history of egypt, chaldæa, syria, babylonia, and assyria by gaston maspero (1846-1916) an index edited by david widger project gutenberg editions contents ## volume i. ## volume ii. ## volume iii. ## volume iv. ## volume v. ## volume vi. ## volume vii. ## volume viii. ## volume ix. ## volume x. ## volume xi. ## volume xii. ## volume xiii. volumes, chapters and stories volume i. editor's preface translator's preface chapter i.�the nile and egypt chapter ii.�the gods of egypt chapter iii.�the legendary history of egypt illustrations of particular interest (170 images in volume i.) mummy wrappings from tomb at thebes well providing water for irrigation sacrifice of the bull occupations of ani in the elysian fields an incident in the wars of hartheous and sit volume ii. chapter i�the political constitution of egypt chapter ii�the memphite empire chapter iii�the first theban empire list of colored and special illustrations stele in the form of a door the island and temple of phil. collosal statue of a king colored sculptures in the palace cutting and carrying the harvest the pyramid of khephren passenger vessel under sail avenue of sphinxes�karnak denderah�temple of tentyra the channel of the nile between the two fortresses of semneh and kummeh painting at the entrance of the fifth tomb volume iii. chapter i�ancient chaldæa chapter ii�the temples and the gods of chaldæa chapter iii�chaldæan civilization appendix�the pharaohs of the ancient and middle empires listing of special color plates and photographs the charioteer the plenisphere wrappings of a mummy manuscript on papyrus egyptian slave merchant egyptian manuscript astronomical tablet volume iv. chapter i�the first chaldæan empire and the hyksôs in egypt chapter ii�syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest chapter iii�the eighteenth theban dynasty list of special illustrations in this volume collection of vases painting in tomb of the kings thebes signs, arms and instruments valley of the tomb of the kings an egyptian trading vessel: xviiith dynasty a column of troops on the march two companies on the march encounter between egyptian and asiatic chariots ramses ii. counting of the hands painting on the tomb of the kings avenue of rams and pylon at karnak thutmosis iii.,statue in the turin museum volume v. chapter i�the eighteenth theban dynasty�(continued) chapter ii�the reaction against egypt chapter iii�the close of the theban empire color plates and special illustrations a procession of negroes painted tablets in the hall of harps the simoom. sphinx and pyramids at gizeh amenothes iii. colossal head, british museum the decorated pavement of the palace profile of head of mummy (thebes tombs) columns of temple at luxor paintings of chairs the coffin and mummy of ramses ii the defeat of the peoples of the sea ramses iii. binds the chiefs of the libyans signs, arms and instruments volume vi. chapter i�the close of the theban empire�(continued) chapter ii�the rise of the assyrian empire chapter iii�the hebrews and the philistines�damascus list of color plates and special illustrations painting in the fifth tomb of the kings to the right the mummy factory paintings at the end of the hall of the fifth the tomb the lady taksûhît decorated wrappings of a mummy one of the mysterious books of amon one of the hours of the night ishtar as a warrior bringing prisoners to a conquering king a lion-hunt paintings of chairs making a bridge for the passage of the chariots a procession of philistine captives at medinet-habu king solomon and the queen of sheba the mummies of queen mâkerî and her child volume vii. chapter i�the assyrian revival and the struggle for syria chapter ii�tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian chapter iii�sargon of assyria (722-705 b.c.) list of special images and color plates no. 1. enameled brick (nimrod). no. 2. fragment of mural painting (nimrod). temple of khaldis at muzazir sacrifice offered by shalmaneser iii. costumes found in the fifth tomb prayer at sunset tiglath-pileser iii. in his state chariot picture in the hall of the harps in the fifth tomb manuscript on papyrus in hieroglyphics the sword dance iaubîdi of hamath being flayed alive. taking of the city of kishîsim by the assyrians bird's eye view of sargon's palace at dur-sharrukîn volume viii. chapter i�sennacherib (705-681 b.c.) chapter ii�the power of assyria at its zenith; esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal chapter iii�the medes and the second chaldæan empire list of special illustrations and color plates esneh�principal abyssinian trading village sennacherib receiving the submissions of the jews the fleet of sennacherib on the nar-marratum assyrian bas-reliefs at bavian great assyrian stele at baviaît. transport of a winged bull on a sledge. the column of taharqa, at karnak mural decorations from the grottoes a lion issuing from its cage the battle of tulliz khumb-nigash proclaimed king the head of thumman sent to nineveh two elamite chiefs flayed alive prayer in the desert after painting by gerome illustrated manuscript in heiroglyphics chieck beled�gizeh museum decorations on the wrappings of a mummy. the façade of the great temple of abu-simbel prisoners under torture having their tongues torn out a king putting out the eyes of a prisoner a people carried away into captivity volume ix. chapter i�the iranian conquest chapter ii�the last days of the old eastern world list of color images and special illustrations hypostyle of hall of xerxes: detail of entablature the occupations of ani in the elysian fields croesus on his pyre the two goddesses of law; ani adoring osiris; the trial of the conscience; toth and the feather of the law. amasis in adoration before the bull apis encampment de bacharis street vender of curios after the painting by gerome. funeral offerings. the tomb of darius freize of archers at suza fountain and school of the mother of little mohamad a bas-relief on a sidonian sarcophagus volume x. part a. part b. part c. volume xi. chapter i�egypt under the roman empire chapter ii.�the christian period in egypt chapter iii.�egypt during the muhammedan period list of color plates and special illustrations a koptic maiden fragments in wood painted temple at tentyra, enlarged by roman architects an arab girl ethiopian arabs scene in a sepuuchral chamber the slumber song painting at the entrance of the fifth tomb egyptian slave street vendors in metal ware a young egyptian wearing the royal lock an egyptian water-carrier street and mosque of mahdjiar a modern kopt volume xii. chapter i�the crusaders in egypt chapter ii.�the french in egypt chapter iii.�the rule of mehemet ali chapter iv�the british influence in egypt chapter v.�the water ways of egypt chapter vi�the decipherment of the hieroglyphs chapter vii�the development of egyptology chapter viii.�important researches in egypt list of color plates and special illustrations enamelled glass cup from arabia gate of el futuh at cairo interior of the mosque, kilawun bonaparte in egypt the prophet muhammed cairo�eskibieh quarter mosque of mehemit ali a distinguished egyptian jew slave boats on the nile hieroglyphic record of an ancient canal examples of phoenecian porcelain phoenician jewlery the great hall of abydos plans of the tombs of den-setui and others three types of sealings volume xiii. part i. egypt and mesopotamia chapter i�the discovery of prehistoric egypt chapter ii�abydos and the first three dynasties part ii. chapter iii�memphis and the pyramids chapter iv�recent excavations in western asia and the dawn of chaldæan history part iii. chapter v�elam and babylon, the country of the sea and the kassites chapter vi�early babylonian life and customs part iv. chapter vii�temples and tombs of thebes chapter viii�the assyrian and neo-babylonian empires in the light of chapter ix�the last days of ancient egypt listing of special color plates and photographs stele of vultures in context quick image stele of victory in context quick image statue of queen teta-shera in context quick image wall painting in context quick image produced from images generously made available by the internet archive.) [illustration: james morris webb, a. m. evangelist of the church of god (acts 20-28, biblical)] the black man the father of civilization proven by biblical history author: james morris webb, a. m. copyright applied for preface. i have many objects in presenting this book to the public. _first_: i love my race regardless of the prejudice against her, the unenviable position she holds, and the things she is falsely said to be guilty of. i demonstrate my love for her by launching this book before the public as somewhat of a defense against the prejudice of ancient, as well as modern historical writers and lecturers, who have misrepresented her, and took from her the good deeds and honors that are justly due her. _secondly_: i realize that my race has had defenders, and has some now, men of my race and men of other races. but i am simply presenting this book as an humble race defender, in connection with the body of race defenders, and if my theory in this book is accepted as one of the little fingers of this splendid body, i will feel that i have accomplished some results and thus portrayed the story of "the widow's mite"--she gave all she had, and i contribute likewise. _thirdly_: to appreciate my argument, the reader had best have a bible at his finger tips so as to examine my references and compare them with my statements, which i make wholly and solely upon the authorities found in the bible, which in turn is the real and only authority on ancient history (again my authority is not inspired in the slightest degree with malice or hatred for the white race). my profession as a minister of the gospel of jesus christ would not permit me to defend in the name of justice, harboring malice and hatred or any ill feeling toward my white brethren. i am acting with that meek and humble spirit and with a gigantic pride in my race, which i hope, pleases god. j. m. webb. [illustration: abraham lincoln frederick douglas dr. booker t. washington] three of the greatest men in american history frederick douglas, the thunder-bolt, whose mighty peals of thunder awoke the sympathy of the christian men and women of this country in behalf of his enslaved and suffering people. abraham lincoln, the flash of lightning, who, like a streak of light from heaven giving hope to the black people, struck the shackles from their hands and left them lying shattered at their feet. dr. booker t. washington, who is nobly directing a never-to-be-forgotten battle for that moral and industrial education, which douglas and lincoln made it possible for them to obtain. introduction the bible gives the first and only true account of the origin of mankind. it is the only book containing an accurate record of the progress of man toward civilization, and it is the indispensable reference of all searchers after the real facts of the birth of humanity and its progress toward the civilization of today; beginning with his creation, it is the only authentic record of man; authentic because it is first hand, not a copy of something else or a scientific or literary review, but a dispassionate record of man's creation and progress, untrimmed, unshaped and unvarnished, to suit prejudice. it would not be a complete record if it did not show with the rest of them the origin of the black man and "woe for all these pinnacle thieves"--it shows that he, the "black man" is the "father of civilization." the black man has been misrepresented by prejudiced historians and lecturers. it has been and is now quoted that ham, the father of the black man, was cursed by his father, noah. now, in regard to this incident let us take the biblical record for it, and anyone not totally blind with prejudice will be convinced by reading in the book of genesis the 9th chapter from the 20th to the 27th verse inclusive, that noah did not, "for he could not curse" ham, although he did in a fit of intoxication pronounce a curse on canaan, the son of ham. in passing, i might mention that canaan was never inconvenienced by the curse of noah, because he was the father of seven prosperous nations, foremost among them were the canaanites, phoenicians and sidonians. the sidonians sprang from sidon, who was the first son of canaan, according to genesis 10th chapter 15th verse. these same sidonians are the men "descended from black men" whom solomon ordered hiram of tyre to engage to do the skilled hewing and designing of the timber work on solomon's temple--solomon declaring that these sidonians, "black men" were the only men possessed with anywhere near sufficient skill to take charge of and successfully complete the artistic timber work on "his" solomon's temple. first kings 5th chapter 6th verse speaks very plainly of this fact. solomon knew the black race was a superior, not an inferior race. he married pharoah's daughter--see 1st kings, 3rd chapter 1st verse; 7th chapter 8th verse, also the 9th chapter and 16th verse. solomon's wife might have been of as dark skin or even as black as he was, for history shows that egypt had two full blooded ethiopian pharoahs just before and during the reign of solomon, according to herodotus, the names of these two ethiopians were sabaco or "sebichos" and sethos, so solomon surely got an ethiopian "negro or black" woman for a wife. this naturally increased the proportion of negro blood in the veins of the future king of the jews. viewing the progress of the immediate descendants of ham we learn that a curse laid upon one by a mortal of that day was as foolish and ineffective as it is in this, the story about this curse, also the story of the black man who contended that a black skin and woolly hair is a disgrace, has, according to the bible, no foundation. speaking of black skin, the greatest brain work and wisdom ever given to this world was given by men of black skins, or at least in whose veins the greatest portion of blood was ethiopian or negro blood. as to this assertion and king solomon, see "songs of solomon 1st chapter 6th verse." solomon's dark skin should cause no surprise, because his mother, hittite, was also the widow of uriah (see 2nd samuels 12th chapter 9th and 10th verses). the hittites are the descendants of heth and heth was the second son of canaan (see genesis 10th chapter 15th verse). as to the woolly hair, jesus, the blessed saviour of mankind, will have his head covered with woolly hair when he comes to judge the world, (daniel 7th chapter 9th and 10th verses). now, if daniel's prophecy is true that when christ left this earth he had woolly hair, he naturally will return with woolly hair, and the pictures of him today are an erroneous conception of him, by the artists. this grand old book the bible, does not show that god ever turned a man black to disgrace him for his sins, or anything else, but this same bible does show that god's power did turn a man white to disgrace him because of his sins, and said that his seed would be likewise forever. facts are stubborn things and often very disagreeable, sometimes even sickening, and by reading carefully the 5th chapter of the 2nd kings, 25th, 26th and 27th verses, many of our highly civilized brethren "whose ancient ancestors disgraced them" will suffer an alarming fit of nausea. among the many low cowardly things that have been said and done against the negro during this christian era, one poor benighted individual published a "joke" in book form, in which he claims that, the negro is a beast, the poor fellow tries to be serious, and no doubt thinks he is offering at least some proof of his assertion. the poor fellow of course, receives some sympathy, and would no doubt receive as much as any of the rest of his class, were it not for the fact that he holds a professorship in one of our leading american christian universities. of course the disgust, if any, is felt for those responsible for placing the poor devil in such a position, and the real and well placed sympathy is for the student, who must suffer because of this fellow. the fact remains, however, that regardless of what has been said and done against the negro and of whatever might be said or done against him in future, he is the only man who can trace himself back through the ages to his origin, and find monumental evidence of his unequaled greatness, his prowess, the laurels and great honors he won, the things he created and perfected which have a direct influence on our civilization of today. the "black man" i boldly assert "was the father of civilization," born in the land of egypt, and the different branches of science and art were simply transmitted to other races, which, as the ages have rolled by have only been enlarged and to some extent improved upon. even the modern american negro has proven that he is original, for instance--as a tonsorial artist he has no superiors and no negro was ever known to enter a "barber college" to learn the trade. negroes inherit the sweetest, most musical voices, and if you have not heard a negro quartette or chorus after they have arranged the harmony of a piece they are to sing, you have not heard what is best and sweetest in vocal music. as instrumentalists "not forgetting the many others" i simply mention blind tom, and blind boone, the fame of these two men needs no comment. they only displayed that talent handed down to them through centuries by their black ancestors. as for the negro being original, why the negro has given great america the only claim she ever did or ever will have to a national music. god honored the black man by allowing some of his ethiopian blood to flow in the veins of his only son jesus christ, and i unhesitatingly assert that jesus would in america be classed a negro. i make this assertion only on the authority of the bible, according to which jesus was born out of the tribe of judah. judah had only five children and they were males, (1st chron. 2nd ch. and 4th v.), three by his first wife and two by his second wife (1st chron. 2nd ch. 3rd and 4th vs.), and both of his wives were descendants of canaan, a black man who was the son of ham (genesis 10th ch. 6th v.). tamar, judah's second wife, bore him two of these sons whose names were phares and zarah (1st chron. 2nd ch. and 4th v.), these two names appear in the genealogy of jesus christ in the book of matthew (1st chapter 3rd verse), so it is no trouble to see that judah of whom christ was to come, started out by presenting to the world children of canaanite women who were hamite descendants. now, virgin mary, of whom christ was born was beyond all doubt a woman out of the tribe of judah, and every bible reference proclaims that jesus was to spring from this tribe of judah (genesis 49-10, heb. 7-14, rev. 5-5th). our beloved st. paul tells us in (romans 1-3) that jesus was of the seed of david according to the flesh. david is the 10th man named from judah in the genealogy of jesus christ (matthew 1st chapter, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th verses). added to this david's great, great grandfather "booz" was born of the woman rahab, who was a direct descendant of ham (matthew 1st chapter 5th verse). this also shows that david, one of god's greatest soldiers, was one who most successfully led his people and one who had negro blood in his veins. bible history is full of honors for the black man, jethro the ethiopian or negro father-in-law of moses, who was the author who first employed that, which is today, our judicial system, considerably twisted and revised to meet the changing conditions of civilization (exodus 18th chapter). this chapter tells of jethro's visit to moses, and how he gave moses the foundation of what is today our system of graded courts for pronouncing judgments. again moses "the hebrew emancipator" was named by a black woman "pharoah's daughter"--she said she called him moses because she drew him out of the water (exodus 2-10) and besides black men educated moses. at any rate he received what education he had in the schools of the black people of egypt (acts 7th 22nd), so there is nothing remarkable in the fact that dr. booker t. washington, w. e. b. dubois, w. s. scarborough and many other negro or black men occupy places among the foremost and most eminent educators of the world, and why should they not? they are descended from fathers who ruled egypt centuries ago and with their great wisdom layed the foundation of learning. [illustration: bishop h. m. turner, d.d., l.l.d. the most fearless defender the afro-americans have] bishop h. m. turner, d.d., l.l.d. bishop h. m. turner, born at newbury, south carolina, february 1st, 1833, is the senior bishop of the a. m. e. church. he has been bishop for thirty-one years, and is quoted as the walking encyclopedia of methodism, and for this cause the last general conference that convened at norfolk, va., on may, 1908, voted unanimously for the good bishop to be the historian of the african-methodist episcopal church. it is to be remembered that bishop turner was the first colored man to be a commissioned officer in the united states army, which appointment he received from president lincoln. the bishop was twice a member of the georgia legislature, and also the first of his church to be elected bishop to africa. the black man first chapter. "that time changes all things" is a saying so old and so true as to admit of no argument. it is exemplified in so many different ways as to require no comment, and yet when we hear the phrase used glibly and thoughtlessly, every day, it is but natural to wonder if the one who uses it realizes what he is saying, or rather, if he knows what those few commonplace words mean, when used to form that sentence. it is a foregone conclusion that he does not. he never stopped, "he, of this enlightened age, i mean," long enough to examine even a little of the abundance of indisputable proof that the saying "time changes all things" applies to things and conditions, seldom if ever present, to his own narrow mind, and far away and beyond even his meaner and low prejudiced influence. if he did, his retrospective mood, would, before carrying him back to the very beginning, suffer something of a shock, and his attitude would change. instead of delighting in history, modern, medieval and ancient, his attitude would change so noticeably that an observer would imagine that his only interest was in tearing down and falsifying facts, and concealing records that he could not falsify. when we hear or read the sayings of some of our "misnamed" great men, but in reality disgustingly conspicuous public figures, we are fully justified in making the charge of falsifying and concealing such facts as they are not really ignorant of. one of these conspicuous public characters delights in making the assertion that the hamite ethiopian or negro never amounted to anything, or possessed anything, never occupied an eminence, save to which the semitic or white man had dragged or driven him up to. if ignorance alone was responsible for this glaring falsehood, a great deal of sympathy would go out to those who make the statement as well as those who believe it to be true because of their ignorance. as harsh as it may seem sympathy would be wasted for a great deal of the self asserted enlightenment of today is but egotism. much of the so-called wisdom is self praise for successfully concealing, or at least surrounding historical facts with such mystery as to place the descendants of shem upon an eminence which is not justly his and makes him in his own opinion appear much larger than what he really is. and yet with all the egotism, some knowledge of the true origin of mankind exists, and it is this knowledge that causes the fasifying and hiding as much as possible the true historical records, especially of the black man. it cannot be said that the learned historical writers, the great divines, theological students and lecturers of today are ignorant of the history of ham, the son of noah, and his descendants, such as nimrod, the founder of the great ancient city of babylon, and also menes the first king of egypt and the founder of the great ancient city of memphis. ridpath says that the traditions of antiquity points to memphis and babylon as the fountains of human wisdom. if those above-named are ignorant of the history of the last-named, they are doing the world a great injustice in assuming the position of teacher and leader. if they are familiar with the history of the races and the deeds of men, they will no doubt have for them and their kind good and sufficient reasons for making false and misleading statements as to some historical records, and totally forgetting or demeaning others. an early queen of egypt was a descendant of the ethiopian or negro race. this is conceded by some of the modern writers; some of them going so far as to say that her skin was very black, and a few of them acknowledge that it was this black queen who placed the first fleet of war ships on the river nile. they have no doubt traced this woman back to where they are satisfied that she was descended in a direct lineal line from zipporah, the black and ethiopian wife of moses. we read very little of these two women, because modern writers seek to obscure them, and our ministers of the gospel never preach or lecture on that part of the bible in which they are mentioned. why? because, if they do they must give credit to black people. in this connection, i do not speak of biblical history only. were it not for the fact that the dimensions of this book would be extended far beyond what was intended, i could begin even with hannibal, the carthagenian general, and record the accomplishments of black men without the intervening of any long periods of time, down to the time of alexander dumas, toussant l'overture, and alexander sergievitch pouskin, russo-african poet. i could do more, i could come into the borders of this republic and beginning with crispus octikus, or alexander hamilton--record the accomplishments of these same black descendants of ham, down to this day. this modern record would contain many references to both the war of independence and the war of the rebellion. it would also mention a great many black men who can never forget el caney and san juan hill. besides the heroes of war, modern history is replete with the names of black men famous in peace for their accomplishments in science and letters of art. space will not permit me to dwell upon these men and their accomplishments and the towering obstacles in spite of which they succeeded. i could not fail, however, to mention frederick douglas who was one of the greatest statesmen america ever had, even though he was born a slave. dr. booker t. washington was also born a slave, and is one of the greatest educators the world has ever known. as to the many other great things black men have done and are doing, i cannot fail to mention the north pole, for, if human beings have stood on the spot claimed as the north pole, the black man was preceded by no one. i speak of mr. matt henson, the negro, who, if indeed, the pole ever was reached, was one of the first of the only two "to date" to reach it. [illustration: prof. w. s. scarborough] prof. w. s. scarborough is head of the classical department of wilberforce university of ohio, and vice-president of the same institution. he, too, is a great writer in defense of the afro-american race. here are some of his remarks in his master-piece, "race integrity": (see next page.) "the truth is that the term 'caucasian' has little or no meaning as it is now used. the word itself is a conventional term given at the first by blumenbach to designate what he considered the highest type of the human family, shown by a skull from mount caucasus. when we attempt to trace those who would claim the name as an expression of their superiority we find the type has disappeared. there is no pure specimen now in existence. and if we ask what is 'white' we can only say, 'that it is a term used to designate the absence of color'--that is all, and no sign whatever of 'race integrity.' we have already indicated that science and investigation point to the fact that primitive man was not white. it is no new theory, but it has seemed convenient for the saxon to let it rest as much as possible in discrete oblivion. bishop h. m. turner of the african methodist episcopal church has often promulgated it in his own inimitable way, and moncure d. conway has also declared that the white people of the world today are only a reflex leprosy and that the natural color is brown or black." second chapter. his first home god but faintly revealed the puzzle of civilization to noah and his three sons, shem, ham and japhet (genesis 9th chapter 1st seven verses), and it became their duty to start to work on the first moves of the puzzle, as well as to create nations. he, who would begin from the first, moves and works the matter out to perfection. ham, the father of the black man, located in africa. africa was his homestead, so to speak. david, the psalmist, credited ham with this territory in the 105th psalm 23rd and 27th verses, and also in the 106th psalm 22nd verse. now, if this is not true, and we reject it on the ground of not being sufficient proof of the black man's first and original home, we can on quite as good ground reject any and every other part of the bible, for what i here state is no wild imagination, but facts taken from the bible. cush, mizriam, phut and canaan were the first sons of ham (genesis 10th chapter, 6th verse), and these four sons including nimrod, the grandson of ham, were the first to start work on the problem of civilization; in a word they were the pioneers and the very pillars of civilized governments. cush located in south egypt on the river nile. he became the father of the ethiopians as well as the father of the cushites through nimrod who located on the southern part of the euphrates river. it is to be remembered that nimrod is the founder of the babylonian kingdom (genesis 10th chapter, 10th verse.) mizriam located on the upper part of the river nile, and he became the father of the egyptians. phut located in the northern part of africa. canaan located in the land known as the old palestine country, which is modern turkey. canaan became the father of the canaanites (genesis 10th chapter, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th verses). according to the bible the above is the exact location of the first sons of ham, and the question which naturally follows is, "was civilization born in their land and given birth by ham's first offspring?" it is conceded by john clark ridpath and a few other writers on ancient history that the egyptians were the fathers of civilization, according to the chronology of manetho, an egyptian priest. egypt was founded in the year b. c. 3892, and menes was the first mortal king. the all important question now arises, "were the egyptians descendants of black men, or were they descendants of white men? were they descendants of ham or shem?" it is well known that students claim to be divided in their opinion as to the original stock from which the ancient egyptians came. ridpath, among others, says they were neither semitic nor negro, but concludes his remarks on the origin of the egyptians by saying that the ancient egyptians were considered a branch of that part of the cushite family, which settled in asia. probably the little matter of the cushites being the grand-children of ham slipped ridpath's mind, else his statements would not have been so conflicting, because he just says that they were not negroes, but ends his argument by saying that they were a branch of the cushite family of asia. it requires no laborious research to establish the facts that cush was the father of all cushite nations. he was also the first son of ham (genesis 10th chapter, 6th verse). now then, if the ethiopians and all other cushite nations who sprang from this first son of ham were not negroes, will some of our historians omit the word "probably," so much used by them, and say _what_ they were. it is fair to assume that with their boasted intelligence and superior brain power, by this time they would have been able to search out and connect at least some of the many facts, and plain, indisputable records in the bible which leaves no room for doubt or "probably." we learn from the bible that ham is the father of the african family; the ethiopian is the darkest or blackest tribe of the hamites. cush was the founder or father of this tribe. moses selected his wife from this black or ethiopian tribe (numbers 12th chapter, 1st verse). it must be plain to any one who will read the parts referred to in the bible, that ridpath's contention that the egyptians sprang from the cushites was the wrong avenue to escape the blood of the negro, or their relation to the black man's family. i believe, however, that ridpath wrote in good faith for the majority of the historical writers claim that the egyptians descended from a white race, notwithstanding they admit that the old testament gives the truest, the most complete and reliable record on the origin of the egyptians of any other book, so it is not unnatural to believe that their opinions are influenced by racial prejudice. now it is true that the bible contains the only authentic, and certainly the most ancient record of not only the egyptians, but of all mankind, and i can and will prove by it that the egyptian--hamite--sprang from mizriam. according to the biblical gazette, the word "egypt" is derived from the word mizriam, and this word "mizriam" was the name of one of the first sons of ham (genesis 10th chapter, 6th verse). by the word "egypt" being coined from the word "mizriam," it strengthens my contention that the egyptian was descended from the black man. i will now dig down further into the rich earth of proof for more enlightenment out of the book of truth. by viewing the ancient bible map of africa and asia, which map can be found in the back of the new testament, one can readily pick out the spots upon which shem, ham and japheth first located. you will notice that mizriam, the second son of ham, and the accredited father of the egyptians located on the very spot, so to speak, where the great city of memphis was built by menes, the first king of egypt. again you will notice that all the names within african borders are names of the sons of ham, shem and his offspring, located in asia. perhaps a better way to locate ham, shem and japheth and their first offspring is first to read the 10th and 11th chapters of genesis, then locate their names on the map, and it will be seen that not a shemite, or white man, originally located in africa. all of the white men located in asia, and according to the bible white men never began to travel in africa until abraham's time, b. c. 1921. the egyptians lived in a high state of civilization near 2,000 years before abraham's first visit to egypt, and the appearance of white people was a circus and a curiosity to the black people. abraham realized this fact and commanded his wife to represent herself as his sister, because as he said, "she was fair to look upon," white (genesis 12th chapter, 11th, 12th and 13th verses). this would indicate that the egyptians were not white, and i will say without fear of my assertion being disproven, that until after the time of abraham, the egyptians were a simon pure black race. shortly after abraham's visit, the shemitic or white travellers began to pour into egypt to such an extent that the egyptians began inter-marrying with them, and of course, this inter-marrying had its effect of contaminating the pure negro blood, and this inter-marrying was the cause of the black man, or full blooded egyptian losing the power of control in the kingdom. in other words--this is the loop through which the shepherd or white or shemitic kings slipped through and took possession of the egyptian kingdom. [illustration: dr. w. e. burghardt dubois] dr. w. e. burghardt dubois is the most scholarly speaker and writer of the afro-american race. he is the author of the book "souls of black folk," which is a marvellous book. on the following page are some of the phrases from his famous address to the social study clubs of chicago university. february 13th, 1907, on education and civilization: "the doing of the world's work is a great duty and a great privilege. it is a thing not to be aimed at but to be aimed beyond. just so soon as a nation or a country can put its foot upon this satisfaction of the lower wants and step upward to the greater aspirations of human brotherhood and the broader ideals of civilization, just so soon the real building of civilization begins. it seems to me, therefore, that the students of chicago university and they that teach them, ought especially, on every occasion to impress this broader aspect of the race problem. that instead of putting it in its narrower, nastier channel, instead of stooping to listen to men, who themselves represent what is lowest and least in our national organization, that you should strive in every way to realize yourselves and to show others that this great broad question of humanity is not a question of petty crime, not a question of so many bales of cotton, not a question even of mere industrial development, but is a question of human aspiration, and that if here in america, on the very fore front of present advance, it is possible to murder the aspiration of 10,000,000 of men, then america is not yet civilized." third chapter. his rule in egypt dr. leonhard schmitz, ph. d., ll. d., f. r., s. e., says in his work on ancient egyptian history, that these hyksos or shepherd kings were semite people. "white," of course, and they comprised the 15th, 16th and 17th dynasties, which covered 511 years. now, during this period, jacob and his twelve sons and their families moved from canaan to egypt, and other semite or whites from asia did likewise, because the white man had begun to rule egypt. at the 18th dynasty, however, fortune turned against the white rulers of egypt, and the black men or the negroes regained possession of their country, and banished the whites from their land, except the jews, whom they held as slaves. they reorganized the kingdom with their own blood, "the blood of the negro." aahmas was the first king after the whites were driven out, and his wife was nefruari, the ethiopian princess, greatly celebrated for her dusky charms, her wealth and her accomplishments. the beginning of this reorganization of a period is recorded in the 1st chapter of the book of exodus, which shows that at the beginning of the slavery of the jews, god told abraham that his people would be held in bondage in egypt for 400 years (genesis 15th chapter, 13th verse). those 400 years marked the period of egypt's most rapid and substantial progress, as dr. schmitz says in writing on ancient egyptian history, those years were the most brilliant in egypt's record, and the period at which her art reached its highest point. it is but reasonable to suppose this to have been so, for the shepherd, or "white kings" had destroyed all of the former brilliancy of egypt, and did not because they could not do anything to replace or imitate its grandeur or beauty. the black people when they regained possession of their kingdom and again began to rule, made slaves of the jews and compelled them to do all the heavy, dirty, unskilled labor, such as carrying bricks and mortar and working in the field (exodus 1st chapter, 13th and 14th verses). while the egyptians turned their attention to science and art and reorganizing and drilling their army, so as to be able to protect their country against all nations. as dr. schmitz says, the eastern boundaries of egypt were well protected by strong fortresses. this is but natural, because on the east, the semitic or white races reigned, and no doubt they were unfriendly to the egyptians, or "black" people, because they had expelled the shepherd or "white" kings from their land. now, when the egyptians had attained "in that age" to the highest degree of intelligence and wisdom, and were possessed of the greatest human power, god deemed it wise to make his own infinite wisdom and power felt over that of human wisdom and power, by using moses as an instrument to knock at the door of the egyptian government and ask for the release of the enslaved jews. moses did not appear in egypt by any human authority, or power, but by the authority and the power of god, for it would have been useless for not only moses, but for any nation or number of nations to approach egypt with hostile intentions, without god, because egypt with her wisdom and power had the world at her mercy. there it required god with his immeasurable wisdom and power to overcome the wisdom and power of these black egyptians. the evidence of god's power was displayed to the "pharoah meneptah," who is generally conceded to be the "pharoah of the exodus," by his, "god's" instruments, moses and aaron who were to appear before the pharoah and cast down their rods which turned to serpents (exodus 7th chapter, 10th verse). when they had cast down their rods before pharoah, and they turned to serpents, pharoah called the wise men, or magicians of egypt with their enchantments, and they cast down their rods which also became serpents (exodus 7th chapter, 11th and 12th verses). this was the performing of two miracles, one by god's power, and one by human power. this vieing with god, though only for an instance of time is what no white man has had the power to do since his creation. but, however, god, in order to demonstrate his supreme power, caused the serpents transformed from the rods of moses and aaron to swallow the serpents transformed from the rods of pharoah's or egypt's wise men (exodus 7-12). this rod and serpent incident was the beginning of a series of plague miracles (read the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th chapters of exodus), which wrecked the egyptians' or black man's kingdom, and also destroyed that great power which he had over all other nations and released the jews from slavery. the black man's power, as the first power among the nations had now begun to decay, and as the black race began to die, as a power among nations, the white race began to rise to where it had never been before, but this was 2,500 years after the black man had worked out all the problems of civilization. in reading revelation, 13th chapter, 11th verse, of st. john, the divine, i am very much impressed by the description of one of his revelations which god unfolded to him, and which he describes as follows: "i behold another beast coming up out of the earth and he had two horns, like lamb's, and he spake as a dragon." now, to my mind, the foregoing vision of st. john the divine, was this very country, the united states of america, revealed to him ages ago before this country was discovered and named, the two horns i interpret to be the two great political parties, that have done so much to corrupt this government and misrule its people from their infancy to the present day. again, the american government spake like a dragon when it permitted slavery to exist, especially when its constitution says "that all men were born free and equal." now, concerning the creating and enthralling of nations, their rise and fall, that is the will and the work of god. (75th psalms, 6th and 7th verses.) (jeremiah, 27th and 5th verses.) (daniel, 2nd chapter, 21st verse.) (daniel, 4th chapter, 17th verse.) so, since it is true that the black man is the father of civilization, it is just as true that the white man is now at the helm, and the big "i am" of the civilized world. but the fact remains that he took his civilization and his position after the black man had created it, and passed from the stage of action, just as the white man must do at god's own appointed time, to make room for some other race, probably the yellow race, chinese or japanese. david, the psalmist, said: "egypt was the land of the black man--ham not shem, the white man," and he further said that the tabernacles which were the houses and dwellings from the lowest to the king's palaces were ham's, and not shem's, the white man--(psalms, 106th chapter, 22nd verse; 105th chapter, 23rd to 27th verse; 78th chapter, 51st verse). it is easy to understand why the negro or black man is not identified with his egyptian brother; that reason is seldom honestly and earnestly sought for. the reason is--that the historians, with a very few exceptions, write from a prejudiced standpoint, together with the fact that they do not give credit to the old testament, if indeed, they study it at all, especially that part of it which is the most ancient, and beyond all shadow of a doubt the first and only true account of the origin of mankind it is easy to understand. it is impossible for god to forget that the black man and his land (egypt) was the cradle of rescue that rocked and nursed the son of god in his first two years of life, when herod's decree to destroy all children under two years of age was issued. it was known that the decree was issued for the express and only purpose of destroying the infant christ, but god chose egypt, the black man's land, as a haven of rest and safety during the life of the displeased and would-be infant murderer, herod. (matt., 2nd chapter.) this might be the origin of that old, old saying, "blood is thicker than water," for jesus in going into egypt, went among black women and men, who were the founders of the tribe from which he sprang. when god in his infinite wisdom, his great love, justice and mercy, and at his own appointed time, summons mankind to take his rightful place in the wavering human line to be rewarded for that smallest of virtues, in proportion as he for the greatest of virtues, will say to the black man, who will be found heading the line, "well done, thou good and faithful black servant, thou, my instrument, the father of civilization." the end. comments on lecture tours of the writer. _to whom it may concern_: "i beg to say, after hearing elder webb on the subject, that the blood of the negro coursed through the veins of jesus and solomon. i am frank to say i have seldom, if ever, enjoyed such an intellectual treat. the position he assumed as the subject of his lecture touching the hametic blood and race is difficult and requires a practical knowledge of biblical and historical lore. but i am pleased to say that he not only shows himself an expert, but the master of the situation, and i commend him to the ministry and churches of our race of every denomination. truly, "bishop h. m. turner." comment from one of the leading papers of the writer's home. "the evidence submitted by elder webb tending to prove that the saviour of mankind was a black man seems to be sufficient to put those who oppose the proposition upon their proof. now that the chain of evidence presented by mr. webb appears so complete, it is strange that none of the delvers in the biblical records have not advanced the sensational proposition before. not only was christ a negro, but it seems that solomon, who has been held up through all of the ages as the personification of wisdom, had ethiopian blood in his veins also."--_seattle daily times._ [illustration: henry o. tanner the world-famous afro-american artist] henry o. tanner is the world famous afro-american artist. he is the oldest son of bishop tanner of the a. m. e. church. he was born in pittsburg, penn., but was trained in the public schools of philadelphia, to which place his parents moved soon after his birth. his first steps in his life work were taken in the art schools of philadelphia from which training he went to paris where his genius developed and flowered in the studies of benjamin constant and julien. in 1895 his "sabot maker," was shown in the salon exhibit and received friendly treatment from the french critics. frenchmen, as a rule, are not too favorably inclined to the works of foreigners and their appreciation of tanner is truly significant of the real value this work--a merit which puts it beyond the limitations of race and country. in 1896 he exhibited "daniel in the lion's den," the first of a line of religious works with which his fame has been since connected. this picture received honorable mention from the french jury and was bought by the pennsylvania academy. mr. tanner's picture, "the two disciples at the tomb," was purchased by the chicago art institute for $1,600. in memory of paul lawrence dunbar famous african-american poet the colored soldiers (from dunbar's "lyrics of lowly life.") if the muse were mine to tempt it and my feeble voice were strong, if my tongue were trained to measures, i would sing a stirring song. i would sing a song heroic of those noble sons of ham, of the gallant colored soldiers who fought for uncle sam! in the early days you scorned them, and with many a flip and flout said "these battles are the white man's. and the whites will fight them out." up the hills you fought and faltered, in the vales you strove and bled, while your ears still heard the thunder of the foes' advancing tread. then distress fell on the nation, and the flag was drooping low; should the dust pollute your banner? no! the nation shouted, no! so when war, in savage triumph, spread abroad his funeral pall- then you called the colored soldiers, and they answered to your call. and like hounds unleashed and eager for the life blood of the prey, sprung they forth and bore them bravely in the thickest of the fray, and where'er the fight was hottest, where the bullets fastest fell, there they pressed unblanched and fearless at the very mouth of hell. below are written some of the comments on his poetry and prose: dr. adams, editor of "the advance," says: "dunbar was a genius bound in ebony." former president theodore roosevelt said: "i was a great admirer of his poetry and his prose." [illustration: p. ka isaka seme a native born african] p. ka isaka seme, who delivered such a wonderful oration on the subject, "the regeneration of africa," which oration is reproduced from the colored american magazine of new york (june, 1906). this oration substantiates me in my article wherein i claim that the black man was the father of civilization. the regeneration of africa curtis medals oration, first prize, april 5, 1906, columbia university i have chosen to speak to you on this occasion upon "the regeneration of africa." i am an african, and i set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion. men have tried to compare races on the basis of some equality. in all the works of nature, equality, if by it we mean identity, is an impossible dream! search the universe! you will find no two units alike. the scientists tell us there are no two cells, no two atoms, identical. nature has bestowed upon each a peculiar individuality, an exclusive patent--from the great giants of the forest to the tenderest blade. catch in your hand, if you please, the gentle flakes of snow. each is a perfect gem, a new creation; it shines in its own glory--a work of art different from all of its aerial companions. man, the crowning achievement of nature, defies analysis. he is a mystery through all ages and for all time. the races of mankind are composed of free and unique individuals. an attempt to compare them on the basis of equality can never be finally satisfactory. each is self. my thesis stands on this truth; time has proved it. in all races, genius is like a spark, which, concealed in the bosom of a flint, bursts forth at the summoning stroke. it may arise anywhere and in any race. i would ask you not to compare africa to europe or to any other continent. i make this request not from any fear that such comparison might bring humiliation upon africa. the reason i have stated,--a common standard is impossible! come with me to the ancient capital of egypt, thebes, the city of one hundred gates. the grandeur of its venerable ruins and the gigantic proportions of its architecture reduced to insignificance the boasted monuments of other nations. the pyramids of egypt are structures to which the world presents nothing comparable. the mighty monuments seem to look with disdain on every other work of human art and to vie with nature herself. all the glory of egypt belongs to africa and her people. these monuments are the indestructible memorials of their great and original genius. it is not through egypt alone that africa claims such unrivalled historic achievements. i could have spoken of the pyramids of ethiopia, which, though inferior in size to those of egypt, far surpass them in architectural beauty; their sepulchres which evince the highest purity of taste, and of many prehistoric ruins in other parts of africa. in such ruins africa is like the golden sun, that, having sunk beneath the western horizon, still plays upon the world which he sustained and enlightened in his career. justly the world now demands- "whither is fled the visionary gleam, where is it now, the glory and the dream?" oh, for that historian who, with the open pen of truth, will bring to africa's claim the strength of written proof. he will tell of a race whose onward tide was often swelled with tears, but in whose heart bondage has not quenched the fire of former years. he will write that in these later days when earth's noble ones are named, she has a roll of honor too, of whom she is not ashamed. the giant is awakening! from the four corners of the earth africa's sons, who have been proved through fire and sword, are marching to the future's golden door bearing the records of deeds of valor done. mr. calhoun, i believe, was the most philosophical of all the slave-holders. he said once that if he could find a black man who could understand the greek syntax, he would then consider their race human, and his attitude toward enslaving them would therefore change. what might have been the sensation kindled by the greek syntax in the mind of the famous southerner, i have so far been unable to discover; but oh, i envy the moment that was lost! and woe to the tongues that refused to tell the truth! if any such were among the now living, i could show him among black men of pure african blood those who could repeat the koran from memory, skilled in latin, greek and hebrew,--arabic and chaldais--men great in wisdom and profound knowledge--one professor of philosophy in a celebrated german university; one corresponding member of the french academy of sciences, who regularly transmitted to that society meteorological observations, and hydrographical journals and papers on botany and geology; another whom many ages call "the wise," whose authority mahomet himself frequently appealed to in the koran in support of his own opinion--men of wealth and active benevolence, those whose distinguished talents and reputation have made them famous in the cabinet and in the field, officers of artillery in the great armies of europe, generals and lieutenant generals in the armies of peter the great in russia and napoleon in france, presidents of free republics, kings of independent nations which have burst their way to liberty by their own vigor. there are many other africans who have shown marks of genius and high character sufficient to redeem their race from the charges which i am now considering. ladies and gentlemen, the day of great exploring expeditions in africa is over! man knows his home now in a sense never known before. many great and holy men have evinced a passion for the day you are now witnessing--their prophetic vision shot through many unborn centuries to this very hour. "men shall run to and fro," said daniel, "and knowledge shall increase upon the earth." oh, how true! see the triumph of human genius today! science has searched out the deep things of nature, surprised the secrets of the most distant stars, disentombed the memorials of everlasting hills, taught the lightning to speak, the vapors to toil and the winds to worship--spanned the sweeping rivers, tunneled the longest mountain range--made the world a vast whispering gallery, and has brought foreign nations into one civilized family. this all-powerful contact says even to the most backward race, you cannot remain where you are, you cannot fall back you must advance! a great century has come upon us. no race possessing the inherent capacity to survive can resist and remain unaffected by this influence of contact and intercourse, the backward with the advanced. this influence constitutes the very essence of efficient progress and of civilization. from these heights of the twentieth century i again ask you to cast your eyes south of the desert of sahara. if you could go with me to the oppressed congos and ask, what does it mean, that now, for liberty, they fight like men and die like martyrs; if you would go with me to bechuanaland, face their council of headmen and ask what motives caused them recently to decree so emphatically that alcoholic drinks shall not enter their country--visit their king, khama, ask for what cause he leaves the gold and ivory palace of his ancestors, its mountain strongholds and all its august ceremony, to wander daily from village to village through all his kingdom, without a guard or any decoration of his rank--a preacher of industry and education, and an apostle of the new order of things; if you would ask menelik what means this that abyssinia is now looking across the ocean--oh, if you could read the letters that come to us from zululand--you, too, would be convinced that the elevation of the african race is evidently a part of the new order of things that belong to this new and powerful period. the african already recognizes his anomalous position and desires a change. the brighter day is rising upon africa. already i seem to see her chains dissolved, her desert plains red with harvest, her ayssinia and her zululand the seats of science and religion, reflecting the glory of the rising sun from the spires of their churches and universities. her congo and her gambia whitened with commerce, her crowded cities sending forth the hum of business, and all her sons employed in advancing the victories of peace--greater and more abiding than the spoils of war. yes, the regeneration of africa belongs to this new and powerful period! by this term regeneration i wish to be understood to mean the entrance into a new life, embracing the diverse phases of a higher, complex existence. the basic factor which assures their regeneration resides in the awakened race-consciousness. this gives them a clear perception of their elemental needs and of their undeveloped powers. it therefore must lead them to the attainment of that higher and advanced standard of life. the african people, although not a strictly homogeneous race, possess a common fundamental sentiment which is everywhere manifest, crystalizing itself into one common controlling idea. conflicts and strife are rapidly disappearing before the fusing force of this enlightened perception of the true intertribal relation, which relation should subsist among a people with a common destiny. agencies of a social, economic and religious advance tell of a new spirit which, acting as a leavening ferment, shall raise the anxious and aspiring mass to the level of their ancient glory. the ancestral greatness, the unimpaired genius, and the recuperative power of the race, its irrepressibility, which assures its permanence, constitute the african's greatest source of inspiration. he has refused to camp forever on the borders of the industrial world; having learned that knowledge is power, he is educating his children. you find them in edinburgh, in cambridge, and in the great schools of germany. these return to their country like arrows, to drive darkness from the land. i hold that this industrial and educational initiative, and his untiring devotion to these activities must be regarded as positive evidences of this process of his regeneration. the regeneration of africa means that a new and unique civilization is soon to be added to the world. the african is not a proletarian in the world of science and art. he has precious creations of his own, of ivory, of copper and of gold, fine, plaited willow-ware and weapons of superior workmanship. civilization resembles an organic being in its development--it is born, it perishes, and it can propogate itself. more particularly, it resembles a plant, it takes root in the teeming earth, and when the seeds fall in other soils new varieties sprout up. the most essential departure of this new civilization is that it shall be thoroughly spiritual and humanistic--indeed a regeneration moral and eternal! o africa! like some great century plant that shall bloom in ages hence, we watch thee; in our dream see in thy swamps the prospero of our stream; thy doors unlocked, where knowledge in her tomb hath lain innumerable years in gloom. then shalt thou, waking with that morning gleam shine as thy sister lands with equal beam. team (http://www.fadedpage.com) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 31413-h.htm or 31413-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31413/31413-h/31413-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31413/31413-h.zip) the story of extinct civilizations of the west by robert e. anderson, m.a., f.a.s. author of extinct civilizations of the east [illustration: prehistoric structure, uxmal (yucatan) (p. 76).] [illustration] venient annis saecula seris quibus oceanus vincula rerum laxet, et ingens pateat tellus tethys que novos detegat orbes. --seneca. new york _mcclure, phillips & co._ mcmiv copyright, 1903, by d. appleton and company contents chapter page introduction 9 i. pre-columbian discoveries of america 19 ii. "discovery of the world and of man" 36 iii. the extinct civilization of the aztecs 54 iv. american archeology 71 v. mexico before the spanish invasion 88 vi. arrival of the spaniards 106 vii. cortés and montezuma 135 viii. balboa and the isthmus 164 ix. extinct civilization of peru 172 x. pizarro and the incas 186 maps, etc. page prehistoric structure, uxmal (yucatan) _frontispiece_ imaginary continent, south of africa and asia 12 remains of a norse church at katortuk, greenland 21 map of vinland 24 the dighton stone in the taunton river, massachusetts 27 the dighton stone. fig. 2 28 cipher autograph of columbus 46 chulpa or stone tomb of the peruvians 87 quetzalcoatl 93 ancient bridge near tezcuco 100 teocalli, aztec temple for human sacrifices 105 monolith doorway. near lake titicaca. fig. 1 173 image over the doorway shown in fig. 1. near lake titicaca. fig. 2 175 the quipu 180 gold ornament (? zodiac) from a tomb at cuzco 182 extinct civilizations of the west introduction throughout all the periods of european history, ancient or modern, no age has been more remarkable for events of first-rate importance than the latter half of the fifteenth century. the rise of the new learning, the "discovery of the world and of man," the displacement of many outworn beliefs, these with other factors produced an awakening that startled kings and nations. then felt they like balboa, when with eagle eyes he stared at the pacific, and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise silent, upon a peak in darien. it was at this historical juncture that the "middle ages" came to an end, and modern europe had its beginning. (see chapter ii.) why was europe so long in discovering the vast continent which all the time lay beyond the western ocean? simply because every skipper and every "board of admiralty" believed that this world on which we live and move is flat and level. they did not at all realize the fact that it is _ball_-shaped; and that when a ball is very large (say, as large as a balloon), then any small portion of the surface must appear flat and level to a fly or "mite" traveling in that vicinity. homer believed that our world is a flat and level plain, with a great river, oceanus, flowing round it; and for many ages that seemed a very natural and sufficient theory. the pythagoreans, it is true, argued that our earth must be spherical, but why? oh, said they, because in geometry the sphere is the "most perfect" of all solid figures. aristotle, being scientific, gave better reasons for believing that the earth is spherical or ball-shaped. he said the shadow of the earth is always round like the shadow of a ball; and the shadow of the earth can be seen during any eclipse of the moon; therefore, all who see that shadow on the moon's disk know, or ought to know, that the earth is ball-shaped. another reason given by aristotle is that the altitude of any star above the horizon changes when the observer travels north or south. for example, if at london a star appears to be 40° above the northern horizon, and at york the same star at the same instant appears 42-1/2°, it is evident that 2-1/2° is the difference (increase) of altitude at york compared with london. such an observation shows that the road from london to york is not over a flat, level plane, but over the curved surface of a sphere, the arc of a circle, in fact. herodotus, the father of history, was a good geographer and an experienced traveler, yet his only conception of the world was as a flat, wide-extending surface. in egypt he was told how pharaoh necho had sent a crew of phenicians to explore the coast of africa by setting out from the red sea, and how they sailed south till they had _the sun on their right hand_. "absurd!" says herodotus, in his naïve manner, "this story i can not believe." in egypt, as in greece or europe generally, the sun rises on the left hand, and at noon casts a shadow pointing north; whereas in south africa the sun at noon casts a shadow pointing south, and sunrise is therefore on the _right hand_. the honest sailors had told the truth; they had merely "crossed the line," without knowing it. if herodotus had known that the world was spherical or ball-shaped, he could easily have understood that by traveling due south the sun must at last appear at noon to the north instead of the south. a counterpart to the story of the phenician sailors occurs in pliny: he tells how some ambassadors came to the roman emperor claudius from an island in the south of asia, and when in italy were much astonished to see the sun at noon to the south, casting shadows to the north. they also wondered, he says, to see the great bear and other groups of stars which had never been visible in their native land (nat. hist., vi, 22). that there were islands or even a continent in the western ocean was a tradition not infrequent in classical and medieval times, as we shall presently see, but to place a continent in the southern ocean was a greater stretch of imagination. the great outstanding problem of the sources of the nile probably suggested this southern continent to some. ptolemy, the great egyptian geographer, even formed the conjecture that the southern continent was joined to africa by a broad isthmus, as indicated in certain maps. such a connection of the two continents would at once dispose of the story that the phenician sailors had "doubled the cape." in several maps after the time of columbus, australia is extended westward in order to pass muster for the southern continent. [illustration: imaginary continent, south of africa and asia. [the cardinal points are shown by the four winds.] beginning of the fifteenth century. the word brumæ = the winter solstices.] it is with a western continent, however, that we are now mainly concerned. what lands were imagined by the ancients in the far west under the setting sun? the mighty ocean beyond spain was to the greeks and latins a place of dread and mystery. "stout was his heart and girt with triple brass," says the roman poet, "who first hazarded his weak vessel on the pitiless ocean." even the western parts of the mediterranean were shrunk from, according to the odyssey, without speaking of the horrors of the great ocean beyond. "beyond gades," i. e., scarcely outside of the pillars of hercules, the extreme limit of the ancient world, "no man," said pindar, "however daring, could pass; only a god might voyage those waters!" in spite of the dread which the ancient mariners felt for the great western ocean, their poets found it replete with charm and mystery. the imagination rested upon those golden sunsets, and the tales of marvel which, after long intervals, sea-borne sailors had told of distant lands in the west. the poets placed there the happy home destined for the souls of heroes. thus (odys. iv, 561): no snow is there, nor yet great storm nor any rain, but always ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill west, and bloweth cool on men. so far homer. his contemporary, hesiod, thus describes the elysian fields as islands under the setting sun: there on earth's utmost limits zeus assigned a life, a seat, distinct from human kind, beside the deepening whirlpools of the main, in those blest isles where saturn holds his reign, apart from heaven's immortals calm they share, a rest unsullied by the clouds of care: and yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown'd springs the ripe harvest from the teeming ground. the poet pindar places in the same mysterious west "the castle of chronos" (i. e., "old time"), "where o'er the isles of the blest ocean breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold, some from the land on glistening trees, while others the water feeds; and with bracelets of these they entwine their hands, and make crowns for their heads." _vesper_, the star of evening, was called hesperus by the greeks; and hence the hesperides, daughters of the western star, had the task of watching the golden apples planted by the goddess hera in the garden of the gods, on the other side of the river oceanus. one of the labors of hercules was to fetch three of those mystic apples for the king of mycenae. the poet euripides thus refers to the gardens of the west, when the chorus wish to fly "over the adriatic wave": or to the famed hesperian plains, whose rich trees bloom with gold, to join the grief-attunèd strains my winged progress hold; beyond whose shores no passage gave the ruler of the purple wave. of all the lands imagined to lie in the western ocean by the greeks, the most important was "atlantis." some have thought it may possibly have been a prehistoric discovery of america. in any case it has exercised the ingenuity of a good many modern scientists. the tale of atlantis we owe to plato himself, who perhaps learned it in egypt, just as herodotus picked up there the account of the circumnavigation of africa by the phenician mariners. "when solon was in egypt," says plato, "he had talk with an aged priest of sais who said, 'you greeks are all children: you know but of one deluge, whereas there have been many destructions of mankind both by flood and fire.'... in the distant western ocean lay a continent larger than libya and asia together."... in this atlantis there had grown up a mighty state whose kings were descended from poseidon and had extended their sway over many islands and over a portion of the great continent; even libya up to the gates of egypt, and europe as far as tyrrhenia, submitted to their sway.... afterward came a day and night of great floods and earthquakes; atlantis disappeared, swallowed by the waves. geologists and geographers have seriously tried to find evidence of atlantis having existed in the atlantic, whether as a portion of the american continent, or as a huge island in the ocean which could have served as a stepping-stone between the western world and the eastern. from a series of deep-sea soundings ordered by the british, american, and german governments, it is now very well known that in the middle of the atlantic basin there is a ridge, running north and south, whose depth is less than 1,000 fathoms, while the valleys east and west of it average 3,000 fathoms. at the azores the north atlantic ridge becomes broader. the theory is that a part of the ridge-plateau was the atlantis of plato that "disappeared swallowed by the waves." (nature, xv, 158, 553, xxvii, 25; science, june 29, 1883.) buffon, the naturalist, with reference to fauna and flora, dated the separation of the new and old world "from the catastrophe of atlantis" (epoques, ix, 570); and sir charles lyell confessed a temptation to "accept the theory of an atlantis island in the northern atlantic." (geology, p. 141.) the following account "from an historian of the fourth century b. c." is another possible reference to a portion of america--from a translation "delivered in english," 1576. selenus told midas that without this worlde there is a continent or percell of dry lande which in greatnesse (as hee reported) was unmeasureable; that it nourished and maintained, by the benifite of the greene meadowes and pasture plots, sundrye bigge and mighty beastes; that the men which inhabite the same climate exceede the stature of us twise, and yet the length of there life is not equale to ours. the historian plutarch, in his morals, gives an account of ogygia, with an illusion to a continent, possibly america: an island, ogygia, lies in the arms of the ocean, about five days' sail west from britain.... the adjacent sea is termed the saturnian, and the continent by which the great sea is circularly environed is distant from ogygia about 5,000 stadia, but from the other islands not so far.... one of the men paid a visit to the great island, as they called europe. from him the narrator learned many things about the state of men after death--the conclusion being that the souls of men arrive at the moon, wherein lie the elysian fields of homer. the greek historian, diodorus siculus, has a similar account with curious details of an "island" which might very well have been part of a continent. columbus believed to the last that cuba was a continent. in the ocean, at the distance of several days' sailing to the west, there lies an island watered by several navigable rivers. its soil is fertile, hilly, and of great beauty.... there are country houses handsomely constructed, with summer-houses and flower-beds. the hilly district is covered with dense woods and fruit-trees of every kind. the inhabitants spend much time in hunting and thus procure excellent food. they have naturally a good supply of fish, their shores being washed by the ocean.... in a word this island seems a happy home for gods rather than for men (v. 19). another greek writer, lucian, in one of his witty dialogues, refers to an island in the atlantic, that lies eighty days' sail westward of the pillars of hercules--the extreme limit of the ancient world, as has already been seen. readers of henry fielding and admirers of squire westers will remember how in the london of the eighteenth century the limits of piccadilly westward was a tavern at hyde park corner called the _hercules' pillars_, on the site of the future apsley house.[1] although neither greek nor roman navigators were likely to attempt a voyage into the ocean beyond the straits of gibraltar, yet a trading vessel from carthage or phenicia might easily have been driven by an easterly gale into, or even across, the atlantic. some involuntary discoveries were no doubt due to this chance, and the reports brought to europe were probably the germs of such tales as the poets invented about the fair regions of the west. in celtic literature, moreover, "avalon" was placed far under the setting sun beyond the ocean--avalon or "glas-inis" being to the bards the land of the dead, marvelous and mysterious. [footnote 1: tom jones, xvi. chap. 2, 3, etc.] in english literature of the middle ages there is a remarkable passage relating to our present subject, which was written long before that rise of the new learning mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. it is a statement made by roger bacon, the greatest of oxonian scholars of the thirteenth century, who, long before the renascence, did much to restore the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics. in his opus majus, the elder bacon wrote: more than the fourth part of the earth which we inhabit is still unknown to us.... it is evident therefore that between the extreme west and the confines of india, there must be a surface which comprises more than half the earth. though roger bacon, to use his own words, died "unheard, forgotten, buried," our recent historians place his name first in the great roll of modern science. there now remains only one quotation to make from the ancients. we have been reserving it for two reasons--first, because it is a singularly happy anticipation of the discovery of the new world, so happy that it became a favorite stanza with the discoverer himself. this we learn from the life of the "great admiral," written by his son ferdinand. secondly, because it adorns our title-page and has been characterized as "a lucky prophecy"--written in the first century a. d. the author, seneca, was a dramatist as well as a philosopher, the lines occurring at the end of one of his choruses--medea, 376. we may thus translate the prophetic stanza: for at a distant date this ancient world will westward stretch its bounds, and then disclose beyond the main a vast new continent, with realms of wealth and might. chapter i pre-columbian discoveries of america 1 _norse discovery._--by glancing at a map of the north atlantic, the reader will at once see that the natural approach from europe to the western continent was by iceland and greenland--especially in those early days when ocean navigation was unknown. iceland is nearer to greenland than to norway; and greenland is part of america. but in iceland there were celtic settlers in the early centuries; and even king arthur, according to the history of geoffrey of monmouth, sailed north to that "ultima thule." during the ninth century a christian community had been established there under certain irish monks. this early civilization, however, was destined to become presently extinct. it was in a. d. 875, i. e., during the reign of alfred the great in england, that the norse earl, ingolf, led a colony to iceland. more strenuous and savage than the christian celts whom they found there, the latter with their preaching monks soon sailed to the south, and left the northmen masters of the island. the norse colony under ingolf was strongly reenforced by norwegians who took refuge there to avoid the tyranny of their king, harold, the fair-haired. ingolf built the town ingolfshof, named after him, and also reikiavik, afterward the capital, named from the "reek" or steam of its hot springs. so important did this colony become that in the second generation the population amounted to 60,000. ingolf was admired by the poet james montgomery (not to be confounded with robert, whom macaulay criticized so severely), who in 1819 thus wrote of him and his island: there on a homeless soil his foot he placed, framed his hut-palace, colonized the waste, and ruled his horde with patriarchal sway --where justice reigns, 'tis freedom to obey.... and iceland shone for generous lore renowned, a northern light when all was gloom around. the next year after ingolf had come to iceland, gunnbiorn, a hardy norseman, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange land.... about half a century later, judging by the icelandic sagas, we learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away which was called "mickle ireland" (_irland it mikla_)--[winsor's hist. america, i, 61]. gunnbiorn's discovery was utilized by erik the red, another sea-rover, in a. d. 980, who sailed to it and, after three years' stay, returned with a favorable account--giving it the fair name _greenland_. the norse established two centers of population on greenland. it is now believed that after doubling cape farewell, they built their first town near that head and the second farther north. the former, _eystribygd_ (i. e., "easter bigging"), developed into a large colony, having in the fourteenth century 190 settlements, with a cathedral and eleven churches, and containing two cities and three or four monasteries. the second town, _westribygd_ (i. e., "wester bigging") had grown to ninety settlements and four churches in the same time. the germ and root of that civilization (afterward extinct, as we shall see) was due to leif the son of red erik, who visited norway, the mother-country, at the very close of the tenth century. [illustration: remains of a norse church at katortuk, greenland.] he found that the king and people there had enthusiastically embraced the new religion, _christianity_. leif presently shared their fervor, and decided to reject woden, thor, and the other gods of old scandinavia. a priest was told off to accompany leif back to greenland, and preach the new faith. it was thus that a christian civilization first found footing in arctic america. the ruins of those early christian churches (see illustration above) form most interesting objects in modern greenland; near the chief ruin is a curious circular group of large stones. the poet of "greenland," to whom we have already referred, quotes from a danish chronicle to the effect that, in the golden age of the colony, there were a hundred parishes to form the bishopric; and that the see was ruled by seventeen bishops from a. d. 1120 to 1408. bishop andrew is the last mentioned, ordained in 1408 by the archbishop of drontheim. from the same authority we learn that according to some of the annals "the best wheat grew to perfection in the valleys; the forests were extensive; flocks and herds were numerous and very large and fat." the cloister of st. thomas was heated by pipes from a warm spring, and attached to the cloister was a richly cultivated garden. after leif, son of erik, had introduced christianity into greenland, his next step was to extend the norse civilization still farther within the american continent. news had reached him of a new land, with a level coast, lying nine days' sailing southwest of greenland. picking thirty-five men, leif started for further exploration. one part of the new country was barren and rocky, therefore leif named it _helluland_ (i. e., "stone land"), which appears to have been newfoundland. farther south they found a sandy shore, backed by a level forest country, which leif named _markland_ (i. e., "wood land"), identified with nova scotia. after two days' sail, according to the saga account, having landed and explored the new continent along the banks of a river, they resolved to winter there. in one of these explorations a german called tyrker found some grapes on a wild vine, and brought a specimen for the admiration of leif and his party. this country was therefore named _vinland_ (i. e., "wine land"), and is identified with new england, part of rhode island, and massachusetts.[2] [footnote 2: prof. r. b. anderson says, "the basin of the charles river should be selected as the most probable scene of the visits of leif erikson, etc." [_v._ map.]] our greenland poet thus refers to leif's landing: wineland the glad discoverers called that shore, and back the tidings of its riches bore; but soon return'd with colonizing bands. the norsemen founded a regular settlement in vinland, establishing there a christian community related to that of greenland. leif's brother, korvald, explored the interior in all directions. with the natives, who are called "skraelings" in the sagas, they traded in furs; these people, who seemed dwarfish to the norsemen, used leathern boats and were no doubt eskimos: a stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock. the principal settler in vinland was thorfinn, an icelander, who had married a daughter-in-law of erik the red. she persuaded thorfinn to sail to the new country in order to make a permanent settlement there. in the year 1007 a. d. he sailed with 160 men, having live stock and other colonial equipments. after three years he returned to greenland, his wife having given birth to a son during their first year in vinland. from this son, snorre, it is claimed by some norwegian historians, that thorwaldsen, the eminent danish sculptor is descended. after the time of thorfinn, the settlement in vinland continued to flourish, having a good export trade in timber with greenland. in 1121 a. d. according to the icelandic saga, the bishop, erik upsi, visited vinland, that country being, like iceland and greenland, included in his bishopric. the last voyage to vinland for timber, according to the sagas, was in 1347. [illustration: map] professor horsford, of cambridge, mass., finds the site of norumbega, mentioned in various old maps, on the river charles, near waltham, mass., and maintains that town to be identical with vinland of the norsemen. to prove his belief in this theory, the professor built a tower commemorating the norse discoveries. he argued that norumbega was a corruption by the indians of the word _norvegr_ a norse form of "norway." the abandonment of vinland by the norse settlers may be compared with that of gosnold's expedition to the same region near the end of queen elizabeth's reign. gosnold was sent to plant an english colony in america, after the failure of sir walter raleigh's settlement at roanoke (north carolina); and the coast explored corresponded exactly to that which the norse settlers had named vinland, lying between the sites of boston and new york. he gave the name cape cod to that promontory, and also named the islands nantucket, martha's vineyard, and the elizabeth group. selecting one of these for settling a colony, he built on it a storehouse and fort. the scheme, however, failed, owing to the threats of the natives and the scarcity of supplies, and all the colonists sailed from massachusetts, just as the norse settlers had done many generations previously. the expedition of gosnold to vinland, however, bore good fruit, from the favorable report of the new country which he made at home. the merchants of bristol fitted out two ships under martin pring, and in the first voyage a great part of maine (lying north of massachusetts) was explored, and the coast south to martha's vineyard, where gosnold had been. this led to profitable traffic with the natives, and three years later pring made a more complete survey of maine. vinland was also the scene of the famous landing of the mayflower, bringing its puritans from england. it was in cape cod bay that she was first moored. after exploring the new country, just as leif erikson had done so many generations previously, they chose a place on the west side of the bay and named the little settlement "plymouth," after the last english port from which they had sailed. farther north, still in vinland, they soon founded two other towns, "salem" and "boston." those three settlements have ever since been important centers of energy and intelligence in massachusetts, as well as memorials of the norse occupation of vinland. on the occasion of a public statue being erected in boston, mass., to the memory of leif erikson, a committee of the massachusetts historical society formally decided thus: "it is antecedently probable that the northmen discovered america in the early part of the eleventh century." prof. daniel wilson, in his learned work prehistoric man (ii, 83, 85), thus gives his opinion as to the norse colony: with all reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of details, there is the strongest probability in favor of the authenticity of the american vinland. [illustration: the dighton stone in the taunton river, massachusetts.] of the norse colonies in greenland there are some undoubted remains, one being a stone inscription in _runes_, proving that it was made before the reformation, when that mode of writing was forbidden by law. the stone is four miles beyond upernavik. the inscription, according to professor rask, runs thus: erling the son of sigvat, and enride oddsoen, had cleared the place and raised a mound on the friday after rogation-day; --date either 1135 or 1170. rafn, the celebrated danish archeologist, states as the result of many years' research, that america was repeatedly visited by the icelanders in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries; that the estuary of the st. lawrence was their chief station; that they had coasted southward to carolina, everywhere introducing some christian civilization among the natives. [illustration: the dighton stone. fig. 2.] a supposed rock memorial of the norsemen is the dighton stone in the taunton river, massachusetts; one of its sentences, according to professor rafn, being: "thorfinn with 151 norse seafaring men took possession of this land." the figures and letters (whether runic or merely indian) inscribed on the dighton rock have been copied by antiquaries at the following dates: 1680, 1712, 1730, 1768, 1788, 1807, 1812. the above illustration (fig. 2) shows the last mentioned. there have been many probable traces of ancient norsemen found in america, besides those already given. at cape cod, in the last generation, a number of hearth-stones were found under a layer of peat. a more famous relic was the skeleton dug up in fall river, mass., with an ornamental belt of metal tubes made from fragments of flat brass; there were also some arrow-heads of the same material. longfellow, the new england poet, naturally had his attention directed to this discovery (made, 1831), and founded on it his ballad the skeleton in armor, connecting it with the round tower at newport. the latter, according to professor rafn, "was erected decidedly not later than the twelfth century." i was a viking old, my deeds, though manifold, no skald in song has told no saga taught thee!... far in the northern land by the wild baltic's strand i with my childish hand tamed the ger-falcon. oft to his frozen lair tracked i the grisly bear, while from my path the hare fled like a shadow. * * * * * scarce had i put to sea bearing the maid with me- fairest of all was she among the norsemen! three weeks we westward bore, and when the storm was o'er, cloud-like we saw the shore stretching to leeward; there for my lady's bower, built i this lofty tower which to this very hour stands looking seaward! sir clements markham, of the royal geographical society, believes that the norse settlers in greenland were driven from their settlements there by eskimos coming, not from the interior of america, but from west siberia along the polar regions, by wrangell land [_v._ journal, r, g. s., 1865, and arctic geography, 1875]. there was much curiosity from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century as to the site of the lost colonies of greenland which had so long flourished. in 1568 and 1579 the king of denmark sent two expeditions, the latter in charge of an englishman, but no traces were found. at the beginning of the eighteenth century some light was thrown upon the problem by a missionary called egede, who first described the ruins and relics observable on the west coast. by the success of his preaching among the greenlanders for fifteen years, assisted by other gospel missionaries, the moravians were induced to found their settlements in the country, principally in the southwest. it seems probable that in early times the climate of iceland was milder than it now is. columbus, some fifteen years before his great voyage across the atlantic, sailed to this northern "thule," and reports that there was no ice. if so, it is surely possible that greenland also may have been greener and more attractive than during the recent centuries. why should it not at one time have been fully deserving of the name by which we still know it? some would explain the change in climatic conditions by the closing in of icepacks. at present greenland is buried deep under a vast, solid ice-cap from which only a few of the highest peaks protrude to show the position of the submerged mountains, but at former periods, according to geologists, there were gardens and farms flourishing under a genial climate. others suppose that, were the ice removed, we should see an archipelago of elevated islands. 2. _celtic discovery of america._--we have already glanced at the fact that when the norsemen first seized iceland they found that island inhabited by irish celts. these christianized celts made way before the savage invaders, who did not accept the catholic religion till about the close of the tenth century. sailing south, those dispossessed irish probably joined their brother celts who had already long held a district on the eastern coast of north america, which some norse skippers called "white man's land," and also _irland-it-mikla_ (i. e., "mickle ireland"). professor rafn places this district on the coast of carolina. a learned memoir, published 1851, attempts to prove that the mysterious "mound-builders" of the ohio valley were of the same race as the settlers on mickle ireland, and related to the "white-bearded men" who established an extinct civilization in mexico. a french antiquary, 1875, identified mickle ireland with ontario and quebec. beauvois, in his elysée trans-atlantique, derives the name labrador from the _innis labrada_, an island mentioned in an ancient irish romance.[3] another irish discoverer was st. brandan,[4] abbot of cluainfert, ireland (died may 16, 577), who was told that far in the ocean lay an island which was the land promised to the saints. st. brandan set sail in company with seventy-five monks, and spent seven years upon the ocean in two voyages, discovering this island and many others equally marvelous, including one which turned out to be the back of a huge fish, upon which they celebrated easter.[5] [footnote 3: as to the irish claim for the pre-columbian discovery of america, see also humboldt (cosmos, ii, 607), and laing (heimsk., i, 186).] [footnote 4: ms. book of lismore.] [footnote 5: the story is given by humboldt and d'avezac.] among the celtic claimants for discovery we must also include the welsh, who lay stress upon certain resemblances between their language and the dialects of the native americans. a better argument is the historical account taken from their annals about the expedition of prince madoc, son of a welsh chieftain, who sailed due west in the year 1170, after the rumor of the norse discoveries had reached britain. he landed on a vast and fertile continent where he settled 120 colonists. on his return to wales he fitted out a second fleet of ten ships, but the annals give no report of the result. several writers state that the place of landing was near the gulf of mexico: hakluyt connecting the discovery with mexico (1589) and again with the west indies (edition of 1600). in the seventeenth century some authors wished to substantiate the story of prince madoc, in order that the british claim to america should antedate the spanish claim through columbus. prince madoc is, to most readers, only known by southey's poem.[6] [footnote 6: some quotations from southey's poem are given in chapters v, vi.] 3. _basque discovery of america._--who are the basque people? a curious race of spanish mountaineers, who have been as great a puzzle to ethnologists and historians as their language has been to philologists and scholars. we know, however, that in former times they were nearly all seamen, making long voyages to the north for whale and newfoundland cod fishing. they have produced excellent navigators; and possibly preceded columbus in discovering america. sebastian, the lieutenant of magellan, was one of the basque race. magellan did not live to complete his famous voyage, therefore sebastian was the first actual circumnavigator of our globe. françois michel, in his work le pays basque, says that the basque sailors knew the coasts of newfoundland a century before the time of columbus; and that it was from one of these ocean mariners that he first learned the existence of a continent beyond the atlantic. other arguments are derived from comparing the peculiarities of the basque tongue with those of the american dialects. whitney, an american scholar, concludes that "no other dialect of the old world so much resembles the american languages in structure as the basque." 4. _jewish discovery of america._--there is one claim for the discovery of america, which, though quite improbable, if not impossible, has been upheld and sanctioned by many scholarly works in several languages. it is argued that the red indians represent the ten "lost tribes" of the hebrew people who had been deported to assyria and media (_v._ extinct civilizations of the east, p. 109). the theory was first started by some spanish priest-missionaries, and has since been defended by many learned divines both in england and america, one leading argument being certain similarities in the languages. catlin (_v._ smithsonian report, 1885) enumerates many analogies which he found among the western indians. the most authoritative statement is that of lord kingsborough in the well-known mexican antiquities (1830-'48), chiefly in vol. vii. some writers actually quote a statement made in the mormon bible! leading new england divines, like mayhew and cotton mather, espoused the cause with similar faith, as well as roger williams and william penn. 5. _the italian discovery of america._--not through columbus the genoese, or amerigo vespucci, the florentine, although they were certainly italians, but by two venetians, nicolo and antonio zeno. in a. d. 1380 or 1390 these brothers zeni were shipwrecked in the north atlantic, and, when staying in frislanda, made the acquaintance of a sailor who, after twenty-six years' absence, had returned, giving them the following report: "being driven west in a gale, he found an island with civilized inhabitants, who had latin books, but could not speak norse, and whose country was called estotiland, while a region on the mainland, farther south, to which he had also gone, was called drogeo. here he had met with cannibals. still farther south was a great country with towns and temples." the two brothers zeni finally conveyed this account to another brother in venice, together with a map of those distant regions, but these documents remained neglected till 1558, when a descendant compiled a book to embody the information, accompanied by a map, now famous as "the zeno map." humboldt, with reference to this map, remarks that it is singular that the name frislanda should have been applied by columbus to an island south of iceland. washington irving (in his life of columbus) explains the book by a desire to appeal to the national pride of italy, since, if true, the discovery of the brothers would antedate that of columbus by a century. malte-brun, the distinguished geographer, distinctly accepted the zeni narrative as true, and believed that it was by colonists from greenland that the latin books had reached estotiland. another strong advocate afterward appeared in mr. major, an official in the map department of the british museum, who believed that much of the map in question represented genuine information of the fourteenth century, mixed with some spurious parts inserted by the younger zeno. mr. major's paper on the site of the lost colony of greenland determined, and the pre-columbian discoveries of america confirmed, appeared in r. geog. soc. journal, 1873; _v_. also proc. mass. hist. soc., 1874. nordenskjöld also accepted the chief results of this italian discovery, and as an arctic explorer of experience, his opinion carries weight. mercator and hugo grotius were also believers in the zeni account. chapter ii "discovery of the world and of man" at the beginning of this book a reference was made to the great upheaval in european history called the "renascence" (fr. _renaissance_) or revival of learning. in 1453 the turks took constantinople, driving the greek scholars to take refuge in italy, which at once became the most civilized nation in europe. poetry, philosophy, and art thence found their way to france, england, and germany, being greatly assisted by the invention of printing, which just then was beginning to make books cheaper than they ever had been. at the same time feudalism was ruined, because the invention of gunpowder had previously been changing the art of war. for example, the king of france, louis xi, as well as the king of england, henry vii, had entire disposal of the national artillery; and therefore overawed the barons and armored knights. neither moated fortresses nor mail-clad warriors, nor archers with bows and arrows, could prevail against powder and shot. the middle ages had come to an end; modern europe was being born. france had become concentrated by the union of the south to the north on the conclusion of the "hundred years' war," the final expulsion of the english, and the abolition of all the great feudatories of the kingdom. england, at the same time, had entirely swept away the rule of the barons by the recent "wars of the roses," and henry had strengthened his position by alliance with france, spain, and scotland. spain, by the expulsion of the moors from granada in a. d. 1492, was for the first time concentrated into one great state by the union of isabella's kingdom of castile-leon to ferdinand's kingdom of aragon-sicily. from the importance of the word _renaissance_ as indicating the "movement of transition from the medieval to the modern world," matthew arnold gave it the english form "renascence"--adopted by j. r. green, coleridge, and others. in germany, this great revival of letters and learning was contemporaneous with the reformation, which had long been preparing (e. g., in england since john wyclif) and was specially assisted by the invention of printing, which we have just mentioned. the minds of men everywhere were expanded: "whatever works of history, science, morality, or entertainment seemed likely to instruct or amuse were printed and distributed among the people at large by printers and booksellers." thus it was that, though the turks never had any pretension to learning or culture, yet their action in the middle of the fifteenth century indirectly caused a marvelous tide of civilization to overflow all the western countries of europe. another result in the same age was the increase of navigation and exploration--the discovery of the world as well as of man. when the turks became masters of the eastern shores of the mediterranean, the european merchants were prevented from going to india and the east by the overland route, as had been done for generations. thus, since geography was at this very time improved by the science of copernicus and others, the natural inquiry was how to reach india by sea instead of going overland. columbus, therefore, sailed due west to reach asia, and stumbled upon a "new world" without knowing what he did; then cabot, sailing from bristol, sailed northwest to reach india, and stumbled upon the continent of america; and during the same reign (henry vii) the atlantic coast of both north and south america was visited by english, portuguese, or spanish navigators. the third expedition to reach india by sea was under de gama. he set out in the same year as cabot, sailing into the south atlantic, and ultimately did find the west coast of india at calicut, after rounding the cape. the mere enumeration of so many events, all of first-rate importance, proves that that half century (say from a. d. 1460 to 1520) must be called "an age of marvels," _sæclum mirabile_. the concurrence of so many epoch-making results gave a great impulse, not only to the study of literature, science, and art, but to the exploration of many unknown countries in america, africa, and asia, and the universal expansion of human knowledge generally. i.--we shall now consider the first of these discoverers, who was also the greatest. columbus, the latinized form of the italian colombo, spanish, colon. this genoese navigator must throughout all history be called the discoverer of america, notwithstanding all the work of smaller men. from his study of geographical books in several languages, columbus had convinced himself that our planet is spherical or ball-shaped, not a flat, plane surface. till then india had always been reached by traveling overland toward the rising sun. why not sail westward from europe over the ocean, and thus come to the eastern parts of asia by traveling toward the setting sun? by doing so, since our world is ball-shaped, said columbus, we must inevitably reach zipango (i. e., "japan") and cathay (i. e., "china"), which are the most eastern parts of asia. india then will be a mere detail. judging from the accounts of asia and its eastern islands given by marco polo, a venetian, as well as from the maps sketched by ptolemy, the egyptian geographer, columbus believed that the east coast of asia was not so very far from the west coast of europe. columbus was confirmed in this opinion by a learned geographer of florence, named paul, and henceforward impatiently waited for an opportunity of testing the truth of his theory. he convinced himself, but could not convince any one else, that a westerly route to india was quite feasible. first he laid his plans before the authorities at genoa, who had for generations traded with asia by the overland journey, and ought therefore to have been glad to learn of this new alternative route, since the turks were now playing havoc with the other; but no, they told columbus that his idea was chimerical! next he applied to the court of france. "ridiculous!" was the reply, accompanied with a polite sneer. next columbus sent his scheme to henry vii of england, a prince full of projects, but miserly. "too expensive!" was the tudor's reply, though presently, after the spanish success, he became eager to despatch expeditions from bristol under the cabots. then columbus, by the advice of his brother, who had settled in lisbon as a map-maker, approached king john, seeking patronage and assistance, pleading the foremost position of portugal among the maritime states. the portuguese neglected the golden opportunity, ocean navigation not being in their way as yet; their skippers preferred "to hug the african shore." at last columbus gained the ear of isabella, queen of castile; she believed in him and tried to get the assistance of her husband, ferdinand, king of aragon, in providing an outfit for the great expedition. owing to ferdinand's war in expelling the moors from granada, columbus had still to wait several years. in a previous year, 1477, columbus had sailed to the north atlantic, perhaps in one of those basque whalers already referred to, going "a hundred leagues beyond thule." if that means iceland, as is generally supposed, it seems most probable that, when conversing with the sailors there he must have heard how leif, with his norsemen, had discovered the american coasts of newfoundland and vinland some five centuries earlier, and how they had settled a colony on the new continent. other writers have pointed out that columbus could very well have heard of vinland and the northmen before leaving genoa, since one of the popes had sanctioned the appointment of a bishop over the new diocese. if so, the visit of columbus to iceland probably gave him confirmation as to the norse discovery of the american continent. when at last king ferdinand had taken granada from the moors, columbus was put in command of three ships, with 120 men. he set sail from the port of palos, in andalusia, on a friday, august 3, 1492, first steering to the canary islands, and then standing due west. in september, to the amazement of all on board, the compass was seen to "vary": an important scientific discovery--viz., that the magnetic needle does not always point to the pole-star. some writers have imagined that the compass was for the first time utilized for a long journey by columbus, but the occult power of the magnetic needle or "lodestone" had been known for ages before the fifteenth century. the ancient persians and other "wise men of the east" used the lodestone as a talisman. both the mongolian and caucasian races used it as an infallible guide in traveling across the mighty plains of asia. the cynosure in the great bear was the "guiding star," whether by sea or land; but when the heavens were wrapped in clouds, the magic stone or needle served to point exactly the position of the unseen star. what columbus and his terrified crews discovered was the "variation of the compass," due to the fact that the magnetic needle points, not to the north star, but to the "magnetic pole," a point in canada to the west of baffin's bay and north of hudson bay. if columbus had continued steering due west he would have landed on the continent of america in florida; but before sighting that coast the course was changed to southwest, because some birds were seen flying in that direction. the first land reached was an island of the bahama group, which he named _san salvador_. as the spanish boats rowed to shore they were welcomed by crowds of astonished natives, mostly naked, unless for a girdle of wrought cotton or plaited feathers. hence the lines of milton: such of late columbus found the american, so girt with feathered cincture, naked else and wild, among the trees on isles and woody shores. the spot of landing was formerly identified by washington irving and baron humboldt with "cat island"; but from the latest investigation it is now believed to have been watling's island. here he landed on a friday, october 12, 1492. so little was then known of the geography of the atlantic or of true longitude, that columbus attributed these islands to the _east coast of asia_. he therefore named them "indian islands," as if close to hindustan, a blunder that has now been perpetuated for four hundred and ten years. the natives were called "indians" for the same reasons. as the knowledge of geography advanced it became necessary to say "west indies" or "east indies" respectively, to distinguish american from asiatic--"indian corn" means american, but "indian ink" means asiatic, etc. even after his fourth and last voyage columbus believed that the continent, as well as the islands, was a portion of eastern asia, and he died in that belief, without any suspicion of having discovered a new world. a curious confirmation of the opinion of columbus has just been discovered (1894) in the florence library, by dr. wieser, of innsbruck. it is the actual copy of a map by the great admiral, drawn roughly in a letter written from jamaica, july, 1503. it shows that his belief as to the part of the world reached in his voyages was that it was the east coast of asia. the chief discovery made by columbus in his first voyage was the great island of cuba, which he imagined to be part of a continent. some of the spaniards went inland for sixty miles and reported that they had reached a village of more than a thousand inhabitants, and that the corn used for food was called _maize_--probably the first instance of europeans using a term which was afterward to become as familiar as "wheat" or "barley." the natives told columbus that their gold ornaments came from _cubakan_, meaning the interior of cuba; but he, on hearing the syllable _kan_, immediately thought of the "khan" mentioned by marco polo, and therefore imagined that "cathay" (the china of that famous traveler) was close at hand. the simple-minded cubans were amazed that the spaniards had such a love for gold, and pointed eastward to another island, which they called _hayti_, saying it was more plentiful there than in cuba. thus columbus discovered the second in size of all the west indian islands, cuba being the first; he, after landing on it, called it "hispaniola," or little spain. hayti in a few years became the headquarters of the spanish establishments in the new world, after its capital, san domingo, had been built by bartholomew columbus. it was in this island that the spaniards saw the first of the "caziques," or native princes, afterward so familiar during the conquest of mexico; he was carried on the shoulders of four men, and courteously presented columbus with some plates of gold. in a letter to the monarchs of spain the admiral thus refers to the natives of hayti: the people are so affectionate, so tractable, and so peaceable that i swear to your highnesses there is not a better race of men, nor a better country in the world; ... their conversation is the sweetest and mildest in the world, and always accompanied with a smile. the king is served with great state, and his behavior is so decent that it is pleasant to see him. the admiral had previously described the indians of cuba as equally simple and friendly, telling how they had "honored the strangers as sacred beings allied to heaven." the pity of it, and the shame, is that those frank, unsuspicious, islanders had no notion or foresight of the cruel desolation which their gallant guests were presently to bring upon the native races--death, and torture, and extermination! a harbor in cuba is thus described by columbus in a letter to ferdinand and isabella: i discovered a river which a galley might easily enter.... i found from five to eight fathoms of water. having proceeded a considerable way up the river, everything invited me to settle there. the beauty of the river, the clearness of the water, the multitude of palm-trees and an infinite number of other large and flourishing trees, the birds and the verdure of the plains, ... i am so much amazed at the sight of such beauty, that i know not how to describe it. having lost his flag-ship, columbus returned to spain with the two small caravels that remained from his petty fleet of three, arriving in the port of palos march 15, 1493. the reception of the successful explorer was a national event. he entered barcelona to be presented at court with every circumstance of honor and triumph. sitting in presence of the king and queen he related his wondrous tale, while his attendants showed the gold, the cotton, the parrots and other unknown birds, the curious arms and plants, and above all the nine "indians" with their outlandish trappings--brought to be made christians by baptism. ferdinand and isabella heaped honors upon the successful navigator; and in return he promised them the untold riches of zipango and cathay. a new fleet, larger and better equipped, was soon found for a second voyage. with his new ships, in 1498, columbus again stood due west from the canaries; and at last discovering an island with three mountain summits he named it trinidad (i. e., "trinity") without knowing that he was then coasting the great continent of south america. a few days later he and the crew were amazed by a tumult of waves caused by the fresh water of a great river meeting the sea. it was the "oronooko," afterward called orinoco; and from its volume columbus and his shipmates concluded that it must drain part of a continent or a very large island. where orinoco in his pride, rolls to the main no tribute tide, but 'gainst broad ocean urges far a rival sea of roaring war; while in ten thousand eddies driven the billows fling their foam to heaven, and the pale pilot seeks in vain, where rolls the river, where the main. that was the first glimpse which they had of america proper, still imagining it was only a part of eastern asia. in the following voyage, his last, columbus coasted part of the isthmus of darien. it was not, however, explored till the visit of balboa. [illustration: cipher autograph of columbus. the interpretation of the cipher is probably: servatf christus maria yosephus (christoferens).] it was during his third voyage that the "great admiral" suffered the indignity at san domingo of being thrown into chains and sent back to spain. this was done by bobadilla, an officer of the royal household, who had been sent out with full power to put down misrule. the monarchs of spain set columbus free; and soon afterward he was provided with four ships for his fourth voyage. stormy weather wrecked this final expedition, and at last he was glad to arrive in spain, november 7, 1504. he now felt that his work on earth was done, and died at valladolid, may 20, 1506. after temporary interment there his body was transferred to the cathedral of san domingo--whence, 1796, some remains were removed with imposing ceremonies to havana. from later investigations it appears that the ashes of the genoese discoverer are still in the tomb of san domingo. it was in the cathedral of seville, over his first tomb, that king ferdinand is said to have honored the memory of the great admiral with a marble monument bearing the well-known epitaph: a castilla y aragon nuevo mundo dio colon. or, "_to the united kingdom of castile-aragon columbus gave a new world_." after the death of columbus, it seemed as if fate intended his family to enjoy the honors and rewards of which he had been so unjustly deprived. his son, diego, wasted two years trying to obtain from king ferdinand the offices of viceroy and admiral, which he had a right to claim in accordance with the arrangement formerly made with his father. at last diego began a suit against ferdinand before the council which managed indian affairs. that court decided in favor of diego's claim; and as he soon greatly improved his social position by marrying the niece of the duke of alva, a high nobleman, diego received the appointment of governor (not viceroy), and went to hayti, attended by his brother and uncles, as well as his wife and a large retinue. there diego columbus and his family lived, "with a splendor hitherto unknown in the new world." ii.--henry vii of england, after repenting that he had not secured the services of columbus, commissioned john cabot to sail from bristol across the atlantic in a northwesterly direction, with the hope of finding some passage there-abouts to india. in june, 1497, a new coast was sighted (probably labrador or newfoundland), and named _prima vista_. they coasted the continent southward, "ever with intent to find the passage to india," till they reached the peninsula now called florida. on this important voyage was based the claim which the english kings afterward made for the possession of all the atlantic coast of north america. king henry wished colonists to settle in the new land, _tam viri quam feminæ_, but since, in his usual miserly character, he refused to give a single "testoon," or "groat" toward the enterprise, no colonies were formed till the days of walter raleigh, more than a century later. sebastian cabot, born in bristol, 1477, was more renowned as a navigator than his father, john, and almost ranks with columbus. after discovering labrador or newfoundland with his father, he sailed a second time with 300 men to form colonies, passing apparently into hudson bay. he wished to discover a channel leading to hindustan, but the difficulties of icebergs and cold weather so frightened his crews that he was compelled to retrace his course. in another attempt at the northwest passage to asia, he reached latitude 67-1/2° north, and "gave english names to sundry places in hudson bay." in 1526, when commanding a spanish expedition from seville, he sailed to brazil, which had already been annexed to portugal by cabrera, explored the river la plata and ascended part of the paraguay, returning to spain in 1531. after his return to england, king edward vi had some interviews with cabot, one topic being the "variation of the compass." he received a royal pension of 250 marks, and did special work in relation to trade and navigation. the great honor of cabot is that he saw the american continent before columbus or amerigo vespucci. iii.--of the great navigators of that unexampled age of discovery, as spain was honored by columbus and england by cabot, so portugal was honored by de gama. vasco de gama, the greatest of portuguese navigators, left lisbon in 1497 to explore the unknown world lying east of the cape of good hope, arriving at calicut, may, 1498. before that, diaz had actually rounded the cape, but seems to have done so merely before a high gale. he named it "the stormy cape." cabrera, or cabral, was another great explorer sent from portugal to follow in the route of de gama; but being forced into a southwesterly route by currents in the south atlantic, he landed on the continent of america, and annexed the new country to portugal under the name of brazil. cabrera afterward drew up the first commercial treaty between portugal and india. iv.--magellan, scarcely inferior to columbus, brought honor as a navigator both to portugal and spain. for the latter country, when in the service of charles v, he revived the idea of columbus that we may sail to asia or the spice islands by sailing _west_. with a squadron of five ships, 236 men, he sailed, in 1519, to brazil and convinced himself that the great estuary was not a strait. sailing south along the american coast, he discovered the strait that bears his name, and through it entered the pacific, then first sailed upon by europeans, though already seen by balboa and his men "upon a peak in darien"--as keats puts it in his famous sonnet.[7] from the continuous fine weather enjoyed for some months, magellan naturally named the new sea "the pacific." after touching at the ladrones and the philippines, magellan was killed in a fight with the inhabitants of matan, a small island. sebastian, his basque lieutenant (mentioned in chapter i) then successfully completed the circumnavigation of the world, sailing first to the moluccas and thence to spain. [footnote 7: the poet, however, makes the clerical blunder of writing cortez for balboa.] v.--of all the world-famous navigators contemporary with colon, the genoese, there remains only one deserving of our notice, and that because his name is for all time perpetuated in that of the new world. amerigo (latin _americus_) vespucci, born at florence, 1451, had commercial occupation in cadiz, and was employed by the spanish government. he has been charged with a fraudulent attempt to usurp the honor due to columbus, but humboldt and others have defended him, after a minute examination of the evidence. in a book published in 1507 by a german, _waldseemüller_, the author happens to say: and the fourth part of the world having been discovered by americus, it may be called amerige, that is the land of americus, or _america_. vespucci never called himself the discoverer of the new continent; as a mere subordinate he could not think of such a thing. as a matter of fact, he and columbus were always on friendly terms, attached, and trusted. humboldt explains the blunder of waldseemüller and others by the general ignorance of the history of how america was discovered, since for some years it was jealously guarded as a "state secret." humboldt curiously adds that the "musical sound of the name caught the public ear," and thus the blunder has been universally perpetuated: _statque stabitque in omne volubilis ævum_. another reason for the universal renown of amerigo was that his book was the first that told of the new "western world"; and was therefore eagerly read in all parts of europe. cuba, though the largest of the west indian islands, and second to be discovered, was not colonized till after the death of columbus. thus for more than three centuries and a half, as "queen of the antilles" and "pearl of the antilles," cuba has been noted as a chief colonial possession of spain, till recent events brought it under the power of the united states. the conquest of the island was undertaken by velasquez, who, after accompanying the great admiral in his second voyage, had settled in hispaniola (or hayti) and acquired a large fortune there. he had little difficulty in the annexation of cuba, because the natives, like those of hispaniola, were of a peaceful character, easily imposed upon by the invaders. the only difficulty velasquez had was in the eastern part of the island, where hatuey, a cazique or native chief, who had fled there from hispaniola, made preparations to resist the spaniards. when defeated, he was cruelly condemned by velasquez to be burned to death, as a "slave who had taken arms against his master." the scene at hatuey's execution is well known: when fastened to the stake, a franciscan friar promised him immediate admittance into the joys of heaven, if he would embrace the christian faith. "are there any spaniards," says he, after some pause, "in that region of bliss which you describe?" "yes," replied the monk, "but only such as are worthy and good." "the best of them have neither worth nor goodness: i will not go to a place where i may meet with one of that accursed race." being thus annexed in 1511, by the middle of the century all the native indians of cuba had become extinct. in the following century this large and fertile island suffered severely by the buccaneers, but during the eighteenth century it prospered. during the nineteenth century, the united states government had often been urged to obtain possession of it; for example, the sum of one hundred million dollars was offered in 1848 by president polk. slavery was at last abolished absolutely in 1886. in recent years spain, by ceding cuba and the philippines to the united states and the carolines to germany, has brought her colonial history to a close. two other important events occurred when velasquez was governor of cuba: first, the escape of balboa from hispaniola, to become afterward governor of darien; and, second, the expedition under cordova to explore that part of the continent of america which lies nearest to cuba. this expedition of 110 men, in three small ships, led to the discovery of that large peninsula now known as yucatan. cordova imagined it to be an island. the natives were not naked, like those of the west indian islands, but wore cotton clothes, and some had ornaments of gold. in the towns, which contained large stone houses, and country generally, there were many proofs of a somewhat advanced civilization. the natives, however, were much more warlike than the simple islanders of cuba and hispaniola; and cordova, in fact, was glad to return from yucatan. velasquez, on hearing the report of cordova, at once fitted out four vessels to explore the newly discovered country, and despatched them under command of his nephew, grijalva. everywhere were found proofs of civilization, especially in architecture. the whole district, in fact, abounds in prehistoric remains. from a friendly chief grijalva received a sort of coat of mail covered with gold plates; and on meeting the ruler of the province he exchanged some toys and trinkets, such as glass beads, pins, scissors, for a rich treasure of jewels, gold ornaments and vessels. grijalva was therefore the first european to step on the aztec soil and open an intercourse with the natives. velasquez, the governor, at once prepared a larger expedition, choosing as leader or commander an officer who was destined henceforth to fill a much larger place in history than himself, one who presently appeared capable of becoming a general in the foremost rank, hernando cortés, greatest of all spanish explorers. chapter iii the extinct civilization of the aztecs in the extinct civilizations of the east it was shown that the cosmogony of the chaldeans closely resembles that of the hebrews and the phenicians, and that the account of the deluge in genesis exactly reproduces the much earlier one found on one of the babylonian tablets. traces of a deluge legend also existed among the early aztecs. they believed that two persons survived the deluge, a man named koksoz and his wife. their heads are represented in ancient paintings together with a boat floating on the waters at the foot of a mountain. a dove is also depicted, with a hieroglyphical emblem of languages in his mouth.... tezpi, the noah of a neighboring people, also escaped in a boat, which was filled with various kinds of animals and birds. after some time a vulture was sent out from it, but remained feeding on the dead bodies of the giants, which had been left on the earth as the waters subsided. the little humming-bird was then sent forth and returned with the branch of a tree in its mouth. another aztec tradition of the deluge is that the pyramidal mound, the temple of cholula (a sacred city on the way between the capital and the seaport), was built by the giants to escape drowning. like the tower of babel, it was intended to reach the clouds, till the gods looked down and, by destroying the pyramid by fires from heaven, compelled the builders to abandon the attempt. the hieroglyphics used in the aztec calendar correspond curiously with the zodiacal signs of the mongols of eastern asia. "the symbols in the mongolian calendar are borrowed from animals, and four of the twelve are the same as the aztec." the antiquity of most of the monuments is proved--e. g., by the growth of trees in the midst of the buildings in yucatan. many have had time to attain a diameter of from six to nine feet. in a courtyard at uxmal, the figures of tortoises sculptured in relief upon the granite pavement are so worn away by the feet of countless generations of the natives that the design of the artist is scarcely recognizable. the spanish invaders demolished every vestige of the aztec religious monuments, just as roman catholic images and paraphernalia were once treated by the "straitest sects" of protestants, or even mohammedans. the beautiful plateau around the lakes of mexico, as well as other central portions of america, were without any doubt occupied from the earliest ages by peoples who gradually advanced in civilization from generation to generation and passed through cycles of revolutions--in one century relapsing, in another advancing by leaps and bounds by an infusion of new blood or a change of environment--exactly similar to the checkered annals of the successive dynasties in the nile valley and the plains of babylonia. in the new world, as in the old world, from prehistoric times wealth was accumulated at such centers, bringing additional comfort and refinement, and implying the practise of the useful arts and some applications of science. as to the legendary migrations or even those extinct races whose names still remain, max müller said:[8] [footnote 8: chips from a german workshop, i, 327.] the traditions are no better than the greek traditions about pelasgians, æolians, and ionians, and it would be a mere waste of time to construct out of such elements a systematic history, only to be destroyed again sooner or later, by some niebuhr, grote, or lewis. _anahuac_ (i. e., "waterside" or "the lake-country"), in the early centuries of our era, was a name of the country round the lakes and town afterward called mexico. to this center, as a place for settlement, there came from the north or northwest a succession of tribes more or less allied in race and language--especially (according to one theory) the _toltecs_ from tula, and the _aztecs_ from aztlan. tula, north of the mexican valley, had been the first capital of the toltecs, and at the time of the spanish conquest there were remains of large buildings there. most of the extensive temples and other edifices found throughout "new spain" were attributed to this race and the word "toltek" became synonymous with "architect." some five centuries after the toltecs had abandoned tula, the aztecs or early mexicans arrived to settle in the valley of anahuac. with the aztecs came the tezcucans, whose capital, tezcuco, on the eastern border of the mexican lake, has given it its still surviving name. the aztecs, again, after long migrations from place to place, finally, in a. d. 1325, halted on the southwestern shores of the great lake. according to tradition, a heavenly vision thus announced the site of their future capital: they beheld perched on the stem of a prickly-pear, which shot out from the crevice of a rock washed by the waves, a royal eagle of extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in its talons, and its broad wings opened to the rising sun. they hailed the auspicious omen, announced by an oracle as indicating the sight of their future city, and laid its foundations by sinking piles into the shallows; for the low marshes were half buried under water.... the place was called tenochtitlan (i. e. "the cactus on a rock") in token of its miraculous origin. [such were the humble beginnings of the venice of the western world.][9] [footnote 9: prescott, i, i, pp. 8, 9.] to this day the arms of the mexican republic show the device of the eagle and the cactus--to commemorate the legend of the foundation of the capital--afterward called mexico from the name of their war-god. fiercer and more warlike than their brethren of tezcuco, the men of the latter town were glad of their assistance, when invaded and defeated by a hostile tribe. thus mexico and tezcuco became close allies, and by the time of montezuma i, in the middle of the fifteenth century, their sovereignty had extended beyond their native plateau to the coast country along the gulf of mexico. the capital rapidly increased in population, the original houses being replaced by substantial stone buildings. there are documents showing that tenochtitlan was of much larger dimensions than the modern capital of mexico, on the same site. just before the arrival of the spaniards, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the kingdom extended from the gulf across to the pacific; and southward under the ruthless ahuitzotl over the whole of guatemala and nicaragua. the aztecs resembled the ancient peruvians in very few respects, one being the use of knots on strings of different colors to record events and numbers. compare our account of "the quipu" in chapter x. the aztecs seem to have replaced that rude method of making memoranda during the seventh century by picture-writing. before the spanish invasion, thousands of native clerks or chroniclers were employed in painting on vegetable paper and canvas. examples of such manuscripts may still be seen in all the great museums. their contents chiefly refer to ritual, astrology, the calendar, annals of the kings, etc. most of the literary productions of the ancient mexicans were stupidly destroyed by the spanish under cortés. the first archbishop of mexico founded a professorship in 1553 for expounding the hieroglyphs of the aztecs, but in the following century the study was abandoned. even the native-born scholars confessed that they were unable to decipher the ancient writing. one of the most ancient books (assigned to tula, the "toltec" capital, a. d. 660, and written by huetmatzin, an astrologer), describes the heavens and the earth, the stars in their constellations, the arrangement of time in the official calendar, with some geography, mythology, and cosmogony. in the fifteenth century the king of tezcuco published sixty hymns in honor of the supreme being, with an elegy on the destruction of a town, and another on the instability of human greatness. in the same century the three anahuac states (acolhua, mexico, and tlacopan) formed a confederacy with a constant tendency to give mexico the supremacy. the two capitals looking at each other across the lake were steadily growing in importance, with all the adjuncts of public works--causeways, canals, aqueducts, temples, palaces, gardens, and other evidences of wealth. the horror and disgust caused by the aztec sacrificial bloodshed are greatly increased by considering the number of the victims. the kings actually made war in order to provide as many victims as possible for the public sacrifices--especially on such an occasion as a coronation or the consecration of a new temple. captives were sometimes reserved a considerable time for the purpose of immolation. it was the regular method of the aztec warrior in battle not to kill one's opponent if he could be made a captive; to take him alive was a meritorious act in religion. in fact, the spaniards in this way frequently escaped death at the hands of their mexican opponents. when king montezuma was asked by a european general why he had permitted the republic of tlascala to remain independent on the borders of his kingdom, his reply was, "that she might furnish me with victims for my gods." in reckoning the number of victims prescott seems to have trusted too implicitly to the almost incredible accounts of the spanish. zumurraga, the first bishop of mexico, asserts that 20,000 were sacrificed annually, but casas points out that with such a "waste of the human species," as is implied in some histories, the country could not have been so populous as cortés found it. the estimate of casas is "that the mexicans never sacrificed more than fifty or a hundred persons in a year." notwithstanding the wholesale bloodshed before the shrines of their gory gods, we can still assign to the aztecs a high degree of civilization. the history of even modern europe will illustrate this statement, although apparently paradoxical. consider "the condition of some of the most polished countries in the sixteenth century after the establishment of the modern inquisition--an institution which yearly destroyed its thousands by a death more painful than the aztec sacrifices, ... which did more to stay the march of improvement than any other scheme ever devised by human cunning.... human sacrifice was sometimes voluntarily embraced by the aztecs as the most glorious death, and one that opened a sure passage into paradise. the inquisition, on the other hand, branded its victims with infamy in this world, and consigned them to everlasting perdition in the next." the difficulty with the aztecs is how to reconcile such refinement as their extinct civilization showed with their savage enjoyment of bloodshed. "no captive was ever ransomed or spared; all were sacrificed without mercy, and their flesh devoured." the first of the four chief counselors of the empire was called the "prince of the deadly lance," the second "divider of men," the third "shedder of blood," the fourth "the lord of the dark house." the temples were very numerous, generally merely pyramidal masses of clay faced with brick or stone. the roof was a broad area on which stood one or two towers, from forty to fifty feet in height, forming the sanctuaries of the presiding deities, and therefore containing their images. before these sanctuaries stood the dreadful stone of sacrifice. there were also two altars with sacred fires kept ever burning. all the religious services were public, and the pyramidal temples, with stairs round their massive sides, allowed the long procession of priests to be visible as they ceremoniously ascended to perform the dread office of slaughtering the human victims. human sacrifices had not originally been a feature of the aztec worship. but about 200 years before the arrival of the spanish invaders was the beginning of this religious atrocity, and at last no public festival was considered complete without some human bloodshed. prescott takes as an example the great festival in honor of tezcatlipoca, a handsome god of the second rank, called "the soul of the world," and endowed with perpetual youth. a year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his personal beauty and without a blemish on his body, was selected.... tutors took charge of him and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. he was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers.... when he went abroad he was attended by a train of the royal pages, and as he halted in the streets to play some favorite melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity.... four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were selected, and with them he continued to live idly, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honors of a divinity. when at length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived, ... stripped of his gaudy apparel, one of the royal barges transported him across a lake to a temple which rose on its margin.... hither the inhabitants of the capital flocked to witness the consummation of the ceremony. as the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers and broke in pieces his musical instruments. ... on the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted locks flowed in disorder over their sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. they led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper, with its upper surface somewhat convex. on this the victim was stretched. five priests secured his head and limbs, while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his bloody office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp razor of _itzli_, and inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart, and after holding it up to the sun (as representing the supreme god), cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration. such was an instance of the human sacrifices for which ancient mexico became infamous to the whole civilized world. one instance of a sacrifice differing from the ordinary sort is thus given by a spanish historian: a captive of distinction was sometimes furnished with arms for single combat against a number of mexicans in succession. if he defeated them all, as did occasionally happen, he was allowed to escape. if vanquished he was dragged to the block and sacrificed in the usual manner. the combat was fought on a huge circular stone before the population of the capital. women captives were occasionally sacrificed before those bloodthirsty gods, and in a season of drought even children were sometimes slaughtered to propitiate tlaloc, the god of rain. borne along in open litters, dressed in their festal robes and decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest hearts to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant of the priests who read in their tears a favorable augury for the rain prayer. one spanish historian informs us that these innocent victims of this repulsive religion were generally bought by the priests from parents who were poor. we may now resume the traditional settlement of the ancient mexicans on the region called anahuac, including all the fertile plateau and extending south to the lake of nicaragua. the chief tribes of the race were said to have come from california, and after being subject to the colhua people asserted their independence about a. d. 1325. soon afterward, their first capital, tenochtitlan, was built on the site of mexico, their permanent center. for several generations they lived, like their remote ancestors, the red men of the woods, as hunters, fishers, and trappers, but at last their prince or chief cazique was powerful enough to be called king. the rule of this aztec prince, beginning a. d. 1440, marked the beginning of their greatness as a race. it became a rule of their kingdom that every new king must gain a victory before being crowned; and thus by the conquest of a new nation furnish a supply of captives to gratify their tutelary deity by the necessary human sacrifices. in 1502 the younger montezuma ascended the throne. he is better known to us than the previous kings, because it was in his reign that the spanish conquerors appeared on the scene. from the time of cortés the history of the aztecs becomes part of that of the mexicans. they were easily conquered by the european troops, partly because of their betrayal by various of the neighboring nations whom they had formerly conquered. at the beginning of the sixteenth century, according to prescott, the aztec king ruled the continent from the atlantic to the pacific. from the scientific side of their extinct civilization it is their knowledge of astronomy that chiefly causes astonishment (see also p. 85). as in the case of the chaldeans and babylonians, a motive for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of accurately fixing the religious festivals. the tropical year being thus ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. from a very early period they had practised agriculture, growing indian corn and "mexican aloe." having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their farming was naturally of a rude and imperfect sort. "the degree of civilization," says prescott, "which the aztecs reached, as inferred by their political institutions, may be considered, perhaps, not much short of that enjoyed by our saxon ancestors under alfred." in a passage comparing the aztecs to the american indians, we read: the latter has something peculiarly sensitive in his nature. he shrinks instinctively from the rude touch of a foreign hand. even when this foreign influence comes in the form of civilization he seems to sink and pine away beneath it. it has been so with the mexicans. under the spanish domination their numbers have silently melted away. their energies are broken. they no longer tread their mountain plains with the conscious independence of their ancestors. in their faltering step and meek and melancholy aspect we read the sad characters of the conquered race.... their civilization was of the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. the fierce virtues of the aztec were all his own. humboldt found some analogy between the aztec theory of the universe, as taught by the priests, and the asiatic "cosmogonies." the aztecs, in explaining the great mystery of man's existence after death, believed that future time would revolve in great periods or cycles, each embracing thousands of years. at the end of each of the four cycles of future time in the present world, "the human family will be swept from the earth by the agency of one of the elements, and the sun blotted out from the heavens to be again rekindled." the priesthood comprised a large number who were skilled in astrology and divination. the great temple of mexico, alone, had 5,000 priests in attendance, of whom the chief dignitaries superintended the dreadful rites of human sacrifice. others had management of the singing choirs with their musical accompaniment of drums and other instruments; others arranged the public festivals according to the calendar, and had charge of the hieroglyphical word-painting and oral traditions. one important section of the priesthood were teachers, responsible for the education of the children and instruction in religion and morality. the head management of the hierarchy or whole ecclesiastical system, was under two high priests--the more dignified that they were chosen by the king and principal nobles without reference to birth or social station. these high priests were consulted on any national emergency, and in precedency of rank were superior to every man except the king. montezuma is said to have been a priest. the priestly power was more absolute than any ever experienced in europe. two remarkable peculiarities were that when a sinner was pardoned by a priest, the certificate afterward saved the culprit from being legally punished for any offense; secondly, there could be no pardon for an offense once atoned for if the offense were repeated. "long after the conquest, the simple natives when they came under the arm of the law, sought to escape by producing the certificate of their former confession." (prescott, i, 33.) the prayer of the priest-confessor, as reported by a spanish historian, is very remarkable: "o, merciful lord, thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let thy forgiveness and favor descend, like the pure waters of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. thou knowest that this poor man has sinned, _not from his own free will_, but from the influence of the sign under which he was born...." after enjoining on the penitent a variety of minute ceremonies by way of penance, the confessor urges the necessity of instantly procuring a slave for sacrifice to the deity. in the schools under the clergy the boys were taught by priests and the girls by priestesses. there was a higher school for instruction in tradition and history, the mysteries of hieroglyphs, the principles of government, and certain branches of astronomical and natural science. in the education of their children the mexican community were very strict, but from a letter preserved by one of the spanish historians, we can not doubt the womanly affection of a mother who thus wrote to her daughter: my beloved daughter, very dear little dove, you have already heard and attended to the words which your father has told you. they are precious words, which have proceeded from the bowels and heart in which they were treasured up; and your beloved father well knows that you, his daughter, begotten of him, are his blood and his flesh; and god our lord knows that it is so. although you are a woman, and are the image of your father, what more can i say to you than has already been said?... my dear daughter, whom i tenderly love, see that you live in the world in peace, tranquillity, and contentment--see that you disgrace not yourself, that you stain not your honor, nor pollute the luster and fame of your ancestors.... may god prosper you, my first-born, and may you come to god, who is in every place.[10] [footnote 10: sahagun, hist. de nueva españa, vi, 19.] some trace of a "natural piety," which will probably surprise our readers, is also found in the ceremony of aztec baptism, as described by the same writer. after the head and lips of the infant were touched with water and a name given to it, the goddess cioacoatl was implored "that the sin which was given to us before the beginning of the world might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew." in sahagun's account we read: when all the relations of the child were assembled, the midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism, was summoned. when the sun had risen, the midwife, taking the child in her arms, called for a little earthen vessel of water.... to perform the rite, she placed herself _with her face toward the west_, and began to go through certain ceremonies.... after this she sprinkled water on the head of the infant, saying, "o my child! receive the water of the lord of the world, which is our life, and is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. it is to wash and to purify." ... [after a prayer] she took the child in both hands, and lifting him toward heaven said, "o lord, thou seest here thy creature whom thou hast sent into this world, this place of sorrow, suffering, and penitence. grant him, o lord, thy gifts and thine inspiration." the science of the aztecs has excited the wonder of all competent judges, such as humboldt (already quoted) and the astronomer la place. lord kingsborough remarks in his great work: it can hardly be doubted that the mexicans were acquainted with many scientifical instruments of strange invention;... whether the telescope may not have been of the number is uncertain; but the thirteenth plate of m. dupaix's monuments, which represents a man holding something of a similar nature to his eye, affords reason to suppose that they knew how to improve the powers of vision. references to the calendar of the aztecs should not omit the secular festival occurring at the end of their great cycle of fifty-two years. from the length of the period, two generations, one might compare it with the "jubilee" of ancient israel--a word made familiar toward the close of queen victoria's reign. the great event always took place at midwinter, the most dreary period of the year, and when the five intercalary days arrived they "abandoned themselves to despair," breaking up the images of the gods, allowing the holy fires of the temples to go out, lighting none in their homes, destroying their furniture and domestic utensils, and tearing their clothes to rags. this disorder and gloom signified that figuratively the end of the world was at hand. on the evening of the last day, a procession of priests, assuming the dress and ornaments of their gods, moved from the capital toward a lofty mountain, about two leagues distant. they carried with them a noble victim, the flower of their captives, and an apparatus for kindling the _new fire_, the success of which was an augury of the renewal of the cycle. on the summit of the mountain, the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of the pleiades[11] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. the flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of the slaughtered captive was thrown. as the light streamed up toward heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and the housetops.... couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing beacon, rapidly bore them over every part of the country.... a new cycle had commenced its march. the following thirteen days were given up to festivity. ... the people, dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with garlands and chaplets of flowers, thronged in joyous procession to offer up their oblations and thanksgivings in the temples. dances and games were instituted emblematical of the regeneration of the world. [footnote 11: a famous group of seven small stars in the bull constellation. the "seven sisters" appear as only _six_ to ordinary eyesight: to make out the seventh is a test of a practised eye and excellent vision.] prescott compares this carnival of the aztecs to the great secular festival of the romans or ancient etruscans, which (as suetonius remarked) "few alive had witnessed before, or could expect to witness again." the _ludi sæculares_ or secular games of rome were held only at very long intervals and lasted for three days and nights. the poet southey thus refers to the ceremony of opening the new aztec cycle, or circle of the years. on his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid, on his bare breast, dry sedge and odorous gums, laid ready to receive the sacred spark, and blaze, to herald the ascending sun, upon his living altar. round the wretch the inhuman ministers of rites accurst stand, and expect the signal when to strike the seed of fire. their chief, apart from all, ... eastward turns his eyes; for now the hour draws nigh, and speedily he look's to see the first faint dawn of day break through the orient sky. _madoc_, ii, 26. chapter iv american archeology long before the time of columbus and the spanish conquest there existed on the table-land of mexico two great races or nations, as has already been shown, both highly civilized, and both akin in language, art, and religion. ethnologists and antiquaries are not agreed as to their origin or the development of their civilization. many recent critics have held the theory that there had been a previous people from whom both races inherited their extinct civilization, this previous race being the "toltecs," whom we have repeatedly mentioned in the preceding chapter. to that previous race some attribute the colossal stonework around lake titicaca, as well as other survivals of long-forgotten culture. some would even class them with the "mound-builders" of the ohio valley. other recent antiquaries, however, while fully admitting the aztec-tescucan civilization to be real and historical, treat the toltec theory as partly or entirely mythical. one writer alleges, after the manner of max müller, that the toltecs are "simply a personification of the rays of light" radiating from the aztec sun-god. leaving abstract theories, we shall devote this chapter to the principal facts of american archeology--especially as regards the races and the monuments of their long extinct civilizations. throughout many parts of both north and south america, and over large areas, the red-skinned natives continued their generations as their ancestors had done through untold centuries, scarcely rising above the state of rude, uncultured sons of the soil living as hunters, trappers, fishers, as had been done immemorially when wild in woods the noble savage ran, as dryden puts it. but in mexico, yucatan, and central america, colombia, and peru there were men of the original redskin race who had distinctly attained to civilization for unknown generations before the time of columbus. not only so, but in many centers of wealth and population the process of social improvement and advance had been continuous for unrecorded ages; and in certain cases a long extinct civilization had over-laid a previous civilization still more remotely extinct. some works constructed for supplying water, for example, could only have been applied to that purpose when the climate or geological conditions were quite different from what they have always been in historical times! who is the red man? compared in numbers with the yellow man, the white man, or even the black, he is very unimportant, being only one-tenth as great as the african race.[12] in american ethnology, however, the red man is all-important. primeval men of this race undoubtedly formed the original stock whence during the centuries were derived all the numerous tribes of "indians" found in either north or south america. throughout asia and africa there is great diversity in type among the races that are indigenous; but as to america, to quote humboldt: [footnote 12: white or caucasian 640,000,000, yellow or mongolian 600,000,000, black or african 200,000,000, red or american 20,000,000.] the indians of new spain [i. e., mexico] bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit canada, florida, peru, and brazil. we have the same swarthy and copper color, straight and smooth hair, small beard, squat body, long eye, with the corner directed upward toward the temples, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, and expression of gentleness in the mouth, strongly contrasted with a gloomy and severe look. whence the original red men of america were derived it is impossible to say. the date is too remote and the data too few. from fossil remains of human bones, agassiz estimated a period of at least ten thousand years; and near new orleans, beneath four buried forests, a skeleton was found which was possibly fifty thousand years old. if, therefore, the redskins branched off from the yellow man, it must have been at a period which lies utterly beyond historic ken or calculation. some recent ethnologists have borrowed the "glacier theory" from the science of geology, in order to trace the development of civilization among certain races. in switzerland and greenland the signs of the action of a glacier can be traced and recognized just as we trace the proofs of the action of water in a dry channel. visit the front of a glacier in autumn after the summer heat has made it shrink back, you will see (1) rounded rocks, as if planed on the top, with (2) a mixed mass of stones and gravel like a rubbish-heap, scattered on (3) a mass of clay and sand, containing boulders. the same three tests are frequently found in countries where there have been no glaciers within the memory of man. such traces, found not only in england, scotland, and ireland, but in northern germany and denmark, prove that the mountain mass of scandinavia was the nucleus of a huge ice-cap "radiating to a distance of not less than 1,000 miles, and thick enough to block up with solid ice the north sea, the german ocean, the baltic, and even the atlantic up to the 100-fathom line." in north america the same thing is proved by similar evidence. a gigantic ice-cap extending from canada has glaciated all the minor mountain ranges to the south, sweeping over the whole continent. the drift and boulders still remain to prove the fact, as far south as only 15° north of the tropic. a warm oceanic current, like the gulf stream of the atlantic, would shorten a glacial period. speaking of scotland, one authority states that "if the gulf stream were diverted and the highlands upheaved to the height of the new zealand alps, the whole country would again be buried under glaciers pushing out into the seas" on the west and east. the theory is that as the climate became warmer, the ice-fronts retreated northward by the shrinking of the glaciers, and therefore the animals, including man, were able to live farther north. the men of that very remote period were "neolithic," and some of the stone monuments are attributed to them that were formerly called "druidic." a recent writer asks; with reference to stonehenge: did neolithic men slowly coming northward, as the rigors of the last glacial period abated, domicile here, and build this huge gaunt temple before they passed farther north, to degrade and dwindle down into eskimos wandering the dismal coasts of arctic seas? another writer, with reference to the american ice-sheet, says: during the second glacial epoch when the great boreal ice-sheet covered one-half of the north american continent, reaching as far south as the present cities of philadelphia and st. louis, and the glaciated portions were as unfit for human occupation as the snow-cap of greenland is to-day, aggregations of population clustered around the equatorial zone, because the climatic conditions were congenial. and inasmuch as civilization, the world over, clings to the temperate climates and thrives there best, we are not surprised to learn that communities far advanced in arts and architecture built and occupied those great cities in yucatan, honduras, guatemala, and other central american states, whose populations once numbered hundreds of thousands. an approximate date when this civilization was at the acme of its glory would be about ten thousand years ago. this is established by observations upon the recession of the existing glacier fronts, which are known to drop back twelve miles in one hundred years. with the gradual withdrawal of the glacial ice-sheet the climate grew proportionately milder, and flora and fauna moved simultaneously northward. some emigrants went to south america and settled there, carrying their customs, arts, ceremonial rites, hieroglyphs, architecture, etc.; and an immense exodus took place into mexico, which ultimately extended westward up the pacific coast. in subsequent epochs when the ice-sheet had withdrawn from large areas, there were immense influxes of people from asia via bering strait on the pacific side, and from northwestern europe via greenland on the atlantic side. the korean immigration of the year 544 led to the founding of the mexican empire in 1325. to trace then the gradations of ascent from the native american--called "indians" by a blunder of the great admiral, as afterward they were nicknamed "redskins" by the english settlers--to the mexicans, peruvians, or colombians is a task far beyond our strength. leaving the question of race, therefore, we now turn to the antiquarian remains, especially the architectural. the prehistoric civilization which was developed to the south of mexico is generally known as "mayan," although the mayas were undoubtedly akin to the aztecs or early mexicans. the maya tribes in yucatan and honduras, from abundant evidence, must have risen to a refinement in prehistoric times, which, in several respects, was superior to that of the aztecs. in architecture they were in advance from the earliest ages not only of the aztec peoples, but of all the american races. in yucatan the mayas have left some wonderful remains at mayapan, their prehistoric capital, and near it at a place called uxmal which has become famous from its vast and elaborate structures,[13] evidencing a knowledge of art and science which had flourished in this region for centuries before the arrival of the spanish. the chief building in uxmal is in pyramidal form, the principal design in the ancient aztec temples (as well as those of chaldea, etc.), consisting of three terraces faced with hewn stone. the terraces are in length 575, 545, and 360 feet respectively; with the temple on the summit, 322 feet, and a great flight of stairs leading to it. the whole building is surrounded by a belt of richly sculptured figures, above a cornice. at chichen, also in yucatan, there is an area of two miles perimeter entirely covered with architectural ruins; many of the roofs having apparently consisted of stone arches, painted in various colors. one building, of peculiar construction, proves an enigma to all travelers: it is more than ninety yards long and consists of two parallel walls, each ten yards thick, the distance between them being also ten yards. it has been conjectured that the anomalous construction had reference to some public games by which the citizens amused themselves in that long-forgotten period. among other memorials of mayan architecture in this country is the city of tuloom on the east coast, fortified with strong walls and square towers. a more remarkable "find" in the dense forests of chiapas, in the same country, is the city recorded by stephens and other travelers. it is near the coast, at the place where cortés and his spanish soldiers were moving about for a considerable time, yet they do not appear to have ever seen the splendid ruins, or to have at all suspected their existence. even if the natives knew, the spaniards might have found the toil of forcing a passage through such forests too laborious. the name of the city which had so long been buried under the tropical vegetation was quite unknown, nor was there any tradition of it; but when found it was called "palenque," from the nearest inhabited village. there were substantial and handsome buildings with excellent masonry, and in many cases beautiful sculptures and hieroglyphical figures. [footnote 13: see frontispiece.] merida, the capital of yucatan, is on the site of a prehistoric city whose name had also become unknown. when building the present town, the spaniards utilized the ancient buildings as quarries for good stones. the larger prehistoric structures are frequently on artificial mounds, being probably intended for religious or ceremonial purposes. the walls both within and without are elaborately decorated, sometimes with symbolic figures. sometimes officials in ceremonial costumes are seen apparently performing religious rites. these are often accompanied by inscriptions in low relief, with the peculiar mayan characters which some archeologists call "calculiform hieroglyphs" (_v._ p. 82). on one of the altar-slabs near palenque there occurs a sculptured group of several figures in the act of making offerings to a central object shaped like the latin cross. "the latin, the greek, and the egyptian cross or _tau_ (t) were evidently sacred symbols to this ancient people, bearing some religious meanings derived from their own cult."[14] [footnote 14: d. g. brinton.] the cross occurs frequently, not only in the mayan sculptures, but also in the ceremonial of the aztecs. the spanish followers of cortés were astonished to see this symbol used by these "barbarians," as they called them. winsor (i, 195) says that the mayan cross has been explained to mean "the four cardinal points, the rain-bringers, the symbol of life and health"; and again, "the emblem of fire, indeed an ornamental fire-drill." students of architecture find a rudimentary form of the arch occurring in some of the ruins, notably at palenque. two walls are built parallel to each other, at some distance apart, then at the beginning of the arch the layers on both sides have the inner stones slightly projecting, each layer projecting a little more than the previous one, till at a certain height the stones of one wall are almost touching those of the wall opposite. finally, a single flat stone closes in the space between and completes the arch. in honduras, on the banks of the copan, the spaniards found a prehistoric capital in ruins, on an elevated area, surrounded by substantial walls built of dressed stones, and enclosing large groups of buildings. one structure is mainly composed of huge blocks of polished stone. in several houses the whole of the external surface is covered with elaborate carved designs: the adjacent soil is covered with sculptured obelisks, pillars, and idols, with finely dressed stones, and with blocks ornamented with skilfully carved figures of the characteristic maya hieroglyphs, which, could they be deciphered, would doubtless reveal the story of this strange and solitary city. in western guatemala, at utatla, the ancient capital of the quiches, a tribe allied to the mayas, several pyramids still remain. one is 120 feet high, surmounted by a stone wall, and another is ascended by a staircase of nineteen steps, each nineteen inches in height. the literary remains (such as alphabets, hieroglyphs, manuscripts, etc.) of the maya and aztec races are in some respects as vivid a proof of the extinct civilizations as any of the architectural monuments already discussed. both aztecs and mayans of yucatan and central america used picture-writing, and sometimes an imperfect form of hieroglyphics. the most elementary kind was simply a rough sketch of a scene or historical group which they wished to record. when, for example, cortés had his first interview with some messengers sent by montezuma, one of the aztecs was observed sketching the dress and appearance of the spaniards, and then completing his picture by using colors. even in recent times indians have recorded facts by pictographs: in harper's magazine (august, 1902) we read that "pictographs and painted rocks to the number of over 3,000 are scattered all over the united states, from the dighton rock, massachusetts (_v_. pp. 27, 28), to the kern river cañon in california, and from the florida cape to the mouse river in manitoba. the identity of the indians with their ancient progenitors is further proved by relics, mortuary customs, linguistic similarities, plants and vegetables, and primitive industrial and mechanical arts, which have remained constant throughout the ages." the pictographs of the kern river cañon, according to the same writer, were inscribed on the rocks there "about five thousand years ago." a more advanced form of picture-writing is frequently found in the mayan and other inscriptions and manuscripts. two objects are represented, whose names, when pronounced together, give a sound which suggests the name to be recorded or remembered. thus, the name gladstone may be expressed in this manner by two pictures, one a laughing face (i. e., "happy" or "glad"), the other a rock (i. e., "stone"). it is exactly the same contrivance that is used to construct the puzzle called a "rebus." a third form of hieroglyphic was by devising some conventional mark or symbol to suggest the initial sound of the name to be recorded. such a mark or character would be a "letter," in fact; and thus the prehistoric alphabets were arrived at, not only among the early mayans of yucatan, etc., but among the prehistoric peoples of asia, as the chinese, the hittites, etc., as well as the primeval egyptians. many of the sculptures in copan and palenque to which we have referred contain pictographs and hieroglyphs. a spanish bishop of yucatan drew up a mayan alphabet in order to express the hieroglyphs on monuments and manuscripts in roman letters; but much more data are needed before scholars will read the ancient mayan-aztec tongues as they have been enabled to understand the egyptian inscriptions or the cuneiform records of babylonia. for the american hieroglyphs we still lack a second young or champollion. there are three famous manuscripts in the mayan character: 1. the dresden codex, preserved in the royal library of that city. it is called a "religious and astrological ritual" by abbé brasseur. 2. codex troano, in madrid, described in two folios by abbé brasseur. 3. codex peresianus, named from the wrapper in which it was found, 1859, which had the name "perez." it is also known as codex mexicanus. in lord kingsborough's great work on mexican antiquities there are several of the mayan manuscripts printed in facsimile, and others in a book by m. aubin, of paris. each group of letters in a mayan inscription is enclosed in an irregular oval, supposed to resemble the cross-section of a pebble; hence the term _calculiform_ (i. e., "pebble-shaped") is applied to their hieroglyphs, as _cuneiform_ (i. e., "wedge-shaped") is applied to the babylonian and assyrian letters. the paper which the prehistoric mexicans (mayas, aztecs, or tescucans, etc.) used for writing and drawing upon was of vegetable origin, like the egyptian papyrus. it was made by macerating the leaves of the _maguey_, a plant of the greatest importance (_v._ p. 94). when the surface of the paper was glazed, the letters were painted on in brilliant colors, proceeding from left to right, as we do. each book was a strip of paper, several yards long and about ten inches wide, not rolled round a stick, as the volumes of ancient rome were, but folded zigzag, like a screen. the protecting boards which held the book were often artistically carved and painted. the topics of the ordinary books, so far as we yet know, were religious ritual, dreams, and prophecies, the calendar, chronological notes, medical superstitions, portents of marriage and birth. the written language was in common and extensive use for the legal conveyance and sale of property. one of the most remarkable facts connected with this extinct civilization was the accuracy of their calendar and chronological system. their calendar was actually superior to that then existing in europe. they had two years: one for civil purposes, of three hundred and sixty-five days, divided into eighteen months of twenty days, besides five supplementary days; the other, a ritual or ecclesiastical year, to regulate the public festivals. the civil year required thirteen days to be added at the end of every fifty-two years, so as to harmonize with the ritual year. each month contained four weeks of five days, but as each of the twenty days (forming a month) had a distinct name, humboldt concluded that the names were borrowed from a prehistoric calendar, used in india and tartary. wilson (prehistoric man, i, 133) remarks: by the unaided results of native science the dwellers on the mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time so nearly correct that when the spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning according to the unreformed julian calendar, was really eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation whose civilization they so speedily effaced. in 1790 there was found in the square of mexico a famous relic, the mexican calendar stone, "one of the most striking monuments of american antiquity." it was long supposed to have been intended for chronological purposes; but later authorities call it a votive tablet or sacrificial altar.[15] similar circular stones have been dug up in other parts of mexico and in yucatan. [footnote 15: pp. 68-70, _v._ p. 95.] both the mayas and the aztecs excelled in the ordinary arts of civilized life. paper-making has already been spoken of. cotton being an important produce of their soil, they understood its spinning, dyeing, and weaving so well that the spaniards mistook some of the finer aztec fabrics for silk. they cultivated maize, potatoes, plantains, and other vegetables. both in mexico and yucatan they produced beautiful work in feathers; metal working was not so important as in some countries, being chiefly for ornamental purposes. in fact, it was the comparative plenty of gold and silver around mexico that delayed the invasion of the mayan country for more than twenty years. the mayas had developed trade to a considerable extent before the spanish invasion, and interchanged commodities with the island of cuba. it was there, accordingly, that columbus first saw this people, and first heard of yucatan. of the mexican remains on the central plateau, the most conspicuous is the mound or pyramid of cholula, although it retains few traces of prehistoric art. a modern church with a dome and two towers now occupies the summit, with a paved road leading up to it. it is chiefly noted, first, by antiquaries, as having originally been a great temple of quetzalcoatl, the beneficent deity, famous in story; and, secondly, for the fierce struggle around the mound and on the slopes between the mexicans and spanish. (_v._ pp. 130-133.) another mound in this district, yochicalco, lies seventy-five miles southwest of the capital. it is considered one of the best memorials of the extinct civilization, consisting of five terraces supported by stone walls, and formerly surmounted by a pyramid. passing from the traces of aztec and mayan civilization, we may now glance at the antiquities of the colombian states. there are no temples or large structures, because the natives, before the spanish conquest, used timber for building, but owing to the abundance of gold in their brooks and rivers, they developed skill in gold-working, and produced fine ornaments of wonderful beauty. many hollow figures have been found, evidently cast from molds, representing men, beasts, and birds, etc. stone-cutting was also an art of this ancient race, sometimes applied to making idols bearing hieroglyphs. when the spaniards invaded them to take their gold and precious stones, the "chibchas," who then held the colombian table-land and valleys, threw large quantities of those valuables into a lake near bogota, the capital. it was afterward attempted to recover those treasures by draining off the water, but only a small portion was found; and in the present year (1903) a new engineering attempt has been made. a spanish writer, in 1858, asserted that evidence was found in the caves and mines that in ancient times the colombians produced an alloy of gold, copper, and iron having the temper and hardness of steel. on a tributary of the river magdalena there are many curious stone images, sometimes with grotesquely carved faces. turning next to the mound-builders, in the ohio and upper mississippi valley, we find traces of an extinct civilization in high mounds, evidently artificial, extensive embankments, broad deep ditches, terraced pyramids, and an interesting variety of stone implements and pottery. some mounds were for burial-places, others for sacrificial purposes, others again as a site for building, like those we have seen in mexico and maya. many enclosures contain more than fifty acres of land; and one embankment is fifty miles long. among the relics associated with those works are articles of pottery, knives, and copper ornaments, hammered silver, mica, obsidian, pearls, beautifully sculptured pipes, shells, and stone implements. the mounds found in some of the gulf states seem to confirm a theory that the mound-builders were the ancestors of the choctaw indians and their allies, and had been driven southward. in the lower mississippi valley, eastward to the seacoast, there are many large earthworks, including round and quadrilateral mounds, embankments, canals, and artificial lakes. similar works can be traced to the southern extremity of florida. some were constructed as sites for large buildings. the tribes to whom they are due are now known to have been agricultural--growing maize, beans, and pumpkins; with these products and those of the chase they supported a considerable population. among other antiquarian remains in america are the cliff-houses and "pueblos." the former peculiarity is explained by the deep cañons of the dry table-land of colorado. imagine a narrow deep cutting or narrow trench worn by water-courses out of solid rock, deep enough to afford a channel to the stream from 500 to 1,500 feet below the plateau above. next imagine one of the caves which the water many ages ago had worn out of the perpendicular sides of the cañon; and in that cave a substantial, well-built structure of cut stones bedded in firm mortar. such are the "cliff--houses," sometimes of two stories. occasionally there is a watch-tower perched on a conspicuous point of rock near a cliff-dwelling, with small windows looking to the east and north. these curious buildings, though now prehistoric, in a sense, are believed by archeologists to be later than the spanish conquest. peru is very important archeologically, but some interesting points will properly fall under our general account of that country and its conquest by spain. [illustration: chulpa or stone tomb of the peruvians.] in peruvian architecture, we find "cyclopean walls," with polygonal stones of five or six feet diameter, so well polished and adjusted that no mortar was necessary; sometimes with a projecting part of the stone fitting exactly into a corresponding cavity of the stone immediately above or below it. such huge stones are of hard granite or basalt, etc. the walls are often very massive and substantial, sometimes from thirty to forty feet in thickness. the only approach to the modern "arch" in the peruvian structures is a device similar to that which was described under the mayan architecture. some important buildings were surrounded with large upright stones, similar to the famous "druidic" temple at stonehenge. all of the chief structures were accurately placed with reference to the cardinal points, and the main entrance always faced the east. the peruvian tombs were very elaborate, one kind being made by cutting caverns in the steep precipices of the cordillera and then carefully walling in the entrance. another variety (the _chulpa_) was really a stone tower erected above ground, twelve to thirty feet high. the chulpas were sometimes built in groups. chapter v mexico before the spanish invasion the aztecs and the tescucans were the chief races occupying the great table-land of anahuac, including, as we have seen, the famous mexican valley. in the preceding chapter we have set forth some of the leading points in the extinct civilization of those races, and also that of the mayas, who in several respects were perhaps superior to the anahuac kingdoms. several features of the early mexican civilization will come before us as we accompany the european conquerors, in their march over the table-land. meantime, we glance first at the geography of this magnificent region, and secondly at the manners and institutions of the people, their industrial arts, etc., and their terrible religion. the last-mentioned topic has already been partly discussed in chapter iii. the tropic of cancer passes through the middle of mexico, and therefore its southern half, which is the most important, is all under the burning sun of the "torrid zone." this heat, however, is greatly modified by the height of the surface above sea-level, since the country, taken as a whole, is simply an extensive table-land. the height of the plain in the two central states, mexico and puebla, is 8,000 feet, or about double the average height of the highest summits in the british isles. on the west of the republic is a continuous chain of mountains, and on the east of the table-land run a series of mountainous groups parallel to the seacoast, with a summit in vera cruz of over 13,400 feet. to the south of the capital an irregular range running east and west contains these remarkable volcanoes--colima, 14,400 feet; jorulla, popocatepetl, 17,800; orizaba (extinct), 18,300, the highest summit in mexico, and, with the exception of some of the mountains of alaska, in north america. the great plateau-basin formed around the capital and its lakes is completely enclosed by mountains. this high table-land has its own climate as compared with the broad tract lying along the atlantic. hence the latter is known as the hot region (_caliente_), and the former the cold region (_fria_). between the two climates, as the traveler mounts from the sea-level to the great plateau, is the temperate region (_templada_), an intermediate belt of perpetual humidity, a welcome escape from the heat and deadly malaria of the hot region with its "bilious fevers." sometimes as he passes along the bases of the volcanic mountains, casting his eye "down some steep slope or almost unfathomable ravine on the margin of the road, he sees their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enameled vegetation of the tropics." this contrast arises from the height he has now gained above the hot coast region. the climate on the table-land is only cold in a relative sense, being mild to europeans, with a mean temperature at the capital of 60°, seldom lowered to the freezing-point. the "temperate" slopes form the "paradise of mexico," from "the balmy climate, the magnificent scenery, and the wealth of semitropical vegetation." the aztec and tescucan laws were kept in state records, and shown publicly in hieroglyphs. the great crimes against society were all punished with death, including the murder of a slave. slaves could hold property, and all their sons were freedmen. the code in general showed real respect for the leading principles of morality. in mexico, as in ancient egypt, the soldier shared with the priest the highest consideration. the king must be an experienced warrior. the tutelary deity of the aztecs was the god of war. a great object of military expeditions was to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. the soldier who fell in battle was transported at once to the region of ineffable bliss in the bright mansions of the sun.... thus every war became a crusade; and the warrior was not only raised to a contempt of danger, but courted it--animated by a religious enthusiasm like that of the early saracen or the christian crusader. the officers of the armies wore rich and conspicuous uniforms--a tight-fitting tunic of quilted cotton sufficient to turn the arrows of the native indians; a cuirass (for superior officers) made of thin plates of gold or silver; an overcoat or cloak of variegated feather-work; helmets of wood or silver, bearing showy plumes, adorned with precious stones and gold ornaments. their belts, collars, bracelets, and earrings were also of gold or silver. southey, in his poem, makes his welsh prince, madoc, thus boast: their mail, if mail it may be called, was woven of vegetable down, like finest flax, bleached to the whiteness of new-fallen snow, ... others of higher office were arrayed in feathery breastplates, of more gorgeous hue than the gay plumage of the mountain-cock, than the pheasants' glittering pride. but what were these or what the thin gold hauberk, when opposed to arms like ours in battle? _madoc_, i, 7. we learn of the ancient mexicans, to their honor, that in the large towns hospitals were kept for the cure of the sick and wounded soldiers, and as a permanent refuge if disabled. not only so, says a spanish historian, but "the surgeons placed over them were so far better than those in europe that they did not protract the cure to increase the pay." even the red man of the woods, as we learn from fenimore cooper and catlin, believes reverently in the great spirit who upholds the universe; and similarly his more civilized brother of mexico or tezcuco spoke of a supreme creator, lord of heaven and earth. in their prayers some of the phrases were: the god by whom we live, omnipresent, knowing all thoughts, giving all gifts, without whom man is nothing, invisible, incorporeal, of perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defense. prescott, however, remarks that notwithstanding such attributes "the idea of unity--of a being with whom volition is action, who has no need of inferior ministers to execute his purposes--was too simple, or too vast, for their understandings; and they sought relief, as usual, in a plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various occupations of man." the aztecs, in fact, believed in thirteen _dii majores_ and over 200 _dii minores_. to each of these a special day was assigned in the calendar, with its appropriate festival. chief of them all was that bloodthirsty monster _huitsilopochtli_, the hideous god of war--tutelary deity of the nation. there was a huge temple to him in the capital, and on the great altar before his image there, and on all his altars throughout the empire, the reeking blood of thousands of human victims was being constantly poured out. the terrible name of this mexican mars has greatly puzzled scholars of the language. according to one derivation, the name is a compound of two words, _humming-bird_ and _on the left_, because his image has the feathers of that bird on the left foot. prescott naturally thinks that "too amiable an etymology for so ruffian a deity." the other name of the war-god, _mexitl_ (i. e., "the hare of the aloes"), is much better known, because from it is derived the familiar name of the capital. [illustration: quetzalcoatl.] the god of the air, _quetzalcoatl_, a beneficent deity, who taught mexicans the use of metals, agriculture, and the arts of government. prescott remarks that he was doubtless one of those benefactors of their species who have been deified by the gratitude of posterity. there was a remarkable tradition of quetzalcoatl, preserved among the mexicans, that he had been a king, afterward a god, and had a temple dedicated to his worship at cholula[16] when on his way to the mexican gulf. embarking there, he bade his people a long farewell, promising that he and his descendants would revisit them. the expectation of his return prepared the way for the success of the tall white-skinned invaders. [footnote 16: the ruins were referred to in chap, iv, (_v._ p. 84, also 130.)] in the aztec agriculture, the staple plant was of course the _maize_ or indian corn. humboldt tells us that at the conquest it was grown throughout america, from the south of chile to the river st. lawrence; and it is still universal in the new world. other important plants on the aztec soil were the _banana_, which (according to one spanish writer) was the forbidden fruit that tempted our poor mother eve; the _cacao_, whose fruit supplies the valuable chocolate; the _vanilla_, used for flavoring; and most important of all, the _maguey_, or mexican aloe, much valued because its leaves were manufactured into paper, and its juice by fermentation becomes the national intoxicant, "pulque." the _maguey_, or great mexican aloe, grown all over the table-land, is called "the miracle of nature," producing not only the _pulque_, but supplying _thatch_ for the cottages, _thread_ and _cords_ from its tough fiber, _pins_ and _needles_ from the thorns which grow on the leaves, an excellent _food_ from its roots, and _writing-paper_ from its leaves. one writer, after speaking of the "pulque" being made from the "maguey," adds, "with what remains of these leaves they manufacture excellent and very fine cloth, resembling holland or the finest linen." the _itztli_, formerly mentioned as being used at the sacrifices by the officiating priest, was "obsidian," a dark transparent mineral, of the greatest hardness, and therefore useful for making knives and razors. the mexican sword was serrated, those of the finest quality being of course edged with itztli. sculptured figures abounded in every aztec temple and town, but in design very inferior to the ancient specimens of egypt and babylonia, not to mention greece. a remarkable collection of their sculptured images occurred in the _place_ or great square of mexico--the aztec forum--and similar spots. ever since the spanish invasion the destruction of the native objects of art has been ceaseless and ruthless. "two celebrated bas-reliefs of the last montezuma and his father," says prescott, "cut in the solid rock, in the beautiful groves of chapoltepec, were deliberately destroyed, as late as the last century [i. e., the eighteenth], by order of the government." he further remarks: this wantonness of destruction provokes the bitter animadversion of the spanish writer martyr, whose enlightened mind respected the vestiges of civilization wherever found. "the conquerors," says he, "seldom repaired the buildings that they defaced; they would rather sack twenty stately cities than erect one good edifice." the pre-columbian mexicans inherited a practical knowledge of mechanics and engineering. the calendar stone, for example (spoken of in the preceding chapter), a mass of dark porphyry estimated at fifty tons weight, was carried for a distance of many leagues from the mountains beyond lake chalco, through a rough country crossed by rivers and canals. in the passage its weight broke down a bridge over a canal, and the heavy rock had to be raised from the water beneath. with such obstacles, without the draft assistance of horses or cattle, how was it possible to effect such a transport? perhaps the mechanical skill of their builders and engineers had contrived some tramway or other machinery. an english traveler had a curious suggestion: latrobe accommodates the wonders of nature and art very well to each other, by suggesting that these great masses of stone were transported by means of the mastodon, whose remains are occasionally disinterred in the mexican valley. the mexicans wove many kinds of cotton cloth, sometimes using as a dye the rich crimson of the cochineal insect. they made a more expensive fabric by interweaving the cotton with the fine hair of rabbits, and other animals; sometimes embroidering with pretty designs of flowers and birds, etc. the special art of the aztec weaver was in feather-work, which when brought to europe produced the highest admiration: with feathers they could produce all the effect of a beautiful mosaic. the gorgeous plumage of the tropical birds, especially of the parrot tribe, afforded every variety of color; and the fine down of the humming-bird, which reveled in swarms among the honeysuckle bowers of mexico, supplied them with soft aerial tints that gave an exquisite finish to the picture. the feathers, pasted on a fine cotton web, were wrought into dresses for the wealthy, hangings for apartments, and ornaments for the temples. when some of the mexican feather-work was shown at strasbourg: "never," says one admirer, "did i behold anything so exquisite for brilliancy and nice gradation of color, and for beauty of design. no european artist could have made such a thing." instead of shops the aztecs had in every town a market-place, where fairs were held every fifth day--i. e., once a week. each commodity had a particular quarter, and the traffic was partly by barter, and partly by using the following articles as money: bits of tin shaped like an egyptian cross (t), bags of cacao holding a specified number of grains, and, for large values, quills of gold-dust. the married women among the aztecs were treated kindly and respectfully by their husbands. the feminine occupations were spinning and embroidery, etc., as among the ancient greeks, while listening to ballads and love stories related by their maidens and musicians (ramusio, iii, 305). in banquets and other social entertainments the women had an equal share with the men. sometimes the festivities were on a large scale, with costly preparations and numerous attendants. the mexicans, ancient and modern, have always been passionately fond of flowers, and on great occasions not only were the halls and courts strewed and adorned in profusion with blossoms of every hue and sweet odor, but perfumes scented every room. the guests as they sat down found ewers of water before them and cotton napkins, since washing the hands both before and after eating was a national habit of almost religious obligation.[17] modern europeans believe that tobacco was introduced from america in the time of queen isabella and queen elizabeth, but ages before that period the aztecs at their banquets had the "fragrant weed" offered to the company, "in pipes, mixed up with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars, inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver." the smoke after dinner was no doubt preliminary to the _siesta_ or nap of "forty winks." it is not known if the aztec ladies, like their descendants in modern mexico, also appreciated the _yetl_, as the mexicans called "tobacco." our word came from the natives of hayti, one of the islands discovered by columbus. [footnote 17: sahagun (vi, 22) quotes the precise instructions of a father to his son: he must wash face and hands before sitting down to table, and must not leave till he has repeated the operation and cleansed his teeth.] the tables of the aztecs abounded in good food--various dishes of meat, especially game, fowl, and fish. the turkey, for example, was introduced into europe from mexico, although stupidly supposed to have come from asia. the french named it _coq d'inde_,[18] the "indian cock," meaning american, but the ordinary hearer imagined _d'inde_ meant from hindustan. the blunder arose from that misapplication of the word "indian," first made by columbus, as we formerly explained. [footnote 18: the spanish named this handsome bird _gallopavo_ (lat. _pavo_, the "peacock"). the wild turkey is larger and more beautiful than the tame, and therefore benjamin franklin, when speaking sarcastically of the "american eagle," insisted that the wild turkey was the proper national emblem.] the aztec cooks dressed their viands with various sauces and condiments, the more solid dishes being followed by fruits of many kinds, as well as sweetmeats and pastry. chafing-dishes even were used. besides the varieties of beautiful flowers which adorned the table there were sculptured vases of silver and sometimes gold. at table the favorite beverage was the _chocolatl_ flavored with vanilla and different spices. the fermented juice of the maguey, with a mixture of sweets and acids, supplied also various agreeable drinks, of different degrees of strength. when the young mexicans of both sexes amused themselves with dances, the older people kept their seats in order to enjoy their _pulque_ and gossip, or listen to the discourse of some guest of importance. the music which accompanied the dances was frequently soft and rather plaintive. the early mexicans included the tezcucans as well as the aztecs proper; and since their capitals were on the same lake and both races were closely akin, we may devote some space to these alcohuans or eastern aztecs. their civilization was superior to that of the western aztecs in some respects, and nezahual-coyotl, their greatest prince, formed alliance with the western state, and then remodeled the various departments of his government. he had a council of war, another of finance, and a third of justice. a remarkable institution, under king nezahual-coyotl, was the "council of music," intended to promote the study of science and the practise of art. tezcuco, in fact, became the nursery not only of such sciences as could be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various useful and ornamental arts. "its historians, orators, and poets were celebrated throughout the country.... its idiom, more polished than the mexican, continued long after the conquest to be that in which the best productions of the native races were composed. tezcuco was the athens of the western world.... among the most illustrious of her bards was their king himself." a spanish writer adds that it was to the eastern aztecs that noblemen sent their sons "to study poetry, moral philosophy, the heathen theology, astronomy, medicine, and history." [illustration: ancient bridge near tezcuco.] the most remarkable problem connected with ancient mexico is how to reconcile the general refinement and civilization with the sacrifices of human victims. there was no town or city but had its temples in public places, with stairs visibly leading up to the sacrificial stone, ever standing ready before some hideous idol or other--as already described. in all countries there have been public spectacles of bloodshed, not only as in the gladiators in the ancient circus- butchered to make a roman holiday, or the tournays of the middle ages, but in the prize-ring fights and public executions by ax or guillotine, of the age that is just passing away. the thousands who perished for religious ideas by means of the holy roman inquisition should not be overlooked by the spanish writers who are so indignant that montezuma and his priests sacrificed tens of thousands under the claims of a heathen religion. the very day on which we write these words, august 18th, is the anniversary of the last sentence for beheading passed by our house of lords. by that sentence three scottish "jacobites" passed under the ax on tower hill, where their remains still rest in a chapel hard by. so lately as 1873, the shah of persia, when resident as a visitor in buckingham palace, was amazed to find that the laws of great britain prevented him from depriving five of his courtiers of their lives. they had just been found guilty of some paltry infringement of persian etiquette. during the last generation or the previous one, both in england and scotland, the country schoolmaster on a certain day had the schoolroom cleared so that the children and their friends should enjoy the treat of seeing all the game-cocks of the parish bleeding on the floor one after another, being either struck by a spur to the brain, or else wounded to a painful death. when james boswell and others regularly attended the spectacles of tyburn and sometimes cheered the wretched victim if he "died game," the philosopher will not wonder at the populace of some city of ancient mexico crowding round the great temple and greedily watching the bloody sacrifice done with full sanction of the priesthood and the king. the primitive religions were derived from sun-worship, and as fire is the nearest representative of the sun, it seemed essential to _burn_ the victim offered as a sacrifice. at carthage, the great phenician colony, children were cruelly sacrificed by fire to the god melkarth of tyre. "melkarth" being simply _melech kiriath_ (i. e., "king of the city"), and therefore identical with the "moloch" or "molech" of the ammonites, moabites, and israelites. in the earliest prehistoric age the children of ammon, moab, and israel were apparently so closely akin that they had practically the same religion and worshiped the same idols. the tribal god was originally the god of syria or canaan. in more than a dozen places of the old testament we find the hebrews accused of burning their children or passing them through the fire to the sun-god, but the ancient mexicans did not burn their victims, and _in no case were the victims their own children_. the victims were captives taken in war, or persons convicted of crime; and thus the mexicans were in atrocity far surpassed by those races akin to the hebrews who are much denounced by the sacred writers, e. g.: josiah ... defiled topheth that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to molech (2 kings xxiii, 10). they have built also the high places to burn their sons with fire for burnt-offerings (jer. xix, 5). yea, they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of canaan (ps. cvi, 37). that a father should offer his own child as a sacrifice to the sun-god or any other, would to the mild and gentle aztec be too dreadful a conception. it is the enormous number who were immolated that shocks the european mind, but to the populace enjoying the spectacle the victims were enemies of the king or criminals deserving execution. perhaps it is a more difficult problem to explain how so civilized a community as the aztec races undoubtedly were could look with complacency upon any one tasting a dish composed of some part of the captive he had taken in battle. it is not only repulsive as an idea, but seems impossible. yet much depends on the point of view as well as the atmosphere. according to archeologists, all the primeval races of men could at a pinch feed on human flesh, but after many generations learned to do better without it. we may have simply outgrown the craving, till at last we call it unnatural, whereas those ancient mexicans, with all their wealth of food, had refined upon it. let us again refer to the old testament: thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters and these hast thou sacrificed to be devoured (ezek. xvi, 20). ... have caused their sons to pass for them through the fire, to devour them (ezek. xxiii, 37). we may therefore infer that to the early races of canaan (including israel), as well as to the primeval aztecs, it was a privilege and religious custom to eat part of any sacrifice that had been offered. there can be little doubt, to any one who has studied the earliest human antiquities, that all races indulged in cannibalism, not only during that enormously remote age called paleolithic, but in comparatively recent though still prehistoric times. "this is clearly proved by the number of human bones, chiefly of women and young persons, which have been found charred by fire and split open for extraction of the marrow." such charred bones have frequently been preserved in caves, as at chaleux in belgium, where in some instances they occurred "in such numbers as to indicate that they had been the scene of cannibal feasts." the survival of human sacrifice among the aztecs, with its accompanying traces of cannibalism, was due to the savagery of a long previous condition of their indian race; just as in the greek drama, when that ancient people had attained a high level of culture and refinement, the sacrifice of a human life, sometimes a princess or other distinguished heroine, was not unfrequent. we remember polyxena, the virgin daughter of hecuba, whom her own people resolved to sacrifice on the tomb of achilles; and her touching bravery, as she requests the greeks not to bind her, being ashamed, she says, "having lived a princess to die a slave." a better known example is iphigenia, so beloved by her father, king agamemnon, and yet given up by him a victim for purposes of state and religion. [illustration: teocalli, aztec temple for human sacrifices.] from the greek drama, human sacrifices frequently passed to the roman; nor does such a refined critic as horace object to it, but only suggests that the bloodshed ought to be perpetrated behind the scenes. in seneca's play, medea (quoted in our introduction), that rule was grossly violated, since the children have their throats cut by their heroic mother in full view of the audience. in the same passage (ars poët., 185, 186) horace forbids a banquet of human flesh being prepared before the eyes of the public, as had been done in a play written by ennius, the roman poet. the religious sacrifice of human victims by the "druids" or priests of ancient gaul and britain seems exactly parallel to the wholesale executions on the mexican _teocallis_, since the wretched victims whom our celtic ancestors packed for burning into those huge wicker images, were captives taken in battle, like those stretched for slaughter upon the mexican stone of sacrifice. human sacrifice was so common in civilized rome that it was not till the first century b. c. that a law was passed expressly forbidding it--(pliny, hist. nat., xxx, 3, 4). chapter vi arrival of the spaniards the "new birth" of the world, which characterized the end of the fifteenth century, had an enormous influence upon spain. her queen, the "great catholic isabella," had, by assisting columbus, done much in the great discovery of the western world. spain speedily had substantial reward in the boundless wealth poured into her lap, and the rich colonies added to her dominion. thus in the beginning of the sixteenth century the new consolidated spain, formed by the union of the two kingdoms, castile and aragon, became the richest and greatest of all the european states. the spanish governors in the west indies being ambitious of planting new colonies in the name of the spanish king, conquest and annexation were stimulated in all directions. when cuba and hayti were overrun and annexed to spain, not without much unjust treatment of the simple natives, as we have seen, they became centers of operation, whence expeditions could be sent to trinidad or any other island, to panama, to yucatan, or florida, or any other part of the continent. after the marvelous experience of grijalva in yucatan, then considered an island, and his report that its inhabitants were quite a civilized community compared with the natives of the isles, velasquez, the governor of cuba, resolved at once to invade the new country for purposes of annexation and plunder. velasquez prepared a large expedition for this adventure, consisting of eleven ships with more than 600 armed men on board; and after much deliberation chose fernando cortés to be the commander. who was this cortés, destined by his military genius and unscrupulous policy to be comparable to hannibal or julius cæsar among the ancients, and to clive or napoleon bonaparte among the moderns? velasquez knew him well as one of his subordinates in the cruel conquest of cuba; before that cortés had distinguished himself in hayti as an energetic and skilled officer. of an impetuous and fiery temper which he had learned to keep thoroughly in command, he was characterized by that quality possessed by all commanders of superior genius, the "art of gaining the confidence and governing the minds of men." as a youth in spain he had studied for the bar at the university of salamanca; and in some of his speeches on critical occasions one can find certain traces of his academical training in the adroit arguments and clever appeals. other qualifications as an officer were his manly and handsome appearance, his affable manners, combined with "extraordinary address in all martial exercises, and a constitution of such vigor as to be capable of enduring any fatigue." cortés on reviewing his commission from the governor, velasquez, was too shrewd not to be aware of the importance of his new position. the "great admiral," with reference to the discovery of the new world, had said: "i have only opened the door for others to enter"; and cortés was conscious that now was the moment for that entrance. filled with unbounded ambition he rose to the occasion. velasquez somewhat hypocritically pretended that the object he had in view was merely barter with the natives of new spain--that being the name given by grijalva to yucatan and the neighboring country. he ordered cortés to impress on the natives the grandeur and goodness of his royal master; to invite them to give in their allegiance to him, and to manifest it by regaling him with such comfortable presents of gold, pearls, and precious stones as by showing their own good-will would secure his favor and protection. mustering his forces for the new expedition, cortés found that he had no sailors, 553 soldiers, besides 200 indians of the island; ten heavy guns, four lighter ones, called falconets. he had also sixteen horses, knowing the effect of even a small body of cavalry in dealing with savages. on february 18, 1519, cortés sailed with eleven vessels for the coast of yucatan. landing at tabasco, where grijalva had found the natives friendly, cortés found that the yucatans had resolved to oppose him, and were presently assembled in great numbers. the result of the fighting, however, was naturally a foregone conclusion, partly on account of "the astonishment and terror excited by the destructive effect" of the european firearms, and the "monstrous apparition" of men on horseback. such quadrupeds they had never seen before, and they concluded that the rider with his horse formed one unaccountable animal. gomara and other chroniclers tell how st. james, the tutelar saint of spain, appeared in the ranks on a gray horse, and led the christians to victory over the heathen. an especially fortunate thing for cortés was that among the female slaves presented after this battle, there was one of remarkable intelligence, who understood both the aztec and the mayan languages, and soon learned the spanish. she proved invaluable to cortés as an interpreter, and afterward had a share in all his campaigns. she is generally called marina. if the spanish accounts are true, stating that the native army consisted of five squadrons of 8,000 men each, then this victory is one of the most remarkable on record, as a proof of the value of gunpowder as compared with primitive bows and arrows. to the simple americans the terrible invaders seemed actually to wield the thunder and the lightning. next day cortés made an arrangement with the chiefs; and after confidence was restored, asked where they got their gold from. they pointed to the high grounds on the west, and said _culhua_, meaning mexico. the palm sunday being at hand, the conversion of the "heathen" was duly celebrated by pompous and solemn ceremonial. the army marched in procession with the priests at their head, accompanied by crowds of indians of both sexes, till they reached the principal temple. a new altar being built, the image of the presiding deity was taken from its place and thrown down, to make room for that of the virgin carrying the infant saviour. cortés now learned that the capital of the mexican empire was on the mountain plains nearly seventy leagues inland; and that the ruler was the great and powerful montezuma. it was on the morning of good friday that cortés landed on the site of vera cruz, which after the conquest of mexico speedily grew into a flourishing seaport, becoming the commercial capital of new spain. a friendly conference took place between cortés and teuhtlile, an aztec chief, who asked from what country the strangers had come and why they had come. "i am a servant," replied cortés, "of a mighty monarch beyond the seas, who rules over an immense empire, having kings and princes for his vassals. since my master has heard of the greatness of the mexican emperor he has desired me to enter into communication with him, and has sent me as envoy to wait upon montezuma with a present in token of good-will, and with a message which i must deliver in person. when can i be admitted to your sovereign's presence?" the aztec chief replied with an air of dignity: "how is it that you have been here only two days, and demand to see the emperor? if there is another monarch as powerful as montezuma, i have no doubt my master will be happy to interchange courtesies." the slaves of teuhtlile presented to cortés ten loads of fine cotton, several mantles of that curious feather-work whose rich and delicate dyes might vie with the most beautiful painting, and a wicker basket filled with ornaments of wrought gold, all calculated to inspire the spaniards with high ideas of the wealth and mechanical ingenuity of the mexicans. having duly expressed his thanks, cortés then laid before the aztec chief the presents intended for montezuma. these were "an armchair richly carved and painted; a crimson cap bearing a gold medal emblazoned with st. george and the dragon; collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of cut-glass, which, in a country where glass was unknown, might claim to have the value of real gems." during the interview teuhtlile had been curiously observing a shining gilt helmet worn by a soldier, and said that it was exactly like that of quetzalcoatl. "who is he?" asked cortés. "quetzalcoatl is the god about whom the aztecs have the prophecy that he will come back to them across the sea." cortés promised to send the helmet to montezuma, and expressed a wish that it would be returned filled with the gold-dust of the aztecs, that he might compare it with the spanish gold-dust! one reporter who was present says: he further told governor teuhtlile that the spaniards were troubled with a disease of the heart for which gold was a specific remedy! another incident of this notable interview was that one of the mexican attendants was observed by cortés to be scribbling with a pencil. it was an artist sketching the appearance of the strangers, their dress, arms, and attitude, and filling in the picture with touches of color. struck with the idea of being thus represented to the mexican monarch, cortés ordered the cavalry to be exercised on the beach in front of the artists. the bold and rapid movements of the troops, ... the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals on which they were mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, which cortés ordered to be fired at the same time, and witnessed the volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the rushing sound of the balls, as they dashed through the trees of the neighboring forest, shivering their branches into fragments, they were filled with consternation and wonder, from which the aztec chief himself was not wholly free. this was all faithfully copied by the picture-writers, so far as their art went, in sketching and vivid coloring. they also recorded the ships of the strangers--"the water-houses," as they were named--whose dark hulls and snow-white sails were swinging at anchor in the bay. meantime what had montezuma been doing, the sad-faced[19] and haughty emperor of mexico, land of the aztecs and the tezcucans? at the beginning of his reign he had as a skilful general led his armies as far as honduras and nicaragua, extending the limits of the empire, so that it had now reached the maximum. [footnote 19: the name montezuma means "sad or severe man," a title suited to his features, though not to his mild character.] tezcuco, the sister state to mexico, had latterly shown hostility to montezuma, and still more formidable was the republic of tlascala, lying between his capital and the coast. prodigies and prophecies now began to affect all classes of the population in the mexican valley. everybody spoke of the return from over the sea of the popular god quetzalcoatl, the fair-skinned and longhaired (p. 93). a generation had already elapsed since the first rumors that white men in great mysterious vessels, bearing in their hands the thunder and lightning, were seizing the islands and must soon seize the mainland. no wonder that montezuma, stern, tyrannical, and disappointed, should be dismayed at the news of grijalva's landing, and still more so when hearing of the fleet and army of cortés, and seeing their horsemen pictured by his artists--the whole accompanied by exaggerated accounts of the guns and cannon able to produce thunder and lightning. after holding a council, montezuma resolved to send an embassy to cortés, presenting him with a present which should reflect the incomparable grandeur and resources of mexico, and at the same time forbidding an approach to the capital. the governor teuhtlile, on this second embassy, was accompanied by two aztec nobles and 100 slaves, bearing the present from montezuma to cortés. as they entered the pavilion of the spanish general the air was filled with clouds of incense which rose from censers carried by some attendants. some delicately wrought mats were then unrolled, and on them the slaves displayed the various articles, ... shields, helmets, cuirasses, embossed with plates and ornaments of pure gold; collars and bracelets of the same metal, sandals, fans, and crests of variegated feathers, intermingled with gold and silver thread, and sprinkled with pearls and precious stones; imitations of birds and animals in wrought and cast gold and silver, of exquisite workmanship; curtains, coverlets, and robes of cotton, fine as silk, of rich and various dyes, interwoven with feather-work that rivaled the delicacy of painting.... the things which excited most admiration were two circular plates of gold and silver, as "large as carriage-wheels"; one representing the sun was richly carved with plants and animals. it was thirty palms in circumference, and was worth about £52,500 sterling.[20] [footnote 20: robertson, the historian, gives £5,000; but prescott reckons a _peso de oro_ at £2 12s. 6d.; whence the 20,000 of the text gives 20,000 x 2-5/8 = 2,500 x 21 = £52,500.] cortés was interested in seeing the soldier's helmet brought back to him full to the brim with grains of gold. the courteous message from montezuma, however, did not please him much. montezuma excused himself from having a personal interview by "the distance being too great, and the journey beset with difficulties and dangers from formidable enemies.... all that could be done, therefore, was for the strangers to return to their own land." soon after cortés, by a species of statecraft, formed a new municipality, thus transforming his camp into a civil community. the name of the new city was _villa rica de vera cruz_, i. e., "the rich town of the true cross." once the municipality was formed, cortés resigned before them his office of captain-general, and thus became free from the authority of velasquez. the city council at once chose cortés to be captain-general and chief justice of the colony. he could now go forward unchecked by any superior except the crown. it was a desperate undertaking to climb with an army from the hot region of this flat coast through the varied succession of "slopes" which form the temperate region, and at last, on the high table-land, obtain entrance upon the great enclosed valley of mexico. cortés found that an essential preliminary was to gain the friendship of the totonacs, a nation tributary to montezuma. their subjection to the aztecs he had already verified, since one day when holding a conference with the totonac leaders and a neighboring cazique (i. e., "prince"), cortés saw five men of haughty appearance enter the market-place, followed by several attendants, and at once receive the politest attention from the totonacs. cortés asked marina, his slave interpreter, who or what they were. "they are aztec nobles," she replied, "sent by montezuma to receive tribute." presently the totonac chiefs came to cortés with looks of dire dismay, to inform him of the great emperor's resentment at the entertainment offered to the spaniards, and demanding in expiation twenty young men and women for sacrifice to the aztec gods. cortés, with every look of indignation, insisted that the totonacs should not only refuse to comply, but should seize the aztec messengers and hold them strictly confined in prison. unscrupulous to gain his ends, cortés by lies and cunning duplicity managed to set the mexican nobles free, dismissing them with a friendly message to montezuma, while at the same time securing the confidence of the simple-minded totonacs, urging them to join the spaniards and make a bold effort to regain their independence. some thought that cortés was really the kindly divinity quetzalcoatl, promised by the prophets to bring freedom and happiness. as an instance of the religious enthusiasm of the spanish invaders, we may give the account of the "conversion" of zempoalla, a city in the totonac district. when cortés pressed upon the cazique of zempoalla that his mission was to turn the indians from the abominations of their present religion, that prince replied that he could not accept what the spanish priests had told him about the creator and ruler of the universe; especially that he ever stooped to become a mere man, weak and poor, so as to suffer voluntarily persecution and even death at the hands of some of his own creatures. the cazique added that he "would resist any violence offered to his gods, who would, indeed, avenge the act themselves by the instant destruction of their enemies." cortés and his men seized the opportunity. there is no doubt that, after witnessing some of the barbarous sacrifices of human victims followed by cannibal feasts, their souls had naturally been sickened. they now proceeded to force the work of conversion as soon as cortés had appealed to them and declared that "god and the holy saints would never favor their enterprise, if such atrocities were allowed; and that for his own part, he was resolved the indian idols should be demolished that very hour if it cost him his life. "scarcely waiting for his commands the spaniards moved toward one of the principal _teocallis_, or temples, which rose high on a pyramidal foundation with a steep ascent of stone steps in the middle. the cazique, divining their purpose, instantly called his men to arms. the indian warriors gathered from all quarters, with shrill cries and clashing of weapons, while the priests, in their dark cotton robes, with disheveled tresses matted with blood, rushed frantic among the natives, calling on them to protect their gods from violation! all was now confusion and tumult.... cortés took his usual prompt measures. causing the cazique and some of the principal citizens and priests to be arrested, he commanded them to quiet the people, declaring that if a single arrow was shot against a spaniard, it should cost every one of them his life.... the cazique covered his face with his hands, exclaiming that the gods would avenge their own wrongs. "the christians were not slow in availing themselves of his tacit acquiescence. fifty soldiers, at a signal from their general, sprang up the great stairway of the temple, entered the building on the summit, the walls of which were black with human gore, and dragged the huge wooden idols to the edge of the terrace. their fantastic forms and features, conveying a symbolic meaning which was lost on the spaniards, seemed to their eyes only the hideous lineaments of satan. with great alacrity they rolled the colossal monsters down the steps of the pyramid, amid the triumphant shouts of their own companions and the groans and lamentations of the natives. they then consummated the whole by burning them in the presence of the assembled multitude." after the temple had been cleansed from every trace of the idol-worship and its horrors, a new altar was raised, surmounted by a lofty cross, and hung with garlands of roses. a reaction having now set in among the indians, many were willing to become christians, and some of the aztec priests even joined in a procession to signify their conversion, wearing white robes instead of their former dark mantles, and carrying lighted candles in their hands, "while an image of the virgin half smothered under the weight of flowers was borne aloft, and, as the procession climbed the steps of the temple, was deposited above the altar.... the impressive character of the ceremony and the passionate eloquence of the good priest touched the feelings of the motley audience, until indians as well as spaniards, if we may trust the chronicler, were melted into tears and audible sobs." before finally marching westward toward the temperate "slopes" of the mountains, cortés had another opportunity of proving his generalship and prompt resource at a critical moment. when agathocles, the autocratic ruler of syracuse, sailed over to defeat the carthaginians, the first thing he did on landing in africa was to burn his ships, that his soldiers might have no opportunity of retreat, and no hope but in victory. cortés now acted on exactly the same principle. after discovering that a number of his soldiers had formed a conspiracy to seize one of the ships and sail to cuba, cortés, on conviction, punished two of the ringleaders with death. soon after, he formed the extraordinary resolution of destroying his ships without the knowledge of his army. the five worst ships were first ordered to be dismantled; and, soon after, to be sunk. when the rest were inspected, four of them were condemned in the same manner. when the news reached zempoalla, the army were excited almost to open mutiny. cortés, however, was perfectly cool. addressing the army collectively, he assured them that the ships were not fit for service, as had been shown by due inspection. "there is one important advantage gained to the army, viz., the addition of a hundred able-bodied recruits who were necessary to man the lost ships. besides all that, of what use could ships be to us in the present expedition? as for me, i will remain here even without a comrade. as for those who shrink from the dangers of our glorious enterprise, let them go back, in god's name! let them go home, since there is still one vessel left; let them go on board and return to cuba. they can tell how they deserted their commander and their comrades, and patiently wait till they see us return loaded with the spoils of the aztecs." persuasion is the end of true oratory. the reply of the army to cortés was the unanimous shout "to mexico! to mexico!" after beginning the gradual ascent in their march toward the table-land of mexico, the first place noted by the invaders was jalapa, a town which still retains its aztec name, known to all the world by the well-known drug grown there. it is a favorite resort of the wealthier residents in vera cruz, and that too tropical plain which cortés had just left. the mighty mountain orizaba, one of the guardians of the mexican valley, is now full in sight, towering in solitary grandeur with its robe of snow. at last they reached a town so populous that there were thirteen aztec temples with the usual sacrificial stone for human victims before each idol. in the suburbs the spanish were shocked by a gathering of human skulls, many thousand in number. this appalling reminder of the unspeakable sacrifices soon became a familiar sight as they marched through that country. cortés asked the cazique if he were subject to montezuma. "who is there," replied the local prince, "that is not tributary to that emperor?" "_i_ am not," said the stranger general. cortés assured him that the monarch whom the spaniards served had princes as vassals, who were more powerful than the aztec ruler. the cazique said: montezuma could muster thirty great vassals, each master of 100,000 men. his revenues were incalculable, since every subject, however poor, paid something.... more than 20,000 victims, the fruit of his wars, were annually sacrificed on the altars of his gods! his capital stood on a lake, in the center of a spacious valley.... the approach to the city was by means of causeways several miles long; and when the connecting bridges were raised all communication with the country was cut off. the indians showed the greatest curiosity respecting the dresses, weapons, horses, and dogs of their strange visitors. the country all around was then well wooded and full of villages and towns, which disappeared after the conquest. humboldt remarked, when he traveled there, that the whole district had, "at the time of the arrival of the spanish, been more inhabited and better cultivated, and that in proportion as they got higher up near the table-land, they found the villages more frequent, the fields more subdivided, and the people more law-abiding." before entering upon the table-land, cortés resolved to visit the republic of tlascala, which was noted for having retained its independence in spite of the aztecs. after sending an embassy, consisting of the four chief zempoallas, who had accompanied the army, he set out toward tlascala, lingering as they proceeded, so that his ambassadors should have time to return. while wondering at the delay, they suddenly reached a remarkable fortification which marked the limits of the republic, and acted as a barrier against the mexican invasions. prescott thus describes it: a stone wall nine feet in height and twenty in thickness, with a parapet a foot and a half broad raised on the summit for the protection of those who defended it. it had only one opening in the center, made by two semicircular lines of wall overlapping each other for the space of forty paces, and affording a passageway between, ten paces wide, so contrived, therefore, as to be perfectly commanded by the inner wall. this fortification, which extended more than two leagues, rested at either end on the bold natural buttresses formed by the sierra. the work was built of immense blocks of stone nicely laid together without cement, and the remains still existing, among which are rocks of the whole breadth of the rampart, fully attest its solidity and size. who were the people of this stout-hearted republic? the tlascalans were a kindred tribe to the aztecs, and after coming to the mexican valley, toward the close of the twelfth century, had settled for many years on the western shore of lake tezcuco. afterward they migrated to that district of fruitful valleys where cortés found them; _tlascala_, meaning "land of bread." they then, as a nation, consisted of four separate states, considerably civilized, and always able to protect their confederacy against foreign invasion. their arts, religion, and architecture were the same as those of the aztecs and tezcucans. more than once had the aztecs attempted to bring the little republic into subjection, but in vain. in one campaign montezuma had lost a favorite, besides having his army defeated; and though a much more formidable invasion followed, "the bold mountaineers withdrew into the recesses of their hills, and coolly watching their opportunity, rushed like a torrent on the invaders, and drove them back with dreadful slaughter from their territories." the tlascalans had of course heard of the redoubtable europeans and their advance upon montezuma's kingdom, but not expecting any visit themselves, they were in doubt about the embassy sent by cortés, and the council had not reached a decision when the arrival of cortés was announced at the head of his cavalry. attacked by a body of several thousand indians, he sent back a horseman to make the infantry hurry up to his assistance. two of the horses were killed, a loss seriously felt by cortés; but when the main body had discharged a volley from their muskets and crossbows, so astounded were the tlascalan indians that they stopped fighting and withdrew from the field. next morning, after cortés had given careful instruction to his army (now more than 3,000 in number, with his indian auxiliaries), they had not marched far when they were met by two of the zempoallans, who had been sent as ambassadors. they informed cortés that, as captives, they had been reserved for the sacrificial stone, but had succeeded in breaking out of prison. they also said that forces were being collected from all quarters to meet the spaniards. at the first encounter, the indians, after some spirited fighting, retreated in order to draw the spanish army into a defile impracticable for artillery or cavalry. pressing forward they found, on turning an abrupt corner of the glen, that an army of many thousands was drawn up in order, prepared to receive them. as they came into view, the tlascalans set up a piercing war-cry, shrill and hideous, accompanied by the melancholy beat of a thousand drums. cortés spurred on the cavalry to force a passage for the infantry, and kept exhorting his soldiers, while showing them an example of personal daring. "if we fail now," he cried, "the cross of christ can never be planted in this land. forward, comrades! when was it ever known that a castilian turned his back on a foe?" with desperate efforts the soldiers forced a passage through the indian columns, and then, as soon as the horse opened room for the movements of the gunners, the terrible "thunder and lightning" of the cannon did the rest. the havoc caused in their ranks, combined with the roar and the flash of gunpowder, and the mangled carcasses, filled the whole of the barbarian army with horror and consternation. eight leaders of the tlascalan army having fallen, the prince ordered a retreat. the chief of the tlascalans, xicotencatl, was no ordinary leader. when cortés wished to press on to the capital, he sent two envoys to the tlascalan camp, but all that xicotencatl deigned to reply was that the spaniards might pass on as soon as they chose to tlascala, and when they reached it their flesh would be hewn from their bodies for sacrifice to the gods. if they preferred to remain in their own quarters, he would pay them a visit there the next day. the envoys also told cortés that the chief had now collected another very large army, five battalions of 10,000 men each. there was evidently a determination to try the fate of tlascala by a pitched battle and exterminate the bold invaders. the next day, september 5, 1519, was therefore a critical one in the annals of cortés. he resolved to meet the tlascalan chief in the field, after directing the foot-soldiers to use the point of their swords and not the edge; the horse to charge at half speed, directing their lances at the eyes of their enemies; the gunners and crossbowmen to support each other, some loading while others were discharging their pieces. before cortés and his soldiers had marched a mile they saw the immense tlascalan army stretched far and wide over a vast plain. nothing could be more picturesque than the aspect of these indian battalions, with the naked bodies of the common soldiers gaudily painted, the fantastic helmets of the chiefs bright with ornaments and precious stones, and the glowing panoplies of feather-work.... the golden glitterance and the feather-mail more gay than glittering gold; and round the helm a coronal of high upstanding plumes.... ... with war-songs and wild music they came on.[21] [footnote 21: southey (madoc, i, 7).] the tlascalan warriors had attained wonderful skill in throwing the javelin. "one species, with a thong attached to it, which remained in the slinger's hand, that he might recall the weapon, was especially dreaded by the spaniards." their various weapons were pointed with bone or obsidian, and sometimes headed with copper. the yell or scream of defiance raised by these indians almost drowned the volume of sound from "the wild barbaric minstrelsy of shell, atabal, and trumpet with which they proclaimed their triumphant anticipations of victory over the paltry forces of the invaders." advancing under a thick shower of arrows and other missiles, the spanish soldiers at a certain distance quickly halted and drew up in order, before delivering a general fire along the whole line. the front ranks of their wild opponents were mowed down and those behind were "petrified with dismay." but for the accident of dissension having arisen between the chiefs of the tlascalans, it almost seemed as if nothing could have saved cortés and his spanish army. before the battle, the haughty treatment of one of those chiefs by xicotencatl, the cazique, provoked the injured man to draw off all his contingent during the battle, and persuade another chief to do the same. with his forces so weakened, the cazique was compelled to resign the field to the spaniards. xicotencatl, in his eagerness for revenge, consulted some of the aztec priests, who recommended a night attack upon cortés's camp in order to take his army by surprise. the tlascalan, therefore, with 10,000 warriors, marched secretly toward the spanish camp, but owing to the bright moonlight they were not unseen by the vedettes. besides that, cortés had accustomed his army to sleep with their arms by their side and the horses ready saddled. in an instant, as it were, the whole camp were on the alert and under arms. the indians, meanwhile, were stealthily advancing to the silent camp, and, "no sooner had they reached the slope of the rising ground than they were astounded by the deep battle-cry of the spaniards, followed by the instantaneous appearance of the whole army. scarcely awaiting the shock of their enemy, the panic-struck barbarians fled rapidly and tumultuously across the plain. the horse easily overtook the fugitives, riding them down, and cutting them to pieces without mercy." next day cortés sent new ambassadors to the tlascalan capital, accompanied by his faithful slave interpreter, marina. they found the cazique's council sad and dejected, every gleam of hope being now extinguished. the message of cortés still promised friendship and pardon, if only they agreed to act as allies. if the present offer were rejected, "he would visit their capital as a conqueror, raze every house to the ground, and put every inhabitant to the sword." on hearing this ultimatum, the council chose four leading chiefs to be entrusted with a mission to cortés, "assuring him of a free passage through the country, and a friendly reception in the capital." the ambassadors, on their way back to cortés, called at the camp of xicotencatl, and were there detained by him. he was still planning against the terrible invaders. cortés, in the meantime, had another opportunity of showing his resource and presence of mind. some of his soldiers had shown a grumbling discontent: "the idea of conquering mexico was madness; if they had encountered such opposition from the petty republic, what might they not expect from the great mexican empire? there was now a temporary suspension of hostilities; should they not avail themselves of it to retrace their steps to vera cruz?" to this cortés listened calmly and politely, replying that "he had told them at the outset that glory was to be won only by toil and danger; he had never shrunk from his share of both. to go back now was impossible. what would the tlascalans say? how would the mexicans exult at such a miserable issue! instead of turning your eyes toward cuba, fix them on mexico, the great object of our enterprise." many other soldiers having gathered round, the mutinous party took courage to say that "another such victory as the last would be their ruin; they were going to mexico only to be slaughtered." with some impatience cortés gaily quoted a soldiers' song: better die with honor than live in long disgrace! --a sentiment which the majority of the audience naturally cheered to the echo, while the malcontents slunk away to their quarters. the next event was the arrival of some tlascalans wearing white badges as an indication of peace. they brought a message, they said, from xicotencatl, who now desired an arrangement with cortés, and would soon appear in person. most of them remained in the camp, where they were treated kindly; but marina, with her "woman's wit," became somewhat suspicious of them. perhaps some of them, forgetting that she knew their language, let drop a phrase in talking to each other, which awoke her distrust. she told cortés that the men were spies. he had them arrested and examined separately, ascertaining in that way that they were sent to obtain secret information of the spanish camp, and that, in fact, xicotencatl was mustering his forces to make another determined attack on the invading army. to show the fierceness of his resentment at such treatment, cortés ordered the fifty spy ambassadors to have their hands hacked off, and sent back to tell their lord that "the tlascalans might come by day or night, they would find the spaniards ready for them." the sight of their mutilated comrades filled the indian camp with dread and horror. all thoughts of resistance to the advance of cortés were now abandoned, and not long after the arrival of xicotencatl himself was announced, attended by a numerous train. he advanced with "the firm and fearless step of one who was coming rather to bid defiance than to sue for peace. he was rather above the middle size, with broad shoulders and a muscular frame, intimating great activity and strength. he made the usual salutation by touching the ground with his hand and carrying it to his head." he threw no blame on the tlascalan senate, but assumed all the responsibility of the war. he admitted that the spanish army had beaten him, but hoped they would use their victory with moderation, and not trample on the liberties of the republic. cortés admired the cazique's lofty spirit, while pretending to rebuke him for having so long remained an enemy. "he was willing to bury the past in oblivion, and to receive the tlascalans as vassals to the emperor, his master." before the entry into tlascala, the capital, there arrived an embassy from montezuma, who had been keenly disappointed, no doubt, that cortés had not only not been defeated by the bravest race on the mexican table-land, but had formed a friendly alliance with them. as cortés, with his army, approached the populous city, they were welcomed by great crowds of men and women in picturesque dresses, with nosegays and wreaths of flowers; priests in white robes and long matted tresses, swinging their burning censers of incense. the anniversary of this entry into tlascala, september 23, 1519, is still celebrated as a day of rejoicing. cortés, in his letter to the emperor, king of spain, compares it for size and appearance to granada, the moorish capital. pottery was one of the industries in which tlascala excelled. the tlascalan was chiefly agricultural in his habits; his honest breast glowed with the patriotic attachment to the soil, which is the fruit of its diligent culture, while he was elevated by that consciousness of independence which is the natural birthright of a child of the mountains. cholula, capital of the republic of that name, is six leagues north of tlascala, and about twenty southeast of mexico. in the time of the conquest of the table-land of anahuac, as the whole district is sometimes termed, this city was large and populous. the people excelled in mechanical arts, especially metal-working, cloth-weaving, and a delicate kind of pottery. reference has already been made to the god quetzalcoatl, in whose honor a huge pyramid was erected here. from the farthest parts of anahuac devotees thronged to cholula, just as the mohammedans to mecca. the spaniards found the people of cholula superior in dress and looks to any of the races they had seen. the higher classes "wore fine embroidered mantles resembling the moorish cloak in texture and fashion.... they showed the same delicate taste for flowers as the other tribes of the plateau, tossing garlands and bunches among the soldiers.... the spaniards were also struck with the cleanliness of the city, the regularity of the streets, the solidity of the houses, and the number and size of the pyramidal temples." after being treated with kindness and hospitality for several days, all at once the scene changed, the cause being the arrival of messengers from montezuma. at the same time some tlascalans told cortés that a great sacrifice, mostly of children, had been offered to propitiate the favor of the gods. at this juncture, marina, the indian slave interpreter, again proved to be the "good angel" of cortés. she had become very friendly with the wife of one of the cholula caziques, who gave her a hint that there was danger in staying at the house of any spaniard; and, when further pressed by marina, said that the spaniards were to be slaughtered when marching out of the capital. the plot had originated with the aztec emperor, and 20,000 mexicans were already quartered a little distance out of town. in this most critical position, cortés at once decided to take possession of the great square, placing a strong guard at each of its three gates of entrance. the rest of what troops he had in the town, he posted without with the cannon, to command the avenues. he had already sent orders to the tlascalan chiefs to keep their soldiers in readiness to march, at a given signal, into the city to support the spaniards. presently the caziques of cholula arrived with a larger body of levies than cortés had demanded. he at once charged them with conspiring against the spaniards after receiving them as friends. they were so amazed at his discovery of their perfidy that they confessed everything, laying the blame on montezuma. "that pretense," said cortés, assuming a look of fierce indignation, "is no justification; i shall now make such an example of you for your treachery that the report of it will ring throughout the wide borders of anahuac!" at the firing of a harquebus, the fatal signal, the crowd of unsuspecting cholulans were massacred as they stood, almost without resistance. meantime the other indians without the square commenced an attack on the spaniards, but the heavy guns of the battery played upon them with murderous effect, and cavalry advanced to support the attack. the steeds, the guns, the weapons of the spaniards, were all new to the cholulans. notwithstanding the novelty of the terrific spectacle, the flash of arms mingling with the deafening roar of the artillery, the desperate indians pushed on to take the places of their fallen comrades. while this scene of bloodshed was progressing, the tlascalans, as arranged, were hastening to the assistance of their spanish allies. the cholulans, when thus attacked in rear by their traditional enemies, speedily gave way, and tried to save themselves in the great temple and elsewhere. the "holy city," as it was called, was converted into a pandemonium of massacre. in memory of the signal defeat of the cholulans, cortés converted the chief part of the great temple into a christian church. envoys again arrived from mexico with rich presents and a message vindicating the pusillanimous emperor from any share in the conspiracy against cortés. continuing their march, the allied army of spaniards and tlascalans proceeded till they reached the mountains which separate the table-land of puebla from that of mexico. to cross this range they followed the route which passes between the mighty popocatepetl (i. e., "the smoking mountain") and another called the "white woman" from its broad robe of snow. the first lies about forty miles southeast of the capital to which their march was directed. it is more than 2,000 feet higher than mont blanc, and has two principal craters, one of which is about 1,000 feet deep and has large deposits of sulfur which are regularly mined. popocatepetl has long been only a quiescent volcano, but during the invasion by cortés it was often burning, especially at the time of the siege of tlascala. that was naturally interpreted all over the district of anahuac to be a bad omen, associated with the landing and approach of the spaniards. cortés insisted on several descents being made into the great crater till sufficient sulfur was collected to supply gunpowder to his army. the icy cold winds, varied by storms of snow and sleet, were more trying to the europeans than the tlascalans, but some relief was found in the stone shelters which had been built at certain intervals along the roads for the accommodation of couriers and other travelers. at last they reached the crest of the sierra which unites popocatepetl, the "great _volcan_," to its sister mountain the "woman in white." soon after, at a turning of the road, the invaders enjoyed their first view of the famous valley of mexico or tenochtitlan, with its beautiful lakes in their setting of cultivated plains, here and there varied by woods and forests. "in the midst, like some indian empress with her coronal of pearls, the fair city with her white towers and pyramidal temples, reposing as it were on the bosom of the waters--the far-famed 'venice of the aztecs.'" this view of the "promised land" will remind some of the picturesque account given by livy (xxi, 35) of hannibal reaching the top of the pass over the alps and pointing out the fair prospect of italy to his soldiers. we may thus render the passage: "on the ninth day the ridge of the alps was reached, over ground generally trackless and by roundabout ways.... the order for marching being given at break of day, the army were sluggishly advancing over ground wholly covered with snow, listlessness, and despair depicted on the features of all, hannibal went on in front, and after ordering the soldiers to halt on a height which commanded a distant view, far and wide, points out to them italy and the plains of lombardy on both banks of the po, at the foot of the alps, telling them that at that moment they were crossing not only the walls of italy but of the roman capital; that the rest of the march was easy and downhill." the situation of hannibal and his carthaginians surveying italy for the first time is in some respects closely analogous to that of cortés pointing out the valley of mexico to his spanish soldiers. chapter vii cortés and montezuma we have now seen the spanish conquerors with a large contingent of 6,000 natives surmounting the mountains to the east of the mexican valley and looking down upon the lake of tezcuco on which were built the sister capitals. montezuma, the aztec monarch, was already in a state of dismay, and sent still another embassy to propitiate the terrible cortés, with a great present of gold and robes of the most precious fabrics and workmanship; and a promise that, if the foreign general would turn back toward vera cruz, the mexicans would pay down four loads of gold for himself and one to each of his captains, besides a yearly tribute to their king in europe. these promises did not reach cortés till he was descending from the sierra. he replied that details were best arranged by a personal interview, and that the spaniards came with peaceful motives. montezuma was now plunged in deep despair. at last he summoned a council to consult his nobles and especially his nephew, the young king of tezcuco, and his warlike brother. the latter advised him to "muster as large an army as possible, and drive back the invaders from his capital or die in its defense." "ah!" replied the monarch, "the gods have declared themselves against us!" still another embassy was prepared, with his nephew, lord of tezcuco, at its head, to offer a welcome to the unwelcome visitors. cortés approached through fertile fields, plantations, and maguey-vineyards till they reached lake chalco. there they found a large town built in the water on piles, with canals instead of streets, full of movement and animation. "the spaniards were particularly struck with the style and commodious structure of the houses, chiefly of stone, and with the general aspect of wealth and even elegance which prevailed." next morning the king of tezcuco came to visit cortés, in a palanquin richly decorated with plates of gold and precious stones, under a canopy of green plumes. he was accompanied by a numerous suite. advancing with the mexican salutation, he said he had been commanded by montezuma to welcome him to the capital, at the same time offering three splendid pearls as a present. cortés "in return threw over the young king's neck a chain of cut glass, which, where glass was as rare as diamonds, might be admitted to have a value as real as the latter." the army of cortés next marched along the southern side of lake chalco, "through noble woods and by orchards glowing with autumnal fruits, of unknown names, but rich and tempting hues." they also passed "through cultivated fields waving with the yellow harvest, and irrigated by canals introduced from the neighboring lake, the whole showing a careful and economical husbandry, essential to the maintenance of a crowded population." a remarkable public work next engaged the attention of the spaniards, viz., a solid causeway of stone and lime running directly through the lake, in some places so wide that eight horsemen could ride on it abreast. its length is some four or five miles. marching along this causeway, they saw other wonders; numbers of the natives darting in all directions in their skiffs, curious to watch the strangers marching, and some of them bearing the products of the country to the neighboring cities. they were amazed also by the sight of the floating gardens, teeming with flowers and vegetables, and moving like rafts over the waters. all round the margin, and occasionally far in the lake, they beheld little towns and villages, which, half concealed by the foliage, and gathered in white clusters round the shore, "looked in the distance like companies of white swans riding quietly on the waves." about the middle of this lake was a town, to which the spaniards gave the name of venezuela[22] (i. e., "little venice"). from its situation and the style of the buildings, cortés called it the most beautiful town that he had yet seen in new spain. [footnote 22: not to be confounded with the indian village on the shore of lake maracaibo, to which (with similar motive) vespucci had given that name--now capital of a large republic.] after crossing the isthmus which separates that lake from lake tezcuco they were now at iztapalapan, a royal residence in charge of the emperor's brother. here a ceremonious reception was given to cortés and his staff, "a collation being served in one of the great halls of the palace. the excellence of the architecture here excited the admiration of the general. the buildings were of stone, and the spacious apartments had roofs of odorous cedar-wood, while the walls were tapestried with fine cotton stained with brilliant colors. "but the pride of iztapalapan was its celebrated gardens, covering an immense tract of land and laid out in regular squares. the gardens were stocked with fruit-trees and with the gaudy family of flowers which belonged to the mexican flora, scientifically arranged, and growing luxuriant in the equable temperature of the table-land. in one quarter was an aviary filled with numerous kinds of birds remarkable in this region both for brilliancy of plumage and for song. but the most elaborate piece of work was a huge reservoir of stone, filled to a considerable height with water, well supplied with different sorts of fish. this basin was 1,600 paces in circumference, and surrounded by a walk." readers must remember that at that age no beautiful gardens on a large scale were known in any part of europe. the first "garden of plants" (to use the name afterward applied by the french) is said to have been an italian one, at padua, in 1545, a whole generation after the time of the arrival of cortés in mexico. it was only under louis "le magnifique" that france created the versailles gardens, and not till the time of george iii and his tutor bute could we boast of the gardens at kew, now admired by all the world. the ancient mexicans, therefore, under their extinct civilization, had developed this taste for the beautiful many ages before the most cultivated races in europe. cortés took up his quarters at this residence of iztapalapan for the night, expecting to meet montezuma on the morrow. mexico was now distinctly full in view, looking "like a thing of fairy creation," a city of enchantment. there aztlan stood upon the farther shore; amid the shade of trees its dwellings rose, their level roofs with turrets set around and battlements all burnished white, which shone like silver in the sunshine. i beheld the imperial city, her far-circling walls, her garden groves and stately palaces, her temples mountain size, her thousand roofs. and when i saw her might and majesty my mind misgave me then. _madoc_, i, 6. that following day, november 8, 1519, should be noted in every calendar, when the great capital of the western world admitted the conquering general from the eastern world. the invaders were now upon a larger causeway, which stretched across the salt waters of lake tezcuco; and "had occasion more than ever to admire the mechanical science of the aztecs." it was wide enough throughout its whole extent for ten horsemen to ride abreast. the spaniards saw everywhere "evidence of a crowded and thriving population, exceeding all they had yet seen." the water was darkened by swarms of canoes filled with indians; and here also were those fairy islands of flowers. half a league from the capital they encountered a solid work of stone, which traversed the road. it was twelve feet high, strengthened by towers at the extremities, and in the center was a battlemented gateway, which opened a passage to the troops. here they were met by several hundred aztec chiefs, who came out to announce the approach of montezuma, and to welcome the spaniards to his capital. they were dressed in the fanciful gala costume of the country, with the cotton sash around their loins, and a broad mantle of the same material, or of the brilliant feather embroidery, flowing gracefully down their shoulders. on their necks and arms they displayed collars and bracelets of turquoise mosaic, with which delicate plumage was curiously mingled, while their ears, under lips, and occasionally their noses were garnished with pendants formed of precious stones, or crescents of fine gold. after all the caziques had performed the same formal salutation separately, there was no further delay till they reached a bridge near the gates of the capital. soon after "they beheld the glittering retinue of the emperor emerging from the great street leading through the heart of the city. amid a crowd of indian nobles preceded by three officers of state bearing golden wands, they saw the royal palanquin blazing with burnished gold. it was borne on the shoulders of nobles, and over it a canopy of gaudy feather-work, covered with jewels and fringed with silver, was supported by four attendants of the same rank." at a certain distance from the spaniards "the train halted, and montezuma, descending from the litter, came forward, leaning on the arms of the lords of tezcuco and iztapalapan"--the emperor's nephew and brother, already mentioned. "as the monarch advanced, his subjects, who lined the sides of the causeway, bent forward, with their eyes fastened on the ground, as he passed." montezuma wore the ample square cloak common to the mexicans, but of the finest cotton sprinkled with pearls and precious stones; his sandals were similarly sprinkled, and had soles of solid gold. his only head ornament was a bunch of feathers of the royal green color. a man about forty; tall and rather thin; black hair, cut rather short for a person of rank; dignified in his movements; his features wearing an expression of benignity not to be expected from his character. after dismounting from horseback, cortés advanced to meet montezuma, who received him with princely courtesy, while cortés responded by profound expressions of respect, with thanks for his experience of the emperor's munificence. he then hung round montezuma's neck a sparkling chain of colored crystal, accompanying this with a movement as if to embrace him, when he was restrained by the two aztec lords, shocked at the menaced profanation of the sacred person of their monarch and master. montezuma appointed his brother to conduct the spaniards to their residence in the capital, and was again carried through the adoring crowds in his litter. "the spaniards quickly followed, and with colors flying and music playing soon made their entrance into the southern quarter." on entering "they found fresh cause for admiration in the grandeur of the city and the superior style of its architecture. the great avenue through which they were now marching was lined with the houses of the nobles, who were encouraged by the emperor to make the capital their residence. the flat roofs were protected by stone parapets, so that every house was a fortress. sometimes these roofs seemed parterres of flowers ... broad terraced gardens laid out between the buildings. occasionally a great square intervened surrounded by its porticoes of stone and stucco; or a pyramidal temple reared its colossal bulk crowned with its tapering sanctuaries, and altars blazing with unextinguishable fires. but what most impressed the spaniards was the throngs of people who swarmed through the streets and on the canals." probably, however, the spectacle of the european army with their horses, their guns, bright swords and helmets of steel, a metal to them unknown; their weird and mysterious music--the whole formed to the aztec populace an inexplicable wonder, combined with those foreigners who had arrived from the distant east, "revealing their celestial origin in their fair complexions." many of the aztec citizens betrayed keen hatred of the tlascalans who marched with the spaniards in friendly alliance. at length cortés with his mixed army halted near the center of the city in a great open space, "where rose the huge pyramidal pile dedicated to the patron war-god of the aztecs, second only to the temple of cholula in size as well as sanctity." the present famous cathedral of modern mexico is built on part of the same site. a palace built opposite the west side of the great temple was assigned to cortés. it was extensive enough to accommodate the whole of the army of cortés. montezuma paid him a visit there, having a long conversation through the indispensable assistance of marina, the slave interpreter. "that evening the spaniards celebrated their arrival in the mexican capital by a general discharge of artillery. the thunders of the ordnance reverberating among the buildings and shaking them to their foundations, the stench of the sulfureous vapor reminding the inhabitants of the explosions of the great volcano (popocatepetl) filled the hearts of the superstitious aztecs with dismay." next day cortés had gracious permission to return the visit of the emperor, and therefore proceeded to wait upon him at the royal palace, dressed in his richest suit of clothes. the spanish general felt the importance of the occasion and resolved to exercise all his eloquence and power of argument in attempting the "conversion" of montezuma to the christian faith. for this purpose, with the assistance of the faithful marina, cortés engaged the emperor in a theological discussion; explaining the creation of the world as taught in the jewish scriptures; the fall of man from his first happy and holy condition by the temptation of satan; the mysterious redemption of the human race by the incarnation and atonement of the son of god himself. "he assured montezuma that the idols worshiped in mexico were satan under different forms. a sufficient proof of this was the bloody sacrifices they imposed, which he contrasted with the pure and simple rite of the mass. it was to snatch the emperor's soul and the souls of his people from the flames of eternal fire that the christians had come to this land." montezuma replied that the god of the spaniards must be a good being, and "my gods also are good to me; there was no need to further discourse on the matter." if he had "resisted their visit to his capital, it was because he had heard such accounts of their cruelties--that they sent the lightning to consume his people, or crushed them to pieces under the hard feet of the ferocious animals on which they rode. he was now convinced that these were idle tales; that the spaniards were kind and generous in their nature." he concluded by admitting the superiority of the sovereign of cortés beyond the seas. "your sovereign is the rightful lord of all: i rule in his name." the rough spanish cavaliers were touched by the kindness and affability of montezuma. as they passed him, says diaz, in his history, they made him the most profound obeisance, hat in hand; and on the way home could discourse of nothing but the gentle breeding and courtesy of the indian monarch. montezuma's capital cortés and his army being now fairly domesticated in mexico, and the emperor having apparently become reconciled to the presence of his formidable guests, we may pause to consider the surroundings. the present capital occupies the site of tenochtitlan, but many changes have occurred in the intervening four centuries. first of all, the salt waters of the great lake have entirely shrunk away, leaving modern mexico high and dry, a league away from the waters that cortés saw flowing in ample canals through all the streets. formerly the houses stood on elevated piles and were independent of the floods which rose in lake tezcuco by the overflowing of other lakes on a higher level. but when the foundations were on solid ground it became necessary to provide against the accumulated volume of water by excavating a tunnel to drain off the flood. this was constructed about one hundred years after the invasion of the spaniards, and has been described by humboldt as "one of the most stupendous hydraulic works in existence." the appearance of the lake and suburbs of the capital have long lost much of the attractive appearance they had at the time of the spanish visit; but the town itself is still the most brilliant city in spanish america, surmounted by a cathedral, which forms "the most sumptuous house of worship in the new world." the great causeway already described as leading north from the royal city of iztapalapan, had another to the north of the capital, which might be called its continuation. the third causeway, leading west to the town tacuba from the island city, will be noticed presently as the scene of the spaniards' retreat. there were excellent police regulations for health and cleanliness. water supplied by earthen pipes was from a hill about two miles distant. besides the palaces and temples there were several important buildings: an armory filled with weapons and military dresses; a granary; various warehouses; an immense aviary, with "birds of splendid plumage assembled from all parts of the empire--the scarlet cardinal, the golden pheasant, the endless parrot tribe, and that miniature miracle of nature, the humming-bird, which delights to revel among the honeysuckle bowers of mexico." the birds of prey had a separate building. the menagerie adjoining the aviary showed wild animals from the mountain forests, as well as creatures from the remote swamps of the hot lands by the seashore. the serpents "were confined in long cages lined with down or feathers, or in troughs of mud and water." wishing to visit the great mexican temple, cortés, with his cavalry and most of his infantry, followed the caziques whom montezuma had politely sent as guides. on their way to the central square the spaniards "were struck with the appearance of the inhabitants, and their great superiority in the style and quality of their dress over the people of the lower countries. the women, as in other parts of the country, seemed to go about as freely as the men. they wore several skirts or petticoats of different lengths, with highly ornamented borders, and sometimes over them loose-flowing robes, which reached to the ankles. no veils were worn here as in some other parts of anahuac. the aztec women had their faces exposed; and their dark raven tresses floated luxuriantly over their shoulders, revealing features which, although of a dusky or rather cinnamon hue, were not unfrequently pleasing, while touched with the serious, even sad expression characteristic of the national physiognomy." when near the great market "the spaniards were astonished at the throng of people pressing toward it, and on entering the place their surprise was still further heightened by the sight of the multitudes assembled there, and the dimensions of the enclosure, twice as large, says one spanish observer, as the celebrated square of salamanca. here were traders from all parts; the goldsmiths from azcapozalco, the potters and jewelers of cholula, the painters of tezcuco, the stone-cutters, hunters, fishermen, fruiterers, mat and chair makers, florists, etc. the pottery department was a large one; so were the armories for implements of war; razors and mirrors--booths for apothecaries with drugs, roots, and medical preparations. in other places again, blank-books or maps for the hieroglyphics or pictographs were to be seen folded together like fans. animals both wild and tame were offered for sale, and near them, perhaps, a gang of slaves with collars round their necks. one of the most attractive features of the market was the display of provisions: meats of all kinds, domestic poultry, game from the neighboring mountains, fish from the lakes and streams, fruits in all the delicious abundance of these temperate regions, green vegetables, and the unfailing maize." this market, like hundreds of smaller ones, was of course held every fifth day--the week of the ancient mexicans being one-fourth of the twenty days which constituted the aztec month. this great market was comparable to "the periodical fairs in europe, not as they now exist, but as they existed in the middle ages," when from the difficulties of intercommunication they served as the great central marts for commercial intercourse, exercising a most important and salutary influence on the community. one of the spaniards in the party accompanying cortés was the historian diaz, and his testimony is remarkable: there were among us soldiers who had been in many parts of the world, constantinople and rome, and through all italy, and who said that a market-place so large, so well ordered and regulated, and so filled with people, they had never seen. proceeding next to the great _teocalli_ or aztec temple, covering the site of the modern cathedral with part of the market-place and some adjoining streets, they found it in the midst of a great open space, surrounded by a high stone wall, ornamented on the outside by figures of serpents raised in relief, and pierced by huge battlemented gateways opening on the four principal streets of the capital. the _teocalli_ itself was a solid pyramidal structure of earth and pebbles, coated on the outside with hewn stones, the sides facing the cardinal points. it was divided into five stories, each of smaller dimensions than that immediately below. the ascent was by a flight of steps on the outside, which reached to the narrow terrace at the bottom of the second story, passing quite round the building, when a second stairway conducted to a similar landing at the base of the third. thus the visitor was obliged to pass round the whole edifice four times in order to reach the top. this had a most imposing effect in the religious ceremonials, when the pompous procession of priests with their wild minstrelsy came sweeping round the huge sides of the pyramid, as they rose higher and higher toward the summit in full view of the populace assembled in their thousands. cortés marched up the steps at the head of his men, and found at the summit "a vast area paved with broad flat stones. the first object that met their view was a large block of jasper, the peculiar shape of which showed it was the stone on which the bodies of the unhappy victims were stretched for sacrifice. its convex surface, by raising the breast, enabled the priest to perform more easily his diabolical task of removing the heart. at the other end of the area were two towers or sanctuaries, consisting of three stories, the lower one of stone, the two upper of wood elaborately carved. in the lower division stood the images of their gods; the apartments above were filled with utensils for their religious services, and with the ashes of some of their aztec princes who had fancied this airy sepulcher. before each sanctuary stood an altar, with that undying fire upon it, the extinction of which boded as much evil to the empire as that of the vestal flame would have done in ancient rome. here also was the huge cylindrical drum made of serpents' skins, and struck only on extraordinary occasions, when it sent forth a melancholy, weird sound, that might be heard for miles" over the country, indicating fierce anger of deity against the enemies of mexico. as cortés reached the summit he was met by the emperor himself attended by the high priest. taking the general by the hand, montezuma pointed out the chief localities in the wide prospect which their position commanded, including not only the capital, "bathed on all sides by the salt floods of the tezcuco, and in the distance the clear fresh waters of lake chalco," but the whole of the valley of mexico to the base of the circular range of mountains, and the wreaths of vapor rolling up from the hoary head of popocatepetl. cortés was allowed "to behold the shrines of the gods. they found themselves in a spacious apartment, with sculptures on the walls, representing the mexican calendar, or the priestly ritual. before the altar in this sanctuary stood the colossal image of huitzilopochtli, the tutelary deity and war-god of the aztecs. his countenance was distorted into hideous lineaments of symbolical import. the huge folds of a serpent, consisting of pearls and precious stones, were coiled round his waist, and the same rich materials were profusely sprinkled over his person. on his left foot were the delicate feathers of the humming-bird, which gave its name to the dread deity. the most conspicuous ornament was a chain of gold and silver hearts alternate, suspended round his neck, emblematical of the sacrifice in which he most delighted. a more unequivocal evidence of this was afforded by three human hearts that now lay smoking on the altar before him. "the adjoining sanctuary was dedicated to a milder deity. this was tezcatlipoca, who created the world, next in honor to that invisible being the supreme god, who was represented by no image, and confined by no temple. he was represented as a young man, and his image of polished black stone was richly garnished with gold plates and ornaments. but the homage to this god was not always of a more refined or merciful character than that paid to his carnivorous brother." according to diaz, whom we have already quoted, the stench of human gore in both those chapels was more intolerable than that of all the slaughter-houses in castile. glad to escape into the open air, cortés expressed wonder that a great and wise prince like montezuma could have faith "in such evil spirits as these idols, the representatives of the devil! permit us to erect here the true cross, and place the images of the blessed virgin and her son in these sanctuaries; you will soon see how your false gods will shrink before them!" this extraordinary speech of the general shocked montezuma, who, in reproof, said: "had i thought you would have offered this outrage to the gods of the aztecs, i would not have admitted you into their presence." cortés, as a general, had some of the great qualities of napoleon, but he also resembled him occasionally in a singular lack of delicacy and good taste. we do not, however, find that he ever showed such mean malignity as the french general did when persecuting madame de staël, because in her germany she had omitted to mention his campaigns and administration. within the same enclosure, cortés and his companions visited a temple dedicated to quetzalcoatl, a god referred to already. other buildings served as seminaries for the instruction of youth of both sexes; and according to the spanish accounts of the teaching and management of these institutions there was "the greatest care for morals and the most blameless deportment." seizure of montezuma after being guest of the mexican emperor for a week, cortés resolved to carry out a most daring and unprecedented scheme--a purely "napoleonic movement," such as could scarcely have entered the brain of any general ancient or modern. he argued with himself that a quarrel might at any moment break out between his men and the citizens; the spaniards again could not remain long quiet unless actively employed; and, thirdly, there was still greater danger with the tlascalans, "a fierce race now in daily contact with a nation that regards them with loathing and detestation." lastly, the governor of cuba, already grossly offended with cortés, might at any moment send after him a sufficient army to wrest from him the glory of conquest. cortés therefore formed the daring resolve to seize montezuma in his palace and carry him as a prisoner to the spanish quarters. he hoped thus to have in his own hands the supreme management of affairs, and at the same time secure his own safety with such a "sacred pledge" in keeping. it was necessary to find a pretext for seizing the hospitable montezuma. news had already come to cortés, when at cholula, that escalante, whom he had left in charge of vera cruz, had been defeated by the aztecs in a pitched battle, and that the head of a spaniard, then slain, had been sent to the emperor, after being shown in triumph throughout some of the chief cities. cortés asked an audience from montezuma, and that being readily granted, he prepared for his plot by having a large body of armed men posted in the courtyard. choosing five companions of tried courage, cortés then entered the palace, and after being graciously received, told montezuma that he knew of the treachery that had taken place near the coast, and that the emperor was said to be the cause. the emperor said that such a charge could only have been concocted by his enemies. he agreed with the proposal of cortés to summon the aztec chief who was accused of treachery to the garrison at vera cruz; and was then persuaded to transfer his residence to the palace occupied by the spaniards. he was there received and treated with ostentatious respect; but his people observed that in front of the palace there was constantly posted a patrol of sixty soldiers, with another equally large in the rear. when the aztec chief arrived from the coast, he and his sixteen aztec companions were condemned to be burned alive before the palace. the next daring act of the spanish general was to order iron fetters to be fastened on montezuma's ankles. the great emperor seemed struck with stupor and spoke never a word. meanwhile the aztec chiefs were executed in the courtyard without interruption, the populace imagining the sentence had been passed upon them by montezuma, and the victims submitting to their fate without a murmur. cortés returning then to the room where montezuma was imprisoned, unclasped the fetters and said he was now at liberty to return to his own palace. the emperor, however, declined the offer. the instinctive sense of human sympathy must have frequently been not only repressed but extinguished by all the great conquering generals who have crushed nations under foot. besides those of prehistoric times in asia and europe, we have examples in alexander the greek, julius cæsar the roman, cortés and pizarro the spaniards, frederick the prussian, and napoleon the corsican. the great french general consciously aimed at dramatic effect in his exploits, but how paltry his seizing the duc d'enghien at dead of night by a troop of soldiers, or his coercing the king of spain to resign his sovereignty after inducing him to cross the border into france. in the unparalleled case of cortés, a powerful emperor is seized by a few strangers at noonday and carried off a prisoner without opposition or bloodshed. so extraordinary a transaction, says robertson, would appear "extravagant beyond the bounds of probability" were it not that all the circumstances are "authenticated by the most unquestionable evidence." the nephew of montezuma, cakama, the lord of tezcuco, had been closely watching all the motions of the spaniards. he "beheld with indignation and contempt the abject condition of his uncle; and now set about forming a league with several of the neighboring caziques to break the detested yoke of the spaniards." news of this league reached the ears of cortés, and arresting him with the permission of montezuma, he deposed him, and appointed a younger brother in his place. the other caziques were seized, each in his own city, and brought to mexico, where cortés placed them in strict confinement along with cakama. the next step taken by cortés was to demand from montezuma an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the spanish emperor. the aztec monarch and chief caziques easily granted this; and even agreed that a gratuity should be sent by each of them as proof of loyalty. collectors were sent out, and "in a few weeks most of them returned, bringing back large quantities of gold and silver plate, rich stuffs, etc." to this montezuma added a huge hoard, the treasures of his father. when brought into the quarters, the gold alone was sufficient to make three great heaps. it consisted partly of native grains, and partly of bars; but the greatest portion was in utensils, and various kinds of ornaments and curious toys, together with imitations of birds, insects, or flowers, executed with uncommon truth and delicacy. there were also quantities of collars, bracelets, wands, fans, and other trinkets, in which the gold and feather-work were richly powdered with pearls and precious stones. montezuma expressed regret that the treasure was no larger; he had "diminished it," he said, "by his former gifts to the white men." the spaniards gazed on this display of riches, far exceeding all hitherto seen in the new world--though small compared with the quantity of treasure found in peru. the whole amount of this mexican gift was about £1,417,000, according to prescott, dr. robertson making it smaller. it was no easy task to divide the spoil. a fifth had to be deducted for the crown, and an equal share went to the general, besides a "large sum to indemnify him and the governor of cuba for the charges of the expedition and the loss of the fleet. the garrison of vera cruz was also to be provided for. the cavalry, musketeers, and crossbowmen each received double pay." thus for each of the common soldiers there was only 100 gold _pesos_--i. e., £2-5/8 x 100 = £262 10s. to many this share seemed paltry, compared with their expectations; and it required all the tact and authority of cortés to quell the grumbling. there still remained one important object of the spanish invasion, an object which cortés as a good catholic dared not overlook--the conversion of the aztec nation from heathenism. the bloody ritual of the _teocallis_ was still observed in every city. cortés waited on montezuma, urging a request that the great temple be assigned for public worship according to the christian rites. montezuma was evidently much alarmed, declaring that his people would never allow such a profanation, but at last, after consulting the priest, agreed that one of the sanctuaries on the summit of the temple should be granted to the christians as a place of worship. an altar was raised, surmounted by a crucifix and the image of the virgin. the whole army ascended the steps in solemn procession and listened with silent reverence to the service of the mass. in conclusion, "as the beautiful te deum rose toward heaven, cortés and his soldiers kneeling on the ground, with tears streaming from their eyes, poured forth their gratitude to the almighty for this glorious triumph of the cross." such a union of heathenism and christianity was too unnatural to continue. a few days later the emperor sent for cortés and earnestly advised him to leave the country at once. cortés replied that ships were necessary. montezuma agreed to supply timber and workmen, and in a short time the construction of several ships was begun at vera cruz on the seacoast, while in the capital the garrison kept itself ready by day and by night for a hostile attack. only six months had elapsed since the arrival of the spaniards in the capital, 1519, and now the army was in more uncomfortable circumstances than ever. meanwhile, while cortés had been reducing mexico and humbling the unfortunate montezuma, the governor of cuba had complained to the court of spain, but without success. charles v, since his election to the imperial crown of germany, had neglected the affairs of spain; and when the envoys from vera cruz waited upon him, little came of the conference except the astonishment of the court at the quantity of gold, and the beautiful workmanship of the ornaments and the rich colors of the mexican feather-work. the opposition of the bishop of burgos thwarted the conqueror of mexico, as he had already successfully opposed the schemes of the "great admiral" and his son diego columbus. we shall presently see how this influential ecclesiastic was able to thwart balboa when governor of darien. velasquez was now determined to wreak his revenge upon cortés without waiting longer for assistance from spain. he prepared an expedition of eighteen ships with eighty horsemen, 800 infantry, 120 crossbowmen, and twelve pieces of artillery. to command these velasquez chose a hidalgo named narvaez, who had assisted formerly in subduing cuba and hispaniola. the personal appearance of narvaez, as given by diaz, is worth quoting: he was tall, stout-limbed, with a large head and red beard, an agreeable presence, a voice deep and sonorous, as if it rose from a cavern. he was a good horseman and valiant. meanwhile cortés persuaded montezuma that some friends from spain had arrived at vera cruz, and therefore got permission to leave him and the capital in charge of alvarado and a small garrison. montezuma, in his royal litter, borne on the shoulders of his aztec nobles, accompanied the spanish general to the southern causeway. when cortés was within fifteen leagues' distance of zempoalla, where narvaez was encamped, the latter sent a message that if his authority were acknowledged he would supply ships to cortés and his army so that all who wished might freely leave the country with all their property. cortés, however, with his usual astuteness, replied: "if narvaez bears a royal commission i will readily submit to him. but he has produced none. he is a deputy of my rival, velasquez. for myself, i am a servant of the king; i have conquered the country for him; and for him i and my brave followers will defend it to the last drop of our blood. if we fall it will be glory enough to have perished in the discharge of our duty." narvaez and his army were meantime spending their time frivolously; and when the actual attack was begun in the dead of night, under a pouring rain-storm, it appeared that only two sentinels were on guard. narvaez, badly wounded, was taken prisoner on the top of a _teocalli_; and in a very short time his army was glad to capitulate. the horse-soldiers whom narvaez had sent to waylay one of the roads to zempoalla, rode in soon after to tender their submission. the victorious general, seated in a chair of state, with a richly embroidered mexican mantle on his shoulders, received his congratulations from the officers and soldiers of both armies. narvaez and several others were led in chains. cortés not only defeated narvaez, but, after the battle, enlisted under his standard the spanish soldiers who had been sent to attack him--reminding one of the "magnetism" of hannibal or napoleon, and the consequent enthusiasm caused by mere presence, looks, and words. before the rejoicings were finished, however, tidings were brought to cortés from the mexican capital that the whole city was in a state of revolt against alvarado. on his march back to the great plateau cortés found the inhabitants of tlascala still friendly and willing to assist as allies in the struggle against their ancient foes, the mexicans. on reaching the camp of the spaniards in mexico, cortés found that alvarado had provoked the insurrection by a massacre of the aztec populace. having entered the precincts with his army, cortés at once made anxious preparations for the siege which was threatened by the aztecs, now assembling in thousands. as the assailants approached "they set up a hideous yell, or rather that shrill whistle used in fight by the nations of anahuac," accompanied by the sound of shell and atabal and their other rude instruments of wild music. this was followed by a tempest of missiles, stones, darts, and arrows. the spaniards waited until the foremost column had arrived within distance, when a general discharge of artillery and muskets swept the ranks of the assailants. never till now had the mexicans witnessed the murderous power of these formidable engines. at first they stood aghast, but soon rallying, they rushed forward over the prostrate bodies of their comrades. pressing on, some of them tried to scale the parapet, while others tried to force a breach in it. when the parapet proved too strong they shot burning arrows upon the wooden outworks. next day there were continually fresh supplies of warriors added to the forces of the assailants, so that the danger of the situation was greatly increased. diaz, an onlooker, thus wrote: the mexicans fought with such ferocity that if we had been assisted by 10,000 hectors and as many orlandos, we should have made no impression on them. there were several of our troops who had served in the italian wars, but neither there nor in the battles with the turks had they ever seen anything like the desperation shown by these indians. cortés at last drew off his men and sounded a retreat, taking refuge in the fortress. the mexicans encamped round it, and during the night insulted the besieged, shouting, "the gods have at last delivered you into our hands: the stone of sacrifice is ready: the knives are sharpened." cortés now felt that he had not fully understood the character of the mexicans. the patience and submission formerly shown in deference to the injured montezuma was now replaced by concentrated arrogance and ferocity. the spanish general even stooped to request the interposition of the aztec emperor; and, at last, when assured that the foreigners would leave his country if a way were opened through the mexican army he agreed to use his influence. for this purpose he put on his imperial robes; his mantle of white and blue flowed over his shoulders, held together by its rich clasp of the green _chalchivitl_. the same precious gem, with emeralds of uncommon size, set in gold, profusely ornamented other parts of his dress. his feet were shod with the golden sandals, and his brows covered with the mexican diadem, resembling in form the pontifical tiara. thus attired and surrounded by a guard of spaniards, and several aztec nobles, and preceded by the golden wand, the symbol of sovereignty, the indian monarch ascended the central turret of the palace. at the sight of montezuma all the mexican army became silent, partly, no doubt, from curiosity. he assured them that he was no prisoner; that the strangers were his friends, and would leave mexico of their own accord as soon as a way was opened. to call himself a friend of the hateful spaniards was a fatal argument. instead of respecting their monarch, though in his official robes, the populace howled angry curses at him as a degenerate aztec, a coward, no longer a warrior or even a man! a cloud of missiles was hurled at montezuma, and he was struck to the ground by the blow of a stone on his head. the unfortunate monarch only survived his wounds for a few days, disdaining to take any nourishment, or to receive advice from the spanish priests. meanwhile, cortés and his army met with an unexpected danger. a large body of the indian warriors had taken possession of the great temple, at a short distance from the spanish quarters. from this commanding position they kept shooting a deadly flight of arrows on the spaniards. cortés sent his chamberlain, escobar, with a body of men to storm the temple, but, after three efforts, the party had to relinquish the attempt. cortés himself then led a storming party, and after some determined fighting reached the platform at the top of the temple where the two sanctuaries of the aztec deities stood. this large area was now the scene of a desperate battle, fought in sight of the whole capital as well as of the spanish troops still remaining in the courtyard. this struggle between such deadly enemies caused dreadful carnage on both sides: the edge of the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. cortés himself had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate.... the number of the enemy was double that of the christians; but the invulnerable armor of the spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advantages which far outweighed the odds of physical strength and numbers. this unparalleled scene of bloodshed lasted for three hours. of the mexicans "two or three priests only survived to be led away in triumph"; yet the loss of the spaniards was serious enough, amounting to forty-five of their best men. nearly all the others were wounded, some seriously. after dragging the uncouth monster, huitzilopochtli, from his sanctuary, the assailants hurled the repulsive image down the steps of the temple, and then set fire to the building. the same evening they burned a large part of the town. cortés now resolved upon a night retreat from the capital; but when marching along one of the causeways they were attacked by the mexicans in such numbers that, when morning dawned, the shattered battalion was reduced to less than half its number. in after years that disastrous retreat was known to the spanish chroniclers as _noche triste_, the "night of sorrows." after a hurried six days' march before the pursuers, cortés gained a victory so signal that an alliance was speedily formed with tlascala against mexico. cortés built twelve brigantines at vera cruz in order to secure the command of lake tescuco and thus attempt the reduction of the mexican capital. on his return to the great lake he found that the throne was now occupied by guatimozin, a nephew of montezuma. using their brigantines the spanish soldiers now began the siege of mexico--"the most memorable event in the conquest of america." it lasted seventy-five days, during which the whole of the capital was reduced to ruins. guatimozin, the last of the aztec emperors, was condemned by the spanish general to be hanged on the charge of treason. cortés was now master of all mexico. the spanish court and people were full of admiration for his victories and the extent of his conquests; and charles v appointed him "captain-general and governor of new spain." on revisiting europe, the emperor honored him with the order of st. jago and the title of marquis. latterly, however, after some failures in his exploring expeditions, cortés, on his return to spain, found himself treated with neglect. it was then, according to voltaire's story, that when charles asked the courtiers, "who is that man?" referring to cortés, the latter said aloud: "it is one, sire, that has added more provinces to your dominions than any other governor has added towns!" cortés died in his sixty-second year, december 2, 1547. chapter viii balboa and the isthmus in the spanish conquest of america there are three great generals: cortés, balbao, and pizarro. the third may to many readers seem immeasurably superior as explorer and conqueror to the second, but it must be remembered that pizarro's scheme of discovering and invading peru was precisely that which balboa had already prepared. pizarro could afford to say, "others have labored, and i have merely entered into their labors." what, then, was the work done by balboa, and what prevented him from taking peru? in 1510, the year before the conquest of cuba, balboa was glad to escape from hispaniola, not to avoid the spanish cruelties, like hatuey, the luckless cazique, but to escape from his spanish creditors. so anxious was he to get on board that he concealed himself in a cask to avoid observation. balboa, however, had administrative qualities, and after taking possession of the uncleared district of darien in the name of the king of spain, he was appointed governor of the new province. he built the town santa maria on the coast of the darien gulf; but so pestilential was the district (and still is) that the settlers were glad after a short time to remove to the other side of the isthmus. it was by mere accident that balboa first heard of a great ocean beyond the mountains of darien, and of the enormous wealth of peru, a country hitherto unknown to spain or europe. as several soldiers were one day disputing about the division of some gold-dust, an indian cazique called out: "why quarrel about such a trifle? i can show you a region where the commonest pots and pans are made of that metal." to the inquiries of balboa and his companions, the cazique replied that by traveling six days to the south they should see another ocean, near which lay the wealthy kingdom. resolving to cross the isthmus, notwithstanding a thousand formidable obstructions, balboa formed a party consisting of 190 veterans, accompanied by 1,000 indians, and several fierce dogs trained to hunt the naked natives. such were the difficulties that the "six days' journey" occupied twenty-five before the ridge of the isthmus range was reached. balboa commanded his men to halt, and advanced alone to the summit, that he might be the first who should enjoy a spectacle which he had so long desired. as soon as he beheld the sea stretching in endless prospect below him he fell on his knees; ... his followers observing his transports of joy rushed forward to join in his wonder, exultation, and gratitude. that was the moment, september 25, 1513, immortalized in keats's sonnet: when with eagle eyes he stared at the pacific, and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent, upon a peak in darien. balboa hurried down the western slope of the isthmus range to take formal possession in the name of the spanish monarch. he found a fishing village there which had been named panama (i. e., "plenty fish") by the indians, but had also a reputation for the pearls found in its bay. in his letter to spain, balboa said, to illustrate the difficulties of the expedition, that of all the 190 men in his party there were never more than eighty fit for service at one time. notwithstanding the wonderful news of the discovery of the "great southern ocean," as the pacific was then called, ferdinand overlooked the great services of balboa, and appointed a new governor of darien called pedrarias, who instituted a judicial inquiry into some previous transactions of balboa, imposing a heavy fine as punishment. the new governor committed other acts of great imprudence, and at length ferdinand felt that he had only superseded the most active and experienced officer he had in the new world. to make amends to balboa, he was appointed "lieutenant-governor of the countries upon the south sea," with great privileges and authority. at the same time pedrarias was commanded to "support balboa in all his operations, and to consult with him concerning every measure which he himself pursued." balboa, in 1517, began his preparations for entering the south sea and conveying troops to the country which he proposed to invade. with four small brigantines and 300 chosen soldiers (a force superior to that with which pizarro afterward undertook the same expedition), he was on the point of sailing toward the coasts of which they had such expectations, when a message arrived from pedrarias. balboa being unconscious of crime, agreed to delay the expedition, and meet pedrarias for conference. on entering the palace balboa was arrested and immediately tried on the charge of disloyalty to the king and intention of revolt against the governor. he was speedily sentenced to death, although the accusation was so absurd that the judges who pronounced the sentence "seconded by the whole colony, interceded warmly for his pardon." "the spaniards beheld with astonishment and sorrow the public execution of a man whom they universally deemed more capable than any who had borne command in america, of forming and accomplishing great designs." this gross injustice amounting to a public scandal was accounted for by the malignant influence of the bishop of burgos, in spain, who was the original cause of balboa being superseded as governor of darien. the expedition designed by balboa was now relinquished; but the removal of the colony soon afterward to the pacific side of the isthmus may be considered a step toward the realization of an exactly similar attempt by pizzaro. to some historical readers the word "darien" only recalls the bitter prejudice entertained against william iii, our "dutch king," notwithstanding the special pleading of lord macaulay and others. some scottish merchants had adopted a scheme recommended by the most reliable authorities[23] of that age, viz., the settlement of a half-commercial, half-military colony on the atlantic coast of the isthmus. such a company, in the words of paterson, would be masters of the "door of the seas," and the "key of the universe." the east india companies both of england and holland showed an envious jealousy of the scottish merchants, and therefore no assistance was to be expected from the king, although he had given his royal sanction to the scots act of parliament creating the company. the scottish people, however, zealously continued the scheme. some 1,200 men "set sail from leith amid the blessings of many thousands of their assembled countrymen. they reached the gulf of darien in safety, and established themselves on the coast in localities to which they gave the names of new caledonia and new st. andrews." the government of spain (secretly instigated, it was believed, by the english king) resolved to attack the embryo colony. the shipwreck of the whole scheme soon followed, due undoubtedly more to the jealousy of the english merchants (who believed that any increase of trade in scotland or ireland was a positive loss to england) and the bad faith of our dutch king, than to all other causes whatever. of the colony, according to dalrymple (ii, 103), not more than thirty ever saw their own country again. [footnote 23: e.g., paterson, founder of the bank of england, fletcher of saltoun, the marquis of tweeddale, then chief minister of scotland, sir john dalrymple, etc.] in 1526 a company of english merchants was formed to trade with the west indies and the "spanish main," and commanded great success. other merchants did the same. soon after the spanish court instituted a coast-guard to make war upon these traders; and as they had full power to capture and slay all who did not bear the king of spain's commission, there were terrible tales told in europe of mutilation, torture, and revenge. the windward islands having been gradually settled by french and english adventurers, frederick of toledo was sent with a large fleet to destroy those petty colonies. this harsh treatment rendered the planters desperate, and under the name of buccaneers,[24] they continued "a retaliation so horribly savage [_v._ notes to rokeby] that the perusal makes the reader shudder. from piracy at sea, they advanced to making predatory descents on the spanish territories; in which they displayed the same furious and irresistible valor, the same thirst of spoil, and the same brutal inhumanity to their captives." the pride and presumption of spain were partly resisted by the english monarchs, but not with real effect before the time of cromwell, strongest of all the rulers of britain. under his government of the seas spain was deprived of the island of jamaica; and the buccaneers to their disgust found that the flag of the great protector was a check against all piracy and injustice. [footnote 24: named from _boucan_, a kind of preserved meat, used by those rovers. they had learned this peculiar art of preserving from the native caribs.] under charles ii, however, the buccaneers resumed their conflict with the spanish, and in 1670, henry morgan, with 1,500 english and french ruffians resolved to cross the isthmus like balboa, to plunder the depositories of gold and silver which lay in the city of panama and other places on the pacific coast. having stormed a strong fortress at the mouth of the chagres river, they forced their way through the entangled forests for ten days, and after much hardship reached panama, to find it defended by a regular army of twice their number. the spaniards, however, were beaten, and morgan thoroughly sacked and plundered the city, taking captive all the chief citizens in order to extort afterward large ransoms. ten years afterward the isthmus of darien was crossed by dampier, another celebrated buccaneer, but his party was too small to attack panama. they seized some spanish vessels in the bay and plundered all the coast for some distance. the following description by the bold buccaneer is not without interest to those who consider the present importance of the place: near the riverside stands new panama, a very handsome city, in a spacious bay of the same name, into which disembogue many long and navigable rivers, some whereof are not without gold; besides that it is beautified by many pleasant isles, the country about it affording a delightful prospect to the sea.... the houses are chiefly of brick and pretty lofty, especially the president's, the churches, the monasteries, and other public structures, which make the best show i have seen in the west indies. the present prosperity of panama is due to its large transit trade, which was recently estimated at £15,000,000 a year. the pearl-fisheries, famous at the time of balboa's visit, have now little value. the narrowest breadth of the isthmus being only thirty miles, there have naturally been many engineering proposals to connect the pacific and atlantic oceans by a canal. m. de lesseps founded a french company in 1881 for the construction of a ship-canal with eight locks, and over forty-six miles in length; but in 1889, the excavations stopped after some 48-1/2 millions of cubic meters of earth and rock had been removed. meanwhile a railway 47-1/2 miles long connects colon on the atlantic with panama on the pacific. the mexican isthmus of tehuantepec, only 140 miles across, separates the bay of campeachy from the pacific, and failing the panama canal some engineers were in favor of a _ship-railway_ for conveying large vessels _bodily_ from the atlantic to the pacific. the scheme met with great favor in the united states, but has not yet been carried out. the third proposal for connecting the two great oceans is probably the most feasible because it follows the most deeply marked depression of the isthmus. the nicaraguan ship-canal will, if the scheme be carried out, pass from greytown on the atlantic to brito on the pacific, about 170 miles apart, through the republic of nicaragua, which lies north of panama and south of guatemala. one obvious advantage of this ship-canal is that the great lake is utilized, affording already about one-third of the waterway; only twenty-eight miles, in fact, being actual canal, and the rest river, lake, and lagoon navigation. in the latest specifications the engineers proposed to dam up the river (san juan) by a stone wall seventy feet high and 1,900 feet long, thus raising the water to a level of 106 feet above the sea. only three locks will be required to work the nicaraguan ship-canal. chapter ix extinct civilization of peru § (a) _peruvian archeology_ as the extinct civilization of the incas of peru is the most important phase of development among all the american races, so also their prehistoric remains are extremely interesting to the archeologist. [illustration: monolith doorway. near lake titicaca. fig. 1.] 1. _architecture._--in the interior of the country we find many remarkable examples of stone building, such as walls of huge polygonal stones, four-sided or five-sided or six-sided, some six feet across, laid without mortar, and so finely polished and adjusted that the blade of a knife can not be inserted between them. the strength of the masonry is sometimes assisted by having the projecting parts of a stone fitting into corresponding hollows or recesses in the stone above or below it. the stones being frequently extremely hard granite, or basalt, etc., antiquarian travelers have wondered how in early times the natives could have cut and polished them without any metal tools. the ordinary explanation is that the work was done by patiently rubbing one stone against another, with the aid of sharp sand, "time being no object" in the case of the laborers among savage and primitive races. it is believed by most antiquaries that long before the period of the incas there was a powerful empire to which we must attribute such cyclopean ruins; especially as the construction and style differ so greatly from what is found in the inca period. the huge stones occur at tiahuanacu (near lake titicaca), cuzco, ollantay, and the altar of concacha. fig. 1 is a broken doorway at tiahuanacu, composed of huge monoliths. fig. 2 is an enlargement of an image over the doorway shown in fig. 1. the doorway forms the entrance to a quadrangular area (400 yards by 350) surrounded by large stones standing on end. the gateway or doorway of fig. 1 is one of the most marvelous stone monuments existing, being _one block of hard rock_, deeply sunk in the ground. the present height is over seven feet. the whole of the inner side "from a line level with the upper lintel of the doorway to the top" is a mass of sculpture, "which speaks to us," says sir c. r. markham, "in difficult riddles of the customs and art culture, of the beliefs and traditions of an ancient" extinct civilization. the figure in high relief above the doorway (fig. 2) is a head surrounded by rays, "each terminating in a circle or the head of an animal." six human heads hang from the girdle, and two more from the elbows. each hand holds a scepter terminating at the lower end with the head of a condor--that huge american vulture familiar to the peruvians. that bird of prey was probably an emblem of royalty to the prehistoric dynasty now long forgotten. [illustration: image over the doorway shown in fig. 1. near lake titicaca. fig. 2.] some older historians speak of richly carved statues which formerly stood in this enclosure, and "many cylindrical pillars." of the masonry of these ruins generally, squier says: "the stone is faced with a precision that no skill can excel, its right angles turned with an accuracy that the most careful geometer could not surpass. i do not believe there exists a better piece of stone-cutting, the material considered, on this or the other continent." the fortress above cuzco, the capital of the incas, is considered the grandest monument of extinct american civilization. "like the pyramids and the coliseum, it is imperishable.... a fortified work, 600 yards in length, built of gigantic stones, in three lines, forming walls supporting terraces and parapets.... the stones are of blue limestone, of enormous size and irregular in shape, but fitted into each other with rare precision. one stone is twenty-seven feet high by fourteen; and others fifteen feet high by twelve are common throughout the work." in all the architecture of the prehistoric peruvians the true arch is not found, though there is an approach to the "maya arch," formerly described, finishing the doorway overhead by overlapping stones. the immense fortresses of ollantay and pisac are really hills which, by means of encircling walls, have been transformed into immense pyramids with many terraces rising above each other. all large buildings, such as temples and palaces, were laid out to agree with the "cardinal points," the principal entrance always facing the rising sun. the tomb construction of the ancient peruvians has been already noticed (_v._ chap. iv). to the south of cuzco are the ruins of a temple, cacha, which is considered to be of a date between the cyclopean structures already described and the inca architecture. the chief part is 110 yards long, built of wrought stones; and in the middle of the building from end to end runs a wall pierced by twelve high doorways. there were also two series of pillars which had formerly supported a floor. those traces of the cyclopean builders point to an extremely early date, but several students of the peruvian antiquities point confidently to distinct evidence of a still more primitive race--to be compared, perhaps, with those builders of "druidic monuments" whom it is now the fashion to call "neolithic men." some "cromlechs" or burial-places have been found in bolivia and other parts of peru; and in many respects they are parallel to the stone monuments found in great britain as well as brittany and other parts of europe. some of those peruvian cromlechs consist of four great slabs of slate, each about five feet high, four or five in width, and more than an inch thick. a fifth is placed over them. over the whole a pyramid of clay and rough stones is piled. possibly that race of cromlech builders bore the same relation to the temple builders described above that the builders of kits coty house, between rochester and maidstone, bore to the temple builders of stonehenge on salisbury plain. if they had to retreat, as the ice-sheet was driven farther from the torrid zone, then by the theory of the glacial period the cromlech men in both cases would at last be simply eskimos. 2. _aqueducts._--the ancient peruvians attained great skill in the distribution of water--especially for irrigation. artificial lakes or reservoirs were formed, so that by damming up the streams in the rainy season a good supply was created for the dry season. some great monuments still remain of their hydraulic engineering, such as extensive cisterns, solid dikes along the rivers to prevent overflow, tunnels to drain lakes during an oversupply, and, in some places, artificial cascades. 3. _roads and bridges._--the roads and highways of the incas were so excellent that "in many places" they still offer by far the most convenient avenues of transit. they are from fifteen to twenty-five feet in width, bedded with small stones often laid in concrete. as the use of beasts of burden was almost unknown, the roads did not ascend a steep inclination by zigzags but by steps cut in the rock. at certain distances public shelters were erected for travelers, and some of these still offer the best lodging-houses to be found along the routes. bridges were of wood, of ropes made from maguey fiber, or of stone. some of the latter are still in excellent condition, in spite of the violence of the mountain torrents which they have spanned for four centuries. 4. _sculpture._--the maya race of yucatan and central america were much superior to the prehistoric peruvians in stone sculpture. except those examples already referred to under 1, their artists have apparently produced nothing to show skill in workmanship, much less fertility of imagination. that is largely explained by their lack of suitable tools. 5. _goldsmith's work._--in this branch of art the ancient peruvians greatly excelled, especially in inlaying and gilding. gold-beating and gilding had been prosecuted to remarkable delicacy, and the very thin layers of gold-leaf on many articles led the spaniards at first to believe they were of the solid metal. these delicate layers showed ornamental designs, including birds, butterflies, and the like. 6. _pottery._--in this department of industrial art the prehistoric peruvians showed much aptitude both "in regard to variety of design and technical skill in preparing the material. vases with pointed bottoms and painted sides recalling those of ancient greece and etruria are often disinterred along the coast." the merit of those artists lay in perfect imitation of natural objects, such as birds, fishes, fruits, plants, skulls, persons in various positions, faces (often with graphic individuality). some jars exactly resembled the "magic vases" which are still found in hindustan, and can be emptied only when held at a certain angle. 7. though ignorant of perspective and the rules of light and shade, these ancient peruvians had an accurate eye for color. "spinning, weaving, and dyeing," to quote sir c. r. markham, "were arts which were sources of employment to a great number, owing to the quantity and variety of the fabrics.... there were rich dresses interwoven with gold or made of gold thread; fine woolen mantles ornamented with borders of small square plates of gold and silver; colored cotton cloths worked in complicated patterns; and fabrics of aloe fiber and sheep's sinews for breeches. coarser cloths of llama wool were also made in vast quantities." [illustration: the quipu.] 8. the _quipu_ (i e., "knot").--without writing or even any of the simpler forms of pictographs which some indian races inferior to them in refinement had invented, the peruvians had no means of sending a message relating to tribute or the number of warriors in an army, or a date, except the _quipu_. it consisted of one principal cord about two feet long held horizontally, to which other cords of various colors and lengths were attached, hanging vertically. the knots on the vertical cords, and their various lengths served by means of an arranged code to convey certain words and phrases. each color and each knot had so many conventional significations; thus _white_ = silver, _green_ = corn, _yellow_ = gold; but in another quipu, _white_ = peace, _red_ = war, soldiers, etc. the quipu was originally only a means of numeration and keeping accounts, thus: a single knot = 10 a double knot = 100 a triple knot = 1,000 two singles = 20 two doubles = 200 etc. 9. the great stone monuments described in our first section belonged, according to some writers, to a dynasty called pirua, who ruled over the highlands of peru and bolivia long before the times of the incas. that early race had as the center of their civilization the shores of lake titicaca. 10. _the ancient capital._--cuzco, the center of government till the time of the conquest by the spaniards, and for a long time the only city in the peruvian empire, deserves a paragraph under the head archeology. its wonderful fortress has already been referred to, and there are other cyclopean remains, such as the great wall which contains the "stone of twelve corners." some monuments of the inca period also attract much attention, such as the curi-cancha temple, 296 feet long, the palace of amaru-cancha (i. e., "place of serpents"), so called from the serpents sculptured in relief on the exterior. of these and other buildings squier remarks that the "joints are of a precision unknown in our architecture; the world has nothing to show in the way of stone-cutting and fitting to surpass the skill and accuracy displayed in the inca structures of cuzco." to obtain the site for their capital the incas had to carry out a great engineering work, by confining two mountain torrents between walls of substantial masonry so solid as to serve even to modern times. the valley of cuzco was the source of the peruvian civilization, center and origin of the empire. hence the name, cuzco = "navel," just as the ancient greeks called athens _umbilicus terræ_, and our new england cousins fondly refer to boston, mass., as "the hub of the universe"! [illustration: gold ornament (? zodiac) from a tomb at cuzco.] § (b) _peru before the arrival of the spaniards_ the "national myth" of the peruvians was that at lake titicaca two supernatural beings appeared, both children of the sun. one was manco capac, the first inca, who taught the people agriculture; the other was his wife, who taught the women to spin and weave. from them were lineally derived all the incas. as representing the sun, the inca was high priest and head of the hierarchy, and therefore presided at the great religious festivals. he was the source from which everything flowed--all dignity, all power, all emolument. louis le magnifique when at the height of his power might be taken as a type of the emperor inca: both could literally use the phrase, _l'état c'est moi,_ "the state! i am the state!" in the royal palaces and dress great barbaric pomp was assumed. all the apartments were studded with gold and silver ornaments. the worship of the sun, representing the creator, the dweller in space, the teacher and ruler of the universe,[25] was the religion of the incas inherited from their distant ancestry. the great temple at cuzco, with its gorgeous display of riches, was called "the place of gold, the abode of the teacher of the universe." an elliptical plate of gold was fixed on the wall to represent the deity. [footnote 25: according to sir c. r. markham, f. r. s.] sufficient evidence is still visible of the engineering industry evinced by the natives before the arrival of pizarro. we give some particulars of the two principal highways, both joining quito to cuzco, then passing south to chile. first, the high level road, 1,600 miles in length, crossing the great peruvian table-land, and conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; with galleries cut for leagues through the living rock, rivers crossed by means of bridges, and ravines of hideous depth filled up with solid masonry. the roadway consisted of heavy flags of freestone. secondly, the low level highway along the coast country between the andes and the pacific. the prehistoric engineers had here to encounter quite a different task. the causeway was raised on a high embankment of earth, with trees planted along the margin. in the strips of sandy waste, huge piles (many of them to be seen to this day) were driven into the ground to indicate the route. another colossal effort was the conveyance of water to the rainless country by the seacoast, especially to certain parts capable of being reclaimed and made fertile. some of the aqueducts were of great length--one measuring between 400 and 500 miles. the following table gives the peruvian calendar for a year: i. raymi, the _festival of the winter solstice_, in honor of the sun june 22d. season of plowing july 22d. season of sowing august 22d. ii. _festival of the spring equinox_ september 22d. season of brewing october 22d. commemoration of the dead november 22d. iii. _festival of the summer solstice_ december 22d. season of exercises january 22d. season of ripening february 22d. iv. _festival of autumn equinox_ march 22d. beginning of harvest april 22d. harvesting month may 22d. since quito is exactly on the equator, the vertical rays of the sun at noon during the equinox cast no shadow. that northern capital, therefore, was "held in especial veneration as the favored abode of the great deity." at the feast of raymi, or new year's day, the sacrifice usually offered was that of the llama, a fire being kindled by means of a concave mirror of polished metal collecting the rays of the sun into a focus upon a quantity of dried cotton. the national festival of the aztecs we compared to the secular celebration of the romans; so now the raymi of the peruvians may be likened to the panathenæa of ancient athens, when the people of attica ascended in splendid procession to the shrine on the acropolis. in mexico the spanish travelers often experienced severe famines; and in india, even at the present day (to the disgrace perhaps of our management) nearly every year many thousands die of hunger. it was very different under the ancient peruvians, because by law "the product of the lands consecrated to the sun, as well as those set apart for the incas, was deposited in the _tambos_, or public storehouses, as a stated provision for times of scarcity." the spaniards found those prehistoric agriculturists utilizing the inexhaustible supply of guano found on all the islands of the pacific. it was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the british farmer found the value of this fertilizer. chapter x pizarro and the incas when stout-hearted balboa first reached the summit of the isthmus range and looked south over the bay of panama, he might have seen the "silver bell," which forms the summit of the mighty volcano chimborazo. still farther south in the same direction lay the "land of gold," of which he had heard. balboa was unjustly prevented from exploring that unknown country, but among the spanish soldiers in panama there were two who determined to carry out balboa's scheme. the younger, pizarro, was destined to rival cortés as explorer and conqueror; almagro, his companion in the expedition, was less crafty and cruel. sailing from panama, the spanish first landed on the coast below quito, and found the natives wearing gold and silver trinkets. on a second voyage, with more men, they explored the coast of peru and visited tumbez, a town with a lofty temple and a palace for the incas. they beheld a country fully peopled and cultivated; the natives were decently clothed, and possessed of ingenuity so far surpassing the other inhabitants of the new world as to have the use of tame domestic animals. but what chiefly attracted the notice of the visitors was such a show of gold and silver, not only in ornaments, but in several vessels and utensils for common use, formed of those precious metals as left no room to doubt that they abounded with profusion in the country. after his return pizarro visited spain and secured the patronage of charles v, who appointed him governor and captain-general of the newly discovered country. in the next voyage from panama, pizarro set sail with 180 soldiers in three small ships--"a contemptible force surely to invade the great empire of peru." pizarro was very fortunate in the time of his arrival, because two brothers were fiercely contending in civil war to obtain the sovereignty. their father, huana capac, the twelfth inca in succession from manco capac, had recently died after annexing the kingdom of quito, and thus doubling the power of the empire. pizarro made friends with atahualpa, who had become inca by the defeat and death of his brother, and a friendly meeting was arranged between them. the peruvians are thus described by a spanish onlooker: first of all there arrived 400 men in uniform; the inca himself, on a couch adorned with plumes, and almost covered with plates of gold and silver, enriched with precious stones, was carried on the shoulders of his principal attendants. several bands of singers and dancers accompanied the procession; and the whole plain was covered with troops, more than 30,000 men. after engaging in a religious dispute with the inca, who refused to acknowledge the authority of the pope and threw the breviary on the ground, the spanish chaplain exclaimed indignantly that the word of god had been insulted by a heathen. pizarro instantly gave the signal of assault: the martial music struck up, the cannon and muskets began to fire, the horse rallied out fiercely to the charge, the infantry rushed on sword in hand. the peruvians, astonished at the suddenness of the attack, dismayed with the effect of the firearms and the irresistible impression of the cavalry, fled with universal consternation on every side. pizarro, at the head of his chosen band, soon penetrated to the royal seat, and seizing the inca by the arm, carried him as a prisoner to the spanish quarters. for his ransom atahualpa agreed to pay a weight of gold amounting to more than five millions sterling. instead of keeping faith with the inca by restoring him to liberty, pizarro basely allowed him to be tried on several false charges and condemned to be burned alive. after hearing of the enormous ransom many spaniards hurried from guatemala, panama, and nicaragua to share in the newly discovered booty of peru, the "land of gold." pizarro, therefore, being now greatly reenforced with soldiers, forced his way to cuzco, the capital. the riches found there exceeded in value what had been received as atahualpa's ransom. as governor of peru, pizarro chose a new site for his capital, nearer the coast than cuzco, and there founded lima. it is now a great center of trade. pizarro lived here in great state till the year 1542, when his fate reached him by means of a party of conspirators seeking to avenge the death of almagro, his former rival, whom he had cruelly executed as a traitor. on sunday, june 26th, at midday, while all lima was quiet under the siesta, the conspirators passed unobserved through the two outer courts of the palace, and speedily despatched the soldier-adventurer, intrepidly defending himself with a sword and buckler. "a deadly thrust full in the throat," and the tale of daring pizarro was told. _raro antecedentem scelestum_ _deseruit pede poena claudo._ when did doom, though lame, not bide its time, to clutch the nape of skulking crime? w. e. gladstone. general index. a. agathocles, 119. agassiz, 73. alfred, king, 19. almagro, pizarro's rival, 186, 189. alvarado, 158, 159. america, discoveries of, 19-35, 38-45, 48-53. america, origin of the name, 50. american archeology, 71-79 (_see_ also aztec, peru, civilization). amerigo (_americus_), (_see_ vespucci). anahuac, 56, 58, 63. archeology, 71-88 (see under aztec, mexico, peru, and civilization, extinct). aristotle, shape of the earth, 10. arthur, king, 19. atahualpa, inca, 187, 188. atlantic, ridge, 15. atlantis, island or continent, 14, 15. avalon, 17. aztecs, their traditions, 54, 56, 57, 62, 63. aztecs, antiquities, 55. aztecs, kingdom, 58; empire founded, 76. aztecs, letters, etc., 58, 79-82. aztecs, astronomy, 64, 65, 68, 83. aztecs, human sacrifices, 59, 60, 62, 102, 106; how explained by comparison with jews, greeks, druids, etc., 100-106. aztecs, priesthood, 65, 67. aztecs, religion, 92, 93; laws, 90. aztecs, natural piety, 66-68. aztecs, secular festival, 68-70. aztecs, soldiery, 91, 92. aztecs, agriculture, 94. aztecs, markets, 97, 147. aztecs, banquets, social amusements, 97, 99. aztlan, 56. b. bacon, roger, 18. bahamas, 41. balboa, 9, 50, 52, 164, 168. balboa scheme--adopted by pizarro, 186. balboa hears of the land of gold, 165. balboa crosses the isthmus, 166, 167. balboa unjustly treated, 167, 168. barcelona, columbus honored at court, 45. basque discovery, 32. boston in vinland, 26, 182. brandan, st. discoverer, 32. brito, ship-canal, 172. buccaneers, origin, etc., 169, 170. buffon, 15. burgos, bishop of, 157, 168. c. cabot, 38, 48, 49. cabrera reaches brazil, 49. cakama, prince of tezcuco, 154. calendar stone, 83, 84. calicut reached by gama, 49. canaanites, etc., sun-worship, 102, 103. cannibalism, 102, 103. capac, inca, 182, 187. carthage, 17, 102. cathay, 39, 43, 45. cazique, 43, 117, etc. celtic discoveries, 19, 30-32. chalco, lake, 136, 137. charles v. and cortés, 164. chiapas, 77. chibchas, 85. cholula, 84, 94, 130, 133. civilization, extinct, chaps, iii, ix. civilization, celtic, 19. civilization, norse, 19-25, 27-31. civilization, aztec, etc., 54-70, 82, 83. civilization, peru, 172-185. colon (_see_ columbus); also an atlantic port on the isthmus of darien, 172. columbia, 76, 85. columbus, 17-18, 37, 38-46, 157. columbus, early failures, 39. columbus, voyage to iceland, 39. columbus, variation of the compass, 41, 42, 49. columbus, discovers bahamas, cuba, hayti, 42-44. columbus, discovers trinidad and orinoco, 45. columbus, map by (found in 1894), 42. columbus, autograph (cut) and epitaph, 46. columbus, ferdinand, 18; bartholomew, 43. columbus, diego, 47, 157. continent, supposed southern (cut), 12. continent, western, 13 (_see_ atlantis, hesperides). condor, emblem of prehistoric inca, 173, 175 (cuts). copan, 79-81. cordova lands on yucatan, 53. cortés appointed leader, 53, 64, 77, 80. cortés at cuba and hayti, 117. cortés at yucatan, 109. cortés and teuhtile, in, 112. cortés, generalship, 119, 124, 126, 159. cortés, resource, 127, 128, 158. cortés, cruelty, 129, 132, 153. cortés at popocatepetl, 133. cortés and montezuma, 141, 143-143. cortés, lack of delicacy, 152. cortés, arrest of montezuma, 152-157. cortés, personal courage, 162. cortés, retreat, "night of sorrows," 163. cortés, mexico retaken and its emperor hanged, 164. cortés and charles v., 164. cliff-houses, 86. cotton, az. tec., preparation of, 84, 96. cromwell, his influence, 170. cruz, vera, 110, 114, 120, 156, 157, 163. cuba, 43-45, 51-53, 84. culhua, 110. cuzco, 174, 176, 181, 183, 188. cuzco, cyclopean remains, 181, 183. cuzco, temple, 183. cyclopean ruins in peru, 173, 178, 181-183. cyclopean ruins in peru (cuts), 173, 175. d. dalrymple, sir john, 169, 170. dampier, buccaneer, 170. darien, taken by balboa, 169. darien, scottish expedition, 169. darien, causes of failure, 169, 170. darien, crossed by morgan, 170, 171. darien, crossed by dampier, 171. diaz, navigator, rounds the cape of good hope and names it the "stormy cape," 49. diaz, historian, quoted, 148, 151, 158, 160. dighton stone, 28 (cuts, 27, 28). diodorus siculus, 16. druid sacrifices, 106. "druidic," 74, 177, 178. e. edward vi and cabot, 48. elysian fields, 13, 14, 16. erik the red, 20. escobar, 162. euripides, quoted, 14. f. feather-work, 84, 96. ferdinand and isabella, 40, 41. feudalism ended, 36. g. gama, de, 38, 58. gardens, 138, 139. glazier, theory, 73-74. gladstone quoted, 189. gosnold's expedition, 25, 26. greenland, 19-25, 30, 31. grijalva and yucatan, 10, 53. guatemala, 58, 76, 79. guatimozin, 163. gunnbiorn, 20. h. hannibal on the alps, 134, 135. harold fair-hair, 20. hatuey, 51, 52. hayti, 43, 98. helluland (newfoundland), 22. henry vii., 48, 49. hercules' pillars, 13, 17. herodotus, 10, 11. hesiod, quoted, 13. hesperides, isles of the blest, 14. homer, quoted, 10, 13. honduras, 76, 79. huitzilopochtli, god of battles, 93, 94, 150, 151 (_see_ mexitl.) humboldt, 35, 50, 65, 73, 83, 94. i. iceland, 19, 20. incas, 172, 182 (_see_ peru). "indian," as a term applied to the new world by mistake, a blunder still perpetuated, 42 (_cf_. 98.) indians, "red-skins," 72-74, 80, 90. ingolf, 19. iphigenia, 104. ireland, mickle, 20, 31, 32. italian discovery, 34-36. itztli (obsidian), used as a sharp flint, 95. iztapalapan, 138. j. jamaica, 170. jewish "discovery," 33. juan, s., ship-canal, 172. k. katortuk (greenland), 21, 22 (cut, 21). kingsborough, lord, 34, 69, 82. l. leif erikson, 21-23. lesseps de, 171-173. loadstone, 41, 42. longfellow, quoted, 29. lucian, quoted, 17. m. madoc, 32, 33, 70. magellan reaches the pacific ocean and names it, 49; killed at matan, 50. magnetic pole, 41. maguey plant, its singular value, 94. major, mr., on pre-columbian discoveries of america, and site of the greenland colonies, 35, 36. malte-brun, 35. marina, "slave-interpreter," 109, 115, 128, 131. markham, sir c., quoted, 30, 174, 179, 183. markland (nova scotia), 22. marvels, age of, 38, 39. maya, mayapan, 76, 79. maya, ms., 81, 82. maya, trade, 84. _mayflower_ lands in vinland, 26. medea, 18, 104. merida, 78. mexico, mexicans (_see also_ aztecs). mexico, archeology, 72-86. mexico, geography, 89, 90, 133-135. mexico, valley, 134, 135. mexico, town, 139, 142, 145-151. mexico, wealth, 155. mexico, siege, 160-164. mexico, ferocity in war, 160-164. mexitl, the god of battles, another name for huitzilopochtli, 93. monolith (cuts), 173, 175. montezuma i., 57. montezuma, 110-113. montezuma, meaning of name, 113. montezuma, power, 120, 121, 135, 141. montezuma, affability, 144. montezuma, dress, etc., 161. montezuma, death, 162. montgomery, james, 20, 22, 23. morgan, buccaneer, 170. mound builders, 31, 71, 85. müller, max, quoted, 56. n. narvaez, 158, 159. nicaragua, ship-canal, 58, 172. norse discovery, 19-32. norse towns in greenland, 20. norumbega, 25. o. ocean, western, 12, 16, 17. ocean, southern, first name for the atlantic (q.v.) oceanus, river, 10. ogygia, 16. ollantay, peru, 174, 176. orinoco, discovered, 45. orizaba, 120. overland route, 37. p. pacific, first seen, 166. pacific, first sailed upon, 50. palenque, 77, 79, 81. palos, 41, 45. panama, 166, 171, 172. panama, modern, 171. paper (prehistoric) of mexico, 82. pedrarias, 167, 168. peru and incas, chaps. ix., x. peru agriculture, 182, 185. peru aqueducts, roads, etc., 177. peru archeology, 172-182. peru architecture, 87, 172-178. peru calendar, 184, 185. peru chulpas, 87 (cut). peru quipu, 180 (cut). peru sculpture and pottery, 178. peru history and religion, 182. phenicians, 11, 17. pictograph, 80, 112. pindar, quoted, 13. pizarro, 164, 167. pizarro and atahualpha, 187, 188. pizarro and peru, 186-189. pizarro, first and second voyages, 186, 187. pizarro imitated balboa, 165, 186. pizarro invades peru, 187. pizarro, his treachery and cruelty, 188, 189. pizarro at cusco, 188. pizarro founds lima, 188. pizarro, "doom" at last, 189. plato, 14, 15. plutarch, 16. polo, marco, 39, 43. polyxena, 104. popocatepetl, 133, 134. ptolemy, 11, 39. pythagorean theory, 10. q. quetzalcoatl, 84, 93, 94, 111, 113, 130, 152. quipu, 180, 181 (cut, 180). r. rafn, 28, 29, 31. raymi, peruvian festival, 184, 185. renascence, 9, 36, 37. renascence influence on travel and exploration, 38. renascence assisted the reformation, 37. runes in greenland, 27, 28. s. sebastian, magellan's basque lieutenant, 33, 50. seneca, 18, 19 (title-page). "scraelings," vinland, 23. "skeleton in armor," 29. spain, how consolidated, 37, 106. spain, close of its colonial history, 52. squier, quoted, 176, 181. t. tambos, peru, 185. tehuantepec, isthmus, 171. tenochtitlan, mexico, 57. teocalli, 106, 117, 148-151, 156 (cut, 105). tezcatlipoca, god of youth, 61. tezcuco, eastern capital, mexico, 56. tezcuco, 56, 57, 136. tezcuco, king of, 100. tezcuco, lake, 139-140. thorfinn, 23. thorwaldsen, 23. titicaca, lake, 71, 182. titicaca (_see_ cyclopean ruins), 174, 175. tlaloc, god of rain, 63. tlascala, 113, 121-127, 130, 153, 159, 163. tlascala, people, and siege, 130, 133. toltecs, 56, 71. totonacs, 115. trinidad, 45. tula, 56. tumbez, peru, 186. turks, causing civilization, 36, 38. u. utatla, 79. uxmal, 55, 76 (frontispiece). v. valladolid, 46. velasquez, 51-53, 107, 108, 158. vesper, 14 (_see_ hesperides). vespucci, 49, 51, 52. vinland (new england), 23, 25. vinland, map of, 24. voltaire, story of cortés, 164. w. waldseemüller, 50. watling's island, 42. welsh discovery, 32, 33. william iii. and darien scheme, 168-169. wilson, "prehistoric man," 26, 81. world, shape of, 9-11. x. xalapa, 120. xicotencatl, tlascalan, 124, 126, 127-130. xicotencatl appearance, 129. y. yochicalco, 86. yucatan, 53, 54, 75-77. z. zempoalla, "conversion of," 116. zempoalla, 119, 158, 159. zeni, italian brothers, 34-35. zeno map, 34, 35. zipango (japan), 39, 45. zodiac, comparative, 55. zodiac (cut) from a tomb at cusco, 182. * * * * * transcriber's note: the many spelling and hyphenation discrepancies in this text are as in the original. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume v. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] the eighteenth theban dynasty--(continued) _thûtmosis iii.: the organisation of the syrian provinces--amenôthes iii.: the worshippers of atonû._ _thutmosis iii.: the talcing of qodshâ in the 42nd year of his reign--the tribute of the south--the triumph-song of amon._ _the constitution of the egyptian empire--the grown vassals and their relations with the pharaoh--the king�s messengers--the allied states--royal presents and marriages; the status of foreigners in the royal harem--commerce with asia, its resources and its risks; protection granted to the national industries, and treaties of extradition._ _amenôthes ii, his campaigns in syria and nubia--thûtmosis iv.; his dream under the shadow of the sphinx and his marriage--amenôthes iii. and his peaceful reign--the great building works--the temples of nubia: soleb and his sanctuary built by amenôthes iii, gebel barkal, elephantine--the beautifying of thebes: the temple of mat, the temples of amon at luxor and at karnak, the tomb of amenôthes iii, the chapel and the colossi of memnon._ _the increasing importance of anion and his priests: preference shown by amenôthes iii. for the heliopolitan gods, his marriage with tii--the influence of tii over amenôthes iv.: the decadence of amon and of thebes, atonû and khûîtniatonû--change of physiognomy in khûniaton, his character, his government, his relations with asia: the tombs of tel el-amarna and the art of the period--tutanlchamon, at: the return of the pharaohs to thebes and the close of the xviiith dynasty._ chapter i--the eighteenth theban dynasty--(continued) _thutmosis iii.: the organisation of the syrian provinces--amenothes iii.: the royal worshippers of atonû._ in the year xxxiv. the egyptians reappeared in zahi. the people of anaugasa having revolted, two of their towns were taken, a third surrendered, while the chiefs of the lotanû hastened to meet their lord with their usual tribute. advantage was taken of the encampment being at the foot of the lebanon to procure wood for building purposes, such as beams and planks, masts and yards for vessels, which were all shipped by the kefâtiu at byblos for exportation to the delta. this expedition was, indeed, little more than a military march through the country. it would appear that the syrians soon accustomed themselves to the presence of the egyptians in their midst, and their obedience henceforward could be fairly relied on. we are unable to ascertain what were the circumstances or the intrigues which, in the year xxxv., led to a sudden outbreak among the tribes settled on the euphrates and the orontes. the king of mitanni rallied round him the princes of naharaim, and awaited the attack of the egyptians near aruna. thûtmosis displayed great personal courage, and the victory was at once decisive. we find mention of only ten prisoners, one hundred and eighty mares, and sixty chariots in the lists of the spoil. anaugasa again revolted, and was subdued afresh in the year xxxviii.; the shaûsû rebelled in the year xxxix., and the lotanû or some of the tribes connected with them two years later. the campaign of the year xlii. proved more serious. troubles had arisen in the neighbourhood of arvad. thûtmosis, instead of following the usual caravan route, marched along the coast-road by way of phoenicia. he destroyed arka in the lebanon and the surrounding strongholds, which were the haunts of robbers who lurked in the mountains; then turning to the northeast, he took tunipa and extorted the usual tribute from the inhabitants of naharaim. on the other hand, the prince of qodshû, trusting to the strength of his walled city, refused to do homage to the pharaoh, and a deadly struggle took place under the ramparts, in which each side availed themselves of all the artifices which the strategic warfare of the times allowed. on a day when the assailants and besieged were about to come to close quarters, the amorites let loose a mare among the chariotry of thûtmosis. the egyptian horses threatened to become unmanageable, and had begun to break through the ranks, when amenemhabî, an officer of the guard, leaped to the ground, and, running up to the creature, disembowelled it with a thrust of his sword; this done, he cut off its tail and presented it to the king. the besieged were eventually obliged to shut themselves within their newly built walls, hoping by this means to tire out the patience of their assailants; but a picked body of men, led by the same brave amenemhabî who had killed the mare, succeeded in making a breach and forcing an entrance into the town. even the numerous successful campaigns we have mentioned, form but a part, though indeed an important part, of the wars undertaken by thûtmosis to �fix his frontiers in the ends of the earth.� scarcely a year elapsed without the viceroy of ethiopia having a conflict with one or other of the tribes of the upper nile; little merit as he might gain in triumphing over such foes, the spoil taken from them formed a considerable adjunct to the treasure collected in syria, while the tributes from the people of kûsh and the uaûaîû were paid with as great regularity as the taxes levied on the egyptians themselves. it comprised gold both from the mines and from the rivers, feathers, oxen with curiously trained horns, giraffes, lions, leopards, and slaves of all ages. the distant regions explored by hâtshopsîtû continued to pay a tribute at intervals. a fleet went to pûanît to fetch large cargoes of incense, and from time to time some ilîm chief would feel himself honoured by having one of his daughters accepted as an inmate of the harem of the great king. after the year xlii. we have no further records of the reign, but there is no reason to suppose that its closing years were less eventful or less prosperous than the earlier. thûtmosis iii., when conscious of failing powers, may have delegated the direction of his armies to his sons or to his generals, but it is also quite possible that he kept the supreme command in his own hands to the end of his days. even when old age approached and threatened to abate his vigour, he was upheld by the belief that his father amon was ever at hand to guide him with his counsel and assist him in battle. �i give to thee, declared the god, the rebels that they may fall beneath thy sandals, that thou mayest crush the rebellious, for i grant to thee by decree the earth in its length and breadth. the tribes of the west and those of the east are under the place of thy countenance, and when thou goest up into all the strange lands with a joyous heart, there is none who will withstand thy majesty, for i am thy guide when thou treadest them underfoot. thou hast crossed the water of the great curve of naharaim* in thy strength and in thy power, and i have commanded thee to let them hear thy roaring which shall enter their dens, i have deprived their nostrils of the breath of life, i have granted to thee that thy deeds shall sink into their hearts, that my uraeus which is upon thy head may burn them, that it may bring prisoners in long files from the peoples of qodi, that it may consume with its flame those who are in the marshes,** that it may cut off the heads of the asiatics without one of them being able to escape from its clutch. i grant to thee that thy conquests may embrace all lands, that the urseus which shines upon my forehead may be thy vassal, so that in all the compass of the heaven there may not be one to rise against thee, but that the people may come bearing their tribute on their backs and bending before thy majesty according to my behest; i ordain that all aggressors arising in thy time shall fail before thee, their heart burning within them, their limbs trembling!� * the euphrates, in the great curve described by it across naharaim, after issuing from the mountains of cilicia. ** the meaning is doubtful. the word signifies pools, marshes, the provinces situated beyond egyptian territory, and consequently the distant parts of the world--those which are nearest the ocean which encircles the earth, and which was considered as fed by the stagnant waters of the celestial nile, just as the extremities of egypt were watered by those of the terrestrial nile. [illustration: 006.jpg a procession of negroes] �i.--i am come that i may grant unto thee to crush the great ones of zahi, i throw them under thy feet across their mountains,--i grant to thee that they shall see thy majesty as a lord of shining splendour when thou shinest before them in my likeness! �ii.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush those of the country of asia, to break the heads of the people of lotanû,--i grant thee that they may see thy majesty, clothed in thy panoply, when thou seizest thy arms, in thy war-chariot. �iii.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the land of the east, and invade those who dwell in the provinces of tonûtir,--i grant that they may see thy majesty as the comet which rains down the heat of its flame and sheds its dew. �iv.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the land of the west, so that kafîti and cyprus shall be in fear of thee,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like the young bull, stout of heart, armed with horns which none may resist. �v.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush those who are in their marshes, so that the countries of mitanni may tremble for fear of thee,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like the crocodile, lord of terrors, in the midst of the water, which none can approach. �vi.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush those who are in the isles, so that the people who live in the midst of the very-green may be reached by thy roaring,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like an avenger who stands on the back of his victim. �vii.--i am come, to grant that thou mayest crush the tihonu, so that the isles of the utanâtiû may be in the power of thy souls,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like a spell-weaving lion, and that thou mayest make corpses of them in the midst of their own valleys.* �viii.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the ends of the earth, so that the circle which surrounds the ocean may be grasped in thy fist,--i grant that they may see thy majesty as the sparrow-hawk, lord of the wing, who sees at a glance all that he desires. �ix.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the peoples who are in their �duars,� so that thou mayest bring the hirû-shâîtû into captivity,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like the jackal of the south, lord of swiftness, the runner who prowls through the two lands. �x.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the nomads, so that the nubians as far as the land of pidît are in thy grasp,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like unto thy two brothers horus and sit, whose arms i have joined in order to establish thy power.� * the name of the people associated with the tihonu was read at first tanau, and identified with the danai of the greeks. chabas was inclined to read ûtena, and brugsch, ûthent, more correctly utanâtiû, utanâti, the people of uatanit. the juxtaposition of this name with that of the libyans compels us to look towards the west for the site of this people: may we assign to them the ionian islands, or even those in the western mediterranean. the poem became celebrated. when seti i., two centuries later, commanded the poet laureates of his court to celebrate his victories in verse, the latter, despairing of producing anything better, borrowed the finest strophes from this hymn to thûtmosis iil, merely changing the name of the hero. the composition, unlike so many other triumphal inscriptions, is not a mere piece of official rhetoric, in which the poverty of the subject is concealed by a multitude of common-places whether historical or mythological. egypt indeed ruled the world, either directly or through her vassals, and from the mountains of abyssinia to those of cilicia her armies held the nations in awe with the threat of the pharaoh. the conqueror, as a rule, did not retain any part of their territory. he confined himself to the appropriation of the revenue of certain domains for the benefit of his gods.* amon of karnak thus became possessor of seven syrian towns which he owed to the generosity of the victorious pharaohs.** * the seven towns which amon possessed in syria are mentioned, in the time of ramses iii., in the list of the domains and revenues of the god. ** in the year xxiii., on his return from his first campaign, thûtmosis iii. provided offerings, guaranteed from the three towns anaûgasa, inûâmû, and hûrnikarû, for his father amonrâ. certain cities, like tunipa, even begged for statues of thûtmosis for which they built a temple and instituted a cultus. amon and his fellow-gods too were adored there, side by side with the sovereign the inhabitants had chosen to represent them here below.* these rites were at once a sign of servitude, and a proof of gratitude for services rendered, or privileges which had been confirmed. the princes of neighbouring regions repaired annually to these temples to renew their oaths of allegiance, and to bring their tributes �before the face of the king.� taking everything into account, the condition of the pharaoh�s subjects might have been a pleasant one, had they been able to accept their lot without any mental reservation. they retained their own laws, their dynasties, and their frontiers, and paid a tax only in proportion to their resources, while the hostages given were answerable for their obedience. these hostages were as a rule taken by thûtmosis from among the sons or the brothers of the enemy�s chief. they were carried to thebes, where a suitable establishment was assigned to them,** the younger members receiving an education which practically made them egyptians. * the statues of thûtmosis iii. and of the gods of egypt erected at tunipa are mentioned in a letter from the inhabitants of that town to amenôthes iii. later, ramses ii., speaking of the two towns in the country of the khâti in which were two statues of his majesty, mentions tunipa as one of them. ** the various titles of the lists of thûtmosis iii. at thebes show us �the children of the syrian chiefs conducted as prisoners� into the town of sûhanû, which is elsewhere mentioned as the depot, the prison of the temple of anion. w. max mullcr was the first to remark the historical value of this indication, but without sufficiently insisting on it; the name indicates, perhaps, as he says, a great prison, but a prison like those where the princes of the family of the ottoman sultans were confined by the reigning monarch- a palace usually provided with all the comforts of oriental life. as soon as a vacancy occurred in the succession either in syria or in ethiopia, the pharaoh would choose from among the members of the family whom he held in reserve, that prince on whose loyalty he could best count, and placed him upon the throne.* the method of procedure was not always successful, since these princes, whom one would have supposed from their training to have been the least likely to have asserted themselves against the man to whom they owed their elevation, often gave more trouble than others. the sense of the supreme power of egypt, which had been inculcated in them during their exile, seemed to be weakened after their return to their native country, and to give place to a sense of their own importance. their hearts misgave them as the time approached for them to send their own children as pledges to their suzerain, and also when called upon to transfer a considerable part of their revenue to his treasury. they found, moreover, among their own cities and kinsfolk, those who were adverse to the foreign yoke, and secretly urged their countrymen to revolt, or else competitors for the throne who took advantage of the popular discontent to pose as champions of national independence, and it was difficult for the vassal prince to counteract the intrigues of these adversaries without openly declaring himself hostile to his foreign master.** * among the tel el-amarna tablets there is a letter of a petty syrian king, adadnirari, whose father was enthroned after a fashion in nûkhassi by thûtmosis iii. ** thus, in the tel el-amarna correspondence, zimrida, governor of sidon, gives information to amenôthes iii. on the intrigues which the notables of the town were concocting against egyptian authority. ribaddû relates in one of these despatches that the notables of byblos and the women of his harem were urging him to revolt; later, a letter of amûnirâ to the king of egypt informs us that ribaddû had been driven from byblos by his own brother. a time quickly came when a vestige of fear alone constrained them to conceal their wish for liberty; the most trivial incident then sufficed to give them the necessary encouragement, and decided them to throw off the mask, a repulse or the report of a repulse suffered by the egyptians, the news of a popular rising in some neighbouring state, the passing visit of a chaldæan emissary who left behind him the hope of support and perhaps of subsidies from babylon, and the unexpected arrival of a troop of mercenaries whose services might be hired for the occasion.* a rising of this sort usually brought about the most disastrous results. the native prince or the town itself could keep back the tribute and own allegiance to no one during the few months required to convince pharaoh of their defection and to allow him to prepare the necessary means of vengeance; the advent of the egyptians followed, and the work of repression was systematically set in hand. they destroyed the harvests, whether green or ready for the sickle, they cut down the palms and olive trees, they tore up the vines, seized on the flocks, dismantled the strongholds, and took the inhabitants prisoners.** * bûrnabûriash, king of babylon, speaks of syrian agents who had come to ask for support from his father, kûrigalzû, and adds that the latter had counselled submission. in one of the letters preserved in the british museum, azîrû defends himself for having received an emissary of the king of the khâti. ** cf. the raiding, for instance, of the regions of arvad and of the zahi by thûtmosis iii., described in the annals, 11. 4, 5. we are still in possession of the threats which the messenger khâni made against the rebellious chief of a province of the zahi--possibly aziru. the rebellious prince had to deliver up his silver and gold, the contents of his palace, even his children,* and when he had finally obtained peace by means of endless sacrifices, he found himself a vassal as before, but with an empty treasury, a wasted country, and a decimated people. * see, in the accounts of the campaigns of thûtmosis, the record of the spoils, as well as the mention of the children of the chiefs brought as prisoners into egypt. [illustration: 015.jpg a syrian town and its outskirts after an egyptian army had passed through it] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gayet. in spite of all this, some head-strong native princes never relinquished the hope of freedom, and no sooner had they made good the breaches in their walls as far as they were able, than they entered once more on this unequal contest, though at the risk of bringing irreparable disaster on their country. the majority of them, after one such struggle, resigned themselves to the inevitable, and fulfilled their feudal obligations regularly. they paid their fixed contribution, furnished rations and stores to the army when passing through their territory, and informed the ministers at thebes of any intrigues among their neighbours.* years elapsed before they could so far forget the failure of their first attempt to regain independence, as to venture to make a second, and expose themselves to fresh reverses. the administration of so vast an empire entailed but a small expenditure on the egyptians, and required the offices of merely a few functionaries.** the garrisons which they kept up in foreign provinces lived on the country, and were composed mainly of light troops, archers, a certain proportion of heavy infantry, and a few minor detachments of chariotry dispersed among the principal fortresses.*** * we find in the _annals_, in addition to the enumeration of the tributes, the mention of the foraging arrangements which the chiefs were compelled to make for the army on its passage. we find among the tablets letters from aziru denouncing the intrigues of the khâti; letters also of ribaddu pointing out the misdeeds of abdashirti, and other communications of the same nature, which demonstrate the supervision exercised by the petty syrian princes over each other. ** under thûtmosis iii. we have among others �mir,� or �nasi sîtû mihâtîtû,� �governors of the northern countries,� the thûtîi who became afterwards a hero of romance. the individuals who bore this title held a middle rank in the egyptian hierarchy. *** the archers--_pidâtid, pidâti, pidâte_--and the chariotry quartered in syria are often mentioned in the tel el-amarna correspondence. steindorff has recognised the term -ddû aûîtû, meaning infantry, in the word ûeû, ûiû, of the tel el-amarna tablets. the officers in command had orders to interfere as little as possible in local affairs, and to leave the natives to dispute or even to fight among themselves unhindered, so long as their quarrels did not threaten the security of the pharaoh.* it was never part of the policy of egypt to insist on her foreign subjects keeping an unbroken peace among themselves. if, theoretically, she did not recognise the right of private warfare, she at all events tolerated its practice. it mattered little to her whether some particular province passed out of the possession of a certain eibaddû into that of a certain azîru, or _vice versa_, so long as both eibaddû and azîru remained her faithful slaves. she never sought to repress their incessant quarrelling until such time as it threatened to take the form of an insurrection against her own power. then alone did she throw off her neutrality; taking the side of one or other of the dissentients, she would grant him, as a pledge of help, ten, twenty, thirty, or even more archers.** * a half at least of the tel el-amarna correspondence treats of provincial wars between the kings of towns and countries subject to egypt--wars of abdashirti and his son azîru against the cities of the phoenician coast, wars of abdikhiba, or abdi-tabba, king of jerusalem, against the chiefs of the neighbouring cities. ** abimilki (abisharri) demands on one occasion from the king of egypt ten men to defend tyre, on another occasion twenty; the town of gula requisitioned thirty or forty to guard it. delattre thinks that these are rhetorical expressions answering to a general word, just as if we should say �a handful of men�; the difference of value in the figures is to me a proof of their reality. no doubt the discipline and personal courage of these veterans exercised a certain influence on the turn of events, but they were after all a mere handful of men, and their individual action in the combat would scarcely ever have been sufficient to decide the result; the actual importance of their support, in spite of their numerical inferiority, lay in the moral weight they brought to the side on which they fought, since they represented the whole army of the pharaoh which lay behind them, and their presence in a camp always ensured final success. the vanquished party had the right of appeal to the sovereign, through whom he might obtain a mitigation of the lot which his successful adversary had prepared for him; it was to the interest of egypt to keep the balance of power as evenly as possible between the various states which looked to her, and when she prevented one or other of the princes from completely crushing his rivals, she was minimising the danger which might soon arise from the vassal whom she had allowed to extend his territory at the expense of others. these relations gave rise to a perpetual exchange of letters and petitions between the court of thebes and the northern and southern provinces, in which all the petty kings of africa and asia, of whatever colour or race, set forth, either openly or covertly, their ambitions and their fears, imploring a favour or begging for a subsidy, revealing the real or suspected intrigues of their fellow-chiefs, and while loudly proclaiming their own loyalty, denouncing the perfidy and the secret projects of their neighbours. as the ethiopian peoples did not, apparently, possess an alphabet of their own, half of the correspondence which concerned them was carried on in egyptian, and written on papyrus. in syria, however, where babylonian civilization maintained itself in spite of its conquest by thûtmosis, cuneiform writing was still employed, and tablets of dried clay.* it had, therefore, been found necessary to establish in the pharaoh�s palace a department for this service, in which the scribes should be competent to decipher the chaldæan character. dictionaries and easy mythological texts had been procured for their instruction, by means of which they had learned the meaning of words and the construction of sentences. having once mastered the mechanism of the syllabary, they set to work to translate the despatches, marking on the back of each the date and the place from whence it came, and if necessary making a draft of the reply.** in these the pharaoh does not appear, as a rule, to have insisted on the endless titles which we find so lavishly used in his inscriptions, but the shortened protocol employed shows that the theory of his divinity was as fully acknowledged by strangers as it was by his own subjects. they greet him as their sun, the god before whom they prostrate themselves seven times seven, while they are his slaves, his dogs, and the dust beneath his feet.*** * a discovery made by the fellahîn, in 1887, at tel el arnarna, in the rums of the palace of khûniaton, brought to light a portion of the correspondence between asiatic monarchs, whether vassals or independent of egypt, with the officers of amenôthes iii. and iv., and with these pharaohs themselves. ** several of these registrations are still to be read on the backs of the tablets at berlin, london, and gîzeh. ***the protocols of the letters of abdashirti may be taken as an example, or those of abimilki to pharaoh, sometimes there is a development of the protocol which assumes panegyrical features similar to those met with in egypt. the runners to whom these documents were entrusted, and who delivered them with their own hand, were not, as a rule, persons of any consideration; but for missions of grave importance �the king�s messengers� were employed, whose functions in time became extended to a remarkable degree. those who were restricted to a limited sphere of activity were called �the king�s messengers for the regions of the south,� or �the king�s messengers for the regions of the north,� according to their proficiency in the idiom and customs of africa or of asia. others were deemed capable of undertaking missions wherever they might be required, and were, therefore, designated by the bold title of �the king�s messengers for all lands.� in this case extended powers were conferred upon them, and they were permitted to cut short the disputes between two cities in some province they had to inspect, to excuse from tribute, to receive presents and hostages, and even princesses destined for the harem of the pharaoh, and also to grant the support of troops to such as could give adequate reason for seeking it.* their tasks were always of a delicate and not infrequently of a perilous nature, and constantly exposed them to the danger of being robbed by highwaymen or maltreated by some insubordinate vassal, at times even running the risk of mutilation or assassination by the way.** * the tel el-amarna correspondence shows the messengers in the time of amenôthes iii. and iv. as receiving tribute, as bringing an army to the succour of a chief in difficulties, as threatening with the anger of the pharaoh the princes o£ doubtful loyalty, as giving to a faithful vassal compliments and honours from his suzerain, as charged with the conveyance of a gift of slaves, or of escorting a princess to the harem of the pharaoh. ** a letter of ribaddu, in the time of amenôthes iii., represents a royal messenger as blockaded in by bios by the rebels. they were obliged to brave the dangers of the forests of lebanon and of the taurus, the solitudes of mesopotamia, the marshes of chaldoa, the voyages to pûanît and asia minor. some took their way towards assyria and babylon, while others embarked at tyre or sidon for the islands of the ægean archipelago.* the endurance of all these officers, whether governors or messengers, their courage, their tact, the ready wit they were obliged to summon to help them out of the difficulties into which their calling frequently brought them, all tended to enlist the public sympathy in their favour.** * we hear from the tablets of several messengers to babylon, and the mitanni, rasi, mani, khamassi. the royal messenger thûtîi, who governed the countries of the north, speaks of having satisfied the heart of the king in �the isles which are in the midst of the sea.� this was not, as some think, a case of hyperbole, for the messengers could embark on phoenician vessels; they had a less distance to cover in order to reach the ægean than the royal messenger of queen hâtshopsîtû had before arriving at the country of the somalis and the �ladders of incense.� ** the hero of the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 1, with whom chabas made us acquainted in his _voyage d�un égyptien_, is probably a type of the �messenger� or the time of ramses ii.; in any case, his itinerary and adventures are natural to a �royal messenger� compelled to traverse syria alone. many of them achieved a reputation, and were made the heroes of popular romance. more than three centuries after it was still related how one of them, by name thûtîi, had reduced and humbled jaffa, whose chief had refused to come to terms. thûtîi set about his task by feigning to throw off his allegiance to thûtmosis iii., and withdrew from the egyptian service, having first stolen the great magic wand of his lord; he then invited the rebellious chief into his camp, under pretence of showing him this formidable talisman, and killed him after they had drunk together. the cunning envoy then packed five hundred of his soldiers into jars, and caused them to be carried on the backs of asses before the gates of the town, where he made the herald of the murdered prince proclaim that the egyptians had been defeated, and that the pack train which accompanied him contained the spoil, among which was thûtîi himself. the officer in charge of the city gate was deceived by this harangue, the asses were admitted within the walls, where the soldiers quitted their jars, massacred the garrison, and made themselves masters of the town. the tale is, in the main, the story of ali baba and the forty thieves. the frontier was continually shifting, and thûtmosis iii., like thûtmosis i., vainly endeavoured to give it a fixed character by erecting stelas along the banks of the euphrates, at those points where he contended it had run formerly. while kharu and phoenicia were completely in the hands of the conqueror, his suzerainty became more uncertain as it extended northwards in the direction of the taurus. beyond qodshû, it could only be maintained by means of constant supervision, and in naharaim its duration was coextensive with the sojourn of the conqueror in the locality during his campaign, for it vanished of itself as soon as he had set out on his return to africa. it will be thus seen that, on the continent of asia, egypt possessed a nucleus of territories, so far securely under her rule that they might be actually reckoned as provinces; beyond this immediate domain there was a zone of waning influence, whose area varied with each reign, and even under one king depended largely on the activity which he personally displayed. this was always the case when the rulers of egypt attempted to carry their supremacy beyond the isthmus; whether under the ptolemies or the native kings, the distance to which her influence extended was always practically the same, and the teaching of history enables us to note its limits on the map with relative accuracy.* * the development of the egyptian navy enabled the ptolemies to exercise authority over the coasts of asia minor and of thrace, but this extension of their power beyond the indicated limits only hastened the exhaustion of their empire. this instance, like that of mehemet ali, thus confirms the position taken up in the text. the coast towns, which were in maritime communication with the ports of the delta, submitted to the egyptian yoke more readily than those of the interior. but this submission could not be reckoned on beyond berytus, on the banks of the lykos, though occasionally it stretched a little further north as far as byblos and arvad; even then it did not extend inland, and the curve marking its limits traverses coele-syria from north-west to south-east, terminating at mount hermon. damascus, securely entrenched behind anti-lebanon, almost always lay outside this limit. the rulers of egypt generally succeeded without much difficulty in keeping possession of the countries lying to the south of this line; it demanded merely a slight effort, and this could be furnished for several centuries without encroaching seriously on the resources of the country, or endangering its prosperity. when, however, some province ventured to break away from the control of egypt, the whole mechanism of the government was put into operation to provide soldiers and the necessary means for an expedition. each stage of the advance beyond the frontier demanded a greater expenditure of energy, which, with prolonged distances, would naturally become exhausted. the expedition would scarcely have reached the taurus or the euphrates, before the force of circumstances would bring about its recall homewards, leaving but a slight bond of vassalage between the recently subdued countries and the conqueror, which would speedily be cast off or give place to relations dictated by interest or courtesy. thûtmosis iii. had to submit to this sort of necessary law; a further extension of territory had hardly been gained when his dominion began to shrink within the frontiers that appeared to have been prescribed by nature for an empire like that of egypt. kharû and phoenicia proper paid him their tithes with due regularity; the cities of the amurru and of zahi, of damascus, qodshû, hamath, and even of tunipa, lying on the outskirts of these two subject nations, formed an ill-defined borderland, kept in a state of perpetual disturbance by the secret intrigues or open rebellions of the native princes. the kings of alasia, naharaim, and mitanni preserved their independence in spite of repeated reverses, and they treated with the conqueror on equal terms.* * the difference of tone between the letters of these kings and those of the other princes, as well as the consequences arising from it, has been clearly defined by delattre. the tone of their letters to the pharaoh, the polite formulas with which they addressed him, the special protocol which the egyptian ministry had drawn up for their reply, all differ widely from those which we see in the despatches coming from commanders of garrisons or actual vassals. in the former it is no longer a slave or a feudatory addressing his master and awaiting his orders, but equals holding courteous communication with each other, the brother of alasia or of mitanni with his brother of egypt. they inform him of their good health, and then, before entering on business, they express their good wishes for himself, his wives, his sons, the lords of his court, his brave soldiers, and for his horses. they were careful never to forget that with a single word their correspondent could let loose upon them a whirlwind of chariots and archers without number, but the respect they felt for his formidable power never degenerated into a fear which would humiliate them before him with their faces in the dust. this interchange of diplomatic compliments was called for by a variety of exigencies, such as incidents arising on the frontier, secret intrigues, personal alliances, and questions of general politics. the kings of mesopotamia and of northern syria, even those of assyria and chaldæa, who were preserved by distance from the dangers of a direct invasion, were in constant fear of an unexpected war, and heartily desired the downfall of egypt; they endeavoured meanwhile to occupy the pharaoh so fully at home that he had no leisure to attack them. even if they did not venture to give open encouragement to the disposition in his subjects to revolt, they at least experienced no scruple in hiring emissaries who secretly fanned the flame of discontent. the pharaoh, aroused to indignation by such plotting, reminded them of their former oaths and treaties. the king in question would thereupon deny everything, would speak of his tried friendship, and recall the fact that he had refused to help a rebel against his beloved brother.* these protestations of innocence were usually accompanied by presents, and produced a twofold effect. they soothed the anger of the offended party, and suggested not only a courteous answer, but the sending of still more valuable gifts. oriental etiquette, even in those early times, demanded that the present of a less rich or powerful friend should place the recipient under the obligation of sending back a gift of still greater worth. every one, therefore, whether great or little, was obliged to regulate his liberality according to the estimation in which he held himself, or to the opinion which others formed of him, and a personage of such opulence as the king of egypt was constrained by the laws of common civility to display an almost boundless generosity: was he not free to work the mines of the divine land or the diggings of the upper nile; and as for gold, �was it not as the dust of his country�?** * see the letter of amenôthes iii. to kallimmasin of babylon, where the king of egypt complains of the inimical designs which the babylonian messengers had planned against him, and of the intrigues they had connected on their return to their own country; see also the letter from burnaburiash to amenôthes iv., in which he defends himself from the accusation of having plotted against the king of egypt at any time, and recalls the circumstance that his father kurigalzu had refused to encourage the rebellion of one of the syrian tribes, subjects of amenôthes iii. ** see the letter of dushratta, king of mitanni, to the pharaoh amenôthes iv. he would have desired nothing better than to exhibit such liberality, had not the repeated calls on his purse at last constrained him to parsimony; he would have been ruined, and egypt with him, had he given all that was expected of him. except in a few extraordinary cases, the gifts sent never realised the expectations of the recipients; for instance, when twenty or thirty pounds of precious metal were looked for, the amount despatched would be merely two or three. the indignation of these disappointed beggars and their recriminations were then most amusing: �from the time when my father and thine entered into friendly relations, they loaded each other with presents, and never waited to be asked to exchange amenities;* and now my brother sends me two minas of gold as a gift! send me abundance of gold, as much as thy father sent, and even, for so it must be, more than thy father.� ** pretexts were never wanting to give reasonable weight to such demands: one correspondent had begun to build a temple or a palace in one of his capitals,*** another was reserving his fairest daughter for the pharaoh, and he gave him to understand that anything he might receive would help to complete the bride�s trousseau.**** * burnaburiash complains that the king�s messengers had only brought him on one occasion two minas of gold, on another occasion twenty minas; moreover, that the quality of the metal was so bad that hardly five minas of pure gold could be extracted from it. ** literally, �and they would never make each other a fair request.� the meaning i propose is doubtful, but it appears to be required by the context. the letter from which this passage was taken is from burnaburiash, king of babylon, to amenôthes iv. *** this is the pretext advanced by burnaburiash in the letter just cited. **** this seems to have been the motive in a somewhat embarrassing letter which dushratta, king of mitanni, wrote to the pharaoh amenôthes iii. on the occasion of his fixing the dowry of his daughter. the princesses thus sent from babylon or mitanni to the court of thebes enjoyed on their arrival a more honourable welcome, and were assigned a more exalted rank than those who came from kharû and phoenicia. as a matter of fact, they were not hostages given over to the conqueror to be disposed of at will, but queens who were united in legal marriage to an ally.* once admitted to the pharaoh�s court, they retained their full rights as his wife, as well as their own fortune and mode of life. some would bring to their betrothed chests of jewels, utensils, and stuffs, the enumeration of which would cover both sides of a large tablet; others would arrive escorted by several hundred slaves or matrons as personal attendants.** a few of them preserved their original name,*** many assumed an egyptian designation,**** and so far adapted themselves to the costumes, manners, and language of their adopted country, that they dropped all intercourse with their native land, and became regular egyptians. * the daughter of the king of the khâti, wife of ramses il, was treated, as we see from the monuments, with as much honour as would have been accorded to egyptian princesses of pure blood. ** gilukhipa, who was sent to egypt to become the wife of amenôthes iii., took with her a company of three hundred and seventy women for her service. she was a daughter of sutarna, king of mitanni, and is mentioned several times in the tel el-amarna correspondence. *** for example, gilukhipa, whose name is transcribed kilagîpa in egyptian, and another princess of mitanni, niece of gilukhipa, called tadu-khîpa, daughter of dushratta and wife of amenôthes iv. **** the prince of the khâti�s daughter who married ramses ii. is an example; we know her only by her egyptian name mâîtnofîrûrî. the wife of ramses iii. added to the egyptian name of isis her original name, humazarati. when, after several years, an ambassador arrived with greetings from their father or brother, he would be puzzled by the changed appearance of these ladies, and would almost doubt their identity: indeed, those only who had been about them in childhood were in such cases able to recognise them.* these princesses all adopted the gods of their husbands,** though without necessarily renouncing their own. from time to time their parents would send them, with much pomp, a statue of one of their national divinities--ishtar, for example--which, accompanied by native priests, would remain for some months at the court.*** * this was the case with the daughter of kallimmasin, king of babylon, married to amenôthes iii.; her father�s ambassador did not recognise her. ** the daughter of the king of the khâti, wife of ramses ii., is represented in an attitude of worship before her deified husband and two egyptian gods. *** dushratta of mitanni, sending a statue of ishtar to his daughter, wife of amenôthes iii., reminds her that the same statue had already made the voyage to egypt in the time of his father sutarna. the children of these queens ranked next in order to those whose mothers belonged to the solar race, but nothing prevented them marrying their brothers or sisters of pure descent, and being eventually raised to the throne. the members of their families who remained in asia were naturally proud of these bonds of close affinity with the pharaoh, and they rarely missed an opportunity of reminding him in their letters that they stood to him in the relationship of brother-in-law, or one of his fathers-in-law; their vanity stood them in good stead, since it afforded them another claim on the favours which they were perpetually asking of him.* * dushratta of mitanni never loses an opportunity of calling aoienôthes iii., husband of his sister gilukhîpa, and of one of his daughters, �akhiya,� my brother, and �khatani-ya,� my son-in-law. these foreign wives had often to interfere in some of the contentions which were bound to arise between two states whose subjects were in constant intercourse with one another. invasions or provincial wars may have affected or even temporarily suspended the passage to and from of caravans between the countries of the tigris and those of the nile; but as soon as peace was re-established, even though it were the insecure peace of those distant ages, the desert traffic was again resumed and carried on with renewed vigour. the egyptian traders who penetrated into regions beyond the euphrates, carried with them, and almost unconsciously disseminated along the whole extent of their route, the numberless products of egyptian industry, hitherto but little known outside their own country, and rendered expensive owing to the difficulty of transmission or the greed of the merchants. the syrians now saw for the first time in great quantities, objects which had been known to them hitherto merely through the few rare specimens which made their way across the frontier: arms, stuffs, metal implements, household utensils--in fine, all the objects which ministered to daily needs or to luxury. these were now offered to them at reasonable prices, either by the hawkers who accompanied the army or by the soldiers themselves, always ready, as soldiers are, to part with their possessions in order to procure a few extra pleasures in the intervals of fighting. [illustration: 031.jpg the lotanû and the goldsmiths�work constituting their tribute] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. the scene here reproduced occurs in most of the theban tombs of the xviiii. dynasty. on the other hand, whole convoys of spoil were despatched to egypt after every successful campaign, and their contents were distributed in varying proportions among all classes of society, from the militiaman belonging to some feudal contingent, who received, as a reward of his valour, some half-dozen necklaces or bracelets, to the great lord of ancient family or the crown prince, who carried off waggon-loads of booty in their train. these distributions must have stimulated a passion for all syrian goods, and as the spoil was insufficient to satisfy the increasing demands of the consumer, the waning commerce which had been carried on from early times was once more revived and extended, till every route, whether by land or water, between thebes, memphis, and the asiatic cities, was thronged by those engaged in its pursuit. it would take too long to enumerate the various objects of merchandise brought in almost daily to the marts on the nile by phoenician vessels or the owners of caravans. they comprised slaves destined for the workshop or the harem,* hittite bulls and stallions, horses from singar, oxen from alasia, rare and curious animals such as elephants from nîi, and brown bears from the lebanon,** smoked and salted fish, live birds of many-coloured plumage, goldsmiths�work*** and precious stones, of which lapis-lazuli was the chief. * syrian slaves are mentioned along with ethiopian in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 1, and there is mention in the tel el-amarna correspondence of hittite slaves whom dushratta of mitanni brought to amenôthes iii., and of other presents of the same kind made by the king of alasia as a testimony of his grateful homage. ** the elephant and the bear are represented on the tomb of liakhmirî among the articles of tribute brought into egypt. *** the _annals of thutmosis iii_. make a record in each campaign of the importation of gold and silver vases, objects in lapis-lazuli and crystal, or of blocks of the same materials; the theban tombs of this period afford examples of the vases and blocks brought by the syrians. the tel el-amarna letters also mention vessels of gold or blocks of precious stone sent as presents or as objects of exchange to the pharaoh by the king of babylon, by the king of mitanni, by the king of the hittites, and by other princes. the lapis-lazuli of babylon, which probably came from persia, was that which was most prized by the egyptians on account of the golden sparks in it, which enhanced the blue colour; this is, perhaps, the uknu of the cuneiform inscriptions, which has been read for a long time as �crystal.� [illustration: 032b.jpg painted tablets in the hall of harps] wood for building or for ornamental work--pine,cypress, yew, cedar, and oak,* musical instruments,** helmets, leathern jerkins covered with metal scales, weapons of bronze and iron,*** chariots,**** dyed and embroidered stuffs,^ perfumes,^^ dried cakes, oil, wines of kharû, liqueurs from alasia, khâti, singar, naharaim, amurru, and beer from qodi.^^^ * building and ornamental woods are often mentioned in the inscriptions of thûtmosis iii. a scene at karnak represents seti i. causing building-wood to be cut in the region of the lebanon. a letter of the king of alasia speaks of contributions of wood which several of his subjects had to make to the king of egypt. ** some stringed instruments of music, and two or three kinds of flutes and flageolets, are designated in egyptian by names borrowed from some semitic tongue--a fact which proves that they were imported; the wooden framework of the harp, decorated with sculptured heads of astartô, figures among the objects coming from syria in the temple of the theban anion. *** several names of arms borrowed from some semitic dialect have been noticed in the texts of this period. the objects as well as the words must have been imported into egypt, e.g. the quiver, the sword and javelins used by the charioteers. cuirasses and leathern jerkins are mentioned in the inscriptions of thûtmosis iii. **** chariots plated with gold and silver figure frequently among the spoils of thûtmosis iii.: the anastasi papyrus, no. 1, contains a detailed description of syrian chariots- markabûti--with a reference to the localities whore certain parts of them were made;--the country of the amurru, that of aûpa, the town of pahira. the tel el-amarna correspondence mentions very frequently chariots sent to the pharaoh by the king of babylon, either as presents or to be sold in egypt; others sent by the king of alasia and by the king of mitanni. ^ some linen, cotton, or woollen stuffs are mentioned in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 4, and elsewhere as coming from syria. the egyptian love of white linen always prevented their estimating highly the coloured and brocaded stuffs of asia; and one sees nowhere, in the representations, any examples of stuffs of such origin, except on furniture or in ships equipped with something of the kind in the form of sails. ^^ the perfumed oils of syria are mentioned in a general way in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 1; the king of alasia speaks of essences which he is sending to amenôthes iii.; the king of mitanni refers to bottles of oil which he is forwarding to gilukhîpa and to tii. ^^^ a list of cakes of syrian origin is found in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 1; also a reference to balsamic oils from naharaim, and to various oils which had arrived in the ports of the delta, to the wines of syria, to palm wine and various liqueurs manufactured in alasia, in singar, among the khâti, amorites, and the people of. tikhisa; finally, to the beer of qodi. [illustration: 034.jpg. the bear and elephant brought as tribute in the tomb of rakhmiri] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of prisse d�avennes� sketch. on arriving at the frontier, whether by sea or by land, the majority of these objects had to pay the custom dues which were rigorously collected by the officers of the pharaoh. this, no doubt, was a reprisal tariff, since independent sovereigns, such as those of mitanni, assyria, and babylon, were accustomed to impose a similar duty on all the products of egypt. the latter, indeed, supplied more than she received, for many articles which reached her in their raw condition were, by means of native industry, worked up and exported as ornaments, vases, and highly decorated weapons, which, in the course of international traffic, were dispersed to all four corners of the earth. the merchants of babylon and assyria had little to fear as long as they kept within the domains of their own sovereign or in those of the pharaoh; but no sooner did they venture within the borders of those turbulent states which separated the two great powers, than they were exposed to dangers at every turn. safe-conducts were of little use if they had not taken the additional precaution of providing a strong escort and carefully guarding their caravan, for the shaûsû concealed in the depths of the lebanon or the needy sheikhs of kharû could never resist the temptation to rob the passing traveller.* * the scribe who in the reign of ramses ii. composed the _travels of an egyptian_, speaks in several places of marauding tribes and robbers, who infested the roads followed by the hero. the tel el-amarna correspondence contains a letter from the king of alasia, who exculpates himself from being implicated in the harsh treatment certain egyptians had received in passing through his territory; and another letter in which the king of babylon complains that chaldoan merchants had been robbed at khinnatun, in galilee, by the prince of akku (acre) and his accomplices: one of them had his feet cut off, and the other was still a prisoner in akku, and burnaburiash demands from amenôthes iv. the death of the guilty persons. the victims complained to their king, who felt no hesitation in passing on their woes to the sovereign under whose rule the pillagers were supposed to live. he demanded their punishment, but his request was not always granted, owing to the difficulties of finding out and seizing the offenders. an indemnity, however, could be obtained which would nearly compensate the merchants for the loss sustained. in many cases justice had but little to do with the negotiations, in which self-interest was the chief motive; but repeated refusals would have discouraged traders, and by lessening the facilities of transit, have diminished the revenue which the state drew from its foreign commerce. the question became a more delicate one when it concerned the rights of subjects residing out of their native country. foreigners, as a rule, were well received in egypt; the whole country was open to them; they could marry, they could acquire houses and lands, they enjoyed permission to follow their own religion unhindered, they were eligible for public honours, and more than one of the officers of the crown whose tombs we see at thebes were themselves syrians, or born of syrian parents on the banks of the nile.* * in a letter from the king of alasia, there is question of a merchant who had died in egypt. among other monuments proving the presence of syrians about the pharaoh, is the stele of ben-azana, of the town of zairabizana, surnamed ramses-empirî: he was surrounded with semites like himself. hence, those who settled in egypt without any intention of returning to their own country enjoyed all the advantages possessed by the natives, whereas those who took up a merely temporary abode there were more limited in their privileges. they were granted the permission to hold property in the country, and also the right to buy and sell there, but they were not allowed to transmit their possessions at will, and if by chance they died on egyptian soil, their goods lapsed as a forfeit to the crown. the heirs remaining in the native country of the dead man, who were ruined by this confiscation, sometimes petitioned the king to interfere in their favour with a view of obtaining restitution. if the pharaoh consented to waive his right of forfeiture, and made over the confiscated objects or their equivalent to the relatives of the deceased, it was solely by an act of mercy, and as an example to foreign governments to treat egyptians with a like clemency should they chance to proffer a similar request.* * all this seems to result from a letter in which the king of alasia demands from amenôthes iii. the restitution of the goods of one of his subjects who had died in egypt; the tone of the letter is that of one asking a favour, and on the supposition that the king of egypt had a right to keep the property of a foreigner dying on his territory. it is also not improbable that the sovereigns themselves had a personal interest in more than one commercial undertaking, and that they were the partners, or, at any rate, interested in the enterprises, of many of their subjects, so that any loss sustained by one of the latter would eventually fall upon themselves. they had, in fact, reserved to themselves the privilege of carrying on several lucrative industries, and of disposing of the products to foreign buyers, either to those who purchased them out and out, or else through the medium of agents, to whom they intrusted certain quantities of the goods for warehousing. the king of babylon, taking advantage of the fashion which prompted the egyptians to acquire objects of chaldæan goldsmiths� and cabinet-makers� art, caused ingots of gold to be sent to him by the pharaoh, which he returned worked up into vases, ornaments, household utensils, and plated chariots. he further fixed the value of all such objects, and took a considerable commission for having acted as intermediary in the transaction.* in alasia, which was the land of metals, the king appears to have held a monopoly of the bronze. whether he smelted it in the country, or received it from more distant regions ready prepared, we cannot say, but he claimed and retained for himself the payment for all that the pharaoh deigned to order of him.** * letter of burnaburiash to amenôthes iv. ** letter from the king of alasia to amenôthes iii., where, whilst pretending to have nothing else in view than making a present to his royal brother, he proposes to make an exchange of some bronze for the products of egypt, especially for gold. from such instances we can well understand the jealous, watch which these sovereigns exercised, lest any individual connected with corporations of workmen should leave the kingdom and establish himself in another country without special permission. any emigrant who opened a workshop and initiated his new compatriots in the technique or professional secrets of his craft, was regarded by the authorities as the most dangerous of all evil-doers. by thus introducing his trade into a rival state, he deprived his own people of a good customer, and thus rendered himself liable to the penalties inflicted on those who were guilty of treason. his savings were confiscated, his house razed to the ground, and his whole family--parents, wives, and children--treated as partakers in his crime. as for himself, if justice succeeded in overtaking him, he was punished with death, or at least with mutilation, such as the loss of eyes and ears, or amputation of the feet. this severity did not prevent the frequent occurrence of such cases, and it was found necessary to deal with them by the insertion of a special extradition clause in treaties of peace and other alliances. the two contracting parties decided against conceding the right of habitation to skilled workmen who should take refuge with either party on the territory of the other, and they agreed to seize such workmen forthwith, and mutually restore them, but under the express condition that neither they nor any of their belongings should incur any penalty for the desertion of their country. it would be curious to know if all the arrangements agreed to by the kings of those times were sanctioned, as in the above instance, by properly drawn up agreements. certain expressions occur in their correspondence which seem to prove that this was the case, and that the relations between them, of which we can catch traces, resulted not merely from a state of things which, according to their ideas, did not necessitate any diplomatic sanction, but from conventions agreed to after some war, or entered on without any previous struggle, when there was no question at issue between the two states.* * the treaty of ramses ii. with the king of the khâti, the only one which has come down to us, was a renewal of other treaties effected one after the other between the fathers and grandfathers of the two contracting sovereigns. some of the tel el-amarna letters probably refer to treaties of this kind; e.g. that of burnaburiash of babylon, who says that since the time of karaîndash there had been an exchange of ambassadors and friendship between the sovereigns of chaldoa and of egypt, and also that of dushratta of mitanni, who reminds queen tîi of the secret negotiations which had taken place between him and amenôthes iii. when once the syrian conquest had been effected, egypt gave permanency to its results by means of a series of international decrees, which officially established the constitution of her empire, and brought about her concerted action with the asiatic powers. [illustration: 040.jpg the mummy of thutmosis iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by emil brugsch-bey. she already occupied an important position among them, when thûtmosis iii. died, on the last day of phamenoth, in the ivth year of his reign.* he was buried, probably, at deîr el-baharî, in the family tomb wherein the most illustrious members of his house had been laid to rest since the time of thûtmosis i. his mummy was not securely hidden away, for towards the close of the xxth dynasty it was torn out of the coffin by robbers, who stripped it and rifled it of the jewels with which it was covered, injuring it in their haste to carry away the spoil. it was subsequently re-interred, and has remained undisturbed until the present day; but before re-burial some renovation of the wrappings was necessary, and as portions of the body had become loose, the restorers, in order to give the mummy the necessary firmness, compressed it between four oar-shaped slips of wood, painted white, and placed, three inside the wrappings and one outside, under the bands which confined the winding-sheet. * dr. mahler has, with great precision, fixed the date of the accession of thûtmosis iii, as the 20th of march, 1503, and that of his death as the 14th of february, 1449 b.c. i do not think that the data furnished to dr. mahler by brugsch will admit of such exact conclusions being drawn from them, and i should fix the fifty-four years of the reign of thûtmosis iii. in a less decided manner, between 1550 and 1490 b.c., allowing, as i have said before, for an error of half a century more or less in the dates which go back to the time of the second theban empire. [illustration: 041.jpg head of the mummy of thûtmosis iii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph lent by m. grébaut, taken by emil brugsch-bey. happily the face, which had been plastered over with pitch at the time of embalming, did not suffer at all from this rough treatment, and appeared intact when the protecting mask was removed. its appearance does not answer to our ideal of the conqueror. his statues, though not representing him as a type of manly beauty, yet give him refined, intelligent features, but a comparison with the mummy shows that the artists have idealised their model. the forehead is abnormally low, the eyes deeply sunk, the jaw heavy, the lips thick, and the cheek-bones extremely prominent; the whole recalling the physiognomy of thûtmosis ii., though with a greater show of energy. thûtmosis iii. is a fellah of the old stock, squat, thickset, vulgar in character and expression, but not lacking in firmness and vigour.* amenôthes ii., who succeeded him, must have closely resembled him, if we may trust his official portraits. he was the son of a princess of the blood, hâtshopsîtû ii., daughter of the great hâtshopsîtû,** and consequently he came into his inheritance with stronger claims to it than any other pharaoh since the time of amenôthes i. possibly his father may have associated him with himself on the throne as soon as the young prince attained his majority;*** at any rate, his accession aroused no appreciable opposition in the country, and if any difficulties were made, they must have come from outside. * the restored remains allow us to estimate the height at about 5 ft. 3 in. ** his parentage is proved by the pictures preserved in the tomb of his foster-father, where he is represented in company with the _royal mother_, marîtrî. hâtshopsîtû. *** it is thus that wiedemann explains his presence by the side of thûtmosis iii. on certain bas-reliefs in the temple of amada. it is always a dangerous moment in the existence of a newly formed empire when its founder having passed away, and the conquered people not having yet become accustomed to a subject condition, they are called upon to submit to a successor of whom they know little or nothing. it is always problematical whether the new sovereign will display as great activity and be as successful as the old one; whether he will be capable of turning to good account the armies which his predecessor commanded with such skill, and led so bravely against the enemy; whether, again, he will have sufficient tact to estimate correctly the burden of taxation which each province is capable of bearing, and to lighten it when there is a risk of its becoming too heavy. if he does not show from the first that it is his purpose to maintain his patrimony intact at all costs, or if his officers, no longer controlled by a strong hand, betray any indecision in command, his subjects will become unruly, and the change of monarch will soon furnish a pretext for widespread rebellion. the beginning of the reign of amenôthes ii. was marked by a revolt of the libyans inhabiting the theban oasis, but this rising was soon put down by that amenemhabî who had so distinguished himself under thûtmosis.* soon after, fresh troubles broke out in different parts of syria, in galilee, in the country of the amurru, and among the peoples of naharaim. the king�s prompt action, however, prevented their resulting in a general war.** he marched in person against the malcontents, reduced the town of shamshiaduma, fell upon the lamnaniu, and attacked their chief, slaying him with his own hand, and carrying off numbers of captives. * brugsch and wiedemann place this expedition at the time when amenôthes il was either hereditary prince or associated with his father the inscription of amenemhabî places it explicitly after the death of thûtmosis iii., and this evidence outweighs every other consideration until further discoveries are made. ** the campaigns of amenôthes ii. were related on a granite stele, which was placed against the second of the southern pylons at karnak. the date of this monument is almost certainly the year ii.; there is strong evidence in favour of this, if it is compared with the inscription of amada, where amenôthes ii. relates that in the year iii. he sacrificed the prisoners whom he had taken in the country of tikhisa. [illustration: 044.jpg amenôthes ii., from the statue at turin] drawn by faucher-gudin. he crossed the orontes on the 26th of pachons, in the year ii., and seeing some mounted troops in the distance, rushed upon them and overthrew them; they proved to be the advanced guard of the enemy�s force, which he encountered shortly afterwards and routed, collecting in the pursuit considerable booty. he finally reached naharaim, where he experienced in the main but a feeble resistance. nîi surrendered without resistance on the 10th of epiphi, and its inhabitants, both men and women, with censers in their hands, assembled on the walls and prostrated themselves before the conqueror. at akaîti, where the partisans of the egyptian government had suffered persecution from a considerable section of the natives, order was at once reestablished as soon as the king�s approach was made known. no doubt the rapidity of his marches and the vigour of his attacks, while putting an end to the hostile attitude of the smaller vassal states, were effectual in inducing the sovereigns of alasia, of mitanni,* and of the hittites to renew with amenôthes the friendly relations which they had established with his father.** * amenôthes ii. mentions tribute from mitanni on one of the columns which he decorated at karnak, in the hall of the caryatides, close to the pillars finished by his predecessors. ** the cartouches on the pedestal of the throne of amenôthes il, in the tomb of one of his officers at sheîkh-abd-el qûrneh, represent--together with the inhabitants of the oasis, libya, and kush--the kefatiû, the people of naharaim, and the upper lotanû, that is to say, the entire dominion of thûtmosis iii., besides the people of manûs, probably mallos, in the cilician plain. this one campaign, which lasted three or four months, secured a lasting peace in the north, but in the south a disturbance again broke out among the barbarians of the upper nile. amenôthes suppressed it, and, in order to prevent a repetition of it, was guilty of an act of cruel severity quite in accordance with the manners of the time. he had taken prisoner seven chiefs in the country of tikhisa, and had brought them, chained, in triumph to thebes, on the forecastle of his ship. he sacrificed six of them himself before amon, and exposed their heads and hands on the façade of the temple of karnak; the seventh was subjected to a similar fate at napata at the beginning of his third year, and thenceforth the sheîkhs of kush thought twice before defying the authority of the pharaoh.* * in an inscription in the temple of amada, it is there said that the king offered this sacrifice on his return from his first expedition into asia, and for this reason i have connected the facts thus related with those known to us through the stele of karnak. amenôthes�reign was a short one, lasting ten years at most, and the end of it seems to have been darkened by the open or secret rivalries which the question of the succession usually stirred up among the kings� sons. the king had daughters only by his marriage with one of his full sisters, who like himself possessed all the rights of sovereignty; those of his sons who did not die young were the children of princesses of inferior rank or of concubines, and it was a subject of anxiety among these princes which of them would be chosen to inherit the crown and be united in marriage with the king�s heiresses, khûît and mûtemûaû. [illustration: 046.jpg the great sphinx and the chapel of thutmosis iv.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph taken in 1887 by émil brugsch-bey [illustration: 047.jpg the simoom. sphinx and pyramids at gizeh] one of his sons, named thûtmosis, who resided at the �white wall,� was in the habit of betaking himself frequently to the libyan desert to practise with the javelin, or to pursue the hunt of lions and gazelles in his chariot. on these occasions it was his pleasure to preserve the strictest incognito, and he was accompanied by two discreet servants only. one day, when chance had brought him into the neighbourhood of the great pyramid, he lay down for his accustomed siesta in the shade cast by the sphinx, the miraculous image of khopri the most powerful, the god to whom all men in memphis and the neighbouring towns raised adoring hands filled with offerings. the gigantic statue was at that time more than half buried, and its head alone was seen above the sand. as soon as the prince was asleep it spoke gently to him, as a father to his son: �behold me, gaze on me, o my son thûtmosis, for i, thy father harmakhis-khopri-tûmû, grant thee sovereignty over the two countries, in both the south and the north, and thou shalt wear both the white and the red crown on the throne of sibû, the sovereign, possessing the earth in its length and breadth; the flashing eye of the lord of all shall cause to rain on thee the possessions of egypt, vast tribute from all foreign countries, and a long life for, many years as one chosen by the sun, for my countenance is thine, my heart is thine, no other than thyself is mine! nor am i covered by the sand of the mountain on which i rest, and have given thee this prize that thou mayest do for me what my heart desires, for i know that thou art my son, my defender; draw nigh, i am with thee, i am thy well-beloved father.� the prince understood that the god promised him the kingdom on condition of his swearing to clear the sand from the statue. he was, in fact, chosen to be the husband of the queens, and immediately after his accession he fulfilled his oath; he removed the sand, built a chapel between the paws, and erected against the breast of the statue a stele of red granite, on which he related his adventure. his reign was as short as that of amenôthes, and his campaigns both in asia and ethiopia were unimportant.* * the latest date of his reign at present known is that of the year vii., on the rocks of konosso, and on a stele of sarbût el-khâdîm. there is an allusion to his wars against the ethiopians in an inscription of amada, and to his campaigns against the peoples of the north and south on the stele of nofirhaît. [illustration: 050.jpg the stele of the sphinx of gizer] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by émil brugsch-bey. he had succeeded to an empire so firmly established from naharaim to kari,* that, apparently, no rebellion could disturb its peace. one of the two heiress-princesses, kûît, the daughter, sister, and wife of a king, had no living male offspring, but her companion mûtemûaû had at least one son, named amenôthes. in his case, again, the noble birth of the mother atoned for the defects of the paternal origin. moreover, according to tradition, amon-ka himself had intervened to renew the blood of his descendants: he appeared in the person of thûtmosis iv., and under this guise became the father of the heir of the pharaohs.** * the peoples of naharaim and of northern syria are represented bringing him tribute, in a tomb at sheîkh-abd el-qûrneh. the inscription published by mariette, speaks of the first expedition of thûtmosis iv. to the land of [naharai]na, and of the gifts which he lavished on this occasion on the temple of anion. ** it was at first thought that mûtemûaû was an ethiopian, afterwards that she was a syrian, who had changed her name on arriving at the court of her husband. the manner in which she is represented at luxor, and in all the texts where she figures, proves not only that she was of egyptian race, but that she was the daughter of amenôthes ii., and born of the marriage of that prince with one of his sisters, who was herself an hereditary princess. like queen ahmasis in the bas-reliefs of deîr el-baharî, mûtemûaû is shown on those of luxor in the arms of her divine lover, and subsequently greeted by him with the title of mother; in another bas-relief we see the queen led to her couch by the goddesses who preside over the birth of children; her son amenôthes, on coming into the world with his double, is placed in the hands of the two niles, to receive the nourishment and the education meet for the children of the gods. he profited fully by them, for he remained in power forty years, and his reign was one of the most prosperous ever witnessed by egypt during the theban dynasties. [illustration: 052.jpg queen mutemûau.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by daniel héron. amenôthes iii. had spent but little of his time in war. he had undertaken the usual raids in the south against the negroes and the tribes of the upper nile. in his fifth year, a general defection of the sheikhs obliged him to invade the province of abhaît, near semneh, which he devastated at the head of the troops collected by mari-ifi mosû, the prince of kûsh; the punishment was salutary, the booty considerable, and a lengthy peace was re-established. the object of his rare expeditions into naharaim was not so much to add new provinces to his empire, as to prevent disturbances in the old ones. the kings of alasia, of the khâti, of mitanni, of singar,* of assyria, and of babylon did not dare to provoke so powerful a neighbour.** * amenôthes entitles himself on a scarabæus �he who takes prisoner the country of singar;� no other document has yet been discovered to show whether this is hyperbole, or whether he really reached this distant region. ** the lists of the time of amenôthes iii. contain the names of phoenicia, naharaim, singar, qodshu, tunipa, patina, carchomish, and assur; that is to say, of all the subject or allied nations mentioned in the correspondence of tel el amarna. certain episodes of these expeditions had been engraved on the exterior face of the pylon constructed by the king for the temple of amon at karnak; at the present time they are concealed by the wall at the lower end of the hypostyle hall. the tribute of the lotanû was represented on the tomb of hûi, at sheîkh-abd-el-qûrneh. [illustration: 052b.jpg amenothes iii. colossal head in the british museum] [illustration: 052b-text.jpg] the remembrance of the victories of thûtmosis iii. was still fresh in their memories, and, even had their hands been free, would have made them cautious in dealing with his great-grandson; but they were incessantly engaged in internecine quarrels, and had recourse to pharaoh merely to enlist his support, or at any rate make sure of his neutrality, and prevent him from joining their adversaries. [illustration: 053.jpg amenothes iii. from the tomb of khamhait] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by daniel héron. whatever might have been the nature of their private sentiments, they professed to be anxious to maintain, for their mutual interests, the relations with egypt entered on half a century before, and as the surest method of attaining their object was by a good marriage, they would each seek an egyptian wife for himself, or would offer amenôthes a princess of one of their own royal families. the egyptian king was, however, firm in refusing to bestow a princess of the solar blood even on the most powerful of the foreign kings; his pride rebelled at the thought that she might one day be consigned to a place among the inferior wives or concubines, but he gladly accepted, and even sought for wives for himself, from among the syrian and chaldæan princesses. kallimmasin of babylon gave amenôthes first his sister, and when age had deprived this princess of her beauty, then his daughter irtabi in marriage.* * letter from amenôthes iii. to kallimmasin, concerning a sister of the latter, who was married to the king of egypt, but of whom there are no further records remaining at babylon, and also one of his daughters whom amenôthes had demanded in marriage; and letters from kallimmasin, consenting to bestow his daughter irtabi on the pharaoh, and proposing to give to amenothes whichever one he might choose of the daughters of his house. sutarna of mitanni had in the same way given the pharaoh his daughter gilukhîpa; indeed, most of the kings of that period had one or two relations in the harem at thebes. this connexion usually proved a support to asiatic sovereigns, such alliances being a safeguard against the rivalries of their brothers or cousins. at times, however, they were the means of exposing them to serious dangers. when sutarna died he was succeeded by his son dushratta, but a numerous party put forward another prince, named artassumara, who was probably gilukhîpa�s brother, on the mother�s side;* a hittite king of the name of pirkhi espoused the cause of the pretender, and a civil war broke out. * her exact relationship is not explicitly expressed, but is implied in the facts, for there seems no reason why gilukhîpa should have taken the part of one brother rather than another, unless artassumara had been nearer to her than dushratta; that is to say, her brother on the mother�s side as well as on the father�s. dushratta was victorious, and caused his brother to be strangled, but was not without anxiety as to the consequences which might follow this execution should gilukhîpa desire to avenge the victim, and to this end stir up the anger of the suzerain against him. dushratta, therefore, wrote a humble epistle, showing that he had received provocation, and that he had found it necessary to strike a decisive blow to save his own life; the tablet was accompanied by various presents to the royal pair, comprising horses, slaves, jewels, and perfumes. gilukhîpa, however, bore dushratta no ill-will, and the latter�s anxieties were allayed. the so-called expeditions of amenôthes to the syrian provinces must constantly have been merely visits of inspection, during which amusements, and especially the chase, occupied nearly as important a place as war and politics. amenôthes iii. took to heart that pre-eminently royal duty of ridding the country of wild beasts, and fulfilled it more conscientiously than any of his predecessors. he had killed 112 lions during the first ten years of his reign, and as it was an exploit of which he was remarkably proud, he perpetuated the memory of it in a special inscription, which he caused to be engraved on numbers of large scarabs of fine green enamel. egypt prospered under his peaceful government, and if the king made no great efforts to extend her frontiers, he spared no pains to enrich the country by developing industry and agriculture, and also endeavoured to perfect the military organisation which had rendered the conquest of the east so easy a matter. a census, undertaken by his minister amenôthes, the son of hâpi, ensured a more correct assessment of the taxes, and a regular scheme of recruiting for the army. [illustration: 056.jpg scarab of the hunt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph published in mariette. whole tribes of slaves were brought into the country by means of the border raids which were always taking place, and their opportune arrival helped to fill up the vacancies which repeated wars had caused among the rural and urban population; such a strong impetus to agriculture was also given by this importation, that when, towards the middle of the reign, the minister khâmhâîfc presented the tax-gathers at court, he was able to boast that he had stored in the state granaries a larger quantity of corn than had been gathered in for thirty years. the traffic carried on between asia and the delta by means of both egyptian and foreign ships was controlled by customhouses erected at the mouths of the nile, the coast being protected by cruising vessels against the attacks of pirates. the fortresses of the isthmus and of the libyan border, having been restored or rebuilt, constituted a check on the turbulence of the nomad tribes, while garrisons posted at intervals at the entrance to the wadys leading to the desert restrained the plunderers scattered between the nile and the red sea, and between the chain of oases and the unexplored regions of the sahara.* egypt was at once the most powerful as well as the most prosperous kingdom in the world, being able to command more labour and more precious metals for the embellishment of her towns and the construction of her monuments than any other. all this information is gathered from the inscription on the statue of amenôthes, the son of hâpi. public works had been carried on briskly under thûtmosis iii. and his successors. the taste for building, thwarted at first by the necessity of financial reforms, and then by that of defraying the heavy expenses incurred through the expulsion of the hyksôs and the earlier foreign wars, had free scope as soon as spoil from the syrian victories began to pour in year by year. while the treasure seized from the enemy provided the money, the majority of the prisoners were used as workmen, so that temples, palaces, and citadels began to rise as if by magic from one end of the valley to the other.* * for this use of prisoners of war, cf. the picture from the tomb of rakhmirî on p. 58 of the present work, in which most of the earlier egyptologists believed they recognised the hebrews, condemned by pharaoh to build the cities of ramses and pithom in the delta. nubia, divided into provinces, formed merely an extension of the ancient feudal egypt--at any rate as far as the neighbourhood of the tacazzeh--though the egyptian religion had here assumed a peculiar character. [illustration: 058.jpg a gang of syrian prisoners making brick for the temple of amon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the chromolithograph in lepsius. the conquest of nubia having been almost entirely the work of the theban dynasties, the theban triad, amon, maût, and montû, and their immediate followers were paramount in this region, while in the north, in witness of the ancient elephantinite colonisation, we find khnûmû of the cataract being worshipped, in connexion with didûn, father of the indigenous nubians. the worship of amon had been the means of introducing that of eâ and of horus, and osiris as lord of the dead, while phtah, sokhît, atûmû, and the memphite and heliopolitan gods were worshipped only in isolated parts of the province. a being, however, of less exalted rank shared with the lords of heaven the favour of the people. this was the pharaoh, who as the son of amon was foreordained to receive divine honours, sometimes figuring, as at bohani, as the third member of a triad, at other times as head of the ennead. ûsirtasen iii. had had his chapels at semneh and at kûmmeh, they were restored by thûtmosis iii., who claimed a share of the worship offered in them, and whose son, amenôthes ii., also assumed the symbols and functions of divinity. [illustration: 059.jpg one of the rams of amenôthes iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mons. de mertens. amenôthes i. was venerated in the province of kari, and amenôthes iii., when founding the fortress hâît-khâmmâît* in the neighbourhood of a nubian village, on a spot now known as soleb, built a temple there, of which he himself was the protecting genius.** * the name signifies literally �the citadel of khâmmâît,� and it is formed, as lepsius recognised from the first, from the name of the sparrow-hawk khâmmâît, �mait rising as goddess,� which amenôthes had assumed on his accession. ** lepsius recognised the nature of the divinity worshipped in this temple; the deified statue of the king, �his living statue on earth,� which represented the god of the temple, is there named �nibmâûrî, lord of nubia.� thûtmosis iii. had already worked at soleb. the edifice was of considerable size, and the columns and walls remaining reveal an art as perfect as that shown in the best monuments at thebes. it was approached by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, while colossal statues of lions and hawks, the sacred animals of the district, adorned the building. the sovereign condescended to preside in person at its dedication on one of his journeys to the southern part of his empire, and the mutilated pictures still visible on the façade show the order and detail of the ceremony observed on this occasion. the king, with the crown upon his head, stood before the centre gate, accompanied by the queen and his minister amenôthes, the son of hâpi, who was better acquainted than any other man of his time with the mysteries of the ritual.* * on amenôthes, the son of hâpi, see p. 56 of the present volume; it will be seen in the following chapter, in connection with the egyptian accounts of the exodus, what tradition made of him. the king then struck the door twelve times with his mace of white stone, and when the approach to the first hall was opened, he repeated the operation at the threshold of the sanctuary previous to entering and placing his statue there. he deposited it on the painted and gilded wooden platform on which the gods were exhibited on feast-days, and enthroned beside it the other images which were thenceforth to constitute the local ennead, after which he kindled the sacred fire before them. the queen, with the priests and nobles, all bearing torches, then passed through the halls, stopping from time to time to perform acts of purification, or to recite formulas to dispel evil spirits and pernicious influences; finally, a triumphal procession was formed, and the whole _cortege_ returned to the palace, where a banquet brought the day�s festivities to a close.* it was amenôthes iii. himself, or rather one of his statues animated by his double, who occupied the chief place in the new building. indeed, wherever we come across a temple in nubia dedicated to a king, we find the homage of the inhabitants always offered to the image of the founder, which spoke to them in oracles. all the southern part of the country beyond the second cataract is full of traces of amenôthes, and the evidence of the veneration shown to him would lead us to conclude that he played an important part in the organisation of the country. sedeinga possessed a small temple under the patronage of his wife tîi. the ruins of a sanctuary which he dedicated to anion, the sun-god, have been discovered at gebel-barkal; amenôthes seems to have been the first to perceive the advantages offered by the site, and to have endeavoured to transform the barbarian village of napata into a large egyptian city. some of the monuments with which he adorned soleb were transported, in later times, to gebel-barkal, among them some rams and lions of rare beauty. they lie at rest with their paws crossed, the head erect, and their expression suggesting both power and repose.** as we descend the nile, traces of the work of this king are less frequent, and their place is taken by those of his predecessors, as at sai, at semneh, at wady haifa, at amada, at ibrîm, and at dakkeh. distant traces of amenôthes again appear in the neighbourhood of the first cataract, and in the island of elephantine, which he endeavoured to restore to its ancient splendour. * thus the small temple of sarrah, to the north of wady haifa, is dedicated to �the living statue of ramses ii. in the land of nubia,� a statue to which his majesty gave the name of �usirmârî zosir-shâfi.� ** one of the rams was removed from gebel-barkal by lepsius, and is now in the berlin museum, as well as the pedestal of one of the hawks. prisse has shown that these two monuments originally adorned the temple of soleb, and that they were afterwards transported to napata by an ethiopian king, who engraved his name on the pedestal of one of them. [illustration: 062.jpg one of the lions of gebel-barkal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the two lions of gebel barkal in the british museum two of the small buildings which he there dedicated to khnûmû, the local god, were still in existence at the beginning of the present century. that least damaged, on the south side of the island, consisted of a single chamber nearly forty feet in length. the sandstone walls, terminating in a curved cornice, rested on a hollow substructure raised rather more than six feet above the ground, and surrounded by a breast-high parapet. a portico ran round the building, having seven square pillars on each of its two sides, while at each end stood two columns having lotus-shaped capitals; a flight of ten or twelve steps between two walls of the same height as the basement, projected in front, and afforded access to the cella. the two columns of the façade were further apart than those at the opposite end of the building, and showed a glimpse of a richly decorated door, while a second door opened under the peristyle at the further extremity. the walls were covered with the half-brutish profile of the good khnûmû, and those of his two companions, anûkît and satît, the spirits of stormy waters. the treatment of these figures was broad and simple, the style free, light, and graceful, the colouring soft; and the harmonious beauty of the whole is unsurpassed by anything at thebes itself. it was, in fact, a kind of oratory, built on a scale to suit the capacities of a decaying town, but the design was so delicately conceived in its miniature proportions that nothing more graceful can be imagined.* * amenôthes ii. erected some small obelisks at elephantine, one of which is at present in england. the two buildings of amenôthes iii. at elephantine were still in existence at the beginning of the present century. they have been described and drawn by french scholars; between 1822 and 1825 they were destroyed, and the materials used for building barracks and magazines at syene. ancient egypt and its feudal cities, ombos, edfû,* nekhabît, esneh,** medamôt,*** coptos,**** denderah, abydos, memphis,^ and heliopolis, profited largely by the generosity of the pharaohs. * the works undertaken by thûtmosis iii. in the temple of edfû are mentioned in an inscription of the ptolemaic period; some portions are still to be seen among the ruins of the town. ** an inscription of the roman period attributes the rebuilding of the great temple of esneh to thûtmosis iii. grébaut discovered some fragments of it in the quay of the modern town. *** amenôthes ii. appears to have built the existing temple. **** the temple of hâthor was built by thûtmosis iii. some fragments found in the ptolemaic masonry bear the cartouche of thûtmosis iv. ^ amenôthes ii. certainly carried on works at memphis, for he opened a new quarry at tûrah, in the year iv. amenôthes iii. also worked limestone quarries, and built at saqqârah the earliest chapels of the serapeum which are at present known to us. since the close of the xiith dynasty these cities had depended entirely on their own resources, and their public buildings were either in ruins, or quite inadequate to the needs of the population, but now gold from syria and kûsh furnished them with the means of restoration. the delta itself shared in this architectural revival, but it had suffered too severely under the struggle between the theban kings and the shepherds to recover itself as quickly as the remainder of the country. all effort was concentrated on those of its nomes which lay on the eastern frontier, or which were crossed by the pharaohs in their journeys into asia, such as the bubastite and athribite nomes; the rest remained sunk in their ancient torpor.* * mariette and e. de rougé, attribute this torpor, at least as far as tanis is concerned, to the aversion felt by the pharaohs of egyptian blood for the hyksôs capital, and for the provinces where the invaders had formerly established themselves in large numbers. beyond the red sea the mines were actively worked, and even the oases of the libyan desert took part in the national revival, and buildings rose in their midst of a size proportionate to their slender revenues. thebes naturally came in for the largest share of the spoils of war. although her kings had become the rulers of the world, they had not, like the pharaohs of the xiith and xiiith dynasties, forsaken her for some more illustrious city: here they had their ordinary residence as well as their seat of government, hither they returned after each campaign to celebrate their victory, and hither they sent the prisoners and the spoil which they had reserved for their own royal use. in the course of one or two generations thebes had spread in every direction, and had enclosed within her circuit the neighbouring villages of ashîrû, the fief of maiit, and apît-rîsîfc, the southern thebes, which lay at the confluence of the nile with one of the largest of the canals which watered the plain. the monuments in these two new quarters of the town were unworthy of the city of which they now formed part, and amenôthes iii. consequently bestowed much pains on improving them. he entirely rebuilt the sanctuary of maût, enlarged the sacred lake, and collected within one of the courts of the temple several hundred statues in black granite of the memphite divinity, the lioness-headed sokhît, whom he identified with his theban goddess. the statues were crowded together so closely that they were in actual contact with each other in places, and must have presented something of the appearance of a regiment drawn up in battle array. the succeeding pharaohs soon came to look upon this temple as a kind of storehouse, whence they might provide themselves with ready-made figures to decorate their buildings either at thebes or in other royal cities. about a hundred of them, however, still remain, most of them without feet, arms, or head; some over-turned on the ground, others considerably out of the perpendicular, from the earth having given way beneath them, and a small number only still perfect and in situ. [illustration: 065.jpg the temple at elephantine, as it was in 1799] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the _description de l�egypte, ant_., vol. i p. 35. a good restoration of it, made from the statements in the _description_, is to be found in pekrot-cuipiez, _histoire de l�art dans l�antiquité_, vol. i. pp. 402, 403. [illustration: 066.jpg the great court of the temple of luxor during the inundation] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. [illustration: 067.jpg part of the avenue of rams, between the temples of amon and maût] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. at luxor amenôthes demolished the small temple with which the sovereigns of the xiith and xiiith dynasties had been satisfied, and replaced it by a structure which is still one of the finest yet remaining of the times of the pharaohs. the naos rose sheer above the waters of the nile, indeed its cornices projected over the river, and a staircase at the south side allowed the priests and devotees to embark directly from the rear of the building. the sanctuary was a single chamber, with an opening on its side, but so completely shut out from the daylight by the long dark hall at whose extremity it was placed as to be in perpetual obscurity. it was flanked by narrow, dimly lightly chambers, and was approached through a pronaos with four rows of columns, a vast court surrounded with porticoes occupying the foreground. at the present time the thick walls which enclosed the entire building are nearly level with the ground, half the ceilings have crumbled away, air and light penetrate into every nook, and during the inundation the water flowing into the courts, transformed them until recently into lakes, whither the flocks and herds of the village resorted in the heat of the day to bathe or quench their thirst. pictures of mysterious events never meant for the public gaze now display their secrets in the light of the sun, and reveal to the eyes of the profane the supernatural events which preceded the birth of the king. on the northern side an avenue of sphinxes and crio-sphinxes led to the gates of old thebes. at present most of these creatures are buried under the ruins of the modern town, or covered by the earth which overlies the ancient road; but a few are still visible, broken and shapeless from barbarous usage, and hardly retaining any traces of the inscriptions in which amenôthes claimed them boastingly as his work. [illustration: 069.jpg the pylons of thûtmosis iii. and harmhabî at kaknak] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. triumphal processions passing along this route from luxor to karnak would at length reach the great court before the temple of amon, or, by turning a little to the right after passing the temple of maût, would arrive in front of the southern façade, near the two gilded obelisks whose splendour once rejoiced the heart of the famous hâtshopsîtû. thûtmosis iii. was also determined on his part to spare no expense to make the temple of his god of proportions suitable to the patron of so vast an empire. not only did he complete those portions which his predecessors had merely sketched out, but on the south side towards ashîrû he also built a long row of pylons, now half ruined, on which he engraved, according to custom, the list of nations and cities which he had subdued in asia and africa. to the east of the temple he rebuilt some ancient structures, the largest of which served as a halting-place for processions, and he enclosed the whole with a stone rampart. the outline of the sacred lake, on which the mystic boats were launched on the nights of festivals, was also made more symmetrical, and its margin edged with masonry. [illustration: 070.jpg sacred lake akd the southern part of the temple of karnak.] drawn by boucher, from a photograph by boato: the building near the centre of the picture is the covered walk constructed by thûtmosis iii. by these alterations the harmonious proportion between the main buildings and the façade had been destroyed, and the exterior wall was now too wide for the pylon at the entrance. amenôthes iii. remedied this defect by erecting in front a fourth pylon, which was loftier, larger, and in all respects more worthy to stand before the enlarged temple. its walls were partially covered with battle-scenes, which informed all beholders of the glory of the conqueror.* * portions of the military bas-reliefs which covered the exterior face of the pylon are still to be seen through the gaps in the wall at the end of the great hall of pillars built by seti i. and ramses ii. progress had been no less marked on the left bank of the river. as long as thebes had been merely a small provincial town, its cemeteries had covered but a moderate area, including the sandy plain and low mounds opposite karnak and the valley of deîr el-baharî beyond; but now that the city had more than doubled its extent, the space required for the dead was proportionately greater. the tombs of private persons began to spread towards the south, and soon reached the slopes of the assassîf, the hill of sheikh-abd-el-qurnah and the district of qûrnet-mûrraî--in fact, all that part which the people of the country called the �brow� of thebes. on the borders of the cultivated land a row of chapels and mastabas with pyramidal roofs sheltered the remains of the princes and princesses of the royal family. the pharaohs themselves were buried either separately under their respective brick pyramids or in groups in a temple, as was the case with the first three thûtmosis and hâtshopsîtû at deîr el-baharî. amenôthes ii. and thûtmosis iv. could doubtless have found room in this crowded necropolis,* although the space was becoming limited, but the pride of the pharaohs began to rebel against this promiscuous burial side by side with their subjects. amenôthes iii. sought for a site, therefore, where he would have ample room to display his magnificence, far from the vulgar crowd, and found what he desired at the farther end of the valley which opens out behind the village of qurnah. here, an hour�s journey from the bank of the nile, he cut for himself a magnificent rock-tomb with galleries, halls, and deep pits, the walls being decorated with representations of the voyage of the sun through the regions which he traverses during the twelve hours of his nocturnal course. * the generally received opinion is that these sovereigns of the xviiith dynasty were buried in the bibân el-molûk, but i have made several examinations of this valley, and cannot think that this was the case. on the contrary, the scattered notices in the fragments of papyrus preserved at turin seem to me to indicate that amenôthes ii. and thûtmosis iv. must have been buried in the neighbourhood of the assassîf or of deîr el-baharî. a sarcophagus of red granite received his mummy, and _ushabti�s_ of extraordinary dimensions and admirable workmanship mounted guard around him, so as to release him from the corvée in the fields of ialû. the chapel usually attached to such tombs is not to be found in the neighbourhood. as the road to the funeral valley was a difficult one, and as it would be unreasonable to condemn an entire priesthood to live in solitude, the king decided to separate the component parts which had hitherto been united in every tomb since the memphite period, and to place the vault for the mummy and the passages leading to it some distance away in the mountains, while the necessary buildings for the cultus of the statue and the accommodation of the priests were transferred to the plain, and were built at the southern extremity of the lands which were at that time held by private persons. the divine character of amenôthes, ascribed to him on account of his solar origin and the co-operation of amon-râ at his birth, was, owing to this separation of the funerary constituents, brought into further prominence. when once the body which he had animated while on earth was removed and hidden from sight, the people soon became accustomed to think only of his double enthroned in the recesses of the sanctuary: seeing him receive there the same honours as the gods themselves, they came naturally to regard him as a deity himself. [illustration: 073.jpg the two colossi of memnon in the plain of thebes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the �vocal statue of memon� is that on the right-hand side of the illustration. the arrangement of his temple differed in no way from those in which amon, maût, and montû were worshipped, while it surpassed in size and splendour most of the sanctuaries dedicated to the patron gods of the chief towns of the nomes. it contained, moreover, colossal statues, objects which are never found associated with the heavenly gods. several of these figures have been broken to pieces, and only a few scattered fragments of them remain, but two of them still maintain their positions on each side of the entrance, with their faces towards the east. they are each formed of a single block of red breccia from syenê,* and are fifty-three feet high, but the more northerly one was shattered in the earthquake which completed the ruin of thebes in the year 27 b.c. the upper part toppled over with the shock, and was dashed to pieces on the floor of the court, while the lower half remained in its place. soon after the disaster it began to be rumoured that sounds like those produced by the breaking of a harp-string proceeded from the pedestal at sunrise, whereupon travellers flocked to witness the miracle, and legend soon began to take possession of the giant who spoke in this marvellous way. in vain did the egyptians of the neighbourhood declare that the statue represented the pharaoh amenôthes; the greeks refused to believe them, and forthwith recognised in the colossus an image of memnon the ethiopian, son of tithonus and aurora, slain by their own achilles beneath the walls of troy--maintaining that the music heard every morning was the clear and harmonious voice of the hero saluting his mother. * it is often asserted that they are made of rose granite, but jollois and devilliers describe them as being of �a species of sandstone breccia, composed of a mass of agate flint, conglomerated together by a remarkably hard cement. this material, being very dense and of a heterogeneous composition, presents to the sculptor perhaps greater difficulties than even granite.� towards the middle of the second century of our era, hadrian undertook a journey to upper egypt, and heard the wonderful song; sixty years later, septimus severus restored the statue by the employment of courses of stones, which were so arranged as to form a rough representation of a human head and shoulders. his piety, however, was not rewarded as he expected, for memnon became silent, and his oracle fell into oblivion. the temple no longer exists, and a few ridges alone mark the spot where it rose; but the two colossi remain at their post, in the same condition in which they were left by the roman cæsar: the features are quite obliterated, and the legs and the supporting female figures on either side are scored all over with greek and latin inscriptions expressing the appreciation of ancient tourists. although the statues tower high above the fields of corn and _bersîm_ which surround them, our first view of them, owing to the scale of proportion observed in their construction, so different from that to which we are accustomed, gives us the impression that they are smaller than they really are, and it is only when we stand close to one of them and notice the insignificant appearance of the crowd of sightseers clustered on its pedestal that we realize the immensity of the colossi. the descendants of ahmosis had by their energy won for thebes not only the supremacy over the peoples of egypt and of the known world, but had also secured for the theban deities pre-eminence over all their rivals. the booty collected both in syria and ethiopia went to enrich the god amon as much as it did the kings themselves; every victory brought him the tenth part of the spoil gathered on the field of battle, of the tribute levied on vassals, and of the prisoners taken as slaves. when thûtmosis iil, after having reduced megiddo, organised a systematic plundering of the surrounding country, it was for the benefit of amon-eâ that he reaped the fields and sent their harvest into egypt; if during his journeys he collected useful plants or rare animals, it was that he might dispose of them in the groves or gardens of amon as well as in his own, and he never retained for his personal use the whole of what he won by arms, but always reserved some portion for the sacred treasury. [illustration: 076.jpg a party of tourists at the foot of the vocal statue of memnok] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. his successors acted in a similar manner, and in the reigns of amenôthes ii., thût-mosis iv., and amenôthes iii., the patrimony of the theban priesthood continued to increase. the pharaohs, perpetually called upon as they were to recompense one or other of their servants, were never able to retain for long their share of the spoils of war. gold and silver, lands, jewels, and slaves passed as quickly out of their hands as they had fallen into them, and although then fortune was continually having additions made to it in every fresh campaign, yet the increase was rarely in proportion to the trouble expended. the god, on the contrary, received what he got for all time, and gave back nothing in return: fresh accumulations of precious metals were continually being added to his store, his meadows were enriched by the addition of vineyards, and with his palm forests he combined fish-ponds full of fish; he added farms and villages to those he already possessed, and each reign saw the list of his possessions increase. he had his own labourers, his own tradespeople, his own fishermen, soldiers, and scribes, and, presiding over all these, a learned hierarchy of divines, priests, and prophets, who administered everything. this immense domain, which was a kind of state within the state, was ruled over by a single high priest, chosen by the sovereign from among the prophets. he was the irresponsible head of it, and his spiritual ambition had increased step by step with the extension of his material resources. as the human pharaoh showed himself entitled to homage from the lords of the earth, the priests came at length to the conclusion that amon had a right to the allegiance of the lords of heaven, and that he was the supreme being, in respect of whom the others were of little or no account, and as he was the only god who was everywhere victorious, he came at length to be regarded by them as the only god in existence. it was impossible that the kings could see this rapid development of sacerdotal power without anxiety, and with all their devotion to the patron of their city, solicitude for their own authority compelled them to seek elsewhere for another divinity, whose influence might in some degree counterbalance that of amon. the only one who could vie with him at thebes, either for the antiquity of his worship or for the rank which he occupied in the public esteem, was the sun-lord of heliopolis, head of the first ennead. thûtmosis iv. owed his crown to him, and �displayed his gratitude in clearing away the sand from the sphinx, in which the spirit of harmakhis was considered to dwell; and amenôthes iii., although claiming to be the son of amon himself, inherited the disposition shown by thûtmosis in favour of the heliopolitan religions, but instead of attaching himself to the forms most venerated by theologians, he bestowed his affection on a more popular deity--atonû, the fiery disk. he may have been influenced in his choice by private reasons. like his predecessors, he had taken, while still very young, wives from among his own family, but neither these reasonable ties, nor his numerous diplomatic alliances with foreign princesses, were enough for him. from the very beginning of his reign he had loved a maiden who was not of the blood of the pharaohs, tîi, the daughter of iûîa and his wife tûîa.* * for the last thirty years queen tîi has been the subject of many hypotheses and of much confusion. the scarabasi engraved under amenôthes iii. say explicitly that she was the daughter of two personages, iûîa and tûîa, but these names are not accompanied by any of the signs which are characteristic of foreign names, and were considered egyptian by contemporaries. hincks was the first who seems to have believed her to be a syrian; he compares her father�s name with that of levi, and attributes the religious revolution which followed to the influence of her foreign education. this theory has continued to predominate; some prefer a libyan origin to the asiatic one, and latterly there has been an attempt to recognise in tîi one of the princesses of mitanni mentioned in the correspondence of tel el-amarna. as long ago as 1877, i showed that tîi was an egyptian of middle rank, probably of heliopolitan origin. connexions of this kind had been frequently formed by his ancestors, but the egyptian women of inferior rank whom they had brought into their harems had always remained in the background, and if the sons of these concubines were ever fortunate enough to come to the throne, it was in default of heirs of pure blood. amenôthes iii. married tîi, gave her for her dowry the town of zâlû in lower egypt, and raised her to the position of queen, in spite of her low extraction. she busied herself in the affairs of state, took precedence of the princesses of the solar family, and appeared at her husband�s side in public ceremonies, and was so figured on the monuments. if, as there is reason to believe, she was born near heliopolis, it is easy to understand how her influence may have led amenôthes to pay special honour to a heliopolitan divinity. he had built, at an early period of his reign, a sanctuary to atonû at memphis, and in the xth year he constructed for him a chapel at thebes itself,* to the south of the last pylon of ïhûtmosis iii., and endowed this deity with property at the expense of anion. * this temple seems to have been raised on the site of the building which is usually attributed to amenôthes ii. and amenôthes iii. the blocks bearing the name of amenôthes ii. had been used previously, like most of those which bear the cartouches of amenôthes iii. the temple of atonû, which was demolished by harmhabî or one of the ramses, was subsequently rebuilt with the remains of earlier edifices, and dedicated to amon. [illustration: 079.jpg marriage scarabæus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the scarabaeus preserved at gîzeh. he had several sons;* but the one who succeeded him, and who, like him, was named amenôthes, was the most paradoxical of all the egyptian sovereigns of ancient times.** * one of them, thûtmosis, was high priest of phtah, and we possess several monuments erected by him in the temple of memphis; another, tûtonkhamon, subsequently became king. he also had several daughters by tîi--sîtamon. ** the absence of any cartouches of amenôthes iv. or his successors in the table of abydos prevented champollion and rosellini from classifying these sovereigns with any precision. nestor l�hôte tried to recognise in the first of them, whom he called _bakhen-balchnan_, a king belonging to the very ancient dynasties, perhaps the hyksôs apakhnan, but lepsius and hincks showed that he must be placed between amenôthes iii. and harmhabî, that he was first called amenôthes like his father, but that he afterwards took the name of baknaten, which is now read khûnaten or khûniaton. his singular aspect made it difficult to decide at first whether a man or a woman was represented. mariette, while pronouncing him to be a man, thought that he had perhaps been taken prisoner in the sudan and mutilated, which would have explained his effeminate appearance, almost like that of an eunuch. recent attempts have been made to prove that amenôthes iv. and khûniaton were two distinct persons, or that khûniaton was a queen; but they have hitherto been rejected by egyptologists. he made up for the inferiority of his birth on account of the plebeian origin of his mother tîî,* by his marriage with nofrîtîti, a princess of the pure solar race.** tîi, long accustomed to the management of affairs, exerted her influence over him even more than she had done over her husband. without officially assuming the rank, she certainly for several years possessed the power, of regent, and gave a definite oriental impress to her son�s religious policy. no outward changes were made at first; amenôthes, although showing his preference for heliopolis by inscribing in his protocol the title of prophet of harmakhis, which he may, however, have borne before his accession, maintained his residence at thebes, as his father had done before him, continued to sacrifice to the theban divinities, and to follow the ancient paths and the conventional practices.*** * the filiation of amenôthes iv. and tîi has given rise to more than one controversy. the egyptian texts do not define it explicitly, and the title borne by tîi has been considered by some to prove that amenôthes iv. was her son, and by others that she was the mother of queen nofrîtîti. the tel el-amarna correspondence solves the question, however, as it gives a letter from dushratta to khûniaton, in which tîi is called �thy mother.� ** nofrîtîti, the wife of amenôthes iv., like all the princesses of that time, has been supposed to be of syrian origin, and to have changed her name on her arrival in egypt. the place which she holds beside her husband is the same as that which belongs to legitimate queens, like nofritari, ahmosis, and hâtshopsîtû, and the example of these princesses is enough to show us what was her real position; she was most probably a daughter of one of the princesses of the solar blood, perhaps of one of the sisters of amenôthes iii., and amenôthes iv. married her so as to obtain through her the rights which were wanting to him through his mother tîi. *** the tomb of ramses, governor of thebes and priest of mâît, shows us in one part of it the king, still faithful to his name of amenôthes, paying homage to the god amon, lord of karnak, while everywhere else the worship of atonû predominates. the cartouches on the tomb of pari, read by bouriant akhopîrûrî, and by scheil more correctly nofirkhopîrûrî, seem to me to represent a transitional form of the protocol of amenôthes iv., and not the name of a new pharaoh; the inscription in which they are to be found bears the date of his third year. he either built a temple to the theban god, or enlarged the one which his father had constructed at karnak, and even opened new quarries at syene and silsileh for providing granite and sandstone for the adornment of this monument. his devotion to the invincible disk, however, soon began to assert itself, and rendered more and more irksome to him the religious observances which he had constrained himself to follow. there was nothing and no one to hinder him from giving free course to his inclinations, and the nobles and priests were too well trained in obedience to venture to censure anything he might do, even were it to result in putting the whole population into motion, from elephantine to the sea-coast, to prepare for the intruded deity a dwelling which should eclipse in magnificence the splendour of the great temple. a few of those around him had become converted of their own accord to his favourite worship, but these formed a very small minority. thebes had belonged to amon so long that the king could never hope to bring it to regard atonû as anything but a being of inferior rank. each city belonged to some god, to whom was attributed its origin, its development, and its prosperity, and whom it could not forsake without renouncing its very existence. if thebes became separated from amon it would be thebes no longer, and of this amenôthes was so well aware that he never attempted to induce it to renounce its patron. his residence among surroundings which he detested at length became so intolerable, that he resolved to leave the place and create a new capital elsewhere. the choice of a new abode would have presented no difficulty to him had he been able to make up his mind to relegate atonû to the second rank of divinities; memphis, heracleopolis, siût, khmûnû, and, in fact, all the towns of the valley would have deemed themselves fortunate in securing the inheritance of their rival, but not one of them would be false to its convictions or accept the degradation of its own divine founder, whether phtah, harshafîtû, anubis, or thot. a newly promoted god demanded a new city; amenôthes, therefore, made selection of a broad plain extending on the right bank of the nile, in the eastern part of the hermopolitan nome, to which he removed with all his court about the fourth or fifth year of his reign.* * the last date with the name of amenôthes is that of the year v., on a papyrus from the payilm; elsewhere we find from the year vi. the name of khûniaton, by the side of monuments with the cartouche of amenôthes; we may conclude from this that the foundation of the town dates from the year iv. or v. at the latest, when the prince, having renounced the worship of amon, left thebes that he might be able to celebrate freely that of atonû. he found here several obscure villages without any historical or religious traditions, and but thinly populated; amenôthes chose one of them, the et-tel of the present day, and built there a palace for himself and a temple for his god. the temple, like that of eâ at heliopolis, was named _haît-banbonû_, the mansion of the obelisk. it covered an immense area, of which the sanctuary, however, occupied an inconsiderable part; it was flanked by brick storehouses, and the whole was surrounded by a thick wall. the remains show that the temple was built of white limestone, of fine quality, but that it was almost devoid of ornament, for there was no time to cover it with the usual decorations.* * the opinion of brugsch, that the arrangement of the various parts differed from that of other temples, and was the effect of foreign influence, has not been borne out by the excavations of prof. pétrie, the little which he has brought to light being entirely of egyptian character. the temple is represented on the tomb of the high priest mariri. [illustration: 084.jpg map] the palace was built of brick; it was approached by a colossal gateway, and contained vast halls, interspersed with small apartments for the accommodation of the household, and storehouses for the necessary provisions, besides gardens which had been hastily planted with rare shrubs and sycamores. fragments of furniture and of the roughest of the utensils contained in the different chambers are still unearthed from among the heaps of rubbish, and the cellars especially are full of potsherds and cracked jars, on which we can still see written an indication of the reign and the year when the wine they once contained was made. altars of massive masonry rose in the midst of the courts, on which the king or one of his ministers heaped offerings and burnt incense morning, noon, and evening, in honour of the three decisive moments in the life of atonû.* * naville discovered at deîr el-baharî a similar altar, nearly intact. no other example was before known in any of the ruined towns or temples, and no one had any idea of the dimensions to which these altars, attained. a few painted and gilded columns supported the roofs of the principal apartments in which the pharaoh held his audiences, but elsewhere the walls and pillars were coated with cream-coloured stucco or whitewash, on which scenes of private life were depicted in colours. the pavement, like the walls, was also decorated. in one of the halls which seems to have belonged to the harem, there is still to be seen distinctly the picture of a rectangular piece of water containing fish and lotus-flowers in full bloom; the edge is adorned with water-plants and flowering shrubs, among which birds fly and calves graze and gambol; on the right and left were depicted rows of stands laden with fruit, while at each end of the room were seen the grinning faces of a gang of negro and syrian prisoners, separated from each other by gigantic arches. the tone of colouring is bright and cheerful, and the animals are treated with great freedom and facility. the pharaoh, had collected about him several of the best artists then to be found at thebes, placing them under the direction of baûki, the chief of the corporation of sculptors,* and probably others subsequently joined these from provincial studios. * baûki belonged to a family of artists, and his father mani had filled before him the post of chief of the sculptors. the part played by these personages was first defined by brugsch, with perhaps some exaggeration of their artistic merit and originality of talent. work for them was not lacking, for houses had to be built for all the courtiers and government officials who had been obliged to follow the king, and in a few years a large town had sprung up, which was called khûîtatonû, or the �horizon of the disk.� it was built on a regular plan, with straight streets and open spaces, and divided into two separate quarters, interspersed with orchards and shady trellises. workmen soon began to flock to the new city--metal-founders, glass-founders, weavers; in fine, all who followed any trade indispensable to the luxury of a capital. the king appropriated a territory for it from the ancient nome of the hare, thus compelling the god thot to contribute to the fortune of atonû; he fixed its limits by means of stelæ placed in the mountains, from gebel-tûnah to deshlûît on the west, and from sheikh-said to el-hauata on the eastern bank;* it was a new nome improvised for the divine _parvenu_. * we know at present of fourteen of these stelæ. a certain number must still remain to be discovered on both banks of the nile. [illustration: 082.jpg the decorated pavement of the palace] atonû was one of the forms of the sun, and perhaps the most material one of all those devised by the egyptians. he was defined as �the good god who rejoices in truth, the lord of the solar course, the lord of the disk, the lord of heaven, the lord of earth, the living disk which lights up the two worlds, the living harmakhis who rises on the horizon bearing his name of shû, which is disk, the eternal infuser of life.� his priests exercised the same functions as those of heliopolis, and his high priest was called �oîrimaû,� like the high priest of râ in aunû. this functionary was a certain marirl, upon whom the king showered his favours, and he was for some time the chief authority in the state after the pharaoh himself. atonû was represented sometimes by the ordinary figure of horus,* sometimes by the solar disk, but a disk whose rays were prolonged towards the earth, like so many arms ready to lay hold with their little hands of the offerings of the faithful, or to distribute to mortals the _crux ansata_, the symbol of life. the other gods, except amon, were sharers with humanity in his benefits. atonû proscribed him, and tolerated him only at thebes; he required, moreover, that the name of amon should be effaced wherever it occurred, but he respected râ and horus and harmakhis--all, in fact, but amon: he was content with being regarded as their king, and he strove rather to become their chief than their destroyer.** * it was probably this form of horus which had, in the temple at thebes, the statue called �the red image of atonû in paatoml.� ** prisse d�avennes has found at karnak, on fragments of the temple, the names of other divinities than atonû worshipped by khûniatonû. his nature, moreover, had nothing in it of the mysterious or ambiguous; he was the glorious torch which gave light to humanity, and which was seen every day to flame in the heavens without ever losing its brilliance or becoming weaker. when he hides himself �the world rests in darkness, like those dead who lie in their rock-tombs, with their heads swathed, their nostrils stuffed up, their eyes sightless, and whose whole property might be stolen from them, even that which they have under their head, without their knowing it; the lion issues from his lair, the serpent roams ready to bite, it is as obscure as in a dark room, the earth is silent whilst he who creates everything dwells in his horizon.� he has hardly arisen when �egypt becomes festal, one awakens, one rises on one�s feet; when thou hast caused men to clothe themselves, they adore thee with outstretched hands, and the whole earth attends to its work, the animals betake themselves to their herbage, trees and green crops abound, birds fly to their marshy thickets with wings outstretched in adoration of thy double, the cattle skip, all the birds which were in their nests shake themselves when thou risest for them; the boats come and go, for every way is open at thy appearance, the fish of the river leap before thee as soon as thy rays descend upon the ocean.� it is not without reason that all living things thus rejoice at his advent; all of them owe their existence to him, for �he creates the female germ, he gives virility to men, and furnishes life to the infant in its mother�s womb; he calms and stills its weeping, he nourishes it in the maternal womb, giving forth the breathings which animate all that he creates, and when the infant escapes from the womb on the day of its birth, thou openest his mouth for speech, and thou satisfiest his necessities. when the chick is in the egg, a cackle in a stone, thou givest to it air while within to keep it alive; when thou hast caused it to be developed in the egg to the point of being able to break it, it goes forth proclaiming its existence by its cackling, and walks on its feet from the moment of its leaving the egg.� atonû presides over the universe and arranges within it the lot of human beings, both egyptians and foreigners. the celestial nile springs up in hades far away in the north; he makes its current run down to earth, and spreads its waters over the fields during the inundation in order to nourish his creatures. he rules the seasons, winter and summer; he constructed the far-off sky in order to display himself therein, and to look down upon his works below. from the moment that he reveals himself there, �cities, towns, tribes, routes, rivers--all eyes are lifted to him, for he is the disk of the day upon the earth.� * the sanctuary in which he is invoked contains only his divine shadow;** for he himself never leaves the firmament. * these extracts are taken from the hymns of tel el-amarna. ** in one of the tombs at tel el-amarna the king is depicted leading his mother tîi to the temple of atonû in order to see �the shadow of râ,� and it was thought with some reason that �the shadow of râ� was one of the names of the temple. i think that this designation applied also to the statue or symbol of the god; the _shadow_ of a god was attached to the statue in the same manner as the �double,� and transformed it into an animated body. his worship assumes none of the severe and gloomy forms of the theban cults: songs resound therein, and hymns accompanied by the harp or flute; bread, cakes, vegetables, fruits, and flowers are associated with his rites, and only on very rare occasions one of those bloody sacrifices in which the other gods delight. the king made himself supreme pontiff of atonu, and took precedence of the high priest. he himself celebrated the rites at the altar of the god, and we see him there standing erect, his hands outstretched, offering incense and invoking blessings from on high.* like the caliph hakim of a later age, he formed a school to propagate his new doctrines, and preached them before his courtiers: if they wished to please him, they had to accept his teaching, and show that they had profited by it. the renunciation of the traditional religious observances of the solar house involved also the rejection of such personal names as implied an ardent devotion to the banished god; in place of amenôthes, �he to whom amon is united,� the king assumed after a time the name of khûniatonû, �the glory of the disk,� and all the members of his family, as well as his adherents at court, whose appellations involved the name of the same god, soon followed his example. the proscription of amon extended to inscriptions, so that while his name or figure, wherever either could be got at, was chiselled out, the vulture, the emblem of mût, which expressed the idea of mother, was also avoided.** * the altar on which the king stands upright is one of those cubes of masonry of which naville discovered such a fine example in the temple of hâtshopsîtû at deîr el-baharî. ** we find, however, some instances where the draughtsman, either from custom or design, had used the vulture to express the word mailt, �the mother,� without troubling himself to think whether it answered to the name of the goddess. the king would have nothing about him to suggest to eye or ear the remembrance of the gods or doctrines of thebes. it would consequently have been fatal to them and their pretensions to the primacy of egypt if the reign of the young king had continued as long as might naturally have been expected. after having been for nearly two centuries almost the national head of africa, amon was degraded by a single blow to the secondary rank and languishing existence in which he had lived before the expulsion of the hyksôs. he had surrendered his sceptre as king of heaven and earth, not to any of his rivals who in old times had enjoyed the highest rank, but to an individual of a lower order, a sort of demigod, while he himself had thus become merely a local deity, confined to the corner of the said in which he had had his origin. there was not even left to him the peaceful possession of this restricted domain, for he was obliged to act as host to the enemy who had deposed him: the temple of atonû was erected at the door of his own sanctuary, and without leaving their courts the priests of amon could hear at the hours of worship the chants intoned by hundreds of heretics in the temple of the disk. amon�s priests saw, moreover, the royal gifts flowing into other treasuries, and the gold of syria and ethiopia no longer came into their hands. should they stifle their complaints, and bow to this insulting oppression, or should they raise a protest against the action which had condemned them to obscurity and a restricted existence? if they had given indications of resistance, they would have been obliged to submit to prompt repression, but we see no sign of this. the bulk of the people--clerical as well as lay--accepted the deposition with complacency, and the nobles hastened to offer their adherence to that which afterwards became the official confession of faith of the lord king.* the lord of thebes itself, a certain ramses, bowed his head to the new cult, and the bas-reliefs of his tomb display to our eyes the proofs of his apostasy: on the right-hand side amon is the only subject of his devotion, while on the left he declares himself an adherent of atonû. religious formularies, divine appellations, the representations of the costume, expression, and demeanour of the figures are at issue with each other in the scenes on the two sides of the door, and if we were to trust to appearances only, one would think that the two pictures belonged to two separate reigns, and were concerned with two individuals strangers to each other.** * the political character of this reaction against the growing power of the high priests and the town of amon was pointed out for the first time by masporo in 1878. ed. meyer and tiele blond with the political idea a monotheistic conception which does not seem to me to be fully justified, at least at present, by anything in the materials we possess. ** his tomb was discovered in 1878 by villiers-stuart. the rupture between the past and the present was so complete, in fact, that the sovereign was obliged to change, if not his face and expression, at least the mode in which they were represented. [illustration: 095.jpg the mask of kihûniatonû] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. petrie thinks that the monument discovered by him, which is of fine plaster, is a cast of the dead king, executed possibly to enable the sculptors to make _ushabtu_, �respondents,� for him. the name and personality of an egyptian were so closely allied that interference with one implied interference with the other. khûniatonû could not continue to be such as he was when amenôthes, and, in fact, their respective portraits differ from each other to that degree that there is some doubt at moments as to their identity. amenôthes is hardly to be distinguished from his father: he has the same regular and somewhat heavy features, the same idealised body and conventional shape as those which we find in the orthodox pharaohs. khûniatonû affects a long and narrow head, conical at the top, with a retreating forehead, a large aquiline and pointed nose, a small mouth, an enormous chin projecting in front, the whole being supported by a long, thin neck. his shoulders are narrow, with little display of muscle, but his breasts are so full, his abdomen so prominent, and his hips so large, that one would think they belonged to a woman. etiquette required the attendants upon the king, and those who aspired to his favour, to be portrayed in the bas-reliefs of temples or tombs in all points, both as regards face and demeanour, like the king himself. hence it is that the majority of his contemporaries, after having borne the likeness of amenôthes, came to adopt, without a break, that of khûniatonû. the scenes at tel el-amarna contain, therefore, nothing but angular profiles, pointed skulls, ample breasts, flowing figures, and swelling stomachs. the outline of these is one that lends itself readily to caricature, and the artists have exaggerated the various details with the intention, it may be, of rendering the representations grotesque. there was nothing ridiculous, however, in the king, their model, and several of his statues attribute to him a languid, almost valetudinarian grace, which is by no means lacking in dignity. [illustration: 096.jpg amenôthes iv., from the statuette in the louvre.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing by petrie. [illustration: 097.jpg page image] he was a good and affectionate man, and was passionately fond of his wife, nofrîtîti, associating her with himself in his sovereign acts. if he set out to visit the temple, she followed him in a chariot; if he was about to reward one of his faithful subjects, she stood beside him and helped to distribute the golden necklaces. she joined him in his prayers to the solar disk; she ministered to him in domestic life, when, having broken away from the worries of his public duties, he sought relaxation in his harem; and their union was so tender, that we find her on one occasion, at least, seated in a coaxing attitude on her husband�s knees--a unique instance of such affection among all the representations on the monuments of egypt. [illustration: 098.jpg khûniatonû and his wife rewarding one of the great officers of the court] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. they had six daughters, whom they brought up to live with them on terms of the closest intimacy: they accompanied their father and mother everywhere, and are exhibited as playing around the throne while their parents are engaged in performing the duties of their office. the gentleness and gaiety of the king were reflected in the life of his subjects: all the scenes which they have left us consist entirely of processions, cavalcades, banquets, and entertainments. khûniatonû was prodigal in the gifts of gold and the eulogies which he bestowed on marirî, the chief priest: the people dance around him while he is receiving from the king the just recompense of his activity. when hûîa, who came back from syria in the xiith year of the king�s reign, brought solemnly before him the tribute he had collected, the king, borne in his jolting palanquin on the shoulders of his officers, proceeded to the temple to return thanks to his god, to the accompaniment of chants and the waving of the great fans. when the divine father aï had married the governess of one of the king�s daughters, the whole city gave itself up to enjoyment, and wine flowed freely during the wedding feast. notwithstanding the frequent festivals, the king found time to watch jealously over the ordinary progress of government and foreign affairs. the architects, too, were not allowed to stand idle, and without taking into account the repairs of existing buildings, had plenty to do in constructing edifices in honour of atonû in the principal towns of the nile valley, at memphis, heliopolis, hermopolis, hermonthis, and in the fayûm. the provinces in ethiopia remained practically in the same condition as in the time of amenôthes iii.;* kûsh was pacified, notwithstanding the raids which the tribes of the desert were accustomed to make from time to time, only to receive on each occasion rigorous chastisement from the king�s viceroy. * the name and the figure of khûniatonû are met with on the gate of the temple of soleb, and he received in his xiith year the tributes of kûsh, as well as those of syria. the sudden degradation of amon had not brought about any coldness between the pharaoh and his princely allies in asia. the aged amenôthes had, towards the end of his reign, asked the hand of dushratta�s daughter in marriage, and the mitannian king, highly flattered by the request, saw his opportunity and took advantage of it in the interest of his treasury. he discussed the amount of the dowry, demanded a considerable sum of gold, and when the affair had been finally arranged to his satisfaction, he despatched the princess to the banks of the nile. on her arrival she found her affianced husband was dead, or, at all events, dying. amenôthes iv., however, stepped into his father�s place, and inherited his bride with his crown. [illustration: 100.jpg the door of a tomb at tel el-amarna] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. the new king�s relations with other foreign princes were no less friendly; the chief of the khâti (hittites) complimented him on his accession, the king of alasia wrote to him to express his earnest desire for a continuance of peace between the two states. burnaburiash of babylon had, it is true, hoped to obtain an egyptian princess in marriage for his son, and being disappointed, had endeavoured to pick a quarrel over the value of the presents which had been sent him, together with the notice of the accession of the new sovereign. but his kingdom lay too far away to make his ill-will of much consequence, and his complaints passed unheeded. in coele-syria and phoenicia the situation remained unchanged. the vassal cities were in a perpetual state of disturbance, though not more so than in the past. azîru, son of abdashirti, chief of the country of the amorites, had always, even during the lifetime of amenôthes iii., been the most turbulent of vassals. the smaller states of the orontes and of the coast about arvad had been laid waste by his repeated incursions and troubled by his intrigues. he had taken and pillaged twenty towns, among which were simyra, sini, irqata, and qodshû, and he was already threatening byblos, berytus, and sidon. it was useless to complain of him, for he always managed to exculpate himself to the royal messengers. khaî, dûdû, amenemaûpît had in turn all pronounced him innocent. pharaoh himself, after citing him to appear in egypt to give an explanation of his conduct, had allowed himself to be won over by his fair speaking, and had dismissed him uncondemned. other princes, who lacked his cleverness and power, tried to imitate him, and from north to south the whole of syria could only be compared to some great arena, in which fighting was continually carried on between one tribe or town and another--tyre against sidon, sidon against byblos, jerusalem against lachish. all of them appealed to khûniatonû, and endeavoured to enlist him on their side. their despatches arrived by scores, and the perusal of them at the present day would lead us to imagine that egypt had all but lost her supremacy. the egyptian ministers, however, were entirely unmoved by them, and continued to refuse material support to any of the numerous rivals, except in a few rare cases, where a too prolonged indifference would have provoked an open revolt in some part of the country. khûniatonû died young, about the xviiith year of his reign.* he was buried in the depths of a ravine in the mountain-side to the east of the town, and his tomb remained unknown till within the last few years. although one of his daughters who died before her father had been interred there, the place seems to have been entirely unprepared for the reception of the king�s body. the funeral chamber and the passages are scarcely even rough-hewn, and the reception halls show a mere commencement of decoration.** the other tombs of the locality are divided into two groups, separated by the ravine reserved for the burying-place of the royal house. the noble families possessed each their own tomb on the slopes of the hillside; the common people were laid to rest in pits lower down, almost on the level of the plain. the cutting and decoration of all these tombs had been entrusted to a company of contractors, who had executed them according to two or three stereotyped plans, without any variation, except in size. nearly all the walls are bare, or present but few inscriptions; those tombs only are completed whose occupants died before the pharaoh. * the length of khûniatonû�s reign was fixed by griffith with almost absolute certainty by means of the dates written in ink on the jars of wine and preserves found in the ruins of the palace. ** the tomb has been found, as i anticipated, in the ravine which separates the northern after the southern group of burying-places. the arabs opened it in 1891, and grébaut has since completely excavated it. the scenes depicted in it are connected with the death and funeral of the princess mâqîtatonû. [illustration: 103.jpg interior of a tomb at tel el-amarna] drawn by boudier, after a photograph by insinger. the façades of the tombs are cut in the rock, and contain, for the most part, but one door, the jambs of which are covered on both sides by several lines of hieroglyphs; and it is just possible to distinguish traces of the adoration of the radiant disk on the lintels, together with the cartouches containing the names of the king and god. the chapel is a large rectangular chamber, from one end of which opens the inclined passage leading to the coffin. the roof is sometimes supported by columns, having capitals decorated with designs of flowers or of geese hung from the abacus by their feet with their heads turned upwards. the religious teaching at tel el-amarna presents no difference in the main from that which prevailed in other parts of egypt.* the double of osiris was supposed to reside in the tomb, or else to take wing to heaven and embark with atonû, as elsewhere he would embark with eâ. the same funerary furniture is needed for the deceased as in other local cults--ornaments of vitreous paste, amulets, and _ushabtiu_, or �respondents,� to labour for the dead man in the fields of ialû. those of khûniatonû were, like those of amenôthes iii., actual statuettes in granite of admirable workmanship. the dead who reached the divine abode, retained the same rank in life that they had possessed here below, and in order to ensure the enjoyment of it, they related, or caused to be depicted in their tombs, the events of their earthly career. * the peculiar treatment of the two extremities of the sign for the sky, which surmounts the great scene on the tomb of ahmosis, shows that there had been no change in the ideas concerning the two horizons or the divine tree found in them: the aspirations for the soul of marirî, the high priest of atonû, or for that of the sculptor baûkû, are the same as those usually found, and the formula on the funerary stelae differs only in the name of the god from that on the ordinary stelae of the same kind. a citizen of khûîtatonû would naturally represent the manners and customs of his native town, and this would account for the local colouring of the scenes in which we see him taking part. they bear no resemblance to the traditional pictures of the buildings and gardens of thebes with which we are familiar; we have instead the palaces, colonnades, and pylons of the rising city, its courts planted with sycomores, its treasuries, and its storehouses. the sun�s disk hovers above and darts its prehensile rays over every object; its hands present the _crux ansata_ to the nostrils of the various members of the family, they touch caressingly the queen and her daughters, they handle the offerings of bread and cakes, they extend even into the government warehouses to pilfer or to bless. throughout all these scenes khûniatonû and the ladies of his harem seem to be ubiquitous: here he visits one of the officers, there he repairs to the temple for the dedication of its sanctuary. his chariot, followed at a little distance by that of the princesses, makes its way peaceably through the streets. the police of the city and the soldiers of the guard, whether egyptians or foreigners, run before him and clear a path among the crowd, the high priest marirî stands at the gate to receive him, and the ceremony is brought to a close by a distribution of gold necklaces or rings, while the populace dance with delight before the sovereign. meantime the slaves have cooked the repast, the dancers and musicians within their chambers have rehearsed for the evening�s festival, and the inmates of the house carry on animated dialogues during their meal. the style and the technique of these wall-paintings differ in no way from those in the necropolis of the preceding period, and there can be no doubt that the artists who decorated these monuments were trained in the schools of thebes. their drawing is often very refined, and there is great freedom in their composition; the perspective of some of the bas-reliefs almost comes up to our own, and the movement of animated crowds is indicated with perfect accuracy. it is, however, not safe to conclude from these examples that the artists who executed them would have developed egyptian art in a new direction, had not subsequent events caused a reaction against the worship of atonû and his followers. [illustration: 104.jpg profile of head of mummy (thebes tombs.)] [illustration: 106.jpg two of the daughters of khûhi atonû] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. although the tombs in which they worked differ from the generality of egyptian burying-places, their originality does not arise from any effort, either conscious or otherwise, to break through the ordinary routine of the art of the time; it is rather the result of the extraordinary appearance of the sovereign whose features they were called on to portray, and the novelty of several of the subjects which they had to treat. that artist among them who first gave concrete form to the ideas circulated by the priests of atonû, and drew the model cartoons, evidently possessed a master-hand, and was endowed with undeniable originality and power. no other egyptian draughtsman ever expressed a child�s grace as he did, and the portraits which he sketched of the daughters of khûniatonû playing undressed at their mother�s side, are examples of a reserved and delicate grace. but these models, when once composed and finished even to the smallest details, were entrusted for execution to workmen of mediocre powers, who were recruited not only from thebes, but from the neighbouring cities of hermopolis and siût. these estimable people, with a praiseworthy patience, traced bit by bit the cartoons confided to them, omitting or adding individuals or groups according to the extent of the wall-space they had to cover, or to the number of relatives and servants whom the proprietor of the tomb desired should share in his future happiness. the style of these draughtsmen betrays the influence of the second-rate schools in which they had learned their craft, and the clumsiness of their work would often repel us, were it not that the interest of the episodes portrayed redeems it in the eyes of the egyptologist. khûniatonû left no son to succeed him; two of his sons-in-law successively occupied the throne--sâakerî, who had married his eldest daughter marîtatonû, and tûtankhamon, the husband of ankhnasaton. the first had been associated in the sovereignty by his father-in-law;* he showed himself a zealous partisan of the �disk,� and he continued to reside in the new capital during the few years of his sole reign.** the second son-in-law was a son of amenôthes iii., probably by a concubine. he returned to the religion of amon, and his wife, abjuring the creed of her father, changed her name from ankhnasaton to that of ankhnasamon. her husband abandoned khûitatonû*** at the end of two or three years, and after his departure the town fell into decadence as quickly as it had arisen. the streets were unfrequented, the palaces and temples stood empty, the tombs remained unfinished and unoccupied, and its patron god returned to his former state, and was relegated to the third or fourth rank in the egyptian pantheon. * he and his wife are represented by the side of khûniatonû, with the protocol and the attributes of royalty. pétrie assigns to this double reign those minor objects on which the king�s prenomen ankhkhopîrûri is followed by the epithet beloved of uânirâ, which formed part of the name of khûniatonû. ** pétrie thinks, on the testimony of the lists of manetho, which give twelve years to akenkheres, daughter of horos, that sâakerî reigned twelve years, and only two or three years as sole monarch without his father-in-law. i think these two or three years a probable maximum length of his reign, whatever may be the value we should here assign to the lists of manetho. *** pétrie, judging from the number of minor objects which he has found in his excavations at tel el-amarna, believes that he can fix the length of tûtankhamon�s sojourn at khûîtatonû at six years, and that of his whole reign at nine years. the town struggled for a short time against its adverse fate, which was no doubt retarded owing to the various industries founded in it by khûniatonû, the manufactories of enamel and coloured glass requiring the presence of many workmen; but the latter emigrated ere long to thebes or the neighbouring city of hermopolis, and the �horizon of atonû� disappeared from the list of nomes, leaving of what might have been the capital of the egyptian empire, merely a mound of crumbling bricks with two or three fellahîn villages scattered on the eastern bank of the nile.* * pétrie thinks that the temples and palaces were systematically destroyed by harmhabî, and the ruins used by him in the buildings which he erected at different places in egypt. but there is no need for this theory: the beauty of the limestone which khûniatonû had used sufficiently accounts for the rapid disappearance of the deserted edifices. thebes, whose influence and population had meanwhile never lessened, resumed her supremacy undisturbed. if, out of respect for the past, tûtankhamon continued the decoration of the temple of atonû at karnak, he placed in every other locality the name and figure of amon; a little stucco spread over the parts which had been mutilated, enabled the outlines to be restored to their original purity, and the alteration was rendered invisible by a few coats of colour. tûtankhamon was succeeded by the divine father aï, whom khûniatonû had assigned as husband to one of his relatives named tîi, so called after the widow of amenôthes iii. aï laboured no less diligently than his predecessor to keep up the traditions which had been temporarily interrupted. he had been a faithful worshipper of the disk, and had given orders for the construction of two funerary chapels for himself in the mountain-side above tel el-amarna, the paintings in which indicate a complete adherence to the faith of the reigning king. but on becoming pharaoh, he was proportionally zealous in his submission to the gods of thebes, and in order to mark more fully his return to the ancient belief, he chose for his royal burying-place a site close to that in which rested the body of amenôthes iii.* * the first tomb seems to have been dug before his marriage, at the time when he had no definite ambitions; the second was prepared for him and his wife tîi. his sarcophagus, a large oblong of carved rose granite, still lies open and broken on the spot. [illustration: 111.jpg sarcophagus of the pharaoh aî] drawn by faucher-gudin, after the drawing of prisse d�avenues. figures of goddesses stand at the four angles and extend their winged arms along its sides, as if to embrace the mummy of the sovereign. tûtankhamon and aï were obeyed from one end of egypt to the other, from napata to the shores of the mediterranean. the peoples of syria raised no disturbances during their reigns, and paid their accustomed tribute regularly;* if their rule was short, it was at least happy. it would appear, however, that after their deaths, troubles arose in the state. the lists of manetho give two or three princes--râthôtis, khebres, and akherres--whose names are not found on the monuments.** it is possible that we ought not to regard them as historical personages, but merely as heroes of popular romance, of the same type as those introduced so freely into the history of the preceding dynasties by the chroniclers of the saite and greek periods. they were, perhaps, merely short-lived pretenders who were overthrown one by the other before either had succeeded in establishing himself on the seat of horus. be that as it may, the xviiith dynasty drew to its close amid strife and quarreling, without our being able to discover the cause of its overthrow, or the name of the last of its sovereigns.*** * tûtankhamon receives the tribute of the kûshites as well as that of the syrians; aï is represented at shataûi in nubia as accompanied by paûîrû, the prince of kûsh. ** wiedemann has collected six royal names which, with much hesitation, he places about this time. *** the list of kings who make up the xviiith dynasty can be established with certainty, with the exception of the order of the three last sovereigns who succeed khûniatonû. it is here given in its authentic form, as the monuments have permitted us to reconstruct it, and in its greek form as it is found in the lists of manetho: [illustration: 112.jpg table] manetho�s list, as we have it, is a very ill-made extract, wherein the official kings are mixed up with the legitimate queens, as well as, at least towards the end, with persons of doubtful authenticity. several kings, between khûniatonû and harmhabi, are sometimes added at the end of the list; some of these i think, belonged to previous dynasties, e.g. teti to the vith, râhotpû to the xviith; several are heroes of romance, as mernebphtah or merkhopirphtah, while the names of the others are either variants from the cartouche names of known princes, or else are nicknames, such as was sesû, sestûrî for ramses ii. dr. mahler believes that he can fix, within a few days, the date of the kings of whom the list is composed, from ahmosis i. to aî. i hold to the approximate date which i have given in vol. iv. p. 153 of this history, and i give the years 1600 to 1350 as the period of the dynasty, with a possible error of about fifty years, more or less. scarcely half a century had elapsed between the moment when the xviii�s dynasty reached the height of its power under amenôthes iii. and that of its downfall. it is impossible to introduce with impunity changes of any kind into the constitution or working of so complicated a machine as an empire founded on conquest. when the parts of the mechanism have been once put together and set in motion, and have become accustomed to work harmoniously at a proper pace, interference with it must not be attempted except to replace such parts as are broken or worn out, by others exactly like them. to make alterations while the machine is in motion, or to introduce new combinations, however ingenious, into any part of the original plan, might produce an accident or a breakage of the gearing when perhaps it would be least expected. when the devout khûniatonû exchanged one city and one god for another, he thought that he was merely transposing equivalents, and that the safety of the commonwealth was not concerned in the operation. whether it was amon or atonu who presided over the destinies of his people, or whether thebes or tel el-amarna were the centre of impulse, was, in his opinion, merely a question of internal arrangement which could not affect the economy of the whole. but events soon showed that he was mistaken in his calculations. it is probable that if, on the expulsion of the hyksôs, the earlier princes of the dynasty had attempted an alteration in the national religion, or had moved the capital to any other city they might select, the remainder of the kingdom would not have been affected by the change. but after several centuries of faithful adherence to amon in his city of thebes, the governing power would find it no easy matter to accomplish such a resolution. during three centuries the dynasty had become wedded to the city and to its patron deity, and the locality had become so closely associated with the dynasty, that any blow aimed at the god could not fail to destroy the dynasty with it; indeed, had the experiment of khûniatonû been prolonged beyond a few years, it might have entailed the ruin of the whole country. all who came into contact with egypt, or were under her rule, whether asiatics or africans, were quick to detect any change in her administration, and to remark a falling away from the traditional systems of the times of thûtmosis iii. and amenothes ii. the successors of the heretic king had the sense to perceive at once the first symptoms of disorder, and to refrain from persevering in his errors; but however quick they were to undo his work, they could not foresee its serious consequences. his immediate followers were powerless to maintain their dynasty, and their posterity had to make way for a family who had not incurred the hatred of amon, or rather that of his priests. if those who followed them were able by their tact and energy to set egypt on her feet again, they were at the same time unable to restore her former prosperity or her boundless confidence in herself. [illustration: 114.jpg tailpiece] chapter ii--the reaction against egypt _the xith dynasty: harmhabî--the hittite empire in syria and in asia minor--seti i. and ramses ii.--the people of the sea: mînephtah and the israelite exodus._ _the birth and antecedents of harmhabî, his youth, his enthronement--the final triumph of amon and his priests--harmhabî infuses order into the government: his wars against the ethiopians and asiatics--the khâti, their civilization, religion; their political and military constitution; the extension of their empire towards the north--the countries and populations of asia minor; commercial routes between the euphrates and the ægean sea--the treaty concluded between harmhabî and sapalulu._ _ramses i. and the uncertainties as to his origin--seti i. and the campaign against syria in the 1st year of his reign; the re-establishment of the egyptian empire--working of the gold-mines at etaï--the monuments constructed by seti i. in nubia, at karnak, luxor, and abydos--the valley of the kings and tomb of seti i. at thebes._ _ramses ii., his infancy, his association in the government, his début in ethiopia: he builds a residence in the delta--his campaign against the khâti in the 5th year of his reign--the talcing of qodshu, the victory of ramses ii. and the truce established with khâtusaru: the poem of pentaûîrît--his treaty with the khâti in the 21st year of his reign: the balance of power in syria: the marriage of ramses ii. with a hittite princess--public works: the speos at abu-simbel; luxor, karnak, the eamesseum, the monuments in the delta--the regency of khamoîsît and mînephtah, the legend of sesostris, the coffin and mummy of ramses ii._ _minephtah--the kingdom of libya, the people of the sea--the first invasion of libya: the egyptian victory at piriû; the triumph of minephtah--seti ii., amenmeses, siphtah-minephtah--the foreign captives in egypt; the exodus of the hebrews and their march to sinai--an egyptian romance of the exodus: amenophis, son of pa-apis._ [illustration: 117.jpg page image] chapter ii--the reaction against egypt _the xixth dynasty: harmhabî--the hittite empire in syria and in asia minor--seti i. and ramses ii.--the people of the sea: minephtah and the israelite exodus._ while none of these ephemeral pharaohs left behind them a, either legitimate or illegitimate, son there was no lack of princesses, any of which, having on her accession to the throne to choose a consort after her own heart, might thus become the founder of a new dynasty. by such a chance alliance harmhabî, who was himself descended from thûtmosis iii., was raised to the kingly office.* his mother, mûtnozmît, was of the royal line, and one of the most beautiful statues in the gîzeh museum probably represents her. the body is mutilated, but the head is charming in its intelligent and animated expression, in its full eyes and somewhat large, but finely modelled, mouth. the material of the statue is a finegrained limestone, and its milky whiteness tends to soften the malign character of her look and smile. it is possible that mûtnozmît was the daughter of amenôthes iii. by his marriage with one of his sisters: it was from her, at any rate, and not from his great-grandfather, that harmhabî derived his indisputable claims to royalty.** * a fragment of an inscription at karnak calls thûtmosis iii. �the father of his fathers.� champollion called him hornemnob, rosellini, hôr-hemheb, hôr-em-hbai, and both identified him with the hôros of manetho, hence the custom among egyptologists for a long time to designate him by the name horus. dévéria was the first to show that the name corresponded with the armais of the lists of manetho, and, in fact, armais is the greek transcription of the group harmhabî in the bilingual texts of the ptolemaic period. ** mûtnozmît was at first considered the daughter and successor of harmhabî, or his wife. birch showed that the monuments did not confirm these hypotheses, and he was inclined to think that she was harmhabî�s mother. as far as i can see for the present, it is the only solution which agrees with the evidence on the principal monument which has made known her existence. he was born, probably, in the last years of amenôthes, when tîi was the exclusive favourite of the sovereign; but it was alleged later on, when harmhabî had emerged from obscurity, that amon, destining him for the throne, had condescended to become his father by mûtnozmît--a customary procedure with the god when his race on earth threatened to become debased.* it was he who had rocked the newly born infant to sleep, and, while harsiesis was strengthening his limbs with protective amulets, had spread over the child�s skin the freshness and brilliance which are the peculiar privilege of the immortals. while still in the nursery, the great and the insignificant alike prostrated themselves before harmhabî, making him liberal offerings. every one recognised in him, even when still a lad and incapable of reflection, the carriage and complexion of a god, and horus of cynopolis was accustomed to follow his steps, knowing that the time of his advancement was near. after having called the attention of the egyptians to harmhabî, amon was anxious, in fact, to hasten the coming of the day when he might confer upon him supreme rank, and for this purpose inclined the heart of the reigning pharaoh towards him. aï proclaimed him his heir over the whole land.** * all that we know of the youth of harmhabî is contained in the texts on a group preserved in the turin museum, and pointed out by champollion, translated and published subsequently by birch and by brugsch. the first lines of the inscription seem to me to contain an account of the union of amon with the queen, analogous to those at deîr el-baharî treating of the birth of hâtshopsîtû, and to those at luxor bearing upon amenôthes iii. (cf. vol. iv. pp. 342, 343; and p. 51 of the present volume), and to prove for certain that harmhabî�s mother was a princess of the royal line by right. ** the king is not named in the inscription. it cannot have been amenôthes iv., for an individual of the importance of harmhabî, living alongside this king, would at least have had a tomb begun for him at. tel el-amarna. we may hesitate between aï and tûtankhamon; but the inscription seems to say definitely that harmhabî succeeded directly to the king under whom he had held important offices for many years, and this compels us to fix upon aï, who, as we have said at p. 108, et seq., of the present volume, was, to all appearances, the last of the so-called heretical sovereigns. he never gave cause for any dissatisfaction when called to court, and when he was asked questions by the monarch he replied always in fit terms, in such words as were calculated to produce serenity, and thus gained for himself a reputation as the incarnation of wisdom, all his plans and intentions appearing to have been conceived by thot the ibis himself. for many years he held a place of confidence with the sovereign. the nobles, from the moment he appeared at the gate of the palace, bowed their backs before him; the barbaric chiefs from the north or south stretched out their arms as soon as they approached him, and gave him the adoration they would bestow upon a god. his favourite residence was memphis, his preference for it arising from his having possibly been born there, or from its having been assigned to him for his abode. here he constructed for himself a magnificent tomb, the bas-reliefs of which exhibit him as already king, with the sceptre in his hand and the uraaus on his brow, while the adjoining cartouche does not as yet contain his name.* * this part of the account is based upon, a study of a certain number of texts and representations all coming from harmhabî�s tomb at saqqârah, and now scattered among the various museums--at gîzeh, leyden, london, and alexandria. birch was the first to assign those monuments to the pharaoh harmhabî, supposing at the same time that he had been dethroned by ramses i., and had lived at memphis in an intermediate position between that of a prince and that of a private individual; this opinion was adopted by ed. meyer, rejected by wiedemann and by myself. after full examination, i think the harmhabî of the tomb at saqqârah and the pharaoh harmhabî are one and the same person; harmhabî, sufficiently high placed to warrant his wearing the uraius, but not high enough to have his name inscribed in a cartouche, must have had his tomb constructed at saqqârah, as aï and possibly ramses i. had theirs built for them at tel el-amarna. he was the mighty of the mighty, the great among the great, the general of generals, the messenger who ran to convey orders to the people of asia and ethiopia, the indispensable companion in council or on the field of battle,* at the time when horus of cynopolis resolved to seat him upon his eternal throne. aï no longer occupied it. horus took harmhabî with him to thebes, escorted him thither amid expressions of general joy, and led him to amon in order that the god might bestow upon him the right to reign. the reception took place in the temple of luxor, which served as a kind of private chapel for the descendants of amenôthes. amon rejoiced to see harmhabî, the heir of the two worlds; he took him with him to the royal palace, introduced him into the apartments of his august daughter, mûtnozmît; then, after she had recognised her child and had pressed him to her bosom, all the gods broke out into acclamations, and their cries ascended up to heaven.** * the fragments of the tomb preserved at leyden show him leading to the pharaoh asiatics and ethiopians, burthened with tribute. the expressions and titles given above are borrowed from the fragments at gîzeh. ** owing to a gap, the text cannot be accurately translated at this point. the reading can be made out that amon �betook himself to the palace, placing the prince before him, as far as the sanctuary of his (amon�s) daughter, the very august...; she poured water on his hands, she embraced the beauties (of the prince), she placed herself before him.� it will be seen that the name of the daughter of amon is wanting, and birch thought that a terrestrial princess whom harmhabî had married was in question, miifcnozmît, according to brugsch. if the reference is not to a goddess, who along with amon took part in the ceremonies, but to mûtnozmît, we must come to the conclusion that she, as heir and queen by birth, must have ceded her rights by some ritual to her son before he could be crowned. �behold, amon arrives with his son before him, at the palace, in order to put upon his head the diadem, and to prolong the length of his life! we install him, therefore, in his office, we give to him the insignia of eâ, we pray amon for him whom he has brought as our protector: may he as king have the festivals of eâ and the years of horus; may he accomplish his good pleasure in thebes, in heliopolis, in memphis, and may he add to the veneration with which these cities are invested.� and they immediately decided that the new pharaoh should be called horus-sturdy-bull, mighty in wise projects, lord of the vulture and of the very marvellous urseus in thebes, the conquering horus who takes pleasure in the truth, and who maintains the two lands, the lord of the south and north, sozir khopîrûrî chosen of eâ, the offspring of the sun, harmhabî mîamûn, giver of life. the _cortege_ came afterwards to the palace, the king walking before amon: there the god embraced his son, placed the diadems upon his head, delivered to him the rule of the whole world, over foreign populations as well as those of egypt, inasmuch as he possessed this power as the sovereign of the universe. this is the customary subject of the records of enthronement. pharaoh is the son of a god, chosen by his father, from among all those who might have a claim to it, to occupy for a time the throne of horus; and as he became king only by a divine decree, he had publicly to express, at the moment of his elevation, his debt of gratitude to, and his boundless respect for, the deity, who had made him what he was. in this case, however, the protocol embodied something more than the traditional formality, and its hackneyed phrases borrowed a special meaning from the circumstances of the moment. amon, who had been insulted and proscribed by khûniatonû, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of the immediate successors of his enemy. [illustration: 123.jpg the first pylon of harmhabî at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by beato. they had restored to him his privileges and his worship, they had become reconciled to him, and avowed themselves his faithful ones, but all this was as much an act of political necessity as a matter of religion: they still continued to tolerate, if not to favour, the rival doctrinal system, and the temple of the hateful disk still dishonoured by its vicinity the sanctuary of karnak. harmhabî, on the other hand, was devoted to amon, who had moulded him in embryo, and had trained him from his birth to worship none but him. harmhabî�s triumph marked the end of the evil days, and inaugurated a new era, in which amon saw himself again master of thebes and of the world. immediately after his enthronement harmhabî rivalled the first amen-ôthes in his zeal for the interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of atonû and the building before which they stood; then, that no trace of them might remain, he worked up the stones into the masonry of two pylons, which he set up upon the site, to the south of the gates of thûtmosis iii. they remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in the year 27 b.c. a great earthquake brought them abruptly to light. we find everywhere among the ruins, at the foot of the dislocated gates, or at the bases of the headless colossal figures, heaps of blocks detached from the structure, on which can be made out remnants of prayers addressed to the disk, scenes of worship, and cartouches of amenôfches iv., aï, and tûtankhamon. the work begun by harmhabî at thebes was continued with unabated zeal through the length of the whole river-valley. �he restored the sanctuaries from the marshes of athû even to nubia; he repaired their sculptures so that they were better than before, not to speak of the fine things he did in them, rejoicing the eyes of râ. that which he had found injured he put into its original condition, erecting a hundred statues, carefully formed of valuable stone, for every one which was lacking. he inspected the ruined towns of the gods in the land, and made them such as they had been in the time of the first ennead, and he allotted to them estates and offerings for every day, as well as a set of sacred vessels entirely of gold and silver; he settled priests in them, bookmen, carefully chosen soldiers, and assigned to them fields, cattle, all the necessary material to make prayers to râ every morning.� these measures were inspired by consideration for the ancient deities; but he added to them others, which tended to secure the welfare of the people and the stability of the government. up to this time the officials and the egyptian soldiers had displayed a tendency to oppress the fellahîn, without taking into consideration the injury to the treasury occasioned by their rapacity. constant supervision was the only means of restraining them, for even the best-served pharaohs, thûtmosis, and amenôthes iii. themselves, were obliged to have frequent recourse to the rigour of the law to keep the scandalous depredations of the officials within bounds.* * harmhabî refers to the edicts of thûtmosis iii. the religious disputes of the preceding years, in enfeebling the authority of the central power, had given a free hand to these oppressors. the scribes and tax-collectors were accustomed to exact contributions for the public service from the ships, whether laden or not, of those who were in a small way of business, and once they had laid their hands upon them, they did not readily let them go. the poor fellow falling into their clutches lost his cargo, and he was at his wits� end to know how to deliver at the royal storehouses the various wares with which he calculated to pay his taxes. no sooner had the court arrived at some place than the servants scoured the neighbourhood, confiscating the land produce, and seizing upon slaves, under pretence that they were acting for the king, while they had only their personal ends in view. soldiers appropriated all the hides of animals with the object, doubtless, of making from them leather jackets and helmets, or of duplicating their shields, with the result that when the treasury made its claim for leather, none was to be found. it was hardly possible, moreover, to bring the culprits to justice, for the chief men of the towns and villages, the prophets, and all those who ought to have looked after the interests of the taxpayer, took money from the criminals for protecting them from justice, and compelled the innocent victims also to purchase their protection. harmhabî, who was continually looking for opportunities to put down injustice and to punish deceit, at length decided to pro-mulgate a very severe edict against the magistrates and the double-dealing officials: any of them who was found to have neglected his duty was to have his nose cut off, and was to be sent into perpetual exile to zalu, on the eastern frontier. his commands, faithfully carried out, soon produced a salutary effect, and as he would on no account relax the severity of the sentence, exactions were no longer heard of, to the advantage of the revenue of the state. on the last day of each month the gates of his palace were open to every one. [illustration: 127.jpg amenothes iv. from a fragment used again by harmhabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by prisse d�avennes. any one on giving his name to the guard could enter the court of honour, where he would find food in abundance to satisfy his hunger while he was awaiting an audience. the king all the while was seated in the sight of all at the tribune, whence he would throw among his faithful friends necklaces and bracelets of gold: he inquired into complaints one after another, heard every case, announced his judgments in brief words, and dismissed his subjects, who went away proud and happy at having had their affairs dealt with by the sovereign himself.* * all these details are taken from a stele discovered in 1882. the text is so mutilated that it is impossible to give a literal rendering of it in all its parts, but the sense is sufficiently clear to warrant our rilling up the whole with considerable certainty. the portraits of harmhabî which have come down to us give us the impression of a character at once energetic and agreeable. the most beautiful of these is little more than a fragment broken off a black granite statue. its mournful expression is not pleasing to the spectator, and at the first view alienates his sympathy. the face, which is still youthful, breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which is somewhat rare among the pharaohs of the best period: the thin and straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour, and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the false beard depending from it. every detail is treated with such freedom that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work upon, rather than a rock almost hard enough to defy the chisel; the command over it is so complete that the difficulty of the work is forgotten in the perfection of the result. the dreamy expression of his face, however, did not prevent harmhabî from displaying beyond egypt, as within it, singular activity. [illustration: 128.jpg harmhabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a autograph by emil brugsch-bey. although egypt had never given up its claims to dominion over the whole river-valley, as far as the plains of sennar, yet since the time of amenôthes iii. no sovereign had condescended, it would i appear, to conduct in person the expeditions directed against the tribes of! the upper nile. harmhabî was anxious to revive the custom which imposed upon the pharaohs the obligation to make their first essay in arms in ethiopia, as horus, son of isis, had done of yore, and he seized the pretext of the occurrence of certain raids there to lead a body of troops himself into the heart of the negro country. [illustration: 129.jpg the vaulted passage of the rock-tomb at gebel silsileh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. he had just ordered at this time the construction of the two southern pylons at karnak, and there was great activity in the quarries of silsileh. a commemorative chapel also was in course of excavation here in the sandstone rock, and he had dedicated it to his father, amon-ba of thebes, coupling with him the local divinities, hapî the nile, and sobkû the patron of ombos. the sanctuary is excavated somewhat deeply into the hillside, and the dark rooms within it are decorated with the usual scenes of worship, but the vaulted approach to them displays upon its western wall the victory of the king. we see here a figure receiving from amon the assurance of a long and happy life, and another letting fly his arrows at a host of fleeing enemies; ethiopians raise their heads to him in suppliant gesture; soldiers march past with their captives; above one of the doors we see twelve military leaders marching and carrying the king aloft upon their shoulders, while a group of priests and nobles salute him, offering incense.* * the significance of the monument was pointed out first by champollion. the series of races conquered was represented at karnak on the internal face of one of the pylons built by harmhabi; it appears to have been �usurped� by ramses ii. at this period egyptian ships were ploughing the red sea, and their captains were renewing official relations with pûanît. somali chiefs were paying visits to the palace, as in the time of thûtmosis iii. the wars of amon had, in fact, begun again. the god, having suffered neglect for half a century, had a greater need than ever of gold and silver to fill his coffers; he required masons for his buildings, slaves and cattle for his farms, perfumed essences and incense for his daily rites. his resources had gradually become exhausted, and his treasury would soon be empty if he did not employ the usual means to replenish it. he incited harmhabi to proceed against the countries from which, in olden times he had enriched himself--to the south in the first place, and then, having decreed victory there, and having naturally taken for himself the greater part of the spoils, he turned his attention to asia. [illustration: 131.jpg the triumph op harmhabî in the sanctuary of gebel silsileh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by daniel heron. the black spots are due to the torches of the fellahîn of the neighbourhood who have visited the rock tomb in bygone years. in the latter campaign the egyptian troops took once more the route through coele-syria, and if the expedition experienced here more difficulties than on the banks of the upper nile, it was, nevertheless, brought to an equally triumphant conclusion. those of their adversaries who had offered an obstinate resistance were transported into other lands, and the rebel cities were either razed to the ground or given to the flames: the inhabitants having taken refuge in the mountains, where they were in danger of perishing from hunger, made supplications for peace, which was granted to them on the usual conditions of doing homage and paying tribute.* * these details are taken from the fragment of an inscription now in the museum at vienna; bergmann, and also erman, think that we have in this text the indication of an immigration into egypt of a tribe of the monâtiu. we do not exactly know how far he penetrated into the country; the list of the towns and nations over which he boasts of having triumphed contains, along with names unknown to us, some already famous or soon to become so--arvad, pibukhu, the khâti, and possibly alasia. the haui-nibu themselves must have felt the effects of the campaign, for several of their chiefs associated, doubtless, with the phoenicians, presented themselves before the pharaoh at thebes. egypt was maintaining, therefore, its ascendency, or at least appearing to maintain it in those regions where the kings of the xviiith dynasty had ruled after the campaigns of thûtmosis i., thûtmosis iii., and amenothes ii. its influence, nevertheless, was not so undisputed as in former days; not that the egyptian soldiers were less valiant, but owing to the fact that another power had risen up alongside them whose armies were strong enough to encounter them on the field of battle and to obtain a victory over them. beyond naharaim, in the deep recesses of the amanus and taurus, there had lived, for no one knows how many centuries, the rude and warlike tribes of the khâti, related not so, much to the semites of the syrian plain as to the populations of doubtful race and language who occupied the upper basins of the halys and euphrates.* the chaldæan conquest had barely touched them; the egyptian campaign had not more effect, and thûtmosis iii. himself, after having crossed their frontiers and sacked several of their towns, made no serious pretence to reckon them among his subjects. their chiefs were accustomed, like their neighbours, to use, for correspondence with other countries, the cuneiform mode of writing; they had among them, therefore, for this purpose, a host of scribes, interpreters, and official registrars of events, such as we find to have accompanied the sovereigns of assyria and babylon.** these chiefs were accustomed to send from time to time a present to the pharaoh, which the latter was pleased to regard as a tribute,*** or they would offer, perhaps, one of their daughters in marriage to the king at thebes, and after the marriage show themselves anxious to maintain good faith with their son-in-law. * halévy asserts that the khâti were semites, and bases his assertion on materials of the assyrian period. thés khâti, absorbed in syria by the semites, with whom they were blended, appear to have been by origin a non-semitic people. ** a letter from the king of the khâti to the pharaoh amenothes iv. is written in cuneiform writing and in a semitic language. it has been thought that other documents, drawn up in a non-semitic language and coming from mitanni and arzapi, contain a dialect of the hittite speech or that language itself. a �writer of books,� attached to the person of the hittite king khatusaru, is named amongst the dead found on the field of battle at qodshû. *** it is thus perhaps we must understand the mention of tribute from the khâti in the _annals of thûtmosis iii._, 1. 26, in the year xxxiii., also in the year xl. one of the tel el-amarna letters refers to presents of this kind, which the king of khâti addresses to amenôthes iv. to celebrate his enthronement, and to ask him to maintain with himself the traditional good relations of their two families. they had, moreover, commercial relations with egypt, and furnished it with cattle, chariots, and those splendid cappadocian horses whose breed was celebrated down to the greek period.* they were already, indeed, people of consideration; their territory was so extensive that the contemporaries of thutmosis iii. called them the greater khâti; and the epithet �vile,� which the chancellors of the pharaohs added to their name, only shows by its virulence the impression which they had produced upon the mind of their adversaries.** * the horses of the khâti were called _abarî_, strong, vigorous, as also their bulls. the king of alasia, while offering to amenôthes iii. a profitable speculation, advises him to have nothing to do with the king of the khâti or with the king of sangar, and thus furnishes proof that the egyptians held constant commercial relations with the khâti. ** m. de rougé suggested that khâti �the little� was the name of the hittites of hebron. the expression, �khâti the great,� has been compared with that of khanirabbat, �khani the great,� which in the assyrian texts would seem to designate a part of cappadocia, in which the province of miliddi occurs, and the identification of the two has found an ardent defender in w. max millier. until further light is thrown upon it, the most probable reading of the word is not khani-_ra_bat, but khani-_gal_bat. the name khani-galbat is possibly preserved in julbat, which the arab geographers applied in the middle ages to a province situated in lesser armenia. their type of face distinguishes them clearly from the nations conterminous with them on the south. the egyptian draughtsmen represented them as squat and short in stature, though vigorous, strong-limbed, and with broad and full shoulders in youth, but as inclined frequently to obesity in old age. the head is long and heavy, the forehead flattened, the chin moderate in size, the nose prominent, the eyebrows and cheeks projecting, the eyes small, oblique, and deep-set, the mouth fleshy, and usually framed in by two deep wrinkles; the flesh colour is a yellowish or reddish white, but clearer than that of the phoenicians or the amurru. [illustration: 135.jpg three heads of hittite soldiers] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. their ordinary costume consisted, sometimes of a shirt with short sleeves, sometimes of a sort of loin-cloth, more or less ample according to the rank of the individual wearing it, and bound round the waist by a belt. to these they added a scanty mantle, red or blue, fringed like that of the chaldæans, which they passed over the left shoulder and brought back under the right, so as to leave the latter exposed. they wore shoes with thick soles, turning up distinctly at the toes,* and they encased their hands in gloves, reaching halfway up the arm. * this characteristic is found on the majority of the monuments which the peoples of asia minor have left to us, and it is one of the most striking indications of the northern origin of the khâti. the egyptian artists and modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority of them have represented the khâti without shoes. they shaved off both moustache and beard, but gave free growth to their hair, which they divided into two or three locks, and allowed to fall upon their backs and breasts. the king�s head-dress, which was distinctive of royalty, was a tall pointed hat, resembling to some extent the white crown of the pharaohs. the dress of the people, taken all together, was of better and thicker material than that of the syrians or egyptians. the mountains and elevated plateaus which they inhabited were subject to extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold. if the summer burnt up everything, the winter reigned here with an extreme rigour, and dragged on for months: clothing and footgear had to be seen to, if the snow and the icy winds of december were to be resisted. the character of their towns, and the domestic life of their nobles and the common people, can only be guessed at. some, at least, of the peasants must have sheltered themselves in villages half underground, similar to those which are still to be found in this region. the town-folk and the nobles had adopted for the most part the chaldæan or egyptian manners and customs in use among the semites of syria. as to their religion, they reverenced a number of secondary deities who had their abode in the tempest, in the clouds, the sea, the rivers, the springs, the mountains, and the forests. above this crowd there were several sovereign divinities of the thunder or the air, sun-gods and moon-gods, of which the chief was called khâti, and was considered to be the father of the nation. they ascribed to all their deities a warlike and savage character. the egyptians pictured some of them as a kind of râ,* others as representing sit, or rather sûtkhû, that patron of the hyksôs which was identified by them with sit: every town had its tutelary heroes, of whom they were accustomed to speak as if of its sûtkhû--sûtkhû of paliqa, sûtkhû of khissapa, sûtkhû of sarsu, sûtkhû of salpina. the goddesses in their eyes also became astartés, and this one fact suggests that these deities were, like their phoenician and canaanite sisters, of a double nature--in one aspect chaste, fierce, and warlike, and in another lascivious and pacific. one god was called mauru, another targu, others qaui and khepa.** * the cilician inscriptions of the græco-roman period reveal the existence in this region of a god, rho, rhos. did this god exist among the khâti, and did the similarity of the pronunciation of it to that of the god râ suggest to the egyptians the existence of a similar god among these people, or did they simply translate into their language the name of the hittite god representing the sun? ** the names mauru and qaui are deduced from the forms maurusaru and qauisaru, which were borne by the khâti: qaui was probably the eponymous hero of the qui people, as khâti was of the khâti. tarku and tisubu appear to me to be contained in the names targanunasa, targazatas, and tartisubu; tisubu is probably the têssupas mentioned in the letter from dushratta written in mitannian, and identical with the tushupu of another letter from the same king, and in a despatch from tarkondaraush. targu, targa, targanu, resemble the god tarkhu, which is known to us from the proper names of these regions preserved in attributes covered by each of these divine names, and as to the forms with which they were invested. [illustration: 138.jpg a hittite king.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a picture in lepsius. khatusaru, king of the khâti, who was for thirty years a contemporary of ramses ii. tishubu, the rammân of the assyrians, was doubtless lord of the tempest and of the atmosphere; shausbe answered to shala and to ishtar the queen of love;* but we are frequently in ignorance as to the assyrian and greek inscriptions. kheba, khepa, khîpa, is said to be a denomination of rammân; we find it in the names of the princesses tadu-khîpa, gilu-khîpa, puu-khîpa. the majority of them, both male and female, were of gigantic stature, and were arrayed in the vesture of earthly kings and queens: they brandished their arms, displayed the insignia of their authority, such as a flower or bunch of grapes, and while receiving the offerings of the people were seated on a chair before an altar, or stood each on the animal representing him--such as a lion, a stag, or wild goat. the temples of their towns have disappeared, but they could never have been, it would seem, either-large or magnificent: the favourite places of worship were the tops of mountains, in the vicinity of springs, or the depths of mysterious grottoes, where the deity revealed himself to his priests, and received the faithful at the solemn festivals celebrated several times a year.* * the association of tushupu, tessupas, tisubu, with rammânu is made out from an assyrian tablet published by bezold: it was reserved for say ce and jensen to determine the nature of the god. shausbe has been identified with ishtar or shala by jensen. we know as little about their political organisation as about their religion.* we may believe, however, that it was feudal in character, and that every clan had its hereditary chief and its proper gods: the clans collectively rendered obedience to a common king, whose effective authority depended upon his character and age.** * the religious cities and the festivals of the greek epoch are described by strabo; these festivals were very ancient, and their institution, if not the method of celebrating them, may go back to the time of the hittite empire. ** the description of the battle of qodshû in the time of ramses ii. shows us the king of the khâti surrounded by his vassals. the evidence of the existence of a similar feudal organisation from the time of the xviiith dynasty is furnished by a letter of dushratta, king of mitanni, where he relates to amenôthes iv. the revolt of his brother artassumara, and speaks of the help which one of the neighbouring chiefs, pirkhi, and all the khâti had given to the rebel. the various contingents which the sovereign could collect together and lead would, if he were an incapable general, be of little avail against the well-officered and veteran troops of egypt. still they were not to be despised, and contained the elements of an excellent army, superior both in quality and quantity to any which syria had ever been able to put into the field. the infantry consisted of a limited number of archers or slingers. they had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented with a tuft. the bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in a point. [illustration: 140.jpg a hittite chariot with its three occupants] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. their mode of attack was in close phalanxes, whose shock must have been hard to bear, for the soldiers forming them were in part at least recruited from among the strong and hardy mountaineers of the taurus. the chariotry comprised the nobles and the _élite_ of the army, but it was differently constituted from that of the egyptians, and employed other tactics. the hittite chariots were heavier, and the framework, instead of being a mere skeleton, was pannelled on the sides, the contour at the top being sometimes quite square, at other times rudely curved. it was bound together in the front by two disks of metal, and strengthened by strips of copper or bronze, which were sometimes plated with silver or gold. there were no quiver-cases as in egyptian chariots, for the hittite charioteers rarely resorted to the bow and arrow. the occupants of a chariot were three in number--the driver; the shield-bearer, whose office it was to protect his companions by means of a shield, sometimes of a round form, with a segment taken out on each side, and sometimes square; and finally, the warrior, with his sword and lance. the hittite princes whom fortune had brought into relations with thûtmosîs iii. and amenôthes ii. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent forces around them. it was owing probably to the feebleness of their character or to the turbulence of their barons that we must ascribe the poor part they played in the revolutions of the eastern world at this time. the establishment of a strong military power on their southern frontier was certain, moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way against them to their own profit. pharaoh�s generals were accustomed to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at thebes among those of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little effect in restraining the hittites. they continued, in spite of them, to march southward, and the letters from the egyptian governors record their progress year after year. they had a hand in all the plots which were being hatched among the syrians, and all the disaffected who wished to be free from foreign oppression--such as abdashirti and his son azîru--addressed themselves to them for help in the way of chariots and men.* * azîru defends himself in one of his letters against the accusation of having received four messengers from the king of the khâti, while he refused to receive those from egypt. the complicity of aziru with the khâti is denounced in an appeal from the inhabitants of tunipa. in a mutilated letter, an unknown person calls attention to the negotiations which a petty-syrian prince had entered into with the king of the khâti. even inthe time of amenôfches iii. they had endeavoured to reap profit from the discords of mitanni, and had asserted their supremacy over it. dushratta, however, was able to defeat one of their chiefs. repulsed on this side, they fell back upon that part of naharaim lying between the euphrates and orontes, and made themselves masters of one town after another in spite of the despairing appeals of the conquered to the theban king. from the accession of khûniatonû, they set to work to annex the countries of nukhassi, nîi, tunipa, and zinzauru: they looked with covetous eyes upon phoenicia, and were already menacing coele-syria. the religious confusion in egypt under tûtankhamon and aî left them a free field for their ambitions, and when harmhabî ventured to cross to the east of the isthmus, he found them definitely installed in the region stretching from the mediterranean and the lebanon to the euphrates. their then reigning prince, sapalulu, appeared to have been the founder of a new dynasty: he united the forces of the country in a solid body, and was within a little of making a single state out of all northern syria.* * sapalulu has the same name as that wo meet with later on in the country of patin, in the time of salmanasar iii., viz. sapalulme. it is known to us only from a treaty with the khâti, which makes him coeval with ramses i.: it was with him probably that harmhabî had to deal in his syrian campaigns. the limit of his empire towards the south is gathered in a measure from what we know of the wars of seti i. with the khâti. all naharaim had submitted to him: zahi, alasia, and the amurru had passed under his government from that of the pharaohs; carchemish, tunipa, nîi, hamath, figured among his royal cities, and qodshû was the defence of his southern frontier. his progress towards the east was not less considerable. mitanni, arzapi, and the principalities of the euphrates as far as the balikh, possibly even to the khabur,* paid him homage: beyond this, assyria and chaldæa barred his way. here, as on his other frontiers, fortune brought him face to face with the most formidable powers of the asiatic world. * the text of the poem of pentaûîrît mentions, among the countries confederate with the khâti, all naharaim; that is to say, the country on either side of the euphrates, embracing mitanni and the principalities named in the amarna correspondence, and in addition some provinces whose sites have not yet been discovered, but which may be placed without much risk of error to the north of the taurus. the latter prince was obliged to capture qodshû, and to conquer the people of the lebanon. had he sufficient forces at his disposal to triumph over them, or only enough to hold his ground? both hypotheses could have been answered in the affirmative if each one of these great powers, confiding in its own resources, had attacked him separately. the amorites, the people of zahi, alasia, and naharaim, together with recruits from hittite tribes, would then have put him in a position to resist, and even to carry off victory with a high hand in the final struggle. but an alliance between assyria or babylon and thebes was always possible. there had been such things before, in the time of thut-mosis iv. and in that of amenôthes iii., but they were lukewarm agreements, and their effect was not much to boast of, for the two parties to the covenant had then no common enemy to deal with, and their mutual interests were not, therefore, bound up with their united action. the circumstances were very different now. the rapid growth of a nascent kingdom, the restless spirit of its people, its trespasses on domains in which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,--did not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an offensive and defensive treaty? if they decided to act in concert, how could sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources to withstand the double assault? the hittites, as we know them more especially from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, might be regarded as the lords only of northern syria, and their power be measured merely by the extent of territory which they occupied to the south of the taurus and on the two banks of the middle euphrates. but this does not by any means represent the real facts. this was but the half of their empire; the rest extended to the westward and northward, beyond the mountains into that region, known afterwards as asia minor, in which egyptian tradition had from ancient times confused some twenty nations under the common vague epithet of haûî-nîbû. official language still employed it as a convenient and comprehensive term, but the voyages of the phoenicians and the travels of the �royal messengers,� as well as, probably, the maritime commerce of the merchants of the delta, had taught the scribes for more than a century and a half to make distinctions among these nations which they had previously summed up in one. the lufeu* were to be found there, as well as the danauna,** the shardana,*** and others besides, who lay behind one another on the coast. of the second line of populations behind the region of the coast tribes, we have up to the present no means of knowing anything with certainty. asia minor, furthermore, is divided into two regions, so distinctly separated by nature as well as by races that one would be almost inclined to regard them as two countries foreign to each other. * the luku, luka, are mentioned in the amarna correspondence under the form lukki as pirates and highway robbers. the identity of these people with the lycians i hold as well established. ** the danauna are mentioned along with the luku in the amarna correspondence. the termination, _-auna, -ana_ of this word appears to be the ending in -aon found in asiatic names like lykaôn by the side of lykos, kataôn by the side of kêtis and kat-patuka; while the form of the name danaos is preserved in greek legend, danaôn is found only on oriental monuments. the danauna came �from their islands,� that is to say, from the coasts of asia minor, or from greece, the term not being pressed too literally, as the egyptians were inclined to call all distant lands situated to the north beyond the mediterranean sea �islands.� *** e. de rougé and chabas were inclined to identify the shardana with the sardes and the island of sardinia. unger made them out to be the khartanoi of libya, and was followed by brugsch. w. max müller revived the hypotheses of de rougé and chabas, and saw in them bands from the italian island. i am still persuaded, as i was twenty-five years ago, that they were asiatics--the mæonian tribe which gave its name to sardis. the serdani or shardana are mentioned as serving in the egyptian army in the tel el-amarna tablets. in its centre it consists of a well-defined undulating plain, having a gentle slope towards the black sea, and of the shape of a kind of convex trapezium, clearly bounded towards the north by the highlands of pontus, and on the south by the tortuous chain of the taurus. a line of low hills fringes the country on the west, from the olympus of mysia to the taurus of pisidia. towards the east it is bounded by broken chains of mountains of unequal height, to which the name anti-taurus is not very appropriately applied. an immense volcanic cone, mount argseus, looks down from a height of some 13,000 feet over the wide isthmus which connects the country with the lands of the euphrates. this volcano is now extinct, but it still preserved in old days something of its languishing energy, throwing out flames at intervals above the sacred forests which clothed its slopes. the rivers having their sources in the region just described, have not all succeeded in piercing the obstacles which separate them from the sea, but the pyramus and the sarus find their way into the mediterranean and the iris, halys and sangarios into the euxine. the others flow into the lowlands, forming meres, marshes, and lakes of fluctuating extent. the largest of these lakes, called tatta, is salt, and its superficial extent varies with the season. in brief, the plateau of this region is nothing but an extension of the highlands of central asia, and has the same vegetation, fauna, and climate, the same extremes of temperature, the same aridity, and the same wretched and poverty-stricken character as the latter. the maritime portions are of an entirely different aspect. [illustration: 146.jpg map] the western coast which stretches into the ægean is furrowed by deep valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers--the caicus, the hermos, the cayster, and meander--which flow through them are effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes the land to encroach there upon the sea. the littoral is penetrated here and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands--lesbos, chios, samos, cos, rhodes--of which the majority are near enough to the continent to act as defences of the seaboard, and to guard the mouths of the rivers, while they are far enough away to be secure from the effects of any violent disturbances which might arise in the mainland. the cyclades, distributed in two lines, are scattered, as it were, at hazard between asia and europe, like great blocks which have fallen around the piers of a broken bridge. the passage from one to the other is an easy matter, and owing to them, the sea rather serves to bring together the two continents than to divide them. two groups of heights, imperfectly connected with the central plateau, tower above the ægean slope--wooded ida on the north, veiled in cloud, rich in the flocks and herds upon its sides, and in the metals within its bosom; and on the south, the volcanic bastions of lycia, where tradition was wont to place the fire-breathing chimaera. a rocky and irregularly broken coast stretches to the west of lycia, in a line almost parallel with the taurus, through which, at intervals, torrents leaping from the heights make their way into the sea. at the extreme eastern point of the coast, almost at the angle where the cilician littoral meets that of syria, the pyramus and the sarus have brought down between them sufficient material to form an alluvial plain, which the classical geographers designated by the name of the level cilicia, to distinguish it from the rough region of the interior, gilicia trachea. the populations dwelling in this peninsula belong to very varied races. on the south and south-west certain semites had found an abode--the mysterious inhabitants of solyma, and especially the phoenicians in their scattered trading-stations. on the north-east, beside the khâti, distributed throughout the valleys of the anti-taurus, between the euphrates and mount argseus, there were tribes allied to the khâti*--possibly at this time the tabal and the mushkâ--and, on the shores of the black sea, those workers in metal, which, following the greeks, we may call, for want of a better designation, the chalybes. * a certain number of these tribes or of their towns are to be found in the list contained in the treaty of ramses ii. with the khâti. we are at a loss to know the distribution of tribes in the centre and in the north-west, but the bosphorus and the hellespont, we may rest assured, never formed an ethnographical frontier. the continents on either side of them appear at this point to form the banks of a river, or the two slopes of a single valley, whose bottom lies buried beneath the waters. the barbarians of the balkans had forced their way across at several points. dardanians were to be encountered in the neighbourhood of mount ida, as well as on the banks of the axios, from early times, and the kebrenes of macedonia had colonised a district of the troad near ilion, while the great nation of the mysians had issued, like them, from the european populations of the hebrus and the strymon. the hero dardanos, according to legend, had at first founded, under the auspices of the idasan zeus, the town of dardania; and afterwards a portion of his progeny followed the course of the scamander, and entrenched themselves upon a precipitous hill, from the top of which they could look far and wide over the plain and sea. the most ancient ilion, at first a village, abandoned on more than one occasion in the course of centuries, was rebuilt and transformed, earlier than the xvth century before christ, into an important citadel, the capital of a warlike and prosperous kingdom. the ruins on the spot prove the existence of a primitive civilization analogous to that of the islands of the archipelago before the arrival of the phoenician navigators. we find that among both, at the outset, flint and bone, clay, baked and unbaked, formed the only materials for their utensils and furniture; metals were afterwards introduced, and we can trace their progressive employment to the gradual exclusion of the older implements. these ancient trojans used copper, and we encounter only rarely a kind of bronze, in which the proportion of tin was too slight to give the requisite hardness to the alloy, and we find still fewer examples of iron and lead. they were fairly adroit workers in silver, electrum, and especially in gold. the amulets, cups, necklaces, and jewellery discovered in their tombs or in the ruins of their houses, are sometimes of a not ungraceful form. their pottery was made by hand, and was not painted or varnished, but they often gave to it a fine lustre by means of a stone-polisher. other peoples of uncertain origin, but who had attained a civilization as advanced as that of the trojans, were the maeonians, the leleges, and the carians who had their abode to the south of troy and of the mysians. the maeonians held sway in the fertile valleys of the hermos, cayster, and maaander. they were divided into several branches, such as the lydians, the tyrseni, the torrhebi, and the shardana, but their most ancient traditions looked back with pride to a flourishing state to which, as they alleged, they had all belonged long ago on the slopes of mount sipylos, between the valley of the hermos and the gulf of smyrna. the traditional capital of this kingdom was magnesia, the most ancient of cities, the residence of tantalus, the father of niobe and the pelopidae. the leleges rise up before us from many points at the same time, but always connected with the most ancient memories of greece and asia. the majority of the strongholds on the trojan coast belonged to them--such as antandros and gargara--and pedasos on the satniois boasted of having been one of their colonies, while several other towns of the same name, but very distant from each other, enable us to form some idea of the extent of their migrations.* * according to the scholiast on nicander, the word �pedasos� signified �mountain,� probably in the language of the leleges. we know up to the present of four pedasi, or pedasa: the first in messenia, which later on took the name of methône; the second in the troad, on the banks of the satniois; the third in the neighbourhood of cyzicus; and the fourth in caria. in the time of strabo, ruined tombs and deserted sites of cities were shown in caria which the natives regarded as lelegia--that is, abode of the leleges. the carians were dominant in the southern angle of the peninsula and in the ægean islands; and the lycians lay next them on the east, and were sometimes confounded with them. one of the most powerful tribes of the carians, the tremilse, were in the eyes of the greeks hardly to be separated from the mountainous district which they knew as lycia proper; while other tribes extended as far as the halys. a district of the troad, to the south of mount ida, was called lycia, and there was a lycaonia on both sides of the middle taurus; while attica had its lycia, and crete its lycians. these three nations--the lycians, carians, and leleges--were so entangled together from their origin, that no one would venture now to trace the lines of demarcation between them, and we are often obliged to apply to them collectively what can be appropriately ascribed to only one. how far the hittite power extended in the first years of its expansion we have now hardly the means of knowing. it would appear that it took within its scope, on the south-west, the cilician plain, and the undulating region bordering on it--that of qodi: the prince of the latter district, if not his vassal, was at least the colleague of the king of the khâti, and he acted in concert with him in peace as well as in war.* * the country of qidi, qadi, qodi, has been connected by chabas with galilee, and brugsch adopted the identification. w. max müller identified it with phoenicia. i think the name served to designate the cilician coast and plain from the mouth of the orontes, and the country which was known in the græco-roman period by the name kêtis and kataonia. it embraced also the upper basin of the pyramos and its affluents, as well as the regions situated between the euphrates and the halys, but its frontier in this direction was continually fluctuating, and our researches fail to follow it. it is somewhat probable that it extended considerably towards the west and north-west in the direction of the ægean sea. the forests and escarpments of lycaonia, and the desolate steppes of the central plateau, have always presented a barrier difficult to surmount by any invader from the east. if the khâti at that period attacked it in front, or by a flank movement, the assault must rather have been of the nature of a hurried reconnaissance, or of a raid, than of a methodically conducted campaign.* * the idea of a hittite empire extending over almost all asia minor was advanced by sayce. they must have preferred to obtain possession of the valleys of the thermodon and the iris, which were rich in mineral wealth, and from which they could have secured an inexhaustible revenue. the extraction and working of metals in this region had attracted thither from time immemorial merchants from neighbouring and distant countries--at first from the south to supply the needs of syria, chaldæa, and egypt, then from the west for the necessities of the countries on the ægean. the roads, which, starting from the archipelago on the one hand, or the euphrates on the other, met at this point, fell naturally into one, and thus formed a continuous route, along which the caravans of commerce, as well as warlike expeditions, might henceforward pass. starting from the cultivated regions of mæonia, the road proceeded up the valley of the hermos from west to east; then, scaling the heights of the central plateau and taking a direction more and more to the north-east, it reached the fords of the halys. crossing this river twice--for the first time at a point about two-thirds the length of its course, and for the second at a short distance from its source--it made an abrupt turn towards the taurus, and joined, at melitene, the routes leading to the upper tigris, to nisibis, to singara, and to old assur, and connecting further down beyond the mountainous region, under the walls of carchemish, with the roads which led to the nile and to the river-side cities on the persian gulf.* * the very early existence of this road, which partly coincides with the royal route of the persian achemenids, was proved by kiepert. there were other and shorter routes, if we think only of the number of miles, from the hermos in pisidia or lycaonia, across the central steppe and through the cilician gates, to the meeting of the ways at carchemish; but they led through wretched regions, without industries, almost without tillage, and inhospitable alike to man and beast, and they were ventured on only by those who aimed at trafficking among the populations who lived in their neighbourhood. the khâti, from the time even when they were enclosed among the fastnesses of the taurus, had within their control the most important section of the great land route which served to maintain regular relations between the ancient kingdoms of the east and the rising states of the ægean, and whosoever would pass through their country had to pay them toll. the conquest of naharaim, in giving them control of a new section, placed almost at their discretion the whole traffic between chaldæa and egypt. from the time of thûtmosis iii. caravans employed in this traffic accomplished the greater part of their journey in territories depending upon babylon, assyria, or memphis, and enjoyed thus a relative security; the terror of the pharaoh protected the travellers even when they were no longer in his domains, and he saved them from the flagrant exactions made upon them by princes who called themselves his brothers, or were actually his vassals. but the time had now come when merchants had to encounter, between qodshu and the banks of the khabur, a sovereign owing no allegiance to any one, and who would tolerate no foreign interference in his territory. from the outbreak of hostilities with the khâti, egypt could communicate with the cities of the lower euphrates only by the wadys of the arabian desert, which were always dangerous and difficult for large convoys; and its commercial relations with chaldæa were practically brought thus to a standstill, and, as a consequence, the manufactures which fed this trade being reduced to a limited production, the fiscal receipts arising from it experienced a sensible diminution. when peace was restored, matters fell again into their old groove, with certain reservations to the khâti of some common privileges: egypt, which had formerly possessed these to her own advantage, now bore the burden of them, and the indirect tribute which she paid in this manner to her rivals furnished them with arms to fight her in case she should endeavour to free herself from the imposition. all the semi-barbaric peoples of the peninsula of asia minor were of an adventurous and warlike temperament. they were always willing to set out on an expedition, under the leadership of some chief of noble family or renowned for valour; sometimes by sea in their light craft, which would bring them unexpectedly to the nearest point of the syrian coast, sometimes by land in companies of foot-soldiers and charioteers. they were frequently fortunate enough to secure plenty of booty, and return with it to their homes safe and sound; but as frequently they would meet with reverses by falling into some ambuscade: in such a case their conqueror would not put them to the sword or sell them as slaves, but would promptly incorporate them into his army, thus making his captives into his soldiers. the king of the khâti was able to make use of them without difficulty, for his empire was conterminous on the west and north with some of their native lands, and he had often whole regiments of them in his army--mysians, lycians, people of augarît,* of ilion,** and of pedasos.*** * the country of augarît, ugarît, is mentioned on several occasions in the tel el-amarna correspondence. the name has been wrongly associated with caria; it has been placed by w. max miiller well within naharaim, to the east of the orontes, between khalybôn (aleppo) and apamoea, the writer confusing it with akaiti, named in the campaign of amenôthes ii. i am not sure about the site, but its association in the amarna letters with gugu and khanigalbat inclines me to place it beyond the northern slopes of the taurus, possibly on the banks of the halys or of the upper euphrates. ** the name of this people was read eiûna by champollion, who identified it with the ionians; this reading and identification were adopted by lenormant and by w. max müller. chabas hesitates between eiûna and maiûna, ionia and moonia and brugsch read it malunna. the reading iriûna, iliûna, seems to me the only possible one, and the identification with ilion as well. *** owing to its association with the dardanians, mysians, and ilion, i think it answers to the pedasos on the satniois near troy. the revenue of the provinces taken from egypt, and the products of his tolls, furnished him with abundance of means for obtaining recruits from among them.* all these things contributed to make the power of the khâti so considerable, that harmhabî, when he had once tested it, judged it prudent not to join issues with them. he concluded with sapalulu a treaty of peace and friendship, which, leaving the two powers in possession respectively of the territory each then occupied, gave legal sanction to the extension of the sphere of the khâti at the expense of egypt.** syria continued to consist of two almost equal parts, stretching from byblos to the sources of the jordan and damascus: the northern portion, formerly tributary to egypt, became a hittite possession; while the southern, consisting of phoenicia and canaan,*** which the pharaoh had held for a long time with a more effective authority, and had more fully occupied, was retained for egypt. * e. de rougé and the egyptologists who followed him thought at first that the troops designated in the egyptian texts as lycians, mysians, dardanians, were the national armies of these nations, each one commanded by its king, who had hastened from asia minor to succour their ally the king of the khâti. i now think that those were bands of adventurers, consisting of soldiers belonging to these nations, who came to put themselves at the service of civilized monarchs, as the oarians, ionians, and the greeks of various cities did later on: the individuals whom the texts mention as their princes were not the kings of these nations, but the warrior chiefs to which each band gave obedience. ** it is not certain that harmhabî was the pharaoh with whom sapalulu entered into treaty, and it might be insisted with some reason that ramses i. was the party to it on the side of egypt; but this hypothesis is rendered less probable by the fact of the extremely short reign of the latter pharaoh. i am inclined to think, as w. max miiller has supposed, that the passage in the _treaty of ramses ii. with the prince of the khâti,_ which speaks of a treaty concluded with sapalulu, looks back to the time of ramses ii.�s predecessor, harmhabî. *** this follows from the situation of the two empires, as indicated in the account of the campaign of seti i. in his first year. the king, after having defeated the nomads of the arabian desert, passed on without further fighting into the country of the amûrrû and the regions of the lebanon, which fact seems to imply the submission of kharû. w. max miiller was the first to* discern clearly this part of the history of egyptian conquest; he appears, however, to have circumscribed somewhat too strictly the dominion of harmhabî in assigning carmel as its limit. the list of the nations of the north who yielded, or are alleged to have yielded, submission to harmhabî, were traced on the first pylon of this monarch at karnak, and on its adjoining walls. among others, the names of the khâti and of arvad are to be read there. this could have been but a provisional arrangement: if thebes had not altogether renounced the hope of repossessing some day the lost conquests of thûtmosis iii., the khâti, drawn by the same instinct which had urged them to cross their frontiers towards the south, were not likely to be content with less than the expulsion of the egyptians from syria, and the absorption of the whole country into the hittite dominion. peace was maintained during harmhabî�s lifetime. we know nothing of egyptian affairs during the last years of his reign. his rule may have come to an end owing to some court intrigue, or he may have had no male heir to follow him.* ramses, who succeeded him, did not belong to the royal line, or was only remotely connected with it.** * it would appear, from an ostracon in the british museum, that the year xxi. follows after the year vii. of harmhabî�s reign; it is possible that the year xxi. may belong to one of harmhabî�s successors, seti i. or ramses ii., for example. ** the efforts to connect ramses i. with a family of semitic origin, possibly the shepherd-kings themselves, have not been successful. everything goes to prove that the ramses family was, and considered itself to be, of egyptian origin. brugsch and ed. meyer were inclined to see in ramses i. a younger brother of harmhabî. this hypothesis has nothing either for or against it up to the present. he was already an old man when he ascended the throne, and we ought perhaps to identify him with one or other of the ramses who flourished under the last pharaohs of the xviiith dynasty, perhaps the one who governed thebes under khûniatonû, or another, who began but never finished his tomb in the hillside above tel el-amarna, in the burying-place of the worshippers of the disk. [illustration: 160.jpg ramses i.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in rosellini. he had held important offices under harmhabî,* and had obtained in marriage for his son seti the hand of tuîa, who, of all the royal family, possessed the strongest rights to the crown.** * this tel el-amarna ramses is, perhaps, identical with the theban one: he may have followed his master to his new capital, and have had a tomb dug for himself there, which he subsequently abandoned, on the death of khûniatonû, in order to return to thebes with tûtankhamon and aï. ** the fact that the marriage was celebrated under the auspices of harmhabî, and that, consequently, ramses must have occupied an important position at the court of that prince, is proved by the appearance of ramses ii., son of tuîa, as early as the first year of seti, among the ranks of the combatants in the war carried on by that prince against the tihonû; even granting that he was then ten years old, we are forced to admit that he must have been born before his grandfather came to the throne. there is in the vatican a statue of tuîa; other statues have been discovered at san. ramses reigned only six or seven years, and associated seti with himself in the government from his second year. he undertook a short military expedition into ethiopia, and perhaps a raid into syria; and we find remains of his monuments in nubia, at bohani near wady haifa, and at thebes, in the temple of amon.* * he began the great hypostyle hall at karnak; e. de rougé thinks that the idea of building this was first conceived under the xviiith dynasty. he displayed little activity, his advanced age preventing him from entering on any serious undertaking: but his accession nevertheless marks an important date in the history of egypt. although harmhabî was distantly connected with the line of the ahmessides, it is difficult at the present day to know what position to assign him in the pharaonic lists: while some regard him as the last of the xviiith dynasty, others prefer to place him at the head of the xixth. no such hesitation, however, exists with regard to ramses i., who was undoubtedly the founder of a new family. the old familiar names of thûtmosis and amenôthes henceforward disappear from the royal lists, and are replaced by others, such as seti, mînephtah, and, especially, ramses, which now figure in them for the first time. the princes who bore these names showed themselves worthy successors of those who had raised egypt to the zenith of her power; like them they were successful on the battle-field, and like them they devoted the best of the spoil to building innumerable monuments. no sooner had seti celebrated his father�s obsequies, than he assembled his army and set out for war. it would appear that southern syria was then in open revolt. �word had been brought to his majesty: �the vile shaûsû have plotted rebellion; the chiefs of their tribes, assembled in one place on the confines of kharû, have been smitten with blindness and with the spirit of violence; every one cutteth his neighbour�s throat.� * it was imperative to send succour to the few tribes who remained faithful, to prevent them from succumbing to the repeated attacks of the insurgents. seti crossed the frontier at zalu, but instead of pursuing his way along the coast, he marched due east in order to attack the shaûsû in the very heart of the desert. the road ran through wide wadys, tolerably well supplied with water, and the length of the stages necessarily depended on the distances between the wells. this route was one frequented in early times, and its security was ensured by a number of fortresses and isolated towers built along it, such as �the house of the lion �--_ta ait pa maû_--near the pool of the same name, the migdol of the springs of huzîna, the fortress of uazît, the tower of the brave, and the migdol of seti at the pools of absakaba. the bedawîn, disconcerted by the rapidity of this movement, offered no serious resistance. their flocks were carried off, their trees cut down, their harvests destroyed, and they surrendered their strongholds at discretion. pushing on from one halting-place to another, the conqueror soon reached babbîti, and finally pakanâna.** * the pictures of this campaign and the inscriptions which explain them were engraved by seti i., on the outside of the north wall of the great hypostyle hall at karnak. ** the site of pakanâna has, with much probability, been fixed at el-kenân or khurbet-kanâan, to the south of hebron. brugsch had previously taken this name to indicate the country of canaan, but chabas rightly contested this view. w. max millier took up the matter afresh: he perceived that we have here an allusion to the first town encountered by seti i. in the country of canaan to the south-west of raphia, the name of which is not mentioned by the egyptian sculptor; it seems to me that this name should be pakanâna, and that the town bore the same name as the country. the latter town occupied a splendid position on the slope of a rocky hill, close to a small lake, and defended the approaches to the vale of hebron. it surrendered at the first attack, and by its fall the egyptians became possessed of one of the richest provinces in the southern part of kharû. this result having been achieved, seti took the caravan road to his left, on the further side of gaza, and pushed forward at full speed towards the hittite frontier. [illustration: 163.jpg the return of the north wall of the hypostyle hall at karnak, where seti i. represents some episodes in his first campaign] drawn by boudier, from a photograph, by émil brugsch-bey. it was probably unprotected by any troops, and the hittite king was absent in some other part of his empire. seti pillaged the amurru, seized ianuâmu and qodshû by a sudden attack, marched in an oblique direction towards the mediterranean, forcing the inhabitants of the lebanon to cut timber from their mountains for the additions which he was premeditating in the temple of the theban amon, and finally returned by the coast road, receiving, as he passed through their territory, the homage of the phoenicians. his entry into egypt was celebrated by solemn festivities. the nobles, priests, and princes of both south and north hastened to meet him at the bridge of zalû, and welcomed, with their chants, both the king and the troops of captives whom he was bringing back for the service of his father amon at karnak. the delight of his subjects was but natural, since for many years the egyptians bad not witnessed such a triumph, and they no doubt believed that the prosperous era of thûtmosis iii. was about to return, and that the wealth of naharaim would once more flow into thebes as of old. their illusion was short-lived, for this initial victory was followed by no other. maurusaru, king of the khâti, and subsequently his son mautallu, withstood the pharaoh with such resolution that he was forced to treat with them. a new alliance was concluded on the same conditions as the old one, and the boundaries of the two kingdoms remained the same as under harmhabî, a proof that neither sovereign had gained any advantage over his rival. hence the campaign did not in any way restore egyptian supremacy, as had been hoped at the moment; it merely served to strengthen her authority in those provinces which the khâti had failed to take from egypt. the phoenicians of tyre and sidon had too many commercial interests on the banks of the nile to dream of breaking the slender tie which held them to the pharaoh, since independence, or submission to another sovereign, might have ruined their trade. the kharû and the bedawîn, vanquished wherever they had ventured to oppose the pharaoh�s troops, were less than ever capable of throwing off the egyptian yoke. syria fell back into its former state. the local princes once more resumed their intrigues and quarrels, varied at intervals by appeals to their suzerain for justice or succour. the �royal messengers� appeared from time to time with their escorts of archers and chariots to claim tribute, levy taxes, to make peace between quarrelsome vassals, or, if the case required it, to supersede some insubordinate chief by a governor of undoubted loyalty; in fine, the entire administration of the empire was a continuation of that of the preceding century. the peoples of kûsh meanwhile had remained quiet during the campaign in syria, and on the western frontier the tihonû had suffered so severe a defeat that they were not likely to recover from it for some time.* the bands of pirates, shardana and others, who infested the delta, were hunted down, and the prisoners taken from among them were incorporated into the royal guard.** * this war is represented at karnak, and ramses ii. figures there among the children of seti i. ** we gather this from passages in the inscriptions from the year v. onwards, in which ramses ii. boasts that he has a number of shardana prisoners in his guard; rouge was, perhaps, mistaken in magnifying these piratical raids into a war of invasion. [illustration: 166.jpg representation of seti i. vanquishing the libyans and asiatics on the walls, karnak] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by ernil brugsch-bey. seti, however, does not appear to have had a confirmed taste for war. he showed energy when occasion required it, and he knew how to lead his soldiers, as the expedition of his first year amply proved; but when the necessity was over, he remained on the defensive, and made no further attempt at conquest. by his own choice he was �the jackal who prowls about the country to protect it,� rather than �the wizard lion marauding abroad by hidden paths,� * and egypt enjoyed a profound peace in consequence of his ceaseless vigilance. * these phrases are taken direct from the inscriptions of seti i. a peaceful policy of this kind did not, of course, produce the amount of spoil and the endless relays of captives which had enabled his predecessors to raise temples and live in great luxury without overburdening their subjects with taxes. seti was, therefore, the more anxious to do all in his power to develop the internal wealth of the country. the mining colonies of the sinaitic peninsula had never ceased working since operations had been resumed there under hâtshopsîtû and thûtmosis iii., but the output had lessened during the troubles under the heretic kings. seti sent inspectors thither, and endeavoured to stimulate the workmen to their former activity, but apparently with no great success. we are not able to ascertain if he continued the revival of trade with pûanît inaugurated by harmhabî; but at any rate he concentrated his attention on the regions bordering the red sea and the gold-mines which they contained. those of btbaï, which had been worked as early as the xiith dynasty, did not yield as much as they had done formerly; not that they were exhausted, but owing to the lack of water in their neighbourhood and along the routes leading to them, they were nearly deserted. it was well known that they contained great wealth, but operations could not be carried on, as the workmen were in danger of dying of thirst. seti despatched engineers to the spot to explore the surrounding wadys, to clear the ancient cisterns or cut others, and to establish victualling stations at regular intervals for the use of merchants supplying the gangs of miners with commodities. these stations generally consisted of square or rectangular enclosures, built of stones without mortar, and capable of resisting a prolonged attack. the entrance was by a narrow doorway of stone slabs, and in the interior were a few huts and one or two reservoirs for catching rain or storing the water of neighbouring springs. sometimes a chapel was built close at hand, consecrated to the divinities of the desert, or to their compeers, mînû of coptos, horus, maut, or isis. one of these, founded by seti, still exists near the modern town of redesieh, at the entrance to one of the valleys which furrow this gold region. [illustration: 168.jpg a fortified station on the route between the nile and the red sea. drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de bock it is built against, and partly excavated in, a wall of rock, the face of which has been roughly squared, and it is entered through a four-columned portico, giving access to two dark chambers, whose walls are covered with scenes of adoration and a lengthy inscription. in this latter the sovereign relates how, in the ixth year of his reign, he was moved to inspect the roads of the desert; he completed the work in honour of amon-râ, of phtah of memphis, and of harmakhis, and he states that travellers were at a loss to express their gratitude and thanks for what he had done. �they repeated from mouth to mouth: �may amon give him an endless existence, and may he prolong for him the length of eternity! o ye gods of fountains, attribute to him your life, for he has rendered back to us accessible roads, and he has opened that which was closed to us. henceforth we can take our way in peace, and reach our destination alive; now that the difficult paths are open and the road has become good, gold can be brought back, as our lord and master has commanded.�� plans were drawn on papyrus of the configuration of the district, of the beds of precious metal, and of the position of the stations. [illustration: 169.jpg the temple of seti i. at redesieh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by golénischeff. one of these plans has come down to us, in which the districts are coloured bright red, the mountains dull ochre, the roads dotted over with footmarks to show the direction to be taken, while the superscriptions give the local names, and inform us that the map represents the bukhni mountain and a fortress and stele of seti. the whole thing is executed in a rough and naive manner, with an almost childish minuteness which provokes a smile; we should, however, not despise it, for it is the oldest map in the world. [illustration: 170.jpg fragment of the map of the gold-mines] facsimile by faucher-gudin of coloured chalk-drawing by chabas. the gold extracted from these regions, together with that brought from ethiopia, and, better still, the regular payment of taxes and custom-house duties, went to make up for the lack of foreign spoil all the more opportunely, for, although the sovereign did not share the military enthusiasm of thûtmosis iii., he had inherited from him the passion for expensive temple-building. [illustration: 171.jpg the three standing columns of the temple of sesebi] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. he did not neglect nubia in this respect, but repaired several of the monuments at which the xviiith dynasty had worked--among others, kalabsheh, dakkeh, and amada, besides founding a temple at sesebi, of which three columns are still standing.* * in lepsius�s time there were still four columns standing; insinger shows us only three. the outline of these columns is not graceful, and the decoration of them is very poor, for art degenerated rapidly in these distant provinces of the empire, and only succeeded in maintaining its vigour and spirit in the immediate neighbourhood of the pharaoh, as at abydos, memphis, and above all at thebes. seti�s predecessor ramses, desirous of obliterating all traces of the misfortunes lately brought about by the changes effected by the heretic kings, had contemplated building at karnak, in front of the pylon of amenôthes iii., an enormous hall for the ceremonies connected with the cult of amon, where the immense numbers of priests and worshippers at festival times could be accommodated without inconvenience. it devolved on seti to carry out what had been merely an ambitious dream of his father�s.* * the great hypostyle hall was cleared and the columns were strengthened in the winter of 1895-6, as far, at least, as it was possible to carry out the work of restoration without imperilling the stability of the whole. we long to know who was the architect possessed of such confidence in his powers that he ventured to design, and was able to carry out, this almost superhuman undertaking. his name would be held up to almost universal admiration beside those of the greatest masters that we are familiar with, for no one in greece or italy has left us any work which surpasses it, or which with such simple means could produce a similar impression of boldness and immensity. it is almost impossible to convey by words to those who have not seen it, the impression which it makes on the spectator. failing description, the dimensions speak for themselves. the hall measures one hundred and sixty-two feet in length, by three hundred and twenty-five in breadth. a row of twelve columns, the largest ever placed inside a building, runs up the centre, having capitals in the form of inverted bells. [illustration: 173 an avenue of one of the aisles of the hypostyle hall at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. one hundred and twenty-two columns with lotiform capitals fill the aisles, in rows of nine each. the roof of the central bay is seventy-four feet above the ground, and the cornice of the two towers rises sixty-three feet higher. the building was dimly lighted from the roof of the central colonnade by means of stone gratings, through which the air and the sun�s rays entered sparingly. the daylight, as it penetrated into the hall, was rendered more and more obscure by the rows of columns; indeed, at the further end a perpetual twilight must have reigned, pierced by narrow shafts of light falling from the ventilation holes which were placed at intervals in the roof. [illustration: 174.jpg the gratings of the central colonnade in the hypostyle hall at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. in the background, on the right, may be seen a column which for several centuries has been retained in a half-fallen position by the weight of its architrave. the whole building now lies open to the sky, and the sunshine which floods it, pitilessly reveals the mutilations which it has suffered in the course of ages; but the general effect, though less mysterious, is none the less overwhelming. it is the only monument in which the first _coup d�oil_ surpasses the expectations of the spectator instead of disappointing him. the size is immense, and we realise its immensity the more fully as we search our memory in vain to find anything with which to compare it. seti may have entertained the project of building a _replica_ of this hall in southern thebes. amenôthes iii. had left his temple at luxor unfinished. the sanctuary and its surrounding buildings were used for purposes of worship, but the court of the customary pylon was wanting, and merely a thin wall concealed the mysteries from the sight of the vulgar. seti resolved to extend the building in a northerly direction, without interfering with the thin screen which had satisfied his predecessors. starting from the entrance in this wall, he planned an avenue of giant columns rivalling those of karnak, which he destined to become the central colonnade of a hypostyle hall as vast as that of the sister temple. either money or time was lacking to carry out his intention. he died before the aisles on either side were even begun. at abydos, however, he was more successful. we do not know the reason of seti�s particular affection for this town; it is possible that his family held some fief there, or it may be that he desired to show the peculiar estimation in which he held its local god, and intended, by the homage that he lavished on him, to cause the fact to be forgotten that he bore the name of sit the accursed. [illustration: 176.jpg one of the colonnades of the hypostyle hall in the temple of seti i. at abydos] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the king selected a favourable site for his temple to the south of the town, on the slope of a sandhill bordering the canal, and he marked out in the hardened soil a ground plan of considerable originality. the building was approached through two pylons, the remains of which are now hidden under the houses of aarabat el-madfuneh. [illustration: 176b.jpg the facade of the temple of seti] a fairly large courtyard, bordered by two crumbling walls, lies between the second pylon and the temple façade, which was composed of a portico resting on square pillars. passing between these, we reach two halls supported by-columns of graceful outline, beyond which are eight chapels arranged in a line, side by side, in front of two chambers built in to the hillside, and destined for the reception of osiris. the holy of holies in ordinary temples is surrounded by chambers of lesser importance, but here it is concealed behind them. the building-material mainly employed here was the white limestone of tûrah, but of a most beautiful quality, which lent itself to the execution of bas-reliefs of great delicacy, perhaps the finest in ancient egypt. the artists who carved and painted them belonged to the theban school, and while their subjects betray a remarkable similarity to those of the monuments dedicated by amenôthes iii., the execution surpasses them in freedom and perfection of modelling; we can, in fact, trace in them the influence of the artists who furnished the drawings for the scenes at tel el-amarna. they have represented the gods and goddesses with the same type of profile as that of the king--a type of face of much purity and gentleness, with its aquiline nose, its decided mouth, almond-shaped eyes, and melancholy smile. when the decoration of the temple was completed, seti regarded the building as too small for its divine inmate, and accordingly added to it a new wing, which he built along the whole length of the southern wall; but he was unable to finish it completely. several parts of it are lined with religious representations, but in others the subjects have been merely sketched out in black ink with corrections in red, while elsewhere the walls are bare, except for a few inscriptions, scribbled over them after an interval of twenty centuries by the monks who turned the temple chambers into a convent. this new wing was connected with the second hypostyle hall of the original building by a passage, on one of the walls of which is a list of seventy-five royal names, representing the ancestors of the sovereign traced back to mini. the whole temple must be regarded as a vast funerary chapel, and no one who has studied the religion of egypt can entertain a doubt as to its purpose. abydos was the place where the dead assembled before passing into the other world. it was here, at the mouth of the �cleft,� that they received the provisions and offerings of their relatives and friends who remained on this earth. as the dead flocked hither from all quarters of the world, they collected round the tomb of osiris, and there waited till the moment came to embark on the boat of the sun. seti did not wish his soul to associate with those of the common crowd of his vassals, and prepared this temple for himself, as a separate resting-place, close to the mouth of hades. after having dwelt within it for a short time subsequent to his funeral, his soul could repair thither whenever it desired, certain of always finding within it the incense and the nourishment of which it stood in need. thebes possessed this king�s actual tomb. the chapel was at qurnah, a little to the north of the group of pyramids in which the pharaohs of the xith dynasty lay side by side with those of the xiiith and xviith. ramses had begun to build it, and seti continued the work, dedicating it to the cult of his father and of himself. its pylon has altogether disappeared, but the façade with lotus-bud columns is nearly perfect, together with several of the chambers in front of the sanctuary. the decoration is as carefully carried out and the execution as delicate as that in the work at abydos; we are tempted to believe from one or two examples of it that the same hands have worked at both buildings. [illustration: 181.jpg the temple of qurnah] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the rock-cut tomb is some distance away up in the mountain, but not in the same ravine as that in which amenôthes iii., aï, and probably tûtankhamon and harmhabî, are buried.* * there are, in fact, close to those of aï and amenôthes iii., three other tombs, two at least of which have been decorated with paintings, now completely obliterated, and which may have served as the burying-places of tûtankhamon and harmhabî: the earlier egyptologists believed them to have been dug by the first kings of the xviiith dynasty. there then existed, behind the rock amphitheatre of deîr el-baharî, a kind of enclosed basin, which could be reached from the plain only by dangerous paths above the temple of hâtshopsîtû. this basin is divided into two parts, one of which runs in a south-easterly direction, while the other trends to the south-west, and is subdivided into minor branches. to the east rises a barren peak, the outline of which is not unlike that of the step-pyramid of saqqâra, reproduced on a colossal scale. no spot could be more appropriate to serve as a cemetery for a family of kings. the difficulty of reaching it and of conveying thither the heavy accessories and of providing for the endless processions of the pharaonic funerals, prevented any attempt being made to cut tombs in it during the ancient and middle empires. about the beginning of the xixth dynasty, however, some engineers, in search of suitable burial sites, at length noticed that this basin was only separated from the wady issuing to the north of qurnah by a rocky barrier barely five hundred cubits in width. this presented no formidable obstacle to such skilful engineers as the egyptians. they cut a trench into the living rock some fifty or sixty cubits in depth, at the bottom of which they tunnelled a narrow passage giving access to the valley.* * french scholars recognised from the beginning of this century that the passage in question had been made by human agency. i attribute the execution of this work to ramses i., as i believe harmhabî to have been buried in the eastern valley, near amenôthes iii. it is not known whether this herculean work was accomplished during the reign of harnhabî or in that of ramses i. the latter was the first of the pharaohs to honour the spot by his presence. his tomb is simple, almost coarse in its workmanship, and comprises a gentle inclined passage, a vault and a sarcophagus of rough stone. that of seti, on the contrary, is a veritable palace, extending to a distance of 325 feet into the mountain-side. it is entered by a wide and lofty door, which opens on to a staircase of twenty-seven steps, leading to an inclined corridor; other staircases of shallow steps follow with their landings; then come successively a hypostyle hall, and, at the extreme end, a vaulted chamber, all of which are decorated with mysterious scenes and covered with inscriptions. this is, however, but the first storey, containing the antechambers of the dead, but not their living-rooms. a passage and steps, concealed under a slab to the left of the hall, lead to the real vault, which held the mummy and its funerary furniture. as we penetrate further and further by the light of torches into this subterranean abode, we see that the walls are covered with pictures and formulae, setting forth the voyages of the soul through the twelve hours of the night, its trials, its judgment, its reception by the departed, and its apotheosis--all depicted on the rock with the same perfection as that which characterises the bas-reliefs on the finest slabs of tûrah stone at qurnah and abydos. a gallery leading out of the last of these chambers extends a few feet further and then stops abruptly; the engineers had contemplated the excavation of a third storey to the tomb, when the death of their master obliged them to suspend their task. the king�s sarcophagus consists of a block of alabaster, hollowed out, polished, and carved with figures and hieroglyphs, with all the minuteness which we associate with the cutting of a gem. [illustration: 184.jpg one of the pillars of the tomb of seti i.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger, taken in 1884. it contained a wooden coffin, shaped to the human figure and painted white, the features picked out in black, and enamel eyes inserted in a mounting of bronze. the mummy is that of a thin elderly man, well preserved; the face was covered by a mask made of linen smeared with pitch, but when this was raised by means of a chisel, the fine kingly head was exposed to view. it was a masterpiece of the art of the embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had only a few hours previously breathed his last. death had slightly drawn the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had flattened the nose a little, and the skin was darkened by the pitch; but a calm and gentle smile still played over the mouth, and the half-opened eyelids allowed a glimpse to be seen from under their lashes of an apparently moist and glistening line,--the reflection from the white porcelain eyes let in to the orbit at the time of burial. seti had had several children by his wife tuîa, and the eldest had already reached manhood when his father ascended the throne, for he had accompanied him on his syrian campaign. the young prince died, however, soon after his return, and his right to the crown devolved on his younger brother, who, like his grandfather, bore the name of ramses. the prince was still very young,* but seti did not on that account delay enthroning with great pomp this son who had a better right to the throne than himself. * the history of the youth and the accession of ramses ii. is known to us from the narrative given by himself in the temple of seti i. at abydos. the bulk of the narrative is confirmed by the evidence of the kubân inscription, especially as to the extreme youth of ramses at the time when he was first associated with the crown. �from the time that i was in the egg,� ramses writes later on, �the great ones sniffed the earth before me; when i attained to the rank of eldest son and heir upon the throne of sibû, i dealt with affairs, i commanded as chief the foot-soldiers and the chariots. my father having appeared before the people, when i was but a very little boy in his arms, said to me: �i shall have him crowned king, that i may see him in all his splendour while i am still on this earth!� the nobles of the court having drawn near to place the pschent upon my head: �place the diadem upon his forehead!� said he.� as ramses increased in years, seti delighted to confer upon him, one after the other, the principal attributes of power; �while he was still upon this earth, regulating everything in the land, defending its frontiers, and watching over the welfare of its inhabitants, he cried: �let him reign!� because of the love he had for me.� seti also chose for him wives, beautiful �as are those of his palace,� and he gave him in marriage his sisters nofrîtari ii. mîmût and isîtnofrît, who, like ramses himself, had claims to the throne. ramses was allowed to attend the state councils at the age of ten; he commanded armies, and he administered justice under the direction of his father and his viziers. seti, however, although making use of his son�s youth and activity, did not in any sense retire in his favour; if he permitted ramses to adopt the insignia of royalty--the cartouches, the pschent, the bulbous-shaped helmet, and the various sceptres--he still remained to the day of his death the principal state official, and he reckoned all the years of this dual sovereignty as those of his sole reign.* * brugsoh is wrong in reckoning the reign of ramses ii. from the time of his association in the crown; the great inscription of abydos, which has been translated by brugsch himself, dates events which immediately followed the death of seti i. as belonging to the first year of ramses ii. ramses repulsed the incursions of the tihonû, and put to the sword such of their hordes as had ventured to invade egyptian territory. he exercised the functions of viceroy of ethiopia, and had on several occasions to chastise the pillaging negroes. we see him at beît-wally and at abu simbel charging them in his chariot: in vain they flee in confusion before him; their flight, however swift, cannot save them from captivity and destruction. [illustration: 187.jpg ramses ii. puts the negroes to flight] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. he was engaged in ethiopia when the death of seti recalled him to thebes.* * we do not know how long seti i. reigned; the last date is that of his ixth year at redesieh and at aswan, and that of the year xxvii. sometimes attributed to him belongs to one of the later ramessides. i had at first supposed his reign to have been a long one, merely on the evidence afforded by manetho�s lists, but the presence of ramses ii. as a stripling, in the campaign of seti�s 1st year, forces us to limit its duration to fifteen or twenty years at most, possibly to only twelve or fifteen. he at once returned to the capital, celebrated the king�s funeral obsequies with suitable pomp, and after keeping the festival of amon, set out for the north in order to make his authority felt in that part of his domains. he stopped on his way at abydos to give the necessary orders for completing the decoration of the principal chambers of the resting-place built by his father, and chose a site some 320 feet to the north-west of it for a similar memnonium for himself. he granted cultivated fields and meadows in the thinite name for the maintenance of these two mausolea, founded a college of priests and soothsayers in connexion with them, for which he provided endowments, and also assigned them considerable fiefs in all parts of the valley of the nile. the delta next occupied his attention. the increasing importance of the syrian provinces in the eyes of egypt, the growth of the hittite monarchy, and the migrations of the peoples of the mediterranean, had obliged the last princes of the preceding dynasty to reside more frequently at memphis than amenôthes i. or thûtmosis iii. had done. amenôthes iii. had set to work to restore certain cities which had been abandoned since the days of the shepherds, and bubastis, athribis, and perhaps tanis, had, thanks to his efforts, revived from their decayed condition. the pharaohs, indeed, felt that at thebes they were too far removed from the battle-fields of asia; distance made it difficult for them to counteract the intrigues in which their vassals in kharû and the lords of naharaim were perpetually implicated, and a revolt which might have been easily anticipated or crushed had they been advised of it within a few days, gained time to increase and extend during the interval occupied by the couriers in travelling to and from the capital. ramses felt the importance of possessing a town close to the isthmus where he could reside in security, and he therefore built close to zalû, in a fertile and healthy locality, a stronghold to which he gave his own name,* and of which the poets of the time have left us an enthusiastic description. �it extends,� they say, �between zahi and egypt--and is filled with provisions and victuals.--it resembles hermonthis,--it is strong like memphis,--and the sun rises--and sets in it--so that men quit their villages and establish themselves in its territory.�--�the dwellers on the coasts bring conger eels and fish in homage,--they pay it the tribute of their marshes.--the inhabitants don their festal garments every day,--perfumed oil is on their heads and new wigs;--they stand at their doors, their hands full of bunches of flowers,--green branches from the village of pihâthor,--garlands of pahûrû,--on the day when pharaoh makes his entry.--joy then reigns and spreads, and nothing can stay it,--o usirmarî-sotpûnirî, thou who art montû in the two lands,--ramses-mîamûn, the god.� the town acted as an advance post, from whence the king could keep watch against all intriguing adversaries,--whether on the banks of the orontes or the coast of the mediterranean. * an allusion to the foundation of this residence occurs in an inscription at abu simbel, dated in his xxvth year. nothing appeared for the moment to threaten the peace of the empire. the asiatic vassals had raised no disturbance on hearing of the king�s accession, and mautallu continued to observe the conditions of the treaty which he had signed with seti. two military expeditions undertaken beyond the isthmus in the iind and ivth years of the new sovereign were accomplished almost without fighting. he repressed by the way the marauding shaûsû, and on reaching the nahr el-kelb, which then formed the northern frontier of his empire, he inscribed at the turn of the road, on the rocks which overhang the mouth of the river, two triumphal stelæ in which he related his successes.* towards the end of his ivth year a rebellion broke out among the khâti, which caused a rupture of relations between the two kingdoms and led to some irregular fighting. khâtusaru, a younger brother of maurusaru, murdered the latter and made himself king in his stead.** it is not certain whether the egyptians took up arms against him, or whether he judged it wise to oppose them in order to divert the attention of his subjects from his crime. * the stelæ are all in a very bad condition; in the last of them the date is no longer legible. ** in the _treaty of harrises ii. with the prince of khâti_, the writer is content to use a discreet euphemism, and states that mautallu succumbed �to his destiny.� the name of the prince of the khâti is found later on under the form khatusharu, in that of a chief defeated by tiglath-pileser i. in the country of kummukh, though this name has generally been read khatukhi. at all events, he convoked his syrian vassals and collected his mercenaries; the whole of naharaim, khalupu, carchemish, and arvad sent their quota, while bands of dardanians, mysians, trojans, and lycians, together with the people of pedasos and girgasha,* furnished further contingents, drawn from an area extending from the most distant coasts of the mediterranean to the mountains of cilicia. ramses, informed of the enemy�s movement by his generals and the governors of places on the frontier, resolved to anticipate the attack. he assembled an army almost as incongruous in its component elements as that of his adversary: besides egyptians of unmixed race, divided into four corps bearing the names of amon, phtah, harmakhis and sûtkhû, it contained ethiopian auxiliaries, libyans, mazaiu, and shardana.** * the name of this nation is written karkisha, kalkisha, or kashkisha, by one of those changes of _sh_ into _r-l_ which occur so frequently in assyro-chaldæan before a dental; the two different spellings seem to show that the writers of the inscriptions bearing on this war had before them a list of the allies of khâtusaru, written in cuneiform characters. if we may identify the nation with the kashki or kashku of the assyrian texts, the ancestors of the people of colchis of classical times, the termination _-isha_ of the egyptian word would be the inflexion _-ash_ or _-ush_ of the eastern asiatic tongues which we find in so many race-names, e.g. adaush, saradaush, ammaush. rouge and brugsch identified them with the girgashites of the bible. brugsch, adopting the spelling kashki, endeavoured to connect them with casiotis; later on he identified them with the people of gergis in troas. ramsay recognises in them the kisldsos of cilicia. ** in the account of the campaign the shardana only are mentioned; but we learn from a list in the _anastasi papyrus i_, that the army of ramses ii. included, in ordinary circumstances, in addition to the shardana, a contingent of mashauasha, kahaka, and other libyan and negro mercenaries. when preparations were completed, the force crossed the canal at zalû, on the 9th of payni in his vth year, marched rapidly across canaan till they reached the valley of the litâny, along which they took their way, and then followed up that of the orontes. they encamped for a few days at shabtuna, to the south-west of qodshû,* in the midst of the amorite country, sending out scouts and endeavouring to discover the position of the enemy, of whose movements they possessed but vague information. * shabtuna had been placed on the nahr es-sebta, on the site now occupied by kalaat el-hosn, a conjecture approved by mariette; it was more probably a town situated in the plain, to the south of bahr el-kades, a little to the south-west of tell keby mindoh which represents qodshû, and close to some forests which at that time covered the slopes of lebanon, and, extending as they did to the bottom of the valley, concealed the position of the khâti from the egyptians. khâtusaru lay concealed in the wooded valleys of the lebanon; he was kept well posted by his spies, and only waited an opportunity to take the field; as an occasion did not immediately present itself, he had recourse to a ruse with which the generals of the time were familiar. ramses, at length uneasy at not falling in with the enemy, advanced to the south of shabtuna, where he endeavoured to obtain information from two bedawîn. �our brethren,� said they, �who are the chiefs of the tribes united under the vile prince of khâti, send us to give information to your majesty: we desire to serve the pharaoh. we are deserting the vile prince of the khâti; he is close to khalupu (aleppo), to the north of the city of tunipa, whither he has rapidly retired from fear of the pharaoh.� this story had every appearance of probability; and the distance--khalupu was at least forty leagues away--explained why the reconnoitring parties of the egyptians had not fallen in with any of the enemy. the pharaoh, with this information, could not decide whether to lay siege to qodshû and wait until the hittites were forced to succour the town, or to push on towards the euphrates and there seek the engagement which his adversary seemed anxious to avoid. [illustration: 193.jpg the shardana guard of ramses ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. he chose the latter of the two alternatives. he sent forward the legions of anion, phrâ, phtah, and sutkhu, which constituted the main body of his troops, and prepared to follow them with his household chariotry. at the very moment when this division was being effected, the hittites, who had been represented by the spies as being far distant, were secretly massing their forces to the north-east of qodshu, ready to make an attack upon the pharaoh�s flank as soon as he should set out on his march towards khalupu. the enemy had considerable forces at their disposal, and on the day of the engagement they placed 18,000 to 20,000 picked soldiers in the field.* besides a well-disciplined infantry, they possessed 2500 to 3000 chariots, containing, as was the asiatic custom, three men in each.** * an army corps is reckoned as containing 9000 men on the wall scenes at luxor, and 8000 at the eamesseum; the 3000 chariots were manned by 9000 men. in allowing four to five thousand men for the rest of the soldiers engaged, we are not likely to be far wrong, and shall thus obtain the modest total mentioned in the text, contrary to the opinion current among historians. * the mercenaries are included in these figures, as is shown by the reckoning of the lycian, dardanian, and pedasian chiefs who were in command of the chariots during the charges against ramses ii. the egyptian camp was not entirely broken up, when the scouts brought in two spies whom they had seized--asiatics in long blue robes arranged diagonally over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. the king, who was seated on his throne delivering his final commands, ordered them to be beaten till the truth should be extracted from them. they at last confessed that they had been despatched to watch the departure of the egyptians, and admitted that the enemy was concealed in ambush behind the town. ramses hastily called a council of war and laid the situation before his generals, not without severely reprimanding them for the bad organisation of the intelligence department. the officers excused themselves as best they could, and threw the blame on the provincial governors, who had not been able to discover what was going on. the king cut short these useless recriminations, sent swift messengers to recall the divisions which had started early that morning, and gave orders that all those remaining in camp should hold themselves in readiness to attack. the council were still deliberating when news was brought that the hittites were in sight. [illustration: 195.jpg two hittite spies beaten by the egyptian soldiers] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the picture in the temple at abu simbel. their first onslaught was so violent that they threw down one side of the camp wall, and penetrated into the enclosure. ramses charged them at the head of his household troops. eight times he engaged the chariotry which threatened to surround him, and each time he broke their ranks. once he found himself alone with manna, his shield-bearer, in the midst of a knot of warriors who were bent on his destruction, and he escaped solely by his coolness and bravery. the tame lion which accompanied him on his expeditions did terrible work by his side, and felled many an asiatic with his teeth and claws.* * the lion is represented and named in the battle-scenes at abu simbel, at dorr, and at luxor, where we see it in camp on the eve of the battle, with its two front paws tied, and its keeper threatening it. [illustration: 196.jpg the egyptian camp and the council of war on the morning of the battle of qodshû] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato of the west front of the eamesseum. the soldiers, fired by the king�s example, stood their ground resolutely during the long hours of the afternoon; at length, as night was drawing on, the legions of phrâ and sûtkhû, who had hastily retraced their steps, arrived on the scene of action. a large body of khâfci, who were hemmed in in that part of the camp which they had taken in the morning, were at once killed or made prisoners, not a man of them escaping. khâtusaru, disconcerted by this sudden reinforcement of the enemy, beat a retreat, and nightfall suspended the struggle. it was recommenced at dawn the following morning with unabated fury, and terminated in the rout of the confederates. garbatusa, the shield-bearer of the hittite prince, the generals in command of his infantry and chariotry, and khalupsaru, the �writer of books,� fell during the action. the chariots, driven back to the orontes, rushed into the river in the hope of fording it, but in so doing many lives were lost. mazraîma, the prince of khâti�s brother, reached the opposite bank in safety, but the chief of tonisa was drowned, and the lord of khalupu was dragged out of the water more dead than alive, and had to be held head downwards to disgorge the water he had swallowed before he could be restored to consciousness. [illustration: 198.jpg the garrison of qodshû issuing forth to help the prince of khâti.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by bénédite. khâtusaru himself was on the point of perishing, when the troops which had been shut up in qodshû, together with the inhabitants, made a general sortie; the egyptians were for a moment held in check, and the fugitives meanwhile were able to enter the town. either there was insufficient provision for so many mouths, or the enemy had lost all heart from the disaster; at any rate, further resistance appeared useless. the next morning khâtusaru sent to propose a truce or peace to the victorious pharaoh. the egyptians had probably suffered at least as much as their adversaries, and perhaps regarded the eventuality of a siege with no small distaste; ramses, therefore, accepted the offers made to him and prepared to return to egypt. the fame of his exploits had gone before him, and he himself was not a little proud of the energy he had displayed on the day of battle. his predecessors had always shown themselves to be skilful generals and brave soldiers, but none of them had ever before borne, or all but borne, single-handed the brunt of an attack. ramses loaded his shield-bearer manna with rewards for having stood by him in the hour of danger, and ordered abundant provender and sumptuous harness for the good horses--�strength-in-thebaid� and �nûrît the satisfied�--who had drawn his chariot.* * a gold ring in the louvre bears in relief on its bezel two little horses; which are probably �strength-in-thebaid� and �nûrît satisfied.� he determined that the most characteristic episodes of the campaign--the beating of the spies, the surprise of the camp, the king�s repeated charges, the arrival of his veterans, the flight of the syrians, and the surrender of qodshû--should be represented on the walls and pylons of the temples. a poem in rhymed strophes in every case accompanies these records of his glory, whether at luxor, at the eamesseum, at the memnonium of abydos, or in the heart of nubia at abu simbel. the author of the poem must have been present during the campaign, or must have had the account of it from the lips of his sovereign, for his work bears no traces of the coldness of official reports, and a warlike strain runs through it from one end to the other, so as still to invest it with life after a lapse of more than thirty centuries.* * the author is unknown: pentaûr, or rather pentaûîrît, to whom e. de rougé attributed the poem, is merely the transcriber of the copy we possess on papyrus. but little pains are bestowed on the introduction, and the poet does not give free vent to his enthusiasm until the moment when he describes his hero, left almost alone, charging the enemy in the sight of his followers. the pharaoh was surrounded by two thousand five hundred chariots, and his retreat was cut off by the warriors of the �perverse� khâti and of the other nations who accompanied them--the peoples of arvad, mysia, and pedasos; each of their chariots contained three men, and the ranks were so serried that they formed but one dense mass. �no other prince was with me, no general officers, no one in command of the archers or chariots. my foot-soldiers deserted me, my charioteers fled before the foe, and not one of them stood firm beside me to fight against them.� then said his majesty: �who art thou, then, my father amon? a father who forgets his son? or have i committed aught against thee? have i not marched and halted according to thy command? when he does not violate thy orders, the lord of egypt is indeed great, and he overthrows the barbarians in his path! what are these asiatics to thy heart? amon will humiliate those who know not the god. have i not consecrated innumerable offerings to thee? filling thy holy dwelling-place with my prisoners, i build thee a temple for millions of years, i lavish all my goods on thy storehouses, i offer thee the whole world to enrich thy domains.... a miserable fate indeed awaits him who sets himself against thy will, but happy is he who finds favour with thee by deeds done for thee with a loving heart. i invoke thee, o my father amon! here am i in the midst of people so numerous that it cannot be known who are the nations joined together against me, and i am alone among them, none other is with me. my many soldiers have forsaken me, none of my charioteers looked towards me when i called them, not one of them heard my voice when i cried to them. but i find that amon is more to me than a million soldiers, than a hundred thousand charioteers, than a myriad of brothers or young sons, joined all together, for the number of men is as nothing, amon is greater than all of them. each time i have accomplished these things, amon, by the counsel of thy mouth, as i do not transgress thy orders, i rendered thee glory even to the ends of the earth.� so calm an invocation in the thick of the battle would appear misplaced in the mouth of an ordinary man, but pharaoh was a god, and the son of a god, and his actions and speeches cannot be measured by the same standard as that of a common mortal. he was possessed by the religious spirit in the hour of danger, and while his body continued to fight, his soul took wing to the throne of amon. he contemplates the lord of heaven face to face, reminds him of the benefits which he had received from him, and summons him to his aid with an imperiousness which betrays the sense of his own divine origin. the expected help was not delayed. �while the voice resounds in hermonthis, amon arises at my behest, he stretches out his hand to me, and i cry out with joy when he hails me from behind: �face to face with thee, face to face with thee, ramses miamun, i am with thee! it is i, thy father! my hand is with thee, and i am worth more to thee than hundreds of thousands. i am the strong one who loves valour; i have beheld in thee a courageous heart, and my heart is satisfied; my will is about to be accomplished!� i am like montû; from the right i shoot with the dart, from the left i seize the enemy. i am like baal in his hour, before them; i have encountered two thousand five hundred chariots, and as soon as i am in their midst, they are overthrown before my mares. not one of all these people has found a hand wherewith to fight; their hearts sink within their breasts, fear paralyses their limbs; they know not how to throw their darts, they have no strength to hold their lances. i precipitate them into the water like as the crocodile plunges therein; they are prostrate face to the earth, one upon the other, and i slay in the midst of them, for i have willed that not one should look behind him, nor that one should return; he who falls rises not again.� this sudden descent of the god has, even at the present day, an effect upon the reader, prepared though he is by his education to consider it as a literary artifice; but on the egyptian, brought up to regard amon with boundless reverence, its influence was irresistible. the prince of the khâti, repulsed at the very moment when he was certain of victory, �recoiled with terror. he sends against the enemy the various chiefs, followed by their chariots and skilled warriors,--the chiefs of arvad, lycia, and ilion, the leaders of the lycians and dardanians, the lords of carchemish, of the girgashites, and of khalupu; these allies of the khâti, all together, comprised three thousand chariots.� their efforts, however, were in vain. �i fell upon them like montû, my hand devoured them in the space of a moment, in the midst of them i hewed down and slew. they said one to another: �this is no man who is amongst us; it is sûtkhû the great warrior, it is baal incarnate! these are not human actions which he accomplishes: alone, by himself, he repulses hundreds of thousands, without leaders or men. up, let us flee before him, let us seek to save our lives, and let us breathe again!�� when at last, towards evening, the army again rallies round the king, and finds the enemy completely defeated, the men hang their heads with mingled shame and admiration as the pharaoh reproaches them: �what will the whole earth say when it is known that you left me alone, and without any to succour me? that not a prince, not a charioteer, not a captain of archers, was found to place his hand in mine? i fought, i repulsed millions of people by myself alone. �victory-in-thebes� and �nûrît satisfied� were my glorious horses; it was they that i found under my hand when i was alone in the midst of the quaking foe. i myself will cause them to take their food before me, each day, when i shall be in my palace, for i was with them when i was in the midst of the enemy, along with the prince manna my shield-bearer, and with the officers of my house who accompanied me, and who are my witnesses for the combat; these are those whom i was with. i have returned after a victorious struggle, and i have smitten with my sword the assembled multitudes.� the ordeal was a terrible one for the khâti; but when the first moment of defeat was over, they again took courage and resumed the campaign. this single effort had not exhausted their resources, and they rapidly filled up the gaps which had been made in their ranks. the plains of naharaim and the mountains of cilicia supplied them with fresh chariots and foot-soldiers in the place of those they had lost, and bands of mercenaries were furnished from the table-lands of asia minor, so that when ramses ii. reappeared in syria, he found himself confronted by a completely fresh army. khâtusaru, having profited by experience, did not again attempt a general engagement, but contented himself with disputing step by step the upper valleys of the litany and orontes. meantime his emissaries spread themselves over phoenicia and kharû, sowing the seeds of rebellion, often only too successfully. in the king�s viiith year there was a general rising in galilee, and its towns--galaput in the hill-country of bît-aniti, merorn, shalama, dapur, and anamaîm*--had to be reduced one after another. * episodes from this war are represented at karnak. the list of the towns taken, now much mutilated, comprised twenty four names, which proves the importance of the revolt. dapur was the hardest to carry. it crowned the top of a rocky eminence, and was protected by a double wall, which followed the irregularities of the hillside. it formed a rallying-point for a large force, which had to be overcome in the open country before the investment of the town could be attempted. the siege was at last brought to a conclusion, after a series of skirmishes, and the town taken by scaling, four egyptian princes having been employed in conducting the attack. in the pharaoh�s ixth year a revolt broke out on the egyptian frontier, in the shephelah, and the king placed himself at the head of his troops to crush it. ascalon, in which the peasantry and their families had found, as they hoped, a safe refuge, opened its gates to the pharaoh, and its fall brought about the submission of several neighbouring places. this, it appears, was the first time since the beginning of the conquests in syria that the inhabitants of these regions attempted to take up arms, and we may well ask what could have induced them thus to renounce their ancient loyalty. their defection reduced egypt for the moment almost to her natural frontiers. peace had scarcely been resumed when war again broke out with fresh violence in coele-syria, and one year it reached even to naharaim, and raged around tunipa as in the days of thûtmosis iii. �pharaoh assembled his foot-soldiers and chariots, and he commanded his foot-soldiers and his chariots to attack the perverse khâti who were in the neighbourhood of tunipa, and he put on his armour and mounted his chariot, and he waged battle against the town of the perverse khâti at the head of his foot-soldiers and his chariots, covered with his armour;� the fortress, however, did not yield till the second attack. ramses carried his arms still further afield, and with such results, that, to judge merely from the triumphal lists engraved on the walls of the temple of karnak, the inhabitants on the banks of the euphrates, those in carchemish, mitanni, singar, assyria, and mannus found themselves once more at the mercy of the egyptian battalions. these victories, however brilliant, were not decisive; if after any one of them the princes of assyria and singar may have sent presents to the pharaoh, the hittites, on the other hand, did not consider themselves beaten, and it was only after fifteen campaigns that they were at length sufficiently subdued to propose a treaty. at last, in the egyptian king�s xxist year, on the 21st of the month tybi, when the pharaoh, then residing in his good town of anakhîtû, was returning from the temple where he had been offering prayers to his father amon-eâ, to harmakhis of heliopolis, to phtah, and to sûtkhû the valiant son of nûît, eamses, one of the �messengers� who filled the office of lieutenant for the king in asia, arrived at the palace and presented to him tartisubu, who was authorised to make peace with egypt in the name of khâtusaru.* tartisubu carried in his hand a tablet of silver, on which his master had prescribed the conditions which appeared to him just and equitable. a short preamble recalling the alliances made between the ancestors of both parties, was followed by a declaration of friendship, and a reciprocal obligation to avoid in future all grounds of hostility. * the treaty of ramses ii. with the prince of the khâti was sculptured at karnak. not only was a perpetual truce declared between both peoples, but they agreed to help each other at the first demand. �should some enemy march against the countries subject to the great king of egypt, and should he send to the great prince of the khâti, saying: �come, bring me forces against them,� the great prince of the khâti shall do as he is asked by the great king of egypt, and the great prince of the khâti shall destroy his enemies. and if the great prince of the khâti shall prefer not to come himself, he shall send his archers and his chariots to the great king of egypt to destroy his enemies.� a similar clause ensured aid in return from ramses to khâtusaru, �his brother,� while two articles couched in identical terms made provision against the possibility of any town or tribe dependent on either of the two sovereigns withdrawing its allegiance and placing it in the hands of the other party. in this case the egyptians as well as the hittites engaged not to receive, or at least not to accept, such offers, but to refer them at once to the legitimate lord. the whole treaty was placed under the guarantee of the gods both, of egypt and of the khâti, whose names were given at length: �whoever shall fail to observe the stipulations, let the thousand gods of khâti and the thousand gods of egypt strike his house, his land, and his servants. but he who shall observe the stipulations engraved on the tablet of silver, whether he belong to the hittite people or whether he belong to the people of egypt, as he has not neglected them, may the thousand gods of khâti and the thousand gods of egypt give him health, and grant that he may prosper, himself, the people of his house, and also his land and his servants.� the treaty itself ends by a description of the plaque of silver on which it was engraved. it was, in fact, a facsimile in metal of one of those clay tablets on which the chaldæans inscribed their contracts. the preliminary articles occupied the upper part in closely written lines of cuneiform characters, while in the middle, in a space left free for the purpose, was the impress of two seals, that of the prince of the khâti and of his wife pûûkhîpa. khâtusaru was represented on them as standing upright in the arms of sûtkhû, while around the two figures ran the inscription, �seal of sûtkhû, the sovereign of heaven.� pûûkhîpa leaned on the breast of a god, the patron of her native town of aranna in qaauadana, and the legend stated that this was the seal of the sun of the town of àranna, the regent of the earth. the text of the treaty was continued beneath, and probably extended to the other side of the tablet. the original draft had terminated after the description of the seals, but, to satisfy the pharaoh, certain additional articles were appended for the protection of the commerce and industry of the two countries, for the prevention of the emigration of artisans, and for ensuring that steps taken against them should be more effectual and less cruel. any criminal attempting to evade the laws of his country, and taking refuge in that of the other party to the agreement, was to be expelled without delay and consigned to the officers of his lord; any fugitive not a criminal, any subject carried off or detained by force, any able artisan quitting either territory to take up permanent residence in the other, was to be conducted to the frontier, but his act of folly was not to expose him to judicial condemnation. �he who shall thus act, his fault shall not be brought up against him; his house shall not be touched, nor his wife, nor his children; he shall not have his throat cut, nor shall his eyes be touched, nor his mouth, nor his feet; no criminal accusation shall be made against him.� this treaty is the most ancient of all those of which the text has come down to us; its principal conditions were--perfect equality and reciprocity between the contracting sovereigns, an offensive and defensive alliance, and the extradition of criminals and refugees. the original was drawn up in chaldæan script by the scribes of khâtusaru, probably on the model of former conventions between the pharaohs and the asiatic courts, and to this the egyptian ministers had added a few clauses relative to the pardon of emigrants delivered up by one or other of the contracting parties. when, therefore, tartisubu arrived in the city of eamses, the acceptance of the treaty was merely a matter of form, and peace was virtually concluded. it did not confer on the conqueror the advantages which we might have expected from his successful campaigns: it enjoined, on the contrary, the definite renunciation of those countries, mitanni, naharaim, alasia, and amurru, over which thûtmosis iii. and his immediate successors had formerly exercised an effective sovereignty. sixteen years of victories had left matters in the same state as they were after the expedition of harmhabî, and, like his predecessor, ramses was able to retain merely those asiatic provinces which were within the immediate influence of egypt, such as the phoenician coast proper, kharû, persea beyond jordan, the oases of the arabian desert, and the peninsula of sinai.* * the _anastasi papyrus i_. mentions a place called _zaru of sesostris_, in the neighbourhood of aleppo, in a part of syria which was not in egyptian territory: the frontier in this locality must have passed between arvad and byblos on the coast, and between qodshû and hazor from merom inland. egyptian rule on the other side of the jordan seems to be proved by the monument discovered a few years ago in the haurân, and known under the name of the �stone of job� by the bedawîn of the neighbourhood. this apparently unsatisfactory result, after such supreme efforts, was, however, upon closer examination, not so disappointing. for more than half a century at least, since the hittite kingdom had been developed and established under the impulse given to it by sapalulu, everything had been in its favour. the campaign of seti had opposed merely a passing obstacle to its expansion, and had not succeeded in discouraging its ambitions, for its rulers still nursed the hope of being able one day to conquer syria as far as the isthmus. the check received at qodshû, the abortive attempts to foment rebellion in galilee and the shephelah, the obstinate persistence with which ramses and his army returned year after year to the attack, the presence of the enemy at tunipa, on the banks of the euphrates, and in the provinces then forming the very centre of the hittite kingdom--in short, all the incidents of this long struggle--at length convinced khâtusaru that he was powerless to extend his rule in this direction at the expense of egypt. moreover, we have no knowledge of the events which occupied him on the other frontiers of his kingdom, where he may have been engaged at the same time in a conflict with assyria, or in repelling an incursion of the tribes on the black sea. the treaty with pharaoh, if made in good faith and likely to be lasting, would protect the southern extremities of his kingdom, and allow of his removing the main body of his forces to the north and east in case of attack from either of these quarters. the security which such an alliance would ensure made it, therefore, worth his while to sue for peace, even if the egyptians should construe his overtures as an acknowledgment of exhausted supplies or of inferiority of strength. ramses doubtless took it as such, and openly displayed on the walls at karnak and in the eamesseum a copy of the treaty so flattering to his pride, but the indomitable resistance which he had encountered had doubtless given rise to reflections resembling those of khâtusaru, and he had come to realise that it was his own interest not to lightly forego the good will of the khâti. egypt had neighbours in africa who were troublesome though not dangerous: the timihû, the tihonu, the mashûasha, the negroes of kûsh and of pûanît, might be a continual source of annoyance and disturbance, even though they were incapable of disturbing her supremacy. the coast of the delta, it is true, was exposed to the piracy of northern nations, but up to that time this had been merely a local trouble, easy to meet if not to obviate altogether. the only real danger was on the asiatic side, arising from empires of ancient constitution like chaldæa, or from hordes who, arriving at irregular intervals from the north, and carrying all before them, threatened, after the example of the hyksôs, to enter the delta. the hittite kingdom acted as a kind of buffer between the nile valley and these nations, both civilized and barbarous; it was a strongly armed force on the route of the invaders, and would henceforth serve as a protecting barrier, through which if the enemy were able to pass it would only be with his strength broken or weakened by a previous encounter. the sovereigns loyally observed the peace which they had sworn to each other, and in his xxxivth year the marriage of ramses with the eldest daughter of khâtusaru strengthened their friendly relations. [illustration: 214.jpg khâtusaru, prince of khâti, and his daughter] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plate in lepsius; the triad worshipped by khâtusaru and his daughter is composed of ramses ii., seated between amon-râ and phtah-totûnen. pharaoh was not a little proud of this union, and he has left us a naive record of the manner in which it came about. the inscription is engraved on the face of the rock at abu simbel in nubia; and ramses begins by boasting, in a heroic strain, of his own energy and exploits, of the fear with which his victories inspired the whole world, and of the anxiety of the syrian kinglets to fulfil his least wishes. the prince of the khâti had sent him sumptuous presents at every opportunity, and, not knowing how further to make himself agreeable to the pharaoh, had finally addressed the great lords of his court, and reminded them how their country had formerly been ruined by war, how their master sûtkhû had taken part against them, and how they had been delivered from their ills by the clemency of the sun of egypt. �let us therefore take our goods, and placing my eldest daughter at the head of them, let us repair to the domains of the great god, so that the king sesostris may recognise us.� he accordingly did as he had proposed, and the embassy set out with gold and silver, valuable horses, and an escort of soldiers, together with cattle and provisions to supply them with food by the way. when they reached the borders of khâru, the governor wrote immediately to the pharaoh as follows: �here is the prince of the khâti, who brings his eldest daughter with a number of presents of every kind; and now this princess and the chief of the country of the khâti, after having crossed many mountains and undertaken a difficult journey from distant parts, have arrived at the frontiers of his majesty. may we be instructed how we ought to act with regard to them.� the king was then in residence at ramses. when the news reached him, he officially expressed his great joy at the event, since it was a thing unheard of in the annals of the country that so powerful a prince should go to such personal inconvenience in order to marry his daughter to an ally. the pharaoh, therefore, despatched his nobles and an army to receive them, but he was careful to conceal the anxiety which he felt all the while, and, according to custom, took counsel of his patron god sûtkhû: �who are these people who come with a message at this time to the country of zahi?� the oracle, however, reassured him as to their intentions, and he thereupon hastened to prepare for their proper reception. the embassy made a triumphal entry into the city, the princess at its head, escorted by the egyptian troops told off for the purpose, together with the foot-soldiers and charioteers of the khâti, comprising the flower of their army and militia. a solemn festival was held in their honour, in which food and drink were served without stint, and was concluded by the celebration of the marriage in the presence of the egyptian lords and of the princes of the whole earth.* * the fact of the marriage is known to us by the decree of phtah totûnen at abu simbel in the xxxvth year of the king�s reign. the account of it in the text is taken from the stele at abu simbel. the last lines are so mutilated that i have been obliged to paraphrase them. the stele of the princess of bakhtan has preserved the romantic version of this marriage, such as was current about the saite period. the king of the khâti must have taken advantage of the expedition which the pharaoh made into asia to send him presents by an embassy, at the head of which he placed his eldest daughter: the princess found favour with ramses, who married her. ramses, unwilling to relegate a princess of such noble birth to the companionship of his ordinary concubines, granted her the title of queen, as if she were of solar blood, and with the cartouche gave her the new name of ûirimaûnofîrurî--�she who sees the beauties of the sun.� she figures henceforth in the ceremonies and on the monuments in the place usually occupied by women of egyptian race only, and these unusual honours may have compensated, in the eyes of the young princess, for the disproportion in age between herself and a veteran more than sixty years old. the friendly relations between the two courts became so intimate that the pharaoh invited his father-in-law to visit him in his own country. �the great prince of khâti informed the prince of qodi: �prepare thyself that we may go down into egypt. the word of the king has gone forth, let us obey sesostris. he gives the breath of life to those who love him; hence all the earth loves him, and khâti forms but one with him.�� they were received with pomp at ramses-anakhîtû, and perhaps at thebes. it was with a mixture of joy and astonishment that egypt beheld her bitterest foe become her most faithful ally, �and the men of qimît having but one heart with the chiefs of the khâti, a thing which had not happened since the ages of pa.� the half-century following the conclusion of this alliance was a period of world-wide prosperity. syria was once more able to breathe freely, her commerce being under the combined protection of the two powers who shared her territory. not only caravans, but isolated travellers, were able to pass through the country from north to south without incurring any risks beyond those occasioned by an untrustworthy guide or a few highwaymen. it became in time a common task in the schools of thebes to describe the typical syrian tour of some soldier or functionary, and we still possess one of these imaginative stories in which the scribe takes his hero from qodshû across the lebanon to byblos, berytus, tyre, and sidon, �the fish� of which latter place �are more numerous than the grains of sand;� he then makes him cross galilee and the forest of oaks to jaffa, climb the mountains of the dead sea, and following the maritime route by raphia, reach pelusium. the egyptian galleys thronged the phoenician ports, while those of phoenicia visited egypt. the latter drew so little water that they had no difficulty in coming up the nile, and the paintings in one of the tombs represent them at the moment of their reaching thebes. the hull of these vessels was similar to that of the nile boats, but the bow and stern were terminated by structures which rose at right angles, and respectively gave support to a sort of small platform. upon this the pilot maintained his position by one of those wondrous feats of equilibrium of which the orientals were masters. [illustration: 218.jpg phoenician boats landing at thebes] drawn by boudier, from the photograph published by daressy. an open rail ran round the sides of the vessel, so as to prevent goods stowed upon the deck from falling into the sea when the vessel lurched. voyages to pûanît were undertaken more frequently in quest of incense and precious metals. the working of the mines of akiti had been the source of considerable outlay at the beginning of the reign. the measures taken by seti to render the approaches to them practicable at all seasons had not produced the desired results; as far back as the iiird year of ramses the overseers of the south had been forced to acknowledge that the managers of the convoys could no longer use any of the cisterns which had been hewn and built at such great expense. �half of them die of thirst, together with their asses, for they have no means of carrying a sufficient number of skins of water to last during the journey there and back.� the friends and officers whose advice had been called in, did not doubt for a moment that the king would be willing to complete the work which his father had merely initiated. �if thou sayest to the water, �come upon the mountain,� the heavenly waters will spring out at the word of thy mouth, for thou art râ incarnate, khopri visibly created, thou art the living image of thy father tûmû, the heliopolitan.�--�if thou thyself sayest to thy father the nile, father of the gods,� added the viceroy of ethiopia, ��raise the water up to the mountain,� he will do all that thou hast said, for so it has been with all thy projects which have been accomplished in our presence, of which the like has never been heard, even in the songs of the poets.� the cisterns and wells were thereupon put into such a condition that the transport of gold was rendered easy for years to come. the war with the khâti had not suspended building and other works of public utility; and now, owing to the establishment of peace, the sovereign was able to devote himself entirely to them. he deepened the canal at zalû; he repaired the walls and the fortified places which protected the frontier on the side of the sinaitic peninsula, and he built or enlarged the strongholds along the nile at those points most frequently threatened by the incursions of nomad tribes. ramses was the royal builder _par excellence_, and we may say without fear of contradiction that, from the second cataract to the mouths of the nile, there is scarcely an edifice on whose ruins we do not find his name. in nubia, where the desert approaches close to the nile, he confined himself to cutting in the solid rock the monuments which, for want of space, he could not build in the open. the idea of the cave-temple must have occurred very early to the egyptians; they were accustomed to house their dead in the mountain-side, why then should they not house their gods in the same manner? the oldest forms of speos, those near to beni-hasan, at deîr el-baharî, at bl-kab, and at gebel silsileh, however, do not date further back than the time of the xviiith dynasty. all the forms of architectural plan observed in isolated temples were utilised by ramses and applied to rock-cut buildings with more or less modification, according to the nature of the stratum in which he had to work. where space permitted, a part only of the temple was cut in the rock, and the approaches to it were built in the open air with blocks brought to the spot, so that the completed speos became only in part a grotto--a hemi-speos of varied construction. it was in this manner that the architects of ramses arranged the court and pylon at beît-wally, the hypostyle hall, rectangular court and pylon at gerf-hosseîn, and the avenue of sphinxes at wady es-sebuah, where the entrance to the avenue was guarded by two statues overlooking the river. the pylon at gerf-hosseîn has been demolished, and merely a few traces of the foundations appear here and there above the soil, but a portion of the portico which surrounded the court is still standing, together with its massive architraves and statues, which stand with their backs against the pillars. [illustration: 221.jpg the projecting columns of the speos of gerf-hosseîn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. the sanctuary itself comprised an antechamber, supported by two columns and flanked by two oblong recesses; this led into the holy of holies, which was a narrow niche with a low ceiling, placed between two lateral chapels. a hall, nearly square in shape, connected these mysterious chambers with the propylæa, which were open to the sky and faced with osiride caryatides. [illustration: 221.jpg the caryatides of gerf-hosseîn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. these appear to keep rigid and solemn watch over the approaches to the tabernacle, and their faces, half hidden in the shadow, still present such a stern appearance that the semi-barbaric nubians of the neighbouring villages believe them to be possessed by implacable genii. they are supposed to move from their places during the hours of night, and the fire which flashes from their eyes destroys or fascinates whoever is rash enough to watch them. other kings before ramses had constructed buildings in these spots, and their memory would naturally become associated with his in the future; he wished, therefore, to find a site where he would be without a rival, and to this end he transformed the cliff at abu simbel into a monument of his greatness. the rocks here project into the nile and form a gigantic conical promontory, the face of which was covered with triumphal stelæ, on which the sailors or troops going up or down the river could spell out as they passed the praises of the king and his exploits. a few feet of shore on the northern side, covered with dry and knotty bushes, affords in winter a landing-place for tourists. at the spot where the beach ends near the point of the promontory, sit four colossi, with their feet nearly touching the water, their backs leaning against a sloping wall of rock, which takes the likeness of a pylon. a band of hieroglyphs runs above their heads underneath the usual cornice, over which again is a row of crouching cynocephali looking straight before them, their hands resting upon their knees, and above this line of sacred images rises the steep and naked rock. one of the colossi is broken, and the bust of the statue, which must have been detached by some great shock, has fallen to the ground; the others rise to the height of 63 feet, and appear to look across the nile as if watching the wadys leading to the gold-mines. [illustration 224.jpg the two colossi of abu simbel to the south of the doorway] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. the pschent crown surmounts their foreheads, and the two ends of the head-dress fall behind their ears; their features are of a noble type, calm and serious; the nose slightly aquiline, the under lip projecting above a square, but rather heavy, chin. of such a type we may picture ramses, after the conclusion of the peace with the khâti, in the full vigour of his manhood and at the height of his power. [illustration: 225.jpg the interior of the speos of abu simbel] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. the doorway of the temple is in the centre of the façade, and rises nearly to a level with the elbows of the colossi; above the lintel, and facing the river, stands a figure of the god râ, represented with a human body and the head of a sparrow-hawk, while two images of the king in profile, one on each side of the god, offer him a figure of truth. the first hall, 130 feet long by 58 feet broad, takes the place of the court surrounded by a colonnade which in other temples usually follows the pylon. her eight osiride figures, standing against as many square pillars, appear to support the weight of the superincumbent rock. their profile catches the light as it enters through the open doorway, and in the early morning, when the rising sun casts a ruddy ray over their features, their faces become marvellously life-like. we are almost tempted to think that a smile plays over their lips as the first beams touch them. the remaining chambers consist of a hypostyle hall nearly square in shape, the sanctuary itself being between two smaller apartments, and of eight subterranean chambers excavated at a lower level than the rest of the temple. the whole measures 178 feet from the threshold to the far end of the holy of holies. the walls are covered with bas-reliefs in which the pharaoh has vividly depicted the wars which he carried on in the four corners of his kingdom; here we see raids against the negroes, there the war with the khâti, and further on an encounter with some libyan tribe. ramses, flushed by the heat of victory, is seen attacking two timihu chiefs: one has already fallen to the ground and is being trodden underfoot; the other, after vainly letting fly his arrows, is about to perish from a blow of the conqueror. [illustration: 228.jpg the face of the rock at abu simgel] his knees give way beneath him, his head falls heavily backwards, and the features are contracted in his death-agony. pharaoh with his left hand has seized him by the arm, while with his right he points his lance against his enemy�s breast, and is about to pierce him through the heart. as a rule, this type of bas-relief is executed with a conventional grace which leaves the spectator unmoved, and free to consider the scene merely from its historical point of view, forgetful of the artist. [illustration: 229.jpg ramses ii. pierces a libyan chief with his lance] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mons. do bock. an examination of most of the other wall-decorations of the speos will furnish several examples of this type: we see ramses with a suitable gesture brandishing his weapon above a group of prisoners, and the composition furnishes us with a fair example of official sculpture, correct, conventional, but devoid of interest. here, on the contrary, the drawing is so full of energy that it carries the imagination hack to the time and scene of those far-off battles. [illustration: 230.jpg ramses ii. strikes a group of prisoners] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. the indistinct light in which it is seen helps the illusion, and we almost forget that it is a picture we are beholding, and not the action itself as it took place some three thousand years ago. a small speos, situated at some hundred feet further north, is decorated with standing colossi of smaller size, four of which represent ramses, and two of them his wife, isit nofrîtari. this speos possesses neither peristyle nor crypt, and the chapels are placed at the two extremities of the transverse passage, instead of being in a parallel line with the sanctuary; on the other hand, the hypostyle hall rests on six pillars with hathor-headed capitals of fine proportions. [illustration: 231.jpg the façade of the little speos of hauthor at abu simbel] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plates in champollion. a third excavated grotto of modest dimensions served as an accessory chamber to the two others. an inexhaustible stream of yellow sand poured over the great temple from the summit of the cliff, and partially covered it every year. no sooner were the efforts to remove it relaxed, than it spreads into the chambers, concealing the feet of the colossi, and slowly creeping upwards to their knees, breasts, and necks; at the beginning of this century they were entirely hidden. in spite of all that was done to divert it, it ceaselessly reappeared, and in a few summers regained all the ground which had been previously cleared. it would seem as if the desert, powerless to destroy the work of the conqueror, was seeking nevertheless to hide it from the admiration of posterity.* * the english engineers have succeeded in barring out the sand, and have prevented it from pouring over the cliff any more.--ed. seti had worked indefatigably at thebes, but the shortness of his reign prevented him from completing the buildings he had begun there. there existed everywhere, at luxor, at karnak, and on the left bank of the nile, the remains of his unfinished works; sanctuaries partially roofed in, porticoes incomplete, columns raised to merely half their height, halls as yet imperfect with blank walls, here and there covered with only the outlines in red and black ink of their future bas-reliefs, and statues hardly blocked out, or awaiting the final touch of the polisher.* * this is the description which ramses gave of the condition in which he found the memnonium of abydos. an examination of the inscriptions existing in the theban temples which seti i. had constructed, shows that it must have applied also to the appearance of certain portions of qurneh, luxor, and karnak in the time of ramses ii. ramses took up the work where his father had relinquished it. at luxor there was not enough space to give to the hypostyle hall the extension which the original plans proposed, and the great colonnade has an unfinished appearance. [illustration: 230.jpg columns of temple at luxor] the nile, in one of its capricious floods, had carried away the land upon which the architects had intended to erect the side aisles; and if they wished to add to the existing structure a great court and a pylon, without which no temple was considered complete, it was necessary to turn the axis of the building towards the east. [illustration: 233.jpg the chapel of thutmosis iii. and one of the pylons of ramses ii. at luxor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. in their operations the architects came upon a beautiful little edifice of rose granite, which had been either erected or restored by thûtmosis iii. at a time when the town was an independent municipality and was only beginning to extend its suburban dwellings to meet those of karnak. they took care to make no change in this structure, but set to work to incorporate it into their final plans. it still stands at the north-west corner of the court, and the elegance of its somewhat slender little columns contrasts happily with the heaviness of the structure to which it is attached. a portion of its portico is hidden by the brickwork of the mosque of abu�l haggag: the part brought to light in the course of the excavations contains between each row of columns a colossal statue of ramses ii. we are accustomed to hear on all sides of the degeneracy of the sculptor�s art at this time, and of its having fallen into irreparable neglect. nothing can be further from the truth than this sweeping statement. there are doubtless many statues and bas-reliefs of this epoch which shock us by their crudity and ugliness, but these owed their origin for the most part to provincial workshops which had been at all times of mediocre repute, and where the artists did not receive orders enough to enable them to correct by practice the defects of their education. we find but few productions of the theban school exhibiting bad technique, and if we had only this one monument of luxor from which to form our opinion of its merits, it would be sufficient to prove that the sculptors of ramses ii. were not a whit behind those of harmham or seti i. adroitness in cutting the granite or hard sandstone had in no wise been lost, and the same may be said of the skill in bringing out the contour and life-like action of the figure, and of the art of infusing into the features and demeanour of the pharaoh something of the superhuman majesty with which the egyptian people were accustomed to invest their monarchs. if the statues of ramses ii. in the portico are not perfect models of sculpture, they have many good points, and their bold treatment makes them effectively decorative. [illustration: 235.jpg the colonnade of seti i. and the three colossal statues of ramses ii. at luxor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. eight other statues of ramses are arranged along the base of the façade, and two obelisks--one of which has been at paris for half a century*--stood on either side of the entrance. * the colonnade and the little temple of thûtmosis iii. were concealed under the houses of the village; they were first brought to light in the excavations of 1884-86. the whole structure lacks unity, and there is nothing corresponding to it in this respect anywhere else in egypt. the northern half does not join on to the southern, but seems to belong to quite a distinct structure, or the two parts might be regarded as having once formed a single edifice which had become divided by an accident, which the architect had endeavoured to unite together again by a line of columns running between two walls. the masonry of the hypostyle hall at karnak was squared and dressed, but the walls had been left undecorated, as was also the case with the majority of the shafts of the columns and the surface of the architraves. ramses covered the whole with a series of sculptured and painted scenes which had a rich ornamental effect; he then decorated the pylon, and inscribed on the outer wall to the south the list of cities which he had captured. the temple of amon then assumed the aspect which it preserved henceforward for centuries. the ramessides and their successors occupied themselves in filling it with furniture, and in taking steps for the repair of any damage that might accrue to the hall or pillars; they had their cartouches or inscriptions placed in vacant spaces, but they did not dare to modify its arrangement. it was reserved for the ethiopian and greek pharaohs, in presence of the hypostyle and pylon of the xixth dynasty, to conceive of others on a still vaster scale. [illustration: 236.jpg paintings of chairs] ramses, having completed the funerary chapel of seti at qurneh upon the left bank of the river, then began to think of preparing the edifice destined for the cult of his �double�--that eamesseum whose majestic ruins still stand at a short distance to the north of the giants of amenôthes. did these colossal statues stimulate his spirit of emulation to do something yet more marvellous? he erected here, at any rate, a still more colossal figure. the earthquake which shattered memnon brought it to the ground, and fragments of it still strew the soil where they fell some nineteen centuries ago. there are so many of them that the spectator would think himself in the middle of a granite quarry.* * the ear measures 3 feet 4 inches (feet ?) in length; the statue is 58 feet high from the top of the head to the sole of the foot, and the weight of the whole has been estimated at over a thousand tons. [illustration: 237.jpg the remains of the colossal statue of ramses ii. at the ramesseum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato the portions forming the breast, arms, and thighs are in detached pieces, but they are still recognisable where they lie close to each other. the head has lost nothing of its characteristic expression, and its proportions are so enormous, that a man could sleep crouched up in the hollow of one of its ears as if on a sofa. behind the court overlooked by this colossal statue lay a second court, surrounded by a row of square pillars, each having a figure of osiris attached to it. the god is represented as a mummy, the swathings throwing the body and limbs into relief. [illustration: 238.jpg the ramesseum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato; the great blocks in the foreground are the fragments of the colossal statue of ramses ii. his hands are freed from the bandages and are crossed on the breast, and hold respectively the flail and crook; the smiling face is surmounted by an enormous head-dress. the sanctuary with the buildings attached to it has perished, but enormous brick structures extend round the ruins, forming an enclosure of storehouses. here the priests of the �double� were accustomed to dwell with their wives and slaves, and here they stored up the products of their domains--meat, vegetables, corn, fowls dried or preserved in fat, and wines procured from all the vineyards of egypt. these were merely the principal monuments put up by ramses ii. at thebes during the sixty-seven years of his rule. there would be no end to the enumeration of his works if we were to mention all the other edifices which he constructed in the necropolis or among the dwellings of the living, all those which he restored, or those which he merely repaired or inscribed with his cartouches. these are often cut over the name of the original founder, and his usurpations of monuments are so numerous that he might be justly accused of having striven to blot out the memory of his predecessors, and of claiming for himself the entire work of the whole line of pharaohs. it would seem as if, in his opinion, the glory of egypt began with him, or at least with his father, and that no victorious campaigns had been ever heard of before those which he conducted against the libyans and the hittites. the battle of qodshû, with its attendant episodes--the flogging of the spies, the assault upon the camp, the charge of the chariots, the flight of the syrians--is the favourite subject of his inscriptions; and the poem of pentaûîrît adds to the bas-reliefs a description worthy of the acts represented. this epic reappears everywhere, in nubia and in the said, at abu simbel, at beît-wally, at derr, at luxor, at karnak, and on the eamesseum, and the same battle-scenes, with the same accompanying texts, reappear in the memnonium, whose half-ruined walls still crown the necropolis of abydos. [illustration: 240.jpg the ruins of the memnonium of ramses ii. at abydos] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. he had decided upon the erection of this latter monument at the very beginning of his reign, and the artisans who had worked at the similar structure of seti i. were employed to cover its walls with admirable bas-reliefs. ramses also laid claim to have his own resting-place at �the cleft;� in this privilege he associated all the pharaohs, from whom he imagined himself to be descended, and the same list of their names, which we find engraved in the chapel of his father, appears on his building also. some ruins, lying beyond abydos, are too formless to do more than indicate the site of some of his structures. he enlarged the temple of harshafîtû and that of osiris at heracleopolis, and, to accomplish these works the more promptly, his workmen had recourse for material to the royal towns of the ivth and xiith dynasties; the pyramids of usirtasen ii. and snofrûi at medûm suffered accordingly the loss of the best part of their covering. he finished the mausoleum at memphis, and dedicated the statue which seti had merely blocked out; he then set to work to fill the city with buildings of his own device--granite and sandstone chambers to the east of the sacred lake,* monumental gateways to the south,** and before one of them a fine colossal figure in granite.*** it lay not long ago at the bottom of a hole among the palm trees, and was covered by the inundation every year; it has now been so raised as to be safe from the waters. ramses could hardly infuse new life into all the provinces which had been devastated years before by the shepherd-kings; but heliopolis,**** bubastes, athribis, patûmû, mendis, tell moqdam, and all the cities of the eastern corner of the delta, constitute a museum of his monuments, every object within them testifying to his activity. * partly excavated and published by mariette, and partly by m. de morgan. this is probably the temple mentioned in the _great inscription of abu simbel_. ** these are probably those mentioned by herodotus, when he says that sesostris constructed a propylon in the temple of hephaistos. *** this is abu-1-hôl of the arabs. **** ruins of the temple of râ bear the cartouche of ramses ii. �cleopatra�s needle,� transported to alexandria by one of the ptolemies, had been set up by ramses at heliopolis; it is probably one of the four obelisks which the traditional sesostris is said to have erected in that city, according to pliny. he colonised these towns with his prisoners, rebuilt them, and set to work to rouse them from the torpor into which they had fallen after their capture by ahmosis. he made a third capital of tanis, which rivalled both memphis and thebes. [illustration: 242.jpg the colossal statue of ramses ii. at mitrahineh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph brought back by bénédite. before this it had been little more than a deserted ruin: he cleared out the _débris_, brought a population to the place; rebuilt the temple, enlarging it by aisles which extended its area threefold; and here he enthroned, along with the local divinities, a triad, in which amonrâ and sûtkhû sat side by side with his own deified �double.� the ruined walls, the overturned stelæ, the obelisks recumbent in the dust, and the statues of his usurped predecessors, all bear his name. his colossal figure of statuary sandstone, in a sitting attitude like that at the eamesseum, projected from the chief court, and seemed to look down upon the confused ruin of his works.* * the fragments of the colossus were employed in the græco roman period as building material, and used in the masonry of a boundary wall. we do not know how many wives he had in his harem, but one of the lists of his children which has come down to us enumerates, although mutilated at the end, one hundred and eleven sons, while of his daughters we know of fifty-five.* * the list of abydos enumerates thirty-three of his sons and thirty-two of his daughters, that of wady-sebua one hundred and eleven of his sons and fifty-one of his daughters; both lists are mutilated. the remaining lists for the most part record only some of the children living at the time they were drawn up, at derr, at the eamesseum, and at abu simbel. the majority of these were the offspring of mere concubines or foreign princesses, and possessed but a secondary rank in comparison with himself; but by his union with his sisters nofrîtari marîtmût and isîtnofrît, he had at least half a dozen sons and daughters who might aspire to the throne. death robbed him of several of these before an opportunity was open to them to succeed him, and among them amenhikhopshûf, amenhiunamif, and ramses, who had distinguished themselves in the campaign against the khâti; and some of his daughters--bitanîti, marîtamon, nibîttaûi--by becoming his wives lost their right to the throne. about the xxxth year of his reign, when he was close upon sixty, he began to think of an associate, and his choice rested on the eldest surviving son of his queen isîtnofrît, who was called khâmoîsît. this prince was born before the succession of his father, and had exhibited distinguished bravery under the walls of qodshu and at ascalon. when he was still very young he had been invested with the office of high priest of the memphite phtah, and thus had secured to him the revenues of the possessions of the god, which were the largest in all egypt after those of the theban anion. he had a great reputation for his knowledge of abstruse theological questions and of the science of magic--a later age attributing to him the composition of several books on magic giving directions for the invocation of spirits belonging to this world and the world beyond. he became the hero also of fantastic romances, in which it was related of him how, in consequence of his having stolen from the mummy of an old wizard the books of thot, he became the victim of possession by a sort of lascivious and sanguinary ghoul. ramses relieved himself of the cares of state by handing over to khâmoîsîfc the government of the country, without, however, conferring upon him the titles and insignia of royalty. the chief concern of khâmoîsît was to secure the scrupulous observance of the divine laws. he celebrated at silsilis the festivals of the inundation; he presided at the commemoration of his father�s apotheosis, and at the funeral rites of the apis who died in the xxxth year of the king�s reign. before his time each sacred bull had its separate tomb in a quarter of the memphite necropolis known to the greeks as the serapeion. the tomb was a small cone-roofed building erected on a square base, and containing only one chamber. khâmoîsît substituted for this a rock-tomb similar to those used by ordinary individuals. he had a tunnel cut in the solid rock to a depth of about a hundred yards, and on either side of this a chamber was prepared for each apis on its death, the masons closing up the wall after the installation of the mummy. his regency had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, when, the burden of government becoming too much for him, he was succeeded in the lvth year of ramses by his younger brother mînephtah, who was like himself a son of isîtnofrît.* mînephtah acted, during the first twelve years of his rule, for his father, who, having now almost attained the age of a hundred, passed peacefully away at thebes in the lxviii year of his reign, full of days and sated with glory.** he became the subject of legend almost before he had closed his eyes upon the world. * mînephtah was in the order of birth the thirteenth son of ramses ii. ** a passage on a stele of ramses iv. formally attributes to him a reign of sixty-seven years. i procured at koptos a stele of his year lxvi. [illustration: 245.jpg the chapel of the apis of amekôthes iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by mariette. he had obtained brilliant successes during his life, and the scenes describing them were depicted in scores of places. popular fancy believed everything which he had related of himself, and added to this all that it knew of other kings, thus making him the pharaoh of pharaohs--the embodiment of all preceding monarchs. legend preferred to recall him by the name sesûsû, sesûstûrî--a designation which had been applied to him by his contemporaries, and he thus became better known to moderns as sesostris than by his proper name ramses mîamûn.* * this designation, which is met with at medinet-habu and in the anmtasi papyrus i., was shown by e. de rougé to refer to ramses ii.; the various readings sesû, sesûsû, sesûstûrî, explain the different forms sesosis, sesoosis, sesostris. wiedemann saw in this name the mention of a king of the xviiith dynasty not yet classified. according to tradition, he was at first sent to ethiopia with a fleet of four hundred ships, by which he succeeded in conquering the coasts of the red sea as far as the indus. in later times several stelæ in the cinnamon country were ascribed to him. he is credited after this with having led into the east a great army, with which he conquered syria, media, persia, bactriana, and india as far as the ocean; and with having on his return journey through the deserts of scythia reached the don [tanais], where, on the shore of the masotic sea, he left a number of his soldiers, whose descendants afterwards peopled colchis. it was even alleged that he had ventured into europe, but that the lack of provisions and the inclemency of the climate had prevented him from advancing further than thrace. [illustration: 246.jpg statue of khamoisit] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a statue in the british museum. he returned to egypt after an absence of nine years, and after having set up on his homeward journey statues and stelæ everywhere in commemoration of his victories. herodotus asserts that he himself had seen several of these monuments in his travels in syria and ionia. some of these are of genuine egyptian manufacture, and are to be attributed to our ramses; they are to be found near tyre, and on the banks of the nahr el-kelb, where they mark the frontier to which his empire extended in this direction. others have but little resemblance to egyptian monuments, and were really the work of the asiatic peoples among whom they were found. the two figures referred to long ago by herodotus, which have been discovered near ninfi between sardis and smyrna, are instances of the latter. [illustration: 247.jpg stele of the nahr el-kelb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the shoes of the figures are turned up at the toe, and the head-dress has more resemblance to the high hats of the people of asia minor than to the double crown of egypt, while the lower garment is striped horizontally in place of vertically. the inscription, moreover, is in an asiatic form of writing, and has nothing egyptian about it. ramses ii. in his youth was the handsomest man of his time. he was tall and straight; his figure was well moulded--the shoulders broad, the arms full and vigorous, the legs muscular; the face was oval, with a firm and smiling mouth, a thin aquiline nose, and large open eyes. [illustration: 248.jpg the bas-belief of ninfi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. [illustration: 249.jpg the coffin and mummy of ramses ii] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken from the mummy itself, by emil brugsch-bey. there may be seen below the cartouche the lines of the official report of inspection written during the xxist dynasty. old age and death did not succeed in marring the face sufficiently to disfigure it. the coffin containing his body is not the same as that in which his children placed him on the day of his obsequies; it is another substituted for it by one of the ramessides, and the mask upon it has but a distant resemblance to the face of the victorious pharaoh. the mummy is thin, much shrunken, and light; the bones are brittle, and the muscles atrophied, as one would expect in the case of a man who had attained the age of a hundred; but the figure is still tall and of perfect proportions.* * even after the coalescence of the vertebrae and the shrinkage produced by mummification, the body of ramses ii. still measures over 5 feet 8 inches. the head, which is bald on the top, is somewhat long, and small in relation to the bulk of the body; there is but little hair on the forehead, but at the back of the head it is thick, and in smooth stiff locks, still preserving its white colour beneath the yellow balsams of his last toilet. the forehead is low, the supra-orbital ridges accentuated, the eyebrows thick, the eyes small and set close to the nose, the temples hollow, the cheek-bones prominent; the ears, finely moulded, stand out from the head, and are pierced, like those of a woman, for the usual ornaments pendant from the lobe. a strong jaw and square chin, together, with a large thick-lipped mouth, which reveals through the black paste within it a few much-worn but sound teeth, make up the features of the mummied king. his moustache and beard, which were closely shaven in his lifetime, had grown somewhat in his last sickness or after his death; the coarse and thick hairs in them, white like those of the head and eyebrows, attain a length of two or three millimetres. the skin shows an ochreous yellow colour under the black bituminous plaster. the mask of the mummy, in fact, gives a fair idea of that of the living king; the somewhat unintelligent expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose, displays itself with an air of royal majesty beneath the sombre materials used by the embalmer. the disappearance of the old hero did not produce many changes in the position of affairs in egypt: mînephtah from this time forth possessed as pharaoh the power which he had previously wielded as regent. he was now no longer young. born somewhere about the beginning of the reign of ramses ii., he was now sixty, possibly seventy, years old; thus an old man succeeded another old man at a moment when egypt must have needed more than ever an active and vigorous ruler. the danger to the country did not on this occasion rise from the side of asia, for the relations of the pharaoh with his kharu subjects continued friendly, and, during a famine which desolated syria,* he sent wheat to his hittite allies. * a document preserved in the _anastasi papyrus iii._ shows how regular the relations with syria had become. it is the journal of a custom-house officer, or of a scribe placed at one of the frontier posts, who notes from day to day the letters, messengers, officers, and troops which passed from the 15th to the 25th of pachons, in the iiird year of the reign. the nations, however, to the north and east, in libya and in the mediterranean islands, had for some time past been in a restless condition, which boded little good to the empires of the old world. the tirnihû, some of them tributaries from the xiith, and others from the first years of the xviiith dynasty, had always been troublesome, but never really dangerous neighbours. from time to time it was necessary to send light troops against them, who, sailing along the coast or following the caravan routes, would enter their territory, force them from their retreats, destroy their palm groves, carry off their cattle, and place garrisons in the principal oases--even in sîwah itself. for more than a century, however, it would seem that more active and numerically stronger populations had entered upon the stage. a current of invasion, having its origin in the region of the atlas, or possibly even in europe, was setting towards the nile, forcing before it the scattered tribes of the sudan. who were these invaders? were they connected with the race which had planted its dolmens over the plains of the maghreb? whatever the answer to this question may be, we know that a certain number of berber tribes*--the labû and mashaûasha--who had occupied a middle position between egypt and the people behind them, and who had only irregular communications with the nile valley, were now pushed to the front and forced to descend upon it.** * the nationality of these tribes is evidenced by the names of their chiefs, which recall exactly those of the numidians--massyla, massinissa, massiva. ** the labû, laûbû, lobû, are mentioned for the first time under ramses ii.; these are the libyans of classical geographers. the mashaûasha answer to the maxycs of herodotus; they furnished mercenaries to the armies of ramses ii. they were men tall of stature and large of limb, with fair skins, light hair, and blue eyes; everything, in fact, indicating their northern origin. they took pleasure in tattooing the skin, just as the tuaregs and kabyles are now accustomed to do, and some, if not all, of them practised circumcision, like a portion of the egyptians and semites. in the arrangement of the hair, a curl fell upon the shoulder, while the remainder was arranged in small frizzled locks. their chiefs and braves wore on their heads two flowering plumes. a loin-cloth, a wild-beast�s skin thrown over the back, a mantle, or rather a covering of woollen or dyed cloth, fringed and ornamented with many-coloured needlework, falling from the left shoulder with no attachment in front, so as to leave the body unimpeded in walking,--these constituted the ordinary costume of the people. their arms were similar to those of the egyptians, consisting of the lance, the mace, the iron or copper dagger, the boomerang, the bow and arrow, and the sling. [illustration: 253.jpg a libyan] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. they also employed horses and chariots. their bravery made them a foe not to be despised, in spite of their ignorance of tactics and their want of discipline. when they were afterwards formed into regiments and conducted by experienced generals, they became the best auxiliary troops which egypt could boast of. the labû from this time forward were the most energetic of the tribes, and their chiefs prided themselves upon possessing the leadership over all the other clans in this region of the world.* * this was the case in the wars of mînephtah and ramses iii., in which the labû and their kings took the command of the confederate armies assembled against egypt. the labû might very well have gained the mastery over the other inhabitants of the desert at this period, who had become enfeebled by the frequent defeats which they had sustained at the hands of the egyptians. at the moment when mînephtah ascended the throne, their king, mâraîû, son of didi, ruled over the immense territory lying between the fayûm and the two syrtes: the timihu, the kahaka, and the mashaûasha rendered him the same obedience as his own people. a revolution had thus occurred in africa similar to that which had taken place a century previously in naharaim, when sapalulu founded the hittite empire. a great kingdom rose into being where no state capable of disturbing egyptian control had existed before. the danger was serious. the hittites, separated from the nile by the whole breadth of kharu, could not directly threaten any of the egyptian cities; but the libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with the delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley they chose. mînephtah, therefore, hastened to resist the assault of the westerns, as his father had formerly done that of the easterns, and, strange as it may seem, he found among the troops of his new enemies some of the adversaries with whom the egyptians had fought under the walls of qodshû sixty years before. the shardana, lycians, and others, having left the coasts of the delta and the phoenician seaports owing to the vigilant watch kept by the egyptians over their waters, had betaken themselves to the libyan littoral, where they met with a favourable reception. whether they had settled in some places, and formed there those colonies of which a greek tradition of a recent age speaks, we cannot say. they certainly followed the occupation of mercenary soldiers, and many of them hired out their services to the native princes, while others were enrolled among the troops of the king of the khâti or of the pharaoh himself. mâraîû brought with him achæans, shardana, tûrsha, shagalasha,* and lycians in considerable numbers when he resolved to begin the strife.** this was not one of those conventional little wars which aimed at nothing further than the imposition of the payment of a tribute upon the conquered, or the conquest of one of their provinces. mâraîû had nothing less in view than the transport of his whole people into the nile valley, to settle permanently there as the hyksôs had done before him. * the shakalasha, shagalasha, identified with the sicilians by e. de rougé, were a people of asia minor whose position there is approximately indicated by the site of the town sagalassos, named after them. ** the _inscription of mînephtah_ distinguishes the libyans of mâraîû from �the people of the sea.� he set out on his march towards the end of the ivth year of the pharaoh�s reign, or the beginning of his vth, surrounded by the elite of his troops, �the first choice from among all the soldiers and all the heroes in each land.� the announcement of their approach spread terror among the egyptians. the peace which they had enjoyed for fifty years had cooled their warlike ardour, and the machinery of their military organisation had become somewhat rusty. the standing army had almost melted away; the regiments of archers and charioteers were no longer effective, and the neglected fortresses were not strong enough to protect the frontier. as a consequence, the oases of farafrah and of the natron lakes fell into the hands of the enemy at the first attack, and the eastern provinces of the delta became the possession of the invader before any steps could be taken for their defence. memphis, which realised the imminent danger, broke out into open murmurs against the negligent rulers who had given no heed to the country�s ramparts, and had allowed the garrisons of its fortresses to dwindle away. fortunately syria remained quiet. the khâti, in return for the aid afforded them by mînephtah during the famine, observed a friendly attitude, and the pharaoh was thus enabled to withdraw the troops from his asiatic provinces. he could with perfect security take the necessary measures for ensuring �heliopolis, the city of tûmû,� against surprise, �for arming memphis, the citadel of phtah-tonen, and for restoring all things which were in disorder: he fortified pibalîsît, in the neighbourhood of the shakana canal, on a branch of that of heliopolis,� and he rapidly concentrated his forces behind these quickly organised lines.* * chabas would identify pibalîsît with bubastis; i agree with brugsch in placing it at belbeîs. mâraîû, however, continued to advance; in the early months of the summer he had crossed the canopic branch of the nile, and was now about to encamp not far from the town of pirici. when the king heard of this �he became furious against them as a lion that fascinates its victim; he called his officers together and addressed them: �i am about to make you hear the words of your master, and to teach you this: i am the sovereign shepherd who feeds you; i pass my days in seeking out that which is useful for you: i am your father; is there among you a father like me who makes his children live? you are trembling like geese, you do not know what is good to do: no one gives an answer to the enemy, and our desolated land is abandoned to the incursions of all nations. the barbarians harass the frontier, rebels violate it every day, every one robs it, enemies devastate our seaports, they penetrate into the fields of egypt; if there is an arm of a river they halt there, they stay for days, for months; they come as numerous as reptiles, and no one is able to sweep them back, these wretches who love death and hate life, whose hearts meditate the consummation of our ruin. behold, they arrive with their chief; they pass their time on the land which they attack in filling their stomachs every day; this is the reason why they come to the land of egypt, to seek their sustenance, and their intention is to install themselves there; mine is to catch them like fish upon their bellies. their chief is a dog, a poor devil, a madman; he shall never sit down again in his place.�� he then announced that on the 14th of epiphi he would himself conduct the troops against the enemy. these were brave words, but we may fancy the figure that this king of more than sixty years of age would have presented in a chariot in the middle of the fray, and his competence to lead an effective charge against the enemy. on the other hand, his absence in such a critical position of affairs would have endangered the _morale_ of his soldiers and possibly compromised the issue of the battle. a dream settled the whole question.* * ed. meyer sees in this nothing but a customary rhetorical expression, and thinks that the god spoke in order to encourage the king to defend himself vigorously. while mînephtah was asleep one night, he saw a gigantic figure of phtah standing before him, and forbidding him to advance. ��stay,� cried the god to him, while handing him the curved khopesh: �put away discouragement from thee!� his majesty said to him: �but what am i to do then?� and phtah answered him: �despatch thy infantry, and send before it numerous chariots to the confines of the territory of piriû.��** * this name was read pa-ari by e. de rougé, pa-ali by lauth, and was transcribed pa-ari-shop by brugsch, who identified with prosopitis. the orthography of the text at athribis shows that we ought to read piri, pirû, piriû; possibly the name is identical with that of larû which is mentioned in the pyramid-texts. the pharaoh obeyed the command, and did not stir from his position. mâraîû had, in the mean time, arranged his attack for the 1st of epiphi, at the rising of the sun: it did not take place, however, until the 3rd. �the archers of his majesty made havoc of the barbarians for six hours; they were cut off by the edge of the sword.� when mâraîû saw the carnage, �he was afraid, his heart failed him; he betook himself to flight as fast as his feet could bear him to save his life, so successfully that his bow and arrows remained behind him in his precipitation, as well as everything else he had upon him.� his treasure, his arms, his wife, together with the cattle which he had brought with him for his use, became the prey of the conqueror; �he tore out the feathers from his head-dress, and took flight with such of those wretched libyans as escaped the massacre, but the officers who had the care of his majesty�s team of horses followed in their steps� and put most of them to the sword. mâraîû succeeded, however, in escaping in the darkness, and regained his own country without water or provisions, and almost without escort. the conquering troops returned to the camp laden with booty, and driving before them asses carrying, as bloody tokens of victory, quantities of hands and phalli cut from the dead bodies of the slain. the bodies of six generals and of 6359 libyan soldiers were found upon the field of battle, together with 222 shagalasha, 724 tursha, and some hundreds of shardana and achæans: several thousands of prisoners passed in procession before the pharaoh, and were distributed among such of his soldiers as had distinguished themselves. these numbers show the gravity of the danger from which egypt had escaped: the announcement of the victory filled the country with enthusiasm, all the more sincere because of the reality of the panic which had preceded it. the fellahîn, intoxicated with joy, addressed each other: ��come, and let us go a long distance on the road, for there is now no fear in the hearts of men.�the fortified posts may at last be left; the citadels are now open; messengers stand at the foot of the walls and wait in the shade for the guard to awake after their siesta, to give them entrance. the military police sleep on their accustomed rounds, and the people of the marshes once more drive their herds to pasture without fear of raids, for there are no longer marauders near at hand to cross the river; the cry of the sentinels is heard no more in the night: �halt, thou that comest, thou that comest under a name which is not thine own--sheer off!� and men no longer exclaim on the following morning: �such or such a thing has been stolen;� but the towns fall once more into their usual daily routine, and he who works in the hope of the harvest, will nourish himself upon that which he shall have reaped.� the return from memphis to thebes was a triumphal march. [illustration: 260.jpg statue of mînephtah] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by dévéria. �he is very strong, binrî mînephtah,� sang the court poets, �very wise are his projects--his words have as beneficial effect as those of thot--everything which he does is completed to the end.--when he is like a guide at the head of his armies--his voice penetrates the fortress walls.--very friendly to those who bow their backs--before mîamun--his valiant soldiers spare him who humbles himself--before his courage and before his strength;--they fall upon the libyans--they consume the syrian;--the shardana whom thou hast brought back by thy sword--make prisoners of their own tribes.--very happy thy return to thebes--victorious! thy chariot is drawn by hand--the conquered chiefs march backwards before thee--whilst thou leadest them to thy venerable father--amon, husband of his mother.� and the poets amuse themselves with summoning mâraîû to appear in egypt, pursued as he was by his own people and obliged to hide himself from them. �he is nothing any longer but a beaten man, and has become a proverb among the labû, and his chiefs repeat to themselves: �nothing of the kind has occurred since the time of râ.� the old men say each one to his children: �misfortune to the labû! it is all over with them! no one can any longer pass peacefully across the country; but the power of going out of our land has been taken from us in a single day, and the tihonu have been withered up in a single year; sûtkhû has ceased to be their chief, and he devastates their �duars;� there is nothing left but to conceal one�s self, and one feels nowhere secure except in a fortress.�� the news of the victory was carried throughout asia, and served to discourage the tendencies to revolt which were beginning to make themselves manifest there. �the chiefs gave there their salutations of peace, and none among the nomads raised his head after the crushing defeat of the libyans; khâti is at peace, canaan is a prisoner as far as the disaffected are concerned, the inhabitant of ascalon is led away, gezer is carried into captivity, ianuâmîm is brought to nothing, the israîlû are destroyed and have no longer seed, kharu is like a widow of the land of egypt.� * * this passage is taken from a stele discovered by petrie in 1896, on the site of the amenophium at thebes. the mention of the israîlû immediately calls to mind the place-names yushaph-îlu, yakob-îlu, on lists of thûtmosis iii. which have been compared with the names jacob and joseph. mînephtah ought to have followed up his opportunity to the end, but he had no such intention, and his inaction gave mâraîû time to breathe. perhaps the effort which he had made had exhausted his resources, perhaps old age prevented him from prosecuting his success; he was content, in any case, to station bodies of pickets on the frontier, and to fortify a few new positions to the east of the delta. the libyan kingdom was now in the same position as that in which the hittite had been after the campaign of seti i.: its power had been checked for the moment, but it remained intact on the egyptian frontier, awaiting its opportunity. mînephtah lived for some time after this memorable year* and the number of monuments which belong to this period show that he reigned in peace. we can see that he carried out works in the same places as his father before him; at tanis as well as thebes, in nubia as well as in the delta. he worked the sandstone quarries for his building materials, and continued the custom of celebrating the feasts of the inundation at silsileh. one at least of the stelae which he set up on the occasion of these feasts is really a chapel, with its architraves and columns, and still, excites the admiration of the traveller on account both of its form and of its picturesque appearance. * the last known year of his reign is the year viii. the lists of manetho assign to him a reign of from twenty to forty years; brugsch makes it out to have been thirty-four years, from 1300 to 1266 b.c., which is evidently too much, but we may attribute to him without risk of serious error a reign of about twenty years. the last years of his life were troubled by the intrigues of princes who aspired to the throne, and by the ambition of the ministers to whom he was obliged to delegate his authority. [illustration: 263.jpg the chapels of ramses ii. and minephtah at sisileh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. one of the latter, a man of semite origin, named ben-azana, of zor-bisana, who had assumed the appellation of his first patron, ramsesûpirnirî, appears to have acted for him as regent. mînephtah was succeeded, apparently, by one of his sons, called seti, after his great-grandfather.* seti ii. had doubtless reached middle age at the time of his accession, but his portraits represent him, nevertheless, with the face and figure of a young man.** the expression in these is gentle, refined, haughty, and somewhat melancholic. mu it is the type of seti i. and ramses ii., but enfeebled and, as it were, saddened. an inscription of his second year attributes to him victories in asia,*** but others of the same period indicate the existence of disturbances similar to those which had troubled the last years of his father. * e. de rougé introduced amenmeses and siphtah between mînephtah and seti ii., and i had up to the present followed his example; i have come back to the position of chabas, making seti ii. the immediate successor of mînephtah, which is also the view of brugsch, wiedemann, and ed. meyer. the succession as it is now given does not seem to me to be free from difficulties; the solution generally adopted has only the merit of being preferable to that of e. de rougé, which i previously supported. ** the last date known of his reign is the year ii. which is found at silsilis; chabas was, nevertheless, of the opinion that he reigned a considerable time. *** the expressions employed in this document do not vary much from the usual protocol of all kings of this period. the triumphal chant of seti ii. preserved in the _anastasi papyrus iv_. is a copy of the triumphal chant of mînephtah, which is in the same papyrus. [illustration: 264.jpg statue of seti ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. these were occasioned by a certain aiari, who was high priest of phtah, and who had usurped titles belonged ordinarily to the pharaoh or his eldest son, in the house of sibû, �heir and hereditary prince of the two lands.� seti died, it would seem, without having had time to finish his tomb. we do not know whether he left any legitimate children, but two sovereigns succeeded him who were not directly connected with him, but were probably the grandsons of the amenmesis and the siphtah, whom we meet with among the children of ramses. the first of these was also called amenmesis,* and he held sway for several years over the whole of egypt, and over its foreign possessions. * graffiti of this sovereign have been found at the second cataract. certain expressions have induced e. de rougé to believe that he, as well as siphtah, came originally from khibît in the aphroditopolite nome. this was an allusion, as chabas had seen, to the myth of horus, similar to that relating to thûtmosis iii., and which we more usually meet with in the cases of those kings who were not marked out from their birth onwards for the throne. [illustration: 265.jpg seti ii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by émil brugsch-bey. the second, who was named siphtah-mînephtah, ascended �the throne of his father� thanks to the devotion of his minister baî,* but in a greater degree to his marriage with a certain princess called tausirît. he maintained himself in this position for at least six years, during which he made an expedition into ethiopia, and received in audience at thebes messengers from all foreign nations. he kept up so zealously the appearance of universal dominion, that to judge from his inscriptions he must have been the equal of the most powerful of his predecessors at thebes. egypt, nevertheless, was proceeding at a quick pace towards its downfall. no sooner had this monarch disappeared than it began to break up.** there were no doubt many claimants for the crown, but none of them succeeded in disposing of the claims of his rivals, and anarchy reigned supreme from one end of the nile valley to the other. the land of qîmît began to drift away, and the people within it had no longer a sovereign, and this, too, for many years, until other times came; for �the land of qîmît was in the hands of the princes ruling over the nomes, and they put each other to death, both great and small. * baî has left two inscriptions behind him, one at silsilis and the other at sehêl, and the titles he assumes on both monuments show the position he occupied at the theban court during the reign of siphtah-mînephtah. chabas thought that baî had succeeded in maintaining his rights to the crown against the claims of amenmesis. ** the little that we know about this period of anarchy has been obtained from the _harris papyrus_. other times came afterwards, during years of nothingness, in which arisu, a syrian,* was chief among them, and the whole country paid tribute before him; every one plotted with his neighbour to steal the goods of others, and it was the same with regard to the gods as with regard to men, offerings were no longer made in the temples.� * the name of this individual was deciphered by chabas; lauth, and after him krall, were inclined to read it as ket, ketesh, in order to identify it with the ketes of diodorus siculus. a form of the name arisai in the bible may be its original, or that of arish which is found in phoenician, especially punic, inscriptions. this was in truth the revenge of the feudal system upon pharaoh. the barons, kept in check by ahmosis and amenôthes i., restricted by the successors of these sovereigns to the position of simple officers of the king, profited by the general laxity to recover as many as possible of their ancient privileges. for half a century and more, fortune had given them as masters only aged princes, not capable of maintaining continuous vigilance and firmness. the invasions of the peoples of the sea, the rivalry of the claimants to the throne, and the intrigues of ministers had, one after the other, served to break the bonds which fettered them, and in one generation they were able to regain that liberty of action of which they had been deprived for centuries. to this state of things egypt had been drifting from the earliest times. unity could be maintained only by a continuous effort, and once this became relaxed, the ties which bound the whole country together were soon broken. there was another danger threatening the country beside that arising from the weakening of the hands of the sovereign, and the turbulence of the barons. for some three centuries the theban pharaohs were accustomed to bring into the country after each victorious campaign many thousands of captives. the number of foreigners around them had, therefore, increased in a striking manner. the majority of these strangers either died without issue, or their posterity became assimilated to the indigenous inhabitants. in many places, however, they had accumulated in such proportions that they were able to retain among themselves the remembrance of their origin, their religion, and their customs, and with these the natural desire to leave the country of their exile for their former fatherland. as long as a strict watch was kept over them they remained peaceful subjects, but as soon as this vigilance was relaxed rebellion was likely to break out, especially amongst those who worked in the quarries. traditions of the greek period contain certain romantic episodes in the history of these captives. some babylonian prisoners brought back by sesostris, these traditions tell us, unable to endure any longer the fatiguing work to which they were condemned, broke out into open revolt. [illustration: 268.jpg amenmesis] drawn by faucher-gudin, after a picture in rosellini. they made themselves masters of a position almost opposite memphis, and commanding the river, and held their ground there with such obstinacy that it was found necessary to give up to them the province which they occupied: they built here a town, which they afterwards called babylon. a similar legend attributes the building of the neighbouring village of troîû to captives from troy.* the scattered barbarian tribes of the delta, whether hebrews or the remnant of the ïïyksôs, had endured there a miserable lot ever since the accession of the ramessides. the rebuilding of the cities which had been destroyed there during the wars with the hyksôs had restricted the extent of territory on which they could pasture their herds. ramses ii. treated them as slaves of the treasury,** and the hebrews were not long under his rule before they began to look back with regret on the time of the monarchs �who knew joseph.� ** * the name babylon comes probably from _banbonu, barbonu, babonu_--a term which, under the form _hât-banbonu,_ served to designate a quarter of heliopolis, or rather a suburban village of that city. troja was, as we have seen, the ancient city of troîû, now tûrah, celebrated for its quarries of fine limestone. the narratives collected by the historians whom diodorus consulted were products of the saite period, and intended to explain to greeks the existence on egyptian territory of names recalling those of babylon in chaldæa and of homeric troy. ** a very ancient tradition identifies ramses ii. with the pharaoh �who knew not joseph� (_exod._ i. 8). recent excavations showing that the great works in the east of the delta began under this king, or under seti ii. at the earliest, confirm in a general way the accuracy of the traditional view: i have, therefore, accepted it in part, and placed the exodus after the death of ramses ii. other authorities place it further back, and lieblein in 1863 was inclined to put it under amenôthes iii. the egyptians set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. and they built for pharaoh treasure cities, pithom and raamses. but the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. and they were �grieved because of the children of israel.� * a secondary version of the same narrative gives a more detailed account of their condition: �they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.� ** the unfortunate slaves awaited only an opportunity to escape from the cruelty of their persecutors. * _exod_. i. 11, 12. excavations made by naville have brought to light near tel el-maskhutah the ruins of one of the towns which the hebrews of the alexandrine period identified with the cities constructed by their ancestors in egypt: the town excavated by naville is pitûmû, and consequently the pithom of the biblical account, and at the same time also the succoth of exod. xii. 37, xiii. 20, the first station of the bnê-israel after leaving ramses. ** _exod,_ i. 13, 14. the national traditions of the hebrews inform us that the king, in displeasure at seeing them increase so mightily notwithstanding his repression, commanded the midwives to strangle henceforward their male children at their birth. a woman of the house of levi, after having concealed her infant for three months, put him in an ark of bulrushes and consigned him to the nile, at a place where the daughter of pharaoh was accustomed to bathe. the princess on perceiving the child had compassion on him, adopted him, called him moses--saved from the waters--and had him instructed in all the knowledge of the egyptians. moses had already attained forty years of age, when he one day encountered an egyptian smiting a hebrew, and slew him in his anger, shortly afterwards fleeing into the land of midian. here he found an asylum, and jethro the priest gave him one of his daughters in marriage. after forty years of exile, god, appearing to him in a burning bush, sent him to deliver his people. the old pharaoh was dead, but moses and his brother aaron betook themselves to the court of the new pharaoh, and demanded from him permission for the hebrews to sacrifice in the desert of arabia. they obtained it, as we know, only after the infliction of the ten plagues, and after the firstborn of the egyptians had been stricken.* the emigrants started from ramses; as they were pursued by a body of troops, the sea parted its waters to give them passage over the dry ground, and closing up afterwards on the egyptian hosts, overwhelmed them to a man. thereupon moses and the children of israel sang this song unto jahveh, saying: �jahveh is my strength and song--and he has become my salvation.--this is my god, and i will praise him,--my father�s god, and i will exalt him.--the lord is a man of war,--and jahveh is his name.--pharaoh�s chariots and his hosts hath he cast into the sea, --and his chosen captains are sunk in the sea of weeds.--the deeps cover them--they went down into the depths like a stone.... the enemy said: �i will pursue, i will overtake--i will divide the spoil--my lust shall be satiated upon them--i will draw my sword--my hand shall destroy them.�--thou didst blow with thy wind--the sea covered them--they sank as lead in the mighty waters.� ** * _exod._ ii.-xiii. i have limited myself here to a summary of the biblical narrative, without entering into a criticism of the text, which i leave to others. ** _exod._ xv. 1-10 (r.v.) from this narrative we see that the hebrews, or at least those of them who dwelt in the delta, made their escape from their oppressors, and took refuge in the solitudes of arabia. according to the opinion of accredited historians, this exodus took place in the reign of mînephtah, and the evidence of the triumphal inscription, lately discovered by prof. petrie, seems to confirm this view, in relating that the people of israîlû were destroyed, and had no longer a seed. the context indicates pretty clearly that these ill-treated israîlû were then somewhere south of syria, possibly in the neighbourhood of ascalon and glezer. if it is the biblical israelites who are here mentioned for the first time on an egyptian monument, one might suppose that they had just quitted the land of slavery to begin their wanderings through the desert. although the peoples of the sea and the libyans did not succeed in reaching their settlements in the land of goshen, the israelites must have profited both by the disorder into which the egyptians were thrown by the invaders, and by the consequent withdrawal to memphis of the troops previously stationed on the east of the delta, to break away from their servitude and cross the frontier. if, on the other hand, the israîlû of mînephtah are regarded as a tribe still dwelling among the mountains of canaan, while the greater part of the race had emigrated to the banks of the nile, there is no need to seek long after mînephtah for a date suiting the circumstances of the exodus. the years following the reign of seti ii. offer favourable conditions for such a dangerous enterprise: the break-up of the monarchy, the discords of the barons, the revolts among the captives, and the supremacy of a semite over the other chiefs, must have minimised the risk. we can readily understand how, in the midst of national disorders, a tribe of foreigners weary of its lot might escape from its settlements and betake itself towards asia without meeting with strenous opposition from the pharaoh, who would naturally be too much preoccupied with his own pressing necessities to trouble himself much over the escape of a band of serfs. having crossed the red sea, the israelites pursued their course to the north-east on the usual road leading into syria, and then turning towards the south, at length arrived at sinai. it was a moment when the nations of asia were stirring. to proceed straight to canaan by the beaten track would have been to run the risk of encountering their moving hordes, or of jostling against the egyptian troops, who still garrisoned the strongholds of the she-phelah. the fugitives had, therefore, to shun the great military roads if they were to avoid coming into murderous conflict with the barbarians, or running into the teeth of pharaoh�s pursuing army. the desert offered an appropriate asylum to people of nomadic inclinations like themselves; they betook themselves to it as if by instinct, and spent there a wandering life for several generations.* * this explanation of the wanderings of the israelites has been doubted by most historians: it has a cogency, once we admit the reality of the sojourn in egypt and the exodus. the traditions collected in their sacred books described at length their marches and their halting-places, the great sufferings they endured, and the striking miracles which god performed on their behalf.* * the itinerary of the hebrew people through the desert contains a very small number of names which were not actually in use. they represent possibly either the stations at which the caravans of the merchants put up, or the localities where the bedawin and their herds were accustomed to sojourn. the majority of them cannot be identified, but enough can still be made out to give us a general idea of the march of the emigrants. moses conducted them through all these experiences, continually troubled by their murmurings and seditions, but always ready to help them out of the difficulties into which they were led, on every occasion, by their want of faith. he taught them, under god�s direction, how to correct the bitterness of brackish waters by applying to them the wood of a certain tree.* when they began to look back with regret to the �flesh-pots of egypt� and the abundance of food there, another signal miracle was performed for them. �at even the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning the dew lay round about the host; and when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. and when the children of israel saw it, they said one to another, �what is it? �for they wist not what it was. and moses said unto them, �it is the bread which the lord hath given you to eat.��** * _exod._ xv. 23-25. the station marah, �the bitter waters,� is identified by modern tradition with ain howarah. there is a similar way of rendering waters potable still in use among the bedawin of these regions. ** _exod._ xvi. 13-15. �and the house of israel called the name thereof �manna: �and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.� * �and the children of israel did eat the manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat the manna until they came unto the borders of the land of canaan.� ** further on, at eephidim, the water failed: moses struck the rocks at horeb, and a spring gushed out.*** the amalekites, in the meantime, began to oppose their passage; and one might naturally doubt the power of a rabble of slaves, unaccustomed to war, to break through such an obstacle. joshua was made their general, �and moses, aaron, and hur went up to the top of the hill: and it came to pass, when moses held up his hand, that israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand, amalek prevailed. but moses� hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and aaron and hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. and joshua discomfited amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.� **** * _exod._ xvi. 31. prom early times the manna of the hebrews had been identified with the mann-es-sama, �the gift of heaven,� of the arabs, which exudes in small quantities from the leaves of the tamarisk after being pricked by insects: the question, however, is still under discussion whether another species of vegetable manna may not be meant. ** _exod._ xvi. 35. *** _exod._ xvii. 1-7. there is a general agreement as to the identification of rephidim with the wady peîrân, the village of pharan of the græco-roman geographers. **** exod. xvii. 8-13. three months after the departure of the israelites from egypt they encamped at the foot of sinai, and �the lord called unto moses out of the mountain, saying, �thus shalt thou say to the house of jacob, and tell the children of israel: ye have seen what i did unto the egyptians, and how i bare you on eagles� wings, and brought you unto myself. now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me from among all peoples: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.� the people answered together and said, �all that the lord hath spoken we will do.� and the lord said unto moses, �lo, i come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when i speak with thee, and may also believe thee for ever.�� �on the third day, when it was morning, there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. and moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet god; and they stood at the nether part of the mountain. and mount sinai was altogether on smoke, because the lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. and when the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, moses spake, and god answered him by a voice.� * * _exod._ xix. 3-6, 9, 16-19. then followed the giving of the supreme law, the conditions of the covenant which the lord himself deigned to promulgate directly to his people. it was engraved on two tables of stone, and contained, in ten concise statements, the commandments which the creator of the universe imposed upon the people of his choice. �i. i am jahveh, which brought thee out of the land of egypt. thou shalt have none other gods before me. ii. thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, etc. iii. thou shalt not take the name of jahveh thy god in vain. iv. remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. v. honour thy father and thy mother. vi. thou shalt do no murder. vii. thou shalt not commit adultery. viii. thou shalt not steal. ix. thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. x. thou shalt not covet.� * * we have two forms of the decalogue--one in _exod._ xx. 2 17, and the other in _deut._ v. 6-18. �and all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off. and they said unto moses, �speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not god speak with us, lest we die.��* god gave his commandments to moses in instalments as the circumstances required them: on one occasion the rites of sacrifice, the details of the sacerdotal vestments, the mode of consecrating the priests, the composition of the oil and the incense for the altar; later on, the observance of the three annual festivals, and the orders as to absolute rest on the seventh day, as to the distinctions between clean and unclean animals, as to drink, as to the purification of women, and lawful and unlawful marriages.** * _exod._ xx. 18, 19. ** this legislation and the history of the circumstances on which it was promulgated are contained in four of the books of the pentateuch, viz. _exodus, leviticus, numbers, and deuteronomy_. any one of the numerous text-books published in germany will be found to contain an analysis of these books, and the prevalent opinions as to the date of the documents which it [the hexateuch] contains. i confine myself here and afterwards only to such results as may fitly be used in a general history. the people waited from week to week until jahveh had completed the revelation of his commands, and in their impatience broke the new law more than once. on one occasion, when �moses delayed to come out of the mount,� they believed themselves abandoned by heaven, and obliged aaron, the high priest, to make for them a golden calf, before which they offered burnt offerings. the sojourn of the people at the foot of sinai lasted eleven months. at the end of this period they set out once more on their slow marches to the promised land, guided during the day by a cloud, and during the night by a pillar of fire, which moved before them. this is a general summary of what we find in the sacred writings. the israelites, when they set out from egypt, were not yet a nation. they were but a confused horde, flying with their herds from their pursuers; with no resources, badly armed, and unfit to sustain the attack of regular troops. after leaving sinai, they wandered for some time among the solitudes of arabia petraea in search of some uninhabited country where they could fix their tents, and at length settled on the borders of idumaea, in the mountainous region surrounding kadesh-barnea.* kadesh had from ancient times a reputation for sanctity among the bedawin of the neighbourhood: it rejoiced in the possession of a wonderful well--the well of judgment--to which visits were made for the purpose of worship, and for obtaining the �judgment� of god. the country is a poor one, arid and burnt up, but it contains wells which never fail, and wadys suitable for the culture of wheat and for the rearing of cattle. the tribe which became possessed of a region in which there was a perennial supply of water was fortunate indeed, and a fragment of the psalmody of israel at the time of their sojourn here still echoes in a measure the transports of joy which the people gave way to at the discovery of a new spring: �spring up, o well; sing ye unto it: the well which the princes digged, which the nobles of the people delved with the sceptre and with their staves.� ** * the site of kadesh-barnea appears to have been fixed with certainty at ain-qadis by c. trumbull. ** _numb._ xxi. 17, 18. the context makes it certain that this song was sung at beer, beyond the arnon, in the land of moab. it has long been recognised that it had a special reference, and that it refers to an incident in the wanderings of the people through the desert. the wanderers took possession of this region after some successful brushes with the enemy, and settled there, without being further troubled by their neighbours or by their former masters. the egyptians, indeed, absorbed in their civil discords, or in wars with foreign nations, soon forgot their escaped slaves, and never troubled themselves for centuries over what had become of the poor wretches, until in the reign of the ptolemies, when they had learned from the bible something of the people of god, they began to seek in their own annals for traces of their sojourn in egypt and of their departure from the country. a new version of the exodus was the result, in which hebrew tradition was clumsily blended with the materials of a semi-historical romance, of which amenôthes iii. was the hero. his minister and namesake, amenôthes, son of hâpû, left ineffaceable impressions on the minds of the inhabitants of thebes: he not only erected the colossal figures in the amenophium, but he constructed the chapel at deîr el-medineh, which was afterwards restored in ptolemaic times, and where he continued to be worshipped as long as the egyptian religion lasted. profound knowledge of the mysteries of magic were attributed to him, as in later times to prince khâmoîsît, son of ramses ii. on this subject he wrote certain works which maintained their reputation for more than a thousand years after his death,* and all that was known about him marked him out for the important part he came to play in those romantic stories so popular among the egyptians. * one of these books, which is mentioned in several religious texts, is preserved in the _louvre papyrus_. the pharaoh in whose good graces he lived had a desire, we are informed, to behold the gods, after the example of his ancestor horus. the son of hâpû, or pa-apis, informed him that he could not succeed in his design until he had expelled from the country all the lepers and unclean persons who contaminated it. acting on this information, he brought together all those who suffered from physical defects, and confined them, to the number of eighty thousand, in the quarries of tûrah. there were priests among them, and the gods became wrathful at the treatment to which their servants were exposed; the soothsayer, therefore, fearing the divine anger, predicted that certain people would shortly arise who, forming an alliance with the unclean, would, together with them, hold sway in egypt for thirteen years. he then committed suicide, but the king nevertheless had compassion on the outcasts, and granted to them, for their exclusive use, the town of avaris, which had been deserted since the time of ahmosis. the outcasts formed themselves into a nation under the rule of a heliopolitan priest called osarsyph, or moses, who gave them laws, mobilised them, and joined his forces with the descendants of the shepherds at jerusalem. the pharaoh amenôphis, taken by surprise at this revolt, and remembering the words of his minister amenôthes, took flight into ethiopia. the shepherds, in league with the unclean, burned the towns, sacked the temples, and broke in pieces the statues of the gods: they forced the egyptian priests to slaughter even their sacred animals, to cut them up and cook them for their foes, who ate them derisively in their accustomed feasts. amenôphis returned from ethiopia, together with his son ramses, at the end of thirteen years, defeated the enemy, driving them back into syria, where the remainder of them became later on the jewish nation.* * a list of the pharaohs after aï, as far as it is possible to make them out, is here given: [illustration: 281.jpg table] this is but a romance, in which a very little history is mingled with a great deal of fable: the scribes as well as the people were acquainted with the fact that egypt had been in danger of dissolution at the time when the hebrews left the banks of the nile, but they were ignorant of the details, of the precise date and of the name of the reigning pharaoh. a certain similarity in sound suggested to them the idea of assimilating the prince whom the chroniclers called menepthes or amenepthes with amen-ôthes, i.e. amenophis iii.; and they gave to the pharaoh of the xixth dynasty the minister who had served under a king of the xviiith: they metamorphosed at the same time the hebrews into lepers allied with the shepherds. from this strange combination there resulted a narrative which at once fell in with the tastes of the lovers of the marvellous, and was a sufficient substitute for the truth which had long since been forgotten. as in the case of the egyptians of the greek period, we can see only through a fog what took place after the deaths of mînephtah and seti ii. we know only for certain that the chiefs of the nomes were in perpetual strife with each other, and that a foreign power was dominant in the country as in the time of apôphis. the days of the empire would have harmhabî himself belonged to the xviiith dynasty, for he modelled the form of his cartouches on those of the ahmesside pharaohs: the xixth dynasty began only, in all probability, with ramses i., but the course of the history has compelled me to separate harmhabî from his predecessors. not knowing the length of the reigns, we cannot determine the total duration of the dynasty: we shall not, however, be far wrong in assigning to it a length of 130 years or thereabouts, i.e. from 1350 to somewhere near 1220 b.c. been numbered if a deliverer had not promptly made his appearance. the direct line of ramses ii. was extinct, but his innumerable sons by innumerable concubines had left a posterity out of which some at least might have the requisite ability and zeal, if not to save the empire, at least to lengthen its duration, and once more give to thebes days of glorious prosperity. egypt had set out some five centuries before this for the conquest of the world, and fortune had at first smiled upon her enterprise. thûtmosis i., thûtmosis iii., and the several pharaohs bearing the name of amenôthes had marched with their armies from the upper waters of the nile to the banks of the euphrates, and no power had been able to withstand them. new nations, however, soon rose up to oppose her, and the hittites in asia and the libyans of the sudan together curbed her ambition. neither the triumphs of ramses ii. nor the victory of mînephtah had been able to restore her prestige, or the lands of which her rivals had robbed her beyond her ancient frontier. now her own territory itself was threatened, and her own well-being was in question; she was compelled to consider, not how to rule other tribes, great or small, but how to keep her own possessions intact and independent: in short, her very existence was at stake. chapter iii--the close of the theban empire _ramses iii.--the theban city under the ramessides--manners and customs._ _nalthtâsît and ramses iii.: the decline of the military spirit in egypt--the reorganisation of the army and fleet by ramses--the second libyan invasion--the asiatic peoples, the pulasati, the zakleala, and the tyrseni: their incursions into syria and their defeat--the campaign of the year xl and the fall of the libyan kingdom--cruising on the red sea--the buildings at medinet-habû--the conspiracy of pentaûîrît--the mummy of ramses iii._ _the sons and immediate successors of ramses iii.--thebes and the egyptian population: the transformation of the people and of the great lords: the feudal system from being military becomes religious--the wealth of precious metals, jewellery, furniture, costume--literary education, and the influence of the semitic language on the egyptian: romantic stories, the historical novel, fables, caricatures and satires, collections of maxims and moral dialogues, love-poems._ [illustration: 287.jpg page image] chapter iii--the close of the theban empire _ramses iii.--the theban city under the ramessides--manners and customs._ as in a former crisis, egypt once more owed her salvation to a scion of the old theban race. a descendant of seti i. or ramses ii., named nakhtûsît, rallied round him the forces of the southern nomes, and succeeded, though not without difficulty, in dispossessing the syrian arisû. �when he arose, he was like sûtkhû, providing for all the necessities of the country which, for feebleness, could not stand, killing the rebels which were in the delta, purifying the great throne of egypt; he was regent of the two lands in the place of tûmû, setting himself to reorganise that which had been overthrown, to such good purpose, that each one recognised as brethren those who had been separated from him as by a wall for so long a time, strengthening the temples by pious gifts, so that the traditional rites could be celebrated at the divine cycles.� * * the exact relationship between nakhtûsît and ramses ii. is not known; he was probably the grandson or great-grandson of that sovereign, though ed. meyer thinks he was perhaps the son of seti ii. the name should be read either nakhîtsît, with the singular of the first word composing it, or nakhîtûsît, nakhtûsît, with the plural, as in the analogous name of the king of the xxxth dynasty, nectanebo. many were the difficulties that he had to encounter before he could restore to his country that peace and wealth which she had enjoyed under the long reign of sesostris. it seems probable that his advancing years made him feel unequal to the task, or that he desired to guard against the possibility of disturbances in the event of his sudden death; at all events, he associated with himself on the throne his eldest son ramses--not, however, as a pharaoh who had full rights to the crown, like the coadjutors of the amenemhâîts and usirtasens, but as a prince invested with extraordinary powers, after the example of the sons of the pharaohs thûtmosis and seti i. ramses recalls with pride, towards the close of his life, how his father �had promoted him to the dignity of heir-presumptive to the throne of sibû,� and how he had been acclaimed as �the supreme head of qimît for the administration of the whole earth united together.� * this constituted the rise of a new dynasty on the ruins of the old--the last, however, which was able to retain the supremacy of egypt over the oriental world. we are unable to ascertain how long this double reign lasted. * the only certain monument that we as yet possess of this double reign is a large stele cut on the rock behind medinet-habû. [illustration: 289.jpg nakhtûsît.] nakhtûsît, fully occupied by enemies within the country, had no leisure either to build or to restore any monuments;* on his death, as no tomb had been prepared for him, his mummy was buried in that of the usurper siphtah and the queen tausirît. * wiedemann attributes to him the construction of one of the doors of the temple of mût at karnak; it would appear that there is a confusion in his notes between the prenomen of this sovereign and that of seti ii., who actually did decorate one of the doorways of that temple. nakhûsît must have also worked on the temple of phtah at memphis. his cartouche is met with on a statue originally dedicated by a pharaoh of the xiith dynasty, discovered at tell-nebêsheh. he was soon forgotten, and but few traces of his services survived him; his name was subsequently removed from the official list of the kings, while others not so deserving as he--as, for instance, siphtah-minephtah and amenmesis--were honourably inscribed in it. the memory of his son overshadowed his own, and the series of the legitimate kings who formed the xxth dynasty did not include him. ramses iii. took for his hero his namesake, ramses the great, and endeavoured to rival him in everything. this spirit of imitation was at times the means of leading him to commit somewhat puerile acts, as, for example, when he copied certain triumphal inscriptions word for word, merely changing the dates and the cartouches,* or when he assumed the prenomen of usirmârî, and distributed among his male children the names and dignities of the sons of sesostris. we see, moreover, at his court another high priest of phtah at memphis bearing the name of khâmoîsît, and marîtûmû, another supreme pontiff of râ in heliopolis. however, this ambition to resemble his ancestor at once instigated him to noble deeds, and gave him the necessary determination to accomplish them. * thus the great decree of phtah-totûnen, carved by ramses ii. in the year xxxv. on the rocks of abu simbel, was copied by ramses iii. at medinet-habû in the year xii. he began by restoring order in the administration of affairs; �he established truth, crushed error, purified the temple from all crime,� and made his authority felt not only in the length and breadth of the nile valley, but in what was still left of the asiatic provinces. the disturbances of the preceding years had weakened the prestige of amon-râ, and the king�s supremacy would have been seriously endangered, had any one arisen in syria of sufficient energy to take advantage of the existing state of affairs. but since the death of khâtusaru, the power of the khâti had considerably declined, and they retained their position merely through their former prestige; they were in as much need of peace, or even more so, than the egyptians, for the same discords which had harassed the reigns of seti ii. and his successors had doubtless brought trouble to their own sovereigns. they had made no serious efforts to extend their dominion over any of those countries which had been the objects of the cupidity of their forefathers, while the peoples of kharu and phoenicia, thrown back on their own resources, had not ventured to take up arms against the pharaoh. the yoke lay lightly upon them, and in no way hampered their internal liberty; they governed as they liked, they exchanged one prince or chief for another, they waged petty wars as of old, without, as a rule, exposing themselves to interference from the egyptian troops occupying the country, or from the �royal messengers.� these vassal provinces had probably ceased to pay tribute, or had done so irregularly, during the years of anarchy following the death of siphtah, but they had taken no concerted action, nor attempted any revolt, so that when ramses iii. ascended the throne he was spared the trouble of reconquering them. he had merely to claim allegiance to have it at once rendered him--an allegiance which included the populations in the neighbourhood of qodshû and on the banks of the nahr el-kelb. the empire, which had threatened to fall to pieces amid the civil wars, and which would indeed have succumbed had they continued a few years longer, again revived now that an energetic prince had been found to resume the direction of affairs, and to weld together those elements which had been on the point of disintegration. one state alone appeared to regret the revival of the imperial power; this was the kingdom of libya. it had continued to increase in size since the days of mînephtah, and its population had been swelled by the annexation of several strange tribes inhabiting the vast area of the sahara. one of these, the mashaûasha, acquired the ascendency among these desert races owing to their numbers and valour, and together with the other tribes--the sabati, the kaiakasha, the shaîû, the hasa, the bikana, and the qahaka*--formed a confederacy, which now threatened egypt on the west. this federation was conducted by didi, mashaknû, and mâraîû, all children of that mâraîû who had led the first libyan invasion, and also by zamarû and zaûtmarû, two princes of less important tribes.** their combined forces had attacked egypt for the second time during the years of anarchy, and had gained possession one after another of all the towns in the west of the delta, from the neighbourhood of memphis to the town of qarbîna: the canopic branch of the nile now formed the limit of their dominion, and they often crossed it to devastate the central provinces.*** * this enumeration is furnished by the summary of the campaigns of ramses iii. in _the great harris papyrus_. the sabati of this text are probably identical with the people of the sapudiu or spudi (asbytse), mentioned on one of the pylons of medinet-habû. ** the relationship is nowhere stated, but it is thought to be probable from the names of didi and mâraîû, repeated in both series of inscriptions. *** the town of qarbîna has been identified with the canopus of the greeks, and also with the modern korbani; and the district of gautu, which adjoined it, with the territory of the modern town of edkô. spiegel-berg throws doubt on the identification of qarbu or qarbîna, with canopus. révillout prefers to connect qarbîna with heracleopolis parva in lower egypt. nakhtûsîti had been unable to drive them out, and ramses had not ventured on the task immediately after his accession. the military institutions of the country had become totally disorganised after the death of mînephtah, and that part of the community responsible for furnishing the army with recruits had been so weakened by the late troubles, that they were in a worse condition than before the first libyan invasion. the losses they had suffered since egypt began its foreign conquests had not been repaired by the introduction of fresh elements, and the hope of spoil was now insufficient to induce members of the upper classes to enter the army. there was no difficulty in filling the ranks from the fellahîn, but the middle class and the aristocracy, accustomed to ease and wealth, no longer came forward in large numbers, and disdained the military profession. it was the fashion in the schools to contrast the calling of a scribe with that of a foot-soldier or a charioteer, and to make as merry over the discomforts of a military occupation as it had formerly been the fashion to extol its glory and profitableness. these scholastic exercises represented the future officer dragged as a child to the barracks, �the side-lock over his ear.--he is beaten and his sides are covered with scars,--he is beaten and his two eyebrows are marked with wounds,--he is beaten and his head is broken by a badly aimed blow; he is stretched on the ground� for the slightest fault, �and blows fall on him as on a papyrus,--and he is broken by the stick.� his education finished, he is sent away to a distance, to syria or ethiopia, and fresh troubles overtake him. �his victuals and his supply of water are about his neck like the burden of an ass,--and his neck and throat suffer like those of an ass,--so that the joints of his spine are broken.--he drinks putrid water, keeping perpetual guard the while.� his fatigues soon tell upon his health and vigour: �should he reach the enemy,--he is like a bird which trembles.--should he return to egypt,--he is like a piece of old worm-eaten wood.--he is sick and must lie down, he is carried on an ass,--while thieves steal his linen,--and his slaves escape.� the charioteer is not spared either. he, doubtless, has a moment of vain-glory and of flattered vanity when he receives, according to regulations, a new chariot and two horses, with which he drives at a gallop before his parents and his fellow-villagers; but once having joined his regiment, he is perhaps worse off than the foot-soldier. �he is thrown to the ground among thorns:--a scorpion wounds him in the foot, and his heel is pierced by its sting.--when his kit is examined,--his misery is at its height.� no sooner has the fact been notified that his arms are in a bad condition, or that some article has disappeared, than �he is stretched on the ground--and overpowered with blows from a stick.� this decline of the warlike spirit in all classes of society had entailed serious modifications in the organisation of both army and navy. the native element no longer predominated in most battalions and on the majority of vessels, as it had done under the xviiith dynasty; it still furnished those formidable companies of archers--the terror of both africans and asiatics--and also the most important part, if not the whole, of the chariotry, but the main body of the infantry was composed almost exclusively of mercenaries, particularly of the shardana and the qahaka. ramses began his reforms by rebuilding the fleet, which, in a country like egypt, was always an artificial creation, liable to fall into decay, unless a strong and persistent effort were made to keep it in an efficient condition. shipbuilding had made considerable progress in the last few centuries, perhaps from the impulse received through phoenicia, and the vessels turned out of the dockyards were far superior to those constructed under hâtshopsîtû. the general outlines of the hull remained the same, but the stem and stern were finer, and not so high out of the water; the bow ended, moreover, in a lion�s head of metal, which rose above the cut-water. a wooden structure running between the forecastle and quarter-deck protected the rowers during the fight, their heads alone being exposed. the mast had only one curved yard, to which the sail was fastened; this was run up from the deck by halyards when the sailors wanted to make sail, and thus differed from the egyptian arrangement, where the sail was fastened to a fixed upper yard. at least half of the crews consisted of libyan prisoners, who were branded with a hot iron like cattle, to prevent desertion; the remaining half was drawn from the syrian or asiatic coast, or else were natives of egypt. in order to bring the army into better condition, ramses revived the system of classes, which empowered him to compel all egyptians of unmixed race to take personal service, while he hired mercenaries from libya, phoenicia, asia minor, and wherever he could get them, and divided them into regular regiments, according to their extraction and the arms that they bore. in the field, the archers always headed the column, to meet the advance of the foe with their arrows; they were followed by the egyptian lancers--the shardana and the tyrseni with their short spears and heavy bronze swords--while a corps of veterans, armed with heavy maces, brought up the rear.* in an engagement, these various troops formed three lines of infantry disposed one behind the other--the light brigade in front to engage the adversary, the swordsmen and lancers who were to come into close quarters with the foe, and the mace-bearers in reserve, ready to advance on any threatened point, or to await the critical moment when their intervention would decide the victory: as in the times of thûtmosis and ramses ii. the chariotry covered the two wings. * this is the order of march represented during the syrian campaign, as gathered from the arrangement observed in the pictures at medinet-habu. it was well for ramses that on ascending the throne he had devoted himself to the task of recruiting the egyptian army, and of personally and carefully superintending the instruction and equipment of his men; for it was thanks to these precautions that, when the confederated libyans attacked the country about the vth year of his reign, he was enabled to repulse them with complete success. �didi, mashaknû, maraîû, together with zamarû and zaûtmarû, had strongly urged them to attack egypt and to carry fire before them from one end of it to the other.�--�their warriors confided to each other in their counsels, and their hearts were full: �we will be drunk!� and their princes said within their breasts: �we will fill our hearts with violence!� but their plans were overthrown, thwarted, broken against the heart of the god, and the prayer of their chief, which their lips repeated, was not granted by the god.� they met the egyptians at a place called �kamsisû-khasfi-timihû� (�ramses repulses the timihû�), but their attack was broken by the latter, who were ably led and displayed considerable valour. �they bleated like goats surprised by a bull who stamps its foot, who pushes forward its horn and shakes the mountains, charging whoever seeks to annoy it.� they fled afar, howling with fear, and many of them, in endeavouring to escape their pursuers, perished in the canals. �it is,� said they, �the breaking of our spines which threatens us in the land of egypt, and its lord destroys our souls for ever and ever. woe be upon them! for they have seen their dances changed into carnage, sokhît is behind them, fear weighs upon them. we march no longer upon roads where we can walk, but we run across fields, all the fields! and their soldiers did not even need to measure arms with us in the struggle! pharaoh alone was our destruction, a fire against us every time that he willed it, and no sooner did we approach than the flame curled round us, and no water could quench it on us.� the victory was a brilliant one; the victors counted 12,535 of the enemy killed,* and many more who surrendered at discretion. the latter were formed into a brigade, and were distributed throughout the valley of the nile in military settlements. they submitted to their fate with that resignation which we know to have been a characteristic of the vanquished at that date. * the number of the dead is calculated from that of the hands and phalli brought in by the soldiers after the victory, the heaps of which are represented at medinet-habu. they regarded their defeat as a judgment from god against which there was no appeal; when their fate had been once pronounced, nothing remained to the condemned except to submit to it humbly, and to accommodate themselves to the master to whom they were now bound by a decree from on high. the prisoners of one day became on the next the devoted soldiers of the prince against whom they had formerly fought resolutely, and they were employed against their own tribes, their employers having no fear of their deserting to the other side during the engagement. they were lodged in the barracks at thebes, or in the provinces under the feudal lords and governors of the pharaoh, and were encouraged to retain their savage customs and warlike spirit. they intermarried either with the fellahîn or with women of their own tribes, and were reinforced at intervals by fresh prisoners or volunteers. drafted principally into the delta and the cities of middle egypt, they thus ended by constituting a semi-foreign population, destined by nature and training to the calling of arms, and forming a sort of warrior caste, differing widely from the militia of former times, and known for many generations by their national name of mashaûasha. as early as the xiith dynasty, the pharaohs had, in a similar way, imported the mazaîû from nubia, and had used them as a military police; ramses iii. now resolved to naturalise the libyans for much the same purpose. his victory did not bear the immediate fruits that we might have expected from his own account of it; the memory of the exploits of ramses ii. haunted him, and, stimulated by the example of his ancestor at qodshû, he doubtless desired to have the sole credit of the victory over the libyans. he certainly did overcome their kings, and arrested their invasion; we may go so far as to allow that he wrested from them the provinces which they had occupied on the left bank of the canopic branch, from marea to the natron lakes, but he did not conquer them, and their power still remained as formidable as ever. he had gained a respite at the point of the sword, but he had not delivered egypt from their future attacks. [illustration: 299.jpg one of the libyan chiefs vanquished by ramses iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. he might perhaps have been tempted to follow up his success and assume the offensive, had not affairs in asia at this juncture demanded the whole of his attention. the movement of great masses of european tribes in a southerly and easterly direction was beginning to be felt by the inhabitants of the balkans, who were forced to set out in a double stream of emigration--one crossing the bosphorus and the propontis towards the centre of asia minor, while the other made for what was later known as greece proper, by way of the passes over olympus and pindus. the nations who had hitherto inhabited these regions, now found themselves thrust forward by the pressure of invading hordes, and were constrained to move towards the south and east by every avenue which presented itself. it was probably the irruption of the phrygians into the high table-land which gave rise to the general exodus of these various nations--the pulasati, the zakkala, the shagalasha, the danauna, and the uashasha--some of whom had already made their way into syria and taken part in campaigns there, while others had as yet never measured strength with the egyptians. the main body of these migrating tribes chose the overland route, keeping within easy distance of the coast, from pamphylia as far as the confines of naharaim. [illustration: 300.jpg the waggons of the pulasati and their confederates] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. they were accompanied by their families, who must have been mercilessly jolted in the ox-drawn square waggons with solid wheels in which they travelled. the body of the vehicle was built either of roughly squared planks, or else of something resembling wicker-work. the round axletree was kept in its place by means of a rude pin, and four oxen were harnessed abreast to the whole structure. the children wore no clothes, and had, for the most part, their hair tied into a tuft on the top of their heads; the women affected a closely fitting cap, and were wrapped in large blue or red garments drawn close to the body.* the men�s attire varied according to the tribe to which they belonged. the pulasati undoubtedly held the chief place; they were both soldiers and sailors, and we must recognise in them the foremost of those tribes known to the greeks of classical times as the oarians, who infested the coasts of asia minor as well as those of greece and the ægean islands.** * these details are taken from the battle-scenes at medinet habu. ** the pulasati have been connected with the philistines by champollion, and subsequently by the early english egyptologists, who thought they recognised in them the inhabitants of the shephelah. chabas was the first to identify them with the pelasgi; unger and brugsch prefer to attribute to them a libyan origin, but the latter finally returns to the pelasgic and philistine hypothesis. they were without doubt the philistines, but in their migratory state, before they settled on the coast of palestine. [illustration: 301.jpg pulasati] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. crete was at this time the seat of a maritime empire, whose chiefs were perpetually cruising the seas and harassing the civilized states of the eastern mediterranean. these sea-rovers had grown wealthy through piracy, and contact with the merchants of syria and egypt had awakened in them a taste for a certain luxury and refinement, of which we find no traces in the remains of their civilization anterior to this period. some of the symbols in the inscriptions found on their monuments recall certain of the egyptian characters, while others present an original aspect and seem to be of ægean origin. we find in them, arranged in juxtaposition, signs representing flowers, birds, fish, quadrupeds of various kinds, members of the human body, and boats and household implements. from the little which is known of this script we are inclined to derive it from a similar source to that which has furnished those we meet with in several parts of asia minor and northern syria. it would appear that in ancient times, somewhere in the centre of the peninsula--but under what influence or during what period we know not--a syllabary was developed, of which varieties were handed on from tribe to tribe, spreading on the one side to the hittites, cilicians, and the peoples on the borders of syria and egypt, and on the other to the trojans, to the people of the cyclades, and into crete and greece. it is easy to distinguish the pulasati by the felt helmet which they wore fastened under the chin by two straps and surmounted by a crest of feathers. the upper part of their bodies was covered by bands of leather or some thick material, below which hung a simple loin-cloth, while their feet were bare or shod with short sandals. they carried each a round buckler with two handles, and the stout bronze sword common to the northern races, suspended by a cross belt passing over the left shoulder, and were further armed with two daggers and two javelins. they hurled the latter from a short distance while attacking, and then drawing their sword or daggers, fell upon the enemy; we find among them a few chariots of the hittite type, each manned by a driver and two fighting men. the tyrseni appear to have been the most numerous after the pulasati, next to whom came the zakkala. the latter are thought to have been a branch of the siculo-pelasgi whom greek tradition represents as scattered at this period among the cyclades and along the coast of the hellespont;* they wore a casque surmounted with plumes like that of the pulasati. the tyrseni may be distinguished by their feathered head-dress, but the shaga-lasha affected a long ample woollen cap falling on the neck behind, an article of apparel which is still worn by the sailors of the archipelago; otherwise they were equipped in much the same manner as their allies. the other members of the confederation, the shardana, the danauna, and the nashasha, each furnished an inconsiderable contingent, and, taken all together, formed but a small item of the united force.** * the zakkara, or zakkala, have been identified with the teucrians by lauth, chabas, and fr. lenormant, with the zygritse of libya by linger and brugsch, who subsequently returned to the teucrian hypothesis; w. max millier regards them as an asiatic nation probably of the lydian family. the identification with the siculo-pelasgi of the ægean sea was proposed by maspero. ** the form of the word shows that it is of asiatic origin, uasasos, uassos, which refers us to caria or lycia. their fleet sailed along the coast and kept within sight of the force on land. the squadrons depicted on the monuments are without doubt those of the two peoples, the pulasati and zakkala. their ships resembled in many respects those of egypt, except in the fact that they had no cut-water. the bow and stern rose up straight like the neck of a goose or swan; two structures for fighting purposes were erected above the dock, while a rail running round the sides of the vessel protected the bodies of the rowers. an upper yard curved in shape hung from the single mast, which terminated in a top for the look-out during a battle. the upper yard was not made to lower, and the top-men managed the sail in the same manner as the egyptian sailors. the resemblance between this fleet and that of ramses is easily explained. the dwellers on the ægean, owing to the knowledge they had acquired of the phoenician galleys, which were accustomed to cruise annually in their waters, became experts in shipbuilding. [illustration: 304.jpg a sihagalasha chief] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. they copied the lines of the phoenician craft, imitated the rigging, and learned to manoeuvre their vessels so well, both on ordinary occasions and in a battle, that they could now oppose to the skilled eastern navigators ships as well fitted out and commanded by captains as experienced as those of egypt or asia. there had been a general movement among all these peoples at the very time when ramses was repelling the attack of the libyans; �the isles had quivered, and had vomited forth their people at once.� * * this campaign is mentioned in the inscription of medinet habu. we find some information about the war in the _great harris papyrus_, also in the inscription of medinet-habu which describes the campaign of the year v., and in other shorter texts of the same temple. they were subjected to one of those irresistible impulses such as had driven the shepherds into egypt; or again, in later times, had carried away the cimmerians and the scyths to the pillage of asia minor: �no country could hold out against their arms, neither khâti, nor qodi, nor carchemish, nor arvad, nor alasia, without being brought to nothing.� the ancient kingdoms of sapalulu and khâtusaru, already tottering, crumbled to pieces under the shock, and were broken up into their primitive elements. the barbarians, unable to carry the towns by assault, and too impatient to resort to a lengthened siege, spread over the valley of the orontes, burning and devastating the country everywhere. having reached the frontiers of the empire, in the country of the amorites, they came to a halt, and constructing an entrenched camp, installed within it their women and the booty they had acquired. some of their predatory bands, having ravaged the bekâa, ended by attacking the subjects of the pharaoh himself, and their chiefs dreamed of an invasion of egypt. ramses, informed of their design by the despatches of his officers and vassals, resolved to prevent its accomplishment. he summoned his troops together, both indigenous and mercenary, in his own person looked after their armament and commissariat, and in the viiith year of his reign crossed the frontier near zalu. he advanced by forced marches to meet the enemy, whom he encountered somewhere in southern syria, on the borders of the shephelah,* and after a stubbornly contested campaign obtained the victory. he carried off from the field, in addition to the treasures of the confederate tribes, some of the chariots which had been used for the transport of their families. the survivors made their way hastily to the north-west, in the direction of the sea, in order to receive the support of their navy, but the king followed them step by step. * no site is given for these battles. e. de rougé placed the theatre of war in syria, and his opinion was accepted by brugsch. chabas referred it to the mouth of the nile near pelusium, and his authority has prevailed up to the present. the remarks of w. max müller have brought me back to the opinion of the earlier egyptologists; but i differ from him in looking for the locality further south, and not to the mouth of nahr el-kelb as the site of the naval battle. it seems to me that the fact that the zakkala were prisoners at dor, and the pulasati in the shephelah, is enough to assign the campaign to the regions i have mentioned in the text. it is recorded that he occupied himself with lion-hunting _en route_ after the example of the victors of the xviiith dynasty, and that he killed three of these animals in the long grass on one occasion on the banks of some river. he rejoined his ships, probably at jaffa, and made straight for the enemy. the latter were encamped on the level shore, at the head of a bay wide enough to offer to their ships a commodious space for naval evolutions--possibly the mouth of the belos, in the neighbourhood of magadîl. the king drove their foot-soldiers into the water at the same moment that his admirals attacked the combined fleet of the pulasati and zakkala. [illustration: 307.jpg the army op ramses iii. on the march, and the lion-hunt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. some of the ægean galleys were capsized and sank when the egyptian vessels rammed them with their sharp stems, and the crews, in endeavouring to escape to land by swimming, were picked off by the arrows of the archers of the guard who were commanded by ramses and his sons; they perished in the waves, or only escaped through the compassion of the victors. �i had fortified,� said the pharaoh, �my frontier at zahi; i had drawn up before these people my generals, my provincial governors, the vassal princes, and the best of my soldiers. the mouths of the river seemed to be a mighty rampart of galleys, barques, and vessels of all kinds, equipped from the bow to the stern with valiant armed men. the infantry, the flower of egypt, were as lions roaring on the mountains; the charioteers, selected from among the most rapid warriors, had for their captains only officers confident in themselves; the horses quivered in all their limbs, and were burning to trample the nations underfoot. as for me, i was like the warlike montû: i stood up before them and they saw the vigour of my arms. i, king ramses, i was as a hero who is conscious of his valour, and who stretches his hands over the people in the day of battle. those who have violated my frontier will never more garner harvests from this earth: the period of their soul has been fixed for ever. my forces were drawn up before them on the �very green,� a devouring flame approached them at the river mouth, annihilation embraced them on every side. those who were on the strand i laid low on the seashore, slaughtered like victims of the butcher. i made their vessels to capsize, and their riches fell into the sea.� those who had not fallen in the fight were caught, as it were, in the cast of a net. a rapid cruiser of the fleet carried the egyptian standard along the coast as far as the regions of the orontes and saros. the land troops, on the other hand, following on the heels of the defeated enemy, pushed through coele-syria, and in their first burst of zeal succeeded in reaching the plains of the euphrates. a century had elapsed since a pharaoh had planted his standard in this region, and the country must have seemed as novel to the soldiers of ramses iii. as to those of his predecessor thûtmosis. [illustration: 308.jpg the defeat of the peoples of the sea] the khâti were still its masters; and all enfeebled as they were by the ravages of the invading barbarians, were nevertheless not slow in preparing to resist their ancient enemies. the majority of the citadels shut their gates in the face of ramses, who, wishing to lose no time, did not attempt to besiege them: he treated their territory with the usual severity, devastating their open towns, destroying their harvests, breaking down their fruit trees, and cutting away their forests. he was able, moreover, without arresting his march, to carry by assault several of their fortified towns, alaza among the number, the destruction of which is represented in the scenes of his victories. the spoils were considerable, and came very opportunely to reward the soldiers or to provide funds for the erection of monuments. the last battalion of troops, however, had hardly recrossed the isthmus when lotanû became again its own master, and egyptian rule was once more limited to its traditional provinces of kharû and phoenicia. the king of the khâti appears among the prisoners whom the pharaoh is represented as bringing to his father amon; carchemish, tunipa, khalabu, katna, pabukhu, arvad, mitanni, mannus, asi, and a score of other famous towns of this period appear in the list of the subjugated nations, recalling the triumphs of thûtmosis iii. and amenothes ii. ramses did not allow himself to be deceived into thinking that his success was final. he accepted the protestations of obedience which were spontaneously offered him, but he undertook no further expedition of importance either to restrain or to provoke his enemies: the restricted rule which satisfied his exemplar ramses ii. ought, he thought, to be sufficient for his own ambition. egypt breathed freely once more on the announcement of the victory; henceforward she was �as a bed without anguish.� �let each woman now go to and fro according to her will,� cried the sovereign, in describing the campaign, �her ornaments upon her, and directing her steps to any place she likes!� and in order to provide still further guarantees of public security, he converted his asiatic captives, as he previously had his african prisoners, into a bulwark against the barbarians, and a safeguard of the frontier. the war must, doubtless, have decimated southern syria; and he planted along its coast what remained of the defeated tribes--the philistines in the shephelah, and the zakkala on the borders of the great oak forest stretching from oarmel to dor.* * it is in this region that we find henceforward the hebrews in contact with the philistines: at the end of the xxist egyptian dynasty a scribe makes dor a town of the zakkala. watch-towers were erected for the supervision of this region, and for rallying-points in case of internal revolts or attacks from without. one of these, the migdol of ramses iii., was erected, not far from the scene of the decisive battle, on the spot where the spoils had been divided. this living barrier, so to speak, stood between the nile valley and the dangers which threatened it from asia, and it was not long before its value was put to the proof. the libyans, who had been saved from destruction by the diversion created in their favour on the eastern side of the empire, having now recovered their courage, set about collecting their hordes together for a fresh invasion. they returned to the attack in the xith year of ramses, under the leadership of kapur, a prince of the mashauasha.* * the second campaign against the libyans is known to us from the inscriptions of the year xi. at medinet-habu. [illustration: 313.jpg the captive chiefs of ramses iii. at medinet-ihabu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. the first prisoner on the left is the prince of the khâti (cf. the cut on p. 318 of the present work), the second is the prince of the amâuru [amoritos], the third the prince of the zakkala, the fourth that of the shardana, the fifth that of the shakalasha (see the cut on p. 304 of this work), and the sixth that of the tursha [tyrseni]. their soul had said to them for the second time that �they would end their lives in the nomes of egypt, that they would till its valleys and its plains as their own land.� the issue did not correspond with their intentions. �death fell upon them within egypt, for they had hastened with their feet to the furnace which consumes corruption, under the fire of the valour of the king who rages like baal from the heights of heaven. all his limbs are invested with victorious strength; with his right hand he lays hold of the multitudes, his left extends to those who are against him, like a cloud of arrows directed upon them to destroy them, and his sword cuts like that of montû. kapur, who had come to demand homage, blind with fear, threw down his arms, and his troops did the same. he sent up to heaven a suppliant cry, and his son [mashashalu] arrested his foot and his hand; for, behold, there rises beside him the god who knows what he has in his heart: his majesty falls upon their heads as a mountain of granite and crushes them, the earth drinks up their blood as if it had been water...; their army was slaughtered, slaughtered their soldiers,� near a fortress situated on the borders of the desert called the �castle of usirmarî-miamon.� they were seized, �they were stricken, their arms bound, like geese piled up in the bottom of a boat, under the feet of his majesty.� * the fugitives were pursued at the sword�s point from the _castle of usirmarî-miamon_ to the _castle of the sands_, a distance of over thirty miles.** * the name of the son of kapur, mashashalu, masesyla, which is wanting in this inscription, is supplied from a parallel inscription. * the castle of usirmarî-miamon was �on the mountain of the horn of the world,� which induces me to believe that we must seek its site on the borders of the libyan desert. the royal title entering into its name being liable to change with every reign, it is possible that we have an earlier reference to this stronghold in a mutilated passage of the athribis stele, which relates to the campaigns of mînephtah; it must have commanded one of the most frequented routes leading to the oasis of amon. [illustration: 314.jpg ramses iii. binds the chiefs of the libyans] from a photograph by beato. two thousand and seventy-five libyans were left upon the ground that day, two thousand and fifty-two perished in other engagements, while two thousand and thirty-two, both male and female, were made prisoners. these were almost irreparable losses for a people of necessarily small numbers, and if we add the number of those who had succumbed in the disaster of six years before, we can readily realise how discouraged the invaders must have been, and how little likely they were to try the fortune of war once more. their power dwindled and vanished almost as quickly as it had arisen; the provisional cohesion given to their forces by a few ambitious chiefs broke up after their repeated defeats, and the rudiments of an empire which had struck terror into the pharaohs, resolved itself into its primitive elements, a number of tribes scattered over the desert. they were driven back beyond the libyan mountains; fortresses* guarded the routes they had previously followed, and they were obliged henceforward to renounce any hope of an invasion _en masse_, and to content themselves with a few raiding expeditions into the fertile plain of the delta, where they had formerly found a transitory halting-place. counter-raids organised by the local troops or by the mercenaries who garrisoned the principal towns in the neighbourhood of memphis--hermopolis and thinisl--inflicted punishment upon them when they became too audacious. their tribes, henceforward, as far as egypt was concerned, formed a kind of reserve from which the pharaoh could raise soldiers every year, and draw sufficient materials to bring his army up to fighting strength when internal revolt or an invasion from without called for military activity. * _the great harris papyrus_ speaks of fortifications erected in the towns of anhûri-shû, possibly thinis, and of thot, possibly hermopolis, in order to repel the tribes of the tihonu who were ceaselessly harassing the frontier. [illustration: 318.jpg the prince of the khati] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken at medinet habu. the campaign of the xith year brought to an end the great military expeditions of ramses iii. henceforward he never took the lead in any more serious military enterprise than that of repressing the bedawin of seîr for acts of brigandage,* or the ethiopians for some similar reason. he confined his attention to the maintenance of commercial and industrial relations with manufacturing countries, and with the markets of asia and africa. he strengthened the garrisons of sinai, and encouraged the working of the ancient mines in that region. he sent a colony of quarry-men and of smelters to the land of atika, in order to work the veins of silver which were alleged to exist there.** *the sâîrû of the egyptian texts have been identified with the bedawin of seîr. ** this is the gebel-ataka of our day. all this district is imperfectly explored, but we know that it contains mines and quarries some of which were worked as late as in the time of the mameluk sultans. he launched a fleet on the red sea, and sent it to the countries of fragrant spices. �the captains of the sailors were there, together with the chiefs of the _corvée_ and accountants, to provide provision� for the people of the divine lands �from the innumerable products of egypt; and these products were counted by myriads. sailing through the great sea of qodi, they arrived at pûântt without mishap, and there collected cargoes for their galleys and ships, consisting of all the unknown marvels of tonûtir, as well as considerable quantities of the perfumes of pûâtîn, which they stowed on board by tens of thousands without number. the sons of the princes of tonûtir came themselves into qîmit with their tributes. they reached the region of coptos safe and sound, and disembarked there in peace with their riches.� it was somewhere about sau and tuau that the merchants and royal officers landed, following the example of the expeditions of the xiith and xviiith dynasties. here they organised caravans of asses and slaves, which taking the shortest route across the mountain--that of the valley of rahanû--carried the precious commodities to coptos, whence they were transferred to boats and distributed along the river. the erection of public buildings, which had been interrupted since the time of mînephtah, began again with renewed activity. the captives in the recent victories furnished the requisite labour, while the mines, the voyages to the somali coast, and the tributes of vassals provided the necessary money. syria was not lost sight of in this resumption of peaceful occupations. the overthrow of the khâti secured egyptian rule in this region, and promised a long tranquillity within its borders. one temple at least was erected in the country--that of pa-kanâna--where the princes of kharu were to assemble to offer worship to the pharaoh, and to pay each one his quota of the general tribute. the pulasati were employed to protect the caravan routes, and a vast reservoir was erected near aîna to provide a store of water for the irrigation of the neighbouring country. the delta absorbed the greater part of the royal subsidies; it had suffered so much from the libyan incursions, that the majority of the towns within it had fallen into a condition as miserable as that in which they were at the time of the expulsion of the shepherds. heliopolis, bubastis, thmuis, amû, and tanis still preserved some remains of the buildings which had already been erected in them by ramses; he constructed also, at the place at present called tel el-yahûdîyeh, a royal palace of limestone, granite, and alabaster, of which the type is unique amongst all the structures hitherto discovered. its walls and columns were not ornamented with the usual sculptures incised in stone, but the whole of the decorations--scenes as well as inscriptions--consisted of plaques of enamelled terra-cotta set in cement. the forms of men and animals and the lines of hieroglyphs, standing out in slight relief from a glazed and warm-coloured background, constitute an immense mosaic-work of many hues. the few remains of the work show great purity of design and an extraordinary delicacy of tone. [illustration: 320.jpg signs, arms and instruments] all the knowledge of the egyptian painters, and all the technical skill of their artificers in ceramic, must have been employed to compose such harmoniously balanced decorations, with their free handling of line and colour, and their thousands of rosettes, squares, stars, and buttons of varicoloured pastes.* * this temple has been known since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the louvre is in possession of some fragments from it which came from salt�s collection; it was rediscovered in 1870, and some portions of it were transferred by mariette to the boulaq museum. the remainder was destroyed by the fellahîn, at the instigation of the enlightened amateurs of cairo, and fragments of it have passed into various private collections. the decoration has been attributed to chaldoan influence, but it is a work purely egyptian, both in style and in technique. [illustration: 321.jpg the colossal osirian figures in the first court at medinet-habu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the difficulties to overcome were so appalling, that when the marvellous work was once accomplished, no subsequent attempt was made to construct a second like it: all the remaining structures of ramses iii., whether at memphis, in the neighbourhood of abydos, or at karnak, were in the conventional style of the pharaohs. he determined, nevertheless, to give to the exterior of the memnonium, which he built near medinet-habu for the worship of himself, the proportions and appearance of an asiatic �migdol,� influenced probably by his remembrance of similar structures which he had seen during his syrian campaign. the chapel itself is of the ordinary type, with its gigantic pylons, its courts surrounded by columns--each supporting a colossal osirian statue--its hypostyle hall, and its mysterious cells for the deposit of spoils taken from the peoples of the sea and the cities of asia. his tomb was concealed at a distant spot in the biban-el-moluk, and we see depicted on its walls the same scenes that we find in the last resting-place of seti i. or ramses ii., and in addition to them, in a series of supplementary chambers, the arms of the sovereign, his standards, his treasure, his kitchen, and the preparation of offerings which were to be made to him. his sarcophagus, cut out of an enormous block of granite, was brought for sale to europe at the beginning of this century, and cambridge obtained possession of its cover, while the louvre secured the receptacle itself. these were years of profound tranquillity. the pharaoh intended that absolute order should reign throughout his realm, and that justice should be dispensed impartially within it. [illustration: 322.jpg the first pylon of the temple] there were to be no more exactions, no more crying iniquities: whoever was discovered oppressing the people, no matter whether he were court official or feudal lord--was instantly deprived of his functions, and replaced by an administrator of tried integrity. ramses boasts, moreover, in an idyllic manner, of having planted trees everywhere, and of having built arbours wherein the people might sit in the shade in the open air; while women might go to and fro where they would in security, no one daring to insult them on the way. the shardanian and libyan mercenaries were restricted to the castles which they garrisoned, and were subjected to such a severe discipline that no one had any cause of complaint against these armed barbarians settled in the heart of egypt. �i have,� continues the king, �lifted up every miserable one out of his misfortune, i have granted life to him, i have saved him from the mighty who were oppressing him, and have secured rest for every one in his own town.� the details of the description are exaggerated, but the general import of it is true. egypt had recovered the peace and prosperity of which it had been deprived for at least half a century, that is, since the death of mînephtah. the king, however, was not in such a happy condition as his people, and court intrigues embittered the later years of his life. one of his sons, whose name is unknown to us, but who is designated in the official records by the nickname of pentaûîrît, formed a conspiracy against him. his mother, tîi, who was a woman of secondary rank, took it into her head to secure the crown for him, to the detriment of the children of queen isît. an extensive plot was hatched in which scribes, officers of the guard, priests, and officials in high place, both natives and foreigners, were involved. a resort to the supernatural was at first attempted, and the superintendent of the herds, a certain panhûibaûnû, who was deeply versed in magic, undertook to cast a spell upon the pharaoh, if he could only procure certain conjuring books of which he was not possessed. these were found to be in the royal library. he managed to introduce himself under cover of the night into the harem, where he manufactured certain waxen figures, of which some were to excite the hate of his wives against their husband, while others would cause him to waste away and finally perish. a traitor betrayed several of the conspirators, who, being subjected to the torture, informed upon others, and these at length brought the matter home to pentaûîrît and his immediate accomplices. all were brought before a commission of twelve members, summoned expressly to try the case, and the result was the condemnation and execution of six women and some forty men. the extreme penalty of the egyptian code was reserved for pentaûîrît, and for the most culpable,--�they died of themselves,� and the meaning of this phrase is indicated, i believe, by the appearance of one of the mummies disinterred at deîr el-baharî.* the coffin in which it was placed was very plain, painted white and without inscription; the customary removal of entrails had not been effected, but the body was covered with a thick layer of natron, which was applied even to the skin itself and secured by wrappings. * the translations by dévéria, lepage-renouf, and erman agree in making it a case of judicial suicide: there was left to the condemned a choice of his mode of death, in order to avoid the scandal of a public execution. it is also possible to make it a condemnation to death in person, which did not allow of the substitution of a proxy willing, for a payment to his family, to undergo death in place of the condemned; but, unfortunately, no other text is to be found supporting the existence of such a practice in egypt. it makes one�s flesh creep to look at it: the hands and feet are tied by strong bands, and are curled up as if under an intolerable pain; the abdomen is drawn up, the stomach projects like a ball, the chest is contracted, the head is thrown back, the face is contorted in a hideous grimace, the retracted lips expose the teeth, and the mouth is open as if to give utterance to a last despairing cry. the conviction is borne in upon us that the man was invested while still alive with the wrappings of the dead. is this the mummy of pentaûîrît, or of some other prince as culpable as he was, and condemned to this frightful punishment? in order to prevent the recurrence of such wicked plots, pharaoh resolved to share his throne with that one of his sons who had most right to it. in the xxxiind year of his reign he called together his military and civil chiefs, the generals of the foreign mercenaries, the shardana, the priests, and the nobles of the court, and presented to them, according to custom, his heir-designate, who was also called ramses. he placed the double crown upon his brow, and seated him beside himself upon the throne of horus. this was an occasion for the pharaoh to bring to remembrance all the great exploits he had performed during his reign--his triumphs over the libyans and over the peoples of the sea, and the riches he had lavished upon the gods: at the end of the enumeration he exhorted those who were present to observe the same fidelity towards the son which they had observed towards the father, and to serve the new sovereign as valiantly as they had served himself. [illustration: 327.jpg the mummy of ramses iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a, photograph by emil brugsch bey. the joint reign lasted for only four years. ramses iii. was not much over sixty years of age when he died. he was still vigorous and muscular, but he had become stout and heavy. the fatty matter of the body having been dissolved by the natron in the process of embalming, the skin distended during life has gathered up into enormous loose folds, especially about the nape of the neck, under the chin, on the hips, and at the articulations of the limbs. the closely shaven head and cheeks present no trace of hair or beard. the forehead, although neither broad nor high, is better proportioned than that of ramses ii.; the supra-orbital ridges are less accentuated than his, the cheek-bones not so prominent, the nose not so arched, and the chin and jaw less massive. the eyes were perhaps larger, but no opinion can be offered on this point, for the eyelids have been cut away, and the cleared-out cavities have been filled with rags. the ears do not stand out so far from the head as those of ramses ii., but they have been pierced for ear-rings. the mouth, large by nature, has been still further widened in the process of embalming, owing to the awkwardness of the operator, who has cut into the cheeks at the side. the thin lips allow the white and regular teeth to be seen; the first molar on the right has been either broken in half, or has worn away more rapidly than the rest. ramses iii. seems, on the whole, to have been a sort of reduced copy, a little more delicate in make, of ramses ii.; his face shows more subtlety of expression and intelligence, though less nobility than that of the latter, while his figure is not so upright, his shoulders not so broad, and his general muscular vigour less. what has been said of his personality may be extended to his reign; it was evidently and designedly an imitation of the reign of ramses il, but fell short of its model owing to the insufficiency of his resources in men and money. if ramses iii. did not succeed in becoming one of the most powerful of the theban pharaohs, it was not for lack of energy or ability; the depressed condition of egypt at the time limited the success of his endeavours and caused them to fall short of his intentions. the work accomplished by him was not on this account less glorious. at his accession egypt was in a wretched state, invaded on the west, threatened by a flood of barbarians on the east, without an army or a fleet, and with no resources in the treasury. in fifteen years he had disposed of his inconvenient neighbours, organised an army, constructed a fleet, re-established his authority abroad, and settled the administration at home on so firm a basis, that the country owed the peace which it enjoyed for several centuries to the institutions and prestige which he had given it. his associate in the government, ramses iv., barely survived him. then followed a series of _rois fainéants_ bearing the name of ramses, but in an order not yet clearly determined. it is generally assumed that ramses v., brother of ramses iii., succeeded ramses iv. by supplanting his nephews--who, however, appear to have soon re-established their claim to the throne, and to have followed each other in rapid succession as ramses vi., ramses vil, ramses viii., and maritûmû.* others endeavour to make out that ramses v. was the son of ramses iv., and that the prince called ramses vi. never succeeded to the throne at all. at any rate, his son, who is styled ramses vil, but who is asserted by some to have been a son of ramses iii., is considered to have succeeded ramses v., and to have become the ancestor from whom the later ramessides traced their descent.** * the order of the ramessides was first made out by champollion the younger and by rosellini. bunsen and lepsius reckon in it thirteen kings; e. de rougé puts the number at fifteen or sixteen; maspero makes the number to be twelve, which was reduced still further by setho. erman thinks that ramses ix. and ramses x. were also possibly sons of ramses iii.; he consequently declines to recognise king maritûmû as a son of that sovereign, as brugsch would make out. * the monuments of these later ramessides are so rare and so doubtful that i cannot yet see my way to a solution of the questions which they raise. the short reigns of these pharaohs were marked by no events which would cast lustre on their names; one might say that they had nothing else to do than to enjoy peacefully the riches accumulated by their forefather. ramses iv. was anxious to profit by the commercial relations which had been again established between egypt and puanît, and, in order to facilitate the transit between coptos and kosseir, founded a station, and a temple dedicated to isis, in the mountain of bakhni; by this route, we learn, more than eight thousand men had passed under the auspices of the high priest of amon, nakh-tû-ramses. this is the only undertaking of public utility which we can attribute to any of these kings. as we see them in their statues and portraits, they are heavy and squat and without refinement, with protruding eyes, thick lips, flattened and commonplace noses, round and expressionless faces. their work was confined to the engraving of their cartouches on the blank spaces of the temples at karnak and medinet-habu, and the addition of a few stones to the buildings at memphis, abydos, and heliopolis. whatever energy and means they possessed were expended on the construction of their magnificent tombs. [illustration: 331.jpg a ramses of the xxth dynasty] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. this is the ramses vi. of the series now generally adopted. these may still be seen in the biban el-moluk, and no visitor can refrain from admiring them for their magnitude and decoration. as to funerary chapels, owing to the shortness of the reigns of these kings, there was not time to construct them, and they therefore made up for this want by appropriating the chapel of their father, which was at medinet-habu, and it was here consequently that their worship was maintained. the last of the sons of ramses iii. was succeeded by another and equally ephemeral ramses; after whom came ramses x. and ramses xi., who re-established the tradition of more lasting reigns. there was now no need of expeditions against kharu or libya, for these enfeebled countries no longer disputed, from the force of custom, the authority of egypt. from time to time an embassy from these countries would arrive at thebes, bringing presents, which were pompously recorded as representing so much tribute.* if it is true that a people which has no history is happy, then egypt ought to be reckoned as more fortunate under the feebler descendants of ramses iii. than it had ever been under the most famous pharaohs. * the mention of a tribute, for instance, in the time of ramses iv. from the lotanu. thebes continued to be the favourite royal residence. here in its temple the kings were crowned, and in its palaces they passed the greater part of their lives, and here in its valley of sepulchres they were laid to rest when their reigns and lives were ended. the small city of the beginning of the xviiith dynasty had long encroached upon the plain, and was now transformed into an immense town, with magnificent monuments, and a motley population, having absorbed in its extension the villages of ashirû,* and madit, and even the southern apît, which we now call luxor. but their walls could still be seen, rising up in the middle of modern constructions, a memorial of the heroic ages, when the power of the theban princes was trembling in the balance, and when conflicts with the neighbouring barons or with the legitimate king were on the point of breaking out at every moment.** * the village of ashirû was situated to the south of the temple of karnak, close to the temple of mût. its ruins, containing the statues of sokhît collected by amenôthes iii., extend around the remains marked x in mariette�s plan. * these are the walls which are generally regarded as marking the sacred enclosure of the temples: an examination of the ruins of thebes shows us that, during the xxth and xxist dynasties, brick-built houses lay against these walls both on the inner and outer sides, so that they must have been half hidden by buildings, as are the ancient walls of paris at the present day. the inhabitants of apît retained their walls, which coincided almost exactly with the boundary of nsîttauî, the great sanctuary of amon; ashirû sheltered behind its ramparts the temple of mût, while apît-rîsît clustered around a building consecrated by amenôthes iii. to his divine father, the lord of thebes. within the boundary walls of thebes extended whole suburbs, more or less densely populated and prosperous, through which ran avenues of sphinxes connecting together the three chief boroughs of which the sovereign city was composed. on every side might have been seen the same collections of low grey huts, separated from each other by some muddy pool where the cattle were wont to drink and the women to draw water; long streets lined with high houses, irregularly shaped open spaces, bazaars, gardens, courtyards, and shabby-looking palaces which, while presenting a plain and unadorned exterior, contained within them the refinements of luxury and the comforts of wealth. the population did not exceed a hundred thousand souls,* reckoning a large proportion of foreigners attracted hither by commerce or held as slaves. * letronne, after having shown that we have no authentic ancient document giving us the population, fixes it at 200,000 souls. my estimate, which is, if anything, exaggerated, is based on the comparison of the area of ancient thebes and that of such modern towns as shit, girgeh and qina, whose populations are known for the last fifty years from the census. [illustration: 334.jpg map: thebes in the xxth dynasty] the court of the pharaoh drew to the city numerous provincials, who, coming thither to seek their fortune, took up their abode there, planting in the capital of southern egypt types from the north and the centre of the country, as well as from nubia and the oases; such a continuous infusion of foreign material into the ancient theban stock gave rise to families of a highly mixed character, in which all the various races of egypt were blended in the most capricious fashion. in every twenty officers, and in the same number of ordinary officials, about half would be either syrians, or recently naturalised nubians, or the descendants of both, and among the citizens such names as pakhari the syrian, palamnanî the native of the lebanon, pinahsî the negro, palasiaî the alasian, preserved the indications of foreign origin.* a similar mixture of races was found in other cities, and memphis, bubastis, tanis, and siût must have presented as striking an aspect in this respect as thebes.** at memphis there were regular colonies of phoenician, canaanite, and amorite merchants sufficiently prosperous to have temples there to their national gods, and influential enough to gain adherents to their religion from the indigenous inhabitants. they worshipped baal, anîti. baal-zaphuna, and ashtoreth, side by side with phtah, nofîrtûmû, and sokhit,*** and this condition of things at memphis was possibly paralleled elsewhere--as at tanis and bubastis. * among the forty-three individuals compromised in the conspiracy against ramses iii. whose names have been examined by dévéria, nine are foreigners, chiefly semites, and were so recognised by the egyptians themselves--adiram, balmahara, garapusa, lunîni the libyan, paiarisalama, possibly the jerusalemite, nanaiu, possibly the ninevite, palulca the lycian, qadendena, and uarana or naramu. ** an examination of the stelæ of abydos shows the extent of foreign influence in this city in the middle of the xviiith dynasty. *** these gods are mentioned in the preamble of a letter written on the _verso_ of the _sallier papyrus_. from the mode in which they are introduced we may rightly infer that they had, like the egyptian gods who are mentioned with them, their chapels at memphis. a place in memphis is called �the district called the district of the khâtiû� is an inscription of the iiith year of aï, and shows that hittites were there by the side of canaanites. this blending of races was probably not so extensive in the country districts, except in places where mercenaries were employed as garrisons; but sudanese or hittite slaves, brought back by the soldiers of the ranks, had introduced ethiopian and asiatic elements into many a family of the fellahîn.* * one of the letters in the great bologna papyrus treats of a syrian slave, employed as a cultivator at hermopolis, who had run away from his master. we have only to examine in any of our museums the statues of the memphite and theban periods respectively, to see the contrast between the individuals represented in them as far as regards stature and appearance. some members of the courts of the ramessides stand out as genuine semites notwithstanding the disguise of their egyptian names; and in the times of kheops and ûsirtasen they would have been regarded as barbarians. many of them exhibit on their faces a blending of the distinctive features of one or other of the predominant oriental races of the time. additional evidence of a mixture of races is forthcoming when we examine with an unbiased mind the mummies of the period, and the complexity of the new elements introduced among the people by the political movements of the later centuries is thus strongly confirmed. the new-comers had all been absorbed and assimilated by the country, but the generations which arose from this continual cross-breeding, while representing externally the egyptians of older epochs, in manners, language, and religion, were at bottom something different, and the difference became the more accentuated as the foreign elements increased. the people were thus gradually divested of the character which had distinguished them before the conquest of syria; the dispositions and defects imported from without counteracted to such an extent their own native dispositions and defects that all marks of individuality were effaced and nullified. the race tended to become more and more what it long continued to be afterwards,--a lifeless and inert mass, without individual energy--endowed, it is true, with patience, endurance, cheerfulness of temperament, and good nature, but with little power of self-government, and thus forced to submit to foreign masters who made use of it and oppressed it without pity. the upper classes had degenerated as much as the masses. the feudal nobles who had expelled the shepherds, and carried the frontiers of the empire to the banks of the euphrates, seemed to have expended their energies in the effort, and to have almost ceased to exist. as long as egypt was restricted to the nile valley, there was no such disproportion between the power of the pharaoh and that of his feudatories as to prevent the latter from maintaining their privileges beside, and, when occasion arose, even against the monarch. the conquest of asia, while it compelled them either to take up arms themselves or to send their troops to a distance, accustomed them and their soldiers to a passive obedience. the maintenance of a strict discipline in the army was the first condition of successful campaigning at great distances from the mother country and in the midst of hostile people, and the unquestioning respect which they had to pay to the orders of their general prepared them for abject submission to the will of their sovereign. to their bravery, moveover, they owed not only money and slaves, but also necklaces and bracelets of honour, and distinctions and offices in the pharaonic administration. the king, in addition, neglected no opportunity for securing their devotion to himself. he gave to them in marriage his sisters, his daughters, his cousins, and any of the princesses whom he was not compelled by law to make his own wives. he selected from their harems nursing-mothers for his own sons, and this choice established between him and them a foster relationship, which was as binding among the egyptians and other oriental peoples as one of blood. it was not even necessary for the establishment of this relation that the foster-mother�s connexion with the pharaoh�s son should be durable or even effective: the woman had only to offer her breast to the child for a moment, and this symbol was quite enough to make her his nurse--his true _monâît_. this fictitious fosterage was carried so far, that it was even made use of in the case of youths and persons of mature age. when an egyptian woman wished to adopt an adult, the law prescribed that she should offer him the breast, and from that moment he became her son. a similar ceremony was prescribed in the case of men who wished to assume the quality of male nurse--_monâî_--or even, indeed, of female nurse--_monâît_--like that of their wives; according to which they were to place, it would seem, the end of one of their fingers in the mouth of the child.* once this affinity was established, the fidelity of these feudal lords was established beyond question; and their official duties to the sovereign were not considered as accomplished when they had fulfilled their military obligations, for they continued to serve him in the palace as they had served him on the field. wherever the necessities of the government called them--at memphis, at ramses, or elsewhere--they assembled around the pharaoh; like him they had their palaces at thebes, and when they died they were anxious to be buried there beside him.** * these symbolical modes of adoption were first pointed out by maspero. legend has given examples of them: as, for instance, where isis fosters the child of malkander, king of byblos, by inserting the tip of her finger in its mouth. ** the tomb of a prince of tobûî, the lesser aphroditopolis, was discovered at thebes by maspero. the rock-out tombs of two thinite princes were noted in the same necropolis. these two were of the time of thûtmosis iii. i have remarked in tombs not yet made public the mention of princes of el-kab, who played an important part about the person of the pharaohs down to the beginning of the xxth dynasty. many of the old houses had become extinct, while others, owing to marriages, were absorbed into the royal family; the fiefs conceded to the relations or favourites of the pharaoh continued to exist, indeed, as of old, but the ancient distrustful and turbulent feudality had given place to an aristocracy of courtiers, who lived oftener in attendance on the monarch than on their own estates, and whose authority continued to diminish to the profit of the absolute rule of the king. there would be nothing astonishing in the �count� becoming nothing more than a governor, hereditary or otherwise, in thebes itself; he could hardly be anything higher in the capital of the empire.* but the same restriction of authority was evidenced in all the provinces: the recruiting of soldiers, the receipt of taxes, most of the offices associated with the civil or military administration, became more and more affairs of the state, and passed from the hands of the feudal lord into those of the functionaries of the crown. the few barons who still lived on their estates, while they were thus dispossessed of the greater part of their prerogatives, obtained some compensation, on the other hand, on the side of religion. from early times they had been by birth the heads of the local cults, and their protocol had contained, together with those titles which justified their possession of the temporalities of the nome, others which attributed to them spiritual supremacy. the sacred character with which they were invested became more and more prominent in proportion as their political influence became curtailed, and we find scions of the old warlike families or representatives of a new lineage at thinis, at akhmîm,** in the nome of baalû, at hierâconpolis,*** at el-kab,**** and in every place where we have information from the monuments as to their position, bestowing more concern upon their sacerdotal than on their other duties. * rakhmirî and his son manakhpirsonbû were both �counts �of thebes under thûtmosis iii., and there is nothing to show that there was any other person among them invested with the same functions and belonging to a different family. ** for example, the tomb of anhûrimôsû, high priest of anhuri-shû and prince of thinis, under mînephtah, where the sacerdotal character is almost exclusively prominent. the same is the case with the tombs of the princes of akhmîm in the time of khûniatonû and his successors: the few still existing in 1884-5 have not been published. the stelæ belonging to them are at paris and berlin. *** horimôsû, prince of hierâconpolis under thûtmosis iii., is, above everything else, a prophet of the local horus. **** the princes of el-kab during the xixth and xxth dynasties were, before everything, priests of nekhabit, as appears from an examination of their tombs, which, lying in a side valley, far away from the tomb of pihirî, are rarely visited. this transfiguration of the functions of the barons, which had been completed under the xixth and xxth dynasties, corresponded with a more general movement by which the pharaohs themselves were driven to accentuate their official position as high priests, and to assign to their sons sacerdotal functions in relation to the principal deities. this rekindling of religious fervour would not, doubtless, have restrained military zeal in case of war;* but if it did not tend to suppress entirely individual bravery, it discouraged the taste for arms and for the bold adventures which had characterised the old feudality. * the sons of ramses ii., khâmoîsît and marîtùmû, were bravo warriors in spite of their being high priests of phtah at memphis, and of râ at heliopolis. the duties of sacrificing, of offering prayer, of celebrating the sacred rites according to the prescribed forms, and rendering due homage to the gods in the manner they demanded, were of such an exactingly scrupulous and complex character that the pharaohs and the lords of earlier times had to assign them to men specially fitted for, and appointed to, the task; now that they had assumed these absorbing functions themselves, they were obliged to delegate to others an increasingly greater proportion of their civil and military duties. thus, while the king and his great vassals were devoutly occupying themselves in matters of worship and theology, generals by profession were relieving them of the care of commanding their armies; and as these individuals were frequently the chiefs of ethiopian, asiatic, and especially of libyan bands, military authority, and, with it, predominant influence in the state were quickly passing into the hands of the barbarians. a sort of aristocracy of veterans, notably of shardana or mashauasha, entirely devoted to arms, grew up and increased gradually side by side with the ancient noble families, now by preference devoted to the priesthood.* * this military aristocracy was fully developed in the xxist and xxiind dynasties, but it began to take shape after ramses iii. had planted the shardana and qahaka in certain towns as garrisons. the barons, whether of ancient or modern lineage, were possessed of immense wealth, especially those of priestly families. the tribute and spoil of asia and africa, when once it had reached egypt, hardly ever left it: they were distributed among the population in proportion to the position occupied by the recipients in the social scale. the commanders of the troops, the attendants on the king, the administrators of the palace and temples, absorbed the greater part, but the distribution was carried down to the private soldier and his relations in town or country, who received some of the crumbs. when we remember for a moment the four centuries and more during which egypt had been reaping the fruits of her foreign conquest, we cannot think without amazement of the quantities of gold and other precious metals which must have been brought in divers forms into the valley of the nile.* every fresh expedition made additions to these riches, and one is at a loss to know whence in the intervals between two defeats the conquered could procure so much wealth, and why the sources were never exhausted nor became impoverished. this flow of metals had an influence upon commercial transactions, for although trade was still mainly carried on by barter, the mode of operation was becoming changed appreciably. in exchanging commodities, frequent use was now made of rings and ingots of a certain prescribed weight in _tabonû_; and it became more and more the custom to pay for goods by a certain number of _tabonû_ of gold, silver, or copper, rather than by other commodities: it was the practice even to note down in invoices or in the official receipts, alongside the products or manufactured articles with which payments were made, the value of the same in weighed metal.** * the quantity of gold in ingots or rings, mentioned in the _annals of tkutmosis iii._, represents altogether a weight of nearly a ton and a quarter, or in value some £140,000 of our money. and this is far from being the whole of the metal obtained from the enemy, for a large portion of the inscription has disappeared, and the unrecorded amount might be taken, without much risk of error, at as much as that of which we have evidence--say, some two and a half tons, which thûtmosis had received or brought back between the years xxiii. and xlii. of his reign--an estimation rather under than over the reality. these figures, moreover, take no account of the vessels and statues, or of the furniture and arms plated with gold. silver was not received in such large quantities, but it was of great value, and the like may be said of copper and lead. * the facts justifying this position were observed and put together for the first time by chabas: a translation is given in his memoir of a register of the xxth or xxist dynasty, which gives the price of butcher�s meat, both in gold and silver, at this date. fresh examples have been since collected by spiegelberg, who has succeeded in drawing up a kind of tariff for the period between the xviiith and xxth dynasties. this custom, although not yet widely extended, placed at the disposal of trade enormous masses of metal, which were preserved in the form of ingots or bricks, except the portion which went to the manufacture of rings, jewellery, or valuable vessels.* * there are depicted on the monuments bags or heaps of gold dust, ingots in the shape of bricks, rings, and vases, arranged alongside each other. the general prosperity encouraged a passion for goldsmith�s work, and the use of bracelets, necklaces, and chains became common among classes of the people who were not previously accustomed to wear them. there was henceforward no scribe or merchant, however poor he might be, who had not his seal made of gold or silver, or at any rate of copper gilt. the stone was sometimes fixed, but frequently arranged so as to turn round on a pivot; while among people of superior rank it had some emblem or device upon it, such as a scorpion, a sparrow-hawk, a lion, or a cynocephalous monkey. chains occupied the same position among the ornaments of egyptian women as rings among men; they were indispensable decorations. examples of silver chains are known of some five feet in length, while others do not exceed two to three inches. there are specimens in gold of all sizes, single, double, and triple, with large or small links, some thick and heavy, while others are as slight and flexible as the finest venetian lace. the poorest peasant woman, alike with the lady of the court, could boast of the possession of a chain, and she must have been in dire poverty who had not some other ornament in her jewel-case. the jewellery of queen âhhotpû shows to what degree of excellence the work of the egyptian goldsmiths had attained at the time of the expulsion of the nyksôs: they had not only preserved the good traditions of the best workmen of the xiith dynasty, but they had perfected the technical details, and had learned to combine form and colour with a greater skill. the pectorals of prince khâmoîsît and the lord psaru,now in the louvre, but which were originally placed in the tomb of the apis in the time of ramses ii., are splendid examples. [illustration: 345.jpg pectoral of ramses ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the jewel in the louvre. the most common form of these represents in miniature the front of a temple with a moulded or flat border, surmounted by a curved cornice. in one of them, which was doubtless a present from the king himself, the cartouche, containing the first name of the pharaoh-usirmari, appears just below the frieze, and serves as a centre for the design within the frame. the wings of the ram-headed sparrow-hawk, the emblem of amonrâ, are so displayed as to support it, while a large urseus and a vulture beneath embracing both the sparrow-hawk and the cartouche with outspread wings give the idea of divine protection. two _didû_, each of them filling one of the lower corners, symbolise duration. the framework of the design is made up of divisions marked out in gold, and filled either with coloured enamels or pieces of polished stone. the general effect is one of elegance, refinement, and harmony, the three principal elements of the design becoming enlarged from the top downwards in a deftly adjusted gradation. the dead-gold of the cartouche in the upper centre is set off below by the brightly variegated and slightly undulating band of colours of the sparrow-hawk, while the urseus and vulture, associated together with one pair of wings, envelope the upper portions in a half-circle of enamels, of which the shades pass from red through green to a dull blue, with a freedom of handling and a skill in the manipulation of colour which do honour to the artist. it was not his fault if there is still an element of stiffness in the appearance of the pectoral as a whole, for the form which religious tradition had imposed upon the jewel was so rigid that no artifice could completely get over this defect. it is a type which arose out of the same mental concepts as had given birth to egyptian architecture and sculpture--monumental in character, and appearing often as if designed for colossal rather than ordinary beings. the dimensions, too overpowering for the decoration of normal men or women, would find an appropriate place only on the breasts of gigantic statues: the enormous size of the stone figures to which alone they are adapted would relieve them, and show them in their proper proportions. the artists of the second theban empire tried all they could, however, to get rid of the square framework in which the sacred bird is enclosed, and we find examples among the pectorals in the louvre of the sparrow-hawk only with curved wings, or of the ram-headed hawk with the wings extended; but in both of them there is displayed the same brilliancy, the same purity of line, as in the square-shaped jewels, while the design, freed from the trammels of the hampering enamelled frame, takes on a more graceful form, and becomes more suitable for personal decoration. [illustration: 347.jpg the ram-headed sparrow-hawk in the louvre] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a jewel in the louvre. the ram�s head in the second case excels in the beauty of its workmanship anything to be found elsewhere in the museums of europe or egypt. it is of the finest gold, but its value does not depend upon the precious material: the ancient engraver knew how to model it with a bold and free hand, and he has managed to invest it with as much dignity as if he had been carving his subject in heroic size out of a block of granite or limestone. it is not an example of pure industrial art, but of an art for which a designation is lacking. other examples, although more carefully executed and of more costly materials, do not approach it in value: such, for instance, are the earrings of ramses xii. at gîzeh, which are made up of an ostentatious combination of disks, filigree-work, chains, beads, and hanging figures of the urseus. to get an idea of the character of the plate on the royal sideboards, we must have recourse to the sculptures in the temples, or to the paintings on the tombs: the engraved gold or silver centrepieces, dishes, bowls, cups, and amphoras, if valued by weight only, were too precious to escape the avarice of the impoverished generations which followed the era of theban prosperity. in the fabrication of these we can trace foreign influences, but not to the extent of a predominance over native art: even if the subject to be dealt with by the artist happened to be a phoenician god or an asiatic prisoner, he was not content with slavishly copying his model; he translated it and interpreted it, so as to give it an egyptian character. the household furniture was in keeping with these precious objects. beds and armchairs in valuable woods, inlaid with ivory, carved, gilt, painted in subdued and bright colours, upholstered with mattresses and cushions of many-hued asiatic stuffs, or of home-made materials, fashioned after chaldæan patterns, were in use among the well-to-do, while people of moderate means had to be content with old-fashioned furniture of the ancient regime. [illustration: 348.jpg decorated armchair] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of these objects in the tomb of ramses iii. the theban dwelling-house was indeed more sumptuously furnished than the earliest memphite, but we find the same general arrangements in both, which provided, in addition to quarters for the masters, a similar number of rooms intended for the slaves, for granaries, storehouses, and stables. while the outward decoration of life was subject to change, the inward element remained unaltered. costume was a more complex matter than in former times: the dresses and lower garments were more gauffered, had more embroidery and stripes; the wigs were larger and longer, and rose up in capricious arrangements of curls and plaits. [illustration: 349.jpg egyptian wig] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertens. the use of the chariot had now become a matter of daily custom, and the number of domestics, already formidable, was increased by fresh additions in the shape of coachmen, grooms, and _saises_, who ran before their master to clear a way for the horses through the crowded streets of the city.* * the pictures at tel el-amarna exhibit the king, queen, and princesses driving in their chariots with escorts of soldiers and runners. we often find in the tomb-paintings the chariot and coachman of some dignitary, waiting while their master inspects a field or a workshop, or while he is making a visit to the palace for some reward. as material, existence became more complex, intellectual life partook of the same movement, and, without deviating much from the lines prescribed for it by the learned and the scribes of the memphite age, literature had become in the mean time larger, more complicated, more exacting, and more difficult to grapple with and to master. it had its classical authors, whose writings were committed to memory and taught in the schools. these were truly masterpieces, for if some felt that they understood and enjoyed them, others found them almost beyond their comprehension, and complained bitterly of their obscurity. the later writers followed them pretty closely, in taking pains, on the one hand to express fresh ideas in the forms consecrated by approved and ancient usage, or when they failed to find adequate vehicles to convey new thoughts, resorting in their lack of imagination to the foreigner for the requisite expressions. the necessity of knowing at least superficially, something of the dialect and writings of asia compelled the egyptian scribes to study to some degree the literature of phonecia and of chaldæa. [illustration: 350.jpg page image with furniture] drawn by faucher-gudin, from photographs of the objects in the museums of berlin and gîzeh. from these sources they had borrowed certain formulae and incantation, medical recipes, and devout legends, in which the deities of assyria and especially astartê played the chief part. they appropriated in this manner a certain number of words and phrases with which they were accustomed to interlard their discourses and writings. they thought it polite to call a door no longer by the word _ro_, but the term _tira_, and to accompany themselves no longer with the harp _bordt_, but with the same instrument under its new name _kinnôr_, and to make the _salâm_ in saluting the sovereign in place of crying before him, _aaû_. they were thorough-going semiticisers; but one is less offended by their affectation when one considers that the number of captives in the country, and the intermarriages with canaanite women, had familiarised a portion of the community from childhood with the sounds and ideas of the languages from which the scribes were accustomed to borrow unblushingly. this artifice, if it served to infuse an appearance of originality into their writings, had no influence upon their method of composition. their poetical ideal remained what it had been in the time of their ancestors, but seeing that we are now unable to determine the characteristic cadence of sentences or the mental attitude which marked each generation of literary men, it is often difficult for us to find out the qualities in their writings which gave them popularity. a complete library of one of the learned in the ramesside period must have contained a strange mixture of works, embracing, in addition to books of devotion, which were indispensable to those who were solicitous about their souls,* collections of hymns, romances, war and love songs, moral and philosophical treatises, letters, and legal documents. * there are found in the rubrics of many religious books, for example that dealing with the unseen world, promises of health and prosperity to the soul which, �while still on earth,� had read and learned them. a similar formula appears at the end of several important chapters of the _book of the dead._ it would have been similar in character to the literary-possessions of an egyptian of the memphite period,* but the language in which it was written would not have been so stiff and dry, but would have flowed more easily, and been more sustained and better balanced. * the composition of these libraries may be gathered from the collections of papyri which have turned up from time to time, and have been sold by the arabs to europeans buyers; e.g. the sallier collection, the anastasi collections, and that of harris. they have found their way eventually into the british museum or the museum at leyden, and have been published in the _select papyri_ of the former, or in the _monuments égyptiens_ of the latter. the great odes to the deities which we find in the theban _papyri_ are better fitted, perhaps, than the profane compositions of the period, to give us an idea of the advance which egyptian genius had made in the width and richness of its modes of expression, while still maintaining almost the same dead-level of idea which had characterised it from the outset. among these, one dedicated to harmakhis, the sovereign sun, is no longer restricted to a bare enumeration of the acts and virtues of the �disk,� but ventures to treat of his daily course and his final triumphs in terms which might have been used in describing the victorious campaigns or the apotheosis of a pharaoh. it begins with his awakening, at the moment when he has torn himself away from the embraces of night. standing upright in the cabin of the divine bark, �the fair boat of millions of years,� with the coils of the serpent mihni around him, he glides in silence on the eternal current of the celestial waters, guided and protected by those battalions of secondary deities with whose odd forms the monuments have made us familiar. �heaven is in delight, the earth is in joy, gods and men are making festival, to render glory to phrâ-harmakhis, when they see him arise in his bark, having overturned his enemies in his own time!� they accompany him from hour to hour, they fight the good fight with him against apopi, they shout aloud as he inflicts each fresh wound upon the monster: they do not even abandon him when the west has swallowed him up in its darkness.* some parts of the hymn remind us, in the definiteness of the imagery and in the abundance of detail, of a portion of the poem of pentaûîrît, or one of those inscriptions of ramses iii. wherein he celebrates the defeat of hordes of asiatics or libyans. * the remains of egyptian romantic literature have been collected and translated into french by maspero, and subsequently into english by flinders petrie. the egyptians took a delight in listening to stories. they preferred tales which dealt with the marvellous and excited their imagination, introducing speaking animals, gods in disguise, ghosts and magic. one of them tells of a king who was distressed because he had no heir, and had no sooner obtained the favour he desired from the gods, than the seven hathors, the mistresses of fate, destroyed his happiness by predicting that the child would meet with his death by a serpent, a dog, or a crocodile. efforts were made to provide against such a fatality by shutting him up in a tower; but no sooner had he grown to man�s estate, than he procured himself a dog, went off to wander through the world, and married the daughter of the prince of naharaim. his fate meets him first under the form of a serpent, which is killed by his wife; he is next assailed by a crocodile, and the dog kills the crocodile, but as the oracles must be fulfilled, the brute turns and despatches his master without further consideration. another story describes two brothers, anûpû and bitiû, who live happily together on their farm till the wife of the elder falls in love with the younger, and on his repulsing her advances, she accuses him to her husband of having offered her violence. the virtue of the younger brother would not have availed him much, had not his animals warned him of danger, and had not phrâ-harmakhis surrounded him at the critical moment with a stream teeming with crocodiles. he mutilates himself to prove his innocence, and announces that henceforth he will lead a mysterious existence far from mankind; he will retire to the valley of the acacia, place his heart on the topmost flower of the tree, and no one will be able with impunity to steal it from him. the gods, however, who frequent this earth take pity on his loneliness, and create for him a wife of such beauty that the nile falls in love with her, and steals a lock of her hair, which is carried by its waters down into egypt. pharaoh finds the lock, and, intoxicated by its scent, commands his people to go in quest of the owner. having discovered the lady, pharaoh marries her, and ascertaining from her who she is, he sends men to cut down the acacia, but no sooner has the flower touched the earth, than bitiû droops and dies. the elder brother is made immediately acquainted with the fact by means of various prodigies. the wine poured out to him becomes troubled, his beer leaves a deposit. he seizes his shoes and staff and sets out to find the heart. after a search of seven years he discovers it, and reviving it in a vase of water, he puts it into the mouth of the corpse, which at once returns to life. bitiû, from this moment, seeks only to be revenged. he changes himself into the bull apis, and, on being led to court, he reproaches the queen with the crime she has committed against him. the queen causes his throat to be cut; two drops of his blood fall in front of the gate of the palace, and produce in the night two splendid �persea� trees, which renew the accusation in a loud voice. the queen has them cut down, but a chip from one of them flies into her mouth, and ere long she gives birth to a child who is none other than a reincarnation of bitiû. when the child succeeds to the pharaoh, he assembles his council, reveals himself to them, and punishes with death her who was first his wife and subsequently his mother. the hero moves throughout the tale without exhibiting any surprise at the strange incidents in which he takes part, and, as a matter of fact, they did not seriously outrage the probabilities of contemporary life. in every town sorcerers could be found who knew how to transform themselves into animals or raise the dead to life: we have seen how the accomplices of pentaûîrît had recourse to spells in order to gain admission to the royal palace when they desired to rid themselves of ramses iii. the most extravagant romances differed from real life merely in collecting within a dozen pages more miracles than were customarily supposed to take place in the same number of years; it was merely the multiplicity of events, and not the events themselves, that gave to the narrative its romantic and improbable character. the rank of the heroes alone raised the tale out of the region of ordinary life; they are always the sons of kings, syrian princes, or pharaohs; sometimes we come across a vague and undefined pharaoh, who figures under the title of pîrûîâûi or prûîti, but more often it is a well-known and illustrious pharaoh who is mentioned by name. it is related how, one day, kheops, suffering from _ennui_ within his palace, assembled his sons in the hope of learning from them something which he did not already know. they described to him one after another the prodigies performed by celebrated magicians under kanibri and snofrûi; and at length mykerinos assured him that there was a certain didi, living then not far from meîdum, who was capable of repeating all the marvels done by former wizards. most of the egyptian sovereigns were, in the same way, subjects of more or less wonderful legends--sesostris, amenôthes iii., thûfcmosis iii., amenemhâît i., khîti, sahûrî, usirkaf, and kakiû. these stories were put into literary shape by the learned, recited by public story-tellers, and received by the people as authentic history; they finally filtered into the writings of the chroniclers, who, in introducing them into the annals, filled up with their extraordinary details the lacunæ of authentic tradition. sometimes the narrative assumed a briefer form, and became an apologue. in one of them the members of the body were supposed to have combined against the head, and disputed its supremacy before a jury; the parties all pleaded their cause in turn, and judgment was given in due form.* * this version of the _fable of the members and the stomach_ was discovered upon a schoolboy�s tablet at turin. animals also had their place in this universal comedy. the passions or the weaknesses of humanity were attributed to them, and the narrator makes the lion, rat, or jackal to utter sentiments from which he draws some short practical moral. la fontaine had predecessors on the banks of the nile of whose existence he little dreamed. [illustration: 357.jpg the cat and the jackal go off to the fields with their flocks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. as la fontaine found an illustrator in granville, so, too, in egypt the draughtsman brought his reed to the aid of the fabulist, and by his cleverly executed sketches gave greater point to the sarcasm of story than mere words could have conveyed. where the author had briefly mentioned that the jackal and the cat had cunningly forced their services on the animals whom they wished to devour at their leisure, the artist would depict the jackal and the cat equipped as peasants, with wallets on their backs, and sticks over their shoulders, marching behind a troup of gazelles or a flock of fat geese: it was easy to foretell the fate of their unfortunate charges. elsewhere it is an ox who brings up before his master a cat who has cheated him, and his proverbial stupidity would incline us to think that he will end by being punished himself for the misdeeds of which he had accused the other. puss�s sly and artful expression, the ass-headed and important-looking judge, with the wand and costume of a high and mighty dignitary, give pungency to the story, and recall the daily scenes at the judgment-seat of the lord of thebes. in another place we see a donkey, a lion, a crocodile, and a monkey giving an instrumental and vocal concert. [illustration: 358.jpg the cat before its judge] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. a lion and a gazelle play a game of chess. a cat of fashion, with a flower in her hair, has a disagreement with a goose: they have come to blows, and the excitable puss, who fears she will come off worst in the struggle, falls backwards in a fright. the draughtsmen having once found vent for their satire, stopped at nothing, and even royalty itself did not escape their attacks. while the writers of the day made fun of the military calling, both in prose and verse, the caricaturists parodied the combats and triumphal scenes of the ramses or thutmosis of the day depicted on the walls of the pylons. the pharaoh of all the rats, perched upon a chariot drawn by dogs, bravely charges an army of cats; standing in the heroic attitude of a conqueror, he pierces them with his darts, while his horses tread the fallen underfoot; his legions meanwhile in advance of him attack a fort defended by tomcats, with the same ardour that the egyptian battalions would display in assaulting a syrian stronghold. [illustration: 359.jpg a concert of animals devoted to music] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. this treatment of ethics did not prevent the egyptian writers from giving way to their natural inclinations, and composing large volumes on this subject after the manner of kaqîmni or phtahhotpû. one of their books, in which the aged ani inscribes his instructions to his son, khonshotpû, is compiled in the form of a dialogue, and contains the usual commonplaces upon virtue, temperance, piety, the respect due to parents from children, or to the great ones of this world from their inferiors. the language in which it is written is ingenious, picturesque, and at times eloquent; the work explains much that is obscure in egyptian life, and upon which the monuments have thrown no light. �beware of the woman who goes out surreptitiously in her town, do not follow her or any like her, do not expose thyself to the experience of what it costs a man to face an ocean of which the bounds are unknown.* the wife whose husband is far from home sends thee letters, and invites thee to come to her daily when she has no witnesses; if she succeeds in entangling thee in her net, it is a crime which is punishable by death as soon as it is known, even if no wicked act has taken place, for men will commit every sort of crime when under this temptation alone.� * i have been obliged to paraphrase the sentence considerably to render it intelligible to the modern reader. the egyptian text says briefly: �do not know the man who braves the water of the ocean whose bounds are unknown.�_to know the man_ means here _know the state of the man_ who does an action. �be not quarrelsome in breweries, for fear that thou mayest be denounced forthwith for words which have proceeded from thy mouth, and of having spoken that of which thou art no longer conscious. thou fallest, thy members helpless, and no one holds out a hand to thee, but thy boon-companions around thee say: �away with the drunkard!� thou art wanted for some business, and thou art found rolling on the ground like an infant.� in speaking of what a man owes to his mother, ani waxes eloquent: �when she bore thee as all have to bear, she had in thee a heavy burden without being able to call on thee to share it. when thou wert born, after thy months were fulfilled, she placed herself under a yoke in earnest, her breast was in thy mouth for three years; in spite of the increasing dirtiness of thy habits, her heart felt no disgust, and she never said: �what is that i do here?� when thou didst go to school to be instructed in writing, she followed thee every day with bread and beer from thy house. now thou art a full-grown man, thou hast taken a wife, thou hast provided thyself with a house; bear always in mind the pains of thy birth and the care for thy education that thy mother lavished on thee, that her anger may not rise up against thee, and that she lift not her hands to god, for he will hear her complaint!� the whole of the book does not rise to this level, but we find in it several maxims which appear to be popular proverbs, as for instance: �he who hates idleness will come without being called;� �a good walker comes to his journey�s end without needing to hasten;� or, �the ox which goes at the head of the flock and leads the others to pasture is but an animal like his fellows.� towards the end, the son khonshotpû, weary of such a lengthy exhortation to wisdom, interrupts his father roughly: �do not everlastingly speak of thy merits, i have heard enough of thy deeds;� whereupon ani resignedly restrains himself from further speech, and a final parable gives us the motive of his resignation: �this is the likeness of the man who knows the strength of his arm. the nursling who is in the arms of his mother cares only for being suckled; but no sooner has he found his mouth than he cries: �give me bread!�� it is, perhaps, difficult for us to imagine an egyptian in love repeating madrigals to his mistress,* for we cannot easily realise that the hard and blackened bodies we see in our museums have once been men and women loving and beloved in their own day. * the remains of egyptian amatory literature have been collected, translated, and commentated on by maspero. they have been preserved in two papyri, one of which is at turin, the other in the british museum. the first of these appears to be a sort of dialogue in which the trees of a garden boast one after another of the beauty of a woman, and discourse of the love-scenes which took place under their shadow. the feeling which they entertained one for another had none of the reticence or delicacy of our love: they went straight to the point, and the language in which, they expressed themselves is sometimes too coarse for our taste. the manners and customs of daily life among the egyptians tended to blunt in them the feelings of modesty and refinement to which our civilization has accustomed us. their children went about without clothes, or, at any rate, wore none until the age of puberty. owing to the climate, both men and women left the upper part of the body more or less uncovered, or wore fabrics of a transparent nature. in the towns, the servants who moved about their masters or his guests had merely a narrow loin-cloth tied round their hips; while in the country, the peasants dispensed with even this covering, and the women tucked up their garments when at work so as to move more freely. the religious teaching and the ceremonies connected with their worship drew the attention of the faithful to the unveiled human form of their gods, and the hieroglyphs themselves contained pictures which shock our sense of propriety. hence it came about that the young girl who was demanded in marriage had no idea, like the maiden of to-day, of the vague delights of an ideal union. the physical side was impressed upon her mind, and she was well aware of the full meaning of her consent. her lover, separated from her by her disapproving parents, thus expresses the grief which overwhelms him: �i desire to lie down in my chamber,--for i am sick on thy account,--and the neighbours come to visit me.--ah! if my sister but came with them,--she would show the physicians what ailed me,--for she knows my sickness!� even while he thus complains, he sees her in his imagination, and his spirit visits the places she frequents: �the villa of my sister,--(a pool is before the house),--the door opens suddenly,--and my sister passes out in wrath.--ah! why am i not the porter,--that she might give me her orders!--i should at least hear her voice, even were she angry,--and i, like a little boy, full of fear before her!� meantime the young girl sighs in vain for �her brother, the beloved of her heart,� and all that charmed her before has now ceased to please her. �i went to prepare my snare, my cage and the covert for my trap--for all the birds of puânît alight upon egypt, redolent with perfume;--he who flies foremost of the flock is attracted by my worm, bringing odours from puânît,--its claws full of incense.--but my heart is with thee, and desires that we should trap them together,--i with thee, alone, and that thou shouldest be able to hear the sad cry of my perfumed bird,--there near to me, close to me, i will make ready my trap,--o my beautiful friend, thou who goest to the field of the well-beloved!� the latter, however, is slow to appear, the day passes away, the evening comes on: �the cry of the goose resounds--which is caught by the worm-bait,--but thy love removes me far from the bird, and i am unable to deliver myself from it; i will carry off my net, and what shall i say to my mother,--when i shall have returned to her?--every day i come back laden with spoil,--but to-day i have not been able to set my trap,--for thy love makes me its prisoner!� �the goose flies away, alights,--it has greeted the barns with its cry;--the flock of birds increases on the river, but i leave them alone and think only of thy love,--for my heart is bound to thy heart--and i cannot tear myself away from thy beauty.� her mother probably gave her a scolding, but she hardly minds it, and in the retirement of her chamber never wearies of thinking of her brother, and of passionately crying for him: �o my beautiful friend! i yearn to be with thee as thy wife--and that thou shouldest go whither thou wishest with thine arm upon my arm,--for then i will repeat to my heart, which is in thy breast, my supplications.--if my great brother does not come to-night,--i am as those who lie in the tomb--for thou, art thou not health and life,--he who transfers the joys of thy health to my heart which seeks thee?� the hours pass away and he does not come, and already �the voice of the turtle-dove speaks,--it says: �behold, the dawn is here, alas! what is to become of me?� thou, thou art the bird, thou callest me,--and i find my brother in his chamber,--and my heart is rejoiced to see him!--i will never go away again, my hand will remain in thy hand,--and when i wander forth, i will go with thee into the most beautiful places,--happy in that he makes me the foremost of women--and that he does not break my heart.� we should like to quote the whole of it, but the text is mutilated, and we are unable to fill in the blanks. it is, nevertheless, one of those products of the egyptian mind which it would have been easy for us to appreciate from beginning to end, without effort and almost without explanation. the passion in it finds expression in such sincere and simple language as to render rhetorical ornament needless, and one can trace in it, therefore, nothing of the artificial colouring which would limit it to a particular place or time. it translates a universal sentiment into the common language of humanity, and the hieroglyphic groups need only to be put into the corresponding words of any modern tongue to bring home to the reader their full force and intensity. we might compare it with those popular songs which are now being collected in our provinces before the peasantry have forgotten them altogether: the artlessness of some of the expressions, the boldness of the imagery, the awkwardness and somewhat abrupt character of some of the passages, communicate to both that wild charm which we miss in the most perfect specimens of our modern love-poets. end of vol. v. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen's college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume i., part a. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] editor's preface professor maspero does not need to be introduced to us. his name is well known in england and america as that of one of the chief masters of egyptian science as well as of ancient oriental history and archaeology. alike as a philologist, a historian, and an archaeologist, he occupies a foremost place in the annals of modern knowledge and research. he possesses that quick apprehension and fertility of resource without which the decipherment of ancient texts is impossible, and he also possesses a sympathy with the past and a power of realizing it which are indispensable if we would picture it aright. his intimate acquaintance with egypt and its literature, and the opportunities of discovery afforded him by his position for several years as director of the bulaq museum, give him an unique claim to speak with authority on the history of the valley of the nile. in the present work he has been prodigal of his abundant stores of learning and knowledge, and it may therefore be regarded as the most complete account of ancient egypt that has ever yet been published. in the case of babylonia and assyria he no longer, it is true, speaks at first hand. but he has thoroughly studied the latest and best authorities on the subject, and has weighed their statements with the judgment which comes from an exhaustive acquaintance with a similar department of knowledge. naturally, in progressive studies like those of egyptology and assyriology, a good many theories and conclusions must be tentative and provisional only. discovery crowds so quickly on discovery, that the truth of to-day is often apt to be modified or amplified by the truth of to-morrow. a single fresh fact may throw a wholly new and unexpected light upon the results we have already gained, and cause them to assume a somewhat changed aspect. but this is what must happen in all sciences in which there is a healthy growth, and archaeological science is no exception to the rule. the spelling of ancient egyptian proper names adopted by professor maspero will perhaps seem strange to many. but it must be remembered that all our attempts to represent the pronunciation of ancient egyptian words can be approximate only; we can never ascertain with certainty how they were actually sounded. all that can be done is to determine what pronunciation was assigned to them in the greek period, and to work backwards from this, so far as it is possible, to more remote ages. this is what professor maspero has done, and it must be no slight satisfaction to him to find that on the whole his system of transliteration is confirmed by the cuneiform tablets of tel el-amarna. the difficulties attaching to the spelling of assyrian names are different from those which beset our attempts to reproduce, even approximately, the names of ancient egypt. the cuneiform system of writing was syllabic, each character denoting a syllable, so that we know what were the vowels in a proper name as well as the consonants. moreover, the pronunciation of the consonants resembled that of the hebrew consonants, the transliteration of which has long since become conventional. when, therefore, an assyrian or babylonian name is written phonetically, its correct transliteration is not often a matter of question. but, unfortunately, the names are not always written phonetically. the cuneiform script was an inheritance from the non-semitic predecessors of the semites in babylonia, and in this script the characters represented words as well as sounds. not unfrequently the semitic assyrians continued to write a name in the old sumerian way instead of spelling it phonetically, the result being that we do not know how it was pronounced in their own language. the name of the chaldæan noab, for instance, is written with two characters which ideographically signify "the sun" or "day of life," and of the first of which the sumerian values were _ut, babar, khis, tarn,_ and _par_, while the second had the value of _zi_. were it not that the chaldæan historian bêrôssos writes the name xisuthros, we should have no clue to its semitic pronunciation. professor maspero's learning and indefatigable industry are well known to me, but i confess i was not prepared for the exhaustive acquaintance he shows with assyriological literature. nothing seems to have escaped his notice. papers and books just published, and half forgotten articles in obscure periodicals which appeared years ago, have all alike been used and quoted by him. naturally, however, there are some points on which i should be inclined to differ from the conclusions he draws, or to which he has been led by other assyriologists. without being an assyriologist himself, it was impossible for him to be acquainted with that portion of the evidence on certain disputed questions which is only to be found in still unpublished or untranslated inscriptions. there are two points which seem to me of sufficient importance to justify my expression of dissent from his views. these are the geographical situation of the land of magan, and the historical character of the annals of sargon of accad. the evidence about magan is very clear. magan is usually associated with the country of melukhkha, "the salt" desert, and in _every_ text in which its geographical position is indicated it is placed in the immediate vicinity of egypt. thus assur-bani-pal, after stating that he had "gone to the lands of magan and melukhkha," goes on to say that he "directed his road to egypt and kush," and then describes the first of his egyptian campaigns. similar testimony is borne by esar-haddon. the latter king tells us that after quitting egypt he directed his road to the land of melukhkha, a desert region in which there were no rivers, and which extended "to the city of rapikh" (the modern raphia) "at the edge of the wadi of egypt" (the present wadi el-arîsh). after this he received camels from the king of the arabs, and made his way to the land and city of magan. the tel el-amarna tablets enable us to carry the record back to the fifteenth century b.c. in certain of the tablets now as berlin (winckler and abel, 42 and 45) the phoenician governor of the pharaoh asks that help should be sent him from melukhkha and egypt: "the king should hear the words of his servant, and send ten men of the country of melukhkha and twenty men of the country of egypt to defend the city [of gebal] for the king." and again, "i have sent [to] pharaoh" (literally, "the great house") "for a garrison of men from the country of melukhkha, and... the king has just despatched a garrison [from] the country of melukhkha." at a still earlier date we have indications that melukhkha and magan denoted the same region of the world. in an old babylonian geographical list which belongs to the early days of chaldsean history, magan is described as "the country of bronze," and melukhkha as "the country of the _samdu_," or "malachite." it was this list which originally led oppert, lenormant, and myself independently to the conviction that magan was to be looked for in the sinaitic peninsula. magan included, however, the midian of scripture, and the city of magan, called makkan in semitic assyrian, is probably the makna of classical geography, now represented by the ruins of mukna. as i have always maintained the historical character of the annals of sargon of accad, long before recent discoveries led professor hilprecht and others to adopt the same view, it is as well to state why i consider them worthy of credit. in themselves the annals contain nothing improbable; indeed, what might seem the most unlikely portion of them--that which describes the extension of sargon's empire to the shores of the mediterranean--has been confirmed by the progress of research. ammi-satana, a king of the first dynasty of babylon (about 2200 b.c.), calls himself "king of the country of the amorites," and the tel el-amarna tablets have revealed to us how deep and long-lasting babylonian influence must have been throughout western asia. moreover, the vase described by professor maspero in the present work proves that the expedition of naram-sin against magan was an historical reality, and such an expedition was only possible if "the land of the amorites," the syria and palestine of later days, had been secured in the rear. but what chiefly led me to the belief that the annals are a document contemporaneous with the events narrated in them, are two facts which do not seem to have been sufficiently considered. on the one side, while the annals of sargon are given in full, those of his son naram-sin break off abruptly in the early part of his reign. i see no explanation of this, except that they were composed while naram-sin was still on the throne. on the other side, the campaigns of the two monarchs are coupled with the astrological phenomena on which the success of the campaigns was supposed to depend. we know that the babylonians were given to the practice and study of astrology from the earliest days of their history; we know also that even in the time of the later assyrian monarchy it was still customary for the general in the field to be accompanied by the _asipu_, or "prophet," the ashshâph of dan. ii. 10, on whose interpretation of the signs of heaven the movements of the army depended; and in the infancy of chaldæn history we should accordingly expect to find the astrological sign recorded along with the event with which it was bound up. at a subsequent period the sign and the event were separated from one another in literature, and had the annals of sargon been a later compilation, in their case also the separation would assuredly have been made. that, on the contrary, the annals have the form which they could have assumed and ought to have assumed only at the beginning of contemporaneous babylonian history, is to me a strong testimony in favour of their genuineness. it may be added that babylonian seal-cylinders have been found in cyprus, one of which is of the age of sargon of accad, its style and workmanship being the same as that of the cylinder figured in vol. iii. p. 96, while the other, though of later date, belonged to a person who describes himself as "the servant of the deified naram-sin." such cylinders may, of course, have been brought to the island in later times; but when we remember that a characteristic object of prehistoric cypriote art is an imitation of the seal-cylinder of chaldsea, their discovery cannot be wholly an accident. professor maspero has brought his facts up to so recent a date that there is very little to add to what he has written. since his manuscript was in type, however, a few additions have been made to our assyriological knowledge. a fresh examination of the babylonian dynastic tablet has led professor delitzsch to make some alterations in the published account of what professor maspero calls the ninth dynasty. according to professor delitzsch, the number of kings composing the dynasty is stated on the tablet to be twenty-one, and not thirty-one as was formerly read, and the number of lost lines exactly corresponds with this figure. the first of the kings reigned thirty-six years, and he had a predecessor belonging to the previous dynasty whose name has been lost. there would consequently have been two elamite usurpers instead of one. i would further draw attention to an interesting text, published by mr. strong in the _babylonian and oriental record_, which i believe to contain the name of a king who belonged to the legendary dynasties of chaldæa. this is samas-natsir, who is coupled with sargon of accad and other early monarchs in one of the lists. the legend, if i interpret it rightly, states that "elam shall be altogether given to samas-natsir;" and the same prince is further described as building nippur and dur-ilu, as king of babylon and as conqueror both of a certain baldakha and of khumba-sitir, "the king of the cedar-forest." it will be remembered that in the epic of gil-games, khumbaba also is stated to have been the lord of the "cedar-forest." but of new discoveries and facts there is a constant supply, and it is impossible for the historian to keep pace with them. even while the sheets of his work are passing through the press, the excavator, the explorer, and the decipherer are adding to our previous stores of knowledge. in egypt, mr. de morgan's unwearied energy has raised as it were out of the ground, at kom ombo, a vast and splendidly preserved temple, of whose existence we had hardly dreamed; has discovered twelfth-dynasty jewellery at dahshur of the most exquisite workmanship, and at meir and assiut has found in tombs of the sixth dynasty painted models of the trades and professions of the day, as well as fighting battalions of soldiers, which, for freshness and lifelike reality, contrast favourably with the models which come from india to-day. in babylonia, the american expedition, under mr. haines, has at niffer unearthed monuments of older date than those of sargon of accad. nor must i forget to mention the lotiform column found by mr. de morgan in a tomb of the old empire at abusir, or the interesting discovery made by mr. arthur evans of seals and other objects from the prehistoric sites of krete and other parts of the aegean, inscribed with hieroglyphic characters which reveal a new system of writing that must at one time have existed by the side of the hittite hieroglyphs, and may have had its origin in the influence exercised by egypt on the peoples of the mediterranean in the age of the twelfth dynasty. in volumes iv., v., and vi. we find ourselves in the full light of an advanced culture. the nations of the ancient east are no longer each pursuing an isolated existence, and separately developing the seeds of civilization and culture on the banks of the euphrates and the nile. asia and africa have met in mortal combat. babylonia has carried its empire to the frontiers of egypt, and egypt itself has been held in bondage by the hyksôs strangers from asia. in return, egypt has driven back the wave of invasion to the borders of mesopotamia, has substituted an empire of its own in syria for that of the babylonians, and has forced the babylonian king to treat with its pharaoh on equal terms. in the track of war and diplomacy have come trade and commerce; western asia is covered with roads, along which the merchant and the courier travel incessantly, and the whole civilised world of the orient is knit together in a common literary culture and common commercial interests. the age of isolation has thus been succeeded by an age of intercourse, partly military and antagonistic, partly literary and peaceful. professor maspero paints for us this age of intercourse, describes its rise and character, its decline and fall. for the unity of eastern civilization was again shattered. the hittites descended from the ranges of the taurus upon the egyptian province of northern syria, and cut off the semites of the west from those of the east. the israelites poured over the jordan out of edom and moab, and took possession of canaan, while babylonia itself, for so many centuries the ruling power of the oriental world, had to make way for its upstart rival assyria. the old imperial powers were exhausted and played out, and it needed time before the new forces which were to take their place could acquire sufficient strength for their work. as usual, professor maspero has been careful to embody in his history the very latest discoveries and information. notice, it will be found, has been taken even of the _stela_ of meneptah, recently disinterred by professor pétrie, on which the name of the israelites is engraved. at elephantine, i found, a short time since, on a granite boulder, an inscription of khufuânkh--whose sarcophagus of red granite is one of the most beautiful objects in the gizeh museum--which carries back the history of the island to the age of the pyramid-builders of the fourth dynasty. the boulder was subsequently concealed under the southern side of the city-wall, and as fragments of inscribed papyrus coeval with the sixth dynasty have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood, on one of which mention is made of "this domain" of pepi ii., it would seem that the town of elephantine must have been founded between the period of the fourth dynasty and that of the sixth. manetho is therefore justified in making the fifth and sixth dynasties of elephantine origin. it is in babylonia, however, that the most startling discoveries have been made. at tello, m. de sarzec has found a library of more than thirty thousand tablets, all neatly arranged, piled in order one on the other, and belonging to the age of gudea (b.c. 2700). many more tablets of an early date have been unearthed at abu-habba (sippara) and jokha (isin) by dr. scheil, working for the turkish government. but the most important finds have been at niffer, the ancient nippur, in northern babylonia, where the american expedition has brought to a close its long work of systematic excavation. here mr. haynes has dug down to the very foundations of the great temple of el-lil, and the chief historical results of his labours have been published by professor hilprecht (in _the babylonian expedition of the university of pennsylvania_, vol. i. pl. 2, 1896). about midway between the summit and the bottom of the mound, mr. haynes laid bare a pavement constructed of huge bricks stamped with the names of sargon of akkad and his son naram-sin. he found also the ancient wall of the city, which had been built by naram-sin, 13.7 metres wide. the _débris_ of ruined buildings which lies below the pavement of sargon is as much as 9.25 metres in depth, while that above it, the topmost stratum of which brings us down to the christian era, is only 11 metres in height. we may form some idea from this of the enormous age to which the history of babylonian culture and writing reaches back. in fact, professor hilprecht quotes with approval mr. haynes's words: "we must cease to apply the adjective 'earliest' to the time of sargon, or to any age or epoch within a thousand years of his advanced civilization." "the golden age of babylonian history seems to include the reign of sargon and of ur-gur." many of the inscriptions which belong to this remote age of human culture have been published by professor hilprecht. among them is a long inscription, in 132 lines, engraved on multitudes of large stone vases presented to the temple of el-lil by a certain lugal-zaggisi. lugal-zaggisi was the son of ukus, the _patesi_ or high priest of the "land of the bow," as mesopotamia, with its bedawin inhabitants, was called. he not only conquered babylonia, then known as kengi, "the land of canals and reeds," but founded an empire which extended from the persian gulf to the mediterranean. this was centuries before sargon of akkad followed in his footsteps. erech became the capital of lugal-zaggisi's empire, and doubtless received at this time its sumerian title of "the city" _par excellence_. for a long while previously there had been war between babylonia and the "land of the bow," whose rulers seem to have established themselves in the city of kis. at one time we find the babylonian prince en-sag(sag)-ana capturing kis and its king; at another time it is a king of kis who makes offerings to the god of nippur, in gratitude for his victories. to this period belongs the famous "stela of the vultures" found at tello, on which is depicted the victory of e-dingir-ana-gin, the king of lagas (tello), over the semitic hordes of the land of the bow. it may be noted that the recent discoveries have shown how correct professor maspero has been in assigning the kings of lagas to a period earlier than that of sargon of akkad. professor hilprecht would place e-dingir-ana-gin after lugal-zaggisi, and see in the stela of the vultures a monument of the revenge taken by the sumerian rulers of lagas for the conquest of the country by the inhabitants of the north. but it is equally possible that it marks the successful reaction of chaldsea against the power established by lugal-zaggisi. however this may be, the dynasty of lagas (to which professor hilprecht has added a new king, en-khegal) reigned in peace for some time, and belonged to the same age as the first dynasty of ur. this was founded by a certain lugal-kigubnidudu, whose inscriptions have been found at niffer. the dynasty which arose at ur in later days (cir. b.c. 2700), under ur-gur and bungi, which has hitherto been known as "the first dynasty of ur," is thus dethroned from its position, and becomes the second. the succeeding dynasty, which also made ur its capital, and whose kings, ine-sin, pur-sin il, and gimil-sin, were the immediate predecessors of the first dynasty of babylon (to which kharnmurabi belonged), must henceforth be termed the third. among the latest acquisitions from tello are the seals of the _patesi_, lugal-usumgal, which finally remove all doubt as to the identity of "sargani, king of the city," with the famous sargon of akkad. the historical accuracy of sargon's annals, moreover, have been fully vindicated. not only have the american excavators found the contemporary monuments of him and his son naram-sin, but also tablets dated in the years of his campaigns against "the land of the amorites." in short, sargon of akkad, so lately spoken of as "a half-mythical" personage, has now emerged into the full glare of authentic history. that the native chronologists had sufficient material for reconstructing the past history of their country, is also now clear. the early babylonian contract-tablets are dated by events which officially distinguished the several years of a king's reign, and tablets have been discovered compiled at the close of a reign which give year by year the events which thus characterised them. one of these tablets, for example, from the excavations at niffer, begins with the words: (1) "the year when par-sin (ii.) becomes king. (2) the year when pur-sin the king conquers urbillum," and ends with "the year when gimil-sin becomes king of ur, and conquers the land of zabsali" in the lebanon. of special interest to the biblical student are the discoveries made by mr. pinches among some of the babylonian tablets which have recently been acquired by the british museum. four of them relate to no less a personage than kudur-laghghamar or chedor-laomer, "king of elam," as well as to eri-aku or arioch, king of larsa, and his son dur-makh-ilani; to tudghula or tidal, the son of gazza[ni], and to their war against babylon in the time of khamrnu[rabi]. in one of the texts the question is asked, "who is the son of a king's daughter who has sat on the throne of royalty? dur-makh-ilani, the son of eri-âku, the son of the lady kur... has sat on the throne of royalty," from which it may perhaps be inferred that eri-âku was the son of kudur-laghghamar's daughter; and in another we read, "who is kudur-laghghamar, the doer of mischief? he has gathered together the umman manda, has devastated the land of bel (babylonia), and [has marched] at their side." the umman manda were the "barbarian hordes" of the kurdish mountains, on the northern frontier of elam, and the name corresponds with that of the goyyim or "nations" in the fourteenth chapter of genesis. we here see kudur-laghghamar acting as their suzerain lord. unfortunately, all four tablets are in a shockingly broken condition, and it is therefore difficult to discover in them a continuous sense, or to determine their precise nature. they have, however, been supplemented by further discoveries made by dr. scheil at constantinople. among the tablets preserved there, he has found letters from kharnmurabi to his vassal sin-idinnam of larsa, from which we learn that sin-idinnam had been dethroned by the elamites kudur-mabug and eri-âku, and had fled for refuge to the court of kharnmurabi at babylon. in the war which subsequently broke out between kharnmurabi and kudur-laghghamar, the king of elam (who, it would seem, exercised suzerainty over babylonia for seven years), sin-idinnam gave material assistance to the babylonian monarch, and khammurabi accordingly bestowed presents upon him as a "recompense for his valour on the day of the overthrow of kudur-laghghamar." i must also refer to a fine scarab--found in the rubbish-mounds of the ancient city of kom ombos, in upper egypt--which bears upon it the name of sutkhu-apopi. it shows us that the author of the story of the expulsion of the hyksôs, in calling the king ra-apopi, merely, like an orthodox egyptian, substituted the name of the god of heliopolis for that of the foreign deity. equally interesting are the scarabs brought to light by professor flinders pétrie, on which a hitherto unknown ya'aqob-hal or jacob-el receives the titles of a pharaoh. in volumes vii., viii., and ix., professor maspero concludes his monumental work on the history of the ancient east. the overthrow of the persian empire by the greek soldiers of alexander marks the beginning of a new era. europe at last enters upon the stage of history, and becomes the heir of the culture and civilisation of the orient. the culture which had grown up and developed on the banks of the euphrates and nile passes to the west, and there assumes new features and is inspired with a new spirit. the east perishes of age and decrepitude; its strength is outworn, its power to initiate is past. the long ages through which it had toiled to build up the fabric of civilisation are at an end; fresh races are needed to carry on the work which it had achieved. greece appears upon the scene, and behind greece looms the colossal figure of the roman empire. during the past decade, excavation has gone on apace in egypt and babylonia, and discoveries of a startling and unexpected nature have followed in the wake of excavation. ages that seemed prehistoric step suddenly forth into the daydawn of history; personages whom a sceptical criticism had consigned to the land of myth or fable are clothed once more with flesh and blood, and events which had been long forgotten demand to be recorded and described. in babylonia, for example, the excavations at niffer and tello have shown that sargon of akkad, so far from being a creature of romance, was as much a historical monarch as nebuchadrezzar himself; monuments of his reign have been discovered, and we learn from them that the empire he is said to have founded had a very real existence. contracts have been found dated in the years when he was occupied in conquering syria and palestine, and a cadastral survey that was made for the purposes of taxation mentions a canaanite who had been appointed "governor of the land of the amorites." even a postal service had already been established along the high-roads which knit the several parts of the empire together, and some of the clay seals which franked the letters are now in the museum of the louvre. at susa, m. de morgan, the late director of the service of antiquities in egypt, has been excavating below the remains of the achremenian period, among the ruins of the ancient elamite capital. here he has found numberless historical inscriptions, besides a text in hieroglyphics which may cast light on the origin of the cuneiform characters. but the most interesting of his discoveries are two babylonian monuments that were carried off by elamite conquerors from the cities of babylonia. one of them is a long inscription of about 1200 lines belonging to manistusu, one of the early babylonian kings, whose name has been met with at niffer; the other is a monument of naram-sin, the son of sargon of akkad, which it seems was brought as booty to susa by simti-silkhak, the grandfather, perhaps, of eriaku or arioch. in armenia, also, equally important inscriptions have been found by belck and lehmann. more than two hundred new ones have been added to the list of vannic texts. it has been discovered from them that the kingdom of biainas or van was founded by ispuinis and menuas, who rebuilt yan itself and the other cities which they had previously sacked and destroyed. the older name of the country was kumussu, and it may be that the language spoken in it was allied to that of the hittites, since a tablet in hieroglyphics of the hittite type has been unearthed at toprak kaleh. one of the newly-found inscriptions of sarduris iii. shows that the name of the assyrian god, hitherto read ramman or rimmon, was really pronounced hadad. it describes a war of the vannic king against assur-nirari, son of hadad-nirari (_a-da-di-ni-ra-ri_) of assyria, thus revealing not only the true form of the assyrian name, but also the parentage of the last king of the older assyrian dynasty. from another inscription, belonging to rusas ii., the son of argistis, we learn that campaigns were carried on against the hittites and the moschi in the latter years of sennacherib's reign, and therefore only just before the irruption of the kimmerians into the northern regions of western asia. the two german explorers have also discovered the site and even the ruins of muzazir, called ardinis by the people of van. they lie on the hill of shkenna, near topsanâ, on the road between kelishin and sidek. in the immediate neighbourhood the travellers succeeded in deciphering a monument of rusas i., partly in vannic, partly in assyrian, from which it appears that the vannic king did not, after all, commit suicide when the news of the fall of muzazir was brought to him, as is stated by sargon, but that, on the contrary, he "marched against the mountains of assyria" and restored the fallen city itself. urzana, the king of muzazir, had fled to him for shelter, and after the departure of the assyrian army he was sent back by rusas to his ancestral domains. the whole of the district in which muzazir was situated was termed lulu, and was regarded as the southern province of ararat. in it was mount nizir, on whose summit the ark of the chaldsean noah rested, and which is therefore rightly described in the book of genesis as one of "the mountains of ararat." it was probably the rowandiz of to-day. the discoveries made by drs. belck and lehmann, however, have not been confined to vannic texts. at the sources of the tigris dr. lehmann has found two assyrian inscriptions of the assyrian king, shalmaneser il, one dated in his fifteenth and the other in his thirty-first year, and relating to his campaigns against aram of ararat. he has further found that the two inscriptions previously known to exist at the same spot, and believed to belong to tiglath-ninip and assur-nazir-pal, are really those of shalmaneser ii., and refer to the war of his seventh year. but it is from egypt that the most revolutionary revelations have come. at abydos and kom el-ahmar, opposite el-kab, monuments have been disinterred of the kings of the first and second dynasties, if not of even earlier princes; while at negada, north of thebes, m. de morgan has found a tomb which seems to have been that of menés himself. a new world of art has been opened out before us; even the hieroglyphic system of writing is as yet immature and strange. but the art is already advanced in many respects; hard stone was cut into vases and bowls, and even into statuary of considerable artistic excellence; glazed porcelain was already made, and bronze, or rather copper, was fashioned into weapons and tools. the writing material, as in babylonia, was often clay, over which seal-cylinders of a babylonian pattern were rolled. equally babylonian are the strange and composite animals engraved on some of the objects of this early age, as well as the structure of the tombs, which were built, not of stone, but of crude brick, with their external walls panelled and pilastered. professor hommel's theory, which brings egyptian civilisation from babylonia along with the ancestors of the historical egyptians, has thus been largely verified. but the historical egyptians were not the first inhabitants of the valley of the nile. not only have palaeolithic implements been found on the plateau of the desert; the relics of neolithic man have turned up in extraordinary abundance. when the historical egyptians arrived with their copper weapons and their system of writing, the land was already occupied by a pastoral people, who had attained a high level of neolithic culture. their implements of flint are the most beautiful and delicately finished that have ever been discovered; they were able to carve vases of great artistic excellence out of the hardest of stone, and their pottery was of no mean quality. long after the country had come into the possession of the historical dynasties, and had even been united into a single monarchy, their settlements continued to exist on the outskirts of the desert, and the neolithic culture that distinguished them passed only gradually away. by degrees, however, they intermingled with their conquerors from asia, and thus formed the egyptian race of a later day. but they had already made egypt what it has been throughout the historical period. under the direction of the asiatic immigrants and of the eugineering science whose first home had been in the alluvial plain of babylonia, they accomplished those great works of irrigation which confined the nile to its present channel, which cleared away the jungle and the swamp that had formerly bordered the desert, and turned them into fertile fields. theirs were the hands which carried out the plans of their more intelligent masters, and cultivated the valley when once it had been reclaimed. the egypt of history was the creation of a twofold race: the egyptians of the monuments supplied the controlling and directing power; the egyptians of the neolithic graves bestowed upon it their labour and their skill. the period treated of by professor maspero in these volumes is one for which there is an abundance of materials sucli as do not exist for the earlier portions of his history. the evidence of the monuments is supplemented by that of the hebrew and classical writers. but on this very account it is in some respects more difficult to deal with, and the conclusions arrived at by the historian are more open to question and dispute. in some cases conflicting accounts are given of an event which seem to rest on equally good authority; in other cases, there is a sudden failure of materials just where the thread of the story becomes most complicated. of this the decline and fall of the assyrian empire is a prominent example; for our knowledge of it, we have still to depend chiefly on the untrustworthy legends of the greeks. our views must be coloured more or less by our estimate of herodotos; those who, like myself, place little or no confidence in what he tells us about oriental affairs will naturally form a very different idea of the death-struggle, of assyria from that formed by writers who still see in him the father of oriental history. even where the native monuments have come to our aid, they have not unfrequently introduced difficulties and doubts where none seemed to exist before, and have made the task of the critical historian harder than ever. cyrus and his forefathers, for instance, turn out to have been kings of anzan, and not of persia, thus explaining why it is that the neo-susian language appears by the side of the persian and the babylonian as one of the three official languages of the persian empire; but we still have to learn what was the relation of anzan to persia on the one hand, and to susa on the other, and when it was that cyrus of anzan became also king of persia. in the annalistic tablet, he is called "king of persia" for the first time in the ninth year of nabonidos. similar questions arise as to the position and nationality of astyages. he is called in the inscriptions, not a mede, but a manda--a name which, as i showed many years ago, meant for the babylonian a "barbarian" of kurdistan. i have myself little doubt that the manda over whom astyages ruled were the scythians of classical tradition, who, as may be gathered from a text published by mr. strong, had occupied the ancient kingdom of ellipi. it is even possible that in the madyes of herodotos, we have a reminiscence of the manda of the cuneiform inscriptions. that the greek writers should have confounded the madâ or medes with the manda or barbarians is not surprising; we find even berossos describing one of the early dynasties of babylonia as "median" where manda, and not madâ, must plainly be meant. these and similar problems, however, will doubtless be cleared up by the progress of excavation and research. perhaps m. de morgan's excavations at susa may throw some light on them, but it is to the work of the german expedition, which has recently begun the systematic exploration of the site of babylon, that we must chiefly look for help. the babylon of nabopolassar and nebuchadrezzar rose on the ruins of nineveh, and the story of downfall of the assyrian empire must still be lying buried under its mounds. a. h. sayce. translator's preface in completing the translation of this great work, i have to thank professor maspero for kindly permitting me to appeal to him on various questions which arose while preparing the translation. his patience and courtesy have alike been unfailing in every matter submitted for his decision. i am indebted to miss bradbury for kindly supplying, in the midst of much other literary work for the egypt exploration fund, the translation of the chapter on the gods, and also of the earlier parts of some of the first chapters. she has, moreover, helped me in my own share of the work with many suggestions and hints, which her intimate connection with the late miss amelia b. edwards fully qualified her to give. as in the original there is a lack of uniformity in the transcription and accentuation of arabic names, i have ventured to alter them in several cases to the form most familiar to english readers. the spelling of the ancient egyptian words has, at professor maspero's request, been retained throughout, with the exception that the french _ou_ has been invariably represented by û, e.g. khnoumou by khnûmû. by an act of international courtesy, the director of the _imprimerie nationale_ has allowed the beautifully cut hieroglyphic and cuneiform type used in the original to be employed in the english edition, and i take advantage of this opportunity to express to him our thanks and appreciation of his graceful act. m. l. mcclure. contents chapter i.--the nile and egypt the river and its influence upon the formation of the country--the oldest inhabitants of the valley and its first political organization chapter ii.--the gods of egypt their number and their nature--the feudal gods, living and dead--the triads--temples and priests--the cosmogonies of the delta--the enneads of heliopolis and of hermopolis chapter iii.--the legendary history of egypt the divine dynasties: râ, shû, osiris, sit, horus-thot, and the invention of sciences and writing-menes, and the three first human dynasties [illustration: 001.jpg page one] [illustration: 002.jpg page two] chapter i.--the nile and egypt _the river and its influence upon the formation and character of the country--the oldest inhabitants of the land--the first political organization of the valley._ _the delta: its gradual formation, its structure, its canals--the valley of egypt--the two arms of the river--the eastern nile--the appearance of its hanks--the hills--the gorge of gehel silsileh--the cataracts: the falls of aswan--nubia--the rapids of wady halfah--the takazze--the blue nile and the white nile. the sources of the nile--the egyptian cosmography--the four pillars and the four upholding mountains--the celestial nile the source of the terrestial nile--the southern sea and the islands of spirits--the tears of isis--the rise of the nile--the green nile and the bed nile--the opening of the dykes---the fall of the nile--the river at its lowest ebb. the alluvial deposits and the effects of the inundation upon the soil of egypt--paucity of the flora: aquatic plants, the papyrus and the lotus; the sycamore and the date-palm, the acacias, the dôm-palms--the fauna: the domestic and wild animals; serpents, the urstus; the hippopotamus and the crocodile; birds; fish, the fahaka. the nile god: his form and its varieties--the goddess mirit--the supposed sources of the nile at elephantine--the festivals of gebel silsileh-hymn to the nile from papyri m the british museum. the names of the nile and egypt: bomitu and qimit--antiquity of the egyptianpeople--their first horizon--the hypothesis of their asiatic origin--the probability of their african origin--the language and its semitic affinities--the race and its principal types. the primitive civilization of egypt--its survival into historic times--the women of amon--marriage--rights of women and children--houses--furniture--dress--jewels--wooden and metal arms--primitive life-fishing and hunting--the lasso and "bolas"--the domestication of animals--plants used for food--the lotus--cereals--the hoe and the plough. the conquest of the valley--dykes--basins--irrigation--the princes--the nomes--the first local principalities--late organization of the delta--character of its inhabitants--gradual division of the principalities and changes of then areas--the god of the city._ [illustration: 003.jpg chapter one] the nile and egypt _the river and its influence upon the formation of the country--the oldest inhabitants of the valley and its first political organization._ * the same expression has been attributed to hecatseus of miletus. it has often been observed that this phrase seems egyptian on the face of it, and it certainly recalls such forms of expression as the following, taken from a formula frequently found on funerary "all things created by heaven, given by earth, _brought by the nile--from its mysterious sources._" nevertheless, up to the present time, the hieroglyphic texts have yielded nothing altogether corresponding to the exact terms of the greek historians- _gift_ of the nile, or its natural _product_. a long low, level shore, scarcely rising above the sea, a chain of vaguely defined and ever-shifting lakes and marshes, then the triangular plain beyond, whose apex is thrust thirty leagues into the land--this, the delta of egypt, has gradually been acquired from the sea, and is as it were the gift of the nile. the mediterranean once reached to the foot of the sandy plateau on which stand the pyramids, and formed a wide gulf where now stretches plain beyond plain of the delta. the last undulations of the arabian hills, from gebel mokattam to gebel geneffeh, were its boundaries on the east, while a sinuous and shallow channel running between africa and asia united the mediterranean to the red sea. westward, the littoral followed closely the contour of the libyan plateau; but a long limestone spur broke away from it at about 31° n., and terminated in cape abûkîr. the alluvial deposits first tilled up the depths of the bay, and then, under the influence of the currents which swept along its eastern coasts, accumulated behind that rampart of sand-hills whose remains are still to be seen near benha. thus was formed a miniature delta, whose structure pretty accurately corresponded with that of the great delta of to-day. here the nile divided into three divergent streams, roughly coinciding with the southern courses of the rosetta and damietta branches, and with the modern canal of abu meneggeh. the ceaseless accumulation of mud brought down by the river soon overpassed the first limits, and steadily encroached upon the sea until it was carried beyond the shelter furnished by cape abûkîr. thence it was gathered into the great littoral current flowing from africa to asia, and formed an incurvated coast-line ending in the headland of casios, on the syrian frontier. from that time egypt made no further increase towards the north, and her coast remains practically such as it was thousands of years ago:[*] the interior alone has suffered change, having been dried up, hardened, and gradually raised. its inhabitants thought they could measure the exact length of time in which this work of creation had been accomplished. according to the egyptians, menés, the first of their mortal kings, had found, so they said, the valley under water. the sea came in almost as far as the fayûm, and, excepting the province of thebes, the whole country was a pestilential swamp. hence, the necessary period for the physical formation of egypt would cover some centuries after menés. this is no longer considered a sufficient length of time, and some modern geologists declare that the nile must have worked at the formation of its own estuary for at least seventy-four thousand years.[**] * élie de beaumont, "the great distinction of the nile delta lies in the almost uniform persistence of its coast-line.... the present sea-coast of egypt is little altered from that of three thousand years ago." the latest observations prove it to be sinking and shrinking near alexandria to rise in the neighbourhood of port said. ** others, as for example schweinfurth, are more moderate in their views, and think "that it must have taken about twenty thousand years for that alluvial deposit which now forms the arable soil of egypt to have attained to its present depth and fertility." this figure is certainly exaggerated, for the alluvium would gain on the shallows of the ancient gulf far more rapidly than it gains upon the depths of the mediterranean. but even though we reduce the period, we must still admit that the egyptians little suspected the true age of their country. not only did the delta long precede the coming of menés, but its plan was entirely completed before the first arrival of the egyptians. the greeks, full of the mysterious virtues which they attributed to numbers, discovered that there were seven principal branches, and seven mouths of the nile, and that, as compared with these, the rest were but false mouths. [illustration: 006.jpg the mouth of the nile previous to the formation of the delta.] as a matter of fact, there were only three chief outlets. the canopic branch flowed westward, and fell into the mediterranean near cape abûkîr, at the western extremity of the arc described by the coast-line. the pelusiac branch followed the length of the arabian chain, and flowed forth at the other extremity; and the sebennytic stream almost bisected the triangle contained between the canopic and pelusiac channels. two thousand years ago, these branches separated from the main river at the city of cerkasoros, nearly four miles north of the site where cairo now stands. but after the pelusiac branch had ceased to exist, the fork of the river gradually wore away the land from age to age, and is now some nine miles lower down.[*] these three great waterways are united by a network of artificial rivers and canals, and by ditches--some natural, others dug by the hand of man, but all ceaselessly shifting. they silt up, close, open again, replace each other, and ramify in innumerable branches over the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility on all sides. as the land rises towards the south, this web contracts and is less confused, while black mould and cultivation alike dwindle, and the fawn-coloured line of the desert comes into sight. the libyan and arabian hills appear above the plain, draw nearer to each other, and gradually shut in the horizon until it seems as though they would unite. and there the delta ends, and egypt proper has begun. it is only a strip of vegetable mould stretching north and south between regions of drought and desolation, a prolonged oasis on the banks of the river, made by the nile, and sustained by the nile. the whole length of the land is shut in between two ranges of hills, roughly parallel at a mean distance of about twelve miles.[**] * by the end of the byzantine period, the fork of the river lay at some distance south of shetnûfi, the present shatanûf, which is the spot where it now is. the arab geographers call the head of the delta batn-el-bagaraji, the cow's belly. ampère, in his voyage en egypte et en nubie, p. 120, says,--"may it not be that this name, denoting the place where the most fertile part of egypt begins, is a reminiscence of the cow goddess, of isis, the symbol of fecundity, and the personification of egypt?" **de rozière estimated the mean breadth as being only a little over nine miles. during the earlier ages, the river filled all this intermediate space, and the sides of the hills, polished, worn, blackened to their very summits, still bear unmistakable traces of its action. wasted, and shrunken within the deeps of its ancient bed, the stream now makes a way through its own thick deposits of mud. the bulk of its waters keeps to the east, and constitutes the true nile, the "great river" of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. a second arm flows close to the libyan desert, here and there formed into canals, elsewhere left to follow its own course. from the head of the delta to the village of demt it is called the bahr-yûsuf; beyond derût--up to gebel silsileh--it is the ibrâhimîyeh, the sohâgîyeh, the raiân. but the ancient names are unknown to us. this western nile dries up in winter throughout all its upper courses: where it continues to flow, it is by scanty accessions from the main nile. it also divides north of henassieh, and by the gorge of illahûn sends out a branch which passes beyond the hills into the basin of the fayûrn. the true nile, the eastern nile, is less a river than a sinuous lake encumbered with islets and sandbanks, and its navigable channel winds capriciously between them, flowing with a strong and steady current below the steep, black banks cut sheer through the alluvial earth. [illustration: 009.jpg a line of laden camels emerges from a hollow of the undulating road. 1] 1 from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in 1884. there are light groves of the date-palm, groups of acacia trees and sycamores, square patches of barley or of wheat, fields of beans or of bersîm,[*] and here and there a long bank of sand which the least breeze raises into whirling clouds. and over all there broods a great silence, scarcely broken by the cry of birds, or the song of rowers in a passing boat. * bersîm is a kind of trefoil, the _trifolium alexandrinum_ of linnæus. it is very common in egypt, and the only plant of the kind generally cultivated for fodder. something of human life may stir on the banks, but it is softened into poetry by distance. a half-veiled woman, bearing a bundle of herbs upon her head, is driving her goats before her. an irregular line of asses or of laden camels emerges from one hollow of the undulating road only to disappear within another. a group of peasants, crouched upon the shore, in the ancient posture of knees to chin, patiently awaits the return of the ferry-boat. [illustration: 010.jpg] 1 from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in 1886. a dainty village looks forth smiling from beneath its palm trees. near at hand it is all naked filth and ugliness: a cluster of low grey huts built of mud and laths; two or three taller houses, whitewashed; an enclosed square shaded by sycamores; a few old men, each seated peacefully at his own door; a confusion of fowls, children, goats, and sheep; half a dozen boats made fast ashore. but, as we pass on, the wretchedness all fades away; meanness of detail is lost in light, and long before it disappears at a bend of the river, the village is again clothed with gaiety and serene beauty. day by day, the landscape repeats itself. the same groups of trees alternate with the same fields, growing green or dusty in the sunlight according to the season of the year. with the same measured flow, the nile winds beneath its steep banks and about its scattered islands. [illustration: 011.jpg part of gebel shêkh herîdi. 1] 1 from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in 1882. one village succeeds another, each alike smiling and sordid under its crown of foliage. the terraces of the libyan hills, away beyond the western nile, scarcely rise above the horizon, and lie like a white edging between the green of the plain and the blue of the sky. the arabian hills do not form one unbroken line, but a series of mountain masses with their spurs, now approaching the river, and now withdrawing to the desert at almost regular intervals. at the entrance to the valley, rise gebel mokattam and gebel el-ahmar. gebel hemûr-shemûl and gebel shêkh embârak next stretch in echelon from north to south, and are succeeded by gebel et-ter, where, according to an old legend, all the birds of the world are annually assembled.[*] * in makrizi's _description of egypt_ we read: "every year, upon a certain day, all the herons (boukîr, _ardea bubulcus_ of cuvier) assemble at this mountain. one after another, each puts his beak into a cleft of the hill until the cleft closes upon one of them. and then forthwith all the others fly away but the bird which has been caught struggles until he dies, and there his body remains until it has fallen into dust." the same tale is told by other arab writers, of which a list may be seen in etienne quatremère, _mémoires historiques et géographiques sur l'egypte et quelques contrées voisines_, vol. i. pp. 31-33. it faintly recalls that ancient tradition of the cleft at abydos, whereby souls must pass, as human-headed birds, in order to reach the other world. [illustration: 12.jpg the hill of kasr es-sayyad. 2] 2 from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in 1882. then follows gebel abûfêda, dreaded by the sailors for its sudden gusts. limestone predominates throughout, white or yellowish, broken by veins of alabaster, or of red and grey sandstones. its horizontal strata are so symmetrically laid one above another as to seem more like the walls of a town than the side of a mountain. but time has often dismantled their summits and loosened their foundations. man has broken into their façades to cut his quarries and his tombs; while the current is secretly undermining the base, wherein it has made many a breach. as soon as any margin of mud has collected between cliffs and river, halfah and wild plants take hold upon it, and date-palms grow there--whence their seed, no one knows. presently a hamlet rises at the mouth of the ravine, among clusters of trees and fields in miniature. beyond siût, the light becomes more glowing, the air drier and more vibrating, and the green of cultivation loses its brightness. the angular outline of the dom-palni mingles more and more with that of the common palm and of the heavy sycamore, and the castor-oil plant increasingly abounds. but all these changes come about so gradually that they are effected before we notice them. the plain continues to contract. at thebes it is still ten miles wide; at the gorge of gebelên it has almost disappeared, and at gebel silsileh it has completely vanished. there, it was crossed by a natural dyke of sandstone, through which the waters have with difficulty scooped for themselves a passage. from this point, egypt is nothing but the bed of the nile lying between two escarpments of naked rock. further on the cultivable land reappears, but narrowed, and changed almost beyond recognition. hills, hewn out of solid sandstone, succeed each other at distances of about two miles, low, crushed, sombre, and formless. presently a forest of palm trees, the last on that side, announces aswan and nubia. five banks of granite, ranged in lines between latitude 24° and 18° n., cross nubia from east to west, and from north-east to south-west, like so many ramparts thrown up between the mediterranean and the heart of africa. the nile has attacked them from behind, and made its way over them one after another in rapids which have been glorified by the name of cataracts. [illustration: 014.jpg entrance to the first cataract. 1] 1 view taken from the hills opposite elephantine, by insinger, in 1884. classic writers were pleased to describe the river as hurled into the gulfs of syne with so great a roar that the people of the neighbourhood were deafened by it. even a colony of persians, sent thither by cambyses, could not bear the noise of the falls, and went forth to seek a quieter situation. the first cataract is a kind of sloping and sinuous passage six and a quarter miles in length, descending from the island of philae to the port of aswan, the aspect of its approach relieved and brightened by the ever green groves of elephantine. beyond elephantine are cliffs and sandy beaches, chains of blackened "roches moutonnées" marking out the beds of the currents, and fantastic reefs, sometimes bare and sometimes veiled by long grasses and climbing plants, in which thousands of birds have made their nests. there are islets too, occasionally large enough to have once supported something of a population, such as amerade, salûg, sehêl. the granite threshold of nubia, is broken beyond sehêl, but its débris, massed m disorder against the right bank, still seem to dispute the passage of the waters, dashing turbulently and roaring as they flow along through tortuous channels, where every streamlet is broken up into small cascades, ihe channel running by the left bank is always navigable. [illustration: 015.jpg entrance to nubia.] during the inundation, the rocks and sandbanks of the right side are completely under water, and their presence is only betrayed by eddies. but on the river's reaching its lowest point a fall of some six feet is established, and there big boats, hugging the shore, are hauled up by means of ropes, or easily drift down with the current. [illustration: 016.jpg league beyond league, the hills stketch on in low ignoble outline. 1] 1 from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in 1881. all kinds of granite are found together in this corner of africa. there are the pink and red syenites, porphyritic granite, yellow granite, grey granite, both black granite and white, and granites veined with black and veined with white. as soon as these disappear behind us, various sandstones begin to crop up, allied to the coarsest _calcaire grossier_. the hill bristle with small split blocks, with peaks half overturned, with rough and denuded mounds. league beyond league, they stretch in low ignoble outline. here and there a valley opens sharply into the desert, revealing an infinite perspective of summits and escarpments in echelon one behind another to the furthest plane of the horizon, like motionless caravans. the now confined river rushes on with a low, deep murmur, accompanied night and day by the croaking of frogs and the rhythmic creak of the sâkîeh.[*] * the sâkîeh is made of a notch-wheel fixed vertically on a horizontal axle, and is actuated by various cog-wheels set in continuous motion by oxen or asses. a long chain of earthenware vessels brings up the water either from the river itself, or from some little branch canal, and empties it into a system of troughs and reservoirs. thence, it flows forth to be distributed over all the neighbouring land. jetties of rough stone-work, made in unknown times by an unknown people, run out like breakwaters into midstream. [illustration: 018.jpg the entrance to the first cataract] from time to time waves of sand are borne over, and drown the narrow fields of durra and of barley. scraps of close, aromatic pasturage, acacias, date-palms, and dôm-palms, together with a few shrivelled sycamores, are scattered along both banks. the ruins of a crumbling pylon mark the site of some ancient city, and, overhanging the water, is a vertical wall of rock honeycombed with tombs. amid these relics of another age, miserable huts, scattered hamlets, a town or two surrounded with little gardens are the only evidence that there is yet life in nubia. south of wâdy halfah, the second granite bank is broken through, and the second cataract spreads its rapids over a length of four leagues: the archipelago numbers more than 350 islets, of which some sixty have houses upon them and yield harvests to their inhabitants. the main characteristics of the first two cataracts are repeated with slight variations in the cases of the three which follow,--at hannek, at guerendid, and el-hu-mar. it is egypt still, but a joyless egypt bereft of its brightness: impoverished, disfigured, and almost desolate. [illustration: 020.jpg entrance to the second catakact. 1] 1 view taken from the top of the rocks of abusîr, after a photograph by insinger, in 1881. there is the same double wall of hills, now closely confining the valley, and again withdrawing from each other as though to flee into the desert. everywhere are moving sheets of sand, steep black banks with their narrow strips of cultivation, villages which are scarcely visible on account of the lowness of their huts sycamore ceases at gebel-barkal, date-palms become fewer and finally disappear. the nile alone has not changed. and it was at philse, so it is at berber. here, however, on the right bank, 600 leagues from the sea, is its first affluent, the takazze, which intermittently brings to it the waters of northern ethiopia. at khartum, the single channel in which the river flowed divides; and two other streams are opened up in a southerly direction, each of them apparently equal in volume to the main stream. which is the true nile? is it the blue nile, which seems to come down from the distant mountains? or is it the white nile, which has traversed the immense plains of equatorial africa. the old egyptians never knew. the river kept the secret of its source from them as obstinately as it withheld it from us until a few years ago. vainly did their victorious armies follow the nile for months together as they pursued the tribes who dwelt upon its banks, only to find it as wide, as full, as irresistible in its progress as ever. it was a fresh-water sea, and sea--_iaûmâ, iôma_--was the name by which they called it. the egyptians therefore never sought its source. they imagined the whole universe to be a large box, nearly rectangular in form, whose greatest diameter was from south to north, and its least from east to west. the earth, with its alternate continents and seas, formed the bottom of the box; it was a narrow, oblong, and slightly concave floor, with egypt in its centre. the sky stretched over it like an iron ceiling, flat according to some, vaulted according to others. its earthward face was capriciously sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables, and which, extinguished or unperceived by day, were lighted, or became visible to our eyes, at night. [illustration: 022.jpg an attempt to represent the egyptian universe.2] 2 section taken at hermopolis. to the left, is the bark of the sun on the celestial river. since this ceiling could not remain in mid-air without support, four columns, or rather four forked trunks of trees, similar to those which maintained the primitive house, were supposed to uphold it. but it was doubtless feared lest some tempest should overturn them, for they were superseded by four lofty peaks, rising at the four cardinal points, and connected by a continuous chain of mountains. the egyptians knew little of the northern peak: the mediterranean, the "very green," interposed between it and egypt, and prevented their coming near enough to see it. the southern peak was named apit the horn of the earth; that on the east was called bâkhû, the mountain of birth; and the western peak was known as manu, sometimes as onkhit, the region of life. [illustration: 023.jpg footnotes with graphics] bâkhû was not a fictitious mountain, but the highest of those distant summits seen from the nile in looking towards the red sea. in the same way, manu answered to some hill of the libyan desert, whose summit closed the horizon. when it was discovered that neither bâkhû nor manu were the limits of the world, the notion of upholding the celestial roof was not on that account given up. it was only necessary to withdraw the pillars from sight, and imagine fabulous peaks, invested with familiar names. these were not supposed to form the actual boundary of the universe; a great river--analogous to the ocean-stream of the greeks--lay between them and its utmost limits. this river circulated upon a kind of ledge projecting along the sides of the box a little below the continuous mountain chain upon which the starry heavens were sustained. on the north of the ellipse, the river was bordered by a steep and abrupt bank, which took its rise at the peak of manu on the west, and soon rose high enough to form a screen between the river and the earth. the narrow valley which it hid from view was known as da'it from remotest times. eternal night enfolded that valley in thick darkness, and filled it with dense air such as no living thing could breathe. towards the east the steep bank rapidly declined, and ceased altogether a little beyond bâkhû, while the river flowed on between low and almost level shores from east to south, and then from south to west. the sun was a disc of fire placed upon a boat. at the same equable rate, the river carried it round the ramparts of the world. erom evening until morning it disappeared within the gorges of daït; its light did not then reach us, and it was night. from morning until evening its rays, being no longer intercepted by any obstacle, were freely shed abroad from one end of the box to the other, and it was day. the nile branched off from the celestial river at its southern bend;[*] hence the south was the chief cardinal point to the egyptians, and by that they oriented themselves, placing sunrise to their left, and sunset to their right. * the classic writers themselves knew that, according to egyptian belief, the nile flowed down from heaven. the legend of the nile having its source in the ocean stream was but a greek transposition of the egyptian doctrine, which represented it as an arm of the celestial river whereon the sun sailed round the earth. before they passed beyond the defiles of gebel silsileh, they thought that the spot whence the celestial waters left the sky was situate between elephantine and philae, and that they descended in an immense waterfall whose last leaps were at syene. it may be that the tales about the first cataract told by classic writers are but a far-off echo of this tradition of a barbarous age. conquests carried into the heart of africa forced the egyptians to recognize their error, but did not weaken their faith in the supernatural origin of the river. they only placed its source further south, and surrounded it with greater marvels. they told how, by going up the stream, sailors at length reached an undetermined country, a kind of borderland between this world and the next, a "land of shades," whose inhabitants were dwarfs, monsters, or spirits. thence they passed into a sea sprinkled with mysterious islands, like those enchanted archipelagoes which portuguese and breton mariners were wont to see at times when on their voyages, and which vanished at their approach. these islands were inhabited by serpents with human voices, sometimes friendly and sometimes cruel to the shipwrecked. he who went forth from the islands could never more re-enter them: they were resolved into the waters and lost within the bosom of the waves. a modern geographer can hardly comprehend such fancies; those of greek and roman times were perfectly familiar with them. they believed that the nile communicated with the red sea near suakin, by means of the astaboras, and this was certainly the route which the egyptians of old had imagined for their navigators. the supposed communication was gradually transferred farther and farther south; and we have only to glance over certain maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to see clearly drawn what the egyptians had imagined--the centre of africa as a great lake, whence issued the congo, the zambesi, and the nile. arab merchants of the middle ages believed that a resolute man could pass from alexandria or cairo to the land of the zindjes and the indian ocean by rising from river to river.[*] * joinville has given a special chapter to the description of the sources and wonders of the nile, in which he believed as firmly as in an article of his creed. as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, wendelinus devoted part of his _admiranda nili_ to proving that the river did not rise in the earthly paradise. at gûrnah, forty years ago, rhind picked up a legend which stated that the nile flows down from the sky. [illustration: 027.jpg south africa and the sources of the nile, by odoakdo lopez. 1] 1 facsimile of the map published by kircher in _oedipus ægyptiacus_, vol. i. (_iconismus ii_), p. 53. many of the legends relating to this subject are lost, while others have been collected and embellished with fresh features by jewish and christian theologians. the nile was said to have its source in paradise, to traverse burning regions inaccessible to man, and afterwards to fall into a sea whence it made its way to egypt. sometimes it carried down from its celestial sources branches and fruits unlike any to be found on earth. the sea mentioned in all these tales is perhaps a less extravagant invention than we are at first inclined to think. a lake, nearly as large as the victoria nyanza, once covered the marshy plain where the bahr el-abiad unites with the sobat, and with the bahr el-ghazal. alluvial deposits have filled up all but its deepest depression, which is known as birket nû; but, in ages preceding our era, it must still have been vast enough to suggest to egyptian soldiers and boatmen the idea of an actual sea, opening into the indian ocean. the mountains, whose outline was vaguely seen far to southward on the further shores, doubtless contained within them its mysterious source. there the inundation was made ready, and there it began upon a fixed day. the celestial nile had its periodic rise and fall, on which those of the earthly nile depended. every year, towards the middle of june, isis, mourning for osiris, let fall into it one of the tears which she shed over her brother, and thereupon the river swelled and descended upon earth. isis has had no devotees for centuries, and her very name is unknown to the descendants of her worshippers; but the tradition of her fertilizing tears has survived her memory. even to this day, every one in egypt, mussulman or christian, knows that a divine drop falls from heaven during the night between the 17th and 18th of june, and forthwith brings about the rise of the nile. swollen by the rains which fall in february over the region of the great lakes, the white nile rushes northward, sweeping before it the stagnant sheets of water left by the inundation of the previous year. on the left, the bahr el-ghazâl brings it the overflow of the ill-defined basin stretching between darfûr and the congo; and the sobat pours in on the right a tribute from the rivers which furrow the southern slopes of the abyssinian mountains. the first swell passes khartum by the end of april, and raises the water-level there by about a foot, then it slowly makes its way through nubia, and dies away in egypt at the beginning of june. its waters, infected by half-putrid organic matter from the equatorial swamps, are not completely freed from it even in the course of this long journey, but keep a greenish tint as far as the delta. they are said to be poisonous, and to give severe pains in the bladder to any who may drink them. i am bound to say that every june, for five years, i drank this green water from the nile itself, without taking any other precaution than the usual one of filtering it through a porous jar. neither i, nor the many people living with me, ever felt the slightest inconvenience from it. happily, this _green nile_ does not last long, but generally flows away in three or four days, and is only the forerunner of the real flood. the melting of the snows and the excessive spring rains having suddenly swollen the torrents which rise in the central plateau of abyssinia, the blue nile, into which they flow, rolls so impetuously towards the plain that, when its waters reach khartum in the middle of may, they refuse to mingle with those of the white nile, and do not lose their peculiar colour before reaching the neighbourhood of abu hamed, three hundred miles below. from that time the height of the nile increases rapidly day by day. the river, constantly reinforced by floods following one upon another from the great lakes and from abyssinia, rises in furious bounds, and would become a devastating torrent were its rage not checked by the nubian cataracts. here six basins, one above another, in which the water collects, check its course, and permit it to flow thence only as a partially filtered and moderated stream. it is signalled at syene towards the 8th of june, at cairo by the 17th to the 20th, and there its birth is officially celebrated during the "night of the drop." two days later it reaches the delta, just in time to save the country from drought and sterility. egypt, burnt up by the khamsin, a west wind blowing continuously for fifty days, seems nothing more than an extension of the desert. the trees are covered and choked by a layer of grey dust. about the villages, meagre and laboriously watered patches of vegetables struggle for life, while some show of green still lingers along the canals and in hollows whence all moisture has not yet evaporated. the plain lies panting in the sun--naked, dusty, and ashen--scored with intersecting cracks as far as eye can see. the nile is only half its usual width, and holds not more than a twentieth of the volume of water which is borne down in october. it has at first hard work to recover its former bed, and attains it by such subtle gradations that the rise is scarcely noted. it is, however, continually gaining ground; here a sandbank is covered, there an empty channel is filled, islets are outlined where there was a continuous beach, a new stream detaches itself and gains the old shore. the first contact is disastrous to the banks; their steep sides, disintegrated and cracked by the heat, no longer offer any resistance to the current, and fall with a crash, in lengths of a hundred yards and more. [illustration: 31.jpg during the inundation] as the successive floods grow stronger and are more heavily charged with mud, the whole mass of water becomes turbid and changes colour. in eight or ten days it has turned from greyish blue to dark red, occasionally of so intense a colour as to look like newly shed blood. the "red nile" is not unwholesome like the "green nile," and the suspended mud to which it owes its suspicious appearance deprives the water of none of its freshness and lightness. it reaches its full height towards the 15th of july; but the dykes which confine it, and the barriers constructed across the mouths of canals, still prevent it from overflowing. the nile must be considered high enough to submerge the land adequately before it is set free. the ancient egyptians measured its height by cubits of twenty-one and a quarter inches. at fourteen cubits, they pronounced it an excellent nile; below thirteen, or above fifteen, it was accounted insufficient or excessive, and in either case meant famine, and perhaps pestilence at hand. to this day the natives watch its advance with the same anxious eagerness; and from the 3rd of july, public criers, walking the streets of cairo, announce each morning what progress it has made since evening. more or less authentic traditions assert that the prelude to the opening of the canals, in the time of the pharaohs, was the solemn casting to the waters of a young girl decked as for her bridal--the "bride of the nile." even after the arab conquest, the irruption of the river into the bosom of the land was still considered as an actual marriage; the contract was drawn up by a cadi, and witnesses confirmed its consummation with the most fantastic formalities of oriental ceremonial. it is generally between the 1st and 16th of july that it is decided to break through the dykes. when that proceeding has been solemnly accomplished in state, the flood still takes several days to fill the canals, and afterwards spreads over the low lands, advancing little by little to the very edge of the desert. egypt is then one sheet of turbid water spreading between two lines of rock and sand, flecked with green and black spots where there are towns or where the ground rises, and divided into irregular compartments by raised roads connecting the villages. in nubia the river attains its greatest height towards the end of august; at cairo and in the delta not until three weeks or a month later. for about eight days it remains stationary, and then begins to fall imperceptibly. sometimes there is a new freshet in october, and the river again increases in height. but the rise is unsustained; once more it falls as rapidly as it rose, and by december the river has completely retired to the limits of its bed. one after another, the streams which fed it fail or dwindle. the tacazze is lost among the sands before rejoining it, and the blue nile, well-nigh deprived of tributaries, is but scantily maintained by abyssinian snows. the white nile is indebted to the great lakes for the greater persistence of its waters, which feed the river as far as the mediterranean, and save the valley from utter drought in winter. but, even with this resource, the level of the water falls daily, and its volume is diminished. long-hidden sandbanks reappear, and are again linked into continuous line. islands expand by the rise of shingly beaches, which gradually reconnect them with each other and with the shore. smaller branches of the river cease to flow, and form a mere network of stagnant pools and muddy ponds, which fast dry up. the main channel itself is only intermittently navigable; after march boats run aground in it, and are forced to await the return of the inundation for their release. from the middle of april to the middle of june, egypt is only half alive, awaiting the new nile. [illustration: 034.jpg assiout] those ruddy and heavily charged waters, rising and retiring with almost mathematical regularity, bring and leave the spoils of the countries they have traversed: sand from nubia, whitish clay from the regions of the lakes, ferruginous mud, and the various rock-formations of abyssinia. these materials are not uniformly disseminated in the deposits; their precipitation being regulated both by their specific gravity and the velocity of the current. flattened stones and rounded pebbles are left behind at the cataract between syene and keneh, while coarser particles of sand are suspended in the undercurrents and serve to raise the bed of the river, or are carried out to sea and form the sandbanks which are slowly rising at the damietta and rosetta mouths of the nile. the mud and finer particles rise towards the surface, and are deposited upon the land after the opening of the dykes. soil which is entirely dependent on the deposit of a river, and periodically invaded by it, necessarily maintains but a scanty flora; and though it is well known that, as a general rule, a flora is rich in proportion to its distance from the poles and its approach to the equator, it is also admitted that egypt offers an exception to this rule. at the most, she has not more than a thousand species, while, with equal area, england, for instance, possesses more than fifteen hundred; and of this thousand, the greater number are not indigenous. many of them have been brought from central africa by the river: birds and winds have continued the work, and man himself has contributed his part in making it more complete. from asia he has at different times brought wheat barley the olive, the apple, the white or pink almond, and some twenty other species now acclimatized on the banks of the nile. marsh plants predominate in the delta; but the papyrus, and the three varieties of blue, white, and pink lotus which once flourished there, being no longer cultivated, have now almost entirely disappeared, and reverted to their original habitats. [illustration: 036.jpg entrance of the mudîriyeh of asyût.] the sycamore and the date-palm, both importations from central africa, have better adapted themselves to their exile, and are now fully naturalized on egyptian soil. [illustration: 037.jpg forest of date palms] the sycamore grows in sand on the edge of the desert as vigorously as in the midst of a well-watered country. its roots go deep in search of water, which infiltrates as far as the gorges of the hills, and they absorb it freely, even where drought seems to reign supreme. the heavy, squat, gnarled trunk occasionally attains to colossal dimensions, without ever growing very high. its rounded masses of compact foliage are so wide-spreading that a single tree in the distance may give the impression of several grouped together; and its shade is dense, and impenetrable to the sun. a striking contrast to the sycamore is presented by the date-palm. its round and slender stem rises uninterruptedly to a height of thirteen to sixteen yards; its head is crowned with a cluster of flexible leaves arranged in two or three tiers, but so scanty, so pitilessly slit, that they fail to keep off the light, and cast but a slight and unrefreshing shadow. few trees have so elegant an appearance, yet few are so monotonously elegant. there are palm trees to be seen on every hand; isolated, clustered by twos and threes at the mouths of ravines and about the villages, planted in regular file along the banks of the river like rows of columns, symmetrically arranged in plantations,--these are the invariable background against which other trees are grouped, diversifying the landscape. the feathery tamarisk[*] and the nabk, the moringa, the carob, or locust tree several varieties of acacia and mimosa-the sont, the mimosa habbas, the white acacia, the acacia parnesxana--and the pomegranate tree, increase in number with the distance from the mediterranean. * the egyptian name for the tamarisk, _asari, asri_, is identical with that given to it in semitic languages, both ancient and modern. this would suggest the question whether the tamarisk did not originally come from asia. in that case it must have been brought to egypt from remote antiquity, for it figures in the pyramid texts. bricks of nile mud, and memphite and theban tombs have yielded us leaves, twigs, and even whole branches of the tamarisk. [illustration: 40.jpg acacias at the entrance to a garden outside ekhmîm. 1] 1 from a drawing by boudier, from a photograph by insinger, taken in 1884. the dry air of the valley is marvellously suited to them, but makes the tissue of their foliage hard and fibrous, imparting an aerial aspect, and such faded tints as are unknown to their growth in other climates. the greater number of these trees do not reproduce themselves spontaneously, and tend to disappear when neglected. the acacia seyal, formerly abundant by the banks of the river, is now almost entirely confined to certain valleys of the theban desert, along with a variety of the kernelled dôm-palm, of which a poetical description has come down to us from the ancient egyptians. the common dôm-palm bifurcates at eight or ten yards from the ground; these branches are subdivided, and terminate in bunches of twenty to thirty palmate and fibrous leaves, six to eight feet long. at the beginning of this century the tree was common in upper egypt, but it is now becoming scarce, and we are within measurable distance of the time when its presence will be an exception north of the first cataract. willows are decreasing in number, and the persea, one of the sacred trees of ancient egypt, is now only to be found in gardens. none of the remaining tree species are common enough to grow in large clusters; and egypt, reduced to her lofty groves of date-palms, presents the singular spectacle of a country where there is no lack of trees, but an almost entire absence of shade. [illustration: 41.jpg she-ass and her foal.] if egypt is a land of imported flora, it is also a land of imported fauna, and all its animal species have been brought from neighbouring countries. some of these--as, for example, the horse and the camel--were only introduced at a comparatively recent period, two thousand to eighteen hundred years before our era; the camel still later. the animals--such as the long and short-horned oxen, together with varieties of goats and dogs--are, like the plants, generally of african origin, and the ass of egypt preserves an original purity of form and a vigour to which the european donkey has long been a stranger. the pig and the wild boar, the long-eared hare, the hedgehog, the ichneumon, the moufflon, or maned sheep, innumerable gazelles, including the egyptian gazelles, and antelopes with lyre-shaped horns, are as much west asian as african, like the carnivors of all sizes, whose prey they are--the wild cat, the wolf, the jackal, the striped and spotted hyenas, the leopard, the panther, the hunting leopard, and the lion. [illustration: 042.jpg the uræus of egypt. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from pl. iii. of the reptiles supplement to the _description de ægypte_. on the other hand, most of the serpents, large and small, are indigenous. some are harmless, like the colubers; others are venomous, such as the soy tale, the cerastes, the haje viper, and the asp. the asp was worshipped by the egyptians under the name of uræus. it occasionally attains to a length of six and a half feet, and when approached will erect its head and inflate its throat in readiness for darting forward. the bite is fatal, like that of the cerastes; birds are literally struck down by the strength of the poison, while the great mammals, and man himself, almost invariably succumb to it after a longer or shorter death-struggle. the uræus is rarely found except in the desert or in the fields; the scorpion crawls everywhere, in desert and city alike, and if its sting is not always followed by death, it invariably causes terrible pain. probably there were once several kinds of gigantic serpent in egypt, analogous to the pythons of equatorial africa. they are still to be seen in representations of funerary scenes, but not elsewhere; for, like the elephant, the giraffe, and other animals which now only thrive far south, they had disappeared at the beginning of historic times. the hippopotamus long maintained its ground before returning to those equatorial regions whence it had been brought by the nile. common under the first dynasties, but afterwards withdrawing to the marshes of the delta, it there continued to flourish up to the thirteenth century of our era. the crocodile, which came with it, has, like it also, been compelled to beat a retreat. lord of the river throughout all ancient times, worshipped and protected in some provinces, execrated and proscribed in others, it might still be seen in the neighbourhood of cairo towards the beginning of our century. in 1840, it no longer passed beyond the neighbourhood of gebel et-têr, nor beyond that of manfalût in thirty years later, mariette asserted that it was steadily retreating before the guns of tourists, and the disturbance which the regular passing of steamboats produced in the deep waters. to-day, no one knows of a single crocodile existing below aswan, but it continues to infest nubia, and the rocks of the first cataract: one of them is occasionally carried down by the current into egypt where it is speedily despatched by the fellâhin, or by some traveller in quest of adventure. the fertility of the soil, and the vastness of the lakes and marshes, attract many migratory birds; passerinæ and palmipedes flock thither from all parts of the mediterranean. our european swallows, our quails, our geese and wild ducks, our herons--to mention only the most familiar--come here to winter, sheltered from cold and inclement weather. [illustration: 044.jpg the ibis of egypt.] even the non-migratory birds are really, for the most part, strangers acclimatized by long sojourn. some of them--the turtledove, the magpie, the kingfisher, the partridge, and the sparrow-may be classed with our european species, while others betray their equatorial origin in the brightness of their colours. white and black ibises, red flamingoes, pelicans, and cormorants enliven the waters of the river, and animate the reedy swamps of the delta in infinite variety. they are to be seen ranged in long files upon the sand-banks, fishing and basking in the sun; suddenly the flock is seized with panic, rises heavily, and settles away further off. in hollows of the hills, eagle and falcon, the merlin, the bald-headed vulture, the kestrel, the golden sparrow-hawk, find inaccessible retreats, whence they descend upon the plains like so many pillaging and well-armed barons. a thousand little chattering birds come at eventide to perch in flocks upon the frail boughs of tamarisk and acacia. [illustration: 045.jpg the mormyrus oxyrhynchus.] many sea-fish make their way upstream to swim in fresh waters-shad, mullet, perch, and labrus--and carry their excursions far into the saïd. those species which are not mediterranean came originally, still come annually, from the heart of ethiopia with the of the nile, including two kinds of alestes, the elled turtle, the bagrus docmac, and the mormyrus. some attain to a gigantic size, the bagrus bayad and the turtle to about one yard, the latus to three and a half yards in length, while others, such as the sihlrus (catfish), are noted for their electric properties. nature seems to have made the fahâka (the globe-fish) in a fit of playfulness. it is a long fish from beyond the cataracts, and it is carried by the nile the more easily on account of the faculty it has of filling itself with air, and inflating its body at will. [illustration: 046.jpg ahaka] when swelled out immoderately, the fahâka overbalances, and drifts along upside down, its belly to the wind, covered with spikes so that it looks like a hedgehog. during the inundation, it floats with the current from one canal to another, and is cast by the retreating waters upon the muddy fields, where it becomes the prey of birds or of jackals, or serves as a plaything for children. [illustration: 47.jpg two fishermen carrying a latus. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a medûm painting. pétrie, _medûm_, pl. xii. everything is dependent upon the river:--the soil, the produce of the soil, the species of animals it bears, the birds which it feeds: and hence it was the egyptians placed the river among their gods. they personified it as a man with regular features, and a vigorous and portly body, such as befits the rich of high lineage. his breasts, fully developed like those of a woman, though less firm, hang heavily upon a wide bosom where the fat lies in folds. a narrow girdle, whose ends fall free about the thighs, supports his spacious abdomen, and his attire is completed by sandals, and a close-fitting head-dress, generally surmounted with a crown of water-plants. sometimes water springs from his breast; sometimes he presents a frog, or libation vases; or holds a bundle of the cruces ansato, as symbols of life; or bears a flat tray, full of offerings--bunches of flowers, ears of corn, heaps of fish, and geese tied together by the feet. the inscriptions call him, "hâpi, father of the gods, lord of sustenance, who maketh food to be, and covereth the two lands of egypt with his products; who giveth life, banisheth want, and filleth the granaries to overflowing." he is evolved into two personages, one being sometimes coloured red, and the other blue. the former, who wears a cluster of lotus-flowers upon his head, presides over the egypt of the south; the latter has a bunch of papyrus for his head-dress, and watches over the delta.[**] [**] wilkinson was the first who suggested that this god, when painted red was the red (that is high) nile and when painted blue, was to be identified with the low nile. this opinion has since been generally adopted; but to me it does not appear so incontrovertible as it has been considered. here, as in other cases, the difference in colour is only a means of making the distinction between two personages obvious to sight. two goddesses, corresponding to the two hâpis--mirit qimâit for upper, and mirit mîhit for lower egypt--personified the banks of the river. they are often represented as standing with outstretched arms, as though begging for the water which should make them fertile. the nile-god had his chapel in every province, and priests whose right it was to bury all bodies of men or beasts cast up by the river; for the god had claimed them, and to his servants they belonged. [illustration: 048.jpg the nile god. 1] 1 the nile god: drawn by faucher-gudin, after a statue in the british museum. the dedication of this statue took place about 880 b.c. the giver was sheshonqu, high-priest of amon in thebes, afterwards king of egypt under the name of sheshhonqû ii., and he is represented as standing behind the leg of the god. [illustration: 049.jpg the shrine of the nile at biggeh.1] 1 reproduced from a bas-relief in the small temple of philae, built by rajan and his successors. the window or door of this temple opened upon gen, and by comparing the drawing of the egyptian artist with the view i the end of the chamber, it is easy to recognize the original of this cliff bouette in the piled-up rocks of the island. by a mistake of the modern copyist's, his drawing faces the wrong way. several towns were dedicated to him: hâthâpi, nûit-hâpi, nilo-polis. it was told in the thebaïd how the god dwelt within a grotto, or shrine (tophit), in the island of biggeh, whence he issued at the inundation. this tradition dates from a time when the cataract was believed to be at the end of the world, and to bring down the heavenly river upon earth. two yawning gulfs (_qorîti_), at the foot of the two granite cliffs (_monîti_) between which it ran, gave access to this mysterious retreat. a bas-relief from philae represents blocks of stone piled one above another, the vulture of the south and the hawk of the north, each perched on a summit, wearing a panther skin, with both arms upheld in adoration. the statue is mutilated: the end of the nose, the beard, and part of the tray have disappeared, but are restored in the illustration. the two little birds hanging alongside the geese, together with a bunch of ears of corn, are fat quails, and the circular chamber wherein hâpi crouches concealed, clasping a libation vase in either hand. a single coil of a serpent outlines the contour of this chamber, and leaves a narrow passage between its overlapping head and tail through which the rising waters may overflow at the time appointed, bringing to egypt "all things good, and sweet, and pure," whereby gods and men are fed. towards the summer solstice, at the very moment when the sacred water from the gulfs of syene reached silsileh, the priests of the place, sometimes the reigning sovereign, or one of his sons, sacrificed a bull and geese, and then cast into the waters a sealed roll of papyrus. this was a written order to do all that might insure to egypt the benefits of a normal inundation. when pharaoh himself deigned to officiate, the memory of the event was preserved by a stela engraved upon the rocks. even in his absence, the festivals of the nile were among the most solemn and joyous of the land. according to a tradition transmitted from age to age, the prosperity or adversity of the year was dependent upon the splendour and fervour with which they were celebrated. had the faithful shown the slightest lukewarmness, the nile might have refused to obey the command and failed to spread freely over the surface of the country. peasants from a distance, each bringing his own provisions, ate their meals together for days, and lived in a state of brutal intoxication as long as this kind of fair lasted. on the great day itself, the priests came forth in procession from the sanctuary, bearing the statue of the god along the banks, to the sound of instruments and the chanting of hymns. [illustration: 051.jpg nile gods from the temple of seti i. at abydos bringing food to every nome of egypt. 1] 1 from a drawing by faucher-gudin, after a photograph by béato. "i.--hail to thee, hâpi!--who appearest in the land and comest--to give life to egypt;--thou who dost hide thy coming in darkness--in this very day whereon thy coming is sung,--wave, which spreadest over the orchards created by ra--to give life to all them that are athirst--who refusest to give drink unto the desert--of the overflow of the waters of heaven; as soon as thou descendest,--sibû, the earth-god, is enamoured of bread,--napri, the god of grain, presents his offering,--phtah maketh every workshop to prosper. "ii.--lord of the fish! as soon as he passeth the cataract--the birds no longer descend upon the fields;--creator of corn, maker of barley,--he prolongeth the existence of temples.--do his fingers cease from their labours, or doth he suffer?--then are all the millions of beings in misery;--doth he wane in heaven? then the gods--themselves, and all men perish. "iii.--the cattle are driven mad, and all the world--both great and small, are in torment!--but if, on the contrary, the prayers of men are heard at his rising--and (for them) he maketh himself khnûmû,--when he ariseth, then the earth shouts for joy,--then are all bellies joyful,--each back is shaken with laughter,--and every tooth grindeth. "iv.--bringing food, rich in sustenance,--creator of all good things,--lord of all seeds of life, pleasant unto his elect,--if his friendship is secured--he produceth fodder for the cattle,--and he provideth for the sacrifices of all the gods,--finer than any other is the incense which cometh from him;--he taketh possession of the two lands--and the granaries are filled, the storehouses are prosperous,--and the goods of the poor are multiplied. "v.--he is at the service of all prayers to answer them,--withholding nothing. to make boats to be that is his strength.--stones are not sculptured for him--nor statues whereon the double crown is placed;--he is unseen;--no tribute is paid unto him and no offerings are brought unto him,--he is not charmed by words of mystery;--the place of his dwelling is unknown, nor can his shrine be found by virtue of magic writings. "vi.--there is no house large enough for thee,--nor any who may penetrate within thy heart!--nevertheless, the generations of thy children rejoice in thee--for thou dost rule as a king--whose decrees are established for the whole earth,--who is manifest in presence of the people of the south and of the north,--by whom the tears are washed from every eye,--and who is lavish of his bounties. "vii.--where sorrow was, there doth break forth joy--and every heart rejoiceth. sovkû, the crocodile, the child of nit, leaps for gladness;[*]--for the nine gods who accompany thee have ordered all things,--the overflow giveth drink unto the fields--and maketh all men valiant; one man taketh to drink of the labour of another,--without charge being brought against him.[**] * the goddess nît, the heifer born from the midst of the primordial waters, had two crocodiles as her children, which are sometimes represented on the monuments as hanging from her bosom. both the part played by these animals, and the reason for connecting them with the goddess, are still imperfectly understood. ** this is an allusion to the quarrels and lawsuits resulting from the distribution of the water in years when the nile was poor or bad. if the inundation is abundant, disputes are at an end. "ix.--if thou dost enter in the midst of songs to go forth in the midst of gladness,--if they dance with joy when thou comest forth out of the unknown,--it is that thy heaviness is death and corruption.--and when thou art implored to give the water of the year,--the people of the thebai'd and of the north are seen side by side,--each man with the tools of his trade,--none tarrieth behind his neighbour;--of all those who clothed themselves, no man clotheth himself (with festive garments)--the children of thot, the god of riches, no longer adorn themselves with jewels,--nor the nine gods, but they are in the night!--as soon as thou hast answered by the rising,--each one anointeth himself with perfumes. "x.--establisher of true riches, desire of men,--here are seductive words in order that thou mayest reply;--if thou dost answer mankind by waves of the heavenly ocean,--napri, the grain-god, presents his offering,--all the gods adore (thee),--the birds no longer descend upon the hills;--though that which thy hand formeth were of gold--or in the shape of a brick of silver,--it is not lapis-lazuli that we eat,--but wheat is of more worth than precious stones. "xi.--they have begun to sing unto thee upon the harp,--they sing unto thee keeping time with their hands,--and the generations of thy children rejoice in thee, and they have filled thee with salutations of praise;--for it is the god of riches who adorneth the earth,--who maketh barks to prosper in the sight of man--who rejoiceth the heart of women with child--who loveth the increase of the flocks. "xii.--when thou art risen in the city of the prince,--then is the rich man filled--the small man (the poor) disdaineth the lotus,--all is solid and of good quality,--all herbage is for his children.--doth he forget to give food?--prosperity forsaketh the dwellings,--and earth falleth into a wasting sickness." [illustration: 055.jpg libyan mountains] the word nile is of uncertain origin. we have it from the greeks, and they took it from a people foreign to egypt, either from the phoenicians, the khîti, the libyans, or from people of asia minor. when the egyptians themselves did not care to treat their river as the god hâpi, they called it the sea, or the great river. they had twenty terms or more by which to designate the different phases which it assumed according to the seasons, but they would not have understood what was meant had one spoken to them of the nile. the name egypt also is part of the hellenic tradition; perhaps it was taken from the temple-name of memphis, hâikûphtah, which barbarian coast tribes of the mediterranean must long have had ringing in their ears as that of the most important and wealthiest town to be found upon the shores of their sea. the egyptians called themselves bomitû, botû, and their country qîmit, the black land. whence came they? how far off in time are we to carry back the date of their arrival? the oldest monuments hitherto known scarcely transport us further than six thousand years, yet they are of an art so fine, so well determined in its main outlines, and reveal so ingeniously combined a system of administration, government, and religion, that we infer a long past of accumulated centuries behind them. it must always be difficult to estimate exactly the length of time needful for a race as gifted as were the ancient egyptians to rise from barbarism into a high degree of culture. nevertheless, i do not think that we shall be misled in granting them forty or fifty centuries wherein to bring so complicated an achievement to a successful issue, and in placing their first appearance at eight or ten thousand years before our era. their earliest horizon was a very limited one. their gaze might wander westward over the ravine-furrowed plains of the libyan desert without reaching that fabled land of manu where the sun set every evening; but looking eastward from the valley, they could see the peak of bâkhû, which marked the limit of regions accessible to man. beyond these regions lay the beginnings of to-nûtri, the land of the gods, and the breezes passing over it were laden with its perfumes, and sometimes wafted them to mortals lost in the desert.[*] * the perfumes and the odoriferous woods of the divine land were celebrated in egypt. a traveller or hunter, crossing the desert, "could not but be vividly impressed by suddenly becoming aware, in the very midst of the desert, of the penetrating scent of the _robul (puliciaria undulata_, schwbine.), which once followed us throughout a day and two nights, in some places without our being able to distinguish whence it came; as, for instance, when we were crossing tracts of country without any traces of vegetation whatever." (golenischeff). northward, the world came to an end towards the lagoons of the delta, whose inaccessible islands were believed to be the sojourning-place of souls after death. as regards the south, precise knowledge of it scarcely went beyond the defiles of gebel sil-sileh, where the last remains of the granite threshold had perhaps not altogether disappeared. the district beyond gebel silsileh, the province of konûsit, was still a foreign and almost mythic country, directly connected with heaven by means of the cataract. long after the egyptians had broken through this restricted circle, the names of those places which had as it were marked out their frontiers, continued to be associated in their minds with the idea of the four cardinal points. bâkhû and manu were still the most frequent expressions for the extreme east and west. nekhabit and bûto, the most populous towns in the neighbourhoods of gebel silsileh and the ponds of the delta, were set over against each other to designate south and north. it was within these narrow limits that egyptian civilization struck root and ripened, as in a closed vessel. what were the people by whom it was developed, the country whence they came, the races to which they belonged, is to-day unknown. the majority would place their cradle-land in asia,[*] but cannot agree in determining the route which was followed in the emigration to africa. * the greater number of contemporary egyptologists, brugsch, ebers,--lauth, lieblein, have rallied to this opinion, in the train of e. de rougé; but the most extreme position has been taken up by hommel, the assyriologist, who is inclined to derive egyptian civilization entirely from the babylonian. after having summarily announced this thesis in his _geschichte babyloniens und assyriens_, p. 12, et seq., he has set it forth at length in a special treatise, _der babylonische ursprung der àgyptischen kultur_, 1892, wherein he endeavours to prove that the heliopolitan myths, and hence the whole egyptian religion, are derived from the cults of eridû, and would make the name of the egyptian city onû, or anû, identical with that of _nûn-h, nûn_, which is borne by the chaldean. some think that the people took the shortest road across the isthmus of suez, others give them longer peregrinations and a more complicated itinerary. they would have them cross the straits of bab el-mandeb, and then the abyssinian mountains, and, spreading northward and keeping along the nile, finally settle in the egypt of to-day. a more minute examination compels us to recognize that the hypothesis of an asiatic origin, however attractive it may seem, is somewhat difficult to maintain. the bulk of the egyptian population presents the characteristics of those white races which have been found established from all antiquity on the mediterranean slope of the libyan continent; this population is of african origin, and came to egypt from the west or south-west. in the valley, perhaps, it may have met with a black race which it drove back or destroyed; and there, perhaps, too, it afterwards received an accretion of asiatic elements, introduced by way of the isthmus and the marshes of the delta. but whatever may be the origin of the ancestors of the egyptians, they were scarcely settled upon the banks of the nile before the country conquered, and assimilated them to itself, as it has never ceased to do in the case of strangers who have occupied it. at the time when their history begins for us, all the inhabitants had long formed but one people, with but one language. this language seems to be connected with the semitic tongues by many of its roots. it forms its personal pronouns, whether isolated or suffixed, in a similar way. one of the tenses of the conjugation, and that the simplest and most archaic, is formed with identical affixes. without insisting upon resemblances which are open to doubt, it may be almost affirmed that most of the grammatical processes used in semitic languages are to be found in a rudimentary condition in egyptian. one would say that the language of the people of egypt and the languages of the semitic races, having once belonged to the same group, had separated very early, at a time when the vocabulary and the grammatical system of the group had not as yet taken definite shape. subject to different influences, the two families would treat in diverse fashion the elements common to both. the semitic dialects continued to develop for centuries, while the egyptian language, although earlier cultivated, stopped short in its growth. "if it is obvious that there was an original connexion between the language of egypt and that of asia, this connexion is nevertheless sufficiently remote to leave to the egyptian race a distinct physiognomy." we recognize it in sculptured and painted portraits, as well as in thousands of mummied bodies out of subterranean tombs. the highest type of egyptian was tall and slender, with a proud and imperious air in the carriage of his head and in his whole bearing. he had wide and full shoulders, well-marked and vigorous pectoral muscles, muscular arms, a long, fine hand, slightly developed hips, and sinewy legs. the detail of the knee-joint and the muscles of the calf are strongly marked beneath the skin; the long, thin, and low-arched feet are flattened out at the extremities owing to the custom of going barefoot. the head is rather short, the face oval, the forehead somewhat retreating. the eyes are wide and fully opened, the cheekbones not too marked, the nose fairly prominent, and either straight or aquiline. the mouth is long, the lips full, and lightly ridged along their outline; the teeth small, even, well-set, and remarkably sound; the ears are set high on the head. at birth the skin is white, but darkens in proportion to its exposure to the sun. men are generally painted red in the pictures, though, as a matter of fact, there must already have been all the shades which we see among the present population^ from a most delicate, rose-tinted complexion to that of a smoke-coloured bronze. women, who were less exposed to the sun, are generally painted yellow, the tint paler in proportion as they rise in the social scale. the hair was inclined to be wavy, and even to curl into little ringlets, but without ever turning into the wool of the negro. [illustration: 059.jpg the noble type of egyptian. 1] 1 statue of rânofir in the gîzeh museum (vth dynasty), after a photograph by émil brugsch-bey. [illustration: 060.jpg head of a tileban mummy.] the beard was scanty, thick only upon the chin. such was the highest type; the commoner was squat, dumpy, and heavy. chest and shoulders seem to be enlarged at the expense of the pelvis and the hips, to such an extent as to make the want of proportion between the upper and lower parts of the body startling and ungraceful. the skull is long, somewhat retreating, and slightly flattened on the top; the features are coarse, and as though carved in flesh by great strokes of the blocking-out chisel. small frseuated eyes, a short nose, flanked by widely distended nostrils, round cheeks, a square chin, thick, but not curling lips--this unattractive and ludicrous physiognomy, sometimes animated by an expression of cunning which recalls the shrewd face of an old french peasant, is often lighted up by gleams of gentleness and of melancholy good-nature. the external characteristics of these two principal types in the ancient monuments, in all varieties of modifications, may still be seen among the living. the profile copied from a theban mummy taken at hazard from a necropolis of the xviiith dynasty, and compared with the likeness of a modern luxor peasant, would almost pass for a family portrait. wandering bisharîn have inherited the type of face of a great noble, the contemporary of kheops; and any peasant woman of the delta may bear upon her shoulders che head of a twelfth-dynasty king. a citizen of cairo, gazing with wonder at the statues of khafra or of seti i. in the gîzeh museum, is himself, feature for feature, the very image of those ancient pharaohs, though removed from them by fifty centuries. [illustration: 062.jpg a fellah woman with the features of an ancient king. 1] 1 the face of the woman here given was taken separately, and was subsequently attached to the figure of an egyptian woman whom naville had photographed sitting beside a colossal head. the nose of the statue has been restored. until quite recently nothing, or all but nothing, had been discovered which could be attributed to the primitive races of egypt: even the flint weapons and implements which had been found in various places could not be ascribed to them with any degree of certainty, for the egyptians continued to use stone long after metal was known to them. they made stone arrowheads, hammers, and knives, not only in the time of the pharaohs, but under the romans, and during the whole period of the middle ages, and the manufacture of them has not yet entirely died out.[**] ** an entire collection of flint tools--axes, adzes, knives, and sickles--mostly with wooden handles, were found by prof. pétrie in the ruins of kahun, at the entrance to the fayûm: these go back to the time of the twelfth dynasty, more than three thousand years before our era. mariette had previously pointed out to the learned world the fact that a coptic _reis_, salîb of abydos, in charge of the excavations, shaved his head with a flint knife, according to the custom of his youth (1820-35). i knew the man, who died at over eighty years of age in 1887; he was still faithful to his flint implement, while his sons and the whole population of el kharbeh were using nothing but steel razors. as his scalp was scraped nearly raw by the operation, he used to cover his head with fresh leaves to cool the inflamed skin. these objects, and the workshops where they were made, might therefore be less ancient than the greater part of the inscribed monuments. but if so far we had found no examples of any work belonging to the first ages, we met in historic times with certain customs which were out of harmony with the general civilization of the period. a comparison of these customs with analogous practices of barbarous nations threw light upon the former, completed their meaning, and showed us at the same time the successive stages through which the egyptian people had to pass before reaching their highest civilization. we knew, for example, that even as late as the cæsars, girls belonging to noble families at thebes were consecrated to the service of amon, and were thus licensed to a life of immorality, which, however, did not prevent them from making rich marriages when age obliged them to retire from office. theban women were not the only people in the world to whom such licence was granted or imposed upon them by law; wherever in a civilized country we see a similar practice, we may recognize in it an ancient custom which in the course of centuries has degenerated into a religious observance. the institution of the women of amon is a legacy from a time when the practice of polyandry obtained, and marriage did not yet exist. age and maternity relieved them from this obligation, and preserved them from those incestuous connections of which we find examples in other races. a union of father and daughter, however, was perhaps not wholly forbidden,[*] and that of brother and sister seems to have been regarded as perfectly right and natural; the words brother and sister possessing in egyptian love-songs the same significance as lover and mistress with us. * e. de rouge held that rameses ii. married at least two of his daughters, bint anati and honittui; wiedemann admits that psammetichus i. had in the same way taken to wife nitocris, who had been born to him by the theban princess shapenuapit. the achæmenidan kings did the same: artaxerxes married two of his own daughters. paternity was necessarily doubtful in a community of this kind, and hence the tie between fathers and children was slight; there being no family, in the sense in which we understand the word, except as it centred around the mother. maternal descent was, therefore, the only one openly acknowledged, and the affiliation of the child was indicated by the name of the mother alone. when the woman ceased to belong to all, and confined herself to one husband, the man reserved to himself the privilege of taking as many wives as he wished, or as he was able to keep, beginning with his own sisters. all wives did not enjoy identical rights: those born of the same parents as the man, or those of equal rank with himself, preserved their independence. if the law pronounced him the master, _nibû_, to whom they owed obedience and fidelity, they were mistresses of the house, _nîbît pirû_, as well as wives, _himitû_, and the two words of the title express their condition. each of them occupied, in fact, her own house, _pirû_, which she had from her parents or her husband, and of which she was absolute mistress, _nîbît_. she lived in it and performed in it without constraint all a woman's duties; feeding the fire, grinding the corn, occupying herself in cooking and weaving, making clothing and perfumes, nursing and teaching her children. when her husband visited her, he was a guest whom she received on an equal footing. it appears that at the outset these various wives were placed under the authority of an older woman, whom they looked on as their mother, and who defended their rights and interests against the master; but this custom gradually disappeared, and in historic times we read of it as existing only in the families of the gods. the female singers consecrated to amon and other deities, owed obedience to several superiors, of whom the principal (generally the widow of a king or high priest) was called _chief-superior of the ladies of the harem of amon_. besides these wives, there were concubines, slaves purchased or born in the house, prisoners of war, egyptians of inferior class, who were the chattels of the man and of whom he could dispose as he wished. all the children of one father were legitimate, whether their mother were a wife or merely a concubine, but they did not all enjoy the same advantages; those among them who were born of a brother or sister united in legitimate marriage, took precedence of those whose mother was a wife of inferior rank or a slave. in the family thus constituted, the woman, to all appearances, played the principal part. children recognized the parental relationship in the mother alone. the husband appears to have entered the house of his wives, rather than the wives to have entered his, and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the greeks were deceived by it. they affirmed that the woman was supreme in egypt; the man at the time of marriage promised obedience to her and entered into a contract not to raise any objection to her commands. we had, therefore, good grounds for supposing that the first egyptians were semi-savages, like those still living in africa and america, having an analogous organization, and similar weapons and tools. a few lived in the desert, in the oasis of libya, or in the deep valleys of the red land--doshirit, to doshiru--between the nile and the sea; the poverty of the country fostering their native savagery. others, settled on the black land, gradually became civilized, and we have found of late considerable remains of those of their generations who, if not anterior to the times of written records, were at least contemporary with the earliest kings of the first historical dynasty. [illustration: 066.jpg negro prisoners wearing the panther's skist as a loin-cloth.] their houses were like those of the fellahs of to-day, low huts of wattle daubed with puddled clay, or of bricks dried in the sun. they contained one room, either oblong or square, the door being the only aperture. those of the richer class only were large enough to make it needful to support the roof by means of one or more trunks of trees, which did duty for columns. earthen pots, turned by hand, flint knives and other implements, mats of reeds or plaited straw, two flat stones for grinding corn, a few pieces of wooden furniture, stools, and head-rests for use at night, comprised all the contents. their ordinary pottery is heavy and almost devoid of ornament, but some of the finer kinds have been moulded and baked in wickerwork baskets, which have left a quaint trellis-like impression on the surface of the clay. in many cases the vases are bicolour, the body being of a fine smooth red, polished with a stone, while the neck and base are of an intense black, the surface of which is even more shining than that of the red part. sometimes they are ornamented with patterns in white of flowers, palms, ostriches, gazelles, boats with undulated or broken lines, or geometrical figures of a very simple nature. more often the ground is coloured a fine yellow, and the decoration has been traced in red lines. jars, saucers, double vases, flat plates, large cups, supports for amphorae, trays raised on a foot--in short, every kind of form is found in use at that remote period. the men went about nearly naked, except the nobles, who wore a panther's skin, sometimes thrown over the shoulders, sometimes drawn round the waist, and covering the lower part of the body, the animal's tail touching the heels behind, as we see later in several representations of the negroes of the upper nile. they smeared their limbs with grease or oil, and they tattooed their faces and bodies, at least in part; but in later times this practice was retained by the lower classes only. on the other hand, the custom of painting the face was never given up. to complete their toilet, it was necessary to accentuate the arch of the eyebrow with a line of kohl (antimony powder). a similar black line surrounded and prolonged the oval of the eye to the middle of the temple, a layer of green coloured the under lid, and ochre and carmine enlivened the tints of the cheeks and lips. the hair, plaited, curled, oiled, and plastered with grease, formed an erection which was as complicated in the case of the man as in that of the woman. [illustration: 068.jpg notable wearing the large cloak over the left shoulder. 1; and priest wearing the panther's skin across the breast. 2] 1 wooden statue in the gîzeh museum (ivth dynasty), drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by béchard. 2 statue of the second prophet of amon, aa-nen, in the turin museum (xviiith dynasty). should the hair be too short, a black or blue wig, dressed with much skill, was substituted for it; ostrich feathers waved on the heads of warriors, and a large lock, flattened behind the right ear, distinguished the military or religious chiefs from their subordinates. when the art of weaving became common, a belt and loin-cloth of white linen replaced the leathern garment. fastened round the waist, but so low as to leave the navel uncovered, the loin-cloth frequently reached to the knee; the hinder part was frequently drawn between the legs and attached in front to the belt, thus forming a kind of drawers. tails of animals and wild beast's skin were henceforth only the insignia of authority with which priests and princes adorned themselves on great days and at religious ceremonies. the skin was sometimes carelessly thrown over the left shoulder and swayed with the movement of the body; sometimes it was carefully adjusted over one shoulder and under the other, so as to bring the curve of the chest into prominence. the head of the animal, skilfully prepared and enlivened by large eyes of enamel, rested on the shoulder or fell just below the waist of the wearer; the paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the thighs; the spots of the skin were manipulated so as to form five-pointed stars. on going out-of-doors, a large wrap was thrown over all; this covering was either smooth or hairy, similar to that in which the nubians and abyssinians of the present day envelop themselves. it could be draped in various ways; transversely over the left shoulder like the fringed shawl of the chaldeans, or hanging straight from both shoulders like a mantle.[**] ** this costume, to which egyptologists have not given sufficient attention, is frequently represented on the monuments. besides the two statues reproduced above, i may cite those of uahibri and of thoth-nofir in the louvre, and the lady nofrit in the gîzeh museum. thothotpû in his tomb wears this mantle. khnumhotpû and several of his workmen are represented in it at beni-hasan, as also one of the princes of elephantine in the recently discovered tombs, besides many egyptians of all classes in the tombs of thebes (a good example is in the tomb of harmhabi). the reason why it does not figure more often is, in the first place, that the egyptian artists experienced actual difficulty in representing the folds of its drapery, although these were simple compared with the complicated arrangement of the roman toga; finally, the wall-paintings mostly portray either interior scenes, or agricultural labour, or the work of various trades, or episodes of war, or religious ceremonies, in all of which the mantle plays no part. every egyptian peasant, however, possessed his own, and it was in constant use in his daily life. in fact, it did duty as a cloak, sheltering the wearer from the sun or from the rain, from the heat or from the cold. they never sought to transform it into a luxurious garment of state, as was the case in later times with the roman toga, whose amplitude secured a certain dignity of carriage, and whose folds, carefully adjusted beforehand, fell around the body with studied grace. the egyptian mantle when not required was thrown aside and folded up. the material being fine and soft it occupied but a small space and was reduced to a long thin roll; the ends being then fastened together, it was slung over the shoulder and round the body like a cavalry cloak.[*] * many draughtsmen, ignorant of what they had to represent, have made incorrect copies of the manner in which this cloak was worn; but examples of it are numerous, although until now attention has not been called to them. the following are a few instances taken at random of the way in which it was used: pepi i., fighting against the nomads of sinai, has the cloak, but with the two ends passed through the belt of his loin-cloth; at zawyet el-maiyitîn, khunas, killing birds with the boomerang from his boat, wears it, but simply thrown over the left shoulder, with the two extremities hanging free. khnumhotpû at beni-hasan, the khrihdbi, the overseers, or the peasants, all have it rolled and slung round them; the prince of el-bersheh wears it like a mantle in folds over the two shoulders. if it is objected that the material could not be reduced to such small dimensions as those represented in these drawings of what i believe to be the egyptian cloak, i way cite our cavalry capes, when rolled and slung, as an instance of what good packing will do in reducing volume. [illustration: 070.jpg a dignitary wrapped in his large cloak. 1] 1 statue of khiti in the gîzeh museum (xiith and xiiith dynasties), drawn by faucher-gudin. travellers, shepherds, all those whose occupations called them to the fields, carried it as a bundle at the ends of their sticks; once arrived at the scene of their work, they deposited it in a corner with their provisions until they required it. the women were at first contented with a loin-cloth like that of the men; it was enlarged and lengthened till it reached the ankle below and the bosom above, and became a tightly fitting garment, with two bands over the shoulders, like braces, to keep it in place. the feet were not always covered; on certain occasions, however, sandals of coarse leather, plaited straw, split reed, or even painted wood, adorned those shapely egyptian feet, which, to suit our taste, should be a little shorter. [illustration: 072.jpg costume of egyptian woman, spinning. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the spinning-women at the paris exhibition of 1889. it was restored from the paintings in the tomb of khnumhotpû at beni-hasan. both men and women loved ornaments, and covered their necks, breasts, arms, wrists, and ankles with many rows of necklaces and bracelets. the bracelets were made of elephant ivory, mother-of-pearl, or even flint, very cleverly perforated. the necklaces were composed of strings of pierced shells,[**] interspersed with seeds and little pebbles, either sparkling or of unusual shapes.[***] subsequently imitations in terra-cotta replaced the natural shells, and precious stones were substituted for pebbles, as were also beads of enamel, either round, pear-shaped, or cylindrical: the necklaces were terminated and a uniform distance maintained between the rows of beads, by several slips of wood, bone, ivory, porcelain, or terra-cotta, pierced with holes, through which ran the threads. ** the burying-places of abydos, especially the most ancient, have furnished us with millions of shells, pierced and threaded as necklaces; they all belong to the species of cowries used as money in africa at the present day. *** necklaces of seeds have been found in the tombs of abydos, thebes, and gebelên. of these schweinfurth has identified, among others, the _cassia absus_, "a weed of the soudan whose seeds are sold in the drug bazaar at cairo and alexandria under the name of _shishn_, as a remedy, which is in great request among the natives, for ophthalmia." for the necklaces of pebbles, cf. maspeeo, guide du visiteur, pp. 270, 271, no. 4129. a considerable number of these pebbles, particularly those of strange shape, or presenting a curious combination of colours, must have been regarded as amulets or fetishes by their egyptian owners; analogous cases, among other peoples, have been pointed out by e. b. tylor, primitive culture, vol. ii. p. 189. [illustration: 073.jpg man wearing wig and necklaces.1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a portrait of pharaoh seti i. of the xixth dynasty: the lower part of the necklace has been completed. weapons, at least among the nobility, were an indispensable part of costume. most of them were for hand-to-hand fighting: sticks, clubs, lances furnished with a sharpened bone or stone point, axes and daggers of flint,[*] sabres and clubs of bone or wood variously shaped, pointed or rounded at the end, with blunt or sharp blades,--inoffensive enough to look at, but, wielded by a vigorous hand, sufficient to break an arm, crush in the ribs, or smash a skull with all desirable precision.[**] the plain or triple curved bow was the favourite weapon for attack at a distance,[***] but in addition to this there were the sling, the javelin, and a missile almost forgotten nowadays, the boomerang, we have no proof however, that the egyptians handled the boomerang[****] with the skill of the australians, or that they knew how to throw it so as to bring it back to its point of departure.[v] * in several museums, notably at leyden, we find egyptian axes of stone, particularly of serpentine, both rough and polished. ** in primitive times the bone of an animal served as a club. this is proved by the shape of the object held in the hand in the sign and the hieroglyph which is the determinative in writing for all ideas of violence or brute force, comes down to us from a time when the principal weapon was the club, or a bone serving as a club. *** for the two principal shapes of the bow, see lepsius, der bogen in der hieroglypliik (zeitschrift, 1872, pp. 79 88). from the earliest times the sign m£ portrays the soldier equipped with the bow and bundle of arrows; the quiver was of asiatic origin, and was not adopted until much later. in the contemporary texts of the first dynasties, the idea of weapons is conveyed by the bow, arrow, and club or axe. **** the boomerang is still used by certain tribes of the nile valley. it is portrayed in the most ancient tombs, and every museum possesses examples, varying in shape. besides the ordinary boomerang, the egyptians used one which ended in a knob, and another of semicircular shape: this latter, reproduced in miniature in cornelian or in red jasper, served as an amulet, and was placed on the mummy to furnish the deceased in the other world with a fighting or hunting weapon. v the australian boomerang is much larger than the egyptian one; it is about a yard in length, two inches in width, and three sixteenths of an inch in thickness. for the manner of handling it, and what can be done with it, see lubbock, prehistoric man, pp. 402, 403. [illustration: 074.jpg the boomerang and fighting bow. 2 ] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting in the tomb of khnumhotpû at beni-hasan. [illustration: 075.jpg votive axe. 3] 3 the blade is of bronze, and is attached to the wooden handle by interlacing thongs of leather (gizeh museum). drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. such was approximately the most ancient equipment as far as we can ascertain; but at a very early date copper and iron were known in egypt.[**] long before historic times, the majority of the weapons in wood were replaced by those of metal,--daggers, sabres, hatchets, which preserved, however, the shape of the old wooden instruments. ** metals were introduced into egypt in very ancient times, since the class of blacksmiths is associated with the worship of horus of edfû, and appears in the account of the mythical wars of that god. the earliest tools we possess, in copper or bronze, date from the ivth dynasty: pieces of iron have been found from time to time in the masonry of the great pyramid. mons montélius has again and again contested the authenticity of these discoveries, and he thinks that iron was not known in egypt till a much later period. those wooden weapons which were retained, were used for hunting, or were only brought out on solemn occasions when tradition had to be respected. the war-baton became the commander's wand of authority, and at last degenerated into the walking-stick of the rich or noble. [illustration: 076.jpg king holding the baton. 3] 3 bas-relief in the temple of luxor, from a photograph taken by insinger in 1886. the club at length represented merely the rank of a chieftain,[*] while the crook and the wooden-handled mace, with its head of ivory, diorite, granite, or white stone, the favourite weapons of princes, continued to the last the most revered insignia of royalty.[**] life was passed in comparative ease and pleasure. of the ponds left in the open country by the river at its fall, some dried up more or less quickly during the winter, leaving on the soil an immense quantity of fish, the possession of which birds and wild beasts disputed with man.[***] * the wooden club most commonly represented is the usual insignia of a nobleman. several kinds of clubs, somewhat difficult for us moderns to distinguish, yet bearing different names, formed a part of funereal furniture. ** the crook is the sceptre of a prince, a pharaoh, or a god; the white mace has still the value apparently of a weapon in the hands of the king who brandishes it over a group of prisoners or over an ox which he is sacrificing to a divinity. most museums possess specimens of the stone heads of these maces, but until lately their use was not known. i had several placed in the boulak museum. it already possessed a model of one entirely of wood. *** cf. the description of these pools given by geoffroy saint-hilaire in speaking of the fahaka. even at the present day the jackals come down from the mountains in the night, and regale themselves with the fish left on the ground by the gradual drying up of these ponds. [illustration: 077.jpg fishing in the marshes] other pools, however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many _vivaria_ in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks. fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by the egyptians from early times. where the ponds failed, the neighbouring nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. standing in light canoes, or rather supported by a plank on bundles of reeds bound together, they ventured into mid-stream, in spite of the danger arising from the ever-present hippopotamus; or they penetrated up the canals amid a thicket of aquatic plants, to bring down with the boomerang the birds which found covert there. [illustration: 078.jpg hunting in the marshes: encountering and spearing a hippopotamus. 1] 1 tomb of ti. drawn by faucher-gudin, from dûmichen, besultate, vol. ii. pl. x. the fowl and fish which could not be eaten fresh, were dried, salted, or smoked, and kept for a rainy day. like the river, the desert had its perils and its resources. only too frequently, the lion, the leopard, the panther, and other large felidse were met with there. [illustration: 079.jpg hunting in the desert: bull, lion, and oryx pierced with arrows. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting by beni-hasan, lepsius, denhm., ii. 136. 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of ptahhotpû. the dogs on the upper level are of hyenoid type, those on the lower are abyssinian greyhounds. the nobles, like the pharaohs of later times, deemed it as their privilege or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even to their dens. the common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the oryx, the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare: nondescript packs, in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side with the wolf-dog and the lithe abyssinian greyhound, scented and retrieved for their master the prey which he had pierced with his arrows. at times a hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother, would be followed by one of her young; or a gazelle, but slightly wounded, would be taken to the village and healed of its hurt. [illustration: 080.jpg catching animals with the bola. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of ptahhotpû. above are seen two porcupines, the foremost of which, emerging from his hole, has seized a grasshopper. such animals by daily contact with man, were gradually tamed, and formed about his dwelling a motley flock, kept partly for his pleasure and mostly for his profit, and becoming in case of necessity a ready stock of provisions.[**] ** in the same way, before the advent of europeans, the half-civilized tribes of north america used to keep about their huts whole flocks of different animals, which were tame, but not domesticated. efforts were therefore made to enlarge this flock, and the wish to procure animals without seriously injuring them, caused the egyptians to use the net for birds and the lasso and the _bola_ for quadrupeds,[*]--weapons less brutal than the arrow and the javelin. the _bola_ was made by them of a single rounded stone, attached to a strap about five yards in length. the stone once thrown, the cord twisted round the legs, muzzle, or neck of the animal pursued, and by the attachment thus made the pursuer, using all his strength, was enabled to bring the beast down half strangled. the lasso has no stone attached to it, but a noose prepared beforehand, and the skill of the hunter consists in throwing it round the neck of his victim while running. they caught indifferently, without distinction of size or kind, all that chance brought within their reach. the daily chase kept up these half-tamed flocks of gazelles, wild goats, water-bucks, stocks, and ostriches, and their numbers are reckoned by hundreds on the monuments of the ancient empire.[**] * hunting with the bola is constantly represented in the paintings both of the memphite and theban periods. wilkinson has confounded it with lasso-hunting, and his mistake has been reproduced by other egyptologists. lasso-hunting is seen in lepsius, denhn., ii. 96, in dùmichen, _resultate_, vol. i. pl. viii., and particularly in the numerous sacrificial scenes where the king is supposed to be capturing the bull of the north or south, previous to offering it to the god. ** as the tombs of the ancient empire show us numerous flocks of gazelles, antelopes, and storks, feeding under the care of shepherds, fr. lenormant concluded that the egyptians of early times had succeeded in domesticating some species, nowadays rebels to restraint. it is my belief that the animals represented were tamed, but not domesticated, and were the result of great hunting expeditions in the desert. the facts which lenormant brought forward to support his theory may be used against him. for instance, the fawn of the gazelle nourished by its mother does not prove that it was bred in captivity; the gazelle may have been caught before calving, or just after the birth of its young. the fashion of keeping flocks of animals taken from the desert died out between the xiith and xviiith dynasties. at the time of the new empire, they had only one or two solitary animals as pets for women or children, the mummies of which were sometimes buried by the side of their mistresses. experience alone taught the hunter to distinguish between those species from which he could draw profit, and others whose wildness made them impossible to domesticate. the subjection of the most useful kinds had not been finished when the historic period opened. [illustration: 082.jpg a swineherd and his pigs. 2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting in a theban tomb of the xviiith dynasty. the ass, the sheep, and the goat were already domesticated, but the pig was still out in the marshes in a semi-wild state, under the care of special herdsmen,[*] and the religious rites preserved the remembrance of the times in which the ox was so little tamed, that in order to capture while grazing the animals needed for sacrifice or for slaughter, it was necessary to use the lasso.[***] * the hatred of the egyptians for the pig (herodotus, ii. 47) is attributed to mythological motives. lippert thinks this antipathy did not exist in egypt in primitive times. at the outset the pig would have been the principal food of the people; then, like the dog in other regions, it must have been replaced at the table by animals of a higher order- gazelles, sheep, goats, oxen--and would have thus fallen into contempt. to the excellent reasons given by lippert could be added others drawn from the study of the egyptian myths, to prove that the pig has often been highly esteemed. thus, isis is represented, down to late times, under the form of a sow, and a sow, whether followed or not by her young is one of the amulets placed in the tomb with the deceased, to secure for him the protection of the goddess. *** mariette, abydos (vol. i. pl. 48 b, 53). to prevent the animal from evading the lasso and escaping during the sacrifice, its right hind foot was fastened to its left horn. europeans are astonished to meet nowadays whole peoples who make use of herbs and plants whose flavour and properties are nauseating to us: these are mostly so many legacies from a remote past; for example, castor-oil, with which the berbers rub their limbs, and with which the fellahîn of the saïd flavour their bread and vegetables, was preferred before all others by the egyptians of the pharaonic age for anointing the body and for culinary use.[*] they had begun by eating indiscriminately every kind of fruit which the country produced. many of these, when their therapeutic virtues had been learned by experience, were gradually banished as articles of food, and their use restricted to medicine; others fell into disuse, and only reappeared at sacrifices, or at funeral feasts; several varieties continue to be eaten to the present time--the acid fruits of the nabeca and of the carob tree, the astringent figs of the sycamore, the insipid pulp of the dam-palm, besides those which are pleasant to our western palates, such as the common fig and the date. the vine flourished, at least in middle and lower egypt; from time immemorial the art of making wine from it was known, and even the most ancient monuments enumerate half a dozen famous brands, red or white.[**] * i have often been obliged, from politeness, when dining with the native agents appointed by the european powers at port saïd, to eat salads and mayonnaise sauces flavoured with castor-oil; the taste was not so disagreeable as might be at first imagined. ** the four kinds of canonical wine, brought respectively from the north, south, east, and west of the country, formed part of the official repast and of the wine-cellar of the deceased from remote antiquity. vetches, lupins, beans, chick-peas, lentils, onions, fenugreek,[*] the bamiâ,[**] the meloukhia,[***] the arum colocasia, all grew wild in the fields, and the river itself supplied its quota of nourishing plants. * all these species have been found in the tombs and identified by savants in archaeological botany--kunth, unger, schweinfurth (loret, _la flore pharaonique_, pp. 17, 40, 42, 43, nos. 33, 97, 102, 104, 105, 106). ** the bamiâ, _hibiscus esculentus_, l., is a plant of the family of the malvaceae, having a fruit of five divisions, covered with prickly hairs, and pontaining round, white, soft seeds, slightly sweet, but astringent in taste, and very mucilaginous. it figures on the monuments of pharaonic times. *** the meloukhia, _corchorus olitorius_, l., is a plant belonging to the tilliacese, which is chopped up and cooked much the same as endive is with us, but which few europeans can eat with pleasure, owing to the mucilage it contains. theophrastus says it was celebrated for its bitterness; it was used as food, however, in the greek town of alexandria. [illustration: 084.jpg the egyptian lotus. 4] 4 drawn by faucher-gudin from the _description de l'egypte_, histoire naturelle, pl. 61. two of the species of lotus which grew in the nile, the white and the blue, have seed-vessels similar to those of the poppy: the capsules contain small grains of the size of millet-seed. the fruit of the pink lotus "grows on a different stalk from that of the flower, and springs directly from the root; it resembles a honeycomb in form," or, to take a more prosaic simile, the rose of a watering-pot. the upper part has twenty or thirty cavities, "each containing a seed as big as an olive stone, and pleasant to eat either fresh or dried." this is what the ancients called the bean of egypt. "the yearly shoots of the papyrus are also gathered. after pulling them up in the marshes, the points are cut off and rejected, the part remaining being about a cubit in length. it is eaten as a delicacy and is sold in the markets, but those who are fastidious partake of it only after baking." twenty different kinds of grain and fruits, prepared by crushing between two stones, are kneaded and baked to furnish cakes or bread; these are often mentioned in the texts as cakes of nabeca, date cakes, and cakes of figs. lily loaves, made from the roots and seeds of the lotus, were the delight of the gourmand, and appear on the tables of the kings of the xixth dynasty.[*] * _tiû_, which is the most ancient word for bread, appears in early times to have been used for every kind of paste, whether made with fruits or grain; the more modern word âqû applies specially to bread made from cereals. the lily loaves are mentioned in the papyrus anastasi, no. 4, p. 14. 1. 1. bread and cakes made of cereals formed the habitual food of the people. durrah is of african origin; it is the "grain of the south" of the inscriptions. on the other hand, it is supposed that wheat and six-rowed barley came from the region of the euphrates. egypt was among the first to procure and cultivate them.[*] the soil there is so kind to man, that in many places no agricultural toil is required. * the position which wheat and barley occupy in the lists of offerings, proves the antiquity of their existence in egypt. mariette found specimens of barley in the tombs of the ancient empire at saqqarah. [illustration: 086.jpg the egyptian hoe.2] 2 bas-relief from the tomb of ti; drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. as soon as the water of the nile retires, the ground is sown without previous preparation, and the grain, falling straight into the mud, grows as vigorously as in the best-ploughed furrows. where the earth is hard it is necessary to break it up, but the extreme simplicity of the instruments with which this was done shows what a feeble resistance it offered. for a long time the hoe sufficed. it was composed either of a large stone tied to a wooden handle, or was made of two pieces of wood of unequal length, united at one of their extremities, and held together towards the middle by a slack cord: the plough, when first invented was but a slightly enlarged hoe, drawn by oxen. the cultivation of cereals, once established on the banks of the nile, developed, from earliest times, to such a degree as to supplant all else: hunting, fishing, the rearing of cattle, occupied but a secondary place compared with agriculture, and egypt became, that which she still remains, a vast granary of wheat. the part of the valley first cultivated was from gebel silsileh to the apex of the delta.[*] * this was the tradition of all the ancients. herodotus related that, according to the egyptians, the whole of egypt, with the exception of the theban nome, was a vast swamp previous to the time of menés. aristotle adds that the red sea, the mediterranean, and the area now occupied by the delta, formed one sea. cf. pp. 3-5 of this volume, on the formation of the delta. [illustration: 087.jpg ploughing. 2] 2 bas-relief from the tomb of ti; drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. between the libyan and arabian ranges it presents a slightly convex surface, furrowed lengthways by a depression, in the bottom of which the nile is gathered and enclosed when the inundation is over. in the summer, as soon as the river had risen higher than the top of its banks, the water rushed by the force of gravity towards the lower lands, hollowing in its course long channels, some of which never completely dried up, even when the nile reached its lowest level.[*] cultivation was easy in the neighbourhood of these natural reservoirs, but everywhere else the movements of the river were rather injurious than advantageous to man. the inundation scarcely ever covered the higher ground in the valley, which therefore remained unproductive; it flowed rapidly over the lands of medium elevation, and moved so sluggishly in the hollows that they became weedy and stagnant pools.[**] * the whole description of the damage which can be done by the nile in places where the inundation is not regulated, is borrowed from linant de bellefonds, _mémoire sur les principaux travaux d'utilité publique_, p. 3. ** this physical configuration of the country explains the existence at a very early date of those gigantic serpents which i have already mentioned. [illustration: 089.jpg an egyptian sakiâ (well) showing method of procuring water for irrigation.] in any year the portion not watered by the river was invaded by the sand: from the lush vegetation of a hot country, there was but one step to absolute aridity. at the present day an ingeniously established system of irrigation allows the agriculturist to direct and distribute the overflow according to his needs. from gebel ain to the sea, the nile and its principal branches are bordered by long dykes, which closely follow the windings of the river and furnish sufficiently stable embankments. numerous canals lead off to right and left, directed more or less obliquely towards the confines of the valley; they are divided at intervals by fresh dykes, starting at the one side from the river, and ending on the other either at the bahr yusuf or at the rising of the desert. some of these dykes protect one district only, and consist merely of a bank of earth; others command a large extent of territory, and a breach in them would entail the ruin of an entire province. these latter are sometimes like real ramparts, made of crude brick carefully cemented; a few, as at qosheish, have a core of hewn stones, which later generations have covered with masses of brickwork, and strengthened with constantly renewed buttresses of earth. they wind across the plain with many unexpected and apparently aimless turns; on closer examination, however, it may be seen that this irregularity is not to be attributed to ignorance or caprice. experience had taught the egyptians the art of picking out, upon the almost imperceptible relief of the soil, the easiest lines to use against the inundation: of these they have followed carefully the sinuosities, and if the course of the dykes appears singular, it is to be ascribed to the natural configuration of the ground. subsidiary embankments thrown up between the principal ones, and parallel to the nile, separate the higher ground bordering the river from the low lands on the confines of the valley; they divide the larger basins into smaller divisions of varying area, in which the irrigation is regulated by means of special trenches. as long as the nile is falling, the dwellers on its banks leave their canals in free communication with it; but they dam them up towards the end of the winter, just before the return of the inundation, and do not reopen them till early in august, when the new flood is at its height. the waters then flowing in by the trenches are arrested by the nearest transverse dyke and spread over the fields. when they have stood there long enough to saturate the ground, the dyke is pierced, and they pour into the next basin until they are stopped by a second dyke, which in its turn forces them again to spread out on either side. this operation is renewed from dyke to dyke, till the valley soon becomes a series of artificial ponds, ranged one above another, and flowing one into another from grebel silsileh to the apex of the delta. in autumn, the mouth of each ditch is dammed up anew, in order to prevent the mass of water from flowing back into the stream. the transverse dykes, which have been cut in various places, are also repaired, and the basins become completely landlocked, separated by narrow causeways. in some places, the water thus imprisoned is so shallow that it is soon absorbed by the soil; in others, it is so deep, that after it has been kept in for several weeks, it is necessary to let it run off into a neighbouring depression, or straight into the river itself. [illustration: 091.jpg boatmen fighting on a canal communicating with the nile. 1] 1 bas-relief from the tomb of ti; drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by e. brugsch-bey. history has left us no account of the vicissitudes of the struggle in which the egyptians were engaged with the nile, nor of the time expended in bringing it to a successful issue. legend attributes the idea of the system and its partial working out to the god osiris: then menés, the first mortal king, is said to have made the dyke of qosheish, on which depends the prosperity of the delta and middle egypt, and the fabulous mceris is supposed to have extended the blessings of the irrigation to the fayûm. in reality, the regulation of the inundation and the making of cultivable land are the work of unrecorded generations who peopled the valley. the kings of the historic period had only to maintain and develop certain points of what had already been done, and upper egypt is to this day chequered by the network of waterways with which its earliest inhabitants covered it. the work must have begun simultaneously at several points, without previous agreement, and, as it were, instinctively. a dyke protecting a village, a canal draining or watering some small province, demanded the efforts of but few individuals; then the dykes would join one another, the canals would be prolonged till they met others, and the work undertaken by chance would be improved, and would spread with the concurrence of an ever-increasing population. what happened at the end of last century, shows us that the system grew and was developed at the expense of considerable quarrels and bloodshed. the inhabitants of each district carried out the part of the work most conducive to their own interest, seizing the supply of water, keeping it and discharging it at pleasure, without considering whether they were injuring their neighbours by depriving them of their supply or by flooding them; hence arose perpetual strife and fighting. it became imperative that the rights of the weaker should be respected, and that the system of distribution should be co-ordinated, for the country to accept a beginning at least of social organization analogous to that which it acquired later: the nile thus determined the political as well as the physical constitution of egypt. [illustration: 092.jpg a great egyptian lord, ti, and his wife. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by dûmichen, _resultate_, vol. ii. pl. vit the country was divided among communities, whose members were supposed to be descended from the same seed (_paît_) and to belong to the same family (_pâîtû_): the chiefs of them were called _ropâîtû_, the guardians, or pastors of the family, and in later times their name became a title applicable to the nobility in general. families combined and formed groups of various importance under the authority of a head chief--_ropâîtû-hâ_. they were, in fact, hereditary lords, dispensing justice, levying taxes in kind on their subordinates, reserving to themselves the redistribution of land, leading their men to, battle, and sacrificing to the gods.[*] the territories over which they exercised authority formed small states, whose boundaries even now, in some places, can be pointed out with certainty. the principality of the terebinth[**] occupied the very heart of egypt, where the valley is widest, and the course of the nile most advantageously disposed by nature--a country well suited to be the cradle of an infant civilization. siaût (siût), the capital, is built almost at the foot of the libyan range, on a strip of land barely a mile in width, which separates the river from the hills. a canal surrounds it on three sides, and makes, as it were, a natural ditch about its walls; during the inundation it is connected with the mainland only by narrow causeways--shaded with mimosas--and looking like a raft of verdure aground in the current.[***] * these prerogatives were still exercised by the princes of the nomes under the middle and new empires; they only enjoyed them then by the good will of the reigning sovereign. ** the egyptian word for the tree which gives its name to this principality is _atf, iatf, iôtf_: it is only by a process of elimination that i have come to identify it with the _pistacia terebinthus_, l., which furnished the egyptians with the scented resin _snûtir_. *** boudier's drawing, reproduced on p. 31, and taken from a photograph by beato, gives most faithfully the aspect presented by the plain and the modern town of siout during the inundation. [illustration: 094.jpg nomes of middle egypt] the site is as happy as it is picturesque; not only does the town command the two arms of the river, opening or closing the waterway at will, but from time immemorial the most frequented of the routes into central africa has terminated at its gates, bringing to it the commerce of the soudan. it held sway, at the outset, over both banks, from range to range, northward as far as deyrût, where the true bahr yusuf leaves the nile, and southward to the neighbourhood of gebel sheikh haridi. the extent and original number of the other principalities is not so easily determined. the most important, to the north of siût, were those of the hare and the oleander. the principality of the hare never reached the dimensions of that of its neighbour the terebinth, but its chief town was khmûnû, whose antiquity was so remote, that a universally accepted tradition made it the scene of the most important acts of creation.[*] that of the oleander, on the contrary, was even larger than that of the terebinth, and from hininsû, its chief governor ruled alike over the marshes of the fayûm and the plains of beni-suef.[**] to the south, apû on the right bank governed a district so closely shut in between a bend of the nile and two spurs of the range, that its limits have never varied much since ancient times. its inhabitants were divided in their employment between weaving and the culture of cereals. from early times they possessed the privilege of furnishing clothing to a large part of egypt, and their looms, at the present day, still make those checked or striped "melayahs" which the fellah women wear over their long blue tunics.[***] * khmûnû, the present ashmûneîn, is the hermopolis of the greeks, the town of the god thot. ** hininsû is the _heraecleopolis magna_ of the greeks, the present henassieh, called also ahnas-el-medineh. the egyptian word for the tree which gives its name to this principality, is nârît. loret has shown that this tree, _nârît_, is the oleander. *** apû was the panopolis or chemmis of the greeks, the town of the god mîn or ithyphallic khimû. its manufactures of linen are mentioned by strabo; the majority of the beautiful coptic woven fabrics and embroideries which have been brought to europe lately, come from the necropolis of the arab period at apû. beyond apû, thinis, the girgeh of the arabs, situate on both banks of the river, rivalled khmûnû in antiquity and siût in wealth: its plains still produce the richest harvests and feed the most numerous herds of sheep and oxen in the said. [illustration: 096.jpg nomes of upper egypt] as we approach the cataract, information becomes scarcer. qûbti and aûnû of the south, the coptos and hermonthis of the greeks, shared peaceably the plain occupied later on by thebes and its temples, and nekhabît and zobû watched over the safety of egypt. nekhabît soon lost its position as a frontier town, and that portion of nubia lying between gebel silsileh and the rapids of syene formed a kind of border province, of which nubît-ombos was the principal sanctuary and abu-elephantine the fortress: beyond this were the barbarians, and those inaccessible regions whence the nile descended upon our earth. the organization of the delta, it would appear, was more slowly brought about. it must have greatly resembled that of the lowlands of equatorial africa, towards the confluence of the bahr el abiad and the bahr el ghazâl. great tracts of mud, difficult to describe as either solid or liquid, marshes dotted here and there with sandy islets, bristling with papyrus reeds, water-lilies, and enormous plants through which the arms of the nile sluggishly pushed their ever-shifting course, low-lying wastes intersected with streams and pools, unfit for cultivation and scarcely available for pasturing cattle. the population of such districts, engaged in a ceaseless struggle with nature, always preserved relatively ruder manners, and a more rugged and savage character, impatient of all authority. the conquest of this region began from the outer edge only. a few principalities were established at the apex of the delta in localities where the soil had earliest been won from the river. it appears that one of these divisions embraced the country south of and between the bifurcation of the nile: aûnû of the north, the heliopolis of the greeks, was its capital. in very early times the principality was divided, and formed three new states, independent of each other. those of aûnû and the haunch were opposite to each other, the first on the arabian, the latter on the libyan bank of the nile. the district of the white wall marched with that of the haunch on the north, and on the south touched the territory of the oleander. further down the river, between the more important branches, the governors of sai's and of bubastis, of athribis and of busiris, shared among themselves the primitive delta. two frontier provinces of unequal size, the arabian on the east in the wady tumilat, and the libyan on the west to the south of lake mareotis, defended the approaches of the country from the attacks of asiatic bedâwins and of african nomads. the marshes of the interior and the dunes of the littoral, were not conducive to the development of any great industry or civilization. they only comprised tracts of thinly populated country, like the principalities of the harpoon and of the cow, and others whose limits varied from century to century with the changing course of the river. the work of rendering the marshes salubrious and of digging canals, which had been so successful in the nile valley, was less efficacious in the delta, and proceeded more slowly. here the embankments were not supported by a mountain chain: they were continued at random across the marshes, cut at every turn to admit the waters of a canal or of an arm of the river. the waters left their usual bed at the least disturbing influence, and made a fresh course for themselves across country. if the inundation were delayed, the soft and badly drained soil again became a slough: should it last but a few weeks longer than usual, the work of several generations was for a long time undone. the delta of one epoch rarely presented the same aspect as that of previous periods, and northern egypt never became as fully mistress of her soil as the egypt of the south. [illustration: 099.jpg nomes of lower egypt] these first principalities, however small they appear to us, were yet too large to remain undivided. in those times of slow communication, the strong attraction which a capital exercised over the provinces under its authority did not extend over a wide radius. that part of the population of the terebinth, living sufficiently near to siût to come into the town for a few hours in the morning, returning in the evening to the villages when business was done, would not feel any desire to withdraw from the rule of the prince who governed there. on the other hand, those who lived outside that restricted circle were forced to seek elsewhere some places of assembly to attend the administration of justice, to sacrifice in common to the national gods, and to exchange the produce of the fields and of local manufactures. those towns which had the good fortune to become such rallying-points naturally played the part of rivals to the capital, and their chiefs, with the district whose population, so to speak, gravitated around them, tended to become independent of the prince. when they succeeded in doing this, they often preserved for the new state thus created, the old name, slightly modified by the addition of an epithet. the primitive territory of siût was in this way divided into three distinct communities; two, which remained faithful to the old emblem of the tree--the upper terebinth, with siût itself in the centre, and the lower terebinth, with kûsit to the north; the third, in the south and east, took as their totem the immortal serpent which dwelt in their mountains, and called themselves the serpent mountain, whose chief town was that of the sparrow hawk. the territory of the oleander produced by its dismemberment the principality of the upper oleander, that of the lower oleander, and that of the knife. the territory of the harpoon in the delta divided itself into the western and eastern harpoon. the fission in most cases could not have been accomplished without struggles; but it did take place, and all the principalities having a domain of any considerable extent had to submit to it, however they may have striven to avoid it. this parcelling out was continued as circumstances afforded opportunity, until the whole of egypt, except the half desert districts about the cataract, became but an agglomeration of petty states nearly equal in power and population.[*] * examples of the subdivision of ancient nomes and the creation of fresh nomes are met with long after primitive times. we find, for example, the nome of the western harpoon divided under the greeks and romans into two districts--that of the harpoon proper, of which the chief town was sonti nofir; and that of ranûnr, with the onûphis of classical geographers for its capital. the greeks called them nomes, and we have borrowed the word from them; the natives named them in several ways, the most ancient term being "nûît," which may be translated _domain_, and the most common appellation in recent times being "hospû," which signifies _district_. the number of the nomes varied considerably in the course of centuries: the hieroglyphic monuments and classical authors fixed them sometimes at thirty-six, sometimes at forty, sometimes at forty-four, or even fifty. the little that we know of their history, up to the present time, explains the reason of this variation. ceaselessly quarrelled over by the princely families who possessed them, the nomes were alternately humbled and exalted by civil wars, marriages, and conquest, which caused them continually to pass into fresh hands, either entire or divided. the egyptians, whom we are accustomed to consider as a people respecting the established order of things, and conservative of ancient tradition, showed themselves as restless and as prone to modify or destroy the work of the past, as the most inconstant of our modern nations. the distance of time which separates them from us, and the almost complete absence of documents, gives them an appearance of immobility, by which we are liable to be unconsciously deceived; when the monuments still existing shall have been unearthed, their history will present the same complexity of incidents, the same agitations, the same instability, which we suspect or know to have been characteristic of most other oriental nations. one thing alone remained stable among them in the midst of so many revolutions, and which prevented them from losing their individuality and from coalescing in a common unity. this was the belief in and the worship of one particular deity. if the little capitals of the petty states whose origin is lost in a remote past--edfû and denderah, nekhabît and bûto, siûfc, thinis, khmûnû, sais, bubastis, athribis--had only possessed that importance which resulted from the presence of an ambitious petty prince, or from the wealth of their inhabitants, they would never have passed safe and sound through the long centuries of existence which they enjoyed from the opening to the close of egyptian history. fortune raised their chiefs, some even to the rank of rulers of the world, and in turn abased them: side by side with the earthly ruler, whose glory was but too often eclipsed, there was enthroned in each nome a divine ruler, a deity, a god of the domain, "nûtir nûiti," whose greatness never perished. the princely families might be exiled or become extinct, the extent of the territory might diminish or increase, the town might be doubled in size and population or fall in ruins: the god lived on through all these vicissitudes, and his presence alone preserved intact the rights of the state over which he reigned as sovereign. if any disaster befell his worshippers, his temple was the spot where the survivors of the catastrophe rallied around him, their religion preventing them from mixing with the inhabitants of neighbouring towns and from becoming lost among them. the survivors multiplied with that extraordinary rapidity which is the characteristic of the egyptian fellah, and a few years of peace sufficed to repair losses which apparently were irreparable. local religion was the tie which bound together those divers elements of which each principality was composed, and as long as it remained, the nomes remained; when it vanished, they disappeared with it. [illustration: 105.jpg page image] [illustration: 106.jpg page image] chapter ii.--the gods of egypt _their number and nature--the feudal gods, living and dead--triads---the temples and priesthood--the cosmogonies of the delta----the enneads of heliopolis and hermopolis._ _multiplicity of the egyptian gods: the commonalty of the gods, its varieties, human, animal, and intermediate between man and beast; gods of foreign origin, indigenous gods, and the contradictory forms with which they were invested in accordance with various conceptions of their nature. the star-gods--the sun-god as the eye of the shy; as a bird, as a calf, and as a man; its barks, voyages round the world, and encounters with the serpent apopi--the moon-god and its enemies--the star-gods: the haunch of the ox, the hippopotamus, the lion, the five horus-planets; sothis sirius, and sahû orion. the feudal gods and their classes: the nile-gods, the earth-gods, the sky-gods and the sun-god, the horus-gods--the equality of feudal gods and goddesses; their persons, alliances, and marriages: their children--the triads and their various developments. the nature of the gods: the double, the soul, the body, death of men and gods, and their fate after death--the necessity for preserving the body, mummification--dead gods the gods of the dead--the living gods, their temples and images--the gods of the people, trees, serpents, family fetiches--the theory of prayer and sacrifice: the servants of the temples, the property of the gods, the sacerdotal colleges. the cosmogonies of the delta: sibu and naît, osiris and isis, su and nephthys--heliopolis and its theological schools: ra, his identification with horus, his dual nature, and the conception of atûmû--the heliopolitan enneads: formation of the great ennead--thot and the hermopolitan ennead: creation by articulate words and by voice alone--diffusion of the enneads: their connection with the local triads, the god one and the god eight--the one and only gods._ [illustration: 107.jpg page image] the gods of egypt the incredible number of religious scenes to be found among the representations on the ancient monuments of egypt is at first glance very striking. nearly every illustration in the works of egyptologists brings before us the figure of some deity receiving with an impassive countenance the prayers and offerings of a worshipper. one would think that the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, and contained just sufficient men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship. [illustration: 108.jpg the goddess napkît, stapît.1] 1 the goddess naprît, napît; bas-relief from the first chamber of osiris, on the east side of the great temple of denderah. drawn by faucher-gudin. on penetrating into this mysterious world, we are confronted by an actual rabble of gods, each one of whom has always possessed but a limited and almost unconscious existence. they severally represented a function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe; thus naprît was identified with the ripe ear, or the grain of wheat;[**] ** the word _naprît_ means _grain_, the grain of wheat. the grain-god is represented in the tomb of seti i. as a man wearing two full ears of wheat or barley upon his head. he is mentioned in the _hymn to the nile_ about the same date, and in two or three other texts of different periods. the goddess _naprît_, or _napît_, to whom reference is here made, was his duplicate; her head-dress is a sheaf of corn, as in the illustration. *** this goddess, whose name expresses and whose form personifies the brick or stone couch, the child-bed or -chair, upon which women in labour bowed themselves, is sometimes subdivided into two or four secondary divinities. she is mentioned along with shaît, _destiny_, and raninît, _suckling_. her part of fairy godmother at the cradle of the new-born child is indicated in the passage of the westcar papyrus giving a detailed account of the births of three kings of the fifth dynasty. she is represented in human form, and often wears upon her head two long palm-shoots, curling over at their ends. maskhonît appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth;[*] and raninît presided over the naming and the nurture of the newly born.[*] neither raninît, the fairy godmother, nor maskhonît exercised over nature as a whole that sovereign authority which we are accustomed to consider the primary attribute of deity. every day of every year was passed by the one in easing the pangs of women in travail; by the other, in choosing for each baby a name of an auspicious sound, and one which would afterwards serve to exorcise the influences of evil fortune. no sooner were their tasks accomplished in one place than they hastened to another, where approaching birth demanded their presence and their care. from child-bed to child-bed they passed, and if they fulfilled the single offices in which they were accounted adepts, the pious asked nothing more of them. bands of mysterious cynocephali haunting the eastern and the western mountains concentrated the whole of their activity on one passing moment of the day. they danced and chattered in the east for half an hour, to salute the sun at his rising, even as others in the west hailed him on his entrance into night.[**] * raninît presides over the child's suckling, but she also gives him his name, and hence, his fortune. she is on the whole the nursing goddess. sometimes she is represented as a human-headed woman, or as lioness-headed, most frequently with the head of a serpent; she is also the urseus, clothed, and wearing two long plumes on her head, and a simple urous, as represented in the illustration on p. 169. ** this is the subject of a vignette in the _book of the dead_, ch. xvi., where the cynocephali are placed in echelon upon the slopes of the hill on the horizon, right and left of the radiant solar disk, to which they offer worship by gesticulations. it was the duty of certain genii to open gates in hades, or to keep the paths daily traversed by the sun.[*] these genii were always at their posts, never free to leave them, and possessed no other faculty than that of punctually fulfilling their appointed offices. their existence, generally unperceived, was suddenly revealed at the very moment when the specific acts of their lives were on the point of accomplishment. these being completed, the divinities fell back into their state of inertia, and were, so to speak, reabsorbed by their functions until the next occasion.[***] * maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 34, 35. *** the egyptians employed a still more forcible expression than our word "absorption" to express this idea. it was said of objects wherein these genii concealed themselves, and whence they issued in order to re-enter them immediately, that these forms _ate_ them, or that they _ate_ their own forms. [illustration: 110.jpg some fabulous beasts of the egyptian desert. 2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin from champollion's copies, made from the tombs of beni-hassan. to the right is the _sha_, one of the animals of sit, and an exact image of the god with his stiff and arrow-like tail. next comes the _safir_, the griffin; and, lastly, we have the serpent-headed _saza_. scarcely visible even by glimpses, they were not easily depicted; their real forms being often unknown, these were approximately conjectured from their occupations. the character and costume of an archer, or of a spear-man, were ascribed to such as roamed through hades, to pierce the dead with arrows or with javelins. those who prowled around souls to cut their throats and hack them to pieces were represented as women armed with knives, carvers--_donît_--or else as lacerators--_nokit_. some appeared in human form; others as animals--bulls or lions, rams or monkeys, serpents, fish, ibises, hawks; others dwelt in inanimate things, such as trees,[*] sistrums, stakes stuck in the ground;[**] and lastly, many betrayed a mixed origin in their combinations of human and animal forms. these latter would be regarded by us as monsters; to the egyptians, they were beings, rarer perhaps than the rest, but not the less real, and their like might be encountered in the neighbourhood of egypt.[***] * thus, the sycamores planted on the edge of the desert were supposed to be inhabited by hâthor, nûît, selkît, nît, or some other goddess. in vignettes representing the deceased as stopping before one of these trees and receiving water and loaves of bread, the bust of the goddess generally appears from amid her sheltering foliage. but occasionally, as on the sarcophagus of petosiris, the transformation is complete, and the trunk from which the branches spread is the actual body of the god or goddess. finally, the whole body is often hidden, and only the arm of the goddess to be seen emerging from the midst of the tree, with an overflowing libation vase in her hand. ** the trunk of a tree, disbranched, and then set up in the ground, seems to me the origin of the osirian emblem called _tat_ or _didu_. the symbol was afterwards so conventionalized as to represent four columns seen in perspective, one capital overtopping another; it thus became the image of the four pillars which uphold the world. *** the belief in the real existence of fantastic animals was first noted by maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 117, 118, 132, and vol. ii. p. 213. until then, scholars only recognized the sphinx, and other egyptian monsters, as allegorical combinations by which the priesthood claimed to give visible expression in one and the same being to physical or moral qualities belonging to several different beings. the later theory has now been adopted by wiedemann, and by most contemporary egyptologists. how could men who believed themselves surrounded by sphinxes and griffins of flesh and blood doubt that there were bull-headed and hawk-headed divinities with human busts? the existence of such paradoxical creatures was proved by much authentic testimony; more than one hunter had distinctly seen them as they ran along the furthest planes of the horizon, beyond the herds of gazelles of which he was in chase; and shepherds dreaded them for their flocks as truly as they dreaded the lions, or the great felidse of the desert.[*] * at beni-hassan and in thebes many of the fantastic animals mentioned in the text, griffins, hierosphinxes, serpent headed lions, are placed along with animals which might be encountered by local princes hunting in the desert. this nation of gods, like nations of men, contained foreign elements, the origin of which was known to the egyptians themselves. they knew that hâthor, the milch cow, had taken up her abode in their land from very ancient times, and they called her the lady of pûanît, after the name of her native country. bîsû had followed her in course of time, and claimed his share of honours and worship along with her. he first appeared as a leopard; then he became a man clothed in a leopard's skin, but of strange countenance and alarming character, a big-headed dwarf with high cheek-bones, and a wide and open mouth, whence hung an enormous tongue; he was at once jovial and martial, the friend of the dance and of battle.[*] * the hawk-headed monster with flower-tipped tail was called the saga. in historic times all nations subjugated by the pharaohs transferred some of their principal divinities to their conquerors, and the libyan shehadidi was enthroned in the valley of the nile, in the same way as the semitic baâlû and his retinue of astartes, anitis, eeshephs, and kadshûs. these divine colonists fared like all foreigners who have sought to settle on the banks of the nile: they were promptly assimilated, wrought, moulded, and made into egyptian deities scarcely distinguishable from those of the old race. this mixed pantheon had its grades of nobles, princes, kings, and each of its members was representative of one of the elements constituting the world, or of one of the forces which regulated its government. [illustration: 113.jpb some fabulous beasts of the egyptian desert 1] 1 bîsû, pp. 111-184. the tail-piece to the summary of this chapter is a figure of bîsû, drawn by faucher-gudin from an amulet in blue enamelled pottery. the sky, the earth, the stars, the sun, the nile, were so many breathing and thinking beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the universe. they were worshipped from one end of the valley to the other, and the whole nation agreed in proclaiming their sovereign power. but when the people began to name them, to define their powers and attributes, to particularize their forms, or the relationships that subsisted among them, this unanimity was at an end. each principality, each nome, each city, almost every village, conceived and represented them differently. some said that the sky was the great horus, haroêris, the sparrow-hawk of mottled plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces the whole field of creation. owing to a punning assonance between his name and the word _horû_, which designates the human countenance, the two senses were combined, and to the idea of the sparrow-hawk there was added that of a divine face, whose two eyes opened in turn, the right eye being the sun, to give light by day, and the left eye the moon, to illumine the night. the face shone also with a light of its own, the zodiacal light, which appeared unexpectedly, morning or evening, a little before sunrise, and a little after sunset. these luminous beams, radiating from a common centre, hidden in the heights of the firmament, spread into a wide pyramidal sheet of liquid blue, whose base rested upon the earth, but whose apex was slightly inclined towards the zenith. the divine face was symmetrically framed, and attached to earth by four thick locks of hair; these were the pillars which upbore the firmament and prevented its falling into ruin. a no less ancient tradition disregarded as fabulous all tales told of the sparrow-hawk, or of the face, and taught that heaven and earth are wedded gods, sibû, and nûît, from whose marriage came forth all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be. [illustration: 115.jpg nûît the starry one. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painted coffin of the xxith dynasty in leyden. most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth-god sibû as extended beneath nûît the starry one; the goddess stretched out her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above the clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. but there were also many who believed that sibû was concealed under the form of a colossal gander, whose mate once laid the sun egg, and perhaps still laid it daily. from the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her, and announced the good news to all who cared to hear it--after the manner of his kind--he had received the flattering epithet of _ngagu oîrû_, the great cack-ler. other versions repudiated the goose in favour of a vigorous bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a cow, a large-eyed hâthor, of beautiful countenance. the head of the good beast rises into the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover the world flow along her spine; the star-covered underside of her body, which we call the firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and her four legs are the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points of the world. [illustration: 116.jpg the goose-god facing the cat-goddess, the lady of heaven. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a stella in the museum of gîzeh. this is not the goose of sibû, but the goose of amon, which was nurtured in the temple of karnak, and was called smonû. pacing it is the cat of maût, the wife of amon. amon, originally an earth-god, was, as we see, confounded with sibû, and thus naturally appropriated that deity's form of a goose. the planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according to the prevailing conception of the heavens. the fiery disk _atonû_, by which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called râ, as was also the planet itself.[*] where the sky was regarded as horus, râ formed the right eye of the divine face: when horus opened his eyelids in the morning, he made the dawn and day; when he closed them in the evening, the dusk and night were at hand. * the name of râ has been variously explained. the commonest etymology is that deriving the name from a verb râ, _to give, to make to be_ a person or a thing, so that râ would thus be the great organizer, the author of all things. lauth goes so far as to say that "notwithstanding its brevity, râ is a composite word (r-a, _maker--to be_)" as a matter of fact, the word is simply the name of the planet applied to the god. it means the _sun_, and nothing more. [illustration: 117.jpg the cow hâthor, the lady op heaven.3] 3 drawn by boudier, from a xxxth dynasty statue of green basalt in the gîzeh museum (maspero, _guide du visiteur_, p. 345, no. 5243). the statue was also published by mariette, _monuments divers_, pl. 96 a-b, and in the _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. x. where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, râ was considered as her son,[**] his father being the earth-god, and he was born again with every new dawn, wearing a sidelock, and with his finger to his lips as human children were conventionally represented. ** several passages from the pyramid texts prove that the _two eyes_ were very anciently considered as belonging to the face of nûît, and this conception persisted to the last days of egyptian paganism. hence, we must not be surprised if the inscriptions generally represent the god râ as coming forth from nûît under the form of a disc, or a scarabaeus, and born of her even as human children are born. he was also that luminous egg, laid and hatched in the east by the celestial goose, from which the sun breaks forth to fill the world with its rays.[**] ** these are the very expressions used in the seventeenth chapter of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxv. lines 58-61; lepsius, _todtenbuch_, pl. ix. 11. 50, 51). [illustration: 118.jpg the twelve stages in the life of the sun and its twelve forms throughout the day. 1] 1 the twelve forms of the sun during the twelve hours of the day, from the ceiling of the hall of the new year at edfu. drawing by faucher-gudin. nevertheless, by an anomaly not uncommon in religions, the egg did not always contain the same kind of bird; a lapwing, or a heron, might come out of it,[*] or perhaps, in memory of horus, one of the beautiful golden sparrow-hawks of southern egypt. a sun-hawk, hovering in high heaven on outspread wings, at least presented a bold and poetic image; but what can be said for a sun-calf? yet it is under the innocent aspect of a spotted calf, a "sucking calf of pure mouth,"[**] that the egyptians were pleased to describe the sun-god when sibu, the father, was a bull, and hâthor a heifer. * the lapwing or the heron, the egyptian _bonû_, is generally the osirian bird. the persistence with which it is associated with heliopolis and the gods of that city shows that in this also we have a secondary form of râ. ** the calf is represented in ch. cix. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, pl. cxx.), where the text says (lines 10, 11), "i know that this calf is harmakhis the sun, and that it is no other than the morning star, daily saluting râ." the expression "_sucking calf of pure mouth_" is taken word for word from a formula preserved in the pyramid texts (ûnas, 1. 20). but the prevalent conception was that in which the life of the sun was likened to the life of man. the two deities presiding over the east received the orb upon their hands at its birth, just as midwives receive a new-born child, and cared for it during the first hour of the day and of its life. it soon left them, and proceeded "under the belly of nûît," growing and strengthening from minute to minute, until at noon it had become a triumphant hero whose splendour is shed abroad over all. but as night comes on his strength forsakes him and his glory is obscured; he is bent and broken down, and heavily drags himself along like an old man leaning upon his stick. at length he passes away beyond the horizon, plunging westward into the mouth of nûît, and traversing her body by night to be born anew the next morning, again to follow the paths along which he had travelled on the preceding day. a first bark, the _saktit_, awaited him at his birth, and carried him from the eastern to the southern extremity of the world. _mâzît_, the second bark, received him at noon, and bore him into the land of manu, which is at the entrance into hades; other barks, with which we are less familiar, conveyed him by night, from his setting until his rising at morn.[*] sometimes he was supposed to enter the barks alone, and then they were magic and self-directed, having neither oars, nor sails, nor helm.[**] * in the formulæ of the _book of knowing that which is in hades_, the dead sun remains in the bark saktit during part of the night, and it is only to traverse the fourth and fifth hours that he changes into another. ** such is the bark of the sun in the other world. although carrying a complete crew of gods, yet for the most part it progresses at its own will, and without their help. the bark containing the sun alone is represented in many vignettes of the _book of the dead_, and at the head of many stelæ. sometimes they were equipped with a full crew, like that of an egyptian boat--a pilot at the prow to take soundings in the channel and forecast the wind, a pilot astern to steer, a quartermaster in the midst to transmit the orders of the pilot at the prow to the pilot at the stern, and half a dozen sailors to handle poles or oars. peacefully the bark glided along the celestial river amid the acclamations of the gods who dwelt upon its shores. but, occasionally, apôpi, a gigantic serpent, like that which hides within the earthly nile and devours its banks, came forth from the depth of the waters and arose in the path of the god.[*] as soon as they caught sight of it in the distance, the crew flew to arms, and entered upon the struggle against him with prayers and spear-thrusts. men in their cities saw the sun faint and fail, and sought to succour him in his distress; they cried aloud, they were beside themselves with excitement, beating their breasts, sounding their instruments of music, and striking with all their strength upon every metal vase or utensil in their possession, that their clamour might rise to heaven and terrify the monster. after a time of anguish, râ emerged from the darkness and again went on his way, while apôpi sank back into the abyss,[**] paralysed by the magic of the gods, and pierced with many a wound. * in upper egypt there is a widespread belief in the existence of a monstrous serpent, who dwells at the bottom of the river, and is the genius of the nile. it is he who brings about those falls of earth (_batabît_) at the decline of the inundation which often destroy the banks and eat whole fields. at such times, offerings of durrah, fowls, and dates are made to him, that his hunger may be appeased, and it is not only the natives who give themselves up to these superstitious practices. part of the grounds belonging to the karnak hotel at luxor having been carried away during the autumn of 1884, the manager, a greek, made the customary offerings to the serpent of the nile. ** the character of apôpi and of his struggle with the sun was, from the first, excellently defined by champollion as representing the conflict of darkness with light. occasionally, but very rarely, apôpi seems to win, and his triumph over râ furnishes one explanation of a solar eclipse. a similar explanation is common to many races. in one very ancient form of the egyptian legend, the sun is represented by a wild ass running round the world along the sides of the mountains that uphold the sky, and the serpent which attacks it is called _haiû_. apart from these temporary eclipses, which no one could foretell, the sun-king steadily followed his course round the world, according to laws which even his will could not change. day after day he made his oblique ascent from east to south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west. during the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and he came closer to egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went farther away. this double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. the egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of the nature of the world. the solar bark always kept close to that bank of the celestial river which was nearest to men; and when the river overflowed at the annual inundation, the sun was carried along with it outside the regular bed of the stream, and brought yet closer to egypt. as the inundation abated, the bark descended and receded, its greatest distance from earth corresponding with the lowest level of the waters. it was again brought back to us by the rising strength of the next flood; and, as this phenomenon was yearly repeated, the periodicity of the sun's oblique movements was regarded as the necessary consequence of the periodic movements of the celestial nile. the same stream also carried a whole crowd of gods, whose existence was revealed at night only to the inhabitants of earth. at an interval of twelve hours, and in its own bark, the pale disk of the moon--_yâûhû aûhû_--followed the disk of the sun along the ramparts of the world. the moon, also, appeared in many various forms--here, as a man born of nûît;[*] there, as a cynocephalus or an ibis;[**] elsewhere, it was the left eye of horus,[***] guarded by the ibis or cynocephalus. like râ, it had its enemies incessantly upon the watch for it: the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the sow. but it was when at the full, about the 15th of each month, that the lunar eye was in greatest peril. * he may be seen as a child, or man, bearing the lunar disk upon his head, and pressing the lunar eye to his breast. passages from the pyramid text of unas indicate the relationship subsisting between thot, sibû, and nûît, making thot the brother of isis, sit, and nephthys. in later times he was considered a son of râ. ** even as late as the græco-roman period, the temple of thot at khmûnû contained a sacred ibis, which was the incarnation of the god, and said to be immortal by the local priesthood. the temple sacristans showed it to apion the grammarian, who reports the fact, but is very sceptical in the matter. *** the texts quoted by chabas and lepsius to show that the sun is the right eye of horus also prove that his left eye is the moon. [illustration: 123.jpg egyptian conception of the principal constellations of the northern sky.4] 4 drawn by faucher-gudin, from the ceiling of the ramesseum. on the right, the _female hippopotamus_ bearing the _crocodile_, and leaning on the _monâît_; in the middle, the _haunch_, here represented by the whole bull; to the left, _selkit_ and the _sparrow-hawk_, with the _lion_, and the _giant fighting the crocodile_. the sow fell upon it, tore it out of the face of heaven, and cast it, streaming with blood and tears, into the celestial nile, where it was gradually extinguished, and lost for days; but its twin, the sun, or its guardian, the cyno-cephalus, immediately set forth to find it and to restore it to horus. no sooner was it replaced, than it slowly recovered, and renewed its radiance; when it was well--_ûzaît_--the sow again attacked and mutilated it, and the gods rescued and again revived it. [illustration: 124.jpg the lunar bark, self-propelled, under the protection of the two eyes.] each month there was a fortnight of youth and of growing splendour, followed by a fortnight's agony and ever-increasing pallor. it was born to die, and died to be born again twelve times in the year, and each of these cycles measured a month for the inhabitants of the world. one invariable accident from time to time disturbed the routine of its existence. profiting by some distraction of the guardians, the sow greedily swallowed it, and then its light went out suddenly, instead of fading gradually. these eclipses, which alarmed mankind at least as much as did those of the sun, were scarcely more than momentary, the gods compelling the monster to cast up the eye before it had been destroyed. [illustration: 125.jpg the haunch, and the female hippopotamus.1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from the rectangular zodiac carved upon the ceiling of the great temple of denderah (dùmichen, _resultate_, vol. ii. pl. xxxix.). every evening the lunar bark issued out of hades by the door which râ had passed through in the morning, and as it rose on the horizon, the star-lamps scattered over the firmament appeared one by one, giving light here and there like the camp-fires of a distant army. however many of them there might be, there were as many indestructibles--_akhîmû sokû_--or unchanging ones--_akhîmû ûrdû_--whose charge it was to attend upon them and watch over their maintenance.[**] ** the _akhîmû sokû_ and the _akhîmû ûrdû_ have been very variously defined by different egyptologists who have studied them. chabas considered them to be gods or genii of the constellations of the ecliptic, which mark the apparent course of the sun through the sky. following the indications given by dévéria, he also thought them to be the sailors of the solar bark, and perhaps the gods of the twelve hours, divided into two classes: the _akhîmû sokû_ being those who are rowing, and the _akhîmû ûrdû_ those who are resting. but texts found and cited by brugsch show that the _akhîmû sokû_ are the planets accompanying râ in the northern sky, while the _akhîmû ûrdû_ are his escort in the south. the nomenclature of the stars included in these two classes is furnished by monuments of widely different epochs. the two names should be translated according to the meaning of their component words: _akhîmû sokû_, those who know not destruction, the indestructibles; and _akhîmû ûrdû_ ( _urzii_), those who know not the immobility of death, the _imperishables_. they were not scattered at random by the hand which had suspended them, but their distribution had been ordered in accordance with a certain plan, and they were arranged in fixed groups like so many star republics, each being independent of its neighbours. they represented the outlines of bodies of men and animals dimly traced out upon the depths of night, but shining with greater brilliancy in certain important places. the seven stars which we liken to a chariot (charles's wain) suggested to the egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the northern edge of the horizon.[*] * the forms of the constellations, and the number of stars composing them in the astronomy of different periods, are known from the astronomical scenes of tombs and temples. the identity of the _haunch_ with the _chariot_, or _great bear_ of modern astronomy, was discovered by lepsius and confirmed by biot. mariette pointed out that the pyramid arabs applied the name of the _haunch (er-rigl)_ to the same group of stars as that thus designated by the ancient egyptians. champollion had noted the position of the _haunch_ in the northern sky, but had not suggested any identification. the _haunch_ appertained to sît-typhon. two lesser stars connected the haunch--_maskhaît_--with thirteen others, which recalled the silhouette of a female hippopotamus--_rirît_--erect upon her hind legs,[*] and jauntily carrying upon her shoulders a monstrous crocodile whose jaws opened threateningly above her head. eighteen luminaries of varying size and splendour, forming a group hard by the hippopotamus, indicated the outline of a gigantic lion couchant, with stiffened tail, its head turned to the right, and facing the haunch.[***] * the connection of _birît_, the female hippopotamus, with the haunch is made quite clear in scenes from philae and edfû, representing isis holding back typhon by a chain, that he might do no hurt to sâhii-osiris. jollois and devilliers thought that the hippopotamus was the _great bear_. biot contested their conclusions, and while holding that the hippopotamus might at least in part present our constellation of the dragon, thought that it was probably included in the scene only as an ornament, or as an emblem. the present tendency is to identify the hippopotamus with the dragon and with certain stars not included in the constellations surrounding it. *** the lion, with its eighteen stars, is represented on the tomb of seti i.; on the ceiling of the ramesseum; and on the sarcophagus of htari. [illustration: 127.jpg okion, sothis, and two hokus-planets standing in their bakks. 2] 2 from the astronomic ceiling in the tomb of seti i. (lefébure, 4th part, pl. xxxvi.). the lion is sometimes shown as having a crocodile's tail. according to biot the egyptian lion has nothing in common with the greek constellation of that name, nor yet with our own, but was composed of smaller stars, belonging to the greek constellation of the cup or to the continuation of the hydra, so that its head, its body, and its tail would follow the [ ] of the hydra, between the [ ] and [ ] of that constellation, or the [ ] of the virgin. most of the constellations never left the sky: night after night they were to be found almost in the same places, and always shining with the same even light. [illustration: 128.jpg sahu-orion. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a small bronze in the gîzeh museum, published by mariette, in the _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. 9. the legs are a modern restoration. others borne by a slow movement passed annually beyond the limits of sight for months at a time. five at least of our planets were known from all antiquity, and their characteristic colours and appearances carefully noted. sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed horus. ùapshetatûi, our jupiter, kahiri-(saturn), sobkû-(mercury), steered their barks straight ahead like iâûhû and râ; but mars-doshiri, the red, sailed backwards. as a star bonu, the bird (yenus) had a dual personality; in the evening it was uati, the lonely star which is the first to rise, often before nightfall; in the morning it became tiûnûtiri, the god who hails the sun before his rising and proclaims the dawn of day. sahû and sopdît, orion and sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious world. sahû consisted of fifteen stars, seven large and eight small, so arranged as to represent a runner darting through space, while the fairest of them shone above his head, and marked him out from afar to the admiration of mortals. [illustration: 129.jpg orion and the cow sothis separated by the sparrow-hawk. 1] 1 scene from the rectangular zodiac of denderah, drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken with magnesium light by dûmichen. with his right hand he flourished the _crux ansata_, and turning his head towards sothis as he beckoned her on with his left, seemed as though inviting her to follow him. the goddess, standing sceptre in hand, and crowned with a diadem of tall feathers surmounted by her most radiant star, answered the call of sahû with a gesture, and quietly embarked in pursuit as though in no anxiety to overtake him. sometimes she is represented as a cow lying down in her bark, with tree stars along her back, and sirius flaming from between her horns.[*] * the identity of the cow with sothis was discovered by jollois and devilliers. it is under this animal form that sothis is represented in most of the græco-roman temples, at denderah, edfû, esneh, dêr el-medîneh. not content to shine by night only, her bluish rays, suddenly darted forth in full daylight and without any warning, often described upon the sky the mystic lines of the triangle which stood for her name. it was then that she produced those curious phenomena of the zodiacal light which other legends attributed to horus himself. one, and perhaps the most ancient of the innumerable accounts of this god and goddess, represented sahû as a wild hunter. a world as vast as ours rested upon the other side of the iron firmament; like ours, it was distributed into seas, and continents divided by rivers and canals, but peopled by races unknown to men. sahû traversed it during the day, surrounded by genii who presided over the lamps forming his constellation. at his appearing "the stars prepared themselves for battle, the heavenly archers rushed forward, the bones of the gods upon the horizon trembled at the sight of him," for it was no common game that he hunted, but the very gods themselves. one attendant secured the prey with a lasso, as bulls are caught in the pastures, while another examined each capture to decide if it were pure and good for food. this being determined, others bound the divine victim, cut its throat, disembowelled it, cut up its carcass, cast the joints into a pot, and superintended their cooking. sahû did not devour indifferently all that the fortune of the chase might bring him, but classified his game in accordance with his wants. he ate the great gods at his breakfast in the morning, the lesser gods at his dinner towards noon, and the small ones at his supper; the old were rendered more tender by roasting. [illustration: 131.jpg amon-râ, as mînû of coptos, and invested with his emblems. 1] 1 scene on the north wall of the hypostyle hall at karnak; drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger, taken in 1882. the king, seti i., is presenting bouquets of leaves to amon-mînû. behind the god stands isis (of coptos), sceptre and _crux ansata_ in hand. as each god was assimilated by him, its most precious virtues were transfused into himself; by the wisdom of the old was his wisdom strengthened, the youth of the young repaired the daily waste of his own youth, and all their fires, as they penetrated his being, served to maintain the perpetual splendour of his light. the nome gods who presided over the destinies of egyptian cities, and formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of these natural categories. in vain do they present themselves under the most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain disguise themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally discloses the principal features of their original physiognomies. osiris of the delta, khuûmû of the cataract, harshâfitû of heracleopolis, were each of them, incarnations of the fertilizing and life-sustaining nile. wherever there is some important change in the river, there they are more especially installed and worshipped: khnûmû at the place of its entering into egypt, and again at the town of hâûrît, near the point where a great arm branches off from the eastern stream to flow towards the libyan hills and form the bahr-yûsuf: harshâfitû at the gorges of the fayûm, where the bahr-yûsuf leaves the valley; and, finally, osiris at mendes and at busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which was held to be the true nile by the people of the land. isis of bûto denoted the black vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of egypt annually covered and fertilized by the inundation.[*] * in the case of isis, as in that of osiris, we must mark the original character; and note her characteristics as goddess of the delta before she had become a multiple and contradictory personality through being confounded with other divinities. but the earth in general, as distinguished from the sky--the earth with its continents, its seas, its alternation of barren deserts and fertile lands--was represented as a man: phtah at memphis, amon at thebes, mînû at coptos and at panopolis. amon seems rather to have symbolized the productive soil, while mînû reigned over the desert. but these were fine distinctions, not invariably insisted upon, and his worshippers often invested amon with the most significant attributes of mînû. [illustration: 133.jpg anhûri. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze of the saïte period, in my own possession. the sky-gods, like the earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the one consisting of women: hâthor of denderah, or nît of sais; the other composed of men identical with horus, or derived from him: anhûri-shû of sebennytos and thinis; harmerati, horus of the two eyes, at pharbaethos; har-sapdi, horus the source of the zodiacal light, in the wâdy tumilât; and finally harhûdîti at edfû. râ, the solar disk, was enthroned at heliopolis, and sun-gods were numerous among the nome deities, but they were sun-gods closely connected with gods representing the sky, and resembled horus quite as much as râ. whether under the name of horus or of anhûri, the sky was early identified with its most brilliant luminary, its solar eye, and its divinity was as it were fused into that of the sun. horus the sun, and râ, the sun-cod of heliopolis, had so permeated each other that none could say where the one began and the other ended. one by one all the functions of râ had been usurped by horus, and all the designations of horus had been appropriated by râ. the sun was styled harmakhûîti, the horus of the two mountains--that is, the horus who comes forth from the mountain of the east in the morning, and retires at evening into the mountain of the west;[*] or hartimâ, horus the pikeman, that horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the serpent of the celestial river; or harnûbi, the golden horus, the great golden sparrow-hawk with mottled plumage, who puts all other birds to flight; and these titles were indifferently applied to each of the feudal gods who represented the sun. * from the time of champollion, harmakhûîti has been identified with the harmachis of the greeks, the great sphinx. [illustration: 134.jpg the hawk-headed hokus.2] 2 a bronze of the saïte period, from the posno collection, and now in the louvre; drawn by faucher-gudin. the god is represented as upholding a libation vase with both hands, and pouring the life-giving water upon the king, standing, or prostrate, before him. in performing this ceremony, he was always assisted by another god, generally by sit, sometimes by thot or anubis. the latter were numerous. sometimes, as in the case of harkhobi, horus of khobiû,[*] a geographical qualification was appended to the generic term of horus, while specific names, almost invariably derived from the parts which they were supposed to play, were borne by others. the sky-god worshipped at thinis in upper egypt, at zarît and at sebennytos in lower egypt, was called anhuri. when he assumed the attributes of râ, and took upon himself the solar nature, his name was interpreted as denoting the conqueror of the sky. he was essentially combative. crowned with a group of upright plumes, his spear raised and ever ready to strike the foe, he advanced along the firmament and triumphantly traversed it day by day.[**] the sun-god who at medamôfc taûd and erment had preceded amon as ruler of the theban plain, was also a warrior, and his name of montû had reference to his method of fighting. he was depicted as brandishing a curved sword and cutting off the heads of his adversaries.[***] * _harkhobi, harâmkhobiû_ is the horus of the marshes (_khobiû_) of the delta, the lesser horus the son of isis, who was also made into the son of osiris. ** the right reading of the name was given as far back as lepsius. the part played by the god, and the nature of the link connecting him with shû, have been explained by maspero. the greeks transcribed his name onouris, and identified him with ares. *** montû preceded amon as god of the land between kûs and gebelên, and he recovered his old position in the græco roman period after the destruction of thebes. most egyptologists, and finally brugsch, made him into a secondary form of amon, which is contrary to what we know of the history of the province. just as onû of the south (erment) preceded thebes as the most important town in that district, so montû had been its most honoured god. heer wiedemann thinks the name related to that of amon and derived from it, with the addition of the final _tû_. each of the feudal gods naturally cherished pretensions to universal dominion, and proclaimed himself the suzerain, the father of all the gods, as the local prince was the suzerain, the father of all men; but the effective suzerainty of god or prince really ended where that of his peers ruling over the adjacent nomes began. [illustration: 136.jpg the hoeus of hibonû, on the back of the gazelle.] the goddesses shared in the exercise of supreme power, and had the same right of inheritance and possession as regards sovereignty that women had in human law.[*] isis was entitled lady and mistress at bûto, as hâthor was at denderah, and as nit at sais, "the firstborn, when as yet there had been no birth." they enjoyed in their cities the same honours as the male gods in theirs; as the latter were kings, so were they queens, and all bowed down before them. the animal gods, whether entirely in the form of beasts, or having human bodies attached to animal heads, shared omnipotence with those in human form. horus of hibonû swooped down upon the back of a gazelle like a hunting hawk, hâthor of denderah was a cow, bastit of bubastis was a cat or a tigress, while nekhabit of el kab was a great bald-headed vulture.[**] hermopolis worshipped the ibis and cynocephalus of thot; oxyrrhynchus the _mor-myrus_ fish;[***] and ombos and the fayûm a crocodile, under the name of sobkû,[****] sometimes with the epithet of azaï, the brigand.[v] * in attempts at reconstituting egyptian religions, no adequate weight has hitherto been given to the equality of gods and goddesses, a fact to which attention was first called by maspeeo (_études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 253, et seq.). ** nekhabît, the goddess of the south, is the vulture, so often represented in scenes of war or sacrifice, who hovers over the head of the pharaohs. she is also shown as a vulture-headed woman. *** we have this on the testimony of classic writers, steabo, book xvii. p. 812, _de iside et csiride_, § vii., 1872, paethey's edition, pp. 9, 30, 128. ^elianus, hist, anim., book x. § 46. **** sobhû, sovkû is the animal's name, and the exact translation of sovû would be crocodile-god. its greek transcription is [ ]. on account of the assonance of the names he was sometimes confounded with _sivû, sibû_ by the egyptians themselves, and thus obtained the titles of that god. this was especially the case at the time when sit having been proscribed, sovkû the crocodile, who was connected with sit, shared his evil reputation, and endeavoured to disguise his name or true character as much as possible. v azaï is generally considered to be the osiris of the fayûm, but he was only transformed into osiris, and that by the most daring process of assimilation. his full name defines him as _osiri azaï hi halt to-sit (osiris the brigand, who is in the fayûm)_, that is to say, as sovkû identified with osiris. [illustration: 138.jpg the cat-headed bast. 4] 4 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a green enamelled figure in my possession (saïte period). we cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. why, towards græco-roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at siût?[**] how came sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***] occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought that determined their choice. ** uapuaîtû, the _guide of the celestial ways_, who must not be confounded with anubis of the cynopolite nome of upper egypt, was originally the feudal god of siût. he guided human souls to the paradise of the oasis, and the sun upon its southern path by day, and its northern path by night. *** champollion, rosellini, lepsius, have held that the typhonian animal was a purely imaginary one, and wilkinson says that the egyptians themselves admitted its unreality by representing it along with other fantastic beasts. this would rather tend to show that they believed in its actual existence (cf. p. 112 of this history). plbyte thinks that it may be a degenerated form of the figure of the ass or oryx. the habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court, and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost justify the as yet uncivilized egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the east, or passed away in the west. [illustration: 139.jpg two images] if râ was held to be a grasshopper under the old empire, it was because he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from central africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. most of the nile-gods, khnûmû, osiris, harshafitû, were incarnate in the form of a ram or of a buck. does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage of these animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the life-giving nile and the overflowing of its waters? it is easy to understand how the neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the fayûm or of ombos. the crocodiles there multiplied so rapidly as to constitute a serious danger; there they had the mastery, and could be appeased only by means of prayers and sacrifices. when instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which it was regarded. the crocodile is amphibious; and sobkû was supposed to be a crocodile, because before the creation the sovereign god plunged recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to form the world, as the crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs upon the bank. most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur, apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. families were assigned to them later.[*] * the existence of the egyptian triads was discovered and defined by champollion. these triads have long served as the basis upon which modern writers have sought to establish their systems of the egyptian religion. brugsch was the first who rightly attempted to replace the triad by the ennead, in his book religion und mythologie der alten ægypter. the process of forming local triads, as here set forth, was first pointed out by maspero (_études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 269, et seq.). each appropriated two companions and formed a trinity, or as it is generally called, a triad. but there were several kinds of triads. in nomes subject to a god, the local deity was frequently content with one wife and one son; but often he was united to two goddesses, who were at once his sisters and his wives according to the national custom. [illustration: 141.jpg nit of saïs.] thus, thot of hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of seshaît-safk-hîtâbûi and hahmâûît. tûmû divided the homage of the inhabitants of helio-polis with nebthôtpît and with iûsasît. khnûmû seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract--anûkît the constrainer, who compresses the nile between its rocks at philse and at syene, and satît the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight and swift as an arrow.[*] where a goddess reigned over a nome, the triad was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son. nît of sai's had taken for her husband osiris of mendes, and borne him a lion's whelp, ari-hos-nofir.[**] * maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 273, et seq. ** _arihosnofir_ means _the lion whose gaze has a beneficent fascination_. he also goes under the name of _tutu_, which seems as though it should be translated "_the bounding_,"--a mere epithet characterizing one gait of the lion-god's. hâthor of denderah had completed her household with haroêris and a younger horus, with the epithet of ahi--he who strikes the sistrum.[*] * brugsch explains the name of ahi as meaning _he who causes his waters to rise_, and recognizes this personage as being, among other things, a form of the nile. the interpretation offered by myself is borne out by the many scenes representing the child of hâthor playing upon the sistrum and the _monâît_. moreover, _ahi, ahît_ is an invariable title of the priests and priestesses whose office it is, during religious ceremonies, to strike the sistrum, and that other mystic musical instrument, the sounding whip called _monâît_. [illustration: 142.jpg imhotpû. 2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette encrusted with gold, in the gîzeh museum. the seat is alabaster, and of modern manufacture. a triad containing two goddesses produced no legitimate offspring, and was unsatisfactory to a people who regarded the lack of progeny as a curse from heaven; one in which the presence of a son promised to ensure the perpetuity of the race was more in keeping with the idea of a blessed and prosperous family, as that of gods should be. triads of the former kind were therefore almost everywhere broken up into two new triads, each containing a divine father, a divine mother, and a divine son. two fruitful households arose from the barren union of thot with safkhîtâbûi and nahmâûît: one composed of thot, safkhîtâbûi, and harnûbi, the golden sparrow-hawk;[***] into the other nahmâûît and her nursling nofirhorû entered. *** this somewhat rare triad, noted by wilkinson, is sculptured on the wall of a chamber in the tûrah quarries. [illustration: 143.jpg nofirtûmû. 3] 3 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette incrusted with gold, in the gîzeh museum. the persons united with the old feudal divinities in order to form triads were not all of the same class. goddesses, especially, were made to order, and might often be described as grammatical, so obvious is the linguistic device to which they owe their being. from râ, amon, horus, sobkû, female ras, anions, horuses, and sobkûs were derived, by the addition of the regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine names--râît, amonît, horît, sobkît.[*] in the same way, detached cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons. imhotpû, "he who comes in peace," was merely one of the epithets of phtah before he became incarnate as the third member of the memphite triad.[**] in other cases, alliances were contracted between divinities of ancient stock, but natives of different nomes, as in the case of isis of bûto and the mendesian osiris; of haroêris of edfu and hâthor of denderah. * maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 7, 8, 256. ** imhotpû, the imouthes of the greeks, and by them identified with æsculapius, was discovered by salt, and his name was first translated as _he who comes with offering_. the translation, _he who comes in peace_, proposed by e. de rougé, is now universally adopted. imhotpû did not take form until the time of the new empire; his great popularity at memphis and throughout egypt dates from the saïte and greek periods. in the same manner sokhît of letopolis and bastît of bubastis were appropriated as wives to phtah of memphis, nofirtûmû being represented as his son by both unions.[*] these improvised connections were generally determined by considerations of vicinity; the gods of conterminous principalities were married as the children of kings of two adjoining kingdoms are married, to form or to consolidate relations, and to establish bonds of kinship between rival powers whose unremitting hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire peoples. the system of triads, begun in primitive times and con-, tinned unbrokenly up to the last days of egyptian polytheism, far from in any way lowering the prestige of the feudal gods, was rather the means of enhancing it in the eyes of the multitude. powerful lords as the new-comers might be at home, it was only in the strength of an auxiliary title that they could enter a strange city, and then only on condition of submitting to its religious law. hâthor, supreme at denderah, shrank into insignificance before haroêris at edfû, and there retained only the somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband.[**] * originally, nofirtûmû appears to have been the son of cat or lioness-headed goddesses, bastît and sokhît, and from them he may have inherited the lion's head with which he is often represented. his name shows him to have been in the first place an incarnation of atûmû, but he was affiliated to the god phtah of memphis when that god became the husband of his mothers, and preceded imhotpû as the third personage in the oldest memphite triad. ** each year, and at a certain time, the goddess came in high state to spend a few days in the great temple of edfû, with her husband haroêris. on the other hand, haroêris when at denderah descended from the supreme rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady hâthor. his name came first in invocations of the triad because of his position therein as husband and father; but this was simply a concession to the propriety of etiquette, and even though named in second place, hâthor was none the less the real chief of denderah and of its divine family.[*] thus, the principal personage in any triad was always the one who had been patron of the nome previous to the introduction of the triad: in some places the father-god, and in others the mother-goddess. * the part played by haroêris at denderah was so inconsiderable that the triad containing him is not to be found in the temple. "in all our four volumes of plates, the triad is not once represented, and this is the more remarkable since at thebes, at memphis, at philse, at the cataracts, at elephantine, at edfû, among all the data which one looks to find in temples, the triad is most readily distinguished by the visitor. but we must not therefore conclude that there was no triad in this case. the triad of edfû consists of hor-hut, hâthor, and hor-sam-ta-ui. the triad of denderah contains hâthor, hor-hut, and hor-sam-ta ui. the difference is obvious. at edfû, the male principle, as represented by hor-hut, takes the first place, whereas the first person at denderah is hâthor, who represents the female principle" (mariette, _dendérah_, texte, pp. 80, 81). [illustration: 145.jpg horus] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin from a statuette in the gîzeh museum (mariette, _album du musée de boulaq_, pl. 4). the son in a divine triad had of himself but limited authority. when isis and osiris were his parents, he was generally an infant horus, naked, or simply adorned with necklaces and bracelets; a thick lock of hair depended from his temple, and his mother squatting on her heels, or else sitting, nursed him upon her knees, offering him her breast.[*] even in triads where the son was supposed to have attained to man's estate, he held the lowest place, and there was enjoined upon him the same respectful attitude towards his parents as is observed by children of human race in the presence of theirs. he took the lowest place at all solemn receptions, spoke only with his parents' permission, acted only by their command and as the agent of their will. occasionally he was vouchsafed a character of his own, and filled a definite position, as at memphis, where imhotpû was the patron of science.[**] * for representations of harpocrates, the child horus, see lanzone, _dizionario di mitologia egizia_, pis. ccxxvii., ccxxviii., and particularly pl. cccx. 2, where there is a scene in which the young god, represented as a sparrow-hawk, is nevertheless sucking the breast of his mother isis with his beak. ** hence he is generally represented as seated, or squatting, and attentively reading a papyrus roll, which lies open upon his knees; cf. the illustration on p. 142. but, generally, he was not considered as having either office or marked individuality; his being was but a feeble reflection of his father's, and possessed neither life nor power except as derived from him. two such contiguous personalities must needs have been confused, and, as a matter of fact, were so confused as to become at length nothing more than two aspects of the same god, who united in his own person degrees of relationship mutually exclusive of each other in a human family. father, inasmuch as he was the first member of the triad; son, by virtue of being its third member; identical with himself in both capacities, he was at once his own father, his own son, and the husband of his mother. gods, like men, might be resolved into at least two elements, soul and body;[*] but in egypt, the conception of the soul varied in different times and in different schools. it might be an insect--butterfly, bee, or praying mantis;[**] or a bird--the ordinary sparrow-hawk, the human-headed sparrow-hawk, a heron or a crane--bi, haï--whose wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space;[***] or the black shadow--khaîbît--that is attached to every body, but which death sets free, and which thenceforward leads an independent existence, so that it can move about at will, and go out into the open sunlight. * in one of the pyramid texts, sâhû-orion, the wild hunter, captures the gods, slaughters and disembowels them, cooks their joints, their haunches, their legs, in his burning cauldrons, and feeds on their souls as well as on their bodies. a god was not limited to a single body and a single soul; we know from several texts that râ had _seven souls and fourteen doubles_. ** mr. lepage-renouf supposes that the soul may have been considered as being a butterfly at times, as in greece. m. lefébure thinks that it must sometimes have been incarnate as a wasp--i should rather say a bee or a praying mantis. *** the simple sparrow-hawk is chiefly used to denote the soul of a god; the human-headed sparrow-hawk, the heron, or the crane is used indifferently for human or divine souls. it is from horapollo that we learn this symbolic significance of the sparrow-hawk and the pronunciation of the name of the soul as _bai_. [illustration: 147.jp the black shadow coming out into the sunlight. 4] 4 drawn by faucher-gudin, from naville's _das thebanische todtenbuch, vol. i. pl. civ._ finally, it might be a kind of light shadow, like a reflection from the surface of calm water, or from a polished mirror, the living and coloured projection of the human figure, a double--_ka_--reproducing in minutest detail the complete image of the object or the person to whom it belonged.[*] * the nature of the double has long been misapprehended by egyptologists, who had even made its name into a kind of pronominal form. that nature was publicly and almost simultaneously announced in 1878, first by maspero, and directly afterwards by lepage-renouf. [illustration: 148.jpg the august souls of osiris and horus in adoration before the solar disk. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by dûmichen, of a scene on the cornice of the front room of osiris on the terrace of the great temple of denderah. the soul on the left belongs to horus, that on the right to osiris, lord of amentît. each bears upon its head the group of tall feathers which is characteristic of figures of anhûri (cf. p. 103). the soul, the shadow, the double of a god, was in no way essentially different from the soul, shadow, or double of a man; his body, indeed, was moulded out of a more rarefied substance, and generally invisible, but endowed with the same qualities, and subject to the same imperfections as ours. the gods, therefore, on the whole, were more ethereal, stronger, more powerful, better fitted to command, to enjoy, and to suffer than ordinary men, but they were still men. they had bones,[**] muscles, flesh, blood; they were hungry and ate, they were thirsty and drank; our passions, griefs, joys, infirmities, were also theirs. the _sa_, a mysterious fluid, circulated throughout their members, and carried with it health, vigour, and life. ** for example, the text of the _destruction of men_, and other documents, teach us that the flesh of the aged sun had become gold, and his bones silver. the blood of râ is mentioned in the _book of the dead_, as well as the blood of isis and of other divinities. they were not all equally charged with it; some had more, others less, their energy being in proportion to the amount which they contained. the better supplied willingly gave of their superfluity to those who lacked it, and all could readily transmit it to mankind, this transfusion being easily accomplished in the temples. the king, or any ordinary man who wished to be thus impregnated, presented himself before the statue of the god, and squatted at its feet with his back towards it. the statue then placed its right hand upon the nape of his neck, and by making passes, caused the fluid to flow from it, and to accumulate in him as in a receiver. this rite was of temporary efficacy only, and required frequent renewal in order that its benefit might be maintained. [illustration: 150.jpg the king after his coronation receiving the imposition of the sa. 1] 1 drawn by boudier from a photograph by m. gay et, taken in 1889, of a scene in the hypostyle hall at lûxor. this illustration shows the relative positions of prince and god. anion, after having placed the pschent upon the head of the pharaoh amenôthes iii., who kneels before him, proceeds to _impose the sa_. by using or transmitting it the gods themselves exhausted their _sa_ of life; and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger, while the latter went to draw fresh fulness from a mysterious pond in the northern sky, called the "pond of the sa."[*] divine bodies, continually recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their vigour far beyond the term allotted to the bodies of men and beasts. age, instead of quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them into precious metals. their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to gold; their hair, piled up and painted blue, after the manner of great chiefs, was turned into lapis-lazuli.[**] * it is thus that in the _tale of the daughter of the prince of bakhtan_ we find that one of the statues of the theban konsû supplies itself with _sa_ from another statue representing one of the most powerful forms of the god. the _pond of sa_, whither the gods go to draw the magic fluid, is mentioned in the pyramid texts. ** cf. the text of the _destruction of men_ (il. 1, 2) referred to above, where age produces these transformations in the body of the sun. this changing of the bodies of the gods into gold, silver, and precious stones, explains why the alchemists, who were disciples of the egyptians, often compared the transmutation of metals to the metamorphosis of a genius or of a divinity: they thought by their art to hasten at will that which was the slow work of nature. this transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether do away with the ravages of time. decrepitude was no less irremediable with them than with men, although it came to them more slowly; when the sun had grown old "his mouth trembled, his drivelling ran down to earth, his spittle dropped upon the ground." none of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny; for them as for mankind the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the tomb.[*] * the idea of the inevitable death of the gods is expressed in other places as well as in a passage of the eighth chapter of the booh of the dead (naville's edition), which has not to my knowledge hitherto been noticed: "i am that osiris in the west, and osiris knoweth his day in which he shall be no more;" that is to say, the day of his death when he will cease to exist. all the gods, atûmû, horus, râ, thot, phtah, khnûmû, are represented under the forms of mummies, and this implies that they are dead. moreover, their tombs were pointed out in several places in egypt. the ancients long refused to believe that death was natural and inevitable. they thought that life, once began, might go on indefinitely: if no accident stopped it short, why should it cease of itself? and so men did not die in egypt; they were assassinated. the murderer often belonged to this world, and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened from the hillside, a tree which fell upon the passer-by and crushed him. but often too the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only. he was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slily insinuated itself into the living man, or fell upon him with irresistible violence--illness being a struggle between the one possessed and the power which possessed him. as soon as the former succumbed he was carried away from his own people, and his place knew him no more. but had all ended for him with the moment in which he had ceased to breathe? as to the body, no one was ignorant of its natural fate. it quickly fell to decay, and a few years sufficed to reduce it to a skeleton. and as for the skeleton, in the lapse of centuries that too was disintegrated and became a mere train of dust, to be blown away by the first breath of wind. the soul might have a longer career and fuller fortunes, but these were believed to be dependent upon those of the body, and commensurate with them. every advance made in the process of decomposition robbed the soul of some part of itself; its consciousness gradually faded until nothing was left but a vague and hollow form that vanished altogether when the corpse had entirely disappeared. erom an early date the egyptians had endeavoured to arrest this gradual destruction of the human organism, and their first effort to this end naturally was directed towards the preservation of the body, since without it the existence of the soul could not be ensured. it was imperative that during that last sleep, which for them was fraught with such terrors, the flesh should neither become decomposed nor turn to dust, that it should be free from offensive odour and secure from predatory worms. they set to work, therefore, to discover how to preserve it. the oldest burials which have as yet been found prove that these early inhabitants were successful in securing the permanence of the body for a few decades only. when one of them died, his son, or his nearest relative, carefully washed the corpse in water impregnated with an astringent or aromatic substance, such as natron or some solution of fragrant gums, and then fumigated it with burning herbs and perfumes which were destined to overpower, at least temporarily, the odour of death.[*] * this is to be gathered from the various pyramid texts relating to the purification by water and to fumigation: the pains taken to secure material cleanliness, described in these formulas, were primarily directed towards the preservation of the bodies subjected to these processes, and further to the perfecting of the souls to which these bodies had been united. having taken these precautions, they placed the body in the grave, sometimes entirely naked, sometimes partially covered with its ordinary garments, or sewn up in a closely fitting gazelle skin. the dead man was placed on his left side, lying north and south with his face to the east, in some cases on the bare ground, in others on a mat, a strip of leather or a fleece, in the position of a child in the foetal state. the knees were sharply bent at an angle of 45° with the thighs, while the latter were either at right angles with the body, or drawn up so as almost to touch the elbows. the hands are sometimes extended in front of the face, sometimes the arms are folded and the hands joined on the breast or neck. in some instances the legs are bent upward in such a fashion that they almost lie parallel with the trunk. the deceased could only be made to assume this position by a violent effort, and in many cases the tendons and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the operation. the dryness of the ground selected for these burial-places retarded the corruption of the flesh for a long time, it is true, but only retarded it, and so did not prevent the soul from being finally destroyed. seeing decay could not be prevented, it was determined to accelerate the process, by taking the flesh from the bones before interment. the bodies thus treated are often incomplete; the head is missing, or is detached from the neck and laid in another part of the pit, or, on the other hand, the body is not there, and the head only is found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a heap of stones, or a layer of cut flints. the forearms and the hands were subjected to the same treatment as the head. in many cases no trace of them appears, in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or scattered about haphazard. other mutilations are frequently met with; the ribs are divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or the body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the ground or enclosed together in an earthenware chest. these precautions were satisfactory in so far as they ensured the better preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the egyptians felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice. the human organism thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to half its bulk, but what remained had neither unity, consistency, nor continuity. it was not even a perfect skeleton with its constituent parts in their relative places, but a mere mass of bones with no connecting links. this drawback, it is true, was remedied by the artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the individual thus completely dismembered in the course of the funeral ceremonies. the bones were laid in their natural order; those of the feet at the bottom, then those of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the skull itself. but the superstitious fear inspired by the dead man, particularly of one thus harshly handled, and particularly the apprehension that he might revenge himself on his relatives for the treatment to which they had subjected him, often induced them to make this restoration intentionally incomplete. when they had reconstructed the entire skeleton, they refrained from placing the head in position, or else they suppressed one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the deceased should be unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the living. having taken this precaution, they nevertheless felt a doubt whether the soul could really enjoy life so long as one half only of the body remained, and the other was lost for ever: they therefore sought to discover the means of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony framework of the body. it had been observed that when a corpse had been buried in the desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed into a case of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly wasted away,[*] and the whole frame thus remained intact, at least in appearance, while its integrity ensured that of the soul. * such was the appearance of the bodies of coptic monks of the sixth, eighth, and ninth centuries, which i found in the convent cemeteries of contra-syene, taûd, and akhmîm, right in the midst of the desert. an attempt was made by artificial means to reproduce the conservative action of the sand, and, without mutilating the body, to secure at will that incorruptibility without which the persistence of the soul was but a useless prolongation of the death-agony. it was the god anubis--the jackal lord of sepulture--who was supposed to have made this discovery. he cleansed the body of the viscera, those parts which most rapidly decay, saturated it with salts and aromatic substances, protected it first of all with the hide of a beast, and over this laid thick layers of linen. the victory the god had thus gained over corruption was, however, far from being a complete one. the bath in which the dead man was immersed could not entirely preserve the softer parts of the body: the chief portion of them was dissolved, and what remained after the period of saturation was so desiccated that its bulk was seriously diminished. when any human being had been submitted to this process, he emerged from it a mere skeleton, over which the skin remained tightly drawn: these shrivelled limbs, sunken chest, grinning features, yellow and blackened skin spotted by the efflorescence of the embalmer's salts, were not the man himself, but rather a caricature of what he had been. as nevertheless he was secure against immediate destruction, the egyptians described him as furnished with his shape; henceforth he had been purged of all that was evil in him, and he could face with tolerable security whatever awaited him in the future. the art of anubis, transmitted to the embalmers and employed by them from generation to generation, had, by almost eliminating the corruptible part of the body without destroying its outward appearance, arrested decay, if not for ever, at least for an unlimited period of time. if there were hills at hand, thither the mummied dead were still borne, partly from custom, partly because the dryness of the air and of the soil offered them a further chance of preservation. in districts of the delta where the hills were so distant as to make it very costly to reach them, advantage was taken of the smallest sandy islet rising above the marshes, and there a cemetery was founded. where this resource failed, the mummy was fearlessly entrusted to the soil itself, but only after being placed within a sarcophagus of hard stone, whose lid and trough, hermetically fastened together with cement, prevented the penetration of any moisture. reassured on this point, the soul followed the body to the tomb, and there dwelt with it as in its eternal house, upon the confines of the visible and invisible worlds. here the soul kept the distinctive character and appearance which pertained to it "upon the earth:" as it had been a "double" before death, so it remained a double after it, able to perform all functions of animal life after its own fashion. it moved, went, came, spoke, breathed, accepted pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechanically, rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than from any rational desire for immortality. unceasing regret for the bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful and inert existence. "o my brother, withhold not thyself from drinking and from eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within thy heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth? the west is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein its inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in their mummy-forms, never more waking to see their brethren; never more to recognize their fathers or their mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children. the living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me but stagnant and dead; that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. since i came into this funereal valley i know not where nor what i am. give me to drink of running water!... let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face to the north, that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow." by day the double remained concealed within the tomb. if it went forth by night, it was from no capricious or sentimental desire to revisit the spots where it had led a happier life. its organs needed nourishment as formerly did those of its body, and of itself it possessed nothing "but hunger for food, thirst for drink."[*] want and misery drove it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living. it prowled like a marauder about fields and villages, picking up and greedily devouring whatever it might find on the ground--broken meats which had been left or forgotten, house and stable refuse--and, should these meagre resources fail, even the most revolting dung and excrement.[**] * _teti_, 11. 74, 75. "hateful unto teti is hunger, and he eateth it not; hateful unto teti is thirst, nor hath he drunk it." we see that the egyptians made hunger and thirst into two substances or beings, to be swallowed as food is swallowed, but whose effects were poisonous unless counteracted by the immediate absorption of more satisfying sustenance. ** king teti, when distinguishing his fate from that of the common dead, stated that he had abundance of food, and hence was not reduced to so pitiful an extremity. "abhorrent unto teti is excrement, teti rejecteth urine, and teti abhorreth that which is abominable in him; abhorrent unto him is faecal matter and he eateth it not, hateful unto teti is liquid filth." (_teti_, 11. 68, 69_). the same doctrine is found in several places in the book of the dead_. this ravenous sceptre had not the dim and misty form, the long shroud of floating draperies of our modern phantoms, but a precise and definite shape, naked, or clothed in the garments which it had worn while yet upon earth, and emitting a pale light, to which it owed the name of luminous--_khû, khûû_.[*] the double did not allow its family to forget it, but used all the means at its disposal to remind them of its existence. it entered their houses and their bodies, terrified them waking and sleeping by its sudden apparitions, struck them down with disease or madness,[**] and would even suck their blood like the modern vampire. * the name of luminous was at first so explained as to make the light wherewith souls were clothed, into a portion of the divine light. in my opinion the idea is a less abstract one, and shows that, as among many other nations, so with the egyptians the soul was supposed to appear as a kind of pale flame, or as emitting a glow analogous to the phosphorescent halo which is seen by night about a piece of rotten wood, or putrefying fish. this primitive conception may have subsequently faded, and _khû the glorious one_, one of the _mânes_, may have become one of those flattering names by which it was thought necessary to propitiate the dead; it then came to have that significance of _resplendent with light_ which is ordinarily attributed to it. ** the incantations of which the leyden papyrus published by pleyte is full are directed against _dead men or dead women_ who entered into one of the living to give him the _migraine_, and violent headaches. another leyden papyrus, briefly analyzed by ohabas, and translated by maspero, contains the complaint, or rather the formal act of requisition of a husband whom the _luminous_ of his wife returned to torment in his home, without any just cause for such conduct. one effectual means there was, and one only, of escaping or preventing these visitations, and this lay in taking to the tomb all the various provisions of which the double stood in need, and for which it visited their dwellings. funerary sacrifices and the regular cultus of the dead originated in the need experienced for making provision for the sustenance of the manes after having secured their lasting existence by the mummification of their bodies.[*] * several chapters of the _book of the dead_ consist of directions for giving food to that part of man which survives his death, e.g. chap, cv., "_chapter for providing food for the double_" (naville's edition, pl. cxvii.), and chap, cvi., "_chapter for giving daily abundance unto the deceased, in memphis_" (naville's edition, pl. cxviii.). [illustration: 161.jpg sacrificing to the dead in the tomb chapel. 2] 2 stela of antûf i., prince of thebes, drawn by faucher gudin from a photograph taken by emil brugsch-bey. below, servants and relations are bringing the victims and cutting up the ox at the door of the tomb. in the middle is the dead man, seated under his pavilion and receiving the sacrifice: an attendant offers him drink, another brings him the haunch of an ox a third a basket and two jars; provisions fill the whole chamber. behind antûf stand two servants, the one fanning his master, and the second offering him his staff and sandals. the position of the door, which is in the lowest row of the scenes, indicates that what is represented above it takes place within the tomb. gazelles and oxen were brought and sacrificed at the door of the tomb chapel; the haunches, heart, and breast of each victim being presented and heaped together upon the ground, that there the dead might find them when they began to be hungry. vessels of beer or wine, great jars of fresh water, purified with natron, or perfumed, were brought to them that they might drink their fill at pleasure, and by such voluntary tribute men bought their good will, as in daily life they bought that of some neighbour too powerful to be opposed. the gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which death so plentifully bestows upon men. their bodies suffered change and gradually perished until nothing was left of them. their souls, like human souls, were only the representatives of their bodies, and gradually became extinct if means of arresting the natural tendency to decay were not found in time. thus, the same necessity that forced men to seek the kind of sepulture which gave the longest term of existence to their souls, compelled the gods to the same course. at first, they were buried in the hills, and one of their oldest titles describes them as those "who are upon the sand,"[*] safe from putrefaction; afterwards, when the art of embalming had been discovered, the gods received the benefit of the new invention and were mummified. * in the _book of knowing that which is in hades_, for the fourth and fifth hours of the night, we have the description of the sandy realm of sokaris and of the gods _hiriû shâîtû senû_, who are on their sand. elsewhere in the same book we have a cynocephalus _upon its sand_, and the gods of the eighth hour are also mysterious gods who are on their sand. wherever these personages are represented in the vignettes, the egyptian artist has carefully drawn the ellipse painted in yellow and sprinkled with red, which is the conventional rendering of sand, and sandy districts. each nome possessed the mummy and the tomb of its dead god: at thinis there was the mummy and the tomb of anhuri, the mummy of osiris at mendes, the mummy of tûmû at heliopolis.[*] in some of the nomes the gods did not change their names in altering the mode of their existence: the deceased osiris remained osiris; nit and hâthor when dead were still nît and hâthor, at saïs and at denderah. but phtah of memphis became sokaris by dying; uapûaîtû, the jackal of siût, was changed into anubis;[**] and when his disk had disappeared at evening, anhûri, the sunlit sky of thinis, was khontamentît, lord of the west, until the following day. * the sepulchres of tûmû, khopri, râ, osiris, and in each of them the heap of sand hiding the body, are represented in the tomb of seti i., as also the four rams in which the souls of the god are incarnate. the tombs of the gods were known even in roman times. ** to my mind, at least, this is an obvious conclusion from the monuments of siût, in which the jackal god is called uapûaîtû, as the living god, lord of the city, and anûpû, master of embalming or of the oasis, lord of ra-qrirît, inasmuch as he is god of the dead. ra-qrirît, _the door of the stone_, was the name which the people of siût gave to their necropolis and to the infernal domain of their god. that bliss which we dream of enjoying in the world to come was not granted to the gods any more than to men. their bodies were nothing but inert larvae, "with unmoving heart,"[*] weak and shrivelled limbs, unable to stand upright were it not that the bandages in which they were swathed stiffened them into one rigid block. their hands and heads alone were free, and were of the green or black shades of putrid flesh. * this is the characteristic epithet for the dead osiris, urdu mt, he whose heart is unmoving, he whose heart no longer beats, and who has therefore ceased to live. [illustration: 164.jpg phtah as a mummy. 2] 2 drawing by faucher-gudin of a bronze statuette of the saïte period, found in the department of hérault, at the end of a gallery in an ancient mine. their doubles, like those of men, both dreaded and regretted the light. all sentiment was extinguished by the hunger from which they suffered, and gods who were noted for their compassionate kindness when alive, became pitiless and ferocious tyrants in the tomb. when once men were bidden to the presence of sokaris, khontamentîfc, or even of osiris, "mortals come terrifying their hearts with fear of the god, and none dareth to look him in the face either among gods or men; for him the great are as the small. he spareth not those who love him; he beareth away the child from its mother, and the old man who walketh on his way; full of fear, all creatures make supplication before him, but he turneth not his face towards them." only by the unfailing payment of tribute, and by feeding him as though he were a simple human double, could living or dead escape the consequences of his furious temper. the living paid him his dues in pomps and solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular intervals; but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned to extend to them. he did not allow them to receive directly the prayers, sepulchral meals, or offerings of kindred on feast-days; all that was addressed to them must first pass through his hands. when their friends wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he insisted that these should first be offered and formally presented to himself; then he was humbly prayed to transmit them to such or such a double, whose name and parentage were pointed out to him. he took possession of them, kept part for his own use, and of his bounty gave the remainder to its destined recipient. thus death made no change in the relative positions of the feudal god and his worshippers. the worshipper who called himself the _amakhû_ of the god during life was the subject and vassal of his mummied god even in the tomb;[*] and the god who, while living, reigned over the living, after his death continued to reign over the dead. * the word _amakhû_ is applied to an individual who has freely entered the service of king or baron, and taken him for his lord: _amakhû khir nibuf_ means _vassal of his lord_. in the same way, each chose for himself a god who became his patron, and to whom he owed _fealty_, i.e. to whom he was _amakhû_--vassal. to the god he owed the service of a good vassal--tribute, sacrifices, offerings; and to his vassal the god owed in return the service of a suzerain- protection, food, reception into his dominions and access to his person. a man might be absolutely _nib amahkît_, master of fealty, or, relatively to a god, _amakhû khir osiri_, the vassal of osiris, _amakhû khir phtah-sokari_, the vassal of phtah-sokaris. he dwelt in the city near the prince and in the midst of his subjects: râ living in heliopolis along with the prince of heliopolis; haroêris in edfû together with the prince of edfû; nît in saïs with the prince of sais. although none of the primitive temples have come down to us, the name given to them in the language of the time, shows what they originally were. a temple was considered as the feudal mansion--hâît,--the house--_pirû, pi_,--of the god, better cared for, and more respected than the houses of men, but not otherwise differing from them. it was built on a site slightly raised above the level of the plain, so as to be safe from the inundation, and where there was no natural mound, the want was supplied by raising a rectangular platform of earth. a layer of sand spread uniformly on the sub-soil provided against settlements or infiltration, and formed a bed for the foundations of the building.[*] * this custom lasted into græco-roman times, and was part of the ritual for laying the foundations of a temple. after the king had dug out the soil on the ground where the temple was to stand, he spread over the spot sand mixed with pebbles and precious stones, and upon this he laid the first course of stone. this was first of all a single room, circumscribed, gloomy, covered in by a slightly vaulted roof, and having no opening but the doorway, which was framed by two tall masts, whence floated streamers to attract from afar the notice of worshippers; in front of its façade [*] was a court, fenced in with palisading. * no egyptian temples of the first period have come down to our time, but herr erman has very justly remarked that we have pictures of them in several of the signs denoting the word _temple_ in texts of the memphite period. [illustration: 167.jpg the sacred bull. 2] 2 a sculptor's model from tanis, now in the gîzeh museum, drawn by faucher-gudin from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. the sacred marks, as given in the illustration, are copied from those of similar figures on stelæ of the serapeum. within the temple were pieces of matting, low tables of stone, wood, or metal, a few utensils for cooking the offerings, a few vessels for containing the blood, oil, wine, and water with which the god was every day regaled. as provisions for sacrifice increased, the number of chambers increased with them, and rooms for flowers, perfumes, stuffs, precious vessels, and food were grouped around the primitive abode; until that which had once constituted the whole temple became no more than its sanctuary. there the god dwelt, not only in spirit but in body,[*] and the fact that it was incumbent upon him to live in several cities did not prevent his being present in all of them at once. he could divide his double, imparting it to as many separate bodies as he pleased, and these bodies might be human or animal, natural objects or things manufactured--such as statues of stone, metal, or wood.[**] several of the gods were incarnate in rams: osiris at mendes, harshafitû at heracleopolis, khnûmû at elephantine. living rams were kept in their temples, and allowed to gratify any fancy that came into their animal brains. other gods entered into bulls: râ at heliopolis, and, subsequently, phtah at memphis, minû at thebes, and montû at hermonthis. they indicated beforehand by certain marks such beasts as they intended to animate by. their doubles, and he who had learnt to recognize these signs was at no loss to find a living god when the time came for seeking one and presenting it to the adoration of worshippers in the temple.[***] * thus at denderah, it is said that the soul of hâthor likes to leave heaven "in the form of a human-headed sparrow-hawk of lapis-lazuli, accompanied by her divine cycle, to come and unite herself to the statue." "other instances," adds mariette, "would seem to justify us in thinking that the egyptians accorded a certain kind of life to the statues and images which they made, and believed (especially in connection with tombs) that the spirit haunted images of itself." ** maspero, _études de mythologie et l'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. i. p. 77, et seq.; _archéologie égyptienne_, pp. 106, 107; english edition, pp. 105, 106. this notion of actuated statues seemed so strange and so unworthy of the wisdom of the egyptians that egyptologists of the rank of m. de rougé have taken in an abstract and metaphorical sense expressions referring to the automatic movements of divine images. *** the bulls of râ and of phtah, the mnevis and the hapis, are known to us from classic writers. the bull of minû at thebes may be seen in the procession of the god as represented on monuments of ramses ii. and ramses iii. bâkhû (called bakis by the greeks), the bull of hermonthis, is somewhat rare, and mainly represented upon a few later stelæ in the gîzeh museum; it is chiefly known from the texts. the particular signs distinguishing each of these sacred animals have been determined both on the authority of ancient writers, and from examination of the figured monuments; the arrangement and outlines of some of the black markings of the hapis are clearly shown in the illustration on p. 167. and if the statues had not the same outward appearance of actual life as the animals, they none the less concealed beneath their rigid exteriors an intense energy of life which betrayed itself on occasion by gestures or by words. they thus indicated, in language which their servants could understand, the will of the gods, or their opinion on the events of the day; they answered questions put to them in accordance with prescribed forms, and sometimes they even foretold the future. [illustration: 169.jpg open-air offerings to the serpent. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken in the tomb of khopirkerîsonbû. the inscription behind the urseus states that it represents _banûît the august, lady of the double granary_. each temple held a fairly large number of statues representing so many embodiments of the local divinity and of the members of his triad. these latter shared, albeit in a lesser degree, all the honours and all the prerogatives of the master; they accepted sacrifices, answered prayers, and, if needful, they prophesied. they occupied either the sanctuary itself, or one of the halls built about the principal sanctuary, or one of the isolated chapels which belonged to them, subject to the suzerainty of the feudal god. the god has his divine court to help him in the administration of his dominions, just as a prince is aided by his ministers in the government of his realm. this state religion, so complex both in principle and in its outward manifestations, was nevertheless inadequate to express the exuberant piety of the populace. there were casual divinities in every nome whom the people did not love any the less because of their inofficial character; such as an exceptionally high palm tree in the midst of the desert, a rock of curious outline, a spring trickling drop by drop from the mountain to which hunters came to slake their thirst in the hottest hours of the day, or a great serpent believed to be immortal, which haunted a field, a grove of trees, a grotto, or a mountain ravine.[*] * it was a serpent of this kind which gave its name to the hill of shêikh harîdî, and the adjacent nome of the serpent mountain; and though the serpent has now turned mussulman, he still haunts the mountain and preserves his faculty of coming to life again every time that he is killed. the peasants of the district brought it bread, cakes, fruits, and thought that they could call down the blessing of heaven upon their fields by gorging the snake with offerings. everywhere on the confines of cultivated ground, and even at some distance from the valley, are fine single sycamores, flourishing as though by miracle amid the sand. [illustration: 171.jpg the peasant's offering to the sycamore. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a scene in the tomb of khopirkerîsonbû. the sacred sycamore here stands at the end of a field of corn, and would seem to extend its protection to the harvest. their fresh greenness is in sharp contrast with the surrounding fawn-coloured landscape, and their thick foliage defies the midday sun even in summer. but, on examining the ground in which they grow, we soon find that they drink from water which has infiltrated from the nile, and whose existence is in nowise betrayed upon the surface of the soil. they stand as it were with their feet in the river, though no one about them suspects it. egyptians of all ranks counted them divine and habitually worshipped them,[**] making them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers, vegetables, and water in porous jars daily replenished by good and charitable people. ** maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 224--227. they were represented as animated by spirits concealed within them, but which could manifest themselves on occasion. at such times the head or whole body of the spirit of a tree would emerge from its trunk, and when it returned to its hiding-place the trunk reabsorbed it, or _ate_ it again, according to the egyptian expression, which i have already had occasion to quote above; see p. 110, note 3. passers-by drank of the water, and requited the unexpected benefit with a short prayer. there were several such trees in the memphite nome, and in the letopolite nome from dashûr to gîzeh, inhabited, as every one knew, by detached doubles of nûît and hâthor. these combined districts were known as the "land of the sycamore," a name afterwards extended to the city of memphis; and their sacred trees are worshipped at the present day both by mussulman and christian fellahîn.[*] * the tree at matarîeh, commonly called the _tree of the virgin_, seems to me to be the successor of a sacred tree of heliopolis in which a goddess, perhaps hâthor, was worshipped. the most famous among them all, the sycamore of the south--_nûhît rîsit_--was regarded as the living body of hâthor on earth. side by side with its human gods and prophetic statues, each nome proudly advanced one or more sacred animals, one or more magic trees. each family, and almost every individual, also possessed gods and fetishes, which had been pointed out for their worship by some fortuitous meeting with an animal or an object; by a dream, or by sudden intuition. they had a place in some corner of the house, or a niche in its walls; lamps were continually kept burning before them, and small daily offerings were made to them, over and above what fell to their share on solemn feast-days. in return, they became the protectors of the household, its guardians and its counsellors. appeal was made to them in every exigency of daily life, and their decisions were no less scrupulously carried out by their little circle of worshippers, than was the will of the feudal god by the inhabitants of his principality. [illustration: 173.jpg the sacrifice of the bull.--the officiating priest lassoing the victim. 1] 1 bas-relief from the temple of seti i. at abydos; drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. daniel héron. seti i., second king of the xixth dynasty, is throwing the lasso; his son, ramses ii., who is still the crown prince, holds the bull by the tail to prevent its escaping from the slipknot. the prince was the great high priest. the whole religion of the nome rested upon him, and originally he himself performed its ceremonies. of these, the chief was sacrifice,--that is to say, a banquet which it was his duty to prepare and lay before the god with his own hands. he went out into the fields to lasso the half-wild bull; bound it, cut its throat, skinned it, burnt part of the carcase in front of his idol and distributed the rest among his assistants, together with plenty of cakes, fruits, vegetables, and wine.[*] on the occasion, the god was present both in body and double, suffering himself to be clothed and perfumed, eating and drinking of the best that was set on the table before him, and putting aside some of the provisions for future use. this was the time to prefer requests to him, while he was gladdened and disposed to benevolence by good cheer. he was not without suspicion as to the reason why he was so feasted, but he had laid down his conditions beforehand, and if they were faithfully observed he willingly yielded to the means of seduction brought to bear upon him. moreover, he himself had arranged the ceremonial in a kind of contract formerly made with his worshippers and gradually perfected from age to age by the piety of new generations.[**] above all things, he insisted on physical cleanliness. the officiating priest must carefully wash--_ûâbû_--his face, mouth, hands, and body; and so necessary was this preliminary purification considered, that from it the professional priest derived his name of _ûîbû_, the washed, the clean.[***] * this appears from the sacrificial ritual employed in the temples up to the last days of egyptian paganism; cf., for instance, the illustration on p. 173, where the king is represented as lassoing the bull. that which in historic times was but an image, had originally been a reality. ** the most striking example of the divine institution of religious services is furnished by the inscription relating the history of the destruction of men in the reign of râ, where the god, as he is about to make his final ascension into heaven, substitutes animal for human sacrifices. *** the idea of physical cleanliness comes out in such variants as _ûîbû totûi_, "clean of both hands," found on stelae instead of the simple title _ûîbû_. we also know, on the evidence of ancient writers, the scrupulous daily care which egyptian priests took of their bodies. it was only as a secondary matter that the idea of moral purity entered into the conception of a priest. his costume was the archaic dress, modified according to circumstances. during certain services, or at certain points in the sacrifices, it was incumbent upon him to wear sandals, the panther-skin over his shoulder, and the thick lock of hair falling over his right ear; at other times he must gird himself with the loin-cloth having a jackal's tail, and take the shoes from off his feet before proceeding with his office, or attach a false beard to his chin. the species, hair, and age of the victim, the way in which it was to be brought and bound, the manner and details of its slaughter, the order to be followed in opening its body and cutting it up, were all minutely and unchangeably decreed. and these were but the least of the divine exactions, and those most easily satisfied. the formulas accompanying each act of the sacrificial priest contained a certain number of words whose due sequence and harmonies might not suffer the slightest modification whatever, even from the god himself, under penalty of losing their efficacy.[*] * the purification ritual for officiating priests is contained in a papyrus of the berlin museum, whose analysis and table of chapters has been published by herr oscar von lemm, _das bitualbuch des ammonsdienstes_, p. 4, et seq. they were always recited with the same rhythm, according to a system of chaunting in which every tone had its virtue, combined with movements which confirmed the sense and worked with irresistible effect: one false note, a single discord between the succession of gestures and the utterance of the sacramental words, any hesitation, any awkwardness in the accomplishment of a rite, and the sacrifice was vain. worship as thus conceived became a legal transaction, in the course of which the god gave up his liberty in exchange for certain compensations whose kind and value were fixed by law. by a solemn deed of transfer the worshipper handed over to the legal representatives of the contracting divinity such personal or real property as seemed to him fitting payment for the favour which he asked, or suitable atonement for the wrong which he had done. if man scrupulously observed the innumerable conditions with which the transfer was surrounded, the god could not escape the obligation of fulfilling his petition;[*] but should he omit the least of them, the offering remained with the temple and went to increase the endowments in mortmain, while the god was pledged to nothing in exchange. * this obligation is evident from texts where, as in the poem of pentaûirît, a king who is in danger demands from his favourite god the equivalent in protection of the sacrifices which he has offered to that divinity, and the gifts wherewith he has enriched him. "have i not made unto thee many offerings?" says ramses ii. to amon. "i have filled thy temple with my prisoners, i have built thee a mansion for millions of years.... ah if evil is the lot of them who insult thee, good are thy purposes towards those who honour thee, o amon!" hence the officiating priest assumed a formidable responsibility as regarded his fellows: a slip of memory, the slightest accidental impurity, made him a bad priest, injurious to himself and harmful to those worshippers who had entrusted him with their interests before the gods. since it was vain to expect ritualistic perfections from a prince constantly troubled with affairs of state, the custom was established of associating professional priests with him, personages who devoted all their lives to the study and practice of the thousand formalities whose sum constituted the local religion. each temple had its service of priests, independent of those belonging to neighbouring temples, whose members, bound to keep their hands always clean and their voices true, were ranked according to the degrees of a learned hierarchy. at their head was a sovereign pontiff to direct them in the exercise of their functions. in some places he was called the first prophet, or rather the first servant of the god--_hon-nûtir topi_; at thebes he was the first prophet of amon, at thinis he was the first prophet of anhûri.[*] * this title of _first prophet_ belongs to priests of the less important towns, and to secondary divinities. if we find it employed in connection with the theban worship, it is because amon was originally a provincial god, and only rose into the first rank with the rise of thebes and the great conquests of the xviiith and xixth dynasties. but generally he bore a title appropriate to the nature of the god whose servant he was. the chief priest of râ at heliopolis, and in all the cities which adopted the heliopolitan form of worship, was called _oîrû maû_, the master of visions, and he alone besides the sovereign of the nome, or of egypt, enjoyed the privilege of penetrating into the sanctuary, of "entering into heaven and there beholding the god" face to face. in the same way, the high priest of anhûri at sebennytos was entitled the wise and pure warrior--_ahûîti saû uîbu_--because his god went armed with a pike, and a soldier god required for his service a pontiff who should be a soldier like himself. these great personages did not always strictly seclude themselves within the limits of the religious domain. the gods accepted, and even sometimes solicited, from their worshippers, houses, fields, vineyards, orchards, slaves, and fishponds, the produce of which assured their livelihood and the support of their temples. there was no egyptian who did not cherish the ambition of leaving some such legacy to the patron god of his city, "for a monument to himself," and as an endowment for the priests to institute prayers and perpetual sacrifices on his behalf.[*] in course of time these accumulated gifts at length formed real sacred fiefs--_hotpû-nûtir_--analogous to the _wakfs_ of mussulman egypt.[**] they were administered by the high priest, who, if necessary, defended them by force against the greed of princes or kings. two, three, or even four classes of prophets or _heiroduli_ under his orders assisted him in performing the offices of worship, in giving religious instruction, and in the conduct of affairs. women did not hold equal rank with men in the temples of male deities; they there formed a kind of harem whence the god took his mystic spouses, his concubines, his maidservants, the female musicians and dancing women whose duty it was to divert him and to enliven his feasts. but in temples of goddesses they held the chief rank, and were called _hierodules_, or priestesses, _hierodules_ of nit, _hierodules_ of hâthor, _hierodules_ of pakhît.[***] * as regards the saïte period, we are beginning to accumulate many stelae recording gifts to a god of land or houses, made either by the king or by private individuals. ** we know from the _great harris papyrus_ to what the fortune of amon amounted at the end of the reign of ramses iii.; its details may be found in brugsch, _die ægyptologie_, pp. 271-274. cf. in naville, _bubastis, eighth memoir of the egyptian exploration fund_, p. 61, a calculation as to the quantities of precious metals belonging to one of the least of the temples of bubastis; its gold and silver were counted by thousands of pounds. *** mariette remarks that priests play but a subordinate part in the temple of hâthor. this fact, which surprised him, is adequately explained by remembering that hâthor being a goddess, women take precedence over men in a temple dedicated to her. at sais, the chief priest was a man, the tcharp-haîtû; but the persistence with which women of the highest rank, and even queens themselves, took the title of prophetess of nit from the times of the ancient empire shows that in this city the priestess of the goddess was of equal, if not superior, rank to the priest. the lower offices in the households of the gods, as in princely households, were held by a troop of servants and artisans: butchers to cut the throats of the victims, cooks and pastrycooks, confectioners, weavers, shoemakers, florists, cellarers, water-carriers and milk-carriers. in fact, it was a state within a state, and the prince took care to keep its government in his own hands, either by investing one of his children with the titles and functions of chief pontiff', or by arrogating them to himself. in that case, he provided against mistakes which would have annulled the sacrifice by associating with himself several masters of the ceremonies, who directed him in the orthodox evolutions before the god and about the victim, indicated the due order of gestures and the necessary changes of costume, and prompted him with the words of each invocation from a book or tablet which they held in their hands.[*] * the title of such a personage was _khri-habi_, the man with the roll or tablet, because of the papyrus roll, or wooden tablet containing the ritual, which he held in his hand. in addition to its rites and special hierarchy, each of the sacerdotal colleges thus constituted had a theology in accordance with the nature and attributes of its god. its fundamental dogma affirmed the unity of the nome god, his greatness, his supremacy over all the gods of egypt and of foreign lands[*]--whose existence was nevertheless admitted, and none dreamed of denying their reality or contesting their power. * in the inscriptions all local gods bear the titles of _nûtir ûâ_, only god; sûton nûtirû, sûntirû, [ greek word], king of the gods; of _nûtir âa nib pit_, the great god, lord of heaven, which show their pretensions to the sovereignty and to the position of creator of the universe. the latter also boasted of their unity, their greatness, their supremacy; but whatever they were, the god of the nome was master of them all--their prince, their ruler, their king. it was he alone who governed the world, he alone kept it in good order, he alone had created it. not that he had evoked it out of nothing; there was as yet no concept of nothingness, and even to the most subtle and refined of primitive theologians creation was only a bringing of pre-existent elements into play. [illustration: 180.jpg shu uplifting the sky. 2] 2 drawing by faucher-gudin of a green enamelled statuette in my possession. it was from shu that the greeks derived their representations, and perhaps their myth of atlas. the latent germs of things had always existed, but they had slept for ages and ages in the bosom of the nû, of the dark waters. in fulness of time the god of each nome drew them forth, classified them, marshalled them according to the bent of his particular nature, and made his universe out of them by methods peculiarly his own. nît of saïs, who was a weaver, had made the world of warp and woof, as the mother of a family weaves her children's linen. khnûmû, the nile-god of the cataracts, had gathered up the mud of his waters and therewith moulded his creatures upon a potter's table. in the eastern cities of the delta these procedures were not so simple. there it was admitted that in the beginning earth and sky were two lovers lost in the nû, fast locked in each other's embrace, the god lying beneath the goddess. on the day of creation a new god, shu, came forth from the primaeval waters, slipped between the two, and seizing nûît with both hands, lifted her above his head with outstretched arms.[*] * this was what the egyptians called _the upliftings of shû_. the event first took place at hermopolis, and certain legends added that in order to get high enough the god had been obliged to make use of a staircase or mound situate in this city, and which was famous throughout egypt. though the starry body of the goddess extended in space--her head being to the west and her loins to the east--her feet and hands hung down to the earth. these were the four pillars of the firmament under another form, and four gods of four adjacent principalities were in charge of them. osiris, or horus the sparrow-hawk, presided over the southern, and sit over the northern pillar; thot over that of the west, and sapdi, the author of the zodiacal light, over that of the east. they had divided the world among themselves into four regions, or rather into four "houses," bounded by those mountains which surround it, and by the diameters intersecting between the pillars. each of these houses belonged to one, and to one only; none of the other three, nor even the sun himself, might enter it, dwell there, or even pass through it without having obtained its master's permission. sibu had not been satisfied to meet the irruption of shû by mere passive resistance. he had tried to struggle, and he is drawn in the posture of a man who has just awakened out of sleep, and is half turning on his couch before getting up. one of his legs is stretched out, the other is bent and partly drawn up as in the act of rising. the lower part of the body is still unmoved, but he is raising himself with difficulty on his left elbow, while his head droops and his right arm is lifted towards the sky. his effort was suddenly arrested. rendered powerless by a stroke of the creator, sibû remained as if petrified in this position, the obvious irregularities of the earth's surface being due to the painful attitude in which he was stricken. his sides have since been clothed with verdure, generations of men and animals have succeeded each other upon his back, but without bringing any relief to his pain; he suffers evermore from the violent separation of which he was the victim when nûît was torn from him, and his complaint continues to rise to heaven night and day. [illustration: 182.jpg shû forcibly separating sibû and nûît. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting on the mummy-case of bûtehamon in the turin museum. "shû, the great god, lord of heaven," receives the adoration of two ram-headed souls placed upon his right and left. [illustration: 183.jpg the didû of osiris. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a specimen in blue enamelled pottery, now in my possession. [illustration: 183b.jpg the didû dressed. 2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin from a figure frequently found in theban mummy-cases of xxist and xxiind dynasties (wilkinson, _manners and customs_. 2nd edit., vol. iii. pl. xxv., no 5). the aspect of the inundated plains of the delta, of the river by which they are furrowed and fertilized, and of the desert sands by which they are threatened, had suggested to the theologians of mendes and bûto an explanation of the mystery of creation, in which the feudal divinities of these cities and of several others in their neighbourhood, osiris, sit, and isis, played the principal parts. osiris first represented the wild and fickle nile of primitive times; afterwards, as those who dwelt upon his banks learned to regulate his course, they emphasized the kindlier side of his character and soon transformed him into a benefactor of humanity, the supremely good being, ûnnofriû, onnophris.[*] he was lord of the principality of didû, which lay along the sebennytic branch of the river between the coast marshes and the entrance to the wâdy tûmilât, but his domain had been divided; and the two nomes thus formed, namely, the ninth and sixteenth nomes of the delta in the pharaonic lists, remained faithful to him, and here he reigned without rival, at busiris as at mendes. his most famous idol-form was the didû, whether naked or clothed, the fetish, formed of four superimposed columns, which had given its name to the principality.[**] * it has long been a dogma with egyptologists that osiris came from abydos. maspero has shown that from his very titles he is obviously a native of the delta, and more especially of busiris and mendes. ** the didû has been very variously interpreted. it has been taken for a kind of nilometer, for a sculptor's or modeller's stand, or a painter's easel for an altar with four superimposed tables, or a sort of pedestal bearing four door-lintels, for a series of four columns placed one behind another, of which the capitals only are visible, one above the other, etc. the explanation given in the text is that of reuvens, who recognized the didû as a symbolic representation of the four regions of the world; and of maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 359, note 3. according to egyptian theologians, it represented the spine of osiris, preserved as a relic in the town bearing the name of _didû, bidît_. [illustration: 185.jpg osiris-onnophris, whip and crook in hand. 1] 1 drawn by boudier from a statue in green basalt found at sakkarah, and now in the gîzeh museum. they ascribed life to this didû, and represented it with a somewhat grotesque face, big cheeks, thick lips, a necklace round its throat, a long flowing dress which hid the base of the columns beneath its folds, and two arms bent across the breast, the hands grasping one a whip and the other a crook, symbols of sovereign authority. this, perhaps, was the most ancient form of osiris; but they also represented him as a man, and supposed him to assume the shapes of rams and bulls,[*] or even those of water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, and cranes, which disported themselves about the lakes of that district.[**] * the ram of mendes is sometimes osiris, and sometimes the soul of osiris. the ancients took it for a he-goat, and to them we are indebted for the record of its exploits. according to manetho, the worship of the sacred ram is not older than the time of king kaiekhos of the second dynasty. a ptolemaic necropolis of sacred rams was discovered by mariette at tmai el-amdid, in the ruins of thmûis, and some of their sarcophagi are now in the gîzeh museum. ** the bonû, the chief among these birds, is not the phoenix, as has so often been asserted. it is a kind of heron, either the _ardea cinerea_, which is common in egypt, or else some similar species. the goddess whom we are accustomed to regard as inseparable from him, isis the cow, or woman with cow's horns, had not always belonged to him. originally she was an independent deity, dwelling at bûto in the midst of the ponds of adhû. she had neither husband nor lover, but had spontaneously conceived and given birth to a son, whom she suckled among the reeds--a lesser horus who was called harsiîsît, horus the son of isis, to distinguish him from haroêris. at an early period she was married to her neighbour osiris, and no marriage could have been better suited to her nature. for she personified the earth--not the earth in general, like sibu, with its unequal distribution of seas and mountains, deserts and cultivated land; but the black and luxuriant plain of the delta, where races of men, plants, and animals increase and multiply in ever-succeeding generations. to whom did she owe this inexhaustible productive energy if not to her neighbour osiris, to the nile? the nile rises, overflows, lingers upon the soil; every year it is wedded to the earth, and the earth comes forth green and fruitful from its embraces. [illustration: 187.jpg isis, wearing the cow-horn head-dress. 1] 1 drawn by boudier from a green basalt statue in the gîzeh museum. prom a photograph by émil brugsch-bey. the marriage of the two elements suggested that of the two divinities; osiris wedded isis and adopted the young horus. but this prolific and gentle pair were not representative of all the phenomena of nature. the eastern part of the delta borders upon the solitudes of arabia, and although it contains several rich and fertile provinces, yet most of these owe their existence to the arduous labour of the inhabitants, their fertility being dependent on the daily care of man, and on his regular distribution of the water. the moment he suspends the straggle or relaxes his watchfulness, the desert reclaims them and overwhelms them with sterility. sit was the spirit of the mountain, stone and sand, the red and arid ground as distinguished from the moist black soil of the valley. on the body of a lion or of a dog he bore a fantastic head with a slender curved snout, upright and square-cut ears; his cloven tail rose stiffly behind him, springing from his loins like a fork. he also assumed a human form, or retained the animal head only upon a man's shoulders. he was felt to be cruel and treacherous, always ready to shrivel up the harvest with his burning breath, and to smother egypt beneath a shroud of shifting sand. the contrast between this evil being and the beneficent couple, osiris and isis, was striking. nevertheless, the theologians of the delta soon assigned a common origin to these rival divinities of nile and desert, red land and black. sibû had begotten them, nûît had given birth to them one after another when the demiurge had separated her from her husband; and the days of their birth were the days of creation.[*] * according to one legend which is comparatively old in origin, the fous* children of nûît, and horus her grandson, were born one after another, each on one of the intercalary days of the year. this legend was still current in the greek period. at first each of them had kept to his own half of the world. moreover sit, who had begun by living alone, had married, in order that he might be inferior to osiris in nothing. [illustration: 189.jpg nephthys, as a wailing woman. 1 and the god sît, fighting. 2] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a painted wooden statuette in my possession, from a funeral couch found at akhmîm. on her head the goddess bears the hieroglyph for her name; she is kneeling at the foot of the funeral couch of osiris and weeps for the dead god. 2 bronze statuette of the xxth dynasty, encrusted with gold, from the hoffmann collection: drawn by faucher-gudin from a photograph taken by legrain in 1891. about the time when the worship of sît was proscribed, one of the egyptian owners of this little monument had endeavoured to alter its character, and to transform it into a statuette of the god khnûmû. he took out the upright ears, replacing them with ram's horns, but made no other change. in the drawing i have had the later addition of the curved horns removed, and restored the upright ears, whose marks may still be seen upon the sides of the head-dress. as a matter of fact, his companion, nephthys, did not manifest any great activity, and was scarcely more than an artificial counterpart of the wife of osiris, a second isis who bore no children to her husband;[*] for the sterile desert brought barrenness to her as to all that it touched. * the impersonal character of nephthys, her artificial origin, and her derivation from isis, have been pointed out by maspero (_études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 362-364). the very name of the goddess, which means _the lady (nibît)_ of the_ mansion (haït)_, confirms this view. [illustration: 190.jpg plan of the ruins of heliopolis. 2] 2 drawn by thuillier, from the _description de l'egypte_ (atlas, ant., vol. v. pl. 26, 1). yet she had lost neither the wish nor the power to bring forth, and sought fertilization from another source. tradition had it that she had made osiris drunken, drawn him to her arms without his knowledge, and borne him a son; the child of this furtive union was the jackal anubis. thus when a higher nile overflows lands not usually covered by the inundation, and lying unproductive for lack of moisture, the soil eagerly absorbs the water, and the germs which lay concealed in the ground burst forth into life. the gradual invasion of the domain of sît by osiris marks the beginning of the strife. sit rebels against the wrong of which he is the victim, involuntary though it was; he surprises and treacherously slays his brother, drives isis into temporary banishment among her marshes, and reigns over the kingdom of osiris as well as over his own. but his triumph is short-lived. horus, having grown up, takes arms against him, defeats him in many encounters, and banishes him in his turn. the creation of the world had brought the destroying and the life-sustaining gods face to face: the history of the world is but the story of their rivalries and warfare. none of these conceptions alone sufficed to explain the whole mechanism of creation, nor the part which the various gods took in it. the priests of heliopolis appropriated them all, modified some of their details and eliminated others, added several new personages, and thus finally constructed a complete cosmogony, the elements of which were learnedly combined so as to correspond severally with the different operations by which the world had been evoked out of chaos and gradually brought to its present state. heliopolis was never directly involved in the great revolutions of political history; but no city ever originated so many mystic ideas and consequently exercised so great an influence upon the development of civilization.[*] * by its inhabitants it was accounted older than any other city of egypt. [illustration: 192.jpg horus, the avenger of his father, and anubis ûapôaîtû. 2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by béato of a bas-relief in the temple of seti i. at abydos. the two gods are conducting king ramses ii., here identified with osiris, towards the goddess hâthor. it was a small town built on the plain not far from the nile at the apex of the delta, and surrounded by a high wall of mud bricks whose remains could still be seen at the beginning of the century, but which have now almost completely disappeared. [illustration: 191.jpg the sun springing from an opening lotus-flower] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin. the open lotus-flower, with a bud on either side, stands upon the usual sign for any water basin. here the sign represents the nû, that dark watery abyss from which the lotus sprang on the morning of creation, and whereon it is still supposed to bloom. one obelisk standing in the midst of the open plain, a few waste mounds of débris, scattered blocks, and two or three lengths of crumbling wall, alone mark the place where once the city stood. ka was worshipped there, and the greek name of heliopolis is but the translation of that which was given to it by the priests--pi-ra, city of the sun. its principal temple, the "mansion of the prince," rose from about the middle of the enclosure, and sheltered, together with the god himself, those animals in which he became incarnate: the bull mnevis, and sometimes the phoenix. according to an old legend, this wondrous bird appeared in egypt only once in five hundred years. it is born and lives in the depths of arabia, but when its father dies it covers the body with a layer of myrrh, and flies at utmost speed to the temple of helio-polis, there to bury it.[*] * the phoenix is not the _bonû_ (cf. p. 186, note 2), but a fabulous bird derived from the golden sparrow-hawk, which was primarily a form of haroêris, and of the sun-gods in second place only. on the authority of his heliopolitan guides, herodotus tells us (ii. 83) that in shape and size the phoenix resembled the eagle, and this statement alone should have sufficed to prevent any attempt at identifying it with the bonû, which is either a heron or a lapwing. [illustration: 194.jpg the plain and mounds of heliopolis fifty years ago.2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a water-colour published by lepsius, _denkm_., i. 56. the view is taken from the midst of the ruins at the foot of the obelisk of usirtasen. a little stream runs in the foreground, and passes through a muddy pool; to right and left are mounds of ruins, which were then considerable, but have since been partially razed. in the distance cairo rises against the south-west. in the beginning, râ was the sun itself, whose fires appear to be lighted every morning in the east and to be extinguished at evening in the west; and to the people such he always remained. among the theologians there was considerable difference of opinion on the point. some held the disk of the sun to be the body which the god assumes when presenting himself for the adoration of his worshippers. others affirmed that it rather represented his active and radiant soul. finally, there were many who defined it as one of his forms of being--_khopriû_--one of his self-manifestations, without presuming to decide whether it was his body or his soul which he deigned to reveal to human eyes; but whether soul or body, all agreed that the sun's disk had existed in the nû before creation. but how could it have lain beneath the primordial ocean without either drying up the waters or being extinguished by them? at this stage the identification of râ with horus and his right eye served the purpose of the theologians admirably: the god needed only to have closed his eyelid in order to prevent his fires from coming in contact with the water.[*] * this is clearly implied in the expression so often used by the sacred writers of ancient egypt in reference to the appearance of the sun and his first act at the time of creation: "_thou openest the two eyes_, and earth is flooded with rays of light." he was also said to have shut up his disk within a lotus-bud, whose folded petals had safely protected it. the flower had opened on the morning of the first day, and from it the god had sprung suddenly as a child wearing the solar disk upon his head. but all theories led the theologians to distinguish two periods, and as it were two beings in the existence of supreme deity: a pre-mundane sun lying inert within the bosom of the dark waters, and our living and life-giving sun. [illustration: 196.jpg hakmakhûîti-hakmakhis, the great god. 1] 1 drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger of an outer wall of the hypostyle hall at karnak. harmakhis grants years and festivals to the pharaoh seti i., who kneels before him, and is presented by the lioness-headed goddess sokhît, here described as a magician--_oîrît hilcaû_. one division of the heliopolitan school retained the use of traditional terms and images in reference to these sun-gods. to the first it left the human form, and the title of râ, with the abstract sense of creator, deriving the name from the verb _râ_, which means to give. for the second it kept the form of the sparrow-hawk and the name of harma-khûîti--horus in the two horizons--which clearly denoted his function;[*] and it summed up the idea of the sun as a whole in the single name of râ-harmakhûîti, and in a single image in which the hawk-head of horus was grafted upon the human body of râ. the other divisions of the school invented new names for new conceptions. the sun existing before the world they called creator--_tûmû, atûmû_ [**]--and our earthly sun they called _khopri_--he who is. * harmakhûîti is horus, the sky of the two horizons; _i.e._ the sky of the daytime, and the night sky. when the celestial horus was confounded with râ, and became the sun (cf. p. 133), he naturally also became the sun of the two horizons, the sun by day, and the sun by night. ** e. de rouge, _études sur le rituel funéraire_, p. 76: "his name may be connected with two radicals. tem is a negation; it may be taken to mean _the inapproachable one, the unknown_ (as in thebes, where _aman_ means mystery). atûm is, in fact, described as 'existing alone in the abyss,' before the appearance of light. it was in this time of darkness that atûm performed the first act of creation, and this allows of our also connecting his name with the coptic tamio, _creare_. atûm was also the prototype of man (in coptic tme, _homo_), and becomes a perfect 'tûm' after his resurrection." rugsch would rather explain _tûmû_ as meaning _the perfect one, the complete_. e. de rougé's philological derivations are no longer admissible; but his explanation of the name corresponds so well with the part played by the god that i fail to see how that can be challenged. tûmû was a man crowned and clothed with the insignia of supreme power, a true king of gods, majestic and impassive as the pharaohs who succeeded each other upon the throne of egypt. the conception of khopri as a disk enclosing a scarabæus, or a man with a scarabous upon his head, or a scarabus-headed mummy, was suggested by the accidental alliteration of his name and that of khopirrû, the scarabæus. the difference between the possible forms of the god was so slight as to be eventually lost altogether. his names were grouped by twos and threes in every conceivable way, and the scarabæus of khopri took its place upon the head of râ, while the hawk headpiece was transferred from the shoulders of harmakhûîti to those of tûmû. the complex beings resulting from these combinations, râ-tûmû, atûmû-râ, râ-tûmû-khopri, râ-harmakhûîti-tûmû, tûm-harmakhûîti-khopri, never attained to any pronounced individuality. [illustration: 198.jpg khopri, in his bark] they were as a rule simple duplicates of the feudal god, names rather than persons, and though hardly taken for one another indiscriminately, the distinctions between them had reference to mere details of their functions and attributes. hence arose the idea of making these gods into embodiments of the main phases in the life of the sun during the day and throughout the year. râ symbolized the sun of springtime and before sunrise, harmakhûîti the summer and the morning sun, atûmû the sun of autumn and of afternoon, khopri that of winter and of night. the people of heliopolis accepted the new names and the new forms presented for their worship, but always subordinated them to their beloved râ. for them râ never ceased to be the god of the nome; while atûmû remained the god of the theologians, and was invoked by them, the people preferred râ. at thinis and at sebennytos anhûri incurred the same fate as befell râ at heliopolis. after he had been identified with the sun, the similar identification of shû inevitably followed. of old, anhûri and shû were twin gods, incarnations of sky and earth. they were soon but one god in two persons--the god anhûri-shû, of which the one half under the title of auhûri represented, like atûmû, the primordial being; and shû, the other half, became, as his name indicates, the creative sun-god who upholds (_shû_) the sky. tûrnû then, rather than râ, was placed by the heliopolitan priests at the head of their cosmogony as supreme creator and governor. several versions were current as to how he had passed from inertia into action, from the personage of tûmû into that of râ. according to the version most widely received, he had suddenly cried across the waters, "come unto me!"[*] and immediately the mysterious lotus had unfolded its petals, and râ had appeared at the edge of its open cup as a disk, a newborn child, or a disk-crowned sparrow-hawk; this was probably a refined form of a ruder and earlier tradition, according to which it was upon râ himself that the office had devolved of separating sibû from nûît, for the purpose of constructing the heavens and the earth. * it was on this account that the egyptians named the first day of the year the _day of come-unto-me!_ but it was doubtless felt that so unseemly an act of intervention was beneath the dignity even of an inferior form of the suzerain god; shû was therefore borrowed for the purpose from the kindred cult of anhûri, and at heliopolis, as at sebennytos, the office was entrusted to him of seizing the sky-goddess and raising her with outstretched arms. the violence suffered by nûît at the hands of shû led to a connexion of the osirian dogma of mendes with the solar dogma of sebennytos, and thus the tradition describing the creation of the world was completed by another, explaining its division into deserts and fertile lands. sîbû, hitherto concealed beneath the body of his wife, was now exposed to the sun; osiris and sit, isis and nephthys, were born, and, falling from the sky, their mother, on to the earth, their father, they shared the surface of the latter among themselves. thus the heliopolitan doctrine recognized three principal events in the creation of the universe: the dualization of the supreme god and the breaking forth of light, the raising of the sky and the laying bare of the earth, the birth of the nile and the allotment of the soil of egypt, all expressed as the manifestations of successive deities. of these deities, the latter ones already constituted a family of father, mother, and children, like human families. learned theologians availed themselves of this example to effect analogous relationships between the rest of the gods, combining them all into one line of descent. as atûmû-râ could have no fellow, he stood apart in the first rank, and it was decided that shû should be his son, whom he had formed out of himself alone, on the first day of creation, by the simple intensity of his own virile energy. shû, reduced to the position of divine son, had in his turn begotten sibû and nûît, the two deities which he separated. until then he had not been supposed to have any wife, and he also might have himself brought his own progeny into being; but lest a power of spontaneous generation equal to that of the demiurge should be ascribed to him, he was married, and the wife found for him was tafnûît, his twin sister, born in the same way as he was born. this goddess, invented for the occasion, was never fully alive, and remained, like nephthys, a theological entity rather than a real person. the texts describe her as the pale reflex of her husband. [illustration: 201.jpg the twin lions, shû and tafnûît. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a vignette in the papyrus of ani in the british museum, published by lepage-renouf in the _proceedings of the society of biblical archæology_, vol. xi., 1889-90, pp. 26-28. the inscription above the lion on the right reads _safu_, "yesterday;" the other, _dûaû_, "this morning." together with him she upholds the sky, and every morning receives the newborn sun as it emerges from the mountain of the east; she is a lioness when shû is a lion, a woman when he is a man, a lioness-headed woman if he is a lion-headed man; she is angry when he is angry, appeased when he is appeased; she has no sanctuary wherein he is not worshipped. in short, the pair made one being in two bodies, or, to use the egyptian expression, "one soul in its two twin bodies." hence we see that the heliopolitans proclaimed the creation to be the work of the sun-god, atûmû-râ, and of the four pairs of deities who were descended from him. it was really a learned variant of the old doctrine that the universe was composed of a sky-god, horus, supported by his four children and their four pillars: in fact, the four sons of the heliopolitan cosmogony, shû and sibû, osiris and sit, were occasionally substituted for the four older gods of the "houses" of the world. this being premised, attention must be given to the important differences between the two systems. at the outset, instead of appearing contemporaneously upon the scene, like the four children of horus, the four heliopolitan gods were deduced one from another, and succeeded each other in the order of their birth. they had not that uniform attribute of supporter, associating them always with one definite function, but each of them felt himself endowed with faculties and armed with special powers required by his condition. ultimately they took to themselves goddesses, and thus the total number of beings working in different ways at the organization of the universe was brought up to nine. hence they were called by the collective name of the ennead, the nine gods--_paûit nûtîrû_,[*]--and the god at their head was entitled _paûîti_, the god of the ennead. * the first egyptologists confounded the sign used in writing _paûît_ with the sign _kh_, and the word _khet, other_. e. de rougé was the first to determine its phonetic value: "it should be read paû, and designates a body of gods." shortly afterwards beugsch proved that "the group of gods invoked by e. de rougé must have consisted of nine "- of an ennead. this explanation was not at first admitted either by lepsius or by mariette, who had proposed a mystic interpretation of the word in his _mémoire sur la mère d'apis_, or by e. de rougé, or by chabas. the interpretation a _nine_, an _ennead_, was not frankly adopted until later, and more especially after the discovery of the pyramid texts; to-day, it is the only meaning admitted. of course the egyptian ennead has no other connection than that of name with the enneads of the neo-platonists. when creation was completed, its continued existence was ensured by countless agencies with whose operation the persons of the ennead were not at leisure to concern themselves, but had ordained auxiliaries to preside over each of the functions essential to the regular and continued working of all things. the theologians of heliopolis selected eighteen from among the innumerable divinities of the feudal cults of egypt, and of these they formed two secondary enneads, who were regarded as the offspring of the ennead of the creation. the first of the two secondary enneads, generally known as the minor ennead, recognized as chief harsiesis, the son of osiris. harsiesis was originally an earth-god who had avenged the assassination of his father and the banishment of his mother by sit; that is, he had restored fulness to the nile and fertility to the delta. when harsiesis was incorporated into the solar religions of heliopolis, his filiation was left undisturbed as being a natural link between the two enneads, but his personality was brought into conformity with the new surroundings into which he was transplanted. he was identified with râ through the intervention of the older horus, haroêris-harmakhis, and the minor ennead, like the great ennead, began with a sun-god. this assimilation was not pushed so far as to invest the younger horus with the same powers as his fictitious ancestor: he was the sun of earth, the everyday sun, while atûmû-râ was still the sun pre-mundane and eternal. our knowledge of the eight other deities of the minor ennead is very imperfect. [illustration: 204.jpg the four funerary genii, khabsonûf, tiûmaûtf, hapi, and amsît. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from wilkinson's _manners and customs_, 2nd edit., vol. iii. p. 221, pl. xlviii. we see only that these were the gods who chiefly protected the sun-god against its enemies and helped it to follow its regular course. thus harhûditi, the horus of edfû, spear in hand, pursues the hippopotami or serpents which haunt the celestial waters and menace the god. the progress of the sun-bark is controlled by the incantations of thot, while uapûaîtû, the dual jackal-god of siufc, guides, and occasionally tows it along the sky from south to north. the third ennead would seem to have included among its members anubis the jackal, and the four funerary genii, the children of horus--hapi, amsît, tiûmaûtf, kabhsonûf; it further appears as though its office was the care and defence of the dead sun, the sun by night, as the second ennead had charge of the living sun. its functions were so obscure and apparently so insignificant as compared with those exercised by the other enneads, that the theologians did not take the trouble either to represent it or to enumerate its persons. they invoked it as a whole, after the two others, in those formulas in which they called into play all the creative and preservative forces of the universe; but this was rather as a matter of conscience and from love of precision than out of any true deference. at the initial impulse of the lord of heliopolis, the three combined enneads started the world and kept it going, and gods whom they had not incorporated were either enemies to be fought with, or mere attendants. the doctrine of the heliopolitan ennead acquired an immediate and a lasting popularity. it presented such a clear scheme of creation, and one whose organization was so thoroughly in accordance with the spirit of tradition, that the various sacerdotal colleges adopted it one after another, accommodating it to the exigencies of local patriotism. each placed its own nome-god at the head of the ennead as "god of the nine," "god of the first time," creator of heaven and earth, sovereign ruler of men, and lord of all action. as there was the ennead of atûmû at heliopolis, so there was that of anhûri at thinis and at sebennytos; that of minû at coptos and at panopolis; that of haroêris at edfû; that of sobkhû at ombos; and, later, that of phtah at memphis and of amon at thebes. nomes which worshipped a goddess had no scruples whatever in ascribing to her the part played by atûmû, and in crediting her with the spontaneous maternity of shû and tafnûît. illustration: 206.jpg [plan of the ruins op hermopolis magna. 1] 1 plan drawn by thuillier, from the _description de l' egypte_, ant., vol. iv. pl. 50. nît was the source and ruler of the ennead of saïs, isis of that of bûto, and hâthor of that of denderah.[**] few of the sacerdotal colleges went beyond the substitution of their own feudal gods for atûmû. provided that the god of each nome held the rank of supreme lord, the rest mattered little, and the local theologians made no change in the order of the other agents of creation, their vanity being unhurt even by the lower offices assigned by the heliopolitan tradition to such powers as osiris, sibû, and sit, who were known and worshipped throughout the whole country. ** on the ennead of hâthor at denderah, see mariette, denderah, p. 80., et seq., of the text. the fact that nît, isis, and, generally speaking, all the feudal goddesses, were the chiefs of their local enneads, is proved by the epithets applied to them, which represent them as having independent creative power by virtue of their own unaided force and energy, like the god at the head of the heliopolitan ennead. the theologians of hermopolis alone declined to borrow the new system just as it stood, and in all its parts. hermopolis had always been one of the ruling cities of middle egypt. standing alone in the midst of the land lying between the eastern and western mies, it had established upon each of the two great arms of the river a port and a custom-house, where all boats travelling either up or down stream paid toll on passing. not only the corn and natural products of the valley and of the delta, but also goods from distant parts of africa brought to siûfc by soudanese caravans, helped to fill the treasury of hermopolis. thot, the god of the city, represented as ibis or baboon, was essentially a moon-god, who measured time, counted the days, numbered the months, and recorded the years. lunar divinities, as we know, are everywhere supposed to exercise the most varied powers: they command the mysterious forces of the universe; they know the sounds, words, and gestures by which those forces are put in motion, and not content with using them for their own benefit, they also teach to their worshippers the art of employing them. [illustration: 208.jpg the ibis thot. 1; and the cynocephalous thot. 2] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from an enamelled pottery figure from coptos, now in my possession. neck, feet, and tail are in blue enamel, the rest is in green. the little personage represented as squatting beneath the beak is mâit, the goddess of truth, and the ally of thot. the ibis was furnished with a ring for suspending it; this has been broken off, but traces of it may still be seen at the back of the head. 2 drawn by faucher-gudin from a green enamelled pottery figure in my possession (saïte period). thot formed no exception to this rule. he was lord of the voice, master of words and of books, possessor or inventor of those magic writings which nothing in heaven, on earth, or in hades can withstand.[***] *** cf. in the tale of satni (maspero, _contes populaires de l'ancienne egypte_, 2nd edit., p. 175) the description of the book which thot has himself written with his own hand, and which makes its possessor the equal of the gods. "the two formulas which are written therein, if thou recitest the first thou shalt charm heaven, earth, hades, the mountains, the waters; thou shalt know the birds of the sky and the reptiles, how many soever they be; thou shalt see the fish of the deep, for a divine power will cause them to rise to the surface of the water. if thou readest the second formula, even although thou shouldest be in the tomb, thou shalt again take the form which was thine upon earth; thou shalt even see the sun rising in heaven, and his cycle of gods, and the moon in the form wherein it appeareth." he had discovered the incantations which evoke and control the gods; he had transcribed the texts and noted the melodies of these incantations; he recited them with that true intonation--_mâ khrôû_--which renders them all-powerful, and every one, whether god or man, to whom he imparted them, and whose voice he made true--_smâ khrôû_--became like himself master of the universe. he had accomplished the creation not by muscular effort to which the rest of the cosmogonical gods primarily owed their birth, but by means of formulas, or even of the voice alone, "the first time" when he awoke in the nû. in fact, the articulate word and the voice were believed to be the most potent of creative forces, not remaining immaterial on issuing from the lips, but condensing, so to speak, into tangible substances; into bodies which were themselves animated by creative life and energy; into gods and goddesses who lived or who created in their turn. by a very short phrase tûmû had called forth the gods who order all things; for his "come unto me!" uttered with a loud voice upon the day of creation, had evoked the sun from within the lotus. thot had opened his lips, and the voice which proceeded from him had become an entity; sound had solidified into matter, and by a simple emission of voice the four gods who preside over the four houses of the world had come forth alive from his mouth without bodily effort on his part, and without spoken evocation. creation by the voice is almost as great a refinement of thought as the substitution of creation by the word for creation by muscular effort. in fact, sound bears the same relation to words that the whistle of a quartermaster bears to orders for the navigation of a ship transmitted by a speaking trumpet; it simplifies speech, reducing it as it were to a pure abstraction. at first it was believed that the creator had made the world with a word, then that he had made it by sound; but the further conception of his having made it by thought does not seem to have occurred to the theologians. it was narrated at hermopolis, and the legend was ultimately universally accepted, even by the heliopolitans, that the separation of nûît and sibû had taken place at a certain spot on the site of the city where sibû had ascended the mound on which the feudal temple was afterwards built, in order that he might better sustain the goddess and uphold the sky at the proper height. the conception of a creative council of five gods had so far prevailed at hermopolis that from this fact the city had received in remote antiquity the name of the "house of the five;" its temple was called the "abode of the five" down to a late period in egyptian history, and its prince, who was the hereditary high priest of thot, reckoned as the first of his official titles that of "great one of the house of the five." the four couples who had helped atûmû were identified with the four auxiliary gods of thot, and changed the council of five into a great hermopolitan ennead, but at the cost of strange metamorphoses. however artificially they had been grouped about atûmû, they had all preserved such distinctive characteristics as prevented their being confounded one with another. when the universe which they had helped to build up was finally seen to be the result of various operations demanding a considerable manifestation of physical energy, each god was required to preserve the individuality necessary for the production of such effects as were expected of him. they could not have existed and carried on their work without conforming to the ordinary conditions of humanity; being born one of another, they were bound to have paired with living goddesses as capable of bringing forth their children as they were of begetting them. on the other hand, the four auxiliary gods of hermopolis exercised but one means of action--the voice. having themselves come forth from the master's mouth, it was by voice that they created and perpetuated the world. apparently they could have done without goddesses had marriage not been imposed upon them by their identification with the corresponding gods of the heliopolitan ennead; at any rate, their wives had but a show of life, almost destitute of reality. as these four gods worked after the manner of their master, thot, so they also bore his form and reigned along with him as so many baboons. when associated with the lord of hermopolis, the eight divinities of heliopolis assumed the character and the appearance of the four hermopolitan gods in whom they were merged. they were often represented as eight baboons surrounding the supreme baboon, or as four pairs of gods and goddesses without either characteristic attributes or features; or, finally, as four pairs of gods and goddesses, the gods being, as far as we are able to judge, the couple nû-nûît answers to shû-tafnûît; hahû-hehît to sibû and nûîfc; kakû-kakît to osiris and isis; ninû-ninît to sit and nephthys. there was seldom any occasion to invoke them separately; they were addressed collectively as the eight--_khmûnû_--and it was on their account that hermopolis was named _khmûnû_, the city of the eight. ultimately they were deprived of the little individual life still left to them, and were fused into a single being to whom the texts refer as khomninû, the god eight. [illustration: 212.jpg the hermopolitan ogdoad. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a photograph by béato. cf. lepsius, denkm., iv. pl. 66 c. in this illustration i have combined! the two extremities of a great scene at philæ, in which the _eight_, divided into two groups of four, frog headed men, and the goddesses serpent-headed women. morning and evening do they sing; and the mysterious hymns wherewith they salute the rising and the setting sun ensure the continuity of his course. their names did not survive their metamorphoses; each pair had no longer more than a single name, the termination of each name varying according as a god or a goddess was intended:--nu and nûît, hehû and hehît, kakû and kakît, ninû and ninît, the god one and the god eight, the monad and the ogdoad. the latter had scarcely more than a theoretical existence, and was generally absorbed into the person of the former. thus the theologians of hermopolis gradually disengaged the unity of their feudal god from the multiplicity of the cosmogonie deities. [illustration: 213.jpg amon. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a bronze statuette found at thebes, and now in my possession. by degrees the ennead of thot was thus reduced to two terms: take part in the adoration of the king. according to a custom common towards the græco-roman period, the sculptor has made the feet of his gods like jackals' heads; it is a way of realizing the well-known metaphor which compares a rapid runner to the jackal roaming around egypt. as the sacerdotal colleges had adopted the heliopolitan doctrine, so they now generally adopted that of hermopolis: amon, for instance, being made to preside indifferently over the eight baboons and over the four independent couples of the primitive ennead. in both cases the process of adaptation was absolutely identical, and would have been attended by no difficulty whatever, had the divinities to whom it was applied only been without family; in that case, the one needful change for each city would have been that of a single name in the heliopolitan list, thus leaving the number of the ennead unaltered. but since these deities had been turned into triads they could no longer be primarily regarded as simple units, to be combined with the elements of some one or other of the enneads without preliminary arrangement. the two companions whom each had chosen had to be adopted also, and the single thot, or single atûmû, replaced by the three patrons of the nome, thus changing the traditional nine into eleven. happily, the constitution of the triad lent itself to all these adaptations. we have seen that the father and the son became one and the same personage, whenever it was thought desirable. we also know that one of the two parents always so far predominated as almost to efface the other. sometimes it was the goddess who disappeared behind her husband; sometimes it was the god whose existence merely served to account for the offspring of the goddess, and whose only title to his position consisted in the fact that he was her husband. two personages thus closely connected were not long in blending into one, and were soon defined as being two faces, the masculine and feminine aspects of a single being. on the one hand, the father was one with the son, and on the other he was one with the mother. hence the mother was one with the son as with the father, and the three gods of the triad were resolved into one god in three persons. [illustration: 215.jpg the theban ennead] 1 this ennead consists of fourteen members--montû, duplicating atûmû; the four usual couples; then horus, the son of isis and osiris, together with his associate deities, hâthor, tanu, and anît. thanks to this subterfuge, to put a triad at the head of an ennead was nothing more than a roundabout way of placing a single god there: the three persons only counted as one, and the eleven names only amounted to the nine canonical divinities. thus, the theban ennead of amon-maut-khonsû, shû, tafnûît, sibû, nûît, osiris, isis, sît, and nephthys, is, in spite of its apparent irregularity, as correct as the typical ennead itself. in such enneads isis is duplicated by goddesses of like nature, such as hâthor, selkît, taninît, and yet remains but one, while osiris brings in his son horus, who gathers about himself all such gods as play the part of divine son in other triads. the theologians had various methods of procedure for keeping the number of persons in an ennead at nine, no matter how many they might choose to embrace in it. supernumeraries were thrown in like the "shadows" at roman suppers, whom guests would bring without warning to their host, and whose presence made not the slightest difference either in the provision for the feast, or in the arrangements for those who had been formally invited. thus remodelled at all points, the ennead of heliopolis was readily adjustable to sacerdotal caprices, and even profited by the facilities which, the triad afforded for its natural expansion. in time the heliopolitan version of the origin of shû-tafnûît must have appeared too primitively barbarous. allowing for the licence of the egyptians during pharaonic times, the concept of the spontaneous emission whereby atûrnû had produced his twin children was characterized by a superfluity of coarseness which it was at least unnecessary to employ, since by placing the god in a triad, this double birth could be duly explained in conformity with the ordinary laws of life. the solitary atûrnû of the more ancient dogma gave place to atûrnû the husband and father. he had, indeed, two wives, iûsâsît and nebthotpît, but their individualities were so feebly marked that no one took the trouble to choose between them; each passed as the mother of shû and tafnûîfc. this system of combination, so puerile in its ingenuity, was fraught with the gravest consequences to the history of egyptian religions. shu having been transformed into the divine son of the heliopolitan triad, could henceforth be assimilated with the divine sons of all those triads which took the place of tûmû at the heads of provincial enneads. thus we find that horus the son of isis at bûto, arihosnofir the son of nit at sais, khnûmû the son of hâthor at esneh, were each in turn identified with shû the son of atûrnû, and lost their individualities in his. sooner or later this was bound to result in bringing all the triads closer together, and in their absorption into one another. through constant reiteration of the statement that the divine sons of the triads were identical with shû, as being in the second rank of the ennead, the idea arose that this was also the case in triads unconnected with enneads; in other terms, that the third person in any family of gods was everywhere and always shû under a different name. it having been finally admitted in the sacerdotal colleges that tûmû and shû, father and son, were one, all the divine sons were, therefore, identical with tûmû, the father of shû, and as each divine son was one with his parents, it inevitably followed that these parents themselves were identical with tûmû. reasoning in this way, the egyptians naturally tended towards that conception of the divine oneness to which the theory of the hermopolitan ogdoad was already leading them. in fact, they reached it, and the monuments show us that in comparatively early times the theologians were busy uniting in a single person the prerogatives which their ancestors had ascribed to many different beings. but this conception of deity towards which their ideas were converging has nothing in common with the conception of the god of our modern religions and philosophies. no god of the egyptians was ever spoken of simply as god. tûmû was the "one and only god"--_nûtir ûâû ûâîti_--at heliopolis; anhûri-shû was also the "one and only god" at sebennytos and at thinis. the unity of atûmû did not interfere with that of anhûri-shû, but each of these gods, although the "sole" deity in his own domain, ceased to be so in the domain of the other. the feudal spirit, always alert and jealous, prevented the higher dogma which was dimly apprehended in the temples from triumphing over local religions and extending over the whole land. egypt had as many "sole" deities as she had large cities, or even important temples; she never accepted the idea of the sole god, "beside whom there is none other." [illustration: 218.jpg tailpiece] [illustration: 219.jpg page image] [illustration: 220.jpg page image] chapter iii.---the legendary history of egypt _the divine dynasties: râ, shû, osieis, sît, hoeus--thot, and the invention of sciences and writing--menes, and the three first human dynasties._ _the egyptians claim to be the most ancient of peoples: traditions concerning the creation of man and of animals--the heliopolitan enneads the framework of the divine dynasties--râ, the first king of egypt, and his fabulous history: he allows himself to be duped and robbed by isis, destroys rebellious men, and ascends into heaven. the legend of shu and sibil--the reign of osiris onnophris and of isis: they civilize egypt and the world--osiris, slain by sit, is entombed by isis and avenged by horus--the wars of typhon and of horus: peace, and the division of egypt between the two gods. the osirian embalmment; the kingdom of osiris opened to the followers of horus--the book of the dead--the journeying of the soul in search of the fields of ialû--the judgment of the soul, the negative confession--the privileges and duties of osirian souls--confusion between osirian and solar ideas as to the state of the dead: the dead in the hark of the sun--the going forth by day--the campaigns of harmakhis against sit. thot, the inventor: he reveals all sciences to men--astronomy, stellar tables; the year, its subdivisions, its defects, influence of the heavenly bodies and the days upon human destiny--magic arts; incantations, amulets---medicine: the vitalizing spirits, diagnosis, treatment--writing: ideographic, syllabic, alphabetic. the history of egypt as handed down by tradition: manetho, the royal lists, main divisions of egyptian history--the beginnings of its early history vague and uncertain: menés, and the legend of memphis--the first three human dynasties, the two thimie and the memphite--character and, origin of the legends concerning them--the famine stela--the earliest monuments: the step pyramid of saqgdrah._ [illustration: 221.jpg page image] the legendary history of egypt _the divine dynasties: râ, shû, osiris, sît, horus--thot, and the invention of sciences and writing--menés, and the three first human dynasties._ the building up and diffusion of the doctrine of the ennead, like the formation of the land of egypt, demanded centuries of sustained effort, centuries of which the inhabitants themselves knew neither the number nor the authentic history. when questioned as to the remote past of their race, they proclaimed themselves the most ancient of mankind, in comparison with whom all other races were but a mob of young children; and they looked upon nations which denied their pretensions with such indulgence and pity as we feel for those who doubt a well-known truth. their forefathers had appeared upon the banks of the nile even before the creator had completed his work, so eager were the gods to behold their birth. no egyptian disputed the reality of this right of the firstborn, which ennobled the whole race; but if they were asked the name of their divine father, then the harmony was broken, and each advanced the claims of a different personage.[*] phtah had modelled man with his own hands;[**] khnûmû had formed him on a potter's table.[***] * we know the words which plato puts into the mouth of an egyptian priest: "o solon, solon, you greeks are always children, and there is no old man who is a greek! you are all young in mind; there is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you which is white with age." other nations disputed their priority--the phrygians, the medes, or rather the tribe of the magi among the medes, the ethiopians, the scythians. a cycle of legends had gathered about this subject, giving an account of the experiments instituted, by psamtik, or other sovereigns, to find out which were right, egyptians or foreigners. ** at philæ and at denderah, phtah is represented as piling upon his potter's table the plastic clay from which he is about to make a human body, and which is somewhat wrongly called the egg of the world. it is really the lump of earth from which man came forth at his creation. *** at philas, khnûmû calls himself "the potter who fashions men, the modeller of the gods." he there moulds the members of osiris, the husband of the local isis, as at erment he forms the body of harsamtaûi, or rather that of ptolemy cæsarion, the son of julius cæsar and the celebrated cleopatra, identified with harsamtaûi. râ at his first rising, seeing the earth desert and bare, had flooded it with his rays as with a flood of tears; all living things, vegetable and animal, and man himself, had sprung pell-mell from his eyes, and were scattered abroad with the light over the surface of the world.[*] sometimes the facts were presented under a less poetic aspect. the mud of the nile, heated to excess by the burning sun, fermented and brought forth the various races of men and animals by spontaneous generation, having moulded itself into a thousand living forms. then its procreative power became weakened to the verge of exhaustion. yet on the banks of the river, in the height of summer, smaller animals might still be found whose condition showed what had once taken place in the case of the larger kinds. some appeared as already fully formed, and struggling to free themselves from the oppressive mud; others, as yet imperfect, feebly stirred their heads and fore feet, while their hind quarters were completing their articulation and taking shape within the matrix of earth.[**] * with reference to the substances which proceeded from the eye of râ, see the remarks of birch, _sur un papyrus magique du musée britannique_. by his tears (_romîtû_) horus, or his eye as identified with the sun, had given birth to all men, egyptians (_romîtû, rotû_), libyans, and asiatics, excepting only the negroes. the latter were born from another part of his body by the same means as those employed by atûmû in the creation of shû and tafnûît. ** the same story is told, but with reference to rats only, by pliny, by diodorus, by ælianus, by macrobius, and by other greek or latin writers. even in later times, and in europe, this pretended phenomenon met with a certain degree of belief, as may be seen from the curious work of marcus fredericus wendelinus, _archipalatinus, admiranda nili_, franco-furti, mdcxxiii., cap. xxi. pp. 157-183. in egypt all the fellahîn believe in the spontaneous generation of rats as in an article of their creed. they have spoken to me of it at thebes, at denderah, and on the plain of abydos; and major brown has lately noted the same thing in the fayûm. the variant which he heard from the lips of the notables is curious, for it professes to explain why the rats who infest the fields in countless bands during the dry season, suddenly disappear at the return of the inundation; born of the mud and putrid water of the preceding year, to mud they return, and as it were dissolve at the touch of the new waters. it was not râ alone whose tears were endowed with vitalizing power. all divinities whether beneficent or malevolent, sit as well as osiris or isis, could give life by weeping; and the work of their eyes, when once it had fallen upon earth, flourished and multiplied as vigorously as that which came from the eyes of râ. [illustration: 224.jpg khnûmû modelling man upon a potter's table. 1] 1 drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gayet. the scene is taken from bas-reliefs in the temple of luxor, where the god khnûmû is seen completing his modelling of the future king amenôthes iii. and his double, represented as two children wearing the side-lock and large necklace. the first holds his finger to his lips, while the arms of the second swing at his sides. the individual character of the creator was not without bearing upon the nature of his creatures; good was the necessary outcome of the good gods, evil of the evil ones; and herein lay the explanation of the mingling of things excellent and things execrable, which is found everywhere throughout the world. voluntarily or involuntarily, sit and his partisans were the cause and origin of all that is harmful. daily their eyes shed upon the world those juices by which plants are made poisonous, as well as malign influences, crime, and madness. their saliva, the foam which fell from their mouths during their attacks of rage, their sweat, their blood itself, were all no less to be feared. when any drop of it touched the earth, straightway it germinated, and produced something strange and baleful--a serpent, a scorpion, a plant of deadly nightshade or of henbane. but, on the other hand, the sun was all goodness, and persons or things which it cast forth into life infallibly partook of its benignity. wine that maketh man glad, the bee who works for him in the flowers secreting wax and honey, the meat and herbs which are his food, the stuffs that clothe him, all useful things which he makes for himself, not only emanated from the solar eye of horus, but were indeed nothing more than the eye of horus under different aspects, and in his name they were presented in sacrifice. the devout generally were of opinion that the first egyptians, the sons and flock of râ, came into the world happy and perfect;[*] by degrees their descendants had fallen from that native felicity into their present state. * in the tomb of seti i, the words _flock of the sun, flock of râ_, are those by which the god horus refers to men. certain expressions used by egyptian writers are in themselves sufficient to show that the first generations of men were supposed to have lived in a state of happiness and perfection. to the egyptians _the times of râ, the times of the god_--that is to say, the centuries immediately following on the creation---were the ideal age, and no good thing had appeared upon earth since then. some, on the contrary, affirmed that their ancestors were born as so many brutes, unprovided with the most essential arts of gentle life. they knew nothing of articulate speech, and expressed themselves by cries only, like other animals, until the day when thot taught them both speech and writing. these tales sufficed for popular edification; they provided but meagre fare for the intelligence of the learned. the latter did not confine their ambition to the possession of a few incomplete and contradictory details concerning the beginnings of humanity. they wished to know the history of its consecutive development from the very first; what manner of life had been led by their fathers; what chiefs they had obeyed and the names or adventures of those chiefs; why part of the nations had left the blessed banks of the nile and gone to settle in foreign lands; by what stages and in what length of time those who had not emigrated rose out of native barbarism into that degree of culture to which the most ancient monuments bore testimony. no efforts of imagination were needful for the satisfaction of their curiosity: the old substratum of indigenous traditions was rich enough, did they but take the trouble to work it out systematically, and to eliminate its most incongruous elements. the priests of heliopolis took this work in hand, as they had already taken in hand the same task with regard to the myths referring to the creation; and the enneads provided them with a ready-made framework. they changed the gods of the ennead into so many kings, determined with minute accuracy the lengths of their reigns, and compiled their biographies from popular tales. the duality of the feudal god supplied an admirable expedient for connecting the history of the world with that of chaos. tûmû was identified with nû, and relegated to the primordial ocean: râ was retained, and proclaimed the first king of the world. he had not established his rule without difficulty. the "children of defeat," beings hostile to order and light, engaged him in fierce battles; nor did he succeed in organizing his kingdom until he had conquered them in nocturnal combat at hermopolis, and even at heliopolis itself.[*] * the _children of defeat_, in egyptian _mosû batashû_, or _mosû batashît_, are often confounded with the followers of sit, the enemies of osiris. from the first they were distinct, and represented beings and forces hostile to the sun, with the dragon apôpi at their head. their defeat at hermopolis corresponded to the moment when shu, raising the sky above the sacred mound in that city, substituted order and light for chaos and darkness. this defeat is mentioned in chap xvii. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. 1. 3, et seq.), in which connexion e. de rougé first explained its meaning. in the same chapter of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pis. xxiv., xxv., 11. 54-58), reference is also made to the battle by night, in heliopolis, at the close of which râ appeared in the form of a cat or lion, and beheaded the great serpent. pierced with wounds, apôpi the serpent sank into the depths of ocean at the very moment when the new year began. the secondary members of the great ennead, together with the sun, formed the first dynasty, which began with the dawn of the first day, and ended at the coming of horus, the son of isis. the local schools of theology welcomed this method of writing history as readily as they had welcomed the principle of the ennead itself. some of them retained the heliopolitan demiurge, and hastened to associate him with their own; others completely eliminated him in favour of the feudal divinity,--amon at thebes, thot at hermopolis, phtah at memphis,--keeping the rest of the dynasty absolutely unchanged.[*] the gods in no way compromised their prestige by becoming incarnate and descending to earth. since they were men of finer nature, and their qualities, including that of miracle-working, were human qualities raised to the highest pitch of intensity, it was not considered derogatory to them personally to have watched over the infancy and childhood of primeval man. the raillery in which the egyptians occasionally indulged with regard to them, the good-humoured and even ridiculous _rôles_ ascribed to them in certain legends, do not prove that they were despised, or that zeal for them had cooled. the greater the respect of believers for the objects of their worship, the more easily do they tolerate the taking of such liberties, and the condescension of the members of the ennead, far from lowering them in the eyes of generations who came too late to live with them upon familiar terms, only enhanced the love and reverence in which they were held. nothing shows this better than the history of râ. his world was ours in the rough; for since shu was yet nonexistent, and nuit still reposed in the arms of sibû, earth and sky were but one.[**] * thot is the chief of the hermopolitan ennead, and the titles ascribed to him by inscriptions maintaining his supremacy show that he also was considered to have been the first king. one of the ptolemies said of himself that he came "as the majesty of thot, because he was the equal of atûmû, hence the equal of khopri, hence the equal of râ." atûmû-khopri-râ being the first earthly king, it follows that the _majesty of thot_, with whom ptolemy identifies himself, comparing himself to the three forms of the god râ, is also the first earthly king. ** this conception of the primitive egyptian world is clearly implied in the very terms employed by the author of the destruction of men. nuit does not rise to form the sky until such time as râ thinks of bringing his reign to an end; that is to say, after egypt had already been in existence for many centuries. in chap. xvii. of the book of the dead (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. 11. 3-5) it is stated that the reign of râ began in the times when the upliftings had not yet taken place; that is to say, before shu had separated nûît from sibû, and forcibly uplifted her above the body of her husband. nevertheless in this first attempt at a world there was vegetable, animal, and human life. egypt was there, all complete, with her two chains of mountains, her nile, her cities, the people of her nomes, and the nomes themselves. then the soil was more generous; the harvests, without the labourer's toil, were higher and more abundant;[*] and when the egyptians of pharaonic times wished to mark their admiration of any person or thing, they said that the like had never been known since the time of râ. * this is an ideal in accordance with the picture drawn of the fields of ialû in chap. ex. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pis. cxxi.~ cxxiii.). as with the paradise of most races, so the place of the osirian dead still possessed privileges which the earth had enjoyed during the first years succeeding the creation; that is to say, under the direct rule of râ. it is an illusion common to all peoples; as their insatiable thirst for happiness is never assuaged by the present, they fall back upon the remotest past in search of an age when that supreme felicity which is only known to them as an ideal was actually enjoyed by their ancestors. râ dwelt in heliopolis, and the most ancient portion of the temple of the city, that known as the "mansion of the prince"--haït sarû,--passed for having been his palace. his court was mainly composed of gods and goddesses, and they as well as he were visible to men. it contained also men who filled minor offices about his person, prepared his food, received the offerings of his subjects, attended to his linen and household affairs. it was said that the _oîrû maû_--the high priest of râ, the _hankistît_--his high priestess, and generally speaking all the servants of the temple of heliopolis, were either directly descended from members of this first household establishment of the god, or had succeeded to their offices in unbroken succession. [illustration: 230.jpg at the first hour of the bay the sun embarks fob his journey through egypt.1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the scenes represented upon the architraves of the pronaos at edfû (rosellini, _monumenti del culto_, pl. xxxviii. no. 1). in the morning he went forth with his divine train, and, amid the acclamations of the crowd, entered the bark in which he made his accustomed circuit of the world, returning to his home at the end of twelve hours after the accomplishment of his journey. he visited each province in turn, and in each he tarried for an hour, to settle all disputed matters, as the final judge of appeal. he gave audience to both small and great, he decided their quarrels and adjudged their lawsuits, he granted investiture of fiefs from the royal domains to those who had deserved them, and allotted or confirmed to every family the income needful for their maintenance. he pitied the sufferings of his people, and did his utmost to alleviate them; he taught to all comers potent formulas against reptiles and beasts of prey, charms to cast out evil spirits, and the best recipes for preventing illness. his incessant bounties left him at length with only one of his talismans: the name given to him by his father and mother at his birth, which they had revealed to him alone, and which he kept concealed within his bosom lest some sorcerer should get possession of it to use for the furtherance of his evil spells. but old age came on, and infirmities followed; the body of râ grew bent, "his mouth trembled, his slaver trickled down to earth and his saliva dropped upon the ground." isis, who had hitherto been a mere woman-servant in the household of the pharaoh, conceived the project of stealing his secret from him, "that she might possess the world and make herself a goddess by the name of the august god." force would have been unavailing; all enfeebled as he was by reason of his years, none was strong enough to contend successfully against him. but isis "was a woman more knowing in her malice than millions of men, clever among millions of the gods, equal to millions of spirits, to whom as unto râ nothing was unknown either in heaven or upon earth." she contrived a most ingenious stratagem. when man or god was struck down by illness, the only chance of curing him lay in knowing his real name, and thereby adjuring the evil being that tormented him. isis determined to cast a terrible malady upon râ, concealing its cause from him; then to offer her services as his nurse, and by means of his sufferings to extract from him the mysterious word indispensable to the success of the exorcism. she gathered up mud impregnated with the divine saliva, and moulded of it a sacred serpent which she hid in the dust of the road. suddenly bitten as he was setting out upon his daily round, the god cried out aloud, "his voice ascended into heaven and his nine called: 'what is it? what is it?' and his gods: 'what is the matter? what is the matter?' but he could make them no answer so much did his lips tremble, his limbs shake, and the venom take hold upon his flesh as the nile seizeth upon the land which it invadeth." presently he came to himself, and succeeded in describing his sensations. "something painful hath stung me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my two eyes see it not; my hand hath not wrought it, nothing that i have made knoweth it what it is, yet have i never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain that may overpass it.... fire it is not, water it is not, yet is my heart in flames, my flesh trembleth, all my members are full of shiverings born of breaths of magic. behold! let there be brought unto me children of the gods of beneficent words, who know the power of their mouths, and whose science reacheth unto heaven." they came, these children of the gods, all with their books of magic. there came isis with her sorcery, her mouth full of life-giving breaths, her recipe for the destruction of pain, her words which pour life into breathless throats, and she said: "what is it? what is it, o father of the gods? may it not be that a serpent hath wrought this suffering in thee; that one of thy children hath lifted up his head against thee? surely he shall be overthrown by beneficent incantations, and i will make him to retreat at the sight of thy rays." on learning the cause of his torment, the sun-god is terrified, and begins to lament anew: "i, then, as i went along the ways, travelling through my double land of egypt and over my mountains, that i might look upon that which i have made, i was bitten by a serpent that i saw not. fire it is not, water it is not, yet am i colder than water, i burn more than fire, all my members stream with sweat, i tremble, mine eye is not steady, no longer can i discern the sky, drops roll from my face as in the season of summer." isis proposes her remedy, and cautiously asks him his ineffable name. but he divines her trick, and tries to evade it by an enumeration of his titles. he takes the universe to witness that he is called "khopri in the morning, râ at noon, tûmû in the evening." the poison did not recede, but steadily advanced, and the great god was not eased. then isis said to râ: "thy name was not spoken in that which thou hast said. tell it to me and the poison will depart; for he liveth upon whom a charm is pronounced in his own name." the poison glowed like fire, it was strong as the burning of flame, and the majesty of râ said, "i grant thee leave that thou shouldest search within me, o mother isis! and that my name pass from my bosom into thy bosom." in truth, the all-powerful name was hidden within the body of the god, and could only be extracted thence by means of a surgical operation similar to that practised upon a corpse which is about to be mummified. isis undertook it, carried it through successfully, drove out the poison, and made herself a goddess by virtue of the name. the cunning of a mere woman had deprived râ of his last talisman. in course of time men perceived his decrepitude. they took counsel against him: "lo! his majesty waxeth old, his bones are of silver, his flesh is of gold, his hair of lapis-lazuli." as soon as his majesty perceived that which they were saying to each other, his majesty said to those who were of his train, "call together for me my divine eye, shû, tafnûît, sibû, and nûît, the father and the mother gods who were with me when i was in the nû, with the god nû. let each bring his cycle along with him; then, when thou shalt have brought them in secret, thou shalt take them to the great mansion that they may lend me their counsel and their consent, coming hither from the nû into this place where i have manifested myself." so the family council comes together: the ancestors of râ, and his posterity still awaiting amid the primordial waters the time of their manifestation--his children shû and tafnûît, his grandchildren sibû and nûît. they place themselves, according to etiquette, on either side his throne, prostrate, with their foreheads to the ground, and thus their conference begins: "o nû, thou the eldest of the gods, from whom i took my being, and ye the ancestor-gods, behold! men who are the emanation of mine eye have taken counsel together against me! tell me what ye would do, for i have bidden you here before i slay them, that i may hear what ye would say thereto." nû, as the eldest, has the right to speak first, and demands that the guilty shall be brought to judgment and formally condemned. "my son râ, god greater than the god who made him, older than the gods who created him, sit thou upon thy throne, and great shall be the terror when thine eye shall rest upon those who plot together against thee!" but râ not unreasonably fears that when men see the solemn pomp of royal justice, they may suspect the fate that awaits them, and "flee into the desert, their hearts terrified at that which i have to say to them." the desert was even then hostile to the tutelary gods of egypt, and offered an almost inviolable asylum to their enemies. the conclave admits that the apprehensions of râ are well founded, and pronounces in favour of summary execution; the divine eye is to be the executioner. "let it go forth that it may smite those who have devised evil against thee, for there is no eye more to be feared than thine when it attacketh in the form of hâthor." so the eye takes the form of hâthor, suddenly falls upon men, and slays them right and left with great strokes of the knife. after some hours, râ, who would chasten but not destroy his children, commands her to cease from her carnage; but the goddess has tasted blood, and refuses to obey him. "by thy life," she replies, "when i slaughter men then is my heart right joyful!" [illustration: 236.jpg sokhît, the lioness-headed. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a bronze statuette of the saïte period in the gizeh museum (mariette, _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. 6). that is why she was afterwards called sokhît the slayer, and represented under the form of a fierce lioness. nightfall stayed her course in the neighbourhood of heracleopolis; all the way from heliopolis she had trampled through blood. as soon as she had fallen asleep, râ hastily took effectual measures to prevent her from beginning her work again on the morrow. "he said: 'call on my behalf messengers agile and swift, who go like the wind.' when these messengers were straightway brought to him, the majesty of the god said: 'let them run to elephantine and bring me mandragora in plenty.'"[**] ** the mandragora of elephantine was used in the manufacture of an intoxicating and narcotic drink employed either in medicine or in magic. in a special article, brugsch has collected particulars preserved by the texts as to the uses of this plant. it was not as yet credited with the human form and the peculiar kind of life ascribed to it by western sorcerers. when they had brought him the mandragora, the majesty of this great god summoned the miller which is in heliopolis that he might bray it; and the women-servants having crushed grain for the beer, the mandragora, and also human blood, were mingled with the liquor, and thereof was made in all seven thousand jars of beer. râ himself examined this delectable drink, and finding it to possess the wished-for properties: "'it is well,' said he; 'therewith shall i save men from the goddess;' then, addressing those of his train: 'take these jars in your arms, and carry them to the place where she has slaughtered men.' râ, the king, caused dawn to break at midnight, so that this philtre might be poured down upon the earth; and the fields were flooded with it to the depth of four palms, according as it pleased the souls of his majesty." in the morning the goddess came, "that she might return to her carnage, but she found that all was flooded, and her countenance softened; when she had drunken, it was her heart that softened; she went away drunk, without further thought of men." there was some fear lest her fury might return when the fumes of drunkenness were past, and to obviate this danger râ instituted a rite, partly with the object of instructing future generations as to the chastisement which he had inflicted upon the impious, partly to console sokhît for her discomfiture. he decreed that "on new year's day there should be brewed for her as many jars of philtre as there were priestesses of the sun. that was the origin of all those jars of philtre, in number equal to that of the priestesses, which, at the feast of hâthor, all men make from that day forth." peace was re-established, but could it last long? would not men, as soon as they had recovered from their terror, betake themselves again to plotting against the god? besides, râ now felt nothing but disgust for our race. the ingratitude of his children had wounded him deeply; he foresaw ever-renewed rebellions as his feebleness became more marked, and he shrank from having to order new massacres in which mankind would perish altogether. "by my life," says he to the gods who accompanied him, "my heart is too weary for me to remain with mankind, and slay them until they are no more: annihilation is not of the gifts that i love to make." and the gods exclaim in surprise: "breathe not a word of thy weariness at a time when thou dost triumph at thy pleasure." but râ does not yield to their representations; he will leave a kingdom wherein they murmur against him, and turning towards nû he says: "my limbs are decrepit for the first time; i will not go to any place where i can be reached." it was no easy matter to find him an inaccessible retreat owing to the imperfect state in which the universe had been left by the first effort of the demiurge. nû saw no other way out of the difficulty than that of setting to work to complete the creation. ancient tradition had imagined the separation of earth and sky as an act of violence exercised by shu upon sibû and nûît. history presented facts after a less brutal fashion, and shû became a virtuous son who devoted his time and strength to upholding nûît, that he might thereby do his father a service. nûît, for her part, showed herself to be a devoted daughter whom there was no need to treat roughly in order to teach her her duty; of herself she consented to leave her husband, and place her beloved ancestor beyond reach. "the majesty of nû said: 'son shu, do as thy father râ shall say; and thou, daughter nûît, place him upon thy back and hold him suspended above the earth!' nûît said: 'and how then, my father nû?' thus spake nûît, and she did that which nû commanded her; she changed herself into a cow, and placed the majesty of râ upon her back. when those men who had not been slain came to give thanks to râ, behold! they found him no longer in his palace; but a cow stood there, and they perceived him upon the back of the cow." they found him so resolved to depart that they did not try to turn him from his purpose, but only desired to give him such a proof of their repentance as should assure them of the complete pardon of their crime. "they said unto him: 'wait until the morning, o râ! our lord, and we will strike down thine enemies who have taken counsel against thee.' so his majesty returned to his mansion, descended from the cow, went in along with them, and earth was plunged into darkness. but when there was light upon earth the next morning, the men went forth with their bows and their arrows, and began to shoot at the enemy. whereupon the majesty of this god said unto them: 'your sins are remitted unto you, for sacrifice precludes the execution of the guilty.' and this was the origin upon earth of sacrifices in which blood was shed." thus it was that when on the point of separating for ever, the god and men came to an understanding as to the terms of their future relationship. men offered to the god the life of those who had offended him. human sacrifice was in their eyes the obligatory sacrifice, the only one which could completely atone for the wrongs committed against the godhead; man alone was worthy to wash away with his blood the sins of men.[*] for this one time the god accepted the expiation just as it was offered to him; then the repugnance which he felt to killing his children overcame him, he substituted beast for man, and decided that oxen, gazelles, birds, should henceforth furnish the material for sacrifice.[**] * this legend, which seeks to explain the discontinuance of human sacrifices among the egyptians, affords direct proof of their existence in primitive times. this is confirmed by many facts. we shall see that _ûashbîti_ laid in graves were in place of the male or female slaves who were originally slaughtered at the tombs of the rich and noble that they might go to serve their masters in the next world. even in thebes, under the xixth dynasty, certain rock-cut tombs contain scenes which might lead us to believe that occasionally at least human victims were sent to doubles of distinction. during this same period, moreover, the most distinguished hostile chiefs taken in war were still put to death before the gods. in several towns, as at eilithyia and at heliopolis, or before certain gods, such as osiris or kronos-sibû, human sacrifice lasted until near roman times. but generally speaking it was very rare. almost everywhere cakes of a particular shape, and called [greek word], or else animals, had been substituted for man. ** it was asserted that the partisans of apôpi and of sît, who were the enemies of râ, osiris, and the other gods, had taken refuge in the bodies of certain animals. hence, it was really human or divine victims which were offered when beasts were slaughtered in sacrifice before the altars. this point settled, he again mounted the cow, who rose, supported on her four legs as on so many pillars; and her belly, stretched out above the earth like a ceiling, formed the sky. he busied himself with organizing the new world which he found on her back; he peopled it with many beings, chose two districts in which to establish his abode, the field of reeds--_sokhît ialû_--and the field of rest--_sokhît hotpît_--and suspended the stars which were to give light by night. all this is related with many plays upon words, intended, according to oriental custom, as explanations of the names which the legend assigned to the different regions of heaven. at sight of a plain whose situation pleased him, he cried: "the field rests in the distance!"--and that was the origin of the field of rest. he added: "there will i gather plants!"--and from this the field of reeds took its name. while he gave himself up to this philological pastime, nûît, suddenly transported to unaccustomed heights, grew frightened, and cried for help: "for pity's sake give me supports to sustain me!" this was the origin of the support-gods. they came and stationed themselves by each of her four legs, steadying these with their hands, and keeping constant watch over them. as this was not enough to reassure the good beast, "râ said, 'my son shû, place thyself beneath my daughter nûît, and keep watch on both sides over the supports, who live in the twilight; hold thou her up above thy head, and be her guardian!'" shû obeyed; nûît composed herself, and the world, now furnished with the sky which it had hitherto lacked, assumed its present symmetrical form. shû and sibû succeeded râ, but did not acquire so lasting a popularity as their great ancestor. nevertheless they had their annals, fragments of which have come down to us. their power also extended over the whole universe: "the majesty of shû was the excellent king of the sky, of the earth, of hades, of the water, of the winds, of the inundation, of the two chains of mountains, of the sea, governing with a true voice according to the precepts of his father râ-harmakhis." [illustration: 242.jpg cow, sustained above the earth by shû and the support] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin. only "the children of the serpent apôpi, the impious ones who haunt the solitary places and the deserts," disavowed his authority. like the bedawîn of later times, they suddenly streamed in by the isthmus routes, went up into egypt under cover of night, slew and pillaged, and then hastily returned to their fastnesses with the booty which they had carried off. from sea to sea ka had fortified the eastern frontier against them. he had surrounded the principal cities with walls, embellished them with temples, and placed within them those mysterious talismans more powerful for defence than a garrison of men. thus aît-nobsû, near the mouth of the wady-tûmilât, possessed one of the rods of the sun-god, also the living uraeus of his crown whose breath consumes all that it touches, and, finally, a lock of his hair, which, being cast into the waters of a lake, was changed into a hawk-headed crocodile to tear the invader in pieces.[*] * egyptians of all periods never shrank from such marvels. one of the tales of the theban empire tells us of a piece of wax which, on being thrown into the water, changed into a living crocodile capable of devouring a man. the talismans which protected egypt against invasion are mentioned by the pseudo-callisthenes, who attributes their invention to nectanebo. arab historians often refer to them. the employment of these talismans was dangerous to those unaccustomed to use them, even to the gods themselves. scarcely was sibû enthroned as the successor of shu, who, tired of reigning, had reascended into heaven in a nine days' tempest, before he began his inspection of the eastern marches, and caused the box in which was kept the uræus of râ to be opened. "as soon as the living viper had breathed its breath against the majesty of sibû there was a great disaster--great indeed, for those who were in the train of the god perished, and his majesty himself was burned in that day. when his majesty had fled to the north of aît-nobsû, pursued by the fire of this magic urasus, behold! when he came to the fields of henna, the pain of his burn was not yet assuaged, and the gods who were behind him said unto him: 'o sire! let them take the lock of râ which is there, when thy majesty shall go to see it and its mystery, and his majesty shall be healed as soon as it shall be placed upon thee.' so the majesty of sibû caused the magic lock to be brought to piarît,--the lock for which was made that great reliquary of hard stone which is hidden in the secret place of piarît, in the district of the divine lock of the lord râ,--and behold! this fire departed from the members of the majesty of sibû. and many years afterwards, when this lock, which had thus belonged to sibû, was brought back to piarît in aît-nobsû, and cast into the great lake of piarît whose name is _aît-tostesû_, the dwelling of waves, that it might be purified, behold! this lock became a crocodile: it flew to the water and became sobkû, the divine crocodile of aît-nobsû." in this way the gods of the solar dynasty from generation to generation multiplied talismans and enriched the sanctuaries of egypt with relics. [illustration: 244.jpg three of the divine amulets preserved in the temple of aît-nobsû at the roman period. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by griffith. the three talismans here represented are two crowns, each in a naos, and the burning fiery uræus. were there ever duller legends and a more senile phantasy! they did not spring spontaneously from the lips of the people, but were composed at leisure by priests desirous of enhancing the antiquity of their cult, and augmenting the veneration of its adherents in order to increase its importance. each city wished it to be understood that its feudal sanctuary was founded upon the very day of creation, that its privileges had been extended or confirmed during the course of the first divine dynasty, and that these pretensions were supported by the presence of objects in its treasury which had belonged to the oldest of the king-gods. such was the origin of tales in which the personage of the beneficent pharaoh is often depicted in ridiculous fashion. did we possess all the sacred archives, we should frequently find them quoting as authentic history more than one document as artificial as the chronicle of aît-nobsû. when we come to the later members of the ennead, there is a change in the character and in the form of these tales. doubtless osiris and sît did not escape unscathed out of the hands of the theologians; but even if sacerdotal interference spoiled the legend concerning them, it did not altogether disfigure it. here and there in it is still noticeable a sincerity of feeling and liveliness of imagination such as are never found in those of shû and of sibû. this arises from the fact that the functions of these gods left them strangers, or all but strangers, to the current affairs of the world. shû was the stay, sibû the material foundation of the world; and so long as the one bore the weight of the firmament without bending, and the other continued to suffer the tread of human generations upon his back, the devout took no more thought of them than they themselves took thought of the devout. the life of osiris, on the other hand, was intimately mingled with that of the egyptians, and his most trivial actions immediately reacted upon their fortunes. they followed the movements of his waters; they noted the turning-points in his struggles against drought; they registered his yearly decline, yearly compensated by his aggressive returns and his intermittent victories over typhon; his proceedings and his character were the subject of their minute study. if his waters almost invariably rose upon the appointed day and extended over the black earth of the valley, this was no mechanical function of a being to whom the consequences of his conduct are indifferent; he acted upon reflection, and in full consciousness of the service that he rendered. he knew that by spreading the inundation he prevented the triumph of the desert; he was life, he was goodness--_onnofriû_--and isis, as the partner of his labours, became like him the type of perfect goodness. but while osiris developed for the better, sit was transformed for the worse, and increased in wickedness as his brother gained in purity and moral elevation. in proportion as the person of sît grew more defined, and stood out more clearly, the evil within him contrasted more markedly with the innate goodness of osiris, and what had been at first an instinctive struggle between two beings somewhat vaguely defined--the desert and the nile, water and drought--was changed into conscious and deadly enmity. no longer the conflict of two elements, it was war between two gods; one labouring to produce abundance, while the other strove to do away with it; one being all goodness and life, while the other was evil and death incarnate. a very ancient legend narrates that the birth of osiris and his brothers took place during the five additional days at the end of the year; a subsequent legend explained how nûît and sibû had contracted marriage against the express wish of râ, and without his knowledge. when he became aware of it he fell into a violent rage, and cast a spell over the goddess to prevent her giving birth to her children in any month of any year whatever. but thot took pity upon her, and playing at draughts with the moon won from it in several games one seventy-second part of its fires, out of which he made five whole days; and as these were not included in the ordinary calendar, nûît could then bring forth her five children, one after another: osiris, haroêris, sit, isis, and nephthys. osiris was beautiful of face, but with a dull and black complexion; his height exceeded five and a half yards.[*] * as a matter of fact, osiris is often represented with black or green hands and face, as is customary for gods of the dead; it was probably this peculiarity which suggested the popular idea of his black complexion. a magic papyrus of ramesside times fixes the stature of the god at seven cubits, and a phrase in a ptolemaic inscription places it at eight cubits, six palms, three fingers. he was born at thebes, in the first of the additional days, and straightway a mysterious voice announced that the lord of all--_nibû-r-zarû_--had appeared. the good news was hailed with shouts of joy, followed by tears and lamentations when it became known with what evils he was menaced.[*] the echo reached râ in his far-off dwelling, and his heart rejoiced, notwithstanding the curse which he had laid upon nûît. he commanded the presence of his great-grandchild in xoïs, and unhesitatingly acknowledged him as the heir to his throne. osiris had married his sister isis, even, so it was said, while both of them were still within their mother's womb;[**] and when he became king he made her queen regent and the partner of all his undertakings. * one variant of the legend told that a certain pamylis of thebes having gone to draw water had heard a voice proceeding from the temple of zeus, which ordered him to proclaim aloud to the world the birth of the great king, the beneficent osiris. he had received the child from the hands of kronos, brought it up to youth, and to him the egyptians had consecrated the feast of pamylies, which resembled the phallophoros festival of the greeks. ** _de iside et osiride_, leemans' edition, § 12, pp. 20, 21. haroêris, the apollo of the greeks, was supposed to be the issue of a marriage consummated before the birth of his parents while they were still within the womb of their mother rhea-nûît. this was a way of connecting the personage of haroêris with the osirian myths by confounding him with the homonymous harsiêsis, the son of isis, who became the son of osiris through his mother's marriage with that god. the egyptians were as yet but half civilized; they were cannibals, and though occasionally they lived upon the fruits of the earth, they did not know how to cultivate them. osiris taught them the art of making agricultural implements--the plough and the hoe,--field labour, the rotation of crops, the harvesting of wheat and barley,[*] and vine culture. * diodoeus even ascribes to him the discovery of barley and of wheat; this is consequent upon the identification of isis with demeter by the greeks. according to the historian, leo of pella, the goddess twined herself a crown of ripe ears and placed it upon her head one day when she was sacrificing to her parents. isis weaned them from cannibalism, healed their diseases by means of medicine or of magic, united women to men in legitimate marriage, and showed them how to grind grain between two flat stones and to prepare bread for the household. she invented the loom with the help of her sister nephthys, and was the first to weave and bleach linen. there was no worship of the gods before osiris established it, appointed the offerings, regulated the order of ceremonies, and composed the texts and melodies of the liturgies. he built cities, among them thebes itself, according to some; though others declared that he was born there. as he had been the model of a just and pacific king, so did he desire to be that of a victorious conqueror of nations; and, placing the regency in the hands of isis, he went forth to war against asia, accompanied by thot the ibis and the jackal anubis. he made little or no use of force and arms, but he attacked men by gentleness and persuasion, softened them with songs in which voices were accompanied by instruments, and taught them also the arts which he had made known to the egyptians. no country escaped his beneficent action, and he did not return to the banks of the nile until he had traversed and civilized the world from one horizon to the other. sît-typhon was red-haired and white-skinned, of violent, gloomy, and jealous temper.[*] secretly he aspired to the crown, and nothing but the vigilance of isis had kept him from rebellion during the absence of his brother. the rejoicings which celebrated the king's return to memphis provided sit with his opportunity for seizing the throne. * the colour of his hair was compared with that of a red haired ass, and on that account the ass was sacred to him. as to his violent and jealous disposition, see the opinion of diodorus siculus, book i. 21, and the picture drawn by synesius in his pamphlet ægyptius. it was told how he tore his mother's bowels at birth, and made his own way into the world through her side. [illustration: 250.jpg the osmian triad hokus. osiris, isis. 2] 2 drawing by boudier of the gold group in the louvre museum. the drawing is made from a photograph which belonged to m. de witte, before the monument was acquired by e. de rougé in 1871. the little square pillar of lapis-lazuli, upon which osiris squats, is wrongly set up, and the names and titles of king osorkon, the dedicator of the triad, are placed upside down. he invited osiris to a banquet along with seventy-two officers whose support he had ensured, made a wooden chest of cunning workmanship and ordered that it should be brought in to him, in the midst of the feast. as all admired its beauty, he sportively promised to present it to any one among the guests whom it should exactly fit. all of them tried it, one after another, and all unsuccessfully; but when osiris lay down within it, immediately the conspirators shut to the lid, nailed it firmly down, soldered it together with melted lead, and then threw it into the tanitic branch of the nile, which carried it to the sea. the news of the crime spread terror on all sides. the gods friendly to osiris feared the fate of their master, and hid themselves within the bodies of animals to escape the malignity of the new king. isis cut off her hair, rent her garments, and set out in search of the chest. she found it aground near the mouth of the river[*] under the shadow of a gigantic acacia, deposited it in a secluded place where no one ever came, and then took refuge in bûto, her own domain and her native city, whose marshes protected her from the designs of typhon even as in historic times they protected more than one pharaoh from the attacks of his enemies. there she gave birth to the young horus, nursed and reared him in secret among the reeds, far from the machinations of the wicked one.[**] * at this point the legend of the saïte and greek period interpolates a whole chapter, telling how the chest was carried out to sea and cast upon the phoenician coast near to byblos. the acacia, a kind of heather or broom in this case, grew up enclosing the chest within its trunk. this addition to the primitive legend must date from the xviiith to the xxth dynasties, when egypt had extensive relations with the peoples of asia. no trace of it whatever has hitherto been found upon egyptian monuments strictly so called; not even on the latest. ** the opening illustration of this chapter (p. 221) is taken from a monument at phihe, and depicts isis among the reeds. the representation of the goddess as squatting upon a mat probably gave rise to the legend of the floating isle of khemmis, which hecatæus of miletus had seen upon the lake of bûto, but whose existence was denied by herodotus notwithstanding the testimony of hecatæus. but it happened that sît, when hunting by moonlight, caught sight of the chest, opened it, and recognizing the corpse, cut it up into fourteen pieces, which he scattered abroad at random. once more isis set forth on her woeful pilgrimage. she recovered all the parts of the body excepting one only, which the oxyrhynchus had greedily devoured;[*] and with the help of her sister nephthys, her son horus, anubis, and thot, she joined together and embalmed them, and made of this collection of his remains an imperishable mummy, capable of sustaining for ever the soul of a god. on his coming of age, horus called together all that were left of the loyal egyptians and formed them into an army.[**] * this part of the legend was so thoroughly well known, that by the time of the xixth dynasty it suggested incidents in popular literature. when bitiû, the hero of _the tale of the two brothers_, mutilated himself to avoid the suspicion of adultery, he cast his bleeding member into the water, and _the oxyrhynchus devoured it_. ** towards the grecian period there was here interpolated an account of how osiris had returned from the world of the dead to arm his son and train him to fight. according to this tale he had asked horus which of all animals seemed to him most useful in time of war, and horus chose the horse rather than the lion, because the lion avails for the weak or cowardly in need of help, whereas the horse is used for the pursuit and destruction of the enemy. judging from this reply that horus was ready to dare all, osiris allowed him to enter upon the war. the mention of the horse affords sufficient proof that this episode is of comparatively late origin (cf. p. 41 for the date at which the horse was acclimatized in egypt). his "followers"--_shosûû horû_--defeated the "accomplices of sît"--_samiu sît_--who were now driven in their turn to transform themselves into gazelles, crocodiles and serpents,--animals which were henceforth regarded as unclean and typhonian. for three days the two chiefs had fought together under the forms of men and of hippopotami, when isis, apprehensive as to the issue of the duel, determined to bring it to an end. "lo! she caused chains to descend upon them, and made them to drop upon horus. thereupon horus prayed aloud, saying: 'i am thy son horus!' then isis spake unto the fetters, saying; 'break, and unloose yourselves from my son horus!' she made other fetters to descend, and let them fall upon her brother sit. forthwith he lifted up his voice and cried out in pain, and she spake unto the fetters and said unto them: 'break!' yea, when sît prayed unto her many times, saying: 'wilt thou not have pity upon the brother of thy son's mother?' then her heart was filled with compassion, and she cried to the fetters: 'break, for he is my eldest brother!' and the fetters unloosed themselves from him, and the two foes again stood face to face like two men who will not come to terms." horus, furious at seeing his mother deprive him of his prey, turned upon her like a panther of the south. she fled before him on that day when battle was waged with sît the violent, and he cut off her head. but thot transformed her by his enchantments and made a cow's head for her, thereby identifying her with her companion, hâthor. [illustration: 253.jpg isis-hathor, cow-headed. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette of saïte period in the gîzeh museum (mariette, _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. 5, no. 167). the war went on, with all its fluctuating fortunes, till the gods at length decided to summon both rivals before their tribunal. according to a very ancient tradition, the combatants chose the ruler of a neighbouring city, thot, lord of hermopolis parva, as the arbitrator of their quarrel. sît was the first to plead, and he maintained that horus was not the son of osiris, but a bastard, whom isis haô conceived after the death of her husband. horua triumphantly vindicated the legitimacy of his birth; and thot condemned sît to restore, according to some, the whole of the inheritance which he had wrongly retained,--according to others, part of it only. the gods ratified the sentence, and awarded to the arbitrator the title of _ûapirahûhûi_: he who judges between two parties. a legend of more recent origin, and circulated after the worship of osiris had spread over all egypt, affirmed that the case had remained within the jurisdiction of sibû, who was father to the one, and grandfather to the other party. sibû, however, had pronounced the same judgment as thot, and divided the kingdom into halves--_poshûi_; sît retained the valley from the neighbourhood of memphis to the first cataract, while horus entered into possession of the delta. egypt henceforth consisted of two distinct kingdoms, of which one, that of the north, recognized horus, the son of isis, as its patron deity; and the other, that of the south, placed itself under the protection of sît nûbîti, the god of ombos.[*] * another form of the legend gives the 27th athyr as the date of the judgment, assigning egypt to horus, and to sît nubia, or _doshirît_, the red land. it must have arisen towards the age of the xviiith dynasty, at a time when their piety no longer allowed the devout to admit that the murderer of osiris could be the legitimate patron of half the country. so _the half_ belonging to sît was then placed either in nubia or in the western desert, which had, indeed, been reckoned as his domain from earliest times. the moiety of horus, added to that of sît, formed the kingdom which sibû had inherited; but his children failed to keep it together, though it was afterwards reunited under pharaohs of human race. the three gods who preceded osiris upon the throne had ceased to reign, but not to live. râ had taken refuge in heaven, disgusted with his own creatures; shû had disappeared in the midst of a tempest; and sibû had quietly retired within his palace when the time of his sojourning upon earth had been fulfilled. not that there was no death, for death, too, together with all other things and beings, had come into existence in the beginning, but while cruelly persecuting both man and beast, had for a while respected the gods. osiris was the first among them to be struck down, and hence to require funeral rites. he also was the first for whom family piety sought to provide a happy life beyond the tomb. though he was king of the living and the dead at mendes by virtue of the rights of all the feudal gods in their own principalities, his sovereignty after death exempted him no more than the meanest of his subjects from that painful torpor into which all mortals fell on breathing their last. but popular imagination could not resign itself to his remaining in that miserable state for ever. what would it have profited him to have isis the great sorceress for his wife, the wise horus for his son, two master-magicians--thot the ibis and the jackal anubis--for his servants, if their skill had not availed to ensure him a less gloomy and less lamentable after-life than that of men. anubis had long before invented the art of mummifying, and his mysterious science had secured the everlasting existence of the flesh; but at what a price! [illustration: 256.jpg the osirian mummy prepared and laid upon the funerary couch by the jackal anubis.1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from rosellint, _monumenti civili_, pl. cxxxiv. 2. while anubis is stretching out his hands to lay out the mummy on its couch, the soul is hovering above its breast, and holding to its nostrils the sceptre, and the wind-filled sail which is the emblem of breath and of the new life. for the breathing, warm, fresh-coloured body, spontaneous in movement and function, was substituted an immobile, cold and blackish mass, a sufficient basis for the mechanical continuity of the double, but which that double could neither raise nor guide; whose weight paralysed and whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure and almost without consciousness of existence. thot, isis, and horus applied themselves in the case of osiris to ameliorating the discomfort and constraint entailed by the more primitive embalmment. [illustration: 257.jpg the reception op the mummy by anubis at the door op the tomb, and the opening of the mouth. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting in the tomb of a king in the theban necropolis. they did not dispense with the manipulations instituted by anubis, but endued them with new power by means of magic. they inscribed the principal bandages with protective figures and formulas; they decorated the body with various amulets of specific efficacy for its different parts; they drew numerous scenes of earthly existence and of the life beyond the tomb upon the boards of the coffin and upon the walls of the sepulchral chamber. when the body had been made imperishable, they sought to restore one by one all the faculties of which their previous operations had deprived it. the mummy was set up at the entrance to the vault; the statue representing the living person was placed beside it, and semblance was made of opening the mouth, eyes, and ears, of loosing the arms and legs, of restoring breath to the throat and movement to the heart. the incantations by which these acts were severally accompanied were so powerful that the god spoke and ate, lived and heard, and could use his limbs as freely as though he had never been steeped in the bath of the embalmer. he might have returned to his place among men, and various legends prove that he did occasionally appear to his faithful adherents. but, as his ancestors before him, he preferred to leave their towns and withdraw into his own domain. the cemeteries of the inhabitants of busiris and of mendes were called _sokhît ialû_, the meadow of reeds, and _sokhît hotpû_, the meadow of best. they were secluded amid the marshes, in small archipelagoes of sandy islets where the dead bodies, piled together, rested in safety from the inundations. this was the first kingdom of the dead osiris, but it was soon placed elsewhere, as the nature of the surrounding districts and the geography of the adjacent countries became better known; at first perhaps on the phoenician shore beyond the sea, and then in the sky, in the milky way, between the north and the east, but nearer to the north than to the east. this kingdom was not gloomy and mournful like that of the other dead gods, sokaris or khontamentît, but was lighted by sun and moon; the heat of the day was tempered by the steady breath of the north wind, and its crops grew and throve abundantly. [illustration: 259.jpg osikis in hades, accompanied by isis, amentît, and nephthys, receives the homage of truth. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by daniel héron, taken in 1881 in the temple of seti i. at abydos. thick walls served as fortifications against the attacks of sit and evil genii; a palace like that of the pharaohs stood in the midst of delightful gardens; and there, among his own people, osiris led a tranquil existence, enjoying in succession all the pleasures of earthly life without any of its pains. the goodness which had gained him the title of onnophris while he sojourned here below, inspired him with the desire and suggested the means of opening the gates of his paradise to the souls of his former subjects. souls did not enter into it unexamined, nor without trial. each of them had first to prove that during its earthly life it had belonged to a friend, or, as the egyptian texts have it, to a vassal of osiris--_amakhû khir osiri_--one of those who had served horus in his exile and had rallied to his banner from the very beginning of the typhonian wars. [illustration: 260.jpg the deceased climbing the slope of the mountain of the west,2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from naville bas ægyptische todtenbuch, vol. i. pl. cxxviii. ai. these were those followers of horus--_shosûû horû_--so often referred to in the literature of historic times.[*] * cf, p. 252. the _followers of horns_, i.e. those who had followed horus during the typhonian wars, are mentioned in a turin fragment of the canon of the kings, in which the author summarizes the chronology of the divine period. like the reign of râ, the time in which the followers of horus were supposed to have lived was for the egyptians of classic times the ultimate point beyond which history did not reach. horus, their master, having loaded them with favours during life, decided to extend to them after death the same privileges which he had conferred upon his father. he convoked around the corpse the gods who had worked with him at the embalmment of osiris: anubis and thot, isis and nephthys, and his four children--hâpi, qabhsonûf, amsît, and tiûmaûtf--to whom he had entrusted the charge of the heart and viscera. they all performed their functions exactly as before, repeated the same ceremonies, and recited the same formulas at the same stages of the operations, and so effectively that the dead man became a real osiris under their hands, having a true voice, and henceforth combining the name of the god with his own. [illustration: 261.jpg the mummy of sûtimosû clasping his soul into his arms. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from guieysse-lefébure, _le papyrus de soutimès_, pl. viii. the outlines of the original have unfortunately been restored and enfeebled by the copyist. he had been sakhomka or menkaûrî; he became the osiris sakhomka, or the osiris menkaûrî, true of voice. horus and his companions then celebrated the rites consecrated to the "opening of the mouth and the eyes:" animated the statue of the deceased, and placed the mummy in the tomb, where anubis received it in his arms. recalled to life and movement, the double reassumed, one by one, all the functions of being, came and went and took part in the ceremonies of the worship which was rendered to him in his tomb. there he might be seen accepting the homage of his kindred, and clasping to his breast his soul under the form of a great human-headed bird with features the counterpart of his own. after being equipped with the formulas and amulets wherewith his prototype, osiris, had been furnished, he set forth to seek the "field of reeds." the way was long and arduous, strewn with perils to which he must have succumbed at the very first stages had he not been carefully warned beforehand and armed against them. [illustration: 262.jpg cynocephali drawing the net in which souls are caught. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a facsimile by dévèria (e. de rougé, _études sur le rituel funéraire_, pl. iv. no. 4). ignorant souls fished for by the cynocephali are here represented as fish; but the soul of nofirûbnû, instructed in the protective formulas, preserves its human form. a papyrus placed with the mummy in its coffin contained the needful topo-graphical directions and passwords, in order that he might neither stray nor perish by the way. the wiser egyptians copied out the principal chapters for themselves, or learned them by heart while yet in life, in order to be prepared for the life beyond. those who had not taken this precaution studied after death the copy with which they were provided; and since few egyptians could read, a priest, or relative of the deceased, preferably his son, recited the prayers in the mummy's ear, that he might learn them before he was carried away to the cemetery. if the double obeyed the prescriptions of the "book of the dead" to the letter, he reached his goal without fail.[*] on leaving the tomb he turned his back on the valley, and staff in hand climbed the hills which bounded it on the west, plunging boldly into the desert, where some bird, or even a kindly insect such as a praying mantis, a grasshopper, or a butterfly, served as his guide. soon he came to one of those sycamores which grow in the sand far away from the nile, and are regarded as magic trees by the fellahîn. out of the foliage a goddess--nûît, ïïâthor, or nît--half emerged, and offered him a dish of fruit, loaves of bread, and a jar of water. * manuscripts of this work represent about nine-tenths of the papyri hitherto discovered. they are not all equally full; complete copies are still relatively scarce, and most of those found with mummies contain nothing but extracts of varying length. the book itself was studied by champollion, who called it the _funerary ritual_; lepsius afterwards gave it the less definite name of _book of the dead_, which seems likely to prevail. it has been chiefly known from the hieroglyphic copy at turin, which lepsius traced and had lithographed in 1841, under the title of _das todtenbuch der ægypter_. in 1865, e. du rougé began to publish a hieratic copy in the louvre, but since 1886 there has been a critical edition of manuscripts of the theban period most carefully collated by e. naville, _das mgyptische todtenbuch der xviii bis xx dynastie_, berlin, 1886, 2 vols, of plates in folio, and 1 vol. of introduction in 4to. on this edition see maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 325-387. by accepting these gifts he became the guest of the goddess, and could never more retrace his steps[*] without special permission. beyond the sycamore were lands of terror, infested by serpents and ferocious beasts, furrowed by torrents of boiling water, intersected by ponds and marshes where gigantic monkeys cast their nets. * maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 224-227. it was not in egypt alone that the fact of accepting food offered by a god of the dead constituted a recognition of suzerainty, and prevented the human soul from returning to the world of the living. traces of this belief are found everywhere, in modern as in ancient times, and e. b. tylob, has collected numerous examples of the same in primitive culture, 2nd edit., vol. ii. pp. 47, 51, 52. [illustration: 264.jpg the deceased and his wife seated in front of the sycamore of nûît and receiving the bread and water of the next world. 2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coloured plate in rosellini, _monumenti civili._,pl. cxxxiv. 3. ignorant souls, or those ill prepared for the struggle, had no easy work before them when they imprudently entered upon it. those who were not overcome by hunger and thirst at the outset were bitten by a urasus, or horned viper, hidden with evil intent below the sand, and perished in convulsions from the poison; or crocodiles seized as many of them as they could lay hold of at the fords of rivers; or cynocephali netted and devoured them indiscriminately along with the fish into which the partisans of typhon were transformed. they came safe and sound out of one peril only to fall into another, and infallibly succumbed before they were half through their journey. but, on the other hand, the double who was equipped and instructed, and armed with the true voice, confronted each foe with the phylactery and the incantation by which his enemy was held in check. as soon as he caught sight of one of them he recited the appropriate chapter from his book, he loudly proclaimed himself râ, tûmû, horus, or khopri--that god whose name and attributes were best fitted to repel the immediate danger--and flames withdrew at his voice, monsters fled or sank paralysed, the most cruel of genii drew in their claws and lowered their arms before him. he compelled crocodiles to turn away their heads; he transfixed serpents with his lance; he supplied himself at pleasure with all the provisions that he needed, and gradually ascended the mountains which surround the world, sometimes alone, and fighting his way step by step, sometimes escorted by beneficent divinities. halfway up the slope was the good cow hâfchor, the lady of the west, in meadows of tall plants where every evening she received the sun at his setting. if the dead man knew how to ask it according to the prescribed rite, she would take him upon her shoulders[*] and carry him across the accursed countries at full speed. * coffins of the xxth and xxist dynasties, with a yellow ground, often display this scene. generally the scene is found beneath the feet of the dead, at the lower end of the cartonage, and the cow is represented as carrying off at a gallop the mummy who is lying on her back. [illustration: 266.jpg the deceased piercing a serpent with his lance. 2] 2 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by naville (_das ægyptische todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. iii. p b). the commonest enemies of the dead were various kinds of serpents. having reached the north, he paused at the edge of an immense lake, the lake of kha, and saw in the far distance the outline of the islands of the blest. one tradition, so old as to have been almost forgotten in rames-side times, told how thot the ibis there awaited him, and bore him away on his wings;[***] another, no less ancient but of more lasting popularity, declared that a ferry-boat plied regularly between the solid earth and the shores of paradise. *** it is often mentioned in the pyramid texts, and inspired one of the most obscure chapters among them (_teti_, 11. 185-200; cf. _recueil de travaux_, vol. v. pp. 22, 23). it seems that the ibis had to fight with sit for right of passage. the god who directed it questioned the dead, and the bark itself proceeded to examine them before they were admitted on board; for it was a magic bark. "tell me my name," cried the mast; and the travellers replied: "he who guides the great goddess on her way is thy name." "tell me my name," repeated the braces. "the spine of the jackal ûapûaîtû is thy name." "tell me my name," proceeded the mast-head. [illustration: 267.jpg the good cow hâthor carrying the dead man and his soul. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coloured facsimile published by leemans, _monuments égyptiens du musée d' antiquités des pays-bas à leyden_, part iii. pl. xii. "the neck of amsît is thy name." "tell me my name," asked the sail. "nûît is thy name." each part of the hull and of the rigging spoke in turn and questioned the applicant regarding its name, this being generally a mystic phrase by which it was identified either with some divinity as a whole, or else with some part of his body. when the double had established his right of passage by the correctness of his answers, the bark consented to receive him and to carry him to the further shore. there he was met by the gods and goddesses of the court of osiris: by anubis, by hathor the lady of the cemetery, by nît, by the two màîts who preside over justice and truth, and by the four children of horus stiff-sheathed in their mummy wrappings. they formed as it were a guard of honour to introduce him and his winged guide into an immense hall, the ceiling of which rested on light graceful columns of painted wood. [illustration: 268.jpg anubis and thot weighing the heart of the deceased in the scales of truth. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from pl. cxxxvi. ag of naville's _das thebanische todtenbuch_. at the further end of the hall osiris was seated in mysterious twilight within a shrine through whose open doors he might be seen wearing a red necklace over his close-fitting case of white bandaging, his green face surmounted by the tall white diadem flanked by two plumes, his slender hands grasping flail and crook, the emblems of his power. [illustration: 269.jpg the deceased is brought before the shrine of osiris the judge by horus, the son of isis.] behind him stood isis and nephthys watching over him with uplifted hands, bare bosoms, and bodies straitly cased in linen. forty-two jurors who had died and been restored to life like their lord, and who had been chosen, one from each of those cities of egypt which recognized his authority, squatted right and left, and motionless, clothed in the wrappings of the dead, silently waited until they were addressed. the soul first advanced to the foot of the throne, carrying on its outstretched hands the image of its heart or of its eyes, agents and accomplices of its sins and virtues. it humbly "smelt the earth," then arose, and with uplifted hands recited its profession of faith. "hail unto you, ye lords of truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of truth and justice! i have come before thee, my master; i have been brought to see thy beauties. for i know thee, i know thy name, i know the names of thy forty-two gods who are with thee in the hall of the two truths, living on the remains of sinners, gorging themselves with their blood, in that day when account is rendered before onnophris, the true of voice. thy name which is thine is 'the god whose two twins are the ladies of the two truths;' and i, i know you, ye lords of the two truths, i bring unto you truth, i have destroyed sins for you. i have not committed iniquity against men! i have not oppressed the poor! i have not made defalcations in the necropolis! i have not laid labour upon any free man beyond that which he wrought for himself! i have not transgressed, i have not been weak, i have not defaulted, i have not committed that which is an abomination to the gods. i have not caused the slave to be ill-treated of his master! i have not starved any man, i have not made any to weep, i have not assassinated any man, i have not caused any man to be treacherously assassinated, and i have not committed treason against any! i have not in aught diminished the supplies of temples! i have not spoiled the shrewbread of the gods! i have not taken away the loaves and the wrappings of the dead! i have done no carnal act within the sacred enclosure of the temple! i have not blasphemed! i have in nought curtailed the sacred revenues! i have not pulled down the scale of the balance! i have not falsified the beam of the balance! i have not taken away the milk from the mouths of sucklings! i have not lassoed cattle on their pastures! i have not taken with nets the birds of the gods! i have not fished in their ponds! i have not turned back the water in its season! i have not cut off a water-channel in its course! i have not put out the fire in its time! i have not defrauded the nine gods of the choice part of victims! i have not ejected the oxen of the gods! i have not turned back the god at his coming forth! i am pure! i am pure! i am pure! i am pure! pure as this great bonû of heracleopolis is pure!... there is no crime against me in this land of the double truth! since i know the names of the gods who are with thee in the hall of the double truth, save thou me from them!" he then turned towards the jury and pleaded his cause before them. they had been severally appointed for the cognizance of particular sins, and the dead man took each of them by name to witness that he was innocent of the sin which that one recorded. his plea ended, he returned to the supreme judge, and repeated, under what is sometimes a highly mystic form, the ideas which he had already advanced in the first part of his address. "hail unto you, ye gods who are in the great hall of the double truth, who have no falsehood in your bosoms, but who live on truth in aûnû, and feed your hearts upon it before the lord god who dwelleth in his solar disc! deliver me from the typhon who feedeth on entrails, o chiefs! in this hour of supreme judgment;--grant that the deceased may come unto you, he who hath not sinned, who hath neither lied, nor done evil, nor committed any crime, who hath not borne false witness, who hath done nought against himself, but who liveth on truth, who feedeth on truth. he hath spread joy on all sides; men speak of that which he hath done, and the gods rejoice in it. he hath reconciled the god to him by his love; he hath given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; he hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath offered sacrifices to the gods, sepulchral meals unto the manes. deliver him from himself, speak not against him before the lord of the dead, for his mouth is pure, and his two hands are pure!" in the middle of the hall, however, his acts were being weighed by the assessors. like all objects belonging to the gods, the balance is magic, and the genius which animates it sometimes shows its fine and delicate little human head on the top of the upright stand which forms its body. everything about the balance recalls its superhuman origin: a cynocephalus, emblematic of thot, sits perched on the upright and watches the beam; the cords which suspend the scales are made of alternate _cruces ansato and tats_. truth squats upon one of the scales; thot, ibis-headed, places the heart on the other, and always merciful, bears upon the side of truth that judgment may be favourably inclined. he affirms that the heart is light of offence, inscribes the result of the proceeding upon a wooden tablet, and pronounces the verdict aloud. "thus saith thot, lord of divine discourse, scribe of the great ennead, to his father osiris, lord of eternity, 'behold the deceased in this hall of the double truth, his heart hath been weighed in the balance in the presence of the great genii, the lords of hades, and been found true. no trace of earthly impurity hath been found in his heart. now that he leaveth the tribunal true of voice, his heart is restored to him, as well as his eyes and the material cover of his heart, to be put back in their places each in its own time, his soul in heaven, his heart in the other world, as is the custom of the "followers of horus." henceforth let his body lie in the hands of anubis, who presideth over the tombs; let him receive offerings at the cemetery in the presence of onno-phris; let him be as one of those favourites who follow thee; let his soul abide where it will in the necropolis of his city, he whose voice is true before the great ennead.'" in this "negative confession," which the worshippers of osiris taught to their dead, all is not equally admirable. the material interests of the temple were too prominent, and the crime of killing a sacred goose or stealing a loaf from the bread offerings was considered as abominable as calumny or murder. but although it contains traces of priestly cupidity, yet how many of its precepts are untarnished in their purity by any selfish ulterior motive! in it is all our morality in germ, and with refinements of delicacy often lacking among peoples of later and more advanced civilizations. the god does not confine his favour to the prosperous and the powerful of this world; he bestows it also upon the poor. his will is that they be fed and clothed, and exempted from tasks beyond their strength; that they be not oppressed, and that unnecessary tears be spared them. if this does not amount to the love of our neighbour as our religions preach it, at least it represents the careful solicitude due from a good lord to his vassals. his pity extends to slaves; not only does he command that no one should ill-treat them himself, but he forbids that their masters should be led to ill-treat them. this profession of faith, one of the noblest bequeathed us by the old world, is of very ancient origin. it may be read in scattered fragments upon the monuments of the first dynasties, and the way in which its ideas are treated by the compilers of these inscriptions proves that it was not then regarded as new, but as a text so old and so well known that its formulas were current in all mouths, and had their prescribed places in epitaphs.[*] was it composed in mendes, the god's own home, or in heliopolis, when the theologians of that city appropriated the god of mendes and incorporated him in their ennead? in conception it certainly belongs to the osirian priesthood, but it can only have been diffused over the whole of egypt after the general adoption of the heliopolitan ennead throughout the cities. as soon as he was judged, the dead man entered into the possession of his rights as a pure soul. on high he received from the universal lord all that kings and princes here below bestowed upon their followers--rations of food,[**] and a house, gardens, and fields to be held subject to the usual conditions of tenure in egypt, i.e. taxation, military service, and the corvée. * for instance, one of the formulas found in memphite tombs states that the deceased had been the friend of his father, the beloved of his mother, sweet to those who lived with him, gracious to his brethren, loved of his servants, and that he had never sought wrongful quarrel with any man; briefly, that he spoke and did that which is right here below. ** the formula of the pyramid times is: "thy thousand of oxen, thy thousand of geese, of roast and boiled joints from the larder of the gods, of bread, and plenty of the good things presented in the hall of osiris." if the island was attacked by the partisans of sit, the osirian doubles hastened in a body to repulse them, and fought bravely in its defence. of the revenues sent to him by his kindred on certain days and by means of sacrifices, each gave tithes to the heavenly storehouses. yet this was but the least part of the burdens laid upon him by the laws of the country, which did not suffer him to become enervated by idleness, but obliged him to labour as in the days when he still dwelt in egypt. [illustration: 275.jpg the manes tilling the ground and reaping in the fields of ialû. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a vignette in the funerary papyrus of nebhopît in turin. he looked after the maintenance of canals and dykes, he tilled the ground, he sowed, he reaped, he garnered the grain for his lord and for himself. yet to those upon whom they were incumbent, these posthumous obligations, the sequel and continuation of feudal service, at length seemed too heavy, and theologians exercised their ingenuity to find means of lightening the burden. they authorized the manes to look to their servants for the discharge of all manual labour which they ought to have performed themselves. barely did a dead man, no matter how poor, arrive unaccompanied at the eternal cities; he brought with him a following proportionate to his rank and fortune upon earth. [illustration: 276.jpg uashbîti. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin from a painted limestone statuette from the tomb of _sonnozmû_ at thebes, dating from the end of the xxth dynasty. at first they were real doubles, those of slaves or vassals killed at the tomb, and who had departed along with the double of the master to serve him beyond the grave as they had served him here. a number of statues and images, magically endued with activity and intelligence, was afterwards substituted for this retinue of victims. originally of so large a size that only the rich or noble could afford them, they were reduced little by little to the height of a few inches. some were carved out of alabaster, granite, diorite, fine limestone, or moulded out of fine clay and delicately modelled; others had scarcely any human resemblance. they were endowed with life by means of a formula recited over them at the time of their manufacture, and afterwards traced upon their legs. all were possessed of the same faculties. when the god who called the osirians to the corvée pronounced the name of the dead man to whom the figures belonged, they arose and answered for him; hence their designation of "respondents "--_ûashbîti_. equipped for agricultural labour, each grasping a hoe and carrying a seed-bag on his shoulder, they set out to work in their appointed places, contributing the required number of days of forced labour. [illustration: 277.jpg the dead man and his wife playing at draughts in the pavilion. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a vignette in no, 4 papyrus, dublin (naville, _das mgyptische todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. xxvii. da). the name of draughts is not altogether accurate; a description of the game may be found in falkner, _games ancient and oriental and how to play them_, pp. 9-101. up to a certain point they thus compensated for those inequalities of condition which death itself did not efface among the vassals of osiris; for the figures were sold so cheaply that even the poorest could always afford some for themselves, or bestow a few upon their relations; and in the islands of the blest, fellah, artisan, and slave were indebted to the uashbîti for release from their old routine of labour and unending toil. while the little peasants of stone or glazed ware dutifully toiled and tilled and sowed, their masters were enjoying all the delights of the egyptian paradise in perfect idleness. they sat at ease by the water-side, inhaling the fresh north breeze, under the shadow of trees which were always green. they fished with lines among the lotus-plants; they embarked in their boats, and were towed along by their servants, or they would sometimes deign to paddle themselves slowly about the canals. [illustration: 278.jpg the dead man sailing in his bark along the canals of the fields of ialit. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from the papyrus of nebhopît, in turin. this drawing is from part of the same scene as the illustration on p. 275. they went fowling among the reed-beds, or retired within their painted pavilions to read tales, to play at draughts, to return to their wives who were for ever young and beautiful.[**] ** gymnastic exercises, hunting, fishing, sailing, are all pictured in theban tombs. the game of draughts is mentioned in the title of chap. xvii. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. 1. 2), and the women's pavilion is represented in the tomb of rakhmiri that the dead were supposed to read tales is proved from the fact that broken ostraca bearing long fragments of literary works are found in tombs; they were broken to kill them and to send on their doubles to the dead man in the next world. it was but an ameliorated earthly life, divested of all suffering under the rule and by the favour of the true-voiced onnophris. the feudal gods promptly adopted this new mode of life. [illustration: 279.jpg boat of a funerary fleet on its way to abydos. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by éinil brugsch-bey. the original was found in the course of m. de morgan's excavations at mêîr, and is now at gîzeh. the dead man is sitting in the cabin, wrapped in his cloak. as far as i know, this is the only boat which has preserved its original rigging. it dates from the xith or xiith dynasty. each of their dead bodies, mummified, and afterwards reanimated in accordance with the osirian myth, became an osiris as did that of any ordinary person. some carried the assimilation so far as to absorb the god of mendes, or to be absorbed in him. at memphis phtah-sokaris became phtah-sokar-osiris, and at thinis khontamentîfc became osiris khontamentît. the sun-god lent himself to this process with comparative ease because his life is more like a man's life, and hence also more like that of osiris, which is the counterpart of a man's life. [illustration: 280.jpg the solar bark into which the dead man is about to enter. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a vignette in the papyrus of nebqadn, in paris. born in the morning, he ages as the day declines, and gently passes away at evening. from the time of his entering the sky to that of his leaving it, he reigns above as he reigned here below in the beginning; but when he has left the sky and sinks into hades, he becomes as one of the dead, and is, as they are, subjected to osirian embalmment. the same dangers that menace their human souls threaten his soul also; and when he has vanquished them, not in his own strength, but by the power of amulets and magical formulas, he enters into the fields of lalû, and ought to dwell there for ever under the rule of onuophris. he did nothing of the kind, however, for daily the sun was to be seen reappearing in the east twelve hours after it had sunk into the darkness of the west. was it a new orb each time, or did the same sun shine every day? in either case the result was precisely the same; the god came forth from death and re-entered into life. having identified the course of the sun-god with that of man, and râ with osiris for a first day and a first night, it was hard not to push the matter further, and identify them for all succeeding days and nights, affirming that man and osiris might, if they so wished, be born again in the morning, as râ was, and together with him. if the egyptians had found the prospect of quitting the darkness of the tomb for the bright meadows of ialû a sensible alleviation of their lot, with what joy must they have been filled by the conception which allowed them to substitute the whole realm of the sun for a little archipelago in an out-of-the-way corner of the universe. their first consideration was to obtain entrance into the divine bark, and this was the object of all the various practices and prayers, whose text, together with that which already contained the osirian formulas, ensured the unfailing protection of râ to their possessor. the soul desirous of making use of them went straight from his tomb to the very spot where the god left earth to descend into hades. this was somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of abydos, and was reached through a narrow gorge or "cleft" in the libyan range, whose "mouth" opened in front of the temple of osiris khontamentît, a little to the north-west of the city. the soul was supposed to be carried thither by a small flotilla of boats, manned by figures representing friends or priests, and laden with food, furniture, and statues. this flotilla was placed within the vault on the day of the funeral, and was set in motion by means of incantations recited over it during one of the first nights of the year, at the annual feast of the dead. the bird or insect which had previously served as guide to the soul upon its journey now took the helm to show the fleet the right way, and under this command the boats left abydos and mysteriously passed through the "cleft" into that western sea which is inaccessible to the living, there to await the daily coming of the dying sun-god. [illustration: 282.jpg the solar bark passing into the mountain of the west. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a very small photograph published in the catalogue of the minutoli sale. as soon as his bark appeared at the last bend of the celestial nile, the cynocephali, who guarded the entrance into night, began to dance and gesticulate upon the banks as they intoned their accustomed hymn. the gods of abydos mingled their shouts of joy with the chant of the sacred baboons, the bark lingered for a moment upon the frontiers of day, and initiated souls seized the occasion to secure their recognition and their reception on board of it.[*] once admitted, they took their share in the management of the boat, and in the battles with hostile deities; but they were not all endowed with the courage or equipment needful to withstand the perils and terrors of the voyage. many stopped short by the way in one of the regions which it traversed, either in the realm of khontamentît, or in that of sokaris, or in those islands where the good osiris welcomed them as though they had duly arrived in the ferry-boat, or upon the wing of thot. there they dwelt in colonies under the suzerainty of local gods, rich, and in need of nothing, but condemned to live in darkness, excepting for the one brief hour in which the solar bark passed through their midst, irradiating them with beams of light.[**] * this description of the embarkation and voyage of the soul is composed from indications given in one of the vignettes of chap. xvi. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxii.), combined with the text of a formula which became common from the times of the xith and xiith dynasties (maspero, _études de mythologie et l'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 14-18, and _études égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 122, 123). ** maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 44, 45. the few persevered, feeling that they had courage to accompany the sun throughout, and these were indemnified for their sufferings by the most brilliant fate ever dreamed of by egyptian souls., born anew with the sun-god and appearing with him at the gates of the east, they were assimilated to him, and shared his privilege of growing old and dying, only to be ceaselessly rejuvenated and to live again with ever-renewed splendour. they disembarked where they pleased, and returned at will into the world. if now and then they felt a wish to revisit all that was left of their earthly bodies, the human-headed sparrow-hawk descended the shaft in full flight, alighted upon the funeral couch, and, with hands softly laid upon the spot where the heart had been wont to beat, gazed upwards at the impassive mask of the mummy. [illustration: 284.jpg the soul descending the sepulchral shaft on its way to rejoin the mummy. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from dévèria. this was but for a moment, since nothing compelled these perfect souls to be imprisoned within the tomb like the doubles of earlier times, because they feared the light. they "went forth by day," and dwelt in those places where they had lived; they walked in their gardens by their ponds of running water; they perched like so many birds on the branches of the trees which they had planted, or enjoyed the fresh air under the shade of their sycamores; they ate and drank at pleasure; they travelled by hill and dale; they embarked in the boat of râ, and disembarked without weariness, and without distaste for the same perpetual round. this conception, which was developed somewhat late, brought the egyptians back to the point from which they had started when first they began to speculate on the life to come. [illustration: 285.jpg the soul on the edge of the funeral couch, with its hands on the heart of the mummy. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey, reproducing the miniature sarcophagus of the scribe râ (maspero, _guide du visiteur_, pp. 130, 131, no. 1621). the soul, after having left the place of its incarnation to which in the beginning it clung, after having ascended into heaven and there sought congenial asylum in vain, forsook all havens which it had found above, and unhesitatingly fell back upon earth, there to lead a peaceful, free, and happy life in the full light of day, and with the whole valley of egypt for a paradise. the connection, always increasingly intimate between osiris and râ, gradually brought about a blending of the previously separate myths and beliefs concerning each. the friends and enemies of the one became the friends and enemies of the other, and from a mixture of the original conceptions of the two deities, arose new personalities, in which contradictory elements were blent together, often without true fusion. the celestial horuses one by one were identified with horus, son of isis, and their attributes were given to him, as his in the same way became theirs. apopi and the monsters--the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the wild boar--who lay in wait for râ as he sailed the heavenly ocean, became one with sît and his accomplices. sit still possessed his half of egypt, and his primitive brotherly relation to the celestial horus remained unbroken, either 'on account of their sharing one temple, as at nûbît, or because they were worshipped as one in two neighbouring nomes, as, for example, at oxyrrhynchos and at heracleopolis magna. the repulsion with which the slayer of osiris was regarded did not everywhere dissociate these two cults: certain small districts persisted in this double worship down to the latest times of paganism. it was, after all, a mark of fidelity to the oldest traditions of the race, but the bulk of the egyptians, who had forgotten these, invented reasons taken from the history of the divine dynasties to explain the fact. the judgment of thot or of sibû had not put an end to the machinations of sît: as soon as horus had left the earth, sît resumed them, and pursued them, with varying fortune, under the divine kings of the second ennead. now, in the year 363 of harmakhis, the typhonians reopened the campaign. beaten at first near edfû, they retreated precipitately northwards, stopping to give battle wherever their partisans predominated,--at zatmîfc in the theban nome,[*] at khaîtnûtrît to the north-east of denderah, and at hibonû in the principality of the gazelle. * zatmît appears to have been situate at some distance from bayadîyéh, on the spot where the map published by the egyptian commission marks the ruins of a modern village. there was a necropolis of considerable extent there, which furnishes the luxor dealers with antiquities, many of which belong to the first theban empire. [illustration: 287.jpg the soul going forth into its garden by day. 2] 2 copied by faucher-gudin from the survey-drawings of the tomb of anni by boussac, member of the _mission française_ in egypt (1891). the inscription over the arbour gives the list of the various trees in the garden of anni during his lifetime. several bloody combats, which took place between oxyrrhynchos and heracleopolis magna, were the means of driving them finally out of the nile valley; they rallied for the last time in the eastern provinces of the delta, were beaten at zalû, and giving up all hope of success on land, they embarked at the head of the gulf of suez, in order to return to the nubian desert, their habitual refuge in times of distress. the sea was the special element of typhon, and upon it they believed themselves secure. horus, however, followed them, overtook them near shas-hirît, routed them, and on his return to edfu, celebrated his victory by a solemn festival. by degrees, as he made himself master of those localities which owed allegiance to sit, he took energetic measures to establish in them the authority of osiris and of the solar cycle. in all of them he built, side by side with the sanctuary of the typhonian divinities, a temple to himself, in which he was enthroned under the particular form he was obliged to assume in order to vanquish his enemies. metamorphosed into a hawk at the battle of hibonû, we next see him springing on to the back of sit under the guise of a hippopotamus; in his shrine at hibonû he is represented as a hawk perching on the back of a gazelle, emblem of the nome where the struggle took place. near to zalû he became incarnate as a human-headed lion, crowned with the triple diadem, and having feet armed with claws which cut like a knife; it was under the form, too, of a lion that he was worshipped in the temple at zalû. the correlation of sit and the celestial horus was not, therefore, for these egyptians of more recent times a primitive religious fact; it was the consequence, and so to speak the sanction, of the old hostility between the two gods. [illustration: 289.jpg] horus had treated his enemy in the same fashion that a victorious pharaoh treated the barbarians conquered by his arms: he had constructed a fortress to keep his foe in check, and his priests formed a sort of garrison as a precaution against the revolt of the rival priesthood and the followers of the rival deity. in this manner the battles of the gods were changed into human struggles, in which, more than once, egypt was deluged with blood. the hatred of the followers of osiris to those of typhon was perpetuated with such implacability, that the nomes which had persisted in adhering to the worship of sit, became odious to the rest of the population: the image of their master on the monuments was mutilated, their names were effaced from the geographical lists, they were assailed with insulting epithets, and to pursue and slay their sacred animals was reckoned a pious act. thus originated those skirmishes which developed into actual civil wars, and were continued down to roman times. the adherents of typhon only became more confirmed in their veneration for the accursed god; christianity alone overcame their obstinate fidelity to him.[*] * this incident in the wars of horus and sit is drawn by faucher-gudin from a bas-relief of the temple of edfû. on the right, har-hûdîti, standing up in the solar bark, pierces with his lance the head of a crocodile, a partisan of sît, lying in the water below; harmâkhis, standing behind him, is present at the execution. facing this divine pair, is the young horus, who kills a man, another partisan of sît, while isis and har-hûdîti hold his chains; behind horus, isis and thot are leading four other captives bound and ready to be sacrificed before harmâkhis. the history of the world for egypt was therefore only the history of the struggle between the adherents of osiris and the followers of sît; an interminable warfare in which sometimes one and sometimes the other of the rival parties obtained a passing advantage, without ever gaining a decisive victory till the end of time. the divine kings of the second and third ennead devoted most of the years of their earthly reign to this end; they were portrayed under the form of the great warrior pharaohs, who, from the eighteenth to the twelfth century before our era, extended their rule from the plains of the euphrates to the marshes of ethiopia. a few peaceful sovereigns are met with here and there in this line of conquerors--a few sages or legislators, of whom the most famous was styled thot, the doubly great, ruler of hermopolis and of the hermopolitan ennead. a legend of recent origin made him the prime minister of horus, son of isis; a still more ancient tradition would identify him with the second king of the second dynasty, the immediate successor of the divine horuses, and attributes to him a reign of 3226 years. he brought to the throne that inventive spirit and that creative power which had characterized him from the time when he was only a feudal deity. astronomy, divination, magic, medicine, writing, drawing--in fine, all the arts and sciences emanated from him as from their first source. he had taught mankind the methodical observation of the heavens and of the changes that took place in them, the slow revolutions of the sun, the rapid phases of the moon, the intersecting movements of the five planets, and the shapes and limits of the constellations which each night were lit up in the sky. most of the latter either remained, or appeared to remain immovable, and seemed never to pass out of the regions accessible to the human eye. those which were situate on the extreme margin of the firmament accomplished movements there analogous to those of the planets. [illustration: 293.jpg one of the astronomical tables of the tomb of ramses iv. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a copy by lepsius, _denkm._, iii. 227, 3. every year at fixed times they were seen to sink one after another below the horizon, to disappear, and rising again after an eclipse of greater or less duration, to regain insensibly their original positions. the constellations were reckoned to be thirty-six in number, the thirty-six _decani_ to whom were attributed mysterious powers, and of whom sothis was queen--sothis transformed into the star of isis, when orion (sâhû), became the star of osiris. the nights are so clear and the atmosphere so transparent in egypt, that the eye can readily penetrate the depths of space, and distinctly see points of light which would be invisible in our foggy climate. the egyptians did not therefore need special instruments to ascertain the existence of a considerable number of stars which we could not see without the help of our telescopes; they could perceive with the naked eye stars of the fifth magnitude, and note them upon their catalogues.[*] it entailed, it is true, a long training and uninterrupted practice to bring their sight up to its maximum keenness; but from very early times it was a function of the priestly colleges to found and maintain schools of astronomy. the first observatories established on the banks of the nile seem to have belonged to the temples of the sun; the high priests of râ--who, to judge from their title, were alone worthy to behold the sun face to face--were actively employed from the earliest times in studying the configuration and preparing maps of the heavens. the priests of other gods were quick to follow their example: at the opening of the historic period, there was not a single temple, from one end of the valley to the other, that did not possess its official astronomers, or, as they were called, "watchers of the night."[**] * biot, however, states that stars of the third and fourth magnitude "are the smallest which can be seen with the naked eye." i believe i am right in affirming that several of the fellahîn and bedawîn attached to the "service des antiquités" can see stars which are usually classed with those of the fifth magnitude. ** _urshu_: this word is also used for the soldiers on watch during the day upon the walls of a fortress. birch believed he had discovered in the british museum a catalogue of observations made at thebes by several astronomers upon a constellation which answered to the hyades or the pleiades; it was merely a question in this text of the quantity of water supplied regularly to the astronomers of a theban temple for their domestic purposes. in the evening they went up on to the high terraces above the shrine, or on to the narrow platforms which terminated the pylons, and fixing their eyes continuously on the celestial vault above them, followed the movements of the constellations and carefully noted down the slightest phenomena which they observed. a portion of the chart of the heavens, as known to theban egypt between the eighteenth and twelfth centuries before our era, has survived to the present time; parts of it were carved by the decorators on the ceilings of temples, and especially on royal tombs. the deceased pharaohs were identified with osiris in a more intimate fashion than their subjects. they represented the god even in the most trivial details; on earth--where, after having played the part of the beneficent onnophris of primitive ages, they underwent the most complete and elaborate embalming, like osiris of the lower world; in hades--where they embarked side by side with the sun-osiris to cross the night and to be born again at daybreak; in heaven--where they shone with orion-sâhu under the guardianship of sothis, and, year by year, led the procession of the stars. the maps of the firmament recalled to them, or if necessary taught them, this part of their duties: they there saw the planets and the _decani_ sail past in their boats, and the constellations follow one another in continuous succession. the lists annexed to the charts indicated the positions occupied each month by the principal heavenly bodies--their risings, their culminations, and their settings. unfortunately, the workmen employed to execute these pictures either did not understand much about the subject in hand, or did not trouble themselves to copy the originals exactly: they omitted many passages, transposed others, and made endless mistakes, which made it impossible for us to transfer accurately to a modern map the information possessed by the ancients. in directing their eyes to the celestial sphere, thot had at the same time revealed to men the art of measuring time, and the knowledge of the future. as he was the moon-god _par excellence_, he watched with jealous care over the divine eye which had been entrusted to him by horus, and the thirty days during which he was engaged in conducting it through all the phases of its nocturnal life, were reckoned as a month. twelve of these months formed the year, a year of three hundred and sixty days, during which the earth witnessed the gradual beginning and ending of the circle of the seasons. the nile rose, spread over the fields, sank again into its channel; to the vicissitudes of the inundation succeeded the work of cultivation; the harvest followed the seedtime: these formed three distinct divisions of the year, each of nearly equal duration. thot made of them the three seasons,--that of the waters, shaît; that of vegetation, pirûît; that of the harvest, shômû--each comprising four months, numbered one to four; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of shaît; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of pirûît; the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th months of shômû. the twelve months completed, a new year began, whose birth was heralded by the rising of sothis in the early days of august. the first month of the egyptian year thus coincided with the eighth of ours. thot became its patron, and gave it his name, relegating each of the others to a special protecting divinity; in this manner the third month of shaît fell to hathor, and was called after her; the fourth of pirûît belonged to ranûît or ramûît, the lady of harvests, and derived from her its appellation of pharmûti. official documents always designated the months by the ordinal number attached to them in each season, but the people gave them by preference the names of their tutelary deities, and these names, transcribed into greek, and then into arabic, are still used by the christian inhabitants of egypt, side by side with the mussulman appellations. one patron for each month was, however, not deemed sufficient: each month was subdivided into three decades, over which presided as many _decani_, and the days themselves were assigned to genii appointed to protect them. a number of festivals were set apart at irregular intervals during the course of the year: festivals for the new year, festivals for the beginning of the seasons, months and decades, festivals for the dead, for the supreme gods, and for local divinities. every act of civil life was so closely allied to the religious life, that it could not be performed without a sacrifice or a festival. a festival celebrated the cutting of the dykes, another the opening of the canals, a third the reaping of the first sheaf, or the carrying of the grain; a crop gathered or stored without a festival to implore the blessing of the gods, would have been an act of sacrilege and fraught with disaster. the first year of three hundred and sixty days, regulated by the revolutions of the moon, did not long meet the needs of the egyptian people; it did not correspond with the length of the solar year, for it fell short of it by five and a quarter days, and this deficit, accumulating from twelvemonth to twelvemonth, caused such a serious difference between the calendar reckoning and the natural seasons, that it soon had to be corrected. they intercalated, therefore, after the twelfth month of each year and before the first day of the ensuing year, five epagomenal days, which they termed the "five days over and above the year."[*] * there appears to be a tendency among egyptologists now to doubt the existence, under the ancient empire, of the five epagomenal days, and as a fact they are nowhere to be found expressly mentioned; but we know that the five gods of the osirian cycle were born during the epagomenal day (cf. p. 247 of this history), and the allusions to the osirian legend which are met with in the pyramid texts, prove that the days were added long before the time when those inscriptions were cut. as the wording of the texts often comes down from prehistoric times, it is most likely that the invention of the epagomenal days is anterior to the first thinite and memphite dynasties. the legend of osiris relates that thot created them in order to permit nûît to give birth to all her children. these days constituted, at the end of the "great year," a "little month," which considerably lessened the difference between the solar and lunar computation, but did not entirely do away with it, and the six hours and a few minutes of which the egyptians had not taken count gradually became the source of fresh perplexities. they at length amounted to a whole day, which needed to be added every four years to the regular three hundred and sixty days, a fact which was unfortunately overlooked. the difficulty, at first only slight, which this caused in public life, increased with time, and ended by disturbing the harmony between the order of the calendar and that of natural phenomena: at the end of a hundred and twenty years, the legal year had gained a whole month on the actual year, and the 1st of thot anticipated the heliacal rising of sothis by thirty days, instead of coinciding with it as it ought. the astronomers of the græco-roman period, after a retrospective examination of all the past history of their country, discovered a very ingenious theory for obviating this unfortunate discrepancy. if the omission of six hours annually entailed the loss of one day every four years, the time would come, after three hundred and sixty-five times four years, when the deficit would amount to an entire year, and when, in consequence, fourteen hundred and sixty whole years would exactly equal fourteen hundred and sixty-one incomplete years. the agreement of the two years, which had been disturbed by the force of circumstances, was re-established of itself after rather more than fourteen and a half centuries: the opening of the civil year became identical with the beginning of the astronomical year, and this again coincided with the heliacal rising of sirius, and therefore with the official date of the inundation. to the egyptians of pharaonic times, this simple and eminently practical method was unknown: by means of it hundreds of generations, who suffered endless troubles from the recurring difference between an uncertain and a fixed year, might have consoled themselves with the satisfaction of knowing that a day would come when one of their descendants would, for once in his life, see both years coincide with mathematical accuracy, and the seasons appear at their normal times. the egyptian year might be compared to a watch which loses a definite number of minutes daily. the owner does not take the trouble to calculate a cycle in which the total of minutes lost will bring the watch round to the correct time: he bears with the irregularity as long as his affairs do not suffer by it; but when it causes him inconvenience, he alters the hands to the right hour, and repeats this operation each time he finds it necessary, without being guided by a fixed rule. in like manner the egyptian year fell into hopeless confusion with regard to the seasons, the discrepancy continually increasing, until the difference became so great, that the king or the priests had to adjust the two by a process similar to that employed in the case of the watch. the days, moreover, had each their special virtues, which it was necessary for man to know if he wished to profit by the advantages, or to escape the perils which they possessed for him. there was not one among them that did not recall some incident of the divine wars, and had not witnessed a battle between the partisans of sit and those of osiris or râ; the victories or the disasters which they had chronicled had as it were stamped them with good or bad luck, and for that reason they remained for ever auspicious or the reverse. it was on the 17th of athyr that typhon had enticed his brother to come to him, and had murdered him in the middle of a banquet. every year, on this day, the tragedy that had taken place in the earthly abode of the god seemed to be repeated afresh in the heights of heaven. just as at the moment of the death of osiris, the powers of good were at their weakest, and the sovereignty of evil everywhere prevailed, so the whole of nature, abandoned to the powers of darkness, became inimical to man. whatever he undertook on that day issued in failure. if he went out to walk by the river-side, a crocodile would attack him, as the crocodile sent by sît had attacked osiris. if he set out on a journey, it was a last farewell which he bade to his family and friends: death would meet him by the way. to escape this fatality, he must shut himself up at home, and wait in inaction until the hours of danger had passed and the sun of the ensuing day had put the evil one to flight.[*] * on the 20th of thot no work was to be done, no oxen killed, no stranger received. on the 22nd no fish might be eaten, no oil lamp was to be lighted. on the 23rd "put no incense on the fire, nor kill big cattle, nor goats, nor ducks; eat of no goose, nor of that which has lived." on the 26th "do absolutely nothing on this day," and the same advice is found on the 7th of paophi, on the 18th, on the 26th, on the 27th, and more than thirty times in the remainder of the sallier calendar. on the 30th of mechir it is forbidden to speak aloud to any one. it was to his interest to know these adverse influences; and who would have known them all, had not thot pointed them out and marked them in his calendars? one of these, long fragments of which have come down to us, indicated briefly the character of each day, the gods who presided over it, the perils which accompanied their patronage, or the good fortune which might be expected of them. the details of it are not always intelligible to us, as we are still ignorant of many of the episodes in the life of osiris. the egyptians were acquainted with the matter from childhood, and were guided with sufficient exactitude by these indications. the hours of the night were all inauspicious; those of the day were divided into three "seasons" of four hours each, of which some were lucky, while others were invariably of ill omen. "the 4th of tybi: _good, good, good_. whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. whosoever is born on this day, will die more advanced in years than any of his family; he will attain to a greater age than his father. the 5th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. this is the day on which the goddess sokhîfc, mistress of the double white palace, burnt the chiefs when they raised an insurrection, came forth, and manifested themselves. offerings of bread to shû, phtah, thot: burn incense to râ, and to the gods who are his followers, to phtah, thot, hû-sû, on this day. whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. the 6th of tybi: _good, good, good_. whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. the 7th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. do not join thyself to a woman in the presence of the eye of horus. beware of letting the fire go out which is in thy house. the 8th of tybi: _good, good, good_. whatsoever thou seest with thine eye this day, the ennead of the gods will grant to thee: the sick will recover. the 9th of tybi: _good, good, good_. the gods cry out for joy at noon this day. bring offerings of festal cakes and of fresh bread, which rejoice the heart of the gods and of the manes. the 10th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, mimical_. do not set fire to weeds on this day: it is the day on which the god sap-hôû set fire to the land of btito. the 11th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. do not draw nigh to any flame on this day, for râ entered the flames to strike all his enemies, and whosoever draws nigh to them on this day, it shall not be well with him during his whole life. the 12th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. see that thou beholdest not a rat on this day, nor approachest any rat within thy house: it is the day wherein sokhît gave forth the decrees." in these cases a little watchfulness or exercise of memory sufficed to put a man on his guard against evil omens; but in many circumstances all the vigilance in the world would not protect him, and the fatality of the day would overtake him, without his being able to do ought to avert it. no man can at will place the day of his birth at a favourable time; he must accept it as it occurs, and yet it exercises a decisive influence on the manner of his death. according as he enters the world on the 4th, 5th, or 6th of paophi, he either dies of marsh fever, of love, or of drunkenness. the child of the 23rd perishes by the jaws of a crocodile: that of the 27th is bitten and dies by a serpent. on the other hand, the fortunate man whose birthday falls on the 9th or the 29th lives to an extreme old age, and passes away peacefully, respected by all. [illustration: 304.jpg the gods fighting foe the magician who has invoked them. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from the tracing by golbnischeff, _die metternich-stele_, pi, iii. 14. thot, having pointed out the evil to men, gave to them at the same time the remedy. the magical arts of which he was the repository, made him virtual master of the other gods. he knew their mystic names, their secret weaknesses, the kind of peril they most feared, the ceremonies which subdued them to his will, the prayers which they could not refuse to grant under pain of misfortune or death. his wisdom, transmitted to his worshippers, assured to them the same authority which he exercised upon those in heaven, on earth, or in the nether world. the magicians instructed in his school had, like the god, control of the words and sounds which, emitted at the favourable moment with the "correct voice," would evoke the most formidable deities from beyond the confines of the universe: they could bind and loose at will osiris, sit, anubis, even thot himself; they could send them forth, and recall them, or constrain them to work and fight for them. the extent of their power exposed the magicians to terrible temptations; they were often led to use it to the detriment of others, to satisfy their spite, or to gratify their grosser appetites. many, moreover, made a gain of their knowledge, putting it at the service of the ignorant who would pay for it. when they were asked to plague or get rid of an enemy, they had a hundred different ways of suddenly surrounding him without his suspecting it: they tormented him with deceptive or terrifying dreams; they harassed him with apparitions and mysterious voices; they gave him as a prey to sicknesses, to wandering spectres, who entered into him and slowly consumed him. they constrained, even at a distance, the wills of men; they caused women to be the victims of infatuations, to forsake those they had loved, and to love those they had previously detested. in order to compose an irresistible charm, they merely required a little blood from a person, a few nail-parings, some hair, or a scrap of linen which he had worn, and which, from contact with his skin, had become impregnated with his personality. portions of these were incorporated with the wax of a doll which they modelled, and clothed to resemble their victim; thenceforward all the inflictions to which the image was subjected were experienced by the original; he was consumed with fever when his effigy was exposed to the fire, he was wounded when the figure was pierced by a knife. the pharaohs themselves had no immunity from these spells.[*] * spells were employed against ramses iii., and the evidence in the criminal charge brought against the magicians explicitly mentions the wax figures and the philters used on this occasion. these machinations were wont to be met by others of the same kind, and magic, if invoked at the right moment, was often able to annul the ills which magic had begun. it was not indeed all-powerful against fate: the man born on the 27th of paophi would die of a snake-bite, whatever charm he might use to protect himself. but if the day of his death were foreordained, at all events the year in which it would occur was uncertain, and it was easy for the magician to arrange that it should not take place prematurely. a formula recited opportunely, a sentence of prayer traced on a papyrus, a little statuette worn about the person, the smallest amulet blessed and consecrated, put to flight the serpents who were the instruments of fate. those curious stelae on which we see horus half naked, standing on two crocodiles and brandishing in his fists creatures which had reputed powers of fascination, were so many protecting talismans; set up at the entrance to a room or a house, they kept off the animals represented and brought the evil fate to nought. [illustration: 306.jpg the child horus on the crocodiles. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from an alexandrian stele in the gîzeh museum. the reason for the appearance of so many different animals in this stele and in others of the same nature, has been given by maspero, _études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 417 419; they were all supposed to possess the evil eye and to be able to fascinate their victim before striking him. sooner or later destiny would doubtless prevail, and the moment would come when the fated serpent, eluding all precautions, would succeed in carrying out the sentence of death. at all events the man would have lived, perhaps to the verge of old age, perhaps to the years of a hundred and ten, to which the wisest of the egyptians hoped to attain, and which period no man born of mortal mother might exceed. if the arts of magic could thus suspend the law of destiny, how much more efficacious were they when combating the influences of secondary deities, the evil eye, and the spells of man? thot, who was the patron of sortilege, presided also over exorcisms, and the criminal acts which some committed in his name could have reparation made for them by others in his name. to malicious genii, genii still stronger were opposed; to harmful amulets, those which were protective; to destructive measures, vitalizing remedies; and this was not even the most troublesome part of the magicians' task. nobody, in fact, among those delivered by their intervention escaped unhurt from the trials to which, he had been subjected. the possessing spirits when they quitted their victim generally left behind them traces of their occupation, in the brain, heart, lungs, intestines--in fact, in the whole body. the illnesses to which the human race is prone, were not indeed all brought about by enchanters relentlessly persecuting their enemies, but they were all attributed to the presence of an invisible being, whether spectre or demon, who by some supernatural means had been made to enter the patient, or who, unbidden, had by malice or necessity taken up his abode within him. it was needful, after expelling the intruder, to re-establish the health of the sufferer by means of fresh remedies. the study of simples and other _materiæ medicæ_ would furnish these; thot had revealed himself to man as the first magician, he became in like manner for them the first physician and the first surgeon. egypt is naturally a very salubrious country, and the egyptians boasted that they were "the healthiest of all mortals;" but they did not neglect any precautions to maintain their health. "every month, for three successive days, they purged the system by means of emetics or clysters. the study of medicine with them was divided between specialists; each physician attending to one kind of illness only. every place possessed several doctors; some for diseases of the eyes, others for the head, or the teeth, or the stomach, or for internal diseases." but the subdivision was not carried to the extent that herodotus would make us believe. it was the custom to make a distinction only between the physician trained in the priestly schools, and further instructed by daily practice and the study of books,--the bone-setter attached to the worship of sokhit who treated fractures by the intercession of the goddess,--and the exorcist who professed to cure by the sole virtue of amulets and magic phrases. the professional doctor treated all kinds of maladies, but, as with us, there were specialists for certain affections, who were consulted in preference to general practitioners. if the number of these specialists was so considerable as to attract the attention of strangers, it was because the climatic character of the country necessitated it. where ophthalmia and affections of the intestines raged violently, we necessarily find many oculists[*] as well as doctors for internal maladies. the best instructed, however, knew but little of anatomy. as with the christian physicians of the middle ages, religious scruples prevented the egyptians from cutting open or dissecting, in the cause of pure science, the dead body which was identified with that of osiris. the processes of embalming, which would have instructed them in anatomy, were not intrusted to doctors; the horror was so great with which any one was regarded who mutilated the human form, that the "paraschite," on whom devolved the duty of making the necessary incisions in the dead, became the object of universal execration: as soon as he had finished his task, the assistants assaulted him, throwing stones at him with such violence that he had to take to his heels to escape with his life.[**] * affections of the eyes occupy one-fourth of the _ebers papyrus_. ** diodorus siculus, i. 91. the knowledge of what went on within the body was therefore but vague. life seemed to be a little air, a breath which was conveyed by the veins from member to member. "the head contains twenty-two vessels, which draw the spirits into it and send them thence to all parts of the body. there are two vessels for the breasts, which communicate heat to the lower parts. there are two vessels for the thighs, two for the neck, two for the arms, two for the back of the head, two for the forehead, two for the eyes, two for the eyelids, two for the right ear by which enter the breaths of life, and two for the left ear which in like manner admit the breaths of death." [illustration: 310.jpg a dead man receiving the breath of life. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by naville, in the _ægyptische todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. lxix. the deceased carries in this hand a sail inflated by the wind, symbolizing the air, and holds it to his nostrils that he may inhale the breaths which will fill anew his arteries, and bring life to his limbs. the "breaths" entering by the right ear, are "the good airs, the delicious airs of the north;" the sea-breeze which tempers the burning of summer and renews the strength of man, continually weakened by the heat and threatened with exhaustion. these vital spirits, entering the veins and arteries by the ear or nose, mingled with the blood, which carried them to all parts of the body; they sustained the animal, and were, so to speak, the cause of its movement. the heart, the perpetual mover--_hâîti_--collected them and redistributed them throughout the body: it was regarded as "the beginning of all the members," and whatever part of the living body the physician touched, "whether the head, the nape of the neck, the hands, the breast, the arms, the legs, his hand lit upon the heart," and he felt it beating under his fingers. under the influence of the good breaths, the vessels were inflated and worked regularly; under that of the evil, they became inflamed, were obstructed, were hardened, or gave way, and the physician had to remove the obstruction, allay the inflammation, and re-establish their vigour and elasticity. at the moment of death, the vital spirits "withdrew with the soul; the blood," deprived of air, "became coagulated, the veins and arteries emptied themselves, and the creature perished" for want of breaths. the majority of the diseases from which the ancient egyptians suffered, are those which still attack their successors; ophthalmia, affections of the stomach, abdomen, and bladder, intestinal worms, varicose veins, ulcers in the leg, the nile pimple, and finally the "divine mortal malady," the _divinus morbus_ of the latins, epilepsy. anaemia, from which at least one-fourth of the present population suffers, was not less prevalent than at present, if we may judge from the number of remedies which were used against hematuria, the principal cause of it. the fertility of the women entailed a number of infirmities or local affections which the doctors attempted to relieve, not always with success.[*] * with regard to the diseases of women, cf. _ebers papyrus_, pis. xciii., xcviii., etc. several of the recipes are devoted to the solution of a problem which appears to have greatly exercised the mind of the ancients, viz. the determination of the sex of a child before its birth. the science of those days treated externals only, and occupied itself merely with symptoms easily determined by sight or touch; it never suspected that troubles which showed themselves in two widely remote parts of the body might only be different effects of the same illness, and they classed as distinct maladies those indications which we now know to be the symptoms of one disease. they were able, however, to determine fairly well the specific characteristics of ordinary affections, and sometimes described them in a precise and graphic fashion. "the abdomen is heavy, the pit of the stomach painful, the heart burns and palpitates violently. the clothing oppresses the sick man and he can barely support it. nocturnal thirsts. his heart is sick, as that of a man who has eaten of the sycamore gum. the flesh loses its sensitiveness as that of a man seized with illness. if he seek to satisfy a want of nature he finds no relief. say to this, 'there is an accumulation of humours in the abdomen, which makes the heart sick. i will act.'" this is the beginning of gastric fever so common in egypt, and a modern physician could not better diagnose such a case; the phraseology would be less flowery, but the analysis of the symptoms would not differ from that given us by the ancient practitioner. the medicaments recommended comprise nearly everything which can in some way or other be swallowed, whether in solid, mucilaginous, or liquid form. vegetable remedies are reckoned by the score, from the most modest herb to the largest tree, such as the sycamore, palm, acacia, and cedar, of which the sawdust and shavings were supposed to possess both antiseptic and emollient properties. among the mineral substances are to be noted sea-salt, alum, nitre, sulphate of copper, and a score of different kinds of stones--among the latter the "memphite stone" was distinguished for its virtues; if applied to parts of the body which were lacerated or unhealthy, it acted as an anaesthetic and facilitated the success of surgical operations. flesh taken from the living subject, the heart, the liver, the gall, the blood--either dried or liquid--of animals, the hair and horn of stags, were all customarily used in many cases where the motive determining their preference above other _materiæ medicæ_ is unknown to us. many recipes puzzle us by their originality and by the barbaric character of the ingredients recommended: "the milk of a woman who has given birth to a boy," the dung of a lion, a tortoise's brains, an old book boiled in oil.[*] * ebers papyrus, pl. lxxviii. 1. 22--lxxix. 1. 1: "to relieve a child who is constipated.--an old book. boil it in oil, and apply half to the stomach, to provoke evacuation." it must not be forgotten that, the writings being on papyrus, the old book in question, once boiled, would have an effect analogous to that of our linseed-meal poultices. if the physician recommended taking an old one, it was for economical reasons merely; the egyptians of the middle classes would always have in their possession a number of letters, copy-books, and other worthless waste papers, of which they would gladly rid themselves in such a profitable manner. the medicaments compounded of these incongruous substances were often very complicated. it was thought that the healing power was increased by multiplying the curative elements; each ingredient acted upon a specific region of the body, and after absorption, separated itself from the rest to bring its influence to bear upon that region. the physician made use of all the means which we employ to-day to introduce remedies into the human system, whether pills or potions, poultices, or ointments, draughts or clysters. not only did he give the prescriptions, but he made them up, thus combining the art of the physician with that of the dispenser. he prescribed the ingredients, pounded them either separately or together, he macerated them in the proper way, boiled them, reduced them by heating, and filtered them through linen. fat served him as the ordinary vehicle for ointments, and pure water for potions; but he did not despise other liquids, such as wine, beer (fermented or un-fermented), vinegar, milk, olive oil, "ben" oil either crude or refined, even the urine of men and animals: the whole, sweetened with honey, was taken hot, night and morning. the use of more than one of these remedies became worldwide; the greeks borrowed them from the egyptians; we have piously accepted them from the greeks; and our contemporaries still swallow with resignation many of the abominable mixtures invented on the banks of the nile, long before the building of the pyramids. it was thot who had taught men arithmetic; thot had revealed to them the mysteries of geometry and mensuration; thot had constructed instruments and promulgated the laws of music; thot had instituted the art of drawing, and had codified its unchanging rules. he had been the inventor or patron of all that was useful or beautiful in the nile valley, and the climax of his beneficence was reached by his invention of the principles of writing, without which humanity would have been liable to forget his teaching, and to lose the advantage of his discoveries. it has been sometimes questioned whether writing, instead of having been a benefit to the egyptians, did not rather injure them. an old legend relates that when the god unfolded his discovery to king thamos, whose minister he was, the monarch immediately raised an objection to it. [illustration: 315.jpg th0t records the years of the life of ramses. 1] 1 bas-relief of the temple of seti i. at abydos, drawn by boudier; from a photograph by beato. the god is marking with his reed-pen upon the notches of a long frond of palm, the duration in millions of years of the reign of pharaoh upon this earth, in accordance with the decree of the gods. children and young people, who had hitherto been forced to apply themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them, now that they possessed a means of storing up knowledge without trouble, would cease to apply themselves, and would neglect to exercise their memories. whether thamos was right or not, the criticism came too late: "the ingenious art of painting words and of speaking to the eyes" had once for all been acquired by the egyptians, and through them by the greater part of mankind. it was a very complex system, in which were united most of the methods fitted for giving expression to thought, namely: those which were limited to the presentment of the idea, and those which were intended to suggest sounds. [illustration: 316.jpg page image] at the outset the use was confined to signs intended to awaken the idea of the object in the mind of the reader by the more or less faithful picture of the object itself; for example, they depicted the sun by a centred disc, the moon by a crescent, a lion by a lion in the act of walking, a man by a small figure in a squatting attitude. as by this method it was possible to convey only a very restricted number of entirely materialistic concepts, it became necessary to have recourse to various artifices in order to make up for the shortcomings of the ideograms properly so-called. the part was put for the whole, the pupil in place of the whole eye, the head of the ox instead of the complete ox. the egyptians substituted cause for effect and effect for cause, the instrument for the work accomplished, and the disc of the sun signified the day; a smoking brazier the fire: the brush, inkpot, and palette of the scribe denoted writing or written documents. they conceived the idea of employing some object which presented an actual or supposed resemblance to the notion to be conveyed; thus, the foreparts of a lion denoted priority, supremacy, command; the wasp symbolized royalty, and a tadpole stood for hundreds of thousands. they ventured finally to use conventionalisms, as for instance when they drew the axe for a god, or the ostrich-feather for justice; the sign in these cases had only a conventional connection with the concept assigned to it. at times two or three of these symbols were associated in order to express conjointly an idea which would have been inadequately rendered by one of them alone: a five-pointed star placed under an inverted crescent moon denoted a month, a calf running before the sign for water indicated thirst. [illustration: 317.jpg page image] all these artifices combined furnished, however, but a very incomplete means of seizing and transmitting thought. when the writer had written out twenty or thirty of these signs and the ideas which they were supposed to embody, he had before him only the skeleton of a sentence, from which the flesh and sinews had disappeared; the tone and rhythm of the words were wanting, as were also the indications of gender, number, person, and inflection, which distinguish the different parts of speech and determine the varying relations between them. besides this, in order to understand for himself and to guess the meaning of the author, the reader was obliged to translate the symbols which he deciphered, by means of words which represented in the spoken language the pronunciation of each symbol. whenever he looked at them, they suggested to him both the idea and the word for the idea, and consequently a sound or group of sounds; when each of them had thus acquired three or four invariable associations of sound, he forgot their purely ideographic value and accustomed himself to consider them merely as notations of sound. the first experiment in phonetics was a species of rebus, where each of the signs, divorced from its original sense, served to represent several words, similar in sound, but differing in meaning in the spoken language. the same group of articulations, _naûfir, nofir_, conveyed in egyptian the concrete idea of a lute and the abstract idea of beauty; the sign expressed at once the lute and beauty. [illustration: 318.jpg page image] the beetle was called khopirru, and the verb "to be" was pronounced _khopirû_: the figure of the beetle & consequently signified both the insect and the verb, and by further combining with it other signs, the articulation of each corresponding syllable was given in detail. the sieve _miaû_, the mat _pu, pi_, the mouth _ra, rû_, gave the formula _khaû-pi-rû_, which was equivalent to the sound of _khopirû_, the verb "to be:" grouped together, they denoted in writing the concept of "to be" by means of a triple rebus. in this system, each syllable of a word could be represented by one of several signs, all sounding alike. one-half of these "syllables" stood for open, the other half for closed syllables, and the use of the former soon brought about the formation of a true alphabet. the final vowel in them became detached, and left only the remaining consonant--for example, _r in rû, h in ha, n in ni, b in bû_--so that rû, ha, bû, eventually stood for r, h, n, and b only. this process in the course of time having been applied to a certain number of syllables, furnished a fairly large alphabet, in which several letters represented each of the twenty-two chief articulations, which the scribes considered sufficient for their purposes. the signs corresponding to one and the same letter were homophones or "equivalents in sound"--[ ] are homophones, just as [ ] and [ ], because each of them, in the group to which it belongs, may be indifferently used to translate to the eye the articulations m or n. one would have thought that when the egyptians had arrived thus far, they would have been led, as a matter of course, to reject the various characters which they had used each in its turn, in order to retain an alphabet only. [illustration: 319.jpg page image] but the true spirit of invention, of which they had given proof, abandoned them here as elsewhere: if the merit of a discovery was often their due, they were rarely able to bring their invention to perfection. they kept the ideographic and syllabic signs which they had used at the outset, and, with the residue of their successive notations, made for themselves a most complicated system, in which syllables and ideograms were mingled with letters properly so called. there is a little of everything in an egyptian phrase, sometimes even in a word; as, for instance, in [ ] maszirû, the ear, or [ ] kherôû, the voice; there are the syllables [ ] kher, the ordinary letters [ ], which complete the phonetic pronunciation, and finally the ideograms, namely, [ ], which gives the picture of the ear by the side of the written word for it, and [ ] which proves that the letters represent a term designating an action of the mouth. this medley had its advantages; it enabled the egyptians to make clear, by the picture of the object, the sense of words which letters alone might sometimes insufficiently explain. the system demanded a serious effort of memory and long years of study; indeed, many people never completely mastered it. the picturesque appearance of the sentences, in which we see representations of men, animals, furniture, weapons, and tools grouped together in successive little pictures, rendered hieroglyphic writing specially suitable for the decoration of the temples of the gods or the palaces of kings. mingled with scenes of worship, sacrifice, battle, or private life, the inscriptions frame or separate groups of personages, and occupy the vacant spaces which the sculptor or painter was at a loss to fill; hieroglyphic writing is pre-eminently a monumental script. for the ordinary purposes of life it was traced in black or red ink on fragments of limestone or pottery, or on wooden tablets covered with stucco, and specially on the fibres of papyrus. the exigencies of haste and the unskilfulness of scribes soon changed both its appearance and its elements; the characters when contracted, superimposed and united to one another with connecting strokes, preserved only the most distant resemblance to the persons or things which they had originally represented. this cursive writing, which was somewhat incorrectly termed hieratic, was used only for public or private documents, for administrative correspondence, or for the propagation of literary, scientific, and religious works. it was thus that tradition was pleased to ascribe to the gods, and among them to thot--the doubly great--the invention of all the arts and sciences which gave to egypt its glory and prosperity. it was clear, not only to the vulgar, but to the wisest of the nation, that, had their ancestors been left merely to their own resources, they would never have succeeded in raising themselves much above the level of the brutes. the idea that a discovery of importance to the country could have risen in a human brain, and, once made known, could have been spread and developed by the efforts of successive generations, appeared to them impossible to accept. they believed that every art, every trade, had remained unaltered from the outset, and if some novelty in its aspect tended to show them their error, they preferred to imagine a divine intervention, rather than be undeceived. the mystic writing, inserted as chapter sixty-four in the _book of the dead_, and which subsequently was supposed to be of decisive moment to the future life of man, was, as they knew, posterior in date to the other formulas of which this book was composed; they did not, however, regard it any the less as being of divine origin. it had been found one day, without any one knowing whence it came, traced in blue characters on a plaque of alabaster, at the foot of the statue of thot, in the sanctuary of hermopolis. a prince, hardiduf, had discovered it in his travels, and regarding it as a miraculous object, had brought it to his sovereign. this king, according to some, was hûsaphaîti of the first dynasty, but by others was believed to be the pious mykerinos. in the same way, the book on medicine, dealing with the diseases of women, was held not to be the work of a practitioner; it had revealed itself to a priest watching at night before the holy of holies in the temple of isis at coptos. "although the earth was plunged into darkness, the moon shone upon it and enveloped it with light. it was sent as a great wonder to the holiness of king kheops, the just of speech." the gods had thus exercised a direct influence upon men until they became entirely civilized, and this work of culture was apportioned among the three divine dynasties according to the strength of each. the first, which comprised the most vigorous divinities, had accomplished the more difficult task of establishing the world on a solid basis; the second had carried on the education of the egyptians; and the third had regulated, in all its minutiae, the religious constitution of the country. when there was nothing more demanding supernatural strength or intelligence to establish it, the gods returned to heaven, and were succeeded on the throne by mortal men. one tradition maintained dogmatically that the first human king whose memory it preserved, followed immediately after the last of the gods, who, in quitting the palace, had made over the crown to man as his heir, and that the change of nature had not entailed any interruption in the line of sovereigns. another tradition would not allow that the contact between the human and divine series had been so close. between the ennead and menés, it intercalated one or more lines of theban or thinite kings; but these were of so formless, shadowy, and undefined an aspect, that they were called manes, and there was attributed to them at most only a passive existence, as of persons who had always been in the condition of the dead, and had never been subjected to the trouble of passing through life. menés was the first in order of those who were actually living. from his time, the egyptians claimed to possess an uninterrupted list of the pharaohs who had ruled over the nile valley. as far back as the xviiith dynasty this list was written upon papyrus, and furnished the number of years that each prince occupied the throne, or the length of his life.[*] * the only one of these lists which we possess, the "turin royal papyrus," was bought, nearly intact, at thebes, by drovetti, about 1818, but was accidentally injured by him in bringing home. the fragments of it were acquired, together with the rest of the collection, by the piedmontese government in 1820, and placed in the turin museum, where champollion saw and drew attention to them in 1824. seyffarth carefully collected and arranged them in the order in which they now are; subsequently lepsius gave a facsimile of them in 1840, in his _auswahl der wichtigsten urhunden_, pls. i.-vi., but this did not include the verso; champollion-figeac edited in 1847, in the _revue archéologique_, 1st series, vol. vi., the tracings taken by the younger champollion before seyffarth's arrangement; lastly, wilkinson published the whole in detail in 1851. since then, the document has been the subject of continuous investigation: e. de rougé has reconstructed, in an almost conclusive manner, the pages containing the first six dynasties, and lauth, with less certainty, those which deal with the eight following dynasties. extracts from it were inscribed in the temples, or even in the tombs of private persons; and three of these abridged catalogues are still extant, two coming from the temples of seti i. and ramses ii. at abydos,[*] while the other was discovered in the tomb of a person of rank named tunari, at saqqâra.[**] they divided this interminable succession of often problematical personages into dynasties, following in this division, rules of which we are ignorant, and which varied in the course of ages. in the time of the ramessides, names in the list which subsequently under the lagides formed five groups were made to constitute one single dynasty.[***] * the first table of abydos, unfortunately incomplete, was discovered in the temple of ramses ii. by banks, in 1818; the copy published by caillaud and by salt served as a foundation for champollion's first investigations on the history of egypt. the original, brought to france by mimaut, was acquired by england, and is now in the british museum. the second table, which is complete, all but a few signs, was brought to light by mariette in 1864, in the excavations at abydos, and was immediately noticed and published by dùmichen. the text of it is to be found in mariette, _la nouvelle table d'abydos (revue archéologique_, 2nd series, vol. xiii.), and _abydos_, vol. i. pl. 43. ** the table of saqqâra, discovered in 1863, has been published by mariette, _la table de saqqâra (revue archéologique_, 2nd series, vol. x. p. 169, et seq.), and reproduced in the _monuments divers_, pl. 58. *** the royal canon of turin, which dates from the ramesside period, gives, indeed, the names of these early kings without a break, until the list reaches unas; at this point it sums up the number of pharaohs and the aggregate years of their reigns, thus indicating the end of a dynasty. in the intervals between the dynasties rubrics are placed, pointing out the changes which took place in the order of direct succession. the division of the same group of sovereigns into five dynasties has been preserved to us by manetho. manetho of sebennytos, who wrote a history of europe for the use of alexandrine greeks, had adopted, on some unknown authority, a division of thirty-one dynasties from menés to the macedonian conquest, and his system has prevailed--not, indeed, on account of its excellence, but because it is the only complete one which has come down to us.[*] all the families inscribed in his lists ruled in succession.[**] * the best restoration of the system of manetho is that by lepsius, _das konigsbuch der alten ægypter_, which should be completed and corrected from the memoirs of lauth, lieblein, krall, and unger. a common fault attaches to all these memoirs, so remarkable in many respects. they regard the work of manetho, not as representing a more or less ingenious system applied to egyptian history, but as furnishing an authentic scheme of this history, in which it is necessary to enclose all the royal names which the monuments have revealed, and are still daily revealing to us. ** e. de rougé triumphantly demonstrated, in opposition to bunsen, now nearly fifty years ago, that all manetho's dynasties are successive, and the monuments discovered from year to year in egypt have confirmed his demonstration in every detail. the country was no doubt frequently broken up into a dozen or more independent states, each possessing its own kings during several generations; but the annalists had from the outset discarded these collateral lines, and recognized only one legitimate dynasty, of which the rest were but vassals. their theory of legitimacy does not always agree with actual history, and the particular line of princes which they rejected as usurpers represented at times the only family possessing true rights to the crown.[*] * it is enough to give two striking examples of this. the royal lists of the time of the ramessides suppress, at the end of the xviiith dynasty, amenôthes iv. and several of his successors, and give the following sequence--amenôthes iii., harmhabît, ramses i., without any apparent hiatus; manetho, on the contrary, replaces the kings who were omitted, and keeps approximately to the real order between horos (amenôthes iii.) and armais (harmhabît). again, the official tradition of the xxth dynasty gives, between ramses ii. and ramses iii., the sequence--mînephtah, seti il, nakht-seti; manetho, on the other hand, gives amenemes followed by thûôris, who appear to correspond to the amenmeses and siphtah of contemporary monuments, but, after mînephtah, he omits seti ii. and nakhîtou-seti, the father of ramses iii. in egypt, as elsewhere, the official chroniclers were often obliged to accommodate the past to the exigencies of the present, and to manipulate the annals to suit the reigning party; while obeying their orders the chroniclers deceived posterity, and it is only by a rare chance that we can succeed in detecting them in the act of falsification, and can re-establish the truth. [illustration: 325.jpg table of the kings] the system of manetho, in the state in which it has been handed down to us by epitomizers, has rendered, and continues to render, service to science; if it is not the actual history of egypt, it is a sufficiently faithful substitute to warrant our not neglecting it when we wish to understand and reconstruct the sequence of events. his dynasties furnish the necessary framework for most of the events and revolutions, of which the monuments have preserved us a record. at the outset, the centre to which the affairs of the country gravitated was in the extreme north of the valley. the principality which extended from the entrance of the fayûm to the apex of the delta, and subsequently the town of memphis itself, imposed their sovereigns upon the remaining nomes, served as an emporium for commerce and national industries, and received homage and tribute from neighbouring peoples. about the time of the vith dynasty this centre of gravity was displaced, and tended towards the interior; it was arrested for a short time at heracleo-polis (ixth and xth dynasties), and ended by fixing itself at thebes (xith dynasty). from henceforth thebes became the capital, and furnished egypt with her rulers. with the exception of the xivth xoïte dynasty, all the families occupying the throne from the xith to the xxth dynasty were theban. when the barbarian shepherds invaded africa from asia, the thebaïd became the last refuge and bulwark of egyptian nationality; its chiefs struggled for many centuries against the conquerors before they were able to deliver the rest of the valley. it was a theban dynasty, the xviiith, which inaugurated the era of foreign conquest; but after the xixth, a movement, the reverse of that which had taken place towards the end of the first period, brought back the centre of gravity, little by little, towards the north of the country. from the time of the xxist dynasty, thebes ceased to hold the position of capital: tanis, bubastis, mendes, sebennytos, and above all, sais, disputed the supremacy with each other, and political life was concentrated in the maritime provinces. those of the interior, ruined by ethiopian and assyrian invasions, lost their influence and gradually dwindled away. thebes became impoverished and depopulated; it fell into ruins, and soon was nothing more than a resort for devotees or travellers. the history of egypt is, therefore, divided into three periods, each corresponding to the suzerainty of a town or a principality:-i.--memphite period, usually called the "ancient empire," from the ist to the xth dynasty: kings of memphite origin ruled over the whole of egypt during the greater part of this epoch. ii.--theban period, from the xith to the xxth dynasty. it is divided into two parts by the invasion of the shepherds (xvith dynasty): a. the first theban empire (middle empire), from the xith to the xivth dynasty. b. the new theban empire, from the xviith to the xxth dynasty. iii.--saïte period, from the xxist to the xxxth dynasty, divided into two unequal parts by the persian conquest: a. the first saïte period, from the xxist to the xxvith dynasty. b. the second saïte period, from the xxviiith to the xxxth dynasty. the memphites had created the monarchy. the thebans extended the rule of egypt far and wide, and made of her a conquering state: for nearly six centuries she ruled over the upper nile and over western asia. under the saïtes she retired gradually within her natural frontiers, and from having been aggressive became assailed, and suffered herself to be crushed in turn by all the nations she had once oppressed.[*] * the division into ancient, middle, and new empire, proposed by lepsius, has the disadvantage of not taking into account the influence which the removal of the seat of the dynasties exercised on the history of the country. the arrangement which i have here adopted was first put forward in the _revue critique_, 1873, vol. i. pp. 82, 83. the monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended to unite the country under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups, each of which formed a separate kingdom. heliopolis became the chief focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the rich plains and the marshes of the delta. its colleges of priests had collected, condensed, and arranged the principal myths of the local religions; the ennead to which it gave conception would never have obtained the popularity which we must acknowledge it had, if its princes had not exercised, for at least some period, an actual suzerainty over the neighbouring plains. it was around heliopolis that the kingdom of lower egypt was organized; everything there bore traces of heliopolitan theories--the protocol of the kings, their supposed descent from râ, and the enthusiastic worship which they offered to the sun. the delta, owing to its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited for government from one centre; the nile valley proper, narrow, tortuous, and stretching like a thin strip on either bank of the river, did not lend itself to so complete a unity. it, too, represented a single kingdom, having the reed and the lotus for its emblems; but its component parts were more loosely united, its religion was less systematized, and it lacked a well-placed city to serve as a political and sacerdotal centre. hermopolis contained schools of theologians who certainly played an important part in the development of myths and dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was never widely felt. in the south, siût disputed their supremacy, and heracleopolis stopped their road to the north. these three cities thwarted and neutralized one another, and not one of them ever succeeded in obtaining a lasting authority over upper egypt. each of the two kingdoms had its own natural advantages and its system of government, which gave to it a particular character, and stamped it, as it were, with a distinct personality down to its latest days. the kingdom of upper egypt was more powerful, richer, better populated, and was governed apparently by more active and enterprising rulers. it is to one of the latter, mini or menés of thinis, that tradition ascribes the honour of having fused the two egypts into a single empire, and of having inaugurated the reign of the human dynasties. thinis figured in the historic period as one of the least of egyptian cities. it barely maintained an existence on the left bank of the nile, if not on the exact spot now occupied by girgeh, at least only a short distance from it.[*] * the site of thinis is not yet satisfactorily identified. it is neither at kom-es-sultân, as mariette thought, nor, according to the hypothesis of a. schmidt, at el-kherbeh. brugsch has proposed to fix the site at the village of tineh, near berdis, and is followed in this by dumichen. the present tendency is to identify it either with girgeh itself, or with one of the small neighbouring towns--for example, birbeh--where there are some ancient ruins; this was also the opinion of champollion and of nester l'hôte. i may mention that, in a frequently quoted passage of hellanicos, zoèga corrects the reading [greek phrase], which would once more give us the name of thinis: the mention of this town as being "situated on the river," would be a fresh reason for its identification with girgeh. [illustration: 332.jpg plan of the ruins of abydos, made by mariette in 1865 and 1875.] the principality of the osirian reliquary, of which it was the metropolis, occupied the valley from one mountain range to the other, and gradually extended across the desert as far as the great theban oasis. its inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, anhûri, or rather two twin gods, anhûri-shû, who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities and became a warlike personification of râ. anhûri-shû, like all the other solar manifestations, came to be associated with a goddess having the form or head of a lioness--a sokhît, who took for the occasion the epithet of mîhît, the northern one. some of the dead from this city are buried on the other side of the nile, near the modern village of mesheikh, at the foot of the arabian chain, whose steep cliffs here approach somewhat near the river: the principal necropolis was at some distance to the east, near the sacred town of abydos. it would appear that, at the outset, abydos was the capital of the country, for the entire nome bore the same name as the city, and had adopted for its symbol the representation of the reliquary in which the god reposed. in very early times abydos fell into decay, and resigned its political rank to thinis, but its religious importance remained unimpaired. the city occupied a long and narrow strip of land between the canal and the first slopes of the libyan mountains. a brick fortress defended it from the incursions of the bedouin, and beside it the temple of the god of the dead reared its naked walls. here, anhûri, having passed from life to death, was worshipped under the name of khontamentît, the chief of that western region whither souls repair on quitting this earth. it is impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by what political combinations this sun of the night came to be identified with osiris of mendes, since the fusion dates back to a very remote antiquity; it had become an established fact long before the most ancient sacred books were compiled. osiris khontamentît grew rapidly in popular favour, and his temple attracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims. the great oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious paradise, whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness. it was called uîfc, the sepulchre; this name clung to it after it had become an actual egyptian province, and the remembrance of its ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people, so that the "cleft," or gorge in the mountain through which the doubles journeyed towards it, never ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the other world. at the time of the new year festivals, spirits flocked thither from all parts of the valley; they there awaited the coming of the dying sun, in order to embark with him and enter safely the dominions of khontamentît. abydos, even before the historic period, was the only town, and its god the only god, whose worship, practised by all egyptians, inspired them all with an equal devotion. the excavations of the last few years have brought to light some, at all events, of the oldest pharaohs known to the egyptian annalists, namely, those whom they placed in their first human dynasties; and the locality where the monuments of these princes were discovered, shows us that these writers were correct in representing thinis as playing an important part in the history of the early ages of their country. if the tomb of menés--that sovereign whom we are inclined to look upon as the first king of the official lists--lies near the village of nagadeh, not far from thebes,[*] those of his immediate successors are close to thinis, in the cemeteries of abydos.[**] they stand at the very foot of the libyan hills, near the entrance to the ravine--the "cleft"--through which the mysterious oasis was reached, and thither the souls flocked in order that they might enter by a safe way the land beyond the grave.[***] * the objects found during these excavations are now in the gîzeh museum. ** the credit of having discovered this important necropolis, and of having brought to light the earliest known monuments of the first dynasties, is entirely due to amélineau. he carried on important work there during four years, from 1895 to 1899: unfortunately its success was impaired by the theories which he elaborated with regard to the new monuments, and by the delay in publishing an account of the objects which remained in his possession. *** for the "cleft," cf. supra, pp. 281, 282, 334. the mass of pottery, whole and broken, which has accumulated on this site from the offerings of centuries has obtained for it among the fellahin the name of omm-el-g-aâb--"the mother of pots." the tombs there lie in serried ranks. they present for the most part a rough model of the pyramids of the memphite period--rectangular structures of bricks without mortar rising slightly above the level of the plain. the funeral chamber occupies the centre of each, and is partly hollowed out of the soil, like a shallow well, the sides being bricked. it had a flat timber roof, covered by a layer of about three feet of sand; the floor also was of wood, and in several cases the remains of the beams of both ceiling and pavement have been brought to light. the body of the royal inmate was laid in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by its funeral furniture and by a part of the offerings. the remainder was placed in the little rooms which opened out of the principal vault, sometimes on the same level, sometimes on one higher than itself; after their contents had been laid within them, the entrance to these rooms was generally walled up. human bodies have been found inside them, probably those of slaves killed at the funeral that they might wait upon the dead in his life beyond the grave.[*] the objects placed in these chambers were mostly offerings, but besides these were coarse stelae bearing the name of a person, and dictated to "the double of his luminary."[**] some of them mention a dwarf[***] or a favourite dog of the sovereign, who accompanied his master into the tomb. tablets of ivory or bone skilfully incised furnish us with scenes representing some of the ceremonies of the deification of the king in his lifetime and the sacrifices offered at the time of his burial;[****] in rarer instances they record his exploits. * el. petrie, the royal tombs of the first dynasty, part i. p. 14. ** the "luminous double" or the "double of his luminary" is doubtless that luminous spectre which haunted the tombs and even the houses of the living during the night, and which i have mentioned, supra, p. 160. *** petrie found the skeletons of two dwarfs, probably the very two to whom the two stelae (nos. 36, 37) in the tomb of semempses were raised. was one of these dwarfs one of the _danga_ of puanît who were sought after by the pharaohs of the memphite dynasties? **** this was the ceremony called by the egyptians "the festival of the foundation "--_habu sadu_. the offerings themselves were such as we meet with in burials of a subsequent age--bread, cakes, meat, and poultry of various sorts--indeed, everything we find mentioned in the lists inscribed in the tombs of the later dynasties, particularly the jars of wine and liquors, on the clay bungs of which are still legible the impression of the signet bearing the name of the sovereign for whose use they were sealed. besides stuffs and mats, the furniture comprised chairs, beds, stools, an enormous number of vases, some in coarse pottery for common use, others in choice stone such as diorite, granite, or rock crystal very finely worked, on the fragments of all of which may be read cut in outline the names and preamble of the pharaoh to whom the object belonged. the ceremonial of the funerary offering and its significance was already fully developed at this early period; this can be gathered by the very nature of the objects buried with the deceased, by their number, quantity, and by the manner in which they were arranged. like their successors in the egypt of later times, these ancient kings expected to continue their material existence within the tomb, and they took precautions that life there should be as comfortable as circumstances should permit. access to the tomb was sometimes gained by a sloping passage or staircase; this made it possible to see if everything within was in a satisfactory condition. after the dead had been enclosed in his chamber, and five or six feet of sand had been spread over the beams which formed its roof, the position of the tomb was shown merely by a scarcely perceptible rise in the soil of the necropolis, and its site would soon have been forgotten, if its easternmost limits had not been marked by two large stelae on which were carefully engraved one of the appellations of the king--that of his double, or his horus name.[*] * for the horus name of the pharaohs, see vol. ïi., pp. 23 25. it was on this spot, upon an altar placed between the two stelæ, that the commemorative ceremonies were celebrated, and the provisions renewed on certain days fixed by the religious law. groups of private tombs were scattered around,--the resting-places of the chief officers of the sovereign, the departed pharaoh being thus surrounded in death by the same courtiers as those who had attended him during his earthly existence. the princes, whose names and titles have been revealed to us by the inscriptions on these tombs, have not by any means been all classified as yet, the prevailing custom at that period having been to designate them by their horus names, but rarely by their proper names, which latter is the only one which figures in the official lists which we possess of the egyptian kings. a few texts, more explicit than the rest, enable us to identify three of them with the usaphais, the miebis, and the semempses of manetho--the fifth, sixth, and seventh kings of the ist dynasty.[*] the fact that they are buried in the necropolis of abydos apparently justifies the opinion of the egyptian chroniclers that they were natives of thinis. is the menés who usually figures at their head[**] also a thinite prince? * the credit is due to sethe of having attributed their ordinary names to several of the kings of the ist dynasty with horus names only which were found by amélineau, and these identifications have been accepted by all egyptologists. pétrie discovered quite recently on some fragments of vases the horus names of these same princes, together with their ordinary names. the usaphais, the miebis, and the semempses of manetho are now satisfactorily identified with three of the pharaohs discovered by amélineau and by pétrie. ** in the time of seti i. and ramses ii. he heads the list of the table of abydos. under ramses ii. his statue was carried in procession, preceding all the other royal statues. finally, the "royal papyrus" of turin, written in the time of ramses i., begins the entire series of the human pharaohs with his name. several scholars believe that his ordinary name, mini, is to be read on an ivory tablet engraved for a sovereign whose horus name--ahauîti, the warlike--is known to us from several documents, and whose tomb also has been discovered, but at nagadeh. it is a great rectangular structure of bricks 165 feet long and 84 broad, the external walls of which were originally ornamented by deep polygonal grooves, resembling those which score the façade of chaldæan buildings, but the nagadeh tomjb has a second brick wall which fills up all the hollows left in the first one, and thus hides the primitive decoration of the monument. the building contains twenty-one chambers, five of which in the centre apparently constituted the dwelling of the deceased, while the others, grouped around these, serve as storehouses from whence he could draw his provisions at will. did the king buried within indeed bear the name of menés,[*] and if such was the case, how are we to reconcile the tradition of his thinite origin with the existence of his far-off tomb in the neighbourhood of thebes? * the sign _manu_, which appears on the ivory tablet found in this tomb, has been interpreted as a king's name, and consequently inferred to be menés. this reading has been disputed on various sides, and the point remains, therefore, a contested one until further discovery. objects bearing his horus name have been found at omm-el-gaâb, and it is evident that he belonged to the same age as the sovereigns interred in this necropolis. if, indeed, menés was really his personal name, there is no reason against his being the menés of tradition, he whom the pharaohs of the glorious theban dynasties regarded as the earliest of their purely human ancestors. whether he was really the first king who reigned over the whole of egypt, or whether he had been preceded by other sovereigns whose monuments we may find in some site still unexplored, is a matter for conjecture. that princes had exercised authority in various parts of the country is still uncertain, but that the egyptian historians did not know them, seems to prove that they had left no written records of their names. at any rate, a menés lived who reigned at the outset of history, and doubtless before long the nile valley, when more carefully explored, will yield us monuments recording his actions and determining his date. the civilization of the egypt of his time was ruder than that with which we have hitherto been familiar on its soil, but even at that early period it was almost as complete. it had its industries and its arts, of which the cemeteries furnish us daily with the most varied examples: weaving, modelling in clay, wood-carving, the incising of ivory, gold, and the hardest stone were all carried on; the ground was cultivated with hoe and plough; tombs were built showing us the model of what the houses and palaces must have been; the country had its army, its administrators, its priests, its nobles, its writing, and its system of epigraphy differs so little from that to which we are accustomed in later ages, that we can decipher it with no great difficulty. frankly speaking, all that we know at present of the first of the pharaohs beyond the mere fact of his existence is practically _nil_, and the stories related of him by the writers of classical times are mere legends arranged to suit the fancy of the compiler. "this menés, according to the priests, surrounded memphis with dykes. for the river formerly followed the sandhills for some distance on the libyan side. menés, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to the south of memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain ranges. then menés, the first who was king, having enclosed a firm space of ground with dykes, there founded that town which is still called memphis; he then made a lake round it, to the north and west, fed by the river, the city being bounded on the east by the nile."[*] * the dyke supposed to have been made by menés is evidently that of qosheîsh, which now protects the province of gîzeh, and regulates the inundation in its neighbourhood. the history of memphis, such as it can be gathered from the monuments, differs considerably from the tradition current in egypt at the time of herodotus. it appears, indeed, that at the outset, the site on which it subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress, anbû-hazû--the white wall--which was dependent on heliopolis, and in which phtah possessed a sanctuary. after the "white wall" was separated from the heliopolitan principality to form a nome by itself, it assumed a certain importance, and furnished, so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded the thinite. its prosperity dates only, however, from the time when the sovereigns of the vth and vith dynasties fixed on it for their residence; one of them, papi l, there founded for himself and for his "double" after him, a new town, which he called minnofîrû, from his tomb. minnofîrû, which is the correct pronunciation and the origin of memphis, probably signified "the good refuge," the haven of the good, the burying-place where the blessed dead came to rest beside osiris. the people soon forgot the true interpretation, or probably it did not fall in with their taste for romantic tales. they were rather disposed, as a rule, to discover in the beginnings of history individuals from whom the countries or cities with which they were familiar took their names: if no tradition supplied them with this, they did not experience any scruple in inventing one. the egyptians of the time of the ptolemies, who were guided in their philological speculations by the pronunciation in vogue around them, attributed the patronship of their city to a princess memphis, a daughter of its founder, the fabulous uchoreus; those of preceding ages before the name had become altered, thought to find in minnofîrû a "mini nofir," or "menés the good," the reputed founder of the capital of the delta. menés the good, divested of his epithet, is none other than menés, the first king, and he owes this episode in his life to a popular attempt at etymology. the legend which identifies the establishment of the kingdom with the construction of the city, must have originated at the time when memphis was still the residence of the kings and the seat of government, at latest about the end of the memphite period. it must have been an old tradition in the time of the theban dynasties, since they admitted unhesitatingly the authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the northern city so marked a superiority over their own country. [illustration: 343.jpg necklace, bearing name of menes. 1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin after prisse d'avenues. the gold medallions engraved with the name of menés are ancient, and perhaps go back to the xxth dynasty; the setting is entirely modern, with the exception of the three oblong pendants of cornelian. when once this half-mythical menés was firmly established in his position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story which would portray him as an ideal sovereign. he was represented as architect, warrior, and statesman; he had begun the temple of phtah, written laws and regulated the worship of the gods, particularly that of hâpis, and he had conducted expeditions against the libyans. when he lost his only son in the flower of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning to console him--the "maneros"--both the words and the tune of which were handed down from generation to generation. he did not, moreover, disdain the luxuries of the table, for he invented the art of serving a dinner, and the mode of eating it in a reclining posture. one day, while hunting, his dogs, excited by something or other, fell upon him to devour him. he escaped with difficulty, and, pursued by them, fled to the shore of lake moeris, and was there brought to bay; he was on the point of succumbing to them, when a crocodile took him on his back and carried him across to the other side.[*] in gratitude he built a new town, which he called crocodilopolis, and assigned to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him; he then erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb. other traditions show him in a less favourable light. they accuse him of having, by horrible crimes, excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign of sixty to sixty-two years, he was killed by a hippopotamus which came forth from the nile.[**] * this is an episode from the legend of osiris: at phihe, in the little building of the antonines, may be seen a representation of a crocodile crossing the nile, carrying on his back the mummy of the god. the same episode is also found in the tale of onus el ujûd and of uard f'il-ikmâm, where the crocodile leads the hero to his beautiful prisoner in the island of philæ. ebers, _ægypte_, french trans., vol. ii. pp. 415, 416, has shown how this episode in the arab story must have been inspired by the bas-relief at philæ and by the scene which it portrays: the temple is still called "kasr," and the island "geziret onus el-ujûd." ** in popular romances, this was the usual end of criminals of every kind; we shall see that another king, akhthoes the founder of the ixth dynasty, after committing horrible misdeeds, was killed, in the same way as menés, by a hippopotamus. they also related that the saïte tafnakhti, returning from an expedition against the arabs, during which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp and luxuries of royal life, had solemnly cursed him, and had caused his imprecations to be inscribed upon a stele set up in the temple of amon at thebes. nevertheless, in the memory that egypt preserved of its first pharaoh, the good outweighed the evil. he was worshipped in memphis side by side with phtah and ramses ii.; his name figured at the head of the royal lists, and his cult continued till the time of the ptolemies. his immediate successors had an actual existence, and their tombs are there in proof of it. we know where usaphais, miebis, and semempses[*] were laid to rest, besides more than a dozen other princes whose real names and whose position in the official lists are still uncertain. the order of their succession was often a matter of doubt to the egyptians themselves, but perhaps the discoveries of the next few years will enable us to clear up and settle definitely matters which were shrouded in mystery in the time of the theban pharaohs. as a fact, the forms of such of their names as have been handed down to us by later tradition, are curt and rugged, indicative of an early state of society, and harmonizing with the more primitive civilization to which they belong: ati the wrestler, teti the runner, qenqoni the crusher, are suitable rulers for a people, the first duty of whose chief was to lead his followers into battle, and to strike harder than any other man in the thickest of the fight.[**] * flinders pétrie, _the 'royal tombs of the first dynasty_, vol. i. p. 56. ** the egyptians were accustomed to explain the meaning of the names of their kings to strangers, and the canon of eratosthenes has preserved several of their derivations, of which a certain number, as, for instance, that of menés from aùovioç, the "lasting," are tolerably correct. m. krall is, to my knowledge, the only egyptologist who has attempted to glean from the meaning of these names indications of the methods by which the national historians of egypt endeavoured to make up the lists of the earliest dynasties. some of the monuments they have left us, seem to show that their reigns were as much devoted to war as those of the later pharaohs. the king whose horus name was nârumîr, is seen on a contemporary object which has come down to us, standing before a heap of beheaded foes; the bodies are all stretched out on the ground, each with his head placed neatly between his legs: the king had overcome, apparently in some important engagement, several thousands of his enemies, and was inspecting the execution of their leaders. that the foes with whom these early kings contended were in most cases egyptian princes of the nomes, is proved by the list of city names which are inscribed on the fragments of another document of the same nature, and we gather from them that dobu (edfu), hasutonu (cynopolis), habonu (hipponon), hakau (memphis) and others were successively taken and dismantled.[*] * palette resembling the preceding one, and with it deposited in the gîzeh museum; reproduced by steindokff, and by j. de morgan. the names of the towns were enclosed within the embattled line which was used later on to designate foreign countries. the animals which surmount them represent the gods of egypt, the king's protectors; and the king himself, identified with these gods, is making a breach in the wall with a pick-axe. the names of the towns have not been satisfactorily identified: hat-kau, for instance, may not be memphis, but it appears that there is no doubt with regard to habonu. cf. sayce, the beginnings of the egyptian monarchy in the proceedings of the biblical archæological society, 1898, vol. xx. pp, 99-101. on this fragment king den is represented standing over a prostrate chief of the bedouin, striking him with his mace. sondi, who is classed in the iind dynasty, received a continuous worship towards the end of the iiird dynasty. but did all those whose names preceded or followed his on the lists, really exist as he did? and if they existed, to what extent do the order and the relation assigned to them agree with the actual truth? the different lists do not contain the same names in the same positions; certain pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason. where manetho inscribes kenkenes and ouenephes, the tables of the time of seti i. gave us ati and ata; manetho reckons nine kings to the iind dynasty, while they register only five.[*] * the impossibility of reconciling the names of the greek with those of the pharaonic lists has been admitted by most of the savants who have discussed the matter, viz. mariette, e. de rouge, lieblein, wiedemann; most of them explain the differences by the supposition that, in many cases, one of the lists gives the cartouche name, and the other the cartouche prenomen of the same king. the monuments, indeed, show us that egypt in the past obeyed princes whom her annalists were unable to classify: for instance, they associate with sondi a pirsenû, who is not mentioned in the annals. we must, therefore, take the record of all this opening period of history for what it is--namely, a system invented at a much later date, by means of various artifices and combinations--to be partially accepted in default of a better, but without according to it that excessive confidence which it has hitherto received. the two thinite dynasties, in direct descent from the first human king menés, furnish, like this hero himself, only a tissue of romantic tales and miraculous legends in the place of history. a double-headed stork, which had appeared in the first year of teti, son of menés, had foreshadowed to egypt a long prosperity, but a famine under ouenephes, and a terrible plague under semempses, had depopulated the country: the laws had been relaxed, great crimes had been committed, and revolts had broken out. during the reign of boêthos, a gulf had opened near bubastis, and swallowed up many people, then the nile had flowed with honey for fifteen days in the time of nephercheres, and sesochris was supposed to have been a giant in stature. a few details about royal edifices were mixed up with these prodigies. teti had laid the foundation of the great palace of memphis, ouenephes had built the pyramids of ko-komè near saqqara. several of the ancient pharaohs had published books on theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine; several had made laws which lasted down to the beginning of the christian era. one of them was called kakôû, the male of males, or the bull of bulls. they explained his name by the statement that he had concerned himself about the sacred animals; he had proclaimed as gods, hâpis of memphis, mnevis of heliopolis, and the goat of mendes. after him, binôthris had conferred the right of succession upon all the women of the blood-royal. the accession of the iiird dynasty, a memphite one according to manetho, did not at first change the miraculous character of this history. the libyans had revolted against necherophes, and the two armies were encamped before each other, when one night the disk of the moon became immeasurably enlarged, to the great alarm of the rebels, who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger of heaven, and yielded without fighting. tosorthros, the successor of necherophes, brought the hieroglyphs and the art of stone-cutting to perfection. he composed, as teti did, books of medicine, a fact which caused him to be identified with the healing god imhotpu. the priests related these things seriously, and the greek writers took them down from their lips with the respect which they offered to everything emanating from the wise men of egypt. what they related of the human kings was not more detailed, as we see, than their accounts of the gods. whether the legends dealt with deities or kings, all that we know took its origin, not in popular imagination, but in sacerdotal dogma: they were invented long after the times they dealt with, in the recesses of the temples, with an intention and a method of which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances on the monuments. towards the middle of the third century before our era, the greek troops stationed on the southern frontier, in the forts at the first cataract, developed a particular veneration for isis of philæ. their devotion spread to the superior officers who came to inspect them, then to the whole population of the thebàid, and finally reached the court of the macedonian kings. the latter, carried away by force of example, gave every encouragement to a movement which attracted worshippers to a common sanctuary, and united in one cult the two races over which they ruled. they pulled down the meagre building of the sa'ite period which had hitherto sufficed for the worship of isis, constructed at great cost the temple which still remains almost intact, and assigned to it considerable possessions in nubia, which, in addition to gifts from private individuals, made the goddess the richest landowner in southern egypt. khnûmû and his two wives, anûkit and satît, who, before isis, had been the undisputed suzerains of the cataract, perceived with jealousy their neighbour's prosperity: the civil wars and invasions of the centuries immediately preceding had ruined their temples, and their poverty contrasted painfully with the riches of the new-comer. [illustration: 350.jpg satît presents the pharaoh amenôthes iii. to khnômû.1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the temple of khnûmû, at elephantine. this bas-relief is now destroyed. the priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before king ptolemy, to represent to him the services which they had rendered and still continued to render to egypt, and above all to remind him of the generosity of the ancient pharaohs, whose example, owing to the poverty of the times, the recent pharaohs had been unable to follow. [illustration: 351.jpg anûkit] doubtless authentic documents were wanting in their archives to support their pretensions: they therefore inscribed upon a rock, in the island of sehel, a long inscription which they attributed to zosiri of the iiird dynasty. this sovereign had left behind him a vague reputation for greatness. as early as the xiith dynasty usirtasen iii. had claimed him as "his father"--his ancestor--and had erected a statue to him; the priests knew that, by invoking him, they had a chance of obtaining a hearing. the inscription which they fabricated, set forth that in the eighteenth year of zosiri's reign he had sent to madîr, lord of elephantine, a message couched in these terms: "i am overcome with sorrow for the throne, and for those who reside in the palace, and my heart is afflicted and suffers greatly because the nile has not risen in my time, for the space of eight years. corn is scarce, there is a lack of herbage, and nothing is left to eat: when any one calls upon his neighbours for help, they take pains not to go. the child weeps, the young man is uneasy, the hearts of the old men are in despair, their limbs are bent." ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to deduce from this romantic tale? and did the god regain possession of the domains and dues which they declared had been his right? the stele shows us with what ease the scribes could forge official documents, when the exigencies of they crouch on the earth, they fold their hands; the courtiers have no further resources; the shops formerly furnished with rich wares are now filled only with air, all that was in them has disappeared. "my spirit also, mindful of the beginning of things, seeks to call upon the saviour who was here where i am, during the centuries of the gods, upon thot-ibis, that great wise one, upon imhotpû, son of phtah of memphis. where is the place in which the nile is born? who is the god or goddess concealed there? what is his likeness?" [illustration: 353.jpg the step pyramid of sauara. 1] 1 drawn by boudier, from a photograph by dévèria (1864); in the foreground, the tomb of ti. the lord of elephantine brought his reply in person. he described to the king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the situation of the island and the rocks of the cataract, the phenomena of the inundation, the gods who presided over it, and who alone could relieve egypt from her disastrous plight. zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered the prescribed sacrifices; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted and cried aloud, "i am khnûmû who created thee!" and promised him a speedy return of a high nile and the cessation of the famine. pharaoh was touched by the benevolence which his divine father had shown him; he forthwith made a decree by which he ceded to the temple all his rights of suzerainty over the neighbouring nomes within a radius of twenty miles. henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedressers, fishermen and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their incomes to the priests; the quarries could not be worked without the consent of khnûmû, and the payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers, and finally, all metals and precious woods shipped thence for egypt had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple. did the daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. every prodigy, every fact related by manetho, was taken from some document analogous to the supposed inscription of zosiri.[*] * the legend of the yawning gulf at bubastis must be connected with the gifts supposed to have been offered by king boêthos to the temple of that town, to repair the losses sustained by the goddess on that occasion; the legend of the pestilence and famine is traceable to some relief given by a local god, and for which semempses and ùenephes might have shown their gratitude in the same way as zosiri. the tradition of the successive restorations of denderah accounts for the constructions attributed to teti i. and to tosorthros; finally, the prête tided discoveries of sacred books, dealt with elsewhere, show how manetho was enabled to attribute to his pharaohs the authorship of works on medicine or theology. the real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes which egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single kingdom, under the rule of one man. many names, apparently of powerful and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives. the monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely disappeared: they exist in places where we have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly bring them to light. the few which we do possess barely go back beyond the iiird dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of shiri, priest of sondi and pirsenû; possibly the tomb of khûîthotpû at saqqâra; the great sphinx of gîzeh; a short inscription on the rocks of the wady maghâra, which represents zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of khnûmû in the greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of sinai; and finally the step-pyramid where this same pharaoh rests.[*] * the stele of sehêl has enabled us to verify the fact that the preamble [a string of titles] to the inscription of the king, buried in the step-pyramid, is identical with that of king zosiri: it was, therefore, zosiri who constructed, or arranged for the construction of this monument as his tomb. the step-pyramid of saqqâra was opened in 1819, at the expense of the prussian general minutoli, who was the first to give a brief description of the interior, illustrated by plans and drawings. it forms a rectangular mass, incorrectly orientated, with a variation from the true north of 4° 35', 393 ft. 8 in. long from east to west, and 352 ft. deep, with a height of 159 ft. 9 in. it is composed of six cubes, with sloping sides, each being about 13 ft. less in width than the one below it; that nearest to the ground measures 37 ft. 8 in. in height, and the uppermost one 29 ft. 9 in. it was entirely constructed of limestone from the neighbouring mountains. the blocks are small, and badly cut, the stone courses being concave to offer a better resistance to downward thrust and to shocks of earthquake. when breaches in the masonry are examined, it can be seen that the external surface of the steps has, as it were, a double stone facing, each facing being carefully dressed. the body of the pyramid is solid, the chambers being cut in the rock beneath. these chambers have been often enlarged, restored, and reworked in the course of centuries, and the passages which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which it is dangerous to venture without a guide. the columned porch, the galleries and halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which the architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain the more precious objects of the funerary furniture. until the beginning of this century, the vault had preserved its original lining of glazed pottery. three quarters of the wall surface were covered with green tiles, oblong and slightly convex on the outer side, but flat on the inner: a square projection pierced with a hole, served to fix them at the back in a horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods. [illustration: 356. jpg one of the chambers of the step-pyramid, with its wall-covering of glazed tiles.1] 1 drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured sketch by sogato. m. stern attributes the decoration of glazed pottery to the xxvi '' dynasty, which opinion is shared by borchardt. the yellow and green glazed tiles hearing the cartouche of papi i., show that the egyptians of the memphite dynasties used glazed facings at that early date; we may, therefore, believe, if the tiles of the vault of zosiri are really of the saïte period, that they replaced a decoration of the same kind, which belonged to the time of its construction, and of which some fragments still exist among the tiles of more recent date. the three bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the titles of the pharaoh: the hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green, or yellow, on a fawn-coloured ground. other kings had built temples, palaces, and towns,--as, for instance, king khâsakhimu, of whose constructions some traces exist at hieracônpolis, opposite to el-kab, or king khâsakhmui, who preceded by a few years the pharaohs of the ivth dynasty--but the monuments which they raised to be witnesses of their power or piety to future generations, have, in the course of ages, disappeared under the tramplings and before the triumphal blasts of many invading hosts: the pyramid alone has survived, and the most ancient of the historic monuments of egypt is a tomb. [illustration: 357.jpg tailpiece] end of vol. i. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume iv. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] _the first chaldean empire and the hyksôs in egypt_ _syria: the part played by it in the history of the ancient world-babylon and the first chaldæan empire--the dominion of the hyksôs: âhmosis._ _syria, owing to its geographical position, condemned to be subject to neighbouring powers-lebanon, anti-lebanon, the valley of the orontes and of the litâny, and surrounding regions: the northern table-land, the country about damascus, the mediterranean coast, the jordan and the dead sea-civilization and primitive inhabitants, semites and asiatics: the almost entire absence of egyptian influence, the predominance of that of chaldæa._ _babylon, its ruins and its environs--it extends its rule over mesopotamia; its earliest dynasty and its struggle with central chaldæa-elam, its geographical position, its peoples; kutur-nakhunta conquers larsam-bimsin (eri-aku); khammurabi founds the first babylonian empire; ids victories, his buildings, his canals--the elamites in syria: kudurlagamar--syria recognizes the authority of hammurabi and his successors._ _the hyksôs conquer egypt at the end of the xivth dynasty; the founding of avaris--uncertainty both of ancients and moderns with regard to the origin of the hyksôs: probability of their being the khati--their kings adopt the manners and civilization of the egyptians: the monuments of khiani and of apôphis i. and ii--the xvth dynasty._ _semitic incursions following the hyksôs--the migration of the phoenicians and the israelites into syria: terah, abraham and his sojourn in the land of canaan--isaac, jacob, joseph: the israelites go down into egypt and settle in the land of goshen._ _thébes revolts against the hyksôs: popular traditions as to the origin of the war, the romance of apôphis and saquinri--the theban princesses and the last icings of the xviith dynasty: tiûdqni kamosis, ahmosis i.--the lords of el-kab, and the part they played during the war of independence--the taking of avaris and the expulsion of the ilylcsôs._ _the reorganization of egypt--ahmosis i. and his nubian wars, the reopening of the quarries of turah--amenôthes i. and his mother nofrîtari: the jewellery of queen âhhotpû--the wars of amenôthes i., the apotheosis of nofrîtari--the accession of thûtmosis i. and the re-generation of egypt._ chapter i--the first chaldæan empire and the hyksôs in egypt _syria: the part played by it in the ancient world--babylon and the first chaldæan empire--the dominion of the hyksôs: âhmosis._ some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battle-fields of the contending nations which environ them. into such regions, and to their cost, neighbouring peoples come from century to century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. the nations around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent servitude. should some unlooked-for chance relieve them from the presence of their foreign lord, they will probably be quite incapable of profiting by the respite which fortune puts in their way, or of making any effectual attempt to organize themselves in view of future attacks. they tend to become split up into numerous rival communities, of which even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a perpetual frontier war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of retaining a glorious sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains, or some wooded ravines in the mountains. year after year there will be scenes of bloody conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles on behalf of petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious animosity, that the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or even more than, from an invasion. there will be no truce to their struggles until they all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and, except in the interval between two conquests, they will have no national existence, their history being almost entirely merged in that of other nations. from remote antiquity syria was in the condition just described, and thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. chaldæa, egypt, assyria, and persia presided in turn over its destinies, while macedonia and the empires of the west were only waiting their opportunity to lay hold of it. by its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later to come violently into collision. confined between the sea and the desert, syria offers the only route of easy access to an army marching northwards from africa into asia, and all conquerors, whether attracted to mesopotamia or to egypt by the accumulated riches on the banks of the euphrates or the nile, were obliged to pass through it in order to reach the object of their cupidity. it might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal consequence of its position, had the formation of the country permitted its tribes to mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to the invading hosts; but the range of mountains which forms its backbone subdivides it into isolated districts, and by thus restricting each tribe to a narrow existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism. the twin chains, the lebanon and the anti-lebanon, which divide the country down the centre, are composed of the same kind of calcareous rocks and sandstone, while the same sort of reddish clay has been deposited on their slopes by the glaciers of the same geological period.* * drake remarked in the lebanon several varieties of limestone, which have been carefully catalogued by blanche and lartet. above these strata, which belong to the jurassic formation, come reddish sandstone, then beds of very hard yellowish limestone, and finally marl. the name lebanon, in assyrian libnana, would appear to signify �the white mountain;� the amorites called the anti-lebanon saniru, shenir, according to the assyrian texts and the hebrew books. arid and bare on the northern side, they sent out towards the south featureless monotonous ridges, furrowed here and there by short narrow valleys, hollowed out in places into basins or funnel-shaped ravines, which are widened year by year by the down-rush of torrents. these ridges, as they proceed southwards, become clothed with verdure and offer a more varied outline, the ravines being more thickly wooded, and the summits less uniform in contour and colouring. lebanon becomes white and ice-crowned in winter, but none of its peaks rises to the altitude of perpetual snows: the highest of them, mount timarun, reaches 10,526 feet, while only three others exceed 9000.* anti-lebanon is, speaking generally, 1000 or 1300 feet lower than its neighbour: it becomes higher, however, towards the south, where the triple peak of mount hermon rises to a height of 9184 feet. the orontes and the litâny drain the intermediate space. the orontes rising on the west side of the anti-lebanon, near the ruins of baalbek, rushes northwards in such a violent manner, that the dwellers on its banks call it the rebel--nahr el-asi.** about a third of the way towards its mouth it enters a depression, which ancient dykes help to transform into a lake; it flows thence, almost parallel to the sea-coast, as far as the 36th degree of latitude. there it meets the last spurs of the amanos, but, failing to cut its way through them, it turns abruptly to the west, and then to the south, falling into the mediterranean after having received an increase to its volume from the waters of the afrîn. * bukton-drake, unexplored syria, vol. i. p. 88, attributed to it an altitude of 9175 english feet; others estimate it at 10,539 feet. the mountains which exceed 3000 metres are dahr el-kozîb, 3046 metres; jebel-mislriyah, 3080 metres; and jebel-makhmal or makmal, 3040 metres. as a matter of fact, these heights are not yet determined with the accuracy desirable. ** the egyptians knew it in early times by the name of aûnrati, or araûnti; it is mentioned in assyrian inscriptions under the name of arantû. all are agreed in acknowledging that this name is not semitic, and an aryan origin is attributed to it, but without convincing proof; according to strabo (xvi. ii. § 7, p. 750), it was originally called typhon, and was only styled orontes after a certain orontes had built the first bridge across it. the name of axios which it sometimes bears appears to have been given to it by greek colonists, in memory of a river in macedonia. this is probably the origin of the modern name of asi, and the meaning, _rebellious river_, which arab tradition attaches to the latter term, probably comes from a popular etymology which likened axios to asi, the identification was all the easier since it justifies the epithet by the violence of its current. the litâny rises a short distance from the orontes; it flows at first through a wide and fertile plain, which soon contracts, however, and forces it into a channel between the spurs of the lebanon and the galilæan hills. the water thence makes its way between two cliffs of perpendicular rock, the ravine being in several places so narrow that the branches of the trees on the opposite sides interlace, and an active man could readily leap across it. near yakhmur some detached rocks appear to have been arrested in their fall, and, leaning like flying buttresses against the mountain face, constitute a natural bridge over the torrent. the basins of the two rivers lie in one valley, extending eighty leagues in length, divided by an almost imperceptible watershed into two beds of unequal slope. the central part of the valley is given up to marshes. it is only towards the south that we find cornfields, vineyards, plantations of mulberry and olive trees, spread out over the plain, or disposed in terraces on the hillsides. towards the north, the alluvial deposits of, the orontes have gradually formed a black and fertile soil, upon which grow luxuriant crops of cereals and other produce. cole-syria, after having generously nourished the oriental empires which had preyed upon her, became one of the granaries of the roman world, under the capable rule of the cæsars. syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and soil. that to the north, flanked by the amanos, is a gloomy mountainous region, with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually towards the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over with bare and rounded hills, and seamed with tortuous valleys which open out to the euphrates, the orontes, or the desert. vast, slightly undulating plains succeed the table-lands: the soil is dry and stony, the streams are few in number and contain but little water. the sajur flows into the euphrates, the afrîn and the karasu when united yield their tribute to the orontes, while the others for the most part pour their waters into enclosed basins. the khalus of the greeks sluggishly pursues its course southward, and after reluctantly leaving the gardens of aleppo, finally loses itself on the borders of the desert in a small salt lake full of islets: about halfway between the khalus and the euphrates a second salt lake receives the nahr ed-dahab, the �golden river.� the climate is mild, and the temperature tolerably uniform. the sea-breeze which rises every afternoon tempers the summer heat: the cold in winter is never piercing, except when the south wind blows which comes from the mountains, and the snow rarely lies on the ground for more than twenty-four hours. it seldom rains during the autumn and winter months, but frequent showers fall in the early days of spring. vegetation then awakes again, and the soil lends itself to cultivation in the hollows of the valleys and on the table-lands wherever irrigation is possible. the ancients dotted these now all but desert spaces with wells and cisterns; they intersected them with canals, and covered them with farms and villages, with fortresses and populous cities. primæval forests clothed the slopes of the amanos, and pinewood from this region was famous both at babylon and in the towns of lower chaldæa. the plains produced barley and wheat in enormous quantities, the vine throve there, the gardens teemed with flowers and fruit, and pistachio and olive trees grew on every slope. the desert was always threatening to invade the plain, and gained rapidly upon it whenever a prolonged war disturbed cultivation, or when the negligence of the inhabitants slackened the work of defence: beyond the lakes and salt marshes it had obtained a secure hold. at the present time the greater part of the country between the orontes and the euphrates is nothing but a rocky table-land, ridged with low hills and dotted over with some impoverished oases, excepting at the foot of anti-lebanon, where two rivers, fed by innumerable streams, have served to create a garden of marvellous beauty. the barada, dashing from cascade to cascade, flows for some distance through gorges before emerging on the plain: scarcely has it reached level ground than it widens out, divides, and forms around damascus a miniature delta, into which a thousand interlacing channels carry refreshment and fertility. below the town these streams rejoin the river, which, after having flowed merrily along for a day�s journey, is swallowed up in a kind of elongated chasm from whence it never again emerges. at the melting of the snows a regular lake is formed here, whose blue waters are surrounded by wide grassy margins �like a sapphire set in emeralds.� this lake dries up almost completely in summer, and is converted into swampy meadows, filled with gigantic rushes, among which the birds build their nests, and multiply as unmolested as in the marshes of chaldæa. the awaj, unfed by any tributary, fills a second deeper though smaller basin, while to the south two other lesser depressions receive the waters of the anti-lebanon and the hauran. syria is protected from the encroachments of the desert by a continuous barrier of pools and beds of reeds: towards the east the space reclaimed resembles a verdant promontory thrust boldly out into an ocean of sand. the extent of the cultivated area is limited on the west by the narrow strip of rock and clay which forms the littoral. from the mouth of the litâny to that of the orontes, the coast presents a rugged, precipitous, and inhospitable appearance. there are no ports, and merely a few ill-protected harbours, or narrow beaches lying under formidable headlands. one river, the nahr el-kebir, which elsewhere would not attract the traveller�s attention, is here noticeable as being the only stream whose waters flow constantly and with tolerable regularity; the others, the leon, the adonis,* and the nahr el-kelb,* can scarcely even be called torrents, being precipitated as it were in one leap from the lebanon to the mediterranean. olives, vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while in ancient times the heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of oak, pine, larch, cypress, spruce, and cedar. the mountain range drops in altitude towards the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills, connecting gebel ansarieh with the lebanon proper; beyond the latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable wall. near to the termination of coele-syria, but separated from it by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of hermon a valley unlike any other in the world. at this point the surface of the earth has been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic action, leaving a chasm which has never since closed up. a river, unique in character--the jordan--flows down this gigantic crevasse, fertilizing the valley formed by it from end to end.*** * the adonis of classical authors is now nahr-ibrahim. we have as yet no direct evidence as to the phoenician name of this river; it was probably identical with that of the divinity worshipped on its banks. the fact of a river bearing the name of a god is not surprising: the belos, in the neighbourhood of acre, affords us a parallel case to the adonis. ** the present nahr el-kelb is the lykos of classical authors. the due de luynes thought he recognized a corruption of the phoenician name in that of alcobile, which is mentioned hereabouts in the itinerary of the pilgrim of bordeaux. the order of the itinerary does not favour this identification, and alcobile is probably jebail: it is none the less probable that the original name of the nahr el kelb contained from earliest times the phoenician equivalent of the arab word _kelb_, �dog.� *** the jordan is mentioned in the egyptian texts under the name of yorduna: the name appears to mean _the descender, the down-flowing._ its principal source is at tell el-qadi, where it rises out of a basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of laish.* * this source is mentioned by josephus as being that of the little jordan. [illustration: 014.jpg the most northern source of the jordan, the naiir-el-hasbany] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by the duc de luynes. the water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows down among the brushwood to join the nahr el-hasbany, which brings the waters of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it mingles with the banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate marshy meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering lake huleh.* * lake huleh is called the waters of merom, mê-merom, in the book of joshua, xi. 5, 7; and lake sammochonitis in josephus. the name of ulatha, which was given to the surrounding country, shows that the modern word huleh is derived from an ancient form, of which unfortunately the original has not come down to us. [illustration 014b.jpg lake of genesarath] at this point the jordan reaches the level of the mediterranean, but instead of maintaining it, the river makes a sudden drop on leaving the lake, cutting for itself a deeply grooved channel. it has a fall of some 300 feet before reaching the lake of grenesareth, where it is only momentarily arrested, as if to gather fresh strength for its headlong career southwards. [illustration: 017.jpg one of the reaches of the jordan] drawn by boudier, from several photographs brought back by lortet. here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks, as if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than 62 miles before reaching, the dead sea, nearly 1300 feet below the level of the mediterranean.* * the exact figures are: the lake of hûleh 7 feet above the mediterranean; the lake of genesareth 68245 feet, and the dead sea 1292 feet below the sea-level; to the south of the dead sea, towards the water-parting of the akabah, the ground is over 720 feet higher than the level of the red sea. [illustration: 018.jpg the dead sea and the mountains of moab, seen fkom the heights of engedi] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by the duc de luynes. nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either bank. on the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000 feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions: behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and intersected in all directions by the affluents of the jordan and the dead sea--the yarmuk,* the jabbok,** and the arnon.*** * the yarmuk does not occur in the bible, but we meet with its name in the talmud, and the greeks adopted it under the form hieromax. ** _gen._ xxxii. 22; numb, xxi. 24. the name has been grecized under the forms lôbacchos, labacchos, iambykes. it is the present nahr zerqa. *** _numb._ xxi. 13-26; beut. ii. 24; the present wady môjib. [shephelah = �low country,� plain (josh. xi. 16). with the article it means the plain along the mediterranean from joppa to gaza.--te.] the whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation, with no ambition to take part in general history. west of the jordan, a confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives. one ridge--mount carmel--detached from the principal chain near the southern end of the lake of genesareth, runs obliquely to the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. north of this range extends galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields; while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel zones--the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes--an expanse of plain, a �shephelah,� dotted about with woods and watered by intermittent rivers,--and finally the mountains. the region of dunes is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it--gaza, jaffa, ashdod, and ascalon--are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens. the plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no manure and very little labour. the higher ground and the hill-tops are sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they become denuded and burnt by the sun. the valleys, too, are watered only by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished from the desert. in fact, till the sinaitic peninsula and the frontiers of egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed by the volcanic summits of mount seir. the spring rains, however, cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food. we may summarise the physical characteristics of syria by saying that nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state. in the north, we have the country of the two rivers--the naharaim--extending from the orontes to the euphrates and the balikh, or even as far as the khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of the lebanon, lie coele-syria and its two unequal neighbours, aram of damascus and phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of provinces bordering the valley of the jordan. * the naharaim of the egyptians was first identified with mesopotamia; it was located between the orontes and the balikh or the euphrates by maspero. this opinion is now adopted by the majority of egyptologists, with slight differences in detail. ed. meyer has accurately compared the egyptian naharaim with the parapotamia of the administration of the seleucidæ. it is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the fourth millennium before our era. wherever excavations are made, relics are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. these remains, however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite characteristics, and they yield no information with regard to the origin or affinities of the tribes who fashioned them.* the study of the geographical nomenclature in use about the xvith century b.c. reveals the existence, at all events at that period, of several peoples and several languages. the mountains, rivers, towns, and fortresses in palestine and coele-syria are designated by words of semitic origin: it is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic disguise which they bear on the egyptian geographical lists, names familiar to us in hebrew or assyrian. * researches with regard to the primitive inhabitants of syria and their remains have not as yet been prosecuted to any extent. the caves noticed by hedenborg at ant-elias, near tripoli, and by botta at nahr el-kelb, and at adlun by the duc de luynes, have been successively explored by lartet, tristram, lortet, and dawson. the grottoes of palestine proper, at bethzur, at gilgal near jericho, and at tibneh, have been the subject of keen controversy ever since their discovery. the abbé richard desired to identify the flints of gilgal and tibneh with the stone knives used by joshua for the circumcision of the israelites after the passage of the jordan (_josh._ v2-9), some of which might have been buried in that hero�s tomb. but once across the orontes, other forms present themselves which reveal no affinities to these languages, but are apparently connected with one or other of the dialects of asia minor.* the tenacity with which the place-names, once given, cling to the soil, leads us to believe that a certain number at least of those we know in syria were in use there long before they were noted down by the egyptians, and that they must have been heirlooms from very early peoples. as they take a semitic or non-semitic form according to their geographical position, we may conclude that the centre and south were colonized by semites, and the north by the immigrant tribes from beyond the taurus. facts are not wanting to support this conclusion, and they prove that it is not so entirely arbitrary as we might be inclined to believe. the asiatic visitors who, under a king of the xiith dynasty, came to offer gifts to khnûmhotpû, the lord of beni-hasan, are completely semitic in type, and closely resemble the bedouins of the present day. their chief--abisha--bears a semitic name,** as too does the sheikh ammianshi, with whom sinûhit took refuge.*** * the non-semitic origin of the names of a number of towns in northern syria preserved in the egyptian lists, is admitted by the majority of scholars who have studied the question. ** his name has been shown to be cognate with the hebrew abishai (1 sam. xxvi. 6-9; 2 sam. ii. 18, 24; xxi. 17) and with the chaldæo-assyrian abeshukh. *** the name ammianshi at once recalls those of ammisatana, ammiza-dugga, and perhaps ammurabi, or khammurabi, of one of the babylonian dynasties; it contains, with the element ammi, a final _anshi_. chabas connects it with two hebrew words _am-nesh_, which he does not translate. ammianshi himself reigned over the province of kadimâ, a word which in semitic denotes the east. finally, the only one of their gods known to us, hadad, was a semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and whom we find later on ruling over the destinies of damascus. peoples of semitic speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the greater part of that region on the shores of the mediterranean which we find still in their possession many centuries later, at the time of the egyptian conquest. [illustration: 028.jpg asiatic women from the tomb of khnûmhotpû] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. for a time egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs. when, however, the �lords of the sands� grew too insolent, the pharaoh sent a column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for years. offenders banished from egypt sought refuge with the turbulent kinglets, who were in a perpetual state of unrest between sinai and the dead sea. egyptian sailors used to set out to traffic along the seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; egyptian merchants were accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior. the accounts they gave of their journeys were not reassuring. the traveller had first to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the isthmus, and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging tribes who inhabited it. [illustration: 024.jpg two asiatics fkom the tomb of khnûmhoptû.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger should he escape these initial perils, the amu--an agricultural and settled people inhabiting the fertile region--would give the stranger but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from their attacks.* the country seems to have been but thinly populated; tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards, rendered the route through them dangerous. * the merchant who sets out for foreign lands �leaves his possessions to his children--for fear of lions and asiatics.� ** thûtmosis iii. went elephant-hunting near the syrian town of niî. the notion that syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the egyptians, that their popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of kazarâti, chief of assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to engage in combat. * as, for instance, the hero in the _story of the predestined prince_, exiled from egypt with his dog, pursues his way hunting till he reaches the confines of naharaim, where he is to marry the prince�s daughter. these merchants� adventures and explorations, as they were not followed by any military expedition, left absolutely no mark on the industries or manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to the frontiers of egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power of her attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond the provinces lying nearest to the dead sea. the remaining populations looked rather to chaldæa, and received, though at a distance, the continuous impress of the kingdoms of the euphrates. the tradition which attributes to sargon of agadê, and to his son istaramsin, the subjection of the people of the amanos and the orontes, probably contains but a slight element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we hesitate to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the lebanon or landed in cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent of their civilization in those western countries which are regarded as having been under their rule. more than three thousand years before our era, the asiatics who figure on the tomb of khnûmhotpû clothed themselves according to the fashions of uru and lagash, and affected long robes of striped and spotted stuffs. we may well ask if they had also borrowed the cuneiform syllabary for the purposes of their official correspondence,* and if the professional scribe with his stylus and clay tablet was to be found in their cities. the babylonian courtiers were, no doubt, more familiar visitors among them than the memphite nobles, while the babylonian kings sent regularly to syria for statuary stone, precious metals, and the timber required in the building of their monuments: urbau and gudea, as well as their successors and contemporaries, received large convoys of materials from the amanos, and if the forests of lebanon were more rarely utilised, it was not because their existence was unknown, but because distance rendered their approach more difficult and transport more costly. the mediterranean marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one denomination--martu, amurru,** the west--but there were distinctive names for each of the provinces into which they were divided. * the most ancient cuneiform tablets of syrian origin are not older than the xvith century before our era; they contain the official, correspondence of the native princes with the pharaohs amenôthes iii. and iv. of the xviiith dynasty, as will be seen later on in this volume; they were discovered in the ruins of one of the palaces at tel el amarna in egypt. ** formerly read akharru. martu would be the sumerian and akharru the semitic form, akharru meaning _that which is behind_. the discovery of the tel el-amarna tablets threw doubt on the reading of the name akharru: some thought that it ought to be kept in any case; others, with more or less certainty, think that it should be replaced by amuru, amurru, the country of the amorites. but the question has now been settled by babylonian contract and law tablets of the period of khaminurabi, in which the name is written _a mu-ur-ri (ki)_. hommel originated the idea that martu might be an abbreviation of amartu, that is, amar with the feminine termination of nouns in the canaanitish dialect: martu would thus actually signify _the country of the amorites_. probably even at that date they called the north khati,* and cole-syria, amurru, the land of the amorites. the scattered references in their writings seem to indicate frequent intercourse with these countries, and that, too, as a matter of course which excited no surprise among their contemporaries: a journey from lagash to the mountains of tidanum and to gubin, or to the lebanon and beyond it to byblos,** meant to them no voyage of discovery. armies undoubtedly followed the routes already frequented by caravans and flotillas of trading boats, and the time came when kings desired to rule as sovereigns over nations with whom their subjects had peaceably traded. * the name of the khati, khatti, is found in the _book of omens_, which is supposed to contain an extract from the annals of sargon and naramsin; as, however, the text which we possess of it is merely a copy of the time of assurbanipal, it is possible that the word khati is merely the translation of a more ancient term, perhaps martu. winckler thinks it to be included in lesser armenia and the melitônê of classical authors. ** gubin is probably the kûpûna, kûpnû, of the egyptians, the byblos of phoenicia. amiaud had proposed a most unlikely identification with koptos in egypt. in the time of inê-sin, king of ur, mention is found of simurru, zimyra. it does not appear, however, that the ancient rulers of lagash ever extended their dominion so far. the governors of the northern cities, on the other hand, showed themselves more energetic, and inaugurated that march westwards which sooner or later brought the peoples of the euphrates into collision with the dwellers on the nile: for the first babylonian empire without doubt comprised part if not the whole of syria.* * it is only since the discovery of the tel el-amarna tablets that the fact of the dominant influence of chaldæa over syria and of its conquest has been definitely realized. it is now clear that the state of things of which the tablets discovered in egypt give us a picture, could only be explained by the hypothesis of a babylonish supremacy of long duration over the peoples situated between the euphrates and the mediterranean. among the most celebrated names in ancient history, that of babylon is perhaps the only one which still suggests to our minds a sense of vague magnificence and undefined dominion. cities in other parts of the world, it is true, have rivalled babylon in magnificence and power: egypt could boast of more than one such city, and their ruins to this day present to our gaze more monuments worthy of admiration than babylon ever contained in the days of her greatest prosperity. the pyramids of memphis and the colossal statues of thebes still stand erect, while the ziggurâts and the palaces of chaldæa are but mounds of clay crumbling into the plain; but the egyptian monuments are visible and tangible objects; we can calculate to within a few inches the area they cover and the elevation of their summits, and the very precision with which we can gauge their enormous size tends to limit and lessen their effect upon us. how is it possible to give free rein to the imagination when the subject of it is strictly limited by exact and determined measurements? at babylon, on the contrary, there is nothing remaining to check the flight of fancy: a single hillock, scoured by the rains of centuries, marks the spot where the temple of bel stood erect in its splendour; another represents the hanging gardens, while the ridges running to the right and left were once the ramparts. [illustration: 029.jpg the ruins of babylon] drawn by boudier, from a drawing reproduced in hofer. it shows the state of the ruins in the first half of our century, before the excavations carried out at european instigation. the vestiges of a few buildings remain above the mounds of rubble, and as soon as the pickaxe is applied to any spot, irregular layers of bricks, enamelled tiles, and inscribed tablets are brought to light--in fine, all those numberless objects which bear witness to the presence of man and to his long sojourn on the spot. but these vestiges are so mutilated and disfigured that the principal outlines of the buildings cannot be determined with any certainty, and afford us no data for guessing their dimensions. he who would attempt to restore the ancient appearance of the place would find at his disposal nothing but vague indications, from which he might draw almost any conclusion he pleased. [illustration: 030.jpg plan of the ruins of babylon] prepared by thuillier, from a plan reproduced in g. rawlinson, _herodotus_ palaces and temples would take a shape in his imagination on a plan which never entered the architect�s mind; the sacred towers as they rose would be disposed in more numerous stages than they actually possessed; the enclosing walls would reach such an elevation that they must have quickly fallen under their own weight if they had ever been carried so high: the whole restoration, accomplished without any certain data, embodies the concept of something vast and superhuman, well befitting the city of blood and tears, cursed by the hebrew prophets. babylon was, however, at the outset, but a poor town, situated on both banks of the euphrates, in a low-lying, flat district, intersected by canals and liable at times to become marshy. the river at this point runs almost directly north and south, between two banks of black mud, the base of which it is perpetually undermining. as long as the city existed, the vertical thrust of the public buildings and houses kept the river within bounds, and even since it was finally abandoned, the masses of _debris_ have almost everywhere had the effect of resisting its encroachment; towards the north, however, the line of its ancient quays has given way and sunk beneath the waters, while the stream, turning its course westwards, has transferred to the eastern bank the gardens and mounds originally on the opposite side. e-sagilla, the temple of the lofty summit, the sanctuary of merodach, probably occupied the vacant space in the depression between the babil and the hill of the kasr.* * the temple of merodach, called by the greeks the temple of belos, has been placed on the site called babîl by the two rawlinsons; and by oppert; hormuzd rassam and fr. delitzsch locate it between the hill of junjuma and the kasr, and considers babîl to be a palace of nebuchadrezzar. in early times it must have presented much the same appearance as the sanctuaries of central chaldæa: a mound of crude brick formed the substructure of the dwellings of the priests and the household of the god, of the shops for the offerings and for provisions, of the treasury, and of the apartments for purification or for sacrifice, while the whole was surmounted by a ziggurât. on other neighbouring platforms rose the royal palace and the temples of lesser divinities,* elevated above the crowd of private habitations. * as, for instance, the temple e-temenanki on the actual hill of amrân-ibn-ali, the temple of shamash, and others, which there will be occasion to mention later on in dealing with the second chaldæan empire. [illustration: 032.jpg the kask seen from the south] drawn by boudier, from the engraving by thomas in perrot chipiez. the houses of the people were closely built around these stately piles, on either side of narrow lanes. a massive wall surrounded the whole, shutting out the view on all sides; it even ran along the bank of the euphrates, for fear of a surprise from that quarter, and excluded the inhabitants from the sight of their own river. on the right bank rose a suburb, which was promptly fortified and enlarged, so as to become a second babylon, almost equalling the first in extent and population. [illustration: 033.jpg the tell of borsippa, the present birs-nimrud] drawn by faucher-gudin, after the plate published in ohesney. beyond this, on the outskirts, extended gardens and fields, finding at length their limit at the territorial boundaries of two other towns, kutha and borsippa, whose black outlines are visible to the east and south-west respectively, standing isolated above the plain. sippara on the north, nippur on the south, and the mysterious agadê, completed the circle of sovereign states which so closely hemmed in the city of bel. we may surmise with all probability that the history of babylon in early times resembled in the main that of the egyptian thebes. it was a small seigneury in the hands of petty princes ceaselessly at war with petty neighbours: bloody struggles, with alternating successes and reverses, were carried on for centuries with no decisive results, until the day came when some more energetic or fortunate dynasty at length crushed its rivals, and united under one rule first all the kingdoms of northern and finally those of southern chaldæa. the lords of babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, religious and military, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but gradually yielding to the latter as the town increased in power. they were merely the priestly representatives or administrators of babel--_shakannaku babili_--and their authority was not considered legitimate until officially confirmed by the god. each ruler was obliged to go in state to the temple of bel merodach within a year of his accession: there he had to take the hands of the divine statue, just as a vassal would do homage to his liege, and those only of the native sovereigns or the foreign conquerors could legally call themselves kings of babylon--_sharru babili_--who had not only performed this rite, but renewed it annually.* * the meaning of the ceremony in which the kings of babylon �took the hands of bel� has been given by winckler; tiele compares it very aptly with the rite performed by the egyptian kings--at heliopolis, for example, when they entered alone the sanctuary of râ, and there contemplated the god face to face. the rite was probably repeated annually, at the time of the zakmuku, that is, the new year festival. sargon the elder had lived in babylon, and had built himself a palace there: hence the tradition of later times attributed to this city the glory of having been the capital of the great empire founded by the akkadian dynasties. the actual sway of babylon, though arrested to the south by the petty states of lower chaldæa, had not encountered to the north or north-west any enemy to menace seriously its progress in that semi-fabulous period of its history. the vast plain extending between the euphrates and the tigris is as it were a continuation of the arabian desert, and is composed of a grey, or in parts a whitish, soil impregnated with selenite and common salt, and irregularly superimposed upon a bed of gypsum, from which asphalt oozes up here and there, forming slimy pits. frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is infrequent at any season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage which the spring showers have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully resist its heat, such as the common salsola, the salsola soda, the pallasia, a small mimosa, and a species of very fragrant wormwood, forming together a vari-coloured vegetation which gives shelter to the ostrich and the wild ass, and affords the flocks of the nomads a grateful pasturage when the autumn has set in. the euphrates bounds these solitudes, but without watering them. the river flows, as far as the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or bare hills, at the foot of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports rows of date-palms intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and willows. wherever there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede from the river, a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and every inch of the soil is brought under cultivation. the aspect of the country remains unchanged as far as the embouchure of the khabur; but there a black alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the water were to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops. [illustration: 036.jpg the banks of the euphrates at zuleibeh] drawn by boudier, from the plate in chesney. the fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley: while in the prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that it comes up to the horses� girths. in some places the meadows are so covered with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the effect produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them in search of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen. this fragrant prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce excellent and abundant honey, while the vine and olive find there a congenial soil. the population was unequally distributed in this region. some half-savage tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain, dwelling in tents, and supporting life by the chase and by the rearing of cattle; but the bulk of the inhabitants were concentrated around the affluents of the euphrates and tigris, or at the foot of the northern mountains wherever springs could be found, as in assur, singar, nisibis, tilli,* kharranu, and in all the small fortified towns and nameless townlets whose ruins are scattered over the tract of country between the khabur and the balikh. kharranu, or harran, stood, like an advance guard of chaldæan civilization, near the frontiers of syria and asia minor.** to the north it commanded the passes which opened on to the basins of the upper euphrates and tigris; it protected the roads leading to the east and south-east in the direction of the table-land of iran and the persian gulf, and it was the key to the route by which the commerce of babylon reached the countries lying around the mediterranean. we have no means of knowing what affinities as regards origin or race connected it with uru, but the same moon-god presided over the destinies of both towns, and the sin of harran enjoyed in very early times a renown nearly equal to that of his namesake. * tilli, the only one of these towns mentioned with any certainty in the inscriptions of the first chaldæan empire, is the tela of classical authors, and probably the present werânshaher, near the sources of the balikh. ** kharranu was identified by the earlier assyriologists with the harran of the hebrews (_gen._ v. 12), the carrhse of classical authors, and this identification is still generally accepted. he was worshipped under the symbol of a conical stone, probably an aerolite, surmounted by a gilded crescent, and the ground-plan of the town roughly described a crescent-shaped curve in honour of its patron. his cult, even down to late times, was connected with cruel practices; generations after the advent to power of the abbasside caliphs, his faithful worshippers continued to sacrifice to him human victims, whose heads, prepared according to the ancient rite, were accustomed to give oracular responses.* the government of the surrounding country was in the hands of princes who were merely vicegerents:** chaldæan civilization before the beginnings of history had more or less laid hold of them, and made them willing subjects to the kings of babylon.*** * without seeking to specify exactly which were the doctrines introduced into harranian religion subsequently to the christian era, we may yet affirm that the base of this system of faith was merely a very distorted form of the ancient chaldæan worship practised in the town. ** only one vicegerent of mesopotamia is known at present, and he belongs to the assyrian epoch. his seal is preserved in the british museum. *** the importance of harran in the development of the history of the first chaldæan empire was pointed out by winckler; but the theory according to which this town was the capital of the kingdom, called by the chaldæan and assyrian scribes �the kingdom of the world,� is justly combated by tiele. these sovereigns were probably at the outset somewhat obscure personages, without much prestige, being sometimes independent and sometimes subject to the rulers of neighbouring states, among others to those of agadê. in later times, when babylon had attained to universal power, and it was desired to furnish her kings with a continuous history, the names of these earlier rulers were sought out, and added to those of such foreign princes as had from time to time enjoyed the sovereignty over them--thus forming an interminable list which for materials and authenticity would well compare with that of the thinite pharaohs. this list has come down to us incomplete, and its remains do not permit of our determining the exact order of reigns, or the status of the individuals who composed it. we find in it, in the period immediately subsequent to the deluge, mention of mythical heroes, followed by names which are still semi-legendary, such as sargon the elder; the princes of the series were, however, for the most part real beings, whose memories had been preserved by tradition, or whose monuments were still existing in certain localities. towards the end of the xxvth century before our era, however, a dynasty rose into power of which all the members come within the range of history.* * this dynasty, which is known to us in its entirety by the two lists of g. smith and by pinches, was legitimately composed of only eleven kings, and was known as the babylonian dynasty, although sayce suspects it to be of arabian origin. it is composed as follows:-[illustration: 039.jpg table] the dates of this dynasty are not fixed with entire certainty. the first of them, sumuabîm, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one or other of the fifteen years of his reign, and documents of public or private interest abound in proportion as we follow down the line of his successors. sumulaîlu, who reigned after him, was only distantly related to his predecessor; but from sumulaîlu to sam-shusatana the kingly power was transmitted from father to son without a break for nine generations, if we may credit the testimony of the official lists.* * simulaîlu, also written samu-la-ilu, whom mr. pinches has found in a contract tablet associated with pungunila as king, was not the son of sumuabîm, since the lists do not mention him as such; he must, however, have been connected with some sort of relationship, or by marriage, with his predecessor, since both are placed in the same dynasty. a few contracts of sumulaîlu are given by meissner. samsuiluna calls him �my forefather (d-gula-mu), the fifth king before me.� hommel believes that the order of the dynasties has been reversed, and that the first upon the lists we possess was historically the second; he thus places the babylonian dynasty between 2035 and 1731 b.c. his opinion has not been generally adopted, but every assyriologist dealing with this period proposes a different date for the reigns in this dynasty; to take only one characteristic example, khammurabi is placed by oppert in the year 2394-2339, by delitzsch murdter in 2287-2232, by winckler in 2264-2210, and by peiser in 2139-2084, and by carl niebuhr in 2081-2026. contemporary records, however, prove that the course of affairs did not always run so smoothly. they betray the existence of at least one usurper--immêru--who, even if he did not assume the royal titles, enjoyed the supreme power for several years between the reigns of zabu and abilsin. the lives of these rulers closely resembled those of their contemporaries of southern chaldæa. they dredged the ancient canals, or constructed new ones; they restored the walls of their fortresses, or built fresh strongholds on the frontier;* they religiously kept the festivals of the divinities belonging to their terrestrial domain, to whom they annually rendered solemn homage. * sumulaîlu had built six such large strongholds of brick, which were repaired by samsuiluna five generations later. a contract of sinmuballit is dated the year in which he built the great wall of a strong place, the name of which is unfortunately illegible on the fragment which we possess. they repaired the temples as a matter of course, and enriched them according to their means; we even know that zabu, the third in order of the line of sovereigns, occupied himself in building the sanctuary eulbar of anunit, in sippara. there is evidence that they possessed the small neighbouring kingdoms of kishu, sippara, and kuta, and that they had consolidated them into a single state, of which babylon was the capital. to the south their possessions touched upon those of the kings of uru, but the frontier was constantly shifting, so that at one time an important city such as nippur belonged to them, while at another it fell under the dominion of the southern provinces. perpetual war was waged in the narrow borderland which separated the two rival states, resulting apparently in the balance of power being kept tolerably equal between them under the immediate successors of sumuabîm* --the obscure sumulaîlu, zabum, the usurper immeru, abîlsin and sinmuballit--until the reign of khammurabi (the son of sinmuballit), who finally made it incline to his side.** the struggle in which he was engaged, and which, after many vicissitudes, he brought to a successful issue, was the more decisive, since he had to contend against a skilful and energetic adversary who had considerable forces at his disposal. birnsin*** was, in reality, of elamite race, and as he held the province of yamutbal in appanage, he was enabled to muster, in addition to his chaldæan battalions, the army of foreigners who had conquered the maritime regions at the mouth of the tigris and the euphrates. * none of these facts are as yet historically proved: we may, however, conjecture with some probability what was the general state of things, when we remember that the first kings of babylon were contemporaries of the last independent sovereigns of southern chaldæa. ** the name of this prince has been read in several ways- hammurabi, khammurabi, by the earlier assyriologists, subsequently hammuragash, khammuragash, as being of elamite or cossoan extraction: the reading khammurabi is at present the prevailing one. the bilingual list published by pinches makes khammurabi an equivalent of the semitic names kimta rapashtum. hence halévy concluded that khammurabi was a series of ideograms, and that kimtarapashtum was the true reading of the name; his proposal, partially admitted by hommel, furnishes us with a mixed reading of khammurapaltu, amraphel. [hommel is now convinced of the identity of the amraphel of _gen._ xiv. i with khammurabi.--te.] sayce, moreover, adopts the reading khammurabi, and assigns to him an arabian origin. the part played by this prince was pointed out at an early date by menant. recent discoveries have shown the important share which he had in developing the chaldæan empire, and have, increased his reputation with assyriologists. *** the name of this king has been the theme of heated discussions: it was at first pronounced aradsin, ardusin, or zikarsin; it is now read in several different ways--rimsin, or eriaku, riaku, rimagu. others have made a distinction between the two forms, and have made out of them the names of two different kings. they are all variants of the same name. i have adopted the form rimsin, which is preferred by a few assyriologists. [the tablets recently discovered by mr. pinches, referring to kudur-lagamar and tudkhula, which he has published in a paper road before the victoria institute, jan. 20, 1896, have shown that the true reading is eri-aku. the elamite name eri-aku, �servant of the moon god,� was changed by some of his subjects into the babylonian rim-sin, �have mercy, o moon-god!� just as abêsukh, the hebrew absihu�a (�the father of welfare�) was transformed into the babylonian ebisum (�the actor�).--ed.] it was not the first time that elam had audaciously interfered in the affairs of her neighbours. in fabulous times, one of her mythical kings--khumbaba the ferocious--had oppressed. uruk, and gilgames with all his valour was barely able to deliver the town. sargon the elder is credited with having subdued elam; the kings and vicegerents of lagash, as well as those of uru and. larsam, had measured forces with anshan, but with no decisive issue. from time to time they obtained an advantage, and we find recorded in the annals victories gained by gudea, inê-sin, or bursin, but to be followed only by fresh reverses; at the close of such campaigns, and in order to seal the ensuing peace, à princess of susa would be sent as a bride to one of the chaldæan cities, or a chaldæan lady of royal birth would enter the harem of a king of anshân. elam was protected along the course of the tigris and on the shores of the nâr-marratum by a wide marshy region, impassable except at a few fixed and easily defended places. the alluvial plain extending behind the marshes was as rich and fertile as that of chaldæa. wheat and barley ordinarily yielded an hundred and at times two hundredfold; the towns were surrounded by a shadeless belt of palms; the almond, fig, acacia, poplar, and willow extended in narrow belts along the rivers� edge. the climate closely resembles that of chaldaja: if the midday heat in summer is more pitiless, it is at least tempered by more frequent east winds. the ground, however, soon begins to rise, ascending gradually towards the north-east. the distant and uniform line of mountain-peaks grows loftier on the approach of the traveller, and the hills begin to appear one behind another, clothed halfway up with thick forests, but bare on their summits, or scantily covered with meagre vegetation. they comprise, in fact, six or seven parallel ranges, resembling natural ramparts piled up between the country of the tigris and the table-land of iran. the intervening valleys were formerly lakes, having had for the most part no communication with each other and no outlet into the sea. in the course of centuries they had dried up, leaving a thick deposit of mud in the hollows of their ancient beds, from which sprang luxurious and abundant harvests. the rivers--the uknu,* the ididi,** and the ulaî***--which water this region are, on reaching more level ground, connected by canals, and are constantly shifting their beds in the light soil of the susian plain: they soon attain a width equal to that of the euphrates, but after a short time lose half their volume in swamps, and empty themselves at the present day into the shatt-el-arab. they flowed formerly into that part of the persian gulf which extended as far as kornah, and the sea thus formed the southern frontier of the kingdom. * the uknu is the kerkhah of the present day, the choaspes of the greeks. ** the ididi was at first identified with the ancient pasitigris, which scholars then desired to distinguish from the eulseos: it is now known to be the arm of the karun which runs to dizful, the koprates of classical times, which has sometimes been confounded with the eulaws. *** the ulaî, mentioned in the hebrew texts (ban. viii. 2, 16), the euloos of classical writers, also called pasitigris. it is the karun of the present day, until its confluence with the shaûr, and subsequently the shaûr itself, which waters the foot of the susian hills. from earliest times this country was inhabited by three distinct peoples, whose descendants may still be distinguished at the present day, and although they have dwindled in numbers and become mixed with elements of more recent origin, the resemblance to their forefathers is still very remarkable. there were, in the first place, the short and robust people of well-knit figure, with brown skins, black hair and eyes, who belonged to that negritic race which inhabited a considerable part of asia in prehistoric times.* * the connection of the negroid type of susians with the negritic races of india and oceania, has been proved, in the course of m. dieulafoy�s expedition to the susian plains and the ancient provinces of elam. [illustration: 045.jpg map of chaldæa and elam.] [illustration: 046.jpg an ancient susian of negretic race] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of sargon ii. in the louvre. these prevailed in the lowlands and the valleys, where the warm, damp climate favoured their development; but they also spread into the mountain region, and had pushed their outposts as far as the first slopes of the iranian table-land. they there contact with white-skinned of medium height, who were probably allied to the nations of northern and central asia--to the scythians,* for instance, if it is permissible to use a vague term employed by the ancients. * this last-mentioned people is, by some authors, for reasons which, so far, can hardly be considered conclusive, connected with the so-called sumerian race, which we find settled in chaldæa. they are said to have been the first to employ horses and chariots in warfare. [illustration: 047.jpg native of mixed negritic race from susiana] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph furnished by marcel dieulafoy. semites of the same stock as those of chaldæa pushed forward as far as the east bank of the tigris, and settling mainly among the marshes led a precarious life by fishing and pillaging.* the country of the plain was called anzân, or anshân,** and the mountain region numma, or ilamma, �the high lands:� these two names were subsequently used to denote the whole country, and ilamma has survived in the hebrew word elam.*** susa, the most important and flourishing town in the kingdom, was situated between the ulaî and the ididi, some twenty-five or thirty miles from the nearest of the mountain ranges. * from the earliest times we meet beyond the tigris with names like that of durilu, a fact which proves the existence of races speaking a semitic dialect in the countries under the suzerainty of the king of elam: in the last days of the chaldæan empire they had assumed such importance that the hebrews made out elam to be one of the sons of shem (_gen._ x. 22). ** anzân, anshân, and, by assimilation of the nasal with the sibilant, ashshân. this name has already been mentioned in the inscriptions of the kings and vicegerents of lagash and in the _book of prophecies_ of the ancient chaldæan astronomers; it also occurs in the royal preamble of cyrus and his ancestors, who like him were styled �kings of anshân.� it had been applied to the whole country of elam, and afterwards to persia. some are of opinion that it was the name of a part of elam, viz. that inhabited by the turanian medes who spoke the second language of the achæmenian inscriptions, the eastern half, bounded by the tigris and the persian gulf, consisting of a flat and swampy land. these differences of opinion gave rise to a heated controversy; it is now, however, pretty generally admitted that anzân-anshân was really the plain of elam, from the mountains to the sea, and one set of authorities affirms that the word anzân may have meant �plain� in the language of the country, while others hesitate as yet to pronounce definitely on this point. *** the meaning of �nunima,� �ilamma,� �ilamtu,� in the group of words used to indicate elam, had been recognised even by the earliest assyriologists; the name originally referred to the hilly country on the north and east of susa. to the hebrews, elam was one of the sons of shem (gen. x. 22). the greek form of the name is elymais, and some of the classical geographers were well enough acquainted with the meaning of the word to be able to distinguish the region to which it referred from susiana proper. [illustration: 048.jpg the tumulus of susa, as it appeared towards the middle of the xixth century] drawn by faucher-gudin, after a plate in chesney. its fortress and palace were raised upon the slopes of a mound which overlooked the surrounding country:* at its base, to the eastward, stretched the town, with its houses of sun-dried bricks.** * susa, in the language of the country, was called shushun; this name was transliterated into chaldæo-assyrian, by shushan, shushi. ** strabo tells us, on the authority of polycletus, that the town had no walls in the time of alexander, and extended over a space two hundred stadia in length; in the viii century b.c. it was enclosed by walls with bastions, which are shown on a bas-relief of assurbanipal, but it was surrounded by unfortified suburbs. further up the course of the uknu, lay the following cities: madaktu, the badaca of classical authors,* rivalling susa in strength and importance; naditu,** til-khumba,*** dur-undash,**** khaidalu.^--all large walled towns, most of which assumed the title of royal cities. elam in reality constituted a kind of feudal empire, composed of several tribes--the habardip, the khushshi, the umliyash, the people of yamutbal and of yatbur^^--all independent of each other, but often united under the authority of one sovereign, who as a rule chose susa as the seat of government. * madaktu, mataktu, the badaka of diodorus, situated on the eulaaos, between susa and ecbatana, has been placed by rawlinson near the bifurcation of the kerkhah, either at paipul or near aiwân-i-kherkah, where there are some rather important and ancient ruins; billerbeck prefers to put it at the mouth of the valley of zal-fer, on the site at present occupied by the citadel of kala-i-riza. ** naditu is identified by finzi with the village of natanzah, near ispahan; it ought rather to be looked for in the neighbourhood of sarna. *** til-khumba, the mound of khumba, so named after one of the principal elamite gods, was, perhaps, situated among the ruins of budbar, towards the confluence of the ab-i-kirind and kerkhah, or possibly higher up in the mountain, in the vicinity of asmanabad. **** dur-undash, dur-undasi, has been identified, without absolutely conclusive reason, with the fortress of kala-i dis on the disful-rud. ^ khaidalu, khidalu, is perhaps the present fortress of dis malkan. ^^ the countries of yatbur and yamutbal extended into the plain between the marshes of the tigris and the mountain; the town of durilu was near the yamutbal region, if not in that country itself. umliyash lay between the uknu and the tigris. [illustration: 050.jpg page image] the language is not represented by any idioms now spoken, and its affinities with the sumerian which some writers have attempted to establish, are too uncertain to make it safe to base any theory upon them.* * a great part of the susian inscriptions have been collected by fr. lenormant. an attempt has been made to identify the language in which they are written with the sumero-accadian, and authorities now generally agree in considering the arcæmenian inscriptions of the second type as representative of its modern form. hommel connects it with georgian, and includes it in a great linguistic family, which comprises, besides these two idioms, the hittite, the cappadocian, the armenian of the van inscriptions, and the cosstean. oppert claims to have discovered on a tablet in the british museum a list of words belonging to one of the idioms (probably semitic) of susiana, which differs alike from the suso-medic and the assyrian. the little that we know of elamite religion reveals to us a mysterious world, full of strange names and vague forms. over their hierarchy there presided a deity who was called shushinak (the susian), dimesh or samesh, dagbag, as-siga, adaene, and possibly khumba and æmmân, whom the chaldæns identified with their god ninip; his statue was concealed in a sanctuary inaccessible to the profane, but it was dragged from thence by assurbanipal of nineveh in the viith century b.c.* this deity was associated with six others of the first rank, who were divided into two triads--shumudu, lagamaru, partikira; ammankasibar, uduran, and sapak: of these names, the least repellent, ammankasibar, may possibly be the memnon of the greeks. the dwelling of these divinities was near susa, in the depths of a sacred forest to which the priests and kings alone had access: their images were brought out on certain days to receive solemn homage, and were afterwards carried back to their shrine accompanied by a devout and reverent multitude. these deities received a tenth of the spoil after any successful campaign--the offerings comprising statues of the enemies� gods, valuable vases, ingots of gold and silver, furniture, and stuffs. the elamite armies were well organized, and under a skilful general became irresistible. in other respects the elamites closely resembled the chaldæans, pursuing the same industries and having the same agricultural and commercial instincts. in the absence of any bas-reliefs and inscriptions peculiar to this people, we may glean from the monuments of lagash and babylon a fair idea of the extent of their civilization in its earliest stages. * _shushinak_ is an adjective derived from the name of the town of susa. the real name of the god was probably kept secret and rarely uttered. the names which appear by the side of shushinak in the text published by h. rawlinson, as equivalents of the babylonian ninip, perhaps represent different deities; we may well ask whether the deity may not be the khumba, umma, ummân, who recurs so frequently in the names of men and places, and who has hitherto never been met with alone in any formula or dedicatory tablet. the cities of the euphrates, therefore, could have been sensible of but little change, when the chances of war transferred them from the rule of their native princes to that of an elamite. the struggle once over, and the resulting evils repaired as far as practicable, the people of these towns resumed their usual ways, hardly conscious of the presence of their foreign ruler. the victors, for their part, became assimilated so rapidly with the vanquished, that at the close of a generation or so the conquering dynasty was regarded legitimate and national one, loyally attached to the traditions and religion of its adopted country. in the year 2285 b.c., towards the close of the reign of nurrammân, or in the earlier part of that of siniddinam, a king of elam, by name kudur-nakhunta, triumphantly marched through chaldæa from end to end, devastating the country and sparing neither town nor temple: uruk lost its statue of nana, which was carried off as a trophy and placed in the sanctuary of susa. the inhabitants long mourned the detention of their goddess, and a hymn of lamentation, probably composed for the occasion by one of their priests, kept the remembrance of the disaster fresh in their memories. �until when, oh lady, shall the impious enemy ravage the country!--in thy queen-city, uruk, the destruction is accomplished,--in eulbar, the temple of thy oracle, blood has flowed like water,--upon the whole of thy lands has he poured out flame, and it is spread abroad like smoke.--oh, lady, verily it is hard for me to bend under the yoke of misfortune!--? oh, lady, thou hast wrapped me about, thou hast plunged me, in sorrow!--the impious mighty one has broken me in pieces like a reèd,--and i know not what to resolve, i trust not in myself,--like a bed of reeds i sigh day and night!--i, thy servant, i bow myself before thee!� it would appear that the whole of chaldæa, including babylon itself, was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of the invader;* a susian empire thus absorbed chaldæa, reducing its states to feudal provinces, and its princes to humble vassals. kudur-nakhunta having departed, the people of larsa exerted themselves to the utmost to repair the harm that he had done, and they succeeded but too well, since their very prosperity was the cause only a short time after of the outburst of another storm. siniddinam, perhaps, desired to shake off the elamite yoke. simtishilkhak, one of the successors of kudur-nakhunta, had conceded the principality of yamutbal as a fief to kudur-mabug, one of his sons. kudur-mabug appears to have been a conqueror of no mean ability, for he claims, in his inscriptions, the possession of the whole of syria.** * the submission of babylon is evident from the title adda martu, �sovereign of the west,� assumed by several of the elamite princes (of. p. 65 of the present work): in order to extend his authority beyond the euphrates, it was necessary for the king of elam to be first of all master of babylon. in the early days of assyriology it was supposed that this period of elamite supremacy coincided with the median dynasty of berosus. ** his preamble contains the titles _adda martu,_ �prince of syria;� _adda lamutbal_, �prince of yamutbal.� the word _adda_ seems properly to mean �lather,� and the literal translation of the full title would probably be �father of syria,� �_father_ of yamutbal,� whence the secondary meanings �master, lord, prince,� which have been provisionally accepted by most assyriologists. tiele, and winckler after him, have suggested that martu is here equivalent to yamutbal, and that it was merely used to indicate the western part of elam; winckler afterwards rejected this hypothesis, and has come round to the general opinion. he obtained a victory over siniddinam, and having dethroned him, placed the administration of the kingdom in the hands of his own son eimsin. this prince, who was at first a feudatory, afterwards associated in the government with his father, and finally sole monarch after the latter�s death, married a princess of chaldæan blood, and by this means legitimatized his usurpation in the eyes of his subjects. his domain, which lay on both sides of the tigris and of the euphrates, comprised, besides the principality of yamutbal, all the towns dependent on sumer and accad--uru, larsa, uruk, and nippur, he acquitted himself as a good sovereign in the sight of gods and men: he repaired the brickwork in the temple of nannar at uru; he embellished the temple of shamash at larsa, and caused two statues of copper to be cast in honour of the god; he also rebuilt lagash and grirsu. the city of uruk had been left a heap of ruins after the withdrawal of kudur-nakhunta: he set about the work of restoration, constructed a sanctuary to papsukal, raised the ziggurât of nana, and consecrated to the goddess an entire set of temple furniture to replace that carried off by the elamites. he won the adhesion of the priests by piously augmenting their revenues, and throughout his reign displayed remarkable energy. documents exist which attribute to him the reduction of durilu, on the borders of elam and the chaldæan states; others contain discreet allusions to a perverse enemy who disturbed his peace in the north, and whom he successfully repulsed. he drove sinmuballit out of ishin, and this victory so forcibly impressed his contemporaries, that they made it the starting-point of a new semi-official era; twenty-eight years after the event, private contracts still continued to be dated by reference to the taking of ishin. sinmuballit�s son, khammurabi, was more fortunate. eimsin vainly appealed for help against him to his relative and suzerain kudur-lagamar, who had succeeded simtishilkhak at susa. eimsin was defeated, and disappeared from the scene of action, leaving no trace behind him, though we may infer that he took refuge in his fief of yamutbal. the conquest by khammurabi was by no means achieved at one blow, the enemy offering an obstinate resistance. he was forced to destroy several fortresses, the inhabitants of which had either risen against him or had refused to do him homage, among them being those of meîr* and malgu. when the last revolt had been put down, all the countries speaking the language of chaldæa and sharing its civilization were finally united into a single kingdom, of which khammurabi proclaimed himself the head. other princes who had preceded him had enjoyed the same opportunities, but their efforts had never been successful in establishing an empire of any duration; the various elements had been bound together for a moment, merely to be dispersed again after a short interval. the work of khammurabi, on the contrary, was placed on a solid foundation, and remained unimpaired under his successors. not only did he hold sway without a rival in the south as in the north, but the titles indicating the rights he had acquired over sumer and accad were inserted in his protocol after those denoting his hereditary possessions,--the city of bel and the four houses of the world. khammurabi�s victory marks the close of those long centuries of gradual evolution during which the peoples of the lower euphrates passed from division to unity. before his reign there had been as many states as cities, and as many dynasties as there were states; after him there was but one kingdom under one line of kings. * maîru, meîr, has been identified with shurippak; but it is, rather, the town of mar, now tell-id. a and lagamal, the elamite lagamar, were worshipped there. it was the seat of a linen manufacture, and possessed large shipping. khammurabi�s long reign of fifty-five years has hitherto yielded us but a small number of monuments--seals, heads of sceptres, alabaster vases, and pompous inscriptions, scarcely any of them being of historical interest. he was famous for the number of his campaigns, no details of which, however, have come to light, but the dedication of one of his statues celebrates his good fortune on the battlefield. �bel has lent thee sovereign majesty: thou, what awaitest thou?--sin has lent thee royalty: thou, what awaitest thou?--ninip has lent thee his supreme weapon: thou, what awaitest thou?--the goddess of light, ishtar, has lent thee the shock of arms and the fray: thou, what awaitest thou?--shamash and bamman are thy varlets: thou, what awaitest thou?--it is khammurabi, the king, the powerful chieftain--who cuts the enemies in pieces,--the whirlwind of battle--who overthrows the country of the rebels--who stays combats, who crushes rebellions,--who destroys the stubborn like images of clay,--who overcomes the obstacles of inaccessible mountains.� the majority of these expeditions were, no doubt, consequent on the victory which destroyed the power of kimsin. it would not have sufficed merely to drive back the elamites beyond the tigris; it was necessary to strike a blow within their own territory to avoid a recurrence of hostilities, which might have endangered the still recent work of conquest. here, again, khammurabi seems to have met with his habitual success. [illustration: 057.jpg head of a sceptre in copper, bearing the name of kham-murabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a rapid sketch made at the british museum. ashnunak was a border district, and shared the fate of all the provinces on the eastern bank of the tigris, being held sometimes by elam and sometimes by chaldæa; properly speaking, it was a country of semitic speech, and was governed by viceroys owning allegiance, now to babylon, now to susa.* khammurabi seized this province, and permanently secured its frontier by building along the river a line of fortresses surrounded by earthworks. following the example of his predecessors, he set himself to restore and enrich the temples. * pognon discovered inscriptions of four of the vicegerents of ashnunak, which he assigns, with some hesitation, to the time of khammurabi, rather than to that of the kings of telloh. three of these names are semitic, the fourth sumerian; the language of the inscriptions bears a resemblance to the semitic dialect of chaldæa. the house of zamama and ninni, at kish, was out of repair, and the ziggurât threatened to fall; he pulled it down and rebuilt it, carrying it to such a height that its summit �reached the heavens.� merodach had delegated to him the government of the faithful, and had raised him to the rank of supreme ruler over the whole of chaldæa. at babylon, close to the great lake which served as a reservoir for the overflow of the euphrates, the king restored the sanctuary of esagilla, the dimensions of which did not appear to him to be proportionate to the growing importance of the city. �he completed this divine dwelling with great joy and delight, he raised the summit to the firmament,� and then enthroned merodach and his spouse, zarpanit, within it, amid great festivities. he provided for the ever-recurring requirements of the national religion by frequent gifts; the tradition has come down to us of the granary for wheat which he built at babylon, the sight of which alone rejoiced the heart of the god. while surrounding sippar with a great wall and a fosse, to protect its earthly inhabitants, he did not forget shamash and malkatu, the celestial patrons of the town. he enlarged in their honour the mysterious ebarra, the sacred seat of their worship, and that which no king from the earliest times had known how to build for his divine master, that did he generously for shamash his master. he restored ezida, the eternal dwelling of merodach, at borsippa; eturka-lamma, the temple of anu, ninni, and nana, the suzerains of kish; and also ezikalamma, the house of the goddess ninna, in the village of zarilab. in the southern provinces, but recently added to the crown,--at larsa, uruk, and uru,--he displayed similar activity. [illustration: 059.jpg page image] he had, doubtless, a political as well as a religious motive in all he did; for if he succeeded in winning the allegiance of the priests by the prodigality of his pious gifts, he could count on their gratitude in securing for him the people�s obedience, and thus prevent the outbreak of a revolt. he had, indeed, before him a difficult task in attempting to allay the ills which had been growing during centuries of civil discord and foreign conquest. the irrigation of the country demanded constant attention, and from earliest times its sovereigns had directed the work with real solicitude; but owing to the breaking up of the country into small states, their respective resources could not be combined in such general operations as were needed for controlling the inundations and effectually remedying the excess or the scarcity of water. khammurabi witnessed the damage done to the whole province of umliyash by one of those terrible floods which still sometimes ravage the regions of the lower tigris,* and possibly it may have been to prevent the recurrence of such a disaster that he undertook the work of canalization. * contracts dated the year of an inundation which laid waste umliyash; cf. in our own time, the inundation of april 10, 1831, which in a single night destroyed half the city of bagdad, and in which fifteen thousand persons lost their lives either by drowning or by the collapse of their houses. he was the first that we know of who attempted to organize and reduce to a single system the complicated network of ditches and channels which intersected the territory belonging to the great cities between babylon and the sea. already, more than half a century previously, siniddinam had enlarged the canal on which larsa was situated, while bimsin had provided an outlet for the �river of the gods� into the persian gulf:* by the junction of the two a navigable channel was formed between the euphrates and the marshes, and an outlet was thus made for the surplus waters of the inundation. khammurabi informs us how anu and bel, having confided to him the government of sumer and accad, and having placed in his hands the reins of power, he dug the nâr-khammurabi, the source of wealth to the people, which brings abundance of water to the country of sumir and accad. �i turned both its banks into cultivated ground, i heaped up mounds of grain and i furnished perpetual water for the people of sumir and accad. the country of sumer and accad, i gathered together its nations who were scattered, i gave them pasture and drink, i ruled over them in riches and abundance, i caused them to inhabit a peaceful dwelling-place. then it was that khammurabi, the powerful king, the favourite of the great gods, i myself, according to the prodigious strength with which merodach had endued me, i constructed a high fortress, upon mounds of earth; its summit rises to the height of the mountains, at the head of the nâr-khammurabi, the source of wealth to the people. this fortress i called dur-sinmuballit-abim-uâlidiya, the fortress of sinmuballit, the father who begat me, so that the name of sinmuballit, the father who begat me, may endure in the habitations of the world.� * contract dated �the year the tigris, river of the gods, was canalized down to the sea�; i.e. as far as the point to which the sea then penetrated in the environs of kornah. this canal of khammurabi ran from a little south of babylon, joining those of siniddinam and rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain in its entire length.* it drained the stagnant marshes on either side along its course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its banks were enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously had been useless for purposes of cultivation. a ditch of minor importance pierced the isthmus which separates the tigris and the euphrates in the neighbourhood of sippar.** khammurabi did not rest contented with these; a system of secondary canals doubtless completed the whole scheme of irrigation which he had planned after the achievement of his conquest, and his successors had merely to keep up his work in order to ensure an unrivalled prosperity to the empire. * delattre is of opinion that the canal dug by khammurabi is the arakhtu of later epochs which began at babylon and extended as far as the larsa canal. it must therefore be approximately identified with the shatt-en-nil of the present day, which joins shatt-el-kaher, the canal of siniddinam. ** the canal which khammurabi caused to be dug or dredged may be the nâr-malkâ, or �royal canal,� which ran from the tigris to the euphrates, passing sippar on the way. the digging of this canal is mentioned in a contract. their efforts in this direction were not unsuccessful. samsuîluna, the son of khammurabi, added to the existing system two or three fresh canals, one at least of which still bore his name nearly fifteen centuries later; it is mentioned in the documents of the second assyrian empire in the time of assurbanipal, and it is possible that traces of it may still be found at the present day. abiêshukh,* ammisatana,** ammizadugga,*** and samsusatana,**** all either continued to elaborate the network planned by their ancestors, or applied themselves to the better distribution of the overflow in those districts where cultivation was still open to improvement. * abîshukh (the hebrew abishua) is the form of the name which we find in contemporary contracts. the official lists contain the variant ebishu, ebîshum. ** ammiditana is only a possible reading: others prefer ammisatana. the nâr-ammisatana is mentioned in a sippar contract. another contract is dated �the year in which ammisatana, the king, repaired the canal of samsuîluna.� *** this was, at first, read ammididugga. ammizadugga is mentioned in the date of a contract as having executed certain works--of what nature it is not easy to say--on the banks of the tigris; another contract is dated �the year in which ammizadugga, the king, by supreme command of sha-mash, his master, [dug] the ndr-ammizadugga-nulchus-nishi (canal of ammizadugga), prosperity of men.� in the minæan inscriptions of southern arabia the name is found under the form of ammi-zaduq. **** sometimes erroneously read samdiusatana; but, as a matter of fact, we have contracts of that time, in which a royal name is plainly written as samsusatana. we should know nothing of these kings had not the scribes of those times been in the habit of dating the contracts of private individuals by reference to important national events. they appear to have chosen by preference incidents in the religious life of the country; as, for instance, the restoration of a temple, the annual enthronisation of one of the great divinities, such as shamash, merodach, ishtar, or nana, as the eponymous god of the current year, the celebration of a solemn festival, or the consecration of a statue; while a few scattered allusions to works of fortification show that meanwhile the defence of the country was jealously watched over.* these sovereigns appear to have enjoyed long reigns, the shortest extending over a period of five and twenty years; and when at length the death of any king occurred, he was immediately replaced by his son, the notaries� acts and the judicial documents which have come down to us betraying no confusion or abnormal delay in the course of affairs. we may, therefore, conclude that the last century and a half of the dynasty was a period of peace and of material prosperity. chaldæa was thus enabled to fully reap the advantage of being united under the rule of one individual. it is quite possible that those cities--uru, larsa, ishin, uruk, and nippur--which had played so important a part in the preceding centuries, suffered from the loss of their prestige, and from the blow dealt to their traditional pretensions. * samsuîluna repaired the five fortresses which his ancestor sumulaîlu had built. contract dated �the year in which ammisatana, the king, built dur-ammisatana, near the sin river,� and �the year in which ammisatana, the king, gave its name to dur-iskunsin, near the canal of ammisatana.� contract dated �the year in which the king ammisatana repaired dur-iskunsin.� contract dated �the year in which samsuîluna caused �the wall of uru and uruk� to be built.� up to this time they had claimed the privilege of controlling the history of their country, and they had bravely striven among themselves for the supremacy over the southern states; but the revolutions which had raised each in turn to the zenith of power, had never exalted any one of them to such an eminence as to deprive its rivals of all hope of supplanting it and of enjoying the highest place. the rise of babylon destroyed the last chance which any of them had of ever becoming the capital; the new city was so favourably situated, and possessed so much wealth and so many soldiers, while its kings displayed such tenacious energy, that its neighbours were forced to bow before it and resign themselves to the subordinate position of leading provincial towns. they gave a loyal obedience to the officers sent them from the north, and sank gradually into obscurity, the loss of their political supremacy being somewhat compensated for by the religious respect in which they were always held. their ancient divinities--nana, sin, anu, and ra--were adopted, if we may use the term, by the babylonians, who claimed the protection of these gods as fully as they did that of merodach or of nebo, and prided themselves on amply supplying all their needs. as the inhabitants of babylon had considerable resources at their disposal, their appeal to these deities might be regarded as productive of more substantial results than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. the increase of the national wealth and the concentration, under one head, of armies hitherto owning several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not of babylon or larsa alone, but of the whole of chaldæa, to offer an invincible resistance to foreign enemies, and to establish their dominion in countries where their ancestors had enjoyed merely a precarious sovereignty. hostilities never completely ceased between elam and babylon; if arrested for a time, they broke out again in some frontier disturbance, at times speedily suppressed, but at others entailing violent consequences and ending in a regular war. no document furnishes us with any detailed account of these outbreaks, but it would appear that the balance of power was maintained on the whole with tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each generation finding themselves in much the same position as they had occupied at its commencement. the two empires were separated from south to north by the sea and the tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the present village of amara and running in the direction of the mountains. durîlu probably fell ordinarily under chaldæan jurisdiction. umliyash was included in the original domain of kham-murabi, and there is no reason to believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. there is every probability that they possessed the plain east of the tigris, comprising nineveh and arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples scattered over the lower slopes of the kurdish mountains rendered them homage. they kept the mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty, and we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended northwards as far as mount masios, and westwards to the middle course of the euphrates. at what period the chaldæans first crossed that river is as yet unknown. many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains over syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions. kudur-mabug proclaims himself �adda� of martu, lord of the countries of the west, and we are in the possession of several facts which suggest the idea of a great blamite empire, with a dominion extending for some period over western asia, the existence of which was vaguely hinted at by the greeks, who attributed its glory to the fabulous memnon.* contemporary records are still wanting which might show whether kudur-mabug inherited these distant possessions from one of his predecessors--such as kudur-nakhunta, for instance--or whether he won them himself at the point of the sword; but a fragment of an old chronicle, inserted in the hebrew scriptures, speaks distinctly of another elamite, who made war in person almost up to the egyptian frontier.** this is the kudur-lagamar (chedorlaomer) who helped eimsin against hammurabi, but was unable to prevent his overthrow. * we know that to herodotus (v. 55) susa was the city of memnon, and that strabo attributes its foundation to tithonus, father of memnon. according to oppert, the word memnon is the equivalent of the susian umman-anîn, �the house of the king:� weissbach declares that �anin� does not mean king, and contradicts oppert�s view, though he does not venture to suggest a new explanation of the name. ** _gen._ xiv. prom the outset assyriologists have never doubted the historical accuracy of this chapter, and they have connected the facts which it contains with those which seem to be revealed by the assyrian monuments. the two rawlinsons intercalate kudur-lagamar between kudur-nakhunta and kudur-mabug, and oppert places him about the same period. fr. lenormant regards him as one of the successors of kudur-mabug, possibly his immediate successor. g. smith does not hesitate to declare positively that the kudur-mabug and kudur-nakhunta of the inscriptions are one and the same with the kudur-lagamar (chedor-laomer) of the bible. finally, schrader, while he repudiates smith�s view, agrees in the main fact with the other assyriologists. on the other hand, the majority of modern biblical critics have absolutely refused to credit the story in genesis. sayce thinks that the bible story rests on an historic basis, and his view is strongly confirmed by pinches�discovery of a chaldæan document which mentions kudur-lagamar and two of his allies. the hebrew historiographer reproduced an authentic fact from the chronicles of babylon, and connected it with one of the events in the life of abraham. the very late date generally assigned to gen. xiv. in no way diminishes the intrinsic probability of the facts narrated by the chaldæan document which is preserved to us in the pages of the hebrew book. in the thirteenth year of his reign over the east, the cities of the dead sea--sodom, gomorrah, adamah, zeboîm, and belâ--revolted against him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, amraphel of chaldæa, ariôch of ellasar,* tida�lo the guti, and marched with them to the confines of his dominions. tradition has invested many of the tribes then inhabiting southern syria with semi-mythical names and attributes. they are represented as being giants--rephalm; men of prodigious strength--zuzîm; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of speech--zamzummîm; as formidable monsters**--emîm or anakîm, before whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the horîm who were encamped on the confines of the sinaitic desert, and as the amalekites who ranged over the mountains to the west of the dead sea. kudur-lagamar defeated them one after another--the rephaîm near to ashtaroth-karnaîm, the zuzîm near ham,**** the amîm at shaveh-kiriathaim, and the horîm on the spurs of mount seir as far as el-paran; then retracing his footsteps, he entered the country of the amalekites by way of en-mishpat, and pillaged the amorites of hazazôn-tamar. * ellasar has been identified with larsa since the researches of rawlin-son and norris; the goîm, over whom tidal was king, with the guti. ** sayce considers zuzîm and zamzummîm to be two readings of the same word zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the original document. the sounds represented, in the hebrew alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the chaldæan syllabary by the same character, and a hebrew or babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned in the story of this campaign, would have been quite as much at a loss as any modern scholar to say whether he ought to transcribe the word as z-m-z-m or as z-w-z-vo; some scribes read it _zuzîm,_ others preferred _zamzummîm._ *** _numb._ xiii. 33. **** in deut. ii. 20 it is stated that the zamzummîm lived in the country of ammon. sayce points out that we often find the variant am for the character usually read _ham_ or _kham_--the name khammurabi, for instance, is often found written ammurabi; the ham in the narrative of genesis would, therefore, be identical with the land of ammon in deuteronomy, and the difference between the spelling of the two would be due to the fact that the document reproduced in the xiviith chapter of genesis had been originally copied from a cuneiform tablet in which the name of the place was expressed by the sign _ham-am._ in the mean time, the kings of the five towns had concentrated their troops in the vale of siddîm, and were there resolutely awaiting kudur-lagamar. they were, however, completely routed, some of the fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains. kudur-lagamar sacked sodom and gomorrah, re-established his dominion on all sides, and returned laden with booty, hebrew tradition adding that he was overtaken near the sources of the jordan by the patriarch abraham.* * an attempt has been made to identify the three vassals of kudur-lagamar with kings mentioned on the chaldæan monuments. tidcal, or, if we adopt the septuagint variant, thorgal, has been considered by some as the bearer of a sumorian name, turgal= �great chief,� �great son,� while others put him on one side as not having been a babylonian; pinches, sayce, and hommel identify him with tudkhula, an ally of kudur-lagamar against khammurabi. schrader was the first to suggest that amraphel was really khammurabi, and emended the amraphel of the biblical text into amraphi or amrabi, in order to support this identification. halévy, while on the whole accepting this theory, derives the name from the pronunciation kimtarapashtum or kimtarapaltum, which he attributes to the name generally read khammurabi, and in this he is partly supported by hommel, who reads �khammurapaltu.� after his victory over kudur-lagamar, khammurabi assumed the title of king of martu,* which we find still borne by ammisatana sixty years later.** we see repeated here almost exactly what took place in ethiopia at the time of its conquest by egypt: merchants had prepared the way for military occupation, and the civilization of babylon had taken hold on the people long before its kings had become sufficiently powerful to claim them as vassals. the empire may be said to have been virtually established from the day when the states of the middle and lower euphrates formed but one kingdom in the hands of a single ruler. we must not, however, imagine it to have been a compact territory, divided into provinces under military occupation, ruled by a uniform code of laws and statutes, and administered throughout by functionaries of various grades, who received their orders from babylon or susa, according as the chances of war favoured the ascendency of chaldæa or elam. it was in reality a motley assemblage of tribes and principalities, whose sole bond of union was subjection to a common yoke. * it is, indeed, the sole title which he attributes to himself on a stone tablet now in the british museum. ** in an inscription by this prince, copied probably about the time of nabonidus by the scribe belushallîm, he is called �king of the vast land of martu.� they were under obligation to pay tribute, and furnish military contingents and show other external marks of obedience, but their particular constitution, customs, and religion were alike respected: they had to purchase, at the cost of a periodical ransom, the right to live in their own country after their own fashion, and the head of the empire forbore all interference in their affairs, except in cases where the internecine quarrels and dissensions threatened the security of his suzerainty. their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them: a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example from spreading far and wide. the empire was maintained by perpetual re-conquests, and its extent varied with the energy shown by its chiefs, or with the resources which were for the moment available. separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus, egypt loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. her natural fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold and perfumes which she received from the heart of ethiopia, were well known by the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of her treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of asiatic courts. egypt had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and the line of princes who governed her had little in common with the pharaohs who had rendered her name so formidable under the xiith dynasty. she was now under the rule of the xoites, whose influence was probably confined to the delta, and extended merely in name over the said and nubia. the feudal lords, ever ready to reassert their independence as soon as the central power waned, shared between them the possession of the nile valley below memphis: the princes of thebes, who were probably descendants of usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and though some slight scruple may have prevented them from donning the pschënt or placing their names within a cartouche, they assumed notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power. a favourable opportunity was therefore offered to an invader, and the chaldæans might have attacked with impunity a people thus divided among themselves.* they stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of syria, or if they pushed further forward, it was without any important result: distance from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the elamites, prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for such a momentous undertaking. what they had not dared to venture, others more audacious were to accomplish. at this juncture, so runs the egyptian record, �there came to us a king named timaios. under this king, then, i know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and in the face of all probability bands from the east, people of ignoble race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily and without fighting.� * the theory that the divisions of egypt, under the xivth dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes, were one of the main causes of the success of the shepherds, is now admitted to be correct. it is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the african--the war-chariot--and before the horse and his driver the egyptians gave way in a body.* the invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of the nile. towns and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined; they massacred all they could of the male population, reduced to slavery those of the women and children whose lives they spared, and then proclaimed as king salatis, one of their chiefs.** he established a semblance of regular government, chose memphis as his capital, and imposed a tax upon the vanquished. two perils, however, immediately threatened the security of his triumph: in the south the theban lords, taking matters into their own hands after the downfall of the xoites, refused the oath of allegiance to salatis, and organized an obstinate resistance;*** in the north he had to take measures to protect himself against an attack of the chaldæans or of the élamites who were oppressing chaldæa.**** * the horse was unknown, or at any rate had not been employed in. egypt prior to the invasion; we find it, however, in general use immediately after the expulsion of the shepherds, see the tomb of pihiri. moreover, all historians agree in admitting that it was introduced into the country under the rule of the shepherds. the use of the war-chariot in chaldæa at an epoch prior to the hyksôs invasion, is proved by a fragment of the vulture stele; it is therefore, natural to suppose that the hyksôs used the chariot in war, and that the rapidity of their conquest was due to it. ** the name salatis (var. saitôs) seems to be derived from a semitic word, siialît = �the chief,� �the governor;� this was the title which joseph received when pharaoh gave him authority over the whole of egypt (gen. xli. 43). salatis may not, therefore, have been the real name of the first hyksôs king, but his title, which the egyptians misunderstood, and from which they evolved a proper name: uhlemann has, indeed, deduced from this that manetho, being familiar with the passage referring to joseph, had forged the name of salatis. ebers imagined that he could decipher the egyptian form of this prince�s name on the colossus of tell-mokdam, where naville has since read with certainty the name of a pharaoh of the xiiith and xivth dynasties, nahsiri. *** the text of manetho speaks of taxes which he imposed on the high and low lands, which would seem to include the thebaid in the kingdom; it is, however, stated in the next few pages that the successors of salatis waged an incessant war against the egyptians, which can only refer to hostilities against the thebans. we are forced, therefore, to admit, either that manetho took the title of lord of the high and low lands which belonged to salatis, literally, or that the thebans, after submitting at first, subsequently refused to pay tribute, thus provoking a war. **** manetho here speaks of assyrians; this is an error which is to be explained by the imperfect state of historical knowledge in greece at the time of the macedonian supremacy. we need not for this reason be led to cast doubt upon the historic value of the narrative: we must remember the suzerainty which the kings of babylon exercised over syria, and read _chaldæans_ where manetho has written _assyrians_. in herodotus �assyria� is the regular term for �babylonia,� and babylonia is called �the land of the assyrians.� from the natives of the delta, who were temporarily paralysed by their reverses, he had, for the moment, little to fear: restricting himself, therefore, to establishing forts at the strategic points in the nile valley in order to keep the thebans in check, he led the main body of his troops to the frontier on the isthmus. pacific immigrations had already introduced asiatic settlers into the delta, and thus prepared the way for securing the supremacy of the new rulers; in the midst of these strangers, and on the ruins of the ancient town of hâwârît-avaris, in the sethro�ifce nome--a place connected by tradition with the myth of osiris and typhon--salatis constructed an immense entrenched camp, capable of sheltering two hundred and forty thousand men. he visited it yearly to witness the military manoeuvres, to pay his soldiers, and to preside over the distribution of rations. this permanent garrison protected him from a chaldæan invasion, a not unlikely event as long as syria remained under the supremacy of the babylonian kings; it furnished his successors also with an inexhaustible supply of trained soldiers, thus enabling them to complete the conquest of lower egypt. years elapsed before the princes of the south would declare themselves vanquished, and five kings--anôn, apachnas, apôphis i., iannas, and asses--passed their lifetime �in a perpetual warfare, desirous of tearing up egypt to the very root.� these theban kings, who were continually under arms against the barbarians, were subsequently classed in a dynasty by themselves, the xvth of manetho, but they at last succumbed to the invader, and asses became master of the entire country. his successors in their turn formed a dynasty, the xvith, the few remaining monuments of which are found scattered over the length and breadth of the valley from the shores of the mediterranean to the rocks of the first cataract. the egyptians who witnessed the advent of this asiatic people called them by the general term amûû, asiatics, or monâtiû, the men of the desert.* they had already given the bedouin the opprobrious epithet of shaûsû--pillagers or robbers--which aptly described them;** and they subsequently applied the same name to the intruders--hiq shaûsû--from which the greeks derived their word hyksôs, or hykoussôs, for this people.*** * the meaning of the term _monîti_ was discovered by e. de rougé, who translated it _shepherd_, and applied it to the hyksôs; from thence it passed into the works of all the egyptologists who concerned themselves with this question, but _shepherd_ has not been universally accepted as the meaning of the word. it is generally agreed that it was a generic term, indicating the races with which their conquerors were supposed to be connected, and not the particular term of which manetho�s word _hoiveves_ would be the literal translation. ** the name seems, in fact, to be derived from a word which meant �to rob,� �to pillage.� the name shausu, shosu, was not used by the egyptians to indicate a particular race. it was used of all bedouins, and in general of all the marauding tribes who infested the desert or the mountains. the shausu most frequently referred to on the monuments are those from the desert between egypt and syria, but there is a reference, in the time of ramses ii., to those from the lebanon and the valley of orontes. krall finds an allusion to them in a word (_shosim_) in _judges_ ii. 14, which is generally translated by a generic expression, �the spoilers.� *** manetho declares that the people were called hyksôs, from _syk_, which means �king� in the sacred language, and _sôs_, which means �shepherd� in the popular language. as a matter of fact, the word _hyku_ means �prince �in the classical language of egypt, or, as manetho styles it, the _sacred language_, i.e. in the idiom of the old religious, historical, and literary texts, which in later ages the populace no longer understood. shôs, on the contrary, belongs to the spoken language of the later time, and does not occur in the ancient inscriptions, so that manetho�s explanation is valueless; there is but one material fact to be retained from his evidence, and that is the name _hyk shôs_ or _hyku-shôs_ given by its inventors to the alien kings. cham-pollion and rosellini were the first to identify these shôs with the shaûsû whom they found represented on the monuments, and their opinion, adopted by some, seems to me an extremely plausible one: the egyptians, at a given moment, bestowed the generic name of shaûsû on these strangers, just as they had given those of amûû and manâtiû. the texts or writers from whom manetho drew his information evidently mentioned certain kings _hyku_-shaûsû; other passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were applied to the race, and were rendered _hyku_-shaûsû = �the _prisoners_ taken from the shaûsû,� a substantive derived from the root _haka_ = �to take� being substituted for the noun _hyqu_ = �prince.� josephus declares, on the authority of manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this derivation--a fact which is easily explained by the custom of the egyptian record offices. i may mention, in passing, that mariette recognised in the element �_sôs_� an egyptian word _shôs_ = �soldiers,� and in the name of king mîrmâshâû, which he read mîrshôsû, an equivalent of the title hyq shôsû. but we are without any clue as to their real name, language, or origin. the writers of classical times were unable to come to an agreement on these questions: some confounded the hyksôs with the phoenicians, others regarded them as arabs.* modern scholars have put forward at least a dozen contradictory hypotheses on the matter. the hyksôs have been asserted to have been canaanites, elamites, hittites, accadians, scythians. the last opinion found great favour with the learned, as long as they could believe that the sphinxes discovered by mariette represented apôphis or one of his predecessors. as a matter of fact, these monuments present all the characteristics of the mongoloid type of countenance--the small and slightly oblique eyes, the arched but somewhat flattened nose, the pronounced cheekbones and well-covered jaw, the salient chin and full lips slightly depressed at the corners.** these peculiarities are also observed in the three heads found at damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at mit-farês in the fayum, in the twin figures of the nile removed to the bulaq museum from tanis, and upon the remains of a statue in the collection at the villa ludovisi in rome. the same foreign type of face is also found to exist among the present inhabitants of the villages scattered over the eastern part of the delta, particularly on the shores of lake menzaleh, and the conclusion was drawn that these people were the direct descendants of the hyksôs. * manetho takes them to be phoenicians, but he adds that certain writers thought them to be arabs: brugsch favours this latter view, but the arab legend of a conquest of egypt by sheddâd and the adites is of recent origin, and was inspired by traditions in regard to the hyksôs current during the byzantine epoch; we cannot, therefore, allow it to influence us. we must wait before expressing a definite opinion in regard to the facts which glaser believes he has obtained from the minoan inscriptions which date from the time of the hyksôs. ** mariette, who was the first to describe these curious monuments, recognised in them all the incontestable characteristics of a semitic type, and the correctness of his view was, at first, universally admitted. later on hamy imagined that he could distinguish traces of mongolian influences, and er. lenormant, and then mariette himself came round to this view; it has recently been supported in england by flower, and in germany by virchow. this theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the sphinxes of san had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for amenemhâît iii., a king of the xiith dynasty. in spite of the facts we possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of the hyksôs is as mysterious as ever. we gather, however, that the third millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable migratory movements. the expeditions far afield of elamite and chaldæan princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the regions over which they passed. they must have encountered by the way many nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily displace. an impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate or increase the movement: a collision with one horde reacted on its neighbours, who either displaced or carried others with them, and the whole multitude, gathering momentum as they went, were precipitated in the direction first given.* * the hyksôs invasion has been regarded as a natural result of the elamite conquest. a tradition, picked up by herodotus on his travels, relates that the phoenicians had originally peopled the eastern and southern shores of the persian gulf;* it was also said that indathyrses, a scythian king, had victoriously scoured the whole of asia, and had penetrated as far as egypt.** either of these invasions may have been the cause of the syrian migration. in. comparison with the meagre information which has come down to us under the form of legends, it is provoking to think how much actual fact has been lost, a tithe of which would explain the cause of the movement and the mode of its execution. the least improbable hypothesis is that which attributes the appearance of the shepherds about the xxiiird century b.c., to the arrival in naharaim of those khati who subsequently fought so obstinately against the armies both of the pharaohs and the ninevite kings. they descended from the mountain region in which the halys and the euphrates take their rise, and if the bulk of them proceeded no further than the valleys of the taurus and the amanos, some at least must have pushed forward as far as the provinces on the western shores of the dead sea. the most adventurous among them, reinforced by the canaanites and other tribes who had joined them on their southward course, crossed the isthmus of suez, and finding a people weakened by discord, experienced no difficulty in replacing the native dynasties by their own barbarian chiefs.*** * it was to the exodus of this race, in the last analysis, that the invasion of the shepherds may be attributed ** a certain number of commentators are of opinion that the wars attributed to indathyrses have been confounded with what herodotus tells of the exploits of madyes, and are nothing more than a distorted remembrance of the great scythian invasion which took place in the latter half of the viith century b.c. *** at the present time, those scholars who admit the turanian origin of the hyksôs are of opinion that only the nucleus of the race, the royal tribe, was composed of mongols, while the main body consisted of elements of all kinds--canaanitish, or, more generally, semitic. [illustration: 079.jpg pallate of hyksôs scribe] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertons. it is the palette of a scribe, now in the berlin museum, and given by king apôpi ii âusirrî to a scribe named atu. both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the egyptians, but the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that of �she-maû,� * strangers, and in referring to them used the same vague appellations which they applied to the bedouin of the sinaitic peninsula,--monâtiû, the shepherds, or sâtiû, the archers. they succeeded in hiding the original name of their conquerors so thoroughly, that in the end they themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it from posterity. the remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of manetho after a lapse of twenty centuries.** the victors were known as the �plagues� or �pests,� and every possible crime and impiety was attributed to them. * the term _shamamil,_ variant of _sliemaû,_ is applied to them by queen hâtshopsîtu: the same term is employed shortly afterward by thutmosis iii., to indicate the enemies whom he had defeated at megiddo. ** he speaks of them in contemptuous terms as _men of ignoble race_. the epithet _aîti, iaîti, iadîti_, was applied to the nubians by the writer of the inscription of ahmosi si-abîna, and to the shepherds of the delta by the author of the _sallier papyrus_. brugsch explained it as �the rebels,� or �disturbers,� and goodwin translated it �invaders�; chabas rendered it by �plague-stricken,� an interpretation which was in closer conformity with its etymological meaning, and groff pointed out that the malady called ait, or adit in egyptian, is the malignant fever still frequently to be met with at the present day in the marshy cantons of the delta, and furnished the proper rendering, which is �the fever-stricken.� [illustration: 080.jpg a hyksôs prisoner guiding the plough, at el-kab] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. but the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders soon lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized. those of them stationed in the encampment at avaris retained the military qualities and characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became assimilated to their new compatriots, and were soon recognisable merely by their long hair, thick beard, and marked features. their sovereigns seemed to have realised from the first that it was more to their interest to exploit the country than to pillage it; as, however, none of them was competent to understand the intricacies of the treasury, they were forced to retain the services of the majority of the scribes, who had managed the public accounts under the native kings.* once schooled to the new state of affairs, they readily adopted the refinements of civilized life. * the same thing took place on every occasion when egypt was conquered by an alien race: the persian achæmenians and greeks made use of the native employés, as did the romans after them; and lastly, the mussulmans, arabs, and turks. the court of the pharaohs, with its pomp and its usual assemblage of officials, both great and small, was revived around the person of the new sovereign;* the titles of the amenemhâîts and the usirtasens, adapted to these �princes of foreign lands,� ** legitimatised them as descendants of horus and sons of the sun.*** they respected the local religions, and went so far as to favour those of the gods whose attributes appeared to connect them with some of their own barbarous divinities. the chief deity of their worship was baal, the lord of all,**** a cruel and savage warrior; his resemblance to sit, the brother and enemy of osiris, was so marked, that he was identified with the egyptian deity, with the emphatic additional title of sutkhû, the great sit.^ * the narrative of the _sallier papyrus,_ no. 1, shows us the civil and military chiefs collected round the shepherd king apôpi, and escorting him in the solemn processions in honour of the gods. they are followed by the scribes and magicians, who give him advice on important occasions. ** hiqu situ: this is the title of abîsha at beni-hassan, which is also assumed by khiani on several small monuments; steindorff has attempted to connect it with the name of the hyksôs. *** the preamble of the two or three shepherd-kings of whom we know anything, contains the two cartouches, the special titles, and the names of horus, which formed part of the title of the kings of pure egyptian race; thus apôphis il is proclaimed to be the living horus, who joins the two earths in peace, the good god, aqnunrî, son of the sun, apôpi, who lives for ever, on the statues of mîrmâshâu, which he had appropriated, and on the pink granite table of offerings in the gizeh museum. **** the name of baal, transcribed baâlu, is found on that of a certain petebaâlû, �the gift of baal,� who must have flourished in the time of the last shepherd-kings, or rather under the theban kings of the xviith dynasty, who were their contemporaries, whose conclusions have been adopted by brugsch. ^ sutikhû, sutkhû, are lengthened forms of sûtû, or sîtû; and chabas, who had at first denied the existence of the final _jehû_, afterwards himself supplied the philological arguments which proved the correctness of the reading: he rightly refused, however, to recognise in sutikhû or sutkhû --the name of the conquerors� god--a transliteration of the phoenician sydyk, and would only see in it that of the nearest egyptian deity. this view is now accepted as the right one, and sutkhû is regarded as the indigenous equivalent of the great asiatic god, elsewhere called baal, or supreme lord. [professor pétrie found a scarab bearing the cartouche of �sutekh� apepi i. at koptos.--te.] he was usually represented as a fully armed warrior, wearing a helmet of circular form, ornamented with two plumes; but he also borrowed the emblematic animal of sît, the fennec, and the winged griffin which haunted the deserts of the thebaid. his temples were erected in the cities of the delta, side by side with the sanctuaries of the feudal gods, both at bubastis and at tanis. tanis, now made the capital, reopened its palaces, and acquired a fresh impetus from the royal presence within its walls. apôphis aq-nûnrî, one of its kings, dedicated several tables of offerings in that city, and engraved his cartouches upon the sphinxes and standing colossi of the pharaohs of the xiith and xiiith dynasties. [illustration: 082.jpg table of offerings bearing the name of apôti âqnûnrî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by e. brugsch. [illustration: 083.jpg page image] he was, however, honest enough to leave the inscriptions of his predecessors intact, and not to appropriate to himself the credit of works belonging to the amenemhâîts or to mirmâshâû. khianî, who is possibly the iannas of manetho, was not, however, so easily satisfied.* the statue bearing his inscription, of which the lower part was discovered by naville at bubastis, appears to have been really carved for himself or for one of his contemporaries. it is a work possessing no originality, though of very commendable execution, such as would render it acceptable to any museum; the artist who conceived it took �his inspiration with considerable cleverness from the best examples turned out by the schools of the delta under the sovkhotpfts and the nofirhotpûs. but a small grey granite lion, also of the reign of khianî, which by a strange fate had found its way to bagdad, does not raise our estimation of the modelling of animals in the hyksôs period. * naville, who reads the name râyan or yanrâ, thinks that this prince must be the annas or iannas mentioned by manetho as being one of the six shepherd-kings of the xvth dynasty. mr. pétrie proposed to read khian, khianî, and the fragment discovered at gebeleîn confirms this reading, as well as a certain number of cylinders and scarabs. mr. pétrie prefers to place this pharaoh in the viiith dynasty, and makes him one of the leaders in the foreign occupation to which he supposes egypt to have submitted at that time; but it is almost certain that he ought to be placed among the hyksôs of the xvith dynasty. the name khianî, more correctly khiyanî or kheyanî, is connected by tomkins, and hilprecht with that of a certain khayanû or khayan, son of gabbar, who reigned in amanos in the time of salmanasar ii., king of assyria. [illustration: 084.jpg broken statue of khiani] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by naville. it is heavy in form, and the muzzle in no way recalls the fine profile of the lions executed by the sculptors of earlier times. the pursuit of science and the culture of learning appear to have been more successfully perpetuated than the fine arts; a treatise on mathematics, of which a copy has come down to us, would seem to have been recopied, if not remodelled, in the twenty-second year of apôphis il aûsirrî. if we only possessed more monuments or documents treating of this period, we should doubtless perceive that their sojourn on the banks of the nile was instrumental in causing a speedy change in the appearance and character of the hyksôs. the strangers retained to a certain extent their coarse countenances and rude manners: they showed no aptitude for tilling the soil or sowing grain, but delighted in the marshy expanses of the delta, where they gave themselves up to a semi-savage life of hunting and of tending cattle. the nobles among them, clothed and schooled after the egyptian fashion, and holding fiefs, or positions at court, differed but little from the native feudal chiefs. we see here a case of what generally happens when a horde of barbarians settles down in a highly organised country which by a stroke of fortune they may have conquered; as soon as the hyksôs had taken complete possession of egypt, egypt in her turn took possession of them, and those who survived the enervating effect of her civilization were all but transformed into egyptians. if, in the time of the native pharaohs, asiatic tribes had been drawn towards egypt, where they were treated as subjects or almost as slaves, the attraction which she possessed for them must have increased in intensity under the shepherds. they would now find the country in the hands of men of the same races as themselves--egyptianised, it is true, but not to such an extent as to have completely lost their own language and the knowledge of their own extraction. such immigrants were the more readily welcomed, since there lurked a feeling among the hyksôs that it was necessary to strengthen themselves against the slumbering hostility of the indigenous population. the royal palace must have more than once opened its gates to asiatic counsellors and favourites. canaanites and bedouin must often have been enlisted for the camp at avaris. invasions, famines, civil wars, all seem to have conspired to drive into egypt not only isolated individuals, but whole families and tribes. that of the beni-israel, or israelites, who entered the country about this time, has since acquired a unique position in the world�s history. they belonged to that family of semitic extraction which we know by the monuments and tradition to have been scattered in ancient times along the western shores of the persian gulf and on the banks of the euphrates. those situated nearest to chaldæa and to the sea probably led a settled existence; they cultivated the soil, they employed themselves in commerce and industries, their vessels--from dilmun, from mâgan, and from milukhkha--coasted from one place to another, and made their way to the cities of sumer and accad. they had been civilized from very early times, and some of their towns were situated on islands, so as to be protected from sudden incursions. other tribes of the same family occupied the interior of the continent; they lived in tents, and delighted in the unsettled life of nomads. there appeared to be in this distant corner of arabia an inexhaustible reserve of population, which periodically overflowed its borders and spread over the world. it was from this very region that we see the kashdim, the true chaldæans, issuing ready armed for combat,--a people whose name was subsequently used to denote several tribes settled between the lower waters of the tigris and the euphrates. it was there, among the marshes on either side of these rivers, that the aramoans established their first settlements after quitting the desert. there also the oldest legends of the race placed the cradle of the phoenicians; it was even believed, about the time of alexander, that the earliest ruins attributable to this people had been discovered on the bahrein islands, the largest of which, tylos and arados, bore names resembling the two great ports of tyre and arvad. we are indebted to tradition for the cause of their emigration and the route by which they reached the mediterranean. the occurrence of violent earthquakes forced them to leave their home; they travelled as far as the lake of syria, where they halted for some time; then resuming their march, did not rest till they had reached the sea, where they founded sidon. the question arises as to the position of the lake of syria on whose shores they rested, some believing it to be the bahr-î-nedjif and the environs of babylon; others, the lake of bambykês near the euphrates, the emigrants doubtless having followed up the course of that river, and having approached the country of their destination on its north-eastern frontier. another theory would seek to identify the lake with the waters of merom, the lake of galilee, or the dead sea; in this case the horde must have crossed the neck of the arabian peninsula, from the euphrates to the jordan, through one of those long valleys, sprinkled with oases, which afforded an occasional route for caravans.* several writers assure us that the phoenician tradition of this exodus was misunderstood by herodotus, and that the sea which they remembered on reaching tyre was not the persian gulf, but the dead sea. if this had been the case, they need not have hesitated to assign their departure to causes mentioned in other documents. the bible tells us that, soon after the invasion of kudur-lagamar, the anger of god being kindled by the wickedness of sodom and gomorrah, he resolved to destroy the five cities situated in the valley of siddim. a cloud of burning brimstone broke over them and consumed them; when the fumes and smoke, as �of a furnace,� had passed away, the very site of the towns had disappeared.** previous to their destruction, the lake into which the jordan empties itself had had but a restricted area: the subsidence of the southern plain, which had been occupied by the impious cities, doubled the size of the lake, and enlarged it to its present dimensions. the earthquake which caused the phoenicians to leave their ancestral home may have been the result of this cataclysm, and the sea on whose shores they sojourned would thus be our dead sea. * they would thus have arrived at the shores of lake merom, or at the shores either of the dead sea or of the lake of gennesareth; the arab traditions speak of an itinerary which would have led the emigrants across the desert, but they possess no historic value is so far as these early epochs are concerned. ** _gen._ xix. 24-29; the whole of this episode belongs to the jehovistic narrative. one fact, however, appears to be certain in the midst of many hypotheses, and that is that the phoenicians had their origin in the regions bordering on the persian gulf. it is useless to attempt, with the inadequate materials as yet in our possession, to determine by what route they reached the syrian coast, though we may perhaps conjecture the period of their arrival. herodotus asserts that the tyrians placed the date of the foundation of their principal temple two thousand three hundred years before the time of his visit, and the erection of a sanctuary for their national deity would probably take place very soon after their settlement at tyre: this would bring their arrival there to about the xxviiith century before our era. the elamite and babylonian conquests would therefore have found the phoenicians already established in the country, and would have had appreciable effect upon them. the question now arises whether the beni-israel belonged to the group of tribes which included the phoenicians, or whether they were of chaldæan race. their national traditions leave no doubt upon that point. they are regarded as belonging to an important race, which we find dispersed over the country of padan-aram, in northern mesopotamia, near the base of mount masios, and extending on both sides of the euphrates.* * the country of padan-aram is situated between the euphrates and the upper reaches of the khabur, on both sides of the balikh, and is usually explained as the �plain� or �table-land� of aram, though the etymology is not certain; the word seems to be preserved in that of tell-faddân, near harrân. their earliest chiefs bore the names of towns or of peoples,--n akhor, peleg, and serug:* all were descendants of arphaxad,** and it was related that terakh, the direct ancestor of the israelites, had dwelt in ur-kashdîm, the ur or uru of the chaldæans.*** he is said to have had three sons--abraham, nakhôr, and harân. harân begat lot, but died before his father in ur-kashdîm, his own country; abraham and nakhor both took wives, but abraham�s wife remained a long time barren. then terakh, with his son abraham, his grandson lot, the son of harân, and his daughter-in-law sarah,**** went forth from ur-kashdîm (ur of the chaldees) to go into the land of canaan. * nakhôr has been associated with the ancient village of khaura, or with the ancient village of hâditha-en-naura, to the south of anah; peleg probably corresponds with phalga or phaliga, which was situated at the mouth of the khabur; serug with the present sarudj in the neighbourhood of edessa, and the other names in the genealogy were probably borrowed from as many different localities. ** the site of arphaxad is doubtful, as is also its meaning: its second element is undoubtedly the name of the chaldæans, but the first is interpreted in several ways--�frontier of the chaldæans,� �domain of the chaldæans.� the similarity of sound was the cause of its being for a long time associated with the arrapakhitis of classical times; the tendency is now to recognise in it the country nearest to the ancient domain of the chaldæans, i.e. babylonia proper. *** ur-kashdîm has long been sought for in the north, either at orfa, in accordance with the tradition of the syrian churches still existing in the east, or in a certain ur of mesopotamia, placed by ammianus marcellinus between nisibis and the tigris; at the present day halévy still looks for it on the syrian bank of the euphrates, to the south-east of thapsacus. rawlin-son�s proposal to identify it with the town of uru has been successively accepted by nearly all assyriologists. sayce remarks that the worship of sin, which was common to both towns, established a natural link between them, and that an inhabitant of uru would have felt more at home in harrân than in any other town. **** the names of sarah and abraham, or rather the earlier form, abram, have been found, the latter under the form abirâmu, in the contracts of the first chaldæan empire. and they came unto kharân, and dwelt there, and terakh died in kharân.* it is a question whether kharân is to be identified with harrân in mesopotamia, the city of the god sin; or, which is more probable, with the syrian town of haurân, in the neighbourhood of damascus. the tribes who crossed the euphrates became subsequently a somewhat important people. they called themselves, or were known by others, as the �ibrîm, or hebrews, the people from beyond the river;** and this appellation, which we are accustomed to apply to the children of israel only, embraced also, at the time when the term was most extended, the ammonites, moabites, edomites, ishmaelites, midianites, and many other tribes settled on the borders of the desert to the east and south of the dead sea. * gen. xi. 27-32. in the opinion of most critics, verses 27, 31 32 form part of the document which was the basis of the various narratives still traceable in the bible; it is thought that the remaining verses bear the marks of a later redaction, or that they may be additions of a later date. the most important part of the text, that relating the migration from ur-kashdîm to kharân, belongs, therefore, to the very oldest part of the national tradition, and may be regarded as expressing the knowledge which the hebrews of the times of the kings possessed concerning the origin of their race. ** the most ancient interpretation identified this nameless river with the euphrates; an identification still admitted by most critics; others prefer to recognise it as being the jordan. halévy prefers to identify it with one of the rivers of damascus, probably the abana. these peoples all traced their descent from abraham, the son of terakh, but the children of israel claimed the privilege of being the only legitimate issue of his marriage with sarah, giving naïve or derogatory accounts of the relations which connected the others with their common ancestor; ammon and moab were, for instance, the issue of the incestuous union of lot and his daughters. midian and his sons were descended from keturah, who was merely a concubine, ishmael was the son of an egyptian slave, while the �hairy� esau had sold his birthright and the primacy of the edomites to his brother jacob, and consequently to the israelites, for a dish of lentils. abraham left kharân at the command of jahveh, his god, receiving from him a promise that his posterity should be blessed above all others. abraham pursued his way into the heart of canaan till he reached shechem, and there, under the oaks of moreh, jahveh, appearing to him a second time, announced to him that he would give the whole land to his posterity as an inheritance. abraham virtually took possession of it, and wandered over it with his flocks, building altars at shechem, bethel, and mamre, the places where god had revealed himself to him, treating as his equals the native chiefs, abîmelech of gerar and melchizedek of jerusalem,* and granting the valley of the jordan as a place of pasturage to his nephew lot, whose flocks had increased immensely.** his nomadic instinct having led him into egypt, he was here robbed of his wife by pharaoh.*** * cf. the meeting with melchizedek after the victory over the elamites (_gen_. xiv. 18-20) and the agreement with abîmelech about the well (gen. xxi. 22-34). the mention of the covenant of abraham with abîmelech belongs to the oldest part of the national tradition, and is given to us in the jehovistic narrative. many critics have questioned the historical existence of melchizedek, and believed that the passage in which he is mentioned is merely a kind of parable intended to show the head of the race paying tithe of the spoil to the priest of the supreme god residing at jerusalem; the information, however, furnished by the tel el-amarna tablets about the ancient city of jerusalem and the character of its early kings have determined sayce to pronounce melchizedek to be an historical personage. ** _gen._ xiii. 1-13. lot has been sometimes connected of late with the people called on the egyptian monuments rotanu, or lotanu, whom we shall have occasion to mention frequently further on: he is supposed to have been their eponymous hero. lôtan, which is the name of an edomite clan, (_gen_. xxxvi. 20, 29), is a racial adjective, derived from lot. *** _gen._ xii. 9-20, xiii. 1. abraham�s visit to egypt reproduces the principal events of that of jacob. [illustration: 093.jpg the traditional oak of abraham at hebron] drawn by boudier, from a photograph brought home by lortet. on his return he purchased the field of ephron, near kirjath-arba, and the cave of machpelah, of which he made a burying-place for his family* kirjath-arba, the hebron of subsequent times, became from henceforward his favourite dwelling-place, and he was residing there when the elamites invaded the valley of siddîm, and carried off lot among their prisoners. * _gen_. xiii. 18, xxiii. (elohistic narrative). the tombs of the patriarchs are believed by the mohammedans to exist to the present day in the cave which is situated within the enclosure of the mosque at hebron, and the tradition on which this belief is based goes back to early christian times. abraham set out in pursuit of them, and succeeded in delivering his nephew.* god (jahveh) not only favoured him on every occasion, but expressed his will to extend over abraham�s descendants his sheltering protection. he made a covenant with him, enjoining the use on the occasion of the mysterious rites employed among the nations when effecting a treaty of peace. abraham offered up as victims a heifer, a goat, and a three-year-old ram, together with a turtle-dove and a young pigeon; he cut the animals into pieces, and piling them in two heaps, waited till the evening. �and when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon abraham; and lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him,� and a voice from on high said to him: �know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will i judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.... and it came to pass, that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.� jahveh sealed the covenant by consuming the offering. * _gen._ xiv. 12-24. 2 gen. xv., jehovistic narrative. two less important figures fill the interval between the divine prediction of servitude and its accomplishment. the birth of one of them, isaac, was ascribed to the divine intervention at a period when sarah had given up all hope of becoming a mother. abraham was sitting at his tent door in the heat of the day, when three men presented themselves before him, whom he invited to repose under the oak while he prepared to offer them hospitality. after their meal, he who seemed to be the chief of the three promised to return within a year, when sarah should be blessed with the possession of a son. the announcement came from jahveh, but sarah was ignorant of the fact, and laughed to herself within the tent on hearing this amazing prediction; for she said, �after i am waxed old shall i have pleasure, my lord being old also?� the child was born, however, and was called isaac, �the laugher,� in remembrance of sarah�s mocking laugh.* there is a remarkable resemblance between his life and that of his father.** like abraham he dwelt near hebron,*** and departing thence wandered with his household round the wells of beersheba. like him he was threatened with the loss of his wife. * _gen_. xviii. 1-16, according to the jehovistic narrative. _gen_. xvii. 15-22 gives another account, in which the elohistic writer predicts the birth of isaac in a différent way. the name of isaac, �the laugher,� possibly abridged from isaak-el, �he on whom god smiles,� is explained in three different ways: first, by the laugh of abraham (ch. xvii. 17); secondly, by that of sarah (xviii. 12) when her son�s birth was foretold to her; and lastly, by the laughter of those who made sport of the delayed maternity of sarah (xxi. 6). ** many critics see in the life of isaac a colourless copy of that of abraham, while others, on the contrary, consider that the primitive episodes belonged to the former, and that the parallel portions of the two lives were borrowed from the biography of the son to augment that of his father. *** _gen_. xxxv. 27, elohistic narrative. like him, also, he renewed relations with abîmelech of gerar.* he married his relative rebecca, the granddaughter of nâkhor and the sister of laban.** after twenty years of barrenness, his wife gave birth to twins, esau and jacob, who contended with each other from their mother�s womb, and whose descendants kept up a perpetual feud. we know how esau, under the influence of his appetite, deprived himself of the privileges of his birthright, and subsequently went forth to become the founder of the edomites. jacob spent a portion of his youth in padan-aram; here he served laban for the hands of his cousins rachel and leah; then, owing to the bad faith of his uncle, he left him secretly, after twenty years� service, taking with him his wives and innumerable flocks. at first he wandered aimlessly along the eastern bank of the jordan, where jahveh revealed himself to him in his troubles. laban pursued and overtook him, and, acknowledging his own injustice, pardoned him for having taken flight. jacob raised a heap of stones on the site of their encounter, known at mizpah to after-ages as the �stone of witness �--g-al-ed (galeed).*** this having been accomplished, his difficulties began with his brother esau, who bore him no good will. * _gen._ xxvi. 1--31, jehovistic narrative. in _gen._ xxv. 11 an elohistic interpolation makes isaac also dwell in the south, near to the �well of the living one who seeth me.� ** _gen._ xxiv., where two narratives appear to have been amalgamated; in the second of these, abraham seems to have played no part, and eliezer apparently conducted rebecca direct to her husband isaac (vers. 61-67). *** _gen._ xxxi. 45-54, where the writer evidently traces the origin of the word gilead to gal-ed. we gather from the context that the narrative was connected with the cairn at mizpah which separated the hebrew from the aramæan speaking peoples. one night, at the ford of the jabbok, when he had fallen behind his companions, �there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day,� without prevailing against him. the stranger endeavoured to escape before daybreak, but only succeeded in doing so at the cost of giving jacob his blessing. �what is thy name? and he said, jacob. and he said, thy name shall be called no more jacob, but israel: for thou hast striven with god and with men, and hast prevailed.� jacob called the place penîel, �for,� said he, �i have seen god face to face, and my life is preserved.� the hollow of his thigh was �strained as he wrestled with him,� and he became permanently lame.* immediately after the struggle he met esau, and endeavoured to appease him by his humility, building a house for him, and providing booths for his cattle, so as to secure for his descendants the possession of the land. from this circumstance the place received the name of succôth--the �booths �--by which appellation it was henceforth known. another locality where jahveh had met jacob while he was pitching his tents, derived from this fact the designation of the �two hosts�--mahanaîm.** on the other side of the river, at shechem,*** at bethel,**** and at hebron, near to the burial-place of his family, traces of him are everywhere to be found blent with those of abraham. * _gen._ xxxii. 22-32. this is the account of the jehovistic writer. the elohist gives a different version of the circumstances which led to the change of name from jacob to israel; he places the scene at bethel, and suggests no precise etymology for the name israel (_gen._ xxxv. 9-15). ** _gen._ xxxii. 2, 3, where the theophany is indicated rather than directly stated. *** _gen._ xxxiii. 18-20. here should be placed the episode of dinah seduced by an amorite prince, and the consequent massacre of the inhabitants by simeon and levi (_gen._ xxxiv.). the almost complete dispersion of the two tribes of simeon and levi is attributed to this massacre: cf. _gen._ xlix. 5-7. **** _gen._ xxxv. 1-15, where is found the elohistic version (9-15) of the circumstances which led to the change of name from jacob to israel. by his two wives and their maids he had twelve sons. leah was the mother of keuben, simeon, levi, judah, issachar, and zabulon; gad. and asher were the children of his slave zilpah; while joseph and benjamin were the only sons of rachel--dan and naphtali being the offspring of her servant bilhah. the preference which his father showed to him caused joseph to be hated by his brothers; they sold him to a caravan of midianites on their way to egypt, and persuaded jacob that a wild beast had devoured him. jahveh was, however, with joseph, and �made all that he did to prosper in his hand.� he was bought by potiphar, a great egyptian lord and captain of pharaoh�s guard, who made him his overseer; his master�s wife, however, �cast her eyes upon joseph,� but finding that he rejected her shameless advances, she accused him of having offered violence to her person. being cast into prison, he astonished his companions in misfortune by his skill in reading dreams, and was summoned to court to interpret to the king his dream of the seven lean kine who had devoured the seven fat kine, which he did by representing the latter as seven years of abundance, of which the crops should be swallowed up by seven years of famine. joseph was thereupon raised by pharaoh to the rank of prime minister. he stored up the surplus of the abundant harvests, and as soon as the famine broke out, distributed the corn to the hunger-stricken people in exchange for their silver and gold, and for their flocks and fields. hence it was,that the whole of the nile valley, with the exception of the lands belonging to the priests, gradually passed into the possession of the royal treasury. meanwhile his brethren, who also suffered from the famine, came down into egypt to buy corn. joseph revealed himself to them, pardoned the wrong they had done him, and presented them to the pharaoh. �and pharaoh said unto joseph, say unto thy brethren, this do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of canaan: and take your father and your household, and come unto me: and i will give you the good of the land of egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land.� jacob thereupon raised his camp and came to beersheba, where he offered sacrifices to the god of his father isaac; and jahveh commanded him to go down into egypt, saying, �i will there make of thee a great nation: i will go down with thee into egypt: and i will also surely bring thee up again: and joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.� the whole family were installed by pharaoh in the province of goshen, as far as possible from the centres of the native population, �for every shepherd is an abomination unto the egyptians.� in the midst of these stern yet touching narratives in which the hebrews of the times of the kings delighted to trace the history of their remote ancestors, one important fact arrests our attention: the beni-israel quitted southern syria and settled on the banks of the nile. they had remained for a considerable time in what was known later as the mountains of judah. hebron had served as their rallying-point; the broad but scantily watered wadys separating the cultivated lands from the desert, were to them a patrimony, which they shared with the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns. every year, in the spring, they led their flocks to browse on the thin herbage growing in the bottoms of the valleys, removing them to another district only when the supply of fodder was exhausted. the women span, wove, fashioned garments, baked bread, cooked the viands, and devoted themselves to the care of the younger children, whom they suckled beyond the usual period. the men lived like the bedouin--periods of activity alternating regularly with times of idleness, and the daily routine, with its simple duties and casual work, often gave place to quarrels for the possession of some rich pasturage or some never-failing well. a comparatively ancient tradition relates that the hebrews arrived in egypt during the reign of aphôbis, a hyksôs king, doubtless one of the apôpi, and possibly the monarch who restored the monuments of the theban pharaohs, and engraved his name on the sphinxes of amenemhâît iii. and on the colossi of mîrmâshâû.* the land which the hebrews obtained is that which, down to the present day, is most frequently visited by nomads, who find there an uncertain hospitality. * the year xvii. of apôphis has been pointed out as the date of their arrival, and this combination, probably proposed by some learned jew of alexandria, was adopted by christian chroniclers. it is unsupported by any fact of egyptian history, but it rests on a series of calculations founded on the information contained in the bible. starting from the assumption that the exodus must have taken place under ahmosîs, and that the children of israel had been four hundred and thirty years on the banks of the nile, it was found that the beginning of their sojourn fell under the reign of the apôphis mentioned by josephus, and, to be still more correct, in the xviith year of that prince. the tribes of the isthmus of suez are now, in fact, constantly shifting from one continent to another, and their encampments in any place are merely temporary. the lord of the soil must, if he desire to keep them within his borders, treat them with the greatest prudence and tact. should the government displease them in any way, or appear to curtail their liberty, they pack up their tents and take flight into the desert. the district occupied by them one day is on the next vacated and left to desolation. probably the same state of things existed in ancient times, and the border nomes on the east of the delta were in turn inhabited or deserted by the bedouin of the period. the towns were few in number, but a series of forts protected the frontier. these were mere village-strongholds perched on the summit of some eminence, and surrounded by a strip of cornland. beyond the frontier extended a region of bare rock, or a wide plain saturated with the ill-regulated surplus water of the inundation. the land of goshen was bounded by the cities of heliopolis on the south, bubastis on the west, and tanis and mendes on the north: the garrison at avaris could easily keep watch over it and maintain order within it, while they could at the same time defend it from the incursions of the monatiû and the hîrû-shâîtû.* * goshen comprised the provinces situated on the borders of the cultivable cornland, and watered by the infiltration of the nile, which caused the growth of a vegetation sufficient to support the flocks during a few weeks; and it may also have included the imperfectly irrigated provinces which were covered with pools and reedy swamps after each inundation. the beni-israel throve in these surroundings so well adapted to their traditional tastes. even if their subsequent importance as a nation has been over-estimated, they did not at least share the fate of many foreign tribes, who, when transplanted into egypt, waned and died out, or, at the end of two or three generations, became merged in the native population.* in pursuing their calling as shepherds, almost within sight of the rich cities of the nile valley, they never forsook the god of their fathers to bow down before the enneads or triads of egypt; whether he was already known to them as jahveh, or was worshipped under the collective name of elohîm, they served him with almost unbroken fidelity even in the presence of râ and osiris, of phtah and sûtkhû. * we are told that when the hebrews left ramses, they were �about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. and a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks and herds, even very much cattle� (_exod._ xii. 37, 38). the hyksôs conquest had not in any way modified the feudal system of the country. the shepherd-kings must have inherited the royal domain just as they found it at the close of the xivth dynasty, but doubtless the whole delta, from avaris to sais, and from memphis to buto, was their personal appanage. their direct authority probably extended no further south than the pyramids, and their supremacy over the fiefs of the said was at best precarious. the turbulent lords who shared among them the possession of the valley had never lost their proud or rebellious spirit, and under the foreign as under the native pharaohs regulated their obedience to their ruler by the energy he displayed, or by their regard for the resources at his disposal. thebes had never completely lost the ascendency which it obtained over them at the fall of the memphite dynasty. the accession of the xoite dynasty, and the arrival of the shepherd-kings, in relegating thebes unceremoniously to a second rank, had not discouraged it, or lowered its royal prestige in its own eyes or in those of others: the lords of the south instinctively rallied around it, as around their natural citadel, and their resources, combined with its own, rendered it as formidable a power as that of the masters of the delta. if we had fuller information as to the history of this period, we should doubtless see that the various theban princes took occasion, as in the heracleopolitan epoch, to pick a quarrel with their sovereign lord, and did not allow themselves to be discouraged by any check.* * the length of time during which egypt was subject to asiatic rule is not fully known. historians are agreed in recognizing the three epochs referred to in the narrative of manetho as corresponding with (1) the conquest and the six first hyksôs kings, including the xvth theban dynasty; (2) the complete submission of egypt to the xvith foreign dynasty; (3) the war of independence during the xviith dynasty, which consisted of two parallel series of kings, the one shepherds (pharaohs), the other thebans. there has been considerable discussion as to the duration of the oppression. the best solution is still that given by erman, according to whom the xvth dynasty lasted 284, the xvith 234, and the xviith 143 years, or, in all, 661 years. the invasion must, therefore, have taken place about 2346 b.c., or about the time when the elamite power was at its highest. the advent of the xvith dynasty would fall about 2062 b.c., and the commencement of the war of independence between 1730 and 1720 b.c. the period of hegemony attributed by the chronicles to the hyksôs of the xvith dynasty was not probably, as far as they were concerned, years of perfect tranquillity, or of undisputed authority. in inscribing their sole names on the lists, the compilers denoted merely the shorter or longer period during which their theban vassals failed in their rebellious efforts, and did not dare to assume openly the title or ensigns of royalty. a certain apôphis, probably the same who took the prsenomen of aqnûnrî, was reigning at tanis when the decisive revolt broke out, and saqnûnrî tiûâa i., who was the leader on the occasion, had no other title of authority over the provinces of the south than that of _hiqu,_ or regent. we are unacquainted with the cause of the outbreak or with its sequel, and the egyptians themselves seem to have been not much better informed on the subject than ourselves. they gave free flight to their fancy, and accommodated the details to their taste, not shrinking from the introduction of daring fictions into the account. a romance, which was very popular with the literati four or five hundred years later, asserted that the real cause of the war was a kind of religious quarrel. �it happened that the land of egypt belonged to the fever-stricken, and, as there was no supreme king at that time, it happened then that king saqnûnrî was regent of the city of the south, and that the fever-stricken of the city of râ were under the rule of râ-apôpi in avaris. the whole land tribute to the latter in manufactured products, and the north did the same in all the good things of the delta. now, the king râ-apôpi took to himself sûtkhû for lord, and he did not serve any other god in the whole land except sûtkhû, and he built a temple of excellent and everlasting work at the gate of the king râ-apôpi, and he arose every morning to sacrifice the daily victims, and the chief vassals were there with garlands of flowers, as it was accustomed to be done for the temple of phrâ-harmâkhis.� having finished the temple, he thought of imposing upon the thebans the cult of his god, but as he shrank from employing force in such a delicate matter, he had recourse to stratagem. he took counsel with his princes and generals, but they were unable to propose any plan. the college of diviners and scribes was more complaisant: �let a messenger go to the regent of the city of the south to tell him: the king râ-apôpi commands thee: �that the hippopotami which are in the pool of the town are to be exterminated in the pool, in order that slumber may come to me by day and by night.� he will not be able to reply good or bad, and thou shalt send him another messenger: the king râ-apôpi commands thee: �if the chief of the south does not reply to my message, let him serve no longer any god but sûtkhû. but if he replies to it, and will do that which i tell him to do, then i will impose nothing further upon him, and i will not in future bow before any other god of the whole land than amonrâ, king of the gods!�� another pharaoh of popular romance, nectanebo, possessed, at a much later date, mares which conceived at the neighing of the stallions of babylon, and his friend lycerus had a cat which went forth every night to wring the necks of the cocks of memphis:* the hippopotami of the theban lake, which troubled the rest of the king of tanis, were evidently of close kin to these extraordinary animals. * found in a popular story, which came in later times to be associated with the traditions connected with æsop. the sequel is unfortunately lost. we may assume, however, without much risk of error, that saqnûnrî came forth safe and sound from the ordeal; that apôpi was taken in his own trap, and saw himself driven to the dire extremity of giving up sûtkhû for amonrâ or of declaring war. he was likely to adopt the latter alternative, and the end of the manuscript would probably have related his defeat. [illustration: 106.jpg pallate of tiûâa] drawn from the original by faucher-gudin. hostilities continued for a century and a half from the time when saqnûnrî tiûâa declared himself son of the sun and king of the two egypts. from the moment in which he surrounded his name with a cartouche, the princes of the said threw in their lot with him, and the xviith dynasty had its beginning on the day of his proclamation. the strife at first was undecisive and without marked advantage to either side: at length the pharaoh whom the greek copyists of manetho call alisphragmouthosis, defeated the barbarians, drove them away from memphis and from the western plains of the delta, and shut them up in their entrenched camp at avaris, between the sebennytic branch of the nile and the wady tumilât. the monuments bearing on this period of strife and misery are few in number, and it is a fortunate circumstance if some insignificant object tarns up which would elsewhere be passed over as unworthy of notice. one of the officials of tiûâa i. has left us his writing palette, on which the cartouches of his master are incised with a rudeness baffling description. we have also information of a prince of the blood, a king�s son, tûaû, who accompanied this same pharaoh in his expeditions; and the gîzeh museum is proud of having in its possession the i wooden sabre which this individual placed on the mummy of a certain aqhorû, to enable him to defend himself against the monsters of the lower world. a second saqnûnrî tiûâa succeeded the first, and like him was buried in a little brick pyramid on the border of the theban necropolis. at his death the series of rulers was broken, and we meet with several names which are difficult to classify--sakhontinibrî, sanakhtû-niri, hotpûrî, manhotpûrî, eâhotpû.* * hotpûrî and manhotpûrî are both mentioned in the fragments of a fantastic story (copied during the xxth dynasty), bits of which are found in most european museums. in one of these fragments, preserved in the louvre, mention is made of hotpûrî�s tomb, certainly situated at thebes; we possess scarabs of this king, and pétrie discovered at coptos a fragment of a stele bearing his name and titles, and describing the works which he executed in the temples of the town. the xivth year of manhotpûrî is mentioned in a passage of the story as being the date of the death of a personage born under hotpûrî. these two kings belong, as far as we are able to judge, to the middle of the xviith dynasty; i am inclined to place beside them the pharaoh nûbhotpûrî, of whom we possess a few rather coarse scarabs. as we proceed, however, information becomes more plentiful, and the list of reigns almost complete. the part which the princesses of older times played in the transmission of power had, from the xiith dynasty downward, considerably increased in importance, and threatened to overshadow that of the princes. the question presents itself whether, during these centuries of perpetual warfare, there had not been a moment when, all the males of the family having perished, the women alone were left to perpetuate the solar race on the earth and to keep the succession unbroken. as soon as the veil over this period of history begins to be lifted, we distinguish among the personages emerging from the obscurity as many queens as kings presiding over the destinies of egypt. the sons took precedence of the daughters when both were the offspring of a brother and sister born of the same parents, and when, consequently, they were of equal rank; but, on the other hand, the sons forfeited this equality when there was any inferiority in origin on the maternal side, and their prospect of succession to the throne diminished in proportion to their mother�s remoteness from the line of râ. in the latter case all their sisters, born of marriages which to us appear incestuous, took precedence of them, and the eldest daughter became the legitimate pharaoh, who sat in the seat of horus on the death of her father, or even occasionally during his lifetime. the prince whom she married governed for her, and discharged those royal duties which could be legally performed by a man only,--such as offering worship to the supreme gods, commanding the army, and administering justice; but his wife never ceased to be sovereign, and however small the intelligence or firmness of which she might be possessed, her husband was obliged to leave to her, at all events on certain occasions, the direction of affairs. [illustration: 109.jpg nofrîtari, from tue wooden statuette in the turin museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by plinders pétrie. at her death her children inherited the crown: their father had formally to invest the eldest of them with royal, authority in the room of the deceased, and with him he shared the externals, if not the reality, of power.* it is doubtful whether the third saq-nûnrî tiûâa known to us--he who added an epithet to his name, and was commonly known as tiûâqni, �tiûâa the brave� ** --united in his person all the requisites of a pharaoh qualified to reign in his own right. however this may have been, at all events his wife, queen ahhotpû, possessed them. * thus we find thûtmosis i. formally enthroning his daughter hât-shopsîtû, towards the close of his reign. ** it would seem that the epithet qeni ( = the brave, the robust) did not form an indispensable part of his name, any more than ahmosi did of the names of members of the family of ahmosis, the conqueror of the shepherds. it is to him that the tiûâa cartouche refers, which is to be found on the statue mentioned by daninos-pasha, published by bouriant, and on which we find ahmosis, a princess of the same name, together with queen ahhotpû i. his eldest son ahmosû died prematurely; the two younger brothers, kamosû and a second ahmosû, the amosis of the greeks, assumed the crown after him. it is possible, as frequently happened, that their young sister ahmasi-nofrîtari entered the harem of both brothers consecutively. [illustration: 110.jpg the head of saqnuri] drawn by bouclier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. we cannot be sure that she was united to kamosû, but at all events she became the wife of ahmosis, and the rights which she possessed, together with those which her husband had inherited from their mother ahhotpû, gave him a legal claim such as was seldom enjoyed by the pharaohs of that period, so many of them being sovereigns merely _de facto,_ while he was doubly king by right. tiûâqni, kamosû,* and ahmosis** quickly succeeded each other. tiûâqni very probably waged war against the shepherds, and it is not known whether he fell upon the field of battle or was the victim of some plot; the appearance of his mummy proves that he died a violent death when about forty years of age. two or three men, whether assassins or soldiers, must have surrounded and despatched him before help was available. a blow from an axe must have severed part of his left cheek, exposed the teeth, fractured the jaw, and sent him senseless to the ground; another blow must have seriously injured the skull, and a dagger or javelin has cut open the forehead on the right side, a little above the eye. his body must have remained lying where it fell for some time: when found, decomposition had set in, and the embalming had to be hastily performed as best it might. the hair is thick, rough, and matted; the face had been shaved on the morning of his death, but by touching the cheek we can ascertain how harsh and abundant the hair must have been. the mummy is that of a fine, vigorous man, who might have lived to a hundred years, and he must have defended himself resolutely against his assailants; his features bear even now an expression of fury. a flattened patch of exuded brain appears above one eye, the forehead is wrinkled, and the lips, which are drawn back in a circle about the gums, reveal the teeth still biting into the tongue. kamosû did not reign long; we know nothing of the events of his life, but we owe to him one of the prettiest examples of the egyptian goldsmith�s art--the gold boat mounted on a carriage of wood and bronze, which was to convey his double on its journeys through hades. this boat was afterwards appropriated by his mother ahhotpû. * with regard to kamosû, we possess, in addition to the miniature bark which was discovered on the sarcophagus of queen ahhotpû, and which is now in the museum at gîzeh, a few scattered references to his worship existing on the monuments, on a stele at gîzeh, on a table of offerings in the marseilles museum, and in the list of princes worshipped by the �servants of the necropolis.� his pyramid was at drah abu�l-neggah, beside those of ilûâa and amenôthês i. ** the name amosû or ahmosi is usually translated �child of the moon-god� the real meaning is, �the moon-god has brought forth,� �him� or �her� (referring to the person who bears the name) being understood. ahmosisa must have been about twenty-five years of age when he ascended the throne; he was of medium height, as his body when mummied measured only 5 feet 6 inches in length, but the development of the neck and chest indicates extraordinary strength. the head is small in proportion to the bust, the forehead low and narrow, the cheek-bones project, and the hair is thick and wavy. the face exactly resembles that of tiûâcrai, and the likeness alone would proclaim the affinity, even if we were ignorant of the close relationship which united these two pharaohs.* ahmosis seems to have been a strong, active, warlike man; he was successful in all the wars in which we know him to have been engaged, and he ousted the shepherds from the last towns occupied by them. it is possible that modern writers have exaggerated the credit due to ahmosis for expelling the hyksôs. he found the task already half accomplished, and the warfare of his forefathers for at least a century must have prepared the way for his success; if he appears to have played the most important _rôle_ in the history of the deliverance, it is owing to our ignorance of the work of others, and he thus benefits by the oblivion into which their deeds have passed. taking this into consideration, we must still admit that the shepherds, even when driven into avaris, were not adversaries to be despised. forced by the continual pressure of the egyptian armies into this corner of the delta, they were as a compact body the more able to make a protracted resistance against very superior forces. * here again my description is taken from the present appearance of the mummy, which is now in the gîzeh museum. it is evident, from the inspection which i have made, that ahmosis was about fifty years old at the time of his death, and, allowing him to have reigned twenty-five years, he must have been twenty-five or twenty-six when he came to the throne. [illustration: 113.jpg the small gold votive barque of pharaoh kamosû, in the gîzeh museum.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by émil brugsch-bey. the impenetrable marshes of menzaleh on the north, and the desert of the red sea on the south, completely covered both their wings; the shifting network of the branches of the nile, together with the artificial canals, protected them as by a series of moats in front, while syria in their rear offered them inexhaustible resources for revictualling their troops, or levying recruits among tribes of kindred race. as long as they could hold their ground there, a re-invasion was always possible; one victory would bring them to memphis, and the whole valley would again fall under then-suzerainty. ahmosis, by driving them from their last stronghold, averted this danger. it is, therefore, not without reason that the official chroniclers of later times separated him from his ancestors and made him the head of a new dynasty. [illustration: 114.jpg page image] his predecessors had in reality been merely pharaohs on sufferance, ruling in the south within the confines of their theban principality, gaining in power, it is true, with every generation, but never able to attain to the suzerainty of the whole country. they were reckoned in the xviith dynasty together with the hyksôs sovereigns of uncontested legitimacy, while their successors were chosen to constitute the xviiith, comprising pharaohs with full powers, tolerating no competitors, and uniting under their firm rule the two regions of which egypt was composed--the possessions of sit and the possessions of horus.* * manetho, or his abridgers, call the king who drove out the shepherds amôsis or tethmôsis. lepsius thought he saw grounds for preferring the second reading, and identified this tethmôsis with thûtmosi manakhpirri, the ïhûtmosis iii. of our lists; ahmosis could only have driven out the greater part of the nation. this theory, to which naville still adheres, as also does stindorff, was disputed nearly fifty years ago by e. de rougé; nowadays we are obliged to admit that, subsequent to the vth year of ahmosis, there were no longer shepherd-kings in egypt, even though a part of the conquering race may have remained in the country in a state of slavery, as we shall soon have occasion to observe. the war of deliverance broke out on the accession of ahmosis, and continued during the first five years of his reign.* one of his lieutenants, the king�s namesake--âhmosi-si-abîna--who belonged to the family of the lords of nekhabît, has left us an account, in one of the inscriptions in his tomb, of the numerous exploits in which he took part side by side with his royal master, and thus, thanks to this fortunate record of his vanity, we are not left in complete ignorance of the events which took place during this crucial struggle between the asiatic settlers and their former subjects. nekhabît had enjoyed considerable prosperity in the earlier ages of egyptian history, marking as it did the extreme southern limit of the kingdom, and forming an outpost against the barbarous tribes of nubia. as soon as the progress of conquest had pushed the frontier as far south as the first cataract, it declined in importance, and the remembrance of its former greatness found an echo only in proverbial expressions or in titles used at the pharaonic court.* the nomes situated to the south of thebes, unlike those of middle egypt, did not comprise any extensive fertile or well-watered territory calculated to enrich its possessors or to afford sufficient support for a large population: they consisted of long strips of alluvial soil, shut in between the river and the mountain range, but above the level of the inundation, and consequently difficult to irrigate. * this is evident from passage in the biography of ahmosi si-abîna, where it is stated that, after the taking of avaris, the king passed into asia in the year vi. the first few lines of the _great inscription of el-kab_ seem to refer to four successive campaigns, i.e. four years of warfare up to the taking of avaris, and to a fifth year spent in pursuing the shepherds into syria. ** the vulture of nekhabît is used to indicate the south, while the urseus of buto denotes the extreme north; the title râ-nekhnît, �chief of nekhnît,� which is, hypothetically, supposed to refer to a judicial function, is none the less associated with the expression, �nekhabît tekhnît,� as an indication of the south, and, therefore, can be traced to the prehistoric epoch when nekhabît was the primary designation of the south. [illustration: 116.jpg the walls of el-kab seen from the tomb of pihiri] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. [illustration: 116a.jpg collection of vases] modelled and painted in the grand temple. philae island. these nomes were cultivated, moreover, by a poor and sparse population. it needed a fortuitous combination of circumstances to relieve them from their poverty-stricken condition--either a war, which would bring into prominence their strategic positions; or the establishment of markets, such as those of syênê and elephantine, where the commerce of neighbouring regions would naturally centre; or the erection, as at ombos or adfû, of a temple which would periodically attract a crowd of pilgrims. the principality of the two feathers comprised, besides nekhabît, ât least two such towns--anît, on its northern boundary, and nekhnît almost facing nekhabît on the left bank of the river.* these three towns sometimes formed separate estates for as many independent lords:** even when united they constituted a fiefdom of but restricted area and of slender revenues, its chiefs ranking below those of the great feudal princes of middle egypt. the rulers of this fiefdom led an obscure existence during the whole period of the memphite empire, and when at length thebes gained the ascendency, they rallied to the latter and acknowledged her suzerainty. one of them, sovkûnakhîti, gained the favour of sovkhotpû iii. sakhemûaztaûirî, who granted him lands which made the fortune of his house; another of them, aï, married khonsu, one of the daughters of sovkûmsaûf i. and his queen nûbkhâs, and it is possible that the misshapen pyramid of qûlah, the most southern in egypt proper, was built for one of these royally connected personages. * nekhnît is the hieracônpolis of greek and roman times, hâît-baûkû, the modern name of which is kom-el-ahmar. ** pihiri was, therefore, prince of nekhabît and of anît at one and the same time, whereas the town of nekhnît had its own special rulers, several of whom are known to us from the tombs at kom-el-ahmar. the descendants of aï attached themselves faithfully to the pharaohs of the xviith dynasty, and helped them to the utmost in their struggle against the invaders. their capital, nekhabît, was situated between the nile and the arabian chain, at the entrance to a valley which penetrates some distance into the desert, and leads to the gold-mines on the red sea. the town profited considerably from the precious metals brought into it by the caravans, and also from the extraction of natron, which from prehistoric times was largely employed in embalming. it had been a fortified place from the outset, and its walls, carefully repaired by successive ages, were still intact at the beginning of this century. they described at this time a rough quadrilateral, the two longer sides of which measured some 1900 feet in length, the two shorter being about one-fourth less. the southern face was constructed in a fashion common in brick buildings in egypt, being divided into alternate panels of horizontally laid courses, and those in which the courses were concave; on the north and west façades the bricks were so laid as to present an undulating arrangement running uninterruptedly from one end to the other. the walls are 33 feet thick, and their average height 27 feet; broad and easy steps lead to the foot-walk on the top. the gates are unsymmetrically placed, there being one on the north, east, and west sides respectively; while the southern side is left without an opening. these walls afforded protection to a dense but unequally distributed population, the bulk of which was housed towards the north and west sides, where the remains of an immense number of dwellings may still be seen. the temples were crowded together in a small square enclosure, concentric with the walls of the enceinte, and the principal sanctuary was dedicated to nekhabît, the vulture goddess, who gave her name to the city.* this enclosure formed a kind of citadel, where the garrison could hold out when the outer part had fallen into the enemy�s hands. the times were troublous; the open country was repeatedly wasted by war, and the peasantry had more than once to seek shelter behind the protecting ramparts of the town, leaving their lands to lie fallow. * a part of the latter temple, that which had been rebuilt in the saîte epoch, was still standing at the beginning of the xixth century, with columns bearing the cartouches of hakori; it was destroyed about the year 1825, and champollion found only the foundations of the walls. [illustration: 119.jpg the ruins of the pyramid of qûlah, near mohammerieh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. famine constantly resulted from these disturbances, and it taxed all the powers of the ruling prince to provide at such times for his people. a chief of the commissariat, bebî by name, who lived about this period, gives us a lengthy account of the number of loaves, oxen, goats, and pigs, which he allowed to all the inhabitants both great and little, down even to the quantity of oil and incense, which he had taken care to store up for them: his prudence was always justified by the issue, for �during the many years in which the famine recurred, he distributed grain in the city to all those who hungered.� babaî, the first of the lords of el-kab whose name has come down to us, was a captain in the service of saqnûnrî tiûâqni.* his son ahmosi, having approached the end of his career, cut a tomb for himself in the hill which overlooks the northern side of the town. he relates on the walls of his sepulchre, for the benefit of posterity, the most praiseworthy actions of his long life. he had scarcely emerged from childhood when he was called upon to act for his father, and before his marriage he was appointed to the command of the barque _the calf._ from thence he was promoted to the ship _the north_, and on account of his activity he was chosen to escort his namesake the king on foot, whenever he drove in his chariot. he repaired to his post at the moment when the decisive war against the hyksôs broke out. * there are still some doubts as to the descent of this ahmosi. some authorities hold that babai was the name of his father and abîna that of his grandfather; others think that babai was his father and abîna his mother; others, again, make out babai and abîna to be variants of the same name, probably a semitic one, borne by the father of ahmosi; the majority of modern egyptologists (including myself) regard this last hypothesis as being the most probable one. the tradition current in the time of the ptolemies reckoned the number of men under the command of king ahmosis when he encamped before avaris at 480,000. this immense multitude failed to bring matters to a successful issue, and the siege dragged on indefinitely. the king afc length preferred to treat with the shepherds, and gave them permission to retreat into syria safe and sound, together with their wives, their children, and all their goods. this account, however, in no way agrees with the all too brief narration of events furnished by the inscription in the tomb. the army to which egypt really owed its deliverance was not the undisciplined rabble of later tradition, but, on the contrary, consisted of troops similar to those which subsequently invaded syria, some 15,000 to 20,000 in number, fully equipped and ably officered, supported, moreover, by a fleet ready to transfer them across the canals and arms of the river in a vigorous condition and ready for the battle.* * it may be pointed out that ahmosi, son of abîna, was a sailor and a leader of sailors; that he passed from one vessel to another, until he was at length appointed to the command of one of the most important ships in the royal fleet. transport by water always played considerable part in the wars which were carried on in egyptian territory; i have elsewhere drawn attention to campaigns conducted in this manner under the horacleopolitan dynasties, and we shall see that the ethiopian conquerors adopted the same mode of transit in the course of their invasion of egypt. as soon as this fleet arrived at the scene of hostilities, the engagement began. ahmosi-si-abîna conducted the manouvres under the king�s eye, and soon gave such evidence of his capacity, that he was transferred by royal favour to the _rising in memphis_--a vessel with a high freeboard. he was shortly afterwards appointed to a post in a division told off for duty on the river zadiku, which ran under the walls of the enemy�s fortress.* two successive and vigorous attacks made in this quarter were barren of important results. ahmosi-si-abîna succeeded in each of the attacks in killing an enemy, bringing back as trophies a hand of each of his victims, and his prowess, made known to the king by one of the heralds, twice procured for him, �the gold of valour,� probably in the form of collars, chains, or bracelets.** * the name of this canal was first recognised by brugsch, then misunderstood and translated �the water bearing the name of the water of avaris.� it is now road �zadikû,� and, with the egyptian article, pa-zadikû, or pzadikû. the name is of semitic origin, and is derived from the root meaning �to be just;� we do not know to which of the watercourses traversing the east of the delta it ought to be applied. ** the fact that the attacks from this side were not successful is proved by the sequel. if they had succeeded, as is usually supposed, the egyptians would not have fallen back on another point further south in order to renew the struggle. [illustration: 122.jpg the tombs of the princes of nekhabît, in the hillside above el-kab] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the assault having been repulsed in this quarter, the egyptians made their way towards the south, and came into conflict with the enemy at the village of taqimît.* here, again, the battle remained undecided, but ahmosi-si-abîna had an adventure. he had taken a prisoner, and in bringing him back lost himself, fell into a muddy ditch, and, when he had freed himself from the dirt as well as he could, pursued his way by mistake for some time in the direction of avaris. he found out his error, however, before it was too late, came back to the camp safe and sound, and received once more some gold as a reward of his brave conduct. a second attack upon the town was crowned with complete success; it was taken by storm, given over to pillage, and ahmosi-si-abîna succeeded in capturing one man and three women, who were afterwards, at the distribution of the spoil, given to him as slaves.** the enemy evacuated in haste the last strongholds which they held in the east of the delta, and took refuge in the syrian provinces on the egyptian frontier. whether it was that they assumed here a menacing attitude, or whether ahmosis hoped to deal them a crushing blow before they could find time to breathe, or to rally around them sufficient forces to renew the offensive, he made up his mind to cross the frontier, which he did in the 5th year of his reign. * the site of taqimît is unknown. ** the prisoner who was given to ahmosis after the victory, is probably paâmû, the asiatic, mentioned in the list of his slaves which he had engraved on one of the walls of his tomb. it was the first time for centuries that a pharaoh had trusted himself in asia, and the same dread of the unknown which had restrained his ancestors of the xiith dynasty, doubtless arrested ahmosis also on the threshold of the continent. he did not penetrate further than the border provinces of zahi, situated on the edge of the desert, and contented himself with pillaging the little town of sharûhana.* ahmosi-si-abîna was again his companion, together with his cousin, ahmosi-pannekhabit, then at the beginning of his career, who brought away on this occasion two young girls for his household.** * sharûhana, which is mentioned again under thûtmosis iii. is not the plain of sharon, as birch imagined, but the sharuhen of the biblical texts, in the tribe of simeon (_josh._ xix. 6), as brugsch recognised it to be. it is probably identical with the modern tell-esh-sheriâh, which lies north-west of beersheba. ** ahmosi pannekhabit lay in tomb no. 2, at el-kab. his history is briefly told on one of the walls, and on two sides of the pedestal of his statues. we have one of these, or rather two plates from the pedestal of one of them, in the louvre; the other is in a good state of preservation, and belongs to mr. finlay. the inscription is found in a mutilated condition on the wall of the tomb, but the three monuments which have come down to us are sufficiently complementary to one another to enable us to restore nearly the whole of the original text. the expedition having accomplished its purpose, the egyptians returned home with their spoil, and did not revisit asia for a long period. if the hyksôs generals had fostered in their minds the idea that they could recover their lost ground, and easily re-enter upon the possession of their african domain, this reverse must have cruelly disillusioned them. they must have been forced to acknowledge that their power was at an end, and to renounce all hope of returning to the country which had so summarily ejected them. the majority of their own people did not follow them into exile, but remained attached to the soil on which they lived, and the tribes which had successively settled down beside them--including the beni-israel themselves--no longer dreamed of a return to their fatherland. the condition of these people varied according to their locality. those who had taken up a position in the plain of the delta were subjected to actual slavery. ahmosis destroyed the camp at avails, quartered his officers in the towns, and constructed forts at strategic points, or rebuilt the ancient citadels to resist the incursions of the bedouin. the vanquished people in the delta, hemmed in as they were by a network of fortresses, were thus reduced to a rabble of serfs, to be taxed and subjected to the _corvée_ without mercy. but further north, the fluctuating population which roamed between the sebennytic and pelusiac branches of the nile were not exposed to such rough treatment. the marshes of the coast-line afforded them a safe retreat, in which they could take refuge at the first threat of exactions on the part of the royal emissaries. secure within dense thickets, upon islands approached by interminable causeways, often covered with water, or by long tortuous canals concealed in the thick growth of reeds, they were able to defy with impunity the efforts of the most disciplined troops, and treason alone could put them at the mercy of their foes. most of the pharaohs felt that the advantages to be gained by conquering them would be outweighed by the difficulty of the enterprise; all that could result from a campaign would be the destruction of one or two villages, the acquisition of a few hundred refractory captives, of some ill-favoured cattle, and a trophy of nets and worm-eaten boats. the kings, therefore, preferred to keep a close watch over these undisciplined hordes, and as long as their depredations were kept within reasonable limits, they were left unmolested to their wild and precarious life. the asiatic invasion had put a sudden stop to the advance of egyptian rule in the vast plains of the upper nile. the theban princes, to whom nubia was directly subject, had been too completely engrossed in the wars against their hereditary enemy, to devote much time to the continuation of that work of colonization in the south which had been carried on so vigorously by their forefathers of the xiith and xiiith dynasties. the inhabitants of the nile valley, as far as the second cataract, rendered them obedience, but without any change in the conditions and mode of their daily life, which appear to have remained unaltered for centuries. the temples of usirtasen and amenemhaît were allowed to fall into decay one after another, the towns waned in prosperity, and were unable to keep their buildings and monuments in repair; the inundation continued to bring with it periodically its fleet of boats, which the sailors of kûsh had laden with timber, gum, elephants� tusks, and gold dust: from time to time a band of bedouin from uaûaît or mazaiû would suddenly bear down upon some village and carry off its spoils; the nearest garrison would be called to its aid, or, on critical occasions, the king himself, at the head of his guards, would fall on the marauders and drive them back into the mountains. ahrnosis, being greeted on his return from syria by the news of such an outbreak, thought it a favourable moment to impress upon the nomadic tribes of nubia the greatness of his conquest. on this occasion it was the people of khonthanûnofir, settled in the wadys east of the nile, above semneh, which required a lesson. the army which had just expelled the hyksôs was rapidly conveyed to the opposite borders of the country by the fleet, the two ahmosi of nekhabît occupying the highest posts. the egyptians, as was customary, landed at the nearest point to the enemy�s territory, and succeeded in killing a few of the rebels. ahmosi-si-abîna brought back two prisoners and three hands, for which he was rewarded by a gift of two female bedouin slaves, besides the �gold of valour.� this victory in the south following on such decisive success in the north, filled the heart of the pharaoh with pride, and the view taken of it by those who surrounded him is evident even in the brief sentences of the narrative. he is described as descending the river on the royal galley, elated in spirit and flushed by his triumph in nubia, which had followed so closely on the deliverance of the delta. but scarcely had he reached thebes, when an unforeseen catastrophe turned his confidence into alarm, and compelled him to retrace his steps. it would appear that at the very moment when he was priding himself on the successful issue of his ethiopian expedition, one of the sudden outbreaks, which frequently occurred in those regions, had culminated in a sudanese invasion of egypt. we are not told the name of the rebel leader, nor those of the tribes who took part in it. the egyptian people, threatened in a moment of such apparent security by this inroad of barbarians, regarded them as a fresh incursion of the hyksôs, and applied to these southerners the opprobrious term of �fever-stricken,� already used to denote their asiatic conquerors. the enemy descended the nile, committing terrible atrocities, and polluting every sanctuary of the theban gods which came within their reach. they had reached a spot called tentoâ,* before they fell in with the egyptian troops. ahmosi-si-abîna again distinguished himself in the engagement. the vessel which he commanded, probably the _rising in memphis_, ran alongside the chief galliot of the sudanese fleet, and took possession of it after a struggle, in which ahmosi made two of the enemy�s sailors prisoners with his own hand. the king generously rewarded those whose valour had thus turned the day in his favour, for the danger had appeared to him critical; he allotted to every man on board the victorious vessel five slaves, and five ancra of land situated in his native province of each respectively. the invasion was not without its natural consequences to egypt itself. * the name of this locality does not occur elsewhere; it would seem to refer, not to a village, but rather to a canal, or the branch of a river, or a harbour somewhere along the nile. i am unable to locate it definitely, but am inclined to think we ought to look for it, if not in egypt itself, at any rate in that part of nubia which is nearest to egypt. m. revillout, taking up a theory which had been abandoned by chabas, recognising in this expedition an offensive incursion of the shepherds, suggests that tantoâ may be the modern tantah in the delta. a certain titiânu, who appears to have been at the head of a powerful faction, rose in rebellion at some place not named in the narrative, but in the rear of the army. the rapidity with which ahmosis repulsed the nubians, and turned upon his new enemy, completely baffled the latter�s plans, and he and his followers were cut to pieces, but the danger had for the moment been serious.* it was, if not the last expedition undertaken in this reign, at least the last commanded by the pharaoh in person. by his activity and courage ahmosis had well earned the right to pass the remainder of his days in peace. * the wording of the text is so much condensed that it is difficult to be sure of its moaning. modern scholars agree with brugsch that titiânu is the name of a man, but several egyptologists believe its bearer to have been chief of the ethiopian tribes, while others think him to have been a rebellious egyptian prince, or a king of the shepherds, or give up the task of identification in despair. the tortuous wording of the text, and the expressions which occur in it, seem to indicate that the rebel was a prince of the royal blood, and even that the name he bears was not his real one. later on we shall find that, on a similar occasion, the official documents refer to a prince who took part in a plot against ramses iii. by the fictitious name of pentauîrît; titiânu was probably a nickname of the same kind inserted in place of the real name. it seems that, in cases of high treason, the criminal not only lost his life, but his name was proscribed both in this world and in the next. a revival of military greatness always entailed a renaissance in art, followed by an age of building activity. the claims of the gods upon the spoils of war must be satisfied before those of men, because the victory and the booty obtained through it were alike owing to the divine help given in battle. a tenth, therefore, of the slaves, cattle, and precious metals was set apart for the service of the gods, and even fields, towns, and provinces were allotted to them, the produce of which was applied to enhance the importance of their cult or to repair and enlarge their temples. the main body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons were added to the original plan, and the impulse once given to architectural work, the co-operation of other artificers soon followed. sculptors and painters whose art had been at a standstill for generations during the centuries of egypt�s humiliation, and whose hands had lost their cunning for want of practice, were now once more in demand. they had probably never completely lost the technical knowledge of their calling, and the ancient buildings furnished them with various types of models, which they had but to copy faithfully in order to revive their old traditions. a few years after this revival a new school sprang up, whose originality became daily more patent, and whose leaders soon showed themselves to be in no way inferior to the masters of the older schools. ahmosis could not be accused of ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his wars allowed him the necessary leisure, he began his work of temple-building. the accession to power of the great theban families had been of little advantage to thebes itself. its pharaohs, on assuming the sovereignty of the whole valley, had not hesitated to abandon their native city, and had made heracleopolis, the fayum or even memphis, their seat of government, only returning to thebes in the time of the xiiith dynasty, when the decadence of their power had set in. the honour of furnishing rulers for its country had often devolved on thebes, but the city had reaped but little benefit from the fact; this time, however, the tide of fortune was to be turned. the other cities of egypt had come to regard thebes as their metropolis from the time when they had temples. the main body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons were added to the original plan, and the impulse once given to architectural work, the co-operation of other artificers soon followed. sculptors and painters whose art had been at a standstill for generations during the centuries of egypt�s humiliation, and whose hands had lost their cunning for want of practice, were now once more in demand. they had probably never completely lost the technical knowledge of their calling, and the ancient buildings furnished them with various types of models, which they had but to copy faithfully in order to revive their old traditions. a few years after this revival a new school sprang up, whose originality became daily more patent, and whose leaders soon showed themselves to be in no way inferior to the masters of the older schools. ahmosis could not be accused of ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his wars allowed him the necessary leisure, he began his work of temple-building. the accession to power of the great theban families had been of little advantage to thebes itself. its pharaohs, on assuming the sovereignty of the whole valley, had not hesitated to abandon their native city, and had made heracleopolis, the fayum or even memphis, their seat of government, only returning to thebes in the time of the xiiith dynasty, when the decadence of their power had set in. the honour of furnishing rulers for its country had often devolved on thebes, but the city had reaped but little benefit from the fact; this time, however, the tide of fortune was to be turned. [illustration: 130.jpg painting in tomb of the kings thebes] the other cities of egypt had come to regard thebes as their metropolis from the time when they had learned to rally round its princes to wage war against the hyksôs. it had been the last town to lay down arms at the time of the invasion, and the first to take them up again in the struggle for liberty. thus the egypt which vindicated her position among the nations of the world was not the egypt of the memphite dynasties. it was the great egypt of the amenemhâîts and the usirtasens, still further aggrandised by recent victories. thebes was her natural capital, and its kings could not have chosen a more suitable position from whence to command effectually the whole empire. situated at an equal distance from both frontiers, the pharaoh residing there, on the outbreak of a war either in the north or south, had but half the length of the country to traverse in order to reach the scene of action. ahmosis spared no pains to improve the city, but his resources did not allow of his embarking on any very extensive schemes; he did not touch the temple of amon, and if he undertook any buildings in its neighbourhood, they must have been minor edifices. he could, indeed, have had but little leisure to attempt much else, for it was not till the xxiind year of his reign that he was able to set seriously to work.* * in the inscription of the year xxii., âhmosis expressly states that he opened new chambers in the quarries of tûrah for the works in connection with the theban amon, as well as for those of the temple of the memphite phtah. an opportunity then occurred to revive a practice long fallen into disuse under the foreign kings, and to set once more in motion an essential part of the machinery of egyptian administration. the quarries of turah, as is well known, enjoyed the privilege of furnishing the finest materials to the royal architects; nowhere else could be found limestone of such whiteness, so easy to cut, or so calculated to lend itself to the carving of delicate inscriptions and bas-reliefs. the commoner veins had never ceased to be worked by private enterprise, gangs of quarrymen being always employed, as at the present day, in cutting small stone for building purposes, or in ruthlessly chipping it to pieces to burn for lime in the kilns of the neighbouring villages; but the finest veins were always kept for state purposes. contemporary chroniclers might have formed a very just estimate of national prosperity by the degree of activity shown in working these royal preserves; when the amount of stone extracted was lessened, prosperity was on the wane, and might be pronounced to be at its lowest ebb when the noise of the quarryman�s hammer finally ceased to be heard. [illustration: 132.jpg a convoy of tûrah quarrymen drawing stone] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by vyse-perring. every dynasty whose resources were such as to justify their resumption of the work proudly recorded the fact on stelae which lined the approaches to the masons� yards. ahmosis reopened the tûrah quarry-chambers, and procured for himself �good stone and white� for the temples of anion at thebes and of phtah at memphis. no monument has as yet been discovered to throw any light on the fate of memphis subsequent to the time of the amenemhâîts. it must have suffered quite as much as any city of the delta from the shepherd invasion, and from the wars which preceded their expulsion, since it was situated on the highway of an invading army, and would offer an attraction for pillagers. by a curious turn of fortune it was the �fankhûi,� or asiatic prisoners, who were set to quarry the stone for the restoration of the monuments which their own forefathers had reduced to ruins.* the bas-reliefs sculptured on the stelæ of ahmosis show them in full activity under the _corvée;_ we see here the stone block detached from the quarry being squared by the chisel, or transported on a sledge drawn by oxen. * the _fankhûi_ are, properly speaking, all white prisoners, without distinction of race. their name is derived from the root _fôkhu, fankhu_ = to bind, press, carry off, steal, destroy; if it is sometimes used in the sense of phoenicians, it is only in the ptolemaic epoch. here the term �fankhûi� refers to the shepherds and asiatics made prisoners in the campaign of the year v. against sharuhana. ahmosis had several children by his various wives; six at least owned nofrîtari for their mother and possessed near claims to the crown, but she may have borne him others whose existence is unrecorded. the eldest appears to have been a son, sipiri; he received all the honours due to an hereditary prince, but died without having reigned, and his second brother, amenhotpû--called by the greeks amenôthes*--took his place. * the form amenôphis, which is usually employed, is, properly speaking, the equivalent of the name _amenemaupitu,_ or amenaupîti, which belongs to a king of the xxist tanite dynasty; the true greek transcription of the ptolemaic epoch, corresponding to the pronunciation _amehotpe,_ or _amenhopte,_ is amenôthes. under the xviiith dynasty the cuneiform transcription of the tablets of tel-el amarna, amankhatbi, seems to indicate the pronunciation amanhautpi, amanhatpi, side by side with the pronunciation aman-hautpu, amenhotpu. ahmosis was laid to rest in the chapel which he had prepared for himself in the cemetery of drah-abu�l-neggah, among the modest pyramids of the xith, xiiith, and xviith dynasties.* he was venerated as a god, and his cult was continued for six or eight centuries later, until the increasing insecurity of the theban necropolis at last necessitated the removal of the kings from their funeral chambers.** the coffin of ahmosis was found to be still intact, though it was a poorly made one, shaped to the contours of the body, and smeared over with yellow; it represents the king with the false beard depending from his chin, and his breast covered with a pectoral ornament, the features, hair, and accessories being picked out in blue. his name has been hastily inscribed in ink on the front of the winding-sheet, and when the lid was removed, garlands of faded pink flowers were still found about the neck, laid there as a last offering by the priests who placed the pharaoh and his compeers in their secret burying-place. * the precise site is at present unknown: we see, however, that it was in this place, when wo observe that ahmosis was worshipped by the servants of the necropolis, amongst the kings and princes of his family who were buried at drah abu�l-neggah. ** his priests and the minor _employés_ of his cult are mentioned on a stele in the museum at turin, and on a brick in the berlin museum. he is worshipped as a god, along with osiris, horus, and isis, on a stele in the lyons museum, brought from abydos: he had, probably, during one of his journeys across egypt, made a donation to the temple of that city, on condition that he should be worshipped there for ever; for a stele at marseilles shows him offering homage to osiris in the bark of the god itself, and another stele in the louvre informs us that pharaoh thûtmosis iv. several times sent one of his messengers to abydos for the purpose of presenting land to osiris and to his own ancestor ahmosis. [illustration: 135.jpg coffin of ahmosis in the gîzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. amenôthes i. had not attained his majority when his father �thus winged his way to heaven,� leaving him as heir to the throne.* nofrîtari assumed the authority; after having shared the royal honours for nearly twenty-five years with her husband, she resolutely refused to resign them.** she was thus the first of those queens by divine right who, scorning the inaction of the harem, took on themselves the right to fulfil the active duties of a sovereign, and claimed the recognition of the equality or superiority of their titles to those of their husbands or sons. * the last date known is that of the year xxii. at tûrah; manetho�s lists give, in one place, twenty-five years and four months after the expulsion; in another, twenty-six years in round numbers, as the total duration of his reign, which has every appearance of probability. ** there is no direct evidence to prove that amenôthes i. was a minor when he came to the throne; still the presumptions in favour of this hypothesis, afforded by the monuments, are so strong that many historians of ancient egypt have accepted it. queen nofrîtari is represented as reigning, side by side with her reigning son, on some few theban tombs which can be attributed to their epoch. [illustration: 136.jpg nofritari, hie black-skinned goddess] drawn by bouclier, from the photograph by m. de mertens taken in the berlin museum. the aged ahhotpu, who, like nofrîtari, was of pure royal descent, and who might well have urged her superior rank, had been content to retire in favour of her children; she lived to the tenth year of her grandson�s reign, respected by all her family, but abstaining from all interference in political affairs. when at length she passed away, full of days and honour, she was embalmed with special care, and her body was placed in a gilded mummy-case, the head of which presented a faithful copy of her features. beside her were piled the jewels she had received in her lifetime from her husband and son. the majority of them a fan with a handle plated with gold, a mirror of gilt bronze with ebony handle, bracelets and ankle-rings, some of solid and some of hollow gold, edged with fine chains of plaited gold wire, others formed of beads of gold, lapis-lazuli, cornelian, and green felspar, many of them engraved with the cartouche of ahmosis. belonging also to ahmosis we have a beautiful quiver, in which figures of the king and the gods stand out in high relief on a gold plaque, delicately chased with a graving tool; the background is formed of small pieces of lapis and blue glass, cunningly cut to fit each other. one bracelet in particular, found on the queen�s wrist, consisted of three parallel bands of solid gold set with turquoises, and having, a vulture with extended wings on the front. the queen�s hair was held in place by a gold circlet, scarcely as large as a bracelet; a cartouche was affixed to the circlet, bearing the name of ahmosis in blue paste, and flanked by small sphinxes, one on each side, as supporters. a thick flexible chain of gold was passed several times round her neck, and attached to it as a pendant was a beautiful scarab, partly of gold and partly of blue porcelain striped with gold. the breast ornament was completed by a necklace of several rows of twisted cords, from which depended antelopes pursued by tigers, sitting jackals, hawks, vultures, and the winged urasus, all attached to the winding-sheet by means of a small ring soldered on the back of each animal. the fastening of this necklace was formed of the heads of two gold hawks, the details of the heads being worked out in blue enamel. both weapons and amulets were found among the jewels, including three gold flies suspended by a thin chain, nine gold and silver axes, a lion�s head in gold of most minute workmanship, a sceptre of black wood plated with gold, daggers to defend the deceased from the dangers of the unseen world, boomerangs of hard wood, and the battle-axe of ahmosis. besides these, there were two boats, one of gold and one of silver, originally intended for the pharaoh kamosû--models of the skiff in which his mummy crossed the nile to reach its last resting-place, and to sail in the wake of the gods on the western sea. [illustration: 136b.jpg the jewels and weapons of queen âhhhotpû i. in the gîzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by bechard. nofrîtari thus reigned conjointly with amenôthes, and even if we have no record of any act in which she was specially concerned, we know at least that her rule was a prosperous one, and that her memory was revered by her subjects. while the majority of queens were relegated after death to the crowd of shadowy ancestors to whom habitual sacrifice was offered, the worshippers not knowing even to which sex these royal personages belonged, the remembrance of nofrîtari always remained distinct in their minds, and her cult spread till it might be said to have become a kind of popular religion. in this veneration ahmosis was rarely associated with the queen, but amenôthes and several of her other children shared in it--her son sipiri, for instance, and her daughters sîtamon,* sîtkamosi, and marîtamon; nofrîtari became, in fact, an actual goddess, taking her place beside amon, khonsû, and maut,** the members of the theban triad, or standing alone as an object of worship for her devotees. * sîtamon is mentioned, with her mother, on the karnak stele and on the coffin of bûtehamon. ** she is worshipped with the theban triad by brihor, at karnak, in the temple of khonsû. [illustration: 141.jpg the two coffins of ahhotp ii. and nofritari standing in tub vestibule of the old bûlak museum.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. she was identified with isis, hathor, and the mistresses of hades, and adopted their attributes, even to the black or blue coloured skin of these funerary divinities.* * her statue in the turin museum represents her as having black skin. she is also painted black standing before amenôthes (who is white) in the deir el-medineh tomb, now preserved in the berlin museum, in that of nibnûtîrû, and hi that of unnofir, at sheikh abd el-qûrnah. her face is painted blue in the tomb of kasa. the representations of this queen with a black skin have caused her to be taken for a negress, the daughter of an ethiopian pharaoh, or at any rate the daughter of a chief of some nubian tribe; it was thought that ahmosis must have married her to secure the help of the negro tribes in his wars, and that it was owing to this alliance that he succeeded in expelling the hyksôs. later discoveries have not confirmed these hypotheses. nofrîtari was most probably an egyptian of unmixed race, as we have seen, and daughter of ahhotpû i., and the black or blue colour of her skin is merely owing to her identification with the goddesses of the dead. considerable endowments were given for maintaining worship at her tomb, and were administered by a special class of priests. her mummy reposed among those of the princes of her family, in the hiding-place at deîr-el-baharî: it was enclosed in an enormous wooden sarcophagus covered with linen and stucco, the lower part being shaped to the body, while the upper part representing the head and arms could be lifted off in one piece. the shoulders are covered with a network in relief, the meshes of which are painted blue on a yellow background. the queen�s hands are crossed over her breast, and clasp the _crux ansata_, the symbol of life. the whole mummy-case measures a little over nine feet from the sole of the feet to the top of the head, which is furthermore surmounted by a cap, and two long ostrich-feathers. the appearance is not so much that of a coffin as of one of those enormous caryatides which we sometimes find adorning the front of a temple. we may perhaps attribute to the influence of nofrîtari the lack of zest evinced by amenôthes for expeditions into syria. even the most energetic kings had always shrunk from penetrating much beyond the isthmus. those who ventured so far as to work the mines of sinai had nevertheless felt a secret fear of invading asia proper--a dread which they never succeeded in overcoming. when the raids of the bedouin obliged the egyptian sovereign to cross the frontier into their territory, he would retire as soon as possible, without attempting any permanent conquest. after the expulsion of the hyksôs, ahmosis seemed inclined to pursue a less timorous course. he made an advance on sharûhana and pillaged it, and the booty he brought back ought to have encouraged him to attempt more important expeditions; but he never returned to this region, and it would seem that when his first enthusiasm had subsided, he was paralysed by the same fear which had fallen on his ancestors. nofrîtari may have counselled her son not to break through the traditions which his father had so strictly followed, for amenôthes i. confined his campaigns to africa, and the traditional battle-fields there. he embarked for the land of kûsh on the vessel of ahmosi-si-abîna �for the purpose of enlarging the frontiers of egypt.� it was, we may believe, a thoroughly conventional campaign, conducted according to the strictest precedents of the xiith dynasty. the pharaoh, as might be expected, came into personal contact with the enemy, and slew their chief with his own hand; the barbarian warriors sold their lives dearly, but were unable to protect their country from pillage, the victors carrying off whatever they could seize--men, women, and cattle. the pursuit of the enemy had led the army some distance into the desert, as far as a halting-place called the �upper cistern�--_khnûmît hirît_; instead of retracing his steps to the nile squadron, and returning slowly by boat, amenôthes resolved to take a short cut homewards. ahmosi conducted him back overland in two days, and was rewarded for his speed by the gift of a quantity of gold, and two female slaves. an incursion into libya followed quickly on the ethiopian campaign. [illustration: 144.jpg statue of amenôthes i. in the turin museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph supplied by flinders pétrie. the tribe of the kihaka, settled between lake mareotis and the oasis of amon, had probably attacked in an audacious manner the western provinces of the delta; a raid was organized against them, and the issue was commemorated by a small wooden stele, on which we see the victor represented as brandishing his sword over a barbarian lying prostrate at his feet. the exploits of amenôthes appear to have ended with this raid, for we possess no monument recording any further victory gained by him. this, however, has not prevented his contemporaries from celebrating him as a conquering and �victorious king. he is portrayed standing erect in his chariot ready to charge, or as carrying off two barbarians whom he holds half suffocated in his sinewy arms, or as gleefully smiting the princes of foreign lands. he acquitted himself of the duties of the chase as became a true pharaoh, for we find him depicted in the act of seizing a lion by the tail and raising him suddenly in mid-air previous to despatching him. these are, indeed, but conventional pictures of war, to which we must not attach an undue importance. egypt had need of repose in order to recover from the losses it had sustained during the years of struggle with the invaders. if amenôthes courted peace from preference and not from political motives, his own generation profited as much by his indolence as the preceding one had gained by the energy of ahrnosis. the towns in his reign resumed their ordinary life, agriculture flourished, and commerce again followed its accustomed routes. egypt increased its resources, and was thus able to prepare for future conquest. the taste for building had not as yet sufficiently developed to become a drain upon the public treasury. we have, however, records showing that amenôthes excavated a cavern in the mountain of ibrîm in nubia, dedicated to satît, one of the goddesses of the cataract. [illustration: 146.jpg page image] it is also stated that he worked regularly the quarries of silsileh, but we do not know for what buildings the sandstone thus extracted was destined.* karnak was also adorned with chapels, and with at least one colossus,** while several chambers built of the white limestone of tûrah were added to ombos. thebes had thus every reason to cherish the memory of this pacific king. * a bas-relief on the western bank of the river represents him deified: panaîti, the name of a superintendent of the quarries who lived in his reign, has been preserved in several graffiti, while another graffito gives us only the protocol of the sovereign, and indicates that the quarries were worked in his reign. ** the chambers of white limestone are marked i, k, on mariette�s plan; it is possible that they may have been merely decorated under thûtmosis iii., whose cartouches alternate with those of amenôthes i. the colossus is now in front of the third pylon, and wiedemann concluded from this fact that amenôthes had begun extensive works for enlarging the temple of amon; mariette believed, with greater probability, that the colossus formerly stood at the entrance to the xiith dynasty temple, but was removed to its present position by thûtmosis iii. as nofrîtari had been metamorphosed into a form of isis, amenôthes was similarly represented as osiris, the protector of the necropolis, and he was depicted as such with the sombre colour of the funerary divinities; his image, moreover, together with those of the other gods, was used to decorate the interiors of coffins, and to protect the mummies of his devotees.* * wiedemann has collected several examples, to which it would be easy to add others. the names of the king are in this case constantly accompanied by unusual epithets, which are enclosed in one or other of his cartouches: mons. kevillout, deceived by these unfamiliar forms, has made out of one of these variants, on a painted cloth in the louvre, a new amenôthes, whom he styles amenôthes v. [illustration: 147.jpg the coffin and mummy of amenothes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. one of his statues, now in the turin museum, represents him sitting on his throne in the posture of a king giving audience to his subjects, or in that of a god receiving the homage of his worshippers. the modelling of the bust betrays a flexibility of handling which is astonishing in a work of art so little removed from barbaric times; the head is a marvel of delicacy and natural grace. we feel that the sculptor has taken a delight in chiselling the features of his sovereign, and in reproducing the benevolent and almost dreamy expression which characterised them.* the cult of amenôthes lasted for seven or eight centuries, until the time when his coffin was removed and placed with those of the other members of his family in the place where it remained concealed until our own times.** * another statue of very fine workmanship, but mutilated, is preserved in the gizeh museum; this statue is of the time of seti i., and, as is customary, represents amenôthes in the likeness of the king then reigning. ** we know, from the abbott papyrus, that the pyramid of amenôthes i. was situated at dr-ah abou�l-neggah, among those of the pharaohs of the xith, xiith, and xviith dynasties. the remains of it have not yet been discovered. it is shaped to correspond with the form of the human body and painted white; the face resembles that of his statue, and the eyes of enamel, touched with kohl, give it a wonderful appearance of animation. the body is swathed in orange-coloured linen, kept in place by bands of brownish linen, and is further covered by a mask of wood and cartonnage, painted to match the exterior of the coffin. long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy from head to foot. a wasp, attracted by their scent, must have settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed un-crumpled through the long centuries. amenôthes had married ahhotpû ii, his sister by the same father and mother;* ahmasi, the daughter born of this union, was given in marriage to thûtmosis, one of her brothers, the son of a mere concubine, by name sonisonbû.** ahmasi, like her ancestor nofrîtari, had therefore the right to exercise all the royal functions, and she might have claimed precedence of her husband. whether from conjugal affection or from weakness of character, she yielded, however, the priority to thûtmosis, and allowed him to assume the sole government. * ahhotpû ii. may be seen beside her husband on several monuments. the proof that she was full sister of amenôthes i. is furnished by the title of �hereditary princess� which is given to her daughter àhmasi; this princess would not have taken precedence of her brother and husband thûtmosis, who was the son of an inferior wife, had she not been the daughter of the only legitimate spouse of amenôthes i. the marriage had already taken place before the accession of thûtmosis i., as ahmasi figures in a document dated the first year of his reign. ** the absence of any cartouche shows that sonisonbû did not belong to the royal family, and the very form of the name points her out to have been of the middle classes, and merely a concubine. the accession of her son, however, ennobled her, and he represents her as a queen on the walls of the temple at deîr el-baharî; even then he merely styles her �royal mother,� the only title she could really claim, as her inferior position in the harem prevented her from using that of �royal spouse.� [illustration: 150.jpg thûtmosis i., from a statue in the gîzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph taken by émil brugsch-bey. he was crowned at thebes on the 21st of the third month of pirît; and a circular, addressed to the representatives of the ancient seignorial families and to the officers of the crown, announced the names assumed by the new sovereign. �this is the royal rescript to announce to you that my majesty has arisen king of the two egypts, on the seat of the horus of the living, without equal, for ever, and that my titles are as follows: the vigorous bull horus, beloved of mâît, the lord of the vulture and of the uraeus who raises itself as a flame, most valiant,--the golden horns, whose years are good and who puts life into all hearts, king of the two egypts, akhopirkerî, son of the sun, thûtmosis, living for ever.* cause, therefore, sacrifices to be offered to the gods of the south and of elephantine,** and hymns to be chanted for the well-being of the king akhopirkerî, living for ever, and then cause the oath to be taken in the name of my majesty, born of the royal mother sonisonbû, who is in good health.--this is sent to thee that thou mayest know that the royal house is prosperous, and in good health and condition, the 1st year, the 21st of the third month of pirît, the day of coronation.� * this is really the protocol of the king, as we find it on the monuments, with his two horus names and his solar titles. ** the copy of the letter which has come down to us is addressed to the commander of elephantine: hence the mention of the gods of that town. the names of the divinities must have been altered to suit each district, to which the order to offer sacrifices for the prosperity of the new sovereign was sent. the new king was tall in stature, broad-shouldered, well knit, and capable of enduring the fatigues of war without flagging. his statues represent him as having a full, round face, long nose, square chin, rather thick lips, and a smiling but firm expression. thûtmosis brought with him on ascending the throne the spirit of the younger generation, who, born shortly after the deliverance from the hyksôs, had grown up in the peaceful days of amenôthes, and, elated by the easy victories obtained over the nations of the south, were inspired by ambitions unknown to the egyptians of earlier times. to this younger race africa no longer offered a sufficiently wide or attractive field; the whole country was their own as far as the confluence of the two niles, and the theban gods were worshipped at napata no less devoutly than at thebes itself. what remained to be conquered in that direction was scarcely worth the trouble of reducing to a province or of annexing as a colony; it comprised a number of tribes hopelessly divided among themselves, and consequently, in spite of their renowned bravery, without power of resistance. light columns of troops, drafted at intervals on either side of the river, ensured order among the submissive, or despoiled the refractory of their possessions in cattle, slaves, and precious stones. thûtmosis i. had to repress, however, very shortly after his accession, a revolt of these borderers at the second and third cataracts, but they were easily overcome in a campaign of a few days� duration, in which the two âhmosis of al-kab took an honourable part. there was, as usual, an encounter of the two fleets in the middle of the river: the young king himself attacked the enemy�s chief, pierced him with his first arrow, and made a considerable number of prisoners. thûtmosis had the corpse of the chief suspended as a trophy in front of the royal ship, and sailed northwards towards thebes, where, however, he was not destined to remain long.* an ample field of action presented itself to him in the north-east, affording scope for great exploits, as profitable as they were glorious.** * that this expedition must be placed at the beginning of the king�s reign, in his first year, is shown by two facts: (1) it precedes the syrian campaign in the biography of the two âhmosis of el-kab; (2) the syrian campaign must have ended in the second year of the reign, since thûtmosis i., on the stele of tombos which bears that date, gives particulars of the course of the euphrates, and records the submission of the countries watered by that river. the date of the invasion may be placed between 2300 and 2250 b.c.; if we count 661 years for the three dynasties together, as erman proposes, we find that the accession of ahmosis would fall between 1640 and 1590. i should place it provisionally in the year 1600, in order not to leave the position of the succeeding reigns uncertain; i estimate the possible error at about half a century. ** it is impossible at present to draw up a correct table of the native or foreign sovereigns who reigned over egypt during the time of the hyksôs. i have given the list of the kings of the xiiith and xivth dynasties which are known to us from the turin papyrus. i here append that of the pharaohs of the following dynasties, who are mentioned either in the fragments of manetho or on the monuments: [illustration: 153.jpg table] syria offered to egyptian cupidity a virgin prey in its large commercial towns inhabited by an industrious population, who by maritime trade and caravan traffic had amassed enormous wealth. the country had been previously subdued by the chaldæans, who still exercised an undisputed influence over it, and it was but natural that the conquerors of the hyksôs should act in their turn as invaders. the incursion of asiatics into egypt thus provoked a reaction which issued in an egyptian invasion of asiatic soil. thûtmosis and his contemporaries had inherited none of the instinctive fear of penetrating into syria which influenced ahmosis and his successor: the theban legions were, perhaps, slow to advance, but once they had trodden the roads of palestine, they were not likely to forego the delights of conquest. from that time forward there was perpetual warfare and pillaging expeditions from the plains of the blue nile to those of the euphrates, so that scarcely a year passed without bringing to the city of amon its tribute of victories and riches gained at the point of the sword. one day the news would be brought that the amorites or the khâti had taken the field, to be immediately followed by the announcement that their forces had been shattered against the valour of the egyptian battalions. another day, pharaoh would re-enter the city with the flower of his generals and veterans; the chiefs whom he had taken prisoners, sometimes with his own hand, would be conducted through the streets, and then led to die at the foot of the altars, while fantastic processions of richly clothed captives, beasts led by halters, and slaves bending under the weight of the spoil would stretch in an endless line behind him. [illustration: 154.jpg signs, arms and instruments] meanwhile the timihû, roused by some unknown cause, would attack the outposts stationed on the frontier, or news would come that the peoples of the sea had landed on the western side of the delta; the pharaoh had again to take the field, invariably with the same speedy and successful issue. the libyans seemed to fare no better than the syrians, and before long those who had survived the defeat would be paraded before the theban citizens, previous to being sent to join the asiatic prisoners in the mines or quarries; their blue eyes and fair hair showing from beneath strangely shaped helmets, while their white skins, tall stature, and tattooed bodies excited for a few hours the interest and mirth of the idle crowd. at another time, one of the customary raids into the land of kûsh would take place, consisting of a rapid march across the sands of the ethiopian desert and a cruise along the coasts of pûanîfc. this would be followed by another triumphal procession, in which fresh elements of interest would appear, heralded by flourish of trumpets and roll of drums: pharaoh would re-enter the city borne on the shoulders of his officers, followed by negroes heavily chained, or coupled in such a way that it was impossible for them to move without grotesque contortions, while the acclamations of the multitude and the chanting of the priests would resound from all sides as the _cortege_ passed through the city gates on its way to the temple of amon. egypt, roused as it were to warlike frenzy, hurled her armies across all her frontiers simultaneously, and her sudden appearance in the heart of syria gave a new turn to human history. the isolation of the kingdoms of the ancient world was at an end; the conflict of the nations was about to begin. chapter ii--syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest _syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest_ _nineveh and the first cossæan kings-the peoples of syria, their towns, their civilization, their religion-phoenicia._ _the dynasty of uruazagga-the cossseans: their country, their gods, their conquest of chaldæa-the first sovereigns of assyria, and the first cossæan icings: agumhakrimê._ _the egyptian names for syria: kharâ, zahi, lotanû, kefâtiu-the military highway from the nile to the euphrates: first section from zalu to gaza-the canaanites: their fortresses, their agricultural character: the forest between jaffa and mount carmel, megiddo-the three routes beyond megiddo: qodshu-alasia, naharaim, garchemish; mitanni and the countries beyond the euphrates._ _disintegration of the syrian, canaanite, amorite, and khdti populations; obliteration of types-influence of babylon on costumes, customs, and religion--baalim and astarte, plant-gods and stone-gods-religion, human sacrifices, festivals; sacred stones--tombs and the fate of man after death-phoenician cosmogony._ _phoenicia--arad, marathus, simyra, botrys--byblos, its temple, its goddess, the myth of adonis: aphaka and the valley of the nahr-ibrahim, the festivals of the death and resurrection of adonis--berytus and its god el; sidon and its suburbs--tyre: its foundation, its gods, its necropolis, its domain in the lebanon._ _isolation of the phoenicians with regard to the other nations of syria; their love of the sea and the causes which developed it--legendary accounts of the beginning of their colonization--their commercial proceedings, their banks and factories; their ships--cyprus, its wealth, its occupations--the phoenician colonies in asia minor and the ægean sea: purple dye--the nations of the ægean._ [illustration: 158.jpg page image] chapter ii--syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest nineveh and the first cossæan kings--the peoples of syria, their towns, their civilization, their religion--phoenicia. the world beyond the arabian desert presented to the eyes of the enterprising pharaohs an active and bustling scene. babylonian civilization still maintained its hold there without a rival, but babylonian rule had ceased to exercise any longer a direct control, having probably disappeared with the sovereigns who had introduced it. when ammisatana died, about the year 2099, the line of khammurabi became extinct, and a family from the sea-lands came into power.* * the origin of this second dynasty and the reading of its name still afford matter for discussion. amid the many conflicting opinions, it behoves us to remember that gulkishar, the only prince of this dynasty whose title we possess, calls himself _king of the country of the sea_, that is to say, of the marshy country at the mouth of the euphrates: this simple fact directs us to seek the cradle of the family in those districts of southern chaldæa. sayce rejects this identification on philological and chronological grounds, and sees in gulkishar, �king of the sea-lands,� a vassal kaldâ prince. this unexpected revolution of affairs did not by any means restore to the cities of lower chaldæa the supreme authority which they once possessed. babylon had made such good use of its centuries of rule that it had gained upon its rivals, and was not likely now to fall back into a secondary place. henceforward, no matter what dynasty came into power, as soon as the fortune of war had placed it upon the throne, babylon succeeded in adopting it, and at once made it its own. the new lord of the country, ilumaîlu, having abandoned his patrimonial inheritance, came to reside near to merodach.* * the name has been read an-ma-an or anman by pinches, subsequently ilumaîlu, mailu, finally anumaîlu and perhaps humaîlu. the true reading of it is still unknown. hommel believed he had discovered in hilprecht�s book an inscription belonging to the reign of this prince; but hilprecht has shown that it belonged to a king of erech, an-a-an, anterior to the time of an-ma-an. he was followed during the four next centuries by a dynasty of ten princes, in uninterrupted succession. their rule was introduced and maintained without serious opposition. the small principalities of the south were theirs by right, and the only town which might have caused them any trouble--assur--was dependent on them, being satisfied with the title of vicegerents for its princes,--khallu, irishum, ismidagan and his son sarnsiramman i., igurkapkapu and his son sarnsiramman ii.* as to the course of events beyond the khabur, and any efforts ilumaîlu�s descendants may have made to establish their authority in the direction of the mediterranean, we have no inscriptions to inform us, and must be content to remain in ignorance. the last two of these princes, melamkurkurra and eâgamîl, were not connected with each other, and had no direct relationship with their predecessors.** the shortness of their reigns presents a striking contrast with the length of those preceding them, and probably indicates a period of war or revolution. when these princes disappeared, we know not how or why, about the year 1714 b.c., they were succeeded by a king of foreign extraction; and one of the semi-barbarous race of kashshu ascended the throne which had been occupied since the days of khammurabi by chaldæans of ancient stock.*** * inscription of irishum, son of khallu, on a brick found at kalah-shergat, and an inscription of sarnsiramman ii., son of igurkapkapu, on another brick from the same place. sarnsiramman i. and his father ismidagan are mentioned in the great inscription of tiglath-pileser ii., as having lived 641 years before king assurdân, who himself had preceded tiglath-pileser by sixty years: they thus reigned between 1900 and 1800 years before our era, according to tradition, whose authenticity we have no other means of verifying. ** the name of the last is read eâgamîl, for want of anything better: oppert makes it eâgâ, simply transcribing the signs; and hilprecht, who took up the question again after him, has no reading to propose. *** i give here the list of the kings of the second dynasty, from the documents discovered by pinches: no monument remains of any of these princes, and even the reading of their names is merely provisional: those placed between brackets represent delitzsch�s readings. a gulkishar is mentioned in an inscription of belnadiuabal; but jensen is doubtful if the gulkishar mentioned in this place is identical with the one in the lists. [illustration: table] these kashshu, who spring up suddenly out of obscurity, had from the earliest times inhabited the mountainous districts of zagros, on the confines of elymai�s and media, where the cossæans of the classical historians flourished in the time of alexander.* * the kashshu are identified with the cossæans by sayce, by schrader, by fr. delitzsch, by halévy, by tiele, by hommel, and by jensen. oppert maintains that they answer to the kissians of herodotus, that is to say, to the inhabitants of the district of which susa is the capital. lehmann supports this opinion. winckler gives none, and several assyriologists incline to that of kiepert, according to which the kissians are identical with the cossæans. it was a rugged and unattractive country, protected by nature and easy to defend, made up as it was of narrow tortuous valleys, of plains of moderate extent but of rare fertility, of mountain chains whose grim sides were covered with forests, and whose peaks were snow-crowned during half the year, and of rivers, or, more correctly speaking, torrents, for the rains and the melting of the snow rendered them impassable in spring and autumn. the entrance to this region was by two or three well-fortified passes: if an enemy were unwilling to incur the loss of time and men needed to carry these by main force, he had to make a detour by narrow goat-tracks, along which the assailants were obliged to advance in single file, as best they could, exposed to the assaults of a foe concealed among the rocks and trees. the tribes who were entrenched behind this natural rampart made frequent and unexpected raids upon the marshy meadows and fat pastures of chaldæa: they dashed through the country, pillaging and burning all that came in their way, and then, quickly regaining their hiding-places, were able to place their booty in safety before the frontier garrisons had recovered from the first alarm.* these tribes were governed by numerous chiefs acknowledging a single king--_ianzi_--whose will was supreme over nearly the whole country:** some of them had a slight veneer of chaldæan civilization, while among the rest almost every stage of barbarism might be found. the remains of their language show that it was remotely allied to the dialect of susa, and contained many semitic words.*** what is recorded of their religion reaches us merely at second hand, and the groundwork of it has doubtless been modified by the babylonian scribes who have transmitted it to us.**** * it was thus in the time of alexander and his successors, and the information given by the classical historians about this period is equally applicable to earlier times, as we may conclude from the numerous passages from assyrian inscriptions which have been collected by fr. delitzsch. ** delitzsch conjectures that _ianzi_, or _ianzu_, had become a kind of proper name, analogous to the term _pharaoh_ employed by the egyptians. *** a certain number of cossæan words has been preserved and translated, some in one of the royal babylonian lists, and some on a tablet in the british museum, discovered and interpreted by fr. delitzsch. several assyriologists think that they showed a marked affinity with the idiom of the susa inscriptions, and with that of the achæmenian inscriptions of the second type; others deny the proposed connection, or suggest that the cossæan language was a semitic dialect, related to the chaldæo-assyrian. oppert, who was the first to point out the existence of this dialect, thirty years ago, believed it to be the elamite; he still persists in his opinion, and has published several notes in defence of it. **** it has been studied by pr. delitzsch, who insists on the influence which daily intercourse with the chaldæans had on it after the conquest; halévy, in most of the names of the gods given as cossæan, sees merely the names of chaldæan divinities slightly disguised in the writing. they worshipped twelve great gods, of whom the chief--kashshu, the lord of heaven-gave his name to the principal tribe, and possibly to the whole race:* shûmalia, queen of the snowy heights, was enthroned beside him,** and the divinities next in order were, as in the cities of the euphrates, the moon, the sun (sakh or shuriash), the air or the tempest (ubriash), and khudkha.*** then followed the stellar deities or secondary incarnations of the sun,--mirizir, who represented both istar and beltis; and khala, answering to gula.**** * the existence of kashshu is proved by the name of kashshunadinakhé: ashshur also bore a name identical with that of his worshippers. ** she is mentioned in a rescript of nebuchadrezzar i., at the head of the gods of namar, that is to say, the cossæan deities, as �the lady of the shining mountains, the inhabitants of the summits, the frequenter of peaks.� she is called shimalia in rawlinson, but delitzsch has restored her name which was slightly mutilated; one of her statues was taken by samsirammân iii., king of assyria, in one of that sovereign�s campaigns against chaldæa. *** all these identifications are furnished by the glossary of delitzsch. ubriash, under the form of buriash, is met with in a large number of proper names, burnaburiash, shagashaltiburiash, ulamburiash, kadashmanburiash, where the assyrian scribe translates it _bel-matâti_, lord of the world: buriash is, therefore, an epithet of the god who was called rammân in chaldæa. the name of the moon-god is mutilated, and only the initial syllable shi... remains, followed by an indistinct sign: it has not yet been restored. **** halévy considers khala, or khali, as a harsh form of gula: if this is the case, the cossæans must have borrowed the name, and perhaps the goddess herself, from their chaldæan neighbours. the chaldæan ninip corresponded both to gidar and maruttash, bel to kharbe and turgu, merodach to shipak, nergal to shugab.* the cossæan kings, already enriched by the spoils of their neighbours, and supported by a warlike youth, eager to enlist under their banner at the first call,** must have been often tempted to quit their barren domains and to swoop down on the rich country which lay at their feet. we are ignorant of the course of events which, towards the close of the xviiith century b.c., led to their gaining possession of it. the cossæan king who seized on babylon was named gandish, and the few inscriptions we possess of his reign are cut with a clumsiness that betrays the barbarism of the conqueror. they cover the pivot stones on which sargon of agadê or one of the bursins had hung the doors of the temple of nippur, but which gandish dedicated afresh in order to win for himself, in the eyes of posterity, the credit of the work of these sovereigns.*** * hilprecht has established the identity of turgu with bel of nippur. ** strabo relates, from some forgotten historian of alexander, that the cossæans �had formerly been able to place as many as thirteen thousand archers in line, in the wars which they waged with the help of the elymæans against the inhabitants of susa and babylon.� *** the full name of this king, gandish or gandash, which is furnished by the royal lists, is written gaddash on a monument in the british museum discovered by pinches, whose conclusions have been erroneously denied by winckler. a process of abbreviation, of which there are examples in the names of other kings of the same dynasty, reduced the name to gandê in the current language. bel found favour in the eyes of the cossæans who saw in him kharbê or turgu, the recognised patron of their royal family: for this reason gandish and his successors regarded bel with peculiar devotion. these kings did all they could for the decoration and endowment of the ancient temple of ekur, which had been somewhat neglected by the sovereigns of purely babylonian extraction, and this devotion to one of the most venerated chaldæan sanctuaries contributed largely towards their winning the hearts of the conquered people.* * hilpreoht calls attention on this point to the fact that no one has yet discovered at nippur a single ex-voto consecrated by any king of the two first babylonian dynasties. the cossæan rule over the countries of the euphrates was doubtless similar in its beginnings to that which the hyksôs exercised at first over the nomes of egypt. the cossæan kings did not merely bring with them an army to protect their persons, or to occupy a small number of important posts; they were followed by the whole nation, and spread themselves over the entire country. the bulk of the invaders instinctively betook themselves to districts where, if they could not resume the kind of life to which they were accustomed in their own land, they could, at least give full rein to their love of a free and wild existence. as there were no mountains in the country, they turned to the marshes, and, like the hyksôs in egypt, made themselves at home about the mouths of the rivers, on the half-submerged low lands, and on the sandy islets of the lagoons which formed an undefined borderland between the alluvial region and the persian gulf. the covert afforded, by the thickets furnished scope for the chase which these hunters had been accustomed to pursue in the depths of their native forests, while fishing, on the other hand, supplied them with an additional element of food. when their depredations drew down upon them reprisals from their neighbours, the mounds occupied, by their fortresses, and surrounded by muddy swamps, offered them almost as secure retreats as their former strongholds on the lofty sides of the zagros. they made alliances with the native aramæans--with those kashdi, properly called chaldæans, whose name we have imposed upon all the nations who, from a very early date, bore rule on the banks of the lower euphrates. here they formed themselves into a state--karduniash--whose princes at times rebelled, against all external authority, and at other times acknowledged the sovereignty of the babylonian monarchs.* * the state of karduniash, whose name appears for the first time on the monuments of the cossæan period, has been localised in a somewhat vague manner, in the south of babylonia, in the country of the kashdi, and afterwards formally identified with the _countries of the sea_, and with the principality which was called bît-yâkin in the assyrian period. in the tel-el-amarna tablets the name is already applied to the entire country occupied by the cossæan kings or their descendants, that is to say, to the whole of babylonia. sargon ii. at that time distinguishes between an upper and a lower karduniash; and in consequence the earliest assyriologists considered it as an assyrian designation of babylon, or of the district surrounding it, an opinion which was opposed by delitzsch, as he believed it to be an indigenous term which at first indicated the district round babylon, and afterwards the whole of babylonia. from one frequent spelling of the name, the meaning appears to have been _fortress of duniash_; to this delitzsch preferred the translation _garden of duniash_, from an erroneous different reading--ganduniash: duniash, at first derived from a chaldæan god _dun_, whose name may exist in _dunghi_, is a cossæan name, which the assyrians translated, as they did buriash, _belmatâti_, lord of the country. winckler rejects the ancient etymology, and proposes to divide the word as kardu-niash and to see in it a cossæan translation of the expression _mât-kaldi_, country of the caldæans: hommel on his side, as well as delitzsch, had thought of seeking in the chaldæans proper--_kaldi_ for _kashdi_, or _kash-da_, �domain of the cossæans �--the descendants of the cossæans of karduniash, at least as far as race is concerned. in the cuneiform texts the name is written kara--d. p. duniyas, �the wall of the god duniyas� (cf. the median wall or wall of semiramis which defended babylonia on the north). the people of sumir and akkad, already a composite of many different races, absorbed thus another foreign element, which, while modifying its homogeneity, did not destroy its natural character. those cossæan tribes who had not quitted their own country retained their original barbarism, but the hope of plunder constantly drew them from their haunts, and they attacked and devastated the cities of the plain unhindered by the thought that they were now inhabited by their fellow-countrymen. the raid once over, many of them did not return home, but took service under some distant foreign ruler--the syrian princes attracting many, who subsequently became the backbone of their armies,* while others remained at babylon and enrolled themselves in the body-guard of the kings. * halévy has at least proved that the khabiri mentioned in. the tel el-amarna tablets were cossæans, contrary to the opinion of sayce, who makes them tribes grouped round hebron, which w. max müller seems to accept; winckler, returning to an old opinion, believes them to have been hebrews. to the last they were an undisciplined militia, dangerous, and difficult to please: one day they would hail their chiefs with acclamations, to kill them the next in one of those sudden outbreaks in which they were accustomed to make and unmake their kings.* the first invaders were not long in acquiring, by means of daily intercourse with the old inhabitants, the new civilization: sooner or later they became blended with the natives, losing all their own peculiarities, with the exception of their outlandish names, a few heroic legends,** and the worship of two or three gods--shûmalia, shugab, and shukamuna. * this is the opinion of hommel, supported by the testimony of the _synchronous hist._: in this latter document the cossæans are found revolting against king kadashmankharbé, and replacing him on the throne by a certain nazibugash, who was of obscure origin. ** pr. delitzsch and schrader compare their name with that of kush, who appears in the bible as the father of nimrod (_gen._ x. 8-12); hommel and sayce think that the history of nimrod is a reminiscence of the cossæan rule. jensen is alone in his attempt to attribute to the cossæans the first idea of the epic of gilgames. as in the case of the hyksôs in africa, the barbarian conquerors thus became merged in the more civilized people which they had subdued. this work of assimilation seems at first to have occupied the whole attention of both races, for the immediate successors of gandish were unable to retain under their rule all the provinces of which the empire was formerly composed. they continued to possess the territory situated on the middle course of the euphrates as far as the mouth of the balikh, but they lost the region extending to the east of the khabur, at the foot of the masios, and in the upper basin of the tigris: the vicegerents of assur also withdrew from them, and, declaring that they owed no obedience excepting to the god of their city, assumed the royal dignity. the first four of these kings whose names have come down to us, sulili, belkapkapu, adasi, and belbâni,* appear to have been but indifferent rulers, but they knew bow to hold their own against the attacks of their neighbours, and when, after a century of weakness and inactivity, babylon reasserted herself, and endeavoured to recover her lost territory, they had so completely established their independence that every attack on it was unsuccessful. the cossæan king at that time--an active and enterprising prince, whose name was held in honour up to the days of the ninevite supremacy--was agumkakrimê, the son of tassigurumash.** * these four names do not so much represent four consecutive reigns as two separate traditions which were current respecting the beginnings of assyrian royalty. the most ancient of them gives the chief place to two personages named belkapkapu and sulili; this tradition has been transmitted to us by rammânnirâri iii., because it connected the origin of his race with these kings. the second tradition placed a certain belbâni, the son of adasi, in the room of belkapkapu and sulili: esarhaddon made use of it in order to ascribe to his own family an antiquity at least equal to that of the family to which rammânnirâri iii. belonged. each king appropriated from the ancient popular traditions those names which seemed to him best calculated to enhance the prestige of his dynasty, but we cannot tell how far the personages selected enjoyed an authentic historical existence: it is best to admit them at least provisionally into the royal series, without trusting too much to what is related of them. ** the tablet discovered by pinches is broken after the fifth king of the dynasty. the inscription of agumkakrimê, containing a genealogy of this prince which goes back as far as the fifth generation, has led to the restoration of the earlier part of the list as follows: gandish, gaddash, adumitasii .... 1655-? b.c. gandê ........................... 1714-1707 b.c. tassigurumash.................... ? agumrabi, his son................ 1707-1685 agumkakrimê ..................... ? [a]guyashi ...................... 1685-1663 ushshi, his son.................. 1663-1655 this �brilliant scion of shukamuna� entitled himself lord of the kashshu and of akkad, of babylon the widespread, of padan, of alman, and of the swarthy guti.* ashnunak had been devastated; he repeopled it, and the four �houses of the world� rendered him obedience; on the other hand, elam revolted from its allegiance, assur resisted him, and if he still exercised some semblance of authority over northern syria, it was owing to a traditional respect which the towns of that country voluntarily rendered to him, but which did not involve either subjection or control. the people of khâni still retained possession of the statues of merodach and of his consort zarpanit, which had been stolen, we know not how, some time previously from chaldæa.** agumkakrimê recovered them and replaced them in their proper temple. this was an important event, and earned him the good will of the priests. * the translation _black-headed_, i.e. dark-haired and complexioned, _guti_, is uncertain; jensen interprets the epithet _nishi saldati_ to mean �the guti, stupid (foolish? culpable?) people.� the guti held both banks of the lower zab, in the mountains on the east of assyria. delitzsch has placed padan and alman in the mountains to the east of the diyâleh; jensen places them in the chain of the khamrîn, and winckler compares alman or halman with the holwân of the present day. ** the khâni have been placed by delitzsch in the neighbourhood of mount khâna, mentioned in the accounts of the assyrian campaigns, that is to say, in the amanos, between the euphrates and the bay of alexandretta: he is inclined to regard the name as a form of that of the khâti. the king reorganised public worship; he caused new fittings for the temples to be made to take the place of those which had disappeared, and the inscription which records this work enumerates with satisfaction the large quantities of crystal, jasper, and lapis-lazuli which he lavished on the sanctuary, the utensils of silver and gold which he dedicated, together with the �seas� of wrought bronze decorated with monsters and religious emblems.* this restoration of the statues, so flattering to the national pride and piety, would have been exacted and insisted upon by a khammurabi at the point of the sword, but agumkakrimê doubtless felt that he was not strong enough to run the risk of war; he therefore sent an embassy to the khâni, and such was the prestige which the name of babylon still possessed, from the deserts of the caspian to the shores of the mediterranean, that he was able to obtain a concession from that people which he would probably have been powerless to extort by force of arms.** * we do not possess the original of the inscription which tells us of these facts, but merely an early copy. ** strictly speaking, one might suppose that a war took place; but most assyriologists declare unhesitatingly that there was merely an embassy and a diplomatic negotiation. the egyptians had, therefore, no need to anticipate chaldæan interference when, forsaking their ancient traditions, they penetrated for the first time into the heart of syria. not only was babylon no longer supreme there, but the coalition of those cities on which she had depended for help in subduing the west was partially dissolved, and the foreign princes who had succeeded to her patrimony were so far conscious of their weakness, that they voluntarily kept aloof from the countries in which, previous to their advent, babylon had held undivided sway. the egyptian conquest of syria had already begun in the days of agumkakrimê, and it is possible that dread of the pharaoh was one of the chief causes which influenced the cossæans to return a favourable answer to the khâni. thûtmosis i., on entering syria, encountered therefore only the native levies, and it must be admitted that, in spite of their renowned courage, they were not likely to prove formidable adversaries in egyptian estimation. not one of the local syrian dynasties was sufficiently powerful to collect all the forces of the country around its chief, so as to oppose a compact body of troops to the attack of the african armies. the whole country consisted of a collection of petty states, a complex group of peoples and territories which even the egyptians themselves never completely succeeded in disentangling. they classed the inhabitants, however, under three or four very comprehensive names--kharû, zahi, lotanû, and kefâtiû--all of which frequently recur in the inscriptions, but without having always that exactness of meaning we look for in geographical terms. as was often the case in similar circumstances, these names were used at first to denote the districts close to the egyptian frontier with which the inhabitants of the delta had constant intercourse. the kefâtiû seem to have been at the outset the people of the sea-coast, more especially of the region occupied later by the phoenicians, but all the tribes with whom the phoenicians came in contact on the asiatic and european border were before long included under the same name.* * the kefâtiû, whose name was first read kefa, and later kefto, were originally identified with the inhabitants of cyprus or crete, and subsequently with those of cilicia, although the decree of canopus locates them in phoenicia. zahi originally comprised that portion of the desert and of the maritime plain on the north-east of egypt which was coasted by the fleets, or traversed by the armies of egypt, as they passed to and fro between syria and the banks of the nile. this region had been ravaged by ahmosis during his raid upon sharuhana, the year after the fall of avaris. to the south-east of zahi lay kharû; it included the greater part of mount seir, whose wadys, thinly dotted over with oases, were inhabited by tribes of more or less stationary habits. the approaches to it were protected by a few towns, or rather fortified villages, built in the neighbourhood of springs, and surrounded by cultivated fields and poverty-stricken gardens; but the bulk of the people lived in tents or in caves on the mountain-sides. the egyptians constantly confounded those khauri, whom the hebrews in after-times found scattered among the children of edom, with the other tribes of bedouin marauders, and designated them vaguely as shaûsû. lotanû lay beyond, to the north of kharû and to the north-east of zahi, among the hills which separate the �shephelah� from the jordan.* * the name of lotanû or rotanû has been assigned by brugsch to the assyrians, but subsequently, by connecting it, more ingeniously than plausibly, with the assyrian _iltânu_, he extended it to all the peoples of the north; we now know that in the texts it denotes the whole of syria, and, more generally, all the peoples dwelling in the basins of the orontes and the euphrates. the attempt to connect the name rotanû or lotanû with that of the edomite tribe of lotan (gen. xxxvi. 20, 22) was first made by p. de saulcy; it was afterwards taken up by haigh and adopted by renan. as it was more remote from the isthmus, and formed the egyptian horizon in that direction, all the new countries with which the egyptians became acquainted beyond its northern limits were by degrees included under the one name of lotanû, and this term was extended to comprise successively the entire valley of the jordan, then that of the orontes, and finally even that of the euphrates. lotanû became thenceforth a vague and fluctuating term, which the egyptians applied indiscriminately to widely differing asiatic nations, and to which they added another indefinite epithet when they desired to use it in a more limited sense: that part of syria nearest to egypt being in this case qualified as upper lotanû, while the towns and kingdoms further north were described as being in lower lotanû. in the same way the terms zahi and kharû were extended to cover other and more northerly regions. zahi was applied to the coast as far as the mouth of the nahr el-kebir and to the country of the lebanon which lay between the mediterranean and the middle course of the orontes. kharû ran parallel to zahi, but comprised the mountain district, and came to include most of the countries which were at first ranged under upper lotanû; it was never applied to the region beyond the neighbourhood of mount tabor, nor to the trans-jordanie provinces. the three names in their wider sense preserved the same relation to each other as before, zahi lying to the west and north-west of kharû, and lower lotanû to the north of kharû and north-east of zahi, but the extension of meaning did not abolish the old conception of their position, and hence arose confusion in the minds of those who employed them; the scribes, for instance, who registered in some far-off theban temple the victories of the pharaoh would sometimes write zahi where they should have inscribed kharû, and it is a difficult matter for us always to detect their mistakes. it would be unjust to blame them too severely for their inaccuracies, for what means had they of determining the relative positions of that confusing collection of states with which the egyptians came in contact as soon as they had set foot on syrian soil? a choice of several routes into asia, possessing unequal advantages, was open to the traveller, but the most direct of them passed through the town of zalû. the old entrenchments running from the ked sea to the marshes of the pelusiac branch still protected the isthmus, and beyond these, forming an additional defence, was a canal on the banks of which a fortress was constructed. this was occupied by the troops who guarded the frontier, and no traveller was allowed to pass without having declared his name and rank, signified the business which took him into syria or egypt, and shown the letters with which he was entrusted.* * the notes of an official living at zalu in the time of mîneptah are preserved on the back of pls. v., vi. of the _anastasi papyrus iii_,; his business was to keep a register of the movements of the comers and goers between egypt and syria during a few days of the month pakhons, in the year iii. it was from zalû that the pharaohs set out with their troops, when summoned to kharû by a hostile confederacy; it was to zalû they returned triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom. the road ran for some distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the nile during six months of the year; it then turned eastward, and for some distance skirted the sea-shore, passing between the mediterranean and the swamp which writers of the greek period called the lake of sirbonis.* * the sirbonian lake is sometimes half full of water, sometimes almost entirely dry; at the present time it bears the name of sebkhat berdawil, from king baldwin i. of jerusalem, who on his return from his egyptian campaign died on its shores, in 1148, before he could reach el-artsh. [illustration: 177.jpg the fortress and bridge of zalu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. this stage of the journey was beset with difficulties, for the sirbonian lake did not always present the same aspect, and its margins were constantly shifting. when the canals which connected it with the open sea happened to become obstructed, the sheet of water subsided from evaporation, leaving in many places merely an expanse of shifting mud, often concealed under the sand which the wind brought up from the desert. travellers ran imminent risk of sinking in this quagmire, and the greek historians tell of large armies being almost entirely swallowed up in it. about halfway along the length of the lake rose the solitary hill of mount casios; beyond this the sea-coast widened till it became a vast slightly undulating plain, covered with scanty herbage, and dotted over with wells containing an abundant supply of water, which, however, was brackish and disagreeable to drink. [illustration: 178.jpg map] beyond these lay a grove of palms, a brick prison, and a cluster of miserable houses, bounded by a broad wady, usually dry. the bed of the torrent often served as the boundary between africa and asia, and the town was for many years merely a convict prison, where ordinary criminals, condemned to mutilation and exile, were confined; indeed, the greeks assure us that it owed its name of rhinocolûra to the number of noseless convicts who were to be seen there.* * the ruins of the ancient town, which were of considerable extent, are half buried under the sand, out of which an egyptian naos of the ptolemaic period has been dug, and placed near the well which supplies the fort, where it serves as a drinking trough for the horses. brugsch believed he could identify its site with that of the syrian town hurnikheri, which he erroneously reads harinkola; the ancient form of the name is unknown, the greek form varies between rhinocorûra and rhinocolûra. the story of the mutilated convicts is to be found in diodorus siculus, as well as in strabo; it rests on a historical fact. under the xviiith dynasty zalû was used as a place of confinement for dishonest officials. for this purpose it was probably replaced by rhinocolûra, when the egyptian frontier was removed from the neighbourhood of selle to that of el-arîsh. at this point the coast turns in a north-easterly direction, and is flanked with high sand-hills, behind which the caravans pursue their way, obtaining merely occasional glimpses of the sea. here and there, under the shelter of a tower or a half-ruined fortress, the traveller would have found wells of indifferent water, till on reaching the confines of syria he arrived at the fortified village of raphia, standing like a sentinel to guard the approach to egypt. beyond raphia vegetation becomes more abundant, groups of sycamores and mimosas and clusters of date-palms appear on the horizon, villages surrounded with fields and orchards are seen on all sides, while the bed of a river, blocked with gravel and fallen rocks, winds its way between the last fringes of the desert and the fruitful shephelah;* on the further bank of the river lay the suburbs of gaza, and, but a few hundred yards beyond, gaza itself came into view among the trees standing on its wall-crowned hill.** * the term shephelah signifies the plain; it is applied by the biblical writers to the plain bordering the coast, from the heights of gaza to those of joppa, which were inhabited at a later period by the philistines (_josh_. xi. 16; _jer_. xxxii. 44 and xxxiii. 13). ** guérin describes at length the road from gaza to raphia. the only town of importance between them in the greek period was iênysos, the ruins of which are to be found near khan yunes, but the egyptian name for this locality is unknown: aunaugasa, the name of which brugsch thought he could identify with it, should be placed much farther away, in northern or in coele-syria. the egyptians, on their march from the nile valley, were wont to stop at this spot to recover from their fatigues; it was their first halting-place beyond the frontier, and the news which would reach them here prepared them in some measure for what awaited them further on. the army itself, the �troop of râ,� was drawn from four great races, the most distinguished of which came, of course, from the banks of the nile: the amû, born of sokhît, the lioness-headed goddess, were classed in the second rank; the nahsi, or negroes of ethiopia, were placed in the third; while the timihû, or libyans, with the white tribes of the north, brought up the rear. the syrians belonged to the second of these families, that next in order to the egyptians, and the name of amu, which for centuries had been given them, met so satisfactorily all political, literary, or commercial requirements, that the administrators of the pharaohs never troubled themselves to discover the various elements concealed beneath the term. we are, however, able at the present time to distinguish among them several groups of peoples and languages, all belonging to the same family, but possessing distinctive characteristics. the kinsfolk of the hebrews, the children of ishmael and edom, the moabites and ammonites, who were all qualified as shaûsû, had spread over the region to the south and east of the dead sea, partly in the desert, and partly on the confines of the cultivated land. the canaanites were not only in possession of the coast from gaza to a point beyond the nahr el-kebir, but they also occupied almost the whole valley of the jordan, besides that of the litâny, and perhaps that of the upper orontes.* there were aramaean settlements at damascus, in the plains of the lower orontes, and in naharaim.** * i use the term canaanite with the meaning most frequently attached to it, according to the hebrew use (_gen_. x. 15 19). this word is found several times in the egyptian texts under the forms kinakhna, kinakhkhi, and probably kûnakhaîû, in the cuneiform texts of tel el-amarna. ** as far as i know, the term aramæan is not to be found in any egyptian text of the time of the pharaohs: the only known example of it is a writer�s error corrected by chabas. w. max müller very justly observes that the mistake is itself a proof of the existence of the name and of the acquaintance of the egyptians with it. the country beyond the aramaean territory, including the slopes of the amanos and the deep valleys of the taurus, was inhabited by peoples of various origin; the most powerful of these, the khâti, were at this time slowly forsaking the mountain region, and spreading by degrees over the country between the afrîn and the euphrates.* the canaanites were the most numerous of all these groups, and had they been able to amalgamate under a single king, or even to organize a lasting confederacy, it would have been impossible for the egyptian armies to have broken through the barrier thus raised between them and the rest of asia; but, unfortunately, so far from showing the slightest tendency towards unity or concentration, the canaanites were more hopelessly divided than any of the surrounding nations. their mountains contained nearly as many states as there were valleys, while in the plains each town represented a separate government, and was built on a spot carefully selected for purposes of defence. the land, indeed, was chequered with these petty states, and so closely were they crowded together, that a horseman, travelling at leisure, could easily pass through two or three of them in a day�s journey.** * thûtmosis iii. shows that, at any rate, they were established in these regions about the xvith century b.c. the egyptian pronunciation of their name is _khîti_, with the feminine _khîtaît, khîtit_; but the tel el-amarna texts employ the vocalisation _khâti, khâte_, which must be more correct than that of the egyptians, the form _khîti_ seems to me to be explicable by an error of popular etymology. egyptian ethnical appellations in _îti_ formed their plural by _-âtiû, -âteê, -âti, -âte_, so that if _khâte, khâti_, were taken for a plural, it would naturally have suggested to the scribes the form _khîti_ for the singular. ** thûtmosis iii., speaking to his soldiers, tells them that all the chiefs the projecting spur of some mountain, or on a solitary and more or less irregularly shaped eminence in the midst of a plain, and the means of defence in the country are shut up in megiddo, so that �to take it is to take a thousand cities:� this is evidently a hyperbole in the mouth of the conqueror, but the exaggeration itself shows how numerous were the chiefs and consequently the small states in central and southern syria. not only were the royal cities fenced with walls, but many of the surrounding villages were fortified, while the watch-towers, or _migdols_* built at the bends of the roads, at the fords over the rivers, and at the openings of the ravines, all testified to the insecurity of the times and the aptitude for self-defence shown by the inhabitants. * this canaanite word was borrowed by the egyptians from the syrians at the beginning of their asiatic wars; they employed it in forming the names of the military posts which they established on the eastern frontier of the delta: it appears for the first time among syrian places in the list of cities conquered by thûtmosis iii. [illustration: 184.jpg the canaanite fortresses] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the aspect of these migdols, or forts, must have appeared strange to the first egyptians who beheld them. these strongholds bore no resemblance to the large square or oblong enclosures to which they were accustomed, and which in their eyes represented the highest skill of the engineer. in syria, however, the positions suitable for the construction of fortresses hardly ever lent themselves to a symmetrical plan. the usual sites had to be adapted in each case to suit the particular configuration of the ground. [illustration: 185.jpg the walled city of dapûr, in galilee] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken at karnak by beato. it was usually a mere wall of stone or dried brick, with towers at intervals; the wall measuring from nine to twelve feet thick at the base, and from thirty to thirty-six feet high, thus rendering an assault by means of portable ladders, nearly impracticable.* * this is, at least, the result of investigations made by modern engineers who have studied these questions of military archæology. the gateway had the appearance of a fortress in itself. it was composed of three large blocks of masonry, forming a re-entering face, considerably higher than the adjacent curtains, and pierced near the top with square openings furnished with mantlets, so as to give both a front and flank view of the assailants. the wooden doors in the receded face were covered with metal and raw hides, thus affording a protection against axe or fire.* * most of the canaanite towns, taken by ramses ii. in the campaign of his viiith year were fortified in this manner. it must have been the usual method of fortification, as it seems to have served as a type for conventional representation, and was sometimes used to denote cities which had fortifications of another kind. for instance, dapûr-tabor is represented in this way, while a picture on another monument, which is reproduced in the illustration on page 185, represents what seems to have been the particular form of its encompassing walls. the building was strong enough not only to defy the bands of adventurers who roamed the country, but was able to resist for an indefinite time the operations of a regular siege. sometimes, however, the inhabitants when constructing their defences did not confine themselves to this rudimentary plan, but threw up earthworks round the selected site. on the most exposed side they raised an advance wall, not exceeding twelve or fifteen feet in height, at the left extremity of which the entrance was so placed that the assailants, in endeavouring to force their way through, were obliged to expose an unprotected flank to the defenders. by this arrangement it was necessary to break through two lines of fortification before the place could be entered. supposing the enemy to have overcome these first obstacles, they would find themselves at their next point of attack confronted with a citadel which contained, in addition to the sanctuary of the principal god, the palace of the sovereign himself. this also had a double enclosing wall and massively built gates, which could be forced only at the expense of fresh losses, unless the cowardice or treason of the garrison made the assault an easy one.* * the type of town described in the text is based on a representation on the walls of karnak, where the siege of dapûr-tabor by ramses ii. is depicted. another type is given in the case of ascalon. [illustration: 187.jpg the migdol of ramses iii. at thebes, in the temple of medinet-abul] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by dévéria in 1865. of these bulwarks of canaanite civilization, which had been thrown up by hundreds on the route of the invading hosts, not a trace is to be seen to-day. they may have been razed to the ground during one of those destructive revolutions to which the country was often exposed, or their remains may lie hidden underneath the heaps of ruins which thirty centuries of change have raised over them.* * the only remains of a canaanite fortification which can be assigned to the egyptian period are those which professor f. i. petrie brought to light in the ruins of tell el-hesy, and in which he rightly recognised the remains of lachish. the records of victories graven on the walls of the theban temples furnish, it is true, a general conception of their appearance, but the notions of them which we should obtain from this source would be of a very confused character had not one of the last of the conquering pharaohs, ramses iii., taken it into his head to have one built at thebes itself, to contain within it, in addition to his funerary chapel, accommodation for the attendants assigned to the conduct of his worship. in the greek and roman period a portion of this fortress was demolished, but the external wall of defence still exists on the eastern side, together with the gate, which is commanded on the right by a projection of the enclosing-wall, and flanked by two guard-houses, rectangular in shape, and having roofs which jut out about a yard beyond the wall of support. having passed through these obstacles, we find ourselves face to face with a _migdol_ of cut stone, nearly square in form, with two projecting wings, the court between their loop-holed walls being made to contract gradually from the point of approach by a series of abutments. a careful examination of the place, indeed, reveals more than one arrangement which the limited knowledge of the egyptians would hardly permit us to expect. we discover, for instance, that the main body of the building is made to rest upon a sloping sub-structure which rises to a height of some sixteen feet. this served two purposes: it increased, in the first place, the strength of the defence against sapping; and in the second, it caused the weapons launched by the enemy to rebound with violence from its inclined surface, thus serving to keep the assailants at a distance. the whole structure has an imposing look, and it must be admitted that the royal architects charged with carrying out their sovereign�s idea brought to their task an attention to detail for which the people from whom the plan was borrowed had no capacity, and at the same time preserved the arrangements of their model so faithfully that we can readily realise what it must have been. transport this migdol of ramses iii. into asia, plant it upon one of those hills which the canaanites were accustomed to select as a site for their fortifications, spread out at its base some score of low and miserable hovels, and we have before us an improvised pattern of a village which recalls in a striking manner zerîn or beîtîn, or any other small modern town which gathers the dwellings of its fellahin round some central stone building--whether it be a hostelry for benighted travellers, or an ancient castle of the crusading age. [illustration: 189.jpg the modern village of beîtîn (ancient bethel), seen from the south-west.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. there were on the littoral, to the north of gaza, two large walled towns, ascalon and joppa, in whose roadsteads merchant vessels were accustomed to take hasty refuge in tempestuous weather.* there were to be found on the plains also, and on the lower slopes of the mountains, a number of similar fortresses and villages, such as iurza, migdol, lachish, ajalon, shocho, adora, aphukîn, keilah, gezer, and ono; and, in the neighbourhood of the roads which led to the fords of the jordan, gibeah, beth-anoth, and finally urusalim, our jerusalem.** a tolerably dense population of active and industrious husbandmen maintained themselves upon the soil. * ascalon was not actually on the sea. its port, �maiumas ascalonis,� was probably merely a narrow bay or creek, now, for a long period, filled up by the sand. neither the site nor the remains of the port have been discovered. the name of the town is always spelled in egyptian with an �s �- askaluna, which gives us the pronunciation of the time. the name of joppa is written yapu, yaphu, and the gardens which then surrounded the town are mentioned in the _anastasi papyrus i_. ** urusalim is mentioned only in the tel el-amarna tablets, alongside of kilti or keilah, ajalon, and lachish. the remaining towns are noticed in the great lists of thûtmosis iii. [illustration: 191.jpg page image] the plough which they employed was like that used by the egyptians and babylonians, being nothing but a large hoe to which a couple of oxen were harnessed.* the scarcity of rain, except in certain seasons, and the tendency of the rivers to run low, contributed to make the cultivators of the soil experts in irrigation and agriculture. almost the only remains of these people which have come down ti us consist of indestructible wells and cisterns, or wine and oil presses hollowed out of the rock.** * this is the form of plough still employed by the syrians in some places. ** monuments of this kind are encountered at every step in judaea, but it is very difficult to date them. the aqueduct of siloam, which goes back perhaps to the time of hezekiah. fields of wheat and barley extended along the flats of the valleys, broken in upon here and there by orchards, in which the white and pink almond, the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive flourished side by side. [illustration: 192.jpg amphitheatre of hills] drawn by boudier, from a plate in chesney. jerusalem, possibly in part to be attributed to the reign of solomon, are the only instances to which anything like a certain date may be assigned. but these are long posterior to the xviiith dynasty. good judges, however, attribute some of these monuments to a very distant period: the masonry of the wells of beersheba is very ancient, if not as it is at present, at least as it was when it was repaired in the time of the cæsars; the olive and wine presses hewn in the rock do not all date back to the roman empire, but many belong to a still earlier period, and modern descriptions correspond with what we know of such presses from the bible. if the slopes of the valley rose too precipitously for cultivation, stone dykes were employed to collect the falling earth, and thus to transform the sides of the hills into a series of terraces rising one above the other. here the vines, planted in lines or in trellises, blended their clusters with the fruits of the orchard-trees. it was, indeed, a land of milk and honey, and its topographical nomenclature in the egyptian geographical lists reflects as in a mirror the agricultural pursuits of its ancient inhabitants: one village, for instance, is called aubila, �the meadow;� while others bear such names as ganutu, �the gardens;� magraphut, �the mounds;� and karman, �the vineyard.� the further we proceed towards the north, we find, with a diminishing aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed in our western lands.* towns grew and multiplied upon this rich and loamy soil, but as these lay outside the usual track of the invading hosts--which preferred to follow the more rugged but shorter route leading straight to carmel across the plain--the records of the conquerors only casually mention a few of them, such as bîtshaîlu, birkana, and dutîna.** * shechem is not mentioned in the egyptian geographical lists, but max müller thinks he has discovered it in the name of the mountain of sikima which figures in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 1. ** bîtshaîlu, identified by chabas with bethshan, and with shiloh by mariette and maspero, is more probably bethel, written bît-sha-îlu, either with _sh_, the old relative pronoun of the phoenician, or with the assyrian _sha_; on the latter supposition one must suppose, as sayce does, that the compiler of the egyptian lists had before him sources of information in the cuneiform character. birkana appears to be the modern brukin, and dutîna is certainly dothain, now tell-dothân. beyond ono reddish-coloured sandy clay took the place of the dark and compact loam: oaks began to appear, sparsely at first, but afterwards forming vast forests, which the peasants of our own days have thinned and reduced to a considerable extent. the stunted trunks of these trees are knotted and twisted, and the tallest of them do not exceed some thirty feet in height, while many of them may be regarded as nothing more imposing than large bushes.* muddy rivers, infested with crocodiles, flowed slowly through the shady woods, spreading out their waters here and there in pestilential swamps. on reaching the seaboard, their exit was impeded by the sands which they brought down with them, and the banks which were thus formed caused the waters to accumulate in lagoons extending behind the dunes. for miles the road led through thickets, interrupted here and there by marshy places and clumps of thorny shrubs. bands of shaûsû were accustomed to make this route dangerous, and even the bravest heroes shrank from venturing alone along this route. towards aluna the way began to ascend mount carmel by a narrow and giddy track cut in the rocky side of the precipice.** * the forest was well known to the geographers of the græco roman period, and was still in existence at the time of the crusades. ** this defile is described at length in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 1, and the terms used by the writer are in themselves sufficient evidence of the terror with which the place inspired the egyptians. the annals of thûtmosis iii. are equally explicit as to the difficulties which an army had to encounter here. i have placed this defile near the point which is now called umm-el-fahm, and this site seems to me to agree better with the account of the expedition of thûtmosis iii. than that of arraneh proposed by conder. beyond the mount, it led by a rapid descent into a plain covered with corn and verdure, and extending in a width of some thirty miles, by a series of undulations, to the foot of tabor, where it came to an end. two side ranges running almost parallel--little hermon and glilboa--disposed in a line from east to west, and united by an almost imperceptibly rising ground, serve rather to connect the plain of megiddo with the valley of the jordan than to separate them. a single river, the kishon, cuts the route diagonally--or, to speak more correctly, a single river-bed, which is almost waterless for nine months of the year, and becomes swollen only during the winter rains with the numerous torrents bursting from the hillsides. as the flood approaches the sea it becomes of more manageable proportions, and finally distributes its waters among the desolate lagoons formed behind the sand-banks of the open and wind-swept bay, towered over by the sacred summit of carmel.* * in the lists of thûtmosis iii. we find under no. 48 the town of rosh-qodshu, the �sacred cape,� which was evidently situated at the end of the mountain range, or probably on the site of haifah; the name itself suggests the veneration with which carmel was invested from the earliest times. no corner of the world has been the scene of more sanguinary engagements, or has witnessed century after century so many armies crossing its borders and coming into conflict with one another. every military leader who, after leaving africa, was able to seize gaza and ascalon, became at once master of southern syria. he might, it is true, experience some local resistance, and come into conflict with bands or isolated outposts of the enemy, but as a rule he had no need to anticipate a battle before he reached the banks of the kishon. [illustration: 196.jpg the evergreen oaks between joppa and carmel] drawn by boudier, from a pencil sketch by lortet. here, behind a screen of woods and mountain, the enemy would concentrate his forces and prepare resolutely to meet the attack. if the invader succeeded in overcoming resistance at this point, the country lay open to him as far as the orontes; nay, often even to the euphrates. the position was too important for its defence to have been neglected. a range of forts, ibleâm, taanach, and megiddo,* drawn like a barrier across the line of advance, protected its southern face, and beyond these a series of strongholds and villages followed one another at intervals in the bends of the valleys or on the heights, such as shunem, kasuna, anaharath, the two aphuls, cana, and other places which we find mentioned on the triumphal lists, but of which, up to the present, the sites have not been fixed. * megiddo, the �legio� of the roman period, has been identified since robinson�s time with khurbet-lejûn, and more especially with the little mound known by the name of tell-el-mutesallim. conder proposed to place its site more to the east, in the valley of the jordan, at khurbet-el mujeddah. [illustration: 197.jpg acre and the fringe of reefs sheltering the ancient port] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lortet. from this point the conqueror had a choice of three routes. one ran in an oblique direction to the west, and struck the mediterranean near acre, leaving on the left the promontory of carmel, with the sacred town, rosh-qodshu, planted on its slope. [illustration: 198.jpg map] acre was the first port where a fleet could find safe anchorage after leaving the mouths of the nile, and whoever was able to make himself master of it had in his hands the key of syria, for it stood in the same commanding position with regard to the coast as that held by megiddo in respect of the interior. its houses were built closely together on a spit of rock which projected boldly into the sea, while fringes of reefs formed for it a kind of natural breakwater, behind which ships could find a safe harbourage from the attacks of pirates or the perils of bad weather. from this point the hills come so near the shore that one is sometimes obliged to wade along the beach to avoid a projecting spur, and sometimes to climb a zig-zag path in order to cross a headland. in more than one place the rock has been hollowed into a series of rough steps, giving it the appearance of a vast ladder.* below this precipitous path the waves dash with fury, and when the wind sets towards the land every thud causes the rocky wall to tremble, and detaches fragments from its surface. the majority of the towns, such as aksapu (ecdippa), mashal, lubina, ushu-shakhan, lay back from the sea on the mountain ridges, out of the reach of pirates; several, however, were built on the shore, under the shelter of some promontory, and the inhabitants of these derived a miserable subsistence from fishing and the chase. beyond the tyrian ladder phoenician territory began. the country was served throughout its entire length, from town to town, by the coast road, which turning at length to the right, and passing through the defile formed by the nahr-el-kebîr, entered the region of the middle orontes. * hence the name tyrian ladder, which is applied to one of these passes, either ras-en-nakurah or ras-el-abiad. [illustration: 201.jpg the town of qodshu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the second of the roads leading from megiddo described an almost symmetrical curve eastwards, crossing the jordan at beth-shan, then the jab-bok, and finally reaching damascus after having skirted at some distance the last of the basaltic ramparts of the haurân. here extended a vast but badly watered pasture-land, which attracted the bedouin from every side, and scattered over it were a number of walled towns, such as hamath, magato, ashtaroth, and ono-eepha.* * proof that the egyptians knew this route, followed even to this day in certain circumstances, is furnished by the lists of thûtmosis iii., in which the principal stations which it comprises are enumerated among the towns given up after the victory of megiddo. dimasqu was identified with damascus by e. de rougé, and astarotu with ashtarôth-qarnaim. hamatu is probably hamath of the gadarenes; magato, the maged of the maccabees, is possibly the present mukatta; and ono-repha, raphôn, raphana, arpha of decapolis, is the modern er-rafeh. probably damascus was already at this period the dominant authority over the region watered by these two rivers, as well as over the villages nestling in the gorges of hermon,--abila, helbôn of the vineyards, and tabrûd,--but it had not yet acquired its renown for riches and power. protected by the anti-lebanon range from its turbulent neighbours, it led a sort of vegetative existence apart from invading hosts, forgotten and hushed to sleep, as it were, in the shade of its gardens. the third road from megiddo took the shortest way possible. after crossing the kishon almost at right angles to its course, it ascended by a series of steep inclines to arid plains, fringed or intersected by green and flourishing valleys, which afforded sites for numerous towns,--pahira, merom near lake huleh, qart-nizanu, beerotu, and lauîsa, situated in the marshy district at the head-waters of the jordan.* from this point forward the land begins to fall, and taking a hollow shape, is known as coele-syria, with its luxuriant vegetation spread between the two ranges of the lebanon. it was inhabited then, as at the time of the babylonian conquest, by the amorites, who probably included damascus also in their domain.** * pahira is probably safed; qart-nizanu, the �flowery city,� the kartha of zabulon; and bcerôt, the berotha of josephus, near merom. maroma and lauîsa, laisa, have been identified with merom and laish. ** the identification of the country of amâuru with that of the amorites was admitted from the first. the only doubt was as to the locality occupied by these amorites: the mention of qodshu on the orontes, in the country of the amurru, showed that coele-syria was the region in question. in the tel el-amarna tablets the name amurru is applied also to the country east of the phoenician coast, and we have seen that there is reason to believe that it was used by the babylonians to denote all syria. if the name given by the cuneiform inscriptions to damascus and its neighbourhood, �gar-imirîshu,� �imirîshu,� �imirîsh,� really means �the fortress of the amorites,� we should have in this fact a proof that this people were in actual possession of the damascene syria. this must have been taken from them by the hittites towards the xxth century before our era, according to hommel; about the end of the xviiith dynasty, according to lenormant. if, on the other hand, the assyrians read the name �sha-imiri-shu,� with the signification, �the town of its asses,� it is simply a play upon words, and has no bearing upon the primitive meaning of the name. [illustration: 202.jpg the tyrian ladder at ras el-abiad] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. their capital, the sacred qodshu, was situated on the left bank of the orontes, about five miles from the lake which for a long time bore its name, bahr-el-kades.* it crowned one of those barren oblong eminences which are so frequently met with in syria. a muddy stream, the tannur, flowed, at some distance away, around its base, and, emptying itself into the orontes at a point a little to the north, formed a natural defence for the town on the west. its encompassing walls, slightly elliptic in form, were strengthened by towers, and surrounded by two concentric ditches which kept the sapper at a distance. * the name qodshu-kadesh was for a long time read uatesh, badesh, atesh, and, owing to a confusion with qodi, ati, or atet. the town was identified by champollion with bactria, then transferred to mesopotamia by bosollini, in the land of omira, which, according to pliny, was close to the taurus, not far from the khabur or from the province of aleppo: osburn tried to connect it with hadashah (_josh_. xv. 21), an amorite town in the southern part of the tribe of judah; while hincks placed it in edessa. the reading kedesh, kadesh, qodshu, the result of the observations of lepsius, has finally prevailed. brugsch connected this name with that of bahr el-kades, a designation attached in the middle ages to the lake through which the orontes flows, and placed the town on its shores or on a small island on the lake. thomson pointed out tell neby-mendeh, the ancient laodicea of the lebanon, as satisfying the requirements of the site. conder developed this idea, and showed that all the conditions prescribed by the egyptian texts in regard to qodshu find here, and here alone, their application. the description given in the text is based on conder�s observations. [illustration: 206.jpt the dyke at baiik el-kades in its present condition] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. a dyke running across the orontes above the town caused the waters to rise and to overflow in a northern direction, so as to form a shallow lake, which acted as an additional protection from the enemy. qodshu was thus a kind of artificial island, connected with the surrounding country by two flying bridges, which could be opened or shut at pleasure. once the bridges were raised and the gates closed, the boldest enemy had no resource left but to arm himself with patience and settle down to a lengthened siege. the invader, fresh from a victory at megiddo, and following up his good fortune in a forward movement, had to reckon upon further and serious resistance at this point, and to prepare himself for a second conflict. the amorite chiefs and their allies had the advantage of a level and firm ground for the evolutions of their chariots during the attack, while, if they were beaten, the citadel afforded them a secure rallying-place, whence, having gathered their shattered troops, they could regain their respective countries, or enter, with the help of a few devoted men, upon a species of guerilla warfare in which they excelled. the road from damascus led to a point south of quodshu, while that from phonicia came right up to the town itself or to its immediate neighbourhood. the dyke of bahr el-kades served to keep the plain in a dry condition, and thus secured for numerous towns, among which hamath stood out pre-eminently, a prosperous existence. beyond hamath, and to the left, between the orontes and the sea, lay the commercial kingdom of alasia, protected from the invader by bleak mountains.* * the site of alasia, alashia, was determined from the tel el-amarna tablets by maspero. niebuhr had placed it to the west of cilicia, opposite the island of eleousa mentioned by strabo. conder connected it with the scriptural elishah, and w. max millier confounds it with asi or cyprus. on the right, between the orontes and the balikh, extended the land of rivers, naharaim. towns had grown up here thickly,--on the sides of the torrents from the amanos, along the banks of rivers, near springs or wells--wherever, in fact, the presence of water made culture possible. the fragments of the egyptian chronicles which have come down to us number these towns by the hundred,* and yet of how many more must the records have perished with the crumbling theban walls upon which the pharaohs had their names incised! khalabu was the aleppo of our own day,** and grouped around it lay turmanuna, tunipa, zarabu, nîi, durbaniti, nirabu, sarmata,*** and a score of others which depended upon it, or upon one of its rivals. the boundaries of this portion of the lower lotanû have come down to us in a singularly indefinite form, and they must also, moreover, have been subject to continual modifications from the results of tribal conflicts. * two hundred and thirty names belonging to naharaim are still legible on the lists of thûtmosis iii., and a hundred others have been effaced from the monument. ** khalabu was identified by chabas with khalybôn, the modern aleppo, and his opinion has been adopted by most egyptologists. *** tunipa has been found in tennib, tinnab, by noldoke; zarabu in zarbi, and sarmata in sarmeda, by tomkins; durbaniti in deîr el-banât, the castrum puellarum of the chroniclers of the crusades; nirabu in nirab, and tirabu in tereb, now el-athrib. nirab is mentioned by nicholas of damascus. nîi, long confounded with nineveh, was identified by lenormant with ninus vetus, membidj, and by max millier with balis on the euphrates: i am inclined to make it kefer naya, between aleppo and turmanin. [illustration: 208.jpg map] we are at a loss to know whether the various principalities were accustomed to submit to the leadership of a single individual, or whether we are to relegate to the region of popular fancy that lord of naharaim of whom the egyptian scribes made such a hero in their fantastic narratives.* * in the �story of the predestined prince� the heroine is daughter of the prince of naharaim, who seems to exercise authority over all the chiefs of the country; as the manuscript does not date back further than the xxth dynasty, we are justified in supposing that the egyptian writer had a knowledge of the hittite domination, during which the king of the khâti was actually the ruler of all naharaim. carchemish represented in this region the position occupied by megiddo in relation to kharû, and by qodshu among the amorites; that is to say, it was the citadel and sanctuary of the surrounding country. whoever could make himself master of it would have the whole country at his feet. [illustration: 211.jpg site of carchemish] it lay upon the euphrates, the winding of the river protecting it on its southern and south-eastern sides, while around its northern front ran a deep stream, its defence being further completed by a double ditch across the intervening region. like qodshu, it was thus situated in the midst of an artificial island beyond the reach of the battering-ram or the sapper. the encompassing wall, which tended to describe an ellipse, hardly measured two miles in circumference; but the suburbs extending, in the midst of villas and gardens, along the river-banks furnished in time of peace an abode for the surplus population. the wall still rises some five and twenty to thirty feet above the plain. two mounds divided by a ravine command its north-western side, their summits being occupied by the ruins of two fine buildings--a temple and a palace.* carchemish was the last stage in a conqueror�s march coming from the south. * karkamisha, gargamish, was from the beginning associated with the carchemish of the bible; but as the latter was wrongly identified with circesium, it was naturally located at the confluence of the khabur with the euphrates. hincks fixed the site at rum-kaleh. g. rawlinson referred it cursorily to hierapolis-mabog, which position maspero endeavoured to confirm. finzi, and after him g. smith, thought to find the site at jerabis, the ancient europos, and excavations carried on there by the english have brought to light in this place hittite monuments which go back in part to the assyrian epoch. this identification is now generally accepted, although there is still no direct proof attainable, and competent judges continue to prefer the site of membij. i fall in with the current view, but with all reserve. [illustration: 212.jpg the tell of jerabis in its present condition] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a cut in the _graphic_. for an invader approaching from the east or north it formed his first station. he had before him, in fact, a choice of the three chief fords for crossing the euphrates. that of thapsacus, at the bend of the river where it turns eastward to the arabian plain, lay too far to the south, and it could be reached only after a march through a parched and desolate region where the army would run the risk of perishing from thirst. [illustration: 213.jpg a northern syrian] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. for an invader proceeding from asia minor, or intending to make his way through the defiles of the taurus, samosata offered a convenient fording-place; but this route would compel the general, who had naharaim or the kingdoms of chaldæa in view, to make a long detour, and although the assyrians used it at a later period, at the time of their expeditions to the valleys of the halys, the egyptians do not seem ever to have travelled by this road. carchemish, the place of the third ford, was about equally distant from thapsacus and samosata, and lay in a rich and fertile province, which was so well watered that a drought or a famine would not be likely to enter into the expectations of its inhabitants. hither pilgrims, merchants, soldiers, and all the wandering denizens of the world were accustomed to direct their steps, and the habit once established was perpetuated for centuries. on the left bank of the river, and almost opposite carchemish, lay the region of mitânni,* which was already occupied by a people of a different race, who used a language cognate, it would seem, with the imperfectly classified dialects spoken by the tribes of the upper tigris and upper euphrates.** harran bordered on mitânni, and beyond harran one may recognise, in the vaguely defined singar, assur, arrapkha, and babel, states that arose out of the dismemberment of the ancient chaldæan empire.*** * mitânni is mentioned on several egyptian monuments; but its importance was not recognised until after the discovery of the tel el-amarna tablets and of its situation. the fact that a letter from the prince of mitânni is stated in a hieratic docket to have come from naharaim has been used as a proof that the countries were identical; i have shown that the docket proves only that mitânni formed a part of naharaim. it extended over the province of edessa and harran, stretching out towards the sources of the tigris. niebuhr places it on the southern slope of the masios, in mygdonia; th. reinach connects it with the matiôni, and asks whether this was not the region occupied by this people before their emigration towards the caspian. ** several of the tel el-amarna tablets are couched in this language. *** these names were recognised from the first in the inscriptions of thûtmosis iii. and in those of other pharaohs of the xviiith and xixth dynasties. the carchemish route was, of course, well known to caravans, but armed bodies had rarely occasion to make use of it. it was a far cry from memphis to carchemish, and for the egyptians this town continued to be a limit which they never passed, except incidentally, when they had to chastise some turbulent tribe, or to give some ill-guarded town to the flames.* * a certain number of towns mentioned in the lists of thûtmosis iii. were situated beyond the euphrates, and they belonged some to mitânni and some to the regions further away. [illustration: 215.jpg the heads of three amorite captives] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. it would be a difficult task to define with any approach to accuracy the distribution of the canaanites, amorites, and aramæans, and to indicate the precise points where they came into contact with their rivals of non-semitic stock. frontiers between races and languages can never be very easily determined, and this is especially true of the peoples of syria. they are so broken up and mixed in this region, that even in neighbourhoods where one predominant tribe is concentrated, it is easy to find at every step representatives of all the others. four or five townships, singled out at random from the middle of a province, would often be found to belong to as many different races, and their respective inhabitants, while living within a distance of a mile or two, would be as great strangers to each other as if they were separated by the breadth of a continent. [illustration: 216.jpg mixture of syrian races] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. it would appear that the breaking up of these populations had not been carried so far in ancient as in modern times, but the confusion must already have been great if we are to judge from the number of different sites where we encounter evidences of people of the same language and blood. the bulk of the khâti had not yet departed from the taurus region, but some stray bands of them, carried away by the movement which led to the invasion of the hyksôs, had settled around hebron, where the rugged nature of the country served to protect them from their neighbours.* * in very early times they are described as dwelling near hebron or in the mountains of judah. since we have learned from the egyptian and assyrian monuments that the khâti dwelt in northern syria, the majority of commentators have been indisposed to admit the existence of southern hittites; this name, it is alleged, having been introduced into the biblical around text through a misconception of the original documents, where the term hittite was the equivalent of canaanite. the amorites* had their head-quarters qodshul in coele-syria, but one section of them had taken up a position on the shores of the lake of tiberias in galilee, others had established themselves within a short distance of jaffa** on the mediterranean, while others had settled in the neighbourhood of the southern hittites in such numbers that their name in the hebrew scriptures was at times employed to designate the western mountainous region about the dead sea and the valley of the jordan. their presence was also indicated on the table-lands bordering the desert of damascus, in the districts frequented by bedouin of the tribe of terah, ammon and moab, on the rivers yarmuk and jabbok, and at edrei and heshbon.*** * ed. meyer has established the fact that the term amorite, as well as the parallel word canaanite, was the designation of the inhabitants of palestine before the arrival of the hebrews: the former belonged to the prevailing tradition in the kingdom of israel, the latter to that which was current in judah. this view confirms the conclusion which may be drawn from the egyptian monuments as to the power of expansion and the diffusion of the people. ** these were the amorites which the tribe of dan at a later period could not dislodge from the lands which had been allotted to them. *** this was afterwards the domain of sihon, king of the amorites, and that of og. the fuller, indeed, our knowledge is of the condition of syria at the time of the egyptian conquest, the more we are forced to recognise the mixture of races therein, and their almost infinite subdivisions. the mutual jealousies, however, of these elements of various origin were not so inveterate as to put an obstacle in the way, i will not say of political alliances, but of daily intercourse and frequent contracts. owing to intermarriages between the tribes, and the continual crossing of the results of such unions, peculiar characteristics were at length eliminated, and a uniform type of face was the result. from north to south one special form of countenance, that which we usually call semitic, prevailed among them. [illustration: 218.jpg a caricature of the syrian type] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the syrian and egyptian monuments furnish us everywhere, under different ethnical names, with representations of a broad-shouldered people of high stature, slender-figured in youth, but with a fatal tendency to obesity in old age. their heads are large, somewhat narrow, and artificially flattened or deformed, like those of several modern tribes in the lebanon. their high cheek-bones stand out from their hollow cheeks, and their blue or black eyes are buried under their enormous eyebrows. the lower part of the face is square and somewhat heavy, but it is often concealed by a thick and curly beard. the forehead is rather low and retreating, while the nose has a distinctly aquiline curve. the type is not on the whole so fine as the egyptian, but it is not so heavy as that of the chaldæans in the time of gudea. the theban artists have represented it in their battle-scenes, and while individualising every soldier or asiatic prisoner with a happy knack so as to avoid monotony, they have with much intelligence impressed upon all of them the marks of a common parentage. [illustration: 219.jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original wooden object. one feels that the artists must have recognised them as belonging to one common family. they associated with their efforts after true and exact representation a certain caustic humour, which impelled them often to substitute for a portrait a more or less jocose caricature of their adversaries. on the walls of the pylons, and in places where the majesty of a god restrained them from departing too openly from their official gravity, they contented themselves with exaggerating from panel to panel the contortions and pitiable expressions of the captive chiefs as they followed behind the triumphal chariot of the pharaoh on his return from his syrian campaigns.* * an illustration of this will be found in the line of prisoners, brought by seti i. from his great asiatic campaign, which is depicted on the outer face of the north wall of the hypostyle at karnak. where religious scruples offered no obstacle they abandoned themselves to the inspiration of the moment, and gave themselves freely up to caricature. it is an amorite or canaanite--that thick-lipped, flat-nosed slave, with his brutal lower jaw and smooth conical skull--who serves for the handle of a spoon in the museum of the louvre. the stupefied air with which he trudges under his burden is rendered in the most natural manner, and the flattening to which his forehead had been subjected in infancy is unfeelingly accentuated. the model which served for this object must have been intentionally brutalised and disfigured in order to excite the laughter of pharaoh�s subjects.* * dr. regnault thinks that the head was artificially deformed in infancy: the bandage necessary to effect it must have been applied very low on the forehead in front, and to the whole occiput behind. if this is the case, the instance is not an isolated one, for a deformation of a similar character is found in the case of the numerous semites represented on the tomb of rakhmiri: a similar practice still obtains in certain parts of modern syria. [illustration: 220.jpg syrians dressed in the loin-cloth and double shawl] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. the idea of uniformity with which we are impressed when examining the faces of these people is confirmed and extended when we come to study their costumes. men and women--we may say all syrians according to their condition of life--had a choice between only two or three modes of dress, which, whatever the locality, or whatever the period, seemed never to change. on closer examination slight shades of difference in cut and arrangement may, however, be detected, and it may be affirmed that fashion ran even in ancient syria through as many capricious evolutions as with ourselves; but these variations, which were evident to the eyes of the people of the time, are not sufficiently striking to enable us to classify the people, or to fix their date. the peasants and the lower class of citizens required no other clothing than a loin-cloth similar to that of the egyptians,* or a shirt of a yellow or white colour, extending below the knees, and furnished with short sleeves. the opening for the neck was cruciform, and the hem was usually ornamented with coloured needlework or embroidery. the burghers and nobles wore over this a long strip of cloth, which, after passing closely round the hips and chest, was brought up and spread over the shoulders as a sort of cloak. this was not made of the light material used in egypt, which offered no protection from cold or rain, but was composed of a thick, rough wool, like that employed in chaldæa, and was commonly adorned with stripes or bands of colour, in addition to spots and other conspicuous designs. * the asiatic loin-cloth differs from the egyptian in having pendent cords; the syrian fellahin still wear it when at work. rich and fashionable folk substituted for this cloth two large shawls--one red and the other blue--in which they dexterously arrayed themselves so as to alternate the colours: a belt of soft leather gathered the folds around the figure. red morocco buskins, a soft cap, a handkerchief, a _kejfîyeh_ confined by a fillet, and sometimes a wig after the egyptian fashion, completed the dress. [illustration: 222a.jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a figure on the tomb of ramses iii. beards were almost universal among the men, but the moustache was of rare occurrence. in many of the figures represented on the monuments we find that the head was carefully shaved, while in others the hair was allowed to grow, arranged in curls, frizzed and shining with oil or sweet-smelling pomade, sometimes thrown back behind the ears and falling on the neck in bunches or curly masses, sometimes drawn out in stiff spikes so as to serve as a projecting cover over the face. [illustration: 222b.jpg a syrian with hair tired pent-house fashion] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. the women usually tired their hair in three great masses, of which the thickest was allowed to fall freely down the back; while the other two formed a kind of framework for the face, the ends descending on each side as far as the breast. some of the women arranged their hair after the egyptian manner, in a series of numerous small tresses, brought together at the ends so as to form a kind of plat, and terminating in a flower made of metal or enamelled terracotta. a network of glass ornaments, arranged on a semicircle of beads, or on a background of embroidered stuff, was frequently used as a covering for the top of the head.* * examples of syrian feminine costume are somewhat rare on the egyptian monuments. in the scenes of the capturing of towns we see a few. here the women are represented on the walls imploring the mercy of the besieger. other figures are those of prisoners being led captive into egypt. [illustration: 223.jpg page image] the shirt had no sleeves, and the fringed garment which covered it left half of the arm exposed. children of tender years had their heads shaved, as a head-dress, and rejoiced in no more clothing than the little ones among the egyptians. with the exception of bracelets, anklets, rings on the fingers, and occasionally necklaces and earrings, the syrians, both men and women, wore little jewellery. the chaldæa women furnished them with models of fashion to which they accommodated themselves in the choice of stuffs, colours, cut of their mantles or petticoats, arrangement of the hair, and the use of cosmetics for the eyes and cheeks. in spite of distance, the modes of babylon reigned supreme. the syrians would have continued to expose their right shoulder to the weather as long as it pleased the people of the lower euphrates to do the same; but as soon as the fashion changed in the latter region, and it became customary to cover the shoulder, and to wrap the upper part of the person in two or three thicknesses of heavy wool, they at once accommodated themselves to the new mode, although it served to restrain the free motion of the body. among the upper classes, at least, domestic arrangements were modelled upon the fashions observed in the palaces of the nobles of car-chemish or assur: the same articles of toilet, the same ranks of servants and scribes, the same luxurious habits, and the same use of perfumes were to be found among both.* * an example of the fashion of leaving the shoulder bare is found even in the xxth dynasty. the tel el-amarna tablets prove that, as far as the scribes were concerned, the customs and training of syria and chaldæa were identical. the syrian princes are there represented as employing the cuneiform character in their correspondence, being accompanied by scribes brought up after the chaldæan manner. we shall see later on that the king of the khati, who represented in the time of ramses ii. the type of an accomplished syrian, had attendants similar to those of the chaldæan kings. from all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from the misunderstandings of the egyptian chroniclers, syria stands before us as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful to be a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions. the religion of the syrians was subject to the same influences as their customs; we are, as yet, far from being able to draw a complete picture of their theology, but such knowledge as we do possess recalls the same names and the same elements as are found in the religious systems of chaldæa. the myths, it is true, are still vague and misty, at least to our modern ideas: the general characteristics of the principal divinities alone stand out, and seem fairly well defined. as with the other semitic races, the deity in a general sense, the primordial type of the godhead, was called _el_ or _ilû_, and his feminine counterpart _ilât_, but we find comparatively few cities in which these nearly abstract beings enjoyed the veneration of the faithful.* the gods of syria, like those of egypt and of the countries watered by the euphrates, were feudal princes distributed over the surface of the earth, their number corresponding with that of the independent states. each nation, each tribe, each city, worshipped its own lord--_adoni_** --or its master--_baal_*** --and each of these was designated by a special title to distinguish him from neighbouring _baalîm_, or masters. * the frequent occurrence of the term _ilû_ or _el_ in names of towns in southern syria seems to indicate pretty conclusively that the inhabitants of these countries used this term by preference to designate their supreme god. similarly we meet with it in aramaic names, and later on among the nabathseans; it predominates at byblos and berytus in phoenicia and among the aramaic peoples of north syria; in the samalla country, for instance, during the viiith century b.c. ** the extension of this term to syrian countries is proved in the israelitish epoch by canaanitish names, such as adonizedek and adonibezek, or jewish names such as adonijah, adonikam, adoniram-adoram. *** movers tried to prove that there was one particular god named baal, and his ideas, popularised in prance by m. de vogiié, prevailed for some time: since then scholars have gone back to the view of münter and of the writers at the beginning of this century, who regarded the term baal as a common epithet applicable to all gods. the baal who ruled at zebub was styled �master of zebub,� or baal-zebub;* and the baal of hermon, who was an ally of gad, goddess of fortune, was sometimes called baal-hermon, or �master of hermon,� sometimes baal-g-ad, or �master of gad;� ** the baal of shechem, at the time of the israelite invasion, was �master of the covenant�--baal-berîth--doubtless in memory of some agreement which he had concluded with his worshippers in regard to the conditions of their allegiance.*** * baal-zebub was worshipped at ekxon during the philistine supremacy. ** the mountain of baal-hermon is the mountain of baniâs, where the jordan has one of its sources, and the town of baal-hermon is baniâs itself. the variant baal-gad occurs several times in the biblical books. *** baal-berith, like baal-zebub, only occurs, so far as we know at present, in the hebrew scriptures, where, by the way, the first element, baal, is changed to el, el-berith. [illustration: 226.jpg lotanû women and children from the tomb of rakhmieî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from coloured sketches by prisse d�avennes. the prevalent conception of the essence and attributes of these deities was not the same in all their sanctuaries, but the more exalted among them were regarded as personifying the sky in the daytime or at night, the atmosphere, the light,* or the sun, shamash, as creator and prime mover of the universe; and each declared himself to be king--_melek_--over the other gods.** bashuf represented the lightning and the thunderbolt;*** shalmân, hadad, and his double bimmôn held sway over the air like the babylonian. * this appears under the name _or_ or _ur_ in the samalla inscriptions of the viiith century b.c.; it is, so far, a unique instance among the semites. ** we find the term applied in the bible to the national god of the ammonites, under the forms _moloch, molech, mikôm, milkâm_, and especially with the article, _ham-molek_; the real name hidden beneath this epithet was probably _amnôn or ammân_, and, strictly speaking, the god moloch only exists in the imagination of scholars. the epithet was used among the oanaanites in the name melchizedek, a similar form to adonizedek, abimelech, ahimelech; it was in current use among the phoenicians, in reference to the god of tyre, melek-karta or melkarth, and in many proper names, such as melekiathon, baalmelek, bodmalek, etc., not to mention the god milichus worshipped in spain, who was really none other than melkarth. *** resheph has been vocalised _rashuf_ in deference to the egyptian orthography rashupu. it was a name common to a whole family of lightning and storm-gods, and m. de rougé pointed out long ago the passage in the great inscription of ramses iii. at medinet-habu, in which the soldiers who man the chariots are compared to the rashupu; the rabbinic hebrew still employs this plural form in the sense of �demons.� the phoenician inscriptions contain references to several local rashufs; the way in which this god is coupled with the goddess qodshu on the egyptian stelæ leads me to think that, at the epoch now under consideration, he was specially worshipped by the amorites, just as his equivalent hadad was by the inhabitants of damascus, neighbours of the amorites, and perhaps themselves amorites. rammânu;* dagon, patron god of fishermen and husbandmen, seems to have watched over the fruitfulness of the sea and the land.** we are beginning to learn the names of the races whom they specially protected: rashuf the amorites, hadad and rimmon the aramæans of damascus, dagon the peoples of the coast between ashkelon and the forest of carmel. rashûf is the only one whose appearance is known to us. he possessed the restless temperament usually attributed to the thunder-gods, and was, accordingly, pictured as a soldier armed with javelin and mace, bow and buckler; a gazelle�s head with pointed horns surmounts his helmet, and sometimes, it may be, serves him as a cap. * hadad and rimmon are represented in assyrio-chaldæan by one and the same ideogram, which may be read either dadda hadad or eammânu. the identity of the expressions employed shows how close the connection between the two divinities must have been, even if they were not similar in all respects; from the hebrew writings we know of the temple of rimmon at damascus (_2 kings_ v. 18) and that one of the kings of that city was called tabrimmôn = �llimmon is good� (_1 kings_ xv. 18), while hadad gave his name to no less than ten kings of the same city. even as late as the græco roman epoch, kingship over the other gods was still attributed both to rimmon and to hadad, but this latter was identified with the sun. ** the documents which we possess in regard to dagon date from the hebrew epoch, and represent him as worshipped by the philistines. we know, however, from the tel el-amarna tablets, of a dagantakala, a name which proves the presence of the god among the canaanites long before the philistine invasion, and we find two beth-dagons--one in the plain of judah, the other in the tribe of asher; philo of byblos makes dagon a phoenician deity, and declares him to be the genius of fecundity, master of grain and of labour. the representation of his statue which appears on the græco roman coins of abydos, reminds us of the fish-god of chaldæa. each god had for his complement a goddess, who was proclaimed �mistress� of the city, _baalat_, or �queen,� _milkat_, of heaven, just as the god himself was recognised as �master� or �king.� * as a rule, the goddess was contented with the generic name of astartê; but to this was often added some epithet, which lent her a distinct personality, and prevented her from being confounded with the astartês of neighbouring cities, her companions or rivals.** * among goddesses to whom the title �baalat �was referred, we have the goddess of byblos, baalat-gebal, also the goddess of berytus, baalat-berîth, or beyrut. the epithet �queen of heaven �is applied to the phoenician astartê by hebrew (_jer._ vii. 18, xliv. 18-29) and classic writers. the egyptians, when they adopted these oanaanitish goddesses, preserved the title, and called each of them _nibît pit,_ �lady of heaven.� in the phoenician inscriptions their names are frequently preceded by the word _rabbat: rabbat baalat-gebal_, �(my) lady baalat-gebal.� ** the hebrew writers frequently refer to the canaanite goddesses by the general title �the ashtarôth� or �astartês,� and a town in northern syria bore the significant name of istarâti = �the ishtars, the ashtarôth,� a name which finds a parallel in anathôth = �the anats,� a title assumed by a town of the tribe of benjamin; similarly, the assyrio chaldæans called their goddesses by the plural of ishtar. the inscription on an egyptian amulet in the louvre tells us of a personage of the xxth dynasty, who, from his name, rabrabîna, must have been of syrian origin, and who styled himself �prophet of the astartês,� honnutir astiratu. [illustration: 229.jpg astarte as a sphinx] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a copy of an original in chased gold. thus she would be styled the �good� astartê, ashtoreth naamah, or the �horned� astartê, ashtoreth qarnaîm, because of the lunar crescent which appears on her forehead, as a sort of head-dress.* she was the goddess of good luck, and was called gad;** she was anat,*** or asîti,**** the chaste and the warlike. * the two-horned astartê gave her name to a city beyond the jordan, of which she was, probably, the eponymous goddess: (gen xiv. 5) she would seem to be represented on the curious monument called by the arabs �the stone of job,� which was discovered by m. schumacher in the centre of the hauran. it was an analogous goddess whom the egyptians sometimes identified with their hâthor, and whom they represented as crowned with a crescent. ** gad, the goddess of fortune, is mainly known to us in connection with the aramæans; we find mention made of her by the hebrew writers, and geographical names, such as baal-gad and migdol-gad, prove that she must have been worshipped at a very early date in the canaanite countries. *** anat, or anaîti, or aniti, has been found in a phoenician inscription, which enables us to reconstruct the history of the goddess. her worship was largely practised among the canaanites, as is proved by the existence in the hebrew epoch of several towns, such as beth-anath, beth anoth, anathôth; at least one of which, bît-anîti, is mentioned in the egyptian geographical lists. the appearance of anat-anîti is known to us, as she is represented in egyptian dress on several stelæ of the xixth and xxth dynasties. her name, like that of astartê, had become a generic term, in the plural form anathôth, for a whole group of goddesses. **** asîti is represented at radesieh, on a stele of the time of seti i.; she enters into the composition of a compound name, _asîtiiàkhûrû_ (perhaps �the goddess of asiti is enflamed with anger �), which we find on a monument in the vienna museum. w. max müller makes her out to have been a divinity of the desert, and the place in which the picture representing her was found would seem to justify this hypothesis; the egyptians connected her, as well as the other astartês, with sit-typhon, owing to her cruel and warlike character. [illustration: 231.jpg page image] the statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman�s head, but more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude, or encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled with flowers or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy tresses--a faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to her service, the _qedeshôt_. she was the goddess of love in its animal, or rather in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was styled qaddishat the holy, like the hetairæ of her family; qodshu, the amorite capital, was consecrated to her service, and she was there associated with rashuf, the thunder-god.* * qaddishat is know to us from the egyptian monuments referred to above. the name was sometimes written qodshû, like that of the town: e. de bougé argued from this that qaddishat must have been the eponymous divinity of qodshû, and that her real name was kashit or kesh; he recalls, however, the _rôle_ played by the qedeshoth, and admits that �the holy here means the prostitute.� but she often comes before us as a warlike amazon, brandishing a club, lance, or shield, mounted on horseback like a soldier, and wandering through the desert in quest of her prey.* this dual temperament rendered her a goddess of uncertain attributes and of violent contrasts; at times reserved and chaste, at other times shameless and dissolute, but always cruel, always barren, for the countless multitude of her excesses for ever shut her out from motherhood: she conceives without ceasing, but never brings forth children.** the baalim and astartês frequented by choice the tops of mountains, such as lebanon, carmel, hermon, or kasios:*** they dwelt near springs, or hid themselves in the depths of forests.**** they revealed themselves to mortals through the heavenly bodies, and in all the phenomena of nature: the sun was a baal, the moon was astartê, and the whole host of heaven was composed of more or less powerful genii, as we find in chaldæa. * a fragment of a popular tale preserved in the british museum, and mentioned by birch, seems to show us astartê in her character of war-goddess, and the sword of astartê is mentioned by chabas. a bas-relief at edfû represents her standing upright in her chariot, drawn by horses, and trampling her enemies underfoot: she is there identified with sokhît the warlike, destroyer of men. ** this conception of the syrian goddesses had already become firmly established at the period with which we are dealing, for an egyptian magical formula defines anîti and astartê as �the great goddesses who conceiving do not bring forth young, for the horuses have sealed them and sit hath established them.� *** the baal of lebanon is mentioned in an archaic phoenician inscription, and the name �holy cape� (_rosh qodshu_), borne in the time of thûtmosis iii. either by haifa or by a neighbouring town, proves that carmel was held sacred as far back as the egyptian epoch. baal-hermon has already been mentioned. **** the source of the jordan, near baniâs, was the seat of a baal whom the greeks identified with pan. this was probably the baal-gad who often lent his name to the neighbouring town of baal-hermon: many of the rivers of phoenicia were called after the divinities worshipped in the nearest city, e.g. the adonis, the bêlos, the asclepios, the damûras. they required that offerings and prayers should be brought to them at the high places,* but they were also pleased--and especially the goddesses--to lodge in trees; tree-trunks, sometimes leafy, sometimes bare and branchless (_ashêrah_), long continued to be living emblems of the local astartês among the peoples of southern syria. side by side with these plant-gods we find everywhere, in the inmost recesses of the temples, at cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn into pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the house of the god, the betyli or beth-els in which he enclosed a part of his intelligence and vital force. * these are the �high places� (bamôth) so frequently referred to by the hebrew prophets, and which we find in the country of moab, according to the mesha inscription, and in the place-name bamoth-baal; many of them seem to have served for canaanitish places of worship before they were resorted to by the children of israel. the worship of these gods involved the performance of ceremonies more bloody and licentious even than those practised by other races. the baalim thirsted after blood, nor would they be satisfied with any common blood such as generally contented their brethren in chaldæa or egypt: they imperatively demanded human as well as animal sacrifices. among several of the syrian nations they had a prescriptive right to the firstborn male of each family;* this right was generally commuted, either by a money payment or by subjecting the infant to circumcision.** * this fact is proved, in so far as the hebrew people is concerned, by the texts of the pentateuch and of the prophets; amongst the moabites also it was his eldest son whom king mosha took to offer to his god. we find the same custom among other syrian races: philo of byblos tells us, in fact, that el-kronos, god of byblos, sacrificed his firstborn son and set the example of this kind of offering. ** redemption by a payment in money was the case among the hebrews, as also the substitution of an animal in the place of a child; as to redemption by circumcision, cf. the story of moses and zipporah, where the mother saves her son from jahveh by circumcising him. circumcision was practised among the syrians of palestine in the time of herodotus. at important junctures, however, this pretence of bloodshed would fail to appease them, and the death of the child alone availed. indeed, in times of national danger, the king and nobles would furnish, not merely a single victim, but as many as the priests chose to demand.* while they were being burnt alive on the knees of the statue, or before the sacred emblem, their cries of pain were drowned by the piping of flutes or the blare of trumpets, the parents standing near the altar, without a sign of pity, and dressed as for a festival: the ruler of the world could refuse nothing to prayers backed by so precious an offering, and by a purpose so determined to move him. such sacrifices were, however, the exception, and the shedding of their own blood by his priests sufficed, as a rule, for the daily wants of the god. seizing their knives, they would slash their arms and breasts with the view of compelling, by this offering of their own persons, the good will of the baalim.** * if we may credit tertullian, the custom of offering up children as sacrifices lasted down to the proconsulate of tiberius. ** cf., for the hebraic epoch, the scene where the priests of baal, in a trial of power with elijah before ahab, offered up sacrifices on the highest point of carmel, and finding that their offerings did not meet with the usual success, �cut themselves... with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them.� the astartês of all degrees and kinds were hardly less cruel; they imposed frequent flagellations, self-mutilation, and sometimes even emasculation, on their devotees. around the majority of these goddesses was gathered an infamous troop of profligates (_kedeshîm_), �dogs of love� (_kelabîm_), and courtesans (_kedeshôt_). the temples bore little resemblance to those of the regions of the lower euphrates: nowhere do we find traces of those _ziggurat_ which serve to produce the peculiar jagged outline characteristic of chaldæan cities. the syrian edifices were stone buildings, which included, in addition to the halls and courts reserved for religious rites, dwelling-rooms for the priesthood, and storehouses for provisions: though not to be compared in size with the sanctuaries of thebes, they yet answered the purpose of strongholds in time of need, and were capable of resisting the attacks of a victorious foe.* a numerous staff, consisting of priests, male and female singers, porters, butchers, slaves, and artisans, was assigned to each of these temples: here the god was accustomed to give forth his oracles, either by the voice of his prophets, or by the movement of his statues.** the greater number of the festivals celebrated in them were closely connected with the pastoral and agricultural life of the country; they inaugurated, or brought to a close, the principal operations of the year--the sowing of seed, the harvest, the vintage, the shearing of the sheep. at shechem, when the grapes were ripe, the people flocked out of the town into the vineyards, returning to the temple for religious observances and sacred banquets when the fruit had been trodden in the winepress.*** * the story of abimelech gives us some idea of what the canaanite temple of baal-berîth at shechem was like. ** as to the regular organisation of baal-worship, we possess only documents of a comparatively late period. *** it is probable that the vintage festival, celebrated at shiloh in the time of the judges, dated back to a period of canaanite history prior to the hebrew invasion, i.e. to the time of the egyptian supremacy. in times of extraordinary distress, such as a prolonged drought or a famine, the priests were wont to ascend in solemn procession to the high places in order to implore the pity of their divine masters, from whom they strove to extort help, or to obtain the wished-for rain, by their dances, their lamentations, and the shedding of their blood.* *cf., in the hebraic period, the scene where the priests of baal go up to the top of mount carmel with the prophet elijah. almost everywhere, but especially in the regions east of the jordan, were monuments which popular piety surrounded with a superstitious reverence. such were the isolated boulders, or, as we should call them, �menhirs,� reared on the summit of a knoll, or on the edge of a tableland; dolmens, formed of a flat slab placed on the top of two roughly hewn supports, cromlechs, or, that is to say, stone circles, in the centre of which might be found a beth-el. we know not by whom were set up these monuments there, nor at what time: the fact that they are in no way different from those which are to be met with in western europe and the north of africa has given rise to the theory that they were the work of some one primeval race which wandered ceaselessly over the ancient world. a few of them may have marked the tombs of some forgotten personages, the discovery of human bones beneath them confirming such a conjecture; while others seem to have been holy places and altars from the beginning. the nations of syria did not in all cases recognise the original purpose of these monuments, but regarded them as marking the seat of an ancient divinity, or the precise spot on which he had at some time manifested himself. when the children of israel caught sight of them again on their return from egypt, they at once recognised in them the work of their patriarchs. the dolmen at shechem was the altar which abraham had built to the eternal after his arrival in the country of canaan. isaac had raised that at beersheba, on the very spot where jehovah had appeared in order to renew with him the covenant that he had made with abraham. one might almost reconstruct a map of the wanderings of jacob from the altars which he built at each of his principal resting-places--at gilead [galeed], at ephrata, at bethel, and at shechem.* each of such still existing objects probably had a history of its own, connecting it inseparably with some far-off event in the local annals. * the heap of stones at galeed, in aramaic _jegar sahadutha_, �the heap of witness,� marked the spot where laban and jacob were reconciled; the stele on the way to ephrata was the tomb of rachel; the altar and stele at bethel marked the spot where god appeared unto jacob. [illustration: 235.jpg transjordanian dolmen] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. [illustration: 238.jpg a cromlech in the neighbourhood of hesban, in the country of moab] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. most of them were objects of worship: they were anointed with oil, and victims were slaughtered in their honour; the faithful even came at times to spend the night and sleep near them, in order to obtain in their dreams glimpses of the future.* * the menhir of bethel was the identical one whereon jacob rested his head on the night in which jehovah appeared to him in a dream. in phoenicia there was a legend which told how usôos set up two stellæ to the elements of wind and fire, and how he offered the blood of the animals he had killed in the chase as a libation. men and beasts were supposed to be animated, during their lifetime, by a breath or soul which ran in their veins along with their blood, and served to move their limbs; the man, therefore, who drank blood or ate bleeding flesh assimilated thereby the soul which inhered in it. after death the fate of this soul was similar to that ascribed to the spirits of the departed in egypt and chaldæa. the inhabitants of the ancient world were always accustomed to regard the surviving element in man as something restless and unhappy--a weak and pitiable double, doomed to hopeless destruction if deprived of the succour of the living. they imagined it as taking up its abode near the body wrapped in a half-conscious lethargy; or else as dwelling with the other _rephaim_ (departed spirits) in some dismal and gloomy kingdom, hidden in the bowels of the earth, like the region ruled by the chaldæan allât, its doors gaping wide to engulf new arrivals, but allowing none to escape who had once passed the threshold.* * the expression _rephaim_ means �the feeble�; it was the epithet applied by the hebrews to a part of the primitive races of palestine. there it wasted away, a prey to sullen melancholy, under the sway of inexorable deities, chief amongst whom, according to the phoenician idea, was mout (death),* the grandson of el; there the slave became the equal of his former master, the rich man no longer possessed anything which could raise him above the poor, and dreaded monarchs were greeted on their entrance by the jeers of kings who had gone down into the night before them. *among the hebrews his name was maweth, who feeds the departed like sheep, and himself feeds on them in hell. some writers have sought to identify this or some analogous god with the lion represented on a stele of piraeus which threatens to devour the body of a dead man. [illustration: 240.jpg a corner of the phoenician neckropolis at adlun] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph in lortet. the corpse, after it had been anointed with perfumes and enveloped in linen, and impregnated with substances which retarded its decomposition, was placed in some natural grotto or in a cave hollowed out of the solid rock: sometimes it was simply laid on the bare earth, sometimes in a sarcophagus or coffin, and on it, or around it, were piled amulets, jewels, objects of daily use, vessels filled with perfume, or household utensils, together with meat and drink. the entrance was then closed, and on the spot a cippus was erected--in popular estimation sometimes held to represent the soul--or a monument was set up on a scale proportionate to the importance of the family to which the dead man had belonged.* on certain days beasts ceremonially pure were sacrificed at the tomb, and libations poured out, which, carried into the next world by virtue of the prayers of those who offered them, and by the aid of the gods to whom the prayers were addressed, assuaged the hunger and thirst of the dead man.** the chapels and stellæ which marked the exterior of these �eternal� *** houses have disappeared in the course of the various wars by which syria suffered so heavily: in almost all cases, therefore, we are ignorant as to the sites of the various cities of the dead in which the nobles and common people of the canaanite and amorite towns were laid to rest.**** * the pillar or stele was used among both hebrews and phoenicians to mark the graves of distinguished persons. among the semites speaking aramaic it was called _nephesh_, especially when it took the form of a pyramid; the word means �breath,� �soul,� and clearly shows the ideas associated with the object. ** an altar was sometimes placed in front of the sarcophagus to receive these offerings. *** this expression, which is identical with that used by the egyptians of the same period, is found in one of the phoenician inscriptions at malta. **** the excavations carried out by m. gautier in 1893-94, on the little island of bahr-el-kadis, at one time believed to have been the site of the town of qodshu, have revealed the existence of a number of tombs in the enclosure which forms the central part of the tumulus: some of these may possibly date from the amorite epoch, but they are very poor in remains, and contain no object which permits us to fix the date with accuracy. in phoenicia alone do we meet with burial-places which, after the vicissitudes and upheavals of thirty centuries, still retain something of their original arrangement. sometimes the site chosen was on level ground: perpendicular shafts or stairways cut in the soil led down to low-roofed chambers, the number of which varied according to circumstances: they were often arranged in two stories, placed one above the other, fresh vaults being probably added as the old ones were filled up. they were usually rectangular in shape, with horizontal or slightly arched ceilings; niches cut in the walls received the dead body and the objects intended for its use in the next world, and were then closed with a slab of stone. elsewhere some isolated hill or narrow gorge, with sides of fine homogeneous limestone, was selected.* * such was the necropolis at adlûn, the last rearrangement of which took place during the græco-roman period, but which externally bears so strong a resemblance to an egyptian necropolis of the xviiith or xixth dynasty, that we may, without violating the probabilities, trace its origin back to the time of the pharaonic conquest. in this case the doors were placed in rows on a sort of façade similar to that of the egyptian rock-tomb, generally without any attempt at external ornament. the vaults were on the ground-level, but were not used as chapels for the celebration of festivals in honour of the dead: they were walled up after every funeral, and all access to them forbidden, until such time as they were again required for the purposes of burial. except on these occasions of sad necessity, those whom �the mouth of the pit had devoured� dreaded the visits of the living, and resorted to every means afforded by their religion to protect themselves from them. their inscriptions declare repeatedly that neither gold nor silver, nor any object which could excite the greed of robbers, was to be found within their graves; they threaten any one who should dare to deprive them of such articles of little value as belonged to them, or to turn them out of their chambers in order to make room for others, with all sorts of vengeance, divine and human. these imprecations have not, however, availed to save them from the desecration the danger of which they foresaw, and there are few of their tombs which were not occupied by a succession of tenants between the date of their first making and the close of the roman supremacy. when the modern explorer chances to discover a vault which has escaped the spade of the treasure-seeker, it is hardly ever the case that the bodies whose remains are unearthed prove to be those of the original proprietors. [illustration: 242.jpg valley of the tomb of the kings] [illustration: 242-text.jpg] the gods and legends of chaldæa had penetrated to the countries of amauru and canaan, together with the language of the conquerors and their system of writing: the stories of adapa�s struggles against the south-west wind, or of the incidents which forced irishkigal, queen of the dead, to wed nergal, were accustomed to be read at the courts of syrian princes. chaldæan theology, therefore, must have exercised influence on individual syrians and on their belief; but although we are forced to allow the existence of such influence, we cannot define precisely the effects produced by it. only on the coast and in the phoenician cities do the local religions seem to have become formulated at a fairly early date, and crystallised under pressure of this influence into cosmogonie theories. the baalim and astartês reigned there as on the banks of the jordan or orontes, and in each town baal was �the most high,� master of heaven and eternity, creator of everything which exists, though the character of his creating acts was variously defined according to time and place. some regarded him as the personification of justice, sydyk, who established the universe with the help of eight indefatigable cabiri. others held the whole world to be the work of a divine family, whose successive generations gave birth to the various elements. the storm-wind, colpias, wedded to chaos, had begotten two mortals, ulom (time) and kadmôn (the first-born), and these in their turn engendered qên and qênath, who dwelt in phoenicia: then came a drought, and they lifted up their heads to the sun, imploring him, as lord of the heavens (_baalsamîn_), to put an end to their woes. at tyre it was thought that chaos existed at the beginning, but chaos of a dark and troubled nature, over which a breath (_rûakh_) floated without affecting it; �and this chaos had no ending, and it was thus for centuries and centuries.--then the breath became enamoured of its own principles, and brought about a change in itself, and this change was called desire:--now desire was the principle which created all things, and the breath knew not its own creation.--the breath and chaos, therefore, became united, and mot the clay was born, and from this clay sprang all the seed of creation, and mot was the father of all things; now mot was like an egg in shape.--and the sun, the moon, the stars, the great planets, shone forth.* there were living beings devoid of intelligence, and from these living beings came intelligent beings, who were called _zophesamîn_, or �watchers of the heavens.�now the thunder-claps in the war of separating elements awoke these intelligent beings as it were from a sleep, and then the males and the females began to stir themselves and to seek one another on the land and in the sea.� * mot, the clay formed by the corruption of earth and water, is probably a phoenician form of a word which means _water_ in the semitic languages. cf. the egyptian theory, according to which the clay, heated by the sun, was supposed to have given birth to animated beings; this same clay modelled by khnûmû into the form of an egg was supposed to have produced the heavens and the earth. a scholar of the roman epoch, philo of byblos, using as a basis some old documents hidden away in the sanctuaries, which had apparently been classified by sanchoniathon, a priest long before his time, has handed these theories of the cosmogony down to us: after he has explained how the world was brought out of chaos, he gives a brief summary of the dawn of civilization in phoenicia and the legendary period in its history. no doubt he interprets the writings from which he compiled his work in accordance with the spirit of his time: he has none the less preserved their substance more or less faithfully. beneath the veneer of abstraction with which the greek tongue and mind have overlaid the fragment thus quoted, we discern that groundwork of barbaric ideas which is to be met with in most oriental theologies, whether egyptian or babylonian. at first we have a black mysterious chaos, stagnating in eternal waters, the primordial nû or apsû; then the slime which precipitates in this chaos and clots into the form of an egg, like the mud of the nile under the hand? of khnûmû; then the hatching forth of living organisms and indolent generations of barely conscious creatures, such as the lakhmû, the anshar, and the illinu of chaldæan speculation; finally the abrupt appearance of intelligent beings. [illustration: 246.jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. the phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the mediterranean, with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of chaos which differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it presented itself as something silent and motionless: they imagined it as swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring tempest, at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths, and in fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm. no sooner had the earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole family of the north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to civilized order. it was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring race should trace its descent from the winds. in phoenicia the sea is everything: of land there is but just enough to furnish a site for a score of towns, with their surrounding belt of gardens. mount lebanon, with its impenetrable forests, isolated it almost entirely from coele-syria, and acted as the eastward boundary of the long narrow quadrangle hemmed in between the mountains and the rocky shore of the sea. at frequent intervals, spurs run out at right angles from the principal chain, forming steep headlands on the sea-front: these cut up the country, small to begin with, into five or six still smaller provinces, each one of which possessed from time immemorial its own independent cities, its own religion, and its own national history. to the north were the zahi, a race half sailors, half husbandmen, rich, brave, and turbulent, ever ready to give battle to their neighbours, or rebel against an alien master, be he who he might. arvad,* which was used by them as a sort of stronghold or sanctuary, was huddled together on an island some two miles from the coast: it was only about a thousand yards in circumference, and the houses, as though to make up for the limited space available for their foundations, rose to a height of five stories. an astartê reigned there, as also a sea-baal, half man, half fish, but not a trace of a temple or royal palace is now to be found.** * the name arvad was identified in the egyptian inscriptions by birch, who, with hincks, at first saw in the name a reference to the peoples of ararat; birch�s identification, is now accepted by all egyptologists. the name is written aruada or arada in the tel el-amarna tablets. ** the arvad astartê had been identified by the egyptians with their goddess bastît. the sea-baal, who has been connected by some with dagon of askalon, is represented on the earliest arvadian coins. he has a fish-like tail, the body and bearded head of a man, with an assyrian headdress; on his breast we sometimes find a circular opening which seems to show the entrails. the whole island was surrounded by a stone wall, built on the outermost ledges of the rocks, which were levelled to form its foundation. the courses of the masonry were irregular, laid without cement or mortar of any kind. this bold piece of engineering served the double purpose of sea-wall and rampart, and was thus fitted to withstand alike the onset of hostile fleets and the surges of the mediterranean.* * the antiquity of the wall of arvad, recognised by travellers of the last century, is now universally admitted by all archæologists. [illustration: 248.jpg] there was no potable water on the island, and for drinking purposes the inhabitants were obliged to rely on the fall of rain, which they stored in cisterns--still in use among their descendants. in the event of prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up in mid-channel. their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which was fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring; the fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell, and rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated by salt water.* * renan tells us that �m. gaillardot, when crossing from the island to the mainland, noticed a spring of sweet water bubbling up from the bottom of the sea.... thomson and walpole noticed the same spring or similar springs a little to the north of tortosa.� [illustration: 249.jpg page image] the harbour opened to the east, facing the mainland: it was divided into two basins by a stone jetty, and was doubtless insufficient for the sea-traffic, but this was the less felt inasmuch as there was a safe anchorage outside it--the best, perhaps, to be found in these waters. opposite to arvad, on an almost continuous line of coast some ten or twelve miles in length, towns and villages occurred at short intervals, such as marath, antarados, enhydra, and karnê, into which the surplus population of the island overflowed. karnê possessed a harbour, and would have been a dangerous neighbour to the arvadians had they themselves not occupied and carefully fortified it.* * marath, now amrît, possesses some ancient ruins which have been described by renan. antarados, which prior to the græco-roman era was a place of no importance, occupies the site of tortosa. enhydra is not known, and karnê has been replaced by karnûn to the north of tortosa. none of the �neighbours of arados� are mentioned by name in the assyrian texts; but w. max müller has demonstrated that the egyptian form _aratût_ or _aratiût_ corresponds with a semitic plural _arvadôt_, and consequently refers not only to arad itself, but also to the fortified cities and towns which formed its continental suburbs. the cities of the dead lay close together in the background, on the slope of the nearest chain of hills; still further back lay a plain celebrated for its fertility and the luxuriance of its verdure: lebanon, with its wooded peaks, was shut in on the north and south, but on the east the mountain sloped downwards almost to the sea-level, furnishing a pass through which ran the road which joined the great military highway not far from qodshu. the influence of arvad penetrated by means of this pass into the valley of the orontes, and is believed to have gradually extended as far as hamath itself--in other words, over the whole of zahi. for the most part, however, its rule was confined to the coast between g-abala and the nahr el-kebîr; simyra at one time acknowledged its suzerainty, at another became a self-supporting and independent state, strong enough to compel the respect of its neighbours.* beyond the orontes, the coast curves abruptly inward towards the west, and a group of wind-swept hills ending in a promontory called phaniel,** the reputed scene of a divine manifestation, marked the extreme limit of arabian influence to the north, if, indeed, it ever reached so far. * simyra is the modern surnrah, near the nahr el-kebîr. ** the name has only come down to us under its greek form, but its original form, phaniel or penûel, is easily arrived at from the analogous name used in canaan to indicate localities where there had been a theophany. renan questions whether phaniel ought not to be taken in the same sense as the pnê-baal of the carthaginian inscriptions, and applied to a goddess to whom the promontory had been dedicated; he also suggests that the modern name _cap madonne_ may be a kind of echo of the title _rabbath_ borne by this goddess from the earliest times. half a dozen obscure cities flourished here, arka,* siani,** mahallat, kaiz, maîza, and botrys,*** some of them on the seaboard, others inland on the bend of some minor stream. botrys,**** the last of the six, barred the roads which cross the phaniel headland, and commanded the entrance to the holy ground where byblos and berytus celebrated each year the amorous mysteries of adonis. * arka is perhaps referred to in the tablets of tel el amarna under the form irkata or irkat; it also appears in the bible (gen. x. 17) and in the assyrian texts. it is the cassarea of classical geographers, which has now resumed its old phoenician name of tell-arka. ** sianu or siani is mentioned in the assyrian texts and in the bible; strabo knew it under the name of sinna, and a village near arka was called sin or syn as late as the xvth century. *** according to the assyrian inscriptions, these were the names of the three towns which formed the tripolis of græco-roman times. **** botrys is the hellenized form of the name bozruna or bozrun, which appears on the tablets of tel el-amarna; the modern name, butrun or batrun, preserves the final letter which the greeks had dropped. gublu, or--as the greeks named it--byblos,* prided itself on being the most ancient city in the world. the god el had founded it at the dawning of time, on the flank of a hill which is visible from some distance out at sea. a small bay, now filled up, made it an important shipping centre. the temple stood on the top of the hill, a few fragments of its walls still serving to mark the site; it was, perhaps, identical with that of which we find the plan engraved on certain imperial coins.** * _gublu_ or _gubli_ is the pronunciation indicated for this name in the tel el-amarna tablets; the egyptians transcribed it _kupuna_ or _kupna_ by substituting _n_ for _l_. the greek name byblos was obtained from gublu by substituting a _b_ for the _g_. ** renan carried out excavations in the hill of kassubah which brought to light some remains of a græco-roman temple: he puts forward, subject to correction, the hypothesis which i have adopted above. two flights of steps led up to it from the lower quarters of the town, one of which gave access to a chapel in the greek style, surmounted by a triangular pediment, and dating, at the earliest, from the time of the seleucides; the other terminated in a long colonnade, belonging to the same period, added as a new façade to an earlier building, apparently in order to bring it abreast of more modern requirements. [illustration: 252.jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. the sanctuary which stands hidden behind this incongruous veneer is, as represented on the coins, in a very archaic style, and is by no means wanting in originality or dignity. it consists of a vast rectangular court surrounded by cloisters. at the point where lines drawn from the centres of the two doors seem to cross one another stands a conical stone mounted on a cube of masonry, which is the beth-el animated by the spirit of the god: an open-work balustrade surrounds and protects it from the touch of the profane. the building was perhaps not earlier than the assyrian or persian era, but in its general plan it evidently reproduced the arrangements of some former edifice.* * the author of the _de deâ syrâ_ classed the temple of byblos among the phoenician temples of the old order, which were almost as ancient as the temples of egypt, and it is probable that from the egyptian epoch onwards the plan of this temple must have been that shown on the coins; the cloister arcades ought, however, to be represented by pillars or by columns supporting architraves, and the fact of their presence leads me to the conclusion that the temple did not exist in the form known to us at a date earlier than the last assyrian period. at an early time el was spoken of as the first king of g-ablu in the same manner as each one of his egyptian fellow-gods had been in their several nomes, and the story of his exploits formed the inevitable prelude to the beginning of human history. grandson of eliûn who had brought chaos into order, son of heaven and earth, he dispossessed, vanquished, and mutilated his father, and conquered the most distant regions one after another--the countries beyond the euphrates, libya, asia minor and greece: one year, when the plague was ravaging his empire, he burnt his own son on the altar as an expiatory victim, and from that time forward the priests took advantage of his example to demand the sacrifice of children in moments of public danger or calamity. [illustration: 253.jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. he was represented as a man with two faces, whose eyes opened and shut in an eternal alternation of vigilance and repose: six wings grew from his shoulders, and spread fan-like around him. he was the incarnation of time, which destroys all things in its rapid flight; and of the summer sun, cruel and fateful, which eats up the green grass and parches the fields. an astartê reigned with him over byblos--baalat-gublu, his own sister; like him, the child of earth and heaven. in one of her aspects she was identified with the moon, the personification of coldness and chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was represented with the crescent or cow-horns of the egyptian hâthor; but in her other aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in whom the greeks recognised the popular concept of aphroditê. tradition tells us how, one spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the youthful god known by the title of _adoni_, or �my lord.� we scarce know what to make of the origin of adonis, and of the legends which treat him as a hero--the representation of him as the incestuous offspring of a certain king kinyras and his own daughter myrrha is a comparatively recent element grafted on the original myth; at any rate, the happiness of two lovers had lasted but a few short weeks when a sudden end was put to it by the tusks of a monstrous wild boar. baalat-gublu wept over her lover�s body and buried it; then her grief triumphed over death, and adonis, ransomed by her tears, rose from the tomb, his love no whit less passionate than it had been before the catastrophe. this is nothing else than the chaldæan legend of ishtar and dûmûzi presented in a form more fully symbolical of the yearly marriage of earth and heaven. like the lady of byblos at her master�s approach, earth is thrilled by the first breath of spring, and abandons herself without shame to the caresses of heaven: she welcomes him to her arms, is fructified by him, and pours forth the abundance of her flowers and fruits. them comes summer and kills the spring: earth is burnt up and withers, she strips herself of her ornaments, and her fruitfulness departs till the gloom and icy numbness of winter have passed away. each year the cycle of the seasons brings back with it the same joy, the same despair, into the life of the world; each year baalat falls in love with her adonis and loses him, only to bring him back to life and lose him again in the coming year. the whole neighbourhood of byblos, and that part of mount lebanon in which it lies, were steeped in memories of this legend from the very earliest times. we know the precise spot where the goddess first caught sight of her lover, where she unveiled herself before him, and where at the last she buried his mutilated body, and chanted her lament for the dead. a river which flows southward not far off was called the adonis, and the valley watered by it was supposed to have been the scene of this tragic idyll. the adonis rises near aphaka,* at the base of a narrow amphitheatre, issuing from the entrance of an irregular grotto, the natural shape of which had, at some remote period, been altered by the hand of man; in three cascades it bounds into a sort of circular basin, where it gathers to itself the waters of the neighbouring springs, then it dashes onwards under the single arch of a roman bridge, and descends in a series of waterfalls to the level of the valley below. * aphaka means �spring� in syriac. the site of the temple and town of aphaka, where a temple of aphroditê and adonis still stood in the time of the emperor julian, had long been identified either with fakra, or with el-yamuni. seetzen was the first to place it at el-afka, and his proposed identification has been amply confirmed by the researches of penan. [illustration: 256.jpg valley of the adonis] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. [illustration: 256a.jpg the amphitheatre of aphaka and the source of the nahh-ibrahim] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. the temple rises opposite the source of the stream on an artificial mound, a meteorite fallen from heaven having attracted the attention of the faithful to the spot. the mountain falls abruptly away, its summit presenting a red and bare appearance, owing to the alternate action of summer sun and winter frost. as the slopes approach the valley they become clothed with a garb of wild vegetation, which bursts forth from every fissure, and finds a foothold on every projecting rock: the base of the mountain is hidden in a tangled mass of glowing green, which the moist yet sunny spring calls forth in abundance whenever the slopes are not too steep to retain a shallow layer of nourishing mould. it would be hard to find, even among the most picturesque spots of europe, a landscape in which wildness and beauty are more happily combined, or where the mildness of the air and sparkling coolness of the streams offer a more perfect setting for the ceremonies attending the worship of astartê.* * the temple had been rebuilt during the roman period, as were nearly all the temples of this region, upon the site of a more ancient structure; this was probably the edifice which the author of _de deâ syrâ_ considered to be the temple of venus, built by kinyras within a day�s journey of byblos in the lebanon. in the basin of the river and of the torrents by which it is fed, there appears a succession of charming and romantic scenes--gaping chasms with precipitous ochre-coloured walls; narrow fields laid out in terraces on the slopes, or stretching in emerald strips along the ruddy river-banks; orchards thick with almond and walnut trees; sacred grottoes, into which the priestesses, seated at the corner of the roads, endeavour to draw the pilgrims as they proceed on their way to make their prayers to the goddess;* sanctuaries and mausolea of adonis at yanukh, on the table-land of mashnaka, and on the heights of ghineh. according to the common belief, the actual tomb of adonis was to be found at byblos itself,** where the people were accustomed to assemble twice a year to keep his festivals, which lasted for several days together. * renan points out at byblos the existence of one of these caverns which gave shelter to the _kedeshoth_. many of the caves met with in the valley of the nahr-ibrahîm have doubtless served for the same purpose, although their walls contain no marks of the cult. ** melito placed it, however, near aphaka, and, indeed, there must have been as many different traditions on the subject as there were celebrated sanctuaries. at the summer solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open the divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring, the priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a corpse made ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the gardens of adonis--terra-cotta pots filled with earth in which wheat and barley, lettuce and fennel, were sown. these were set out at the door of each house, or in the courts of the temple, where the sprouting plants had to endure the scorching effect of the sun, and soon withered away. for several days troops of women and young girls, with their heads dishevelled or shorn, their garments in rags, their faces torn with their nails, their breasts and arms scarified with knives, went about over hill and dale in search of their idol, giving utterance to cries of despair, and to endless appeals: �ah, lord! ah, lord! what is become of thy beauty.� once having found the image, they brought it to the feet of the goddess, washed it while displaying its wound, anointed it with sweet-smelling unguents, wrapped it in a linen and woollen shroud, placed it on a catafalque, and, after expressing around the bier their feelings of desolation, according to the rites observed at fanerais, placed it solemnly in the tomb.* * theocritus has described in his fifth idyll the laying out and burial of adonis as it was practised at alexandria in egypt in the iiird century before our era. the close and dreary summer passes away. with the first days of september the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing away the ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents into the hollows of the valleys. the adonis river begins to swell with the ruddy waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with it. the wind from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast, and forces it to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a kind of crimson fringe.* this was the blood of the hero, and the sight of this precious stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who donned once more their weeds of mourning until the priests were able to announce to them that, by virtue of their supplications, adonis was brought back from the shades into new life. shouts of joy immediately broke forth, and the people who had lately sympathized with the mourning goddess in her tears and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in expressions of mad and amorous delight. wives and virgins--all the women who had refused during the week of mourning to make a sacrifice of their hair--were obliged to atone for this fault by putting themselves at the disposal of the strangers whom the festival had brought together, the reward of their service becoming the property of the sacred treasury.** * the same phenomenon occurs in spring. maundrell saw it on march 17, and renan in the first days of february. ** a similar usage was found in later times in the countries colonised by or subjected to the influence of the phoenicians, especially in cyprus. berytus shared with byblos the glory of having had el for its founder.* the road which connects these two cities makes a lengthy detour in its course along the coast, having to cross numberless ravines and rocky summits: before reaching palai-byblos, it passes over a headland by a series of steps cut into the rock, forming a kind of �ladder� similar to that which is encountered lower down, between acre and the plains of tyre. * the name berytus was found by hincks in the egyptian texts under the form. bîrutu, beîrutu; it occurs frequently in the tel el-amarna tablets. the river lykos runs like a kind of natural fosse along the base of this steep headland. it forms at the present time a torrent, fed by the melting snows of mount sannin, and is entirely unnavigable. it was better circumstanced formerly in this respect, and even in the early years of the boman conquest, sailors from arvad (arados) were accustomed to sail up it as far as one of the passes of the lower lebanon, leading into cole-syria. berytus was installed at the base of a great headland which stands out boldly into the sea, and forms the most striking promontory to be met with in these regions from carmel to the vicinity of arvad. the port is nothing but an open creek with a petty roadstead, but it has the advantage of a good supply of fresh water, which pours down from the numerous springs to which it is indebted for its name.* according to ancient legends, it was given by el to one of his offspring called poseidon by the greeks. * the name beyrut has been often derived from a phconician word signifying _cypress_, and which may have been applied to the pine tree. the phoenicians themselves derived it from bîr, �wells.� adonis desired to take possession of it, but was frustrated in the attempt, and the maritime baal secured the permanence of his rule by marrying one of his sisters--the baalat-beyrut who is represented as a nymph on græco-roman coins.* the rule of the city extended as far as the banks of the tamur, and an old legend narrates that its patron fought in ancient times with the deity of that river, hurling stones at him to prevent his becoming master of the land to the north. the bar formed of shingle and the dunes which contract the entrance were regarded as evidences of this conflict.** * the poet nonnus has preserved a highly embellished account of this rivalry, where adonis is called dionysos. ** the original name appears to have been tamur, tamyr, from a word signifying �palm� in the phoenician language. the myth of the conflict between poseidon and the god of the river, a baal-demarous, has been explained by renan, who accepts the identification of the river-deity with baal thamar, already mentioned by movers. beyond the southern bank of the river, sidon sits enthroned as �the firstborn of canaan.� in spite of this ambitious title it was at first nothing but a poor fishing village founded by bel, the agenor of the greeks, on the southern slope of a spit of land which juts out obliquely towards the south-west.* it grew from year to year, spreading out over the plain, and became at length one of the most prosperous of the chief cities of the country--a �mother� in phoenicia.** * sidon is called �the firstborn of canaan� in genesis: the name means a fishing-place, as the classical authors already knew--�nam piscem phonices _sidôn_ appellant.� ** in the coins of classic times it is called �sidon, the mother--_om_--of kambe, hippo, citium, and tyre.� the port, once so celebrated, is shut in by three chains of half-sunken reefs, which, running out from the northern end of the peninsula, continue parallel to the coast for some hundreds of yards: narrow passages in these reefs afford access to the harbour; one small island, which is always above water, occupies the centre of this natural dyke of rocks, and furnishes a site for a maritime quarter opposite to the continental city.* the necropolis on the mainland extends to the east and north, and consists of an irregular series of excavations made in a low line of limestone cliffs which must have been lashed by the waves of the mediterranean long prior to the beginning of history. these tombs are crowded closely together, ramifying into an inextricable maze, and are separated from each other by such thin walls that one expects every moment to see them give way, and bury the visitors in the ruin. many date back to a very early period, while all of them have been re-worked and re-appropriated over and over again. the latest occupiers were contemporaries of the macedonian kings or the roman cæsars. space was limited and costly in this region of the dead: the sidonians made the best use they could of the tombs, burying in them again and again, as the egyptians were accustomed to do in their cemeteries at thebes and memphis. the surrounding plain is watered by the �pleasant bostrênos,� and is covered with gardens which are reckoned to be the most beautiful in all syria--at least after those of damascus: their praises were sung even in ancient days, and they had then earned for the city the epithet of �the flowery sidon.� ** * the only description of the port which we possess is that in the romance of olitophon and leucippus by achilles tatius. ** the bostrênos, which is perhaps to be recognised under the form borinos in the periplus of scylax, is the modern nahr el-awaly. here, also, an astartê ruled over the destinies of the people, but a chaste and immaculate astartê, a self-restrained and warlike virgin, sometimes identified with the moon, sometimes with the pale and frigid morning star.* in addition to this goddess, the inhabitants worshipped a baal-sidon, and other divinities of milder character--an astartê shem-baal, wife of the supreme baal, and eshmun, a god of medicine--each of whom had his own particular temple either in the town itself or in some neighbouring village in the mountain. baal delighted in travel, and was accustomed to be drawn in a chariot through the valleys of phoenicia in order to receive the prayers and offerings of his devotees. the immodest astartê, excluded, it would seem, from the official religion, had her claims acknowledged in the cult offered to her by the people, but she became the subject of no poetic or dolorous legend like her namesake at byblos, and there was no attempt to disguise her innately coarse character by throwing over it a garb of sentiment. she possessed in the suburbs her chapels and grottoes, hollowed out in the hillsides, where she was served by the usual crowd of _ephébæ_ and sacred courtesans. some half-dozen towns or fortified villages, such as bitzîti,** the lesser sidon, and sarepta, were scattered along the shore, or on the lowest slopes of the lebanon. * astartê is represented in the bible as the goddess of the sidonians, and she is in fact the object of the invocations addressed to the mistress deity in the sidonian inscriptions, the patroness of the town. kings and queens were her priests and priestesses respectively. ** bitzîti is not mentioned except in the assyrian texts, and has been identified with the modern region ait ez-zeîtûn to the south-east of sidon. it is very probably the elaia of philo of byblos, the biais of dionysios periegetes, which renan is inclined to identify with heldua, khan-khaldi, by substituting eldis as a correction. sidonian territory reached its limit at the cape of sarepta, where the high-lands again meet the sea at the boundary of one of those basins into which phoenicia is divided. passing beyond this cape, we come first upon a tyrian outpost, the town of birds;* then upon the village of nazana** with its river of the same name; beyond this upon a plain hemmed in by low hills, cultivated to their summits; then on tombs and gardens in the suburbs of autu;*** and, further still, to a fleet of boats moored at a short distance from the shore, where a group of reefs and islands furnishes at one and the same time a site for the houses and temples of tyre, and a protection from its foes. * the phoenician name of ornithônpolis is unknown to us: the town is often mentioned by the geographers of classic times, but with certain differences, some placing it to the north and others to the south of sarepta. it was near to the site of adlun, the adnonum of the latin itineraries, if it was not actually the same place. ** nazana was both the name of the place and the river, as kasimîyeh and khan kasimîyeh, near the same locality, are to-day. *** autu was identified by brugsch with avatha, which is probably el-awwâtîn, on the hill facing tyre. max müller, who reads the word as authu, ozu, prefers the uru or ushu of the assyrian texts. it was already an ancient town at the beginning of the egyptian conquest. as in other places of ancient date, the inhabitants rejoiced in stories of the origin of things in which the city figured as the most venerable in the world. after the period of the creating gods, there followed immediately, according to the current legends, two or three generations of minor deities--heroes of light and flame--who had learned how to subdue fire and turn it to their needs; then a race of giants, associated with the giant peaks of kasios, lebanon, hermon, and brathy;* after which were born two male children--twins: samem-rum, the lord of the supernal heaven, and usôos, the hunter. human beings at this time lived a savage life, wandering through the woods, and given up to shameful vices. * the identification of the peak of brathy is uncertain. the name has been associated with tabor: since it exactly recalls the name of the cypress and of berytus, it would be more prudent, perhaps, to look for the name in that of one of the peaks of the lebanon near the latter town. [illustration: 267.jpg the ambrosian rocks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. samemrum took up his abode among them in that region which became in later times the tyrian coast, and showed them how to build huts, papyrus, or other reeds: usôos in the mean time pursued the avocation of a hunter of wild beasts, living upon their flesh and clothing himself with their skins. a conflict at length broke out between the two brothers, the inevitable result of rivalry between the ever-wandering hunter and the husbandman attached to the soil. usôos succeeded in holding his own till the day when fire and wind took the part of his enemy against him.* the trees, shaken and made to rub against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction, and the forest was set on fire. usôos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled it of its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea, bearing him, the first of his race, with it. * the text simply states the material facts, the tempest and the fire: the general movement of the narrative seems to prove that the intervention of these elements is an episode in the quarrel between the two brothers--that in which usôos is forced to fly from the region civilized by samemrum. landing on one of the islands, he set up two menhirs, dedicating them to fire and wind that he might thenceforward gain their favour. he poured out at their base the blood of animals he had slaughtered, and after his death, his companions continued to perform the rites which he had inaugurated. [illustration: 268.jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. the town which he had begun to build on the sea-girt isle was called tyre, the �rock,� and the two rough stones which he had set up remained for a long time as a sort of talisman, bringing good luck to its inhabitants. it was asserted of old that the island had not always been fixed, but that it rose and fell, with the waves like a raft. two peaks looked down upon it--the �ambrosian rocks�--between which grew the olive tree of astartê, sheltered by a curtain of flame from external danger. an eagle perched thereon watched over a viper coiled round the trunk: the whole island would cease to float as soon as a mortal should succeed in sacrificing the bird in honour of the gods. usôos, the herakles, destroyer of monsters, taught the people of the coast how to build boats, and how to manage them; he then made for the island and disembarked: the bird offered himself spontaneously to his knife, and as soon as its blood had moistened the earth, tyre rooted itself fixedly opposite the mainland. coins of the roman period represent the chief elements in this legend; sometimes the eagle and olive tree, sometimes the olive tree and the stelo, and sometimes the two stelæ only. from this time forward the gods never ceased to reside on the holy island; astartê herself was born there, and one of the temples there showed to the admiration of the faithful a fallen star--an aerolite which she had brought back from one of her journeys. [illustration: 269.jpg tyre and its suburbs on the mainland] baal was called the melkarth. king of the city, and the greeks after» wards identified him with their herakles. his worship was of a severe and exacting character: a fire burned perpetually in his sanctuary; his priests, like those of the egyptians, had their heads shaved; they wore garments of spotless white linen, held pork in abomination, and refused permission to married women to approach the altars.* * the worship of melkarth at gados (cadiz) and the functions of his priests are described by silius italicus: as gades was a tyrian colony, it has been naturally assumed that the main features of the religion of tyre were reproduced there, and silius�s account of the melkarth of gades thus applies to his namesake of the mother city. festivals, similar to those of adonis at byblos, were held in his honour twice a year: in the summer, when the sun burnt up the earth with his glowing heat, he offered himself as an expiatory victim to the solar orb, giving himself to the flames in order to obtain some mitigation of the severity of the sky;* once the winter had brought with it a refreshing coolness, he came back to life again, and his return was celebrated with great joy. his temple stood in a prominent place on the largest of the islands furthest away from the mainland. it served to remind the people of the remoteness of their origin, for the priests relegated its foundation almost to the period of the arrival of the phoenicians on the shores of the mediterranean. the town had no supply of fresh water, and there was no submarine spring like that of arvad to provide a resource in time of necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore, to resort to springs which were fortunately to be found everywhere on the hillsides of the mainland. the waters of the well of eas el-aîn had been led down to the shore and dammed up there, so that boats could procure a ready supply from this source in time of peace: in time of war the inhabitants of tyre had to trust to the cisterns in which they had collected the rains that fell at certain seasons.** * the festival commemorating his death by fire was celebrated at tyre, where his tomb was shown, and in the greater number of the tyrian colonies. ** abisharri (abimilki), king of tyre, confesses to the pharaoh amenôthes iii. that in case of a siege his town would neither have water nor wood. aqueducts and conduits of water are spoken of by menander as existing in the time of shalmaneser; all modern historians agree in attributing their construction to a very remote antiquity. the strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the nile at several points of its course through middle egypt, but it was as effective as a broader channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have a chance of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a lengthened siege. * according to the writers who were contemporary with alexander, the strait was 4 stadia wide (nearly 1/2 mile), or 500 paces (about 3/8 mile), at the period when the macedonians undertook the siege of the town; the author followed by pliny says 700 paces, possibly over--mile wide. from the observations of poulain de bossay, renan thinks the space between the island and the mainland might be nearly a mile in width, but we should perhaps do well to reduce this higher figure and adopt one agreeing better with the statements of diodorus and quintus curtius. like the coast region opposite arvad, the shore which faced tyre, lying between the mouth of the litany and ras el-aîn, was an actual suburb of the city itself--with its gardens, its cultivated fields, its cemeteries, its villas, and its fortifications. here the inhabitants of the island were accustomed to bury their dead, and hither they repaired for refreshment during the heat of the summer. to the north the little town of mahalliba, on the southern bank of the litâny, and almost hidden from view by a turn in the hills, commanded the approaches to the bekaa, and the high-road to coele-syria.* to the south, at ras el-aîn, old tyre (palastyrus) looked down upon the route leading into galilee by way of the mountains.** * mahalliba is the present khurbet-mahallib. ** palrotyrus has often been considered as a tyre on the mainland of greater antiquity than the town of the same name on the island; it is now generally admitted that it was merely an outpost, which is conjecturally placed by most scholars in the neighbourhood of ras el-aîn. eastwards autu commanded the landing-places on the shore, and served to protect the reservoirs; it lay under the shadow of a rock, on which was built, facing the insular temple of melkarth, protector of mariners, a sanctuary of almost equal antiquity dedicated to his namesake of the mainland.* the latter divinity was probably the representative of the legendary samemrum, who had built his village on the coast, while usôos had founded his on the ocean. he was the baalsamîm of starry tunic, lord of heaven and king of the sun. * if the name has been preserved, as i believe it to be, in that of el-awwâtîn, the town must be that whose ruins we find at the foot of tell-mashûk, and which are often mistaken for those of palastyrus. the temple on the summit of the tell was probably that of heracles astrochitôn mentioned by nonnus. as was customary, a popular astartê was associated with these deities of high degree, and tradition asserted that melkarth purchased her favour by the gift of the first robe of tyrian purple which was ever dyed. priestesses of the goddess had dwellings in all parts of the plain, and in several places the caves are still pointed out where they entertained the devotees of the goddess. behind autu the ground rises abruptly, and along the face of the escarpment, half hidden by trees and brushwood, are the remains of the most important of the tyrian burying-places, consisting of half-filled-up pits, isolated caves, and dark galleries, where whole families lie together in their last sleep. in some spots the chalky mass has been literally honeycombed by the quarrying gravedigger, and regular lines of chambers follow one another in the direction of the strata, after the fashion of the rock-cut tombs of upper egypt. they present a bare and dismal appearance both within and without. the entrances are narrow and arched, the ceilings low, the walls bare and colourless, unrelieved by moulding, picture, or inscription. at one place only, near the modern village of hanaweh, a few groups of figures and coarsely cut stelae are to be found, indicating, it would seem, the burying-place of some chief of very early times. [illustration: 273.jpg the sculptured rocks of hanaweh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by lortet. these figures run in parallel lines along the rocky sides of a wild ravine. they vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet in height, the bodies being represented by rectangular pilasters, sometimes merely rough-hewn, at others grooved with curved lines to suggest the folds of the asiatic garments; the head is carved full face, though the eyes are given in profile, and the summary treatment of the modelling gives evidence of a certain skill. whether they are to be regarded as the product of a primitive amorite art or of a school of phoenician craftsmen, we are unable to determine. in the time of their prosperity the tyrians certainly pushed their frontier as far as this region. the wind-swept but fertile country lying among the ramifications of the lowest spurs of the lebanon bears to this day innumerable traces of their indefatigable industry--remains of dwellings, conduits and watercourses, cisterns, pits, millstones and vintage-troughs, are scattered over the fields, interspersed with oil and wine presses. the phoenicians took naturally to agriculture, and carried it to such a high state of perfection as to make it an actual science, to which the neighbouring peoples of the mediterranean were glad to accommodate their modes of culture in later times.* * their taste for agriculture, and the comparative perfection of their modes of culture, are proved by the greatness of the remains still to be observed: �the phoenicians constructed a winepress, a trough, to last for ever.� their colonists at carthage carried with them the same clever methods, and the romans borrowed many excellent things in the way of agriculture from carthaginian books, especially from those of mago. among no other people was the art of irrigation so successfully practised, and from such a narrow strip of territory as belonged to them no other cultivators could have gathered such abundant harvests of wheat and barley, and such supplies of grapes, olives, and other fruits. from arvad to tyre, and even beyond it, the littoral region and the central parts of the valleys presented a long ribbon of verdure of varying breadth, where fields of corn were blended with gardens and orchards and shady woods. the whole region was independent and self-supporting, the inhabitants having no need to address themselves to their neighbours in the interior, or to send their children to seek their fortune in distant lands. to insure prosperity, nothing was needed but a slight exercise of labour and freedom from the devastating influence of war. the position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and from the conflicts which laid waste the rest of syria. along almost the entire eastern border of the country the lebanon was a great wall of defence running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity by the additional protection of the rivers nahr el-kebîr and litany. its slopes were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees and brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and snow. hunters� or shepherds� paths led here and there in tortuous courses from one side of the mountain to the other. near the middle of the country two roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications between the littoral and the plain of the interior. they branched off on either side from the central road in the neighbourhood of tabakhi, south of qodshu, and served the needs of the wooded province of magara.* this region was inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the egyptians called at one time lamnana, the libanites,** at others shausu, using for them the same appellation as that which they bestowed upon the bedouin of the desert. * magara is mentioned in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. 1, and chabas has identified it with the plain of macra, which strabo places in syria, in the neighbourhood of eloutheros. ** the name lamnana is given in a picture of the campaigns of seti i. the roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of the wolves and hyamas which infested it, and even of those thick-maned lions known to asia at the time; and then proceeding in its course, crossed the ridge in the neighbourhood of the snow-peak called shaua, which is probably the sannîn of our times. while one of these roads, running north along the lake of yamuneh and through the gorge of akura, then proceeded along the adonis* to byblos, the other took a southern direction, and followed the nahr el-kelb to the sea. * this is the road pointed out by renan as the easiest but least known of those which cross the lebanon; the remains of an assyrian inscription graven on the rocks near aîn el asafîr show that it was employed from a very early date, and renan thought that it was used by the armies which came from the upper valley of the orontes. towards the mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of the river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for the passage of its waters: a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote date leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to the summit of the promontory. commerce followed these short and direct routes, but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, although they offered access into the very heart of phoenicia. invaders would encounter here, in fact, a little known and broken country, lending itself readily to surprises and ambuscades; and should they reach the foot of the lebanon range, they would find themselves entrapped in a region of slippery defiles, with steep paths at intervals cut into the rock, and almost inaccessible to chariots or horses, and so narrow in places that a handful of resolute men could have held them for a long time against whole battalions. the enemy preferred to make for the two natural breaches at the respective extremities of the line of defence, and for the two insular cities which flanked the approaches to them--tyre in the case of those coming from egypt, arvad and simyra for assailants from the euphrates. the arvadians, bellicose by nature, would offer strong resistance to the invader, and not permit themselves to be conquered without a brave struggle with the enemy, however powerful he might be.* when the disproportion of the forces which they could muster against the enemy convinced them of the folly of attempting an open conflict, their island-home offered them a refuge where they would be safe from any attacks. * thûtmosis iii. was obliged to enter on a campaign against arvad in the year xxix., in the year xxx., and probably twice in the following years. under amenôthes iii. and iv. we see that these people took part in all the intrigues directed against egypt; they were the allies of the khati against ramses ii. in the campaign of the year v. and later on we find them involved in most of the wars against assyria. sometimes the burning and pillaging of their property on the mainland might reduce them to throw themselves on the mercy of their foes, but such submission did not last long, and they welcomed the slightest occasion for regaining their liberty. conquered again and again on account of the smallness of their numbers, they were never discouraged by their reverses, and phoenicia owed all its military history for a long period to their prowess. the tyrians were of a more accommodating nature, and there is no evidence, at least during the early centuries of their existence, of the display of those obstinate and blind transports of bravery by which the arvadians were carried away.* * no campaign against tyre is mentioned in any of the egyptian annals: the expedition of thûtmosis iii. against senzauru was directed against a town of coele-syria mentioned in the tel el-amarna tablets with the orthography zinzar, the sizara-larissa of græco-roman times, the shaizar of the arab chronicles. on the contrary, the tel el-amarna tablets contain several passages which manifest the fidelity of tyre and its governors to the king of egypt. their foreign policy was reduced to a simple arithmetical question, which they discussed in the light of their industrial or commercial interests. as soon as they had learned from a short experience that a certain pharaoh had at his disposal armies against which they could offer no serious opposition, they at once surrendered to him, and thought only of obtaining the greatest profit from the vassalage to which they were condemned. the obligation to pay tribute did not appear to them so much in the light of a burthen or a sacrifice, as a means of purchasing the right to go to and fro freely in egypt, or in the countries subject to its influence. the commerce acquired by these privileges recouped them more than a hundredfold for all that their overlord demanded from them. the other cities of the coast--sidon, berytus, byblos--usually followed the example of tyre, whether from mercenary motives, or from their naturally pacific disposition, or from a sense of their impotence; and the same intelligent resignation with which, as we know, they accepted the supremacy of the great egyptian empire, was doubtless displayed in earlier centuries in their submission to the babylonians. their records show that they did not accept this state of things merely through cowardice or indolence, for they are represented as ready to rebel and shake off the yoke of their foreign master when they found it incompatible with their practical interests. but their resort to war was exceptional; they generally preferred to submit to the powers that be, and to accept from them as if on lease the strip of coast-line at the base of the lebanon, which served as a site for their warehouses and dockyards. thus they did not find the yoke of the stranger irksome--the sea opening up to them a realm of freedom and independence which compensated them for the limitations of both territory and liberty imposed upon them at home. the epoch which was marked by their first venture on the mediterranean, and the motives which led to it, were alike unknown to them. the gods had taught them navigation, and from the beginning of things they had taken to the sea as fishermen, or as explorers in search of new lands.* they were not driven by poverty to leave their continental abode, or inspired thereby with a zeal for distant cruises. they had at home sufficient corn and wine, oil and fruits, to meet all their needs, and even to administer to a life of luxury. and if they lacked cattle, the abundance of fish within their reach compensated for the absence of flesh-meat. * according to one of the cosmogonies of sanchoniathon, khusôr, who has been identified with hephsestos, was the inventor of the fishing-boat, and was the first among men and gods who taught navigation. according to another legend, melkarth showed the tyrians how to make a raft from the branches of a fig tree, while the construction of the first ships is elsewhere ascribed to the _cabiri_. nor was it the number of commodiously situated ports on their coast which induced them to become a seafaring people, for their harbours were badly protected for the most part, and offered no shelter when the wind set in from the north, the rugged shore presenting little resource against the wind and waves in its narrow and shallow havens. it was the nature of the country itself which contributed more than anything else to make them mariners. the precipitous mountain masses which separate one valley from another rendered communication between them difficult, while they served also as lurking-places for robbers. commerce endeavoured to follow, therefore, the sea-route in preference to the devious ways of this highwayman�s region, and it accomplished its purpose the more readily because the common occupation of sea-fishing had familiarised the people with every nook and corner on the coast. the continual wash of the surge had worn away the bases of the limestone cliffs, and the superincumbent masses tumbling down into the sea formed lines of rocks, hardly rising above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. it required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. the coasting trade was attracted from arvad successively to berytus, sidon, and tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. it was in full operation, doubtless, from the vith egyptian dynasty onwards, when the pharaohs no longer hesitated to embark troops at the mouth of the nile for speedy transmission to the provinces of southern syria, and it was by this coasting route that the tin and amber of the north succeeded in reaching the interior of egypt. the trade was originally, it would seem, in the hands of those mysterious kefâtiu of whom the name only was known in later times. when the phoenicians established themselves at the foot of the lebanon, they had probably only to take the place of their predecessors and to follow the beaten tracks which they had already made. we have every reason to believe that they took to a seafaring life soon after their arrival in the country, and that they adapted themselves and their civilization readily to the exigencies of a maritime career.* * connexion between phoenicia and greece was fully established at the outbreak of the egyptian wars, and we may safely assume their existence in the centuries immediately preceding the second millennium before our era. in their towns, as in most sea-ports, there was a considerable foreign element, both of slaves and freemen, but the egyptians confounded them all under one name, kefâtiu, whether they were cypriotes, asiatics, or europeans, or belonged to the true tyrian and sidonian race. the costume of the kafîti was similar to that worn by the people of the interior--the loin-cloth, with or without a long upper garment: while in tiring the hair they adopted certain refinements, specially a series of curls which the men arranged in the form of an aigrette above their foreheads. this motley collection of races was ruled over by an oligarchy of merchants and shipowners, whose functions were hereditary, and who usually paid homage to a single king, the representative of the tutelary god, and absolute master of the city.* * under the egyptian supremacy, the local princes did not assume the royal title in the despatches which they addressed to the kings of egypt, but styled themselves governors of their cities. the industries pursued in phoenicia were somewhat similar to those of other parts of syria; the stuffs, vases, and ornaments made at tyre and sidon could not be distinguished from those of hamath or of carchemish. [illustration 282.jpg one of the kafîti from the tomb of rakhmirî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured sketches by prisse d�avennes in the natural hist. museum. all manufactures bore the impress of babylonian influence, and their implements, weights, measures, and system of exchange were the same as those in use among the chaldæans. the products of the country were, however, not sufficient to freight the fleets which sailed from phoenicia every year bound for all parts of the known world, and additional supplies had to be regularly obtained from neighbouring peoples, who thus became used to pour into tyre and sidon the surplus of their manufactures, or of the natural wealth of their country. the phoenicians were also accustomed to send caravans into regions which they could not reach in their caracks, and to establish trading stations at the fords of rivers, or in the passes over mountain ranges. we know of the existence of such emporia at laish near the sources of the jordan, at thapsacus, and at nisibis, and they must have served the purpose of a series of posts on the great highways of the world. the settlements of the phoenicians always assumed the character of colonies, and however remote they might be from their fatherland, the colonists never lost the manners and customs of their native country. they collected together into their _okels_ or storehouses such wares and commodities as they could purchase in their new localities, and, transmitting them periodically to the coast, shipped them thence to all parts of the world. not only were they acquainted with every part of the mediterranean, but they had even made voyages beyond its limits. in the absence, however, of any specific records of their naval enterprise, the routes they followed must be a subject of conjecture. they were accustomed to relate that the gods, after having instructed them in the art of navigation, had shown them the way to the setting sun, and had led them by their example to make voyages even beyond the mouths of the ocean. el of byblos was the first to leave syria; he conquered greece and egypt, sicily and libya, civilizing their inhabitants, and laying the foundation of cities everywhere. the sidonian astartê, with her head surmounted by the horns of an ox, was the next to begin her wanderings over the inhabited earth. melkarth completed the task of the gods by discovering and subjugating those countries which had escaped the notice of his predecessors. hundreds of local traditions, to be found on all the shores of the mediterranean down to roman times, bore witness to the pervasive influence of the old canaanite colonisation. at cyprus, for instance, wo find traces of the cultus of kinyras, king of byblos and father of adonis; again, at crete, it is the daughter of a prince of sidon, buropa, who is carried off by zeus under the form of a bull; it was kadmos, sent forth to seek buropa, who visited cyprus, rhodes, and the cyclades before building thebes in boeotia and dying in the forests of illyria. in short, wherever the phoenicians had obtained a footing, their audacious activity made such an indelible impression upon the mind of the native inhabitants that they never forgot those vigorous thick-set men with pale faces and dark beards, and soft and specious speech, who appeared at intervals in their large and swift sailing vessels. they made their way cautiously along the coast, usually keeping in sight of land, making sail when the wind was favourable, or taking to the oars for days together when occasion demanded it, anchoring at night under the shelter of some headland, or in bad weather hauling their vessels up the beach until the morrow. they did not shrink when it was necessary from trusting themselves to the open sea, directing their course by the pole-star;* in this manner they often traversed long distances out of sight of land, and they succeeded in making in a short time voyages previously deemed long and costly. * the greeks for this reason called it phonikê, the phoenician star; ancient writers refer to the use which the phoenicians made of the pole-star to guide them in navigation. it is hard to say whether they were as much merchants as pirates--indeed, they hardly knew themselves--and their peaceful or warlike attitude towards vessels which they encountered on the seas, or towards the people whose countries they frequented, was probably determined by the circumstances of the moment.* if on arrival at a port they felt themselves no match for the natives, the instinct of the merchant prevailed, and that of the pirate was kept in the background. they landed peaceably, gained the good will of the native chief and his nobles by small presents, and spreading out their wares, contented themselves, if they could do no better, with the usual advantage obtained in an exchange of goods. * the manner in which the phoenicians plied their trade is strikingly described in the _odyssey_, in the part where eumaios relates how he was carried off by a sidonian vessel and sold as a slave: cf. the passage which mentions the ravages of the greeks on the coast of the delta. herodotus recalls the rape of io, daughter of inachos, by the phoenicians, who carried her and her companions into egypt; on the other hand, during one of their egyptian expeditions they had taken two priestesses from thebes, and had transported one of them to dodona, the other into libya. they were never in a hurry, and would remain in one spot until they had exhausted all the resources of the country, while they knew to a nicety how to display their goods attractively before the expected customer. their wares comprised weapons and ornaments for men, axes, swords, incised or damascened daggers with hilts of gold or ivory, bracelets, necklaces, amulets of all kinds, enamelled vases, glass-work, stuffs dyed purple or embroidered with gay colours. at times the natives, whose cupidity was excited by the exhibition of such valuables, would attempt to gain possession of them either by craft or by violence. they would kill the men who had landed, or attempt to surprise the vessel during the night. but more often it was the phoenicians who took advantage of the friendliness or the weakness of their hosts. [illustration: 286.jpg page image] they would turn treacherously upon the unarmed crowd when absorbed in the interest of buying and selling; robbing and killing the old men, they would make prisoners of the young and strong, the women and children, carrying them off to sell them in those markets where slaves were known to fetch the highest price. this was a recognised trade, but it exposed the phoenicians to the danger of reprisals, and made them objects of an undying hatred. when on these distant expeditions they were subject to trivial disasters which might lead to serious consequences. a mast might break, an oar might damage a portion of the bulwarks, a storm might force them to throw overboard part of their cargo or their provisions; in such predicaments they had no means of repairing the damage, and, unable to obtain help in any of the places they might visit, their prospects were of a desperate character. they soon, therefore, learned the necessity of establishing cities of refuge at various points in the countries with which they traded--stations where they could go to refit and revictual their vessels, to fill up the complement of their crews, to take in new freight, and, if necessary, pass the winter or wait for fair weather before continuing their voyage. for this purpose they chose by preference islands lying within easy distance of the mainland, like their native cities of tyre and arvad, but possessing a good harbour or roadstead. if an island were not available, they selected a peninsula with a narrow isthmus, or a rock standing at the extremity of a promontory, which a handful of men could defend against any attack, and which could be seen from a considerable distance by their pilots. most of their stations thus happily situated became at length important towns. they were frequented by the natives from the interior, who allied themselves with the new-comers, and furnished them not only with objects of trade, but with soldiers, sailors, and recruits for their army; and such was the rapid spread of these colonies, that before long the mediterranean was surrounded by an almost unbroken chain of phoenician strongholds and trading stations. [illustration: 288.jpg an egyptian trading vessel of the first half of the xviiith dynasty] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. all the towns of the mother country--arvad, byblos, berytus, tyre, and sidon--possessed vessels engaged in cruising long before the egyptian conquest of syria. we have no direct information from any existing monument to show us what these vessels were like, but we are familiar with the construction of the galleys which formed the fleets of the pharaohs of the xviiith dynasty. the art of shipbuilding had made considerable progress since the times of the memphite kings. prom the period when egypt aspired to become one of the great powers of the world, she doubtless endeavoured to bring her naval force to the same pitch of perfection as her land forces could boast of, and her fleets probably consisted of the best vessels which the dockyards of that day could turn out. phoenician vessels of this period may therefore be regarded with reason as constructed on lines similar to those of the egyptian ships, differing from them merely in the minor details of the shape of the hull and manner of rigging. the hull continued to be built long and narrow, rising at the stem and stern. the bow was terminated by a sort of hook, to which, in time of peace, a bronze ornament was attached, fashioned to represent the head of a divinity, gazelle, or bull, while in time of war this was superseded by a metal cut-water made fast to the hull by several turns of stout rope, the blade rising some couple of yards above the level of the deck.* the poop was ornamented with a projection firmly attached to the body of the vessel, but curved inwards and terminated by an open lotus-flower. an upper deck, surrounded by a wooden rail, was placed at the bow and stern to serve as forecastle and quarterdecks respectively, and in order to protect the vessel from the danger of heavy seas the ship was strengthened by a structure to which we find nothing analogous in the shipbuilding of classical times: an enormous cable attached to the gammonings of the bow rose obliquely to a height of about a couple of yards above the deck, and, passing over four small crutched masts, was made fast again to the gammonings of the stern. the hull measured from the blade of the cut-water to the stern-post some twenty to five and twenty yards, but the lowest part of the hold did not exceed five feet in depth. there was no cabin, and the ballast, arms, provisions, and spare-rigging occupied the open hold.** * to get a clear idea of the details of this structure, we have only to compare the appearance of ships with and without a cut-water in the scenes at thebes, representing the celebration of a festival at the return of the fleet. ** m. glaser thinks that there were cabins for the crew under the deck, and he recognises in the sixteen oblong marks on the sides of the vessels at deîr el-bahari so many dead-lights; as there could not have been space for so many cabins, i had concluded that these were ports for oars to be used in time of battle, but on further consideration i saw that they represented the ends of the beams supporting the deck. the bulwarks were raised to a height of some two feet, and the thwarts of the rowers ran up to them on both the port and starboard sides, leaving an open space in the centre for the long-boat, bales of merchandise, soldiers, slaves, and additional passengers.* a double set of steering-oars and a single mast completed the equipment. the latter, which rose to a height of some twenty-six feet, was placed amidships, and was held in an upright position by stays. the masthead was surmounted by two arrangements which answered respectively to the top [�gabie�] and _calcet_ of the masts of a galley.** there were no shrouds on each side from the masthead to the rail, but, in place of them, two stays ran respectively to the bow and stern. the single square-sail was extended between two yards some sixty to seventy feet long, and each made of two pieces spliced together at the centre. the upper yard was straight, while the lower curved upward at the ends. the yard was hoisted and lowered by two halyards, which were made fast aft at the feet of the steersmen. the yard was kept in its place by two lifts which came down from the masthead, and were attached respectively about eight feet from the end of each yard-arm. when the yard was hauled up it was further supported by six auxiliary lifts, three being attached to each yard-arm. the lower yard, made fast to the mast by a figure-of-eight knot, was secured by sixteen lifts, which, like those of the upper yard, worked through the �calcet.� * one of the bas-reliefs exhibits a long-boat in the water at the time the fleet was at anchor at puanît. as we do not find any vessel towing one after her, we naturally conclude that the boat must have been stowed on board. ** the �gabie� was a species of top where a sailor was placed on the look-out. the �calcet� is, properly speaking, a square block of wood containing the sheaves on which the halyards travelled. the egyptian apparatus had no sheaves, and answers to the �calcet� on the masts of a galley only in its serving the same purpose. the crew comprised thirty rowers, fifteen on each side, four top-men, two steersmen, a pilot at the bow, who signalled to the men at the helm the course to steer, a captain and a governor of the slaves, who formed, together with ten soldiers, a total of some fifty men.* in time of battle, as the rowers would be exposed to the missiles of the enemy, the bulwarks were further heightened by a mantlet, behind which the oars could be freely moved, while the bodies of the men were fully protected, their heads alone being visible above it. the soldiers were stationed as follows: two of them took their places on the forecastle, a third was perched on the masthead in a sort of cage improvised on the bars forming the top, while the remainder were posted on the deck and poop, from which positions and while waiting for the order to board they could pour a continuous volley of arrows on the archers and sailors of the enemy.** * i have made this calculation from an examination of the scenes in which ships are alternatively represented as at anchor and under weigh. i know of vessels of smaller size, and consequently with a smaller crew, but i know of none larger or more fully manned. ** the details are taken from the only representation of a naval battle which we possess up to this moment, viz. that of which i shall have occasion to speak further on in connection with the reign of ramses iii. the first colony of which the phoenicians made themselves masters was that island of cyprus whose low, lurid outline they could see on fine summer evenings in the glow of the western sky. some hundred and ten miles in length and thirty-six in breadth, it is driven like a wedge into the angle which asia minor makes with the syrian coast: it throws out to the north-east a narrow strip of land, somewhat like an extended finger pointing to where the two coasts meet at the extremity of the gulf of issos. a limestone cliff, of almost uniform height throughout, bounds, for half its length at least, the northern side of the island, broken occasionally by short deep valleys, which open out into creeks deeply embayed. a scattered population of fishermen exercised their calling in this region, and small towns, of which we possess only the greek or grecised names--karpasia, aphrodision, kerynia, lapethos--led there a slumbering existence. almost in the centre of the island two volcanic peaks, troodes and olympos, face each other, and rise to a height of nearly 7000 feet, the range of mountains to which they belong--that of aous--forming the framework of the island. the spurs of this range fall by a gentle gradient towards the south, and spread out either into stony slopes favourable to the culture of the vine, or into great maritime flats fringed with brackish lagoons. the valley which lies on the northern side of this chain runs from sea to sea in an almost unbroken level. a scarcely perceptible watershed divides the valley into two basins similar to those of syria, the larger of the two lying opposite to the phoenician coast. the soil consists of black mould, as rich as that of egypt, and renewed yearly by the overflowing of the pediæos and its affluents. thick forests occupied the interior, promising inexhaustible resources to any naval power. even under the koman emperors the cypriotes boasted that they could build and fit out a ship from the keel to the masthead without looking to resources beyond those of their own island. the ash, pine, cypress, and oak flourished on the sides of the range of aous, while cedars grew there to a greater height and girth than even on the lebanon. wheat, barley, olive trees, vines, sweet-smelling woods for burning on the altar, medicinal plants such as the poppy and the _ladanum_, henna for staining with a deep orange colour the lips, eyelids, palm, nails, and fingertips of the women, all found here a congenial habitat; while a profusion everywhere of sweet-smelling flowers, which saturated the air with their penetrating odours--spring violets, many-coloured anemones, the lily, hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, and wild rose--led the greeks to bestow upon the island the designation of �the balmy cyprus.� mines also contributed their share to the riches of which the island could boast. iron in small quantities, alum, asbestos, agate and other precious stones, are still to be found there, and in ancient times the neighbourhood of tamassos yielded copper in such quantities that the romans were accustomed to designate this metal by the name �cyprium,� and the word passed from them into all the languages of europe. it is not easy to determine the race to which the first inhabitants of the island belonged, if we are not to see in them a branch of the kefâtiu, who frequented the asiatic shores of the mediterranean from a very remote period. in the time of egyptian supremacy they called their country asi, and this name inclines one to connect the people with the ægeans.* an examination of the objects found in the most ancient tombs of the island seems to confirm this opinion. these consist, for the most part, of weapons and implements of stone--knives, hatchets, hammers, and arrow-heads; and mingled with these rude objects a score of different kinds of pottery, chiefly hand-made and of coarse design--pitchers with contorted bowls, shallow buckets, especially of the milk-pail variety, provided with spouts and with pairs of rudimentary handles. * �asi,� �asîi,� was at first sought for on the asiatic continent--at is on the euphrates, or in palestine: the discovery of the canopic decree allows us to identify it with cyprus, and this has now been generally done. the reading �asebi� is still maintained by some. [illustration: 294.jpg map of cyprus] the pottery is red or black in colour, and the ornamentation of it consists of incised geometrical designs. copper and bronze, where we find examples of these metals, do not appear to have been employed in the manufacture of ornaments or arrow-heads, but usually in making daggers. there is no indication anywhere of foreign influence, and yet cyprus had already at this time entered into relations with the civilized nations of the continent.* according to chaldæan tradition, it was conquered about the year 3800 b.c. by sargon of agadê: without insisting upon the reality of this conquest, which in any case must have been ephemeral in its nature, there is reason to believe that the island was subjected from an early period to the influence of the various peoples which lived one after another on the slopes of the lebanon. popular legend attributes to king kinyras and to the giblites [i.e. the people of byblos] the establishment of the first phoenician colonies in the southern region of the island--one of them being at paphos, where the worship of adonis and astartê continued to a very late date. the natives preserved their own language and customs, had their own chiefs, and maintained their national independence, while constrained to submit at the same time to the presence of phoenician colonists or merchants on the coast, and in the neighbourhood of the mines in the mountains. the trading centres of these settlers--kition, amathus, solius, golgos, and tamassos--were soon, however, converted into strongholds, which ensured to phonicia the monopoly of the immense wealth contained in the island.** * an examination into the origin of the cypriotes formed part of the original scheme of this work, together with that of the monuments of the various races scattered along the coast of asia minor and the islands of the ægean; but i have been obliged to curtail it, in order to keep within the limits i had proscribed for myself, and i have merely epitomised, as briefly as possible, the results of the researches undertaken in those regions during the last few years. ** the phoenician origin of these towns is proved by passages from classical writers. the date of the colonisation is uncertain, but with the knowledge we possess of the efficient vessels belonging to the various phoenician towns, it would seem difficult not to allow that the coasts at least of cyprus must have been partially occupied at the time of the egyptian invasions. tyre and sidon had no important centres of industry on that part of the canaanite coast which extended to the south of carmel, and egypt, even in the time of the shepherd kings, would not have tolerated the existence on her territory of any great emporium not subject to the immediate supervision of her official agents. we know that the libyan cliffs long presented an obstacle to inroads into egyptian territory, and baffled any attempts to land to the westwards of the delta: the phoenicians consequently turned with all the greater ardour to those northern regions which for centuries had furnished them with most valuable products--bronze, tin, amber, and iron, both native and wrought. a little to the north of the orontes, where the syrian border is crossed and asia minor begins, the coast turns due west and runs in that direction for a considerable distance. the phoenicians were accustomed to trade along this region, and we may attribute, perhaps, to them the foundation of those obscure cities--kibyra, masura, euskopus, sylion, mygdalê, and sidyma*--all of which preserved their apparently semitic names down to the time of the roman epoch. the whole of the important island of rhodes fell into their power, and its three ports, ialysos, lindos*, and kamiros, afforded them a well-situated base of operations for further colonisation. on leaving rhodes, the choice of two routes presented itself to them. to the south-west they could see the distant outline of karpathos, and on the far horizon behind it the summits of the cretan chain. crete itself bars on the south the entrance to the ægean, and is almost a little continent, self-contained and self-sufficing. * no direct evidence exists to lead us to attribute the foundation of these towns to the phoenicians, but the semitic origin of nearly all the names is an uncontested fact. [illustration: 297.jpg the murex trunculus] it is made up of fertile valleys and mountains clothed with forests, and its inhabitants could employ themselves in mines and fisheries. the phoenicians effected a settlement on the coast at itanos, at kairatos, and at arados, and obtained possession of the peak of cythera, where, it is said, they raised a sanctuary to astartê. if, on leaving rhodes, they had chosen to steer due north, they would soon have come into contact with numerous rocky islets scattered in the sea between the continents of asia and europe, which would have furnished them with as many stations, less easy of attack, and more readily defended than posts on the mainland. of these the giblites occupied melos, while the sidonians chose oliaros and thera, and we find traces of them in every island where any natural product, such as metals, sulphur, alum, fuller�s earth, emery, medicinal plants, and shells for producing dyes, offered an attraction. the purple used by the tyrians for dyeing is secreted by several varieties of molluscs common in the eastern mediterranean; those most esteemed by the dyers were the _murex trunculus_ and the _murex brandaris_, and solid masses made up of the detritus of these shells are found in enormous quantities in the neighbourhood of many phoenician towns. the colouring matter was secreted in the head of the shellfish. to obtain it the shell was broken by a blow from a hammer, and the small quantity of slightly yellowish liquid which issued from the fracture was carefully collected and stirred about in salt water for three days. [illustration: 298.jpg dagger of âhmosis] drawn by faucher-gudin. it was then boiled in leaden vessels and reduced by simmering over a slow fire; the remainder was strained through a cloth to free it from the particles of flesh still floating in it, and the material to be dyed was then plunged into the liquid. the usual tint thus imparted was that of fresh blood, in some lights almost approaching to black; but careful manipulation could produce shades of red, dark violet, and amethyst. phoenician settlements can be traced, therefore, by the heaps of shells upon the shore, the cyclades and the coasts of greece being strewn with this refuse. the veins of gold in the pangaion range in macedonia attracted them off the thracian coast* received also frequent visits from them, and they carried their explorations even through the tortuous channel of the hellespont into the propontis, drawn thither, no doubt by the silver mines in the bithynian mountains** which were already being worked by asiatic miners. * the fact that they worked the mines of thasos is attested by herodotus. ** pronektos, on the gulf of ascania, was supposed to be a phoenician colony. beyond the calm waters of the propontis, they encountered an obstacle to their progress in another narrow channel, having more the character of a wide river than of a strait; it was with difficulty that they could make their way against the violence of its current, which either tended to drive their vessels on shore, or to dash them against the reefs which hampered the navigation of the channel. when, however, they succeeded in making the passage safely, they found themselves upon a vast and stormy sea, whose wooded shores extended east and west as far as eye could reach. [illustration: 299.jpg one of the daggers discovered at mycenæ, showing an imitation of egyptian decoration] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile in perrot-chipiez. from the tribes who inhabited them, and who acted as intermediaries, the phoenician traders were able to procure tin, lead, amber, caucasian gold, bronze, and iron, all products of the extreme north--a region which always seemed,to elude their persevering efforts to discover it. we cannot determine the furthest limits reached by the phoenician traders, since they were wont to designate the distant countries and nations with which they traded by the vague appellations of �isles of the sea� and �peoples of the sea,� refusing to give more accurate information either from jealousy or from a desire to hide from other nations the sources of their wealth. the peoples with whom they traded were not mere barbarians, contented with worthless objects of barter; their clients included the inhabitants of the iegean, who, if inferior to the great nations of the east, possessed an independent and growing civilization, traces of which are still coming to light from many quarters in the shape of tombs, houses, palaces, utensils, ornaments, representations of the gods, and household and funerary furniture,--not only in the cyclades, but on the mainland of asia minor and of greece. no inferior goods or tinsel wares would have satisfied the luxurious princes who reigned in such ancient cities as troy and mycenae, and who wanted the best industrial products of egypt and syria--costly stuffs, rare furniture, ornate and well-wrought weapons, articles of jewellery, vases of curious and delicate design--such objects, in fact, as would have been found in use among the sovereigns and nobles of memphis or of babylon. for articles to offer in exchange they were not limited to the natural or roughly worked products of their own country. their craftsmen, though less successful in general technique than their oriental contemporaries, exhibited considerable artistic intelligence and an extraordinary manual skill. accustomed at first merely to copy the objects sold to them by the phoenicians, they soon developed a style of their own; the mycenaean dagger in the illustration on page 299, though several centuries later in date than that of the pharaoh ahmosis, appears to be traceable to this ancient source of inspiration, although it gives evidence of new elements in its method of decoration and in its greater freedom of treatment. the inhabitants of the valleys of the nile and of the orontes, and probably also those of the euphrates and tigris, agreed in the, high value they set upon these artistic objects in gold, silver, and bronze, brought to them from the further shores of the mediterranean, which, while reproducing their own designs, modified them to a certain extent; for just as we now imitate types of ornamental work in vogue among nations less civilized than ourselves, so the iegean people set themselves the task through their potters and engravers of reproducing exotic models. the phoenician traders who exported to greece large consignments of objects made under various influences in their own workshops, or purchased in the bazaars of the ancient world, brought back as a return cargo an equivalent number of works of art, bought in the towns of the west, which eventually found their way into the various markets of asia and africa. these energetic merchants were not the first to ply this profitable trade of maritime carriers, for from the time of the memphite empire the products of northern regions had found their way, through the intermediation of the haûinibû, as far south as the cities of the delta and the thebaid. but this commerce could not be said to be either regular or continuous; the transmission was carried on from one neighbouring tribe to another, and the syrian sailors were merely the last in a long chain of intermediaries--a tribal war, a migration, the caprice of some chief, being sufficient to break the communication, and even cause the suspension of transit for a considerable period. the phoenicians desired to provide against such risks by undertaking themselves to fetch the much-coveted objects from their respective sources, or, where this was not possible, from the ports nearest the place of their manufacture. reappearing with each returning year in the localities where they had established emporia, they accustomed the natives to collect against their arrival such products as they could profitably use in bartering with one or other of their many customers. they thus established, on a fixed line of route, a kind of maritime trading service, which placed all the shores of the mediterranean in direct communication with each other, and promoted the blending of the youthful west with the ancient east. [illustration: 302.jpg tailpiece] chapter iii--the eighteenth theban dynasty thûtmosis i. and his army--hâtshopsitû and thûtmosis iii. _thutmosis i.�s campaign in syria--the organisation of the egyptian army: the infantry of the line, the archers, the horses, and the charioteers--the classification of the troops according to their arms--marching and encampment in the enemy�s country: battle array--chariot-charges--the enumeration and distribution of the spoil--the vice-royalty of rush and the adoption of egyptian customs by the ethiopian tribes._ _the first successors of thutmosis i.: ahmasi and hatshopsitit, thûtmosis ii--the temple of deîr el-bahari and the buildings of karnah--the ladders of incense--the expedition to pûanît: bartering with the natives, the return of the fleet._ _thûtmosis iii.: his departure for asia, the battle of megiddo and the subjection of southern syria--the year 23 to the year 28 of his reign--conquest of lotanû and of mitânni--the campaign of the 33rd year of the king�s reign._ [illustration: 305.jpg page image] chapter iii--the eighteenth theban dynasty _thûtmosis i. and his army--hâtshopsîtû and thûtmosis iii._ the account of the first expedition undertaken by thûtmosis in asia, a region at that time new to the egyptians, would be interesting if we could lay our hands upon it. we should perhaps find in the midst of official documents, or among the short phrases of funerary biographies, some indication of the impression which the country produced upon its conquerors. with the exception of a few merchants or adventurers, no one from thebes to memphis had any other idea of asia than that which could be gathered from the scattered notices of it in the semi-historical romances of the preceding age. the actual sight of the country must have been a revelation; everything appearing new and paradoxical to men of whom the majority had never left their fatherland, except on some warlike expedition into ethiopia or on some rapid raid along the coasts of the red sea. instead of their own narrow valley, extending between its two mountain ranges, and fertilised by the periodical overflowing of the nile which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before them wide irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, but to occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills of varying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation; mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed with forests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snow even in the hottest period of summer: and in this region of nature, where everything was strange to them, they found nations differing widely from each other in appearance and customs, towns with crenellated walls perched upon heights difficult of access; and finally, a civilization far excelling that which they encountered anywhere in africa outside their own boundaries. thûtmosis succeeded in reaching on his first expedition a limit which none of his successors was able to surpass, and the road taken by him in this campaign--from gaza to megiddo, from megiddo to qodshû, from qodshû to carchemish--was that which was followed henceforward by the egyptian troops in all their expeditions to the euphrates. of the difficulties which he encountered on his way we have no information. on arriving at naharaim, however, we know that he came into contact with the army of the enemy, which was under the command of a single general--perhaps the king of mitanni himself, or one of the lieutenants of the �cossæan king of babylon�--who had collected together most of the petty princes of the northern country to resist the advance of the intruder. the contest was hotly fought out on both sides, but victory at length remained with the invaders, and innumerable prisoners fell into their hands. the veteran âhmosi, son of abîna, who was serving in his last campaign, and his cousin, âhmosi pannekhabît, distinguished themselves according to their wont. the former, having seized upon a chariot, brought it, with the three soldiers who occupied it, to the pharaoh, and received once more �the collar of gold;� the latter killed twenty-one of the enemy, carrying off their hands as trophies, captured a chariot, took one prisoner, and obtained as reward a valuable collection of jewellery, consisting of collars, bracelets, sculptured lions, choice vases, and costly weapons. a stele, erected on the banks of the euphrates not far from the scene of the battle, marked the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognised henceforth as the frontier of his empire. he re-entered thebes with immense booty, by which gods as well as men profited, for he consecrated a part of it to the embellishment of the temple of amon, and the sight of the spoil undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which the people had cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. thûtmosis was held up by his subjects to the praise of posterity as having come into actual contact with that country and its people, which had hitherto been known to the egyptians merely through the more or less veracious tales of exiles and travellers. the aspect of the great river of the naharaim, which could be compared with the nile for the volume of its waters, excited their admiration. they were, however, puzzled by the fact that it flowed from north to south, and even were accustomed to joke at the necessity of reversing the terms employed in egypt to express going up or down the river. this first syrian campaign became the model for most of those subsequently undertaken by the pharaohs. it took the form of a bold advance of troops, directed from zalû towards the north-east, in a diagonal line through the country, who routed on the way any armies which might be opposed to them, carrying by assault such towns as were easy of capture, while passing by others which seemed strongly defended--pillaging, burning, and slaying on every side. there was no suspension of hostilities, no going into winter quarters, but a triumphant return of the expedition at the end of four or five months, with the probability of having to begin fresh operations in the following year should the vanquished break out into revolt.* * from the account of the campaigns of amenôthes ii., i thought we might conclude that this pharaoh wintered in syria at least once; but the text does not admit of this interpretation, and we must, therefore, for the present give up the idea that the pharaohs ever spent more than a few months of the year on hostile territory. the troops employed in these campaigns were superior to any others hitherto put into the field. the egyptian army, inured to war by its long struggle with the shepherd-kings, and kept in training since the reign of âhmosis by having to repulse the perpetual incursions of the ethiopian or libyan barbarians, had no difficulty, in overcoming the syrians; not that the latter were wanting in courage or discipline, but owing to their limited supply of recruits, and the political disintegration of the country, they could not readily place under arms such enormous numbers as those of the egyptians. egyptian military organisation had remained practically unchanged since early times: the army had always consisted, firstly, of the militia who held fiefs, and were under the obligation of personal service either to the prince of the nome or to the sovereign; secondly, of a permanent force, which was divided into two corps, distributed respectively between the sa�id and the delta. those companies which were quartered on the frontier, or about the king either at thebes or at one of the royal residences, were bound to hold themselves in readiness to muster for a campaign at any given moment. the number of natives liable to be levied when occasion required, by �generations,� or as we should say by classes, may have amounted to over a hundred thousand men,* but they were never all called out, and it does not appear that the army on active service ever contained more than thirty thousand men at a time, and probably on ordinary occasions not much more than ten or fifteen thousand.** * the only numbers which we know are those given by herodotus for the saïte period, which are evidently exaggerated. coming down to modern times, we see that mehemet-ali, from 1830 to 1840, had nearly 120,000 men in syria, egypt, and the sudan; and in 1841, at the time when the treaties imposed upon him the ill-kept obligation of reducing his army to 18,000 men, it still contained 81,000. we shall probably not be far wrong in estimating the total force which the pharaohs of the xviiith dynasty, lords of the whole valley of the nile, and of part of asia, had at their disposal at 120,000 or 130,000 men; these, however, were never all called out at once. ** we have no direct information respecting the armies acting in syria; we only know that, at the battle of qodshû, ramses ii. had against him 2500 chariots containing three men each, making 7500 charioteers, besides a troop estimated at the ramesseum at 8000 men, at luxor at 9000, so that the syrian army probably contained about 20,000 men. it would seem that the egyptian army was less numerous, and i estimate it with great hesitation at about 15,000 or 18,000 men: it was considered a powerful army, while that of the hittites was regarded as an innumerable host. a passage in the anastasi papyrus, no. 1, tells us the composition of a corps led by ramses ii. against the tribes in the vicinity of qocoîr and the rahanû valley; it consisted of 5000 men, of whom 620 were shardana, 1600 qahak, 70 mashaûasha, and 880 negroes. the infantry was, as we should expect, composed of troops of the line and light troops. the former wore either short wigs arranged in rows of curls, or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough to deaden blows; the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a short loin-cloth was wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper part of the thighs were protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimes scalloped at the sides, and composed of leather thongs attached to a belt. a buckler of moderate dimensions had been substituted for the gigantic shield of the earlier theban period; it was rounded at the top and often furnished with a solid metal boss, which the experienced soldiers always endeavoured to present to the enemy�s lances and javelins. their weapons consisted of pikes about five feet long, with broad bronze or copper points, occasionally of flails, axes, daggers, short curved swords, and spears; the trumpeters were armed with daggers only, and the officers did not as a rule encumber themselves with either buckler or pike, but bore and axe and dagger, an occasionally a bow. [illustration: 311.jpg a platoon (troop) of egyptian spearmen at deîr el-baharî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by naville. the light infantry was composed chiefly of bowmen--_pidâtû_--the celebrated archers of egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used with deadly skill, speedily became renowned throughout the east; the quiver, of the use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowed from the asiatics, probably from the hyksôs, and was carried hanging at the side or slung over the shoulder. both spearmen and archers were for the most part pure-bred egyptians, and were divided into regiments of unequal strength, each of which usually bore the name of some god--as, for example, the regiment of ra or of phtah, of arnon or of sûtkhû*--in which the feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or his lieutenants, fought side by side with the king�s soldiers furnished from the royal domains. the effective force of the army was made up by auxiliaries taken from the tribes of the sahara and from the negroes of the upper nile.** * the army of ramses ii. at the battle of qodshû comprised four corps, which bore the names of amon, râ, phtah, and sûtkhû. other lesser corps were named the _tribe of pharaoh,_ the _tribe of the beauty of the solar dish._ these, as far as i can judge, must have been troops raised on the royal domains by a system of local recruiting, who were united by certain common privileges and duties which constituted them an hereditary militia, whence they were called _tribes_. ** these ethiopian recruits are occasionally represented in the theban tombs of the xviiith dynasty, among others in the tomb of pahsûkhîr. these auxiliaries were but sparingly employed in early times, but their numbers were increased as wars became more frequent and necessitated more troops to carry them on. the tribes from which they were drawn supplied the pharaohs with an inexhaustible reserve; they were courageous, active, indefatigable, and inured to hardships, and if it had not been for their turbulent nature, which incited them to continual internal dissensions, they might readily have shaken off the yoke of the egyptians. incorporated into the egyptian army, and placed under the instruction of picked officers, who subjected them to rigorous discipline, and accustomed them to the evolutions of regular troops, they were transformed from disorganised hordes into tried and invincible battalions.* * the armies of hâtshopsîtû already included libyan auxiliaries, some of which are represented at deîr el baharî; others of asiatic origin are found under amenôthes iv., but they are not represented on the monuments among the regular troops until the reign of ramses ii., when the shardana appear for the first time among the king�s body guard. [illustration: 313.jpg a platoon of egyptian archers at deîr el-baharî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the old army, which had conquered nubia in the days of the papis and usirtasens, had consisted of these three varieties of foot-soldiers only, but since the invasion of the shepherds, a new element had been incorporated into the modern army in the-shape of the chariotry, which answered to some extent to the cavalry of our day as regards their tactical employment and efficacy. the horse, when once introduced into egypt, soon became fairly adapted to its environment. it retained both its height and size, keeping the convex forehead--which gave the head a slightly curved profile--the slender neck, the narrow hind-quarters, the lean and sinewy legs, and the long flowing tail which had characterised it in its native country. the climate, however, was enervating, and constant care had to be taken, by the introduction of new blood from syria, to prevent the breed from deteriorating.* * the numbers of horses brought from syria either as spoils of war or as tribute paid by the vanquished are frequently recorded in the annals of thûtmosis iii. besides the usual species, powerful stallions were imported from northern syria, which were known by the semitic name of abîri, the strong. in the tombs of the xviiith dynasty, the arrival of syrian horses in egypt is sometimes represented. [illustration: 314.jpg the egyptian chariot preserved in the florence museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by petrie. the pharaohs kept studs of horses in the principal cities of the nile valley, and the great feudal lords, following their example, vied with each other in the possession of numerous breeding stables. the office of superintendent to these establishments, which was at the disposal of the master of the horse, became in later times one of the most important state appointments.* * in the story of the conquest of egypt by the ethiopian piônkhi, studs are indicated at hermopolis, at athribis, in the towns to the east and in the centre of the delta, and at sais. diodorus siculus relates that, in his time, the foundations of 100 stables, each capable of containing 200 horses, were still to be seen on the western bank of the river between memphis and thebes. [illustration: 315.jpg the king charging on his chariot] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the first chariots introduced into egypt were, like the horses, of foreign origin, but when built by egyptian workmen they soon became more elegant, if not stronger than their models. lightness was the quality chiefly aimed at; and at length the weight was so reduced that it was possible for a man to carry his chariot on his shoulders without fatigue. the materials for them were on this account limited to oak or ash and leather; metal, whether gold or silver, iron or bronze, being used but sparingly, and then only for purposes of ornamentation. the wheels usually had six, but sometimes eight spokes, or occasionally only four. the axle consisted of a single stout pole of acacia. the framework of the chariot was composed of two pieces of wood mortised together so as to form a semicircle or half-ellipse, and closed by a straight bar; to this frame was fixed a floor of sycomore wood or of plaited leather thongs. the sides of the chariot were formed of upright panels, solid in front and open at the sides, each provided with a handrail. the pole, which was of a single piece of wood, was bent into an elbow at about one-fifth of its length from the end, which was inserted into the centre of the axletree. on the gigantic t thus formed was fixed the body of the chariot, the hinder part resting on the axle, and the front attached to the bent part of the pole, while the whole was firmly bound together with double leather thongs. a yoke of hornbeam, shaped like a bow, to which the horses were harnessed, was fastened to the other extremity of the pole. the asiatics placed three men in a chariot, but the egyptians only two; the warrior--_sinni_--whose business it was to fight, and the shield-bearer--_qazana_--who protected his companion with a buckler during the engagement. a complete set of weapons was carried in the chariot--lances, javelins, and daggers, curved spear, club, and battle-axe--while two bow-cases as well as two large quivers were hung at the sides. the chariot itself was very liable to upset, the slightest cause being sufficient to overturn it. even when moving at a slow pace, the least inequality of the ground shook it terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium. at such times the charioteer would stand astride of the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle, and planting the other firmly on the pole, so as to lessen the jolting, and to secure a wider base on which to balance himself. to carry all this into practice long education was necessary, for which there were special schools of instruction, and those who were destined to enter the army were sent to these schools when little more than children. to each man, as soon as he had thoroughly mastered all the difficulties of the profession, a regulation chariot and pair of horses were granted, for which he was responsible to the pharaoh or to his generals, and he might then return to his home until the next call to arms. the warrior took precedence of the shield-bearer, and both were considered superior to the foot-soldier; the chariotry, in fact, like the cavalry of the present day, was the aristocratic branch of the army, in which the royal princes, together with the nobles and their sons, enlisted. no egyptian ever willingly trusted himself to the back of a horse, and it was only in the thick of a battle, when his chariot was broken, and there seemed no other way of escaping from the mêlée, that a warrior would venture to mount one of his steeds. there appear, however, to have been here and there a few horsemen, who acted as couriers or aides-de-camp; they used neither saddle-cloth nor stirrups, but were provided with reins with which to guide their animals, and their seat on horseback was even less secure than the footing of the driver in his chariot. [illustration: 318.jpg an egyptian learning to ride, from a bas-relief in the bologna museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by flinders petrie. the infantry was divided into platoons of six to ten men each, commanded by an officer and marshalled round an ensign, which represented either a sacred animal, an emblem of the king or of his double, or a divine figure placed upon the top of a pike; this constituted an object of worship to the group of soldiers to whom it belonged. we are unable to ascertain how many of these platoons, either of infantry or of chariotry, went to form a company or a battalion, or by what ensigns the different grades were distinguished from each other, or what was their relative order of rank. bodies of men, to the number of forty or fifty, are sometimes represented on the monuments, but this may be merely by chance, or because the draughtsman did not take the trouble to give the proper number accurately. the inferior officers were equipped very much like the soldiers, with the exception of the buckler, which they do not appear to have carried, and certainly did not when on the march: the superior officers might be known by their umbrella or flabellum, a distinction which gave them the right of approaching the king�s person. [illustration: 319.jpg the war-dance of the timihu at deîr el-baharî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the military exercises to which all these troops were accustomed probably differed but little from those which were in vogue with the armies of the ancient empire; they consisted in wrestling, boxing, jumping, running either singly or in line at regular distances from each other, manual exercises, fencing, and shooting at a target; the war-dance had ceased to be in use among the egyptian regiments as a military exercise, but it was practised by the ethiopian and libyan auxiliaries. at the beginning of each campaign, the men destined to serve in it were called out by the military scribes, who supplied them with arms from the royal arsenals. then followed the distribution of rations. the soldiers, each carrying a small linen bag, came up in squads before the commissariat officers, and each received his own allowance.* * we see the distribution of arms made by the scribes and other officials of the royal arsenals represented in the pictures at medinet-abu. the calling out of the classes was represented in the egyptian tombs of the xviiith dynasty, as well as the distribution of supplies. once in the enemy�s country the army advanced in close order, the infantry in columns of four, the officers in rear, and the chariots either on the right or left flank, or in the intervals between divisions. skirmishers thrown out to the front cleared the line of march, while detached parties, pushing right and left, collected supplies of cattle, grain, or drinking-water from the fields and unprotected villages. the main body was followed by the baggage train; it comprised not only supplies and stores, but cooking-utensils, coverings, and the entire paraphernalia of the carpenters� and blacksmiths� shops necessary for repairing bows, lances, daggers, and chariot-poles, the whole being piled up in four-wheeled carts drawn by asses or oxen. the army was accompanied by a swarm of non-combatants, scribes, soothsayers, priests, heralds, musicians, servants, and women of loose life, who were a serious cause of embarrassment to the generals, and a source of perpetual danger to military discipline. at nightfall they halted in a village, or more frequently bivouacked in an entrenched camp, marked out to suit the circumstances of the case. this entrenchment was always rectangular, its length being twice as great as its width, and was surrounded by a ditch, the earth from which, being banked up on the inside, formed a rampart from five to six feet in height; the exterior of this was then entirely faced with shields, square below, but circular in shape at the top. the entrance to the camp was by a single gate in one of the longer sides, and a plank served as a bridge across the trench, close to which two detachments mounted guard, armed with clubs and naked swords. [illustration: 321.jpg a column of troops on the march, chariots and infantry] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the royal quarters were situated at one end of the camp. here, within an enclosure, rose an immense tent, where the pharaoh found all the luxury to which he was accustomed in his palaces, even to a portable chapel, in which each morning he could pour out water and burn incense to his father, amon-râ of thebes. the princes of the blood who formed his escort, his shield-bearers and his generals, were crowded together hard by, and beyond, in closely packed lines, were the horses and chariots, the draught bullocks, the workshops and the stores. [illustration: 322.jpg an egyptian fortified camp, forced by the enemy] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. it represents the camp of ramses ii. before qodshû: the upper angle of the enclosure and part of the surrounding wall have been destroyed by the khâti, whose chariots are pouring in at the breach. in the centre is the royal tent, surrounded by scenes of military life. this picture has been sculptured partly over an earlier one representing one of the episodes of the battle; the latter had been covered with stucco, on which the new subject was executed. part of the stucco has fallen away, and the king in his chariot, with a few other figures, has reappeared, to the great detriment of the later picture. [illustration: 322b.jpg two companies on the march] the soldiers, accustomed from childhood to live in the open air, erected no tents or huts of boughs for themselves in these temporary encampments, but bivouacked in the open, and the sculptures on the façades of the theban pylons give us a minute picture of the way in which they employed themselves when off duty. here one man, while cleaning his armour, superintends the cooking. another, similarly engaged, drinks from a skin of wine held up by a slave. a third has taken his chariot to pieces, and t is replacing some portion the worse for wear. some are sharpening their daggers or lances; others mend their loin-cloths or sandals, or exchange blows with fists and sticks. the baggage, linen, arms, and provisions are piled in disorder on the ground; horses, oxen, and asses are eating or chewing the cud at their ease; while here and there a donkey, relieved of his burden, rolls himself on the ground and brays with delight.* * we are speaking of the camp of thûtmosis iii. near âlûna, the day before the battle of megiddo, and the words put into the mouths of the soldiers to mark their vigilance are the same as those which we find in the ramesseum and at luxor, written above the guards of the camp where ramses ii. is reposing. [illustration: 325.jpg scenes from military life in an egyptian camp] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the success of the egyptians in battle was due more to the courage and hardihood of the men than to the strategical skill of their commanders. we find no trace of manouvres, in the sense in which we understand the word, either in their histories or on their bas-reliefs, but they joined battle boldly with the enemy, and the result was decided by a more or less bloody conflict. the heavy infantry was placed in the centre, the chariots were massed on the flanks, while light troops thrown out to the front began the action by letting fly volleys of arrows and stones, which through the skill of the bowmen and slingers did deadly execution; then the pikemen laid their spears in rest, and pressing straight forward, threw their whole weight against the opposing troops. at the same moment the charioteers set off at a gentle trot, and gradually quickened their pace till they dashed at full speed upon the foe, amid the confused rumbling of wheels and the sharp clash of metal. [illustration: 327.jpg encounter between egyptian and asiatic chariots] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing by champolion. the egyptians, accustomed by long drilling to the performance of such evolutions, executed these charges as methodically as though they were still on their parade-ground at thebes; if the disposition of the ground were at all favourable, not a single chariot would break the line, and the columns would sweep across the field without swerving or falling into disorder. the charioteer had the reins tied round his body, and could, by throwing his weight either to the right or the left, or by slackening or increasing the pressure through a backward or forward motion, turn, pull up, or start his horses by a simple movement of the loins: he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his ear, the arrow levelled ready to let fly, while the shield-bearer, clinging to the body of the chariot with one hand, held out his buckler with the other to shelter his comrade. it would seem that the syrians were less skilful; their bows did not carry so far as those of their adversaries, and consequently they came within the enemy�s range some moments before it was possible for them to return the volley with effect. their horses would be thrown down, their drivers would fall wounded, and the disabled chariots would check the approach of those following and overturn them, so that by the time the main body came up with the enemy the slaughter would have been serious enough to render victory hopeless. nevertheless, more than one charge would be necessary finally to overturn or scatter the syrian chariots, which, once accomplished, the egyptian charioteer would turn against the foot-soldiers, and, breaking up their ranks, would tread them down under the feet of his horses.* * the whole of the above description is based on incidents from the various pictures of battles which appear on the monuments of ramses ii. nor did the pharaoh spare himself in the fight; his splendid dress, the urasus on his forehead, and the nodding plumes of his horses made him a mark for the blows of the enemy, and he would often find himself in positions of serious danger. in a few hours, as a rule, the conflict would come to an end. [illustration: 328.jpg ramses ii.] [illustration: 328-text.jpg] once the enemy showed signs of giving way, the egyptian chariots dashed upon them precipitously, and turned the retreat into a rout: the pursuit was, however, never a long one; some fortress was always to be found close at hand where the remnant of the defeated host could take refuge.* the victors, moreover, would be too eager to secure the booty, and to strip the bodies of the dead, to allow time for following up the foe. * after the battle of megiddo, the remnants of the syrian army took refuge in the city, where thûtmosis iii. besieged them; similarly under ramses ii. the hittite princes took refuge in qodshû after their defeat. the prisoners were driven along in platoons, their arms bound in strange and contorted attitudes, each under the charge of his captor; then came the chariots, arms, slaves, and provisions collected on the battle-field or in the camp, then other trophies of a kind unknown in modern warfare. when an egyptian killed or mortally wounded any one, he cut off, not the head, but the right hand or the phallus, and brought it to the royal scribes. these made an accurate inventory of everything, and even pharaoh did not disdain to be present at the registration. the booty did not belong to the persons who obtained it, but was thrown into a common stock which was placed at the disposal of the sovereign: one part he reserved for the gods, especially for his father amon of thebes, who had given him the victory; another part he kept for himself, and the remainder was distributed among his army. each man received a reward in proportion to his rank and services, such as male or female slaves, bracelets, necklaces, arms, vases, or a certain measured weight of gold, known as the �gold of bravery.� a similar sharing of the spoil took place after every successful engagement: from pharaoh to the meanest camp-follower, every man who had contributed to the success of a campaign returned home richer than he had set out, and the profits which he derived from a war were a liberal compensation for the expenses in which it had involved him. [illustration: 330.jpg counting of the hands] the results of the first expedition of thûtmosis i. were of a decisive character; so much so, indeed, that he never again, it would seem, found it necessary during the remainder of his life to pass the isthmus. northern syria, it is true, did not remain long under tribute, if indeed it paid any at all after the departure of the egyptians, but the southern part of the country, feeling itself in the grip of the new master, accepted its defeat: gaza became the head-quarters of a garrison which secured the door of asia for future invasion,* and pharaoh, freed from anxiety in this quarter, gave his whole time to the consolidation of his power in ethiopia. * this fact is nowhere explicitly stated on the monuments: we may infer it, however, from the way in which thûtmosis iii. tells how he reached gaza without opposition at the beginning of his first campaign, and celebrated the anniversary of his coronation there. on the other hand, we learn from details in the lists that the mountains and plains beyond gaza were in a state of open rebellion. the river and desert tribes of this region soon forgot the severe lesson which he had given them: as soon as the last egyptian soldier had left their territory they rebelled once more, and began a fresh series of inroads which had to be repressed anew year after year. thûtmosis i. had several times to drive them back in the years ii. and iii., but was able to make short work of their rebellions. an inscription at tombos on the nile, in the very midst of the disturbed districts, told them in brave words what he was, and what he had done since he had come to the throne. wherever he had gone, weapon in hand, �seeking a warrior, he had found none to withstand him; he had penetrated to valleys which were unknown to his ancestors, the inhabitants of which had never beheld the wearers of the double diadem.� all this would have produced but little effect had he not backed up his words by deeds, and taken decisive measures to restrain the insolence of the barbarians. tombos lies opposite to hannek, at the entrance to that series of rapids known as the third cataract. the course of the nile is here barred by a formidable dyke of granite, through which it has hollowed out six winding channels of varying widths, dotted here and there with huge polished boulders and verdant islets. when the inundation is at its height, the rocks are covered and the rapids disappear, with the exception of the lowest, which is named lokoli, where faint eddies mark the place of the more dangerous reefs; and were it not that the fall here is rather more pronounced and the current somewhat stronger, few would suspect the existence of a cataract at the spot. as the waters go down, however, the channels gradually reappear. when the river is at its lowest, the three westernmost channels dry up almost completely, leaving nothing but a series of shallow pools; those on the east still maintain their flow, but only one of them, that between the islands of tombos and abadîn, remains navigable. here thûtmosis built, under invocation of the gods of heliopolis, one of those brickwork citadels, with its rectangular keep, which set at nought all the efforts and all the military science of the ethiopians: attached to it was a harbour, where each vessel on its way downstream put in for the purpose of hiring a pilot.* the monarchs of the xiith and xiiith dynasties had raised fortifications at the approaches to wady haifa, and their engineers skilfully chose the sites so as completely to protect from the ravages of the nubian pirates that part of the nile which lay between wady haifa and philse.* * the foundation of this fortress is indicated in an emphatic manner in the tombos inscription: �the masters of the great castle (the gods of heliopolis) have made a fortress for the soldiers of the king, which the nine peoples of nubia combined could not carry by storm, for, like a young panther before a bull which lowers its head, the souls of his majesty have blinded them with fear.� quarries of considerable size, where cailliaud imagined he could distinguish an overturned colossus, show the importance which the establishment had attained in ancient times; the ruins of the town cover a fairly large area near the modern village of kerman. henceforward the garrison at tombos was able to defend the mighty curve described by the river through the desert of mahas, together with the island of argo, and the confines of dongola. the distance between thebes and this southern frontier was a long one, and communication was slow during the winter months, when the subsidence of the waters had rendered the task of navigation difficult for the egyptian ships. the king was obliged, besides, to concentrate his attention mainly on asiatic affairs, and was no longer able to watch the movements of the african races with the same vigilance as his predecessors had exercised before egyptian armies had made their way as far as the banks of the euphrates. thutmosis placed the control of the countries south of assuan in the hands of a viceroy, who, invested with the august title of �royal son of kûsh,� must have been regarded as having the blood of râ himself running in his veins.* * the meaning of this title was at first misunderstood. champollion and rosellini took it literally, and thought it referred to ethiopian princes, who were vassals or enemies of egypt. birch persists in regarding them as ethiopians driven out by their subjects, restored by the pharaohs as viceroys, while admitting that they may have belonged to the solar family. sura, the first of these viceroys whose name has reached us, was in office at the beginning of the campaign of the year iii.* he belonged, it would seem, to a theban family, and for several centuries afterwards his successors are mentioned among the nobles who were in the habit of attending the court. their powers were considerable: they commanded armies, built or restored temples, administered justice, and received the homage of loyal sheikhs or the submission of rebellious ones.** the period for which they were appointed was not fixed by law, and they held office simply at the king�s pleasure. during the xixth dynasty it was usual to confer this office, the highest in the state, on a son of the sovereign, preferably the heir-apparent. occasionally his appointment was purely formal, and he continued in attendance on his father, while a trusty substitute ruled in his place: often, however, he took the government on himself, and in the regions of the upper nile served an apprenticeship to the art of ruling. * he is mentioned in the sehêl inscriptions as �the royal son sura.� nahi, who had been regarded as the first holder of the office, and who was still in office under thutmosis iii., had been appointed by thutmosis i., but after sura. ** under thutmosis iii., the viceroy nahi restored the temple at semneh; under tutankhamon, the viceroy hui received tribute from the ethiopian princes, and presented them to the sovereign. [illustration: 336.jpg a city of modern nubia--the ancient dongola] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by insinger. this district was in a perpetual state of war--a war without danger, but full of trickery and surprises: here he prepared himself for the larger arena of the syrian campaigns, learning the arts of generalship more perfectly than was possible in the manouvres of the parade-ground. moreover, the appointment was dictated by religious as well as by political considerations. the presumptive heir to the throne was to his father what horus had been to osiris--his lawful successor, or, if need be, his avenger, should some act of treason impose on him the duty of vengeance: and was it not in ethiopia that horus had gained his first victories over typhon? to begin like horus, and flesh his maiden steel on the descendants of the accomplices of sit, was, in the case of the future sovereign, equivalent to affirming from the outset the reality of his divine extraction.* * in the _orbiney papyrus_ the title of �prince of kûsh� was assigned to the heir-presumptive to the throne. as at the commencement of the theban dynasties, it was the river valley only in these regions of the upper nile which belonged to the pharaohs. from this time onward it gave support to an egyptian population as far as the juncture of the two niles: it was a second egypt, but a poorer one, whose cities presented the same impoverished appearance as that which we find to-day in the towns of nubia. the tribes scattered right and left in the desert, or distributed beyond the confluence of the two niles among the plains of sennar, were descended from the old indigenous races, and paid valuable tribute every year in precious metals, ivory, timber, or the natural products of their districts, under penalty of armed invasion.* * the tribute of the ganbâtiû, or people of the south, and that of kûsh and of the ûaûaîû, is mentioned repeatedly in the _annales de thûtmosis iii._ for the year xxxi., for the year xxxiii., and for the year xxxiv. the regularity with which this item recurs, unaccompanied by any mention of war, following after each syrian campaign, shows that it was an habitual operation which was registered as an understood thing. true, the inscription does not give the item for every year, but then it only dealt with ethiopian affairs in so far as they were subsidiary to events in asia; the payment was none the less an annual one, the amount varying in accordance with local agreement. among these races were still to be found descendants of the mazaiû and ûaûaîû, who in days gone by had opposed the advance of the victorious egyptians: the name of the uaûaîû was, indeed, used as a generic term to distinguish all those tribes which frequented the mountains between the nile and the red sea,* but the wave of conquest had passed far beyond the boundaries reached in early campaigns, and had brought the egyptians into contact with nations with whom they had been in only indirect commercial relations in former times. * the annals of thûtmosis iii. mention the tribute of pûanît for the peoples of the coast, the tribute of uaûaît for the peoples of the mountain between the nile and the sea, the tribute of kûsh for the peoples of the south, or ganbâtiû. [illustration: 338.jpg arrival of an ethiopian queen bringing tribute to the viceroy of kûsii] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. some of these were light-coloured men of a type similar to that of the modern abyssinians or gallas: they had the same haughty and imperious carriage, the same well-developed and powerful frames, and the same love of fighting. most of the remaining tribes were of black blood, and such of them as we see depicted on the monuments resemble closely the negroes inhabiting central africa at the present day. [illustration: 339.jpg typical galla woman] they have the same elongated skull, the low prominent forehead, hollow temples, short flattened nose, thick lips, broad shoulders, and salient breast, the latter contrasting sharply with the undeveloped appearance of the lower part of the body, which terminates in thin legs almost devoid of calves. egyptian civilization had already penetrated among these tribes, and, as far as dress and demeanour were concerned, their chiefs differed in no way from the great lords who formed the escort of the pharaoh. we see these provincial dignitaries represented in the white robe and petticoat of starched, pleated, and gauffered linen; an innate taste for bright colours, even in those early times, being betrayed by the red or yellow scarf in which they wrapped themselves, passing it over one shoulder and round the waist, whence the ends depended and formed a kind of apron. a panther�s skin covered the back, and one or two ostrich-feathers waved from the top of the head or were fastened on one side to the fillet confining the hair, which was arranged in short curls and locks, stiffened with gum and matted with grease, so as to form a sort of cap or grotesque aureole round the skull. the men delighted to load themselves with rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces, while from their arms, necks, and belts hung long strings of glass beads, which jingled with every movement of the wearer. they seem to have frequently chosen a woman as their ruler, and her dress appears to have closely resembled that of the egyptian ladies. she appeared before her subjects in a chariot drawn by oxen, and protected from the sun by an umbrella edged with fringe. the common people went about nearly naked, having merely a loin-cloth of some woven stuff or an animal�s skin thrown round their hips. their heads were either shaven, or adorned with tufts of hair stiffened with gum. the children of both sexes wore no clothes until the age of puberty; the women wrapped themselves in a rude garment or in a covering of linen, and carried their children on the hip or in a basket of esparto grass on the back, supported by a leather band which passed across the forehead. one characteristic of all these tribes was their love of singing and dancing, and their use of the drum and cymbals; they were active and industrious, and carefully cultivated the rich soil of the plain, devoting themselves to the raising of cattle, particularly of oxen, whose horns they were accustomed to train fantastically into the shapes of lyres, bows, and spirals, with bifurcations at the ends, or with small human figures as terminations. as in the case of other negro tribes, they plied the blacksmith�s and also the goldsmith�s trade, working up both gold and silver into rings, chains, and quaintly shaped vases, some specimens of their art being little else than toys, similar in design to those which delighted the byzantine caesars of later date. [illustration: 341.jpg gold epergne representing scenes from ethiopian life] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting on the tomb of hûi. a wall-painting remains of a gold epergne, which represents men and monkeys engaged in gathering the fruit of a group of dôm-palms. two individuals lead each a tame giraffe by the halter, others kneeling on the rim raise their hands to implore mercy from an unseen enemy, while negro prisoners, grovelling on their stomachs, painfully attempt to raise their head and shoulders from the ground. this, doubtless, represents a scene from the everyday life of the people of the upper nile, and gives a faithful picture of what took place among many of its tribes during a rapid inroad of some viceroy of kush or a raid by his lieutenants. the resources which thûtmosis i. was able to draw regularly from these southern regions, in addition to the wealth collected during his syrian campaign, enabled him to give a great impulse to building work. the tutelary deity of his capital--amon-râ--who had ensured him the victory in all his battles, had a prior claim on the bulk of the spoil; he received it as a matter of course, and his temple at thebes was thereby considerably enlarged; we are not, however, able to estimate exactly what proportion fell to other cities, such as kummeh, elephantine,* abydos,** and memphis, where a few scattered blocks of stone still bear the name of the king. troubles broke out in lower egypt, but they were speedily subdued by thûtmosis, and he was able to end his days in the enjoyment of a profound peace, undisturbed by any care save that of ensuring a regular succession to his throne, and of restraining the ambitions of those who looked to become possessed of his heritage.*** * wiedemann found his name there cut in a block of brown freestone. ** a stele at abydos speaks of the building operations carried on by thûtmosis i. in that town. *** the expressions from which we gather that his reign was disturbed by outbreaks of internal rebellion seem to refer to a period subsequent to the syrian expedition, and prior to his alliance with the princess hâtshopsîtû. his position was, indeed, a curious one; although _de facto_ absolute in power, his children by queen ahmasi took precedence of him, for by her mother�s descent she had a better right to the crown than her husband, and legally the king should have retired in favour of hie sons as soon as they were old enough to reign. the eldest of them, uazmosû, died early.* the second, amenmosu, lived at least to attain adolescence; he was allowed to share the crown with his father from the fourth year of the latter�s reign, and he also held a military command in the delta,** but before long he also died, and thûtmosis i. was left with only one son--a thûtmosis like himself--to succeed him. the mother of this prince was a certain mûtnofrit,*** half-sister to the king on his father�s side, who enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that her husband allowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mother�s side, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son from being recognised as heir-apparent, hence the occupation of the �seat of horus� reverted once more to a woman, hâtshopsîtû, the eldest daughter of âhmasi. * uazmosû is represented on the tomb of pahiri at el-kab, where mr. griffith imagines he can trace two distinct uazmosû; for the present, i am of opinion that there was but one, the son of thûtmosis i. his funerary chapel was discovered at thebes; it is in a very bad state of preservation. ** amenmosû is represented at el-kab, by the side of his brother uazmosû. also on a fragment where we find him, in the fourth year of his father�s reign, honoured with a cartouche at memphis, and consequently associated with his father in the royal power. *** mûtnofrit was supposed by mariette to have been a daughter of thûtmosis il; the statue reproduced on p. 345 has shown us that she was wife of thûtmosis i. and mother of thûtmosis ii. hâtshopsîtû herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. her maternal ancestor, sonisonbû, had not been a scion of the royal house, and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of the solar blood. according to egyptian belief, this defect of birth could only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god, becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception, had to condescend to infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner. * a similar instance of divine substitution is known to us in the case of two other sovereigns, viz. amenôthes iii., whose father, titmosis iv., was born under conditions analogous to those attending the birth of thûtmosis i.; and ptolemy caesarion, whose father, julius cæsar, was not of egyptian blood. [illustration: 344.jpg portrait of the queen âhmasi] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by naville. the inscriptions with which hâtshopsîtû decorated her chapel relate how, on that fateful night, amon descended upon ahmasi in a flood of perfume and light. the queen received him favourably, and the divine spouse on leaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a daughter, in whom his valour and strength should be manifested once more here below. the sequel of the story is displayed in a series of pictures before our eyes. [illustration: 345.jpg queen mûtnofrît in the gîzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conduct the queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in this portrait of her a finished work of art. the child enters the world amid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and her double constitute themselves her nurses. at the appointed time, her earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, and presents to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over egypt and the world.* * the association of hâtshopsîtû with her father on the throne, has now been placed beyond doubt by the inscriptions discovered and commented on by naville in 1895. [illustration: 346.jpg queen hâtshopsîtû in male costume] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by naville. from henceforth hâtshopsîtû adopts every possible device to conceal her real sex. she changes the termination of her name, and calls herself hâtshopsîû, the chief of the nobles, in lieu of hâtshopsîtû, the chief of the favourites. she becomes the king mâkerî, and on the occasion of all public ceremonies she appears in male costume. we see her represented on the theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid of breasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diadem rests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from her chin. [illustration: 347.jpg bust of queen hâtshopsîtû] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertens. this was the head of one of the sphinxes which formed an avenue at deîr el-baharî; it was brought over by lepsius and is now in the berlin museum. the fragment has undergone extensive restoration, but this has been done with the help of fragments of other statues, in which the details here lost were in a good state of preservation. she retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking of herself, and also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be the betrothed of amon--khnûmît amaûnû.* * we know how greatly puzzled the early egyptologists were by this manner of depicting the queen, and how champollion, in striving to explain the monuments of the period, was driven to suggest the existence of a regent, amenenthes, the male counterpart and husband of hâtshopsîtû, whose name he read amense. this hypothesis, adopted by rosellini, with some slight modifications, was rejected by birch. this latter writer pointed out the identity of the two personages separated by champollion, and proved them to be one and the same queen, the amenses of manetho; he called her amûn-nûm hc, but he made her out to be a sister of amenôthes i., associated on the throne with her brothers thûtmosis i. and thûtmosis il, and regent at the beginning of the reign of thûtmosis iii. hineks tried to show that she was the daughter of thûtmosis i., the wife of thûtmosis ii. and the sister of thûtmosis iii.; it is only quite recently that her true descent and place in the family tree has been recognised. she was, not the sister, but the aunt of thûtmosis iii. the queen, called by birch amûn-nûm-het, the latter part of her name being dropped and the royal prenomen being joined to her own name, was subsequently styled ha-asû or hatasû, and this form is still adopted by some writers; the true reading is hâtshopsîtû or hâtshopsîtû, then hâtshopsîû, or hâtshepsîû, as naville has pointed out. her father united her while still young to her brother thûtmosis, who appears to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains the very subordinate part which he plays beside the queen. when thûtmosis i. died, egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head of affairs, and this youth succeeded his father in office: but hâtshopsîtû, while relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp to her husband,* kept the direction of the state entirely in her own hands. the portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as having refined features, with a proud and energetic expression. the oval of the face is elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the eyes deep set under the arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and tightly closed. * it is evident, from the expressions employed by thûtmosis i. in associating his daughter with himself on the throne, that she was unmarried at the time, and naville thinks that she married her brother thûtmosis ii. after the death of her father. it appears to me more probable that thûtmosis i. married her to her brother after she had been raised to the throne, with a view to avoiding complications which might have arisen in the royal family after his own death. the inscription at shutt-er-ragel, which has furnished mariette with the hypothesis that thûtmosis i. and thûtmosis il reigned simultaneously, proves that the person mentioned in it, a certain penaîti, flourished under both these pharaohs, but by no means shows that these two reigned together; he exercised the functions which he held by their authority during their successive reigns. [illustration: 348.jpg painting on the tomb of the kings] she governed with so firm a hand that neither egypt nor its foreign vassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw themselves from her authority. one raid, in which several prisoners were taken, punished a rising of the shaûsû in central syria, while the usual expeditions maintained order among the peoples of ethiopia, and quenched any attempt which they might make to revolt. when in the second year of his reign the news was brought to thutmosis ii. that the inhabitants of the upper nile had ceased to observe the conditions which his father had imposed upon them, he �became furious as a panther,� and assembling his troops set out for war without further delay. the presence of the king with the army filled the rebels with dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put an end to their attempt at rebelling. the earlier kings of the xviiith dynasty had chosen for their last resting-place a spot on the left bank of the nile at thebes, where the cultivated land joined the desert, close to the pyramids built by their predecessors. probably, after the burial of amenôthes, the space was fully occupied, for thutmosis i. had to seek his burying-ground some way up the ravine, the mouth of which was blocked by their monuments. the libyan chain here forms a kind of amphitheatre of vertical cliffs, which descend to within some ninety feet of the valley, where a sloping mass of detritus connects them by a gentle declivity with the plain. [illustration: 350.jpg the amphitheatre at deîr el-baharî, as it appeared bepoee naville�s excavations] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the great lords and the queens in the times of the antufs and the usirtasens had taken possession of this spot, but their chapels were by this period in ruins, and their tombs almost all lay buried under the waves of sand which the wind from the desert drives perpetually over the summit of the cliffs. this site was seized on by the architects of thûtmosis, who laid there the foundations of a building which was destined to be unique in the world. its ground plan consisted of an avenue of sphinxes, starting from the plain and running between the tombs till it reached a large courtyard, terminated on the west by a colonnade, which was supported by a double row of pillars. [illustration: 351.jpg the northern collonade] drawn by bouclier, from a photograph supplied by naville. above and beyond this was the vast middle platform,* connected with the upper court by the central causeway which ran through it from end to end; this middle platform, like that below it, was terminated on the west by a double colonnade, through which access was gained to two chapels hollowed out of the mountain-side, while on the north it was bordered with excellent effect by a line of proto-dorio columns ranged against the face of the cliff. * the english nomenclature employed in describing this temple is that used in the _guide to deir el-bahari_, published by the _egypt exploration fund_.--tr. this northern colonnade was never completed, but the existing part is of as exquisite proportions as anything that greek art has ever produced. at length we reach the upper platform, a nearly square courtyard, cutting on one side into the mountain slope, the opposite side being enclosed by a wall pierced by a single door, while to right and left ran two lines of buildings destined for purposes connected with the daily worship of the temple. the sanctuary was cut out of the solid rock, but the walls were faced with white limestone; some of the chambers are vaulted, and all of them decorated with bas-reliefs of exquisite workmanship, perhaps the finest examples of this period. thûtmosis i. scarcely did more than lay the foundations of this magnificent building, but his mummy was buried in it with great pomp, to remain there until a period of disturbance and general insecurity obliged those in charge of the necropolis to remove the body, together with those of his family, to some securer hiding-place.* the king was already advanced in age at the time of his death, being over fifty years old, to judge by the incisor teeth, which are worn and corroded by the impurities of which the egyptian bread was full. * both e. de rougé and mariette were opposed to the view that the temple was founded by thûtmosis i., and naville agrees with them. judging from the many new texts discovered by naville, i am inclined to think that thûtmosis i. began the structure, but from plans, it would appear, which had not been so fully developed as they afterwards became. prom indications to be found here and there in the inscriptions of the ramesside period, i am not, moreover, inclined to regard deîr el-bâhâri as the funerary chapel of tombs which were situated in some unknown place elsewhere, but i believe that it included the burial-places of thûtmosis i., thûtmosis ii., queen hâtshopsîtû, and of numerous representatives of their family; indeed, it is probable that thûtmosis iii. and his children found here also their last resting-place. [illustration: 353.jpg head of the mummy of thûtmosis i.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken by emil brugsch-bey. the body, though small and emaciated, shows evidence of unusual muscular strength; the head is bald, the features are refined, and the mouth still bears an expression characteristic of shrewdness and cunning.* * the coffin of thûtmosis i. was usurped by the priest-king pinozmû i., son of piônkhi, and the mummy was lost. i fancy i have discovered it in mummy no. 5283, of which the head presents a striking resemblance to those of thûtmosis ii. and iii. thûtmosis ii. carried on the works begun by his father, but did not long survive him.* the mask on his coffin represents him with a smiling and amiable countenance, and with the fine pathetic eyes which show his descent from the pharaohs of the xiith dynasty. * the latest year up to the present known of this king is the iind, found upon the aswan stele. erman, followed by ed. meyer, thinks that hâtshop-sîtû could not have been free from complicity in the premature death of thûtmosis ii.; but i am inclined to believe, from the marks of disease found on the skin of his mummy, that the queen was innocent of the crime here ascribed to her. [illustration: 354.jpg head of the mummy of thûtmosis ii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in the possession of emil brugsch bey. his statues bear the same expression, which indeed is that of the mummy itself. he resembles thûtmosis i., but his features are not so marked, and are characterised by greater gentleness. he had scarcely reached the age of thirty when he fell a victim to a disease of which the process of embalming could not remove the traces. the skin is scabrous in patches, and covered with scars, while the upper part of the skull is bald; the body is thin and somewhat shrunken, and appears to have lacked vigour and muscular power. by his marriage with his sister, thûtmosis left daughters only,* but he had one son, also a thûtmosis, by a woman of low birth, perhaps merely a slave, whose name was isis.** hâtshopsîtû proclaimed this child her successor, for his youth and humble parentage could not excite her jealousy. she betrothed him to her one surviving daughter, hâtshopsîtû ii., and having thus settled the succession in the male line, she continued to rule alone in the name of her nephew who was still a minor, as she had done formerly in the case of her half-brother. * two daughters of queen hâtshopsîtû i. are known, of whom one, nofîrûrî, died young, and hâtshopsîtû ii. marîtrî, who was married to her half-brother on her father�s side, thûtmosis iii., who was thus her cousin as well. amenôthes ii. was offspring of this marriage. ** the name of the mother of thûtmosis iii. was revealed to us on the wrappings found with the mummy of this king in the hiding-place of deîr el-baharî; the absence of princely titles, while it shows the humble extraction of the lady isis, explains at the same time the somewhat obscure relations between hâtshopsîtû and her nephew. her reign was a prosperous one, but whether the flourishing condition of things was owing to the ability of her political administration or to her fortunate choice of ministers, we are unable to tell. she pressed forward the work of building with great activity, under the direction of her architect sanmût, not only at deîr el-baharî, but at karnak, and indeed everywhere in thebes. the plans of the building had been arranged under thûtmosis i., and their execution had been carried out so quickly, that in many cases the queen had merely to see to the sculptural ornamentation on the all but completed walls. this work, however, afforded her sufficient excuse, according to egyptian custom, to attribute the whole structure to herself, and the opinion she had of her own powers is exhibited with great naiveness in her inscriptions. she loves to pose as premeditating her actions long beforehand, and as never venturing on the smallest undertaking without reference to her divine father. [illustration: 356.jpg the coffin of thûtmosis i.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph in the possession of emil brugsch-bey. this is what i teach to mortals who shall live in centuries to come, and whose hearts shall inquire concerning the monument which i have raised to my father, speaking and exclaiming as they contemplate it: as for me, when i sat in the palace and thought upon him who created me, my heart prompted me to raise to him two obelisks of electrum, whose apices should pierce the firmaments, before the noble gateway which is between the two great pylons of the king thûtmosis i. and my heart led me to address these words to those who shall see my monuments in after-years and who shall speak of my great deeds: beware of saying, �i know not, i know not why it was resolved to carve this mountain wholly of gold!� these two obelisks, my majesty has made them of electrum for my father anion, that my name may remain and live on in this temple for ever and ever; for this single block of granite has been cut, without let or obstacle, at the desire of my majesty, between the first of the second month of pirîfc of the vth year, and the 30th of the fourth month of shomû of the vith year, which makes seven months from the day when they began to, quarry it. one of these two monoliths is still standing among the ruins of karnak, and the grace of its outline, the finish of its hieroglyphics, and the beauty of the figures which cover it, amply justify the pride which the queen and her brother felt in contemplating it. [illustration: 356b avenue of rams and pylon at karnak] [illustration: 356b-text] [illustration: 357.jpg the statue of sanmût] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mortens: the original is in the berlin museum, whither lepsius brought it. sanmût is squatting and holding between his arras and knees the young king thût-mosis iii,, whose head with the youthful side lock appears from under his chin. the tops of the pyramids were gilt, so that �they could be seen from both banks of the river,� and �their brilliancy lit up the two lands of egypt:� needless to say these metal apices have long disappeared. [illustration: 338.jpg page image] drawn by fauoher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. later on, in the the queen�s reign, amon enjoined a work which was more difficult to carry out. on a day when hâtshopsîtû had gone to the temple to offer prayers, �her supplications arose up before the throne of the lord of karnak, and a command was heard in the sanctuary, a behest of the god himself, that the ways which lead to pûanît should be explored, and that the roads to the �ladders of incense� should be trodden.� * * the word �ladders� is the translation of the egyptian word �khâtiû,� employed in the text to designate the country laid out in terraces where the incense trees grew; cf. with a different meaning, the �ladders� of the eastern mediterranean. gums required for the temple service had hitherto reached the theban priests solely by means of foreign intermediaries; so that in the slow transport across africa they lost much of their freshness, besides being defiled by passing through impure hands. in addition to these drawbacks, the merchants confounded under the one term �anîti� substances which differed considerably both in value and character, several of them, indeed, scarcely coming under the category of perfumes, and hence being unacceptable to the gods. one kind, however, found favour with them above all others, being that which still abounds in somali-land at the present day--a gum secreted by the incense sycomore.* * from the form of the trees depicted on the monument, it is certain that the egyptians went to pûanît in search of the _boswellia thurifera_ cart.; but they brought back with them other products also, which they confounded together under the name �incense.� it was accounted a pious work to send and obtain it direct from the locality in which it grew, and if possible to procure the plants themselves for acclimatisation in the nile valley. but the relations maintained in former times with the people of these aromatic regions had been suspended for centuries. �none now climbed the �ladders of incense,� none of the egyptians; they knew of them from hearsay, from the stories of people of ancient times, for these products were brought to the kings of the delta, thy fathers, to one or other of them, from the times of thy ancestors the kings of the said who lived of yore.� all that could be recalled of this country was summed up in the facts, that it lay to the south or to the extreme east, that from thence many of the gods had come into egypt, while from out of it the sun rose anew every morning. amon, in his omniscience, took upon himself to describe it and give an exact account of its position. �the �ladders of incense� is a secret province of tonûtir, it is in truth a place of delight. i created it, and i thereto lead thy majesty, together with mût, hâthor, uîrît, the lady of pûanît, uîrît-hikaû, the magician and regent of the gods, that the aromatic gum may be gathered at will, that the vessels may be laden joyfully with living incense trees and with all the products of this earth.� hâtshopsîtû chose out five well-built galleys, and manned them with picked crews. she caused them to be laden with such merchandise as would be most attractive to the barbarians, and placing the vessels under the command of a royal envoy, she sent them forth on the bed sea in quest of the incense. we are not acquainted with the name of the port from which the fleet set sail, nor do we know the number of weeks it took to reach the land of pûanît, neither is there any record of the incidents which befell it by the way. it sailed past the places frequented by the mariners of the xiith dynasty--suakîn, massowah, and the islands of the ked sea; it touched at the country of the ilîm which lay to the west of the bab el-mandeb, went safely through the straits, and landed at last in the land of perfumes on the somali coast.* there, between the bay of zeîlah and bas hafun, stretched the barbaric region, frequented in later times by the merchants of myos hormos and of berenice. * that part of pûanît where the egyptians landed was at first located in arabia by brugsch, then transferred to somali-land by mariette, whose opinion was accepted by most egyptologists. dumichen, basing his hypothesis on a passage where pûanît is mentioned as �being on both sides of the sea,� desired to apply the name to the arabian as well as to the african coast, to yemen and hadhramaut as well as to somali-land; this suggestion was adopted by lieblein, and subsequently by ed. meyer, who believed that its inhabitants were the ancestors of the sabseans. since then krall has endeavoured to shorten the distance between this country and egypt, and he places the pûanît of hâtshopsîtû between suakin and massowah. this was, indeed, the part of the country known under the xiith dynasty at the time when it was believed that the nile emptied itself thereabouts into the red sea, in the vicinity of the island of the serpent king, but i hold, with mariette, that the pûanît where the egyptians of hâtshopsîtû�s time landed is the present somali-land--a view which is also shared by navillo, but which brugsch, in the latter years of his life, abandoned. [illustration: 361.jpg an inhabitant of the land of pûanît] drawn by fauchon-gudin, from a photograph by gayet. the first stations which the latter encountered beyond cape direh--avails, malao, mundos, and mosylon--were merely open roadsteads offering no secure shelter; but beyond mosylon, the classical navigators reported the existence of several wadys, the last of which, the elephant river, lying between bas el-eîl and cape guardafui, appears to have been large enough not only to afford anchorage to several vessels of light draught, but to permit of their performing easily any evolutions required. during the roman period, it was there, and there only, that the best kind of incense could be obtained, and it was probably at this point also that the egyptians of hâtshopsîtû�s time landed. the egyptian vessels sailed up the river till they reached a place beyond the influence of the tide, and then dropped anchor in front of a village scattered along a bank fringed with sycomores and palms.* * i have shown, from a careful examination of the bas reliefs, that the egyptians must have landed, not on the coast itself, as was at first believed, but in the estuary of a river, and this observation has been accepted as decisive by most egyptologists; besides this, newly discovered fragments show the presence of a hippopotamus. since then i have sought to identify the landing-place of the egyptians with the most important of the creeks mentioned by the græco-roman merchants as accessible for their vessels, viz. that which they called the elephant river, near to the present ras el-fîl. the huts of the inhabitants were of circular shape, each being surmounted with a conical roof; some of them were made of closely plaited osiers, and there was no opening in any of them save the door. they were built upon piles, as a protection from the rise of the river and from wild animals, and access to them was gained by means of moveable ladders. oxen chewing the cud rested beneath them. the natives belonged to a light-coloured race, and the portraits we possess of them resemble the egyptian type in every particular. they were tall and thin, and of a colour which varied between brick-red and the darkest brown. their beards were pointed, and the hair was cut short in some instances, while in others it was arranged in close rows of curls or in small plaits. the costume of the men consisted of a loin-cloth only, while the dress of the women was a yellow garment without sleeves, drawn in at the waist and falling halfway below the knee. the royal envoy landed under an escort of eight soldiers and an officer, but, to prove his pacific intentions, he spread out upon a low table a variety of presents, consisting of five bracelets two gold necklaces, a dagger with strap and sheath complete, a battle-axe, and eleven strings of glass beads. [illustration: 303.jpg a village on the bank of the river, with ladders of incense] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the inhabitants, dazzled by the display of so many valuable objects, ran to meet the new-comers, headed by their sheikh, and expressed a natural astonishment at the sight of the strangers. �how is it,� they exclaimed, �that you have reached this country hitherto unknown to men? have you come down by way of the sky, or have you sailed on the waters of the tonûtir sea? you have followed the path of the sun, for as for the king of the land of egypt, it is not possible to elude him, and we live, yea, we ourselves, by the breath which he gives us.� the name of their chief was parihû, who was distinguished from his subjects by the boomerang which he carried, and also by his dagger and necklace of beads: his right leg, moreover, appears to have been covered with a kind of sheath composed of rings of some yellow metal, probably gold.* he was accompanied by his wife ati, riding on an ass, from which she alighted in order to gain a closer view of the strangers. she was endowed with a type of beauty much admired by the people of central africa, being so inordinately fat that the shape of her body was scarcely recognisable under the rolls of flesh which hung down from it. her daughter, who appeared to be still young, gave promise of one day rivalling, if not exceeding, her mother in size.** * mariette compares this kind of armour to the �dangabor� of the congo tribes, but the �dangabor �is worn on the arm. livingstone saw a woman, the sister of sebituaneh, the highest lady of the sesketeh, who wore on each leg eighteen rings of solid brass as thick as the finger, and three rings of copper above the knee. the weight of these shining rings impeded her walking, and produced sores on her ankles; but it was the fashion, and the inconvenience became nothing. as to the pain, it was relieved by a bit of rag applied to the lower rings. ** these are two instances of abnormal fat production--the earliest with which we are acquainted. after an exchange of compliments, the more serious business of the expedition was introduced. the egyptians pitched a tent, in which they placed the objects of barter with which they were provided, and to prevent these from being too great a temptation to the natives, they surrounded the tent with a line of troops. [illustration: 365.jpg prince parihû and the princess of puanît] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the main conditions of the exchange were arranged at a banquet, in which they spread before the barbarians a sumptuous display of egyptian delicacies, consisting of bread, beer, wine, meat, and carefully prepared and flavoured vegetables. payment for every object was to be made at the actual moment of purchase. for several days there was a constant stream of people, and asses groaned beneath their burdens. the egyptian purchases comprised the most varied objects: ivory tusks, gold, ebony, cassia, myrrh, cynocephali and green monkeys, greyhounds, leopard skins, large oxen, slaves, and last, but not least, thirty-one incense trees, with their roots surrounded by a ball of earth and placed in large baskets. the lading of the ships was a long and tedious affair. all available space being at length exhausted, and as much cargo placed on board as was compatible with the navigation of the vessel, the squadron set sail and with all speed took its way northwards. [illustration: 366.jpg the embarkation of the incense sycomores on board the egyptian fleet] drawn by bouclier, from a photograph by beato. the egyptians touched at several places on the coast on their return journey, making friendly alliances with the inhabitants; the him added a quota to their freight, for which room was with difficulty found on board,--it consisted not only of the inevitable gold, ivory, and skins, but also of live leopards and a giraffe, together with plants and fruits unknown on the banks of the nile.* * lieblein thought that their country was explored, not by the sailors who voyaged to pûanît, but by a different body who proceeded by land, and this view was accepted by ed. meyer. the completed text proves that there was but a single expedition, and that the explorers of pûanît visited the ilîm also. the giraffe which they gave does not appear in the cargo of the vessels at pûanît; the visit must, therefore, have been paid on the return voyage, and the giraffe was probably represented on the destroyed part of the walls where naville found the image of this animal wandering at liberty among the woods. the fleet at length made its reappearance in egyptian ports, having on board the chiefs of several tribes on whose coasts the sailors had landed, and �bringing back so much that the like had never been brought of the products of pûanît to other kings, by the supreme favour of the venerable god, amon râ, lord of karnak.� the chiefs mentioned were probably young men of superior family, who had been confided to the officer in command of the squadron by local sheikhs, as pledges to the pharaoh of good will or as commercial hostages. national vanity, no doubt, prompted the egyptians to regard them as vassals coming to do homage, and their gifts as tributes denoting subjection. the queen inaugurated a solemn festival in honour of the explorers. the theban militia was ordered out to meet them, the royal flotilla escorting them as far as the temple landing-place, where a procession was formed to carry the spoil to the feet of the god. the good theban folk, assembled to witness their arrival, beheld the march past of the native hostages, the incense sycomores, the precious gum itself, the wild animals, the giraffe, and the oxen, whose numbers were doubtless increased a hundredfold in the accounts given to posterity with the usual official exaggeration. the trees were planted at deîr el-baharî, where a sacred garden was prepared for them, square trenches being cut in the rock and filled with earth, in which the sycomore, by frequent watering, came to flourish well.* * naville found these trenches still filled with vegetable mould, and in several of them roots, which gave every indication of the purpose to which the trenches were applied. a scene represents seven of the incense sycomores still growing in their pots, and offered by the queen to the majesty �of this god amonrâ of karnak.� the great heaps of fresh resin were next the objects of special attention. hâtshopsîtû �gave a bushel made of electrum to gauge the mass of gum, it being the first time that they had the joy of measuring the perfumes for amon, lord of karnak, master of heaven, and of presenting to him the wonderful products of pûanît. thot, the lord of hermo-polis, noted the quantities in writing; safkhîtâbûi verified the list. her majesty herself prepared from it, with her own hands, a perfumed unguent for her limbs; she gave forth the smell of the divine dew, her perfume reached even to pûanît, her skin became like wrought gold,* and her countenance shone like the stars in the great festival hall, in the sight of the whole earth.� * in order to understand the full force of the imagery here employed, one must remember that the egyptian artists painted the flesh of women as light yellow. hâtshopsîtû commanded the history of the expedition to be carved on the wall of the colonnades which lay on the west side of the middle platform of her funerary chapel: we there see the little fleet with sails spread, winging its way to the unknown country, its safe arrival at its destination, the meeting with the natives, the animated palavering, the consent to exchange freely accorded; and thanks to the minuteness with which the smallest details have been portrayed, we can as it were witness, as if on the spot, all the phases of life on board ship, not only on egyptian vessels, but, as we may infer, those of other oriental nations generally. for we may be tolerably sure that when the phoenicians ventured into the distant parts of the mediterranean, it was after a similar fashion that they managed and armed their vessels. [illustration: 369.jpg some of the incense trees brought from pûanît to deîr el-baiiakî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. although the natural features of the asiatic or greek coast on which they effected a landing differed widely from those of pûanît, the phoenician navigators were themselves provided with similar objects of exchange, and in their commercial dealings with the natives the methods of procedure of the european traders were doubtless similar to those of the egyptians with the barbarians of the red sea. hâtshopsîtû reigned for at least eight years after this memorable expedition, and traces of her further activity are to be observed in every part of the nile valley. she even turned her attention to the delta, and began the task of reorganising this part of her kingdom, which had been much neglected by her predecessors. the wars between the theban princes and the lords of avaris had lasted over a century, and during that time no one had had either sufficient initiative or leisure to superintend the public works, which were more needed here than in any other part of egypt. the canals were silted up with mud, the marshes and the desert had encroached on the cultivated lands, the towns had become impoverished, and there were some provinces whose population consisted solely of shepherds and bandits. hâtshopsîtû desired to remedy these evils, if only for the purpose of providing a practicable road for her armies marching to zalû _en route_ for syria.* * this follows from the great inscription at stabl-antar, which is commonly interpreted as proving that the shepherd kings still held sway in egypt in the reign of thûtmosis iii., and that they were driven out by him and his aunt. it seems to me that the queen is simply boasting that she had repaired the monuments which had been injured by the shepherds during the time they sojourned in egypt, in the land of avaris. up to the present time no trace of these restorations has been found on the sites. the expedition to pûanît being mentioned in lines 13, 14, they must be of later date than the year ix. of hâtshopsîtû and thûtmosis iii. she also turned her attention to the mines of sinai, which had not been worked by the egyptian kings since the end of the xiith dynasty. in the year xvi. an officer of the queen�s household was despatched to the wady magharah, the site of the ancient works, with orders to inspect the valleys, examine the veins, and restore there the temple of the goddess hâthor; having accomplished his mission, he returned, bringing with him a consignment of those blue and green stones which were so highly esteemed by the egyptians. meanwhile, thûtmosis iii. was approaching manhood, and his aunt, the queen, instead of abdicating in his favour, associated him with herself more frequently in the external acts of government.* * the account of the youth of thûtmosis iii., such as brugsch made it out to be from an inscription of this king, the exile of the royal child at bûto, his long sojourn in the marshes, his triumphal return, must all be rejected. brugsch accepted as actual history a poetical passage where the king identifies himself with horus son of isis, and goes so far as to attribute to himself the adventures of the god. she was forced to yield him precedence in those religious ceremonies which could be performed by a man only, such as the dedication of one of the city gates of ombos, and the foundation and marking out of a temple at medinet-habû; but for the most part she obliged him to remain in the background and take a secondary place beside her. we are unable to determine the precise moment when this dual sovereignty came to an end. it was still existent in the xvith year of the reign, but it had ceased before the xxiind year. death alone could take the sceptre from the hands that held it, and thûtmosis had to curb his impatience for many a long day before becoming the real master of egypt. he was about twenty-five years of age when this event took place, and he immediately revenged himself for the long repression he had undergone, by endeavouring to destroy the very remembrance of her whom he regarded as a usurper. every portrait of her that he could deface without exposing himself to being accused of sacrilege was cut away, and he substituted for her name either that of thûtmosis i. or of thûtmosis ii. [illustration: 372.jpg thutmosis iii., from his statue in the turin museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. a complete political change was effected both at home and abroad from the first day of his accession to power. hâtshopsîtû had been averse to war. during the whole of her reign there had not been a single campaign undertaken beyond the isthmus of suez, and by the end of her life she had lost nearly all that her father had gained in syria; the people of kharu had shaken off the yoke,* probably at the instigation of the king of the amorites,** and nothing remained to egypt of the asiatic province but gaza, sharûhana,*** and the neighbouring villages. the young king set out with his army in the latter days of the year xxii. he reached gaza on the 3rd of the month of pakhons, in time to keep the anniversary of his coronation in that town, and to inaugurate the 24th year of his reign by festivals in honour of his father amon.**** they lasted the usual length of time, and all the departments of state took part in them, but it was not a propitious moment for lengthy ceremonies. * e. de rougé thought that he had discovered, in a slightly damaged inscription bearing upon the pûanît expedition, the mention of a tribute paid by the lotanû. there is nothing in the passage cited but the mention of the usual annual dues paid by the chiefs of pûanît and of the ilîm. ** this is at least what may be inferred from the account of the campaign, where the prince of qodshû, a town of the amaûru (amorites), figures at the head of the coalition formed against thûtmosis iii. *** this is the conclusion to be adopted from the beginning of the inscription of thûtmosis iii.: �now, during the duration of these same years, the country of the lotanû was in discord until other times succeeded them, when the people who were in the town of sharûhana, from the town of yûrza, to the most distant regions of the earth, succeeded in making a revolt against his majesty.� **** the account of this campaign has been preserved to us on a wall adjoining the granite sanctuary at karnak. the king left gaza the following day, the 5th of pakhons; he marched but slowly at first, following the usual caravan route, and despatching troops right and left to levy contributions on the cities of the plain--migdol, yapu (jaffa), lotanû, ono--and those within reach on the mountain spurs, or situated within the easily accessible wadys, such as sauka (socho), hadid, and harîlu. on the 16th day he had not proceeded further than yahmu, where he received information which caused him to push quickly forward. the lord of qodshû had formed an alliance with the syrian princes on the borders of naharaim, and had extorted from them promises of help; he had already gone so far as to summon contingents from the upper orontes, the litany, and the upper jordan, and was concentrating them at megiddo, where he proposed to stop the way of the invading army. thûtmosis called together his principal officers, and having imparted the news to them, took counsel with them as to a plan of attack. three alternative routes were open to him. the most direct approached the enemy�s position on the front, crossing mount carmel by the saddle now known as the umm el-fahm; but the great drawback attached to this route was its being so restricted that the troops would be forced to advance in too thin a file; and the head of the column would reach the plain and come into actual conflict with the enemy while the rear-guard would only be entering the defiles in the neighbourhood of aluna. the second route bore a little to the east, crossing the mountains beyond dutîna and reaching the plain near taânach; but it offered the same disadvantages as the other. the third road ran north of _zafîti_, to meet the great highway which cuts the hill-district of nablûs, skirting the foot of tabor near jenîn, a little to the north of megiddo. it was not so direct as the other two, but it was easier for troops, and the king�s generals advised that it should be followed. the king was so incensed that he was tempted to attribute their prudence to cowardice. �by my life! by the love that râ hath for me, by the favour that i enjoy from my master amon, by the perpetual youth of my nostril in life and power, my majesty will go by the way of aluna, and let him that will go by the roads of which ye have spoken, and let him that will follow my majesty. what will be said among the vile enemies detested of râ: �doth not his majesty go by another way? for fear of us he gives us a wide berth,� they will cry.� the king�s counsellors did not insist further. �may thy father amon of thebes protect thee!� they exclaimed; �as for us, we will follow thy majesty whithersoever thou goest, as it befitteth a servant to follow his master.� the word of command was given to the men; thûtmosis himself led the vanguard, and the whole army, horsemen and foot-soldiers, followed in single file, wending their way through the thickets which covered the southern slopes of mount carmel.* * the position of the towns mentioned and of the three roads has been discussed by e. de rougé, also by p. de saulcy, who fixed the position of yahmu at el-kheimeh, and showed that the egyptian army must have passed through the defiles of umm el-rahm. conder disagreed with this opinion in certain respects, and identified aluna, aruna, at first with arrabeh, and afterwards with arraneh; he thought that thûtmosis came out upon megiddo from the south-east, and he placed megiddo at mejeddah, near beisan, while tomkins placed aruna in the wady el-arriân. w. max millier seems to place yahinu too much to the north, in the neighbourhood of jett. they pitched their camp on the evening of the 19th near aluna, and on the morning of the 20th they entered the wild defiles through which it was necessary to pass in order to reach the enemy. the king had taken precautionary measures against any possible attempt of the natives to cut the main column during this crossing of the mountains. his position might at any moment have become a critical one, had the allies taken advantage of it and attacked each battalion as it issued on to the plain before it could re-form. but the prince of qodshû, either from ignorance of his adversary�s movements, or confident of victory in the open, declined to take the initiative. towards one o�clock in the afternoon, the egyptians found themselves once more united on the further side of the range, close to a torrent called the qina, a little to the south of megiddo. when the camp was pitched, thûtmosis announced his intention of engaging the enemy on the morrow. a council of war was held to decide on the position that each corps should occupy, after which the officers returned to their men to see that a liberal supply of rations was served out, and to organise an efficient system of patrols. they passed round the camp to the cry: �keep a good heart: courage! watch well, watch well! keep alive in the camp!� the king refused to retire to rest until he had been assured that �the country was quiet, and also the host, both to south and north.� by dawn the next day the whole army was in motion. it was formed into a single line, the right wing protected by the torrent, the left extended into the plain, stretching beyond megiddo towards the north-west. thûtmosis and his guards occupied the centre, standing �armed in his chariot of electrum like unto horus brandishing his pike, and like montû the theban god.� the syrians, who had not expected such an early attack, were seized with panic, and fled in the direction of the town, leaving their horses and chariots on the field; but the citizens, fearing lest in the confusion the egyptians should effect an entrance with the fugitives, had closed their gates and refused to open them. some of the townspeople, however, let down ropes to the leaders of the allied party, and drew them up to the top of the ramparts: �and would to heaven that the soldiers of his majesty had not so far forgotten themselves as to gather up the spoil left by the vile enemy! they would then have entered megiddo forthwith; for while the men of the garrison were drawing up the lord of qodshû and their own prince, the fear of his majesty was upon their limbs, and their hands failed them by reason of the carnage which the royal urous carried into their ranks.� the victorious soldiery were dispersed over the fields, gathering together the gilded and silvered chariots of the syrian chiefs, collecting the scattered weapons and the hands of the slain, and securing the prisoners; then rallying about the king, they greeted him with acclamations and filed past to deliver up the spoil. he reproached them for having allowed themselves to be drawn away from the heat of pursuit. �had you carried megiddo, it would have been a favour granted to me by râ my father this day; for all the kings of the country being shut up within it, it would have been as the taking of a thousand towns to have seized megiddo.� the egyptians had made little progress in the art of besieging a stronghold since the times of the xiith dynasty. when scaling failed, they had no other resource than a blockade, and even the most stubborn of the pharaohs would naturally shrink from the tedium of such an undertaking. thûtmosis, however, was not inclined to lose the opportunity of closing the campaign by a decisive blow, and began the investment of the town according to the prescribed modes. [illustration: 378.jpg an egyptian encampment before a besieged town] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. his men were placed under canvas, and working under the protection of immense shields, supported on posts, they made a ditch around the walls, strengthening it with a palisade. the king constructed also on the east side a fort which he called �manakhpirrî-holds-the-asiatics.� famine soon told on the demoralised citizens, and their surrender brought about the submission of the entire country. most of the countries situated between the jordan and the sea--shunem, cana, kinnereth, hazor, bedippa, laish, merom, and acre--besides the cities of the haurân--hamath, magato, ashtarôth, ono-repha, and even damascus itself--recognised the suzerainty of egypt, and their lords came in to the camp to do homage.* * the names of these towns are inscribed on the lists of karnak published by mariette. the syrian losses did not amount to more than 83 killed and 400 prisoners, showing how easily they had been routed; but they had abandoned considerable supplies, all of which had fallen into the hands of the victors. some 724 chariots, 2041 mares, 200 suits of armour, 602 bows, the tent of the prince of qodshû with its poles of cypress inlaid with gold, besides oxen, cows, goats, and more than 20,000 sheep, were among the spoil. before quitting the plain of bsdraelon, the king caused an official survey of it to be made, and had the harvest reaped. it yielded 208,000 bushels of wheat, not taking into account what had been looted or damaged by the marauding soldiery. the return homewards of the egyptians must have resembled the exodus of some emigrating tribe rather than the progress of a regular army thûtmosis caused a long list of the vanquished to be engraved on the walls of the temple which he was building at karnak, thus affording the good people of thebes an opportunity for the first time of reading on the monuments the titles of the king�s syrian subjects written in hieroglyphics. one hundred and nineteen names follow each other in unbroken succession, some of them representing mere villages, while others denoted powerful nations; the catalogue, however, was not to end even here. having once set out on a career of conquest, the pharaoh had no inclination to lay aside his arms. from the xxiith year of his reign to that of his death, we have a record of twelve military expeditions, all of which he led in person. southern syria was conquered at the outset--the whole of kharû as far as the lake of grennesareth, and the amorite power was broken at one blow. [illustration: 380.jpg some of the plants and animals brought back from puanît] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the three succeeding campaigns consolidated the rule of egypt in the country of the negeb, which lay to the south-west of the dead sea, in phoenicia, which prudently resigned itself to its fate, and in that part of lotanii occupying the northern part of the basin of the orontes.** * we know of these three campaigns from the indirect testimony of the annals, which end in the year xxix. with the mention of the fifth campaign. the only dated one is referred to the year xxv., and we know of that of the negeb only by the _inscription of amenemhabî_, 11. 3-5: the campaign began in the negeb of judah, but the king carried it to naharaim the same year. none of these expeditions appear to have been marked by any successes comparable to the victory at megiddo, for the coalition of the syrian chiefs did not survive the blow which they then sustained; but qodshû long remained the centre of resistance, and the successive defeats which its inhabitants suffered never disarmed for more than a short interval the hatred which they felt for the egyptian. [illustration: 381.jpg part of the triumphal lists of thutmosis iii.] on one of the pylons of the temple at karnak. drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. during these years of glorious activity considerable tribute poured in to both memphis and thebes; not only ingots of gold and silver, bars and blocks of copper and lead, blocks of lapis-lazuli and valuable vases, but horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and useful animals of every kind, in addition to all of which we find, as in hâtshopsîtû�s reign, the mention of rare plants and shrubs brought back from countries traversed by the armies in their various expeditions. the theban priests and _savants_ exhibited much interest in such curiosities, and their royal pupil gave orders to his generals to collect for their benefit all that appeared either rare or novel. they endeavoured to acclimatise the species or the varieties likely to be useful, and in order to preserve a record of these experiments, they caused a representation of the strange plants or animals to be drawn on the walls of one of the chapels which they were then building to one of their gods. these pictures may still be seen there in interminable lines, portraying the specimens brought from the upper lotanû in the xxvth year of thûtmosis, and we are able to distinguish, side by side with many plants peculiar to the regions of the euphrates, others having their habitat in the mountains and valleys of tropical africa. this return to an aggressive policy on the part of the egyptians, after the weakness they had exhibited during the later period of hâtshopsîtû�s regency, seriously disconcerted the asiatic sovereigns. they had vainly flattered themselves that the invasion of thûtmosis i. was merely the caprice of an adventurous prince, and they hoped that when his love of enterprise had expended itself, egypt would permanently withdraw within her traditional boundaries, and that the relations of elam with babylon, carchemish with qodshû, and the barbarians of the persian gulf with the inhabitants of the iranian table-land would resume their former course. this vain delusion was dispelled by the advent of a new thûtmosis, who showed clearly by his actions that he intended to establish and maintain the sovereignty of egypt over the western dependencies, at least, of the ancient chaldæan empire, that is to say, over the countries which bordered the middle course of the euphrates and the coasts of the mediterranean. the audacity of his marches, the valour of his men, the facility with which in a few hours he had crushed the assembled forces of half syria, left no room to doubt that he was possessed of personal qualities and material resources sufficient to carry out projects of the most ambitious character. babylon, enfeebled by the perpetual dissensions of its cossæan princes, was no longer in a position to contest with him the little authority she still retained over the peoples of naharaim or of coele-syria; protected by the distance which separated her from the nile valley, she preserved a sullen neutrality, while assyria hastened to form a peaceful alliance with the invading power. again and again its kings sent to thûtmosis presents in proportion to their resources, and the pharaoh naturally treated their advances as undeniable proofs of their voluntary vassalage. each time that he received from them a gift of metal or lapis-lazuli, he proudly recorded their tribute in the annals of his reign; and if, in exchange, he sent them some egyptian product, it was in smaller quantities, as might be expected from a lord to his vassal.* * the �tribute of assûr� is mentioned in this way under the years xxiii. and xxiv. the presents sent by the pharaoh in return are not mentioned in any egyptian text, but there is frequent reference to them in the tel el-amarna tablets. it may be mentioned here that the name of nineveh does not occur on the egyptian monuments, but only that of the town nîi, in which champollion wrongly recognised the later capital of assyria. sometimes there would accompany the convoy, surrounded by an escort of slaves and women, some princess, whom the king would place in his harem or graciously pass on to one of his children; but when, on the other hand, an even distant relative of the pharaoh was asked in marriage for some king on the banks of the tigris or euphrates, the request was met with a disdainful negative: the daughters of the sun were of too noble a race to stoop to such alliances, and they would count it a humiliation to be sent in marriage to a foreign court. [illustration: 384.jpg some of the objects carried in tribute to the syrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, after champollion. free transit on the main road which ran diagonally through kharû was ensured by fortresses constructed at strategic points,* and from this time forward thûtmosis was able to bring the whole force of his army to bear upon both coele-syria and naharaim.** he encamped, in the year xxvii., on the table-land separating the afrîn and the orontes from the euphrates, and from that centre devastated the district of ûânît,*** which lay to the west of aleppo; then crossing �the water of naharaim� in the neighbourhood of carchemish, he penetrated into the heart of mitanni. * the castle, for instance, near megiddo, previously referred to, which, after having contributed to the siege of the town, probably served to keep it in subjection. ** the accounts of the campaigns of thûtmosis iii. have been preserved in the annals in a very mutilated condition, the fragments of which were discovered at different times. they are nothing but extracts from an official account, made for amon and his priests. *** the province of the tree ûanû; cf. with this designation the epithet �shad erini,� �mountain of the cedar tree,� which the assyrians bestowed on the amanus. the following year he reappeared in the same region. tunipa, which had made an obstinate resistance, was taken, together with its king, and 329 of his nobles were forced to yield themselves prisoners. thûtmosis �with a joyous heart� was carrying them away captive, when it occurred to him that the district of zahi, which lay away for the most part from the great military highroads, was a tempting prey teeming with spoil. the barns were stored with wheat and barley, the cellars were filled with wine, the harvest was not yet gathered in, and the trees bent under the weight of their fruit. having pillaged senzaûrû on the orontes,* he made his way to the westwards through the ravine formed by the ishahr el-kebîr, and descended suddenly on the territory of arvad. the towns once more escaped pillage, but thutmosis destroyed the harvests, plundered the orchards, carried off the cattle, and pitilessly wasted the whole of the maritime plain. * senzaûrû was thought by ebers to be �the double tyre.� brugsch considered it to be tyre itself. it is, i believe, the sizara of classical writers, the shaizar of the arabs, and is mentioned in one of the tel el-amarna tablets in connection with nîi. there was such abundance within the camp that the men were continually getting drunk, and spent their time in anointing themselves with oil, which they could do only in egypt at the most solemn festivals. they returned to syria in the year xxx., and their good fortune again favoured them. the stubborn qodshû was harshly dealt with; simyra and arvad, which hitherto had held their own, now opened their gates to him; the lords of upper lotanû poured in their contributions without delay, and gave up their sons and brothers as hostages. in the year xxxi., the city of anamut in tikhisa, on the shores of lake msrana, yielded in its turn;* on the 3rd of pakhons, the anniversary of his coronation, the lotanû renewed their homage to him in person. * the site of the tikhisa country is imperfectly defined. nisrana was seemingly applied to the marshy lake into which the koweik flows, and it is perhaps to be found in the name kin-nesrîn. in this case tikhisa would be the country near the lake; the district of the grseco-roruan chalkis is situated on the right of the military road. the return of the expedition was a sort of triumphal procession. at every halting-place the troops found quarters and provisions prepared for them, bread and cakes, perfumes, oil, wine, and honey being provided in such quantities that they were obliged on their departure to leave the greater part behind them. the scribes took advantage of this peaceful state of affairs to draw up minute accounts of the products of lotanû--corn, barley, millet, fruits, and various kinds of oil--prompted doubtless by the desire to arrive at a fairly just apportionment of the tribute. indeed, the results of the expedition were considered so satisfactory that they were recorded on a special monument dedicated in the palace at thebes. the names of the towns and peoples might change with every war, but the spoils suffered no diminution. in the year xxxiii., the kingdoms situated to the west of the euphrates were so far pacified that thutmosis was able without risk to carry his arms to mesopotamia. he entered the country by the fords of carchemish, near to the spot where his grandfather, thutmosis i., had erected his stele half a century previously. he placed another beside this, and a third to the eastward to mark the point to which he had extended the frontier of his empire.. the mitanni, who exercised a sort of hegemony over the whole of naharaim, were this time the objects of his attack. thirty-two of their towns fell one after another, their kings were taken captive and the walls of their cities were razed, without any serious resistance. the battalions of the enemy were dispersed at the first shock, and pharaoh �pursued them for the space of a mile, without one of them daring to look behind him, for they thought only of escape, and fled before him like a flock of goats.� thutmosis pushed forward as far certainly as the balikh, and perhaps on to the khabur or even to the hermus; and as he approached the frontier, the king of singar, a vassal of assyria, sent him presents of lapis-lazuli. when this prince had retired, another chief, the lord of the great kkati, whose territory had not even been threatened by the invaders, deemed it prudent to follow the example of the petty princes of the plain of the euphrates, and despatched envoys to the pharaoh bearing presents of no great value, but testifying to his desire to live on good terms with egypt. still further on, the inhabitants of nîi begged the king�s acceptance of a troop of slaves and two hundred and sixty mares; he remained among them long enough to erect a stele commemorating his triumph, and to indulge in one of those extensive hunts which were the delight of oriental monarchs. the country abounded in elephants. the soldiers were employed as beaters, and the king and his court succeeded in killing one hundred and twenty head of big game, whose tusks were added to the spoils. these numbers indicate how the extinction of such animals in these parts was brought about. beyond these regions, again, the sheikhs of the lamnaniû came to meet the pharaoh. they were a poor people, and had but little to offer, but among their gifts were some birds of a species unknown to the egyptians, and two geese, with which, however, his majesty deigned to be satisfied.* * the campaign of the year xxxi. it is mentioned in the _annals of thulmosis iii._, 11. 17-27; the reference to the elephant-hunt occurs only in the _inscription of amenemhabi_, 11. 22, 23; an allusion to the defeat of the kings of mitanni is found in a mutilated inscription from the tomb of manakhpirrîsonbû. it was probably on his return from this campaign that thûtmosis caused the great list to be engraved which, while it includes a certain number of names assigned to places beyond the euphrates, ought necessarily to contain the cities of the mitanni. end of vol. iv. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume ix. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: 001.jpg frontispiece] howling dervish [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: 001.jpg page image] [illustration: 002.jpg page image] _the iranian conquest_ _the iranian religions--cyrus in lydia and at babylon; cambyses in egypt--darius and the organisation of the empire._ _the constitution of the median empire borrowed from the ancient peoples of the euphrates: its religion only is peculiar to itself--legends concerning zoroaster, his laws; the avesta and its history--elements contained in it of primitive religion--the supreme god ahura-mazâ and his amêsha-spentas: the yazatas, the fravashis--angrô-mainyus and his agents, the daîvas, the pairîkas, their struggle with ahura-mazdâ--the duties of man here below, funerals, his fate after death---worship and temples: fire-altars, sacrifices, the magi_. _cyrus and the legends concerning his origin: his revolt against astyages and the fall of the median empire--the early years of the reign of nabonidus: revolutions in tyre, the taking of harrân--the end of the reign of alyattes, lydian art and its earliest coinage--croesus, his relations with continental greece, his conquests, his alliances with babylon and egypt--the war between lydia and persia: the defeat of the lydians, the taking of sardes, the death of croesus and subsequent legends relating to it--the submission of the cities of the asiatic littoral._ _cyrus in bactriana and in the eastern regions of the iranian table-land --the impression produced on the chaldæan by his victories; the jewish exiles, ezekiel and his dreams of restoration, the new temple, the prophecies against babylon; general discontent with nabonidus--the attach of cyrus and the battle of zalzallat, the taking of babylon and the fall of nabonidus: the end of the chaldæan empire and the deliverance of the jews._ _egypt under amasis: building works, support given to the greeks; naukratis, its temples, its constitution, and its prosperity--preparations for defence and the unpopularity of amasis with the native egyptians--the death of cyrus and legends relating to it: his palace at pasargadæ and his tomb--cambyses and smerdis--the legendary causes of the war with egypt--psammetichus iii., the battle of pelusium; egypt reduced to a persian province._ _cambyses� plans for conquest; the abortive expeditions to the oceans of amnion and carthage--the kingdom of ethiopia, its kings, its customs: the persians fail to reach napata, the madness of cambyses--the fraud of gaumâta, the death of cambyses and the reign of the pseudo-smerdis, the accession of darius--the revolution in susiana, chaldæa, and media: nebuchadrezzar iii. and the fall of babylon, the death of orætes, the defeat of khshatrita, restoration of peace throughout asia, egyptian affairs and the re-establishment of the royal power._ _the organisation of the country and its division into satrapies: the satrap, the military commander, the royal secretary; couriers, main roads, the eyes and ears of the king--the financial system and the provincial taxes: the daric--advantages and drawbacks of the system of division into satrapies; the royal guard and the military organisation of the empire--the conquest of the hapta-hindu and the prospect of war with greece._ [illustration: 003.jpg page image] chapter i--the iranian conquest drawn by boudier, from the engraving in coste and flandin. the vignette, drawn by faucher-gudin, from a statuette in terra-cotta, found in southern russia, represents a young scythian. _the iranian religions--cyrus in lydia and at babylon: cambyses in egypt --darius and the organisation of the empire._ the median empire is the least known of all those which held sway for a time over the destinies of a portion of western asia. the reason of this is not to be ascribed to the shortness of its duration: the chaldæan empire of nebuchadrezzar lasted for a period quite as brief, and yet the main outlines of its history can be established with some certainty in spite of large blanks and much obscurity. whereas at babylon, moreover, original documents abound, enabling us to put together, feature by feature, the picture of its ancient civilisation and of the chronology of its kings, we possess no contemporary monuments of ecbatana to furnish direct information as to its history. to form any idea of the median kings or their people, we are reduced to haphazard notices gleaned from the chroniclers of other lands, retailing a few isolated facts, anecdotes, legends, and conjectures, and, as these materials reach us through the medium of the babylonians or the greeks of the fifth or sixth century b.c., the picture which we endeavour to compose from them is always imperfect or out of perspective. we seemingly catch glimpses of ostentatious luxury, of a political and military organisation, and a method of government analogous to that which prevailed at later periods among the persians, but more imperfect, ruder, and nearer to barbarism--a persia, in fact, in the rudimentary stage, with its ruling spirit and essential characteristics as yet undeveloped. the machinery of state had doubtless been adopted almost in its entirety from the political organisations which obtained in the kingdoms of assyria, elam, and chaldæa, with which sovereignties the founders of the median empire had held in turns relations as vassals, enemies, and allies; but once we penetrate this veneer of mesopotamian civilisation and reach the inner life of the people, we find in the religion they profess--mingled with some borrowed traits--a world of unfamiliar myths and dogmas of native origin. the main outlines of this religion were already fixed when the medes rose in rebellion against assur-bani-pal; and the very name of _confessor_--fravartîsh--applied to the chief of that day, proves that it was the faith of the royal family. it was a religion common to all the iranians, the persians as well as the medes, and legend honoured as its first lawgiver and expounder an ancient prophet named zarathustra, known to us as zoroaster.* most classical writers relegated zoroaster to some remote age of antiquity--thus he is variously said to have lived six thousand years before the death of plato,** five thousand before the trojan war,*** one thousand before moses, and six hundred before xerxes� campaign against athens; while some few only affirmed that he had lived at a comparatively recent period, and made him out a disciple of the philosopher pythagoras, who flourished about the middle of the fifth century b.c. * the name zarathustra has been interpreted in a score of different ways. the greeks sometimes attributed to it the meaning �worshipper of the stars,� probably by reason of the similarity in sound of the termination �-astres� of zoroaster with the word �astron.� among modern writers, h. rawlinson derived it from the assyrian zîru-ishtar, �the seed of ishtar,� but the etymology now most generally accepted is that of burnouf, according to which it would signify �the man with gold-coloured camels,� the �possessor of tawny camels.� the ordinary greek form zoroaster seems to be derived from some name quite distinct from zarathustra. ** this was, as pliny records, the opinion of eudoxus; not eudoxus of cnidus, pupil of plato, as is usually stated, but a more obscure personage, eudoxus of rhodes. *** this was the statement of hermodorus. according to the most ancient national traditions, he was born in the aryanem-vaêjô, or, in other words, in the region between the araxes and the kur, to the west of the caspian sea. later tradition asserted that his conception was attended by supernatural circumstances, and the miracles which accompanied his birth announced the advent of a saint destined to regenerate the world by the revelation of the true law. in the belief of an iranian, every man, every living creature now existing or henceforth to exist, not excluding the gods themselves, possesses a frôhar, or guardian spirit, who is assigned to him at his entrance into the world, and who is thenceforth devoted entirely to watching over his material and moral well-being,* about the time appointed for the appearance of the prophet, his frôhar was, by divine grace, imprisoned in the heart of a haoma,** and was absorbed, along with the juice of the plant, by the priest purushâspa,*** during a sacrifice, a ray of heavenly glory descending at the same time into the bosom of a maiden of noble race, named dughdôva, whom purushâspa shortly afterwards espoused. * the fravashi (for _fravarti_, from _fra-var_, �to support, nourish�), or the _frôhar (feruer)_, is, properly speaking, the nurse, the genius who nurtures. many of the practices relating to the conception and cult of the fravashis seem to me to go back to the primitive period of the iranian religions. ** the haoma is an _asclepias sarcostema viminalis_. *** the name signifies �he who has many horses.� zoroaster was engendered from the mingling of the frôhar with the celestial ray. the evil spirit, whose supremacy he threatened, endeavoured to destroy him as soon as he saw the light, and despatched one of his agents, named bôuiti, from the country of the far north to oppose him; but the infant prophet immediately pronounced the formula with which the psalm for the offering of the waters opens: �the will of the lord is the rule of good!� and proceeded to pour libations in honour of the river darêja, on the banks of which he had been born a moment before, reciting at the same time the �profession of faith which puts evil spirits to flight.� bôuiti fled aghast, but his master set to work upon some fresh device. zoroaster allowed him, however, no time to complete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddles propounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his hands full of stones--stones as large as a house--with which the good deity supplied him. the mere sight of him dispersed the demons, and they regained the gates of their hell in headlong flight, shrieking out, �how shall we succeed in destroying him? for he is the weapon which strikes down evil beings; he is the scourge of evil beings.� his infancy and youth were spent in constant disputation with evil spirits: ever assailed, he ever came out victorious, and issued more perfect from each attack. when he was thirty years old, one of the good spirits, vôhumanô, appeared to him, and conducted him into the presence of ahura-mazdâ, the supreme being. when invited to question the deity, zoroaster asked, �which is the best of the creatures which are upon the earth?� the answer was, that the man whose heart is pure, he excels among his fellows. he next desired to know the names and functions of the angels, and the nature and attributes of evil. his instruction ended, he crossed a mountain of flames, and underwent a terrible ordeal of purification, during which his breast was pierced with a sword, and melted lead poured into his entrails without his suffering any pain: only after this ordeal did he receive from the hands of ahura-mazdâ the book of the law, the avesta, was then sent back to his native land bearing his precious burden. at that time, vîshtâspa, son of aurvatâspa, was reigning over bactria. for ten years zoroaster had only one disciple, his cousin maidhyoi-mâonha, but after that he succeeded in converting, one after the other, the two sons of hvôgva, the grand vizir jâmâspa, who afterwards married the prophet�s daughter, and frashaoshtra, whose daughter hvôgvi he himself espoused; the queen, hutaosa, was the next convert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king vîshtâspa himself became a disciple. the triumph of the good cause was hastened by the result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise men of the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with their captious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his right hand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by grace from above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end of their resources, he completed his victory by reciting the avesta before them. the legend adds, that after rallying the majority of the people round him, he lived to a good old age, honoured of all men for his saintly life. according to some accounts, he was stricken dead by lightning,* while others say he was killed by a turanian soldier, brâtrôk-rêsh, in a war against the hyaonas. * this is, under very diverse forms, the version preferred by western historians of the post-classical period. the question has often been asked whether zoroaster belongs to the domain of legend or of history. the only certain thing we know concerning him is his name; all the rest is mythical, poetic, or religious fiction. classical writers attributed to him the composition or editing of all the writings comprised in persian literature: the whole consisted, they said, of two hundred thousand verses which had been expounded and analysed by hermippus in his commentaries on the secret doctrines of the magi. the iranians themselves averred that he had given the world twenty-one volumes--the twenty-one _nasks_ of the avesta,* which the supreme deity had created from the twenty-one words of the magian profession of faith, the _ahuna vairya_. king vîshtâspa is said to have caused two authentic copies of the avesta--which contained in all ten or twelve hundred chapters**--to be made, one of which was consigned to the archives of the empire, the other laid up in the treasury of a fortress, either shapîgân, shîzîgân, samarcand, or persepolis.*** * the word _avesta_, in pehlevi _apastâk_, whence come the persian forms _âvasta, ôstâ_, is derived from the achæmenian word _abasta_, which signifies _law_ in the inscriptions of darius. the term zend-avesta, commonly used to designate the sacred book of the persians, is incorrectly derived from the expression _apastâc u zend_, which in pehlevi designates first the law itself, and then the translation and commentary in more modern language which conduces to a _knowledge (zend)_ of the law. the customary application, therefore, of the name zend to the language of the avesta is incorrect. ** the dinkart fixes the number of chapters at 1000, and the shâh-nâmak at 1200, written on plates of gold. according to masudi, the book itself and the two commentaries formed 12,000 volumes, written in letters of gold, the twenty-one nasks each contained 200 pages, and the whole of these writings had been inscribed on 12,000 cow-hides. *** the site of shapîgân or shaspîgân is unknown. j. darmesteter suggests that it ought to be read as _shizîgân_, which would permit of the identification of the place with shîz, one of the ancient religious centres of iran, whose temple was visited by the sassanids on their accession to the throne. according to the ardâ-vîrâf the law was preserved at istakhr, or persepolis, according to the shâh nâmak at samarcand in the temple of the fire-god. alexander is said to have burnt the former copy: the latter, stolen by the greeks, is reported to have been translated into their language and to have furnished them with all their scientific knowledge. one of the arsacids, vologesus i., caused a search to be made for all the fragments which existed either in writing or in the memory of the faithful,* and this collection, added to in the reign of the sassanid king, ardashîr bâbagan, by the high priest tansar, and fixed in its present form under sapor i., was recognised as the religious code of the empire in the time of sapor ii., about the fourth century of the christian era.*** the text is composed, as may be seen, of three distinct strata, which are by no means equally ancient;*** one can, nevertheless, make out from it with sufficient certainty the principal features of the religion and cult of iran, such as they were under the achæmenids, and perhaps even under the hegemony of the medes. * tradition speaks simply of a king valkash, without specifying which of the four kings named vologesus is intended. james darmesteter has given good reasons for believing that this valkash is vologesus i. (50-75 a.d.), the contemporary of nero. ** this is the tradition reproduced in two versions of the dinkart. *** darmesteter declares that ancient zoroastrianism is, in its main lines, the religion of the median magi, even though he assigns the latest possible date to the composition of the avesta as now existing, and thinks he can discern in it greek, jewish, and christian elements. it is a complicated system of religion, and presupposes a long period of development. the doctrines are subtle; the ceremonial order of worship, loaded with strict observances, is interrupted at every moment by laws prescribing minute details of ritual,* which were only put in practice by priests and strict devotees, and were unknown to the mass of the faithful. * renan defined the avesta as �the code of a very small religious sect; it is a talmud, a book of casuistry and strict observance. i have difficulty in believing that the great persian empire, which, at least in religious matters, professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law so strict. i think, that had the persians possessed a sacred book of this description, the greeks must have mentioned it.� the primitive, base of this religion is difficult to discern clearly: but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications of natural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all the ancient nations of western asia--the stars, sirius, the moon, the sun, water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cow and the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficent or malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, and reduced to sacerdotal principles, according to the prescriptions of a powerful priesthood. families consecrated to the service of the altar had ended, as among the hebrews, by separating themselves from the rest of the nation and forming a special tribe, that of the magi, which was the last to enter into the composition of the nation in historic times. all the magi were not necessarily devoted to the service of religion, but all who did so devote themselves sprang from the magian tribe; the avesta, in its oldest form, was the sacred book of the magi, as well as that of the priests who handed down their religious tradition under the various dynasties, native or foreign, who bore rule over iran. the creator was described as �the whole circle of the heavens,� �the most steadfast among the gods,� for �he clothes himself with the solid vault of the firmament as his raiment,� �the most beautiful, the most intelligent, he whose members are most harmoniously proportioned; his body was the light and the sovereign glory, the sun and the moon were his eyes.� the theologians had gradually spiritualised the conception of this deity without absolutely disconnecting him from the material universe. [illustration: 012.jpg the ahura-mazdâ of the bas-reliefs of persepolis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from flandin and coste. he remained under ordinary circumstances invisible to mortal eyes, and he could conceal his identity even from the highest gods, but he occasionally manifested himself in human form. he borrowed in such case from assyria the symbol of assur, and the sculptors depict him with the upper part of his body rising above that winged disk which is carved in a hovering attitude on the pediments of assyrian monuments or stelæ. [illustration: 012b.jpg hypostyle of hall of xerxes: detail of entablature] in later days he was portrayed under the form of a king of imposing stature and majestic mien, who revealed himself from time to time to the princes of iran.* * in a passage of philo of byblos the god is described as having the head of a falcon or an eagle, perhaps by confusion with one of the genii represented on the walls of the palaces. [illustration: 013.jpg an iranian genius in form of a winged bull] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. he was named ahurô-mazdâo or ahura-mazdâ, the omniscient lord,* _spento-mainyus_, the spirit of good, _mainyus-spenishtô_** the most beneficent of spirits. * _ahura_ is derived from _ahu_ = _lord_: mazdâo can be analysed into the component parts, _maz = great_, and _dâo = he who knows_. at first the two terms were interchangeable, and even in the gâthas the form mazda ahura is employed much more often than the form ahura mazda. in the achsemenian inscriptions, auramazdâ is only found as a single word, except in an inscription of xerxes, where the two terms are in one passage separated and declined _aurahya mazdâha_. the form ormuzd, ormazd, usually employed by europeans, is that assumed by the name in modern persian. ** these two names are given to him more especially in connection with his antagonism to angrômainyus. himself uncreated, he is the creator of all things, but he is assisted in the administration of the universe by legions of beings, who are all subject to him.* * darius styles ahura-mazdâ, _mathishta bagânâm_, the greatest of the gods, and xerxes invokes the protection of ahura-mazdâ along with that of the gods. the classical writers also mention gods alongside of ahura-mazdâ as recognised not only among the achæmenian persians, but also among the parthians. darmesteter considers that the earliest achæmenids worshipped ahura-mazdâ alone, �placing the other gods together in a subordinate and anonymous group: may ahura-mazdâ and the other gods protect me.� [illustration: 014.jpg ahura-mazdâ bestowing the tokens of royalty on an iranian king] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by dieulafoy. the most powerful among his ministers were originally nature-gods, such as the sun, the moon, the earth, the winds, and the waters. the sunny plains of persia and media afforded abundant witnesses of their power, as did the snow-clad peaks, the deep gorges through which rushed roaring torrents, and the mountain ranges of ararat or taurus, where the force of the subterranean fires was manifested by so many startling exhibitions of spontaneous conflagration.* the same spiritualising tendency which had already considerably modified the essential concept of ahura-mazdâ, affected also that of the inferior deities, and tended to tone down in them the grosser traits of their character. it had already placed at their head six genii of a superior order, six ever-active energies, who, after assisting their master at the creation of the universe, now presided under his guidance over the kingdoms and forces of nature.** * all these inferior deities, heroes, and genii who presided over persia, the royal family, and the different parts of the empire, are often mentioned in the most ancient classical authors that have come down to us. ** the six amesha-spentas, with their several characteristics, are enumerated in a passage of the _de iside_. this exposition of persian doctrine is usually attributed to theopompus, from which we may deduce the existence of a belief in the amesha-spentas in the achsemenian period. j. darmesteter affirms, on the contrary, that �the author describes the zoro-astrianism of his own times (the second century a.d.), and quotes theopompus for a special doctrine, that of the periods of the world�s life.� although this last point is correct, the first part of darmesteter�s theory does not seem to me justified by investigation. the whole passage of plutarch is a well arranged composition of uniform style, which may be regarded as an exposition of the system described by theopompus, probably in the eighth of his philippics. [illustration: 016a.jpg the moon-god] [illustration: 016b.jpg god of the wind] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king kanishka, published by percy gardner. these benevolent and immortal beings--_amesha-spentas_--were, in the order of precedence, vohu-manô (good thought), asha-vahista (perfect holiness), khshathra-vairya (good government), spenta-armaiti (meek piety), haurvatât (health), ameretât (immortality). each of them had a special domain assigned to him in which to display his energy untrammelled: vohu-manô had charge of cattle, asha-vahista of fire, khshathra-vairya of metals, spenta-armaiti of the earth, haurvatât and ameretât of vegetation and of water. they were represented in human form, either masculine as vohu-manô and asha-vahista,* or feminine as spenta-armaiti, the daughter and spouse of ahura-mazdâ, who became the mother of the first man, gayomaretan, and, through gayomaretan, ancestress of the whole human race. * the image of asha-vahista is known to us from coins of the indo-scythian kings of bactriana. vohu-manô is described as a young man. [illustration: 017a.jpg atar the god of fire] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king kanishka, published by percy gardner. [illustration: 017b.jpg aurvataspa] drawn by faucher-gudin, from coin published by percy gardner. [illustration: 017c.jpg mithra] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king huvishka, published by percy gardner. sometimes ahura-mazdâ is himself included among the amesha-spentas, thus bringing their number up to seven; sometimes his place is taken by a certain sraôsha (obedience to the law), the first who offered sacrifice and recited the prayers of the ritual. subordinate to these great spirits were the yazatas, scattered by thousands over creation, presiding over the machinery of nature and maintaining it in working order. most of them received no special names, but many exercised wide authority, and several were accredited by the people with an influence not less than that of the greater deities themselves. such were the regent of the stars--tishtrya, the bull with golden horns, sirius, the sparkling one; mâo, the moon-god; the wind, vâto; the atmosphere, vayu, the strongest of the strong, the warrior with golden armour, who gathers the storm and hurls it against the demon; atar, fire under its principal forms, divine fire, sacred fire, and earthly fire; vere-thraghna, the author of war and giver of victory; aurva-taspa, the son of the waters, the lightning born among the clouds; and lastly, the spirit of the dawn, the watchful mithra, �who, first of the celestial yazatas, soars above mount hara,* before the immortal sun with his swift steeds, who, first in golden splendour, passes over the beautiful mountains and casts his glance benign on the dwellings of the aryans.� ** * hara is haroberezaiti, or elburz, the mountain over which the sun rises, �around which many a star revolves, where there is neither night nor darkness, no wind of cold or heat, no sickness leading to a thousand kinds of death, nor infection caused by the daôvas, and whose summit is never reached by the clouds.� ** this is the mithra whose religion became so powerful in alexandrian and roman times. his sphere of action is defined in the bundehesh. mithra was a charming youth of beautiful countenance, his head surrounded with a radiant halo. the nymph anâhita was adored under the form of one of the incarnations of the babylonian goddess mylitta, a youthful and slender female, with well-developed breasts and broad hips, sometimes represented clothed in furs and sometimes nude.* like the foreign goddess to whom she was assimilated, she was the dispenser of fertility and of love; the heroes of antiquity, and even ahura-mazdâ himself, had vied with one another in their worship of her, and she had lavished her favours freely on all.** * the popularity of these two deities was already well established at the period we are dealing with, for herodotus mentions mithra and confuses him with anâhita. ** her name ardvî-sûra anâhita seems to signify _the lofty and immaculate power_. the less important yazatas were hardly to be distinguished from the innumerable multitude of fravashis. the fravasliis are the divine types of all intelligent beings. they were originally brought into being by ahura-mazdâ as a distinct species from the human, but they had allowed themselves to be entangled in matter, and to be fettered in the bodies of men, in order to hasten the final destruction of the demons and the advent of the reign of good.* * the legend of the descent of the fravashis to dwell among men is narrated in the bundehesh. [illustration: 018.jpg mylitta-anâhita] drawn by faucher-gudin, from loftus [illustration: 018a.jpg nana-anâhita] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king huvishka, published by percy gardner. once incarnate, a fravasliis devotes himself to the well-being of the mortal with whom he is associated; and when once more released from the flesh, he continues the struggle against evil with an energy whose efficacy is proportionate to the virtue and purity displayed in life by the mortal to whom he has been temporarily joined. the last six days of the year are dedicated to the fravashis. they leave their heavenly abodes at this time to visit the spots which were their earthly dwelling-places, and they wander through the villages inquiring, �who wishes to hire us? who will offer us a sacrifice? who will make us their own, welcome us, and receive us with plenteous offerings of food and raiment, with a prayer which bestows sanctity on him who offers it?� and if they find a man to hearken to their request, they bless him: �may his house be blessed with herds of oxen and troops of men, a swift horse and a strongly built chariot, a man who knoweth how to pray to god, a chieftain in the council who may ever offer us sacrifices with a hand filled with food and raiment, with a prayer which bestows sanctity on him who offers it!� ahura-mazdâ created the universe, not by the work of his hands, but by the magic of his word, and he desired to create it entirely free from defects. his creation, however, can only exist by the free play and equilibrium of opposing forces, to which he gives activity: the incompatibility of tendency displayed by these forces, and their alternations of growth and decay, inspired the iranians with the idea that they were the result of two contradictory principles, the one beneficent and good, the other adverse to everything emanating from the former.* * spiegel, who at first considered that the iranian dualism was derived from polytheism, and was a preliminary stage in the development of monotheism, held afterwards that a rigid monotheism had preceded this dualism. the classical writers, who knew zoroastrianism at the height of its glory, never suggested that the two principles might be derived from a superior principle, nor that they were subject to such a principle. the iranian books themselves nowhere definitely affirm that there existed a single principle distinct from the two opposing principles. in opposition to the god of light, they necessarily formed the idea of a god of darkness, the god of the underworld, who presides over death, angrô-mainyus. the two opposing principles reigned at first, each in his own domain, as rivals, but not as irreconcilable adversaries: they were considered as in fixed opposition to each other, and as having coexisted for ages without coming into actual conflict, separated as they were by the intervening void. as long as the principle of good was content to remain shut up inactive in his barren glory, the principle of evil slumbered unconscious in a darkness that knew no beginning; but when at last �the spirit who giveth increase�--spentô-mainyus--determined to manifest himself, the first throes of his vivifying activity roused from inertia the spirit of destruction and of pain, angrô-mainyus. the heaven was not yet in existence, nor the waters, nor the earth, nor ox, nor fire, nor man, nor demons, nor brute beasts, nor any living thing, when the evil spirit hurled himself upon the light to quench it for ever, but ahura-mazdâ had already called forth the ministers of his will--amêsha-spentas, yazatas, fravashis--and he recited the prayer of twenty-one words in which all the elements of morality are summed up, the ahuna-vairya: �the will of the lord is the rule of good. let the gifts of vohu-manô be bestowed on the works accomplished, at this moment, for mazda. he makes ahura to reign, he who protects the poor.� the effect of this prayer was irresistible: �when ahura had pronounced the first part of the formula, zânak mînoî, the spirit of destruction, bowed himself with terror; at the second part he fell upon his knees; and at the third and last he felt himself powerless to hurt the creatures of ahura-mazdâ.� * * theopompus was already aware of this alternation of good and bad periods. according to the tradition enshrined in the first chapter of the bundehesh, it was the result of a sort of compact agreed upon at the beginning by ahura-mazdâ and angrô-mainyus. ahura-mazdâ, rearing to be overcome if he entered upon the struggle immediately, but sure of final victory if he could gain time, proposed to his adversary a truce of nine thousand years, at the expiration of which the battle should begin. as soon as the compact was made, angrô mainyus realised that he had been tricked into taking a false step, but it was not till after three thousand years that he decided to break the truce and open the conflict. the strife, kindled at the beginning of time between the two gods, has gone on ever since with alternations of success and defeat; each in turn has the victory for a regular period of three thousand years; but when these periods are ended, at the expiration of twelve thousand years, evil will be finally and for ever defeated. while awaiting this blessed fulness of time, as spentô-mainyus shows himself in all that is good and beautiful, in light, virtue, and justice, so angrô-mainyus is to be perceived in all that is hateful and ugly, in darkness, sin, and crime. against the six amesha-spentas he sets in array six spirits of equal power--akem-manô, evil thought; andra, the devouring fire, who introduces discontent and sin wherever he penetrates; sauru, the flaming arrow of death, who inspires bloodthirsty tyrants, who incites men to theft and murder; nâongaithya, arrogance and pride; tauru, thirst; and zairi, hunger.* * the last five of these spirits are enumerated in the _vendidad_, and the first, akem-manô, is there replaced by nasu, the chief spirit of evil. to the yazatas he opposed the daêvas, who never cease to torment mankind, and so through all the ranks of nature he set over against each good and useful creation a counter-creation of rival tendency. ��like a fly he crept into� and infected �the whole universe.� he rendered the world as dark at full noonday as in the darkest night. he covered the soil with vermin, with his creatures of venomous bite and poisonous sting, with serpents, scorpions, and frogs, so that there was not a space as small as a needle�s point but swarmed with his vermin. he smote vegetation, and of a sudden the plants withered.... he attacked the flames, and mingled them with smoke and dimness. the planets, with their thousands of demons, dashed against the vault of heaven and waged war on the stars, and the universe became darkened like a space which the fire blackens with its smoke.� and the conflict grew ever keener over the world and over man, of whom the evil one was jealous, and whom he sought to humiliate. [illustration: 022.jpg one of the bad genii, subject to angrô-mainyus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken from the original bas-relief in glazed tiles in the louvre. [illustration: 023.jpg the king struggling against an evil genius] drawn by boudier, from the photograph in marcel dieulafoy. the children of angrô-mainyus disguised themselves under those monstrous forms in which the imagination of the chaldæans had clothed the allies of mummu-tiamât, such as lions with bulls� heads, and the wings and claws of eagles, which the achæmenian king combats on behalf of his subjects, boldly thrusting them through with his short sword. aêshma of the blood-stained lance, terrible in wrath, is the most trusted leader of these dread bands,* the chief of twenty other daêvas of repulsive aspect--astô-vîdhôtu, the demon of death, who would devote to destruction the estimable fravashis;** apaosha, the enemy of tishtrya the wicked black horse, the bringer of drought, who interferes with the distribution of the fertilising waters; and bûiti, who essayed to kill zoroaster at his birth.*** * the name aêshma means _anger_. he is the asmodeus, aêshmo daevô, of rabbinic legends. ** the name of this demon signifies _he who separates the bones_. *** the greater bundehesh connects the demon bûiti with the indian buddha, and j. darmestefer seems inclined to accept this interpretation. in this case we must either admit that the demon bûiti is of relatively late origin, or that he has, in the legend of zoroaster, taken the place of a demon whose name resembled his own closely enough to admit of the assimilation. the female demons, the bruges, the incubi (yâtus), the succubi (pairîka), the peris of our fairy tales, mingled familiarly with mankind before the time of the prophet, and contracted with them fruitful alliances, but zoroaster broke up their ranks, and prohibited them from becoming incarnate in any form but that of beasts; their hatred, however, is still unquenched, and their power will only be effectually overthrown at the consummation of time. it is a matter of uncertainty whether the medes already admitted the possibility of a fresh revelation, preparing the latest generations of mankind for the advent of the reign of good. the traditions enshrined in the sacred books of iran announce the coming of three prophets, sons of zoroaster --ukhshyatereta, ukhshyatnemô, and saoshyant* --who shall bring about universal salvation. * the legend ran that they had been conceived in the waters of the lake kansu. the name saoshyant signifies _the useful one, the saviour_; ukshyate-reta, _he who malces the good increase_; ukshyatnemô, _he who makes prayer increase_. saoshyant, assisted by fifteen men and fifteen pure women, who have already lived on earth, and are awaiting their final destiny in a magic slumber, shall offer the final sacrifice, the virtue of which shall bring about the resurrection of the dead. �the sovereign light shall accompany him and his friends, when he shall revivify the world and ransom it from old age and death, from corruption and decay, and shall render it eternally living, eternally growing, and master of itself.� the fatal conflict shall be protracted, but the champions of saoshyant shall at length obtain the victory. �before them shall bow aêshma of the blood-stained lance and of ominous renown, and saoshyant shall strike down the she-demon of the unholy light, the daughter of darkness. akem-manô strikes, but vohu-manô shall strike him in his turn; the lying word shall strike, but the word of truth shall strike him in his turn; haurvatât and ameretâfc shall strike down hunger and thirst; haurvatât and ameretât shall strike down terrible hunger and terrible thirst.� angrô-mainyus himself shall be paralysed with terror, and shall be forced to confess the supremacy of good: he shall withdraw into the depths of hell, whence he shall never again issue forth, and all the reanimated beings devoted to the mazdean law shall live an eternity of peace and contentment. man, therefore, incessantly distracted between the two principles, laid wait for by the baêvas, defended by the yazatas, must endeavour to act according to law and justice in the condition in which fate has placed him. he has been raised up here on earth to contribute as far as in him lies to the increase of life and of good, and in proportion as he works for this end or against it, is he the _ashavan_, the pure, the faithful one on earth and the blessed one in heaven, or the _anashavan_, the lawless miscreant who counteracts purity. the highest grade in the hierarchy of men belongs of right to the mage or the _âthravan_, to the priest whose voice inspires the demons with fear, or the soldier whose club despatches the impious, but a place of honour at their side is assigned to the peasant, who reclaims from the power of angrô-mainyus the dry and sterile fields. among the places where the earth thrives most joyously is reckoned that �where a worshipper of ahura-mazdâ builds a house, with a chaplain, with cattle, with a wife, with sons, with a fair flock; where man grows the most corn, herbage, and fruit trees; where he spreads water on a soil without water, and drains off water where there is too much of it.� he who sows corn, sows good, and promotes the mazdean faith; �he nourishes the mazdean religion as fifty men would do rocking a child in the cradle, five hundred women giving it suck from their breasts.* when the corn was created the daêvas leaped, when it sprouted the daêvas lost courage, when the stem set the daêvas wept, when the ear swelled the daêvas fled. in the house where corn is mouldering the daêvas lodge, but when the corn sprouts, one might say that a hot iron is being turned round in their mouths.� and the reason of their horror is easily divined: �whoso eats not, has no power either to accomplish a valiant work of religion, or to labour with valour, or yet to beget children valiantly; it is by eating that the universe lives, and it dies from not eating.� the faithful follower of zoroaster owes no obligation towards the impious man or towards a stranger,** but is ever bound to render help to his coreligionist. * the original text says in a more enigmatical fashion, �he nourishes the religion of mazdâ as a hundred feet of men and a thousand breasts of women might do.� ** charity is called in parsee language, _ashô-dâd_ the _gift to a pious man_, or the _gift of piety_, and the pious man, the _ashavan_, is by definition the worshipper of ahura-mazdâ alone. he will give a garment to the naked, and by so doing will wound zemaka, the demon of winter. he will never refuse food to the hungry labourer, under pain of eternal torments, and his charity will extend even to the brute beasts, provided that they belong to the species created by ahura-mazdâ: he has duties towards them, and their complaints, heard in heaven, shall be fatal to him later on if he has provoked them. asha-vahista will condemn to hell the cruel man who has ill-treated the ox, or allowed his flocks to suffer; and the killing of a hedgehog is no less severely punished--for does not a hedgehog devour the ants who steal the grain? the dog is in every case an especially sacred animal--the shepherd�s dog, the watchdog, the hunting-dog, even the prowling dog. it is not lawful to give any dog a blow which renders him impotent, or to slit his ears, or to cut his foot, without incurring grave responsibilities in this world and in the next; it is necessary to feed the dog well, and not to throw bones to him which are too hard, nor have his food served hot enough to burn his tongue or his throat. for the rest, the faithful zoroastrian was bound to believe in his god, to offer to him the orthodox prayers and sacrifices, to be simple in heart, truthful, the slave of his pledged word, loyal in his very smallest acts. if he had once departed from the right way, he could only return to it by repentance and by purification, accompanied by pious deeds: to exterminate noxious animals, the creatures of angrô-mainyus and the abode of his demons, such as the frog, the scorpion, the serpent or the ant, to clear the sterile tracts, to restore impoverished land, to construct bridges over running water, to distribute implements of husbandry to pions men, or to build them a house, to give a pure and healthy maiden in marriage to a just man,--these were so many means of expiation appointed by the prophet.* marriage was strictly obligatory,** and seemed more praiseworthy in proportion as the kinship existing between the married pair was the closer: not only was the sister united in marriage to her brother, as in egypt, but the father to his daughter, and the mother to her son, at least among the magi. * a passage in the _vendidad_ even enumerates how many noisome beasts must be slain to accomplish one full work of expiation--�to kill 1000 serpents of those who drag themselves upon the belly, and 2000 of the other species, 1000 land frogs or 2000 water frogs, 1000 ants who steal the grain,� and so on. ** the _vendidad_ says, �and i tell thee, o spitama zarathustra, the man who has a wife is above him who lives in continency;� and, as we have seen in the text, one of these forms of expiation consisted in �marrying to a worthy man a young girl who has never known a man� (_vendidad_, 14, § 15). herodotus of old remarked that one of the chief merits in an iranian was to have many children: the king of persia encouraged fecundity in his realm, and awarded a prize each year to that one of his subjects who could boast the most numerous progeny. polygamy was also encouraged and widely practised: the code imposed no limit on the number of wives and concubines, and custom was in favour of a man�s having as many wives as his fortune permitted him to maintain. on the occasion of a death, it was forbidden to burn the corpse, to bury it, or to cast it into a river, as it would have polluted the fire, the earth, or the water--an unpardonable offence. the corpse could be disposed of in different ways. the persians were accustomed to cover it with a thick layer of wax, and then to bury it in the ground: the wax coating obviated the pollution which direct contact would have brought upon the soil. the magi, and probably also strict devotees, following their example, exposed the corpse in the open air, abandoning it to the birds or beasts of prey. it was considered a great misfortune if these respected the body, for it was an almost certain indication of the wrath of ahura-mazdâ, and it was thought that the defunct had led an evil life. when the bones had been sufficiently stripped of flesh, they were collected together, and deposited either in an earthenware urn or in a stone ossuary with a cover, or in a monumental tomb either hollowed out in the heart of the mountain or in the living rock, or raised up above the level of the ground. meanwhile the soul remained in the neighbourhood for three days, hovering near the head of the corpse, and by the recitation of prayers it experienced, according to its condition of purity or impurity, as much of joy or sadness as the whole world experiences. when the third night was past, the just soul set forth across luminous plains, refreshed by a perfumed breeze, and its good thoughts and words and deeds took shape before it �under the guise of a young maiden, radiant and strong, with well-developed bust, noble mien, and glorious face, about fifteen years of age, and as beautiful as the most beautiful;� the unrighteous soul, on the contrary, directed its course towards the north, through a tainted land, amid the squalls of a pestilential hurricane, and there encountered its past ill deeds, under the form of an ugly and wicked young woman, the ugliest and most wicked it had ever seen. the genius rashnu razishta, the essentially truthful, weighed its virtues or vices in an unerring balance, and acquitted or condemned it on the impartial testimony of its past life. on issuing from the judgment-hall, the soul arrived at the approach to the bridge cinvaut, which, thrown across the abyss of hell, led to paradise. the soul, if impious, was unable to cross this bridge, but was hurled down into the abyss, where it became the slave of angrô-mainyus. if pure, it crossed the bridge without difficulty by the help of the angel sraôsha, and was welcomed by vohu-manô, who conducted it before the throne of ahura-mazdâ, in the same way as he had led zoroaster, and assigned to it the post which it should occupy until the day of the resurrection of the body.* * all this picture of the fate of the soul is taken from the _vendidad_, where the fate of the just is described, and in the _yasht_, where the condition of faithful and impious souls respectively is set forth on parallel lines. the classical authors teach us nothing on this subject, and the little they actually say only proves that the persians believed in the immortality of the soul. the main outlines of the picture here set forth go back to the times of the achæmenids and the medes, except the abstract conception of the goddess who leads the soul of the dead as an incarnation of his good or evil deeds. the religious observances enjoined on the members of the priestly caste were innumerable and minute. ahura-mazdâ and his colleagues had not, as was the fashion among the assyrians and egyptians, either temples or tabernacles, and though they were represented sometimes under human or animal forms, and even in some cases on bas-reliefs, yet no one ever ventured to set up in their sanctuaries those so-called animated or prophetic statues to which the majority of the nations had rendered or were rendering their solicitous homage. altars, however, were erected on the tops of hills, in palaces, or in the centre of cities, on which fires were kindled in honour of the inferior deities or of the supreme god himself. [illustration: 031.jpg the two iranian altakrat nakhsh-î-rustem] drawn by boudier, from a heliogravure in marcel dieulafoy. two altars were usually set up together, and they are thus found here and there among the ruins, as at nakhsh-î-kustem, the necropolis of persepolis, where a pair of such altars exist; these are cut, each out of a single block, in a rocky mass which rises some thirteen feet above the level of the surrounding plain. they are of cubic form and squat appearance, looking like towers flanked at the four corners by supporting columns which are connected by circular arches; above a narrow moulding rises a crest of somewhat triangular projections; the hearth is hollowed out on the summit of each altar.* * according to perrot and chipiez, �it is not impossible that these altars were older than the great buildings of persepolis, and that they were erected for the old persian town which darius raised to the position of capital.� at meshed-î-murgâb, on the site of the ancient pasargadas, the altars have disappeared, but the basements on which they were erected are still visible, as also the flight of eight steps by which they were approached. those altars on which burned, a perpetual fire were not left exposed to the open air: they would have run too great a risk of contracting impurities, such as dust borne by the wind, flights of birds, dew, rain, or snow. they were enclosed in slight structures, well protected by walls, and attaining in some cases considerable dimensions, or in pavilion-shaped edifices of stone adorned with columns. [illustration: 032.jpg the two iranian altars of murgab] drawn by boudier, from plandin and coste. the sacrificial rites were of long duration, and frequent, and were rendered very complex by interminable manual acts, ceremonial gestures, and incantations. [illustration: 032b.jpg the occupations of ani in the elysian fields] in cases where the altar was not devoted to maintaining a perpetual fire, it was kindled when necessary with small twigs previously barked and purified, and was subsequently fed with precious woods, preferably cypress or laurel;* care was taken not to quicken the flame by blowing, for the human breath would have desecrated the fire by merely passing over it; death was the punishment for any one who voluntarily committed such a heinous sacrilege. the recognised offering consisted of flowers, bread, fruit, and perfumes, but these were often accompanied, as in all ancient religions, by a bloody sacrifice; the sacrifice of a horse was considered the most efficacious, but an ox, a cow, a sheep, a camel, an ass, or a stag was frequently offered: in certain circumstances, especially when it was desired to conciliate the favour of the god of the underworld, a human victim, probably as a survival of very ancient rites was preferred.** * pausanias, who witnessed the cult as practised at hierocæsarsea, remarked the curious colour of the ashes heaped upon the altar. * most modern writers deny the authenticity of herodotus� account, because a sacrifice of this kind is opposed to the spirit of the magian religion, which is undoubtedly the case, as far as the latest form of the religion is concerned; but the testimony of herodotus is so plain that the fact itself must be considered as indisputable. we may note that the passage refers to the foundation of a city; and if we remember how persistent was the custom of human sacrifice among ancient races at the foundation of buildings, we shall be led to the conclusion that the ceremony described by the greek historian was a survival of a very ancient usage, which had not yet fallen entirely into desuetude at the achæmenian epoch. [illustration: 033.jpg the sacred fire burning on the altar] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the impression of a persian intaglio. the king, whose royal position made him the representative of ahura-mazdâ on earth, was, in fact, a high priest, and was himself able to officiate at the altar, but no one else could dispense with the mediation of the magi. the worshippers proceeded in solemn procession to the spot where the ceremony was to take place, and there the priest, wearing the tiara on his head, recited an invocation in a slow and mysterious voice, and implored the blessings of heaven on the king and nation. he then slaughtered the victim by a blow on the head, and divided it into portions, which he gave back to the offerer without reserving any of them, for ahura-mazdâ required nothing but the soul; in certain cases, the victim was entirely consumed by fire, but more frequently nothing but a little of the fat and some of the entrails were taken to feed and maintain the flame, and sometimes even this was omitted.* sacrifices were of frequent occurrence. without mentioning the extraordinary occasions on which a king would have a thousand bulls slain at one time,** the achæmenian kings killed each day a thousand bullocks, asses, and stags: sacrifice under such circumstances was another name for butchery, the object of which was to furnish the court with a sufficient supply of pure meat. the ceremonial bore resemblance in many ways to that still employed by the modern zoroastrians of persia and india. * a relic of this custom may be discerned in the expiatory sacrifice decreed in the _vendidad_: �he shall sacrifice a thousand head of small cattle, and he shall place their entrails devoutly on the fire, with libations.� ** the number 1000 seems to have had some ritualistic significance, for it often recurs in the penances imposed on the faithful as expiation for their sins: thus it was enjoined to slay 1000 serpents, 1000 frogs, 1000 ants who steal the grain, 1000 head of small cattle, 1000 swift horses, 1000 camels, 1000 brown oxen. the officiating priest covered his mouth with the bands which fell from his mitre, to prevent the god from being polluted by his breath; he held in his hand the baresman, or sacred bunch of tamarisk, and prepared the mysterious liquor from the haoma plant.* he was accustomed each morning to celebrate divine service before the sacred fire, not to speak of the periodic festivals in which he shared the offices with all the members of his tribe, such as the feast of mithra, the feast of the fravashis,** the feast commemorating the rout of angrô-mainyus,*** the feast of the saksea, during which the slaves were masters of the house.**** * the drink mentioned by the author of the _de iside_, which was extracted from the plant omômi, and which the magi offered to the god of the underworld, is certainly the haoma. the rite mentioned by the greek author, which appears to be an incantation against ahriman, required, it seems, a potion in which the blood of a wolf was a necessary ingredient: this questionable draught was then carried to a place where the sun�s rays never shone, and was there sprinkled on the ground as a libation. ** menander speaks of this festival as conducted in his own times, and tells us that it was called eurdigan; modern authorities usually admit that it goes back to the times of the achæmenids or even beyond. *** agathias says that every worshipper of ahura-mazdâ is enjoined to kill the greatest possible number of animals created by angrô-mainyus, and bring to the magi the fruits of his hunting. herodotus had already spoken of this destruction of life as one of the duties incumbent on every persian, and this gives probability to the view of modern writers that the festival went back to the achæmenian epoch. **** the festival of the sakoa is mentioned by ctesias. it was also a babylonian festival, and most modern authorities conclude from this double use of the name that the festival was borrowed from the babylonians by the persians, but this point is not so certain as it is made out to be, and at any rate the borrowing must have taken place very early, for the festival was already well established in the achæmenian period. all the magi were not necessarily devoted to the priesthood; but those only became apt in the execution of their functions who had been dedicated to them from infancy, and who, having received the necessary instruction, were duly consecrated. these adepts were divided into several classes, of which three at least were never confounded in their functions--the sorcerers, the interpreters of dreams, and the most venerated sages--and from these three classes were chosen the ruling body of the order and its supreme head. their rule of life was strict and austere, and was encumbered with a thousand observances indispensable to the preservation of perfect purity in their persons, their altars, their victims, and their sacrificial vessels and implements. the magi of highest rank abstained from every form of living thing as food, and the rest only partook of meat under certain restrictions. their dress was unpretentious, they wore no jewels, and observed strict fidelity to the marriage vow;* and the virtues with which they were accredited obtained for them, from very early times, unbounded influence over the minds of the common people as well as over those of the nobles: the king himself boasted of being their pupil, and took no serious step in state affairs without consulting ahura-mazdâ or the other gods by their mediation. the classical writers maintain that the magi often cloaked monstrous vices under their apparent strictness, and it is possible that this was the case in later days, but even then moral depravity was probably rather the exception than the rule among them:*** the majority of the magi faithfully observed the rules of honest living and ceremonial purity enjoined on them in the books handed down by their ancestors. * clement of alexandria assures us that they were strictly celibate, but besides the fact that married magi are mentioned several times, celibacy is still considered by zoroastrians an inferior state to that of marriage. ** in the greek period, a spurious epitaph of darius, son of hystaspes, was quoted, in which the king says of himself, �i was the pupil of the magi.� *** these accusations are nearly all directed against their incestuous marriages: it seems that the classical writers took for a refinement of debauchery what really was before all things a religious practice. there is reason to believe that the magi were all-powerful among the medes, and that the reign of astyages was virtually the reign of the priestly caste; but all the iranian states did not submit so patiently to their authority, and the persians at last proved openly refractory. their kings, lords of susa as well as of pasargadse, wielded all the resources of elam, and their military power must have equalled, if it did not already surpass, that of their suzerain lords. their tribes, less devoted to the manner of living of the assyrians and chaldæans, had preserved a vigour and power of endurance which the medes no longer possessed; and they needed but an ambitious and capable leader, to rise rapidly from the rank of subjects to that of rulers of iran, and to become in a short time masters of asia. such a chief they found in cyrus,* son of cambyses; but although no more illustrious name than his occurs in the list of the founders of mighty empires, the history of no other has suffered more disfigurement from the imagination of his own subjects or from the rancour of the nations he had conquered.** * the original form of the name is kûru, kûrush, with a long _o_, which forces us to reject the proposed connection with the name of the indian hero kuru, in which the _u_ is short. numerous etymologies of the name cyrus have been proposed. the persians themselves attributed to it the sense of _the sun_. ** we possess two entirely different versions of the history of the origin of cyrus, but one, that of herodotus, has reached us intact, while that of ctesias is only known to us in fragments from extracts made by nicolas of damascus, and by photius. spiegel and duncker thought to recognise in the tradition followed by ctesias one of the persian accounts of the history of cyrus, but bauer refuses to admit this hypothesis, and prefers to consider it as a romance put together by the author, according to the taste of his own times, from facts partly different from those utilised by herodotus, and partly borrowed from herodotus himself: but it should very probably be regarded as an account of median origin, in which the founder of the persian empire is portrayed in the most unfavourable light. or perhaps it may be regarded as the form of the legend current among the pharnaspids who established themselves as satraps of dascylium in the time of the achæmenids, and to whom the royal house of cappadocia traced its origin. it is almost certain that the account given by herodotus represents a median version of the legend, and, considering the important part played in it by harpagus, probably that version which was current among the descendants of that nobleman. the historian dinon, as far as we can judge from the extant fragments of his work, and from the abridgment made by trogus pompeius, adopted the narrative of ctesias, mingling with it, however, some details taken from herodotus and the romance of xenophon, the cyropodia. the medes, who could not forgive him for having made them subject to their ancient vassals, took delight in holding him up to scorn, and not being able to deny the fact of his triumph, explained it by the adoption of tortuous and despicable methods. they would not even allow that he was of royal birth, but asserted that he was of ignoble origin, the son of a female goatherd and a certain atradates,* who, belonging to the savage clan of the mardians, lived by brigandage. cyrus himself, according to this account, spent his infancy and early youth in a condition not far short of slavery, employed at first in sweeping out the exterior portions of the palace, performing afterwards the same office in the private apartments, subsequently promoted to the charge of the lamps and torches, and finally admitted to the number of the royal cupbearers who filled the king�s goblet at table. * according to one of the historians consulted by strabo, cyrus himself, and not his father, was called atradates. [illustration: 039.jpg a royal hunting-party in hun] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the silver vase in the museum of the hermitage. when he was at length enrolled in the bodyguard,* he won distinction by his skill in all military exercises, and having risen from rank to rank, received command of an expedition against the cadusians. * the tradition reproduced by dinon narrated that cyrus had begun by serving among the kavasses, the three hundred staff-bearers who accompanied the sovereign when he appeared in public, and that he passed next into the royal body guard, and that once having attained this rank, he passed rapidly through all the superior grades of the military profession. on the march he fell in with a persian groom named oebaras,* who had been cruelly scourged for some misdeed, and was occupied in the transportation of manure in a boat: in obedience to an oracle the two united their fortunes, and together devised a vast scheme for liberating their compatriots from the median yoke. * this oebaras whom ctesias makes the accomplice of cyrus, seems to be an antedated forestallment of theoebaras whom the tradition followed by herodotus knows as master of the horse under darius, and to whom that king owed his elevation to the throne. how atradates secretly prepared the revolt of the mardians; how cyrus left his camp to return to the court at ecbatana, and obtained from astyages permission to repair to his native country under pretext of offering sacrifices, but in reality to place himself at the head of the conspirators; how, finally, the indiscretion of a woman revealed the whole plot to a eunuch of the harem, and how he warned astyages in the middle of his evening banquet by means of a musician or singing-girl, was frequently narrated by the median bards in their epic poems, and hence the story spread until it reached in later times even as far as the greeks.* * according to ctesias, it was a singing-girl who revealed the existence of the plot to astyages; according to dinon, it was the bard angarês. windischmann has compared this name with that of the vedic guild of singers, the angira. astyages, roused to action by the danger, abandons the pleasures of the chase in which his activity had hitherto found vent, sets out on the track of the rebel, wins a preliminary victory on the hyrba, and kills the father of cyrus: some days after, he again overtakes the rebels, at the entrance to the defiles leading to pasargadse, and for the second time fortune is on the point of declaring in his favour, when the persian women, bringing back their husbands and sons to the conflict, urge them on to victory. the fame of their triumph having spread abroad, the satraps and provinces successfully declared for the conqueror; hyrcania, first, followed by the parthians, the sakae, and the bactrians: astyages was left almost alone, save for a few faithful followers, in the palace at ecbatana. his daughter amytis and his son-in-law spitamas concealed him so successfully on the top of the palace, that he escaped discovery up to the moment when cyrus was on the point of torturing his grandchildren to force them to reveal his hiding-place: thereupon he gave himself up to his enemies, but was at length, after being subjected to harsh treatment for a time, set at liberty and entrusted with the government of a mountain tribe dwelling to the south-east of the caspian sea, that of the barcanians. later on he perished through the treachery of oebaras, and his corpse was left unburied in the desert, but by divine interposition relays of lions were sent to guard it from the attacks of beasts of prey: cyrus, acquainted with this miraculous circumstance, went in search of the body and gave it a magnificent burial.* another legend asserted, on the contrary, that cyrus was closely connected with the royal line of cyaxares; this tradition was originally circulated among the great median families who attached themselves to the achaemenian dynasty.** * the passage in herodotus leads marquart to believe that the murder of astyages formed part of the primitive legend, but was possibly attributed to cambysos, son of cyrus, rather than to oebaras, the companion of the conqueror�s early years. ** this is the legend as told to herodotus in asia minor, probably by the members of the family of harpagus, which the greek historian tried to render credible by interpreting the miraculous incidents in a rationalising manner. [illustration: 042.jpg remains of the palace of ecbatana] drawn by boudier, from coste and flandin. according to this legend astyages had no male heirs, and the sceptre would have naturally descended from him to his daughter mandanê and her sons. astyages was much alarmed by a certain dream concerning his daughter: he dreamt that water gushed forth so copiously from her womb as to flood not only ecbatana, but the whole of asia, and the interpreters, as much terrified as himself, counselled him not to give mandanê in marriage to a persian noble of the race of the achæmenids, named cambyses; but a second dream soon troubled the security into which this union had lulled him: he saw issuing from his daughter�s womb a vine whose branches overshadowed asia, and the interpreters, being once more consulted, predicted that a grandson was about to be born to him whose ambition would cost him his crown. he therefore bade a certain nobleman of his court, named harpagus--he whose descendants preserved this version of the story of cyrus--to seize the infant and put it to death as soon as its mother should give it birth; but the man, touched with pity, caused the child to be exposed in the woods by one of the royal shepherds. a bitch gave suck to the tiny creature, who, however, would soon have succumbed to the inclemency of the weather, had not the shepherd�s wife, being lately delivered of a still-born son, persuaded her husband to rescue the infant, whom she nursed with the same tenderness as if he had been her own child. the dog was, as we know, a sacred animal among the iranians: the incident of the bitch seems, then, to have been regarded by them as an indication of divine intervention, but the greeks were shocked by the idea, and invented an explanation consonant with their own customs. they supposed that the woman had borne the name of spakô: spakô signifying _bitch_ in the language of media.* * herodotus asserts that the child�s foster-mother was called in greek _kynô_, in median _spalcô_, which comes to the same thing, for _spaha_ means _bitch_ in median. further on he asserts that the parents of the child heard of the name of his nurse with joy, as being of good augury; �and, in order that the persians might think that cyrus had been preserved alive by divine agency, _they spread abroad the report that cyrus had been suckled by a bitch_. and thus arose the fable commonly accepted.� trogus pompeius received the original story probably through dinon, and inserted it in his book. cyrus grew to boyhood, and being accepted by mandanê as her son, returned to the court; his grandfather consented to spare his life, but, to avenge himself on harpagus, he caused the limbs of the nobleman�s own son to be served up to him at a feast. thenceforth harpagus had but one idea, to overthrow the tyrant and transfer the crown to the young prince: his project succeeded, and cyrus, having overcome astyages, was proclaimed king by the medes as well as by the persians. the real history of cyrus, as far as we can ascertain it, was less romantic. we gather that kurush, known to us as cyrus, succeeded his father cambyses as ruler of anshân about 559 or 558 b.c.,* and that he revolted against astyages in 553 or 552 b.c.,** and defeated him. the median army thereupon seizing its own leader, delivered him into the hands of the conqueror: ecbatana was taken and sacked, and the empire fell at one blow, or, more properly speaking, underwent a transformation (550 b.c.). the transformation was, in fact, an internal revolution in which the two peoples of the same race changed places. the name of the medes lost nothing of the prestige which it enjoyed in foreign lands, but that of the persians was henceforth united with it, and shared its renown: like astyages and his predecessors, cyrus and his successors reigned equally over the two leading branches of the ancient iranian stock, but whereas the former had been kings of the medes and persians, the latter became henceforth kings of the persians and medes.*** * the length of cyrus� reign is fixed at thirty years by ctesias, followed by dinon and trogus pompeius, but at twenty-nine years by herodotus, whose computation i here follow. hitherto the beginning of his reign has been made to coincide with the fall of astyages, which was consequently placed in 569 or 568 b.c., but the discovery of the _annals of nabonidus_ obliges us to place the taking of ecbatana in the sixth year of the babylonian king, which corresponds to the year 550 b.c., and consequently to hold that cyrus reckoned his twenty-nine years from the moment when he succeeded his father cambyses. ** the inscription on the _rassam cylinder of abu-habba_, seems to make the fall of the median king, who was suzerain of the scythians of harrân, coincide with the third year of nabonidus, or the year 553-2 b.c. but it is only the date of the commencement of hostilities between cyrus and astyages which is here furnished, and this manner of interpreting the text agrees with the statement of the median traditions handed down by the classical authors, that three combats took place between astyages and cyrus before the final victory of the persians. *** this equality of the two peoples is indicated by the very terms employed by darius, whom he speaks of them, in the _great inscription of behistun_. he says, for example, in connection with the revolt of the false smerdis, that �the deception prevailed greatly in the land, in persia and media as well as in the other provinces,� and further on, that �the whole people rose, and passed over from cambyses to him, persia and media as well as the other countries.� in the same way he mentions �the army of persians and medes which was with him,� and one sees that he considered medes and persians to be on exactly the same footing. the change effected was so natural that their nearest neighbours, the chaldæans, showed no signs of uneasiness at the outset. they confined themselves to the bare registration of the fact in their annals at the appointed date, without comment, and nabonidus in no way deviated from the pious routine which it had hitherto pleased him to follow. under a sovereign so good-natured there was little likelihood of war, at all events with external foes, but insurrections were always breaking out in different parts of his territory, and we read of difficulties in khumê in the first year of his reign, in hamath in his second year, and troubles in plionicia in the third year, which afforded an opportunity for settling the tyrian question. tyre had led a far from peaceful existence ever since the day when, from sheer apathy, she had accepted the supremacy of nebuchadrezzar.* * all these events are known through the excerpt from menander preserved to us by josephus in his treatise _against apion_. baal ii. had peacefully reigned there for ten years (574-564), but after his death the people had overthrown the monarchy, and various _suffetes_ had followed one another rapidly--eknibaal ruled two months, khelbes ten months, the high priest abbar three months, the two brothers mutton and gerastratus six years, all of them no doubt in the midst of endless disturbances; whereupon a certain baalezor restored the royal dignity, but only to enjoy it for the space of one year. on his death, the inhabitants begged the chaldæans to send them, as a successor to the crown, one of those princes whom, according to custom, baal had not long previously given over as hostages for a guarantee of his loyalty, and nergal-sharuzur for this purpose selected from their number mahar-baal, who was probably a son of ithobaal (558-557).* when, at the end of four years, the death of mahar-baal left the throne vacant (554-553), the tyrians petitioned for his brother hirôm, and nabonidus, who was then engaged in syria, came south as far as phoenicia and installed the prince.** * the fragment of menander does not give the babylonian king�s name, but a simple chronological calculation proves him to have been nergal-sharuzur. ** _annals of nabonidus_, where mention is made of a certain nabu-makhdan-uzur--but the reading of the name is uncertain --who seems to be in revolt against the chaldæans. floigl has very ingeniously harmonised the dates of the annals with those obtained from the fragment of menander, and has thence concluded that the object of the expedition of the third year was the enthroning of hirôm which is mentioned in the fragment, and during whose fourteenth year cyrus became king of babylon. this took place at the very moment when cyrus was preparing his expedition against astyages; and the babylonian monarch took advantage of the agitation into which the medes were thrown by this invasion, to carry into execution a project which he had been planning ever since his accession. shortly after that event he had had a dream, in which marduk, the great lord, and sin, the light of heaven and earth, had appeared on either side of his couch, the former addressing him in the following words: �nabonidus, king of babylon, with the horses of thy chariot bring brick, rebuild e-khul-khul, the temple of harrân, that sin, the great lord, may take up his abode therein.� nabonidus had respectfully pointed out that the town was in the hands of the scythians, who were subjects of the medes, but the god had replied: �the scythian of whom thou speakest, he, his country and the kings his protectors, are no more.� cyrus was the instrument of the fulfilment of the prophecy. nabonidus took possession of harrân without difficulty, and immediately put the necessary work in hand. this was, indeed, the sole benefit that he derived from the changes which were taking place, and it is probable that his inaction was the result of the enfeebled condition of the empire. the country over which he ruled, exhausted by the assyrian conquest, and depopulated by the scythian invasions, had not had time to recover its forces since it had passed into the hands of the chaldæans; and the wars which nebuchadrezzar had been obliged to undertake for the purpose of strengthening his own power, though few in number and not fraught with danger, had tended to prolong the state of weakness into which it had sunk. if the hero of the dynasty who had conquered egypt had not ventured to measure his strength with the median princes, and if he had courted the friendship not only of the warlike cyaxares but of the effeminate astyages, it would not be prudent for nabonidus to come into collision with the victorious new-comers from the heart of iran. chaldsea doubtless was right in avoiding hostilities, at all events so long as she had to bear the brunt of them alone, but other nations had not the same motives for exercising prudence, and lydia was fully assured that the moment had come for her to again take up the ambitious designs which the treaty of 585 had forced her to renounce. alyattes, relieved from anxiety with regard to the medes, had confined his energies to establishing firmly his kingdom in the regions of asia minor extending westwards from the halys and the anti-taurus. the acquisition of colophon, the destruction of smyrna, the alliance with the towns of the littoral, had ensured him undisputed possession of the valleys of the caicus and the hermus, but the plains of the maeander in the south, and the mountainous districts of mysia in the north, were not yet fully brought under his sway. he completed the occupation of the troad and mysia about 584, and afterwards made of the entire province an appanage for adramyttios, who was either his son or his brother.* * the doings of alyattes in troas and in mysia are vouched for by the anecdote related by plutarch concerning this king�s relations with pittakos. the founding of adramyttium is attributed to him by stephen of byzantium, after aristotle, who made adramyttios the brother of croesus. radat gives good reasons for believing that adramyttios was brother to alyattes and uncle to crosus, and the same person as adramys, the son of sadyattes, according to xanthus of lydia. radet gives the year 584 for the date of these events. he even carried his arms into bithynia, where, to enforce his rule, he built several strongholds, one of which, called alyatta, commanded the main road leading from the basin of the rhyndacus to that of the sangarius, skirting the spurs of olympus.* he experienced some difficulty in reducing caria, and did not finally succeed in his efforts till nearly the close of his reign in 566. adramyttios was then dead, and his fief had devolved on his eldest surviving brother or nephew, crosus, whose mother was by birth a carian. this prince had incurred his father�s displeasure by his prodigality, and an influential party desired that he should be set aside in favour of his brother pantaleon, the son of alyattes by an ionian. croesus, having sown his wild oats, was anxious to regain his father�s favour, and his only chance of so doing was by distinguishing himself in the coming war, if only money could be found for paying his mercenaries. sadyattes, the richest banker in lydia, who had already had dealings with all the members of the royal family, refused to make him a loan, but theokharides of priênê advanced him a thousand gold staters, which enabled crosus to enroll his contingent at bphesus, and to be the first to present himself at the rallying-place for the troops.** * radet places the operations in bithynia before the median war, towards 594 at the latest. i think that they are more probably connected with those in mysia, and that they form part of the various measures taken after the median war to achieve the occupation of the regions west of the halys. ** a mutilated extract from xanthus of lydia in suidas seems to carry these events back to the time of the war against priênê, towards the beginning of the reign. the united evidence of the accompanying circumstances proves that they belong to the time of the old age of alyattes, and makes it very likely that they occurred in 566, the date proposed by radet for the carian campaign. caria was annexed to the kingdom, but the conditions under which the annexation took place are not known to us;* and croesus contributed so considerably to the success of the campaign, that he was reinstated in popular favour. alyattes, however, was advancing in years, and was soon about to rejoin his adversaries cyaxares and nebuchadrezzar in hades. like the pharaohs, the kings of lydia were accustomed to construct during their lifetime the monuments in which they were to repose after death. their necropolis was situated not far from sardes, on the shores of the little lake gygaea; it was here, close to the resting-place of his ancestors and their wives, that alyattes chose the spot for his tomb,** and his subjects did not lose the opportunity of proving to what extent he had gained their affections. * the fragment of nicolas of damascus does not speak of the result of the war, but it was certainly favourable, for herodotus counts the carians among croesus� subjects. ** the only one of these monuments, besides that of alyattes, which is mentioned by the ancients, belonged to one of the favourites of gyges, and was called _the tomb of the courtesan_. strabo, by a manifest error, has applied this name _to_ the tomb of alyattes. [illustration: 050.jpg the tumulus of alyattes and the entrance to the passage] drawn by boudier, from the sketch by spiegolthal. his predecessors had been obliged to finish their work at their own expense and by forced labour;* but in the case of alyattes the three wealthiest classes of the population, the merchants, the craftsmen, and the courtesans, all united to erect for him an enormous tumulus, the remains of which still rise 220 feet above the plains of the hermus. * this, at least, seems to be the import of the passage in clearchus of soli, where that historian gives an account of the erection of the _tomb of the courtesan_. [illustration: 051.jpg one of the lydian ornaments in the louvre] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the sub-structure consisted of a circular wall of great blocks of limestone resting on the solid rock, and it contained in the centre a vault of grey marble which was reached by a vaulted passage. a huge mound of red clay and yellowish earth was raised above the chamber, surmounted by a small column representing a phallus, and by four stelæ covered with inscriptions, erected at the four cardinal points. it follows the traditional type of burial-places in use among the old asianic races, but it is constructed with greater regularity than most of them; alyattes was laid within it in 561, after a glorious reign of forty-nine years.* * herodotus gave fifty-seven years� length of reign to alyattes, whilst the chronographers, who go back as far as xanthus of lydia, through julius africanus, attribute to him only forty-nine; historians now prefer the latter figures, at least as representing the maximum length of reign. [illustration: 052.jpg mould for jewellery of lydian origin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. it was wholly due to him that lydia was for the moment raised to the level of the most powerful states which then existed on the eastern shores of the mediterranean. he was by nature of a violent and uncontrolled temper, and during his earlier years he gave way to fits of anger, in which he would rend the clothes of those who came in his way or would spit in their faces, but with advancing years his character became more softened, and he finally earned the reputation of being a just and moderate sovereign. the little that we know of his life reveals an energy and steadfastness of purpose quite unusual; he proceeded slowly but surely in his undertakings, and if he did not succeed in extending his domains as far as he had hoped at the beginning of his campaigns against the medes, he at all events never lost any of the provinces he had acquired. under his auspices agriculture flourished, and manufactures attained a degree of perfection hitherto unknown. [illustration: 053.jpg a lydian funery couch] drawn by faucher-gudin, from choisy. none of the vases in gold, silver, or wrought-iron, which he dedicated and placed among the treasures of the greek temples, has come down to us, but at rare intervals ornaments of admirable workmanship are found in the lydian tombs. those now in the louvre exhibit, in addition to human figures somewhat awkwardly treated, heads of rams, bulls, and griffins of a singular delicacy and faithfulness to nature. these examples reveal a blending of grecian types and methods of production with those of egypt or chaldæa, the hellenic being predominant,* and the same combination of heterogeneous elements must have existed in the other domains of industrial art---in the dyed and embroidered stuffs,** the vases,*** and the furniture.**** * the ornaments, of which we have now no specimens, but only the original moulds cut in serpentine, betray imitation of assyria and chaldæa. ** the custom of clothing themselves in dyed and embroidered stuffs was one of the effeminate habits with which the poet xenophanes reproached the ionians as having been learned from their lydian neighbours. *** m. perrot points out that one of the vases discovered by g. dennis at bintépé is an evident imitation of the egyptian and phoenician chevroned glasses. the shape of the vase is one of those found represented, with the same decoration, on egyptian monuments subsequent to the middle empire, where the chevroned lines seem to be derived from the undulations of ribbon-alabaster. **** the stone funerary couches which have been discovered in lydian tombs are evidently copied from pieces of wooden furniture similarly arranged and decorated. [illustration: 054a.jpg lydian coin bearing a running fox] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a specimen in the cabinet des médailles: a stater of electrum weighing 14.19 grammes. [these illustrations are larger than the original pieces.--tr.] [illustration: 054b.jpg lydian coin with a hare] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles._ lydia, inheriting the traditions of phrygia, and like that state situated on the border of two worlds, allied moreover with egypt as well as babylon, and in regular communication with the delta, borrowed from each that which fell in with her tastes or seemed likely to be most helpful to her in her commercial relations. as the country produced gold in considerable quantities, and received still more from extraneous sources, the precious metal came soon to be employed as a means of exchange under other conditions than those which had hitherto prevailed. besides acting as commission agents and middle-men for the disposal of merchandise at sardes, ephesus, miletus, clazomenaa, and all the maritime cities, the lydians performed at the same time the functions of pawnbrokers, money-changers, and bankers, and they were ready to make loans to private individuals as well as to kings. obliged by the exigencies of their trade to cut up the large gold ingots into sections sufficiently small to represent the smallest values required in daily life, they did not at first impress upon these portions any stamp as a guarantee of the exact weight or the purity of the metal; they were estimated like the _tabonu_ of the egyptians, by actual weighing on the occasion of each business transaction. [illustration: 055.jpg lydian coins with a lion and lion�s head] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. the idea at length occurred to them to impress each of these pieces with a common stamp, serving, like the trade-marks employed by certain guilds of artisans, to testify at once to their genuineness and their exact weight: in a word, they were the inventors of money. the most ancient coinage of their mint was like a flattened sphere, more or less ovoid, in form: it consisted at first of electrum, and afterwards of smelted gold, upon which parallel striae or shallow creases were made by a hammer. there were two kinds of coinage, differing considerably from each other; one consisted of the heavy stater, weighing about 14.20 grammes, perhaps of phoenician origin, the other of the light stater, of some 10.80 grammes in weight, which doubtless served as money for the local needs of lydia: both forms were subdivided into pieces representing respectively the third, the sixth, the twelfth, and the twenty-fourth of the value of the original. [illustration: 056a.jpg coin bearing head of mouflon goat] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. [illustration: 056b.jpg money of croesus] the stamp which came to be impressed upon the money was in relief, and varied with the banker; * when political communities began to follow the example of individuals, it also bore the name of the city where it was minted. * [the best english numismatists do not agree with m. babelon�s �banker� theory. cf. barclay v. head, _historia nummorum_, p. xxxiv.---tr.] the type of impression once selected, was little modified for fear of exciting mistrust among the people, but it was more finely executed and enlarged so as to cover one of the faces, that which we now call the _obverse_. several subjects entered into the composition of the design, each being impressed by a special punch: thus in the central concavity we find the figure of a running fox, emblem of apollo bassareus, and in two similar depressions, one above and the other below the central, appear a horse�s or stag�s head, and a flower with four petals. later on the design was simplified, and contained only one, or at most two figures--a hare squatting under a tortuous climbing plant, a roaring lion crouching with its head turned to the left, the grinning muzzle of a lion, the horned profile of an antelope or mouflon sheep: rosettes and flowers, included within a square depression, were then used to replace the stria and irregular lines of the reverse. these first efforts were without inscriptions; it was not long, however, before there came to be used, in addition to the figures, legends, from which we sometimes learn the name of the banker; we read, for instance, �i am the mark of phannes,� on a stater of electrum struck at ephesus, with a stag grazing on the right. we are ignorant as to which of the lydian kings first made use of the new invention, and so threw into circulation the gold and electrum which filled his treasury to overflowing. the ancients say it was gyges, but the gygads of their time cannot be ascribed to him; they were, without any doubt, simply ingots marked with the stamp of the banker of the time, and were attributed to gyges either out of pure imagination or by mistake.* * the gold of gyges is known to us through a passage in pollux. fr. lenormant attributed to gyges the coins which babelon restores to the banks of asia minor. babelon sees in the gygads only �ingots of gold, struck _possibly_ in the name of gyges, capable of being used as coin, doubtless representing a definitely fixed weight, but still lacking that ultimate perfection which characterises the coinage of civilised peoples: from the standpoint of circulation in the market their shape was defective and inconvenient; their subdivision did not extend to such small fractions as to make all payments easy; they were too large and too dear for easy circulation through many hands.� the same must be said of the pieces of money which have been assigned to his successors, and, even when we find on them traces of writing, we cannot be sure of their identification; one legend which was considered to contain the name of sadyattes has been made out, without producing conviction, as involving, instead, that of clazomenæ. there is no certainty until after the time of alyattes, that is, in the reign of croesus. it is, as a fact, to this prince that we owe the fine gold and silver coins bearing on the obverse a demi-lion couchant confronting a bull treated similarly.* the two creatures appear to threaten one another, and the introduction of the lion recalls a tradition regarding the city of sardes; it may represent the actual animal which was alleged to have been begotten by king meles of one of his concubines, and which he caused to be carried solemnly round the city walls to render them impregnable. croesus did not succeed to the throne of his father without trouble. his enemies had not laid down their arms after the carian campaign, and they endeavoured to rid themselves of him by all the means in use at oriental courts. the ionian mother of his rival furnished the slave who kneaded the bread with poison, telling her to mix it with the dough, but the woman revealed the intended crime to her master, who at once took the necessary measures to frustrate the plot; later on in life he dedicated in the temple of delphi a statue of gold representing the faithful bread-maker.** the chief of the rival party seems to have been sadyattes, the banker from whom croesus had endeavoured to borrow money at the beginning of his career, but several of the lydian nobles, whose exercise of feudal rights had been restricted by the growing authority of the mermnado, either secretly or openly gave their adhesion to pantaleon, among them being glaucias of sidênê; the greek cities, always ready to chafe at authority, were naturally inclined to support a claimant born of a greek mother, and pindarus the tyrant of ephesus, and grandson of the melas who had married the daughter of gyges, joined the conspirators. * lenormant ascribed an issue of coins without inscriptions to the kings ardys, sadyattes, and alyattes, but this has since been believed not to have been their work. ** herodotus mentions the statue of the bread-maker, giving no reason why crosus dedicated it. the author quoted by plutarch would have it that in revenge he made his half brothers eat the poisoned bread. [illustration: 059.jpg view of the site and ruins of ephesus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. as soon as alyattes was dead, crosus, who was kept informed by his spies of their plans, took action with a rapidity which disconcerted his adversaries. it is not known what became of pantaleon, whether he was executed or fled the country, but his friends were tortured to death or had to purchase their pardon dearly. sadyattes was stretched on a rack and torn with carding combs.* glaucias, besieged in his fortress of sidênê, opened its gates after a desperate resistance; the king demolished the walls, and pronounced a solemn curse on those who should thereafter rebuild them. pindarus, summoned to surrender, refused, but as he had not sufficient troops to defend the entire city, he evacuated the lower quarters, and concentrated all his forces on the defence of the citadel; he refused to open negotiations until after the fall of a tower at the moment when a practicable breach had been made, and succeeded in obtaining an honourable capitulation for himself and his people by a ruse. * the history of sadyattes and of his part in the conspiracy results from points of agreement which have been established between various passages in herodotus and in nicolas of damascus, where the person is sometimes named and sometimes not. he dedicated the town to artemis, and by means of a rope connected the city walls with the temple, which stood nearly a mile away in the suburbs, and then entreated for peace in the name of the goddess. croesus was amused at the artifice, and granted favourable conditions to the inhabitants, but insisted on the expulsion of the tyrant. the latter bowed before the decree, and confiding the care of his children and possessions to his friend pasicles, left for the peloponnesus with his retinue. bphesus up to this time had been a kind of allied principality, whose chiefs, united to the royal family of lydia by marriages from generation to generation, recognised the nominal suzerainty of the reigning king rather than his effective authority. it was in fact a species of protectorate, which, while furthering the commercial interests of lydia, satisfied at the same time the passion of the greek cities for autonomy. croesus, encouraged by his first success, could not rest contented with such a compromise. he attacked, successively, miletus and the various ionian, æolian, and dorian communities of the littoral, and brought them all under his sway, promising on their capitulation that their local constitutions should be respected if they became direct dependencies of his empire. he placed garrisons in such towns as were strategically important for him to occupy, but everywhere else he razed to the ground the fortresses and ramparts which might afford protection to his enemies in case of rebellion, compelling the inhabitants to take up their abode on the open plain where they could not readily defend themselves.* the administration of the affairs of each city was entrusted to either a wealthy citizen, or an hereditary tyrant, or an elected magistrate, who was held responsible for its loyalty; the administrator paid over the tribute to the sovereign�s treasurers, levied the specified contingent and took command of it in time of war, settled any quarrels which might occur, and was empowered, when necessary, to exile turbulent and ambitious persons whose words or actions appeared to him to be suspicious. croesus treated with generosity those republics which tendered him loyal obedience, and affected a special devotion to their gods. he gave a large number of ex-voto offerings to the much-revered sanctuary of bran-chidse, in the territory of miletus; he dedicated some golden heifers at the artemision of ephesus, and erected the greater number of the columns of that temple at his own expense.** * he treated thus the ephesians and the ilians. ** the fragments of columns brought from this temple by wood and preserved in the british museum have on one of the bases the remains of an inscription confirming the testimony of herodotus. at one time in his career he appears to have contemplated extending his dominion over the greek islands, and planned, as was said, the equipment of a fleet, but he soon acknowledged the imprudence of such a project, and confined his efforts to strengthening his advantageous position on the littoral by contracting alliances with the island populations and with the nations of greece proper.* * he seems to have been deterred from his project by a sarcastic remark made, as some say, by pittakos the mitylenian, or according to others, by bias of priênê. following the diplomacy of his ancestors, he began by devoting himself to the gods of the country, and took every pains to gain the good graces of apollo of delphi. he dispensed his gifts with such liberality that neither his contemporaries nor subsequent generations grew weary of admiring it. on one occasion he is said to have sacrificed three thousand animals, and burnt, moreover, on the pyre the costly contents of a palace--couches covered with silver and gold, coverlets and robes of purple, and golden vials. his subjects were commanded to contribute to the offering, and he caused one hundred and seventeen hollow half-bricks to be cast of the gold which they brought him for this purpose. these bricks were placed in regular layers within the treasury at delphi where the gifts of lydia from the time of alyattes were deposited, and the top of the pile was surmounted by a lion of fine gold of such a size that the pedestal and statue together were worth £1,200,000 of our present money. these, however, formed only a tithe of his gifts; many of the objects dedicated by him were dispersed half a century (548 b.c.) later when the temple was burnt, and found their way into the treasuries of the greek states which enjoyed the favour of apollo--among them being an enormous gold cup sent to clazomeme, and four barrels of silver and two bowls, one of silver and one of gold, sent to the corinthians. the people at delphi, as well as their god, participated in the royal largesse, and croesus distributed to them the sum of two staters per head. no doubt their gratitude led them by degrees to exaggerate the total of the benefits showered upon them, especially as time went on and their recollection of the king became fainter; but even when we reduce the number of the many gifts which they attributed to him, we are still obliged to acknowledge that they surpassed anything hitherto recorded, and that they produced throughout the whole of greece the effect that croesus had desired. the oracle granted to him and to the lydians the rights of citizenship in perpetuity, the privilege of priority in consulting it before all comers, precedence for his legates over other foreign embassies, and a place of honour at the games and at all religious ceremonies. it was, in fact, the admission of lydia into the hellenic concert, and the offerings which croesus showered upon the sanctuaries of lesser fame--that of zeus at dodona, of amphiaraos at oropos, of trophonios at lebadsea, on the oracle of abee in phocis, and on the ismenian apollo at thebes--secured a general approval of the act. political alliances contracted with the great families of athens, the alcmonidæ and eupatridæ,* with the cypselidæ of, corinth,** and with the heraclidæ of sparta,*** completed the policy of bribery which croesus had inaugurated in the sacerdotal republics, with the result that, towards 548, being in the position of uncontested patron of the greeks of asia, he could count upon the sympathetic neutrality of the majority of their compatriots in europe, and on the effective support of a smaller number of them in the event of his being forced into hostilities with one or other of his asiatic rivals. * traditions as to crcesus� relations with alcrnseon are preserved by herodotus. the king compelled the inhabitants of lampsacus, his vassals, to release the elder miltiades, whom they had taken prisoner, and thus earned the gratitude of the eupatridæ. ** alyattes had been the ally of periander, as is proved by an anecdote in herodotus. this friendship continued under crosus, for after the fall of the monarchy, when the special treasuries of lydia were suppressed, the ex-voto offerings of the lydian kings were deposited in the treasury of corinth. *** according to theopompus, the lacedaemonians, wishing to gild the face of the statue of the amyclsean, apollo, and finding no gold in greece, consulted the delphian prophetess: by her advice they sent to lydia to buy the precious metal from croesus. this, however, constituted merely one side of his policy, and the negotiations which he carried on with his western neighbours were conducted simultaneously with his wars against those of the east. alyattes had asserted his supremacy over the whole of the country on the western side of the halys, but it was of a very vague kind, having no definite form, and devoid of practical results as far as several of the districts in the interior were concerned. croesus made it a reality, and in less than ten years all the peoples contained within it, the lycians excepted--mysians, phrygians, mariandynians, paphlagonians, thynians, bithynians, and pamphylians--had rendered him homage. in its constitution his empire in no way differed from those which at that time shared the rule of western asia; the number of districts administered directly by the sovereign were inconsiderable, and most of the states comprised in it preserved their autonomy. phrygia had its own princes, who were descendants of midas,* and in the same way caria and mysia also retained theirs; but these vassal lords paid tribute and furnished contingents to their liege of sardes, and garrisons lodged in their citadels as well as military stations or towns founded in strategic positions, such as prusa** in bithynia, cibyra, hyda, grimenothyræ, and temenothyræ,*** kept strict watch over them, securing the while free circulation for caravans or individual merchants throughout the whole country. croesus had achieved his conquest just as media was tottering to its fall under the attacks of the persians. * this is proved by the history of the prince adrastus in herodotus. herodotus probably alluded to this colonisation by crcesus, when he said that the mysians of olympus were descendants of lydian colonists. ** strabo merely says that the kibyrates were descended from the lydians who dwelt in cabalia; since croesus was, as far as we know, the only lydian king who ever possessed this part of asia, radet, with good reason, concludes that kibyra was colonised by him. *** radet has given good reasons for believing that at least some of these towns were enlarged and fortified by croesus. their victory placed the lydian king in a position of great perplexity, since it annulled the treaties concluded after the eclipse of 585, and by releasing him from the obligations then contracted, afforded him an opportunity of extending the limits within which his father had confined himself. now or never was the time for crossing the halys in order to seize those mineral districts with which his subjects had so long had commercial relations; on the other hand, the unexpected energy of which the persians had just given proof, their bravery, their desire for conquest, and the valour of their leader, all tended to deter him from the project: should he be victorious, cyrus would probably not rest contented with tke annexation of a few unimportant districts or the imposition of a tribute, but would treat his adversary as he had astyages, and having dethroned him, would divide lydia into departments to be ruled by one or other of his partisans. warlike ideas, nevertheless, prevailed at the court of sardes, and, taking all into consideration, we cannot deny that they had reason on their side. the fall of ecbatana had sealed the fate of media proper, and its immediate dependencies had naturally shared the fortunes of the capital; but the more distant provinces still wavered, and they would probably attempt to take advantage of the change of rule to regain their liberty. cyrus, obliged to take up arms against them, would no longer have his entire forces at his disposal, and by attacking him at that juncture it might be possible to check his power before it became irresistible. having sketched out his plan of campaign, croesus prepared to execute it with all possible celerity. egypt and chaldæa, like himself, doubtless felt themselves menaced; he experienced little difficulty in persuading them to act in concert with him in face of the common peril, and he obtained from both amasis and nabonidus promises of effective co-operation. at the same time he had recourse to the greek oracles, and that of delphi was instrumental in obtaining for him a treaty of alliance and friendship with sparta. negotiations had been carried on so rapidly, that by the end of 548 all was in readiness for a simultaneous movement; sparta was equipping a fleet, and merely awaited the return of the favourable season to embark her contingent; egypt had already despatched hers, and her cypriot vassals were on the point of starting, while bands of thracian infantry were marching to reinforce the lydian army. these various elements represented so considerable a force of men, that, had they been ranged on a field of battle, cyrus would have experienced considerable difficulty in overcoming them. an unforeseen act of treachery obliged the lydians to hasten their preparations and commence hostilities before the moment agreed on. eurybatos, an ephesian, to whom the king had entrusted large sums of money for the purpose of raising mercenaries in the peloponnesus, fled with his gold into persia, and betrayed the secret of the coalition. the achaemenian sovereign did not hesitate to forestall the attack, and promptly assumed the offensive. the transport of an army from ecbatana to the middle course of the halys would have been a long and laborious undertaking, even had it kept within the territory of the empire; it would have necessitated crossing the mountain groups of armenia at their greatest width, and that at a time when the snow was still lying deep upon the ground and the torrents were swollen and unfordable. the most direct route, which passed through assyria and the part of mesopotamia south of the masios, lay for the most part in the hands of the chaldæans, but their enfeebled condition justified cyrus�s choice of it, and he resolved, in the event of their resistance, to cut his way through sword in hand. he therefore bore down upon arbela by the gorges of rowandîz in the month nisan, making as though he were bound for karduniash; but before the babylonians had time to recover from their alarm at this movement, he crossed the river not far from nineveh and struck into mesopotamia. he probably skirted the slopes of the masios, overcoming and killing in the month iyyâr some petty king, probably the ruler of armenia,* and debouched into cappadocia. this province was almost entirely in the power of the enemy; nabonidus had despatched couriers by the shortest route in order to warn his ally, and if necessary to claim his promised help. * ploigl, who was the first to refer a certain passage in the _annals of nabonidus_ to the expedition against croesus, restored is[parda] as the name of the country mentioned, and saw even the capture of sardes in the events of the month iyyâr, in direct contradiction to the greek tradition. the connection between the campaign beyond the tigris and the lydian war seems to me incontestable, but the babylonian chronicler has merely recorded the events which affected babylonia. cyrus� object was both to intimidate nabonidus and also to secure possession of the most direct, and at the same time the easiest, route: by cutting across mesopotamia, he avoided the difficult marches in the mountainous districts of armenia. perhaps we should combine, with the information of the _annals_, the passage of xenophon, where it is said that the armenians refused tribute and service to the king of persia: cyrus would have punished the rebels on his way, after crossing the euphrates. croesus, when he received them, had with him only the smaller portion of his army, the lydian cavalry, the contingents of his asiatic subjects, and a few greek veterans, and it would probably have been wiser to defer the attack till after the disembarkation of the lacedaemonians; but hesitation at so critical a moment might have discouraged his followers, and decided his fate before any action had taken place. he therefore collected his troops together, fell upon the right bank of the halys,* devastated the country, occupied pteria and the neighbouring towns, and exiled the inhabitants to a distance. he had just completed the subjection of the white syrians when he was met by an emissary from the persians; cyrus offered him his life, and confirmed his authority on condition of his pleading for mercy and taking the oath of vassalage.** croesus sent a proud refusal, which was followed by a brilliant victory, after which a truce of three months was concluded between the belligerents.*** * on this point herodotus tells a current story of his time: thaïes had a trench dug behind the army, which was probably encamped in one of the bends made by the halys; he then diverted the stream into this new bed, with the result that the lydians found themselves on the right bank of the river without having had the trouble of crossing it. ** nicolas of damascus records that cyrus, after the capture of sardes, for a short time contemplated making croesus a vassal king, or at least a satrap of lydia. *** we have two very different accounts of this campaign, viz. that of herodotus, and that of polyonus. according to herodotus, croesus gave battle only once in pteria, with indecisive result, and on the next day quietly retired to his kingdom, thinking that cyrus would not dare to pursue him. according to polyonus, croesus, victorious in a first engagement owing to a more or less plausible military stratagem, consented to a truce, but on the day after was completely defeated, and obliged to return to his kingdom with a routed army. herodotus� account of the fall of croesus and of sardes, borrowed partly from a good written source, xanthus or charon of lampsacus, partly from the tradition of the harpagidse, seems to have for its object the soothing of the vanity both of the persians and of the lydians, since, if the result of the war could not be contested, the issue of the battle was at least left uncertain. if he has given a faithful account, no one can understand why croesus should have retired and ceded white syria to a rival who had never conquered him. the account given by polysenus, in spite of the improbability of some of its details, comes from a well-informed author: the defeat of the lydians in the second battle explains the retreat of crcesus, who is without excuse in herodotus� version of the affair. pompeius trogus adopted a version similar to that of polysenus. cyrus employed the respite in attempting to win over the greek cities of the littoral, which he pictured to himself as nursing a bitter hatred against the mermnadæ; but it is to be doubted if his emissaries succeeded even in wresting a declaration of neutrality from the milesians; the remainder, ionians and æolians, all continued faithful to their oaths.* on the resumption of hostilities, the tide of fortune turned, and the lydians were crushed by the superior forces of the persians and the medes; crcesus retired under cover of night, burning the country as he retreated, to prevent the enemy from following him, and crossed the halys with the remains of his battalions. the season was already far advanced; he thought that the persians, threatened in the rear by the babylonian troops, would shrink from the prospect of a winter campaign, and he fell back upon sardes without further lingering in phrygia. but nabonidus did not feel himself called upon to show the same devotion that his ally had evinced towards him, or perhaps the priests who governed in his name did not permit him to fulfil his engagements.** * herodotus makes the attempted corruption of the ionians to date from the beginning of the war, even before cyrus took the field. ** the author followed by pompeius trogus has alone preserved the record of this treaty. the fact is important as explaining croesus� behaviour after his defeat, but schubert goes too far when he re-establishes on this ground an actual campaign of cyrus against babylon: radet has come back to the right view in seeing only a treaty made with nabonidus. as soon as peace was proposed, he accepted terms, without once considering the danger to which the lydians were exposed by his defection. the persian king raised his camp as soon as all fear of an attack to rearward was removed, and, falling upon defenceless phrygia, pushed forward to sardes in spite of the inclemency of the season. no movement could have been better planned, or have produced such startling results. croesus had disbanded the greater part of his feudal contingents, and had kept only his body-guard about him, the remainder of his army--natives, mercenaries, and allies--having received orders not to reassemble till the following spring. the king hastily called together all his available troops, both lydians and foreigners, and confronted his enemies for the second time. even under these unfavourable conditions he hoped to gain the advantage, had his cavalry, the finest in the world, been able to take part in the engagement. but cyrus had placed in front of his lines a detachment of camels, and the smell of these animals so frightened the lydian horses that they snorted and refused to charge.* * herodotus� mention of the use of camels is confirmed, with various readings, by xenophon, by polysenus, and by ælian; their employment does not necessarily belong to a legendary form of the story, especially if we suppose that the camel, unknown before in asia minor, was first introduced there by the persian army. the site of the battle is not precisely known. according to herodotus, the fight took place in the great plain before sardes, which is crossed by several small tributaries of the hermus, amongst others the hyllus. radet recognises that the hyllus of herodotus is the whole or part of the stream now called the kusu-tchaî, and he places the scene of action near the township of adala, which would correspond with xenophon�s thymbrara. this continues to be the most likely hypothesis. after the battle croesus would have fled along the hermus towards sardes. xenophon�s story is a pure romance. croesus was again worsted on the confines of the plain of the hermus, and taking refuge in the citadel of sardes, he despatched couriers to his allies in greece and egypt to beg for succour without delay. the lacedaemonians hurried on the mobilisation of their troops, and their vessels were on the point of weighing anchor, when the news arrived that sardes had fallen in the early days of december, and that croesus himself was a prisoner.* how the town came to be taken, the greeks themselves never knew, and their chroniclers have given several different accounts of the event.** * radet gives the date of the capture of sardes as about november 15, 546; but the number and importance of the events occurring between the retreat of croesus and the decisive catastrophe--the negotiations with babylon, the settling into winter quarters, the march of cyrus across phrygia--must have required a longer time than radet allots to them in his hypothesis, and i make the date a month later. ** ctesias and xenophon seem to depend on herodotus, the former with additional fabulous details concerning his oebaras, cyrus� counsellor, which show the probable origin of his additions. polysenus had at his disposal a different story, the same probably that he used for his account of the campaign in cappadocia, for in it can be recognised the wish to satisfy, within possible limits, the pride of the lydians: here again the decisive success is preceded by a check given to cyrus and a three months� truce. the least improbable is that found in herodotus. the blockade had lasted, so he tells us, fourteen days, when cyrus announced that he would richly reward the first man to scale the walls. many were tempted by his promises, but were unsuccessful in their efforts, and their failure had discouraged all further attempts, when a mardian soldier, named hyreades, on duty at the foot of the steep slopes overlooking the tmolus, saw a lydian descend from rock to rock in search of his helmet which he had lost, and regain the city by the same way without any great difficulty. he noted carefully the exact spot, and in company with a few comrades climbed up till he reached the ramparts; others followed, and taking the besieged unawares, they opened the gates to the main body of the army.* * about three and a half centuries later sardes was captured in the same way by one of the generals of antiochus the great. croesus could not bear to survive the downfall of his kingdom: he erected a funeral pyre in the courtyard of his palace, and took up his position on it, together with his wives, his daughters, and the noblest youths of his court, surrounded by his most precious possessions. he could cite the example of more than one vanquished monarch of the ancient asiatic world in choosing such an end, and one of the fabulous ancestors of his race, sandon-herakles, had perished after this fashion in the midst of the flames. was the sacrifice carried out? everything leads us to believe that it was, but popular feeling could not be resigned to the idea that a prince who had shown such liberality towards the gods in his prosperity should be abandoned by them in the time of his direst need. they came to believe that the lydian monarch had expiated by his own defeat the crime by the help of which his ancestor gyges had usurped the throne. apollo had endeavoured to delay the punishment till the next generation, that it might fall on the son of his votary, but he had succeeded in obtaining from fate a respite of three years only. even then he had not despaired, and had warned croesus by the voice of the oracles. they had foretold him that, in crossing the halys, the lydians ^would destroy a great empire, and that their power would last till the day when a mule should sit upon the throne of media. croesus, blinded by fate, could not see that cyrus, who was of mixed race, persian by his father and median by his mother, was the predicted mule. he therefore crossed the halys, and a great empire fell, but it was his own. at all events, the god might have desired to show that to honour his altars and adorn his temple was in itself, after all, the best of treasures. �when sardes, suffering the vengeance of zeus, was conquered by the army of the persians, the god of the golden sword, apollo, was the guardian of croesus. when the day of despair arrived, the king could not resign himself to tears and servitude; within the brazen-walled court he erected a funeral pyre, on which, together with his chaste spouse and his bitterly lamenting daughters of beautiful locks, he mounted; he raised his hands towards the depths of the ether and cried: �proud fate, where is the gratitude of the gods, where is the prince, the child of leto? where is now the house of alyattes?... the ancient citadel of sardes has fallen, the pactolus of golden waves runs red with blood; ignominiously are the women driven from their well-decked chambers! that which was once my hated foe is now my friend, and the sweetest thing is to die!� thus he spoke, and ordered the softly moving eunuch* to set fire to the wooden structure. * the word translated �softly moving eunuch� is here perhaps a proper name: the slave whose duty it was to kindle the pyre was called abrobatas in the version of the story chosen by bacchylides, while that adopted by the potter whose work is reproduced on the opposite page, calls him euthymos. the maidens shrieked and threw their arms around their mother, for the death before them was that most hated by mortals. but just when the sparkling fury of the cruel fire had spread around, zeus, calling up a black-flanked cloud, extinguished the yellow flame. nothing is incredible of that which the will of the gods has decreed: apollo of delos, seizing the old man, bore him, together with his daughters of tender feet, into the hyperborean land as a reward for his piety, for no mortal had sent richer offerings to the illustrious pythô!� [illustration: 075.jpg cimesus on his pyre] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the museum of the louvre. this miraculous ending delighted the poets and inspired many fine lines, but history could with difficulty accommodate itself to such a materialistic intervention of a divine being, and sought a less fabulous solution. the legend which appeared most probable to the worthy herodotus did not even admit that the lydian king took his own life; it was cyrus who condemned him, either with a view of devoting the first-fruits of his victory to the immortals, or to test whether the immortals would save the rival whose piety had been so frequently held up to his admiration. the edges of the pyre had already taken light, when the lydian king sighed and thrice repeated the name of solon. it was a tardy recollection of a conversation in which the athenian sage had stated, without being believed, that none can be accounted truly happy while they still live. cyrus, applying it to himself, was seized with remorse or pity, and commanded the bystanders to quench the fire, but their efforts were in vain. thereupon croesus implored the pity of apollo, and suddenly the sky, which up till then had been serene and clear, became overcast; thick clouds collected, and rain fell so heavily that the burning pile was at once extinguished.* * the story told by nicolas of damascus comes down probably from xanthus of lydia, but with many additions borrowed directly from herodotus and rhetorical developments by the author himself. most other writers who tell the story depend for their information, either directly or indirectly, on herodotus: in later times it was supposed that the lydian king was preserved from the flames by the use of some talisman such as the ephesian letters. well treated by his conqueror, the lydian king is said to have become his friend and most loyal counsellor; he accepted from him the fief of barênê in media, often accompanied him in his campaigns, and on more than one occasion was of great service to him by the wise advice which he gave. we may well ask what would have taken place had he gained the decisive victory over cyrus that he hoped. chaldæa possessed merely the semblance of her former greatness and power, and if she still maintained her hold over mesopotamia, syria, phoenicia, and parts of arabia, it was because these provinces, impoverished by the assyrian conquest, and entirely laid waste by the scythians, had lost the most energetic elements of their populations, and felt themselves too much enfeebled to rise against their suzerain. egypt, like chaldæa, was in a state of decadence, and even though her pharaohs attempted to compensate for the inferiority of their native troops by employing foreign mercenaries, their attempts at asiatic rule always issued in defeat, and just as the babylonian sovereigns were unable to reduce them to servitude, so they on their part were powerless to gain an advantage over the sovereigns of babylon. hence lydia, in her youth and vigour, would have found little difficulty in gaining the ascendency over her two recent allies, but beyond that she could not hope to push her success; her restricted territory, sparse population, and outlying position would always have debarred her from exercising any durable dominion over them, and though absolute mistress of asia minor, the countries beyond the taurus were always destined to elude her grasp. if the achæmenian, therefore, had confined himself, at all events for the time being, to the ancient limits of his kingdom, egypt and chaldæa would have continued to vegetate each within their respective area, and the triumph of croesus would, on the whole, have caused but little change in the actual balance of power in the east. the downfall of croesus, on the contrary, marked a decisive era in the world�s history. his army was the only one, from the point of numbers and organisation, which was a match for that of cyrus, and from the day of its dispersion it was evident that neither egypt nor chaldæa had any chance of victory on the battle-field. the subjection of babylon and harrân, of hamath, damascus, tyre and sidon, of memphis and thebes, now became merely a question of time, and that not far distant; the whole of asia, and that part of africa which had been the oldest cradle of human civilisation, were now to pass into the hands of one man and form a single empire, for the benefit of the new race which was issuing forth in irresistible strength from the recesses of the iranian table-land. it was destined, from the very outset, to come into conflict with an older, but no less vigorous race than itself, that of the greeks, whose colonists, after having swarmed along the coasts of the mediterranean, were now beginning to quit the seaboard and penetrate wherever they could into the interior. [illustration: 078.jpg a persian king fighting with greeks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an intaglio reproduced in the _antiquités du bosphore cimmérien._ they had been on friendly terms with that dynasty of the meramadæ who had shown reverence for the hellenic gods; they had, as a whole, disdained to betray croesus, or to turn upon him when he was in difficulties beyond the halys; and now that he had succumbed to his fate, they considered that the ties which had bound them to sardes were broken, and they were determined to preserve their independence at all costs. this spirit of insubordination would have to be promptly dealt with and tightly curbed, if perpetual troubles in the future were to be avoided. the asianic peoples soon rallied round their new master--phrygians, mysians, the inhabitants on the shores of the black sea, and those of the pamphylian coast;* even cilicia, which had held its own against chaldæa, media, and lydia, was now brought under the rising power, and its kings were henceforward obedient to the persian rule.** * none of the documents actually say this, but the general tenor of herodotus� account seems to show clearly that, with the exception of the greek cities of the carians and lycians, all the peoples who had formed part of the lydian dominion under croesus submitted, without any appreciable resistance, after the taking of sardes. ** herodotus mentions a second syennesis king of cilicia forty years later at the time of the ionian revolt. the two leagues of the ionians and æolians had at first offered to recognise cyrus as their suzerain under the same conditions as those with which croesus had been satisfied; but he had consented to accept it only in the case of miletus, and had demanded from the rest an unconditional surrender. this they had refused, and, uniting in a common cause perhaps for the first time in their existence, they had resolved to take up arms. as the persians possessed no fleet, the creeks had nothing to fear from the side of the ægean, and the severity of the winter prevented any attack being made from the land side till the following spring. they meanwhile sought the aid of their mother-country, and despatched an embassy to the spartans; the latter did not consider it prudent to lend them troops, as they would have done in the case of croesus, but they authorised lakrines, one of their principal citizens, to demand of the great king that he should respect the hellenic cities, under pain of incurring their enmity. [illustration: 080.jpg the present site of miletus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. cyrus was fully occupied with the events then taking place in the eastern regions of iran; babylon had not ventured upon any move after having learned the news of the fall of sardes, but the bactrians and the sakæ had been in open revolt during the whole of the year that he had been detained in the extreme west, and a still longer absence might risk the loss of his prestige in media, and even in persia itself.* * the tradition followed by ctesias maintained that the submission of the eastern peoples was an accomplished fact when the lydian war began. that adopted by herodotus placed this event after the fall of croesus; at any rate, it showed that fear of the bactrians and the sakæ, as well as of the babylonians and egyptians was the cause that hastened cyrus� retreat. the threat of the lacedaæmonians had little effect upon him; he inquired as to what sparta and greece were, and having been informed, he ironically begged the lacedæmonian envoy to thank his compatriots for the good advice with which they had honoured him; �but,� he added, �take care that i do not soon cause you to babble, not of the ills of the ionians, but of your own.� he confided the government of sardes to one of his officers, named tabalos, and having entrusted paktyas, one of the lydians who had embraced his cause, with the removal of the treasures of croesus to persia, he hastily set out for ecbatana. he had scarcely accomplished half of his journey when a revolt broke out in his rear; paktyas, instead of obeying his instructions, intrigued with the ionians, and, with the mercenaries he had hired from them, besieged tabalos in the citadel of sardes. if the place capitulated, the entire conquest would have to be repeated; fortunately it held out, and its resistance gave cyrus time to send its governor reinforcements, commanded by mazares the median. as soon as they approached the city, paktyas, conscious that he had lost the day, took refuge at kymê. its inhabitants, on being summoned to deliver him up, refused, but helped him to escape to mytilene, where the inhabitants of the island attempted to sell him to the enemy for a large sum of money. the kymæans saved him a second time, and conveyed him to the temple of athene poliarchos at chios. the citizens, however, dragged him from his retreat, and delivered him over to the median general in exchange for atarneus, a district of mysia, the possession of which they were disputing with the lesbians.* paktyas being a prisoner, the lydians were soon recalled to order, and mazares was able to devote his entire energies to the reduction of the greek cities; but he had accomplished merely the sack of priênê,** and the devastation of the suburbs of magnesia on the æander, when he died from some illness. * a passage which has been preserved of charon of lampsacus sums up in a few words the account given by herodotus of the adventures of paktyas, but without mentioning the treachery of the islanders: he confines himself to saying cyrus caught the fugitive after the latter had successively left chios and mytilene. ** herodotus attributes the taking of this city to the persian tabules, who is evidently the tabalos of herodotus. the median harpagus, to whom tradition assigns so curious a part as regards astyages and the infant cyrus, succeeded him as governor of the ancient lydian kingdom, and completed the work which he had begun. the first two places to be besieged were phocæa and teos, but their inhabitants preferred exile to slavery; the phocæans sailed away to found marseilles in the western regions of the mediterranean, and the people of teos settled along the coast of thracia, near to the gold-mines of the pangseus, and there built abdera on the site of an ancient clazomenian colony. the other greek towns were either taken by assault or voluntarily opened their gates, so that ere long both ionians and æolians were, with the exception of the samians, under persian rule. the very position of the latter rendered them safe from attack; without a fleet they could not be approached, and the only people who could have furnished cyrus with vessels were the phoenicians, who were not as yet under his power. the rebellion having been suppressed in this quarter, harpagus made a descent into caria; the natives hastened to place themselves under the persian yoke, and the dorian colonies scattered along the coast, halicarnas-sus, cnidos, and the islands of cos and rhodes, followed their examples, but lycia refused to yield without a struggle. [illustration: 083.jpg a lycian city upon its inaccessible rock] the rock and tombs of tlôs, drawn by boudier, from the view in fellows. its steep mountain chains, its sequestered valleys, its towns and fortresses perched on inaccessible rocks, all rendered it easy for the inhabitants to carry on a successful petty warfare against the enemy. the inhabitants of xanthos, although very inferior in numbers, issued down into the plain and disputed the victory with the invaders for a considerable time; at length their defeat and the capitulation of their town induced the remainder of the lycians to lay down arms, and brought about the final pacification of the peninsula. it was parcelled out into several governorships, according to its ethnographical affinities; as for instance, the governorship of lydia, that of ionia, that of phrygia,* and others whose names are unknown to us. harpàgus appeared to have resided at sardes, and exercised vice-regal functions over the various districts, but he obtained from the king an extensive property in lycia and in caria, which subsequently caused these two provinces to be regarded as an appanage of his family. * herodotus calls a certain mitrobates satrap of daskylion; he had perhaps been already given this office by cyrus. orcetes had been made governor of ionia and lydia by cyrus. while thus consolidating his first conquest, cyrus penetrated into the unknown regions of the far east. nothing would have been easier for him than to have fallen upon babylon and overthrown, as it were by the way, the decadent rule of nabonidus; but the formidable aspect which the empire still presented, in spite of its enfeebled condition, must have deceived him, and he was unwilling to come into conflict with it until he had made a final reckoning with the restless and unsettled peoples between the caspian and the slopes on the indian side of the table-land of iran. as far as we are able to judge, they were for the most part of iranian extraction, and had the same religion, institutions, and customs as the medes and persians. tradition had already referred the origin of zoroaster, and the scene of his preaching, to bactriana, that land of heroes whose exploits formed the theme of persian epic song. it is not known, as we have already had occasion to remark, by what ties it was bound to the empire of cyaxares, nor indeed if it ever had been actually attached to it. we do not possess, unfortunately, more than almost worthless scraps of information on this part of the reign of cyrus, perhaps the most important period of it, since then, for the first time, peoples who had been hitherto strangers to the asiatic world were brought within its influence. if ctesias is to be credited, bactriana was one of the first districts to be conquered. its inhabitants were regarded as being among the bravest of the east, and furnished the best soldiers. they at first obtained some successes, but laid down arms on hearing that cyrus had married a daughter of astyages.* this tradition was prevalent at a time when the achaemenians were putting forward the theory that they, and cyrus before them, were the legitimate successors of the old median sovereigns; they welcomed every legend which tended to justify their pretensions, and this particular one was certain to please them, since it attributed the submission of bactriana not to a mere display of brute force, but to the recognition of an hereditary right. the annexation of this province entailed, as a matter of course, that of margiana, of the khoramnians,** and of sogdiana. cyrus constructed fortresses in all these districts, the most celebrated being that of kyropolis, which commanded one of the principal fords of the iaxartes.*** * this is the campaign which ctesias places before the lydian war, but which herodotus relegates to a date after the capture of sardes. ** ctesias must have spoken of the submission of these peoples, for a few words of a description which he gave of the khoramnians have been preserved to us. *** tomaschek identifies kyra or kyropolis with the present ura-tepe, but distinguishes it from the kyreskhata of ptolemy, to which he assigns a site near usgent. the steppes of siberia arrested his course on the north, but to the east, in the mountains of chinese turkestan, the sakas, who were renowned for their wealth and bravery, did not escape his ambitious designs. the account which has come down to us of his campaigns against them is a mere romance of love and adventure, in which real history plays a very small part. he is said to have attacked and defeated them at the first onset, taking their king amorges prisoner; but this capture, which cyrus considered a decisive advantage, was supposed to have turned the tide of fortune against him. sparêthra, the wife of amorges, rallied the fugitives round her, defeated the invaders in several engagements, and took so many of their men captive, that they were glad to restore her husband to her in exchange for the prisoners she had made. the struggle finally ended, however, in the subjection of the sakae; they engaged to pay tribute, and thenceforward constituted the advance-guard of the iranians against the nomads of the east. cyrus, before quitting their neighbourhood, again ascended the table-land, and reduced ariana, thatagus, harauvati, zaranka, and the country of cabul; and we may well ask if he found leisure to turn southwards beyond lake hamun and reach the shores of the indian ocean. one tradition, of little weight, relates that, like alexander at a later date, he lost his army in the arid deserts of gedrosia; the one fact that remains is that the conquest of gedrosia was achieved, but the details of it are lost. the period covered by his campaigns was from five to six years, from 545 to 539, but cyrus returned from these expeditions into the unknown only to plan fresh undertakings. there remained nothing now to hinder him from marching against the chaldæans, and the discord prevailing at babylon added to his chance of success. nabonidus�s passion for archæology had in no way lessened since the opening of his reign. the temple restorations prompted by it absorbed the bulk of his revenues. he made excavations in the sub-structures of the most ancient sanctuaries, such as larsam, uruk, uru, sippar, and nipur; and when his digging was rewarded by the discovery of cylinders placed there by his predecessors, his delight knew no bounds. such finds constituted the great events of his life, in comparison with which the political revolutions of asia and africa diminished in importance day by day. it is difficult to tell whether this indifference to the weighty affairs of government was as complete as it appears to us at this distance of time. certain facts recorded in the official chronicles of that date go to prove that, except in name and external pomp, the king was a nonentity. the real power lay in the hands of the nobles and generals, and bel-sharuzur, the king�s son, directed affairs for them in his father�s name. nabonidus meanwhile resided in a state of inactivity at his palace of tima, and it is possible that his condition may have really been that of a prisoner, for he never left tima to go to babylon, even on the days of great festivals, and his absence prevented the celebration of the higher rites of the national religion, with the procession of bel and its accompanying ceremonies, for several consecutive years. the people suffered from these quarrels in high places; not only the native babylonians or kaldâ, who were thus deprived of their accustomed spectacles, and whose piety was scandalised by these dissensions, but also the foreign races dispersed over mesopotamia, from the confluence of the khabur to the mouths of the euphrates. too widely scattered or too weak to make an open declaration of their independence, their hopes and their apprehensions were alternately raised by the various reports of hostilities which reached their ears. the news of the first victories of the persians aroused in the exiled jews the idea of speedy deliverance, and cyrus clearly appeared to them as the hero chosen by jahveh to reinstate them in the country, of their forefathers. the number of the jewish exiles, which perhaps at first had not exceeded 20,000* had largely increased in the half-century of their captivity, and even if numerically they were of no great importance, their social condition entitled them to be considered as the _élite_ of all israel. * the body of exiles of 597 consisted of ten thousand persons, of whom seven thousand belonged to the wealthy, and one thousand to the artisan class, while the remainder consisted of people attached to the court (2 kings xxiv. 14 16). in the body of 587 are reckoned three thousand and twenty-three inhabitants of judah, and eight hundred and thirty-two dwellers in jerusalem. but the body of exiles of 581 numbers only seven hundred and forty-five persons (jer. lii. 30). these numbers are sufficiently moderate to be possibly exact, but they are far from being certain. there had at first been the two kings, jehoiachin and zedekiah, their families, the aristocracy of judah, the priests and pontiff of the temple, the prophets, the most skilled of the artisan class and the soldiery. though distributed over babylon and the neighbouring cities, we know from authentic sources of only one of their settlements, that of tell-abîb on the chebar* though many of the jewish colonies which flourished thereabouts in roman times could undoubtedly trace their origin to the days of the captivity; one legend found in the talmud affirmed that the synagogue of shafyâthîb, near nehardaa, had been built by king jehoiachin with stones brought from the ruins of the temple at jerusalem. these communities enjoyed a fairly complete autonomy, and were free to administer their own affairs as they pleased, provided that they paid their tribute or performed their appointed labours without complaint. the shêkhs, or elders of the family or tribe, who had played so important a part in their native land, still held their respective positions; the chaldæans had permitted them to retain all the possessions which they had been able to bring with them into exile, and recognised them as the rulers of their people, who were responsible to their conquerors for the obedience of those under them, leaving them entire liberty to exercise their authority so long as they maintained order and tranquillity among their subordinates.** * ezek. iii. 15. the chebar or kebar has been erroneously identified with the khabur; cuneiform documents show that it was one of the canals near nipur. ** cf. the assemblies of these chiefs at the house of ezekiel and their action (viii. 1; xiv. 1; xx. 1). how the latter existed, and what industries they pursued in order to earn their daily bread, no writer of the time has left on record. the rich plain of the euphrates differed so widely from the soil to which they had been accustomed in the land of judah, with its bare or sparsely wooded hills, slopes cultivated in terraces, narrow and ill-watered wadys, and tortuous and parched valleys, that they must have felt themselves much out of their element in their chaldæan surroundings. they had all of them, however, whether artisans, labourers, soldiers, gold-workers, or merchants, to earn their living, and they succeeded in doing so, following meanwhile the advice of jeremiah, by taking every precaution that the seed of israel should not be diminished.* the imagination of pious writers of a later date delighted to represent the exiled jews as giving way to apathy and vain regrets: �by the rivers of babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered zion. upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged up our harps. for there they that led us captive required of us songs, and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of zion. how shall we sing the lord�s song in a strange land?� ** * jer. xxix. 1-7. ** ps. cxxxvii. 1-4. this was true of the priests and scribes only. a blank had been made in their existence from the moment when the conqueror had dragged them from the routine of daily rites which their duties in the temple service entailed upon them. the hours which had been formerly devoted to their offices were now expended in bewailing the misfortunes of their nation, in accusing themselves and others, and in demanding what crime had merited this punishment, and why jahveh, who had so often shown clemency to their forefathers, had not extended his forgiveness to them. it was, however, by the long-suffering of god that his prophets, and particularly ezekiel, were allowed to make known to them the true cause of their downfall. the more ezekiel in his retreat meditated upon their lot, the more did the past appear to him as a lamentable conflict between divine justice and jewish iniquity. at the time of their sojourn in egypt, jahveh had taken the house of jacob under his protection, and in consideration of his help had merely demanded of them that they should be faithful to him. �cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of egypt: i am the lord your god.� the children of israel, however, had never observed this easy condition, and this was the root of their ills; even before they were liberated from the yoke of pharaoh, they had betrayed their protector, and he had thought to punish them: �but i wrought for my name�s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, among whom they were, in whose sight i made myself known unto them.... so i caused them to go forth out of the land of egypt, and brought them into the wilderness. and i gave them my statutes, and showed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them. moreover also i gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them... but the house of israel rebelled against me.� as they had acted in egypt, so they acted at the foot of sinai, and again jahveh could not bring himself to destroy them; he confined himself to decreeing that none of those who had offended him should enter the promised land, and he extended his goodness to their children. but these again showed themselves no wiser than their fathers; scarcely had they taken possession of the inheritance which had fallen to them, �a land flowing with milk and honey... the glory of all lands,� than when they beheld �every high hill and every thick tree... they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering, there also they made their sweet savour, and they poured out there their drink offerings.� not contented with profaning their altars by impious ceremonies and offerings, they further bowed the knee to idols, thinking in their hearts, �we will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.� �as i live, saith the lord god, surely with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will i be king over you.� * 1 ezek. xx. however just the punishment, bzekiel did not believe that it would last for ever. the righteousness of god would not permit future generations to be held responsible for ever for the sins of generations past and present. �what mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children�s teeth are set on edge? as i live, saith the lord god, ye shall not have occasion to use this proverb any more in israel! behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth it shall die. but if a man be just... he shall surely live, saith the lord god.� israel, therefore, was master of his own destiny. if he persisted in erring from the right way, the hour of salvation was still further removed from him; if he repented and observed the law, the divine anger would be turned away. �therefore... o house of israel... cast away from you all your transgressions wherein ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, o house of israel? for i have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth... wherefore turn yourselves and live.� 1 there were those who objected that it was too late to dream of regeneration and of hope in the future: �our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.� the prophet replied that the lord had carried him in the spirit and set him down in the midst of a plain strewn with bones. �so i prophesied... and as i prophesied there was a noise... and the bones came together, bone to his bone. and i beheld, and lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came up and skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them. then said (the lord) unto me, prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the lord god: come from the four winds, o breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. so i prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. then he said unto me... these bones are the whole house of israel.... behold, i will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, o my people; and i will bring you into the land of israel.... and i will put my spirit in you and ye shall live, and i will place you in your own land; and ye shall know that i the lord hath spoken it and performed it, saith the lord.� a people raised from such depths would require a constitution, a new law to take the place of the old, from the day when the exile should cease. ezekiel would willingly have dispensed with the monarchy, as it had been tried since the time of samuel with scarcely any good results. for every hezekiah or josiah, how many kings of the type of ahaz or manasseh had there been! the jews were nevertheless still so sincerely attached to the house of david, that the prophet judged it inopportune to exclude it from his plan for their future government. he resolved to tolerate a king, but a king of greater piety and with less liberty than the compiler of the book of deuteronomy had pictured to himself, a servant of the servants of god, whose principal function should be to provide the means of worship. indeed, the lord himself was the only sovereign whom the prophet fully accepted, though his concept of him differed greatly from that of his predecessors: from that, for instance, of amos--the lord god who would do nothing without revealing �his secret unto his servants the prophets;� or of hosea--who desired �mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of god more than burnt offerings.� the jahveh of ezekiel no longer admitted any intercourse with the interpreters of his will. he held �the son of man� at a distance, and would consent to communicate with him only by means of angels who were his messengers. the love of his people was, indeed, acceptable to him, but he preferred their reverence and fear, and the smell of the sacrifice offered according to the law was pleasing to his nostrils. the first care of the returning exiles, therefore, would be to build him a house upon the holy mountain. ezekiel called to mind the temple of solomon, in which the far-off years of his youth were spent, and mentally rebuilt it on the same plan, but larger and more beautiful; first the outer court, then the inner court and its chambers, and lastly the sanctuary, the dimensions of which he calculates with scrupulous care: �and the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits; and the sides of the entrance were five cubits on the one side and five cubits on the other side: and he measured the length thereof, forty cubits; and the breadth, twenty cubits�--and so forth, with a wealth of technical details often difficult to be understood. and as a building so well proportioned should be served by a priesthood worthy of it, the sons of zadok only were to bear the sacerdotal office, for they alone had preserved their faith unshaken; the other lévites were to fill merely secondary posts, for not only had they shared in the sins of the nation, but they had shown a bad example in practising idolatry. the duties and prerogatives of each one, the tithes and offerings, the sacrifices, the solemn festivals, the preparation of the feasts,--all was foreseen and prearranged with scrupulous exactitude. ezekiel was, as we have seen, a priest; the smallest details were as dear to him as the noblest offices of his calling, and the minute ceremonial instructions as to the killing and cooking of the sacrificial animals appeared to him as necessary to the future prosperity of his people as the moral law. towards the end, however, the imagination of the seer soared above the formalism of the sacrificing priest; he saw in a vision waters issuing out of the very threshold of the divine house, flowing towards the dead sea through a forest of fruit trees, �whose leaf shall not wither, neither shall the fruit thereof fail.� the twelve tribes of israel, alike those of whom a remnant still existed as well as those which at different times had become extinct, were to divide the regenerated land by lot among them--dan in the extreme north, reuben and judah in the south; and they would unite to found once more, around mount sion, that new jerusalem whose name henceforth was to be jahveh-shammah, �the lord is there.� * * ezek. xlvii., xlviii. the image of the river seems to be borrowed from the _vessel of water_ of chaldæan mythology. the influence of ezekiel does not seem to have extended beyond a restricted circle of admirers. untouched by his preaching, many of the exiles still persisted in their worship of the heathen gods; most of these probably became merged in the bulk of the chaldæan population, and were lost, as far as israel was concerned, as completely as were the earlier exiles of ephraim under tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon. the greater number of the jews, however, remained faithful to their hopes of future greatness, and applied themselves to discerning in passing events the premonitory signs of deliverance. �like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been before thee, o lord.... come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. for, behold, the lord cometh forth out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.� * the condition of the people improved after the death of nebuchadrezzar. amil-marduk took jehoiachin out of the prison in which he had languished for thirty years, and treated him with honour:** this was not as yet the restoration that had been promised, but it was the end of the persecution. * an anonymous prophet, about 570, in isa. xxvi. 17, 20, 21. ** 2 kings xxv. 27-30; cf. jer. lii. 31-34. a period of court intrigues followed, during which the sceptre of nebuchadrezzar changed hands four times in less than seven years; then came the accession of the peaceful and devout nabonidus, the fall of astyages, and the first victories of cyrus. nothing escaped the vigilant eye of the prophets, and they began to proclaim that the time was at hand, then to predict the fall of babylon, and to depict the barbarians in revolt against her, and israel released from the yoke by the all-powerful will of the persians. �thus saith the lord to his anointed, to cyrus, whose right hand i have holden to subdue nations before him, and i will loose the loins of kings; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut; i will go before thee and make the rugged places plain: i will break in pieces the doors of brass, rend in sunder the bars of iron: and i will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that i am the lord which call thee by thy name, even the god of israel. for jacob my servant�s sake, and israel my chosen, i have called thee by thy name: i have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.� * nothing can stand before the victorious prince whom jahveh leads: �bel boweth down, nebo stoopeth; their idols are upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: the things that ye carried about are made a load, a burden to the weary beast. they stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity.� ** �o virgin daughter of babylon, sit on the ground without a throne, o daughter of the chaldæans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. take the millstones and grind meal: remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers. they nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen.... sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, o daughter of the chaldæans: for thou shalt no more be called the lady of kingdoms.� *** * second isaiah, in isa. xlv. 1-4. ** second isaiah, in isa. xlvi. 1, 2. *** second isaiah, in isa. xlvii. 1-5. the task which cyrus had undertaken was not so difficult as we might imagine. not only was he hailed with delight by the strangers who thronged babylonia, but the babylonians themselves were weary of their king, and the majority of them were ready to welcome the persian who would rid them of him, as in old days they hailed the assyrian kings who delivered them from their chaldæan lords. it is possible that towards the end of his reign nabonidus partly resumed the supreme power;* but anxious for the future, and depending but little on human help, he had sought a more powerful aid at the hands of the gods. he had apparently revived some of the old forgotten cults, and had applied to their use revenues which impoverished the endowment of the prevalent worship of his own time. as he felt the growing danger approach, he remembered those towns of secondary grade--uru, uruk, larsam, and eridu--all of which, lying outside nebuchadrezzar�s scheme of defence, would be sacrificed in the case of an invasion: he had therefore brought away from them the most venerated statues, those in which the spirit of the divinity was more particularly pleased to dwell, and had shut them up in the capital, within the security of its triple rampart.** * this seems to follow from the part which he plays in the final crisis, as told in the _cylinder of cyrus_ and in the _annals_. ** the chronicler adds that the gods of sippar, kutha, and borsippa were not taken to babylon; and indeed, these cities being included within the lines of defence of the great city, their gods were as well defended from the enemy as if they had been in babylon itself. this attempt to concentrate the divine powers, accentuating as it did the supremacy of bel-marduk over his compeers, was doubtless flattering to his pride and that of his priests, but was ill received by the rest of the sacerdotal class and by the populace. all these divine guests had not only to be lodged, but required to be watched over, decked, fed, and feted, together with their respective temple retinues; and the prestige and honour of the local bel, as well as his revenues, were likely to suffer in consequence. the clamour of the gods in the celestial heights soon re-echoed throughout the land; the divinities complained of their sojourn at babylon as of a captivity in e-sagilla; they lamented over the suppression of their daily sacrifices, and marduk at length took pity on them. he looked upon the countries of sumir and akkad, and saw their sanctuaries in ruins and their towns lifeless as corpses; �he cast his eyes over the surrounding regions; he searched them with his glance and sought out a prince, upright, after his own heart, who should take his hands. he proclaimed by name cyrus, king of anshân, and he called him by his name to universal sovereignty.� alike for the people of babylon and for the exiled jew, and also doubtless for other stranger-colonies, cyrus appeared as a deliverer chosen by the gods; his speedy approach was everywhere expected, if not with the same impatience, at least with an almost joyful resignation. his plans were carried into action in the early months of 538, and his habitual good fortune did not forsake him at this decisive moment of his career. the immense citadel raised by nebuchadrezzar in the midst of his empire, in anticipation of an attack by the medes, was as yet intact, and the walls rising one behind another, the moats, and the canals and marshes which protected it, had been so well kept up or restored since his time, that their security was absolutely complete; a besieging army could do little harm--it needed a whole nation in revolt to compass its downfall. a whole nation also was required for its defence, but the babylonians were not inclined to second the efforts of their sovereign. nabonidus concentrated his troops at the point most threatened, in the angle comprised near opis between the medic wall and the bend of the tigris, and waited in inaction the commencement of the attack. it is supposed that cyrus put two bodies of troops in motion: one leaving susa under his own command, took the usual route of all blamite invasions in the direction of the confluence of the tigris and the dîyala; the other commanded by gobryas, the satrap of gutium, followed the course of the adhem or the dîyala, and brought the northern contingents to the rallying-place. from what we know of the facts as a whole, it would appear that the besieging force chose the neighbourhood of the present bagdad to make a breach in the fortifications. taking advantage of the months when the rivers were at their lowest, they drew off the water from the dîyala and the tigris till they so reduced the level that they were able to cross on foot; they then cut their way through the ramparts on the left bank, and rapidly transported the bulk of their forces into the very centre of the enemy�s position. the principal body of the chaldæan troops were still at opis, cut off from the capital; cyrus fell upon them, overcame them on the banks of the zalzallat in the early days of tammuz, urging forward gobryas meanwhile upon babylon itself.* on the 14th of tammuz, nabonidus evacuated sippar, which at once fell into the hands of the persian outposts; on the 16th gobryas entered babylon without striking a blow, and nabonidus surrendered himself a prisoner.** * for the strategic interpretation of the events of this campaign i have generally adopted the explanations of billerbeck. herodotus� account with regard to the river gyndes is probably a reminiscence of alterations made in the river-courses at the time of the attack in the direction of bagdad. ** the _cylinder of cyrus_, 1. 17, expressly says so: �without combat or battle did marduk make him enter babylon,� the _annals of nabonidus_ confirm this testimony of the official account. the victorious army had received orders to avoid all excesses which would offend the people; they respected the property of the citizens and of the temples, placed a strong detachment around ê-sagilla to protect it from plunder, and no armed soldier was allowed within the enclosure until the king� had determined on the fate of the vanquished. cyrus arrived after a fortnight had elapsed, on the 3rd of march-esvân, and his first act was one of clemency. he prohibited all pillage, granted mercy to the inhabitants, and entrusted the government of the city to gobryas. bel-sharuzur, the son of nabonidus, remained to be dealt with, and his energetic nature might have been the cause of serious difficulties had he been allowed an opportunity of rallying the last partisans of the dynasty around him. gobryas set out to attack him, and on the 11th of march-esvân succeeded in surprising and slaying him. with him perished the last hope of the chaldæans, and the nobles and towns, still hesitating on what course to pursue, now vied with each other in their haste to tender submission. the means of securing their good will, at all events for the moment, was clearly at hand, and it was used without any delay: their gods were at once restored to them. this exodus extended over nearly two months, during march-esvân and adar, and on its termination a proclamation of six days of mourning, up to the 3rd of nisân, was made for the death of bel-sharuzur, and as an atonement for the faults of nabonidus, after which, on the 4th of nisân, the notables of the city were called together in the temple of nebo to join in the last expiatory ceremonies. cyrus did not hesitate for a moment to act as tiglath-pileser iii. and most of the sargonids had done; he �took the hands of bel,� and proclaimed himself king of the country, but in order to secure the succession, he associated his son cambyses with himself as king of babylon. mesopotamia having been restored to order, the provinces in their turn transferred their allegiance to persia; �the kings enthroned in their palaces, from the upper sea to the lower, those of syria and those who dwell in tents, brought their weighty tribute to babylon and kissed the feet of the suzerain.� events had followed one another so quickly, and had entailed so little bloodshed, that popular imagination was quite disconcerted: it could not conceive that an empire of such an extent and of so formidable an appearance should have succumbed almost without a battle, and three generations had not elapsed before an entire cycle of legends had gathered round the catastrophe. they related how cyrus, having set out to make war, with provisions of all kinds for his household, and especially with his usual stores of water from the river choaspes, the only kind of which he deigned to drink, had reached the banks of the gyndes. while seeking for a ford, one of the white horses consecrated to the sun sprang into the river, and being overturned by the current, was drowned before it could be rescued. cyrus regarded this accident as a personal affront, and interrupted his expedition to avenge it. he employed his army during one entire summer in digging three hundred and sixty canals, and thus caused the principal arm of the stream to run dry, and he did not resume his march upon babylon till the following spring, when the level of the water was low enough to permit of a woman crossing from one bank to the other without wetting her knees. the babylonians at first attempted to prevent the blockade of the place, but being repulsed in their _sorties_, they retired within the walls, much to cyrus�s annoyance, for they were provisioned for several years. he therefore undertook to turn the course of the euphrates into the bahr-î-nejîf, and having accomplished it, he crept into the centre of the city by the dry bed of the river. if the babylonians had kept proper guard, the persians would probably have been surrounded and caught like fish in a net; but on that particular day they were keeping one of their festivals, and continued their dancing and singing till they suddenly found the streets alive with the enemy. babylon suffered in no way by her servitude, and far from its being a source of unhappiness to her, she actually rejoiced in it; she was rid of nabonidus, whose sacrilegious innovations had scandalised her piety, and she possessed in cyrus a legitimate sovereign since he had �taken the hands of bel.� it pleased her to believe that she had conquered her victor rather than been conquered by him, and she accommodated herself to her persian dynasty after the same fashion that she had in turn accustomed herself to cossæan or elamite, ninevite or chaldæan dynasties in days gone by. nothing in or around the city was changed, and she remained what she had been since the fall of assyria, the real capital of the regions situated between the mediterranean and the zagros. it seems that none of her subjects--whether syrians, tyrians, arabs, or idumæans--attempted to revolt against their new master, but passively accepted him, and the persian dominion extended uncontested as far as the isthmus of suez; cyprus even, and such of the phoenicians as were still dependencies of egypt, did homage to her without further hesitation. the jews alone appeared only half satisfied, for the clemency shown by cyrus to their oppressors disappointed their hopes and the predictions of their prophets. they had sung in anticipation of children killed before their fathers� eyes, of houses pillaged, of women violated, and babylon, the glory of the empire and the beauty of chaldæan pride, utterly destroyed like sodom and gomorrha when overthrown by jahveh. �it shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the arabian pitch tent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. and wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces.� * * the table of the last kings of ptolemy and the monuments, is given below:-[illustration: 105.jpg table of the last kings of ptolemy] cyrus, however, was seated on the throne, and the city of nebuchadrezzar, unlike that of sargon and sennacherib, still continued to play her part in the world�s history. the revenge of jerusalem had not been as complete as that of samaria, and her sons had to content themselves with obtaining the cessation of their exile. it is impossible to say whether they had contributed to the downfall of nabonidus otherwise than by the fervency of their prayers, or if they had rendered cyrus some service either in the course of his preparations or during his short campaign. they may have contemplated taking up arms in his cause, and have been unable to carry the project into execution owing to the rapidity with which events took place. however this may be, he desired to reward them for their good intentions, and in the same year as his victory, he promulgated a solemn edict, in which he granted them permission to return to judah and to rebuild not only their city, but the temple of their god. the inhabitants of the places where they were living were charged to furnish them with silver, gold, materials, and cattle, which would be needed by those among them who should claim the benefits of the edict; they even had restored to them, by order of the king, what remained in the babylonian treasury of the vessels of gold and silver which had belonged to the sanctuary of jahveh. the heads of the community received the favour granted to them from such high quarters, without any enthusiasm. now that they were free to go, they discovered that they were well off at babylon. they would have to give up their houses, their fields, their business, their habits of indifference to politics, and brave the dangers of a caravan journey of three or four months� duration, finally encamping in the midst of ruins in an impoverished country, surrounded by hostile and jealous neighbours; such a prospect was not likely to find favour with many, and indeed it was only the priests, the lévites, and the more ardent of the lower classes who welcomed the idea of the return with a touching fervour. the first detachment organised their departure in 536, under the auspices of one of the princes of the royal house, named shauash-baluzur (sheshbazzar), a son of jehoiachin.* it comprised only a small number of families, and contained doubtless a few of the captives of nebuchadrezzar who in their childhood had seen the temple standing and had been present at its destruction. * the name which is written sheshbazzar in the hebrew text of the book of ezra (i. 9, 11; v. 14, 16) is rendered sasabalassaros in lucian�s recension of the septuagint, and this latter form confirms the hypothesis of hoonacker, which is now universally accepted, that it corresponds to the babylonian shamash-abaluzur. it is known that shamash becomes shauash in babylonian; thus saosdukhînos comes from shamash-shumukîn: similarly shamash-abaluzur has become shauash-abaluzur. imbert has recognised sheshbazzar, shauash-abaluzur in the shenazzar mentioned in 1 chron. iii. 8, as being one of the sons of jeconiah, and this identification has been accepted by several recent historians of israel. it should be remembered that shauash abaluzur and zerubbabel have long been confounded one with the other. the returning exiles at first settled in the small towns of judah and benjamin, and it was not until seven months after their arrival that they summoned courage to clear the sacred area in order to erect in its midst an altar of sacrifice.* * the history of this first return from captivity is summarily set forth in ezra i.; cf. v. 13-17; vi. 3-5, 15. its authenticity has been denied: with regard to this point and the questions relating to jewish history after the exile, the modifications which have been imposed on the original plan of this work have obliged me to suppress much detail in the text and the whole of the bibliography in the notes. they formed there, in the land of their fathers, a little colony, almost lost among the heathen nations of former times--philistines, idumasans, moabites, ammonites, and the settlers implanted at various times in what had been the kingdom of israel by the sovereigns of assyria and chaldæa. grouped around the persian governor, who alone was able to protect them from the hatred of their rivals, they had no hope of prospering, or even of maintaining their position, except by exhibiting an unshaken fidelity to their deliverers. it was on this very feeling that cyrus mainly relied when he granted them permission to return to their native hills, and he was actuated as much by a far-seeing policy as from the promptings of instinctive generosity. it was with satisfaction that he saw in that distant province, lying on the frontier of the only enemy yet left to him in the old world, a small band, devoted perforce to his interests, and whose very existence depended entirely on that of his empire. he no doubt extended the same favour to the other exiles in chaldæa who demanded it of him, but we do not know how many of them took advantage of the occasion to return to their native countries, and this exodus of the jews still remains, so far as we know, a unique fact. the administration continued the same as it had been under the chaldæans; aramæan was still the official language in the provincial dependencies, and the only change effected was the placing of persians at the head of public offices, as in asia minor, and allowing them a body of troops to support their authority.* * the presence of persian troops in asia minor is proved by the passage in herodotus where he says that orotes had with him 1000 persians as his body-guard. one great state alone remained of all those who had played a prominent part in the history of the east. this was egypt; and the policy which her rulers had pursued since the development of the iranian power apparently rendered a struggle with it inevitable. amasis had taken part in all the coalitions which had as their object the perpetuation of the balance of the powers in western asia; he had made a treaty with croesus, and it is possible that his contingents had fought in the battles before sardes; lydia having fallen, he did all in his power to encourage nabonidus in his resistance. as soon as he found himself face to face with cyrus, he understood that a collision was imminent, and did his best in preparing to meet it. even if cyrus had forgotten the support which had been freely given to his rivals, the wealth of egypt was in itself sufficient to attract the persian hordes to her frontiers. a century later, the egyptians, looking back on the past with a melancholy retrospection, confessed that �never had the valley been more flourishing or happier than under amasis; never had the river shown itself more beneficent to the soil, nor the soil more fertile for mankind, and the inhabitated towns might be reckoned at 20,000 in number.� the widespread activity exhibited under psammetichus ii., and apries, was redoubled under the usurper, and the quarries of turah,* silsileh,** assuan, and even those of hammamât, were worked as in the palmy days of the theban dynasties. the island of philæ, whose position just below the cataract attracted to it the attention of the military engineers, was carefully fortified and a temple built upon it, the materials of which were used later on in the masonry of the sanctuary of ptolemaic times. thebes exhibited a certain outburst of vitality under the impulse given by ankhnasnofiribri and by shashonqu, the governor of her palace;*** two small chapels, built in the centre of the town, still witness to the queen�s devotion to amon, of whom she was the priestess. wealthy private individuals did their best to emulate their sovereign�s example, and made for themselves at shêkh abd-el-gurnah and at assassif those rock-hewn tombs which rival those of the best periods in their extent and the beauty of their bas-reliefs.**** * a stele of his forty-fourth year still exists in the quarries of the mokattam. ** according to herodotus, it was from the quarries of elephantine that amasis caused to be brought the largest blocks which he used in the building of sais. *** her tomb still exists at deir el-medineh, and the sarcophagus, taken from the tomb in 1833, is now in the british museum. **** the most important of these tombs is that of petenit, the father of shashonqu, who was associated with ankhnasnofiribri in the government of thebes. most of the cities of the said were in such a state of decadence that it was no longer possible to restore to them their former prosperity, but abydos occupied too important a place in the beliefs connected with the future world, and attracted too many pilgrims, to permit of its being neglected. the whole of its ancient necropolis had been rifled by thieves during the preceding centuries, and the monuments were nearly as much buried by sand as in our own times. [illustration: 111.jpg an osiris stretched full length on the ground] drawn by faucher-gudin, after mariette. the monument is a statuette measuring only 15 centimetres in length; it has been reproduced to give an idea of the probable form of the statue seen by herodotus. the dismantled fortress now known as the shunêt ez-zebîb served as the cemetery for the ibises of thoth, and for the stillborn children of the sacred singing-women, while the two memnonia of seti and ramses, now abandoned by their priests, had become mere objects of respectful curiosity, on which devout egyptians or passing travellers--phoenicians, aramæans, cypriots, carians, and greeks from ionia and the isles--came to carve their names.* * the position occupied by the graffiti on certain portions of the walls show that in these places in the temple of seti there was already a layer of sand varying from one to three metres in depth. amasis confided the work of general restoration to one of the principal personages of his court, pefzââunît, prince of sais, who devoted his attention chiefly to two buildings--the great sanctuary of osiris, which was put into good condition throughout, and the very ancient necropolis of omm-el-graab, where lay hidden the _àlquhah_, one of the sepulchres of the god; he restored the naos, the table of offerings, the barques, and the temple furniture, and provided for the sacred patrimony by an endowment of fields, vineyards, palm groves, and revenues, so as to ensure to the sanctuary offerings in perpetuity. it was a complete architectural resurrection. the nomes of middle egypt, which had suffered considerably during the ethiopian and assyrian wars, had some chance of prosperity now that their lords were relieved from the necessity of constantly fighting for some fresh pretender. horu, son of psam-metichus, prince of the oleander nome, rebuilt the ancient sanctuary of harshafaîtu at heracleopolis, and endowed it with a munificence which rivalled that of pefzââunîfc at abydos. the king himself devoted his resources chiefly to works at memphis and in the delta. he founded a temple of isis at memphis, which herodotus described as extending over an immense area and being well worth seeing; unfortunately nothing now remains of it, nor of the recumbent colossus, sixty feet in length, which the king placed before the court of phtah, nor of the two gigantic statues which he raised in front of the temple, one on each side of the door. [illustration: 112.jpg the two goddesses of law; ani adoring osiris] the trial of the conscience; toth and the feather of the law. besides these architectural works, amasis invested the funerary ceremonies of the apis-bulls with a magnificence rarely seen before his time, and the official stelae which he carved to the memory of the animals who died in his reign exhibit a perfection of style quite unusual. his labours at memphis, however, were eclipsed by the admirable work which he accomplished at sais. the propylæ which he added to the temple of nît �surpassed most other buildings of the same kind, as much by their height and extent, as by the size and quality of the materials;� he had, moreover, embellished them by a fine colonnade, and made an approach to them by an avenue of sphinxes. [illustration: 113.jpg amasis in adoration before the bull apis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken in the louvre. in other parts of the same building were to be seen two superb obelisks, a recumbent figure similar to that at memphis, and a monolithic naos of rose granite brought from the quarries of elephantine. amasis had a special predilection for this kind of monument. that which he erected at thmuis is nearly twenty-three feet in height,* and the louvre contains another example, which though smaller still excites the admiration of the modern visitor.** * the exact measurements are 23 1/2 ft. in height, 12 ft. 9 ins. in width, and 10 ft. 6 ins. in depth. the naos of saft el-hinneh must have been smaller, but it is impossible to determine its exact dimensions. ** it measures 9 ft. 7 ins. in height, 3 ft. 1 in. in width, and 3 ft. 8 ins. [illustration: 114.jpg the naos of amasis at thmuis] drawn by boudier, from the sketch of burton. the naos of sais, which amazed herodotus, was much larger than either of the two already mentioned, or, indeed, than any known example. tradition states that it took two thousand boatmen three years to convey it down from the first cataract. it measured nearly thirty feet high in the interior, twenty-four feet in depth, and twelve feet in breadth; even when hollowed out to contain the emblem of the god, it still weighed nearly 500,000 kilograms. it never reached its appointed place in the sanctuary. the story goes that �the architect, at the moment when the monument had been moved as far as a certain spot in the temple, heaved a sigh, oppressed with the thought of the time expended on its transport and weary of the arduous work. amasis overheard the sigh, and taking it as an omen, he commanded that the block should be dragged no further. others relate that one of the overseers in charge of the work was crushed to death by the monument, and for this reason it was left standing on the spot,� where for centuries succeeding generations came to contemplate it.* * the measurements given by herodotus are so different from those of any naos as yet discovered, that i follow kenrick in thinking that herodotus saw the monument of amasis lying on its side, and that he took for the height what was really the width in depth. it had been erected in the nome of athribis, and afterwards taken to alexandria about the ptolemaic era; it was discovered under water in one of the ports of the town at the beginning of this century, and drovetti, who recovered it, gave it to the museum of the louvre in 1825. amasis, in devoting his revenues to such magnificent works, fully shared the spirit of the older pharaohs, and his labours were nattering to the national vanity, even though many lives were sacrificed in their accomplishment; but the glory which they reflected on egypt did not have the effect of removing the unpopularity in which tie was personally held. the revolution which overthrew apries had been provoked by the hatred of the native party towards the foreigners; he himself had been the instrument by which it had been accomplished, and it would have been only natural that, having achieved a triumph in spite of the greeks and the mercenaries, he should have wished to be revenged on them, and have expelled them from his dominions. but, as a fact, nothing of the kind took place, and amasis, once crowned, forgot the wrongs he had suffered as an aspirant to the royal dignity; no sooner was he firmly seated on the throne, than he recalled the strangers, and showed that he had only friendly intentions with regard to them. his predecessors had received them into favour, he, in fact, showed a perfect infatuation for them, and became as complete a greek as it was possible for an egyptian to be. his first care had been to make a treaty with the dorians of oyrene, and he displayed so much tact in dealing with them, that they forgave him for the skirmish of irasa, and invited him to act as arbitrator in their dissensions. a certain arkesilas ii. had recently succeeded the battos who had defeated the egyptian troops, but his suspicious temper had obliged his brothers to separate themselves from him, and they had founded further westwards the independent city of barca. on his threatening to evict them, they sent a body of libyans against him. fighting ensued, and he was beaten close to the town of leukon. he lost 7000 hoplites in the engagement, and the disaster aroused so much ill-feeling against him that laarchos, another of his brothers, strangled him. laarchos succeeded him amid the acclamations of the soldiery; but not long after, eryxô and polyarchos, the wife and brother-in-law of his victim, surprised and assassinated him in his turn. the partisans of laarchos then had recourse to the pharaoh, who showed himself disposed to send them help; but his preparations were suspended owing to the death of his mother. polyarchos repaired to egypt before the royal mourning was ended, and pleaded his cause with such urgency that he won over the king to his side; he obtained the royal investiture for his sister�s child, who was still a minor, battos iii., the lame, and thus placed oyrene in a sort of vassalage to the egyptian crown.* * herodotus narrates these events without mentioning amasis, and nicolas of damascus adopted herodotus� account with certain modifications taken from other sources. the intervention of amasis is mentioned only by plutarch and by polyaanus; but the record of it had been handed down to them by some more ancient author--perhaps by akesandros; or perhaps, in the first instance, by hellanicos of lesbos, who gave a somewhat detailed account of certain points in egyptian history. the passage of herodotus is also found incorporated in accounts of cyrenian origin: his informants were interested in recalling deeds which reflected glory on their country, like the defeat of apries at irasa, but not in the memory of events so humiliating for them as the sovereign intervention of pharaoh only a few years after this victory. and besides, the merely pacific success which amasis achieved was not of a nature to leave a profound mark on the egyptian mind. it is thus easy to explain how it was that herodotus makes no allusion to the part played by egypt in this affair. the ties which connected the two courts were subsequently drawn closer by marriage; partly from policy and partly from a whim, amasis espoused a cyrenian woman named ladikê, the daughter, according to some, of arkesilas or of battos, according to others, of a wealthy private individual named kritobulos.* the greeks of europe and asia minor fared no less to their own satisfaction at his hand than their compatriots in africa; following the example of his ally croesus, he entered into relations with their oracles on several occasions, and sent them magnificent presents. the temple of delphi having been burnt down in 548, the athenian family of the alcmæonides undertook to rebuild it from the ground for the sum of three hundred talents, of which one-fourth was to be furnished by the delphians. when these, being too poor to pay the sum out of their own resources, made an appeal to the generosity of other friendly powers, amasis graciously offered them a thousand talents of egyptian alum, then esteemed the most precious of all others. alum was employed in dyeing, and was an expensive commodity in the markets of europe; the citizens of delphi were all the more sensible of pharaoh�s generosity, since the united greeks of the nile valley contributed only twenty _minæ_ of the same mineral as their quota. amasis erected at cyrene a statue of his wife ladikê, and another of the goddess neît, gilded from head to foot, and to these he added his own portrait, probably painted on a wooden panel.** * the very fact of the marriage is considered by wiedemann as a pure legend, but there is nothing against its authenticity; the curious story of the relations of the woman with amasis told by the cyrenian commentators is the only part which need be rejected. ** the text of herodotus can only mean a painted panel similar to those which have been found on the mummies of the græco-roman era in the fayum. he gave to athene of lindos two stone statues and a corselet of linen of marvellous fineness;* and hera of samos received two wooden statues, which a century later herodotus found still intact. the greeks flocked to egypt from all quarters of the world in such considerable numbers that the laws relating to them had to be remodelled in order to avoid conflicts with the natives. * it seems that one of these statues is that which, after being taken to constantinople, was destroyed in a fire in 476 a.d. fragments of the corselet still existed in the first century of our era, but inquisitive persons used to tear off pieces to see for themselves whether, as herodotus assures us, each thread was composed of three hundred and sixty-five strands, every one visible with the naked eye. the townships founded a century earlier along the pelusiac arm of the nile had increased still further since the time of necho, and to their activity was attributable the remarkable prosperity of the surrounding region. but the position which they occupied on the most exposed side of egypt was regarded as permanently endangering the security of the country: her liberty would be imperilled should they revolt during a war with the neighbouring empire, and hand over the line of defence which was garrisoned by them to the invader. amasis therefore dispossessed their inhabitants, and transferred them to memphis and its environs. the change benefited him in two ways, for, while securing himself from possible treason, he gained a faithful guard for himself in the event of risings taking place in his turbulent capital. while he thus distributed these colonists of ancient standing to his best interests, he placed those of quite recent date in the part of the delta furthest removed from asia, where surveillance was most easy, in the triangle, namely, lying to the west of sais, between the canopic branch of the nile, the mountains, and the sea-coast. the milesians had established here some time previously, on a canal connected with the main arm of the river, the factory of naucratis, which long remained in obscurity, but suddenly developed at the beginning of the xxvith dynasty, when sais became the favourite residence of the pharaohs. this town amasis made over to the greeks so that they might make it the commercial and religious centre of their communities in egypt. [illustration: 120.jpg the present site of naucratis] reduced by faucher-gudin from the plan published by petrie. the site of the hellenion is marked a, the modern arab village b, the temenos of hera and apollo e, that of the dioskuri f, and that of aphrodite g. temples already existed there, those of apollo and aphrodite, together with all the political and religious institutions indispensable to the constitution of an hellenic city; but the influx of immigrants was so large and rapid, that, after the lapse of a few years, the entire internal organism and external aspect of the city were metamorphosed. new buildings rose from the ground with incredible speed--the little temple of the dioskuri, the protectors of the sailor, the temple of the samian hera, that of zeus of ægina, and that of athene;* ere long the great temenos, the hellenion, was erected at the public expense by nine æolian, ionian, and dorian towns of asia minor, to serve as a place of assembly for their countrymen, as a storehouse, as a sanctuary, and, if need be, even as a refuge and fortress, so great was its area and so thick its walls.** * the temple of athene, the nît of the saite nome, is as yet known only by an inscription in pctrie. ** the site has been rediscovered by petrie at the southern extremity of and almost outside the town; the walls were about 48 feet thick and 39 feet high, and the rectangular area enclosed by them could easily contain fifty thousand men. it was not possible for the constitution of naucratis to be very homogeneous, when a score of different elements assisted in its composition. it appears to have been a compromise between the institutions of the dorians and those of the ionians. its supreme magistrates were called timuchi, but their length of office and functions are alike unknown to us. the inspectors of the emporia and markets could be elected only by the citizens of the nine towns, and it is certain that the chief authority was not entirely in the hands either of the timuchi or the inspectors; perhaps each quarter of the town had its council taken from among the oldest residents. a prytanasum was open to all comers where assemblies and banquets were held on feast-days; here were celebrated at the public expense the festivals of dionysos and apollo komasos. amasis made the city a free port, accessible at all times to whoever should present themselves with peaceable intent, and the privileges which he granted naturally brought about the closing of all the other seaports of egypt. when a greek ship, pursued by pirates, buffeted by storms, or disabled by an accident at sea, ran ashore at some prohibited spot on the coast, the captain had to appear before the nearest magistrate, in order to swear that he had not violated the law wilfully, but from the force of circumstances. if his excuse appeared reasonable, he was permitted to make his way to the mouth of the canopic branch of the nile; but when the state of the wind or tide did not allow of his departure, his cargo was transferred to boats of the locality, and sent to the hellenic settlement by the canals of the delta. this provision of the law brought prosperity to naucratis; the whole of the commerce of egypt with the greek world passed through her docks, and in a few years she became one of the wealthiest emporia of the mediterranean. the inhabitants soon overflowed the surrounding country, and covered it with villas and townships. such merchants as refused to submit to the rule of their own countrymen found a home in some other part of the valley which suited them, and even upper egypt and the libyan desert were subject to their pacific inroads. the milesians established depots in the ancient city of abydos;* the cypriots and lesbians, and the people of ephesus, chios, and samos, were scattered over the islands formed by the network of canals and arms of the nile, and delighted in giving them the names of their respective countries;** greeks of diverse origin settled themselves at neapolis, not far from panopolis; and the samians belonging to the æschrionian tribe penetrated as far as the great oasis; in fact, there was scarcely a village where hellenic traders were not found, like the _bakals_ of to-day, selling wine, perfumes, oil, and salted provisions to the natives, practising usury in all its forms, and averse from no means of enriching themselves as rapidly as possible. * in stephen of byzantium the name of the town is said to be derived from that of the milesian abydos who founded it, probably on the testimony of aristagoras. letronne has seen that the historian meant a factory established by the milesians probably in the reign of amasis, at the terminus of the route leading to the great oasis. ** the compiler confines himself to stating that there were in the nile islands called ephesus, chios, samos, lesbos, cyprus, and so on; the explanation i have given in the text accounts for this curious fact quite simply. those who returned to their mother-country carried thither strange tales, which aroused the curiosity and cupidity of their fellow-citizens; and philosophers, merchants, and soldiers alike set out for the land of wonders in pursuit of knowledge, wealth, or adventures. amasis, ever alert upon his asiatic frontier, and always anxious to strengthen himself in that quarter against a chaldæan or persian invasion, welcomed them with open arms: those who remained in the country obtained employment about his person, while such as left it not to return, carried away with them the memory of his kindly treatment, and secured for him in hellas alliances of which he might one day stand in need. the conduct of amasis was politic, but it aroused the ill-feeling of his subjects against him. like the jews under hezekiah, the babylonians under nabonidus, and all other decadent races threatened by ruin, they attributed their decline, not to their own vices, but to the machinations of an angry god, and they looked on favours granted to strangers as a sacrilege. had not the greeks brought their divinities with them? did they not pervert the simple country-folk, so that they associated the greek religion with that of their own country? money was scarce; amasis had been obliged to debit the rations and pay of his mercenaries to the accounts of the most venerated egyptian temples--those of sais, heliopolis, bubastis, and memphis; and each of these institutions had to rebate so much per cent. on their annual revenues in favour of the barbarians, and hand over to them considerable quantities of corn, cattle, poultry, stuffs, woods, perfumes, and objects of all kinds. the priests were loud in their indignation, the echo of which still rang in the ears of the faithful some centuries later, and the lower classes making common cause with their priests, a spirit of hatred was roused among the populace as bitter as that which had previously caused the downfall of apries. as the fear of the army prevented this feeling from manifesting itself in a revolt, it found expression in the secret calumnies which were circulated against the king, and misrepresented the motives of all his actions. scores of malicious stories were repeated vilifying his character. it was stated that before his accession he was much addicted to eating and drinking, but that, suffering from want of money, he had not hesitated in procuring what he wished for by all sorts of means, the most honest of which had been secret theft. when made king, he had several times given way to intoxication to such an extent as to be incapable of attending to public business; his ministers were then obliged to relate moral tales to him to bring him to a state of reason. many persons having taunted him with his low extraction, he had caused a statue of a divinity to be made out of a gold basin in which he was accustomed to wash his feet, and he had exposed it to the adoration of the faithful. when it had been worshipped by them for some time, he revealed the origin of the idol, and added �that it had been with himself as with the foot-pan.... if he were a private person formerly, yet now he had come to be their king, and so he bade them honour and reverence him.� towards the middle and end of his reign he was as much detested as he had been beloved at the outset. he had, notwithstanding, so effectively armed egypt that the persians had not ventured to risk a collision with her immediately after their conquest of babylon. cyrus had spent ten years in compassing the downfall of nabonidus, and, calculating that that of amasis would require no less a period of time, he set methodically to work on the organisation of his recently acquired territory; the cities of phoenicia acknowledged him as their suzerain, and furnished him with what had hitherto been a coveted acquisition, a fleet. these preliminaries had apparently been already accomplished, when the movements of the barbarians suddenly made his presence in the far east imperative. he hurried thither, and was mysteriously lost to sight (529). tradition accounts for his death in several ways. if xenophon is to be credited, he died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifying those present by his wisdom and his almost superhuman resignation.* * a similar legend, but later in date, told how cyrus, when a hundred years old, asked one day to see his friends. he was told that his son had had them all put to death: his grief at the cruelty of cambyses caused his death in a few days. berosus tells us that he was killed in a campaign against the daliæ; ctesias states that, living been wounded in a skirmish with the æerbikes, one of the savage tribes of bactriana, he succumbed to his injuries three days after the engagement. according to the worthy herodotus, he asked the hand of tomyris, queen of the massagetse, in marriage, and was refused with disdain. he declared war against her to avenge his wounded vanity, set out to fight with her beyond the araxes, in the steppes of turkestan, defeated the advance-guard of cavalry, and took prisoner the heir to the crown, spargapises, who thereupon ran himself through with his sword. �then tomyris collected all the forces of her kingdom, and gave him (cyrus) battle.� of all the combats in which barbarians have engaged among themselves, i reckon this to have been the fiercest. the following, as i understand, was the manner of it:--first, the two armies stood apart and shot their arrows at each other; then, when their quivers were empty, they closed and fought hand to hand with lances and daggers; and thus they continued fighting for a length of time, neither choosing to give ground. at length the massagetse prevailed. the greater part of the army of the persians was destroyed. search was made among the slain by order of the queen for the body of cyrus; and when it was found, she took a skin, and, filling it full of human blood, she dipped the head of cyrus in the gore, saying, as she thus insulted the corse, �i live and have conquered thee in fight, and yet by thee am i ruined, for thou tookest my son with guile; but thus i make good my threat, and give thee thy fill of blood.� the engagement was not as serious as the legend would have us believe, and the growth of the persian power was in no way affected, by it. it cost cyrus his life, but his army experienced no serious disaster, and his men took the king�s body and brought it to pasargadæ. he had a palace there, the remains of which can still be seen on the plain of murgâb. the edifice was unpretentious, built upon a rectangular plan, with two porches of four columns on the longer sides, a lateral chamber at each of the four angles, and a hypostyle hall in the centre, divided lengthways by two rows of columns which supported the roof. the walls were decorated with bas-reliefs, and wherever the inscriptions have not been destroyed, we can read in cuneiform characters in the three languages which thenceforward formed the official means of communication of the empire--persian, medic, and chaldæan--the name, title, and family of the royal occupant. cyrus himself is represented in a standing posture on the pilasters, wearing a costume in which egyptian and assyrian features are curiously combined. he is clothed from neck to ankle in the close-fitting fringed tunic of the babylonian and mnevite sovereigns; his feet are covered with laced boots, while four great wings, emblems of the supreme power, overshadow his shoulders and loins, two of them raised in the air, the others pointing to the earth; he wears on his head the egyptian skull-cap, from which rises one of the most complicated head-dresses of the royal wardrobe of the pharaohs. the monarch raises his right hand with the gesture of a man speaking to an assembled people, and as if repeating the legend traced above his image: �i am cyrus, the king, the achæmenian.� he was buried not far off, in the monumental tomb which he had probably built for himself in a square enclosure, having a portico on three of its sides; a small chamber, with a ridge roof, rises from a base composed of six receding steps, so arranged as to appear of unequal height. [illustration: 128.jpg cyrus the achaemenian] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by dieulafoy. the doorway is narrow, and so low that a man of medium statue finds some difficulty in entering. it is surmounted by a hollow moulding, quite egyptian in style, and was closed by a two-leaved stone door. the golden coffin rested on a couch of the same metal, covered with precious stuffs; and a circular table, laden with drinking-vessels and ornaments enriched with precious stones, completed the furniture of the chamber. the body of the conqueror remained undisturbed on this spot for two centuries under the care of the priests; but while alexander was waging war on the indian frontier, the greek officers, to whom he had entrusted the government of persia proper, allowed themselves to be tempted by the enormous wealth which the funerary chapel was supposed to contain. [illustration: 129.jpg the tomb op cyrus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the heliogravure of dieulafoy. they opened the coffin, broke the couch and the table, and finding them too heavy to carry away easily, they contented themselves with stealing the drinking-vessels and jewels. alexander on his return visited the place, and caused the entrance to be closed with a slight wall of masonry; he intended to restore the monument to its former splendour, but he himself perished shortly after, and what remained of the contents probably soon disappeared. after the death of cyrus, popular imagination, drawing on the inexhaustible materials furnished by his adventurous career, seemed to delight in making him the ideal of all a monarch should be; they attributed to him every virtue--gentleness, bravery, moderation, justice, and wisdom. there is no reason to doubt that he possessed the qualities of a good general--activity, energy, and courage, together with the astuteness and the duplicity so necessary to success in asiatic conquest--but he does not appear to have possessed in the same degree the gifts of a great administrator. he made no changes in the system of government which from the time of tiglath-pileser iii. onwards had obtained among all oriental sovereigns; he placed satraps over the towns and countries of recent acquisition, at sardes and babylon, in syria and palestine, but without clearly defining their functions or subjecting them to a supervision sufficiently strict to ensure the faithful performance of their duties. he believed that he was destined to found a single empire in which all the ancient empires were to be merged, and he all but carried his task to a successful close: egypt alone remained to be conquered when he passed away. his wife kassandanê, a daughter of pharnaspes, and an achæmenian like himself, had borne him five children; two sons, cambyses* and smerdis,** and three daughters, atossa, roxana, and artystonê.*** * the persian form of the name rendered kambyses by the greeks was kâbuzîyâ or kambuzîya. herodotus calls him the son of kassandanê, and the tradition which he has preserved is certainly authentic. ctesias has erroneously stated that his mother was amytis, the daughter of astyages, and dinon, also erroneously, the egyptian women nitêtis; diodorus siculus and strabo make him the son of meroê. ** the original form was bardiya or barzîya, �the laudable,� and the first greek transcript known, in æschylus, is mardos, or, in the scholiasts on the passage, merdias, which has been corrupted into marphios by hellanikos and into merges by pompeius trogus. the form smerdis in herodotus, and in the historians who follow him, is the result of a mistaken assimilation of the persian name with the purely greek one of smerdis or smerdies. *** herodotus says that atossa was the daughter of kassandanê, and the position which she held during three reigns shows that she must have been so; justi, however, calls her the daughter of amytis. a second daughter is mentioned by herodotus, the one whom cambyses killed in egypt by a kick; he gives her no name, but she is probably the same as the roxana who according to ctesias bore a headless child. the youngest, artystonê, was the favourite wife of darius. josephus speaks of a fourth daughter of cyrus called meroê, but without saying who was the mother of this princess. cambyses was probably born about 558, soon after his father�s accession, and he was his legitimate successor, according to the persian custom which assigned the crown to the eldest of the sons born in the purple. he had been associated, as we have seen, in the babylonian regal power immediately after the victory over nabonidus, and on the eve of his departure for the fatal campaign against the massagetse his father, again in accordance with the persian law, had appointed him regent. a later tradition, preserved by ctesias, relates that on this occasion the territory had been divided between the two sons: smerdis, here called tanyoxarkes, having received as his share bactriana, the khoramnians, the parthians, and the carmanians, under the suzerainty of his brother. cambyses, it is clear, inherited the whole empire, but intrigues gathered round smerdis, and revolts broke out in the provinces, incited, so it was said, whether rightly or wrongly, by his partisans.* the new king was possessed of a violent, merciless temper, and the persians subsequently emphasised the fact by saying that cyrus had been a father to them, cambyses a master. the rebellions were repressed with a vigorous hand, and finally smerdis disappeared by royal order, and the secret of his fate was so well kept, that it was believed, even by his mother and sisters, that he was merely imprisoned in some obscure median fortress.** * herodotus speaks of peoples subdued by cambyses in asia, and this allusion can only refer to a revolt occurring after the death of cyrus, before the egyptian expedition; these troubles are explicitly recorded in xenophon. ** the inscription of behistun says distinctly that cambyses had his brother bardîya put to death before the egyptian expedition; on the other hand, herodotus makes the murder occur during the egyptian expedition and ctesias after this expedition. ctesias� version of the affair adds that cambyses, the better to dissimulate his crime, ordered the murderer sphendadates to pass himself off as tanyoxarkes, as there was a great resemblance between the two: sphendadates --the historian goes on to say--was exiled to bactriana, and it was not until five years afterwards that the mother of the two princes heard of the murder and of the substitution. these additions to the story are subsequent developments suggested by the traditional account of the pseudo-smerdis. in recent times several authorities have expressed the opinion that all that is told us of the murder of smerdis and about the pseudo-smerdis is merely a legend, invented by darius or those about him in order to justify his usurpation in the eyes of the people: the pseudo-smerdis would be smerdis himself, who revolted against cambyses, and was then, after he had reigned a few months, assassinated by darius. winckler acknowledges �that certainty is impossible in such a case;� and, in reality, all ancient tradition is against his hypothesis, and it is best to accept herodotus� account, with all its contradictions, until contemporaneous documents enable us to decide what to accept and what to reject in it. the ground being cleared of his rival, and affairs on the scythian frontier reduced to order, cambyses took up the projects against egypt at the exact point at which his predecessor had left them. amasis, who for ten years had been expecting an attack, had taken every precaution in his power against it, and had once more patiently begun to make overtures of alliance with the hellenic cities; those on the european continent did not feel themselves so seriously menaced as to consider it to their interest to furnish him with any assistance, but the greeks of the independent islands, with their chief, poly crates, tyrant of samos, received his advances with alacrity. polycrates had at his disposal a considerable fleet, the finest hitherto seen in the waters of the ægean, and this, combined with the egyptian navy, was not any too large a force to protect the coasts of the delta, now that the persians had at their disposition not only the vessels of the æolian and ionian cities, but those of phoenicia and cyprus. a treaty was concluded, bringing about an exchange of presents and amenities between the two princes which lasted as long as peace prevailed, but was ruptured at the critical moment by the action of polycrates, though not actually through his own fault. the aristocratic party, whose chiefs were always secretly plotting his overthrow, had given their adherence to the persians, and their conduct became so threatening about the time of the death of cyras, that polycrates had to break his engagements with egypt in order to avert a catastrophe.* * herodotus laid the blame for the breach of the treaty to the king of egypt, and attributed to his fear of the constant good fortune of polycrates. the lattor�s accession to power is fixed at about the year 540 by some, by others in the year 537, or in the year 533-2; his negotiations with amasis must be placed somewhere during the last fifteen years of the pharaoh. he made a treaty with the persian king, and sent a squadron of forty galleys to join the fleet then being equipped in the phoenician ports.* * herodotus records two opposing traditions: one that the samians joined in the egyptian campaign, the other that they went only as far as the neighbourhood of karpathos. amasis, therefore, when war at last broke out, found himself left to face the enemy alone. the struggle was inevitable, and all the inhabitants of the eastern coasts of the mediterranean had long foreseen its coming. without taking into consideration the danger to which the persian empire and its syrian provinces were exposed by the proximity of a strong and able power such as egypt, the hardy and warlike character of cambyses would naturally have prompted him to make an attempt to achieve what his predecessors, the warrior-kings of nineveh and babylon, had always failed to accomplish successfully. policy ruled his line of action, and was sufficient to explain it, but popular imagination sought other than the very natural causes which had brought the most ancient and most recent of the great empires of the world into opposition; romantic reasons were therefore invented to account for the great drama which was being enacted, and the details supplied varied considerably, according as the tradition was current in asia or africa. it was said that a physician lent to cyrus by amasis, to treat him for an affection of the eyes, was the cause of all the evil. the unfortunate man, detained at susa and chafing at his exile, was said to have advised cambyses to ask for the daughter of pharaoh in marriage, hoping either that amasis would grant the request, and be dishonoured in the eyes of his subjects for having degraded the solar race by a union with a barbarian, or that he would boldly refuse, and thus arouse the hatred of the persians against himself. amasis, after a slight hesitation, substituted nitêtis, a daughter of apries, for his own child. it happened that one day in sport cambyses addressed the princess by the name of her supposed father, whereupon she said, �i perceive, o king, that you have no suspicion of the way in which you have been deceived by amasis; he took me, and having dressed me up as his own daughter, sent me to you. in reality i am the daughter of apries, who was his lord and master until the day that he revolted, and, in concert with the rest of the egyptians, put his sovereign to death.� the deceit which cambyses thus discovered had been put upon him irritated him so greatly as to induce him to turn his arms against egypt. so ran the persian account of the tale, but on the banks of the nile matters were explained otherwise. here it was said that it was to cyrus himself that nitêtis had been married, and that she had borne cambyses to him; the conquest had thus been merely a revenge of the legitimate heirs of psammetichus upon the usurper, and cambyses had ascended the throne less as a conqueror than as a pharaoh of the line of apries. it was by this childish fiction that the egyptians in their decadence consoled themselves before the stranger for their loss of power. always proud of their ancient prowess, but incapable of imitating the deeds of their forefathers, they none the less pretended that they could neither be vanquished nor ruled except by one of themselves, and the story of nitêtis afforded complete satisfaction to their vanity. if cambyses were born of a solar princess, persia could not be said to have imposed a barbarian king upon egypt, but, on the contrary, that egypt had cleverly foisted her pharaoh upon persia, and through persia upon half the universe. one obstacle still separated the two foes--the desert and the marshes of the delta. the distance between the outposts of pelusium and the fortress of ænysos* on the syrian frontier was scarcely fifty-six miles, and could be crossed by an army in less than ten days.** formerly the width of this strip of desert had been less, but the assyrians, and after them the chaldæans, had vied with each other in laying waste the country, and the absence of any settled population now rendered the transit difficult. cambyses had his head-quarters at gaza, at the extreme limit of his own dominions,*** but he was at a loss how to face this solitary region without incurring the risk of seeing half his men buried beneath its sands, and his uncertainty was delaying his departure when a stroke of fortune relieved him from his difficulty. * the ænysos of herodotus is now khân yunes. ** in 1799, napoleon�s army left kattiyeh on the 18th of pluviôse, and was at gaza on the 7th of ventose, after remaining from the 21st to the 30th of pluviôse before el arîsh besieging that place. *** this seems to follow from the tradition, according to which cambyses left his treasures at gaza during the egyptian campaign, and the town was thence called _gaza_, �the treasury.� the etymology is false, but the fact that suggested it is probably correct, considering the situation of gaza and the part it must necessarily play in an invasion of egypt. phanes of halicarnassus, one of the mercenaries in the service of egypt, a man of shrewd judgment and an able soldier, fell out with amasis for some unknown reason, and left him to offer his services to his rival. this was a serious loss for egypt, since phanes possessed considerable authority over the mercenaries, and was better versed in egyptian affairs than any other person. he was pursued and taken within sight of the lycian coast, but he treated his captors to wine and escaped from them while they were intoxicated. he placed cambyses in communication with the shêkh of the scattered tribes between syria and the delta. the arab undertook to furnish the persian king with guides, as one of his predecessors had done in years gone by for esar-haddon, and to station relays of camels laden with water along the route that the invading army was to follow. having taken these precautions, cambyses entrusted the cares of government and the regulation of his household to oropastes,* one of the persian magi, and gave the order to march forward. * herodotus calls this individual patizeithes, and dionysius of miletus, who lived a little before herodotus, gives panzythes as a variant of this name: the variant passed into the syncellus as pauzythes, but the original form patikhshâyathiya is a title signifying _viceroy, regent, or minister_, answering to the modern persian _padishah_: herodotus, or the author he quotes, has taken the name of the office for that of the individual. on the other hand, pompeius trogus, who drew his information from good sources, mentions, side by side with comètes or gaumata, his brother oropastes, whose name ahura-upashta is quite correct, and may mean, _him whom ahura helps_. it is generally admitted that pompeius trogus, or rather justin, has inverted the parts they played, and that his comètes is the pseudo smerdis, and not, as he says, oropastes; it was, then, the latter who was the usurper�s brother, and it is his name of oropastes which should be substituted for that of the patizeithes of herodotus. [illustration: 138.jpg psammetichus iii. ] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the louvre. on arriving at pelusium, he learned that his adversary no longer existed. amasis had died after a short illness, and was succeeded by his son psammetichus iii. this change of command, at the most critical moment, was almost in itself, a disaster. àmasis, with his consummate experience of men and things, his intimate knowledge of the resources of egypt, his talents as a soldier and a general, his personal prestige, his hellenic leanings, commanded the confidence of his own men and the respect of foreigners; but what could be expected of his unknown successor, and who could say whether he were equal to the heavy task which fate had assigned to him? the whole of the nile valley was a prey to gloomy presentiment.* * psammetichus iii. has left us very few monuments, which is accounted for by the extreme shortness of his reign. for the same reason doubtless several writers of classical times have ignored his existence, and have made the conquest of egypt take place under amasis. ctesias calls the pharaoh amyrtseus, and gives the same name to those who rebelled against the persians in his own time, and he had an account of the history of the conquest entirely different from that of herodotus. egypt was threatened not only, as in the previous century, by the nations of the tigris and euphrates, but all asia, from the indus to the hellespont, was about to fall on her to crush her. she was destitute of all human help and allies, and the gods themselves appeared to have forsaken her. the fellahin, inspired with vague alarm, recognised evil omens in all around them. rain is rare in the thebaid, and storms occur there only twice or three times in a century: but a few days after the accession of psammetichus, a shower of fine rain fell at thebes, an event, so it was stated with the exaggeration characteristic of the bearers of ill news, which had never before occurred.* * the inhabitants of the said have, up to our own time, always considered rain in the valley as an ill-omened event. they used to say in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when speaking of napoleon�s expedition, �we knew that misfortune threatened us, because it rained at luxor shortly before the french came.� wilkinson assures us that rain is not so rare at thebes as herodotus thought: he speaks of five or six showers a year, and of a great storm on an average every ten years. but even he admits that it is confined to the mountain district, and does not reach the plain: i never heard of rain at luxor during the six winters that i spent in upper egypt. pharaoh hastened to meet the invader with all the men, chariots, and native bowmen at his disposal, together with his libyan and cyrenoan auxiliaries, and the ionians, carians, and greeks of the isles and mainland. the battle took place before pelusium, and was fought on both sides with brave desperation, since defeat meant servitude for the egyptians, and for the persians, cut off by the desert from possible retreat, captivity or annihilation. phanes had been obliged to leave his children behind him, and pharaoh included them in his suite, to serve, if needful, as hostages. the carians and ionians, who felt themselves disgraced by the defection of their captain, called loudly for them just before the commencement of the action. they were killed immediately in front of the lines, their father being a powerless onlooker; their blood was thrown into a cask half full of wine, and the horrible mixture was drunk by the soldiers, who then furiously charged the enemy�s battalions. the issue of the struggle was for a long time doubtful, but the egyptians were inferior in numbers; towards evening their lines gave way and the flight began.* all was not, however, lost, if psammetichus had but followed the example of taharqa, and defended the passage of the various canals and arms of the river, disputing the ground inch by inch with the persians, and gaining time meanwhile to collect a fresh army. the king lost his presence of mind, and without attempting to rally what remained of his regiments, he hastened to take refuge within the white wall. cambyses halted a few days to reduce pelusium,** and in the mean time sent a vessel of mitylene to summon memphis to capitulate: the infuriated populace, as soon as they got wind of the message, massacred the herald and the crew, and dragged their bleeding limbs through the streets. * according to herodotus, eighty years later the battle field used to be shown covered with bones, and it was said that the egyptians could be distinguished from the persians by the relative hardness of their skulls. ** polysenus hands down a story that cambyses, in order to paralyse the resistance of the besieged, caused cats, dogs, ibises, and other sacred animals to march at the head of his attacking columns: the egyptians would not venture to use their arms for fear of wounding or killing some of their gods. the city held out for a considerable time; when at length she opened her gates, the remaining inhabitants of the said who had hesitated up to then, hastened to make their submission, and the whole of egypt as far as philae became at one stroke a persian province. the libyans did not wait to be summoned to bring their tribute; cyrene and barca followed their example, but their offerings were so small that the conqueror�s irritation was aroused, and deeming himself mocked, he gave way to his anger, and instead of accepting them, he threw them to his soldiers with his own hand (b.c. 525).* * the question as to the year in which egypt was subdued by cambyses has long divided historians: i still agree with those who place the conquest in the spring of 525. this sudden collapse of a power whose exalted position had defied all attacks for centuries, and the tragic fate of the king who had received his crown merely to lose it, filled contemporary beholders with astonishment and pity. it was said that, ten days after the capitulation of memphis, the victorious king desired out of sport to test the endurance of his prisoner. psammetichus beheld his daughter and the daughters of his nobles pass before him, half naked, with jars on their shoulders, and go down to the nile to fetch water from the river like common slaves; his son and two thousand young men of the same age, in chains and with ropes round their necks, also defiled before him on their way to die as a revenge for the murder of the mitylenians; yet he never for a moment lost his royal imperturbability. but when one of his former companions in pleasure chanced to pass, begging for alms and clothed in rags, psammetichus suddenly broke out into weeping, and lacerated his face in despair. cambyses, surprised at this excessive grief in a man who up till then had exhibited such fortitude, demanded the reason of his conduct. �son of cyrus,� he replied, �the misfortunes of my house are too unparalleled to weep over, but not the affliction of my friend. when a man, on the verge of old age, falls from luxury and abundance into extreme poverty, one may well lament his fate.� when the speech was reported to cambyses, he fully recognised the truth of it. croesus, who was also present, shed tears, and the persians round him were moved with pity. cambyses, likewise touched, commanded that the son of the pharaoh should be saved, but the remission of the sentence arrived too late. he at all events treated pharaoh himself with consideration, and it is possible that he might have replaced him on the throne, under an oath of vassalage, had he not surprised him in a conspiracy against his own life. he thereupon obliged him to poison himself by drinking bulls� blood, and he confided the government of the nile valley to a persian named aryandes. no part of the ancient world now remained unconquered except the semi-fabulous kingdom of ethiopia in the far-off south. cities and monarchies, all the great actors of early times, had been laid in the dust one after another--tyre, damascus, carchemish, urartu, elam, assyria, jerusalem, media, the lydians, babylon, and finally egypt; and the prey they had fought over so fiercely and for so many centuries, now belonged in its entirety to one master for the first time as far as memory could reach back into the past. cambyses, following in the footsteps of cyrus, had pursued his victorious way successfully, but it was another matter to consolidate his conquests and to succeed in governing within the limits of one empire so many incongruous elements--the people of the caucasus and those of the nile valley, the greeks of the ægean and the iranians, the scythians from beyond the oxus and the semites of the banks of the euphrates or of the mediterranean coast; and time alone would show whether this heritage would not fall to pieces as quickly as it had been built up. the asiatic elements of the empire appeared, at all events for the moment, content with their lot, and babylon showed herself more than usually resigned; but egypt had never accepted the yoke of the stranger willingly, and the most fortunate of her assyrian conquerors had never exercised more than a passing supremacy over her. cambyses realised that he would never master her except by governing her himself for a period of several years, and by making himself as egyptian as a persian could be without offending his own subjects at home. he adopted the titles of the pharaohs, their double cartouche, their royal costume, and their solar filiation; as much to satisfy his own personal animosity as to conciliate the egyptian priests, he repaired to sais, violated the tomb of amasis, and burnt the mummy after offering it every insult.* * herodotus gives also a second account, which declares that cambyses thus treated the body, not of amasis, but of some unknown person whom he took for amasis. the truth of the story is generally contested, for the deed would have been, as herodotus himself remarks, contrary to persian ideas about the sanctity of fire. i think that by his cruel treatment of the mummy, cambyses wished to satisfy the hatred of the natives against the greek-loving king, and so render himself more acceptable to them. the destruction of the mummy entailing that of the soul, his act gave the saitic population a satisfaction similar to that experienced by the refined cruelty of those who, a few centuries ago, killed their enemies when in a state of deadly sin, and so ensure not only their dismissal from this world, but also their condemnation in the next. [illustration: 145.jpg the naophoros statuette of the vatican] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph: the head and hands are a restoration of the eighteenth century, in the most inappropriate græco-roman style. he removed his troops from the temple of nît, which they had turned into a barrack to the horror of the faithful, and restored at his own expense the damage they had done to the building. he condescended so far as to receive instruction in the local religion, and was initiated in the worship of the goddess by the priest uzaharrîsnîti. this was, after all, a pursuance of the policy employed by his father towards the babylonians, and the projects which he had in view necessitated his gaining the confidence of the people at all costs. asia having no more to offer him, two almost untried fields lay open to his ambition--africa and europe--the greek world and what lay beyond it, the carthaginian world and ethiopia. the necessity of making a final reckoning with egypt had at the outset summoned him to africa, and it was therefore in that continent that he determined to carry on his conquests. memphis was necessarily the base of his operations, the only point from which he could direct the march of his armies in a westerly or southerly direction, and at the same time keep in touch with the rest of his empire, and he would indeed have been imprudent had he neglected anything which could make him acceptable to its inhabitants. as soon as he felt he had gained their sympathies, he despatched two expeditions, one to carthage and one to ethiopia. cyrene had spontaneously offered him her homage; he now further secured it by sending thither with all honour ladikê, the widow of amasis, and he apparently contemplated taking advantage of the good will of the cyrenians to approach carthage by sea. the combined fleets of ionia and phonicia were without doubt numerically sufficient for this undertaking, but the tyrians refused to serve against their own colonies, and he did not venture to employ the greeks alone in waters which were unfamiliar to them. besides this, the information which he obtained from those about him convinced him that the overland route would enable him to reach his destination more surely if more slowly; it would lead him from the banks of the nile to the oases of the theban desert, from there to the ammonians, and thence by way of the libyans bordering on the syrtes and the liby-phoenicians. he despatched an advance-guard of fifty thousand men from thebes to occupy the oasis of ammon and to prepare the various halting-places for the bulk of the troops. the fate of these men has never been clearly ascertained. they crossed the oasis of el-khargeh and proceeded to the north-west in the direction of the oracle. the natives afterwards related that when they had arrived halfway, a sudden storm of wind fell upon them, and the entire force was buried under mounds of sand during a halt. cambyses was forced to take their word; in spite of all his endeavours, no further news of his troops was forthcoming, except that they never reached the temple, and that none of the generals or soldiers ever again saw egypt (524). the expedition to ethiopia was not more successful. since the retreat of tanuatamanu, the pharaohs of napata had severed all direct relations with asia; but on being interfered with by psammetichus i. and ii., they had repulsed the invaders, and had maintained their frontier almost within sight of philæ.* in nubia proper they had merely a few outposts stationed in the ruins of the towns of the theban period--at derr, at pnubsu, at wady-halfa, and at semneh; the population again becoming dense and the valley fertile to the south of this spot. kush, like egypt, was divided into two regions --to-qonusît, with its cities of danguru,** napata, asta-muras, and barua; and alo,*** which extended along the white and the blue nile in the plain of sennaar: the asmakh, the descendants of the mashauasha emigrants of the time of psammetichus i., dwelt on the southern border of alo. * the northern boundary of ethiopia is given us approximately by the lists of temples in the inscriptions of harsiatef and of nastosenen: pnubsu is mentioned several times as receiving gifts from the king, which carries the permanent dominion of the ethiopian kings as far as the second cataract. ** now old dongola. *** berua is the meroê of strabo, astaboras the modern ed dameîr, and alo the kingdom of aloah of the mediæval arab geographers. [illustration: 147.jpg ethiopian gkoup] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by berghoff. a number of half-savage tribes, maditi and bohrehsa, were settled to the right and to the left of the territory watered by the nile, between darfur, the mountains of abyssinia, and the red sea; and the warlike disposition of the ethiopian kings found in these tribes an inexhaustible field for obtaining easy victories and abundant spoil. many of these sovereigns--piônkhi, alaru, harsiatef, nastosenen--whose respective positions in the royal line are still undetermined, specially distinguished themselves in these struggles, but the few monuments they have left, though bearing witness to their military enterprise and ability, betray their utter decadence in everything connected with art, language, and religion. the ancient egyptian syllabary, adapted to the needs of a barbarous tongue, had ended by losing its elegance; architecture was degenerating, and sculpture slowly growing more and more clumsy in appearance. some of the work, however, is not wanting in a certain rude nobility--as, for instance, the god and goddess carved side by side in a block of grey granite. ethiopian worship had become permeated with strange superstitions, and its creed was degraded, in spite of the strictness with which the priests supervised its application and kept watch against every attempt to introduce innovations. towards the end of the seventh century some of the families attached to the temple of am on at napata had endeavoured to bring about a kind of religious reform; among other innovations they adopted the practice of substituting for the ordinary sacrifice, new rites, the chief feature of which was the offering of the flesh of the victim raw, instead of roasted with fire. this custom, which was doubtless borrowed from the negroes of the upper nile, was looked upon as a shameful heresy by the orthodox. the king repaired in state to the temple of anion, seized the priests who professed these seditious beliefs, and burnt them alive. [illustration: 148.jpg encampment de bacharis] the use of raw meat, nevertheless, was not discontinued, and it gained such ground in the course of ages that even christianity was unable to suppress it; up to the present time, the _brindê_, or piece of beef cut from the living animal and eaten raw, is considered a delicacy by the abyssinians. the isolation of the ethiopians had rather increased than lowered their reputation among other nations. their transitory appearance on the battle-fields of asia had left a deep impression on the memories of their opponents. the tenacity they had displayed during their conflict with assyria had effaced the remembrance of their defeat. popular fancy delighted to extol the wisdom of sabaco,* and exalted taharqa to the first rank among the conquerors of the old world; now that kush once more came within the range of vision, it was invested with a share of all these virtues, and the inquiries cambyses made concerning it were calculated to make him believe that he was about to enter on a struggle with a nation of demigods rather than of men. he was informed that they were taller, more beautiful, and more vigorous than all other mortals, that their age was prolonged to one hundred and twenty years and more, and that they possessed a marvellous fountain whose waters imparted perpetual youth to then-bodies. there existed near their capital a meadow, perpetually furnishing an inexhaustible supply of food and drink; whoever would might partake of this �table of the sun,� and eat to his fill.** * the eulogy bestowed on him by herodotus shows the esteem in which he was held even in the saite period; later on he seems to have become two persons, and so to have given birth to the good ethiopian king aktisanes. ** pausanias treats it as a traveller�s tale. heeren thought that he saw in herodotus� account a reference to intercourse by signs, so frequent in africa. the �table of the sun� would thus have been a kind of market, whither the natives would come for their provisions, using exchange to procure them. i am inclined rather to believe the story to be a recollection, partly of the actual custom of placing meats, which the first comer might take, on the tombs in the necropolis, partly of the mythical �meadow of offerings� mentioned in the funerary texts, to which the souls of the dead and the gods alike had access. this divine region would have transferred to our earth by some folk-tale, like the judgment of the dead, the entrance into the solar bark, and other similar beliefs. gold was so abundant that it was used for common purposes, even for the chains of their prisoners; but, on the other hand, copper was rare and much prized. canibyses despatched some spies chosen from among the ichthyophagi of the bed sea to explore this region, and acting on the report they brought back, he left memphis at the head of an army and a fleet.* the expedition was partly a success and partly a failure. it followed the nile valley as far as korosko, and then struck across the desert in the direction of napata;** but provisions ran short before a quarter of the march had been achieved, and famine obliged the invaders to retrace their steps after having endured terrible sufferings.*** * herodotus� text speaks of an army only, but the accounts of the wars between ethiopia and egypt show that the army was always accompanied by the necessary fleet. ** it is usually thought that the expedition marched by the side of the nile as far as napata; to support this theory the name of a place mentioned in pliny is quoted, cambusis at the third cataract, which is supposed to contain the name of the conqueror. this town, which is sometimes mentioned by the classical geographers, is called kambiusit in the ethiopie texts, and the form of the name makes its connection with the history of cambyses easy. i think it follows, from the text of herodotus, that the persians left the grassy land, the river-valley, at a given moment, to enter the sand, i.e. the desert. now this is done to-day at two points--near korosko to rejoin the nile at abu-hammed, and near wady-halfah to avoid the part of the nile called the �stony belly,� batn el-hagar. the korosko route, being the only one suitable for the transit of a body of troops, and also the only route known to herodotus, seems, i think, likely to be the one which was followed in the present instance; at all events, it fits in best with the fact that cambyses was obliged to retrace his steps hurriedly, when he had accomplished hardly a fifth of the journey. *** many modern historians are inclined to assume that cambyses� expedition was completely successful, and that its result was the overthrow of the ancient kingdom of nepata and the foundation of that of meroê. cambyses would have given the new town which he built there the name of his sister meroê. the traditions concerning cambusis and meroê belong to the alexandrine era, and rest only on chance similarities of sound. with regard to the ethiopian province of the persian empire and to the ethiopian neighbours of egypt whom cambyses subdued, the latter are not necessarily ethiopians of napata. herodotus himself says that the ethiopians dwelt in the country above elephantine, and that half of what he calls the island of takhompsô was inhabited by ethiopians: the subjugated ethiopians and their country plainly correspond with the dodekaschênos of the græco-roman era. cambyses had to rest content with the acquisition of those portions of nubia adjoining the first cataract--the same, in fact, that had been annexed to egypt by psammetichus i. and ii. (523). the failure of this expedition to the south, following so closely on the disaster which befell that of the west, had a deplorable effect on the mind of cambyses. he had been subject, from childhood, to attacks of epilepsy, during which he became a maniac and had no control over his actions. these reverses of fortune aggravated the disease, and increased the frequency and length of the attacks.* * recent historians admit neither the reality of the illness of cambyses nor the madness resulting from it, but consider them egyptian fables, invented out of spite towards the king who had conquered and persecuted them. the bull apis had died shortly before the close of the ethiopian campaign, and the egyptians, after mourning for him during the prescribed number of weeks, were bringing his successor with rejoicings into the temple of phtah, when the remains of the army re-entered memphis. cambyses, finding the city holiday-making, imagined that it was rejoicing over his misfortunes. he summoned the magistrates before him, and gave them over to the executioner without deigning to listen to their explanations. he next caused the priests to be brought to him, and when they had paraded the apis before him, he plunged his dagger into its flank with derisive laughter: �ah, evil people! so you make for yourselves divinities of flesh and blood which fear the sword! it is indeed a fine god that you egyptians have here; i will have you to know, however, that you shall not rejoice overmuch at having deceived me!� the priests were beaten as impostors, and the bull languished from its wound and died in a few days*1 its priests buried it, and chose another in its place without the usual ceremonies, so as not to exasperate the anger of the tyrant,** but the horror evoked by this double sacrilege raised passions against cambyses which the ruin of the country had failed to excite. * later historians improved upon the account of herodotus, and it is said in the _de iside_, that cambyses killed the apis and threw him to the dogs. here there is probably a confusion between the conduct of cambyses and that attributed to the eunuch bagoas nearly two centuries later, at the time of the second conquest of egypt by ochus. ** mariette discovered in the serapseum and sent to the louvre fragments of the epitaph of an apis buried in epiphi in the sixth year of cambyses, which had therefore died a few months previously. this fact contradicts the inference from the epitaph of the apis that died in the fourth year of darius, which would have been born in the fifth year of cambyses, if we allow that there could not have been two apises in egypt at once. this was, indeed, the usual rule, but a comparison of the two dates shows that here it was not followed, and it is therefore simplest, until we have further evidence, to conclude that at all events in cases of violence, such as sacrilegious murder, there could have been two apises at once, one discharging his functions, and the other unknown, living still in the midst of the herds. the manifestations of this antipathy irritated him to such an extent that he completely changed his policy, and set himself from that time forward to act counter to the customs and prejudices of the egyptians. they consequently regarded his memory with a vindictive hatred. the people related that the gods had struck him with madness to avenge the murder of the apis, and they attributed to him numberless traits of senseless cruelty, in which we can scarcely distinguish truth from fiction. it was said that, having entered the temple of phtah, he had ridiculed the grotesque figure under which the god was represented, and had commanded the statues to be burnt. on another occasion he had ordered the ancient sepulchres to be opened, that he might see what was the appearance of the mummies. the most faithful members of his family and household, it was said, did not escape his fury. he killed his own sister roxana, whom he had married, by a kick in the abdomen; he slew the son of prexaspes with an arrow; he buried alive twelve influential persians; he condemned croesus to death, and then repented, but punished the officers who had failed to execute the sentence pronounced against the lydian king.* * the whole of this story of croesus is entirely fabulous. he had no longer any reason for remaining in egypt, since he had failed in his undertakings; yet he did not quit the country, and through repeated delays his departure was retarded a whole year. meanwhile his long sojourn in africa, the report of his failures, and perhaps whispers of his insanity, had sown the seeds of discontent in asia; and as darius said in after-years, when recounting these events, �untruth had spread all over the country, not only in persia and media, but in other provinces.� cambyses himself felt that a longer absence would be injurious to his interests; he therefore crossed the isthmus in the spring of 521, and was making his way through northern syria, perhaps in the neighbourhood of hamath,* when he learned that a revolution had broken out, and that its rapid progress threatened the safety of his throne and life. * herodotus calls the place where cambyses died agbatana (ecbatana). pliny says that the town of carmel was thus named at first; but the place here mentioned cannot well have been in that direction. it has been identified with batansea in the country between the orontes and the euphrates, but the most likely theory is the one suggested by a passage in stephen of byzantium, that the place in question is the large syrian city of hamath. josephus makes him die at damascus. tradition asserted that a herald appeared before him and proclaimed aloud, in the hearing of the whole army, that cambyses, son of cyrus, had ceased to reign, and summoned whoever had till that day obeyed him to acknowledge henceforth smerdis, son of cyrus, as their lord. cambyses at first believed that his brother had been spared by the assassins, and now, after years of concealment, had at length declared himself; but he soon received proofs that his orders had been faithfully accomplished, and it is said that he wept at the remembrance of the fruitless crime. the usurper was gaumâta, one of the persian magi, whose resemblance to smerdis was so remarkable that even those who were cognisant of it invariably mistook the one for the other,* and he was brother to that oropastes to whom cambyses had entrusted the administration of his household before setting out for egypt.** * greek tradition is unanimous on this point, but the inscription of behistun does not mention it. ** the inscription of behistun informs us that the usurper�s name was gaumâta. pompeius trogus alone, probably following some author who made use of charon of lampsacus, handed down this name in the form comètes or gometes, which his abbreviator justin carelessly applied to the second brother. ctesias gives the mage the name sphendadates, which answers to the old persian spentôdâta, �he who is given by the holy one,� i.e. by ahura-mazdâ. the supporters of the mage gave him this name, as an heroic champion of the mazdoan faith who had destroyed such sanctuaries as were illegal, and identified him with spentôdâta, son of wistâspa. both of them were aware of the fate of smerdis; they also knew that the persians were ignorant of it, and that every one at court, including the mother and sisters of the prince, believed that he was still alive. gaumâta headed a revolt in the little town of pasyauvadâ on the 14th of viyakhna, in the early days of march, 521, and he was hailed by the common people from the moment of his appearance. persia, media, and the iranian provinces pronounced in his favour, and solemnly enthroned him three months later, on the 9th of garmapada; babylon next accepted him, followed by elam and the regions of the tigris. though astounded at first by such a widespread defection, cambyses soon recovered his presence of mind, and was about to march forward at the head of the troops who were still loyal to him, when he mysteriously disappeared. whether he was the victim of a plot set on foot by those about him, is not known. the official version of the story given by darius states that he died by his own hand, and it seems to insinuate that it was a voluntary act, but another account affirms that he succumbed to an accident;* while mounting his horse, the point of his dagger pierced his thigh in the same spot in which he had stabbed the apis of the egyptians. feeling himself seriously wounded, he suddenly asked the name of the place where he was lying, and was told it was �agbatana� (ecbatana). �now, long before this, the oracle of buto had predicted that he should end his days in agbatana, and he, believing it to be the agbatana in media where were his treasures, understood that he should die there in his old age; whereas the oracle meant agbatana in syria. when he heard the name, he perceived his error. he understood what the god intended, and cried, �it is here, then, that cambyses, son of cyrus, must perish!�� he expired about three weeks after, leaving no posterity and having appointed no successor.** * it has been pointed out, for the purpose of harmonising the testimony of herodotus with that of the inscription of behistun, that although the latter speaks of the death of cambyses by his own hand, it does not say whether that death was voluntary or accidental. ** the story of a person whose death has been predicted to take place in some well-known place, and who has died in some obscure spot of the same name, occurs several times in different historians, e.g. in the account of the emperor julian, and in that of henry iii. of england, who had been told that he would die in jerusalem, and whose death took place in the jerusalem chamber at westminster. ctesias has preserved an altogether different tradition--that cambyses on his return from babylon wounded himself while carving a piece of wood for his amusement, and died eleven days after the accident. what took place in the ensuing months still remains an enigma to us. the episode of gaumâta has often been looked on as a national movement, which momentarily restored to the medes the supremacy of which cyrus had robbed them; but it was nothing of the sort. gaumâta was not a mede by birth: he was a persian, born in persia, in the township of pisyauvadâ, at the foot of mount ara-kadrish, and the persians recognised and supported him as much as did the medes. it has also been thought that he had attempted to foment a religious revolution,* and, as a matter of fact, he destroyed several temples in a few months. * most of the ancient writers shared this opinion, and have been followed therein by many modern writers. rawlinson was the first to show that gaumâta�s movement was not median, and that he did not in the least alter the position of the persians in the empire: but he allows the magian usurpation to have been the prelude to a sort of religious reform. here, however, the reform touched less upon a question of belief than on one of fact. the unity of the empire presupposed the unity of the royal fire, and where-ever that fire was burning another could not be lighted without sacrilege in the eyes of the faithful. the pyres that gaumâta desired to extinguish were, no doubt, those which the feudal families had maintained for their separate use in defiance of the law, and the measure which abolished them had a political as well as a religious side. the little we can glean of the line of action adopted by smerdis does not warrant the attribution to him of the vast projects which some modern writers credit him with. he naturally sought to strengthen himself on the throne, which by a stroke of good fortune he had ascended, and whatever he did tended solely to this end. the name and the character that he had assumed secured him the respect and fidelity of the iranians: �there was not one, either among the medes or the persians, nor among the members of the achæmenian race, who dreamed of disputing his power� in the early days of his reign. the important thing in his eyes was, therefore, to maintain among his subjects as long as possible the error as to his identity. he put to death all, whether small or great, who had been in any way implicated in the affairs of the real smerdis, or whom he suspected of any knowledge of the murder. he withdrew from public life as far as practicable, and rarely allowed himself to be seen. having inherited the harem of his predecessors, together with their crown, he even went so far as to condemn his wives to a complete seclusion. he did not venture to hope, nor did those in his confidence, that the truth would not one day be known, but he hoped to gain, without loss of time, sufficient popularity to prevent the revelation of the imposture from damaging his prospects. the seven great houses which he had dispossessed would, in such a case, refuse to rally round him, and it was doubtless to lessen their prestige that he extinguished their pyres; but the people did not trouble themselves as to the origin of their sovereign, if he showed them his favour and took proper precautions to secure their good will. he therefore exempted the provinces from taxes and military service for a period of three years. he had not time to pursue this policy, and if we may believe tradition, the very precautions which he took to conceal his identity became the cause of his misfortunes. in the royal harem there were, together with the daughters of cyrus, relatives of all the persian nobility, and the order issued to stop all their communications with the outer world had excited suspicion: the avowals which had escaped cambyses before the catastrophe were now called to mind, and it was not long before those in high places became convinced that they had been the dupes of an audacious imposture. a conspiracy broke out, under the leadership of the chiefs of the seven clans, among whom was numbered darius, the son of hystaspes, who was connected, according to a genealogy more or less authentic, with the family of the achæmenides:* the conspirators surprised gaumâta in his palace of sikayauvatish, which was situated in the district of nisaya, not far from ecbatana, and assassinated him on the 10th of bâgayâdîsh, 521 b.c. * the passage in the behistun inscription, in which darius sets forth his own genealogy, has received various interpretations. that of oppert seems still the most probable, that the text indicates two parallel branches of achæmenides, which nourished side by side until cambyses died and darius ascended the throne. such a genealogy, however, appears to be fictitious, invented solely for the purpose of connecting darius with the ancient royal line, with which in reality he could claim no kinship, or only a very distant connection. [illustration: 159.jpg darius, son of hystaspes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from m. dieulafoy. the exact particulars of this scene were never known, but popular imagination soon supplied the defect, furnishing a full and complete account of all that took place. in the first place, phædimê, daughter of otanes, one of the seven, furnished an authentic proof of the fraud which had been perpetrated. her father had opportunely recalled the marvellous resemblance between smerdis and the magian, and remembered at the same time that the latter had been deprived of his ears in punishment for some misdeed: he therefore sent certain instructions to phffidimê, who, when she made the discovery, at the peril of her life, that her husband had no ears, communicated the information to the disaffected nobles. the conspirators thereupon resolved to act without delay; but when they arrived at the palace, they were greeted with an extraordinary piece of intelligence. the magi, disquieted by some vague rumours which were being circulated against them, had besought prexaspes to proclaim to the people that the reigning monarch was indeed smerdis himself. but prexaspes, instead of making the desired declaration, informed the multitude that the son of cyrus was indeed dead, for he himself had murdered him at the bidding of cambyses, and, having made this confession, he put himself to death, in order to escape the vengeance of the magi. this act of prexaspes was an additional inducement to the conspirators to execute their purpose. the guard stationed at the gates of the palace dared not refuse admission to so noble a company, and when the throne-room was reached and the eunuchs forbade further advance, the seven boldly drew their swords and forced their way to the apartment occupied by the two magi. the usurpers defended themselves with bravery, but succumbed at length to the superior number of their opponents, after having wounded two of the conspirators. gobryas pinioned gaumâta with his arms, and in such a way that darius hesitated to make the fatal thrust for fear of wounding his comrade; but the latter bade him strike at all hazards, and by good fortune the sword did not even graze him. the crime accomplished, the seven conspirators agreed to choose as king that member of their company whose horse should first neigh after sunrise: a stratagem of his groom caused the election to fall on darius. as soon as he was duly enthroned, he instituted a festival called the �magophonia,� or �massacre of the magi,� in commemoration of the murder which had given him the crown. his first care was to recompense the nobles to whom he owed his position by restoring to them the privileges of which they had been deprived by the pseudo-smerdis, namely, the right of free access to the king, as well as the right of each individual to a funeral pyre; but the usurper had won the affection of the people, and even the inhabitants of those countries which had been longest subject to the persian sway did not receive the new sovereign favourably. darius found himself, therefore, under the necessity of conquering his dominions one after the other.* * the history of the early part of the reign of darius is recorded in the great inscription which the king caused to be cut in three languages on the rocks of behistun. the order of the events recorded in it is not always easy to determine. i have finally adopted, with some modifications, the arrangement of marquart, which seems to me to give the clearest �conspectus� of these confused wars. the persian empire, like those of the chaldæans and medes, had consisted hitherto of nothing but a fortuitous collection of provinces under military rule, of vassal kingdoms, and of semi-independent cities and tribes; there was no fixed division of authority, and no regular system of government for the outlying provinces. the governors assigned by cyrus and cambyses to rule the various provinces acquired by conquest, were actual viceroys, possessing full control of an army, and in some cases of a fleet as well, having at their disposal considerable revenues both in money and in kind, and habituated, owing to their distance from the capital, to settle pressing questions on their own responsibility, subject only to the necessity of making a report to the sovereign when the affair was concluded, or when the local resources were insufficient to bring it to a successful issue. for such free administrators the temptation must have been irresistible to break the last slender ties which bound them to the empire, and to set themselves up as independent monarchs. the two successive revolutions which had taken place in less than a year, convinced such governors, and the nations over which they bore rule, that the stately edifice erected by cyrus and cambyses was crumbling to pieces, and that the moment was propitious for each of them to carve out of its ruins a kingdom for himself; the news of the murder, rapidly propagated, sowed the seeds of revolt in its course--in susiana, at babylon, in media, in parthia, in margiana, among the sattagydes, in asia minor, and even in egypt itself*--which showed itself in some places in an open and undisguised form, while in others it was contemptuously veiled under the appearance of neutrality, or the pretence of waiting to see the issue of events. * in the _behistun inscription_, it is stated that insurrections broke out in all these countries while darius was at babylon; that is to say, while he was occupied in besieging that city, as is evident from the order of the events narrated. the first to break out into open rebellion were the neighbouring countries of elam and chaldæa: the death of smerdis took place towards the end of september, and a fortnight later saw two rebel chiefs enthroned--a certain athrîna at susa, and a nadinta-bel at babylon.* athrîna, the son of umbadaranma, was a scion of the dynasty dispossessed by the successors of sargon in the preceding century, but nevertheless he met with but lukewarm assistance from his own countrymen;** he was taken prisoner before a month had passed, and sent to darius, who slew him with his own hand. * the latest known document of the pseudo-smerdis is dated the 1st of tisri at babylon, and the first of nebuchadrezzar iii. are dated the 17th and 20th of the same month. the revolt of babylon, then, must be placed between the 1st and 17th of tisri; that is, either at the end of september or the beginning of october, 521 b.c. ** the revolt cannot have lasted much more than six weeks, for on the 26th of athriyâdiya following, that is to say, at the beginning of december, darius had already joined issue with the babylonians on the banks of the tigris. babylon was not so easily mastered. her chosen sovereign claimed to be the son of nabonidus, and had, on ascending the throne, assumed the illustrious name of nebuchadrezzar; he was not supported, moreover, by only a few busybodies, but carried the whole population with him. the babylonians, who had at first welcomed cyrus so warmly, and had fondly imagined that they had made him one of themselves, as they had made so many of their conquerors for centuries past, soon realised their mistake. the differences of language, manners, spirit, and religion between themselves and the persians were too fundamental to allow of the naturalisation of the new sovereign, and of the acceptance by the achæmenides of that fiction of a double personality to which tiglath-pileser iii., shalmaneser, and even assur-bani-pal had submitted. popular fancy grew weary of cyrus, as it had already grown weary in turn of all the foreigners it had at first acclaimed--whether elamite, kaldâ, or assyrian--and by a national reaction the self-styled son of nabonidus enjoyed the benefit of a devotion proportionately as great as the hatred which had been felt twenty years before for his pretended sire. the situation might become serious if he were given time to consolidate his power, for the loyalty of the ancient provinces of the chaldæan empire was wavering, and there was no security that they would not feel inclined to follow the example of the capital as soon as they should receive news of the sedition. darius, therefore, led the bulk of his forces to babylon without a day�s more delay than was absolutely necessary, and the event proved that he had good reason for such haste. nebuchadrezzar iii. had taken advantage of the few weeks which had elapsed since his accession, to garrison the same positions on the right bank of the tigris, as nabonidus had endeavoured to defend against cyrus at the northern end of the fortifications erected by his ancestor. a well-equipped flotilla patrolled the river, and his lines presented so formidable a front that darius could not venture on a direct attack. he arranged his troops in two divisions, which he mounted partly on horses, partly on camels, and eluding the vigilance of his adversary by attacking him simultaneously on many sides, succeeded in gaining the opposite bank of the river. the chaldæans, striving in vain to drive him back into the stream, were at length defeated on the 27th of athriyâdiya, and they retired in good order on babylon. six days later, on the 2nd of anâmaka, they fought a second battle at zazanu, on the bank of the euphrates, and were again totally defeated. nebuchadrezzar escaped with a handful of cavalry, and hastened to shut himself up in his city. darius soon followed him, but if he cherished a hope that the babylonians would open their gates to him without further resistance, as they had done to cyrus, he met with a disappointment, for he was compelled to commence a regular siege and suspend all other operations, and that, too, at a moment when the provinces were breaking out into open insurrection on every hand.* * the account given by darius seems to imply that no interval of time elapsed between the second defeat of nebuchadrezzar iii. and the taking of babylon, so that several modern historians have rejected the idea of an obstinate resistance. herodotus, however, speaks of the long siege the city sustained, and the discovery of tablets dated in the first and even the second year of nebuchadrezzar iii. shows that the siege was prolonged into the second year of this usurper, at least until the month of nisân (march april), 520 b.c. no evidence can be drawn from the tablets dated in the reign of darius, for the oldest yet discovered, which is dated in the month sebat (jan.-feb.), in the year of his accession, and consequently prior to the second year of nebuchadrezzar, comes from abu-habba. on the other hand, the statement that all the revolts broke out while darius was �at babylon� does not allow of the supposition that all the events recorded before his departure for media could have been compressed into the space of three or four months. it seems, therefore, more probable that the siege lasted till 519 b.c., as it can well have done if credit be given to the mention of �twenty-one months at least� by herodotus; perhaps the siege was brought to an end in the may of that year, as calculated by marquart. [illustration: 166.jpg darius piercing a rebel with his lance before a group of four prisoners] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the impression of an intaglio at st. petersburg. the attempt of the persian adventurer martîya to stir up the susians to revolt in his rear failed, thanks to the favourable disposition of the natives, who refused to recognise in him ummanîsh, the heir of their national princes. media, however, yielded unfortunately to the solicitations of a certain fravartîsh, who had assumed the personality of khshatrita of the race of cyaxares, and its revolt marked almost the beginning of a total break-up of the empire. the memory of astyages and cyaxares had not yet faded so completely as to cause the median nobles to relinquish the hope of reasserting the supremacy of media; the opportunity for accomplishing this aim now seemed all the more favourable, from the fact that darius had been obliged to leave this province almost immediately after the assassination of the usurper, and to take from it all the troops that he could muster for the siege of babylon. several of the nomadic tribes still remained faithful to him, but all the settled inhabitants of media ranged themselves under the banner of the pretender, and the spirit of insurrection spread thereupon into armenia and assyria. for one moment there was a fear lest it should extend to asia minor also, where orcetes, accustomed, in the absence of cambyses, to act as an autonomous sovereign, displayed little zeal in accommodating himself to the new order of things. there was so much uncertainty as to the leanings of the persian guard of orcetes, that darius did not venture to degrade the satrap officially, but despatched bagseus to sardes with precise instructions, which enabled him to accomplish his mission by degrees, so as not to risk a lydian revolt. his first act was to show the guard a rescript by which they were relieved from attendance on orcetes, and �thereupon they immediately laid down their spears.� emboldened by their ready obedience, bagseus presented to the secretary a second letter, which contained his instructions: �the great king commands those persians who are in sardes to kill orestes.� �whereupon,� it is recorded, �they drew their swords and slew him.� * * the context of herodotus indicates that the events narrated took place shortly after the accession of darius. further on herodotus mentions, as contemporaneous with the siege of babylon, events which took place after the death of orcetes; it is probable, therefore, that the scene described by herodotus occurred in 520 b.c. at the latest. a revolt in asia minor was thus averted, at a time when civil war continued to rage in the centre of iran. the situation, however, continued critical. darius could not think of abandoning the siege of babylon, and of thus both losing the fruits of his victories and seeing nebuchadrezzar reappear in assyria or susiana. on the other hand, his army was a small one, and he would incur great risks in detaching any of his military chiefs for a campaign against the mede with an insufficient force. he decided, however, to adopt the latter course, and while he himself presided over the blockade, he simultaneously despatched two columns--one to media, under the command of the persian vidarna, one of the seven; the other to armenia, under the armenian dâdarshîsh. vidarna, encountered khshatrita near marush, in the mountainous region of the old namri, on the 27th of anâmaka, and gave him battle; but though he claimed the victory, the result was so indecisive that he halted in kambadênê, at the entrance to the gorges of the zagros mountains, and was there obliged to await reinforcements before advancing further. dâdarshîsh, on his side, gained three victories over the armenians--one near zuzza on the 8th of thuravâhara, another at tigra ten days later, and the third on the 2nd of thâigarshîsh, at a place not far from uhyâma--but he also was compelled to suspend operations and remain inactive pending the arrival of fresh troops. half the year was spent in inaction on either side, for the rebels had not suffered less than their opponents, and, while endeavouring to reorganise their forces, they opened negotiations with the provinces of the north-east with the view of prevailing on them to join their cause. darius, still detained before babylon, was unable to recommence hostilities until the end of 520 b.c. he sent vaumisa to replace dâdarshîsh as the head of the army in armenia, and the new general distinguished himself at the outset by winning a decisive victory on the 15th of anâmaka, near izitush in assyria; but the effect which he hoped to secure from this success was neutralised almost immediately by grievous defections. sagartia, in the first place, rose in rebellion at the call of a pretended descendant of oyaxares, named chitrantakhma; hyrcania, the province governed by hystaspes, the father of darius, followed suit and took up the cause of khshatrita, and soon after margiana broke out into revolt at the instigation of a certain frâda. even persia itself deserted darius, and chose another king instead of a sovereign whom no one seemed willing to acknowledge. many of the mountain tribes could not yet resign themselves to the belief that the male line of cyrus had become extinct with the death of cambyses. the usurpation of gaumâta and the accession of darius had not quenched their faith in the existence of smerdis: if the magian were an impostor, it did not necessarily follow that smerdis had been assassinated, and when a certain vahyazdâta rose up in the town of târavâ in the district of yautiyâ, and announced himself as the younger son of cyrus, they received him with enthusiastic acclamations. a preliminary success gained by hystaspes at vispauzatîsh, in parthia, on the 22nd of viyakhna, 519 b.c., prevented the guerilla bands of hyrcania from joining forces with the medes, and some days later the fall of babylon at length set darius free to utilise his resources to the utmost. the long resistance of nebuchadrezzar furnished a fruitful theme for legend: a fanciful story was soon substituted for the true account of the memorable siege he had sustained. half a century later, when his very name was forgotten, the heroism of his people continued to be extolled beyond measure. when darius arrived before the ramparts he found the country a desert, the banks of the canals cut through, and the gardens and pleasure-houses destroyed. the crops had been gathered and the herds driven within the walls of the city, while the garrison had reduced by a massacre the number of non-combatants, the women having all been strangled, with the exception of those who were needed to bake the bread. at the end of twenty months the siege seemed no nearer to its close than at the outset, and the besiegers were on the point of losing heart, when at length zopyrus, one of the seven, sacrificed himself for the success of the blockading army. slitting his nose and ears, and lacerating his back with the lash of a whip, he made his way into the city as a deserter, and persuaded the garrison to assign him a post of danger under pretence of avenging the ill-treatment he had received from his former master. he directed some successful sallies on points previously agreed upon, and having thus lulled to rest any remaining feelings of distrust on the part of the garrison, he treacherously opened to the persians the two gates of which he was in charge; three thousand babylonians were impaled, the walls were razed to the ground, and the survivors of the struggle were exiled and replaced by strange colonists.* the only authentic fact about this story is the length of the siege. nebuchadrezzar was put to death, and darius, at length free to act, hastened to despatch one of his lieutenants, the persian artavardiya, against vahyazdâta, while he himself marched upon the medes with the main body of the royal army.** * ctesias places the siege of babylon forty years later, under xerxes i.; according to him, it was megabysus, son of zopyrus, who betrayed the city. polysenus asserts that the stratagem of zopyrus was adopted in imitation of a sakian who dwelt beyond the oxus. latin writers transferred the story to italy, and localised it at gabii: but the roman hero, sextus tarquinius, did not carry his devotion to the point of mutilating himself. ** _beldstun inscr_.: �then i sent the army of the persians and medes which was with me. one named artavardiya, a persian, my servant, i made their general; the rest of the persian army went to media with me.� the rebels had hitherto been confronted by the local militia, brave but inexperienced troops, with whom they had been able to contend on a fairly equal footing: the entry into the field of the veteran regiments of cyrus and cambyses changed the aspect of affairs, and promptly brought the campaign to a successful issue. darius entered media by the defiles of kerend, reinforced vidarna in kambadçnê, and crushed the enemy near the town of kundurush, on the 20th of adukanîsh, 519 b.c. khshatrita fled towards the north with some few horsemen, doubtless hoping to reach the recesses of mount elburz, and to continue there the struggle; but he was captured at bagâ and carried to ecbatana. his horrible punishment was proportionate to the fear he had inspired: his nose, ears, and tongue were cut off, and his eyes gouged out, and in this mutilated condition he was placed in chains at the gate of the palace, to demonstrate to his former subjects how the achæmenian� king could punish an impostor. when the people had laid this lesson sufficiently to heart, khshatrita was impaled; many of his principal adherents were ranged around him and suffered the same fate, while the rest were decapitated as an example. babylon and media being thus successfully vanquished, the possession of the empire was assured to darius, whatever might happen in other parts of his territory, and henceforth the process of repressing disaffection went on unchecked. immediately after the decisive battle of kundurush, vaumisa accomplished the pacification of armenia by a victory won near autiyâra, and artavardiya defeated vahyazdâta for the first time at eakhâ in persia. vahyazdâta had committed the mistake of dividing his forces and sending a portion of them to arachosia. vivâna, the governor of this province, twice crushed the invaders, and almost at the same time the persian dâdardîsh of bactriana was triumphing over frâda and winning margiana back to allegiance. for a moment it seemed as if the decisive issue of the struggle might be prolonged for months, since it was announced that the appearance of a new pseudo-smerdis on the scene had been followed by the advent of a second pseudo-nebuchadrezzar in chaldæa. darius left only a weak garrison at babylon when he started to attack khshatrita: a certain arakha, an armenian by birth, presenting himself to the babylonian people as the son of nabonidus, caused himself to be proclaimed king in december, 519 b.c.; but the city was still suffering so severely from the miseries of the long siege, that it was easy for the mede vindafrâ to reduce it promptly to submission after a month or six weeks of semi-independence. this was the last attempt at revolt. chitran-takhma expiated his crimes by being impaled, and hystaspes routed the hyrcanian battalions at patigrabana in parthia: artavardiya having defeated vahyazdâta, near mount paraga, on the 6th of garmapada, 618 b.c., besieged him in his fortress of uvâdeshaya, and was not long in effecting his capture. the civil war came thus to an end. it had been severe, but it had brought into such prominence the qualities of the sovereign that no one henceforth dared to dispute his possession of the crown. a man of less energetic character and calm judgment would have lost his head at the beginning of the struggle, when almost every successive week brought him news of a fresh rebellion--in susiana, babylon, media, armenia, assyria, margiana, hyrcania, and even persia itself, not to speak of the intrigues in asia minor and egypt; he would have scattered his forces to meet the dangers on all sides at once, and would assuredly have either succumbed in the struggle, or succeeded only by chance after his fate had trembled in the balance for years. darius, however, from the very beginning knew how to single out the important points upon which to deal such vigorous blows as would ensure him the victory with the least possible delay. he saw that babylon, with its numerous population, its immense wealth and prestige, and its memory of recent supremacy, was the real danger to his empire, and he never relaxed his hold on it until it was subdued, leaving his generals to deal with the other nations, the medes included, and satisfied if each of them could but hold his adversary in check without gaining any decided advantage over him. the event justified his decision. when once babylon had fallen, the remaining rebels were no longer a source of fear; to defeat khshatrita was the work of a few weeks only, and the submission of the other provinces followed as a natural consequence on the ruin of media.* * mention of some new wars is made towards the end of the inscription, but the text here is so mutilated that the sense can no longer be easily determined. [illustration: 174.jpg rebels brought to darius by ahura-mazd] this is the scene depicted on the rock of behistun. after consummating his victories, darius caused an inscription in commemoration of them to be carved on the rocks in the pass of bagistana [behistun], one of the most frequented routes leading from the basin of the tigris to the tableland of iran. [illustration: 175.jpg the rocks of behistun] drawn by boudier, from flandin and coste. there his figure is still to be seen standing, with his foot resting on the prostrate body of an enemy, and his hand raised in the attitude of one addressing an audience, while nine figures march in file to meet him, their arms tied behind their backs, and cords round their necks, representing all the pretenders whom he had fought and put to death--athrîna, nadinta-bel, khshatrita, vahyazdâta, arakha, and chitrantakhma; an inscription, written in the three official languages of the court, recounts at full length his mighty deeds. the drama did not, however, come to a close with the punishment of vahyazdâta, for though no tribe or chieftain remained now in open revolt, many of those who had taken no active share in the rebellion had, by their conduct during the crisis, laid themselves open to grave suspicions, and it seemed but prudent to place them under strict surveillance or to remove them from office altogether. orotes had been summarily despatched, and his execution did not disturb the peace of asia minor; but aryandes, to whose rule cambyses had entrusted the valley of the nile, displayed no less marked symptoms of disaffection, and deserved the same fate. though he had not ventured to usurp openly the title of king, he had arrogated to himself all the functions and rights of royalty, and had manifested as great an independence in his government as if he had been an actual pharaoh. the inhabitants of gyrene did not approve of the eagerness displayed by their tyrant arkesilas iii. to place himself under the persian yoke: after first expelling and then recalling him, they drove him away a second time, and at length murdered him at barca, whither he had fled for refuge. pheretimô came to egypt to seek the help of aryandes, just as laarchos had formerly implored the assistance of amasis, and represented to him that her son had fallen a victim to his devotion to his suzerain. it was a good opportunity to put to ransom one of the wealthiest countries of africa; so the governor sent to the cyrenaica all the men and vessels at his disposal. barca was the only city to offer any resistance, and the persian troops were detained for nine months motionless before its walls, and the city then only succumbed through treachery. some detachments forced their way as far as the distant town of euesperides,* and it is possible that aryandes dreamt for a moment of realising the designs which cambyses had formed against carthage. insufficiency of supplies stayed the advance of his generals; but the riches of their ally, cyrene, offered them a strong temptation, and they were deliberating how they might make this wealth their own before returning to memphis, and were, perhaps, on the point of risking the attempt, when they received orders to withdraw. the march across the desert proved almost fatal to them. the libyans of marmarica, attracted by the spoils with which the persian troops were laden, harassed them incessantly, and inflicted on them serious losses; they succeeded, however, in arriving safely with their prisoners, among whom were the survivors of the inhabitants of barca. at this time the tide of fortune was setting strongly in favour of darius: aryandes, anxious to propitiate that monarch, despatched these wretched captives to persia as a trophy of his success, and darius sent them into bactriana, where they founded a new barca.** * this is the town which later on under the lagidæ received the name of berenice, and which is now called benghazi. ** it is doubtless to these acts of personal authority on the part of aryandes that darius alludes in the behistun inscription, when he says, �while i was before babylon, the following provinces revolted against me--persia and susiana, the medes and assyria, and the egyptians...� but this tardy homage availed him nothing. darius himself visited egypt and disembarrassed himself of �his troublesome subject by his summary execution, inflicted, some said, because he had issued coins of a superior fineness to those of the royal mint,* while, according to others, it was because he had plundered egypt and so ill-treated the egyptians as to incite them to rebellion. * it is not certain that aryandes did actually strike any coinage in his own name, and perhaps herodotus has only repeated a popular story current in egypt in his days. if this money actually existed, its coinage was but a pretext employed by darius; the true motive of the condemnation of aryandes was certainly an armed revolt, or a serious presumption of revolutionary intentions. after the suppression of this rival, darius set himself to win the affection of his egyptian province, or, at least, to render its servitude bearable. with a country so devout and so impressed with its own superiority over all other nations, the best means of accomplishing his object was to show profound respect for its national gods and its past glory. darius, therefore, proceeded to shower favours on the priests, who had been subject to persecution ever since the disastrous campaign in ethiopia. cambyses had sent into exile in elam the chief priest of sais--that uza-harrîsnîti who had initiated him into the sacred rites; darius gave permission to this important personage to return to his native land, and commissioned him to repair the damage inflicted by the madness of the son of cyrus. uzaharrîsnîti, escorted back with honour to his native city, re-established there the colleges of sacred scribes, and restored to the temple of nît the lands and revenues which had been confiscated. greek tradition soon improved upon the national account of this episode, and asserted that darius took an interest in the mysteries of egyptian theology, and studied the sacred books, and that on his arrival at memphis in 517 b.c., immediately after the death of an apis, he took part publicly in the general mourning, and promised a reward of a hundred talents of gold to whosoever should discover the successor of the bull. according to a popular story still current when herodotus travelled in egypt, the king visited the temple of pthah before leaving memphis, and ordered his statue to be erected there beside that of sesostris. the priests refused to obey this command, for, said they, �darius has not equalled the deeds of sesostris: he has not conquered the scythians, whom sesostris overcame.� darius replied that �he hoped to accomplish as much as sesostris had done, if he lived as long as sesostris,� and so conciliated the patriotic pride of the priests. the egyptians, grateful for his moderation, numbered him among the legislators whose memory they revered, by the side of menés, asykhis, bocchoris, and sabaco. the whole empire was now obedient to the will of one man, but the ordeal from which it had recently escaped showed how loosely the elements of it were bound together, and with what facility they could be disintegrated. the system of government in force hitherto was that introduced into assyria by tiglath-pileser iii., which had proved so eminently successful in the time of sargon and his descendants; babylon and ecbatana had inherited it from nineveh, and persepolis had in turn adopted it from ecbatana and babylon. it had always been open to objections, of which by no means the least was the great amount of power and independence accorded by it to the provincial governors; but this inconvenience had been little felt when the empire was of moderate dimensions, and when no province permanently annexed to the empire lay at any very great distance from the capital for the time being. but this was no longer the case, now that persian rule extended over nearly the whole of asia, from the indus to the thracian bosphorus, and over a portion of africa also. it must have seemed far from prudent to set governors invested with almost regal powers over countries so distant that a decree despatched from the palace might take several weeks to reach its destination. the heterogeneity of the elements in each province was a guarantee of peace in the eyes of the sovereign, and darius carefully abstained from any attempt at unification: not only did he allow vassal republics, and tributary kingdoms and nations to subsist side by side, but he took care that each should preserve its own local dynasty, language, writing, customs, religion, and peculiar legislation, besides the right to coin money stamped with the name of its chief or its civic symbol. the greek cities of the coast maintained their own peculiar constitutions which they had enjoyed under the mernmadas; darius merely required that the chief authority among them should rest in the hands of the aristocratic party, or in those of an elective or hereditary tyrant whose personal interest secured his fidelity. the carians,* lycians,** pamphylians, and cilicians*** continued under the rule of their native princes, subject only to the usual obligations. of the _corvée_, taxation, and military service as in past days; the majority of the barbarous tribes which inhabited the taurus and the mountainous regions in the centre of asia minor were even exempted from all definite taxes, and were merely required to respect the couriers, caravans, and armies which passed through their territory. * herodotus cites among the commanders of the persian fleet three carian dynasts, histiseus, pigres, and damasithymus, besides the famous artemisia of halicarnassus. ** in herodotus where a dynast named kyberniskos, son of sika, is mentioned among the commanders of the fleet. the received text of herodotus needs correction, and we should read kybernis, son of kossika, some of whose coins are still in existence. *** the cilician contingent in the fleet of xerxes at salamis was commanded by syennesis himself, and cilicia never had a satrap until the time of cyrus the younger. [illustration: 181.jpg map of the archaemenian strapies] native magistrates and kings still bore sway in phoenicia* and cyprus, and the shêkhs of the desert preserved their authority over the marauding and semi-nomadic tribes of idumasa, nabatsea, moab, and ammon, and the wandering bedâwin on the euphrates and the khabur. egypt, under darius, remained what she had been under the saitic and ethiopian dynasties, a feudal state governed by a pharaoh, who, though a foreigner, was yet reputed to be of the solar race; the land continued to be divided unequally into diverse principalities, thebes still preserving its character as a theocracy under the guidance of the pallacide of amon and her priestly counsellors, while the other districts subsisted under military chieftains. our information concerning the organisation of the central and eastern provinces is incomplete, but it is certain that here also the same system prevailed. in the years of peace which succeeded the troubled opening of his reign, that is, from 519 to 515 b.c.,** darius divided the whole empire into satrapies, whose number varied at different periods of his reign from twenty to twenty-three, and even twenty-eight.*** * three kings, viz. the kings of sidon, tyre, and arvad, bore commands in the phoenician fleet of xerxes. ** herodotus states that this dividing of the empire into provinces took place immediately after the accession of darius, and this mistake is explained by the fact that he ignores almost entirely the civil wars which filled the earliest years of the reign. his enumeration of twenty satrapies comprises india and omits thrace, which enables us to refer the drawing up of his list to a period before the scythian campaign, viz. before 514 b.c. herodotus very probably copied it from the work of hecatseus of miletus, and consequently it reproduces a document contemporary with darius himself. *** the number twenty is, as has been remarked, that given by herodotus, and probably by hecatæus of miletus. the great behistun inscription enumerates twenty-three countries, and the inscription of nakhsh-î-rustem gives twenty-eight. persia proper was not included among these, for she had been the cradle of the reigning house, and the instrument of conquest.* * in the great behistun inscription darius mentions persia first of all the countries in his possession. in the inscription e of persepolis he omits it entirely, and in that of nakhsh-î-rustem he does not include it in the general catalogue. the iranian table-land, and the parts of india or regions beyond the oxus which bordered on it, formed twelve important vice-royalties--media, hyrcania, parthia, zaranka, aria, khorasmia, bactriana, sogdiana, gandaria, and the country of the sakae--reaching from the plains of tartary almost to the borders of china, the country of the thatagus in the upper basin of the elmend, arachosia, and the land of maka on the shores of the indian ocean. ten satrapies were reckoned in the west--uvayâ, elam, in which lay susa, one of the favourite residences of darius; babirus (babylon) and chaldæa; athurâ, the ancient kingdom of assyria; arabayâ, stretching from the khabur to the litany, the jordan, and the orontes; egypt, the peoples of the sea, among whom were reckoned the phoenicians, cilicians, and cypriots, and the islanders of the ægean; yaunâ, which comprised lycia, caria, and the greek colonies along the coast; sparda, with phrygia and mysia; armenia; and lastly, katpatuka or cappadocia, which lay on both sides of the halys from the taurus to the black sea. if each of these provinces had been governed, as formerly, by a single individual, who thus became king in all but name and descent, the empire would have run great risk of a speedy dissolution. darius therefore avoided concentrating the civil and military powers in the same hands. in each province he installed three officials independent of each other, but each in direct communication with himself--a satrap, a general, and a secretary of state. the satraps were chosen from any class in the nation, from among the poor as well as from among the wealthy, from foreigners as well as from persians;* but the most important satrapies were bestowed only on persons allied by birth** or marriage with the achæmenids,*** and, by preference, on the legitimate descendants of the six noble houses. they were not appointed for any prescribed period, but continued in office during the king�s pleasure. they exercised absolute authority in all civil matters, and maintained a court, a body-guard,**** palaces and extensive parks, or _paradises_, where they indulged in the pleasures of the chase; they controlled the incidence of taxation,^ administered justice, and possessed the power of life and death. * herodotus mentions a satrap chosen from among the lydians, pactyas, and another satrap of greek extraction, xenagoras of halicarnassus. ** the most characteristic instance is that of hystaspes, who was satrap of persia under oambyses, and of parthia and hyrcania under his own son. one of the brothers of darius, artaphernes, was satrap of sardes, and three of the king�s sons, achemenes, ariabignes, and masistes, were satraps of egypt, ionia, and bactriana respectively. *** to understand how well established was the custom of bestowing satrapies on those only who were allied by marriage to the royal house, it is sufficient to recall the fact that, later on, under xerxes i., when pausanias, king of sparta, had thoughts of obtaining the position of satrap in greece, he asked for the hand of an achæmenian princess. **** we know, for example, that orcotes, satrap of sardes under cyrus, cambyses, and darius, had a body-guard of 1000 persians. ^ thus, artaphernes, satrap of sardes, had a cadastral survey made of the territory of the ionians, and by the results of this survey he regulated the imposition of taxes, �which from that time up to the present day are exacted according to his ordinance.� attached to each satrap was a secretary of state, who ostensibly acted as his chancellor, but whose real function was to exercise a secret supervision over his conduct and report upon it to the imperial ministers.* the persian troops, native militia and auxiliary forces quartered in the province, were placed under the orders, moreover, of a general, who was usually hostile to the satrap and the secretary.** these three officials counterbalanced each other, and held each other mutually in check, so that a revolt was rendered very difficult, if not impossible. all three were kept in constant communication with the court by relays of regular couriers, who carried their despatches on horseback or on camels, from one end of asia to the other, in the space of a few weeks.*** * the rôle played by the secretary is clearly indicated by the history of orotes, satrap of sardes. ** while darius appoints his brother artaphernes satrap of lydia, he entrusts the command of the army and the fleet to otanes, son of sisamnes. similarly several generals are met with at the side of artaphernes in the ionic revolt. *** xenophon compares their speed in travelling to the flight of birds. a good example of the use of the camel for the postal service is cited by strabo, on the occasion of the death of philotas and the execution of parmenion under alexander. the most celebrated of the post-roads was that which ran from sardes to susa through lydia and phrygia, crossing the halys, traversing cappadocia and cilicia, and passing through armenia and across the euphrates, until at length, after passing through matiênê and the country of the cossæans, it reached elam. this main route was divided into one hundred and eleven stages, which were performed by couriers on horseback and partly in ferry-boats, in eighty-four days. other routes, of which we have no particular information, led to egypt, media, bactria, and india,* and by their means the imperial officials in the capital were kept fully informed of all that took place in the most distant parts of the empire. as an extra precaution, the king sent out annually certain officers, called his �eyes� or his �ears,� ** who appeared on the scene when they were least expected, and investigated the financial or political situation, reformed abuses in the administration, and reprimanded or even suspended the government officials; they were accompanied by a body of troops to support their decisions, whose presence invested their counsels with the strongest sanction.*** an unfavourable report, a slight irregularity, a mere suspicion, even, was sufficient to disqualify a satrap. sometimes he was deposed, often secretly condemned to death without a trial, and the execution of the judgment was committed even to his own servants. * ctesias at the end of his work describes the route leading from ephesus to bactriana and india. it is probable that the route described by isidorus of charax in his _stathma parthica_ already existed in the times of the achæmenids, and was traversed by their postal couriers. ** mention of the _eye of the king_ occurs in herodotus, in æschylus, and in plutarch, of the _ear_ in xenophon; cf. the persian proverb, according to which �the king has many eyes and many ears.� *** xenophon affirms that these inspections were still held in his day. [illustration: 186.jpg street vender of curios] after the painting by gerome. a messenger would arrive unexpectedly, and remit to the guards an order charging them to put their chief to death--an order which was promptly executed at the mere sight of the royal decree. this reform in the method of government was displeasing to the persian nobles, whose liberty of action it was designed to curtail, and they took their revenge in sneering at the obedience they could not refuse to render. cyrus, they said, had been a father, cambyses a master, but darius was only a pedler greedy of gain. the chief reason for this division of the empire into provinces was, indeed, fiscal rather than political: to arrange the incidence of taxation in his province, to collect the revenue in due time and forward the total amount to the imperial treasury, formed the fundamental duty of a satrap, to which all others had to yield. persia proper was exempt from the payment of any fixed sum, its inhabitants being merely required to offer presents to the king whenever he passed through their districts. these semi-compulsory gifts were proportioned to the fortunes of the individual contributors; they might consist merely of an ox or a sheep, a little milk or cheese, some dates, a handful of flour, or some vegetables. the other provinces, after being subjected to a careful survey, were assessed partly in money, partly in kind, according to their natural capacity or wealth. the smallest amount of revenue raised in any province amounted to 170 talents of silver--the sum, for instance, collected from arachosia with its dependencies gedrosia and grandara; while egypt yielded a revenue of 700 talents, and the amount furnished by babylon, the wealthiest province of all, amounted to 1000 talents. the total revenue of the empire reached the enormous sum of.£3,311,997, estimated by weight of silver, which is equivalent to over £26,000,000 of modern english money, if the greater value of silver in antiquity is taken into consideration. in order to facilitate the collection of the revenue, darius issued the gold and silver coins which are named after him. on the obverse side these darics are stamped with a figure of the sovereign, armed with the bow or javelin. they were coined on the scale of 3000 gold darics to one talent, each daric weighing normally.2788 oz. troy, and being worth exactly 20 silver drachmae or medic shekels; so that the relative value of the two metals was approximately 1 to 13 1/2|. [illustration: 188.jpg daric of darius, son of hystaspes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a specimen in the bibliothèque nationale. the most ancient type of daric was thick and irregular in shape, and rudely stamped, but of remarkable fineness, the amount of alloy being never more than three per cent. the use of this coinage was nowhere obligatory, and it only became general in the countries bordering on the mediterranean, where it met the requirements of international traffic and political relations, and in the payment of the army and the navy. in the interior, the medium of exchange used in wholesale and retail commercial transactions continued to be metals estimated by weight, and the kings of persia themselves preferred to store their revenues in the shape of bullion; as the metal was received at the royal treasury it was melted and poured into clay moulds, and was minted into money only gradually, according to the whim or necessity of the moment.* * arrian relates that alexander found 50,000 talents� weight of silver in the treasury at susa; other hoards quite as rich were contained in the palaces of persepolis and pasargadæ. taxes in kind were levied even more largely than in money, but the exact form they assumed in the different regions of the empire has not yet been ascertained. the whole empire was divided into districts, which were charged with the victualling of the army and the court, and babylon alone bore a third of the charges under this head. we learn elsewhere that egypt was bound to furnish corn for the 120,000 men of the army of occupation, and that the fisheries of the fayum yielded the king a yearly revenue of 240 talents. the medes furnished similarly 100,000 sheep, 4000 mules, and 3000 horses; the armenians, 30,000 foals; the cilicians, 365 white horses, one for each day in the year; the babylonians, 500 youthful eunuchs; and any city or town which produced or manufactured any valuable commodity was bound to furnish a regular supply to the sovereign. thus, chalybon provided wine; libya and the oases, salt; india, dogs, with whose support four large villages in babylonia were charged; the æolian assos, cheese; and other places, in like manner, wool, wines, dyes, medicines, and chemicals. these imperial taxes, though they seem to us somewhat heavy, were not excessive, but taken by themselves they give us no idea of the burdens which each province had to resign itself to bear. the state provided no income for the satraps; their maintenance and that of their suite were charged on the province, and they made ample exactions on the natives. the province of babylon was required to furnish its satrap daily with an _ardeb_ of silver; egypt, india, media, and syria each provided a no less generous allowance for its governor, and the poorest provinces were not less heavily burdened. the satraps required almost as much to satisfy their requirements as did the king; but for the most part they fairly earned their income, and saved more to their subjects than they extorted from them. they repressed brigandage, piracy, competition between the various cities, and local wars; while quarrels, which formerly would have been settled by an appeal to arms, were now composed before their judgment-seats, and in case of need the rival factions were forcibly compelled to submit to their decisions. they kept up the roads, and afforded complete security to travellers by night and day; they protected industries and agriculture, and, in accordance with the precepts of their religious code, they accounted it an honourable task to break up waste land or replant deserted sites. darius himself did not disdain to send congratulations to a satrap who had planted trees in asia minor, and laid out one of those wooded parks in which the king delighted to refresh himself after the fatigues of government, by the exercise of walking or in the pleasures of the chase. in spite of its defects, the system of government inaugurated by darius secured real prosperity to his subjects, and to himself a power far greater than that enjoyed by any of his predecessors. it rendered revolts on the part of the provincial governors extremely difficult, and enabled the court to draw up a regular budget and provide for its expenses without any undue pressure on its subjects; in one point only was it defective, but that point was a cardinal one, namely, in the military organisation. darius himself maintained, for his personal protection, a bodyguard recruited from the persians and the medes. it was divided into three corps, consisting respectively of 2000 cavalry, 2000 infantry of noble birth, armed with lances whose shafts were ornamented below with apples of gold or silver--whence their name of _mêlophori_--and under them the 10,000 �immortals,� in ten battalions, the first of which had its lances ornamented with golden pomegranates. this guard formed the nucleus of the standing army, which could be reinforced by the first and second grades of persian and median feudal nobility at the first summons. forces of varying strength garrisoned the most important fortresses of the empire, such as sardes, memphis, elephantine, daphnæ, babylon, and many others, to hold the restless natives in check. these were, indeed, the only regular troops on which the king could always rely. whenever a war broke out which demanded no special effort, the satraps of the provinces directly involved summoned the military contingents of the cities and vassal states under their control, and by concerted action endeavoured to bring the affair to a successful issue without the necessity of an appeal to the central authority. if, on the contrary, troubles arose which threatened the welfare of the whole empire, and the sovereign felt called upon to conduct the campaign in person, he would mobilise his guard, and summon the reserves from several provinces or even from all of them. veritable hordes of recruits then poured in, but these masses of troops, differing from each other in their equipment and methods of fighting, in disposition and in language, formed a herd of men rather than an army. they had no cohesion or confidence in themselves, and their leaders, unaccustomed to command such enormous numbers, suffered themselves to be led rather than exercise authority as guides. any good qualities the troops may have possessed were neutralised by lack of unity in their methods of action, and their actual faults exaggerated this defect, so that, in spite of their splendid powers of endurance and their courage under every ordeal, they ran the risk of finding themselves in a state of hopeless inferiority when called upon to meet armies very much smaller, but composed of homogenous elements, all animated with the same spirit and drilled in the same school. by continual conquests, the persians were now reduced to only two outlets for their energies, in two opposite directions--in the east towards india, in the west towards greece. everywhere else their advance was arrested by the sea or other obstacles almost as impassable to their heavily armed battalions: to the north the empire was bounded by the black sea, the caucasus, the caspian sea, and the siberian steppes; to the south, by the indian ocean, the sandy table-land of arabia, and the african deserts. at one moment, about 512 b.c., it is possible that they pushed forward towards the east.* * india is not referred to in the behistun inscription, but is mentioned in one of the inscriptions of persepolis, and in that of nakhsh-î-rustem. the campaign in which it was subjugated must be placed about 512 b.c. [illustration: 192.jpg funeral offerings.] from the iranian plateau they beheld from afar the immense plain of the hapta hindu (or the punjab). darius invaded this territory, and made himself master of extensive districts which he formed into a new satrapy, that of india, but subsequently, renouncing all idea of pushing eastward as far as the granges, he turned his steps towards the southeast. a fleet, constructed at peukêla and placed under the command of a greek admiral, scylax of caryanda, descended the indus by order of the king;* subjugating the tribes who dwelt along the banks as he advanced, scylax at length reached the ocean, on which he ventured forth, undismayed by the tides, and proceeded in a westerly direction, exploring, in less than thirty months, the shores of gedrosia and arabia. * scylax published an account of his voyage which was still extant in the time of aristotle. hugo berger questions the authenticity of the circumnavigation of arabia, as that of the circumnavigation of africa under necho. once on the threshold of india, the persians saw open before them a brilliant and lucrative career: the circumstances which prevented them from following up this preliminary success are unknown--perhaps the first developments of nascent buddhism deterred them--but certain it is that they arrested their steps when they had touched merely the outskirts of the basin of the indus, and retreated at once towards the west. the conquest of lydia, and subsequently of the greek cities and islands along the coast of the ægean, had doubtless enriched the empire by the acquisition of active subject populations, whose extraordinary aptitude in the arts of peace as well as of war might offer incalculable resources to a sovereign who should know how to render them tractable and rule them wisely. not only did they possess the elements of a navy as enterprising and efficacious as that of the phoenicians, but the perfection of their equipment and their discipline on land rendered them always superior to any asiatic army, in whatever circumstances, unless they were crushed by overwhelming numbers. inquisitive, bold, and restless, greedy of gain, and inured to the fatigues and dangers of travel, the greeks were to be encountered everywhere--in asia minor, egypt, syria, babylon, and even persia itself; and it was a greek, we must remember, whom the great king commissioned to navigate the course of the indus and the waters of the indian ocean. at the same time, the very ardour of their temperament, and their consequent pride, their impatience of all regular control, their habitual proneness to civic strife, and to sanguinary quarrels with the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities, rendered them the most dangerous subjects imaginable to govern, and their loyalty very uncertain. moreover, their admission as vassals of the persian empire had not altered their relations with european greece, and commercial transactions between the opposite shores of the ægean, inter-marriages, the travels of voyagers, movements of mercenaries, and political combinations, went on as freely and frequently under the satraps of sardes as under the mermnadas. it was to corinth, sparta, and athens that the families banished by cyrus after his conquest fled for refuge, and every time a change of party raised a new tyrant to power in one of the æolian, ionian, or doric communities, the adherents of the deposed ruler rushed in similar manner to seek shelter among their friends across the sea, sure to repay their hospitality should occasion ever require it. plots and counterplots were formed between the two shores, without any one paying much heed to the imperial authority of persia, and the constant support which the subject greeks found among their free brethren was bound before long to rouse the anger of the court at susa. when polycrates, foreseeing the fall of amasis, placed himself under the suzerainty of cambyses, the corinthians and spartans came to besiege him in samos without manifesting any respect for the great king. they failed in this particular enterprise,* but later on, after oroetes had been seized and put to death, it was to the spartans that the successor of polycrates, maaandrios, applied for help to assert his claim to the possession of the tyranny against syloson, brother of polycrates and a personal friend of darius.** * the date of the death of polycrates must be placed between that of the conquest of egypt and that of the revolt of gaumâta, either in 524 or 523 b.c. ** the reinstatement of syloson may be placed in 516 b.c., about the time when darius was completing the reorganisation of the empire and preparing to attack greece. this constant intervention of the foreigner was in evident contradiction to the spirit which had inspired the reorganisation of the empire. just when efforts were being made to strengthen the imperial power and ensure more effective obedience from the provincials by the institution of satrapies, it was impossible to put up with acts of unwarrantable interference, which would endanger the prestige of the sovereign and the authority of his officers. conquest presented the one and only natural means of escape from the difficulties of the present situation and of preventing their recurrence; when satraps should rule over the european as well as over the asiatic coasts of the ægean, all these turbulent greeks would be forced to live at peace with one another and in awe of the sovereign, as far as their fickle nature would allow. it was not then, as is still asserted, the mere caprice of a despot which brought upon the greek world the scourge of the persian wars, but the imperious necessity of security, which obliges well-organised empires to subjugate in turn all the tribes and cities which cause constant trouble on its frontiers. darius, who was already ruler of a good third of the hellenic world, from trebizond to barca, saw no other means of keeping what he already possessed, and of putting a stop to the incessant fomentation of rebellion in his own territories, than to conquer the mother-country as he had conquered the colonies, and to reduce to subjection the whole of european hellas. chapter ii--the last days of the old eastern world _the median war--the last native dynasties of egypt--the eastern world on the eve op the macedonian conquest._ _the persians in 512 b.c.--european greece and the dangers which its independence presented to the safety of the empire--the preliminaries of the median wars: the scythian expedition, the conquest of thrace and macedonia--the ionic revolt, the intervention of athens and the taking of sardes; the battle of lade--mardonius in thrace and in macedonia._ _the median wars--the expedition of datis and artaphernes: the taking of eretria, the battle of marathon (490)--the revolt of egypt under khabbisha; the death of darius and the accession of xerxes i.--the revolt of babylon under shamasherïb--the invasion of greece: artemision, thermopylæ, the taking of athens, salamis--platsæ and the final retreat of the persians: mycalê--the war carried on by the athenians and the league of delos: inaros, the campaigns in cyprus and egypt, the peace of oallias--the death of xerxes._ _artaxerxes i. (465-424): the revolt of megabyzos--the palaces of pasargadæ. persepolis, and susa; persian architecture and sculpture; court life, the king and his harem--revolutions in the palace--xerxes i., sekudianos, darius ii.--intervention in greek affairs and the convention of miletus; the end of the peace of gallias--artaxerxes ii. (404-359) and gyrus the younger: the battle of kunaxa and the retreat of the ten thousand (401)._ _troubles in asia minor, syria, and egypt--amyrtxus and the xxviiith saite dynasty--the xxixth sebennytic dynasty--nephorites i, hakoris, psammutis, their alliances with evagoras and with the states of continental greece--the xxxth mendesian dynasty--nectanebo i, tachôs and the invasion of syria, the revolt of nectanebo ii.--the death of artaxerxes ii.--the accession of ochus (359 b.c.), his unfortunate wars in the delta, the conquest of egypt (342) and the reconstitution of the empire._ _the eastern world: elam, urartu, the syrian kingdoms, the ancient semitic states decayed and decaying--babylon in its decline--the jewish state and its miseries--nehemiah, ezra--egypt in the eyes of the greeks: sais, the delta, the inhabitants of the marshes--memphis, its monuments, its population--travels in upper egypt: the fayum, khemmis, thebes, elephantine--the apparent vigour and actual feebleness of egypt._ _persia and its powerlessness to resist attack: the rise of macedonia, philippi --arses (337) and darius codomannos (336)--alexander the great--the invasion of asia--the battle of granicus and the conquest of the asianic peninsula--issus, the siege of tyre and of gaza, the conquest of egypt, the foundation of alexandria--arbela: the conquest of babylon, susa, and ecbatana--the death of darius and the last days of the old eastern world._ [illustration: 199.jpg page image] [page 200 and 201 need to be rescanned] chapter ii--the last days of the old eastern world _the median wars--the last native dynasties of egypt--the eastern world on the eve of the macedonian conquest._ [drawn by boudier, from one of the sarcophagi of sidon, now in the museum of st. irene. the vignette, which is by faucher-gudin, represents the sitting cyno-cephalus of nectanebo i., now in the egyptian museum at the vatican.] darius appears to have formed this project of conquest immediately after his first victories, when his initial attempts to institute satrapies had taught him not only the condition and needs of asia minor, but of the teaching the scythians such a lesson as would prevent them from bearing down upon his right flank during his march, or upon his rear while engaged in a crucial struggle in the hellenic peninsula. on the other hand, the geographical information possessed by the persians with regard to the danubian regions was of so vague a character, that darius must have believed the scythians to have been nearer to his line of operations, and their country less desolate than was really the case.* a flotilla, commanded by ariaramnes, satrap of cappadocia, ventured across the black sea in 515,** landed a few thousand men upon the opposite shore, and brought back prisoners who furnished those in command with the information they required.*** * the motives imputed to darius by the ancients for making this expedition are the desire of avenging the disasters of the scythian invasion, or of performing an exploit which should render him as famous as his predecessors in the eyes of posterity. ** the reconnaissance of ariaramnes is intimately connected with the expedition itself in ctesias, and could have preceded it by a few months only. if we take for the date of the latter the year 514-513, the date given in the table of the capitol, that of the former cannot be earlier than 515. ariaramnes was not satrap of cappadocia, for cappadocia belonged then to the satrapy of daskylion. *** the supplementary paragraphs of the inscription of behistun speak of an expedition of darius against the sako, which is supposed to have had as its objective either the sea of aral or the tigris. would it not be possible to suppose that the sea mentioned is the pontus euxinus, and to take the mutilated text of behistun to be a description either of the campaign beyond the danube, or rather of the preliminary _reconnaissance_ of ariaramnes a year before the expedition itself? darius, having learned what he could from these poor wretches, crossed the bosphorus in 514, with a body of troops which tradition computed at 800,000, conquered the eastern coast of thrace, and won his way in a series of conflicts as far as the ister. the ionian sailors built for him a bridge of boats, which he entrusted to their care, and he then started forward into the steppes in search of the enemy. the scythians refused a pitched battle, but they burnt the pastures before him on every side, filled up the wells, carried off the cattle, and then slowly retreated into the interior, leaving darius to face the vast extent of the steppes and the terrors of famine. later tradition stated that he wandered for two months in these solitudes between the ister and the tanais; he had constructed on the banks of this latter river a series of earthworks, the remains of which were shown in the time of herodotus, and had at length returned to his point of departure with merely the loss of a few sick men. the barbarians stole a march upon him, and advised the greeks to destroy the bridge, retire within their cities, and abandon the persians to their fate. the tyrant of the ohersonnesus, miltiades the athenian, was inclined to follow their advice; but histiasus, the governor of miletus, opposed it, and eventually carried his point. darius reached the southern bank without difficulty, and returned to asia.* * ctesias limits the campaign beyond the danube to a fifteen days� march; and strabo places the crossing of the danube near the mouth of that river, at the island of peukê, and makes the expedition stop at the dniester. neither the line of direction of the persian advance nor their farthest point reached is known. the eight forts which they were said to have built, the ruins of which were shown on the banks of the oaros as late as the time of herodotus, were probably tumuli similar to those now met with on the russian steppes, the origin of which is ascribed by the people to persons celebrated in their history or traditions. the greek towns of thrace thought themselves rid of him, and rose in revolt; but he left 80,000 men in europe who, at first under megabyzos, and then under otanes, reduced them to subjection one after another, and even obliged amyntas i., the king of macedonia, to become a tributary of the empire. the expedition had not only failed to secure the submission of the scythians, but apparently provoked reprisals on their part, and several of their bands penetrated ere long into the chersonnesus. it nevertheless was not without solid result, for it showed that darius, even if he could not succeed in subjugating the savage danubian tribes, had but little to fear from them; it also secured for him a fresh province, that of thrace, and, by the possession of macedonia, brought his frontier into contact with northern greece. the overland route, in any case the more satisfactory of the two, was now in the hands of the invader. revolutions at athens prevented him from setting out on his expedition as soon as he had anticipated. hippias had been overthrown in 510, and having taken refuge at sigoum, was seeking on all sides for some one to avenge him against his fellow-citizens. the satrap of sardes, arta-phernes, declined at first to listen to him, for he hoped that the athenians themselves would appeal to him, without his being obliged to have recourse to their former tyrant. as a matter of fact, they sent him an embassy, and begged his help against the spartans. he promised it on condition that they would yield the traditional homage of earth and water, and their delegates complied with his demand, though on their return to athens they were disowned by the citizens (508). artaphernes, disappointed in this direction, now entered into communications with hippias, and such close relations soon existed between the two that the athenians showed signs of uneasiness. two years later they again despatched fresh deputies to sardes to beg the satrap not to espouse the cause of their former ruler. for a reply the satrap summoned them to recall the exiles, and, on their refusing (506),* their city became thenceforward the ostensible objective of the persian army and fleet. the partisans of hippias within the town were both numerous and active; it was expected that they would rise and hand over the city as soon as their chief should land on a point of territory with a force sufficient to intimidate the opposing faction. athens in the hands of hippias, would mean athens in the hands of the persians, and greece accessible to the persian hordes at all times by the shortest route. darius therefore prepared to make the attempt, and in order to guard against any mishap, he caused all the countries that he was about to attack to be explored beforehand. spies attached to his service were sent to scour the coasts of the peloponnesus and take note of all its features, the state of its ports, the position of the islands and the fortresses; and they penetrated as far as italy, if we may believe the story subsequently told to herodotus.** * herodotus fixes the date at the time when the athenians first ostracised the principal partisans of the pisistratids, and amongst others hipparchus, son of charmes, i.e. in 507-6. ** herodotus said that darius sent spies with the physician democedes of crotona shortly before the scythian expedition. while he thus studied the territory from a distance, he did not neglect precautions nearer to hand, but ordered the milesians to occupy in his name the principal stations of the ægean between ionia and attica. histiasus, whose loyalty had stood darius in such good stead at the bridge over the danube, did not, however, appear to him equal to so delicate a task: the king summoned him to susa on some slight pretext, loaded him with honours, and replaced him by his nephew aristagoras. aristagoras at once attempted to justify the confidence placed in him by taking possession of naxos; but the surprise that he had prepared ended in failure, discontent crept in among his men, and after a fruitless siege of four months he was obliged to withdraw (499).* his failure changed the tide of affairs. he was afraid that the persians would regard it as a crime, and this fear prompted him to risk everything to save his fortune and his life. he retired from his office as tyrant, exhorted the milesians, who were henceforth free to do so, to make war on the barbarians, and seduced from their allegiance the crews of the vessels just returned from naxos, and still lying in the mouths of the meander; the tyrants who commanded them were seized, some exiled, and some put to death. the æolians soon made common cause with their neighbours the ionians, and by the last days of autumn the whole of the ægean littoral was under arms (499).** * herodotus attributes an unlikely act of treachery to megabates the persian, who was commanding the iranian contingent attached to the ionian troops. ** the dorian cities took no part in the revolt--at least herodotus never mentions them among the confederates. the three ionian cities of ephesus, kolophon, and lebedos also seem to have remained aloof, and we know that the ephesians were not present at the battle of ladê. from the outset aristagoras realised that they would be promptly overcome if asiatic hellas were not supported by hellas in europe. while the lydian satrap was demanding reinforcements from his sovereign, aristagoras therefore repaired to the peloponnesus as a suppliant for help. sparta, embroiled in one of her periodical quarrels with argos, gave him an insolent refusal;* even athens, where the revolution had for the moment relieved her from the fear of the pisistratidaa and the terrors of a barbarian invasion, granted him merely twenty triremes--enough to draw down reprisals on her immediately after their defeat, without sensibly augmenting the rebels� chances of success; to the athenian contingent bretria added five vessels, and this comprised his whole force. the leaders of the movement did not hesitate to assume the offensive with these slender resources. as early as the spring of 498, before artaphernes had received reinforcements, they marched suddenly on sardes. they burnt the lower town, but, as on many previous occasions, the citadel held out; after having encamped for several days at the foot of its rock, they returned to ephesus laden with the spoil.** * aristagoras had with him a map of the world engraved on a bronze plate, which was probably a copy of the chart drawn up by hecatseus of miletus. ** herodotus says that the ionians on their return suffered a serious reverse near ephesus. the author seems to have adopted some lydian or persian tradition hostile to the ionians, for charon of lampsacus, who lived nearer to the time of these events, mentions only the retreat, and hints at no defeat. if the expedition had really ended in this disaster, it is not at all likely that the revolt would have attained the dimensions it did immediately afterwards. this indeed was a check to their hostilities, and such an abortive attempt was calculated to convince them of their powerlessness against the foreign rule. none the less, however, when it was generally known that they had burnt the capital of asia minor, and had with impunity made the representative of the great king feel in his palace the smoke of the conflagration, the impression was such as actual victory could have produced. the cities which had hitherto hesitated to join them, now espoused their cause--the ports of the troad and the hellespont, lycia, the carians, and cyprus--and their triumph would possibly have been secured had greece beyond the ægean followed the general movement and joined the coalition. sparta, however, persisted in her indifference, and athens took the opportunity of withdrawing from the struggle. the asiatic greeks made as good a defence as they could, but their resources fell far short of those of the enemy, and they could do no more than delay the catastrophe and save their honour by their bravery. cyprus was the first to yield during the winter of 498-497. its vessels, in conjunction with those of the ionians, dispersed the fleet of the phoenicians off salamis, but the troops of their princes, still imbued with the old system of military tactics, could not sustain the charge of the persian battalions; they gave way under the walls of salamis, and their chief, onesilus, was killed in a final charge of his chariotry.* * the movement in cyprus must have begun in the winter of 499-498, for onesilus was already in the field when darius heard of the burning of sardes; and as it lasted for a year, it must have been quelled in the winter of 498-497. his death effected the ruin of the ionian cause in cyprus, which on the continent suffered at the same time no less serious reverses. the towns of the hellespont and of æolia succumbed one after another; kymê and clazomenæ next opened their gates; the carians were twice beaten, once near the white columns, and again near labranda, and their victory at pedasos suspended merely for an instant the progress of the persian arms, so that towards the close of 497 the struggle was almost entirely concentrated round miletus. aristagoras, seeing that his cause was now desperate, agreed with his partisans that they should expatriate themselves. he fell fighting against the edonians of thrace, attempting to force the important town of enneahodoi, near the mouth of the strymon (496);* but his defection had not discouraged any one, and histiseus, who had been sent to sardes by the great king to negotiate the submission of the rebels, failed in his errand. even when blockaded on the land side, miletus could defy an attack so long as communication with the sea was not cut off. * in herodotus the town is not named, but a passage in thucydides shows that it was enneahodoi, afterwards amphipolis, and that the death of aristagoras took place thirty-two years before the athenian defeat at drabeskos, i.e. probably in 496. [illustration: 209.jpg a cypriot chariot] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the terra-cotta group in the new york museum. darius therefore brought up the phoenician fleet, reinforced it with the cypriot contingents, and despatched the united squadrons to the archipelago during the summer of 494. the confederates, even after the disasters of the preceding years, still possessed 353 vessels, most of them of 30 to 50 oars; they were, however, completely defeated near the small island of ladê, in the latter part of the summer, and miletus, from that moment cut off from the rest of the world, capitulated a few weeks later. a small proportion of its inhabitants continued to dwell in the ruined city, but the greater number were carried away to ampê, at the mouth of the tigris, in the marshes of the nâr-marratum.* * the year 497, i.e. three years before the capture of the town, appears to be an unlikely date for the battle of ladê: miletus must have fallen in the autumn or winter months following the defeat. caria was reconquered during the winter of 494-493, and by the early part of 493, chios, lesbos, tenedos, the cities of the chersonnesus and of propontis--in short, all which yet held out--were reduced to obedience. artaphernes reorganised his vanquished states entirely in the interest of persia. he did not interfere with the constitutions of the several republics, but he reinstated the tyrants. he regulated and augmented the various tributes, prohibited private wars, and gave to the satrap the right of disposing of all quarrels at his own tribunal. the measures which he adopted had long after his day the force of law among the asiatic greeks, and it was by them they regulated their relations with the representatives of the great king. if darius had ever entertained doubts as to the necessity for occupying european greece to ensure the preservation of peace in her asiatic sister-country, the revolt of ionia must have completely dissipated them. it was a question whether the cities which had so obstinately defied him for six long years, would ever resign themselves to servitude as long as they saw the peoples of their race maintaining their independence on the opposite shores of the ægean, and while the misdeeds of which the contingents of eretria and athens had been guilty during the rebellion remained unpunished. a tradition, which sprang up soon after the event, related that on hearing of the burning of sardes, darius had bent his bow and let fly an arrow towards the sky, praying zeus to avenge him on the athenians: and at the same time he had commanded one of his slaves to repeat three times a day before him, at every meal, �sire, remember the athenians!�* * the legend is clearly older than the time of herodotus, for in the _persæ_ of eschylus the shade of darius, when coming out of his tomb, cries to the old men, �remember athens and greece!� as a matter of fact, the intermeddling of these strangers between the sovereign and his subjects was at once a serious insult to the achæmenids and a cause of anxiety to the empire; to leave it unpunished would have been an avowal of weakness or timidity, which would not fail to be quickly punished in syria, egypt, babylon, and on the scythian frontiers, and would ere long give rise to similar acts of revolt and interference. darius, therefore, resumed his projects, but with greater activity than before, and with a resolute purpose to make a final reckoning with the greeks, whatever it might cost him. the influence of his nephew mardonius at first inclined him to adopt the overland route, and he sent him into thrace with a force of men and a fleet of galleys sufficient to overcome all obstacles. mardonius marched against the greek colonies and native tribes which had throw off the yoke during the ionian war, and reduced those who had still managed to preserve their independence. the bryges opposed him with such determination, that summer was drawing to its close before he was able to continue his march. he succeeded, however, in laying hands on macedonia, and obliged its king, alexander, to submit to the conditions accepted by his father amyntas; but at this juncture half of his fleet was destroyed by a tempest in the vicinity of mount athos, and the disaster, which took place just as winter was approaching, caused him to suspend his operations (492). he was recalled on account of his failure, and the command was transferred to datis the mede and to the persian artaphernes. darius, however, while tentatively using the land routes through greece for his expeditions, had left no stone unturned to secure for himself that much-coveted sea-way which would carry him straight into the heart of the enemy�s position, and he had opened negotiations with the republics of greece proper. several of them had consented to tender him earth and water, among them being ægina,* and besides this, the state of the various factions in athens was such, that he had every reason to believe that he could count on the support of a large section of the population when the day came for him to disembark his force on the shores of attica. * herodotus states that _all_ the island-dwelling greeks submitted to the great king. but herodotus himself says later on that the people of naxos, at all events, proved refractory. [illustration: 212a.jpg alexander i. of macedon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. [illustration: 212b.jpg a phoenician galley] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of byblos in the _cabinet des médailles_. he therefore decided to direct his next expedition against athens itself, and he employed the year 491 in concentrating his troops and triremes in cilicia, at a sufficient distance from the european coast to ensure their safety from any sudden attack. in the spring of 490 the army recruited from among the most warlike nations of the empire--the persians, medes, and sakse--went aboard the phoenician fleet, while galleys built on a special model were used as transports for the cavalry. the entire convoy sailed safely out of the mouth of the pyramos to the port of samos, coasting the shores of asia minor, and then passing through the cyclades, from samos to naxos, where they met with no opposition from the inhabitants, headed for delos, where datis offered a sacrifice to apollo, whom he confounded with his god mithra; finally they reached eubæa, where eretria and carystos vainly endeavoured to hold their own against them. eretria was reduced to ashes, as sardes had been, and such of its citizens as had not fled into the mountains at the enemy�s approach were sent into exile among the kissians in the township of arderikka. hippias meanwhile had joined the persians and had been taken into their confidence. while awaiting the result of the intrigues of his partisans in athens, he had advised datis to land on the eastern coast of attica, in the neighbourhood of marathon, at the very place from whence his father pisistratus had set out forty years before to return to his country after his first exile. the position was well chosen for the expected engagement. [illustration: 214.jpg map of marathon] the bay and the strand which bordered it afforded an excellent station for the fleet, and the plain, in spite of its marshes and brushwood, was one of those rare spots where cavalry might be called into play without serious drawbacks. a few hours on foot would bring the bulk of the infantry up to the acropolis by a fairly good road, while by the same time the fleet would be able to reach the roadstead of phalerum. all had been arranged beforehand for concerted action when the expected rising should take place; but it never did take place, and instead of the friends whom the persians expected, an armed force presented itself, commanded by the polemarch callimachus and the ten strategi, among whom figured the famous miltiades. at the first news of the disembarkation of the enemy, the republic had despatched the messenger phidippides to sparta to beg for immediate assistance, and in the mean time had sent forward all her able-bodied troops to meet the invaders. they comprised about 10,000 hoplites, accompanied, as was customary, by nearly as many more light infantry, who were shortly reinforced by 1000 platæans. they encamped in the valley of avlona, around a small temple of heracles, in a position commanding the roads into the interior, and from whence they could watch the enemy without exposing themselves to an unexpected attack. [illustration: 215.jpg the battle-field of marathon] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. amédée hauvette. the two armies watched each other for a fortnight, datis expecting a popular outbreak which would render an engagement unnecessary, miltiades waiting patiently till the lacedaemonians had come up, or till some false move on the part of his opponent gave him the opportunity of risking a decisive action. what took place at the end of this time is uncertain. whether datis grew tired of inaction, or whether he suddenly resolved to send part of his forces by sea, so as to land on the neighbouring shore of athens, and miltiades fell upon his rear when only half his men had got on board the fleet, is not known. at any rate, miltiades, with the platæans on his left, set his battalions in movement without warning, and charged the enemy with a rush. the persians and the sakæ broke the centre of the line, but the two wings, after having dispersed the assailants on their front, wheeled round upon them and overcame them: 6000 barbarians were left dead upon the field as against some 200 athenians and platæans, but by dint of their valiant efforts the remainder managed to save the fleet with a loss of only seven galleys. datis anchored that evening off the island of ægilia, and at the same moment the victorious army perceived a signal hoisted on the heights of pentelicus apparently to attract his attention; when he set sail the next morning and, instead of turning eastwards, proceeded to double cape sunion, miltiades had no longer any doubt that treachery was at work, and returned to athens by forced marches. datis, on entering the roads of phalerum, found the shore defended, and the army that he had left at marathon encamped upon the cynosargê. he cruised about for a few hours in sight of the shore, and finding no movement made to encourage him to land, he turned his vessels about and set sail for ionia. the material loss to the persians was inconsiderable, for even the cyclades remained under their authority; miltiades, who endeavoured to retake them, met with a reverse before paros, and the athenians, disappointed by his unsuccessful attempt, made no further efforts to regain them. the moral effect of the victory on greece and the empire was extraordinary. up till then the median soldiers had been believed to be the only invincible troops in the world; the sight of them alone excited dread in the bravest hearts, and their name was received everywhere with reverential awe. but now a handful of hoplites from one of the towns of the continent, and that not the most renowned for its prowess, without cavalry or bowmen, had rushed upon and overthrown the most terrible of all oriental battalions, the persians and the sakæ. darius could not put up with such an affront without incurring the risk of losing his prestige with the people of asia and europe, who up till then had believed him all-powerful, and of thus exposing himself to the possibility of revolutions in recently subdued countries, such as egypt, which had always retained the memory of her past greatness. in the interest of his own power, as well as to soothe his wounded pride, a renewed attack was imperative, and this time it must be launched with such dash and vigour that all resistance would be at once swept before it. events had shown him that the influence of the pisistratidæ had not been strong enough to secure for him the opening of the gates of athens, and that the sea route did not permit of his concentrating an adequate force of cavalry and infantry on the field of battle; he therefore reverted to the project of an expedition by the overland route, skirting the coasts of thrace and macedonia. during three years he collected arms, provisions, horses, men, and vessels, and was ready to commence hostilities in the spring of 487, when affairs in egypt prevented him. this country had undeniably prospered under his suzerainty. it formed, with cyrene and the coast of libya, the sixth of his satrapies, to which were attached the neighbouring nubian tribes of the southern frontier.* the persian satrap, installed at the white wall in the ancient palace of the pharaohs, was supported by an army of 120,000 men, who occupied the three entrenched camps of the saites--daphnæ and marea on the confines of the delta, and elephantinê in the south.** outside these military stations, where the authority of the great king was exercised in a direct manner, the ancient feudal organisation existed intact. the temples retained their possessions and their vassals, and the nobles within their principalities were as independent and as inclined to insurrection as in past times. the annual tribute, the heaviest paid by any province with the exception of cossæa and assyria, amounted only to 700 talents of silver. to this sum must be added the farming of the fishing in lake moeris, which, according to herodotus,*** brought in one talent a day during the six months of the high nile, but, according to diodorus,**** during the whole year, as well as the 120,000 medimni of wheat required for the army of occupation, and the obligation to furnish the court of susa with libyan nitre and nile water; the total of these impositions was far from constituting a burden disproportionate to the wealth of the nile valley. * the nubian tribes, who are called ethiopians by herodotus and the cuneiform inscriptions, paid no regular tribute, but were obliged to send annually two chænikes of pure gold, two hundred pieces of ebony, twenty elephants� tusks, and five young slaves, all under the name of a free gift. ** herodotus states that in his own time the persians, like the saite pharaohs, still had garrisons at daphnæ and at elephantine. *** herodotus says that the produce sank to the value of a third of a talent a day during the six other months. **** diodorus siculus says that the revenue produced by the fisheries in the lake had been handed over by moris to his wife for the expenses of her toilet. [illustration: 219.jpg darius on the stele of the isthmus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the _description de l�egypte_. commerce brought in to it, in fact, at least as much money as the tribute took out of it. incorporated with an empire which extended over three continents, egypt had access to regions whither the products of her industry and her soil had never yet been carried. the produce of ethiopia and the sudan passed through her emporia on its way to attract customers in the markets of tyre, sidon, babylon, and susa, and the isthmus of suez and kosseir were the nearest ports through which arabia and india could reach the mediterranean. darius therefore resumed the work of necho, and beginning simultaneously at both extremities, he cut afresh the canal between the nile and the gulf of suez. trilingual stelæ in egyptian, persian, and medic were placed at intervals along its banks, and set forth to all comers the method of procedure by which the sovereign had brought his work to a successful end. in a similar manner he utilised the wadys which wind between koptos and the red sea, and by their means placed the cities of the said in communication with the �ladders of incense,� punt and the sabæans.* * several of the inscriptions engraved on the rocks of the wady hammamât show to what an extent the route was frequented at certain times during the reign. they bear the dates of the 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th, and 36th years of darius. the country of saba (sheba) is mentioned on one of the stelæ of the isthmus. he extended his favour equally to the commerce which they carried on with the interior of africa; indeed, in order to ensure the safety of the caravans in the desert regions nearest to the nile, he skilfully fortified the great oasis. he erected at habît, kushît, and other places, several of those rectangular citadels with massive walls of unburnt brick, which resisted every effort of the nomad tribes to break through them; and as the temple at habit, raised in former times by the theban pharaohs, had become ruinous, he rebuilt it from its foundations. [illustration: 220.jpg walls of the fortress of ditsh-el-qalâa] drawn by boudier, from the engraving by cailliaud. dush is the kushît of the hieroglyphs, the kysis of græco-roman times, and is situated on the southern border of the great oasis, about the latitude of assuân. he was generous in his gifts to the gods, and even towns as obscure as edfu was then received from him grants of money and lands. the egyptians at first were full of gratitude for the favours shown them, but the news of the defeat at marathon, and the taxes with which the susian court burdened them in order to make provision for the new war with greece, aroused a deep-seated discontent, at all events amongst those who, living in the delta, had had their patriotism or their interests most affected by the downfall of the saite dynasty. it would appear that the priests of buto, whose oracles exercised an indisputable influence alike over greeks and natives, had energetically incited the people to revolt. the storm broke in 486, and a certain khabbisha, who perhaps belonged to the family of psammetichus, proclaimed himself king both at sais and memphis.* * herodotus does not give the name of the leader of the rebellion, but says that it took place in the fourth year after marathon. a demotic contract in the turin museum bears the date of the third month of the second season of the thirty-fifth year of darius i.: khabbîsha�s rebellion therefore broke out between june and september, 486. stern makes this prince to have been of libyan origin. from the form of his name, révillout has supposed that he was an arab, and birch was inclined to think that he was a persian satrap who made a similar attempt to that of aryandes. but nothing is really known of him or of his family previous to his insurrection against darius. [illustration: 221.jpg the great temple of darius at habît] drawn by boudier, from the engraving by cailliaud. darius did not believe the revolt to be of sufficient gravity to delay his plans for any length of time. he hastily assembled a second army, and was about to commence hostilities on the banks of the nile simultaneously with those on the hellespont, when he died in 485, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign. he was one of the great sovereigns of the ancient world--the greatest without exception of those who had ruled over persia. cyrus and cambyses had been formidable warriors, and the kingdoms of the bast had fallen before their arms, but they were purely military sovereigns, and if their successor had not possessed other abilities than theirs, their empire would have shared the fate of that of the medes and the chaldæans; it would have sunk to its former level as rapidly as it had risen, and the splendour of its opening years would have soon faded from remembrance. darius was no less a general by instinct and training than they, as is proved by the campaigns which procured him his crown; but, after having conquered, he knew how to organise and build up a solid fabric out of the materials which his predecessors had left in a state of chaos; if persia maintained her rule over the east for two entire centuries, it was due to him and to him alone. the question of the succession, with its almost inevitable popular outbreaks, had at once to be dealt with. darius had had several wives, and among them, the daughter of gobryas, who had borne him three children: artabazanes, the eldest, had long been regarded as the heir-presumptive, and had probably filled the office of regent during the expedition in scythia. but atossa, the daughter of cyrus, who had already been queen under cambyses and gaumâta, was indignant at the thought of her sons bowing down before the child of a woman who was not of achæmenian race, and at the moment when affairs in egypt augured ill for the future, and when the old king, according to custom, had to appoint his successor, she intreated him to choose khshayarsha, the eldest of her children, who had been borne to the purple, and in whose veins flowed the blood of cyrus. darius acceded to her request, and on his death, a few months after, khshayarsha ascended the throne. his brothers offered no opposition, and the persian nobles did homage to their new king. khshayarsha, whom the greeks called xerxes, was at that time thirty-four years of age. he was tall, vigorous, of an imposing figure and noble countenance, and he had the reputation of being the handsomest man of his time, but neither his intelligence nor disposition corresponded to his outward appearance; he was at once violent and feeble, indolent, narrow-minded, and sensual, and was easily swayed by his courtiers and mistresses. the idea of a war had no attractions for him, and he was inclined to shirk it. his uncle artabanus exhorted him to follow his inclination for peace, and he lent a favourable ear to his advice until his cousin mardonius remonstrated with him, and begged him not to leave the disgrace of marathon unpunished, or he would lower the respect attached to the name of persia throughout the world. he wished, at all events, to bring egyptian affairs to an issue before involving himself in a serious european war. khabbîsha had done his best to prepare a stormy reception for him. during a period of two years khabbîsha had worked at the extension of the entrenchments along the coast and at the mouths of the nile, in order to repulse the attack that he foresaw would take place simultaneously with that on land, but his precautions proved fruitless when the decisive moment arrived, and he was completely crushed by the superior numbers of xerxes. [illustration: 224.jpg xerxes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a daric in the _cabinet des médailles_. the nomes of the delta which had taken a foremost part in the rising were ruthlessly raided, the priests heavily fined, and the oracle of buto deprived of its possessions as a punishment for the encouragement freely given to the rebels. khabbîsha disappeared, and his fate is unknown. achæmenes, one of the king�s brothers, was made satrap, but, as on previous occasions, the constitution of the country underwent no modification. the temples retained their inherited domains, and the nomes continued in the hands of their hereditary princes, without a suspicion crossing the mind of xerxes that his tolerance of the priestly institutions and the local dynasties was responsible for the maintenance of a body of chiefs ever in readiness for future insurrection (483).* * the only detailed information on this revolt furnished by the egyptian monuments is given in the stele of ptolemy, the son of lagos. an apis, whose sarcophagus still exists, was buried by khabbîsha in the serapoum in the second year of his reign, which proves that he was in possession of memphis: the white wall had perhaps been deprived of its garrison in order to reinforce the army prepared against greece, and it was possibly thus that it fell into the hands of khabbîsha. order was once more restored, but he was not yet entirely at liberty to pursue his own plan of action. classical tradition tells us, that on the occasion of his first visit to babylon he had offended the religious prejudices of the chaldæans by a sacrilegious curiosity. he had, in spite of the entreaties of the priests, forced an entrance into the ancient burial-place of bel-etana, and had beheld the body of the old hero preserved in oil in a glass sarcophagus, which, however, was not quite full of the liquid. a notice posted up beside it, threatened the king who should violate the secret of the tomb with a cruel fate, unless he filled the sarcophagus to the brim, and xerxes had attempted to accomplish this mysterious injunction, but all his efforts had failed. the example set by egypt and the change of sovereign are sufficient to account for the behaviour of the babylonians; they believed that the accession of a comparatively young monarch, and the difficulties of the campaign on the banks of the nile, afforded them a favourable occasion for throwing off the yoke. they elected as king a certain shamasherib, whose antecedents are unknown; but their independence was of short duration,* for megabyzos, son of zopyrus, who governed the province by hereditary right, forced them to disarm after a siege of a few months. * this shamasherib is mentioned only on a contract dated from his accession, which is preserved in the british museum. it would appear that xerxes treated them with the greatest severity: he pillaged the treasury and temple of bel, appropriated the golden statue which decorated the great inner hall of the ziggurât, and carried away many of the people into captivity (581). babylon never recovered this final blow: the quarters of the town that had been pillaged remained uninhabited and fell into ruins; commerce dwindled and industry flagged. the counsellors of xerxes had, no doubt, wished to give an object-lesson to the province by their treatment of babylon, and thus prevent the possibility of a revolution taking place in asia while its ruler was fully engaged in a struggle with the greeks. meanwhile all preparations were completed, and the contingents of the eastern and southern provinces concentrated at kritalla, in cappadocia, merely awaited the signal to set out. xerxes gave the order to advance in the autumn of 481, crossed the halys and took up his quarters at sardes, while his fleet prepared to winter in the neighbouring ports of phocæ and kymê.* * diodorus, who probably follows ephorus, is the only writer who informs us of the place where the fleet was assembled. gathered together in that little corner of the world, were forces such as no king had ever before united under his command; they comprised 1200 vessels of various build, and probably 120,000 combatants, besides the rabble of servants, hucksters, and women which followed all the armies of that period. the greeks exaggerated the number of the force beyond all probability. they estimated it variously at 800,000, at 3,000,000, and at 5,283,220 men; 1,700,000 of whom were able-bodied foot-soldiers, and 80,000 of them horsemen.* * herodotus records the epigram to the effect that 3,000,000 men attacked thermopylæ. ctesias and ephorus adopt the same figures; iso-crates is contented with 700,000 combatants and 5,000,000 men in all. [illustration: 227.jpg a trireme in motion] drawn by faucher-gudin: the left portion is a free reproduction of a photograph of the bas-relief of the acropolis; the right, of the picture of pozzo. the two partly overlap one another, and give both together the idea of a trireme going at full speed. the troops which they could bring up to oppose these hordes were, indeed, so slender in number, when reckoned severally, that all hope of success seemed impossible. xerxes once more summoned the greeks to submit, and most of the republics appeared inclined to comply; athens and sparta alone refused, but from different motives. athens knew that, after the burning of sardes and the victory of marathon, they could hope for no pity, and she was well aware that persia had decreed her complete destruction; the athenians were familiar with the idea of a struggle in which their very existence was at stake, and they counted on the navy with which themistocles had just provided them to enable them to emerge from the affair with honour. sparta was not threatened with the same fate, but she was at that time the first military state in greece, and the whole of the peloponnesus acknowledged her sway; in the event of her recognising the suzerainty of the barbarians, the latter would not fail to require of her the renunciation of her hegemony, and she would then be reduced to the same rank as her former rivals, tegea and argos. athens and sparta therefore united to repulse the common enemy, and the advantage that this alliance afforded them was so patent that none of the other states ventured to declare openly for the great king. argos and crete, the boldest of them, announced that they would observe neutrality; the remainder, thessalians, boeotians, and people of corcyra, gave their support to the national cause, but did so unwillingly. xerxes crossed the hellespont in the spring of 480, by two bridges of boats thrown across it between abydos and sestos; he then formed his force into three columns, and made his way slowly along the coast, protected on the left by the whole of his fleet from any possible attack by the squadrons of the enemy. the greeks had three lines of defence which they could hold against him, the natural strength of which nearly compensated them for the inferiority of their forces; these were mount olympus, mount oeta, and the isthmus of corinth. the first, however, was untenable, owing to the ill will of the thessalians; as a precautionary measure 10,000 hoplites were encamped upon it, but they evacuated the position as soon as the enemy�s advance-guard came into sight. the natural barrier of oeta, less formidable than that of olympus, was flanked by the euboean straits on the extreme right, but the range was of such extent that it did not require to be guarded with equal vigilance along its whole length. the spartans did not at first occupy it, for they intended to accumulate all the greek forces, both troops and vessels, around the isthmus. at that point the neck of land was so narrow, and the sea so shut in, that the numbers of the invading force proved a drawback to them, and the advantage almost of necessity lay with that of the two adversaries who should be best armed and best officered. this plan of the spartans was a wise one, but athens, which was thereby sacrificed to the general good, refused to adopt it, and as she alone furnished almost half the total number of vessels, her decision had to be deferred to. a body of about 10,000 hoplites was therefore posted in the pass of thermopylæ under the command of leonidas, while a squadron of 271 vessels disposed themselves near the promontory of artemision, off the euripus, and protected the right flank of the pass against a diversion from the fleet. meanwhile xerxes had been reinforced in the course of his march by the contingents from macedonia, and had received the homage of the cities of thessaly; having reached the defiles of the oeta and the euboea, he began by attacking the creeks directly in front, both fleets and armies facing one another. leonidas succeeded in withstanding the assault on two successive days, and then the inevitable took place. a detachment of persians, guided by the natives of the country, emerged by a path which had been left unguarded, and bore down upon the greeks in the rear; a certain number managed to escape, but the bulk of the force, along with the 300 spartans and their king, succumbed after a desperate resistance. as for the fleet, it had borne itself bravely, and had retained the ascendency throughout, in spite of the superiority of the enemy�s numbers; on hearing the news of the glorious death of leonidas, they believed their task ended for the time being, and retired with the athenians in their wake, ready to sustain the attack should they come again to close quarters. the victorious side had suffered considerable losses in men and vessels, but they had forced the passage, and central greece now lay at their mercy. xerxes received the submission of the thebans, the phocæans, the locrians, the dorians, and of all who appealed to his clemency; then, having razed to the ground platæa and thespisæ, the only two towns which refused to come to terms with him, he penetrated into attica by the gorges of the cithssron. the population had taken refuge in salamis, ægina, and troezen. the few fanatics who refused to desist in their defence of the acropolis, soon perished behind their ramparts; xerxes destroyed the temple of pallas by fire to avenge the burning of sardes, and then entrenched his troops on the approaches to the isthmus, stationing his squadrons in the ports of munychia, phalerum, and the piræus, and suspended all hostilities while waiting to see what policy the greeks would pursue. it is possible that he hoped that a certain number of them would intreat for mercy, and others being encouraged by their example to submit, no further serious battle would have to be fought. when he found that no such request was proffered, he determined to take advantage of the superiority of his numbers, and, if possible, destroy at one blow the whole of the greek naval reserve; he therefore gave orders to his admirals to assume the offensive. the greek fleet lay at anchor across the bay of salamis. the left squadron of the persians, leaving munychia in the middle of the night, made for the promontory of cynosura, landing some troops as it passed on the island of psyttalia, on which it was proposed to fall back in case of accident, while the right division, sailing close to the coast of attica, closed the entrance to the straits in the direction of eleusis; this double movement was all but completed, when the greeks were informed by fugitives of what was taking place, and the engagement was inevitable. they accepted it fearlessly. xerxes, enthroned with his immortals on the slopes of ægialeos, could, from his exalted position, see the athenians attack his left squadron: the rest of the allies followed them, and from afar these words were borne upon the breeze: �go, sons of greece, deliver your country, deliver your children, your wives, and the temples of the gods of your fathers and the tombs of your ancestors. a single battle will decide the fate of all you possess.� the persians fought with their accustomed bravery, �but before long their numberless vessels, packed closely together in a restricted space, begin to hamper each other�s movements, and their rams of brass collide; whole rows of oars are broken.� the greek vessels, lighter and easier to manoeuvre than those of the phoenicians, surround the latter and disable them in detail. �the surface of the sea is hidden with floating wreckage and corpses; the shore and the rocks are covered with the dead.� at length, towards evening, the energy of the barbarians beginning to flag, they slowly fell back upon the piræus, closely followed by their adversaries, while aristides bore down upon psyttalia with a handful of athenians. �like tunnies, like fish just caught in a net, with blows from broken oars, with fragments of spars, they fall upon the persians, they tear them to pieces. the sea resounds from afar with groans and cries of lamentation. night at length unveils her sombre face� and separates the combatants.* * æschylus gives the only contemporaneous account of the battle, and the one which herodotus and all the historians after him have paraphrased, while they also added to it oral traditions. [illustration: 233.jpg part of the battlefield of salamis] the advantage lay that day with the greeks, but hostilities might be resumed on the morrow, and the resources of the persians were so considerable that their chances of victory were not yet exhausted. xerxes at first showed signs of wishing to continue the struggle; he repaired the injured vessels and ordered a dyke to be constructed, which, by uniting salamis to the mainland, would enable him to oust the athenians from their last retreat. but he had never exhibited much zest for the war; the inevitable fatigues and dangers of a campaign were irksome to his indolent nature, and winter was approaching, which he would be obliged to spend far from susa, in the midst of a country wasted and trampled underfoot by two great armies. mardonius, guessing what was passing in his sovereign�s mind, advised him to take advantage of the fine autumn weather to return to sardes; he proposed to take over from xerxes the command of the army in greece, and to set to work to complete the conquest of the peloponnesus. he was probably glad to be rid of a sovereign whose luxurious habits were a hindrance to his movements. xerxes accepted his proposal with evident satisfaction, and summarily despatching his vessels to the hellespont to guard the bridges, he set out on his return journey by the overland route. at the time of his departure the issue of the struggle was as yet unforeseen. mardonius evacuated attica, which was too poor and desolate a country to support so large an army, and occupied comfortable winter quarters in the rich plains of thessaly, where he recruited his strength for a supreme effort in the spring. he had with him about 60,000 men, picked troops from all parts of asia--medes, sakæ, bactrians, and indians, besides the regiment of the immortals and the egyptian veterans who had distinguished themselves by their bravery at salamis; the heavy hoplites of thebes and of the boeotian towns, the thessalian cavalry, and the battalions of macedonia were also in readiness to join him as soon as called on. the whole of these troops, relieved from the presence of the useless multitude which had impeded its movements under xerxes, and commanded by a bold and active general, were anxious to distinguish themselves, and the probabilities of their final success were great. the confederates were aware of the fact, and although resolved to persevere to the end, their maoeuvres betrayed an unfortunate indecision. their fleet followed the persian squadron bound for the hellespont for several days, but on realising that the enemy were not planning a diversion against the peloponnesus, they put about and returned to their various ports. the winter was passed in preparations on both sides. xerxes, on his return to sardes, had got together a fleet of 200 triremes and an army of 60,000 men, and had stationed them at cape mycale, opposite samos, to be ready in case of an ionian revolt, or perhaps to bear down upon any given point in the peloponnesus when mardonius had gained some initial advantage. the lacædemonians, on their part, seem to have endeavoured to assume the defensive both by land and sea; while their foot-soldiers were assembling in the neighbourhood of corinth, their fleet sailed as far as delos and there anchored, as reluctant to venture beyond as if it had been a question of proceeding to the pillars of hercules. athens, which ran the risk of falling into the enemy�s hands for the second time through these hesitations, evinced such marked displeasure that mardonius momentarily attempted to take advantage of it. he submitted to the citizens, through alexander, king of macedon, certain conditions, the leniency of which gave uneasiness to the spartans; the latter at once promised athens all she wanted, and on the strength of their oaths she at once broke off the negotiations with the persians. mardonius immediately resolved on action: he left his quarters in thessaly in the early days of may, reached attica by a few quick marches, and spread his troops over the country before the peloponnesians were prepared to resist. the people again took refuge in salamis; the persians occupied athens afresh, and once more had recourse to diplomacy. this time the spartans were alarmed to good purpose; they set out to the help of their ally, and from that moment mardonius showed no further consideration in his dealing with athens. he devastated the surrounding country, razed the city walls to the ground, and demolished and burnt the remaining houses and temples; he then returned to boeotia, the plains of which were more suited to the movements of his squadrons, and took up a position in an entrenched camp on the right bank of the asopos. the greek army, under the command of pausanias, king of sparta, subsequently followed him there, and at first stationed themselves on the lower slopes of mount cithseron. their force was composed of about 25,000 hoplites, and about as many more light troops, and was scarcely inferior in numbers to the enemy, but it had no cavalry of any kind. several days passed in skirmishing without definite results, mardonius fearing to let his asiatic troops attack the heights held by the heavy greek infantry, and pausanias alarmed lest his men should be crushed by the thessalian and persian horse if he ventured down into the plains. want of water at length obliged the greeks to move slightly westwards, their right wing descending as far as the spring of gargaphia, and their left to the bank of the asopos. but this position facing east, exposed them so seriously to the attacks of the light asiatic horse, that after enduring it for ten days they raised their camp and fell back in the night on platæa. unaccustomed to manouvre together, they were unable to preserve their distances; when day dawned, their lines, instead of presenting a continuous front, were distributed into three unequal bodies occupying various parts of the plain. mardonius unhesitatingly seized his opportunity. he crossed the asopos, ordered the thebans to attack the athenians, and with the bulk of his asiatic troops charged the spartan contingents. here, as at marathon, the superiority of equipment soon gave the greeks the advantage: mardonius was killed while leading the charge of the persian guard, and, as is almost always the case among orientals, his death decided the issue of the battle. the immortals were cut to pieces round his dead body, while the rest took flight and sought refuge in their camp. [illustration: 238.jpg map] [illustration: 239.jpg the battle-field of plataea] almost simultaneously the athenians succeeded in routing the boeotians. they took the entrenchments by assault, gained possession of an immense quantity of spoil, and massacred many of the defenders, but they could not prevent artabazus from retiring in perfect order with 40,000 of his best troops protected by his cavalry. he retired successively from thessaly, macedonia, and thrace, reached asia after suffering severe losses, and european greece was freed for ever from the presence of the barbarians. while her fate was being decided at platsæ, that of asiatic greece was being fought out on the coast of ionia. the entreaties of the samians had at length encouraged leotychidas and xanthippus to take the initiative. the persian generals, who were not expecting this aggressive movement, had distributed the greater part of their vessels throughout the ionian ports, and had merely a small squadron left at their disposal at mycale. surprised by the unexpected appearance of the enemy, they were compelled to land, were routed, and their vessels burnt (479). this constituted the signal for a general revolt: samos, chios, and lesbos affiliated themselves to the hellenic confederation, and the cities of the littoral, which sparta would have been powerless to protect for want of a fleet, concluded an alliance with athens, whose naval superiority had been demonstrated by recent events. the towns of the hellespont threw off the yoke as soon as the triremes of the confederates appeared within their waters, and sestos, the only one of them prevented by its persian garrison from yielding to the athenians, succumbed, after a long siege, during the winter of 479-478. the campaign of 478 completed the deliverance of the greeks. a squadron commanded by pausanias roused the islands of the carian coast and cyprus itself, without encountering any opposition, and then steering northwards drove the persians from byzantium. the following winter the conduct of operations passed out of the hands of sparta into those of athens--from the greatest military to the greatest naval power in greece; and the latter, on assuming command, at once took steps to procure the means which would enable her to carry, out her task thoroughly. she brought about the formation of a permanent league between the asiatic greeks and those of the islands. each city joining it preserved a complete autonomy as far as its internal affairs were concerned, but pledged itself to abide by the advice of athens in everything connected with the war against the persian empire, and contributed a certain quota of vessels, men, and money, calculated according to its resources, for the furtherance of the national cause. the centre of the confederation was fixed at delos; the treasure held in common was there deposited under the guardianship of the god, and the delegates from the confederate states met there every year at the solemn festivals, athens to audit the accounts of her administration, and the allies to discuss the interests of the league and to decide on the measures to be taken against the common enemy. oriental empires maintain their existence only on condition of being always on the alert and always victorious. they can neither restrict themselves within definite limits nor remain upon the defensive, for from the day when they desist from extending their area their ruin becomes inevitable; they must maintain their career of conquest, or they must cease to exist. this very activity which saves them from downfall depends, like the control of affairs, entirely on the ruling sovereign; when he chances to be too indolent or too incapable of government, he retards progress by his inertness or misdirects it through his want of skill, and the fate of the people is made thus to depend entirely on the natural disposition of the prince, since none of his subjects possesses sufficient authority to correct the mistakes of his master. having conquered asia, the persian race, finding itself hemmed in by insurmountable obstacles--the sea, the african and arabian deserts, the mountains of turkestan and the caucasus, and the steppes of siberia--had only two outlets for its energy, greece and india. darius had led his army against the greeks, and, in spite of the resistance he had encountered from them, he had gained ground, and was on the point of striking a crucial blow, when death cut short his career. the impetus that he had given to the militant policy was so great that xerxes was at first carried away by it; but he was naturally averse to war, without individual energy and destitute of military genius, so that he allowed himself to be beaten where, had he possessed anything of the instincts of a commander, he would have been able to crush his adversary with the sheer weight of his ships and battalions. even after salamis, even after platæa and mycale, the resources of hellas, split up as it was into fifty different republics, could hardly bear comparison with those of all asia concentrated in the hands of one man: xerxes must have triumphed in the end had he persevered in his undertaking, and utilised the inexhaustible amount of fresh material with which his empire could have furnished him. but to do that he would have had to take a serious view of his duties as a sovereign, as cyrus and darius had done, whereas he appears to have made use of his power merely for the satisfaction of his luxurious tastes and his capricious affections. during the winter following his return, and while he was reposing at sardes after the fatigues of his campaign in greece, he fell in love with the wife of masistes, one of his brothers, and as she refused to entertain his suit, he endeavoured to win her by marrying his son darius to her daughter artayntas. he was still amusing himself with this ignoble intrigue during the year which witnessed the disasters of platæa and mycale, when he was vaguely entertaining the idea of personally conducting a fresh army beyond the ægean: but the marriage of his son having taken place, he returned to susa in the autumn, accompanied by the entire court, and from thenceforward he remained shut up in the heart of his empire. after his departure the war lost its general character, and deteriorated into a series of local skirmishes between the satraps in the vicinity of the mediterranean and the members of the league of delos. the phoenician fleet played the principal part in the naval operations, but the central and eastern asiatics--bactrians, indians, parthians, arians, arachosians, armenians, and the people from susa and babylon--scarcely took any part in the struggle. the athenians at the outset assumed the offensive under the intelligent direction of cimon. they expelled the persian garrisons from eion and thrace in 476. they placed successively under their own hegemony all the greek communities of the asianic littoral. towards 466, they destroyed a fleet anchored within the gulf of pamphylia, close to the mouth of the eurymedon, and, as at mycale, they landed and dispersed the force destined to act in concert with the squadron. sailing from thence to cyprus, they destroyed a second phoenician fleet of eighty vessels, and returned to the piraeus laden with booty. such exploits were not devoid of glory and profit for the time being, but they had no permanent results. all these naval expeditions were indeed successful, and the islands and towns of the ægean, and even those of the black sea and the southern coasts of asia minor, succeeded without difficulty in freeing themselves from the persian yoke under the protection of the athenian triremes; but their influence did not penetrate further inland than a few miles from the shore, beyond which distance they ran the risk of being cut off from their vessels, and the barbarians of the interior--lydians, phrygians, mysians, pamphylians, and even most of the lycians and carians--remained subject to the rule of the satraps. the territory thus liberated formed but a narrow border along the coast of the peninsula; a border rent and interrupted at intervals, constantly in peril of seizure by the enemy, and demanding considerable efforts every year for its defence. athens was in danger of exhausting her resources in the performance of this ungrateful task, unless she could succeed in fomenting some revolution in the vast possessions of her adversary which should endanger the existence of his empire, or which, at any rate, should occupy the persian soldiery in constantly recurring hostilities against the rebellious provinces. if none of the countries in the centre of asia minor would respond to their call, and if the interests of their commercial rivals, the phoenicians, were so far opposed to their own as to compel them to maintain the conflict to the very end, egypt, at any rate, always proud of her past glory and impatient of servitude, was ever seeking to rid herself of the foreign yoke and recover her independent existence under, the authority of her pharaohs. it was not easy to come to terms with her and give her efficient help from athens itself; but cyprus, with its semi-greek population hostile to the achæmenids, could, if they were to take possession of it, form an admirable base of operations in that corner of the mediterranean. the athenians were aware of this from the outset, and, after their victory at the mouth of the eurymedon, a year never elapsed without their despatching a more or less numerous fleet into cypriot waters; by so doing they protected the ægean from the piracy of the phoenicians, and at the same time, in the event of any movement arising on the banks of the nile, they were close enough to the delta to be promptly informed of it, and to interfere to their own advantage before any repressive measures could be taken. the field of hostilities having shifted, and greece having now set herself to attempt the dismemberment of the persian empire, we may well ask what has become of xerxes. the little energy and intelligence he had possessed at the outset were absorbed by a life of luxury and debauchery. weary of his hopeless pursuit of the wife of masistes, he transferred his attentions to the artayntas whom he had given in marriage to his son darius, and succeeded in seducing her. the vanity of this unfortunate woman at length excited the jealously of the queen. amestris believed herself threatened by the ascendency of this mistress; she therefore sent for the girl�s mother, whom she believed guilty of instigating the intrigue, and, having cut off her breasts, ears, nose, lips, and torn out her tongue, she sent her back, thus mutilated, to her family. masistes, wishing to avenge her, set out for bactriana, of which district he was satrap: he could easily have incited the province to rebel, for its losses in troops during the wars in europe had been severe, and a secret discontent was widespread; but xerxes, warned in time, despatched horsemen in pursuit, who overtook and killed him. the incapacity of the king, and the slackness with which he held the reins of government�, were soon so apparent as to produce intrigues at court: artabanus, the chief captain of the guards, was emboldened by the state of affairs to attempt to substitute his own rule for that of the achæmenids, and one night he assassinated xerxes. his method of procedure was never exactly known, and several accounts of it were soon afterwards current. one of them related that he had as his accomplice the eunuch aspamithres. having committed the crime, both of them rushed to the chamber of artaxerxes,* one of the sons of the sovereign, but still a child; they accused darius, the heir to the throne, of the murder, and having obtained an order to seize him, they dragged him before his brother and stabbed him, while he loudly protested his innocence. * artaxerxes is the form commonly adopted by the greek historians and by the moderns who follow them, but ctcsias and others after him prefer artoxerxes. the original form of the persian name was artakhshathra. [illustration: 247.jpg artaxerxes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a daric in the _cabinet des médailles_. other tales related that artabanus had taken advantage of the free access to the palace which his position allowed him, to conceal himself one night within it, in company with his seven sons. having murdered xerxes, he convinced artaxerxes of the guilt of his brother, and conducting him to the latter�s chamber, where he was found asleep, artabanus stabbed him on the spot, on the pretence that he was only feigning slumber.* * of the two principal accounts, the first is as old as ctesias, who was followed in general outline by ephorus, of whose account diodorus siculus preserves a summary compilation; the second was circulated by dinon, and has come down to us through the abbreviation of pompeius trogus. the remains of a third account are met with in aristotle. ælian knew a fourth in which the murder was ascribed to the son of xerxes himself. the murderer at first became the virtual sovereign, and he exercised his authority so openly that later chronographers inserted his name in the list of the achæmenids, between that of his victim and his _protégé_; but at the end of six months, when he was planning the murder of the young prince, he was betrayed by megabyzos and slain, together with his accomplices. his sons, fearing a similar fate, escaped into the country with some of the troops. they perished in a skirmish, sword in hand; but their prompt defeat, though it helped to establish the new king upon his throne, did not ensure peace, for the most turbulent provinces at the two extremes of the empire, bactriana on the northeast and egypt in the south-west, at once rose in arms. the bactrians were led by hystaspes, one of the sons of xerxes, who, being older than artaxerxes, claimed the throne; his pretensions were not supported by the neighbouring provinces, and two bloody battles soon sealed his fate (462).* the chastisement of egypt proved a harder task. since the downfall of the saites, the eastern nomes of the delta had always constituted a single fief, which the greeks called the kingdom of libya. lords of marea and of the fertile districts extending between the canopic arm of the nile, the mountains, and the sea, its princes probably exercised suzerainty over several of the libyan tribes of marmarica. inaros, son of psammetichus,** who was then the ruling sovereign, defied the persians openly. the inhabitants of the delta, oppressed by the tax-gatherers of achæmenes,*** welcomed him with open arms, and he took possession of the country between the two branches of the nile, probably aided by the cyrenians; the nile valley itself and memphis, closely guarded by the persian garrisons, did not, however, range themselves on his side. * the date 462 is approximate, and is inferred from the fact that the war in bactriana is mentioned in ctesias between the war against the sons of artabanus which must have occupied a part of 463, and the egyptian rebellion which broke out about 462, as diodorus siculus points out, doubtless following ephorus. ** the name of the father of inaros is given us by the contemporary testimony of thucydides. *** achomenes is the form given by herodotus and by diodorus siculus, who make him the son of darius i., appointed governor of egypt after the repression of the revolt of khabbîsha. ctesias calls him achæmenides, and says that he was the son of xerxes. meanwhile the satrap, fearing that the troops at his disposal were insufficient, had gone to beg assistance of his nephew. artaxerxes had assembled an army and a fleet, and, in the first moment of enthusiasm, had intended to assume the command in person; but, by the advice of his counsellors, he was with little difficulty dissuaded from carrying this whim into effect, and he delegated the conduct of affairs to achæmenes. the latter at first repulsed the libyans (460), and would probably have soon driven them back into their deserts, had not the athenians interfered in the fray. they gave orders to their fleet at cyprus to support the insurgents by every means in their power, and their appearance on the scene about the autumn of 469 changed the course of affairs. achæmenes was overcome at papremis, and his army almost completely exterminated. inaros struck him down with his own hand in the struggle; but the same evening he caused the body to be recovered, and sent it to the court of susa, though whether out of bravado, or from respect to the achæmenian race, it is impossible to say.* * diodorus siculus says in so many words that the athenians took part in the battle of papremis; thucydides and herodotus do not speak of their being there, and several modern historians take this silence as a proof that their squadron arrived after the battle had been fought. his good fortune did not yet forsake him. some days afterwards, the athenian squadron of charitimides came up by chance with the phoenician fleet, which was sailing to the help of the persians, and had not yet received the news of the disaster which had befallen them at papremis. the greeks sunk thirty of the enemy�s vessels and took twenty more, and, after this success, the allies believed that they had merely to show themselves to bring about a general rising of the fellahîn, and effect the expulsion of the persians from the whole of egypt. they sailed up the river and forced memphis after a few days� siege; but the garrison of the white wall refused to surrender, and the allies were obliged to lay siege to it in the ordinary manner (459):* in the issue this proved their ruin. artaxerxes raised a fresh force in cilicia, and while completing his preparations, attempted to bring about a diversion in greece. the strength of pharaoh did not so much depend on his libyan and egyptian hordes, as on the little body of hoplites and the crews of the athenian squadron; and if the withdrawal of the latter could be effected, the repulse of the others would be a certainty. persian agents were therefore employed to beg the spartans to invade attica; but the remembrance of salamis and platæa was as yet too fresh to permit of the lacedæmonians allying themselves with the common enemy, and their virtue on this occasion was proof against the darics of the orientals.** the egyptian army was placed in the field early in the year 456, under the leadership of megabyzos, the satrap of syria: it numbered, so it was said, some 300,000 men, and it was supported by 300 phoenician vessels commanded by artabazos.*** * the date of 459-8 for the arrival of the athenians is concluded from the passage of thucydides, who gives an account of the end of the war after the cruise of tolmides in 455, in the sixth year of its course. ** megabyzos opened these negotiations, and his presence at sparta during the winter of 457-6 is noticed. *** ctesias here introduces the persian admiral horiscos, but diodorus places artabazos and megabyzos side by side, as was the case later on in the war in cyprus, one at the head of the fleet, the other of the army; it is probable that the historian from whom diodorus copied, viz. ephorus, recognised the same division of leadership in the egyptian campaign. the allies raised the blockade of the white wall as soon as he entered the delta, and hastened to attack him; but they had lost their opportunity. defeated in a desperate encounter, in which charitimides was killed and inaros wounded in the thigh, they barricaded themselves within the large island of prosopitis, about the first fortnight in january of the year 455, and there sustained a regular siege for the space of eighteen months. at the end of that time megabyzos succeeded in turning an arm of the river, which left their fleet high and dry, and, rather than allow it to fall into his hands, they burned their vessels, whereupon he gave orders to make the final assault. the bulk of the athenian auxiliaries perished in that day�s attack, the remainder withdrew with inaros into the fortified town of byblos, where megabyzos, unwilling to prolong a struggle with a desperate enemy, permitted them to capitulate on honourable terms. some of them escaped and returned to cyrene, from whence they took ship to their own country; but the main body, to the number of 6000, were carried away to susa by megabyzos in order to receive the confirmation of the treaty which he had concluded. as a crowning stroke of misfortune, a reinforcement of fifty athenian triremes, which at this juncture entered the mendesian mouth of the nile, was surrounded by the phoenician fleet, and more than half of them destroyed. the fall of prosopitis brought the rebellion to an end.* * the accounts of these events given by ctesias and thucydides are complementary, and, in spite of their brevity, together form a whole which must be sufficiently near the truth. that of ephorus, preserved in diodorus, is derived from an author who shows partiality to the athenians, and who passes by everything not to their honour, while he seeks to throw the blame for the final disaster on the cowardice of the egyptians. the summary of aristodemus comes directly from that of thucydides. the nomes of the delta were restored to order, and, as was often customary in oriental kingdoms, the vanquished petty princes or their children were reinvested in their hereditary fiefs; even libya was not taken from the family of inaros, but was given to his son thannyras and a certain psammetichus. a few bands of fugitives, however, took refuge in the marshes of the littoral, in the place where the saites in former times had sought a safe retreat, and they there proclaimed king a certain amyrtgeus, who was possibly connected with the line of amasis, and successfully defied the repeated attempts of the persians to dislodge them. the greek league had risked the best of its forces in this rash undertaking, and had failed in its enterprise. it had cost the allies so dearly in men and galleys, that if the persians had at once assumed the offensive, most of the asiatic cities would have found themselves in a most critical situation; and athens, then launched in a quarrel with the states of the peloponnesus, would have experienced the greatest difficulty in succouring them. the feebleness of artaxerxes, however, and possibly the intrigues at court and troubles in various other parts of the empire, prevented the satraps from pursuing their advantage, and when at length they meditated taking action, the opportunity had gone by. they nevertheless attempted to regain the ascendency over cyprus; artabazos with a sidonian fleet cruised about the island, megabyzos assembled troops in cilicia, and the petty kings of greek origin raised a cry of alarm. athens, which had just concluded a truce with the peloponnesians, at once sent two hundred vessels to their assistance under the command of oimon (449). cimon acted as though he were about to reopen the campaign in egypt and despatched sixty of his triremes to king amyrtceus, while he himself took marion and blockaded kition with the rest of his forces. the siege dragged on; he was perhaps about to abandon it, when he took to his bed and died. those who succeeded him in the command were obliged to raise the blockade for want of provisions, but as they returned and were passing salamis, they fell in with the phoenician vessels which had just been landing the cilician troops, and defeated them; they then disembarked, and, as at mycale and eurymedon, they gained a second victory in the open field, after which they joined the squadron which had been sent to egypt, and sailed for athens with the dead body of their chief. they had once more averted the danger of an attack on the ægean, but that was all. the athenian statesmen had for some time past realised that it was impossible for them to sustain a double conflict, and fight the battles of greece against the common enemy, while half of the cities whose safety was secured by their heroic devotion were harassing them on the continent, but the influence of cimon had up till now encouraged them to persist; on the death of cimon, they gave up the attempt, and callias, one of their leaders, repaired in state to susa for the purpose of opening negotiations. the peace which was concluded on the occasion of this embassy might at first sight appear advantageous to their side. the persian king, without actually admitting his reverses, accepted their immediate consequences. he recognised the independence of the asiatic creeks, of those at least who belonged to the league of delos, and he promised that his armies on land should never advance further than three days� march from the ægean littoral. on the seas, he forbade his squadrons to enter hellenic waters from the chelidonian to the cyanæan rocks--that is, from the eastern point of lycia to the opening of the black sea: this prohibition did not apply to the merchant vessels of the contracting parties, and they received permission to traffic freely in each other�s waters--the phoenicians in greece, and the greeks in phonicia, cilicia, and egypt. and yet, when we consider the matter, athens and hellas were, of the two, the greater losers by this convention, which appeared to imply their superiority. not only did they acknowledge indirectly that they felt themselves unequal to the task of overthrowing the empire, but they laid down their arms before they had accomplished the comparatively restricted task which they had set themselves to perform, that of freeing all the greeks from the iranian yoke: their egyptian compatriots still remained persian tributaries, in company with the cities of cyrenaïca, pamphylia, and cilicia, and, above all, that island of cyprus in which they had gained some of their most signal triumphs. the persians, relieved from a war which for a quarter of a century had consumed their battalions and squadrons, drained their finances, and excited their subjects to revolt, were now free to regain their former wealth and perhaps their vigour, could they only find generals to command their troops and guide their politics. artaxerxes was incapable of directing this revival, and his inveterate weakness exposed him perpetually to the plotting of his satraps or to the intrigues of the women of his harem. the example of artabanus, followed by that of hystaspes, had shown how easy it was for an ambitious man to get rid secretly of a monarch or a prince and seriously endanger the crown. the members of the families who had placed darius on the throne, possessed by hereditary right, or something little short of it, the wealthiest and most populous provinces--babylonia, syria, lydia, phrygia, and the countries of the halys--and they were practically kings in all but name, in spite of the _surveillance_ which the general and the secretary were supposed to exercise over their actions. besides this, the indifference and incapacity of the ruling sovereigns had already tended to destroy the order of the administrative system so ably devised by darius: the satrap had, as a rule, absorbed the functions of a general within his own province, and the secretary was too insignificant a personage to retain authority and independence unless he received the constant support of the sovereign. the latter, a tool in the hands of women and eunuchs, usually felt himself powerless to deal with his great vassals. his toleration went to all lengths if he could thereby avoid a revolt; when this was inevitable, and the rebels were vanquished, he still continued to conciliate them, and in most cases their fiefs and rights were preserved or restored to them, the monarch knowing that he could rid himself of them treacherously by poison or the dagger in the case of their proving themselves too troublesome. megabyzos by his turbulence was a thorn in the side of artaxerxes during the half of his reign. he had ended his campaign in egypt by engaging to preserve the lives of inaros and the 6000 greeks who had capitulated at byblos, and, in spite of the anger of the king, he succeeded in keeping his word for five years, but at the end of that time the demands of amestris prevailed. she succeeded in obtaining from him some fifty greeks whom she beheaded, besides inaros himself, whom she impaled to avenge achæmenes. megabyzos, who had not recovered from the losses he had sustained in his last campaign against cimon, at first concealed his anger, but he asked permission to visit his syrian province, and no sooner did he reach it, than he resorted to hostilities. he defeated in succession usiris and menostates, the two generals despatched against him, and when force failed to overcome his obstinate resistance, the government condescended to treat with him, and swore to forget the past if he would consent to lay down arms. to this he agreed, and reappeared at court; but once there, his confidence nearly proved fatal to him. having been invited to take part in a hunt, he pierced with his javelin a lion which threatened to attack the king: artaxerxes called to mind an ancient law which punished by death any intervention of that kind, and he ordered that the culprit should be beheaded. megabyzos with difficulty escaped this punishment through the entreaties of amestris and of his wife amytis; but he was deprived of his fiefs, and sent to kyrta, on the shores of the persian gulf. after five years this exile became unbearable; he therefore spread the report that he was attacked by leprosy, and he returned home without any one venturing to hinder him, from fear of defiling themselves by contact with his person. amestris and amytis brought about his reconciliation with his sovereign; and thenceforward he regulated his conduct so successfully that the past was completely forgotten, and when he died, at the age of seventy-six years, artaxerxes deeply regretted his loss.* * these events are known to us only through ctesias. their date is uncertain, but there is no doubt that they occurred after cimon�s campaign in cyprus and the conclusion of the peace of callias. peace having been signed with athens, and the revolt of megabyzos being at an end, artaxerxes was free to enjoy himself without further care for the future, and to pass his time between his various capitals and palaces. [illustration: 258.jpg view of the achaemenian ruins of istakhr] drawn by boudier, from the engraving of flandin and coste. his choice lay between susa and persepolis, between ecbatana and babylon, according as the heat of the summer or the cold of the winter induced him to pass from the plains to the mountains, or from the latter to the plains. during his visits to babylon he occupied one of the old chaldæan palaces, but at ecbatana he possessed merely the ancient residence of the median kings, and the seraglio built or restored by xerxes in the fashion of the times: at susa and in persia proper, the royal buildings were entirely the work of the achæmenids, mostly that of darius and xerxes. the memory of cyrus and of the kings to whom primitive persia owed her organisation in the obscure century preceding her career of conquest, was piously preserved in the rude buildings of pasargadæ, which was regarded as a sacred city, whither the sovereigns repaired for coronation as soon as their predecessors had expired. but its lonely position and simple appointments no longer suited their luxurious and effeminate habits, and darius had in consequence fixed his residence a few miles to the south of it, near to the village, which after its development became the immense royal city of persepolis. he there erected buildings more suited to the splendour of his court, and found the place so much to his taste during his lifetime, that he was unwilling to leave it after death. he therefore caused his tomb to be cut in the steep limestone cliff which borders the plain about half a mile to the north-west of the town. it is an opening in the form of a greek cross, the upper part of which contains a bas-relief in which the king, standing in front of the altar, implores the help of ahura-mazdâ poised with extended wings above him; the platform on which the king stands is supported by two rows of caryatides in low relief, whose features and dress are characteristic of persian vassals, while other personages, in groups of three on either side, are shown in the attitude of prayer. below, in the transverse arms of the cross, is carved a flat portico with four columns, in the centre of which is the entrance to the funeral vault. within the latter, in receptacles hollowed out of the rock, darius and eight of his family were successively laid. xerxes caused a tomb in every way similar to be cut for himself near that of darius, and in the course of years others were added close by.* * the tomb of darius alone bears an inscription. darius iii. was also buried there by command of alexander. [illustration: 260.jpg the tomb of darius] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the heliogravure by marcel dieulafoy. both the tombs and the palace are built in that eclectic style which characterises the achæmenian period of iranian art. the main features are borrowed from the architecture of those nations which were vassals or neighbours of the empire--babylonia, egypt, and greece; but these various elements have been combined and modified in such a manner as to form a rich and harmonious whole. [illustration: 261.jpg the hill of the royal achaemenian tombs at nakush-i-rustem] drawn by boudier, from the engraving of flandin and coste. the core of the walls was of burnt bricks, similar to those employed in the euphrates valley, but these were covered with a facing of enamelled tiles, disposed as a skirting or a frieze, on which figured those wonderful processions of archers, and the lions which now adorn the louvre, while the pilasters at the angles, the columns, pillars, window-frames, and staircases were of fine white limestone or of hard bluish-grey marble. [illustration: 262.jpg one of the capitals from susa] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the louvre by faucher-gudin. [illustration: 262b.jpg freize of archers at suza] [illustration: 263.jpg general ruins of persipolis] the doorways are high and narrow; the moulding which frames them is formed of three ionic fillets, each projecting beyond the other, surmounted by a coved egyptian lintel springing from a row of alternate eggs and disks. the framing of the doors is bare, but the embrasures are covered with bas-reliefs representing various scenes in which the king is portrayed fulfilling his royal functions--engaged in struggles with evil genii which have the form of lions or fabulous animals, occupied in hunting, granting audiences, or making an entrance in state, shaded by an umbrella which is borne by a eunuch behind him. the columns employed in this style of architecture constitute its most original feature. the base of them usually consists of two mouldings, resting either on a square pedestal or on a cylindrical drum, widening out below into a bell-like curve, and sometimes ornamented with several rows of inverted leaves. the shafts, which have forty-eight perpendicular ribs cut on their outer surface, are perhaps rather tall in proportion to their thickness. they terminate in a group of large leaves, an evident imitation of the egyptian palm-leaf capital, from which spring a sort of rectangular fluted die or abacus, flanked on either side with four rows of volutes curved in opposite directions, generally two at the base and two at the summit. the heads and shoulders of two bulls, placed back to back, project above the volutes, and take the place of the usual abacus of the capital. the dimensions of these columns, their gracefulness, and the distance at which they were placed from one another, prove that they supported not a stone architrave, but enormous beams of wood, which were inserted between the napes of the bulls� necks, and upon which the joists of the roof were superimposed. the palace of persepolis, built by darius after he had crushed the revolts which took place at the outset of his reign, was situated at the foot of a chain of rugged mountains which skirt the plain on its eastern side, and was raised on an irregularly shaped platform or terrace, which was terminated by a wall of enormous polygonal blocks of masonry. the terrace was reached by a double flight of steps, the lateral walls of which are covered with bas-reliefs, representing processions of satellites, slaves, and tributaries, hunting scenes, fantastic episodes of battle, and lions fighting with and devouring bulls. the area of the raised platform was not of uniform level, and was laid out in gardens, in the midst of which rose the pavilions that served as dwelling-places. the reception-rooms were placed near the top of the flight of steps, and the more important of them had been built under the two preceding kings. those nearest to the edge of the platform were the propylæ of xerxes--gigantic entrances whose gateways were guarded on either side by winged bulls of assyrian type; beyond these was the _apadana_, or hall of honour, where the sovereign presided in state at the ordinary court ceremonies. to the east of the _apadana_, and almost in the centre of the raised terrace, rose the hall of a hundred columns, erected by darius, and used only on special occasions. artaxerxes i. seems to have had a particular affection for susa. it had found favour with his predecessors, and they had so frequently resided there, even after the building of persepolis, that it had continued to be regarded as the real capital of the empire by other nations, whereas the persian sovereigns themselves had sought to make it rather an impregnable retreat than a luxurious residence. artaxerxes built there an _apadana_ on a vaster scale than any hitherto designed. [illustration: 267.jpg the propylaea of xerxes i. at persepolis] drawn by boudier, from the heliogravure of marcel dieulafoy. it comprised three colonnades, which, taken together, formed a rectangle measuring 300 feet by 250 feet on the two sides, the area being approximately that of the courtyard of the louvre. the central colonnade, which was the largest of the three, was enclosed by walls on three sides, but was open to the south. immense festoons of drapery hung from the wooden entablature, and curtains, suspended from rods between the first row of columns, afforded protection from the sun and from the curiosity of the vulgar. [illustration: 268.jpg bas-relief of the staircase leading to the apadana of xerxes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from marcel dieulafoy. at the hour appointed for the ceremonies, the great king took his seat in solitary grandeur on the gilded throne of the achæmenids; at the extreme end of the colonnade his eunuchs, nobles, and guards ranged themselves in silence on either side, each in the place which etiquette assigned to him. meanwhile the foreign ambassadors who had been honoured by an invitation to the audience--greeks from thebes, sparta, or athens; sakae from the regions of the north; indians, arabs, nomad chiefs from mysterious ethiopia-ascended in procession the flights of steps which led from the town to the palace, bearing the presents destined for its royal master. [illustration: 269.jpg the king on his throne] drawn by faucher-gudin, from plandin and coste. having reached the terrace, the curtains of the _apadana_ were suddenly parted, and in the distance, through a vista of columns, they perceived a motionless figure, resplendent with gold and purple, before whom they fell prostrate with their faces to the earth. the heralds were the bearers of their greetings, and brought back to them a gracious or haughty reply, as the case may be. when they rose from the ground, the curtains had closed, the kingly vision was eclipsed, and the escort which had accompanied them into the palace conducted them back to the town, dazzled with the momentary glimpse of the spectacle vouchsafed to them. [illustration: 270.jpg a view of the apadana of susa, restored] drawn by boudier, from the restoration by marcel dieulafoy. the achæemenian monarchs were not regarded as gods or as sons of gods, like the egyptian pharaohs, and the persian religion forbade their ever becoming so, but the person of the king was hedged round with such ceremonial respect as in other oriental nations was paid only to the gods: this was but natural, for was he not a despot, who with a word or gesture could abase the noblest of his subjects, and determine the well-being or misery of his people? his dress differed from that of his nobles only by the purple dye of its material and the richness of the gold embroideries with which it was adorned, but he was distinguished from all others by the peculiar felt cap, or _kidaris_, which he wore, and the blue-and-white band which encircled it like a crown; the king is never represented without his long sceptre with pommelled handle, whether he be sitting or standing, and wherever he went he was attended by his umbrellaand fan-bearers. the prescriptions of court etiquette were such as to convince his subjects and persuade himself that he was sprung from a nobler race than that of any of his magnates, and that he was outside the pale of ordinary humanity. the greater part of his time was passed in privacy, where he was attended only by the eunuchs appointed to receive his orders; and these orders, once issued, were irrevocable, as was also the king�s word, however much he might desire to recall a promise once made. his meals were, as a rule, served to him alone; he might not walk on foot beyond the precincts of the palace, and he never showed himself in public except on horseback or in his chariot, surrounded by his servants and his guards. the male members of the royal family and those belonging to the six noble houses enjoyed the privilege of approaching the king at any hour of the day or night, provided he was not in the company of one of his wives. these privileged persons formed his council, which he convoked on important occasions, but all ordinary business was transacted by means of the scribes and inferior officials, on whom devolved the charge of the various departments of the government. a vigorous ruler, such as darius had proved himself, certainly trusted no one but himself to read the reports sent in by the satraps, the secretaries, and the generals, or to dictate the answers required by each; but xerxes and artaxerxes delegated the heaviest part of such business to their ministers, and they themselves only fulfilled such state functions as it was impossible to shirk--the public administration of justice, receptions of ambassadors or victorious generals, distributions of awards, annual sacrifices, and state banquets: they were even obliged, in accordance with an ancient and inviolable tradition, once a year to set aside their usual sober habits and drink to excess on the day of the feast of mithra. occasionally they would break through their normal routine of life to conduct in person some expedition of small importance, directed against one of the semi-independent tribes of iran, such as the cadusians, but their most glorious and frequent exploits were confined to the chase. they delighted to hunt the bull, the wild boar, the deer, the wild ass, and the hare, as the pharaohs or assyrian kings of old had done; and they would track the lion to his lair and engage him single-handed; in fact, they held a strict monopoly in such conflicts, a law which punished with death any huntsman who had the impertinence to interpose between the monarch and his prey being only abolished by artaxerxes. a crowd of menials, slaves, great nobles, and priests filled the palace; grooms, stool-bearers, umbrellaand fan-carriers, _havasses_, �immortals,� bakers, perfumers, soldiers, and artisans formed a retinue so numerous as to require a thousand bullocks, asses, and stags to be butchered every day for its maintenance; and when the king made a journey in full state, this enormous train looked like an army on the march. the women of the royal harem lived in seclusion in a separate wing of the palace, or in isolated buildings erected in the centre of the gardens. the legitimate wives of the sovereign were selected from the ladies of the royal house, the sisters or cousins of the king, and from the six princely persian families; but their number were never very large, usually three or four at most.* * cambyses had had three wives, including his two sisters atossa and roxana. darius had four wives--two daughters of cyrus, atossa and artystônê, parmys daughter of srnerdis, and a daughter of otanes. the concubines, on the other hand, were chosen from all classes of society, and were counted by hundreds. [illustration: 273.jpg processional display of tribute brought to the king of persia] drawn by faucher-gudin, from plates in flandin and coste. they sang or played on musical instruments at the state banquets of the court, they accompanied their master to the battle-field or the chase, and probably performed the various inferior domestic duties in the interior of the harem, such as spinning, weaving, making perfumes, and attending to the confectionery and cooking. each of the king�s wives had her own separate suite of apartments and special attendants, and occupied a much higher position than a mere concubine; but only one was actually queen and had the right to wear the crown, and this position belonged of right to a princess of achæ-menian race. thus atossa, daughter of cyrus, was queen successively to cambyses, gaumâta, and darius; amestris to xerxes; and damaspia to artaxerxes. besides the influence naturally exerted by the queen over the mind of her husband, she often acquired boundless authority in the empire, in spite of her secluded life.* * thus atossa induced darius to designate xerxes as his heir-apparent. her power was still further increased when she became a widow, if the new king happened to be one of her own sons. in such circumstances she retained the external attributes of royalty, sitting at the royal table whenever the king deigned to dine in the women�s apartments, and everywhere taking precedence of the young queen; she was attended by her own body of eunuchs, of whom, as well as of her private revenues, she had absolute control. those whom the queen-mother took under her protection escaped punishment, even though they richly deserved it, but the object of her hatred was doomed to perish in the end, either by poison treacherously administered, or by some horrible form of torture, being impaled, suffocated in ashes, tortured in the trough, or flayed alive. artaxerxes reigned for forty-two years, spending his time between the pleasures of the chase and the harem; no serious trouble disturbed his repose after his suppression of the revolt under megabyzos, but on his death in 424 b.c. there was a renewal of the intrigues and ambitious passions which had stained with bloodshed the opening years of his reign. the legitimate heir, xerxes ii., was assassinated, after a reign of forty-five days, by secudianus (sogdianus), one of his illegitimate brothers, and the _cortège_ which was escorting the bodies of his parents conveyed his also to the royal burying-place at persepolis. meanwhile secudianus became suspicious of another of his brothers, named ochus, whom artaxerxes had caused to marry parysatis, one of the daughters of xerxes, and whom he had set over the important province of hyrcania. ochus received repeated summonses to appear in his brother�s presence to pay him homage, and at last obeyed the mandate, but arrived at the head of an army. the persian nobility rose at his approach, and one by one the chief persons of the state declared themselves in his favour: first arbarius, commander of the cavalry; then arxanes, the satrap of egypt; and lastly, the eunuch artoxares, the ruler of armenia. these three all combined in urging ochus to assume the _edaris_ publicly, which he, with feigned reluctance, consented to do, and proceeded, at the suggestion of parysatis, to open negotiations with secudianus, offering to divide the regal power with him. secudianus accepted the offer, against the advice of his minister menostanes, and gave himself up into the hands of the rebels. he was immediately seized and cast into the ashes, where he perished miserably, after a reign of six months and fifteen days. on ascending the throne, ochus assumed the name of darius. his confidential advisers were three eunuchs, who ruled the empire in his name--artoxares, who had taken such a prominent part in the campaign which won him the crown, artibarzanes, and athôos; but the guiding spirit of his government was, in reality, his wife, the detestable parysatis. she had already borne him two children before she became queen; a daughter, amestris, and a son, arsaces, who afterwards became king under the name of artaxerxes. soon after the accession of her husband, she bore him a second son, whom she named cyrus, in memory of the founder of the empire, and a daughter, artostê; several other children were born subsequently, making thirteen in all, but these all died in childhood, except one named oxendras. violent, false, jealous, and passionately fond of the exercise of power, parysatis hesitated at no crime to rid herself of those who thwarted her schemes, even though they might be members of her own family; and, not content with putting them out of the way, she delighted in making them taste her hatred to the full, by subjecting them to the most skilfully graduated refinements of torture; she deservedly left behind her the reputation of being one of the most cruel of all the cruel queens, whose memory was a terror not only to the harems of persia, but to the whole of the eastern world. the numerous revolts which broke out soon after her husband�s accession, furnished occasions for the revelation of her perfidious cleverness. all the malcontents of the reign of artaxerxes, those who had been implicated in the murder of xerxes ii., or who had sided with secudianus, had rallied round a younger brother of darius, named arsites, and one of them, artyphios, son of megabyzos, took the field in asia minor. being supported by a large contingent of greek mercenaries, he won two successive victories at the opening of the campaign, but was subsequently defeated, though his forces still remained formidable. but persian gold accomplished what persian bravery had failed to achieve, and prevailed over the mercenaries so successfully that all deserted him with the exception of three milesians. [illustration: 276.jpg darius ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the coins in the _cabinet des médailles._ artyphios and arsites, thus discouraged, committed the imprudence of capitulating on condition of receiving a promise that their lives should be spared, and that they should be well treated; but parysatis persuaded her husband to break his plighted word, and they perished in the ashes. their miserable fate did not discourage the satrap of lydia, pissuthnes, who was of achæmenian race: he entered the lists in 418 b.c., with the help of the athenians. the relations between the persian empire and greece had continued fairly satisfactory since the peace of 449 b.c., and the few outbreaks which had taken place had not led to any widespread disturbance. the athenians, absorbed in their quarrel with sparta, preferred to close their eyes to all side issues, lest the persians should declare war against them, and the satraps of asia minor, fully alive to the situation, did not hesitate to take advantage of any pretext for recovering a part of the territory they coveted: it was thus that they had seized colophon about 430 b.c., and so secured once more a port on the ægean. darius despatched to oppose pissuthnes a man of noble birth, named tissaphernes, giving him plenary power throughout the whole of the peninsula, and tissaphernes endeavoured to obtain by treachery the success he would with difficulty have won on the field of battle: he corrupted by his darics lycon, the commander of the athenian contingent, and pissuthnes, suddenly abandoned by his best auxiliaries, was forced to surrender at discretion. he also was suffocated in the ashes, and darius bestowed his office on tissaphernes. but the punishment of pissuthnes did not put an end to the troubles: his son amorges roused caria to revolt, and with the title of king maintained his independence for some years longer. while these incidents were taking place, the news of the disasters in sicily reached the east: as soon as it was known in susa that athens had lost at syracuse the best part of her fleet and the choicest of her citizens, the moment was deemed favourable to violate the treaty and regain control of the whole of asia minor. two noteworthy men were at that time set over the western satrapies, tissaphernes ruling at sardes, and tiribazus over hellespontine phrygia. these satraps opened negotiations with sparta at the beginning of 412 b.c., and concluded a treaty with her at miletus itself, by the terms of which the peloponnesians recognised the suzerainty of darius over all the territory once held by his ancestors in asia, including the cities since incorporated into the athenian league. they hoped shortly to be strong enough to snatch from him what they now ceded, and to set free once more the greeks whom they thus condemned to servitude after half a century of independence, but their expectations were frustrated. the towns along the coast fell one after another into the power of tissaphernes, amorges was taken prisoner in lassos, and at the beginning of 411 b.c. there remained to the athenians in ionia and caria merely the two ports of halicarnassus and notium, and the three islands of cos, samos, and lesbos: from that time the power of the great king increased from year to year, and weighed heavily on the destinies of greece. meanwhile darius ii. was growing old, and intrigues with regard to the succession were set on foot. two of his sons put forward claims to the throne: arsaces had seniority in his favour, but had been born when his father was still a mere satrap; cyrus, on the contrary, had been born in the purple, and his mother parysatis was passionately devoted to him.* thanks to her manouvres, he was practically created viceroy of asia minor in 407 b.c., with such abundant resources of men and money at his disposal, that he was virtually an independent sovereign. while he was consolidating his power in the west, his mother endeavoured to secure his accession to the throne by intriguing at the court of the aged king; if her plans failed, cyrus was prepared to risk everything by an appeal to arms. * cyrus was certainly not more than seventeen years old in 407 b.c., evening admitting that he was born immediately after his father�s accession in 424-3 b.c. [illustration: 279.jpg cyrus the younger] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the coins in the _cabinet des médailles_. he realised that the greeks would prove powerful auxiliaries in such a contingency; and as soon as he had set up his court at sardes, he planned how best to conciliate their favour, or at least to win over those whose support was likely to be most valuable. athens, as a maritime power, was not in a position to support him in an enterprise which especially required the co-operation of a considerable force of heavily armed infantry. he therefore deliberately espoused the cause of the peloponnesians, and the support he gave them was not without its influence on the issue of the struggle: the terrible day of ægos potamos was a day of triumph for him as much as for the lacedaemonians (405 b.c.). his intimacy with lysander, however, his constant enlistments of mercenary troops, and his secret dealings with the neighbouring provinces, had already aroused suspicion, and the satraps placed under his orders, especially tissaphernes, accused him to the king of treason. darius summoned him to susa to explain his conduct (405 b.c.), and he arrived just in time to be present at his father�s death (404), but too late to obtain his designation as heir to the throne through the intervention of his mother, parysatis; arsaces inherited the crown, and assumed the name of artaxerxes. [illustration: 280.jpg artaxerxes mnemon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. this coin, which was struck at mallos, in cilicia, bears as a counter-mark the figure of a bull and the name of the city of issus. cyrus entered the temple of pasargadae surreptitiously during the coronation ceremony, with the intention of killing his brother at the foot of the altar; but tissaphernes, warned by one of the priests, denounced him, and he would have been put to death on the spot, had not his mother thrown her arms around him and prevented the executioner from fulfilling his office. having with difficulty obtained pardon and been sent back to his province, he collected thirty thousand greeks and a hundred thousand native troops, and, hastily leaving sardes (401 b.c.), he crossed asia minor, northern syria, and mesopotamia, encountered the royal army at cunaxa, to the north of babylon, and rashly met his end at the very moment of victory. he was a brave, active, and generous prince, endowed with all the virtues requisite to make a good oriental monarch, and he had, moreover, learnt, through contact with the greeks, to recognise the weak points of his own nation, and was fully determined to remedy them: his death, perhaps, was an irreparable misfortune for his country. had he survived and supplanted the feeble artaxerxes, it is quite possible that he might have confirmed and strengthened the power of persia, or, at least, temporarily have arrested its decline. having lost their leader, his asiatic followers at once dispersed; but the mercenaries did not lose heart, and, crossing asia and armenia, gained at length the shores of the black sea. up to that time the greeks had looked upon persia as a compact state, which they were sufficiently powerful to conquer by sea and hold in check by land, but which they could not, without imprudence, venture to attack within its own frontiers. the experience of the ten thousand was a proof to them that a handful of men, deprived of their proper generals, without guides, money, or provisions, might successfully oppose the overwhelming forces of the great king, and escape from his clutches without any serious difficulty. national discords prevented them from at once utilising the experience they thus acquired, but the lesson was not lost upon the court of susa. the success of lysander had been ensured by persian subsidies, and now sparta hesitated to fulfil the conditions of the treaty of miletus; the lacedæmonians demanded liberty once more for the former allies of athens, fostered the war in asia in order to enforce their claims, and their king agesilaus, penetrating to the very heart of phrygia, would have pressed still further forward in the tracks of the ten thousand, had not an opportune diversion been created in his rear by the bribery of the persians. athens once more flew to arms: her fleet, in conjunction with the phoenicians, took possession of cythera; the long walls were rebuilt at the expense of the great king, and sparta, recalled by these reverses to a realisation of her position, wisely abandoned her inclination for distant enterprises. asia minor was reconquered, and persia passed from the position of a national enemy to that of the friend and arbiter of greece; but she did so by force of circumstances only, and not from having merited in any way the supremacy she attained. her military energy, indeed, was far from being exhausted; but poor artaxerxes, bewildered by the rivalries between his mother and his wives, did not know how to make the most of the immense resources still at his disposal, and he met with repeated checks as soon as he came face to face with a nation and leaders who refused to stoop to treachery. he had no sooner recovered possession of the ægean littoral than egypt was snatched from his grasp by a new pharaoh who had arisen in the nile valley. the peace had not been seriously disturbed in egypt during the forty years which had elapsed since the defeat of inarus. satrap had peaceably succeeded satrap in the fortress of memphis; the exhaustion of libya had pre-vented any movement on the part of thannyras; the aged amyrtæus had passed from the scene, and his son, pausiris, bent his neck submissively to the persian yoke. more than once, however, unexpected outbursts had shown that the fires of rebellion were still smouldering. a psammetichus, who reigned about 445 b.c. in a corner of the delta, had dared to send corn and presents to the athenians, then at war with artaxerxes i., and the second year of darius ii. had been troubled by a sanguinary sedition, which, however, was easily suppressed by the governor then in power; finally, about 410 b.c., a king of egypt had, not without some show of evidence, laid himself open to the charge of sending a piratical expedition into phoenician waters, an arab king having contributed to the enterprise.* * the revolt mentioned by ctesias has nothing to do with the insurrection of the satrap of egypt which is here referred to, the date of which is furnished by the syncellus. it was easy to see, moreover, from periodical revolts--such as that of megabyzos in syria, those of artyphios and arsites, of pissuthnes and amorges in asia minor--with what impunity the wrath of the great king could be defied: it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that, about 405 b.c., an enemy should appear in the heart of the delta in the person of a grandson and namesake of amyrtæus. he did not at first rouse the whole country to revolt, for egyptian troops were still numbered in the army of artaxerxes at the battle of cunaxa in 401 b.c.; but he succeeded in establishing a regular native government, and struggled so resolutely against the foreign domination that the historians of the sacred colleges inscribed his name on the list of the pharaohs. he is there made to represent a whole dynasty, the xxviiith which lasted six years, coincident with the six years of his reign. it was due to a mendesian dynasty, however, whose founder was nephorites, that egypt obtained its entire freedom, and was raised once more to the rank of a nation. this dynasty from the very outset adopted the policy which had proved so successful in the case of the saites three centuries previously, and employed it with similar success. egypt had always been in the position of a besieged fortress, which needed, for its complete security, that its first lines of defence should be well in advance of its citadel: she must either possess syria or win her as an ally, if she desired to be protected against all chance of sudden invasion. nephorites and his successors, therefore, formed alliances beyond the isthmus, and even on the other side of the mediterranean, with cyprus, caria, and greece, in one case to purchase support, and in another to re-establish the ancient supremacy exercised by the theban pharaohs.* * this is, at any rate, the idea given of him by egyptian tradition in the time of the ptolemies, as results from a passage in the _demotic rhapsody_, where his reign is mentioned. every revolt against the persians, every quarrel among the satraps, helped forward their cause, since they compelled the great king to suspend his attacks against egypt altogether or to prosecute them at wide intervals: the egyptians therefore fomented such quarrels, or even, at need, provoked them, and played their game so well that for a long time they had to oppose only a fraction of the persian forces. like the saite pharaohs before them, they were aware how little reliance could be placed on native troops, and they recruited their armies at great expense from the european greeks. this occurred at the time when mercenary forces were taking the place of native levies throughout hellas, and war was developing into a lucrative trade for those who understood how to conduct it: adventurers, greedy for booty, flocked to the standards of the generals who enjoyed the best reputation for kindness or ability, and the generals themselves sold their services to the highest bidder. the persian kings took large advantage of this arrangement to procure troops: the pharaohs imitated their example, and in the years which followed, the most experienced captains, iphicrates, chabrias, and timotheus, passed from one camp to another, as often against the will as with the consent of their fatherland. the power of sparta was at her zenith when nephorites ascended the throne, and she was just preparing for her expedition to phrygia. the pharaoh concluded an alliance with the lacedomonians, and in 396 b.c. sent to agesilaus a fleet laden with arms, corn, and supplies, which, however, was intercepted by conon, who was at that moment cruising in the direction of rhodes in command of the persian squadron. this misadventure and the abrupt retreat of the spartans from asia minor cooled the good will of the egyptian king towards his allies. thinking that they had abandoned him, and that he was threatened with an imminent attack on the shore of the delta, he assembled, probably at pelusium, the forces he had apparently intended for a distant enterprise. matters took longer to come to a crisis than he had expected. the retreat of agesilaus had not pacified the ægean satrapies; after the disturbance created by cyrus the younger, the greater number of the native tribes--mysians, pisidians, people of pontus and paphlagonia--had shaken off the persian yoke, and it was a matter of no small difficulty to reduce them once more to subjection. their incessant turbulence gave egypt time to breathe and to organise new combinations. cyprus entered readily into her designs. since the subjugation of that island in 445 b.c., the greek cities had suffered terrible oppression at the hands of the great king. artaxerxes i., despairing of reducing them to obedience, depended exclusively for support on the phoenician inhabitants of the island, who, through his favour, regained so much vigour that in the space of less than two generations they had recovered most of the ground lost during the preceding centuries: semitic rulers replaced the achaean tyrants at salamis, and in most of the other cities, and citium became what it had been before the rise of salamis, the principal commercial centre in the island. evagoras, a descendant of the ancient kings, endeavoured to retrieve the grecian cause: after driving out of salamis abdemon, its tyrian ruler, he took possession of all the other towns except citium and amathus. this is not the place to recount the brilliant part played by evagoras, in conjunction with conon, during the campaigns against the spartans in the peloponnesian war. the activity he then displayed and the ambitious designs he revealed soon drew upon him the dislike of the persian governors and their sovereign; and from 391 b.c. he was at open war with persia. he would have been unable, single-handed, to maintain the struggle for any length of time, but egypt and greece were at his back, ready to support him with money or arms. hakoris had succeeded nephorites i. in 393 b.c.,* and had repulsed an attack of artaxerxes between 390 and 386.** * the length of the reign of nephorites i. is fixed at six years by the lists of manetho; the last-known date of his reign is that of his fourth year, on a mummy-bandage preserved in the louvre. ** this war is alluded to by several ancient authors in passages which have been brought together and explained by judeah; but unfortunately the detailed history of the events is not known. he was not unduly exalted by his success, and had immediately taken wise precautions in view of a second invasion. after safeguarding his western frontier by concluding a treaty with the libyans of barca, he entered into an alliance with evagoras and the athenians. [illustration: 287.jpg hakoris] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. he sent lavish gifts of corn to the cypriots, as well as munitions of war, ships, and money while athens sent them several thousand men under the command of chabrias; not only did an expedition despatched against them under autophradates fail miserably, but evagoras seized successively citium and amathus, and, actually venturing across the sea, took tyre by assault and devastated phoenicia and cilicia. the princes of asia minor were already preparing for revolt, and one of them, hecatomnus of caria, had openly joined the allies, when sparta suddenly opened negotiations with persia: antalcidas presented himself at susa to pay homage before the throne of the great king. the treaty of miletus had brought the efforts of athens to naught, and sold the asiatic greeks to their oppressors: the peace obtained by antalcidas effaced the results of salamis and platsæ, and laid european greece prostrate at the feet of her previously vanquished foes. an order issuing from the centre of persia commanded the cities of greece to suspend hostilities and respect each other�s liberties; the issuing of such an order was equivalent to treating them as vassals whose quarrels it is the function of the suzerain to repress, but they nevertheless complied with the command (387 b.c.), artaxerxes, relieved from anxiety for the moment, as to affairs on the ægean, was now free to send his best generals into the rebel countries, and such was the course his ministers recommended. evagoras was naturally the first to be attacked. cyprus was, in fact, an outpost of egypt; commanding as she did the approach by sea, she was in a position to cut the communications of any army, which, issuing from palestine, should march upon the delta. artaxerxes assembled three hundred thousand foot-soldiers and three hundred triremes under the command of tiribazus, and directed the whole force against the island. at first the cypriot cruisers intercepted the convoys which were bringing provisions for this large force, and by so doing reduced the invaders to such straits that sedition broke out in their camp; but evagoras was defeated at sea off the promontory of citium, and his squadron destroyed. he was not in any way discouraged by this misfortune, but leaving his son, pnytagoras, to hold the barbarian forces in check, he hastened to implore the help of the pharaoh (385 b.c.). but hakoris was too much occupied with securing his own immediate safety to risk anything in so desperate an enterprise. evagoras was able to bring back merely an insufficient subsidy; he shut himself up in salamis, and there maintained the conflict for some years longer. meanwhile hakoris, realising that the submission of cyprus would oppose his flank to attack, tried to effect a diversion in asia minor, and by entering into alliance with the pisidians, then in open insurrection, he procured for it a respite, of which he himself took advantage to prepare for the decisive struggle. the peace effected by antalcidas had left most of the mercenary soldiers of greece without employment. hakoris hired twenty thousand of them, and the phoenician admirals, still occupied in blockading the ports of cyprus, failed to intercept the vessels which brought him these reinforcements. it was fortunate for egypt that they did so, for the pharaoh died in 381 b.c., and his successors, psamuthis il, mutis, and nephorites il, each occupied the throne for a very short time, and the whole country was in confusion for rather more than two years (381-379 b.c.) during the settlement of the succession.* * hakoris reigned thirteen years, from 393 to 381 b.c. the reigns of the three succeeding kings occupied only two years and four months between them, from the end of 381 to the beginning of 378. muthes or mutis, who is not mentioned in all the lists of manetho, seems to have his counterpart in the _demotic rhapsody_. wiedemann has inverted the order usually adopted, and proposed the following series: nephorites i., muthes, psamuthis, hakoris, nephorites ii. the discovery at karnak of a small temple where psamuthis mentions hakoris as his predecessor shows that on this point at least manetho was well informed. the turbulent disposition of the great feudatory nobles, which had so frequently brought trouble upon previous pharaohs during the assyrian wars, was no less dangerous in this last century of egyptian independence; it caused the fall of the mendesian dynasty in the very face of the enemy, and the prince of sebennytos, nakht-har-habît, nectanebo i., was raised to the throne by the military faction. according to a tradition current in ptolemaic times, this sovereign was a son of nephorites i., who had been kept out of his heritage by the jealousy of the gods; whatever his origin, the people had no cause to repent of having accepted him as their king. he began his reign by suppressing the slender subsidies which evagoras had continued to receive from his predecessors, and this measure, if not generous, was at least politic. for cyprus was now virtually in the power of the persians, and the blockade of a few thousand men in salamis did not draught away a sufficiently large proportion of their effective force to be of any service to egypt: the money which had hitherto been devoted to the cypriots was henceforth reserved for the direct defence of the nile valley. evagoras obtained unexpectedly favourable conditions: artaxerxes conceded to him his title of king and the possession of his city (383 b.c.), and turned his whole attention to nectanebo, the last of his enemies who still held out. nectanebo had spared no pains in preparing effectively to receive his foe. he chose as his coadjutor the athenian chabrias, whose capacity as a general had been manifested by recent events, and the latter accepted this office although he had received no instructions from his government to do so, and had transformed the delta into an entrenched camp. he had fortified the most vulnerable points along the coast, had built towers at each of the mouths of the river to guard the entrance, and had selected the sites for his garrison fortresses so judiciously that they were kept up long after his time to protect the country. two of them are mentioned by name: one, situated below pelusium, called the castle of chabrias; the other, not far from lake mareotis, which was known as his township.* * both are mentioned by strabo; the exact sites of these two places are not yet identified. diodorus siculus, describing the defensive preparations of egypt, does not state expressly that they were the work of chabrias, but this fact seems to result from a general consideration of the context. [illustration: 291.jpg pharnabazus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. the persian generals endeavoured to make their means of attack proportionate to the defences of the enemy. acre was the only port in southern syria large enough to form the rendezvous for a fleet, where it might be secure from storms and surprises of the enemy. this was chosen as the persian headquarters, and formed the base of their operations. during three years they there accumulated supplies of food and military stores, phoenician and creek vessels, and both foreign and native troops. the rivalries between the military commanders, tithraustes, datâmes, and abrocomas, and the intrigues of the court, had on several occasions threatened the ruin of the enterprise, but pharnabazus, who from the outset had held supreme command, succeeded in ridding himself of his rivals, and in the spring of 374 b.c. was at length ready for the advance. the expedition consisted of two hundred thousand asiatic troops, and twenty thousand greeks, three hundred triremes, two hundred galleys of thirty oars, and numerous transports. superiority of numbers was on the side of the persians, and that just at the moment when nectanebo lost his most experienced general. artaxerxes had remonstrated with the athenians for permitting one of their generals to serve in egypt, in spite of their professed friendship for himself, and, besides insisting on his recall, had requested for himself the services of the celebrated iphicrates. the athenians complied with his demand, and while summoning chabrias to return to athens, despatched iphicrates to syria, where he was placed in command of the mercenary troops. pharnabazus ordered a general advance in may, 374 b.c.,* but when he arrived before pelusium, he perceived that he was not in a position to take the town by storm; not only had the fortifications been doubled, but the banks of the canals had been cut and the approaches inundated. iphicrates advised him not to persevere in attempting a regular siege: he contended that it would be more profitable to detach an expeditionary force towards some less well-protected point on the coast, and there to make a breach in the system of defence which protected the enemies� front. * as kenrick justly observes, �the persian and athenian generals committed the same mistake which led to the defeat of saint louis and the capture of his army in 1249 a.d., and which bonaparte avoided in his campaign of 1798.� anyhow, it seems that the fault must be laid on pharnabazus alone, and that iphicrates was entirely blameless. three thousand men were despatched with all secrecy to the mouth of the mendesian branch of the nile, and there disembarked unexpectedly before the forts which guarded the entrance. the garrison, having imprudently made a sortie in face of the enemy, was put to rout, and pursued so hotly that victors and vanquished entered pell-mell within the walls. [illustration: 293.jpg artaxerxes ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a silver stater in the _cabinet des médailles_. after this success victory was certain, if the persians pursued their advantage promptly and pushed forward straight into the heart of the delta; the moment was the more propitious for such a movement, since nectanebo had drained memphis of troops to protect his frontier. iphicrates, having obtained this information from one of the prisoners, advised pharnabazus to proceed up the nile with the fleet, and take the capital by storm before the enemy should have time to garrison it afresh; the persian general, however, considered the plan too hazardous, and preferred to wait until the entire army should have joined him. iphicrates offered to risk the adventure with his body of auxiliary troops only, but was suspected of harbouring some ambitious design, and was refused permission to advance. meanwhile these delays had given the egyptians time to recover from their first alarm; they boldly took the offensive, surrounded the position held by pharnabazus, and were victorious in several skirmishes. summer advanced, the nile rose more rapidly than usual, and soon the water encroached upon the land; the invaders were obliged to beat a retreat before it, and fall back towards syria. iphicrates, disgusted at the ineptitude and suspicion of his asiatic colleagues, returned secretly to greece: the remains of the army were soon after disbanded, and egypt once more breathed freely. the check received by the persian arms, however, was not sufficiently notorious to shake that species of supremacy which artaxerxes had exercised in greece since the peace of 387. sparta, thebes, and athens vied with each other in obtaining an alliance with him as keenly as if he had been successful before pelusium. antalcidas reappeared at susa in 372 b.c. to procure a fresh act of intervention; pelopidas and ismenias, in 367, begged for a rescript similar to that of antalcidas; and finally athens sent a solemn embassy to entreat for a subsidy. it seemed as if the great king had become a kind of supreme arbiter for greece, and that all the states hitherto leagued against him now came in turn to submit their mutual differences for his decision. but this arbiter who thus imposed his will on states beyond the borders of his empire was never fully master within his own domains. of gentle nature and pliant disposition, inclined to clemency rather than to severity, and, moreover, so lacking in judgment as a general that he had almost succumbed to an attack by the cadusians on the only occasion that he had, in a whim of the moment, undertaken the command of an army in person, artaxerxes busied himself with greater zeal in religious reforms than in military projects. he introduced the rites of mithra and anâhita into the established religion of the state, but he had not the energy necessary to curb the ambitions of his provincial governors. asia minor, whose revolts followed closely on those of egypt, rose in rebellion against him immediately after the campaign on the nile, ariobarzanes heading the rebellion in phrygia, datâmes and aspis that in cilicia and cappadocia, and both defying his power for several years. when at length they succumbed through treachery, the satraps of the mediterranean district, from the hellespont to the isthmus of suez, formed a coalition and simultaneously took the field: the break-up of the empire would have been complete had not persian darics been lavishly employed once more in the affair. meanwhile nectanebo had died in 361,* and had been succeeded by tachôs.** * the lists of manetho assign ten or eighteen years to his reign. a sarcophagus in vienna bears the date of his fifteenth year, and the great inscription of edfu speaks of gifts he made to the temple in this town in the eighteenth year of his reign. the reading eighteen is therefore preferable to the reading ten in the lists of manetho; if the very obscure text of the _demotic rhapsody_ really applies the number nine or ten to the length of the reign, this reckoning must be explained by some mystic calculations of the priests of the ptolemaic epoch. ** the name of this king, written by the greeks teôs or tachôs, in accordance with the pronunciation of different egyptian dialects, has been discovered in hieroglyphic writing on the external wall of the temple of khonsu at karnak. the new pharaoh deemed the occasion opportune to make a diversion against persia and to further secure his own safety: he therefore offered his support to the satraps, who sent eheomitres as a delegate to discuss the terms of an offensive and defensive alliance. having inherited from nectanebo a large fleet and a full treasury, tachôs entrusted to the ambassador 500 talents of silver, and gave him fifty ships, with which he cruised along the coast of asia minor towards leukê. his accomplices were awaiting him there, rejoicing at the success of his mission, but he himself had no confidence in the final issue of the struggle, and merely sought how he might enter once more into favour with the persian court; he therefore secured his safety by betraying his associates. he handed over the subsidies and the egyptian squadron to orontes, the satrap of daskylium, and then seizing the insurgent chiefs sent them in chains to susa. these acts of treachery changed the complexion of affairs; the league suddenly dissolved after the imprisonment of its leaders, and arta-xerxes re-established his authority over asia minor. [illustration: 296.jpg datames iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. egypt became once more the principal object of attack, and by the irony of fate pharaoh had himself contributed to enrich the coffers and reinforce the fleet of his foes. in spite of this mischance, however, circumstances were so much in his favour that he ventured to consider whether it would not be more advantageous to forestall the foe by attacking him, rather than passively to await an onslaught behind his own lines. he had sought the friendship of athens,* and, though it had not been granted in explicit terms, the republic had, nevertheless, permitted ghabrias to resume his former post at his side. * the memory of this embassy has been preserved for us by a decree of the athenian assembly, unfortunately much mutilated, which has been assigned to various dates between 362 and 358 b.c. m. paul foucart has shown that the date of the decree must be referred to one of three archon-ships- the archonship of callimedes, 360-59; that of eucharistus, 359-8; or that of cephisodotus, 358-7^ without entering into a discussion of the other evidence on the subject, it seems to me probable that the embassy may be most conveniently assigned to the archonship of callimedes, towards the end of 360 b.c., at the moment when chabrias had just arrived in egypt, and was certain to endeavour to secure the help of athens for the king he served. chabrias exhorted him to execute his project, and as he had not sufficient money to defray the expenses of a long campaign outside his own borders, the athenian general instructed him how he might procure the necessary funds. he suggested to him that, as the egyptian priests were wealthy, the sums of money annually assigned to them for the sacrifices and maintenance of the temples would be better employed in the service of the state, and counselled him to reduce or even to suppress most of the sacerdotal colleges. the priests secured their own safety by abandoning their personal property, and the king graciously deigned to accept their gifts, and then declared to them that in future, as long as the struggle against persia continued, he should exact from them nine-tenths of their sacred revenues. this tax would have sufficed for all requirements if it had been possible to collect it in full, but there is no doubt that very soon the priests must have discovered means of avoiding part of the payment, for it was necessary to resort to other expedients. chabrias advised that the poll and house taxes should be increased; that one obol should be exacted for each �ardeb� of corn sold, and a tithe levied on the produce of all ship-building yards, manufactories, and manual industries. money now poured into the treasury, but a difficulty arose which demanded immediate solution. egypt possessed very little specie, and the natives still employed barter in the ordinary transactions of life, while the foreign mercenaries refused to accept payment in kind or uncoined metal; they demanded good money as the price of their services. orders were issued to the natives to hand over to the royal exchequer all the gold and silver in their possession, whether wrought or in ingots, the state guaranteeing gradual repayment through the nomarchs from the future product of the poll-tax, and the bullion so obtained was converted into specie for the payment of the auxiliary troops. these measures, though winning some unpopularity for tachôs, enabled him to raise eighty thousand native troops and ten thousand greeks, to equip a fleet of two hundred vessels, and to engage the best generals of the period. his eagerness to secure the latter, however, was injurious to his cause. having already engaged chabrias and obtained the good will of athens, he desired also to gain the help of agesilaus and the favourable opinion of the lacedaemonians. though now eighty years old, agesilaus was still under the influence of cupidity and vanity; the promise of being placed in supreme command enticed him, and he set sail with one thousand hoplites. a disappointment awaited him at the moment of his disembarkation: tachôs gave him command of the mercenary troops only, reserving for himself the general direction of operations, and placing the whole fleet under the orders of chabrias. the aged hero, having vented his indignation by indulging a more than ordinary display of spartan rudeness, allowed himself to be appeased by abundant presents, and assumed the post assigned to him. but soon after a more serious subject of disagreement arose between him and his ally; agesilaus was disposed to think that tachôs should remain quietly on the banks of the nile, and leave to his generals the task of conducting the campaign. the ease with which mercenary leaders passed from one camp to the other, according to the fancy of the moment, was not calculated to inspire the egyptian pharaoh with confidence: he refused to comply with the wishes of agesilaus, and, entrusting the regency to one of his relatives, proceeded to invade syria. he found the persians unprepared: they shut themselves up in their strongholds, and the pharaoh confided to his cousin nectanebo, son of the regent, the task of dislodging them. the war dragged on for some time; discontent crept in among the native levies, and brought treachery in its train. the fiscal measures which had been adopted had exasperated the priests and the common people; complaints, at first only muttered in fear, found bold expression as soon as the expeditionary force had crossed the frontier. [illustration: 299.jpb nectanebo i] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. the regent secretly encouraged the malcontents, and wrote to his son warning him of what was going on, and advised him to seize the crown. nectanebo could easily have won over the egyptian troops to his cause, but their support would have proved useless as long as the greeks did not pronounce in his favour, and chabrias refused to break his oaths. agesilaus, however, was not troubled by the same scruples. his vanity had been sorely wounded by the pharaoh: after being denied the position which was, he fancied, his by right, his short stature, his ill-health, and native coarseness had exposed him to the unseemly mockery of the courtiers. tachôs, considering his ability had been over-estimated, applied to him, it is said, the fable of the mountain bringing forth a mouse; to which he had replied, �when opportunity offers, i will prove to him that i am the lion.� when tachôs requested him to bring the rebels to order, he answered ironically that he was there to help the egyptians, not to attack them; and before giving his support to either of the rival claimants, he should consult the ephors. the ephors enjoined him to act in accordance with the welfare of his country, and he thereupon took the side of nectanebo, despite the remonstrances of chabrias. tachôs, deserted by his veterans, fled to sidon, and thence to susa, where artaxerxes received him hospitably and without reproaching him (359 b.c.); but the news of his fall was not received on the banks of the nile with as much rejoicing as he had anticipated. the people had no faith in any revolution in which the greeks whom they detested took the chief part, and the feudal lords refused to acknowledge a sovereign whom they had not themselves chosen; they elected one of their number--the prince of mendes--to oppose nectanebo. the latter was obliged to abandon the possessions won by his predecessor, and return with his army to egypt: he there encountered the forces of his enemy, which, though as yet undisciplined, were both numerous and courageous. agesilaus counselled an immediate attack before these troops had time to become experienced in tactics, but he no longer stood well at court; the prince of mendes had endeavoured to corrupt him, and, though he had shown unexpected loyalty, many, nevertheless, suspected his good faith. nectanebo set up his headquarters at tanis, where he was shortly blockaded by his adversary. it is well known how skilfully the egyptians handled the pick-axe, and how rapidly they could construct walls of great strength; the circle of entrenchments was already near completion, and provisions were beginning to fail, when agesilaus received permission to attempt a sortie. he broke through the besieging lines under cover of the night, and some days later won a decisive victory (359 b.c.). nectanebo would now have gladly kept the spartan general at his side, for he was expecting a persian attack; but agesilaus, who had had enough of egypt and its intrigues, deserted his cause, and shortly afterwards died of exhaustion on the coast near cyrene. the anticipated persian invasion followed shortly after, but it was conducted without energy or decision. artaxerxes had entrusted the conduct of the expedition to tachôs, doubtless promising to reinstate him in his former power as satrap or vassal king of egypt, but tachôs died before he could even assume his post,* and the discords which rent the family of the persian king prevented the generals who replaced him from taking any effective action. * ælian narrates, probably following dinon, that tachôs died of dysentery due to over-indulgence at dinner. the aged artaxerxes had had, it was reported, one hundred and fifteen sons by the different women in his harem, but only three of those by his queen statira were now living--darius, ariaspes, and ochus. darius, the eldest of the three, had been formally recognised as heir-apparent--perhaps at the time of the disastrous war against the cadusians* --but the younger brother, ochus, who secretly aspired to the throne, had managed to inspire him with anxiety with regard to the succession, and incited him to put the aged king out of the way. contemporary historians, ill informed as to the intrigues in the palace, whose effects they noted without any attempt to explore their intricacies, invented several stories to account for the conduct of the young prince. some assigned as the reason of his conspiracy a romantic love-affair. they said that cyrus the younger had had an ionian mistress named aspasia, who, after the fatal battle of cunaxa, had been taken into the harem of the conqueror, and had captivated him by her beauty. darius conceived a violent passion for this damsel, and his father was at first inclined to give her up to him, but afterwards, repenting of his complaisance, consecrated her to the service of mithra, a cult which imposed on her the obligation of perpetual chastity. darius, exasperated by this treatment, began to contemplate measures of vengeance, but, being betrayed by his brother ochus, was put to death with his whole family.** * pompeius trogus asserts that such co-regencies were contrary to persian law; we have seen above that, on the contrary, they were obligatory when the sovereign was setting out on a campaign. ** this is the version of the story given by dinon and accepted by pompoius trogus. a chronological calculation easily demonstrates its unlikelihood. it follows from the evidence given by justin himself that artaxerxes died of grief soon after the execution of his son; but, on the other hand, that the battle of cunaxa took place in 400 b.c.: aspasia must then have been fifty or sixty years old when darius fell in love with her. by the removal of this first obstacle the crafty prince found himself only one step nearer success, for his brother ariaspes was acknowledged as heir-apparent: ochus therefore persuaded him that their father, convinced of the complicity of ariaspes in the plot imputed to darius, intended to put him to an ignominious death, and so worked upon him that he committed suicide to escape the executioner. a bastard named arsames, who might possibly have aspired to the crown, was assassinated by ochus. this last blow was too much for artaxerxes, and he died of grief after a reign of forty-six years (358 b.c.).* ochus, who immediately assumed the name of artaxerxes, began his reign by the customary massacre: he put to death all the princes of the royal family,** and having thus rid himself of all the rival claimants to the supreme power, he hastened on preparations for the war with egypt which had been interrupted by his father�s death and his own accession. * this is the length attributed by plutarch to this reign, and which is generally accepted. it was narrated in after days that the king kept the fact of his father�s death hidden for ten months, but it is impossible to tell how much truth there is in this statement, which was accepted by dinon. ** according to the author followed by pompeius trogus, the princesses themselves were involved in this massacre. this is certainly an exaggeration, for we shall shortly see that darius iii., the last king of persia, was accounted to be the grandson of darius ii.; the massacre can only have involved the direct heirs of artaxerxes. the necessity for restoring persian dominion on the banks of the nile was then more urgent than at any previous time. during the half-century which had elapsed since the recovery of her independence, egypt had been a perpetual source of serious embarrassment to the great king. the contemporaries of amyrtseus, whether greeks or barbarians, had at first thought that his revolt was nothing more than a local rising, like many a previous one which had lasted but a short time and had been promptly suppressed. but when it was perceived that the native dynasties had taken a hold upon the country, and had carried on a successful contest with persia, in spite of the immense disproportion in their respective resources; when not only the bravest soldiers of asia, but the best generals of greece, had miserably failed in their attacks on the frontier of the delta, phoenicia and syria began to think whether what was possible in africa might not also be possible in asia. from that time forward, whenever a satrap or vassal prince meditated revolt, it was to egypt that he turned as a natural ally, and from egypt he sought the means to carry out his project; however needy the pharaoh of that day might be, he was always able to procure for such a suitor sufficient money, munitions of war, ships, and men to enable him to make war against the empire. the attempt made by ochus failed, as all previous attempts had done: the two adventurers who commanded the forces of nectanebo, the athenian diophantes and lamius of sparta, inflicted a disastrous defeat on the imperial troops, and forced them to beat a hasty retreat. this defeat was all the more serious in its consequences because of the magnitude of the efforts which had been made: the king himself was in command of the troops, and had been obliged to turn his back precipitately on the foe. the syrian provinces, which had been in an unsettled condition ever since the invasion under tachôs, flew to arms; nine petty kings of cyprus, including evagoras ii., nephew of the famous prince of that name, refused to pay tribute, and artabazus roused asia minor to rebellion. the phoenicians still hesitated; but the insolence of their satrap, the rapacity of the generals who had been repulsed from egypt, and the lack of discipline in the persian army forced them to a decision. in a convention summoned at tripoli, the representatives of the phoenician cities conferred on tennes, king of sidon, the perilous honour of conducting the operations of the confederate army, and his first act was to destroy the royal villa in the lebanon, and his next to burn the provisions which had been accumulated in various ports in view of the egyptian war (351-350 b.c.). [illustration: 305.jpg evagoras ii. of salamis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. ochus imagined at the outset that his generals would soon suppress these rebellions, and, in fact, idrieus, tyrant of caria, supported by eight thousand mercenaries under the athenian phocion, overcame the petty tyrants of cyprus without much difficulty; but in asia minor, artabazus, supported by athens and thebes, held at bay the generals sent to oppose him, and tennes won a signal victory in syria. he turned for support to egypt, and nectanebo, as might be expected, put greek troops at his disposal to the number of four thousand, commanded by one of his best generals, mentor of ehodes: belesys, the satrap of syria, and mazseus, satrap of cilicia, suffered a total defeat. ochus, exasperated at their want of success, called out every available soldier, three hundred thousand asiatics and ten thousand greeks; the sidonians, on their side, dug a triple trench round their city, raised their ramparts, and set fire to their ships, to demonstrate their intention of holding out to the end. unfortunately, their king, tennes, was not a man of firm resolution. hitherto he had lived a life of self-indulgence, surrounded by the women of his harem, whom he had purchased at great cost in ionia and greece, and had made it the chief object of his ambition to surpass in magnificence the most ostentatious princes of cyprus, especially nicocles of salamis, son of evagoras. the approach of ochus confused his scanty wits; he endeavoured to wipe out his treachery towards his suzerain by the betrayal of his own subjects. he secretly despatched his confidential minister, a certain thessalion, to the persian camp, promising to betray sidon to the persian king, and to act as his guide into egypt on condition of having his life preserved and his royal rank guaranteed to him. ochus had already agreed to these conditions, when an impulse of vanity on his part nearly ruined the whole arrangement. thessalion, not unreasonably doubting the king�s good faith, had demanded that he should swear by his right hand to fulfil to the letter all the clauses of the treaty; whereupon ochus, whose dignity was offended by this insistence, gave orders for the execution of the ambassador. but as the latter was being dragged away, he cried out that the king could do as he liked, but that if he disdained the help of tennes, he would fail in his attacks both upon phonicia and egypt. these words produced a sudden reaction, and thessalion obtained all that he demanded. when the persians had arrived within a few days� march of sidon, tennes proclaimed that a general assembly of the phoenician deputies was to be held, and under pretext of escorting the hundred leading men of his city to the appointed place of meeting, led them into the enemy�s camp, where they were promptly despatched by the javelins of the soldiery. the sidonians, deserted by their king, were determined to carry on the struggle, in the expectation of receiving succour from egypt; but the persian darics had already found their way into the hands of the mercenary troops, and the general whom nectanebo had lent them, declared that his men considered the position desperate, and that he should surrender the city at the first summons. the sidonians thereupon found themselves reduced to the necessity of imploring the mercy of the conqueror, and five hundred of them set out to meet him as suppliants, carrying olive branches in their hands. bub ochus was the most cruel monarch who had ever reigned in persia--the only one, perhaps, who was really bloodthirsty by nature; he refused to listen to the entreaties of the suppliants, and, like the preceding hundred delegates, they were all slain. the remaining citizens, perceiving that they could not hope for pardon, barricaded themselves in their houses, to which they set fire with their own hands; forty thousand persons perished in the flames, and so great was the luxury in the appointments of the private houses, that large sums were paid for the right to dig for the gold and silver ornaments buried in the ruins. the destruction of the city was almost as complete as in the days of esarhaddon. when sidon had thus met her fate, the persians had no further reason for sparing its king, tennes, and he was delivered to the executioner; whereupon the other phoenician kings, terrified by his fate, opened their gates without a struggle. once more the treachery of a few traitors had disconcerted the plans of the pharaoh, and delivered the outposts of egypt into the hands of the enemy: but ochus renewed his preparations with marvellous tenacity, and resolved to neglect nothing which might contribute to his final success. his victories had confirmed the cities of the empire in their loyalty, and they vied with one another in endeavouring to win oblivion for their former hesitation by their present zeal: �what city, or what nation of asia did not send embassies to the sovereign? what wealth did they not lavish on him, whether the natural products of the soil, or the rare and precious productions of art? did he not receive a quantity of tapestry and woven hangings, some of purple, some of diverse colours, others of pure white? many gilded pavilions, completely furnished, and containing an abundant supply of linen and sumptuous beds? chased silver, wrought gold, cups and bowls, enriched with precious stones, or valuable for the perfection and richness of their work? he also received untold supplies of barbarian and grecian weapons, and still larger numbers of draught cattle and of sacrificial victims, bushels of preserved fruits, bales and sacks full of parchments or books, and all kinds of useful articles? so great was the quantity of salted meats which poured in from all sides, that from a distance the piles might readily be mistaken for rows of hillocks or high mounds.� the land-force was divided into three corps, each under a barbarian and a greek general. it advanced along the sea coast, following the ancient route pursued by the armies of the pharaohs, and as it skirted the marshes of sirbonis, some detachments, having imprudently ventured over the treacherous soil, perished to a man. when the main force arrived in safety before pelusium, it found nectanebo awaiting it behind his ramparts and marshes. he had fewer men than his adversary, his force numbering only six thousand egyptians, twenty thousand libyans, and the same number of greeks; but the remembrance of the successes won by himself and his predecessors with inferior numbers inspired him with confidence in the issue of the struggle. his fleet could not have ventured to meet in battle the combined squadrons of cyprus and phoenicia, but, on the other hand, he had a sufficient number of flat-bottomed boats to prevent any adversary from entering the mouths of the nile. the weak points along his mediterranean seaboard and eastern frontier were covered by strongholds, fortifications, and entrenched camps: in short, his plans were sufficiently well laid to ensure success in a defensive war, if the rash ardour of his greek mercenaries had not defeated his plans. five thousand of these troops were in occupation of pelusium, under command of philophrôn. some companies of thebans, who were serving under lacrates in the persian army, crossed a deep canal which separated them from the city, and provoked the garrison to risk an encounter in the open field. philophrôn, instead of treating their challenge with indifference, accepted it, and engaged in a combat which lasted till nightfall. on the following day, lacrates, having drawn off the waters of the canal and thrown a dyke across it, led his entire force up to the glacis of the fortifications, dug some trenches, and brought up a line of battering-rams. he would soon have effected a breach, but the egyptians understood how to use the spade as well as the lance, and while the outer wall was crumbling, they improvised behind it a second wall, crowned with wooden turrets. nectanebo, who had come up with thirty thousand native, five thousand greek troops, and half the libyan contingent, observed the vicissitudes of the siege from a short distance, and by his presence alone opposed the advance of the bulk of the persian army. weeks passed by, the time of the inundation was approaching, and it seemed as if this policy of delay would have its accustomed success, when an unforeseen incident decided in a moment the fate of egypt. among the officers of ochus was a certain nicostratus of argos, who on account of his prodigious strength was often compared to heracles, and who out of vanity dressed himself up in the traditional costume of that hero, the lion�s skin and the club. having imbibed, doubtless, the ideas formerly propounded by iphicrates, nicostratus forced some peasants, whose wives and children he had seized as hostages, to act as his guides, and made his way up one of the canals which traverse the marshes of menzaleh: there he disembarked his men in the rear of nectanebo, and took up a very strong position on the border of the cultivated land. this enterprise, undertaken with a very insufficient force, was an extremely rash one; if the egyptian generals had contented themselves with harassing nicostratus without venturing on engaging him in a pitched battle, they would speedily have forced him to re-embark or to lay down his arms. unfortunately, however, five thousand mercenaries, who formed the garrison of one of the neighbouring towns, hastened to attack him under the command of clinias of cos, and suffered a severe defeat. as a result, the gates of the town were thrown open to the enemy, and if the persians, encouraged by the success of this forlorn hope, had followed it up boldly, nectanebo would have run the risk of being cut off from his troops which were around pelusium, and of being subsequently crushed. he thought it wiser to retreat towards the apex of the delta, but this very act of prudence exposed him to one of those accidental misfortunes which are wont to occur in armies formed of very diverse elements. while he was concentrating his reserves at memphis, the troops of the first line thought that, by leaving them exposed to the assaults of the great king, he was deliberately sacrificing them. pelusium capitulated to lacrates; mentor of ehodes pushed forward and seized bubastis, and the other cities in the eastern portion of the delta, fearing to bring upon themselves the fate of sidon, opened their gates to the persians after a mere show of resistance. the forces which had collected at memphis thereupon disbanded, and nectanebo, ruined by these successive disasters, collected his treasures and fled to ethiopia. the successful issue of the rash enterprise of nicostratus had overthrown the empire of the pharaohs, and re-established the persian empire in its integrity (342 b.c.).* * the complete history of this war is related by diodorus siculus, who generally follows the narrative of theopompus. the chronology is still sufficiently uncertain to leave some doubt as to the exact date of each event; i have followed that arrangement which seems to accord best with the general history of the period. the following table may be drawn up of the last egyptian dynasties as far as they can be restored at present:-[illustration: 312.jpg table of the last egyptian dynasties] egypt had prospered under the strong rule of its last native pharaohs. every one of them, from amyrtous down to nectanebo, had done his best to efface all traces of the persian invasions and restore to the country the appearance which it had presented before the days of its servitude; even kings like psamutis and tachôs, whose reign had been of the briefest, had, like those who ruled for longer periods, constructed or beautified the monuments of the country. the thebaid was in this respect a special field of their labours. the island of philæ, exposed to the ceaseless attacks of the ethiopians, had been reduced to little more than a pile of ruins. [illustration: 313.jpg small temple of nectanebo, at the southern extremity of philae] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. nectanebo ii. erected a magnificent gate there, afterwards incorporated into the first pylon of the temple built by the ptolemies, and one at least of the buildings that still remain, the charming rectangular kiosk, the pillars of which, with their hathor capitals, rise above the southern extremity of the island and mark the spot at which the ethiopian pilgrims first set foot on the sacred territory of the bountiful isis. nectanebo i. restored the sanctuaries of nekhabît at el-kab, and of horus at edfu, in which latter place he has left an admirable naos which delights the modern traveller by its severe proportions and simplicity of ornament, while nectanebo ii. repaired the ancient temple of mînu at coptos; in short, without giving a detailed list of what was accomplished by each of these later pharaohs, it may be said that there are few important sites in the valley of the nile where some striking evidence of their activity may not still be discovered even after the lapse of so many centuries. [illustration: 314.jpg naos of nectanebo in the temple at edfu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. it will be sufficient to mention thebes, memphis, sebennytos, bubastis, pahabît, patumu, and tanis. nor did the theban oases, including that of amon himself, escape their zeal, for the few europeans who have visited them in modern times have observed their cartouches there. [illustration: 315.jpg great gate of nectanebo at karnak] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. moreover, in spite of the brief space of time within which they were carried out, the majority of these works betray no signs of haste or slipshod execution; the craftsmen employed on them seem to have preserved in their full integrity all the artistic traditions of earlier times, and were capable of producing masterpieces which will bear comparison with those of the golden age. the eastern gate, erected at karnak in the time of nectanebo ii., is in no way inferior either in purity of proportion or in the beauty of its carvings to what remains of the gates of amenôthes iii. [illustration: 316.jpg fragment of a naos of the time of nectanebo ii. in the bologna museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by flinders pétrie. the sarcophagus of nectanebo i. is carved and decorated with a perfection of skill which had never been surpassed in any age, and elsewhere, on all the monuments which bear the name of this monarch the hieroglyphics have been designed and carved with as much care as though each one of them had been a precious cameo.* * the sarcophagus was for a long time preserved near the mosque of ibn-tulun, and was credited with peculiar virtues by the superstitious inhabitants of cairo. the basalt torso of nectanebo ii., which attracts so much admiration in the bibliothèque nationale in paris for accuracy of proportion and delicacy of modelling, deserves to rank with the finest statues of the ancient empire. the men�s heads are veritable portraits, in which such details as a peculiar conformation of the skull, prominent cheekbones, deep-set eyes, sunken cheeks, or the modelling of the chin, have all been observed and reproduced with a fidelity and keenness of observation which we fail to find in such works of the earlier artists as have come down to us. these later sculptors display the same regard for truth in their treatment of animals, and their dog-headed divinities; their dogs, lions, and sphinxes will safely bear comparison with the most lifelike presentments of these creatures to be found among the remains of the memphite or theban eras. egypt was thus in the full tide of material prosperity when it again fell under the persian yoke, and might have become a source of inexhaustible wealth to ochus had he known how to secure acceptance of his rule, as darius, son of hystaspes, had done in the days of amasis. [illustration: 317.jpg one of the lions in the vatican] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by flinders pétrie. the violence of his temperament, however, impelled him to a course of pitiless oppression, and his favourite minister, the eunuch bagoas, seems to have done his best to stimulate his master�s natural cruelty. in the days when they felt themselves securely protected from his anger by their libyan and greek troops, the fellahîn had freely indulged in lampoons at the expense of their persian suzerain; they had compared him to typhon on account of his barbarity, and had nicknamed him �the ass,� this animal being in their eyes a type of everything that is vile. on his arrival at memphis, ochus gave orders that an ass should be installed in the temple of phtah, and have divine honours paid to it; he next had the bull apis slaughtered and served up at a set banquet which he gave to his friends on taking possession of the white wall. the sacred goat of mendes suffered the same fate as the apis, and doubtless none of the other sacred animals were spared. bagoas looted the temples in the most systematic way, despatched the sacred books to persia, razed the walls of the cities to the ground, and put every avowed partisan of the native dynasty to the sword. after these punitive measures had been carried out, ochus disbanded his mercenaries and returned to babylon, leaving pherendates in charge of the reconquered province.* * it seems that a part of the atrocities committed by ochus and bagoas soon came to be referred to the time of the �impure� and to that of cambyses. the downfall of egypt struck terror into the rebellious satraps who were in arms elsewhere. artabazus, who had kept asia minor in a ferment ever since the time of artaxerxes ii., gave up the struggle of his own accord and took refuge in macedonia. the petty kings of the cities on the shores of the hellespont and the ægean submitted themselves in order to regain favour, or if, like hermias of atarnasa, the friend of aristotle, they still resisted, they were taken prisoners and condemned to death. the success of ochus was a reality, but there was still much to be done before things were restored to the footing they had occupied before the crisis. we know enough of the course of events in the western provinces to realise the pitch of weakness to which the imbecility of darius ii. and his son artaxerxes ii. had reduced the empire of darius and xerxes, but it is quite certain that the disastrous effects of their misgovernment were not confined to the shores of the mediterranean, but were felt no less acutely in the eastern and central regions of the empire. there, as on the greek frontiers, the system built up at the cost of so much ingenuity by darius was gradually being broken down with each year that passed, and the central government could no longer make its power felt at the extremities of the empire save at irregular intervals, when its mandates were not intercepted or nullified in transmission. the functions of the �eyes� and �ears� of the king had degenerated into a mere meaningless formality, and were, more often than not, dispensed with altogether. the line of demarcation between the military and civil power had been obliterated: not only had the originally independent offices of satrap, general, and secretary ceased to exist in each separate province, but, in many instances, the satrap, after usurping the functions of his two colleagues, contrived to extend his jurisdiction till it included several provinces, thus establishing himself as a kind of viceroy. absorbed in disputes among themselves, or in conspiracies against the achsemenian dynasty, these officials had no time to look after the well-being of the districts under their control, and the various tribes and cities took advantage of this to break the ties of vassalage. to take asia minor alone, some of the petty kings of bithynia, paphlagonia, and certain districts of cappadocia or the mountainous parts of phrygia still paid their tribute intermittently, and only when compelled to do so; others, however, such as the pisidians, lycaonians, a part of the lycians, and some races of mount taurus, no longer dreamed of doing so. the three satrapies on the shores of the caspian, which a hundred years before had wedged themselves in between that sea and the euxine, were now dissolved, all trace of them being lost in a confused medley of kingdoms and small states, some of which were ready enough to acknowledge the supremacy of persia, while others, such as the gordiseans, taochi, chalybes, colchi, mosynoki, and tibarenians, obeyed no rule but their own. [illustration: 321.jpg map of the persian empire] all along the caspian, the cadusians and amardians, on either side of the chain of mountains bordering the iranian plateau, defied all the efforts made to subdue them.* india and the sakse had developed from the condition of subjects into that of friendly allies, and the savage hordes of gedrosia and the paropamisus refused to recognise any authority at all.** * they appear in the history of every epoch as the irreconcilable foes of the great king, enemies against whom even the most peacefully disposed sovereigns were compelled to take the field in person. ** the sakæ fought at arbela, but only as allies of the persians. the indians who are mentioned with them came from the neighbourhood of cabul; most of the races who had formerly figured in darius� satrapy of india had become independent by the time alexander penetrated into the basin of the indus. the whole empire needed to be reconquered and reorganised bit by bit if it was to exercise that influence in the world to which its immense size entitled it, and the question arose whether the elements of which it consisted would lend themselves to any permanent reorganisation or readjustment. the races of the ancient eastern world, or, at any rate, that portion of them which helped to make its history, either existed no longer or had sunk into their dotage. they had worn each other out in the centuries of their prime, chaldæans and assyrians fighting against cossæans or elamites, egyptians against ethiopians and against hittites, urartians, armæans, the peoples of lebanon and of damascus, the phoenicians, canaanites and jews, until at last, with impoverished blood and flagging energies, they were thrown into conflict with younger and more vigorous nations. the medes had swept away all that still remained of assyria and urartu; the persians had overthrown the medes, the lydians, and the chaldæans, till egypt alone remained and was struck down by them in her turn. what had become of these conquered nations during the period of nearly two hundred years that the achæmenians had ruled over them? first, as regards elam, one of the oldest and formerly the most powerful of them all. she had been rent into two halves, each of them destined to have a different fate. in the mountains, the uxians, mardians, elymasans, and cossæans--tribes who had formerly been the backbone of the nation--had relapsed into a semi-barbarous condition, or rather, while the rest of the world had progressed in civilization and refinement, they had remained in a state of stagnation, adhering obstinately to the customs of their palmy days: just as they had harried the chaldæans or assyrians in the olden times, so now they harried the persians; then, taking refuge in their rocky fastnesses, they lived on the proceeds of their forays, successfully resisting all attempts made to dislodge them. the people of the plains, on the other hand, kept in check from the outset by the presence of the court at susa, not only promptly resigned themselves to their fate, but even took pleasure in it, and came to look upon themselves as in some sort the masters of asia. was it not to their country, to the very spot occupied by the palace of their king, that, for nearly two hundred years, satraps, vassal kings, the legates of foreign races, ambassadors of greek republics--in a word, all the great ones of this world--came every year to render homage, and had not the treasures which these visitors brought with them been expended, in part at any rate, on their country? the memory of their former prosperity paled before the splendours of their new destiny, and the glory of their ancestors suffered eclipse. the names of the national kings, the story of their chaldæan and syrian conquests, the trophies of their victories over the great generals of nineveh, the horrors of their latest discords and of the final catastrophe were all forgotten; even the documents which might have helped to recall them lay buried in the heart of the mound which served as a foundation for the palace of the achgernenides. beyond the vague consciousness of a splendid past, the memory of the common people was a blank, and when questioned by strangers they could tell them nothing save legends of the gods or the exploits of mythical heroes; and from them the greeks borrowed their memnon, that son of tithonus and eôs who rushed to the aid of priam with his band of ethiopians, and whose prowess had failed to retard by a single day the downfall of troy. further northwards, the urartians and peoples of ancient naîri, less favoured by fortune, lost ground with each successive generation, yielding to the steady pressure of the armenians. in the time of herodotus they were still in possession of the upper basins of the euphrates and araxus, and, in conjunction with the matieni and saspires, formed a satrapy--the eighteenth--the boundaries of which coincided pretty closely with those of the kingdom ruled over by the last kings of van in the days of assur-bani-pal; the armenians, on their side, constituted the thirteenth satrapy, between mount taurus and the lower arsanias. [illustration: 325.jpg coins of the satraps with aramaean inscriptions] drawn by faucher-gudin, from coins in the _cabinet des médailles_ the whole face of their country had undergone a profound change since that time: the urartians, driven northwards, became intermingled with the tribes on the slopes of the caucasus, while the armenians, carried along towards the east, as though by some resistless current, were now scaling the mountainous bulwark of ararat, and slowly but surely encroaching on the lower plains of the araxes. these political changes had been almost completed by the time of ochus, and urartu had disappeared from the scene, but an armenia now flourished in the very region where urartu had once ruled, and its princes, who were related to the family of the achæmenides, wielded an authority little short of regal under the modest name of satraps. thanks to their influence, the religions and customs of iran were introduced into the eastern borders of asia minor. they made their way into the valleys of the iris and the halys, into cappadocia and the country round mount taurus, and thither they brought with them the official script of the empire, the persian and aramaean cuneiform which was employed in public documents, in inscriptions, and on coins. the centre of the peninsula remained very much the same as it had been in the period of the phrygian supremacy, but further westward hellenic influences gradually made themselves felt. [illustration: 326.jpg a lycian tomb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a woodcut in bonndorff. the arts of greece, its manners, religious ideals, and modes of thought, were slowly displacing civilisations of the asianic type, and even in places like lycia, where the language successfully withstood the greek invasion, the life of the nations, and especially of their rulers, became so deeply impregnated with hellenism as to differ but little from that in the cities on the ionic, æolian, or doric seaboard. the lycians still adhered to the ancient forms which characterised their funerary architecture, but it was to greek sculptors, or pupils from the grecian schools, that they entrusted the decoration of the sides of their sarcophagi and of their tombs. [illustration: 327b.jpg statue of mausolus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the british museum. [illustration: 327a.jpg coin of a lycian king] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a silver stater in the _cabinet des médailles._ the king in question was named deneveles, and is only known by the coins bearing his superscription. he flourished about 395 b.c. their kings minted coins many of which are reckoned among the masterpieces of antique engraving; and if we pass from lycia to the petty states of caria, we come upon one of the greatest triumphs of greek art--that huge mausoleum in which the inconsolable artemisia enclosed the ashes and erected the statue of her husband. the asia minor of egyptian times, with its old-world dynasties, its old-world names, and old-world races, had come to be nothing more than an historic memory; even that martial world, in which the assyrian conquerors fought so many battles from the euphrates to the black sea, was now no more, and its neighbours and enemies of former days had, for the most part, disappeared from the land of the living. [illustration: 328.jpg lycian sarcophagus decorated with greek carvings] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photogravure published by hamdy-beg and th. reinach. the lotanu were gone, the khâti were gone, and gone, too, were carchemish, arpad, and qodshu, much of th§ir domain having been swallowed up again by the desert for want of hands to water and till it; even assyria itself seemed but a shadow half shrouded in the mists of oblivion. sangara, nisibis, resaina, and edessa still showed some signs of vigour, but on quitting the slopes of the masios and proceeding southwards, piles of ruins alone marked the sites of those wealthy cities through which the ninevite monarchs had passed in their journeyings towards syria. here wide tracts of arid and treeless country were now to be seen covered with aromatic herbage, where the scenite arabs were wont to pursue the lion, wild ass, ostrich, bustard, antelope, and gazelle; a few abandoned forts, such as korsortê, anatho, and is (hit) marked the halting-places of armies on the banks of the euphrates. in the region of the tigris, the descendants of assyrian captives who, like the jews, had been set free by cyrus, had rebuilt assur, and had there grown wealthy by husbandry and commerce,* but in the district of the zab solitude reigned supreme.** calah and nineveh were alike deserted, and though their ruins still littered the sites where they had stood, their names were unknown in the neighbouring villages. xenophon, relying on his guides, calls the former place larissa, the second mespila.*** * this seems to be indicated by a mutilated passage in the _cylinder of gyrus_, where assur is mentioned in the list of towns and countries whose inhabitants were sent back to their homes by cyrus after the capture of babylon. xenophon calls it esense, this being, possibly, a translation of the name given to it by its inhabitants. nothing could be more natural than for exiles to call the villages founded by them on their return �new.� the town seems to have been a large and wealthy one. ** xenophon calls this country media, a desert region which the ten thousand took six days to cross. *** the name larissa is, possibly, a corruption of some name similar to that of the city of larsam in chaldæa; mespila may be a generic term. [mespila is muspula, �the low ground� at the foot of kouyunjik; larissa probably al resen or res-eni, between kouyunjik and nebi yunus.--ed.] already there were historians who took the ziggurât at nineveh to be the burial-place of sardanapalus. they declared that cyrus had pulled it down in order to strengthen his camp during the siege of the town, and that formerly it had borne an epitaph afterwards put into verse by the poet choerilus of iassus: �i reigned, and so long as i beheld the light of the sun, i ate, i drank, i loved, well knowing how brief is the life of man, and to how many vicissitudes it is liable.� many writers, remembering the assyrian monument at anchialê in cilicia, were inclined to place the king�s tomb there. it was surmounted by the statue of a man--according to one account, with his hands crossed upon his breast, according to another, in the act of snapping his fingers--and bore the following inscription in chaldaic letters: �i, sardanapalus, son of anakyndaraxes, founded anchialê and tarsus in one day, but now am dead.� thus ten centuries of conquests and massacre had passed away like a vapour, leaving nothing but a meagre residue of old men�s tales and moral axioms. in one respect only does the civilisation of the euphrates seem to have fairly held its own. cossæa, though it had lost its independence, had lost but little of its wealth; its former rebellions had done it no great injury, and its ancient cities were still left standing, though shorn of their early splendour. uru, it is true, numbered but few citizens round its tottering sanctuaries, but uruk maintained a school of theologians and astronomers no less famous throughout the east than those of borsippa. the swamps, however, which surrounded it possessed few attractions, and greek travellers rarely ventured thither. they generally stopped at babylon, or if they ventured off the beaten track, it was only to visit the monuments of nebuchadrezzar, or the tombs of the early kings in its immediate neighbourhood. babylon was, indeed, one of the capitals of the empire--nay, for more than half a century, during the closing years of artaxerxes i., in the reign of darius ii., and in the early days of artaxerxes il, it had been the real capital; even under ochus, the court spent the winter months there, and resorted thither in quest of those resources of industry and commerce which susa lacked. the material benefits due to the presence of the sovereign seem to have reconciled the city to its subject condition; there had been no seditious movement there since the ill-starred rising of shamasherîb, which xerxes had quelled with ruthless severity. the greek mercenaries or traders who visited it, though prepared for its huge size by general report, could not repress a feeling of astonishment as they approached it. first of all there was the triple wall of nebuchadrezzar, with its moats, its rows of towers, and its colossal gateways. unlike the greek cities, it had been laid out according to a regular plan, and formed a perfect square, inside which the streets crossed one another at right angles, some parallel to the euphrates, others at right angles to it; every one of the latter terminated in a brazen gate opening through the masonry of the quay, and giving access to the river. the passengers who crowded the streets included representatives of all the asiatic races, the native babylonians being recognisable by their graceful dress, consisting of a linen tunic falling to the feet, a fringed shawl, round cap, and heavy staff terminating in a knob. from this ever-changing background stood out many novel features calculated to stimulate greek curiosity, such as the sick persons exposed at street-corners in order that they might beg the passers-by to prescribe for them, the prostitution of her votaries within the courts of the goddess mylitta, and the disposal of marriageable girls by auction: herodotus, however, regretted that this latter custom had fallen into abeyance. and yet to the attentive eye of a close observer even babylon must have furnished many unmistakable symptoms of decay. the huge boundary wall enclosed too large an area for the population sheltered behind it; whole quarters were crumbling into heaps of ruins, and the flower and vegetable gardens were steadily encroaching on spaces formerly covered with houses. public buildings had suffered quite as much as private dwellings from the persian wars. xerxes had despoiled the temples, and no restoration had been attempted since his time. the ziggurât of bel lay half buried already beneath piles of rubbish; the golden statues which had once stood within its chambers had disappeared, and the priests no longer carried on their astronomical observations on its platform.* * herodotus merely mentions that xerxes had despoiled the temple; strabo tells us that alexander wished to restore it, but that it was in such a state of dilapidation that it would have taken ten thousand men two months merely to remove the rubbish. the palaces of the ancient kings were falling to pieces from lack of repairs, though the famous hanging gardens in the citadel were still shown to strangers. the guides, of course, gave them out to be a device of semiramis, but the well-informed knew that they had been constructed by nebuchadrezzar for one of his wives the daughter of oyaxares, who pined for the verdure of her native mountains. �they were square in shape, each side being four hundred feet long; one approached them by steps leading to terraces placed one above the other, the arrangement of the whole, resembling that of an amphitheatre. each terrace rested on pillars which, gradually increasing in size, supported the weight of the soil and its produce. the loftiest pillar attained a height of fifty feet; it reached to the upper part of the garden, its capital being on a level with the balustrades of the boundary wall. the terraces were covered with a layer of soil of sufficient depth for the roots of the largest trees; plants of all kinds that delight the eye by their shape or beauty were grown there. one of the columns was hollowed from top to bottom; it contained hydraulic engines which pumped up quantities of water, no part of the mechanism being visible from the outside.� many travellers were content to note down only such marvels as they considered likely to make their narratives more amusing, but others took pains to collect information of a more solid character, and before they had carried their researches very far, were at once astounded and delighted with the glimpses they obtained of chaldæan genius. no doubt, they exaggerated when they went so far as to maintain that all their learning came to them originally from babylon, and that the most famous scholars of greece, pherecydes of scyros, democritus of abdera, and pythagoras,* owed the rudiments of philosophy, mathematics, physics, and astrology to the school of the _magi_. * the story which asserts that pythagoras served under nergilos, king of assyria, is probably based on some similarity of names: thus among the greek kings of cyprus, and in the time of assur-bani-pal, we find one whose name would recall that of pythagoras, if the accuracy of the reading were beyond question. yet it is not surprising that they should have believed this to be the case, when increasing familiarity with the priestly seminaries revealed to them the existence of those libraries of clay tablets in which, side by side with theoretic treatises dating from two thousand years back and more, were to be found examples of applied mechanics, observations, reckonings, and novel solutions of problems, which generations of scribes had accumulated in the course of centuries. the greek astronomers took full advantage of these documents, but it was their astrologers and soothsayers who were specially indebted to them. the latter acknowledged their own inferiority the moment they came into contact with their euphratean colleagues, and endeavoured to make good their deficiencies by taking lessons from the latter or persuading them to migrate to greece. a hundred years later saw the babylonian berosus opening at cos a public school of divination by the stars. from thenceforward �chaldæan� came to be synonymous with �astrologer� or �sorcerer,� and chaldæan magic became supreme throughout the world at the very moment when chaldæa itself was in its death-throes. nor was its unquestioned supremacy in the black art the sole legacy that chaldæa bequeathed to the coming generations: its language survived, and reigned for centuries afterwards in the regions subjugated by its arms. the cultivated tongue employed by the scribes of nineve and babylon in the palmy days of their race, had long become a sort of literary dialect, used in writings of a lofty character and understood by a select few, but unintelligible to the common people. the populace in town or country talked an aramaic jargon, clumsier and more prolix than assyrian, but easier to understand. we know how successfully the aramæans had managed to push their way along the euphrates and into syria towards the close of the hittite supremacy: their successive encroachments had been favoured, first by the assyrian, later by the chaldæan conquests, and now they had become sole possessors of the ancient naharaîna, the plains of cilicia, the basin of the orontes, and the country round damascus; but the true home of the aramæans was in syria rather than in the districts of the lower euphrates. even in the time of the sargonids their alphabet had made so much headway that at nineveh itself and at calah it had come into everyday use; when chaldæan supremacy gave way to that of the persians, its triumph--in the western provinces, at any rate--was complete, and it became the recognised vehicle of the royal decrees: we come upon it in every direction, on the coins issued by the satraps of asia minor, on the seals of local governors or dynasts, on inscriptions or stelæ in egypt, in the letters of the scribes, and in the rescripts of the great king. from nisib to baphia, between the tigris and the mediterranean, it gradually supplanted most of the other dialects--semitic or otherwise--which had hitherto prevailed. phoenician held its ground in the seaports, but hebrew gave way before it, and ended by being restricted to religious purposes, as a literary and liturgical language. it was in the neighbourhood of babylon itself that the judæan exiles had, during the captivity, adopted the aramaic language, and their return to canaan failed to restore either the purity of their own language or the dignity and independence of their religious life. their colony at jerusalem possessed few resources; the wealthier hebrews had, for the most part, remained in chaldæa, leaving the privilege of repopulating the holy city to those of their brethren who were less plenteously endowed with this world�s goods. these latter soon learned to their cost that zion was not the ideal city whose �gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the wealth of the nations;� far from �sucking the milk of nations and the breast of kings,� * their fields produced barely sufficient to satisfy the more pressing needs of daily life. �ye have sown much, and bring in little,� as jahveh declared to them �ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.� ** * an anonymous prophet in isa. lx. 11-16. ** hagg. i. 6. they quickly relinquished the work of restoration, finding themselves forgotten by all--their babylonian brethren included--in the midst of the great events which were then agitating the world, the preparations for the conquest of egypt, the usurpation of the pseudo-smerdis, the accession of darius, the babylonian and median insurrections. possibly they believed that the achæmenides had had their day, and that a new chaldæan empire, with a second nebuchadrezzar at its head, was about to regain the ascendency. it would seem that the downfall of nadintav-bel inspired them with new faith in the future and encouraged them to complete their task: in the second year of darius, two prophets, haggai and zechariah, arose in their midst and lifted up their voices. [illustration: 337.jpg chaldean seal with aramaic inscription] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photogravure published in menant. zerubbabel, a prince of the royal line, governed judah in the persian interest, and with him was associated the high priest joshua, who looked after the spiritual interests of the community: the reproaches of the two prophets aroused the people from their inaction, and induced them to resume their interrupted building operations. darius, duly informed of what was going on by the governor of syria, gave orders that they were not to be interfered with, and four years later the building of the temple was completed.* * ezra iv.-vi.; the account given by josephus of the two expeditions of zerubbabel seems to have been borrowed partly from the canonical book, partly from the apocryphal writing known as the _1st book of esdras_. for nearly a century after this the little jewish republic remained quiescent. it had slowly developed until it had gradually won back a portion of the former territories of benjamin and judah, but its expansion southwards was checked by the idumæans, to whom nebuchadrezzar had years before handed over hebron and acrabattenê (akrabbim) as a reward for the services they had rendered. on the north its neighbours were the descendants of those aramaean exiles whom sargon, sennacherib, and esar-haddon, kings of assyria, had, on various occasions, installed around samaria in mount ephraim. at first these people paid no reverence to the �god of the land,� so that jahveh, in order to punish them, sent lions, which spread carnage in their ranks. then the king of assyria allotted them an israelitish priest from among his prisoners, who taught them �the law� of jahveh, and appointed other priests chosen from the people, and showed them how to offer up sacrifices on the ancient high places.* * kings xvii. 24-40. there do not seem to have been the continual disputes between the inhabitants of judaea and samaria before the return of nehemiah, which the compilers of the books of ezra and nehemiah seem to have believed. thus another israel began to rise up again, and, at first, the new judah seems to have been on tolerably friendly terms with it: the two communities traded and intermarried with one another, the samaritans took part in the religious ceremonies, and certain of their leaders occupied a court in the temple at jerusalem. the alliance, however, proved dangerous to the purity of the faith, for the proselytes, while they adopted jahveh and gave him that supreme place in their devotions which was due to �the god of the land,� had by no means entirely forsworn their national superstitions, and adrammelek, nergal, tartak, anammelek, and other deities still found worshippers among them. judah, which in the days of its independence had so often turned aside after the gods of canaan and moab, was in danger of being led away by the idolatrous practices of its new neighbours; intermarriage with the daughters of moab and ammon, of philistia and samaria, was producing a gradual degeneracy: the national language was giving way before the aramaean; unless some one could be found to stem the tide of decadence and help the people to remount the slope which they were descending, the fate of judah was certain. a prophet--the last of those whose predictions have survived to our time--stood forth amid the general laxity and called the people to account for their transgressions, in the name of the eternal, but his single voice, which seemed but a feeble echo of the great prophets of former ages, did not meet with a favourable hearing. salvation came at length from the jews outside judah, the naturalised citizens of babylon, a well-informed and wealthy body, occupying high places in the administration of the empire, and sometimes in the favour of the sovereign also, yet possessed by an ardent zeal for the religion of their fathers and a steadfast faith in the vitality of their race. one of these, a certain nehemiah, was employed as cupbearer to artaxerxes ii. he was visited at susa by some men of judah whose business had brought them to that city and inquired of them how matters fared in jerusalem. hanani, one of his visitors, replied that �the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.� nehemiah took advantage of a moment when the king seemed in a jovial mood to describe the wretched state of his native land in moving terms: he obtained leave to quit susa and authority to administer the city in which his fathers had dwelt.* * nehemiah i., ii. this took place in the twentieth year of artaxerxes, about 385 b.c. nehemiah at once made his way to jerusalem with such escort as befitted his dignity, and the news of his mission, and, apparently, the sentiments of rigid orthodoxy professed by him from the beginning, provoked the resentment of the neighbouring potentates against him: sanballat the horonite, tobiah the ammonite, chief of the samaritans, and geshem the bedâwin did their best to thwart him in the execution of his plans. he baffled their intrigues by his promptitude in rebuilding the walls, and when once he had rendered himself safe from any sudden attack, he proceeded with the reforms which he deemed urgent. his tenure of office lasted twelve years--from 384 to 373 b.c.--and during the whole of that time he refused to accept any of the dues to which he was entitled, and which his predecessors had received without scruple. ever since their return from exile, the common people had been impoverished and paralysed by usury. the poor had been compelled to mortgage their fields and their vineyards in order to pay the king�s taxes; then, when their land was gone, they had pledged their sons and their daughters; the moneyed classes of the new israel thus absorbed the property of their poorer brethren, and reduced the latter to slavery. nehemiah called the usurers before him and severely rebuking them for their covetousness, bade them surrender the interest and capital of existing debts, and restore the properties which had fallen into their hands owing to their shameful abuse of wealth, and release all those of their co-religionists whom they had enslaved in default of payment of their debts.* his high place in the royal favour doubtless had its effect on those whose cupidity suffered from his zeal, and prevented external enemies from too openly interfering in the affairs of the community: by the time he returned to the court, in 372 b.c., after an absence of twelve years, jerusalem and its environs had to some extent regained the material prosperity of former days. the part played by nehemiah was, however, mainly political, and the religious problem remained in very much the same state as before. the high priests, who alone possessed the power of solving it, had fallen in with the current that was carrying away the people, and--latterly, at any rate--had become disqualified through intermarriage with aliens: what was wanted was a scribe deeply versed in sacred things to direct them in the right way, and such a man could be found only in babylonia, the one country in which the study of the ancient traditions still flourished. a certain ezra, son of seraiah, presented himself in 369 b.c., and, as he was a man of some standing, artaxerxes not only authorised him to go himself, but to take with him a whole company of priests and lévites and families formerly attached to the service of the temple.** the books containing the law of god and the history of his people had, since the beginning of the captivity, undergone alterations which had profoundly modified their text and changed their spirit. * neh. v. ** neh. xiii. 6: �in the two and thirtieth year of artaxerxes, king of babylon, i went unto the king.� this work of revision, begun under the influence of ezekiel, and perhaps by his own followers, had, since his time, been carried on without interruption, and by mingling the juridical texts with narratives of the early ages collected from different sources, a lengthy work had been produced, very similar in composition and wording to the five books of moses and the book of joshua as we now possess them.* it was this version of the revelation of jahveh that ezra brought with him from babylon in order to instruct the people of judah, and the first impressions received by him at the end of his journey convinced him that his task would be no light one, for the number of mixed marriages had been so great as to demoralise not only the common people, but even the priests and leading nobles as well. nevertheless, at a general assembly** of the people he succeeded in persuading them to consent to the repudiation of alien wives. * this is the priestly revision presupposed by recent critics; here again, in order to keep within the prescribed limits of space, i have been compelled to omit much that i should have liked to add in regard to the nature of this work and the spirit in which it was carried out. ** ezra, vii.-xi., where the dates given do not form part of the work as written by ezra, but have been introduced later by the editor of the book as it now stands. but this preliminary success would have led to nothing unless he could secure formal recognition of the rigorous code of which he had constituted himself the champion, and protracted negotiations were necessary before he could claim a victory on this point as well as on the other. at length, about 367 b.c., more than a year after his arrival, he gained his point, and the covenant between jahveh and his people was sealed with ceremonies modelled on those which had attended the promulgation of deuteronomy in the time of josiah. on the first day of the seventh month, a little before the autumn festival, the people assembled at jerusalem in �the broad place which was before the water gate.� ezra mounted a wooden pulpit, and the chief among the priests sat beside him. he �opened the book in the sight of all the people... and... all the people stood up: and ezra blessed the lord, the great god. and all the people answered �amen, amen!� with the lifting up of their hands; and they bowed their heads and worshipped the lord with their faces to the ground.� then began the reading of the sacred text. as each clause was read, the lévites stationed here and there among the people interpreted and explained its provisions in the vulgar tongue, so as to make their meaning clear to all. the prolix enumeration of sins and their expiation, and threats expressed in certain chapters, produced among the crowd the same effect of nervous terror as had once before been called forth by the precepts and maledictions of deuteronomy. the people burst into tears, and so vehement were their manifestations of despair, that all the efforts of ezra and his colleagues were needed to calm them. ezra took advantage of this state of fervour to demand the immediate application of the divine ordinances. and first of all, it was �found written in the law, how that the lord had commanded by moses that the children of israel should dwell in booths.� for, seven days jerusalem was decked with leaves; tabernacles of olive, myrtle, and palm branches rose up on all sides, on the roofs of houses, in courtyards, in the courts of the temple, at the gates of the city. then, on the 27th day of the same month, the people put on mourning in order to confess their own sins and the sins of their fathers. finally, to crown the whole, ezra and his followers required the assembly to swear a solemn oath that they would respect �the law of moses,� and regulate their conduct by it.* after the first enthusiasm was passed, a reaction speedily set in. many even among the priests thought that ezra had gone too far in forbidding marriage with strangers, and that the increase of the tithes and sacrifices would lay too heavy a burden on the nation. the gentile women reappeared, the sabbath was no longer observed either by the israelites or aliens; eliashîb, son of the high priest joiakim, did not even deprive tobiah the ammonite of the chamber in the temple which he had formerly prepared for him, and things were almost imperceptibly drifting back into the same state as before the reformation, when nehemiah returned from susa towards the close of the reign of artaxerxes. he lost no time in re-establishing respect for the law, and from henceforward opposition, if it did not entirely die out, ceased to manifest itself in jerusalem.** * neh. viii., ix., with an interpolation in ver. 9 of chap, viii., inserted in order to identify nehemiah with the representative of the persian government. ** neh. xiii. elsewhere, however, among the samaritans, indumæans, and philistines, it continued as keen as ever, and the jews themselves were imprudent enough to take part in the political revolutions that were happening around them in their corner of the empire. their traditions tell how they were mixed up in the rising of the phoenician cities against ochus, and suffered the penalty; when sidon capitulated, they were punished with the other rebels, the more recalcitrant among them being deported into hyrcania. assyria was nothing more than a name, babylon and phoenicia were growing weaker every day; the jews, absorbed in questions of religious ethics, were deficient in material power, and had not as yet attained sufficient moral authority to exercise an influence over the eastern world: the egypt indestructible had alone escaped the general shipwreck, and seemed fated to survive her rivals for a long time. of all these ancient nations it was she who appealed most strongly to the imagination of the greeks: greek traders, mercenaries, scholars, and even tourists wandered freely within her borders, and accounts of the strange and marvellous things to be found there were published far and wide in the writings of hecataeus of miletus, herodotus of halicarnassus, and hellanicus of lesbos. as a rule, they entered the country from the west, as european tourists and merchants still do; but eakôtis, the first port at which they touched, was a mere village, and its rocky pharos had no claim to distinction beyond the fact that it had been mentioned by homer. from hence they followed the channel of the canopic arm, and as they gradually ascended, they had pointed out to them anthylla, arkandrupolis, and gyna> copolis, townships dependent on naucratis, lying along the banks, or situated some distance off on one of the minor canals; then naucratis itself, still a flourishing place, in spite of the rebellions in the delta and the suppressive measures of the persians. all this region seemed to them to be merely an extension of greece under the african sky: to their minds the real egypt began at sais, a few miles further eastwards. sais was full in memories of the xxvith dynasty; there they had pointed out to them the tombs of the pharaohs in the enclosure of nit, the audience hall in which psammetichus ii. received the deputation of the eleians, the prison where the unfortunate apries had languished after his defeat. the gateways of the temple of nit seemed colossal to eyes accustomed to the modest dimensions of most greek sanctuaries; these were, moreover, the first great monuments that the strangers had seen since they landed, and the novelty of their appearance had a good deal to do with the keenness of the impression produced. the goddess showed herself in hospitable guise to the visitors; she welcomed them all, greek or persian, at her festivals, and initiated them into several of her minor rites, without demanding from them anything beyond tolerance on certain points of doctrine. [illustration: 346.jpg fountain and school of the mother of little mohamad] her dual attributes as wielder of the bow and shuttle had inspired the greeks with the belief that she was identical with that one of their own goddesses who most nearly combined in her person this complex mingling of war and industry: in her they fountain and school of the mother of little mohammed worshipped the prototype of their own pallas. on the evening of the 17th day of thoth, herodotus saw the natives, rich and poor, placing on the fronts of their dwellings large flat lamps filled with a mixture of salt and oil which they kept alight all night in honour of osiris and of the dead.* * in my opinion it is not the festivals of athyr that are here referred to, but those of the month of thoth, when, as the inscriptions show, it was the practice to _light the new fire_, according to the ritual, after first extinguishing the fire of the previous year, not only in the temple of the god, but in all the houses of the city. he made his way into the dwelling of the ineffable god, and there, unobserved among the crowd, he witnessed scenes from the divine life represented by the priests on the lake by the light of torches, episodes of his passion, mourning, and resurrection. the priests did not disclose their subtler mysteries before barbarian eyes, nor did they teach the inner meaning of their dogmas, but the little they did allow him to discern filled the traveller with respect and wonder, recalling sometimes by their resemblance to them the mysteries in which he was accustomed to take part in his own country. then, as now, but little attention was paid to the towns in the centre and east of the delta; travellers endeavoured to visit one or two of them as types, and collected as much information as they could about the remainder. herodotus and his rivals attached little importance to those details of landscape which possess so much attraction for the modern tourist. they bestowed no more than a careless glance on the chapels scattered up and down the country like the mohammedan shrines at the present day, and the waters extending on all sides beneath the acacias and palm trees during the inundation, or the fellahin trotting along on their little asses beside the pools, did not strike them as being of sufficient interest to deserve passing mention in an account of their travels. [illustration: 348.jpg modern mohammedan shekhs tombs] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. they passed by the most picturesque villages with indifference, and it was only when they reached some great city, or came upon some exceptionally fine temple or eccentric deity, that their curiosity was aroused. mendes worshipped its patron god in the form of a live ram,* and bestowed on all members of the same species some share of the veneration it lavished on the divine animal. the inhabitants of atarbêkhis,** on the island of prosopitis, gave themselves up to the worship of the bull. * herodotus says that both the goats and the god were named mendes in egyptian, but he is here confusing ordinary goats with the special goat which was supposed to contain the soul of osiris. it was the latter that the egyptians named after the god himself, baînibdîduît, i.e. _the soul of the master of the city of diduît_. ** the old explanation of this name as the _city of hathor_ has been rightly rejected as inconsistent with one of the elementary rules of hieroglyphic grammar. the name, when properly divided into its three constituent parts, means literally _the castle of horus the sparrow-hawk, or hat-har baki_ when one of these animals died in the neighbourhood they buried it, leaving one horn above the earth in order to mark the spot, and once every year the boats of atarbêkhis made a tour round the island to collect the skeletons or decaying bodies, in order that they might be interred in a common burying-place. [illustration: 349.jpg part of the inundation in a palm grove] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. the people of busiris patronised a savage type of religion. during the festival of isis they gave themselves up to fierce conflicts, their fanatical fury even infecting strangers who chanced to be present. the carians also had hit upon a means of outdoing the extravagance of the natives themselves: like the shiite mohammedans of the present day at the festival of the hassanên, they slashed their faces with knives amidst shrieks and yells. at paprêmis a pitched battle formed part of the religious observances: it took place, however, under certain special conditions. on the evening of the festival of anhurît, as the sun went down, a number of priests performed a hasty sacrifice in the temple, while the remainder of the local priesthood stationed themselves at the gate armed with heavy cudgels. when the ceremony was over, the celebrants placed the statue of the god on a four-wheeled car as though about to take it away to some other locality, but their colleagues at the gate opposed its departure and barred the way. it was at this juncture that the faithful intervened; they burst in the door and set upon the priests with staves, the latter offering a stout resistance. the cudgels were heavy, the arms that wielded them lusty, and the fight lasted a long time, yet no one was ever killed in the fray--at least, so the priests averred--and i am at a loss to understand why herodotus, who was not a native of paprêmis, should have been so unkind as to doubt their testimony.* * the god whom the greeks identified with their ares was anhurît, as is proved by one of the leyden papyri. so, too, in modern times at cairo, it used to be affirmed that no mohammedan who submitted to the dôseh was ever seriously injured by the hoofs of the horse which trampled over the bodies extended on the ground. [illustration: 350.jpg ephemeral hovels of clay or dried bricks] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by haussoullier. it is nearly always in connection with some temple or religious festival that he refers to the towns of the delta, and, indeed, in most of the minor cities of egypt, just as in those of modern italy there is little to interest visitors except the religious monuments or ceremonies. herodotus went to tanis or mendes as we go to orvieto or loretto, to admire the buildings or pay our devotions at a famous shrine. more often than not the place was nothing in itself, consisting merely of a fortified enclosure, a few commonplace houses occupied by the wealthy inhabitants or by government officials, and on mounds of ancient _debris_, the accumulation of centuries, a number of ephemeral hovels built of clay, or dried bricks, divided into irregular blocks by winding alleys. the whole local interest was centred in the sanctuary and its inmates, human and divine. the traveller made his way in as best he could, went into ecstasies over the objects that were shown to him, and as soon as he had duly gone the rounds, set out for the next place on his list, deeming himself lucky if he happened to arrive during one of the annual fairs, such as that of bubastis, for instance. bands of pilgrims flocked in from all parts of egypt; the river craft were overflowing with men and women, who converted the journey into one long carnival. every time the vessel put in to land, the women rushed on shore, amid the din of castanets and flutes, and ran hither and thither challenging the women of the place with abuse to dance against them with uplifted garments. to the foreigners there was little to distinguish the festival of bastît from many other egyptian ceremonies of the kind; it consisted of a solemn procession, accompanied by the singing of hymns and playing of harps, dancing and sacrifices, but for weeks before and after it the town was transformed into one vast pleasure-ground. the people of bubastis took a certain pride in declaring that more wine was drunk in it during a single day than during the rest of the whole year. butô enjoyed exceptional popularity among the greeks in egypt. its patron goddess, the isis who took refuge amid the pools in a moving thicket of reeds and lotus, in order that she might protect her son horus from the jealousy of typhon, reminded them of the story of latona and the cycle of the delian legends; they, visited her in crowds, and her oracle became to most of them what that of delos was to their brethren in europe. at butô they found a great temple, similar to all egyptian temples, a shrine in which the statues of the goddess continued her mysterious existence, and, in the midst of the sacred lake, the little island of khemmis, which was said to float hither and thither upon the waters. herodotus did not venture to deny this absolutely, but states that he had never seen it change its position or even stir: perhaps his incredulity may have been quickened by the fact that this miracle had already been inquired into by hecatasus of miletus, an author who was his pet aversion. the priests of butô declared that their prophets had foretold everything that had happened for a long time past, and for each event they had a version which redounded to the credit of their goddess: she had shown pheron how he might recover his sight, had foretold how long the reign of mykerinos would last, had informed psammetichus that he would be saved by men of brass rising out of the sea, and had revealed to cambyses that he should die in a town named ecbatana. her priests had taken an active part in the revolt of khabbîsha against darius, and had lost a goodly portion of their treasure and endowments for their pains. they still retained their prestige, however, in spite of the underhand rivalry of the oracle of zeus ammon. the notaries of the libyan deity could bring forward miracles even more marvellous than those credited to the egyptian latona, and in the case of many of the revolutions which had taken place on the banks of the nile, a version of the legend in his honour was circulated side by side with the legends of butô. the latter city lay on the very outskirts of one of those regions which excited the greatest curiosity among travellers, the almost inaccessible bucolicum, where, it was said, no rebel ever failed to find a safe refuge from his alien pursuers. the egyptians of the marshes were a very courageous race, but savage, poor, and ill fed. they drank nothing but beer, and obtained their oil not from the olive, but from the castor-oil plant,* and having no corn, lived on the seeds or roots of the lotus, or even on the stalks of the papyrus, which they roasted or boiled. * it seems, moreover, that this custom was not confined to the delta; herodotus, in contrasting the custom of bucolicum with that of the rest of egypt, was evidently thinking of sais, memphis, and other great cities in which he had resided, where foreign olive oil obtained from greece or syria was generally used. fish was their staple article of food, and this they obtained in considerable quantity from lake menzaleh, the lagoons along the coast, and the canals or pools left by the inundation. but little was known of their villages or monuments, and probably they were not worth the trouble of a visit after those of the cities of the plain: endless stories were told of feats of brigandage and of the mysterious hiding-places which these localities offered to every outlaw, one of the most celebrated being the isle of elbô, where the blind anysis defied the power of ethiopia for thirty years, and in which the first amyrtasus found refuge. with the exception of a few merchants or adventurers who visited them with an eye to gain, most travellers coming from or returning to asia avoided their territory, and followed the military road along the pelusiac arm of the nile from pehisium to daphno or zalu, and from daphnæ or zalu to bubastis. a little below kerkasoron, near the apex of the delta, the pyramids stood out on the horizon, looking insignificant at first, but afterwards so lofty that, during the period of inundation, when the whole valley, from the mountains of arabia to those of libya, was nothing but one vast river, a vessel seemed to sail in their shadow for a long time before it reached their base. the traveller passed heliopolis on his left with its temple of the sun, next the supposed sources of the northern nile, the quarries of the red mountain, and then entering at length the nile itself, after a journey of some hours, came to anchor by the quays of memphis. to the greeks of that time, memphis was very much what cairo is to us, viz. the typical oriental city, the quintessence and chief representative of ancient egypt. in spite of the disasters which had overwhelmed it during the last few centuries, it was still a very beautiful city, ranking with babylon as one of the largest in the world. its religious festivals, especially those in honour of apis, attracted numberless pilgrims to it at certain seasons of the year, and hosts of foreigners, recruited from every imaginable race of the old continent, resorted to it for purposes of trade. most of the nationalities who frequented it had a special quarter, which was named after them; the phoenicians occupied the _tyrian camp_, the greeks and carians the _hellenic wall and carian wall_, and there were oaromemphites or hellenomemphites side by side with the native inhabitants. a persian garrison was stationed within the white wall, ready to execute the satrap�s orders in the event of rebellion, and could have held out for a long time even after the rest of the country had fallen into the hands of the insurgents. animals which one would scarcely have expected to find in the streets of a capital, such as cows, sheep, and goats, wandered about unheeded in the most crowded thoroughfares; for the common people, instead of living apart from their beasts, as the greeks did, stabled them in their own houses. nor was this the only custom which must have seemed strange in the eyes of a newly arrived visitor, for the egyptians might almost have been said to make a point of doing everything differently from other nation�s. the baker, seen at the kneading-trough inside his shop, worked the dough with his foot; on the other hand, the mason used no trowel in applying his mortar, and the poorer classes scraped up handfuls of mud mixed with dung when they had occasion to repair the walls of their hovels. in greece, even the very poorest retired to their houses and ate with closed doors; the egyptians felt no repugnance at eating and drinking in the open air, declaring that unbecoming and improper acts should be performed in secret, but seemly acts in public. the first blind alley they came to, a recess between two hovels, the doorstep of a house or temple, any of these seemed to them a perfectly natural place to dine in. their bill of fare was not a sumptuous one. a sort of flat pancake somewhat bitter in taste, and made--not of corn or barley--but of spelt, a little oil, an onion or a leek, with an occasional scrap of meat or poultry, washed down by a jug of beer or wine; there was nothing here to tempt the foreigner, and, besides, it would not have been thought right for him to invite himself. a greek who lived on the flesh of the cow was looked upon as unclean in the highest degree; no egyptian would have thought of using the same pot or knife with him, or of kissing him on the mouth by way of greeting. moreover, egyptian etiquette did not tolerate the same familiarities as the greek: two friends on catching sight of one another paused before they met, bowed, then clasped one another round the knees or pretended to do so. young people gave way to an old man, or, if seated, rose to let him pass. the traveller recalled the fact that the spartans behaved in the same way, and approved this mark of deference; but nothing in his home-life had prepared him for the sight of respectable women coming and going as they pleased, without escort and unveiled, carrying burdens on their shoulders (whereas the men carried them on their heads), going to market, keeping stalls or shops, while their husbands or fathers stayed comfortably at home, wove cloth, kneaded the potter�s clay or turned the wheel, and worked at their trades; no wonder that they were ready to believe that the man was the slave, and the wife the mistress of the family. some historians traced the origin of these customs back to osiris, others only as far as sesostris: sesostris was the last resource of greek historians when they got into difficulties. the city was crowded with monuments; there was the temple of the phoenician astarte, in which priests of syrian descent had celebrated the mysteries of the great goddess ever since the days of the xviiith dynasty; then there was the temple of râ, the temple of amon, the temple of tamu, the temple of bastît, and the temple of isis.* * this list is taken mainly from one of the mutilated letters found on the back of the _sallier papyrus_. the phoenician astarte, called a foreign aphrodite by herodotus, was regarded by the egyptians as a counterpart of bastît, lady of onkhtoui. the temple of phtah, as yet intact, provided the visitor with a spectacle scarcely less admirable than that offered by the temple of the theban amon at karnak. the kings had modified the original plan as each thought best, one adding obelisks or colossal statues, another a pylon, a third a pillared hall. completed in this way by the labours of a score of dynasties, it formed, as it were, a microcosm of egyptian history, in which each image, inscription and statue, aroused the attention of the curious. they naturally desired to learn who were the strangely dressed races shown struggling in a battle scene, the name of the king who had conquered them, and the reasons which had led him to construct this or that part of a monument, and there were plenty of busybodies ready to satisfy, as far as they could, the curiosity of visitors. interpreters were at hand who bartered such information as they possessed, and the modern traveller who has had occasion to employ the services of a dragoman will have no difficulty in estimating the value of intelligence thus hawked about in ancient times. priests of the lower class, doorkeepers and sacristans were trained to act as _ciceroni_, and knew the main outlines of the history of the temple in which they lived. menés planned it, moeris added the northern propylæ, ehampsinitus those on the west, psammetichus the south, asychis those on the east, the most noteworthy of them all. a native of memphis, born at the foot of the pyramids, had been familiar with the names of menés and cheops from childhood; he was consequently apt to attribute to them everything of importance achieved by the pharaohs of the old days. menés had built the temple, menés had founded the city, menés had created the soil on which the city stood, and preserved it from floods by his dykes. the thoughtful traveller would assent, for had he not himself observed the action of the mud; a day�s journey from the coast one could not let down a plummet without drawing it up covered with a blackish slime, a clear proof that the nile continued to gain upon the sea. menés, at all events, had really existed; but as to asychis, moris, proteus, pheron, and most of the characters glibly enumerated by herodotus, it would be labour lost to search for their names among the inscriptions; they are mere puppets of popular romance, some of their names, such as pirâui or pruti, being nothing more than epithets employed by the story-tellers to indicate in general terms the heroes of their tales. we can understand how strangers, placed at the mercy of their dragoman, were misled by this, and tempted to transform each title into a man, taking pruti and pirâui to be pharaoh proteus and pharaoh pheron, each of them celebrated for his fabulous exploits. the guides told herodotus, and herodotus retails to us, as sober historical facts, the remedy employed by this unhistorical pheron in order to recover his sight; the adventures of paris and helen at the court of proteus,* and the droll tricks played by a thief at the expense of the simple ehampsinitus. * some dragomans identified the helen of the homeric legend with the �foreign aphrodite� who had a temple in the tyrian quarter at memphis, and who was really a semitic divinity. [illustration: 359.jpg the step pyramid seen from the grove op palm trees to the north of saqqarah] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by haussoullier. the excursions made by the greek traveller in the environs of memphis were very similar to those taken by modern visitors to cairo: on the opposite bank of the nile there was heliopolis with its temple of râ, then there were the quarries of turah, which had been worked from time immemorial, yet never exhausted, and from which the monuments he had been admiring, and the very pyramids themselves had been taken stone by stone.* * these are �the quarries in the arabian mountain,� mentioned by herodotus without indication of the local name. the sphinx probably lay hidden beneath the sand, and the nearest pyramids, those at saqqarah, were held in small esteem by visitors;* they were told as they passed by that the step pyramid was the most ancient of all, having been erected by uenephes, one of the kings of the first dynasty, and they asked no further questions. * herodotus does not mention it, nor does any other writer of the greek period. their whole curiosity was reserved for the three giants at gizeh and their inmates, cheops, chephren, mykerinos, and the fair nitokris with the rosy cheeks. through all the country round, at heliopolis, and even in the fayum itself, they heard the same names that had been dinned into their ears at memphis; the whole of the monuments were made to fit into a single cycle of popular history, and what they learned at one place completed, or seemed to complete, what they had learned at another. i cannot tell whether many of them cared to stray much beyond lake moris: the repressive measures of ochus had, as it would appear, interrupted for a time the regular trade which, ever since the saite kings of the xxvith dynasty, had been carried on by the greeks with the oases, by way of abydos. a stranger who ventured as far as the thebaid would have found himself in the same plight as a european of the last century who undertook to reach the first cataract. their point of departure--memphis or cairo--was very much the same; their destinations--elephantine and assuan--differed but little. they employed the same means of transport, for, excepting the cut of the sails, the modern dahabeah is an exact counterpart of the pleasure and passenger boats shown on the monuments. lastly, they set out at the same time of year, in november or december, after the floods had subsided. the same length of time was required for the trip; it took a month to reach assuan from cairo if the wind-were favourable, and if only such stoppages were made as were strictly necessary for taking in fresh provisions. pococke, having left cairo on the 6th of december, 1737, about midday, was at akhmîm by the 17th. he set sail again on the 18th, stayed at thebes from the 13th of january, 1738, till the 17th, and finally moored at assuan on the evening of january 20th, making in all forty-five days, fourteen of which were spent at various stopping-places. if the diary of a greek excursionist or tourist had come down to us, we should probably find in it entries of a very similar kind.* the departure from memphis would take place in november or december; ten or twelve days later the traveller would find himself at panopolis;** from panopolis to elephantine, stopping at coptos and thebes, would take about a month, allowing time for a stay at thebes, and returning to memphis in february or march. * herodotus fixes twenty days for the voyage from sais to elephantine. this period of time must be probably correct, since at the present day dahabeahs constantly run from cairo to the second cataract and back in two months, including stoppages of ten days to a fortnight for seeing the monuments. the twenty days of herodotus represent the minimum duration of the voyage, without taking into account the stoppages and accidents which often delay sailing vessels on the nile. nine days, which herodotus gives as the time for reaching thebes, is not sufficient, if the voyage is undertaken in the usual way, stopping every evening for the night; but it would be possible if the navigation were uninterrupted day and night. this is now rarely done, but it might have been frequent in ancient times, especially in the service of the state. ** it would seem clear that herodotus stopped at panopolis and had communications with the people of the town. [panopolis or khemmis is the present ekhmîm.--tr.] [illustration: 362a.jpg long strings of laden vessels] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. the greater part of the time was employed in getting from one point to another, and the necessity of taking advantage of a favourable wind in going up the river, often obliged the travellers to neglect more than one interesting locality. [illustration: 302b.jpg the vast sheet of water in the midday heat] the greek was not so keenly alive to the picturesqueness of the scenes through which he passed as the modern visitor, and in the account of his travels he took no note of the long lines of laden boats going up or down stream, nor of the vast sheet of water glowing in the midday sun, nor of the mountains honeycombed with tombs and quarries, at the foot of which he would be sailing day after day. what interested him above all things was information with regard to the sources of the immense river itself, and the reasons for its periodic inundation, and, according to the mental attitude impressed on him by his education, he accepted the mythological solution offered by the natives, or he sought for a more natural one in the physical lore of his own _savants_: thus he was told that the nile took its rise at elephantine, between the two rocks called krôphi and môphi, and in showing them to him his informant would add that psammetichus i. had attempted to sound the depth of the river at this point, but had failed to fathom it. at the few places where the pilot of the barque put in to port, the population showed themselves unfriendly, and refused to hold any communication with the greeks. [illustration: 363.jpg the mountains honeycombed with tombs and quarries] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. the interpreters, who were almost all natives of the delta, were not always familiar with the people and customs of the said, and felt almost as completely foreign at thebes as did their employers. their office was confined to translating the information furnished by the inhabitants when the latter were sufficiently civilised to hold communication with the travellers. what most astonished herodotus at panopolis was the temple and the games held in honour, so he believed, of perseus, the son of danaë. these exercises terminated in an attempt to climb a regular �greasy pole� fixed in the ground, and strengthened right and left by three rows of stays attached to the mast at different heights; as for perseus, he was the ithyphallic god of the locality, mînu himself, one of whose epithets--pehresu, the runner--was confounded by the greek ear with the name of the hero. the dragomans, enlarging on this mistaken identity, imagined that the town was the birthplace of danaos and lyncseus; that perseus, returning from libya with the head of medusa, had gone out of his way to visit the cradle of his family, and that he had instituted the games in remembrance of his stay there. thebes had become the ghost of its former self; the persian governors had neglected the city, and its princesses and their ministers were so impoverished that they were unable to keep up its temples and palaces. herodotus scarcely mentions it, and we can hardly wonder at it: he had visited the still flourishing memphis, where the temples were cared for and were filled with worshippers. what had thebes to show him in the way of marvels which he had not already seen, and that, too, in a better state of preservation? his theban ciceroni also told him the same stories that he had heard in lower egypt, and he states that their information agreed in the main with that which he had received at memphis and heliopolis, which made it unnecessary to repeat it at length. two or three things only appeared to him worthy of mention. his admiration was first roused by the 360 statues of the high priests of amon which had already excited the wonder of his rival hecataeus; he noted that all these personages were, without exception, represented as mere men, each the son of another man, and he took the opportunity of ridiculing the vanity of his compatriots, who did not hesitate to inscribe the name of a god at the head of their genealogies, removed by some score of generations only from their own. on the other hand, the temple servitors related to him how two theban priestesses, carried off by the phoenicians and sold, one in libya and the other in greece, had set up the first oracles known in those two countries: herodotus thereupon remembered the story he had heard in epirus of two black doves which had flown away from thebes, one towards the oasis of ammon, the other in the direction of dodona; the latter had alighted on an old beech tree, and in a human voice had requested that a temple consecrated to zeus should be founded on the spot.* * this indicates a confusion in the minds of the egyptian dragomans with the two brooding birds of osiris, isis and nephthys, considered as _zarait_, that is to say, as two birds of a different species, according to the different traditions either vultures, rooks, or doves. herodotus is quite overcome with joy at the thought that greek divination could thus be directly traced to that of egypt, for like most of his contemporaries, he felt that the hellenic cult was ennobled by the fact of its being derived from the egyptian. the traveller on the nile had to turn homewards on reaching elephantine, as that was the station of the last persian garrison. nubia lay immediately beyond the cataract, and the ethiopians at times crossed the frontier and carried their raids as far as thebes. elephantine, like assuan at the present day, was the centre of a flourishing trade. here might be seen kushites from napata or meroë, negroes from the upper nile and the bahr el-ghazal, and ammonians, from all of whom the curious visitor might glean information while frequenting the bazaars. the cataract was navigable all the year round, and the natives in its vicinity enjoyed the privilege of piloting freight boats through its difficult channel. it took four days to pass through it, instead of the three, or even two, which suffice at the present day. above it, the nile spread out and resembled a lake dotted over with islands, several of which, such as phike and biggeh, contained celebrated temples, which were as much frequented by the ethiopians as by the egyptians. correctly speaking, it was not egypt herself that the greeks saw, but her external artistic aspect and the outward setting of egyptian civilisation. the vastness of her monuments, the splendour of her tombs, the pomp of her ceremonies, the dignity and variety of her religious formulas, attracted their curiosity and commanded their respect: the wisdom of the egyptians had passed into a proverb with them, as it had with the hebrews. but if they had penetrated behind the scenes, they would have been obliged to acknowledge that beneath this attractive exterior there was hopeless decay. as with all creatures when they have passed their prime, egypt had begun to grow old, and was daily losing her elasticity and energy. her spirit had sunk into a torpor, she had become unresponsive to her environment, and could no longer adapt herself to the form she had so easily acquired in her youth: it was as much as she could do to occupy fully the narrower limits to which she had been reduced, and to maintain those limits unbroken. the instinct which made her shrink from the intrusion of foreign customs and ideas, or even mere contact with nations of recent growth, was not the mere outcome of vanity. she realised that she maintained her integrity only by relying on the residue of her former solidarity and on the force of custom. the slightest disturbance of the equilibrium established among her members, instead of strengthening her, would have robbed her of the vigour she still possessed, and brought about her dissolution. [illustration: 367.jpg darius iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. she owed whatever activity she possessed to impulses imparted to her by the play of her ancient mechanism--a mechanism so stable in its action, and so ingeniously constructed, that it had still a reserve of power within it sufficient to keep the whole in motion for centuries, provided there was no attempt to introduce new wheels among the old. she had never been singularly distinguished for her military qualities; not that she was cowardly, and shrank from facing death, but because she lacked energy and enthusiasm for warlike enterprise. the tactics and armaments by which she had won her victories up to her prime, had at length become fetters which she was no longer inclined to shake off, and even if she was still able to breed a military caste, she was no longer able to produce armies fit to win battles without the aid of mercenaries. in order to be successful in the field, she had to associate with her own troops recruits from other countries--libyans, asiatics, and greeks, who served to turn the scale. the egyptians themselves formed a compact body in this case, and bearing down upon the enemy already engaged by the mercenaries, broke through his ranks by their sheer weight, or, if they could not accomplish this, they stood their ground bravely, taking to flight only when the vacancies in their ranks showed them that further resistance was impossible. the machinery of government, like the organisation of their armies, had become antiquated and degenerate. [illustration: 368.jpg an elephant armed for war] drawn by boudier, from a little terra-cotta group from myrrhina now in the louvre. this object dates from the time of the kings of pergamos, and the soldier round whom the elephant winds his trunk in order to dash him to the ground is a gaul of asia minor. the nobility were as turbulent as in former times, and the royal authority was as powerless now as of old to assert itself in the absence of external help, or when treason was afoot among the troops. religion alone maintained its ascendency, and began to assume to itself the loyalty once given to the pharaoh, and the devotion previously consecrated to the fatherland. the fellahîn had never fully realised the degradation involved in serving a stranger, and what they detested in the persian king was not exactly the fact that he was a persian. their national pride, indeed, always prompted them to devise some means of connecting the foreign monarch with their own solar line, and to transform an achæmenian king into a legitimate pharaoh. that which was especially odious to them in a cambyses or an ochus was the disdain which such sovereigns displayed for their religion, and the persecution to which they subjected the immortals. they accustomed themselves without serious repining to have no longer one of their own race upon the throne, and to behold their cities administered by asiatics, but they could not understand why the foreigner preferred his own gods, and would not admit amon, phtah, horus, and râ to the rank of supreme deities. ochus had, by his treatment of the apis and the other divine animals, put it out of his power ever to win their good will. his brutality had made an irreconcilable enemy of that state which alone gave signs of vitality among the nations of the decaying east. this was all the more to be regretted, since the persian empire, in spite of the accession of power which it had just manifested, was far from having regained the energy which had animated it, not perhaps in the time of darius, but at all events under the first xerxes. the army and the wealth of the country were doubtless still intact--an army and a revenue which, in spite of all losses, were still the largest in the world--but the valour of the troops was not proportionate to their number. the former prowess of the persians, medians, bactrians, and other tribes of iran showed no degeneracy: these nations still produced the same race of brave and hardy foot-soldiers, the same active and intrepid horsemen; but for a century past there had not been the improvements either in the armament of the troops or in the tactics of the generals which were necessary to bring them up to the standard of excellence of the greek army. the persian king placed great faith in extraordinary military machines. he believed in the efficacy of chariots armed with scythes; besides this, his relations with india had shown him what use his oriental neighbours made of elephants, and having determined to employ these animals, he had collected a whole corps of them, from which he. hoped great things. in spite of the addition of these novel recruits, it was not on the asiatic contingents that he chiefly relied in the event of war, but on the mercenaries who� were hired at great expense, and who formed the chief support of his power. from the time of artaxerxes ii. onwards, it was the greek hoplites and peltasts who had always decided the issue of the persian battles. the expeditions both by land and sea had been under the conduct of athenian or spartan generals--conon, chabrias, iphi-crates, agesilas, timotheus, and their pupils; and again also it was to the greeks--to the rhodian mentor and to, memnon--that ochus had owed his successes. the older nations--egypt, syria, chaldæa, and elam--had all had their day of supremacy; they had declined in the course of centuries, and assyria had for a short time united them under her rule. on the downfall of assyria, the iranians had succeeded to her heritage, and they had built up a single empire comprising all the states which had preceded them in western asia; but decadence had fallen upon them also, and when they had been masters for scarcely two short centuries, they were in their turn threatened with destruction. their rule continued to be universal, not by reason of its inherent vigour, but on account of the weakness of their subjects and neighbours, and a determined attack on any of the frontiers of the empire would doubtless have resulted in its overthrow. greece herself was too demoralised to cause darius any grave anxiety. not only had she renounced all intention of attacking the great king in his own domain, as in the days of the athenian hegemony, when she could impose her own conditions of peace, but her perpetual discords had yielded her an easy prey to persia, and were likely to do so more and more. the greek cities chose the great king as the arbiter in their quarrels; they vied with each other in obtaining his good will, his subsidies in men and vessels, and his darics: they armed or disarmed at his command, and the day seemed at hand when they would become a normal dependency of persia, little short of a regular satrapy like asiatic hellas. one chance of escape from such a fate remained to them--if one or other of them, or some neighbouring state, could acquire such an ascendency as to make it possible to unite what forces remained to them under one rule. macedonia in particular, having hitherto kept aloof from the general stream of politics, had at this juncture begun to shake off its lethargy, and had entered with energy into the hellenic concert under the auspices of its king, philip. bagoas recognised the danger which threatened his people in the person of this ambitious sovereign, and did not hesitate to give substantial support to the adversaries of the macedonian prince; chersobleptes of thrace and the town of perinthus receiving from him such succour as enabled them to repulse philip successfully (340). unfortunately, while bagoas was endeavouring to avert danger in this quarter, his rivals at court endeavoured to prejudice the mind of the king against him, and their intrigues were so successful that he found himself ere long condemned to the alternative of murdering his sovereign or perishing himself. he therefore poisoned ochus, to avoid being assassinated or put to the torture, and placed on the throne arses, the youngest of the king�s sons, while he caused the remaining royal children to be put to death (336).* egypt hailed this tragic end as a mark of the vengeance of the gods whom ochus had outraged. a report was spread that the eunuch was an egyptian, that he had taken part in the murder of the apis under fear of death, but that when he was sure of his own safety he had avenged the sacrilege. as soon as the poison had taken effect, it was said he ate a portion of the dead body and threw the remainder to the cats: he then collected the bones and made them into whistles and knife-handles.** * plutarch calls the successor of ochus oarses, which recalls the name which dinon gives to artaxerxes ii. diodorus says that bagoas destroyed the whole family of ochus, but he is mistaken. arrian mentions a son of ochus about 330, and several other members of the royal achæmenian race are known to have been living in the time of alexander. ** the body of the enemy thrown to the cats to be devoured is a detail added by the popular imagination, which crops up again in the tale of satni khâmois. ochus had astonished his contemporaries by the rapidity with which he had re-established the integrity of the empire; they were pleased to compare him with the heroes of his race, with cyrus, cambyses, and darius. but to exalt him to such a level said little for their moral or intellectual perceptions, since in spite of his victories he was merely a despot of the ordinary type; his tenacity degenerated into brutal obstinacy, his severity into cruelty, and if he obtained successes, they were due rather to his generals and his ministers than to his own ability. his son arses was at first content to be a docile instrument in the hands of bagoas; but when the desire for independence came to him with the habitual exercise of power, and he began to chafe at his bonds, the eunuch sacrificed him to his own personal safety, and took his life as he had done that of his father in the preceding year (336). so many murders following each other in rapid succession had considerably reduced the achsemenian family, and bagoas for a moment was puzzled where to find a king: he at length decided in favour of codomannos, who according to some was a great-grandson of darius ii., but according to others was not of the royal line, but had in his youth been employed as a courier. he had distinguished himself in the hostilities against the casduians, and had been nominated satrap of armenia by ochus as a reward for his bravery. he assumed at his accession the name of darius; brave, generous, clement, and possessed with an ardent desire to do right, he was in every way the superior of his immediate predecessors, and he deserved to have reigned at a time when the empire was less threatened. bagoas soon perceived that his new protégé, whose conduct he had reckoned on directing as he pleased, intended to govern for himself, and he therefore attempted to get rid of him; bagoas was, however, betrayed by his accomplices, and compelled to drink the poison which he had prepared for darius. these revolutions had distracted the attention of the court of susa from the events which were taking place on the shores of the ægean, and philip had taken advantage of them to carry into effect the designs against persia which he had been long meditating. after having been victorious against the greeks, he had despatched an army of ten thousand men into asia under the command of parmenion and attains (336). we may ask if it were not he who formed the project of universal conquest which was so soon to be associated with the name of his son alexander. he was for the moment content to excite revolt among the cities of the ægean littoral, and restore to them that liberty of which they had been deprived for nearly a century. he himself followed as soon as these lost children of greece had established themselves firmly in asia. the story of his assassination on the eve of his departure is well known (336), and of the difficulties which compelled alexander to suspend the execution of the plans which his father had made. darius attempted to make use of the respite thus afforded him by fortune; he adopted the usual policy of liberally bribing one part of greece to take up arms against macedonia--a method which was at first successful. while alexander was occupied in the destruction of thebes, the rhodian general memnon, to whom had been entrusted the defence of asia minor, forced the invaders to entrench themselves in the troad. if the persian fleet had made its appearance in good time, and had kept an active watch over the straits, the advance-guard of the macedonians would have succumbed to the enemy before the main body of the troops had succeeded in joining them in asia, and it was easy to foretell what would have been the fate of an enterprise inaugurated by such a disaster. persia, however, had not yet learnt to seize the crucial moment for action: her vessels were still arming when the enemy made their appearance on the european shore of hellespont, and alexander had ample time to embark and disembark the whole of his army without having to draw his sword from the scabbard. he was accompanied by about thirty thousand foot soldiers and four thousand five hundred horse; the finest troops commanded by the best generals of the time--parmenion, his two sons nikanor and philotas, crater, clitos, antigonus, and others whose names are familiar to us all; a larger force than memnon and his subordinates were able to bring up to oppose him, at all events at the opening of the campaign, during the preliminary operations which determined the success of the enterprise. the first years of the campaign seem like a review of the countries and nations which in bygone times had played the chief part in oriental history. an engagement at the fords of the granicus, only a few days after the crossing of the hellespont, placed asia minor at the mercy of the invader (334). mysia, lydia, caria, and lycia tendered their submission, miletus and halicarnassus being the only towns to offer any resistance. in the spring of 333, phrygia followed the general movement, in company with cappadocia and cilicia; these represented the hittite and asianic world, the last representatives of which thus escaped from the influences of the east and passed under the hellenic supremacy. [illustration: 376.jpg the battlefield of issus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by lortet. at the foot of the amanus, alexander came into conflict not only with the generals of darius, but with the great king himself. the amanus, and the part of the taurus which borders on the euphrates valley, had always constituted the line of demarcation between the domain of the races of the asianic peninsula and that of the semitic peoples. [illustration: 377.jpg a bas-relief on a sidonian sarcophagus] a second battle near the issus, at the entrance to the cilician gates, cleared the ground, and gave the conqueror time to receive the homage of the maritime provinces. both northern and coele-syria submitted to him from samosata to damascus. [illustration: 379.jpg the isthmus of tyre at the present day] drawn by boudier, from a sketch by lortet. the less important towns of phonicia, such as arvad, byblos, sidon, and those of cyprus, followed their example; but tyre closed its gates, and trusted to its insular position for the preservation of its independence, as it had done of old in the time of sennacherib and of nebuchadrezzar. it was not so much a scrupulous feeling of loyalty which emboldened her to take this step, as a keen realisation of what her conquest by the macedonian would entail. it was entirely-owing to persia that she had not succumbed in all parts of the eastern mediterranean in that struggle with greece which had now lasted for centuries: persia had not only arrested the progress of hellenic colonisation in cyprus, but had given a fresh impulse to that of tyre, and phoenician influence had regained its ascendency over a considerable part of the island. the surrender of tyre, therefore, would be equivalent to a greek victory, and would bring about the decay of the city; hence its inhabitants preferred hostilities, and they were prolonged in desperation over a period of seven months. at the end of that time alexander succeeded in reducing the place by constructing a dyke or causeway, by means of which he brought his machines of war up to the foot of the ramparts, and filled in the channel which separated the town from the mainland; the island thus became a peninsula, and tyre henceforth was reduced to the rank of an ordinary town, still able to maintain her commercial activity, but having lost her power as an independent state (332). phoenicia being thus brought into subjection, judæa and samaria yielded to the conqueror without striking a blow, though the fortress of gaza followed the example set by tyre, and for the space of two months blocked the way to the delta. egypt revolted at the approach of her liberator, and the rising was so unanimous as to dismay the satrap mazakes, who capitulated at the first summons. alexander passed the winter on the banks of the nile. finding that the ancient capitals of the country--thebes, sais, and even memphis itself--occupied positions which were no longer suited to the exigencies of the times, he founded opposite to the island of pharos, in the township of eakotis, a city to which he gave his own name. the rapid growth of the prosperity of alexandria showed how happy the founder had been in the choice of its site: in less than half a century from the date of its foundation, it had eclipsed all the other capitals of the eastern mediterranean, and had become the centre of african hellenism. while its construction was in progress, alexander, having had opportunities of studying the peculiarities and characteristics of the egyptians, had decided to perform the one act which would conciliate the good feeling of the natives, and secure for him their fidelity during his wars in the east: he selected from among their gods the one who was also revered by the greeks, zeus-amnion, and repaired to the oasis that he might be adopted by the deity. as a son of the god, he became a legitimate pharaoh, an egyptian like themselves, and on returning to memphis he no longer hesitated to adopt the _pschent_ crown with the accompanying ancient rites. he returned to asia early in the year 331, and crossed the euphrates. darius had attempted to wrest asia minor from his grasp, but antigonus, the governor of phrygia, had dispersed the troops despatched for this purpose in 332, and alexander was able to push forward fearlessly into those regions beyond the euphrates, where the ten thousand had pursued their victorious march before him. he crossed the tigris about the 20th of september, and a week later fell in with his rival in the very heart of assyria, not far from, the village of gaugamela, where he took up a position which had been previously studied, and was particularly suited for the evolutions of cavalry. [illustration: 382.jpg the battle of arbela, from the mosaic of herculanum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. at the granicus and near issus, the greek element had played an important part among the forces which contested the field; on this occasion, however, the great king was accompanied by merely two or three thousand mercenaries, while, on the other hand, the whole of asia seemed to have roused herself for a last effort, and brought forward her most valiant troops to oppose the disciplined ranks of the macedonians. persians, susians, medes, armenians, iranians from bactriana, sakae, and indians were all in readiness to do their best, and were accompanied by every instrument of military warfare employed in oriental tactics; chariots armed with scythes, the last descendants of the chariotry which had dominated all the battle-fields from the time of the xviiith theban dynasty down to the latest sargonids, and, employed side by side with these relics of a bygone day, were indian elephants, now for the first time brought into use against european battalions. these picked troops sold their lives dearly, but the perfection of the macedonian arms, and, above all, the superiority of the tactics employed by their generals, carried the day; the evening of the 30th of september found darius in flight, and the achæmenian empire crushed by the furious charges of alexander�s squadrons. babylon fell into their hands a few days later, followed by susa, and in the spring of 330, ecbatana; and shortly after darius met his end on the way to media, assassinated by the last of his generals. with his death, persia sank back into the obscurity from which cyrus had raised her rather more than two centuries previously. with the exception of the medes, none of the nations which had exercised the hegemony of the east before her time, not even assyria, had had at their disposal such a wealth of resources and had left behind them so few traces of their power. a dozen or so of palaces, as many tombs, a few scattered altars and stelæ, remains of epics preserved by the greeks, fragments of religious books, often remodelled, and issuing in the avesta--when we have reckoned up all that remains to us of her, what do we find to compare in interest and in extent with the monuments and wealth of writings bequeathed to us by egypt and chaldæa? the iranians received oriental civilisation at a time when the latter was in its decline, and caught the spirit of decadence in their contact with it. in succeeding to the patrimony of the nations they conquered, they also inherited their weakness; in a few years they had lost all the vigour of their youth, and were barely able to maintain the integrity of the empire they had founded. moreover, the great peoples to whom they succeeded, although lacking the vigour necessary for the continuance of their independent existence, had not yet sunk so low as to acquiesce in their own decay, and resign themselves to allowing their national life to be absorbed is that of another power: they believed that they would emerge from the crisis, as they had done from so many others, with fresh strength, and, as soon as an occasion presented itself, they renewed the war against their iranian suzerain. prom, the first to the latest of the sovereigns bearing the name of darius, the history of the achæmenids in an almost uninterrupted series of internal wars and provincial revolts. the greeks of ionia, the egyptians, chaldæans, syrians, and the tribes of asia minor, all rose one after another, sometimes alone, sometimes in concert; some carrying on hostilities for not more than two or three years; others, like egypt, maintaining them for more than half a century. they were not discouraged by the reprisals which followed each of these rebellions; they again had recourse to arms as soon as there seemed the least chance of success, and they renewed the struggle till from sheer exhaustion the sword fell from their hand. persia was worn out by this perpetual warfare, in which at the same time each of her rivals expended the last relics of their vitality, and when macedonia entered on the scene, both lords and vassals were reduced to such a state of prostration, that it was easy to foretell their approaching end. the old oriental world was in its death-throes; but before it passed away, the successful audacity of alexander had summoned greece to succeed to its inheritance. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume vii. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: 001.jpg frontispiece] /* slumber song--after painting bv p. grot. johann */ [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: 002.jpg page image] _the assyrian revival and the struggle for syria_ _assur-nazir-pal (885-860 b.c.) and shalmaneser iii. (860-825 b.c.)--the kingdom of urartu and its conquering princes: menuas and argistis._ _the line of assyrian kings after assurirba, and the babylonian dynasties: the war between rammân-nirâri iii. and shamash-mudammiq; his victories over babylon; tukulti-ninip ii. (890-885 b.c.)--the empire at the accession of assur-nazir-pal: the assyrian army and the progress of military tactics; cavalry, military engines; the condition of assyria�s neighbours, methods of assyrian conquest._ _the first campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in nairi and on the khabur (885-882 b.c.): zamua reduced to an assyrian province (881 b.c.)--the fourth campaign in naîri and the war on the euphrates (880 b.c.); the first conquest of bu-adini--northern syria at the opening of the ixth century: its civilisation, arts, army, and religion--the submission of the hittite states and of the patina: the assyrians reach the mediterranean._ _the empire after the wars of assur-nazir-pal--building of the palace at calah: assyrian architecture and sculpture in the ixth century--the tunnel of negub and the palace of balawât--the last years of assur-nazir-pal: his campaign of the year 867 in naîri--the death of assur-nazir-pal (860 b.c.); his character._ _shalmaneser iii. (860-825 b.c.): the state of the empire at his accession--urartu: its physical features, races, towns, temples, its deities--shalmaneser�s first campaign in urartu: he penetrates as far as lake van (860 b.c.)--the conquest of bît-adini and of naîri (859-855 b.c.)_ _the attack on damascus: the battle of qarqar (854 b.c.) and the war against babylon (852-851 b.c.)--the alliance between judah and israel, the death of ahab (853 b.c.); damascus successfully resists the attacks of assyria (849-846 b.c.)--moab delivered from israel, mesha; the death of ben-hadad (adadidri) and the accession of hazael; the fall of the house of omri-jehu (843 b.c.)--the defeat of hazael and the homage of jehu (842-839 b.c.). wars in cilicia and in namri (838-835 b.c.): the last battles of shalmaneser iii.; his building works, the revolt of assur-dain-pal--samsi-rammân iv. (825-812 b.c.), his first three expeditions, his campaigns against babylon--bammdn-nirdri iv, (812-783 b.c.)--jehu, athaliah, joash: the supremacy of hazael over israel and judah--victory of bammdn-nirdri over mari, and the submission of all syria to the assyrians (803 b.c.)._ _the growth of urartu: the conquests of menuas and argistis i., their victories over assyria--shalmaneser iv. (783-772 b.c.)--assurdân iii. (772-754 b.c.)--assur-niruri iii. (754-745 b.c.)--the downfall of assyria and the triumph of urartu._ [illustration: 003.jpg page image] chapter i--the assyrian revival and the struggle for syria _assur-nazir-pal (885-860) and shalmaneser iii. (860-825)--the kingdom of urartu and its conquering princes: menuas and argistis._ assyria was the first to reappear on the scene of action. less hampered by an ancient past than egypt and chaldæa, she was the sooner able to recover her strength after any disastrous crisis, and to assume again the offensive along the whole of her frontier line. image drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief at koyunjik of the time of sennacherib. the initial cut, which is also by faucher-gudin, represents the broken obelisk of assur nazir-pal, the bas-reliefs of which are as yet unpublished. during the years immediately following the ephemeral victories and reverses of assurirba, both the country and its rulers are plunged in the obscurity of oblivion. two figures at length, though at what date is uncertain, emerge from the darkness--a certain irbarammân and an assur-nadinakhê ii., whom we find engaged in building palaces and making a necropolis. they were followed towards 950 by a tiglath-pileser ii., of whom nothing is known but his name.* he in his turn was succeeded about the year 935 by one assurdân ii., who appears to have concentrated his energies upon public works, for we hear of him digging a canal to supply his capital with water, restoring the temples and fortifying towns. kammân-nirâri iii., who followed him in 912, stands out more distinctly from the mists which envelop the history of this period; he repaired the gate of the tigris and the adjoining wall at assur, he enlarged its principal sanctuary, reduced several rebellious provinces to obedience, and waged a successful warfare against the neighbouring inhabitants of karduniash. since the extinction of the race of nebuchadrezzar i., babylon had been a prey to civil discord and foreign invasion. the aramaean tribes mingled with, or contiguous to the remnants of the cossoans bordering on the persian gulf, constituted possibly, even at this period, the powerful nation of the kaldâ.** * our only knowledge of tiglath-pileser ii. is from a brick, on which he is mentioned as being the grandfather of rammân nirâri ii. ** the names chaldæa and chaldæans being ordinarily used to designate the territory and people of babylon, i shall employ the term kaldu or kaldâ in treating of the aramæan tribes who constituted the actual chaldæan nation. it has been supposed, not without probability, that a certain simashshikhu, prince of the country of the sea, who immediately followed the last scion of the line of pashê,* was one of their chiefs. he endeavoured to establish order in the city, and rebuilt the temple of the sun destroyed by the nomads at sippar, but at the end of eighteen years he was assassinated. his son eâmukinshurnu remained at the head of affairs some three to six months; kashshu-nadinakhê ruled three or six years, at the expiration of which a man of the house of bâzi, eulbar-shakinshumi by name, seized upon the crown.** his dynasty consisted of three members, himself included, and it was overthrown after a duration of twenty years by an elamite, who held authority for another seven.*** * the name of this prince has been read simbarshiku by peiser, a reading adopted by rost; simbarshiku would have been shortened into sibir, and we should have to identify it with that of the sibir mentioned by assur-nazir-pal in his annals, col. ii. 1. 84, as a king of karduniash who lived before his (assur-nazir-pal�s) time (see p. 38 of the present volume). ** the name of this king may be read edubarshakîn-shumi. the house of bâzi takes its name from an ancestor who must have founded it at some unknown date, but who never reigned in chaldæa. winckler has with reason conjectured that the name subsequently lost its meaning to the babylonians, and that they confused the chaldæan house of bâzi with the arab country of bâzu: this may explain why in his dynasties berosos attributes an arab origin to that one which comprises the short-lived line of bît-bâzi. *** our knowledge of these events is derived solely from the texts of the babylonian canon published and translated by g. smith, by pinches, and by sayce. the inscription of nabubaliddin informs us that kashu-nadînakhê and eulbar shâkinshumu continued the works begun by simashshiku in the temple of the sun at sippar. it was a period of calamity and distress, during which the arabs or the aramæans ravaged the country, and pillaged without compunction not only the property of the inhabitants, but also that of the gods. the elamite usurper having died about the year 1030, a babylonian of noble extraction expelled the intruders, and succeeded in bringing the larger part of the kingdom under his rule.* * the names of the first kings of this dynasty are destroyed in the copies of the royal canon which have come down to us. the three preceding dynasties are restored as follows:-[illustration: 006.jpg table of kings] five or six of his descendants had passed away, and a certain shamash-mudammiq was feebly holding the reins of government, when the expeditions of rammân-nirâri iii. provoked war afresh between assyria and babylon. the two armies encountered each other once again on their former battlefield between the lower zab and the turnat. shamash-mudammiq, after being totally routed near the yalmân mountains, did not long survive, and naboshumishkun, who succeeded him, showed neither more ability nor energy than his predecessor. the assyrians wrested from him the fortresses of bambala and bagdad, dislodged him from the positions where he had entrenched himself, and at length took him prisoner while in flight, and condemned him to perpetual captivity.* * shamash-mudammiq appears to have died about 900. naboshumishkun probably reigned only one or two years, from 900 to 899 or to 898. the name of his successor is destroyed in the _synchronous history_; it might be nabubaliddin, who seems to have had a long life, but it is wiser, until fresh light is thrown on the subject, to admit that it is some prince other than nabubaliddin, whose name is as yet unknown to us. his successor abandoned to the assyrians most of the districts situated on the left bank of the lower zab between the zagros mountains and the tigris, and peace, which was speedily secured by a double marriage, remained unbroken for nearly half a century. tukulti-ninip ii. was fond of fighting; �he overthrew his adversaries and exposed their heads upon stakes,� but, unlike his predecessor, he directed his efforts against naîri and the northern and western tribes. we possess no details of his campaigns; we can only surmise that in six years, from 890 to 885,* he brought into subjection the valley of the upper tigris and the mountain provinces which separate it from the assyrian plain. having reached the source of the river, he carved, beside the image of tiglath-pileser i., the following inscription, which may still be read upon the rock. �with the help of assur, shamash, and rammân, the gods of his religion, he reached this spot. the lofty mountains he subjugated from the sun-rising to its down-setting; victorious, irresistible, he came hither, and like unto the lightning he crossed the raging rivers.� ** * the parts preserved of the eponym canon begin their record in 893, about the end of the reign of rammân-nirâri il the line which distinguishes the two reigns from one another is drawn between the name of the personage who corresponds to the year 890, and that of tukulti-ninip who corresponds to the year 889: tukulti-ninip ii., therefore, begins his reign in 890, and his death is six years later, in 885. ** this inscription and its accompanying bas-relief are mentioned in the _annals of assur-nazir-pal_. he did not live long to enjoy his triumphs, but his death made no impression on the impulse given to the fortunes of his country. the kingdom which he left to assur-nazir-pal, the eldest of his sons, embraced scarcely any of the countries which had paid tribute to former sovereigns. besides assyria proper, it comprised merely those districts of naîri which had been annexed within his own generation; the remainder had gradually regained their liberty: first the outlying dependencies--cilicia, melitene, northern syria, and then the provinces nearer the capital, the valleys of the masios and the zagros, the steppes of the khabur, and even some districts such as lubdi and shupria, which had been allotted to assyrian colonists at various times after successful campaigns. nearly the whole empire had to be reconquered under much the same conditions as in the first instance. assyria itself, it is true, had recovered the vitality and elasticity of its earlier days. the people were a robust and energetic race, devoted to their rulers, and ready to follow them blindly and trustingly wherever they might lead. the army, while composed chiefly of the same classes of troops as in the time of tiglath-pileser i.,--spearmen, archers, sappers, and slingers,--now possessed a new element, whose appearance on the field of battle was to revolutionize the whole method of warfare; this was the cavalry, properly so called, introduced as an adjunct to the chariotry. the number of horsemen forming this contingent was as yet small; like the infantry, they wore casques and cuirasses, but were clothed with a tight-fitting loin-cloth in place of the long kilt, the folds of which would have embarrassed their movements. one-half of the men carried sword and lance, the other half sword and bow, the latter of a smaller kind than that used by the infantry. their horses were bridled, and bore trappings on the forehead, but had no saddles; their riders rode bareback without stirrups; they sat far back with the chest thrown forward, their knees drawn up to grip the shoulder of the animal. [illustration: 009.jpg an assyrian horseman armed with the sword] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief in bronze on the gate of balawât. the assyrian artist has shown the head and legs of the second horse in profile behind the first, but he has forgotten to represent the rest of its body, and also the man riding it. each horseman was attended by a groom, who rode abreast of him, and held his reins during an action, so that he might be free to make use of his weapons. this body of cavalry, having little confidence in its own powers, kept in close contact with the main body of the army, and was not used in independent manouvres; it was associated with and formed an escort to the chariotry in expeditions where speed was essential, and where the ordinary foot soldier would have hampered the movements of the charioteers.* * isolated horsemen must no doubt have existed in the assyrian just as in the egyptian army, but we never find any mention of a _body_ of cavalry in inscriptions prior to the time of assur-nazir-pal; the introduction of this new corps must consequently have taken place between the reigns of tiglath-pileser and assur-nazir-pal, probably nearer the time of the latter. assur-nazir-pal himself seldom speaks of his cavalry, but he constantly makes mention of the horsemen of the aramaean and syrian principalities, whom he incorporated into his own army. [illustration: 010.jpg a mounted assyrian archer with attendant] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs of the gate of balawât. the army thus reinforced was at all events more efficient, if not actually more powerful, than formerly; the discipline maintained was as severe, the military spirit as keen, the equipment as perfect, and the tactics as skilful as in former times. a knowledge of engineering had improved upon the former methods of taking towns by sapping and scaling, and though the number of military engines was as yet limited, the besiegers were well able, when occasion demanded, to improvise and make use of machines capable of demolishing even the strongest walls.* * the battering-ram had already reached such a degree of perfection under assur-nazir-pal, that it must have been invented some time before the execution of the first bas reliefs on which we see it portrayed. its points of resemblance to the greek battering-ram furnished hoofer with one of his mam arguments for placing the monuments of khorsabad and koyunjik as late as the persian or parthian period. the assyrians were familiar with all the different kinds of battering-ram; the hand variety, which was merely a beam tipped with iron, worked by some score of men; the fixed ram, in which the beam was suspended from a scaffold and moved by means of ropes; and lastly, the movable ram, running on four or six wheels, which enabled it to be advanced or withdrawn at will. the military engineers of the day allowed full rein to their fancy in the many curious shapes they gave to this latter engine; for example, they gave to the mass of bronze at its point the form of the head of an animal, and the whole engine took at times the form of a sow ready to root up with its snout the foundations of the enemy�s defences. the scaffolding of the machine was usually protected by a carapace of green leather or some coarse woollen material stretched over it, which broke the force of blows from projectiles: at times it had an additional arrangement in the shape of a cupola or turret in which archers were stationed to sweep the face of the wall opposite to the point of attack. [illustration: 012.jpg the movable sow making a breach in the wall of a fortress] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs of the gate of balawât. the battering-rams were set up and placed in line at a short distance from the ramparts of the besieged town; the ground in front of them was then levelled and a regular causeway constructed, which was paved with bricks wherever the soil appeared to be lacking in firmness. these preliminaries accomplished, the engines were pushed forward by relays of troops till they reached the required range. the effort needed to set the ram in motion severely taxed the strength of those engaged in the work; for the size of the beam was enormous, and its iron point, or the square mass of metal at the end, was of no light weight. the besieged did their best to cripple or, if possible, destroy the engine as it approached them. [illustration: 013.jpg the turreted battering-ram attacking the walls of a town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief brought from nimroud, now in the british museum. torches, lighted tow, burning pitch, and stink-pots were hurled down upon its roofing: attempts were made to seize the head of the ram by means of chains or hooks, so as to prevent it from moving, or in order to drag it on to the battlements; in some cases the garrison succeeded in crushing the machinery with a mass of rock. the assyrians, however, did not allow themselves to be discouraged by such trifling accidents; they would at once extinguish the fire, release, by sheer force of muscle, the beams which the enemy had secured, and if, notwithstanding all their efforts, one of the machines became injured, they had others ready to take its place, and the ram would be again at work after only a few minutes� delay. walls, even when of burnt brick or faced with small stones, stood no chance against such an attack. [illustration: 014.jpg the besieged endeavouring to cripple or destroy the battering-ram] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief from nimroud, now in the british museum. the first blow of the ram sufficed to shake them, and an opening was rapidly made, so that in a few days, often in a few hours, they became a heap of ruins; the foot soldiers could then enter by the breach which the pioneers had effected. it must, however, be remembered that the strength and discipline which the assyrian troops possessed in such a high degree, were common to the military forces of all the great states--elam, damascus, naîri, the hittites, and chaldæa. it was owing to this, and also to the fact that the armies of all these powers were, as a rule, both in strength and numbers, much on a par, that no single state was able to inflict on any of the rest such a defeat as would end in its destruction. what decisive results had the terrible struggles produced, which stained almost periodically the valleys of the tigris and the zab with blood? after endless loss of life and property, they had nearly always issued in the establishment of the belligerents in their respective possessions, with possibly the cession of some few small towns or fortresses to the stronger party, most of which, however, were destined to come back to its former possessor in the very next campaign. the fall of the capital itself was not decisive, for it left the vanquished foe chafing under his losses, while the victory cost his rival so dear that he was unable to maintain the ascendency for more than a few years. twice at least in three centuries a king of assyria had entered babylon, and twice the babylonians had expelled the intruder of the hour, and had forced him back with a blare of trumpets to the frontier. although the ninevite dynasties had persisted in their pretensions to a suzerainty which they had generally been unable to enforce, the tradition of which, unsupported by any definite decree, had been handed on from one generation to another; yet in practice their kings had not succeeded in �taking the hands of bel,� and in reigning personally in babylon, nor in extorting from the native sovereign an official acknowledgment of his vassalage. profiting doubtless by past experience, assur-nazir-pal resolutely avoided those direct conflicts in which so many of his predecessors had wasted their lives. if he did not actually renounce his hereditary pretensions, he was content to let them lie dormant. he preferred to accommodate himself to the terms of the treaty signed a few years previously by rammân-nirâri, even when babylon neglected to observe them; he closed his eyes to the many ill-disguised acts of hostility to which he was exposed,* and devoted all his energies to dealing with less dangerous enemies. * he did not make the presence of cossoan troops among the allies of the sukhi a casus belli, even though they were commanded by a brother and by one of the principal officers of the king of babylon. even if his frontier touched karduniash to the south, elsewhere he was separated from the few states strong enough to menace his kingdom by a strip of varying width, comprising several less important tribes and cities;--to the east and north-east by the barbarians of obscure race whose villages and strongholds were scattered along the upper affluents of the tigris or on the lower terraces of the iranian plateau: to the west and north-west by the principalities and nomad tribes, mostly of aramoan extraction, who now for a century had peopled the mountains of the tigris and the steppes of mesopotamia. they were high-spirited, warlike, hardy populations, proud of their independence and quick to take up arms in its defence or for its recovery, but none of them possessed more than a restricted domain, or had more than a handful of soldiers at its disposal. at times, it is true, the nature of their locality befriended them, and the advantages of position helped to compensate for their paucity of numbers. [illustration: 017.jpg the escarpments of the zab] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. sometimes they were entrenched behind one of those rapid watercourses like the radanu, the zab, or the turnat, which are winter torrents rather than streams, and are overhung by steep banks, precipitous as a wall above a moat; sometimes they took refuge upon some wooded height and awaited attack amid its rocks and pine woods. assyria was superior to all of them, if not in the valour of its troops, at least numerically, and, towering in the midst of them, she could single out at will whichever tribe offered the easiest prey, and falling on it suddenly, would crush it by sheer force of weight. in such a case the surrounding tribes, usually only too well pleased to witness in safety the fall of a dangerous rival, would not attempt to interfere; but their turn was ere long sure to come, and the pity which they had declined to show to their neighbours was in like manner refused to them. the assyrians ravaged their country, held their chiefs to ransom, razed their strongholds, or, when they did not demolish them, garrisoned them with their own troops who held sway over the country. the revenues gleaned from these conquests would swell the treasury at nineveh, the native soldiers would be incorporated into the assyrian army, and when the smaller tribes had all in turn been subdued, their conqueror would, at length, find himself confronted with one of the great states from which he had been separated by these buffer communities; then it was that the men and money he had appropriated in his conquests would embolden him to provoke or accept battle with some tolerable certainty of victory. immediately on his accession, assur-nazir-pal turned his attention to the parts of his frontier where the population was most scattered, and therefore less able to offer any resistance to his projects.* * the principal document for the history of assur-nazir-pal is the �monolith of nimrud,� discovered by layard in the ruins of the temple of ninip; it bears the same inscription on both its sides. it is a compilation of various documents, comprising, first, a consecutive account of the campaigns of the king�s first six years, terminating in a summary of the results obtained during that period; secondly, the account of the campaign of his sixth year, followed by three campaigns not dated, the last of which was in syria; and thirdly, the history of a last campaign, that of his eighteenth year, and a second summary. a monolith found in the ruins of kurkh, at some distance from diarbekir, contains some important additions to the account of the campaigns of the fifth year. the other numerous inscriptions of assur-nazir-pal which have come down to us do not contain any information of importance which is not found in the text of the annals. the inscription of the broken obelisk, from which i have often quoted, contains in the second column some mention of the works undertaken by this king. he marched towards the north-western point of his territory, suddenly invaded nummi,* and in an incredibly short time took gubbe, its capital, and some half-dozen lesser places, among them surra, abuku, arura, and arubi. the inhabitants assembled upon a mountain ridge which they believed to be inaccessible, its peak being likened to �the point of an iron dagger,� and the steepness of its sides such that �no winged bird of the heavens dare venture on them.� in the short space of three days assur-nazir-pal succeeded in climbing its precipices and forcing the entrenchments which had been thrown up on its summit: two hundred of its defenders perished sword in hand, the remainder were taken prisoners. the kirruri,** terrified by this example, submitted unreservedly to the conqueror, yielded him their horses, mules, oxen, sheep, wine, and brazen vessels, and accepted the assyrian prefects appointed to collect the tribute. * nummi or nimmi, mentioned already in the annals of tiglath-pileser i., has been placed by hommel in the mountain group which separates lake van from lake urumiah, but by tiele in the regions situated to the southeast of nineveh; the observations of delattre show that we ought perhaps to look for it to the north of the arzania, certainly in the valley of that river. it appears to me to answer to the cazas of varto and boulanîk in the sandjak of mush. the name of the capital may be identified with the present gop, chief town of the caza of boulanîk; in this case abuku might be represented by the village of biyonkh. ** the kirruri must have had their habitat in the depression around lake frumiah, on the western side of the lake, if we are to believe schrader; jelattre has pointed out that it ought to be sought elsewhere, near the sources of the tigris, not far from the murad-su. the connection in which it is here cited obliges us to place it in the immediate neighbourhood of nummi, and its relative position to adaush and gilzân makes it probable that it is to be sought to the west and south-west of lake van, in the cazas of mush and sassun in the sandjak of mush. the neighbouring districts, adaush, gilzân, and khubushkia, followed their example;* they sent the king considerable presents of gold, silver, lead, and copper, and their alacrity in buying off their conqueror saved them from the ruinous infliction of a garrison. the assyrian army defiling through the pass of khulun next fell upon the kirkhi, dislodged the troops stationed in the fortress of nishtun, and pillaged the cities of khatu, khatara, irbidi, arzania, tela, and khalua; ** bubu, the chief of nishtun,*** was sent to arbela, flayed alive, and his skin nailed to the city wall. * kirzâu, also transcribed gilzân and guzân, has been relegated by the older assyriologists to eastern armenia, and the site further specified as being between the ancient araxes and lake urumiah, in the persian provinces of khoî and marand. the indications given in our text and the passages brought together by schrader, which place gilzân in direct connection with kirruri on one side and with kurkhi on the other, oblige us to locate the country in the upper basin of the tigris, and i should place it near bitlis tchaî, where different forms of the word occur many times on the map, such as ghalzan in ghalzan-dagh; kharzan, the name of a caza of the sandjak of sert; khizan, the name of a caza of the sandjak of bitlis. girzân-kilzân would thus be the roman province of arzanene, ardzn in armenian, in which the initial g or h of the ancient name has been replaced in the process of time by a soft aspirate. khubushkia or khutushkia has been placed by lenormant to the east of the upper zab, and south of arapkha, and this identification has been approved by schrader and also by delitzsch; according to the passages that schrader himself has cited, it must, however, have stretched northwards as far as shatakh-su, meeting gilzân at one point of the sandjaks of van and hakkiari. ** assur-nazir-pal, in going from kirruri to kirkhi in the basin of the tigris, could go either by the pass of bitlis or that of sassun; that of bitlis is excluded by the fact that it lies in kirruri, and kirruri is not mentioned in what follows. but if the route chosen was by the pass of sassun, khulun necessarily must have occupied a position at the entrance of the defiles, perhaps that of the present town of khorukh. the name khatu recalls that of the khoith tribe which the armenian historians mention as in this locality. khaturu is perhaps hâtera in the caza of lidjô, in the sandjak of diarbekîr, and arzania the ancient arzan, arzn, the ruins of which may be seen near sheikh-yunus. tila-tela is not the same town as the tela in mesopotamia, which we shall have occasion to speak of later, but is probably to be identified with til or tilleh, at the confluence of the tigris and the bohtan-tcha. finally, it is possible that the name khalua may be preserved in that of halewi, which layard gives as belonging to a village situated almost halfway between rundvan and til. *** nishtun was probably the most important spot in this region: from its position on the list, between khulun and khataru on one side and arzania on the other, it is evident we must look for it somewhere in sassun or in the direction of mayafarrikin. [illustration: 021.jpg the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in nairi] in a small town near one of the sources of the tigris, assur-nazir-pal founded a colony on which he imposed his name; he left there a statue of himself, with an inscription celebrating his exploits carved on its base, and having done this, he returned to nineveh laden with booty. [illustration: 022.jpg the site of shadikanni at arban, on the khabur] drawn by boudier, from a sketch taken by layard. a few weeks had sufficed for him to complete, on this side, the work bequeathed to him by his father, and to open up the neighbourhood of the northeast provinces; he was not long in setting out afresh, this time to the north-west, in the direction of the taurus.* * the text of the �annals� declares that these events took place �in this same limmu,� in what the king calls higher up in the column �the beginning of my royalty, the first year of my reign.� we must therefore suppose that he ascended the throne almost at the beginning of the year, since he was able to make two campaigns under the same eponym. he rapidly skirted the left bank of the tigris, burned some score of scattered hamlets at the foot of nipur and pazatu,* crossed to the right bank, above amidi, and, as he approached the euphrates, received the voluntary homage of kummukh and the mushku.** but while he was complacently engaged in recording the amount of vessels of bronze, oxen, sheep, and jars of wine which represented their tribute, a messenger of bad tidings appeared before him. assyria was bounded on the east by a line of small states, comprising the katna*** and the bît-khalupi,**** whose towns, placed alternately like sentries on each side the khabur, protected her from the incursions of the bedâwin. * nipur or nibur is the nibaros of strabo. if we consider the general direction of the campaign, we are inclined to place nipur close to the bank of the tigris, east of the regions traversed in the preceding campaign, and to identify it, as also pazatu, with the group of high hills called at the present day the ashit-dagh, between the kharzan-su and the batman-tchai. ** the mushku (moschiano or meshek) mentioned here do not represent the main body of the tribe, established in cappadocia; they are the descendants of such of the mushku as had crossed the euphrates and contested the possession of the regions of kashiari with the assyrians. *** the name has been read sometimes katna, sometimes shuna. the country included the two towns of kamani and dur katlimi, and on the south adjoined bît-khalupi; this identifies it with the districts of magada and sheddadîyeh, and, judging by the information with which assur-nazir-pal himself furnishes us, it is not impossible that dur-katline may have been on the site of the present magarda, and kamani on that of sheddadîyeh. ancient ruins have been pointed out on both these spots. **** suru, the capital of bît-khalupi, was built upon the khabur itself where it is navigable, for assur-nazir-pal relates further on that he had his royal barge built there at the time of the cruise which he undertook on the euphrates in the vith year of his reign. the itineraries of modern travellers mention a place called es-sauar or es saur, eight hours� march from the mouth of the khabur on the right bank of the river, situated at the foot of a hill some 220 feet high; the ruins of a fortified enclosure and of an ancient town are still visible. following tomkins, i should there place suru, the chief town of khalupi; bît-khalupi would be the territory in the neighbourhood of es-saur. [illustration: 024.jpg one of the winged bulls found at arban] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by layard. they were virtually chaldæan cities, having been, like most of those which flourished in the mesopotamian plains, thoroughly impregnated with babylonian civilisation. shadikanni, the most important of them, commanded the right bank of the khabur, and also the ford where the road from nineveh crossed the river on the route to hariân and carche-mish. the palaces of its rulers were decorated with winged bulls, lions, stelae, and bas-reliefs carved in marble brought from the hills of singar. the people seem to have been of a capricious temperament, and, nothwithstanding the supervision to which they were subjected, few reigns elapsed in which it was not necessary to put down a rebellion among them. bît-khalupi and its capital suru had thrown off the assyrian yoke after the death of tukulti-ninip; the populace, stirred up no doubt by aramæan emissaries, had assassinated the harnathite who governed them, and had sent for a certain akhiababa, a man of base extraction from bît-adini, whom they had proclaimed king. this defection, if not promptly dealt with, was likely to entail serious consequences, since it left an important point on the frontier exposed: and there now remained nothing to prevent the people of adini or their allies from spreading over the country between the khabur and the tigris, and even pushing forward their marauding bands as far as the very walls of singar and assur. [illustration: 024b.jpg no. 1. enameled brick (nimrod). no. 2. fragment of mural painting (nimrod).] [illustration: 025.jpg stele from arban] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard�s sketch without losing a moment, assur-nazir-pal marched down the course of the khabur, hastily collecting the tribute of the cities through which he passed. the defenders of sura were disconcerted by his sudden appearance before their town, and their rulers came out and prostrated themselves at the king�s feet: �dost thou desire it? it is life for us;--dost thou desire it? it is death;--dost thou desire it? what thy heart chooseth, that do to us!� but the appeal to his clemency was in vain; the alarm had been so great and the danger so pressing, that assur-nazir-pal was pitiless. the town was handed over to the soldiery, all the treasure it contained was confiscated, and the women and children of the best families were made slaves; some of the ringleaders paid the penalty of their revolt on the spot; the rest, with akhiabaha, were carried away and flayed alive, some at nineveh, some elsewhere. an assyrian garrison was installed in the citadel, and an ordinary governor, azilu by name, replaced the dynasty of native princes. the report of this terrible retribution induced the laqî* to tender their submission, and their example was followed by khaian, king of khindanu on the euphrates. he bought off the assyrians with gold, silver, lead, precious stones, deep-hued purple, and dromedaries; he erected a statue of assur-nazir-pal in the centre of his palace as a sign of his vassalage, and built into the wall near the gates of his town an inscription dedicated to the gods of the conqueror. * the laqî were situated on both banks of the euphrates, principally on the right bank, between the khabur and the balikh, interspersed among the sukhi, of whom they were perhaps merely a dissentient fraction. six, or at the most eight, months had sufficed to achieve these rapid successes over various foes, in twenty different directions--the expeditions in nummi and kirruri, the occupation of kummukh, the flying marches across the mountains and plains of mesopotamia--during all of which the new sovereign had given ample proof of his genius. he had, in fine, shown himself to be a thorough soldier, a conqueror of the type of tiglath-pileser, and assyria by these victories had recovered her rightful rank among the nations of western asia. the second year of his reign was no less fully occupied, nor did it prove less successful than the first. at its very beginning, and even before the return of the favourable season, the sukhi on the euphrates made a public act of submission, and their chief, ilubâni, brought to nineveh on their behalf a large sum of gold and silver. he had scarcely left the capital when the news of an untoward event effaced the good impression he had made. the descendants of the colonists, planted in bygone times by shalmaneser i. on the western slope of the masios, in the district of khalzidipkha, had thrown off their allegiance, and their leader, khulaî, was besieging the royal fortress of damdamusa.* assur-nazir-pal marched direct to the sources of the tigris, and the mere fact of his presence sufficed to prevent any rising in that quarter. he took advantage of the occasion to set up a stele beside those of his father tukulti-ninip and his ancestor tiglath-pileser, and then having halted to receive the tribute of izalla,** he turned southwards, and took up a position on the slopes of the kashiari. * the position of khalzidipkha or khalzilukha, as well as that of kina-bu, its stronghold, is shown approximately by what follows. assur-nazir-pal, marching from the sources of the supnat towards tela, could pass either to the east or west of the karajah-dagh; as the end of the campaign finds him at tushkhân, to the south of the tigris, and he returns to naîri and kirkhi by the eastern side of the karajah-dagh, we are led to conclude that the outgoing march to tela was by the western side, through the country situated between the karajah-dagh and the euphrates. on referring to a modern map, two rather important places will be found in this locality: the first, arghana, commanding the road from diarbekîr to khar-put; the other, severek, on the route from diarbekîr to orfah. arghana appears to me to correspond to the royal city of damdamusa, which would, thus have protected the approach to the plain on the north-west. severek corresponds fairly well to the position which, according to the assyrian text, kinabu must have occupied; hence the country of khalzidipkha (khalzilukha) must be the district of severek. ** izalla, written also izala, azala, paid its tribute in sheep and oxen, and also produced a wine for which it continued to be celebrated down to the time of nebuchadrezzar ii. lenormant and finzi place this country near to nisibis, where the byzantine and syrian writers mention a district and a mountain of the same name, and this conjecture is borne out by the passages of the _annals of assur-nazir-pal_ which place it in the vicinity of bît-adini and bît-bakhiâni. it has also been adopted by most of the historians who have recently studied the question. at the first news of his approach, khulai had raised the blockade of damdamusa and had entrenched himself in kinabu; the assyrians, however, carried the place by storm, and six hundred soldiers of the garrison were killed in the attack. the survivors, to the number of three thousand, together with many women and children, were, thrown into the flames. the people of mariru hastened to the rescue;* the assyrians took three hundred of them, prisoners and burnt them alive; fifty others were ripped up, but the victors did not stop to reduce their town. the district of nirbu was next subjected to systematic ravaging, and half of its inhabitants fled into the mesopotamian desert, while the remainder sought refuge in tela at the foot of the ukhira.** * the site of mariru is unknown; according to the text of the annals, it ought to lie near severek (kinabu) to the south-east, since after having mentioned it, assur-nazir-pal speaks of the people of nirbu whom he engaged in the desert before marching against tela. ** tila or tela is the tela antoninopolis of the writers of the roman period and the present veranshehr. the district of nirbu, of which it was the capital, lay on the southern slope of the karajah-dagh at the foot of mount urkhira, the central group of the range. the name kashiari is applied to the whole mountain group which separates the basins of the tigris and euphrates to the south and south-west. the latter place was a strong one, being surrounded by three enclosing walls, and it offered an obstinate resistance. notwithstanding this, it at length fell, after having lost three thousand of its defenders:--some of its garrison were condemned to the stake, some had their hands, noses, or ears cut off, others were deprived of sight, flayed alive, or impaled amid the smoking ruins. this being deemed insufficient punishment, the conqueror degraded the place from its rank of chief town, transferring this, together with its other privileges, to a neighbouring city, tushkhân, which had belonged to the assyrians from the beginning of their conquests.* the king enlarged the place, added to it a strong enclosing wall, and installed within it the survivors of the older colonists who had been dispersed by the war, the majority of whom had taken refuge in shupria.** * from this passage we learn that tushkhân, also called tushkha, was situated on the border of nirbu, while from another passage in the campaign of the vth year we find that it was on the right bank of the tigris. following h. rawlinson, i place it at kurkh, near the tigris, to the east of diarbekîr. the existence in that locality of an inscription of assur-nazir-pal appears to prove the correctness of this identification; we are aware, in fact, of the particular favour in which this prince held tushkhân, for he speaks with pride of the buildings with which he embellished it. hommel, however, identifies kurkh with the town of matiâtô, of which mention is made further on. ** shupria or shupri, a name which has been read ruri, had been brought into submission from the time of shalmaneser i. we gather from the passages in which it is mentioned that it was a hilly country, producing wine, rich in flocks, and lying at a short distance from tushkhân; perhaps mariru, mentioned on p. 28, was one of its towns. i think we may safely place it on the north-western slopes of the kashiari, in the modern caza of tchernik, which possesses several vineyards held in high estimation. knudtzon, to whom we are indebted for the reading of this name, places the country rather further north, within the fork formed by the two upper branches of the tigris. he constructed a palace there, built storehouses for the reception of the grain of the province; and, in short, transformed the town into a stronghold of the first order, capable of serving as a base of operations for his armies. the surrounding princes, in the meanwhile, rallied round him, including ammibaal of bît-zamani, and the rulers of shupria, naîri, and urumi;* the chiefs of eastern nirbu alone held aloof, emboldened by the rugged nature of their mountains and the density of their forests. assur-nazir-pal attacked them on his return journey, dislodged them from the fortress of ishpilibria where they were entrenched, gained the pass of buliani, and emerged into the valley of luqia.** * the position of bît-zamani on the banks of the euphrates was determined by delattre. urumi was situated on the right bank of the same river in the neighbourhood of sumeisat, and the name has survived in that of urima, a town in the vicinity so called even as late as roman times. nirdun, with madara as its capital, occupied part of the eastern slopes of the kashiari towards ortaveran. ** hommel identifies the luqia with the northern affluent of the euphrates called on the ancient monuments lykos, and he places the scene of the war in armenia. the context obliges us to look for this river to the south of the tigris, to the north-east and to the east of the kashiari. the king coming from nirbu, the pass of buliani, in which he finds the towns of kirkhi, must be the valley of khaneki, in which the road winds from mardin to diarbekir, and the luqia is probably the most important stream in this region, the sheikhân-su, which waters savur, chief town of the caza of avinch. ardupa must have been situated near, or on the actual site of, the present mardîn, whose assyrian name is unknown to us; it was at all events a military station on the road to nineveh, along which the king returned victorious with the spoil. at ardupa a brief halt was made to receive the ambassadors of one of the hittite sovereigns and others from the kings of khanigalbat, after which he returned to nineveh, where he spent the winter. as a matter of fact, these were but petty wars, and their immediate results appear at the first glance quite inadequate to account for the contemporary enthusiasm they excited. the sincerity of it can be better understood when we consider the miserable state of the country twenty years previously. assyria then comprised two territories, one in the plains of the middle, the other in the districts of the upper, tigris, both of considerable extent, but almost without regular intercommunication. caravans or isolated messengers might pass with tolerable safety from assur and nineveh to singar, or even to nisibis; but beyond these places they had to brave the narrow defiles and steep paths in the forests of the masios, through which it was rash to venture without keeping eye and ear ever on the alert. the mountaineers and their chiefs recognized the nominal suzerainty of assyria, but refused to act upon this recognition unless constrained by a strong hand; if this control were relaxed they levied contributions on, or massacred, all who came within their reach, and the king himself never travelled from his own city of nineveh to his own town of amidi unless accompanied by an army. in less than the short space of three years, assur-nazir-pal had remedied this evil. by the slaughter of some two hundred men in one place, three hundred in another, two or three thousand in a third, by dint of impaling and flaying refractory sheikhs, burning villages and dismantling strongholds, he forced the marauders of naîri and kirkhi to respect his frontiers and desist from pillaging his country. the two divisions of his kingdom, strengthened by the military colonies in nirbu, were united, and became welded together into a compact whole from the banks of the lower zab to the sources of the khabur and the supnat. during the following season the course of events diverted the king�s efforts into quite an opposite direction (b.c. 882). under the name of zamua there existed a number of small states scattered along the western slope of the iranian plateau north of the cossæans.* many of them--as, for instance, the lullumê--had been civilized by the chaldæans almost from time immemorial; the most southern among them were perpetually oscillating between the respective areas of influence of babylon and nineveh, according as one or other of these cities was in the ascendant, but at this particular moment they acknowledged assyrian sway. were they excited to rebellion against the latter power by the emissaries of its rival, or did they merely think that assur-nazir-pal was too fully absorbed in the affairs of naîri to be able to carry his arms effectively elsewhere? at all events they coalesced under nurrammân, the sheikh of dagara, blocked the pass of babiti which led to their own territory, and there massed their contingents behind the shelter of hastily erected ramparts.** * according to hommol and tiele, zamua would be the country extending from the sources of the radanu to the southern shores of the lake of urumiah; schrader believes it to have occupied a smaller area, and places it to the east and south-west of the lesser zab. delattre has shown that a distinction must be made between zamua on lake van and the well-known zamua upon the zab. zamua, as described by assur nazir-pal, answers approximately to the present sandjak of suleimaniyeh in the vilayet of mossul. ** hommol believes that assur-nazir-pal crossed the zab near altin-keupru, and he is certainly correct: but it appears to me from a passage in the _annals_, that instead of taking the road which leads to bagdad by ker-kuk and tuz-khurmati, he marched along that which leads eastwards in the direction of suleimaniyeh. the pass of babiti must have lain between gawardis and bibân, facing the kissê tchai, which forms the western branch of the radanu. dagara would thus be represented by the district to the east of kerkuk at the foot of the kara-dagh. assur-nazir-pal concentrated his army at kakzi,* a little to the south of arbela, and promptly marched against them; he swept all obstacles before him, killed fourteen hundred and sixty men at the first onslaught, put dagara to fire and sword, and soon defeated nurrammân, but without effecting his capture. * kakzi, sometimes read kalzi, must have been situated at shemamek of shamamik, near hazeh, to the south-west of erbil, the ancient arbela, at the spot where jones noticed important assyrian ruins excavated by layard. as the campaign threatened to be prolonged, he formed an entrenched camp in a favourable position, and stationed in it some of his troops to guard the booty, while he dispersed the rest to pillage the country on all sides. [illustration: 033.jpg the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in zamua] one expedition led him to the mountain group of nizir, at the end of the chain known to the people of lullumê as the kinipa.* he there reduced to ruins seven towns whose inhabitants had barricaded themselves in urgent haste, collected the few herds of cattle he could find, and driving them back to the camp, set out afresh towards a part of nizir as yet unsubdued by any conqueror. the stronghold of larbusa fell before the battering-ram, to be followed shortly by the capture of bara. thereupon the chiefs of zamua, convinced of their helplessness, purchased the king�s departure by presents of horses, gold, silver, and corn.** nurrammân alone remained impregnable in his retreat at nishpi, and an attempt to oust him resulted solely in the surrender of the fortress of birutu.*** the campaign, far from having been decisive, had to be continued during the winter in another direction where revolts had taken place,--in khudun, in kissirtu, and in the fief of arashtua,**** all three of which extended over the upper valleys of the lesser zab, the radanu, the turnat, and their affluents. * mount kinipa is a part of nizir, the khalkhalân-dagh, if we may-judge from the direction of the assyrian campaign. ** none of these places can be identified with certainty. the gist of the account leads us to gather that bara was situated to the east of dagara, and formed its frontier; we shall not be far wrong in looking for all these districts in the fastnesses of the kara-dagh, in the caza of suleimaniyeh. mount nishpi is perhaps the segirmc-dagh of the present day. *** the assyrian compiler appears to have made use of two slightly differing accounts of this campaign; he has twice repeated the same facts without noticing his mistake. **** the fief of arashtua, situated beyond the turnat, is probably the district of suleimaniyeh; it is, indeed, at this place only that the upper course of the turnat is sufficiently near to that of the radanu to make the marches of assur-nazir-pal in the direction indicated by the assyrian scribe possible. according to the account of the _annals_, it seems to me that we must seek for khudun and kissirtu to the south of the fief of arashtua, in the modern cazas of gulanbar or shehrizôr. the king once more set out from kakzi, crossed the zab and the eadanu, through the gorges of babiti, and halting on the ridges of mount simaki, peremptorily demanded tribute from dagara.* this was, however, merely a ruse to deceive the enemy, for taking one evening the lightest of his chariots and the best of his horsemen, he galloped all night without drawing rein, crossed the turnat at dawn, and pushing straight forward, arrived in the afternoon of the same day before the walls of ammali, in the very heart of the fief of arashtua.** the town vainly attempted a defence; the whole population was reduced to slavery or dispersed in the forests, the ramparts were demolished, and the houses reduced to ashes. khudun with twenty, and kissirtu with ten of its villages, bara, kirtiara, dur-lullumê, and bunisa, offered no further resistance, and the invading host halted within sight of the defiles of khashmar.*** * the _annals of assur-nazir-pal_ go on to mention that mount simaki extended as far as the turnat, and that it was close to mount azira. this passage, when compared with that in which the opening of the campaign is described, obliges us to recognise in mounts simaki and azira two parts of the shehrizôr chain, parallel to the seguirmé-dagh. the fortress of mizu, mentioned in the first of these two texts, may perhaps be the present gurân-kaleh. ** hommel thinks that ammali is perhaps the present suleimaniyeh; it is, at all events, on this side that we must look for its site. *** i do not know whether we may trace the name of the ancient mount khashmar-khashmir in the present azmir-dagh; it is at its feet, probably in the valley of suleimanabad, that we ought to place the passes of khashmar. one kinglet, however, amika of zamru, showed no intention of capitulating. entrenched behind a screen of forests and frowning mountain ridges, he fearlessly awaited the attack. the only access to the remote villages over which he ruled, was by a few rough roads hemmed in between steep cliffs and beds of torrents; difficult and dangerous at ordinary times, they were blocked in war by temporary barricades, and dominated at every turn by some fortress perched at a dizzy height above them. after his return to the camp, where his soldiers were allowed a short respite, assur-nazir-pal set out against zamru, though he was careful not to approach it directly and attack it at its most formidable points. between two peaks of the lara and bidirgi ranges he discovered a path which had been deemed impracticable for horses, or even for heavily armed men. by this route, the king, unsuspected by the enemy, made his way through the mountains, and descended so unexpectedly upon zamru, that amika had barely time to make his escape, abandoning everything in his alarm--palace, treasures, harem, and even his chariot.* a body of assyrians pursued him hotly beyond the fords of the lallu, chasing him as far as mount itini; then, retracing their steps to headquarters, they at once set out on a fresh track, crossed the idir, and proceeded to lay waste the plains of ilaniu and suâni.** * this raid, which started from the same point as the preceding one, ran eastwards in an opposite direction and ended at mount itini. leaving the fief of arashtua in the neighbourhood of suleimaniyeh, assur-nazir-pal crossed the chain of the azmir-dagh near pir-omar and gudrun, where we must place mounts lara and bidirgi, and emerged upon zamru; the only-places which appear to correspond to zamru in that region are kandishin and suleimanabad. hence the lallu is the river which runs by kandishin and suleimanabad, and itini the mountain which separates this river from the tchami-kizildjik. ** i think we may recognise the ancient name of ilaniu in that of alan, now borne by a district on the turkish and persian frontier, situated between kunekd ji-dagh and the town of serdesht. the expedition, coming from the fief of arashtua, must have marched northwards: the idir in this case must be the tchami-kizildjik, and mount sabua the chain of mountains above serdesht. despairing of taking amika prisoner, assur-nazir-pal allowed him to lie hidden among the brushwood of mount sabua, while he himself called a halt at parsindu,* and set to work to organise the fruits of his conquest. * parsindu, mentioned between mount ilaniu and the town of zamru, ought to lie somewhere in the valley of tchami kizildjik, near murana. he placed garrisons in the principal towns---at parsindu, zamru, and at arakdi in lullumê, which one of his predecessors had re-named tukulti-ashshur-azbat,* --�i have taken the help of assur.� he next imposed on the surrounding country an annual tribute of gold, silver, lead, copper, dyed stuffs, oxen, sheep, and wine. envoys from neighbouring kings poured in--from khudun; khubushkia, and gilzân, and the whole of northern zamua bowed �before the splendour of his arms;� it now needed only a few raids resolutely directed against mounts azîra and simaki, as far as the turn at, to achieve the final pacification of the south. while in this neighbourhood, his attention was directed to the old town of atlîla,** built by sibir,*** an ancient king of karduniash, but which had been half ruined by the barbarians. he re-named it dur-assur, �the fortress of assur,� and built himself within it a palace and storehouses, in which he accumulated large quantities of corn, making the town the strongest bulwark of his power on the cossæan border. *the approximate site of arakdi is indicated in the itinerary of assur-nazir-pal itself; the king comes from zamru in the neighbourhood of sulei-manabad, crosses mount lara, which is the northern part of the azmir-dagh, and arrives at arakdi, possibly somewhere in surtash. in the course of the preceding campaign, after having laid waste bara, he set out from this same town (arakdi) to subdue nishpi, all of which bears out the position i have indicated. the present town of baziân would answer fairly well for the site of a place destined to protect the assyrian frontier on this side. ** given its position on the chaldæan frontier, atlîla is probably to be identified with the kerkuk of the present day. *** hommel is inclined to believe that sibir was the immediate predecessor of nabubaliddin, who reigned at babylon at the same time as assur-nazir-pal at nineveh; consequently he would be a contemporary of rammân-nirâri iii. and of tukulti-ninip ii. peiser and rost have identified him with simmash-shikhu. [illustration: 037.jpg the zab below the passes of alan, the ancient ilaniu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. the two campaigns of b.c. 882 and 881 had cost assur-nazir-pal great efforts, and their results had been inadequate to the energy expended. his two principal adversaries, nurrammân and amika, had eluded him, and still preserved their independence at the eastern extremities of their former states. most of the mountain tribes had acknowledged the king�s supremacy merely provisionally, in order to rid themselves of his presence; they had been vanquished scores of times, but were in no sense subjugated, and the moment pressure was withdrawn, they again took up arms. the districts of zamua alone, which bordered on the assyrian plain, and had been occupied by a military force, formed a province, a kind of buffer state between the mountain tribes and the plains of the zab, protecting the latter from incursions. assur-nazir-pal, feeling himself tolerably safe on that side, made no further demands, and withdrew his battalions to the westward part of his northern frontier. he hoped, no doubt, to complete the subjugation of the tribes who still contested the possession of various parts of the kashiari, and then to push forward his main guard as far as the euphrates and the arzania, so as to form around the plain of amidi a zone of vassals or tutelary subjects like those of zamua. with this end in view, he crossed the tigris near its source at the traditional fords, and made his way unmolested in the bend of the euphrates from the palace of tilluli, where the accustomed tribute of kummukh was brought to him, to the fortress of ishtarâti, and from thence to kibaki. the town of matiatê, having closed its gates against him, was at once sacked, and this example so stimulated the loyalty of the kurkhi chiefs, that they ha*tened to welcome him at the neighbouring military station of zazabukha. the king�s progress continued thence as before, broken by frequent halts at the most favourable points for levying contributions on the inhabitants.1 assur-nazir-pal encountered no serious difficulty except on the northern slopes of the kashiari, but there again fortune smiled on him; all the contested positions were soon ceded to him, including even madara, whose fourfold circuit of walls did not avail to save it from the conqueror.** after a brief respite at tushkhân, he set out again one evening with his lightest chariots and the pick of his horsemen, crossed the tigris on rafts, rode all night, and arrived unexpectedly the next morning before pitura, the chief town of the dirrabans.*** it was surrounded by a strong double enceinte, through which he broke after forty-eight hours of continuous assault: 800 of its men perished in the breach, and 700 others were impaled before the gates. * it is difficult to place any of these localities on the map: they ought all to be found between the ford of the tigris, at diarbeldr and the euphrates, probably at the foot of the mihrab-dagh and the kirwântchernen-dagh. ** madara belonged to a certain lapturi, son of tubusi, mentioned in the campaign of the king�s second year. in comparing the facts given in the two passages, we see it was situated on the eastern slope of the kashiari, not far from tushkhan on one side, and ardupa--that is probably mardin--? on the other. the position of ortaveran, or of one of the �tells� in its neighbourhood, answers fairly well to these conditions. *** according to the details given in the _annals_, we must place the town of bitura (or pitura) at about 19 miles from kurkh, on the other side of the tigris, in a north-easterly direction, and consequently the country of lirrâ would be between the hazu-tchaî and the batman-tchaî. the matni, with its passes leading in to naîri, must in this case be the mountain group to the north of mayafarrikîn, known as the dordoseh-dagh or the darkôsh-dagh. arbaki, at the extreme limits of eirkhi, was the next to succumb, after which the assyrians, having pillaged dirra, carried the passes of matni after a bloody combat, spread themselves over naîri, burning 250 of its towns and villages, and returned with immense booty to tushkhân. they had been there merely a few days when the newt arrived that the people of bît-zamâni, always impatient of the yoke, had murdered their prince ammibaal, and had proclaimed a certain burramman in his place. assur-nazir-pal marched upon sinabux and repressed the insurrection, reaping a rich harvest of spoil--chariots fully equipped, 600 draught-horses, 130 pounds of silver and as much of gold, 6600 pounds of lead and the same of copper, 19,800 pounds of iron, stuffs, furniture in gold and ivory, 2000 bulls, 500 sheep, the entire harem of ammibaal, besides a number of maidens of noble family together with their dresses. burramman was by the king�s order flayed alive, and arteanu his brother chosen as his successor. sinabu* and the surrounding towns formed part of that network of colonies which in times past shalmaneser i. had organised as a protection from the incursions of the inhabitants of naîri; assur-nazir-pal now used it as a rallying-place for the remaining assyrian families, to whom he distributed lands and confided the guardianship of the neighbouring strongholds. * hommel thinks that sinabu is very probably the same as the kinabu mentioned above; but it appears from assur-nazir pal�s own account that this kinabu was in the province of khalzidipkha (khalzilukha) on the kashiari, whereas sinabu was in bît-zamâni. the results of this measure were not long in making themselves felt: shupria, ulliba, and nirbu, besides other districts, paid their dues to the king, and shura in khamanu,* which had for some time held out against the general movement, was at length constrained to submit (880 b.c.). * shur is mentioned on the return to nairi, possibly on the road leading from amidi and tushkhân to nineveh. hommel believes that the country of khamanu was the amanos in cilicia, and he admits, but unwillingly, that assur-nazir pal made a detour beyond the euphrates. i should look for shura, and consequently for khamanu, in the tur-abdin, and should identify them with saur, in spite of the difference of the two initial articulations. however high we may rate the value of this campaign, it was eclipsed by the following one. the aramæans on the khabur and the middle euphrates had not witnessed without anxiety the revival of ninevite activity, and had begged for assistance against it from its rival. two of their principal tribes, the sukhi and the laqi, had addressed themselves to the sovereign then reigning at babylon. he was a restless, ambitious prince, named nabu-baliddin, who asked nothing better than to excite a hostile feeling against his neighbour, provided he ran no risk by his interference of being drawn into open warfare. he accordingly despatched to the prince of sukhi the best of his cossoan troops, commanded by his brother zabdanu and one of the great officers of the crown, bel-baliddin. in the spring of 879 b.c., assur-nazir-pal determined once for all to put an end to these intrigues. he began by inspecting the citadels flanking the line of the kharmish* and the khabur,--tabiti,** magarisi,*** shadikanni, shuru in bît-khafupi, and sirki.**** * the kharmish has been identified with the hirmâs, the river flowing by nisibis, and now called the nahr-jaghjagha. ** tabiti is the thebeta (thebet) of roman itineraries and syrian writers, situated 33 miles from nisibis and 52 from singara, on the nahr-hesawy or one of the neighbouring wadys. *** magarisi ought to be found on the present nahr jaghjagha, near its confluence with the nahr-jerrâhi and its tributaries; unfortunately, this part of mesopotamia is still almost entirely unexplored, and no satisfactory map of it exists as yet. **** sirki is circesium at the mouth of the khabur. between the embouchures of the khabur and the balîkh, the euphrates winds across a vast table-land, ridged with marly hills; the left bank is dry and sterile, shaded at rare intervals by sparse woods of poplars or groups of palms. the right bank, on the contrary, is seamed with fertile valleys, sufficiently well watered to permit the growth of cereals and the raising of cattle. the river-bed is almost everywhere wide, but strewn with dangerous rocks and sandbanks which render navigation perilous. on nearing the ruins of halebiyeh, the river narrows as it enters the arabian hills, and cuts for itself a regular defile of three or four hundred paces in length, which is approached by the pilots with caution.* * it is at this defile of el-hammeh, and not at that of birejik at the end of the taurus, that we must place the _khinqi sha purati_--the narrows of the euphrates--so often mentioned in the account of this campaign. assur-nazir-pal, on leaving sirki, made his way along the left bank, levying toll on supri, naqarabâni, and several other villages in his course. here and there he called a halt facing some town on the opposite bank, but the boats which could have put him across had been removed, and the fords were too well guarded to permit of his hazarding an attack. one town, however, khindânu, made him a voluntary offering which, he affected to regard as a tribute, but kharidi and anat appeared not even to suspect his presence in their vicinity, and he continued on his way without having obtained from them anything which could be construed into a mark of vassalage.* * the detailed narrative of the _annals_ informs us that assur-nazir-pal encamped on a mountain between khindânu and bît-shabaia, and this information enables us to determine on the map with tolerable certainty the localities mentioned in this campaign. the mountain in question can be none other than el-hammeh, the only one met with on this bank of the euphrates between the confluents of the euphrates and the khabur. khindânu is therefore identical with the ruins of tabus, the dabausa of ptolemy; hence supri and naqabarâni are situated between this point and sirki, the former in the direction of tayebeh, the latter towards el-hoseîniyeh. on the other hand, the ruins of kabr abu-atîsh would correspond very well to bît-shabaia: is the name of abu-sbé borne by the arabs of that neighbourhood a relic of that of shabaia. kharidi ought in that case to be looked for on the opposite bank, near abu-subân and aksubi, where chesney points out ancient remains. a day�s march beyond kabr abu-atîsh brings us to el-khass, so that the town of anat would be in the isle of moglah. shuru must be somewhere near one of the two tell-menakhîrs on this side the balikh. [illustration: 044.jpg the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in mesopotamia] at length, on reaching shuru, shadadu, the prince of sukhi, trusting in his cossoans, offered him battle; but he was defeated by assur-na�zir-pal, who captured the king of babylon�s brother, forced his way into the town after an assault lasting two days, and returned to assyria laden with spoil. this might almost be considered as a repulse; for no sooner had the king quitted the country than the aramaeans in their turn crossed the euphrates and ravaged the plains of the khabur.* assur-nazir-pal resolved not to return until he was in a position to carry his arms into the heart of the enemy�s country. he built a flotilla at shuru in bît-khalupi on which he embarked his troops. wherever the navigation of the euphrates proved to be difficult, the boats were drawn up out of the water and dragged along the banks over rollers until they could again be safely launched; thus, partly afloat and partly on land, they passed through the gorge of halebiyeh, landed at kharidi, and inflicted a salutary punishment on the cities which had defied the king�s wrath on his last expedition. khindânu, kharidi, and kipina were reduced to ruins, and the sukhi and the laqi defeated, the assyrians pursuing them for two days in the bisuru mountains as far as the frontiers of bit-adini.** * the _annals_ do not give us either the _limmu_ or the date of the year for this new expedition. the facts taken altogether prove that it was a continuation of the preceding one, and it may therefore be placed in the year b.c. 878. ** the campaign of b.c. 878 had for its arena that of the euphrates which lies between the khabur and the balikh; this time, however, the principal operations took place on the right bank. if mount bisuru is the jebel-bishri, the town of kipina, which is mentioned between it and kharidi, ought to be located between maidân and sabkha. a complete submission was brought about, and its permanency secured by the erection of two strongholds, one of which, kar-assur-nazir-pal, commanded the left, and the other, nibarti-assur, the right bank of the euphrates.* this last expedition had brought the king into contact with the most important of the numerous aramaean states congregated in the western region of mesopotamia. this was bît-adini, which lay on both sides of the middle course of the euphrates.** it included, on the right bank, to the north of carchemish, between the hills on the sajur and arabân-su, a mountainous but fertile district, dotted over with towns and fortresses, the names of some of which have been preserved--pakarrukhbuni, sursunu, paripa, dabigu, and shitamrat.*** tul-barsip, the capital, was situated on the left bank, commanding the fords of the modern birejîk,**** and the whole of the territory between this latter and the balîkh acknowledged the rule of its princes, whose authority also extended eastwards as far as the basaltic plateau of tul-abâ, in the mesopotamian desert. * the account in the annals is confused, and contains perhaps some errors with regard to the facts. the site of the two towns is nowhere indicated, but a study of the map shows that the assyrians could not become masters of the country without occupying the passes of the euphrates; i am inclined to think that kar-assur-nazir-pal is el-halebiyeh, and nibarti-assur, zalebiyeh, the zenobia of roman times. ** bît-adini appears to have occupied, on the right bank of the euphrates, a part of the cazas of aîn-tab, rum-kaleh, and birejîk, that of suruji, minus the nakhiyeh of harrân, the larger part of the cazas of membîj and of rakkah, and part of the caza of zôr, the cazas being those represented on the maps of vital cuinet. *** none of these localities can be identified with certainty, except perhaps dabigu, a name we may trace in that of the modern village of dehbek. **** tul-barsip has been identified with birejîk. to the south-east, bît-adini bordered upon the country of the sukhi and the laqi,* lying to the east of assyria; other principalities, mainly of aramoan origin, formed its boundary to the north and north-west--shugab in the bend of the euphrates, from birejîk to samosata,** tul-abnî around edessa,*** the district of harrân,**** bît-zamani, izalla in the tektek-dagh and on the upper khabur, and bît-bakhiâni in the plain extending from the khabur to the kharmish.^ * in his previous campaign assur-nazir-pal had taken two towns of bît-adini, situated on the right bank of the euphrates, at the eastern extremity of mount bisuru, near the frontier of the lâqi. ** the country of shugab is mentioned between birejîk (tul barsip) and bît-zamani, in one of the campaigns of shalmaneser iii., which obliges us to place it in the caza of rum-kaleh; the name has been read sumu. *** tul-abnî, which was at first sought for near the sources of the tigris, has been placed in the mesopotamian plain. the position which it occupies among the other names obliges us to put it near bît-adini and bît-zamani: the only possible site that i can find for it is at orfah, the edessa of classical times. **** the country of harrân is nowhere mentioned as belonging either to bît-adini or to tul-abnî: we must hence conclude that at this period it formed a little principality independent of those two states. ^ the situation of bît-bakhiâni is shown by the position which it occupies in the account of the campaign, and by the names associated with it in another passage of the _annals_. bît-zamani had belonged to assyria by right of conquest ever since the death of ammibaal; izalla and bît-bakhiâni had fulfilled their duties as vassals whenever assur-nazir-pal had appeared in their neighbourhood; bît-adini alone had remained independent, though its strength was more apparent than real. the districts which it included had never been able to form a basis for a powerful state. if by chance some small kingdom arose within it, uniting under one authority the tribes scattered over the burning plain or along the river banks, the first conquering dynasty which sprang up in the neighbourhood would be sure to effect its downfall, and absorb it under its own leadership. as mitâni, saved by its remote position from bondage to egypt, had not been able to escape from acknowledging the supremacy of the khâti, so bît-adini was destined to fall almost without a struggle under the yoke of the assyrians. it was protected from their advance by the volcanic groups of the urâa and tul-abâ, which lay directly in the way of the main road from the marshes of the khabur to the outskirts of tul-barsip. assur-nazir-pal, who might have worked round this line of natural defence to the north through nirbu, or to the south through his recently acquired province of lâqi, preferred to approach it in front; he faced the desert, and, in spite of the drought, he invested the strongest citadel of tul-abâ in the month of june, 877 b.c. the name of the place was kaprabi, and its inhabitants believed it impregnable, clinging as it did to the mountain-side �like a cloud in the sky.� * * the name is commonly interpreted �great rock,� and divided thus--kap-rabi. it may also be considered, like kapridargila or kapranishâ, as being formed of _kapru_ and _abi_; this latter element appears to exist in the ancient name of telaba, thallaba, now tul-abâ. kapr-abi might be a fortress of the province of tul-abâ. the king, however, soon demolished its walls by sapping and by the use of the ram, killed 800 of its garrison, burned its houses, and carried off 2400 men with their families, whom he installed in one of the suburbs of calah. akhuni, who was then reigning in bît-adini, had not anticipated that the invasion would reach his neighbourhood: he at once sent hostages and purchased peace by a tribute; the lord of tul-abnî followed his example, and the dominion of assyria was carried at a blow to the very frontier of the khâti. it was about two centuries before this that assurirba had crossed these frontiers with his vanquished army, but the remembrance of his defeat had still remained fresh in the memory of the people, as a warning to the sovereign who should attempt the old hazardous enterprise, and repeat the exploits of sargon of agadê or of tiglath-pileser i. assur-nazir-pal made careful preparations for this campaign, so decisive a one for his own prestige and for the future of the empire. he took with him not only all the assyrian troops at his disposal, but requisitioned by the way the armies of his most recently acquired vassals, incorporating them with his own, not so much for the purpose of augmenting his power of action, as to leave no force in his rear when once he was engaged hand to hand with the syrian legions. he left calah in the latter days of april, 876 b.c.,* receiving the customary taxes from bît-bakhiâni, izalla, and bît-adini, which comprised horses, silver, gold, copper, lead, precious stuffs, vessels of copper and furniture of ivory; having reached tul-barsip, he accepted the gifts offered by tul-abni, and crossing the euphrates upon rafts of inflated skins, he marched his columns against oarchemish. * on the 8th iyyâr, but without any indication of limmu, or any number of the year or of the campaign; the date 876 b.c. is admitted by the majority of historians. the political organisation of northern syria had remained entirely unaltered since the days when tiglath-pileser made his first victorious inroad into the country. the cilician empire which succeeded to the assyrian--if indeed it ever extended as far as some suppose--did not last long enough to disturb the balance of power among the various races occupying syria: it had subjugated them for a time, but had not been able to break them up and reconstitute them. at the downfall of the cilician empire the small states were still intact, and occupied, as of old, the territory comprising the ancient naharaim of the egyptians, the plateau between the orontes and the euphrates, the forests and marshy lowlands of the amanos, the southern slopes of taurus, and the plains of cilicia. [illustration: 050.jpg campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in syria] of these states, the most famous, though not then the most redoubtable, was that with which the name of the khâti is indissolubly connected, and which had carchemish as its capital. this ancient city, seated on the banks of the euphrates, still maintained its supremacy there, but though its wealth and religious ascendency were undiminished, its territory had been curtailed. the people of bît-adini had intruded themselves between this state and kummukh, arazik hemmed it in on the south, khazazu and khalmân confined it on the west, so that its sway was only freely exercised in the basin of the sajur. on the north-west frontier of the khâti lay gurgum, whose princes resided at marqasi and ruled over the central valley of the pyramos together with the entire basin of the ak-su. mikhri,* iaudi, and samalla lay on the banks of the saluara, and in the forests of the amanos to the south of gurgum. kuî maintained its uneventful existence amid the pastures of cilicia, near the marshes at the mouth of the pyramos. to the south of the sajur, bît-agusi** barred the way to the orontes; and from their lofty fastness of arpad, its chiefs kept watch over the caravan road, and closed or opened it at their will. * mikhri or ismikhri, i.e. �the country of larches,� was the name of a part of the amanos, possibly near the pyramos. ** the real name of the country was iakhânu, but it was called bît-gusi or bît-agusi, like bît-adini, bît-bakhiâni, bît-omri, after the founder of the reigning dynasty. we must place iakhânu to the south of azaz, in the neighbourhood of arpad, with this town as its capital. they held the key of syria, and though their territory was small in extent, their position was so strong that for more than a century and a half the majority of the assyrian generals preferred to avoid this stronghold by making a detour to the west, rather than pass beneath its walls. scattered over the plateau on the borders of agusi, or hidden in the valleys of amanos, were several less important principalities, most of them owing allegiance to lubarna, at that time king of the patina and the most powerful sovereign of the district. the patina had apparently replaced the alasia of egyptian times, as bît-adini had superseded mitâni; the fertile meadow-lands to the south of samalla on the afrîn and the lower orontes, together with the mountainous district between the orontes and the sea as far as the neighbourhood of eleutheros, also belonged to the patina. [illustration: 052.jpg bas-relief from a building at sinjirli] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by perrot and chipiez. on the southern frontier of the patina lay the important phoenician cities, arvad, arka, and sina; and on the south-east, the fortresses belonging to hamath and damascus. the characteristics of the country remained unchanged. fortified towns abounded on all sides, as well as large walled villages of conical huts, like those whose strange outlines on the horizon are familiar to the traveller at the present-day. the manners and civilisation of chaldæa pervaded even more than formerly the petty courts, but the artists clung persistently to asianic tradition, and the bas-reliefs which adorned the palaces and temples were similar in character to those we find scattered throughout asia minor; there is the same inaccurate drawing, the same rough execution, the same tentative and awkward composition. [illustration: 053.jpg jibrîn, a village of conical huts, on the plateau of aleppo] drawn by boudier, from a photograph reproduced in peters. the scribes from force of custom still employed the cuneiform syllabary in certain official religious or royal inscriptions, but, as it was difficult to manipulate and limited in application, the speech of the aramæan immigrants and the phoenician alphabet gradually superseded the ancient language and mode of writing.* * there is no monument bearing an inscription in this alphabet which can be referred with any certainty to the time of assur-nazir-pal, but the inscriptions of the kings of samalla date back to a period not more than a century and a half later than his reign; we may therefore consider the aramæan alphabet as being in current use in northern syria at the beginning of the ninth century, some forty years before the date of mesha�s inscription (i.e. the moabite stone). thus these northern syrians became by degrees assimilated to the people of babylon and nineveh, much as the inhabitants of a remote province nowadays adapt their dress, their architecture, their implements of husbandry and handicraft, their military equipment and organisation, to the fashions of the capital.* * one can judge of their social condition from the enumeration of the objects which formed their tribute, or the spoil which the assyrian kings carried off from their country. [illustration: 054.jpg the war-chariot of the khâti op the ninth century] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief. their armies were modelled on similar lines, and consisted of archers, plkemen, slingers, and those troops of horsemen which accompanied the chariotry on flying raids; the chariots, moreover, closely followed the assyrian type, even down to the padded bar with embroidered hangings which connected the body of the chariot with the end of the pole. [illustration: 055.jpg the assyrian war-chariot of the ninth century b.c.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze bas-relief on the gates of balawât. the syrian princes did not adopt the tiara, but they wore the long fringed robe, confined by a girdle at the waist, and their mode of life, with its ceremonies, duties, and recreations, differed little from that prevailing in the palaces of calah or babylon. they hunted big game, including the lion, according to the laws of the chase recognised at nineveh, priding themselves as much on their exploits in hunting, as on their triumphs in war. [illustration: 056.jpg a king of the khâti hunting a lion in his chariot] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by hogarth, published in the _recueil de travaux_. their religion was derived from the common source which underlay all semitic religions, but a considerable number of babylonian deities were also worshipped; these had been introduced in some cases without any modification, whilst in others they had been assimilated to more ancient gods bearing similar characteristics: at nerab, among the patina, nusku and his female companion nikal, both of chaldæan origin, claimed the homage of the faithful, to the disparagement of shahr the moon and shamash the sun. local cults often centred round obscure deities held in little account by the dominant races; thus samalla reverenced uru the light, bekubêl the wind, the chariot of el, not to mention el himself, besheph, hadad, and the cabin, the servants of besheph. [illustration: 057.jpg the god hadad] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph in luschan. these deities were mostly of the assyrian type, and if one may draw any conclusion from the few representations of them already discovered, their rites must have been celebrated in a manner similar to that followed in the cities on the lower euphrates. scarcely any signs of egyptian influence survived, though here and there a trace of it might be seen in the figures of calf or bull, the vulture of mut or the sparrow-hawk of horus. assur-nazir-pal, marching from the banks of the khabur to bît-adini, and from bît-adini passing on to northern syria, might almost have imagined himself still in his own dominions, so gradual and imperceptible were the changes in language and civilisation in the country traversed between nineveh and assur, tul-barsip and samalla. his expedition was unattended by danger or bloodshed. lubarna, the reigning prince of the patina, was possibly at that juncture meditating the formation of a syrian empire under his rule. unki, in which lay his capital of kunulua, was one of the richest countries of asia,* being well watered by the afrin, orontes, and saluara;** no fields produced such rich harvests as his, no meadows pastured such cattle or were better suited to the breeding of war-horses. * the unki of the assyrians, the uniuqa of the egyptians, is the valley of antioch, the amk of the present day. kunulua or kinalia, the capital of the patina, has been identified with the gindaros of greek times; i prefer to identify it with the existing tell-kunâna, written for tell-kunâla by the common substitution of _n_ for _l_ at the end of proper names. ** the saluara of the assyrian texts is the present kara-su, which flows into the ak-denîz, the lake of antioch. [illustration: 058.jpg religious scene displaying egyptian features] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the impression taken from a hittite cylinder. his mountain provinces yielded him wood and minerals, and provided a reserve of semi-savage woodcutters and herdsmen from which to recruit his numerous battalions. the neighbouring princes, filled with uneasiness or jealousy by his good fortune, saw in the assyrian monarch a friend and a liberator rather than an enemy. carchemish opened its gates and laid at his feet the best of its treasures--twenty talents of silver, ingots, rings, and daggers of gold, a hundred talents of copper, two hundred talents of iron, bronze bulls, cups decorated with scenes in relief or outline, ivory in the tusk or curiously wrought, purple and embroidered stuffs, and the state carriage of its king shangara. the hittite troops, assembled in haste, joined forces with the aramæan auxiliaries, and the united host advanced on coele-syria. the scribe commissioned to record the history of this expedition has taken a delight in inserting the most minute details. leaving carchemish, the army followed the great caravan route, and winding its way between the hills of munzigâni and khamurga, skirting bît-agusi, at length arrived under the walls of khazazu among the patina.* * khazazu being the present azaz, the assyrian army must have followed the route which still leads from jerabis to this town. mount munzigâni and khamurga, mentioned between carchemish and akhânu or iakhânu, must lie between the sajur and the koweik, near shehab, at the only point on the route where the road passes between two ranges of lofty hills. the town having purchased immunity by a present of gold and of finely woven stuffs, the army proceeded to cross the apriê, on the bank of which an entrenched camp was formed for the storage of the spoil. lubarna offered no resistance, but nevertheless refused to acknowledge his inferiority; after some delay, ifc was decided to make a direct attack on his capital, kunulua, whither he had retired. the appearance of the assyrian vanguard put a speedy end to his ideas of resistance: prostrating himself before his powerful adversary, he offered hostages, and emptied his palaces and stables to provide a ransom. this comprised twenty talents of silver, one talent of gold, a hundred talents of lead, a hundred talents of iron, a thousand bulls, ten thousand sheep, daughters of his nobles with befitting changes of garments, and all the paraphernalia of vessels, jewels, and costly stuffs which formed the necessary furniture of a princely household. the effect of his submission on his own vassals and the neighbouring tribes was shown in different ways. bît-agusi at once sent messengers to congratulate the conqueror, but the mountain provinces awaited the invader�s nearer approach before following its example. assur-nazir-pal, seeing that they did not take the initiative, crossed the orontes, probably at the spot where the iron bridge now stands, and making his way through the country between laraku and iaturi,* reached the banks of the sangura* without encountering any difficulty. * the spot where assur-nazir-pal must have crossed the orontes is determined by the respective positions of kunulua and tell-kunâna. at the iron bridge, the modern traveller has the choice of two roads: one, passing antioch and beît el-mâ, leads to urdeh on the nahr-el-kebîr; the other reaches the same point by a direct route over the gebel kosseir. if, as i believe, assur-nazir-pal took the latter route, the country and mount laraku must be the northern part of gebel kosseir in the neighbourhood of antioch, and iaturi, the southern part of the same mountain near derkush. laraku is mentioned in the same position by shalmaneser iii., who reached it after crossing the orontes, on descending from the amanos _en route_ for the country of hamath. ** the sangura or sagura has been identified by delattre with the nahr-el-kebîr, not that river which the greeks called the eleutheros, but that which flows into the sea near latakia. before naming the sangura, the _annals_ mention a country, whose name, half effaced, ended in _-ku_: i think we may safely restore this name as [ashtama]kou, mentioned by shalmaneser iii. in this region, after the name of laraku. the country of ashtamaku would thus be the present canton of urdeh, which is traversed before reaching the banks of the nahr-el-kebîr. after a brief halt there in camp, he turned his back on the sea, and passing between saratini and duppâni,* took by assault the fortress of aribua.** this stronghold commanded all the surrounding country, and was the seat of a palace which lubarna at times used as a similar residence. here assur-nazir-pal took up his quarters, and deposited within its walls the corn and spoils of lukhuti;*** he established here an assyrian colony, and, besides being the scene of royal festivities, it became henceforth the centre of operations against the mountain tribes. * the mountain cantons of saratini and duppâni (kalpâni l�adpâni?), situated immediately to the south of the nahr-el kebîr, correspond to the southern part of gebel-el-akrad, but i cannot discover any names on the modern map at all resembling them. ** beyond duppâni, assur-nazir-pal encamped on the banks of a river whose name is unfortunately effaced, and then reached aribua; this itinerary leads us to the eastern slope of the gebel ansarieh in the latitude of hamath. the only site i can find in this direction fulfilling the requirements of the text is that of masiad, where there still exists a fort of the assassins. the name aribua is perhaps preserved in that of rabaô, er-rabahu, which is applied to a wady and village in the neighbourhood of masiad. *** lukhuti must not be sought in the plains of the orontes, where assur-nazir-pal would have run the risk of an encounter with the king of hamath or his vassals; it must represent the part of the mountain of ansarieh lying between kadmus, masiad, and tortosa. the forts of the latter were destroyed, their houses burned, and prisoners were impaled outside the gates of their cities. having achieved this noble exploit, the king crossed the intervening spurs of lebanon and marched down to the shores of the mediterranean. here he bathed his weapons in the waters, and offered the customary sacrifices to the gods of the sea, while the phoenicians, with their wonted prudence, hastened to anticipate his demands--tyre, sidon, byblos, mahallat, maîza, kaîza, the amorites and arvad,* all sending tribute. * the point where assur-nazir-pal touched the sea-coast cannot be exactly determined: admitting that he set out from masiad or its neighbourhood, he must have crossed the lebanon by the gorge of the eleutheros, and reached the sea board somewhere near the mouth of this river. one point strikes us forcibly as we trace on the map the march of this victorious hero, namely, the care with which he confined himself to the left bank of the orontes, and the restraint he exercised in leaving untouched the fertile fields of its valley, whose wealth was so calculated to excite his cupidity. this discretion would be inexplicable, did we not know that there existed in that region a formidable power which he may have thought it imprudent to provoke. it was damascus which held sway over those territories whose frontiers he respected, and its kings, also suzerains of hamath and masters of half israel, were powerful enough to resist, if not conquer, any enemy who might present himself. the fear inspired by damascus naturally explains the attitude adopted by the hittite states towards the invader, and the precautions taken by the latter to restrict his operations within somewhat narrow limits. having accepted the complimentary presents of the phoenicians, the king again took his way northwards--making a slight detour in order to ascend the amanos for the purpose of erecting there a stele commemorating his exploits, and of cutting pines, cedars, and larches for his buildings--and then returned to nineveh amid the acclamations of his people. in reading the history of this campaign, its plan and the principal events which took place in it appear at times to be the echo of what had happened some centuries before. the recapitulation of the halting-places near the sources of the tigris and on the banks of the upper euphrates, the marches through the valleys of the zagros or on the slopes of kashiari, the crushing one by one of the mesopotamian races, ending in a triumphal progress through northern syria, is almost a repetition, both as to the names and order of the places mentioned, of the expedition made by tiglath-pileser in the first five years of his reign. the question may well arise in passing whether assur-nazir-pal consciously modelled his campaign on that of his ancestor, as, in egypt, ramses iii. imitated ramses ii., or whether, in similar circumstances, he instinctively and naturally followed the same line of march. in either case, he certainly showed on all sides greater wisdom than his predecessor, and having attained the object of his ambition, avoided compromising his success by injudiciously attacking damascus or babylon, the two powers who alone could have offered effective resistance. the victory he had gained, in 879, over the brother of nabu-baliddin had immensely flattered his vanity. his panegyrists vied with each other in depicting karduniash bewildered by the terror of his majesty, and the chaldæans overwhelmed by the fear of his arms; but he did not allow himself to be carried away by their extravagant flatteries, and continued to the end of his reign to observe the treaties concluded between the two courts in the time of his grandfather rammân-nirâri.* * his frontier on the chaldæan side, between the tigris and the mountains, was the boundary fixed by rammân-nirâri. he had, however, sufficiently enlarged his dominions, in less than ten years, to justify some display of pride. he himself described his empire as extending, on the west of assyria proper, from the banks of the tigris near nineveh to lebanon and the mediterranean;* besides which, sukhi was subject to him, and this included the province of rapiku on the frontiers of babylonia.** * the expression employed in this description and in similar passages, _ishtu ibirtan nâru_, translated _from the ford over the river_, or better, _from the other side of the river_, must be understood as referring to assyria proper: the territory subject to the king is measured in the direction indicated, starting from the rivers which formed the boundaries of his hereditary dominions. _from the other bank of the tigris_ means from the bank of the tigris opposite nineveh or oalah, whence the king and his army set out on their campaigns. ** rapiku is mentioned in several texts as marking the frontier between the sukhi and chaldæa. he had added to his older provinces of amidi, masios and singar, the whole strip of armenian territory at the foot of the taurus range, from the sources of the supnat to those of the bitlis-tchaî, and he held the passes leading to the banks of the arzania, in kirruri and gilzân, while the extensive country of naîri had sworn him allegiance. towards the south-east the wavering tribes, which alternately gave their adherence to assur or babylon according to circumstances, had ranged themselves on his side, and formed a large frontier province beyond the borders of his hereditary kingdom, between the lesser zab and the turnat. but, despite repeated blows inflicted on them, he had not succeeded in welding these various factors into a compact and homogeneous whole; some small proportion of them were assimilated to assyria, and were governed directly by royal officials,* but the greater number were merely dependencies, more or less insecurely held by the obligations of vassalage or servitude. in some provinces the native chiefs were under the surveillance of assyrian residents;** these districts paid an annual tribute proportionate to the resources and products of their country: thus kirruri and the neighbouring states contributed horses, mules, bulls, sheep, wine, and copper vessels; the aramaeans gold, silver, lead, copper, both wrought and in the ore, purple, and coloured or embroidered stuffs; while izalla, nirbu, nirdun, and bît-zamâni had to furnish horses, chariots, metals, and cattle. * there were royal governors in suru in bit-khalupi, in matiâte, in madara, and in naîri. ** there were �assyrian� residents in kirruri and the neighbouring countries, in kirkhi, and in naîri. the less civilised and more distant tribes were not, like these, subject to regular tribute, but each time the sovereign traversed their territory or approached within reasonable distance, their chiefs sent or brought to him valuable presents as fresh pledges of their loyalty. royal outposts, built at regular intervals and carefully fortified, secured the fulfilment of these obligations, and served as depots for storing the commodities collected by the royal officials; such outposts were, damdamusa on the north-west of the kashiari range, tushkhân on the tigris, tilluli between the supnat and the euphrates, aribua among the patina, and others scattered irregularly between the greater and lesser zab, on the khabur, and also in naîri. these strongholds served as places of refuge for the residents and their guards in case of a revolt, and as food-depots for the armies in the event of war bringing them into their neighbourhood. in addition to these, assur-nazir-pal also strengthened the defences of assyria proper by building fortresses at the points most open to attack; he repaired or completed the defences of kaksi, to command the plain between the greater and lesser zab and the tigris; he rebuilt the castles or towers which guarded the river-fords and the entrances to the valleys of the gebel makhlub, and erected at calah the fortified palace which his successors continued to inhabit for the ensuing five hundred years. assur-nazir-pal had resided at nineveh from the time of his accession to the throne; from thence he had set out on four successive campaigns, and thither he had returned at the head of his triumphant troops, there he had received the kings who came to pay him homage, and the governors who implored his help against foreign attacks; thither he had sent rebel chiefs, and there, after they had marched in ignominy through the streets, he had put them to torture and to death before the eyes of the crowd, and their skins were perchance still hanging nailed to the battlements when he decided to change the seat of his capital. the ancient capital no longer suited his present state as a conqueror; the accommodation was too restricted, the decoration too poor, and probably the number of apartments was insufficient to house the troops of women and slaves brought back from his wars by its royal master. built on the very bank of the tebilti, one of the tributaries of the khusur, and hemmed in by three temples, there was no possibility of its enlargement--a difficulty which often occurs in ancient cities. the necessary space for new buildings could only have been obtained by altering the course of the stream, and sacrificing a large part of the adjoining quarters of the city: assur-nazir-pal therefore preferred to abandon the place and to select a new site where he would have ample space at his disposal. [illustration: 067.jpg the mounds of calah] drawn by boudier, from layard. the pointed mound on the left near the centre of the picture represents the ziggurât of the great temple. he found what he required close at hand in the half-ruined city of calah, where many of his most illustrious predecessors had in times past sought refuge from the heat of assur. it was now merely an obscure and sleepy town about twelve miles south of nineveh, on the right bank of the tigris, and almost at the angle made by the junction of this river with the greater zab. the place contained a palace built by shalmaneser i., which, owing to many years� neglect, had become uninhabitable. assur-nazir-pal not only razed to the ground the palaces and temples, but also levelled the mound on which they had been built; he then cleared away the soil down to the water level, and threw up an immense and almost rectangular terrace on which to lay out his new buildings. [illustration: 068.jpg stele of assur-nazir-pal at calah] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mansell. the king chose ninip, the god of war, as the patron of the city, and dedicated to him, at the north-west corner of the terrace, a ziggurât with its usual temple precincts. here the god was represented as a bull with a man�s head and bust in gilded alabaster, and two yearly feasts were instituted in his honour, one in the month sebat, the other in the month ulul. the ziggurât was a little over two hundred feet high, and was probably built in seven stages, of which only one now remains intact: around it are found several independent series of chambers and passages, which may have been parts of other temples, but it is now impossible to say which belonged to the local belît, which to sin, to gula, to rammân, or to the ancient deity râ. at the entrance to the largest chamber, on a rectangular pedestal, stood a stele with rounded top, after the egyptian fashion. on it is depicted a figure of the king, standing erect and facing to the left of the spectator; he holds his mace at his side, his right hand is raised in the attitude of adoration, and above him, on the left upper edge of the stele, are grouped the five signs of the planets; at the base of the stele stands an altar with a triangular pedestal and circular slab ready for the offerings to be presented to the royal founder by priests or people. the palace extended along the south side of the terrace facing the town, and with the river in its rear; it covered a space one hundred and thirty-one yards in length and a hundred and nine in breadth. in the centre was a large court, surrounded by seven or eight spacious halls, appropriated to state functions; between these and the court were many rooms of different sizes, forming the offices and private apartments of the royal house. the whole palace was built of brick faced with stone. three gateways, flanked by winged, human-headed bulls, afforded access to the largest apartment, the hall of audience, where the king received his subjects or the envoys of foreign powers.* the doorways and walls of some of the rooms were decorated with glazed tiles, but the majority of them were covered with bands of coloured** bas-reliefs which portrayed various episodes in the life of the king--his state-councils, his lion hunts, the reception of tribute, marches over mountains and rivers, chariot-skirmishes, sieges, and the torture and carrying away of captives. * at the east end of the hall layard found a block of alabaster covered with inscriptions, forming a sort of platform on which the king�s throne may have stood. ** layard points out the traces of colouring still visible when the excavations were made. [illustration: 070.jpg the winged bulls op assur-nazir-pal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by layard. incised in bands across these pictures are inscriptions extolling the omnipotence of assur, while at intervals genii with eagles� beaks, or deities in human form, imperious and fierce, appear with hands full of offerings, or in the act of brandishing thunderbolts against evil spirits. the architect who designed this imposing decoration, and the sculptors who executed it, closely followed the traditions of ancient chaldæa in the drawing and composition of their designs, and in the use of colour or chisel; but the qualities and defects peculiar to their own race give a certain character of originality to this borrowed art. they exaggerated the stern and athletic aspect of their models, making the figure thick-set, the muscles extraordinarily enlarged, and the features ludicrously accentuated. [illustration: 071.jpg glazed tile from palace of calah] drawn by boudier, after layard. their pictures produce an impression of awkwardness, confusion and heaviness, but the detail is so minute and the animation so great that the attention of the spectator is forcibly arrested; these uncouth beings impress us with the sense of their self-reliance and their confidence in their master, as we watch them brandishing their weapons or hurrying to the attack, and see the shock of battle and the death-blows given and received. the human-headed bulls, standing on guard at the gates, exhibit the calm and pensive dignity befitting creatures conscious of their strength, while the lions passant who sometimes replace them, snarl and show their teeth with an almost alarming ferocity. [illustration: 072.jpg lion from assur-nazir-pal�s palace] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the sculpture in the british museum. the statues of men and gods, as a rule, are lacking in originality. the heavy robes which drape them from head to foot give them the appearance of cylinders tied in at the centre and slightly flattened towards the top. the head surmounting this shapeless bundle is the only life-like part, and even the lower half of this is rendered heavy by the hair and beard, whose tightly curled tresses lie in stiff rows one above the other. the upper part of the face which alone is visible is correctly drawn; the expression is of rather a commonplace type of nobility--respectable but self-sufficient. the features--eyes, forehead, nose, mouth--are all those of assur-nazir-pal; the hair is arranged in the fashion he affected, and the robe is embroidered with his jewels; but amid all this we miss the keen intelligence always present in egyptian sculpture, whether under the royal head-dress of cheops or in the expectant eyes of the sitting scribe: the assyrian sculptor could copy the general outline of his model fairly well, but could not infuse soul into the face of the conqueror, whose �countenance beamed above the destruction around him.� the water of the tigris being muddy, and unpleasant to the taste, and the wells at calah so charged with lime and bitumen as to render them unwholesome, assur-nazir-pal supplied the city with water from the neighbouring zab.* an abundant stream was diverted from this river at the spot now called negub, and conveyed at first by a tunnel excavated in the rock, and thence by an open canal to the foot of the great terrace: at this point the flow of the water was regulated by dams, and the surplus was utilised for irrigation** purposes by means of openings cut in the banks. * the presence of bitumen in the waters of calah is due to the hot springs which rise in the bed of the brook shor derreh. ** the canal of negub--_negub_ signifies _hole_ in arabic- was discovered by layard. the zab having changed its course to the south, and scooped out a deeper bed for itself, the double arch, which serves as an entrance to the canal, is actually above the ordinary level of the river, and the water flows through it only in flood-time. the aqueduct was named bâbilat-khigal--the bringer of plenty--and, to justify the epithet, date-palms, vines, and many kinds of fruit trees were planted along its course, so that both banks soon assumed the appearance of a shady orchard interspersed with small towns and villas. the population rapidly increased, partly through the spontaneous influx of assyrians themselves, but still more through the repeated introduction of bands of foreign prisoners: forts, established at the fords of the zab, or commanding the roads which cross the gebel makhlub, kept the country in subjection and formed an inner line of defence at a short distance from the capital. [illustration: 074.jpg a corner of the ruined palace of assur-nazir-pal] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by rassam. assur-nazir-pal kept up a palace, garden, and small temple, near the fort of imgur-bel, the modern balawât: thither he repaired for intervals of repose from state affairs, to enjoy the pleasures of the chase and cool air in the hot season. he did not entirely abandon his other capitals, nineveh and assur, visiting them occasionally, but calah was his favourite seat, and on its adornment he spent the greater part of his wealth and most of his leisure hours. only once again did he abandon his peaceful pursuits and take the field, about the year 897 b.c., during the eponymy of shamashnurî. the tribes on the northern boundary of the empire had apparently forgotten the lessons they had learnt at the cost of so much bloodshed at the beginning of his reign: many had omitted to pay the tribute due, one chief had seized the royal cities of amidi and damdamusa, and the rebellion threatened to spread to assyria itself. assur-nazir-pal girded on his armour and led his troops to battle as vigorously as in the days of his youth. he hastily collected, as he passed through their lands, the tribute due from kipâni, izalla, and kummukh, gained the banks of the euphrates, traversed grubbu burning everything on his way, made a detour through dirria and kirkhi, and finally halted before the walls of damdamusa. six hundred soldiers of the garrison perished in the assault and four hundred were taken prisoners: these he carried to amidi and impaled as an object-lesson round its walls; but, the defenders of the town remaining undaunted, he raised the siege and plunged into the gorges of the kashiari. having there reduced to submission udâ, the capital of lapturi, son of tubisi, he returned to calah, taking with him six thousand prisoners whom he settled as colonists around his favourite residence. this was his last exploit: he never subsequently quitted his hereditary domain, but there passed the remaining seven years of his life in peace, if not in idleness. he died in 860 b.c., after a reign of twenty-five years. his portraits represent him as a vigorous man, with a brawny neck and broad shoulders, capable of bearing the weight of his armour for many hours at a time. he is short in the head, with a somewhat flattened skull and low forehead; his eyes are large and deep-set beneath bushy eyebrows, his cheek-bones high, and his nose aquiline, with a fleshy tip and wide nostrils, while his mouth and chin are hidden by moustache and beard. the whole figure is instinct with real dignity, yet such dignity as is due rather to rank and the habitual exercise of power, than to the innate qualities of the man.* * perrot and chipiez do not admit that the assyrian sculptors intended to represent the features of their kings; for this they rely chiefly on the remarkable likeness between all the figures in the same series of bas-reliefs. my own belief is that in assyria, as in egypt, the sculptors took the portrait of the reigning sovereign as the model for all their figures. the character of assur-nazir-pal, as gathered from the dry details of his annals, seems to have been very complex. he was as ambitious, resolute, and active as any prince in the world; yet he refrained from offensive warfare as soon as his victories had brought under his rule the majority of the countries formerly subject to tiglath-pileser i. he knew the crucial moment for ending a campaign, arresting his progress where one more success might have brought him into collision with some formidable neighbour; and this wise prudence in his undertakings enabled him to retain the principal acquisitions won by his arms. as a worshipper of the gods he showed devotion and gratitude; he was just to his subjects, but his conduct towards his enemies was so savage as to appear to us cruel even for that terribly pitiless age: no king ever employed such horrible punishments, or at least none has described with such satisfaction the tortures inflicted on his vanquished foes. perhaps such measures were necessary, and the harshness with which he repressed insurrection prevented more frequent outbreaks and so averted greater sacrifice of life. but the horror of these scenes so appals the modern reader, that at first he can only regard assur-nazir-pal as a royal butcher of the worst type. [illustration: 077.jpg shalmaneser iii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell, taken from the original stele in the british museum. assur-nazir-pal left to his successor an overflowing treasury, a valiant army, a people proud of their progress and fully confident in their own resources, and a kingdom which had recovered, during several years of peace, from the strain of its previous conquests. shalmaneser iii.* drew largely on the reserves of men and money which his father�s foresight had prepared, and his busy reign of thirty-five years saw thirty-two campaigns, conducted almost without a break, on every side of the empire in succession. a double task awaited him, which he conscientiously and successfully fulfilled. * [the shalmaneser iii. of the text is the shalmaneser ii. of the notes.--tr.] assur-nazir-pal had thoroughly reorganised the empire and raised it to the rank of a great power: he had confirmed his provinces and vassal states in their allegiance, and had subsequently reduced to subjection, or, at any rate, penetrated at various points, the little buffer principalities between assyria and the powerful kingdoms of babylon, damascus, and urartu; but he had avoided engaging any one of these three great states in a struggle of which the issue seemed doubtful. shalmaneser could not maintain this policy of forbearance without loss of prestige in the eyes of the world: conduct which might seem prudent and cautious in a victorious monarch like assur-nazir-pal would in him have argued timidity or weakness, and his rivals would soon have provoked a quarrel if they thought him lacking in the courage or the means to attack them. immediately after his accession, therefore, he assumed the offensive, and decided to measure his strength first against urartu, which for some years past had been showing signs of restlessness. few countries are more rugged or better adapted for defence than that in which his armies were about to take the field. the volcanoes to which it owed its configuration in geological times, had become extinct long before the appearance of man, but the surface of the ground still bears evidence of their former activity; layers of basaltic rock, beds of scorias and cinders, streams of half-disintegrated mud and lava, and more or less perfect cones, meet the eye at every turn. subterranean disturbances have not entirely ceased even now, for certain craters--that of tandurek, for example--sometimes exhale acid fumes; while hot springs exist in the neighbourhood, from which steaming waters escape in cascades to the valley, and earthquakes and strange subterranean noises are not unknown. the backbone of these armenian mountains joins towards the south the line of the grordyasan range; it runs in a succession of zigzags from south-east to northwest, meeting at length the mountains of pontus and the last spurs of the caucasus. [illustration: 079.jpg the two peaks of mount ararat] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by a. tissandier. lofty snow-clad peaks, chiefly of volcanic origin, rise here and there among them, the most important being akhta-dagh, tandurek, ararat, bingoel, and palandoeken. the two unequal pyramids which form the summit of ararat are covered with perpetual snow, the higher of them being 16,916 feet above the sea-level. the spurs which issue from the principal chain cross each other in all directions, and make a network of rocky basins where in former times water collected and formed lakes, nearly all of which are now dry in consequence of the breaking down of one or other of their enclosing sides. two only of these mountain lakes still remain, entirely devoid of outlet, lake van in the south, and lake urumiah further to the south-east. the assyrians called the former the upper sea of naîri, and the latter the lower sea, and both constituted a defence for urartu against their attacks. to reach the centre of the kingdom of urartu, the assyrians had either to cross the mountainous strip of land between the two lakes, or by making a detour to the north-west, and descending the difficult slopes of the valley of the arzania, to approach the mountains of armenia lying to the north of lake van. the march was necessarily a slow and painful one for both horses and men, along narrow winding valleys down which rushed rapid streams, over raging torrents, through tangled forests where the path had to be cut as they advanced, and over barren wind-swept plateaux where rain and mist chilled and demoralized soldiers accustomed to the warm and sunny plains of the euphrates. the majority of the armies which invaded this region never reached the goal of the expedition: they retired after a few engagements, and withdrew as quickly as possible to more genial climes. the main part of the urartu remained almost always unsubdued behind its barrier of woods, rocks, and lakes, which protected it from the attacks levelled against it, and no one can say how far the kingdom extended in the direction of the caucasus. it certainly included the valley of the araxes and possibly part of the valley of the kur, and the steppes sloping towards the caspian sea. it was a region full of contrasts, at once favoured and ill-treated by nature in its elevation and aspect: rugged peaks, deep gorges, dense thickets, districts sterile from the heat of subterranean fires, and sandy wastes barren for lack of moisture, were interspersed with shady valleys, sunny vine-clad slopes, and wide stretches of fertile land covered with rich layers of deep alluvial soil, where thick-standing corn and meadow-lands, alternating with orchards, repaid the cultivator for the slightest attempt at irrigation. [illustration: 080.jpg end of the harvest--cutting straw] history does not record who were the former possessors of this land; but towards the middle of the ninth century it was divided into several principalities, whose position and boundaries cannot be precisely determined. it is thought that urartu lay on either side of mount ararat and on both banks of the araxes, that biainas lay around lake van,* and that the mannai occupied the country to the north and east of lake urumiah;** the positions of the other tribes on the different tributaries of the euphrates or the slopes of the armenian mountains are as yet uncertain. * urartu is the only name by which the assyrians knew the kingdom of van; it has been recognised from the very beginning of assyriological studies, as well as its identity with the ararat of the bible and the alarodians of herodotus. it was also generally recognised that the name biainas in the vannic inscriptions, which hincks read bieda, corresponded to the urartu of the assyrians, but in consequence of this mistaken reading, efforts have been made to connect it with adiabene. sayce was the first to show that biainas was the name of the country of van, and of the kingdom of which van was the capital; the word bitâni which sayce connects with it is not a secondary form of the name of van, but a present day term, and should be erased from the list of geographical names. ** the mannai are the minni of jeremiah (li. 27), and it is in their country of minyas that one tradition made the ark rest after the deluge. the country was probably peopled by a very mixed race, for its mountains have always afforded a safe asylum for refugees, and at each migration, which altered the face of western asia, some fugitives from neighbouring nations drifted to the shelter of its fastnesses. [illustration: 082.jpg the kingdom of uratu] the principal element, the khaldi, were akin to that great family of tribes which extended across the range of the taurus, from the shores of the mediterranean to the euxine, and included the khalybes, the mushku, the tabal, and the khâti. the little preserved of their language resembles what we know of the idioms in use among the people of arzapi and mitânni, and their religion seems to have been somewhat analogous to the ancient worship of the hittites. the character of the ancient armenians, as revealed to us by the monuments, resembles in its main features that of the armenians of the present time. they appear as tall, strong, muscular, and determined, full of zest for work and fighting, and proud of their independence. [illustration: 083.jpg fragment of a votive shield of urartian work] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hormuzd rassam. some of them led a pastoral life, wandering about with their flocks during the greater part of the year, obliged to seek pasturage in valley, forest, or mountain height according to the season, while in winter they remained frost-bound in semi-subterranean dwellings similar to those in which descendants immure themselves at the present day. where the soil lent itself to agriculture, they proved excellent husbandmen, and obtained abundant crops. their ingenuity in irrigation was remarkable, and enabled them to bring water by a system of trenches from distant springs to supply their fields and gardens; besides which, they knew how to terrace the steep hillsides so as to prevent the rapid draining away of moisture. industries were but little developed among them, except perhaps the working of metals; for were they not akin to those chalybes of the pontus, whose mines and forges already furnished iron to the grecian world? fragments have been discovered in the ruined cities of urartu of statuettes, cups, and votive shields, either embossed or engraved, and decorated with concentric bands of animals or men, treated in the assyrian manner, but displaying great beauty of style and remarkable finish of execution. [illustration: 084.jpg site of an urartian town at toprah-kaleh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. their towns were generally fortified or perched on heights, rendering them easy of defence, as, for example, van and toprah-kaleh. even such towns as were royal residences were small, and not to be compared with the cities of assyria or aram; their ground-plan generally assumed the form of a rectangular oblong, not always traced with equal exactitude. [illustration: 085.jpg the ruins of a palace of urartu at toprah-kaleh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by hormuzd rassam. the walls were built of blocks of roughly hewn stone, laid in regular courses, but without any kind of mortar or cement; they were surmounted by battlements, and flanked at intervals by square towers, at the foot of which were outworks to protect the points most open to attack. the entrance was approached by narrow and dangerous pathways, which sometimes ran on ledges across the precipitous face of the rock. the dwelling-houses were of very simple construction, being merely square cabins of stone or brick, devoid of any external ornament, and pierced by one low doorway, but sometimes surmounted by an open colonnade supported by a row of small pillars; a flat roof with a parapet crowned the whole, though this was often replaced by a gabled top, which was better adapted to withstand the rains and snows of winter. the palaces of the chiefs differed from the private houses in the size of their apartments and the greater care bestowed upon their decoration. their façades were sometimes adorned with columns, and ornamented with bucklers or carved discs of metal; slabs of stone covered with inscriptions lined the inner halls, but we do not know whether the kings added to their dedications to the gods and the recital of their victories, pictures of the battles they had fought and of the fortresses they had destroyed. the furniture resembled that in the houses of nineveh, but was of simpler workmanship, and perhaps the most valuable articles were imported from assyria or were of aramaean manufacture. the temples seemed to have differed little from the palaces, at least in external appearance. the masonry was more regular and more skilfully laid; the outer court was filled with brazen lavers and statues; the interior was furnished with altars, sacrificial stones, idols in human or animal shape, and bowls identical with those in the sanctuaries on the euphrates, but the nature and details of the rites in which they were employed are unknown. one supreme deity, khaldis, god of the sky, was, as far as we can conjecture, the protector of the whole nation, and their name was derived from his, as that of the assyrians was from assur, the cossæans from kashshu, and the khati from khâtu. [illustration: 086.jpg temple of khaldis at muzazir] this deity was assisted in the government of the universe by teisbas, god of the air, and ardinîs the sun-god. groups of secondary deities were ranged around this sovereign triad--auis, the water; ayas, the earth; selardis, the moon; kharubainis, irmusinis, adarutas, and arzi-melas: one single inscription enumerates forty-six, but some of these were worshipped in special localities only. [illustration: 089.jpg assyrian soldiers carrying off or destroying the furniture of an urartian temple] drawn by faucher-gudin, from botta. scribes are weighing gold, and soldiers destroying the statue of a god with their axes. it would appear as if no goddesses were included in the native pantheon. saris, the only goddess known to us at present, is probably merely a variant of the ishtar of nineveh or arbela, borrowed from the assyrians at a later date. the first assyrian conquerors looked upon these northern regions as an integral part of naîri, and included them under that name. they knew of no single state in the district whose power might successfully withstand their own, but were merely acquainted with a group of hostile provinces whose internecine conflicts left them ever at the mercy of a foreign foe.* two kingdoms had, however, risen to some importance about the beginning of the ninth century--that of the mannai in the east, and that of urartu in the centre of the country. urartu comprised the district of ararat proper, the province of biaina, and the entire basin of the arzania. * the single inscription of tiglath-pileser i. contains a list of twenty-three kings of nairi, and mentions sixty chiefs of the same country. [illustration: 090.jpg shalmanesee iii. crossing the mountains] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. arzashkun, one of its capitals, situated probably near the sources of this river, was hidden, and protected against attack, by an extent of dense forest almost impassable to a regular army. the power of this kingdom, though as yet unorganised, had already begun to inspire the neighbouring states with uneasiness. assur-nazir-pal speaks of it incidentally as lying on the northern frontier of his empire,* but the care he took to avoid arousing its hostility shows the respect in which he held it. * arzashku, arzashkun, seems to be the assyrian form of an urartian name ending in _-ka_, formed from a proper name arzash, which recalls the name arsène, arsissa, applied by the ancients to part of lake van. arzashkun might represent the ardzik of the armenian historians, west of malasgert. he was, indeed, as much afraid of urartu as of damascus, and though he approached quite close to its boundary in his second campaign, he preferred to check his triumphant advance rather than risk attacking it. it appears to have been at that time under the undisputed rule of a certain sharduris, son of lutipri, and subsequently, about the middle of assur-nazir-pal�s reign, to have passed into the hands of aramê, who styled himself king of naîri, and whose ambition may have caused those revolts which forced assur-nazir-pal to take up arms in the eighteenth year of his reign. on this occasion the assyrians again confined themselves to the chastisement of their own vassals, and checked their advance as soon as they approached urartu. their success was but temporary; hardly had they withdrawn from the neighbourhood, when the disturbances were renewed with even greater violence, very probably at the instigation of aramê. shalmaneser iii. found matters in a very unsatisfactory state both on the west and south of lake van: some of the peoples who had been subject to his father--the khubushkia, the pastoral tribes of the gordæan mountains, and the aramæans of the euphrates--had transferred their allegiance elsewhere. he immediately took measures to recall them to a sense of their duty, and set out from calah only a few days after succeeding to the crown. he marched at first in an easterly direction, and, crossing the pass of simisi, burnt the city of aridi, thus proving that he was fully prepared to treat rebels after the same fashion as his father. the lesson had immediate effect. all the neighbouring tribes, khargæans, simisæans, the people of simira, sirisha, and ulmania, hastened to pay him homage even before he had struck his camp near aridi. hurrying across country by the shortest route, which entailed the making of roads to enable his chariots and cavalry to follow him, he fell upon khubushkia, and reduced a hundred towns to ashes, pursuing the king kakia into the depths of the forest, and forcing him to an unconditional surrender. ascending thence to shugunia, a dependency of aramê�s, he laid the principality waste, in spite of the desperate resistance made on their mountain slopes by the inhabitants; then proceeding to lake van, he performed the ceremonial rites incumbent on an assyrian king whenever he stood for the first time on the shores of a new sea. he washed his weapons in the waters, offered a sacrifice to the gods, casting some portions of the victim into the lake, and before leaving carved his own image on the surface of a commanding rock. on his homeward march he received tribute from gilzân. this expedition was but the prelude of further successes. after a few weeks� repose at nineveh, he again set out to make his authority felt in the western portions of his dominions. [illustration: 093.jpg the people of shugunia fighting against the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. akhuni, chief of bît-adini, whose position was the first to be menaced, had formed a league with the chiefs of all the cities which had formerly bowed before assur-nazir-pal�s victorious arms, gurgum, samalla, kuî, the patina, car-chemish, and the khâti. shalmaneser seized lalati* and burmarana, two of akhuni�s towns, drove him across the euphrates, and following close on his heels, collected as he passed the tribute of gurgum, and fell upon samalla. * lalati is probably the lulati of the egyptians. the modern site is not known, nor is that of burmarana. under the walls of lutibu he overthrew the combined forces of adini, samalla, and the patina, and raised a trophy to commemorate his victory at the sources of the saluara; then turning sharply to the south, he crossed the orontes in pursuit of shapalulme, king of the patina. [illustration: 094.jpg prisoners from shugunia, with their arms tied and yokes on their necks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. not far from alizir he encountered a fresh army raised by akhuni and the king of samalla, with contingents from carchemish, kuî, cilicia, and iasbuki:* having routed it, he burnt the fortresses of shapalulme, and after occupying himself by cutting down cedars and cypress trees on the amanos in the province of atalur, he left a triumphal stele engraved on the mountain-side. * the country of iasbuki is represented by ishbak, a son of abraham and keturah, mentioned in genesis (xxv. 2) in connection with shuah. [illustration: 094b.jpg sacrifice offered by shalmaneser iii.] [illustration: 095.jpg costumes found in the fifth tomb] next turning eastwards, he received the homage offered with alacrity by the towns of taia, khazazu, nulia, and butamu, and, with a final tribute from agusi, he returned in triumph to nineveh. the motley train which accompanied, him showed by its variety the immense extent of country he had traversed during this first campaign. among the prisoners were representatives of widely different races;--khâti with long robes and cumbrous head-dresses, following naked mountaineers from shugunia, who marched with yokes on their necks, and wore those close-fitting helmets with short crests which have such a strangely modern look on the assyrian bas-reliefs. the actual results of the campaign were, perhaps, hardly commensurate with the energy expended. this expedition from east to west had certainly inflicted considerable losses on the rebels against whom it had been directed; it had cost them dearly in men and cattle, and booty of all kinds, and had extorted from them a considerable amount of tribute, but they remained, notwithstanding, still unsubdued. as soon as the assyrian troops had quitted their neighbourhood, they flattered themselves they were safe from further attack. no doubt they thought that a show of submission would satisfy the new invader, as it had satisfied his father; but shalmaneser was not disposed to rest content with this nominal dependence. he intended to exercise effective control over all the states won by his sword, and the proof of their subjection was to be the regular payment of tribute and fulfilment of other obligations to their suzerain. year by year he unfailingly enforced his rights, till the subject states were obliged to acknowledge their master and resign themselves to servitude. the narrative of his reiterated efforts is a monotonous one. the king advanced against adini in the spring of 859 b.c., defeated akhuni near tul-barsip, transported his victorious regiments across the euphrates on rafts of skins, seized surunu, paripa, and dabigu* besides six fortresses and two hundred villages, and then advanced into the territory of carchemish, which he proceeded to treat with such severity that the other hittite chiefs hastened to avert a similar fate by tendering their submission. * shalmaneser crossed the euphrates near tul-barsip, which would lead him into the country between birejîk, rum-kaleh, and aintab, and it is in that district that we must look for the towns subject to akhuni. dabigu, i consider, corresponds to dehbek on rey�s map, a little to the north-east of aintab; the sites of paripa and surunu are unknown. the very enumeration of their offerings proves not only their wealth, but the terror inspired by the advancing assyrian host: shapalulmê of the patina, for instance, yielded up three talents of gold, a hundred talents of silver, three hundred talents of copper, and three hundred of iron, and paid in addition to this an annual tribute of one talent of silver, two talents of purple, and two hundred great beams of cedar-wood. samalla, agusi, and kummukh were each laid under tribute in proportion to their resources, but their surrender did not necessarily lead to that of adini. akhuni realised that, situated as he was on the very borders of assyrian territory, there was no longer a chance of his preserving his semi-independence, as was the case with his kinsfolk beyond the euphrates; proximity to the capital would involve a stricter servitude, which would soon reduce him from the condition of a vassal to that of a subject, and make him merely a governor where he had hitherto reigned as king. abandoned by the khâti, he sought allies further north, and entered into a league with the tribes of naîri and urartu. when, in 858 b.c., shalmaneser iii. forced an entrance into tul-barsip, and drove back what was left of the garrison on the right bank of the euphrates, a sudden movement of aramê obliged him to let the prey escape from his grasp. rapidly fortifying tul-barsip, nappigi, aligu, pitru, and mutkînu, and garrisoning them with loyal troops to command the fords of the river, as his ancestor shalmaneser i. had done six centuries before,* he then re-entered naîri by way of bît-zamani, devastated inziti with fire and sword, forced a road through to the banks of the arzania, pillaged sukhmi and dayaîni, and appeared under the walls of arzashkun. * pitru, the pethor of the bible (numb. xxii. 5), is situated near the confluence of the sajur and the euphrates, somewhere near the encampment called oshériyéh by sachau. mutkînu was on the other bank, perhaps at kharbet-beddaî, nearly opposite pitru. nappigi was on the left bank of the euphrates, which excludes its identification with mabog hierapolis, as proposed by hommel; nabigath, mentioned by tomkins, is too far east. nappigi and aligu must both be sought in the district between the euphrates and the town of saruj. aramê withdrew to mount adduri and awaited his attack in an almost impregnable position; he was nevertheless defeated: 3400 of his soldiers fell on the field of battle; his camp, his treasures, his chariots, and all his baggage passed into the hands of the conqueror, and he himself barely escaped with his life. shalmaneser ravaged the country �as a savage bull ravages and tramples under his feet the fertile fields;� he burnt the villages and the crops, destroyed arzashkun, and raised before its gates a pyramid of human heads, surrounded by a circle of prisoners impaled on stakes. he climbed the mountain chain of iritia, and laid waste aramali and zanziuna at his leisure, and descending for the second time to the shores of lake van, renewed the rites he had performed there in the first year of his reign, and engraved on a neighbouring rock an inscription recording his deeds of prowess. [illustration: 100.jpg shua, king of gilzan, bringing a war-horse fully caparisoned to shalmaneser] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the black obelisk. he made his way back to gilzân, where its king, shua, brought him a war-horse fully caparisoned, as a token of homage. shalmaneser graciously deigned to receive it, and further exacted from the king the accustomed contributions of chariot-horses, sheep, and wine, together with seven dromedaries, whose strange forms amused the gaping crowds of nineveh. after quitting gilzân, shalmaneser encountered the people of khubushkia, who ventured to bar his way; but its king, kakia, lost his city of shilaia, and three thousand soldiers, besides bulls, horses, and sheep innumerable. having enforced submission in khubushkia, shalmaneser at length returned to assur through the defiles of kirruri, and came to calah to enjoy a well-earned rest after the fatigues of his campaign. [illustration: 101.jpg dromedaries from gilzan] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. but akhuni had not yet lost heart. though driven back to the right bank of the euphrates, he had taken advantage of the diversion created by aramê in his favour, to assume a strong position among the hills of shitamrat with the river in his rear.* * the position of shitamrat may answer to the ruins of the fortress of rum-kaleh, which protected a ford of the euphrates in byzantine times. shalmaneser attacked his lines in front, and broke through them after three days� preliminary skirmishing; then finding the enemy drawn up in battle array before their last stronghold, the king charged without a moment�s hesitation, drove them back and forced them to surrender. akhuni�s life was spared, but he was sent with the remainder of his army to colonise a village in the neighbourhood of assur, and adini became henceforth an integral part of assyria. [illustration: 102.jpg tribute from gilzan] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the black obelisk. the war on the western frontier was hardly brought to a close when another broke out in the opposite direction. the king rapidly crossed the pass of bunagishlu and fell upon mazamua: the natives, disconcerted by his impetuous onslaught, nevertheless hoped to escape by putting out in their boats on the broad expanse of lake urumiah. shalmaneser, however, constructed rafts of inflated skins, on which his men ventured in pursuit right out into the open. the natives were overpowered; the king �dyed the sea with their blood as if it had been wool,� and did not withdraw until he had forced them to appeal for mercy. in five years shalmaneser had destroyed adini, laid low urartu, and confirmed the tributary states of syria in their allegiance; but damascus and babylon were as yet untouched, and the moment was at hand when he would have to choose between an arduous conflict with them, or such a repression of the warlike zeal of his opening years, that, like his father assur-nazir-pal, he would have to repose on his laurels. shalmaneser was too deeply imbued with the desire for conquest to choose a peaceful policy: he decided at once to assume the offensive against damascus, being probably influenced by the news of ahab�s successes, and deeming that if the king of israel had gained the ascendency unaided, assur, fully confident of its own superiority, need have no fear as to the result of a conflict. the forces, however, at the disposal of benhadad ii. (adadidri) were sufficient to cause the assyrians some uneasiness. the king of damascus was not only lord of coele-syria and the haurân, but he exercised a suzerainty more or less defined over hamath, israel, ammon, the arabian and idumean tribes, arvad and the principalities of northern phoenicia, usanata, shianu, and irkanata;* in all, twelve peoples or twelve kings owned his sway, and their forces, if united to his, would provide at need an army of nearly 100,000 men: a few years might see these various elements merged in a united empire, capable of withstanding the onset of any foreign foe.** * irkanata, the egyptian arqanatu, perhaps the irqata of the tel-el-a marna tablets, is the arka of phoenicia. the other countries enumerated are likewise situated in the same locality. shianu (for a long time read as shizanu), the sin of the bible (gen. x. 17), is mentioned by tiglath-pileser iii. under the name sianu. ushanat is called uznu by tiglath-pileser, and delitzsch thought it represented the modern kalaat-el-hosu. with arvad it forms the ancient zahi of the egyptians, which was then subject to damascus. ** the suzerainty of ben-hadad over these twelve peoples is proved by the way in which they are enumerated in the assyrian documents: his name always stands at the head of the list. the manner in which the assyrian scribes introduce the names of these kings, mentioning sometimes one, sometimes two among them, without subtracting them from the total number 12, has been severely criticised, and schrader excused it by saying that 12 is here used as a round number somewhat vaguely. shalmaneser set out from nineveh on the 14th day of the month iyyâr, 854 b.c., and chastised on his way the aramaeans of the balikh, whose sheikh giammu had shown some inclination to assert his independence. he crossed the euphrates at tul-harsip, and held a species of durbar at pitru for his syrian subjects: sangar of carchemish, kundashpi of kummukh, aramê of agusi, lalli of melitene, khaiani of samalla, garparuda who had succeeded shapalulmê among the patina, and a second garparuda of gurgum, rallied around him with their presents of welcome, and probably also with their troops. this ceremony concluded, he hastened to khalmaa and reduced it to submission, then plunged into the hill-country between khalmân and the orontes, and swept over the whole territory of hamath. a few easy victories at the outset enabled him to exact ransom from, or burn to the ground, the cities of adinnu, mashgâ, arganâ, and qarqar, but just beyond qarqar he encountered the advance-guard of the syrian army.* * the position of these towns is uncertain: the general plan of the campaign only proves that they must lie on the main route from aleppo to kalaat-sejar, by barâ or by maarêt-en nômân and kalaat-el-mudiq. it is agreed that qarqar must be sought not far from hamath, whatever the exact site may be. an examination of the map shows us that qarqar corresponds to the present kalaat-el-mudiq, the ancient apamasa of lebanon; the confederate army would command the ford which led to the plain of hamath by kalaat-sejar. [illustration: 105.jpg tribute from garparuda, king of the patina] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the black obelisk. ben-hadad had called together, to give him a fitting reception, the whole of the forces at his disposal: 1200 chariots, 1200 horse, 20,000 foot-soldiers from damascus alone; 700 chariots, 700 horse and 10,000 foot from hamath; 2000 chariots and 10,000 foot belonging to ahab, 500 soldiers from kuî, 1000 mountaineers from the taurus,* 10 chariots and 10,000 foot from irk and 200 from arvad, 200 from usanata, 30 chariots and 10,000 foot from shianu, 1000 camels from gindibu the arab, and 1000 ammonites. * the people of the muzri next enumerated have long been considered as egyptians; the juxtaposition of their name with that of kuî shows that it refers here to the muzri of the taurus. the battle was long and bloody, and the issue uncertain; shalmaneser drove back one wing of the confederate army to the orontes, and forcing the other wing and the centre to retire from qarqar to kirzau, claimed the victory, though the losses on both sides were equally great. it would seem as if the battle were indecisive--the assyrians, at any rate, gained nothing by it; they beat a retreat immediately after their pretended victory, and returned to their own land without prisoners and almost without booty. on the whole, this first conflict had not been unfavourable to damascus: it had demonstrated the power of that state in the eyes of the most incredulous, and proved how easy resistance would be, if only the various princes of syria would lay aside their differences and all unite under the command of a single chief. the effect of the battle in northern syria and among the recently annexed aïamoan tribes was very great; they began to doubt the omnipotence of assyria, and their loyalty was shaken. sangar of carchemish and the khâti refused to pay their tribute, and the emirs of tul-abnî and mount kashiari broke out into open revolt. shalmaneser spent a whole year in suppressing the insurrection; complications, moreover, arose at babylon which obliged him to concentrate his attention and energy on chaldæan affairs. nabu-baliddin had always maintained peaceful and friendly relations with assyria, but he had been overthrown, or perhaps assassinated, and his son marduk-nadin-shumu had succeeded him on the throne, to the dissatisfaction of a section of his subjects. another son of nabu-baliddin, marduk-belusâtê, claimed the sovereign power, and soon won over so much of the country that marduk-nâdin-shumu had fears for the safety of babylon itself. he then probably remembered the pretensions to kharduniash, which his assyrian neighbours had for a long time maintained, and applied to shalmaneser to support his tottering fortunes. the assyrian monarch must have been disposed to lend a favourable ear to a request which allowed him to intervene as suzerain in the quarrels of the rival kingdom: he mobilised his forces, offered sacrifices in honour of bammân at zabân, and crossed the frontier in 853 b.c.* the war dragged on during the next two years. the scene of hostilities was at the outset on the left bank of the tigris, which for ten centuries had served as the battle-field for the warriors of both countries. shalmaneser, who had invested me-turnat at the fords of the lower dîyalah, at length captured that fortress, and after having thus isolated the rebels of babylonia proper, turned his steps towards g-ananatê.** * the town of zabân is situated on the lesser zab, but it is impossible to fix the exact site. ** mè-turnat, mê-turni, �the water of the turnat,� stood upon the dîyalah, probably near the site of bakuba, where the most frequented route crosses the river; perhaps we may identify it with the artemita of classical authors. gananatê must be sought higher up near the mountains, as the context points out; i am inclined to place it near the site of khanekin, whose gardens are still celebrated, and the strategic importance of which is considerable. marduk-belusâtê, �a vacillating king, incapable of directing his own affairs,� came out to meet him, but although repulsed and driven within the town, he defended his position with such spirit that shalmaneser was at length obliged to draw off his troops after having cut down all the young compelled the fruit trees, disorganised the whole system of irrigation,--in short, after having effected all the damage he could. he returned in the following spring by the most direct route; lakhiru fell into his hands,* but marduk-belusâtê, having no heart to contend with him for the possession of a district ravaged by the struggle of the preceding summer, fell back on the mountains of yasubi and concentrated his forces round armân.** * lakhiru comes before gananate on the direct road from assyria, to the south of the lower zab, as we learn from the account of the campaign itself: wo shall not do wrong in placing this town either at kifri, or in its neighbourhood on the present caravan route. ** mount yasubi is the mountainous district which separates khanekin from holwân. shalmaneser, having first wreaked his vengeance upon gananatê, attacked his adversary in his self-chosen position; annan fell after a desperate defence, and marduk-belusâtê either perished or disappeared in a last attempt at retaliation. marduk-nadîn-shumu, although rid of his rival, was not yet master of the entire kingdom. the aramæans of the marshes, or, as they called themselves, the kaldâ, had refused him their allegiance, and were ravaging the regions of the lower euphrates by their repeated incursions. they constituted not so much a compact state, as a confederation of little states, alternately involved in petty internecine quarrels, or temporarily reconciled under the precarious authority of a sole monarch. each separate state bore the name of the head of the family--real or mythical--from whom all its members prided themselves on being descended,--bît-dakkuri, bît-adini, bît-amukkâni, bît-shalani, bît-shalli, and finally bît-yakîn, which in the end asserted its predominance over all the rest.* * as far as we can judge, bît-dakkuri and bît-adini were the most northerly, the latter lying on both sides of the euphrates, the former on the west of the euphrates, to the south of the bahr-i-nejîf; bît-yakîn was at the southern extremity near the mouths of the euphrates, and on the western shore of the persian gulf. in demanding shalmaneser�s help, marduk-nadîn-shumu had virtually thrown on him the responsibility of bringing these turbulent subjects to order, and the assyrian monarch accepted the duties of his new position without demur. he marched to babylon, entered the city and went direct to the temple of e-shaggîl: the people beheld him approach with reverence their deities bel and belît, and visit all the sanctuaries of the local gods, to whom he made endless propitiatory libations and pure offerings. he had worshipped ninip in kuta; he was careful not to forget nabo of borsippa, while on the other hand he officiated in the temple of ezida, and consulted its ancient oracle, offering upon its altars the flesh of splendid oxen and fat lambs. the inhabitants had their part in the festival as well as the gods; shalmaneser summoned them to a public banquet, at which he distributed to them embroidered garments, and plied them with meats and wine; then, after renewing his homage to the gods of babylon, he recommenced his campaign, and set out in the direction of the sea. baqâni, the first of the chaldæan cities which lay on his route, belonged to bît-adini,* one of the tribes of bît-dakkuri; it appeared disposed to resist him, and was therefore promptly dismantled and burnt--an example which did not fail to cool the warlike inclinations which had begun to manifest themselves in other parts of bît-dakkuri. * the site of baqâni is unknown; it should be sought for between lamlum and warka, and bît-adini in bît-dakkuri should be placed between the shatt-et-kaher and the arabian desert, if the name of enzudî, the other royal town, situated to the west of the euphrates, is found, as is possible, under a popular etymology, in that of kalaat ain saîd or kalaat ain-es-saîd in the modern maps. he next crossed the euphrates, and pillaged enzudî, the fate of which caused the remainder of bît-adini to lay down arms, and the submission of the latter brought about that of bît-yakîn and bît-amukkani. these were all rich provinces, and they bought off the conqueror liberally: gold, silver, tin, copper, iron, acacia-wood, ivory, elephants� skins, were all showered upon the invader to secure his mercy. it must have been an intense satisfaction to the pride of the assyrians to be able to boast that their king had deigned to offer sacrifices in the sacred cities of accad, and that he had been borne by his war-horses to the shores of the salt sea; these facts, of little moment to us now, appeared to the people of those days of decisive importance. no king who was not actually master of the country would have been tolerated within the temple of the eponymous god, for the purpose of celebrating the rites which the sovereign alone was empowered to perform. marduk-nadîn-shumu, in recognising shalmaneser�s right to act thus, thereby acknowledged that he himself was not only the king�s ally, but his liegeman. this bond of supremacy doubtless did not weigh heavily upon him; as soon as his suzerain had evacuated the country, the two kingdoms remained much on the same footing as had been established by the treaties of the three previous generations. alliances were made between private families belonging to both, peace existed between the two sovereigns, interchange of commerce and amenities took place between the two peoples, but with one point of difference which had not existed formerly: assur protected babel, and, by taking precedence of marduk, he became the real head of the peoples of the euphrates valley. assured of the subordination, or at least of the friendly neutrality of babylon, shalma-neser had now a free hand to undertake a campaign in the remoter regions of syria, without being constantly haunted by the fear that his rival might suddenly swoop down upon him in the rear by the valleys of the badanu or the zabs. he now ran no risks in withdrawing his troops from the south-eastern frontier, and in marshalling his forces on the slopes of the armenian alps or on the banks of the orontes, leaving merely a slender contingent in the heart of assyria proper to act as the necessary guardians of order in the capital. since the indecisive battle of qarqar, the western frontier of the empire had receded as far as the euphrates, and shalmaneser had been obliged to forego the collection of the annual syrian tribute. it would have been an excellent opportunity for the khâti, while they enjoyed this accidental respite, to come to an understanding with damascus, for the purpose of acting conjointly against a common enemy; but they let the right moment slip, and their isolation made submission inevitable. the effort to subdue them cost shalmaneser dear, both in time and men; in the spring of each year he appeared at the fords of tul-barsip and ravaged the environs of carchemish, then marched upon the orontes to accomplish the systematic devastation of some fresh district, or to inflict a defeat on such of his adversaries as dared to encounter him in the open field. in 850 b.c. the first blow was struck at the khâti; agusi* was the next to suffer, and its king, aramê, lost arniê, his royal city, with some hundred more townships and strongholds.** * historians have up to the present admitted that this campaign of the year 850 took place in armenia. the context of the account itself shows us that, in his tenth year, shalmaneser advanced against the towns of aramê, immediately after having pillaged the country of the khâti, which inclines me to think that these towns were situated in northern syria. i have no doubt that the aramê in question is not the armenian king of that name, but aramê the sovereign of bit-agusi, who is named several times in the annals of shalmaneser. ** the text of bull no. 1 adds to the account of the war against aramê, that of a war against the damascene league, which merely repeats the account of shalmaneser�s eleventh year. it is generally admitted that the war against aramê falls under his tenth year, and the war against ben-hadad during his eleventh year. the scribes must have had at their disposal two different versions of one document, in which these two wars were described without distinction of year. the compiler of the inscription of the bulls would have considered them as forming two distinct accounts, which he has placed one after the other. in 849 b.c. it was the turn of damascus. the league of which ben-hadad had proclaimed himself the suzerain was still in existence, but it had recently narrowly escaped dissolution, and a revolt had almost deprived it of the adherence of israel and the house of omri--after hamath, the most active of all its members. the losses suffered at qarqar had doubtless been severe enough to shake ahab�s faith in the strength of his master and ally. besides this, it would appear that the latter had not honourably fulfilled all the conditions of the treaty of peace he had signed three years previously; he still held the important fortress of bamoth-gilead, and he delayed handing it over to ahab in spite of his oath to restore it. finding that he could not regain possession of it by fair means, ahab resolved to take it by force. a great change in feeling and politics had taken place at jerusalem. jehoshaphat, who occupied the throne, was, like his father asa, a devout worshipper of jahveh, but his piety did not blind him to the secular needs of the moment. the experience of his predecessors had shown that the union of the twelve tribes under the rule of a scion of judah was a thing of the past for ever; all attempts to restore it had ended in failure and bloodshed, and the house of david had again only lately been saved from ruin by the dearly bought intervention of ben-hadad i. and his syrians. jehoshaphat from the outset clearly saw the necessity of avoiding these errors of the past; he accepted the situation and sought the friendship of israel. an alliance between two princes so unequal in power could only result in a disguised suzerainty for one of them and a state of vassalage for the other; what ben-hadad�s alliance was to ahab, that of ahab was to jehoshaphat, and it served his purpose in spite of the opposition of the prophets.1 the strained relations between the two countries were relaxed, and the severed tribes on both sides of the frontier set about repairing their losses; while hiel the bethelite at length set about rebuilding jericho on behalf of samaria,* jehoshaphat was collecting around him a large army, and strengthening himself on the west against the philistines and on the south against the bedawîn of the desert.** the marriage of his eldest son jehoram*** with athaliah subsequently bound the two courts together by still closer ties;**** mutual-visits were exchanged, and it was on the occasion of a stay made by jehoshaphat at jezreel that the expedition against eamoth was finally resolved on. * the subordinate position of jehoshaphat is clearly indicated by the reply which he makes to ahab when the latter asks him to accompany him on this expedition: �i am as thou art, my people as thy people, my horses as thy horses� (1 kings xxii. 4). ** 1 kings xvi. 34, where the writer has preserved the remembrance of a double human sacrifice, destined, according to the common custom in the whole of the east, to create guardian spirits for the new building: �he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son segub; according to the word of the lord.� [for the curse pronounced on whoever should rebuild jericho, see josh. vi. 26.--tr.] *** [following the distinction in spelling given in 2 kings viii. 25, i have everywhere written joram (of israel) and jehoram (of judah), to avoid confusion.--tr.] **** athaliah is sometimes called the daughter of ahab (2 kings viii. 18), and sometimes the daughter of omri (2 kings viii. 26; cf. 2 ohron. xxii. 2), and several authors prefer the latter filiation, while the majority see in it a mistake of the hebrew scribe. it is possible that both attributions may be correct, for we see by the assyrian inscriptions that a sovereign is called the son of the founder of his line even when he was several generations removed from him: thus, merodach-baladan, the adversary of sargon of assyria, calls himself son of iakin, although the founder of the bît-iakîn had been dead many centuries before his accession. the document used in 2 kings viii. 26 may have employed the term daughter of omri in the same manner merely to indicate that the queen of jerusalem belonged to the house of omri. it might well have appeared a more than foolhardy enterprise, and it was told in israel that micaiah, a prophet, the son of imlah, had predicted its disastrous ending. �i saw,� exclaimed the prophet, �the lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left. and the lord said, who shall entice ahab that he may go up and fall at ramoth-gilead? and one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. and there came forth a spirit, and stood before the lord, and said, i will entice him. and the lord said unto him, wherewith? and he said, i will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. and he said, thou shalt entice him, and shalt prevail also: go forth, and do so. now therefore, behold, the lord hafch put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and the lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.� * * 1 kings xxii. 5-23, reproduced in 2 chron. xviii. 4-22. the two kings thereupon invested ramoth, and ben-hadad hastened to the defence of his fortress. selecting thirty-two of his bravest charioteers, he commanded them to single out ahab only for attack, and not fight with others until they had slain him. this injunction happened in some way to come to the king�s ears, and he therefore disguised himself as a common soldier, while jehoshaphat retained his ordinary dress. attracted by the richness of the latter�s armour, the syrians fell upon him, but on his raising his war-cry they perceived their mistake, and turning from the king of judah they renewed their quest of the israelitish leader. while they were vainly seeking him, an archer drew a bow �at a venture,� and pierced him in the joints of his cuirass. �wherefore he said to his charioteer, turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for i am sore wounded.� perceiving, however, that the battle was going against him, he revoked the order, and remained on the field the whole day, supported by his armour-bearers. he expired at sunset, and the news of his death having spread panic through the ranks, a cry arose, �every man to his city, and every man to his country!� the king�s followers bore his body to samaria,* and israel again relapsed into the position of a vassal, probably under the same conditions as before the revolt. * 1 kings xxii. 28-38 (cf. 2 ohron. xviii. 28-34), with interpolations in verses 35 and 38. it is impossible to establish the chronology of this period with any certainty, so entirely do the hebrew accounts of it differ from the assyrian. the latter mention ahab as alive at the time of the battle of qarqar in 854 b.c. and jehu on the throne in 842 b.c. we must, therefore, place in the intervening twelve years, first, the end of ahab�s reign; secondly, the two years of ahaziah; thirdly, the twelve years of joram; fourthly, the beginning of the reign of jehu--in all, possibly fourteen years. the reign of joram has been prolonged beyond reason by the hebrew annalists, and it alone lends itself to be curtailed. admitting that the siege of samaria preceded the battle of qarqar, we may surmise that the three years which elapsed, according to the tradition (1 kings xxii. 1), between the triumph of ahab and his death, fall into two unequal periods, two previous to qarqar, and one after it, in such a manner that the revolt of israel would have been the result of the defeat of the damascenes; ahab must have died in 835 b.c., as most modern historians agree. on the other hand, it is scarcely probable that jehu ascended the throne at the very moment that shalmaneser was defeating hazael in 842 b.c.; we can only carry back his accession to the preceding year, possibly 843. the duration of two years for the reign of ahaziah can only be reduced by a few months, if indeed as much as that, as it allows of a full year, and part of a second year (cf. 1 kings xxii. 51, where it is said that ahaziah ascended the throne in the 17th year of jehoshaphat, and 2 kings iii. 1, where it states that joram of israel succeeded ahaziah in the 18th year of the same jehoshaphat).; in placing these two years between 853 and 851, there will remain for the reign of joram the period comprised between 851 and 843, namely, eight years, instead of the twelve attributed to him by biblical tradition. ahaziah survived his father two years, and was succeeded by his brother joram.* when shalmaneser, in 849 b.c., reappeared in the valley of the orontes, joram sent out against him his prescribed contingent, and the conquered israelites once more fought for their conqueror. * the hebrew documents merely make mention of ahaziah�s accession, length of reign, and death (1 kings xxii. 40, 51 53, and 2 kings i. 2-17). the assyrian texts do not mention his name, but they state that in 849 �the twelve kings� fought against shalmaneser, and, as we have already seen, one of the twelve was king of israel, here, therefore necessarily ahaziah, whose successor was joram. the assyrians had, as usual, maltreated the khâti. after having pillaged the towns of carchemish and agusi, they advanced on the amanos, held to ransom the territory of the patina enclosed within the bend of the orontes, and descending upon hamath by way of the districts of iaraku and ashta-maku, they came into conflict with the army of the twelve kings, though on this occasion the contest was so bloody that they were forced to withdraw immediately after their success. they had to content themselves with sacking apparazu, one of the citadels of aramê, and with collecting the tribute of garparuda of the patina; which done, they skirted the amanos and provided themselves with beams from its cedars. the two following years were spent in harrying the people of paqarakhbuni, on the right bank of the euphrates, in the dependencies of the ancient kingdom of adini (848 b.c.), and in plundering the inhabitants of ishtaratê in the country of iaîti, near the sources of the tigris (847 b.c.), till in 846 they returned to try their fortune again in syria. they transported 120,000 men across the euphrates, hoping perhaps, by the mere mass of such a force, to crush their enemy in a single battle; but ben-hadad was supported by his vassals, and their combined army must have been as formidable numerically as that of the assyrians. as usual, after the engagement, shalmaneser claimed the victory, but he did not succeed in intimidating the allies or in wresting from them a single rood of territory.* * the care which the king takes to specify that �with 120,000 men he crossed the euphrates in flood-time� very probably shows that this number was for him in some respects an unusual one. discouraged, doubtless, by so many fruitless attempts, he decided to suspend hostilities, at all events for the present. in 845 b.c. he visited naîri, and caused an �image of his royal majesty� to be carved at the source of the tigris close to the very spot where the stream first rises. pushing forward through the defiles of tunibuni, he next invaded urartu, and devastated it as far as the sources of the euphrates; on reaching these he purified his arms in the virgin spring, and offered a sacrifice to the gods. on his return to the frontier, the chief of dayaini �embraced his feet,� and presented him with some thoroughbred horses. in 844 b.c. he crossed the lower zab and plunged into the heart of namri; this country had long been under babylonian influence, and its princes bore semitic names. mardukmudammiq, who was then its ruler, betook himself to the mountains to preserve his life; but his treasures, idols, and troops were carried off to assyria, and he was superseded on the throne by ianzu, the son of khambân, a noble of cossæan origin. as might be expected after such severe exertions, shalmaneser apparently felt that he deserved a time of repose, for his chroniclers merely note the date of 843 b.c. as that of an inspection, terminating in a felling of cedars in the amanos. as a fact, there was nothing stirring on the frontier. chaldæa itself looked upon him as a benefactor, almost as a suzerain, and by its position between elam and assyria, protected the latter from any quarrel with susa. the nations on the east continued to pay their tribute without coercion, and namri, which alone entertained pretensions to independence, had just received a severe lesson. urartu had not acknowledged the supremacy of assur, but it had suffered in the last invasion, and aramê had shown no further sign of hostility. the tribes of the upper tigris--kummukh and adini--accepted their position as subjects, and any trouble arising in that quarter was treated as merely an ebullition of local dissatisfaction, and was promptly crushed. the khâti were exhausted by the systematic destruction of their towns and their harvests. lastly, of the principalities of the amanos, gurgum, samalla, and the patina, if some had occasionally taken part in the struggles for independence, the others had always remained faithful in the performance of their duties as vassals. damascus alone held out, and the valour with which she had endured all the attacks made on her showed no signs of abatement; unless any internal disturbance arose to diminish her strength, she was likely to be able to resist the growing power of assyria for a long time to come. it was at the very time when her supremacy appeared to be thus firmly established that a revolution broke out, the effects of which soon undid the work of the preceding two or three generations. ben-hadad, disembarrassed of shalmaneser, desired to profit by the respite thus gained to make a final reckoning with the israelites. it would appear that their fortune had been on the wane ever since the heroic death of ahab. immediately after the disaster at eamoth, the moabites had risen against ahaziah,* and their king, mesha, son of kamoshgad, had seized the territory north of the arnon which belonged to the tribe of gad; he had either killed or carried away the jewish population in order to colonise the district with moabites, and he had then fortified most of the towns, beginning with dhibon, his capital. owing to the shortness of his reign, ahaziah had been unable to take measures to hinder him; but joram, as soon as he was firmly seated on the throne, made every effort to regain possession of his province, and claimed the help of his ally or vassal jehoshaphat.** * 2 kings iii. 5. the text does not name ahaziah, and it might be concluded that the revolt took place under joram; the expression employed by the hebrew writer, however, �when ahab was dead... the king of moab rebelled against the king of israel,� does not permit of it being placed otherwise than at the opening of ahaziah�s reign. ** 2 kings iii. 6, 7, where jehoshaphat replies to joram in the same terms which he had used to ahab. the chronological difficulties induced ed. meyer to replace the name of jehoshaphat in this passage by that of his son jehoram. as stade has remarked, the presence of two kings both bearing the name of jehoram in the same campaign against moab would have been one of those facts which strike the popular imagination, and would not have been forgotten; if the hebrew author has connected the moabite war with the name of jehoshaphat, it is because his sources of information furnished him with that king�s name. the latter had done his best to repair the losses caused by the war with syria. being lord of edom, he had been tempted to follow the example of solomon, and the deputy who commanded in his name had constructed a vessel * at ezion-geber �to go to ophir for gold;� but the vessel was wrecked before quitting the port, and the disaster was regarded by the king as a punishment from jahveh, for when ahaziah suggested that the enterprise should be renewed at their joint expense, he refused the offer.** but the sudden insurrection of moab threatened him as much as it did joram, and he gladly acceded to the latter�s appeal for help. * [both in the hebrew and the septuagint the ships are in the plural number in 1 kings xxii. 48, 49.--tr.] ** 1 kings xxii. 48, 49, where the hebrew writer calls the vessel constructed by jehoshaphat a �ship of tarshish;� that is, a vessel built to make long voyages. the author of the chronicles thought that the jewish expedition to ezion geber on the red sea was destined to go to tarshish in spain. he has, moreover, transformed the vessel into a fleet, and has associated ahaziah in the enterprise, contrary to the testimony of the book of kings; finally, he has introduced into the account a prophet named eliezer, who represents the disaster as a chastisement for the alliance with ahaziah (2 ghron. xx. 35-37). apparently the simplest way of approaching the enemy would have been from the north, choosing gilead as a base of operations; but the line of fortresses constructed by mesha at this vulnerable point of his frontier was so formidable, that the allies resolved to attack from the south after passing the lower extremity of the dead sea. they marched for seven days in an arid desert, digging wells as they proceeded for the necessary supply of water. mesha awaited them with his hastily assembled troops on the confines of the cultivated land; the allies routed him and blockaded him within his city of kir-hareseth.* closely beset, and despairing of any help from man, he had recourse to the last resource which religion provided for his salvation; taking his firstborn son, he offered him to chemosh, and burnt him on the city wall in sight of the besiegers. the israelites knew what obligations this sacrifice entailed upon the moabite god, and the succour which he would be constrained to give to his devotees in consequence. they therefore raised the siege and disbanded in all directions.** mesha, delivered at the very moment that his cause seemed hopeless, dedicated a stele in the temple of dhibôn, on which he recorded his victories and related what measures he had taken to protect his people.*** * kir-hareseth or kir-moab is the present kcrak, the krak of mediaeval times. ** the account of the campaign (2 kings iii. 8-27) belongs to the prophetic cycle of elisha, and seems to give merely a popular version of the event. a king of edom is mentioned (9-10, 12-13), while elsewhere, under jehoshaphat, it is stated �there was no king in edom� (1 kings xxii. 47); the geography also of the route taken by the expedition is somewhat confused. finally, the account of the siege of kir hareseth is mutilated, and the compiler has abridged the episode of the human sacrifice, as being too conducive to the honour of chemosh and to the dishonour of jahveh. the main facts of the account are correct, but the details are not clear, and do not all bear the stamp of veracity. *** this is the famous moabite stone or stele of dhibôn, discovered by clermont-ganneau in 1868, and now preserved in the louvre. [illustration: 123.jpg the moabite stone of stele of mesha] from a photograph by faucher-gudin, retouched by massias from the original in the louvre. the fainter parts of the stele are the portions restored in the original. he still feared a repetition of the invasion, but this misfortune was spared him; jehoshaphat was gathered to his fathers,* and his edomite subjects revolted on receiving the news of his death. jeho--his son and successor, at once took up arms to bring them to a sense of their duty; but they surrounded his camp, and it was with difficulty that he cut his way through their ranks and escaped during the night. * the date of the death of jehoshaphat may be fixed as 849 or 848 b.c. the biblical documents give us for the period of the history of judah following on the death of ahab: first, eight years of jehoshaphat, from the 17th year of his reign (1 kings xxii. 51) to his 25th (and last) year (1 kings xxii. 42); secondly, eight years of jehoram, son of jehoshaphat (2 kings viii. 17); thirdly, one year of ahaziah, son of jehoram (2 kings viii. 26)--in all 17 years, which must be reduced and condensed into the period between 853 b.c., the probable date of the battle of ramoth, and 843, the equally probable date of the accession of jehu. the reigns of the two ahaziahs are too short to be further abridged; we must therefore place the campaign against moab at the earliest in 850, during the months which followed the accession of joram of israel, and lengthen johoshaphat�s reign from 850 to 849. there will then be room between 849 and 844 for five years (instead of eight) for the reign of jehoram of judah. the defection of the old canaanite city of libnah followed quickly on this reverse,* and jehoram was powerless to avenge himself on it, the philistines and the bedâwin having threatened the western part of his territory and raided the country.** in the midst of these calamities judah had no leisure to take further measures against mesha, and israel itself had suffered too severe a blow to attempt retaliation. the advanced age of ben-hadad, and the unsatisfactory result of the campaigns against shalmaneser, had furnished joram with an occasion for a rupture with damascus. war dragged on for some time apparently, till the tide of fortune turned against joram, and, like his father ahab in similar circumstances, he shut himself within samaria, where the false alarm of an egyptian or hittite invasion produced a panic in the syrian camp, and restored the fortunes of the israelitish king.*** * 2 kings viii. 20-22; cf. 2 ghron. xxi. 8-10. ** this war is mentioned only in 2 ghron. xxi. 16, 17, where it is represented as a chastisement from jahveh; the philistines and �the arabs which are beside the ethiopians� (kush) seem to have taken jerusalem, pillaged the palace, and carried away the wives and children of the king into captivity, �so that there was never a son left him, save jehoahaz (ahaziah), the youngest of his sons.� *** kuenen has proposed to take the whole account of the reign of joram, son of ahab, and transfer it to that of jehoahaz, son of jehu, and this theory has been approved by several recent critics and historians. on the other hand, some have desired to connect it with the account of the siege of samaria in ahab�s reign. i fail to see any reasonable argument which can be brought against the authenticity of the main fact, whatever opinion may be held with regard to the details of the biblical narrative. ben-hadad did not long survive the reverse he had experienced; he returned sick and at the point of death to damascus, where he was assassinated by hazael, one of his captains. hebrew tradition points to the influence of the prophets in all these events. the aged elijah had disappeared, so ran the story, caught up to heaven in a chariot of fire, but his mantle had fallen on elisha, and his power still survived in his disciple. from far and near elisha�s counsel was sought, alike by gentiles as by the followers of the true god; whether the suppliant was the weeping shunamite mourning for the loss of her only son, or naaman the captain of the damascene chariotry, he granted their petitions, and raised the child from its bed, and healed the soldier of his leprosy. during the siege of samaria, he had several times frustrated the enemy�s designs, and had predicted to joram not only the fact but the hour of deliverance, and the circumstances which would accompany it. ben-hadad had sent hazael to the prophet to ask him if he should recover, and elisha had wept on seeing the envoy--�because i know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of israel; their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their women with child. and hazael said, but what is thy servant which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing? and elisha answered, the lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over syria.� on returning to damascus hazael gave the results of his mission in a reassuring manner to ben-hadad, but �on the morrow... he took the coverlet and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died.� the deed which deprived it of its king^ seriously affected damascus itself. it was to ben-hadad that it owed most of its prosperity; he it was who had humiliated hamath and the princes of the coast of arvad, and the nomads of the arabian desert. he had witnessed the rise of the most energetic of all the israelite dynasties, and he had curbed its ambition; omri had been forced to pay him tribute; ahab, ahaziah, and joram had continued it; and ben-hadad�s suzerainty, recognised more or less by their vassals, had extended through moab and judah as far as the bed sea. not only had he skilfully built up this fabric of vassal states which made him lord of two-thirds of syria, but he had been able to preserve it unshaken for a quarter of a century, in spite of rebellions in several of his fiefs and reiterated attacks from assyria; shalmaneser, indeed, had made an attack on his line, but without breaking through it, and had at length left him master of the field. this superiority, however, which no reverse could shake, lay in himself and in himself alone; no sooner had he passed away than it suddenly ceased, and hazael found himself restricted from the very outset to the territory of damascus proper.* hamath, arvad, and the northern peoples deserted the league, to return to it no more; joram of israel called on his nephew ahaziah, who had just succeeded to jehoram of judah, and both together marched to besiege bamoth. * from this point onward, the assyrian texts which mentioned _the twelve kings of the khati_, irkhulini of hamath and adadidri (ben-hadad) of damascus, now only name _khazailu of the country of damascus_. the israelites were not successful in their methods of carrying on sieges; joram, wounded in a skirmish, retired to his palace at jezreel, where ahaziah joined him a few days later, on the pretext of inquiring after his welfare. the prophets of both kingdoms and their followers had never forgiven the family of ahab their half-foreign extraction, nor their eclecticism in the matter of religion. they had numerous partisans in both armies, and a conspiracy was set on foot against the absent sovereigns; elisha, judging the occasion to be a propitious one, despatched one of his disciples to the camp with secret instructions. the generals were all present at a banquet, when the messenger arrived; he took one of them, jehu, the son of nimshi, on one side, anointed him, and then escaped. jehu returned, and seated himself amongst his fellow-officers, who, unsuspicious of what had happened, questioned him as to the errand. �is all well? wherefore came this mad fellow to thee? and he said unto them, ye know the man and what his talk was. and they said, it is false; tell us now. and he said, thus and thus spake he to me, saying, thus saith the lord, i have anointed thee king over israel. then they hasted, and took every man his garment and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew the trumpet, saying, jehu is king.� he at once marched on jezreel, and the two kings, surprised at this movement, went out to meet him with scarcely any escort. the two parties had hardly met when joram asked, �is it peace, jehu?� to which jehu replied, �what peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?� whereupon joram turned rein, crying to his nephew, �there is treachery, o ahaziah.� but an arrow pierced him through the heart, and he fell forward in his chariot. ahaziah, wounded near ibleam, managed, however, to take refuge in megiddo, where he died, his servants bringing the body back to jerusalem.* * according to the very curtailed account in 2 chron. xxii. 9, ahaziah appears to have hidden himself in samaria, where he was discovered and taken to jehu, who had him killed. this account may perhaps have belonged to the different version of which a fragment has been preserved in 2 kings x. 12-17. when jezebel heard the news, she guessed the fate which awaited her. she painted her eyes and tired her head, and posted herself in one of the upper windows of the palace. as jehu entered the gates she reproached him with the words, �is it peace, thou zimri--thy master�s murderer? and he lifted up his face to the window and said, who is on my side--who? two or three eunuchs rose up behind the queen, and he called to them, throw her down. so they threw her down, and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses; and he trode her under foot. and when he was come in he did eat and drink; and he said, see now to this cursed woman and bury her; for she is a king�s daughter.� but nothing was found of her except her skull, hands, and feet, which they buried as best they could. seventy princes, the entire family of ahab, were slain, and their heads piled up on either side of the gate. the priests and worshippers of baal remained to be dealt with. jehu summoned them to samaria on the pretext of a sacrifice, and massacred them before the altars of their god. according to a doubtful tradition, the brothers and relatives of ahaziah, ignorant of what had happened, came to salute joram, and perished in the confusion of the slaughter, and the line of david narrowly escaped extinction with the house of omri.* * 2 kings x. 12-14. stade has shown that this account is in direct contradiction with its immediate context, and that it belonged to a version of the events differing in detail from the one which has come down to us. according to the latter, jehu must at once have met jehonadab the son of rechab, and have entered samaria in his company (vers. 15-17); this would have been a poor way of inspiring the priests of baal with the confidence necessary for drawing them into the trap. according to 2 chron. xxii. 8, the massacre of the princes of judah preceded the murder of ahaziah. athaliah assumed the regency, broke the tie of vassalage which bound judah to israel, and by a singular irony of fate, jerusalem offered an asylum to the last of the children of ahab. the treachery of jehu, in addition to his inexpiable cruelty, terrified the faithful, even while it served their ends. dynastic crimes were common in those days, but the tragedy of jezreel eclipsed in horror all others that had preceded it; it was at length felt that such avenging of jahveh was in his eyes too ruthless, and a century later the prophet hosea saw in the misery of his people the divine chastisement of the house of jehu for the blood shed at his accession. the report of these events, reaching calah, awoke the ambition of shalmaneser. would damascus, mistrusting its usurper, deprived of its northern allies, and ill-treated by the hebrews, prove itself as invulnerable as in the past? at all events, in 842 b.c., shalmaneser once more crossed the euphrates, marched along the orontes, probably receiving the homage of hamath and arvad by the way. restricted solely to the resources of damascus, <hazael did not venture to advance into coele-syria as ben-hadad had always done; he barricaded the defiles of anti-lebanon, and, entrenched on mount shenir with the flower of his troops, prepared to await the attack. it proved the most bloody battle that the assyrians had up to that period ever fought. hazael lost 16,000 foot-soldiers, 470 horsemen, 1121 chariots, and yet succeeded in falling back on damascus in good order. shalmaneser, finding it impossible to force the city, devastated the surrounding country, burnt numberless villages and farms, and felled all the fruit trees in the haurân up to the margin of the desert. this district had never, since the foundation of the kingdom by bezon a century before, suffered at the hands of an enemy�s army, and its population, enriched as much by peaceful labour as by the spoil of its successful wars, offered a prize of incalculable value. on his return march shalmaneser raided the bekaa, entered phoenicia, and carved a triumphal stele on one of the rocks of baalirasi.* * the site of baalirasi is left undecided by assyriologists. the events which follow enable us to affirm with tolerable certainty that the point on the coast where shalmaneser received the tributes of tyre and sidon is none other than the mouth of the nahr-el-kelb: the name baalirasi, �the master of the head,� would then be applicable to the rocky point which rises to the south of the river, and on which egyptian kings had already sculptured their stelæ. the kings of tyre and sidon hastened to offer him numerous gifts, and jehu, who owed to his presence temporary immunity from a syrian invasion, sent his envoys to greet him, accompanied by offerings of gold and silver in bars, vessels of gold of various forms, situlæ, salvers, cups, drinking-vessels, tin, sceptres, and wands of precious woods. shalmaneser�s pride was flattered by this homage, and he carved on one of his monuments the representation of this first official connection of assyria with israel. [illustration: 131.jpg jehu, king of israel, sends presents to shalmaneser] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the scenes represented on the black obelisk. the chief of the embassage is shown prostrating himself and kissing the dust before the king, while the rest advance in single file, some with vessels in their hands, some carrying sceptres, or with metal bowls supported on their heads. the prestige of the house of omri was still a living influence, or else the ninevite scribes were imperfectly informed of the internal changes which had taken place in israel, for the inscription accompanying this bas-relief calls jehu the son of omri, and grafts the regicide upon the genealogical tree of his victims. shalmaneser�s victory had been so dearly bought, that the following year the assyrians merely attempted an expedition for tree-felling in the amanos (841 b.c.). their next move was to push forward into kuî, in the direction of the pyramos and saros (840 b.c.). in the summer of 839 they once more ventured southwards, but this time hazael changed his tactics: pitched battles and massed movements, in which the fate of a campaign was decided by one cast of the dice, were now avoided, and ambuscades, guerilla warfare, and long and tedious sieges became the order of the day. by the time that four towns had been taken, shalmaneser�s patience was worn out: he drew off his troops and fell back on phoenicia, laying tyre, sidon, and byblos under tribute before returning into mesopotamia. hazael had shown himself possessed of no less energy than ben-hadad; and damascus, isolated, had proved as formidable a foe as damascus surrounded by its vassals; shalmaneser therefore preferred to leave matters as they were, and accept the situation. indeed the results obtained were of sufficient importance to warrant his feeling some satisfaction. he had ruthlessly dispelled the dream of syrian hegemony which had buoyed up ben-hadad, he had forced damascus to withdraw the suzerainty it had exercised in the south, and he had conquered northern syria and the lower basin of the orontes. before running any further risks, he judged it prudent to strengthen his recently acquired authority over these latter countries, and to accustom the inhabitants to their new position as subjects of nineveh. he showed considerable wisdom by choosing the tribes of the taurus and of the oappadocian marches as the first objects of attack. in regions so difficult of access, war could only be carried on with considerable hardship and severe loss. the country was seamed by torrents and densely covered with undergrowth, while the towns and villages, which clung to the steep sides of the valleys, had no need of walls to become effective fortresses, for the houses rose abruptly one above another, and formed so many redoubts which the enemy would be forced to attack and take one by one. few pitched battles could be fought in a district of this description; the assyrians wore themselves out in incessant skirmishes and endless petty sieges, and were barely compensated by the meagre spoil which such warfare yielded. [illustration: 134.jpg a mountain village] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by alfred boissier. in 838 b.c. shalmaneser swept over the country of tabal and reduced twenty-four of its princes to a state of subjection; proceeding thence, he visited the mountains of turat,* celebrated from this period downwards for their silver mines and quarries of valuable marbles. * the position of the mountains of turat is indicated by the nature of their products: �we know of _a silver mine_ at marash and an iron mine not worked, and _two fine quarries_, one of pink and the other of black marble.� turat, therefore, must be the marash mountain, the aghir-uagh and its spurs; hence the two sorts of stone mentioned in the assyrian text would be, the one the pink, the other the black marble. in 837 he seized the stronghold of uêtash in melitene, and laid tabal under a fresh contribution; this constituted a sort of advance post for-assyria in the sight of those warlike and continually fluctuating races situated between the sources of the halys and the desert border of asia minor.* secure on this side, he was about to bring matters to a close in cilicia, when the defection of ianzu recalled him to the opposite extremity of the empire. he penetrated into namri by the defiles of khashmur,** made a hasty march through sik-hisatakh, bît-tamul, bît-shakki, and bît-shedi, surprised the rebels and drove them into the forests; he then bore down on parsua*** and plundered twenty-seven petty kings consecutively. * a fragment of an anonymous list, discovered by delitzsch, puts the expedition against the tabal in 837 b.c. instead of in 838, and consequently makes the entire series of ensuing expeditions one year later, up to the revolt of assur-dain pal. this is evidently a mistake of the scribe who compiled this edition of the canon, and the chronology of a contemporary monument, such as the black obelisk, ought to obtain until further light can be thrown on the subject. ** for the site of khashmur or khashmar, cf. _supra_, p. 35, note 3. the other localities cannot as yet be identified with any modern site; we may conjecture that they were scattered about the basin of the upper dîyalah. *** parsua, or with the native termination parsuash, has been identified first with persia and then with parthia, and rost still persists in its identification, if not with the parthia of classical geographers, at least with the parthian people. schrader has shown that it ought to be sought between namri on the south and the mannai on the north; in one of the valleys of the gordysean mountains, and his demonstration has been accepted with a few modifications of detail by most scholars. i believe it to be possible to determine its position with still further precision. parsua on one side lay on the border of namri, which comprises the districts to the east of the dîyalah in the direction of zohab, and was contiguous to the medes on the other side, and also to the mannai, who occupied the southern regions of lake urumiah; it also lies close to bît-khamban, the principal of the cossæan tribes, as it would appear. i can find only one position on the map which would answer to all these requirements: this is in the main the basin of the gavê-rud and its small affluents, the ardelân and the sources of the kizil-uzên, and i shall there place parsua until further information is forthcoming on the subject. skirting misi, amadai, araziash,* and kharkhar, and most of the districts lying on the middle heights of the table-land of iran, he at length came up with ianzu, whom he seized and brought back prisoner to assyria, together with his family and his idols. * amadai is a form of madai, with a prothetical _a_, like agusi or azala, by the side of guzi and zala. the inscription of shalmaneser iii. thus gives us the first mention of the classical medes. araziash, placed too far to the east in sagartenê by fr. lenormant, has been located further westwards by schrader, near the upper course of the kerkhâ; but the documents of all periods show us that on one side it adjoined kharkhar, that is the basin of the gamas âb, on the other side media, that is the country of hamadan. it must, therefore, be placed between the two, in the northern part of the ancient cambadenê in the present tchamabadân. kharkhar in this case would be in the southern part of cambadene, on the main road which leads from the gates of the zagros to hamadan; an examination of the general features of the country leads me to believe that the town of kharkhar should occupy the site of kirmânshahân, or rather of the ancient city which preceded that town. it was at this juncture, perhaps, that he received from the people of muzri the gift of an elephant and some large monkeys, representations of which he has left us on one of his bas-reliefs. elephants were becoming rare, and it was not now possible to kill them by the hundred, as formerly, in syria: this particular animal, therefore, excited the wonder of the ninevites, and the possession of it flattered the vanity of the conqueror. this was, however, an interlude of short duration, and the turbulent tribes of the taurus recalled him to the west as soon as spring set in. he laid waste kuî in 836 b.c., destroyed timur, its capital, and on his return march revenged himself on aramê of agusi, whose spirit was still unbroken by his former misfortunes. [illustration: 137.jpg elephant and monkeys brought as a tribute to nineveh by the people of muzbi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the black obelisk. tanakun and tarsus fell into his hands 835 b.c.; shalmaneser replaced kati, the king of kuî, by his brother kirri, and made of his dominions a kind of buffer state between his own territory and that of pamphylia and lycaonia. he had now occupied the throne for a quarter of a century, not a year of which had elapsed without seeing the monarch gird on his armour and lead his soldiers in person towards one or other points of the horizon. he was at length weary of such perpetual warfare, and advancing age perchance prevented him from leading his troops with that dash and vigour which are necessary to success; however this might be, on his return from cilicia he laid aside his armour once for all, and devoted himself to peaceful occupations. but he did not on that account renounce all attempts at conquest. conducting his campaigns by proxy delegated the command of his army to his tartan dayân-assur, and the northern tribes were the first on whom this general gave proof of his prowess. urartu had passed into the hands of another sovereign since its defeat in 845 b.c., and a second sharduris* had taken the place of the aramê who had ruled at the beginning of shalma-neser�s reign. * the name is written siduri or seduri in the text of the obelisk, probably in accordance with some popular pronunciation, in which the r was but slightly rolled and finally disappeared. the identity of seduri and sharduris, has been adopted by recent historians. belck and lehmann have shown that this seduri was not sharduris, son of lutipris, but a sharduris ii., probably the son of aramê. it would appear that the accession of this prince, who was probably young and active, was the signal for a disturbance among the people of the upper tigris and the masios--a race always impatient of the yoke, and ready to make common cause with any fresh enemy of assyria. an insurrection broke out in bît-zamani and the neighbouring districts. dayân-assur quelled it offhand; then, quitting the basin of the tigris by the défiles of armash, he crossed the arzania, and entered urartu. sharduris came out to meet him, and was defeated, if we may give credence to the official record of the campaign. even if the account be an authentic one, the victory was of no advantage to the assyrians, for they were obliged to retreat before they had subjugated the enemy, and an insurrection among the patina prevented them from returning to the attack in the following year. with obligations to their foreign master on one hand and to their own subjects on the other, the princes of the syrian states had no easy life. if they failed to fulfil their duties as vassals, then an assyrian invasion would pour in to their country, and sooner or later their ruin would be assured; they would have before them the prospect of death by impaling or under the knife of the flayer, or, if they escaped this, captivity and exile in a far-off land. prudence therefore dictated a scrupulous fidelity to their suzerain. on the other hand, if they resigned themselves to their dependent condition, the people of their towns would chafe at the payment of tribute, or some ambitious relative would take advantage of the popular discontent to hatch a plot and foment a revolution, and the prince thus threatened would escape from an assyrian reprisal only to lose his throne or fall by the blow of an assassin. in circumstances such as these the people of the patina murdered their king, lubarna ii., and proclaimed in his room a certain sum, who had no right to the crown, but who doubtless undertook to liberate them from the foreigner. dayân-assur defeated the rebels and blockaded the remains of their army in kinalua. they defended themselves at first energetically, but on the death of surri from some illness, their courage failed them and they offered to deliver over the sons of their chief if their own lives might be spared. dayân-assur had the poor wretches impaled, laid the inhabitants under a heavy contribution, and appointed a certain sâsi, son of uzza, to be their king. the remainder of syria gave no further trouble--a fortunate circumstance, for the countries on the armenian border revolted in 832 b.c., and the whole year was occupied in establishing order among the herdsmen of kirkhi. in 831 b.c., dayân-assiir pushed forward into khubushkia, and traversed it from end to end without encountering any resistance. he next attacked the mannai. their prince, ualki, quailed before his onslaught; he deserted his royal city zirtu,* and took refuge in the mountains. dayân-assur pursued him thither in vain, but he was able to collect considerable booty, and turning in a south-easterly direction, he fought his way along the base of the gordysean mountains till he reached parsua, which he laid under tribute. in 830 b.c. it was the turn of muzazir, which hitherto had escaped invasion, to receive a visit from the tartan. zapparia, the capital, and fifty-six other towns were given over to the flames. from thence, dayân-assur passed into urartu proper; after having plundered it, he fell back on the southern provinces, collecting by the way the tribute of guzân, of the mannai, of andiu,** and parsua; he then pushed on into the heart of namri, and having razed to the ground two hundred and fifty of its towns, returned with his troops to assyria by the defiles of shimishi and through khalman. * the town is elsewhere called izirtu, and appears to have been designated in the inscriptions of van by the name of sisiri-khadiris. ** andia or andiu is contiguous to naîri, to zikirtu and to karalla, which latter borders on manna; it bordered on the country of misa or misi, into which it is merged under the name of misianda in the time of sargon. delattre places andiu in the country of the classical matiense, between the mationian mountains and lake urumiah. the position of misu on the confines of araziash and media, somewhere in the neighbourhood of talvantu-dagh, obliges us to place andiu lower down to the south-east, near the district of kurdasir. this was perhaps the last foreign campaign of shalmaneser iii.�s reign; it is at all events the last of which we possess any history. the record of his exploits ends, as it had begun more than thirty years previously, with a victory in namri. [illustration: 137.jpg black obelisk of shalmaneser iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast in the louvre. [the original is in the brit. mus.--tr.] the aged king had, indeed, well earned the right to end his allotted days in peace. devoted to calah, like his predecessor, he had there accumulated the spoils of his campaigns, and had made it the wealthiest city of his empire. he continued to occupy the palace of assur-nazir-pal, which he had enlarged. wherever he turned within its walls, his eyes fell upon some trophy of his wars or panegyric of his virtues, whether recorded on mural tiles covered with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, or celebrated by statues, altars, and triumphal stelæ. the most curious among all these is a square-based block terminating in three receding stages, one above the other, like the stump of an egyptian obelisk surmounted by a stepped pyramid. five rows of bas-reliefs on it represent scenes most flattering to assyrian pride;--the reception of tribute from gilzân, muzri, the patina, the israelitish jehu, and marduk-abal-uzur, king of the land of sukhi. the latter knew his suzerain�s love of the chase, and he provided him with animals for his preserves, including lions, and rare species of deer. [illustration: 142.jpg stag and lions of the country of sukhi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the black obelisk. the inscription on the monument briefly relates the events which had occurred between the first and the thirty-first years of shalmaneser�s reign;--the defeat of damascus, of babylon and urartu, the conquest of northern syria, of cilicia, and of the countries bordering on the zagros. when the king left calah for some country residence in its-neighbourhood, similar records and carvings would meet his eye. at imgur-bel, one of the gates of the palace was covered with plates of bronze, on which the skilful artist had embossed and engraved with the chisel episodes from the campaigns on the euphrates and the tigris, the crossing of mountains and rivers, the assault and burning of cities, the long lines of captives, the _mêlée_ with the enemy and the pursuit of the chariots. all the cities of assyria, nineveh,* arbela, assur, even to the more distant towns of harrân** and tushkhân,***--vied with each other in exhibiting proofs of his zeal for their gods and his affection for their inhabitants; but his predilection for calah filled them with jealousy, and assur particularly could ill brook the growing aversion with which the assyrian kings regarded her. it was of no avail that she continued to be the administrative and religious capital of the empire, the storehouse of the spoil and annual tribute of other nations, and was continually embellishing herself with fresh monuments: a spirit of discontent was daily increasing, and merely awaited some favourable occasion to break out into open revolt. shalmaneser enjoyed the dignity of _limmu_ for the second time after thirty years, and had celebrated this jubilee of his inauguration by a solemn festival in honour of assur and eammân.**** * nineveh is mentioned as the starting-place of nearly all the first campaigns in the inscription on the _monolith_; also in the balawât inscription, on the other hand, towards the end of the reign, calah is given as the residence of the king on the _black obelisk_ ** mention of the buildings of shalmaneser iii. at harrân occurs in an inscription of nabonidus. *** the monolith discovered at kurkh is in itself a proof that shalmaneser executed works in this town, the tushkhân of the inscriptions. **** any connection established between this thirty-year jubilee and the thirty years� festival of egypt rests on facts which can be so little relied on, that it must be accepted with considerable reserve. [illustration: 144.jpg the bronze-covered gates of balawàt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sketch by pinches. it is possible that he may have thought this a favourable moment for presenting to the people the son whom he had chosen from among his children to succeed him. at any rate, assur-dain-pal, fearing that one of his brothers might be preferred before him, �proclaimed himself king,� and nearly the whole of assyria gathered around his standard. assur and twenty-six more of the most important cities revolted in his favour--nineveh, imgur-bel, sibaniba, dur-balat, arbela, zabân in the chaldæan marches, arrapkha in the valley of the upper zab, and most of the colonies, both of ancient and recent foundation--amidi on the tigris, khindanu near the mouths of the kha-bur and tul-abni on the southern slopes of the masios. the aged king remained in possession only of calah and its immediate environs--nisibis, harrân, tushkhân, and the most recently subdued provinces on the banks of the euphrates and the orontes. it is probable, however, that the army remained faithful to him, and the support which these well-tried troops afforded him enabled the king to act with promptitude. the weight of years did not permit him to command in person; he therefore entrusted the conduct of operations to his son samsi-rammân, but he did not live to see the end of the struggle. it embittered his last days, and was not terminated till 822 b.c., at which date shalmaneser had been dead two years. this prolonged crisis had shaken the kingdom to its foundations; the syrians, the medes, the babylonians, and the peoples of the armenian and aramæan marches were rent from it, and though samsi-rammân iv. waged continuous warfare during the twelve years that he governed, he could only partially succeed in regaining the territory which had been thus lost.* * all that we know of the reign of samsi-rammân iv. comes from an inscription in archaic characters containing the account of four campaigns, without giving the years of each reign or the _limmu_, and historians have classified them in different ways. his first three campaigns were-directed against the north-eastern and eastern provinces. he began by attempting to collect the tribute from naîri, the payment of which had been suspended since the outbreak of the revolution, and he re-established the dominion of assyria from the district of paddir to the township of kar-shulmânasharid, which his father had founded at the fords of the euphrates opposite to carchemish (821 b.c.). in the following campaign he did not personally take part, but the rabshakeh mutarriz-assur pillaged the shores of lake urumiah, and then made his way towards urartu, where he destroyed three hundred towns (820). the third expedition was directed against misi and gizilbunda beyond the upper zab and mount zilar.* the inhabitants of misi entrenched themselves on a wooded ridge commanded by three peaks, but were defeated in spite of the advantages which their position secured for them;** the people of gizilbunda were not more fortunate than their neighbours, and six thousand of them perished at the assault of urash, their capital.*** * mount zilar is beyond the upper zab, on one of the roads which lead to the basin of lake urumiah, probably in khubushkia. there are two of these roads--that which passes over the neck of kelishin, and the other which runs through the gorges of alan; �with the exception of these two points, the mountain chain is absolutely impassable.� according to the general direction of the campaign, it appears to me probable that the king crossed by the passes of alan; mount zilâr would therefore be the group of chains which cover the district of pîshder, and across which the lesser zab passes before descending to the plain. ** the country of misi adjoined gizilbunda, media, araziâsh, and andiu. all these circumstances incline us to place it in the south-eastern part of kurdistan of sihmeh, in the upper valley of kisil-uzên. the ridge, overlooked by three peaks, on which the inhabitants took refuge, cannot be looked for on the west, whore there are few important heights: i should rather identify it with the part of the gordysean mountains which bounds the basin of the kisil-uzên on the west, and which contains three peaks of 12,000 feet--the tchehel tchechma, the derbend, and the nau-kân. *** the name of the country has been read giratbunda, ginunbunda, girubbunda; a variant, to which no objections can be made, has furnished gizilbunda. it was contiguous on one side to the medes, and on the other to the mannai, which obliges us to place it in kurdistan of gerrus, on the kizil uzôn. it may be asked if the word kizil which occurs several times in the topographical nomenclature of these regions is not a relic of the name in question, and if gizil-bunda is not a compound of the same class as kizil-uzên, kizil gatchi, kizihalân, kizil-lôk, whether it be that part of the population spoke a language analogous to the dialects now in use in these districts, or that the ancient word has been preserved by later conquerors and assimilated to some well known word in their own language. mutarriz-assur at once turned upon the medes, vanquished them, and drove them at the point of the sword into their remote valleys, returning to the district of araziash, which he laid waste. a score of chiefs with barbarous names, alarmed by this example, hastened to prostrate themselves at his feet, and submitted to the tribute which he imposed on them. assyria thus regained in these regions the ascendency which the victories of shalmaneser iii. in their time had won for her. babylon, which had endured the suzerainty of its rival for a quarter of a century, seems to have taken advantage of the events occurring in assyria to throw off the yoke, by espousing the cause of assur-dain-pal. samsi-rammân, therefore, as soon as he was free to turn his attention from media (818), directed his forces against babylonia. metur-nât, as usual, was the first city attacked; it capitulated at once, and its inhabitants were exiled to assyria. kami to the south of the turnat, and dibina on mount yalrnan, suffered the same fate, but gananâtê held out for a time; its garrison, however, although reinforced by troops from the surrounding country, was utterly routed before its walls, and the survivors, who fled for refuge to the citadel in the centre of the town, were soon dislodged. the babylonians, who had apparently been taken by surprise at the first attack, at length made preparations to resist the invaders. the prince of dur-papsukal, who owned allegiance to marduk-balatsu-ikbi, king of babylon, had disposed his troops so as to guard the fords of the tigris, in order to prevent the enemy from reaching his capital. but samsi-rammân dispersed this advanced force, killing thirteen thousand, besides taking three thousand prisoners, and finally reduced dur-papsukal to ashes. [148.jpg monolith of samsi-ramman iv] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mansell. the original is in the british museum. the respite thus obtained gave marduk-balatsu-ikbi sufficient time to collect the main body of his troops: the army was recruited from kaldâ and ela-mites, soldiers from namri, and aramaean contingents, and the united force awaited the enemy behind the ruins of dur-papsukal, along the banks of the dabân canal. five thousand footmen, two hundred horsemen, one hundred chariots, besides the king�s tent and all his stores, fell into the hands of the assyrians. the victory was complete; babylon, kuta, and borsippa capitulated one after the other, and the invaders penetrated as far as the land of the kaldâ, and actually reached the persian gulf. samsi-rammân offered sacrifices to the gods, as his father had done before him, and concluded a treaty with marduk-balatsu-ikbi, the terms of which included rectification of boundaries, payment of a subsidy, and the other clauses usual in such circumstances; the peace was probably ratified by a matrimonial alliance, concluded between the babylonian princess sammuramat and bammân-nirâri, son of the conqueror. in this manner the hegemony of assyria over karduniash was established even more firmly than before the insurrection; but all available resources had been utilised in the effort necessary to secure it. samsi-rammân had no leisure to reconquer syria or asia minor, and the euphrates remained the western frontier of his kingdom, as it had been in the early days of shalmaneser iii. the peace with babylon, moreover, did not last long; bau-akhiddîn, who had succeeded marduk-balatsu-ikbi, refused to observe the terms of the treaty, and hostilities again broke out on the turnat and the tigris, as they had done six years previously. this war was prolonged from 813 to 812 b.c., and was still proceeding when samsi-rammân died. his son bammân-nirâri iii. quickly brought it to a successful issue. he carried bau-akhiddîn captive to assyria, with his family and the nobles of his court, and placed on the vacant throne one of his own partisans, while he celebrated festivals in honour of his own supremacy at babylon, kuta, and borsippa. karduniash made no attempt to rebel against assyria during the next half-century. bammân-nirâri proved himself an energetic and capable sovereign, and the thirty years of his reign were by no means inglorious. we learn from the eponym lists what he accomplished during that time, and against which countries he waged war; but we have not yet recovered any inscription to enable us to fill in this outline, and put together a detailed account of his reign. his first expeditions were directed against media (810), gozân (809), and the mannai (808-807); he then crossed the euphrates, and in four successive years conducted as many vigorous campaigns against arpad (806), kkazaiu (808), the town of baali (804), and the cities of the phoenician sea-board (803). the plague interfering with his advance in the latter direction, he again turned his attention eastward and attacked khubushkia in 802, 792, and 784; media in 801-800, 794-793, and 790-787; lushia in 799; namri in 798; diri in 796-795 and 785; itua in 791, 783-782; kishki in 785. this bare enumeration conjures up a vision of an enterprising and victorious monarch of the type of assur-nazir-pal or shalmaneser iii., one who perhaps succeeded even where his redoubtable ancestors had failed. the panoramic survey of his empire, as unfolded to us in one of his inscriptions, includes the mountain ranges of illipi as far as mount sihina, kharkhar, araziash, misu, media, the whole of gizilbunda, man, parsua, allabria, abdadana, the extensive territory of istaîri, far-off andiu, and, westwards beyond the euphrates, the khâti, the entire country of the amorites, tyre, sidon, israel, edom, and the philistines. never before had the assyrian empire extended so far east in the direction of the centre of the iranian tableland, nor so far to the south-west towards the frontiers of egypt.* * allabria or allabur is on the borders of parsua and of karalla, which allows us to locate it in the basins of the kerkhorâh and the saruk, tributaries of the jagatu, which flow into lake urumiah. abdadana, which borders on allabria, and was, according to rammân-nirâri, at the extreme end of naîri, was a little further to the east or north-east; if i am not mistaken, it corresponds pretty nearly to uriâd, on the banks of the kizil-uzên. in two only of these regions, namely, syria and armenia, do native documents add any information to the meagre summary contained in the annals, and give us glimpses of contemporary rulers. the retreat of shalmaneser, after his partial success in 839, had practically left the ancient allies of ben-hadad ii. at the mercy of hazael, the new king of damascus, but he did not apparently attempt to assert his supremacy over the whole of coele-syria, and before long several of its cities acquired considerable importance, first mansuate, and then hadrach,* both of which, casting hamath into the shade, succeeded in holding their own against hazael and his successors. he renewed hostilities, however, against the hebrews, and did not relax his efforts till he had thoroughly brought them into subjection. jehu suffered loss on all his frontiers, �from jordan eastward, all the land of gilead, the gadites, the keubenites, and the manassites, from aroer, which is by the valley of arnon, even gilead and bashan,� ** israel became thus once more entirely dependent on damascus, but the sister kingdom of judah still escaped its yoke through the energy of her rulers. * mansuati successfully resisted rammân-nirâri in 797 b.c., but he probably caused its ruin, for after this only expeditions against hadrach are mentioned. mansuati was in the basin of the orontes, and the manner in which the assyrian texts mention it in connection with zimyra seems to show that it commanded the opening in the lebanon range between cole-syria and phoenicia. the site of khatarika, the hadrach of zech. ix. 1, is not yet precisely determined; but it must, as well as mansuati, have been in the neighbourhood of hamath, perhaps between hamath and damascus. it appears for the first time in 772. ** 2 kings x. 32, 33. even if verse 33 is a later addition, it gives a correct idea of the situation, except as regards bashan, which had been lost to israel for some time already. athaliah reigned seven years, not ingloriously; but she belonged to the house of ahab, and the adherents of the prophets, whose party had planned jehu�s revolution, could no longer witness with equanimity one of the accursed race thus prospering and ostentatiously practising the rites of baal-worship within sight of the great temple of jahveh. on seizing the throne, athaliah had sought out and put to death all the members of the house of david who had any claim to the succession; but jeho-sheba, half-sister of ahaziah, had with difficulty succeeded in rescuing joash, one of the king�s sons. her husband was the high priest jehoiada, and he secreted his nephew for six years in the precincts of the temple; at the end of that time, he won over the captains of the royal guard, bribed a section of the troops, and caused them to swear fealty to the child as their legitimate sovereign. athaliah, hastening to discover the cause of the uproar, was assassinated. mattan, chief priest of baal, shared her fate; and jehoiada at once restored to jahveh the preeminence which the gods of the alien had for a time usurped (837). at first his influence over his pupil was supreme, but before long the memory of his services faded away, and the king sought only how to rid himself of a tutelage which had grown irksome. the temple had suffered during the late wars, and repairs were much needed. joash ordained that for the future all moneys put into the sacred treasury--which of right belonged to the king--should be placed unreservedly at the disposal of the priests on condition that they should apply them to the maintenance of the services and fabric of the temple: the priests accepted the gift, but failed in the faithful observance of the conditions, so that in 814 b.c. the king was obliged to take stringent measures to compel them to repair the breaches in the sanctuary walls:* he therefore withdrew the privilege which they had abused, and henceforth undertook the administration of the temple fund in person. the beginning of the new order of things was not very successful. jehu had died in 815, after a disastrous reign, and both he and his son jehoahaz had been obliged to acknowledge the supremacy of hazael: not only was he in the position of an inferior vassal, but, in order to preclude any idea of a revolt, he was forbidden to maintain a greater army than the small force necessary for purposes of defence, namely, ten thousand foot-soldiers, fifty horsemen, and ten chariots.** * 2 kings xii. 4-16; cf. 2 chron. xxiv. 1-14. the beginning of the narrative is lost, and the whole has probably been modified to make it agree with 2 kings xxii. 3-7. ** 2 kings xiii. 1-7. it may be noticed that the number of foot-soldiers given in the bible is identical with that which the assyrian texts mention as ahab�s contingent at the battle of qarqar, viz. 10,000; the number of the chariots is very different in the two cases. kuenen and other critics would like to assign to the reign of jehoahaz the siege of samaria by the syrians, which the actual text of the book of the kings attributes to the reign of joram. the power of israel had so declined that hazael was allowed to march through its territory unhindered on his way to wage war in the country of the philistines; which he did, doubtless, in order to get possession of the main route of egyptian commerce. the syrians destroyed gath,* reduced pentapolis to subjection, enforced tribute from edom, and then marched against jerusalem. joash took from the treasury of jahveh the reserve funds which his ancestors, jehoshaphat, joram, and ahaziah, had accumulated, and sent them to the invader,** together with all the gold which was found in the king�s house. * the text of 2 kings xii. 17 merely says that hazael took gath. gath is not named by amos among the cities of the philistines (amos. i. 6-8), but it is one of the towns cited by that prophet as examples to israel of the wrath of jahveh (vi. 2). it is probable, therefore, that it was already destroyed in his time. ** 2 kings xii. 17, 18; cf. 2 chron. xxiv. 22-24, where the expedition of hazael is represented as a punishment for the murder of mechariah, son of jehoiada. from this time forward judah became, like israel, edom, the philistines and ammonites, a mere vassal of hazael; with the possible exception of moab, all the peoples of southern syria were now subject to damascus, and formed a league as strong as that which had successfully resisted the power of shalmaneser. rammân-nirâri, therefore, did not venture to attack syria during the lifetime of hazael; but a change of sovereign is always a critical moment in the history of an eastern empire, and he took advantage of the confusion caused by the death of the aged king to attack his successor mari (803 b.c.). mari essayed the tactics which his father had found so successful; he avoided a pitched battle, and shut himself up in damascus. but he was soon closely blockaded, and forced to submit to terms; rammân-nirâri demanded as the price of withdrawal, 23,000 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3000 of copper, 5000 of iron, besides embroidered and dyed stuffs, an ivory couch, and a litter inlaid with ivory,--in all a considerable part of the treasures amassed at the expense of the hebrews and their neighbours. it is doubtful whether rammân-nirâri pushed further south, and penetrated in person as far as the deserts of arabia petrsæ--a suggestion which the mention of the philistines and edomites among the list of his tributary states might induce us to accept. probably it was not the case, and he really went no further than damascus. but the submission of that city included, in theory at least, the submission of all states subject to her sway, and these dependencies may have sent some presents to testify their desire to conciliate his favour; their names appear in the inscriptions in order to swell the number of direct or indirect vassals of the empire, since they were subject to a state which had been effectually conquered. rammân-nirâri did not meet with such good fortune in the north; not only did he fail to obtain the brilliant successes which elsewhere attended his arms, but he ended by sustaining considerable reverses. the ninevite historians reckoned the two expeditions of 808 and 807 b.c. against the mannai as victories, doubtless because the king returned with a train of prisoners and loaded with spoil; but the vannic inscriptions reveal that urartu, which had been rising into prominence during the reign of shalmaneser, had now grown still more powerful, and had begun to reconquer those provinces on the tigris and euphrates of which the assyrians thought themselves the undoubted lords. sharduris ii. had been succeeded, about 828, by his son ishpuinis, who had perhaps measured his strength against samsi-ranimân iv. ishpuinis appears to have conquered and reduced to the condition of a province the neighbouring principality of biainas, which up to that time had been governed by a semi-independent dynasty; at all events, he transferred thence his seat of govern-and made dhuspas his favourite residence. towards the end of his reign he associated with him on the throne his son menuas, and made him commander-in-chief of the army. menuas proved a bold and successful general, and in a few years had doubled the extent of his dominions. he first delivered from the assyrian yoke, and plundered on his father�s account, the tribes on the borders of lake urumiah, muzazir, gilzân, and kirruri; then, crossing the gordygean mountains, he burnt the towns in the valley of the upper zab, which bore the uncouth names of teraîs, ardis, khanalis, bikuras, khatqanas, inuas, and nibur, laid waste the more fertile part of khubushkia, and carved triumphal stelas in the assyrian and vannic scripts upon the rocks in the pass of rowandiz. [illustration: 156.jpg triumphal stele of menuas at kelishin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by j. de morgan. it was probably to recover this territory that rammân-nirâri waged war three times in khubushkia, in 802, 792, and 785, in a district which had formerly been ruled by a prefect from nineveh, but had now fallen into the hands of the enemy.* * it is probable that the stele of kelishin, belonging to the joint reign of ishpuinis and menuas, was intended to commemorate the events which led rammân-nirâri to undertake his first expedition; the conquest by menuas will fall then in 804 or 803 b.c. the inscription of meher-kapussi contains the names of the divinities belonging to several conquered towns, and may have been engraved on the return from this war. everywhere along the frontier, from the lower zab to the euphrates, menuas overpowered and drove back the assyrian outposts. he took from them aldus and erinuis on the southern shores of lake van, compelled dayaîni to abandon its allegiance, and forced its king, udhupursis, to surrender his treasure and his chariots; then gradually descending the valley of the arzania, he crushed seseti, kulmê, and ekarzu. in one year he pillaged the mannai in the east, and attacked the khâti in the west, seizing their fortresses of surisilis, tarkhigamas, and sarduras; in the province of alzu he left 2113 soldiers dead on the field after one engagement; gupas yielded to his sway, followed by the towns of khuzanas and puteria, whereupon he even crossed the euphrates and levied tribute from melitene. but the struggle against assyria absorbed only a portion of his energy; we do not know what he accomplished in the east, in the plains sloping towards the caspian sea, but several monuments, discovered near armavir and erzerum, testify that he pushed his arms a considerable distance towards the north and north-west.* he obliged etius to acknowledge his supremacy, sending a colony to its capital, lununis, whose name he changed to menua-lietzilinis.** * the inscription of erzerum, discovered by f. de saulcy and published by him, shows that menuas was in possession of the district in which this town is situated, and that he rebuilt a palace there. ** inscriptions of yazli-tash and zolakert. it follows from these texts that the country of etius is the district of armavir, and lununis is the ancient name of this city. the now name by which menuas replaced the name lununis signifies _the abode of the people of menuas_; like many names arising from special circumstances, it naturally passed away with the rule of the people who had imposed it. towards the end of his reign he partly subjugated the mannai, planting colonies throughout their territory to strengthen his hold on the country. by these campaigns he had formed a kingdom, which, stretching from the south side of the araxes to the upper reaches of the zab and the tigris, was quite equal to assyria in size, and probably surpassed it in density of population, for it contained no barren steppes such as stretched across mesopotamia, affording support merely to a few wretched bedâwin. as their dominions increased, the sovereigns of biainas began to consider themselves on an equality with the kings of nineveh, and endeavoured still more to imitate them in the luxury and display of their domestic life, as well as in the energy of their actions and the continuity of their victories. they engraved everywhere on the rocks triumphal inscriptions, destined to show to posterity their own exploits and the splendour of their gods. having made this concession to their vanity, they took effective measures to assure possession of their conquests. they selected in the various provinces sites difficult of access, commanding some defile in the� mountains, or ford over a river, or at the junction of two roads, or the approach to a plain; on such spots they would build a fortress or a town, or, finding a citadel already existing, they would repair it and remodel its fortifications so as to render it impregnable. at kalajik, ashrut-darga, and the older mukhrapert may still be seen the ruins of ramparts built by ishpuims. menuas finished the buildings his father had begun, erected others in all the districts where he sojourned, in time of peace or war, at shushanz, sirka,* anzaff, arzwapert, geuzak, zolakert, tashtepê, and in the country of the mannai, and it is possible that the fortified village of melasgerd still bears his name.** * the name of the ancient place corresponding to the modern village of sirka was probably artsunis or artsuyunis, according to the vannic inscriptions. ** a more correct form than melas-gerd is manas-gert, _the city of manas_, where manas would represent menuas: one of the inscriptions of aghtamar speaks of a certain menuakhinas, _city of menuas_, which may be a primitive version of the same name. his wars furnished him with the men and materials necessary for the rapid completion of these works, while the statues, valuable articles of furniture, and costly fabrics, vessels of silver, gold, and copper carried off from assyrian or asiatic cities, provided him with surroundings as luxurious as those enjoyed by the kings of nineveh. his favourite residence was amid the valleys and hills of the south-western shore of lake van, the sea of the rising sun. his father, ishpuinis, had already done much to embellish the site of dhuspas, or khaldinas as it was called, from the god khaldis; he had surrounded it with strong walls, and within them had laid the foundations of a magnificent palace. menuas carried on the work, brought water to the cisterns by subterranean aqueducts, planted gardens, and turned the whole place into an impregnable fortress, where a small but faithful garrison could defy a large army for several years. dhuspas, thus completed, formed the capital and defence of the kingdom during the succeeding century. menuas was gathered to his fathers shortly before the death of eammân-nirâri, perhaps in 784 b.c.* * this date seems to agree with the text of the _annals of argistis_, as far as we are at present acquainted with them; müller has shown, in fact, that they contain the account of fourteen campaigns, probably the first fourteen of the reign of argistis, and he has recognised, in accordance with the observations of stanislas guyard, the formula which separates the campaigns one from another. there are two campaigns against the peoples of the upper euphrates mentioned before the campaigns against assyria, and as these latter follow continuously after 781, it is probable that the former must be placed in 783-782, which would give 783 or 784 for the year of his accession. he was engaged up to the last in a quarrel with the princes who occupied the mountainous country to the north of the araxes, and his son argistis spent the first few years of his reign in completing his conquests in this region.* he crushed with ease an attempted revolt in dayaîni, and then invaded etius, systematically devastating it, its king, uduris, being powerless to prevent his ravages. all the principal towns succumbed one after another before the vigour of his assault, and, from the numbers killed and taken prisoners, we may surmise the importance of his victories in these barbarous districts, to which belonged the names of seriazis, silius, zabakhas, zirimutaras, babanis, and urmias,** though we cannot definitely locate the places indicated. * the _annals of argistis_ are inscribed on the face of the rock which crowns the citadel of van. the inscription contains (as stated in note above) the history of the first fourteen yearly campaigns of argistis. ** the site of these places is still undetermined. seriazis and silius (or tarius) lay to the north-east of dayaîni, and urmias, urmê, recalls the modern name of lake urumiah, but was probably situated on the left bank of the araxes. on a single occasion, the assault on ureyus, for instance, argistis took prisoners 19,255 children, 10,140 men fit to bear arms, 23,280 women, and the survivors of a garrison which numbered 12,675 soldiers at the opening of the siege, besides 1104 horses, 35,016 cattle, and more than 10,000 sheep. two expeditions into the heart of the country, conducted between 784 and 782 b.c., had greatly advanced the work of conquest, when the accession of a new sovereign in assyria made argistis decide to risk a change of front and to concentrate the main part of his forces on the southern boundary of his empire. rammân-nirâri, after his last contest in khubushkia in 784, had fought two consecutive campaigns against the aramæan tribes of itua, near the frontiers of babylon, and he was still in conflict with them when he died in 782 b.c. his son, shalmaneser iv., may have wished to signalise the commencement of his reign by delivering from the power of urartu the provinces which the kings of that country had wrested from his ancestors; or, perhaps, argistis thought that a change of ruler offered him an excellent opportunity for renewing the struggle at the point where menuas had left it, and for conquering yet more of the territory which still remained to his rival. whatever the cause, the assyrian annals show us the two adversaries ranged against each other, in a struggle which lasted from 781 to 778 b.c. argistis had certainly the upper hand, and though his advance was not rapid, it was never completely checked. the first engagement took place at nirbu, near the sources of the supnat and the tigris: nirbu capitulated, and the enemy pitilessly ravaged the hittite states, which were subject to assyria, penetrating as far as the heart of melitene (781). the next year the armies encountered each other nearer to nineveh, in the basin of the bitlis-tchaî, at khakhias; and, in 779, argistis expressly thanks his gods, the khaldises, for having graciously bestowed upon him as a gift the armies and cities of assur. the scene of the war had shifted, and the contest was now carried on in the countries bordering on lake urumiah, bustus and parsua. the natives gained nothing by the change of invader, and were as hardly used by the king of urartu as they had been by shalmaneser iii. or by samsirammân: as was invariably the case, their towns were given over to the flames, their fields ravaged, their cattle and their families carried into captivity. their resistance, however, was so determined that a second campaign was required to complete the conquest: and this time the assyrians suffered a serious defeat at surisidas (778), and a year at least was needed for their recovery from the disaster. during this respite, argistis hastened to complete the pacification of bustus, parsua, and the small portion of man which had not been reduced to subjection by menuas. when the assyrians returned to the conflict, he defeated them again (776), and while they withdrew to the amanus, where a rebellion had broken out (775), he reduced one by one the small states which clustered round the eastern and southern shores of lake urumiah. he was conducting a campaign in namri, when shalmaneser iv. made a last effort to check his advance; but he was again victorious (774), and from henceforth these troubled regions, in which nineveh had so persistently endeavoured for more than a century to establish her own supremacy, became part of the empire of urartu. argistis�s hold of them proved, however, to be a precarious and uncertain one, and before long the same difficulties assailed him which had restricted the power of his rivals. [illustration: 164.jpg urartian stele on the rocks of ak-keupbu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. ximones. he was forced to return again and again to these districts, destroying fortresses and pursuing the inhabitants over plain and mountain: in 773 we find him in urmes, the territory of bikhuras, and bam, in the very heart of namri; in 772, in dhuaras, and gurqus, among the mannai, and at the city of uikhis, in bustus. meanwhile, to the north of the araxes, several chiefs had taken advantage of his being thus engaged in warfare in distant regions, to break the very feeble bond which held them vassals to urartu. btius was the fountain-head and main support of the rebellion; the rugged mountain range in its rear provided its chiefs with secure retreats among its woods and lakes and valleys, through which flowed rapid torrents. argistis inflicted a final defeat on the mannai in 771, and then turned his forces against etius. he took by storm the citadel of ardinis which defended the entrance to the country, ravaged ishqigulus,* and seized amegu, the capital of uidharus: our knowledge of his wars comes to an end in the following year with an expedition into the land of tarius. * sayce shows that ishqigulus was the district of alexandropolis, to the east of kars; its capital, irdanius, is very probably either the existing walled village of kalinsha or the neighbouring ruin of ajuk-kaleh, on the arpa-tohâî. the monuments do not tell us what he accomplished on the borders of asia minor; he certainly won some considerable advantages there, and the influence which assyria had exercised over states scattered to the north of the taurus, such as melitene, and possibly tabal and kummukh, which had formed the original nucleus of the hittite empire, must have now passed into his hands. the form of argistis looms before us as that of a great conqueror, worthy to bear comparison with the most indefatigable and triumphant of the pharaohs of egypt or the lords of chaldæa. the inscriptions which are constantly being discovered within the limits of his kingdom prove that, following the example of all oriental sovereigns, he delighted as much in building as in battle: perhaps we shall some day recover a sufficient number of records to enable us to restore to their rightful place in history this great king, and the people whose power he developed more than any other sovereign. assyria had thus lost all her possessions in the northern and eastern parts of her empire; turning to the west, how much still remained faithful to her? after the expedition of 775 b.c. to the land of cedars, two consecutive campaigns are mentioned against damascus (773) and hadrach (772); it was during this latter expedition, or immediately after it, that shalmaneser iv. died. northern syria seems to have been disturbed by revolutions which seriously altered the balance of power within her borders. the ancient states, whose growth had been arrested by the deadly blows inflicted on them in the ninth century by assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., had become reduced to the condition of second-rate powers, and their dominions had been split up. the patina was divided into four small states--the patina proper, unki, iaudi, and samalla, the latter falling under the rule of an aramaean family;* perhaps the accession of qaral, the founder of this dynasty, had been accompanied by convulsions, which might explain the presence of shalmaneser iv. in the amanos in 775. * the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii. mention unku, iaudi, samalla, and the patin, in the districts where the texts of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., only know of the patina. all these principalities, whether of ancient or recent standing, ranged themselves under one of two kingdoms--either hadrach or arpad, whose names henceforth during the following half-century appear in the front rank whenever a coalition is formed against assyria. carchemish, whose independence was still respected by the fortresses erected in its neighbourhood, could make no move without exposing itself to an immediate catastrophe: arpad, occupying a prominent position a little in front of the afrîn, on the main route leading to the orontes, had assumed the _rôle_ which carchemish was no longer in a position to fill. agusi became the principal centre of resistance; all battles were fought under the walls of its fortresses, and its fall involved the submission of all the country between the euphrates and the sea, as in former times had been the case with kinalua and khazazu.* * that arpad was in agusi is proved, among other places, by the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii., which show us from 743 to 741 the king at war with matîlu of agusi and his suzerain sharduris iii. of urartu. similar to the ascendency of arpad over the plateau of aleppo was that of hadrach in the valley of the orontes. this city had taken the position formerly occupied by hamath, which was now possibly one of its dependencies; it owed no allegiance to damascus, and rallied around it all the tribes of coele-syria, whose assistance hadadezer, but a short while before, had claimed in his war with the foreigner. neither arpad, hadrach, nor damascus ever neglected to send the customary presents to any sovereign who had the temerity to cross the euphrates and advance into their neighbourhood, but the necessity for this act of homage became more and more infrequent. during his reign of eighteen years assurdân iii., son and successor of shalmaneser iv., appeared only three times beneath their walls--at hadrach in 766 and 755, at arpad in 750, a few months only before his death. assyria was gradually becoming involved in difficulties, and the means necessary to the preservation of its empire were less available than formerly. assurdân had frankly renounced all idea of attacking urartu, but he had at least endeavoured to defend himself against his enemies on the southern and eastern frontiers; he had led his armies against gananâtê (771,767), against itua (769), and against the medes (766), before risking an attack on hadrach (765), but more than this he had not attempted. on two occasions in eight years (768, 764) he had preferred to abstain from offensive action, and had remained inactive in his own country. assyria found herself in one of those crises of exhaustion which periodically laid her low after each outbreak of ambitious enterprise; she might well be compared to a man worn out by fatigue and loss of blood, who becomes breathless and needs repose as soon as he attempts the least exertion. before long, too, the scourges of disease and civil strife combined with exhaustion in hastening her ruin. the plague had broken out in the very year of the last expedition against hadrach (765), perhaps under the walls of that city. an eclipse of the sun occurred in 763, in the month of sivân, and this harbinger of woe was the signal for an outbreak of revolt in the city of assur.* * the ideas which orientals held on the subject of comets renders the connection between the two events very likely, if not certain. from assur the movement spread to arrapkha, and wrought havoc there from 761 to 760; it then passed on to gozân, where it was not finally extinguished till 758. the last remains of assyrian authority in syria vanished during this period: assurdân, after two years� respite, endeavoured to re-establish it, and attacked successively hadrach (755) and arpad (754). this was his last exploit. his son assur-nirâri iii. spent his short reign of eight years in helpless inaction; he lost syria, he carried on hostilities in namri from 749 to 748--whether against the aramaeans or urartians is uncertain--then relapsed into inactivity, and a popular sedition drove him finally from calah in 746. he died some months later, without having repressed the revolt; none of his sons succeeded him, and the dynasty, having fallen into disrepute through the misfortunes of its last kings, thus came to an end; for, on the 12th of iyyâr, 742 b.c., a usurper, perhaps, the leader of the revolt at calah, proclaimed himself king under the name of tiglath-pileser.* the second assyrian empire had lasted rather less than a century and a half, from tukulti-ninip ii. to assur-nirâri iii.** * many historians have thought that tiglath-pileser iii. was of babylonian origin; most of them, however, rightly considers that he was an assyrian. the identity of tiglath pileser iii. with pulu, the biblical pul (2 kings xv. 19) has been conclusively proved by the discovery of the _babylonian chronicle_, where the babylonian reigns of tiglath-pileser iii. and his son shalmaneser v. are inserted where the dynastic lists give pulu and ululai, the poros and eluloos of ptolemy. ** here is the concluding portion of the dynasty of the kings of assyria, from irba-rammân to assur-nirâri iii.:-[illustration: 169.jpg table of the dynasty of the kings of assyria] in the manner in which it had accomplished its work, it resembled the egyptian empire of eight hundred years before. the egyptians, setting forth from the nile valley, had overrun syria and had at first brought it under their suzerainty, though without actually subduing it. they had invaded amurru and zahi, naharaim and mitanni, where they had pillaged, burnt, and massacred at will for years, without obtaining from these countries, which were too remote to fall naturally within their sphere of influence, more than a temporary and apparent submission; the regions in the neighbourhood of the isthmus alone had been regularly administered by the officers of pharaoh, and when the country between mount seir and lebanon seemed on the point of being organised into a real empire the invasion of the peoples of the sea had overthrown and brought to nought the work of three centuries. the assyrians, under the leadership of ambitious kings, had in their turn carried their arms over the countries of the euphrates and the mediterranean, but, like those of the egyptians before them, their expeditions resembled rather the destructive raids of a horde in search of booty than the gradual and orderly advance of a civilised people aiming at establishing a permanent empire. their campaigns in cole-syria and palestine had enriched their own cities and spread the terror of their name throughout the eastern world, but their supremacy had only taken firm root in the plains bordering on mesopotamia, and just when they were preparing to extend their rule, a power had sprung up beside them, over which they had been unable to triumph: they had been obliged to withdraw behind the euphrates, and they might reasonably have asked themselves whether, by weakening the peoples of syria at the price of the best blood of their own nation, they had not merely laboured for the benefit of a rival power, and facilitated the rise of urartu. egypt, after her victory over the peoples of the sea, had seemed likely, for the moment, to make a fresh start on a career of conquest under the energetic influence of ramses iii., but her forces proved unequal to the task, and as soon as the master�s hand ceased to urge her on, she shrank back, without a struggle, within her ancient limits, and ere long nothing remained to her of the asiatic empire carved out by the warlike pharaohs of the theban dynasties. if tiglath-pileser could show the same courage and capacity as ramses iii., he might well be equally successful, and raise his nation again to power; but time alone could prove whether nineveh, on his death, would be able to maintain a continuous effort, or whether her new display of energy would prove merely ephemeral, and her empire be doomed to sink into irremediable weakness under the successors of her deliverer, as egypt had done under the later ramessides. chapter ii--tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian empire from 745 to 722 b.c. _tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian empire from 745 to 722 b.c._ _failure of urartu and re-conquest of syria--egypt again united under ethiopian auspices--piônkhi--the downfall of damascus, of babylon, and of israel._ _assyria and its neighbours at the accession of tiglath-pileser iii.: progress of the aramæans in the basin of the middle tigris--urartu and its expansion into the north of syria--damascus and israel--vengeance of israel on damascus--jeroboam ii.--civilisation of the hebrew kingdoms, their commerce, industries, private life, and political organisation--dawn of hebrew literature: the two historians of israel--the priesthood and the prophets--the prophecy of amos at bethel; denunciation of israel by hosea._ _early campaigns of tiglath-pileser iii. in karduniash and in media--he determines to attach urartu in syria: defeat of sharduris, campaign around arpad, and capture of that city--homage paid by the syrian princes, by menahem and rezin ii--second campaign against the medes--invasion of urartu and end of its supremacy--alliance of pekah and rezin against ahaz: the war in judæa and siege of jerusalem._ _egypt under the kings of the xxiith dynasty--the theban principality, its priests, pallacides, and revolts; the xxiiird tanite dynasty--tafnakhti and the rise of the saite family--the egyptian kingdom, of ethiopia: theocratic nature of its dynasty, annexation of the thebaid by the kingdom of napata--piônkhi-mîamun; his generals in middle egypt; submission of khmunu, of memphis, and of tafnalchti--effect produced in asia by the ethiopian conquest._ _the prophet isaiah, his rise under aliaz--intervention of tiglath-pileser iii. in hebrew affairs; the campaign of 733 b.c. against israel--capture of rezin, and the downfall of damascus--nabunazîr; the kaldd and the close of the babylonian dynasty; usurpation of ukînzîr--campaign against ukînzîr; capture of shapîa and of babylon--tiglath-pileser ascends the throne in the last-named city under the name of fulu (729 b.c.)--death of tiglath-pileser iii. (727 b.c.)_ _reorganisation of the assyrian empire; provinces and feudatory states--karduniash, syria--wholesale deportation of conquered races--provincial administrators, their military and financial arrangements--buildings erected by tiglath-pileser at calah--the bit-khilâni--foundation of feudal lordships--belharrdn-beluzur--shalmaneser v. and egypt: rebellion of hoshea, the siege of samaria, and the prophecies of isaiah--sargon--destruction of the kingdom of israel._ chapter ii--tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian empire from 745 to 722 b.c. _failure of urartu and re-conquest of syria--egypt again united under ethiopian auspices--piônkhi--the downfall of damascus, of babylon, and of israel._ * drawn by boudier, from layard. the vignette, also by boudier, represents a bronze statuette of queen karomama, now in the louvre. events proved that, in this period, at any rate, the decadence of assyria was not due to any exhaustion of the race or impoverishment of the country, but was mainly owing to the incapacity of its kings and the lack of energy displayed by their generals. if menuas and argistis had again and again triumphed over the assyrians during half a century, it was not because their bands of raw recruits were superior to the tried veterans of rammân-nirâri in either discipline or courage. the assyrian troops had lost none of their former valour, and their muster-roll showed no trace of diminution, but their leaders had lost the power of handling their men after the vigorous fashion of their predecessors, and showed less foresight and tenacity in conducting their campaigns. although decimated and driven from fortress to fortress, and from province to province, hampered by the rebellions it was called upon to suppress, and distracted by civil discord, the assyrian army still remained a strong and efficient force, ever ready to make its full power felt the moment it realised that it was being led by a sovereign capable of employing its good qualities to advantage. tiglath-pileser had, doubtless, held a military command before ascending the throne, and had succeeded in winning the confidence of his men: as soon as he had assumed the leadership they regained their former prestige, and restored to their country that supremacy which its last three rulers had failed to maintain.* * the official documents dealing with the history of tiglath-pileser iii. have been seriously mutilated, and there is on several points some difference of opinion among historians as to the proper order in which the fragments ought to be placed, and, consequently, as to the true sequence of the various campaigns. the principal documents are as follows: (1) the _annals_ in the central hall of the palace of shalmaneser iii. at nimroud, partly defaced by esarhaddon, and carried off to serve as materials for the south-western palace, whence they were rescued by layard, and brought in fragments to the british museum. (2) the _tablets_, k. 3571 and d. t. 3, in the british museum. (3) the _slabs of nimrud_, discovered by layard and g. smith. the empire still included the original patrimony of assur and its ancient colonies on the upper tigris, the districts of mesopotamia won from the aramæans at various epochs, the cities of khabur, khindanu, laqî, and tebabnî, and that portion of bît-adini which lay to the left of the euphrates. it thus formed a compact mass capable of successfully resisting the fiercest attacks; but the buffer provinces which assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii. had grouped round their own immediate domains on the borders of namri, of naîri, of melitene, and of syria had either resumed their independence, or else had thrown in their lot with the states against which they had been intended to watch. the aramaean tribes never let slip an opportunity of encroaching on the southern frontier. so far, the migratory instinct which had brought them from the arabian desert to the swamps of the persian gulf had met with no check. those who first reached its shores became the founders of that nation of the kaldâ which had, perhaps, already furnished babylon with one of its dynasties; others had soon after followed in their footsteps, and passing beyond the kaldâ settlement, had gradually made their way along the canals which connect the euphrates with the tigris till they had penetrated to the lowlands of the uknu. towards the middle of the eighth century b.c. they wedged themselves in between elam and karduniash, forming so many buffer states of varying size and influence. they extended from north to south along both banks of the tigris, their different tribes being known as the gambulu, the puqudu, the litau, the damunu, the ruuâ, the khindaru, the labdudu, the harîlu, and the rubuu;* the itua, who formed the vanguard, reached the valleys of the turnat during the reign of kammân-nirâri iii. they were defeated in 791 b.c., but obstinately renewed hostilities in 783, 782, 777, and 769; favoured by circumstances, they ended by forcing the cordon of assyrian outposts, and by the time of assur-nirâri had secured a footing on the lower zab. close by, to the east of them, lay namri and media, both at that time in a state of absolute anarchy. the invasions of menuas and of argistis had entirely laid waste the country, and sharduris iii., the king who succeeded argistis, had done nothing towards permanently incorporating them with urartu.** sharduris, while still heir-apparent to the throne, had been appointed by his father governor of the recently annexed territory belonging to etius and the mannai:*** he made lununis his headquarters, and set himself to subdue the barbarians who had settled between the kur and the araxes. when he succeeded to the throne, about 760 b.c., the enjoyment of supreme power in no way lessened his activity. on the contrary, he at once fixed upon the sort of wide isthmus which separates the araxes from lake urumiah, as the goal of his incursions, and overran the territory of the babilu; there he carried by storm three royal castles, twenty-three cities, and sixty villages; he then fell back upon etius, passing through dakis, edias, and urmes on his way, and brought back with him 12,735 children, 46,600 women, 12,000 men capable of bearing arms, 23,335 oxen, 58,100 sheep, and 2,500 horses; these figures give some idea of the importance of his victories and the wealth of the conquered territory. * the list of aramæan tribes, and the positions occupied by them towards the middle of the eighth century, have been given us by tiglath-pileser iii. himself. ** tiglath-pileser did not encounter any urartian forces in these regions, as would almost certainly have been the case had these countries remained subject to urartu from the invasions of menuas and argistis onwards. *** argistis tells us in the _annals_ that he had made his son satrap over the provinces won from the mannai and etius: though his name is not mentioned, sayce believes this son must have been sharduris. so far as we can learn, he does not seem to have attacked khubushkia,* nor to have entered into open rivalry with assyria; even under the rule of assur-nirâri iii. assyria showed a bold enough front to deter any enemy from disturbing her except when forced to do so. sharduris merely strove to recover those portions of his inheritance to which assyria attached but little value, and his inscriptions tell us of more than one campaign waged by him with this object against the mountaineers of melitene, about the year 758. he captured most of their citadels, one after another: dhumeskis, zapsas, fourteen royal castles, and a hundred towns, including milid itself, where king khitaruadas held his court.** * it is evident from the account of the campaigns that tiglath-pileser occupied khubushkia from the very commencement of his reign; we must therefore assume that the invasions of argistis had produced only transient effects. ** these campaigns must have preceded the descent into syria, and i believe this latter to have been anterior to the expedition of assur-nirâri against arpad in 754 b.c. assur-nirâri probably tried to reconquer the tribes who had just become subject to sharduris. the descent of this latter into syria probably took place about 756 or 755 b.c., and his wars against melitene about 758 to 757 b.c. at this point two courses lay open before him. he could either continue his march westwards, and, penetrating into asia minor, fall upon the wealthy and industrious races who led a prosperous existence between the halys and the sangarios, such as the tabal, the chalybes, and the phrygians, or he could turn southwards. [illustration: 180.jpg a vista of the asianic steppe] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by alfred boissier. deterred, apparently, by the dreary and monotonous aspect of the asianic steppes, he chose the latter course; he crossed mount taurus, descended into northern syria about 756, and forced the khâti to swear allegiance to him. their inveterate hatred of the assyrians led the bît-agusi to accept without much reluctance the supremacy of the only power which had shown itself capable of withstanding their triumphant progress. arpad became for several years an unfailing support to urartu and the basis on which its rule in syria rested. assur-nirâri had, as we know, at first sought to recover it, but his attempt to do so in 754 b.c. was unsuccessful, and merely served to demonstrate his own weakness: ten years later, carchemish, grurgum, kummukh, samalla, unki, kuî--in a word, all the aramæans and the khâti between the euphrates and the sea had followed in the steps of the agusi, and had acknowledged the supremacy of sharduris.* * the _minimum_ extent of the dominions of sharduris in syria may be deduced from the list of the allies assigned to him by tiglath-pileser in 743 in the annals. this prince must now haye been sorely tempted to adopt, on his own account, the policy of the ninevite monarchs, and push on in the direction of hamath, damascus, and the phoenician seaboard, towards those countries of israel and judah which were nearly coterminous with far-off egypt. the rapidity of the victories which he had just succeeded in winning at the foot of mount taurus and mount amanus must have seemed a happy omen of what awaited his enterprise in the valleys of the orontes and the jordan. although the races of southern and central syria had suffered less than those of the north from the ambition of the ninevite kings, they had, none the less, been sorely tried during the previous century; and it might be questioned whether they had derived courage from the humiliation of assyria, or still remained in so feeble a state as to present an easy prey to the first invader. the defeat inflicted on mari by rammân-nirâri in 803 had done but little harm to the prestige of damascus. the influence exercised by this state from the sources of the litany to the brook of egypt * was based on so solid a foundation that no temporary reverse had power to weaken it. * [not the nile, but the wady el arish, the frontier between southern syria and egypt. cf. josh. xv. 47; 2 kings xxiv. 7, called �river� of egypt in the a.v.--tr.] had the assyrian monarch thrown himself more seriously into the enterprise, and reappeared before the ramparts of the capital in the following year, refusing to leave it till he had annihilated its armies and rased its walls to the ground, then, no doubt, israel, judah, the philistines, edom, and ammon, seeing it fully occupied in its own defence, might have forgotten the ruthless severity of hazael, and have plucked up sufficient courage to struggle against the damascene yoke; as it was, bammân-nirâri did not return, and the princes who had, perhaps, for the moment, regarded him as a possible deliverer, did not venture on any concerted action. joash, king of judah, and jehoahaz, king of israel, continued to pay tribute till both their deaths, within a year of each other, jehoahaz in 797 b.c., and joash in 796, the first in his bed, the second by the hand of an assassin.* * kings xii. 20, 21, xiii. 9; cf. 2 citron, xxiv. 22-26, where the death of joash is mentioned as one of the consequences of the syrian invasion, and as a punishment for his crime in killing the sons of jehoiada. their children, jehoash in israel, amaziah in judah, were, at first, like their parents, merely the instruments of damascus; but before long, the conditions being favourable, they shook off their apathy and initiated a more vigorous policy, each in his own kingdom. mari had been succeeded by a certain ben-hadad, also a son of hazael,* and possibly this change of kings was accompanied by one of those revolutions which had done so much to weaken damascus: jehoash rebelled and defeated ben-hadad near aphek and in three subsequent engagements, but he failed to make his nation completely independent, and the territory beyond jordan still remained in the hands of the syrians.** we are told that before embarking on this venture he went to consult the aged elisha, then on his deathbed. he wept to see him in this extremity, and bending over him, cried out, �my father, my father, the chariots of israel and the horsemen thereof!� the prophet bade him take bow and arrows and shoot from the window toward the east. the king did so, and elisha said, �the lord�s arrow of victory *** over syria; for thou shalt smite the syrians in aphek till thou have consumed them.� * 2 kings xiii. 24, 25. winckler is of opinion that mari and ben-hadad, son of hazael, were one and the same person. ** 2 kings xiii. 25, the term �saviour� in 2 kings xiii. 5 is generally taken as referring to joash: winckler, however, prefers to apply it to the king of assyria. the biblical text does not expressly state that joash failed to win back the districts of gilead from the syrians, but affirms that he took from them the cities which hazael �had taken out of the hand of jehoahaz, his father.� ramah of gilead and the cities previously annexed by jehoahaz must, therefore, have remained in the hands of ben-hadad. *** [heb. �salvation;� a.v. �deliverance.�--tr.] then he went on: �take the arrows,� and the king took them; then he said, �smite upon the ground,� and the king smote thrice and stayed. and the man of god was wroth with him, and said, �thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten syria till thou hadst consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite syria but thrice.� * amaziah, on his side, had routed the edomites in the valley of salt, one of david�s former battle-fields, and had captured their capital, sela.** elated by his success, he believed himself strong enough to break the tie of vassalage which bound him to israel, and sent a challenge to jehoash in samaria. the latter, surprised at his audacity, replied in a parable, �the thistle that was in lebanon sent to the cedar that was in lebanon, saying, give thy daughter to my son to wife.� but �there passed by a wild beast that was in lebanon and trode down the thistle. thou hast indeed smitten edom, and thine heart hath lifted thee up: glory thereof and abide at home; for why shouldest thou meddle to thy hurt that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and judah with thee?� they met near beth-shemesh, on the border of the philistine lowlands. amaziah was worsted in the engagement, and fell into the power of his rival. jehoash entered jerusalem and dismantled its walls for a space of four hundred cubits, �from the gate of ephraim unto the corner gate;� he pillaged the temple, as though it had been the abode, not of jahveh, but of some pagan deity, insisted on receiving hostages before he would release his prisoner, and returned to samaria, where he soon after died (781 b.c.).*** * 2 kings xiii. 14-19. ** 2 kings xiv. 7; cf. 2 gliron. xxv. 11, 12. sela was rebuilt, and received the name of joktheel from its hebrew masters. the subjection of the country was complete, for, later on, the hebrew chronicler tells of the conquest of elath by king azariah, son of amaziah (2 kings xiv. 22). *** 2 kings xiv. 8-16. cf. 2 ghron. xxv. 17-24. jeroboam ii. completed that rehabilitation of israel, of which his father had but sketched the outline; he maintained his suzerainty, first over amaziah, and when the latter was assassinated at lachish (764),* over his son, the young azariah.** after the defeat of ben-hadad near aphek, damascus declined still further in power, and hadrach, suddenly emerging from obscurity, completely barred the valley of the orontes against it. an expedition under shalmaneser iv. in 773 seems to have precipitated it to a lower depth than it had ever reached before: jeroboam was able to wrest from it, almost without a struggle, the cities which it had usurped in the days of jehu, and gilead was at last set free from a yoke which had oppressed it for more than a century. tradition goes so far as to affirm that israel reconquered the bekaa, hamath, and damascus, those northern territories once possessed by david, and it is quite possible that its rivals, menaced from afar by assyria and hard pressed at their own doors by hadrach, may have resorted to one of those propitiatory overtures which eastern monarchs are only too ready to recognise as acts of submission. the lesser southern states, such as ammon, the bedâwin tribes of hauran, and, at the opposite extremity of the kingdom, the philistines,*** who had bowed themselves before hazael in the days of his prosperity, now transferred their homage to israel. * 2 kings xiv. 19, 20; cf. 2 ghron. xxv. 27, 28. ** the hebrew texts make no mention of this subjection of judah to jeroboam ii.; that it actually took place must, however, be admitted, at any rate in so far as the first half of the reign of azariah is concerned, as a necessary outcome of the events of the preceding reigns. *** the conquests of jeroboam ii. are indicated very briefly in 2 kings xiv. 25-28: cf. amos vi. 14, where the expressions employed by the prophet imply that at the time at which he wrote the whole of the ancient kingdom of david, judah included, was in the possession of israel. moab alone offered any serious resistance. it had preserved its independence ever since the reign of mesha, having escaped from being drawn into the wars which had laid waste the rest of syria. it was now suddenly forced to pay the penalty of its long prosperity. jeroboam made a furious onslaught upon its cities--ar of moab, kir of moab, dibon, medeba, heshbon, elealeh--and destroyed them all in succession. the moabite forces carried a part of the population with them in their flight, and all escaped together across the deserts which enclose the southern basin of the dead sea. on the frontier of edom they begged for sanctuary, but the king of judah, to whom the edomite valleys belonged, did not dare to shelter the vanquished enemies of his suzerain, and one of his prophets, forgetting his hatred of israel in delight at being able to gratify his grudge against moab, greeted them in their distress with a hymn of joy--�i will water thee with my tears, o heshbon elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen. and gladness is taken away and joy out of the fruitful fields; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise; no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; i have made the vintage shout to cease. wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for moab, and my inward parts for kir-heres. and it shall come to pass, when moab presenteth himself, when he wearieth himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, he shall not prevail!�* * isa. xv. 1-9; xvi. 1-12. this prophecy, which had been pronounced against moab �in the old days,� and which is appropriated by isaiah (xvi. 13, 14), has been attributed to jonah, son of amittaî, of gath-hepher, who actually lived in the time of jeroboam ii. (2 kings xiv. 25). it is now generally recognised as the production of an anonymous judsean prophet, and the earliest authentic fragment of prophetic literature which has come down to us. this revival, like the former greatness of david and solomon, was due not so much to any inherent energy on the part of israel, as to the weakness of the nations on its frontiers. egypt was not in the habit of intervening in the quarrels of asia, and assyria was suffering from a temporary eclipse. damascus had suddenly collapsed, and hadrach or mansuati, the cities which sought to take its place, found themselves fully employed in repelling the intermittent attacks of the assyrian; the hebrews, for a quarter of a century, therefore, had the stage to themselves, there being no other actors to dispute their possession of it. during the three hundred years of their existence as a monarchy they had adopted nearly all the laws and customs of the races over whom they held sway, and by whom they were completely surrounded. the bulk of the people devoted themselves to the pasturing and rearing of cattle, and, during the better part of the year, preferred to live in tents, unless war rendered such a practice impossible.* they had few industries save those of the potter** and the smith,*** and their trade was almost entirely in the hands of foreigners. * cf. the passage in 2 kings xiii. 5, �and the children of israel dwelt in their tents as beforetime.� although the word _ôhel_ had by that time acquired the more general meaning of _habitation_, the context here seems to require us to translate it by its original meaning tent. ** pottery is mentioned in 2 sam. xvii. 28; numerous fragments dating from the monarchical period have been found at jerusalem and lachish. *** the story of tubal-cain (gen. iv. 22) shows the antiquity of the ironworker�s art among the israelites; the smith is practically the only artisan to be found amongst nomadic tribes. we find, however, hebrew merchants in egypt,* at tyre, and in coele-syria, and they were so numerous at damascus that they requested that a special bazaar might be allotted to them, similar to that occupied by the merchants of damascus in samaria from time immemorial.** * the accurate ideas on the subject of egypt possessed by the earliest compilers of the traditions contained in genesis and exodus, prove that hebrew merchants must have been in constant communication with that country about the time with which we are now concerned. ** 1 kings xx. 34; cf. what has been said on this point in vol. vi. pp. 432, 441. [illustration: 188.jpg specimens of hebrew pottery] drawn by faucher-gudin, from sketches by warren. the hebrew monarchs had done their best to encourage this growing desire for trade. it was only the complicated state of syrian politics that prevented them from following the example of solomon, and opening communications by sea with the far-famed countries of ophir, either in competition with the phoenicians or under their guidance. indeed, as we have seen, jehoshaphat, encouraged by his alliance with the house of omri, tried to establish a seagoing fleet, but found that peasants could not be turned into sailors at a day�s notice, and the vessel built by him at eziongeber was wrecked before it left the harbour. [illustration: 189.jpg israelites of the higher class in the time of shalmaneser iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the black obelisk. in appearance, the hebrew towns closely resembled the ancient canaanite cities. egyptian influences still predominated in their architecture, as may be seen from what is still left of the walls of lachish, and they were fortified in such a way as to be able to defy the military engines of besiegers. this applies not only to capitals, like jerusalem, tirzah, and samaria, but even to those towns which commanded a road or mountain pass, the ford of a river, or the entrance to some fertile plain; there were scores of these on the frontiers of the two kingdoms, and in those portions of their territory which lay exposed to the attacks of damascus, moab, edom, or the philistines.* the daily life of the inhabitants was; to all intents, the same as at arpad, sidon, or gaza; and the dress, dwellings, and customs of the upper and middle classes cannot have differed in any marked degree from those of the corresponding grades of society in syria. * 2 chron. xi. 6-10, where we find a list of the towns fortified by rehoboam: bethlehem, etam, beth-zur, soco, adullam, gath, mareshah, ziph, adoraim, lachish, azekah, zorah, ajalon, hebron. [illustration: 190.jpg judæan peasants] drawn by boudier, from layard. these figures are taken from a bas-relief which represents sennacherib receiving the submission of judah before lachish. the men wore over their tunic a fringed kaftan, with short sleeves, open in front, a low-crowned hat, and sandals or shoes of pliant leather; * they curled their beards and hair, painted their eyes and cheeks, and wore many jewels; while their wives adopted all the latest refinements in vogue in the harems of damascus, tyre, or nineveh.** descendants of ancient families paid for all this luxury out of the revenues of the wide domains they had inherited; others kept it up by less honourable means, by usury, corruption, and by the exercise of a ruthless violence towards neighbours who were unable to defend themselves. * the kaftan met with in these parts seems to correspond to the _meîl_ (r.v. �ephod �) of the biblical texts (1 sam. ii. 19; xviii. 4, etc.). ** isa. iii. 16-24 describes in detail the whole equipment of jewels, paint, and garments required by the fashionable women of jerusalem during the last thirty years of the eighth century b.c. illustration: 191.jpg women and children of judæa drawn by boudier, from layard. the king himself set them an evil example, and did not hesitate to assassinate one of his subjects in order that he might seize a vineyard which he coveted;* it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the nobles of ephraim �sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes;� ** that they demanded gifts of wheat, and �turned the needy from their right� when they sat as a jury �at the gate.� *** from top to bottom of the social ladder the stronger and wealthier oppressed those who were weaker or poorer than themselves, leaving them with no hope of redress except at the hands of the king.**** * cf. the well-known episode of naboth and ahab in 1 kings xxi. ** amos ii. 6. *** amos v. 11, 12. **** 2 kings vi. 26-30; viii. 3-8, where, in both instances, it is a woman who appeals to the king. cf. for the period of david and solomon, 2 sam. xiv. 1-20, and 1 kings iii. 16-27. unfortunately, the king, when he did not himself set the example of oppression, seldom possessed the resources necessary to make his decisions effective. true, he was chief of the most influential family in either judah or israel, a chief by divine appointment, consecrated by the priests and prophets of jahveh, a priest of the lord,* and he was master in his own city of jerusalem or samaria, but his authority did not extend far beyond the walls. * cf. the anointing of saul (1 sam. ix. 16; x. 1; and xiv. 1), of david (1 sam. xvi. 1-3, 12, 13), of solomon (1 kings i. 34, 39, 45), of jehu (2 kings ix. 1-10), and compare it with the unction received by the priests on their admission to the priesthood (exod. xxix. 7; xxx. 22, 23; cf. lev. viii. 12, 30; x. 7). it was not the old tribal organisation that embarrassed him, for the secondary tribes had almost entirely given up their claims to political independence. the division of the country into provinces, a consequence of the establishment of financial districts by solomon, had broken them up, and they gradually gave way before the two houses of ephraim and judah; but the great landed proprietors, especially those who held royal fiefs, enjoyed almost unlimited power within their own domains. they were, indeed, called on to render military service, to furnish forced labour, and to pay certain trifling dues into the royal treasury;* but, otherwise, they were absolute masters in their own domains, and the sovereign was obliged to employ force if he wished to extort any tax or act of homage which they were unwilling to render. for this purpose he had a standing army distributed in strong detachments along the frontier, but the flower of his forces was concentrated round the royal residence to serve as a body-guard. it included whole companies of foreign mercenaries, like those cretan and carian warriors who, since the time of david, had kept guard round the kings of judah;** these, in time of war,*** were reinforced by militia, drawn entirely from among the landed proprietors, and the whole force, when commanded by an energetic leader, formed a host capable of meeting on equal terms the armies of damascus, edom, or moab, or even the veterans of egypt and assyria. * 1 kings xv. 22 (cf. 2 ohron. xvi. 6), where �king asa made a proclamation unto all judah; none was exempted,� the object in this case being the destruction of ramah, the building of which had been begun by baasha. ** the carians or cretans are again referred to in the history of athaliah (2 kings xi. 4). *** taking the tribute paid by menahem to pul (2 kings xv. 19, 20) as a basis, it has been estimated that the owners of landed estate in israel, who were in that capacity liable to render military service, numbered 60,000 in the time of that king; all others were exempt from military service. the reigning prince was hereditary commander-in-chief, but the _sharzaba_, or captain of the troops, often took his place, as in the time of david, and thereby became the most important person in the kingdom. more than one of these officers had already turned against their sovereign the forces which he had entrusted, to them, and these revolts, when crowned with success, had, on various occasions, in israel at any rate, led to a change of dynasty: omri had been shar zaba when he mutinied against zimri, the assassin of elah, and jehu occupied the same position when elisha deputed him to destroy the house of omri. the political constitutions of judah and israel were, on the whole, very similar to those of the numerous states which shared the territory of syria between them, and their domestic history gives us a fairly exact idea of the revolutions which agitated damascus, hamath, carchemish, arpad, and the principalities of amanos and lebanon about the same period. it would seem, however, that none of these other nations possessed a literary or religious life of any great intensity. they had their archives, it is true, in which were accumulated documents relating to their past history, their rituals of theology and religious worship, their collections of hymns and national songs; but none of these have survived, and the very few inscriptions that have come down to us merely show that they had nearly all of them adopted the alphabet invented by the phoenicians. the israelites, initiated by them into the art of writing, lost no time in setting down, in their turn, all they could recall of the destinies of their race from the creation of the world down to the time in which they lived. from the beginning of the monarchical epoch onwards, their scribes collected together in the _book of the wars of the lord_, the _book of jashar_, and in other works the titles of which have not survived, lyrics of different dates, in which nameless poets had sung the victories and glorious deeds of their national heroes, such as the song of the well, the hymn of moses, the triumphal ode of deborah, and the blessing of jacob.* they were able to draw upon traditions which preserved the memory of what had taken place in the time of the judges;** and when that patriarchal form of government was succeeded by a monarchy, they had narratives of the ark of the lord and its wanderings, of samuel, saul, david, and solomon,*** not to mention the official records which, since then, had been continuously produced and accumulated by the court historians.**** * the books of _jashar_ and of the _wars of the lord_ appear to date from the ixth century b.c.; as the latter is quoted in the elohist narrative, it cannot have been compiled later than the beginning of the viiith century b.c. the passage in numb. xxi. lib, 15, is the only one expressly attributed by the testimony of the ancients to the _book of the wars of the lord,_ but modern writers add to this the _song of the well _(numb. xxi. 17b, 18), and the song of victory over moab (numb. xxi. 27&-30). the _song of the bow_ (2 sam. i. 19-27) admittedly formed part of the _book of jashar_. joshua�s song of victory over the amorites (josh. x. 13), and very probably the couplet recited by solomon at the dedication of the temple (1 kings viii, 12, 13, placed by the lxx. after verse 53), also formed part of it, as also the _song of deborah_ and the blessing of jacob (gen. xlix. 1-27). ** wellhausen was the first to admit the existence of a book of judges prior to the epoch of deuteronomy, and his opinion has been adopted by kuenen and driver. this book was probably drawn upon by the two historians of the ixth and viiith centuries b.c. of whom we are about to speak; some of the narratives, such as the story of abimelech, and possibly that of ehud, may have been taken from a document written at the end of the xth or the beginning of the ixth centuries b.c. *** the revolutions which occurred in the family of david (2 sam. ix.-xx.) bear so evident a stamp of authenticity that they have been attributed to a contemporary writer, perhaps ahimaaz, son of zadok (2 sam. xv. 27), who took part in the events in question. but apart from this, the existence is generally admitted of two or three books which were drawn up shortly after the separation of the tribes, containing a kind of epic of the history of the first two kings; the one dealing with saul, for instance, was probably written in the time of jeroboam. **** the two lists in which the names of the principal personages at the court of david are handed down to us, mention a certain jehoshaphat, son of ahilud, who was _mazhir_, or recorder; he retained his post under solomon (1 kings iv. 3). it may be that more than one writer had already endeavoured to evolve from these materials an epie of jahveh and his faithful people, but in the second half of the ixth century b.c., perhaps in the time of jehoshaphat, a member of the tribe of judah undertook to put forth a fresh edition.* * the approximate date of the composition and source of this first _jehovist_ is still an open question., reuss and kuenen, not to mention others, believe the jehovist writer to have been a native of the northern kingdom; i have adopted the opposite view, which is supported by most modern critics. he related how god, after creating the universe out of chaos, had chosen his own people, and had led them, after trials innumerable, to the conquest of the promised land. he showed, as he went on, the origin of the tribes identified with the children of israel, and the covenants made by jahveh with moses in the arabian desert; while accepting the stories connected with the ancient sanctuaries of the north and east at shechem, bethel, peniel, mahanaim, and succoth, it was at hebron in judah that he placed the principal residence of abraham and his descendants. his style, while simple and direct, is at the same time singularly graceful and vivacious; the incidents he gives are carefully selected, apt and characteristic, while his narrative passes from scene to scene without trace of flagging, unburdened by useless details, and his dialogue, always natural and easy, rises without effort from the level of familiar conversation to heights of impassioned eloquence. his aim was not merely to compile the history of his people: he desired at the same time to edify them, by showing how sin first came into the world through disobedience to the commandments of the most high, and how man, prosperous so long as he kept to the laws of the covenant, fell into difficulties as soon as he transgressed or failed to respect them. his concept of jahveh is in the highest degree a concrete one: he regards him as a being superior to other beings, but made like unto them and moved by the same passions. he shows anger and is appeased, displays sorrow and repents him of the evil.* when the descendants of noah build a tower and a city, he draws nigh to examine what they have done, and having taken account of their work, confounds their language and thus prevents them from proceeding farther.** he desires, later on, to confer a favour on his servant abraham: he appears to him in human form, and eats and drinks with him.*** sodom and gomorrah had committed abominable iniquities, the cry against them was great and their sin very grievous: but before punishing them, he tells abraham that he will �go down and see whether they have done according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, i will know.� **** * exod. iv. 14 and xxxii. 10, anger of jahveh against moses and against israel; gen. vi. 6, 7, where he repents and is sorry for having created man; and exod. xxxii. 14, where he repents him of the evil he had intended to do unto israel. ** gen. xi. 5-8. *** gen. xviii. **** gen. xviii. and xix. elsewhere he wrestles a whole night long with jacob;* or falls upon moses, seeking to kill him, until appeased by zipporah, who casts the blood-stained foreskin of her child at her husband�s feet.** this book, though it breathes the spirit of the prophets and was perhaps written in one of their schools, did not, however, include all the current narratives, and omitted many traditions that were passing from lip to lip; moreover, the excessive materialism of its treatment no longer harmonised with that more idealised concept of the deity which had already begun to prevail. consequently, within less than a century of its appearance, more than one version containing changes and interpolations in the narrative came to be circulated,*** till a scribe of ephraim, who flourished in the time of jeroboam ii., took up the subject and dealt with it in a different fashion.**** * gen. xxxii. 24, 25. ** exod. iv. 24-26. *** schrader and wellhausen have drawn attention to contradictions in the primitive history of humanity as presented by the jehovist which forbid us to accept it as the work of a single writer. nor can these inconsistencies be due to the influence of the elohist, since the latter did not deal with this period in his book. budde has maintained that the primitive work contained no account of the deluge, and traced the descent of all the nations, israel included, back to cain, and he declares he can detect in the earlier chapters of genesis traces of a first jehovist, whom he calls j1. a second jehovist, j2, who flourished between 800 and 700 b.c., is supposed to have added to the contribution of the first, certain details borrowed from the babylonian tradition, such as the deluge, the story of noah, of nimrod, etc. finally, a third jehovist is said to have thrown the versions of his two predecessors into one, taking j2 as the basis of his work. **** the date and origin of the elohist have given rise to no less controversy than those of the jehovist: the view most generally adopted is that he was a native of the northern kingdom, and flourished about 750 b.c. putting on one side the primitive accounts of the origin of the human race which his predecessors had taken pleasure in elaborating, he confined his attention solely to events since the birth of abraham;* his origin is betrayed by the preference he displays for details calculated to flatter the self-esteem of the northern tribes. to his eyes, joseph is the noblest of all the sons of jacob, before whom all the rest must bow their heads, as to a king; next to joseph comes reuben, to whom--rather than to judah**--he gives the place as firstborn. he groups his characters round bethel and shechem, the sanctuaries of israel; even abraham is represented as residing, not at hebron in judea, but at beersheba, a spot held in deep veneration by pilgrims belonging to the ten tribes.*** it is in his concept of the supreme being, however, that he differs most widely from his predecessors. god is, according to him, widely removed from ordinary humanity. he no longer reveals himself at all times and in all places, but works rather by night, and appears to men in their dreams, or, when circumstances require his active interference, is content to send his angels rather than come in his own person.**** * budde seems to have proved conclusively that the elohist did not write any part of the primitive history of mankind. ** gen. xxxvii. 21, 22, 29, 30; xlii. 22, 27; whereas in gen. xliii. 3, 8-10, where the narrative is from the pen of the jehovist, it is judah that plays the principal part: it is possible that, in gen. xxxvii. 21, reuben has been substituted in the existing text for judah. *** gen. xxi. 31, 33; xxii. 19; the importance of beersheba as a holy place resorted to by pilgrims from the northern kingdom is shown in 1 kings xix. 3, and amos v. 5; viii. 14. **** gen. xx. 3-8; xxviii. 11-15; xxxi 24; numb. xxii. 8-12, 20. indeed, such cases of active interference are of rare occurrence, and he prefers to accomplish his purpose through human agents, who act unconsciously, or even in direct contravention of their own clearly, expressed intentions.* moreover it was only by degrees that he revealed his true nature and title; the patriarchs, abraham, isaac, jacob, and joseph, had called him elohim, or �the gods,� and it was not until the coming of moses that he disclosed his real name of jahveh to his worshippers.** * gen. 1. 20, end of the story of joseph: �and as for you, ye meant evil against me; but god meant it for good, to bring it to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive.� ** exod. iii. 13, 14; verse 15 is an interpolation of much later date. [illustration: 200.jpg prayer at sunset] after painting by gerome [illustration: 200-text.jpg] in a word, this new historian shows us in every line that the theological instinct has superseded popular enthusiasm, and his work loses unmistakably in literary interest by the change. we feel that he is wanting in feeling and inspiration; his characters no longer palpitate with life; his narrative drags, its interest decreases, and his language is often deficient in force and colour. but while writers, trained in the schools of the prophets, thus sought to bring home to the people the benefits which their god had showered on them, the people themselves showed signs of disaffection towards him, or were, at any rate, inclined to associate with him other gods borrowed from neighbouring states, and to overlay the worship they rendered him with ceremonies and ideas inconsistent with its original purity. the permanent division of the nation into two independent kingdoms had had its effect on their religion as well as on their political life, and had separated the worshippers into two hostile camps. the inhabitants of judah still continued to build altars on their high places, as they had done in the time before david; there, the devout prostrated themselves before the sacred stones and before the asherah, or went in unto the _kedeshôth_ in honour of astarte, and in jahveh�s own temple at jerusalem they had set up the image of a brazen serpent to which they paid homage.* the feeling, however, that the patron deity of the chosen people could have but one recognised habitation--the temple built for him by solomon--and that the priests of this temple were alone qualified to officiate there in an effective manner, came to prevail more and more strongly in judaea. the king, indeed, continued to offer sacrifices and prayer there,** but the common people could no longer intercede with their god except through the agency of the priests. * cf. what we are told of idolatrous practices in judah under rehoboam and abraham (1 kings xiv. 22-24; xv. 3), and of the tolerance of high places by asa and jehoshaphat (1 kings xv. 14; xxii. 44); even at the period now under consideration neither amaziah (2 kings xiv. 4) nor azariah (2 kings xv. 4) showed any disposition to prohibit them. the brazen serpent was still in existence in the time of hezekiah, at the close of the viiith century b.c. (2 kings xviii. 4). ** 2 kings xvi. 10-16, where ahaz is described as offering sacrifice and giving instructions to the high priest urijah as to the reconstruction and service of the altar; cf. 2 chron. xxvi. 16-21, where similar conduct on the part of uzziah is recorded, and where the leprosy by which he was attacked is, in accordance with the belief of later times, represented as a punishment of the sacrilege committed by him in attempting to perform the sacrifice in person. the latter, in their turn, tended to develop into a close corporation of families consecrated for generations past to the priestly office; they came in time to form a tribe by themselves, which took rank among the other tribes of israel, and claimed levi, one of the twelve sons of jacob, as its ancestor. their head, chosen from among the descendants of zadok, who had been the first high priest in the reign of solomon, was by virtue of his office one of the chief ministers of the crown, and we know what an important part was played by jehoiadah in the revolution which led to the deposition of athaliah; the high priest was, however, no less subordinate to the supreme power than his fellow-ministers, and the sanctity of his office did not avail to protect him from ill-treatment or death if he incurred the displeasure of his sovereign.* he had control over a treasury continually enriched by the offerings of the faithful, and did not always turn his trust to the best uses; in times of extreme distress the king used to borrow from him as a last resource, in order to bring about the withdrawal of an invader, or purchase the help of a powerful ally.** the capital of israel was of too recent foundation to allow of its chapel royal becoming the official centre of national worship; the temple and priesthood of samaria never succeeded in effacing the prestige enjoyed by the ancient oracles, though in the reign of both the first and second jeroboam, dan, bethel, gilgal, and mizpah had each its band of chosen worshippers.*** * in order to form an idea of the relative positions occupied by the king and the high priest, we must read what is told of jehoiadah and joash (2 kings xii. 6-16), or urijah and ahaz (2 kings xvi. 10-16); the story runs that zechariah was put to death by joash (2 chron. xxiv. 22). ** asa did so in order to secure ben-hadad�s help against baasha (1 kings xv. 18, 19; cf. 2 chron. xvi. 2, 3): as to the revenues by which the treasury of the temple was supported and the special dues appropriated to it, cf. 2 kings xii. 4, 5, 7-16, and xxii. 4-7, 9. *** in the time of jeroboam ii., bethel, gilgal, and dan are mentioned by amos (iv. 4; v. 5, 6; viii. 14), by hosea (iv. 15; ix. 15; xii. 12). mizpah is mentioned by hosea (v. 1), and so is tabor. the altar of jahveh on mount carmel was restored by elijah (1 kings xviii. 30). at these centres adoration was rendered to the animal presentment of jahveh,* and even prophets like elijah and elisha did not condemn this as heretical; they had enough to do in hunting down the followers of baal without entering into open conflict with the worshippers of the golden calf. the priesthood of the northern kingdom was not confined to members of the family of levi, but was recruited from all the tribes; it levied a tithe on the harvest, reserved to itself the pick of the offerings and victims, and jealously forbade a plurality of sanctuaries,** the _book of the covenant_*** has handed down to us the regulations in force at one of these temples, perhaps that of bethel, one of the wealthiest of them all. * the golden calves at dan and bethel are referred to by amos (viii. 14) and hosea (x. 5), where bethel is called beth-aven; as to the golden calf at samaria, cf. amos viii. 14 and hos. viii. 5, 6. ** amos iv. 4, 5; v. 21-23. *** this is the title given in exod. xxiv. 7 to a writing in which moses is said to have entered the covenant made between jahveh and israel; it is preserved, with certain interpolations and alterations, in exod. xx. 23?--xxiii. 33. it was inserted in its entirety in the elohist narrative, there taking the place at present occupied by deuteronomy in the pentateuch, viz. that of the covenant made between jahveh and israel prior to the crossing of the jordan (kuenen, _h. c. onderzoek_, i. § 13, no. 32). reuss tries to make out that it was the code promulgated on the occasion of jehoshaphat�s legal reforms, which is only referred to in 2 chron. xvii. 7-9; cf. xix. 5. a more probable theory is that it was the �custom� of one of the great sanctuaries of the northern kingdom reduced to writing at the end of the xth or during the ixth century b.c. [illustration: 202.jpg egyptian altar at deik-el-bahari] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a restoration by naville. the directions in regard to ritual are extremely simple, and the moral code is based throughout on the inexorable _lex talionis_, �life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.� * this brief code must have been almost universally applicable to every conjuncture of civil and religious life in judah no less than in israel. on one point only do we find a disagreement, and that is in connection with the one and only holy of holies to the possession of which the southern kingdom had begun to lay claim: in a passage full of significance jahveh declares, �an altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen: in every place where i record my name i will come unto thee and i will bless thee. and if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.� ** * exod. xxi. 23-25. ** exod. xx. 24-26. the patriarchs and early ancestors of the race had performed their sacrifices in the open air, on rude and low altars, differing widely from lofty and elaborately ornamented erections like those at jerusalem, which seem to have borne a resemblance to the altars of the egyptians: the author of the _book of the covenant_ advises the faithful to follow the example of those great men rather than that of the lévites of judah. nevertheless this multiplicity of high places was not without its dangers; it led the common people to confuse jahveh with the idols of canaan, and encouraged the spread of foreign superstitions. the misfortunes which had come thick and fast upon the israelites ever since the division of the kingdom had made them only too ready to seek elsewhere that support and consolation which they could no longer find at home. the gods of damascus and assur who had caused the downfall of gath, of calneh, and of hamath,* those of tyre and sidon who lavished upon the phoenicians the wealth of the seas, or even the deities of ammon, moab, or edom, might well appear more desirable than a being who, in spite of his former promises, seemed powerless to protect his own people. a number of the israelites transferred their allegiance to these powerful deities, prostrated themselves before the celestial host, flocked round the resting-places of kevan, the star of el, and carried the tabernacles of the king of heaven;** nor was judah slow to follow their example. the prophets, however, did not view their persistent ill-fortune in the same light as the common people; far from accepting it as a proof of the power of other divinities, they recognised in it a mark of jahveh�s superiority. * amos vi. 2; with regard to the destruction of gath by hazael. ** amos v. 26, 27 in their eyes jahveh was the one god, compared with whom the pagan deities were no gods at all, and could not even be said to exist. he might, had he so willed it, have bestowed his protection on any one of the numerous races whom he had planted on the earth: but as a special favour, which he was under no obligation to confer, he had chosen israel to be his own people, and had promised them that they should occupy canaan so long as they kept free from sin. but israel had sinned, israel had followed after idols; its misfortunes were, therefore, but the just penalty of its unfaithfulness. thus conceived, jahveh ceased to be merely the god of a nation--he became the god of the whole world; and it is in the guise of a universal deity that some, at any rate, of the prophets begin to represent him from the time of jeroboam ii. onwards. this change of view in regard to the being of jahveh coincided with a no less marked alteration in the character of his prophets. at first they had taken an active part in public affairs; they had thrown themselves into the political movements of the time, and had often directed their course,* by persuasion when persuasion sufficed, by violence when violence was the only means that was left to them of enforcing the decrees of the most high. not long before this, we find elisha secretly conspiring against the successors of ahab, and taking a decisive part in the revolution which set the house of jehu on the throne in place of that of omri; but during the half-century which had elapsed since his death, the revival in the fortunes of israel and its growing prosperity under the rule of an energetic king had furnished the prophets with but few pretexts for interfering in the conduct of state affairs. * cf. the part taken by nathan in the conspiracy which raised solomon to the throne (1 kings i. 8, et seq.), and previous to this in the story of david�s amour with bathsheba (2 sam. xii. 1-25). similarly, we find prophets such as ahijah in the reign of jeroboam i. (1 kings xi. 29 39; cf. xiv. 1-18; xv. 29, 30), and shemaîah in the reign of rehoboam (1 kings xii. 22-24), jehu son of hananiah under baasha (1 kings xvi. 1-4, 7, 12, 13), micaiah son of imla, and zedekiah under ahab (1 kings xxii. 5-28), not to speak of those mentioned in the chronicles, e.g. azariah son of oded (2 ghron. xv. 1-8), and hanani under asa (2 ghron. xvi. 7-10), jahaziel (2 ghron. xx. 14-19), and eliezer, son of dodavahu (2 ghron. xx. 37), in the time of johoshaphat. no trace of any writings composed by these prophets is found until a very late date; but in chronicles, in addition to a letter from elijah to jehoram of juda (2 ghron. xxi. 12-15), we find a reference to the commentary of the prophet iddo in the time of abijah (2 ghron. xiii. 22), and to the �history of jehu the son of hanani, which is inserted in the book of the kings of israel� (2 chron. xx. 34), in the time of jehoshaphat. they no longer occupied themselves in resisting the king, but addressed themselves to the people, pointed out the heinousness of their sins, and threatened them with the wrath of jahveh if they persisted in their unfaithfulness: they came to be spiritual advisers rather than political partisans, and orators rather than men of action like their predecessors. their discourses were carefully prepared beforehand, and were written down either by themselves or by some of their disciples for the benefit of posterity, in the hope that future generations would understand the dangers or witness the catastrophes which their contemporaries might not live to see. about 760 b.c., amos of tekôa,* a native of judaea, suddenly made his appearance at bethel, in the midst of the festivals which pilgrims had flocked to celebrate in the ancient temple erected to jahveh in one of his animal forms. * the title of the book of amos fixes the date as being �in the days of uzziah king of judah, and in the days of jeroboam the son of joash king of israel� (i. 1), and the state of affairs described by him corresponds pretty closely with what we know of this period. most critics fix the date somewhere between 760 and 750 b.c., but nearer 760 than 750. his opening words filled the listening crowd with wonder: �the high places of isaac shall be desolate,� he proclaimed, �and the sanctuaries of israel shall be laid waste; and i will rise against the house of jeroboam with the sword.� * * amos vii. 9. yet jeroboam had by this time gained all his victories, and never before had the king of samaria appeared to be more firmly seated on the throne: what, then, did this intruder mean by introducing himself as a messenger of wrath in the name of jahveh, at the very moment when jahveh was furnishing his worshippers with abundant signs of his favour? amaziah, the priest of bethel, interrupted him as he went on to declare that �jeroboam should die by the sword, and israel should surely be led away captive out of his land.� the king, informed of what was going on, ordered amos into exile, and amaziah undertook to communicate this sentence to him: �o thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at bethel: for it is the king�s sanctuary, and it is a royal house.� and amos replied, �i was no prophet, neither was i a prophet�s son; but i was a herdman, and a dresser of sycomore trees: and the lord took me from following the flock, and the lord said unto me, go, prophesy unto my people israel. now therefore hear thou the word of the lord: thou sayest, prophesy not against israel, and drop not thy word against the house of isaac: therefore thus saith the lord: thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou thyself shalt die in a land that is unclean, and israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.� * * amos vii. 9-17. this prophecy, first expanded, and then written down with a purity of diction and loftiness of thought which prove amos to have been a master of literary art,* was widely circulated, and gradually gained authority as portents indicative of the divine wrath began to accumulate, such as an earthquake which occurred two years after the incident at bethel,* an eclipse of the sun, drought, famine, and pestilence.*** it foretold, in the first place, the downfall of all the surrounding countries--damascus, gaza, tyre, edom, ammon, moab, and judah; then, denouncing israel itself, condemned it to the same penalties for the same iniquities. in vain did the latter plead its privileges as the chosen people of jahveh, and seek to atone for its guilt by endless sacrifices. �i hate, i despise your feasts,� declared jahveh, �and i will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. yea, though ye offer me your burnt offerings and meat offerings, i will not accept them: neither will i regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for i will not hear the melody of thy viols. but let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.� **** * s. jerome describes amos as �rusticus� and �imperitus sermone,� but modern writers are generally agreed that in putting forward this view he was influenced by the statement as to the peasant origin of the prophet. ** amos i. 1; reference is made to it by the unknown prophet whose words are preserved in zech. xiv. 5. *** the famine is mentioned in amos iv. 6, the drought in amos iv. 7, 8, the pestilence in amos iv. 10. **** amos v. 21-24. the unfaithfulness of israel, the corruption of its cities, the pride of its nobles, had sealed its doom; even at that moment the avenger was at hand on its north-eastern border, the assyrian appointed to carry out sentence upon it.* then follow visions, each one of which tends to deepen the effect of the seer�s words--a cloud of locusts,** a devouring fire,*** a plumb-line in the hands of the lord,**** a basket laden with summer fruits--till at last the whole people of israel take refuge in their temple, vainly hoping that there they may escape from the vengeance of the eternal. �there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape. though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; and though they climb up to heaven, thence will i bring them down. and though they hide themselves in the top of oarmel, i will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will i command the serpent, and he shall bite them. and though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will i command the sword, and it shall slay them; and i will set mine eyes upon them for evil and not for good.� * most commentators admit that the nation raised up by jahveh to oppress israel �from the entering in of hamath unto the brook of the arabah� (amos vi. 14) was no other than assyria. at the very period in which amos flourished, assurdân made two campaigns against hadrach, in 765 and 755, which brought his armies right up to the israelite frontier (schrader, keilinschrift. bibliothec, vol. i. pp. 210 213). ** amos vii. 1-3. *** amos vii. 4-6. **** amos vii. 7-9. it is here that the speech delivered by the prophet at bethel is supposed to occur (vii. 9); the narrative of what afterwards happened follows immediately (amos vii. 10-17). ^ amos viii. 1-3.; amos ix. 1-4. for the first time in history a prophet foretold disaster and banishment for a whole people: love of country was already giving place in the heart of amos to his conviction of the universal jurisdiction of god, and this conviction led him to regard as possible and probable a state of things in which israel should have no part. nevertheless, its decadence was to be merely temporary; jahveh, though prepared to chastise the posterity of jacob severely, could not bring himself to destroy it utterly. the kingdom of david was soon to flourish anew: �behold, the days come, saith the lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. and i will bring again the captivity of my people israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. and i will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which i have given them, saith the lord thy god.� * the voice of amos was not the only one raised in warning. from the midst of ephraim, another seer, this time a priest, hosea, son of beeri,** was never weary of reproaching the tribes with their ingratitude, and persisted in his foretelling of the desolation to come. * amos ix. 13-15. ** hoshea (or hosea) was regarded by the rabbis as the oldest of the lesser prophets, and his writings were placed at the head of their collected works. the title of his book (hos. i. 1), where he begins by stating that he preached �in the days of jeroboam, the son of joash (jehoash), king of israel,� is a later interpolation; the additional mention of uzziah, jotham, ahaz, and hezekiah, kings of judah, is due to an attempted analogy with the title of isaiah. hosea was familiar with the prophecies of amos, and his own predictions show that the events merely foreseen by his predecessor were now in course of fulfilment in his day. the first three chapters probably date from the end of the reign of jeroboam, about 750 b.c.; the others were compiled under his successors, and before 734-733 b.c., since gilead is there mentioned as still forming part of israel (hos. vi. 8; xii. 12), though it was in that year laid waste and conquered by tiglath-pileser iii. duhm has suggested that hosea must have been a priest from the tone of his writings, and this hypothesis is generally accepted by theologians. the halo of grandeur and renown with which jeroboam had surrounded the kingdom could not hide its wretched and paltry character from the prophet�s eyes; �for yet a little while, and i will avenge the blood of jezreel upon the house of jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of israel to cease. and it shall come to pass at that day that i will break the bow of israel in the valley of jezreel.� * like his predecessor, he, too, inveighed against the perversity and unfaithfulness of his people. the abandoned wickedness of gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. in the bitterness of his heart, he demands of jahveh why he should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on his servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which jahveh had suffered at the hands of his people. israel had gone a-whoring after strange gods, and the day of retribution for its crimes was not far distant: �the children of israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim; afterward shall the children of israel return, and seek the lord their god, and david their king; and shall come with fear unto the lord and to his goodness in the latter days.� ** * hos. i. 4, 5. **hos. i.-iii. is the story of hosea and his wife an allegory, or does it rest on a basis of actual fact? most critics now seem to incline to the view that the prophet has here set down an authentic episode from his own career, and uses it to point the moral of his work. whether the decadence of the hebrews was or was not due to the purely moral and religious causes indicated by the prophets, it was only too real, and even the least observant among their contemporaries must have suspected that the two kingdoms were quite unfitted, as to their numbers, their military organisation, and monetary reserves, to resist successfully any determined attack that might be made upon them by surrounding nations. an armed force entering syria by way of the euphrates could hardly fail to overcome any opposition that might be offered to it, if not at the first onset, at any rate after a very brief struggle; none of the minor states to be met upon its way, such as damascus or israel, much less those of hamath or hadrach, were any longer capable of barring its progress, as ben-hadad and hazael had arrested that of the assyrians in the time of shalmaneser iii. the efforts then made by the syrian kings to secure their independence had exhausted their resources and worn out the spirit of their peoples; civil war had prevented them from making good their losses during the breathing-space afforded by the decadence of assyria, and now that nature herself had afflicted them with the crowning misfortunes of famine and pestilence, they were reduced to a mere shadow of what they had been during the previous century. if, therefore, sharduris, after making himself master of the countries of the taurus and amanos, had turned his steps towards the valley of the orontes, he might have secured possession of it without much difficulty, and after that there would have been nothing to prevent his soldiers from pressing on, if need be, to the walls of samaria or even of jerusalem itself. indeed, he seems to have at last made up his mind to embark on this venture, when the revival of assyrian power put a stop to his ambitious schemes. tiglath-pileser, hard pressed on every side by daring and restless foes, began by attacking those who were at once the most troublesome and most vulnerable--the aramæan tribes on the banks of the tigris. to give these incorrigible banditti, who boldly planted their outposts not a score of leagues from his capital, a free hand on his rear, and brave the fortune of war in armenia or syria, without first teaching them a lesson in respect, would have been simply to court serious disaster; an aramæan raid occurring at a time when he was engaged elsewhere with the bulk of his army, might have made it necessary to break off a successful campaign and fall back in haste to the relief of nineveh or calah (kalakh), just as he was on the eve of gaining some decisive advantage. moreover, the suzerainty of assyria over karduniash entailed on him the duty of safeguarding babylon from that other horde of aramæans which harassed it on the east, while the kaldâ were already threatening its southern frontier. it is not quite clear whether nabunazîr who then occupied the throne implored his help:* at any rate, he took the field as soon as he felt that his own crown was secure, overthrew the aramæans at the first encounter, and drove them back from the banks of the lower zab to those of the uknu: all the countries which they had seized to the east of the tigris at once fell again into the hands of the assyrians. * nabunazîr is the nabonassar who afterwards gave his name to the era employed by ptolemy. this first point gained, tiglath-pileser crossed the river, and made a demonstration in force before the babylonian fortresses. he visited, one after another, sippar, nipur, babylon, borsippa, kuta, kîshu, dilbat, and uruk, �cities without peer,� and offered in all of them sacrifices to the gods,--to bel, to zirbanît, to nebo, to tashmît, and to nirgal. karduniash bowed down before him, but he abstained from giving any provocation to the kaldâ, and satisfied with having convinced nabunazîr that assyria had lost none of her former vigour, he made his way back to his hereditary kingdom.* * most historians believe that tiglath-pileser entered karduniash as an enemy: that he captured several towns, and allowed the others to ransom themselves on payment of tribute. the way in which the texts known to us refer to this expedition seems to me, however, to prove that he set out as an ally and protector of nabonazir, and that his visit to the babylonian sanctuaries was of a purely pacific nature. the lightly-won success of this expedition produced the looked-for result. tiglath-pileser had set out a king _de facto_; but now that the gods of the ancient sanctuaries had declared themselves satisfied with his homage, and had granted him that religious consecration which had before been lacking, he returned a king de jure as well (745 b.c.). his next campaign completed what the first had begun. the subjugation of the plain would have been of little advantage if the highlands had been left in the power of tribes as yet unconquered, and allowed to pour down with impunity bands of rapacious freebooters on the newly liberated provinces: security between the zab and the uknu could only be attained by the pacification of namri, and it was, therefore, to namri that the sea of war was transferred in 744 b.c. all the cossæan and babylonian races intermingled in the valleys on the frontier were put to ransom one after another. [illustration: 216.jpg map of campaigns of tiglath-pileser iii. in media] these included the bît-sangibuti, the bît-khambân, the barrua, the bit-zualzash, the bît-matti, the umliash, the parsua, the bît-zatti, the bît-zabdâdani, the bît-ishtar, the city of zakruti, the nina, the bustus, the arakuttu, by which the conqueror gradually made his way into the heart of media, reaching districts into which none of his predecessors had ever penetrated. those least remote he annexed to his own empire, converting them into a province under the rule of an assyrian governor; he then returned to calah with a convoy of 60,500 prisoners, and countless herds of oxen, sheep, mules, and dromedaries. whilst he was thus employed, assur-dainâni, one of his generals to whom he had entrusted the pick of his army, pressed on still further to the north-east, across the almost waterless deserts of media. the mountainous district on the shores of the caspian had for centuries enjoyed a reputation for wealth and fertility among the races settled on the banks of the euphrates and tigris. it was from thence that they obtained their lapis-lazuli, and the hills from which it was extracted were popularly supposed to consist almost entirely of one compact mass of this precious mineral. their highest peak, now known as the demavend, was then called bikni,* a name which had come to be applied to the whole district. * the country of bikni is probably rhagian media and mount bikni, the modern demavend. to the assyrians it stood as the utmost boundary mark of the known world, beyond which their imagination pictured little more than a confused mist of almost fabulous regions and peoples. assur-dainâni caught a distant glimpse of the snow-capped pyramid of demavend, but approached no nearer than its lower slopes, whence he retraced his steps after having levied tribute from their inhabitants. the fame of this exploit spread far and wide in a marvellously short space of time, and chiefs who till then had vacillated in their decision now crowded the path of the victor, eager to pay him homage on his return: even the king of illipi thought it wise to avoid the risk of invasion, and hastened of his own accord to meet the conqueror. here, again, tiglath-pileser had merely to show himself in order to re-establish the supremacy of assyria: the races of the plain, for many years familiar with defeat, made no pretence of serious resistance, but bowed their necks beneath a fresh yoke almost without protest. [illustration: 218.jpg principal pak of mount bikni (demavend)] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. having thus secured his rear from attack for some years at any rate, tiglath-pileser no longer hesitated to try conclusions with urartu. the struggle in which he now deliberately engaged could not fail to be a decisive one; for urartu, buoyed up and borne on the wave of some fifty years of prosperity, had almost succeeded in reaching first rank among the asiatic powers: one more victory over nineveh, and it would become--for how long none might say--undisputed mistress of the whole of asia. assyria, on the other hand, had reached a. point where its whole future hung upon a single issue of defeat or victory. the prestige with which the brilliant campaigns of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii. had invested its name, if somewhat diminished, had still survived its recent reverses, and the terror inspired by its arms was so great even among races who had witnessed them from a distance, that the image of assyria rose involuntarily before the eyes of the hebrew prophets as that of the avenger destined to punish israel for its excesses.* * cf. amos vi. 4. no doubt, during the last few reigns its prosperity had waned and its authority over distant provinces had gradually become relaxed; but now the old dynasty, worn out by its own activity, had given place to a new one, and with this change of rulers the tide of ill-fortune was, perhaps, at last about to turn. at such a juncture, a successful campaign meant full compensation for all past disasters and the attainment of a firmer position than had ever yet been held; whereas another reverse, following on those from which the empire had already suffered, would render their effect tenfold more deadly, and, by letting loose the hatred of those whom fear alone still held in check, complete its overthrow. it was essential, therefore, before entering on the struggle, to weigh well every chance of victory, and to take every precaution by which adverse contingencies might be, as far as possible, eliminated. the army, encouraged by its success in the two preceding campaigns, was in excellent fighting order, and ready to march in any direction without a moment�s hesitation, confident in its ability to defeat the forces of urartu as it had defeated those of the medes and aramæans; but the precise point of attack needed careful consideration. tiglath-pileser must have been sorely tempted to take the shortest route, challenge the enemy at his most vulnerable point on the shores of lake van, and by a well-aimed thrust deal him a blow from which he would never, or only by slow degrees, recover. but this vital region of urartu, as we have already pointed out, presented the greatest difficulties of access. the rampart of mountain and forest by which it was protected on the assyrian side could only be traversed by means of a few byways, along which bands of guerrillas could slip down easily enough to the banks of the tigris, but which were quite impassable to any army in full marching order, hampered by its horses, chariots, and baggage-train: compelled to thread its way, with columns unduly extended, through the woods and passes of an unknown country, which daily use had long made familiar to its adversaries, it would have run the risk of being cut to pieces man by man a dozen times before it could hope to range its disciplined masses on the field of battle. former assyrian invasions had, as a general rule, taken an oblique course towards some of the spurs of this formidable chain, and had endeavoured to neutralise its defences by outflanking them, either by proceeding westwards along the basins of the supnat and the arzania, or eastwards through the countries bordering on lake urumiah; but even this method presented too many difficulties and too little certainty of success to warrant tiglath-pileser in staking the reviving fortunes of his empire on its adoption. he rightly argued that sharduris would be most easily vulnerable in those provinces whose allegiance to him was of recent date, and he resolved to seek out his foe in the heart of northern syria. [illustration: 221.jpg view of the mountains which guard the southern border of uartu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. taken at julamerk, near the junction of the mountain tracks leading from the zab valley to the south-eastern corner of the basin of lake van. there, if anywhere, every chance was in his favour and against the armenian. the scene of operations, while it had long been familiar to his own generals and soldiers, was, on the other hand, entirely new ground to those of the enemy; the latter, though unsurpassed in mountain warfare, lost much of their superiority on the plains, and could not, with all their courage, make up for their lack of experience. moreover, it must not be forgotten that a victory on the banks of the afrîn or the orontes would have more important results than a success gained in the neighbourhood of the lakes or of urartu. not only would it free the assyrians from the only one of their enemies whom they had any cause to fear, but it would also bring back the hittite kings to their allegiance, and restore the assyrian supremacy over the wealthiest regions of western asia: they would thus disable urartu and reconquer syria at one and the same time. tiglath-pileser, therefore, crossed the euphrates in the spring of 743 b.c., neither matîlu of agusi, kushtashpi of kummukh, nor their allies daring to interfere with his progress. he thus advanced as far as arpad, and, in the first moment of surprise, the town threw open its gates before him.* * different writers have given different versions of this campaign. some think that arpad resisted, and that tiglath pileser was laying siege to it, when the arrival of sharduris compelled him to retire; others prefer to believe that arpad was still in the hands of the assyrians, and that tiglath-pileser used it as his base of operations. the formula ina arpadda in the eponym canon proves that tiglath pileser was certainly in arpad: since arpad belonged to the bit-agusi, and they were the allies or vassals of sharduris, we must assume, as i have done here, that in the absence of the urartians they did not dare to resist the assyrians, and opened their gates to them. there, while he was making ready to claim the homage of the surrounding countries, he learnt that sharduris was hastening up to the rescue. he at once struck his camp and marched out to meet his rival, coming up with him in the centre of kummukh, not far from the euphrates, between kishtân and khalpi. sharduris was at the head of his syrian contingents, including the forces of agusi, melitene, kummukh, and gurgum--a formidable army, probably superior in point of numbers to that of the assyrians. the struggle lasted a whole day, and in the course of it the two kings, catching sight of one another on the field of battle, engaged in personal combat: at last, towards evening, the chariots and cavalry of urartu gave way and the rout began. the victors made their way into the camp at the heels of their flying enemies. sharduris abandoned his chariot, and could find nothing but a mare to aid him in his flight; he threw himself upon her back, careless of the ridicule at that time attached to the use of such a mount in eastern countries,* fled at a gallop all through the night, hard pressed by a large body of cavalry, crossed the hills of sibak, and with much difficulty reached the bridge over the euphrates. * so, too, later on, in the time of sargon, rusas, when defeated, gets on the back of a mare and rides off. his pursuers drew rein on the river-bank, and sharduris re-entered his kingdom in safety. he had lost nearly 73,000 men, killed or taken prisoners, in addition to his chariots, and nearly the whole train of horses, asses, servants, and artisans attached to his army; he left his tent still standing, and those who were first to enter it laid hands on his furniture and effects, his royal ornaments, his bed and portable throne, with its cushions and bearing-poles, none of which had he found time to take with him. tiglath-pileser burnt them all on the spot as a thank-offering, to the gods who had so signally favoured him; the bed alone he retained, in order that he might dedicate it as a trophy to the goddess ishtar of nineveh. he had covered himself with glory, and might well be proud of his achievement, yet the victory was in no way a decisive one. the damage inflicted on the allies, considerable though it was, had cost him dear: the forces left to him were not sufficient to enable him to finish the campaign, and extort oaths of allegiance from the syrian princes before they had recovered from the first shock of defeat. he returned to nineveh, and spent the whole winter in reorganising his troops; while his enemies, on the other hand, made preparations to repel the attack energetically. sharduris could not yet venture outside his mountain strongholds, but the hope of being reinforced by him, as soon as he had got together another army, encouraged the syrian kings to remain faithful to him in spite of his reverses.* * the part played by sharduris in the events of the years which followed, passing mention of which was made by winckler (_gesch. bab. und ass_,, pp. 224, 225), have been fully dealt with by belck and lehmann (chaldische _forschungen, in veriiand. der berliner anthropol. gesellschaft_, 1895, pp. 325-336). matîlu of agusi, unable to carry the day against the assyrians in the open field, distributed his men among his towns, and resisted all attacks with extraordinary persistence, confident that sharduris would at length come to help him, and with this hope he held out for three years in his town of arpad. this protracted resistance need no longer astonish us, now that we know, from observations made on the spot, the marvellous skill displayed in the fortification of these asiatic towns. the ruins of arpad have yet to be explored, but those of samalla have been excavated, and show us the methods adopted for the defence of a royal residence about the middle of the century with which we are now concerned. the practice of building citadels on a square or rectangular plan, which prevailed so largely under the egyptian rule, had gradually gone out of fashion as the knowledge of engineering advanced, and the use of mines and military engines had been more fully developed among the nations of western asia. it was found that the heavily fortified angles of the enclosing wall merely presented so many weak points, easy to attack but difficult to defend, no matter how carefully they might be protected by an accumulation of obstacles. in the case of fortresses built on a plain, where the plan was not modified by the nature of the site, the enclosing wall was generally round or oval in shape, and free from useless angles which might detract from its strength. the walls were surmounted by battlements, and flanked at short intervals by round or square towers, the tops of which rose but little, if indeed at all, above the level of the curtain. in front of this main wall was a second lower one, also furnished with towers and battlements, which followed the outline of the first all the way round at an interval of some yards, thus acting as a sort of continuous screen to it. the gates were little less than miniature citadels built into each line of ramparts; the gate of the outer wall was often surrounded by lower outworks, two square bastions and walls enclosing an outer quadrangle which had to be crossed before the real gate was reached. [illustration: 226a.jpg plan of the ancient city of zinjirli.] a reproduction by faucher-gudin of the first plan published by luschan. when a breach had been made in this double enclosure, though the town itself might be taken, the labours of the attacking force were not yet over. in the very centre of the place, on a sort of artificial mound or knoll, stood the royal castle, and resistance on the part of its garrison would make it necessary for the enemy to undertake a second siege no less deadly and protracted than the first. the keep of zinjirli had only a single gate approached by a narrow causeway. [illustration: 226b.jpg one of the gates of zinjirli restored] reproduction by faucher-gudin of the sketch published by luschan. within, it was divided by walls into five compartments, each of which was independent of the rest, and had to be attacked separately. ma-tîlu knew he could hope for no mercy at the hands of the assyrians; he therefore struggled on to the last, and when at length obliged to surrender, in the year 740 b.c., he paid for his obstinacy by the loss of his throne, and perhaps also of his life.* * our knowledge of these events is imperfect, our only information being derived from the very scanty details given in the _eponym canon_; up to the present we can do no more than trace the general course of events. [illustration: 227.jpg bird�s-eye view of the royal castle of zinjirli as restored] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plan published in luschan. the inaction of sharduris clearly showed that he was no longer in a position to protect his allies, and that the backbone of his kingdom was broken; the kings who had put faith in his help now gave him up, and ambassadors flocked in from all parts, even from those which were not as yet directly threatened. kushtashpi of kummukh, tark-hulara of gturgum, pisiris of carchemish, uriaîk of kuî, came to arpad in person to throw themselves at the conqueror�s feet, bringing with them offerings of gold and silver, of lead and iron, of ivory, carved and in the tusk, of purple, and of dyed or embroidered stuffs, and were confirmed in the possession of their respective territories; hiram ii. of tyre, moreover, and eezin of damascus sent their greetings to him.* * _annals of tiglath-pileser iii_., where the statement at the close indicates that tiglath-pileser received the tributary kings of syria �in arpad,� after he had captured that city. the patina, who in days gone by had threatened the fortunes of assur-nazir-pal, once again endeavoured to pose as the rivals of assyria, and tutammû, sovereign of unki, the most daring of the minor states into which the patina had been split up, declined to take part in the demonstrations made by his neighbours. tiglath-pileser marched on kinalua, sacked it, built a fortress there, and left a governor and garrison behind him: agusi and unki henceforth sank down to the level of mere provinces, administered by royal officers in the king�s name, and permanently occupied by assyrian troops. northern syria was thus again incorporated with the empire, but urartu, although deprived of the resources with which syria had supplied it, continued to give cause for apprehension; in 739 b.c., however, a large proportion of the districts of naîri, to which it still clung, was wrested from it, and a fortress was built at ulluba, with a view to providing a stable base of operations at this point on the northern frontier. a rebellion, instigated, it may be, by his own agents, recalled tiglath-pileser to the amanus in the year 738. the petty kings who shared with assyria the possession of the mountains and plains of the afrîn could not succeed in living at peace with one another, and every now and then their disputes broke out into open warfare. samalla was at that time subject to a family of which the first members known to history, qaral and panammu, shared yaudi equally between them. barzur, son of panammu i., had reigned there since about 765 b.c., and there can be little doubt that he must have passed through the same vicissitudes as his neighbours; faithful to urartu as long as sharduris kept the upper hand, and to assyria as soon as tiglath-pileser had humiliated urartu, he had been killed in a skirmish by some rival. his son, panammu il, came to the throne merely as a nominee of his suzerain, and seems to have always rendered him faithful service; unfortunately, yaudi was no longer subject to the house of panammu, but obeyed the rule of a certain azriyahu, who chafed at the presence of an alien power.* * azriyahu of yaudi was identified with azariah of judah by g. smith, and this identification was for a long time accepted without question by most assyriologists. after a violent controversy it has finally been shown that the _yaudi_ of tiglath-pileser iii.�a inscriptions ought to be identified with the _yadi_ or _yaudi_ of the zinjirli inscriptions, and consequently that azriyahu was not king of judah, but a king of northern syria. this view appears to me to harmonise so well with what remains of the texts, and with our knowledge of the events, that i have had no hesitation in adopting it. azriyahu took advantage of the events which kept tiglath-pileser fully occupied in the east, to form a coalition in favour of himself among the states on the banks of the orontes, including some seventeen provinces, dependencies of hamath, and certain turbulent cities of northern phoenicia, such as byblos, arka, zimyra, usnû, siannu, coele-syria, and even hadrach itself. it is not quite clear whether damascus and the hebrews took part in this movement. jeroboam had died in 740, after a prosperous reign of forty-one years, and on his death israel seems to have fallen under a cloud; six months later, his son zechariah was assassinated at ibleam by shallum, son of jabesh, and the prophecy of amos, in which he declared that the house of jeroboam should fall beneath the sword of jahveh,* was fulfilled. shallum himself reigned only one month: two other competitors had presented themselves immediately after his crime;** the ablest of these, menahem, son of gadi, had come from tirzah to samaria, and, after suppressing his rivals, laid hands on the crown.*** he must have made himself master of the kingdom little by little, the success of his usurpation being entirely due to the ruthless energy invariably and everywhere displayed by him; as, for instance, when tappuakh (tiphsah) refused to open its gates at his summons, he broke into the town and slaughtered its inhabitants.**** * amos vii. 9. ** the nameless prophet, whose prediction is handed down to us in zech. ix.--xi., speaks of three shepherds cut off by javeh in one month (xi. 8); two of these were zechariah and shallum; the third is not mentioned in the book of kings. *** 2 kings xiv. 23-29; xv. 8-15. **** 2 kings xv. 16. the massoretic text gives the name of the town as tipsah, but the septuagint has taphôt, which led thenius to suggest tappuakh as an emendation of tipsah: stade prefers the emendation tirzah. all the defects of organisation, all the sources of weakness, which for the last half-century had been obscured by the glories of jeroboam ii., now came to the surface, and defied all human efforts to avert their consequences. �then,� as hosea complains, �is the iniquity of ephraim discovered, and the wickedness of samaria; for they commit falsehood: and the thief entereth in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. and they consider not in their hearts that i (jahveh) remember all their wickedness: now have their own doings beset them about; they are before my face. they make the king glad with their wickedness and the princes with their lies. they are all adulterers; they are as an oven heated by the baker.... they... devour their judges; all their kings are fallen; there is none among them that calleth unto me.� * in judah, azariah (uzziah) had at first shown some signs of ability; he had completed the conquest of idumsea, edom, and had fortified elath,** but he suddenly found himself stricken with leprosy, and was obliged to hand over the reins of government of jotham.*** * sos. vii. 1-4, 7. ** 2 kings xiv. 22; in 2 ghron. xxvi. 6-15 he is credited with the reorganisation of the army and of the judsean fortress, in addition to campaigns against the philistines and arabs. *** 2 kings xv. 5; cf. 2 ghron. xxvi. 19-21. azariah is also abbreviated into uzziah. tappuakh was a town situated on the borders of ephraim and manasseh (josh. xvi. 8; xvii. 7, 8). his long life had been passed uneventfully, and without any disturbance, under the protection of jeroboam; but the very same defects which had led to the ruin of israel were at work also in judah, and menahem, in spite of his enfeebled condition, had nothing to fear in this direction. [illustration: 232.jpg tiglath-pileser iii. in his state chariot] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch published by layard. the danger which menaced him came rather from the east and the north, where damascus, aroused from its state of lethargy by rezôn [rezin] ii., had again begun to strive after the hegemony of syria.* * the name of this king, written rezin in the bible (2 kings xv. 37; xvi. 5, 6, 9), is given as _razunu_ in the assyrian texts; he was therefore ilezôn ii. a passage in the _annals_ seems to indicate that rezin�s father was prince of a city dependent on damascus, not king of damascus itself; unfortunately the text is too much mutilated to warrant us in forming any definite conclusion on this point. all these princes, when they found that the ambition of tiglath-pileser threatened to interfere with their own intrigues, were naturally tempted to combine against him, and were willing to postpone to a more convenient season the settlement of their own domestic quarrrels. but tiglath-pileser did not give them time for this; he routed azriyahu, and laid waste kullani,* the chief centre of revolt, ravaged the valley of the orontes, and carried off the inhabitants of several towns, replacing them with prisoners taken the year before during his campaign in naîri. * kullani is the calno or calneh mentioned by isaiah (x. 9) and amos (vi. 2), which lay somewhere between arpad and hamath; the precise spot is not yet known. after this feat the whole of syria surrendered. rezin and menahem were among the first to tender their homage, and the latter paid a thousand talents of silver for the _firman_ which definitely confirmed his tenure of the throne; the princes of tyre, byblos, hamath, carchemish, milid, tabal, and several others followed their example--even a certain zabibi, queen of an arab tribe, feeling compelled to send her gifts to the conqueror. a sudden rising among the aramæan tribes on the borders of elam obliged tiglath-pileser to depart before he had time to take full advantage of his opportunity. the governors of lullumi and naîri promptly suppressed the outbreak, and, collecting the most prominent of the rebels together, sent them to the king in order that he might distribute them throughout the cities of syria: a colony of 600 prisoners from the town of amlati was established in the territory of damaunu, 5400 from dur were sent to the fortresses of unki, kunalia, khuzarra, taî, tarmanazi, kulmadara, khatatirra, and sagillu, while another 10,000 or so were scattered along the phoenician seaboard and among the adjacent mountains. the revolt had meanwhile spread to the nations of media, where it was, perhaps, fomented by the agents of urartu; and for the second time within seven years (737 b.c.) tiglath-pileser trampled underfoot the countries over which he had ridden in triumph at the beginning of his career--the bît-kapsi, the bît-sangibuti, the bît-tazzakki, the bît-zulazash, the bît-matti, and umliash. the people of upash, among the bît-kapsi, entrenched themselves on the slopes of mount abirus; but he carried their entrenchments by storm. ushuru of taddiruta and burdadda of nirutakta were seized with alarm, and hid themselves in their mountain gorges; but he climbed up in pursuit of them, drove them out of their hiding-places, seized their possessions, and made them prisoners. similar treatment was meted out to all those who proved refractory; some he despoiled, others he led captive, and �bursting upon the remainder like the downpour of bammân,� permitted none of them to escape. he raised trophies all along his line of march: in bau, a dependency of bît-ishtar, he set up a pointed javelin dedicated to ninip, on which he had engraved a panegyric of the virtues of his master assur; near shilkhazi, a town founded, in bygone days, by the babylonians, he erected a statue of himself, and a pillar consecrated to marduk in til-ashshur. in the following year he again attacked urartu and occupied the mountain province of nâl, which formed one of its outlying defences (736). the year after he entered on the final struggle with sharduris, and led the flower of his forces right under the walls of dhuspas,* the enemy�s capital. * the name is written turuspas in the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii. dhuspas really consisted of two towns joined together. one of these, extending over the plain by the banks of the alaîs and in the direction of the lake, was surrounded by fertile gardens and villas, in which the inhabitants spent the summer at their ease. it was protected by an isolated mass of white and red nummulitic chalk, the steep sides of which are seamed with fissures and tunnelled with holes and caverns from top to bottom. [illustration: 235.jpg the rock and citadel of van at the present day] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. the plateau in which it terminates, and which rises to a height of 300 feet at its loftiest point, is divided into three main terraces, each completely isolated from the other two, and forming, should occasion arise, an independent fortress, ishpuinis, menuas, argistis, and sharduris ii. had laboured from generation to generation to make this stronghold impregnable, and they had succeeded in the attempt. [illustration: 236.jpg entrance to the modern citadel of van from the westward] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. there can be little or no doubt, however, that this is merely a variant of the name usually written as tuspas, tuspana, dhuspana, the thospia of classical times; properly speaking, it was the capital of biainas. the only access to it was from the western side, by a narrow bridle-path, which almost overhung the precipice as it gradually mounted to the summit. this path had been partially levelled, and flanked with walls and towers which commanded the approach throughout its whole length; on the platforms at the summit a citadel had been constructed, together with a palace, temples, and storehouses, in which was accumulated a sufficient supply of arms and provisions to enable the garrison to tire out the patience of any ordinary foe; treason or an unusually prolonged siege could only get the better of such a position. tiglath-pileser invested the citadel and ravaged its outskirts without pity, hoping, no doubt, that he would thus provoke the enemy into capitulating. day after day, sharduris, perched in his lofty eyrie, saw his leafy gardens laid bare under the hatchet, and his villages and the palaces of his nobles light up the country round as far as the eye could reach: he did not flinch, however, and when all had been laid waste, the assyrians set up a statue of their king before the principal gate of the fortress, broke up their camp, and leisurely retired. they put the country to fire and sword, destroyed its cities, led away every man and beast they could find into captivity, and then returned to nineveh laden with plunder. urartu was still undaunted, and sharduris remained king as before; but he was utterly spent, and his power had sustained a blow from which it never recovered. he had played against assur with the empire of the whole asiatic world as the stake, and the dice had gone against him: compelled to renounce his great ambitions from henceforth, he sought merely to preserve his independence. since then, armenia has more than once challenged fortune, but always with the same result; it fared no better under tigranes in the roman epoch, than under sharduris in the time of the assyrians; it has been within an ace of attaining the goal of its ambitions, then at the last moment its strength has failed, and it has been forced to retire worsted from the struggle. its position prevented it from exercising very wide influence; hidden away in a corner of asia at the meeting-point of three or four great mountain ranges, near the source of four rivers, all flowing in different directions, it has lacked that physical homogeneity without which no people, however gifted, can hope to attain supremacy; nature has doomed it to remain, like syria, split up into compartments of unequal size and strength, which give shelter to half a score of independent principalities, each one of them perpetually jealous of the rest. from time to time it is invested with a semblance of unity, but for the most part it drags on an uneventful existence, dismembered into as many fragments as there happen to be powerful states around it, its only chance of complete reunion lying in the possibility of one or other of these attaining sufficient predominance to seize the share of the others and absorb it. the subjection of urartu freed assyria from the only rival which could at this moment have disputed its supremacy on the banks of the euphrates and the tigris. the other nations on its northern and eastern frontiers as yet possessed no stability; they might, in the course of a passing outburst, cut an army to pieces or annex part of a province, but they lacked strength to follow up their advantage, and even their most successful raids were sure, in the long run, to lead to terrible reprisals, in which their gains were two or three times outweighed by their losses in men and treasure. for nearly a hundred years nineveh found its hands free, and its rulers were able to concentrate all their energy on two main points of the frontier--to the south-west on syria and egypt, to the south-east on chaldæa and elam. chaldæa gave little trouble, but the condition of syria presented elements of danger. the loyalty of its princes was more apparent than real; they had bowed their necks after the fall of unki, but afterwards, as the years rolled on without any seeming increase in the power of assyria, they again took courage and began once more to quarrel among themselves. menahem had died, soon after he had paid his tribute (737 b.c.); his son pekahiah had been assassinated less than two years later (736)* and his murderer, pekah, son of remaliah, was none too firmly seated on the throne. anarchy was triumphant throughout israel; so much so that judah seized the opportunity for throwing off the yoke it had borne for well-nigh a hundred years. pekah, conscious of his inability to suppress the rebellion, called in rezin to help him. the latter was already on the way when jotham was laid with his fathers (736 b.c.), and it was ahaz, the son of jotham, who had to bear the brant of the assault. he was barely twenty years old, a volatile, presumptuous, and daring youth, who was not much dismayed by his position.** jotham had repaired the fortifications of jerusalem, which had been left in a lamentable state ever since the damage done to them in the reign of amaziah;*** his successor now set to work to provide the city with the supply of water indispensable for its defence,**** and, after repairing the ancient aqueducts, conceived the idea of constructing a fresh one in the spur of mount sion, which extends southwards. * 2 kings xv. 22-26. the chronology of the events which took place between the death of menahem and the fall of samaria, as presented by the biblical documents in the state in which they have been transmitted to us, is radically inaccurate: following the example of most recent historians, i have adhered exclusively to the data furnished by the assyrian texts, merely indicating in the notes the reasons which have led me to adopt certain dates in preference to others. ** 2 kings xv. 38, xvi. 1, 2. ahaz is called iaukhazi, i.e. jehoahaz, in the assyrian texts, and this would seem to have been the original form of the name. *** the restoration of the walls of jerusalem by jotham is only mentioned in 2 chron. xxvii. 3. **** we may deduce this from the words of isaiah (vii. 3), where he represents ahaz �at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller�s field.� ahaz had gone there to inspect the works intended for the defence of the aqueduct. as time pressed, the work was begun simultaneously at each end; the workmen had made a wide detour underground, probably in order to avoid the caves in which the kings of judah had been laid to rest ever since the time of david,* and they were beginning to despair of ever uniting the two sections of the tunnel, when they suddenly heard one another through the wall of rock which divided them. a few blows with the pick-axe opened a passage between them, and an inscription on the wall adjoining the entrance on the east side, the earliest hebrew inscription we possess, set forth the vicissitudes of the work for the benefit of future generations. it was scarcely completed when kezin, who had joined forces with pekah at samaria, came up and laid regular siege to jerusalem.** * this is the highly ingenious hypothesis put forward and defended with much learning by clermont-ganneau, in order to account for the large curve described by the tunnel. ** 2 kings xvi. 5; cf. 2 chron. xxviii. 5-8. it was on this occasion that isaiah delivered the prophecies which, after subsequent revision, furnished the bulk of chaps, vi. 1--x. 4. the allies did not propose to content themselves with exacting tribute from the young king; they meant to dethrone him, and to set up in his room a son of tabeel, whom they had brought with them; they were nevertheless obliged to retire without effecting a breach in his defences and leave the final assault till the following campaign. rezin, however, had done as much injury as he could to judah; he had laid waste both mountain and plain, had taken elath by storm and restored it to the edomites,* and had given a free hand to the philistines (735).** * 2 kings xvi. 6, where the massoretic text states that the syrians retained the town, while the septuagint maintain that he restored it to the edomites. ** chron. xxviii. 18, where a list is given of the towns wrested from judah by the philistines. the delight felt by the philistines at the sight of judah�s abasement seems to be referred to in the short prophecy of isaiah (xiv. 29-32), wrongly ascribed to the year of ahaz�s death. [illustration: 241.jpg hebrew inscription on the siloam aqueduct] a direct reproduction from a plaster cast now in paris. the inscription discovered by schick, in 1880, has since been mutilated, and only the fragments are preserved in the museum at constantinople. some writers think it was composed in the time of hezekiah; for my own part, i agree with stade in assigning it to the period of ahaz. the whole position seemed so hopeless, that a section of the people began to propose surrendering to the mercy of the syrians.* * this seems to be an obvious inference from the words of isaiah (viii. 6): �forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters of shiloah that go softly, _and lose courage because of rezin and bemaliali�s son_.� [the r.v. reads �_rejoice in_� rezin, etc.--tr.] ahaz looked around him in search of some one on whom he might call for help. all his immediate neighbours were hostile; but behind them, in the background, were two great powers who might be inclined to listen to his appeal--egypt and assyria. ever since the expedition of sheshonq into asia, egypt seemed to have lost all interest in foreign politics. osorkon had not inherited the warlike propensities of his father, and his son, takelôti i., and his grandson, osorkon ii., followed his example.* * the chronology of this period is still very uncertain, and the stelae of the serapseum, which enable us to fix the order of the various reigns, yield no information as to their length. sheshonq i. did not reign much longer than twenty-one years, which is his latest known date, and we may take the reign of twenty-one years attributed to him by manetho as being substantially correct. the latest dates we possess are as follows: osorkon i., twelfth year, and takelôti i., sixth year or seventh year. lastly, we have a twenty-ninth year in the case of osorkon ii., with a reference in the case of the twenty-eighth year to the fifth year of a takelôti whose first cartouche is missing, and who perhaps died before his father and co-regent. in manetho, osorkon i. is credited with a reign of fifteen years, and his three next successors with a total of twenty-five years between them, which is manifestly incorrect, since the monuments give twenty-nine years, or twenty-three at the very least, if we take into account the double date in the case of the first two of these kings. the wisest course seems to be to allow forty-five years to osorkon and his two successors: if sheshonq, as i believe, died in 924, the fifty years allotted to the next three pharaohs would bring us down to 880, and it is in this year that i am, for the present, inclined to place the death of osorkon ii. [illustration: 242.jpg bronze] drawn by faucher-gudin, from. lanzone�s statuette. [illustration: 243.jpg the great temple of bubastis duringnaville�s excavations] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by naville. these monarchs regarded themselves as traditionary suzerains of the country of kharu, i.e. of israel, judah, ammon, and moab, and their authority may perhaps have been recognised by the philistines in the main, but they seldom stirred from their own territory, and contented themselves with protecting their frontiers against the customary depredations of the libyan and asiatic nomads.* * repressive measures of this kind are evidently referred to in passages similar to those in which osorkon ii. boasts of having �overthrown beneath his feet the upper and lower lotanu,� and speaks of the exploits of the sons of queen kalamâît against certain tribes whose name, though mutilated, seems to have been libyan in character. under their rule, egypt enjoyed fifty years of profound peace, which was spent in works of public utility, especially in the delta, where, thanks to their efforts, bubastis came to be one of the most splendid among the cities of secondary importance.* * all our knowledge of the history of the temple of bubastis dates from naville�s excavations. its temple, which had been rebuilt by ramses ii. and decorated by the rames-sides, was in a sorry plight when the xxiind dynasty came into power. sheshonq i. did little or nothing to it, but osorkon i. entirely remodelled it, and osorkon ii. added several new halls, including, amongst others, one in which he celebrated, in the twenty-second year of his reign, the festival of his deification. a record of some of the ceremonies observed has come down to us in the mural paintings. there we see the king, in a chapel, consecrating a statue of himself in accordance with the ritual in use since the time of amenôthes iii., and offering the figure devout and earnest worship; all the divinities of egypt have assembled to witness the enthronement of this new member of their confraternity, and take part in the sacrifices accompanying his consecration. this gathering of the gods is balanced by a human festival, attended by nubians and kushites, as well as by the courtiers and populace. the proceedings terminated, apparently, with certain funeral rites, the object being to make the identification of osorkon with osiris complete. [illustration: 244.jpg picture in the hall of the harps in the fifth tomb] the egyptian deities served in a double capacity, as gods of the dead as well as of the living, and no exception could be made in favour of the deified osorkon; while yet living he became an osiris, and his double was supposed to animate those prophetic statues in which he appeared as a mummy no less than those which represented him as still alive. [illustration: 245.jpg gate of the festival hall at bubastis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a restoration by naville. another temple of small size, also dedicated to bastîfc or pasht, which had been built in the time of ramses ii., was enlarged by osorkon i., and richly endowed with workshops, lands, cattle, slaves, and precious metals: tumu-khopri of heliopolis, to mention but one of the deities worshipped there, received offerings of gold in value by weight.£120,000, and silver ingots worth £12,000.* * this is the small temple afterwards described by herodotus as being dedicated to hermes. a country which could afford to indulge in extravagances of this nature must have been in a flourishing condition, and everything goes to prove that egypt prospered under the rule of the early bubastite kings. the very same causes, however, which had ruined the ramessides and the tanites were now openly compassing the downfall of the bubastite dynasty. the military feudalism from which it had sprung, suppressed for a time by sheshonq i., developed almost unchecked under his successors. they had thought to break it up and turn it to their own advantage, by transferring the more important religious functions and the principal fiefs to their own sons or nephews. they governed memphis through the high priests of phtah; a prince of the blood represented them at khmunu,* another at khninsu** (heracleopolis), and others in various cities of the delta, each of them being at the head of several thousand mashauasha, or libyan soldiers on whose fidelity they could entirely rely. * e.g. namrôti, under piônkhi-mîamun, whose rights were such that he adopted the protocol of the pharaohs. ** stole 1959 of the serapæum contains the names of five successive princes of this city, the first of whom was namrôti, son of osorkon ii., and high priest of thebes; a member of the same family, named pefzââbastît, had taken cartouches under osorkon iii. of the xxiiird dynasty. thebes alone had managed to exclude these representatives of the ruling dynasty, and its princes, guided in this particular by the popular prejudice, persistently refused to admit into their bodyguard any but the long-tried mâzaîu. moreover, thebes lost no opportunity of proving itself to be still the most turbulent of the baronies. its territory had suffered no diminution since the time of hrihor, and half of upper egypt, from elephantine to siut, acknowledged its sway.1 * it is evident that this was so from the first steps taken by piônkhi-miamun�s generals: they meet the army and fleet of tafnakhti and the princes of the north right under the walls of hormopolis, but say nothing of any feudal princes of the south. their silence is explained if we assume that thebes, being a dependency of ethiopia, retained at that date, i.e. in the time of the xxiind dynasty, the same or nearly the same boundaries which it had won for itself under the xxist. through all the changes of dynasty its political constitution had remained unaltered; amon still ruled there supreme as ever, and nothing was done until he had been formally consulted in accordance with ancient usage. anputi, in spite of his being a son of sheshonq, was compelled to adopt the title of high priest in order to rule in peace, and had married some daughter or niece of the last of the painotmu. after his death, good care was taken to prevent the pontificate from passing to one of his children, as this would have re-established a theban dynasty which might have soon proved hostile to that of bubastis. to avoid this, osorkon i. made over the office and fief to his own son sheshonq. the latter, after a time, thought he was sufficiently powerful to follow the example of paînotmu and adopt the royal cartouches; but, with all his ambition, he too failed to secure the succession to the male line of his descendants, for osorkon ii. appointed his own son namrôti, already prince of khninsu, to succeed him. the amalgamation of these two posts invested the person on whom they were conferred with almost regal power; khninsu was, indeed, as we know, the natural rampart of memphis and lower egypt against invasion from the south, and its possessor was in a position to control the fate of the empire almost as he pleased. osorkon must have had weighty reasons for taking a step which placed him practically at the mercy of his son, and, indeed, events proved that but little reliance could be placed on the loyalty of the thebans, and that energetic measures were imperative to keep them in the path of duty or lead them back to it. the decadence of the ancient capital had sadly increased since the downfall of the descendants of hrihor. [illustration: 248.jpg small bronze sphinx of siamun] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original now in the louvre. the few public works which they had undertaken, and which sheshonq i. encouraged to the best of his ability, had been suspended owing to want of money, and the craftsmen who had depended on them for support were suffering from poverty: the makers of small articles of a religious or funerary character, carvers of wood or stone, joiners, painters of mummy-cases, and workers in bronze, alone managed to eke out a bare livelihood, thanks to commissions still given to them by officials attached to the temples. theban art, which in its best period had excelled in planning its works on a gigantic scale, now gladly devoted itself to the production of mere knick-knacks, in place of the colossal figures of earlier days. [illustration: 249.jpg ruins of the temple at khninsu after naville�s excavations] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in naville. the illustration shows what now remains of the portions of the temple rebuilt in the time of ramses ii. we have statuettes some twelve or fifteen inches high, crudely coloured, wooden stelæ, shapeless _ushâbti_ redeemed from ugliness by a coating of superb blue enamel, and, above all, those miniature sphinxes representing queens or kings, which present with two human arms either a table of offerings or a salver decorated with cartouches. the starving populace, its interests and vanity alike mortified by the accession of a northern dynasty, refused to accept the decay of its fortunes with resignation, and this spirit of discontent was secretly fomented by the priests or by members of the numerous families which boasted of their descent from the eamessides. although hereditary claims to the throne and the pontificate had died out or lost their force in the male line, they were still persistently urged by the women: consecrated from their birth to the service of amon, and originally reserved to sing his praises or share his nuptial couch, those of them who married transmitted to their children, and more especially to their daughters, the divine germ which qualified them for the throne. they and their followers never ceased to look for the day when the national deity should shake off his apathy, and, becoming the champion of their cause against the bubastite or tanite usurpers, restore their city to the rank and splendour from which it had fallen. namrôti married one of these theban princesses, and thus contrived to ward off the danger of revolt during his lifetime; but on his death or disappearance an insurrection broke out. sheshonq ii. had succeeded osorkon ii., and he, in his turn, was followed by takelôti ii. takelôti chose kala-mâit, daughter of namrôti, as his lawful wife, formally recognised her as queen, and set up numerous statues and votive monuments in her honour. but all in vain: this concession failed to conciliate the rebellious, and the whole thebaid rose against him to a man. in the twelfth year of his reign he entrusted the task of putting down the revolt to his son osorkon, at the same time conferring upon him the office of high priest. it took several years to repress the rising; defeated in the eleventh year, the rebels still held the field in the fifteenth year of the king, and it was not till some time after, between the fifteenth and twenty-second year of takelôti ii., that they finally laid down their arms.* at the end of this struggle the king�s power was quite exhausted, while that of the feudal magnates had proportionately increased. before long, egypt was split up into a number of petty states, some of them containing but a few towns, while others, following the example of thebes, boldly annexed several adjacent nomes. a last remnant of respect for the traditional monarchy kept them from entirely repudiating the authority of pharaoh. they still kept up an outward show of submission to his rule; they paid him military service when called upon, and appealed to him as umpire in their disputes, without, however, always accepting his rulings, and when they actually came to blows among themselves, were content to exercise their right of private warfare under his direction.** the royal domain gradually became narrowed down to the memphite nome and the private appanages of the reigning house, and soon it no longer yielded the sums necessary for the due performance of costly religious ceremonies, such as the enthronement or burial of an apis. the pomp and luxury usually displayed on such occasions grew less and less under the successors of takelôti ii., sheshonq iii., pimi, and sheshonq iv.*** * the story of these events is told in several greatly mutilated inscriptions to be found at karnak on the outer surface of the south wall of the hall of columns. ** it is evident that this was so, from a romance discovered by krall. *** one need only go to the louvre and compare the apis stelae erected during this period with those engraved in the time of the xxvith dynasty, in order to realise the low ebb to which the later kings of the xxiind dynasty had fallen: the fact that the chapel and monuments were built under their direction shows that they were still masters of memphis. we have no authentic date for sheshonq ii., and the twenty-ninth year is the latest known in the case of takelôti ii., but we know that sheshonq iii. reigned fifty two years, and, after two years of pimi, we find a reference to the thirty-seventh year of sheshonq iv. if we allow a round century for these last kings we are not likely to be far out: this would place the close of the bubastite dynasty somewhere about 780 b.c. when the last of these passed away after an inglorious reign of at least thirty-seven years, the prestige of his race had so completely declined that the country would have no more of it; the sceptre passed into the hands of another dynasty, this time of tanite origin.* it was probably a younger branch of the bubastite family allied to the ramessides and theban pallacides. petu-bastis, the first of the line, secured recognition in thebes,** and throughout the rest of egypt as well, but his influence was little greater than that of his predecessors; as in the past, the real power was in the hands of the high priests. * the following list gives the names of the pharaohs of the xxiith dynasty in so far as they have been ascertained up to the present:-[illustration: 252.jpg table of pharaohs of the xxiith dynasty] ** this fact has recently been placed beyond doubt by inscriptions found on the quay at karnak near the water marks of the nile. one of them, auîti by name, even went so far, in the fourteenth or fifteenth year, as to declare himself king, and had his cartouches inscribed on official documents side by side with those of the tanite monarch.* his kingship died with him, just as that of patnotmu had done in similar circumstances, and two years later we find his successor, harsiisît, a mere high priest without pretensions to royalty. * no. 26 of legrain�s inscriptions tells us the height of the nile in the sixteenth year of petubastît, which was also the second year of king auîti. seeing that auîti�s name occurs in the place occupied by that of the high priest of thebes in other inscriptions of the same king, i consider it probable that he was reigning in thebes itself, and that he was a high priest who had become king in the same way as paînotmu under the xxist dynasty. [illustration: 253.jpg king petubastis at prayer] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a small door now in the louvre. doubtless his was not an isolated case; all the grandees who happened to be nearly related either to the dethroned or to the reigning houses acted in like manner, and for the first time for many years egypt acknowledged the simultaneous sway of more than one legitimate pharaoh. matters became still worse under osorkon iii.; although he, too, introduced a daughter of anion into his harem, this alliance failed to give him any hold over thebes, and even the seven nomes and the delta were split up to such an extent that at one time they included something like a score of independent principalities, three of which, hermopolis, heracleopolis, and tentramu, were administered by kings who boasted cartouches similar to those of tanis and bubastis. about 740 b.c. there appeared in the midst of these turbulent and extortionate nobles a man who, by sheer force of energy and talent, easily outstripped all competitors. tafnakhti was a chief of obscure origin, whose hereditary rights extended merely over the village of nutirît and the outskirts of sebennytos. one or two victories gained over his nearest neighbours encouraged him to widen the sphere of his operations. he first of all laid hands on those nomes of the delta which extended to the west of the principal arm of the nile, the saite, athribite, libyan, and memphite nomes; these he administered through officers under his own immediate control; then, leaving untouched the eastern provinces, over which osorkon iii. exercised a make-shift, easygoing rule, he made his way up the river. maitumu and the fayum accepted him as their suzerain, but khninsu and its king, pefzââbastît, faithful to their allegiance,* offered strenuous resistance. * pefzââbastît, king of heracleopolis, seems to be identical with the pharaoh pefzâbastît of the berlin sarcophagus. he then crossed over to the right bank, and received the homage of heliopolis and phebtepahê; he put the inhabitants of uabu to ransom, established a close blockade of khninsu, and persuaded namrôti, king of khmunu, to take an oath of allegiance. at length, those petty kings and princes of the said and the delta who still remained unconquered called upon ethiopia, the only power capable of holding its ground against him, for help. the �vile kaushu� (cush) probably rose to be an independent state about the time when sheshonq and the bubastite kings came into power. [illustration: 255.jpg view of a part of the ruins of napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph published in cailliaud. peopled by theban settlers, and governed by the civil and religious code of thebes, the provinces which lay between the cataract of hannek and the confluence of the two mies soon became a second thebaid, more barren and less wealthy than the first, but no less tied to the traditions of the past. napata, its capital, lay in the plain at the foot of a sandstone cliff, which rose perpendicularly to a height of nearly two hundred feet, its summit, when viewed from the southwest, presenting an accidental resemblance to a human profile.* this was the _du-uabu_, or sacred mount, in the heart of which the god was supposed to have his dwelling; the ruins of several temples can still be seen near the western extremity of the hill, the finest of them being dedicated to a local amon-râ. * the natives believe this profile to have been cut by human hands--an error which has been shared by more than one modern traveller. [illustration: 256.jpg gebel-barkal, the sacred mountain of napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph in cailliaud. this amon was a replica of the theban amon on a smaller scale, and was associated with the same companions as his prototype, maut, his consort, and khonsu, his son. he owed his origin to the same religious concepts, and was the central figure of a similar myth, the only difference being that he was represented in composite shape, with a ram�s head; perhaps a survival from some earlier indigenous deity, such as didun, for instance, who had been previously worshipped in those parts; his priests lived in accordance with the rules of the theban hierarchy. [illustration: 257.jpg ruins of the temple of amon at napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph published by cailliaud. we can readily believe that when hrihor extorted the title of �royal son of kaushu� from the weaklings who occupied the throne at the close of the ramesside dynasty, he took care to install one of the members of his family as high priest at napata, and from henceforward had the whole country at his bidding. subsequently, when paînotmu ii. was succeeded by auputi at thebes, it seems that the ethiopian priests refused to ratify his election. whether they conferred the supreme power on one of their own number, or whether some son of paînotmu, flying from the bubastite kings, arrived at the right moment to provide them with a master, is not quite clear. [illustration: 258.jpg plan of the temple of amon at napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from the plan drawn up and published by cailliaud. the kings of ethiopia, priests from the first, never lost their sacerdotal character. they continued to be men of god, and as such it was necessary that they should be chosen by the god himself. on the death of a sovereign, amon at once became regent in the person of his prophet, and continued to act until the funeral rites were celebrated. as soon as these ceremonies were completed, the army and the people collected at the foot of the sacred mount; the delegates of the various orders of the state were led into the sanctuary, and then, in their presence, all the males of the royal family--�the king�s brothers,� as they were called--were paraded before the statue of the god; he on whom the god laid his hand as he passed was considered to be the chosen one of amon, and consecrated king without delay.* * this is the ritual described in the _stele of the enthronement_. perhaps it was already in use at thebes under the xxist and xxiind dynasties, at the election of the high priest, whether he happened to be a king or not; at any rate, a story of the ptolemaic period told by synesius in _the egyptian_ seems to point to this conclusion. as may be readily imagined, the new monarch thus appointed by divine dictation was completely under the control of the priests, and before long, if he failed to prove sufficiently tractable, they claimed the right to dispense with him altogether; they sent him an order to commit suicide, and he obeyed. the boundaries of this theocratic state varied at different epochs; originally it was confined to the region between the first cataract and the mouth of the blue nile. the bulk of the population consisted of settlers of egyptian extraction and egyptianised natives; but isolated, as they were, from egypt proper by the rupture of the political ties which had bound them to the metropolis, they ceased to receive fresh reinforcements from the northern part of the valley as they had formerly done, and daily became more closely identified with the races of various origin which roamed through the deserts of libya or arabia. this constant infiltration of free or slavish bedâwin blood and the large number of black women found in the harems of the rich, and even in the huts of the common people, quickly impaired the purity of the race, even among the tipper classes of the nation, and the type came to resemble that of the negro tribes of equatorial africa.* * taharqa furnishes us with a striking example of this degeneration of the egyptian type. his face shows the characteristic features of the black race, both on the egyptian statue as well as on the assyrian stele of sinjirli. [illustration: 260a.jpg a nearly pure ethiopian type] [illustration: 260b.jpg mixed negro and ethiopian type] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. the language fared no better in the face of this invasion, and the written character soon became as corrupt as the language; words foreign to the egyptian vocabulary, incorrect expressions, and barbarous errors in syntax were multiplied without stint. the taste for art decayed, and technical ability began to deteriorate, the moral and intellectual standard declined, and the mass of the people showed signs of relapsing into barbarism: the leaders of the aristocracy and the scribes alone preserved almost intact their inheritance from an older civilisation. egypt still attracted them: they looked upon it as their rightful possession, torn from them by alien usurpers in defiance of all sense of right, and they never ceased to hope that some day, when the god saw fit, they would win back their heritage. were not their kings of the posterity of sibu, the true representatives of the ramessides and the solar race, compared with whom the northern pharaohs, even those whose mothers ranked as �worshippers� of amon, were but mere mushroom kings? thebes admitted the validity of their claims: it looked to them for help, and the revolts by which it had been torn ever since the reign of osorkon ii. were, perhaps, instigated by the partisans of ethiopia. in the time of petubastis its high priests, harsiisît and takelôti, were still connected with the tanites; after that it placed itself under the immediate orders of ethiopia, and the pontificate disappeared. the accession of a sovereign who was himself invested by hereditary right with the functions and title of high priest of amon henceforth rendered the existence of such an office superfluous at thebes: it would almost have meant an _imperium in imperio_. the administration of religious, and perhaps also of political, affairs was, therefore, handed over to the deputy prophet, and this change still further enhanced the importance of the �female worshippers of the god.� in the absence of the king, who had his capital at napata, they remained the sole representatives of legitimate authority in the thebaid: the chief among them soon came to be regarded as a veritable _lady of thebes_, and, subject to the god, mistress of the city and its territory. it is not quite clear whether it was piônkhi miamun or one of his immediate predecessors who took possession of the city. the nomes dependent on amon followed the example of the capital, and the whole theban territory as far as siut had been occupied by ethiopian troops, when in the twenty-first year of the king�s reign the princes of the delta and middle egypt appealed to the court of napata for help. [illustration: 262.jpg map of middle egypt during the campaign of pionkhi] even had they not begged it to do so, it would have been compelled before long to intervene, for tafnakhti was already on his way to attack it; piônkki charged luâmarsakni and pu-arama, the generals he had already stationed in the thebaid, to hold tafnakhti in check, till he was able to get together the remainder of his army and descend the nile to support them. their instructions were to spare none of the rebellious towns, but to �capture their men and their beasts, and their ships on the river; to allow none of the fellaheen to go out into the fields, nor any labourer to his labour, but to attack hermopolis and harass it daily.� they followed out these orders, though, it would seem, without result, until the reinforcements from nubia came up: their movements then became more actively offensive, and falling on tafnakhti�s ships, which were making for thebes heavily laden with men and stores, they sunk several of them. [illustration: 262.jpg ruins of oxyrrhynchos and the modern town of bahnesa] drawn by boudier, from an engraving in vivant denon. anxious to profit by this first success, they made straight for heracleopolis with a view to relieving it. tafnakhti, accompanied by the two kings namrôti and auputi, was directing the siege in person; he had under his command, in addition to contingents from busiris, mendès, thoth, and pharbaîthos, all the vassals of osorkon iii., the successor of petubastis and titular pharaoh of the whole country. the ethiopian fleet engaged the egyptian ships at the end of the island of heracleopolis, near the mouth of the canal leading from the nile to the bahr-yusuf.* tafnakhti was defeated, and the remnants of his squadron took refuge in pipuga under cover of his land forces.** at dawn, the next day, the ethiopians disembarked and gave battle. the struggle was long and fierce, but indecisive. luâmarsakni and puarama claimed the victory, but were obliged to effect a retreat on the day following their so-called success, and when they dropped anchor in the harbour of hermopolis, they found that namrôti had made his way back to the city by land and forestalled them. powerless to hold the field without support, he collected all the men and cattle he could lay hands on, and awaited the progress of events behind his ramparts. the ethiopians invested the town, and wrote to inform piônkhi of what they had done--not, however, without some misgiving as to the reception which awaited their despatches. and sure enough, �his majesty became enraged thereat, even as a panther: �if they have allowed a remnant of the warriors of the north to remain, if they have let one of them escape to tell of the fight, if they make him not to die in their slaughter, then by my life, by the love of râ, by the praise of amon for me, i will myself go down and overthrow that which tafnakhti hath done,*** i will compel him to give up war for ever! therefore, after celebrating the festivals of the new year, when i shall have sacrificed to amon of [napata], my father, in his excellent festival wherein he appears in his procession of the new year, when he shall have sent me in peace to look upon the [theban] amon in his festivals at thebes, and when i shall have carried his image in procession to luxor, in the festival celebrated in his honour among the festivals of thebes, on the night of the feast appointed in the thebaid, established by râ at the creation, when i have led him in the procession and brought him unto his throne, on the day for introducing the god, even the second of athyr, then will i make the enemy taste the savour of my claws.�� * the ancient geographers looked upon the nome of heraoleopolis as a large island, its southern boundary being, probably, the canal of harabshent: the end of the island, which the egyptians called �the forepart of khninsu,� was probably harabshent and its environs. ** pi-puga is probably el-fokâ, on the nile, to the north of harabshent. *** the king does not mention his adversary by name in the text; he is content to indicate him by a pronoun in the third person--�that which he hath done... then will i make him taste,� etc. the generals did their very utmost to appease their master�s wrath before he appeared on the scene. they told off a force to keep watch over hermopolis while they themselves marched against the nome of uabu; they took oxyrrhynchos by storm, with �the fury of a water-spout,� and informed the king of this achievement; but �his heart was not softened thereby.� they crossed over to the right bank; they crushed the people of the north under the walls of tatehni,* they forced the walls of the town with the battering-ram, and killed many of the inhabitants, amongst others a son of tafnakhti, whose body they sent to the king; but �his heart was not softened thereby.� they then pushed on as far as haït bonua** and sacked it, but still failed to regain favour. on the 9th of thoth, piônkhi came down to thebes, and after hasty attendance at the services to amon, went to rejoin the vanguard of his army under the walls of hermopolis. * the modern tehneh, on the right bank of the nile, a little below minieh. ** hâit-bonu, or hâbonu, is the hipponon of the greco-roman geographers. [illustration: 266.jpg king namrôti leading a horse to piônkhi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an impression of the stele in the gizeh museum. �no sooner had his majesty quitted the cabin of his ship, than the horses were harnessed and the charioteers in their places; the fear of his majesty spread even to the nomads of asia, and all hearts trembled before him.� piônkhi drove back the enemy behind their walls, pitched his tent to the south-west of the city, threw up earth-works, and built terraces so as to place his bowmen and sling-ers on a level with the battlements of its towers. at the end of three days, namrôti, finding himself hard pressed on every side, resolved to surrender. he sent envoys to piônkhi laden with rich presents, and despatched queen nsitentmahît after them, to beg for mercy from the women who had accompanied the ethiopian, his wives, concubines, daughters, or royal sisters. their entreaties were graciously received, and namrôti ventured to come in person, leading a horse with his right hand and shaking in his left a sistrum of gold and lapis-lazuli; he knelt down and presented with his salutations the long train of gifts which had gone before him. piônkhi visited the temple of thoth, and there, amidst the acclamations of soldiers and priests, offered up the customary sacrifices. [illustration: 267.jpg ruins of the temple of thoth, at hermopolis the great] drawn by boudier, from an engraving in vivant denon. the portico was destroyed about 1820 by the engineers who constructed the sugar refinery at rodah, and now only a few shapeless fragments of it remain. he then made his way to the palace and inspected its courts, chambers, treasury, and storehouses, and reviewed the whole household, including even namrôti�s own wives and daughters, though �he turned not his face towards any one of them.� he next went on to the stud-farms, and was indignant to find that the horses had suffered from hunger during the siege. thoroughbreds were probably somewhat scarce at napata, and he had, no doubt, reckoned on obtaining new blood and a complete relay of chargers from the egyptian stables; his chances of doing so seemed likely to vanish if brood mares and stallions had everywhere been debilitated by the hardships of war. he reserved a part of the booty for himself, handed over the balance to the priests of amon at karnak, and also, before he left, received tribute from heracleopolis. pefzââbastît brought him horses, the pick of his stables, slaves laden with gold and silver and precious stones; then burying his face in the dust, he offered worship to his liberator: �hell had swallowed me up, i was plunged into darkness, and lo, now a light has been given me. since i have found no man to love me in the day of adversity, or to stand by me in the day of battle, save only thee, o victorious king, who hast torn away the night from above me, i will be thy servant, i and all my house, and khninsu shall pay tribute into thy treasury. for, as to thee, thou art harmakhis, chief of the imperishable stars, thou art king, even as he is king, and even as he doth not destroy himself, neither shalt thou destroy thyself!� the downfall of khmunu led all who might still have shown resistance in middle egypt to lay down their arms also. the fortress of pisakhmakhpirrî* dominated the gorges of lahunît, and thus commanded the entrance to the fayum; but the son of tafnakhti agreed to surrender it, provided he were allowed to march out with the honours of war. * this fortress, which bears a name compounded with that of osorkon i., must have been rebuilt by that monarch on the site of an earlier fort; the new name remained in use under the xxiind and xxiiith dynasties, after which the old one reappears. it is illahun, where petrie discovered the remains of a flourishing town of the bubastite epoch. shortly after, maîtumu threw open its gates, and its example was followed by titauî; at maîtumu there was rioting among the egyptians in the streets, one party wishing to hold out, the other to surrender, but in the end the latter had their way.* piônkhi discharged his priestly duties wherever he went, and received the local taxes, always being careful to reserve a tenth for the treasury of amon-râ; the fact that his army was kept under rigid control, and that he showed great clemency to the vanquished, helped largely to conciliate those who were not bound by close ties of interest to the cause of tafnakhti. on reaching memphis, piônkhi at once had recourse to the persuasive methods which had hitherto served him so well, and entered into negotiations with the garrison. �shut not yourselves up in forts, and fight not against the upper country,** for shu the god of creation, when i enter, he entereth, and when i go out, he goeth out, and none may repel my attacks. i will present offerings to phtah and to the divinities of the white wall, i will honour sokari in his mysterious coffer, i will contemplate eîsânbuf,*** then i will return from thence in peace. if ye will trust in me, memphis shall be prosperous and healthy, even the children shall not cry therein. behold the nomes of the south; not a soul has been massacred there, saving only the impious who blasphemed god, and these rebels have been executed.� * maritumu, or maîtumu, is the modern meîdum, associated in the inscription with the characteristic epithet, pisokari nibu-suazu, or �temple of sokari, master of the transfiguration.� titauî lay exactly on the frontier between upper and lower egypt--hence its name, which signifies �commanding the two regions;� it was in the memphite nome, and brugsch identifies it with the greek city of acanthos, near dahshur, but this position appears to me to be too close to memphis and too far from the boundary of the nome; i should prefer to place titauî at kafr el-ayat or thereabouts. ** i.e. against piônkhi, who was master of the upper country, that is, of thebes and ethiopia, and the forces from the whole of the valley to the south of memphis who accompanied him. *** lit., �he who is on the south of his wall,� a name given to one of the quarters of memphis, and afterwards applied to the god phtah, who was worshipped in that quarter. this eloquence, however, was of no avail. a detachment of archers, sailors, and engineers sent to make a reconnaissance of the harbour was taken by surprise and routed with loss, and on the following night tafnakhti suddenly made his appearance on the spot. he had the 8000 men who were defending it paraded before him, and made them a speech, in which he pointed out the great natural strength of the position, the stoutness of the walls and the abundance of provisions; he then mounted his horse, and making his way a second time through the enemy�s outposts, headed straight for the delta in order to levy reinforcements there. the next day, piônkhi went in person to examine the approaches of the city in which his ancestors had once been throned. there was a full nile, and the river came right up to the walls. he sailed close in along the whole of the eastern front, and landed on the north, much vexed and discomfited at finding it so strongly fortified. even the common soldiers were astonished, and began to discuss among themselves the difficulties of the undertaking with a certain feeling of discouragement. it would be necessary, they declared, to open a regular siege, �to make an inclined plane leading to the city, throw upearthworks against its walls, bind ladders, set up masts and erect spars all around it.� piônkhi burst into a rage when these remarks were repeated to him: a siege in set form would have been a most serious enterprise, and would have allowed the allied princes time to get together fresh troops. he drove his ships full speed against the line of boats anchored in the harbour, and broke through it at the first onset; his sailors then scaled the bank and occupied the houses which overlooked it. reinforcements concentrated on this point gradually penetrated into the heart of the city, and after two days� fighting the garrison threw down their arms. the victor at once occupied the temples to save them from pillage: he then purified memphis with water and natron, ascended in triumph to the temple of phtah, and celebrated there those rites which the king alone was entitled to perform. the other fortresses in the neighbourhood surrendered without further hesitation. king auputi of tentramu,* prince akaneshu,** and prince petisis tendered the homage of their subjects in person, and the other sovereigns of the delta merely waited for a demonstration in force on the part of the ethiopians before following their example. * probably the original of the statue discovered by naville at tel-el-yahudîyeh. tentramu and taânu, the cities of auputi, are perhaps identical with the biblical elim (exod. xvi. 1) and the daneon portus of pliny on the red sea, but naville prefers to identify daneon with the tonu of the _berlin papyrus no. 1_. i believe that we ought to look for the kingdom of auputi in the neighbourhood of menzaleh, near tanis. ** akaneshu ruled over sebennytos and in the xviith nome. naville discovered at samannud the statue of one of his descendants, a king of the same name, perhaps his grandson, who was prince of sebennytos in the time of psammetichus i. piônkhi crossed the nile and marched in state to heliopolis, there to receive the royal investiture. he offered up prayers at the various holy places along the route, such as the sanctuary of tumu at khriâhu and the temple of the ennead who dwelt in the cavern from which the northern nile was supposed to spring; he then crossed over mount ahu, bathed his face in the reputed source of the river, and at length penetrated into the dwelling-place of râ. he ascended the steps leading to the great chapel in order that he might there �see râ in hâît-banbonu even himself. all unattended, he drew the bolt, threw open the doors, contemplated his father râ in hâît-banbonu, adjusted ra�s boat mâdît and the saktit of shu, then closed the doors again, affixed a seal of clay, and impressed it with the royal signet.� he had thus submitted his conduct for the approval of the god in whom all attributes of royalty were vested, and the god had legitimatised his claims to universal rule: he was henceforth the master, not merely _de jure_ but _de facto_ as well, and the kings who had hitherto declined to recognise him were now obliged to bow reverently before his authority. osorkon was the first to submit, and did so before the close of piônkhi�s stay at heliopolis; when the latter pitched his camp near kahani* in the athribite nome, the nobles of the eastern delta, both small and great, came one after another with their followers; among them patinifi of pisapti, paimau of busiris, pabîsa of khriâhu and of pihâpi,** besides a dozen others. * kahani is, perhaps, the modern kaha, some distance to the north of qaliub. ** pisapti stood on the present site of shaft-el-ïïineh. khriâhu, as we know, formed part of the heliopolitan nome, and is, very possibly, to be identified with babylon of egypt, the postât of the arabs; pihâpi was a place not far from the supposed source of the southern nile. he extended his favour to all alike, merely stipulating that they should give him the best of their horses, and undertake to keep careful watch over the prosperity of their stud farms. but tafnakhti still held out, and seemed determined to defy him to the end; he had set fire to his palace and taken refuge in the islands on the river, and had provided a hiding-place for himself at masudît among the marshes on the coast in case of final defeat. a victory gained over him by the ethiopian generals suddenly induced him to sue for peace. he offered to disband his men and pay tribute, provided he was guaranteed undisturbed possession of sais and of the western districts of the delta; he refused, however, to sue for pardon in person, and asked that an envoy should be sent to receive his oath of allegiance in the temple of nit. though deserted by his brother princes and allies, he still retained sufficient power to be a thorn in his conqueror�s side; his ultimate overthrow was certain, but it would have entailed many a bloody struggle, while a defeat might easily have shaken the fidelity of the other feudatory kings, and endangered the stability of the new dynasty. piônkhi, therefore, accepted the terms offered him without modification, and asked for no guarantee beyond the oath taken in the presence of the gods. news was brought him about this time that cynopolis and aphroditopolis had at last thrown open their gates, and accordingly he summoned his vassals for the last time to his camp near athribis. with the exception of tafnakhti, they all obeyed the call, including two minor kings of upper and two of lower egypt, together with barons of lesser rank; but of these, namrôti alone was admitted to the royal apartments, because he alone was circumcised and ate no fish; after this the camp was broken up, and the ethiopians set out on their return journey southwards. piônkhi may well have been proud of the result of this campaign, both for himself and for his country. the empire of the pharaohs, which had for the last hundred and fifty years been divided, was now re-established from the confluence of the niles to the shores of the mediterranean, but it was no longer egypt that benefited by the change. it was now, after many years of slavery, the turn of ethiopia to rule, and the seat of power was transferred from thebes or memphis to napata. as a matter of fact, the fundamental constitution of the kingdom underwent no great modification; it had merely one king the more to rule over it--not a stranger, as we are often tempted to conclude, when we come to measure these old-world revolutions by our modern standards of patriotism, but a native of the south, who took the place of those natives of the north who had succeeded one another on the throne since the days of smendes. in fact, this newly crowned son of râ lived a very long way off; he had no troops of his own further north than siut, and he had imposed his suzerainty on the rival claimants and reigning princes without thereby introducing any change in the constitution of the state. in tendering their submission to him, the heads of the different nomes had not the slightest intention of parting with their liberty; they still retained it, even though nominally dependent, and continued, as in the past, to abuse it without scruple. namrôti was king at khmunu, pefzââbastît at khninsu, auputi at tentramu, and osorkon iii. at bubastis; the prestige investing the tanite race persisted so effectively that the annalists give to the last-named precedence over the usurpers of the ethiopian dynasty; the tanites continued to be the incarnate representatives of legitimate power, and when osorkon iii. died, in 732, it was his son psamutis who was regarded as the lord of egypt. tafnakhti had, in his defeat, gained formal recognition of his royalty. he was no longer a mere successful adventurer, a hero of the hour, whose victories were his only title-deeds, whose rights rested solely on the argument of main force. piônkhi, in granting him amnesty, had conferred official investiture on him and on his descendants. henceforth his rule at sais was every whit as legitimate as that of osorkon at bubastis, and he was not slow in furnishing material proof of this, for he granted himself cartouches, the uraeus, and all the other insignia of royalty. these changes must have been quickly noised abroad throughout asia. commercial intercourse between syria and egypt was maintained as actively as ever, and the merchant caravans and fleets exported with regularity the news of events as well as the natural products of the soil or of industry. the tidings of an ethiopian conquest and of the re-establishment of an undivided empire in the valley of the nile, coming as they did at the very moment when the first effects of the assyrian revival began to be so keenly felt, could not fail to attract the attention and arouse the hopes of syrian statesmen. the philistines, who had never entirely released themselves from the ties which bound them to the pharaohs of the delta, felt no repugnance at asking for a renewal of their former protection. [illustration: 276.jpg king tafnakhti presents a field to tumu and to bastit] drawn by boudier, from mallet�s photograph of the stele in the museum at athens. as for the phoenicians, the hebrews, edom, moab, ammon, and damascus, they began to consider whether they had not here, in africa, among the members of a race favourably disposed towards them by the memories of the past and by its ambition, hereditary allies against nineveh. the fact that egypt was torn by domestic dissensions and divided into a score of rival principalities in no way diminished their traditional admiration for its wealth or their confidence in its power; assyria itself was merely an agglomeration of turbulent provinces, vassal cities, and minor kingdoms, artificially grouped round the ancient domain of assur, and yet the convulsions by which it was periodically shaken had not prevented it from developing into the most formidable engine of war that had ever threatened the peace of asia. the african hosts, whether led by ordinary generals or by a king of secondary rank, formed none the less a compact army well fitted by numbers and organisation to hold its own against any forces which tiglath-pileser might put into the field; and even should the supreme pharaoh be unwilling to throw the full weight of his authority into the balance, yet an alliance with one of the lesser kings, such as the lord of sais or of bubastis, would be of inestimable assistance to any one fortunate enough to secure it. it is true that, in so far as the ultimate issue was concerned, there was little to be gained by thus pitting the two great powers together and persuading one to fight against the other; the victor must, in the long run, remain master alike of those who had appealed for help and of those who had fought against him, and if egypt emerged triumphant, there would be nothing for it but to accept her supremacy. in either event, there could be no question of independence; it was a choice between the hegemony of egypt or that of assyria. from the moment that tiglath-pileser had made his appearance on the northern horizon, the nations of southern syria had instinctively looked to pharaoh for aid. there seems to have been an egyptian faction in samaria, even during the disorders which broke out after the death of jeroboam ii., and perhaps it was a hope of overcoming it easily which led menahem of his own accord to invoke the still remote suzerainty of nineveh, after the fall of unki in 738;* later on, when pekah had assassinated pekahiah and entered into alliance with eezin, he adopted the view of those who saw no hope of safety save from the banks of the nile, his only reason for doing so being, apparently, because the kings of the fallen dynasty had received support from the valley of the tigris. hosea continually reproached his countrymen with this vacillating policy, and pointed out the folly of it: �ephraim is like a silly dove without understanding; they call unto egypt, they go unto assyria; when they shall go i will spread my net upon them,� said the eternal.** * the existence of an egyptian faction at this period has been admitted by kittel. winckler has traced to the arabian or idumæan muzri everything previously referred to egypt. his arguments seem to me to be, in many cases, convincing, as i shall point out where necessary, but i think he carries his theory too far when he systematically excludes egypt and puts muzri in its place. egypt, even in its decadent state, was a far more important power than the arabian muzri, and it seems unreasonable to credit it with such a limited share in the politics of the time. i cannot believe that any other power is intended in most of those passages in the hebrew writings and assyrian inscriptions in which the words mizraîm and muzri occur. ** hos. vii. 11, 12. they were to be given up to assyria and dispersed, and while some were to go into assur and eat unclean food, ephraim was to return into egypt; �for, lo, they are gone away from destruction, yet egypt shall gather them up, memphis shall bury them.� * nevertheless, they persisted in negotiating with egypt, and though there was as yet no formal alliance between samaria and sais or tanis, their relations were so close that no enemy of israel could look for protection from psamuti or his vassals. ahaz had, therefore, nothing to hope from this quarter, and was compelled by the force of circumstances to throw himself into the arms of assyria, if he decided to call in outside aid at all. his prophets, like those of pekah, strenuously forbade him to do so, and among them was one who was beginning to exert a marvellous influence over all classes of society--isaiah, the son of amoz. he had begun his career in the year that uzziah died,** and had continued to prophesy without interruption during the brief reign of jotham.*** * hos. ix. 3-6. ** isa. vi. 1. *** the fragments which can be assigned to this period now occur as follows: chap. ii. 2-5 (verses 2-4 are also found in _micah_ iv. 1-3, and were, perhaps, borrowed from some third prophet), ii. 6-22, iii., iv., v. 1-24 (the parable of the vineyard), and lastly, chap, vi., in so far as the substance is concerned; it seems to have been put into its present form long after the events. when jahveh first appeared to him, in the smoke of the altar, seated on a throne and surrounded by seraphim, a sense of his own unworthiness filled him with fear, but an angel purified his lips with a live coal, and he heard the voice of the lord saying, �whom shall i send, and who will go for us?� and he replied, �here am i; send me,� whereupon jahveh gave him this message: �hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again and be healed.� then the prophet asked, �lord, how long?� and jahveh answered, �until cities be waste without inhabitant and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and jahveh have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land. and if there be yet a tenth in it, it shall be eaten up; as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth when they are felled, so the holy seed is the stock thereof.� * * an explanatory gloss, �the fierce anger of rezin and syria and of the son of remaliah,� which formed no part of the original prophecy, is here inserted in the text. judah, though less powerful, was quite as corrupt as his brethren of israel, and the divine wrath threatened him no less than them; it rested with himself, however, to appease it by repentance, and to enter again into divine favour after suffering his punishment; the eternal would then gather together on mount sion those of his faithful people who had survived the crisis, and would assure them a long period of prosperity under his law. the prophet, convinced that men could in no wise alter the decrees of the highest, save by repentance alone, was astonished that the heads of the state should strive to impede the progress of events that were happening under their very eyes, by the elaborately useless combinations of their worldly diplomacy. to his mind, the invasion of pekah and eezin was a direct manifestation of the divine anger, and it filled him with indignation that the king should hope to escape from it by begging for an alliance against them with one of the great powers: when jahveh should decide that the punishment was sufficient for the crime, he would know how to shatter his instruments without any earthly help. indeed, isaiah had already told his master, some days before the allied kings appeared, while the latter was busy superintending the works intended to supply jerusalem with water, to �take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thy heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands.... because syria hath counselled evil against thee, ephraim also, and the son of bemaliah, saying, let us go up against judah, hem it in, carry it by storm, and set up the son of tabeel as king: thus saith the lord god, it shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.� if, however, the course of the divine justice was to be disturbed by the intervention of a purely human agency, the city would doubtless be thereby saved, but the matter would not be allowed to rest there, and the people would suffer even more at the hands of their allies than they had formerly endured from their enemies. �behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name immanuel--god with us.... for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken,� and yet �jahveh shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father�s house, days that have not come, from the day that ephraim departed from judah.� * and then, employing one of those daring apologues, common enough in his time, the prophet took a large tablet and wrote upon it in large letters two symbolical names--_spoil-speedeth, prey-hasteth_--and set it up in a prominent place, and with the knowledge of credible witnesses went in unto the prophetess his wife. when the child was born in due course, jahveh bade him call it _spoil-speedeth, prey-hasteth_, �for before he shall have knowledge to cry, my father and, my mother, the riches of damascus and the spoil of samaria shall be carried away before the king of assyria.� but the eternal added, �forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters of shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in rezin and remaliah�s son; now therefore, behold, the lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river [the euphrates], strong and many:* and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks: and he shall sweep onward into judah; he shall overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, o immanuel [god-with-us]!�*** finding that egypt was in favour of his adversaries, ahaz, in spite of the prophet�s warnings, turned to assyria.**** * isa. vii. 10-17. ** a marginal gloss has here been inserted in the text, indicating that it was «the king of assyria and all his glory » that the prophet referred to *** isa. viii. 1-8. **** the following portions of isaiah are accepted as belonging to the period of this syrian war: in addition to chap, vii., chaps, viii.-ix 6. xi 1-9. xxii. 1-11; i. 4-9, 18-32; to these kuenen adds chap, xxiii. 1-8 [illustration: 282.jpg map the kingdom of damascus] at one time he had found himself so hard pressed that he invoked the aid of the syrian gods, and made his eldest son pass through the fire in order to propitiate them:* he collected together all the silver and gold he could find in his own treasury or in that of the temple and sent it to tiglath-pileser, with this message: �i am thy servant and thy son: come up and save me out of the hand of the king of syria, and out of the hand of the king of israel, which rise up against me.� ** * 2 kings xvi. 3 (cf. 2 chron. xxviii. 3). there is nothing to indicate the date, but most historians place the event at the beginning of the syrian war, a little before or during the siege. ** kings xvi. 7, 8; cf. 2 chron. xxviii. 16, 20, 21. tiglath-pileser came in haste, and rezin and pekah, at the mere tidings of his approach, desisted from their attack on jerusalem, separated, and retired each to his own kingdom. the assyrian king did not immediately follow them up. he took the road leading along the coast, after leaving the plains of the middle orontes, and levied tribute from the phoenician cities as he passed; he then began by attacking the western frontier of israel, and sent a body of troops against the philistines, who were ceaselessly harassing judah. hannon, king of gaza, did not await the attack, but fled to egypt for safety, and ahaz breathed freely, perhaps for the first time since his accession. this, however, was only a beginning; the real struggle took place in the following year, and was hotly contested. in spite of the sorry pass to which its former defeats and present discords had brought it, damascus still possessed immense wealth, and its army, when reinforced by the arabian and israelite contingents, was capable of holding its own for a long time against the battalions of assyria, even if it could not hope to conquer them. unfortunately for its chances, eezin had failed to inherit the military capacity of his great predecessors, ben-hadad and hazael; he allowed tiglath-pileser to crush the hebrews without rendering them any effective assistance. pekah fought his best, but he lost, one after another, the strongholds which guarded his northern frontier--ijon, abel-beth-maacah, janoah, kedesh, and hazor; he saw the whole of naphtali and gilead laid waste, and their inhabitants carried off into assyria without his being able to prevent it; he himself being obliged to evacuate samaria and take refuge in the mountains almost unattended. judah followed, with mingled exultation and disquietude, the vicissitudes of the tragic drama which was thus enacted before its eyes, and isaiah foretold the speedy ruin of the two peoples who had but yesterday threatened to enslave it. he could already see the following picture in his mind�s eye: �damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. the cities of aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.� * * both of these aroêrs lay beyond jordan--one in reuben, afterwards moab (judg. xi. 26; jer. xlviii. 19); the other in amnion, afterwards gad (josh. xiii. 25; 2 sam. xxiv. 5); here they stand for the countries beyond jordan which tiglath-pileser had just laid waste. the tradition preserved in 1 citron, v. 26 stated that these inhabitants of gad and reuben were led into captivity by pul, i.e. tiglath-pileser. �the fortress also shall cease from ephraim, and the kingdom from damascus, and the remnant of syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of israel, saith the lord of hosts! and it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. and it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of ephraim. yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful tree, saith jahveh, the god of israel!... in that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood, and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of israel:* and it shall be as a desolation. for thou hast forgotten the god of thy salvation.� ** * this is probably an allusion to the warlike exploits performed during rezin and pekah�s invasion of judaea, a year or two previously. ** isa. xvii. 1-6, 9, 10. samaria was doomed to helplessness for many a day to come, if not for ever, but it had taken a whole year to lay it low (733); tiglath-pileser returned in 732, and devoted yet another year to the war against damascus. eezin had not been dismayed by the evil fortune of his friends, and had made good his losses by means of fresh alliances. he had persuaded first mutton ii. of tyre, then mitinti of askalon, and with the latter a section of the philistines, to throw in their lot with him; he had even won over shamshieh, queen of the arabs, and with her a number of the most warlike of the desert tribes; for himself, he had taken up a position on the further side of anti-lebanon, and kept strict watch from mount hermon on the roads leading from the valley of the jordan to the plains of the abana, in order to prevent the enemy from outflanking him and taking him in the rear. but all to no purpose; tiglath-pileser bore directly down upon him, overwhelmed him in a pitched battle, obliged him to take refuge behind the walls of damascus, and there besieged him. [illustration: 288.jpg mount hermon] drawn by boudier, from a photograph brought back by lortet. the city was well fortified, amply supplied with provisions, and strongly garrisoned; the siege was, therefore, a long one, and the assyrians filled up the time by laying waste the fertile country at the foot of anti-lebanon. at last rezin yielded, gave himself up unconditionally, and was forthwith executed: eight thousand of his followers were carried off to kîr, on the confines of elam,* his kingdom was abolished, and a ninevite governor was installed in his palace, by whom the former domain of damascus and the territory lately wrested from israel were henceforth to be administered. * 2 kings xvi. 9. kîr is generally located in armenia, media, or babylonia; a passage in isaiah (xxii. 6), however, seems to point to its having been somewhere in the direction of elam, and associated with the aramæans on the banks of the tigris. the assyrian monuments have not, as yet, yielded confirmation of the details given by the _book of the kings_ in regard to the captivity of the inhabitants of damascus. a fragmentary tablet, giving an account of the death of rezin, was discovered by h. raw-linson, but it was left in assyria, and no one knows what has since become of it. [illustration: 289.jpg an arab] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the coalition he had formed did not long survive its leader.* mutton hastily came to an understanding with the conqueror; mitinti, like hannon, fled into egypt, and his place was taken by kukibtu, a partisan of assyria. hoshea, son of elah, rebelled against pekah, assassinated him, and purchased the right to reign over what was left of israel for ten talents of gold.** shamshieh alone held out. * the following is a list of the kings of damascus from the time of david, as far as is known up to the present time:-[illustration: list of the kings of damascus] ** 2 kings xv. 30. the inscription published by h. rawlinson, merely states that �they overthrew pekah, their king, and i promoted auzi [to the kingship] over them. i received [from him] x talents of gold and... talents of silver....� she imagined herself to be safe among the sands of the desert, and it never occurred to her that the heavy masses of the assyrian army would dream of venturing into these solitudes. detachments of light cavalry were sent in pursuit of her, and at first met with some difficulties; they were, however, eventually successful; the armenian and cappadocian steeds of the ninevite horsemen easily rode down the queen�s meharis. [illustration: 290.jpg arab meharis ridden down by the assyrian cavalry] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the bas-relief reproduced by layard. their success made a great impression on the arab tribes, and induced the mashaî, timaî sabasans, khaiapæans, badanæans, and khattiæans to bend the knee before assyria. they all sent envoys bearing presents of gold and silver, camels, both male and female, and spices:* even the muzri, whose territory lay to the south of the dead sea, followed their example, and a certain idibiel was appointed as their chief.** * delitzsch has identified the names of several of these races with names mentioned in the bible, such as the temah, massah, ephah, sheba. ** the name muzri, as winckler has shown, here refers, not to egypt, but to a canton near edom, the nabatsea of the greco-roman geographers. while his lieutenants were settling outstanding issues in this fashion, tiglath-pileser held open courts at damascus, where he received the visits and homage of the syrians. they came to assure themselves by the evidence of their own eyes of the downfall of the power which had for more than one hundred years checked the progress of assyria. those who, like uassarmi of tabal, showed any sign of disaffection were removed, the remainder were confirmed in their dignities, subject to payment of the usual tribute, and mutton of tyre was obliged to give one hundred talents of gold to ransom his city. ahaz came to salute his preserver, and to obtain a nearer view of the soldiers to whom he owed continued possession of jerusalem;* the kings of ammon, moab, edom, and askalon, the philistines and the nomads of the arabian desert, carried away by the general example, followed the lead of judah, until there was not a single prince or lord of a city from the euphrates to the river of egypt who had not acknowledged himself the humble vassal of nineveh. * 2 kings xvi. 10-12. the _nimroud inscrip_. merely mentions his tribute among that of the syrian kings. with the downfall of rezin, syria�s last hope of recovery had vanished; the few states which still enjoyed some show of independence were obliged, if they wished to retain it, to make a parade of unalterable devotion to their ninevite master, or--if they found his suzerainty intolerable--had to risk everything by appealing to egypt for help. much as they may have wished from the very first to do so, it was too early to make the attempt so soon after the conference at damascus; tiglath-pileser had, therefore, no cause to fear a rebellion among them, at any rate for some years to come, and it was just as well that this was so, for at the moment of his triumph on the shores of the mediterranean his interests in chaldæa were threatened by a serious danger. nabonazîr, king of karduniash, had never swerved from the fidelity which he had sworn to his mighty ally after the events of 745, but the tranquillity of his reign had been more than once disturbed by revolt. borsippa itself had risen on one occasion, and endeavoured to establish itself as an independent city side by side with babylon. when nabonazîr died, in 734, he was succeeded by his son nabunâdinzîri, but at the end of a couple of years the latter was assassinated during a popular outbreak, and nabushumukîn, one of his sons, who had been implicated in the rising, usurped the crown (732). he wore it for two months and twelve days, and then abdicated in favour of a certain ukînzîr.* * the following is as complete a list as can at present be compiled of this babylonian dynasty, the eighth of those registered in pinches� canons (cf. rost, _untersucli. zur altorient. gesch._, p. 27):-[illustration: 292.jpg table of this babylonian dynasty] it included twenty-two kings, and lasted for about three hundred and fifty years. the latter was chief of the bît-amukkâni, one of the most important among the chaldæan communities;* the descendants of the aramaean nomads were thus once more placed upon the throne, and their accession put an end to the relations which had existed for several centuries between assyria and karduniash. * the chronicle is silent with regard to the origin of ukînzîr, but tiglath-pileser, who declines to give him the title of �king of babylon,� says that he was _mar amuhlcâni_ = son of amukkâni. pinches� _canon_ indicates that ukînzîr belonged to a dynasty the name of which may be read either shashi or shapi. the reading shapi at once recalls the name of shapîa, one of the chief cities of the bît amukkâni; it would thus confirm the evidence of the nimroud inscription. these marauders, who had always shown themselves impatient of any settled authority, and had never proffered more than a doubtful submission to even the most triumphant invader, were not likely to accept the subordinate position which members of the presiding dynasty had been, for the most part, content to occupy. it was more probable that they would, from the very first, endeavour to throw off the suzerainty of nineveh. tiglath-pileser gave the new dynasty no time to settle itself firmly on the throne: the year after his return from syria he got together an army and marched against it. he first cleared the right bank of the tigris, where the pukudu (pekod) offered but a feeble resistance; he annexed their territory to the ancient province of arrapkha, then crossed the river and attacked the kaldi scattered among the plains and marshes of the shatt el-haî. [illustration: 294.jpg a kaldu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a woodcut published by tomkins. the bît-shilâni were the first to succumb; their king nabushabshi was impaled before one of the gates of his capital, sarrabânu, the town itself was taken by storm, plundered and dismantled, and 55,000 of its inhabitants were led captive into assyria. after the bît-shilâni, came the turn of the bît-shaali. dur-illataî, their capital, was razed to the ground, and its population, numbering 50,400 men and women, was deported. their chief, lakiru, who had shown great bravery in the struggle, escaped impalement, but was sent into captivity with his people, a ninevite governor being appointed in his place. ukînzîr, who was, as we know, hereditary prince of the bit-amuk-kâni, came up in haste to defend his appanage, and threw himself into his fortress at shapîa: tiglath-pileser cut down the gardens and groves of palms which lent it beauty, burnt the surrounding farms and villages, and tried, without success, to make a breach in the walls; he still, however, maintained the siege, but when winter came on and the place still held out, he broke up his camp and retreated in good order, leaving the districts which he had laid waste occupied by an assyrian force. before his departure, he received homage and tribute from most of the aramæan chiefs, including those of balasu and the bît-dakkuri, of nadînu, and even of the bît-yakîn and merodach-baladan, whose ancestors had never before �kissed the foot� of an assyrian conqueror. in this campaign he had acquired nearly three-fourths of the whole babylonian kingdom; but babylon itself still refused to yield, and it was no easy task to compel it to do so. tiglath-pileser spent the whole of the year 730 in preparing for another attack, and in 729 he again appeared in front of shapîa, this time with greater success: ukînzîr fell into his hands, babylon opened its gates, and he caused himself to be proclaimed king of sumir and akkad within its walls.* many centuries had passed since the two empires had been united under the rule of a single master, or an assyrian king had �taken the hands of bel.� tiglath-pileser accepted the condition attached to this solemn investiture, which obliged him to divide his time between calah and babylon, and to repeat at every festival of the new year the mystic ceremony by which the god of the city confirmed him in his office.** * contemporary documents do not furnish us with any information as to these events. the _eponym canon_ tells us that �_the king took the hands of bel_.� pinches� _chronicle_ adds that �in the third year of ukînzîr, tiglath-pileser marched against akkad, laid waste the bît amukkâni, and took ukînzîr prisoner; ukînzîr had reigned three years in babylon. tiglath-pileser followed him upon the throne of babylon.� ** the _eponym canon_ proves that in 728 b.c., the year of his death, he once more took the hands of bel. his babylonian subjects seem to have taken a liking to him, and perhaps in order to hide from themselves their dependent condition, they shortened his purely assyrian name of tukulti-abal-esharra into the familiar sobriquet of puru or pulu, under which appellation the native chroniclers later on inscribed him in the official list of kings: he did not long survive his triumph, but died in the month of tebeth, 728 b.c., after having reigned eighteen years over assyria, and less than two years over babylon and chaldæa. the formulae employed by the scribes in recording historical events vary so little from one reign to another, that it is, in most cases, a difficult matter to make out, under the mask of uniformity by which they are all concealed, the true character and disposition of each successive sovereign. one thing, however, is certain--the monarch who now came upon the scene after half a century of reverses, and in a brief space restored to his armies the skill necessary to defeat such formidable foes as the armenians or the syrians of damascus, must have been an able general and a born leader of men. yet nineveh had never suffered long from a lack of capable generals, and there would be little to distinguish tiglath-pileser from any of his predecessors, if we could place nothing more than a few successful campaigns to his credit. his claim to a pre-eminent place among them rests on the fact that he combined the talents of the soldier with the higher qualities of the administrator, and organised his kingdom in a manner at once so simple and so effective, that most of the oriental powers down to the time of the grecian conquest were content to accept it as a model. as soon as the ambition of the assyrian kings began to extend beyond the region confined between the khabur and the greater zab, they found it necessary to parcel out their territory into provinces under the authority of prefects for the purpose of preserving order among the vanquished peoples, and at the same time of protecting them from the attacks of adjacent tribes; these representatives of the central power were supported by garrisons, and were thus enabled to put down such minor insurrections as broke out from time to time. some of these provinces were already in existence in the reigns of shalmaneser or tiglath-pileser i.; after the reverses in the time of assurirba, their number decreased, but it grew rapidly again as assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii. gradually extended the field of their operations and of their victories. from this epoch onwards, the monuments mention over a score of them, in spite of the fact that the list thus furnished is not a complete one; the provinces of which we know most are those whose rulers were successively appointed to act as _limmi_, each of them giving their name to a year of a reign. assyria proper contained at least four, viz. assur (called _the country_, as distinguished from all others), calah, nineveh, and arbela. the basin of the lesser zab was divided into the provinces of kakzi, arrapkha, and akhizukhîna;* that of the upper tigris into those of amidi, tushkhân, and gôzan. kirruri was bounded by mazamua, and mazamua by arrapkha and lake urumiah. we hear of the three spheres of nazibina (nisibis), tela, and kazappa in mesopotamia,** the two former on the southern watersheds of the masios, on the highways leading into syria; the latter to the south of the euphrates, in the former kingdom of the laqî. * akhizukhîna is probably identical with arzukhîna = �the city of zukhma,� which is referred to as being situated in the basin of the lesser zab. ** razappa is the biblical rezeph (2 kings xix. 12; isa. xxxvii. 12) and the resapha of ptolemy, now er-rasafa, to the south of the euphrates, on one of the routes leading to palmyra. most of them included--in addition to the territory under the immediate control of the governor--a number of vassal states, kingdoms, cities, and tribes, which enjoyed a certain measure of independence, but were liable to pay tribute and render military service. [illustration: 298.jpg map of the assyrian empire under tiglath-pileser iii.] each new country was annexed, as soon as conquered, to the nearest province, or, if necessary, was converted into a distinct province by itself; thus we find that assur-nazir-pal, after laying hands on the upper valleys of the radanu and the turnat, rebuilt the ruined city of atlîla, re-named it dur-assur, placed a commandant, cavalry, and eunuchs there, and established within it storehouses for the receipt of contributions from the neighbouring barbarians. he followed the same course on each occasion when the fortune of war brought him fresh subjects;* and his successors, shalmaneser iii., samsi-rammân iv., and rammân-nirâri did the same thing in media, in asia minor, and in northern syria;** tiglath-pileser iii. had only to follow their example and extend the application of their system to the countries which he gradually forced to submit to his rule.*** * we read of the appointment of a governor in bît-khalupi, at tush-khân, in naîri, and in the country of the patina. ** the territory of the bit-adini was converted into a province by shalmaneser iii. *** we find the formation of an aramæan province, with kar assur as its capital, mentioned in the _annals of tiglatli pileser iii_. provinces were also established in media, in unki, in the basin of the orontes, and in lebanon, from nineteen districts formerly belonging to hamath, six maritime provinces in northern phoenicia and in coele-syria, in galilee, at gaza. in his case, however, certain elements came into play which forced him to modify several of their methods, and to have recourse to others which they had seldom or never employed. the majority of the countries hitherto incorporated had been near enough to the capital--whether it were assur, calah, or nineveh--to permit of strict watch being kept for any sign of disaffection, and they could be promptly recalled to order if they attempted to throw off the yoke. these provinces were, moreover, of moderate area and sparsely populated: once drawn within the orbit of assyria�s attraction, they were unable to escape from its influence by their own unaided efforts; on the contrary, they gradually lost their individuality, and ended by becoming merged in the body of the nation. the aramaean tribes of the khabur and the balikh, the cossæans of the turnat, the marauding shepherds of the gordyæan hills and the slopes of the masios, gradually became assimilated to their conquerors after a more or less protracted resistance, till at length--in spite of differences of origin, creed, and speech--they became the best of assyrians, every whit as devoted to the person of their king and as jealous of his honour as the aboriginal assyrians themselves. a similar result could not be looked for in the case of the cities recently subdued. it was not to be expected that babylon and damascus--to name but two of the most important--would allow themselves to be influenced and to become reconciled to their lot by artifices which had been successful enough with the medes and in the country of tul-abnî. to take the case of babylon first. it was no mere conglomeration of tribes, nor a state of minor importance, but an actual empire, nearly as large as that of assyria itself, and almost as solidly welded together. it extended from the turnat and the mountains of blam to the arabian desert and the nâr-marratûtn, and even though the cossæans, elamites, kaldâ, sumerians, akkadians, and other remnants of ancient peoples who formed its somewhat motley population, had dwelt there for centuries in a state of chronic discord, they all agreed--in theory, at any rate--in recognising the common suzerainty of babylon. babylon was, moreover, by general acknowledgment, the ancient metropolis to which assyria owed its whole civilisation; it was the holy city whose gods and whose laws had served as a prototype for the gods and laws of assyria; from its temples and its archives the assyrian scribes had drawn such knowledge as they had of the history of the ancient world, their religious doctrines and ceremonies, their methods of interpreting the omens and of forecasting the future--in short, their whole literature, both sacred and profane. the king of nineveh might conquer babylon, might even enter within its gates in the hour of triumph, and, when once he had it at his mercy, might throw down its walls, demolish its palaces, destroy its _ziggurât_, burn its houses, exterminate or carry off its inhabitants, and blot out its name from the list of nations; but so long as he recoiled from the sacrilege involved in such irreparable destruction, he was not merely powerless to reduce it to the level of an ordinary leading provincial town, such as tela or tushkhân, but he could not even deprive it in any way of its rank as a capital, or hope to make it anything less than the second city of his empire. as long as it remained in existence, it necessarily took precedence of all others, thanks to its extensive area, the beauty and antiquity of its buildings, and the number of its inhabitants. the pride of its nobles and priests, subdued for a moment by defeat, would almost instantly have reasserted itself, had the victor sought to lower the dignity of their city; babylon only consented to accept an alien master provided he bowed himself respectfully before its superiority, and was willing to forget that he was a stranger within its gates, and was ready to comply with its laws and masquerade as a babylonian. tiglath-pileser iii. never dreamt, therefore, of treating the babylonians as slaves, or of subordinating them to their assyrian descendants, but left their liberties and territory alike unimpaired. he did not attempt to fuse into a single empire the two kingdoms which his ability had won for him; he kept them separate, and was content to be monarch of both on similar terms. he divided himself, as it were, into two persons, one of whom reigned in calah, while the other reigned in karduniash, and his chaldæan subjects took care to invest this dual _rôle_ --based on a fiction so soothing to their pride--with every appearance of reality; he received from them, together with all the titles of the babylonian kings, that name of pulu, which later on found its way into their chronicles, and which was so long a puzzle to historians, both ancient and modern. experience amply proved that this was the only means by which it was possible to yoke temporarily together the two great powers of the euphrates and the tigris. among the successors of tiglath-pileser, the only sovereigns to rule over babylon without considerable difficulty were those who followed the precedent set by him and were satisfied to divide their functions and reign as dual kings over a dual kingdom.* * this was so in the case of tiglath-pileser iii.�s immediate successor, shalmaneser v., of esarhaddon, and of assur-bani-pal; shalmaneser was known at babylon by the name of ululai, assur-bani-pal by that of kanda-lanu. this combination, while gratifying to the ambition of its rulers, was, perhaps, more a source of loss than of gain to assyria itself. it is true that the power of karduniash had decreased under the previous dynasty, but it had still been strong enough to hold back the aramæans of the persian gulf on one side, and the elamite hordes on the other. it lay like a broad barrier between these barbarians and the cities of the middle tigris; when an unusually vigorous attack compelled it to give way at some point, it appealed to nineveh for help, and an assyrian army, entering the country at the fords of the zab, hastened to drive back the aggressors to the place from which they had set out. when, however, the kings of assyria had become kings of babylon as well, the situation was altered. several branches of the kaldâ had hitherto held possession of the city, and still possessed representatives and allies among the other tribes, especially among the bît-yakîn, who believed themselves entitled to reassert their supremacy within in. the elamite princes, on their part, accustomed to descend at will into the plains that lay between the tigris and the euphrates, and to enrich themselves by frequent raids, could not make up their minds to change the habits of centuries, until they had at least crossed swords with the new despot, and put his mettle to the test. the ninevite king of babylon was thus in duty bound to protect his subjects against the same enemies that had ceaselessly harassed his native-born predecessors, and as the unaided resources of karduniash no longer enabled him to do so effectively, he was, naturally, obliged to fall back on the forces at his disposal as king of assyria. henceforward it was no longer the babylonian army that protected nineveh, but rather that of nineveh which had to protect babylon, and to encounter, almost every year, foes whom in former days it had met only at rare intervals, and then merely when it chose to intervene in their affairs. where the assyrian sovereigns had gained a kingdom for themselves and their posterity, assyria itself found little else but fresh battle-fields and formidable adversaries, in the effort to overcome whom its energies were all but exhausted. in syria and on the shores of the mediterranean, tiglath-pileser had nations of less stubborn vitality to deal with, nor was he bound by the traditions of a common past to show equal respect to their prejudices. arpad, unki, the bekâa, damascus, and gilead were all consecutively swallowed up by assyria, but, the work of absorption once completed, difficulties were encountered which now had to be met for the first time. the subordinate to whom he entrusted the task of governing these districts* had one or two assyrian regiments assigned him as his body-guard,** and these exercised the same ascendency over the natives as the egyptian archers had done in days gone by: it was felt that they had the whole might of assyria behind them, and the mere fact of their presence in the midst of the conquered country was, as a rule, sufficient to guarantee the safety of the assyrian governor and ensure obedience to his commands. * the governor was called _shaknu_ = �he whom the king has established in his place,� and _pekhu_ = �the pilot,� �the manager,� whence _pikhatu_ = �a district,� and _bel-pikhati_ = �the master of a district.� it seems that the _shaknu_ was of higher rank than the _bel-pikhati_, and often had the latter under his command. ** thus assur-nazir-pal selected the horsemen and other soldiers who were to form the body-guard of the governor of parzindu. this body-guard was never a very numerous one, for the army would have melted away in the course of a campaign or two, had it been necessary, after each fresh conquest, to detach from it a sufficient force to guard against rebellion. it was strengthened, it is true, by auxiliaries enlisted on the spot, and the tributary chiefs included in the provincial district were expected to furnish a reasonable quota of men in case of need;* but the loyalty of all these people was, at the best, somewhat doubtful, and in the event of their proving untrustworthy at a critical moment, the little band of assyrian horse and foot would be left to deal with the revolt unaided until such time as the king could come and relieve them. * in a despatch from belibni to assur-bani-pal we find aramæans from the persian gulf submitting to the authority of an assyrian officer, and fighting in elam side by side with his troops. again, under assur-bani-pal, an army sent to repress a revolt on the part of kedar and the nabatseans included contingents from ammon, moab, and edom, together with the assyrian garrisons of the haurân and zobah. the distance between the banks of the jordan or abana and those of the tigris was a long one, and in nearly every instance it would have been a question of months before help could arrive. meanwhile, egypt was at hand, jealous of her rival, who was thus encroaching on territory which had till lately been regarded as her exclusive sphere of influence, and vaguely apprehensive of the fate which might be in store for her if some assyrian army, spurred by the lust of conquest, were to cross the desert and bear down upon the eastern frontiers of the delta. distrustful of her own powers, and unwilling to assume a directly offensive attitude, she did all she could to foment continual disturbances among the hebrews and phoenicians, as well as in philistia and aram; she carried on secret intrigues with the independent princes, and held out tempting hopes of speedy intervention before the eyes of their peoples; her influence could readily be traced in every seditious movement. the handful of men assigned to the governors of the earlier provinces close to the capital would have been of little avail against perils of this kind. though tiglath-pileser added colony to colony in the distant regions annexed by him, he organised them on a different plan from that which had prevailed before his time. his predecessors had usually sent assyrians to these colonies, and filled the villages vacated by them with families taken from the conquered region: a transfer of inhabitants was made, for instance, from naîri or from media into assyria, and _vice versâ_. by following this system, tiglath-pileser would soon have scattered his whole people over the dependencies of his empire, and have found his hereditary states peopled by a motley and incoherent collection of aliens; he therefore left his assyrians for the most part at home, and only effected exchanges between captives. in his earlier campaigns he brought back with him, on one occasion, 65,000 prisoners from the table-land of iran, in order to distribute them over a province which he was organising on the banks of the turnat and the zab: he levied contributions of this kind without mercy from all the states that he conquered from year to year, and dispersed the captives thus obtained over the length and breadth of his empire; he transplanted the aramæans of the mesopotamian deserts, and the kaldâ to the slopes of mount amanus or the banks of the orontes, the patinians and hamathæans to ulluba, the inhabitants of damascus to kîr or to the borders of elam,* and the israelites to some place in assyria.** * 2 kings xvi. 9. ** 2 kings xv. 29. he allowed them to take with them their wives and their children, their herds, their chattels, their gods, and even their money. drafted into the towns and country districts in batches sufficiently numerous to be self-supporting, but yet not large enough to allow of their at once re-establishing themselves as a distinct nation in their new home, they seem to have formed, even in the midst of the most turbulent provinces, settlements of colonists who lived unaffected by any native influence or resentment. the aborigines hated them because of their religion, their customs, their clothing, and their language; in their eyes they were mere interlopers, who occupied the property of relations or fellow-countrymen who had fallen in battle or had been spirited away to the other end of the world. and even when, after many years, the native owners of the soil had become familiarised with them, this mutual antipathy had struck such deep root in their minds that any understanding between the natives and the descendants of the immigrants was quite out of the question: what had been formerly a vast kingdom, occupied by a single homogeneous race, actuated by a common patriotic spirit, became for many a year a region capriciously subdivided and torn by the dissensions of a number of paltry antagonistic communities. the colonists, exposed to the same hatreds as the original assyrian conquerors, soon forgot to look upon the latter as the oppressors of all, and, allowing their present grudge to efface the memory of past injuries, did not hesitate to make common cause with them. in time of peace, the governor did his best to protect them against molestation on the part of the natives, and in return for this they rallied round him whenever the latter threatened to get out of hand, and helped him to stifle the revolt or hold it in check until the arrival of reinforcements. thanks to their help, the empire was consolidated and maintained without too many violent outbreaks in regions far removed from the capital and beyond the immediate reach of the sovereign.* we possess very few details with regard to the administration of these prefects.** * this was the history of the only one of those colonies whose fate is known to us--that founded at samaria by sargon and his successors. ** the texts contain a certain number of names of offices, the precise nature of which it is not easy to ascertain, e.g. the khâzanu, the labuttu, and others. one of them, apparently, should be read _shuparshak_, and identical with one of the titles mentioned in ezra (v. 6, vi. 6) as being in existence during the persian epoch. the various functionaries, governors of towns, tax-collectors, heads of stations, and officers whose duty it was to patrol the roads and look after the safety of merchants, were, for the most part, selected from among natives who had thrown in their lot with assyria, and probably few assyrians were to be found outside the more turbulent cities and important fortresses. the kings and chiefs whose territory was attached to a given province, either took their instructions direct from nineveh, or were sometimes placed under the control of a resident, or _kipu_, with some sort of escort at his back, who kept watch over their movements and reported them to the suzerain, and saw that the tribute was paid regularly, and that the military service provided for in the treaties was duly rendered. governors and residents alike kept up a constant correspondence with the court, and such of their letters as have chanced to come down to us show what a minute account of even the most trifling occurrences was required of them by the central authorities. they were not only obliged to report any fluctuation in the temper or attitude of their subordinates, or any intrigues that were being entered into across the frontier; they had also to record the transfer of troops, the return of fugitives, the pursuit of deserters, any chance scuffle between soldiers and natives, as well as the punishment inflicted on the rebellious, the appearance of a portent in the heavens, or omens noticed by the augurs. there were plenty of envious or officious tongues among their followers to report to headquarters the slightest failure of duty, and to draw attention to their negligence. moreover, it seems certain that the object of thus compelling them to refer to the king at every turn, was not merely in order to keep him informed of all that took place in his dependencies, but also to lay bare the daily life of his prefects before his eyes. the latter were entrusted with the command of seasoned troops; they had considerable sums of money passing through their hands, and were often obliged to take prompt decisions and enter into diplomatic or military transactions on their own responsibility; in short, most of them, at any rate, who were stationed at the furthest confines of the empire were really kings in all but title, insignia, and birth. there was always the danger lest some among them should be tempted to reassert, in their own interest, the independence of the countries under their rule, and seek to found a dynasty in their midst. the strict supervision maintained over these governors generally nipped any ambition of this kind in the bud; in some cases, however, it created the very danger it was intended to prevent. if a governor who had been recalled to nineveh or calah in order to explain his conduct failed to clear himself completely, he at once fell into disgrace; and disgrace in assyria, as in other countries of the east, meant, nine times out of ten, confiscation of property, mutilation and lifelong imprisonment, or death in its most hideous form. he would, therefore, think twice before quitting his post, and if he had any reason to suppose himself suspected, or viewed with disfavour in high quarters, he would be in no hurry to obey a summons to the capital. a revolt was almost certain to be crushed without fail, and offered merely a very precarious chance of escape, but the governor was seldom likely to hesitate between almost certain condemnation and the vague possibility of a successful rising; in such a case, therefore, he staked everything on a single throw. [illustration: 312.jpg tiglath-pileser iii. besieging a revellious city.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell. the system was a defective on, in that it exposed to strong temptation the very functionaries whose loyalty was most essential to the proper working of the administration, but its dangers were out weighed by such important advantages that we cannot but regard it as a very real improvement on the haphazard methods of the past. in the first place, it opened up a larger recruiting-ground for the army, and, in a measure, guaranteed it against that premature exhaustion which had already led more than once to an eclipse of the assyrian power. it may be that the pick of these provincial troops were, preferably, told off for police duties, or for the defence of the districts in which they were levied, and that they seldom left it except to do battle in the adjacent territory;* but, even with these limitations they were none the less of inestimable value, since they relieved the main army of assyria from garrison duties in a hundred scattered localities, and allowed the king to concentrate it almost in its entirety about his own person, and to direct it _en masse_ upon those points where he wished to strike a decisive blow. * thus, in the reign of assur-bani-pal, we find the militia of the governor of uruk marching to battle against the gambulu. on the other hand, the finances of the kingdom were put on a more stable and systematic basis. for nearly the whole of the two previous centuries, during which assyria had resumed its victorious career, the treasury had been filled to some extent by taxes in kind or in money, and by various dues claimed from the hereditary kingdom and its few immediate dependencies, but mainly by booty and by tribute levied after each campaign from the peoples who had been conquered or had voluntarily submitted to assyrian rule. the result was a budget which fluctuated greatly, since all forays were not equally lucrative, and the new dependencies proved so refractory at the idea of perpetual tribute, that frequent expeditions were necessary in order to persuade them to pay their dues. we do not know how tiglath-pileser iii. organised the finances of his provinces, but certain facts recorded here and there in the texts show that he must have drawn very considerable amounts from them. we notice that twenty or thirty years after his time, carchemish was assessed at a hundred talents, arpad and kuî at thirty each, megiddo and manzuatu at fifteen, though the purposes to which these sums were applied is not specified. [illustration: 314.jpg a herd of horses brought in as tribute] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs on the gates of balawat. the breed here represented seems to have been common in urartu, as well as in cappadocia and northern syria. on the other hand, we know the precise object to which the contributions of several other cities were assigned; as, for instance, so much for the maintenance of the throne in the palace, or for the divans of the ladies of the harem; so much for linen garments, for dresses, and for veils; twenty talents from nineveh for the armaments of the fleet, and ten from the same city for firewood. certain provinces were expected to maintain the stud-farms, and their contributions of horses were specially valuable, now that cavalry played almost as important a part as infantry in military operations. the most highly prized animals came, perhaps, from asia minor; the nations of mount taurus, who had supplied chargers to israel and egypt five centuries earlier, now furnished war-horses to the squadrons of nineveh. the breed was small, but robust, inured to fatigue and hard usage, and in every way similar to that raised in these countries at the present day. in war, horses formed a very considerable proportion of the booty taken; in time of peace, they were used as part of the payment of the yearly tribute, and a brisk trade in them was carried on with mesopotamia. [illustration: 315.jpg a typical cappadocian horse] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. alfred boissier. after the king had deducted from his receipts enough to provide amply for the wants of his family and court, the salaries of the various functionaries and officials, the pay and equipment of his army, the maintenance and construction of palaces and fortresses, he had still sufficient left over to form an enormous reserve fund on which he and his successors might draw in the event of their ordinary sources of income being depleted by a series of repeated reverses. tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon assyria the character by which it was known during the most splendid century of its history, and the organisation which he devised for it was so admirably adapted to the oriental genius that it survived the fall of nineveh, and served as a model for every empire-maker down to the close of the macedonian era and even beyond it. [illustration: 316.jpg a syrian bît-khilâni] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from the restoration published by luschan. the wealth of the country grew rapidly, owing to the influx of capital and of foreign population; in the intervals between their campaigns its rulers set to work to remove all traces of the ruins which had been allowed to accumulate during the last forty years. the king had built himself a splendid palace at calah, close to the monuments of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., and its terraces and walls overhung the waters of the tigris. the main entrance consisted of a _bît-khilâni_, one of those porticoes, flanked by towers and supported by columns or pillars, often found in syrian towns, the fashion for which was now beginning to spread to western asia.* * the precise nature of the edifices referred to in the inscriptions under the name of bît-khilâni is still a matter of controversy. it has been identified with the pillared hall, or audience-chamber, such as we find in sargon�s palace at khorsabad, and with edifices or portions of edifices which varied according to the period, but which were ornamented with columns. it seems clear, however, that it was used of the whole series of chambers and buildings which formed the monumental gates of assyrian palaces, something analogous to the _migdol_ of ramses iii. at medinet-habu, and more especially to the gates at zinjirli. those discovered at zinjirli afford fine examples of the arrangements adopted in buildings of this kind; the lower part of the walls was covered with bas-reliefs, figures of gods and men, soldiers mounted or on foot, victims and fantastic animal shapes; the columns, where there were any, rested on the back of a sphinx or on a pair of griffins of a type which shows a curious mixture of egyptian and semitic influences. [illustration: 317.jpg the foundatins of a bît-khilâni] drawn by boudier, from a sketch published by luschan. [illustration: 318.jpg base of a column at zinjireli] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph published by luschan. the wood-work of the ninevite bît-khilâni was of cedar from mount amanus, the door-frames and fittings were of various rare woods, inlaid with ivory and metal. the entrance was guarded by the usual colossal figures, and the walls of the state reception-rooms were covered with slabs of alabaster; on these, in accordance with the usual custom,* were carved scenes from the royal wars, with explanatory inscriptions. the palace was subsequently dismantled, its pictures defaced and its inscriptions obliterated,** to mark the hatred felt by later generations towards the hero whom they were pleased to regard as a usurper; we can only partially succeed in deciphering his annals by the help of the fragmentary sentences which have escaped the fury of the destroyer. * the building of tiglath-pileser�s palace is described in the nimroud inscription. it stood near the centre of the platform of nimroud. ** the materials were utilised by esarhaddon, but it does not necessarily follow that the palace was dismantled by that monarch; this was probably done by sargon or by sennacherib. the cities and fortresses which he raised throughout the length and breadth of assyria proper and its more recently acquired provinces have similarly disappeared; we can only conjecture that the nobles of his court, fired by his example, must have built and richly endowed more than one city on their hereditary estates, or in the territories under their rule. bel-harrân-beluzur, the marshal of the palace, who twice gave his name to years of the king�s reign, viz. in 741 and 727 b.c., possessed, it would seem, an important fief a little to the north of assur, near the banks of the tharthar, on the site of the present tel-abta. the district was badly cultivated, and little better than a wilderness; by express order of the celestial deities--marduk, nabu, shamash, sin, and the two ishtars--he dug the foundations of a city which he called dur-bel-harrân-beluzur. the description he gives of it affords conclusive evidence of the power of the great nobles, and shows how nearly they approached, by their wealth and hereditary privileges, to the kingly rank. he erected, we are told, a _ziggurât_ on a raised terrace, in which he placed his gods in true royal fashion; he assigned slaves, landed property, and a yearly income to their priests, in order that worship might be paid to them in perpetuity; he granted sanctuary to all freemen who settled within the walls or in the environs, exemption from forced labour, and the right to tap a water-course and construct a canal. a decree of foundation was set up in the temple in memory of bel-harrân-beluzur, precisely as if he were a crowned king. it is a stele of common grey stone with a circular top. the dedicator stands erect against the background of the carving, bare-foot and bare-headed, his face cleanshaven, dressed in a long robe embroidered in a chessboard pattern, and with a tunic pleated in horizontal rows; his right elbow is supported by the left hand, while the right is raised to a level with his eyes, his fist is clenched, and the thumb inserted between the first and second fingers in the customary gesture of adoration. [illustration: 320.jpg stele or bel-harran-beluzur.] drawn by boudier, from the photograph published by father scheil. what the provost of the palace had done on his land, the other barons in all probability did on theirs; most of the departments which had fallen away and languished during the disturbances at the close of the previous dynasty, took a new lease of life under their protection. private documents--which increase in number as the century draws to an end--contracts, official reports, and letters of scribes, all give us the impression of a wealthy and industrious country, stirred by the most intense activity, and in the enjoyment of unexampled prosperity. the excellent administration of tiglath-pileser and his nobles had paved the way for this sudden improvement, and had helped to develop it, and when shalmaneser v. succeeded his father on the throne it continued unchecked.* the new-comer made no changes in the system of government which had been so ably inaugurated. he still kept assyria separate from karduniash; his babylonian subjects, faithful to ancient custom, soon devised a nickname for him, that of ululai, as though seeking to persuade themselves that they had a king who belonged to them alone; and it is under this name that their annalists have inscribed him next to pulu in the list of their dynasties.** his reign was, on the whole, a calm and peaceful one; the kaldâ, the medes, urartu, and the races of mount taurus remained quiet, or, at any rate, such disorders as may have arisen among them were of too trifling a nature to be deemed worthy of notice in the records of the time. syria alone was disturbed, and several of its independent states took advantage of the change of rulers to endeavour to shake off the authority of assyria. * it was, for a long time, an open question with the earlier assyriologists whether or not shalmaneser and sargon were different names for one and the same monarch. as for monuments, we possess only one attributed to shalmaneser, a weight in the form of a lion, discovered by layard at nimroud, in the north-west palace. the length of his reign, and the scanty details we possess concerning it, have been learnt from the _eponym canon_ and _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, and also from the hebrew texts (2 kings xvii. 3 6; xviii. 9-12). ** the identity of ululai and shalmaneser v., though still questioned by oppert, has been proved by the comparison of babylonian records, in some of which the names pulu and ululai occur in positions exactly corresponding with those occupied, in others, by tiglath-pileser and shalmaneser. the name ululai was given to the king because he was born in the month of ulul; in pinches� list we find a gloss, �dynasty of tinu,� which probably indicates the assyrian town in which tiglath-pileser iii. and his son were born. egypt continued to give them secret encouragement in these tactics, though its own internal dissensions prevented it from offering any effective aid. the tanite dynasty was in its death-throes. psamuti, the last of its kings, exercised a dubious sovereignty over but a few of the nomes on the arabian frontier.* * he is the psammous mentioned by manetho. the cartouches attributed to him by lepsius really belong to the psammuthis of the xxixth dynasty. it is possible that one of the marks found at karnak indicating the level of the nile belong to the reign of this monarch. his neighbours the saites were gradually gaining the upper hand in the delta and in the fiefs of middle egypt, at first under tafnakhti, and then, after his death, under his son bukunirînif, bocchoris of the greek historians. they held supremacy over several personages who, like themselves, claimed the title and rank of pharaoh; amongst others, over a certain rudamanu mîamun, son of osorkon: their power did not, however, extend beyond siut, near the former frontier of the theban kingdom. the withdrawal of piônkhi-mîamun, and his subsequent death, had not disturbed the ethiopian rule in the southern half of egypt, though it somewhat altered its character. while an unknown ethiopian king filled the place of the conquerer at napata, another ethiopian, named kashta, made his way to the throne in thebes. [illustration: 322.jpg manuscript on papyrus in hieroglyphics] it is possible that he was a son of piônkhi, and may have been placed in supreme power by his father when the latter reinstated the city in its place as capital. with all their partiality for real or supposed descendants of the ramesside dynasty, the thebans were, before all things, proud of their former greatness, and eagerly hoped to regain it without delay. when, therefore, they accepted this kushite king who, to their eyes, represented the only family possessed of a legitimate claim to the throne, it was mainly because they counted on him to restore them to their former place among the cities of egypt. they must have been cruelly disappointed when he left them for the sacred mountain. his invasion, far from reviving their prosperity, merely served to ratify the suppression of that pontificate of amon-râ which was the last remaining evidence of their past splendour. [illustration: 323.jpg cone bearing the name of kashta and of his daughter amenertas] drawn by faucher-gudin, after prisse d�avennes. all hope of re-establishing it had now to be abandoned, since the sovereign who had come to them from napata was himself by birth and hereditary privelege and hereditary sole priest of anion: in his absence the actual head of the theban religion could lay claim only to an inferior office, and indeed, even then, the only reason for accepting a second prophet was that he might direct the worship of the temple at karnak. the force of circumstances compelled the ethiopians to countenance in the thebaid what their tanite or bubastite predecessors had been obliged to tolerate at hermopolis, heracleopolis, sais, and in many another lesser city; they turned it into a feudatory kingdom, and gave it a ruler who, like auîti, half a century earlier, had the right to use the cartouches. once installed, kashta employed the usual methods to secure his seat on the throne, one of the first being a marriage alliance. the disappearance of the high priests had naturally increased the importance of the princesses consecrated to the service of amon. from henceforward they were the sole visible intermediaries between the god and his people, the privileged guardians of his body and his double, and competent to perpetuate the line of the solar kings. the theban appanage constituted their dowry, and even if their sex prevented them from discharging all those civil, military, and religious duties required by their position, no one else had the right to do so on their behalf, unless he was expressly chosen by them for the purpose. when once married they deputed their husbands to act for them; so long as they remained either single or widows, some exalted personage, the prophet of amon or montu, the ruler of thebes, or the administrator of the said, managed their houses and fiefs for them with such show of authority that strangers were at times deceived, and took him for the reigning monarch of the country.* * thus harua, in the time of amenertas, was prince and chief over the servants of the �divine worshipper.� mantumihâit, in the time of taharqa and of tanuatamanu, was ruler of thebes, and fourth prophet of amon, and it is he who is described in the assyrian monuments as king of thebes. the pharaohs had, therefore, a stronger incentive than ever to secure exclusive possession of these women, and if they could not get all of them safely housed in their harems, they endeavoured, at any rate, to reserve for themselves the chief among them, who by purity of descent or seniority in age had attained the grade of _divine worshipper_. kashta married a certain shapenuapît, daughter of osorkon iii. and a theban pallacide;* it is uncertain whether he eventually became king over ethiopia and the sudan or not. so far, we have no proof that he did, but it seems quite possible when we remember that one of his children, shabaku (sabaco), subsequently occupied the throne of napata in addition to that of thebes. kashta does not appear to have possessed sufficient energy to prevent the delta and its nomes from repudiating the ethiopian supremacy. the saites, under tafnakhti or bocchoris, soon got the upper hand, and it was to them that the syrian vassals of nineveh looked for aid, when death removed the conqueror who had trampled them so ruthlessly underfoot. ever since the fall of arpad, hadrach, and damascus, shabaraîn, a town situated somewhere in the valley of the orontes or of the upper litany,** and hitherto but little known, had served as a rallying-point for the disaffected aramaean tribes: on the accession of shalmaneser v. it ventured to rebel, probably in 727 b.c., but was overthrown and destroyed, its inhabitants being led away captive. * it may be that, in accordance with a custom which obtained during the generations that followed, and which possibly originated about this period, this daughter of osorkon iii. was only the adoptive mother of amenertas. ** shabaraîn was originally confounded with samaria by the early commentators on the babylonian chronicle. halévy, very happily, referred it to the biblical sepharvaîm, a place always mentioned in connection with hamath and arpad (2 kings xvii. 24, 31; xviii. 34; xix. 13: cf. isa. xxxvi. 19; xxxvii. 13), and to the sibraim of ezekiel (xlvii. 16), called in the _septuagint_ samarêim. its identification with samaria has, since then, been generally rejected, and its connection with sibraim admitted. sibraim (or sepharvaîm, or samarêîm) has been located at shomerîyeh, to the east of the bahr-kades, and south of hamath. this achievement proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that in spite of their change of rulers the vengeance of the assyrians was as keen and sharp as ever. not one of the syrian towns dared to stir, and the phonician seaports, though their loyalty had seemed, for a moment, doubtful, took care to avoid any action which might expose them to the terrors of a like severity.* the israelites and philistines, alone of the western peoples, could not resign themselves to a prudent policy; after a short period of hesitation they drew the sword from its scabbard, and in 725 war broke out.** * the siege of tyre, which the historian menander, in a passage quoted by josephus, places in the reign of shalmaneser, ought really to be referred to the reign of sennacherib, or the fragment of menander must be divided into three parts dealing with three different assyrian campaigns against tyre, under tiglath-pileser, sennacherib, and esarhaddon respectively. ** the war cannot have begun earlier, for the _eponym canon_, in dealing with 726, has the words �in the country,� thus proving that no expedition took place in that year; in the case of the year 725, on the other hand, it refers to a campaign against some country whose name has disappeared. the passages in the _book of kings_ (2 kings xvii. 1-6, and xviii. 9-12) which deal with the close of the kingdom of israel, have been interpreted in such a way as to give us two campaigns by shalmaneser against hoshea: (1) hoshea having failed to pay the tribute imposed upon him by tiglath-pileser, shalmaneser made war upon him and compelled him to resume its payment (2 kings xvii. 1-3); (2) hoshea having intrigued with egypt, and declined to pay tribute, shalmaneser again took the field against him, made him prisoner, and besieged samaria for three years (2 kings xvii. 4-6; xviii. 9-12). the first expedition must, in this case, have taken place in 727, while the second must have lasted from 725-722. most modern historians believe that the hebrew writer has ascribed to shalmaneser the subjection of hoshea which was really the act of tiglath-pileser, as well as the final war against israel. according to winckler, the two portions of the narrative must have been borrowed from two different versions of the final war, which the final editor inserted one after the other, heedless of the contradictions contained in them. hoshea, who had ascended the throne with the consent of tiglath-pileser, was unable to keep them quiet. the whole of galilee and gilead was now an assyrian province, subject to the governor of damascus; jerusalem, moab, ammon, and the bedâwin had transferred their allegiance to nineveh; and israel, with merely the central tribes of ephraim, manasseh, and benjamin left, was now barely equal in area and population to judah. their tribute weighed heavily on the israelites; passing armies had laid waste their fields, and townsmen, merchants, and nobles alike, deprived of their customary resources, fretted with impatience under the burdens and humiliations imposed on them by their defeat; convinced of their helplessness, they again looked beyond their own borders for some nation or individual who should restore to them their lost prosperity. amid the tottering fortunes of their neighbours, egypt alone stood erect, and it was, therefore, to egypt that they turned their eyes. negotiations were opened, not with pharaoh himself, but with shabi, one of the petty kings on the eastern frontier of the delta, whose position made him better qualified than any other to deal with syrian affairs.* * this individual is called sua, seveh, and so in the hebrew text (2 kings xvii. 4), and the septuagint gives the transliteration sebek side by side with sêgôs. he is found again under the forms shibahi, shabi, shabé, in sargon�s inscriptions. hannon of gaza had by this time returned from exile, and it was, doubtless, owing to shabi�s support that he had been able to drive out the assyrian generals and recover his crown.* the israelite aristocracy was led away by his example, but shalmaneser hastened to the spot before the egyptian bowmen had time to cross the isthmus. hoshea begged for mercy, and was deported into assyria and condemned to lifelong imprisonment.** though deserted by her king, samaria did not despair; she refused to open her gates, and, being strongly fortified, compelled the assyrians to lay regular siege to the city. it would seem that at one moment, at the beginning of operations, when it was rumoured on all sides that pharaoh would speedily intervene, ahaz began to fear for his own personal safety, and seriously considered whether it would not be wiser to join forces with israel or with egypt.*** * this seems to be the inference from sargon�s inscription, in which he is referred to as relying on the army of shabi, the _tartan_ of egypt. ** 2 kings xvii. 4. *** the _second book of kings_ (xviii. 9,10; cf. xvii. 6) places the beginning of the siege of samaria in the seventh year of hoshea ( = fourth year of hezekiah), and the capture of the town in the ninth year of hoshea ( = sixth year of hezekiah); further on it adds that sennacherib�s campaign against hezekiah took place in the fourteenth year of the latter�s reign (2 kings xviii. 13; cf. isa. xxxvi. 1). now, sennacherib�s campaign against hezekiah took place (as will be shown later on, in vol. viii. chapter i.) in 702 b.c., and samaria was captured in 722. the synchronisms in the hebrew narrative are therefore fictitious, and rest on no real historical basis--at any rate, in so far as the king who occupied the throne of judah at the time of the fall of samaria is concerned; ahaz was still alive at that date, and continued to reign till 716 or 715, or perhaps only till 720. [illustration: 328.jpg the sword dance] after painting by gerome the rapid sequence of events, however, backed by the counsel of isaiah, speedily recalled him to a more reasonable view of the situation. the prophet showed him samaria spread out before him like one of those wreaths of flowers which the guests at a banquet bind round their brows, and which gradually fade as their wearers drink deeper and deeper. �woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with wine. behold, the lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, shall be cast down to the earth with violence. the crown of the pride of the drunkards of ephraim shall be trodden underfoot, and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.� while the cruel fate of the perverse city was being thus accomplished, jahveh sabaoth was to be a crown of glory to those of his children who remained faithful to him; but judah, far from submitting itself to his laws, betrayed him even as israel had done. its prophets and priests were likewise distraught with drunkenness; they staggered under the effects of their potations, and turned to scorn the true prophet sent to proclaim to them the will of jehovah. �whom,� they stammered between their hiccups--�whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to understand the message? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts? for it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little!� and sure enough it was by the mouth of a stammering people, by the lips of the assyrians, that jahveh was to speak to them. in vain did the prophet implore them: �this is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary;� they did not listen to him, and now jahveh turns their own gibes against them: �precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little,�--�that they may go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and taken.� there was to be no hope of safety for jerusalem unless it gave up all dependence on human counsels, and trusted solely to god for protection.* * isa. xxviii. giesebrecht has given it as his opinion that only verses 1-6, 23-29 of the prophecy were delivered at this epoch: the remainder he believes to have been written during sennacherib�s campaign against judah, and suggests that the prophet added on his previous oracle to them, thus diverting it from its original application. others, such as stade and wellhausen, regard the opening verses as embodying a mere rhetorical figure. jerusalem, they say, appeared to the prophet as though changed into samaria, and it is this transformed city which he calls �the crown of pride of the drunkards of ephraim.� samaria was doomed; this was the general belief, and men went about repeating it after isaiah, each in his own words; every one feared lest the disaster should spread to judah also, and that jahveh, having once determined to have done with the northern kingdom, would turn his wrath against that of the south as well. micah the morashtite, a prophet born among the ranks of the middle class, went up and down the land proclaiming misery to be the common lot of the two sister nations sprung from the loins of jacob, as a punishment for their common errors and weaknesses. �the lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come and tread upon the high places of the earth. and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place. for the transgression of jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of israel. what is the transgression of jacob? is it not samaria? and what are the high places of judah? are they not jerusalem?� the doom pronounced against samaria was already being carried out, and soon the hapless city was to be no more than �an heap of the field, and as the plantings of a vineyard; and i will pour down the stones thereof into the valley,� saith the lord, �and i will discover the foundations thereof. and all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will i lay desolate; for of the hire of an harlot hath she gathered them, and into the hire of an harlot shall they return.� yet, even while mourning over samaria, the prophet cannot refrain from thinking of his own people, for the terrible blow which had fallen on israel �is come even unto judah; it reacheth unto the gate of my people, even to jerusalem.� doubtless the assyrian generals kept a watchful eye upon ahaz during the whole time of the siege, from 724 to 722, and when once the first heat of enthusiasm had cooled, the presence of so formidable an army within striking distance must have greatly helped the king to restrain the ill-advised tendencies of some of his subjects. samaria still held out when shalmaneser died at babylon in the month of tebeth, 722. whether he had no son of fit age to succeed him, or whether a revolution, similar to that which had helped to place tiglath-pileser on the throne, broke out as soon as he had drawn his last breath, is not quite clear. at any rate, sargon, an officer who had served under him, was proclaimed king on the 22nd day of tebeth, and his election was approved by the whole of assyria. after some days of hesitation, babylon declined to recognise him, and took the oath of allegiance to a kaldu named marduk-abalidinna, or merodach-baladan. while these events were taking place in the heart of the empire, samaria succumbed; perhaps to famine, but more probably to force. it was sacked and dismantled, and the bulk of its population, amounting to 27,280 souls, were carried away into mesopotamia and distributed along the balîkh, the khabur, the banks of the river of gozân, and among the towns of the median frontier.* * sargon does not mention where he deported the israelites to, but we learn this from the _second book of kings_ (xvii. 6; xviii. 11). there has been much controversy as to whether samaria was taken by shalmanoser, as the hebrew chronicler seems to believe (2 kings xvii. 3-6; xviii. 9, 10), or by sargon, as the assyrian scribes assure us. at first, several scholars suggested a solution of the difficulty by arguing that shalmaneser and sargon were one and the same person; afterwards the theory took shape that samaria was really captured in the reign of shalmaneser, but by sargon, who was in command of the besieging army at the time, and who transferred this achievement, of which he was naturally proud, to the beginning of his own reign. the simplest course seems to be to accept for the present the testimony of contemporary documents, and place the fall of samaria at the beginning of the reign of sargon, being the time indicated by sargon in his inscriptions. sargon made the whole territory into a province; an assyrian governor was installed in the palace of the kings of israel, and soon the altars of the strange gods smoked triumphantly by the side of the altars of jahveh (722 b.c.).* * kings xvii. 24-41, a passage to which i shall have occasion to refer farther on in the present volume. the following is a list of the kings of israel, after the division of the tribes:-[illustration: 333.jpg table of kings of israel] [in this table father and son are shown by a perpendicular line. the king�s name in italics signifies that he died a violent death.--tr.] thus fell samaria, and with samaria the kingdom of israel, and with israel the last of the states which had aspired, with some prospect of success, to rule over syria. they had risen one after another during the four centuries in which the absence of the stranger had left them masters of their own fate--the hittites in the north, the hebrews and the philistines in the south, and the aramæans and damascus in the centre; each one of these races had enjoyed its years of glory and ambition in the course of which it had seemed to prevail over its rivals. then those whose territory lay at the extremities began to feel the disadvantages of their isolated position, and after one or two victories gave up all hope of ever establishing a supremacy over the whole country. the hittite sphere of influence never at any time extended much further southwards than the sources of the orontes, while that of the hebrews in their palmiest days cannot have gone beyond the vicinity of hamath. and even progress thus far had cost both hebrews and hittites a struggle so exhausting that they could not long maintain it. no sooner did they relax their efforts, than those portions of coele-syria which they had annexed to their original territory, being too remote from the seat of power to feel its full attraction, gradually detached themselves and resumed their independence, their temporary suzerains being too much exhausted by the intensity of their own exertions to retain hold over them. damascus, which lay almost in the centre, at an equal distance from the euphrates and the �river of egypt,� could have desired no better position for grouping the rest of syria round her. [illustration: 334.jpg sargon of assyria and his vizier] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by flandin. if any city had a chance of establishing a single kingdom, it was damascus, and damascus alone. but lulled to blissful slumbers in her shady gardens, she did not awake to political life and to the desire of conquest until after all the rest, and at the very moment when nineveh was beginning to recover from her early reverses. both ben-hadads had had a free hand given them during the half-century which followed, and they had taken advantage of this respite to reduce coele-syria, the lebanon, arvadian phoenicia, hamath, and the hebrews--in fact, two-thirds of the whole country--to subjection, and to organise that league of the twelve kings which reckoned ahab of israel among its leaders. this rudimentary kingdom had scarcely come into existence, and its members had not yet properly combined, when shalmaneser iii. arose and launched his bands of veterans against them; it however successfully withstood the shock, and its stubborn resistance at the beginning of the struggle shows us what it might have done, had its founders been allowed time in which to weld together the various elements at their disposal. as it was, it was doomed to succumb--not so much to the superiority of the enemy as to the insubordination of its vassals and its own internal discords. the league of the twelve kings did not survive ben-hadad ii.; hazael and his successors wore themselves out in repelling the attacks of the assyrians and in repressing the revolts of israel; when tiglath-pileser iii. arrived on the scene, both princes and people, alike at damascus and samaria, were so spent that even their final alliance could not save them from defeat. its lack of geographical unity and political combination had once more doomed syria to the servitude of alien rule; the assyrians, with methodical procedure, first conquered and then made vassals of all those states against which they might have hurled their battalions in vain, had not fortune kept them divided instead of uniting them in a compact mass under the sway of a single ruler. from carchemish to arpad, from hamath to damascus and samaria, their irresistible advance had led the assyrians on towards egypt, the only other power which still rivalled their prestige in the eyes of the world; and now, at gaza, on the frontier between africa and asia, as in days gone by on the banks of the euphrates or the balîkh, these two powers waited face to face, hand on hilt, each ready to stake the empire of the asiatic world on a single throw of the dice. [illustration: 336.jpg tailpiece] chapter iii--sargon of assyria (722-705 b.c.) _sargon as a warrior and as a builder._ _the origin of sargon ii.: the revolt of babylon, merodach-baladan and elam--the kingdom of elam from the time of the first babylonian empire; the conquest�s of shutruh-nalkunta i.; the princes of malamîr--the first encounter of assyria and elam, the battle of durilu (721 b.c.)--revolt of syria, iaubîdi of hamath and hannon of gaza--bocchoris and the xxivth egyptian dynasty; the first encounter of assyria with egypt, the battle of raphia (720 b.c.)._ _urartu and the coalition of the peoples of the north-east and north-west--defeat of zikartu (719 b.c.), of the tabal (718), of the khâti (717), of the mannai, of the medes and ellipi (716), and of the modes (715)--commencement of xxvth ethiopian dynasty: sabaco (716)-the fall of urzana and rusas (714) and the formation of an assyrian province in cappadocia (713-710)--the revolt and fall of ashdod._ _the defeat of merodach-baladan and of shutruk-nakhunta ii.: sargon conquers babylon (710-709 b.c.)--success of the assyrians at mushhi: homage of the greeks of cyprus (710)--the buildings of sargon: dur-sharrukîn--the gates and walls of dur-sharrukîn; the city and its population--the royal palace, its courts, the ziggurât, the harem--revolt of kummukh (709 b.c.) and of ellipi (708 b.c.)--inauguration of dur-sharrukîn (706 b.c.)--murder of sargon (705 b.c.): his character._ [illustration: 339.jpg page image] chapter iii--sargon of assyria (722-705 b.c.) _sargon as a warrior and as a builder._ whether sargon was even remotely connected with the royal line, is a question which for the present must remain unanswered. he mentions in one of his inscriptions the three hundred princes who had preceded him in the government of assyria, and three lines further on he refers to the kings his ancestors, but he never mentions his own father by name, and this omission seems to prove that he was not a direct descendant of shalmaneser v., nor of tiglath-pileser iii. nor indeed of any of their immediate predecessors. it is, however, probable, if not certain, that he could claim some sort of kinship with them, though more or less remote. it was customary for the sovereigns of nineveh to give their daughters in marriage to important officials or lords of their court, and owing to the constant contraction of such alliances through several centuries, there was hardly a noble family but had some royal blood in its veins; and that of sargon was probably no exception to the rule. his genealogy was traced by the chroniclers, through several hundred generations of princes, to the semi-mythical heroes who had founded the city of assur; but as assur-nazir-pal and his descendants had claimed bel-kapkapi and sulili as the founders of their race, the sargonids chose a different tradition, and drew their descent from belbâni, son of adasi. the cause and incidents of the revolution which raised sargon to the throne are unknown, but we may surmise that the policy adopted with regard to karduniash was a factor in the case. tiglath-pileser had hardly entered babylon before the fascination of the city, the charm of its associations, and the sacred character of the legends which hallowed it, seized upon his imagination; he returned to it twice in the space of two years to �take the hands of bel,� and shalmaneser v. much preferred it to calah or nineveh as a place of residence. the assyrians doubtless soon became jealous of the favour shown by their princes to their ancient enemy, and their discontent must have doubtless conduced to their decision to raise a new monarch to the throne. the babylonians, on the other hand, seem to have realised that the change in the dynasty presaged a disadvantageous alteration of government; for as soon as the news reached them a movement was set on foot and search made for a rival claimant to set up in opposition to sargon.* * the succession of events, as indicated in _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, seems indeed to imply that the babylonians waited to ascertain the disposition of the new king before they decided what line to adopt. in fact, shalmaneser died in the month tebeth, and sargon ascended the throne at assur in the same month, and it was only in the month nisân that mero-dach-baladan was proclaimed king. the three months intervening between the accession of sargon and that of merodach-baladan evidently represent a period of indecision., when it was not yet known if the king would follow the policy of his predecessors with regard to babylon, or adopt a different attitude towards her. of all the nations who had in turn occupied the plains of the lower euphrates and the marshes bordering on arabia, the kaldâ alone had retained their full vitality. they were constantly recruited by immigrants from their kinsfolk of the desert, and the continual infiltration of these semi-barbarous elements kept the race from becoming enervated by contact with the indigenous population, and more than compensated for the losses in their ranks occasioned by war. the invasion of tiglath-pileser and the consequent deportations of prisoners had decimated the tribes of bît-shilâni, bît-shaali, and bît-amuhkâni, the principalities of the kaldâ which lay nearest to babylonian territory, and which had borne the brunt of attack in the preceding period; but their weakness brought into notice a power better equipped for warfare, whose situation in their rear had as a rule hitherto preserved it from contact with the assyrians, namely, bît-yakîn. the continual deposit of alluvial soil at the mouths of the rivers had greatly altered the coastline from the earliest historic times downwards. the ancient estuary was partly filled up, especially on the western side, where the euphrates enters the persian gulf: a narrow barrier of sand and silt extended between the marshes of arabia and susiana, at the spot where the streams of fresh water met the tidal waters of the sea, and all that was left of the ancient gulf was a vast lagoon, or, as the dwellers on the banks called it, a kind of brackish river, _nâr marratum_. bît-yakîn occupied the southern and western portions of this district, from the mouth of the tigris to the edge of the desert. the aspect of the country was constantly changing, and presented no distinctive features; it was a region difficult to attack and easy to defend; it consisted first of a spongy plain, saturated with water, with scattered artificial mounds on which stood the clustered huts of the villages; between this plain and the shore stretched a labyrinth of fens and peat-bogs, irregularly divided by canals and channels freshly formed each year in flood-time, meres strewn with floating islets, immense reed-beds where the neighbouring peasants took refuge from attack, and into which no one would venture to penetrate without hiring some friendly native as a guide. in this fenland dwelt the kaldâ in their low, small conical huts of reeds, somewhat resembling giant beehives, and in all respects similar to those which the bedawin of irak inhabit at the present day. [illustration: 343.jpg assyrian soldiers pursuing kalda refugees in a bed of reeds] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief reproduced in layard. dur-yakîn, their capital, was probably situated on the borders of the gulf, near the euphrates, in such a position as to command the mouths of the river. merodach-baladan, who was king of bît-yakîn at the time of sargon�s accession, had become subject to assyria in 729 b.c., and had paid tribute to tiglath-pileser, but he was nevertheless the most powerful chieftain who had borne rule over the chaldæans since the death of ukînzîr.* * dur-yakîn was situated on the shores of the persian gulf, as is proved by a passage in the _bull inscription_, where it is stated that sargon threw into the sea the corpses of the soldiers killed during the siege; the neighbourhood of the euphrates is implied in the text of the _inscription des fastes_, and the _annals_, where the measures taken by merodach-baladan to defend his capital are described. the name of bît-yakîn, and probably also that of dur-yakin, have been preserved to us in the name of aginis or aginnê, the name of a city mentioned by strabo, and by the historians of alexander. its site is uncertain, but can be located near the present town of kornah. it was this prince whom the babylonians chose to succeed shalmaneser v. he presented himself before the city, was received with acclamation, and prepared without delay to repulse any hostilities on the part of the assyrians. [illustration: 344.jpg a reed-hut of the bedawin of irak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph in peters. he found a well-disposed ally in elani. from very ancient times the masters of susa had aspired to the possession of mesopotamia or the suzerainty over it, and fortune had several times favoured their ambitious designs. on one occasion they had pressed forward their victorious arms as far as the mediterranean, and from that time forward, though the theatre of their operations was more restricted, they had never renounced the right to interfere in babylonian affairs, and indeed, not long previously, one of them had reigned for a period of seven years in babylon in the interval between two dynasties. our information with regard to the order of succession and the history of these energetic and warlike monarchs is as yet very scanty; their names even are for the most part lost, and only approximate dates can be assigned to those of whom we catch glimpses from time to time.* khumban-numena, the earliest of whom we have any record, exercised a doubtful authority, from anshân to susa, somewhere about the fourteenth century b.c., and built a temple to the god kirisha in his capital, liyan.** * these names are in the majority of cases found written on stamped and baked bricks. they were first compared with the names contained in the annals of sargon and his successors, and assimilated to those of the princes who were contemporary with sennacherib and assur-bani-pal; then they were referred to the time of the great elamite empire, and one of them was identified with that kudur-nakhunta who had pillaged uruk 1635 years before assur-bani-pal. finally, they were brought down again to an intermediate period, more precisely, to the fourteenth or thirteenth century b.c. this last date appears to be justified, at least as the highest permissible, by the mention of durkurigalzu, in a text of undasgal. ** jensen was the first to recognise that liyan was a place name, and the inscriptions of shilkhak-inshusinak add that liyan was the capital of the kingdom; perhaps it was the name of a part of susa. khumban-numena has left us no monuments of his own, but he is mentioned on those of his son. his son undasgal carried on the works begun by his father, but that is all the information the inscriptions afford concerning him, and the mist of oblivion which for a moment lifted and allowed us to discern dimly the outlines of this sovereign, closes in again and hides everything from our view for the succeeding forty or fifty years. [illustration: 346.jpg brick bearing the name of the susian king shilkhak-inshushinak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by marcel dieulafoy. about the thirteenth century a gleam once more pierces the darkness, and a race of warlike and pious kings emerges into view--khalludush-in-shushinak, his son shutruk-nakhunta, the latter�s two sons, kutur-nakhunta and shilkhak-inshu-shinak,* and then perhaps a certain kutir-khuban. * the order of succession of these princes is proved by the genealogies with which their bricks are covered. jensen has shown that we ought to read khalludush-inshushinak and shilkhak-inshushinak, instead of the shorter forms khalludush and shilkhak read previously. the inscriptions on their bricks boast of their power, their piety, and their inexhaustible wealth. one after another they repaired and enlarged the temple built by khumban-numena at liyan, erected sanctuaries and palaces at susa, fortified their royal citadel, and ruled over habardîp and the cossæans as well as over anshân and elam. they vigorously contested the possession of the countries on the right bank of the tigris with the babylonians, and shutruk-nakhunta even succeeded in conquering babylon itself. he deprived zamâmâ-shumiddin, the last but one of the cossæan kings, of his sceptre and his life, placed his own son kutur-nakhunta on the throne, and when the vanquished babylonians set up bel-nadinshumu as a rival sovereign, he laid waste karduniash with fire and sword. after the death of bel-nadinshumu, the pashê princes continued to offer resistance, but at first without success. shutruk-nakhunta had taken away from the temple of esagilla the famous statue of bel-merodach, whose hands had to be taken by each newly elected king of babylon, and had carried it off in his waggons to elam, together with much spoil from the cities on the euphrates.* * the name of the king is destroyed on the babylonian document, but the mention of kutur-nakhunta as his son obliges us, till further information comes to light, to recognise in him the shutruk-nakhunta of the bricks of susa, who also had a son kutur-nakhunta. this would confirm the restoration of shutruk-nakhunta as the name of a sovereign who boasts, in a mutilated inscription, that he had pushed his victories as far as the tigris, and even up to the euphrates. nebuchadrezzar i. brought the statue back to babylon after many vicissitudes, and at the same time recovered most of his lost provinces, but he had to leave at susa the bulk of the trophies which had been collected there in course of the successful wars. one of these represented the ancient hero naram-sin standing, mace in hand, on the summit of a hill, while his soldiers forced their way up the slopes, driving before them the routed hosfcs of susa. shutruk-nakhunta left the figures and names untouched, but carved in one corner of the bas-relief a dedicatory inscription, transforming this ancient proof of babylonian victories over elam into a trophy of blamite victories over babylon. [illustration: 348.jpg bas-relief of nakam-sin, tkansported to susa by shutkuk-nakhunta] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. his descendants would assuredly have brought mesopotamia into lasting subjection, had not the feudal organisation of their empire tolerated the existence of contemporary local dynasties, the members of which often disputed the supreme authority with the rightful king. the dynasty which ruled habardîp* seems to have had its seat of government at tarrisha in the, valley of malamîr.** * the prince represented on the bas-reliefs gives himself the title apirra, the name of apîr, apirti, or habardîp. ** tarrisha is the name of a town, doubtless the capital of the fief of malamîr; it is probably represented by the considerable ruins which layard identified as the remains of the sassanid city of aidej. three hundred figures carved singly or in groups on the rocks of kul-firaun portray its princes and their ministers in every posture of adoration, but most of them have no accompanying inscription. one large bas relief, however, forms an exception, and from its legend we learn the name of khanni, son of takhkhi-khîkhutur.* * the name of khanni has been explained by sayce as _the desirable_, and that of his father, takhkhi-khîkhutur, as _help this thy servant_. [illustration: 349.jpg the great rock bas-relief of malamîr] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by babin and houssay. this prince, even if possessed of no royal protocol, was none the less a powerful and wealthy personage. his figure dominates the picture, the central space of which it completely fills;* his expression is calm, but somewhat severe. his head is covered by a low cap, from which long locks escape and flow over his shoulders; the hair on his face is symmetrically curled above the level of his mouth, and terminates in a pointed beard. the figure is clothed from head to foot in a stiff robe and mantle adorned with tufted fringes, and borders of embroidered rosettes; a girdle at the waist completes the misleading resemblance to the gala-dress of a nine vite, monarch. the hands are crossed on the breast in an attitude of contemplation, while the prince gazes thoughtfully at a sacrifice which is being offered on his behalf. at the bottom of the picture stands a small altar, behind which a priest in a short tunic seems to be accomplishing some cérémonial rite, while two men are cutting the throat of a ram. higher up the heads of three rams lie beside their headless trunks, which are resting on the ground, feet in the air, while a servant brandishes a short sword with which he is about to decapitate the fourth beast. above these, again, three musicians march in procession, one playing on a harp, another on a five-stringed lyre, and the third on a tambourine. an attendant holding a bow, and the minister shutsururazi, stand quietly waiting till the sacrifice is accomplished. the long text which runs across several of the figures is doubtless a prayer, and contains the names of peoples and princes mingled with those of deities. * perrot and chipiez, misled by the analogy of the hittite bas-relief at ibriz, took the largest figure for the image of a god. the inscription engraved on the robe, _u khanni shak takkhi-khikutur_, �i am khanni, son of takhkhi khîkhutur,� leaves no doubt that the figure represents the prince himself, and not a divinity. the memory of these provincial chiefs would be revived, and more of their monuments discovered, if the mountains and inaccessible valleys of ancient elam could be thoroughly explored: it is evident, from the small portion of their history which has been brought to light, that they must have been great sources of trouble to the dynasties which reigned in susa, and that their revolts must often have jeopardised the safety of the empire, in spite of the assistance afforded by the aramæans from the tenth or eleventh centuries onwards. all the semi-nomadic tribes which densely peopled the banks of the tigris, and whose advance towards the north had been temporarily favoured by the weakness of assyria--the gambulu, the pukudu, the eutu, and the itua--had a natural tendency to join forces with elam for the purpose of raiding the wealthy cities of chaldæa, and this alliance, or subjection, as it might be more properly termed, always insured them against any reprisals on the part of their victims. the unknown king who dwelt at susa in 745 b.c. committed the error of allowing tiglath-pileser to crush these allies. khumban-igash, who succeeded this misguided monarch in 742 b.c., did not take up arms to defend bit-amuk-kâni and the other states of the kaldâ from 731 to 729, but experience must have taught him that he had made a mistake in remaining an unmoved spectator of their misfortunes; for when merodach-baladan, in quest of allies, applied to him, he unhesitatingly promised him his support.* * the date of his accession is furnished by the passage in _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, where it is stated that he ascended the throne of elam in the fifth year of nabonazir. the assyrian and babylonian scribes assimilated the susian _b_ to the _m_, and also suppressed the initial aspirate of the elamite name, writing generally umman-igash for khumban igash. assyria and elam had hitherto seldom encountered one another on the field of battle. a wide barrier of semi-barbarous states had for a long time held them apart, and they would have had to cross the territory of the babylonians or the cossæans before coming into contact with each other. tiglath-pileser i., however, had come into conflict with the northern districts of elam towards the end of the twelfth century b.c., and more recently the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal, shalmaneser iii., and rammân-nirâri had frequently brought these sovereigns into contact with tribes under the influence of susa; but the wildness and poverty of the country, and the difficulties it offered to the manoeuvres of large armies, had always prevented the assyrian generals from advancing far into its mountainous regions.* the annexation of aramæan territory beyond the tigris, and the conquest of babylon by tiglath-pileser iii., at length broke through the barrier and brought the two powers face to face at a point where they could come into conflict without being impeded by almost insurmountable natural obstacles, namely, in the plains of the umliash and the united basins of the lower ulai and the uknu. ten years� experience had probably sufficed to convince khumban-igash of the dangers to which the neighbourhood of the assyrians exposed his subjects. the vigilant watch which the new-comers kept over their frontier rendered raiding less easy; and if one of the border chieftains were inclined to harry, as of old, an unlucky babylonian or cossæan village, he ran the risk of an encounter with a well-armed force, or of being plundered in turn by way of reprisal. * sargon declares distinctly that merodach-baladan had invoked the aid of khumban-igash. an irregular but abundant source of revenue was thus curtailed, without taking into consideration the wars to which such incidents must perforce lead sooner or later. even unaided the elamites considered themselves capable of repelling any attack; allied with the babylonians or the kaldâ, they felt certain of victory in any circumstances. sargon realised this fact almost as fully as did the elamites themselves; as soon, therefore, as his spies had forewarned him that an invasion was imminent, he resolved to take the initiative and crush his enemies singly before they succeeded in uniting their forces. khumban-igash had advanced as far as the walls of durîlu, a stronghold which commanded the umliash, and he there awaited the advent of his allies before laying siege to the town: it was, however, the assyrian army which came to meet him and offered him battle. the conflict was a sanguinary one, as became an engagement between such valiant foes, and both sides claimed the victory. the assyrians maintained then-ground, forcing the elamites to evacuate their positions, and tarried some weeks longer to chastise those of their aramæan subjects who had made common cause with the enemy: they carried away the tumuna, who had given up their sheikh into the hands of the emissaries of the kaldâ, and transported the whole tribe, without merodach-baladan making any attempt to save his allies, although his army had not as yet struck a single blow.* * the history of this first campaign against merodach baladan, which is found in a mutilated condition in the _annals of sargon_, exists nowhere else in a complete form, but the facts are very concisely referred to in the _fastes_ and in the _cylinders_. the general sequence of events is indicated by _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, but the author places them in 720 b.c., the second year of merodach baladan, contrary to the testimony of the _annals_, and attributes the victory to the elamites in the battle of durîlu, in deference to babylonian patriotism. the course of events after the battle of durflu seems to prove clearly that the assyrians remained masters of the field. having accomplished this act of vengeance, the assyrians suspended operations and returned to nineveh to repair their losses, probably intending to make a great effort to regain the whole of babylonia in the ensuing year. grave events which occurred elsewhere prevented them, however, from carrying this ambitious project into effect. the fame of their war against elam had spread abroad in the western provinces of the empire, and doubtless exaggerated accounts circulated with regard to the battle of durîlu had roused the spirit of dissatisfaction in the west. sargon had scarcely seated himself securely on a throne to which he was not the direct heir, when he was menaced by elam and repudiated by chaldæa, and it remained to be seen whether his resources would prove equal to maintaining the integrity of his empire, or whether the example set by merodach-baladan would not speedily be imitated by all who groaned under the assyrian yoke. since the decline of damascus and arpad, hamath had again taken a prominent place in northern syria: prompt submission had saved this city from destruction in the time of tiglath-pileser iii., and it had since prospered under the foreign rule; it was, therefore, on hamath that all hopes of deliverance still cherished by rulers and people now centred. a low-born fellow, a smith named iaubîdi, rose in rebellion against the prince of hamath for being mean-spirited enough to pay tribute, proclaimed himself king, and in the space of a few months revived under his own leadership the coalition which hadadezer and rezon ii. had formed in days gone by. arpad and bît-agusi, zimyra and northern phoenicia, damascus and its dependencies, all expelled their assyrian garrisons, and samaria, though still suffering from its overthrow, summoned up courage to rid itself of its governor. meanwhile, hannon of gaza, recently reinstated in his city by egyptian support, was carrying on negotiations with a view to persuading egypt to interfere in the affairs of syria. the last of the tanite pharaohs, psamuti, was just dead, and bocchoris, who had long been undisputed master of the delta, had now ventured to assume the diadem openly (722 b.c.), a usurpation which the ethiopians, fully engaged in the thebaid and on the upper nile, seemed to regard with equanimity. as soon as the petty kings and feudal lords had recognised his suzerainty, bocchoris «listened favourably to the entreaties of hannon, and promised to send an army to gaza under the command of his general shabê. sargon, threatened with the loss of the entire western half of his empire, desisted for a time from his designs on babylon, khumban-igash was wise enough to refrain from provoking an enemy who left him in peace, and merodach-baladan did not dare to enter the lists without the support of his confederate: the victory of durîlu, though it had not succeeded in gaining a province for nineveh, had at least secured the south-eastern frontier from attack, at all events for so long as it should please sargon to remain at a distance. [illustration: 356.jpg iaubîdi of hamath being flayed alive.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by flandin. the league formed by hamath had not much power of cohesion. iaubîdi had assembled his forces and the contingents of his allies at the town of qarqar as hadadezer had done before: he was completely defeated, taken prisoner, and flayed alive. his kingdom was annexed to the assyrian empire, qarqar was burnt to the ground, the fortifications of hamath were demolished, and the city obliged to furnish a force of two hundred charioteers and six hundred horsemen, probably recruited from among the families of the upper classes, to serve as hostages as well as auxiliaries. arpad, zimyra, damascus, samaria, all succumbed without serious opposition, and the citizens who had been most seriously compromised in the revolt paid for their disaffection with their lives. this success confirmed the neighbouring states of tyre, sidon, judah, ammon, and moab in their allegiance, which had shown signs of wavering since the commencement of hostilities; but gaza remained unsubdued, and caused the more uneasiness because it was perceived that behind her was arrayed all the majesty of the pharaoh. the egyptians, slow to bestir themselves, had not yet crossed the isthmus when the assyrians appeared beneath the walls of gaza: hannon, worsted in a preliminary skirmish, retreated on raphia, where shabê, the egyptian general, had at length arrived, and the decisive battle took place before this town. it was the first time that the archers and charioteers of the nile valley had measured forces with the pikemen and cavalry of that of the tigris; the engagement was hotly contested, but the generals and soldiers of bocchoris, fighting according to antiquated methods of warfare, gave way before the onset of the assyrian ranks, who were better equipped and better led. shabê fled �like a shepherd whose sheep had been stolen,� hannon was taken prisoner and loaded with chains, and raphia fell into the hands of the conqueror; the inhabitants who survived the sack of their city were driven into captivity to the number of 9033 men, with their flocks and household goods. the manifest superiority of assyria was evident from the first encounter, but the contest had been so fierce and the result so doubtful that sargon did not consider it prudent to press his advantage. he judged rightly that these troops, whom he had not dispersed without considerable effort, constituted merely an advanced guard. 4 egypt was not like the petty kingdoms of syria or asia minor, which had but one army apiece, and could not risk more than one pitched battle. though shabê�s force was routed, others would not fail to take its place and contend as fiercely for the possession of the country, and even if the assyrians should succeed in dislodging them and curbing the power of bocchoris, the fall of sais or memphis, far from putting an end to the war, would only raise fresh complications. above memphis stretched the valley of the nile, bristling with fortresses, khininsu, oxyrhynchus, hermopolis, siut, thinis, and thebes, the famous city of amon, enthroned on the banks of the river, whose very name still evoked in the minds of the asiatics a vivid remembrance of all its triumphal glories.* * thebes was at that time known among the semites by its popular name of _the city of amon_--which the hebrew writers transcribed as nô-amon (_nahum_ iii. 8) or nô alone (jer. xlvi. 25; ezek. xxx. 14, 15, 16), and the assyrians by ni. thebes itself formed merely one stage in the journey towards syene, ethiopia, napata, and the unknown regions of africa which popular imagination filled with barbarous races or savage monsters, and however far an alien army might penetrate in a southerly direction, it would still meet with the language, customs, and divinities of egypt--an egypt whose boundary seemed to recede as the invader advanced, and which was ever ready to oppose the enemy with fresh forces whenever its troops had suffered from his attacks. sargon, having reached kaphia, halted on the very threshold of the unexplored realm whose portals stood ajar ready to admit him: the same vague disquietude which had checked the conquering career of the pharaohs on the borders of asia now stayed his advance, and bade him turn back as he was on the point of entering africa. he had repulsed the threatened invasion, and as a result of his victory the princes and towns which had invoked the aid of the foreigner lay at his mercy; he proceeded, therefore, to reorganise the provinces of philistia and israel, and received the homage of judah and her dependencies. ahaz, while all the neighbouring states were in revolt, had not wavered in his allegiance; the pacific counsels of isaiah had once more prevailed over the influence of the party which looked for safety in an alliance with egypt.* * sargon probably alludes to homage received at this time, when he styles himself �the subduer of far-off judah.� it is not certain that ahaz was still king of judah; it was for a long time admitted that hezekiah was already king when these events took place, in accordance with 2 kings xviii. 9, 10, where it is stated that samaria was destroyed in the sixth year of hezekiah. i consider, in agreement with several historians, that the date of sennacherib�s invasion of judah must have remained more firmly fixed in the minds of the jewish historians than that of the taking of samaria, and as 2 kings xviii. 13 places this invasion in the fourteenth year of hezekiah, which corresponds, as we shall see, to the third year of sennacherib, or 702 b.c., it seems better to place the accession of hezekiah about 715, and prolong the reign of ahaz till after the campaign of sargon against hannon of gaza. the whole country from the orontes to the mountains of seir and the river of egypt was again reduced to obedience, and set itself by peaceful labours to repair the misfortunes which had befallen it during the previous quarter of a century. sargon returned to his capital, but fate did not yet allow him to renew his projects against babylon. barely did an insurrection break out in any part of the country on the accession of a new king at nineveh without awaking echoes in the distant provinces of the empire. the report of a revolt in chaldæa roused a slumbering dissatisfaction among the syrians, and finally led them into open rebellion: the episodes of the syrian campaign, narrated in armenia or on the slopes of the taurus with the thousand embellishments suggested by the rancour of the narrators, excited the minds of the inhabitants and soon rendered an outbreak inevitable. the danger would have been serious if the suppressed hatred of all had found vent at the same moment, and if insurrections in five or six different parts of his empire had to be faced by the sovereign simultaneously; but as a rule these local wars broke out without any concentrated plan, and in localities too remote from each other to permit of any possible co-operation between the assailants; each chief, before attempting to assert his independence, seemed to wait until the assyrians had had ample time to crush the rebel who first took the field, having done which they could turn the whole of their forces against the latest foe. thus iaubîdi did not risk a campaign till the fall of elam and karduniash had been already decided on the field of durilu; in the same way, the nations of the north and east refrained from entering the lists till they had allowed sargon time to destroy the league of hamath and repel the attack of bharaoh. they were secretly incited to rebellion by a power which played nearly the same part with regard to them that egypt had played in southern syria. urartu had received a serious rebuff in 735 b.c., and the burning of dhuspas had put an end to its ascendency, but the victory had been effected at the cost of so much bloodshed that tiglath-pileser was not inclined to risk losing the advantage already gained by pushing it too far: he withdrew, therefore, without concluding a treaty, and did not return, being convinced that no further hostilities would be attempted till the vanquished enemy had recovered from his defeat. he was justified in his anticipations, for sharduris died about 730, without having again taken up arms, and his son busas i. had left shalmaneser v. unmolested:* but the accession of sargon and the revolts which harassed him had awakened in busas the warlike instincts of his race, and the moment appeared advantageous for abandoning his policy of inactivity. * the name of this king is usually written ursa in the assyrian inscriptions, but the _annals of sargon_ give in each case the form rusa, in accordance with which sayce had already identified the assyrian form ursa or rusa with the form rusas found on some urartian monuments. belck and lehmann have discovered several monuments of this rusas i., son of sharduris. the remembrance of the successful exploits of menuas and argistis still lived in the minds of his people, and more than one of his generals had entered upon their military careers at a time when, from arpad and carchemish to the country of the medes, quite a third of the territory now annexed to assyria had been subject to the king of urartu; eusas, therefore, doubtless placed before himself the possibility of reconquering the lost provinces, and even winning, by a stroke of fortune, more than had been by a stroke of fortune wrested from his father. he began by intriguing with such princes as were weary of the assyrian rule, among the mannai, in zikartu,* among the tabal, and even among the khâti. * zikruti, zikirtu, zikartu, may probably be identified with the sagartians of herodotus. iranzu, who was at that time reigning over the mannai, refused to listen to the suggestions of his neighbour, but two of his towns, shuandakhul and durdukka, deserted him in 719 b.c., and ranged themselves under mitâtti, chief of the zikartu, while about the same time the strongholds of sukkia, bala, and abitikna, which were on the borders of urartu, broke the ties which had long bound them to assyria, and concluded a treaty of alliance with rusas. sargon was not deceived as to the meaning of these events, and at once realised that this movement was not one of those local agitations which broke out at intervals in one or other of his provinces. his officers and spies must have kept him informed of the machinations of eusas and of the revolutions which the migrations of the last thirty years had provoked among the peoples of the iranian table-land. a new race had arisen in their rear, that of the cimmerians and scythians, which, issuing in irresistible waves from the gorges of the caucasus, threatened to overwhelm the whole ancient world of the east. the stream, after a moment�s vacillation, took a westerly direction, and flooded asia minor from one end to the other. some tribes, however, which had detached themselves from the main movement sought an outlet towards the south-east, on to the rich plains of the araxes and the country around lake urumiah. the native races, pressed in the rear by these barbarians, and hemmed in on either side and in front by urartu and assyria, were forced into closer proximity, and, conscious of their individual weakness, had begun to form themselves into three distinct groups, varying considerably in compactness,--the medes in the south, misianda in the north, with zikartu between them. zikartu was at that time the best organised of these nascent states, and its king, mitâtti, was not deficient either in military talent or political sagacity. the people over whom he ruled were, moreover, impregnated with the civilisation of mesopotamia, and by constantly meeting the assyrians in battle they had adopted the general principles of their equipment, organisation, and military tactics. the vigour of his soldiers and the warlike ardour which inspired them rendered his armies formidable even to leaders as experienced, and warriors as hardened, as the officers and soldiers of nineveh. mitâtti had strongly garrisoned the two rebel cities, and trusted that if the assyrians were unable to recapture them without delay, other towns would not be long in following their example; iranzu would, no doubt, be expelled, his place would be taken by a hostile chief, and the mannai, joining hands with urartu on the right and zikartu on the left, would, with these two states, form a compact coalition, whose combined forces would menace the northern frontier of the empire from the zagros to the taurus. [illustration: 364.jpg taking of a castle in zikartu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by flandin. sargon, putting all the available assyrian forces into the field, hurled them against the rebels, and this display of power had the desired effect upon the neighbouring kingdoms: busas and mitâtti did not dare to interfere, the two cities were taken by assault, burnt and razed to the ground, and the inhabitants of the surrounding districts of sukkia, bala, and abitikna were driven into exile among the khâti. the next year, however, the war thus checked on the iranian table-land broke out in the north-west, in the mountains of cilicia. a tabal chief, kiakku of shinukhta, refused to pay his tribute (718). sargon seized him and destroyed his city; his family and adherents, 7500 persons in all, were carried away captives to assyria, and his principality was given to a rival chief, mattî of atuna, on a promise from the latter of an increased amount of tribute.* * the name of atuna is a variant of the name tuna, which is found in the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii., and tuna recalls the name of the old city of tyana, or that of tynna or tunna, near tyana, in the taurus. shinukhta, not far from atuna, must be the capital of a district situated on the karmalas or the saros, on the borders of cilicia or cataonia. in 717 b.c. more serious dangers openly declared themselves. the khâti had not forgotten that they had once been the allies of urartu, and that their king, pisiris, together with matîlu of agusi, had fought for sharduris against tiglath-pileser iii. pisiris conspired with mita, chief of the mushki, and proclaimed his independence; but vengeance swiftly and surely overtook him. he succumbed before his accomplice had time to come to his assistance, and was sent to join kiakku and his adherents in prison, while the districts which he had ruled were incorporated into assyrian territory, and carchemish became the seat of an assyrian prefect who ranked among the _limmi_ from whom successive years took their names. the fall of pisiris made no impression on his contemporaries. they had witnessed the collapse of so many great powers--elam, urartu, egypt--that the misfortunes of so insignificant a personage awakened but little interest; and yet with him foundered one of the most glorious wrecks of the ancient world. for more than a century the khâti had been the dominant power in north-western asia, and had successfully withstood the power of thebes; crushed by the peoples of the sea, hemmed in and encroached upon by the rising wave of aramæan invasion, they had yet disputed their territory step by step with the assyrian generals, and the area over which they spread can be traced by the monuments and inscriptions scattered over cilicia, lycaonia, cappadocia, and northern syria as far as the basins of the orontes and the litâny. so lasting had proved their influence on all around them, and so fresh was the memory of their greatness, that it would have seemed but natural that their vitality should survive this last blow, and that they should enjoy a prosperous future which should vie with their past. but events proved that their national life was dead, and that no recuperative power remained: as soon as sargon had overthrown their last prince, their tribes became merged in the general body of aramæans, and their very name ere long vanished from the pages of history. up to this time eusas had not directly interfered in these quarrels between the suzerain and his vassals: he may have incited the latter to revolt, but he had avoided compromising himself, and was waiting till the mannai had decided to make common cause with him before showing his hand openly. ever since the skirmish of the year 719, mitâtti had actively striven to tempt the mannai from their allegiance, but his intrigues had hitherto proved of no avail against the staunch fidelity first of irânzu and then of azâ, who had succeeded the latter about 718. at the beginning of the year 716 mitâtti was more successful; the mannai, seduced at length by his promises and those of eusas, assembled on mount uaush, murdered their king, and leaving his corpse unburied, hastened to place themselves under the command of bagadatti, regent of umildîsh. sargon hurried to the spot, seized bagadatti, and had him flayed alive on mount uaush, which had just witnessed the murder of azâ, and exposed the mass of bleeding flesh before the gaze of the people to demonstrate the fate reserved for his enemies. but though he had acted speedily he was too late, and the fate of their chief, far from discouraging his subjects, confirmed them in their rebellion. they had placed upon the throne ullusunu, the brother of azâ, and this prince had immediately concluded an alliance with eusas, mitâtti, and the people of andia; his example was soon followed by other eastern chiefs, assurlî of karallu and itti of allabria, whereupon, as the spirit of revolt spread from one to another, most of the districts lately laid under tribute by tiglath-pileser took up arms--niksama, bîtsagbati, bîtkhirmâmi, kilam-bâfci, armangu, and even the parts around kharkhar, and ellipi, with its reigning sovereign dalta. the general insurrection dreaded by sargon, and which eusas had for five years been fomenting, had, despite all the efforts of the assyrian government, at last broken out, and the whole frontier was ablaze from the borders of elam to those of the mushku. sargon turned his attention to where danger was most urgent; he made a descent on the territory of the mannai, and laid it waste �as a swarm of locusts might have done;� he burnt their capital, izirtu, demolished the fortifications of zibia and armaîd, and took ullusunu captive, but, instead of condemning him to death, he restored to him his liberty and his crown on condition of his paying a regular tribute. this act of clemency, in contrast with the pitiless severity shown at the beginning of the insurrection, instantly produced the good effects he expected: the mannai laid down their arms and swore allegiance to the conqueror, and their defection broke up the coalition. sargon did not give the revolted provinces time to recover from the dismay into which his first victories had thrown them, but marched rapidly to the south, and crushed them severally; commencing with andia, where he took 4200 prisoners with their cattle, he next attacked zikartu, whose king, mitâtti, took refuge in the mountains and thus escaped death at the hands of the executioner. assurlî of karalla had a similar fate to bagadatti, and was flayed alive. itti of allabria, with half of his subjects, was carried away to hamath. the towns of niksama and shurgadia were annexed to the province of parsuash. the town of kishîsim was reduced to ashes, and its king, belsharuzur, together with the treasures of his palace, was carried away to nineveh. kharkhar succumbed after a short siege, received a new population, and was henceforward known as kar-sharrukîn; dalta was restored to favour, and retained his dominion intact. never had so great a danger been so ably or so courageously averted. it was not without good reason that, after his victory over the mannai, sargon, instead of attacking busas, the most obstinate of his foes, turned against the medes. bllipi, parsuash, and kharkhar, comprising half the countries which had joined in the insurrection, were on the borders of elam or had frequent relations with that state, and it is impossible to conjecture what turn affairs might have taken had elam been induced to join their league, and had the elamite armies, in conjunction with those of merodach-baladan, unexpectedly fallen upon the assyrian rear by the valleys of the tigris or the turnât. [illustration: 369.jpg taking of the city of kishîsim by the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by plandin. the figures resembling stags� horns, which crown three of the upper towers, are tongues of flame, as was indicated by the red colouring which still remained on them when the bas relief was discovered. had the elamites, however, entertained a desire to mingle in the fray, the promptness with which sargon had re-established order must have given them cause to reflect and induced them to maintain their neutrality. the year which had opened so inauspiciously thus ended in victory, though the situation was still fraught with danger. the agitation which had originated in the east and northeast in 716 reached the north-west in 715, and spread as far as the borders of southern syria. rusas had employed the winter in secret negotiations with the mannai, and had won over one of their principal chiefs, a certain dayaukku, whose name seems to be identical with that which the greeks transliterated as deiokes.* * the identity of the name dayaukku with that of deiokes is admitted by all historians. as soon as spring had returned he entered the territory of ullusunu, and occupied twenty-two strongholds, which were probably betrayed into his hands by dayaukku. while this was taking place mita of mushki invaded cilicia, and the arab tribes of the idumsean desert--the thamudites, the ibadites, the marsimanu, and khayapâ--were emboldened to carry their marauding expeditions into assyrian territory. the assyrian monarch was thus called on to conduct three distinct wars simultaneously in three different directions; he was, moreover, surrounded by wavering subjects whom terror alone held to their allegiance, and whom the slightest imprudence or the least reverse might turn into open foes. sargon resolutely faced the enemy at all three points of attack. as in the previous year, he reserved for himself the position where danger was most threatening, directing the operations against the mannai. he captured one by one the twenty-two strongholds of ullusunu which rusas had seized, and laying hands on dayaukku, sent him and his family into exile to hamath. this display of energy determined ianzu of naîri to receive the assyrian monarch courteously within the royal residence of khubushkia and to supply him with horses, cattle, sheep, and goats in token of homage. proceeding from thence in an oblique direction, sargon reached andia and took prisoner its king tilusînas. having by this exploit reduced the province of mannai to order, he restored the twenty-two towns to ullusunu, and halting some days in izirtu, erected there a statue of himself, according to his custom, as a visible witness of assyrian supremacy, having done which, he retraced his steps to the south-east. the province of kharkhar, which had been reduced to subjection only a few months previously, was already in open revolt, and the district of kar-sharrukîn alone remained faithful to its governor: sargon had to reconquer it completely, town by town, imposing on the four citadels of kishislu, kindâu, bît-bagaiâ, and zaria the new names of kar-nabu, kar-sin, kar-rammânu, and kar-ishtar, besides increasing the fortifications of kar-sharrukîn. the medes once more acknowledged his suzerainty, and twenty-two of their chiefs came to tender the oath of allegiance at his feet; two or three districts which remained insubordinate were given up to pillage as far as bît-khambân, and the inhabitants of kimirra were sent into captivity. the eastern campaign was thus brought to a most successful issue, fortune, meanwhile, having also favoured the assyrian arms in the other menaced quarters. mita, after pushing forward at one point as far as the mediterranean, had been driven back into the mountains by the prefect of kuî, and the bedâwin of the south had sustained a serious reverse. these latter were mere barbarians, ignorant of the arts of reading and writing, and hitherto unconquered by any foreign power: their survivors were removed to samaria, where captives from hamath had already been established, and where they were soon joined by further exiles from babylon. [illustration: 372.jpg the town of bît-bagaîa burnt by the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by flandin. the tongues of flame which issue from the towers still bore traces of red and yellow colouring when the bas-relief was discovered. this episode had greater effect than its importance warranted; or perhaps the majority of the neighbouring states made it a convenient pretext for congratulating sargon on his victories over more serious enemies. he received gifts from shamshiê, the arabian queen who had formerly fought against tiglath-pileser, from itamar the saboan, and the sheikhs of the desert, from the kings of the mediterranean sea-board, and from the pharaoh himself. bocchoris had died after a troublous reign of seven years.* * the two dynasties of tanis and sais may be for the present reconstituted as follows:-[illustration: 373.jpg table of dynasties of tanis and sais] his real character is unknown, but as he left a deep impression on the memories of his people, it is natural to conclude that he displayed, at times, both ability and energy. many legends in which the miraculous element prevailed were soon in circulation concerning him. he was, according to these accounts, weak in body and insignificant in appearance, but made up for these defects by mental ability and sound judgment. he was credited with having been simple in his mode of life, and was renowned as one of the six great legislators produced by egypt. a law concerning debt and the legal rates of interest, was attributed to him; he was also famed for the uprightness of his judgments, which were regarded as due to divine inspiration. isis had bestowed on him a serpent, which, coiling itself round his head when he sat on the judgment-seat, covered him with its shadow, and admonished him not to forget for a moment the inflexible principles of equity and truth. neither tafnakhti nor any of the local sovereigns mentioned on the stele of piônkhi wore comprised in the official computation; there is, therefore, no reason to add them to this list. a collection of the decisions he was reputed to have delivered in famous cases existed in the græco-roman period, and one of them is quoted at length: he had very ingeniously condemned a courtesan to touch the shadow of a purse as payment for the shadowy favours she had bestowed in a dream on her lover. [illustration: 374.jpg king bocchoris giving judgment between two women, rival claimants to a child] drawn by faucher-gudin. an alexandrian poet, pancrates, versified the accounts of this juridical collection,* and the artists of the imperial epoch drew from it motives for mural decoration; they portrayed the king pronouncing judgment between two mothers who disputed possession of an infant, between two beggars laying claim to the same cloak, and between three men asserting each of them his right to a wallet full of food.** * pancrates lived in the time of hadrian, and athenæus, who has preserved his memory for us, quotes the first book of his bocchoreidion. ** considerable remains of this decorative cycle have been discovered at pompeii and at rome, in a series of frescoes, in which lumbroso and e. lowy recognise the features of the legends of bocchoris; the dispute between the two mothers recalls the famous judgment of solomon (1 kings iii. 16-28). a less favourable tradition represents the king as an avaricious and irreligious sovereign: he is said one day to have conceived the sacrilegious desire to bring about a conflict between an ordinary bull and the mnevis adored at heliopolis. the gods, doubtless angered by his crimes, are recorded to have called into being a lamb with eight feet, which, suddenly breaking into articulate speech, predicted that upper and lower egypt would be disgraced by the rule of a stranger.* * this legend, preserved by manetho and ulian is also known from the fragments of a demotic papyrus at vienna, which contains the prophecy of the lamb. [illustration: 375.jpg sabaco] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. the monuments of his reign which have come down to us tell us nothing of his deeds; we can only conjecture that after the defeat sustained by his generals at raphia, the discords which had ruined the preceding dynasties again broke out with renewed violence. indeed, if he succeeded in preserving his crown for several years longer, he owed the fact more to the feebleness of the ethiopians than to his own vigour: no sooner did an enterprising prince appear at barkal and demand that he should render an account of his usurpation, than his power came to an end. kashto having died about 716,* his son shabaku, the sabaco of the greeks, inherited the throne, and his daughter amenertas the priesthood and principality of thebes, in right of her mother shapenuapît. * the date of the accession of sabaco is here fixed at 716 715, because i follow the version of the lists of manetho, which gives twelve years as the reign of that prince; an inscription from hammamât mentions his twelfth year. sabaco was an able and energetic prince, who could by no means tolerate the presence of a rival pharaoh in the provinces which piônkhi had conquered. he declared war, and, being doubtless supported in his undertaking by all the petty kings and great feudal nobles whose jealousy was aroused by the unlooked-for prosperity of the saite monarch, he defeated bocchoris and took him prisoner. tafnakhti had formerly recognised the ethiopian supremacy, and bocchoris, when he succeeded to his father�s dominions, had himself probably sought investiture at the hands of the king of napata. sabaco treated him as a rebel, and either burnt or flayed him alive (715).* * according to manetho, he was burnt alive; the tradition which mentions that he was flayed alive is found in john of antioch. the struggle was hardly over, when the news of sargon�s victories reached egypt. it was natural that the new king, not yet securely seated on his throne, should desire to conciliate the friendship of a neighbour who was so successful in war, and that he should seize the first available pretext to congratulate him. the assyrian on his part received these advances with satisfaction and pride: he perceived in them a guarantee that egyptian intrigues with tyre and jerusalem would cease, and that he could henceforth devote himself to his projects against busas without being distracted by the fear of an ethiopian attack and the subversion of syria in his rear. sargon took advantage of these circumstances to strike a final blow at urartu. he began in the spring of 714 by collecting among the mannai the tribute due from ullusuna, daltâ, and the median chiefs; then pushing forward into the country of the zikartu, he destroyed three forts and twenty-four villages, and burnt their capital, parda. mitatti escaped servitude, but it was at the price of his power: a proscribed fugitive, deserted by his followers, he took refuge in the woods, and never submitted to his conqueror; but he troubled him no further, and disappeared from the pages of history. having achieved this result, sargon turned towards the north-west, and coming at length into close conflict with eusas, did not leave his enemy till he had crushed him. he drove him into the gorges of uaush, slaughtered a large number of his troops, and swept away the whole of his body-guard--a body of cavalry of two hundred men, all of whom were connected by blood with the reigning family. eusas quitted his chariot, and, like his father sharduris on the night of the disaster at kishtân, leaped upon a mare, and fled, overwhelmed with shame, into the mountains. his towns, terror-stricken, opened their gates at the first summons to the victor; sargon burnt those which he knew he could not retain, granted the district of uaush to his vassal ullusunu as a recompense for his loyalty, and then marched up to rest awhile in naîri, where he revictualled his troops at the expense of ianzu of khubushkia. he had, no doubt, hoped that urzana of muzazîr, the last of the friends of eusas to hold out against assyria, would make good use of the respite thus, to all appearances unintentionally, afforded him, and would come to terms; but as the appeal to his clemency was delayed, sargon suddenly determined to assume the aggressive. muzazîr, entrenched within its mountain ranges, was accessible only by one or two dangerous passes; urzana had barricaded these, and believed himself in a position to defy every effort of the assyrians. sargon, equally convinced of the futility of a front attack, had recourse to a surprise. [illustration: 378.jpg taking of a town in urartu by the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the drawing by botta. taking with him his chariots and one thousand picked horsemen, he left the beaten track, and crossing the four or five mountain chains--the shiak, the ardinshi, the ulayau, and the alluria--which lay between him and muzazîr, he unexpectedly bore down upon the city. urzana escaped after a desperate resistance, but the place was taken by assault and sacked, the palace destroyed, the temple overthrown, and the statues of the gods khaldîa and bagbartu dragged from their sanctuary. the entire royal family were sent into slavery, and with them 20,170 of the inhabitants who had survived the siege, besides 690 mules, 920 oxen, 100,225 sheep, and incalculable spoils in gold, silver, bronze, iron, and precious stones and stuffs, the furniture of urzana, and even his seal, being deposited in the treasury at nineveh. [illustration: 379.jpg the seal of urzana, king of muzazîr] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an impression of the original seal which is preserved at the hague. the disaster at muzazîr was the final blow to urartu; it is impossible to say what took place where eusas himself was, and whether the feudatories refused him any further allegiance, but in a short time he found himself almost forsaken, without friends, troops, or a place of refuge, and reduced to choose between death or the degradation of appealing to the mercy of the conqueror. he stabbed himself rather than yield; and sargon, only too thankful to be rid of such a dangerous adversary, stopped the pursuit. argistis ii. succeeded to what was left of his father�s kingdom,* and, being anxious above all things to obtain peace for his subjects, suspended hostilities, without however disarming his troops. * no text states positively that argistis ii. immediately succeeded his father; but he is found mentioned as king of urartu from 708 onwards, and hence it has been concluded, not without some reason, that such was the fact. the vannic inscriptions have not as yet given us this sovereign�s name. as was the case under tiglath-pileser iii., urartu neither submitted to assyria, nor was there any kind of treaty between the belligerents to prescribe the conditions of this temporary truce. both sides maintained their positions on their respective territories: sargon kept the frontier towns acquired by him in previous years, and which he had annexed to the border provinces, retaining also his suzerainty over muzazîr, the mannai, and the median states implicated in the struggle; argistis, on his side, strengthened himself in the regions around the sources of the euphrates and lake van--in biaînas, in etius, and in the plains of the araxes. the material injuries which he had received, however considerable they may appear, were not irreparable, and, as a fact, the country quickly recovered from them, but the people�s confidence in their prince and his chiefs was destroyed. the defeat of sharduris, following as it did on a period of advantageous victories, may have seemed to argistis one of those unimportant occurrences which constantly take place in the career of the strongest nations; the disaster of rusas proved to him that, in attempting to wipe out his first repulse, he had only made matters worse, and the conviction was borne in upon his princes that they were not in a position to contest the possession of western asia with the assyrians. they therefore renounced, more from instinct than as the result of deliberation, the project of enlarging their borders to the south, and if they subsequently reappeared on the mesopotamian plains, it was in search of booty, and not to acquire territory. any attempt to stop their incursions, or to disturb them in their mountain fastnesses, found them prepared to hold their own with the same obstinacy as of old, and they were quite able to safeguard their independence against an intruder. besides this, the cimmerians and the scythians were already pressing on their frontier, and were constantly harassing them. [illustration: 379.jpg the assyrians taking a median town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by flandin. it seems that this town was called amkaru, and its name appears, as far as i know, in none of the accounts which we possess of the campaigns. the town was apparently situated in karalla or in median territory. this fresh danger absorbed their entire attention, and from this time forward they ceased to play a part in general history; the century which had seen the rise and growth of their power was also a witness of their downfall under the attacks of assyria. during the last months of 714, the tribes which had formerly constituted the kingdom of karalla mutinied against the tyranny of their governor, and invited ami-tashshi, the brother of their ancient lord assurlî, to rule over them. sargon attacked them in the spring of 713, dispersed their troops, held them to ransom, and after having once more exacted homage from bît-dayaukku,* ellipi, and allabria. * the dayaukku who gave his name to this province was at first confounded with the personage who was entangled in the affairs of ullusunu, and was then banished by sargon to hamath. a good number of historians now admit that they were different persons. bît-dayaukku is evidently the district of ecbatana. he made a raid extending as far as the confines of the iranian desert, the barren steppes of eastern arabia,* and the district of nagira belonging to the �powerful� manda.* * the eastern arabs mentioned here were nomadic, and inhabited the confines of the great desert to the south-east of media, or the steppes of northern iran. they are those mentioned in a passage of appian, together with parthians, bactrians, and tapyræans, as having submitted to seleucus. ** the �powerful� manda, encamped in the mountain and desert, and who were named after the eastern arabs, must be the peoples situated between the caspian and the steppes of the iranian plateau, and a branch of the scythians who are soon to appear in asiatic history. while he was thus preparing the way for peace in his median domains, one of his generals crossed the euphrates to chastise the tabal for their ill deeds. the latter had figured, about the year 740 b.c., among the peoples who had bowed before the supremacy of urartu, and their chief, uassarmi, had been the ally or vassal of sharduris. contemptuously spared at the taking of arpad, he had not been able to resign himself to the assyrian yoke, and had, in an ill-timed moment, thrown it off in 731; he had, however, been overcome and forced to surrender, and tiglath-pileser had put in his place a man of obscure birth, named khulli, whose fidelity had remained unshaken throughout the reign of shalmaneser v. and the first years of sargon. khulli�s son, ambaridis, the husband of a ninevite princess, who had brought him as dowry a considerable part of cilicia, had been unable to resist the flattering offers of kusas; he had broken the ties which attached him to the new assyrian dynasty, but had been left unmolested so long as urartu and muzazir remained unshaken, since his position at the western extremity of the empire prevented him from influencing in the smallest degree the issue of the struggle, and it was well known that when the fall of kusas took place ambaridis would be speedily brought to account. he was, in fact, seized, banished to the banks of the tigris, and his hereditary fief of bît-burutash annexed to cilicia, under the rule of an assyrian. the following year was signalised by a similar execution at which sargon himself deigned to preside in person. tarkhunazi, the king of miliddu, not only had taken advantage of the troubles consequent on the armenian war to rebel against his master, but had attacked gunzinânu, who held, and had ruthlessly pillaged, the neighbouring district of kammanu.* sargon overcame him in the open field, took from him his city of miliddu, and stormed the town of tulgarimmê in which he had taken refuge.** * kammanu is probably not the kammanênc of the greek geographers, which is too far north relatively to melitênè, but is probably comana of cappadocia and its district. ** tulgarimmê has been connected with the togarmah of the bible (gen. x. 3) by halévy and delitzsch, and their views on this subject have been adopted by most historians. here again the native kingdom disappeared, and was replaced by an assyrian administration. kammanu, wedged in between urartu and mushki, separated these two countries, sometimes rivals to each other, but always enemies to nineveh. its maintenance as an independent kingdom prevented them from combining their efforts, and obtaining that unity of action which alone could ensure for them, if not a definite triumph, at least preservation from complete extinction and an opportunity of maintaining their liberty; the importance of the position, however, rendered it particularly perilous to hold, and the assyrians succeeded in so doing only by strongly fortifying it. walls were built round ten cities, five on the urartian frontier, three on that of mushki, and two on the north, and the country which they protected was made into a new province, that of tulgarimmê, the district of miliddu being confided to the care of mutallu, prince of kummukh (710). an incident which took place in the following year furnished a pretext for completing the organisation and military defence of this western border province. gurgum had been for thirty years or more in the possession of tarkhulara; this prince, after having served sharduris, had transferred his homage to tiglath-pileser, and he had thenceforward professed an unwavering loyalty to the assyrian sovereigns. this accommodating personage was assassinated by his son mutallu; and sargon, fearing a revolt, hastened, at the head of a detachment of picked troops, to avenge him. the murderer threw down his arms almost without having struck a blow, and gurgum was thenceforward placed under the direct rule of nineveh. the affair had not been brought to a close before an outbreak took place in southern syria, which might have entailed very serious consequences had it not been promptly dealt with. egypt, united from end to end under the sceptre of sabaco, jealously kept watch over the political complications in asia, and though perhaps she was not sure enough of her own strength to interfere openly before the death of eusas, she had renewed negotiations with the petty kingdoms of the hebrews and philistines. ashdod had for some time past showed signs of discontent, and it had been found necessary to replace their king, azuri, who had refused to pay tribute, by his brother akhimiti; shortly after this, however, the people had risen in rebellion: they had massacred akhimiti, whom they accused of being a mere thrall of assyria, and had placed on the throne yamani, a soldier of fortune, probably an adventurer of hellenic extraction.* the other philistine cities had immediately taken up arms; edom and moab were influenced by the general movement, and isaiah was striving to avert any imprudent step on the part of judah. sargon despatched the tartan,** and the rapidity with which that officer carried out the campaign prevented the movement from spreading beyond philistia. he devastated ashdod, and its vassal, gath, carried off their gods and their inhabitants, and peopled the cities afresh with prisoners from asia minor, urartu, and media. yamani attempted to escape into egypt, but the chief of milukhkha intercepted him on his way, and handed him over in chains to the conqueror.*** * this prince�s name, usually written yamani, is also written yatnani in the _annals_, and this variation, which is found again in the name of the island of cyprus and the cypriotes, gives us grounds for believing that the assyrian scribe took the race-name of the prince for a proper name: the new king of ashdod would have been a yamani, a greek of cyprus. ** the assyrian narratives, as usual, give the honour of conducting the campaign to the king. isaiah (xx. 1) distinctly says that sargon sent the tartan to quell the revolt of ashdod. *** the _annals_ state that yamani was made prisoner and taken to assyria. the _fastes_, more accurate on this point, state that he escaped to muzri, and that he was given up by the king of milukhkha. the muzri mentioned in this passage very probably here means egypt. the latter took care not to call either moab, edom, or judah to account for the part they had taken in the movement, perhaps because they were not mentioned in his instructions, or because he preferred not to furnish them, by an untimely interference, with a pretext for calling in the help of egypt. the year was doubtless too far advanced to allow him to dream of marching against pharaoh, and moreover that would have been one of those important steps which the king alone had the right to take. there was, however, no doubt that the encounter between the two empires was imminent, and isaiah ventured to predict the precise date of its occurrence. he walked stripped and barefoot through the streets of jerusalem--a strange procedure which he explained by the words which jahveh had put into his lips: �like as my servant isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder upon egypt and upon kush (ethiopia); so shall the king of assyria lead away the captives of egypt and the exiles of kush, young and old, naked and barefoot, and with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of egypt. and they shall be dismayed and ashamed, because of kush their expectation, and of egypt their glory. and the inhabitants of this coastland shall say in that day, behold, such is our expectation, whither we fled for help to be delivered from the king of assyria: and we, how shall we escape?� * * isa. xx. the fulfilment of this prophecy did not take place as quickly as the prophet perhaps desired. egypt appeared too strong to be openly attacked by a mere section of the battalions at the disposal of assyria, and besides, it may have been deemed imprudent to involve the army to any serious extent on so distant a field as africa, when babylon was ready and waiting to fall upon the very heart of assyria at the first news of a real or supposed reverse. circumstances seemed, moreover, to favour a war against merodach-baladan. this sovereign, who had been received with acclamation by the babylonians, had already lost the popularity he had enjoyed at his accession. the fickle character of the people, which made them nearly always welcome a fresh master with enthusiasm, soon led them from love and obedience to hatred, and finally to revolt. merodach-baladan trusted to the kaldâ to help him to maintain his position, and their rude barbarity, even if it protected him against the fickleness of his more civilised subjects, increased the discontent at kutha, sippar, and borsippa. he removed the statues of the gods from these towns, imprisoned the most turbulent citizens, confiscated their goods, and distributed them among his own followers; the other cities took no part in the movement, but sargon must have expected to find in them, if not effective support, at least sympathies which would facilitate his work of conquest. it is true that elam, whose friendship for the aramæan was still undiminished, remained to be reckoned with, but elam had lost much of its prestige in the last few years. the aged khumban-igash had died in 717,* and his successor, shutruk-nakhunta, had not apparently inherited all the energy of his father,** and it is possible that troubles had arisen among the vassals of his own kingdom which prevented him from interfering on behalf of his ally. sargon took account of all these circumstances in arranging his plan of campaign. he divided his army into two forces, one of which, under his own command, was to be directed against merodach-baladan, while the other was to attack the insurgent aramæans on the left bank of the tigris, and was to be manoeuvred so as to drive shutruk-nakhunta back on the marshes of the uknu.*** the eastern force was the first to be set in movement, and it pushed forward into the territory of the gambulu. these latter had concentrated themselves round dur-atkharas, one of their citadels;**** they had increased the height of the walls, and filled the ditches with water brought from the shurappu by means of a canal, and having received a reinforcement of 600 horsemen and 4000 foot soldiers, they had drawn them up in front of the ramparts. * the date of the death of khumban-igash is indirectly given in the passage of the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_, where it is said that in the first year of ashshur-nâdin shumu, king of babylon, ishtar-khundu (= shutruk-nakhunta) was dethroned by his brother, khallushu, after having reigned over elam eighteen years: these events actually took place, as we shall see below, about the year 699 before our era. ** shutruk-nakhunta is the susian form of the name; the assyrian texts distort it into shutur-nankhundi, and the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_, into ishtar-khundu, owing to a faint resemblance in the sound of the name of the goddess ishtar with the form _shutur, sthur_, itself derived from shutruk, with which the name began. *** the earlier historians of assyria, misled in the first place by the form in which the scribes have handed down the account in the annals and the _fastes_, assumed the existence of a single army, led by sargon himself, and which would have marched on all the above-mentioned places of the country, one by one. tiele was the first to recognise that sargon must have left part of his forces to the command of one of his lieutenants, and winckler, enlarging on this idea, showed that there were then two armies, engaged at different seats of war, but manoeuvring as far as possible by mutual arrangement. **** the site of dur-atkharas is unknown. billerbeck places it hypotheti-cally on the stream of mendeli, and his conjecture is in itself very plausible. i should incline, however, to place it more to the south, on account of the passage in which it is said that the kaldâ, to complete the defences of the town, brought a canal from the shurappu and fortified its banks. the shurappu, according to delitzsch, would be the shatt umm-el-jemâl; according to delattrc, the kerkha; the account of the campaign under consideration would lead me to recognise in it a watercourse like the tib, which runs into the tigris near amara, in which case the ruins of kherîb would perhaps correspond with the site of dur-atkharas. a single morning sufficed to disperse them, and the assyrians, entering the city with the fugitives, took possession of it on the same day. they made 16,490 prisoners, and seized horses, mules, asses, camels, and both sheep and oxen in large numbers. eight of the chiefs of the neighbourhood, who ruled over the flat country between the shurappu and the uknu, begged for mercy as soon as they learned the result of the engagement. the name of dur-atkharas was changed to that of dur-nebo, the territory of the gambulu was converted into a province, and its organisation having been completed, the army continued its march, sweeping before it the euâ, the khindaru, the puqudu, in short, all the tribes occupying the district of yatbur. the chiefs of these provinces sought refuge in the morasses of the lower kerkha, but finding themselves surrounded and short of provisions, they were forced by famine to yield to the enemy, and came to terms with the assyrians, who imposed a tribute on them and included them within the new province of gambulu. the goal of this expedition was thus attained, and blam separated from karduniash, but the issue of the war remained undecided as long as shutruk-nakhunta held the cities at the edge of the plain, from which he could emerge at will into the heart of the assyrian position. the conqueror therefore turned in that direction, rapidly took from him the citadels of shamuna and babduri, then those of lakhirimmu and pillutu, and pitched his camp on the bank of the naditi, from whence he despatched marauding bands to pillage the country. dismay spread throughout the district of rashi; the inhabitants, abandoning their cities--tîl-khumba, durmishamash, bubî, and khamanu--migrated as far as bît-imbi; shutruk-nakhunta, overcome with fear, took refuge, so it was said, in the distant mountains to preserve his life.* * none of these places can be identified with certainty. so far as i can follow the account of this campaign on the map, it seems that the attacks upon shutruk-nakhunta took place on the plain and in the mountains between the ab-î-gengir and the tib, so that the river naditi would be the aftâh or one of its tributaries. if this were so, lakhirimmu and pillutu would be situated somewhere near the jughaî ben ruan and the tope ghulamen of de morgan�s map of elam, shamuna near zirzir-têpî, babdurî near hosseini-yeh. but i wish it to be understood that i do not consider these comparisons as more than simple conjectures. bît-imbi was certainly out of the reach of the assyrians, since it was used as a place of refuge by the inhabitants of rashî; at the same time it must have been close to rashî, since the people of this country fled thither. the site of ghilân which de morgan has adopted on his map seems to me to be too far north to comply with these conditions, and that of tapa, approved by billerboek, too southerly. if, as i believe, rashî corresponds to the regions of pushti-kuh which lie on both sides of the upper waters of the mendeli stream, we ought to look for bît-imbi somewhere near the desht-î-ghoaur and the zenjan, near a point where communication with the banks of the ab-î-kirind would be easy. sargon, meanwhile, had crossed the euphrates with the other force, and had marched straight upon bît-dakkuri; having there noticed that the fortress of dur-ladînu was in ruins, he rebuilt it, and, firmly installed within the heart of the country, he patiently waited until the eastern force had accomplished its mission. like his adversary, merodach-baladan, he had no desire to be drawn into an engagement until he knew what chance there was of the latter being reinforced by the king of elam. at the opening of hostilities merodach-baladan claimed the help of the elamite king, and lavished on him magnificent presents--a couch, a throne, a portable chair, a cup for the royal offerings, and his own pectoral chain; these all reached their destination in good condition, and were graciously accepted. but before long the elamite prince, threatened in his own domain, forgot everything except his own personal safety, and declared himself unable to render merodach-baladan any assistance. the latter, on receiving this news, threw himself with his face in the dust, rent his clothes, and broke out into loud weeping; after which, conscious that his strength would not permit of his meeting the enemy in the open field, he withdrew his men from the other side of the tigris, escaped secretly by night, and retired with his troops to the fortress of ikbîbel. the inhabitants of babylon and borsippa did not allow themselves to be disconcerted; they brought the arks of bel, zarpanît, nebo, and tashmît out of their sanctuaries, and came forth with chanting and musical instruments to salute sargon at dûr-ladînu. he entered the city in their company, and after he had celebrated the customary sacrifices, the people enthroned him in merodach-baladan�s palace. tribute was offered to him, but he refused to accept any part of it for his personal use, and applied it to a work of public utility--the repairing of the ancient canal of borsippa, which had become nearly filled up. this done, he detached a body of troops to occupy sippara, and returned to assyria, there to take up his winter quarters. once again, therefore, the ancient metropolis of the euphrates was ruled by an assyrian, who united in one protocol the titles of the sovereigns of assur and kar-duniash. babylon possessed for the kings of nineveh the same kind of attraction as at a later date drew the german cæsars to rome. scarcely had the assyrian monarchs been crowned within their own domains, than they turned their eyes towards babylon, and their ambition knew no rest till the day came for them to present themselves in pomp within the temple of its god and implore his solemn consecration. when at length they had received it, they scrupulously secured its renewal on every occasion which the law prescribed, and their chroniclers recorded among the important events of the year, the ceremony in which they �took the hand of bel.� sargon therefore returned, in the month nisan of the year 709, to preside over the procession of the god, and he devoutly accomplished the rites which constituted him the legitimate successor of the semi-fabulous heroes of the old empire, foremost among whom was his namesake shargâni of agadê. he offered sacrifices to bel, nebo, and to the divinities of sumir and akkad, and he did not return to the camp until he had fulfilled all the duties incumbent on his new dignity. he was involved that year in two important wars at opposite points of his empire. one was at the north-western extremity, against the mushki and their king mita, who, after having supported eusas, was now intriguing with argistis; the other in the south-east, against the kaldâ, and probably also against elam. he entrusted the conduct of the former to the governor of kuî, but reserved to himself the final reckoning with merodach-baladan. the babylonian king had made good use of the respite given him during the winter months. too prudent to meet his enemy in the open plain, he had transformed his hereditary principality into a formidable citadel. during the preceding campaign he had devastated the whole of the country lying between the marshes and the territory occupied by the assyrians, and had withdrawn the inhabitants. most of the towns--ikbîbel, uru, uruk, kishik, and nimid-laguda--were also deserted, and no garrisons were left in them. he had added to the fortifications of dur-yakîa, and enlarged the moat till it was two hundred cubits wide and eighteen deep, so as to reach the level of infiltration; he then turned into it the waters of the euphrates, so that the town appeared to be floating on a lake, without either bridges or quays by means of which the besiegers might have brought their machines within range and their troops been able to approach for an assault. merodach-baladan had been careful not to shut himself within the town, but had taken up a position in the marshes, and there awaited the arrival of the assyrians. sargon, having left babylon in the month of iyyâr, encountered him within sight of dur-yakîn. the aramæan infantry were crushed by repeated charges from the mnevito chariotry and cavalry, who pursued the fugitives to the outer side of the moat, and seized the camp with all its baggage and the royal train, including the king�s tent, a canopy of solid silver which protected the throne, his sceptre, weapons, and stores of all kinds. the peasants, to the number of 90,580, crowded within the lines, also fell into their hands, together with their flocks and herds--2500 horses, 610 mules, and 854 camels, as well as sheep, oxen, and asses; the remainder of the fugitives rushed within the outworks for refuge �like a pack of wild boars,� and finally were driven into the interior of the place, or scattered among the beds of reeds along the coast. sargon cut down the groves of palm trees which adorned the suburbs, and piled up their trunks in the moat, thus quickly forming a causeway right up to the walls. merodach-baladan had been wounded in the arm during the engagement, but, nevertheless, fought stubbornly in defence of his city; when he saw that its fall was inevitable, he fled to the other side of the gulf, and took refuge among the mud flats of the lower ulaî. sargon set fire to dur-yakîn, levelled its towers and walls with the ground, and demolished its houses, temples, and palaces. it had been a sort of penal settlement, to which the kaldâ rulers used to consign those of their subjects belonging to the old aboriginal race, who had rendered themselves obnoxious by their wealth or independence of character; the number of these prisoners was considerable, babylon, borsippa, nipur, and sippar, not to speak of uni, uruk, eridu, larsam, and kishîk, having all of them furnished their share. sargon released them all, and restored their gods to the temples; he expelled the nomads from the estates which, contrary to all justice, had been distributed among them in preceding years, and reinstated the former owners. karduniash, which had been oppressed for twelve long years by a semi-barbarian despot, now breathed again, and hailed sargon as its deliverer, while he on his part was actively engaged in organising his conquest. the voluntary submission of upiri, king of dilmun, who lived isolated in the open sea, �as though in a bird�s nest,� secured to sargon possession of the watercourses which flowed beyond the chaldæan lake into the persian gulf: no sooner had he obtained it than he quitted the neighbourhood of dur-yakîn, crossed the tigris, and reinforced the garrisons which lined his elamite frontier on this side. he had just finished building a strongly fortified citadel on the site of sagbat,* when ambassadors arrived from mita. * this sagbat, which must not be confused with the district of bît-sagbati mentioned in the reign of tiglath-pileser iii., seems to correspond with a post to the south of durîlu, perhaps the ruins of baksayeh, on the tchengula. the governor of kuî had at length triumphed over the obstinacy of the mushki, and after driving them from village to village, had compelled them to sue for terms: the tidings of the victories over the kaldâ had doubtless hastened their decision, but they were still so powerful that it was thought wiser not to impose too rigorous conditions upon them. mita agreed to pay tribute, and surrendered one or two districts, which were turned into an aramæan settlement: the inhabitants were transferred to bît-yakîn, where they had to make the best they could of lands that had been devastated by war. at this juncture the greeks of cyprus flattered the pride of the assyrians in a most unexpected way: after the manner of their race they scoured the seas, and their fleets persistently devastated the coasts of syria and cilicia. [illustration: 396.jpb stele at larnaka] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plaster cast in the louvre. seven of their kings were so far alarmed by the report of sargon�s achievements as to dread punishment for their misdeeds. they therefore sent him presents, and, for the moment, abandoned their piratical expeditions in phoenician waters. the homage of these inveterate robbers raised sargon in his own eyes and in those of his subjects. some years later, about 708 b.c., he presented them with a stele of black marble, on which he had engraved his own portrait, together with a long inscription setting forth his most glorious exploits. they set it up at kition (citium), where it has been preserved amongst the ruins, a priceless witness to the greatness of assyria. while war thus raged around him, sargon still found time for works of a peaceful character. he set himself to remodel and complete the system of irrigation in the assyrian plain; he repaired the dykes, and cleaned out and made good the beds of the canals which had been neglected during the troublous times of the last generation. he erected buildings at calah* and at nineveh, but in these cities everything seemed to recall too vividly the memory of the sovereigns who had gone before him: he wished for a capital which should belong to himself alone, where he would not be reminded of a past in which he had no part. after meditating day and night, his choice fell upon the village of maganubba, a little to the north-east of nineveh, in a wide plain which extends from the banks of the khuzur to the hills of muzri, and by a single decree he expropriated all its inhabitants. he then built on the land which he had purchased from them a city of unrivalled magnificence, which he called by his own name, dur-sharrukîn.** * at calah, he lived in an old palace of assur-nazir-pal restored and adapted for his use, as shown by the inscription published by layard. ** in most of the texts the village of maganubba is not named; it is mentioned in the _cylinder inscription_, and this document is the only one which furnishes details of the expropriation, etc. the modern name of the place is khorsabad, _the city of khosroes_, but the name of its founder was still associated with its ruins, in the time of yakut, who mentions him under the name of sarghun. it was first explored in 1843 by botta, then by place and oppert. the antiquities collected there by botta and place constitute the bulk of the assyrian museum in the louvre; unfortunately, a part of the objects collected by place went to the bottom of the tigris with the lighter which was carrying them. the ground plan of it is of rectangular shape, the sides being about 1900 yards long by 1800 yards wide, each corner exactly facing one of the four points of the compass. its walls rest on a limestone sub-structure some three feet six inches high, and rise fifty-seven feet above the ground; they are strengthened, every thirty yards or so, by battlemented towers which project thirteen feet from the face of the wall and stand sixteen feet higher than the ramparts.* * place reckoned the height of the wall at 75 feet, a measurement adopted by perrot and chipiez; dieulafoy has shown that the height of the wall must be reduced to 47 feet, and that of the towers about 65 feet. [illustration: 398.jpg plan of the royal city of dur-sharrukîn] reduction by faucher-gudin, from the plan published in place. access was gained to the interior by eight gates, two on each side of the square, each of them marked by two towers separated from one another by the width of the bay. every gate had its patron, chosen from among the gods of the city; there was the gate of shamash, the gate of rammân, those of bel and beltis, of ami, of tshtar, of eâ, and of the lady of the gods. each of them was protected externally by a _migdol_, or small castle, built in the syrian style, and flanked at each corner by a low tower thirteen yards in width; five allowed of the passage of beasts as well as men. it was through these that the peasants came in every morning, driving their cattle before them, or jolting along in waggons laden with fruit and vegetables. after passing the outposts, they crossed a paved courtyard, then made their way between the two towers through a vaulted passage over fifty yards long, intersected at almost equal intervals by two transverse galleries. the other three gates had a special arrangement of their own; a flight of twelve steps built out in front of the courtyard rendered them inaccessible to animals or vehicles. at the entrance to the passage towered two colossal bulls with human heads, standing like sentinels--their faces and foreparts turned outward, their hind-quarters ranged along the inner walls--as though gazing before them into space in company with two winged genii. the arch supported by their mitred heads was ornamented by a course of enamelled bricks, on which other genii, facing one another in pairs, offered pine-cones across a circular ornament of many colours. these were the mystic guardians of the city, who shielded it not only from the attacks of men, but also from invasions of evil spirits and pernicious diseases. the rays of the sun made the forecourt warm in winter, while it was always cool under the archway in summer; the gates served as resorts for pleasure or business, where old men and idlers congregated to discuss their affairs and settle the destinies of the state, merchants bargained and disposed of their goods, and the judge and notables of the neighbouring quarter held their courts. [illustration: 400.jpg part of the enamelled course of a gate] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing published in place. it was here that the king generally exposed to view the chieftains and kings whom he had taken captive; here they lay, chained like dogs in cages, dependent on the pity of their guards or of passers-by for such miserable fare as might be flung to them, and, the first feeling of curiosity once passed, no longer provoking even the jeers of the crowd, until a day came when their victor took it into his head to remove them from their ignominious position, and either restored them to their thrones or sent them to the executioner.* the town itself, being built from plans drawn up by one mind, must have presented few of the irregularities of outline characteristic of ancient cities. * to mention but a single instance, it was in this way that assur-bani-pal treated the arab kings captured by him. the streets leading from the gates were of uniform breadth throughout, from one side of the enclosure to the other. they were paved, had no sideways or footpaths, and crossed one another at right angles. the houses on either side of them seem, for the most part, to have consisted of a single story. they were built of bricks, either baked or unbaked, the outer surfaces of which were covered with white or tinted rough-casting. the high and narrow doors were nearly always hidden away in a corner of the front; the bare monotony of the walls was only relieved here and there at long intervals by tiny windows, but often instead of a flat roof the building was surmounted by a conical dome or by semi-cupolas, the concave sides of which were turned inwards. the inhabitants varied greatly in race and language: sargon had filled his city with prisoners collected from all the four quarters of his empire, from elam, chaldæa, and media, from urartu and tabal, syria and palestine, and in order to keep these incongruous elements in check he added a number of assyrians, of the mercantile, official, or priestly classes. he could overlook the whole city from the palace which he had built on both sides the north-eastern wall of the town, half within and half without the ramparts. like all palaces built on the euphratean model, this royal castle stood on an artificial eminence of bricks formed of two rectangles joined together in the shape of the letter t. the only entrance to it was on the city side, foot-passengers being admitted by a double flight of steps built out in front of the ramparts, horsemen and chariots by means of an inclined plane which rose in a gentle gradient along the right flank of the masonry work, and terminated on its eastern front. two main gates corresponded to these two means of approach; the one on the north-east led straight to the royal apartments, the other faced the city and opened on to the double staircase. it was readily distinguishable from a distance by its two flagstaffs bearing the royal standard, and its two towers, at the base of which were winged bulls and colossal figures of gilgames crushing the lion. [illustration: 402.jpg bird�s eye view of sargon�s palace at dur-sharrukîn] drawn by boudier, from the restoration by thomas in place. two bulls of still more monstrous size stood sentry on either side of the gate, the arch was outlined by a course of enamelled bricks, while higher up, immediately beneath the battlements, was an enamelled mosaic showing the king in all his glory. this triumphal arch was reserved for his special use, the common people being admitted by two side doors of smaller size less richly decorated. [illustration: 403.jpg one of the gates of the palace at dur-sharrukîn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. saragon resided at caleh, where he had taken up his quarters in the former palace of assur-nazir-pal, while his new city was still in the hands of the builders. every moment that he could spare from his military and administrative labours was devoted to hastening on the progress of the work, and whenever he gained a victory or pillaged a district, he invariably set aside a considerable part of the booty in order to meet the outlay which the building involved. thus we find that on returning from his tenth campaign he brought with him an immense convoy laden with timber, stone, and precious metals which he had collected in the neighbourhood of mount taurus or among the mountains of assyria, including coloured marbles, lapis-lazuli, rock crystal, pine, cedar, and cypress-wood, gold, silver, and bronze, all of which was destined for dur-sharrukîn; the quantity of silver included among these materials was so great that its value fell to a level with that of copper. [illustration: 404.jpg plan of the excavated portions of the palace at dur-sharrukîn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plan by thomas, in place. the interior of the building, as in the case of the old chaldæan palaces, was separated into two well-marked divisions. the larger of these was used by the king in his public capacity, and to this the nobles and soldiers, and even the common people, were admitted under certain conditions and on certain days prescribed by custom. the outer court was lined on three sides by warehouses and depots, in which were stored the provisions, commodities, and implements required for the host of courtiers and slaves who depended on the sovereign for support. each room had, as may still be seen, its own special purpose. there were cellars for wine and oil, with their rows of large oblong jars; then there were store-rooms for implements of iron, which place found full of rusty helmets, swords, pieces of armour, maces, and ploughshares; a little further on were rooms for the storage of copper weapons, enamelled bricks, and precious metals, and the king�s private treasury, in which were hidden away the spoils of the vanquished or the regular taxes paid by his subjects; some fine bronze lions of marvellous workmanship and lifelike expression were found still shut up here. [illustration: 405.jpg one of the bronze lions from dur-sharrukîn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the louvre. the kitchens adjoined the pantries, and the stables for horses and camels communicated direct with the coach-houses in which the state chariots were kept, while the privies were discreetly hidden in a secluded corner. on the other side, among the buildings occupying the southern angle of the courtyard, the menials of the palace lived huddled together, each family quartered in small, dark rooms. the royal apartments, properly so called, stood at the back of these domestic offices, facing the south-east, near the spot where the inclined plane debouched on to the city ramparts. the monumental entrance to these apartments was guarded, in accordance with religious custom, by a company of winged bulls; behind this gate was a lawn, then a second gate, a corridor and a grand quadrangle in the very centre of the palace. [illustration: 406.jpg a hunting expedition in the woods near dur-sharrukîn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing by flandin, in botta. the king occupied a suite of some twenty rooms of a rather simple character; here he slept, ate, worked, and transacted the greater part of his daily business, guarded by his eunuchs and attended by his ministers and secretaries. the remaining rooms were apartments of state, all of the same pattern, in which the crowd of courtiers and employés assembled while waiting for a private audience or to intercept the king as he passed. a subdued light made its way from above through narrow windows let into the massive arches. the walls were lined to a height of over nine feet from the floor with endless bas-reliefs, in greyish alabaster, picked out in bright colours, and illustrating the principal occupations in which the sovereign spent his days, such as the audiences to ambassadors, hunting in the woods, sieges and battles. a few brief inscriptions interspersed above pictures of cities and persons indicated the names of the vanquished chiefs or the scenes of the various events portrayed; detailed descriptions were engraved on the back of the slabs facing the brick wall against which they rested. this was a precautionary measure, the necessity for which had been but too plainly proved by past experience. every one--the king himself included--well knew that some day or other dur-sharrukîn would be forsaken just as the palaces of previous dynasties had been, and it was hoped that inscriptions concealed in this manner would run a better chance of escaping the violence of man or the ravages of time; preserved in them, the memory of sargon would rise triumphant from the ruins. the gods reigned supreme over the north-east angle of the platform, and a large irregular block of buildings was given up to their priests; their cells contained nothing of any particular interest, merely white walls and black plinths, adorned here and there with frescoes embellished by arabesques, and pictures of animals and symbolical genii. the _ziggurât_ rose to a height of some 141 feet above the esplanade. it had seven storeys dedicated to the gods of the seven planets, each storey being painted in the special colour of its god--the first white, the second black, the third purple, the fourth blue, the fifth a vermilion red; the sixth was coated with silver, and the seventh gilded. there was no chamber in the centre of the tower, but a small gilded chapel probably stood at its base, which was used for the worship of assuf or of ishtar. the harem, or _bît-riduti_, was at the southern corner of the enclosure, almost in the shadow of the _ziggurât_. sargon had probably three queens when he founded his city, for the harem is divided into three separate apartments, of which the two larger look out on the same quadrangle. [illustration: 408.jpg the ziggurat at dur-sharrukin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. two courses of enamelled bricks ran along the base of the façade, while statues were placed at intervals against the wall, and the bay of the gateway was framed by two bronze palm trees gilt: the palm being the emblem of fruitfulness and grace, no more fitting decoration could have been chosen for this part of the building. the arrangement was the same in all three divisions: an ante-chamber of greater width than length; an apartment, one half of which was open to the sky, while the other was covered by a half-dome, and a flight of twelve steps, leading to an alcove in which stood a high wooden couch. the queens and princesses spent their lives in this prison-like _bît-riduti_: their time was taken up with dress, embroidery, needlework, dancing and singing, the monotony of this routine being relieved by endless quarrels, feuds, and intrigues. the male children remained in the harem until the age of puberty, when they left it in order to continue their education as princes and soldiers under the guidance of their father.* * an inscription of assur-bani-pal, gives a summary description of the life led in the harem by heirs to the throne, and describes generally the kind of education received by them from their earliest childhood. [illustration: 409.jpg section of a bedroom in the harem] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. this group of buildings was completed by a park, in which cedars of lebanon, pines, cypresses, gazelles, stags, wild asses and cattle, and even lions, were acclimatised, in addition to a heterogeneous collection of other trees and animals. here, the king gave himself up to the pleasures of the chase, and sometimes invited one or other of his wives to come thither and banquet or drink with him. after mita�s surrender, sargon had hoped to be allowed to finish building his city in peace; but an ill-advised movement in kummukh obliged him to don his harness again (708 b.c.). king mutallu had entered into an alliance with argistis of urartu, and took the field with his army; but when details of what had taken place in chaldæa reached his ears, and he learnt the punishment that had been inflicted on the people of bît-yakin, his courage failed him. [illustration: 410.jpg main book of the harem at duk-sharrukîn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. he fled without waiting for the assyrians to appear, and so great was his haste that he had no time to take his family and treasure with him. sargon annexed his kingdom, placed it under the government of the _tartan_, and incorporated into his own the whole army of kummukh, including 150 chariots, 1500 horsemen, 20,000 archers, and 10,000 pikemen. in the following year (707) his vassal dalta died, leaving two sons, nibi and ishpabara, both of whom claimed possession of the fief of ellipi; nibi appealed to elam for help, and ishpabara at once turned for aid to assyria. sargon sent him a body of troops, commanded by seven of his generals, while shutruk-nakhunta lent his _protégé_ 4500 bowmen; ishpabara won the day, took the city of marubishti by storm, and compelled his brother to take refuge in susian territory. the affair wras over so quickly that it caused practically no delay in the completion of the works at the capital. the consecration of a new city necessitated the observance of a host of complicated ceremonies, which extended over several months. first of all provision had to be made for its religious worship; the omens were consulted in order to determine which of the gods were to be invoked, and, when this was decided, there followed the installation of the various statues and arks which were to preside over the destinies of the city and the priests to whom they were intrusted; the solemn inauguration took place on the 22nd day of tisri, in the year 707 b.c., and from that day forward dur-sharrukîn occupied the rank officially assigned to it among the capitals of the empire. sargon, however, did not formally take up his residence within it till six months later, on the 6th day of iyyâr, 706. he must, by this time, have been advancing in years, and even if we assume him to have been a young man when he ascended the throne, after the sixteen years of bodily fatigue and mental worry through which he had passed since coming into power, he must have needed repose. he handed over the government of the northern provinces to his eldest son sin-akhê-irba, better known to us as sennacherib, whom he regarded as his successor; to him he transferred the responsibility of keeping watch over the movements of the mannai, of urartu, and of the restless barbarians who dwelt beyond the zone of civilised states on the banks of the halys, or at the foot of the distant caucasus: a revolt among the tabal, in 706, was promptly suppressed by his young and energetic deputy. as for sargon himself, he was content to retain the direct control of the more pacific provinces, such as babylon, the regions of the middle euphrates, and syria, and he doubtless hoped to enjoy during his later years such tranquillity as was necessary to enable him to place his conquests on a stable basis. the envious fates, however, allowed him but little more than twelve short months: he perished early in 705 b.c., assassinated by some soldier of alien birth, if i interpret rightly the mutilated text which furnishes us with a brief mention of the disaster. sennacherib was recalled in haste from the frontier, and proclaimed king immediately on his arrival, thus ascending unopposed to the throne on the 12th day of ab. his father�s body had been left unburied, doubtless in order that he might verify with his own eyes the truth of what had been told him concerning his death, and thus have no ground for harbouring suspicions that would have boded ill for the safety of the late king�s councillors and servants. he looked upon his father�s miserable ending as a punishment for some unknown transgression, and consulted the gods to learn what it was that had aroused their anger, refusing to authorise the burial within the palace until the various expiatory rites suggested by the oracle had been duly performed.* * this is my interpretation of the text published and translated by winckler. winckler sees in it the account of a campaign during which sargon was killed by mountaineers, as was cyprus in later times by the massagetse; the king�s body (according to him) remained unburied, and was recovered by sennacherib only after considerable delay. in support of his version of this event winckler cites the passage in isa. xiv. 4-20, which he takes as having been composed to exult over the death of sargon, and then afterwards adapted to the death of a king of babylon. thus mysteriously disappeared the founder of the mightiest dynasty that ever ruled in assyria, perhaps even in the whole of western asia. at first sight, it would seem easy enough to determine what manner of man he was and to what qualities he owed his greatness, thanks to the abundance of documents which his contemporaries have bequeathed to us; but when we come to examine more closely, we soon find the task to be by no means a simple one. the inscriptions maintain so discreet a silence with regard to the antecedents of the kings before their accession, and concerning their education and private life, that at this distance of time we cannot succeed in forming any clear idea as to their individual temperament and character. the monuments record such achievements as they took pride in, in terms of uniform praise which conceal or obliterate the personality of the king in question; it is always the ideal assyrian sovereign who is held up for our admiration under a score of different names, and if, here and there, we come upon some trait which indicates the special genius of this or that monarch, we may be sure that the scribe has allowed it to slip in by accident, quite unconscious of the fact that he is thus affording us a glimpse of his master�s true character and disposition. a study of sargon�s campaigns as revealed in his annals will speedily convince us that he was something more than a fearless general, with a keen eye to plunder, who could see nothing in the most successful expedition but a means of enriching his people or adding to the splendours of his court. he was evidently convinced that certain nations, such as urartu and elam, would never really assimilate with his own subjects, and, in their case, he adhered strictly to the old system of warfare, and did all he could to bring about their ruin; other nations, on the contrary, he regarded as capable of amalgamation with the assyrians, and these he did his best to protect from the worst consequences of their rebellion and resistance. he withdrew them from the influence of their native dynasties, and converted their territories into provinces under his own vigilant administration, and though he did not scruple to send the more turbulent elements among them into exile, and did his best to weaken them by founding alien colonies in their midst, yet he respected their religion, customs, and laws, and, in return for their obedience to his rule, guaranteed them an equitable and judicious government. moreover, he took quite as much interest in their well-being as� in his own military successes, and in the midst of his heroic struggles against rusas and merodach-baladan he contrived to find time for the consideration of such prosaic themes as the cultivation of the vine and of corn; he devoted his attention to the best methods of storing wine, and sought to prevent �oil, which is the life of man and healeth wounds, from rising in price, and the cost of sesame from exceeding that of wheat.� we seem to see in him, not only the stern and at times cruel conqueror, but also the gracious monarch, kind and considerate to his people, and merciful to the vanquished when policy permitted him to indulge his natural leaning to clemency. end of vol. vii. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume vi. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: 001.jpg page image] _the close of the theban empire--(continued)_ _ramses iii.: manners and customs--population--the predominance of amon and his high priests._ _the theban necropolis: mummies--the funeral of a rich theban: the procession of the offerings and the funerary furniture, the crossing of the nile, the tomb, the farewell to the dead, the sacrifice, the coffins, the repast of the dead, the song of the harper--the common ditch--the living inhabitants of the necropolis: draughtsmen, sculptors, painters--the bas-reliefs of the temples and the tombs, wooden statuettes, the smelting of metals, bronze--the religions of the necropolis: the immorality and want of discipline among the people: workmen s strikes._ _amon and the beliefs concerning him: his kingdom over the living and the dead, the soul�s destiny according to the teaching of amon--khonsû and his temple; the temple of amon at karnak, its revenue, its priesthood--the growing influence of the high priests of amon under the sons of ramses iii.: hamsesnaklûti, amenôthes; the violation of the royal burying-places--hrihor and the last of the ramses, smendês and the accession to power of the xxist dynasty: the division of egypt into two states--the priest-kings of amon masters of thebes under the suzerainty of the tanite pharaohs--the close of the theban empire._ [illustration: 003.jpg page image] chapter i--the close of the theban empire--(continued) _ramses iii.: manners and customs--population--the predominance of amon and his high priests._ opposite the thebes of the living, khafîtnîbûs, the thebes of the dead, had gone on increasing in a remarkably rapid manner. it continued to extend in the south-western direction from the heroic period of the xviiith dynasty onwards, and all the eminence and valleys were gradually appropriated one after the other for burying-places. at the time of which i am speaking, this region formed an actual town, or rather a chain of villages, each of which was grouped round some building constructed by one or other of the pharaohs as a funerary chapel. towards the north, opposite karnak, they clustered at drah-abu�l-neggah around pyramids of the first theban monarchs, at qurneh around the mausolæ of ramses i. and seti i., and at sheikh abd el-qurneh they lay near the amenopheum and the pamonkaniqîmît, or ramesseum built by ramses ii. towards the south they diminished in number, tombs and monuments becoming fewer and appearing at wider intervals; the migdol of ramses iii. formed an isolated suburb, that of azamît, at medinet-habu; the chapel of isis, constructed by amenôthes, son of hapû, formed a rallying-point for the huts of the hamlet of karka;* and in the far distance, in a wild gorge at the extreme limit of human habitations, the queens of the ramesside line slept their last sleep. * the village of karka or kaka was identified by brugsch with the hamlet of deîr el-medineh: the founder of the temple was none other than amenôthes, who was minister under amenôthes iii. [illustration: 004.jpg the theban cemeteries] each of these temples had around it its enclosing wall of dried brick, and the collection of buildings within this boundary formed the khîrû, or retreat of some one of the theban pharaohs, which, in the official language of the time, was designated the �august khîrû of millions of years.� [illustration: 005.jpg the necropolis of sheîkh and el-qurneh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. a sort of fortified structure, which was built into one of the corners, served as a place of deposit for the treasure and archives, and could be used as a prison if occasion required.* * this was the hliatmû, the dungeon, frequently mentioned in the documents bearing upon the necropolis. the remaining buildings consisted of storehouses, stables, and houses for the priests and other officials. in some cases the storehouses were constructed on a regular plan which the architect had fitted in with that of the temple. their ruins at the back and sides of the ramesseum form a double row of vaults, extending from the foot of the hills to the border of the cultivated lands. stone recesses on the roof furnished shelter for the watchmen.* the outermost of the village huts stood among the nearest tombs. the population which had been gathered together there was of a peculiar character, and we can gather but a feeble idea of its nature from the surroundings of the cemeteries in our own great cities. death required, in fact, far more attendants among the ancient egyptians than with us. the first service was that of mummification, which necessitated numbers of workers for its accomplishment. some of the workshops of the embalmers have been discovered from time to time at sheikh abd el-qurneh and deîr el-baharî, but we are still in ignorance as to their arrangements, and as to the exact nature of the materials which they employed. a considerable superficial space was required, for the manipulations of the embalmers occupied usually from sixty to eighty days, and if we suppose that the average deaths at thebes amounted to fifteen or twenty in the twenty-four hours, they would have to provide at the same time for the various degrees of saturation of some twelve to fifteen hundred bodies at the least.** * the discovery of quantities of ostraca in the ruins of these chambers shows that they served partly for cellars. ** i have formed my estimate of fifteen to twenty deaths per day from the mortality of cairo during the french occupation. this is given by r. desgenettes, in the _description de l�egypte_, but only approximately, as many deaths, especially of females, must have been concealed from the authorities; i have, however, made an average from the totals, and applied the rate of mortality thus obtained to ancient thebes. the same result follows from calculations based on more recent figures, obtained before the great hygienic changes introduced into cairo by ismail pacha, i.e. from august 1, 1858, to july 31, 1859, and from may 24, 1865, to may 16, 1866, and for the two years from april 2, 1869, to march 21, 1870, and from april 2, 1870, to march 21, 1871. each of the corpses,moreover, necessitated the employment of at least half a dozen workmen to wash it, cut it open, soak it, dry it, and apply the usual bandages before placing the amulets upon the canonically prescribed places, and using the conventional prayers. [illustration: 007.jpg head of a theban mummy] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. there was fastened to the breast, immediately below the neck, a stone or green porcelain scarab, containing an inscription which was to be efficacious in preventing the heart, �his heart which came to him from his mother, his heart from the time he was upon the earth,� from rising up and witnessing against the dead man before the tribunal of osiris.* there were placed on his fingers gold or enamelled rings, as talismans to secure for him the true voice.** * the manipulations and prayers were prescribed in the �book of embalming.� ** the prescribed gold ring was often replaced by one of blue or green enamel. the body becomes at last little more than a skeleton, with a covering of yellow skin which accentuates the anatomical, details, but the head, on the other hand, still preserves, where the operations have been properly conducted, its natural form. the cheeks have fallen in slightly, the lips and the fleshy parts of the nose have become thinner and more drawn than during life, but the general expression of the face remains unaltered. [illustration: 008.jpg the manufacture and painting of the cartonnage] drawn by faucher-gudin, after rosellini. a mask of pitch was placed over the visage to preserve it, above which was adjusted first a piece of linen and then a series of bands impregnated with resin, which increased the size of the head to twofold its ordinary bulk. the trunk and limbs were bound round with a first covering of some pliable soft stuff, warm to the touch. coarsely powdered natron was scattered here and there over the body as an additional preservative. packets placed between the legs, the arms and the hips, and in the eviscerated abdomen, contained the heart, spleen, the dried brain, the hair, and the cuttings of the beard and nails. in those days the hair had a special magical virtue: by burning it while uttering certain incantations, one might acquire an almost limitless power over the person to whom it had belonged. the ernbalmers, therefore, took care to place with the mummy such portions of the hair as they had been obliged to cut off, so as to remove them out of the way of the perverse ingenuity of the sorcerers. [illustration: 009.jpg wrapping of the mummy, under the direction of the �man of the roll�] drawn by faucher-gudin, from rosellini. over the first covering of the mummy already alluded to, there was sometimes placed a strip of papyrus or a long piece of linen, upon which the scribe had transcribed selections--both text and pictures--from �the book of the going forth by day:� in such cases the roll containing the whole work was placed between the legs. the body was further wrapped in several bandages, then in a second piece of stuff, then in more bands, the whole being finally covered with a shroud of coarse canvas and a red linen winding-sheet, sewn together at the back, and kept in place by transverse bands disposed at intervals from head to foot. the son of the deceased and a �man of the roll� were present at this lugubrious toilet, and recited at the application of each piece a prayer, in which its object was defined and its duration secured. every egyptian was supposed to be acquainted with the formulas, from having learned them during his lifetime, by which he was to have restored to him the use of his limbs, and be protected from the dangers of the world beyond. these were repeated to the dead person, however, for greater security, during the process of embalming, and the son of the deceased, or the master of the ceremonies, took care to whisper to the mummy the most mysterious parts, which no living ear might hear with impunity. the wrappings having been completed, the deceased person became aware of his equipment, and enjoyed all the privileges of the �instructed and fortified manes.� he felt himself, both mummy and double, now ready for the tomb. egyptian funerals were not like those to which we are accustomed--mute ceremonies, in which sorrow is barely expressed by a furtive tear: noise, sobbings, and wild gestures were their necessary concomitants. not only was it customary to hire weeping women, who tore their hair, filled the air with their lamentations, and simulated by skilful actions the depths of despair, but the relatives and friends themselves did not shrink from making an outward show of their grief, nor from disturbing the equanimity of the passers-by by the immoderate expressions of their sorrow. one after another they raised their voices, and uttered some expression appropriate to the occasion: �to the west, the dwelling of osiris, to the west, thou who wast the best of men, and who always hated guile.� and the hired weepers answered in chorus: �o chief,* as thou goest to the west, the gods themselves lament.� the funeral _cortege_ started in the morning from the house of mourning, and proceeded at a slow pace to the nile, amid the clamours of the mourners. * the �chief� is one of the names of osiris, and is applied naturally to the dead person, who has become an osiris by virtue of the embalming. the route was cleared by a number of slaves and retainers. first came those who carried cakes and flowers in their hands, followed by others bearing jars full of water, bottles of liqueurs, and phials of perfumes; then came those who carried painted boxes intended for the provisions of the dead man, and for containing the ushabtiu, or �respondents.� the succeeding group bore the usual furniture required by the deceased to set up house again, coffers for linen, folding and arm chairs, state-beds, and sometimes even a caparisoned chariot with its quivers. then came a groom conducting two of his late master�s favourite horses, who, having accompanied the funeral to the tomb, were brought back to their stable. another detachment, more numerous than the others combined, now filed past, bearing the effects of the mummy; first the vessels for the libations, then the cases for the canopic jars, then the canopic jars themselves, the mask of the deceased, coloured half in gold and half in blue, arms, sceptres, military batons, necklaces, scarabs, vultures with encircling wings worn on the breast at festival-times, chains, �respondents,� and the human-headed sparrow-hawk, the emblem of the soul. many of these objects were of wood plated with gold, others of the same material simply gilt, and others of solid gold, and thus calculated to excite the cupidity of the crowd. offerings came next, then a noisy company of female weepers; then a slave, who sprinkled at every instant some milk upon the ground as if to lay the dust; then a master of the ceremonies, who, the panther skin upon his shoulder, asperged the crowd with perfumed water; and behind him comes the hearse. [illustration: 012.jpg the funeral of harmhabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, after a coloured print in wilkinson. the cut on the following page joins this on the right. the latter, according to custom, was made in the form of a boat--representing the bark of osiris, with his ark, and two guardians, isis and nephthys--and was placed upon a sledge, which was drawn by a team of oxen and a relay of fellahîn. the sides of the ark were, as a rule, formed of movable wooden panels, decorated with pictures and inscriptions; sometimes, however, but more rarely, the panels were replaced by a covering of embroidered stuff or of soft leather. in the latter case the decoration was singularly rich, the figures and hieroglyphs being cut out with a knife, and the spaces thus left filled in with pieces of coloured leather, which gave the whole an appearance of brilliant mosaic-work.* * one of these coverings was found in the hiding-place at deîr el-baharî; it had belonged to the princess isîmkhobiû, whose mummy is now at gîzeh. [illustration: 013.jpg the funeral of habmhabî] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured print in wilkinson. the left side of this design fits on to the right of the preceding cut. in place of a boat, a shrine of painted wood, also mounted upon a sledge, was frequently used. when the ceremony was over, this was left, together with the coffin, in the tomb.* * i found in the tomb of sonnozmû two of these sledges with the superstructure in the form of a temple. they are now in the gîzeh museum. the wife and children walked as close to the bier as possible, and were followed by the friends of the deceased, dressed in long linen garments,* each of them bearing a wand. the ox-driver, while goading his beasts, cried out to them: �to the west, ye oxen who draw the hearse, to the west! your master comes behind you!� �to the west,� the friends repeated; �the excellent man lives no longer who loved truth so dearly and hated lying!�** ** the whole of this description is taken from the pictures representing the interment of a certain harmhabî, who died at thebes in the time of thfitmosis iv. * these expressions are taken from the inscriptions on the tomb of rai [illustration: 014.jpg the boat carrying the mummy] drawn by faucher-gudin, from pictures in the tomb of nofirhotpû at thebes. this lamentation is neither remarkable for its originality nor for its depth of feeling. sorrow was expressed on such occasions in prescribed formulas of always the same import, custom soon enabling each individual to compose for himself a repertory of monotonous exclamations of condolence, of which the prayer, �to the west!� formed the basis, relieved at intervals by some fresh epithet. the nearest relatives of the deceased, however, would find some more sincere expressions of grief, and some more touching appeals with which to break in upon the commonplaces of the conventional theme. on reaching the bank of the nile the funeral cortege proceeded to embark.* * the description of this second part of the funeral arrangements is taken from the tomb of harmhabî, and especially from that of nofirhotpû. [illustration: 015.jpg the boats containing the female weepers and the people of the household] drawn by faucher-gudin, from paintings on the tomb of nofirhotpû at thebes. they blended with their inarticulate cries, and the usual protestations and formulas, an eulogy upon the deceased and his virtues, allusions to his disposition and deeds, mention of the offices and honours he had obtained, and reflections on the uncertainty of human life--the whole forming the melancholy dirge which each generation intoned over its predecessor, while waiting itself for the same office to be said over it in its turn. the bearers of offerings, friends, and slaves passed over on hired barges, whose cabins, covered externally with embroidered stuffs of several colours, or with _applique_ leather, looked like the pedestals of a monument: crammed together on the boats, they stood upright with their faces turned towards the funeral bark. the latter was supposed to represent the noshemît, the mysterious skiff of abydos, which had been used in the obsequies of osiris of yore. [illustration: 016.jpg the boats containing the friends and the funerary furniture] drawn by faucher-gudin, from paintings on the tomb of nofirhotpû at thebes. it was elegant, light, and slender in shape, and ornamented at bow and stern with a lotus-flower of metal, which bent back its head gracefully, as if bowed down by its own weight. a temple-shaped shrine stood in the middle of the boat, adorned with bouquets of flowers and with green palm-branches. the female members of the family of the deceased, crouched beside the shrine, poured forth lamentations, while two priestesses, representing respectively isis and nephthys, took up positions behind to protect the body. the boat containing the female mourners having taken the funeral barge in tow, the entire flotilla pushed out into the stream. this was the solemn moment of the ceremony--the moment in which the deceased, torn away from his earthly city, was about to set out upon that voyage from which there is no return. the crowds assembled on the banks of the river hailed the dead with their parting prayers: �mayest thou reach in peace the west from thebes! in peace, in peace towards abydos, mayest thou descend in peace towards abydos, towards the sea of the west!� [illustration: 017.jpg a corner of the theban necropolis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a stele in the gîzeh museum. this crossing of the nile was of special significance in regard to the future of the soul of the deceased: it represented his pilgrimage towards abydos, to the �mouth of the cleft� which gave him access to the other world, and it was for this reason that the name of abydos is associated with that of thebes in the exclamations of the crowd. the voices of the friends replied frequently and mournfully: �to the west, to the west, the land of the justified! the place which thou lovedst weeps and is desolate!� then the female mourners took up the refrain, saying: �in peace, in peace, to the west! o honourable one, go in peace! if it please god, when the day of eternity shall shine, we shall see thee, for behold thou goest to the land which mingles all men together!� the widow then adds her note to the concert of lamentations: �o my brother, o my husband, o my beloved, rest, remain in thy place, do not depart from the terrestrial spot where thou art! alas, thou goest away to the ferry-boat in order to cross the stream! o sailors, do not hurry, leave him; you, you will return to your homes, but he, he is going away to the land of eternity! o osirian bark, why hast thou come to take away from me him who has left me!� the sailors were, of course, deaf to her appeals, and the mummy pursued its undisturbed course towards the last stage of its mysterious voyage. the majority of the tombs--those which were distributed over the plain or on the nearest spurs of the hill--were constructed on the lines of those brick-built pyramids erected on mastabas which were very common during the early theban dynasties. the relative proportions of the parts alone were modified: the mastaba, which had gradually been reduced to an insignificant base, had now recovered its original height, while the pyramid had correspondingly decreased, and was much reduced in size. the chapel was constructed within the building, and the mummy-pit was sunk to a varying depth below. the tombs ranged along the mountain-side were, on the other hand, rock-cut, and similar to those at el-bersheh and beni-hasan. [illustration: 018.jpg painting in the fifth tomb of the kings to the right] the heads of wealthy families or the nobility naturally did not leave to the last moment the construction of a sepulchre worthy of their rank and fortune. they prided themselves on having �finished their house which is in the funeral valley when the morning for the hiding away of their body should come.� access to these tombs was by too steep and difficult a path to allow of oxen being employed for the transport of the mummy: the friends or slaves of the deceased were, therefore, obliged to raise the sarcophagus on their shoulders and bear it as best they could to the door of the tomb. [illustration: 019.jpg the farewell to the mummy, and the double received by the goddess] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the paintings in the theban tombs. the mummy was then placed in an upright position on a heap of sand, with its back to the wall and facing the assistants, like the master of some new villa who, having been accompanied by his friends to see him take possession, turns for a moment on the threshold to take leave of them before entering. a sacrifice, an offering, a prayer, and a fresh outburst of grief ensued; the mourners redoubled their cries and threw themselves upon the ground, the relatives decked the mummy with flowers and pressed it to their bared bosoms, kissing it upon the breast and knees. �i am thy sister, o great one! forsake me not! is it indeed thy will that i should leave thee? if i go away, thou shalt be here alone, and is there any one who will be with thee to follow thee? o thou who lovedst to jest with me, thou art now silent, thou speakest not!� whereupon the mourners again broke out in chorus: �lamentation, lamentation! make, make, make, make lamentation without ceasing as loud as can be made. o good traveller, who takest thy way towards the land of eternity, thou hast been torn from us! o thou who hadst so many around thee, thou art now in the land which bringest isolation! thou who lovedst to stretch thy limbs in walking, art now fettered, bound, swathed! thou who hadst fine stuffs in abundance, art laid in the linen of yesterday!� calm in the midst of the tumult, the priest stood and offered the incense and libation with the accustomed words: �to thy double, osiris nofirhotpû, whose voice before the great god is true!� this was the signal of departure, and the mummy, carried by two men, disappeared within the tomb: the darkness of the other world had laid hold of it, never to let it go again. the chapel was usually divided into two chambers: one, which was of greater width than length, ran parallel to the façade; the other, which was longer than it was wide, stood at right angles with the former, exactly opposite to the entrance. the decoration of these chambers took its inspiration from the scheme which prevailed in the time of the memphite dynasties, but besides the usual scenes of agricultural labour, hunting, and sacrifice, there were introduced episodes from the public life of the deceased, and particularly the minute portrayal of the ceremonies connected with his burial. [illustration: 021.jpg niche in the tomb of menna] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. these pictorial biographies are always accompanied by detailed explanatory inscriptions; every individual endeavoured thus to show to the osirian judges the rank he had enjoyed here upon earth, and to obtain in the fields of lalû the place which he claimed to be his due. the stele was to be found at the far end of the second chamber; it was often let in to a niche in the form of a round-headed doorway, or else it was replaced by a group of statues, either detached or sculptured in the rock itself, representing the occupant, his wives and children, who took the place of the supporters of the double, formerly always hidden within the serdab. the ceremony of the �opening of the mouth� took place in front of the niche on the day of burial, at the moment when the deceased, having completed his terrestrial course, entered his new home and took possession of it for all eternity. the object of this ceremony was, as we know, to counteract the effects of the embalming, and to restore activity to the organs of the body whose functions had been suspended by death. the �man of the roll� and his assistants, aided by the priests, who represented the �children of horus,� once more raised the mummy into an upright position upon a heap of sand in the middle of the chapel, and celebrated in his behalf the divine mystery instituted by horus for osiris. they purified it both by ordinary and by red water, by the incense of the south and by the alum of the north, in the same manner as that in which the statues of the gods were purified at the beginning of the temple sacrifices; they then set to work to awake the deceased from his sleep: they loosened his shroud and called back the double who had escaped from the body at the moment of the death-agony, and restored to him the use of his arms and legs. as soon as the sacrificial slaughterers had despatched the bull of the south, and cut it in pieces, the priest seized the bleeding haunch, and raised it to the lips of the mask as if to invite it to eat; but the lips still remained closed, and refused to perform their office. the priest then touched them with several iron instruments hafted on wooden handles, which were supposed to possess the power of unsealing them. [illustration: 023a.jpg coffin-lid] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertens. [illustration: 023b.jpg coffin-lid] the �opening� once effected, the double became free, and the tomb-paintings from thenceforward ceasing to depict the mummy, represented the double only. they portrayed it �under the form which he had on this earth,� wearing the civil garb, and fulfilling his ordinary functions. the corpse was regarded as merely the larva, to be maintained in its integrity in order to ensure survival; but it could be relegated without fear to the depths of the bare and naked tomb, there to remain until the end of time, if it pleased the gods to preserve it from robbers or archaeologists. at the period of the first theban empire the coffins were rectangular wooden chests, made on the models of the limestone and granite sarcophagi, and covered with prayers taken from the various sacred writings, especially from the �book of the dead�; during the second theban empire, they were modified into an actual sheath for the body, following more or less the contour of the human figure. this external model of the deceased covered his remains, and his figure in relief served as a lid to the coffin. the head was covered with the full-dress wig, a tippet of white cambrio half veiled the bosom, the petticoat fell in folds about the limbs, the feet were shod with sandals, the arms were outstretched or were folded over the breast, and the hands clasped various objects--either the _crux ansata_, the buckle of the belt, the _tat_, or a garland of flowers. sometimes, on the contrary, the coffin was merely a conventional reproduction of the human form. the two feet and legs were joined together, and the modelling of the knee, calf, thigh, and stomach was only slightly indicated in the wood. towards the close of the xviiith dynasty it was the fashion for wealthy persons to have two coffins, one fitting inside the other, painted black or white. from the xxth dynasty onwards they were coated with a yellowish varnish, and so covered with inscriptions and mystic signs that each coffin was a tomb in miniature, and could well have done duty as such, and thus meet all the needs of the soul.* * the first to summarise the characteristics of the coffins and sarcophagi of the second theban period was mariette, but he places the use of the yellow-varnished coffins too late, viz. during the xxiind dynasty. examples of them have since been found which incontestably belong to the xxth. [illustration: 024.jpg the mummy factory] later still, during the xxist and xxiind dynasties, these two, or even three coffins, were enclosed in a rectangular sarcophagus of thick wood, which, surmounted by a semicircular lid, was decorated with pictures and hallowed by prayers: four sparrow-hawks, perched on the uprights at the corners, watched at the four cardinal points, and protected the body, enabling the soul at the same time to move freely within the four houses of which the world was composed. [illustration: 025.jpg the paraphernalia of a mummy of the xxth to the xxiind dynasties] drawn by faucher-gudin, from mariette. the workmen, after having deposited the mummy in its resting-place, piled upon the floor of the tomb the canopio jars, the caskets, the provisions, the furniture, the bed, and the stools and chairs; the usha-btiu occupied compartments in their allotted boxes, and sometimes there would be laid beside them the mummy of a favourite animal--a monkey, a dog of some rare breed, or a pet gazelle, whose coffins were shaped to their respective outlines, the better to place before the deceased the presentment of the living animal. [illustration: 026.jpg the funeral repast--music and dancing] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a fragment in the british museum. the scene representing the funeral repast and its accompanying dances occurs frequently in the theban tombs. a few of the principal objects were broken or damaged, in the belief that, by thus destroying them, their doubles would go forth and accompany the human double, and render him their accustomed services during the whole of his posthumous existence; a charm pronounced over them bound them indissolubly to his person, and constrained them to obey his will. this done, the priest muttered a final prayer, and the masons walled up the doorway. [illustration: 027.jpg the coffin of the favourite gazelle of isîmkhobiu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. the funeral feast now took place with its customary songs and dances. the _almehs_ addressed the guests and exhorted them to make good use of the passing hour: �be happy for one day! for when you enter your tombs you will rest there eternally throughout the length of every day!� immediately after the repast the friends departed from the tomb, and the last link which connected the dead with our world was then broken. the sacred harper was called upon to raise the farewell hymn:* * the harper is often represented performing this last office. in the tomb of nofirhotpû, and in many others, the daughters or the relatives of the deceased accompany or even replace the harper; in this case they belonged to a priestly family, and fulfilled the duties of the �female singers� of amon or some other god. �o instructed mummies, ennead of the gods of the coffin, who listen to the praises of this dead man, and who daily extol the virtues of this instructed mummy, who is living eternally like a god, ruling in amentît, ye also who shall live in the memory of posterity, all ye who shall come and read these hymns inscribed, according to the rites, within the tombs, repeat: �the greatness of the under-world, what is it? the annihilation of the tomb, why is it?� it is to conform to the image of the land of eternity, the true country where there is no strife and where violence is held in abhorrence, where none attacks his neighbour, and where none among our generations who rest within it is rebellious, from the time when your race first existed, to the moment when it shall become a multitude of multitudes, all going the same way; for instead of remaining in this land of egypt, there is not one but shall leave it, and there is said to all who are here below, from the moment of their waking to life: �go, prosper safe and sound, to reach the tomb at length, a chief among the blessed, and ever mindful in thy heart of the day when thou must lie down on the funeral bed!�� the ancient song of antûf, modified in the course of centuries, was still that which expressed most forcibly the melancholy thought paramount in the minds of the friends assembled to perform the last rites. �the impassibility of the chief* is, in truth, the best of fates!� * osiris is here designated by the word �chief,� as i have already pointed out. [illustration: 029.jpg one of the harpers of the tomb of ramses iii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken byjnsinger in 1881. �since the times of the god bodies are created merely to pass away, and young generations take their place: râ rises in the morning, tûmû lies down to rest in the land of the evening, all males generate, the females conceive, every nose inhales the air from the morning of their birth to the day when they go to their place! be happy then for one day, o man!--may there ever be perfumes and scents for thy nostrils, garlands and lotus-flowers for thy shoulders and for the neck of thy beloved sister* who sits beside thee! let there be singing and music before thee, and, forgetting all thy sorrows, think only of pleasure until the day when thou must enter the country of marîtsakro, the silent goddess, though all the same the heart of the son who loves thee will not cease to beat! be happy for one day, o man!--i have heard related what befell our ancestors; their walls are destroyed, their place is no more, they are as those who have ceased to live from the time of the god! the walls of thy tomb are strong, thou hast planted trees at the edge of thy pond, thy soul reposes beneath them and drinks the water; follow that which seemeth good to thee as long as thou art on earth, and give bread to him who is without land, that thou mayest be well spoken of for evermore. think upon the gods who have lived long ago: their meat offerings fall in pieces as if they had been torn by a panther, their loaves are defiled with dust, their statues no longer stand upright within the temple of râ, their followers beg for alms! be happy for one day!� * marriages between brothers and sisters in egypt rendered this word �sister� the most natural appellation. those gone before thee �have had their hour of joy,� and they have put off sadness �which shortens the moments until the day when hearts are destroyed!--be mindful, therefore, of the day when thou shalt be taken to the country where all men are mingled: none has ever taken thither his goods with him, and no one can ever return from it!� the grave did not, however, mingle all men as impartially as the poet would have us believe. the poor and insignificant had merely a place in the common pit, which was situated in the centre of the assassîf,* one of the richest funerary quarters of thebes. * there is really only one complete description of a cemetery of the poor, namely, that given by a. rhind. mariette caused extensive excavations to be made by gabet and vassalli, 1859-1862, in the assassif, near the spot worked by rhind, and the objects found are now in the gîzeh museum, but the accounts of the work are among his unpublished papers, vassalli assures me that he sometimes found the mummies piled one on another to the depth of sixty bodies, and even then he did not reach the lowest of the pile. the hurried excavations which i made in 1882 and 1884, appeared to confirm these statements of rhind and vassalli. yawning trenches stood ever open there, ready to receive their prey; the rites were hurriedly performed, and the grave-diggers covered the mummies of the day�s burial with a little sand, out of which we receive them intact, sometimes isolated, sometimes in groups of twos or threes, showing that they had not even been placed in regular layers. some are wrapped only in bandages of coarse linen, and have been consigned without further covering to the soil, while others have been bound round with palm-leaves laid side by side, so as to form a sort of primitive basket. the class above the poorest people were buried in rough-hewn wooden boxes, smaller at the feet than towards the head, and devoid of any inscription or painting. many have been placed in any coffin that came to hand, with a total indifference as to suitability of size; others lie in a badly made bier, made up of the fragments of one or more older biers. none of them possessed any funerary furniture, except the tools of his trade, a thin pair of leather shoes, sandals of cardboard or plaited reeds, rings of terra-cotta or bronze, bracelets or necklets of a single row of blue beads, statuettes of divinities, mystic eyes, scarabs, and, above all, cords tied round the neck, arms, limbs, or waist, to keep off, by their mystic knots, all malign influences. the whole population of the necropolis made their living out of the dead. this was true of all ranks of society, headed by the sacerdotal colleges of the royal chapels,* and followed by the priestly bodies, to whom was entrusted the care of the tombs in the various sections, but the most influential of whom confined their attentions to the old burying-ground, �isît-mâît,� the true place.** * we find on several monuments the names of persons belonging to these sacerdotal bodies, priests of ahmosis i., priests of thûtmosis i., of thût-mosis ii., of amenôthes ii., and of seti i. ** the persons connected with the �true place� were for a long time considered as magistrates, and the �true place� as a tribunal. it was their duty to keep up the monuments of the kings, and also of private individuals, to clean the tombs, to visit the funerary chambers, to note the condition of their occupants, and, if necessary, repair the damage done by time, and to provide on certain days the offerings prescribed by custom, or by clauses in the contract drawn up between the family of the deceased and the religious authorities. the titles of these officials indicated how humble was their position in relation to the deified ancestors in whose service they were employed; they called themselves the �servants of the true place,� and their chiefs the �superiors of the servants,� but all the while they were people of considerable importance, being rich, well educated, and respected in their own quarter of the town. [illustration: 032.jpg paintings at the end of the hall of the fifth the tomb] they professed to have a special devotion for amenôthes i. and his mother, nofrîtari, who, after five or six centuries of continuous homage, had come to be considered as the patrons of khafîtnîbûs, but this devotion was not to the depreciation of other sovereigns. it is true that the officials were not always clear as to the identity of the royal remains of which they had the care, and they were known to have changed one of their queens or princesses into a king or some royal prince.* * thus queen ahhotpû i., whom the �servant� anhûrkhâû knew to be a woman, is transformed into a king ahhotpû in the tomb of khâbokhnît. [illustration: amenothes iii. at luxor] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gayet. they were surrounded by a whole host of lesser functionaries--bricklayers, masons, labourers, exorcists, scribes (who wrote out pious formulae for poor people, or copied the �books of the going forth by day� for the mummies), weavers, cabinet-makers, and goldsmiths. the sculptors and the painters were grouped into guilds;* many of them spent their days in the tombs they were decorating, while others had their workshops above-ground, probably very like those of our modern monumental masons. * we gather this from the inscriptions which give us the various titles of the sculptors, draughtsmen, or workmen, but i have been unable to make out the respective positions held by these different persons. they kept at the disposal of their needy customers an assortment of ready-made statues and stelæ, votive tablets to osiris, anubis, and other theban gods and goddesses, singly or combined. the name of the deceased and the enumeration of the members of his family were left blank, and were inserted after purchase in the spaces reserved for the purpose.* * i succeeded in collecting at the boulak museum a considerable number of these unfinished statues and stelæ, coming from the workshops of the necropolis. these artisans made the greater part of their livelihood by means of these epitaphs, and the majority thought only of selling as many of them as they could; some few, however, devoted themselves to work of a higher kind. sculpture had reached a high degree of development under the thûtmoses and the ramses, and the art of depicting scenes in bas-relief had been brought to a perfection hitherto unknown. this will be easily seen by comparing the pictures in the old mastabas, such as those of ti or phtahhotpû, with the finest parts of the temples of qurneh, abydos, karnak, deîr el-baharî, or with the scenes in the tombs of seti i. and ramses ii., or those of private individuals such as hûi. the modelling is firm and refined, showing a skill in the use of the chisel and an elegance of outline which have never been surpassed: the amenôthes iii. of luxor and the khâmhâît of sheikh abd el-qurneh might serve for models in our own schools of the highest types which egyptian art could produce at its best in this particular branch. the drawing is freer than in earlier examples, the action is more natural, the composition more studied, and the perspective less wild. we feel that the artist handled his subject _con amore_. he spared no trouble in sketching out his designs and in making studies from nature, and, as papyrus was expensive, he drew rough drafts, or made notes of his impressions on the flat chips of limestone with which the workshops were strewn. [illustration: 035.jpg khâmhaît] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de mertens. nothing at that date could rival these sketches for boldness of conception and freedom in execution, whether it were in the portrayal of the majestic gait of a king or the agility of an acrobat. of the latter we have an example in the turin museum. the girl is nude, with the exception of a tightly fitting belt about her hips, and she is throwing herself backwards with so natural a motion, that we are almost tempted to expect her to turn a somersault and fall once more into position with her heels together. [illustration: 026.jpg sketch of a female acrobat] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by petrie. the unfinished figures on the tomb of seti i. shows with what a steady hand the clever draughtsman could sketch out his subjects. the head from the nape of the neck round to the throat is described by a single line, and the contour of the shoulders is marked by another. the form of the body is traced by two undulating lines, while the arms and legs are respectively outlined by two others. the articles of apparel and ornaments, sketched rapidly at first, had to be gone over again by the sculptor, who worked out the smallest details. one might almost count the tresses of the hair, while the folds of the dress and the enamels of the girdle and bracelets are minutely chiselled. [illustration: bas-relief of seti i., showing corrections made by the sculptor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from photographs by insinger and daniel héron. when the draughtsman had finished his picture from the sketch which he had made, or when he had enlarged it from a smaller drawing, the master of the studio would go over it again, marking here and there in red the defective points, to which the sculptor gave his attention when working the subject out on the wall. if he happened to make a mistake in executing it, he corrected it as well as he was able by filling up with stucco or hard cement the portions to be remodelled, and by starting to work again upon the fresh surface. this cement has fallen out in some cases, and reveals to our eyes to-day the marks of the underlying chiselling. there are, for example, two profiles of seti i. on one of the bas-reliefs of the hypostyle hall at karnak, one faintly outlined, and the other standing fully out from the surface of the stone. the sense of the picturesque was making itself felt, and artists were no longer to be excused for neglecting architectural details, the configuration of the country, the drawing of rare plants, and, in fact, all those accessories which had been previously omitted altogether or merely indicated. the necessity of covering such vast surfaces as the pylons offered had accustomed them to arrange the various scenes of one and the same action in a more natural and intimate connexion than their predecessors could possibly have done. in these scenes the pharaoh naturally played the chief part, but in place of choosing for treatment merely one or other important action of the monarch calculated to exhibit his courage, the artist endeavoured to portray all the successive incidents in his campaigns, in the same manner as the early italian painters were accustomed to depict, one after the other, and on the same canvas, all the events of the same legend. the details of these gigantic compositions may sometimes appear childish to us, and we may frequently be at a loss in determining the relations of the parts, yet the whole is full of movement, and, although mutilated, gives us even yet the impression which would have been made upon us by the turmoil of a battle in those distant days. the sculptor of statues for a long time past was not a whit less skilful than the artist who executed bas-reliefs. the sculptor was doubtless often obliged to give enormous proportions to the figure of the king, to prevent his being overshadowed by the mass of buildings among which the statue was to appear; but this necessity of exaggerating the human form did not destroy in the artist that sense of proportion and that skilful handling of the chisel which are so strikingly displayed in the sitting scribe or in the princess at meîdûm; it merely trained him to mark out deftly the principal lines, and to calculate the volume and dimensions of these gigantic granite figures of some fifty to sixty-five feet high, with as great confidence and skill as he would have employed upon any statue of ordinary dimensions which might be entrusted to him. the colossal statues at abu-simbel and thebes still witness to the incomparable skill of the theban sculptors in the difficult art of imagining and executing superhuman types. the decadence of egyptian art did not begin until the time of ramses iii., but its downward progress was rapid, and the statues of the ramesside period are of little or no artistic value. the form of these figures is poor, the technique crude, and the expression of the faces mean and commonplace. they betray the hand of a mechanical workman who, while still in the possession of the instruments of his trade, can infuse no new life into the traditions of the schools, nor break away from them altogether. [illustration: 040.jpg the kneeling scribe at turin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie; the scribe bears upon his right shoulder, perhaps tattooed, the human image of the god amon-râ, whose animal emblem he embraces. we must look, not to the royal studios, but to the workshops connected with the necropolis, if we want to find statues of half life-size displaying intelligent workmanship, all of which we might be tempted to refer to the xviiith dynasty if the inscriptions upon them did not fix their date some two or three centuries later. an example of them may be seen at turin in the kneeling scribe embracing a ram-headed altar: the face is youthful, and has an expression at once so gentle and intelligent that we are constrained to overlook the imperfections in the bust and legs of the figure. specimens of this kind are not numerous, and their rarity is easily accounted for. the multitude of priests, soldiers, workmen, and small middle-class people who made up the bulk of the theban population had aspirations for a luxury little commensurate with their means, and the tombs of such people are, therefore, full of objects which simulate a character they do not possess, and are deceptive to the eye: such were the statuettes made of wood, substituted from economical motives instead of the limestone or sandstone statues usually provided as supporters for the �double.� [illustration: 041a.jpg young girl in the turing museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by petrie. [illustration: 041b.jpg the lady nehai] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de mertens. enamelled eyes, according to a common custom, were inserted in the sockets, but have disappeared. the funerary sculptors had acquired a perfect mastery of the kind of art needed for people of small means, and we find among the medley of commonplace objects which encumber the tomb they decorated, examples of artistic works of undoubted excellence, such as the ladies naî and tûî now in the louvre, the lady nehaî now at berlin, and the naked child at turin. the lady tûî in her lifetime had been one of the singing-women of amon. she is clad in a tight-fitting robe, which accentuates the contour of the breasts and hips without coarseness: her right arm falls gracefully alongside her body, while her left, bent across her chest, thrusts into her bosom a kind of magic whip, which was the sign of her profession. the artist was not able to avoid a certain heaviness in the treatment of her hair, and the careful execution of the whole work was not without a degree of harshness, but by dint of scraping and polishing the wood he succeeded in softening the outline, and removing from the figure every sharp point. the lady nehaî is smarter and more graceful, in her close-fitting garment and her mantle thrown over the left elbow; and the artist has given her a more alert pose and resolute air than we find in the stiff carriage of her contemporary tûî. the little girl in the turin museum is a looser work, but where could one find a better example of the lithe delicacy of the young egyptian maiden of eight or ten years old? we may see her counterpart to-day among the young nubian girls of the cataract, before they are obliged to wear clothes; there is the same thin chest, the same undeveloped hips, the same meagre thighs, and the same demeanour, at once innocent and audacious. other statuettes represent matrons, some in tight garments, and with their hair closely confined, others without any garment whatever. [illustration: 043a.jpg a soldier] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de mertens. [illustration: 043b.jpg statue in the turin museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by petrie. the turin example is that of a lady who seems proud of her large ear-rings, and brings one of them into prominence, either to show it off or to satisfy herself that the jewel becomes her: her head is square-shaped, the shoulders narrow, the chest puny, the pose of the arm stiff and awkward, but the eyes have such a joyful openness, and her smile such a self-satisfied expression, that one readily over looks the other defects of the statue. in this collection of miniature figures examples of men are not wanting, and there are instances of old soldiers, officials, guardians of temples, and priests proudly executing their office in their distinctive panther skins. three individuals in the gîzeh were contemporaries, or almost so, of the young girl of the turin museum. they are dressed in rich costumes, to which they have, doubtless, a just claim; for one of them, hori, surnamed râ, rejoiced in the favour of the pharaoh, and must therefore have exercised some court function. they seem to step forth with a measured pace and firm demeanour, the body well thrown back and the head erect, their faces displaying something of cruelty and cunning. an officer, whose retirement from service is now spent in the louvre, is dressed in a semi-civil costume, with a light wig, a closely fitting smock-frock with shirt-sleeves, and a loin-cloth tied tightly round the hips and descending halfway down the thigh, to which is applied a piece of stuff kilted lengthwise, projecting in front. a colleague of his, now in the berlin museum, still maintains possession of his official baton, and is arrayed in his striped petticoat, his bracelets and gorget of gold. a priest in the louvre holds before him, grasped by both hands, the insignia of amon-ra--a ram�s head, surmounted by the solar disk, and inserted on the top of a thick handle; another, who has been relegated to turin, appears to be placed between two long staves, each surmounted by an idol, and, to judge from his attitude, seems to have no small idea of his own beauty and importance. the egyptians were an observant people and inclined to satire, and i have a shrewd suspicion that the sculptors, in giving to such statuettes this character of childlike vanity, yielded to the temptation to be merry at the expense of their model. the smelters and engravers in metal occupied in relation to the sculptors a somewhat exalted position. bronze had for a long time been employed in funerary furniture, and _ushabtiu_ (respondents),* amulets, and images of the gods, as well as of mortals, were cast in this metal. many of these tiny figures form charming examples of enamel-work, and are distinguished not only by the gracefulness of the, modelling, but also by the brilliance of the superimposed glaze; but the majority of them were purely commercial articles, manufactured by the hundred from the same models, and possibly cast, for centuries, from the same moulds for the edification of the devout and of pilgrims. * bronze _respondents_ are somewhat rare, and most of those which are to be found among the dealers are counterfeit. the gîzeh museum possesses two examples at least of indisputable authenticity; both of these belong to the xxth dynasty. [illustration: 045.jpg funerary casket in the turing museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. [illustration: 046.jpg shrine in the turin museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lanzone. we ought not, therefore, to be surprised if they are lacking in originality; they are no more to be distinguished from each other than the hundreds of coloured statuettes which one may find on the stalls of modern dealers in religious statuary. [illustration: 046b.jpg the lady taksûhît] from a bronze in the museum at athens [illustration: 046b.jpg-text] here and there among the multitude we may light upon examples showing a marked individuality: the statuette of the lady takûshit, which now forms one of the ornaments of the museum at athens, is an instance. she stands erect, one foot in advance, her right arm hanging at her side, her left pressed against her bosom; she is arrayed in a short dress embroidered over with religious scenes, and wears upon her ankles and wrists rings of value. a wig with stiff-looking locks, regularly arranged in rows, covers her head. the details of the drapery and the ornaments are incised on the surface of the bronze, and heightened with a thread of silver. the face is evidently a portrait, and is that apparently of a woman of mature age, but the body, according to the tradition of the egyptian schools of art, is that of a young girl, lithe, firm, and elastic. the alloy contains gold, and the warm and softened lights reflected from it blend most happily and harmoniously with the white lines of the designs. the joiners occupied, after the workers in bronze, an important position in relation to the necropolis, and the greater part of the furniture which they executed for the mummies of persons of high rank was remarkable for its painting and carpentry-work. some articles of their manufacture were intended for religious use--such as those shrines, mounted upon sledges, on which the image of the god was placed, to whom prayers were made for the deceased; others served for the household needs of the mummy, and, to distinguish these, there are to be seen upon their sides religious and funereal pictures, offerings to the two deceased parents, sacrifices to a god or goddess, and incidents in the osirian life. the funerary beds consisted, like those intended for the living, of a rectangular framework, placed upon four feet of equal height, although there are rare examples in which the supports are so arranged as to give a gentle slope to the structure. the fancy which actuated the joiner in making such beds supposed that two benevolent lions had, of their own free will, stretched out their bodies to form the two sides of the couch, the muzzles constituting the pillow, while the tails were curled up under the feet of the sleeper. many of the heads given to the lions are so noble and expressive, that they will well bear comparison with the granite statues of these animals which amenôthes iii. dedicated in his temple at soleb. the other trades depended upon the proportion of their members to the rest of the community for the estimation in which they were held. the masons, stone-cutters, and common labourers furnished the most important contingent; among these ought also to be reckoned the royal servants--of whose functions we should have been at a loss to guess the importance, if contemporary documents had not made it clear--fishermen, hunters, laundresses, wood-cutters, gardeners, and water-carriers.* * the cailliaud ostracon, which contains a receipt given to some fishermen, was found near sheikh abd el-qurneh, and consequently belonged to the fishermen of the necropolis. there is a question as to the water-carriers of the khirû in the hieratic registers of turin, also as to the washers of clothes, wood-cutters, gardeners and workers in the vineyard. [illustration: 048.jpg the swallow-goddess from the theban necropolis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lanzone. without reckoning the constant libations needed for the gods and the deceased, the workshops required a large quantity of drinking water for the men engaged in them. in every gang of workmen, even in the present day, two or three men are set apart to provide drinking-water for the rest; in some arid places, indeed, at a distance from the river, such as the valley of the kings, as many water-carriers are required as there are workmen. to the trades just mentioned must be added the low-caste crowd depending oh the burials of the rich, the acrobats, female mourners, dancers and musicians. the majority of the female corporations were distinguished by the infamous character of their manners, and prostitution among them had come to be associated with the service of the god.* * the heroine of the erotic papyrus of turin bears the title of �singing-woman of amon,� and the illustrations indicate her profession so clearly and so expressively, that no details of her sayings and doings are wanting. [illustration: 049.jpg the goddess mabîtsakbo] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lanzone. there was no education for all this mass of people, and their religion was of a meagre character. they worshipped the official deities, amon, mût, isis, and hâthor, and such deceased pharaohs as amenôthes i. and nofrîtari, but they had also their own pantheon, in which animals predominated--such as the goose of amon, and his ram pa-rahaninofir, the good player on the horn, the hippopotamus, the cat, the chicken, the swallow, and especially reptiles. death was personified by a great viper, the queen of the west, known by the name marîtsakro, the friend of silence. three heads, or the single head of a woman, attached to the one body, were assigned to it. it was supposed to dwell in the mountain opposite karnak, which fact gave to it, as well as to the necropolis itself, the two epithets of khafîtnîbûs and ta-tahnît, that is, the summit.* * the abundance of the monuments of marîtsakro found at sheikh abd el-gurneh, inclines me to believe that her sanctuary was situated in the neighbourhood of the temple of uazmosû, but there was also on the top of the hill another sanctuary which would equally satisfy the name ta-tahnît. its chapel was situated at the foot of the hill of sheikh abd el-qurneh, but its sacred serpents crawled and wriggled through the necropolis, working miracles and effecting the cure of the most dangerous maladies. the faithful were accustomed to dedicate to them, in payment of their vows, stelas, or slabs of roughly hewn stone, with inscriptions which witnessed to a deep gratitude. �hearken! i, from the time of my appearance on earth, i was a �servant of the true place,� nofirâbû, a stupid ignorant person, who knew not good from evil, and i committed sin against the summit. she punished me, and i was in her hand day and night. i lay groaning on my couch like a woman in childbed, and i made supplication to the air, but it did not come to me, for i was hunted down by the summit of the west, the brave one among all the gods and all the goddesses of the city; so i would say to all the miserable sinners among the people of the necropolis: �give heed to the summit, for there is a lion in the summit, and she strikes as strikes a spell-casting lion, and she pursues him who sins against her! �i invoked then my mistress, and i felt that she flew to me like a pleasant breeze; she placed herself upon me, and this made me recognise her hand, and appeased she returned to me, and she delivered me from suffering, for she is my life, the summit of the west, when she is appeased, and she ought to be invoked!�� there were many sinners, we may believe, among that ignorant and superstitious population, but the governors of thebes did not put their confidence in the local deities alone to keep them within bounds, and to prevent their evil deeds; commissioners, with the help of a detachment of mazaîû, were an additional means of conducting them into the right way. they had, in this respect, a hard work to accomplish, for every day brought with it its contingent of crimes, which they had to follow up, and secure the punishment of the authors. nsisûamon came to inform them that the workman nakhtummaût and his companions had stolen into his house, and robbed him of three large loaves, eight cakes, and some pastry; they had also drunk a jar of beer, and poured out from pure malice the oil which they could not carry away with them. panîbi had met the wife of a comrade alone near an out-of-the-way tomb, and had taken advantage of her notwithstanding her cries; this, moreover, was not the first offence of the culprit, for several young girls had previously been victims of his brutality, and had not ventured up to this time to complain of him on account of the terror with which he inspired the neighbourhood. crimes against the dead were always common; every penniless fellow knew what quantities of gold and jewels had been entombed with the departed, and these treasures, scattered around them at only a few feet from the surface of the ground, presented to them a constant temptation to which they often succumbed. some were not disposed to have accomplices, while others associated together, and, having purchased at a serious cost the connivance of the custodians, set boldly to work on tombs both recent and ancient. not content with stealing the funerary furniture, which they disposed of to the undertakers, they stripped the mummies also, and smashed the bodies in their efforts to secure the jewels; then, putting the remains together again, they rearranged the mummies afresh so cleverly that they can no longer be distinguished by their outward appearance from the originals, and the first wrappings must be removed before the fraud can be discovered. from time to time one of these rogues would allow himself to be taken for the purpose of denouncing his comrades, and avenging himself for the injustice of which he was the victim in the division of the spoil; he was laid hold of by the mazaîû, and brought before the tribunal of justice. the lands situated on the left bank of the nile belonged partly to the king and partly to the god amon, and any infraction of the law in regard to the necropolis was almost certain to come within the jurisdiction of one or other of them. the commission appointed, therefore, to determine the damage done in any case, included in many instances the high priest or his delegates, as well as the officers of the pharaoh. the office of this commission was to examine into the state of the tombs, to interrogate the witnesses and the accused, applying the torture if necessary: when they had got at the facts, the tribunal of the notables condemned to impalement some half a dozen of the poor wretches, and caused some score of others to be whipped.* but, when two or three months had elapsed, the remembrance of the punishment began to die away, and the depredations began afresh. the low rate of wages occasioned, at fixed periods, outbursts of discontent and trouble which ended in actual disturbances. the rations allowed to each workman, and given to him at the beginning of each month, would possibly have been sufficient for himself and his family, but, owing to the usual lack of foresight in the egyptian, they were often consumed long before the time fixed, and the pinch soon began to be felt. the workmen, demoralised by their involuntary abstinence, were not slow to turn to the overseer; �we are perishing of hunger, and there are still eighteen days before the next month.� the latter was prodigal of fair speeches, but as his words were rarely accompanied by deeds, the workmen would not listen to him; they stopped work, left the workshop in turbulent crowds, ran with noisy demonstrations to some public place to hold a meeting--perhaps the nearest monument, at the gate of the temple of thûtmosis iii.,** behind the chapel of mînephtah,*** or in the court of that of seti i. * this is how i translate a fairly common expression, which means literally, �to be put on the wood.� spiegelberg sees in this only a method of administering torture. ** perhaps the chapel of uazmôsû, or possibly the free space before the temple of deîr el-baharî. *** the site of this chapel was discovered by prof. petrie in the spring of 1896. it had previously been supposed to be a temple of amenôthes iii. their overseers followed them; the police commissioners of the locality, the mazaîû, and the scribes mingled with them and addressed themselves to some of the leaders with whom they might be acquainted. but these would not at first give them a hearing. �we will not return,� they would say to the peacemakers; �make it clear to your superiors down below there.� it must have been manifest that from their point of view their complaints were well founded, and the official, who afterwards gave an account of the affair to the authorities, was persuaded of this. �we went to hear them, and they spoke true words to us.� for the most part these strikes had no other consequence than a prolonged stoppage of work, until the distribution of rations at the beginning of the next month gave the malcontents courage to return to their tasks. attempts were made to prevent the recurrence of these troubles by changing the method and time of payments. these were reduced to an interval of fifteen days, and at length, indeed, to one of eight. the result was very much the same as before: the workman, paid more frequently, did not on that account become more prudent, and the hours of labour lost did not decrease. the individual man, if he had had nobody to consider but himself, might have put up with the hardships of his situation, but there were almost always wife and children or sisters concerned, who clamoured for bread in their hunger, and all the while the storehouses of the temples or those of the state close by were filled to overflowing with durrah, barley, and wheat.* * khonsu, for example, excites his comrades to pillage the storehouses of the gate. the temptation to break open the doors and to help themselves in the present necessity must have been keenly felt. some bold spirits among the strikers, having set out together, scaled the two or three boundary walls by which the granaries were protected, but having reached this position their hearts, failed them, and they contented themselves with sending to the chief custodian an eloquent pleader, to lay before him their very humble request: �we are come, urged by famine, urged by thirst, having no more linen, no more oil, no more fish, no more vegetables. send to pharaoh, our master, send to the king, our lord, that he may provide us with the necessaries of life.� if one of them, with less self-restraint, was so carried away as to let drop an oath, which was a capital offence, saying, �by amon! by the sovereign, whose anger is death!� if he asked to be taken before a magistrate in order that he might reiterate there his complaint, the others interceded for him, and begged that he might escape the punishment fixed by the law for blasphemy; the scribe, good fellow as he was, closed his ears to the oath, and, if it were in his power, made a beginning of satisfying their demands by drawing upon the excess of past months to such an extent as would pacify them for some days, and by paying them a supplemental wage in the name of the pharaoh. they cried out loudly: �shall there not be served out to us corn in excess of that which has been distributed to us; if not we will not stir from this spot?� at length the end of the month arrived, and they all appeared together before the magistrates, when they said: �let the scribe, khâmoîsît, who is accountable, be sent for!� he was thereupon brought before the notables of the town, and they said to him: �see to the corn which thou hast received, and give some of it to the people of the necropolis.� pmontunîboîsît was then sent for, and �rations of wheat were given to us daily.� famine was not caused only by the thriftlessness of the multitude: administrators of all ranks did not hesitate to appropriate, each one according to his position, a portion of the means entrusted to them for the maintenance of their subordinates, and the latter often received only instalments of what was due to them. the culprits often escaped from their difficulties by either laying hold of half a dozen of their brawling victims, or by yielding to them a proportion of their ill-gotten gains, before a rumour of the outbreak could reach head-quarters. it happened from time to time, however, when the complaints against them were either too serious or too frequent, that they were deprived of their functions, cited before the tribunals, and condemned. what took place at thebes was repeated with some variations in each of the other large cities. corruption, theft, and extortion had prevailed among the officials from time immemorial, and the most active kings alone were able to repress these abuses, or confine them within narrow limits; as soon as discipline became relaxed, however, they began to appear again, and we have no more convincing proof of the state of decadence into which thebes had fallen towards the middle of the xxth dynasty, than the audacity of the crimes committed in the necropolis during the reigns of the successors of ramses iii. the priesthood of amon alone displayed any vigour and enjoyed any prosperity in the general decline. after the victory of the god over the heretic kings no one dared to dispute his supremacy, and the ramessides displayed a devout humility before him and his ministers. henceforward he became united to râ in a definite manner, and his authority not only extended over the whole of the land of egypt, but over all the countries also which were brought within her influence; so that while pharaoh continued to be the greatest of kings, pharaoh�s god held a position of undivided supremacy among the deities. he was the chief of the two bnneads, the heliopolitan and the hermopolitan, and displayed for the latter a special affection; for the vague character of its eight secondary deities only served to accentuate the position of the ninth and principal divinity with whose primacy that of amon was identified. it was more easy to attribute to amon the entire work of creation when shû, sibû, osiris, and sit had been excluded--the deities whom the theologians of heliopolis had been accustomed to associate with the demiurge; and in the hymns which they sang at his solemn festivals they did not hesitate to ascribe to him all the acts which the priests of former times had assigned to the ennead collectively. �he made earth, silver, gold,--the true lapis at his good pleasure.--he brought forth the herbs for the cattle, the plants upon which men live.--he made to live the fish of the river,--the birds which hover in the air,--giving air to those which are in the egg.--he animates the insects,--he makes to live the small birds, the reptiles, and the gnats as well.--he provides food for the rat in his hole,--supports the bird upon the branch.--may he be blessed for all this, he who is alone, but with many hands.� �men spring from his two eyes,� and quickly do they lose their breath while acclaiming him--egyptians and libyans, negroes and asiatics: �hail to thee!� they all say; �praise to thee because thou dwellest amongst us!--obeisances before thee because thou createst us!�--�thou art blessed by every living thing,--thou hast worshippers in every place,--in the highest of the heavens, in all the breadth of the earth,--in the depths of the seas.--the gods bow before thy majesty,--magnifying the souls which form them,--rejoicing at meeting those who have begotten them,--they say to thee: �go in peace,--father of the fathers of all the gods,--who suspended the heaven, levelled the earth;--creator of beings, maker of things,--sovereign king, chief of the gods,--we adore thy souls, because thou hast made us,--we lavish offerings upon thee, because thou hast given us birth,--we shower benedictions upon thee, because thou dwellest among us.�� we have here the same ideas as those which predominate in the hymns addressed to atonû,* and in the prayers directed to phtah, the nile, shû, and the sun-god of heliopolis at the same period. * breasted points out the decisive influence exercised by the solar hymns of amenôthes iv. on the development of the solar ideas contained in the hymns to amon put forth or re edited in the xxiiird dynasty. the idea of a single god, lord and maker of all things, continued to prevail more and more throughout egypt--not, indeed, among the lower classes who persisted in the worship of their genii and their animals, but among the royal family, the priests, the nobles, and people of culture. the latter believed that the sun-god had at length absorbed all the various beings who had been manifested in the feudal divinities: these, in fact, had surrendered their original characteristics in order to become forms of the sun, amon as well as the others--and the new belief displayed itself in magnifying the solar deity, but the solar deity united with the theban amon, that is, amon-râ. the omnipotence of this one god did not, however, exclude a belief in the existence of his compeers; the theologians thought all the while that the beings to whom ancient generations had accorded a complete independence in respect of their rivals were nothing more than emanations from one supreme being. if local pride forced them to apply to this single deity the designation customarily used in their city--phtah at memphis, anhûri-shû at thinis, khnûmû in the neighbourhood of the first cataract--they were quite willing to allow, at the same time, that these appellations were but various masks for one face. phtah, hâpi, khnûmû, râ,--all the gods, in fact,--were blended with each other, and formed but one deity--a unique existence, multiple in his names, and mighty according to the importance of the city in which he was worshipped. hence amon, lord of the capital and patron of the dynasty, having more partisans, enjoyed more respect, and, in a word, felt himself possessed of more claims to be the sole god of egypt than his brethren, who could not claim so many worshippers. he did not at the outset arrogate to himself the same empire over the dead as he exercised over the living; he had delegated his functions in this respect to a goddess, marîtsakro, for whom the poorer inhabitants of the left bank entertained a persistent devotion. she was a kind of isis or hospitable hathor, whose subjects in the other world adapted themselves to the nebulous and dreary existence provided for their disembodied �doubles.� the osirian and solar doctrines were afterwards blended together in this local mythology, and from the xith dynasty onwards the theban nobility had adopted, along with the ceremonies in use in the memphite period, the heliopolitan beliefs concerning the wanderings of the soul in the west, its embarkation on the solar ship, and its resting-places in the fields of ialû. the rock-tombs of the xviiith dynasty demonstrate that the thebans had then no different concept of their life beyond the world from that entertained by the inhabitants of the most ancient cities: they ascribed to that existence the same inconsistent medley of contradictory ideas, from which each one might select what pleased him best--either repose in a well-provisioned tomb, or a dwelling close to osiris in the middle of a calm and agreeable paradise, or voyages with râ around the world.* * the pyramid texts are found for the most part in the tombs of nofirû and harhôtpû; the texts of the book of the dead are met with on the theban coffins of the same period. [illustration: 060.jpg decorated wrappings of a mummy] the fusion of râ and amon, and the predominance of the solar idea which arose from it, forced the theologians to examine more closely these inconsistent notions, and to eliminate from them anything which might be out of harmony with the new views. the devout servant of amon, desirous of keeping in constant touch with his god both here and in the other would, could not imagine a happier future for his soul than in its going forth in the fulness of light by day, and taking refuge by night on the very bark which carried the object of his worship through the thick darkness of, hades. to this end he endeavoured to collect the formulae which would enable him to attain to this supreme happiness, and also inform him concerning the hidden mysteries of that obscure half of the world in which the sun dwelt between daylight and daylight, teaching him also how to make friends and supporters of the benevolent genii, and how to avoid or defeat the monsters whom he would encounter. the best known of the books relating to these mysteries contained a geographical description of the future world as it was described by the theban priests towards the end of the ramesside period; it was, in fact, an itinerary in which was depicted each separate region of the underworld, with its gates, buildings, and inhabitants.* * the monumental text of this book is found sculptured on a certain number of the tombs of the theban kings. it was first translated into english by birch, then into french by dévéria, and by maspero. the account of it given by the egyptian theologians did not exhibit much inventive genius. they had started with the theory that the sun, after setting exactly west of thebes, rose again due east of the city, and they therefore placed in the dark hemisphere all the regions of the universe which lay to the north of those two points of the compass. the first stage of the sun�s journey, after disappearing below the horizon, coincided with the period of twilight; the orb travelled along the open sky, diminishing the brightness of his fires as he climbed northward, and did not actually enter the underworld till he reached abydos, close to the spot where, at the �mouth of the cleft,� the souls of the faithful awaited him. as soon as he had received them into his boat, he plunged into the tunnel which there pierces the mountains, and the cities through which he first passed between abydos and the fayûm were known as the osirian fiefs. he continued his journey through them for the space of two hours, receiving the homage of the inhabitants, and putting such of the shades on shore as were predestined by their special devotion for the osiris of abydos and his associates, horus and anubis, to establish themselves in this territory. beyond heracleopolis, he entered the domains of the memphite gods, the �land of sokaris,� and this probably was the most perilous moment of his journey. [illustration: 062.jpg one of the mysterious books of amon] the feudatories of phtah were gathered together in grottoes, connected by a labyrinth of narrow passages through which even the most fully initiated were scarcely able to find their way; the luminous boat, instead of venturing within these catacombs, passed above them by mysterious tracks. the crew were unable to catch a glimpse of the sovereign through whose realm they journeyed, and they in like manner were invisible to him; he could only hear the voices of the divine sailors, and he answered them from the depth of the darkness. two hours were spent in this obscure passage, after which navigation became easier as the vessel entered the nomes subject to the osirises of the delta: four consecutive hours of sailing brought the bark from the province in which the four principal bodies of the god slept to that in which his four souls kept watch, and, as it passed, it illuminated the eight circles reserved for men and kings who worshipped the god of mendes. from the tenth hour onwards it directed its course due south, and passed through the aûgàrît, the place of fire and abysmal waters to which the heliopolitans consigned the souls of the impious; then finally quitting the tunnel, it soared up in the east with the first blush of dawn. each of the ordinary dead was landed at that particular hour of the twelve, which belonged to the god of his choice or of his native town. left to dwell there they suffered no absolute torment, but languished in the darkness in a kind of painful torpor, from which condition the approach of the bark alone was able to rouse them. they hailed its daily coming with acclamations, and felt new life during the hour in which its rays fell on them, breaking out into lamentations as the bark passed away and the light disappeared with it. the souls who were devotees of the sun escaped this melancholy existence; they escorted the god, reduced though he was to a mummied corpse, on his nightly cruise, and were piloted by him safe and sound to meet the first streaks of the new day. as the boat issued from the mountain in the morning between the two trees which flanked the gate of the east, these souls had their choice of several ways of spending the day on which they were about to enter. they might join their risen god in his course through the hours of light, and assist him in combating apophis and his accomplices, plunging again at night into hades without having even for a moment quitted his side. [illustration: 066.jpg the entrance to a royal tomb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph, by beato, of the tomb of ramses iv. [illustration: 066b.jpg one of the hours of the night] they might, on the other hand, leave him and once more enter the world of the living, settling themselves where they would, but always by preference in the tombs where their bodies awaited them, and where they could enjoy the wealth which had been accumulated there: they might walk within their garden, and sit beneath the trees they had planted; they could enjoy the open air beside the pond they had dug, and breathe the gentle north breeze on its banks after the midday heat, until the time when the returning evening obliged them to repair once more to abydos, and re-embark with the god in order to pass the anxious vigils of the night under his protection. thus from the earliest period of egyptian history the life beyond the tomb was an eclectic one, made up of a series of earthly enjoyments combined together. the pharaohs had enrolled themselves instinctively among the most ardent votaries of this complex doctrine. their relationship to the sun made its adoption a duty, and its profession was originally, perhaps, one of the privileges of their position. râ invited them on board because they were his children, subsequently extending this favour to those whom they should deem worthy to be associated with them, and thus become companions of the ancient deceased kings of upper and lower egypt.* * this is apparently what we gather from the picture inserted in chapter xvii. of the �book of the dead,� where we see the kings of upper and lower egypt guiding the divine bark and the deceased with them. the idea which the egyptians thus formed of the other world, and of the life of the initiated within it, reacted gradually on their concept of the tomb and of its befitting decoration. they began to consider the entrances to the pyramid, and its internal passages and chambers, as a conventional representation of the gates, passages, and halls of hades itself; when the pyramid passed out of fashion, and they had replaced it by a tomb cut in the rock in one or other of the branches of the bab el-moluk valley, the plan of construction which they chose was an exact copy of that employed by the memphites and earlier thebans, and they hollowed out for themselves in the mountain-side a burying-place on the same lines as those formerly employed within the pyramidal structure. the relative positions of the tunnelled tombs along the valley were not determined by any order of rank or of succession to the throne; each pharaoh after ramses i. set to work on that part of the rock where the character of the stone favoured his purpose, and displayed so little respect for his predecessors, that the workmen, after having tunnelled a gallery, were often obliged to abandon it altogether, or to change the direction of their excavations so as to avoid piercing a neighbouring tomb. the architect�s design was usually a mere project which could be modified at will, and, which he did not feel bound to carry out with fidelity; the actual measurements of the tomb of ramses iv. are almost everywhere at variance with the numbers and arrangement of the working drawing of it which has been preserved to us in a papyrus. the general disposition of the royal tombs, however, is far from being complicated; we have at the entrance the rectangular door, usually surmounted by the sun, represented by a yellow disk, before which the sovereign kneels with his hands raised in the posture of adoration; this gave access to a passage sloping gently downwards, and broken here and there by a level landing and steps, leading to a first chamber of varying amplitude, at the further end of which a second passage opened which descended to one or more apartments, the last of which, contained the coffin. the oldest rock-tombs present some noteworthy exceptions to this plan, particularly those of seti i. and ramses iii.; but from the time of ramses iv., there is no difference to be remarked in them except in the degree of finish of the wall-paintings or in the length of the passages. the shortest of the latter extends some fifty-two feet into the rock, while the longest never exceeds three hundred and ninety feet. the same artifices which had been used by the pyramid-builders to defeat the designs of robbers--false mummy-pits, painted and sculptured walls built across passages, stairs concealed under a movable stone in the corner of a chamber--were also employed by the theban engineers. the decoration of the walls was suggested, as in earlier times, by the needs of the royal soul, with this difference--that the thebans set themselves to render visible to his eyes by paintings that which the memphites had been content to present to his intelligence in writing, so that the pharaoh could now see what his ancestors had been able merely to read on the walls of their tombs. where the inscribed texts in the burial-chamber of unas state that unas, incarnate in the sun, and thus representing osiris, sails over the waters on high or glides into the elysian fields, the sculptured or painted scenes in the interior of the theban catacombs display to the eye ramses occupying the place of the god in the solar bark and in the fields of laid. where the walls of unas bear only the prayers recited over the mummy for the opening of his mouth, for the restoration of the use of his limbs, for his clothing, perfuming, and nourishment, we see depicted on those of seti i. or ramses iv. the mummies of these kings and the statues of their doubles in the hands of the priests, who are portrayed in the performance of these various offices. the starry ceilings of the pyramids reproduce the aspect of the sky, but without giving the names of the stars: on the ceilings of some of the ramesside rock-tombs, on the other hand, the constellations are represented, each with its proper figure, while astronomical tables give the position of the heavenly bodies at intervals of fifteen days, so that the soul could tell at a glance into what region of the firmament the course of the bark would bring him each night. in the earlier ramesside tombs, under seti i. and ramses ii., the execution of these subjects shows evidence of a care and skill which are quite marvellous, and both figures and hieroglyphics betray the hand of accomplished artists. but in the tomb of ramses iii. the work has already begun to show signs of inferiority, and the majority of the scenes are coloured in a very summary fashion; a raw yellow predominates, and the tones of the reds and blues remind us of a child�s first efforts at painting. this decline is even more marked under the succeeding ramessides; the drawing has deteriorated, the tints have become more and more crude, and the latest paintings seem but a lamentable caricature of the earlier ones. the courtiers and all those connected with the worship of amon-râ--priests, prophets, singers, and functionaries connected with the necropolis--shared the same belief with regard to the future world as their sovereign, and they carried their faith in the sun�s power to the point of identifying themselves with him after death, and of substituting the name of râ for that of osiris; they either did not venture, however, to go further than this, or were unable to introduce into their tombs all that we find in the bab el-moluk. they confined themselves to writing briefly on their own coffins, or confiding to the mummies of their fellow-believers, in addition to the �book of the dead,� a copy of the �book of knowing what there is in hades,� or of some other mystic writing which was in harmony with their creed. hastily prepared copies of these were sold by unscrupulous scribes, often badly written and almost always incomplete, in which were hurriedly set down haphazard the episodes of the course of the sun with explanatory illustrations. the representations of the gods in them are but little better than caricatures, the text is full of faults and scarcely decipherable, and it is at times difficult to recognize the correspondence of the scenes and prayers with those in the royal tombs. although amon had become the supreme god, at least for this class of the initiated, he was by no means the sole deity worshipped by the egyptians: the other divinities previously associated with him still held their own beside him, or were further defined and invested with a more decided personality. the goddess regarded as his partner was at first represented as childless, in spite of the name of maût or mût--the mother--by which she was invoked, and amon was supposed to have adopted montû, the god of hermonthis, in order to complete his triad. montû, however, formerly the sovereign of the theban plain, and lord over amon himself, was of too exalted a rank to play the inferior part of a divine son. [illustration: 074.jpg khonsû* and temple of khonsû**.] * drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette in the gizeh museum. ** drawn by thuillier: a is the pylon, b the court, c the hypostyle hall, e the passage isolating the sanctuary, d the sanctuary, f the opisthodomos with its usual chambers. the priests were, therefore, obliged to fall back upon a personage of lesser importance, named khonsû, who up to that period had been relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy. how they came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with osiris and thot, is as yet unexplained,* but the assimilation had taken place before the xixth dynasty drew to its close. khonsû, thus honoured, soon became a favourite deity with both the people and the upper classes, at first merely supplementing montû, but finally supplanting him in the third place of the triad. from the time of sesostris onwards, theban dogma acknowledged him alone side by side with amon-râ and mût the divine mother. * it is possible that this assimilation originated in the fact that khonsû is derived from the verb �khonsû,� to navigate: khonsû would thus have been he who crossed the heavens in his bark--that is, the moon-god. [illustration: 075.jpg the temple of khonsû at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. it was now incumbent on the pharaoh to erect to this newly made favourite a temple whose size and magnificence should be worthy of the rank to which his votaries had exalted him. to this end, ramses iii. chose a suitable site to the south of the hypostyle hall of karnak, close to a corner of the enclosing wall, and there laid the foundations of a temple which his successors took nearly a century to finish.* * the proof that the temple was founded by ramses iii. is furnished by the inscriptions of the sanctuary and the surrounding chambers. its proportions are by no means perfect, the sculpture is wanting in refinement, the painting is coarse, and the masonry was so faulty, that it was found necessary in several places to cover it with a coat of stucco before the bas-reliefs could be carved on the walls; yet, in spite of all this, its general arrangement is so fine, that it may well be regarded, in preference to other more graceful or magnificent buildings, as the typical temple of the theban period. it is divided into two parts, separated from each other by a solid wall. in the centre of the smaller of these is placed the holy of holies, which opens at both ends into a passage ten feet in width, isolating it from the surrounding buildings. to the right and left of the sanctuary are dark chambers, and behind it is a hall supported by four columns, into which open seven small apartments. this formed the dwelling-place of the god and his compeers. the sanctuary communicates, by means of two doors placed in the southern wall, with a hypostyle hall of greater width than depth, divided by its pillars into a nave and two aisles. the four columns of the nave are twenty-three feet in height, and have bell-shaped capitals, while those of the aisles, two on either side, are eighteen feet high, and are crowned with lotiform capitals. [illustration: 077.jpg the court of the temple of khonsû] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the roof of the nave was thus five feet higher than those of the aisles, and in the clear storey thus formed, stone gratings, similar to those in the temple of amon, admitted light to the building. the courtyard, surrounded by a fine colonnade of two rows of columns, was square, and was entered by four side posterns in addition to the open gateway at the end placed between two quadrangular towers. [illustration: 078.jpg the colonnade built by thûtmosis iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. this pylon measures 104 feet in length, and is 32 feet 6 inches wide, by 58 feet high. it contains no internal chambers, but merely a narrow staircase which leads to the top of the doorway, and thence to the summit of the towers. four long angular grooves run up the façade of the towers to a height of about twenty feet from the ground, and are in the same line with a similar number of square holes which pierce the thickness of the building higher up. in these grooves were placed venetian masts, made of poles spliced together and held in their place by means of hooks and wooden stays which projected from the four holes; these masts were to carry at their tops pennons of various colours. such was the temple of khonsû, and the majority of the great theban buildings--at luxor, qurneh, and bamesseum, or medinet-uabu--were constructed on similar lines. even in their half-ruined condition there is something oppressive and uncanny in their appearance. the gods loved to shroud themselves in mystery, and, therefore, the plan of the building was so arranged as to render the transition almost imperceptible from the blinding sunlight outside to the darkness of their retreat within. in the courtyard, we are still surrounded by vast spaces to which air and light have free access. the hypostyle hall, however, is pervaded by an appropriate twilight, the sanctuary is veiled in still deeper darkness, while in the chambers beyond reigns an almost perpetual night. the effect produced by this gradation of obscurity was intensified by constructional artifices. the different parts of the building are not all on the same ground-level, the pavement rising as the sanctuary is approached, and the rise is concealed by a few steps placed at intervals. the difference of level in the temple of khonsû is not more than five feet three inches, but it is combined with a still more considerable lowering of the height of the roof. from the pylon to the wall at the further end the height decreases as we go on; the peristyle is more lofty than the hypostyle hall, this again is higher than the sanctuary and the hall of columns, and the chamber beyond it drops still further in altitude.* * this is �the law of progressive diminution of heights� of perrot-chipiez. karnak is an exception to this rule; this temple had in the course of centuries undergone so many restorations and additions, that it formed a collection of buildings rather than a single edifice. it might have been regarded, as early as the close of the theban empire, as a kind of museum, in which every century and every period of art, from the xiith dynasty downwards, had left its distinctive mark.* * a on the plan denotes the xiith dynasty temple; b is the great hypostyle hall of seti i. and ramses ii.; c the temple of ramses iii. [illustration: 081.jpg the temple of amon at karnak] all the resources of architecture had been brought into requisition during this period to vary, at the will of each sovereign, the arrangement and the general effect of the component parts. columns with sixteen sides stand in the vicinity of square pillars, and lotiform capitals alternate with those of the bell-shape; attempts were even made to introduce new types altogether. the architect who built at the back of the sanctuary what is now known as the colonnade of thûtmosis iii., attempted to invert the bell-shaped capital; the bell was turned downwards, and the neck attached to the plinth, while the mouth rested on the top of the shaft. this awkward arrangement did not meet with favour, for we find it nowhere repeated; other artists, however, with better taste, sought at this time to apply the flowers symbolical of upper and lower egypt to the decorations of the shafts. in front of the sanctuary of karnak two pillars are still standing which have on them in relief representations respectively of the fullblown lotus and the papyrus. a building composed of so many incongruous elements required frequent restoration--a wall which had been undermined by water needed strengthening, a pylon displaying cracks claimed attention, some unsafe colonnade, or a colossus which had been injured by the fall of a cornice, required shoring up--so that no sooner had the corvée for repairs completed their work in one part, than they had to begin again elsewhere. [illustration: 082.jpg the two stele-pillars at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the revenues of amon must, indeed, have been enormous to have borne the continual drain occasioned by restoration, and the resources of the god would soon have been exhausted had not foreign wars continued to furnish him during several centuries with all or more than he needed. the gods had suffered severely in the troublous times which had followed the reign of seti ii., and it required all the generosity of ramses iii. to compensate them for the losses they had sustained during the anarchy under arisû. the spoil taken from the libyans, from the peoples of the sea, and from the hittites had flowed into the sacred treasuries, while the able administration of the sovereign had done the rest, so that on the accession of ramses iv. the temples were in a more prosperous state than ever.* they held as their own property 169 towns, nine of which were in syria and ethiopia; they possessed 113,433 slaves of both sexes, 493,386 head of cattle, 1,071,780 arurse of land, 514 vineyards and orchards, 88 barks and sea-going vessels, 336 kilograms of gold both in ingots and wrought, 2,993,964 grammes of silver, besides quantities of copper and precious stones, and hundreds of storehouses in which they kept corn, oil, wine, honey, and preserved meats--the produce of their domains. two examples will suffice to show the extent of this latter item: the live geese reached the number of 680,714, and the salt or smoked fish that of 494,800.** amon claimed the giant share of this enormous total, and three-fourths of it or more were reserved for his use, namely---86,486 slaves, 421,362 head of cattle, 898,168 _arurse_ of cornland, 433 vineyards and orchards, and 56 egyptian towns. the nine foreign towns all belonged to him, and one of them contained the temple in which he was worshipped by the syrians whenever they came to pay their tribute to the king�s representatives: it was but just that his patrimony should surpass that of his compeers, since the conquering pharaohs owed their success to him, who, without the co-operation of the other feudal deities, had lavished victories upon them. * the donations of ramses iii., or rather the total of the donations made to the gods by the predecessors of that pharaoh, and confirmed and augmented by him, are enumerated at length in the _great harris papyrus_. ** an abridgement of these donations occupies seven large plates in the _great harris papyrus_. his domain was at least five times more considerable than that of râ of heliopolis, and ten times greater than that of the memphite phtah, and yet of old, in the earlier times of history, râ and phtah were reckoned the wealthiest of the egyptian gods. it is easy to understand the influence which a god thus endowed with the goods of this world exercised over men in an age when the national wars had the same consequences for the immortals as for their worshippers, and when the defeat of a people was regarded as a proof of the inferiority of its patron gods. the most victorious divinity became necessarily the wealthiest, before whom all other deities bowed, and whom they, as well as their subjects, were obliged to serve. so powerful a god as amon had but few obstacles to surmount before becoming the national deity; indeed, he was practically the foremost of the gods during the ramesside period, and was generally acknowledged as egypt�s representative by all foreign nations.* his priests shared in the prestige he enjoyed, and their influence in state affairs increased proportionately with his power. * from the xviiith dynasty, at least, the first prophet of amon had taken the precedence of the high priests of heliopolis and memphis, as is proved by the position he occupies in the egyptian hierarchy in the _hood papyrus_. the chief of their hierarchy, however, did not bear the high titles which in ancient times distinguished those of memphis and heliopolis; he was content with the humble appellation of first prophet of amon. he had for several generations been nominated by the sovereign, but he was generally chosen from the families attached hereditarily or otherwise to the temple of karnak, and must previously have passed through every grade of the priestly hierarchy. those who aspired to this honour had to graduate as �divine fathers;� this was the first step in the initiation, and one at which many were content to remain, but the more ambitious or favoured advanced by successive stages to the dignity of third, and then of second, prophet before attaining to the highest rank.* * what we know on this subject has been brought to light mainly by the inscriptions on the statue of baûkûni-khonsû at munich, published and commented on by dévéria, and by lauth. the cursus honorum of ramâ shows us that he was first third, then second prophet of amon, before being raised to the pontificate in the reign of mînephtah. the pharaohs of the xixth dynasty jealously supervised the promotions made in the theban temples, and saw that none was elected except him who was devoted to their interests--such as, for example, baûkûni-khonsû and unnofri under ramses ii. baûkûni-khonsû distinguished himself by his administrative qualities; if he did not actually make the plans for the hypostyle hall at karnak, he appears at least to have superintended its execution and decoration. he finished the great pylon, erected the obelisks and gateways, built the _bari_ or vessel of the god, and found a further field for his activity on the opposite bank of the nile, where he helped to complete both the chapel at qurneh and also the ramesseum. ramses ii. had always been able to make his authority felt by the high priests who succeeded baûkûni-khonsû, but the pharaohs who followed him did not hold the reins with such a strong hand. as early as the reigns of mînephtah and seti ii. the first prophets, raî and ramâ, claimed the right of building at karnak for their own purposes, and inscribed on the walls long inscriptions in which their own panegyrics took precedence of that of the sovereign; they even aspired to a religious hegemony, and declared themselves to be the �chief of all the prophets of the gods of the south and north.� we do not know what became of them during the usurpation of arisû, but nakhtû-ramses, son of miribastît, who filled the office during the reign of ramses iii., revived these ambitious projects as soon as the state of egypt appeared to favour them. the king, however pious he might be, was not inclined to yield up any of his authority, even though it were to the earthly delegate of the divinity whom he reverenced before all others; the sons of the pharaoh were, however, more accommodating, and nakhtû-ramses played his part so well that he succeeded in obtaining from them the reversion of the high priesthood for his son amenôthes. the priestly office, from having been elective, was by this stroke suddenly made hereditary in the family. the kings preserved, it is true, the privilege of confirming the new appointment, and the nominee was not considered properly qualified until he had received his investiture from the sovereign.* * this is proved by the maunier stele, now in the louvre; it is there related how the high priest manakh-pirrî received his investiture from the tanite king. practically the pharaohs lost the power of choosing one among the sons of the deceased pontiff; they were forced to enthrone the eldest of his survivors, and legalise his accession by their approbation, even when they would have preferred another. it was thus that a dynasty of vassal high priests came to be established at thebes side by side with the royal dynasty of the pharaohs. the new priestly dynasty was not long in making its power felt in thebes. nakhtû-ramses and amenôthes lived to a great age--from the reign of ramses iii. to that of ramses x., at the least; they witnessed the accession of nine successive pharaohs, and the unusual length of their pontificates no doubt increased the already extraordinary prestige which they enjoyed throughout the length and breadth of egypt. it seemed as if the god delighted to prolong the lives of his representatives beyond the ordinary limits, while shortening those of the temporal sovereigns. when the reigns of the pharaohs began once more to reach their normal length, the authority of amenôthes had become so firmly established that no human power could withstand it, and the later ramessides were merely a set of puppet kings who were ruled by him and his successors. not only was there a cessation of foreign expeditions, but the delta, memphis, and ethiopia were alike neglected, and the only activity displayed by these pharaohs, as far as we can gather from their monuments, was confined to the service of amon and khonsû at thebes. the lack of energy and independence in these sovereigns may not, however, be altogether attributable to their feebleness of character; it is possible that they would gladly have entered on a career of conquest had they possessed the means. it is always a perilous matter to allow the resources of a country to fall into the hands of a priesthood, and to place its military forces at the same time in the hands of the chief religious authority. the warrior pharaohs had always had at their disposal the spoils obtained from foreign nations to make up the deficit which their constant gifts to the temples were making in the treasury. the sons of ramses iii., on the other hand, had suspended all military efforts, without, however, lessening their lavish gifts to the gods, and they must, in the absence of the spoils of war, have drawn to a considerable extent upon the ordinary resources of the country; their successors therefore found the treasury impoverished, and they would have been entirely at a loss for money had they attempted to renew the campaigns or continue the architectural work of their forefathers. the priests of amon had not as yet suffered materially from this diminution of revenue, for they possessed property throughout the length and breadth of egypt, but they were obliged to restrict their expenditure, and employ the sums formerly used for the enlarging of the temples on the maintenance of their own body. meanwhile public works had been almost everywhere suspended; administrative discipline became relaxed, and disturbances, with which the police were unable to cope, were increasing in all the important towns. nothing is more indicative of the state to which egypt was reduced, under the combined influence of the priesthood and the ramessides, than the thefts and pillaging of which the theban necropolis was then the daily scene. the robbers no longer confined themselves to plundering the tombs of private persons; they attacked the royal burying-places, and their depredations were carried on for years before they were discovered. in the reign of ramses ix., an inquiry, set on foot by amenôthes, revealed the fact that the tomb of sovkûmsaûf i. and his wife, queen nûbk-hâs, had been rifled, that those of amenôthes i. and of antuf iv. had been entered by tunnelling, and that some dozen other royal tombs in the cemetery of drah abu�l neggah were threatened.* * the principal part of this inquiry constitutes the _abbott papyrus_, acquired and published by the british museum, first examined and made the subject of study by birch, translated simultaneously into french by maspero and by chabas, into german by lauth and by erman. other papyri relate to the same or similar occurrences, such as the salt and amherst papyri published by chabas, and also the liverpool papyri, of which we possess merely scattered notices in the writings of goodwin, and particularly in those of spiegelberg. the severe means taken to suppress the evil were not, however, successful; the pillagings soon began afresh, and the reigns of the last three ramessides between the robbers and the authorities, were marked by a struggle in which the latter did not always come off triumphant. [illustration: 089.jpg ramses ix.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. a system of repeated inspections secured the valley of biban el-moluk from marauders,* but elsewhere the measures of defence employed were unavailing, and the necropolis was given over to pillage, although both amenôthes and hrihor had used every effort to protect it. * graffiti which are evidences of these inspections have been drawn on the walls of several royal tombs by the inspectors. others have been found on several of the coffins discovered at deîr el-baharî, e.g. on those of seti i. and ramses ii.; the most ancient belong to the pontificate of hrihor, others belong to the xxist dynasty. hrihor appears to have succeeded immediately after amenôthes, and his accession to the pontificate gave his family a still more exalted position in the country. as his wife nozmit was of royal blood, he assumed titles and functions to which his father and grandfather had made no claim. he became the �royal son� of ethiopia and commander-in-chief of the national and foreign troops; he engraved his name upon the monuments he decorated, side by side with that of ramses xii.; in short, he possessed all the characteristics of a pharaoh except the crown and the royal protocol. a century scarcely had elapsed since the abdication of ramses iii., and now thebes and the whole of egypt owned two masters: one the embodiment of the ancient line, but a mere nominal king; the other the representative of amon, and the actual ruler of the country. what then happened when the last ramses who bore the kingly title was gathered to his fathers? the royal lists record the accession after his death of a new dynasty of tanitic origin, whose founder was nsbindidi or smendes; but, on the other hand, we gather from the theban monuments that the crown was seized by hrihor, who reigned over the southern provinces contemporaneously with smendes. hrihor boldly assumed as prenomen his title of �first prophet of amon,� and his authority was acknowledged by ethiopia, over which he was viceroy, as well as by the nomes forming the temporal domain of the high priests. the latter had acquired gradually, either by marriage or inheritance, fresh territory for the god, in the lands of the princes of nekhabît, kop-tos, akhmîm, and abydos, besides the domains of some half-dozen feudal houses who, from force of circumstances, had become sacerdotal families; the extinction of the direct line of ramessides now secured the high priests the possession of thebes itself, and of all the lands within the southern provinces which were the appanage of the crown. [illustration: 091.jpg hrihor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. they thus, in one way or another, became the exclusive masters of the southern half of the nile valley, from elephantine to siut; beyond siut also they had managed to acquire suzerainty over the town of khobît, and the territory belonging to it formed an isolated border province in the midst of the independent baronies.* * the extent of the principality of thebes under the high priests has been determined by means of the sacerdotal titles of the theban princesses. the representative of the dynasty reigning at tanis held the remainder of egypt from shit to the mediterranean--the half belonging to the memphite phtah and the helio-politan râ, as opposed to that assigned to anion. the origin of this tanite sovereign is uncertain, but it would appear that he was of more exalted rank than his rival in the south. the official chronicling of events was marked by the years of his reign, and the chief acts of the government were carried out in his name even in the thebaid.* repeated inundations had caused the ruin of part of the temple of karnak, and it was by the order and under the auspices of this prince that all the resources of the country were employed to accomplish the much-needed restoration.** * i have pointed out that the years of the reign mentioned in the inscriptions of the high priests and the kings of the sacerdotal line must be attributed to their suzerains, the kings of tanis. hrihor alone seems to have been an exception, since to him are attributed the dates inscribed in the name of the king siamon: m. daressy, however, will not admit this, and asserts that this siamon was a tanite sovereign who must not be identified with hrihor, and must be placed at least two or three generations later than the last of the ramessides. * the real name nsbindidi and the first monument of the manethonian smendes were discovered in the quarries of dababîeh, opposite gebelên. it would have been impossible for him to have exercised any authority over so rich and powerful a personage as hrihor had he not possessed rights to the crown, before which even the high priests of amon were obliged to bow, and hence it has been supposed that he was a descendant of ramses ii. the descendants of this sovereign were doubtless divided into at least two branches, one of which had just become extinct, leaving no nearer heir than hrihor, while another, of which there were many ramifications, had settled in the delta. the majority of these descendants had become mingled with the general population, and had sunk to the condition of private individuals; they had, however, carefully preserved the tradition of their origin, and added proudly to their name the qualification of royal son of ramses. they were degenerate scions of the ramessides, and had neither the features nor the energy of their ancestor. one of them, zodphta-haûfônkhi, whose mummy was found at deîr el-baharî, appears to have been tall and vigorous, but the head lacks the haughty refinement which characterizes those of seti i. and ramses ii., and the features are heavy and coarse, having a vulgar, commonplace expression. [illustration: 093.jpg zodphtahaufonkhi, royal son of ramses] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by insinger. it seems probable that one branch of the family, endowed with greater capability than the rest, was settled at tanis, where sesostris had, as we have seen, resided for many years; smendes was the first of this branch to ascend the throne. the remembrance of his remote ancestor, ramses il, which was still treasured up in the city he had completely rebuilt, as well as in the delta into which he had infused new life, was doubtless of no small service in securing the crown for his descendant, when, the line of the theban kings having come to an end, the tanites put in their claim to the succession. we are unable to discover if war broke out between the two competitors, or if they arrived at an agreement without a struggle; but, at all events, we may assume that, having divided egypt between them, neither of them felt himself strong enough to overcome his rival, and contented himself with the possession of half the empire, since he could not possess it in its entirety. we may fairly believe that smendes had the greater right to the throne, and, above all, the more efficient army of the two, since, had it been otherwise, hrihor would never have consented to yield him the priority. the unity of egypt was, to outward appearances, preserved, through the nominal possession by smendes of the suzerainty; but, as a matter of fact, it had ceased to exist, and the fiction of the two kingdoms had become a reality for the first time within the range of history. henceforward there were two egypts, governed by different constitutions and from widely remote centres. theban egypt was, before all things, a community recognizing a theocratic government, in which the kingly office was merged in that of the high priest. separated from asia by the length of the delta, it turned its attention, like the pharaohs of the vith and xiith dynasties, to ethiopia, and owing to its distance from the mediterranean, and from the new civilization developed on its shores, it became more and more isolated, till at length it was reduced to a purely african state. northern egypt, on the contrary, maintained contact with european and asiatic nations; it took an interest in their future, it borrowed from them to a certain extent whatever struck it as being useful or beautiful, and when the occasion presented itself, it acted in concert with mediterranean powers. there was an almost constant struggle between these two divisions of the empire, at times breaking out into an open rupture, to end as often in a temporary re-establishment of unity. at one time ethiopia would succeed in annexing egypt, and again egypt would seize some part of ethiopia; but the settlement of affairs was never final, and the conflicting elements, brought with difficulty into harmony, relapsed into their usual condition at the end of a few years. a kingdom thus divided against itself could never succeed in maintaining its authority over those provinces which, even in the heyday of its power, had proved impatient of its yoke. asia was associated henceforward in the minds of the egyptians with painful memories of thwarted ambitions, rather than as offering a field for present conquest. they were pursued by the memories of their former triumphs, and the very monuments of their cities recalled what they were anxious to forget. wherever they looked within their towns they encountered the representation of some asiatic scene; they read the names of the cities of syria on the walls of their temples; they saw depicted on them its princes and its armies, whose defeat was recorded by the inscriptions as well as the tribute which they had been forced to pay. the sense of their own weakness prevented the egyptians from passing from useless regrets to action; when, however, one or other of the pharaohs felt sufficiently secure on the throne to carry his troops far afield, he was always attracted to syria, and crossed her frontiers, often, alas! merely to encounter defeat. [illustration: 095.jpg tailpiece] chapter ii--the rise of the assyrian empire _phoenicia and the northern nations after the death op ramses iii.--the first assyrian empire: tiglath-pilesur i.--the aramæans and the khâti._ _the continuance of egyptian influence over syrian civilization after the death of ramses iii.--egyptian myths in phoenicia: osiris and isis at byblos--horus, thot, and the origin of the egyptian alphabet--the tombs at arvad and the kabr-hiram; egyptian designs in phoenician glass and goldsmiths�work--commerce with egypt, the withdrawal of phoenician colonies in the ægean sea and the achæans in cyprus; maritime expeditions in the western mediterranean._ _northern syria: the decadence of the hittites and the steady growth of the aramæan tribes--the decline of the babylonian empire under the cossæan kings, and its relations with egypt: assuruballit, bammdn-nirdri i. and the first assyrian conquests--assyria, its climate, provinces, and cities: the god assur and his ishtar--the wars against chaldæa: shalmaneser i., tulculi-ninip i., and the taking of babylon--belchadrezzar and the last of the cosssæans._ _the dynasty of pashê: nebuchadrezzar i., his disputes with elam, his defeat by assurrîshishî--the legend of the first assyrian empire, ninos and semiramis--the assyrians and their political constitution: the limmu, the king and his divine character, his hunting and his wars--the assyrian army: the infantry and chariotry, the crossing of rivers, mode of marching in the plains and in the mountain districts--camps, battles, sieges; cruelty shown to the vanquished, the destruction of towns and the removal of the inhabitants, the ephemeral character of the assyrian conquests._ _tiglath pileser i.: ms campaign against the mushhu, his conquest of kurhhi and of the regions of the zab--the petty asiatic kingdoms and their civilization: art and writing in the old hittite states--tiglath-pileser i. in nairi and in syria: his triumphal stele at sebbeneh-su--his buildings, his hunts, his conquest of babylon--merodach-nadin-akhi and the close of the pashê dynasty--assur-belkala and samsi-rammân iii.: the decline of assyria--syria without a foreign rider: the incapacity of the khdti to give unity to the country._ [illustration: 099.jpg page image] chapter ii--the rise of the assyrian empire _phoenicia and the northern nations after the death of ramses iii.--the first assyrian empire: tiglath-pileser i.--the aramoans and the khâti._ the cessation of egyptian authority over countries in which it had so long prevailed did not at once do away with the deep impression which it had made upon their constitution and customs. while the nobles and citizens of thebes were adopting the imported worship of baal and astartê, and were introducing into the spoken and written language words borrowed from semitic speech, the syrians, on the other hand, were not unreceptive of the influence of their conquerors. they had applied themselves zealously to the study of egyptian arts, industry and religion, and had borrowed from these as much, at least, as they had lent to the dwellers on the nile. the ancient babylonian foundation of their civilization was not, indeed, seriously modified, but it was covered over, so to speak, with an african veneer which varied in depth according to the locality.* * most of the views put forth in this part of the chapter are based on posterior and not contemporary data. the most ancient monuments which give evidence of it show it in such a complete state that we may fairly ascribe it to some centuries earlier; that is, to the time when egypt still ruled in syria, the period of the xixth and even the xviiith dynasty. phoenicia especially assumed and retained this foreign exterior. its merchants, accustomed to establish themselves for lengthened periods in the principal trade-centres on the nile, had become imbued therein with something of the religious ideas and customs of the land, and on returning to their own country had imported these with them and propagated them in their neighbourhood. they were not content with other household utensils, furniture, and jewellery than those to which they had been accustomed on the nile, and even the phonician gods seemed to be subject to this appropriating mania, for they came to be recognised in the indigenous deities of the said and the delta. there was, at the outset, no trait in the character of baalat by which she could be assimilated to isis or hathor: she was fierce, warlike, and licentious, and wept for her lover, while the egyptian goddesses were accustomed to shed tears for their husbands only. it was this element of a common grief, however, which served to associate the phonician and egyptian goddesses, and to produce at length a strange blending of their persons and the legends concerning them; the lady of byblos ended in becoming an isis or a hathor,* and in playing the part assigned to the latter in the osirian drama. * the assimilation must have been ancient, since the egyptians of the theban dynasties already accepted baalat as the hathor of byblos. [illustration: 101.jpg the tree growing on the tomb of osiris] drawn by faucher-gudin, from prisse d�avennes this may have been occasioned by her city having maintained closer relationships than the southern towns with bûto and mendes, or by her priests having come to recognise a fundamental agreement between their theology and that of egypt. in any case, it was at byblos that the most marked and numerous, as well as the most ancient, examples of borrowing from the religions of the nile were to be found. the theologians of byblos imagined that the coffin of osiris, after it had been thrown into the sea by typhon, had been thrown up on the land somewhere near their city at the foot of a tamarisk, and that this tree, in its rapid growth, had gradually enfolded within its trunk the body and its case. king malkander cut it down in order to use it as a support for the roof of his palace: a marvellous perfume rising from it filled the apartments, and it was not long before the prodigy was bruited abroad. isis, who was travelling through the world in quest of her husband, heard of it, and at once realised its meaning: clad in rags and weeping, she sat down by the well whither the women of byblos were accustomed to come every morning and evening to draw water, and, being interrogated by them, refused to reply; but when the maids of queen astartê* approached in their turn, they were received by the goddess in the most amiable manner--isis deigning even to plait their hair, and to communicate to them the odour of myrrh with which she herself was impregnated. * astartê is the name taken by the queen in the phoenician version: the egyptian counterpart of the same narrative substituted for it nemanous or saôsis; that is to say, the two principal forms of hathor--the hermopolitan nahmâûît and the heliopolitan lûsasît. it would appear from the presence of these names that there must have been in egypt two versions at least of the phoenician adventures of isis--the one of hermopolitan and the other of heliopolitan origin. their mistress came to see the stranger who had thus treated her servants, took her into her service, and confided to her the care of her lately born son. isis became attached to the child, adopted it for her own, after the egyptian manner, by inserting her finger in its mouth; and having passed it through the fire during the night in order to consume away slowly anything of a perishable nature in its body, metamorphosed herself into a swallow, and flew around the miraculous pillar uttering plaintive cries. astartê came upon her once while she was bathing the child in the flame, and broke by her shrieks of fright the charm of immortality. isis was only able to reassure her by revealing her name and the object of her presence there. she opened the mysterious tree-trunk, anointed it with essences, and wrapping it in precious cloths, transmitted it to the priests of byblos, who deposited it respectfully in their temple: she put the coffin which it contained on board ship, and brought it, after many adventures, into egypt. another tradition asserts, however, that osiris never found his way back to his country: he was buried at byblos, this tradition maintained, and it was in his honour that the festivals attributed by the vulgar to the young adonis were really celebrated. a marvellous fact seemed to support this view. every year a head of papyrus, thrown into the sea at some unknown point of the delta, was carried for six days along the syrian coast, buffeted by wind and waves, and on the seventh was thrown up at byblos, where the priests received it and exhibited it solemnly to the people.* the details of these different stories are not in every case very ancient, but the first fact in them carries us back to the time when byblos had accepted the sovereignty of the theban dynasties, and was maintaining daily commercial and political relations with the inhabitants of the nile valley.** * in the later roman period it was letters announcing the resurrection of adonis-osiris that the alexandrian women cast into the sea, and these were carried by the current as far as byblos. see on this subject the commentaries of cyril of alexandra and procopius of gaza on chap, xviii. of isaiah. ** it is worthy of note that philo gives to the divinity with the egyptian name taautos the part in the ancient history of phoenicia of having edited the mystic writings put in order by sanchoniathon at a very early epoch. the city proclaimed horus to be a great god.* el-kronos allied himself with osiris as well as with adonis; isis and baalat became blended together at their first encounter, and the respective peoples made an exchange of their deities with the same light-heartedness as they displayed in trafficking with the products of their soil or their industry. * this is confirmed by one of the names inscribed on the tel el-amarna tablets as being that of a governor of byblos under amenôthes iv. this name was read rabimur, anrabimur, or ilrabimur, and finally ilurabihur: the meaning of it is, �muru is the great god,� or �horus is the great god.� muru is the name which we find in an appellation of a hittite king, maurusaru, �mauru is king.� on an aramoan cylinder in the british museum, representing a god in assyrian dress fighting with two griffins, there is the inscription �horkhu,� harmakhis. [illustration: 104.jpg the phoenician horus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an intaglio engraved in cesnola. the phoenician figures of horus and thot which i have reproduced were pointed out to me by my friend clermont-ganneau. after osiris, the ibis thot was the most important among the deities who had emigrated to asia. he was too closely connected with the osirian cycle to be forgotten by the phoenicians after they had adopted his companions. we are ignorant of the particular divinity with whom he was identified, or would be the more readily associated from some similarity in the pronunciation of his name: we know only that he still preserved in his new country all the power of his voice and all the subtilty of his mind. he occupied there also the position of scribe and enchanter, as he had done at thebes, memphis, thinis, and before the chief of each heliopolitan ennead. he became the usual adviser of el-kronos at byblos, as he had been of osiris and horus; he composed charms for him, and formulae which increased the warlike zeal of his partisans; he prescribed the form and insignia of the god and of his attendant deities, and came finally to be considered as the inventor of letters.* * the part of counsellor which thot played in connexion with the god of byblos was described at some length in the writings attributed to sankhoniathon. [illustration: 105.jpg the phoenician thot] drawn by faucher-gudin, after an intaglio engraved in m. de vogué. the epoch, indeed, in which he became a naturalised phoenician coincides approximately with a fundamental revolution in the art of writing--that in which a simple and rapid stenography was substituted for the complicated and tedious systems with which the empires of the ancient world had been content from their origin. tyre, sidon, byblos, arvad, had employed up to this period the most intricate of these systems. like most of the civilized nations of western asia, they had conducted their diplomatic and commercial correspondence in the cuneiform character impressed upon clay tablets. their kings had had recourse to a babylonian model for communicating to the amenôthes pharaohs the expression of their wishes or their loyalty; we now behold them, after an interval of four hundred years and more*--during which we have no examples of their monuments--possessed of a short and commodious script, without the encumbrance of ideograms, determinatives, polyphony and syllabic sounds, such as had fettered the egyptian and chaldæan scribes, in spite of their cleverness in dealing with them. phonetic articulations were ultimately resolved into twenty-two sounds, to each of which a special sign was attached, which collectively took the place of the hundreds or thousands of signs formerly required. * the inscription on the bronze cup dedicated to the baal of the lebanon, goes back probably to the time of hiram i., say the xth century before our era; the reasons advanced by winckler for dating it in the time of hiram ii. have not been fully accepted up to the present. by placing the introduction of the alphabet somewhere between amenôthes iv. in the xvth and hiram i. in the xth century before our era, and by taking the middle date between them, say the accession of the xxis�dynasty towards the year 1100 b.c. for its invention or adoption, we cannot go far wrong one way or the other. [illustration: 106.jpg one of the most ancient phoenician inscriptions] drawn by paucher-gudin, from a heliogravure. this is the cup of the baal of the lebanon. this was an alphabet, the first in point of time, but so ingenious and so pliable that the majority of ancient and modern nations have found it able to supply all their needs--greeks and europeans of the western mediterranean on the one hand, and semites of all kinds, persians and hindus on the other. [illustration: 107.jpg table of alphabets] it must have originated between the end of the xviiith and the beginning of the xxist dynasties, and the existence of pharaonic rule in phoenicia during this period has led more than one modern scholar to assume that it developed under egyptian influence.* * the hypothesis of an egyptian origin, suggested casually by champollion, has been ably dealt with by e. de rougé. e. de rougé derives the alphabet from the hieratic, and his identifications have been accepted by lauth, by brugsch, by p. lenormant, and by isaac taylor. halévy would take it from the egyptian hieroglyphics directly without the intervention of the hieratic. the egyptian origin, strongly contested of late, has been accepted by the majority of scholars. some affirm that it is traceable directly to the hieroglyphs, while others seek for some intermediary in the shape of a cursive script, and find this in the hieratic writing, which contains, they maintain, prototypes of all the phoenician letters. tables have been drawn up, showing at a glance the resemblances and differences which appear respectively to justify or condemn their hypothesis. perhaps the analogies would be more evident and more numerous if we were in possession of inscriptions going back nearer to the date of origin. as it is, the divergencies are sufficiently striking to lead some scholars to seek the prototype of the alphabet elsewhere--either in babylon, in asia minor, or even in crete, among those barbarous hieroglyphs which are attributed to the primitive inhabitants of the island. it is no easy matter to get at the truth amid these conflicting theories. two points only are indisputable; first, the almost unanimous agreement among writers of classical times in ascribing the first alphabet to the phoenicians; and second, the phonician origin of the greek, and afterwards of the latin alphabet which we employ to-day. to return to the religion of the phoenicians: the foreign deities were not content with obtaining a high place in the estimation of priests and people; they acquired such authority over the native gods that they persuaded them to metamorphose themselves almost completely into egyptian divinities. [illustration: 109.jpg rashuf on his lion] drawn by paucher-gudin, from a photograph reproduced in clermont-ganneau. one finds among the majority of them the emblems commonly used in the pharaonic temples, sceptres with heads of animals, head-dress like the pschent, the _crux ansata_, the solar disk, and the winged scarab. the lady of byblos placed the cow�s horns upon her head from the moment she became identified with hathor.* the baal of the neighbouring arvad--probably a form of bashuf--was still represented as standing upright on his lion in order to traverse the high places: but while, in the monument which has preserved the figure of the god, both lion and mountain are given according to chaldæan tradition, he himself, as the illustration shows, is dressed after the manner of egypt, in the striped and plaited loin-cloth, wears a large necklace on his neck and bracelets on his arms, and bears upon his head the white mitre with its double plume and the egyptian uraaus.** * she is represented as hathor on the stele of iéhav-melek, king of byblos, during the persian period. ** this monument, which belonged to the péretié collection, was found near amrîth, at the place called nahr-abrek. the dress and bearing are so like those of the rashuf represented on egyptian monuments, that i have no hesitation in regarding this as a representation of that god. he brandishes in one hand the weapon of the victor, and is on the point of despatching with it a lion, which he has seized by the tail with the other, after the model of the pharaonic hunters, amenôthes i. and thûtmosis iii. the lunar disk floating above his head lends to him, it is true, a phonician character, but the winged sun of heliopolis hovering above the disk leaves no doubt as to his egyptian antecedents.* * the phonician symbol represents the crescent moon holding the darkened portion in its arms, like the symbol reserved in egypt for the lunar gods. [illustration: 110.jpg a phoenician god in his egyptian shrine] drawn by faucher-gudin, from renan. the worship, too, offered to these metamorphosed gods was as much changed as the deities themselves; the altars assumed something of the egyptian form, and the tabernacles were turned into shrines, which were decorated at the top with a concave groove, or with a frieze made up of repetitions of the uraeus. egyptian fashions had influenced the better classes so far as to change even their mode of dealing with the dead, of which we find in not a few places clear evidence. travellers arriving in egypt at that period must have been as much astonished as the tourist of to-day by the monuments which the egyptians erected for their dead. [illustration: 111.jpg amenôthes i. seizing a lion] drawn by faucher-gudin. this monument was in the louvre museum. analogous figures of gods or kings holding a lion by the tail are found on various monuments of the theban dynasties. the pyramids which met their gaze, as soon as they had reached the apex of the delta, must have far surpassed their ideas of them, no matter how frequently they may have been told about them, and they must have been at a loss to know why such a number of stones should have been brought together to cover a single corpse. at the foot of these colossal monuments, lying like a pack of hounds asleep around their master, the mastabas of the early dynasties were ranged, half buried under the sand, but still visible, and still visited on certain days by the descendants of their inhabitants, or by priests charged with the duty of keeping them up. chapels of more recent generations extended as a sort of screen before the ancient tombs, affording examples of the two archaic types combined--the mastaba more or less curtailed in its proportions, and the pyramid with a more or less acute point. the majority of these monuments are no longer in existence, and only one of them has come down to us intact--that which amenôthes iii. erected in the serapeum at memphis in honour of an apis which had died in his reign. [illustration: 112.jpg a phoenician mastaba at arvad] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thobois, as given in renan. the cuttings made in the lower stonework appear to be traces of unfinished steps. the pyramid at the top is no longer in existence, but its remains are scattered about the foot of the monument, and furnished m. thobois with the means of reconstructing with exactness the original form. phoenicians visiting the nile valley must have carried back with them to their native country a remembrance of this kind of burying-place, and have suggested it to their architects as a model. one of the cemeteries at arvad contains a splendid specimen of this imported design.* * pietschmann thinks that the monument is not older than the greek epoch, and it must be admitted that the cornice is not such as we usually meet with in egypt in theban times; nevertheless, the very marked resemblance to the theban mastaba shows that it must have been directly connected with the egyptian type which prevailed from the xviiith to the xxth dynasties. [illustration: 113.jpg two of the tombs at arvad] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a water-colour by thobois, reproduced in renan. it is a square tower some thirty-six feet high; the six lower courses consist of blocks, each some sixteen and a half feet long, joined to each other without mortar. the two lowest courses project so as to form a kind of pedestal for the building. the cornice at the top consists of a deep moulding, surmounted by a broad flat band, above which rises the pyramid, which attains a height of nearly thirty feet. it is impossible to deny that it is constructed on a foreign model; it is not a slavish imitation, however, but rather an adaptation upon a rational plan to the conditions of its new home. its foundations rest on nothing but a mixture of soil and sand impregnated with water, and if vaults had been constructed beneath this, as in egypt, the body placed there would soon have corrupted away, owing to the infiltration of moisture. the dead bodies were, therefore, placed within the structure above ground, in chambers corresponding to the egyptian chapel, which were superimposed the one upon the other. the first storey would furnish space for three bodies, and the second would contain twelve, for which as many niches were provided. in the same cemetery we find examples of tombs which the architect has constructed, not after an egyptian, but a chaldæan model. a round tower is here substituted for the square structure and a cupola for the pyramid, while the cornice is represented by crenellated markings. the only egyptian feature about it is the four lions, which seem to support the whole edifice upon their backs.* * the fellahîn in the neighbourhood call these two monuments the meghazîl or �distaffs.� arvad was, among phoenician cities, the nearest neighbour to the kingdoms on the euphrates, and was thus the first to experience either the brunt of an attack or the propagation of fashions and ideas from these countries. in the more southerly region, in the country about tyre, there are fewer indications of babylonian influence, and such examples of burying-places for the ruling classes as the kabr-hiram and other similar tombs correspond with the mixed mastaba of the theban period. we have the same rectangular base, but the chapel and its crowning pyramid are represented by the sarcophagus itself with its rigid cover. the work is of an unfinished character, and carelessly wrought, but there is a charming simplicity about its lines and a harmony in its proportions which betray an egyptian influence. [illustration: 115.jpg the kabr-hiram near tyre] drawn by boudier, from a sketch by thobois, reproduced by renan. the spirit of imitation which we find in the religion and architecture of phoenicia is no less displayed in the minor arts, such as goldsmiths�work, sculpture in ivory, engraving on gems, and glass-making. the forms, designs, and colours are all rather those of egypt than of chaldæa. the many-hued glass objects, turned out by the manufacturers of the said in millions, furnished at one time valuable cargoes for the phoenicians; they learned at length to cast and colour copies of these at home, and imitated their egyptian models so successfully that classical antiquity was often deceived by them.* * glass manufacture was carried to such a degree of perfection among the phoenicians, that many ancient authors attributed to them the invention of glass. their engravers, while still continuing to employ cones and cylinders of babylonian form, borrowed the scarab type also, and made use of it on the bezils of rings, the pendants of necklaces, and on a kind of bracelet used partly for ornament and partly as a protective amulet. the influence of the egyptian model did not extend, however, amongst the masses, and we find, therefore, no evidence of it in the case of common objects, such as those of coarse sand or glazed earthenware. egyptian scarab forms were thus confined to the rich, and the material upon which they are found is generally some costly gem, such as cut and polished agate, onyx, haematite, and lapis-lazuli. the goldsmiths did not slavishly copy the golden and silver bowls which were imported from the delta; they took their inspiration from the principles displayed in the ornamentation of these objects, but they treated the subjects after their own manner, grouping them afresh and blending them with new designs. the intrinsic value of the metal upon which these artistic conceptions had been impressed led to their destruction, and among the examples which have come down to us i know of no object which can be traced to the period of the egyptian conquest. it was theban art for the most part which furnished the phoenicians with their designs. these included the lotus, the papyrus, the cow standing in a thicket and suckling her calf, the sacred bark, and the king threatening with his uplifted arm the crowd of conquered foes who lie prostrate before him. [illustration: 117.jpg egyptian treatment of the cow on a phoenician bowl] drawn by faucher-gudin, after grifi. the king�s double often accompanied him on some of the original objects, impassive and armed with the banner bearing the name of horus. the phoenician artist modified this figure, which in its original form did not satisfy his ideas of human nature, by transforming it into a protective genius, who looks with approval on the exploits of his _protégé_, and gathers together the corpses of those he has slain. once these designs had become current among the goldsmiths, they continued to be supplied for a long period, without much modification, to the markets of the eastern and western worlds. indeed, it was natural that they should have taken a stereotyped form, when we consider that the phoenicians who employed them held continuous commercial relations with the country whence they had come--a country of which, too, they recognised the supremacy. egypt in the ramesside period was, as we have seen, distinguished for the highest development of every branch of industry; it had also a population which imported and exported more raw material and more manufactured products than any other. [illustration: 118.jpg the king and his double on a phoenician bowl] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by longpérier. the small nation which acted as a commercial intermediary between egypt and the rest of the world had in this traffic a steady source of profit, and even in providing egypt with a single article--for example, bronze, or the tin necessary for its preparation--could realise enormous profits. the people of tyre and sidon had been very careful not to alienate the good will of such rich customers, and as long as the representatives of the pharaoh held sway in syria, they had shown themselves, if not thoroughly trustworthy vassals, at least less turbulent than their neighbours of arvad and qodshû. even when the feebleness and impotence of the successors of ramses iii. relieved them from the obligation of further tribute, they displayed towards their old masters such deference that they obtained as great freedom of trade with the ports of the delta as they had enjoyed in the past. they maintained with these ports the same relations as in the days of their dependence, and their ships sailed up the river as far as memphis, and even higher, while the egyptian galleys continued to coast the littoral of syria. an official report addressed to hrihor by one of the ministers of the theban amon, indicates at one and the same time the manner in which these voyages were accomplished, and the dangers to which their crews were exposed. hrihor, who was still high priest, was in need of foreign timber to complete some work he had in hand, probably the repair of the sacred barks, and commanded the official above mentioned to proceed by sea to byblos, to king zikarbâl,* in order to purchase cedars of lebanon. * this is the name which classical tradition ascribed to the first husband of dido, the founder of carthage--sicharbas, sichaeus, acerbas. the messenger started from tanis, coasted along kharu, and put into the harbour of dor, which then belonged to the zakkala: while he was revictualling his ship, one of the sailors ran away with the cash-box. the local ruler, badilu, expressed at first his sympathy at this misfortune, and gave his help to capture the robber; then unaccountably changing his mind he threw the messenger into prison, who had accordingly to send to egypt to procure fresh funds for his liberation and the accomplishment of his mission. having arrived at byblos, nothing occurred there worthy of record. the wood having at length been cut and put on board, the ship set sail homewards. driven by contrary winds, the vessel was thrown upon the coast of alasia, where the crew were graciously received by the queen khatiba. we have evidence everywhere, it may be stated, as to the friendly disposition displayed, either with or without the promptings of interest, towards the representative of the theban pontiff. had he been ill-used, the phoenicians living on egyptian territory would have been made to suffer for it. navigators had to take additional precautions, owing to the presence of ægean or asiatic pirates on the routes followed by the mercantile marine, which rendered their voyages dangerous and sometimes interrupted them altogether. the syrian coast-line was exposed to these marauders quite as much as the african had been during the sixty or eighty years which followed the death of ramses ii.; the seamen of the north--achæans and tyrseni, lycians and shardanians--had pillaged it on many occasions, and in the invasion which followed these attacks it experienced as little mercy as naharaim, the khâti, and the region of the amorites. the fleets which carried the philistines, the zakkala, and their allies had devastated the whole coast before they encountered the egyptian ships of ramses iii. near magadîl, to the south of carmel. arvad as well as zahi had succumbed to the violence of their attack, and if the cities of byblos, berytus, sidon, and tyre had escaped, their suburbs had been subjected to the ravages of the foe.* * see, for this invasion, vol. v. pp. 305-311, of the present work. peace followed the double victory of the egyptians, and commerce on the mediterranean resumed once more its wonted ways, but only in those regions where the authority of the pharaoh and the fear of his vengeance were effective influences. beyond this sphere there were continual warfare, piracy, migrations of barbaric hordes, and disturbances of all kinds, among which, if a stranger ventured, it was at the almost certain risk of losing his life or liberty. the area of undisturbed seas became more and more contracted in proportion as the memory of past defeats faded away. cyprus was not comprised within it, and the ægeans, who were restrained by the fear of egypt from venturing into any region under her survey, perpetually flocked thither in numerous bodies. the achæans, too, took up their abode on this island at an early date--about the time when some of their bands were infesting libya, and offering their help to the enemies of the pharaoh. they began their encroachments on the northern side of the island--the least rich, it is true, but the nearest to cilicia, and the easiest to hold against the attacks of their rivals. the disaster of piriu had no doubt dashed their hopes of finding a settlement in egypt: they never returned thither any more, and the current of emigration which had momentarily inclined towards the south, now set steadily towards the east, where the large island of cyprus offered an unprotected and more profitable field of adventure. we know not how far they penetrated into its forests and its interior. the natives began, at length, under their influence, to despise the customs and mode of existence with which they had been previously contented: they acquired a taste for pottery rudely decorated after the mycenean manner, for jewellery, and for the bronze swords which they had seen in the hands of the invaders. the phoenicians, in order to maintain their ground against the intruders, had to strengthen their ancient posts or found others--such as carpasia, gerynia, and lapathos on the achæan coast itself, tamassos near the copper-mines, and a new town, qart-hadashât, which is perhaps only the ancient citium under a new name.* they thus added to their earlier possessions on the island regions on its northern side, while the rest either fell gradually into the hands of hellenic adventurers, or continued in the possession of the native populations. cyprus served henceforward as an advance-post against the attacks of western nations, and the phoenicians must have been thankful for the good fortune which had made them see the wisdom of fortifying it. but what became of their possessions lying outside cyprus? they retained several of them on the southern coasts of asia minor, and rhodes remained faithful to them, as well as thasos, enabling them to overlook the two extremities of the archipelago;** but, owing to the movements of the people of the sea and the political development of the mycenean states, they had to give up the stations and harbours of refuge which they held in the other islands or on the continent. * it is mentioned in the inscription of baal of lebanon, and in the assyrian inscriptions of the vii century b.c. * this would appear to be the case, as far as rhodes is concerned, from the traditions which ascribed the final expulsion of the phoenicians to a doric invasion from argos. the somewhat legendary accounts of the state of affairs after the hellenic conquest are in the fragments of ergias and polyzelos. they still continued, however, to pay visits to these localities--sometimes in the guise of merchants and at others as raiders, according to their ancient custom. they went from port to port as of old, exposing their wares in the market-places, pillaging the farms and villages, carrying into captivity the women and children whom they could entice on board, or whom they might find defenceless on the strand; but they attempted all this with more risk than formerly, and with less success. the inhabitants of the coast were possessed of fully manned ships, similar in form to those of the philistines or the zakkala, which, at the first sight of the phoenicians, set out in pursuit of them, or, following the example set by their foe, lay in wait for them behind some headland, and retaliated upon them for their cruelty. piracy in the archipelago was practised as a matter of course, and there was no islander who did not give himself up to it when the opportunity offered, to return to his honest occupations after a successful venture. some kings seem to have risen up here and there who found this state of affairs intolerable, and endeavoured to remedy it by every means within their power: they followed on the heels of the corsairs and adventurers, whatever might be their country; they followed them up to their harbours of refuge, and became an effective police force in all parts of the sea where they were able to carry their flag. the memory of such exploits was preserved in the tradition of the cretan empire which minos had constituted, and which extended its protection over a portion of continental greece. if the phoenicians had had to deal only with the piratical expeditions of the peoples of the coast or with the jealous watchfulness of the rulers of the sea, they might have endured the evil, but they had now to put up, in addition, with rivalry in the artistic and industrial products of which they had long had the monopoly. the spread of art had at length led to the establishment of local centres of production everywhere, which bade fair to vie with those of phoenicia. on the continent and in the cyclades there were produced statuettes, intaglios, jewels, vases, weapons, and textile fabrics which rivalled those of the east, and were probably much cheaper. the merchants of tyre and sidon could still find a market, however, for manufactures requiring great technical skill or displaying superior taste--such as gold or silver bowls, engraved or decorated with figures in outline--but they had to face a serious falling off in their sales of ordinary goods. to extend their commerce they had to seek new and less critical markets, where the bales of their wares, of which the ægean population was becoming weary, would lose none of their attractions. we do not know at what date they ventured to sail into the mysterious region of the hesperides, nor by what route they first reached it. it is possible that they passed from crete to cythera, and from this to the ionian islands and to the point of calabria, on the other side of the straits of otranto, whence they were able to make their way gradually to sicily.* * ed. meyer thinks that the extension of phoenician commerce to the western mediterranean goes back to the xviiith dynasty, or, at the latest, the xvth century before our era. without laying undue stress on this view, i am inclined to ascribe with him, until we get further knowledge, the colonisation of the west to the period immediately following the movements of the people of the sea and the diminution of phoenician trade in the grecian archipelago. exploring voyages had been made before this, but the founding of colonies was not earlier than this epoch. did the fame of their discovery, we may ask, spread so rapidly in the east as to excite there the cupidity and envy of their rivals? however this may have been, the people of the sea, after repeated checks in africa and syria, and feeling more than ever the pressure of the northern tribes encroaching on them, set out towards the west, following the route pursued by the phoenicians. the traditions current among them and collected afterwards by the greek historians give an account, mingled with many fabulous details, of the causes which led to their migrations and of the vicissitudes which they experienced in the course of them. daedalus having taken flight from crete to sicily, minos, who had followed in his steps, took possession of the greater part of the island with his eteocretes. iolaos was the leader of pelasgic bands, whom he conducted first into libya and finally to sardinia. it came also to pass that in the days of atys, son of manes, a famine broke out and raged throughout lydia: the king, unable to provide food for his people, had them numbered, and decided by lot which of the two halves of the population should expatriate themselves under the leadership of his son tyrsenos. those-who were thus fated to leave their country assembled at smyrna, constructed ships there, and having embarked on board of them what was necessary, set sail in quest of a new home. after a long and devious voyage, they at length disembarked in the country of the umbrians, where they built cities, and became a prosperous people under the name of tyrseni, being thus called after their leader tyrsenos.* * herodotus, whence all the information of other classical writers is directly or indirectly taken. most modern historians reject this tradition. i see no reason for my own part why they should do so, at least in the present state of our knowledge. the etrurians of the historical period were the result of a fusion of several different elements, and there is nothing against the view that the tursha--one of these elements--should have come from asia minor, as herodotus says. properly understood, the tradition seems well founded, and the details may have been added afterwards, either by the lydians themselves, or by the greek historians who collected the lydian traditions. the remaining portions of the nations who had taken part in the attack on egypt--of which several tribes had been planted by ramses iii. in the shephelah, from gaza to carmel--proceeded in a series of successive detachments from asia minor and the ægean sea to the coasts of italy and of the large islands; the tursha into that region which was known afterwards as etruria, the shardana into sardinia, the zakkala into sicily, and along with the latter some pulasati, whose memory is still preserved on the northern slope of etna. fate thus brought the phonician emigrants once more into close contact with their traditional enemies, and the hostility which they experienced in their new settlements from the latter was among the influences which determined their further migration from italy proper, and from the region occupied by the ligurians between the arno and the ebro. they had already probably reached sardinia and corsica, but the majority of their ships had sailed to the southward, and having touched at malta, gozo, and the small islands between sicily and the syrtes, had followed the coast-line of africa, until at length they reached the straits of gribraltar and the southern shores of spain. no traces remain of their explorations, or of their early establishments in the western mediterranean, as the towns which they are thought--with good reason in most instances--to have founded there belong to a much later date. every permanent settlement, however, is preceded by a period of exploration and research, which may last for only a few years or be prolonged to as many centuries. i am within the mark, i think, in assuming that phonician adventurers, or possibly even the regular trading ships of tyre and sidon, had established relations with the semi-barbarous chiefs of botica as early as the xiith century before our era, that is, at the time when the power of thebes was fading away under the weak rule of the pontiffs of amon and the tanite pharaohs. the phoenicians were too much absorbed in their commercial pursuits to aspire to the inheritance which egypt was letting slip through her fingers. their numbers were not more than sufficient to supply men for their ships, and they were often obliged to have recourse to their allies or to mercenary tribes--the leleges or carians--in order to provide crews for their vessels or garrisons for their trading posts; it was impossible, therefore, for them to think of raising armies fit to conquer or keep in check the rulers on the orontes or in naharaim. they left this to the races of the interior--the amorites and hittites--and to their restless ambition. the hittite power, however, had never recovered from the terrible blow inflicted on it at the time of the asianic invasion. [illustration: 128.jpg azâz--one of this tumuli on the ancient hittite plain] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. barthélémy. the confederacy of feudal chiefs, which had been brought momentarily together by sapalulu and his successors, was shattered by the violence of the shock, and the elements of which it was composed were engaged henceforward in struggles with each other. at this time the entire plain between the amanus and the euphrates was covered with rich cities, of which the sites are represented to-day by only a few wretched villages or by heaps of ruins. arabian and byzantine remains sometimes crown the summit of the latter, but as soon as we reach the lower strata we find in more or less abundance the ruins of buildings of the greek or persian period, and beneath these those belonging to a still earlier time. the history of syria lies buried in such sites, and is waiting only for a patient and wealthy explorer to bring it to light.* the khâti proper were settled to the south of the taurus in the basin of the sajur, but they were divided into several petty states, of which that which possessed carchemish was the most important, and exercised a practical hegemony over the others. its chiefs alone had the right to call themselves kings of the khâti. the patinu, who were their immediate neighbours on the west, stretched right up to the mediterranean above the plains of naharairn and beyond the orontes; they had absorbed, it would seem, the provinces of the ancient alasia. aramaeans occupied the region to the south of the patinu between the two lebanon ranges, embracing the districts of hamath and qobah.** * the results of the excavations at zinjirli are evidence of what historical material we may hope to find in these tumuli. see the account of the earlier results in p. von luschan, _ausgrabungen in sendschirli_, 1893. ** the aramaeans are mentioned by tiglath-pileser i. as situated between the balikh, the euphrates, and the sajur. the valleys of the amanus and the southern slopes of the taurus included within them some half-dozen badly defined principalities--samalla on the kara-su,* gurgum** around marqasi, the qui*** and khilakku**** in the classical cilicia, and the kasku^ and kummukh^^ in a bend of the euphrates to the north and north-east of the khâti. * the country of samalla, in egyptian samalûa, extended around the tell of zinjirli, at the foot of the amanus, in the valley of marash of the arab historians. ** the name has been read gamgumu, gaugum, and connected by tom-kins with the egyptian augama, which he reads gagama, in the lists of thûtmosis iii. the aramaean inscription on the statue of king panammu shows that it must be read gurgumu, and sachau has identified this new name with that of jurjum, which was the name by which the province of the amanus, lying between baias and the lake of antioch, was known in the byzantine period; the ancient gurgum stretches further towards the north, around the town of marqasi, which tomkins and sachau have identified with marash. *** the site of the country of qui was determined by schrader; it was that part of the cilician plain which stretches from the amanus to the mountains of the kêtis, and takes in the great town of tarsus. f. lenor-mant has pointed out that this country is mentioned twice in the scriptures (1 _kings_ x, 28 and 2 _chron_. i. 16), in the time of solomon. the designation of the country, transformed into the appellation of an eponymous god, is found in the name qauîsaru, �qauî is king.� **** khilakku, the name of which is possibly the same as the egyptian khalakka, is the cilicia trachsea of classical geographers. ^ the country of kashku, which has been connected with kashkisha, which takes the place of karkisha in an egyptian text, was still a dependency of the hittites in the time of tiglath-pileser. it was in the neighbourhood of the urumu, whose capital seems to have been urum, the ourima of ptolemy, near the bend of the euphrates between sumeîsat and birejik; it extended into the commagene of classical times, on the borders of melitene and the tubal. ^^ kummukh lay on both sides of the euphrates and of the upper tigris; it became gradually restricted, until at length it was conterminous with the commagene of classical geographers. the ancient mitanni to the east of carchemish, which was so active in the time of the later amenôthes, had now ceased to exist, and there was but a vague remembrance of its farmer prowess. it had foundered probably in the great cataclysm which engulfed the hittite empire, although its name appears inscribed once more among those of the vassals of egypt on the triumphal lists of ramses iii. its chief tribes had probably migrated towards the regions which were afterwards described by the greek geographers as the home of the matieni on the halys and in the neighbourhood of lake urmiah. aramaean kingdoms, of which the greatest was that of bit-adîni,* had succeeded them, and bordered the euphrates on each side as far as the chalus and balikh respectively; the ancient harran belonged also to them, and their frontier stretched as far as hamath, and to that of the patinu on the orontes. * the province of bît-adîni was specially that part of the country which lay between the euphrates and the balikh, but it extended also to other syrian provinces between the euphrates and the aprie. it was, as we have seen, a complete breaking up of the old nationalities, and we have evidence also of a similar disintegration in the countries to the north of the taurus, in the direction of the black sea. of the mighty khâti with whom thûtmosis iii. had come into contact, there was no apparent trace: either the tribes of which they were composed had migrated towards the south, or those who had never left their native mountains had entered into new combinations and lost even the remembrance of their name. the milidu, tabal (tubal), and mushku (meshech) stretched behind each other from east to west on the confines of the tokhma-su, and still further away other cities of less importance contended for the possession of the upper saros and the middle region of the halys. these peoples, at once poor and warlike, had been attracted, like the hittites of some centuries previous, by the riches accumulated in the strongholds of syria. eevolutions must have been frequent in these regions, but our knowledge of them is more a matter of conjecture than of actual evidence. towards the year 1170 b.c. the mushku swooped down on kummukh, and made themselves its masters; then pursuing their good fortune, they took from the assyrians the two provinces, alzi and purukuzzi, which lay not far from the sources of the tigris and the balikh.* * the _annals of tiglath-pileser i_. place their invasion fifty years before the beginning of his reign. ed. meyer saw a connexion between this and the invasion of the people of the sea, which took place under ramses iii. i think that the invasion of the mushku was a purely local affair, and had nothing in common with the general catastrophe occasioned by the movement of the asiatic armies. a little later the kashku, together with some aramaeans, broke into shubarti, then subject to assyria, and took possession of a part of it. the majority of these invasions had, however, no permanent result: they never issued in the establishment of an empire like that of the khâti, capable by its homogeneity of offering a serious resistance to the march of a conqueror from the south. to sum up the condition of affairs: if a redistribution of races had brought about a change in northern syria, their want of cohesion was no less marked than in the time of the egyptian wars; the first enemy to make an attack upon the frontier of one or other of these tribes was sure of victory, and, if he persevered in his efforts, could make himself master of as much territory as he might choose. the pharaohs had succeeded in welding together their african possessions, and their part in the drama of conquest had been played long ago; but the cities of the tigris and the lower euphrates--nineveh and babylon-were ready to enter the lists as soon as they felt themselves strong enough to revive their ancient traditions of foreign conquest. the successors of agumkakrimê were not more fortunate than he had been in attempting to raise babylon once more to the foremost rank; their want of power, their discord, the insubordination and sedition that existed among their cossæan troops, and the almost periodic returns of the theban generals to the banks of the euphrates, sometimes even to those of the balikh and the khabur, all seemed to conspire to aggravate the helpless state into which babylon had sunk since the close of the dynasty of uruazagga. elam was pressing upon her eastern, and assyria on her northern frontier, and their kings not only harassed her with persistent malignity, but, by virtue of their alliances by marriage with her sovereigns, took advantage of every occasion to interfere both in domestic and state affairs; they would espouse the cause of some pretender during a revolt, they would assume the guardianship of such of their relatives as were left widows or minors, and, when the occasion presented itself, they took possession of the throne of bel, or bestowed it on one of their creatures. assyria particularly seemed to regard babylon with a deadly hatred. the capitals of the two countries were not more than some one hundred and eighty-five miles apart, the intervening district being a flat and monotonous alluvial plain, unbroken by any feature which could serve as a natural frontier. the line of demarcation usually followed one of the many canals in the narrow strip of land between the euphrates and the tigris; it then crossed the latter, and was formed by one of the rivers draining the iranian table-land,--either the upper zab, the radanu, the turnat, or some of their ramifications in the spurs of the mountain ranges. each of the two states strove by every means in its power to stretch its boundary to the farthest limits, and to keep it there at all hazards. this narrow area was the scene of continual war, either between the armies of the two states or those of partisans, suspended from time to time by an elaborate treaty which was supposed to settle all difficulties, but, as a matter of fact, satisfied no one, and left both parties discontented with their lot and jealous of each other. the concessions made were never of sufficient importance to enable the conqueror to crush his rival and regain for himself the ancient domain of khammurabi; his losses, on the other hand, were often considerable enough to paralyse his forces, and prevent him from extending his border in any other direction. when the egyptians seized on naharaim, assyria and babylon each adopted at the outset a different attitude towards the conquerors. assyria, which never laid any permanent claims to the seaboard provinces of the mediterranean, was not disposed to resent their occupation by egypt, and desired only to make sure of their support or their neutrality. the sovereign then ruling assyria, but of whose name we have no record, hastened to congratulate thûtmosis iii. on his victory at megiddo, and sent him presents of precious vases, slaves, lapis-lazuli, chariots and horses, all of which the egyptian conqueror regarded as so much tribute. babylon, on the other hand, did not take action so promptly as assyria; it was only towards the latter years of thûtmosis that its king, karaîndash, being hard pressed by the assyrian assurbelnishishu, at length decided to make a treaty with the intruder.* * we have no direct testimony in support of this hypothesis, but several important considerations give it probability. as no tribute from babylon is mentioned in the _annals of thûtmosis iii_., we must place the beginning of the relations between egypt and chaldæa at a later date. on the other hand, burnaburiash ii., in a letter written to amenôthes iii., cites karaîndash as the first of _his fathers,_ who had established friendly relations with _the fathers_ of the pharaoh, a fact which obliges us to place the interchange of presents before the time of amenôthes iii.: as the reigns of amenôthes ii. and of thûtmosis iv. were both short, it is probable that these relations began in the latter years of thûtmosis iii. the remoteness of egypt from the babylonian frontier no doubt relieved karaîndash from any apprehension of an actual invasion by the pharaohs; but there was the possibility of their subsidising some nearer enemy, and also of forbidding babylonish caravans to enter egyptian provinces, and thus crippling chaldæan commerce. friendly relations, when once established, soon necessitated a constant interchange of embassies and letters between the nile and the euphrates. as a matter of fact, the babylonian king could never reconcile himself to the idea that syria had passed out of his hands. while pretending to warn the pharaoh of syrian plots against him,* the babylonians were employing at the same time secret agents, to go from city to city and stir up discontent at egyptian rule, praising the while the great cosssean king and his armies, and inciting to revolt by promises of help never meant to be fulfilled. assyria, whose very existence would have been endangered by the re-establishment of a babylonian empire, never missed an opportunity of denouncing these intrigues at head-quarters: they warned the royal messengers and governors of them, and were constantly contrasting the frankness and honesty of their own dealings with the duplicity of their rival. * this was done by kurigalzu i., according to a letter addressed by his son burnaburiash to amenôthes iv. this state of affairs lasted for more than half a century, during which time both courts strove to ingratiate themselves in the favour of the pharaoh, each intriguing for the exclusion of the other, by exchanging presents with him, by congratulations on his accession, by imploring gifts of wrought or unwrought gold, and by offering him the most beautiful women of their family for his harem. the son of karaîndash, whose name still remains to be discovered, bestowed one of his daughters on the young amenôthes iii.: kallimasin, the sovereign who succeeded him, also sent successively two princesses to the same pharaoh. but the underlying bitterness and hatred would break through the veneer of polite formula and protestations when the petitioner received, as the result of his advances, objects of inconsiderable value such as a lord might distribute to his vassals, or when he was refused a princess of solar blood, or even an egyptian bride of some feudal house; at such times, however, an ironical or haughty epistle from thebes would recall him to a sense of his own inferiority. as a fact, the lot of the cossæan sovereigns does not appear to have been a happy one, in spite of the variety and pomposity of the titles which they continued to assume. they enjoyed but short lives, and we know that at least three or four of them--kallimasin, burnaburiash i., and kurigalzu i. ascended the throne in succession during the forty years that amenôthes iii. ruled over egypt and syria.* * the copy we possess of the royal canon of babylon is mutilated at this point, and the original documents are not sufficiently complete to fill the gap. about two or three names are missing after that of agumkakrimê, and the reigns must have been very short, if indeed, as i think, agumka krimî and karaîndash were both contemporaries of the earlier pharaohs bearing the name of thûtmosis. the order of the names which have come down to us is not indisputably established. the following order appears to me to be the most probable at present:- karaîndash. kallimasin. burnaburiash i. kurigalzu i. burnaburiash ii. karakhardash. kadashmankiiarbê i. nazibugas ii.. kurigalzu ii. nazimaruttasii. kadashmanturgu. this is, with a slight exception, the classification adopted by winckler, and that of hilprecht differs from it only in the intercalation of kudurturgu and shagaraktiburiash between burnaburiash ii. and karakhardash. perhaps the rapidity of this succession may have arisen from some internal revolution or from family disturbances. the chaldæans of the old stock reluctantly rendered obedience to these cosssean kings, and, if we may judge from the name, one at least of these ephemeral sovereigns, kallimasin, appears to have been a semite, who owed his position among the cossoan princes to some fortunate chance. a few rare inscriptions stamped on bricks, one or two letters or documents of private interest, and some minor objects from widely distant spots, have enabled us to ascertain the sites upon which these sovereigns erected buildings; karaîndash restored the temple of nana at uruk, burnaburiash and kurigalzu added to that of shamash at larsam, and kurigalzu took in hand that of sin at uru. we also possess a record of some of their acts in the fragments of a document, which a mnevite scribe of the time of assurbanipal had compiled, or rather jumbled together,* from certain babylonian chronicles dealing with the wars against assyria and elam, with public treaties, marriages, and family quarrels. we learn from this, for example, that burnaburiash i. renewed with buzurassur the conventions drawn up between karaîndash and assurbelnishishu. these friendly relations were maintained, apparently, under kurigalzu i. and assur-nadin-akhi, the son of buzurassur;** if kurigalzu built or restored the fortress, long called after him dur-kurigalzu,*** at one of the fords of the narmalka, it was probably as a precautionary measure rather than because of any immediate danger. the relations between the two powers became somewhat strained when burnaburiash ii. and assuruballît had respectively succeeded to kurigalzu and assur-nadin-akhi; **** this did not, however, lead to hostilities, and the subsequent betrothal of karakhardash, son of burnaburiash ii., to mubauîtatseruâ, daughter of assuruballît, tended to restore matters to their former condition. * this is what is generally called the �synchronous history,� the principal remains of which were discovered and published by h. rawlinson. it is a very unskilful complication, in which winckler has discovered several blunders. ** assur-nadin-akhi i. is mentioned in a tel el-amarna tablet as being the father of assuruballît. *** this is the present akerkuf, as is proved by the discovery of bricks bearing the name of kurigalzu; but perhaps what i have attributed to kurigalzu i. must be referred to the second king of that name. **** we infer this from the way in which burnaburiash speaks of the assyrians in the correspondence with amenôthes iv. the good will between the two countries became still more pronounced when kadashmankharbê succeeded his father karakhardash. the cossæan soldiery had taken umbrage at his successor and had revolted, assassinated kadashmankharbê, and proclaimed king in his stead a man of obscure origin named nazibùgash. assuruballît, without a moment�s hesitation, took the side of his new relatives; he crossed the frontier, killed nazibugash, and restored the throne to his sister�s child, kurigalzu ii., the younger. the young king, who was still a minor at his accession, appears to have met with no serious difficulties; at any rate, none were raised by his assyrian cousins, belnirârî i. and his successor budîlu.* * the _synchronous history_ erroneously places the events of the reign of rammân-nirâri in that of belnirârî. the order of succession of buzurassur, assuruballît, belnirârî, and budîlu, has been established by the bricks of kalah-shergât. towards the close of his reign, however, revolts broke out, and it was only by sustained efforts that he was able to restore order in babylon, sippara, and the country of the sea. while the king was in the midst of these difficulties, the elamites took advantage of his troubles to steal from him a portion of his territory, and their king, khurbatila, challenged him to meet his army near dur-dungi. kurigalzu accepted the challenge, gained a decisive victory, took his adversary prisoner, and released him only on receiving as ransom a province beyond the tigris; he even entered susa, and, from among other trophies of past wars, resumed possession of an agate tablet belonging to dungi, which the veteran kudurnakhunta had stolen from the temple of nipur nearly a thousand years previously. this victory was followed by the congratulations of most of his neighbours, with the exception of bammân-nirâri ii., who had succeeded budîlu in assyria, and probably felt some jealousy or uneasiness at the news. he attacked the cossæans, and overthrew them at sugagi, on the banks of the salsallât; their losses were considerable, and kurigalzu could only obtain peace by the cession to assyria of a strip of territory the entire length of the north-west frontier, from the confines of the shubari country, near the sources of the khabur, to the suburbs of babylon itself. nearly the whole of mesopotamia thus changed hands at one stroke, but babylon had still more serious losses to suffer. nazimaruttash, who attempted to wipe out the disaster sustained by his father kurigalzu, experienced two crushing defeats, one at kar-ishtar and the other near akarsallu, and the treaty which he subsequently signed was even more humiliating for his country than the preceding one. all that part of the babylonian domain which lay nearest to nineveh was ceded to the assyrians, from pilaski on the right bank of the tigris to the province of lulumê in the zagros mountains. it would appear that the cossæan tribes who had remained in their native country, took advantage of these troublous times to sever all connection with their fellow-countrymen established in the cities of the plain; for we find them henceforward carrying on a petty warfare for their own profit, and leading an entirely independent life. the descendants of gandish, deprived of territories in the north, repulsed in the east, and threatened in the south by the nations of the persian gulf, never recovered their former ascendency, and their authority slowly declined during the century which followed these events. their downfall brought about the decadence of the cities over which they had held sway; and the supremacy which babylon had exercised for a thousand years over the countries of the euphrates passed into the hands of the assyrian kings. assyria itself was but a poor and insignificant country when compared with her rival. it occupied, on each side of the middle course of the tigris, the territory lying between the 35th and 37th parallels of latitude.* * these are approximately the limits of the first assyrian empire, as given by the monuments; from the persian epoch onwards, the name was applied to the whole course of the tigris as far as the mountain district. the ancient orthography of the name is aushâr. it was bounded on the east by the hills and mountain ranges running parallel to the zagros chain--gebel guar, gebel gara, zerguizavân-dagh, and baravân-dagh, with their rounded monotonous limestone ridges, scored by watercourses and destitute of any kind of trees. on the north it was hemmed in by the spurs of the masios, and bounded on the east by an undefined line running from mount masios to the slopes of singar, and from these again to the chaldæan plain; to the south the frontier followed the configuration of the table-land and the curve of the low cliffs, which in prehistoric times had marked the limits of the persian gulf; from here the boundary was formed on the left side of the tigris by one of its tributaries, either the lower zab or the badanu. the territory thus enclosed formed a compact and healthy district: it was free from extremes of temperature arising from height or latitude, and the relative character and fertility of its soil depended on the absence or presence of rivers. the eastern part of assyria was well watered by the streams and torrents which drained the iranian plateau and the lower mountain chains which ran parallel to it. the beds of these rivers are channelled so deeply in the alluvial soil, that it is necessary to stand on the very edge of their banks to catch a sight of their silent and rapid waters; and it is only in the spring or early summer, when they are swollen by the rains and melting snow, that they spread over the adjacent country. as soon as the inundation is over, a vegetation of the intensest green springs up, and in a few days the fields and meadows are covered with a luxuriant and fragrant carpet of verdure. this brilliant growth is, however, short-lived, for the heat of the sun dries it up as quickly as it appears, and even the corn itself is in danger of being burnt up before reaching maturity. to obviate such a disaster, the assyrians had constructed a network of canals and ditches, traces of which are in many places still visible, while a host of _shadufs_ placed along their banks facilitated irrigation in the dry seasons. the provinces supplied with water in this manner enjoyed a fertility which passed into a proverb, and was well known among the ancients; they yielded crops of cereals which rivalled those of babylonia, and included among their produce wheat, barley, millet, and sesame. but few olive trees were cultivated, and the dates were of inferior quality; indeed, in the greek period, these fruits were only used for fattening pigs and domestic animals. the orchards contained the pistachio, the apple, the pomegranate, the apricot, the vine, the almond, and the fig, and, in addition to the essences common to both syria and egypt, the country produced cédrats of a delicious scent which were supposed to be an antidote to all kinds of poisons. assyria was not well wooded, except in the higher valleys, where willows and poplars bordered the rivers, and sycamores, beeches, limes, and plane trees abounded, besides several varieties of pines and oaks, including a dwarf species of the latter, from whose branches manna was obtained. [illustration: 143.jpg the 1st assyrian empire--map] this is a saccharine substance, which is deposited in small lumps, and is found in greater abundance during wet years and especially on foggy days. when fresh, it has an agreeable taste and is pleasant to eat; but as it will not keep in its natural state, the women prepare it for exportation by dissolving it in boiling water, and evaporating it to a sweetish paste, which has more or less purgative, qualities. the aspect of the country changes after crossing the tigris westward. the slopes of mount masios are everywhere furrowed with streams, which feed the khabur and its principal affluent, the kharmis;* woods become more frequent, and the valleys green and shady. * the kharmis is the mygdonios of greek geographers, the hirmâs of the arabs; the latter name may be derived from kharmis, or it may be that it merely presents a fortuitous resemblance to it. the plains extending southwards, however, contain, like those of the euphrates, beds of gypsum in the sub-soil, which render the water running through them brackish, and prevent the growth of vegetation. the effects of volcanic action are evident on the surface of these great steppes; blocks of basalt pierce through the soil, and near the embouchure of the kharmis, a cone, composed of a mass of lava, cinders, and scorial, known as the tell-kôkab, rises abruptly to a height of 325 feet. the mountain chain of singar, which here reaches its western termination, is composed of a long ridge of soft white limestone, and seems to have been suddenly thrown up in one of the last geological upheavals which affected this part of the country: in some places it resembles a perpendicular wall, while in others it recedes in natural terraces which present the appearance of a gigantic flight of steps. the summit is often wooded, and the spurs covered with vineyards and fields, which flourish vigorously in the vicinity of streams; when these fail, however, the table-land resumes its desolate aspect, and stretches in bare and sandy undulations to the horizon, broken only where it is crossed by the thartar, the sole river in this region which is not liable to be dried up, and whose banks may be traced by the scanty line of vegetation which it nourishes. [illustration: 145.jpg the volcanic cone of kôkab] drawn by boudier, from the cut in layard. in a country thus unequally favoured by nature, the towns are necessarily distributed in a seemingly arbitrary fashion. most of them are situated on the left bank of the tigris, where the fertile nature of the soil enables it to support a dense population. they were all flourishing centres of population, and were in close proximity to each other, at all events during the centuries of assyrian hegemony.* * we find, for example, in the inscription of bavian, a long enumeration of towns and villages situated almost within the suburbs of nineveh, on the banks of the khôser. three of them soon eclipsed their rivals in political and religious importance; these were kalakh and nina on the tigris, and arbaîlu, lying beyond the upper zab, in the broken plain which is a continuation eastwards of the first spurs of the zagros.* on the right bank, however, we find merely some dozen cities and towns, scattered about in places where there was a supply of water sufficient to enable the inhabitants to cultivate the soil; as, for example, assur on the banks of the tigris itself, singara near the sources of the thartar, and nazibina near those of the kharmis, at the foot of the masios. these cities were not all under the rule of one sovereign when thûtmosis iii. appeared in syria, for the egyptian monuments mention, besides the kingdom of assyria, that of singara** and araphka in the upper basin of the zab.*** * the name of arbeles is written in a form which appears to signify �the town of the four gods.� ** this kingdom of singara is mentioned in the egyptian lists of thûtmosis iii. schrader was doubtful as to its existence, but one of its kings is mentioned in a letter from the king of alasia to amenôthes iv.; according to niebuhr, the state of which singara was the capital must have been identical, at all events at one period, with the mitanni of the egyptian texts. *** the arapakha of the egyptian monuments has been identified with the arrapakhitis of the greeks. assyria, however, had already asserted her supremacy over this corner of asia, and the remaining princes, even if they were not mere vicegerents depending on her king, were not strong enough in wealth and extent of territory to hold their own against her, since she was undisputed mistress of assur, arbeles, kalakh, and nineveh, the most important cities of the plain. assur covered a considerable area, and the rectangular outline formed by the remains of its walls is still discernible on the surface of the soil. within the circuit of the city rose a mound, which the ancient builders had transformed, by the addition of masses of brickwork, into a nearly square platform, surmounted by the usual palace, temple, and ziggurat; it was enclosed within a wall of squared stone, the battlements of which remain to the present day.* the whole pile was known as the �ekharsagkurkurra,� or the �house of the terrestrial mountain,� the sanctuary in whose decoration all the ancient sovereigns had vied with one another, including samsirammân i. and irishum, who were merely vicegerents dependent upon babylon. it was dedicated to anshar, that duplicate of anu who had led the armies of heaven in the struggle with tiâmat; the name anshar, softened into aushar, and subsequently into ashshur, was first applied to the town and then to the whole country.** * ainsworth states the circumference of the principal mound of kalah-shergât to be 4685 yards, which would make it one of the most extensive ruins in the whole country. ** another name of the town in later times was palbêki, �the town of the old empire,� �the ancient capital,� or shauru. many assyriologists believe that the name ashur, anciently written aushâr, signified �the plain at the edge of the water�; and that it must have been applied to the town before being applied to the country and the god. others, on the contrary, think, with more reason, that it was the god who gave his name to the town and the country; they make a point of the very ancient play of words, which in assyria itself attributed the meaning �good god� to the word ashur. jensen was the first to state that ashur was the god anshâr of the account of the creation. the god himself was a deity of light, usually represented under the form of an armed man, wearing the tiara and having the lower half of his body concealed by a feathered disk. he was supposed to hover continually over the world, hurling fiery darts at the enemies of his people, and protecting his kingly worshippers under the shadow of his wings. their wars were his wars, and he was with them in the thick of the attack, placing himself in the front rank with the soldiery,* so that when he gained the victory, the bulk of the spoil--precious metals, gleanings of the battle-field, slaves and productive lands--fell to his share. the gods of the vanquished enemy, moreover, were, like their princes, forced to render him homage. in the person of the king he took their statues prisoners, and shut them up in his sanctuary; sometimes he would engrave his name upon their figures and send them back to their respective temples, where the sight of them would remind their worshippers of his own omnipotence.** the goddess associated with him as his wife had given her name, nina, to nineveh,*** and was, as the companion of the chaldæan bel, styled the divine lady belit; she was, in fact, a chaste and warlike ishtar, who led the armies into battle with a boldness characteristic of her father.**** * in one of the pictures, for instance, representing the assault of a town, we see a small figure of the god, hurling darts against the enemy. the inscriptions also state that the peoples �are alarmed and quit their cities _before the arms of assur, the powerful one_.� ** as, for instance, the statues of the gods taken from the arabs in the time of esarhaddon. tiglath-pileser i. had carried away twenty-five statues of gods taken from the peoples of kurkhi and kummukh, and had placed them in the temples of beltis, ishtar, anu, and rammân; he mentions other foreign divinities who had been similarly treated. *** the ideogram of the name of the goddess nina serves to write the name of the town nineveh. the name itself has been interpreted by schrader as �station, habitation,� in the semitic languages, and by fr. delitzsch �repose of the god,� an interpretation which delitzsch himself repudiated later on. it is probable that the town, which, like assur, was a chaldæan colony, derived its name from the goddess to whom it was dedicated, and whose temple existed there as early as the time of the vicegerent samsirammân. **** belit is called by tiglath-pileser i. �the great spouse beloved of assur,� but belit, �the lady,� is here merely an epithet used for ishtar: the assyrian ishtar, ishtar of assur, ishtar of nineveh, or rather--especially from the time of the sargonids--ishtar of arbeles, is almost always a fierce and warlike ishtar, the �lady of combat, who directs battles,� �whose heart incites her to the combat and the struggle.� sayce thinks that the union of ishtar and assur is of a more recent date. [illustration: 149.jpg ishtar as a warrior bringing prisoners to a conquering king] drawn by faucher-gudin, from squeezes brought back by m. do morgan. these two divinities formed an abstract and solitary pair, around whom neither story nor myth appears to have gathered, and who never became the centre of any complex belief. assur seems to have had no parentage assigned to him, no statue erected to him, and he was not associated with the crowd of other divinities; on the contrary, he was called their lord, their �peerless king,� and, as a proof of his supreme sovereignty over them, his name was inscribed at the head of their lists, before those of the triads constituted by the chaldæan priests--even before those of anu, bel, and ba. the city of assur, which had been the first to tender him allegiance for many years, took precedence of all the rest, in spite of the drawbacks with which it had to contend. placed at the very edge of the mesopotamian desert, it was exposed to the dry and burning winds which swept over the plains, so that by the end of the spring the heat rendered it almost intolerable as a residence. the tigris, moreover, ran behind it, thus leaving it exposed to the attacks of the babylonian armies, unprotected as it was by any natural fosse or rampart. the nature of the frontier was such as to afford it no safeguard; indeed, it had, on the contrary, to protect its frontier. nineveh, on the other hand, was entrenched behind the tigris and the zab, and was thus secure from any sudden attack. northerly and easterly winds prevailed during the summer, and the coolness of the night rendered the heat during the day more bearable. it became the custom for the kings and vicegerents to pass the most trying months of the year at nineveh, taking up their abode close to the temple of nina, the assyrian ishtar, but they did not venture to make it their habitual residence, and consequently assur remained the official capital and chief sanctuary of the empire. here its rulers concentrated their treasures, their archives, their administrative offices, and the chief staff of the army; from this town they set out on their expeditions against the cossæans of babylon or the mountaineers of the districts beyond the tigris, and it was in this temple that they dedicated to the god the tenth of the spoil on their return from a successful campaign.* * the majority of scholars now admit that the town of nina, mentioned by gudea and the vicegerents of telloh, was a quarter of, or neighbouring borough of, lagash, and had nothing in common with nineveh, in spite of hommel�s assumption to the contrary. the struggle with chaldæa, indeed, occupied the greater part of their energies, though it did not absorb all their resources, and often left them times of respite, of which they availed themselves to extend their domain to the north and east. we cannot yet tell which of the assyrian sovereigns added the nearest provinces of the upper tigris to his realm; but when the names of these districts appear-in history, they are already in a state of submission and vassalage, and their principal towns are governed by assyrian officers in the same manner as those of singara and nisibe. assuruballît, the conqueror of the cossæans, had succeeded in establishing his authority over the turbulent hordes of shubari which occupied the neighbourhood of the masios, between the khabur and the balîkh, and extended perhaps as far as the euphrates; at any rate, he was considered by posterity as the actual founder of the assyrian empire in these districts.* belnirâri had directed his efforts in another direction, and had conquered the petty kingdoms established on the slopes of the iranian table-land, around the sources of the two zabs, and those of the badanu and the turnât.** * it is called, in an inscription of his great-grandson, rammân-nirâri l, the powerful king �who reduced to servitude the forces of the vast country of shubari, and who enlarged the territory and limits �of assur. ** the inscription of rammân-nirâri i. styles him the prince �who crushes the army of the cossæans, he whose hand unnerves the enemy, and who enlarges the territory and its limits.� the cossæans mentioned in this passage are usually taken to be the cossæan kings of babylon, and not the mountain tribes. like susiana, this part of the country was divided up into parallel valleys, separated from each other by broken ridges of limestone, and watered by the tributaries of the tigris or their affluents. [illustration: 152.jpg a village in the mountain districts of the old assæan kingdom] drawn by boudier, from a drawing by père durand. it was thickly strewn with walled towns and villages; the latter, perched upon the precipitous mountain summits, and surrounded by deep ravines, owed their security solely to their position, and, indeed, needed no fortification. the country abounded in woods and pastures, interspersed with cornlands; access to it was gained by one or two passes on the eastern side, which thus permitted caravans or armies to reach the districts lying between the erythræan and caspian seas. the tribes who inhabited it had been brought early under chaldæan civilization, and had adopted the cuneiform script; such of their monuments as are still extant resemble the bas-reliefs and inscriptions of assyria.* it is not always easy to determine the precise locality occupied by these various peoples; the guti were situated near the upper courses of the turnât and the badanu, in the vicinity of the kashshu;** the lulumê had settled in the neighbourhood of the batîr, to the north of the defiles of zohab;*** the namar separated the lulumê from elam, and were situated half in the plain and half in the mountain, while the arapkha occupied, both banks of the great zab. * pinches has published an inscription of a king of khani, named tukultimir, son of ilushaba, written in chaldeo-assyrian, and found in the temple of shamash at sippara, where the personage himself had dedicated it. winckler gives another inscription of a king of the guti, which is also in semitic and in cuneiform character. ** the name is written sometimes quti, at others guti, which induced pognon to believe that they were two different peoples: the territory occupied by this nation must have been originally to the east of the lesser zab, in the upper basins of the adhem and the diyaleh. oppert proposes to recognise in these guti �the ancestors of the goths, who, fifteen hundred years ago, pushed forward to the russia of the present day: we find,� (he adds), �in this passage and in others, some of which go back to the third millennium before the christian era, the earliest mention of the germanic races.� *** the people of lulumô-lullubi have been pointed out as living to the east of the lesser zab by schrader; their exact position, together with that of mount padîr-batîr in whose neighbourhood they were, has been determined by père scheil. budîlu carried his arms against these tribes, and obtained successes over the turuki and the nigimkhi, the princes of the guti and the shuti, as well as over the akhlamî and the iauri.* * the shutu or shuti, who are always found in connection with the guti, appear to have been the inhabitants of the lower mountain slopes which separate the basin of the tigris with the regions of elam, to the south of turnât. the akhlamê were neighbours of the shuti and the guti; they were settled partly in the mesopotamian plain and partly in the neighbourhood of turnât. the territory of the iauri is not known; the turuki and the nigimkhi were probably situated somewhere to the east of the great zab: in the same way that oppert connects the goths with the guti, so hommel sees in the turuki the turks of a very early date. the chiefs of the lulumê had long resisted the attacks of their neighbours, and one of them, anu-banini, had engraved on the rocks overhanging the road not far from the village of seripul, a bas-relief celebrating his own victories. he figures on it in full armour, wearing a turban on his head, and treading underfoot a fallen foe, while ishtar of arbeles leads towards him a long file of naked captives, bound ready for sacrifice. the resistance of the lulumê was, however, finally overcome by rammân-nirâri, the son of budilû; he strengthened the suzerainty gained by his predecessor over the guti, the cossæans, and the shubarti, and he employed the spoil taken from them in beautifying the temple of assur. he had occasion to spend some time in the regions of the upper tigris, warring against the shubari, and a fine bronze sabre belonging to him has been found near diarbekîr, among the ruins of the ancient amidi, where, no doubt, he had left it as an offering in one of the temples. he was succeeded by shalmânuâsharîd,* better known to us as shalmaneser i., one of the most powerful sovereigns of this heroic age of assyrian history. [illustration: 155.jpg the sabre of ramman-nirari] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sketch published in the _transactions_ of the bibl. arch. soc. his reign seems to have been one continuous war against the various races then in a state of ferment on the frontiers of his kingdom. he appears in the main to have met with success, and in a few years had doubled the extent of his dominions.* his most formidable attacks were directed against the aramaeans** of mount masios, whose numerous tribes had advanced on one side till they had crossed the tigris, while on the other they had pushed beyond the river balîkh, and had probably reached the euphrates.*** * shalmânu-âsharîd, or shulmânu-âsharîd, signifies �the god shulmânu (shalmânu) is prince,� as pinches was the first to point out. ** some of the details of these campaigns have been preserved on the much-mutilated obelisk of assur-nazir-pal. this was a compilation taken from the annals of assyria to celebrate the important acts of the king�s ancestors. the events recorded in the third column were at first attributed to the reign of tiglath-pileser i.; fr. delitzsch was the first to recognise that they could be referred to the reign of this shalmaneser, and his opinion is now admitted by most of the assyriologists who have studied the question. *** the identity of the arami (written also armaya, arumi, arimi) with the aramoans, admitted by the earlier kammin nikâbi assyriologists. he captured their towns one after another, razed their fortresses, smote the agricultural districts with fire and sword, and then turned upon the various peoples who had espoused their cause--the kirkhu, the euri, the kharrîn,* and the muzri, who inhabited the territory between the basins of the two great rivers;** once, indeed, he even crossed the euphrates and ventured within the country of khanigalbat, a feat which his ancestors had never even attempted.*** * the people of the country of kilkhi, or kirkhi, the kurkhi, occupied the region between the tigris at diarbekîr and the mountains overlooking the lake of urumiah. the position of the ruri is not known, but it is certain that on one side they joined the aramaeans, and that they were in the neighbourhood of tushkhân. kharrân is the harrân of the balikh, mentioned in vol. iv. pp. 37, 38 of the present work. ** the name of muzri frequently occurs, and in various positions, among the countries mentioned by the assyrian conquerors; the frequency of its occurrence is easily explained if we are to regard it as a purely assyrian term used to designate the military confines or marches of the kingdom at different epochs of its history. the muzri here in question is the borderland situated in the vicinity of cilicia, probably the sophene and the gumathene of classical geographers. winckler appears to me to exaggerate their importance when he says they were spread over the whole of northern syria as early as the time of shalmaneser i. *** khanigalbat is the name of the province in which milid was placed. he was recalled by a revolt which had broken out in the scattered cities of the district of dur-kurigalzu; he crushed the rising in spite of the help which kadash-manburiash, king of babylon, had given to the rebels, and was soon successful in subduing the princes of lulumê. these were not the raids of a day�s duration, undertaken, without any regard to the future, merely from love of rapine or adventure. shalmaneser desired to bring the regions which he annexed permanently under the authority of assyria, and to this end he established military colonies in suitable places, most of which were kept up long after his death.* * more than five centuries after the time of shalmaneser i., assurnazir-pal makes mention, in his _annals_, of one of these colonies, established in the country of diarbekîr at khabzilukha (or khabzidipkha), near to the town of damdamua. he seems to have directed the internal affairs of his kingdom with the same firmness and energy which he displayed in his military expeditions. it was no light matter for the sovereign to decide on a change in the seat of government; he ran the risk of offending, not merely his subjects, but the god who presided over the destinies of the state, and neither his throne nor his life would have been safe had he failed in his attempt. shalmaneser, however, did not hesitate to make the change, once he was fully convinced of the drawbacks presented by assur as a capital. true, he beautified the city, restored its temples, and permitted it to retain all its privileges and titles; but having done so, he migrated with his court to the town of kalakh, where his descendants continued to reside for several centuries. his son tukulti-ninip made himself master of babylon, and was the first of his race who was able to claim the title of king of sumir and akkad. the cossæans were still suffering from their defeat at the hands of bammân-nirâri. four of their princes had followed nazimaruttash on the throne in rapid succession--kadashmanturgu, kadashmanburiash, who was attacked by shalmaneser, a certain isammeti whose name has been mutilated, and lastly, shagaraktiburiash: bibeiasdu, son of this latter, was in power at the moment when tukulti-ninip ascended the throne. war broke out between the two monarchs, but dragged on without any marked advantage on one side or the other, till at length the conflict was temporarily suspended by a treaty similar to others which had been signed in the course of the previous two or three centuries.* * the passage from the _synchronous history_, republished by winckler, contains the termination of the mutilated name of a babylonian king... _ashu_, which, originally left undecided by winckler, has been restored �bibeiashu� by hilprecht, in the light of monuments discovered at nipur, an emendation which has since then been accepted by winckler. winckler, on his part, has restored the passage on the assumption that the name of the king of assyria engaged against bibeiashu was tukulti-ninip; then, combining this fragment with that in the _pinches chronicle_, which deals with the taking of babylon, he argues that bibeiashu was the king dethroned by tukulti-ninip. an examination of the dates, in so far as they are at present known to us from the various documents, seems to me to render this arrangement inadmissible. the _pinches chronicle_ practically tells us that tukulti-ninip reigned over babylon for _seven years_, when the chaldæans revolted, and named rammânshumusur king. now, the babylonian canon gives us the following reigns for this epoch: bibeiashu _8 years_, belnadînshumu _1 year 6 months_, kadashmankharbe _1 year 6 months_, rammânnadînshumu _6 years_, rammânshumusur _30 years,_ or _9 years_ between the end of the reign of bibeiashu and the beginning of that of rammânshumusur, instead of the _7 years_ given us by the _pinches chronicle_ for the length of the reign of tukulti ninip at babylon. if we reckon, as the only documents known require us to do, seven years from the beginning of the reign of rammânshumusur to the date of the taking of babylon, we are forced to admit that this took place in the reign of kadashmankharbe il, and, consequently, that the passage in the _synchronous history_, in which mention is made of bibeiashu, must be interpreted as i have done in the text, by the hypothesis of a war prior to that in which babylon fell, which was followed by a treaty between this prince and the king of assyria. the peace thus concluded might have lasted longer but for an unforeseen catastrophe which placed babylon almost at the mercy of her rival. the blamites had never abandoned their efforts to press in every conceivable way their claim to the sebbeneh-su, the supremacy, which, prior to kbammurabi, had been exercised by their ancestors over the whole of mesopotamia; they swooped down on karduniash with an impetuosity like that of the assyrians, and probably with the same alternations of success and defeat. their king, kidinkhutrutash, unexpectedly attacked belnadînshumu, son of bibeiashu, appeared suddenly under the walls of nipur and forced the defences of durîlu and étimgarka-lamma: belnadînshumu disappeared in the struggle after a reign of eighteen months. tukulti-ninip left belna-dînshumu�s successor, kadashmankharbe ii., no time to recover from this disaster; he attacked him in turn, carried babylon by main force, and put a number of the inhabitants to the sword. he looted the palace and the temples, dragged the statue of merodach from its sanctuary and carried it off into assyria, together with the badges of supreme power; then, after appointing governors of his own in the various towns, he returned to kalakh, laden with booty; he led captive with him several members of the royal family--among others, bammânshumusur, the lawful successor of bibeiashu. this first conquest of chaldæa did not, however, produce any lasting results. the fall of babylon did not necessarily involve the subjection of the whole country, and the cities of the south showed a bold front to the foreign intruder, and remained faithful to kadashmankharbe; on the death of the latter, some months after his defeat, they hailed as king a certain bammânshumnadîn, who by some means or other had made his escape from captivity. bammânshumnadîn proved himself a better man than his predecessors; when kidinkhutrutash, never dreaming, apparently, that he would meet with any serious resistance, came to claim his share of the spoil, he defeated him near ishin, drove him out of the districts recently occupied by the elamites, and so effectually retrieved his fortunes in this direction, that he was able to concentrate his whole attention on what was going on in the north. the effects of his victory soon became apparent: the nobles of akkad and karduniash declined to pay homage to their assyrian governors, and, ousting them from the offices to which they had been appointed, restored babylon to the independence which it had lost seven years previously. tukulti-ninip paid dearly for his incapacity to retain his conquests: his son assurnazirpal i. conspired with the principal officers, deposed him from the throne, and confined him in the fortified palace of kar-tukulti-ninip, which he had built not far from kalakh, where he soon after contrived his assassination. about this time rammânshumnadîn disappears, and we can only suppose that the disasters of these last years had practically annihilated the cossæan dynasty, for rammânshu-musur, who was a prisoner in assyria, was chosen as his successor. the monuments tell us nothing definite of the troubles which next befell the two kingdoms: we seem to gather, however, that assyria became the scene of civil wars, and that the sons of tukulti-ninip fought for the crown among themselves. tukultiassurbel, who gained the upper hand at the end of six years, set raminân-shumusur at liberty, probably with the view of purchasing the support of the chaldæans, but he did not succeed in restoring his country to the position it had held under shalmaneser and tukulti-ninip i. the history of assyria presents a greater number of violent contrasts and extreme vicissitudes than that of any other eastern people in the earliest times. no sooner had the assyrians arrived, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of five or six generations, at the very summit of their ambition, than some incompetent, or perhaps merely unfortunate, king appeared on the scene, and lost in a few years all the ground which had been gained at the cost of such tremendous exertions: then the subject races would rebel, the neighbouring peoples would pluck up courage and reconquer the provinces which they had surrendered, till the dismembered empire gradually shrank back to its original dimensions. as the fortunes of babylon rose, those of nineveh suffered a corresponding depression: babylon soon became so powerful that eammânshumusur was able to adopt a patronising tone in his relations with assur-nirâri i. and nabodaînâni, the descendants of tukultiassurbel, who at one time shared the throne together.* * all that we know of these two kings is contained in the copy, executed in the time of assurbanipal, of a letter addressed to them by eammânshumusur. they have been placed, at one time or another, either at the beginning of assyrian history before assurbelnishishu, or after tigiath-pileser i., about the xith or xth, or even the viiith century before our era. it has since been discovered that the rammânshumusur who wrote this letter was the successor of tukulti-ninip i. in chaldæa. this period of subjection and humiliation did not last long. belkudurusur, who appears on the throne not long after assurnirâri and his partner, resumed military operations against the cossæans, but cautiously at first; and though he fell in the decisive engagement, yet bammân-shumusur perished with him, and the two states were thus simultaneously left rulerless. milishikhu succeeded bammânshumusur, and ninipahalesharra filled the place of belkudurusur; the disastrous invasion of assyria by the chaldæans, and their subsequent retreat, at length led to an armistice, which, while it afforded evidence of the indisputable superiority of milishikhu, proved no less plainly the independence of his rival. mero-dachabaliddina i. replaced milishikhu, zamâniashu-middin followed merodachabaliddina: assurdân i., son of ninipahalesharra, broke the treaty, captured the towns of zabân, irrîa, and akarsallu, and succeeded in retaining them. the advantage thus gained was but a slight one, for these provinces lying between the two zabs had long been subject to assyria, and had been wrested from her since the days of tukulti-ninip: however, it broke the run of ill luck which seemed to have pursued her so relentlessly, and opened the way for more important victories. this was the last cossæan war; at any rate, the last of which we find any mention in history: bel-nadînshumu ii. reigned three years after zamâmashu-middin, but when he died there was no man of his family whom the priests could invite to lay hold of the hand of merodach, and his dynasty ended with him. it included thirty-six kings, and had lasted five hundred and seventy-six years and six months.* * the following is a list of some of the kings of this dynasty according to the canon discovered by pinches. [illustration: 163.jpg table] it had enjoyed its moments of triumph, and at one time had almost seemed destined to conquer the whole of asia; but it appears to have invariably failed just as it was on the point of reaching the goal, and it became completely exhausted by its victories at the end of every two or three generations. it had triumphed over elam, and yet elam remained a constant peril on its right. it had triumphed over assyria, yet assyria, after driving it back to the regions of the upper tigris, threatened to bar the road to the mediterranean by means of its masian colonies: were they once to succeed in this attempt, what hope would there be left to those who ruled in babylon of ever after re-establishing the traditional empire of the ancient sargon and khammurabi? the new dynasty sprang from a town in pashê, the geographical position of which is not known. it was of babylonian origin, and its members placed, at the be ginning of their protocols, formula which were intended to indicate, in the clearest possible manner, the source from which they sprang: they declared themselves to be scions of babylon, its vicegerents, and supreme masters. the names of the first two we do not know: the third, nebuchadrezzar, shows himself to have been one of the most remarkable men of all those who flourished during this troubled era. at no time, perhaps, had chaldæa been in a more abject state, or assailed by more active foes. the elamite had just succeeded in wresting from her namar, the region from whence the bulk of her chariot-horses were obtained, and this success had laid the provinces on the left bank of the tigris open to their attacks. they had even crossed the river, pillaged babylon, and carried away the statue of bel and that of a goddess named eria, the patroness of khussi: �merodach, sore angered, held himself aloof from the country of akkad;� the kings could no longer �take his hands� on their coming to the throne, and were obliged to reign without proper investiture in consequence of their failure to fulfil the rite required by religious laws.* * the _donation to shamud and shamaî_ informs us that nebuchadrezzar �took the hands of bel� as soon as he regained possession of the statue. the copy we possess of the royal canon. nebuchadrezzar i.�s place in the series has, therefore, been the subject of much controversy. several assyriologists were from the first inclined to place him in the first or second rank, some being in favour of the first, others preferring the second; dolitzsch put him into the fifth place, and winckler, without pronouncing definitely on the position to be assigned him, thought he must come in about half-way down the dynasty. hilprecht, on taking up the questions, adduced reasons for supposing him to have been the founder of the dynasty, and his conclusions have been adopted by oppert; they have been disputed by tiele, who wishes to put the king back to fourth or fifth in order, and by winckler, who places him fourth or fifth. it is difficult, however, to accept hilprecht�s hypothesis, plausible though it is, so long as assyriologists who have seen the original tablet agree in declaring that the name of the first king began with the sign of _merodach_ and not with that of _nebo_, as it ought to do, were this prince really our nebuchadrezzar. nebuchadrezzar arose �in babylon,--roaring like a lion, even as bammân roareth,--and his chosen nobles, roared like lions with him.--to merodach, lord of babylon, rose his prayer:--�how long, for me, shall there be sighing and groaning?--how long, for my land, weeping and mourning?--how long, for my countries, cries of grief and tears? till what time, o lord of babylon, wilt thou remain in hostile regions?--let thy heart be softened, and make babylon joyful,--and let thy face be turned toward eshaggil which thou lovest!�� merodach gave ear to the plaint of his servant: he answered him graciously and promised his aid. namar, united as it had been with chaldæa for centuries, did not readily become accustomed to its new masters. the greater part of the land belonged to a semitic and cossæan feudality, the heads of which, while admitting their suzerain�s right to exact military service from them, refused to acknowledge any further duty towards him. the kings of susa declined to recognise their privileges: they subjected them to a poll-tax, levied the usual imposts on their estates, and forced them to maintain at their own expense the troops quartered on them for the purpose of guaranteeing their obedience.* * shamuà and shamaî �fled in like manner towards karduniash, before the king of elam;� it would seem that rittimerodach had entered into secret negotiations with nebuchadrezzar, though this is nowhere explicitly stated in the text. several of the nobles abandoned everything rather than submit to such tyranny, and took refuge with nebuchadrezzar: others entered into secret negotiations with him, and promised to support him if he came to their help with an armed force. he took them at their word, and invaded namar without warning in the month of tamuz, while the summer was at its height, at a season in which the elamites never even dreamt he would take the field. the heat was intense, water was not to be got, and the army suffered terribly from thirst during its forced march of over a hundred miles across a parched-up country. one of the malcontents, eittimerodach, lord of bitkarziabku, joined nebuchadrezzar with all the men he could assemble, and together they penetrated as far as ulaî. the king of elam, taken by surprise, made no attempt to check their progress, but collected his vassals and awaited their attack on the banks of the river in front of susa. once �the fire of the combat had been lighted between the opposing forces, the face of the sun grew dark, the tempest broke forth, the whirlwind raged, and in this whirlwind of the struggle none of the characters could distinguish the face of his neighbour.� nebuchadrezzar, cut off from his own men, was about to surrender or be killed, when eittimerodach flew to his rescue and brought him off safely. in the end the chaldæans gained the upper hand.* * _donation to rittimerodach,_ col. i. 11. 12-43. the description of the battle as given in this document is generally taken to be merely symbolical, and i have followed the current usage. but if we bear in mind that the text lays emphasis on the drought and severity of the season, we are tempted to agree with pinches and budge that its statements should be taken literally. the affair may have been begun in a cloud of dust, and have ended in a downpour of rain so heavy as to partly blind the combatants. the king was probably drawn away from his men in the confusion; it was probably then that he was in danger of being made prisoner, and that rittimerodach, suddenly coming up, delivered him from the foes who surrounded him. the elamites renounced their claims to the possession of namar, and restored the statues of the gods: nebuchadrezzar �at once laid hold of the hands of bel,� and thus legalised his accession to the throne. other expeditions against the peoples of lulurne and against the cossæans restored his supremacy in the regions of the north-east, and a campaign along the banks of the euphrates opened out the road to syria. he rewarded generously those who had accompanied him on his raid against elam. after issuing regulations intended to maintain the purity of the breed of horses for which namar was celebrated, he reinstated in their possessions shamuâ and his son shamaî, the descendants of one of the priestly families of the province, granting them in addition certain domains near upi, at the mouth of the turnât. he confirmed rittimerodach in possession of all his property, and reinvested him with all the privileges of which the king of elam had deprived him. from that time forward the domain of bitkarziabku was free of the tithe on corn, oxen, and sheep; it was no longer liable to provide horses and mares for the exchequer, or to afford free passage to troops in time of peace; the royal jurisdiction ceased on the boundary of the fief, the seignorial jurisdiction alone extended over the inhabitants and their property. chaldæan prefects ruled in namar, at khalman, and at the foot of the zagros, and nebuchadrezzar no longer found any to oppose him save the king of assyria. the long reign of assurdân in assyria does not seem to have been distinguished by any event of importance either good or bad: it is true he won several towns on the south-east from the babylonians, but then he lost several others on the north-west to the mushku,* and the loss on the one side fully balanced the advantage gained on the other. * hommel has proved, by a very simple calculation, that assurdân must have been the king in whose reign the mushku made the inroad into the basin of the upper tigris and of the balikh, which is mentioned in the _annals of tiglath pileser i._ these _annals_ are our authority for stating that assurdân was on the throne for a long period, though the exact length of his reign is not known. his son mutakkilnusku lived in assur at peace,* but his grandson, assurîshishî, was a mighty king, conqueror of a score of countries, and the terror of all rebels: he scattered the hordes of the akhlamê and broke up their forces; then ninip, the champion of the gods, permitted him to crush the lulumê and the g-uti in their valleys and on their mountains covered with forests. he made his way up to the frontiers of elam,** and his encroachments on territories claimed by babylon stirred up the anger of the chaldæans against him; nebuchadrezzar made ready to dispute their ownership with him. * _annals of tiglath-pileser i_. mutakkilnusku himself has only left us one inscription, in which he declares that he had built a palace in the city of assyria. ** smith discovered certain fragments of annals, which he attributed to assurîshishî. the longest of these tell of a campaign against elam. lotz attributed them to tiglath pileser i., and is supported in this by most assyriologists of the day. the earlier engagements went against the assyrians; they were driven back in disorder, but the victor lost time before one of their strongholds, and, winter coming on before he could take it, he burnt his engines of war, set fire to his camp, and returned home. next year, a rapid march carried him right under the walls of assur; then assurîshishî came to the rescue, totally routed his opponent, captured forty of his chariots, and drove him flying across the frontier. the war died out of itself, its end being marked by no treaty: each side kept its traditional position and supremacy over the tribes inhabiting the basins of the turnât and eadanu. the same names reappear in line after line of these mutilated annals, and the same definite enumerations of rebellious tribes who have been humbled or punished. these kings of the plain, both ninevite and babylonian, were continually raiding the country up and down for centuries without ever arriving at any decisive result, and a detailed account of their various campaigns would be as tedious reading as that of the ceaseless struggle between the latins and sabines which fills the opening pages of roman history. posterity soon grew weary of them, and, misled by the splendid position which assyria attained when at the zenith of its glory, set itself to fabricate splendid antecedents for the majestic empire established by the latter dynasties. the legend ran that, at the dawn of time, a chief named ninos had reduced to subjection one after the other--babylonia, media, armenia, and all the provinces between the indies and the mediterranean. he built a capital for himself on the banks of the tigris, in the form of a parallelogram, measuring a hundred and fifty stadia in length, ninety stadia in width; altogether, the walls were four hundred and eighty stadia in circumference. in addition to the assyrians who formed the bulk of the population, he attracted many foreigners to nineveh, so that in a few years it became the most flourishing town in the whole world. an inroad of the tribes of the oxus interrupted his labours; ninos repulsed the invasion, and, driving the barbarians back into bactria, laid siege to it; here, in the tent of one of his captains, he came upon semiramis, a woman whose past was shrouded in mystery. she was said to be the daughter of an ordinary mortal by a goddess, the ascalonian derketô. exposed immediately after her birth, she was found and adopted by a shepherd named simas, and later on her beauty aroused the passion of oannes, governor of syria. ninos, amazed at the courage displayed by her on more than one occasion, carried her off, made her his favourite wife, and finally met his death at her hands. no sooner did she become queen, than she founded babylon on a far more extensive scale than that of nineveh. its walls were three hundred and sixty stadia in length, with two hundred and fifty lofty towers, placed here and there on its circuit, the roadway round the top of the ramparts being wide enough for six chariots to drive abreast. she made a kind of harbour in the euphrates, threw a bridge across it, and built quays one hundred and sixty stadia in length along its course; in the midst of the town she raised a temple to bel. this great work was scarcely finished when disturbances broke out in media; these she promptly repressed, and set out on a tour of inspection through the whole of her provinces, with a view to preventing the recurrence of similar outbreaks by her presence. wherever she went she left records of her passage behind her, cutting her way through mountains, quarrying a pathway through the solid rock, making broad highways for herself, bringing rebellious tribes beneath her yoke, and raising tumuli to mark the tombs of such of her satraps as fell beneath the blows of the enemy. she built ecbatana in media, semiramocarta on lake van in armenia, and tarsus in cilicia; then, having reached the confines of syria, she crossed the isthmus, and conquered egypt and ethiopia. the far-famed wealth of india recalled her from the banks of the nile to those of the euphrates, _en route_ for the remote east, but at this point her good fortune forsook her: she was defeated by king stratobates, and returned to her own dominions, never again to leave them. she had set up triumphal stelae on the boundaries of the habitable globe, in the very midst of scythia, not far from the iaxartes, where, centuries afterwards, alexander of macedon read the panegyric of herself which she had caused to be engraved there. �nature,� she writes, �gave me the body of a woman, but my deeds have put me on a level with the greatest of men. i ruled over the dominion of ninos, which extends eastwards to the river hinaman, southwards to the countries of incense and myrrh, and northwards as far as the sacaa and sogdiani. before my time no assyrian had ever set eyes on the sea: i have seen four oceans to which no mariner has ever sailed, so far remote are they. i have made rivers to flow where i would have them, in the places where they were needed; thus did i render fertile the barren soil by watering it with my rivers. i raised up impregnable fortresses, and cut roadways through the solid rock with the pick. i opened a way for the wheels of my chariots in places to which even the feet of wild beasts had never penetrated. and, amidst all these labours, i yet found time for my pleasures and for the society of my friends.� on discovering that her son ninyas was plotting her assassination, she at once abdicated in his favour, in order to save him from committing a crime, and then transformed herself into a dove; this last incident betrays the goddess to us. ninos and semiramis are purely mythical, and their mighty deeds, like those ascribed to ishtar and gilgames, must be placed in the same category as those other fables with which the babylonian legends strive to fill up the blank of the prehistoric period.* * the legend of ninos and semiramis is taken from diodorus siculus, who reproduces, often word for word, the version of ctesias. [illustration: 172.jpg the dove-goddess] drawn by boudier, from the sketch published in longpérier. the real facts were, as we know, far less brilliant and less extravagant than those supplied by popular imagination. it would be a mistake, however, to neglect or despise them on account of their tedious monotony and the insignificance of the characters who appear on the stage. it was by dint of fighting her neighbours again and again, without a single day�s respite, that rome succeeded in forging the weapons with which she was to conquer the world; and any one who, repelled by their tedious sameness, neglected to follow the history of her early struggles, would find great difficulty in understanding how it came about that a city which had taken centuries to subjugate her immediate neighbours should afterwards overcome all the states on the mediterranean seaboard with such magnificent ease. in much the same way the ceaseless struggles of assyria with the chaldaeans, and with the mountain tribes of the zagros chain, were unconsciously preparing her for those lightning-like campaigns in which she afterwards overthrew all the civilized nations of the bast one after another. it was only at the cost of unparalleled exertions that she succeeded in solidly welding together the various provinces within her borders, and in kneading (so to speak) the many and diverse elements of her vast population into one compact mass, containing in itself all that was needful for its support, and able to bear the strain of war for several years at time without giving way, and rich enough in men and horses to provide the material for an effective army without excessive impoverishment of her trade or agriculture. [illustration: 173.jpg an assyrian] drawn by boudier, from a painted bas-relief given in layard. the race came of an old semitic strain, somewhat crude as yet, and almost entirely free from that repeated admixture of foreign elements which had marred the purity of the babylonian stock. the monuments show us a type similar in many respects to that which we find to-day on the slopes of singar, or in the valleys to the east of mossul. the figures on the monuments are tall and straight, broad-shouldered and wide in the hips, the arms well developed, the legs robust, with good substantial feet. the swell of the muscles on the naked limbs is perhaps exaggerated, but this very exaggeration of the modelling suggests the vigour of the model; it is a heavier, more rustic type than the egyptian, promising greater strength and power of resistance, and in so far an indisputable superiority in the great game of war. the head is somewhat small, the forehead low and flat, the eyebrows heavy, the eye of a bold almond shape, with heavy lids, the nose aquiline, and full at the tip, with wide nostrils terminating in a hard, well-defined curve; the lips are thick and full, the chin bony, while the face is framed by the coarse dark wavy hair and beard, which fell in curly masses over the nape of the neck and the breast. the expression of the face is rarely of an amiable and smiling type, such as we find in the statues of the theban period or in those of the memphite empire, nor, as a matter of fact, did the assyrian pride himself on the gentleness of his manners: he did not overflow with love for his fellow-man, as the egyptian made a pretence of doing; on the contrary, he was stiff-necked and proud, without pity for others or for himself, hot-tempered and quarrelsome like his cousins of chaldæa, but less turbulent and more capable of strict discipline. it mattered not whether he had come into the world in one of the wretched cabins of a fellah village, or in the palace of one of the great nobles; he was a born soldier, and his whole education tended to develop in him the first qualities of the soldier--temperance, patience, energy, and unquestioning obedience: he was enrolled in an army which was always on a war footing, commanded by the god assur, and under assur, by the king, the vicegerent and representative of the god. his life was shut in by the same network of legal restrictions which confined that of the babylonians, and all its more important events had to be recorded on tablets of clay; the wording of contracts, the formalities of marriage or adoption, the status of bond and free, the rites of the dead and funeral ceremonies, had either remained identical with those in use during the earliest years of the cities of the lower euphrates, or differed from them only in their less important details. the royal and municipal governments levied the same taxes, used the same procedure, employed the same magistrates, and the grades of their hierarchy were the same, with one exception. after the king, the highest office was filled by a soldier, the _tartan_ who saw to the recruiting of the troops, and led them in time of war, or took command of the staff-corps whenever the sovereign himself deigned to appear on the scene of action.* * we can determine the rank occupied, by the _tartanu_ at court by the positions they occupy in the lists of eponymous _limmu_: they invariably come next after the king--a fact which was noticed many years ago. the more influential of these functionaries bore, in addition to their other titles, one of a special nature, which, for the space of one year, made its holder the most conspicuous man in the country; they became _limmu_, and throughout their term of office their names appeared on all official documents. the chaldæans distinguished the various years of each reign by a reference to some event which had taken place in each; the assyrians named them after the _limmu_.* the king was the _ex-officio limmu_ for the year following that of his accession, then after him the _tartan_, then the ministers and governors of provinces and cities in an order which varied little from reign to reign. the names of the _limmu_, entered in registers and tabulated--just as, later on, were those of the greek archons and roman consuls--furnished the annalists with a rigid chronological system, under which the facts of history might be arranged with certainty.** * according to delitzsch, the term _limu,_ or _limmu_, meant at first any given period, then later more especially the year during which a magistrate filled his office; in the opinion of most other assyriologists it referred to the magistrate himself as eponymous archon. ** the first list of _limmu_ was discovered by h. rawlinson. the portions which have been preserved extend from the year 893 to the year 666 b.c. without a break. in the periods previous and subsequent to this we have only names scattered here and there which it has not been possible to classify: the earliest _limmu_ known at present flourished under rammân-nirâri i., and was named mukhurilâni. three different versions of the canon have como down to us. in the most important one the names of the eponymous officials are written one after another without titles or any mention of important events; in the other two, the titles of each personage, and any important occurrences which took place during his year of office, are entered after the name. the king still retained the sacerdotal attributes with which cossæan monarchs had been invested from the earliest times, but contact with the egyptians had modified the popular conception of his personality. his subjects were no longer satisfied to regard him merely as a man superior to his fellow-men; they had come to discover something of the divine nature in him, and sometimes identified him--not with assur, the master of all things, who occupied a position too high above the pale of ordinary humanity--but with one of the demi-gods of the second rank, shamash, the sun, the deity whom the pharaohs pretended to represent in flesh and blood here below. his courtiers, therefore, went as far as to call him �sun� when they addressed him, and he himself adopted this title in his inscriptions.* * nebuchadrezzar i. of babylon assumes the title of _shamash mati-shu_, the �sun of his country,� and hilprecht rightly sees in this expression a trace of egyptian influences; later on, assurnazirpal, king of assyria similarly describes himself as _shamshu kishshat nishi_, the �sun of all mankind.� tiele is of opinion that these expressions do not necessarily point to any theory of the actual incarnation of the god, as was the case in egypt, but that they may be mere rhetorical figures. formerly he had only attained this apotheosis after death, later on he was permitted to aspire to it during his lifetime. the chaldæans adopted the same attitude, and in both countries the royal authority shone with the borrowed lustre of divine omnipotence. with these exceptions life at court remained very much the same as it had been; at nineveh, as at babylon, we find harems filled with foreign princesses, who had either been carried off as hostages from the country of a defeated enemy, or amicably obtained from their parents. in time of war, the command of the troops and the dangers of the battle-field; in time of peace, a host of religious ceremonies and judicial or administrative duties, left but little leisure to the sovereign who desired to perform conscientiously all that was required of him. his chief amusement lay in the hunting of wild beasts: the majority of the princes who reigned over assyria had a better right than even amenôthes iii. himself to boast of the hundreds of lions which they had slain. they set out on these hunting expeditions with quite a small army of charioteers and infantry, and were often away several days at a time, provided urgent business did not require their presence in the palace. they started their quarry with the help of large dogs, and followed it over hill and dale till they got within bowshot: if it was but slightly wounded and turned on them, they gave it the finishing stroke with their lances without dismounting. [illustration: 178.jpg a lion-hunt] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief in the british museum. occasionally, however, they were obliged to follow their prey into places where horses could not easily penetrate; then a hand-to-hand conflict was inevitable. the lion would rise on its hind quarters and endeavour to lay its pursuer low with a stroke of its mighty paw, but only to fall pierced to the heart by his lance or sword. [illustration: 179.jpg lion transfixed by an arrow] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief in the british museum. this kind of encounter demanded great presence of mind and steadiness of hand; the assyrians were, therefore, trained to it from their youth up, and no hunter was permitted to engage in these terrible encounters without long preliminary practice. seeing the lion as they did so frequently, and at such close quarters, they came to know it quite as well as the egyptians, and their sculptors reproduce it with a realism and technical skill which have been rarely equalled in modern times. but while the theban artist generally represents it in an attitude of repose, the assyrians prefer to show it in violent action in all the various attitudes which it assumes during a struggle, either crouching as it prepares to spring, or fully extended in the act of leaping; sometimes it rears into an upright position, with arched back, gaping jaws, and claws protruded, ready to bite or strike its foe; at others it writhes under a spear-thrust, or rolls over and over in its dying agonies. in one instance, an arrow has pierced the skull of a male lion, crashing through the frontal bone a little above the left eyebrow, and protrudes obliquely to the right between his teeth: under the shock of the blow he has risen on his hind legs, with contorted spine, and beats the air with his fore paws, his head thrown back as though to free himself of the fatal shaft. not far from him the lioness lies stretched out upon its back in the rigidity of death. [illustration: 180.jpg paintings of chairs] the �rimu,� or urus, was, perhaps, even a more formidable animal to encounter than any of the _felido_, owing to the irresistible fury of his attack. no one would dare, except in a case of dire necessity, to meet him on foot. the loose flowing robes which the king and the nobles never put aside--not even in such perilous pastimes as these--were ill fitted for the quick movements required to avoid the attack of such an animal, and those who were unlucky enough to quit their chariot ran a terrible risk of being gored or trodden underfoot in the encounter. it was the custom, therefore, to attack the beast by arrows, and to keep it at a distance. if the animal were able to come up with its pursuer, the latter endeavoured to seize it by the horn at the moment when it lowered its head, and to drive his dagger into its neck. if the blow were adroitly given it severed the spinal cord, and the beast fell in a heap as if struck by lightning. a victory over such animals was an occasion for rejoicing, and solemn thanks were offered to assur and ishtar, the patrons of the chase, at the usual evening sacrifice. [illustration: 181.jpg a ubus hunt] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief in the british museum. the slain beasts, whether lion or urus, were arranged in a row before the altar, while the king, accompanied by his flabella, and umbrella-bearers, stood alongside them, holding his bow in his left hand. while the singers intoned the hymn of thanksgiving to the accompaniment of the harp, the monarch took the bowl of sacred wine, touched his lips with it, and then poured a portion of the contents on the heads of the victims. a detailed account of each hunting exploit was preserved for posterity either in inscriptions or on bas-reliefs.* * in the _annals of tiglath-pileser i._ the king counts the number of his victims: 4 urus, 10 male elephants, 120 lions slain in single combat on foot, 800 lions killed by arrows let fly from his chariot. in the _annals of assurnazirpal,_ the king boasts of having slain 30 elephants, 250 urus, and 370 lions. the chase was in those days of great service to the rural population; the kings also considered it to be one of the duties attached to their office, and on a level with their obligation to make war on neighbouring nations devoted by the will of assur to defeat and destruction. [illustration: 182.jpg libation poured over the lions on the return from the chase] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hommel. the army charged to carry out the will of the god had not yet acquired the homogeneity and efficiency which it afterwards attained, yet it had been for some time one of the most formidable in the world, and even the egyptians themselves, in spite of their long experience in military matters, could not put into the field such a proud array of effective troops. we do not know how this army was recruited, but the bulk of it was made up of native levies, to which foreign auxiliaries were added in numbers varying with the times.* a permanent nucleus of troops was always in garrison in the capital under the �tartan,� or placed in the principal towns at the disposal of the governors.** * we have no bas-relief representing the armies of tiglath pileser i. everything in the description which follows is taken from the monuments of assurnazirpal and shalmaneser ii., revised as far as possible by the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser; the armament of both infantry and chariotry must have been practically the same in the two periods. ** this is based on the account given in the obelisk of shalmaneser, where the king, for example, after having gathered his soldiers together at kalakh [calah], put at their head dainassur the artan, �the master of his innumerable troops.� [illustration: 183.jpg two assyrian archers] drawn by faucher-gudin. the contingents which came to be enrolled at these centres on the first rumour of war may have been taken from among the feudal militia, as was the custom in the nile valley, or the whole population may have had to render personal military service, each receiving while with the colours a certain daily pay. the nobles and feudal lords were accustomed to call their own people together, and either placed themselves at their head or commissioned an officer to act in their behalf.* * the assembling of foot-soldiers and chariots is often described at the beginning of each campaign; the _donation of bittimerodach_ brings before us a great feudal lord, who leads his contingent to the king of chaldæa, and anything which took place among the babylonians had its counterpart among the assyrians. sometimes the king had need of all the contingents, and then it was said he �assembled the country.� auxiliaries are mentioned, for example, in the _annals of assurnazirpal_, col. iii. 11. 58-77, where the king, in his passage, rallies one after the other the troops of bît-bakhiâni, of azalli, of bît-adini, of garganish, and of the patinu. [illustration: 184.jpg an assyrian war-chariot charging the foe] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell. these recruits were subjected to the training necessary for their calling by exercises similar to those of the egyptians, but of a rougher sort and better adapted to the cumbrous character of their equipment. the blacksmith�s art had made such progress among the assyrians since the times of thûtmosis iii. and ramses il, that both the character and the materials of the armour were entirely changed. [illustration: 185a.jpg harness of the horses] drawn by faucher-gudin, from g. rawlinson. [illustration: 185b.jpg pikeman] while the egyptian of old entered into the contest almost naked, and without other defence than a padded cap, a light shield, and a leather apron, the assyrian of the new age set out for war almost cased in metal. the pikemen and archers of whom the infantry of the line was composed wore a copper or iron helmet, conical in form, and having cheek-pieces covering the ears; they were clad in a sort of leathern shirt covered with plates or imbricated scales of metal, which protected the body and the upper part of the arm; a quilted and padded loin-cloth came over the haunches, while close-fitting trousers, and buskins laced up in the front, completed their attire. the pikemen were armed with a lance six feet long, a cutlass or short sword passed through the girdle, and an enormous shield, sometimes round and convex, sometimes arched at the top and square at the bottom. the bowmen did not encumber themselves with a buckler, but carried, in addition to the bow and quiver, a poignard or mace. the light infantry consisted of pikemen and archers--each of whom wore a crested helmet and a round shield of wicker-work--of slingers and club-bearers, as well as of men armed with the two-bladed battle-axe. the chariots were heavier and larger than those of the egyptians. they had high, strongly made wheels with eight spokes, and the body of the vehicle rested directly on the axle; the panels were of solid wood, sometimes covered with embossed or carved metal, but frequently painted; they were further decorated sometimes with gold, silver, or ivory mountings, and with precious stones. the pole, which was long and heavy, ended in a boss of carved wood or incised metal, representing a flower, a rosette, the muzzle of a lion, or a horse�s head. it was attached to the axle under the floor of the vehicle, and as it had to bear a great strain, it was not only fixed to this point by leather thongs such as were employed in egypt, but also bound to the front of the chariot by a crossbar shaped like a spindle, and covered with embroidered stuff--an arrangement which prevented its becoming detached when driving at full speed. a pair of horses were harnessed to it, and a third was attached to them on the right side for the use of a supplementary warrior, who could take the place of his comrade in case of accident, or if he were wounded. the trappings were very simple; but sometimes there was added to these a thickly padded caparison, of which the various parts were fitted to the horse by tags so as to cover the upper part of his head, his neck, back, and breast. the usual complement of charioteers was two to each vehicle, as in egypt, but sometimes, as among the khâti, there were three--one on the left to direct the horses, a warrior, and an attendant who protected the other two with his shield; on some occasions a fourth was added as an extra assistant. the equipment of the charioteers was like that of the infantry, and consisted of a jacket with imbricated scales of metal, bow and arrows, and a lance or javelin. a standard which served as a rallying-point for the chariots in the battle was set up on the front part of each vehicle, between the driver and the warrior; it bore at the top a disk supported on the heads of two bulls, or by two complete representations of these animals, and a standing figure of assur letting fly his arrows. the chariotry formed, as in most countries of that time, the picked troops of the service, in which the princes and great lords were proud to be enrolled. upon it depended for the most part the issue of the conflict, and the position assigned to it was in the van, the king or commander-in-chief reserving to himself the privilege of conducting the charge in person. it was already, however, in a state of decadence, both as regards the number of units composing it and its methods of manoeuvring; the infantry, on the other hand, had increased in numbers, and under the guidance of abler generals tended to become the most trustworthy force in assyrian campaigns.* * tiglath-pileser is seen, for instance, setting out on a campaign in a mountainous country with only thirty chariots. notwithstanding the weight of his equipment, the assyrian foot-soldier was as agile as the egyptian, but he had to fight usually in a much more difficult region than that in which the pharaoh�s troops were accustomed to manouvre. [illustration: 188.jpg crossing a river in boats and on inflated skins] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the theatre of war was not like syria, with its fertile and almost unbroken plains furrowed by streams which offered little obstruction to troops throughout the year, but a land of marshes, arid and rocky deserts, mighty rivers, capable, in one of their sudden floods, of arresting progress for days, and of jeopardising the success of a campaign;* violent and ice-cold torrents, rugged mountains whose summits rose into �points like daggers,� and whose passes could be held against a host of invaders by a handful of resolute men.** * sennacherib was obliged to arrest his march against elam, owing to his inability to cross the torrents swollen by the rain; a similar contretemps must have met assurbanipal on the banks of the ididi. ** the assyrian monarchs dwell with pleasure on the difficulties of the country which they have to overcome. bands of daring skirmishers, consisting of archers, slingers, and pikemen, cleared the way for the mass of infantry marching in columns, and for the chariots, in the midst of which the king and his household took up their station; the baggage followed, together with the prisoners and their escorts.* * assurbanipal relates, for instance, that he put under his escort a tribe which had surrendered themselves as prisoners. if they came to a river where there was neither ford nor bridge, they were not long in effecting a passage. [illustration: 189.jpg making a bridge for the passage of the chariots] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of balawât. each soldier was provided with a skin, which, having inflated it by the strength of his lungs and closed the aperture, he embraced in his arms and cast himself into the stream. partly by floating and partly by swimming, a whole regiment could soon reach the other side. the chariots could not be carried over so easily. [illustration: 190.jpg the king�s chariot crossing a bridge] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. if the bed of the river was not very wide, and the current not too violent, a narrow bridge was constructed, or rather an improvised dyke of large stones and rude gabions filled with clay, over which was spread a layer of branches and earth, supplying a sufficiently broad passage for a single chariot, of which the horses were led across at walking pace.* * flying bridges, _tîturâti_, were mentioned as far back as the time of tiglath-pileser i. but when the distance between the banks was too great, and the stream too violent to allow of this mode of procedure, boats were requisitioned from the neighbourhood, on which men and chariots were embarked, while the horses, attended by grooms, or attached by their bridles to the flotilla, swam across the river.* if the troops had to pass through a mountainous district intersected by ravines and covered by forests, and thus impracticable on ordinary occasions for a large body of men, the advance-guard were employed in cutting a passage through the trees with the axe, and, if necessary, in making with the pick pathways or rough-hewn steps similar to those met with in the lebanon on the phoenician coast.** * it was in this manner that tiglath-pileser i. crossed the euphrates on his way to the attack of carchemish. ** tiglath-pileser i. speaks on several occasions, and not without pride, of the roads that he had made for himself with bronze hatchets through the forests and over the mountains. [illustration: 191.jpg the assyrian infantry crossing the mountains] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of balawât. the troops advanced in narrow columns, sometimes even in single file, along these improvised roads, always on the alert lest they should be taken at a disadvantage by an enemy concealed in the thickets. in case of attack, the foot-soldiers had each to think of himself, and endeavour to give as many blows as he received; but the charioteers, encumbered by their vehicles and the horses, found it no easy matter to extricate themselves from the danger. once the chariots had entered into the forest region, the driver descended from his vehicle, and led the horses by the head, while the warrior and his assistant were not slow to follow his example, in order to give some relief to the animals by tugging at the wheels. the king alone did not dismount, more out of respect for his dignity than from indifference to the strain upon the animals; for, in spite of careful leading, he had to submit to a rough shaking from the inequalities of this rugged soil; sometimes he had too much of this, and it is related of him in his annals that he had crossed the mountains on foot like an ordinary mortal.* * the same fact is found in the accounts of every expedition, but more importance is attached to it as we approach the end of the ninevite empire, when the kings were not so well able to endure hardship. sennacherib mentions it on several occasions, with a certain amount of self-pity for the fatigue he had undergone, but with a real pride in his own endurance. a halt was made every evening, either at some village, whose inhabitants were obliged to provide food and lodging, or, in default of this, on some site which they could fortify by a hastily thrown up rampart of earth. if they were obliged to remain in any place for a length of time, a regular encircling wall was constructed, not square or rectangular like those of the egyptians, but round or oval.* * the oval inclines towards a square form, with rounded corners, on the bas-reliefs of the bronze gates of shalmaneser ii. at balawât. [illustration: 193.jpg the king crossing a mountain in his chariot] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell, taken in the british museum. it was made of dried brick, and provided with towers like an ancient city; indeed, many of these entrenched camps survived the occasion of their formation, and became small fortified towns or castles, whence a permanent garrison could command the neighbouring country. the interior was divided into four equal parts by two roads, intersecting each other at right angles. the royal tents, with their walls of felt or brown linen, resembled an actual palace, which could be moved from place to place; they were surrounded with less pretentious buildings reserved for the king�s household, and the stables. [illustration: 194.jpg an assyrian camp] drawn by boudier, from layard. the tent-poles at the angles of these habitations were plated with metal, and terminated at their upper extremities in figures of goats and other animals made of the same material. the tents of the soldiers, were conical in form, and each was maintained in its position by a forked pole placed inside. they contained the ordinary requirements of the peasant---bed and head-rest, table with legs like those of a gazelle, stools and folding-chairs; the household utensils and the provisions hung from the forks of the support. the monuments, which usually give few details of humble life, are remarkable for their complete reproductions of the daily scenes in the camp. we see on them, the soldier making his bed, grinding corn, dressing the carcase of a sheep, which he had just killed, or pouring out wine; the pot boiling on the fire is watched by the vigilant eye of a trooper or of a woman, while those not actively employed are grouped together in twos and threes, eating, drinking, and chatting. a certain number of priests and soothsayers accompanied the army, but they did not bring the statues of their gods with them, the only emblems of the divinities seen in battle being the two royal ensigns, one representing assur as lord of the territory, borne on a single bull and bending his bow, while the other depicted him standing on two bulls as king of assyria.* an altar smoked before the chariot on which these two standards were planted, and every night and morning the prince and his nobles laid offerings upon it, and recited prayers before it for the well-being of the army. military tactics had not made much progress since the time of the great egyptian invasions. the assyrian generals set out in haste from nineveh or assur in the hope of surprising their enemy, and they often succeeded in penetrating into the very heart of his country before he had time to mobilise or concentrate his forces. the work of subduing him was performed piecemeal; they devastated his fields, robbed his orchards, and, marching all through the night,** they would arrive with such suddenness before one or other of his towns, that he would have no time to organise a defence. most of their campaigns were mere forced marches across plains and mountains, without regular sieges or pitched battles. * it is possible that each of these standards corresponded to some dignity of the sovereign; the first belonged to him, inasmuch as he was _shar kishshati,_ �king of the regions,� and the other, by virtue of his office, of _shar ashshur_, �king of assyria.� ** assurnazirpal mentions several night marches, which enabled him to reach the heart of the enemy�s country. [illustration: 196.jpg a fortified town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mansell. the inhabitants of the town who have been taken prisoners, are leaving it with their cattle under the conduct of assyrian soldiers. should the enemy, however, seek an engagement, and the men be drawn up in line to meet him, the action would be opened by archers and light troops armed with slings, who would be followed by the chariotry and heavy infantry for close attack; a reserve of veterans would await around the commanding-general the crucial moment of the engagement, when they would charge in a body among the combatants, and decide the victory by sheer strength of arm.* * tiglath-pileser i. mentions a pitched battle against the muskhu, who numbered 20,000 men; and another against kiliteshub, king of kummukh, in his first campaign. in one of the following campaigns he overcame the people of saraush and those of maruttash, and also 6000 sugi; later on he defeated 23 allied kings of naîri, and took from them 120 chariots and 20,000 people of kumanu. the other wars are little more than raids, during which he encountered merely those who were incapable of offering him any resistance. the pursuit of the enemy was never carried to any considerable distance, for the men were needed to collect the spoil, despatch the wounded, and carry off the trophies of war. such of the prisoners as it was deemed useful or politic to spare were stationed in a safe place under a guard of sentries. the remainder were condemned to death as they were brought in, and their execution took place without delay; they were made to kneel down, with their backs to the soldiery, their heads bowed, and their hands resting on a flat stone or a billet of wood, in which position they were despatched with clubs. the scribes, standing before their tent doors, registered the number of heads cut off; each soldier, bringing his quota and throwing it upon the heap, gave in his name and the number of his company, and then withdrew in the hope of receiving a reward proportionate to the number of his victims.* * the details of this bringing of heads are known to us by representations of a later period. the allusions contained in the _annals of tiglath-pileser i_. show that the custom was in full force under the early assyrian conquerors. when the king happened to accompany the army, he always presided at this scene, and distributed largesse to those who had shown most bravery; in his absence he required that the heads of the enemy�s chiefs should be sent to him, in order that they might be exposed to his subjects on the gates of his capital. sieges were lengthy and arduous undertakings. in the case of towns situated on the plain, the site was usually chosen so as to be protected by canals, or an arm of a river on two or three sides, thus leaving one side only without a natural defence, which the inhabitants endeavoured to make up for by means of double or treble ramparts.* * the town of tela had three containing walls, that of shingisha had four, and that of pitura two. [illustration: 198.jpg the bringing of heads after a battle] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. these fortifications must have resembled those of the syrian towns; the walls were broad at the base, and, to prevent scaling, rose to a height of some thirty or forty feet: there were towers at intervals of a bowshot, from which the archers could seriously disconcert parties making attacks against any intervening points in the curtain wall; the massive gates were covered with raw hides, or were plated with metal to resist assaults by fire and axe, while, as soon as hostilities commenced, the defence was further completed by wooden scaffolding. places thus fortified, however, at times fell almost without an attempt at resistance; the inhabitants, having descended into the lowlands to rescue their crops from the assyrians, would be disbanded, and, while endeavouring to take refuge within their ramparts, would be pursued by the enemy, who would gain admittance with them in the general disorder. if the town did not fall into their hands by some stroke of good fortune, they would at once attempt, by an immediate assault, to terrify the garrison into laying down their arms.* * assurnazirpal, in this fashion, took the town of pitura in two days, in spite of its strong double ramparts. the archers and slingers led the attack by advancing in couples till they were within the prescribed distance from the walls, one of the two taking careful aim, while the other sheltered his comrade behind his round-topped shield. the king himself would sometimes alight from his chariot and let fly his arrows in the front rank of the archers, while a handful of resolute men would rush against the gates of the town and attempt either to break them down or set them alight with torches. another party, armed with stout helmets and quilted jerkins, which rendered them almost invulnerable to the shower of arrows or stones poured on them by the besieged, would attempt to undermine the walls by means of levers and pick-axes, and while thus engaged would be protected by mantelets fixed to the face of the walls, resembling in shape the shields of the archers. often bodies of men would approach the suburbs of the city and endeavour to obtain access to the ramparts from the roofs of the houses in close proximity to the walls. if, however, they could gain admittance by none of these means, and time was of no consideration, they would resign themselves to a lengthy siege, and the blockade would commence by a systematic desolation of the surrounding country, in which the villages scattered over the plain would be burnt, the vines torn up, and all trees cut down. [illustration: 200.jpg the king lets fly arrows at a besieged town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the assyrians waged war with a brutality which the egyptians would never have tolerated. unlike the pharaohs, their kings were not content to imprison or put to death the principal instigators of a revolt, but their wrath would fall upon the entire population. as long as a town resisted the efforts of their besieging force, all its inhabitants bearing arms who fell into their hands were subjected to the most cruel tortures; they were cut to pieces or impaled alive on stakes, which were planted in the ground just in front of the lines, so that the besieged should enjoy a full view of the sufferings of their comrades. [illustration: 201.jpg assyrian sappers] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. even during the course of a short siege this line of stakes would be prolonged till it formed a bloody pale between the two contending armies. this horrible spectacle had at least the effect of shaking the courage of the besieged, and of hastening the end of hostilities. when at length the town yielded to the enemy, it was often razed to the ground, and salt was strewn upon its ruins, while the unfortunate inhabitants were either massacred or transplanted _en masse_ elsewhere. if the bulk of the population were spared and condemned to exile, the wealthy and noble were shown no clemency; they were thrown from, the top of the city towers, their ears and noses were cut off, their hands and feet were amputated, or they and their children were roasted over a slow fire, or flayed alive, or decapitated, and their heads piled up in a heap. [illustration: 202.jpg a town taken by scaling] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the bronze gate at balawât. the two soldiers who represent the assyrian army carry their shields before them; flames appear above the ramparts, showing that the conquerors have burnt the town. the victorious sovereigns appear to have taken a pride in the ingenuity with which they varied these means of torture, and dwell with complacency on the recital of their cruelties. �i constructed a pillar at the gate of the city,� is the boast of one of them; �i then flayed the chief men, and covered the post with their skins; i suspended their dead bodies from this same pillar, i impaled others on the summit of the pillar, and i ranged others on stakes around the pillar.� two or three executions of this kind usually sufficed to demoralise the enemy. the remaining inhabitants assembled: terrified by the majesty of assur, and as it were blinded by the brightness of his countenance, they sunk down at the knees of the victor and embraced his feet.* * these are the very expressions used in the assyrian texts: �the terror of my strength overthrew them, they feared the combat, and they embraced my feet;� and again: �the brightness of assur, my lord, overturned them.� this latter image is explained by the presence over the king of the winged figure of assur directing the battle. [illustration: 203.jpg tortures inflicted on prisoners] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the bronze gates of balawât; on the right the town is seen in flames, and on the walls on either side hangs a row of heads, one above another. the peace secured at the price of their freedom left them merely with their lives and such of their goods as could not be removed from the soil. the scribes thereupon surrounded the spoil seized by the soldiery and drew up a detailed inventory of the prisoners and their property: everything worth carrying away to assyria was promptly registered, and despatched to the capital. [illustration: 204.jpg a convoy of prisoners and captives after the taking of a town] drawn by faucher gudin, from layard. the contents of the royal palace led the way; it comprised the silver, gold, and copper of the vanquished prince, his caldrons, dishes and cups of brass, the women of his harem, the maidens of his household, his furniture and stuffs, horses and chariots, together with his men and women servants. the enemy�s gods, like his kings, were despoiled of their possessions, and poor and rich suffered alike. the choicest of their troops were incorporated into the assyrian regiments, and helped to fill the gaps which war had made in the ranks;* the peasantry and townsfolk were sold as slaves, or were despatched with their families to till the domains of the king in some assyrian village.* tiglath-pileser i. in this manner incorporated 120 chariots of the kashki and the urumi into the assyrian chariotry. [illustration: 205.jpg convoy of prisoners bound in various ways] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of one of the gates of balawât. the monuments often depict the exodus of these unfortunate wretches. they were represented as proceeding on their way in the charge of a few foot-soldiers--each of the men carrying, without any sign of labour, a bag of provisions, while the women bear their young children on their shoulders or in their arms: herds of cows and flocks of goats and sheep follow, chariots drawn by mules bringing up the rear with the baggage. while the crowd of non-combatants were conducted in irregular columns without manacles or chains, the veteran troops and the young men capable of bearing arms were usually bound together, and sometimes were further secured by a wooden collar placed on their necks. many perished on the way from want or fatigue, but such as were fortunate enough to reach the end of the journey were rewarded with a small portion of land and a dwelling, becoming henceforward identified with the indigenous inhabitants of the country. assyrians were planted as colonists in the subjugated towns, and served to maintain there the authority of the conqueror. the condition of the latter resembled to a great extent that of the old egyptian vassals in phoenicia or southern syria. they were allowed to retain their national constitution, rites, and even their sovereigns; when, for instance, after some rebellion, one of these princes had been impaled or decapitated, his successor was always chosen from among the members of his own family, usually one of his sons, who was enthroned almost before his father had ceased to breathe. he was obliged to humiliate his own gods before assur, to pay a yearly tribute, to render succour in case of necessity to the commanders of neighbouring garrisons, to send his troops when required to swell the royal army, to give his sons or brothers as hostages, and to deliver up his own sisters and daughters, or those of his nobles, for the harem or the domestic service of the conqueror. the unfortunate prince soon resigned himself to this state of servitude; he would collect around him and reorganise his scattered subjects, restore them to their cities, rebuild their walls, replant the wasted orchards, and sow the devastated fields. a few years of relative peace and tranquillity, during which he strove to be forgotten by his conqueror, restored prosperity to his country; the population increased with extraordinary rapidity, and new generations arose who, unconscious of the disasters suffered by their predecessors, had, but one aim, that of recovering their independence. we must, however, beware of thinking that the defeat of these tribes was as crushing or their desolation as terrible as the testimony of the inscriptions would lead us to suppose. the rulers of nineveh were but too apt to relate that this or that country had been conquered and its people destroyed, when the assyrian army had remained merely a week or a fortnight within its territory, had burnt some half-dozen fortified towns, and taken two or three thousand prisoners.* * for example, tiglath-pileser i. conquers the kummukli in the first year of his reign, burning, destroying, and depopulating the towns, and massacring �the remainder of the kummukh� who had taken refuge in the mountains, after which, in his second campaign, he again pillages, burns, destroys, and depopulates the towns, and again massacres the remainder of the inhabitants hiding in the mountains. he makes the same statements with regard to most of the other countries and peoples conquered by him, but we find them reappearing with renewed vigour on the scene, soon after their supposed destruction. if we were to accept implicitly all that is recorded of the assyrian exploits in naîri or the taurus, we should be led to believe that for at least half a century the valleys of the upper tigris and middle euphrates were transformed into a desert; each time, however, that they are subsequently mentioned on the occasion of some fresh expedition, they appear once more covered with thriving cities and a vigorous population, whose generals offer an obstinate resistance to the invaders. we are, therefore, forced to admit that the majority of these expeditions must be regarded as mere raids. the population, disconcerted by a sudden attack, would take refuge in the woods or on the mountains, carrying with them their gods, whom they thus preserved from captivity, together with a portion of their treasures and cattle; but no sooner had the invader retired, than they descended once more into the plain and returned to their usual occupations. the assyrian victories thus rarely produced the decisive results which are claimed for them; they almost always left the conquered people with sufficient energy and resources to enable them to resume the conflict after a brief interval, and the supremacy which the suzerain claimed as a result of his conquests was of the most ephemeral nature. a revolt would suffice to shake it, while a victory would be almost certain to destroy it, and once more reduce the empire to the limits of assyria proper. tukultiabalesharra, familiar to us under the name of tiglath-pileser,* is the first of the great warrior-kings of assyria to stand out before us with any definite individuality. * tiglath-pileser is one of the transcriptions given in the lxx. for the hebrew version of the name: it signifies, �the child of esharra is my strength.� by �the child of esharra� the assyrians, like the chaldæans, understood the child of ninib. we find him, in the interval between two skirmishes, engaged in hunting lions or in the pursuit of other wild beasts, and we see him lavishing offerings on the gods and enriching their temples with the spoils of his victories; these, however, were not the normal occupations of this sovereign, for peace with him was merely an interlude in a reign of conflict. he led all his expeditions in person, undeterred by any consideration of fatigue or danger, and scarcely had he returned from one arduous campaign, than he proceeded to sketch the plan of that for the following year; in short, he reigned only to wage war. his father, assurîshishi, had bequeathed him not only a prosperous kingdom, but a well-organised army, which he placed in the field without delay. during the fifty years since the mushku, descending through the gorges of the taurus, had invaded the alzi and the puru-kuzzi, assyria had not only lost possession of all the countries bordering the left bank of the euphrates, but the whole of kummukh had withdrawn its allegiance from her, and had ceased to pay tribute. tiglath-pileser had ascended the throne only a few weeks ere he quitted assur, marched rapidly across eastern mesopotamia by the usual route, through singar and nisib, and climbing the chain of the kashiara, near mardîn, bore down into the very heart of kummukh, where twenty thousand mushku, under the command of five kings, resolutely awaited him. he repulsed them in the very first engagement, and pursued them hotly over hill and vale, pillaging the fields, and encircling the towns with trophies of human heads taken from the prisoners who had fallen into his hands; the survivors, to the number of six thousand, laid down their arms, and were despatched to assyria.* * the king, starting from assur, must have followed the route through sindjar, nisib, mardîn, and diarbekîr--a road used later by the romans, and still in existence at the present day. as he did not penetrate that year as far as the provinces of alzi and purukuzzi, he must have halted at the commencement of the mountain district, and have beaten the allies in the plain of kuru-tchaî, before diarbekîr, in the neighbourhood of the tigris. the kummukh contingents, however, had been separated in the rout from the mushku, and had taken refuge beyond the euphrates, near to the fortress of shirisha, where they imagined themselves in safety behind a rampart of mountains and forests. tiglath-pileser managed, by cutting a road for his foot-soldiers and chariots, to reach their retreat: he stormed the place without apparent difficulty, massacred the defenders, and then turning upon the inhabitants of kurkhi,* who were on their way to reinforce the besieged, drove their soldiers into the nâmi, whose waters carried the corpses down to the tigris. one of their princes, kilite-shub, son of kaliteshub-sarupi, had been made prisoner during the action. tiglath-pileser sent him, together with his wives, children, treasures, and gods,** to share the captivity of the mushku; then retracing his steps, he crossed over to the right bank of the tigris, and attacked the stronghold of urrakhinas which crowned the summit of panâri. * the country of the kurkhi appears to have included at this period the provinces lying between the sebbeneh-su and the mountains of djudî, probably a portion of the sophene, the anzanone and the gordyenc of classical authors. ** the vanquished must have crossed the tigris below diarbekîr and have taken refuge beyond mayafarrikîn, so that shirisha must be sought for between the silvan-dagh and the ak-dagh, in the basin of the batman-tchai, the present nâmi. the people, terror-stricken by the fate of their neighbours, seized their idols and hid themselves within the thickets like a flock of birds. their chief, shaditeshub, son of khâtusaru,* ventured from out of his hiding-place to meet the assyrian conqueror, and prostrated himself at his feet. he delivered over his sons and the males of his family as hostages, and yielded up all his possessions in gold and copper, together with a hundred and twenty slaves and cattle of all kinds; tiglath-pileser thereupon permitted him to keep his principality under the suzerainty of assyria, and such of his allies as followed his example obtained a similar concession. the king consecrated the tenth of the spoil thus received to the use of his god assur and also to rammân;** but before returning to his capital, he suddenly resolved to make an expedition into the almost impenetrable regions which separated him from lake van. * the name of this chief�s father has always been read khâtukhi: it is a form of the name khâtusaru borne by the hittite king in the time of ramses ii. ** the site of urrakhinas--read by winckler urartinas--is very uncertain: the town was situated in a territory which could belong equally well to the kummukh or to the kurkhi, and the mention of the crossing of the tigris seems to indicate that it was on the right bank of the river, probably in the mountain group of tur-abdîn. this district was, even more than at the present day, a confused labyrinth of wooded mountain ranges, through which the eastern tigris and its affluents poured their rapid waters in tortuous curves. as hitherto no army had succeeded in making its way through this territory with sufficient speed to surprise the fortified villages and scattered clans inhabiting the valleys and mountain slopes, tiglath-pileser selected from his force a small troop of light infantry and thirty chariots, with which he struck into the forests; but, on reaching the aruma, he was forced to abandon his chariotry and proceed with the foot-soldiers only. the mildîsh, terrified by his sudden appearance, fell an easy prey to the invader; the king scattered the troops hastily collected to oppose him, set fire to a few fortresses, seized the peasantry and their flocks, and demanded hostages and the usual tribute as a condition of peace.* * the mildîsh of our inscription is to be identified with the country of mount umildîsh, mentioned by sargon of assyria. in his first campaign he thus reduced the upper and eastern half of kummukh, namely, the part extending to the north of the tigris, while in the following campaign he turned his attention to the regions bounded by the euphrates and by the western spurs of the kashiari. the alzi and the purukuzzi had been disconcerted by his victories, and had yielded him their allegiance almost without a struggle. to the southward, the kashku and the urumi, who had, to the number of four thousand, migrated from among the khâti and compelled the towns of the shubarti to break their alliance with the ninevite kings, now made no attempt at resistance; they laid down their arms and yielded at discretion, giving up their goods and their hundred and twenty war-chariots, and resigning themselves to the task of colonising a distant corner of assyria. other provinces, however, were not so easily dealt with; the inhabitants entrenched themselves within their wild valleys, from whence they had to be ousted by sheer force; in the end they always had to yield, and to undertake to pay an annual tribute. the assyrian empire thus regained on this side the countries which shalmaneser i. had lost, owing to the absorption of his energies and interests in the events which were taking place in chaldæa. in his third campaign tiglath-pileser succeeded in bringing about the pacification of the border provinces which shut in the basin of the tigris to the north and east. the kurkhi did not consider themselves conquered by the check they had received at the nâmi; several of their tribes were stirring in kharia, on the highlands above the arzania, and their restlessness threatened to infect such of their neighbours as had already submitted themselves to the assyrian yoke. �my master assur commanded me to attack their proud summits, which no king has ever visited. i assembled my chariots and my foot-soldiers, and i passed between the idni and the ala, by a difficult country, across cloud-capped mountains whose peaks were as the point of a dagger, and unfavourable to the progress of my chariots; i therefore left my chariots in reserve, and i climbed these steep mountains. the community of the kurkhi assembled its numerous troops, and in order to give me battle they entrenched themselves upon the azubtagish; on the slopes of the mountain, an incommodious position, i came into conflict with them, and i vanquished them.� this lesson cost them twenty-five towns, situated at the feet of the aîa, the shuîra, the idni, the shizu, the silgu, and the arzanabiu*--all twenty-five being burnt to the ground. * the site of kharia must be sought for probably between the sources of the tigris and the batman-tchaî. the dread of a similar fate impelled the neighbouring inhabitants of adaush to beg for a truce, which was granted to them;* but the people of saraush and of ammaush, who �from all time had never known what it was to obey,� were cut to pieces, and their survivors incorporated into the empire--a like fate overtaking the isua and the daria, who inhabited khoatras.** * according to the context, the adaush ought to be between the kharia and the saraush; possibly between the batman tchaî and the bohtân-tchaî, in the neighbourhood of mildîsh. ** as tiglath-pileser was forced to cross mount aruma in order to reach the ammaush and the saraush, these two countries, together with isua and daria, cannot be far from mildîsh; isua is, indeed, mentioned as near to anzitene in an inscription of shalmaneser ii., which obliges us to place it somewhere near the sources of the batman-tchaî. the position of muraddash and saradaush is indirectly pointed out by the mention of the lower zab and the lulumê; the name of saradaush is perhaps preserved in that of surtash, borne by the valley through which runs one of the tributaries of the lower zab. beyond this, again, on the banks of the lesser zab and the confines of lulumô, the principalities of muraddash and of saradaush refused to come to terms. tiglath-pileser broke their lines within sight of muraddash, and entered the town with the fugitives in the confusion which ensued; this took place about the fourth hour of the day. the success was so prompt and complete, that the king was inclined to attribute it to the help of rammân, and he made an offering to the temple of this god at assur of all the copper, whether wrought or in ore, which was found among the spoil of the vanquished. he was recalled almost immediately after this victory by a sedition among the kurkhi near the sources of the tigris. one of their tribes, known as the sugi, who had not as yet suffered from the invaders, had concentrated round their standards contingents from some half-dozen cities, and the united force was, to the number of six thousand, drawn up on mount khirikhâ. tiglath-pileser was again victorious, and took from them twenty-five statues of their gods, which he despatched to assyria to be distributed among the sanctuaries of belît at assur, of anu, bammân, and of ishtar. winter obliged him to suspend operations. when he again resumed them at the beginning of his third year, both the kummukh and the kurkhi were so peaceably settled that he was able to carry his expeditions without fear of danger further north, into the regions of the upper euphrates between the halys and lake van, a district then known as naîri. he marched diagonally across the plain of diarbekîr, penetrated through dense forests, climbed sixteen mountain ridges one after the other by paths hitherto considered impracticable, and finally crossed the euphrates by improvised bridges, this being, as far as we know, the first time that an assyrian monarch had ventured into the very heart of those countries which had formerly constituted the hittite empire. he found them occupied by rude and warlike tribes, who derived considerable wealth from working the mines, and possessed each their own special sanctuary, the ruins of which still appear above ground, and invite the attention of the explorer. their fortresses must have all more or less resembled that city of the pterians which flourished for so many ages just at the bend of the halys;* its site is still marked by a mound rising to some thirty feet above the plain, resembling the platforms on which the chaldæan temples were always built--a few walls of burnt brick, and within an enclosure, among the débris of rudely built houses, the ruins of some temples and palaces consisting of large irregular blocks of stone. * the remains of the palace of the city of the pterians, the present euyuk, are probably later than the reign of tiglath pileser, and may be attributed to the xth or ixth century before our era; they, however, probably give a very fair idea of what the towns of the cappadocian region were like at the time of the first assyrian invasions. [illustration: 216.jpg general view of the ruins of euyuk] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. [illustration: 217.jpg the sphinx on the right of euyuk] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. two colossal sphinxes guard the gateway of the principal edifice, and their presence proves with certainty how predominant was egyptian influence even at this considerable distance from the banks of the nile. they are not the ordinary sphinxes, with a human head surmounting the body of a lion couchant on its stone pedestal; but, like the assyrian bulls, they are standing, and, to judge from the hathorian locks which fall on each side of their countenances, they must have been intended to represent a protecting goddess rather than a male deity. a remarkable emblem is carved on the side of the upright to which their bodies are attached; it is none other than the double-headed eagle, the prototype of which is not infrequently found at telloh in lower chaldæa, among remains dating from the time of the kings and vicegerents of lagash. [illustration: 218.jpg two blocks covered with bas-reliefs in the euyuk palace] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the court or hall to which this gate gave access was decorated with bas-reliefs, which exhibit a glaring imitation of babylonian art; we can still see on these the king, vested in his long flowing robes, praying before an altar, while further on is a procession of dignitaries following a troop of rams led by a priest to be sacrificed; another scene represents two individuals in the attitude of worship, wearing short loin-cloths, and climbing a ladder whose upper end has an uncertain termination, while a third person applies his hands to his mouth in the performance of some mysterious ceremony; beyond these are priests and priestesses moving in solemn file as if in the measured tread of some sacred dance, while in one corner we find the figure of a woman, probably a goddess, seated, holding in one hand a flower, perhaps the full-blown lotus, and in the other a cup from which she is about to drink. the costume of all these figures is that which chaldæan fashion had imposed upon the whole of western asia, and consisted of the long heavy robe, falling from the shoulders to the feet, drawn in at the waist by a girdle; but it is to be noted that both sexes are shod with the turned-up shoes of the hittites, and that the women wear high peaked caps. [illustration: 219.jpg mystic scene at euyuk] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the composition of the scenes is rude, the drawing incorrect, and the general technique reminds us rather of the low reliefs of the memphite or theban sculptors than of the high projection characteristic of the artists of the lower euphrates. these slabs of sculptured stone formed a facing at the base of the now crumbling brick walls, the upper surface of which was covered with rough plastering. here and there a few inscriptions reveal the name, titles, and parentage of some once celebrated personage, and mention the god in whose honour he had achieved the work. [illustration: 220.jpg an asiatic goddess] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the characters in which these inscriptions are written are not, as a rule, incised in the stone, but are cut in relief upon its surface, and if some few of them may remind us of the egyptian hieroglyphs, the majority are totally unlike them, both in form and execution. a careful examination of them reveals a medley of human and animal outlines, geometrical figures, and objects of daily use, which all doubtless corresponded to some letter or syllable, but to which we have as yet no trustworthy key. this system of writing is one of a whole group of asiatic scripts, specimens of which are common in this part of the world from crete to the banks of the euphrates and orontes. it is thought that the khâti must have already adopted it before their advent to power, and that it was they who propagated it in northern syria. it did not take the place of the cuneiform syllabary for ordinary purposes of daily life owing to its clumsiness and complex character, but its use was reserved for monumental inscriptions of a royal or religious kind, where it could be suitably employed as a framework to scenes or single figures. [illustration: 221.jpg the asiatic inscription of kolitolu-yaîla] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hogarth. it, however, never presented the same graceful appearance and arrangement as was exhibited in the egyptian hieroglyphs, the signs placed side by side being out of proportion with each other so as to destroy the general harmony of the lines, and it must be regarded as a script still in process of formation and not yet emerged from infancy. every square yard of soil turned up among the ruins of the houses of euyuk yields vestiges of tools, coarse pottery, terra-cotta and bronze statuettes of men and animals, and other objects of a not very high civilization. the few articles of luxury discovered, whether in furniture or utensils, were not indigenous products, but were imported for the most part from chaldæa, syria, phoenicia, and perhaps from egypt; some objects, indeed, came from the coast-towns of the ægean, thus showing that western influence was already in contact with the traditions of the east. [illustration: 222.jpg double scend of offerings] drawn by paucher-gudin, from a photograph by hogarth. it will be remarked that both altars are in the form of a female without a head, but draped in the assyrian robe. all the various races settled between the halys and the orontes were more or less imbued with this foreign civilization, and their monuments, though not nearly so numerous as those of the pharaohs and ninevite kings, bear, nevertheless, an equally striking evidence of its power. examples of it have been pointed out in a score of different places in the valleys of the taurus and on the plains of cappadocia, in bas-reliefs, steke, seals, and intaglios, several of which must be nearly contemporaneous with the first assyrian conquest. [illustration: 223.jpg the bas-relief of ibriz] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hogarth. one instance of it appears on the rocks at ibriz, where a king stands in a devout attitude before a jovial giant whose hands are full of grapes and wheat-ears, while in another bas-relief near frakhtîn we have a double scene of sacrifice. the rock-carving at ibriz is, perhaps, of all the relics of a forgotten world, that which impresses the spectator most favourably. the concept of the scene is peculiarly naïve; indeed, the two figures are clumsily brought together, though each of them, when examined separately, is remarkable for its style and execution. the king has a dignified bearing in spite of his large head, round eyes, and the unskilful way in which his arms are set on his body. the figure of the god is not standing firmly on both feet, but the sculptor has managed to invest him with an air of grandeur and an expression of vigour and _bonhomie,_ which reminds us of certain types of the greek hercules. tiglath-pileser was probably attracted to asia minor as much by considerations of mercantile interest as by the love of conquest or desire for spoil. it would, indeed, have been an incomparable gain for him had he been able, if not to seize the mines themselves, at least to come into such close proximity to them that he would be able to monopolise their entire output, and at the same time to lay hands on the great commercial highway to the trade centres of the west. the eastern terminus of this route lay already within his domains, namely, that which led to assur by way of amid, nisibe, singar, and the valley of the upper tigris; he was now desirous of acquiring that portion of it which wound its way from the fords of the euphrates at malatîyeh to the crossing of the halys. the changes which had just taken place in kummukh and nairi had fully aroused the numerous petty sovereigns of the neighbourhood. the bonds which kept them together had not been completely severed at the downfall of the hittite empire, and a certain sense of unity still lingered among them in spite of their continual feuds; they constituted, in fact, a sort of loose confederation, whose members never failed to help one another when they were threatened by a common enemy. as soon as the news of an assyrian invasion reached them, they at once put aside their-mutual quarrels and combined to oppose the invader with their united forces. tiglath-pileser had, therefore, scarcely crossed the euphrates before he was attacked on his right flank by twenty-three petty kings of naîri,* while sixty other chiefs from the same neighbourhood bore down upon him in front. he overcame the first detachment of the confederates, though not without a sharp struggle; he carried carnage into their ranks, �as it were the whirlwind of eammân,� and seized a hundred and twenty of the enemy�s chariots. the sixty chiefs, whose domains extended as far as the �upper sea,� ** were disconcerted by the news of the disaster, and of their own accord laid down their arms, or offered but a feeble resistance. * the text of the annals of the xth year give thirty instead of twenty-three; in the course of five or six years the numbers have already become exaggerated. ** the site of the �upper sea� has furnished material for much discussion. some believe it to be the caspian sea or the black sea, others take it to be lake van, while some think it to be the mediterranean, and more particularly the gulf of issus between syria and cilicia. at the present day several scholars have returned to the theory which makes it the black sea. tiglath-pileser presented some of them in chains to the god shamash; he extorted an oath of vassalage from them, forced them to give up their children as hostages, and laid a tax upon them _en masse_ of 1200 stallions and 2000 bulls, after which he permitted them to return to their respective towns. he had, however, singled out from among them to grace his own triumph, sini of dayana, the only chief among them who had offered him an obstinate resistance; but even he was granted his liberty after he had been carried captive to assur, and made to kneel before the gods of assyria.* * dayani, which is mentioned in the annals of shalmaneser ii., has been placed on the banks of the murad-su by schrader, and more particularly in the neighbourhood of melasgerd by sayce; delattre has shown that it was the last and most westerly of twenty-three kingdoms conquered by tiglath-pileser i., and that it was consequently enclosed between the murad-su and the euphrates proper. before returning to the capital, tiglath-pileser attacked khanigalbat, and appeared before milidia: as the town attempted no defence, he spared it, and contented himself with levying a small contribution upon its inhabitants. this expedition was rather of the nature of a reconnaissance than a conquest, but it helped to convince the king of the difficulty of establishing any permanent suzerainty over the country. the asiatic peoples were quick to bow before a sudden attack; but no sooner had the conqueror departed, than those who had sworn him eternal fealty sought only how best to break their oaths. the tribes in immediate proximity to those provinces which had been long subject to the assyrian rule, were intimidated into showing some respect for a power which existed so close to their own borders. but those further removed from the seat of government felt a certain security in their distance from it, and were tempted to revert to the state of independence they had enjoyed before the conquest; so that unless the sovereign, by a fresh campaign, promptly made them realise that their disaffection would not remain unpunished, they soon forgot their feudatory condition and the duties which it entailed. three years of merciless conflict with obstinate and warlike mountain tribes had severely tried the assyrian army, if it had not worn out the sovereign; the survivors of so many battles were in sore need of a well-merited repose, the gaps left by death had to be filled, and both infantry and chariotry needed the re-modelling of their corps. the fourth year of the king�s reign, therefore, was employed almost entirely in this work of reorganisation; we find only the record of a raid of a few weeks against the akhlamî and other nomadic aramæans situated beyond the mesopotamian steppes. the assyrians spread over the district between the frontiers of sukhi and the fords of carchemish for a whole day, killing all who resisted, sacking the villages and laying hands on slaves and cattle. the fugitives escaped over the euphrates, vainly hoping that they would be secure in the very heart of the khâti. tiglath-pileser, however, crossed the river on rafts supported on skins, and gave the provinces of mount bishri over to fire and sword:* six walled towns opened their gates to him without having ventured to strike a blow, and he quitted the country laden with spoil before the kings of the surrounding cities had had time to recover from their alarm. * the country of bishri was situated, as the _annals_ point out, in the immediate neighbourhood of carchemish. the name is preserved in that of tell basher still borne by the ruins, and a modern village on the banks of the sajur. the gebel bishri to which hommel alludes is too far to the south to correspond to the description given in the inscription of tiglath-pileser. this expedition was for tiglath-pileser merely an interlude between two more serious campaigns; and with the beginning of his fifth year he reappeared in the provinces of the upper euphrates to complete his conquest of them. he began by attacking and devastating musri, which lay close to the territory of milid. while thus occupied he was harassed by bands of kumani; he turned upon them, overcame them, and imprisoned the remainder of them in the fortress of arini, at the foot of mount aisa, where he forced them to kiss his feet. his victory over them, however, did not disconcert their neighbours. the bulk of the kumani, whose troops had scarcely suffered in the engagement, fortified themselves on mount tala, to the number of twenty thousand; the king carried the heights by assault, and hotly pursued the fugitives as far as the range of kharusa before musri, where the fortress of khunusa afforded them a retreat behind its triple walls of brick. the king, nothing daunted, broke his way through them one after another, demolished the ramparts, razed the houses, and strewed the ruins with salt; he then constructed a chapel of brick as a sort of trophy, and dedicated within it what was known as a copper thunderbolt, being an image of the missile which eammân, the god of thunder, brandished in the face of his enemies. an inscription engraved on the object recorded the destruction of khunusa, and threatened with every divine malediction the individual, whether an assyrian or a stranger, who should dare to rebuild the city. this victory terrified the kumani, and their capital, kibshuna, opened its gates to the royal troops at the first summons. tiglath-pileser completely destroyed the town, but granted the inhabitants their lives on condition of their paying tribute; he chose from among them, however, three hundred families who had shown him the most inveterate hostility, and sent them as exiles into assyria.* * the country of the kumani or kammanu is really the district of comana in cataonia, and not the comana pontica or the khammanene on the banks of the halys. delattre thinks that tiglath-pileser penetrated into this region by the jihun, and consequently seeks to identify the names of towns and mountains, e.g. mount ilamuni with jaur-dagh, the kharusa with shorsh-dagh, and the tala with the kermes-dagh; but it is difficult to believe that, if the king took this route, he would not mention the town of marqasi-marash, which lay at the very foot of the jaur-dagh, and would have stopped his passage. it is more probable that the assyrians, starting from melitene, which they had just subdued, would have followed the route which skirts the northern slope of the taurus by albistan; the scene of the conflict in this case would probably have been the mountainous district of zeitûn. with this victory the first half of his reign drew to its close; in five years tiglath-pileser had subjugated forty-two peoples and their princes within an area extending from the banks of the lower zab to the plains of the khâti, and as far as the shores of the western seas. he revisited more than once these western and northern regions in which he had gained his early triumphs. the reconnaissance which he had made around carchemish had revealed to him the great wealth of the syrian table-land, and that a second raid in that direction could be made more profitable than ten successful campaigns in naîri or upon the banks of the zab. he therefore marched his battalions thither, this time to remain for more than a few days. he made his way through the whole breadth of the country, pushed forward up the valley of the orontes, crossed the lebanon, and emerged above the coast of the mediterranean in the vicinity of arvad. [illustration: 230.jpg sacrifice offered before the royal stele] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. this is the first time for many centuries that an oriental sovereign had penetrated so far west; and his contemporaries must have been obliged to look back to the almost fabulous ages of sargon of agadê or of khammurabi, to find in the long lists of the dynasties of the euphrates any record of a sovereign who had planted his standards on the shores of the sea of the setting sun.* *this is the name given by the assyrians to the mediterranean. tiglath-pileser embarked on its waters, made a cruise into the open, and killed a porpoise, but we have no record of any battles fought, nor do we know how he was received by the phoenician towns. he pushed on, it is thought, as far as the nahr el-kelb, and the sight of the hieroglyphic inscriptions which ramses had caused to be cut there three centuries previously aroused his emulation. assyrian conquerors rarely quitted the scene of their exploits without leaving behind them some permanent memorial of their presence. a sculptor having hastily smoothed the surface of a rock, cut out on it a figure of the king, to which was usually added a commemorative inscription. in front of this stele was erected an altar, upon which sacrifices were made, and if the monument was placed near a stream or the seashore, the soldiers were accustomed to cast portions of the victims into the water in order to propitiate the river-deities. [illustration: 231.jpg portions of the sacrificial victims thrown into the water] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. one of the half-effaced assyrian stelæ adjoining those of the egyptian conqueror is attributed to tiglath-pileser.* *boscawen thinks that we may attribute to tiglath-pileser i. the oldest of the assyrian stelæ at nahr el-kelb; no positive information has as yet confirmed this hypothesis, which is in other respects very probable. it was on his return, perhaps, from this campaign that he planted colonies at pitru on the right, and at mutkînu on the left bank of the euphrates, in order to maintain a watch over carchemish, and the more important fords connecting mesopotamia with the plains of the apriê and the orontes.* * the existence of these colonies is known only from an inscription of shalmaneser ii. the news of tiglath-pileser�s expedition was not long in reaching the delta, and the egyptian monarch then reigning at tanis was thus made acquainted with the fact that there had arisen in syria a new power before which his own was not unlikely to give way. in former times such news would have led to a war between the two states, but the time had gone by when egypt was prompt to take up arms at the slightest encroachment on her asiatic provinces. her influence at this time was owing merely to her former renown, and her authority beyond the isthmus was purely traditional. the tanite pharaoh had come to accept with resignation the change in the fortunes of egypt, and he therefore contented himself with forwarding to the assyrian conqueror, by one of the syrian coasting vessels, a present of some rare wild beasts and a few crocodiles. in olden times assyria had welcomed the arrival of thûtmosis iii. on the euphrates by making him presents, which the theban monarch regarded in the light of tribute: the case was now reversed, the egyptian pharaoh taking the position formerly occupied by the assyrian monarch. tiglath-pileser graciously accepted this unexpected homage, but the turbulent condition of the northern tribes prevented his improving the occasion by an advance into phoenicia and the land of canaan. naîri occupied his attention on two separate occasions at least; on the second of these he encamped in the neighbourhood of the source of the river subnat. this stream, had for a long period issued from a deep grotto, where in ancient times a god was supposed to dwell. the conqueror was lavish in religious offerings here, and caused a bas-relief to be engraved on the entrance in remembrance of his victories. [illustration 233.jpg the stele at sebenneh-su] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by p. taylor, in g. rawlinson. he is here represented as standing upright, the tiara on his brow, and his right arm extended as if in the act of worship, while his left, the elbow brought up to his side, holds a club. the inscription appended to the figure tells, with an eloquence all the more effective from its brevity, how, �with the aid of assur, shamash, and eammân, the great gods, my lords, i, tiglath-pileser, king of assyria, son of assurîshishî, king of assyria, son of mutakkilnusku, king of assyria, conqueror from the great sea, the mediterranean, to the great sea of naîri, i went for the third time to naîri.� the gods who had so signally favoured the monarch received the greater part of the spoils which he had secured in his campaigns. the majority of the temples of assyria, which were founded at a time when its city was nothing more than a provincial capital owing allegiance to babylon, were either, it would appear, falling to ruins from age, or presented a sorry exterior, utterly out of keeping with the magnitude of its recent wealth. the king set to work to enlarge or restore the temples of ishtar, martu, and the ancient bel;* he then proceeded to rebuild, from the foundations to the summit, that of anu and bammân, which the vicegerent samsirammân, son of ismidagan, had constructed seven hundred and one years previously. this temple was the principal sanctuary of the city, because it was the residence of the chief of the gods, assur, under his appellation of anu.** * �bel the ancient,� or possibly �the ancient master,� appears to have been one of the names of anu, who is naturally in this connexion the same as assur. ** this was the great temple of which the ruins still exist. the soil was cleared away down to the bed-rock, upon which an enormous substructure, consisting of fifty courses of bricks, was laid, and above this were erected two lofty ziggurâts, whose tile-covered surfaces shone like the rising sun in their brightness; the completion of the whole was commemorated by a magnificent festival. the special chapel of bammân and his treasury, dating from the time of the same samsirammân who had raised the temple of anu, were also rebuilt on a more important scale.* * the british museum possesses bricks bearing the name of tiglath-pileser i., brought from this temple, as is shown by the inscription on their sides. these works were actively carried on notwithstanding the fact that war was raging on the frontier; however preoccupied he might be with warlike projects, tiglath-pileser never neglected the temples, and set to work to collect from every side materials for their completion and adornment. [illustration: 235.jpg transport of building materials by water] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze doors at balawât. he brought, for example, from naîri such marble and hard stone as might be needed for sculptural purposes, together with the beams of cedar and cypress required by his carpenters. the mountains of singar and of the zab furnished the royal architects with building stone for ordinary uses, and for those facing slabs of bluish gypsum on which the bas-reliefs of the king�s exploits were carved; the blocks ready squared were brought down the affluents of the tigris on rafts or in boats, and thus arrived at their destination without land transport. [illustration: 236.jpg rare animals brought back as trophies by the king] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast in the louvre. the original is in the british museum. the kings of assyria, like the pharaohs, had always had a passion for rare trees and strange animals; as soon as they entered a country, they inquired what natural curiosities it contained, and they would send back to their own land whatever specimens of them could be procured. [illustration: 237.jpg monkey brought back as tribute] drawn by boudier, from the bas-relief in layard. the triumphal _cortege_ which accompanied the monarch on his return after each campaign comprised not only prisoners and spoil of a useful sort, but curiosities from all the conquered districts, as, for instance, animals of unusual form or habits, rhinoceroses and crocodiles,* and if some monkey of a rare species had been taken in the sack of a town, it also would find a place in the procession, either held in a leash or perched on the shoulders of its keeper. * a crocodile sent as a present by the king of egypt is mentioned in the _inscription of the broken obelisk_. the animal is called _namsukha_, which is the egyptian _msuhu_ with the plural article _na._ the campaigns of the monarch were thus almost always of a double nature, comprising not merely a conflict with men, but a continual pursuit of wild beasts. tiglath-pileser, �in the service of ninib, had killed four great specimens of the male urus in the desert of mitanni, near to the town of arazîki, opposite to the countries of the khâti;* he killed them with his powerful bow, his dagger of iron, his pointed lance, and he brought back their skins and horns to his city of assur. he secured ten strong male elephants, in the territory of harrân and upon the banks of the khabur, and he took four of them alive: he brought back their skins and their tusks, together with the living elephants, to his city of assur.� he killed moreover, doubtless also in the service of ninib, a hundred and twenty lions, which he attacked on foot, despatching eight hundred more with arrows from his chariot,** all within the short space of five years, and we may well ask what must have been the sum total, if the complete record for his whole reign were extant. we possess, unfortunately, no annals of the later years of this monarch; we have reason to believe that he undertook several fresh expeditions into nairi,*** and a mutilated tablet records some details of troubles with elam in the xth year of his reign. * the town of arazîki has been identified with the eragiza (eraziga) of ptolemy; the eraziga of ptolemy was on the right bank of the euphrates, while the text of tiglath pileser appears to place arazîki on the left bank. ** the account of the hunts in the _annals_ is supplemented by the information furnished in the first column of the �broken obelisk.� the monument is of the time of assur-nazir pal, but the first column contains an abstract from an account of an anonymous hunt, which a comparison of numbers and names leads us to attribute to tiglath-pileser i.; some assyri-ologists, however, attribute it to assur-nazir-pal. * the inscription of sebbeneh-su was erected at the time of the third expedition into naîri, and the _annals_ give only one; the other two expeditions must, therefore, be subsequent to the vth year of his reign. we gather that he attacked a whole series of strongholds, some of whose names have a cossæan ring about them, such as madkiu, sudrun, ubrukhundu, sakama, shuria, khirishtu, and andaria. his advance in this direction must have considerably provoked the chaldæans, and, indeed, it was not long before actual hostilities broke out between the two nations. the first engagement took place in the valley of the lower zab, in the province of arzukhina, without any decisive result, but in the following year fortune favoured the assyrians, for dur-kurigalzu, both sipparas, babylon, and upi opened their gates to them, while akar-sallu, the akhlamê, and the whole of sukhi as far as eapîki tendered their submission to tiglath-achuch-sawh-akhl-pileser. [illustration: 239.jpg merodach-nadin-akhi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the heliogravure in pr. lenormant. the original is in the british museum. it is one of the boundary stones which were set up in a corner of a field to mark its legal limit. merodach-nadin-akhi, who was at this time reigning in chaldæa, was like his ancestor nebuchadrezzar i., a brave and warlike sovereign: he appears at first to have given way under the blow thus dealt him, and to have acknowledged the suzerainty of his rival, who thereupon assumed the title of lord of the four houses of the world, and united under a single empire the valleys of the tigris and euphrates. but this state of things lasted for a few years only; merodach-nadin-akhi once more took courage, and, supported by the chaldæan nobility, succeeded in expelling the intruders from sumir and akkad. the assyrians, however, did not allow themselves to be driven out without a struggle, but fortune turned against them; they were beaten, and the conqueror inflicted on the assyrian gods the humiliation to which they had so often subjected those of other nations. he took the statues of eammân and shala from ekallati, carried them to babylon, and triumphantly set them up within the temple of bel. there they remained in captivity for 418 years.* tiglath-pileser did not long survive this disaster, for he died about the year 1100 b.c.,** and two of his sons succeeded him on the throne. the elder, assur-belkala,*** had neither sufficient energy nor resources to resume the offensive, and remained a passive spectator of the revolutions which distracted babylon. * we know this fact from the inscription of bavian, in which sennacherib boasts of having brought back these statues to assyria after they had been 418 years in the possession of the enemy. i have followed the commonly received opinion, which places the defeat of tiglath-pileser after the taking of babylon; others think that it preceded the decisive victory of the assyrians. it is improbable that, if the loss of the statues preceded the decisive victory, the assyrian conquerors should have left their gods prisoners in a babylonian temple, and should not have brought them back immediately to ekallati. ** the death of tiglath-pileser must have followed quickly on the victory of babylon; the contents of the inscription of bavian permit us to fix the taking of ekallati by the chaldæans about the year 1108-1106 b.c. we shall not be far wrong in supposing tiglath-pileser to have reigned six or eight years after his defeat. *** i followed the usually received classification. it is, however, possible that we must reverse the order of the sovereigns. merodach-nadin-akhi had been followed by his son merodach-shapîk-zîrîm,* but this prince was soon dethroned by the people, and bammân-abaliddîn, a man of base extraction, seized the crown. * the name of the babylonian king has been variously read merodach-shapîk-zirat, merodach-shapîk-kullat, merodach shapîk-zirmâti and merodach-shapîk-zîrîm. assur-belkala not only extended to this usurper the friendly relations he had kept up with the legitimate sovereign, but he asked for the hand of his daughter in marriage, and the rich dowry which she brought her husband no doubt contributed to the continuation of his pacific policy. he appears also to have kept possession of all the parts of mesopotamia and kammukh conquered by his father, and it is possible that he may have penetrated beyond the euphrates. his brother, samsi-rammân iii., does not appear to have left any more definite mark upon history than assur-belkala; he decorated the temples built by his predecessors, but beyond this we have no certain record of his achievements. we know nothing of the kings who followed him, their names even having been lost, but about a century and a half after tiglath-pileser, a certain assurirba seems to have crossed northern syria, and following in the footsteps of his great ancestor, to have penetrated as far as the mediterranean: on the rocks of mount amanus, facing the sea, he left a triumphal inscription in which he set forth the mighty deeds he had accomplished. this is merely a gleam out of the murky night which envelops his history, and the testimony of one of his descendants informs us that his good fortune soon forsook him: the aramaeans wrested from him the fortresses of pitru and mutkînu, which commanded both banks of the euphrates near carchemish. nor did the retrograde movement slaken after his time: assyria slowly wasted away down to the end of the xth century, and but for the simultaneous decadence of the chaldaeans, its downfall would have been complete. but neither rammân-abaliddîn nor his successor was able to take advantage of its weakness; discord and want of energy soon brought about their own ruin. the dynasty of pashê disappeared towards the middle of the xth century, and a family belonging to the �countries of the sea� took its place: it had continued for about one hundred and thirty-two years, and had produced eleven kings.* * it is no easy matter to draw up an exact list of this dynasty, and hilprecht�s attempt to do so contains more than one doubtful name. the following list is very imperfect and doubtful, but the best that our present knowledge enables us to put forward. [illustration: 242.jpg table of kings] what were the causes of this depression, from which babylon suffered at almost regular intervals, as though stricken with some periodic malady? the main reason soon becomes apparent if we consider the nature of the country and the material conditions of its existence. chaldæa was neither extensive enough nor sufficiently populous to afford a solid basis for the ambition of her princes. since nearly every man capable of bearing arms was enrolled in the army, the chaktean kings had no difficulty in raising, at a moment�s notice, a force which could be employed to repel an invasion, or make a sudden attack on some distant territory; it was in schemes which required prolonged and sustained effort that they felt the drawbacks of their position. in that age of hand-to-hand combats, the mortality in battle was very high, forced marches through forests and across mountains entailed a heavy loss of men, and three or four consecutive campaigns against a stubborn foe soon reduced an army to a condition of dangerous weakness. recruits might be obtained to fill the earlier vacancies in the ranks, but they soon grew fewer and fewer if time was not given for recovery after the opening victories in the struggle, and the supply eventually ceased if operations were carried on beyond a certain period. the total duration of the dynasty was, according to the royal canon, 72 years 6 months. peiser has shown that this is a mistake, and he proposes to correct it to 132 years 6 months, and this is accepted by most assyri-ologists. a reign which began brilliantly often came to an impotent conclusion, owing to the king having failed to economise his reserves; and the generations which followed, compelled to adopt a strictly defensive attitude, vegetated in a sort of anaemic condition, until the birth-rate had brought the proportion of males up to a figure sufficiently high to provide the material for a fresh army. when nebuchadrezzar made war upon assurîshishî, he was still weak from the losses he had incurred during the campaign against elam, and could not conduct his attack with the same vigour as had gained him victory on the banks of the ulaî; in the first year he only secured a few indecisive advantages, and in the second he succumbed. merodach-nadin-akhi was suffering from the reverses sustained by his predecessors when tiglath-pileser provoked him to war, and though he succeeded in giving a good account of an adversary who was himself exhausted by dearly bought successes, he left to his descendants a kingdom which had been drained of its last drop of blood. the same reason which explains the decadence of babylon shows us the cause of the periodic eclipses undergone by assyria after each outburst of her warlike spirit. she, too, had to pay the penalty of an ambition which was out of all proportion to her resources. the mighty deeds of shalmaneser and tukulti-ninip were, as a natural consequence, followed by a state of complete prostration under tukultiassurbel and assurnîrarî: the country was now forced to pay for the glories of assurîshishî and of tiglath-pileser by falling into an inglorious state of languor and depression. its kings, conscious that their rule must be necessarily precarious as long as they did not possess a larger stock of recruits to fall back on, set their wits to work to provide by various methods a more adequate reserve. while on one hand they installed native assyrians in the more suitable towns of conquered countries, on the other they imported whole hordes of alien prisoners chosen for their strength and courage, and settled them down in districts by the banks of the tigris and the zab. we do not know what eammânirâni and shalmaneser may have done in this way, but tiglath-pileser undoubtedly introduced thousands of the mushku, the urumseans, the people of kummukh and naîri, and his example was followed by all those of his successors whose history has come down to us. one might have expected that such an invasion of foreigners, still smarting under the sense of defeat, might have brought with it an element of discontent or rebellion; far from it, they accepted their exile as a judgment of the gods, which the gods alone had a right to reverse, and did their best to mitigate the hardness of their lot by rendering unhesitating obedience to their masters. their grandchildren, born in the midst of assyrians, became assyrians themselves, and if they did not entirely divest themselves of every trace of their origin, at any rate became so closely identified with the country of their adoption, that it was difficult to distinguish them from the native race. the assyrians who were sent out to colonise recently acquired provinces were at times exposed to serious risks. now and then, instead of absorbing the natives among whom they lived, they were absorbed by them, which meant a loss of so much fighting strength to the mother country; even under the most favourable conditions a considerable time must have passed before they could succeed in assimilating to themselves the races amongst whom they lived. at last, however, a day would dawn when the process of incorporation was accomplished, and assyria, having increased her area and resources twofold, found herself ready to endure to the end the strain of conquest. in the interval, she suffered from a scarcity of fighting men, due to the losses incurred in her victories, and must have congratulated herself that her traditional foe was not in a position to take advantage of this fact. the first wave of the assyrian invasion had barely touched syria; it had swept hurriedly over the regions in the north, and then flowed southwards to return no more, so that the northern races were able to resume the wonted tenor of their lives. for centuries after this their condition underwent no change; there was the same repetition of dissension and intrigue, the same endless succession of alliances and battles without any signal advantage on either side. the hittites still held northern syria: carchemish was their capital, and more than one town in its vicinity preserved the tradition of their dress, their language, their arts, and their culture in full vigour. the greek legends tell us vaguely of some sort of cilician empire which is said to have brought the eastern and central provinces of asia minor into subjection about ten centuries before our era.* * solinus, relying on the indirect evidence of hecatseus of miletus, tells us that cilicia extended not only to the countries afterwards known as cataonia, commagene, and syria, but also included lydia, media, armenia, pamphylia, and cappadocia; the conquests of the assyrian kings must have greatly reduced its area. i am of opinion that the tradition preserved by hecatous referred both to the kingdom of sapalulu and to that of the monarchs of this second epoch. is there any serious foundation for such a belief, and must we assume that there existed at this time and in this part of the world a kingdom similar to that of sapalulu? assyria was recruiting its forces, chaldæa was kept inactive by its helplessness, egypt slumbered by the banks of its river, there was no actor of the first rank to fill the stage; now was the opportunity for a second-rate performer to come on the scene and play such a part as his abilities permitted. the cilician conquest, if this be indeed the date at which it took place, had the boards to itself for a hundred years after the defeat of assurirba. the time was too short to admit of its striking deep root in the country. its leaders and men were, moreover, closely related to the syrian hittites; the language they spoke was, if not precisely the hittite, at any rate a dialect of it; their customs were similar, if, perhaps, somewhat less refined, as is often the case with mountain races, when compared with the peoples of the plain. we are tempted to conclude that some of the monuments found south of the taurus were their handiwork, or, at any rate, date from their time. for instance, the ruined palace at sinjirli, the lower portions of which are ornamented with pictures similar to those at pteria, representing processions of animals, some real, others fantastic, men armed with lances or bending the bow, and processions of priests or officials. then there is the great lion at marash, which stands erect, with menacing head, its snarling lips exposing the teeth; its body is seamed with the long lines of an inscription in the asiatic character, in imitation of those with which the bulls in the assyrian palaces are covered. these cilicians gave an impulse to the civilization of the khâti which they sorely needed, for the semitic races, whom they had kept in subjection for centuries, now pressed them hard on all the territory over which they had formerly reigned, and were striving to drive them back into the hills. [illustration: 248.jpg lion at makash] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the cast shown at the paris exhibition of 1889. the aramæans in particular gave them a great deal of trouble. the states on the banks of the euphrates had found them awkward neighbours; was this the moment chosen by the pukudu, the eutu, the gambulu, and a dozen other aramaean tribes, for a stealthy march across the frontier of elam, between durilu and the coast? the tribes from which, soon after, the kaldi nation was formed, were marauding round eridu, uru, and larsa, and may have already begun to lay the foundations of their supremacy over babylon: it is, indeed, an open question whether those princes of the countries of the sea who succeeded the pashê dynasty did not come from the stock of the kaldi aramaeans. while they were thus consolidating on the south-east, the bulk of the nation continued to ascend northwards, and rejoined its outposts in the central region of the euphrates, which extends from the tigris to the khabur, from the khabur to the balîkh and the apriê. they had already come into frequent conflict with most of the victorious assyrian kings, from eammânirâri down to tiglath-pileser; the weakness of assyria and chaldæa gave them their opportunity, and they took full advantage of it. they soon became masters of the whole of mesopotamia; a part of the table-land extending from carchemish to mount amanus fell into their hands, their activity was still greater in the basin of the orontes, and their advanced guard, coming into collision with the amorites near the sources of the litany, began gradually to drive farther and farther southwards all that remained of the races which had shown so bold a front to the egyptian troops. here was an almost entirely new element, gradually eliminating from the scene of the struggle other elements which had grown old through centuries of war, and while this transformation was taking place in northern and central, a similar revolution was effecting a no less surprising metamorphosis in southern syria. there, too, newer races had gradually come to displace the nations over which the dynasties of thûtmosis and ramses had once held sway. the hebrews on the east, the philistines and their allies on the south-west, were about to undertake the conquest of the kharu and its cities. as yet their strength was inadequate, their temperament undecided, their system of government imperfect; but they brought with them the quality of youth, and energies which, rightly guided, would assure the nation which first found out how to take advantage of them, supremacy over all its rivals, and the strength necessary for consolidating the whole country into a single kingdom. [illustration: 250.jpg tailpiece] chapter iii--the hebrews and the philistines--damascus _the israelites in the land of canaan: the judges--the philistines and the hebrew kingdom--saul, david, solomon, the defection of the ten tribes--the xxist egyptian dynasty--sheshonq or shishak damascus._ _the hebrews in the desert: their families, clans, and tribes--the amorites and the hebrews on the left bank of the jordan--the conquest of canaan and the native reaction against the hebrews--the judges, ehud, deborah, jerubbaal or gideon and the manassite supremacy; abimelech, jephihdh._ _the philistines, their political organisation, their army and fleet--judah, dan, and the story of samson--benjamin on the philistine frontier--eli and the ark of the covenant--the philistine dominion over israel; samuel, saul, the benjamite monarchy--david, his retreat to the desert of judah and his sojourn at zilclag--the battle of gilboa and the death of saul--the struggle between ish-bosheth and david--david sole king, and the final defeat of the philistines--jerusalem becomes the capital; the removal of the ark--wars with the peoples of the east--absalom�s rebellion; the coronation of solomon._ _solomon�s government and his buildings--phoenician colonisation in spain: hiram i. and the enlargement of tyre--the voyages to ophir and tarshish--the palace at jerusalem, the temple and its dedication: the priesthood and prophets--the death of solomon; the schism of the ten tribes and the division of the hebrew kingdom._ _the xxist egyptian dynasty: the theban high priests and the tanite pharaohs--the libyan mercenaries and their predominance in the state: the origin of the xxiind (bubastite) dynasty--sheshonq i. as king and his son aûpûti as high priest of amon; the hiding-place at deîr el-baharî--sheshonq�s expedition against jerusalem._ _the two hebrew �kingdoms�; the fidelity of judah to the descendants of solomon, and the repeated changes of dynasty in israel--asa and baasha--the kingdom of damascus and its origin--bezon, tabrimmon, benhadad i.--omri and the foundation of samaria: ahab and the tyrian alliance--the successors of hiram i. at tyre: ithobaal i.--the prophets, their struggle against phonician idolatry, the story of elijah--the wars between israel and damascus up to the time of the assyrian invasion._ [illustration: 253.jpg page image] chapter iii--the hebrews and the philistines--damascus _the israelites in the land of canaan: the judges--the philistines and the hebrew kingdom--saul, david, solomon, the defection of the ten tribes--the xxist egyptian dynasty--sheshonq--damascus._ after reaching kadesh-barnea, the israelites in their wanderings had come into contact with various bedawin tribes--kenites, jerahmelites, edomites, and midianites, with whom they had in turn fought or allied themselves, according to the exigencies of their pastoral life. continual skirmishes had taught them the art of war, their numbers had rapidly increased, and with this increase came a consciousness of their own strength, so that, after a lapse of two or three generations, they may be said to have constituted a considerable nation. its component elements were not, however, firmly welded together; they consisted of an indefinite number of clans, which were again subdivided into several families. each of these families had its chief or �ruler,� to whom it rendered absolute obedience, while the united chiefs formed an assembly of elders who administered justice when required, and settled any differences which arose among their respective followers. the clans in their turn were grouped into tribes,* according to certain affinities which they mutually recognised, or which may have been fostered by daily intercourse on a common soil, but the ties which bound them together at this period were of the most slender character. it needed some special event, such as a projected migration in search of fresh pasturage, or an expedition against a turbulent neighbour, or a threatened invasion by some stranger, to rouse the whole tribe to corporate action; at such times they would elect a �nasi,� or ruler, the duration of whose functions ceased with the emergency which had called him into office.** * the tribe was designated by two words signifying �staff� or �branch.� ** the word _nasi,_ first applied to the chiefs of the tribes (_exod._ xxxiv. 31; _lev_. iv. 22; _numb_. ii. 3), became, after the captivity, the title of the chiefs of israel, who could not be called _kings_ owing to the foreign suzerainty (_esdras_ i. 8). both clans and tribes were designated by the name of some ancestor from whom they claimed to be descended, and who appears in some cases to have been a god for whom they had a special devotion; some writers have believed that this was also the origin of the names given to several of the tribes, such as gad, �good fortune,� or of the totems of the hyena and the dog, in arabic and hebrew, �simeon� and �caleb.� * gad, simeon, and caleb were severally the ancestors of the families who ranged themselves under their respective names, and the eponymous heroes of all the tribes were held to have been brethren, sons of one father, and under the protection of one god. he was known as the jahveh with whom abraham of old had made a solemn covenant; his dwelling-place was mount sinai or mount seîr, and he revealed himself in the storm;** his voice was as the thunder �which shaketh the wilderness,� his breath was as �a consuming fire,� and he was decked with light �as with a garment.� when his anger was aroused, he withheld the dew and rain from watering the earth; but when his wrath was appeased, the heavens again poured their fruitful showers upon the fields.*** * simeon is derived by some from a word which at times denotes a hyena, at others a cross between a dog and a hyena, according to arab lexicography. with regard to caleb, renan prefers a different interpretation; it is supposed to be a shortened form of kalbel, and �dog of el� is a strong expression to denote the devotion of a tribe to its patron god. ** cf. the graphic description of the signs which accompanied the manifestations of jahveh in the _song of deborah (judges_ v. 4, 5), and also in 1 _kings_ xix. 11-13. *** see 1 _kings_ xvii., xviii., where the conflict between elijah and the prophets of baal for the obtaining of rain is described. he is described as being a �jealous god,� brooking no rival, and �visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.� we hear of his having been adored under the figure of a �calf,� * and of his spirit inspiring his prophets, as well as of the anointed stones which were dedicated in his honour. the common ancestor of the nation was acknowledged to have been jacob, who, by his wrestling with god, had obtained the name of israel; the people were divided theoretically into as many tribes as he had sons, but the number twelve to which they were limited does not entirely correspond with all that we know up to the present time of these �children of israel.� some of the tribes appear never to have had any political existence, as for example that of levi,** or they were merged at an early date into some fellow-tribe, as in the case of reuben with gad;*** others, such as ephraim, manasseh, benjamin, and judah, apparently did not attain their normal development until a much later date. * the most common of these animal forms was that of a calf or bull (exod. xxxii.; deut. ix. 21; and in the kingly period, 1 kings xii. 28-30; 2 kings x. 29); we are not told the form of the image of micah the ephraimite (judges xviii. 14, 17, 18, 20, 30, 31). ** levi appears to have suffered dispersion after the events of which there are two separate accounts combined in gen. xxxiv. in conjunction with simeon, he appears to have revenged the violation of his sister dinah by a massacre of the shechemites, and the dispersion alluded to in jacob�s blessing (gen. xlix. 5-7) is mentioned as consequent on this act of barbarism. *** in the ixth century mesha of moab does not mention the reubenites, and speaks of the gadites only as inhabiting the territory formerly occupied by them. tradition attributed the misfortunes of the tribe to the crime of its chief in his seduction of bilhah, his father�s concubine (gen. xlix. 3, 4; cf. xxxv. 22) the jewish chroniclers attempted by various combinations to prove that the sacred number of tribes was the correct one. at times they included levi in the list, in which case joseph was reckoned as one;* while on other occasions levi or simeon was omitted, when for joseph would be substituted his two sons ephraim and manasseh.** in addition to this, the tribes were very unequal in size: ephraim, gad, and manasseh comprised many powerful and wealthy families; dan, on the contrary, contained so few, that it was sometimes reckoned as a mere clan. * as, for instance, in jacob�s blessing (gen. xlix. 5-7) and in the enumeration of the patriarch�s sons at the time of his journey to egypt (gen. xlvi. 9-26). ** numb. i. 20, et seq., where the descendants of levi are not included among the twelve, and deut. xxxiii. 6-25, where simeon is omitted from among the tribes blessed by moses before his death. the tribal organisation had not reached its full development at the time of the sojourn in the desert. the tribes of joseph and judah, who subsequently played such important parts, were at that period not held in any particular estimation; reuben, on the other hand, exercised a sort of right of priority over the rest.* * this conclusion is drawn from the position of eldest son given to him in all the genealogies enumerating the children of jacob. stade, on the contrary, is inclined to believe that this place of honour was granted to him on account of the smallness of his family, to prevent any jealousy arising between the more powerful tribes, such as ephraim and judah (_ges. des vollces isr._, vol. i. pp. 151, 152). the territory which they occupied soon became insufficient to support their numbers, and they sought to exchange it for a wider area, such as was offered by the neighbouring provinces of southern syria. pharaoh at this time exercised no authority over this region, and they were, therefore, no longer in fear of opposition from his troops; the latter had been recalled to egypt, and it is doubtful even whether he retained possession of the shephelah by means of his zakkala and philistine colonies; the hebrews, at any rate, had nothing to fear from him so long as they respected gaza and ascalon. they began by attempting to possess themselves of the provinces around hebron, in the direction of the dead sea, and we read that, before entering them, they sent out spies to reconnoitre and report on the country.* its population had undergone considerable modifications since the israelites had quitted goshen. the amorites, who had seriously suffered from the incursions of asiatic hordes, and had been constantly harassed by the attacks of the aramæans, had abandoned the positions they had formerly occupied on the banks of the orontes and the litany, and had moved southwards, driving the canaanites before them; their advance was accelerated as the resistance opposed to their hordes became lessened under the successors of ramses iii., until at length all opposition was withdrawn. they had possessed themselves of the regions about the lake of genesareth, the mountain district to the south of tabor, the middle valley of the jordan, and, pressing towards the territory east of that river, had attacked the cities scattered over the undulating table-land. this district had not been often subjected to incursions of egyptian troops, and yet its inhabitants had been more impressed by egyptian influence than many others. [illustration: 259.jpg the amorite astarte] drawn by paucher-gudin, from the squeezes and sketches published in the _zeitschrift ties palcistina-vereins_. whereas, in the north and west, cuneiform writing was almost entirely used, attempts had been made here to adapt the hieroglyphs to the native language. the only one of their monuments which has been preserved is a rudely carved bas-relief in black basalt, representing a two-horned astarte, before whom stands a king in adoration; the sovereign is ramses ii., and the inscriptions accompanying the figures contain a religious formula together with a name borrowed from one of the local dialects.* *this is the �stone of job� discovered by strahmacher. the inscription appears to give the name of a goddess, agana zaphon, the second part of which recalls the name of baal zephon. the amorites were everywhere victorious, but our information is confined to this bare fact; soon after their victory, however, we find the territory they had invaded divided into two kingdoms: in the north that of bashan, which comprised, besides the haurân, the plain watered by the yarrnuk; and to the south that of heshbon, containing the district lying around the arnon, and the jabbok to the east of the dead sea.* they seem to have made the same rapid progress in the country between the jordan and the mediterranean as elsewhere. they had subdued some of the small canaanite states, entered into friendly relation with others, and penetrated gradually as far south as the borders of sinai, while we find them establishing petty kings among the hill-country of shechem around hebron, on the confines of the negeb, and the shephelah.** when the hebrew tribes ventured to push forward in a direct line northwards, they came into collision with the advance posts of the amorite population, and suffered a severe defeat under the walls of hormah.*** the check thus received, however, did not discourage them. as a direct course was closed to them, they turned to the right, and followed, first the southern and then the eastern shores of the red sea, till they reached the frontier of gilead.**** * the extension of the amorite power in this direction is proved by the facts relating to the kingdoms of sihon and og gent. i. 4, ii. 24-37, iii. 1-1.7. ** for the amorite occupation of the negeb and the hill country of judah, cf. numb. xiii. 29; bent. i. 7, 19-46; josh. x. 5, 6, 12, xi. 3; for their presence in the shephelah, cf. judges i. 34-36. *** see the long account in numb, xiii., xiv., which terminates with the mention of the defeat of the israelites at hormah; and cf. bent. i. 19-46. **** the itinerary given in numb. xx. 22-29, xxxi., xxxiii. 37-49, and repeated in bent, ii., brings the israelites as far as ezion-geber, in such a manner as to avoid the midianites and the moabites. the friendly welcome accorded to them in the regions situated to the east of the dead sea, has been accounted for either by an alliance made with moab and ammon against their common enemy, the amorites, or by the fact that ammon and moab did not as yet occupy those regions; the inhabitants in that case would have been edomites and midianites, who were in continual warfare with each other. there again they were confronted by the amorites, but in lesser numbers, and not so securely entrenched within their fortresses as their fellow-countrymen in the negeb, so that the israelites were able to overthrow the kingdoms of heshbon and bashan.* * war against sihon, king of heshbon (numb. xxi. 21-31; beut. ii. 26-37), and against og, king of bashan (numb. xxi. 32-35; beut. iii. 1-13). [illustration: 261.jpg the valley of the jabbok, near to its confluence with the jordan] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 336 of the _palestine exploration fund._ gad received as its inheritance nearly the whole of the territory lying between the jabbok and the yarmuk, in the neighbourhood of the ancient native sanctuaries of penuel, mahanaim, and succoth, associated with the memory of jacob.* reuben settled in the vicinity, and both tribes remained there isolated from the rest. from this time forward they took but a slight interest in the affairs of their brethren: when the latter demanded their succour, �gilead abode beyond jordan,� and �by the watercourses of reuben there were great resolves at heart,� but without any consequent action.** it was not merely due to indifference on their part; their resources were fully taxed in defending themselves against the aramæans and bedawins, and from the attacks of moab and ammon. gad, continually threatened, struggled for centuries without being discouraged, but reuben lost heart,*** and soon declined in power, till at length he became merely a name in the memory of his brethren. * gad did not possess the districts between the jabbok and the arnon till the time of the early kings, and retained them only till about the reign of jehu, as we gather from the inscription of mesa. ** these are the very expressions used by the author of the _song of deborah_ in judges v. 16, 17. *** the recollection of these raids by reuben against the beduin of the syrian desert is traceable in 1 citron, v. 10, 18-22. two tribes having been thus provided for, the bulk of the israelites sought to cross the jordan without further delay, and establish themselves as best they might in the very heart of the canaanites. the sacred writings speak of their taking possession of the country by a methodic campaign, undertaken by command of and under the visible protection of jahveh* moses had led them from egypt to kadesh, and from kadesh to the land of gilead; he had seen the promised land from the summit of mount nebo, but he had not entered it, and after his death, joshua, son of nun, became their leader, brought them across jordan dryshod, not far from its mouth, and laid siege to jericho. * the history of the conquest is to be found in the _book of joshua._ the walls of the city fell of themselves at the blowing of the brazen trumpets,* and its capture entailed that of three neighbouring towns, aï, bethel, and shechem. shechem served as a rallying-place for the conquerors; joshua took up his residence there, and built on the summit of mount ebal an altar of stone, on which he engraved the principal tenets of the divine law.** * josh, i.-vi. ** josh, vii., viii. mount ebal is the present gebel sulemiyeh. [illustration: 263.jpg one of the mounds of âîn es-sultân, the ancient jericho] drawn by boudier, from a photograph brought back by lortet. the sudden intrusion of a new element naturally alarmed the worshippers of the surrounding local deities; they at once put a truce to their petty discords, and united in arms against the strangers. at the instigation of adoni-zedeck, king of jerusalem, the canaanites collected their forces in the south; but they were routed not far from gibeon, and their chiefs killed or mutilated.* the amorites in the north, who had assembled round jabin, king of hazor, met with no better success; they were defeated at the waters of merom, hazor was burnt, and galilee delivered to fire and sword.** * josh. x. the same war is given rather differently in judges i. 1-9, where the king is called adoni-bezek. ** josh. xi. as another jabin appears in the history of deborah, it has [illustration: 264.jpg the jordan in the neighbourhood of jericho] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lortet. the country having been thus to a certain extent cleared, joshua set about dividing the spoil, and assigned to each tribe his allotted portion of territory.* such, in its main outlines, is the account given by the hebrew chroniclers; but, if closely examined, it would appear that the israelites did not act throughout with that unity of purpose and energy which they [the hebrew chroniclers] were pleased to imagine. they did not gain possession of the land all at once, but established themselves in it gradually by detachments, some settling at the fords of jericho,** others more to the north, and in the central valley of the jordan as far up as she-chem.*** * the lot given to each tribe is described in josh, xiii. xxi. it has been maintained by some critics that there is a double rôle assigned to one and the same person, only that some maintain that the jabin of josh. xi. has been transferred to the time of the judges, while others make out that the jabin of deborah was carried back to the time of the conquest. ** renan thinks that the principal crossing must have taken place opposite jericho, as is apparent from the account in josh, ii., iii. *** carl niebuhr believes that he has discovered the exact spot at the ford of admah, near succoth. [illustration: 265.jpg one of the wells of beersheba] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lortet. the latter at once came into contact with a population having a higher civilization than themselves, and well equipped for a vigorous resistance; the walled towns which had defied the veterans of the pharaohs had not much to fear from the bands of undisciplined israelites wandering in their neighbourhood. properly speaking, there were no pitched battles between them, but rather a succession of raids or skirmishes, in which several citadels would successively fall into the hands of the invaders. many of these strongholds, harassed by repeated attacks, would prefer to come to terms with the enemy, and would cede or sell them some portion of their territory; others would open their gates freely to the strangers, and their inhabitants would ally themselves by intermarriage with the hebrews. judah and the remaining descendants of simeon and levi established themselves in the south; levi comprised but a small number of families, and made no important settlements; whereas judah took possession of nearly the whole of the mountain district separating the shephelah from the western shores of the dead sea, while simeon made its abode close by on the borders of the desert around the wells of beersheba.* * wellhausen has remarked that the lot of levi must not be separated from that of simeon, and, as the remnant of simeon allied themselves with judah, that of levi also must have shared the patrimony of judah. the descendants of rachel and her handmaid received as their inheritance the regions situated more to the centre of the country, the house of joseph taking the best domains for its branches of ephraim and manasseh. ephraim received some of the old canaanite sanctuaries, such as ramah, bethel, and shiloh, and it was at the latter spot that they deposited the ark of the covenant. manasseh settled to the north of ephraim, in the hills and valleys of the carmel group, and to benjamin were assigned the heights which overlook the plain of jericho. four of the less important tribes, issachar, asher, naphtali, and zebulon, ventured as far north as the borders of tyre and sidon, behind the phoenician littoral, but were prevented by the canaanites and amorites from spreading over the plain, and had to confine themselves to the mountains. all the fortresses commanding the passes of tabor and carmel, megiddo, taanach, ibleam, jezreel, endor, and bethshan remained inviolate, and formed as it were an impassable barrier-line between the hebrews of galilee and their brethren of ephraim. the danites were long before they found a resting-place; they attempted to insert themselves to the north of judah, between ajalon and joppa, but were so harassed by the amorites, that they had to content themselves with the precarious tenure of a few towns such as zora, shaalbîn, and eshdol. the foreign peoples of the shephelah and the canaanite cities almost all preserved their autonomy; the israelites had no chance against them wherever they had sufficient space to put into the field large bodies of infantry or to use their iron-bound chariots. finding it therefore impossible to overcome them, the tribes were forced to remain cut off from each other in three isolated groups of unequal extent which they were powerless to connect: in the centre were joseph, benjamin, and dan; in the south, judah, levi, and simeon; while issachar, asher, naphtali, and zebulon lay to the north. the period following the occupation of canaan constituted the heroic age of the hebrews. the sacred writings agree in showing that the ties which bound the twelve tribes together were speedily dissolved, while their fidelity and obedience to god were relaxed with the growth of the young generations to whom moses or joshua were merely names. the conquerors �dwelt among the canaanites: the hittite, and the amorite, and the perizzite, and the hivite, and the jebusite: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. and the children of israel did that which was evil in the sight of the lord their god, and served the baalim and the asheroth.� * [illustration: 268.jpg map of palestine in time of the judges] when they had once abandoned their ancient faith, political unity was not long preserved. war broke out between one tribe and another; the stronger allowed the weaker to be oppressed by the heathen, and were themselves often powerless to retain their independence. in spite of the thousands of men among them, all able to bear arms, they fell an easy prey to the first comer; the amorites, the ammonites, the moabites, and the philistines, all oppressed them in turn, and repaid with usury the ills which joshua had inflicted on the canaanites. �whithersoever they went out, the hand of the lord was against them for evil, as the lord had spoken, and as the lord had sworn unto them: and they were sore distressed. and the lord raised up judges, which saved them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. and yet they hearkened not unto their judges, for they went a-whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves down unto them: they turned aside quickly out of the way wherein their fathers walked obeying the commandments of the lord; but they did not so. and when the lord raised them up judges, then the lord was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the lord because of their groaning by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. but it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their doings, nor from their stubborn way.� * the history of this period lacks the unity and precision with which we are at first tempted to credit it. * judges ii. 15-19. the israelites, when transplanted into the promised land, did not immediately lose the nomadic habits they had acquired in the desert. they retained the customs and prejudices they had inherited from their fathers, and for many years treated the peasantry, whose fields they had devastated, with the same disdain that the bedawin of our own day, living in the saddle, lance in hand, shows towards the fellahîn who till the soil and bend patiently over the plough. the clans, as of old, were impatient of all regular authority; each tribe tended towards an isolated autonomy, a state of affairs which merited reprisals from the natives and encouraged hatred of the intruders, and it was only when the canaanite oppression became unendurable that those who suffered most from it united themselves to make a common effort, and rallied for a moment round the chief who was ready to lead them. many of these liberators must have acquired an ephemeral popularity, and then have sunk into oblivion together with the two or three generations who had known them; those whose memory remained green among their kinsmen were known by posterity as the judges of israel.* * the word �judges,� which has been adopted to designate these rulers, is somewhat misleading, as it suggests the idea of an organized civil magistracy. the word �shophet,� the same that we meet with in classical times under the form _suffetes_, had indeed that sense, but its primary meaning denotes a man invested with an absolute authority, regular or otherwise; it would be better translated _chief, prince, captain_. these judges were not magistrates invested with official powers and approved by the whole nation, or rulers of a highly organised republic, chosen directly by god or by those inspired by him. they were merely local chiefs, heroes to their own immediate tribe, well known in their particular surroundings, but often despised by those only at a short distance from them. some of them have left only a name behind them, such as shamgar, ibzan, tola, elon, and abdon; indeed, some scholars have thrown doubts on the personality of a few of them, as, for instance, jair, whom they affirm to have personified a gileadite clan, and othnîel, who is said to represent one of the kenite families associated with the children of israel.* others, again, have come down to us through an atmosphere of popular tradition, the elements of which modern criticism has tried in vain to analyse. of such unsettled and turbulent times we cannot expect an uninterrupted history:** some salient episodes alone remain, spread over a period of nearly two centuries, and from these we can gather some idea of the progress made by the israelites, and observe their stages of transition from a cluster of semi-barbarous hordes to a settled nation ripe for monarchy. * the name tola occurs as that of one of the clans of issachar (gen. xlvi. 13; numb. xxvi. 23); elon was one of the clans of zebulon (gen. xlvi. 14; numb. xxvi. 26) ** renan, however, believes that the judges �formed an almost continuous line, and that there merely lacks a descent from father to son to make of them an actual dynasty.� the chronology of the _book of judges_ appears to cover more than four centuries, from othnîel to samson, but this computation cannot be relied on, as �forty years� represents an indefinite space of time. we must probably limit this early period of hebrew history to about a century and a half, from cir. 1200 to 1050 b.c. the first of these episodes deals merely with a part, and that the least important, of the tribes settled in central canaan.* the destruction of the amorite kingdoms of heshbon and bashan had been as profitable to the kinsmen of the israelites, ammon and moab, as it had been to the israelites themselves. * the episode of othnîel and cushan-rishathaim, placed at the beginning of the history of this period (judges iii. 8 11), is, by general consent, regarded as resting on a worthless tradition. the moabites had followed in the wake of the hebrews through all the surrounding regions of the dead sea; they had pushed on from the banks of the arnon to those of the jabbok, and at the time of the judges were no longer content with harassing merely reuben and gad. [illustration: 272.jpg moabite warrior] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the louvre. they were a fine race of warlike, well-armed beda-wins. jericho had fallen into their hands, and their king eglon had successfully scoured the entire hill-country of ephraim,* so that those who wished to escape being pillaged had to safeguard themselves by the payment of an annual tribute. * the text seems to infer (judges iii. 13-15) that, after having taken the oily of palm trees, i.e. jericho (deut. xxxiv. 3; 2 ghron. xxviii. 15), eglon had made it his residence, which makes the story incomprehensible from a geographical point of view. but all difficulties would disappear if we agreed to admit that in ver. 15 the name of the capital of eglon has dropped out. ehud the left-handed concealed under his garments a keen dagger, and joined himself to the benjamite deputies who were to carry their dues to the moabite sovereign. the money having been paid, the deputies turned homewards, but when they reached the cromlech of gilgal,* and were safe beyond the reach of the enemy, ehud retraced his steps, and presenting himself before the palace of eglon in the attitude of a prophet, announced that he had a secret errand to the king, who thereupon commanded silence, and ordered his servants to leave him with the divine messenger in his summer parlour. * the cromlech at gilgal was composed of twelve stones, which, we are told, were erected by joshua as a remembrance of the crossing of the jordan (josh. iv. 19-24). �and ehud said, i have a message from god unto thee. and he arose out of his seat. and ehud put forth his left hand, and took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the sword out of his belly; and it came out behind.� then ehud locked the doors and escaped. �now when he was gone out, his servants came; and they saw, and, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked; and they said, surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber.� but by the time they had forced an entrance, ehud had reached gilgal and was in safety. he at once assembled the clans of benjamin, occupied the fords of the jordan, massacred the bands of moabites scattered over the plain of jericho, and blocked the routes by which the invaders attempted to reach the hill-country of ephraim. almost at the same time the tribes in galilee had a narrow escape from a still more formidable enemy.* they had for some time been under the amorite yoke, and the sacred writings represent them at this juncture as oppressed either by sisera of harosheth-ha-goyîm or by a second jabin, who was able to bring nine hundred chariots of iron into the field.** at length the prophetess deborah of issachar sent to barak of kadesh a command to assemble his people, together with those of zebulon, in the name of the lord;*** she herself led the contingents of issachar, ephraim, and machir to meet him at the foot of tabor, where the united host is stated to have comprised forty thousand men. sisera,**** who commanded the canaanite force, attacked the israelite army between taanach and megiddo in that plain of kishon which had often served as a battle-field during the egyptian campaigns. * the text tells us that, after the time of ehud, the land had rest eighty years (judges iii. 30). this, again, is one of those numbers which represent an indefinite space of time. ** it has been maintained that two versions are here blended together in the text, one in which the principal part is played by sisera, the other in which it is attributed to jabin. the episode of deborah and barak (judges iv., v.) comprises a narrative in prose (chap, iv.), and the song (chap, v.) attributed to deborah. the prose account probably is derived from the song. the differences in the two accounts may be explained as having arisen partly from an imperfect understanding of the poetic text, and partly from one having come down from some other source. *** some critics suppose that the prose narrative (judges iv. 5) has confounded the prophetess deborah, wife of lapidoth, with deborah, nurse of rachel, who was buried near bethel, under the �oak of weeping� (gen. xxxv. 8), and consequently place it between rama and bethel, in the hill country of ephraim. **** in the prose narrative (judges iv. 2-7) sisera is stated to have been the general of jabin: there is nothing incompatible in this statement with the royal dignity elsewhere attributed to sisera. harosheth-ha-goyîm has been identified with the present village of el-haretîyeh, on the right bank of the kishon. it would appear that heavy rains had swelled the streams, and thus prevented the chariots from rendering their expected service in the engagement; at all events, the amorites were routed, and sisera escaped with the survivors towards hazor. [illustration: 275.jpg tell] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lortet. the people of meroz facilitated his retreat, but a kenite named jael, the wife of heber, traitorously killed him with a blow from a hammer while he was in the act of drinking.* * meroz is the present marus, between the lake of huleh and safed. i have followed the account given in the song (judges v. 24-27). according to the prose version (iv. 17-22), jael slew sisera while he was asleep with a tent-pin, which she drove into his temple. [the text of judges v. 24-27 does not seem to warrant the view that he was slain �in the act of drinking,� nor does it seem to conflict with judges iv. 11. -tr.] this exploit was commemorated in a song, the composition of which is attributed to deborah and barak: �for that the leaders took the lead in israel, for that the people offered themselves willingly, bless ye the lord. hear, o ye kings, give ear, o ye princes; i, even i, will sing unto the lord; i will sing praise to the lord, the god of israel.� * the poet then dwells on the sufferings of the people, but tells how deborah and barak were raised up, and enumerates the tribes who took part in the conflict as well as those who turned a deaf ear to the appeal. �then came down a remnant of the nobles and the people.... out of ephraim came down they whose root is in amalek:--out of machir came down governors,--and out of zebulon they that handle the marshal�s staff.--and the princes of issachar were with deborah--as was issachar so was barak,--into the valley they rushed forth at his feet.**--by the watercourses of reuben--there were great resolves of heart.--why satest thou among the sheepfolds,--to hear the pipings for the flocks?--at the watercourses of reuben--there were great searchings of heart--gilead abode beyond jordan:--and dan, why did he remain in ships?--asher sat still at the haven of the sea--and abode by his creeks.--zebulon was a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death,--and naphtali upon the high places of the field.--the kings came and fought;--then fought the kings of canaan.--in taanach by the waters of megiddo:--they took no gain of money.--they fought from heaven,--the stars in their courses fought against sisera.--the river of kishon swept them away,--that ancient river, the river kishon.--o my soul, march on with strength.--then did the horsehoofs stamp--by reason of the pransings, the pransings of their strong ones.� * judges v. 2, 3 (r.v.). ** the text of the song (judges v. 14) contains an allusion to benjamin, which is considered by many critics to be an interpolation. it gives a mistaken reading, �_issachar_ with barak;� issachar having been already mentioned with deborah, probably zébulon should be inserted in the text. sisera flies, and the poet follows him in fancy, as if he feared to see him escape from vengeance. he curses the people of meroz in passing, �because they came not to the help of the lord.� he addresses jael and blesses her, describing the manner in which the chief fell at her feet, and then proceeds to show how, at the very time of sisera�s death, his people were awaiting the messenger who should bring the news of his victory; �through the window she looked forth and cried--the mother of sisera cried through the lattice--�why is his chariot so long in coming?--why tarry the wheels of his chariot?�--her wise ladies answered her,--yea, she returned answer to herself,--�have they not found, have they not divided the spoil?--a damsel, two damsels to every man;--to sisera a spoil of divers colours,--a spoil of divers colours of embroidery on both sides, on the necks of the spoil?--so let all thine enemies perish, o lord:--but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.�� it was the first time, as far as we know, that several of the israelite tribes combined together for common action after their sojourn in the desert of kadesh-barnea, and the success which followed from their united efforts ought, one would think, to have encouraged them to maintain such a union, but it fell out otherwise; the desire for freedom of action and independence was too strong among them to permit of the continuance of the coalition. [illustration: 278.jpg mount tabor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. c. alluaud of limoges. manasseh, restricted in its development by the neighbouring canaanite tribes, was forced to seek a more congenial neighbourhood to the east of the jordan--not close to gad, in the land of gilead, but to the north of the yarmuk and its northern affluents in the vast region extending to the mountains of the haurân. the families of machir and jair migrated one after the other to the east of the lake of gennesaret, while that of nobah proceeded as far as the brook of kanah, and thus formed in this direction the extreme outpost of the children of israel: these families did not form themselves into new tribes, for they were mindful of their affiliation to manasseh, and continued beyond the river to regard themselves still as his children.* the prosperity of ephraim and manasseh, and the daring nature of their exploits, could not fail to draw upon them the antagonism and jealousy of the people on their borders. the midianites were accustomed almost every year to pass through the region beyond the jordan which the house of joseph had recently colonised. assembling in the springtime at the junction of the yarmuk with the jordan, they crossed the latter river, and, spreading over the plains of mount tabor, destroyed the growing crops, raided the villages, and pushed, sometimes, their skirmishing parties over hill and dale as far as gaza.** * manasseh was said to have been established beyond the jordan at the time that gad and reuben were in possession of the land of gilead (numb, xxxii. 33, 39-42, xxxiv. 14, 15; dent. iii. 13-15; josh. xiii. 8, 29-32, xxii.). earlier traditions placed this event in the period which followed the conquest of canaan by joshua. it is not certain that all the families which constituted the half-tribe of manasseh took their origin from manasseh: one of them, for example, that of jair, was regarded as having originated partly from judah (1 chron. ii. 21-24). ** judges vi. 2-6. the inference that they dare not beat wheat in the open follows from ver. 11, where it is said that �gideon was beating out wheat in his winepress to hide it from the midianites.� a perpetual terror reigned wherever they were accustomed to pass*: no one dared beat out wheat or barley in the open air, or lead his herds to pasture far from his home, except under dire necessity; and even on such occasions the inhabitants would, on the slightest alarm, abandon their possessions to take refuge in caves or in strongholds on the mountains.1 during one of these incursions two of their sheikhs encountered some men of noble mien in the vicinity of tabor, and massacred them without compunction.** the latter were people of ophrah,*** brethren of a certain jerubbaal (gideon) who was head of the powerful family of abiezer.**** * the history of the midianite oppression (judges vi.-viii.) seems to be from two different sources; the second (judges viii. 4-21), which is also the shortest, is considered by some to represent the more ancient tradition. the double name of the hero, gideon-jerubbaal, has led some to assign its elements respectively to gideon, judge of the western portion of manasseh, and jerubbaal, judge of the eastern manasseh, and to the consequent fusion of the two men in one. ** this is an assumption which follows reasonably from judges viii. 18, 19. *** the site of the ophrah of abiezer is not known for certain, but it would seem from the narrative that it was in the neighbourhood of shechem. **** the position of gideon-jerubbaal as head of the house of abiezer follows clearly from the narrative; if he is represented in the first part of the account as a man of humble origin (judges vi. 15, 16), it was to exalt the power of jahveh, who was accustomed to choose his instruments from amongst the lowly. the name jerubbaal (1 sam. xii. 11:2 sam. xi. 21, where the name is transformed into jerubbesheth, as ishbaal and meribbaal are into ishbosheth and mephibosheth respectively), in which �baal� seems to some not to represent the canaanite god, but the title lord as applied to jahveh, was supposed to mean �baal fights against him,� and was, therefore, offensive to the orthodox. kuenen thought it meant �lord, fight for him!� renan read it yarebaal, from the vulgate form jerobaal, and translated �he who fears baal.� gideon signifies �he who overthrows� in the battle. assembling all his people at the call of the trumpet, jerubbaal chose from among them three hundred of the strongest, with whom he came down unexpectedly upon the raiders, put them to flight in the plain of jezreel, and followed them beyond the jordan. having crossed the river, �faint and yet pursuing,� he approached the men of succoth, and asked them for bread for himself and his three hundred followers. their fear of the marauders, however, was so great that the people refused to give him any help, and he had no better success with the people of penuel whom he encountered a little further on. he did not stop to compel them to accede to his wishes, but swore to inflict an exemplary punishment upon them on his return. the midianites continued their retreat, in the mean time, �by the way of them that dwelt in tents on the east of nobah and jogbehah,� but jerubbaal came up with them near karkâr, and discomfited the host. he took vengeance upon the two peoples who had refused to give him bread, and having thus fulfilled his vow, he began to question his prisoners, the two chiefs: �what manner of men were they whom ye slew at tabor?� �as thou art, so were they; each one resembled the children of a king.� �and he said, they were my brethren, the sons of my mother: as the lord liveth, if ye had saved them alive, i would not slay you. and he said unto jether his firstborn, up, and slay them. but the youth drew not his sword: for he feared, because he was yet a youth.� true bedawins as they were, the chiefs� pride revolted at the idea of their being handed over for execution to a child, and they cried to jerubbaal: �rise thou, and fall upon us: for as the man is, so is his strength.� from this victory rose the first monarchy among the israelites. the midianites, owing to their marauding habits and the amount of tribute which they were accustomed to secure for escorting caravans, were possessed of a considerable quantity of gold, which they lavished on the decoration of their persons: their chiefs were clad in purple mantles, their warriors were loaded with necklaces, bracelets, rings, and ear-rings, and their camels also were not behind their masters in the brilliance of their caparison. the booty which gideon secured was, therefore, considerable, and, as we learn from the narrative, excited the envy of the ephraimites, who said: �why hast thou served us thus, that thou calledst us not, when thou wentest to fight with midian?� * * judges viii. 1-3. the spoil from the golden ear-rings alone amounted to one thousand seven hundred shekels, as we learn from the narrative, and this treasure in the hands of jerubbaal was not left unemployed, but was made, doubtless, to contribute something to the prestige he had already acquired: the men of israel, whom he had just saved from their foes, expressed their gratitude by offering the crown to him and his successors. the mode of life of the hebrews had been much changed after they had taken up their abode in the mountains of canaan. the tent had given place to the house, and, like their canaanite neighbours, they had given themselves up to agricultural pursuits. this change of habits, in bringing about a greater abundance of the necessaries of life than they had been accustomed to, had begotten aspirations which threw into relief the inadequacy of the social organisation, and of the form of government with which they had previously been content. in the case of a horde of nomads, defeat or exile would be of little moment. should they be obliged by a turn in their affairs to leave their usual haunts, a few days or often a few hours would suffice to enable them to collect their effects together, and set out without trouble, and almost without regret, in search of a new and more favoured home. but with a cultivator of the ground the case would be different: the farm, clearings, and homestead upon which he had spent such arduous and continued labour; the olive trees and vines which had supplied him with oil and wine--everything, in fact, upon which he depended for a livelihood, or which was dependent upon him, would bind him to the soil, and expose his property to disasters likely to be as keenly felt as wounds inflicted on his person. he would feel the need, therefore, of laws to secure to him in time of peace the quiet possession of his wealth, of an army to protect it in time of war, and of a ruler to cause, on the one hand, the laws to be respected, and to become the leader, on the other, of the military forces. jerubbaal is said to have, in the first instance, refused the crown, but everything goes to prove that he afterwards virtually accepted it. he became, it is true, only a petty king, whose sovereignty was limited to manasseh, a part of ephraim, and a few towns, such as succoth and penuel, beyond the jordan. the canaanite city of shechem also paid him homage. like all great chiefs, he had also numerous wives, and he recognised as the national deity the god to whom he owed his victories. out of the spoil taken from the midianites he formed and set up at ophrah an ephod, which became, as we learn, �a snare unto him and unto his house,� but he had also erected under a terebinth tree a stone altar to jahveh-shalom (�jehovah is peace�).* this sanctuary, with its altar and ephod, soon acquired great celebrity, and centuries after its foundation it was the object of many pilgrimages from a distance. jerubbaal was the father by his israelite wives of seventy children, and, by a canaanite woman whom he had taken as a concubine at shechem, of one son, called abimelech.** * the _book of judges_ separates the altar from the ephod, placing the erection of the former at the time of the vocation of gideon (vi. 11-31) and that of the ephod after the victory (viii. 24-27). the sanctuary of ophrah was possibly in existence before the time of jerubbaal, and the sanctity of the place may have determined his selection of the spot for placing the altar and ephod there. ** judges viii. 30, 31. the succession to the throne would naturally have fallen to one of the seventy, but before this could be arranged, abimelech �went to shechem unto his mother�s brethren, and spake with them, and with all the family of the house of his mother�s father, saying, speak, i pray you, in the ears of all the men of shechem, whether is better for you, that all the sons of jerubbaal, which are threescore and ten persons, rule over you, or that one rule over you? remember also that i am your bone and your flesh.� this advice was well received; it flattered the vanity of the people to think that the new king was to be one of themselves; �their hearts inclined to follow abimelech; for they said, he is our brother. and they gave him threescore and ten pieces of silver out of the house of baal-berith (the lord of the covenant), wherewith abimelech hired vain and light fellows, which followed him.... he slew his brethren the sons of jerubbaal, being threescore and ten persons, upon one stone.� the massacre having been effected, �all the men of shechem assembled themselves together, and all the house of millo,* and made abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar which was in shechem.� ** he dwelt at ophrah, in the residence, and near the sanctuary, of his father, and from thence governed the territories constituting the little kingdom of manasseh, levying tribute upon the vassal villages, and exacting probably tolls from caravans passing through his domain. * the word �millo� is a generic term, meaning citadel or stronghold of the city: there was a millo in every important town, jerusalem included. ** the �oak of the pillar� was a sacred tree overshadowing probably a _cippus_: it may have been the tree mentioned in gen. xxxv. 4, under which jacob buried the strange gods; or that referred to in josh. xxiv. 26, under which joshua set up a stone commemorative of the establishment of the law. jotham, the youngest son of gideon, escaped the massacre. as soon as he heard of the election of abimelech, he ascended mount gerizim, and gave out from there the fable of the trees, applying it to the circumstances of the time, and then fled. some critics think that this fable--which is confessedly old--was inserted in the text at a time when prophetical ideas prevailed and monarchy was not yet accepted. this condition of things lasted for three years, and then the shechemites, who had shown themselves so pleased at the idea of having �one of their brethren� as sovereign, found it irksome to pay the taxes levied upon them by him, as if they were in no way related to him. the presence among them of a certain zebul, the officer and representative of abimelech, restrained them at first from breaking out into rebellion, but they returned soon to their ancient predatory ways, and demanded ransom for the travellers they might capture even when the latter were in possession of the king�s safe conduct. this was not only an insult to their lord, but a serious blow to his treasury: the merchants who found themselves no longer protected by his guarantee employed elsewhere the sums which would have come into his hands. the king concealed his anger, however; he was not inclined to adopt premature measures, for the place was a strong one, and defeat would seriously weaken his prestige. the people of shechem, on their part, did not risk an open rupture for fear of the consequences. gaal, son of ebed,* a soldier of fortune and of israelitish blood, arrived upon the scene, attended by his followers: he managed to gain the confidence of the people of shechem, who celebrated under his protection the feast of the vintage. * the name ebed (�slave,� �servant�) is assumed to have been substituted in the massorotic text for the original name jobaal, because of the element baal in the latter word, which was regarded as that of the strange god, and would thus have the sacrilegious meaning �jahveh is baal.� the term of contempt, ebed, was, according to this view, thus used to replace it. on this occasion their merrymaking was disturbed by the presence among them of the officer charged with collecting the tithes, and gaal did not lose the opportunity of stimulating their ire by his ironical speeches: �who is abimelech, and who is shechem, that we should serve him? is not he the son of jerubbaal? and zebul his officer? serve ye the men of hamor the father of shechem: but why should we serve him? and would to god this people were under my hand! then would i remove abimelech. and he said to abimelech, increase thine army, and come out.� zebul promptly gave information of this to his master, and invited him to come by night and lie in ambush in the vicinity of the town, �that in the morning, as soon as the sun is up, thou shalt rise early, and set upon the city: and, behold, when he and the people that is with him come out against thee, thou mayest do to them as thou shalt find occasion.� it turned out as he foresaw; the inhabitants of shechem went out in order to take part in the gathering in of the vintage, while gaal posted his men at the entering in of the gate of the city. as he looked towards the hills he thought he saw an unusual movement among the trees, and, turning round, said to zebul, who was close by, �behold, there come people down from the tops of the mountains. and zebul said unto him, thou seest the shadow of the mountains as if they were men.� a moment after he looked in another direction, �and spake again and said, see, there come people down by the middle of the land, and one company cometh by the way of the terebinth of the augurs.� zebul, seeing the affair turn out so well, threw off the mask, and replied railingly, �where is now thy mouth, wherewith thou saidst, who is abimelech, that we should serve him? is not this the people that thou hast despised? go out, i pray, now, and fight with him.� the king of manasseh had no difficulty in defeating his adversary, but arresting the pursuit at the gates of the city, he withdrew to the neighbouring village of arumah.* * this is now el-ormeh, i.e.kharbet el-eurmah, to the south west of nablus. he trusted that the inhabitants, who had taken no part in the affair, would believe that his wrath had been appeased by the defeat of gaal; and so, in fact, it turned out: they dismissed their unfortunate champion, and on the morrow returned to their labours as if nothing had occurred. [illustration: 288.jpg mount gerizim, with a view of nablus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph reproduced by the duc de luynes. abimelech had arranged his abiezerites in three divisions: one of which made for the gates, while the other two fell upon the scattered labourers in the vineyards. abimelech then fought against the city and took it, but the chief citizens had taken refuge in �the hold of the house of el-berith.� �abimelech gat him up to mount zalmon, he and all the people that were with him; and abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it up, and laid it on his shoulder: and he said unto the people that were with him, what ye have seen me do, make haste, and do as i have done. and all the people likewise cut down every man his bough, and followed abimelech, and put them to the hold, and set the hold on fire upon them; so that all the men of the tower of shechem died also, about a thousand men and women.� [illustration: 289.jpg the town of ascalon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief in the ramesseum. this is a portion of the picture representing the capture of ascalon by ramses ii. this summary vengeance did not, however, prevent other rebellions. thebez imitated shechem, and came nigh suffering the same penalty.* the king besieged the city and took it, and was about to burn with fire the tower in which all the people of the city had taken refuge, when a woman threw a millstone down upon his head �and brake his skull.� * thebez, now tubas, the north-east of nablus. the narrative tells us that, feeling himself mortally wounded, he called his armour-bearer to him, and said, �draw thy sword, and kill me, that men say not of me, a woman slew him.� his monarchy ceased with him, and the ancient chronicler recognises in the catastrophe a just punishment for the atrocious crime he had committed in slaying his half-brothers, the seventy children of jerubbaal.* his fall may be regarded also as the natural issue of his peculiar position: the resources upon which he relied were inadequate to secure to him a supremacy in israel. manasseh, now deprived of a chief, and given up to internal dissensions, became still further enfeebled, and an easy prey to its rivals. the divine writings record in several places the success attained by the central tribes in their conflict with their enemies. they describe how a certain jephthah distinguished himself in freeing gilead from the ammonites.** * judges ix. 23, 24. �and god sent an evil spirit between abimelech and the men of shechem; and the men of shechem dealt treacherously with abimelech: that the violence done to the threescore and ten sons of jerubbaal might come, and that their blood might be laid upon abimelech their brother, which slew them, and upon the men of shechem, which strengthened his hands to slay his brethren.� ** the story of jephthah is contained in chaps, xi., xii. 1 7, of the _book of judges_. the passage (xi. 12-29) is regarded by some, owing to its faint echo of certain portions of numb, xx., xxi., to be an interpolation. jephthah is said to have had gilead for his father and a harlot for his mother. various views have been put forward as to the account of his victories over the midianites, some seeing in it, as well as in the origin of the four days�feast in honour of jephthah�s daughter, insertions of a later date. but his triumph led to the loss of his daughter, whom he sacrificed in order to fulfil a vow he had made to jahveh before the battle.* these were, however, comparatively unimportant episodes in the general history of the hebrew race. bedawins from the east, sheikhs of the midianites, moabites, and ammonites--all these marauding peoples of the frontier whose incursions are put on record--gave them continual trouble, and rendered their existence so miserable that they were unable to develop their institutions and attain the permanent freedom after which they aimed. but their real dangers--the risk of perishing altogether, or of falling back into a condition of servitude--did not arise from any of these quarters, but from the philistines. * there are two views as to the nature of the sacrifice of jephthah�s daughter. some think she was vowed to perpetual virginity, while others consider that she was actually sacrificed. by a decree of pharaoh, a new country had been assigned to the remnants of each of the maritime peoples: the towns nearest to egypt, lying between raphia and joppa, were given over to the philistines, and the forest region and the coast to the north of the philistines, as far as the phoenician stations of dor and carmel,* were appropriated to the zakkala. the latter was a military colony, and was chiefly distributed among the five fortresses which commanded the shephelah. * we are indebted to the _papyrus golenischeff_ for the mention of the position of the zakkala at the beginning of the xxist dynasty. [illustration: 292.jpg a zakkala] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a �squeeze.� gaza and ashdod were separated from the mediterranean by a line of sand-dunes, and had nothing in the nature of a sheltered port--nothing, in fact, but a �maiuma,� or open roadstead, with a few dwellings and storehouses arranged along the beach on which their boats were drawn up. ascalon was built on the sea, and its harbour, although well enough suited for the small craft of the ancients, could not have been entered by the most insignificant of our modern ships. the philistines had here their naval arsenal, where their fleets were fitted out for scouring the egyptian waters as a marine police, or for piratical expeditions on their own account, when the occasion served, along the coasts of phoenicia. ekron and gath kept watch over the eastern side of the plain at the points where it was most exposed to the attacks of the people of the hills--the canaanites in the first instance, and afterwards the hebrews. these foreign warriors soon changed their mode of life in contact with the indigenous inhabitants; daily intercourse, followed up by marriages with the daughters of the land, led to the substitution of the language, manners, and religion of the environing race for those of their mother country. the zakkala, who were not numerous, it is true, lost everything, even to their name, and it was all that the philistines could do to preserve their own. at the end of one or two generations, the �colts� of palestine could only speak the canaanite tongue, in which a few words of the old hellenic _patois_ still continued to survive. their gods were henceforward those of the towns in which they resided, such as marna and dagon and gaza,* dagon at ashdod,** baalzebub at ekron,*** and derketô in ascalon;**** and their mode of worship, with its mingled bloody and obscene rites, followed that of the country. * marna, �our lord,� is mentioned alongside baalzephon in a list of strange gods worshipped at memphis in the xixth dynasty. the worship of dagon at gaza is mentioned in the story of samson (judges xvi. 21-30). ** the temple and statue of dagon are mentioned in the account of the events following the taking of the ark in 1 sam. v. 1-7. it is, perhaps, to him that 1 chron. x. 10 refers, in relating how the philistines hung up saul�s arms in the house of their gods, although 1 sam. xxxi. 10 calls the place the �house of the ashtoreth.� *** baalzebub was the god of ekron (2 kings i. 2-6), and his name was doubtfully translated �lord of flies.� the discovery of the name of the town zebub on the tell el amarna tablets shows that it means the �baal of zebub.� zebub was situated in the philistine plains, not far from ekron. halévy thinks it may have been a suburb of that town. **** the worship of derketô or atergatis at ascalon is witnessed to by the classical writers. [illustration: 294.jpg a procession of philistine captives at medinet-habu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. two things belonging to their past history they still retained--a clear remembrance of their far-off origin, and that warlike temperament which had enabled them to fight their way through many obstacles from the shores of the ægean to the frontiers of egypt. they could recall their island of caphtor,* and their neighbours in their new home were accustomed to bestow upon them the designation of cretans, of which they themselves were not a little proud.** * jer. xlvii. 4 calls them �the remnant of the isle of caphtor;� amos (ix. 7) knew that the lord had brought �the philistines from caphtor;� and in dent. ii. 23 it is related how �the caphtorim which came forth out of caphtor destroyed the avvim, which dwelt in villages as far as gaza, and dwelt in their stead.� classical tradition falls in with the sacred record, and ascribes a cretan origin to the philistines; it is suggested, therefore, that in gen. x. 14 the names casluhim and caphtorim should be transposed, to bring the verse into harmony with history and other parts of scripture. ** in an episode in the life of david (1 sam. xxx. 14), there is mention of the �south of the cherethites,� which some have made to mean cretans--that is to say, the region to the south of the philistines, alongside the territory of judah, and to the �south of caleb.� ezelc. xx. 16 also mentions in juxtaposition with the philistines the cherethites, and �the remnant of the sea-coast,� as objects of god�s vengeance for the many evils they had inflicted on israel. by the cherethims here, and the cherethites in zoph. ii. 5, the cretans are by some thought to be meant, which would account for their association with the philistines. gaza enjoyed among them a kind of hegemony, alike on account of its strategic position and its favourable situation for commerce, but this supremacy was of very precarious character, and brought with it no right whatever to meddle in the internal affairs of other members of the confederacy. each of the latter had a chief of its own, a seren,* and the office of this chief was hereditary in one case at least--gath, for instance, where there existed a larger canaanite element than elsewhere, and was there identified with that of �melek,� ** or king. * the _sarnê plishtîm_ figure in the narrative of the last philistine campaign against saul (1 sam. xxix. 2-4, 7, 9). their number, five, is expressly mentioned in 1 sam. vi. 4, 16-18, as well as the names of the towns over which they ruled. ** achish was king of gath (1 sam. xxi. 10, 12, xxvii. 2), and probably maoch before him. the five sarnîm assembled in council to deliberate upon common interests, and to offer sacrifices in the name of the pentapolis. these chiefs were respectively free to make alliances, or to take the field on their own account, but in matters of common importance they acted together, and took their places each at the head of his own contingent.* their armies were made up of regiments of skilled archers and of pikemen, to whom were added a body of charioteers made up of the princes and the nobles of the nation. the armour for all alike was the coat of scale mail and the helmet of brass; their weapons consisted of the two-edged battle-axe, the bow, the lance, and a large and heavy sword of bronze or iron.** * achish, for example, king of gath, makes war alone against the pillaging tribes, owing to the intervention of david and his men, without being called to account by the other princes (1 sam. xxvii. 2-12, xxviii. 1, 2), but as soon as an affair of moment is in contemplation--such as the war against saul--they demand the dismissal of david, and achish is obliged to submit to his colleagues acting together (1 sam. xxix.). ** philistine archers are mentioned in the battle of gilboa (1 sam. xxxi. 3) as well as chariots (2 sam. i. 6). the horsemen mentioned in the same connexion are regarded by some critics as an interpolation, because they cannot bring themselves to think that the philistines had cavalry corps in the xth century b.c. the philistine arms are described at length in the duel between david and goliath (1 sam. xvii. 5 -7, 38, 39). they are in some respects like those of the homeric heroes. their war tactics were probably similar to those of the egyptians, who were unrivalled in military operations at this period throughout the whole east. under able leadership, and in positions favourable for the operations of their chariots, the philistines had nothing to fear from the forces which any of their foes could bring up against them. as to their maritime history, it is certain that in the earliest period, at least, of their sojourn in syria, as well as in that before their capture by ramses iii., they were successful in sea-fights, but the memory of only one of their expeditions has come down to us: a squadron of theirs having sailed forth from ascalon somewhere towards the end of the xiith dynasty,* succeeded in destroying the sidonian fleet, and pillaging sidon itself. * _justinus_, xviii. 3, § 5. the memory of this has been preserved, owing to the disputes about precedence which raged in the greek period between the phoenician towns. the destruction of sidon must have allowed tyre to develop and take the first place. [illustration: 297.jpg a philistine ship of war] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. but however vigorously they may have plied the occupation of corsairs at the outset of their career, there was, it would appear, a rapid falling off in their maritime prowess; it was on land, and as soldiers, that they displayed their bravery and gained their fame. their geographical position, indeed, on the direct and almost only route for caravans passing between asia and africa, must have contributed to their success. the number of such caravans was considerable, for although egypt had ceased to be a conquering nation on account of her feebleness at home, she was still one of the great centres of production, and the most important market of the east. a very great part of her trade with foreign countries was carried on through the mouths of the nile, and of this commerce the phoenicians had made themselves masters; the remainder followed the land-routes, and passed continually through the territory of the philistines. these people were in possession of the tract of land which lay between the mediterranean and the beginning of the southern desert, forming as it were a narrow passage, into which all the roads leading from the nile to the euphrates necessarily converged. the chief of these routes was that which crossed mount carmel, near megiddo, and passed up the valleys of the litâny and the orontes. this was met at intervals by other secondary roads, such as that which came from damascus by way of tabor and the plain of jezreel, or those which, starting out from the highland of gilead, led through the fords of the lower jordan to ekron and gath respectively. the philistines charged themselves, after the example and at the instigation of the egyptians, with the maintenance of the great trunk road which was in their hands, and also with securing safe transit along it, as far as they could post their troops, for those who confided themselves to their care. in exchange for these good offices they exacted the same tolls which had been levied by the canaanites before them. in their efforts to put down brigandage, they had been brought into contact with some of the hebrew clans after the latter had taken possession of canaan. judah, in its home among the mountains of the dead sea, had become acquainted with the diverse races which were found there, and consequently there had been frequent intermarriages between the hebrews and these peoples. some critics have argued from this that the chronicler had this fact in his mind when he assigned a canaanite wife, shuah, to the father of the tribe himself. he relates how judah, having separated from his brethren, �turned in to a certain adullamite, whose name was hiram,� and that here he became acquainted with shuah, by whom he had three sons. with tamar, the widow of the eldest of the latter, he had accidental intercourse, and two children, perez and zerah, the ancestors of numerous families, were born of that union.* * gen. xxxviii., where there is a detailed account of judah�s unions. edomites, arabs, and midianites were associated with this semi-canaanite stock--for example, kain, caleb, othniel, kenaz, shobal, ephah, and jerahmeel, but the kenites took the first place among them, and played an important part in the history of the conquest of canaan. it is related how one of their subdivisions, of which caleb was the eponymous hero, had driven from hebron the three sons of anak--sheshai, ahiman, and talmai--and had then promised his daughter achsah in marriage to him who should capture debir; this turned out to be his youngest brother othniel, who captured the city, and at the same time obtained a wife. hobab, another kenite, who is represented to have been the brother-in-law of moses, occupied a position to the south of arad, in idumsean territory.* these heterogeneous elements existed alongside each other for a long time without intermingling; they combined, however, now and again to act against a common foe, for we know that the people of judah aided the tribe of simeon in the reduction of the city of zephath;** but they followed an independent course for the most part, and their isolation prevented their obtaining, for a lengthened period, any extension of territory. * the father-in-law of moses is called jethro in exod. iii. 1, iv. 19, but raguel in exod. ii. 18-22. hobab is the son of raguel, numb. x. 29. ** judges i. 17, where zephath is the better reading, and not arad, as has been suggested. they failed, as at first, in their attempts to subjugate the province of arad, and in their efforts to capture the fortresses which guarded the caravan routes between ashdod and the mouth of the jordan. it is related, however, that they overthrew adoni-bezek, king of the jebusites, and that they had dealt with him as he was accustomed to deal with his prisoners. �and adoni-bezek said, threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as i have done, so god hath requited me.� although adoni-bezek had been overthrown, jerusalem still remained independent, as did also gibeon. beeroth, kirjath-jearim, ajalon, gezer, and the cities of the plain, for the israelites could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron, with which the hebrew foot-soldiers found it difficult to deal.* this independent and isolated group was not at first, however, a subject of anxiety to the masters of the coast, and there is but a bare reference to the exploits of a certain shamgar, son of anath, who �smote of the philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad.� ** * see josh. ix. 3-27 for an explanation of how these people were allowed afterwards to remain in a subordinate capacity among the children of israel. ** judges iii. 31; cf. also judges v. 6, in which shamgar is mentioned in the song of deborah. [illustration: 301.jpg tell es-safieh, the gath of the philistines] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 265 of the _palestine exploration fund._ these cities had also to reckon with ephraim, and the tribes which had thrown in their lot with her. dan had cast his eyes upon the northern districts of the shephelah--which were dependent upon ekron or gath--and also upon the semi-phoenician port of joppa; but these tribes did not succeed in taking possession of those districts, although they had harassed them from time to time by raids in which the children of israel did not always come off victorious. one of their chiefs--samson--had a great reputation among them for his bravery and bodily strength. but the details of his real prowess had been forgotten at an early period. the episodes which have been preserved deal with some of his exploits against the philistines, and there is a certain humour in the chronicler�s account of the weapons which he employed: �with the jawbone of an ass have i smitten a thousand men;� he burned up their harvest also by letting go three hundred foxes, with torches attached to their tails, among the standing corn of the philistines. various events in his career are subsequently narrated; such as his adventure in the house of the harlot at gaza, when he carried off the gate of the city and the gate-posts �to the top of the mountain that is before hebron.� by delilah�s treachery he was finally delivered over to his enemies, who, having put out his eyes, condemned him to grind in the prison-house. on the occasion of a great festival in honour of dagon, he was brought into the temple to amuse his captors, but while they were making merry at his expense, he took hold of the two pillars against which he was resting, and bowing �himself with all his might,� overturned them, �and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.� * * some learned critics considered samson to have been a sort of solar deity. the tribe of dan at length became weary of these unprofitable struggles, and determined to seek out another and more easily defensible settlement. they sent out five emissaries, therefore, to look out for a new home. while these were passing through the mountains they called upon a certain michah in the hill-country of ephraim and lodged there. here they took counsel of a levite whom michah had made his priest, and, in answer to the question whether their journey would be prosperous, he told them to �go in peace: before the lord is the way wherein ye go.� their search turned out successful, for they discovered near the sources of the jordan the town of laish, whose people, like the zidonians, dwelt in security, fearing no trouble. on the report of the emissaries, dan decided to emigrate: the warriors set out to the number of six hundred, carried off by the way the ephod of micah and the levite who served before it, and succeeded in capturing laish, to which they gave the name of their tribe. �they there set up for themselves the ephod: and jonathan, the son of gershom, the son of moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the danites until the day of the captivity of the land.� * the tribe of dan displayed in this advanced post of peril the bravery it had shown on the frontiers of the shephelah, and showed itself the most bellicose of the tribes of israel. * the history of this migration, which is given summarily in josh. xix. 47, is, as it now stands, a blending of two accounts. the presence of a descendant of moses as a priest in this local sanctuary probably offended the religious scruples of a copyist, who substituted manasseh for moses (judges xviii. 30), but the correction was not generally accepted. [the r.v. reads �moses� where the authorised text has �manasseh.�--tr.] it bore out well its character--�dan is a lion�s whelp that leapeth forth from bashan� on the hermon;* �a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse�s heels, so that his rider falleth backward.� ** the new position they had taken up enabled them to protect galilee for centuries against the incursions of the aramaeans. * see the blessing of moses (dent, xxxiii. 22). ** these are the words used in the blessing of jacob (gen. xlix. 17). [illustration: 304.jpg the hill of shiloh, seen from the north-east] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 100 of the _palestine exploration fund._ their departure, however, left the descendants of joseph unprotected, with benjamin as their only bulwark. benjamin, like dan, was one of the tribes which contained scarcely more than two or three clans, but compensated for the smallness of their numbers by their energy and tenacity of character: lying to the south of ephraim, they had developed into a breed of hardy adventurers, skilled in handling the bow and sling, accustomed from childhood to use both hands indifferently, and always ready to set out on any expedition, not only against the canaanites, but, if need be, against their own kinsfolk.* they had consequently aroused the hatred of both friend and foe, and we read that the remaining tribes at length decreed their destruction; a massacre ensued, from which six hundred benjamites only escaped to continue the race.** their territory adjoined on the south that of jerusalem, the fortress of the jebusites, and on the west the powerful confederation of which gibeon was the head. it comprised some half-dozen towns--ramah, anathoth, michmash, and nob, and thus commanded both sides of the passes leading from the shephelah into the valley of the jordan. the benjamites were in the habit of descending suddenly upon merchants who were making their way to or returning from gilead, and of robbing them of their wares; sometimes they would make a raid upon the environs of ekron and gath, �like a wolf that ravineth:� realising the prediction of jacob, �in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at even he shall divide the spoil.� *** * benjamin signifies, properly speaking, �the southern.� ** story of the lévite of ephraim (judges xix.-xxi.). the groundwork of it contains only one historical element. the story of the lévite is considered by some critics to be of a later date than the rest of the text. *** he is thus characterised in the blessing of jacob (gen. xlix. 27). vol. vi. x the philistines never failed to make reprisals after each raid, and the benjamites were no match for their heavily armed battalions; but the labyrinth of ravines and narrow gorges into which the philistines had to penetrate to meet their enemy was a favourable region for guerilla warfare, in which they were no match for their opponents. peace was never of long duration on this ill-defined borderland, and neither intercourse between one village and another, alliances, nor intermarriage between the two peoples had the effect of interrupting hostilities; even when a truce was made at one locality, the feud would be kept up at other points of contact. all details of this conflict have been lost, and we merely know that it terminated in the defeat of the house of joseph, a number of whom were enslaved. the ancient sanctuary of shiloh still continued to be the sacred town of the hebrews, as it had been under the canaanites, and the people of ephraim kept there the ark of jahveh-sabaoth, �the lord of hosts.� * it was a chest of wood, similar in shape to the shrine which surmounted the sacred barks of the egyptian divinities, but instead of a prophesying statue, it contained two stones on which, according to the belief of a later age, the law had been engraved.** yearly festivals were celebrated before it, and it was consulted as an oracle by all the israelites. eli, the priest to whose care it was at this time consigned, had earned universal respect by the austerity of his life and by his skill in interpreting the divine oracles.*** * at the very opening of the _first book of samuel_ (i. 3), shiloh is mentioned as being the sanctuary of _jahveh sabaoth_, jahveh the lord of hosts. the tradition preserved in josh, xviii. 1, removes the date of its establishment as far back as the earliest times of the israelite conquest. ** the idea that the tables of the law were enclosed in the ark is frequently expressed in exodus and in subsequent books of the hexateuch. *** the history of eli extends over chaps, i.-iv. of the _first book of samuel_; it is incorporated with that of samuel, and treats only of the events which accompanied the destruction of the sanctuary of shiloh by the philistines. his two sons, on the contrary, took advantage of his extreme age to annoy those who came up to worship, and they were even accused of improper behaviour towards the women who �served at the door of� the tabernacle. they appropriated to themselves a larger portion of the victims than they were entitled to, extracting from the caldron the meat offerings of the faithful after the sacrifice was over by means of flesh-hooks. their misdeeds were such, that �men abhorred the offering of the lord,� and yet the reverence for the ark was so great in the minds of the people, that they continued to have recourse to it on every occasion of national danger.* the people of ephraim and benjamin having been defeated once between eben-ezer and aphek, bore the ark in state to the battle-field, that its presence might inspire them with confidence. the philistines were alarmed at its advent, and exclaimed, �god is come into the camp. woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods?... be strong, and quit yourselves like men, o ye philistines, that ye be not servants unto the hebrews, as they have been to you.� ** in response to this appeal, their troops fought so boldly that they once more gained a victory. �and there ran a man of benjamin out of the army, and came to shiloh the same day with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head. and when he came, lo, eli sat upon his seat by the wayside watching: for his heart trembled for the ark of god. and when the man came into the city, and told it, all the city cried out. and when eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, what meaneth the noise of this tumult? and the man hasted, and came and told eli. now eli was ninety and eight years old; and his eyes were set, that he could not see. and the man said unto eli, i am he that came out of the army, and i fled to-day out of the army. and he said, how went the matter, my son? and he that brought the tidings answered and said, israel is fled before the philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, hophni and phineas, are dead, and the ark of god is taken. and it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of god, that he fell from off his seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy.� *** * sam. iv. 12-18. ** this is not mentioned in the sacred books; but certain reasons for believing this destruction to have taken place are given by stade. *** the philistine garrison at geba (gibeah) is mentioned in 1 sam. xiii. 3, i. the defeat of eben-ezer completed, at least for a time, the overthrow of the tribes of central canaan. the philistines destroyed the sanctuary of shiloh, and placed a garrison at gibeah to keep the benjamites in subjection, and to command the route of the jordan;* it would even appear that they pushed their advance-posts beyond carmel in order to keep in touch with the independent canaanite cities such as megiddo, taanach, and bethshan, and to ensure a free use of the various routes leading in the direction of damascus, tyre, and coele-syria.** * after the victory at gilboa, the philistines exposed the dead bodies of saul and his sons upon the walls of bethshan (1 sam. xxxi. 10, 12), which they would not have been able to do had the inhabitants not been allies or vassals. friendly relations with bethshan entailed almost as a matter of course some similar understanding with the cities of the plain of jezreel. ** 1 sam. vii. 16, 17. these verses represent, as a matter of fact, all that we know of samuel anterior to his relations with saul. this account seems to represent him as exercising merely a restricted influence over the territory of benjamin and the south of ephraim. it was not until the prophetic period that, together with eli, he was made to figure as judge of all israel. the philistine power continued dominant for at least half a century. the hebrew chroniclers, scandalised at the prosperity of the heathen, did their best to abridge the time of the philistine dominion, and interspersed it with israelitish victories. just at this time, however, there lived a man who was able to inspire them with fresh hope. he was a priest of bamah, samuel, the son of elkanah, who had acquired the reputation of being a just and wise judge in the towns of bethel, gilgal, and mizpah; �and he judged israel in all those places, and his return was to bamah, for there was his house... and he built there an altar unto the lord.� to this man the whole israelite nation attributed with pride the deliverance of their race. the sacred writings relate how his mother, the pious hannah, had obtained his birth from jahveh after years of childlessness, and had forthwith devoted him to the service of god. she had sent him to shiloh at the age of three years, and there, clothed in a linen tunic and in a little robe which his mother made for him herself, he ministered before god in the presence of eli. one night it happened, when the latter was asleep in his place, �and the lamp of god was not yet gone out, and samuel was laid down to sleep in the temple of the lord, where the ark of god was, that the lord called samuel: and he said, here am i. and he ran unto eli, and said, here am i; for thou calledst me. and he said, i called thee not; lie down again.� twice again the voice was heard, and at length eli perceived that it was god who had called the child, and he bade him reply: �speak, lord; for thy servant heareth.� from thenceforward jahveh was �with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. and all israel from dan even to beersheba knew that samuel was established to be a prophet of the lord.� twenty years after the sad death of his master, samuel felt that the moment had come to throw off the philistine yoke; he exhorted the people to put away their false gods, and he assembled them at mizpah to absolve them from their sins. the philistines, suspicious of this concourse, which boded ill for the maintenance of their authority, arose against him. �and when the children of israel heard it, they were afraid of the philistines. and samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a whole burnt offering unto the lord: and samuel cried unto the lord for israel, and the lord answered him.� the philistines, demoralised by the thunderstorm which ensued, were overcome on the very spot where they had triumphed over the sons of eli, and fled in disorder to their own country. �then samuel took a stone, and set it between mizpah and shen, and called the name of it eben-ezer (the stone of help), saying, hitherto hath the lord helped us.� he next attacked the tyrians and the amorites, and won back from them all the territory they had conquered.* one passage, in which samuel is not mentioned, tells us how heavily the philistine yoke had weighed upon the people, and explains their long patience by the fact that their enemies had taken away all their weapons. �now there was no smith found throughout all the land of israel: for the philistines said, lest the hebrews make them swords or spears;� and whoever needed to buy or repair the most ordinary agricultural implements was forced to address himself to the philistine blacksmiths.** the very extremity of the evil worked its own cure. the fear of the midian-ites had already been the occasion of the ephemeral rule of jerubbaal and abimelech; the philistine tyranny forced first the tribes of central and then those of southern canaan to unite under the leadership of one man. in face of so redoubtable an enemy and so grave a peril a greater effort was required, and the result was proportionate to their increased activity. * this manner of retaliating against the philistines for the disaster they had formerly inflicted on israel, is supposed by some critics to be an addition of a later date, either belonging to the time of the prophets, or to the period when the jews, without any king or settled government, rallied at mizpah. according to these scholars, 1 sam. vii. 2-14 forms part of a biography, written at a time when the foundation of the benjamite monarchy had not as yet been attributed to saul. ** 1 sam. xiii. 20, 21. the manassite rule extended at most over two or three clans, but that of saul and david embraced the israelite nation.* benjamin at that time reckoned among its most powerful chiefs a man of ancient and noble family--saul, the son of kish--who possessed extensive flocks and considerable property, and was noted for his personal beauty, for �there was not among the children of israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.� ** he had already reached mature manhood, and had several children, the eldest of whom, jonathan, was well known as a skilful and brave soldier, while saul�s reputation was such that his kinsmen beyond jordan had recourse to his aid as to a hero whose presence would secure victory. the ammonites had laid siege to jabesh-gilead, and the town was on the point of surrendering; saul came to their help, forced the enemy to raise the siege, and inflicted such a severe lesson upon them, that during the whole of his lifetime they did not again attempt hostilities. he was soon after proclaimed king by the benjamites, as jerubbaal had been raised to authority by the manassites on the morrow of his victory.*** * the beginning of saul�s reign, up to his meeting with david, will be found in 1 sam. viii.-xv. we can distinguish the remains of at least two ancient narratives, which the writer of the book of samuel has put together in order to form a complete and continuous account. as elsewhere in this work, i have confined myself to accepting the results at which criticism has arrived, without entering into detailed discussions which do not come within the domain of history. ** 1 sam. ix. 2. in one account he is represented as quite a young man, whose father is still in the prime of life (1 sam. ix.), but this cannot refer to the time of the philistine war, where we find him accompanied, at the very outset of his reign, by his son, who is already skilled in the use of weapons. *** 1 sam. xi. according to the text of the septuagint, the war against the ammonites broke out a month after saul had been secretly anointed by samuel; his popular proclamation did not take place till after the return from the campaign. we learn from the sacred writings that samuel�s influence had helped to bring about these events. it had been shown him by the divine voice that saul was to be the chosen ruler, and he had anointed him and set him before the people as their appointed lord; the scene of this must have been either mizpah or gilgal.* * one narrative appears to represent him as being only the priest or local prophet of hamah, and depicts him as favourable to the establishment of the monarchy (1 sam. ix. 1-27, x. 1-16); the other, however, admits that he was �judge� of all israel, and implies that he was hostile to the choice of a king (1 sam. viii. 1-22, x. 17, 27, xii. 1-25) the accession of a sovereign who possessed the allegiance of all israel could not fail to arouse the vigilance of their philistine oppressors; jonathan, however, anticipated their attack and captured gibeah. the five kings at once despatched an army to revenge this loss; the main body occupied michmash, almost opposite to the stronghold taken from them, while three bands of soldiers were dispersed over the country, ravaging as they went, with orders to attack saul in the rear. the latter had only six hundred men, with whom he scarcely dared to face so large a force; besides which, he was separated from the enemy by the wady suweinît, here narrowed almost into a gorge between two precipitous rocks, and through which no body of troops could penetrate without running the risk of exposing themselves in single file to the enemy. jonathan, however, resolved to attempt a surprise in broad daylight, accompanied only by his armour-bearer. �there was a rocky crag on the one side, and a rooky crag on the other side: and the name of the one was bozez (the shining), and the name of the other seneh (the acacia). the one crag rose up on the north in front of michmash, and the other on the south in front of geba (gribeah).� the two descended the side of the gorge, on the top of which they were encamped, and prepared openly to climb the opposite side. the philistine sentries imagined they were deserters, and said as they approached: �behold, the hebrews come forth out of the holes where they had hid themselves. and the men of the garrison answered jonathan and his armour-bearer, and said, come up to us, and we will show you a thing. and jonathan said unto his armour-bearer, come up after me: for the lord hath delivered them into the hand of israel. and jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon his feet, and his armour-bearer after him: and they fell before jonathan; and his armour-bearer slew them after him. and that first slaughter that jonathan and his armour-bearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were half a furrow�s length in an acre of land.� from gribeah, where saul�s troops were in ignorance of what was passing, the benjamite sentinels could distinguish a tumult. saul guessed that a surprise had taken place, and marched upon the enemy. [illustration: 314.jpg the wady suweinit] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 402 of the _palestine exploration fund_. the philistines were ousted from their position, and pursued hotly beyond bethel as far as ajalon.* this constituted the actual birthday of the israelite monarchy. * the account of these events, separated by the parts relating to the biography of samuel (1 sam. xiii. 76-15a, thought by some to be of a later date), and of the breaking by jonathan of the fast enjoined by saul (1 sam. xiv. 23 45), covers 1 sam. xiii. 3-7a, 156-23, xiv. 1-22, 46. the details appear to be strictly historical; the number of the philistines, however, seems to be exaggerated; �30,000 chariots, and 6000 horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea-shore in multitude �(1 sam. xiii. 5). gilead, the whole house of joseph--ephraim and manasseh--and benjamin formed its nucleus, and were saul�s strongest supporters. we do not know how far his influence extended northwards; it probably stopped short at the neighbourhood of mount tabor, and the galileans either refused to submit to his authority, or acknowledged it merely in theory. in the south the clans of judah and simeon were not long in rallying round him, and their neighbours the kenites, with caleb and jerahmeel, soon followed their example. these southerners, however, appear to have been somewhat half-hearted in their allegiance to the benjamite king: it was not enough to have gained their adhesion--a stronger tie was needed to attach them to the rest of the nation. saul endeavoured to get rid of the line of canaanite cities which isolated them from ephraim, but he failed in the effort, we know not from what cause, and his attempt produced no other result than to arouse against him the hatred of the gibeonite inhabitants.* he did his best to watch over the security of his new subjects, and protected them against the amalekites, who were constantly harassing them. * the fact is made known to us by an accidental mention of it in 2 sam. xxi. 1-11. the motive which induced saul to take arms against the gibeonites is immediately apparent when we realise the position occupied by gideon between judah and the tribes of central canaan. their king, agag, happening to fall into his hands, he killed him, and destroyed several of their nomad bands, thus inspiring the remainder with a salutary terror.* subsequent tradition credited him with victories gained over all the enemies of israel--over moab, edom, and even the aramaeans of zobah--it endowed him even with the projects and conquests of david. at any rate, the constant incursions of the philistines could not have left him much time for fighting in the north and east of his domains. their defeat at gibeah was by no means a decisive one, and they quickly recovered from the blow; the conflict with them lasted to the end of saul�s lifetime, and during the whole of this period he never lost an opportunity of increasing his army.** the monarchy was as yet in a very rudimentary state, without either the pomp or accessories usually associated with royalty in the ancient kingdoms of the east. saul, as king of israel, led much the same sort of life as when he was merely a benjamite chief. he preferred to reside at gibeah, in the house of his forefathers, with no further resources than those yielded by the domain inherited from his ancestors, together with the spoil taken in battle.*** * the part taken by samuel in the narrative of saul�s war against the amalekites (1 sam. xv.) is thought by some critics to have been introduced with a view of exalting the prophet�s office at the expense of the king and the monarchy. they regard 1 sam. xiv. 48 as being the sole historic ground of the narrative. ** 1 sam. xiv. 47. we may admit his successful skirmishes with moab, but some writers maintain that the defeat of the edomites and aramaeans is a mere anticipation, and consider that the passage is only a reflection of 2 sam. viii. 8, and reproduces the list of the wars of david, with the exception of the expedition against damascus. *** gibeah is nowhere expressly mentioned as being the capital of saul, but the name gibeah of saul which it bore shows that it must have been the royal residence; the names of the towns mentioned in the account of saul�s pursuit of david--naioth, eamah, and nob--are all near to gibeah. it was also at gibeah that the gibeonites slew seven of the sons and grandsons of saul (2 sam. xxi. 6-9), no doubt to bring ignominy on the family of the first king in the very place in which they had governed. all that he had, in addition to his former surroundings, were a priesthood attached to the court, and a small army entirely at his own disposal. ahijah, a descendant of eli, sacrificed for the king when the latter did not himself officiate; he fulfilled the office of chaplain to him in time of war, and was the mouthpiece of the divine oracles when these were consulted as to the propitious moment for attacking the enemy. [illustration: 319.jpg a phoenician soldier] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the bronze original in the louvre. the army consisted of a nucleus of benjamites, recruited from the king�s clan, with the addition of any adventurers, whether israelites or strangers, who were attracted to enlist under a popular military chief.* it comprised archers, slingers, and bands of heavily armed infantry, after the fashion of the phoenician, bearing pikes. we can gam some idea of their appearance and equipment from the bronze statuettes of an almost contemporary period, which show us the phoenician foot-soldiers or the barbarian mercenaries in the pay of the phoenician cities: they wear the horizontally striped loin-cloth of the syrians, leaving the arms and legs entirely bare, and the head is protected by a pointed or conical helmet. * ahijah (1 sam. xiv. 3), son of ahitub, great-grandson of eli, appears to be the same as ahimelech, son of ahitub, who subsequently helped david (1 sam. xxi. 1-10), and was massacred by order of saul (1 sam. xxii. 9-19). the scribe must have been shocked by the name melech--that of the god milik [moloch]--and must have substituted jah or jahveh. saul possessed none of the iron-bound chariots which always accompanied the qanaanite infantry; these heavy vehicles would have been entirely out of place in the mountain districts, which were the usual field of operations for the israelite force.* we are unable to ascertain whether the king�s soldiers received any regular pay, but we know that the spoil was divided between the prince and his men, each according to his rank and in proportion to the valour he had displayed.** in cases of necessity, the whole of the tribes were assembled, and a selection was made of all those capable of bearing arms. this militia, composed mainly of a pastoral peasantry in the prime of life, capable of heroic efforts, was nevertheless ill-disciplined, liable to sudden panics, and prone to become disbanded on the slightest reverse.*** * with regard to the use of the bow among saul�s soldiers, cf. 1 sam. xx. 18-42, where we find the curious scene of the meeting of david and jonathan, when the latter came out of gibeah on the pretext of practising with bow and arrows. the accoutrement of the hebrews is given in the passage where saul lends his armour to david before meeting with goliath (1 sam. xvii. 38, 39). ** cf. the quarrel which took place between the soldiers of david about the spoil taken from the amalekites, and the manner in which the strife was decided by david (1 sam. xxx. 21-25) *** saul, for instance, assembles the people and makes a selection to attack the philistines (1 sam. xiii. 2, 4, 7) against the ammonites (1 sam. xi. 7, 8) and against the amalekites (1 sam. xv. 4). saul had the supreme command of the whole; the members of his own family served as lieutenants under him, including his son jonathan, to whom he owed some of his most brilliant victories, together with his cousin abner, the _sar-zaba_, who led the royal guard.* among the men of distinguished valour who had taken service under saul, he soon singled out david, son of jesse, a native of bethlehem of judah.** david was the first judæan hero, the typical king who served as a model to all subsequent monarchs. his elevation, like that of saul, is traced to samuel. the old prophet had repaired to bethlehem ostensibly to offer a sacrifice, and after examining all the children of jesse, he chose the youngest, and �anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the spirit of the lord came mightily upon david.� *** * 1 sam. xiv. 50, 51. there is no record of the part played by abner during saul�s lifetime: he begins to figure in the narrative after the battle at gilboa under the double reign of ish-bosheth and david. ** the name of david is a shortened form of davdo, dodo, �the favourite of him,� i.e. god. *** the intervention of the prophet occupies 1 sam. xvi. 1 13. some critics have imagined that this passage was interpolated at a later date, and reflects the events which are narrated in chap. x. they say it was to show that saul was not alone in enjoying consecration by the prophet, and hence all doubt would be set at rest as to whether david was actually that �neighbour of thine, that is better than thou,� mentioned in 1 sam. xv. 28. his introduction at the court of saul is variously accounted for. according to one narrative, saul, being possessed by an evil spirit, fell at times into a profound melancholy, from which he could be aroused only by the playing of a harp. on learning that david was skilled in this instrument, he begged jesse to send him his son, and the lad soon won the king�s affection. as often as the illness came upon him, david took his harp, and �saul was refreshed, and the evil spirit departed from him.� * another account relates that he entered on his soldierly career by killing with his sling goliath of gath,** who had challenged the bravest israelites to combat; though elsewhere the death of goliath is attributed to elhanan of bethlehem,*** one of the �mighty men of valour,� who specially distinguished himself in the wars against the philistines. david had, however, no need to take to himself the brave deeds of others; at ephes-dammîm, in company with eleazar, the son of dodai, and shammah, the son of agu, he had posted himself in a field of lentils, and the three warriors had kept the philistines at bay till their discomfited israelite comrades had had time to rally.**** * 1 sam. xvi. 14-23. this narrative is directly connected with 1 sam. xiv. 52, where we are told that when �saul saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took him unto him.� ** 1 sam. xvii., xviii. 1-5. according to some writers, this second version, the best known of the two, is a development at a later period of the tradition preserved in 2 sam. xxi. 19, where the victory of elhanan over goliath is recorded. *** 2 sam. xxi. 19, where the duel of goliath and elhanan is placed in the reign of david, during the combat at gob. some critics think that the writer of chronicles, recognising the difficulty presented by this passage, changed the epithet bethlehemite, which qualified the name of elhanan, into lahmi, the name of goliath�s brother (1 citron, xx. 5). say ce thought to get over the difficulty by supposing that elhanan was david�s first name; but elhanan is the son of jair, and not the son of jesse. **** the combat of paz-dammîm or ephes-dammîm is mentioned in 1 sam. xvii. 1; the exploit of david and his two comrades, 2 sam: xxiii. 9-12 (cf. 1 chron. xi, 12-14, which slightly varies from 2 sam. xxiii. 9-12). saul entrusted him with several difficult undertakings, in all of which he acquitted himself with honour. on his return from one of them, the women of the villages came out to meet him, singing and dancing to the sound of timbrels, the refrain of their song being: �saul hath slain his thousands, and david his ten thousands.� the king concealed the jealousy which this simple expression of joy excited within him, but it found vent at the next outbreak of his illness, and he attempted to kill david with a spear, though soon after he endeavoured to make amends for his action by giving him his second daughter michal in marriage.* this did not prevent the king from again attempting david�s life, either in a real or simulated fit of madness; but not being successful, he despatched a body of men to waylay him. according to one account it was michal who helped her husband to escape,** while another attributes the saving of his life to jonathan. this prince had already brought about one reconciliation between his father and david, and had spared no pains to reinstall him in the royal favour, but his efforts merely aroused the king�s suspicion against himself. saul imagined that a conspiracy existed for the purpose of dethroning him, and of replacing him by his son; jonathan, knowing that his life also was threatened, at length renounced the attempt, and david and his followers withdrew from court. * the account of the first disagreement between saul and david, and with regard to the marriage of david with michal, is given in 1 sam. xviii. 6-16, 20-29, and presents every appearance of authenticity. verses 17-19, mentioning a project of union between david and saul�s eldest daughter, merab, has at some time been interpolated; it is not given in the lxx., either because it was not in the hebrew version they had before them, or because they suppressed it owing to the motive appearing to them insufficient. ** 1 sam. xix. 11-17. many critics regard this passage as an interpolation. [illustration: 324.jpg aîd-el-ra, the site of the ancient adullam] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 430 of the _palestine exploration fund._ he was hospitably received by a descendant of eli,* ahimelech the priest, at nob, and wandered about in the neighbourhood of adullam, hiding himself in the wooded valleys of khereth, in the heart of judah. he retained the sympathies of many of the benjamites, more than one of whom doubted whether it would not be to their advantage to transfer their allegiance from their aged king to this more youthful hero. * 1 sam. xxi. 8, 9 adds that he took as a weapon the sword of goliath which was laid up in the sanctuary at nob. saul got news of their defection, and one day when he was sitting, spear in hand, under the tamarisk at gibeah, he indignantly upbraided his servants, and pointed out to them the folly of their plans. �hear, now, ye benjamites; will the son of jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards? will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds?� ahimelech was selected as the victim of the king�s anger: denounced by doeg, saul�s steward, he was put to death, and all his family, with the exception of abiathar, one of his sons, perished with him.* as soon as it became known that david held the hill-country, a crowd of adventurous spirits flocked to place themselves under his leadership, anticipating, no doubt, that spoil would not be lacking with so brave a chief, and he soon found himself at the head of a small army, with abiathar as priest, and the ephod, rescued from nob, in his possession.** * 1 sam. xix.-xxii., where, according to some critics, two contradictory versions have been blended together at a late period. the most probable version is given in 1 sam, xix. 8 10 [11-18a], xxi. 1-7 [8-10], xxii., and is that which i have followed by preference; the other version, according to these writers, attributes too important a rôle to jonathan, and relates at length the efforts he made to reconcile his father and his friend (1 sam. xviii. 30, xix. 1-7, xx.). it is thought, from the confusion apparent in this part of the narrative, that a record of the real motives which provoked a rupture between the king and his son-in-law has not been preserved. ** 1 sam. xxii. 20-23, xxiii. 6. for the use of the ephod by abiathar for oracular purposes, cf. 1 sam. xxiii. 9-12, xxx. 7, 8; the inquiry in 1 sam. xxiii. 2-4 probably belongs to the same series, although neither abiathar nor the ephod is mentioned. the country was favourable for their operations; it was a perfect labyrinth of deep ravines, communicating with each other by narrow passes or by paths winding along the edges of precipices. isolated rocks, accessible only by rugged ascents, defied assault, while extensive caves offered a safe hiding-place to those who were familiar with their windings. one day the little band descended to the rescue of keilah, which they succeeded in wresting from the philistines, but no sooner did they learn that saul was on his way to meet them than they took refuge in the south of judah, in the neighbourhood of ziph and maôn, between the mountains and the dead sea.* * 1 sam. xxiii. 1-13; an episode acknowledged to be historical by nearly-all modern critics. [illustration: 326.jpg the desert of judah] drawn by boudior, from photograph no. 197 of the _palestine exploration fund._ the heights visible in the distance are the mountains of moab, beyond the dead sea. saul already irritated by his rival�s successes, was still more galled by being always on the point of capturing him, and yet always seeing him slip from his grasp. on one afternoon, when the king had retired into a cave for his siesta, he found himself at the mercy of his adversary; the latter, however, respected the sleep of his royal master, and contented himself with cutting a piece off his mantle.* on another occasion david, in company with abishai and ahimelech the hittite, took a lance and a pitcher of water from the king�s bedside.** the inhabitants of the country were not all equally loyal to david�s cause; those of ziph, whose meagre resources were taxed to support his followers, plotted to deliver him up to the king,*** while nabal of maôn roughly refused him food. abigail atoned for her husband�s churlishness by a speedy submission; she collected a supply of provisions, and brought it herself to the wanderers. david was as much disarmed by her tact as by her beauty, and when she was left a widow he married her. this union insured the support of the calebite clan, the most powerful in that part of the country, and policy as well as gratitude no doubt suggested the alliance. * 1 sam, xxiv. thought by some writers to be of much later date. ** 1 sam. xxvi. 4-25. skirmishes were not as frequent between the king�s troops and the outlaws as we might at first be inclined to believe, but if at times there was a truce to hostilities, they never actually ceased, and the position became intolerable. encamped between his kinsman and the philistines, david found himself unable to resist either party except by making friends with the other. an incursion of the philistines near maôn saved david from the king, but when saul had repulsed it, david had no choice but to throw himself into the arms of achish, king of gath, of whom he craved permission to settle as his vassal at ziklag, on condition of david�s defending the frontier against the bedawin.* * 1 sam. xxvii. the earlier part of this chapter (vers. 1-6) is strictly historical. some critics take vers. 8-12 to be of later date, and pretend that they were inserted to show the cleverness of david, and to deride the credulity of the king of gath. saul did not deem it advisable to try and dislodge him from this retreat. peace having been re-established in judah, the king turned northward and occupied the heights which bound the plain of jezreel to the east; it is possible that he contemplated pushing further afield, and rallying round him those northern tribes who had hitherto never acknowledged his authority. he may, on the other hand, have desired merely to lay hands on the syrian highways, and divert to his own profit the resources brought by the caravans which plied along them. the philistines, who had been nearly ruined by the loss of the right to demand toll of these merchants, assembled the contingents of their five principalities, among them being the hebrews of david, who formed the personal guard of achish. the four other princes objected to the presence of these strangers in their midst, and forced achish to dismiss them. david returned to ziklag, to find ruin and desolation everywhere. the amalekites had taken advantage of the departure of the hebrews to revenge themselves once for all for david�s former raids on them, and they had burnt the town, carrying off the women and flocks. david at once set out on their track, overtook them just beyond the torrent of besor, and rescued from them, not only his own belongings, but all the booty they had collected by the way in the southern provinces of caleb, in judah, and in the cherethite plain. he distributed part of this spoil among those cities of judah which had shown hospitality to himself and his men, for instance, to jattir, aroer, eshtemoa, hormah, and hebron.* while he thus kept up friendly relations with those who might otherwise have been tempted to forget him, saul was making his last supreme effort against the philistines, but only ito meet with failure. he had been successful in repulsing them as long as he kept to the mountain districts, where the courage of his troops made up for their lack of numbers and the inferiority of their arms; but he was imprudent enough to take up a position on the hillsides of gilboa, whose gentle slopes offered no hindrances to the operations of the heavy philistine battalions. they attacked the israelites from the shunem side, and swept all before them. jonathan perished in the conflict, together with his two brothers, malchi-shua and abinadab; saul, who was wounded by an arrow, begged his armour-bearer to take his life, but, on his persistently refusing, the king killed himself with his own sword. the victorious philistines cut off his head and those of his sons, and placed their armour in the temple of ashtoreth,** while their bodies, thus despoiled, were hung up outside the walls of bethshan, whose canaanite inhabitants had made common cause with the philistines against israel. * 1 sam. xxviii. 1, 2, xxix., xxx. the torrent of besor is the present wady esh-sheriah, which runs to the south of gaza. ** the text of 1 sam. xxxi. 10 says, in a vague manner, �in the house of the ashtaroth� (in the plural), which is corrected, somewhat arbitrarily, in 1 chron. x. 10 iato �in the house of dagon� (b.v.); it is possible that it was the temple at gaza, gaza being the chief of the philistine towns. the people of jabesh-gilead, who had never forgotten how saul had saved them from the ammonites, hearing the news, marched all night, rescued the mutilated remains, and brought them back to their own town, where they burned them, and buried the charred bones under a tamarisk, fasting meanwhile seven days as a sign of mourning.* * 1 sam. xxxi. it would seem that there were two narratives describing this war: in one, the philistines encamped at shunem, and saul occupied mount gilboa (1 sam. xxviii. 4); in the other, the philistines encamped at aphek, and the israelites �by the fountain which is in jezreel� (1 sam. xxix. 1). the first of these accounts is connected with the episode of the witch of endor, the second with the sending away of david by achish. the final catastrophe is in both narratives placed on mount gilboa and stade has endeavoured to reconcile the two accounts by admitting that the battle was fought between aphek and �the fountain,� but that the final scene took place on the slopes of gilboa. there are even two versions of the battle, one in 1 sam. xxxi. and the other in 2 sam. i. 6-10, where saul does not kill himself, but begs an amalekite to slay him; many critics reject the second version. [illustration: 330.jpg the hill of bethshan, seen from the east] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 79 of the _palestine exploration fund._ david afterwards disinterred these relics, and laid them in the burying-place of the family of kish at zela, in benjamin. the tragic end of their king made a profound impression on the people. we read that, before entering on his last battle, saul was given over to gloomy forebodings: he had sought counsel of jahveh, but god �answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by urim, nor by prophets.� the aged samuel had passed away at ramah, and had apparently never seen the king after the flight of david;* saul now bethought himself of the prophet in his despair, and sought to recall him from the tomb to obtain his counsel. * 1 sam. xxv. 1, repeated 1 sam. xxviii. 3, with a mention of the measures taken by saul against the wizards and fortune-tellers. the king had banished from the land all wizards and fortune-tellers, but his servants brought him word that at endor there still remained a woman who could call up the dead. saul disguised himself, and, accompanied by two of his retainers, went to find her; he succeeded in overcoming her fear of punishment, and persuaded her to make the evocation. �whom shall i bring up unto thee?�--�bring up samuel.�--and when the woman saw samuel, she cried with a loud voice, saying, �why hast thou deceived me, for thou art saul?� and the king said unto her, �be not afraid, for what sawest thou?�--�i saw gods ascending out of the earth.�--�what form is he of?�--�an old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle.� saul immediately recognised samuel, and prostrated himself with his face to the ground before him. the prophet, as inflexible after death as in his lifetime, had no words of comfort for the god-forsaken man who had troubled his repose. �the lord hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even to david, because thou obeyedst not the voice of the lord,... and tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me. the lord also shall deliver the host of israel into the hands of the philistines.� * * 1 sam. xxviii. 5-25. there is no reason why this scene should not be historical; it was natural that saul, like many an ancient general in similar circumstances, should seek to know the future by means of the occult sciences then in vogue. some critics think that certain details of the evocation--as, for instance, the words attributed to samuel --are of a later date. we learn, also, how david, at ziklag, on hearing the news of the disaster, had broken into weeping, and had composed a lament, full of beauty, known as the �song of the bow,� which the people of judah committed to memory in their childhood. �thy glory, o israel, is slain upon thy high places! how are the mighty fallen! tell it not in gath, publish it not in the streets of ashkelon; lest the daughters of the philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph! ye mountains of gilboa, let there be no dew nor rain upon you, neither fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, the shield of saul, not anointed with oil! from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of jonathan turned not back, the sword of saul returned not empty. saul and jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were not divided.� * * 2 sam. i. 17-27 (r.v.). this elegy is described as a quotation from jasher, the �book of the upright.� many modern writers attribute its authorship to david himself; others reject this view; all agree in regarding it as extremely ancient. the title, �song of the bow,� is based on the possibly corrupt text of ver. 18. the philistines occupied in force the plain of jezreel and the pass which leads from it into the lowlands of bethshan: the israelites abandoned the villages which they had occupied in these districts, and the gap between the hebrews of the north and those of the centre grew wider. the remnants of saul�s army sought shelter on the eastern bank of the jordan, but found no leader to reorganise them. the reverse sustained by the israelitish champion seemed, moreover, to prove the futility of trying to make a stand against the invader, and even the useless-ness of the monarchy itself: why, they might have asked, burthen ourselves with a master, and patiently bear with his exactions, if, when put to the test, he fails to discharge the duties for the performance of which he was chosen? and yet the advantages of a stable form of government had been so manifest during the reign of saul, that it never for a moment occurred to his former subjects to revert to patriarchal institutions: the question which troubled them was not whether they were to have a king, but rather who was to fill the post. saul had left a considerable number of descendants behind him.* from these, abner, the ablest of his captains, chose ishbaal, and set him on the throne to reign under his guidance.** * we know that he had three sons by his wife ahinoam- jonathan, ishbaal, and malchi-shua; and two daughters, merab and michal (1 sam. xiv. 49, 50, where �ishvi� should be read �ishbaal�). jonathan left at least one son, meribbaal (1 chron. viii. 34, ix. 40, called mephibosheth in 2 sam. xxi. 7), and merab had five sons by adriel (2 sam. xxi. 8). one of saul�s concubines, rizpah, daughter of aiah, had borne him two sons, armoni and meribbaal (2 sam. xxi. 8, where the name meribbaal is changed into mephibosheth); abinadab, who fell with him in the fight at mount gilboa (1 sam. xxxi. 2), whose mother�s name is not mentioned, was another son. ** ishbaal was still a child when his father died: had he been old enough to bear arms, he would have taken a part in the battle of gilboa with his brothers.. the expressions used in the account of his elevation to the throne prove that he was a minor (2 sam. ii. 8, 9); the statement that he was forty years old when he began to reign would seem, therefore, to be an error (ii. 10). gibeah was too close to the frontier to be a safe residence for a sovereign whose position was still insecure; abner therefore installed ishbaal at mahanaim, in the heart of the country of gilead. the house of jacob, including the tribe of benjamin, acknowledged him as king, but judah held aloof. it had adopted the same policy at the beginning of the previous reign, yet its earlier isolation had not prevented it from afterwards throwing in its lot with the rest of the nation. but at that time no leader had come forward from its own ranks who was worthy to be reckoned among the mighty men of israel; now, on the contrary, it had on its frontier a bold and resolute leader of its own race. david lost no time in stepping into the place of those whose loss he had bewailed. their sudden removal, while it left him without a peer among his own people, exposed him to the suspicion and underground machinations of his foreign protectors; he therefore quitted them and withdrew to hebron, where his fellow-countrymen hastened to proclaim him king.* from that time onwards the tendency of the hebrew race was to drift apart into two distinct bodies; one of them, the house of joseph, which called itself by the name of israel, took up its position in the north, on the banks of the jordan; the other, which is described as the house of judah, in the south, between the dead sea and the shephelah. abner endeavoured to suppress the rival kingdom in its infancy: he brought ishbaal to gibeah and proposed to joab, who was in command of david�s army, that the conflict should be decided by the somewhat novel expedient of pitting twelve of the house of judah against an equal number of the house of benjamin. the champions of judah are said to have won the day, but the opposing forces did not abide by the result, and the struggle still continued.** * 2 sam. ii. 1--11. very probably abner recognised the philistine suzerainty as david had done, for the sake of peace; at any rate, we find no mention in holy writ of a war between ishbaal and the philistines. ** 2 sam. ii. 12-32, iii. 1. an intrigue in the harem furnished a solution of the difficulty. saul had raised one of his wives of the second rank, named eizpah, to the post of favourite. abner became enamoured of her and took her. this was an insult to the royal house, and amounted to an act of open usurpation: the wives of a sovereign could not legally belong to any but his successor, and for any one to treat them as abner had treated rizpah, was equivalent to his declaring himself the equal, and in a sense the rival, of his master. ishbaal keenly resented his minister�s conduct, and openly insulted him. abner made terms with david, won the northern tribes, including that of benjamin, over to his side, and when what seemed a propitious moment had arrived, made his way to hebron with an escort of twenty men. he was favourably received, and all kinds of promises were made him; but when he was about to depart again in order to complete the negotiations with the disaffected elders, joab, returning from an expedition, led him aside into a gateway and slew him. david gave him solemn burial, and composed a lament on the occasion, of which four verses have come down to us: having thus paid tribute to the virtues of the deceased general, he lost no time in taking further precautions to secure his power. the unfortunate king ishbaal, deserted by every one, was assassinated by two of his officers as he slept in the heat of the day, and his head was carried to hebron: david again poured forth lamentations, and ordered the traitors to be killed. there was now no obstacle between him and the throne: the elders of the people met him at hebron, poured oil upon his head, and anointed him king over all the provinces which had obeyed the rule of saul in gilead--ephraim and benjamin as well as judah.* * 2 sam. v. 1-3; in 1 ghron. xi. 1-3, xii. 23-40, we find further details beyond those given in the book of samuel; it seems probable, however, that the northern tribes may not have recognised david�s sovereignty at this time. as long as ishbaal lived, and his dissensions with judah assured their supremacy, the philistines were content to suspend hostilities: the news of his death, and of the union effected between israel and judah, soon roused them from this state of quiescence. as prince of the house of caleb and vassal of the lord of grath, david had not been an object of any serious apprehension to them; but in his new character, as master of the dominions of saul, david became at once a dangerous rival, whom they must overthrow without delay, unless they were willing to risk being ere long overthrown by him. they therefore made an attack on bethlehem with the choicest of their forces, and entrenched themselves there, with the canaanite city of jebus as their base, so as to separate judah entirely from benjamin, and cut off the little army quartered round hebron from the reinforcements which the central tribes would otherwise have sent to its aid.* this move was carried out so quickly that david found himself practically isolated from the rest of his kingdom, and had no course left open but to shut himself up in adullam, with his ordinary guard and the judsean levies.** * the history of this war is given in 2 sam. v. 17-25, where the text shows signs of having been much condensed. it is preceded by the account of the capture of jerusalem, which some critics would like to transfer to chap, vi., following ver. 1 which leads up to it. the events which followed are self-explanatory, if we assume, as i have done in the text, that the philistines wished to detach judah from israel: at first (2 sam. v. 17-21) david endeavours to release himself and effect a juncture with israel, as is proved by the relative positions assigned to the two opposing armies, the philistines at bethlehem, david in the cave of adullam; afterwards (2 sam. v. 22-25) david has shaken himself free, has rejoined israel, and is carrying on the struggle between gibeah and gezer. the incidents recounted in 2 sam. xxi. 15 22, xxiii. 13-19, seem to refer almost exclusively to the earlier part of the war, at the time when the hebrews were hemmed in in the neighbourhood of adullam. ** the passage in 2 sam. v. 17 simply states that david �went down to the hold,� and gives no further details. this expression, following as it does the account of the taking of jerusalem, would seem to refer to this town itself, and renan has thus interpreted it. it really refers to adullam, as is shown by the passage in 2 sam. xxiii. 13-17. 1 2 sam. xxi. 15-17. the whole district round about is intersected by a network of winding streams, and abounds in rocky gorges, where a few determined men could successfully hold their ground against the onset of a much more numerous body of troops. the caves afford, as we know, almost impregnable refuges: david had often hidden himself in them in the days when he fled before saul, and now his soldiers profited by the knowledge he possessed of them to elude the attacks of the philistines. he began a sort of guerilla warfare, in the conduct of which he seems to have been without a rival, and harassed in endless skirmishes his more heavily equipped adversaries. he did not spare himself, and freely risked his own life; but he was of small stature and not very powerful, so that his spirit often outran his strength. on one occasion, when he had advanced too far into the fray and was weary with striking, he ran great peril of being killed by a gigantic philistine: with difficulty abishai succeeded in rescuing him unharmed from the dangerous position into which he had ventured, and for the future he was not allowed to run such risks on the field of battle. on another occasion, when lying in the cave of adullam, he began to feel a longing for the cool waters of bethlehem, and asked who would go down and fetch him a draught from the well by the gates of the town. three of his mighty men, joshebbasshebeth, eleazar, and shammah, broke through the host of the philistines and succeeded in bringing it; but he refused to drink the few drops they had brought, and poured them out as a libation to jehovah, saying, �shall i drink the blood of men that went in jeopardy of their lives?� * duels between the bravest and stoutest champions of the two hosts were of frequent occurrence. it was in an encounter of this kind that elhanan the bethlehemite [or david] slew the giant goliath at gob. at length david succeeded in breaking his way through the enemies� lines in the valley of kephaîm, thus forcing open the road to the north. here he probably fell in with the israelitish contingent, and, thus reinforced, was at last in a position to give battle in the open: he was again successful, and, routing his foes, pursued them from gibeon to gezer.** none of his victories, however, was of a sufficiently decisive character to bring the struggle to an end: it dragged on year after year, and when at last it did terminate, there was no question on either side of submission or of tribute:*** the hebrews completely regained their independence, but the philistines do not seem to have lost any portion of their domain, and apparently retained possession of all that they had previously held. * 2 sam. xxiii. 13-17; cf. 1 ghron. xi. 15-19. popular tradition furnishes many incidents of a similar type; cf. alexander in the desert of gedrosia, godfrey de bouillon in asia minor, etc. ** the hebrew text gives �from geba [or gibeah] to gezer� (2 sam. v. 25); the septuagint, �from gibeon to gezer.� this latter reading [which is that of 1 chron. xiv. 16.--tr.] is more in accordance with the geographical facts, and i have therefore adopted it. jahveh had shown by a continual rustling in the leaves of the mulberry trees that he was on david�s side. *** in 2 sam. viii. 1 we are told that david humiliated the philistines, and took �the bridle of the mother city� out of their hands, or, in other words, destroyed the supremacy which they had exercised over israel; he probably did no more than this, and failed to secure any part of their territory. the passage in 1 chron. xviii. 1, which attributes to him the conquest of gath and its dependencies, is probably an amplification of the somewhat obscure wording employed in 2 sam. viii. 1. but though they suffered no loss of territory, their position was in reality much inferior to what it was before. their control of the plain of jezreel was lost to them for ever, and with it the revenue which they had levied from passing caravans: the hebrews transferred to themselves this right of their former masters, and were so much the richer at their expense. to the five cities this was a more damaging blow than twenty reverses would have been to benjamin or judah. the military spirit had not died out among the philistines, and they were still capable of any action which did not require sustained effort; but lack of resources prevented them from entering on a campaign of any length, and any chance they may at one time have had of exercising a dominant influence in the affairs of southern syria had passed away. under the restraining hand of egypt they returned to the rank of a second-rate power, just strong enough to inspire its neighbours with respect, but too weak to extend its territory by annexing that of others. though they might still, at times, give david trouble by contesting at intervals the possession of some outlying citadel, or by making an occasional raid on one of the districts which lay close to the frontier, they were no longer a permanent menace to the continued existence of his kingdom. but was judah strong enough to take their place, and set up in southern syria a sovereign state, around which the whole fighting material of the country might range itself with confidence? the incidents of the last war had clearly shown the disadvantages of its isolated position in regard to the bulk of the nation. the gap between ekron and the jordan, which separated it from ephraim and manasseh, had, at all costs, to be filled up, if a repetition of the manouvre which so nearly cost david his throne at adullam were to be avoided. it is true that the gibeonites and their allies acknowledged the sovereignty of ephraim, and formed a sort of connecting link between the tribes, but it was impossible to rely on their fidelity so long as they were exposed to the attacks of the jebusites in their rear: as soon therefore as david found he had nothing more to fear from the philistines, he turned his attention to jerusalem.* this city stood on a dry and sterile limestone spur, separated on three sides from the surrounding hills by two valleys of unequal length. that of the kedron, on the east, begins as a simple depression, but gradually becomes deeper and narrower as it extends towards the south. about a mile and a half from its commencement it is nothing more than a deep gorge, shut in by precipitous rocks, which for some days after the winter rains is turned into the bed of a torrent.** * the name jerusalem occurs under the form ursalîmmu, or urusalîm, in the tel el-amarna tablets. sion was the name of the citadel preserved by the israelites after the capture of the place, and applied by them to the part of the city which contained the royal palace, and subsequently to the town itself. ** the kedron is called a nalial (2 sam. xv. 23; 1 kings ii. 37; jer. xxxi. 40), i.e. a torrent which runs dry during the summer; in winter it was termed a brook. excavations show that the fall diminishes at the foot of the ancient walls, and that the bottom of the valley has risen nearly twelve yards. during the remainder of the year a number of springs, which well up at the bottom of the valley, furnish an unfailing supply of water to the inhabitants of gibon,* siloam,** and eôgel.*** the valley widens out again near en-kôgel, and affords a channel to the wady of the children of hinnôm, which bounds the plateau on the west. the intermediate space has for a long time been nothing more than an undulating plain, at present covered by the houses of modern jerusalem. in ancient times it was traversed by a depression in the ground, since filled up, which ran almost parallel with the kedron, and joined it near the pool of siloam.**** the ancient city of the jebusites stood on the summit of the headland which rises between these two valleys, the town of jebus itself being at the extremity, while the millo lay farther to the north on the hill of sion, behind a ravine which ran down at right angles into the valley of the hedron. * now, possibly, the �fountain of the virgin,� but its identity is not certain. ** these are the springs which feed the group of reservoirs now known as the pool of siloam. the name �siloam� occurs only in neh. iii. 15, but is undoubtedly more ancient. *** en-rôgel, the �traveller�s well,� is now called the �well of job.� **** this valley, which is not mentioned by name in the old testament, was called, in the time of josephus, the tyropoon, or cheesemakers�quarter. its true position, which had been only suspected up to the middle of the present century, was determined with certainty by means of the excavations carried out by the english and germans. the bottom of the valley was found at a depth of from forty to sixty feet below the present surface. an unfortified suburb had gradually grown up on the lower ground to the west, and was connected by a stairway cut in the rock* with the upper city. this latter was surrounded by ramparts with turrets, like those of the canaanitish citadels which we constantly find depicted on the egyptian monuments. its natural advantages and efficient garrison had so far enabled it to repel all the attacks of its enemies. * this is the ophel of the hebrew text. when david appeared with his troops, the inhabitants ridiculed his presumption, and were good enough to warn him of the hopelessness of his enterprise: a garrison composed of the halt and the blind, without an able-bodied man amongst them, would, they declared, be able successfully to resist him. the king, stung by their mockery, made a promise to his �mighty men� that the first of them to scale the walls should be made chief and captain of his host. we often find that impregnable cities owe their downfall to negligence on the part of their defenders: these concentrate their whole attention on the few vulnerable points, and give but scanty care to those which are regarded as inaccessible.* jerusalem proved to be no exception to this rule; joab carried it by a sudden assault, and received as his reward the best part of the territory which he had won by his valour.** * cf. the capture of sardis by cyrus (herodotus) and by antiochus iii. (polybius), as also the taking of the capitol by the gauls. ** the account of the capture of jerusalem is given in 2 sam. v. 6-9, where the text is possibly corrupt, with interpolated glosses, especially in ver. 8; david�s reply to the mockery of the jebusites is difficult to understand. 1 citron, xi. 4-8 gives a more correct text, but one less complete in so far as the portions parallel with 2 sam. v. 6-9 are concerned; the details in regard to joab are undoubtedly historical, but we do not find them in the book of samuel. in attacking jerusalem, david�s first idea was probably to rid himself of one of the more troublesome obstacles which served to separate one-half of his people from the other; but once he had set foot in the place, he was not slow to perceive its advantages, and determined to make it his residence. hebron had sufficed so long as his power extended over caleb and judah only. situated as it was in the heart of the mountains, and in the wealthiest part of the province in which it stood, it seemed the natural centre to which the kenites and men of judah must gravitate, and the point at which they might most readily be moulded into a nation; it was, however, too far to the south to offer a convenient rallying-point for a ruler who wished to bring the hebrew communities scattered about on both banks of the jordan under the sway of a common sceptre. jerusalem, on the other hand, was close to the crossing point of the roads which lead from the sinaitic desert into syria, and from the shephelah to the land of gilead; it commanded nearly the whole domain of israel and the ring of hostile races by which it was encircled. from this lofty eyrie, david, with judah behind him, could either swoop down upon moab, whose mountains shut him out from a view of the dead sea, or make a sudden descent on the seaboard, by way of bethhoron, at the least sign of disturbance among the philistines, or could push straight on across mount ephraim into galilee. issachar, naphtali, asher, dan, and zebulun were, perhaps, a little too far from the seat of government; but they were secondary tribes, incapable of any independent action, who obeyed without repugnance, but also without enthusiasm, the soldier-king able to protect them from external foes. the future master of israel would be he who maintained his hold on the posterity of judah and of joseph, and david could not hope to find a more suitable place than jerusalem from which to watch over the two ruling houses at one and the same time. the lower part of the town he gave up to the original inhabitants,* the upper he filled with benjamites and men of judah;** he built or restored a royal palace on mount sion, in which he lived surrounded by his warriors and his family.*** one thing only was lacking--a temple for his god. jerubbaal had had a sanctuary at ophrah, and saul had secured the services of ahijah the prophet of shiloh: david was no longer satisfied with the ephod which had been the channel of many wise counsels during his years of adversity and his struggles against the philistines. he longed for some still more sacred object with which to identify the fortunes of his people, and by which he might raise the newly gained prestige of his capital. it so happened that the ark of the lord, the ancient safeguard of ephraim, had been lying since the battle of eben-ezer not far away, without a fixed abode or regular worshippers.**** * judges i. 21; cf. zech. xi. 7, where ekron in its decadence is likened to the jebusite vassal of judah. ** jerusalem is sometimes assigned to benjamin (judges i. 21), sometimes to judah (josh. xv. 63). judah alone is right. *** 2 sam. v. 9, and the parallel passage in 1 chron. xi. 7, 8. **** the account of the events which followed the battle of eben-ezer up to its arrival in the house of abinadab, is taken from the history of the ark, referred to on pp. 306, 307, supra. it is given in 1 sam. v., vi., vii. 1, where it forms an exceedingly characteristic whole, composed, it may be, of two separate versions thrown into one; the passage in 1 sam. vi. 15, where the lévites receive the ark, is supposed by some to be interpolated. the reason why it had not brought victory on that occasion, was that god�s anger had been stirred at the misdeeds committed in his name by the sons of eli, and desired to punish his people; true, it had been preserved from profanation, and the miracles which took place in its neighbourhood proved that it was still the seat of a supernatural power. [illustration: 340.jpg mouse of metal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch published by schick and oldfield thomas. at first the philistines had, according to their custom, shut it up in the temple of dagon at ashdod. on the morrow when the priests entered the sanctuary, they found the statue of their god prostrate in front of it, his fish-like body overthrown, and his head and hands scattered on the floor;* at the same time a plague of malignant tumours broke out among the people, and thousands of mice overran their houses. the inhabitants of ashdod made haste to transfer it on to ekron: it thus went the round of the five cities, its arrival being in each case accompanied by the same disasters. the soothsayers, being consulted at the end of seven months, ordered that solemn sacrifices should be offered up, and the ark restored to its rightful worshippers, accompanied by expiatory offerings of five golden mice and five golden tumours, one for each of the five repentant cities.** * the statue here referred to is evidently similar to those of the chaldæan gods and genii, in which dagon is represented as a man with his back and head enveloped in a fish as in a cloak. ** in the oustinoff collection at jaffa, there is a roughly shaped image of a mouse, cut out of a piece of white metal, and perhaps obtained from the ruins of gaza; it would seem to be an ex-voto of the same kind as that referred to in the hebrew text, but it is of doubtful authenticity. the ark was placed on a new cart, and two milch cows with their calves drew it, lowing all the way, without guidance from any man, to the field of a certain joshua at bethshemesh. the inhabitants welcomed it with great joy, but their curiosity overcame their reverence, and they looked within the shrine. jehovah, being angered thereat, smote seventy men of them, and the warriors made haste to bring the ark to kirjath-jearim, where it remained for a long time, in the house of abinadab on the hill, under charge of his son eleazar.* kirjath-jearim is only about two leagues from jerusalem. david himself went thither, and setting �the ark of god upon a new cart,� brought it away.* two attendants, called uzzah and ahio, drove the new cart, �and david and all israel played before god with all their might: even with songs, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.� an accident leading to serious consequences brought the procession to a standstill; the oxen stumbled, and their sacred burden threatened to fall: uzzah, putting forth his hand to hold the ark, was smitten by the lord, �and there he died before the lord.� david was disturbed at this, feeling some insecurity in dealing with a deity who had thus seemed to punish one of his worshippers for a well-meant and respectful act.** * the text of 1 sam. vi. 21, vii. 1, gives the reading kirjath-jearim, whereas the text of 2 sam. vi. 2 has baale judah, which should be corrected to baal-judah. baal-judah, or, in its abbreviated form, baala, is another name for kirjath-jearim (josh. xv. 9-11; cf. 1 ghron. xiii. 6). similarly, we find the name kirjath-baal (josh. xv. 60). kirjath-jearim is now kharbet-el-enab. ** the transport of the ark from kirjath-jearim to jerusalem is related in 2 sam. vi. and in 1 ghron. xiii., xv., xvi. he �was afraid of the lord that day,� and �would not remove the ark� to jerusalem, but left it for three months in the house of a philistine, obed-edom of gath; but finding that its host, instead of experiencing any evil, was blessed by the lord, he carried out his original intention, and brought the ark to jerusalem. �david, girded with a linen ephod, danced with all his might before the lord,� and �all the house of israel brought up the ark of the lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.� when the ark had been placed in the tent that david had prepared for it, he offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and at the end of the festival there were dealt out to the people gifts of bread, cakes, and wine (or flesh). there is inserted in the narrative* an account of the conduct of michal his wife, who looking out of the window and seeing the king dancing and playing, despised him in her heart, and when david returned to his house, congratulated him ironically--�how glorious was the king of israel to-day, who uncovered himself in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants!� * renan would consider this to have been inserted in the time of hezekiah. it appeared to him to answer �to the antipathy of hamutal and the ladies of the court to the worship of jahveh, and to that form of human respect which restrained the people of the world from giving themselves up to it.� david said in reply that he would rather be held in honour by the handmaids of whom she had spoken than avoid the acts which covered him with ridicule in her eyes; and the chronicler adds that �michal the daughter of saul had no child unto the day of her death.� * * [david�s reply shows (2 sam. vi. 21, 22) that it was in gratitude to jehovah who had exalted him that he thus humbled himself.--tr.] the tent and the ark were assigned at this time to the care of two priests--zadok, son of ahitub, and abiathar, son of ahimelech, who was a descendant of eli, and had never quitted david throughout his adventurous career.* it is probable, too, that the ephod had not disappeared, and that it had its place in the sanctuary; but it may have gradually fallen into neglect, and may have ceased to be the vehicle of oracular responses as in earlier years. the king was accustomed on important occasions to take part in the sacred ceremonies, after the example of contemporary monarchs, and he had beside him at this time a priest of standing to guide him in the religious rites, and to fulfil for him duties similar to those which the chief reader rendered to pharaoh. the only one of these priests of david whose name has come down to us was ira the jethrite, who accompanied his master in his campaigns, and would seem to have been a soldier also, and one of �the thirty.� these priestly officials seem, however, to have played but a subordinate part, as history is almost silent about their acts.** while david owed everything to the sword and trusted in it, he recognised at the same time that he had obtained his crown from jahveh; just as the sovereigns of thebes and nineveh saw in amon and assur the source of their own royal authority. * 2 sam. viii. 17, xx. 25; cf. 1 sam. xxi. 1, xxii. 20; 1 chron. xv. 11. ** 2 sam. xx. 26, where he is called the jairite, and not the ithrite, owing to an easily understood confusion of the hebrew letters. he figures in the list of the _gibborim_, �mighty men,� 2 sam. xxiii. 38. he consulted the lord directly when he wished for counsel, and accepted the issue as a test whether his interpretation of the divine will was correct or erroneous. when once he had realised, at the time of the capture of jerusalem, that god had chosen him to be the champion of israel, he spared no labour to accomplish the task which the divine favour had assigned to him. he attacked one after the other the peoples who had encroached upon his domain, moab being the first to feel the force of his arm. he extended his possessions at the expense of gilead, and the fertile provinces opposite jericho fell to his sword. these territories were in dangerous proximity to jerusalem, and david doubtless realised the peril of their independence. the struggle for their possession must have continued for some time, but the details are not given, and we have only the record of a few incidental exploits: we know, for instance, that the captain of david�s guard, benaiah, slew two moabite notables in a battle.* moabite captives were treated with all the severity sanctioned by the laws of war. they were laid on the ground in a line, and two-thirds of the length of the row being measured off, all within it were pitilessly massacred, the rest having their lives spared. moab acknowledged its defeat, and agreed to pay tribute: it had suffered so much that it required several generations to recover.** * 2 sam. xxiii. 20-23: cf. 1 chron. xi. 22-25. �ariel,� who is made the father of the two slain by benaiah, may possibly be the term in 11. 12, 17, 18 of the inscription of mesha (moabite stone); but its meaning is obscure, and has hitherto baffled all attempts to explain it. ** 2 sam. viii. 2. gilead had become detached from david�s domain on the south, while the ammonites were pressing it on the east, and the ararnæans making encroachments upon its pasture-lands on the north. nahash, king of the ammonites, being dead, david, who had received help from him in his struggle with saul, sent messengers to offer congratulations to his son hanun on his accession. hanun, supposing the messengers to be spies sent to examine the defences of the city, �shaved off one-half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away.� this was the signal for war. the ammonites, foreseeing that david would endeavour to take a terrible vengeance for this insult to his people, came to an understanding with their neighbours. the overthrow of the amorite chiefs had favoured the expansion of the aramæans towards the south. they had invaded all that region hitherto unconquered by israel in the valley of the litany to the east of jordan, and some half-dozen of their petty states had appropriated among them the greater part of the territories which were described in the sacred record as having belonged previously to jabin of hazor and the kings of bashan. the strongest of these principalities--that which occupied the position of qodshû in the bekâa, and had zoba as its capital--was at this time under the rule of hadadezer, son of behob. this warrior had conquered damascus, maacah, and geshur, was threatening the canaanite town of hamath, and was preparing to set out to the euphrates when the ammonites sought his help and protection. he came immediately to their succour. joab, who was in command of david�s army, left a portion of his troops at babbath under his brother abishaî, and with the rest set out against the syrians. he overthrew them, and returned immediately afterwards. the ammonites, hearing of his victory, disbanded their army; but joab had suffered such serious losses, that he judged it wise to defer his attack upon them until zoba should be captured. david then took the field himself, crossed the jordan with all his reserves, attacked the syrians at helam, put them to flight, killing shobach, their general, and captured damascus. hadadezer [hadarezer] �made peace with israel,� and tou or toi, the king of hamath, whom this victory had delivered, sent presents to david. this was the work of a single campaign. the next year joab invested kabbath, and when it was about to surrender he called the king to his camp, and conceded to him the honour of receiving the submission of the city in person. the ammonites were treated with as much severity as their kinsmen of moab. david �put them under saws and harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln.� * * the war with the aramaeans, described in 2 sam. viii. 3 12, is similar to the account of the conflict with the ammonites in 2 sam. x.-xii., but with more details. both documents are reproduced in 1 chron. xviii. 3-11, and xix., xx. 1-3. [illustration: 353.jpg the hebrew kingdom] this success brought others in its train. the idumæans had taken advantage of the employment of the israelite army against the aramæans to make raids into judah. joab and abishaî, despatched in haste to check them, met them in the valley of salt to the south of the dead sea, and gave them battle: their king perished in the fight, and his son hadad with some of his followers took flight into egypt. joab put to the sword all the able-bodied combatants, and established garrisons at petra, elath, and eziongeber* on the red sea. david dedicated the spoils to the lord, �who gave victory to david wherever he went.� neither elath nor eziongeber are here mentioned, but 1 kings ix. 25-28 and 2 chron. viii. 17, 18 prove that these places had been occupied by david. for all that concerns hadad, see 1 kings xi. 15-20. southern syria had found its master: were the hebrews going to pursue their success, and undertake in the central and northern regions a work of conquest which had baffled the efforts of all their predecessors--canaanites, amorites, and hittites? the assyrians, thrown back on the tigris, were at this time leading a sort of vegetative existence in obscurity; and, as for egypt, it would seem to have forgotten that it ever had possessions in asia. there was, therefore, nothing to be feared from foreign intervention should the hebrew be inclined to weld into a single state the nations lying between the euphrates and the red sea. [illustration: 354.jpg the site of rabbath-amon, seen from the west] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 377 of the _palestine exploration fund._ unfortunately, the israelites had not the necessary characteristics of a conquering people. their history from the time of their entry into canaan showed, it is true, that they were by no means incapable of enthusiasm and solidarity: a leader with the needful energy and good fortune to inspire them with confidence could rouse them from their self-satisfied indolence, and band them together for a great effort. but such concentration of purpose was ephemeral in its nature, and disappeared with the chief who had brought it about. in his absence, or when the danger he had pointed out was no longer imminent, they fell back instinctively into their usual state of apathy and disorganisation. their nomadic temperament, which two centuries of a sedentary existence had not seriously modified, disposed them to give way to tribal quarrels, to keep up hereditary vendettas, to break out into sudden tumults, or to make pillaging expeditions into their neighbours� territories. long wars, requiring the maintenance of a permanent army, the continual levying of troops and taxes, and a prolonged effort to keep what they had acquired, were repugnant to them. the kingdom which david had founded owed its permanence to the strong will of its originator, and its increase or even its maintenance depended upon the absence of any internal disturbance or court intrigue, to counteract which might make too serious a drain upon his energy. david had survived his last victory sufficiently long to witness around him the evolution of plots, and the multiplication of the usual miseries which sadden, in the east, the last years of a long reign. it was a matter of custom as well as policy that an exaltation in the position of a ruler should be accompanied by a proportional increase in the number of his retinue and his wives. david was no exception to this custom: to the two wives, abigail and ahinoam, which he had while he was in exile at ziklag, he now added maacah the aramaean, daughter of the king of geshur, haggith, abital, bglah, and several others.* during the siege of babbath-ammon he also committed adultery with bathsheba, the wife of uriah the hittite, and, placing her husband in the forefront of the battle, brought about his death. rebuked by the prophet nathan for this crime, he expressed his penitence, but he continued at the same time to keep bathsheba, by whom he had several children.** there was considerable rivalry among the progeny of these different unions, as the right of succession would appear not to have been definitely settled. of the family of saul, moreover, there were still several members in existence--the son which he had by eizpah, the children of his daughter merab, merib-baal, the lame offspring of jonathan,*** and shimei****--all of whom had partisans among the tribes, and whose pretensions might be pressed unexpectedly at a critical moment. * ahinoam is mentioned in the following passages: 1 sam. xxv. 43, xxvii. 3, xxx. 5; 2 sam. ii. 2, iii. 2; cf. also 1 chron. iii. 1; maacah in 2 sam. iii. 3; 1 chron. iii. 2; haggith in 2 sam. iii. 4; 1 kings i. 5, 11, ii. 13; 1 chron. iii. 2; abital in 2 sam. iii. 4; 1 chron. iii. 3; eglah in 2 sam. iii. 5; 1 chron. iii. 3. for the concubines, see 2 sam. v. 13, xv. 15, xvi. 21, 22; 1 chron. iii. 9, xiv. 3. ** 2 sam. xi., xii. 7-25. *** 2 sam. ix., xvi. 1-4, xix. 25-30, where the name is changed into mephibosheth; the original name is given in 1 chron. viii. 34. **** sam. xvi. 5-14, xix. 16-23; 1 kings ii. 8, 9, 36-46. the eldest son of ahinoam, amnon, whose priority in age seemed likely to secure for him the crown, had fallen in love with one of his half-sisters named tamar, the daughter of maacah, and, instead of demanding her in marriage, procured her attendance on him by a feigned illness, and forced her to accede to his desires. his love was thereupon converted immediately into hate, and, instead of marrying her, he had her expelled from his house by his servants. with rent garments and ashes on her head, she fled to her full-brother absalom. david was very wroth, but he loved his firstborn, and could not permit himself to punish him. absalom kept his anger to himself, but when two years had elapsed he invited amnon to a banquet, killed him, and fled to his grandfather talmai, king of geshur.* * it is to be noted that tamar asked amnon to marry her, and that the sole reproach directed against the king�s eldest son was that, after forcing her, he was unwilling to make her his wife. unions of brother and sister were probably as legitimate among the hebrews at this time as among the egyptians. his anger was now turned against the king for not having taken up the cause of his sister, and he began to meditate his dethronement. having been recalled to jerusalem at the instigation of joab, �absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him,� thus affecting the outward forms of royalty. judah, dissatisfied at the favour shown by david to the other tribes, soon came to recognise absalom as their chief, and some of the most intimate counsellors of the aged king began secretly to take his part. when absalom deemed things safe for action, he betook himself to hebron, under the pretence of a vow which he had made daring his sojourn at geshur. all judah rallied around him, and the excitement at jerusalem was so great that david judged it prudent to retire, with his philistine and cherethite guards, to the other side of the jordan. absalom, in the mean while, took up his abode in jerusalem, where, having received the tacit adherence of the family of saul and of a number of the notables, he made himself king. to show that the rupture between him and david was complete, he had tents erected on the top of the house, and there, in view of the people, took possession of his father�s harem. success would have been assured to him if he had promptly sent troops after the fugitives, but while he was spending his time in inactivity and feasting, david collected together those who were faithful to him, and put them under the command of joab and abishai. the king�s veterans were more than a match for the undisciplined rabble which opposed them, and in the action which followed at mahanaim absalom was defeated: in his flight through the forest of ephraim he was caught in a tree, and before he could disentangle himself was pierced through the heart by joab. david, we read, wished his people to have mercy on his son, and he wept bitterly. he spared on this occasion the family of saul, pardoned the tribe of judah, and went back triumphantly into jerusalem, which a few days before had taken part in his humiliation. the tribes of the house of joseph had taken no side in the quarrel. they were ignorant alike of the motives which set the tribe of judah against their own hero, and of their reasons for the zeal with which they again established him on the throne. they sent delegates to inquire about this, who reproached judah for acting without their cognisance: �we have ten parts in the king, and we have also more right in david than ye: why then did ye despise us, that our advice should not be first had in bringing back our king?� judah answered with yet fiercer words; then sheba, a chief of the benjamites, losing patience, blew a trumpet, and went off crying: �we have no portion in david, neither have we inheritance in the son of jesse: every man to his tents, o israel.� if these words had produced an echo among the central and northern tribes, a schism would have been inevitable: some approved of them, while others took no action, and since judah showed no disposition to put its military forces into movement, the king had once again to trust to joab and the philistine guards to repress the sedition. their appearance on the scene disconcerted the rebels, and sheba retreated to the northern frontier without offering battle. perhaps he reckoned on the support of the aramæans. he took shelter in the small stronghold of abel of bethmaacah, where he defended himself for some time; but just when the place was on the point of yielding, the inhabitants cut off sheba�s head, and threw it to joab from the wall. his death brought the crisis to an end, and peace reigned in israel. intrigues, however, began again more persistently than ever over the inheritance which the two slain princes had failed to obtain. the eldest son of the king was now adonijah, son of haggith, but bathsheba exercised an undisputed sway over her husband, and had prepared him to recognise in solomon her son the heir to the throne. she had secured, too, as his adherents several persons of influence, including zadok, the prophet nathan, and benaiah, the captain of the foreign guard. adonijah had on his side abiathar the priest, joab, and the people of jerusalem, who had been captivated by his beauty and his regal display. in the midst of these rivalries the king was daily becoming weaker: he was now very old, and although he was covered with wrappings he could not maintain his animal heat. a young girl was sought out for him to give him the needful warmth. abishag, a shunammite, was secured for the purpose, but her beauty inspired adonijah with such a violent passion that he decided to bring matters to a crisis. he invited his brethren, with the exception of solomon, to a banquet in the gardens which belonged to him in the south of jerusalem, near the well of eôgel. all his partisans were present, and, inspired by the good cheer, began to cry, �god save king adonijah!� when nathan informed bathsheba of what was going on, she went in unto the king, who was being attended on by abishag, complained to him of the weakness he was showing in regard to his eldest son, and besought him to designate his heir officially. he collected together the soldiers, and charged them to take the young man solomon with royal pomp from the hill of sion to the source of the gibôn: nathan anointed his forehead with the sacred oil, and in the sight of all the people brought him to the palace, mounted on his father�s mule. the blare of the coronation trumpets resounded in the ears of the conspirators, quickly followed by the tidings that solomon had been hailed king over the whole of israel: they fled on all sides, adonijah taking refuge at the horns of the altar. david did not long survive this event: shortly before his death he advised solomon to rid himself of all those who had opposed his accession to the throne. solomon did not hesitate to follow this counsel, and the beginning of his reign was marked by a series of bloodthirsty executions. adonijah was the first to suffer. he had been unwise enough to ask the hand of abishag in marriage: this request was regarded as indicative of a hidden intention to rebel, and furnished an excuse for his assassination. abiathar, at whose instigation adonijah had acted, owed his escape from a similar fate to his priestly character and past services: he was banished to his estate at anathoth, and zadok became high priest in his stead. joab, on learning the fate of his accomplice, felt that he was a lost man, and vainly sought sanctuary near the ark of the lord; but benaiah slew him there, and soon after, shimei, the last survivor of the race of saul, was put to death on some transparent pretext. this was the last act of the tragedy: henceforward solomon, freed from all those who bore him malice, was able to devote his whole attention to the cares of government.* * 1 kings i., ii. this is the close of the history of david, and follows on from 2 sam. xxiv. it would seem that adonijah was heir-apparent (1 kings i. 5, 6), and that solomon�s accession was brought about by an intrigue, which owed its success to the old king�s weakness (1 kings i. 12, 13, 17, 18, 30, 31). the change of rulers had led, as usual, to insurrections among the tributary races: damascus had revolted before the death of david, and had not been recovered. hadad returned from egypt, and having gained adherents in certain parts of edom, resisted all attempts made to dislodge him.* * it seems clear from the context that the revolt of damascus took place during david�s lifetime. it cannot, in any case, have occurred at a later date than the beginning of the reign of solomon, for we are told that rezôn, after capturing the town, �was an adversary of israel all the days of solomon� (1 kings xi. 23-25). hadad returned from egypt when �he had heard that david slept with his fathers, and that joab the captain of the host was dead� (1 kings xi. 21, 22, 25). as a soldier, solomon was neither skilful nor fortunate: he even failed to retain what his father had won for him. though he continued to increase his army, it was more with a view to consolidating his power over the bnê-israel than for any aggressive action outside his borders. on the other hand, he showed himself an excellent administrator, and did his best, by various measures of general utility, to draw closer the ties which bound the tribes to him and to each other. he repaired the citadels with such means as he had at his disposal. he rebuilt the fortifications of megiddo, thus securing the control of the network of roads which traversed southern syria. he remodelled the fortifications of tamar, the two bethhorons, baâlath, hazor, and of many other towns which defended his frontiers. some of them he garrisoned with foot-soldiers, others with horsemen and chariots. by thus distributing his military forces over the whole country, he achieved a twofold object;* he provided, on the one hand, additional security from foreign invasion, and on the other diminished the risk of internal revolt. * 1 kings ix. 15, 17-19; cf. 2 chron. viii. 4-6. the parallel passage in 2 chron. viii. 4, and the marginal variant in the _book of kings_, give the reading tadmor palmyra for tamar, thus giving rise to the legends which state that solomon�s frontier extended to the euphrates. the tamar here referred to is that mentioned in ezeh. xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28, as the southern boundary of judah; it is perhaps identical with the modern kharbêt-kurnub. the remnants of the old aboriginal clans, which had hitherto managed to preserve their independence, mainly owing to the dissensions among the israelites, were at last absorbed into the tribes in whose territory they had settled. a few still held out, and only gave way after long and stubborn resistance: before he could triumph over gezer, solomon was forced to humble himself before the egyptian pharaoh. he paid homage to him, asked the hand of his daughter in marriage, and having obtained it, persuaded him to come to his assistance: the egyptian engineers placed their skill at the service of the besiegers and soon brought the recalcitrant city to reason, handing it over to solomon in payment for his submission.* the canaanites were obliged to submit to the poll-tax and the _corvée_: the men of the league of gibeon were made hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of the lord.** the hebrews themselves bore their share in the expenses of the state, and though less heavily taxed than the canaanites, were, nevertheless, compelled to contribute considerable sums; judah alone was exempt, probably because, being the private domain of the sovereign, its revenues were already included in the royal exchequer.*** * 1 kings ix. 16. the pharaoh in question was probably one of the psiûkhânnît, the psûsennos ii. of manetho. ** 1 kings ix. 20, 21. the annexation of the gibeonites and their allies is placed at the time of the conquest in josh. ix. 3-27; it should be rather fixed at the date of the loss of independence of the league, probably in the time of solomon. *** stade thinks that judah was not exempt, and that the original document must have given thirteen districts. in order to facilitate the collection of the taxes, solomon divided the kingdom into twelve districts, each of which was placed in charge of a collector; these regions did not coincide with the existing tribal boundaries, but the extent of each was determined by the wealth of the lands contained within it. while one district included the whole of mount ephraim, another was limited to the stronghold of mahanaim and its suburbs. mahanaim was at one time the capital of israel, and had played an important part in the life of david: it held the key to the regions beyond jordan, and its ruler was a person of such influence that it was not considered prudent to leave him too well provided with funds. by thus obliterating the old tribal boundaries, solomon doubtless hoped to destroy, or at any rate greatly weaken, that clannish spirit which showed itself with such alarming violence at the time of the revolt of sheba, and to weld into a single homogeneous mass the various hebrew and canaanitish elements of which the people of israel were composed.* * 1 kings iv. 7-19, where a list of the districts is given; the fact that two of solomon�s sons-in-law appear in it, show that the document from which it is taken gave the staff of collectors in office at the close of his reign. each of these provinces was obliged, during one month in each year, to provide for the wants of �the king and his household,� or, in other words, the requirements of the central government. a large part of these contributions went to supply the king�s table; the daily consumption at the court was--thirty measures of fine flour, sixty measures of meal, ten fat oxen, twenty oxen out of the pastures, a hundred sheep, besides all kinds of game and fatted fowl: nor need we be surprised at these figures, for in a country where, and at a time when money was unknown, the king was obliged to supply food to all his dependents, the greater part of their emoluments consisting of these payments in kind. the tax-collectors had also to provide fodder for the horses reserved for military purposes: there were forty thousand of these, and twelve thousand charioteers, and barley and straw had to be forthcoming either in jerusalem itself or in one or other of the garrison towns amongst which they were distributed.* the levying of tolls on caravans passing through the country completed the king�s fiscal operations which were based on the systems prevailing in neighbouring states, especially that of egypt.** * 1 kings iv. 26-28; the complementary passages in 1 kings x. 26 and 2 chron. i. 14 give the number of chariots as 1400 and of charioteers at 12,000. the numbers do not seem excessive for a kingdom which embraced the whole south of palestine, when we reflect that, at the battle of qodshû, northern syria was able to put between 2500 and 3000 chariots into the field against ramses ii. the hebrew chariots probably carried at least three men, like those of the hittites and assyrians. ** 1 kings x. 15, where mention is made of the amount which the chapmen brought, and the traffic of the merchants contains an allusion to these tolls. solomon, like other oriental sovereigns, reserved to himself the monopoly of certain imported articles, such as yarn, chariots, and horses. egyptian yarn, perhaps the finest produced in ancient times, was in great request among the dyers and embroiderers of asia. chariots, at once strong and light, were important articles of commerce at a time when their use in warfare was universal. as for horses, the cities of the delta and middle egypt possessed a celebrated strain of stallions, from which the syrian princes were accustomed to obtain their war-steeds.* solomon decreed that for the future he was to be the sole intermediary between the asiatics and the foreign countries supplying their requirements. his agents went down at regular intervals to the banks of the nile to lay in stock; the horses and chariots, by the time they reached jerusalem, cost him at the rate of six hundred silver shekels for each chariot, and one hundred and fifty shekels for each horse, but he sold them again at a profit to the aramæan and hittite princes. in return he purchased from them cilician stallions, probably to sell again to the egyptians, whose relaxing climate necessitated a frequent introduction of new blood into their stables.** by these and other methods of which we know nothing the yearly revenue of the kingdom was largely increased: and though it only reached a total which may seem insignificant in comparison with the enormous quantities of the precious metals which passed through the hands of the pharaohs of that time, yet it must have seemed boundless wealth in the eyes of the shepherds and husbandmen who formed the bulk of the hebrew nation. * the terms in which the text, 1 kings x. 27-29 (cf. 2 citron, i. 16, 17), speaks of the trade in horses, show that the traffic was already in existence when solomon decided to embark in it. ** 1 kings x. 27-29; 2 chron. i. 16, 17. kuê, the name of lower cilicia, was discovered in the hebrew text by pr. lenormant. winckler, with mistaken reliance on the authority of erman, has denied that egypt produced stud-horses at this time, and wishes to identify the mizraim of the hebrew text with musri, a place near mount taurus, mentioned in the assyrian texts. in thus developing his resources and turning them to good account, solomon derived great assistance from the phoenicians of tyre and sidon, a race whose services were always at the disposal of the masters of southern syria. the continued success of the hellenic colonists on the eastern shores of the mediterranean had compelled the phoenicians to seek with redoubled boldness and activity in the western mediterranean some sort of compensation for the injury which their trade had thus suffered. they increased and consolidated their dealings with sicily, africa, and spain, and established themselves throughout the whole of that misty region which extended beyond the straits of gibraltar on the european side, from the mouth of the guadalete to that of the guadiana. this was the famous tarshish--the oriental el dorado. here they had founded a number of new towns, the most flourishing of which, gadîr,* rose not far from the mouths of the betis, on a small islet separated from the mainland by a narrow arm of the sea. in this city they constructed a temple to melkarth, arsenals, warehouses, and shipbuilding yards: it was the tyre of the west, and its merchant-vessels sailed to the south and to the north to trade with the savage races of the african and european seaboard. on the coast of morocco they built lixos, a town almost as large as gadîr, and beyond lixos, thirty days� sail southwards, a whole host of depots, reckoned later on at three hundred. * i do not propose to discuss here the question of the identity of the country of tartessos with the tarshish or tarsis mentioned in the bible (1 kings x. 22). by exploiting the materials to be obtained from these lands, such as gold, silver, tin, lead, and copper, tyre and sidon were soon able to make good the losses they had suffered from greek privateersmen and marauding philistines. towards the close of the reign of saul over israel, a certain king abîbaal had arisen in tyre, and was succeeded by his son hiram, at the very moment when david was engaged in bringing the whole of israel into subjection. hiram, guided by instinct or by tradition, at once adopted a policy towards the rising dynasty which his ancestors had always found successful in similar cases. he made friendly overtures to the hebrews, and constituted himself their broker and general provider: when david was in want of wood for the house he was building at jerusalem, hiram let him have the necessary quantity, and hired out to him workmen and artists at a reasonable wage, to help him in turning his materials to good account.* * 2 sam. v. 11; cf. the reference to the same incident in 1 kings v 1-3. the accession of solomon was a piece of good luck for him. the new king, born in the purple, did not share the simple and somewhat rustic tastes of his father. he wanted palaces and gardens and a temple, which might rival, even if only in a small way, the palaces and temples of egypt and chaldæa, of which he had heard such glowing accounts: hiram undertook to procure these things for him at a moderate cost, and it was doubtless his influence which led to those voyages to the countries which produced precious metals, perfumes, rare animals, costly woods, and all those foreign knicknacks with which eastern monarchs of all ages loved to surround themselves. the phoenician sailors were well acquainted with the bearings of puanît, most of them having heard of this country when in egypt, a few perhaps having gone thither under the direction and by the orders of pharaoh: and hiram took advantage of the access which the hebrews had gained to the shores of the red sea by the annexation of edom, to establish relations with these outlying districts without having to pass the egyptian customs. he lent to solomon shipwrights and sailors, who helped him to fit out a fleet at eziôn-geber, and undertook a voyage of discovery in company with a number of hebrews, who were no doubt despatched in the same capacity as the royal messengers sent with the galleys of hâtshopsîtû. it was a venture similar to those so frequently undertaken by the egyptian admirals in the palmy days of the theban navy, and of which we find so many curious pictures among the bas-reliefs at deîr el-baharî. on their return, after a three years� absence, they reported that they had sailed to a country named ophir, and produced in support of their statement a freight well calculated to convince the most sceptical, consisting as it did of four hundred and twenty talents of gold. the success of this first venture encouraged solomon to persevere in such expeditions: he sent his fleet on several voyages to ophir, and procured from thence a rich harvest of gold and silver, wood and ivory, apes and peacocks.* * 1 kings ix. 26-28, x. 11, 12; cf. 2 citron, viii. 17, 18, ix. 10, 11, 21. a whole library might be stocked with the various treatises which have appeared on the situation of the country of ophir: arabia, persia, india, java, and america have all been suggested. the mention of almug wood and of peacocks, which may be of indian origin, for a long time inclined the scale in favour of india, but the discoveries of mauch and bent on the zimbabaye have drawn attention to the basin of the zambesi and the ruins found there. dr. peters, one of the best-known german explorers, is inclined to agree with mauch and bent, in their theory as to the position of the ophir of the bible. i am rather inclined to identify it with the egyptian pûanît, on the somali or yemen seaboard. was the profit from these distant cruises so very considerable after all? after they had ceased, memory may have thrown a fanciful glamour over them, and magnified the treasures they had yielded to fabulous proportions: we are told that solomon would have no drinking vessels or other utensils save those of pure gold, and that in his days �silver was as stone,� so common had it become.* * 1 kings x. 21, 27. in chronicles the statement in the _book of kings_ is repeated in a still more emphatic manner, since it is there stated that gold itself was �in jerusalem as stones� (2 chron. i. 15). [illustration: 370.jpg map of tyre subsequent to hiram] doubtless hiram took good care to obtain his fall share of the gains. the phoenician king began to find tyre too restricted for him, the various islets over which it was scattered affording too small a space to support the multitudes which flocked thither. he therefore filled up the channels which separated them; by means of embankments and fortified quays he managed to reclaim from the sea a certain amount of land on the south; after which he constructed two harbours--one on the north, called the sidonian; the other on the south, named the egyptian. he was perhaps also the originator of the long causeway, the lower courses of which still serve as a breakwater, by which he transformed the projecting headland between the island and the mainland into a well-sheltered harbour. finally, he set to work on a task like that which he had already helped solomon to accomplish: he built for himself a palace of cedar-wood, and restored and beautified the temples of the gods, including the ancient sanctuary of melkarth, and that of astarté. in his reign the greatness of phoenicia reached its zenith, just as that of the hebrews culminated under david. [illustration: 371.jpg the breakwater of the egyptian harbour at tyre] drawn by boudier, from a photograph published by the duc de luynes. the most celebrated of solomon�s works were to be seen at jerusalem. as david left it, the city was somewhat insignificant. the water from its fountains had been amply sufficient for the wants of the little jebusite town; it was wholly inadequate to meet the requirements of the growing-population of the capital of judah. solomon made better provision for its distribution than there had been in the past, and then tapped a new source of supply some distance away, in the direction of bethlehem; it is even said that he made the reservoirs for its storage which still bear his name.* * a somewhat ancient tradition attributes these works to solomon; no single fact confirms it, but the balance of probability seems to indicate that he must have taken steps to provide a water-supply for the new city. the channels and reservoirs, of which traces are found at the present day, probably occupy the same positions as those which preceded them. [illustration: 372.jpg one of solomon�s reservoirs near jerusalem] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. c. alluaud of limoges. meanwhile, hiram had drawn up for him plans for a fortified residence, on a scale commensurate with the thriving fortunes of his dynasty. the main body was constructed of stone from the judæan quarries, cut by masons from byblos, but it was inlaid with cedar to such an extent that one wing was called �the house of the forest-of-lebanon.� it contained everything that was required for the comfort of an eastern potentate--a harem, with separate apartments for the favourites (one of which was probably decorated in the egyptian manner for the benefit of pharaoh�s daughter);* then there were reception-halls, to which the great men of the kingdom were admitted; storehouses, and an arsenal. the king�s bodyguard possessed five hundred shields �of beaten gold,� which were handed over by each detachment, when the guard was relieved, to the one which took its place. but this gorgeous edifice would not have been complete if the temple of jahveh had not arisen side by side with the abode of the temporal ruler of the nation. no monarch in those days could regard his position as unassailable until he had a sanctuary and a priesthood attached to his religion, either in his own palace or not far away from it. david had scarcely entered jerusalem before he fixed upon the threshing-floor of araunah the jebusite as a site for the temple, and built an altar there to the lord during a plague which threatened to decimate his people; but as he did not carry the project any farther,** solomon set himself to complete the task which his father had merely sketched out. * 1 kings vii. 8, ix. 24; 2 ghron. viii. 11. ** 2 sam xxiv. 18-25, the threshing-floor of araunah the jebusite is mentioned elsewhere as the site on which solomon built his temple (2 ghron. iii. 1). the site was irregular in shape, and the surface did not naturally lend itself to the purpose for which it was destined. his engineers, however, put this right by constructing enormous piers for the foundations, which they built up from the slopes of the mountain or from the bottom of the valley as circumstances required: the space between this artificial casing and the solid rock was filled up, and the whole mass formed a nearly square platform, from which the temple buildings were to rise. hiram undertook to supply materials for the work. solomon had written to him that he should command �that they hew me cedar trees out of lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants; and i will give thee hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt say: for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the zidonians.� hiram was delighted to carry out the wishes of his royal friend with regard to the cedar and cypress woods. [illustration: 374.jpg some of the stone course of solomon�s temple at jerusalem] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. �my servants,� he answered, �shall bring them down from lebanon unto the sea: and i will make them into rafts to go by sea unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be broken up there, and thou shalt receive them; and thou shalt accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household.� the payment agreed on, which was in kind, consisted of twenty thousand _kôr_ of wheat, and twenty _kôr_ of pure oil per annum, for which hiram was to send to jerusalem not only the timber, but architects, masons, and gebalite carpenters (i.e. from byblos), smelters, sculptors, and overseers.* solomon undertook to supply the necessary labour, and for this purpose made a levy of men from all the tribes. the number of these labourers was reckoned at thirty thousand, and they were relieved regularly every three months; seventy thousand were occupied in the transport of the materials, while eighty thousand cut the stones from the quarry.** * 1 kings v. 7--11 * cf. 2 chron. ii. 3--16, where the writer adds 20,000 _kôr_ of barley, 20,000 �baths� of wine, and the same quantity of oil. ** 1 kings v. 13-18; of. 2 chron. ii. 1, 2, 17, 18. it is possible that the numbers may have been somewhat exaggerated in popular estimation, since the greatest egyptian monuments never required such formidable levies of workmen for their construction; we must remember, however, that such an undertaking demanded a considerable effort, as the hebrews were quite unaccustomed to that kind of labour. the front of the temple faced eastward; it was twenty cubits wide, sixty long, and thirty high. the walls were of enormous squared stones, and the ceilings and frames of the doors of carved cedar, plated with gold; it was entered by a porch, between two columns of wrought bronze, which were called jachin and boaz.* * 1 kings vii. 15-22; cf. 2 chron. iv. 11-13. the names were probably engraved each upon its respective column, and taken together formed an inscription which could be interpreted in various ways. the most simple interpretation is to recognise in them a kind of talismanic formula to ensure the strength of the building, affirming �that it exists by the strength� of god. the interior contained only two chambers; the _hekal,_ or holy place, where were kept the altar of incense, the seven-branched candlestick, and the table of shewbread; and the holy of holies--_debîr_--where the ark of god rested beneath the wings of two cherubim of gilded wood. against the outer wall of the temple, and rising to half its height, were rows of small apartments, three stories high, in which were kept the treasures and vessels of the sanctuary. while the high priest was allowed to enter the holy of holies only once a year, the holy place was accessible at all times to the priests engaged in the services, and it was there that the daily ceremonies of the temple-worship took place; there stood also the altar of incense and the table of shewbread. the altar of sacrifice stood on the platform in front of the entrance; it was a cube of masonry with a parapet, and was approached by stone steps; it resembled, probably, in general outline the monumental altars which stood in the forecourts of the egyptian temples and palaces. there stood by it, as was also customary in chaldæa, a �molten sea,� and some ten smaller lavers, in which the lévites washed the portions of the victims to be offered, together with the basins, knives, flesh-hooks, spoons, shovels, and other utensils required for the bloody sacrifice. a low wall surmounted by a balustrade of cedar-wood separated this sacred enclosure from a court to which the people were permitted to have free access. both palace and temple were probably designed in that pseudo-egyptian style which the phoenicians were known to affect. the few hebrew edifices of which remains have come down to us, reveal a method of construction and decoration common in egypt; we have an example of this in the uprights of the doors at lachish, which terminate in an egyptian gorge like that employed in the naos of the phonician temples. [illustration: 377.jpg an upright of a door at lachish] drawn by paucher-gudin, from the drawing by petrie. the completion of the whole plan occupied thirteen years; at length both palace and temple were finished in the xviith year of the king�s reign. solomon, however, did not wait for the completion of the work to dedicate the sanctuary to god. as soon as the inner court was ready, which was in his xith year, he proceeded to transfer the ark to its new resting-place; it was raised upon a cubical base, and the long staves by which it had been carried were left in their rings, as was usual in the case of the sacred barks of the egyptian deities.* the god of israel thus took up his abode in the place in which he was henceforth to be honoured. the sacrifices on the occasion of the dedication were innumerable, and continued for fourteen days, in the presence of the representatives of all israel. the ornate ceremonial and worship which had long been lavished on the deities of rival nations were now, for the first time, offered to the god of israel. the devout hebrews who had come together from far and near returned to their respective tribes filled with admiration,** and their limited knowledge of art doubtless led them to consider their temple as unique in the world; in fact, it presented nothing remarkable either in proportion, arrangement, or in the variety and richness of its ornamentation and furniture. compared with the magnificent monuments of egypt and chaldæa, the work of solomon was what the hebrew kingdom appears to us among the empires of the ancient world--a little temple suited to a little people. * 1 kings viii. 6-8, and 2 ghron. v. 7-9. ** 1 kings vi. 37, 38 states that the foundations were laid in the ivth year of solomon�s reign, in the month of ziv, and that the temple was completed in the month of bui in the xith year; the work occupied seven years. 1 kings vii. 1 adds that the construction of the palace lasted thirteen years; it went on for six years after the completion of the temple. the account of the dedication (1 kings viii.) contains a long prayer by solomon, part of which (vers. 14 66) is thought by certain critics to be of later date. they contend that the original words of solomon are confined to vers. 12 and 13. the priests to whose care it was entrusted did not differ much from those whom david had gathered about him at the outset of the monarchy. they in no way formed an hereditary caste confined to the limits of a rigid hierarchy; they admitted into their number--at least up to a certain point--men of varied extraction, who were either drawn by their own inclinations to the service of the altar, or had been dedicated to it by their parents from childhood. he indeed was truly a priest �who said of his father and mother, �i have not seen him;� neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew he his own children.� he was content, after renouncing these, to observe the law of god and keep his covenant, and to teach jacob his judgments and israel his law; he put incense before the lord, and whole burnt offerings upon his altar.* * those are the expressions used in the blessing of moses (deut. xxxiii. 8-12); though this text is by some writers placed as late as the viiith century b.c., yet the state of things there represented would apply also to an earlier date. the hebrew priest, in short, had the same duties as a large proportion of the priesthood in chaldæ and egypt. as in egypt, the correct offering of the jewish sacrifices was beset with considerable difficulties, and the risk of marring their efficacy by the slightest inadvertence necessitated the employment of men who were thoroughly instructed in the divinely appointed practices and formulæ. the victims had to be certified as perfect, while the offerers themselves had to be ceremonially pure; and, indeed, those only who had been specially trained were able to master the difficulties connected with the minutiae of legal purity. the means by which the future was made known necessitated the intervention of skilful interpreters of the divine will. we know that in egypt the statues of the gods were supposed to answer the questions put to them by movements of the head or arms, sometimes even by the living voice; but the hebrews do not appear to have been influenced by any such recollections in the use of their sacred oracles. we are ignorant, however, of the manner in which the ephod was consulted, and we know merely that the art of interrogating the divine will by it demanded a long noviciate.* the benefits derived by those initiated into these mysteries were such as to cause them to desire the privileges to be perpetuated to their children. gathered round the ancient sanctuaries were certain families who, from father to son, were devoted to the performance of the sacred rites, as, for instance, that of eli at shiloh, and that of jonathan-ben-gershom at dan, near the sources of the jordan; but in addition to these, the text mentions functionaries analogous to those found among the canaanites, diviners, seers--_roê_--who had means of discovering that which was hidden from the vulgar, even to the finding of lost objects, but whose powers sometimes rose to a higher level when they were suddenly possessed by the prophetic spirit and enabled to reveal coming events. besides these, again, were the prophets--_nabî_**--who lived either alone or in communities, and attained, by means of a strict training, to a vision of the future. * an example of the consulting of the ephod will be found in 1 sam. xxx. 7, 8, where david desires to know if he shall pursue the amalekites. ** 1 sam. ix. 9 is a gloss which identifies the _seer_ of former times with the prophet of the times of the monarchy. their prophetic utterances were accompanied by music and singing, and the exaltation of spirit which followed their exercises would at times spread to the bystanders,--as is the case in the �zikr� of the mahomedans of to-day.* * 1 sam. x. 5-13, where we see saul seized with the prophetic spirit on meeting with a band of prophets descending from the high place; cf. 2 sam. vi. 13-16, 20-23, for david dancing before the ark. the early kings, saul and david, used to have recourse to individuals belonging to all these three classes, but the prophets, owing to the intermittent character of their inspiration and their ministry, could not fill a regular office attached to the court. one of this class was raised up by god from time to time to warn or guide his servants, and then sank again into obscurity; the priests, on the contrary, were always at hand, and their duties brought them into contact with the sovereign all the year round. the god who was worshipped in the capital of the country and his priesthood promptly acquired a predominant position in all oriental monarchies, and most of the other temples, together with the sacerdotal bodies attached to them, usually fell into disrepute, leaving them supreme. if amon of thebes became almost the sole god, and his priests the possessors of all egypt, it was because the accession of the xviiith dynasty had made his pontiffs the almoners of the pharaoh. something of the same sort took place in israel; the priesthood at jerusalem attached to the temple built by the sovereign, being constantly about his person, soon surpassed their brethren in other parts of the country both in influence and possessions. under david�s reign their head had been abiathar, son of ahimelech, a descendant of eli, but on solomon�s accession the primacy had been transferred to the line of zadok. in this alliance of the throne and the altar, it was natural at first that the throne should reap the advantage. the king appears to have continued to be a sort of high priest, and to have officiated at certain times and occasions.* the priests kept the temple in order, and watched over the cleanliness of its chambers and its vessels; they interrogated the divine will for the king according to the prescribed ceremonies, and offered sacrifices on behalf of the monarch and his subjects; in short, they were at first little more than chaplains to the king and his family. * solomon officiated and preached at the consecration of the temple (1 kings viii.). the actual words appear to be of a later date; but even if that be the case, it proves that, at the time they were written, the king still possessed his full sacerdotal powers. solomon�s allegiance to the god of israel did not lead him to proscribe the worship of other gods; he allowed his foreign wives the exercise of their various religions, and he raised an altar to chemosh on the mount of olives for one of them who was a moabite. the political supremacy and material advantages which all these establishments acquired for judah could not fail to rouse the jealousy of the other tribes. ephraim particularly looked on with ill-concealed anger at the prospect of the hegemony becoming established in the hands of a tribe which could be barely said to have existed before the time of david, and was to a considerable extent of barbarous origin. taxes, homage, the keeping up and recruiting of garrisons, were all equally odious to this, as well as to the other clans descended from joseph; meanwhile their burdens did not decrease. a new fortress had to be built at jerusalem by order of the aged king. one of the overseers appointed for this work--jeroboam, the son of nebat--appears to have stirred up the popular discontent, and to have hatched a revolutionary plot. solomon, hearing of the conspiracy, attempted to suppress it; jeroboam was forewarned, and fled to egypt, where pharaoh sheshonq received him with honour, and gave him his wife�s sister in marriage.* the peace of the nation had not been ostensibly troubled, but the very fact that a pretender should have risen up in opposition to the legitimate king augured ill for the future of the dynasty. in reality, the edifice which david had raised with such difficulty tottered on its foundations before the death of his successor; the foreign vassals were either in a restless state or ready to throw off their allegiance; money was scarce, and twenty galilæan towns had been perforce ceded to hiram to pay the debts due to him for the building of the temple;** murmurings were heard among the people, who desired an easier life. * 1 kings xi. 23-40, where the lxx. is fuller than the a. v. ** 1 kings ix. 10-13; cf. 2 cliron. viii. 1, 2, where the fact seems to have been reversed, and hiram is made the donor of the twenty towns. in a future age, when priestly and prophetic influences had gained the ascendant, amid the perils which assailed jerusalem, and the miseries of the exile, the israelites, contrasting their humiliation with the glory of the past, forgot the reproaches which their forefathers had addressed to the house of david, and surrounded its memory with a halo of romance. david again became the hero, and solomon the saint and sage of his race; the latter �spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. and he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.� we are told that god favoured him with a special predilection, and appeared to him on three separate occasions: once immediately after the death of david, to encourage him by the promise of a prosperous reign, and the gift of wisdom in governing; again after the dedication of the temple, to confirm him in his pious intentions; and lastly to upbraid him for his idolatry, and to predict the downfall of his house. solomon is supposed to have had continuous dealings with all the sovereigns of the oriental world,* and a queen of sheba is recorded as having come to bring him gifts from the furthest corner of arabia. * 1 kings iv. 34; on this passage are founded all the legends dealing with the contests of wit and wisdom in which solomon was supposed to have entered with the kings of neighbouring countries; traces of these are found in dius, in menander, and in eupolemus. his contemporaries, however, seem to have regarded him as a tyrant who oppressed them with taxes, and whose death was unregretted.* * i am inclined to place the date of solomon�s death between 935 and 930 b.c. [illustration: 384.jpg king solomon and the queen of sheba] his son rehoboam experienced no opposition in jerusalem and judah on succeeding to the throne of his father; when, however, he repaired to shechem to receive the oath of allegiance from the northern and central tribes, he found them unwilling to tender it except under certain conditions; they would consent to obey him only on the promise of his delivering them from the forced labour which had been imposed upon them by his predecessors. jeroboam, who had returned from his egyptian exile on the news of solomon�s death, undertook to represent their grievances to the new king. �thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee.� rehoboam demanded three days for the consideration of his reply; he took counsel with the old advisers of the late king, who exhorted him to comply with the petition, but the young men who were his habitual companions urged him, on the contrary, to meet the remonstrances of his subjects with threats of still harsher exactions. their advice was taken, and when jeroboam again presented himself, rehoboam greeted him with raillery and threats. �my little finger is thicker than my father�s loins. and now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, i will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but i will chastise you with scorpions.� this unwise answer did not produce the intimidating effect which was desired; the cry of revolt, which had already been raised in the earlier days of the monarchy, was once more heard. �what portion have we in david? neither have we inheritance in the son of jesse: to your tents, o israel: now see to thine own house, david.� rehoboam attempted to carry his threats into execution, and sent the collectors of taxes among the rebels to enforce payment; but one of them was stoned almost before his eyes, and the king himself had barely time to regain his chariot and flee to jerusalem to escape an outburst of popular fury. the northern and central tribes immediately offered the crown to jeroboam, and the partisans of the son of solomon were reduced to those of his own tribe; judah, caleb, the few remaining simeonites, and some of the towns of dan and benjamin, which were too near to jerusalem to escape the influence of a great city, were all who threw in their lot with him.* * 1 kings xii. 1--24; cf. 2 chron. x., xi. 1-4. the text of 1 kings xii. 20 expressly says, �there was none that followed the house of david but the tribe of judah only;� whereas the following verse, which some think to have been added by another hand, adds that rehoboam assembled 180,000 men �which were warriors� from �the house of judah and the tribe of benjamin.� thus was accomplished the downfall of the house of david, and with it the hebrew kingdom which it had been at such pains to build up. when we consider the character of the two kings who formed its sole dynasty, we cannot refrain from thinking that it deserved a better fate. david and solomon exhibited that curious mixture of virtues and vices which distinguished most of the great semite princes. the former, a soldier of fortune and an adventurous hero, represents the regular type of the founder of a dynasty; crafty, cruel, ungrateful, and dissolute, but at the same time brave, prudent, cautious, generous, and capable of enthusiasm, clemency, and repentance; at once so lovable and so gentle that he was able to inspire those about him with the firmest friendship and the most absolute devotion. the latter was a religious though sensual monarch, fond of display--the type of sovereign who usually succeeds to the head of the family and enjoys the wealth which his predecessor had acquired, displaying before all men the results of an accomplished work, and often thereby endangering its stability. the real reason of their failure to establish a durable monarchy was the fact that neither of them understood the temperament of the people they were called upon to govern. the few representations we possess of the hebrews of this period depict them as closely resembling the nations which inhabited southern syria at the time of the egyptian occupation. they belong to the type with which the monuments have made us familiar; they are distinguished by an aquiline nose, projecting cheek-bones, and curly hair and beard. they were vigorous, hardy, and inured to fatigue, but though they lacked those qualities of discipline and obedience which are the characteristics of true warrior races, david had not hesitated to employ them in war; they were neither sailors, builders, nor given to commerce and industries, and yet solomon built fleets, raised palaces and a temple, and undertook maritime expeditions, and financial circumstances seemed for the moment to be favourable. [illustration: 387.jpg a jewish captive] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. the onward progress of assyria towards the mediterranean had been arrested by the hittites, egypt was in a condition of lethargy, the aramæan populations were fretting away their energies in internal dissensions; david, having encountered no serious opposition after his victory over the philistines, had extended his conquests and increased the area of his kingdom, and the interested assistance which tyre afterwards gave to solomon enabled the latter to realise his dreams of luxury and royal magnificence. but the kingdom which had been created by david and solomom rested solely on their individual efforts, and its continuance could be ensured only by bequeathing it to descendants who had sufficient energy and prudence to consolidate its weaker elements, and build up the tottering materials which were constantly threatening to fall asunder. as soon as the government had passed into the hands of the weakling rehoboam, who had at the outset departed from his predecessors� policy, the component parts of the kingdom, which had for a few years been, held together, now became disintegrated without a shock, and as if by mutual consent. the old order of things which existed in the time of the judges had passed away with the death of saul. the advantages which ensued from a monarchical regime were too apparent to permit of its being set aside, and the tribes who had been bound together by nearly half a century of obedience to a common master now resolved themselves, according to their geographical positions, into two masses of unequal numbers and extent--judah in the south, together with the few clans who remained loyal to the kingly house, and israel in the north and the regions beyond jordan, occupying three-fourths of the territory which had belonged to david and solomon. israel, in spite of its extent and population, did not enjoy the predominant position which we might have expected at the beginning of its independent existence. it had no political unity, no capital in which to concentrate its resources, no temple, and no army; it represented the material out of which a state could be formed rather than one already constituted. it was subdivided into three groups, formerly independent of, and almost strangers to each other, and between whom neither david nor solomon had been able to establish any bond which would enable them to forget their former isolation. the centre group was composed of the house of joseph--ephraim, benjamin, and manasseh--and comprised the old fortresses of perea, mahanaim, penuel, succoth, and eamoth, ranged in a line running parallel with the jordan. in the eastern group were the semi-nomad tribes of reuben and gad, who still persisted in the pastoral habits of their ancestors, and remained indifferent to the various revolutions which had agitated their race for several generations. finally, in the northern group lay the smaller tribes of asher, naphtali, issachar, zebulon, and dan, hemmed in between the phoenicians and the aramaeans of zoba and damascus. each group had its own traditions, its own interests often opposed to those of its neighbours, and its own peculiar mode of life, which it had no intention of renouncing for any one else�s benefit. the difficulty of keeping these groups together became at once apparent. shechem had been the first to revolt against rehoboam; it was a large and populous town, situated almost in the centre of the newly formed state, and the seat of an ancient oracle, both of which advantages seemed to single it out as the future capital. but its very importance, and the memories of its former greatness under jeruhhaal and abimelech, were against it. built in the western territory belonging to manasseh, the eastern and northern clans would at once object to its being chosen, on the ground that it would humiliate them before the house of joseph, in the same manner as the selection of jerusalem had tended to make them subservient to judah. jeroboam would have endangered his cause by fixing on it as his capital, and he therefore soon quitted it to establish himself at tirzah. it is true that the latter town was also situated in the mountains of ephraim, but it was so obscure and insignificant a place that it disarmed all jealousy; the new king therefore took up his residence in it, since he was forced to fix on some royal abode, but it never became for him what jerusalem was to his rival, a capital at once religious and military. he had his own sanctuary and priests at tirzah, as was but natural, but had he attempted to found a temple which would have attracted the whole population to a common worship, he would have excited jealousies which would have been fatal to his authority. on the other hand, solomon�s temple had in its short period of existence not yet acquired such a prestige as to prevent jeroboam�s drawing his people away from it: which he determined to do from a fear that contact with jerusalem would endanger the allegiance of his subjects to his person and family. such concourses of worshippers, assembling at periodic intervals from all parts of the country, soon degenerated into a kind of fair, in which commercial as well as religious motives had their part. [illustration: 391.jpg the mound and plain of bethel.] drawn by boudier, from the photograph published by the duc de luynes. these gatherings formed a source of revenue to the prince in whose capital they were held, and financial as well as political considerations required that periodical assemblies should be established in israel similar to those which attracted judah to jerusalem. jeroboam adopted a plan which while safeguarding the interests of his treasury, prevented his becoming unpopular with his own subjects; as he was unable to have a temple for himself alone, he chose two out of the most venerated ancient sanctuaries, that of dan for the northern tribes, and that of bethel, on the judæan frontier, for the tribes of the east and centre. he made two calves of gold, one for each place, and said to the people, �it is too much for you to go up to jerusalem; behold thy gods, o israel, which brought thee up out of the land of egypt.� he granted the sanctuaries certain appanages, and established a priesthood answering to that which officiated in the rival kingdom: �whosoever would he consecrated him, that there might be priests of the high places.� * while jeroboam thus endeavoured to strengthen himself on the throne by adapting the monarchy to the temperament of the tribes over which he ruled, rehoboam took measures to regain his lost ground and restore the unity which he himself had destroyed. he recruited the army which had been somewhat neglected in the latter years of his father, restored the walls of the cities which had remained faithful to him, and fortified the places which constituted his frontier defences against the israelites.** his ambition was not as foolish as we might be tempted to imagine. he had soldiers, charioteers, generals, skilled in the art of war, well-filled storehouses, the remnant of the wealth of solomon, and, as a last resource, the gold of the temple at jerusalem. he ruled over the same extent of territory as that possessed by david after the death of saul, but the means at his disposal were incontestably greater than those of his grandfather, and it is possible that he might in the end have overcome jeroboam, as david overcame ishbosheth, had not the intervention of egypt disconcerted his plans, and, by exhausting his material forces, struck a death-blow to all his hopes. * 1 kings xii. 25-32; chaps, xii. 33, xiii., xiv. 1-18 contain, side by side with the narrative of facts, such as the death of jeroboam�s son, comments on the religious conduct of the sovereign, which some regard as being of later date. ** 1 kings xii. 21-24; cf. 2 ghron. xi. 1-17, where the list of strongholds, wanting in the boole of kings, is given from an ancient source. the writer affirms, in harmony with the ideas of his time, �that the lévites left their suburbs and their possession, and came to judah and jerusalem; for jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the priest�s office unto the lord.� the century and a half which had elapsed since the death of the last of the ramessides had, as far as we can ascertain, been troubled by civil wars and revolutions.* * i have mentioned above the uncertainty which still shrouds the xxth dynasty. the following is the order in which i propose that its kings should be placed:-[illustration: 393.jpg table of kings] the imperious egypt of the theban dynasties had passed away, but a new egypt had arisen, not without storm and struggle, in its place. as long as the campaigns of the pharaohs had been confined to the nile valley and the oases, thebes had been the natural centre of the kingdom; placed almost exactly between the mediterranean and the southern frontier, it had been both the national arsenal and the treasure-house to which all foreign wealth had found its way from the persian gulf to the sahara, and from the coasts of asia minor to the equatorial swamps. the cities of the delta, lying on the frontier of those peoples with whom egypt now held but little intercourse, possessed neither the authority nor the resources of thebes; even memphis, to which the prestige of her ancient dynasties still clung, occupied but a secondary place beside her rival. the invasion of the shepherds, by making the thebaid the refuge and last bulwark of the egyptian nation, increased its importance: in the critical times of the struggle, thebes was not merely the foremost city in the country, it represented the country itself, and the heart of egypt may be said to have throbbed within its walls. the victories of ahmosis, the expeditions of thûtmosis i. and thûtmosis iii., enlarged her horizon; her pharaohs crossed the isthmus of suez, they conquered syria, subdued the valleys of the euphrates and the balîkh, and by so doing increased her wealth and her splendour. her streets witnessed during two centuries processions of barbarian prisoners laden with the spoils of conquest. but with the advent of the xixth and xxth dynasties came anxious times; the peoples of syria and libya, long kept in servitude, at length rebelled, and the long distance between karnak and gaza soon began to be irksome to princes who had to be constantly on the alert on the canaanite frontier, and who found it impossible to have their head-quarters six hundred miles from the scene of hostilities. hence it came about that ramses ii., mînephtah, and ramses iii. all took up their abode in the delta during the greater part of their active life; they restored its ancient towns and founded new ones, which soon acquired considerable wealth by foreign commerce. the centre of government of the empire, which, after the dissolution of the old memphite state, had been removed southwards to thebes on account of the conquest of ethiopia and the encroachment of theban civilization upon nubia and the sudan, now gradually returned northwards, and passing over heracleo-polis, which had exercised a transitory supremacy, at length established itself in the delta. tanis, bubastis, sais, mondes, and sebennytos all disputed the honour of forming the royal residence, and all in turn during the course of ages enjoyed the privilege without ever rising to the rank of thebes, or producing any sovereigns to be compared with those of her triumphant dynasties. tanis was, as we have seen, the first of these to rule the whole of the nile valley. its prosperity had continued to increase from the time that ramses ii. began to rebuild it; the remaining inhabitants of avaris, mingled with the natives of pure race and the prisoners of war settled there, had furnished it with an active and industrious population, which had considerably increased during the peaceful reigns of the xxth dynasty. the surrounding country, drained and cultivated by unremitting efforts, became one of the most fruitful parts of the delta; there was a large exportation of fish and corn, to which were soon added the various products of its manufactories, such as linen and woollen stuffs, ornaments, and objects in glass and in precious metals.* * the immense number of designs taken from aquatic plants, as, for instance, the papyrus and the lotus, single or in groups, as well as from fish and aquatic birds, which we observe on objects of phoenician goldsmiths� work, leads me to believe that the tyrian and sidonian artists borrowed most of their models from the delta, and doubtless from tanis, the most flourishing town of the delta during the centuries following the downfall of thebes. these were embarked on egyptian or phoenician galleys, and were exchanged in the ports of the mediterranean for syrian, asiatic, or ægean commodities, which were then transmitted by the egyptian merchants to the countries of the east and to northern africa.* the port of tanis was one of the most secure and convenient which existed at that period. it was at sufficient distance from the coast to be safe from the sudden attacks of pirates,** and yet near enough to permit of its being reached from the open by merchantmen in a few hours of easy navigation; the arms of the nile, and the canals which here flowed into the sea, were broad and deep, and, so long as they were kept well dredged, would allow the heaviest-laden vessel of large draught to make its way up them with ease. * it was from tanis that the egyptian vessel set out carrying the messengers of hrihor to byblos. ** we may judge of the security afforded by such a position by the account in homer which ulysses gives to eumaios of his pretended voyage to egypt; the greeks having disembarked, and being scattered over the country, were attacked by the egyptians before they could capture a town or carry their booty to the ships. the site of the town was not less advantageous for overland traffic. tanis was the first important station encountered by caravans after crossing the frontier at zalû, and it offered them a safe and convenient emporium for the disposal of their goods in exchange for the riches of egypt and the delta. the combination of so many advantageous features on one site tended to the rapid development of both civic and individual wealth; in less than three centuries after its rebuilding by ramses ii., tanis had risen to a position which enabled its sovereigns to claim even the obedience of thebes itself. we know very little of the history of this tanite dynasty; the monuments have not revealed the names of all its kings, and much difficulty is experienced in establishing the sequence of those already brought to light.* * the classification of the tanite line has been complicated in the minds of most egyptologists by the tendency to ignore the existence of the sacerdotal dynasty of high priests, to confuse with the tanite pharaohs those of the high priests who bore the crown, and to identify in the lists of manetho (more or less corrected) the names they are in search of. a fresh examination of the subject has led me to adopt provisionally the following order for the series of tanite kings:-[illustration: 397.jpg table of kings] their actual domain barely extended as far as siut, but their suzerainty was acknowledged by the said as well as by all or part of ethiopia, and the tanite pharaohs maintained their authority with such vigour, that they had it in their power on several occasions to expel the high priests of amon, and to restore, at least for a time, the unity of the empire. to accomplish this, it would have been sufficient for them to have assumed the priestly dignity at thebes, and this was what no doubt took place at times when a vacancy in the high priesthood occurred; but it was merely in an interim, and the tanite sovereigns always relinquished the office, after a brief lapse of time, in favour of some member of the family of hrihor whose right of primogeniture entitled him to succeed to it.* it indeed seemed as if custom and religious etiquette had made the two offices of the pontificate and the royal dignity incompatible for one individual to hold simultaneously. the priestly duties had become marvellously complicated during the theban hegemony, and the minute observances which they entailed absorbed the whole life of those who dedicated themselves to their performance.** * this is only true if the personage who entitles himself once within a cartouche, �the master of the two lands, first prophet of amon, psiûkhân-nît,� is really the tanite king, and not the high priest psiûkhânnît. ** the first book of diodorus contains a picture of the life of the kings of egypt, which, in common with much information contained in the work, is taken from a lost book of hecataeus. the historical romance written by the latter appears to have been composed from information taken from theban sources. the comparison of it with the inscribed monuments and the ritual of the cultus of amon proves that the ideal description given in this work of the life of the kings, merely reproduces the chief characteristics of the lives of the theban and ethiopian high priests; hence the greater part of the minute observances which we remark therein apply to the latter only, and not to the pharaohs properly so called. they had daily to fulfil a multitude of rites, distributed over the various hours in such a manner that it seemed impossible to find leisure for any fresh occupation without encroaching on the time allotted to absolute bodily needs. the high priest rose each morning at an appointed hour; he had certain times for taking food, for recreation, for giving audience, for dispensing justice, for attending to worldly affairs, and for relaxation with his wives and children; at night he kept watch, or rose at intervals to prepare for the various ceremonies which could only be celebrated at sunrise. he was responsible for the superintendence of the priests of amon in the numberless festivals held in honour of the gods, from which he could not absent himself except for some legitimate reason. from all this it will be seen how impossible it was for a lay king, like the sovereign ruling at tanis, to submit to such restraints beyond a certain point; his patience would soon have become exhausted, want of practice would have led him to make slips or omissions, rendering the rites null and void; and the temporal affairs of his kingdom--internal administration, justice, finance, commerce, and war--made such demands upon his time, that he was obliged as soon as possible to find a substitute to fulfil his religious duties. the force of circumstances therefore maintained the line of theban high priests side by side with their sovereigns, the tanite kings. they were, it is true, dangerous rivals, both on account of the wealth of their fief and of the immense prestige which they enjoyed in egypt, ethiopia, and in all the nomes devoted to the worship of amon. they were allied to the elder branch of the ramessides, and had thus inherited such near rights to the crown that smendes had not hesitated to concede to hrihor the cartouches, the preamble, and insignia of the pharaoh, including the pschent and the iron helmet inlaid with gold. this concession, however, had been made as a personal favour, and extended only to the lifetime of hrihor, without holding good, as a matter of course, for his successors; his son piônkhi had to confine himself to the priestly titles,* and his grandson paînotmû enjoyed the kingly privileges only during part of his life, doubtless in consequence of his marriage with a certain mâkerî, probably daughter of psiûkhânnît l, the tanite king. mâkerî apparently died soon after, and the discovery of her coffin in the hiding-place at deîr el-baharî reveals the fact of her death in giving birth to a little daughter who did not survive her, and who rests in the same coffin beside the mummy of her mother. none of the successors of paînotmû--masahirti, manakhpirrî, paînotmû ii., psiûkhânnît, nsbindîdi--enjoyed a similar distinction, and if one of them happened to surround his name with a cartouche, it was done surreptitiously, without the authority of the sovereign.** * the only monument of this prince as yet known gives him merely the usual titles of the high priest, and the inscriptions of his son paînotmû i. style him �first prophet of amon.� his name should probably be read paîônûkhi or piônûkhi, rather than pionkhi or piânkhi. it is not unlikely that some of the papyri published by spiegelberg date from his pontificate. ** manakhpirrî often places his name in a square cartouche which tends at times to become an oval, but this is the case only on some pieces of stuff rolled round a mummy and on some bricks concealed in the walls of el-hibeh, thebes, and gebeleîn. if the �psiûkhânnît, high priest of amon,� who once (to our knowledge) enclosed his name in a cartouche, is really a high priest, and not a king, his case would be analogous to that of manakhpirrî. paînotmû ii. contented himself with drawing attention to his connection with the reigning house, and styled himself �royal son of psiûkhânnît-mîamon,� on account of his ancestress mâkerî having been the daughter of the pharaoh psiûkhânnît.* * the example of the �royal sons of ramses� explains the variant which makes �paînotmû, son of manakhpirrî,� into �paînotmû, royal son of psiûkhânnît-mîamon.� the relationship of which he boasted was a distant one, but many of his contemporaries who claimed to be of the line of sesostris, and called themselves �royal sons of ramses,� traced their descent from a far more remote ancestor. [illustration: 401.jpg the mummies of queen mâkerî and her child] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. the death of one high priest, or the appointment of his successor, was often the occasion of disturbances; the jealousies between his children by the same or by different wives were as bitter as those which existed in the palace of the pharaohs, and the suzerain himself was obliged at times to interfere in order to restore peace. it was owing to an intervention of this kind that manakhpirrî was called on to replace his brother masahirti. a section of the theban population had revolted, but the rising had been put down by the tanite siamon, and its leaders banished to the oasis; manakhpirrî had thereupon been summoned to court and officially invested with the pontificate in the xxvth year of the king�s reign. but on his return to karnak, the new high priest desired to heal old feuds, and at once recalled the exiles.* troubles and disorders appeared to beset the thebans, and, like the last of the ramessides, they were engaged in a perpetual struggle against robbers.** * this appears in the _maunier stele_ preserved for some time in the �maison française� at luxor, and now removed to the louvre. ** the series of high priests side by side with the sovereigns of the xxist dynasty may be provisionally arranged as follows:-[illustration: 402.jpg table] the town, deprived of its former influx of foreign spoil, became more and more impoverished, and its population gradually dwindled. the necropolis suffered increasingly from pillagers, and the burying-places of the kings were felt to be in such danger, that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect them, withdrew the mummies from their resting-places. the bodies of seti i., ramses ii., and ramses iii. were once more carried down the valley, and, after various removals, were at length huddled together for safety in the tomb of amenôthes i. at drah-abu�l-neggah. the tanite pharaohs seemed to have lacked neither courage nor good will. the few monuments which they have left show that to some extent they carried on the works begun by their predecessors. an unusually high inundation had injured the temple at karnak, the foundations had been denuded by the water, and serious damage would have been done, had not the work of reparation been immediately undertaken. nsbindîdi reopened the sandstone quarries between erment and grebeleîn, from which seti i. had obtained the building materials for the temple, and drew from thence what was required for the repair of the edifice. two of the descendants of nsbindîdi, psiûkhânnît i. and amenemôpît, remodelled the little temple built by kheops in honour of his daughter honît-sonû, at the south-east angle of his pyramid. both siamonmîamon and psiûkhânnît i. have left traces of their work at memphis, and the latter inserted his cartouches on two of the obelisks raised by ramses at heliopolis. but these were only minor undertakings, and it is at tanis that we must seek the most characteristic examples of their activity. here it was that psiûkhânnît rebuilt the brick ramparts which defended the city, and decorated several of the halls of the great temple. the pylons of this sanctuary had been merely begun by sesostris: siamon completed them, and added the sphinxes; and the metal plaques and small objects which he concealed under the base of one of the latter have been brought to light in the course of excavations. the appropriation of the monuments of other kings, which we have remarked under former dynasties, was also practised by the tanites. siamon placed his inscriptions over those of the kamessides, and psiûkhânnît engraved his name on the sphinxes and statues of ame-nemhâît iii. as unscrupulously as apôphis and the hyksôs had done before him. the tanite sovereigns, however, were not at a loss for artists, and they had revived, after the lapse of centuries, the traditions of the local school which had flourished during the xiith dynasty. [illustration: 404.jpg the two niles of tanis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch bey. one of the groups, executed by order of psiûkhânnît, has escaped destruction, and is now in the gîzeh museum. it represents two figures of the nile, marching gravely shoulder to shoulder, and carrying in front of them tables of offerings, ornamented with fish and garnished with flowers. the stone in which they are executed is of an extraordinary hardness, but the sculptor has, notwithstanding, succeeded in carving and polishing it with a skill which does credit to his proficiency in his craft. the general effect of the figures is a little heavy, but the detail is excellent, and the correctness of pose, precision in modelling, and harmony of proportion are beyond criticism. the heads present a certain element of strangeness. the artist evidently took as his model, as far as type and style of head-dress are concerned, the monuments of amenemhâît iii. which he saw around him; indeed, he probably copied one of them feature for feature. he has reproduced the severity of expression, the firm mouth, the projecting cheek-bones, the long hair and fan-shaped beard of his model, but he has not been able to imitate the broad and powerful treatment of the older artists; his method of execution has a certain hardness and conventionality which we never see to the same extent in the statues of the xiith dynasty. the work is, however, an extremely interesting one, and we are tempted to wish that many more such monuments had been saved from the ruins of the city.* * mariette attributes this group to the hyksôs; i have already expressed the opinion that it dates from the xxist dynasty. the pharaoh who dedicated it was a great builder, and, like most of his predecessors with similar tastes, somewhat of a conqueror. the sovereigns of the xxist dynasty, though they never undertook any distant campaigns, did not neglect to keep up a kind of suzerainty over the philistine shephelah to which they still laid claim. the expedition which one of them, probably psiûkhânnît ii., led against gezer, the alliance with the hebrews and the marriage of a royal princess with solomon, must all have been regarded at the court of tanis as a partial revival of the former egyptian rule in syria. the kings were, however, obliged to rest content with small results, for though their battalions were sufficiently numerous and well disciplined to overcome the canaanite chiefs, or even the israelite kingdom, it is to be doubted whether they were strong enough to attack the troops of the aramæan or hittite princes, who had a highly organised military system, modelled on that of assyria. egyptian arms and tactics had not made much progress since the great campaigns of the theban conquerors; the military authorities still complacently trusted to their chariots and their light troops of archers at a period when the whole success of a campaign was decided by heavily armed infantry, and when cavalry had already begun to change the issue of battles. the decadence of the military spirit in egypt had been particularly marked in all classes under the later ramessides, and the native militia, without exception, was reduced to a mere rabble--courageous, it is true, and able to sell their lives dearly when occasion demanded, rather than give way before the enemy, but entirely lacking that enthusiasm and resolution which sweep all obstacles before them. the chariotry had not degenerated in the same way, thanks to the care with which the pharaoh and his vassals kept up the breeding of suitable horses in the training stables of the principal towns. egypt provided solomon with draught-horses, and with strong yet light chariots, which he sold with advantage to the sovereigns of the orontes and the euphrates. but it was the mercenaries who constituted the most active and effective section of the pharaonic armies. these troops formed the backbone on which all the other elements--chariots, spearmen, and native archers--were dependent. their spirited attack carried the other troops with them, and by a tremendous onslaught on the enemy at a decisive moment gave the commanding general some chance of success against the better-equipped and better-organised battalions that he would be sure to meet with on the plains of asia. the tanite kings enrolled these mercenaries in large numbers: they entrusted them with the garrisoning of the principal towns, and confirmed the privileges which their chiefs had received from the ramessides, but the results of such a policy were not long in manifesting themselves, and this state of affairs had been barely a century in existence before egypt became a prey to the barbarians. it would perhaps be more correct to say that it had fallen a prey to the libyans only. the asiatics and europeans whom the theban pharaohs had called in to fight for them had become merged in the bulk of the nation, or had died out for lack of renewal. semites abounded, it is true, in the eastern nomes of the delta, but their presence had no effect on the military strength of the country. some had settled in the towns and villages, and were engaged in commerce or industry; these included phoenician, canaanite, edomite, and even hebrew merchants and artisans, who had been forced to flee from their own countries owing to political disturbances.* * jeroboam (1 kings xi. 40, xii. 2, 3) and hadad (1 kings xi. 17-22) took refuge in this way at the court of pharaoh. a certain proportion were descendants of the hidjsôs, who had been reinforced from time to time by settlements of prisoners captured in battle; they had taken refuge in the marshes as in the times of abmosis, and there lived in a kind of semi-civilized independence, refusing to pay taxes, boasting of having kept themselves from any alliances with the inhabitants of the nile valley, while their kinsmen of the older stock betrayed the knowledge of their origin by such disparaging nicknames as pa-shmûrî, �the stranger,� or pi-âtnû, �the asiatic.� the shardana, who had constituted the body-guard of ramses ii., and whose commanders had, under ramses iii., ranked with the great officers of the crown, had all but disappeared. it had been found difficult to recruit them since the dislodgment of the people of the sea from the delta and the syrian littoral, and their settlement in italy and the fabulous islands of the mediterranean; the adventurers from crete and the ægean coasts now preferred to serve under the philistines, where they found those who were akin to their own race, and from thence they passed on to the hebrews, where, under david and solomon, they were gladly hired as mercenaries.* * carians or cretans (chercthites) formed part of david�s body-guard (2 sam viii. 18, xv. 18, xx. 23); one again meets with these carian or cretan troops in judah in the reign of athaliah (2 kings xi. 4, 19). the libyans had replaced the shardana in all the offices they had filled and in all the garrison towns they had occupied. the kingdom of mâraîû and kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from mînephtah and ramses iii., but the mashaûasha who had founded it still kept an active hegemony over their former subjects; hence it was that the egyptians became accustomed to look on all the libyan tribes as branches of the dominant race, and confounded all the immigrants from libya under the common name of mashaûasha.* egypt was thus slowly flooded by libyans; it was a gradual invasion, which succeeded by pacific means where brute force had failed. a berber population gradually took possession of the country, occupying the eastern provinces of the delta, filling its towns--sais, damanhur, and marea--making its way into the fayum, the suburbs of heracleopolis, and penetrating as far south as abydos; at the latter place they were not found in such great numbers, but still considerable enough to leave distinct traces.** the high priests of amon seem to have been the only personages who neglected to employ this ubiquitous race; but they preferred to use the nubian tribe of the mâzaîû,*** who probably from the xiith dynasty onwards had constituted the police force of thebes. * ramses iii. still distinguished between the qahaka, the tihonû, and the mashaûasha; the monuments of the xxiind dynasty only recognise the mashaiiasha, whose name they curtail to ma. ** the presence in those regions of persons bearing asiatic names has been remarked, without drawing thence any proof for the existence of asiatic colonies in those regions. the presence of libyans at abydos seems to be proved by the discovery in that town of the little monument reproduced on the next page, and of many objects in the same style, many of which are in the louvre or the british museum. *** i have not discovered among the personal attendants of the descendants of hrihor any functionary bearing the title of _chief of the mashaiuasha _; even those who bore it later on, under the xxiind dynasty, were always officers from the north of egypt. it seems almost certain that thebes always avoided having libyan troops, and never received a mashaûasha settlement. these libyan immigrants had adopted the arts of egypt and the externals of her civilization; they sculptured rude figures on the rocks and engraved scenes on their stone vessels, in which they are represented fully armed,* and taking part in some skirmish or attack, or even a chase in the desert. the hunters are divided into two groups, each of which is preceded by a different ensign--that of the west for the right wing of the troop, and that of the east for the left wing. they carry the spear the boomerang, the club, the double-curved bow, and the dart; a fox�s skin depends from their belts over their thighs, and an ostrich�s feather waves above their curly hair. * i attribute to the libyans, whether mercenaries or tribes hovering on the egyptian frontier, the figures cut everywhere on the rocks, which no one up till now has reproduced or studied. to them i attribute also the tombs which mr. petrie has so successfully explored, and in which he finds the remains of a new race which seems to have conquered egypt after the vith dynasty: they appear to be of different periods, but all belong to the berber horsemen of the desert and the outskirts of the nile valley. [illustration: 410.jpg a troop of libyans hunting] drawn by boudier, from the original in the louvre. they never abandoned this special head-dress and manner of arming themselves, and they can always be recognised on the monuments by the plumes surmounting their forehead.* * this design is generally thought to represent a piece of cloth folded in two, and laid flat on the head; examination of the monuments proves that it is the ostrich plume fixed at the back of the head, and laid flat on the hair or wig. their settlement on the banks of the nile and intermarriage with the egyptians had no deteriorating effect on them, as had been the case with the shardana, and they preserved nearly all their national characteristics. if here and there some of them became assimilated with the natives, there was always a constant influx of new comers, full of energy and vigour, who kept the race from becoming enfeebled. the attractions of high pay and the prospect of a free-and-easy life drew them to the service of the feudal lords. the pharaoh entrusted their chiefs with confidential offices about his person, and placed the royal princes at their head. the position at length attained by these mashaûasha was analogous to that of the oossasans at babylon, and, indeed, was merely the usual sequel of permitting a foreign militia to surround an oriental monarch; they became the masters of their sovereigns. some of their generals went so far as to attempt to use the soldiery to overturn the native dynasty, and place themselves upon the throne; others sought to make and unmake kings to suit their own taste. the earlier tanite sovereigns had hoped to strengthen their authority by trusting entirely to the fidelity and gratitude of their guard; the later kings became mere puppets in the hands of mercenaries. at length a libyan family arose who, while leaving the externals of power in the hands of the native sovereigns, reserved to themselves the actual administration, and reduced the kings to the condition of luxurious dependence enjoyed by the elder branch of the ramessides under the rule of the high priests of amon. there was at bubastis, towards the middle or end of the xxth dynasty, a tihonû named buîuwa-buîuwa. he was undoubtedly a soldier of fortune, without either office or rank, but his descendants prospered and rose to important positions among the mashadasha chiefs: the fourth among these, sheshonq by name, married mîhtinuôskhît, a princess of the royal line. his son, namarôti, managed to combine with his function of chief of the mashauasha several religious offices, and his grandson, also called sheshonq, had a still more brilliant career. we learn from the monuments of the latter that, even before he had ascended the throne, he was recognised as king and prince of princes, and had conferred on him the command of all the libyan troops. officially he was the chief person in the state after the sovereign, and had the privilege of holding personal intercourse with the gods, amonrâ included--a right which belonged exclusively to the pharaoh and the theban high priest. the honours which he bestowed upon his dead ancestors were of a remarkable character, and included the institution of a liturgical office in connection with his father namarôti, a work which resembles in its sentiments the devotions of bamses ii. to the memory of seti. he succeeded in arranging a marriage between his son osorkon and a princess of the royal line, the daughter of psiûkhânnît ii., by which alliance he secured the tanite succession; he obtained as a wife for his second son aûpûti, the priestess of amon, and thus obtained an indirect influence over the said and nubia.* * the date of the death of paînotmû ii. is fixed at the xvith year of his reign, according to the inscriptions in the pit at deîr el-baharî. this would be the date of the accession of aûpûti�, if aûpûti succeeded him directly, as i am inclined to believe; but if psiûkhânnît was his immediate successor, and if nsbindîdî succeeded manakhpirri, we must place the accession of aûpûti some years later. [illustration: 413.jpg nsitanibashiru] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by e. brugsch-bey. this priestess was probably a daughter or niece of paînotmû ii., but we are unacquainted with her name. the princesses continued to play a preponderating part in the transmission of power, and we may assume that the lady in question was one of those whose names have come down to us--nsikhonsû, nsitanî-bashîrû, or isimkhobîû ii., who brought with her as a dowry the bubastite fief. we are at a loss whether to place aûpûti immediately after paînotmû, or between the ephemeral pontificates of a certain psiûkhannît and a certain nsbindîdi. his succession imposed a very onerous duty upon him. thebes was going through the agonies of famine and misery, and no police supervision in the world could secure the treasures stored up in the tombs of a more prosperous age from the attacks of a famished people. arrests, trials, and punishments were ineffectual against the violation of the sepulchres, and even the royal mummies--including those placed in the chapel of amenôthes i. by previous high priests--were not exempt from outrage. the remains of the most glorious of the pharaohs were reclining in this chapel, forming a sort of solemn parliament: here was saqnunrî tiuâqni, the last member of the xviith dynasty; here also were the first of the xviiith--ahmosis, amenôthes i., and the three of the name thûtmosis, together with the favourites of their respective harems--nofritari, ahhotpû ii., anhâpû, honittimihû, and sitkamosis; and, in addition, ramses i., seti i., ramses ii. of the xixth dynasty, ramses iii. and ramses x. of the xxth dynasty. the �servants of the true place� were accustomed to celebrate at the appointed periods the necessary rites established in their honour. inspectors, appointed for the purpose by the government, determined from time to time the identity of the royal mummies, and examined into the condition of their wrappings and coffins: after each inspection a report, giving the date and the name of the functionary responsible for the examination, was inscribed on the linen or the lid covering the bodies. the most of the mummies had suffered considerably before they reached the refuge in which they were found. the bodies of sitamon and of the princess honittimihû had been completely destroyed, and bundles of rags had been substituted for them, so arranged with pieces of wood as to resemble human figures. ramses i., ramses ii., and thûtmosis had been deprived of their original shells, and were found in extemporised cases. hrihor�s successors, who regarded these sovereigns as their legitimate ancestors, had guarded them with watchful care, but aûpûti, who did not feel himself so closely related to these old-world pharaohs, considered, doubtless, this vigilance irksome, and determined to locate the mummies in a spot where they would henceforward be secure from all attack. a princess of the family of manakhpirrî--isimkhobiû, it would appear--had prepared a tomb for herself in the rocky cliff which bounds the amphitheatre of deîr el-baharî on the south. the position lent itself readily to concealment. it consisted of a well some 130 feet deep, with a passage running out of it at right angles for a distance of some 200 feet and ending in a low, oblong, roughly cut chamber, lacking both ornament and paintings. paînotmû ii. had been placed within this chamber in the xvith year of the reign of psiûkhannît ii., and several members of his family had been placed beside him not long afterwards. aûpûti soon transferred thither the batch of mummies which, in the chapel of amenôthes i., had been awaiting a more definite sepulture; the coffins, with what remained of their funerary furniture, were huddled together in disorder. the chamber having been filled up to the roof, the remaining materials, consisting of coffers, boxes of _ushabti,_ canopic jars, garlands, together with the belongings of priestly mummies, were arranged along the passage; when the place was full, the entrance was walled up, the well filled, and its opening so dexterously covered that it remained concealed until-our own time. the accidental �sounding� of some pillaging arabs revealed the place as far back as 1872, but it was not until ten years later (1881) that the pharaohs once more saw the light. they are now enthroned--who can say for how many years longer? --in the chambers of the gîzeh museum. egypt is truly a land of marvels! it has not only, like assyria and chaldæa, greece and italy, preserved for us monuments by which its historic past may be reconstructed, but it has handed on to us the men themselves who set up the monuments and made the history. her great monarchs are not any longer mere names deprived of appropriate forms, and floating colourless and shapeless in the imagination of posterity: they may be weighed, touched, and measured; the capacity of their brains may be gauged; the curve of their noses and the cut of their mouths may be determined; we know if they were bald, or if they suffered from some secret infirmity; and, as we are able to do in the case of our contemporaries, we may publish their portraits taken first hand in the photographic camera. sheshonq, by assuming the control of the theban priesthood, did not on this account extend his sovereignty over egypt beyond its southern portion, and that part of nubia which still depended on it. ethiopia remained probably outside his jurisdiction, and constituted from this time forward an independent kingdom, under the rule of dynasties which were, or claimed to be, descendants of hrihor. the oasis, on the other hand, and the libyan provinces in the neighbourhood of the delta and the sea, rendered obedience to his officers, and furnished him with troops which were recognised as among his best. sheshonq found himself at the death of psiûkhânnît ii., which took place about 940 b.c., sole master of egypt, with an effective army and well-replenished treasury at his disposal. what better use could he make of his resources than devote them to reasserting the traditional authority of his country over syria? the intestine quarrels of the only state of any importance in that region furnished him with an opportunity of which he found it easy to take advantage. solomon in his eyes was merely a crowned vassal of egypt, and his appeal for aid to subdue gezer, his marriage with a daughter of the egyptian royal house, the position he had assigned her over all his other wives, and all that we know of the relations between jerusalem and tanis at the time, seem to indicate that the hebrews themselves acknowledged some sort of dependency upon egypt. they were not, however, on this account free from suspicion in their suzerain�s eyes, who seized upon every pretext that offered itself to cause them embarrassment. hadad, and jeroboam afterwards, had been well received at the court of the pharaoh, and it was with egyptian subsidies that these two rebels returned to their country, the former in the lifetime of solomon, and the latter after his death. when jeroboam saw that he was threatened by rehoboam, he naturally turned to his old protectors. sheshonq had two problems before him. should he confirm by his intervention the division of the kingdom, which had flourished in kharû for now half a century, into two rival states, or should he himself give way to the vulgar appetite for booty, and step in for his own exclusive interest? he invaded judæa four years after the schism, and jerusalem offered no resistance to him; rehoboam ransomed his capital by emptying the royal treasuries and temple, rendering up even the golden shields which solomon was accustomed to assign to his guards when on duty about his person.* * 1 kings xiv. 25-28; cf. 2 chron. xii. 1-10, where an episode, not in the _book of kings_, is introduced. the prophet shemaiah played an important part in the transaction. this expedition of the pharaoh was neither dangerous nor protracted, but it was more than two hundred years since so much riches from countries beyond the isthmus had been brought into egypt, and the king was consequently regarded by the whole people of the nile valley as a great hero. aûpûti took upon himself the task of recording the exploit on the south wall of the temple of amon at karnak, not far from the spot where ramses ii. had had engraved the incidents of his syrian campaigns. his architect was sent to silsilis to procure the necessary sandstone to repair the monument. he depicted upon it his father receiving at the hands of amon processions of jewish prisoners, each one representing a captured city. the list makes a brave show, and is remarkable for the number of the names composing it: in comparison with those of thûtmosis iii., it is disappointing, and one sees at a glance how inferior, even in its triumph, the egypt of the xxiind dynasty was to that of the xviiith. [illustration: 419.jpg amon presenting to sheshonq the list of the cities captured in israel and judah] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. it is no longer a question of carchemish, or qodshû, or mitanni, or naharaim: megiddo is the most northern point mentioned, and the localities enumerated bring us more and more to the south--eabbat, taânach, hapharaîm, mahanaîm,* gibeon, beth-horon, ajalon, jud-hammelek, migdol, jerza, shoko, and the villages of the negeb. each locality, in consequence of the cataloguing of obscure towns, furnished enough material to cover two, or even three of the crenellated cartouches in which the names of the conquered peoples are enclosed, and sheshonq had thus the puerile satisfaction of parading before the eyes of his subjects a longer _cortege_ of defeated chiefs than that of his predecessor. his victorious career did not last long: he died shortly after, and his son osorkon was content to assume at a distance authority over the kharu.** * the existence of the names of certain israelite towns on the list of. sheshonq has somewhat astonished the majority of the historians of israel. renan declared that the list must �put aside the conjecture that jeroboam had been the instigator of the expedition, which would certainly have been readily admissible, especially if any force were attached to the greek text of 1 kings xii. 24, which makes jeroboam to have been a son-in-law of the king of egypt;� the same view had been already expressed by stade; others have thought that sheshonq had conquered the country for his ally jeroboam. sheshonq, in fact, was following the egyptian custom by which all countries and towns which paid tribute to the pharaoh, or who recognised his suzerainty, were made to, or might, figure on his triumphal lists whether they had been conquered or not: the presence of megiddo or mahanaim on the lists does not prove that they were _conquered_ by sheshonq, but that the prince to whom they owed allegiance was a tributary to the king of egypt. the name of jud-ham melek, which occupies the twenty-ninth place on the list, was for a long time translated as king or kingdom of judah, and passed for being a portrait of rehoboam, which is impossible. the hebrew name was read by w. max millier jad ham-meleh, the hand, the fort of the king. it appears to me to be more easy to see in it jud-liam-meleh and to associate it with jehudah, a town of the tribe of dan, as brugsch did long ago. ** champollion identified osorkon i. with the zerah, who, according to 2 chron. xiv. 9-15, xvi. 8, invaded judah and was defeated by asa, but this has no historic value, for it is clear that osorkon never crossed the isthmus. it does not appear, however, that either the philistines, or judah, or israel, or any of the petty tribes which had momentarily gravitated around david and solomon, were disposed to dispute osorkon�s claim, theoretic rather than real as it was. the sword of the stranger had finished the work which the intestine quarrel of the tribes had begun. if rehoboam had ever formed the project of welding together the disintegrated elements of israel, the taking of jerusalem must have been a death-blow to his hopes. his arsenals were empty, his treasury at low ebb, and the prestige purchased by david�s victories was effaced by the humiliation of his own defeat. the ease with which the edifice so laboriously constructed by the heroes of benjamin and judah had been overturned at the first shock, was a proof that the new possessors of canaan were as little capable of barring the way to egypt in her old age, as their predecessors had been when she was in her youth and vigour. the philistines had had their day; it seemed by no means improbable at one time that they were about to sweep everything before them, from the negeb to the orontes, but their peculiar position in the furthest angle of the country, and their numerical weakness, prevented them from continuing their efforts for a prolonged period, and they were at length obliged to renounce in favour of the hebrews their ambitious pretensions. the latter, who had been making steady progress for some half a century, had been successful where the philistines had signally failed, and southern syria recognised their supremacy for the space of two generations. we can only conjecture what they might have done if a second david had led them into the valleys of the orontes and euphrates. they were stronger in numbers than their possible opponents, and their troops, strengthened by mercenary guards, would have perhaps triumphed over the more skilled but fewer warriors which the amorite and aramaean cities could throw into the field against them. the pacific reign of solomon, the schism among the tribes, and the egyptian invasion furnished evidence enough that they also were not destined to realise that solidarity which alone could secure them against the great oriental empires when the day of attack came. the two kingdoms were then enjoying an independent existence. judah, in spite of its smaller numbers and its recent disaster, was not far behind the more extensive israel in its resources. david, and afterwards solomon, had so kneaded together the various elements of which it was composed--caleb, cain, jerahmeel and the judsean clans--that they had become a homogeneous mass, grouped around the capital and its splendid sanctuary, and actuated with feelings of profound admiration and strong fidelity for the family which had made them what they were. misfortune had not chilled their zeal: they rallied round rehoboam and his race with such a persistency that they were enabled to maintain their ground when their richer rivals had squandered their energies and fallen away before their eyes. jeroboam, indeed, and his successors had never obtained from their people more than a precarious support and a lukewarm devotion: their authority was continually coming into conflict with a tendency to disintegration among the tribes, and they could only maintain their rule by the constant employment of force. jeroboam had collected together from the garrisons scattered throughout the country the nucleus of an army, and had stationed the strongest of these troops in his residence at tirzah when he did not require them for some expedition against judah or the philistines. his successors followed his example in this respect, but this military resource was only an ineffectual protection against the dangers which beset them. the kings were literally at the mercy of their guard, and their reign was entirely dependent on its loyalty or caprice: any unscrupulous upstart might succeed in suborning his comrades, and the stroke of a dagger might at any moment send the sovereign to join his ancestors, while the successful rebel reigned in his stead.* the egyptian troops had no sooner set out on their homeward march, than the two kingdoms began to display their respective characteristics. an implacable and truceless war broke out between them. the frontier garrisons of the two nations fought with each other from one year�s end to another--carrying off each other�s cattle, massacring one another, burning each other�s villages and leading their inhabitants into slavery.** * among nineteen kings of israel, eight were assassinated and were replaced by the captains of their guards--nadab, elah, zimri, joram, zachariah, shallum, pekahiah, and pekah. ** this is what is meant by the hebrew historians when they say �there was war between rehoboam and jeroboam all the days of his life� (1 kings xv. 6; cf. 2 ohron. xii. 15), and �between abijam and jeroboam� (1 kings xv. 7; 2 ohron. xiii. 2), and �between asa and baasha� (1 kings xv. 16, 32) �all their days.� from time to time, when the situation became intolerable, one of the kings took the field in person, and began operations by attacking such of his enemy�s strongholds as gave him the most trouble at the time. ramah acquired an unenviable reputation in the course of these early conflicts: its position gave it command of the roads terminating in jerusalem, and when it fell into the hands of israel, the judæan capital was blockaded on this side. the strife for its possession was always of a terrible character, and the party which succeeded in establishing itself firmly within it was deemed to have obtained a great success.* * the campaign of abijah at mount zemaraim (2 chron. xiii. 3-19), in which the foundation of the narrative and the geographical details seem fully historical. see also the campaign of baasha against ramah (1 kings xv. 17-22; cf. 2 chron. xvi. 1-6). the encounter of the armies did not, however, seem to produce much more serious results than those which followed the continual guerilla warfare along the frontier: the conqueror had no sooner defeated his enemy than he set to work to pillage the country in the vicinity, and, having accomplished this, returned promptly to his headquarters with the booty. rehoboam, who had seen something of the magnificence of solomon, tried to perpetuate the tradition of it in his court, as far as his slender revenues would permit him. he had eighteen women in his harem, among whom figured some of his aunts and cousins. the titular queen was maacah, who was represented as a daughter of absalom. she was devoted to the _asheras_, and the king was not behind his father in his tolerance of strange gods; the high places continued to be tolerated by him as sites of worship, and even jerusalem was not free from manifestations of such idolatry as was associated with the old canaanite religion. he reigned seventeen years, and was interred in the city of david;* abijam, the eldest son of maacah, succeeded him, and followed in his evil ways. three years later asa came to the throne,** no opposition being raised to his accession. in israel matters did not go so smoothly. when jeroboam, after a reign of twenty-two years, was succeeded by his son nadab, about the year 905 b.c., it was soon evident that the instinct of loyalty to a particular dynasty had not yet laid any firm hold on the ten tribes. the peace between the philistines and israel was quite as unstable as that between israel and judah: an endless guerilla warfare was waged on the frontier, gibbethon being made to play much the same part in this region as ramah had done in regard to jerusalem. for the moment it was in the hands of the philistines, and in the second year of his reign nadab had gone to lay siege to it in force, when he was assassinated in his tent by one of his captains, a certain baasha, son of ahijah, of the tribe of issachar: the soldiers proclaimed the assassin king, and the people found themselves powerless to reject the nominee of the army.*** * 1 kings xiv. 22-24; cf. 2 chron. xi. 18-23, where the details given in addition to those in the booh of kings seem to be of undoubted authenticity. ** 1 kings xv. 1-8; cf. 2 chron. xiii. the booh of kings describes his mother as maacah, the daughter of absalom (xv. 10), which would seem to indicate that he was the brother and not the son of abijam. the uncertainty on this point is of long standing, for the author of chronicles makes abijam�s mother out in one place to be micaiah, daughter of uriel of gibcah (xiii. 2), and in another (xi. 20) maacah, daughter of absalom. *** 1 kings xv. 27-34. baasha pressed forward resolutely his campaign against judah. he seized eamah and fortified it;* and asa, feeling his incapacity to dislodge him unaided, sought to secure an ally. egypt was too much occupied with its own internal dissensions to be able to render any effectual help, but a new power, which would profit quite as much as judah by the overthrow of israel, was beginning to assert itself in the north. damascus had, so far, led an obscure and peaceful existence; it had given way before egypt and chaldæa whenever the egyptians or chaldseans had appeared within striking distance, but had refrained from taking any part in the disturbances by which syria was torn asunder. having been occupied by the amorites, it threw its lot in with theirs, keeping, however, sedulously in the background: while the princes of qodshû waged war against the pharaohs, undismayed by frequent reverses, damascus did not scruple to pay tribute to thûtmosis iii. and his descendants, or to enter into friendly relations with them. meanwhile the amorites had been overthrown, and qodshû, ruined by the asiatic invasion, soon became little more than an obscure third-rate town;** the aramaeans made themselves masters of damascus about the xiith century, and in their hands it continued to be, just as in the preceding epochs, a town without ambitions and of no great renown. * 1 kings xv. 17; cf. 2 ghron. xvi. 1. ** qodshû is only once mentioned in the bible (2 sam. xxiv. 6), in which passage its name, misunderstood by the massoretic scribe, has been restored from the septuagint text. we have seen how the aramæans, alarmed at the sudden rise of the hebrew dynasty, entered into a coalition against david with the ammonite leaders: zoba aspired to the chief place among the nations of central syria, but met with reverses, and its defeat delivered over to the israelites its revolted dependencies in the haurân and its vicinity, such as maacah, geshur, and even damascus itself.* the supremacy was, however, shortlived; immediately after the death of david, a chief named rezôn undertook to free them from the yoke of the stranger. he had begun his military career under hada-dezer, king of zoba: when disaster overtook this leader and released him from his allegiance, he collected an armed force and fought for his own hand. a lucky stroke made him master of damascus: he proclaimed himself king there, harassed the israelites with impunity during the reign of solomon, and took over the possessions of the kings of zoba in the valleys of the litany and the orontes.** the rupture between the houses of israel and judah removed the only dangerous rival from his path, and damascus became the paramount power in southern and central palestine. while judah and israel wasted their strength in fratricidal struggles, tabrimmon, and after him benhadad i., gradually extended their territory in coele-syria;*** they conquered hamath, and the desert valleys which extend north-eastward in the direction of the euphrates, and forced a number of the hittite kings to render them homage. * cf. what is said in regard to these events on pp. 351, 352, supra. ** 1 kings xi. 23-25. the reading �esron� in the septuagint (1 kings xi. 23) indicates a form �khezrôn,� by which it was sought to replace the traditional reading �rezôn.� *** hezion, whom the jewish writer intercalates before tabrimmon (1 kings xv. 18), is probably a corruption of rezôn; winckler, relying on the septuagint variants azin or azael (1 kings xv. 18), proposes to alter hezion into hazael, and inserts a certain hazael i. in this place. tabrimmon is only mentioned in 1 kings xv. 18, where he is said to have been the father of benhadad. they had concluded an alliance with jeroboam as soon as he established his separate kingdom, and maintained the treaty with his successors, nadab and baasha. asa collected all the gold and silver which was left in the temple of jerusalem and in his own palace, and sent it to benhadad, saying, �there is a league between me and thee, between thy father and my father: behold, i have sent unto thee a present of silver and gold; go, break thy league with baasha, king of israel, that he may depart from me.� it would seem that baasha, in his eagerness to complete the fortifications of ramah, had left his northern frontier undefended. benhadad accepted the proposal and presents of the king of judah, invaded galilee, seized the cities of ijôn, dan, and abel-beth-maacah, which defended the upper reaches of the jordan and the litany, the lowlands of genesareth, and all the land of naphtali. baasha hastily withdrew from judah, made terms with benhadad, and settled down in tirzah for the remainder of his reign;* asa demolished eamah, and built the strongholds of gebah and mizpah from its ruins.** benhadad retained the territory he had acquired, and exercised a nominal sovereignty over the two hebrew kingdoms. baasha, like jeroboam, failed to found a lasting dynasty; his son blah met with the same fate at the hands of zimri which he himself had meted out to nadab. as on the former occasion, the army was encamped before gibbethon, in the country of the philistines, when the tragedy took place. * 1 kings xv. 21, xvi. 6. ** 1 kings xv. 18-22; of. 2 ghron. xvi. 2-6. elah was at tirzah, �drinking himself drunk in the house of arza, which was over the household;� zimri, who was �captain of half his chariots,� left his post at the front, and assassinated him as he lay intoxicated. the whole family of baasha perished in the subsequent confusion, but the assassin only survived by seven days the date of his crime. when the troops which he had left behind him in camp heard of what had occurred, they refused to accept him as king, and, choosing omri in his place, marched against tirzah. zimri, finding it was impossible either to win them over to his side or defeat them, set fire to the palace, and perished in the flames. his death did not, however, restore peace to israel; while one-half of the tribes approved the choice of the army, the other flocked to the standard of tibni, son of ginath. war raged between the two factions for four years, and was only ended by the death--whether natural or violent we do not know--of tibni and his brother joram.* * 1 kings xvi. 8-22; joram is not mentioned in the massoretic text, but his name appears in the septuagint. two dynasties had thus arisen in israel, and had been swept away by revolutionary outbursts, while at jerusalem the descendants of david followed one another in unbroken succession. asa outlived nadab by eleven years, and we hear nothing of his relations with the neighbouring states during the latter part of his reign. we are merely told that his zeal in the service of the lord was greater than had been shown by any of his predecessors. he threw down the idols, expelled their priests, and persecuted all those who practised the ancient religions. his grandmother maacah �had made an abominable image for an asherah;� he cut it down, and burnt it in the valley of the kedron, and deposed her from the supremacy in the royal household which she had held for three generations. he is, therefore, the first of the kings to receive favourable mention from the orthodox chroniclers of later times, and it is stated that he �did that which was right in the eyes of the lord, as did david his father.� * omri proved a warlike monarch, and his reign, though not a long one, was signalised by a decisive crisis in the fortunes of israel.** the northern tribes had, so far, possessed no settled capital, shechem, penuel, and tirzah having served in turn as residences for the successors of jeroboam and baasha. latterly tirzah had been accorded a preference over its rivals; but zimri had burnt the castle there, and the ease with which it had been taken and retaken was not calculated to reassure the head of the new dynasty. omri turned his attention to a site lying a little to the north-west of shechem and mount ebal, and at that time partly covered by the hamlet of shomerôn or shimrôn--our modern samaria.*** * 1 kings xv. 11; cf. 2 ohron. xiv. 2. it is admitted, however, though without any blame being attached to him, that �the high places were not taken away� (1 kings xv. 14; cf. 2 chron. xv. 17). ** the hebrew writer gives the length of his reign as twelve years (1 kings xvi. 23). several historians consider this period too brief, and wish to extend it to twenty-four years; i cannot, however, see that there is, so far, any good reason for doubting the approximate accuracy of the bible figures. *** according to the tradition preserved in 1 kings xvi. 24, the name of the city comes from shomer, the man from whom ahab bought the site. his choice was a wise and judicious one, as the rapid development of the city soon proved. it lay on the brow of a rounded hill, which rose in the centre of a wide and deep depression, and was connected by a narrow ridge with the surrounding mountains. the valley round it is fertile and well watered, and the mountains are cultivated up to their summits; throughout the whole of ephraim it would have been difficult to find a site which could compare with it in strength or attractiveness. omri surrounded his city with substantial ramparts; he built a palace for himself, and a temple in which was enthroned a golden calf similar to those at dan and bethel.* a population drawn from other nations besides the israelites flocked into this well-defended stronghold, and samaria soon came to be for israel what jerusalem already was for judah, an almost impregnable fortress, in which the sovereign entrenched himself, and round which the nation could rally in times of danger. his contemporaries fully realised the importance of this move on omri�s part; his name became inseparably connected in their minds with that of israel. samaria and the house of joseph were for them, henceforth, the house of omri, bît-omri, and the name still clung to them long after omri had died and his family had become extinct.** * amos viii. 14, where the sin of samaria, coupled as it is with the life of the god of dan and the way of beersheba, can, as wellhausen points out, only refer to the image of the calf worshipped at samaria. ** shalmaneser ii. even goes so far as to describe jehu, who exterminated the family of omri, as _jaua ahal khumri_, �jehu, son of omri.� he gained the supremacy over judah, and forced several of the south-western provinces, which had been in a state of independence since the days of solomon, to acknowledge his rule; he conquered the country of medeba, vanquished kamoshgad, king of moab, and imposed on him a heavy tribute in sheep and wool.* against benhadad in the north-west he was less fortunate. he was forced to surrender to him several of the cities of gilead--among others bamoth-gilead, which commanded the fords over the jabbok and jordan.** * inscription of meslia, 11. 5-7; cf. 2 kings iii. 4. ** 1 kings xx. 34. no names are given in the text, but external evidence proves that they were cities of persea, and that ramoth-gilead was one of them. [illustration: 432.jpg the hill of samaria] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. 2g of the _palestine exploration fund._ he even set apart a special quarter in samaria for the natives of damascus, where they could ply their trades and worship their gods without interference. it was a kind of semi-vassalage, from which he was powerless to free himself unaided: he realised this, and looked for help from without; he asked and obtained the hand of jezebel, daughter of bthbaal, king of the sidonians, for ahab, his heir. hiram i., the friend of david, had carried the greatness of tyre to its highest point; after his death, the same spirit of discord which divided the hebrews made its appearance in phoenicia. the royal power was not easily maintained over this race of artisans and sailors: baalbazer, son of hiram, reigned for six years, and his successor, abdastart, was killed in a riot after a still briefer enjoyment of power. we know how strong was the influence exercised by foster-mothers in the great families of the bast; the four sons of abda-start�s nurse assassinated their foster-brother, and the eldest of them usurped his crown. supported by the motley crowd of slaves and adventurers which filled the harbours of phoenicia, they managed to cling to power for twelve years. their stupid and brutal methods of government produced most disastrous results. a section of the aristocracy emigrated to the colonies across the sea and incited them to rebellion; had this state of things lasted for any time, the tyrian empire would have been doomed. a revolution led to the removal of the usurper and the restoration of the former dynasty, but did not bring back to the unfortunate city the tranquillity which it sorely needed. the three surviving sons of baalbezer, methuastarfc, astarym, and phelles followed one another on the throne in rapid succession, the last-named perishing by the hand of his cousin ethbaal, after a reign of eight months. so far, the israelites had not attempted to take advantage of these dissensions, but there was always the danger lest one of their kings, less absorbed than his predecessors in the struggle with judah, might be tempted by the wealth of phoenicia to lay hands on it. ethbaal, therefore, eagerly accepted the means of averting this danger by an alliance with the new dynasty offered to him by omri.* * 1 kings xvi. 31, where the historian has hebraicised the phonician name ittobaal into �ethbaal,� �baal is with him.� izebel or jezebel seems to be an abbreviated form of some name like baalezbel. the presence of a phonician princess at samaria seems to have had a favourable effect on the city and its inhabitants. the tribes of northern and central palestine had, so far, resisted the march of material civilization which, since the days of solomon, had carried judah along with it; they adhered, as a matter of principle, to the rude and simple customs of their ancestors. jezebel, who from her cradle had been accustomed to all the luxuries and refinements of the phoenician court, was by no means prepared to dispense with them in her adopted country. by their contact with her, the israelites--at any rate, the upper and middle classes of them--acquired a certain degree of polish; the royal office assumed a more dignified exterior, and approached more nearly the splendours of the other syrian monarchies, such as those of damascus, hamath, sidon, tyre, and even judah. unfortunately, the effect of this material progress was marred by a religious difficulty. jezebel had been brought up by her father, the high priest of the sidonian astarte, as a rigid believer in his faith, and she begged ahab to permit her to celebrate openly the worship of her national deities. ere long the tyrian baal was installed at samaria with his asherah, and his votaries had their temples and sacred groves to worship in: their priests and prophets sat at the king�s table. ahab did not reject the god of his ancestors in order to embrace the religion of his wife--a reproach which was afterwards laid to his door; he remained faithful to him, and gave the children whom he had by jezebel names compounded with that of jahveh, such as ahaziah, joram, and athaliah.* * 1 kings xvi. 31-33. ahaziah and joram mean respectively �whom jahveh sustaineth,� and �jahveh is exalted.� athaliah may possibly be derived from a phoenician form, _ailialith or athlifh,_ into which the name of jahveh does not enter. this was not the first instance of such tolerance in the history of the israelites: solomon had granted a similar liberty of conscience to all his foreign wives, and neither rehoboam nor abijam had opposed maacah in her devotion to the canaanitish idols. but the times were changing, and the altar of baal could no longer be placed side by side with that of jahveh without arousing fierce anger and inexorable hatred. scarce a hundred years had elapsed since the rupture between the tribes, and already one-half of the people were unable to understand how place could be found in the breast of a true israelite for any other god but jahveh: jahveh alone was lord, for none of the deities worshipped by foreign races under human or animal shapes could compare with him in might and holiness. from this to the repudiation of all those practices associated with exotic deities, such as the use of idols of wood or metal, the anointing of isolated boulders or circles of rocks, the offering up of prisoners or of the firstborn, was but a step: asa had already furnished an example of rigid devotion in judah, and there were many in israel who shared his views and desired to imitate him. the opposition to what was regarded as apostasy on the part of the king did not come from the official priesthood; the sanctuaries at dan, at bethel, at shiloh, and at gilgal were prosperous in spite of jezebel, and this was enough for them. but the influence of the prophets had increased marvellously since the rupture between the kingdoms, and at the very beginning of his reign ahab was unwise enough to outrage their sense of justice by one of his violent acts: in a transport of rage he had slain a certain naboth, who had refused to let him have his vineyard in order that he might enlarge the grounds of the palace he was building for himself at jezreel.* the prophets, as in former times, were divided into schools, the head of each being called its father, the members bearing the title of �the sons of the prophets;� they dwelt in a sort of monastery, each having his own cell, where they ate together, performed their devotional exercises or assembled to listen to the exhortations of their chief prophets:** nor did their sacred office prevent them from marrying.*** * 1 kings xxi., where the later tradition throws nearly all the blame on jezebel; whereas in the shorter account, in 2 kings ix. 25, 26, it is laid entirely on ahab. ** in 1 sam. xix. 20, a passage which seems to some to be a later interpolation, mentions a �company of the prophets, prophesying, and samuel standing as head over them.� cf. 2 kings vi. 1-7, where the narrative introduces a congregation of prophets grouped round elisha. *** 2 kings iv. 1-7, where an account is given of the miracle worked by elisha on behalf of �a woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets.� as a rule, they settled near one of the temples, and lived there on excellent terms with the members of the regular priesthood. accompanied by musical instruments, they chanted the songs in which the poets of other days extolled the mighty deeds of jahveh, and obtained from this source the incidents of the semi-religious accounts which they narrated concerning the early history of the people; or, when the spirit moved them, they went about through the land prophesying, either singly, or accompanied by a disciple, or in bands.* the people thronged round them to listen to their hymns or their stories of the heroic age: the great ones of the land, even kings themselves, received visits from them, and endured their reproaches or exhortations with mingled feelings of awe and terror. a few of the prophets took the part of ahab and jezebel,** but the majority declared against them, and of these, the most conspicuous, by his forcibleness of speech and action, was elijah. we do not know of what race or family he came, nor even what he was:*** the incidents of his life which have come down to us seem to be wrapped in a vague legendary grandeur. he appears before ahab, and tells him that for years to come no rain or dew shall fall on the earth save by his command, and then takes flight into the desert in order to escape the king�s anger. * 1 sam. x. 5, where a band of prophets is mentioned �coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a timbrel, and a pipe, and a harp, before them, prophesying;� cf. ver. 10. in 2 kings ii. 3-5, bands of the �children of the prophets� come out from bethel and jericho to ask elisha if he knows the fate which awaits elijah on that very day. ** cf. the anonymous prophet who encourages ahab, in the name of jahveh, to surprise the camp of benhadad before samaria (1 kings xx. 13-15, 22-25, 28); and the prophet zedekiah, who gives advice contrary to that of his fellow prophet micaiah in the council of war held by ahab with jehoshaphat, king of judah, before the attack on ramobh gilead (1 kings xxii. 11, 12, 24). *** the ethnical inscription, �tishbite,� which we find after his name (1 kings xvii. 1, xxi. 17), is due to an error on the part of the copyist. he is there ministered unto by ravens, which bring him bread and meat every night and morning. when the spring from which he drinks dries up, he goes to the house of a widow at zarephath in the country of sidon, and there he lives with his hostess for twelve months on a barrel of meal and a cruse of oil which never fail. the widow�s son dies suddenly: he prays to jahveh and restores him to life; then, still guided by an inspiration from above, he again presents himself before the king. ahab receives him without resentment, assembles the prophets of baal, brings them face to face with elijah on the top of mount carmel, and orders them to put an end to the drought by which his kingdom is wasted. the phoenicians erect an altar and call upon their baâlîm with loud cries, and gash their arms and bodies with knives, yet cannot bring about the miracle expected of them. elijah, after mocking at their cries and contortions, at last addresses a prayer to jahveh, and fire comes down from heaven and consumes the sacrifice in a moment; the people, convinced by the miracle, fall upon the idolaters and massacre them, and the rain shortly afterwards falls in torrents. after this triumph he is said to have fled once more for safety to the desert, and there on horeb to have had a divine vision. �and, behold, the lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the lord; but the lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. and it was so, when elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. and, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, �what doest thou here, elijah?�� god then commanded him to anoint hazael as king of syria, and jehu, son of nimshi, as king over israel, and elisha, son of shaphat, as prophet in his stead, �and him that escapeth from the sword of hazael shall jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of jehu shall elisha slay.� the sacred writings go on to tell us that the prophet who had held such close converse with the deity was exempt from the ordinary laws of humanity, and was carried to heaven in a chariot of fire. the account that has come down to us shows the impression of awe left by elijah on the spirit of his age.* ahab was one of the most warlike among the warrior-kings of israel. he ruled moab with a strong hand,** kept judah in subjection,*** and in his conflict with damascus experienced alternately victory and honourable defeat. hadadidri [hadadezer], of whom the hebrew historians make a second benhadad,**** had succeeded the conqueror of baasha.^ * the story of elijah is found in 1 kings xvii.-xix., xxi. 17-29, and 2 kings i., ii. 1-14. ** inscription of mesha, 11. 7, 8. *** the subordination of judah is nowhere explicitly mentioned: it is inferred from the attitude adopted by jehoshaphat in presence of ahab (1 kings xxii. 1, et seq.). **** the assyrian texts call this dadidri, adadidri, which exactly corresponds to the plebrew form hadadezer. ^ the information in the booh of kings does not tell us at what time during the reign of ahab his first wars with hadadezer (benhadad ii.) and the siege of samaria occurred. the rapid success of shalmaneser�s campaigns against damascus, between 854 and 839 b.c., does not allow us to place these events after the invasion of assyria. ahab appears, in 854, at the battle of karkar, as the ally of benhadad, as i shall show later. the account of his campaigns in the hebrew records has only reached us in a seemingly condensed and distorted condition. israel, strengthened by the exploits of omri, must have offered him a strenuous resistance, but we know nothing of the causes, nor of the opening scenes of the drama. when the curtain is lifted, the preliminary conflict is over, and the israelites, closely besieged in samaria, have no alternative before them but unconditional surrender. this was the first serious attack the city had sustained, and its resistance spoke well for the military foresight of its founder. in benhadad�s train were thirty-two kings, and horses and chariots innumerable, while his adversary could only oppose to them seven thousand men. ahab was willing to treat, but the conditions proposed were so outrageous that he broke off the negotiations. we do not know how long the blockade had lasted, when one day the garrison made a sortie in full daylight, and fell upon the syrian camp; the enemy were panic-stricken, and benhadad with difficulty escaped on horseback with a handful of men. he resumed hostilities in the following year, but instead of engaging the enemy in the hill-country of ephraim, where his superior numbers brought him no advantage, he deployed his lines on the plain of jezreel, near the town of aphek. his servants had counselled him to change his tactics: �the god of the hebrews is a god of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.� the advice, however, proved futile, for he sustained on the open plain a still more severe defeat than he had met with in the mountains, and the hebrew historians affirm that he was taken prisoner during the pursuit. the power of damascus was still formidable, and the captivity of its king had done little to bring the war to an end; ahab, therefore, did not press his advantage, but received the syrian monarch �as a brother,� and set him at liberty after concluding with him an offensive and defensive alliance. israel at this time recovered possession of some of the cities which had been lost under baasha and omri, and the israelites once more enjoyed the right to occupy a particular quarter of damascus. according to the hebrew account, this was the retaliation they took for their previous humiliations. it is further stated, in relation to this event, that a certain man of the sons of the prophets, speaking by the word of the lord, bade one of his companions smite him. having received a wound, he disguised himself with a bandage over his eyes, and placed himself in the king�s path, �and as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. and as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. and the king of israel said unto him, so shall thy judgment be; thyself has decided it. then he hasted, and took the headband away from his eyes, and the king of israel discerned him that he was one of the prophets. and he said unto him, thus saith the lord, because thou hast let go out of thy hand the man whom i had devoted to destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people. and the king of israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to samaria.� this story was in accordance with the popular feeling, and ahab certainly ought not to have paused till he had exterminated his enemy, could he have done so; but was this actually in his power? we have no reason to contest the leading facts in this account, or to doubt that benhadad suffered some reverses before samaria; but we may perhaps ask whether the check was as serious as we are led to believe, and whether imagination and national vanity did not exaggerate its extent and results. the fortresses of persea which, according to the treaty, ought to have been restored to israel, remained in the hands of the people of damascus, and the loss of ramoth-gilead continued to be a source of vexation to such of the tribes of gad and reuben as followed the fortunes of the house of omri:* yet these places formed the most important part of benhadad�s ransom. * �and the king of israel said unto his servants, know ye that ramoth-gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the king of syria?� the sole effect of ahab�s success was to procure for him more lenient treatment; he lost no territory, and perhaps gained a few towns, but he had to sign conditions of peace which made him an acknowledged vassal to the king of syria.* * no document as yet proves directly that ahab was vassal to benhadad ii. the fact seems to follow clearly enough from the account of the battle of karkar against shalmaneser ii., where the contingent of ahab of israel figures among those of the kings who fought for benhadad ii. against the assyrians. damascus still remained the foremost state of syria, and, if we rightly interpret the scanty information we possess, seemed in a fair way to bring about that unification of the country which neither hittites, philistines, nor hebrews had been able to effect. situated nearly equidistant from raphia and carchemish, on the outskirts of the cultivated region, the city was protected in the rear by the desert, which secured it from invasion on the east and north-east; the dusty plains of the haurân protected it on the south, and the wooded cliffs of anti-lebanon on the west and north-west. it was entrenched within these natural barriers as in a fortress, whence the garrison was able to sally forth at will to attack in force one or other of the surrounding nations: if the city were victorious, its central position made it easy for its rulers to keep watch over and preserve what they had won; if it suffered defeat, the surrounding mountains and deserts formed natural lines of fortification easy to defend against the pursuing foe, but very difficult for the latter to force, and the delay presented by this obstacle gave the inhabitants time to organise their reserves and bring fresh troops into the field. the kings of damascus at the outset brought under their suzerainty the aramaean principalities--argob, maacah, and geshur, by which they controlled the haurân, and zobah, which secured to them coele-syria from lake huleh to the bahr el-kades. they had taken upper galilee from the hebrews, and subsequently perasa, as far as the jabbok, and held in check israel and the smaller states, amnion and moab, which followed in its wake. they exacted tribute from hamath, the phoenician arvad, the lower valley of the orontes, and from a portion of the hittites, and demanded contingents from their princes in time of war. their power was still in its infancy, and its elements were not firmly welded together, but the surrounding peoples were in such a state of weakness and disunion that they might be left out of account as formidable enemies. the only danger that menaced the rising kingdom was the possibility that the two ancient warlike nations, egypt and assyria, might shake off their torpor, and reappearing on the scene of their former prowess might attack her before she had consolidated her power by the annexation of naharaim. end of vol. vi. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume viii. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: 001.jpg frontispiece] arab family at dinner [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: 001.jpg page image] _sennacherib (705-681 b.c.)_ _the struggle of sennacherib with judæa and egypt--destruction of babylon_ _the upheaval of the entire eastern world on the accession of sennacherib--revolt of babylon: return of merodach-baladan and his efforts to form a coalition against assyria; the battle of kish (703 b.c.)--belibni, king of babylon (702-699 b.c.)--sabaco, king of egypt, amenertas and pionkhi, shàbî-toku--tyre and its kings after ethbaal ii.: phoenician colonisation in libya and the foundation of carthage--the kingdom of tyre in the time of tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon: elulai--judah and the reforms of hezekiah; alliance of judah and tyre with egypt, the downfall of the tyrian kingdom (702 b.c.)--the battle of altaku and the siege of jerusalem: sennacherib encamped before lachish, his egyptian expedition, the disaster at pelusium._ _renewed revolt of babylon and the tabal (699 b.c.); flight of the people of bît-yakîn into elamite territory; sennacherib�s fleet and descent on nagitu (697-696 b.c.)--khalludush invades karduniash (695 b.c.); nirgal-ushezib and mushesîb-marduk at babylon (693-689 b.c.)--sennacherib invades elam (693 b.c.): battle of khalulê (692 b.c.), siege and destruction of babylon (689 b.c.)--buildings of sennacherib at nineveh: his palace at kouyunjik; its decoration with battle, hunting, and building scenes._ [illustration: 003.jpg page image] chapter i--sennacherib (705-681 b.c.) _the struggle of sennacherib with judæa and egypt--destruction of babylon._ sennacherib either failed to inherit his father�s good fortune, or lacked his ability.* he was not deficient in military genius, nor in the energy necessary to withstand the various enemies who rose against him at widely removed points of his frontier, but he had neither the adaptability of character nor the delicate tact required to manage successfully the heterogeneous elements combined under his sway. * the two principal documents for the reign of sennacherib are engraved on cylinders: the taylor cylinder and the bellino cylinder, duplicates of which, more or less perfect, exist in the collections of the british museum. the taylor cylinder, found at kouyunjik or usebi-yunus, contains the history or the first eight years of this reign; the bellino cylinder treats of the two first years of the reign. he lacked the wisdom to conciliate the vanquished, or opportunely to check his own repressive measures; he destroyed towns, massacred entire tribes, and laid whole tracts of country waste, and by failing to repeople these with captive exiles from other nations, or to import colonists in sufficient numbers, he found himself towards the end of his reign ruling over a sparsely inhabited desert where his father had bequeathed to him flourishing provinces and populous cities. his was the system of the first assyrian conquerors, shalmaneser iii. and assur-nazir-pal, substituted for that of tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon. the assimilation of the conquered peoples to their conquerors was retarded, tribute was no longer paid regularly, and the loss of revenue under this head was not compensated by the uncertain increase in the spoils obtained by war; the recruiting of the army, rendered more difficult by the depopulation of revolted districts, weighed heavier still on those which remained faithful, and began, as in former times, to exhaust the nation. the news of sargon�s murder, published throughout the eastern world, had rekindled hope in the countries recently subjugated by assyria, as well as in those hostile to her. phoenicia, egypt, media, and elam roused themselves from their lethargy and anxiously awaited the turn which events should take at nineveh and babylon. sennacherib did not consider it to his interest to assume the crown of chaldæa, and to treat on a footing of absolute equality a country which had been subdued by force of arms: he relegated it to the rank of a vassal state, and while reserving the suzerainty for himself, sent thither one of his brothers to rule as king.* * the events which took place at babylon at the beginning of sennacherib�s reign are known to us from the fragments of berosus, compared with the canon of ptolemy and pinches� babylonian canon. the first interregnum in the canon of ptolemy (704-702 b.c.) is filled in pinches� canon by three kings who are said to have reigned as follows: sennacherib, two years; marduk-zâkir-shumu, one month; merodach-baladan, nine months. berosus substitutes for sennacherib one of his brothers, whose name apparently he did not know; and this is the version i have adopted, in agreement with most modern historians, as best tallying with the evident lack of affection for babylon displayed by sennacherib throughout his reign. the babylonians were indignant at this slight. accustomed to see their foreign ruler conform to their national customs, take the hands of bel, and assume or receive from them a new throne-name, they could not resign themselves to descend to the level of mere tributaries: in less than two years they rebelled, assassinated the king who had been imposed upon them, and proclaimed in his stead marduk-zâkir-shumu,* who was merely the son of a female slave (704 b.c.). * the servile origin of this personage is indicated in pinches� babylonian canon; he might, however, be connected through his father with a princely, or even a royal, family, and thereby be in a position to win popular support. among modern assyriologists, some suppose that the name akises in berosus is a corruption of [marduk-]zâkir[shumu]; others consider akises-akishu as being the personal name of the king, and marduk-zâkir-shumu his throne-name. this was the signal for a general insurrection in chaldæa and the eastern part of the empire. merodach-baladan, who had remained in hiding in the valleys on the elamite frontier since his defeat in 709 b.c., suddenly issued forth with his adherents, and marched at once to babylon; the very news of his approach caused a sedition, in the midst of which marduk-zâkir-shumu perished, after having reigned for only one month. merodach-baladan re-entered his former capital, and as soon as he was once more seated on the throne, he endeavoured to form alliances with all the princes, both small and great, who might create a diversion in his favour. his envoys obtained promises of help from elam; other emissaries hastened to syria to solicit the alliance of hezekiah, and might have even proceeded to egypt if their sovereign�s good fortune had lasted long enough.* but sennacherib did not waste his opportunities in lengthy-preparations. * 2 kings xx. 12-19; isa. xxxix. the embassy to hezekiah has been assigned to the first reign of merodach-baladan, under sargon. in accordance with the information obtained from the assyrian monuments, it seems to me that it could only have taken place during his second reign, in 703 b.c. the magnificent army left by sargon was at his disposal, and summoning it at once into the field, he advanced on the town of kîsh, where the kaldâ monarch was entrenched with his aramæan forces and the elamite auxiliaries furnished by shutruk-nakhunta. the battle issued in the complete rout of the confederate forces. merodach-baladan fled almost unattended, first to guzum-manu, and then to the marshes of the tigris, where he found a temporary refuge; the troops who were despatched in pursuit followed him for five days, and then, having failed to secure the fugitive, gave up the search.* * the detail is furnished by the _bellino cylinder_. berosus affirmed that merodach-baladan was put to death by belibni. his camp fell into the possession of the victor, with all its contents--chariots, horses, mules, camels, and herds of cattle belonging to the commissariat department of the army: babylon threw open its gates without resistance, hoping, no doubt, that sennacherib would at length resolve to imitate the precedent set by his father and retain the royal dignity for himself. he did, indeed, consent to remit the punishment for this first insurrection, and contented himself with pillaging the royal treasury and palace, but he did not deign to assume the crown, conferring it on belibni, a babylonian of noble birth, who had been taken, when quite a child, to nineveh and educated there under the eyes of sargon.* * the name is transcribed belibos in greek, and it seems as if the assyrian variants justify the pronunciation belibush. while he was thus reorganising the government, his generals were bringing the campaign to a close: they sacked, one after another, eighty-nine strongholds and eight hundred and twenty villages of the kaldâ; they drove out the arabian and aramaean garrisons which merodach-baladan had placed in the cities of karduniash, in urak, nipur, kuta, and kharshag-kalamma, and they re-established assyrian supremacy over all the tribes on the east of the tigris up to the frontiers of elam, the tumuna, the ubudu, the gambulu, and the khindaru, as also over the nabataeans and hagarenes, who wandered over the deserts of arabia to the west of the mouths of the euphrates. the booty was enormous: 208,000 prisoners, both male and female, 7200 horses, 11,073 asses, 5230 camels, 80,100 oxen, 800,500 sheep, made their way like a gigantic horde of emigrants to assyria under the escort of the victorious army. meanwhile the khirimmu remained defiant, and showed not the slightest intention to submit: their strongholds had to be attacked and the inhabitants annihilated before order could in any way be restored in the country. the second reign of merodach-baladan had lasted barely nine months. the blow which ruined merodach-baladan broke up the coalition which he had tried to form against assyria. babylon was the only rallying-point where states so remote, and such entire strangers to each other as judah and elam, could enter into friendly relations and arrange a plan of combined action. having lost babylon as a centre, they were once more hopelessly isolated, and had no means of concerting measures against the common foe: they renounced all offensive action, and waited under arms to see how the conqueror would deal with each severally. the most threatening storm, however, was not that which was gathering over palestine, even were egypt to be drawn into open war: for a revolt of the western provinces, however serious, was never likely to lead to disastrous complications, and the distance from pelusium to the tigris was too great for a victory of the pharaoh to compromise effectually the safety of the empire. on the other hand, should intervention on the part of elam in the affairs of babylon or media be crowned with success, the most disastrous consequences might ensue: it would mean the loss of karduniash, or of the frontier districts won with such difficulty by tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon; it would entail permanent hostilities on the tigris and the zab, and perhaps the appearance of barbarian troops under the walls of calah or of nineveh. elam had assisted merodach-baladan, and its soldiers had fought on the plains of kish. months had elapsed since that battle, yet shutruk-nakhunta showed no disposition to take the initiative: he accepted his defeat at all events for the time, but though he put off the day of reckoning till a more favourable opportunity, it argued neither weakness nor discouragement, and he was ready to give a fierce reception to any assyrian monarch who should venture within his domain. sennacherib, knowing both the character and resources of the elamite king, did not attempt to meet him in the open field, but wreaked his resentment on the frontier tribes who had rebelled at the instigation of the elamites, on the cossoans, on ellipi and its king ishpabara. he pursued the inhabitants into the narrow valleys and forests of the khoatras, where his chariots were unable to follow: proceeding with his troops, sometimes on horseback, at other times on foot, he reduced bît-kilamzak, khardishpi, and bît-kubatti to ashes, and annexed the territories of the cossoans and the yasubigallâ to the prefecture of arrapkha. thence he entered ellipi, where ishpabara did not venture to come to close quarters with him in the open field, but led him on from town to town. he destroyed the two royal seats of marubishti and akkuddu, and thirty-four of their dependent strongholds; he took possession of zizirtu, kummalu, the district of bitbarru, and the city of elinzash, to which he gave the name kar-sennacherib,--the fortress of sennacherib,--and annexed them to the government of kharkhar. the distant medes, disquieted at his advance, sent him presents, and renewed the assurances of devotion they had given to sargon, but sennacherib did not push forward into their territory as his predecessors had done: he was content to have maintained his authority as far as his outlying posts, and to have strengthened the assyrian empire by acquiring some well-situated positions near the main routes which led from the iranian table-land to the plains of mesopotamia. having accomplished this, he at once turned his attention towards the west, where the spirit of rebellion was still active in the countries bordering on the african frontier. sabaco, now undisputed master of egypt, was not content, like piônkhi, to bring egypt proper into a position of dependence, and govern it at a distance, by means of his generals. he took up his residence within it, at least during part of every year, and played the rôle of pharaoh so well that his egyptian subjects, both at thebes and in the delta, were obliged to acknowledge his sovereignty and recognise him as the founder of a new dynasty. he kept a close watch over the vassal princes, placing garrisons in memphis and the other principal citadels, and throughout the country he took in hand public works which had been almost completely interrupted for more than a century owing to the civil wars: the highways were repaired, the canals cleaned out and enlarged, and the foundations of the towns raised above the level of the inundation. bubastis especially profited under his rule, and regained the ascendency it had lost ever since the accession of the second tanite dynasty; but this partiality was not to the detriment of other cities. several of the temples at memphis were restored, and the inscriptions effaced by time were re-engraved. thebes, happy under the government of amenertas and her husband piônkhi, profited largely by the liberality of its ethiopian rulers. at luxor sabaco restored the decoration of the principal gateway between the two pylons, and repaired several portions of the temple of amon at karnak. history subsequently related that, in order to obtain sufficient workmen, he substituted forced labour for the penalty of death: a policy which, beside being profitable, would win for him a reputation for clemency. egypt, at length reduced to peace and order, began once more to flourish, and to display that inherent vitality of which she had so often given proof, and her reviving prosperity attracted as of old the attention of foreign powers. at the beginning of his reign, sabaco had attempted to meddle in the intrigues of syria, but the ease with which sargon had quelled the revolt of ashdod had inspired the egyptian monarch with salutary distrust in his own power; he had sent presents to the conqueror and received gifts in exchange, which furnished him with a pretext for enrolling the asiatic peoples among the tributary nations whose names he inscribed on his triumphal lists.* since then he had had some diplomatic correspondence with his powerful neighbour, and a document bearing his name was laid up in the archives at calah, where the clay seal once attached to it has been discovered. peace had lasted for a dozen years, when he died about 703 b.c., and his son shabîtoku ascended the throne.** * it was probably with reference to this exchange of presents that sabaco caused the bas-relief at karnak to be engraved, in which he represents himself as victorious over both asiatics and africans. ** one version of manetho assigns twelve years to the reign of sabaco, and this duration is confirmed by an inscription in hammamât, dated in his twelfth year. sabaco having succeeded to the throne in 716-715 b.c., his reign brings us down to 704 or 703 b.c., which obliges us to place the accession of shabî-toku in the year following the death of sargon. [illustration: 011.jpg clay seal with cartouche of sabaco] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by layard. the temporary embarrassments in which the babylonian revolution had plunged sennacherib must have offered a tempting opportunity for interference to this inexperienced king. tyre and judah alone of all the syrian states retained a sufficiently independent spirit to cherish any hope of deliverance from the foreign yoke. tyre still maintained her supremacy over southern phoenicia, and her rulers were also kings of sidon.* the long reign of eth-baal and his alliance with the kings of israel had gradually repaired the losses occasioned by civil discord, and had restored tyre to the high degree of prosperity which it had enjoyed under hiram. few actual facts are known which can enlighten us as to the activity which prevailed under eth-baal: we know, however, that he rebuilt the small town of botrys, which had been destroyed in the course of some civil war, and that he founded the city of auza in libyan territory, at the foot of the mountains of aures, in one of the richest mineral districts of modern algeria.** * eth-baal ii., who, according to the testimony of the native historians, belonged to the royal family of tyre, is called king of the sidonians in the bible (1 kings xvi. 31), and the assyrian texts similarly call elulai king of the sidonians, while menander mentions him as king of tyre. it is probable that the king of sidon, mentioned in the annals of shal-maneser iii. side by side with the king of tyre, was a vassal of the tyrian monarch. ** the two facts are preserved in a passage of menander. i admit the identity of the auza mentioned in this fragment with the auzea of tacitus, and with the _colonia septimia aur. auziensium_ of the roman inscriptions the present aumale. in 876 b.c. assur-nazir-pal had crossed the lebanon and skirted the shores of the mediterranean: eth-baal, naturally compliant, had loaded him with gifts, and by this opportune submission had preserved his cities and country from the horrors of invasion.* * the king of tyre who sent gifts to assur-nazir-pal is not named in the assyrian documents: our knowledge of tyrian chronology permits us with all probability to identify him with eth-baal. twenty years later shalmaneser iii. had returned to syria, and had come into conflict with damascus. the northern phoenicians formed a league with ben-hadad (adadidri) to withstand him, and drew upon themselves the penalty of their rashness; the tynans, faithful to their usual policy, preferred to submit voluntarily and purchase peace. their conduct showed the greater wisdom in that, after the death of eth-baal, internal troubles again broke out with renewed fierceness and with even more disastrous results. his immediate successor was balezor (854-846 b.c.), followed by mutton i. (845-821 b.c.), who flung himself at the feet of shalmaneser iii., in 842 b.c., in the camp at baalirasi, and renewed his homage three years later, in 839 b.c. the legends concerning the foundation of carthage blend with our slight knowledge of his history. they attribute to mutton i. a daughter named elissa, who was married to her uncle sicharbal, high priest of melkarth, and a young son named pygmalion (820-774 b.c.). sicharbal had been nominated by mutton as regent during the minority of pygmalion, but he was overthrown by the people, and some years later murdered by his ward. from that time forward elissa�s one aim was to avenge the murder of her husband. she formed a conspiracy which was joined by all the nobles, but being betrayed and threatened with death, she seized a fleet which lay ready to sail in the harbour, and embarking with all her adherents set sail for africa, landing in the district of zeugitanê, where the sidonians had already built kambê. there she purchased a tract of land from larbas, chief of the liby-phoenicians, and built on the ruins of the ancient factory a new town, qart-hadshat, which the greeks called carchedo and the romans carthage. the genius of virgil has rendered the name of dido illustrious: but history fails to recognise in the narratives which form the basis of his tale anything beyond a legendary account fabricated after the actual origin (814-813 b.c.) of the great punic city had been forgotten. thus weakened, tyre could less than ever think of opposing the ambitious designs of assyria: pygmalion took no part in the rebellions of the petty syrian kings against samsî-rammân, and in 803 b.c. he received his suzerain rammân-nirâri with the accustomed gifts, when that king passed through phoenicia before attacking damascus. pygmalion died about 774 b.c., and the names of his immediate successors are not known;* it may be supposed, however, that when the power of nineveh temporarily declined, the ties which held tyre to assyria became naturally relaxed, and the city released herself from the burden of a tribute which had in the past been very irregularly paid. * the fragment of menander �which has preserved for us the list of tyrian kings from abî-baal to pygmalion, was only quoted by josephus, because, the seventh year of pygmalion�s reign corresponding to the date of the foundation of carthage,--814--813 b.c. according to the chronological system of timssus,--the hebrew historian found in it a fixed date which seemed to permit of his establishing the chronology of the kings of israel and judah on a trustworthy basis between the reign of pygmalion and hiram i., the contemporary of david and solomon. the yoke was reassumed half a century later, at the mere echo of the first victories of tiglath-pileser iii.; and hiram ii., who then reigned in tyre, hastened to carry to the camp at arpad assurances of his fidelity (742 b.c.). he gave pledges of his allegiance once more in 738 b.c.; then he disappears, and mutton ii. takes his place about 736 b.c. this king cast off, unhappily for himself, his hereditary apathy, and as soon as a pretext offered itself, abandoned the policy of neutrality to which his ancestors had adhered so firmly. he entered into an alliance in 734 b.c. with damascus, israel and philistia, secretly supported and probably instigated by egypt; then, when israel was conquered and damascus overthrown, he delayed repairing his error till an assyrian army appeared before tyre: he had then to pay the price of his temerity by 120 talents of gold and many loads of merchandise (728 b.c.). the punishment was light and the loss inconsiderable in comparison with the accumulated wealth of the city, which its maritime trade was daily increasing:* mutton thought the episode was closed,** but the peaceful policy of his house, having been twice interrupted, could not be resumed. *[for a description of the trade carried on by tyre, cf. ezelc. xxvi., xxvii., and xxviii.---tr.] ** pygmalion having died about 774 b.c., and hiram ii. not appearing till 742 b.c., it is probable that we should intercalate between these two kings at least one sovereign whose name is still unknown. southern phoenicia, having once launched on the stream of asiatic politics, followed its fluctuations, and was compelled henceforth to employ in her own defence the forces which had hitherto been utilised in promoting her colonial enterprises. but it was not due to the foolish caprice of ignorant or rash sovereigns that tyre renounced her former neutral policy: she was constrained to do so, almost perforce, by the changes which had taken place in europe. the progress of the greeks, and their triumph in the waters of the ægean and ionian seas, and the rapid expansion of the etruscan navy after the end of the ninth century, had gradually restricted the phoenician merchantmen to the coasts of the western mediterranean and the atlantic: they industriously exploited the mineral wealth of africa and spain, and traffic with the barbarous tribes of morocco and lusitania, as well as the discovery and working of the british tin mines, had largely compensated for the losses occasioned by the closing of the greek and italian markets. their ships, obliged now to coast along the inhospitable cliffs of northern africa and to face the open sea, were more strongly and scientifically built than any vessels hitherto constructed. the egyptian undecked galleys, with stem and stern curving inwards, were discarded as a build ill adapted to resist the attacks of wind or wave. the new phoenician galley had a long, low, narrow, well-balanced hull, the stern raised and curving inwards above the steersman, as heretofore, but the bows pointed and furnished with a sharp ram projecting from the keel, equally serviceable to cleave the waves or to stave in the side of an enemy�s ship. motive power was supplied by two banks of oars, the upper ones resting in rowlocks on the gunwale, the lower ones in rowlocks pierced in the timbers of the vessel�s side. an upper deck, supported by stout posts, ran from stem to stern, above the heads of the rowers, and was reserved for the soldiers and the rest of the crew: on a light railing surrounding it were hung the circular shields of the former, forming as it were a rampart on either side. [illustration: 017.jpg a phoenician galley with two banks of oars] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. sennacherib affirms that vessels of this type had been constructed by syrian shipwrights, and were manned by tyrian, sidonian, and ionian sailors. the mast, passing through both decks, was firmly fixed in the keel, and was supported by two stays made fast to stem and stern. the rectangular sail was attached to a yard which could be hoisted or lowered at will. the wealth which accrued to the tyrians from their naval expeditions had rendered the superiority of tyre over the neighbouring cities so manifest that they had nearly all become her vassals. arvad and northern phoenicia were still independent, as also the sacred city of bylos, but the entire coast from the nahr-el-kelb to the headland formed by mount carmel was directly subject to tyre,* comprising the two sidons, bît-zîti, and sarepta, the country from mahalliba to the fords of the litâny, ushu and its hinterland as far as kana, akzîb, akko, and dora; and this compact territory, partly protected by the range of lebanon, and secured by the habitual prudence of its rulers from the invasions which had desolated syria, formed the most flourishing, and perhaps also the most populous, kingdom which still existed between the euphrates and the egyptian desert.** * the kings of arvad and byblos are still found mentioned at the beginning of sennacherib�s reign. ** the extent of the kingdom of tyro is indicated by the passage in which sennacherib enumerated the cities which he had taken from elulai. to these must be added dor, to the south of carmel, which was always regarded as belonging to the tyrians, and whose isolated position between the headland, the sea, and the forest might cause the assyrians to leave it unmolested. besides these, some parts of cyprus were dependent on tyre, though the achaean colonies, continually reinforced by fresh immigrants, had absorbed most of the native population and driven the rest into the mountains. [illustration: 018.jpg map of kingdom of tyre, the campaign of sennacherib] a hybrid civilisation had developed among these early greek settlers, amalgamating the customs, religions, and arts of the ancient eastern world of egypt, syria, and chaldoa in variable proportions: their script was probably derived from one of the asianic systems whose monuments are still but partly known, and it consisted of a syllabary awkwardly adapted to a language for which it had not been designed. a dozen petty kings, of whom the majority were greeks, disputed possession of the northern and eastern parts of the island, at idalion, khytros, paphos, soli, kourion, tamassos, and ledron. the phoenicians had given way at first before the invaders, and had grouped themselves in the eastern plain round kition; they had, however, subsequently assumed the offensive, and endeavoured to regain the territory they had lost. kition, which had been destroyed in one of their wars, had been rebuilt, and thus obtained the name of qart-hadshat, �the new city.� * * the name of this city, at first read as amtikhadashti, and identified with ammokhostos or with amathous,--_amti khadash_ would in this case be equivalent to _new amathous_,--is really karti-khadashti, as is proved by the variant reading discovered by schrader, and this is identical with the native name of carthage in africa. this new city must have been of some antiquity by the time of elulai, for it is mentioned on a fragment of a bronze vase found in cyprus itself: this fragment belonged to a king hiram, who according to some authorities would be hiram ii., according to others, hiram i. mutton�s successor, elulai, continued, as we know, the work of defence and conquest: perhaps it was with a view to checking his advance that seven kings of cyprus sent an embassy, in 709 b.c., to his suzerain, sargon, and placed themselves under the protection of assyria. if this was actually the case, and elulai was compelled to suspend hostilities against these hereditary foes, one can understand that this grievance, added to the reasons for uneasiness inspired by the situation of his continental dominions, may have given him the desire to rid himself of the yoke of assyria, and contributed to his resolution to ally himself with the powers which were taking up arms against her. the constant intercourse of his subjects with the delta, and his natural anxiety to avoid anything which might close one of the richest markets of the world to the tyrian trade, inclined him to receive favourably the overtures of the pharaoh: the emissaries of shabîtoku found him as much disposed as hezekiah himself to begin the struggle. the latter monarch, who had ascended the throne while still very young, had at first shown no ambition beyond the carrying out of religious reforms. his father ahaz had been far from orthodox, in spite of the influence exerted over him by isaiah. during his visit to tiglath-pileser at damascus (729 b.c.) he had noticed an altar whose design pleased him. he sent a description of it to the high priest urijah, with orders to have a similar one constructed, and erected in the court of the temple at jerusalem: this altar he appropriated to his personal use, and caused the priests to minister at it, instead of at the old altar, which he relegated to an inferior position. he also effected changes in the temple furniture, which doubtless appeared to him old-fashioned in comparison with the splendours of the assyrian worship which he had witnessed, and he made some alterations in the approaches to the temple, wishing, as far as we can judge, that the king of judah should henceforth, like his brother of nineveh, have a private, means of access to his national god. this was but the least of his offences: for had he not offered his own son as a holocaust at the moment he felt himself most menaced by the league of israel and damascus? among the people themselves there were many faint-hearted and faithless, who, doubting the power of the god of their forefathers, turned aside to the gods of the neighbouring nations, and besought from them the succour they despaired of receiving from any other source; the worship of jahveh was confounded with that of moloch in the valley of the children of hinnom, where there was a sanctuary or tophet, at which the people celebrated the most horrible rites: a large and fierce pyre was kept continually burning there, to consume the children whose fathers brought them to offer in sacrifice.* isaiah complains bitterly of these unbelievers who profaned the land with their idols, �worshipping the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers had made.� ** the new king, obedient to the divine command, renounced the errors of his father; he removed the fetishes with which the superstition of his predecessors had cumbered the temple, and which they had connected with the worship of jahveh, and in his zeal even destroyed the ancient brazen serpent, the nehushtan, the origin of which was attributed to moses.*** * isa. xxx. 33, where the prophet describes the tophet jahveh�s anger is preparing for assyria. ** isa. ii. 8. *** 2 kings xviii. 4. i leave the account of this religious reformation in the place assigned to it in the bible; other historians relegate it to a time subsequent to the invasion of sennacherib. on the occasion of the revolt of yamani, isaiah counselled hezekiah to remain neutral, and this prudence enabled him to look on in security at the ruin of the philistines, the hereditary foes of his race. under his wise administration the kingdom of judah, secured against annoyance from envious neighbours by the protection which assur freely afforded to its obedient vassals, and revived by thirty years of peace, rose rapidly from the rank of secondary importance which it had formerly been content to occupy. �their land was full of silver and gold, neither was there any end of their treasures; their land also was full of horses, neither was there any end of their chariots.� * * isa. ii. 7, where the description applies better to the later years of ahaz or the reign, of hezekiah than to the years preceding the war against pekah and rezin. now that the kingdom of israel had been reduced to the condition of an assyrian province, it was on judah and its capital that the hopes of the whole hebrew nation were centred. tyre and jerusalem had hitherto formed the extreme outwork of the syrian states; they were the only remaining barrier which separated the empires of egypt and assyria, and it was to the interest of the pharaoh to purchase their alliance and increase their strength by every means in his power. negotiations must have been going on for some time between the three powers, but up to the time of the death of sargon and the return of merodach-baladan to babylon their results had been unimportant, and it was possible that the disasters which had befallen the kaldâ would tend to cool the ardour of the allies. an unforeseen circumstance opportunely rekindled their zeal, and determined them to try their fortune. [illustration: 023.jpg map of the campaign of sennacherib in judea] the inhabitants of ekron, dissatisfied with padî, the chief whom the assyrians had set over them, seized his person and sent him in chains to hezekiah.* * the name of the city, written amgarruna, is really akkaron-ekron. to accept the present was equivalent to open rebellion, and a declaration of war against the power of the suzerain. isaiah, as usual, wished judah to rely on jahveh alone, and preached against alliance with the babylonians, for he foresaw that success would merely result in substituting the kaldâ for the ninevite monarch, and in aggravating the condition of judah. �all that is in thine house,� he said to hezekiah, �and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried to babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the lord. and of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of babylon.� hezekiah did not pay much heed to the prediction, for, he reflected, �peace and truth shall be in my days,� and the future troubled him little.* when the overthrow of merodach-baladan had taken place, the prophet still more earnestly urged the people not to incur the vengeance of assyria without other help than that of tyre or ethiopia, and eliakim, son of hilkiah, spoke in the same strain; but shebna, the prefect of the palace, declaimed against this advice, and the latter�s counsel prevailed with his master.** * 2 kings xx. 16-19. ** this follows from the terms in which the prophet compares the two men (isa. xxii. 15-25). hezekiah agreed to accept the sovereignty over ekron which its inhabitants offered to him, but a remnant of prudence kept him from putting padî to death, and he contented himself with casting him into prison. isaiah, though temporarily out of favour with the king, ceased not to proclaim aloud in all quarters the will of the almighty. �woe to the rebellious children, saith the lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering (form alliances), but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into egypt, and have not asked at my mouth, to strengthen themselves in the strength of pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of egypt! therefore shall the strength of pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of egypt your confusion. when your princes shall be at tanis, and your messengers shall come to heracleopolis,* [heb. hanes.--tr.] you shall all be ashamed of a people that cannot profit you.... for egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have i called her rahab that sitteth still.� * he returned, unwearied and with varying imagery, to his theme, contrasting the uncertainty and frailty of the expedients of worldly wisdom urged by the military party, with the steadfast will of jahveh and the irresistible authority with which he invests his faithful servants. �the egyptians are men, and not god; and their horses flesh, and not spirit; and when the lord shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is holpen shall fall, and they shall all fail together. for thus saith the lord unto me, like as when the lion growleth, and the young lion over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him, he will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the lord of hosts come down to fight upon mount zion, and upon the hill thereof. as birds flying, so will the lord of hosts protect jerusalem: he will protect and deliver it. turn ye unto him from whom ye have deeply revolted, o children of israel.� ** * isa. xxx. 1-5, 7. in verses 4, 5, the original text employs the third person; i have restored the second person, to avoid confusion. ** isa. xxxi. 3-6. no one, however, gave heed to his warnings, either king or people; but the example of phoenicia soon proved that he was right. when sennacherib bestirred himself, in the spring of 702 b.c., either the ethiopians were not ready, or they dared not advance to encounter him in coele-syria, and they left elulai to get out of his difficulties as best he might. he had no army to risk in a pitched battle; but fondly imagined that his cities, long since fortified, and protected on the east by the range of lebanon, would offer a resistance sufficiently stubborn to wear out the patience of his assailant. the assyrians, however, disconcerted his plans. instead of advancing against him by the pass of nahr-el-kebir, according to their usual custom, they attacked him in flank, descending into the very midst of his positions by the _col_ of legnia or one of the neighbouring passes.* they captured in succession the two sidons, bît-zîti, sarepta, mahalliba, ushu, akzîb, and acco: elulai, reduced to the possession of the island of tyre alone, retreated to one of his colonies in cyprus, where he died some years later, without having set foot again on the continent. all his former possessions on the mainland were given to a certain eth-baal, who chose sidon for his seat of government, and tyre lost by this one skirmish the rank of metropolis which she had enjoyed for centuries.** this summary punishment decided all the syrian princes who were not compromised beyond hope of pardon to humble themselves before the suzerain. menahem of samsi-muruna,*** * this follows from the very order in which the cities were taken in the course of this campaign. ** the assyrian text gives for the name of the king of sidon a shortened form tu-baal instead of eth-baal, paralleled by lulia for elulai. *** several of the early assyriologists read usi-muruna, and identified the city bearing this name with samaria. the discovery of the reading samsi-muruna on a fragment of the time of assur-bani-pal no longer permits of this identification, and obliges us to look for the city in phoenicia. abdiliti of arvad, uru-malîk of byblos, puduîlu of amnion, chemosh-nadab of moab, malîk-rammu of edom, mitinti of ashdod, all brought their tribute in person to the assyrian camp before ushu: zedekiah of ashkelon and hezekiah of judah alone persisted in their hostility. egypt had at length been moved by the misfortunes of her allies, and the ethiopian troops had advanced to the seat of war, but they did not arrive in time to save zedekiah: sennacherib razed to the ground all his strongholds one after another, beth-dagon, joppa, bene-berak, and hazor,* took him prisoner at ascalon, and sent him with his family to assyria, setting up sharludarî, son of bukibti, in his stead. sennacherib then turned against ekron, and was about to begin the siege of the city, when the long-expected egyptians at length made their appearance. shabîtoku did not command them in person, but he had sent his best troops--the contingents furnished by the petty kings of the delta, and the sheikhs of the sinaitic peninsula, who were vassals of egypt. the encounter took place near altaku,** and on this occasion again, as at raphia, the scientific tactics of the assyrians prevailed over the stereotyped organisation of pharaoh�s army: the ethiopian generals left some of their chariots in the hands of the conqueror, and retreated with the remnants of their force beyond the isthmus. * these are the cities attributed to the tribes of dan and judah in josh. xv. 25, 41; xix. 45. beth-dagon is now bêt dejân; azuru is yazûr, to the south-east of joppa; beni barak is ibn-abrak, to the north-east of the same town. ** altaku is certainly eltekeh of dan (josh. xix. 44), as was seen from the outset; the site, however, of eltekeh cannot be fixed with any certainty. it has been located at bêt-lukkieh, in the mountainous country north-west of jerusalem, but this position in no way corresponds to the requirements of the assyrian text, according to which the battle took place on a plain large enough for the evolutions of the egyptian chariots, and situated between the group of towns formed by beth-dagon, joppa, beni-barak, and hazor, which sennacherib had just captured, and the cities of ekrbn, timnath, and eltekeh, which he took directly after his victory: a suitable locality must be looked for in the vicinity of ramleh or zernuka. altaku capitulated, an example followed by the neighbouring fortress of timnath, and subsequently by ekron itself, all three being made to feel sennacherib�s vengeance. �the nobles and chiefs who had offended, i slew,� he remarks, �and set up their corpses on stakes in a circle round the city; those of the inhabitants who had offended and committed crimes, i took them prisoners, and for the rest who had neither offended nor transgressed, i pardoned them.� [illustration: 028.jpg the pass of legnia, in lebanon] drawn by boudier, from a photograph given in lortet. [illustration: 028b.jpg esneh--principal abyssinian trading village] we may here pause to inquire how hezekiah was occupied while his fate was being decided on the field of altaku. he was fortifying jerusalem, and storing within it munitions of war, and enrolling jewish soldiers and mercenary troops from the arab tribes of the desert. he had suddenly become aware that large portions of the wall of the city of david had crumbled away, and he set about demolishing the neighbouring houses to obtain materials for repairing these breaches: he hastily strengthened the weak points in his fortifications, stopped up the springs which flowed into the gibon, and cut off the brook itself, constructing a reservoir between the inner and outer city walls to store up the waters of the ancient pool. these alterations* rendered the city, which from its natural position was well defended, so impregnable that sennacherib decided not to attack it until the rest of the kingdom had been subjugated: with this object in view he pitched his camp before lachish, whence he could keep a watch over the main routes from egypt where they crossed the frontier, and then scattered his forces over the land of judah, delivering it up to pillage in a systematic manner. he took forty-six walled towns, and numberless strongholds and villages, demolishing the walls and leading into captivity 200,150 persons of all ages and conditions, together with their household goods, their horses, asses, mules, camels, oxen, and sheep;** it was a war as disastrous in its effects as that which terminated in the fall of samaria, or which led to the final captivity in babylon.*** * isa. xxii. 8-11. * an allusion to the sojourn of sennacherib near lachish is found in 2 kings xviii. 14-17; xix. 8, and in isa. xxxvi. 2; xxxvii. 8 *** it seems that the jewish historian demetrios considered the captivities under nebuchadrezzar and sennacherib to be on the same footing. the work of destruction accomplished, the rabshakeh brought up all his forces and threw up a complete circle of earthworks round jerusalem: hezekiah found himself shut up in his capital �like a bird in a cage.� the inhabitants soon became accustomed to this isolated life, but isaiah was indignant at seeing them indifferent to their calamities, and inveighed against them with angry eloquence: �what aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops? o thou that art full of shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous town; thy slain are not slain with the sword, neither are they dead in battle. all thy rulers fled away together, they are made prisoners without drawing the bow; they are come hither from afar for safety, and all that meet together here shall be taken together.� * * [the r.v. gives this passage as follows: �they were bound by the archers: all that were found of thee were bound together, they fled afar off.�--tr.] the danger was urgent; the assyrians were massed in their entrenchments with their auxiliaries ranged behind them to support them: �elam bare the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and kir uncovered the shield (for the assault). and it came to pass that thy choicest valleys were full of chariots, and the horsemen set themselves in array at thy gate, and he took away the covering of judah.� [illustration: 029.jpg sennacherib receiving the submissions of the jews] in those days, therefore, jahveh, without pity for his people, called them to �weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: and behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. and the lord of hosts revealed himself in mine ears, surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the lord, the lord of hosts.� * the prophet threw the blame on the courtiers especially shebna, who still hoped for succour from the egyptians, and kept up the king�s illusions on this point. he threatened him with the divine anger; he depicted him as seized by jahveh, rolled and kneaded into a lump, �and tossed like a ball into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there shall be the chariots of thy glory, thou shame of thy lord�s house. and i will thrust thee from thy office, and from thy station he shall pull thee down!�** meanwhile, day after day elapsed, and pharaoh did not hasten to the rescue. hezekiah�s eyes were opened; he dismissed shebna, and degraded him to the position of scribe, and set eliakim in his place in the council of state.*** * isa. xxii. 1-14. ** isa. xxii. 15-19. ***in the duplicate narrative of these negotiations with the assyrian generals, shebna is in fact considered as a mere scribe, while eliakim is the prefect of the king�s house (2 kings xviii. 18, 37; xix. 2: isa. xxxvi. 3, 22; xxxvii. 2). isaiah�s influence revived, and he persuaded the king to sue for peace while yet there was time. sennacherib was encamped at lachish; but the tartan and his two lieutenants received the overtures of peace, and proposed a parley near the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller�s field. hezekiah did not venture to go in person to the meeting-place; he sent eliakirn, the new prefect of the palace, shebna, and the chancellor joah, the chief cupbearer, and tradition relates that the assyrian addressed them in severe terms in his master�s name: �now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is pharaoh, king of egypt, to all that trust on him.� then, as he continued to declaim in a loud voice, so that the crowds gathered on the wall could hear him, the delegates besought him to speak in aramaic, which they understood, but �speak not to us in the jews� language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall!� instead, however, of granting their request, the assyrian general advanced towards the spectators and addressed them in hebrew: �hear ye the words of the great king, the king of assyria. let not hezekiah deceive you; for he shall not be able to deliver you: neither let hezekiah make you trust in the lord, saying, the lord will surely deliver us: this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of assyria. hearken not to hezekiah: for thus saith the king of assyria, make your peace with me, and come out to me; and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; until i come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. beware lest hezekiah persuade you, saying, the lord will deliver us!� the specified conditions were less hard than might have been feared.* * the hebrew version of these events is recorded in 2 kings xviii. 13-37; xix., and in isa. xxxvi., xxxvii., with only one important divergence, namely, the absence from isaiah of verses 14-16 of 2 kings xviii. this particular passage, in which the name of the king has a peculiar form, is a detached fragment of an older document, perhaps the official annals of the kingdom, whose contents agreed with the facts recorded in the assyrian text. the rest is borrowed from the cycle of prophetic narratives, and contains two different versions of the same events. the first comprises 2 kings xviii. 13, 17-37; xix. l-9a, 36&-37, where sennacherib is represented as despatching a verbal message to hezekiah by the tartan and his captains. the second consists merely of 2 kings xix. 96-36a, and in this has been inserted a long prophecy of isaiah�s (xix. 21-31) which has but a vague connection with the rest of the narrative. in this sennacherib defied hezekiah in a letter, which the jewish king spread before the lord, and shortly afterwards received a reply through the prophet. the two versions were combined towards the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century, by the compiler of the _book of kings_, and passed thence into the collection of the prophecies attributed to isaiah. the jewish king was to give up his wives and daughters as hostages, to pledge himself to pay a regular tribute, and disburse immediately a ransom of thirty talents of gold, and eight hundred talents of silver: he could only make up this large sum by emptying the royal and sacred treasuries, and taking down the plates of gold with which merely a short while before he had adorned the doors and lintels of the temple. padî was released from his long captivity, reseated on his throne, and received several jewish towns as an indemnity: other portions of territory were bestowed upon mitinti of ashdod and zillibel of graza as a reward for their loyalty.* * the sequence of events is not very well observed in the assyrian text, and the liberation of padî is inserted in 11. 8-11, before the account of the war with hezekiah. it seems very unlikely that the king of judah would have released his prisoner before his treaty with sennacherib; the assyrian scribe, wishing to bring together all the facts relating to ekron, anticipated this event. hebrew tradition fixed the ransom at the lowest figure, 300 talents of silver instead of the 800 given in the assyrian document (2 kings xviii. 14), and authorities have tried to reconcile this divergence by speculating on the different values represented by a talent in different countries and epochs. hezekiah issued from the struggle with his territory curtailed and his kingdom devastated; the last obstacle which stood in the way of the assyrians� victorious advance fell with him, and sennacherib could now push forward with perfect safety towards the nile. he had, indeed, already planned an attack on egypt, and had reached the isthmus, when a mysterious accident arrested his further progress. the conflict on the plains of altaku had been severe; and the army, already seriously diminished by its victory, had been still further weakened during the campaign in judæa, and possibly the excesses indulged in by the soldiery had developed in them the germs of one of those terrible epidemics which had devastated western asia several times in the course of the century: whatever may have been the cause, half the army was destroyed by pestilence before it reached the frontier of the delta, and sennacherib led back the shattered remnants of his force to nineveh.* * the assyrian texts are silent about this catastrophe, and the sacred books of the hebrews seem to refer it to the camp at libnah in palestine (2 kings xix. 8-35); the egyptian legend related by herodotus seems to prove that it took place near the egyptian frontier. josephus takes the king as far as pelusium, and describes the destruction of the assyrian army as taking place in the camp before this town. he may have been misled by the meaning �mud,� which attaches to the name of libnah as well as to that of pelusium. oppert upheld his opinion, and identified the libnah of the biblical narrative with the pelusium of herodotus. it is probable that each of the two nations referred the scene of the miracle to a different locality. the hebrews did not hesitate to ascribe the event to the vengeance of jahveh, and to make it a subject of thankfulness. they related that before their brutal conqueror quitted the country he had sent a parting message to hezekiah: �let not thy god in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of assyria. behold, thou hast heard what the kings of assyria have done to all lands, by destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered? have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, gozan and haran and rezepk, and the children of eden which were in telassar? where is the king of hamath, and the king of arpad, and the king of the city of sepharvaim, of hena, and ivvah?� hezekiah, having received this letter of defiance, laid it in the temple before jahveh, and prostrated himself in prayer: the response came to him through the mouth of isaiah. �thus saith the lord concerning the king of assyria, he shall not come unto this city, nor shoot an arrow there, neither shall he come before it with a shield, nor cast a mount against it. by the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and he shall not come unto this city, saith the lord. for i will defend this city to save it, for mine own sake and for my servant david�s sake. and it came to pass that night, that the angel of the lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the assyrians an hundred four-score and five thousand: and when men arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.� * * 2 kings xix. 8-35; isa. xxxvii. 8-36; this is the second tradition of which mention has been made, but already amalgamated with the first to form the narrative as it now stands. the egyptians considered the event no less miraculous than did the hebrews, and one of their popular tales ascribed the prodigy to phtah, the god of memphis. sethon, the high priest of phtah, lived in a time of national distress, and the warrior class, whom he had deprived of some of its privileges, refused to take up arms in his behalf. he repaired, therefore, to the temple to implore divine assistance, and, falling asleep, was visited by a dream. the god appeared to him, and promised to send him some auxiliaries who should ensure him success. he enlisted such of the egyptians as were willing to follow him, shopkeepers, fullers, and sutlers, and led them to pelusium to resist the threatened invasion. in the night a legion of field-mice came forth, whence no one knew, and, noiselessly spreading throughout the camp of the assyrians, gnawed the quivers, the bowstrings, and the straps of the bucklers in such a way that, on the morrow, the enemy, finding themselves disarmed, fled after a mere pretence at resistance, and suffered severe losses. a statue was long shown in the temple at memphis portraying this sethon: he was represented holding a mouse in his hand, and the inscription bade men reverence the god who had wrought this miracle.* * the statue with which this legend has been connected, must have represented a king offering the image of a mouse crouching on a basket, like the cynocephalus on the hieroglyphic sign which denotes centuries, or the frog of the goddess hiqît. historians have desired to recognise in sethon a king zêt of the xxiiith dynasty, or even shabîtoku of the xxvth dynasty; krall identified him with satni in the demotic story of satni-umois. the disaster was a terrible one: sennacherib�s triumphant advance was suddenly checked, and he was forced to return to asia when the goal of his ambition was almost reached. the loss of a single army, however much to be deplored, was not irreparable, since assyria could furnish her sovereign with a second force as numerous as that which lay buried in the desert on the road to egypt, but it was uncertain what effect the news of the calamity and the sight of the survivors might have on the minds of his subjects and rivals. the latter took no immediate action, and the secret joy which they must have experienced did not blind them to the real facts of the case; for though the power of assyria was shaken, she was still stronger than any one of them severally, or even than all of them together, and to attack her or rebel against her now, was to court defeat with as much certainty as in past days. the pharaoh kept himself behind his rivers; the military science and skill which had baffled his generals on the field of altaku did not inspire him with any desire to reappear on the plains of palestine. hezekiah, king of judah, had emptied his treasury to furnish his ransom, his strongholds had capitulated one by one, and his territory, diminished by the loss of some of the towns of the shephelah, was little botter than a waste of smoking ruins. he thought himself fortunate to have preserved his power under the suzerainty of assyria, and his sole aim for many years was to refill his treasury, reconstitute his army, and re-establish his kingdom. the philistine and nabatasan princes, and the chiefs of moab, ammon, and idumsea, had nothing to gain by war, being too feeble to have any chance of success without the help of judah, tyre, and egypt. the syrians maintained a peaceful attitude, which was certainly their wisest policy; and during the following quarter of a century they loyally obeyed their governors, and gave sennacherib no cause to revisit them. it was fortunate for him that they did so, for the peoples of the north and east, the kaldâ, and, above all, the elamites, were the cause of much trouble, and exclusively occupied his attention during several years. the inhabitants of bît-yakîn, urged on either by their natural restlessness or by the news of the misfortune which had befallen their enemy, determined once more to try the fortunes of war. incited by marduk-ushezlb,* one of their princes, and by merodach-baladan, these people of the marshes intrigued with the courts of babylon and susa, and were emboldened to turn against the assyrian garrisons stationed in their midst to preserve order. sennacherib�s vengeance fell first on marduk-ushezîb, who fled from his stronghold of bîttutu after sustaining a short siege. merodach-baladan, deserted by his accomplice, put the statues of his gods and his royal treasures on board his fleet, and embarking with his followers, crossed the lagoon, and effected a landing in the district of nagîtu, in susian territory, beyond the mouth of the ulaî.** sennacherib entered bît-yakîn without striking a blow, and completed the destruction of the half-deserted town; he next proceeded to demolish the other cities one after the other, carrying off into captivity all the men and cattle who fell in his way. * three kings of babylon at this period bore very similar names--marduk-ushezîb, nergal-ushezîb, and mushezîb-marduk. nergal-ushezîb is the elder of the two whom the texts call shuzub, and whom assyriologists at first confused one with another. ** nagîtu was bounded by the nar-marratum and the ulaî, which allows us to identify it with the territory south of edrisieh. the elamites, disconcerted by the rapidity of his action, allowed him to crush their allies unopposed; and as they had not openly intervened, the conqueror refrained from calling them to account for their intrigues. babylon paid the penalty for all: its sovereign, belibni, who had failed to make the sacred authority of the suzerain respected in the city, and who, perhaps, had taken some part in the conspiracy, was with his family deported to nineveh, and his vacant throne was given to assur-nadin-shumu, a younger son of sargon (699 b.c.).* * berosus, misled by the deposition of belibni, thought that the expedition was directed against babylon itself; he has likewise confounded assur-nâdin-shumu with esar-haddon, and he has given this latter, whom he calls asordancs, as the immediate successor of belibni. the date 699 b.c. for these events is indicated in _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, which places them in the third year of belibni. order was once more restored in karduniash, but sennacherib felt that its submission would be neither sincere nor permanent, so long as merodach-baladan was hovering on its frontier possessed of an army, a fleet, and a supply of treasure, and prepared to enter the lists as soon as circumstances seemed favourable to his cause. sennacherib resolved, therefore, to cross the head of the persian gulf and deal him such a blow as would once for all end the contest; but troubles which broke out on the urartian frontier as soon as he returned forced, him to put off his project. the tribes of tumurru, who had placed their strongholds like eyries among the peaks of nipur, had been making frequent descents on the plains of the tigris, which they had ravaged unchecked by any fear of assyrian power. sennacherib formed an entrenched camp at the foot of their mountain retreat, and there left the greater part of his army, while he set out on an adventurous expedition with a picked body of infantry and cavalry. over ravines and torrents, up rough and difficult slopes, they made their way, the king himself being conveyed in a litter, as there were no roads practicable for his royal chariot; he even deigned to walk when the hillsides were too steep for his bearers to carry him; he climbed like a goat, slept on the bare rocks, drank putrid water from a leathern bottle, and after many hardships at length came up with the enemy. he burnt their villages, and carried off herds of cattle and troops of captives; but this exploit was more a satisfaction of his vanity than a distinct advantage gained, for the pillaging of the plains of the tigris probably recommenced as soon as the king had quitted the country. the same year he pushed as far as dayaîni, here similar tactics were employed. constructing a camp in the neighbourhood of mount anara and mount uppa, he forced his way to the capital, ukki, traversing a complicated network of gorges and forests which had hitherto been considered impenetrable. the king, manîya, fled; ukki was taken by assault and pillaged, the spoil obtained from it slightly exceeding that from tumurru (699 b.c.). shortly afterwards the province of tulgarimmê revolted in concert with the tabal: sennacherib overcame the allied forces, and led his victorious regiments through the defiles of the taurus.* * the dates of and connection between these two wars are not determined with any certainty. some authorities assign them both to the same year, somewhere between 699 and 696 b.c., while others assign them to two different years, the first to 699 or 696 b.c., the second to 698 or 695 b.c. [illustration: 042.jpg a raid among the woods and mountains.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layahd, monuments of nineveh, vol. i. pi. 70. greek pirates or colonists having ventured from time to time to ravage the seaboard, he destroyed one of their fleets near the mouth of the saros, and took advantage of his sojourn in this region to fortify the two cities of tarsus and ankhialê, to defend his cilician frontier against the peoples of asia minor.* * the encounter of the assyrians with the greeks is only known to us from a fragment of berosus. the foundation of tarsus is definitely attributed to sennacherib in the same passage; that of ankhialc is referred to the fabulous sardanapalus, but most historians with much probability attribute the foundation to sennacherib. this was a necessary precaution, for the whole of asia minor was just then stirred by the inrush of new nations which were devastating the country, and the effect of these convulsions was beginning to be felt in the country to the south of the central plain, at the foot of the taurus, and on the frontiers of the assyrian empire. barbarian hordes, attracted by the fame of the ancient hittite sanctuaries in the upper basin of the euphrates and the araxes, had descended now and again to measure their strength against the advanced posts of assyria or urartu, but had subsequently withdrawn and disappeared beyond the halys. their movements may at this time have been so aggressive as to arouse serious anxiety in the minds of the ninevite rulers; it is certain that sennacherib, though apparently hindered by no revolt, delayed the execution of the projects he had formed against merodach-baladan for three years; and it is possible his inaction may be attributed to the fear of some complication arising on his north-western frontier. he did not carry out his scheme till 695 b.c., when all danger in that quarter had passed away. the enterprise was a difficult one, for nagîtu and the neighbouring districts were dependencies of susa, and could not be reached by land without a violation of blamite neutrality, which would almost inevitably lead to a conflict. shutruk-nakhunta was no longer alive. in the very year in which his rival had set up assur-nâdin-shumu as king of karduniash, a revolution had broken out in elam, which was in all probability connected with the events then taking place in babylon. his subjects were angry with him for having failed to send timely succour to his allies the kaldâ, and for having allowed bît-yakîn to be destroyed: his own brother khalludush sided with the malcontents, threw shutruk-nakhunta into prison, and proclaimed himself king. this time the ninevites, thinking that elam was certain to intervene, sought how they might finally overpower merodach-baladan before this interference could prove effectual. the feudal constitution of the blamite monarchy rendered, as we know, the mobilisation of the army at the opening of a war a long and difficult task: weeks might easily elapse before the first and second grades of feudatory nobility could join the royal troops and form a combined army capable of striking an important blow. this was a cause of dangerous inferiority in a conflict with the assyrians, the chief part of whose forces, bivouacking close to the capital during the winter months, could leave their quarters and set out on a campaign at little more than a day�s notice; the kings of elam minimised the danger by keeping sufficient troops under arms on their northern and western frontiers to meet any emergency, but an attack by sea seemed to them so unlikely that they had not, for a long time past, thought of protecting their coast-line. the ancient chaldæan cities, uru, bagash, uruk, and bridu had possessed fleets on the persian gulf; but the times were long past when they used to send to procure stone and wood from the countries of magan and melukhkha, and the seas which they had ruled were now traversed only by merchant vessels or fishing-boats. besides this, the condition of the estuary seemed to prohibit all attack from that side. the space between bît-yakîn and the long line of dunes or mud-banks which blocked the entrance to it was not so much a gulf as a lagoon of uncertain and shifting extent; the water flowed only in the middle, being stagnant near the shores; the whole expanse was irregularly dotted over with mud-banks, and its service was constantly altered by the alluvial soil brought down by the tigris, the euphrates, the ulaî, and the uknu. the navigation of this lagoon was dangerous, for the relative positions of the channels and shallows were constantly shifting, and vessels of deep draught often ran aground in passing from one end of it to the other.* * the condition i describe here is very similar to what alexander�s admirals found 350 years later. arrian has preserved for us the account of nearchus� navigation in these waters, and his description shows such a well-defined condition of the estuary that its main outline must have remained unchanged for a considerable time; the only subsequent alterations which had taken place must have been in the internal configuration, where the deposit of alluvium must have necessarily reduced the area of the lake since the time of sennacherib. the little map on the next page has no pretension to scientific exactitude; its only object is to show roughly what the estuary of the euphrates was like, and to illustrate approximately the course of the assyrian expedition. [illustration: 048.jpg map the nar-marratum in the time of sennacherib] sennacherib decided to march his force to the mouth of the euphrates, and, embarking it there, to bring it to bear suddenly on the portion of elamite territory nearest to nagîtu: if all went well, he would thus have time to crush the rising power of merodach-baladan and regain his own port of departure before khalludush could muster a sufficient army to render efficient succour to his vassal. more than a year was consumed in preparations. the united cities of chaldæa being unable to furnish the transports required to convey such a large host across the nar-marratum, it was necessary to construct a fleet, and to do so in such a way that the enemy should have no suspicion of danger. sennacherib accordingly set up his dockyards at tul-barsîp on the euphrates and at nineveh on the tigris, and syrian shipwrights built him a fleet of vessels after two distinct types. some were galleys identical in build and equipment with those which the mediterranean natives used for their traffic with distant lands. the others followed the old babylonian model, with stem and stern both raised, the bows being sometimes distinguished by the carving of a horse�s head, which justified the name of _sea-horse_ given to a vessel of this kind. they had no masts, but propelling power was provided by two banks of oars one above the other, as in the galleys. the two divisions of the fleet were ready at the beginning of 694 b.c., and it was arranged that they should meet at bît-dakkuri, to the south of babylon. [illustration: 049.jpg the fleet of sennacherib on the nar-marratum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the fleet from tul-barsîp had merely to descend the euphrates to reach the meeting-place,* but that from nineveh had to make a more complicated journey. * the story of the preparations, as it has been transmitted to us in sennacherib�s inscriptions, is curiously similar to the accounts given by the greek historians of the vessels alexander had built at babylon and thap-sacus by phoenician workmen, which descended the euphrates to join the fleet in the persian gulf. this fleet consisted of quinquiremos, according to aristobulus, who was present at their construction: quintus-curtius makes them all vessels with seven banks of oars, but he evidently confuses the galleys built at thapsacus with those which came in sections from phoenicia and which alexander had put together at babylon. by following the course of the tigris to its mouth it would have had to skirt the coast of elam for a considerable distance, and would inevitably have aroused the suspicions of khalludush; the passage of such a strong squadron must have revealed to him the importance of the enterprise, and put him on his guard. the vessels therefore stayed their course at upi, where they were drawn ashore and transported on rollers across the narrow isthmus which separates the tigris from the arakhtu canal, on which they were then relaunched. either the canal had not been well kept, or else it never had the necessary depth at certain places; but the crews managed to overcome all obstacles and rejoined their comrades in due time. sennacherib was ready waiting for them with all his troops--foot-soldiers, charioteers, and horsemen--and with supplies of food for the men, and of barley and oats for the horses; as soon as the last contingent had arrived, he gave the signal for departure, and all advanced together, the army marching along the southern bank, the fleet descending the current, to the little port of bab-salimeti, some twelve miles below the mouth of the river.* * the mouth of the euphrates being at that time not far from the site of kornah, bab-salimeti, which was about twelve miles distant, must have been somewhere near the present village of abu-hatira, on the south bank of the river. there they halted in order to proceed to the final embarcation, but at the last moment their inexperience of the sea nearly compromised the success of the expedition. even if they were not absolutely ignorant of the ebb and flow of the tide, they certainly did not know how dangerous the spring tide could prove at the equinox under the influence of a south wind. the rising tide then comes into conflict with the volume of water brought down by the stream, and in the encounter the banks are broken down, and sometimes large districts are inundated: this is what happened that year, to the terror of the assyrians. their camp was invaded and completely flooded by the waves; the king and his soldiers took refuge in haste on the galleys, where they were kept prisoners for five days �as in a huge cage.� as soon as the waters abated, they completed their preparations and started on their voyage. at the point where the euphrates enters the lagoon, sennacherib pushed forward to the front of the line, and, standing in the bows of his flag-ship, offered a sacrifice to eâ, the god of the ocean. having made a solemn libation, he threw into the water a gold model of a ship, a golden fish, and an image of the god himself, likewise in gold; this ceremony performed, he returned to the port of bab-salimeti with his guard, while the bulk of his forces continued their voyage eastward. the passage took place without mishap, but they could not disembark on the shore of the gulf itself, which was unapproachable by reason of the deposits of semi-liquid mud which girdled it; they therefore put into the mouth of the ulaî, and ascended the river till they reached a spot where the slimy reed-beds gave place to firm ground, which permitted them to draw their ships to land.* * billerbeck recognises in the narrative of sennacherib the indication of two attempts at debarcation, of which the second only can have been successful; i can distinguish only one crossing. the inhabitants assembled hastily at sight of the enemy, and the news, spreading through the neighbouring tribes, brought together for their defence a confused crowd of archers, chariots, and horsemen. the assyrians, leaping into the stream and climbing up the bank, easily overpowered these undisciplined troops. [illustration: 052.jpg a skirmish in the marshes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. they captured at the first onset nagîtu, nagîtu-dibîna, khilmu, pillatu, and khupapânu; and raiding the kaldâ, forced them on board the fleet with their gods, their families, their flocks, and household possessions, and beat a hurried retreat with their booty. merodach-baladan himself and his children once more escaped their clutches, but the state he had tried to create was annihilated, and his power utterly crushed. sennacherib received his generals with great demonstrations of joy at bab-salimeti, and carried the spoil in triumph to nineveh. khalludush, exasperated by the affront put upon him, instantly retaliated by invading karduniash, where he pushed forward as far as sippara, pillaging and destroying the inhabitants without opposition. the babylonians who had accompanied merodach-baladan into exile, returned in the train of the elamites, and, secretly stealing back to their homes, stirred up a general revolt: assur-nâdin-shumu, taken prisoner by his own subjects, was put in chains and despatched to susa, his throne being bestowed on a babylonian named nergal-ushezîb,* who at once took the field (694 b.c.). * this is the prince whom the assyrian documents name shuzub, and whom we might call shuzub the babylonian, in contradistinction to mushezib-marduk, who is shuzub the kaldu. his preliminary efforts were successful: he ravaged the frontier along the turnât with the help of the elamites, and took by assault the city of nipur, which refused to desert the cause of sennacherib (693 b.c.). meanwhile the assyrian generals had captured uruk (erech) on the 1st of tisri, after the retreat of khalludush; and having sacked the city, were retreating northwards with their spoil when they were defeated on the 7th near nipur by nergal-ushezîb. he had already rescued the statues of the gods and the treasure, when his horse fell in the midst of the fray, and he could not disengage himself. his vanquished foes led him captive to nineveh, where sennacherib exposed him in chains at the principal gateway of his palace: the babylonians, who owed to him their latest success, summoned a kaldu prince, mushezîb-marduk, son of gahut, to take command. he hastened to comply, and with the assistance of blamite troops offered such a determined resistance to all attack, that he was finally left in undisturbed possession of his kingdom (692 b.c.): the actual result to assyria, therefore, of the ephemeral victory gained by the fleet had been the loss of babylon. [illustration: 054.jpg the horse of nergal-ushezîb falling in the battle] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. a revolution in elam speedily afforded assyria an opportunity for revenge. when nergal-ushezîb was taken prisoner, the people of susa, dissatisfied with the want of activity displayed by khalludush, conspired to depose him: on hearing, therefore, the news of the revolutions in chaldæa, they rose in revolt on the 26th of tisri, and, besieging him in his palace, put him to death, and elected a certain kutur-nakhunta as his successor. sennacherib, without a moment�s hesitation, crossed the frontier at durîlu, before order was re-established at susa, and recovered, after very slight resistance, baza and bît-khaîri which shutruk-nakhunta had taken from sargon. this preliminary success laid the lower plain of susiana at his mercy, and he ravaged it pitilessly from baza to bît-bunaki. �thirty-four strongholds and the townships depending on them, whose number is unequalled, i besieged and took by assault, their inhabitants i led into captivity, i demolished them and reduced them to ashes: i caused the smoke of their burning to rise into the wide heaven, like the smoke of one great sacrifice.� kutur-nakhunta, still insecurely seated on the throne of susa, retreated with his army towards khaîdalu, in the almost unexplored regions which bordered the banian plateau,* and entrenched himself strongly in the heart of the mountains. * khaîdalu is very probably the present dis malkân. the season was already well advanced when the assyrians set out on this expedition, and november set in while they were ravaging the plain: but the weather was still so fine that sennacherib determined to take advantage of it to march upon madaktu. hardly had he scaled the heights when winter fell upon him with its accompaniment of cold and squally weather. �violent storms broke out, it rained and snowed incessantly, the torrents and streams overflowed their banks,� so that hostilities had to be suspended and the troops ordered back to nineveh. the effect produced, however, by these bold measures was in no way diminished: though kutur-nakhunta had not had the necessary time to prepare for the contest, he was nevertheless discredited among his subjects for failing to bring them out of it with glory, and three months after the retreat of the assyrians he was assassinated in a riot on the 20th of ab, 692 b.c.* * the assyrian documents merely mention the death of kutur nakhunta less than three months after the return of sennacherib to nineveh. pinches� _babylonian chronicle_ only mentions the revolution in which he perished, and informs us that he had reigned ten months. it contracts ummân-minânu, the name of the elamite king, to minânu. his younger brother, ummân-minânu, assumed the crown, and though his enemies disdainfully refused to credit him with either prudence or judgment, he soon restored his kingdom to such a formidable degree of power that mushezîb-marduk thought the opportunity a favourable one for striking a blow at assyria, from which she could never recover. elam had plenty of troops, but was deficient in the resources necessary to pay the men and their chiefs, and to induce the tribes of the table-land to furnish their contingents. mushezîb-marduk, therefore, emptied the sacred treasury of e-sagilla, and sent the gold and silver of bel and zarpanit to ummân-minânu with a message which ran thus: �assemble thine army, and prepare thy camp, come to babylon and strengthen our hands, for thou art our help.� the elamite asked nothing better than to avenge the provinces so cruelly harassed, and the cities consumed in the course of the last campaign: he summoned all his nobles, from the least to the greatest, and enlisted the help of the troops of parsuas, ellipi, and anzân, the aramaean puqudu and gambulu of the tigris, as well as the aramæans of the euphrates, and the peoples of bît-adini and bît-amukkâni, who had rallied round sam una, son of merodach-baladan, and joined forces with the soldiers of mushezîb-marduk in babylon. �like an invasion of countless locusts swooping down upon the land, they assembled, resolved to give me battle, and the dust of their feet rose before me, like a thick cloud which darkens the copper-coloured dome of the sky.� the conflict took place near the township of khalulê, on the banks of the tigris, not far from the confluence of this river with the turnât.* * haupt attributes to the name the signification _holes, bogs_, and this interpretation agrees well enough with the state of the country round the mouths of the dîyala, in the low-lying district which separates that river from the tigris; he compares it with the name haulâyeh, quoted by arab geographers in this neighbourhood, and with that of the canton of hâleh, mentioned in syrian texts as belonging to the district of râdhân, between the adhem and the dîyala. at this point the turnât, flowing through the plain, divides into several branches, which ramify again and again, and form a kind of delta extending from the ruins of nayân to those of reshadeh. during the whole of the day the engagement between the two hosts raged on this unstable soil, and their leaders themselves sold their lives dearly in the struggle. sennacherib invoked the help of assur, sin, shamash, nebo, bel, nergal, ishtar of nineveh, and ishtar of arbela, and the gods heard his prayers. �like a lion i raged, i donned my harness, i covered my head with my casque, the badge of war; my powerful battle-chariot, which mows down the rebels, i ascended it in haste in the rage of my heart; the strong bow which assur entrusted to me, i seized it, and the javelin, destroyer of life, i grasped it: the whole host of obdurate rebels i charged, shining like silver or like the day, and i roared as kammân roareth.� khumba-undash, the elamite general, was killed in one of the first encounters, and many of his officers perished around him, �of those who wore golden daggers at their belts, and bracelets of gold on their wrists.� they fell one after the other, �like fat bulls chained� for the sacrifice, or like sheep, and their blood flowed on the broad plain as the water after a violent storm: the horses plunged in it up to their knees, and the body of the royal chariot was reddened with it. a son of merodach-baladan, nabu-shumishkun, was taken prisoner, but ummân-minânu and mushezîb-marduk escaped unhurt from the fatal field. it seems as if fortune had at last decided in favour of the assyrians, and they proclaimed the fact loudly, but their success was not so evident as to preclude their adversaries also claiming the victory with some show of truth. in any case, the losses on both sides were so considerable as to force the two belligerents to suspend operations; they returned each to his capital, and matters remained much as they had been before the battle took place.* * _pinches� babylonian chronicle_ attributes the victory to the elamites, and says that the year in which the battle was fought was unknown. the testimony of this chronicle is so often marred by partiality, that to prefer it always to that of the ninevite inscriptions shows deficiency of critical ability: the course of events seems to me to prove that the advantage remained with the assyrians, though the victory was not decisive. the date, which necessarily falls between 692 and 689 b.c., has been decided by general considerations as 691 b.c., the very year in which the _taylor cylinder_ was written. years might have elapsed before sennacherib could have ventured to recommence hostilities: he was not deluded by the exaggerated estimate of his victory in the accounts given by his court historians, and he recognised the fact that the issue of the struggle must be uncertain as long as the alliance subsisted between elam and chaldæa. but fortune came to his aid sooner than he had expected. ummân-minânu was not absolute in his dominions any more than his predecessors had been, and the losses he had sustained at khalulê, without obtaining any compensating advantages in the form of prisoners or spoil, had lowered him in the estimation of his vassals; mushezîb-marduk, on the other hand, had emptied his treasuries, and though karduniash was wealthy, it was hardly able, after such a short interval, to provide further subsidies to purchase the assistance of the mountain tribes. sennacherib�s emissaries kept him well informed of all that occurred in the enemy�s court, and he accordingly took the field again at the beginning of 689 b.c., and on this occasion circumstances seemed likely to combine to give him an easy victory.* * the assyrian documents insert the account of the capture of babylon directly after the battle of khalulê, and modern historians therefore concluded that the two events took place within a few months of each other. the information afforded by _pinches� babylonian chronicle_ has enabled us to correct this mistake, and to bring down the date of the taking of babylon to 689 b.c. mushezîb-marduk shut himself up in babylon, not doubting that the elamites would hasten to his succour as soon as they should hear of his distress; but his expectation was not fulfilled. ummân-minânu was struck down by apoplexy, on the 15th of nisân, and though his illness did not at once terminate fatally, he was left paralysed with distorted mouth, and loss of speech, incapable of action, and almost unfit to govern. his seizure put a stop to his warlike preparations: and his ministers, preoccupied with the urgent question of the succession to the throne, had no desire to provoke a conflict with assyria, the issue of which could not be foretold: they therefore left their ally to defend his own interests as best he might. babylon, reduced to rely entirely on its own resources, does not seem to have held out long, and perhaps the remembrance of the treatment it had received on former occasions may account for the very slight resistance it now offered. the assyrian kings who had from time to time conquered babylon, had always treated it with great consideration. they had looked upon it as a sacred city, whose caprices and outbreaks must always be pardoned; it was only with infinite precautions that they had imposed their commands upon it, and even when they had felt that severity was desirable, they had restrained themselves in using it, and humoured the idiosyncrasies of the inhabitants. tiglath-pileser iii, shalmaneser v., and sargon had all preferred to be legally crowned as sovereigns of babylon instead of remaining merely its masters by right of conquest, and though sennacherib had refused compliance with the traditions by which his predecessors had submitted to be bound, he had behaved with unwonted lenity after quelling the two previous revolts. he now recognised that his clemency had been shown in vain, and his small stock of patience was completely exhausted just when fate threw the rebellious city into his power. if the inhabitants had expected to be once more let off easily, their illusions were speedily dissipated: they were slain by the sword as if they had been ordinary foes, such as jews, tibarenians, or kaldâ of bît-yakîn, and they were spared none of the horrors which custom then permitted the stronger to inflict upon the weaker. for several days the pitiless massacre lasted. young and old, all who fell into the hands of the soldiery, perished by the sword; piles of corpses filled the streets and the approaches to the temples, especially the avenue of winged bulls which led to e-sagilla, and, even after the first fury of carnage had been appeased, it was only to be succeeded by more organised pillage. mushezîb-marduk was sent into exile with his family, and immense convoys of prisoners and spoil followed him. the treasures carried off from the royal palace, the temples, and the houses of the rich nobles were divided among the conquerors: they comprised gold, silver, precious stones, costly stuffs, and provisions of all sorts. the sacred edifices were sacked, the images hacked to pieces or carried off to nineveh: bel-marduk, introduced into the sanctuary of assur, became subordinate to the rival deity amid a crowd of strange gods. in the inmost recess of a chapel were discovered some ancient statues of kammân and shala of e-kallati, which marduk-nâdin-akhê had carried off in the time of tiglath-pileser i., and these were brought back in triumph to their own land, after an absence of four hundred and eighteen years. the buildings themselves suffered a like fate to that of their owners and their gods. �the city and its houses, from foundation to roof, i destroyed them, i demolished them, i burnt them with fire; walls, gateways, sacred chapels, and the towers of earth and tiles, i laid them all low and cast them into the arakhtu.� the incessant revolts of the people justified this wholesale destruction. babylon, as we have said before, was too powerful to be reduced for long to the second rank in a mesopotamian empire: as soon as fate established the seat of empire in the districts bordering on the euphrates and the middle course of the tigris, its well-chosen situation, its size, its riches, the extent of its population, the number of its temples, and the beauty of its palaces, all conspired to make it the capital of the country. in vain assur, calah, or nineveh thrust themselves into the foremost rank, and by a strenuous effort made their princes rulers of babylon; in a short time babylon replenished her treasury, found allies, soldiers, and leaders, and in spite of reverses of fortune soon regained the upper hand. the only treatment which could effectually destroy her ascendency was that of leaving in her not one brick upon another, thus preventing her from being re-peopled for several generations, since a new city could not at once spring up from the ashes of the old; until she had been utterly destroyed her conquerors had still reason to fear her. this fact sennacherib, or his councillors, knew well. if he merits any reproach, it is not for having seized the opportunity of destroying the city which babylon offered him, but rather for not having persevered in his design to the end, and reduced her to a mere name. in the midst of these costly and absorbing wars, we may well wonder how sennacherib found time and means to build villas or temples; yet he is nevertheless, among the kings of assyria, the monarch who has left us the largest number of monuments. he restored a shrine of nergal in the small town of tarbizi; he fortified the village of alshi; and in 704 b.c. he founded a royal residence in the fortress of kakzi, which defended the approach to calah from the south-east. he did not reside much at dur-sharrukîn, neither did he complete the decoration of his father�s palace there: his pride as a victorious warrior suffered when his surroundings reminded him of a more successful conqueror than himself, and calah itself was too full of memories of tiglath-pileser iii. and the sovereigns of the eighth century for him to desire to establish his court there. he preferred to reside at nineveh, which had been much neglected by his predecessors, and where the crumbling edifices merely recalled the memory of long-vanished splendours. [illustration: 063.jpg the mounds of nineveh seen from the terrace of a house in mosul] drawn by boudier, from a lithograph in layard. he selected this city as his residence at the very beginning of his reign, perhaps while he was still only crown prince, and began by repairing its ancient fortifications; later on, when the success of his earlier campaigns had furnished him with a sufficient supply of prisoners, he undertook the restoration of the whole city, with its avenues, streets, canals, quays, gardens, and aqueducts: the labour of all the captives brought together from different quarters of his empire was pressed into the execution of his plans--the kaldâ, the aramæans, the mannai, the people of kuî, the cilicians, the philistines, and the ïyrians; the provinces vied with each other in furnishing him with materials without stint,--precious woods were procured from syria, marbles from kapri-dargîla, alabaster from balad, while bît-yakîn provided the rushes to be laid between the courses of brickwork. the river tebilti, after causing the downfall of the royal mausolea and �displaying to the light of day the coffins which they concealed,� had sapped the foundations of the palace of assur-nazir-pal, and caused it to fall in: a muddy pool now occupied the north-western quarter, between the court of ishtar and the lofty ziggurât of assur. this pool sennacherib filled up, and regulated the course of the stream, providing against the recurrence of such-accidents in future by building a substructure of masonry, 454 cubits long by 289 wide, formed of large blocks of stone cemented together by bitumen. on this he erected a magnificent palace, a bît-khilâni in the syrian style, with woodwork of fragrant cedar and cypress overlaid with gold and silver, panellings of sculptured marble and alabaster, and friezes and cornices in glazed tiles of brilliant colouring: inspired by the goddess nin-kurra, he caused winged bulls of white alabaster and limestone statues of the gods to be hewn in the quarries of balad near nineveh. he presided in person at all these operations--at the raising of the soil, the making of the substructures of the terrace, the transport of the colossal statues or blocks and their subsequent erection; indeed, he was to be seen at every turn, standing in ids ebony and ivory chariot, drawn by a team of men. when the building was finished, he was so delighted with its beauty that he named it �the incomparable palace,� and his admiration was shared by his contemporaries; they were never wearied of extolling in glowing terms the twelve bronze lions, the twelve winged bulls, and the twenty-four statues of goddesses which kept watch over the entrance, and for the construction of which a new method of rapid casting had been invented. [illustration: 065.jpg king sennacherib watching the transport of a colossal statue] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. formerly the erection of such edifices cost much in suffering to the artificers employed on them, but sennacherib brought his great enterprise to a prompt completion without extravagant outlay or unnecessary hardship inflicted on his workmen. he proceeded to annex the neighbouring quarters of the city, relegating the inhabitants to the suburbs while he laid out a great park on the land thus cleared; this park was well planted with trees, like the heights of amanus, and in it flourished side by side all the forest growths indigenousnto the cilician mountains and the plains of chaldæa. a lake, fed by a canal leading from the khuzur, supplied it with water, which was conducted in streams and rills through the thickets, keeping them always fresh and green. vines trained on trellises afforded a grateful shade during the sultry hours of the day; birds sang in the branches, herds of wild boar and deer roamed through the coverts, in order that the prince might enjoy the pleasures of the chase without quitting his own private grounds. [illustration: 066.jpg assyrian bas-reliefs at bavian] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in layard. the main part of these constructions was finished about 700 b.c., but many details were left incomplete, and the work was still proceeding after the court had long been in residence on the spot. meanwhile a smaller palace, as well as barracks and a depot for arms and provisions, sprang up elsewhere. eighteen aqueducts, carried across the country, brought the water from the muzri to the khuzur, and secured an adequate supply to the city; the ninevites, who had hitherto relied upon rain-water for the replenishing of their cisterns, awoke one day to find themselves released from all anxiety on this score. an ancient and semi-subterranean canal, which assur-nazir-pal had constructed nearly two centuries before, but which, owing to the neglect of his successors, had become choked up, was cleaned out, enlarged and repaired, and made capable of bringing water to their doors from the springs of mount tas, in the same year as that in which the battle of khalulê took place.* at a later date, magnificent bas-reliefs, carved on the rock by order of esar-haddon, representing winged bulls, figures of the gods and of the king, with explanatory inscriptions, marked the site of the springs, and formed a kind of monumental façade to the ravine in which they took their rise.** * mount tas is the group of hills enclosing the ravine of bavian. these works were described in the bavian inscription, of which they occupy the whole of the first part. ** the bavian text speaks of six inscriptions and statues which the king had engraved on the mount of tas, at the source of the stream. it would be hard to account for the rapidity with which these great works were completed, did one not remember that sargon had previously carried out extensive architectural schemes, in which he must have employed all the available artists in his empire. the revolutions which had shattered the realm under the last descendants of assur-nazir-pal, and the consequent impoverishment of the kingdom, had not been without a disastrous effect on the schools of assyrian sculpture. [ illustration: 068.jpg unknown subjects from the fifth tomb] [illustration: 069.jpg great assyrian stele at baviaît.] drawn by boudior, from layard. since the royal treasury alone was able to bear the expense of those vast compositions in which the artistic skill of the period could have free play, the closing of the royal workshops, owing to the misfortunes of the time, had the immediate effect of emptying the sculptors� studios. even though the period of depression lasted for the space of two or three generations only, it became difficult to obtain artistic workmen; and those who were not discouraged from the pursuit of art by the uncertainty of employment, no longer possessed the high degree of skill attained by their predecessors, owing to lack of opportunity to cultivate it. sculpture was at a very low ebb when tiglath-pileser iii. desired to emulate the royal builders of days gone by, and the awkwardness of composition noticeable in some of his bas-reliefs, and the almost barbaric style of the stelae erected by persons of even so high a rank as belharrân-beluzur, prove the lamentable deficiency of good artists at that epoch, and show that the king had no choice but to employ all the surviving members of the ancient guilds, whether good, bad, or indifferent workmen. the increased demand, however, soon produced an adequate supply of workers, and when sargon ascended the throne, the royal guild of sculptors had been thoroughly reconstituted; the inefficient workmen on whom tiglath-pileser and shalmaneser had been obliged to rely had been eliminated in course of time, and many of the sculptures which adorned the palace at khorsabad display a purity of design and boldness of execution comparable to that of the best egyptian art. the composition still shows traces of chaldæan stiffness, and the exaggerated drawing of the muscles produces an occasionally unpleasing-heaviness of outline, but none the less the work as a whole constitutes one of the richest and most ingenious schemes of decoration ever devised, which, while its colouring was still perfect, must have equalled in splendour the great triumphal battle-scenes at ibsambul or medinet-habu. sennacherib found ready to his hand a body of well-trained artists, whose number had considerably increased during the reign of sargon, and he profited by the experience which they had acquired and the talent that many of them had developed. what immediately strikes the spectator in the series of pictures produced under his auspices, is the great skill with which his artists covered the whole surface at their disposal without overcrowding it. they no longer treated their subject, whether it were a warlike expedition, a hunting excursion, a sacrificial scene, or an episode of domestic life, as a simple juxtaposition of groups of almost equal importance ranged at the same elevation along the walls, the subject of each bas-relief being complete in itself and without any necessary connection with its neighbour. they now selected two or three principal incidents from the subjects proposed to them for representation, and round these they grouped such of the less important episodes as lent themselves best to picturesque treatment, and scattered sparingly over the rest of the field the minor accessories which seemed suitable to indicate more precisely the scene of the action. under the auspices of this later school, assyrian foot-soldiers are no longer depicted attacking the barbarians of media or elam on backgrounds of smooth stone, where no line marks the various levels, and where the remoter figures appear to be walking in the air without anything to support them. if the battle represented took place on a wooded slope crowned by a stronghold on the summit of the hill, the artist, in order to give an impression of the surroundings, covered his background with guilloche patterns by which to represent the rugged surface of the mountains; he placed here and there groups of various kinds of trees, especially the straight cypresses and firs which grew upon the slopes of the iranian table-land: or he represented a body of lancers galloping in single file along the narrow woodland paths, and hastening to surprise a distant enemy, or again foot-soldiers chasing their foes through the forest or engaging them in single combat; while in the corners of the picture the wounded are being stabbed or otherwise despatched, fugitives are trying to escape through the undergrowth, and shepherds are pleading with the victors for their lives. it is the actual scene the sculptor sets himself to depict, and one is sometimes inclined to ask, while noting the precision with which the details of the battle are rendered, whether the picture was not drawn on the spot, and whether the conqueror did not carry artists in his train to make sketches for the decorators of the main features of the country traversed and of the victories won. the masses of infantry seem actually in motion, a troop of horsemen rush blindly over uneven ground, and the episodes of their raid are unfolded in all their confusion with unfailing animation. [illustration: 073.jpg an assyrian cavalry raid through the woods] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. for the first time a spectator can realise assyrian warfare with its striking contrasts of bravery and unbridled cruelty; he is no longer reduced to spell out laboriously a monotonous narrative of a battle, for the battle takes place actually before his eyes. and after the return from the scene of action, when it is desired to show how the victor employed his prisoners for the greater honour of his gods and his own glory, the picture is no less detailed and realistic. [illustration: 074.jpg (and 75) transport of a winged bull on a sledge.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. there we see them, the noble and the great of all the conquered nations, chaldæans and elamites, inhabitants of cilicia, phoenicia, and judaea, harnessed to ropes and goaded by the whips of the overseers, dragging the colossal bull which is destined to mount guard at the gates of the palace: with bodies bent, pendant arms, and faces contorted with pain, they, who had been the chief men in their cities, now take the place of beasts of burden, while sennacherib, erect on his state chariot, with steady glance and lips compressed, watches them as they pass slowly before him in their ignominy and misery. after the destruction of babylon there is a pause in the history of the conqueror, and with him in that of assyria itself. it seems as if nineveh had been exhausted by the greatness of her effort, and was stopping to take breath before setting out on a fresh career of conquest: the other nations also, as if overwhelmed by the magnitude of the catastrophe, appear to have henceforth despaired of their own security, and sought only how to avoid whatever might rouse against them the enmity of the master of the hour. his empire formed a compact and solid block in their midst, on which no human force seemed capable of making any impression. they had attacked it each in turn, or all at once, elam in the east, urartu in the north, egypt in the south-west, and their efforts had not only miserably failed, but had for the most part drawn down upon them disastrous reprisals. the people of urartu remained in gloomy inaction amidst their mountains, the elamites had lost their supremacy over half the aramæan tribes, and if egypt was as yet inaccessible beyond the intervening deserts, she owed it less to the strength of her armies than to the mysterious fatality at libnah. in one half-century the assyrians had effectually and permanently disabled the first of these kingdoms, and inflicted on the others such serious injuries that they were slow in recovering from them. the fate of these proud nations had intimidated the inferior states--arabs, medes, tribes of asia minor, barbarous cimmerians or scythians,--all alike were careful to repress their natural inclinations to rapine and plunder. if occasionally their love of booty overpowered their prudence, and they hazarded a raid on some defenceless village in the neighbouring border territory, troops were hastily despatched from the nearest assyrian garrison, who speedily drove them back across the frontier, and pursuing them into their own country, inflicted on them so severe a punishment that they remained for some considerable time paralysed by awe and terror. assyria was the foremost kingdom of the east, and indeed of the whole world, and the hegemony which she exercised over all the countries within her reach cannot be accounted for solely by her military superiority. not only did she excel in the art of conquest, as many before her had done--babylonians, elamites, hittites, and egyptians--but she did what none of them had been able to accomplish; she exacted lasting obedience from the conquered nations, ruling them with a firm hand, and accustoming them to live on good terms with one another in spite of diversity of race, and this with a light rein, with unfailing tact, and apparently with but little effort. the system of deportation so resolutely carried out by tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon began to produce effect, and up to this time the most happy results only were discernible. the colonies which had been planted throughout the empire from palestine to media, some of them two generations previously, others within recent years, were becoming more and more acclimatised to their new surroundings, on which they were producing the effect desired by their conquerors; they were meant to hold in check the populations in whose midst they had been set down, to act as a curb upon them, and also to break up their national unity and thus gradually prepare them for absorption into a wider fatherland, in which they would cease to be exclusively damascenes, samaritans, hittites, or aramæans, since they would become assyrians and fellow-citizens of a mighty empire. the provinces, brought at length under a regular system of government, protected against external dangers and internal discord, by a well-disciplined soldiery, and enjoying a peace and security they had rarely known in the days of their independence, gradually became accustomed to live in concord under the rule of a common sovereign, and to feel themselves portions of a single empire. the speech of assyria was their official language, the gods of assyria were associated with their national gods in the prayers they offered up for the welfare of the sovereign, and foreign nations with whom they were brought into communication no longer distinguished between them and their conquerors, calling their country assyria, and regarding its inhabitants as assyrians. as is invariably the case, domestic peace and good administration had caused a sudden development of wealth and commercial activity. although nineveh and calah never became such centres of trade and industry as babylon had been, yet the presence of the court and the sovereign attracted thither merchants from all parts of the world. [illustration: 079.jpg sennacherib] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the medes, reaching the capital by way of the passes of kowândîz and suleimaniyeh, brought in the lapis-lazuli, precious stones, metals, and woollen stuffs of central asia and the farthest east, while the phoenicians and even greeks, who were already following in their foot steps, came thither to sell in the à bazaars of assyria the most precious of the wares brought back by their merchant vessels from the shores of the mediterranean, the atlantic, and the farthest west. the great cities of the triangle of assyria were gradually supplanting all the capitals of the ancient world, not excepting memphis, and becoming the centres of universal trade; unexcelled for centuries in the arts of war, assyria was in a fair way to become mistress also in the arts of peace. a jewish prophet thus described the empire at a later date: �the assyrian was a cedar in lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick clouds. the waters nourished him, the deep made him grow: therefore his stature was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long by reason of many waters, when he shot them forth. all the fowls of the heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by many waters. the cedars in the garden of god could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the plane trees were not as his branches; nor was any tree like unto him in beauty: so that all the trees of eden, that were in the garden of god, envied him.� (ezek. xxxi. 3-9). chapter ii--the power of assyria at its zenith; esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal _the medes and cimmerians: lydia--the conquest of egypt, op arabia, and of elam._ _last years of sennacherib--new races appear upon the scene--the medes: deiokes and the foundation of ecbatana, the bit-dayaukku and their origin--the races of asia minor--the phrygians, their earliest rulers, their conquests, and their religion--last of the heraclidæ in lydia, trade and constitution of their kingdom--the tylonidæ, and mermnadæ--the cimmerians driven back into asia by the scythians--the treves._ _murder of sennacherib and accession of esarhaddon: defeat of sharezer (681 b.c.)--campaigns against the kaldd, the cimmerians, the tribes of cilicia, and against sidon (680-679 b.c.); cimmerian and scythian invasions, revolt of vie mannai, and expeditions against the medes; submission of the northern arabs (678-676 b.c.)--egyptian affairs; taharqa (tirhakah), his building operations, his syrian policy--disturbances on the frontiers of elam and urartu._ _first invasion of egypt and subjection of the country to nineveh (670 b.c.)--intrigues of rival claimants to the throne, and division of the assyrian empire between assùr-bani-pal and shamash shumukîn (668 b.c.)--revolt of egypt and death of esarhaddon (668 b.c.); accession of assur-bani-pal; his campaign against kirbît; defeat of taharqa and reconstitution of the egyptian province (667 b.c.)--affairs of asia minor: gyges (693 b.c.), his tears against the greeks and cimmerians; he sends ambassadors to nineveh (664 b.c.)._ _tanuatamanu reasserts the authority of ethiopia in egypt (664 b.c.), and tammaritu of elam invades karduniash; reconquest of the said and sack of thebes--psammetichus i. and the rise of the xxvith dynasty--disturbances among the medes and mannai--war against teumman and the victory of tulliz (660 b.c.): elam yields to the assyrians for the first time--shamash-shumukin at babylon; is at first on good terms with his brother, then becomes dissatisfied, and forms a coalition against the ninevite supremacy._ _the uruk incident and outbreak of the war between karduniash, elam, and assyria; elam disabled by domestic discords--siege and capture of babylon; assur-bani-pal ascends the throne under the name of kandalanu (648-646 b.c.)--revolt of egypt: defeat and death of gyges (642 b.c. ): ardys drives out the cimmerians and dugdamis is killed in cilicia--submission of arabia._ _revolution in elam--attack on indabigash--tammaritu restored to power--pillage and destruction of susa--campaign against the arabs of kedar and the nabatæans: suppression of the tyrian rebellion --dying struggles of elam--capture of madaktu and surrender of khumban-khaldash--the power of assyria reaches its zenith._ [illustration: 083.jpg page image] chapter ii--the power of assyria at its zenith; esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal _the medes and cimmerians: lydia--the conquest of egypt, of arabia, and of elam._ as we have already seen, sennacherib reigned for eight years after his triumph; eight years of tranquillity at home, and of peace with all his neighbours abroad. if we examine the contemporary monuments or the documents of a later period, and attempt to glean from them some details concerning the close of his career, we find that there is a complete absence of any record of national movement on the part of either elam, urartu, or egypt. drawn by faucher-gudin, after layard. the vignette, also by faucher-gudin, represents taharqa in a kneeling attitude, and is taken from a bronze statuette in the macgregor collection. the only event of which any definite mention is made is a raid across the north of arabia, in the course of which hazael, king of adumu, and chief among the princes of kedar, was despoiled of the images of his gods. the older states of the oriental world had, as we have pointed out, grown weary of warfare which brought them nothing but loss of men and treasure; but behind these states, on the distant horizon to the east and north-west, were rising up new nations whose growth and erratic movements assumed an importance that became daily more and more alarming. on the east, the medes, till lately undistinguishable from the other tribes occupying the western corner of the iranian table-land, had recently broken away from the main body, and, rallying round a single leader, already gave promise of establishing an empire formidable alike by the energy of its people and the extent of its domain. a tradition afterwards accepted by them attributed their earlier successes to a certain deïokes, son of phraortes, a man wiser than his fellows, who first set himself to deal out justice in his own household. the men of his village, observing his merits, chose him to be the arbiter of all their disputes, and, being secretly ambitious of sovereign power, he did his best to settle their differences on lines of the strictest equity and justice. by these means he gained such credit with his fellow-citizens as to attract the attention of those who lived in the neighbouring villages, who had suffered from unjust judgments, so that when they heard of the singular uprightness of deïokes and of the equity of his decisions they joyfully had recourse to him until at last they came to put confidence in no one else. the number of complaints brought before him continually increasing as people learnt more and more the justice of his judgments, deïokes, finding himself now all-important, announced that he did not intend any longer to hear causes, and appeared no more in the seat in which he had been accustomed to sit and administer justice. ��it was not to his advantage,� he said, �to spend the whole day in regulating other men�s affairs to the neglect of his own.� hereupon robbery and lawlessness broke out afresh and prevailed throughout the country even more than heretofore; wherefore the medes assembled from all quarters and held a consultation on the state of affairs. the speakers, as i think, were chiefly friends of deïokes. �we cannot possibly,� they said, �go on living in this country if things continue as they now are; let us, therefore, set a king over us, so that the land may be well governed, and we ourselves may be able to attend to our own affairs, and not be forced to quit our country on account of anarchy.� after speaking thus, they persuaded themselves that they desired a king, and forthwith debated whom they should choose. deïokes was proposed and warmly praised by all, so they agreed to elect him.� whereupon deïokes had a great palace built, and enrolled a bodyguard to attend upon him. he next called upon his subjects to leave their villages, and �the medes, obedient to his orders, built the city now called ecbatana, the walls of which are of great size and strength, rising in circles one within the other. the walls are concentric, and so arranged that they rise one above the other by the height of their battlements. the nature of the ground, which is a gentle hill, favoured this arrangement. the number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and the treasuries standing within the last. the circuit of the outer wall is very nearly the same as that of athens. of this wall the battlements are white, of the next black, of the third scarlet, of the fourth blue, of the fifth orange. the two last have their battlements coated respectively with silver and gold. all these fortifications deïokes caused to be raised for himself and his own palace; the people he required to dwell outside the citadel. when the town was finished, he established a rule that no one should have direct access to the king, but that all communications should pass through the hands of messengers. it was declared to be unseemly for any one to see the king face to face, or to laugh or spit in his presence. this ceremonial deïokes established for his own security, fearing lest his compeers who had been brought up with him, and were of as good family and parts as he, should be vexed at the sight of him and conspire against him: he thought that by rendering himself invisible to his vassals they would in time come to regard him as quite a different sort of being from themselves.� two or three facts stand out from this legendary background. it is probable that deïokes was an actual person; that the empire of the medes first took shape under his auspices; that he formed an important kingdom at the foot of mount elvend, and founded ecbatana the great, or, at at any rate, helped to raise it to the rank of a capital.* * the existence of deïokes has been called in question by grote and by the rawlinsons. most recent historians, however, accept the story of this personage as true in its main facts; some believe him to have been merely the ancestor of the royal house which later on founded the united kingdom of the medes. its site was happily chosen, in a rich and fertile valley, close to where the roads emerge which cross the zagros chain of mountains and connect iran with the valleys of the tigris and euphrates, almost on the border of the salt desert which forms and renders sterile the central regions of the plateau. mount elvend shelters it, and feeds with its snows the streams that irrigate it, whose waters transform the whole country round into one vast orchard. the modern town has, as it were, swallowed up all traces of its predecessor; a stone lion, overthrown and mutilated, marks the site of the royal palace. [illustration: 087.jpg stone lion at hamadân] drawn by faucher-gudin, from plandin and coste. the chronological reckoning of the native annalists, as handed down to us by herodotus, credits deïokes with a reign of fifty-three years, which occupied almost the whole of the first half of the seventh century, i.e. from 709 to 656, or from 700 to 647 b.c.* * herodotus expressly attributes a reign of fifty-three years to his deïokes, and the total of a hundred and fifty years which we obtain by adding together the number of years assigned by him to the four median kings (53 + 22 + 40 + 35) brings us back to 709-708, if we admit, as he does, that the year of the proclamation by cyrus as king of persia (559-558) was that in which astyages was overthrown; we get 700-699 as the date of deiokes� accession, if we separate the two facts, as the monuments compel us to do, and reckon the hundred and fifty years of the median empire from the fall of astyages in 550-549. the records of nineveh mention a certain dayaukku who was governor of the mannai, and an ally of the assyrians in the days of sargon, and was afterwards deported with his family to hamath in 715; two years later reference is made to an expedition across the territory of bît-dayaukku, which is described as lying between ellipi and karalla, thus corresponding to the modern province of hamadân. it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the dayaukku who gave his name to this district was identical with the deiokes of later writers.* * the form deïokes, in place of daïokes, is due to the ionic dialect employed by herodotus. justi regards the name as an abbreviated form of the ancient persian _dahyaupati_--�the master of a province,� with the suffix _-ha_. [illustration: 088.jpg view of hamadân and mount elvend in winter] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. he was the official ancestor of a royal house, a fact proved by the way in which his conqueror uses the name to distinguish the country over which he had ruled; moreover, the epoch assigned to him by contemporary chroniclers coincides closely enough with that indicated by tradition in the case of deïokes. he was never the august sovereign that posterity afterwards made him out to be, and his territory included barely half of what constituted the province of media in classical times; he contrived, however--and it was this that gained him universal renown in later days--to create a central rallying-point for the median tribes around which they henceforth grouped themselves. the work of concentration was merely in its initial stage during the lifetime of sennacherib, and little or nothing was felt of its effects outside its immediate area of influence, but the pacific character ascribed to the worthy deïokes by popular legends, is to a certain extent confirmed by the testimony of the monuments: they record only one expedition, in 702, against ellipi and the neighbouring tribes, in the course of which some portions of the newly acquired territory were annexed to the province of kharkhar, and after mentioning this the annals have nothing further to relate during the rest of the reign. sennacherib was too much taken up with his retaliatory measures against babylon, or his disputes with blam, to think of venturing on expeditions such as those which had brought tiglath-pileser iii. or sargon within sight of mount bikni; while the medes, on their part, had suffered so many reverses under these two monarchs that they probably thought twice before attacking any of the outposts scattered along the assyrian frontier: nothing occurred to disturb their tranquillity during the early years of the seventh century, and this peaceful interval probably enabled deïokes to consolidate, if not to extend, his growing authority. but if matters were quiet, at all events on the surface, in this direction, the nations on the north and north-west had for some time past begun to adopt a more threatening attitude. that migration of races between europe and asia, which had been in such active progress about the middle of the second millennium before our era, had increased twofold in intensity after the rise of the xxth egyptian dynasty, and from thenceforward a wave of new races had gradually spread over the whole of asia minor, and had either driven the older peoples into the less fertile or more inaccessible districts, or else had overrun and absorbed them. [illustration: 090.jpg asia minor in the 7th century] many of the nations that had fought against ramses ii. and ramses iii., such as the uashasha, the shagalasha, the zakkali, the danauna, and the tursha, had disappeared, but the thracians, whose appearance on the scene caused such consternation in days gone by, had taken root in the very heart of the peninsula, and had, in the course of three or four generations, succeeded in establishing a thriving state. the legend which traced the descent of the royal line back to the fabulous hero ascanius proves that at the outset the haughty tribe of the ascanians must have taken precedence over their fellows;* it soon degenerated, however, and before long the phrygian tribe gained the upper hand and gave its name to the whole nation. * the name of this tribe was retained by a district afterwards included in the province of bithynia, viz. ascania, on the shores of the ascanian lake: the distribution of place and personal names over the face of the country makes it seem extremely probable that ascania and the early ascanians occupied the whole of the region bounded on the north by the propontis; in other words, the very country in which, according to xanthus of lydia, the phry gians first established themselves after their arrival in asia. phrygia proper, the country first colonised by them, lay between mount dindymus and the river halys, in the valley of the upper sangarios and its affluents: it was there that the towns and strongholds of their most venerated leaders, such as midaion, dorylaion, gordiaion, tataion, and many others stood close together, perpetuating the memory of midas, dorylas, gordios, and tatas. its climate was severe and liable to great extremes of temperature, being bitterly cold in winter and almost tropical during the summer months; forests of oak and pine, however, and fields of corn flourished, while the mountain slopes favoured the growth of the vine; it was, in short, an excellent and fertile country, well fitted for the development of a nation of vinedressers and tillers of the soil. the slaying of an ox or the destruction of an agricultural implement was punishable by death, and legend relates that gordios, the first phrygian king, was a peasant by birth. his sole patrimony consisted of a single pair of oxen, and the waggon used by him in bringing home his sheaves after the harvest was afterwards placed as an offering in the temple of cybele at ancyra by his son midas; there was a local tradition according to which the welfare of all asia depended on the knot which bound the yoke to the pole being preserved intact. midas did not imitate his father�s simple habits, and the poets, after crediting him with fabulous wealth, tried also to make out that he was a conqueror. the kingdom expanded in all directions, and soon included the upper valley of the masander, with its primeval sanctuaries, kydrara, colossæ, and kylsenæ, founded wherever exhalations of steam and boiling springs betrayed the presence of some supernatural power. the southern shores of the hellespont, which formed part of the troad, and was the former territory of the ascania, belonged to it, as did also the majority of the peoples scattered along the coast of the euxine between the mouth of the sangarios and that of the halys; those portions of the central steppe which border on lake tatta were also for a time subject to it, lydia was under its influence, and it is no exaggeration to say that in the tenth and eleventh centuries before our era there was a regular phrygian empire which held sway, almost without a rival, over the western half of asia minor. [illustration: 095.jpg monument commemorative of midas] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a plate in perrot and chipiez. it has left behind it so few relics of its existence, that we can only guess at what it must have been in the days of its prosperity. three or four ruined fortresses, a few votive stelae, and a dozen bas-reliefs cut on the faces of cliffs in a style which at first recalls the hittite and asianic carvings of the preceding age, and afterwards, as we come down to later times, betrays the influence of early greek art. in the midst of one of their cemeteries we come upon a monument resembling the façade of a house or temple cut out of the virgin rock; it consists of a low triangular pediment, surmounted by a double scroll, then a rectangle of greater length than height, framed between two pilasters and a horizontal string-course, the centre being decorated with a geometrical design of crosses in a way which suggests the pattern of a carpet; a recess is hollowed out on a level with the ground, and filled by a blind door with rebated doorposts. is it a tomb? the inscription carefully engraved above one side of the pediment contains the name of midas, and seems to show that we have before us a commemorative monument, piously dedicated by a certain ates in honour of the phrygian hero. [illustration: 096.jpg a phrygian god] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by ramsay. elsewhere we come upon the outlines of a draped female form, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by two lions, or of a man clothed in a short tunic, holding a sort of straight sceptre in his hand, and we fancy that we have the image of a god before our eyes, though we cannot say which of the deities handed down by tradition it may represent. the religion of the phrygians is shrouded in the same mystery as their civilisation and their art, and presents a curious mixture of european and asianic elements. the old aboriginal races had worshipped from time immemorial a certain mother-goddess, ma, or amma, the black earth, which brings forth without ceasing, and nourishes all living things. her central place of worship seems, originally, to have been in the region of the anti-taurus, and it was there that her sacred cities--tyana, venasa, and the cappadocian comana--were to be found as late as roman times; in these towns her priests were regarded as kings, and thousands of her priestesses spent lives of prostitution in her service; but her sanctuaries, with their special rites and regulations, were scattered over the whole peninsula. she was sometimes worshipped under the form of a meteoric stone, or betyle similar to those found in canaan;* more frequently she was represented in female shape, with attendant lions, or placed erect on a lion in the attitude of walking. * e.g. at mount dindymus and at pessinus, which latter place was supposed to possess the oldest sanctuary of cybele. the pessinus stone, which was carried off to rome in 204 b.c., was small, irregular in shape, and of a dark colour. another stone represented ida. [illustration: 097.jpg the mother-goddess between lions] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by ramsay. a moon-god, men, shared divine honours with her, and with a goddess nana whose son atys had been the only love of ma and the victim of her passion. we are told that she compelled him to emasculate himself in a fit of mad delirium, and then transformed him into a pine tree: thenceforward her priests made the sacrifice of their virility with their own hands at the moment of dedicating themselves to the service of the goddess.* * nana was made out to be the daughter of the river sangarios. she is said to have conceived atys by placing in her bosom the fruit of an almond tree which sprang from the hermaphrodite agdistis. this was the form--extremely ancient in its main features--in which the legend was preserved at pessinus. [illustration: 098.jpg the mother-goddess and atys] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by chantre. one of the bas-reliefs at iasilikiaia, to which we shall have occasion to refer later on in chapter iii. of the present volume. the gods introduced from thrace by the phrygians showed a close affinity with those of the purely asianic peoples. precedence was universally given to a celestial divinity named bagaios, lord of the oak, perhaps because he was worshipped under a gigantic sacred oak; he was king of gods and men, then-father,* lord of the thunder and the lightning, the warrior who charges in his chariot. * in this capacity he bore the surname papas. he, doubtless, allowed a queen-regent of the earth to share his throne,* but sauazios, another, and, at first, less venerable deity had thrown this august pair into the shade. * the existence of such a goddess may be deduced from the passage in which dionysius of halicarnassus states that manes, first king of the phrygians, was the son of zeus and demeter. [illustration: 099.jpg the god men associated with the sun and other deities] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by perdrizet. the last figure on the left is the god men; the sun overlooks all the rest, and a god bearing an axe occupies the extreme right of the picture. the shapes of these ancient aboriginal deities have been modified by the influence of græco-roman syncretism, and i merely give these figures, as i do many others, for lack of better representations. the greeks, finding this sauazios at the head of the phrygian pantheon, identified him with their zeus, or, less frequently, with the sun; he was really a variant of their dionysos. he became torpid in the autumn, and slept a death-like sleep all through the winter; but no sooner did he feel the warmth of the first breath of spring, than he again awoke, glowing with youth, and revelled during his summer in the heart of the forest or on the mountain-side, leading a life of riot and intoxication, guarded by a band of sauades, spirits of the springs and streams, the sileni of greek mythology. the resemblances detected by the new-comers between the orgies of thrace and those of asia quickly led to confusion between the different dogmas and divinities. the phrygians adopted ma, and made her their queen, the cybele who dwells in the hills, and takes her title from the mountain-tops which she inhabits--dindymêne on mount dindymus, sipylêne on mount sipylus. she is always the earth, but the earth untilled, and is seated in the midst of lions, or borne through her domain in a car drawn by lions, accompanied by a troop of corybantes with dishevelled locks. sauazios, identified with the asianic atys, became her lover and her priest, and men, transformed by popular etymology into manes, the good and beautiful, was looked upon as the giver of good luck, who protects men after death as well as in life. this religion, evolved from so many diverse elements, possessed a character of sombre poetry and sensual fanaticism which appealed strongly to the greek imagination: they quickly adopted even its most barbarous mysteries, those celebrated in honour of the goddess and atys, or of sauazios. they tell us but little of the inner significance of the symbols and doctrines taught by its votaries, but have frequently described its outward manifestations. these consisted of aimless wanderings through the forests, in which the priest, incarnate representative of his god, led after him the ministers of the temple, who were identified with the sauades and nymphs of the heavenly host. men heard them passing in the night, heralded by the piercing notes of the flute provoking to frenzy, and by the clash of brazen cymbals, accompanied by the din of uproarious ecstasy: these sounds were broken at intervals by the bellowing of bulls and the roll of drums, like the rambling of subterranean thunder. [illustration: 101.jpg midas of phrygia] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a specimen in the _cabinet des médailles_. it is a bronze coin from prymnessos in phrygia, belonging to the imperial epoch. a midas followed a gordios, and a gordios a midas, in alternate succession, and under their rule the phrygian empire enjoyed a period of prosperous obscurity. lydia led an uneventful existence beside them, under dynasties which have received merely passing notice at the hands of the greek chroniclers. they credit it at the outset with the almost fabulous royal line of the atyadæ, in one of whose reigns the tyrseni are said to have migrated into italy. towards the twelfth century the atyadæ were supplanted by a family of heraclido, who traced their descent to a certain agrôn, whose personality is only a degree less mythical than his ancestry; he was descended from heracles through alcseus, belus, and ninus. whether these last two names point to intercourse with one or other of the courts on the banks of the euphrates, it is difficult to say. twenty-one heraclido, each one the son of his predecessor, are said to have followed agrôn on the throne, their combined reigns giving a total of five hundred years.* most of these princes, whether atyadæ or heraclidæ, have for us not even a shadowy existence, and what we know of the remainder is of a purely fabulous nature. for instance, kambles is reported to have possessed such a monstrous appetite, that he devoured his own wife one night, while asleep.** * the number is a purely conventional one, and gutschmid has shown how it originated. the computation at first comprised the complete series of 22 heraclidæ and 5 mermnadæ, estimated reasonably at 4 kings to a century, i.e. 27 x 25 = 675 years, from the taking of sardes to the supposed accession of agrôn. as it was known from other sources that the 5 mermnadæ had reigned 170 years, these were subtracted from the 675, to obtain the duration of the heraclidæ alone, and by this means were obtained the 505 years mentioned by herodotus. ** another version, related by nicolas of damascus, refers the story to the time of lardanos, a contemporary of hercules; it shows that the lydian chronographers considered kambles or kamblitas as being one of the last of the atyad kings. the concubine of meles, again, is said to have brought forth a lion, and the oracle of telmessos predicted that the town of sardes would be rendered impregnable if the animal were led round the city walls; this was done, except on the side of the citadel facing mount tmolus, which was considered unapproachable, but it was by that very path that the persians subsequently entered the town. alkimos, we are told, accumulated immense treasures, and under his rule his subjects enjoyed unequalled prosperity for fourteen years. it is possible that the story of the expedition despatched into palestine by a certain akiamos, which ended in the foundation of ascalon, is merely a feeble echo of the raids in syrian and egyptian waters made by the tyrseni and sardinians in the thirteenth century b.c. the spread of the phrygians, and the subsequent progress of greek colonisation, must have curtailed the possessions of the heraclidas from the eleventh to the ninth centuries, but the material condition of the people does not appear to have suffered by this diminution of territory. when they had once firmly planted themselves in the ports along the asianic littoral--at kymê, at phocæ, at smyrna, at clazomenæ, at colophon, at ephesus, at magnesia, at miletus--the æolians and the ionians lost no time in reaping the advantages which this position, at the western extremities of the great high-road through asia minor, secured to them. they overran all the lydian settlements in phrygia--sardes, leontocephalos, pessinus, gordioon, and ancyra. the steep banks and the tortuous course of the halys failed to arrest them; and they pushed forward beyond the mysterious regions peopled by the white syrians, where the ancient civilisation of asia minor still held its sway. the search for precious metals mainly drew them on--the gold and silver, the copper, bronze, and above all iron, which the chalybæ found in their mountains, and which were conveyed by caravans from the regions of the caucasus to the sacred towns of teiria and pteria.* * the site of pteria has been fixed at boghaz-keui by texier, an identification which has been generally adopted; euyuk is very probably teiria, a town of the lcucosyrians, mentioned by hecatsous of miletus in his work. the friendly relations into which they entered with the natives on these journeys resulted before long in barter and intermarriage, though their influence made itself felt in different ways, according to the character of the people on whom it was brought to bear. [illustration: 104.jpg the steep banks of the halys failed to arrest them] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by a. boissier. the road leading from angora to yuzgat crosses the river not far from the site shown here, near the spot where the ancient road crossed. they gave as a legacy to phrygia one of their alphabets, that of kymê, which soon banished the old hittite syllabary from the monuments, and they borrowed in exchange phrygian customs, musical instruments, traditions, and religious orgies. a midas sought in marriage hermodikê, the daughter of agamemnon the kymsoan, while another midas, who had consulted the oracle of delphi, presented to the god the chryselephantine throne on which he was wont to sit when he dispensed justice. [illustration: 105.jpg view ovek the plain of sardes] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. this interchange of amenities and these alliances, however, had a merely superficial effect, and in no way modified the temperament and life of the people in inner asia minor. they remained a robust, hardworking race, attached to their fields and woods, loutish and slow of understanding, unskilled in war, and not apt in defending themselves in spite of their natural bravery. the lydians, on the contrary, submitted readily to foreign influence, and the greek leaven introduced among them became the germ of a new civilisation, which occupied an intermediate place between that of the greek and that of the oriental world. about the first half of the eighth century b.c. the lydians had become organised into a confederation of several tribes, governed by hereditary chiefs, who were again in their turn subject to the heraclidæ occupying sardes.* this town rose in terraces on the lower slopes of a detached spur of the tmolus running in the direction of the hermos, and was crowned by the citadel, within which were included the royal palace, the treasury, and the arsenals. it was surrounded by an immense plain, bounded on the south by a curve of the tmolus, and on the west by the distant mountains of phrygia katake-kaumenê. the mæonians still claimed primacy over the entire race, and the family was chosen from among their nobles. the king, who was supposed to be descended from the gods, bore, as the insignia of his rank, a double-headed axe, the emblem of his divine ancestors. the greeks of later times said that the axe was that of their heracles, which was wrested by him from the amazon hippolyta, and given to omphalê.** * gelzer was the first, to my knowledge, to state that lydia was a feudal state, and he defined its constitution. radet refuses to recognise it as feudal in the true sense of the term, and he prefers to see in it a confederation of states under the authority of a single prince. ** gelzer sees in the legend about the axe related by plutarch, a reminiscence of a primitive gynocracy. the axe is the emblem of the god of war, and, as such, belongs to the king: the coins of mylasa exhibit it held by zeus labraundos. [illustration: 106.jpg the axe borne by zeus labraundos] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. the king was the supreme head of the priesthood, as also of the vassal chiefs and of the army, but he had as a subordinate a �companion� who could replace him when occasion demanded, and he was assisted in the exercise of his functions by the counsel of �friends,� and further still in extraordinary circumstances by the citizens of the capital assembled in the public square. this intervention of the voice of the populace was a thing unknown in the east, and had probably been introduced in imitation of customs observed among the greeks of æolia or ionia; it was an important political factor, and might possibly lead to an outbreak or a revolution. outside the pale of sardes and the province of mæonia, the bulk of lydian territory was distributed among a very numerous body of landowners, who were particularly proud of their noble descent. many of these country magnates held extensive fiefs, and had in their pay small armies, which rendered them almost independent, and the only way for the sovereign to succeed in ruling them was to conciliate them at all hazards, and to keep them in perpetual enmity with their fellows. two of these rival families vied with each other in their efforts to secure the royal favour; that of the tylonidæ and that of the mermnadæ, the principal domain of which latter lay at teira, in the valley of the cayster, though they had also other possessions at dascylion, in hellespontine phrygia. the head sometimes of one and sometimes of the other family would fill that post of �companion� which placed all the resources of the kingdom at the disposal of the occupant. the first of the mermnadæ of whom we get a glimpse is daskylos, son of gyges, who about the year 740 was �companion� during the declining years of ardys, over whom he exercised such influence that adyattes, the heir to the throne, took umbrage at it, and caused him to be secretly assassinated, whereupon his widow, fearing for her own safety, hastily fled into phrygia, of which district she was a native. on hearing of the crime, ardys, trembling with anger, convoked the assembly, and as his advanced age rendered walking difficult, he caused himself to be carried to the public square in a litter. having reached the place, he laid the assassins under a curse, and gave permission to any who could find them to kill them; he then returned to his palace, where he died a few years later, about 730 b.c. adyattes took the name of meles on ascending the throne, and at first reigned happily, but his father�s curse weighed upon him, and before long began to take effect. lydia having been laid waste by a famine, the oracle declared that, before appeasing the gods, the king must expiate the murder of the mermnad noble, by making every atonement in his power, if need be by an exile of three years� duration. meles submitted to the divine decree. he sought out the widow of his victim, and learning that during her flight she had given birth to a son, called, like his father, daskylos, he sent to entreat the young man to repair immediately to sardes, that he might make amends for the murder; the youth, however, alleged that he was as yet unborn at the hour of his father�s death, and therefore not entitled to be a party to an arrangement which did not personally affect him, and refused to return to his own country. having failed in this attempt, meles entrusted the regency of his kingdom to sadyattes, son of kadys, one of the tylonidas, who probably had already filled the post of companion to the king for some time past, and set out for babylon. when the three years had elapsed, sadyattes faithfully handed over to him the reins of government and resumed the second place. myrsos succeeded meles about 716,* and his accession immediately became the cause of uneasiness to the younger daskylos, who felt that he was no longer safe from the intrigues of the heraclidaî; he therefore quitted phrygia and settled beyond the italys among the white syrians, one of whom he took in marriage, and had by her a son, whom he called gyges, after his ancestor. the lydian chronicles which have come down to us make no mention of him, after the birth of this child, for nearly a quarter of a century. we know, however, from other sources, that the country in which he took refuge had for some time past been ravaged by enemies coming from the caucasus, known to us as the cimmerians.** * the lists of eusebius give 36 years to ardys, 14 years to meles or adyattes, 12 years to myrsos, and 17 years to candaules; that is to say, if we place the accession of gyges in 687, the dates of the reign of candaules are 704 687, of that of mysros 716-704, of that of meles 730-716, of that of ardys i. 766-730. oelzer thinks that the double names each represent a different icing; radet adheres to the four generations of eusebius. ** i would gladly have treated at length the subject of the cimmerians with its accompanying developments, but lack of space prevents me from doing more than summing up here the position i have taken. most modern critics have rejected that part of the tradition preserved by herodotus which refers to the itinerary of the cimmerians, and have confused the cimmerian invasion with that of the thracian tribes. i think that there is reason to give weight to herodotus� statement, and to distinguish carefully between two series of events: (1) a movement of peoples coming from europe into asia, by the routes that herodotus indicates, about the latter half of the eighth century b.c., who would be more especially the cimmerians; (2) a movement of peoples coming from europe into asia by the thracian bosphorus, and among whom there was perhaps, side by side with the treres, a remnant of cimmerian tribes who had been ousted by the scythians. the two streams would have had their confluence in the heart of asia minor, in the first half of the seventh century. [illustration: 110.jpg a conflict with two griffins.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the reliefs on the crown of the great blinitza. previous to this period these had been an almost mythical race in the eyes of the civilised races of the oriental world. they imagined them as living in a perpetual mist on the confines of the universe: �never does bright helios look upon them with his rays, neither when he rises towards the starry heaven, nor when he turns back from heaven towards the earth, but a baleful night spreads itself over these miserable mortals.� * * odyssey, xi. 14-19. it is this passage which ephorus applies to the cimmerians of his own time who were established in the crimea, and which accounts for his saying that they were a race of miners, living perpetually underground. fabulous animals, such as griffins with lions� bodies, having the neck and ears of a fox, and the wings and beak of an eagle, wandered over their plains, and sometimes attacked them; the inhabitants were forced to defend themselves with axes, and did not always emerge victorious from these terrible conflicts. [illustration: 111.jpg scythians armed for war] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the reliefs on the silver vase of kul-oba. the few merchants who had ventured to penetrate into their country had returned from their travels with less fanciful notions concerning the nature of the regions frequented by them, but little continued to be known of them, until an unforeseen occurrence obliged them to quit their remote steppes. the scythians, driven from the plains of the iaxartes by an influx of the massagetæ, were urged forwards in a westerly direction beyond the volga and the don, and so great was the terror inspired by the mere report of their approach, that the cimmerians decided to quit their own territory. a tradition current in asia three centuries later, told how their kings had counselled them to make a stand against the invaders; the people, however, having refused to listen to their advice, their rulers and those who were loyal to them fell by each other�s hands, and their burial-place was still shown near the banks of the tyras. some of their tribes took refuge in the chersonesus taurica, but the greater number pushed forward beyond the mæotio marshes; a body of scythians followed in their track, and the united horde pressed onwards till they entered asia minor, keeping to the shores of the black sea.* this heterogeneous mass of people came into conflict first with urartu; then turning obliquely in a south-easterly direction, their advance-guard fell upon the mannai. but they were repulsed by sargon�s generals; the check thus administered forced them to fall back speedily upon other countries less vigorously defended. the scythians, therefore, settled themselves in the eastern basin of the araxes, on the frontiers of urartu and the mannai, where they formed themselves into a kind of marauding community, perpetually quarrelling with their neighbours.** the cimmerians took their way westwards, and established themselves upon the upper waters of the araxes, the euphrates, the halys, and the thermodon,*** greatly to the vexation of the rulers of urartu. * the version of aristaeas of proconnesus, as given by herodotus and by damastes of sigsea, attributes a more complex origin to this migration, i.e. that the arimaspes had driven the issedonians before them, and that the latter had in turn driven the scythians back on the cimmerians. ** the scythians of the tradition preserved by herodotus must have been the ashguzai or ishkuzai of the cuneiform documents. the original name must have been skuza, shkuza, with a sound in the second syllable that the greeks have rendered by _th_, and the assyrians by _z_: the initial vowel has been added, according to a well-known rule, to facilitate the pronunciation of the combination sk, sine. an oracle of the time of esarhaddon shows that they occupied one of the districts really belonging to the mannai: and it is probably they who are mentioned in a passage of jer. li. 27, where the traditional reading _aschenaz_ should be replaced by that of ashkuz. *** it is doubtless to these events that the tradition preserved by pompeius trogus, which is known to us through his abbreviator justin, or through the compilers of a later period, refers, concerning the two scythian princes ylinus and scolopitus: they seem to have settled along the coast, on the banks of the thermodon and in the district of themiscyra. they subsequently felt their way along the valleys of the anti-taurus, but finding them held by assyrian troops, they turned their steps towards the country of the white syrians, seized sinôpê, where the greeks had recently founded a colony, and bore down upon phrygia. it would appear that they were joined in these regions by other hordes from thrace which had crossed the bosphorus a few years earlier, and among whom the ancient historians particularly make mention of the treres;* the results of the scythian invasion had probably been felt by all the tribes on the banks of the dnieper, and had been the means of forcing them in the direction of the danube and the balkans, whence they drove before them, as they went, the inhabitants of the thracian peninsula across into asia minor. it was about the year 750 b.c. that the cimmerians had been forced to quit their first home, and towards 720 that they came into contact with the empires of the east; the treres had crossed the bosphorus about 710, and the meeting of the two streams of immigration may be placed in the opening years of the seventh century.** * strabo says decisively that the treres were both cimmerians and thracians; elsewhere he makes the treres synonymous with the cimmerians. the treres were probably the predominating tribe among the people which had come into asia on that side. ** gelzer thinks that the invasion by the bosphorus took place about 705, and radet about 708; and their reckoning seems to me to be so likely to be correct, that i do not hesitate to place the arrival of the treres in asia about the time they have both indicated--roughly speaking, about 710 b.c. the combined hordes did not at once attack phrygia itself, but spread themselves along the coast, from the mouths of the ehyndakos to those of halys, constituting a sort of maritime confederation of which heraclea and sinôpê were the chief towns. this confederation must not be regarded as a regularly constituted state, but rather as a vast encampment in which the warriors could leave their families and their spoil in safety; they issued from it nearly every year to spread themselves over the neighbouring provinces, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. the ancient sanctuaries of pteria and the treasures they contained excited their cupidity, but they were not well enough equipped to undertake the siege of a strongly fortified place, and for want of anything better were content to hold it to ransom. the bulk of the indigenous population lived even then in those subterranean dwellings so difficult of access, which are still used as habitations by the tribes on the banks of the halys, and it is possible that they helped to swell the marauding troops of the new-comers. in the declining years of sennacherib, it would appear that the ninevite provinces possessed an irresistible attraction for these various peoples. the fame of the wealth accumulated in the regions beyond the taurus and the euphrates, in syria and mesopotamia, provoked their cupidity beyond all bounds, and the time was at hand when the fear alone of the assyrian armies would no longer avail to hold them in check. the last years of sennacherib had been embittered by the intrigues which usually gathered around a monarch enfeebled by age and incapable of bearing the cares of government with his former vigour. a fierce rivalry existed between those of his sons who aspired to the throne, each of whom possessed his following of partisans, both at court and among the people, who were ready to support him, if need be even with the sword. [illustration: 115.jpg inhabited caves on the banks of the halys] drawn by boudier, from a photograph sent by alfred boissier. one of these princes, probably the eldest of the king�s remaining sons,* named assur-akhê-iddin, called by us esarhaddon, bad already been nominated his successor, and had received the official investiture of the babylonian kingdom under the name of assur-etilmukîn-pal.** * the eldest was perhaps that assur-nadin-shumu who reigned in babylon, and who was taken prisoner to elam by king khalludush. ** the idea of an enthronisation at babylon in the lifetime of sennacherib, put forward by the earlier assyriologists, based on an inscription on a lion�s head discovered at babylon, has been adopted and confirmed by winckler. it was doubtless on this occasion that esarhaddon received as a present from his father the objects mentioned in the document which sayce and budge have called, without sufficient reason, _the will of sennacherib_. the catastrophe of 689 had not resulted in bringing about the ruin of babylon, as sennacherib and his ministers had hoped. the temples, it is true, had been desecrated and demolished, the palaces and public buildings razed to the ground, and the ramparts thrown down, but, in spite of the fact that the city had been set on fire by the conquerors, the quarters inhabited by the lower classes still remained standing, and those of the inhabitants who had escaped being carried away captive, together with such as had taken refuge in the surrounding country or had hidden themselves in neighbouring cities, had gradually returned to their desolated homes. they cleared the streets, repaired the damage inflicted during the siege, and before long the city, which was believed to be hopelessly destroyed, rose once more with the vigour, if not with the wealth, which it had enjoyed before its downfall. the mother of esarhaddon was a babylonian, by name nakïa; and as soon as her son came into possession of his inheritance, an impulse of filial piety moved him to restore to his mother�s city its former rank of capital. animated by the strong religious feeling which formed the groundwork of his character, esarhaddon had begun his reign by restoring the sanctuaries which had been the cradle of the assyrian religion, and his intentions, thus revealed at the very outset, had won for him the sympathy of the babylonians;* this, indeed, was excited sooner than he expected, and perhaps helped to secure to him his throne. during his absence from nineveh, a widespread plot had been formed in that city, and on the 20th day of tebeth, 681, at the hour when sennacherib was praying before the image of his god, two of his sons, sharezer and adarmalik (adrammelech), assassinated their father at the foot of the altar.** * a fragment seems to show clearly that the restoration of the temples was begun even in the lifetime of sennacherib. ** we possess three different accounts of the murder of sennacherib: 1. in the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_. 2. in the bible (2 kings xix. 36, 37; cf. isa. xxxvii. 37, 38; 2 chron. xxxii. 21). 3. in berosus. the biblical account alone mentions both murderers; the _chronicle_ and berosus speak of only one, and their testimony seems to prevail with several historians. i believe that the silence of the _chronicle_ and of berosus is explained by the fact that sharezer was chief in the conspiracy, and the one among the sons who aspired to the kingdom: the second murderer merely acted for his brother, and consequently had no more right to be mentioned by name than those accomplices not of the blood-royal who shared in the murder. the name sharezer is usually considered as an abbreviation of the assyrian name nergal-sharuzur, or assur-sharuzur. winckler thinks that he sees in it a corruption of sharitir, abbreviated from sharitir-assur, which he finds as a royal name on a fragment in the british museum; he proposes to recognise in this sharitir-assur, sharezer enthroned after his father�s death. one half of the army proclaimed sharezer king; the northern provinces espoused his cause; and esarhaddon must for the moment have lost all hope of the succession. his father�s tragic fate overwhelmed him with fear and grief; he rent his clothes, groaned and lamented like a lion roaring, and could be comforted only by the oracles pronounced by the priests of babylon. an assurance that the gods favoured his cause reached him even from assyria, and nineveh, after a few weeks of vacillation, acknowledged him as its sovereign, the rebellion being mercilessly crushed on the 2nd of adar.* * the bible alone tells us that sharezer retired to urartu (2 kings xix. 37). to explain the plan of this campaign, it is usually supposed that at the time of his father�s death esarhaddon was either beyond mount taurus or else on the armenian frontier; the sequence of the dates in the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_, compels me to revert to the opinion that esarhaddon marched from babylon against the rebels, and pursued them as far as mount taurus, and beyond it to khanigalbat. although this was a considerable advantage to esarhaddon�s cause, it could not be considered as decisive, since the provinces of the euphrates still declared for sharezer; the gods, therefore, once more intervened. ishtar of arbela had long been considered as the recognised patroness and oracle of the dynasty. whether it were a question of a foreign expedition or a rebellion at home, of a threatened plague or invasion, of a marriage or an alliance with some powerful neighbour, the ruling sovereign would invariably have recourse to her, always with the same formula, to demand counsel of her for the conduct of affairs in hand, and the replies which she vouchsafed in various ways were taken into consideration; her will, as expressed by the mouth of her ministers, would hasten, suspend, or modify the decisions of the king. esarhaddon did not neglect to consult the goddess, as well as assur and sin, shamash, bel, nebo, and nergal; and their words, transcribed upon a tablet of clay, induced him to act without further delay: �go, do not hesitate, for we march with thee and we will cast down thine enemies!� thus encouraged, he made straight for the scene of danger without passing through nineveh, so as to prevent sharezer and his party having time to recover. his biographers depict esarhaddon hurrying forward, often a day or more in advance of his battalions, without once turning to see who followed him, and without waiting to allow the horses of his baggage-waggons to be unharnessed or permitting his servant^ to pitch his tent; he rested merely for a few moments on the bare ground, indifferent to the cold and nocturnal frosts of the month of sebat. it would appear as if sharezer had placed his hopes on the cimmerians, and had expected their chiefs to come to the rescue. this hypothesis seems borne out by the fact that the decisive battle took place beyond the euphrates and the taurus, in the country of khanigalbat. esarhaddon attributed his success to ishtar, the goddess of bravery and of combat; she alone had broken the weapons of the rebels, she alone had brought confusion into their lines, and had inclined the hearts of the survivors to submit. they cried aloud, �this is our king!� and sharezer thereupon fled into armenia. the war had been brought to a close with such rapidity that even the most unsettled of the assyrian subjects and vassals had not had time to take advantage of it for their own purposes; the kaldâ on the persian gulf, and the sidonians on the mediterranean, were the only two peoples who had openly revolted, and were preparing to enter on a struggle to preserve their independence thus once more regained. yet the events of the preceding months had shaken the power of nineveh more seriously than we should at first suppose. for the first time since the accession of tiglath-pileser iii. the almost inevitable troubles which accompany the change of a sovereign had led to an open war. the vast army of sargon and sennacherib had been split up, and the two factions into which it was divided, commanded as they were by able generals and composed of troops accustomed to conquer, must have suffered more keenly in an engagement with each other than in the course of an ordinary campaign against a common enemy. one part at least of the military staff had become disorganised; regiments had been decimated, and considerable contingents were required to fill the vacancies in the ranks. the male population of assyria, suddenly called on to furnish the necessary effective force, could not supply the demand without drawing too great a proportion of men from the country; and one of those crises of exhaustion was imminent which come upon a nation after an undue strain, often causing its downfall in the midst of its success, and yielding it an easy prey to the wiles of its adversaries.* * the information we possess concerning esarhaddon is gathered from: 1. _the insertion of cylinders a, b, c_, the second of the three better known as the _broken cylinder_. these texts contain a summary of the king�s wars, in which the subject-matter is arranged geographically, not chronologically: they cease with the _eponymy_ of akhazilu, i.e. the year 673. 2. some mutilated fragments, of the _annals_. 3. _the blade stone of aberdeen_, on which the account of the rebuilding of babylon is given. 4. _the stele of zindjirli_. 5. the consultations of the god shamash by esarhaddon in different circumstances of his reign. 6. a considerable number of small inscriptions and some tablets. the classification of the events of this reign presents serious difficulties, which have been partly overcome by passages in the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_. esarhaddon was personally inclined for peace, and as soon as he was established on the throne he gave orders that the building works, which had been suspended during the late troubles, should be resumed and actively pushed forward; but the unfortunate disturbances of the times did not permit of his pursuing his favourite occupation without interruption, and, like those of his warlike predecessors, his life was passed almost entirely on the field of battle. babylon, grateful for what he had done for her, tendered him an unbroken fidelity throughout the stormy episodes of his reign, and showed her devotion to him by an unwavering obedience. the kaldâ received no support from that quarter, and were obliged to bear the whole burden of the war which they had provoked. their chief, nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir, who had been placed over them by sennacherib, now harassed the cities of karduniash, and ningal-shumiddin, the prefect of uru, demanded immediate help from assyria. esarhaddon at once despatched such a considerable force that the kaldu chief did not venture to meet it in the open field, and after a few unimportant skirmishes he gave up the struggle, and took refuge in elam. khumbân-khaldash, had died there in 680, a few months before the murder of sennacherib, and his son, a second khumbân-khaldash, had succeeded him; this prince appears either to have shared the peaceful tastes of his brother-king of assyria, or more probably did not feel himself sufficiently secure of his throne to risk the chance of coming into collision with his neighbour. he caused nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir to be slain, and nâîd-marduk, the other son of merodach-baladan, who had shared his brother�s flight, was so terrified at his murder that he at once sought refuge in nineveh; he was reinstated in his paternal domain on condition of paying a tribute, and, faithful to his oath of allegiance, he thenceforward came yearly in person to bring his dues and pay homage to his sovereign (679). the kaldâ rising had, in short, been little more than a skirmish, and the chastisement of the sidonians would have involved neither time nor trouble, had not the desultory movements of the barbarians obliged the assyrians to concentrate their troops on several points which were threatened on their northern frontier. the cimmerians and the scythians had not suffered themselves to be disconcerted by the rapidity with which the fate of sharezer had been decided, and after a moment�s hesitation they had again set out in various directions on their work of conquest, believing, no doubt, that they would meet with a less vigorous resistance after so serious an upheaval at nineveh. the cimmerians appear to have been the first to have provoked hostilities; their king tiushpa, who ruled over their territory on the black sea, ejected the assyrian garrisons placed on the cappadocian frontier, and his presence in that quarter aroused all the insubordinate elements still remaining in the cilician valleys. esarhaddon brought him to a stand on the confines of the plain of saros, defeated him in khubushna,* and drove the remains of the horde back across the halys. * several assyriologists have thought that khubushna might be an error for khubushkhia, and have sought the seat of war on the eastern frontier of assyria: in reality the context shows that the place under discussion is a district in asia minor, identified with kamisene by gelzcr, but left unidentified by most authorities. jensen has shown that the name is mot with as early as the inscriptions of tiglath pileser iii., where we should read khubishna, and he places the country in northern syria, or perhaps further north in the western part of taurus. the determinative proves that there was a town of this name as well as a district, and this consideration encourages mo to recognise in khubushna or khubishna the town of kabissos-kabessos, the sis of the kingdom of lesser armenia. having thus averted the cimmerian danger, he was able, without much difficulty, to bring the rebels of the western provinces into subjection.* his troops thrust back the cilicians and duha into the rugged fastnesses of the taurus, and razed to the ground one and twenty of their strongholds, besides burning numberless villages and carrying the inhabitants away captive.** * these expeditions are not dated in any of the documents that deal with them: the fact that they are mentioned along with the war against tiushpa and sidon makes me inclined to consider them as being a result of the cimmerian invasion. they were, strictly speaking, the quelling of revolts caused by the presence of the cimmerians in that part of the empire. ** the duua or duha of this campaign, who are designated as neighbours of the tabal, lived in the anti-taurus: the name of the town, tyana, _tuana_, is possibly composed of their name and of the suffix _-na_, which is met with in asianio languages. the people of parnaki, in the bend of the euphrates between tel-assur and the sources of the balîkh, had taken up arms on hearing of the brief successes of tiushpa, but were pitilessly crushed by esarhaddon. the sheikh of arzani, in the extreme south of syria, close to the brook of egypt, had made depredations on the assyrian frontier, but he was seized by the nearest governor and sent in chains to nineveh. a cage was built for him at the gate of the city, and he was exposed in it to the jeers of the populace, in company with the bears, dogs, and boars which the ninevites were in the habit of keeping confined there. it would appear that esarhaddon set himself to come to a final reckoning with sidon and phoenicia, the revolt of which had irritated him all the more, in that it showed an inexcusable ingratitude towards his family. for it was sennacherib who, in order to break the power of blulai, had not only rescued sidon from the dominion of tyre, but had enriched it with the spoils taken from its former rulers, and had raised it to the first rank among the phoenician cities. ethbaal in his lifetime had never been wanting in gratitude, but his successor, abdimilkôt, forgetful of recent services, had chafed at the burden of a foreign yoke, and had recklessly thrown it off as soon as an occasion presented itself. he had thought to strengthen himself by securing the help of a certain sanduarri, who possessed the two fortresses of kundu and sîzu, in the cilician mountains;* but neither this alliance nor the insular position of his capital was able to safeguard him, when once the necessity for stemming the tide of the cimmerian influx was over, and the whole of the assyrian force was free to be brought against him. * some assyriologists have proposed to locate these two towns in cilicia; others place them in the lebanon, kundi being identified with the modern village of ain-kundiya. the name of kundu so nearly recalls that of kuinda, the ancient fort mentioned by strabo, to the north of anchialê, between tarsus and anazarbus, that i do not hesitate to identify them, and to place kundu in cilicia. abdimilkôt attempted to escape by sea before the last attack, but he was certainly taken prisoner, though the circumstances are unrecorded, and sanduarri fell into the enemy�s hands a short time after. the suppression of the rebellion was as vindictive as the ingratitude which prompted it was heinous. sidon was given up to the soldiery and then burnt, while opposite to the ruins of the island city the assyrians built a fortress on the mainland, which they called kar-esarhaddon. the other princes of phoenicia and syria were hastily convoked, and were witnesses of the vengeance wreaked on the city, as well as of the installation of the governor to whom the new province was entrusted. they could thus see what fate awaited them in the event of their showing any disposition to rebel, and the majority of them were not slow to profit by the lesson. the spoil was carried back in triumph to nineveh, and comprised, besides the two kings and their families, the remains of their court and people, and the countless riches which the commerce of the world had brought into the great ports of the mediterranean--ebony, ivory, gold and silver, purple, precious woods, household furniture, and objects of value from all parts in such quantities that it was long before the treasury at nineveh needed any replenishing.* the reverses of the cimmerians did not serve as a warning to the scythians. settled on the borders of manna, partly, no doubt, on the territory formerly dependent on that state,** they secretly incited the inhabitants to revolt, and to join in the raids which they made on the valley of the upper zab, and they would even have urged their horses up to the very walls of nineveh had the occasion presented itself. * the importance of the event and the amount of the spoil captured are apparent, if we notice that esarhaddon does not usually record the booty taken after each campaign; he does so only when the number of objects and of prisoners taken from the enemy is extraordinary. the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_ places the capture of sidon in the second, and the death of abdimilkôt in the fifth year of his reign. hence winckler has concluded that abdimilkôt held out for fully two years after the loss of sidon. the general tenor of the account, as given by the inscriptions, seems to me to be that the capture of the king followed closely on the fall of the town: abdimilkôt and sanduarri probably spent the years between 679 and 676 in prison. ** one of the oracles of shamash speaks of the captives as dwelling in a canton of the mannai. esarhaddon, warned of their intrigues by the spies which he sent among them, could not bring himself either to anticipate their attack or to assume the offensive, but anxiously consulted the gods with regard to them: �o shamash,� he wrote to the sun-god, �great lord, thou whom i question, answer me in sincerity! from this day forth, the 22nd day of this month of simanu, until the 21st day of the month of duzu of this year, during these thirty days and thirty nights, a time has been foreordained favourable to the work of prophecy. in this time thus foreordained, the hordes of the scythians who inhabit a district of the mannai, and who have crossed the mannian frontier,--will they succeed in their undertaking? will they emerge from the passes of khubushkia at the towns of kharrânia and anîsuskia; will they ravage the borders of assyria and steal great booty, immense spoil? that doth thy high divinity know. is it a decree, and in the mouth of thy high divinity, o shamash, great lord, ordained and promulgated? he who sees, shall he see it; he who hears, shall he hear it?� * * the town of anîsuskia is not mentioned elsewhere, but kharrânia is met with in the account of the thirty-first campaign of shalmaneser iii. with kharrâna as its variant. the god comforted his faithful servant, but there was a brief delay before his answer threw light on the future, and the king�s questions were constantly renewed as fresh couriers brought in further information. in 678 b.c. the scythians determined to try their fortune, and their king, ishpakai,* took the field, followed by the mannai. he was defeated and driven back to the north of lake urumiah, the mannai were reduced to subjection, and assyria once more breathed freely. the victory, however, was not a final one, and affairs soon assumed as threatening an aspect as before. the scythian tribes came on the scene, one after another, and allied themselves to the various peoples subject either directly or indirectly to nineveh.** on one occasion it was kashtariti, the regent of karkashshi,*** who wrote to mamitiarshu, one of the median princes, to induce him to make common cause with himself in attacking the fortress of kishshashshu on the eastern border of the empire. at another time we find the same chief plotting with the mannai and the saparda to raid the town of kilmân, and esarhaddon implores the god to show him how the place may be saved from their machinations.**** * this king�s name seems to be of iranian origin. justi has connected it with the name aspakos, which is read in a greek inscription of the cimmerian bosphorus; both forms have been connected with the sanskrit açvalca. ** this subdivision of the horde into several bodies seems to be indicated by the number of different royal names among the scythians which are mentioned in the assyrian documents. *** the site of karkashshi is unknown, but the list of median princes subdued by sargon shows that it was situated in media. kishshashshu is very probably the same as kishisim or kishisu, the town which sargon subdued, and which he called kar-nergal or kar-ninib, and which is mentioned in the neighbourhood of parsuash, karalla, kharkhar, media, and ellipi. i think that it would be in the basin of the gave- rud; billerbeck places it at the ruins of siama, in the upper valley of the lesser zab. **** the people of saparda, called by the persians sparda, have been with good reason identified with the sepharad of the prophet obadiah (ver. 20): the assyrian texts show that this country should be placed in the neighbourhood of the mannai of the medes. he opens negotiations in order to gain time, but the barbarity of his adversary is such that he fears for his envoy�s safety, and speculates whether he may not have been put to death. the situation would indeed have become critical if kashtariti had succeeded in bringing against assyria a combined force of medes, scythians, mannai, and cimmerians, together with urartu and its king, eusas iii.; but, fortunately, petty hatreds made the combination of these various elements an impossibility, and they were unable to arrive at even a temporary understanding. the scythians themselves were not united as to the best course to be pursued, and while some endeavoured to show their hostility by every imaginable outrage and annoyance, others, on the contrary, desired to enter into friendly relations with assyria. esarhaddon received on one occasion an embassy from bartatua,* one of their kings, who humbly begged the hand of a lady of the blood-royal, swearing to make a lasting friendship with him if esarhaddon would consent to the marriage. it was hard for a child brought up in the harem, amid the luxury and comfort of a civilised court, to be handed over to a semi-barbarous spouse; but state policy even in those days was exacting, and more than one princess of the line of sargon had thus sacrificed herself by an alliance which was to the interest of her own people.** * bartatua is, according to winckler�s ingenious observation, the proto-thyes of herodotus, the father of madyes. [the name should more probably be read masta-tua- ed.] ** sargon had in like manner given one of his daughters in marriage to ambaris, king of tabal, in order to attach him to the assyrian cause, but without permanent success. what troubled esarhaddon was not the thought of sacrificing a sister or a daughter, but a misgiving that the sacrifice would not produce the desired result, and in his difficulty he once more had recourse to shamash. �if esarhaddon, king of assyria, grants a daughter of the blood (royal) to bartatua, the king of the iskuza, who has sent an embassy to him to ask a wife, will bartatua, king of the iskuza, act loyally towards esarhaddon, king of assyria? will he honestly and faithfully enter into friendly engagements with esarhaddon, king of assyria? will he observe the conditions (made by) esarhaddon, king of assyria? will he fulfil them punctually? that thy high divinity knoweth. his promises, in a decree and in the mouth of thy high divinity, o shamash, great lord, are they decreed, promulgated?� it is not recorded what came of these negotiations, nor whether the god granted the hand of the princess to her barbarian suitor. all we know is, that the incursions and intrigues of the scythians continued to be a perpetual source of trouble to the medes, and roused them either to rebel against assyria or to claim the protection of its sovereign. esarhaddon, in the course of his reign, was more than once compelled to interfere in order to ensure peace and quietness to the provinces on the table-land of iran, which sargon had conquered and which sennacherib had retained.* * several recent historians allege that sennacherib did not keep the territories that sargon had conquered, and that the assyrian frontier became contracted on that side; whereas the general testimony of the known texts seems to me to prove the contrary, namely, that he preserved nearly all the territory annexed by his father, and that esarhaddon was far from diminishing this inheritance. if these two kings mention only insignificant deeds of arms in the western region, it is because the population, exhausted by the wars of the two preceding reigns, easily recognised the ninevite supremacy, and paid tribute to the assyrian governors with sufficient regularity to prevent any important military expedition against them. he had first to carry his arms to the extreme edge of the desert, into the rugged country of patusharra, lying at the foot of demavend, rich in lapis-lazuli, and as yet untrodden by any king of assyria.* having reached his destination, he captured two petty kings, eparna and shîtirparna, and exiled them to assyria, together with their people, their thoroughbred horses, and their two-humped camels,--in fine, all the possessions of their subjects. shortly after this, three other median chiefs, hitherto intractable--uppis of par-takka, zanasana of partukka,** ramatea of urakazabarna--came to nineveh to present the king with horses and lapis-lazuli, the best of everything they possessed, and piteously entreated him to forgive their misdeeds. * the country of patusharra has been identified with that of the patischorians mentioned by strabo in persia proper, who would have lived further north, not far from demavend; sachau calls attention to the existence of a mountain chain patashwar-gar or padishwar-gir, in front of choarcnê, and he places the country of patusharra between demavend and the desert. ** partakka and partukka seem to be two different adaptations of the name paraituka, the parsetakênô of the greek geographers; tiele thinks of parthyênô. i think that these two names designate the northern districts of partetakênô, the present ashnakhor or the country near to it. they represented that the whole of media was torn asunder by countless strifes, prince against prince, city against city, and an iron will was needed to bring the more turbulent elements to order. esarhaddon lent a favourable ear to their prayers; he undertook to protect them on condition of their paying an annual tribute, and he put them under the protection of the assyrian governors who were nearest to their territory. kharkhar, securely entrenched behind its triple ramparts, assumed the position of capital to these iranian marches. it is difficult to determine the precise dates of these various events; we learn merely that they took place before 673, and we surmise that they must have occurred between the second and sixteenth year of the king�s reign.* * the facts relating to the submission of patusharra and of partukka are contained in cylinder a, dated from the eponymous year of akhazilu, in 673. moreover, the version which this document contains seems to have been made up of two pieces placed one at the end of the other: the first an account of events which occurred during an earlier period of the reign, and in which the exploits are classified in geographical order, from sidon in the west the arabs bordering on chaldæa in the east; and the second consisting of additional campaigns carried out after the completion of the former--which is proved by the place which these exploits occupy, out of their normal position in the geographical series--and making mention of partusharra and partuhka, as well as of belikisha. the editor of the _broken cylinder_ has tried to combine these latter elements with the former in the order adopted by the original narrator. as far as can be seen in what is left of the columns, he has placed, after the chaldsean events, the facts concerning partukka, then those concerning patusharra, and finally the campaign against bazu, the extreme limit of esarhaddon�s activity in the south. knowing that the campaign in the desert and the death of abdimilkôt took place in 676, and that we find them already alluded to in the first part of the narrative, as well as the events of 675 relating to the revolt of dakkuri, we may conclude that the submission of patusharra and that of partukka occurred in 674, or at latest in the beginning of 673. [illustration: 131.jpg the town of kharkhar with its triple rampart] drawn by faucher-gudin, from flandin, in botta. the outcome of them was a distinct gain to assyria, in the acquisition of several new vassals. the recently founded kingdom of ecbatana lacked as yet the prestige which would have enabled it to hold its own against nineveh; besides which, deïokes, the contemporary ruler assigned to it by tradition, was of too complaisant a nature to seek occasions of quarrel. the scythians, after having declared their warlike intentions, seem to have come to a more peaceable frame of mind, and to have curried favour with nineveh; but the rulers of the capital kept a strict watch upon them, since their numbers, their intrepid character, and instinct for rapine made them formidable enemies--the most dangerous, indeed, that the empire had encountered on its north-eastern frontier for nearly a century. this policy of armed _surveillance_, which proved so successful in these regions, was also carefully maintained by esarhaddon on his south-eastern border against assyria�s traditional enemy, the king of susa. babylon, far from exhibiting any restlessness at her present position, showed her gratitude for the favours which her suzerain had showered upon her by resigning herself to become the ally of assyria. she regarded her late disaster as the punishment inflicted by marduk for her revolts against sargon and sennacherib. the god had let loose the powers of evil against her, and the arakhtu, overflowing among the ruins, had swept them utterly away; indeed, for the space of ten years, destruction and desolation seemed to have taken the place of her former wealth of temples and palaces. in the eleventh year, the divine wrath was suddenly appeased. no sooner had esarhaddon mounted the throne, than he entreated shamash, rammân, and even marduk himself, to reveal to him their will with regard to the city; whereupon the omens, interpreted by the seers, commanded him to rebuild babylon and to raise again the temple of ê-sagilla. for this purpose he brought together all the captives taken in war that he had at his disposal, and employed them in digging out clay and in brick-making; he then prepared the foundations, upon which he poured libations of oil, honey, palm-wine, and other wines of various kinds; he himself took the mason�s hod, and with tools of ebony, cypress wood, and oak, moulded a brick for the new sanctuary. the work was, indeed, a gigantic undertaking, and demanded years of uninterrupted labour, but esarhaddon pushed it forward, sparing neither gold, silver, costly stone, rare woods, or plates of enamel in its embellishment. he began to rebuild at the same time all the other temples and the two city walls--imgurbel and nimittibel; to clear and make good the canals which supplied the place with water, and to replant the sacred groves and the gardens of the palace. the inhabitants were encouraged to come back to their homes, and those who had been dispersed among distant provinces were supplied with clothes and food for their return journey, besides having their patrimony restored to them. this rebuilding of the ancient city certainly displeased and no doubt alarmed her two former rivals, the kaldâ and elam, who had hoped one day to wrest her heritage from assyria. elam concealed its ill-feeling, but the kaldâ of bît-dakkuri had invaded the almost deserted territory, and appropriated the lands which had belonged to the noble families of babylon, borsippa, and sippara. when the latter, therefore, returned from exile, and, having been reinstituted in their rights, attempted to resume possession of their property, the usurpers peremptorily refused to relinquish it. esarhaddon was obliged to interfere to ensure its restoration, and as their king, shamash-ibni, was not inclined to comply with the order, esarhaddon removed him from the throne, and substituted in his place a certain nabushallim, son of belesys, who showed more deference to the suzerain�s wishes. it is possible that about this time the kaldâ may have received some support from the aramaeans of the desert and the arab tribes encamped between the banks of the euphrates and syria, or, on the other hand, the latter may have roused the wrath of assyria by inroads of a more than usually audacious character. however this may be, in 676 esarhaddon resolved to invade their desert territory, and to inflict such reprisals as would force them thenceforward to respect the neighbouring border provinces. his first relations with them had been of a courteous and friendly nature. hazael of adumu, one of the sheikhs of kedar, defeated by sennacherib towards the end of his reign, had taken the opportunity of the annual tribute to come to nineveh with considerable presents, and to implore the restoration of the statues of his gods. esarhaddon had caused these battered idols to be cleaned and repaired, had engraved upon them an inscription in praise of assur, and had further married the suppliant sheikh to a woman of the royal harem, named tabua. in consideration of this, he had imposed upon the arab a supplementary tribute of sixty-five camels, and had restored to him his idols. all this took place, no doubt, soon after the king�s accession. a few years later, on the death of hazael, his son yauta solicited investiture, but a competitor for the chieftaincy, a man of unknown origin, named uahab, treacherously incited the arabs to rebel, and threatened to overthrow him. esarhaddon caused uahab to be seized, and exposed him in chains at the gate of nineveh; but, in consideration of this service to the arabs, he augmented the tribute which already weighed upon the people by a further demand for ten gold _minas_, one thousand precious stones, fifty camels, and a thousand measures of spicery. the repression of these arabs of kedar thus confirmed esarhaddon�s supremacy over the extreme northern region of arabia, between damascus and sippara or babylon; but in a more southerly direction, in the wadys which unite lower chaldæa to the districts of the jordan and the dead sea, there still remained several rich and warlike states--among others, bazu,* whose rulers had never done homage to the sovereigns of either assyria or karduniash. * the bazu of this text is certainly the buz which the hebrew books name among the children of nahor (gen. xxii. 21; jer. xxv. 23). the early assyriologists identified khazu with uz, the son of nahor; delitzsch compares the name with that of hazo (huz), the fifth son of nahor (gen. xxii. 22), and his opinion is admitted by most scholars. for the site of these countries i have followed the ideas of delattro, who identifies them with the oases of jauf and meskakeh, in the centre of northern arabia. the assyrians must have set out by the wady haurân or by one of the wadys near to babylon, and have returned by a more southern wady. to carry hostilities into the heart of their country was a bold and even hazardous undertaking; it could be reached only by traversing miles of arid and rocky plains, exposed to the rays of a burning sun, vast extents of swamps and boggy pasture land, desolate wastes infested with serpents and scorpions, and a mountain range of blackish lava known as khâzu. it would have been folly to risk a march with the heavy assyrian infantry in the face of such obstacles. esarhaddon probably selected for the purpose a force composed of cavalry, chariots, and lightly equipped foot-soldiers, and despatched them with orders to reach the jauf by forced marches through the wady haurân. the arabs, who were totally unprepared for such a movement, had not time to collect their forces; eight of their chiefs were taken by surprise and killed one after another--among them kisu of khaldili, agbaru of ilpiati, mansaku of magalani,--and also some reigning queens. la, the king of yadi, at first took refuge in the mountains, but afterwards gave himself up to the enemy, and journeyed as far as nineveh to prostrate himself at esarhaddon�s feet, who restored to him his gods and his crown, on the usual condition of paying tribute. a vassal occupying a country so remote and so difficult of access could not be supposed to preserve an unbroken fidelity towards his suzerain, but he no longer ventured to plunder the caravans which passed through his territory, and that in reality was all that was expected of him. esarhaddon thus pursued a prudent and unadventurous policy in the northern and eastern portions of his empire, maintaining a watchful attitude towards the cimmerians and scythians in the north, carrying on short defensive campaigns among the medes in the east, preserving peace with elam, and making occasional flying raids in the south, rather from the necessity for repressing troublesome border tribes than with any idea of permanent conquest. [illustration: 137.jpg shabitoku, king of egypt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. this policy must have been due to a presentiment of danger from the side of egypt, or to the inception of a great scheme for attacking the reigning pharaoh. after the defeat of his generals at altaku, shabîtoku had made no further attempt to take the offensive; his authority over the feudal nobility of egypt was so widely acknowledged that it causes us no surprise to meet with his cartouches on more than one ruin between thebes and memphis,* but his closing years were marred by misfortune. there was then living at napata a certain taharqa, one of those scions of the solar race who enjoyed the title of �royal brothers,� and from among whom anion of the holy mountain was wont to choose his representative to reign over the land of ethiopia whenever the throne became vacant. it does not appear that the father of taharqa ever held the highest rank; it was from his mother, âkaluka, that he inherited his pretensions to the crown, and through her probably that he traced his descent from the family of the high priests. tradition asserts that he did not gain the regal power without a struggle; having been proclaimed king in ethiopia at the age of twenty, as the result of some revolution, he is said to have marched against shabîtoku, and, coming up with him in the delta, to have defeated him, taken him prisoner, and put him to death.** these events took place about 693 b.c.,*** and taharqa employed the opening years of his reign in consolidating his authority over the double kingdom. * his name or monuments of his erection have been discovered at karnak. ** eusebius, who cites the fact, had his information from a trustworthy greek source, perhaps from manetho himself. the inscription of tanis seems to say that taharqa was twenty years old at the time of his revolt. *** most of the lists of kings taken from manetho assign twelve years to the reign of sébikhos; one alone, that of africanus, assigns him fourteen years. he married the widow of sabaco, queen dikahîtamanu, and thus assumed the guardianship of tanuatamanu, her son by her first husband, and this marriage secured him supreme authority in ethiopia.* that he regarded egypt as a conquered country can no longer be doubted, seeing that he inserted its name on his monuments among those of the nations which he had vanquished. * the text of several documents only mentioned that tanuata manu was the �son of his wife,� which opport interpreted to mean son of taharqa himself, while others see in him a son of kashto, a brother of amenertas, or a son of shabîtoku. [illustration: 139.jpg taharqa and his queen dikahîtamanu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured plate in lepsius. he nevertheless felt obliged to treat it with consideration; he respected the rights of the feudal princes, and behaved himself in every way like a pharaoh of the old royal line. he summoned his mother from napatà, where he had left her, and after proclaiming her regent of the south and the north, he associated her with himself in the rejoicings at his coronation. this ceremony, celebrated at tanis with the usages customary in the delta, was repeated at karnak in accordance with the theban ritual, and a chapel erected shortly afterwards on the northern quay of the great sacred lake has preserved to us the memory of it. akaluka, installed with the rank and prerogatives of the �divine spouse� of amon, presented her son to the deity, who bestowed upon him through his priests dominion over the whole world. she bent the bow, and let fly the arrows towards the four cardinal points, which she thereby symbolically delivered to him as wounded prisoners; the king, on his part, hurled against them bullets of stone, and by this attack figuratively accomplished their defeat. his wars in africa were crowned with a certain meed of success,* and his achievements in this quarter won for him in after time so much popularity among the egyptians, that they extolled him to the greeks as one of their most illustrious conquering pharaohs; they related that he had penetrated as far as the pillars of hercules in the west, and that he had invaded europe in imitation of sesostris. * the list inscribed on the base of the statue discovered by mariette contains a large number of names belonging to africa. they are the same as those met with in the time of the xviiith dynasty, and were probably copied from some monument of ramses ii., who had himself perhaps borrowed them from a document of the time of thûtmosis iii. a bas relief at medinet-habu shows him to us in the act of smiting a group of tribes, among which figure the tepa, doshrît, and �the humbled kush;� this bas-relief was appropriated later on by nectanebo. what we know to be a fact is, that he secured to the valley of the nile nearly twenty years of prosperity, and recalled the glories of the great reigns of former days, if not by his victories, at least by the excellence of his administration and his activity. he planned the erection at karnak of a hypostyle hall in front of the pylons of ramses ii., which should equal, if not surpass, that of seti i.* * these columns have been looked upon as triumphal pillars, designed to support statues or divine emblems. mariette thinks that they supported �an edifice in the architectural style of the kiosk at philæ and the small hypothral temple on the roof of denderah.� i am of opinion that the architect intended to make a hypostyle hall, but that when the columns were erected, he perceived that the great width of the aisle they formed would render the strength of the roof very doubtful, and so renounced the execution of his first design. [illustration: 142.jpg the column of taharqa, at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the columns of the central aisle were disposed in two lines of six pillars each, but only one of these now remains standing in its original place; its height, which is the same as that of seti�s columns, is nearly sixty-nine feet. the columns of the side aisles, like those which should have flanked the immense colonnade at luxor, were never even begun, and the hall of taharqa, like that of seti i., remains unfinished to this day. he bestowed his favour on nubia and ethiopia, as well as on egypt proper; even napata owed to his munificence the most beautiful portions of its temples. the temple of amon, and subsequently that of mût, were enlarged by him; and he decorated their ancient halls with bas-reliefs, representing himself, accompanied by his mother and his wife, in attitudes of adoration before the deity. the style of the carving is very good, and the hieroglyphics would not disgrace the walls of the theban temples. the ethiopian sculptors and painters scrupulously followed the traditions of the mother-country, and only a few insignificant details of ethnic type or costume enable us to detect a slight difference between their works and those of pure egyptian art. at the other extremity of napata, on the western side of the holy mountain, taharqa excavated in the cliff a rock-hewn shrine, which he dedicated to hathor and bîsû (bes), the patron of jollity and happiness, and the god of music and of war. [illustration: 143.jpg the hemispeos op hâthor and bîsû, at gebel-barkal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph in caillaud. bîsû, who was at first relegated to the lowest rank among the crowd of genii adored by the people, had gradually risen to the highest place in the hierarchy of the gods, and his images predominated in chapels destined to represent the cradle of the infant gods, and the sacred spots where goddesses gave birth to their divine offspring. [illustration: 144.jpg entrance to the hemispeos of bîsû (bes), at gebel-barkal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph in caillaud. the portico erected in front of the pylon had a central avenue of pillars, against which stood monstrous and grinning statues of bîsû, his hands on his hips, and his head crowned with a large bunch of lotus-flowers and plumes. two rows of columns with hathor-headed capitals flanked the central aisle, which led to a hall supported by massive columns, also with hathor capitals, and beyond it again lay the actual shrine similarly excavated in the rocky hill; two statues of bîsû, standing erect against their supporting columns, kept guard over the entrance, and their fantastic forms, dimly discernible in the gloom, must have appeared in ancient times to have prohibited the vulgar throng from approaching the innermost sanctuary. half of the roof has fallen in since the building was deserted, and a broad beam of light falling through the aperture thus made reveals the hideous grotesqueness of the statues to all comers. the portraits of taharqa represent him with a strong, square-shaped head, with full cheeks, vigorous mouth, and determined chin, such as belong to a man well suited to deal with that troubled epoch, and the knowledge we as yet possess of his conflict with assyria fully confirms the character exhibited by his portrait statues. [illustration: 145.jpg taharqa] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a cast of the fragment preserved at gizeh we may surmise that, when once absolute master of egypt, he must have cast his eyes beyond the isthmus, and considered how he might turn to his own advantage the secret grudge borne by the syrians against their suzerain at nineveh, but up to the present time we possess no indications as to the policy he pursued in palestine. we may safely assume, however, that it gave umbrage to the assyrians, and that esarhaddon resolved to put an end once for all to the uneasiness it caused him. more than half a century had elapsed since the day when the kings of syria, alarmed at the earliest victories of tiglath-pileser iii., had conceived the idea of pitting their former conquerors against those of the day, and had solicited help from the pharaohs against assyria. none of the sovereigns to whom they turned had refused to listen to their appeals, or failed to promise subsidies and reinforcements; but these engagements, however definite, had for the most part been left unfulfilled, and when an occasion for their execution had occurred, the egyptian armies had merely appeared on the fields of battle to beat a hasty retreat: they had not prevented the subjugation of damascus, israel, tyre, the philistines, nor, indeed, of any of the princes or people who trusted to their renown; yet, notwithstanding these numerous disappointments, the prestige of the egyptians was still so great that insubordinate or rebel states invariably looked to them for support and entreated their help. the assyrian generals had learnt by experience to meet them unmoved, being well aware that the egyptian army was inferior to their own in organisation, and used antiquated weapons and methods of warfare; they were also well aware that the egyptian and even the ethiopian soldiery had never been able successfully to withstand a determined attack by the assyrian battalions, and that when once the desert which protected egypt had been crossed, she would, like babylon, fall an easy prey to their arms. it would merely be necessary to guard against the possible danger of opposition being offered to the passage of the invading host by the idumoan and arab tribes sparsely scattered over the country between the nile and the gulf of akabah, as their hostility would be a cause of serious uneasiness. an expedition, sent against milukhkha* in 675 b.c., had taught the inhabitants to respect the power of assyria; but the campaign had not been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, for the king of elam, khumbân-khaldash ii., seeing his rival occupied at the opposite extremity of his empire, fell unexpectedly upon babylon, and pushing forward as far as sippara, laid waste the surrounding country; and his hateful presence even prevented the god shamash from making his annual progress outside the walls of the city. the people of bît-dakkuri seem to have plucked up courage at his approach, and invaded the neighbouring territory, probably that of borsippa. esarhaddon was absent on a distant expedition, and the garrisons scattered over the province were not sufficiently strong in numbers to risk a pitched battle: khumbân-khaldash, therefore, marched back with his booty to susa entirely unmolested. he died suddenly in his palace a few days after his return, and was succeeded by his brother, urtaku, who was too intent upon seating himself securely on the throne to send his troops on a second raid in the following year. * the name of milukhkha, first applied to the countries in the neighbourhood of the persian gulf, had been transferred to the western coasts of arabia, as well as that of magan. esarhaddon deferred his revenge to a more convenient season, and utilised the respite fate had accorded him on the elamite border to hasten his attack on egypt (673 b.c.). the expedition was a failure, and taharqa was greatly elated at having issued with honour from this trial of strength. as most of the countries over which his enemy exercised his supremacy were those which had been ruled by his theban ancestors in days gone by, taharqa engraved on the base of his statue a list of nations and towns copied from one of the monuments of ramses ii. the khâti, carchemish, mitanni, arvad--in short, a dozen peoples already extinct or in their decline, and whose names were merely perpetuated in the stereotyped official lists,--were enumerated in the list of his vanquished foes side by side with assyria. it was a mere piece of bravado, for never, even when victorious, did he set foot on syrian soil; but all the same the victory had caused the invading host to retire, and the fame of this exploit, spreading throughout asia, was not without its effect on the minds of the inhabitants. the island of tyre had never officially recognised the assyrian suzerainty. the tyrians had lived in peace since the defeat of elulai, and had maintained constant commercial relations with the continent without interfering in active politics: they had, perhaps, even been permitted to establish some settlements on the coast of the mainland. their king, bâal, now deemed the moment a propitious one for coming forward and recovering his lost territory, and since the greek princes of cyprus had ranged themselves under the hegemony of assyria, he thought he could best counterbalance their influence by seeking support from egypt, whose ancient greatness was apparently reviving. he therefore concluded an alliance with taharqa,* and it would be no cause for astonishment if we should one day discover that judah had followed his example. * the alliance of bâal with taharqa is mentioned in the fragment of the _annals_, under the date of year x., and the name bâal is still decipherable amid the defaced linos which contained the account of events which took place before that year. i think we may reasonably assign the first understanding between the two sovereigns, either to the actual year of the first campaign or to the following year. hezekiah had devoted his declining years to religious reformation, and the organisation of his kingdom under the guidance of isaiah or the group of prophets of which isaiah was the leader. judah had increased in population, and had quickly recovered its prosperity; when hezekiah died, about 686 b.c., it had entirely regained its former vigour, but the memory of the disasters of 701 was still sufficiently fresh in the minds of the people to prevent the change of sovereign being followed by a change of policy. manasseh, who succeeded his father, though he did not walk, as hezekiah had done, in the ways of the lord, at least remained loyal to his assyrian masters. it is, however, asserted that he afterwards rebelled, though his reason for doing so is not explained, and that he was carried captive to babylon as a punishment for this crime: he succeeded, nevertheless, in regaining favour, and was reinstated at jerusalem on condition of not repeating his offence. if this statement is true, as i believe it to be, it was probably after the egyptian campaign of 673 b.c.* that his conspiracy with baal took place. * the fact of manasseh�s captivity is only known to us from the testimony of 2 chron. xxxiii. 10-13, and most modern critics consider it apocryphal. the moral development which accompanies the narrative, and the conversion which follows it, are certainly later additions, but the story may have some foundation in fact; we shall see later on that necho i., king of sais, was taken prisoner, led into captivity, and received again into favour in the same way as manasseh is said to have been. the exile to babylon, which at one time appeared to demonstrate the unauthenticity of the passage, would be rather in favour of its authenticity. esarhaddon was king of babylon during the whole of his reign, and the great works which he executed in that city obliged him, we know, to transport thither a large proportion of the prisoners whom he brought back from his wars. the assyrian governors of the neighbouring provinces easily crushed these attempts at independence, but, the islands of tyre being secure from attack, they were obliged to be content with establishing a series of redoubts along the coast, and with prohibiting the tyrians from having access to the mainland. the promptitude of their action quenched the hopes of the egyptian party and prevented the spread of the revolt. esarhaddon was, nevertheless, obliged to put off the fulfilment of his schemes longer than he desired: complications arose on his northern frontiers, near the sources of the tigris, which distracted his attention from the intrigues taking place on the banks of the nile. urartu, hard pressed by the cimmerians and scythians, had lived for a quarter of a century in a condition of sullen peace with assyria, and its kings avoided anything which could bring them into conflict with their hereditary rival. argistis ii. had been succeeded by one of his sons, eusas il, and both of them had been more intent upon strengthening their kingdom than on extending its area; they had rebuilt their capital, dhuspas, on a magnificent scale, and from the security of their rocky home they watched the course of events without taking any part in it, unless forced to do so by circumstances. andaria, chief of lubdi, one of the remote mountain districts, so difficult of access that it always retained its independence in spite of frequent attacks, had seized shupria, a province which had been from very early times subject to the sovereigns of nineveh, and was the first to be colonised by them. the inhabitants, forgetful of their origin, had yielded voluntarily to andaria; but this prince, after receiving their homage, was seized with alarm at his own audacity. he endeavoured to strengthen his position by an alliance with the cimmerians,* and the spirit of insubordination which he aroused spread beyond the euphrates; mugallu of milid, a king of the tabal, resorted to such violent measures that esarhaddon was alarmed lest the wild mountaineers of the taurus should pour down upon the plain of kuî and lay it waste. the danger would indeed have been serious had all these tribes risen simultaneously; but the cimmerians were detained in asia minor by their own concerns,** and mugallu, when he saw the assyrian troops being concentrated to bring him to reason, remained quiet. * this seems, indeed, to be proved by a tablet in which esarhaddon, addressing the god shamash, asks him if the cimmerians or urartians will unite with a certain prince who can be no other than the king of shupria. ** it was about this time they were dealing the death-blow to the kingdom of phrygia. the extension of lubdi was not likely to meet with favour in the eyes of eusas; he did not respond to the advances made to him, and esarhaddon opened his campaign against the rebels without having to dread the intervention of urartu. andaria, besieged in his capital of ubbumi, laid aside his royal robes, and, assuming the ragged garments of a slave, appeared upon the ramparts and pleaded for mercy in a voice choked with tears: �shupria, the country which has sinned against thee, will yield to thee of her own accord; place thy officers over her, she will vow obedience to thee; impose on her a ransom and an annual tribute for ever. i am a robber, and for the crime i have committed i will make amends fifty-fold.� esarhaddon would listen to no terms before a breach had been effected in the city walls. this done, he pardoned the prince who had taken refuge in the citadel, but resumed possession of shupria: its inhabitants were mercilessly punished, being condemned to slavery, and their lands and goods divided among new colonists. many urartians were numbered among the captives: these esarhaddon separated from the rest, and sent back to rusas as a reward for his having remained neutral. all this had barely occupied the space of one month, the month of tebet. the first-fruits of the spoil reserved for uruk had already reached that town by the month kislev, and the year was not so far advanced as to render further undertakings impossible, when the death of the queen, on the 5th adar, suspended all warlike enterprises. the last months of the year were given up to mourning, and the whole of 671 b.c. passed without further action. the ethiopian king was emboldened by this inactivity on the part of his foe to renew his intrigues with syria with redoubled energy; at one moment, indeed, the philistines of ashkelon, secretly instigated, seemed on the point of revolt.* * ashkelon is mentioned in two of the prayers in which esarhaddon consults shamash on the subject of his intended campaign in egypt; he seems to fear lest that city and the bedâwin of the idumoan desert should espouse the cause of the king of ethiopia. they held themselves, however, in check, and esarhaddon, reassured as to their attitude, entered into negotiations with the sheikhs of the arab tribes, and purchased their assistance to cross the desert of sinai. he bade them assemble at raphia, at the western extremity of palestine, each chief bringing all the camels he could command, and as many skins of water as their beasts could carry: this precaution, a wise one at any time, might secure the safety of the army in case taharqa should have filled up the wells which marked the stages in the caravan route.* when all was ready, esarhaddon consulted the oracle of shamash, and, on receiving a favourable reply from the god, left nineveh in the beginning of the month nisân, 670 b.c., to join the invading army in syria.** * this information is furnished by the fragment of the _annals_. the assyrian text introduces this into the narrative in such a manner that it would appear as if these negotiations were carried on at the very commencement of the campaign; it is, however, more probable that they were concluded beforehand, as occurred later on, in the time of cambyses, when the persians invaded egypt. ** the published texts refer to the second egyptian campaign of esarhaddon. the reply of the god is not easy to interpret, but it was certainly favourable, since the expedition took place. he made a detour in order to inspect the lines of forts which his generals had established along the coast opposite tyre, and strengthened their garrisons to prevent bâal from creating a diversion in the rear of his base of operations; he then proceeded southwards to the neighbourhood of aphek, in the territory of the tribe of simeon. the news which there met him must doubtless have informed him that the bedâwin had been won over in the interval by the emissaries of taharqa, and that he would run great risk by proceeding with his campaign before bringing them back to a sense of their duty. on leaving aphek* he consequently turned southwards, and plunged into the heart of the desert, as if he had renounced all designs upon egypt for that season, and was bent only on restoring order in milukhkha and magân before advancing further. for six weeks he marched in short stages, without other water than the supply borne, in accordance with his commands, by the arab camels, passing through tracts of desert infested by strange birds and double-headed serpents; when he had at length dispersed the bands which had endeavoured to oppose his advance, he suddenly turned in a north-westerly direction, and, following the dry bed of the torrent of muzur, at length reached raphia. from thence he did not select the usual route, which follows the coast-line and leads to pelusium, a place which he may have feared was too well defended, but he again pressed forward across the sands of the desert, and in the first days of tammuz reached the cultivated land of the delta by way of the wady tumilât. the frontier garrisons, defeated on the 3rd of tammuz near ishkhupri,** retreated in good order. * the defaced name of the country in which this aphek was situated was read as samirina and translated �samaria� by the first editor. this interpretation has been adopted by most historians, who have seen in aphek the town of this name belonging to the western portion of manasseh. budge read it samina, and this reading, verified by craig, gave winckler the idea of identifying samina or simina with the tribe of simeon, and aphek with the aphckah (josh. xv. 53) in the mountains of judah. ** the text on the stele at zinjirli gives a total of fifteen days� march from ishkhupri to memphis, while pinches� babyl. chron. indicates three battles as having been fought on the 3rd, 16th, and 18th of tammuz, and the taking of memphis as occurring on the 22nd of the same month. if fifteen days is precisely accurate for the length of march, esarhaddon would have reached ishkhupri about the 27th of sivan. taharqa, hastening to their succour, disputed the ground inch by inch, and engaged the invaders in several conflicts, two at least of which, fought on the 16th and 18th of tammuz, were regular pitched battles, but in every case the assyrian tactics triumphed in spite of the dashing onslaught of the egyptians; memphis succumbed on the 22nd, after an assault lasting merely a few hours, and was mercilessly sacked. the ethiopian king, with his army decimated and exhausted, gave up the struggle, and beat a hasty retreat southwards. the attack had been made with such rapidity that he had had no time to remove his court from the �palace of the white wall� to the said; the queen, therefore, together with other women of less exalted rank, fell into the hands of the conqueror, besides the crown-prince, ushana-horu, several younger sons and daughters, and such of the children of sabaco and shabîtoku as resided at court. but the victory had cost the assyrians dearly, and the enemy still appeared to them so formidable that esarhaddon prudently abstained from pursuing him up the nile valley. he favourably received those feudal lords and petty kings who presented themselves to pay him homage, and confirmed them in possession of their fiefs, but he placed over them assyrian governors and imposed new official names on their cities; thus athribis was officially called limir-pateshî-assur, and other cities received the names assur-makan-tishkul, bîfc-marduk-sha-assur-taru, shaîmuk-assur. he further imposed on them a heavy annual tribute of more than six talents of gold and six hundred talents of silver, besides robes and woven stuffs, wine, skins, horses, sheep, and asses; and having accomplished this, he retraced his steps towards the north-east with immense booty and innumerable convoys of prisoners. the complete defeat of the ethiopian power filled not only esarhaddon himself but all asia with astonishment. his return to nineveh was a triumphal progress; travelling through syria by short stages, he paraded his captives and trophies before the peoples and princes who had so long relied on the invincible power of the pharaoh. [illustration: 156.jpg southern promontory at the mouth of the nahr-el-kelb] drawn by boudier, from a photograph recently brought back by lortet. esarhaddon�s predecessors had more than once inscribed the record of their campaigns on the rocks of the nahr-el-kelb, beside the bas-relief engraved there by ramses ii., and it had been no small gratification to their pride thus to place themselves on a footing of equality with one of the most illustrious heroes of the ancient egyptian empire. [illustration: 157.jpg stele of esarhaddon at the nahr-el-kelb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lortet. the footpath which skirts the southern bank of the river, and turning to the south is continued along the seashore, was bordered by the great stelæ in which, one after another, they had thought to immortalise their glory; following their example, esarhaddon was in like manner pleased to celebrate his prowess, and exhibit the ancient lords of the world subjugated to his will. he erected numerous triumphal monuments along his route, and the stele which was discovered at one of the gates of zinjirli is, doubtless, but an example of those which he erected in other important cities. [illustration: 158.jpg stele of zinjirli] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the berlin museum. he is represented on the zinjirli stele standing erect, while at his feet are two kneeling prisoners, whom he is holding by a bridle of cord fastened to metal rings passed through their lips; these figures represent bâal of tyre and taharqa of napata, the latter with the uraaus on his forehead. as a matter of fact, these kings were safe beyond his reach, one surrounded by the sea, the other above the cataracts, and the people were well aware that they did not form part of the band of prisoners which denied before their eyes; but they were accustomed to the vain and extravagant boastings of their conquerors, and these very exaggerations enabled them to understand more fully the extent of the victory. esarhaddon thenceforward styled himself king of egypt, king of the kings of egypt, of the said and of kush, so great was his pride at having trampled underfoot the land of the delta. and, in fact, egypt had, for a century, been the only one of the ancient eastern states which had always eluded the grasp of assyria. the elamites had endured disastrous defeats, which had cost them some of their provinces; the urartians had been driven back into their mountains, and no longer attempted to emerge from them; babylon had nearly been annihilated in her struggles for independence; while the khâti, the phoenicians, damascus, and israel had been absorbed one after another in the gradual extension of ninevehe supremacy. egypt, although she had had a hand in all then-wars and revolutions, had never herself paid the penalty of her intrigues, and even when she had sometimes risked her troops on the battle-fields of palestine, her disasters had not cost her more than the loss of a certain number of men: having once retired to the banks of the nile, no one had dared to follow, and the idea had gained credence among her enemies as well as among her friends that egypt was effectually protected by the desert from every attack. the victory of esarhaddon proved that she was no more invulnerable than the other kingdoms of the world, and that before a bold advance the obstacles, placed by nature in the path of an invader, disappeared; the protecting desert had been crossed, the archers and chariots of egypt had fled before the assyrian cavalry and pikemen, her cities had endured the ignominy and misery of being taken by storm, and the wives and daughters of her pharaohs had been carried off into servitude in common with the numerous princesses of elam and syria of that day. esarhaddon filled his palaces with furniture and woven stuffs, with vases of precious metal and sculptured ivories, with glass ornaments and statuettes looted from memphis: his workers in marble took inspiration from the sphinxes of egypt to modify the winged, human-headed lions upon which the columns of their palaces rested, and the plans of his architects became more comprehensive at the mere announcement of such a vast amount of spoil. the palace they had begun to build at nineveh, on the ruins of an ancient edifice, already surpassed all previous architectural efforts. the alabaster quarries of the assyrian mountains and the forests of phoenicia had alike been put under contribution to face the walls of its state apartments; twenty-two chiefs of the country of the khâti, of phoenicia, and of the mediterranean littoral--among them the greek kings of cyprus--had vied with one another in supplying esarhaddon with great beams of pine, cedar, and cypress for its construction. the ceilings were of cedar supported by pillars of cypress-wood encircled by silver and iron; stone lions and bulls stood on either side of the gates, and the doors were made of cedar and cypress, incrusted or overlaid with iron, silver and ivory. the treasures of egypt enabled esarhaddon to complete this palace and begin a new one at calah, where the buildings erected somewhat hurriedly by tiglath-pileser iii. had already fallen into ruin. some of the slabs on which the latter conqueror had engraved his annals, and recounted the principal episodes of his campaigns, were removed and transferred to the site selected by esarhaddon, and one of the surfaces of each was pared down in order to receive new pictures and fresh inscriptions. they had, however, hardly been placed in the stonemason�s hands when the work was interrupted.* * the date of the building of the palace at calah is furnished by the inscriptions, in which esarhaddon assumes the title of king of egypt. [illustration: 161.jpg assyrian sphinx in egyptian style supporting the base of a column] drawn by boudier, from the alabaster sculpture reproduced by layard. it may have been that esarhaddon had to suspend all his operations while putting down some conspiracy. at any rate, we know that in 669 b.c. many high personages of his court were seized and executed. the question of the succession to the throne was still undecided; sinidina-bal, the son whom esarhaddon had previously designated as his heir presumptive, was dead, and the people feared lest he should choose from among his other sons some prince who had not their interests at heart. the king�s affection for babylon had certainly aroused jealousy and anxiety among his assyrian subjects, and perhaps some further tokens of preference made them uneasy lest� he should select shamash-shumukîn, one of his children who manifested the same tendencies, and who was, moreover, the son of a babylonian wife. most of the nobles who had been led to join the conspiracy paid for their indiscretion with their heads, but their opposition gave the sovereign cause for reflection, and decided him to modify his schemes. convinced that it was impossible to unite babylon and nineveh permanently under the same ruler, he reluctantly decided to divide his kingdom into two parts--assyria, the strongest portion, falling naturally to his eldest son, assur-bani-pal, while babylonia was assigned to shamash-shumukîn, on condition of his paying homage to his brother as suzerain.* the best method to ensure his wishes being carried into effect was to prepare their way for the fulfilment while he was still alive; and rebellions which broke out about this time beyond the isthmus afforded a good opportunity for so doing. egypt was at this period divided into twenty states of various dimensions, very nearly the same as had existed a century before, when piônkhi had, for the first time, brought the whole country under ethiopian rule.** in the south, the extensive theban province occupied both sides of the river from assuan to thinis and khemmis. * winokler considers that assur-bani-pal was the leader of tha conspiracy, and that he obliged his father to recognise him as heir to the crown of assyria, and to associate him on the throne. ** the list of the principalities in the time of esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal is found on the cylinders of assur-bani pal. it was nominally governed by amenertas or her daughter, shapenuapît, but the administration was, as usual, entrusted to a member of the priestly college, at that time to montumihâît, count of thebes, and fourth prophet of anion.* * the assyrian name of this personage, spelt first mantimiankhi, has been more accurately transcribed mantimikhi. the identification with the montumihâît of the theban documents, is now generally adopted. the four principalities of thinis, siut, hermopolis, and heracleopolis separated it from the small kingdom of memphis and sais, and each of the regions of the delta was divided into one or two fiefs, according to the number and importance of the towns it contained. in the south, thebes was too directly under the influence of ethiopia to be able to exercise an independent policy with regard to the rest of the country. in the north, two families contested the supremacy more or less openly. one of them, whose hereditary domains included the arabian, and parts of the surrounding nomes, was then represented by a certain pakruru. he had united under his banner the numerous petty chiefs of the eastern side of the delta, the heirs of the ancient dynasties of tanis and bubastis, and his energy or ability must have made a good impression on the minds of his contemporaries, for they handed down his memory to their successors, who soon metamorphosed him into a popular legendary hero, famed both for his valour and wisdom. the nobles of the western nomes acknowledged as their overlords the regents of sais, the descendants of that bocchoris who had for a short while brought the whole valley of the nile under his sway. sabaco, having put his rival to death, had installed in his hereditary domains an ethiopian named ammeris, but this ammeris had disappeared from the scene about the same time as his patron, in 704 b.c., and after him three princes at least had succeeded to the throne, namely, stephinates, nekhepsos, and necho.* stephinates had died about 680 b.c., without accomplishing anything which was worth recording. nekhepsos had had no greater opportunities of distinguishing himself than had fallen to the lot of his father, and yet legends grew up round his name as round that of pakruru: he was reputed to have been a great soothsayer, astrologist, and magician, and medical treatises were ascribed to him, and almanacs much esteemed by the superstitious in the roman period.** * the lists of eusebius give the series ammeres, stephinates, nekhepsos, necho i., but lepsius displaced ammeres and identified him with the queen amenertas; others have thought to recognise in him miamun piônkhi, or tanuatamanu, the successor of taharqa. he must, however, be left in this place in the list, and we may perhaps consider him as the founder of the xxvith dynasty. if the number of seven years for the reign of stephinates is adopted, we must suppose either that manetho passed over the name of a prince at the beginning of the xxvith dynasty, or that ammeris was only enthroned at memphis after the death of sabaco; but the lists of the syncellus and of sothis assign 27 years to the reign of stephinates. ** the astrological works of nekhepsos are cited, among others, by pliny, and it is probably he whom a greek papyrus of the salt collection mentions under the name of nekheus. necho had already occupied the throne for three or four years when the invasion of 670 b.c. delivered him from the ethiopian supremacy. he is represented as being brave, energetic, and enterprising, ready to hazard everything in order to attain the object towards which the ambition of his ancestors had been tending for a century past, namely, to restore unity to the ancient kingdom under the rule of the house of sais. the extent of his realm, and, above all, the possession of memphis, gave him a real superiority, and esarhaddon did not hesitate to esteem him above his competitors; the ninevite scribes placed him in the first rank, and he heads the list of the egyptian vassals. he soon had an opportunity of proving his devotion to his foreign suzerain. taharqa did not quietly accept his defeat, and egypt looked to him to be revenged on the assyrian as soon as he should have reorganised his army. he once more, accordingly, took the field in the middle of 669 b.c.; the barons of the said rallied to his standard without hesitation, and he soon re-entered the �white wall,� but there his advance was arrested. necho and the neighbouring chiefs of the delta, held in check by the presence of semitic garrisons, did not venture to proclaim themselves on his side, and awaited under arms the arrival of assyrian reinforcements.* esarhaddon, in spite of failing health, assumed command of the troops, and before leaving home carried out the project to which the conspiracy of the preceding year had given rise; he assigned the government of babylon to shamash-shumukin, and solemnly designated assur-bani-pal as the heir to assyria proper, and to the suzerainty over the whole empire.** * the first egyptian campaign of assur-bani-pal is also the last campaign of esarhaddon, and assur-bani-pal appropriated all the earlier incidents of it, some of which belong to the sole reign of his father, and some to the few weeks in which he shared the throne with him. ** the association of assur-bani-pal with his father on the throne was pointed out by g. smith, who thought he could fix the date about 673 b.c., three or four years before the death of esarhaddon. tielo showed that assur-bani-pal was then only made viceroy, and assigned his association in the sovereignty to the year 671 or 670 b.c., about the time of the second egyptian campaign, while hommel brought it down to 669. winckler has, with much reason, placed the date in 668 b.c. the assyrian documents do not mention the coronation of shamash-shuniukîn, for assur-bani-pal afterwards affected to consider his brother a mere viceroy, appointed by himself after the death of his father esarhaddon; but an examination of all the circumstances has shown that the enthronement of shamash-shumukîn at babylon was on a par with that of assur-bani-pal at nineveh, and that both owed their elevation to their father. on the 12th of lyyar, 668 b.c., on the day of the feast of gula, he presented their new lord to all the inhabitants of assyria, both small and great, who had assembled to be present at the ceremony, which ended in the installation of the prince in the palace of bîtriduti, reserved for the heirs-apparent. a few weeks later esarhaddon set out for egypt, but his malady became more serious on the journey, and he died on the 10th of arakhsamna, in the twelfth year of his reign.* * arakhsamna corresponds to the jewish marcheswân, and to our month of may. when we endeavour to conjure up his image before us, we fancy we are right in surmising that he was not cast in the ordinary mould of assyrian monarchs. the history of his campaigns shows that he was as active and resolute as assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., but he did not add to these good qualities their inflexible harshness towards their subjects, nor their brutal treatment of conquered foes. circumstances in which they would have shown themselves merciless, he seized upon as occasions for clemency, and if massacres and executions are recorded among the events of his reign, at least he does not class them among the most important: the records of his wars do not continually speak of rebels flayed alive, kings impaled before the gates of their cities, and whole populations decimated by fire and sword. of all the assyrian conquerors, he is almost the only one for whom the historian can feel any regard, or from the study of whose reign he passes on with regret to pursue that of others in due course. as soon as esarhaddon had passed away, the separation of the two parts of the empire which he had planned was effected almost automatically: assur-bani-pal proclaimed himself king of assyria, and shamash-shumukîn, in like manner, king of babylon. one fact, which seems insignificant enough to us when we read it in the annals, but was decisive in the eyes of their contemporaries, sanctioned the transformation thus accomplished: bel and the gods of accad quitted assur in the month of iyyâr and returned to their resting-place in babylon. the restoration of the images to their own country became necessary as soon as it was decided to have a king in karduniash, even though he were an assyrian. to enable him to exercise legitimate authority, he must have celebrated the rites and �taken the hands of bel,� but it was a question whether this obligation could be fulfilled if bel remained a prisoner in the neighbouring capital. assur-bani-pal believed for a moment that this difficulty could be obviated, and consulted shamash on this delicate question: �shamash-shumukîn, the son of esarhaddon, the king of assyria, can he in this year take the hands of bel, the mighty lord marduk, in this very city, and then go to babylon with the favour of bel! if that would be pleasing to thy great divinity and to the mighty lord marduk, thy great divinity must know it.� the reply was not favourable, and shamash gave it as his opinion that bel could not act as a sovereign lord while still languishing in prison in a city which was not his own. assur-bani-pal had to resign himself to the release of his captive, and he did it with a good grace. he proceeded in pomp to the temple of assur, where marduk was shut up, and humbly entreated the exiled deity to vouchsafe to return to his own country. [illustration: 168.jpg assur-banipal as a bearer of offerings] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lehmann. �think on babylon, which thou didst bring to nought in the rage of thy heart, and turn thy face towards the temple of e-sagilla, the lofty seat of thy divinity! revisit thy city which thou hast forsaken to inhabit a place which is not worthy of thee, and do thou thyself, o marduk, lord of the gods, give the command to return to babylon.� the statue set out on its journey, and was escorted by a solemn procession headed by the two kings. the gods, by one accord, came forth from their cities and saluted the traveller as he passed by--beltis of agadê, nebo of borsippa, shamash of sippara, and nirgal. at length he reached his beloved city, and entered e-sagilla in the midst of an immense throng of people. the kings headed the _cortège_, and the delighted multitude joined their two names with that of the god in their acclamations: it was a day never to be forgotten. assur-bani-pal, in his capacity of suzerain, opened the sacred edifice, and then presented his brother, who thereupon �took the hands of bel.� [illustration: 169.jpg sihamash-shumukin as a bearer of offerings] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lehmann. a quarter of a century had not passed since the victorious sennacherib had, as he thought, inflicted a mortal blow on the one power which stood in the way of assyria�s supremacy in western asia; already, in spite of his efforts, the city had sprung up from its ruins as vigorous as ever, and his sons and grandsons had felt themselves irresistibly drawn to resuscitate that which their ancestors had desired to annihilate irrevocably. babylon had rebuilt her palaces, her walls, and her temples; she had received back her gods without a war, and almost without any agitation, by the mere force of the prestige she exercised over all around her, and even over her conquerors. as a matter of fact, she had not regained her former position, and was still depressed and enfeebled by the blow which had laid her low; in addition to this, her king was an assyrian, and a vassal of assyria, but nevertheless he was her own king, and hers alone. her independence was already half regained. shamash-shumukîn established his court at babylon, and applied himself from the outset to restore, as far as he was able, the material and moral forces of his kingdom. assur-bani-pal, on his side, met with no opposition from his subjects, but prudence cautioned him not to estrange them; the troubles of the preceding year were perhaps not so completely suppressed as to prevent the chiefs who had escaped punishment from being encouraged by the change of sovereign to renew their intrigues. the king, therefore, remained in nineveh to inaugurate his rule, and confided to his generals the charge of conducting the expeditions which had been undertaken during his father�s lifetime.* one of these undertakings was unimportant. tandaî of kirbît, a petty chief, was continually engaged in harassing the inhabitants of yamutbal; he bore down upon them every year, and, after dealing a blow, retreated to his hiding-place in the mountains. he was attacked in his stronghold, and carried away captive with all his people into egypt, at the furthest extremity of the empire, to serve in assyrian garrisons in the midst of the fellahîn.** * in the numerous documents relating to the reign of assur bani-pal the facts are arranged in geographical order, not by the dates of the successive expeditions, and the chronological order of the campaigns is all the more difficult to determine accurately, as _pinches� babylonian chronicle_ fails us after the beginning of this reign, immediately after the mention of the above-mentioned war with kirbît. even the _eponym canon_ is only accurate down to 666 b.c.; in that year there is a break, and although we possess for the succeeding period more than forty names of eponyms, their classification is not at present absolutely certain. ** the expedition against kirbît is omitted in certain documents; it is inserted in the others in the fourth place, between the wars in asia minor and the campaign against the mannai. the place assigned to it in the bab. chron. quite in the beginning of the reign, is confirmed by a fragment of a tablet quoted by winckler. perhaps it was carried out by a babylonian army: although assur-bani-pal claimed the glory of it, by reason of his suzerainty over karduniash. meanwhile, the army which esarhaddon had been leading against taharqa pursued its course under command of the tartan.* syria received it submissively, and the twenty-two kings who still possessed a shadow of autonomy in the country sent assurances of their devotion to the new monarch: even yakînlu, king of arvad, who had aroused suspicion by frequent acts of insubordination,** thought twice before rebelling against his terrible suzerain, and joined the rest in paying both homage and tribute. cyprus and also phoenicia remained faithful to their allegiance, and, what was of still more consequence, the states which lay nearest to egypt--philistia, judah, moab, and ammon; the assyrians were thus able to push forward to the delta without losing time in repressing rebellions along their route. the ethiopians had entrenched themselves at karbanîti;*** they were, however, once more defeated, and left; so many of their soldiers dead upon the field, that taharqa had not sufficient troops left to defend memphis. * the text of tablet k 2675-k 228 of the brit. mus., states distinctly that the tartan commanded the first army. ** assur-bani-pal, acting in the name of his father, esarhaddon, king of assyria, had consulted shamash on the desirability of sending troops against arvad: the prince of this city is called ikkalu, which is a variant of yakînlu. winckler concluded that the campaign against arvad took place before 668 b.c., in the reign of esarhaddon. it seems to me more natural to place it on the return from egypt, when the people of arvad were demoralised by the defeat of the pharaoh whose alliance they had hoped for. *** i had compared karbanîti with the qarbîna mentioned in the _great harris papyrus_, and this identification was accepted by most egyptologists, even after brugsch recognised in qarbîna the name of canopus or a town near canopus. it has been contested by steindorf, and, in fact, karbanîti could not be identified with canopus, any more than the qarbina of the harris papyrus; its site must be looked for in the eastern or central part of the delta. he retreated upon thebes, where he strongly fortified himself; but the tartan had not suffered less than his adversary, and he would have been unable to pursue him, had not reinforcements promptly reached him. the bab-shakeh, who had been despatched from nineveh with some assyrian troops, had summoned to his aid the principal syrian feudal chiefs, who, stimulated by the news of the victories achieved on the banks of the nile, placed themselves unreservedly at his disposal. he ordered their vessels to proceed along the coast as far as the delta, where he purposed to collect a fleet to ascend the river, while their troops augmented the force already under his command. the two assyrian generals, the tartan and the rabshakeh, quitted memphis, probably in the early part of 667 b.c., and, cautiously advancing southwards, covered the distance separating the two egyptian capitals in a steady march of forty days. when the assyrians had advanced well up the valley, the princes of the delta thought the opportunity had arrived to cut them off by a single bold stroke. they therefore opened cautious negotiations with the ethiopian king, and proposed an arrangement which should secure their independence: �we will divide the country between us, and neither of us shall exercise authority over the other.� however secretly these negotiations were conducted, they were certain to come to the knowledge of the assyrian generals: the couriers were intercepted; and discovering from the despatches the extent of the danger, the assyrians seized as many of the leaders of the league as they could. as a warning they sacked sais, mendes, and tanis, demolishing the fortifications, and flaying or impaling the principal citizens before their city gates; they then sent two of the intriguing chiefs, necho and sharludari of pelusium, bound hand and foot with chains, to nineveh. pakruru, of the arabian nome, managed, however, to escape them. taharqa, thus bereft of his allies, was no longer in a condition to repel the invader: he fled to ethiopia, abandoning thebes to its fate. the city was ransomed by despoiling the temple of amon of half its treasures: montumihâît transferred his allegiance unhesitatingly to assur-bani-pal, and the whole of egypt from the mediterranean to the first cataract once more became assyrian territory. the victory was so complete that assur-bani-pal thought he might without risk show clemency to his prisoners. he summoned them to his presence, and there, instead of putting out their eyes or subjecting them to some horrible form of torture, he received them back into favour, and confirmed necho in the possession of all the honours which esarhaddon had conceded to him. he clothed him in a mantle of honour, and bestowed on him a straight-bladed sword with an iron scabbard ornamented with gold, engraved with his names and titles, besides rings, gold bracelets, chariots, horses, and mules; in short, all the appurtenances of royalty. not content with restoring to him the cities of sais and memphis, he granted him the fief of athribis for his eldest son, psammetichus. [illustration: 174.jpg montumihâît, prince of thebes] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by miss benson. it is not quite certain that this statue represents montumihâît, as the inscription is wanting: the circumstances of the discovery, however, render it very probable. moreover, he neglected no measure likely to show his supremacy. athribis received the new name of limir-patesi-assur, _may the high priest of assur be glorious_, and sais that of kar-bel-matâti, _the fortress of the lord of the countries_. psammetichus was called nebo-shezib-anni, _nebo, deliver me_, and residents were installed at his court and that of his father, who were entrusted with the _surveillance_ of their conduct, and the task of keeping them to the path of duty: necho, thus well guarded, thenceforward never faltered in his allegiance. the subjection of egypt reacted on syria and asia minor. of the only two states still existing along the phoenician seaboard, one, namely tyre, had been in revolt for many years, and the other, arvad, showed symptoms of disaffection. [illustration: 175.jpg psammetichus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief in the british museum. esarhaddon, from lack of a sufficient fleet, had never been able to subdue the former, but he had interrupted the communications of the island with the mainland, and the blockade, which was constantly increasing in strictness, had already lasted for four years. on receipt of the news from egypt, bâal realised that further resistance was hopeless; he therefore delivered up to the victor his heir-apparent, yahî-melek, and one of his daughters, together with other hostages, besides silver, gold, and wood, and intreated for pardon. assur-bani-pal left him in possession of his kingdom on condition of paying the regular tribute, but yakînlu, the king of arvad, met with harsher treatment. in vain did he give up his sons, his daughters, and all his treasures; his intractability had worn out the patience of his suzerain: he was carried away captive to nineveh, and replaced by azîbaal, his eldest son. two chiefs of the taurus--mugallu of tabal, who had given trouble to esarhaddon in the last years of his life, and sanda-sarme of cilicia--purchased immunity from the punishment due for various acts of brigandage, by gifts of horses, and by handing over each of them a daughter, richly dowered, to the harem of the king at nineveh. but these were incidents of slight moment, and their very insignificance proves how completely resigned to foreign domination the nations of the mediterranean coast had now become. vassal kings, princes, cities, peasants of the plain or shepherds of the mountains, all who were subject directly or indirectly to assyria, had almost ceased to imagine that a change of sovereign afforded them any chance of regaining their independence. they no longer considered themselves the subjects of a conqueror whose death might free them from allegiance; they realised that they were the subjects of an empire whose power did not depend on the genius or incapacity of one man, but was maintained from age to age in virtue of the prestige it had attained, whatever might be the qualities of the reigning sovereign. the other independent states had at length come to the same conclusion, and the news of the accession of a fresh assyrian king no longer awakened among them hopes of conquest or, at all events, of booty; such an occasion was regarded as a suitable opportunity for strengthening the bonds of neighbourly feeling or conciliatory friendship which united them to assyria, by sending an embassy to congratulate the new sovereign. one of these embassies, which arrived about 667 b.c., caused much excitement at the court of nineveh, and greatly flattered the vanity of the king. reports brought back by sailors or the chiefs of caravans had revealed the existence of a kingdom of lydia in the extreme west of asia minor, at the place of embarcation for crossing the sea.* * it is called _nagu sha nibirti tâmtim_, �the country of the crossing of the sea,� or more concisely, �the country this side the sea.� it was known to be celebrated for its gold and its horses, but no direct relations between the two courts had ever been established, and the lydian kings had hitherto affected to ignore the existence of assyria. a revolution had broken out in this province a quarter of a century previously, which had placed on the throne of the heraclidse that family of the mermnado whose previous history had been so tragic. dascylus, who had made his home for a long time among the white syrians, had no intention of abandoning his adopted country, when one day, about the year 698 b.c., a messenger arrived bidding him repair to sardes without delay. his uncle ardys, prince of tyrrha, having no children, had applied to sadyattes, beseeching him to revoke the sentence of banishment passed on his nephew. �my house is desolate,� said he, �and all my kinsfolk are dead; and furthermore, dascylus and his house have already been pardoned by thine ancestors.� sadyattes consented, but dascylus, preferring not to return, sent his son gyges, then about eighteen years of age, in his stead. gyges was a tall and very beautiful youth, and showed unusual skill as a charioteer and in the use of weapons, so that his renown soon spread throughout the country. sadyattes desired to see him, and being captivated by his bold demeanour, enrolled him in his bodyguard, loaded him with presents, and took him into his entire confidence. gyges was clever enough to utilise the king�s favour in order to enlarge his domains and increase his riches, and thus win partisans among the people and the body of �friends.� carian mercenaries at that time formed one of the most vigorous and best disciplined contingents in the armies of the period.* the carians were, above all, a military race, and are said to have brought the shield and helmet to their highest perfection; at sardes they formed the garrison of the citadel, and their captains were in high favour with the king. gyges formed a fast friendship with arselis of mylasa, one of the chief of these officers, and thus made sure of the support of the garrison, and of the possibility of recruiting a corps among the carian clans who remained in their own country.** he thus incurred the bitter jealousy of the tylonidag, whose chief, lixos, was ready to adopt any measures which might damage his rival, even going so far as to simulate madness and run through the streets of sardes crying out that gyges, the son of dascylus, was about to assassinate the king; but this stratagem did not succeed any better than his other treacherous devices. meanwhile sadyattes had sought the hand of toudô,*** daughter of arnossos of mysia, and sent his favourite to receive his affianced bride at the hand of her father. * archilochus of paros, a contemporary of gyges, mentions the carian mercenaries, and later on ephorus said of them, that they had been the first to sell their services to strangers. ** the connection between arselis and gyges is mentioned by plutarch. *** it is not certain whether the name is toudô or trydô. gyges fell in love with her on the journey, and tried in vain to win her favour. she repulsed his advances with indignation, and on the very night of her marriage complained to her husband of the insult which had been offered her. sadyattes swore that he would avenge her on the morrow; but gyges, warned by a servant, slew the king before daybreak. immediately after thus assassinating his sovereign, gyges called together the �friends,� and ridding himself of those who were hostile to him, induced the others by bribes to further his designs; then descending to the place of public assembly, he summoned the people to a conclave. after a long and stormy debate, it was decided to consult the oracle at delphi, which, corrupted by the gold from the pactolus, enjoined on the lydians to recognise gyges as their king. he married toudô, and by thus espousing the widow of the heraclid sovereign, obtained some show of right to the crown; but the decision of the oracle was not universally acceptable, and war broke out, in which gyges was victorious, thanks to the bravery of his carian mercenaries. his career soon served as the fabric on which the popular imagination was continually working fresh embroideries. he was reported at the outset to have been of base extraction, a mere soldier of fortune, who had raised himself by degrees to the highest posts and had finally supplanted his patron. herodotus, following the poet archilochus of paros, relates how the last of the heraclidas, whom he calls by his private name of kandaules, and not his official name of sadyattes,* forcibly insisted on exposing to the admiration of gyges the naked beauty of his wife; the queen, thus outraged, called upon the favourite to avenge the insult to her modesty by the blood of her husband, and then bestowed on him her hand, together with the crown. * schubert considers that the names sadyattes and kandaules belong to two distinct persons. kandaules, according to him, was probably a second son of myrsos, who, after the murder of sadyattes, disputed the possession of the crown with gyges; in this case he was killed in battle by the carian commander, arselis, as related by plutarch, and gyges was not really king till after the death of kandaules. plato made this story the groundwork of a most fantastic tale. gyges, according to him, was originally a shepherd, who, after a terrible storm, noticed a fissure in the ground, into which he crept; there he discovered an enormous bronze horse, half broken, and in its side the corpse of a giant with a gold ring on his finger. chance revealed to him that this ring rendered its wearer invisible: he set out for the court in quest of adventures, seduced the queen, murdered the king and seized his crown, accomplishing all this by virtue of his talisman.* * this version is curious, because it has preserved for us one of the earliest examples of a ring which renders its wearer invisible; it is well known how frequently such a talisman appears in oriental tales of a later period. according to a third legend, his crime and exaltation had been presaged by a wondrous prodigy. two eagles of supernatural size had alighted on the roof of toudô�s room while she was still dwelling in her father�s house, and the soothsayers who were consulted prognosticated that the princess would be the wife of two kings in a single night; and, in fact, gyges, having stabbed sadyattes when his marriage was but just consummated, forced toudô to become his wife on the spot without waiting for the morrow. other stories were current, in which the events were related with less of the miraculous element, and which attributed the success of gyges to the unbounded fidelity shown him by the carian arselis. in whatever manner it was brought about, his accession marked the opening of a new era for lydia. the country had always been noted for its valiant and warlike inhabitants, but the heraclidse had not expended its abundant resources on foreign conquest, and none of the surrounding peoples suspected that it could again become the seat of a brilliant empire as in fabulous times. [illustration: 181.jpg lydian horsemen] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a lydian bas-relief now in the british museum. gyges endeavoured to awaken the military instincts of his subjects. if he were not actually the first to organise that admirable cavalry corps which for nearly a century proved itself invincible on the field of battle, at least he enlarged and disciplined it, giving it cohesion and daring; and it was well he did so, for a formidable danger already menaced his newly acquired kingdom. the cimmerians and treres, so long as they did not act in concert, had been unable to overcome the resistance offered by the phrygians; their raids, annually renewed, had never resulted in more than the destruction of a city or the pillaging of an ill-defended district. but from 690 to 680 b.c. the cimmerians, held in check by the bold front displayed by sennacherib and esarhaddon, had at last broken away from the seductions of the east, and poured down in force on the centre of the peninsula. king midas, after an heroic defence, at length gave way before their overwhelming numbers, and, rather than fall alive into the hands of the barbarians, poisoned himself by drinking the blood of a bull (676 b.c.).* the flower of his nobility perished with him, and the people of lower rank who survived were so terrified by the invasion, that they seemed in one day to lose entirely the brave and energetic character which had hitherto been their safeguard. the cimmerians seized town after town;** they descended from the basin of the sangarios into that of the bhyndakos; they laid waste the troad, and, about 670 b.c., they established themselves securely in the stronghold of antandros, opposite the magnificent æolian island of lesbos, and ere long their advanced posts were face to face on all sides with the outposts of lydia. * the date of 676 b.c. has been borrowed from julius africanus by the christian chronologists of the byzantine period; these latter made the fall of the phrygian kingdom coincide with the reign of amon in judæa, and this date is accepted by most modern historians. ** one fact alone, probably taken from the lydiaca of xanthus, is known to us concerning their operations in phrygia, namely, the taking of syassos and the capture of enormous stores of corn which were laid up in the silos in that city. gyges resolutely held his own, and successfully repulsed them; but the struggle was too unequal between their vast hordes, recruited incessantly from their reserves in thrace or the caucasus, and his scanty battalions of lydians, carians, and creeks. unaided, he had no chance of reopening the great royal highway, which the fall of the phrygian monarchy had laid at the mercy of the barbarians along the whole of its middle course, and yet he was aware that a cessation of the traffic which passed between the euphrates and the hermos was likely to lead in a short time to the decay of his kingdom. if the numerous merchants who were wont to follow this ancient traditional route were once allowed to desert it and turn aside to one of the coast-roads which might replace it--either that of the pontus in the north or of the mediterranean in the south--they might not be willing to return to it even when again opened to traffic, and lydia would lose for ever one of her richest sources of revenue.* * radet deserves credit for being the first to point out the economic reasons which necessarily led gyges to make his attempt at forming an alliance with assur-bani-pal. he has thus definitely dismissed the objections which some recent critics had raised against the authenticity of this episode in order to defend classic tradition and diminish the authority of the assyrian texts. we may well conceive that gyges, whose fortune and very existence was thus in jeopardy, would seek assistance against these barbarians from the sovereign whose interests appeared identical with his own. the renown of the assyrian empire had penetrated far into the west; the achæns of cyprus who were its subjects, the greek colonists of cilicia, and the soldiers whom the exigencies of the coast-trade brought to syrian ports, must all have testified to its splendour; and the fame of its conquests over the tabal and the peoples on the halys had spread abroad more than once during the previous century, and had reached as far as the western extremity of the peninsula of asia minor, by means of the merchants of sardes or ionia. the cimmerians had harassed assyria, and still continued to be a source of anxiety to her rulers; gyges judged that participation in a common hatred or danger would predispose the king in his favour, and a dream furnished him with a pretext for notifying to the court of nineveh his desire to enter into friendly relations with it. he dreamed that a god, undoubtedly assur, had appeared to him in the night, and commanded him to prostrate himself at the feet of assur-bani-pal: �in his name thou shalt overcome thine enemies.� the next morning he despatched horsemen to the great king, but when the leader of the embassy reached the frontier and met the assyrians for the first time, they asked him, �who, then, art thou, brother, thou from whose land no courier has as yet visited our country?� the language he spoke was unknown to them; they only gathered that he desired to be conducted into the presence of the king, and consequently sent him on to nineveh under good escort. there the same obstacle presented itself, for none of the official interpreters at the court knew the lydian tongue; however, an interpreter was at length discovered, who translated the story of the dream as best he could. assur-bani-pal joyfully accepted the homage offered to him from such a far-off land, and from thenceforward some sort of alliance existed between assyria and lydia--an alliance of a very platonic order, from which gyges at least derived no sensible advantage. some troops sent into the country of the white syrians may have disquieted the cimmerians, and, by causing a diversion in their rear, procured a respite for lydia; but the caravan route across asia minor was only of secondary importance to the prosperity of nineveh and the syrian provinces, since the phoenician navy provided sufficient outlets for their trade in the west. assur-bani-pal lavished friendly speeches on the lydians, but left them to bear the brunt of the attack alone, and devoutly thanked assur for the security which their determined courage procured for the western frontier of his empire. the cimmerian peril being, for the present at least, averted, there no longer remained any foe to trouble the peace of the empire on the northern or eastern frontier, urartu, the mannai, and the medes having now ceased to be formidable. urartu, incessantly exposed to the ravages of the barbarians, had drawn closer and closer to assyria; and though not actually descending to the point of owning its rival�s superiority in order to obtain succour against these terrible foes, it yet carefully avoided all pretexts for war, and persistently maintained friendly relations with its powerful neighbour. its kings, eusas ii. and his successor erimenas, no longer meditated feats of arms and successful raids, but devoted themselves to building their city walls, erecting palaces and temples, and planning pleasant retreats in the mountain fastnesses, where they lived surrounded by gardens planted at great cost, watered by streams brought thither from distant springs. the mannai submitted without a murmur to their assyrian governors, and the medes, kept in check by the garrisons of parsua and kharkhar, seemed to have laid aside much of their fierce and turbulent disposition. esarhaddon had endeavoured to conciliate the good will of elam by a signal service. he had supplied its inhabitants with corn, wine, and provisions of all sorts during a famine which had afflicted the country about 670 b.c.; nor had his good will ended there. he refused to bring into servitude those elamite subjects who had taken refuge with their families on assyrian territory to escape the scourge, although the rights of nations authorised him so to do, but having nourished them as long as the dearth lasted, he then sent them back to their fellow-citizens. urtaku of elam had thenceforward maintained a kind of sullen neutrality, entering only into secret conspiracies against the babylonian prefects on the tigris. the aramaeans in the valleys of the ulaî, indeed, were restless, and several of their chiefs, bel-ikîsha of the g-ambula, and nabo-shumirîsh, plotted in secret with marduk-shumibni, the elamite general in command on the frontier. but no hint of this had yet transpired, and peace apparently reigned there as elsewhere. never had the empire been so respected; never had it united so many diverse nations under one sceptre--egyptians, syrians, tribes of the taurus, and the mountain districts round the tigris and euphrates, mannai, medes, babylonians, and arabs; never, moreover, had it possessed greater resources wherewith to compel obedience from the provinces or defend them against foreign attack. [illustration: 187.jpg assur-bani-pal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs from kouyunjik in the british museum. doubtless the population of assyria proper, and the ancient districts whose contingents formed the nucleus of the army, were still suffering from the results of the civil war which had broken out more than fifteen years before, after the assassination of sennacherib; but under the easy rule of esarhaddon the natural increase of population, unchecked by any extraordinary call for recruits, must have almost repaired their losses. the egyptian campaigns, partially carried out by syrian auxiliaries, had not sensibly retarded this progress, and, provided that peace were maintained for some years longer, the time seemed at hand when the king, having repaired his losses, could call upon the nation to make fresh efforts in offensive or defensive warfare, without the risk of seeing his people melt and disappear before his eyes. it seems, indeed, as if assur-bani-pal, either by policy or natural disposition, was inclined for peace. but this did not preclude, when occasion demanded, his directing his forces and fighting in person like any other assyrian monarch; he, however, preferred repose, and when circumstances forced war upon him, he willingly delegated the conduct of the army to his generals. he would probably have renounced possession of egypt if he could have done so with safety and such a course would not have been without wisdom, the retention of this newly acquired province being difficult and costly. not to speak of differences in language, religion, and manners, which would prevent it from ever becoming assimilated to assyria as damascus, hamath, and samaria, and most of the asiatic states had been, it was merely connected with the rest of the empire by the thin chain of rocks, desert, and marshes stretching between the red sea and the mediterranean. a revolt of the cities of the philistines, or of one of the idumsean sheikhs, would have sufficed to isolate it, and, communications once interrupted, the safety of the numerous assyrian officers and garrisons would be seriously jeopardised, all of whom must be maintained there if the country was to be permanently retained. the inclination to meddle in the affairs of syria always displayed by the pharaohs, and their obsolete claims to rule the whole country as far as the euphrates, did not allow of their autonomy being restored to them at the risk of the immediate renewal of their intrigues with tyre or judah, and the fomenting of serious rebellions among the vassal princes of palestine. on the other hand, egypt was by its natural position so detached from the rest of the empire that it was certain to escape from the influence of nineveh as soon as the pressure of circumstances obliged the suzerain to relax his efforts to keep it in subjection. besides this, ethiopia lay behind egypt, almost inaccessible in the fabled realms of the south, always ready to provoke conspiracies or renew hostilities when the occasion offered. montumihâît had already returned to thebes on the retreat of the assyrian battalions, and though taharqa, rendered inactive, as it was said, by a dream which bade him remain at napata,* had not reappeared north of the cataract, he had sent tanuatamanu, the son of his wife by sabaco, to administer the province in his name.** taharqa died shortly after (666 b.c.), and his stepson was preparing to leave thebes in order to be solemnly crowned at gebel barkal, when he saw one night in a dream two serpents, one on his right hand, the other on his left. the soothsayers whom he consulted on the matter prognosticated for him a successful career: �thou holdest the south countries; seize thou those of the north, and let the crowns of the two regions gleam upon thy brow!� he proceeded at once to present himself before his divine father amon of napata, and, encountering no opposition from the ethiopian priests or nobles, he was able to fulfil the prediction almost immediately after his coronation.*** * the legend quoted by herodotus relates that sabaco, having slain necho i., the father of psammetichus, evacuated egypt which he had conquered, and retired to ethiopia in obedience to a dream. the name of sabaco was very probably substituted for that of taharqa in the tradition preserved in sais and memphis, echoes of which reached the greek historian in the middle of the fifth century b.c. ** it appears, from the _stele of the dream_, that tanuatamanu was in the thebaid at the time of his accession to the throne. *** steindorff thinks that tanuatamanu had been officially associated with himself on the throne by taharqa, and schsefer supposes that the dream dates from the first year of their joint reign. the presence of tanuatamanu beside taharqa, in the small theban temple, the bas-reliefs of which were published by mariette, does not necessarily prove that the two kings reigned conjointly: it may equally well indicate that the one accomplished the work commenced by the other. the said hailed his return with joy, and the inhabitants, massed upon either bank of the river, acclaimed him as he glided past them on his boat: �go in peace! mayest thou have peace! restore life to egypt! rebuild the ruined temples, set up once more the statues and emblems of the deities! reestablish the endowments raised to the gods and goddesses, even the offerings to the dead! restore the priest to his place, that he may minister at all the rites!� the assyrian officials and the princes of the north, with necho at their head, were drawn up beneath the walls of memphis to defy him. he overcame them, however, captured the city, and pushed on into the delta in pursuit of the retreating foe. necho either fell in a skirmish, or was taken prisoner and put to death: his son psammetichus escaped to syria, but the remaining princes shut themselves up, each in his own stronghold, to await reinforcements from asia, and a series of tedious and interminable sieges began. impatient at this dilatory method of warfare, tanuatamanu at length fell back on memphis, and there opened negotiations in the hope of securing at least a nominal submission, which might enable him to withdraw from the affair with honour. [illustration: 190.jpg mural decorations from the grottoes] the princes of the east received his overtures favourably, and consented to prostrate themselves before him at the white wall under the auspices of pakruru. �grant us the breath of life, for he who acknowledges thee not cannot live, and we will be thy vassals, as thou didst declare at the beginning, on the day in which thou becamest king!� [illustration: 191.jpg king tanuatamanu in adoration before the gods of thebes] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by legrain, taken in the small temple at thebes. the heart of his majesty was filled with joy when he heard this discourse: he bestowed upon them in abundance bread, beer, and all manner of good things. after sojourning some days at the court of pharaoh their lord, they said to him, �why stay we here, o prince our master?� his majesty replied, �wherefore?� they answered then, �graciously permit us to return to our own cities, that we may give commands to our subjects, and may bring thee our tribute offerings!� they returned ere long, bringing the promised gifts, and the king withdrew to napata loaded with spoil.* the delta proper at once ceased to obey him, but memphis, as well as thebes, still acknowledged his sway for some two or three years longer.** * tanuatamanu was at first identified by haigh with the person whose name assyriologists read as urdamani, but the impossibility of recognising the name _tanuatamanu_ in _urdamani_ decided e. de rougé, and subsequently others, to admit an urdamani different from tanuatamanu. the discovery of the right reading of the name _tandamanu_ by steindorff has banished all doubts, and it is now universally admitted that the person mentioned in the assyrian documents is identical with the king who erected the _stele of the dream_ at gebel barkal. ** a monument still exists which was dedicated at thebes in the third year of tanuatamanu. it was neither indolence nor fear which had kept assur-bani-pal from marching to the succour of his subjects as soon as the movement under tanuatamanu became manifest, but serious complications had arisen in the south-east which had for the moment obliged him to leave egypt to itself. elam had at last laid aside the mask, and urtaku, yielding to the entreaties of the aramæan sheikhs, who were urged on by marduk-shumibni, had crossed the tigris. shamash-shumukîn, thus taken unawares, could only shut himself up in babylon, and in all haste send information of his plight to his brother and suzerain. assur-bani-pal, preoccupied with the events taking place on the nile, was for a moment in doubt whether this incursion was merely a passing raid or the opening of a serious war, but the reports of his scouts soon left no doubt as to the gravity of the danger: �the elamite, like a swarm of grasshoppers, covers the fields, he covers accad; against babylon he has pitched his camp and drawn out his lines.� the city was too strong to be taken by storm. the assyrians hastened to relieve it, and threatened to cut off the retreat of the aggressors: the latter, therefore, gave up the siege, and returned to their own country, but their demeanour was still so undaunted that assur-bani-pal did not cross the frontier in pursuit of them (665 b.c.). he doubtless fully expected that they would soon return in larger numbers, and perhaps his fear would not have proved unfounded had not fate suddenly deprived them of all their leaders. bel-ikîsha was killed in hunting by a wild boar, nabu-shumirîsh was struck down by dropsy, and marduk-shumibni perished in a mysterious manner. finally urtaku succumbed to an attack of apoplexy, and the year which had been so fatal to his allies proved not less so to himself (664 b.c.). it now seemed as if assur-bani-pal might breathe freely, and inflict his long-deferred vengeance on tanuatamanu, but the death of urtaku did not remove all causes of uneasiness. peace was not yet concluded, and it depended on the new king of elam whether hostilities would be renewed. fortunately for the assyrians, the transmission of power had rarely taken place at susa for a century past without a disturbance, and urtaku himself had gained the throne by usurpation, possibly accompanied by murder. as he had treated his elder brother khumbân-khaldash and the children of the latter, so did his younger brother tammaritu now treat his sons. tammaritu was �a devil� incarnate, whose whole thoughts were of murder and rapine; at least, this was the idea formed of him by his assyrian contemporaries, who declared that he desired to put to death the sons of his two predecessors out of sheer cruelty. but we do not need a very vivid imagination to believe that these princes were anxious to dethrone him, and that in endeavouring to rid himself of them he was merely forestalling their secret plots. they escaped his murderous designs, however, and fled to assyria,--khumbân-igash, khumbân-appa, and tammaritu, sons of uxtaku, and kuduru and parru, sons of khumbân-khaldash, followed by sixty other princes of royal blood, together with archers and servants--forming, in fact, a small army of elamites. assur-bani-pal received them with honour, for their defection furnished him with a powerful weapon against the usurper: by succouring them he could rouse half elam and involve it in civil war, in which the pretenders would soon exhaust their resources. it was now a favourable moment to renew hostilities in egypt, while tammaritu, still insecure on his throne, would not venture to provoke a conflict.* * the time of the war against urtaku and the expedition against tanuatamanu is indicated by a passage in a cylinder as yet unedited. there we read that the invasion of urtaku took place at the moment when tanuatamanu ascended the throne. these preliminary difficulties with elam would thus have coincided with the two years which elapsed between the accession of tanuatamanu and his conquest of memphis, up to the third year mentioned in the berlin inscription; the testimony of the egyptian monuments would thus be in almost complete accord with the assyrian documents on this point. as a matter of fact, tanuatamanu did not risk the defence of memphis, but concentrated his forces at thebes. once more the assyrian generals ascended the nile, and, after a voyage lasting six weeks, at length reached the suburbs of the great city. tanuatamanu had fled towards kipkip, leaving thebes at the mercy of the invaders. it was given up to pillage, its population was carried off into slavery, and its temples and palaces were despoiled of their treasures--gold, silver, metals, and precious stones, broidered and richly dyed stuffs, and horses of the royal stud. [illustration: 195.jpg assyrian helmet found at thebes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph by pétrie. two of the obelisks which adorned the temple of amon were taken down from their pedestals and placed on rafts to be transported to nineveh, and we shall perhaps unearth them some day from its ruins. this work of reprisal accomplished, the conquerors made their way northwards, and the bulk of the army recrossed the isthmus: ethiopian rule had ceased north of the cataract, and egypt settled down once more under the assyrian yoke (663-662 b.c.).* * the dates which i have adopted follow from the date of 666 b.c. given for the death of taharqa and the accession of psammetichus i. the expedition against thebes must have taken place at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth year of the reign of tanuatamanu, shortly after the inscription of the third year, and was engraved either in 663 or 662 b.c. at the latest. impoverished and decayed as thebes had now long since become, the nations whom she had afflicted so sorely in the days of her glory had retained for her feelings of respect and almost of awe: the rumour of her fall, spread through the eastern world, filled them with astonishment and pity. the hebrews saw in it the chastisement inflicted by their god on the tyrant who had oppressed their ancestors, and their prophets used it to impress upon the minds of their contemporaries the vanity of human prosperity. half a century later, when nineveh, menaced in her turn, was desperately arming herself to repel the barbarians, nahum the elkoshite demanded of her, amid his fierce denunciations, whether she vaunted herself to be better than �no-amon (city of amon), that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about her; whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was of the sea? ethiopia and egypt were her strength, and it was infinite. put and lubim (libya and the nubians) came to her succour. yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.� assur-bani-pal, lord of egypt and conqueror of ethiopia, might reasonably consider himself invincible; it would have been well for the princes who trembled at the name of assur-bani-pal, if they had taken this lesson to heart, and had learned from the downfall of tanuata-manu what fate awaited them in the event of their daring to arouse the wrath of assyria by any kind of intrigue. unfortunately, many of them either failed to see the warning or refused to profit by it. the mannai had quickly recovered from the defeat inflicted on them by esarhaddon, and their king, akhsheri, in spite of his advancing years, believed that his own energy and resources were sufficient to warrant him in anticipating a speedy revenge. perhaps a further insight into the real character of assur-bani-pal may have induced him to venture on hostilities. for the king�s contemporaries had begun to realise that, beneath his apparent bravery and ostentation, he was by nature indolent, impatient of restraint, and fond of ease and luxury. when not absorbed in the routine of the court and the pleasures of the harem, he spent his leisure in hunting on the mesopotamian plains, or in the extensive parks which had been laid out by himself or his predecessors in the vicinity of their summer palaces. urus-stalking had become merely a memory of the past: these animals had been so persistently hunted for centuries that the species had almost become extinct; solitary specimens only were occasionally met with in remote parts of the forest or in out-of-the-way marshes. the wild ass was still to be found in large numbers, as well as the goat, the ostrich, and small game, but the lion was now rarely met with, and the beaters were no longer sure of finding him in his ancient haunts. specimens had to be sought by the royal gamekeepers in the provinces, and when successfully trapped were forthwith despatched to one or other of the king�s country seats. the beast was often kept for several days in a cage while preparations were made for a fête, at which he was destined to form one of the chief attractions, and when the time came he was taken to the appointed place and let loose; the sovereign pursued him either in a chariot or on horseback, and did not desist from the chase till he had pierced his quarry with arrows or lance. [illustration: 198.jpg a lion issuing from its cage] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken from the original in the british museum. frequently the beast would be turned loose in the park, and left there till accustomed to his surroundings, so that later on he might be run down under conditions somewhat resembling his native freedom. assur-bani-pal did not shun a personal encounter with an infuriated lion; he displayed in this hazardous sport a bravery and skill which rivalled that of his ancestors, and he never relegated to another the task of leading the attack or dealing the final death-blow. this, however, was not the case when it was a question of starting on some warlike expedition; he would then leave to his tartans, or to the eabshakeh, or to some other chosen officer, the entire conduct of all operations.* * we have seen, for example, that after the death of esarhaddon, the egyptian campaign was conducted by one of the tartans and the eabshakeh. this did not preclude the king from taking an interest in what was passing beyond the frontier, nor did he fail in his performance of the various religious duties which custom imposed on an assyrian sovereign: he consulted the oracles of shamash or ishtar, he offered sacrifices, he fasted and humbled himself in the temples to obtain the success of his troops, and when they returned laden with spoil from the campaign, he attributed their victories no less to his prayers than to their courage or to the skill of their leaders. his generals, thoroughly equipped for their task, and well supported by their troops, had no need of the royal presence to ensure their triumph over any foe they might encounter; indeed, in the absence of the king they experienced a liberty of action and boldness in pressing their victories to the uttermost which they would not have enjoyed had he been in command. foreigners, accustomed to see the sovereigns of nineveh conduct their armies in person, as long as they were not incapacitated by age, thought that the indolence of assur-bani-pal was the unconscious expression of weariness or of his feeble control of the empire, and akhsheri determined to be one of the first to take advantage of it. events proved that he was mistaken in his calculations. no sooner had his intentions become known, than a division of assyrian troops appeared on his frontier, and prepared to attack him. resolving to take the initiative, he fell one night unexpectedly upon the assyrian camp, but fortune declared against him: he was driven back, and his broken ranks were closely pursued for a distance of twenty-three miles. eight of his strongholds fell one after the other, and he was at length forced to abandon his capital of izirtu, and flee precipitately to his fortress of adrana in the heart of the mountains. even there he did not find the security he desired, for the conqueror pursued him thither, methodically devastating by the way the districts through which he passed: he carried off everything--men, slaves, and herds of cattle--and he never retired from a city or village without previously setting it on fire. paddir, arsiyanîsh, and eristiana were thus laid waste, after which the assyrians returned to their camp, having re-established the authority of their master over several districts which had been lost to them for some generations previously. akhsheri had shown no sign of yielding, but his people, weary of a hopeless resistance, put him to death, and hurling his corpse over the wall of adrana, proclaimed his son ualli as king. the new sovereign hastened to conclude a treaty with the assyrians on reasonable terms: he gave up his eldest son, erisinni, and one of his daughters as hostages, and promised to pay the former tribute augmented by an annual present of thirty horses; peace was not again disturbed on this side except by some unimportant skirmishes. in one of these, a median chieftain, named biriz-khadri, made an alliance with two princes of the people of the sakhi, sarâti, and parikhia, sons of gâgu,* to ravage the marches of the greater zab; but their territory was raided in return, and they themselves taken prisoners. * the name of biriz-khadri has an iranian appearance. the first element _biriz_ recalls the zend _bereza, berez_, �tall, large;� the second, which appears in the names bisi khadir and khali-khadri, is of uncertain derivation, and has been connected with _atar_, �fire,� or with _ichwathra_, �brilliance.� gâgu, which is found as the name of a people (gagâti) in the tel-el-amarna tablets, has been identified from the first with the name of gog, prince of rosh, meshech, and tubal (ezek. xxxviii. 2, 3; xxxix.) the name of the country of sakhi, which has not been met with elsewhere, has been compared with that of the sacaj, which seems to have existed not only in the name of the province of sakascnô mentioned by the classical geographers, but in that of shake known to the old armenian geographers; the country itself, however, as it seems to me, cannot be sought in the direction of sakasenô, and consequently the proposed identification cannot hold good. a little later, andaria, prince of lubdi, forgetful of his oath of allegiance to the aged esarhad-don, made a night attack on the towns of kullimir and ubbumî: the inhabitants armed in haste, and he was not only defeated, but was taken captive, and his head cut off to be sent to nineveh. the garrisons and military colonies along the north-east frontier were constantly required to be on the alert; but they usually had sufficient available resources to meet any emergency, and the enemies who molested them were rarely dangerous enough to necessitate the mobilisation of a regular army. this was not the case, however, in the south-west, where tiummân, counting on the military strength of elam, made continual hostile demonstrations. he was scarcely settled on his throne before he hastened to form alliances with those aramæan states which had so often invoked the aid of his predecessors against the ancestors of assur-bani-pal. the kaldâ rejected his proposals, as did most of the tribes of the littoral; but the gambulâ yielded to his solicitations, and their king, dunânu, son of bel-ikîsha, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with elam. their defection left the eastern frontier of karduniash unprotected, and, by opening to the elamite the fords of the tigris, permitted him to advance on babylon unhindered by any serious obstacle. as soon as the compact was sealed, tiummân massed his battalions on the middle course of the uknu, and, before crossing the frontier, sent two of his generals, the susian khumba-darà and the chaldean nabu-damîq, as the bearers of an insolent ultimatum to the court of nineveh: he offered the king the choice between immediate hostilities, or the extradition of the sons of urtaku and khumbân-khaldash, as well as of their partisans who had taken refuge in assyria. to surrender the exiles would have been an open confession of inferiority, and such a humiliating acknowledgment of weakness promptly reported throughout the eastern world might shortly have excited a general revolt: hence assur-bani-pal disdainfully rejected the proposal of the elamite sovereign, which had been made rather as a matter of form than with any hope of its acceptance, but the issue of a serious war with susa was so uncertain that his refusal was accompanied with serious misgivings. it needed many favourable omens from the gods to encourage him to believe in his future success. the moon-god sin was the first to utter his prediction: he suffered eclipse in the month of tammuz, and for three successive days, at nightfall, showed himself in the sky surrounded by strange appearances which heralded the death of a king in elam, and foretold calamity to that country. then assur and ishtar struck tiummân with violent convulsions; they caused his lips and eyes to be horribly distorted, but he despised their warning, and as soon as his seizure had passed, set out to assume command of his army. the news of his action reached nineveh in the month of ab, on the morning of the solemn festival of ishtar. assur-bani-pal was at arbela, celebrating the rites in honour of the goddess, when the messenger appeared before him and repeated, together with the terms of the declaration of war, the scornful words which tiummân had uttered against him and his patroness: �this prince whose wits have been crazed by ishtar--i will let him escape no more, when once i have gone forth and measured my strength against him!� this blasphemy filled the assyrian king with horror. that very evening he betook himself to the sanctuary, and there, prostrate before the image of the goddess, he poured forth prayers mingled with tears: �lady of arbela, i am assur-bani-pal, king of assyria, the creature of thy hands, the offspring of a father whom thou didst create! behold now, this tiummân, the king of elam, who despises the gods of assyria, hath sent forth his host and prepared himself for the conflict; he hath called for his arms to rush to attack assyria. do thou, o archer of the gods, like a bolt falling in the midst of the battle, overthrow him, and let loose upon him a tempest, and an evil wind!� ishtar heard his prayer, and her voice sounded through the gloom: �fear not,� said she, comforting him: �since thou hast raised thy hands to me in supplication, and thine eyes are bedewed with tears grant thee a boon!� towards the end of that night, a seer slept in the temple and was visited by a dream. ishtar of arbela appeared to him, with a quiver on either side, a bow in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. she advanced towards the king, and spoke to him as if she had been his mother: �make war boldly! whichever way thou turnest thy countenance, there will i go!� and the king replied to her, �where thou goest, will i go with thee, sovereign lady!� but she answered, �stay thou here. dwell in this home of nebo, eat thy food and drink thy wine, listen to joyful songs and honour my divinity, until i have gone and accomplished this work. let not thy countenance grow pale, nor thy feet fail under thee, and expose not thyself to the danger of battle.� �and then, o king,� added the seer, �she hid thee in her bosom as a mother, and protected thy image. a flame shall spring forth before her, and shall spread abroad to destroy thine enemies: against tiummân, king of elam, who has angered her, has she set her face!� like mînephtah of old, in the days of the libyan invasions of egypt, assur-bani-pal allowed himself to be readily convinced by the decision of the gods; he did not quit arbela, but gave orders to his troops to proceed to the front. his generals opened the campaign in the month of em, and directed the main body of their forces against the fortress of durîlu, at the point on the frontier nearest to susa. tiummân was not expecting such a prompt and direct attack: he had reckoned doubtless on uniting his forces with those of dunânu with a view to invading karduniash, and suddenly realised that his adversary had forestalled him and was advancing on the heart of his empire. he slowly withdrew his advanced guard, and concentrated his forces round the town of tullîz, a few leagues on this side of susa, and there awaited the enemy�s attack.* * the site of tullîz is unknown. billerbock considers, and with reason, i think, that the battle took place to the south of susa, on the river shavur, which would correspond to the ulaî, on the lowest spurs of the ridge of hills bordering the alluvial plain of susiana. his position was a strong one, flanked on the right by a wood and on the left by the ulaî, while the flower of the elamite nobility was ranged around him. the equipment of his soldiers was simpler than that of the enemy: consisting of a low helmet, devoid of any crest, but furnished with a large pendant tress of horsehair to shade the neck; a shield of moderate dimensions; a small bow, which, however, was quite as deadly a weapon as that of the assyrians, when wielded by skilful hands; a lance, a mace, and a dagger. he had only a small body of cavalry, but the chariotry formed an important force, and presented several original features. the chariot did not follow the classic model, rounded in front and open at the back; it was a kind of light car, consisting of a square footboard placed flat on the axle of the wheels, and furnished with triangular side-pieces on two sides only, the vehicle being drawn by a pair of horses. such chariots were easier to manage, better adapted for rapid motion, and must have been more convenient for a reconnaissance or for skirmishes with infantry; but when thrown in a mass against the heavy chariotry of the peoples of the euphrates, they were far too slightly built to overthrow the latter, and at close quarters were of necessity crushed by the superior weight of the adversary. [illustration: 206.jpg ituni breaks his bow with a blow of his sword, and gives himself up to the executioner] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken from the original in the british museum. [illustration: 206b.jpg the battle of tulliz] tiummân had not succeeded in collecting all his forces before the first columns of the assyrian army advanced to engage his front line, but as he was expecting reinforcements, he endeavoured to gain time by despatching ituni, one of his generals, with orders to negotiate a truce. the assyrian commander, suspecting a ruse, would not listen to any proposals, but ordered the envoy to be decapitated on the spot: ituni broke his bow with a blow of his sword, and stoically yielded his neck to the executioner. the issue of the battle was for a long time undecided, but the victory finally remained with the heavy regiments of assyria. the left wing of the susians, driven into the ulaî, perished by drowning, and the river was choked with the corpses of men and horses, and the débris of arms and broken chariots. the right wing took to flight under cover of a wood, and the survivors tried to reach the mountains. [illustration: 209.jpg urtaku cousin of tiummân, surrendering to an assyrian] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the british museum. urtaku, the cousin of tiummân, was wounded by an arrow; perceiving an assyrian soldier coming up to him, he told him who he was, and recommended him to carry his head to the general: �he will pay you handsomely for it,� he added. tiummân had led in person several charges of his body-guard; and on being wounded, his son tammaritu had succeeded in rescuing him from the thick of the fight: both seated together in a chariot, were in full flight, when one of the wheels caught against a tree and was shattered, the shock flinging the occupants to the ground. a large body of assyrians were in close pursuit, led by one of the exiled susian princes, a second tam-maritu, son of urtaku. [illustration: 210.jpg the last arrow of tiummân and his son] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. at the first discharge an arrow wounded tiummân in the right side, and brought him to his knee. he felt that all was over, and desiring at all events to be revenged, he pointed out the deserter prince to his companion, crying indignantly, �let fly at him.� the arrow missed its mark, and a flight of hostile darts stretched the young man on the ground: the traitor tammaritu dealt the son his death-blow with his mace, while an assyrian decapitated the father. the corpses were left on the field, but the head of the king, after being taken to the general in command, was carried through the camp on one of the chariots captured during the action, and was eventually sent to the palace of arbela by the hand of a well-mounted courier. [illustration: 211.jpg death of tiummân and his son] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. the day concluded with the making of an inventory of the spoil, and by an enumeration of the heads of the slain: prisoners from the rank and file were beaten to death according to custom, and several of the principal officers had their tongues torn out or were flayed alive. the news of the disaster was brought to susa towards evening by the fugitives, and produced a revolution in the city. the partisans of the exiled princes, seizing the adherents of tiummân, put them in chains, and delivered them up to the conqueror. the shattered remnants of the army rallied round them, and a throng of men and women in festal garb issued forth along the banks of the ulai to meet the assyrians. the priests and sacred singers marched to the sound of music, marking the rhythm with their feet, and filling the air with the noise of their harps and double flutes, while behind them came a choir of children, chanting a hymn under the direction of the consecrated eunuchs. the tartan met them, and, acting in accordance with the orders of assur-bani-pal, presented to the multitude khumbân-igash, the eldest son of urtaku, as their king. the people joyfully hailed the new sovereign, and the assyrians, after exacting tribute from him and conferring the fief of khaîdalu on his brother tammaritu, withdrew, leaving to the new princes the task of establishing their authority outside the walls of susa and madaktu. as they returned, they attacked the gambulâ, speedily reducing them to submission. dunânu, besieged in his stronghold of shapîbel, surrendered at discretion, and was carried away captive with all his family. [illustration: 212.jpg khumbân-igash proclaimed king] thus assur-bani-pal had scrupulously obeyed the orders of ishtar. while his generals were winning his victories he had been eating and drinking, hunting, dallying with his wives, and living in the open air. he was taking his pleasure with the queen in the palace garden when the head of tiummân was brought to him: he caused it to be suspended from the branch of a pine tree in full view of the whole court, and continued his banquet to the sound of harps and singing. rusas iii., king of urartu, died about this time, and his successor, sharduris iii., thought it incumbent on him to announce his accession at nineveh. assur-bani-pal received the embassy at arbela, with the graciousness befitting a suzerain whom a faithful vassal honours by his dutiful homage, and in order to impress the urartians still further with an idea of his power, he showed them the two elamite delegates, khumba-darâ and nabu-damîq, in chains at his feet.* * belck and lehmann have very ingeniously connected the embassy, mentioned in the assyrian documents, with the fact of the accession of the king who sent it. [illustration: 215.jpg the head of thumman sent to nineveh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. the chariot speeding along at a gallop in the topmost series of pictures carries a soldier bearing the head of tiumraân in his hand; behind him, under a tent, scribes are registering the heads which are brought in. in the two lower bas-reliefs are displayed the closing scenes of the battle. these wretched men had a more cruel ordeal yet in store for them: when the assyrian army re-entered nineveh, assur-bani-pal placed them on the route along which the cortège had to pass, and made them realise to the full the humiliation of their country. dunânu walked at the head of the band of captive chiefs, with the head of tiummân, taken from its tree, suspended round his neck. when the delegates perceived it, they gave way to despair: khumba-darâ tore out his beard by handfuls, and nabu-damîq, unsheathing the dagger which hung from his belt, plunged it into his own breast. [illustration: 216.jpg assur-bani-pal banqueting with his queen] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the british museum the head of tiummân hangs on the second tree on the left-hand side. the triumphal entry was followed by the usual tortures. the head of tiummân was fixed over the gate of nineveh, to rot before the eyes of the multitude. dunânu was slowly flayed alive, and then bled like a lamb; his brother shamgunu had his throat cut, and his body was divided into pieces, which were distributed over the country as a warning. even the dead were not spared: the bones of nabu-shumirîsh were disinterred and transported to assyria, where his sons were forced to bray them in a mortar.* we may estimate the extent of the alarm which had been felt at nineveh by the outburst of brutal joy with which the victory was hailed. * the fullest text of all those which narrate the campaign against tiummân and dunânu is that on _cylinder b of the british museum_. it pretends, as usual, that the king led the army in person, but the words which the seer places in the mouth of ishtar prove that the king remained at arbela by divine command, and the inscription on one of the bas reliefs, as well as _tablet k 2674_, mentions, without giving his name, the general who was sent against susa. [illustration: 217.jpg two elamite chiefs flayed alive after the battle of tullîz] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. the experience of the past showed what a terrible enemy assyria had in elam, and how slight was the chance of a successful issue in a war against her. her kings had often invaded chaldæa, and had more than once brought it directly under their sway; they had ravaged its cities and pillaged its temples, and the sanctuary of susa were filled with statues of the gods or with bas-reliefs which they had dedicated after their campaigns on the euphrates. although they had not been successful against assyria to the same extent, they had at least always victoriously repelled her attacks: they had held their own against sargon, given much trouble to sennacherib, and defied the power of esarhaddon with impunity. never till now had an assyrian army gained such an important victory over elam, and though it was by no means decisive, we can easily believe that assur-bani-pal was filled with pride and delight, since it was the first time that a king of nineveh had imposed on elam a sovereign of his own choice. since homage was voluntarily rendered him by the rulers of foreign nations, assur-bani-pal doubtless believed that he might exact it without hesitation from the vassal princes dependent on the empire; and not from the weaker only like those who were still to be found in syria, but also from the more powerful, not excepting the lord of karduniash. shamash-shumukîn had fully risen to his position as king of babylon, and the unbroken peace which he had enjoyed since the death of urtaku had enabled him almost to complete the restoration of the kingdom begun under esarhaddon. he had finished the rebuilding of the walls of babylon, and had fortified the approaches to the city, thus rendering it capable of withstanding a long siege; he had repaired the temple of sippara, which had never recovered from the elamite invasion; and while unstintingly lavishing his treasures in honour of the gods and for the safety of his capital, he watched with jealous care over the interests of his subjects. he obtained for them the privilege of being treated on the same footing as the assyrians throughout his father�s ancestral domains; they consequently enjoyed the right of trading without restriction throughout the empire, and met with the same degree of protection from the officials of nineveh as from the magistrates of their own country. assur-bani-pal had at the outset furthered the wishes of his brother to the utmost of his power: he had granted the privileges demanded, and whenever a chaldæan of noble birth arrived at his court, he received him with special marks of favour. the two states enjoyed a nearly absolute equality during the opening years of his reign, and though the will of esarhaddon had made babylon dependent on assyria, the yoke of vassalage was far from heavy. the suzerain reserved to himself the honour of dedicating the mighty works begun by his father, the restoration of the temple of bel-marduk and of the double wall of fortification; he claimed, in his inscriptions, the whole merit of the work, but he none the less respected his brother�s rights, and in no way interfered in the affairs of the city except in state ceremonies in which the assertion of his superior rank was indispensable. but with success his moderation gradually gave place to arrogance. in proportion as his military renown increased, he accentuated his supremacy, and accustomed himself to treat babylon more and more as a vassal state. after the conquest of elam his infatuated pride knew no bounds, and the little consideration he still retained for shamash-shumukîn vanished completely. he thenceforward refused to regard him as being more than a prefect bearing a somewhat higher title than his fellows, a viceroy owing his crown, not to the will of their common father, but to the friendship of his brother, and liable to be deprived of it at any moment through the caprice of the sovereign. he affected to consider all that took place at babylon as his own doing, and his brother as being merely his docile instrument, not deserving mention any more than the ordinary agents who carried out his designs; and if, indeed, he condescended to mention him, it was with an assumption of disdainful superiority. it is a question whether shamash-shumukîn at this juncture believed that his brother was meditating a design to snatch the reins of government from his hand, or whether he merely yielded to the impulse of wounded vanity in resolving to shake off a yoke which had become intolerable. knowing that his power was not equal to that of assur-bani-pal, he sought to enter into relations with foreign allies who shared the same fears, or nursed a similar feeling of bitterness. the nobles and priests of the ancient sumerian and accadian cities were already on his side, but the aramaeans had shown themselves hostile at his accession, and had brought down on him the forces of elam. he found means, however, to conciliate them, together with the tribes which dwelt on the tigris and the uknu, as well as those of the lower euphrates and the arabian desert. he won over to his projects nabu-bêlzikri, the chief of the kaldâ--grandson of that merodach-baladan who had cherished invincible hatred against sargon and sennacherib--besides the lords of the bit-dakkuri and bît-amukkâni, and the sheikh of the pukudu. khumbân-igash ought to have remained loyal to the friend to whom he owed his kingdom, but he chafed at the patronage of assyria, and assur-bani-pal had just formulated a demand to which he, not unreasonably, hesitated to accede. the archaic statue of nana, stolen from uruk by kutur-nakhunta sixteen centuries before, and placed by that prince in one of the temples of susa, had become so naturalised in its new abode that the kings of elam, not content with rendering it an official cult, were wont to send presents to babylonia, to the image which had replaced it in its original sanctuary. assur-bani-pal now required khumbân-igash to give back the original statue, but the elamite could not obey this mandate without imperilling both his throne and his person: he would thereby have risked incurring the displeasure both of the nobles, whose pride would have suffered at the loss of so precious a trophy, and of the common people, who would have thus been deprived of one of their most venerable objects of devotion. the messengers of shamash-shumukîn, arriving at the moment when this question was agitating the court of susa, found the way already prepared for a mutual understanding. besides, they held in their hands an irresistible argument, the treasures of bel-marduk of babylon, of nebo of borsippa, and of nergal of kuta, which had been confided to them by the priests with a view to purchasing, if necessary, the support of elam. khumbân-igash thereupon promised to send a detachment of troops to karduniash, and to invade the provinces of assyria the moment war should be declared. the tribes of guti were easily won over, and were followed by the kings of phoenicia and the bedâwin of melukhkha, and perhaps egypt itself was implicated in the plot. the prince of kedar, amuladdin, undertook to effect a diversion on the frontiers of syria, and uatê, son of layali, one of the arab kings who had paid homage to esarhaddon, was not behindhand in furnishing his contingent of horsemen and wild native infantry. the coalition already extended from the shores of the mediterranean and the red sea to the persian gulf before assur-bani-pal became aware of its existence. an unforeseen occurrence suddenly broke in upon his peace and revealed the extent of the peril which threatened him.* * the chronology of this war has been determined by g. smith from the dates attached to the documents in the british museum, which give the names of three _limmi_, assur durnzur, zagabbu, and bel-kharrân-shadua: these he assigned respectively to the years 650, 649, and 648 b.c. tiele has shown that these three _limmi_ must be assigned to the years 652-650 b.c. though these dates seem in the highest degree probable, we must wait before we can consider them as absolutely certain till chance restores to us the missing parts of the canon. kudur, the assyrian prefect of uruk, learnt from sin-tabnî-uzur, the governor of uru, that certain emissaries of shamash-shumukîn had surreptitiously entered that city and were secretly fomenting rebellion among the people. sin-tabnî-uzur himself had been solicited to join the movement, but had absolutely refused to do so, and considering himself powerless to repress the disaffection with the few soldiers at his disposal, he had demanded reinforcements. kudur first furnished him with five hundred men of his own troops, and subsequently sent some battalions which were under the command of the governors of arrapkha and amidi, but which were, for some unknown reason, encamped in the neighbourhood. it would appear that shamash-shumukîn, finding his projects interfered with by this premature exposure, tried to counteract its effects by protestations of friendship: a special embassy was despatched to his brother to renew the assurances of his devotion, and he thus gained the time necessary to complete his armaments. as soon as he felt himself fully prepared, he gave up further dissimulation, and, throwing away the mask, proclaimed himself independent of assyria, while at the same moment khumbân-igash despatched his army to the frontier and declared war on his former protector. assur-bani-pal was touched to the quick by what he truly considered the ingratitude of the babylonians. �as for the children of babylon, i had set them upon seats of honour, i had clothed them in robes of many colours, i had placed rings of gold upon their fingers; the children of babylon had been established in assyria, and were admitted into my presence. but shamash-shumukîn, the false brother, he has not observed my ordinances, but has raised against me the peoples of akkad, the kaldâ, the aramaeans, the peoples of the country of the sea, from akabah to bab-salimêti!� nineveh was at first in a state of trepidation at this unexpected blow; the sacred oracles gave obscure replies, and presaged evil four times out of five. at last, one day, a seer slept and dreamed a dream, in which he saw this sentence written on the ground in the temple of sin: �all those who are meditating evil against assur-bani-pal, king of assyria, and who are preparing themselves to fight with him, i will inflict on them a terrible death: by the swift sword, by flinging them into fire, by famine and by pestilence, will i destroy their lives!� the courage of the people being revived by this prophecy, assur-bani-pal issued a proclamation to the babylonians, in which he denounced his brother�s treason, and commanded them to remain quiet as they valued their lives, and, having done this, he boldly assumed the offensive (652 b.c.).* * the proclamation is dated in the eponymous year of assur duruzur, corresponding to 652 b.c.; the events which immediately preceded the proclamation ought, very probably, to be assigned to the same year. the only real danger came from the side of elam; this state alone was in a condition to oppose him with as numerous and determined an army as that which he himself could put into the field; if blam were disabled, it would be impossible for babylon to be victorious, and its fall would be a mere question of time. the opening of the campaign was a difficult matter. khumbân-igash, having sold his support dearly, had at all events spared no pains to satisfy his employer, and had furnished him with the flower of his nobility, comprising undashi, one of the sons of tiumman; zazaz, prefect of billatê; parru, chief of khilmu; attamîtu, commanding the archers; and nesu, commander-in-chief of his forces. in order to induce undashi to serve under him, he had not hesitated to recall to his memory the sad fate of tiumman: �go, and avenge upon assyria the murder of the father who begat thee!� the two opposing forces continued to watch one another�s movements without any serious engagement taking place during the greater part of the year 651 b.c.; though the assyrians won some slight advantages, killing attamîtu in a skirmish and sending his head to nineveh, some serious reverses soon counterbalanced these preliminary successes. nabo-bel-shumi had arrived on the scene with his aramæan forces, and had compelled the troops engaged in the defence of uruk and uru to lay down their arms: their leaders, including sin-tabni-uzur himself, had been forced to renounce the supremacy of assyria, and had been enrolled in the rebel ranks.* * the official accounts say nothing of the intervention of nabo-bel-shumi at this juncture, but the information furnished by _tablet k 159_ in the british museum makes up for their silence. the objection raised by tielo to the interpretation given by g. smith that this passage cannot refer to assyrian deserters, falls to the ground if one admits that the assyrian troops led into elam at a subsequent period by nabo-bel-shumi, were none other than the garrisons of the lower euphrates which were obliged to side with the insurgents in 651 b.c. the two despatches, _k 4696_ and _k 28_ in the british museum, which refer to the defection of sin-tabni-uzur, are dated the 8th and 11th abu in the eponymous year of zagabbu, corresponding to the year 651 b.c., as indicated by tiele with very good reason. operations seemed likely to be indefinitely prolonged, and assur-bani-pal, anxious as to the issue, importunately besought the gods to intervene on his behalf, when discords breaking out in the royal family of elam caused the scales of fortune once more to turn in his favour. the energy with which khumbân-igash had entered on the present struggle had not succeeded in effacing the disagreeable impression left on the minds of the majority of his subjects, by the fact that he had returned to his country in the chariots of the stranger and had been enthroned by the decree of an assyrian general. tammaritu, of khaîdalu, who had then fought at his side in the ranks of the invaders, was now one of those who reproached him most bitterly for his conduct. he frankly confessed that his hand had cut off the head of tiummân, but denied that he did so in obedience to the hereditary enemies of his country; he had but avenged his personal injuries, whereas khumbân-igash, following the promptings of ambition, had kissed the ground at the feet of a slave of assur-bani-pal and had received the crown as a recompense for his baseness. putting his rival to death, tammaritu seized the throne, and in order to prove that he was neither consciously nor unconsciously an instrument of ninevite policy, he at once sent reinforcements to the help of babylon without exacting in return any fresh subsidy. the assyrians, taking advantage of the isolated position of shamash-shumukîn, had pressed forward one of their divisions as far as the districts on the sea coast, which they had recovered from the power of nabo-bel-shumi, and had placed under the administration of belibni, a person of high rank. the arrival of the elamite force was on the point of further compromising the situation, and rekindling the flames of war more fiercely than ever, when a second revolution broke out, which shattered for ever the hopes of shamash-shumukîn. assur-bani-pal naturally looked upon this event as the result of his supplications and sacrifices; assur and ishtar, in answer to his entreaties, raised up indabigash, one of the most powerful feudal lords of the kingdom of susa, and incited him to revolt. tarnmaritu fled to the marshes which bordered the nâr-marratum, and seizing a vessel, put out to sea with his brothers, his cousins, seventeen princes of royal blood, and eighty-four faithful followers: the ship, driven by the wind on to the assyrian shore, foundered, and the dethroned monarch, demoralised by sea-sickness, would have perished in the confusion had not one of his followers taken him on his back and carried him safely to land across the mud. belibni sent him prisoner to nineveh with all his suite, and assur-bani-pal, after allowing him to humble himself before him, raised him from the ground, embraced him, and assigned to him apartments in the palace and a train of attendants befitting the dignity which he had enjoyed for a short time at susa. indabigash was too fully occupied with his own affairs to interfere again in the quarrel between the two brothers: his country, disorganised by the successive shocks it had sustained, had need of repose, for some years at least, before re-entering the lists, except at a disadvantage. he concluded no direct treaty with the assyrian king, but he at once withdrew the troops which had entered karduniash, and abstained from all hostile demonstrations against the garrisons of the border provinces: for the moment, indeed, this was all that was required of him (650 b.c.). deprived of the support of elam, babylon was doomed to fall. the aramaeans deserted her cause, and nabu-bel-shumi, grandson of merodach-baladan, despairing of ever recovering the heritage of his family, withdrew to his haunts among the reed beds of the uknu, taking back with him as hostages the assyrians whom he had forced to join his army at the beginning of the campaign. shamash-shumukîn, however, was not disconcerted: he probably hoped that his distant allies might yet effect a diversion in his favour, and thus oblige his brother to withdraw half of the forces employed against him. indeed, after the blockade had already begun, a band of arabs under the two sheikhs abiyatê and aamu forced a way through the besieging lines and entered the city. this was the last succour which reached babylon from without: for many long months all communication between her citizens and the outer world was completely cut off. the assyrians laid waste the surrounding country with ruthless and systematic cruelty, burning the villages, razing to the ground isolated houses, destroying the trees, breaking down the dykes, and filling up the canals. the year 649 b.c. was spent in useless skirmishes; the city offered an energetic and obstinate resistance, and as the walls were thick and the garrison determined, it would not have succumbed had not the supply of provisions finally failed. famine raged in the city, and the inhabitants devoured even their own children, while pestilence spreading among them mowed them down by thousands. [illustration: 228.jpg the eastern world in the reign of assur-bani-pal] the arab auxiliaries at this juncture deserted the cause of the defenders, and their sheikhs surrendered to assur-bani-pal, who received and pardoned them; but the babylonians themselves, knowing that they could expect no mercy, held out some time longer: at length, their courage and their strength exhausted, they rose against their chiefs, whose ambition or patriotic pride had brought them to such a pass, and determined to capitulate on any terms. shamash-shumukm, not wishing to fall alive into the hands of his brother, shut himself up in his palace, and there immolated himself on a funeral pyre with his wives his children, his slaves, and his treasures at the moment when his conquerors were breaking down the gates and penetrating into the palace precincts.* * g. smith thought that the babylonians, rendered furious by their sufferings, had seized shamash-shumukîn and burnt him to death. it is, however, certain that shamash-shumukîn killed himself, according to the eastern custom, to escape the tortures which awaited him if he fell alive into the hands of his enemies. the memory of this event, transferred by the popular imagination to assur-bani-pal, appears lu the concluding portion of the legendary history of sardanapalus. the city presented a terrible spectacle, and shocked even the assyrians, accustomed as they were to horrors of this sort. most of the numerous victims to pestilence or famine lay about the streets or in the public squares, a prey to the dogs and swine; such of the inhabitants and of the soldiery as were comparatively strong had endeavoured to escape into the country, and only those remained who had not sufficient strength left to drag themselves beyond the walls. assur-bani-pal pursued the fugitives, and, having captured nearly all of them, vented on them the full fury of his vengeance. he caused, the tongues of the soldiers to be torn out, and then had them clubbed to death. he massacred the common folk in front of the great winged bulls which had already witnessed a similar butchery half a century before, under his grandfather sennacherib; the corpses of his victims remained long unburied, a prey to all unclean beasts and birds. when the executioners and the king himself were weary of the slaughter, the survivors were pardoned; the remains of the victims were collected and piled up in specified places, the streets were cleansed, and the temples, purified by solemn lustrations, were reopened for worship.* assur-hani-pal proclaimed himself king in his brother�s room: he took the hands of bel, and, according to custom, his babylonian subjects gave him a new name, that of kandalanu, by which he was henceforth known among them.** * the date of 648-647 b.c. for the taking of babylon and the death of shamash-shumukîn is corroborated by the canon of ptolemy and the fragments of berosus, both of which attribute twenty or twenty-one years to the reign of saosdukhm (sammughes). lehmann points out a document dated in the xxth year of shamash-shumukîn, which confirms the exactitude of the information furnished by the greek chronologists. ** the canon of ptolemy gives as the successor of saosdukhm a certain kinêladan, who corresponds to kandalanu, whose date has been fixed by contemporary documents. the identity of kinêladan with assur-bani-pal was known from the greek chronologists, for whereas ptolemy puts kinêladan after saosdukhm, the fragments of berosus state that the successor of sammughes was his _brother_; that is to say, sardanapalus or assur-bani-pal. this identification had been proposed by g. smith, who tried to find the origin of the form kinêladan in the name of sinidinabal, which seems to be borne by assur-bani-pal in _tablet k 195 of the british museum_, and which is really the name of his elder brother; it found numerous supporters as soon as pinches had discovered the tablets dated in the reign of kandalanu, and the majority of assyriologists and historians hold that kandalanu and assur bani-pal are one and the same person. had he been wise, he would have completed the work begun by famine, pestilence, and the sword, and, far from creating, a new babylon, he would have completed the destruction of the ancient city. the same religious veneration which had disarmed so many of his predecessors probably withheld him from giving free rein to his resentment, and not daring to follow the example of sennacherib, he fell back on the expedient adopted by tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon, adhering to their idea of two capitals for two distinct states, but endeavouring to unite in his own person the two irreconcilable sovereignties of marduk and assur. he delegated the administration of babylonian affairs to shamash-danâni, one of his high officers of state,* and re-entered nineveh with an amount of spoil almost equalling that taken from egypt after the sack of thebes. * tin�s shamash-danâni, who was _limmu_ in 644 b.c., was called at that date prefect of akkad, that is to say, of babylon. he probably entered on this office immediately after the taking of the city. kuta, sippara, and borsippa, the vassal states of babylon, which had shared the misfortune of their mistress, were, like her, cleared of their ruins, rebuilt and repeopled, and were placed under the authority of shamash-danâni: such was their inherent vitality that in the short space of ten or a dozen years they had repaired their losses and reattained their wonted prosperity. soon no effect of their disaster remained except an additional incentive for hating nineveh, and a determination more relentless than ever not to spare her when the day of her overthrow should come and they should have her in their power. it was impossible for so violent and so prolonged a crisis to take place without in some degree injuring the prestige of the empire. subjects and allies of long standing remained loyal, but those only recently subjugated by conquest, as well as the neighbouring independent kingdoms, without hesitation threw off the yoke of suzerainty or of obligatory friendship under which they had chafed. egypt freed herself from foreign domination as soon as the possibilities of war with elam had shown themselves, and it was psammetichus of sais, son of necho, one of the princes most favoured by the court of nineveh, who set on foot this campaign against his former patron. he expelled the assyrian garrisons, reduced the petty native princes to submission, and once more set up the kingdom of the pharaohs from elephantine to the syrian desert, without assur-bani-pal having been able to spare a single soldier to prevent him, or to bring him back to a sense of his duty. the details of his proceedings are unknown to us: we learn only that he owed his success to mercenaries imported from asia minor, and the assyrian chroniclers, unaccustomed to discriminate between the different peoples dwelling on the shores of the ægean, believed that these auxiliaries were supplied to the pharaoh by the only sovereign with whom they had had any dealings, namely, gyges, king of lydia. that gyges had had negotiations with psammetichus and procured assistance for him has not yet been proved, but to assert that he was incapable of conceiving and executing such a design is quite a different matter. on the contrary, all the information we possess concerning his reign shows that he was daring in his political undertakings, and anxious to court alliances with the most distant countries. the man who tried to draw assur-bani-pal into a joint enterprise against the cimmerians would not have hesitated to ally himself with psammetichus if he hoped to gain the least profit from so doing. constant intercourse by sea took place between ionia or caria and egypt, and no event of any importance could occur in the delta without being promptly reported in ephesus or miletus. before this time the heraclid rulers of sardes had lived on excellent terms with most of the æolian or ionian colonies: during the anxious years which followed his accession gyges went still further, and entered into direct relations with the nations of greece itself. it was no longer to the gods of asia, to zeus of telmissos, that he addressed himself in order to legitimatise his new sovereignty, but, like midas of phrygia, he applied to the prophetic god of hellas, to the delphian apollo and his priests. [illustration: 235.jpg psammetichus i.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. he recompensed them lavishly for pronouncing judgment in his favour: beside the silver offerings with which he endowed the temple at delphi, he presented to it a number of golden vases, and, among others, six craters weighing thirty talents each, which, placed by the side of the throne of midas, were still objects of admiration in the treasury of the corinthians in the time of herodotus. to these he added at various times such valuable gifts that the pythian priestess, who had hitherto been poor, was in later times accounted to have owed to him her wealth. having made sure of the good will of the immortals, gyges endeavoured to extend his influence among the greek colonies along the coast, and if he did not in every case gain a footing amongst them, his failure seems to have been due, not to his incapacity, but to the force of circumstances or to the ambiguous position which he happened to occupy with regard to these colonies. ambition naturally incited him to annex them and make them into lydian cities, but the bold disposition of their inhabitants and their impatience of constraint never allowed any foreign rule to be established over them: conquest, to be permanent, would have to be preceded by a long period of alliance on equal terms, and of discreet patronage which might insensibly accustom them to recognise in their former friend, first a protector, and then a suzerain imbued with respect for their laws and constitution. gyges endeavoured to conciliate them severally, and to attach them to himself by treaties favourable to their interests or flattering to their vanity, and by timely and generous assistance in their internecine quarrels; and thus, secretly fostering their mutual jealousies, he was able to reduce some by force of arms without causing too much offence to the rest. he took colophon, and also, after several fruitless campaigns, the magnesia which lay near sardes, magnesia of sipylos, tradition subsequently adorning this fortunate episode in his history with various amusing anecdotes. according to one account he had a favourite in a youth of marvellous beauty called magnes, whom the magnesians, as an act of defiance to gryges, had mutilated till he was past recognition; and it was related that the king appealed to the fortune of war to avenge the affront. by a bold stroke he seized the lower quarters of smyrna, but was unable to take the citadel,* and while engaged in the struggle with this city, he entered into a friendly understanding with ephesus and miletus. * herodotus mentions this war without entering into any details. we know from pausanias that the people of smyrna defended themselves bravely, and that the poet mimnermus composed an elegy on this episode in their history. ephesus, situated at the mouth of the river oayster, was the natural port of sardes, the market in which the gold of lydia, and the commodities imported from the east by the caravans which traversed the royal route, might be exchanged for the products of hellas and of the countries of the west visited by the greek mariners. the city was at this time under the control of a family of rich shipowners, of whom the head was called melas: gryges gave him his daughter in marriage, and by this union gained free access to the seaboard for himself and his successors. the reason for his not pushing his advantages further in this direction is not hard to discover; since the fall of the kingdom of phrygia had left his eastern frontier unprotected, the attacks of the cimmerians had obliged him to concentrate his forces in the interior, and though he had always successfully repulsed them, the obstinacy with which these inroads were renewed year after year prevented him from further occupying himself with the greek cities. he had carefully fortified his vast domains in the basin of the ehyndakos, he had reconquered the troad, and though he had been unable to expel the barbarians from adramyttium, he prevented them from having any inland communications. miletus rendered vigorous assistance in this work of consolidating his power, for she was interested in maintaining a buffer state between herself and the marauders who had already robbed her of sinope; and it was for this reason that gyges, after mercilessly harassing her at the beginning of his reign, now preferred to enter into an alliance with her. he had given the milesians permission to establish colonies along the hellespont and the propontid at the principal points where communication took place between europe and asia; abydos, lampsacus, parium, and cyzicus, founded successively by milesian admirals, prevented the tribes which remained in thrace from crossing over to reinforce their kinsfolk who were devastating phrygia. gryges had hoped that his act of deference would have obtained for him the active support of assur-bani-pal, and during the following years he perseveringly continued at intervals to send envoys to nineveh: on one occasion he despatched with the embassy two cimmerian chiefs taken in battle, and whom he offered in token of homage to the gods of assyria. experience, however, soon convinced him that his expectations were vain; the assyrians, far from creating a diversion in his favour, were careful to avoid every undertaking which might draw the attention of the barbarians on themselves. as soon as gyges fully understood their policy, he broke off all connection with them, and thenceforth relied on himself alone for the protection of his interests. the disappointment he thus experienced probably stirred up his anger against assyria, and if he actually came to the aid of psammetichus, the desire of giving expression to a secret feeling of rancour no doubt contributed to his decision. assur-bani-pal deeply resented this conduct, but lydia was too far off for him to wreak his vengeance on it in a direct manner, and he could only beseech the gods to revenge what he was pleased to consider as base ingratitude: he therefore prayed assur and ishtar that �his corpse might lie outstretched before his enemies, and his bones be scattered far and wide.� a certain tugdami was at that time reigning over the cimmerians, and seems to have given to their hitherto undisciplined hordes some degree of cohesion and guidance.*; he gathered under his standard not only the trêres, the thracian kinsfolk of the cimmerians, but some of the asianic tribes, such as the lycians,** who were beginning to feel uneasy at the growing prosperity of gyges, and let them loose upon their lydian quarry. * the name tugdami, mentioned in the hymn published by strong, has been identified by sayce with the cimmerian chief mentioned by strabo under the name of lygdamis. the opinion of sayce has been adopted by other assyriologists. the inscription makes tugdami a king of the manda, and thus overthrows the hypothesis that lygdamis or dygdamis was a lycian chief who managed to discipline the barbarian hordes. ** the alliance of the lycians with the cimmerians and trêres is known from the evidence of callisthenes preserved for us by strabo. it is probable that many of the marauding tribes of the taurus--isaurians, lycaonians, and painphylians--similarly joined the cimmerians. their heavy cavalry, with metal helmets and long steel swords, overran the peninsula from end to end, treading down everything under their horses� hoofs. gyges did his best to stand up against the storm, but his lancers quailed beneath the shock and fled in confusion: he himself perished in the flight, and his corpse remained in the enemy�s hands (652 b.c.). the whole of lydia was mercilessly ravaged, and the lower town of sardes was taken by storm.* * strabo states definitely that it was lygdamis who took the city. the account given by the same author of a double destruction of sardes in 652 and 682 b.c. is due to an unfortunate borrowing from the work of caliisthenes. [illustration: 240.jpg battle of the cimmerians against the greeks accompanied by their dogs] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sarcophagus of clazomenæ. ardys, who had succeeded his father on the throne, was able, however, to save the citadel: he rallied around him the remnants of his army and once more took the field. the cities of ionia made common cause with him; their hoplites issued victorious from more than one engagement, and their dogs, trained to harry fearlessly the horses of the enemy, often took an active part in the battle. city after city was attacked by the barbarians, and the suburbs plundered. ephesus, on account of the wealth it contained, formed their chief attraction, but their forces dashed themselves fruitlessly against its walls; they avenged themselves for their failure by setting on fire the temple of artemis which stood in the outskirts. this act of sacrilege profoundly stirred the whole hellenic world, and when the first fury of pillage was exhausted, the barbarians themselves seemed to have been struck with superstitious horror at their crime: deadly fevers contracted in the marshes near the city thinned their ranks, and in the scourge which struck down their forces they recognised the chastisement of the goddess.* * the invasion of ionia by the cimmerians is indicated in general terms by herodotus; the details of the attack on ephesus and the destruction of the temple of artemis are preserved in a passage of callimachus, and in the fragments quoted by hesychius. the survivors abandoned the siege and withdrew in disorder towards the mountains of the interior. on their way they surprised magnesia on the mæander and entirely destroyed it, but this constituted their sole military success: elsewhere, they contented themselves with devastating the fields without venturing to attack the fortified towns. scarcely had ardys freed himself from their unwelcome presence, than, like his father before him, he tried to win the support of assyria. he sent an envoy to nineveh with a letter couched in very humble terms: �the king whom the gods acknowledge, art thou; for as soon as thou hadst pronounced imprecations against my father, misfortune overtook him. i am thy trembling servant; receive my homage graciously, and i will bear thy yoke!� assur-bani-pal did not harden his heart to this suppliant who confessed his fault so piteously, and circumstances shortly constrained him to give a more efficacious proof of his favour to ardys than he had done in the days of gyges. on quitting lydia, tugdami, with his hordes, had turned eastwards, bent upon renewing in the provinces of the taurus and the euphrates the same destructive raids which he had made among the peoples of the ægean seaboard; but in the gorges of cilicia he came into contact with forces much superior to his own, and fell fighting against them about the year 645 b.c. his son sanda-khshatru led the survivors of this disaster back towards the centre of the peninsula, but the conflict had been so sanguinary that the cimmerian power never fully recovered from it. assur-bani-pal celebrated the victory won by his generals with a solemn thanksgiving to marduk, accompanied by substantial offerings of gold and objects of great value.* * strabo was aware, perhaps from xanthus of lyclia, that lygdamis had fallen in battle in cilicia. the hymn to marduk, published by strong, informs us that the cimmerian chief fell upon the assyrians, and that his son sanda khshatru carried on hostilities some time longer. sanda khshatru is an iranian name of the same type as that of the median king uva-khshatra or cyaxares. the tranquillity of the north-west frontier was thus for a time secured, and this success most opportunely afforded the king leisure to turn his attention to those of his vassals who, having thrown off their allegiance during the war against shamash-shumukîn, had not yet returned to their obedience. among these were the arabs and the petty princes of egypt. the contingents furnished by yauta, son of hazael, had behaved valiantly during the siege of babylon, and when they thought the end was approaching, their leaders, abiyatê and aamu, had tried to cut a way through the assyrian lines: being repulsed, they had laid down their arms on condition of their lives being spared. there now remained the bulk of the arab tribes to be reduced to submission, and the recent experiences of esarhaddon had shown the difficulties attending this task. assur-bani-pal entrusted its accomplishment to his subjects in edom, moab, ammon, the haurân, and damascus, since, dwelling on the very borders of the desert, they were familiar with the routes and the methods of warfare best suited to the country. they proved victorious all along the line. yauta, betrayed by his own subjects, took refuge with the nabatæans; but their king, nadanu, although he did not actually deliver him up to the assyrians, refused to grant him an asylum, and the unhappy man was finally obliged to surrender to his pursuers. his cousin uatê, son of birdadda, was made chief in his place by the assyrians, and yauta was sent to nineveh, where he was exposed at one of the city gates, chained in a niche beside the watch-dogs. amuladdin, the leading prince of kedar, met with no better fate: he was overcome, in spite of the assistance rendered him by adîya, the queen of a neighbouring tribe, and was also carried away into captivity. his defeat completed the discouragement of the tribes who still remained unsubdued. they implored mercy, which assur-bani-pal granted to them, although he deposed most of their sheikhs, and appointed as their ruler that abiyatê who had dwelt at his court since the capitulation of babylon. abiyatê took the oath of fidelity, and was sent back to kedar, where he was proclaimed king of all the arab tribes under the suzerainty of assyria.* * the _cylinder b of the brit. mus._ attributes to the reign of assur-bani-pala whole series of events, comprising the first submission of yauta and the restitution of the statues of atarsamain, which had taken place under esarhaddon. the assyrian annalists do not seem to have always clearly distinguished between yauta, son of hazael, and uatè, son of birdadda. of all the countries which had thrown off their allegiance during the late troubles, egypt alone remained unpunished, and it now seemed as if its turn had come to suffer chastisement for its rebellion. it was, indeed, not to be tolerated that so rich and so recently acquired a province should slip from the grasp of the very sovereign who had completed its conquest, without his making an effort on the first opportunity to reduce it once more to submission. such inaction on his part would be a confession of impotence, of which the other vassals of the empire would quickly take advantage: tyre, judah, moab, the petty kings of the taurus, and the chiefs of media, would follow the example of pharaoh, and the whole work of the last three centuries would have to be done over again. there can be no doubt that assur-bani-pal cherished the secret hope of recovering egypt in a short campaign, and that he hoped to attach it to the empire by more permanent bonds than before, but as a preliminary to executing this purpose it was necessary to close and settle if possible the account still open against elam. recent events had left the two rival powers in such a position that neither peace nor even a truce of long duration could possibly exist between them. elam, injured, humiliated, and banished from the plains of the lower euphrates, over which she had claimed at all times an almost exclusive right of pillage, was yet not sufficiently enfeebled by her disasters to be convinced of her decided inferiority to assyria. only one portion of her forces, and that perhaps the smallest, had taken the field and sustained serious reverses: she had still at her disposal, besides the peoples of the plain and the marshes who had suffered the most, those almost inexhaustible reserves of warlike and hardy mountaineers, whose tribes were ranged on the heights which bounded the horizon, occupying the elevated valleys of the uknu, the ulaî, and their nameless affluents, on the western or southern slopes or in the enclosed basins of the iranian table-land. here elam had at her command at least as many men as her adversaries could muster against her, and though these barbarian contingents lacked discipline and systematic training, their bravery compensated for the imperfection of their military education. elam not only refused to admit herself conquered, but she believed herself sure of final victory, and, as a matter of fact, it is not at all certain that assur-bani-pal�s generals would ever have completely triumphed over her, if internal discords and treason had not too often paralysed her powers. the partisans of khumbân-igash were largely responsible for bringing about the catastrophe in which tiummân had perished, and those who sided with tammaritu had not feared to provoke a revolt at the moment when khumbân-igash was occupied in chaldæa; indabigash in his turn had risen in rebellion in the rear of tammaritu, and his intervention had enabled the assyrians to deal their final blow at shamash-shumukîn. the one idea of the non-reigning members of the royal house was to depose the reigning sovereign, and they considered all means to this end as justifiable, whether assassination, revolt, desertion to the enemy, or defection on the very field of battle. as soon as one of them had dethroned another, hatred of the foreigner again reigned supreme in his breast, and he donned his armour with a firm determination to bring the struggle to an end, but the course he had pursued towards his predecessor was now adopted by one of his relatives towards himself; the enemy meanwhile was still under arms, and each of these revolutions brought him a step nearer to the goal of his endeavours, the complete overthrow of the elamite kingdom and its annexation to the empire of nineveh. even before the struggle with babylon was concluded, assur-bani-pal had demanded of indabigash the release of the assyrians whom nabo-bel-shumu had carried off in his train, besides the extradition of that personage himself. indabigash had no desire for war at this juncture, but hesitated to surrender the kaldâ, who had always served him faithfully: he entered into negotiations which were interminably prolonged, neither of the two parties being anxious to bring them to a close. after the fall of babylon, assur-bani-pal, who was tenacious in his hatred, summoned the elamite ambassadors, and sent them back to their master with a message conceived in the following menacing terms: �if thou dost not surrender those men, i will go and destroy thy cities, and lead into captivity the inhabitants of susa, madaktu, and khaidalu. i will hurl thee from thy throne, and will set up another thereon: as aforetime i destroyed tiummân, so will i destroy thee.� a detachment of troops was sent to enforce the message of defiance, but when the messengers had reached the frontier town of deri, indabigash was no longer there: his nobles had assassinated him, and had elected khumbân-khaldash, the son of atta-mêtush, king in his stead. the opportunity was a favourable one to sow the seeds of division in the elamite camp, before the usurper should have time to consolidate his power: assur-bani-pal therefore threw himself into the cause of tammaritu, supporting him with an army to which many malcontents speedily rallied. the aramæans and the cities of the marsh-lands on the littoral, khilmu, billatê, dummuku, sulâa, lakhiru, and dibirîna, submitted without a struggle, and the invaders met with no resistance till they reached bît-imbi. this town had formerly been conquered by sennacherib, but it had afterwards returned to the rule of its ancient masters, who had strongly fortified it. it now offered a determined resistance, but without success: its population was decimated, and the survivors mutilated and sent as captives into assyria--among them the commander of the garrison, imbappi, son-in-law of khumbân-khaldash, together with the harem of tiummân, with his sons and daughters, and all the members of his family whom his successors had left under guard in the citadel. the siege had been pushed forward so rapidly that the king had not been able to make any attempt to relieve the defenders: besides this, a pretender had risen up against him, one umbakhabua, who had been accepted as king by the important district of bubîlu. the fall of bît-imbi filled the two competitors with fear: they abandoned their homes and fled, the one to the mountains, the other to the lowlands on the shores of the nar-marratum. tammaritu entered susa in triumph and was enthroned afresh; but the insolence and rapacity of his auxiliaries was so ruthlessly manifested, that at the end of some days he resolved to rid himself of them by the sword. a traitor having revealed the design, tammaritu was seized, stripped of his royal apparel, and cast into prison. the generals of assur-bani-pal had no one whom they could proclaim king in his stead, and furthermore, the season being well advanced, the elamites, who had recovered from their first alarm, were returning in a body, and threatened to cut off the assyrian retreat: they therefore evacuated susa, and regained assyria with their booty. they burnt all the towns along the route whose walls were insufficient to protect them against a sudden escalade or an attack of a few hours� duration, and the country between the capital and the frontier soon contained nothing but heaps of smoking ruins (647 e.g.).* * the difficulty we experience in locating on the map most of the names of elamite towns is the reason why we cannot determine with any certainty the whole itinerary followed by the assyrian army. the campaign, which had been so successful at the outset, had not produced all the results expected from it. the assyrians had hoped henceforth to maintain control of elam through tammaritu, but in a short time they had been obliged to throw aside the instrument with which they counted on effecting the complete humiliation of the nation: khumbân-khaldash had reoccupied susa, following on the heels of the last assyrian detachment, and he reigned as king once more without surrendering nabo-bel-shumi, or restoring the statue of nana, or fulfilling any of the conditions which had been the price of a title to the throne. assur-bani-pal was not inclined to bear patiently this partial reverse; as soon as spring returned he again demanded the surrender of the chaldæan and the goddess, under pain of immediate invasion. khumbân-khaldash offered to expel nabo-bel-shumi from lakhiru where he had entrenched himself, and to thrust him towards the assyrian frontier, where the king�s troops would be able to capture him. his offer was not accepted, and a second embassy, headed by tammaritu, who was once more in favour, arrived to propose more trenchant terms. the elamite might have gone so far as to grant the extradition of nabo-bel-shumi, but if he had yielded the point concerning nana, a rebellion would have broken out in the streets of susa: he preferred war, and prepared in desperation to carry it on to the bitter end. the conflict was long and sanguinary, and the result disastrous for elam. bît-imbi opened its gates, the district of kashi surrendered at discretion, followed by the city of khamanu and its environs, and the assyrians approached madaktu: khumbân-khaldash evacuated the place before they reached it, and withdrew beneath the walls of dur-undasi, on the western bank of the ididi. his enemies pursued him thither, but the stream was swift and swollen by rain, so that for two days they encamped on its bank without daring to cross, and were perhaps growing discouraged, when ishtar of arbela once more came to the rescue. appearing in a dream to one of her seers, she said, �i myself go before assur-bani-pal, the king whom my hands have created;� the army, emboldened by this revelation, overcame the obstacle by a vigorous effort, and dashed impetuously over regions as yet unvisited by any conqueror. the assyrians burnt down fourteen royal cities, numberless small towns, and destroyed the cornfields, the vines, and the orchards; khumbàn-khaldash, utterly exhausted, fled to the mountains �like a young dog.� banunu and the districts of tasarra, twenty cities in the country of khumir, khaîdalu, and bashimu, succumbed one after another, and when the invaders at length decided to retrace their steps to the frontier, susa, deserted by her soldiers and deprived of her leaders, lay before them an easy prey. it was not the first time in the last quarter of a century that the assyrians had had the city at their mercy. they had made some stay in it after the battle of tullîz, and also after the taking of bît-imbi in the preceding year; but on those occasions they had visited it as allies, to enthrone a king owing allegiance to their own sovereign, and political exigencies had obliged them to repress their pillaging instincts and their long-standing hatred. now that they had come as enemies, they were restrained by no considerations of diplomacy: the city was systematically pillaged, and the booty found in it was so immense that the sack lasted an entire month. the royal treasury was emptied of its gold and silver, its metals and the valuable objects which had been brought to it from sumir, accad, and karduniash at successive periods from the most remote ages down to that day, in the course of the successful invasions conducted by the princes of susa beyond the tigris; among them, the riches of the babylonian temples, which shamash-shumukîn had lavished on tiumman to purchase his support, being easily distinguishable. the furniture of the palace was sent to nineveh in a long procession; it comprised beds and chairs of ivory, and chariots encrusted with enamel and precious stones, the horses of which were caparisoned with gold. the soldiers made their way into the ziggurât, tore down the plates of ruddy copper, violated the sanctuary, and desecrated the prophetic statues of the gods who dwelt within it, shrouded in the sacred gloom, and whose names were only uttered by their devotees with trembling lips. shumudu, lagamar, partikira, ammankasibar, udurân, sapak, aîpaksina, bilala, panintimri, and kindakarpu, were now brought forth to the light, and made ready to be carried into exile together with their belongings and their priests. [illustration: 251.jpg statues of the gods carried off by assyrian soldiery] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard, _the monuments of nineveh_. thirty-two statues of the kings, both ancient and modern, in silver, gold, bronze, and marble, escorted the gods on their exodus, among their number being those of khumbânigash, son of umbadarâ, shutruk-nakhunta, and tammaritu ii., the sovereigns who had treated assyria with the greatest indignity. the effigy of khalludush was subjected to humiliating outrage: �his mouth, with its menacing smile, was mutilated; his lips, which breathed forth defiance, were slit; his hands, which had brandished the bow against assur, were cut off,� to avenge, though tardily, the ill success of sennacherib. the sacred groves shared the fate of the temples, and all the riches collected in them by generations of victors were carried off in cartloads. they contained, amongst other edifices, the tombs of the ancient heroes of elam, who had feared neither assur nor ishtar, and who had often brought trouble on the ancestors of assur-bani-pal. their sepulchres were violated, their coffins broken open, their bones collected and despatched to nineveh, to crumble finally into dust in the land of exile: their souls, chained to their mortal bodies, shared their captivity, and if they were provided with the necessary sustenance and libations to keep them from annihilation, it was not from any motives of compassion or pity, but from a refinement of vengeance, in order that they might the longer taste the humiliation of captivity. [illustration: 252.jpg the tumulus of suza] the image of nana was found among those of the native gods: it was now separated from them, and after having been cleansed from pollution by the prescribed ceremonies, it was conducted to uruk, which it entered in triumph on the 1st of the month kislev. it was reinstated in the temple it had inhabited of old: sixteen hundred and thirty-five years had passed since it had been carried off, in the reign of kutur-nakhunta, to dwell as a prisoner in susa. assur-bani-pal had no intention of preserving the city of susa from destruction, or of making it the capital of a province which should comprise the plain of elam. possibly it appeared to him too difficult to defend as long as the mountain tribes remained unsubdued, or perhaps the elamites themselves were not so completely demoralised as he was pleased to describe them in his inscriptions, and the attacks of their irregular troops would have rendered the prolonged sojourn of the assyrian garrison difficult, if not impossible. whatever the reason, as soon as the work of pillage was fully accomplished, the army continued its march towards the frontier, carrying with it the customary spoil of the captured towns, and their whole population, or all, at least, who had not fled at the approach of the enemy. the king reserved for himself the archers and pikemen, whom he incorporated into his own bodyguard, as well as the artisans, smelters, sculptors, and stonemasons, whose talents he turned to account in the construction and decoration of his palaces; the remainder of the inhabitants he apportioned, like so many sheep, to the cities and the temples, governors of provinces, officers of state, military chiefs, and private soldiers. khumbân-khaldash reoccupied susa after the assyrians had quitted it, but the misery there was so great that he could not endure it: he therefore transferred his court to madaktu, one of the royal cities which had suffered least from the invasion, and he there tried to establish a regular government. rival claimants to the throne had sprung up, but he overcame them without much difficulty: one of them, named paê, took refuge in assyria, joining tammaritn and that little band of dethroned kings or pretenders to the throne of susa, of whom assur-bani-pal had so adroitly made use to divide the forces of his adversary. khumbân-khaldash might well believe that the transportation of the statue of nana and the sack of susa had satisfied the vengeance of the assyrians, at least for a time, and that they would afford him a respite, however short; but he had reckoned without taking into consideration the hatred which had pursued nabo-bel-shumi during so many years: an envoy followed him as far as madaktu, and offered khumbân-khaldash once more the choice between the extradition of the chaldean or the immediate reopening of hostilities. he seems to have had a moment�s hesitation, but when nabo-bel-shumi was informed of the terms offered by the envoy, �life had no more value in his eyes: he desired death.� he ordered his shield-bearer to slay him, and when the man refused to do so, declaring that he could not live without his master, they stabbed each other simultaneously, and perished, as they had lived, together. khumbân-khaldash, delivered by this suicide from his embarrassments, had the corpse of the master and the head of the faithful shield-bearer duly embalmed, and sent them to nineveh. assur-bani-pal mutilated the wretched body in order to render the conditions of life in the other world harder for the soul: he cut off its head, and forbade the burial of the remains, or the rendering to the dead of the most simple offerings. [illustration: 256.jpg prayer in the desert after painting by gerome] about this time the inhabitants of bît-imbi, of til-khumba, and a dozen other small towns, who had fled for refuge to the woods of mount saladri, came forth from their hiding-places and cast themselves on the mercy of the conqueror: he deigned to receive them graciously, and enrolled them in his guard, together with the prisoners taken in the last campaign. he was contented to leave elam to itself for the moment, as he was disquieted at the turn affairs were taking in arabia. abiyatê, scarcely seated on the throne, had refused to pay tribute, and had persuaded uatê and nadanu to join him in his contumacy; several cities along the phoenician seaboard, led away by his example, shut their gates and declared themselves independent. assur-bani-pal had borne all this patiently, while the mass of his troops were engaged against khumbân-khaldash; but after the destruction of susa, he determined to revenge himself. his forces left nineveh in the spring of 642 b.c., crossed the euphrates, and the line of wooded hills which bordered the course of the river towards the west, provisioned themselves with water at the halting-place of laribda, and plunged into the desert in search of the rebels. the assyrians overran the country of mash, from the town of iarki to azalla, where �there dwell no beasts of the field, where no bird of the sky builds its nest,� and then, after filling their water-skins at the cisterns of azalla, they advanced boldly into the thirsty lands which extend towards qurazite; they next crossed the territory of kedar, cutting down the trees, filling up the wells, burning the tents, and reached damascus from the north-east side, bringing in their train innumerable flocks of asses, sheep, camels, and slaves. the bedâwin of the north had remained passive, but the nabathæans, encouraged by the remoteness of their country and the difficulty of access to it, persisted in their rebellion. the assyrian generals did not waste much time in celebrating their victory in the syrian capital: on the 3rd of ab, forty days after leaving the chaldsean frontier, they started from damascus towards the south, and seized the stronghold of khalkhuliti, at the foot of the basaltic plateau overlooked by the mountains of the haurân; they then destroyed all the fortresses of the country one after another, driving the inhabitants to take shelter in the rugged range of volcanic rocks, where they were blockaded, and finally reduced by famine: abiyatê capitulated, nadanu ransomed himself by a promise of tribute, and the whole desert between syria and the euphrates fell once more into the condition of an assyrian province. before returning to nineveh, assur-bani-pal�s generals inflicted chastisement on akko and ushu, the two chief tyrian cities which had revolted, and this vigorous action confirmed the fidelity of the assyrian vassals in palestine. uate�s life was spared, but his lip and cheek were pierced by the hand of the king himself, and he was led by a cord passed through the wounds, as if he had been a wild beast intended for domestication; a dog�s collar was riveted round his neck, and he was exposed in a cage at one of the gates of nineveh. aamu, the brother of abiyatê, was less fortunate, for he was flayed alive before the eyes of the mob. assyria was glutted with the spoil: the king, as was customary, reserved for his own service the able-bodied men for the purpose of recruiting his battalions, distributing the remainder among his officers and soldiers. the camels captured were so numerous that their market-value was for a long time much reduced; they were offered in the open market, like sheep, for a half-shekel of silver apiece, and the vendor thought himself fortunate to find a purchaser even at this price. the final ruin of elam followed swiftly on the subjugation of arabia. while one division of the army was scouring the desert, the remainder were searching the upland valleys of the ulaî and the uknu, and relentlessly pursuing khumbân-khaldash. the wretched monarch was now in command of merely a few bands of tattered followers, and could no longer take the field; the approach of the enemy obliged him to flee from madaktu, and entrench himself on the heights. famine, misery, and probably also the treachery of his last adherents, soon drove him from his position, and, despairing of his cause, he surrendered himself to the officers who were in pursuit of him. he was the third king of elam whom fate had cast alive into the hands of the conqueror: his arrival at nineveh afforded the haughty assur-bani-pal an occasion for celebrating one of those triumphal processions in which his proud soul delighted, and of going in solemn state to thank the gods for the overthrow of his most formidable enemy. on the day when he went to prostrate himself before assur and ishtar, he sent for tammaritu, paê, and khumbân-khaldash, and adding to them uatê, who was taken out of his cage for the occasion, he harnessed all four to his chariot of state, and caused himself to be drawn through nineveh by this team of fallen sovereigns to the gate of the temple of emashmash. and, indeed, at that moment, he might reasonably consider himself as having reached the zenith of his power. egypt, it is true, still remained unpunished, and its renewed vitality under the influence of the saïte pharaohs allowed no hope of its being speedily brought back into subjection, but its intrigues no longer exerted any influence over syria, and tyre itself appeared to be resigned to the loss of its possessions on the mainland. lydia under the rule of ardys continued to maintain intermittent intercourse with its distant protector. the provinces of the taurus, delivered from the terror inspired by the cimmerians, desired peace above all things, and the mannai had remained quiet since the defeat of akhsheri. babylon was rapidly recovering from the ills she had endured. she consoled herself for her actual servitude by her habitual simulation of independence; she called assur-bani-pal kandalanu, and this new name allowed her to fancy she had a separate king, distinct from the king of assyria. elam no longer existed. its plains and marsh lands were doubtless occupied by assyrian garrisons, and formed an ill-defined annexation to nineveh; the mountain tribes retained their autonomy, and although still a source of annoyance to their neighbours by their raids or sudden incursions, they no longer constituted a real danger to the state: if there still remained some independent elamite states, elam itself, the most ancient, except babylon, of all the asiatic kingdoms, was erased from the map of the world. the memories of her actual history were soon effaced, or were relegated to the region of legend, where the fabulous memnon supplanted in the memory of men those lines of hardy conquerors who had levied tribute from syria in the day when nineveh was still an obscure provincial town. assyria alone remained, enthroned on the ruins of the past, and her dominion seemed established for all time; yet, on closer investigation, indications were not wanting of the cruel sufferings that she also had endured. once again, as after the wars of tiglath-pileser i. and those of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., her chiefs had overtaxed her powers by a long series of unremitting wars against vigorous foes. doubtless the countries comprised within her wide empire furnished her with a more ample revenue and less restricted resources than had been at the command of the little province of ancient days, which had been bounded by the khabur and the zab, and lay on the two banks of the middle course of the tigris; but, on the other hand, the adversaries against whom she had measured her forces, and whom she had overthrown, were more important and of far greater strength than her former rivals. she had paid dearly for humiliating egypt and laying babylon in the dust. as soon as babylon was overthrown, she had, without pausing to take breath, joined issue with elam, and had only succeeded in triumphing over it by drawing upon her resources to the utmost during many years: when the struggle was over, she realised to what an extent she had been weakened by so lavish an outpouring of the blood of her citizens. the babylonian and elamite recruits whom she incorporated into her army after each of her military expeditions, more or less compensated for the void which victory itself had caused in her population and her troops; but the fidelity of these vanquished foes of yesterday, still smarting from their defeat, could not be relied on, and the entire assimilation of their children to their conquerors was the work of at least one or two generations. assyria, therefore, was on the eve of one of those periods of exhaustion which had so often enfeebled her national vitality and imperilled her very existence. on each previous occasion she had, it is true, recovered after a more or less protracted crisis, and the brilliancy of her prospects, though obscured for a moment, appeared to be increased by their temporary eclipse. there was, therefore, good reason to hope that she would recover from her latest phase of depression; and the only danger to be apprehended was that some foreign power, profiting by her momentary weakness, might rise up and force her, while still suffering from the effects of her heroic labours, to take the field once more. chapter iii--the medes and the second chaldæan empire _the fall of nineveh and the rise of the chaldæan and median empires--the xxvith egyptian dynasty: cyaxares, alyattes, and nebuchadrezzar._ _the legendary history of the kings of media and the first contact of the medes with the assyrians: the alleged iranian migrations of the avesta--media-proper, its fauna and flora; phraortes and the beginning of the median empire--persia proper and the persians; conquest of persia by the medes--the last monuments of assur-bani-pal: the library of kouyunjik--phraortes defeated and slain by the assyrians._ _cyaxares and his first attach on nineveh--the assyrian triangle and the defence of nineveh: assur-bani-pal summons the scythians to his aid--the scythian invasion--judah under manasseh and amon: development in the conceptions of the prophets--the scythians in syria and on the borders of egypt: they are defeated and driven back by cyaxares--the last kings of nineveh and naliopolassar--taking and, destruction of nineveh: division of the assyrian empire between the chaldæans and the medes (608 b.c.)._ _the xxvith egyptian dynasty--psammetichus i. and the ionian and carian mercenaries; final retreat of the ethiopians and the annexation of the theban principality; the end of egypt as a great power--first greek settlements in the delta; flight of the mashauasha and the reorganisation of the army--resumption of important works and the renaissance of art in egypt--the occupation of ashdod, and the syrian policy of psammetichus i._ _josiah, king of judah: the discovery and public reading of the book of the covenant; the religious reform--necho ii. invades syria: josiah slain at megiddo, the battle of carchemish--nebuchadrezzar ii.: his policy with regard to media--the conquests of cyaxares and the struggles of the mermnadæ against the greek colonies--the war between alyattes and cyaxares: the battle of the halys and the peace of 585 b.c.--necho reorganises his army and his fleet: the circumnavigation of africa--jeremiah and the egyptian party in jerusalem: the revolt of jehoiakim and the captivity of jehoiachin._ _psammetichus i. and zedekiah--apries and the revolt of tyre and of judah: the siege and destruction of jerusalem--the last convulsions of judah and the submission of tyre; the successes of aprics in phoenicia--the greeks in libya and the founding of cyrene: the defeat of irasa and the fall of apries--amasis and the campaign of nebuchadrezzar against egypt--relations between nebuchadrezzar and astyages--the fortifications of babylon and the rebuilding of the great ziggurât--the successors of nebuchadrezzar: nabonidus._ [illustration: 263.jpg page image] chapter iii--the medes and the second chaldæan empire _the fall of nineveh and the rise of the chaldæan and median empires--the xxvith egyptian dynasty: cyaxares, alyattes, and nebuchadrezzar._ drawn by faucher-gudin, from the silver vase of tchertomlitsk, now in the museum of the hermitage. the vignette is also drawn by faucher-gudin, and represents an egyptian torso in the turin museum; the cartouche which is seen upon the arm is that of psammetichus i. the east was ever a land of kaleidoscopic changes and startling dramatic incidents. an oriental empire, even when built up by strong hands and watched over with constant vigilance, scarcely ever falls to pieces in the slow and gradual process of decay arising from the ties that bind it together becoming relaxed or its constituent elements growing antiquated. it perishes, as a rule, in a cataclysm; its ruin comes like a bolt from the blue, and is consummated before the commencement of it is realised. one day it stands proud and stately in the splendour of its glory; there is no report abroad but that which tells of its riches, its industry, its valour, the good government of its princes and the irresistible might of its gods, and the world, filled with envy or with fear, deeming its good fortune immutable, never once applies to it, even in thought, the usual commonplaces on the instability of human things. suddenly an ill wind, blowing up from the distant horizon, bursts upon it in destructive squalls, and it is overthrown in the twinkling of an eye, amid the glare of lightning, the resounding crash of thunder, whirlwinds of dust and rain: when the storm has passed away as quickly as it came, its mutterings heralding the desolation which it bears to other climes, the brightening sky no longer reveals the old contours and familiar outlines, but the sun of history rises on a new empire, emerging, as if by the touch of a magic wand, from the ruins which the tempest has wrought. there is nothing apparently lacking of all that, in the eyes of the many, invested its predecessor with glory; it seems in no wise inferior in national vigour, in the number of its soldiers, in the military renown of its chiefs, in the proud prosperity of its people, or in the majesty of its gods; the present fabric is as spacious and magnificent, it would seem, as that which has but just vanished into the limbo of the past. no kingdom ever shone with brighter splendour, or gave a greater impression of prosperity, than the kingdom of assyria in the days succeeding its triumphs over blam and arabia: precisely at this point the monuments and other witnesses of its activity fail us, just as if one of the acts of the piece in which it had played a chief part having come to an end, the drop-curtain must be lowered, amid a flourish of trumpets and the illuminations of an apotheosis, to allow the actors a little breathing-space. half a century rolls by, during which we have a dim perception of the subdued crash of falling empires, and of the trampling of armies in fierce fight; then the curtain rises on an utterly different drama, of which the plot has been woven behind the scenes, and the exciting _motif_ has just come into play. we no longer hear of assyria and its kings; their palaces are in ruins; their last faithful warriors sleep in unhonoured graves beneath the ashes of their cities, their prowess is credited to the account of half a dozen fabulous heroes such as ninus, sardanapalus, and semiramis--heroes whose names call up in the memory of succeeding generations only vague but terrible images, such as the phantasies of a dream, which, although but dimly remembered in the morning, makes the hair to stand on end with terror. the nations which erewhile disputed the supremacy with assyria have either suffered a like eclipse--such as the khâti, urartu, the cossæans, and elam--or have fallen like egypt and southern syria into the rank of second-rate powers. it is chaldaea which is now in the van of the nations, in company with lydia and with media, whose advent to imperial power no one would have ventured to predict forty or fifty years before. the principality founded by deïokes about the beginning of the seventh century b.c., seemed at first destined to play but a modest part; it shared the fortune of the semi-barbarous states with which the ninevite conquerors came in contact on the western boundary of the iranian plateau, and from which the governors of arrapkha or of kharkhar had extorted tribute to the utmost as often as occasion offered. according to one tradition, it had only three kings in an entire century: deïokes up till 655 b.c., phraortes from 655 to 633, and after the latter year cyaxares, the hero of his race.* another tradition claimed an earlier foundation for the monarchy, and doubled both the number of the kings and the age of the kingdom.** * this is the tradition gleaned by herodotus, probably at sardes, from the mouths of persians residing in that city. ** this is the tradition derived from the court of artaxerxes by ctesias of cnidus. volney discovered the principle upon which the chronology of his median dynasty was based by ctesias. if we place his list side by side with that of herodotus-[illustration: 268.jpg and 269.jpg table of median dynasty] we see that, while rejecting the names given by herodotus, ctesias repeats twice over the number of years assigned by the latter to the reigns of his kings, at least for the four last generations- at the beginning herodotus gives before deïokes an interregnum of uncertain duration. ctesias substituted the round number of fifty years for the fifty-three assigned to deïokes, and replaced the interregnum by a reign which he estimated at the mean duration of a human generation, thirty years; he then applied to this new pair of numbers the process of doubling he had employed for the couple mentioned above- the number twenty-eight has been attributed to the reign of arbakes, instead of the number thirty, to give an air of truthfulness to the whole catalogue. this tradition ignored the monarchs who had rendered the second assyrian empire illustrious, and substituted for them a line of inactive sovereigns, reputed to be the descendants of ninus and semiramis. the last of them, sardanapalus, had, according to this account, lived a life of self-indulgence in his harem, surrounded by women, dressing himself in their garb, and adopting feminine occupations and amusements. the satrap of media, arbakes, saw him at his toilet, and his heart turned against yielding obedience to such a painted doll: he rebelled in concert with belesys the babylonian. the imminence of the danger thus occasioned roused sardanapalus from his torpor, and revived in him the warlike qualities of his ancestors; he placed himself at the head of his troops, overcame the rebels, and was about to exterminate them, when his hand was stayed by the defection of some bactrian auxiliaries. he shut himself up in nineveh, and for two whole years heroically repulsed all assaults; in the third year, the tigris, swollen by the rains, overflowed its banks and broke down the city walls for a distance of twenty stadia. the king thereupon called to mind an oracle which had promised him victory until the day when the river should betray him. judging that the prediction was about to be accomplished, he resolved not to yield himself alive to the besieger, and setting fire to his palace, perished therein, together with his children and his treasures, about 788 b.c. arbakes, thus rendered an independent sovereign, handed down the monarchy to his son mandaukas, and he in his turn was followed successively by sosarmos, artykas, arbianes, artaios, artynes, and astibaras.* these names are not the work of pure invention; they are met with in more than one assyrian text: among the petty kings who paid tribute to sargon are enumerated some which bear such names as mashdaku,** ashpanda,*** arbaku, and khartukka,*** and many others, of whom traces ought to be found some day among the archives of princely families of later times. * oppert thought that the names given by herodotus represented �aryanised forms of turanian names, of which otesias has given the persian translation.� ** mashdaku is identified by post with the mandaukas or maydaukas of ctesias, which would then be a copyist�s error for masdaukas. the identification with vashd[t]aku, vashtak, the name of a fabulous king of armenia, is rejected by rost; mashdaku would be the iranian mazdaka, preserved in the mazakes of arrian. *** ashpanda is the aspandas or aspadas which ctesias gives instead of the astyages of herodotus. **** the name of artykas is also found in the secondary form kardikoas, which is nearer the khartukka of the assyrian texts. there were in these archives, at the disposal of scribes and strangers inclined to reconstruct the history of asia, a supply of materials of varying value--authentic documents inscribed on brick tablets, legends of fabulous exploits, epic poems and records of real victories and conquests, exaggerated in accordance with the vanity or the interest of the composer: from these elements it was easy to compile lists of median kings which had no real connection with each other as far as their names, order of succession, or duration of reign were concerned. the assyrian chronicles have handed down to us, in place of these dynasties which were alleged to have exercised authority over the whole territory, a considerable number of noble houses scattered over the country, each of them autonomous, and a rival of its neighbour, and only brought into agreement with one another at rare intervals by their common hatred of the invader. some of them were representatives of ancient races akin to the susians, and perhaps to the first inhabitants of chaldæa; others belonged to tribes of a fresh stock, that of the aryans, and more particularly to the iranian branch of the aryan family. we catch glimpses of them in the reign of shalmaneser iii., who calls them the amadaî; then, after this first brush with assyria, intercourse and conflict between the two nations became more and more frequent every year, until the �distant medes� soon began to figure among the regular adversaries of the ninevite armies, and even the haughtiest monarchs refer with pride to victories gained over them. rammân-nirâri waged ceaseless war against them, tiglath-pileser iii. twice drove them before him from the south-west to the north-east as far as the foot of demavend, while sargon, sennacherib, and esarhaddon, during their respective reigns, kept anxious watch upon them, and endeavoured to maintain some sort of authority over the tribes which lay nearest to them. both in the personal names and names of objects which have come down to us in the records of these campaigns, we detect iranian characteristics, in spite of the semitic garb with which the inscriptions have invested them: among the names of countries we find partukka, diristânu, patusharra, nishaîa, urivzân, abîruz, and ariarma, while the men bear such names as ishpabarra, eparna, shîtirparna, uarzân, and dayaukku. as we read through the lists, faint resemblances in sound awaken dormant classical memories, and the ear detects familiar echoes in the names of those persians whose destinies were for a time linked with those of athens and sparta in the days of darius and of xerxes: it is like the first breath of greek influence, faint and almost imperceptible as yet, wafted to us across the denser atmosphere of the east. the iranians had a vague remembrance of a bygone epoch, during which they had wandered, in company with other nations of the same origin as themselves, in that cradle of the aryan peoples, aryanem-vaêjô. modern historians at first placed their mythical birthplace in the wilder regions of central asia, near the oxus and the jaxartes, and not far from the so-called table-land of pamir, which they regarded as the original point of departure of the indo-european races. they believed that a large body of these primitive aryans must have descended southwards into the basin of the indus and its affluents, and that other detachments had installed themselves in the oases of margiana and khorasmia, while the iranians would have made their way up to the plateau which separates the caspian sea from the persian gulf, where they sought to win for themselves a territory sufficient for their wants. the compilers of the sacred books of the iranians claimed to be able to trace each stage of their peregrinations, and to describe the various accidents which befell them during this heroic period of their history. according to these records, it was no mere chance or love of adventure which had led them to wander for years from clime to clime, but rather a divine decree. while ahurômazdaô, the beneficent deity whom they worshipped, had provided them with agreeable resting-places, a perverse spirit, named angrômaînyus, had on every occasion rendered their sojourn there impossible, by the plagues which he inflicted on them. bitter cold, for instance, had compelled them to forsake aryanem-vaêjô and seek shelter in sughdhâ and mûru.* locusts had driven them from sughdhâ; the incursions of the nomad tribes, coupled with their immorality, had forced them to retire from mûru to bâkhdhî, �the country of lofty banners,� ** and subsequently to nisaya, which lies to the south-east, between mûru and bâkhdhî. from thence they made their way into the narrow valleys of the harôyu, and overran vaêkereta, the land of noxious shadows.*** * sughdhâ is sogdiana; mûru, in ancient persian margush, is the modern merv, the margiana of classical geographers. ** bâkhdhî is identical with bactriana, but, as spiegel points out, this avestic form is comparatively recent, and readily suggests the modern balkh, in which the consonants have become weakened. *** the avesta places nisaya between mûru and bâkhdhî to distinguish it from other districts of the same name to be found in this part of asia: eugène burnouf is probably correct in identifying it with the nêssea of strabo and of ptolemy, which lay to the south of margiana, at the junction of the roads leading to hyrcania in one direction and bactriana in the other. from this point forwards, the countries mentioned by their chroniclers are divided into two groups, lying in opposite directions: arahvaiti, haêtumant, and haptahindu* on the east; and on the west, urvâ,** harôyu or haraêva is the greek aria, the modern province of herat. * arahvaiti, the harauvatish of the achsemenian inscriptions, is the greek arachosia, and haêtumant the basin of their etymander, the modern helmend; in other words, the present province of seîstan. hapta-hindu is the western part of the indian continent, i.e. the punjaub. ** the pehlevi commentators identify urvâ with mesônê, mentioned by classical writers, at the confluence of the tigris and euphrates, or perhaps the plain around ispahan which bore the name of masân in the sassanid period. fr. lenormant had connected it with the name urivzân, which is applied in the assyrian inscriptions to a district of media in the time of tiglath-pileser iii. [illustration: 274.jpg map of the lands created by ahura-mazda] the pehlevi commentators identify vaêkereta with kabulistan, and also volunteer the following interpretation of the title which accompanies the name: �the shadow of the trees there is injurious to the body, or as some say, the shadow of the mountains,� and it produces fever there. arguing from passages of similar construction, lassen was led to recognise in the epithet _duzhako-shayanem_ a place-name, �inhabitant of duzhakô,� which he identified with a ruined city in this neighbourhood called dushak; haug believed he had found a confirmation of this hypothesis in the fact that the pairika khnâthaiti created there by angrô-maînyus recalls in sound, at any rate, the name of the people parikani mentioned by classical writers, as inhabiting these regions. khnenta-vehrkâna,* bhagâ,** and chakhra,*** as far as the districts of varena**** and the basin of the upper tigris.^ this legend was composed long after the event, in order to explain in the first place the relationship between the two great families into which the oriental aryans were divided, viz. the indian and iranian, and in the second to account for the peopling by the iranians of a certain number of provinces between the indus and the euphrates. as a matter of fact, it is more likely that the iranians came originally from europe, and that they migrated from the steppes of southern russia into the plains of the kur and the araxes by way of mount caucasus.^^ * the name khnenta seems to have been hellenised into that of kharindas, borne by a river which formed the frontier between hyrcania and media; according to the pehlevi version it was really a river of hyrcania, the djordjân. the epithet vehrkâna, which qualifies the name khnenta, has been identified by burnouf with the hyrcania of classical geographers. ** raghâ is identified with azerbaijan in the pehlevi version of the vendidâd, but is, more probably, the rhago of classical geographers, the capital of eastern media. *** chakhra seems to be identical with the country of karkh, at the northwestern extremity of khorassan. **** varena is identified by the pehlevi commentators with patishkhvargâr, i.e. probably the patusharra of the assyrian inscriptions. ^ haug proposed to identify this last station with the regions situated on the shores of the caspian, near the south-western corner of that sea. but, as garrez points out, the pehlevi commentators prove that it must be the countries on the upper tigris. ^^ spiegel has argued that aryanem-vaôjô is probably arrân, the modern kazabadagh, the mountainous district between the kur and the aras, and his opinion is now gaining acceptance. the settlement of the iranians in russia, and their entrance into asia by way of the caucasus, have been admitted by rost. classical writers reversed this order of things, and derived the sauromato and other scythian tribes from media. it is possible that some of their hordes may have endeavoured to wedge themselves in between the halys and the euphrates as far as the centre of asia minor. their presence in this quarter would explain why we encounter iranian personal names in the sargonide epoch on the two spurs of mount taurus, such as that of the kushtashpi, king of kummukh, in the time of tiglath-pileser iii., and of the kundashpi mentioned in the _annals_ of shalmaneser iii. in the ninth century b.c.* * the name kushtashpi has been compared with that of vistâspa or gushtâsp by fr. lenormant, the name kundashpi with that of vindâspa by gutschmid, and, later on, ball has added to these a long list of names in egyptian and assyrian inscriptions which he looks upon as iranian. kundashpi recalls at first sight gundobunas, a name of the sassanid epoch, if this latter form be authentic. tiele adopts the identification of kushtashpi with vistâspa, and justi has nothing to say against it, nor against the identification of kundashpi with vindâspa. the main body, finding its expansion southwards checked by urartu, diverged in a south-easterly direction, and sweeping before it all the non-aryan or turanian tribes who were too weak to stem its progress, gradually occupied the western edge of the great plateau, where it soon became mainly represented by the two compact groups, the persians to the south on the farthest confines of elam, and the medes between the greater zab, the turnât, and the caspian. it is probable that the kingdom founded by deïokes originally included what was afterwards termed _media magna_ by the græco-roman geographers. this sovereignty was formed by the amalgamation under a single monarch of six important tribes--the buzo, paraatakeni, struchatas, arizanti, budii, and magi. it extended north-westwards as far as the kiziluzôn, which formed the frontier between the persians and the mannai on this side. northwards, it reached as far as demavend; the salt desert that rendered central iran a barren region, furnished a natural boundary on the east; on both the south and west, the assyrian border-lands of ellipi, kharkhar, and arrapkha prevented it from extending to the chief ranges of the zagros and cordioan mountains. the soil, though less fertile than that of chaldæa or of egypt, was by no means deficient in resources. the mountains contained copper, iron, lead, some gold and silver,* several kinds of white or coloured marble,** and precious stones, such as topaz, garnets, emeralds, sapphires, cornelian, and lapis-lazuli, the latter being a substance held in the highest esteem by eastern jewellers from time immemorial; mount bikni was specially celebrated for the fine specimens of this stone which were obtained there.*** its mountains were in those days clothed with dense forests, in which the pine, the oak, and the poplar grew side by side with the eastern plane tree, the cedar, lime, elm, ash, hazel, and terebinth.**** * rawlinson has collected traditions in reference to gold and silver mining among the mountains in the neighbourhood of takht-i-suleiman; one of these is still called _zerreh shardn_, the mount of the _gold-washers_. ** the best known was the so-called tauris marble quarried from the hills in the neighbourhood of lake urumiyah. *** the list of precious stones which pliny tells us were found in media, contains several kinds which we are unable to identify, _e.g_. the zathênê, the gassinades and narcissitis. pliny calls lapis-lazuli _sapphirus_, and declares that the bright specks of pyrites it contained rendered it unsuitable for engraving. in the assyrian inscriptions mount bikni, the modern demavend, is described as a mountain of uknu, or lapis-lazuli. **** a large part of the mountains and plains is now treeless, but it is manifest, both from the evidence of the inscriptions and from the observations of travellers, that the whole of media was formerly well wooded. the intermediate valleys were veritable orchards, in which the vegetation of the temperate zones mingled with tropical growths. the ancients believed that the lemon tree came originally from persia.* to this day the peach, pear, apple, quince, cherry, apricot, almond, filbert, chestnut, fig, pistachio-nut, and pomegranate still flourish there: the olive is easily acclimatised, and the vine produces grapes equally suitable for the table or the winepress.** the plateau presents a poorer and less promising appearance--not that the soil is less genial, but the rivers become lost further inland, and the barrenness of the country increases as they come to an end one after another. where artificial irrigation has been introduced, the fertility of the country is quite as great as in the neighbourhood of the mountains;*** outside this irrigated region no trees are to be seen, except a few on the banks of rivers or ponds, but wheat, barley, rye, oats, and an abundance of excellent vegetables grow readily in places where water is present. * the apple obtained from media was known as the modicum malum, and was credited with the property of being a powerful antidote to poison: it was supposed that it would not grow anywhere outside media. ** in some places, as, for instance, at kirmânshahàn, the vine stocks have to be buried during the winter to protect them from the frost. *** irrigation was effected formerly, as now, by means of subterranean canals with openings at intervals, known as _kanât_. the fauna include, besides wild beasts of the more formidable kinds, such as lions, tigers, leopards, and bears, many domestic animals, or animals capable of being turned to domestic use, such as the ass, buffalo, sheep, goat, dog, and dromedary, and the camel with two humps, whose gait caused so much merriment among the ninevite idlers when they beheld it in the triumphal processions of their kings; there were, moreover, several breeds of horses, amongst which the nisasan steed was greatly prized on account of its size, strength, and agility.* in short, media was large enough and rich enough to maintain a numerous population, and offered a stable foundation to a monarch ambitious of building up a new empire.** * in the time of the seleucides, media supplied nearly the whole of asia with these animals, and the grazing-lands of bagistana, the modern behistun, are said to have supported 160,000 of them. under the parthian kings media paid a yearly tribute of 3000 horses, and the nisæan breed was still celebrated at the beginning of the byzantine era. horses are mentioned among the tribute paid by the medic chiefs to the kings of assyria. ** the history of the medes remains shrouded in greater obscurity than that of any other asiatic race. we possess no original documents which owe their existence to this nation, and the whole of our information concerning its history is borrowed from assyrian and babylonian inscriptions, and from the various legends collected by the greeks, especially by herodotus and ctesias, from persian magnates in asia minor or at the court of the achæmenian kings, or from fragments of vanished works such as the writings of borosus. and yet modern archaeologists and philologists have, during the last thirty years, allowed their critical faculties, and often their imagination as well, to run riot when dealing with this very period. after carefully examining, one after another, most of the theories put forward, i have adopted those hypotheses which, while most nearly approximating to the classical legends, harmonise best with the chronological framework--far too imperfect as yet--furnished by the inscriptions dealing with the closing years of nineveh; i do not consider them all to be equally probable, but though they may be mere stop-gap solutions, they have at least the merit of reproducing in many cases the ideas current among those races of antiquity who had been in direct communication with the medes and with the last of their sovereigns. [illustration: 269.jpg nisæan houses harnessed to a royal chariot] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the bas-relief from persepolis now in the british museum. the first person to conceive the idea of establishing one was, perhaps, a certain fravartish, the phraortes of the greeks, whom herodotus declares to have been the son and successor of deiokes.* * the ancient form of the name, fravartish or frawarti, has been handed down to us by a passage in the great inscription of behistun; it means the man who proclaims faith in ahura mazda, the believer. [illustration: 280.jpg the persian realm] he came to the throne about 655 b.c. at a time when the styar of assur-bani-pal was still in the ascendant, and at first does not seem to have thought of trying to shake off the incubus of assyrian rule. he began very wisely by annexing such of the petty neighbouring states as had hitherto remained independent, and then set himself to attack the one other nation of iranian blood which, by virtue of the number and warlike qualities of its clans, was in a position to enter into rivalry with his own people. the persians, originally concentrated in the interior, among the steep valleys which divide the plateau on the south, had probably taken advantage of the misfortunes of elam to extend their own influence at its expense. their kings were chosen from among the descendants of a certain akhâmanish, the achæmenes of the greeks, who at the time of the iranian invasion had been chief of the pasargadæ, one of the persian clans. achæmenes is a mythical hero rather than a real person; he was, we are told, fed during infancy by an eagle--that mighty eagle whose shadow, according to a persian belief in mediaeval times, assured the sovereignty to him on whom it chanced to fall. achæmenes would seem to have been followed by a certain chaispi--or teispes--a less fabulous personage, described in the legends as his son. it was, doubtless, during his reign that assur-bani-pal, in hot pursuit of tiummân and khumbân-khaldash, completed the downfall of susa; chaispi claimed the eastern half of elam as his share of the spoil, and on the strength of his victory styled himself king of anshân--a title on which his descendants still prided themselves a hundred years after his death.* * the fact that teispes was the immediate successor of achæmenes, indicated by herodotus, is affirmed by darius himself in the behistun inscription. according to billet beck, the anzân (anshân) of the early achæmenidæ was merely a very small part of the ancient anzân (anshân), viz. the district on the east and south-east of kuh-i-dena, which includes the modern towns of yezdeshast, abadeh, yoklîd, and kushkiserd. persia, as then constituted, extended from the mouths of the oroatis--the modern tab--as far as the entrance to the straits of ormuzd.* the coast-line, which has in several places been greatly modified since ancient times by the formation of alluvial deposits, consists of banks of clay and sand, which lie parallel with the shore, and extend a considerable distance inland; in some places the country is marshy, in others parched and rocky, and almost everywhere barren and unhealthy. the central region is intersected throughout its whole length by several chains of hills, which rise terrace-like, one behind the other, from the sea to the plateau; some regions are sterile, more especially in the north and east, but for the most part the country is well wooded, and produces excellent crops of cereals. only a few rivers, such as the oroatis, which forms the boundary between persia and susiana,** the araxes, and the bagradas succeed in breaking through the barriers that beset their course, and reach the persian gulf;*** most of the others find no outlet, and their waters accumulate at the bottom of the valleys, in lakes whose areas vary at the different seasons. * herodotus imagined carmania and persia proper to be one and the same province; from the alexandrine period onwards historians and geographers drew a distinction between the two. ** the form of the name varies in different writers. strabo calls it the oroatis, nearchus the arosis; in pliny it appears as oratis and zarotis, and in ammianus marcellinus as oroates. *** the araxes is the modern bendamîr. the kyros, which flowed past persepolis, is now the pulwar, an affluent of the bendamîr. the bagradas of ptolemy, called the hyperis by juba, is the modern nabend. [illustration: 282.jpg scene in the mountains of persia.] drawn by boudier, from costs and flandin, _voyage en perse_, vol. i. pl. xcvi. [illustration: 285.jpg head of a persian archer] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the naksh-i-rustem bas-relief taken by dieulafoy. the mountainous district is furrowed in all directions by deep ravines, with almost vertical sides, at the bottom of which streams and torrents follow a headlong course. the landscape wears a certain air of savage grandeur; giant peaks rise in needle-like points perpendicularly to the sky; mountain paths wind upward, cut into the sides of the steep precipices; the chasms are spanned by single-arched bridges, so frail and narrow that they seem likely to be swept away in the first gail that blows. no country could present greater difficulties to the movements of a regular army or lend itself more readily to a system of guerrilla warfare. it was unequally divided between some ten or twelve tribes:* chief among these were the pasargadaa, from which the royal family took its origin; after them came the maraphii and maspii. * herodotus only mentions ten persian tribes; xenophon speaks of twelve. the chiefs of these two tribes were elected from among the members of seven families, who, at first taking equal rank with that of the pasargadaæ, had afterwards been reduced to subjection by the achæmenidæ, forming a privileged class at the court of the latter, the members of which shared the royal prerogatives and took a part in the work of government. of the remaining tribes, the panthialad, derusiæi, and carmenians lived a sedentary life, while the dai, mardians, dropici, and sagartians were nomadic in their habits. each one of these tribes occupied its own allotted territory, the limits of which were not always accurately defined; we know that sagartia, parseta-kônê, and mardia lay towards the north, on the confines of media and the salt desert,* taokênê extended along the seaboard, and carmania lay to the east. the tribes had constructed large villages, such as armuza, sisidôna, apostana, gogana, and taôkê, on the sea-coast (the last named possessing a palace which was one of the three chief residences of the achæmenian kings),** and carmana, persepolis, pasargadæ, and gabæ in the interior.*** * parsetakênê, which has already been identified with the partukkanu (or partakkanu) of the assyrian inscriptions, is placed by ptolemy in persia; mardia corresponds to the mountainous district of bebahan and kazrun. ** the position of most of these towns is still somewhat doubtful. armuza is probably ormuz (or hormuz) on the mainland, the forerunner of the insular hormuz of the portuguese, as the french scholar d�anville has pointed out; sisidôna has been identified with the modern village of mogu, near ras-jerd, apostana with the town of shewâr, the name seeming to be perpetuated in that of the jebel asban which rises not far from there. gogana is probably bender kongûn, and taokô, at the mouth of the granis, is either khor gasseîr or rohilla at the mouth of the bishawer. the palace, which was one of the three principal residences of the achæmenian kings, is probably mentioned by strabo, and possibly in dionysius periegetes. *** carmana is the modern kermân; the exact position of gabæ, which also possesses a palace, is not known. [illustration: 287.jpg a persian] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of one of the bas reliefs at persepolis, in dieulafoy. the persians were a keen-witted and observant race, inured to all kinds of hardships in their occupation as mountain shepherds, and they were born warriors. the type preserved on the monuments differs but little from that which still exists at the present day in the more remote districts. it was marked by a tall and slender figure, with sturdy shoulders and loins, a small head, with a thick shock of hair and curling beard, a straight nose, a determined mouth, and an eye steady and alert. yet, in spite of their valour, phraortes overpowered them, and was henceforward able to reckon the princes of anshân among his vassals; strengthened by the addition of their forces to his own, he directed his efforts to the subjection of the other races of the plateau. if we may believe the tradition of the hellenic epoch, he reduced them to submission, and, intoxicated by his success, ventured at last to take up arms against the assyrians, who for centuries past had held rule over upper asia. this was about 635 b.c., or less than ten years after the downfall of elam, and it does not seem likely that the vital forces of assyria can have suffered any serious diminution within so short a space of time.* * the date is indicated by the figures given by herodotus in regard to the medic kings, based on the calculations of himself or his authorities. phraortes died in 634 b.c., after a reign of twenty-two years, and as the last year of his reign coincides with the war against assyria, the preparations for it cannot have been much earlier than 635 or 636 b.c., a year or two before the catastrophe. assur-bani-pal, weary of fighting, even though he no longer directed operations in person, had apparently determined to remain entirely on the defensive, and not to take the field, unless absolutely compelled to do so by rebellion at home or an attack from outside. in view of the growing need of rest for the assyrian nation, he could not have arrived at a wiser decision, provided always that circumstances allowed of its being carried into effect, and that the tributary races and frontier nations were willing to fall in with his intentions. they did so at first, for the fate of elam had filled even the most unruly among them with consternation, and peace reigned supreme from the persian gulf to the mediterranean. assur-bani-pal took advantage of this unexpected lull to push forward the construction of public works in the valleys of the tigris and euphrates. the palace of sennacherib, though it had been built scarcely fifty years before, was already beginning to totter on its foundations; assur-bani-pal entirely remodeled and restored it--a proceeding which gave universal satisfaction. the common people had, as usual, to make the bricks with their own hands and convey them to the spot, but as the chariots employed for this purpose formed part of the booty recently brought back from elam, the privilege of using these trophies did something to lighten the burden of the tasks imposed on them. moreover, they had the satisfaction of seeing at work among the squads of labourers several real kings, the arabian chiefs who had been pursued and captured in the heart of the desert by assur-bani-pal�s generals; they plodded along under their heavy baskets, stimulated by the crack of the whip, amid insults and jeers. this palace was one of the largest and most ornate ever built by the rulers of assyria. true, the decoration does not reveal any novel process or theme; we find therein merely the usual scenes of battle or of the chase, but they are designed and executed with a skill to which the sculptor of nineveh had never before attained. the animals, in particular, are portrayed with a light and delicate touch--the wild asses pursued by hounds, or checked while galloping at full speed by a cast of the lasso; the herds of goats and gazelles hurrying across the desert; the wounded lioness, which raises herself with a last dying effort to roar at the beaters. we are conscious of egyptian influence underlying the asiatic work, and the skilful arrangement of the scenes from the elamite campaigns also reminds us of egypt. the picture of the battle of tullîz recalls, in the variety of its episodes and the arrangement of the perspective, the famous engagement at qodshu, of which ramses ii. has left such numerous presentments on the theban pylons. the assyrians, led by the vicissitudes of invasion to luxor and the ramesseum, had, doubtless, seen these masterpieces of egyptian art in a less mutilated state than that in which we now possess them, and profited by the remembrance when called upon to depict the private life of their king and the victories gained by his armies. [illustration: 290.jpg a herd of wild goats--a bas-relief of the time of assur-bani-pal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sketch by place. it was in this magnificent residence that assur-bani-pal led an existence of indolent splendour, such as the chroniclers of a later age were wont to ascribe to all the assyrian monarchs from the time of semiramis onwards.* * stories of the effeminacy of sardanapalus had been collected by ctesias of cnidus; they soon grew under the hands of historians in the time of alexander, and were passed on by them to writers of the roman and byzantine epochs. [illustration: 290b illustrated manuscript in heiroglyphics] we would gladly believe that he varied the monotony of his hunting expeditions, his banquets, and entertainments in the gardens in company with the women of the harem, by pleasures of a more refined nature, and that he took an unusual interest in the history and literature of the races who had become subject to his rule. as a matter of fact, there have been discovered in several of the ruined chambers of his palaces the remains of a regular library, which must originally have contained thousands of clay tablets, all methodically arranged and catalogued for his use. a portion of them furnish us at first-hand with the records of his reign, and include letters exchanged with provincial governors, augural predictions, consultation of oracles, observations made by the royal astrologers, standing orders, accounts of income and expenditure, even the reports of physicians in regard to the health of members of the royal family or of the royal household: these documents reveal to us the whole machinery of government in actual operation, and we almost seem to witness the secret mechanism by which the kingdom was maintained in activity. other tablets contain authentic copies of works which were looked upon as classics in the sanctuaries of the euphrates. probably, when babylon was sacked, sennacherib had ordered the books which lay piled up in e-sagilla and the other buildings of the city to be collected and carried away to nineveh along with the statues and property of the gods. they had been placed in the treasury, and there they remained until esarhaddon re-established the kingdom of karduniash, and assur-bani-pal was forced to deliver up the statue of marduk and restore to the sanctuaries, now rebuilt, all the wealth of which his grandfather had robbed them: but before sending back the tablets, he ordered copies to be made of them, and his secretaries set to work to transcribe for his use such of these works as they considered worthy of reproduction. the majority of them were treatises compiled by the most celebrated adepts in the sciences for which chaldæa had been famous from time immemorial; they included collections of omens, celestial and terrestrial, in which the mystical meaning of each phenomenon and its influence on the destinies of the world was explained by examples borrowed from the annals of world-renowned conquerors, such as naramsin and sargon of agade; then there were formulæ for exorcising evil spirits from the bodies of the possessed, and against phantoms, vampires, and ghosts, the recognised causes of all disease; prayers and psalms, which had to be repeated before the gods in order to obtain pardon for sin; and histories of divinities and kings from the time of the creation down to the latest date. among these latter were several versions of the epic of grilgames, the story of etana, of adapa, and many others; and we may hope to possess all that the assyrians knew of the old chaldæan literature in the seventh century b.c., as soon as the excavators have unearthed from the mound at kouyunjik all the tablets, complete or fragmentary, which still lie hidden there. even from the shreds of information which they have already yielded to us, we are able to piece together so varied a picture that we can readily imagine assur-bani-pal to have been a learned and studious monarch, a patron of literature and antiquarian knowledge. very possibly he either read himself, or had read to him, many of the authors whose works found a place in his library: the kings of nineveh, like the pharaohs, desired now and then to be amused by tales of the marvellous, and they were doubtless keenly alive to the delightful rhythm and beautiful language employed by the poets of the past in singing the praises of their divine or heroic ancestors. but the mere fact that his palace contained the most important literary collection which the ancient east has so far bequeathed to us, in no way proves that assur-bani-pal displayed a more pronounced taste for literature than his predecessors; it indicates merely the zeal and activity of his librarians, their intelligence, and their respect and admiration for the great works of the past. once he had issued his edict ordering new editions of the old masters to be prepared, assur-bani-pal may have dismissed the matter from his mind, and the work would go on automatically without need for any further interference on his part. the scribes enriched his library for him, in much the same way as the generals won his battles, or the architects built his monuments: they were nothing more than nameless agents, whose individuality was eclipsed by that of their master, their skill and talent being all placed to his credit. babylonia shared equally with assyria in the benefits of his government. he associated himself with his brother shamash-shumukin in the task of completing the temple of ê-sagilla; afterwards, when sole monarch, he continued the work of restoration, not only in babylon, but in the lesser cities as well, especially those which had suffered most during the war, such as uru, uruk, borsippa, and cutha.* he refers to the works at borsippa and kuta towards the end of the account of his campaign against shamash-shumukin, and to those at uruk in describing the war against khumbân khaldash. he remodelled the temple of bel at nippur, the walls built there by him being even now distinguishable from the rest by the size of the bricks and the careful dressing of the masonry. from the shores of the persian gulf to the mountains of armenia, assyria and karduniash were covered with building-yards just as they had been in the most peaceful days of the monarchy. [illustration: 294.jpg remains of assur-bani-pal�s wall at nippur] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph published by peters. it was at this unique juncture of apparent grandeur and prosperity that phraortes resolved to attack assur-bani-pal. there is nothing to indicate that his action took place simultaneously with some movement on the part of other peoples, or with a serious insurrection in any of the assyrian provinces. for my part, i prefer to set it down to one of those sudden impulses, those irresistible outbursts of self-confidence, which from time to time actuated the princes tributary to nineveh or the kings on its frontier. the period of inactivity to which some previous defeat inflicted on them or on their predecessors had condemned them, allowed them to regain their strength, and one or two victories over less powerful neighbours served to obliterate the memory of former humiliation and disaster; they flew to arms full of hope in the result, and once more drew down defeat upon their heads, being lucky indeed if their abortive rising led to nothing worse than the slaughter of their armies, the execution of their generals, and an increase in the amount of their former tribute. this was the fate that overtook phraortes; the conqueror of the persians, when confronted by the veteran troops of assyria, failed before their superior discipline, and was left dead upon the field of battle with the greater part of his army. so far the affair presented no unusual features; it was merely one more commonplace repetition of a score of similar episodes which had already taken place in the same region, under tiglath-pileser iii. or the early sargonides; but huvakshatara, the son of phraortes, known to the greeks as cyaxares,* instead of pleading for mercy, continued to offer a stubborn resistance. cyaxares belongs to history, and there can be no doubt that he exercised a decisive influence over the destinies of the oriental world, but precise details of his exploits are wanting, and his personality is involved in such obscuring mists that we can scarcely seize it; the little we have so far been able to glean concerning him shows us, not so much the man himself, as a vague shadow of him seen dimly through the haze. * the original form of the name is furnished by passages in the behistun inscription, where chitrantakhma of sagartia and fravartish of media, two of the claimants for the throne who rose against darius, are represented as tracing their descent from huvakshatara. his achievements prove him to have been one of those perfect rulers of men, such as asia produces every now and then, who knew how to govern as well as how to win battles--a born general and lawgiver, who could carry his people with him, and shone no less in peace than in war.* * g. rawlinson takes a somewhat different view of cyaxares� character; he admits that cyaxares knew how to win victories, but refuses to credit him with the capacity for organisation required in order to reap the full benefits of conquest, giving as his reason for this view the brief duration of the medic empire. the test applied by him does not seem to me a conclusive one, for the existence of the second chaldæan empire was almost as short, and yet it would be decidedly unfair to draw similar inferences touching the character of nabopolassar or nebuchadrezzar from this fact. [illustration: 297.jpg medic and persian foot-soldiers] drawn by faucher-gudin, after coste and flandin. the first and third figures are medes, the second and fourth persians. the armies at the disposal of his predecessors had been little more than heterogeneous assemblies of feudal militia; each clan furnished its own contingent of cavalry, archers, and pikemen, but instead of all these being combined into a common whole, with kindred elements contributed by the other tribes, each one acted separately, thus forming a number of small independent armies within the larger one. cyaxares saw that defeat was certain so long as he had nothing but these ill-assorted masses to match against the regular forces of assyria: he therefore broke up the tribal contingents and rearranged the units of which they were composed according to their natural affinities, grouping horsemen with horsemen, archers with archers, and pikemen with pikemen, taking the assyrian cavalry and infantry as his models.* * herodotus tells us that cyaxares was �the first to divide the asiatics into different regiments, separating the pikemen from the archers and horsemen; before his time, these troops were all mixed up haphazard together.� i have interpreted his evidence in the sense which seems most in harmony with what we know of assyrian military tactics. it seems incredible that the medic armies can have fought pell-mell, as herodotus declares, seeing that for two hundred years past the medes had been frequently engaged against such well-drilled troops as those of assyria: if the statement be authentic, it merely means that cyaxares converted all the small feudal armies which had hitherto fought side by side on behalf of the king into a single royal army in which the different kinds of troops were kept separate. the foot-soldiers wore a high felt cap known as a tiara; they had long tunics with wide sleeves, tied in at the waist by a belt, and sometimes reinforced by iron plates or scales, as well as gaiters, buskins of soft leather, and large wickerwork shields covered with ox-hide, which they bore in front of them like a movable bulwark; their weapons consisted of a short sword, which depended from the belt and lay along the thigh, one or two light javelins, a bow with a strongly pronounced curve, and a quiver full of arrows made from reeds.* their horsemen, like those of other warlike nations ii of the east, used neither saddle nor stirrups, and though they could make skilful use of lance and sword, their favourite weapon was the bow.** * herodotus describes the equipment of the persians in much the same terms as i have used above, and then adds in the following chapter that �the medes had the same equipment, for it is the equipment of the medes and not that of the persians.� ** herodotus says that the medic horsemen were armed in the same manner as the infantry. [illustration: 298.jpg a medic horseman] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a cast of the medic intaglio in the cabinet des médailles. accustomed from their earliest childhood to all kinds of equestrian exercises, they seemed to sit their horses as though they actually formed part of the animal. they seldom fought in line, but, from the very beginning of an action, hung like a dense cloud on the front and flanks of the enemy, and riddled them with missiles, without, however, coming to close quarters. like the parthians of a later epoch, they waited until they had bewildered and reduced the foe by their ceaseless evolutions before giving the final charge which was to rout them completely. no greater danger could threaten the assyrians than the establishment of a systematically organised military power within the borders of media. an invader starting from egypt or asia minor, even if he succeeded in overthrowing the forces sent out to meet him, had still a long way to go before he could penetrate to the heart of the empire. even if cilicia and syria should be conquered, nothing was easier than to oppose a further advance at the barrier of the euphrates; and should the euphrates be crossed, the khabur still remained, and behind it the desert of singar, which offered the last obstacle between nineveh and the invaders. the distances were less considerable in the case of an army setting out from urartu and proceeding along the basin of the tigris or its affluents; but here, too, the difficulties of transit were so serious that the invader ran a great risk of gradually losing the best part of his forces on the road. on the north-east and east, however, the ancient heritage of assur lay open to direct and swift attack. an enemy who succeeded in destroying or driving back the garrisons stationed as outposts on the rim of the plateau, from kharkhar to parsua, if he ventured to pursue his advantage and descended into the plain of the tigris, had no less than three routes to choose from--the kirind road on the south, the baneh road on the north, and the suleimanych road between the two. the last was the easiest of all, and led almost straight to the fords of altun-keupri and the banks of the lesser zab, on the confines of assyria proper, close under the walls of arbela, the holy city of ishtar. [illustration: 300.jpg the assyrian triangle] he needed but to win two victories, one upon leaving the mountains, the other at the passage of the zab, and two or three weeks� steady marching would bring him from hamadân right up to the ramparts of nineveh. cyaxares won a victory over assur-bani-pal�s generals, and for the first time in over a hundred years assyria proper suffered the ignominy of foreign invasion. the various works constructed by twenty generations of kings had gradually transformed the triangle enclosed between the upper zab, the tigris, and the jebel-makhlub into a regular fortified camp. the southern point of this triangle was defended by calah from the attacks of chaldoa or from foes coming down from media by iïolwân and suleimanyeh, while nineveh guarded it on the northeast, and several lines of walled cities--among which dur-sharrukîn and imgur-bel can still be identified--protected it on the north and east, extending from the tigris as far as the g-hazîr and zab. it was necessary for an enemy to break through this complex defensive zone, and even after this had been successfully accomplished and the walls of the capital had been reached, the sight which would meet the eye was well calculated to dismay even the most resolute invader. viewed as a whole, nineveh appeared as an irregular quadrilateral figure, no two sides of which were parallel, lying on the left bank of the tigris. [illustration: 301.jpg map of nineveh] the river came right up to the walls on the west, and the two mounds of kouyunjik and nebi-yunus, on which stood the palaces of the sargonides, were so skilfully fortified that a single wall connecting the two sufficed to ward off all danger of attack on this side. the south wall, which was the shortest of the four, being only about 870 yards in length, was rendered inaccessible by a muddy stream, while the north wall, some 2150 yards long, was protected by a wide moat which could be filled from the waters of the khuzur. [illustration: 302.jpg part of the fosse at nineveh] drawn by boudier, from a sketch in layard. the eastern front had for a long time depended for its safety on a single wall reinforced by a moat, but sennacherib, deeming it insufficiently protected against a sudden attack, had piled up obstacles in front of it, so that it now presented a truly formidable appearance. it was skirted throughout its whole length by a main rampart, 5400 yards long, which described a gentle curve from north to south, and rose to a height of about 50 feet, being protected by two small forts placed close to the main gates. the fosse did not run along the foot of the wall, but at a distance of about fifty yards in front of it, and was at least some 20 feet deep and over 150 feet in width. it was divided into two unequal segments by the khuzur: three large sluice-gates built on a level with the wall and the two escarpments allowed the river to be dammed back, so that its waters could be diverted into the fosse and thus keep it full in case of siege. in front of each segment was a kind of demi-lune, and--as though this was not precaution enough--two walls, each over 4300 yards long, were built in front of the demi-lunes, the ditch which separated them being connected at one end with the khuzur, and allowed to empty itself into a stream on the south. the number of inhabitants sheltered behind these defences was perhaps 300,000 souls;* each separate quarter of the city was enclosed by ramparts, thus forming, as it were, a small independent town, which had to be besieged and captured after a passage had been cut through the outer lines of defence. * jones and g. rawlinson credit nineveh with a population of not more than 175,000. cyaxares might well have lost heart in the face of so many difficulties, but his cupidity, inflamed by reports of the almost fabulous wealth of the city, impelled him to attack it with extraordinary determination: the spoils of susa, babylon, and thebes, in fact, of the whole of western asia and ethiopia, were, he felt, almost within his reach, and would inevitably fall into his hands provided his courage and perseverance did not fail him. after shutting up the remnant of the assyrian army inside nineveh he laid patient siege to the city, and the fame of his victories being noised abroad on all sides, it awoke among the subject races that longing for revenge which at one time appeared to have been sent to sleep for ever. it almost seemed as though the moment was approaching when the city of blood should bleed in its turn, when its kings should at length undergo the fate which they had so long imposed on other monarchs. nahum the elkoshite,* a hebrew born in the assyrian province of samaria, but at that time an exile in judah, lifted up his voice, and the echo of his words still resounds in our ears, telling us of the joy and hope felt by judah, and with judah, by the whole of asia, at the prospect. speaking as the prophet of jahveh, it was to jahveh that he attributed the impending downfall of the oppressor: �jahveh is a jealous god and avengeth; jahveh avengeth and is full of wrath; jahveh taketh vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. jahveh is slow to anger and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty; jahveh hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. he rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: bashan languisheth, and carmel, and the flower of lebanon languisheth.� * and, �behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.� then he goes on to unfold before the eyes of his hearers a picture of nineveh, humiliated and in the last extremity. * elkosh is identified by eusebius with elkese, which st. jerome declares to have been in galileo, the modern el kauzeh, two and a half hours� walk south of tibnin. the prophecy of nahum has been taken by some as referring to the campaign of phraortes against assyria, but more frequently to the destruction of nineveh by the medes and chaldæans. it undoubtedly refers to the siege interrupted by the scythian invasion. there she lies, behind her bastions of brick, anxiously listening for the approach of the victorious medes. �the noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels; and prancing horses and jumping chariots; the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear; and a multitude of slain and a great heap of carcases: and there is no end of the corpses; they stumble upon their corpses: because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts. behold, i am against thee, saith jahveh of hosts, and i will discover thy skirts upon they face; and i will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. and i will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock. and it shall come to pass that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her? whence shall i seek comforters for thee?� thebes, the city of amon, did not escape captivity; why then should nineveh prove more fortunate? �all thy fortresses shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women; the gates of thy land are set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire hath devoured thy bars. draw thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortresses: go into the clay and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. there shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off,... make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts. thou hast multiplied thy merchants as the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth and flieth away. thy crowned are as the locusts and thy marshals as the swarms of grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. thy shepherds slumber, o king of assyria: thy worthies are at rest: thy people are scattered upon the mountains, and there is none to gather them. there is no assuaging of thy hurt; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee clap the hands over thee; for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?� on this occasion nineveh escaped the fate with which the prophet had threatened it, but its safety was dearly bought. according to the tradition accepted in asia minor two hundred years later, a horde of scythians under king madyes, son of protothyes, setting out from the bussian steppes in pursuit of the cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. we are told that they flung themselves through the caspian gates into the basin of the kur, and came into contact with the medes at the foot of mount caucasus. the defeat of the medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of nineveh. this crisis in the history of asia was certainly not determined by chance. for eighty years assyria had been in contact with the scythians, and the assyrian kings had never ceased to keep an eye upon their movements, or lose sight of the advantage to which their bellicose temper might be turned in circumstances like the present. they had pitted them against the cimmerians, then against the medes, and probably against the kings of urartu as well, and the intimacy between the two peoples came to be so close that the scythian king bartatua did not hesitate to demand one of the daughters of bsarhaddon in marriage. from the very beginning of his reign assur-bani-pal had shown them the utmost consideration, and when king madyes, son of his ally bartatua, intervened thus opportunely in the struggle, he did so, not by mere chance, as tradition would have us believe, but at the urgent request of assyria. he attacked media in the rear, and cyaxares, compelled to raise the siege of nineveh, hastened to join battle with him. the engagement probably took place on the banks of the lower araxes or to the north of lake urumiah, in the region formerly inhabited by the mannai; but after defeating his foe and dictating to him the terms of submission, madyes, carried away by the lust of conquest, did not hesitate to turn his arms against his ally. exhausted by her recent struggle, assyria lay at his mercy, her fortresses alone being able to offer any serious resistance: he overran the country from end to end, and though the walled cities withstood the fury of his attack, the rural districts were plundered right and left, and laid desolate for many a year to come. the scythians of this epoch probably resembled those whom we find represented on the monuments of greek art two centuries later. tall fierce-looking men, with unkempt beards, their long and straggling locks surmounted by the _kyrbasis_, or pointed national cap of felt; they wore breeches and a blouse of embroidered leather, and were armed with lances, bows, and battle-axes. they rode bareback on untrained horses, herds of which followed their tribes about on their wanderings; each man caught the animal he required with the help of a lasso, put bit and bridle on him, and vaulting on to his back at a single bound, reduced him to a state of semi-obedience. no troops could stand their ground before the frantic charge of these wild horsemen; like the huns of roman times, the scythians made a clean sweep of everything they found in their path. they ruined the crops, carried off or slaughtered the herds, and set fire to the villages from sheer love of destruction, or in order to inspire terror; every one who failed to fly to the mountains or take refuge in some fortress, was either massacred on the spot or led away into slavery. [illustration: 308.jpg scythians tending their wounded] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the reliefs on a silver vase from kul-oba. too ignorant of the arts of war to undertake a siege in the regular way, they usually contented themselves with levying ransoms on fortified towns; occasionally, however, when the wealth accumulated behind the walls held out a prospect of ample booty, they blockaded the place until famine compelled it to surrender. more than one ancient city which, thanks to the good government of its rulers and the industry of its citizens, had amassed treasure of inestimable value, was put to fire and sword, and more than one fertile and populous region left unfilled and deserted.* most of the states which for the last three centuries had fought so stubbornly against the assyrians for independence, went down before the storm, including the kingdoms of urartu, of the mushku, and of the tabal,** the miserable end furnishing the hebrew prophets full fifty years later with a theme of sombre rejoicing. �there is meshech, tubal, and all her multitude; her graves are round about her: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for they caused their terror in the land of the living. and they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war, and have laid their swords under their heads,*** and their iniquities are upon their bones; for they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.� **** * this may be deduced from the passage in herodotus, where he says that � the scythians were masters of asia for twenty-eight years, and overturned everything by their brutality and stupidity: for, in addition to tribute, they exacted from every one whatever they chose, and, moreover, they prowled here and there, plundering as they thought good.� ** strabo refers in general terms to the presence of scythians (or, as he calls them, sacae) in armenia, cappadocia, and on the shores of the black sea. *** this, doubtless, means that the mushku and tabal had been so utterly defeated that they could not procure honourable burial for their dead, i.e. with their swords beneath their heads and their weapons on their bodies. **** 1 ezek. xxxii. 26, 27. the cimmerians, who, since their reverses in lydia and on mount taurus, had concentrated practically the whole of their tribes in cappadocia and in the regions watered by the halys and thermodon, shared the good fortune of their former adversaries. at that time they lived under the rule of a certain kôbos, who seems to have left a terrible reputation behind him; tradition gives him a place beside sesostris among the conquerors of the heroic age, and no doubt, like his predecessor dugdamis, he owed this distinction to some expedition or other against the peoples who dwelt on the shores of the ægean sea, but our knowledge of his career is confined to the final catastrophe which overtook him. after some partial successes, such as that near zela, for instance, he was defeated and made prisoner by madyes. his subjects, as vassals of the scythians, joined them in their acts of brigandage,* and together they marched from province to province, plundering as they went; they overran the western regions of the assyrian kingdom from melitene and mesopotamia to northern syria, from northern syria to phoenicia, damascus, and palestine,** and at length made their appearance on the judaean frontier. * it seems probable that this was so, when we consider the confusion between the scythians or sakse, and the cimmerians in the babylonian and persian inscriptions of the achsemenian epoch. ** their migration from media into syria and palestine is expressly mentioned by herodotus. since the day when sennacherib had been compelled to return to assyria without having succeeded in destroying jerusalem, or even carrying it by storm, judah had taken little or no part in external politics. divided at first by a conflict between the party of prudence, who advised submission to nineveh, and the more warlike spirits who advocated an alliance with egypt, it had ended by accepting its secondary position, and had on the whole remained fairly loyal to the dynasty of sargon. [illustration: 311.jpg iranian soldier fighting against the scythians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast of a cylinder given by cunningham. the cylinder is usually described as persian, but the dress is that of the medes as well as of the persians. on the death of hezekiah, his successor, manasseh, had, as we know, been tempted to intervene in the revolutions of the hour, but the prompt punishment which followed his first attempt put an end for ever to his desire for independence. his successor, amon, during his brief reign of two years,* had no time to desert the ways of his father, and josiah,** who came to the throne in 638 b.c., at the age of eight, had so far manifested no hostility towards assyria. * 2 kings xxi. 18-26; cf. 2 chron. xxxiii. 20-25. the reign of fifty-five years attributed to manasseh by the jewish annalists cannot be fitted into the chronology of the period; we must either take off ten years, thus reducing the duration of the reign to forty-five years, or else we must assume the first ten of manasseh to be synchronous with the last ten of hezekiah. ** 2 kings xxii. 1; cf. 2 chron. xxxiv. 1. thus, for more than fifty years, judah enjoyed almost unbroken peace, and led as happy and prosperous an existence as the barrenness of its soil and the unruly spirit of its inhabitants would permit. but though its political activity had been almost nothing during this interval, its spiritual life had seldom been developed with a greater intensity. the reverse sustained by sennacherib had undoubtedly been a triumph for isaiah, and for the religious party of which we are accustomed to regard him as the sole representative. it had served to demonstrate the power of jahveh, and his aversion for all idolatrous worship and for all foreign alliances. in vain did the partisans of egypt talk loudly of pharaoh and of all those principalities of this world which were drawn round in pharaoh�s orbit; egypt had shown herself incapable of safeguarding her friends, and things had gone steadily from bad to worse so long as these latter held the reins of government; their removal from office had been, as it were, the signal for a welcome change in the fortunes of the jews. jahveh had delivered his city the moment when, ceasing to rely upon itself, it had surrendered its guidance into his hands, and the means of avoiding disaster in the future was clearly pointed out to it. judah must be content to follow the counsels which isaiah had urged upon it in the name of the most high, and submissively obey the voice of its prophets. �thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. and ye shall defile the over-laying of thy graven images of silver, and the plating of thy molten images of gold: thou shalt cast them away as an unclean thing; thou shalt say unto it, get thee hence.� isaiah seems to disappear after his triumph, and none of his later prophecies have come down to us: yet the influence of his teaching lasted throughout the reign of hezekiah, and the court, supported by the more religious section of the people, not only abjured the worship of false gods, but forsook the high places and discontinued the practices which he had so strenuously denounced. the great bulk of the nation, however, soon returned to their idolatrous practices, if, indeed, they had ever given them up, and many of the royal advisers grew weary of the rigid observances which it was sought to impose upon them; rites abhorrent to jahveh found favour even among members of the king�s own family, and on hezekiah�s death, about 686 b.c., a reaction promptly set in against both his religious views and the material reforms he had introduced.* * 2 kings xxi. 2-7 (cf. 2 chron. xxxiii. 2-7), where, in spite of manifest recensions of the text, the facts themselves seem to have been correctly set forth. manasseh was only thirteen years old when he came to the throne, and his youth naturally inclined him towards the less austere forms of divine worship: from the very first he tolerated much that his father had forbidden, and the spirit of eclecticism which prevailed among his associates rendered him, later on, an object of special detestation to the orthodox historians of jerusalem. worshippers again began openly to frequent the high places; they set up again the prostrate idols, replanted the sacred groves, and even �built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of jahveh.� the chariots and horses of the sun reappeared within the precincts of the temple, together with the sacred courtesans. baal and the phoenician astarte were worshipped on mount sion. the valley of hinnom, where ahaz had already burnt one of his children during a desperate crisis in the syrian wars, was again lighted up by the flames of the sacred pyre. we are told that manasseh himself set the example by passing his son through the flames; he also had recourse to astrologers, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, and sorcerers of the lowest type. the example of assyria in matters of this kind exercised a preponderant influence on jewish customs, and certainly it would have been a miracle if jerusalem had succeeded in escaping it; did not nineveh owe the lofty place it occupied to these occult sciences and to the mysterious powers of its gods? in thus imitating its conqueror, judah was merely borrowing the weapons which had helped him to subdue the world. the partisans of the ancient religions who were responsible for these innovations must have regarded them as perfectly legitimate reforms, and their action was received with favour in the provinces: before long the latter contained as many sanctuaries as there were towns,* and by thus multiplying the centres of worship, they hoped that, in accordance with ancient belief, the ties which existed between jahveh and his chosen people would also be increased. * jer. ii. 26-30. for the quotation see also jer. xi. 13: �for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, o judah; and according to the number of the streets of jerusalem have ye set up altars to the shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto baal.� the fact that the provinces had been ravaged from end to end in the days of sennacherib, while jerusalem had been spared, was attributed to the circumstance that hezekiah had destroyed the provincial sanctuaries, leaving the temple on mount sion alone standing. wherever jahveh possessed altars, he kept guard over his people, but his protection was not extended to those places where sacrifices were no longer offered to him. the reaction was not allowed to take place without opposition on the part of the prophets and their followers. we are told that manasseh �shed innocent blood very much till he had filled jerusalem from one end to another;� there is even a kabbinic tradition to the effect that, weary of the admonitions of the aged isaiah, he put him to death by shutting him up in the hollow trunk of a tree, and causing him to be sawn in two.* * 2 kings xxi. 16. the tradition in regard to the fate of isaiah took its foundation in this text, and it is perhaps indirectly referred to in heb. xi. 37. for a long time after this no instance can be found of a prophet administering public affairs or directing the actions of the king himself; the priests and reformers, finding no outlet for their energy in this direction, fell back on private preaching and literary propaganda. and, above all, they applied themselves to the task of rewriting the history of israel, which, as told by the chroniclers of the previous century, presented the national deity in too material a light, and one which failed to harmonise with the ideals then obtaining. so long as there were two separate hebrew kingdoms, the existence of the two parallel versions of the elohist and jahvist gave rise to but little difficulty: each version had its own supporters and readers, whose consciences were readily satisfied by the interpolation of a few new facts into the text as occasion arose. but now that samaria had fallen, and the whole political and religious life of the hebrew race was centred in judah alone, the necessity for a double and often contradictory narrative had ceased to exist, and the idea occurred of combining the two in a single work. this task, which was begun in the reign of hezekiah and continued under manasseh, resulted in the production of a literature of which fragments have been incorporated into the historical books of our bible.* the reign of amon witnessed no alteration in the policy initiated by his predecessor manasseh; but when, after less than two years� rule, he was suddenly struck down by the knife of an assassin, the party of reform carried the day, and the views of hezekiah and isaiah regained their ascendency. josiah had been king, in name at any rate, for twelve years,** and was learning to act on his own responsibility, when the scythian danger appeared on the horizon. * the scheme of the present work prevents me from doing more than allude in passing to these preliminary stages in the composition of the priestly code. i shall have occasion to return briefly to the subject at the close of volume ix. ** the date is supplied by the opening passage of the prophecy of jeremiah, �to whom the word of jehovah came in the days of josiah, the son of amon, king of judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign� (i. 2). volney recognised that chaps, i., iv., v., and vi. of jeremiah refer to the scythian invasion, and since his time it has been admitted that, with the exception of certain interpolations in chaps, i. and iii., the whole of the first six chapters date from this period, but that they underwent slight modifications in the recension which was made in the fourth year of jehoiachin in order to make them applicable to the threatened chaldæan invasion. the date is important, since by using it as a basis we can approximately restore the chronology of the whole period. if we assume the thirteenth year of josiah to have been 627-626 b.c., we are compelled to place all the early medic wars in the reign of assur bani-pal, as i have done. this barbarian invasion, which burst upon the peace of assyria like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky, restored to the faithful that confidence in the omnipotence of their god which had seemed about to fail them; when they beheld the downfall of states, the sack of provinces innumerable, whole provinces in flames and whole peoples irresistibly swept away to death or slavery, they began to ask themselves whether these were not signs of the divine wrath, indicating that the day of jahveh was at hand. prophets arose to announce the approaching judgment, among the rest a certain zephaniah, a great-grandson of hezekiah:* �i will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground, saith jahveh. i will consume man and beast; i will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling-blocks with the wicked; and i will cut off man from the face of the earth, saith jahveh. and i will stretch out my hand upon judah, and upon all the inhabitants of jerusalem; and i will cut off the remnant of baal from this place, and the name of the chemarim with the priests; and them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship, which swear to jahveh and swear by malcham; and them that are turned back from following jahveh; and those that have not sought jahveh nor inquired after him. hold thy peace at the presence of the lord jahveh; for the day of jahveh is at hand; for jahveh hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath sanctified his guests.� * zephaniah gives his own genealogy at the beginning of his prophecy (i. 1), though, it is true, he does not add the title �king of judah� after the name of his ancestor hezekiah. �that day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm, against the fenced cities, and against the high battlements. and i will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against jahveh: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung. neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of jahveh�s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy; for he shall make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land.� during this same period of stress and terror, there came forward another prophet, one of the greatest among the prophets of israel--jeremiah, son of hilkiah. he was born in the village of anathoth, near jerusalem, being descended from one of those priestly families in which the faith had been handed down from generation to generation in all its original purity.* * the descent and birthplace of jeremiah are given at the beginning of his prophecies (i. 1). he must have been quite young in the thirteenth year of josiah, as is evident from the statement in i. 6. we are told in chap, xxxvi. that in the fourth year of jehoiakim he dictated a summary of all the prophecies delivered by him from the thirteenth year of josiah up to the date indicated to his servant baruch, and that later on he added a number of others of the same kind. when jahveh called him, he cried out in amazement, �ah, lord god! behold, i cannot speak: for i am a child.� but jahveh reassured him, and touching his lips, said unto him, �behold, i have put my words in thy mouth: see, i have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.� then the prophet perceived a seething cauldron, the face of which appeared from the north, for the eternal declared to him that �out of the north evil shall break out upon all the inhabitants of the land.� already the enemy is hastening: �behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as the whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. woe unto us! for we are spoiled. o jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. how long shall thine evil thoughts lodge within thee? for a voice declareth from dan, and publisheth evil from the hills of ephraim: make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against jerusalem!� the scythians had hardly been mentioned before they were already beneath the walls, and the prophet almost swoons with horror at the sound of their approach. �my bowels, my bowels! i am pained at my very heart: my heart is disquieted in me; i cannot hold my peace; because thou hast heard, o my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. how long shall i see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?� it would seem that the torrent of invasion turned aside from the mountains of judah; it flowed over galilee, samaria, and the philistine shephelah, its last eddies dying away on the frontiers of egypt. psammetiehus is said to have bribed the barbarians to retire. as they fell back they plundered the temple of derketô, near ashkelon: we are told that in order to punish them for this act of sacrilege, the goddess visited them with a disease which caused serious ravages amongst them, and which the survivors carried back with them to their own country.* * herodotus calls the goddess aphrodite urania, by which we must understand derketô or atargatis, who is mentioned by several other classical authors, e.g. xanthus of lydia, diodorus siculus, strabo, pliny. according to justin, the scythians were stopped only by the marshes of the delta. the disease by which the scythians were attacked is described by hippocrates; but in spite of what he tells us about it, its precise nature has not yet been determined. there was, however, no need to introduce a supernatural agency in order to account for their rapid disappearance. the main body of invaders had never quitted media or the northern part of the assyrian empire, and only the southern regions of syria were in all probability exposed to the attacks of isolated bands. these stragglers, who year after year embarked in one desperate adventure after another, must have found great difficulty in filling up the gaps which even victories made in their ranks; enervated by the relaxing nature of the climate, they could offer little resistance to disease, and excess completed what the climate had begun, the result being that most of them died on the way, and only a few survived to rejoin the main body with their booty. for several months the tide of invasion continued to rise, then it ebbed as quickly as it had risen, till soon nothing was left to mark where it had passed save a pathway of ruins, not easily made good, and a feeling of terror which it took many a year to efface. it was long before judah forgot the �mighty nation, the ancient nation, the nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest thou what they say.� * men could still picture in imagination their squadrons marauding over the plains, robbing the fellah of his crops, his bread, his daughters, his sheep and oxen, his vines and fig trees, for �they lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel and have no mercy; their voice roareth like the sea, and they ride upon horses; every one set in array as a man to the battle,** against thee, o daughter of sion. we have heard the fame thereof; our hands wax feeble; anguish hath taken hold of us, and pangs as of a woman in travail.� *** the supremacy of the scythians was of short duration. it was said in after-times that they had kept the whole of asia in a state of terror for twenty-eight years, dating from their defeat of cyaxares; but the length of this period is exaggerated.**** * jer. v. 15; it seems curious that the hebrew prophet should use the epithet �ancient,� when we remember that the scythians claimed to be the oldest nation in the world, older than even the egyptians themselves. ** an obvious allusion to the regular formation adopted by the scythian squadrons. *** jer. v. 17; vi. 23, 24. **** the authenticity of the number of years given in herodotus has been energetically defended by some modern historians, and not less forcibly denied by others, who reduce it, for example, in accordance with a doubtful passage of justin, to eight years. by assigning all the events relating to the scythian invaders to the mean period of twenty years, we should obtain the length of time which best corresponds to what is actually known of the general history of this epoch. the medes soon recovered from their disaster, but before engaging their foes in open conflict, they desired to rid themselves of the prince who had conquered them, and on whom the fortunes of the whole scythian nation depended. cyaxares, therefore, invited madyes and his officers to a banquet, and after plying them to excess with meat and drink, he caused them all to be slain.* * this episode is regarded as legendary by many modern historians. winckler even goes so far as to deny the defeat of the scythians: according to his view, they held possession of media till their chief, astyages, was overthrown by cyrus; rost has gone even further, deeming even cyaxares himself to have been a scythian. for my part, i see no reason to reject the tradition of the fatal banquet. without referring to more ancient illustrations, noldeke recalls the fact that in a period of only ten years, from 1030 to 1040 a.d., the princes reigning over the iranian lands rid themselves by similar methods of the turcoman bands which harassed them. such a proceeding has never been repugnant to oriental morality, and it is of a kind to fix itself in the popular mind: far from wishing to suppress it, i should be inclined to see in it the nucleus of the whole tradition. the barbarians made a brave resistance, in spite of the treason which had deprived them of their leaders: they yielded only after a long and bloody campaign, the details of which are unknown to us. iranian legends wove into the theme of their expulsion all kinds of fantastic or romantic incidents. they related, for instance, how, in combination with the parthians, the scythians, under the leadership of their queen zarinsea, several times defeated the medes: she consented at last to conclude a treaty on equal terms, and peace having been signed, she retired to her capital of boxanakê, there to end her days. one body of the survivors re-entered europe through the caspian gates, another wandered for some time between the araxes and the halys, seeking a country adapted to their native instincts and customs.* cyaxares, relieved from the pressure put upon him by the scythians, immediately resumed his efforts against assyria, and was henceforward able to carry his plans to completion without encountering any serious obstacle. it would be incorrect to say that the scythian invasion had overthrown the empire of the sargonids: it had swept over it like a whirlwind, but had not torn from it one province, nor, indeed, even a single city. the nations, already exhausted by their struggles for independence, were incapable of displaying any energy when the barbarians had withdrawn, and continued to bow beneath the ninevite yoke as much from familiarity with habitual servitude as from inability to shake themselves free. assur-bani-pal had died about the year 625 b.c., after a reign of forty-two years, and his son assur-etililâni had assumed the double crown of assyria and babylon without opposition.** * herodotus speaks of these scythians as having lived at first on good terms with cyaxares. ** the date of assur-bani-pal�s death is not furnished by any assyrian monument, but is inferred from the canon of ptolemy, where saosduchîn or shamash-shumukin and chinaladan or assur-bani-pal each reigns forty-two years, from 668 or 667 to 626 or 625 b.c. the order of succession of the last assyrian kings was for a long time doubtful, and sin-shar ishkun was placed before assur-etililâni; the inverse order seems to be now conclusively proved. the documents which seemed at one time to prove the existence of a last king of assyria named esarhaddon, identical with the saracos of classical writers, really belong to esarhaddon, the father of assur-bani-pal. [another king, sin-sum-lisir, is mentioned in a contract dated at nippur in his accession year. he may have been the immediate predecessor of sarakos.--? ed.] nineveh had been saved from pillage by the strength of her ramparts, but the other fortresses, assur, calah, and dur-sharrukîn, had been destroyed during the late troubles; the enemy, whether medes or scythians, had taken them by storm or reduced them by famine, and they were now mere heaps of ruin, deserted save for a few wretched remnants of their population. assur-etililâni made some feeble attempts to restore to them a semblance of their ancient splendour. he erected at calah, on the site of the palaces which had been destroyed by fire, a kind of castle rudely built, and still more rudely decorated, the rooms of which were small and low, and the walls of sun-dried brick were panelled only to the height of about a yard with slabs of limestone roughly squared, and without sculpture or inscription: the upper part of the walls was covered with a coating of uneven plaster. we do not know how long the inglorious reign of assur-etililâni lasted, nor whether he was assassinated or died a natural death. his brother, sin-shar-ishkun,* who succeeded him about 620 b.c., at first exercised authority, as he had done, over babylon as well as nineveh,** and laboured, like his predecessor, to repair the edifices which had suffered by the invasion, making war on his neighbours, perhaps even on the medes, without incurring serious losses. * the name of this king was discovered by g. smith on the fragments of a cylinder brought from kouyunjik, where he read it as bel-zakir-iskun. the real reading is sin-shar ishkun, and the similarity of this name with that of saracos, the last king of assyria according to greek tradition, strikes one immediately. the relationship of this king to assur-etililâni was pointed out by father scheil from the fragment of a tablet on which sin-shar-ishkun is declared to be the son of assur-bani-pal, king of assyria. ** this may be deduced from a passage of abydenus, where saracos or sin-shar-ishkun sends bussalossoros (that is, nabopolassar) to defend chaldæ against the invasion of the peoples of the sea; so according to abydenus, or rather berosus, from whom abydenus indirectly obtained his information, saracos was king of babylon as well as of nineveh at the beginning of his reign. the chaldæans, however, merely yielded him obedience from force of habit, and the moment was not far distant when they would endeavour to throw off his yoke. babylon was at that time under the rule of a certain nabu-bal-uzur, known to us as nabopolassar, a kaldu of ancient lineage, raised possibly by assur-bani-pal to the dignity of governor, but who, in any case, had assumed the title of king on the accession of assur-etililâni.* * the canon of ptolemy makes nabopolassar the direct successor of chinaladan, and his testimony is justified by the series of babylonian contracts which exist in fairly regular succession from the second to the twenty-first years of nabopolassar. the account given by berosus makes him a general of saracos, but the contradiction which this offers to the testimony of the canon can be explained if he is considered as a vassal-king; the kings of egypt and of media were likewise only satraps, according to babylonian tradition. his was but a local sovereignty, restricted probably to the city and its environs; and for twelve or thirteen years he had rested content with this secondary position, when an unforeseen incident presented him with the opportunity of rising to the first rank. tradition asserted that an immense army suddenly landed at the mouths of the euphrates and the tigris; probably under this story is concealed the memory of one of those revolts of the bît-yakîn and the tribes dwelling on the shores of the nar-marratum, such as had often produced consternation in the minds of the sargonid kings.* sin-shar-ishkun, distracted doubtless by other anxieties, acted as his ancestors had done in similar circumstances, and enjoined on his vassal to march against the aggressors and drive them into the sea; but nabopolassar, instead of obeying his suzerain, joined forces with the rebels, and declared his independence. assur-etililâni and his younger brother had possibly neglected to take the hands of bel, and were therefore looked upon as illegitimate sovereigns. the annalists of later times erased their names from the royal canon, and placed nabopolassar immediately after assur-bani-pal, whom they called kandalanu. but however feeble assyria had become, the cities on the lower euphrates feared her still, and refused to ally themselves with the pretender. nabopolassar might perhaps have succumbed, as so many before him had done, had he been forced to rely entirely on his own resources, and he might have shared the sad fate of merodach-baladan or of shamash-shumukîn; but marduk, who never failed to show favour to his faithful devotees, �raised up help for him and secured him an ally.� the eyes of all who were oppressed by the cruel yoke of nineveh were now turned on cyaxares, and from the time that he had dispersed the scythian hordes it was to him that they looked for salvation. nabopolassar besought his assistance, which the median king graciously promised;** it is even affirmed that a marriage concluded between one of his daughters, amyfcis, and nebuchadrezzar, the heir to the throne of babylon, cemented the alliance.*** * formerly these barbarians were identified with the remains of the scythian hordes, and this hypothesis has been recently revived by prashek. g. rawlinson long ago recognised that the reference must be to the chaldæans, who were perhaps joined by the susians. ** the _cylinder of nabonichs_, the only original document in which allusion is made to the destruction of nineveh, speaks of the ummân-manda and their king, whom it does not name, and it has been agreed to recognise cyaxares in this sovereign. on the other hand, the name of ummân-manda certainly designates in the assyrian texts the wandering iranian tribes to whom the greeks gave the name of sakse or scythians; the result, in the opinions of several assyriologists of the present day, is that neither astyages nor cyaxares were medes in the sense in which we have hitherto accepted them as such on the evidence of herodotus, but that they were scythians, the scythians of the great invasion. this conclusion does not seem to me at present justified. the babylonians, who up till then had not had any direct intercourse either with the madai or the ummân-manda, did as the egyptians had done whether in saite or ptolemaic times, continuing to designate as kharî, kafîti, lotanu, and khâti the nations subject to the persians or macedonians; they applied a traditional name of olden days to present circumstances, and i see, at present, no decisive reason to change, on the mere authority of this one word, all that the classical writers have handed down concerning the history of the epoch according to the tradition current in their days. *** the name of the princess is written amuhia, amyitis. the classical sources, the only ones which mention her, make her the daughter of astyages, and this has given rise to various hypotheses. according to some, the notice of this princess has no historical value. according to others, the astyages mentioned as her father is not cyaxares the mede, but a scythian prince who came to the succour of nabopolassar, perhaps a predecessor of cyaxares on the median throne, and in this case phraortes himself under another name. the most prudent course is still to admit that abydenus, or one of the compilers of extracts to whom we owe the information, has substituted the name of the last king of media for that of his predecessor, either by mistake, or by reason of some chronological combinations. amyitis, transported into the harem of the chaldæan monarch, served, like all princesses married out of their own countries, as a pledge for the faithful observance by her relatives of the treaty which had been concluded. the western provinces of the empire did not permit themselves to be drawn into the movement, and judah, for example, remained faithful to its suzerain till the last moment,* but sin-shar-ishkun received no help from them, and was obliged to fight his last battles single-handed. he shut himself up in nineveh, and held out as long as he could; but when all his resources were exhausted--ammunitions of war, men and food supplies--he met his fate as a king, and burnt himself alive in his palace with his children and his wives, rather than fall alive into the hands of his conquerors (608 b.c.). the babylonians would take no part in pillaging the temples, out of respect for the gods, who were practically identical with their own, but the medes felt no such scruples. �their king, the intrepid one, entirely destroyed the sanctuaries of the gods of assur, and the cities of accad which had shown themselves hostile to the lord of accad, and had not rendered him assistance. he destroyed their holy places, and left not one remaining; he devastated their cities, and laid them waste as it were with a hurricane.� nineveh laid low, assyria no longer existed. after the lapse of a few years, she was named only among the legends of mythical days: two centuries later, her very site was forgotten, and a greek army passed almost under the shadow of her dismantled towers, without a suspicion that there lay before it all that remained of the city where semiramis had reigned in her glory.** * it was to oppose the march of necho _against the king of assyria_ that josiah fought the battle of megiddo (2 kings xxiii. 29, 30; cf. 2 chron. xxxv. 20-24, where the mention of the king of assyria is suppressed). ** this is what the _ten thousand_ did when they passed before larissa and mespila. the name remained famous, and later on the town which bore it attained a relative importance. it is true that egypt, chaldæa, and the other military nations of the east, had never, in their hours of prosperity, shown the slightest consideration for their vanquished foes; the theban pharaohs had mercilessly crushed africa and asia beneath their feet, and had led into slavery the entire population of the countries they had subdued. but the egyptians and chaldaeans had, at least, accomplished a work of civilization whose splendour redeemed the brutalities of their acts of reprisal. it was from egypt and chaldæa that the knowledge and the arts of antiquity--astronomy, medicine, geometry, physical and natural sciences--spread to the ancestors of the classic races; and though chaldæa yields up to us unwillingly, with niggard hand, the monuments of her most ancient kings, the temples and tombs of egypt still exist to prove what signal advances the earliest civilised races made in the arts of the sculptor and the architect. but on turning to assyria, if, after patiently studying the successive centuries during which she held supreme sway over the eastern world, we look for other results besides her conquests, we shall find she possessed nothing that was not borrowed from extraneous sources. she received all her inspirations from chaldæa--her civilisation, her manners, the implements of her industries and of agriculture, besides her scientific and religious literature: one thing alone is of native growth, the military tactics of her generals and the excellence of her soldiery. from the day when assyria first realised her own strength, she lived only for war and rapine; and as soon as the exhaustion of her population rendered success on the field of battle an impossibility, the reason for her very existence vanished, and she passed away. two great kingdoms rose simultaneously from her ruins. cyaxares claimed assyria proper and its dependencies on the upper tigris, but he specially reserved for himself the yet unconquered lands on the northern and eastern frontiers, whose inhabitants had only recently taken part in the political life of the times. nabopolassar retained the suzerainty over the lowlands of elam, the districts of mesopotamia lying along the euphrates, syria, palestine, and most of the countries which had hitherto played a part in history;* he claimed to exert his supremacy beyond the isthmus, and the chaldæan government looked upon the egyptian kings as its feudatories because for some few years they had owned the suzerainty of nineveh.** * there was no actual division of the empire, as has been often asserted, but each of the allies kept the portion which fell into his power at the moment of their joint effort. the two new states gradually increased in power by successive conquests, each annexing by degrees the ancient provinces of assyria nearest to its own frontier. ** this seems to be implied by the terms in which berosus speaks of necho: he considers him as a rebel satrap over the provinces of egypt, coele-syria, and phoenicia, and enumerates egypt in conjunction with syria, phoenicia, and arabia among the dependencies of nabopolassar and nebuchadrezzar. just as the egyptian state documents never mentioned the lotanu or the kharu without entitling them _children of rebellion_, so the chaldæan government, the heir of assyria, could only look upon the kings of syria, arabia, and egypt as rebellious vassals. [illustration: 330. map of the eastern world in the time of nebuchadnezzar] the pharaoh, however, did not long tolerate this pretension, and far from looking forward to bend the knee before a chaldæan monarch, he believed himself strong enough to reassert his ancestral claims to the possession of asia. egypt had experienced many changes since the day when tanuatamanu, returning to ethiopia, had abandoned her to the ambition of the petty dynasties of the delta. one of the romances current among the people of sais in the fifth century b.c. related that at that time the whole land was divided between twelve princes. they lived peaceably side by side in friendly relations with each other, until an oracle predicted that the whole valley would finally belong to that prince among them who should pour a libation to phtah into a brazen cup, and thenceforward they jealously watched each other each time they assembled to officiate in the temple of memphis. one day, when they had met together in state, and the high priest presented to them the golden cups they were wont to use, he found he had mistaken their number, and had only prepared eleven. psammetichus was therefore left without one, and in order not to disarrange the ceremonial he took off his brazen helmet and used it to make his libation; when the rest perceived this, the words of the oracle came to their remembrance, and they exiled the imprudent prince to the marshes along the sea-coast, and forbade him ever to quit them. he secretly consulted the oracle of isis of buto to know what he might expect from the gods, and she replied that the means of revenge would reach him from the sea, on the day when brazen soldiers should issue from its waters. he thought at first that the priests were mocking him, but shortly afterwards ionian and carian pirates, clad in their coats of mail, landed not far from his abode. the messenger who brought tidings of their advent had never before seen a soldier fully armed, and reported that brazen men had issued from the waves and were pillaging the country. psammetichus, realising at once that the prediction was being fulfilled, ran to meet the strangers, enrolled them in his service, and with their aid overthrew successively his eleven rivals.* * the account given by diodorus of these events is in general derived from that of herodotus, with additional details borrowed directly or indirectly from some historian of the same epoch, perhaps hellanicus of mitylene: the reason of the persecution endured by psammetichus is, according to him, not the fear of seeing the prediction fulfilled, but jealousy of the wealth the saite prince had acquired by his commerce with the greeks. i have separated the narrative of herodotus from his account of the labyrinth which did not originally belong to it, but was connected with a different cycle of legends. the original romance was part of the cycle which grew up around the oracle of buto, so celebrated in egypt at the persian epoch, several other fragments of which are preserved in herodotus; it had been mixed up with one of the versions of the stories relating to the labyrinth, probably by some dragoman of the fayyûm. the number twelve does not correspond with the information furnished by the assyrian texts, which enumerate more than twenty egyptian princes; it is perhaps of greek origin, like the _twelve_ great gods which the informants of herodotus tried to make out in egypt, and was introduced into the egyptian version by a greek interpreter. a brazen helmet and an oracle had dethroned him; another oracle and brazen men had replaced him on his throne. a shorter version of these events made no mention of the twelve kings, but related instead that a certain pharaoh named tementhes had been warned by the oracle of amon to beware of cocks. now psammetichus had as a companion in exile a carian named pigres, and in conversing with him one day, he learned by chance that the carians had been the first people to wear crested helmets; he recalled at once the words of the oracle, and hired from asia a number of these �cocks,� with whose assistance he revolted and overthrew his suzerain in battle under the walls of memphis, close to the temple of isis. such is the legendary account of the saite renaissance; its true history is not yet clearly and precisely known. egypt was in a state of complete disintegration when psammetichus at length revived the ambitious projects of his family, but the dissolution of the various component parts had not everywhere taken place in the same manner. [illustration: 335.jpg three hoplites in action] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an archaic vase-painting in the collection of salzmann. in the north, the delta and the nile valley, as far as siut, were in the power of a military aristocracy, supported by irregular native troops and bands of mercenaries, for the most part of libyan extraction, who were always designated by the generic name of mashauasha. most of these nobles were in possession of not more than two or three cities apiece: they had barely a sufficient number of supporters to maintain their precarious existence in their restricted domains, and would soon have succumbed to the attacks of their stronger neighbours, had they not found a powerful protector to assist them. they had finally separated themselves into two groups, divided roughly by the central arm of the nile. one group comprised the districts that might be designated as the asiatic zone of the country--heliopolis, bubastis, mendes, tanis, busiris, and seben-nytos--and it recognised as chief the lord of one or other of those wealthy cities, now the ruler of bubastis, now of tanis, and lastly pakruru of pisaptit. the second group centred in the lords of sais, to whom the possession of memphis had secured a preponderating voice in the counsels of the state for more than a century.* * this grouping, which might already have been suspected from the manner in which the assyrian and egyptian monuments of the period show us the feudal princes rallying round necho i. and pakruru, is indicated by the details in the demotic romance published by krall, where the foundation of the story is the state of egypt in the time of the �twelve kings.� the fiefs and kingdoms of middle egypt wavered between the two groups, playing, however, a merely passive part in affairs: abandoning themselves to the stream of events rather than attempting to direct it, they owed allegiance to sais and tanis alternately as each prevailed over its rival. on passing thence into the thebaid a different world appeared to be entered. there amon reigned, ever increasingly supreme, and the steady advance of his influence had transformed his whole domain into a regular theocracy, where the women occupied the highest position and could alone transmit authority. at first, as we have seen, it was passed on to their husbands and their children, but latterly the rapidity with which the valley had changed masters had modified this law of succession in a remarkable way. each time the principality shifted its allegiance from one king to another, the new sovereign naturally hastened to install beside the _divine female worshipper_ a man devoted to his interests, who should administer the fief to the best advantage of the suzerain. it is impossible to say whether he actually imposed this minister on her as a husband, or whether the time came when she was obliged to submit to as many espousals as there occurred revolutions in the destinies of egypt.* however this may be, we know that from the first half of the seventh century b.c. the custom arose of placing beside �the divine worshipper� a princess of the dominant family, whom she adopted, and who thus became her heiress-designate. taharqa had in this way associated one of his sisters, shapenuapît ii., with the queen amenertas when the latter had lost her husband, piônkhi; and shapenuapît, succeeding her adopted mother, had reigned over thebes in the ethiopian interest during many years. there is nothing to show that she was married, and perhaps she was compensated for her official celibacy by being authorised to live the free life of an ordinary pallacide;** her minister montumihâît directed her affairs for her so completely that the assyrian conquerors looked upon him as petty king of thebes. tanuatamanu confirmed him in his office when the assyrians evacuated the said, and the few years which had elapsed since that event had in no way modified the _régime_ established immediately on their departure. * they would have been, in fact, in the same condition as the hova queens of our century, who married the ministers who reigned in their names. ** it is perhaps these last female descendants of the high priests that are intended in a passage where strabo speaks of the pallacides who were chosen from among the most noble families of the city. diodorus mentions their tombs, quoting from hecatous of abdera, but he does not appear to know the nature of their life; but the name of pallacides which he applies to them proves that their manner of life was really that which strabo describes. it is uncertain how long assur-bani-pal in the north, and tanuatamanu in the south, respectively maintained a precarious sovereignty over the portions of egypt nearest to their own capitals. [illustration: 338.jpg statue of a theban queen] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de bissing. the statue, whose feet are missing, represents either amenertas i. or mutertas; it was never completely finished, and several of the parts have never received their final polish. the opening of the reign of psammetichus seems to have been fraught with difficulties, and the tradition which represents him as proscribed by his peers, and confined to the marshes of the sea-coast, has probably a certain basis of truth. pakruru, who had brought all the western part of the delta under his own influence, and who, incessantly oscillating between assyria and ethiopia, had yet been able to preserve his power and his life, had certainly not of his own free will renounced the hope of some day wearing the double crown. it was against him or his successor that psammetichus must have undertaken his first wars, and it was perhaps with the help of assyrian governors that the federal coalition drove him back to the coast. he extricated himself from this untoward situation by the help of greek and asiatic mercenaries, his ionians and carians. some historians stated that the decisive battle was fought near memphis, in sight of the temple of isis; others affirmed that it took place at momemphis, that several of the princes perished in the conflict, and that the rest escaped into libya, whence they never returned; others, again, spoke of an encounter on the nile, when the fleet of the saite king dispersed that of his rivals. it is, in fact, probable that a single campaign sufficed for psammetichus, as formerly for the ethiopian pretenders, to get the upper hand, and that the egyptian feudal lords submitted after one or two defeats at most, hoping that, as in days gone by, when the first dash made by the new pharaoh was over, his authority would decline, and their own would regain the ascendency. events showed that they were deceived. psammetichus, better served by his hellenes than tafnakhti or bocchoris had been by their libyans, or piônkhi and tanuatamanu by their ethiopians, soon consolidated his rule over the country he had conquered. from 660 or 659 b.c. he so effectively governed egypt that foreigners, and even the assyrians themselves commonly accorded him the title of king. the fall of the ninevite rule had been involved in that of the feudal lords, but it was generally believed that assur-bani-pal would leave no means untried to recall the countries of the nile to their obedience: psammetichus knew this, and knew also that, as soon as they were no longer detained by wars or rebellions elsewhere, the assyrian armies would reappear in egypt. he therefore entered into an alliance with gyges,* and subsequently, perhaps, with shamash-shumukîn also; then, while his former suzerain was waging war in elam and chaldæa, he turned southwards, in 658 b.c., and took possession of the thebaid without encountering any opposition from the ethiopians, as his ancestor tafnakhti had from piônkhi-miamun. mon-tumihâît** negotiated this capitulation of thebes, as he had already negotiated so many others; in recompense for this service, he was confirmed in his office, and his queen retained her high rank. * the annexation of the thebaid and the consequent pacification of egypt was an accomplished fact in the year ix. of psammetichus i. the analogy of similar documents, e.g. the stele of the high priest menkhopirrî, shows that the ceremony of adoption which consecrated the reunion of upper and lower egypt cannot have been separated by a long interval from the completion of the reunion itself: in placing this at the end of the year viii., we should have for the two events the respective dates of 658-657 and 657 656 b.c. ** the part played by montumihâît in this affair is easily deduced: (1) from our knowledge of his conduct some years previously under taharqa and tanuatamanu; (2) from the position he occupied at thebes, in the year ix., with regard to shapenuapît, according to the stele of legrain. a century or two earlier psammetichus would have married one of the princesses of sacerdotal lineage, and this union would have sufficed to legalise his position; perhaps he actually associated shapenuapît with himself by a show of marriage, but in any case he provided her with an adopted daughter according to the custom instituted by the ethiopian pharaohs. she already had one daughter by adoption, whom she had received at the hands of taharqa, and who, in changing her family, had assumed the name of amenertas in honour of the queen who had preceded shapenuapît: psammetichus forced her to replace the ethiopian princess by one of his own daughters, who was henceforth called shapenuapît, after her new mother. a deputation of the nobles and priests of thebes came to escort the princess from memphis, in the month of tybi, in the ninth year of the reign: psammetichus formally presented her to them, and the ambassadors, having listened to his address, expatiated in the customary eulogies on his splendour and generosity. �they shall endure as long as the world lasteth; all that thou ordainest shall endure. how beautiful is that which god hath done for thee, how glorious that which thy divine father hath done for thee? he is pleased that thy double should be commemorated, he rejoices in the pronouncing of thy name, for our lord psammetichus has made a gift to his father amon, he has given him his eldest daughter, his beloved mtauqrît shapenuapît, to be his divine spouse, that she may shake the sistrum before him!� on the 28th of tybi the princess left the harem, clothed in fine linen and adorned with ornaments of malachite, and descended to the quay, accompanied by an immense throng, to set out for her new home. relays stationed along the river at intervals made the voyage so expeditious that at the end of sixteen days the princess came in sight of thebes. she disembarked on the 14th of khoiak, amid the acclamations of the people: �she comes, the daughter of the king of the south, nitauqrît, to the dwelling of amon, that he may possess her and unite her to himself; she comes, the daughter of the king of the north, shapenuapît, to the temple of karnak, that the gods may there chant her praises.� as soon as the aged shapenuapît had seen her coadjutor, �she loved her more than all things,� and assigned her a dowry, the same as that which she had received from her own parents, and which she had granted to her first adopted daughter amenertas. the magnates of thebes--the aged montumihâît, his son nsiphtah, and the prophets of amon--vied with each other in their gifts of welcome: psammetichus, on his side, had acted most generously, and the temples of egypt assigned to the princess an annual income out of their revenues, or bestowed upon her grants of houses and lands, in all constituting a considerable inheritance, which somewhat consoled the thebans for their subjection to a dynasty emanating from the cities of the north. the rest of the principality imitated the example of thebes and the whole of egypt, from the shores of the mediterranean to the rocks of the first cataract, once more found itself reunited under the sceptre of an egyptian king. a small part of nubia, the portion nearest to elephantine, followed this movement, but the greater part refused to cut itself off from the ethiopians. these latter were henceforth confined to the regions along the middle course of the nile, isolated from the rest of the world by the deserts, the red sea, and egypt. it is probable that they did not give up without a struggle the hope of regaining the ground they had lost, and that their armies made more than one expedition in a northerly direction. the inhabitants of the thebaid could hardly fail to remain faithful to them at heart, and to recognise in them the legitimate representatives of the posterity of amon; it is possible that now and again they succeeded in penetrating as far as the ancient capital, but if so, their success was always ephemeral, and their sojourn left no permanent traces. the same causes, however, which had broken up the constituent elements, and destroyed the unity of greater egypt at the end of the theban period, were still at work in saite times to prevent the building up again of the empire. the preservation of the balance of power in this long and narrow strip of country depended on the centre of attraction and on the seat of government being nearly equidistant from the two extremities. this condition had been fulfilled as long as the court resided at thebes; but as the removal of the seat of government to the delta caused the loss and separation of the southern provinces, so its sudden return to the extreme south, with a temporary sojourn at napata, necessarily produced a similar effect, and led to the speedy secession of the northern provinces. in either case, the dynasty placed at one extremity of the empire was unable to sustain for any length of time the weight depending on it at the other; when once the balance became even slightly disturbed, it could not regain its equilibrium, and there was consequently a sudden dislocation of the machinery of government. the triumph of the saite dynasty accomplished the final ruin of the work begun under the papis, and brought to completion by the amenemhâîts and the usirtasens. greater egypt ceased to exist, after more than twenty centuries of glorious life, and was replaced by the little egypt of the first ages of history. the defeat of the military chiefs of the north, the annexation of the principality of amon, and the final expulsion of the ethiopians and the asiatics had occupied scarcely nine years, but these feats constituted only the smaller part of the work psammetichus had to accomplish: his subsequent task lay in restoring prosperity to his kingdom, or, at all events, in raising it from the state of misery into which two centuries of civil wars and invasions had plunged it. the important cities had suffered grievously: memphis had been besieged and taken by assault by both piônkhi and esar-haddon, thebes had been twice sacked by the veterans of assur-bani-pal, and from syenê to pelusium there was not a township but had suffered at the hands of foreigners or of the egyptians themselves. the country had enjoyed a moment�s breathing-space under sabaco, but the little good which this prince had been able to accomplish was effaced immediately after his death: the canals and dykes had been neglected, the supervision of the police relaxed, and the population, periodically decimated or driven to take refuge in the strongholds, had often allowed the lands to lie waste, so that famine had been superadded to the other evils under which the land already groaned. psammetichus, having forced the feudal lords to submit to his supremacy, deprived them of the royal titles they had unduly assumed; he no longer tolerated their habits of private warfare, but restricted them to the functions of hereditary governors, which their ancestors had exercised under the conquering dynasties of former times,* and this enforced peace soon allowed the rural population to devote themselves joyfully to their regular occupations. * during the last few years records of a certain number of persons have been discovered whose names and condition prove that they were the descendants of semi-independent princes of the ethiopian and bubastite periods: e.g. a certain akaneshu, who was prince of sebennytos under psammetichus i., and who very probably was the grandson of akaneshu, prince of the same town under piônkhi; and a sheshonq of busiris, who was perhaps a descendant of sheshonq, prince of busiris under piônkhi. with so fertile a soil, two or three years of security, during which the fellahîn were able to sow and reap their crops free from the fear of marauding bands, sufficed to restore abundance, if not wealth, to the country, and psammetichus succeeded in securing both these and other benefits to egypt, thanks to the vigilant severity of his administration. he would have been unable to accomplish these reforms had he relied only on the forces which had been at the disposal of his ancestors--the native troops demoralised by poverty, and the undisciplined bands of libyan mercenaries, which constituted the sole normal force of the tanite and bubastite pharaohs and the barons of the delta and middle egypt. his experience of these two classes of soldiery had decided him to look elsewhere for a less precarious support, and ever since chance had brought him in contact with the ionians and carians, he had surrounded himself with a regular army of hellenic and asiatic mercenaries. it is impossible to exaggerate the terror that the apparition of these men produced in the minds of the african peoples, or the revolution they effected, alike in peace or war, in oriental states: the charge of the spanish soldiery among the lightly clad foot-soldiers of mexico and peru could not have caused more dismay than did that of the hoplites from beyond the sea among the half-naked archers and pikemen of egypt and libya. with their bulging corselets, the two plates of which protected back and chest, their greaves made of a single piece of bronze reaching from the ankle to the knee, their square or oval bucklers covered with metal, their heavy rounded helmets fitting closely to the head and neck, and surmounted by crests of waving plumes, they were, in truth, men of brass, invulnerable to any oriental weapon. drawn up in close array beneath their �tortoise,� they received almost unhurt the hail of arrows and stones hurled against them by the lightly armed infantry, and then, when their own trumpet sounded the signal for attack, and they let themselves fall with their whole weight upon the masses of the enemy, brandishing their spears above the upper edge of their bucklers, there was no force of native troops or company of mashauasha that did not waver beneath the shock and finally give way before their attack. the egyptians felt themselves incapable of overcoming them except by superior numbers or by stratagem, and it was the knowledge of their own hopeless inferiority which prevented the feudal lords from attempting to revenge themselves on psammetichus. to make themselves his equals, they would have been obliged either to take a sufficient number of similar warriors into their own pay--and this they were not able to afford--or they must have won over those already in the employ of their suzerain; but the liberality with which psammetichus treated his mercenaries gave them good cause to be faithful, even if military honour had not sufficed to keep them loyal to their employer. psammetichus granted to them and their compatriots, who were attracted by the fame of egypt, a concession of the fertile lands of the delta stretching along the pelusiac branch of the nile, and he was careful to separate the ionians from the carians by the whole breadth of the river: this was a wise precaution, for their union beneath a common flag had not extinguished their inherited hatred of one another, and the authority of the general did not always suffice to prevent fatal quarrels breaking out between contingents of different nationalities. [illustration: 347.jpg the saite fortress of daphne] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a restoration by fl. petrie. they occupied, moreover, regularly entrenched camps, enclosed within massive walls, containing a collection of mud huts or houses of brick, the whole enclosure commanded by a fortress which formed the headquarters of the general and staff of officers. some merchants from miletus, emboldened by the presence of their fellow-countrymen, sailed with thirty vessels into the mouth of the bolbitine branch of the nile, and there founded a settlement which they named the port of the milesians, and, following in their wake, successive relays of emigrants arrived to reinforce the infant colony. the king entrusted a certain number of egyptian children to the care of these greek settlers, to be instructed in their language,* and the interpreters thus educated in their schools increased in proportion as the bonds of commercial and friendly intercourse between greece and egypt became strengthened, so that ere long, in the towns of the delta, they constituted a regular class, whose function was to act as intermediaries between the two races. * diodorus, or rather the historian whom he follows, assures us that psammetichus went still further, and gave his own children a greek education; what is possible and even probable, is, that he had them taught greek. a bronze apis in the gizeh museum was dedicated by an interpreter who inscribed on it a bilingual inscription in hieroglyphics and carian. [illustration: 348a.jpg egyptian greek] drawn by faucher-gudin, from pi, pétrie. the original statuette in alabaster is now in the gizeh museum; the cyprian style of the figure is easily recognised. [illustration: 348b.jpg egyptian greek] drawn by faucher-gudin, from pi. pétrie. the original limestone statuette is in the gizeh museum. by thus bringing his subjects in contact with an active, industrious, and enterprising nation, full of youthful vigour, psammetichus no doubt hoped to inspire them with some of the qualities which he discerned in the colonists, but egypt during the last two centuries had suffered too much at the hands of foreigners of all kinds to be favourably disposed to these new-comers. it would have been different had they presented themselves in humble guise like the asiatics and africans to whom egypt had opened her doors so freely after the xviiith dynasty, and if they had adopted the obsequious manners of the phoenician and hebrew merchants; but they landed from their ships fully equipped for war, and, proud of their own courage and ability, they vied with the natives of the ancient race, whether of plebeian or noble birth, for the favour of the sovereign. their language, their rude military customs, their cunning devices in trade, even the astonishment they manifested at the civilisation of the country, rendered them objects of disdain, as well as of jealous hatred to the egyptian. the food of which they partook made them unclean in native estimation, and the horrified fellah shunned contact with them from fear of defiling himself, refusing to eat with them, or to use the same knife or cooking-vessel: the scribes and members of the higher classes, astonished at their ignorance, treated them like children with no past history, whose ancestors a few generations back had been mere savages. although unexpressed at first, this hostility towards the hellenes was not long in manifesting itself openly. the saite tradition attributed it to a movement of wounded vanity. psammetichus, to recompense the prowess of his ionian and carian soldiers, had attached them to his own person, and assigned to them the post of honour on the right wing when the army was drawn up for review or in battle array.* * diodorus siculus states that it was during the syrian war that the king thus honoured his mercenary troops. wiedemann thinks this is an erroneous inference drawn from the passage of herodotus, in which he explains the meaning of the word asmakh. they reaped thus the double advantage of the glory, which they greatly prized, and of the higher pay attached to the title of body-guard, but the troops who had hitherto enjoyed these advantages were naturally indignant at losing them, and began to murmur. one particularly galling circumstance at last caused their discontent to break out. the eastern and southern frontiers of egypt were conterminous with those of two conquering empires, assyria and ethiopia, and on the west the libyan tribes along the shores of the mediterranean were powerful enough to demand constant vigilance on the part of the border garrisons. psammetichus, among other reforms, had reorganised the ancient system of defence. while placing outposts at the entrance to the passes leading from the desert into the nile valley, he had concentrated considerable masses of troops at the three most vulnerable points--the outlets of the road to syria, the country surrounding lake mareotis, and the first cataract; he had fortified daphnse, near the old town of zalu, as a defence against the assyrians, marea against the libyan bedâwin, and elephantine against the ethiopians. these advanced posts had been garrisoned with native troops who were quartered there for a year at a time. to be condemned to such an exile for so long a period raised in them a sense of profound indignation, but when the king apparently forgot them and left them there three years without sending other troops to relieve them, their anger knew no bounds. they resolved to put an end to such treatment, and as the hope of a successful rebellion seemed but small, they decided to leave the country. two hundred and forty thousand of them assembled on a given day with their arms and baggage, and marched in good order towards ethiopia. psammetichus, warned of their intentions when ifc was too late, hastened after them with a handful of followers, and coming up with them, besought them not to desert their national gods, their wives, and their children. he had nearly prevailed on them to return, when one soldier, with a significant gesture, intimated that while manhood lasted they had power to create new families wherever they might chance to dwell. the details of this story betray the popular legend, but nevertheless have a basis of truth. the inscriptions from the time of psammetichus onwards never mention the mashauasha, while their name and their exploits constantly recur in the history of the preceding dynasties: henceforth they and their chiefs vanish from sight, and discord and brigandage simultaneously cease in the egyptian nomes. it was very probably the most turbulent among these auxiliaries who left the country in the circumstances above narrated: since they could not contest the superiority of their greek rivals, they concluded that their own part was played out, and rather than be relegated to the second rank, they preferred to quit the land in a body. psammetichus, thus deprived of their support at the moment when egypt had more than ever need of all her forces to regain her rightful position in the world, reorganised the military system as best he could. he does not seem to have relied much upon the contingents from upper egypt, to whom was doubtless entrusted the defence of the nubian frontier, and who could not be withdrawn from their posts without danger of invasion or revolt. but the source of imminent peril did not lie in this direction, where ethiopia, exhausted by the wars of taharqa and tanuatamanu, perhaps needed repose even more than egypt itself, but rather on the asiatic side, where assur-bani-pal, in spite of the complications constantly arising in karduniash and elam, had by no means renounced his claims to the suzerainty of egypt. the pharaoh divided the feudatory militia of the delta into two classes, which resided apart in different sets of nomes. the first group, who were popularly called hermotybies, were stationed at busiris, sais, and khemmis, in the island of prosopitis, and in one half of natho--in fact, in the district which for the last century had formed the centre of the principality of the saite dynasty: perhaps they were mostly of libyan origin, and represented the bands of mashauasha who, from father to son, had served under tafnakhti and his descendants. popular report numbered them at 160,000 men, all told, and the total number of the other class, known as the calasiries, at 250,000; these latter belonged, in my opinion, to the pure egyptian race, and were met with at thebes, while the troops of the north, who were more generally called out, were scattered over the territory which formerly supported the tanite and bubastite kings, and latterly pakruru, and which comprised the towns of bubastis, aphthis, tanis, mendes, sebennytos, athribis, pharbaathos, thmuis, onuphis, anysis, and myecphoris. each year one thousand hermotybies and one thousand calasiries were chosen to form the royal body-guard, and these received daily five minae of bread apiece, two minas of beef, and four bowls of wine; the jealousy which had been excited by the greek troops was thus lessened, as well as the discontent provoked by the emigration.* * _calasiris_, the exact transcription of _khala-shiri, khala-shere_, signifying _young man_. the meaning and original of the word transcribed hermotybies by herodotus, and hermotymbies according to a variant given by stephen of byzantium, is as yet unknown, but it seems to me to conceal a title analogous to that of _hir-mazaîu_, and to designate what remained of libyan soldiers in egypt. this organisation of the army is described by herodotus as existing in his own days, and there were calasiries and hermotybies in the egyptian contingent which accompanied the army of mardonius to greece; it is nowhere stated that it was the work of psammetichus, but everything points to the conclusion that it was so, at all events in the form in which it was known to the greeks. the king of napata gladly welcomed the timely reinforcements which arrived to fill up the vacancies in his army and among his people, weakened by a century of rapid changes, and generously gave them permission to conquer for themselves some territory in the possession of his enemies! having driven out the barbarians, they established themselves in the peninsula formed by the white and blue niles, and their numbers increased so greatly that in course of time they became a considerable nation. they called themselves asmakh, the men who stand on the king�s left hand, in memory of the affront put upon them, and which they had avenged by their self-exile: greek travellers and geographers called them sometimes automoli, sometimes sembrites, names which clung to them till almost the beginning of our present era. this departure of the mashauasha was as the last blast of wind after a storm: the swell subsided by degrees, and peace reigned in the interior. thebes accommodated itself as best it could to the new order of things under the nominal administration of the divine spouses, the two shapenuapîts. building works were recommenced at all points where it appeared necessary, and the need of restoration was indeed pressing after the disorders occasioned by the assyrian invasion and the ethiopian suzerainty. at karnak, and in the great temples on both banks of the nile, psammetichus, respecting the fiction which assigned the chief authority to the pallacides, effaced himself in favour of them, allowing them to claim all the merit of the work; in the cities they erected small chapels, in which they are portrayed as queens fulfilling their sacerdotal functions, humbly escorted by the viceroy who in other respects exercised the real power. the king�s zeal for restoration is manifest all along the nile, at coptos, abydos,* and in the plains of the delta, which are crowded with memorials of him. his two favourite capitals were memphis and sais, on both of which he impartially lavished his favours. * the first egyptologists attributed the prénommai cartouche of psammetichus i. to psammetichus ii., and _vice versa_: this error must always be kept in mind in referring to their works. at memphis he built the propylons on the south side of the temple of phtah, and the court in which the living apis took his exercise and was fed: this court was surrounded by a colonnade, against the pillars of which were erected statues twelve cubits high, probably representing osiris as in the eames-seum and at medinet-habu. apis even when dead also received his share of attention. since the days when ramses ii. had excavated the subterranean serapeum as a burial-place of the sacred bulls, no subsequent pharaoh who had reigned at memphis had failed to embellish their common tomb, and to celebrate with magnificence their rites of sepulture. [illustration: 355.jpg chamber and sarcophagus of an apis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an engraving published in mariette. the body of the apis, carefully embalmed, was sealed up in a coffin or sarcophagus of hard stone, the mouth of the vault was then walled up, and against the fresh masonry, at the foot of the neighbouring rocks, on the very floor of the passage, or wherever there was a clear space available, the high dignitaries, the workmen or the priests who had taken any part in the ceremonial, set up a votive stele calling down upon themselves and their families divine benedictions. [illustration: 356.jpg the great gallery of the serapeum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an engraving of devéria. the gallery was transformed by degrees into a kind of record-office, where each dynasty in turn recorded its name, whenever a fresh apotheosis afforded them the opportunity: these records were discovered in our own time by mariette, almost perfect in spite of the destroying hand of men, and comprised inscriptions by the bubastites, by bocchoris, and even by the ethiopians. taharqa, when menaced by the assyrians, had stayed at memphis, only a year before his death, in the interval between two campaigns, in order to bury an apis, and psammetichus likewise took care not to neglect this part of his regal duties. he at first was content to imitate his predecessors, but a subsidence having occurred in that part of the serapeum where the apis who had died in the twentieth year of his reign reposed, he ordered his engineers to bore another gallery in a harder vein of limestone, and he performed the opening ceremony in his fifty-second year. it was the commencement of a thorough restoration. the vaults in which the sacred bulls were entombed were severally inspected, the wrappings were repaired together with the mummy cases, the masonry of the chapel was strengthened, and the building endowed with woods, stuffs, perfumes, and the necessary oils. no less activity apparently was displayed at sais, the native home and favourite residence of the pharaoh; but all the monuments which adorned the place, including the temple of nit, and the royal palace, have been entirely destroyed; the enclosing wall of unbaked bricks alone remains, and here and there, amid the _débris_ of the houses, may be seen some heaps of shattered stone where the public buildings once stood. on several blocks the name and titles of psammetichus may yet be deciphered, and there are few cities in the delta which cannot make a similar show. from one end of the nile valley to the other the quarries were reopened, and the arts, stimulated by the orders which flowed in, soon flourished anew. the engraving of hieroglyphics and the art of painting both attained a remarkable degree of elegance; fine statues and bas-reliefs were executed in large numbers, and a widely spread school of art was developed. the local artists had scrupulously observed and handed down the traditions which obtained in the time of the pyramids, and more especially those of the first theban period; even the few fragments that have come down to us of the works of these artists in the age of the ramessides recall rather the style of the vith and xiith dynasties than that of their theban contemporaries. their style, brought to perfection by evident imitation of the old memphite masters, pleases us by its somewhat severe elegance, the taste shown in the choice of detail, and the extraordinary skill displayed in the working of the stone. the memphites had by preference used limestone for their sculpture, the thebans red and grey granite or sandstone; but the artists of the age of psammetichus unhesitatingly attacked basalt, breccia, or serpentine, and obtained marvellous effects from these finely grained materials of regular and even texture. the artistic renaissance which they brought to its height had been already inaugurated under the ethiopians, and many of the statues we possess of the reign of taharqa are examples of excellent workmanship. that of amenertas was over-praised at the time of its discovery; the face, half buried by the wig which we usually associate with the statues of the goddesses, has a dull and vacant expression in spite of its set smile, and the modelling of the figure is rather weak, but nevertheless there is something easy and refined in the gracefulness of the statue as a whole. [358.jpg chieck beled--gizeh museum] a statuette of another �divine spouse,� though mutilated and unfinished, is pleasing from its greater breadth of style, although such breadth is rarely found in the works of this school, which toned down, elongated, and attenuated the figure till it often lost in vigour what it gained in distinction. the one point in which the saite artists made a real advance, was in the treatment of the heads of their models. [illustration: 359.jpg memphite bas-relief of the saite epoch] drawn by boudier, from a heliogravure in mariette. the bas relief was worked into the masonry of a house in memphis in the byzantine period, and it was in order to fit it to the course below that the masons bevelled the lower part of it. the expression is often refined and idealised as in the case of older works, but occasionally the portraiture is exact even to coarseness. it was not the idealised likeness of montumihâît which the artist wished to portray, but montumihâît himself, with his low forehead, his small close-set eyes, his thin cheeks, and the deep lines about his nose and mouth. and besides this, the wrinkles, the crows� feet, the cranial projections, the shape of ear and neck, are brought out with minute fidelity. a statue was no longer, as in earlier days, merely a piece of sacred stone, the support of the divine or human double, in which artistic value was an accessory of no importance and was esteemed only as a guarantee of resemblance: without losing aught of its religious significance, a statue henceforward became a work of art, admired and prized for the manner in which the sculptor faithfully represented his model, as well as for its mystic utility. the reign of psammetichus lasted till nearly the end of the century, and was marked by peace both at home and abroad. no doubt skirmishes of some kind took place in lydia and nubia, but we know nothing of them, nor have we any account of engagements with the asiatics which from time to time must have taken place during this reign. psammetichus followed with a vigilant eye the revolutionary changes beyond the isthmus, actuated at first by the fear of an offensive movement on the part of syria, and when that ceased to be a danger, by the hope of one day recovering, in southern syria, at all events, that leading position which his predecessors had held so long. tradition asserts that he wisely confined his ambition to the conquest of the philistine pentapolis; it is even reported that he besieged ashdod for twenty-nine years before gaining possession of it. if we disregard the cipher, which is evidently borrowed from some popular romance, the fact in itself is in no way improbable. ashdod was a particularly active community, and had played a far more important part in earlier campaigns than any other member of the pentapolis. it possessed outside the town proper, which was situated some little distance from the coast, a seaport similar to that of gaza, and of sufficient size to shelter a whole fleet. [illustration: 361.jpg the ruins of sais] drawn by boudior, from a photograph by golenischeff. whoever held this harbour could exercise effective control over the main routes leading from syria into egypt. psammetichus probably undertook this expedition towards the end of his life, when the victories gained by the medes had demonstrated the incapacity of assyria to maintain the defence of her distant provinces.* * at one time i was inclined to explain this period of twenty-nine years by assuming that the fall of ashdod took place in the twenty-ninth year of the king�s reign, and that herodotus had mistaken the date of its surrender for the duration of the siege: such an hypothesis is, however, unnecessary, since it is very probable that we have here one of those exaggerated estimates of time so dear to the hearts of popular historians. if we are to believe the account given by diodorus, it was in syria that psammetichus granted the honour of a place in the right wing of his army to the greek mercenaries: the capture of ashdod must, in this case, have occurred before the emigration of the native troops. in jer. xxv. 20, reference is made to �the remnant of ashdod,� in the fourth year of jehoiakim, i.e. about 603 b.c., and the decadence of the city is generally attributed to the war with egypt; it might with equal probability be ascribed to the scythian invasion. the attack of the scythians, which might have proved dangerous to egypt, had it been pushed far enough, had left her unharmed, and was in the end even advantageous to her. it was subsequent to the retreat of the barbarians, no doubt, that psam-metichus sent his troops into philistia and succeeded in annexing the whole or part of it. after this success he was content to wait and watch the course of events. the surprising revival of egypt must have had the effect of infusing fresh life into the egyptian factions existing in all the autonomous states, and in the prefectures of syria. the appearance of the pharaoh�s troops, and the toleration of their presence within the territory of the assyrian empire, aroused on all sides the hope of deliverance, and incited the malcontents to take some immediate action. we do not know what may have happened at tyre and sidon, or among the peoples of edom and arabia, but judah, at any rate, under the rule of josiah, carefully abstained from any action inconsistent with the pledge of fidelity which it had given to assyria. indeed, the whole kingdom was completely absorbed in questions of a theological nature, and the agitations which affected the religious life of the nation reacted on its political life as well. josiah, as he grew older, began to identify himself more and more with the doctrines taught by the prophets, and, thanks to his support, the party which sought to complete the reforms outlined by hezekiah gained fresh recruits every day. the opposition which they had formerly aroused among the priests of the temple had gradually died out, partly as the result of genuine conviction, and partly because the priests had come to realise that the establishment of a single exclusive sanctuary would work for their own interest and advantage. the high priest hilkiah took up the line followed by jeremiah, and was supported by a number of influential personages such as shaphan the scribe, son of azaliah, ahikam, achbor son of micaiab, and a prophetess named huldah, who had married the keeper of the royal wardrobe. the terrors of the scythian invasion had oppressed the hearts and quickened the zeal of the orthodox. judah, they declared, had no refuge save jahveh alone; all hope was lost if it persisted in the doctrines which had aroused against the faithless the implacable wrath of jahveh; it must renounce at once those idols and superstitious rites with which his worship had been disfigured, and overthrow the altars which were to be found in every part of the country in order to concentrate all its devotion on the temple of solomon. in a word, judah must return to an observance of the strict letter of the law, as it had been followed by their forefathers. but as this venerable code was not to be found either in the �book of the covenant� or in any of the other writings held sacred by israel, the question naturally arose as to where it was now hidden. in the eighteenth year of his reign, josiah sent shaphan the scribe to the temple in order to audit the accounts of the sums collected at the gates for the maintenance of the building. after the accounts had been checked, hilkiah suddenly declared that he had �found the book of the law� in the temple, and thereupon handed the document to shaphan, who perused it forthwith. on his return to the palace, the scribe made his report: �thy servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen;� then he added �hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book,� and proceeded to read it to the king. when the latter had heard the words contained in this book of the law, he was seized with anguish, and rent his garments; then, unable to arrive at any decision by himself, he sent hilkiah, shaphan, ahikam, achbor, and asaiah to inquire of jahveh for him and for his people, �for great is the wrath of the lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.� [illustration: 364.jpg decorations on the wrappings of a mummy.] the envoys betook themselves not to the official oracle or the recognised prophets, but to a woman, the prophetess huldah, who was attached to the court in virtue of her husband�s office; and she bade them, in the name of the most high, to summon a meeting of the faithful, and, after reading the new code to them, to call upon all present to promise that they would henceforth observe its ordinances: thus jahveh would be appeased, and since the king had �rent his garments and wept before me, i also have heard thee, saith jahveh. therefore, behold, i will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace.� josiah thereupon having summoned the elders of judah and jerusalem, went up into the temple, and there, standing on the platform, he read the book of the law in the presence of the whole people.* * 2 kings xxii. 3-20; xxiii. 1, 2. the narrative has undergone slight interpolation in places, e.g. verses 46, 5a, 6, and 7, where the compiler has made it harmonise with events previously recorded in connection with the reign of joash (2 kings xii. 6-16). the beginning of huldah�s prophecy was suppressed, when the capture of jerusalem proved that the reform of divine worship had not succeeded in averting the wrath of jahveh. it probably contained directions to read the _book of the covenant_ to the people, and to persuade them to adopt its precepts, followed by a promise to save judah provided it remained faithful to its engagements. it dealt with questions which had been frequent subjects of debate in prophetic circles since the days of hezekiah, and the anonymous writer who had compiled it was so strongly imbued with the ideas of jeremiah, and had so closely followed his style, that some have been inclined to ascribe the work to jeremiah himself. it has always been a custom among orientals to affirm that any work for which they profess particular esteem was discovered in the temple of a god; the egyptian priests, for instance, invented an origin of this nature for the more important chapters of their book of the dead, and for the leading treatises in the scientific literature of egypt. the author of the book of the law had ransacked the distant past for the name of the leader who had delivered israel from captivity in egypt. he told how moses, when he began to feel the hand of death upon him, determined to declare in gilead the decrees which jahveh had delivered to him for the guidance of his people.* in these ordinances the indivisible nature of god, and his jealousy of any participation of other deities in the worship of his people, are strongly emphasised. �ye shall surely destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills, and under every green tree: and ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their asherim with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods; and ye shall destroy their name out of that place.� ** * even st. jerome and st. john chrysostom admitted that deuteronomy was the book discovered by hilkiah in the temple during the reign of josiah, and this view is accepted at present, though it is applied, not to the book of deuteronomy as it appears in the pentateuch, but rather to the nucleus of this book, and especially chaps, xii.-xxvi. ** deut. xii. 2, 3. even were a prophet or dreamer of dreams to arise in the midst of the faithful and direct them by a sign or a miracle to turn aside after those accursed gods, they must not follow the teaching of these false guides, not even if the sign or miracle actually came to pass, but must seize and slay them. even �if thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, let us go and serve other gods,... thou shalt not consent unto him nor hearken unto him: neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and, afterwards the hand of all the people. and thou shalt stone him with stones that he die; because he hath sought to draw thee away from jahveh!�* and this jahveh was not the jahveh of any special place. he was not the jahveh of bethel, or of dan, or of mizpah, or of geba, or of beersheba; he is simply jahveh.** yet the seat of his worship was not a matter of indifference to him. �unto the place which jahveh shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither shalt thou come: and thither shall ye bring your... sacrifices and your tithes.� *** jerusalem is not mentioned by name, but the reference to it was clear, since every one knew that the suppression of the provincial sanctuaries must necessarily benefit it. one part of the new code dealt with the relations between different members of the community. the king was to approximate as closely as possible to the ideal priest; he was not to lift up his heart above his brethren, nor set his mind on the possession of many chariots, horses, or wives, but must continually read the law of god and ponder over his ordinances, and observe them word for word all the days of his life.**** * deut. xiii. 1-10. ** deut. vi. 4. the expression found in zecli. xiv. 9 was borrowed from the second of the introductions added to _deuteronomy_ at a later date; the phrase harmonises so closely with the main purpose of the book itself, that there can be no objection to employing it here. *** deut. xii. 5, 6. **** deut. xvii. 14-20; cf. xx. 1-9 for the regulations in regard to the levying of troops. even in time of war he was not to put his trust in his soldiers or in his own personal valour; here again he must allow himself to be guided by jahveh, and must undertake nothing without first consulting him through the medium of his priests. the poor,* the widow, and the orphan,** the bondservant,*** and even the stranger within the gates--in remembrance of the bondage in egypt ****--were all specially placed under the divine protection; every jew who had become enslaved to a fellow-countryman was to be set at liberty at the end of six years, and was to receive a small allowance from his master which would ensure him for a time against starvation.^ * as to the poor, and the charitable obligations towards them imposed by their common religion, cf. deut. xv. 7-11; as to the rights of the hired servant, cf. xxiv. 14, 15. ** deut. xxiv. 17-22 forbids the taking of a widow�s clothing in pledge, and lays down regulations in regard to gleaning permitted to widows and orphans (cf. lev. xix. 9, 10); reference is also made to their share in triennial tithe (deut. xiv. 28, 29; xxvi. 12, 13) and in the solemn festivals (deut. xvi. 11-14). *** slaves were allowed to share in the rejoicings during the great festivals (deut. xvi. 11, 14), and certain rights were accorded to women taken prisoners in war who had become their captors� concubines (deut. xxi. 10-14). ****participation of the stranger in the triennial tithe (deut. xiv. 28, 29; xxvi. 12, 13). ^ deut. xv. 12-18. the regulations in regard to divine worship had not as yet been drawn up in that spirit of hair-splitting minuteness which, later on, became a characteristic of hebrew legislation. only three great festivals are mentioned in the book of the law. the passover was celebrated in the month of abîb, when the grain is in the ear, and had already come to be regarded as commemorative of the exodus; but the other two, the feast of weeks and the feast of tabernacles, were merely associated with the agricultural seasons, and took place, the former seven weeks after the beginning of the harvest, the latter after the last of the crops had been housed.* the claim of the priest to a share in the victim and in the offerings made on various occasions is maintained, and the lawgiver allows him to draw a similar benefit from the annual and triennial tithes which he imposes on corn and wine and on the firstborn of cattle, the produce of this tithe being devoted to a sort of family festival celebrated in the holy place.** the priest was thus placed on the same footing as the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, and his influence was but little greater than it had been in the early days of the monarchy. it was to the prophet and not to the priest that the duty belonged of directing the public conscience in all those cases for which the law had made no provision. �i will put my words into his mouth (said jahveh), and he shall speak unto them all that i shall command him. and it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, i will require it of him. but the prophet which shall speak a word presumptuously in my name, which i have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. and if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the lord hath not spoken?--when a prophet speaketh in the name of jahveh, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which jahveh hath not spoken: the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him.� * deut. xvi. 1-17. ** deut. xviii. 1-8; as to the share in the triennial tithe, cf. deut. xiv. 28, 29; xxvi. 12, 13. when the reading of the law had ended, josiah implored the people to make a covenant with jahveh; that is to say, �to walk after jahveh, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all their hearts and all their souls, to confirm the words of this covenant that were written in this book.� the final words, which lingered in every ear, contained imprecations of even more terrible and gloomy import than those with which the prophets had been wont to threaten judah. �if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of jahveh thy god, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which i command thee this day; then all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee. cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. cursed shall be thy basket and thy kneading-trough. cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, the increase of thy kine, and the young of thy flock.... thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her; thou shalt build an house, and shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not use the fruit thereof. thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof.... thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people; and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day: and there shall be naught in the power of thine hand.... jahveh shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shalt not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young.� this enemy was to burn and destroy everything: �and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, throughout all thy land, which jahveh thy god hath given thee. and thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters... in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall straiten thee.� those who escape must depart into captivity, and there endure for many a long year the tortures of direst slavery; �thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, would god it were even! and at even thou shalt say, would god it were morning! for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.� * * deut. xxviii. the two sets of imprecations (xxvii., xxviii.) which terminate the actual work are both of later redaction, but the original ms. undoubtedly ended with some analogous formula. i have quoted above the most characteristic parts of the twenty-eighth chapter. the assembly took the oath required of them, and the king at once displayed the utmost zeal in exacting literal performance of the ordinances contained in the book of the law. his first step was to purify the temple: hilkiah and his priests overthrew all the idols contained in it, and all the objects that had been fashioned in honour of strange gods--the baals, the asherim, and all the host of heaven--and, carrying them out of jerusalem into the valley of the kidron, cast them into the flames, and scattered the ashes upon the place where all the filth of the city was cast out. the altars and the houses of the sodomites which defiled the temple courts were demolished, the chariots of the sun broken in pieces, and the horses of the god sent to the stables of the king�s chamberlain;* the sanctuaries and high places which had been set up at the gates of the city, in the public places, and along the walls were razed to the ground, and the tophet, where the people made their children pass through the fire, was transformed into a common sewer. * [the hebrew text admits of this meaning, which is, however, not clear in the english a.v.--tr.] the provincial sanctuaries shared the fate of those of the capital; in a short time, from geba to beersheba, there remained not one of those �high places,� at which the ancestors of the nation and their rulers had offered prayers for generations past. the wave of reform passed even across the frontier and was borne into the assyrian province of samaria; the temple and image which jeroboam had set up at bethel were reduced to ashes, and human bones were burnt upon the altar to desecrate it beyond possibility of purification.* * 2 kings xxiii. 3-20, 24-27, where several glosses and interpolations are easily recognisable, such as the episode at bethel (v. 15-20), the authenticity of which is otherwise incontestable. the account in 2 chron. xxxiv. is a defaced reproduction of that of 2 kings, and it places the reform, in part at least, before the discovery of the new law. the governor offered no objection to these acts; he regarded them, in the first place, as the private affairs of the subjects of the empire, with which he had no need to interfere, so long as the outburst of religious feeling did not tend towards a revolt: we know, moreover, that josiah, guided on this point by the prophets, would have believed that he was opposing the divine will had he sought to free himself from the assyrian yoke by ordinary political methods; besides this, in 621, under assur-etililâni, five years after the scythian invasion, the prefect of samaria had possibly not sufficient troops at his disposal to oppose the encroachments of the vassal princes. it was an affair of merely a few months. in the following year, when the work of destruction was over, josiah commanded that the passover should be kept in the manner prescribed in the new book; crowds flocked into jerusalem, from israel as well as from judah, and the festival made a deep impression on the minds of the people. centuries afterwards the passover of king josiah was still remembered: �there was not kept such a passover from the days of the judges... nor in all the days of the kings of israel, nor of the kings of judah.� * 1 2 kings xxiii. 21-23; cf. 2 chron. xxxv. 1-19. the text of the soptuagint appears to imply that it was the first passover celebrated in jerusalem. it also gives in chap. xxii. 3, after the mention of the eighteenth year, a date of the seventh or eighth month, which is not usually accepted, as it is in contradiction with what is affirmed in chap, xxiii. 21-23, viz. that the passover celebrated at jerusalem was in the same year as the reform, in the eighteenth year. it is to do away with the contradiction between these two passages that the hebrew text has suppressed the mention of the month. i think, however, it ought to be considered authentic and be retained, if we are allowed to place the celebration of the passover in what would be one year after. to do this it would not be needful to correct the regnal date in the text: admitting that the reform took place in 621, the passover of 620 would still quite well have taken place in the eighteenth year of josiah, that being dependent on the time of year at which the king had ascended the throne. the first outburst of zeal having spent itself, a reaction was ere long bound to set in both among the ruling classes and among the people, and the spectacle that asia at that time presented to their view was truly of a nature to incite doubts in the minds of the faithful. assyria--that assyria of which the prophets had spoken as the irresistible emissary of the most high--had not only failed to recover from the injuries she had received at the hands, first of the medes, and then of the scythians, but had with each advancing year seen more severe wounds inflicted upon her, and hastening her irretrievably to her ruin. and besides this, egypt and chaldæa, the ancient kingdoms which had for a short time bent beneath her yoke, had now once more arisen, and were astonishing the world by their renewed vigour. psammetichus, it is true, after having stretched his arm across the desert and laid hands upon the citadel which secured to him an outlet into syria for his armies, had proceeded no further, and thus showed that he was not inclined to reassert the ancient rights of egypt over the countries of the jordan and the orontes; but he had died in 611, and his son, necho ii., who succeeded him, did not manifest the same peaceful intentions.* * the last dated stele of psammetichus i. is the official epitaph of the apis which died in his fifty-second year. on the other hand, an apis, born in the fifty-third year of psammetichus, died in the sixteenth year of necho, after having lived 16 years, 7 months, 17 days. a very simple calculation shows that psammetichus i. reigned fifty-four years, as stated by herodotus and manetho, according to julius africanus. if he decided to try his fortune in syria, supported by his greek and egyptian battalions, what would be the attitude that judah would assume between moribund assyria and the kingdom of the pharaohs in its renewed vigour? it was in the spring of 608 that the crisis occurred. nineveh, besieged by the medes, was on the point of capitulating, and it was easy to foresee that the question as to who should rule there would shortly be an open one: should egypt hesitate longer in seizing what she believed to be her rightful heritage, she would run the risk of finding the question settled and another in possession. necho quitted memphis and made his way towards the asiatic frontier with the army which his father had left to him. it was no longer composed of the ill-organised bands of the ethiopian kings or the princes of the delta, temporarily united under the rule of a single leader, but all the while divided by reciprocal hatreds and suspicions which doomed it to failure. all the troops which constituted it--egyptians, libyans, and greeks alike--were thoroughly under the control of their chief, and advanced in a compact and irresistible mass �like the nile: like a river its volume rolls onward. it said: i arise, i inundate the earth, i will drown cities and people! charge, horses! chariots, fly forward at a gallop! let the warriors march, the ethiopian and the libyan under the shelter of his buckler, the fellah bending the bow!�* * jer. xlvi. 7-9, where the prophet describes, not the army which marched against josiah, but that which was beaten at carchemish. with a difference of date of only three or four years, the constituent elements of the army were certainly the same, so that the description of one would apply to the other. as soon as josiah heard the news, he called together his troops and prepared to resist the attack. necho affected not to take his demonstrations seriously, and sent a disdainful message recommending him to remain neutral: �what have i to do with thee, thou king of judah? i come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith i have war: and god hath commanded me to make haste: forbear thee from meddling with god who is with me, that he destroy thee not!�* * the message of necho to josiah is known to us from 2 chron. xxxv. 20-22. having despatched the message, probably at the moment of entering the shephelah, he continued in a northerly direction, nothing doubting that his warning had met a friendly reception; but however low nineveh had fallen, josiah could not feel that he was loosed from the oaths which bound him to her, and, trusting in the help of jahveh, he threw himself resolutely into the struggle. the egyptian generals were well acquainted with the route as far as the farther borders of philistia, having passed along it a few years previously, at the time of the campaign of psammetichus; but they had no experience of the country beyond ashdod, and were solely dependent for guidance on the information of merchants or the triumphant records of the old theban pharaohs. these monuments followed the traditional road which had led their ancestors from gaza to megiddo, from megiddo to qodshu, from qodshu to carchemish, and they were reckoning on passing through the valley of the jordan, and then that of the orontes, without encountering any resistance, when, at the entrance to the gorges of carmel, they were met by the advance guard of the judæan army. josiah, not having been warned in time to meet them as they left the desert, had followed a road parallel to their line of march, and had taken up his position in advance of them on the plain of megiddo, on the very spot where thutmosis iii. had vanquished the syrian confederates nearly ten centuries before. the king of judah was defeated and killed in the confusion of the battle, and the conqueror pushed on northwards without, at that moment, giving the fate of the scattered jews a further thought.* he rapidly crossed the plain of the orontes by the ancient caravan track, and having reached the euphrates, he halted under the walls of carchemish. perhaps he may have heard there of the fall of nineveh, and the fear of drawing down upon himself the medes or the babylonians prevented him from crossing the river and raiding the country of the balikh, which, from the force of custom, the royal scribes still persisted in designating by the disused name of mitanni.** * 2 kings xxiii. 29; cf. 2 chron. xxxv. 22, 23. it is probably to this battle that herodotus alludes when he says that necho overcame the syrians at magdôlos. the identity of magdôlos and megiddo, accepted by almost all historians, was disputed by gutschmid, who sees in the magdôlos of herodotus the migdol of the syro-egyptian frontier, and in the engagement itself, an engagement of necho with the assyrians and their philistine allies; also by th. reinach, who prefers to identify magdôlos with one of the migdols near ascalon, and considers this combat as fought against the assyrian army of occupation. if the information in herodotus were indeed borrowed from hecatasus of miletus, and by the latter from the inscription placed by necho in the temple of branchidae, it appears to me impossible to admit that magdôlos does not here represent megiddo. ** the text of 2 kings xxiii. 29 says positively that necho was marching towards the euphrates. the name mitanni is found even in ptolemaic times. he returned southwards, after having collected the usual tributes and posted a few garrisons at strategic points; at biblah he held a kind of _durbar_ to receive the homage of the independent phoenicians* and of the old vassals of assyria, who, owing to the rapidity of his movements, had not been able to tender their offerings on his outward march. * the submission of the phoenicians to necho is gathered from a passage in berosus, where he says that the egyptian army beaten at carchemish comprised phoenicians, besides syrians and arabs. [illustration: 378.jpg victorious necho] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph published in mariette. this scarab, now in the gizeh museum, is the only egyptian monument which alludes to the victories of necho. above, the king stands between nît and isis; below, the vanquished are stretched on the ground. the jews had rescued the body of their king and had brought it back in his chariot to jerusalem; they proclaimed in his stead, not his eldest son eliakim, but the youngest, shallum, who adopted the name of jehoahaz on ascending the throne. he was a young man, twenty-three years of age, light and presumptuous of disposition, opposed to the reform movement, and had doubtless been unwise enough to display his hostile feelings towards the conqueror. necho summoned him to eiblah, deposed him after a reign of three months, condemned him to prison, and replaced him by eliakim, who changed his name to that of jehoiakim--�he whom jahveh exalts;� and after laying judah under a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and one of gold, the egyptian monarch returned to his own country. certain indications lead us to believe that he was obliged to undertake other punitive expeditions. the philistines, probably deceived by false rumours of his defeat, revolted against him about the time that he was engaged in hostilities in northern syria, and on receiving news not only of his safety, but of the victory he had gained, their alarm was at once aroused. judah forgot her own sorrows on seeing the peril in which they stood, and jeremiah pronounced against them a prophecy full of menace. �behold,� he cried, �waters rise up out of the north, and shall become an overflowing stream, and shall overflow the land and all that is therein, the city and them that dwell therein; and the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl... for the lord will spoil the philistines, the remnant of the isle of caphtor. baldness is come upon gaza; ascalon is dumb with terror, and you, all that are left of the giants, how long will ye tear your faces in your mourning?� * ascalon was sacked and then gaza,** and necho at length was able to re-enter his domains, doubtless by the bridge of zalu, following in this his models, his heroic ancestors of the great theban dynasties. * [r.v., �ashkolon is brought to nought, the remnant of their valley: how long wilt thou cut thyself?�--tr.] ** jer. xlvii., which is usually attributed to a period subsequent to the defeat at carchemish or even later; the title, which alone mentions the egyptians, is wanting in the lxx. if we admit that the enemy coming from the north is the egyptian and not the chaldaean, as do most writers, the only time that danger could have threatened philistia from the egyptians coming from the north, was when necho, victorious, was returning from his first campaign. in this case, the kadytis of herodotus, which has caused so much trouble to commentators, would certainly be gaza, and there would be no difficulty in explaining how the tradition preserved by the greek historian placed the taking of this town after the battle of megiddo. he wished thereupon to perpetuate the memory of the greeks who had served him so bravely, and as soon as the division of the spoil had been made, he sent as an offering to the temple of apollo at miletus, the cuirass which he had worn throughout the campaign. we can picture the reception which his subjects gave him, and how the deputations of priests and nobles in white robes flocked out to meet him with garlands of flowers in their hands, and with acclamations similar to those which of old had heralded the return of seti i. or ramses ii. national pride, no doubt, was flattered by this revival of military glory, but other motives than those of vanity lay at the root of the delight exhibited by the whole country at the news of the success of the expedition. the history of the century which was drawing to its close, had demonstrated more than once how disadvantageous it was to egypt to be separated from a great power merely by the breadth of the isthmus. if taharqa, instead of awaiting the attack on the banks of the nile, had met the assyrians at the foot of carmel, or even before gaza, it would have been impossible for esarhaddon to turn the glorious kingdom of the pharaohs into an assyrian province after merely a few weeks of fighting. the dictates of prudence, more than those of ambition, rendered, therefore, the conquest of syria a necessity, and necho showed his wisdom in undertaking it at the moment when the downfall of nineveh reduced all risk of opposition to a minimum; it remained to be seen whether the conquerors of sin-shar-ishkun would tolerate for long the interference of a third robber, and would consent to share the spoil with these africans, who, having had none of the trouble, had hastened to secure the profit. all the mediterranean dependencies of assyria, such as mesopotamia, syria, and judæ, fell naturally within the sphere of babylon rather than that of media, and, indeed, cyaxares never troubled himself about them; and nabopolassar, who considered them his own by right, had for the moment too much in hand to permit of his reclaiming them. the aramæans of the khabur and the balikh, the nomads of the mesopotamian plain, had not done homage to him, and the country districts were infested with numerous bands of cimmerians and scythians, who had quite recently pillaged the sacred city of harrân and violated the temple of the god sin.* nabopolassar, who was too old to command his troops in person, probably entrusted the conduct of them to nebuchadrezzar, who was the son he had appointed to succeed him, and who had also married the median princess. three years sufficed this prince to carry the frontier of the new chaldæan empire as far as the syrian fords of the euphrates, within sight of thapsacus and carchemish. harrân remained in the hands of the barbarians,** probably on condition of their paying a tribute, but the district of the subaru was laid waste, its cities reduced to ashes, and the babylonian suzerainty established on the southern slopes of the masios. * _inscrip. of the cylinder of nabonidus_ mentions the pillage of harrân as having taken place fifty-four years before the date of its restoration by nabonidus. this was begun, as we know, in the third year of that king, possibly in 554-3. the date of the destruction is, therefore, 608-7, that is to say, a few months before the destruction of nineveh. ** the passage in the _cylinder of nabonidus_ shows that the barbarians remained in possession of the town. having brought these preliminary operations to a successful issue, nabopolassar, considering himself protected on the north and north-east by his friendship with cyaxares, no longer hesitated to make an effort to recover the regions dominated by egyptian influence, and, if the occasion presented itself, to reduce to submission the pharaoh who was in his eyes merely a rebellious satrap. nebuchadrezzar again placed himself at the head of his troops; necho, warned of his projects, hastened to meet him with all the forces at his disposal, and, owing probably to the resistance offered by the garrisons which he possessed in the hittite fortresses, he had time to continue his march as far as the euphrates. the two armies encountered each other at carchemish; the egyptians were completely defeated in spite of their bravery and the skilful tactics of their greek auxiliaries, and the asiatic nations, who had once more begun to rely on egypt, were obliged to acknowledge that they were as unequal to the task of overcoming chaldaea as they had been of sustaining a struggle with assyria.* * jer. xlvi. 2; cf. 2 kings xxiv. 7, where the editor, without mentioning the battle of carchemish, recalls in passing that �the king of babylon had taken, from the brook of egypt unto the river euphrates, all that pertained to the king of egypt.� the religious party in judah, whose hopes had been disappointed by the victory of pharaoh at megiddo, now rejoiced at his defeat, and when the remains of his legions made their way back across the philistine plain, closely pressed by the enemy, jeremiah hailed them as they passed with cutting irony. two or three brief, vivid sentences depicting the spirit that had fired them a few months before, and then the picture of their disorderly flight: �order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to battle. harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand forth with your helmets; furbish the spears, put on the coats of mail. wherefore have i seen it? they are dismayed and turn backward; and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back; terror is on every side, saith the lord. let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; in the north by the river euphrates have they stumbled and fallen.... go up into gilead, and take balm, o virgin daughter of egypt; in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no healing for thee. the nations have heard of thy shame, and the earth is full of thy cry: for the mighty man hath stumbled against the mighty, they are fallen both of them together.� * nebuchadrezzar received by the way the submission of jehoiakim, and of the princes of ammon, moab, and the philistines;** he was nearing pelusium on his way into egypt, when a messenger brought him the news of his father�s death. * jer. xlvi. 3-6, 11, 12. ** the submission of all these peoples is implied by the passage already cited in 2 kings xxiv. 7; berosus speaks of the phoenician, jewish, and syrian prisoners whom nebuchadrezzar left to his generals, when he resolved to return to babylon by the shortest route. he feared lest a competitor should dispute his throne--perhaps his younger brother, that nabu-shum-lishir who had figured at his side at the dedication of a temple to marduk. he therefore concluded an armistice with necho, by the terms of which he remained master of the whole of syria between the euphrates and the wady el-arish, and then hastily turned homewards. but his impatience could not brook the delay occasioned by the slow march of a large force, nor the ordinary circuitous route by carchemish and through mesopotamia. he hurried across the arabian desert, accompanied by a small escort of light troops, and presented himself unexpectedly at the gates of babylon. he found all in order. his chaldæan ministers had assumed the direction of affairs, and had reserved the throne for the rightful heir; he had only to appear to be acclaimed and obeyed (b.c. 605). his reign was long, prosperous, and on the whole peaceful. the recent changes in asiatic politics had shut out the chaldæans from the majority of the battle-fields on which the assyrians had been wont to wage warfare with the tribes on their eastern and northern frontiers. we no longer see stirring on the border-land those confused masses of tribes and communities of whose tumultuous life the ninevite annals make such frequent record: elam as an independent state no longer existed, neither did philipi and namri, nor the cossæans, nor parsua, nor the medes with their perpetual divisions, nor the urartians and the mannai in a constant state of ferment within their mountain territory; all that remained of that turbulent world now constituted a single empire, united under the hegemony of the medes, and the rule of a successful conqueror. the greater part of blam was already subject to those achæmenides who called themselves sovereigns of anshân as well as of persia, and whose fief was dependent on the kingdom of ecbatana:* it is probable that chaldasa received as her share of the ancient susian territory the low countries of the uknu and the ulai, occupied by the aramæan tribes of the puqudu, the eutu, and the grambulu;** but susa fell outside her portion, and was soon transformed into a flourishing iranian town. * �the king and the princes of elam� mentioned in jer. xxv. 25, xlix.35-39, and in ezele. xxxii. 24, 25, in the time of nebuchadrezzar, are probably the persian kings of anshân and their elamite vassals--not only, as is usually believed, the kings and native princes conquered by assur-bani-pal; the same probably holds good of the elam which an anonymous prophet associates with the medes under nabonidus, in the destruction of babylon (isa. xxi. 2). the princes of malamîr appear to me to belong to an anterior epoch. ** the enumeration given in ezelc. xxiii. 23, �the babylonians and all the chaldæans, pelted, and shoa, and koa,� shows us probably that the aramæans of the lower tigris represented by pekôd, as those of the lower euphrates are by the chaldæans, belonged to the babylonian empire in the time of the prophet. they are also considered as belonging to babylon in the passage of an anonymous prophet (jer. i. 21), who wrote in the last days of the chaldæn empire: �go up against the land of merathaim, even against it and the inhabitants of pekod.� translators and commentators have until quite recently mistaken the import of the name pekôd. the plains bordering the right bank of the tigris, from the uknu to the turnat or the eadanu, which had belonged to babylon from the very earliest times, were no doubt still retained by her;* but the mountain district which commanded them certainly remained in the hands of cyaxares, as well as the greater part of assyria proper, and there is every reason to believe that from the eadanu northwards the tigris formed the boundary between the two allies, as far as the confluence of the zab. * this is what appears to me to follow from the account of the conquest o£ babylon by cyrus, as related by herodotus. the entire basin of the upper tigris and its assyrian colonies, amidi and tushkân were now comprised in the sphere of medic influence, and the settlement of the scythians at harrân, around one of the most venerated of the semitic sanctuaries, shows to what restrictions the new authority of chaldasa was subjected, even in the districts of mesopotamia, which were formerly among the most faithful possessions of nineveh. if these barbarians had been isolated, they would not long have defied the king of babylon, but being akin to the peoples who were subject to cyaxares, they probably claimed his protection, and regarded themselves as his liege men; it was necessary to treat them with consideration, and tolerate the arrogance of their presence upon the only convenient road which connected the eastern with the western provinces of the kingdom. it is therefore evident that there was no opening on this side for those ever-recurring struggles in which assyria had exhausted her best powers; one war was alone possible, that with media, but it was fraught with such danger that the dictates of prudence demanded that it should be avoided at all costs, even should the alliance between the two courts cease to be cemented by a royal marriage. however great the confidence which he justly placed in the valour of his chaldæans, nebuchadrezzar could not hide from himself the fact that for two centuries they had always been beaten by the assyrians, and that therefore he would run too great a risk in provoking hostilities with an army which had got the better of the conquerors of his people. besides this, cyaxares was fully engaged in subjecting the region which he had allotted to himself, and had no special desire to break with his ally. nothing is known of his history during the years which followed the downfall of nineveh, but it is not difficult to guess what were the obstacles he had to surmount, and the result of the efforts which he made to overcome them. the country which extends between the caspian and the black sea--the mountain block of armenia, the basins of the araxes and the kur, the valleys of the halys, the iris, and the thermodon, and the forests of the anti-taurus and the taurus itself--had been thrown into utter confusion by the cimmerians and the scythians. nothing remained of the previous order of things which had so long prevailed there, and the barbarians who for a century and a half had destroyed everything in the country seemed incapable of organising anything in its place. urartu had shrunk within its ancient limits around ararat, and it is not known who ruled her; the civilisation of argistis and menuas had almost disappeared with the dynasty which had opposed the power of assyria, and the people, who had never been much impregnated by it, soon fell back into their native rude habits of life. confused masses of european barbarians were stirring in etiaus and the regions of the araxes, seeking a country in which to settle themselves, and did not succeed in establishing themselves firmly till a much later period in the district of sakasênê, to which was attached the name of one of their tribes.* * strabo states that armenia and the maritime regions of cappadocia suffered greatly from the invasion of the scythians. such of the mushku and the tabal as had not perished had taken refuge in the north, among the mountains bordering the black sea, where they were ere long known to the greeks as the moschi and the tibarenians. the remains of the cimmerian hordes had taken their place in cappadocia, and the phrygian population which had followed in their wake had spread themselves over the basin of the upper halys and over the ancient milidu, which before long took from them the name of armenia.* all these elements constituted a seething, struggling, restless mass of people, actuated by no plan or method, and subject merely to the caprice of its chiefs; it was, indeed, the �seething cauldron� of which the hebrew prophets had had a vision, which at times overflowed over the neighbouring nations, and at others was consumed within and wasted itself in fruitless ebullition.** * the phrygian origin of the armenians is pointed out by herodotus and by eudoxius. ** jer. i. 13. it took cyaxares years to achieve his conquests; he finally succeeded, however, in reducing the various elements to subjection--urartians, scythians, cimmerians, chaldæ, and the industrious tribes of the chalybes and the white syrians--and, always victorious, appeared at last on the right hank of the halys; but having reached it, he found himself face to face with foes of quite a different calibre from those with whom he had hitherto to deal. lydia had increased both in wealth and in vigour since the days when her king ardys informed his ally assur-bani-pal that he had avenged the death of his father and driven the cimmerians from the valley of the msoander. he had by so doing averted all immediate danger; but as long as the principal horde remained unexterminated, another invasion was always to be feared; besides which, the barbarian inroad, although of short duration, had wrought such havoc in the country that no native power in asia minor appeared, nor in reality was, able to make the effort needful to destroy them. their king dugdamis, it will be remembered, met his death in cilicia at the hands of the assyrians about the year 640, and kôbos, his successor, was defeated and killed by the scythians under madyes about 633. the repeated repulses they had suffered had the effect of quickly relieving lydia, phrygia, and the remaining states of the ægean and the black sea from their inroads; the milesians wrested sinope from them about 630, and the few bands left behind when the main body set out for the countries of the euphrates were so harried and decimated by the people over whom they had terrorised for nearly a century, that they had soon no refuge except round the fortress of antandros, in the mountains of the troad. most of the kingdoms whose downfall they had caused never recovered from their reverses; but lydia, which had not laid down its arms since the death of gyges, became possessed by degrees of the whole of their territory; phrygia proper came back to her in the general redistribution, and with it most of the countries which had been under the rule of the dynasty of midas, from the mountains of lycia to the shores of the black sea. the transfer was effected, apparently, with very slight opposition and with little loss of time, since in the four or five years which followed the death of kôbos, ardys had risen in the estimation of the greeks to the position enjoyed by gyges; and when, in 628, aristomenes, the hero of the messenian wars, arrived at rhodes, it is said that he contemplated proceeding from thence, first to sardes and then to ecbatana, for the purpose of gaining the adherence of lydia and media to his cause. [illustration: 390.jpga view in the mountains of the messogis] drawn by boudier, from the heliogravure of rayet and thomas. death put an end to his projects, but he would not for a moment have entertained them had not ardys been at that time at the head of a renowned and flourishing kingdom. the renewal of international commerce followed closely on the re-establishment of peace, and even if the long period of scythian invasion, followed by the destruction of nineveh, rendered the overland route less available for regular traffic than before, at all events relations between the inhabitants of the euphrates valley and those of the iegean littoral were resumed to such good purpose that before long several fresh marts were opened in lydia. [illustration: 391.jpg the site of priênê.] drawn by boudier, from the heliogravure of rayet and thomas. kymê and ephesus put the region of the messogis and the tmolus into communication with the sea, but the lower valleys of the hermos and the masander were closed by the existence of greek colonies at smyrna, clazomenas, colophon, priênê, and miletus--all hostile to the mermnadæ--which it would be necessary to overcome if these countries were to enjoy the prosperity shared by other parts of the kingdom; hence the principal effort made by the lydians was either directly to annex these towns, or to impose such treaties on them as would make them their dependencies. ardys seized priênê towards 620, and after having thus established himself on the northern shore of the latrnio gulf,* he proceeded to besiege miletus in 616, at the very close of his career. hostilities were wearily prolonged all through the reign of sadyattes (615-610), and down to the sixth year of alyattes.** * the well-known story that priênê was saved under alyattes by a stratagem of the philosopher bias is merely a fable, of which several other examples are found. it would not be possible to conclude from it, as grote did, that ardys� rule over the town was but ephemeral. ** the periods of duration assigned here to the reigns of these princes are those of euschius--that is to say, 15 years for crosus, 37 for alyattes, 5 for sadyattes, 37 for ardys; julius africanus gives 15 for sadyattes and 38 for ardys, while herodotus suggests 14 for crosus, 57 for alyattes, 12 for sadyattes, and 59 for ardys. the position of miletus was too strong to permit of its being carried by a _coup de main_; besides which, the lydians were unwilling to destroy at one blow a town whose colonies, skilfully planted at the seaports from the coasts of the black sea to those of egypt, would one day furnish them with so many outlets for their industrial products. their method of attacking it resolved itself into a series of exhausting raids. �every year, as soon as the fruit crops and the harvests began to ripen, alyattes set out at the head of his troops, whom he caused to march and encamp to the sound of instruments. having arrived in the milesian territory, he completely destroyed the crops and the orchards, and then again withdrew.� in these expeditions he was careful to avoid any excesses which would have made the injury inflicted appear irretrievable; his troops were forbidden to destroy dwelling-houses or buildings dedicated to the gods; indeed, on one occasion, when the conflagration which consumed the lands accidentally spread to the temple of athena near assêsos, he rebuilt two temples for the goddess at his own expense. the milesians sustained the struggle courageously, until two reverses at limeneion and in the plain of the maeander at length induced them to make terms. their tyrant, thrasybulus, acting on the advice of the delphic apollo and by the mediation of periander of corinth, concluded a treaty with alyattes in which the two princes, declaring themselves the guest and the ally one of the other, very probably conceded extensive commercial privileges to one another both by land and sea (604).* * thrasybulus� stratagem is said to have taken place at priênê by diogenes laertes and by polysenus. the war begins under ardys, lasts for five years under sadyattes, instead of the six years which herodotus attributes to it, and five years under alyattes. alyattes rewarded the oracle by the gift of a magnificent bowl, the work of glaucus of chios, which continued to be shown to travellers of the roman period as one of the most remarkable curiosities of delphi. alyattes continued his expeditions against the other greek colonies, but directed them prudently and leisurely, so as not to alarm his european friends, and provoke the formation against himself of a coalition of the hellenic communities shattered over the isles or along the littoral of the ægean. we know that towards the end of his reign he recovered colophon, which had been previously acquired by gyges, but had regained its independence during the cimmerian crisis;* he razed smyrna to the ground, and forced its inhabitants to occupy unfortified towns, where his suzerainty could not be disputed;** he half devastated clazomense, whose citizens saved it by a despairing effort, and he renewed the ancient alliances with ephesus, kymê, and the cities of the region of the caicus and the hellespont,*** though it is impossible to attribute an accurate date to each of these particular events. * polysenus tells the story of the trick by which alyattes, after he had treated with the people of colophon, destroyed their cavalry and seized on their town. the fact that a treaty was made seems to be confirmed by a fragment of phylarchus, and the surrender of the town to the lydians by a fragment of xenophanes, quoted in athenseus. schubert does not seem to believe that the town was taken by alyattes; i have adopted the opinion of ladet on this point. ** herodotus and nicolas of damascus confine themselves to relating the capture of the city; adds that the lydians compelled the inhabitants to dwell in unfortified towns. schubert thinks that the passage in strabo refers, not to the time of alyattes, but to a subsequent event in the fifth century; he relies for this opinion on a fragment of pindar, which represents smyrna as still flourishing in his time. but, as busolt has pointed out, the intention of the text of pindar is to represent the state of the city at about the time of homer�s birth, and not in the fifth century. *** the peace between ephesus and lydia must have been troubled for a little while in the reign of sadyattes, but it was confirmed under alyattes by the marriage of melas ii. with one of the king�s daughters. most of them had already taken place or were still proceeding when the irruption of the medes across the halys obliged him to concentrate all his energies on the eastern portion of his kingdom. the current tradition in lydia of a century later attributed the conflict of the two peoples to a romantic cause. it related that cyaxares had bestowed his favour on the bands of scythians who had become his mercenaries on the death of madyes, and that he had entrusted to them the children of some of the noblest medic families, that they might train them to hunt and also teach them the use of the bow. one day, on their returning from the chase without any game, cyaxares reproached them for their want of skill in such angry and insulting terms, that they resolved on immediate revenge. they cut one of the children in pieces, which they dressed after the same manner as that in which they were accustomed to prepare the game they had killed, and served up the dish to the king; then, while he was feasting upon it with his courtiers, they lied in haste and took refuge with alyattes. the latter welcomed them, and refused to send them back to cyaxares; hence the outbreak of hostilities. it is, of course, possible that the emigration of a nomad horde may have been the cause of the war,* but graver reasons than this had set the two nations at variance. * grote has collected a certain number of examples in later times to show that the journeying of a nomad horde from one state to another may provoke wars, and he concludes therefrom that at least the basis of herodotus� account may be considered as true. the hardworking inhabitants of the valleys of the iris and the halys were still possessed of considerable riches, in spite of the losses they had suffered from the avaricious cimmerians, and their chief towns, comana, pteria and teiria, continued to enjoy prosperity under the rule of their priest-kings. pteria particularly had developed in the course of the century, thanks to her favourable situation, which had enabled her to offer a secure refuge to the neighbouring population during the late disasters. [illustation: 396.jpg the ruins of pteria] drawn by boudier, from charles texier. the town itself was crowded into a confined plain, on the left bank of a torrent which flowed into the halys, and the city walls may still be clearly traced upon the soil; the outline of the houses, the silos, cisterns, and rock-cut staircases are still visible in places, besides the remains of a palace built of enormous blocks of almost rough-hewn limestone. the town was defended by wide ramparts, and also by two fortresses perched upon enormous masses of rock, while a few thousand yards to the east of the city, on the right bank of the torrent, three converging ravines concealed the sanctuary of one of those mysterious oracles whose fame attracted worshippers from far and wide during the annual fairs. [illustration: 396b.jpg the entrance to the sanctuary of pteria] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by chantre. the bas-reliefs which decorate them belong to that semi-barbarous art which we have already met with in the monuments attributed to the khâfci, near the orontes and euphrates, on both slopes of the amanus, in cilioia, and in the ravines of the taurus. [illustration: 398.jpg one of the processions in the ravine of pteria] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by chantre. long processions of priests and votaries defile before figures of the gods and goddesses standing erect upon their sacred animals; in one scene, a tall goddess, a cybele or an anaitis, leans affectionately upon her chosen lover, and seems to draw him with her towards an image with a lion�s body and the head of a youth.* * these bas-reliefs seem to me to have been executed at about the time with which we are dealing, or perhaps a few years later--in any case, before the persian conquest. pteria and its surrounding hills formed a kind of natural fortress which overlooked the whole bend of the halys; it constituted, in the land of the lydians, an outpost which effectually protected their possessions in phrygia and papnlagonia against an attack from the east; in the hands of the medes it would be a dominant position which would counteract the defensive features of the halys, and from it they might penetrate into the heart of asia minor without encountering any serious obstacles. the struggle between the two sovereigns was not so unequal as might at first appear. no doubt the army of alyattes was inferior in numbers, but the bravery of its component forces and the ability of its leaders compensated for its numerical inferiority, and cyaxares had no troop to be compared with the carian lancers, with the hoplites of ionia, or with the heavy mæonian cavalry. during six years the two armies met again and again--fate sometimes favouring one and sometimes the other--and were about to try their fortune once more, after several indecisive engagements, when an eclipse of the sun suspended operations (585). the iranian peoples would fight only in full daylight, and their adversaries, although warned, so it is said, by the milesian philosopher thaïes of the phenomenon about to take place in the heavens, were perhaps not completely reassured as to its significance, and the two hosts accordingly separated without coming to blows.* * this eclipse was identified at one time with that of sept. 30, 610, at another with that of may 28, 585. the latter of these two dates appears to me to be the correct one, and is the only one which agrees with what we know of the general history of the sixth century. nebuchadrezzar had followed, not without some misgivings, the vicissitudes of the campaign, and his anxiety was shared by the independent princes of asia minor, who were allies of the lydians; he and they alike awaited with dread a decisive action, which, by crushing one of the belligerents beyond hope of recovery, would leave the onlookers at the mercy of the victor in the full flush of his success. tradition relates that syennesis of cilicia and the babylonian nabonidus had taken advantage of the alarm produced by the eclipse to negotiate an armistice, and that they were soon successful in bringing the rival powers to an agreement.* the halys remained the recognised frontier of the two kingdoms, but the lydians probably obtained advantages for their commerce, which they regarded as compensatory for the abandonment of their claim to the district of pteria. to strengthen the alliance, it was agreed that alyattes should give his daughter aryenis in marriage to ishtuvigu, or, as the greeks called him, astyages, the son of cyaxares.** according to the custom of the times, the two contracting parties, after taking the vow of fidelity, sealed the compact by pricking each other�s arms and sucking the few drops of blood which oozed from the puncture.*** * the name labynetos given by herodotus is a transcript of nabonidus, but cannot here designate the babylonian king of that name, for the latter reigned more than thirty years after the peace was concluded between the lydians and the medes. if herodotus has not made the mistake of putting labynetos for nebuchadrezzar, we may admit that this labynetos was a prince of the royal family, or simply a general who was commanding the chaldoan auxiliaries of cyaxares. ** the form ishtuvigu is given us by the chaldoan documents. its exact transcript was astuigas, astyigas, according to ctosias; in fact, this coincides so remarkably with the babylonian mode of spelling, that we may believe that it faithfully reproduces the original pronunciation. *** many ancient authors have spoken of this war, or at least of the eclipse which brought it to an end. several of them place the conclusion of peace not in the reign of cyaxares, but in that of astyages--cicero, solinus, and the armenian eusebius--and their view has been adopted by some modern historians. the two versions of the account can be reconciled by saying that astyages was commanding the median army instead of his father, who was too old to do so, but such an explanation is unnecessary, and cyaxares, though over seventy, might still have had sufficient vigour to wage war. the substitution of astyages for cyaxares by the authors of roman times was probably effected with the object of making the date of the eclipse agree with a different system of chronology from that followed by herodotus. cyaxares died in the following year (584), full of days and renown, and was at once succeeded by astyages. few princes could boast of having had such a successful career as his, even in that century of unprecedented fortunes and boundless ambitions. inheriting a disorganised army, proclaimed king in the midst of mourning, on the morrow of a defeat in which the fate of his kingdom had hung in the balance, he succeeded within a quarter of a century in overthrowing his enemies and substituting his supremacy for theirs throughout the whole of western asia. at his accession media had occupied only a small portion of the iranian table-land; at his death, the median empire extended to the banks of the halys. it is now not difficult to understand why nebuchadrezzar abstained from all expeditions in the regions of the taurus, as well as in those of the upper tigris. he would inevitably have come into contact with the allies of the lydians, perchance with the lydians themselves, or with the medes, as the case might be; and he would have been drawn on to take an active part in their dangerous quarrels, from which, after all, he could not hope to reap any personal advantage. in reality, there was one field of action only open to him, and that was southern syria, with egypt in her rear. he found himself, at this extreme limit of his dominions, in a political situation almost identical with that of his assyrian predecessors, and consequently more or less under the obligation of repeating their policy. the saites, like the ethiopians before them, could enjoy no assured sense of security in the delta, when they knew that they had a great military state as their nearest neighbour on the other side of the isthmus; they felt with reason that the thirty leagues of desert which separated pelusium from gaza was an insufficient protection from invasion, and they desired to have between themselves and their adversary a tract of country sufficiently extensive to ward off the first blows in the case of hostilities. if such a buffer territory could be composed of feudal provinces or tributary states, egyptian pride would be flattered, while at the same time the security of the kingdom would be increased, and indeed the victorious progress of necho had for the moment changed their most ambitious dreams into realities. driven back into the nile valley after the battle of carchemish, their pretensions had immediately shrunk within more modest limits; their aspirations were now confined to gaining the confidence of the few surviving states which had preserved some sort of independence in spite of the assyrian conquest, to detaching them from chaldoan interests and making them into a protecting zone against the ambition of a new esarhaddon. to this work necho applied himself as soon as nebuchadrezzar had left him in order to hasten back to babylon. the egyptian monarch belonged to a persevering race, who were never kept, down by reverses, and had not once allowed themselves to be discouraged during the whole of the century in which they had laboured to secure the crown for themselves; his defeat had not lessened his tenacity, nor, it would seem, his certainty of final success. besides organising his egyptian and libyan troops, he enrolled a still larger number of hellenic mercenaries, correctly anticipating that the restless spirits of the phoenicians and jews would soon furnish him with an opportunity of distinguishing himself upon the scene of action. it was perhaps at this juncture that he decided to strengthen his position by the co-operation of a fleet. the superiority of the chaldoan battalions had been so clearly manifested, that he could scarcely hope for a decisive victory if he persisted in seeking it on land; but if he could succeed in securing the command of the sea, his galleys, by continually cruising along the syrian coast, and conveying troops, provisions, arms, and money to the phoenician towns, would so successfully foster and maintain a spirit of rebellion, that the chaldæans would not dare to venture into egypt until they had dealt with this source of danger in their rear. he therefore set to work to increase the number of his war-vessels on the bed sea, but more especially on the mediterranean, and as he had drawn upon greece for his troops, he now applied to her for shipbuilders.* * herodotus tells us that in his time the ruins of the docks which necho had made for the building of his triremes could still be seen on the shore of the red sea as well as on that of the mediterranean. he seems also to say that the building of the fleet was anterior to the first syrian expedition. [illustration: 404.jpg an egyptian vessel of the saite period] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph sent by g. benédite. the trireme, which had been invented by either the samian or corinthian naval constructors, had as yet been little used, and possibly herodotus is attributing an event of his own time to this earlier period when he affirms that necho filled a dockyard with a whole fleet of these vessels; he possessed, at any rate, a considerable number of them, and along with them other vessels of various build, in which the blunt stem and curved poop of the greeks were combined with the square-cabined barque of the egyptians. at the same time, in order to transport the squadron from one sea to another when occasion demanded, he endeavoured to reopen the ancient canal. he improved its course and widened it so as to permit of two triremes sailing abreast or easily clearing each other in passing. the canal started from the pelusiac branch of the nile, not far from patumos, and skirted the foot of the arabian hills from west to east; it then plunged into the wady tumilat, and finally entered the head of the bay which now forms the lake of ismaïlia. the narrow channel by which this sheet of water was anciently connected with the gulf of suez was probably obstructed in places, and required clearing out at several points, if not along its entire extent. a later tradition states that after having lost 100,000 men in attempting this task, the king abandoned the project on the advice of an oracle, a god having been supposed to have predicted to him that he was working for the barbarians.* * the figures, 100,000 men, are evidently exaggerated, for in a similar undertaking, the digging of the mahmudiyeh canal, mehemet-ali lost only 10,000 men, though the work was greater. [illustration: 405.jpg the ancient head of the red sea, now the northern extremity of the bitter lakes] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken from the railway between ismaïlia and suez, on the eastern shore of the lake. another of necho�s enterprises excited the admiration of his contemporaries, and remained for ever in the memory of the people. the carthaginians had discovered on the ocean coast of libya, a country rich in gold, ivory, precious woods, pepper, and spices, but their political jealousy prevented other nations from following in their wake in the interests of trade. the egyptians possibly may have undertaken to dispute their monopoly, or the phoenicians may have desired to reach their colony by a less frequented highway than the mediterranean. the merchants of the said and the delta had never entirely lost touch with the people dwelling on the shores of the red sea, and though the royal fleets no longer pursued their course down it on their way to punt as in the days of hâtshopsîtu and ramses iii., private individuals ventured from time to time to open trade communications with the ancient �ladders of incense.� necho despatched the phoenician captains of his fleet in search of new lands, and they started from the neighbourhood of suez, probably accompanied by native pilots accustomed to navigate in those waters. the undertaking, fraught with difficulty even in the last century, was, indeed, a formidable one for the small vessels of the saite period. they sailed south for months with the east to the left of them, and on their right the continent which seemed to extend indefinitely before them. towards the autumn they disembarked on some convenient shore, sowed the wheat with which they were provided, and waited till the crop was ripe; having reaped the harvest, they again took to the sea. any accurate remembrance of what they saw was soon effaced; they could merely recollect that, having reached a certain point, they observed with astonishment that the sun appeared to have reversed its course, and now rose on their right hand. this meant that they had turned the southern extremity of africa and were unconsciously sailing northwards. in the third year they passed through the pillars of hercules and reached egypt in safety. the very limited knowledge of navigation possessed by the mariners of that day rendered this voyage fruitless; the dangerous route thus opened up to commerce remained unused, and its discovery was remembered only as a curious feat devoid of any practical use.* * the greek writers after herodotus denied the possibility of such a voyage, and they thought that it could not be decided whether africa was entirely surrounded by water, and that certainly no traveller had ever journeyed above 5000 stadia beyond the entrance to the red sea. modern writers are divided on the point, some denying and others maintaining the authenticity of the account. the observation made by the navigators of the apparent change in the course of the sun, which herodotus has recorded, and which neither he nor his authorities understood, seems to me to be so weighty an argument for its authenticity, that it is impossible to reject the tradition until we have more decided grounds for so doing. in order to obtain any practical results from the arduous voyage, it would have been necessary for egypt to devote a considerable part of its resources to the making of such expeditions, whereas the country preferred to concentrate all its energies on its tyrian policy. necho certainly possessed the sympathies of the tyrians, who had transferred their traditional hatred of the assyrians to the chaldæans. he could also count with equal certainty on the support of a considerable party in moab, ammon, and edom, as well as among the nabatæans and the arabs of kedar; but the key of the whole position lay with judah--that ally without whom none of necho�s other partisans would venture to declare openly against their master. the death of josiah had dealt a fatal blow to the hopes of the prophets, and even long after the event they could not recall it without lamenting the fate of this king after their own heart. �and like unto him,� exclaims their chronicler, �was there no king before him, that turned to the lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of moses; neither after him arose there any like him.� * * 2 kings xxiii. 25. the events which followed his violent death--the deposition of jehoahaz, the establishment and fall of the egyptian supremacy, the proclamation of the chaldæan suzerainty, the degradation of the king and the misery of the people brought about by the tribute exacted from them by their foreign masters,--all these revolutions which had succeeded each other without break or respite had all but ruined the belief in the efficacy of the reform due to hilkiah�s discovery, and preached by jeremiah and his followers. the people saw in these calamities the vengeance of jahveh against the presumptuous faction which had overthrown his various sanctuaries and had attempted to confine his worship to a single temple; they therefore restored the banished attractions, and set themselves to sacrifice to strange gods with greater zest than ever. a like crisis occurred and like party divisions had broken out around jehoiakim similar to those at the court of ahaz and hezekiah a century earlier. the populace, the soldiery, and most of the court officials, in short, all who adhered to the old popular form of religion or were attracted to strange devotions, hoped to rid themselves of the chaldæans by earthly means, and since necho declared himself an implacable enemy of their foe, their principal aim was to come to terms with egypt. jeremiah, on the contrary, and those who remained faithful to the teaching of the prophets, saw in all that was passing around them cogent reasons for rejecting worldly wisdom and advice, and for yielding themselves unreservedly to the divine will in bowing before the chaldæan of whom jahveh made use, as of the assyrian of old, to chastise the sins of judah. the struggle between the two factions constantly disturbed the public peace, and it needed little to cause the preaching of the prophets to degenerate into an incitement to revolt. on a feast-day which occurred in the early months of jehoiakim�s reign, jeremiah took up his station on the pavement of the temple and loudly apostrophised the crowd of worshippers. �thus saith the lord: if ye will not hearken unto me, to walk in my law, which i have set before you, to hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom i send unto you, even rising up early and sending them, but ye have not hearkened; then will i make this house like shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.� such a speech, boldly addressed to an audience the majority of whom were already moved by hostile feelings, brought their animosity to a climax; the officiating priests, the prophets, and the pilgrims gathered round jeremiah, crying, �thou shalt surely die.� the people thronged into the temple, the princes of judah went up to the king�s house and to the house of the lord, and sat in council in the entry of the new gate. they decreed that jeremiah, having spoken in the name of the lord, did not merit death, and some of their number, recalling the precedent of micaiah the morasthite, who in his time had predicted the ruin of jerusalem, added, �did hezekiah king of judah and all judah put him at all to death?� ahikam, the son of shaphan, one of those who had helped in restoring the law, took the prophet under his protection and prevented the crowd from injuring him, but some others were not able to escape the popular fury. the prophet uriah of kirjath-jearim, who unweariedly prophesied against the city and country after the manner of jeremiah, fled to egypt, but in vain; jehoiakim despatched elnathan, the son of achbor, �and certain men with him,� who brought him back to judah, �slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people.� * if popular feeling had reached such a pitch before the battle of carchemish, to what height must it have risen when the news of nebuchadrezzar�s victory had given the death-blow to the hopes of the egyptian faction! jeremiah believed the moment ripe for forcibly arresting the popular imagination while it was swayed by the panic of anticipated invasion. he dictated to his disciple baruch the prophecies he had pronounced since the appearance of the scythians under josiah, and on the day of the solemn fast proclaimed throughout judah during the winter of the fifth year of the reign, a few months after the defeat of the egyptians, he caused the writing to be read to the assembled people at the entry of the new gate.** * jer. xxvi., where the scene takes place at the beginning of jehoiakim�s reign, i.e. under the egyptian domination. ** the date given in jer. xxxvi. 9 makes the year begin in spring, since the ninth month occurs in winter; this date belongs, therefore, to the later recensions of the text. it is nevertheless probably authentic, representing the exact equivalent of the original date according to the old calendar. micaiah, the son of gremariah, was among those who listened, and noting that the audience were moved by the denunciations which revived the memory of their recent misfortunes, he hastened to inform the ministers sitting in council within the palace of what was passing. they at once sent for baruch, and begged him to repeat to them what he had read. they were so much alarmed at its recital, that they advised him to hide himself in company with jeremiah, while they informed the king of the matter. jehoiakim was sitting in a chamber with a brazier burning before him on account of the severe cold: scarcely had they read three or four pages before him when his anger broke forth; he seized the roll, slashed it with the scribe�s penknife, and threw the fragments into the fire. jeremiah recomposed the text from memory, and inserted in it a malediction against the king. �thus saith the lord concerning jehoiakim, king of judah: he shall have none to sit upon the throne of david: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. and i will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity: and i will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of jerusalem, and upon the men of judah, all the evil that i have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not.� * * jer. xxxvi. attempts have been made to reconstruct the contents of jeremiah�s roll, and most of the authors who have dealt with this subject think that the roll contained the greater part of the fragments which, in the book of the prophet, occupy chaps, i. 4-11, ii., iii. 1-5, 19-25, iv. vi., vii., viii., ix. 1-21, x. 17-25, xi., xii. 1-6, xvii. 19-27, xviii., xix. 1-13, which it must be admitted have not in every case been preserved in their original form, but have been abridged or rearranged after the exile. other chapters evidently belong to the years previous to the fifth year of jehoiakim, as well as part of the prophecies against the barbarians, but they could not have been included in the original roll, as the latter would then have been too long to have been read three times in one day. the egyptian tendencies evinced at court, at first discreetly veiled, were now accentuated to such a degree that nebuchadrezzar became alarmed, and came in person to jerusalem in the year 601. his presence frustrated the intrigues of pharaoh. jehoiakim was reduced to order for a time, but three years later he revolted afresh at the instigation of necho, and this time the chaldæan satraps opened hostilities in earnest. they assembled their troops, which were reinforced by syrian, moabite, and ammonite contingents, and laid siege to jerusalem.* * 2 kings xxiv. 1-4. the passage is not easy to be understood as it stands, and it has been differently interpreted by historians. some have supposed that it refers to events immediately following the battle of carchemish, and that jehoiakim defended jerusalem against nebuchadrezzar in 605. others think that, after the battle of carchemish, jehoiakim took advantage of nebuchadrezzar�s being obliged to return at once to babylon, and would not recognise the authority of the chaldæans; that nebuchadrezzar returned later, towards 601, and took jerusalem, and that it is to this second war that allusion is made in the book of kings. it is more simple to consider that which occurred about 600 as a first attempt at rebellion which was punished lightly by the chaldæans. jehoiakim, left to himself, resisted with such determination that nebuchadrezzar was obliged to bring up his chaldæan forces to assist in the attack. judah trembled with fear at the mere description which her prophet habakkuk gave of this fierce and sturdy people, �which march through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling-places which are not theirs. they are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen spread themselves; yea, their horsemen come from far; they fly as an eagle that hasteneth to devour. they come all of them for violence; their faces are set eagerly as the east wind, and they gather captives as the sand. yea, he scoffeth at kings, and princes are a derision unto him: he derideth every stronghold: for he heapeth up dust and taketh it. then shall he sweep by as a wind, and shall pass over the guilty, even he whose might is his god.� nebuchadrezzar�s army must have presented a spectacle as strange as did that of necho. it contained, besides its nucleus of chaldæn and babylonian infantry, squadrons of scythian and median cavalry, whose cruelty it was, no doubt, that had alarmed the prophet, and certainly bands of greek hoplites, for the poet alcasus had had a brother, antimenidas by name, in the chaldæan monarch�s service. jehoiakim died before the enemy appeared beneath the walls of jerusalem, and was at once succeeded by his son jeconiah,* a youth of eighteen years, who assumed the name of jehoiachin.** * [jehoiachin is called coniah in jer. xxii. 24 and xxiv. 1, and jeconiah in 1 chron. iii. 16.--tr.] ** 2 kings xxiv. 5-10; cf. 2 chron. xxxvi. 6-9, where the writer says that nebuchadrezzar bound jehoiakim �in fetters, to carry him to babylon.� the new king continued the struggle at first courageously, but the advent of nebuchadrezzar so clearly convinced him of the futility of the defence, that he suddenly decided to lay down his arms. he came forth from the city with his mother nehushta, the officers of his house, his ministers, and his eunuchs, and prostrated himself at the feet of his suzerain. the chaldæn monarch was not inclined to proceed to extremities; he therefore exiled to babylon jehoiachin and the whole of his seditious court who had so ill-advised the young king, the best of his officers, and the most skilful artisans, in all 3023 persons, but the priests and the bulk of the people remained at jerusalem. the conqueror appointed mattaniah, the youngest son of josiah, to be their ruler, who, on succeeding to the crown, changed his name, after the example of his predecessors, adopting that of zedekiah. jehoiachin had reigned exactly three months over his besieged city (596).* the egyptians made no attempt to save their ally, but if they felt themselves not in a condition to defy the chaldasans on syrian territory, the chaldaeans on their side feared to carry hostilities into the heart of the delta. necho died two years after the disaster at jerusalem, without having been called to account by, or having found an opportunity of further annoying, his rival, and his son psammetichus ii. succeeded peacefully to the throne.** he was a youth at this time,*** and his father�s ministers conducted the affairs of state on his behalf, and it was they who directed one of his early campaigns, if not the very first, against ethiopia.**** * 2 kings xxiv. 11-17; cf. 2 chron. xxxvi. 10. ** the length of necho�s reign is fixed at sixteen years by herodotus, and at six or at nine years by the various abbreviators of manetho. the contemporaneous monuments have confirmed the testimony of herodotus on this point as against that of manetho, and the stelse of the florentine museum, of the leyden museum, and of the louvre have furnished certain proof that necho died in the sixteenth year, after fifteen and a half years� reign. *** his sarcophagus, discovered in 1883, and now preserved in the gizeh museum, is of such small dimensions that it can have been used only for a youth. **** the graffiti of abu-simbel have been most frequently attributed to psammetichus i., and until recently i had thought it possible to maintain this opinion. a. von gutsehmid was the first to restore them to psammetichus il, and his opinion has gained ground since wiedemann�s vigorous defence of it. the alysian mercenary�s graffito contains the greek translation of the current egyptian phrase �when his majesty came on his first military expedition into this country,� which seems to point to no very early date in a reign for a first campaign. moreover, one of the generals in command of the expedition is a psammetichus, son of theocles, that is, a greek with an egyptian name. a considerable lapse of time must have taken place since psammetichus� first dealings with the greeks, for otherwise the person named after the king would not have been of sufficiently mature age to be put at the head of a body of troops. they organised a small army for him composed of egyptians, greeks, and asiatic mercenaries, which, while the king was taking up his residence at elephantine, was borne up the nile in a fleet of large vessels.* it probably went as far south as the northern point of the second cataract, and not having encountered any ethiopian force,** it retraced its course and came to anchor at abu-simbel. * the chief graffito at abu-simbel says, in fact, that the king came to elephantine, and that only the troops accompanying the general psammetichus, the son of theocles, went beyond kerkis. it was probably during his stay at elephantine, while awaiting the return of the expedition, that psammetichus ii. had the inscriptions containing his cartouches engraved upon the rocks of bigga, abaton, philo, and konosso, or among the ruins of elephantine and of phila?. ** the greek inscription says _above kerlcis_. wiedemann has corrected _kerkis_ into _kortis_, the korte of the first cataract, but the reading kerkis is too well established for there to be any reason for change. the simplest explanation is to acknowledge that the inscription refers to a place situated a few miles above abu-simbel, towards wady-halfa. the officers in command, after having admired the rock-cut chapel of ramses ii., left in it a memento of their visit in a fine inscription cut on the right leg of one of the colossi. this inscription informs us that �king psammatikhos having come to elephantine, the people who were with psammatikhos, son of theocles, wrote this. they ascended above kerkis, to where the river ceases; potasimto commanded the foreigners, amasis the egyptians. at the same time also wrote arkhôn, son of amoibikhos, and peleqos, son of ulamos.� following the example of their officers, the soldiers also wrote their names here and there, each in his own language--ionians, rhodians, carians, phoenicians, and perhaps even jews; e.g. elesibios of teos, pabis of colophon, telephos of ialysos, abdsakon son of petiehvê, gerhekal son of hallum. the whole of this part of the country, brought to ruin in the gradual dismemberment of greater egypt, could not have differed much from the nubia of to-day; there were the same narrow strips of cultivation along the river banks, gigantic temples half buried by their own ruins, scattered towns and villages, and everywhere the yellow sand creeping insensibly down towards the nile. the northern part of this province remained in the hands of the saite pharaohs, and the districts situated further south just beyond abu-simbel formed at that period a sort of neutral ground between their domain and that of the pharaohs of napata. while all this was going on, syria continued to plot in secret, and the faction which sought security in a foreign alliance was endeavouring to shake off the depression caused by the reverses of jehoiakim and his son; and the tide of popular feeling setting in the direction of egypt became so strong, that even zedekiah, the creature of nebuchadrezzar, was unable to stem it. the prophets who were inimical to religious reform, persisted in their belief that the humiliation of the country was merely temporary. [illustration: 417.jpg the façade of the great temple of abu-simbel] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by daniel héron. those of them who still remained in jerusalem repeated at every turn, �ye shall not serve the king of babylon... the vessels of the lord�s house shall now shortly be brought again from babylon.� jeremiah endeavoured to counteract the effect of their words, but in vain; the people, instead of listening to the prophet, waxed wroth with him, and gave themselves more and more recklessly up to their former sins. incense was burnt every morning on the roofs of the houses and at the corners of the streets in honour of baal, lamentations for tammuz again rent the air at the season of his festival; the temple was invaded by uncircumcised priests and their idols, and the king permitted the priests of moloch to raise their pyres in the valley of hinnom. the exiled jews, surrounded on all sides by heathen peoples, presented a no less grievous spectacle than their brethren at jerusalem; some openly renounced the god of their fathers, others worshipped their chosen idols in secret, while those who did not actually become traitors to their faith, would only listen to such prophets as promised them a speedy revenge--ahab, zedekiah, son of maaseiah, and shemaiah. there was one man, however, who appeared in their midst, a priest, brought up from his youth in the temple and imbued with the ideas of reform--ezekiel, son of buzi, whose words might have brought them to a more just appreciation of their position, had they not drowned his voice by their clamour; alarmed at their threats, he refrained from speech in public, but gathered round him a few faithful adherents at his house in tel-amb, where the spirit of the lord first came upon him in their presence about the year 592.* * ezelc. i. 1, 2. we see him receiving the elders in his house in chaps, viii. 1, xiv. 1, xx. 1, et. seq. this little band of exiles was in constant communication with the mother-country, and the echo of the religious quarrels and of the controversies provoked between the various factions by the events of the political world, was promptly borne to them by merchants, travelling scribes, or the king�s legates who were sent regularly to babylon with the tribute.* they learnt, about the year 590, that grave events were at hand, and that the moment had come when judah, recovering at length from her trials, should once more occupy, in the sight of the sun, that place for which jahveh had destined her. the kings of moab, ammon, edom, tyre, and sidon had sent envoys to jerusalem, and there, probably at the dictation of egypt, they had agreed on what measures to take to stir up a general insurrection against chaldæa.** the report of their resolutions had revived the courage of the national party, and of its prophets; hananiah, son of azzur, had gone through the city announcing the good news to all.*** * jer. xxix. 3 gives the names of two of these transmitters of the tribute--elasah the son of shaphan, and gemariah the son of hilkiah, to whom jeremiah had entrusted a message for those of the captivity. ** jer. xxvii. 1-3. the statement at the beginning of this chapter: _in the beginning of the reign of jehoiakim_, contains a copyist�s error; the reading should be: _in the beginning of the reign of zedekiah_ (see ver. 12). *** jer. xxvii., xxviii. �thus speaketh the lord of hosts, the god of israel, saying, i have broken the yoke of the king of babylon. within two full years will i bring again into this place all the vessels of the lord�s house .. . and jeconiah the son of jehoiakim, king of judah, with all the captives of judah that went to babylon!� but jeremiah had made wooden yokes and had sent them to the confederate princes, threatening them with divine punishment if they did not bow their necks to nebuchadrezzar; the prophet himself bore one on his own neck, and showed himself in the streets on all occasions thus accoutred, as a living emblem of the slavery in which jahveh permitted his people to remain for their spiritual good. hananiah, meeting the prophet by chance, wrested the yoke from him and broke it, exclaiming, �thus saith the lord: even so will i break the yoke of nebuchadrezzar, king of babylon, within two full years from off the neck of all the nations.� the mirth of the bystanders was roused, but on the morrow jeremiah appeared with a yoke of iron, which jahveh had put �upon the neck of all the nations, that they may serve nebuchadrezzar, king of babylon.� moreover, to destroy in the minds of the exiled jews any hope of speedy deliverance, he wrote to them: �let not your prophets that be in the midst of you, and your diviners, deceive you, neither hearken ye to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. for they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: i have not sent them, saith the lord.� the prophet exhorted them to resign themselves to their fate, at all events for the time, that the unity of their nation might be preserved until the time when it might indeed please jahveh to restore it: �build ye houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens and eat the fruit of them: take ye wives and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply ye there and be not diminished. and seek the peace of the city whither i have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.� psammetichus ii. died in 589,* and his reign, though short, was distinguished by the activity shown in rebuilding and embellishing the temples. * herodotus reckoned the length of the reign of psammetichus ii. at six years, in which he agrees with the syncellus, while the abbreviators of manetho fix it at seventeen years. the results given by the reading of a stele of the louvre enable us to settle that the figure 6 is to be preferred to the other, and to reckon the length of the reign at five years and a half. his name is met with everywhere on the banks of the nile--at karnak, where he completed the decoration of the great columns of taharqa, at abydos, at heliopolis, and on the monuments that have come from that town, such as the obelisk set up in the campus martius at borne. the personal influence of the young sovereign did not count for much in the zeal thus displayed; but the impulse that had been growing during three or four generations, since the time of the expulsion of the assyrians, now began to have its full effect. egypt, well armed, well governed by able ministers, and more and more closely bound to greece by both mercantile and friendly ties, had risen to a very high position in the estimation of its contemporaries; the inhabitants of elis had deferred to her decision in the question whether they should take part in the olympic games in which they were the judges, and following the advice she had given on the matter, they had excluded their own citizens from the sports so as to avoid the least suspicion of partiality in the distribution of the prizes.* the new king, probably the brother of the late pharaoh, had his prenomen of uahibn from his grandfather psammetichus i., and it was this sovereign that the greeks called indifferently uaphres and apries.** * diodorus siculus has transferred the anecdote to amasis, and the decision given is elsewhere attributed to one of the seven sages. the story is a popular romance, of which herodotus gives the version current among the greeks in egypt. ** according to herodotus, apries was the son of psammis. the size of the sarcophagus of psammetichus ii., suitable only for a youth, makes this filiation improbable. psammetichus, who came to the throne when he was hardly more than a child, could have left behind him only children of tender age, and apries appears from the outset as a prince of full mental and physical development. [illustration: 422.jpg apries, from a sphinx in the louvre] drawn by boudier, from the bronze statuette in the louvre museum. he was young, ambitious, greedy of fame and military glory, and longed to use the weapon that his predecessors had for some fifteen years past been carefully whetting; his emissaries, arriving at jerusalem at the moment when the popular excitement was at its height, had little difficulty in overcoming zede-kiah�s scruples. edoni, moab, and the philistines, who had all taken their share in the conferences of the rebel party, hesitated at the last moment, and refused to sever their relations with babylon. tyre and the ammonites alone persisted in their determination, and allied themselves with egypt on the same terms as judah. [illustration: 423.jpg stele of nebuchadrezzar] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by pognon. the figures have been carefully defaced with the hammer, but the outline of the king can still be discerned on the left; he seizes the rampant lion by the right paw, and while it raises its left paw against him, he plunges his dagger into the body of the beast. nebuchadrezzar, thus defied by three enemies, was at a loss to decide upon which to make his first attack. ezekiel, whose place of exile put him in a favourable position for learning what was passing, shows him to us as he �stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver.� judah formed as it were the bridge by which the egyptians could safely enter syria, and if nebuchadrezzar could succeed in occupying it before their arrival, he could at once break up the coalition into three separate parts incapable of rejoining one another--ammon in the desert to the east, tyre and sidon on the seaboard, and pharaoh beyond his isthmus to the south-west. he therefore established himself in a central position at eiblah on the orontes, from whence he could observe the progress of the operations, and hasten with his reserve force to a threatened point in the case of unforeseen difficulties; having done this, he despatched the two divisions of his army against his two principal adversaries. one of these divisions crossed the lebanon, seized its fortresses, and, leaving a record of its victories on the rocks of the wady brissa, made its way southwards along the coast to blockade tyre.* * the account of this phoenician campaign is contained in one of the inscriptions discovered and commented on by pognon. winckler, the only one to my knowledge who has tried to give a precise chronological position to the events recorded in the inscription, places them at the very beginning of the reign, after the victory of carchemish, about the time when nebuchadrezzar heard that his father had just died. i think that this date is not justified by the study of the inscription, for the king speaks therein of the great works that he had accomplished, the restoration of the temples, the rebuilding of the walls of babylon, and the digging of canals, all of which take us to the middle or the end of his reign. we are therefore left to choose between one of two dates, namely, that of 590-587, during the jewish war, and that from the king�s thirty-seventh year to 568 b.c., during the war against amasis which will be treated below. i have chosen the first, because of nebuchadrezzar�s long sojourn at riblah, which gave him sufficient time for the engraving of the stelse on lebanon: the bas-reliefs of wady. brissa could have been cut before the taking of jerusalem, for no allusion to the war against the jews is found in them. the enemy mentioned in the opening lines is perhaps apries, whose fleet was scouring the phoenician coasts. the other force bore down upon zedekiah, and made war upon him ruthlessly. it burnt the villages and unwalled towns, gave the rural districts over as a prey to the philistines and the edomites, surrounded the two fortresses of lachish and azekah, and only after completely exhausting the provinces, appeared before the walls of the capital. jerusalem was closely beset when the news reached the chaldæans that apries was approaching gaza; zedekiah, in his distress, appealed to him for help, and the promised succour at length came upon the scene. the chaldæans at once raised the siege with the object of arresting the advancing enemy, and the popular party, reckoning already on a chaldean defeat, gave way to insolent rejoicing over the prophets of evil. jeremiah, however, had no hope of final success. �deceive not yourselves, saying, the chaldæans shall surely depart from us; for they shall not depart. for though ye had smitten the whole army of the chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire.� what actually took place is not known; according to one account, apries accepted battle and was defeated; according to another, he refused to be drawn into an engagement, and returned haughtily to egypt.* * that, at least, is what jeremiah seems to say (xxxvii. 7): �behold, pharaoh�s army, which is come forth to help you, shall return to egypt into their own land.� there is no hint here of defeat or even of a battle. his fleet probably made some effective raiding on the phoenician coast. it is easy to believe that the sight of the chaldoan camp inspired him with prudence, and that he thought twice before compromising the effects of his naval campaign and risking the loss of his fine army--the only one which egypt possessed--in a conflict in which his own safety was not directly concerned. nebuchadrezzar, on his side, was not anxious to pursue so strongly equipped an adversary too hotly, and deeming himself fortunate in having escaped the ordeal of a trial of strength with him, he returned to his position before the walls of jerusalem. the city receiving no further succour, its fall was merely a question of time, and resistance served merely to irritate the besiegers. the jews nevertheless continued to defend it with the heroic obstinacy and, at the same time, with the frenzied discord of which they have so often shown themselves capable. during the respite which the diversion caused by apries afforded them, jeremiah had attempted to flee from jerusalem and seek refuge in benjamin, to which tribe he belonged. arrested at the city gate on the pretext of treason, he was unmercifully beaten, thrown into prison, and the king, who had begun to believe in him, did not venture to deliver him. he was confined in the court of the palace, which served as a gaol, and allowed a ration of a loaf of bread for his daily food.1 the courtyard was a public place, to which all comers had access who desired to speak to the prisoners, and even here the prophet did not cease to preach and exhort the people to repentance: �he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the chaldæans shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey, and he shall live. thus saith the lord, this city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of babylon, and he shall take it.� [illustration: 427.jpg prisoners under torture having their tongues torn out] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the british museum. the princes and officers of the king, however, complained to zedekiah of him: �let this man, we pray thee, be put to death; forasmuch as he weakeneth the hands of the men of war, and the hands of all the people in speaking such words.� given up to his accusers and plunged in a muddy cistern, he escaped by the connivance of a eunuch of the royal household, only to renew his denunciations with greater force than ever. [illustration: 428.jpg a king putting out the eyes of a prisoner] drawn by faucher-gudin, from several engravings in botta. the mutilated remains of several bas-reliefs have been combined so as to form a tolerably correct scene; the prisoners have a ring passed through their lips, and the king holds them by a cord attached to it. the king sent for him secretly and asked his advice, but could draw from him nothing but threats: �if thou wilt go forth unto the king of babylon�s princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire, and thou shalt live and thine house: but if thou wilt not go forth to the king of babylon�s princes, then shall this city be given into the hand of the chal-dseans, and they shall burn it with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand.� zedekiah would have asked no better than to follow his advice, but he had gone too far to draw back now. to the miseries of war and sickness the horrors of famine were added, but the determination of the besieged was unshaken; bread was failing, and yet they would not hear of surrender. at length, after a year and a half of sufferings heroically borne, in the eleventh year of zedekiah, the eleventh month, and the fourth day of the month, a portion of the city wall fell before the attacks of the battering-rams, and the chaldæan army entered by the breach. zedekiah assembled his remaining soldiers, and took counsel as to the possibility of cutting his way through the enemy to beyond the jordan; escaping by night through the gateway opposite the pool of siloam, he was taken prisoner near jericho, and carried off to eiblah, where nebuchadrezzar was awaiting with impatience the result of the operations. the chaldæans were accustomed to torture their prisoners in the fashion we frequently see represented on the monuments of nineveh, and whenever an unexpected stroke of good fortune brings to light any decorative bas-relief from their palaces, we shall see represented on it the impaling stake, rebels being flayed alive, and chiefs having their tongues torn out. nebuchadrezzar, whose patience was exhausted, caused the sons of zedekiah to be slain in the presence of their father, together with all the prisoners of noble birth, and then, having put out his eyes, sent the king of babylon loaded with chains. as for the city which had so long defied his wrath, he gave it over to nebuzaradan, one of the great officers of the crown, with orders to demolish it and give it up systematically to the flames. the temple was despoiled of its precious wall-coverings, the pillars and brazen ornaments of the time of solomon which still remained were broken up, and the pieces carried off to chaldoa in sacks, the masonry was overthrown and the blocks of stone rolled down the hill into the ravine of the kedron. the survivors among the garrison, the priests, scribes, and members of the upper classes, were sent off into exile, but the mortality during the siege had been so great that the convoy barely numbered eight hundred and thirty-two persons. [illustration: 430b.jpg a people carried away into captivity] some of the poorer population were allowed to remain in the environs, and the fields and vineyards of the exiles were divided among them.1 having accomplished the work of destruction, the chal-dseans retired, leaving the government in the hands of gedaliah, son of ahikam,* a friend of jeremiah. gedaliah established himself at mizpah, where he endeavoured to gather around him the remnant of the nation, and fugitives poured in from moab, ammon, and edom. *chron. xxxvi. 17-20. the following is the table of the kings of judah from the death of solomon to the destruction of jerusalem:-[illustration: 430.jpg table of the kings of judah] it seemed that a jewish principality was about to rise again from the ruins of the kingdom. jeremiah was its accredited counsellor, but his influence could not establish harmony among these turbulent spirits, still smarting from their recent misfortunes.* the captains of the bands which had been roaming over the country after the fall of jerusalem refused, moreover, to act in concert with gedaliah, and one of them, ishmael by name, who was of the royal blood, assassinated him, but, being attacked in gibeon by johanan, the son of kareah, was forced to escape almost alone and take refuge with the ammonites.** these acts of violence aroused the vigilance of the chaldasans; johanan feared reprisals, and retired into egypt, taking with him jeremiah, baruch, and the bulk of the people.*** apries gave the refugees a welcome, and assigned them certain villages near to his military colony at daphnae, whence they soon spread into the neighbouring nomes as far as migdol, memphis, and even as far as the thebaid.**** * for the manner in which jeremiah was separated from the rest of the captives, set at liberty and sent back to gedaliah, see jer. xxxix. 11-18, xl. 1-6. ** 2 kings xxv. 23-25, and jer. xl. 7-16, xli. 1-15, where these events are recorded at length. *** 2 kings xxv. 26; jer. xli. 16-18, xlii., xliii. 1-7. **** jer. xliv. 1, where the word of the lord is spoken to �all the jews... which dwelt at migdol, and at tahpanhes (daphno), and at moph (corr. moph, memphis), and in the country of pathros.� even after all these catastrophes judah�s woes were not yet at an end. in 581, the few remaining jews in palestine allied themselves with the moabites and made a last wild effort for independence; a final defeat, followed by a final exile, brought them to irretrievable ruin.* the earlier captives had entertained no hope of advantage from these despairing efforts, and ezekiel from afar condemned them without pity: �they that inherit those waste places in the land of israel speak, saying, abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance.... ye lift up your eyes unto your idols and shed blood: and shall ye possess the land? ye stand upon your sword, ye work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbour�s wife: and shall ye possess the land?... thus saith the lord god: as i live, surely they that are in the waste places shall fall by the sword, and him that is in the open field will i give to the beasts to be devoured, and they that be in the strongholds and in the caves shall die of the pestilence.� ** * josephus, following berosus, speaks of a war against the moabites and the ammonites, followed by the conquest of egypt in the twenty-third year of nebuchadrezzar. to this must be added a jewish revolt if we are to connect with these events the mention of the third captivity, carried out in the twenty-third year of nebuchadrezzar by nebuzaradan. ** ezek. xxxiii. 23-27. the first act of the revolution foreseen by the prophets was over; the day of the lord, so persistently announced by them, had at length come, and it had seen not only the sack of jerusalem, but the destruction of the earthly kingdom of judah. many of the survivors, refusing still to acknowledge the justice of the chastisement, persisted in throwing the blame of the disaster on the reformers of the old worship, and saw no hope of salvation except in their idolatrous practices. �as for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the lord, we will not hearken unto thee. but we will certainly perform every word that is gone forth out of our mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of judah and in the streets of jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well and saw no evil. but since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.� there still remained to these misguided jews one consolation which they shared in common with the prophets--the certainty of seeing the hereditary foes of israel involved in the common overthrow: ammon had been already severely chastised; tyre, cut off from the neighbouring mainland, seemed on the point of succumbing, and the turn of egypt must surely soon arrive in which she would have to expiate in bitter sufferings the wrongs her evil counsels had brought upon jerusalem. their anticipated joy, however, of witnessing such chastisements was not realised. tyre defied for thirteen years the blockade of nebuchadrezzar, and when the city at length decided to capitulate, it was on condition that its king, ethbaal iii., should continue to reign under the almost nominal suzerainty of the chaldeans (574 b.c.).* * the majority of christian writers have imagined, contrary to the testimony of the phoenician annals, that the island of tyre was taken by nebuchadrezzar; they say that the chaldæans united the island to the mainland by a causeway similar to that constructed subsequently by alexander. it is worthy of notice that a local tradition, still existing in the eleventh century of our era, asserted that the besiegers were not successful in their enterprise. egypt continued not only to preserve her independence, but seemed to increase in prosperity in proportion to the intensity of the hatred which she had stirred up against her. [illustration: 436.jpg bronze lion of bohbait] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an engraving in mariette. apries set about repairing the monuments and embellishing the temples: he erected throughout the country stelæ, tables of offerings, statues and obelisks, some of which, though of small size, like that which adorns the piazza della minerva at borne,* erected so incongruously on the back of a modern elephant, are unequalled for purity of form and delicacy of cutting. the high pitch of artistic excellence to which the schools of the reign of psam-metichus ii. had attained was maintained at the same exalted level. if the granite sphinxes** and bronze lions of this period lack somewhat in grace of form, it must be acknowledged that they display greater refinement and elegance in the technique of carving or moulding than had yet been attained. * [one of the two obelisks of the campus martius, on which site the church of s. maria sopra minerva was built.--tr.] ** above the summary of the contents of the present chapter, will be found one of these sphinxes which was discovered in rome. [illustration: 437.jpg the small obelisk in the piazza della minerva at home] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. while engaged in these works at home, apries was not unobservant of the revolutions occurring in asia, upon which he maintained a constant watch, and in the years which followed the capitulation of tyre, he found the opportunity, so long looked for, of entering once more upon the scene. the phoenician navy had suffered much during the lengthy blockade of their country, and had become inferior to the egyptian, now well organised by thelonians: apries therefore took the offensive by sea, and made a direct descent on the phoenician coasts. nebuchadrezzar opposed him with the forces of the recently subjugated tyrians, and the latter, having cooled in their attachment to egypt owing to the special favour shown by the pharaoh to their rivals the hellenes, summoned their cypriote vassals to assist them in repelling the attack. the egyptians dispersed the combined fleets, and taking possession of sidon, gave it up to pillage. the other maritime cities surrendered of their own accord,* including gebal, which received an egyptian garrison, and where the officers of pharaoh founded a temple to the goddess whom they identified with the egyptian hâthor. * the war of apries against the phoenicians cannot have taken place before the capitulation of tyre in 574 b.c., because the tyrians took part in it by order of nebuchadrezzar, and on the other hand it cannot be put later than 569 b.c., the date of the revolt of amasis; it must therefore be assigned to about 571 b.c. the object at which necho and psammetichus ii. had aimed for fifteen years was thus attained by apries at one fortunate blow, and he could legitimately entitle himself �more fortunate than all the kings his predecessors,� and imagine, in his pride, that �the gods themselves were unable to injure him.� the gods, however, did not allow him long to enjoy the fruits of his victory. greeks had often visited libya since the time when egypt had been thrown open to the trade of the iegean. their sailors had discovered that the most convenient course thither was to sail straight to crete, and then to traverse the sea between this island and the headlands of the libyan plateau; here they fell in with a strong current setting towards the east, which carried them quickly and easily as far as eakotis and canopus, along the marmarican shore. in these voyages they learned to appreciate the value of the country; and about 631 b.c. some dorians of thera, who had set out to seek for a new home at the bidding of the delphic oracle, landed in the small desert island of platsea, where they built a strongly fortified settlement. their leader, battos,* soon crossed over to the mainland, where, having reached the high plateau, he built the city of cyrene on the borders of an extremely fertile region, watered by abundant springs. the tribes of the labu, who had fought so valiantly against the pharaohs of old, still formed a kind of loose confederation, and their territory stretched across the deserts from the egyptian frontier to the shores of the syrtes. the chief of this confederation assumed the title of king, as in the days of mînephtah or of ramses iii.** * herodotus seems to have been ignorant of the real name of the founder of cyrene, which has been preserved for us by pindar, by callimachus, by the spurious heraclides of pontus, and by the chronologists of the christian epoch. herodotus says that _battos_ signifies _king_ in the language of libya. ** the description given by herodotus of these libyan tribes agrees with the slight amount of information furnished by the egyptian monuments for the thirteenth century b.c. the most civilised of these tribes were those which now dwelt nearest to the coast: first the adyrmakhides, who were settled beyond marea, and had been semi-egyptianised by constant intercourse with the inhabitants of the delta; then the giligammes, who dwelt between the port of plynus and the island of aphrodisias; and beyond these, again, the asbystes, famed for their skill in chariot-driving, the cabales, and the auschises. the oases of the hinterland were in the hands of the nasamones and of the mashauasha, whom the greeks called maxyes. one of the revolutions so frequent among the desert tribes had compelled the latter to remove from their home near the nile valley, to a district far to the west, on the banks of the river triton. [illustration: 440.jpg the oasis of amok and the spring of the sun] drawn by boudier, from minutoli. there they had settled down in a permanent fashion, dwelling in houses of stone, and giving themselves up to the cultivation of the soil. they continued, however, to preserve in their new life some of their ancient customs, such as that of painting their bodies with vermilion, and of shaving off the hair from their heads, with the exception of one lock which hung over the right ear. the theban pharaohs had formerly placed garrisons in the most important oases, and had consecrated temples there to their god amon. [illustration: 440b.jpg portion of the ruins of cyrene] one of these sanctuaries, built close to an intermittent spring, which gave forth alternately hot and cold water, had risen to great eminence, and the oracle of these ammonians was a centre of pilgrimage from far and near. the first libyans who came into contact with the greeks, the asbystes and the giligammes, received the new-comers kindly, giving them their daughters in marriage; from the fusion of the two races thus brought about sprang, first under battos and then under his son arkesilas i., an industrious and valiant race. [illustration: 443.jpg map of lybia in the vith century b.c.] the main part of their revenues was derived from commerce in silphium and woollen goods, and even the kings themselves did not deem it beneath their dignity to preside in person at the weighing of the crop, and the storing of the trusses in their magazines. the rapid increase in the wealth of the city having shortly brought about a breach in the friendly relations hitherto maintained between it and its neighbours, battos the fortunate, the son of arkesilas i., sent for colonists from greece: numbers answered to his call, on the faith of a second oracular prediction, and in order to provide them with the necessary land, battos did not hesitate to dispossess his native allies. the latter appealed to adikrân, king of the confederacy, and this prince, persuaded that this irregular militia would not be able to withstand the charge of the hoplites, thereupon applied in his turn to apries for assistance. [illustration: 443b.jpg the silphium ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast of a coin of cyrene. there was much tempting spoil to be had in cyrene, and apries was fully aware of the fact, from the accounts of the libyans and the greeks. his covetousness must have been aroused at the prospect of such rich booty, and perhaps he would have thought of appropriating it sooner, had he not been deterred from the attempt by his knowledge of the superiority of the greek fleets, and of the dangers attendant on a long and painful march over an almost desert country through disaffected tribes. [illustration: 444.jpg weighing silphium in presence of king arkesilas] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the coin room in the bibliothèque nationale at paris. the king here represented is arkesilas ii. the bad. now that he could rely on the support of the libyans, he hesitated no longer to run these risks. deeming it imprudent, with good reason, to employ his mercenary troops against their own compatriots, apries mobilised for his encounter with battos an army exclusively recruited from among his native reserves. the troops set out full of confidence in themselves and of disdain for the enemy, delighted moreover at an opportunity for at length convincing their kings of their error in preferring barbarian to native forces. but the engagement brought to nought all their boastings. the egyptians were defeated in the first encounter near irasa, hard by the fountain of thestê, near the spot where the high plateaus of cyrene proper terminate in the low cliffs of marmarica: and the troops suffered so severely during the subsequent retreat that only a small remnant of the army regained in safety the frontier of the delta.* * the interpretation i have given to the sentiments of the egyptian army follows clearly enough from the observation of herodotus, that �the egyptians, having never experienced themselves the power of the greeks, had felt for them nothing but contempt.� the site of irasa and the fountain of thestê has been fixed with much probability in the fertile district watered still by the fountain of ersen, erazem, or erasân. this unexpected reverse was the occasion of the outbreak of a revolution which had been in preparation for years. the emigration to ethiopia of some contingents of the military class had temporarily weakened the factions hostile to foreign influence; these factions had felt themselves powerless under the rule of psammetichus i., and had bowed to his will, prepared all the while to reassert themselves when they felt strong enough to do so successfully. the reorganisation of the native army furnished them at once with the means of insurrection, of which they had temporarily been deprived. although pharaoh had lavished privileges on the hermotybies and calasiries, she had not removed the causes for discontent which had little by little alienated the good will of the mashauasha: to do so would have rendered necessary the disbanding of the ionian guard, the object of their jealousy, and to take this step neither he nor his successors could submit themselves. the hatred of these mercenaries, and the irritation against the sovereigns who employed them, grew fiercer from reign to reign, and now wanted nothing but a pretext to break forth openly: such a pretext was furnished by the defeat at irasa. when the fugitives arrived at the entrenched camp of marea, exasperated by their defeat, and alleging doubtless that it was due to treachery, they found others who affected to share their belief that pharaoh had despatched his egyptian troops against cyrene with the view of consigning to certain death those whose loyalty to him was suspected, and it was not difficult to stir up the disaffected soldiers to open revolt. it was not the first time that a military tumult had threatened the sovereignty of apries. some time previous to this, in an opposite quarter of the nile valley, the troops stationed at elephantine, composed partly of egyptians, partly of asiatic and greek mercenaries--possibly the same who had fought in the ethiopian campaign under psammetichus ii.--had risen in rebellion owing to some neglect in the payment of their wages: having devastated the thebaid, they had marched straight across the desert to the port of shashirît, in the hope of there seizing ships to enable them to reach the havens of idumæa or nabatoa. the governor of elephantine, nsihor, had at first held them back with specious promises; but on learning that apries was approaching with reinforcements, he attacked them boldly, and driving them before him, hemmed them in between his own force and that of the king and massacred them all. apries thought that the revolt at marea would have a similar issue, and that he might succeed in baffling the rebels by fair words; he sent to them as his representative amasis, one of his generals, distantly connected probably with the royal house. what took place in the camp is not clearly known, for the actual events have been transformed in the course of popular transmission into romantic legends. the story soon took shape that amasis was born of humble parentage in the village of siuph, not far from sais; he was fond, it was narrated, of wine, the pleasures of the table, and women, and replenished his empty purse by stealing what he could lay his hands on from his neighbours or comrades--a gay boon-companion all the while, with an easy disposition and sarcastic tongue. according to some accounts, he conciliated the favour of apries by his invariable affability and good humour; according to others, he won the king�s confidence by presenting him with a crown of flowers on his birthday.* * the king to whom amasis made this offering is called patarmis, and the similarity of this name with the patarbemis of herodotus seems to indicate a variant of the legend, in which patarmis or patarbemis took the place of apries. the story goes on to say that while he was haranguing the rebels, one of them, slipping behind him, suddenly placed on his head the rounded helmet of the pharaohs: the bystanders immediately proclaimed him king, and after a slight show of resistance he accepted the dignity. as soon as the rumour of these events had reached sais, apries despatched patarbemis, one of his chief officers, with orders to bring back the rebel chief alive. the latter was seated on his horse, on the point of breaking up his camp and marching against his former patron, when the envoy arrived. on learning the nature of his mission, amasis charged him to carry back a reply to the effect that he had already been making preparation to submit, and besought the sovereign to grant him patiently a few days longer, so that he might bring with him the egyptian subjects of pharaoh. tradition adds that, on receiving this insolent defiance, apries fell into a violent passion, and without listening to remonstrance, ordered the nose and ears of patarbemis to be cut off, whereupon the indignant people, it is alleged, deserted his cause and ranged themselves on the side of amasis. the mercenaries, however, did not betray the confidence reposed in them by their egyptian lords. although only thirty thousand against a whole people, they unflinchingly awaited the attack at momemphis (569 b.c.); but, being overwhelmed by the numbers of their assailants, disbanded and fled, after a conflict lasting one day. apries, taken prisoner in the rout, was at first well treated by the conqueror, and seems even to have retained for a time the external pomp of royalty; but the populace of sais demanding his execution with vehemence, amasis was at length constrained to deliver him up to their vengeance, and apries was strangled by the mob. he was honourably interred between the royal palace and the temple of nit, not far from the spot where his predecessors reposed in their glory,* and the usurper made himself sole master of the country. it was equivalent to a change of dynasty, and amasis had recourse to the methods usual in such cases to consolidate his power. he entered into a marriage alliance with princesses of the saite line, and thus legitimatised his usurpation as far as the north was concerned.** * it was probably from this necropolis that the coffin of psammetichus ii. came. ** the wife of amasis, who was mother of psammetichus iii., the queen tintkhiti, daughter of petenit, prophet of phtah, was probably connected with the royal family of sais. in the south, the �divine worshippers� had continued to administer the extensive heritage of amon, and nitocris, heiress of shapenuapît, had adopted in her old age a daughter of her great-nephew, psammetichus il, named ankhnasnofiribrî: this princess was at this time in possession of thebes, and amasis appears to have entered into a fictitious marriage with her in order to assume to himself her rights to the crown. he had hardly succeeded in establishing his authority on a firm basis when he was called upon to repel the chaldaean invasion. the hebrew prophets had been threatening egypt with this invasion for a long time, and ezekiel, discounting the future, had already described the entrance of pharaoh into hades, to dwell among the chiefs of the nations--assur, elam, meshech, tubal, edom, and philistia--who, having incurred the vengeance of jahveh, had descended into the grave one after the other: �pharaoh and all his army shall be slain by the sword, saith the lord god! for i have put this terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that are slain by the sword, even pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the lord god!� nebuchadrezzar had some hesitation in hazarding his fortune in a campaign on the banks of the nile: he realised tolerably clearly that babylon was not in command of such resources as had been at the disposal of nineveh under esarhaddon or assur-bani-pal, and that egypt in the hands of a saite dynasty was a more formidable foe than when ruled by the ethiopians. the report of the revolution of which apries had become a victim at length determined him to act; the annihilation of the hellenic troops, and the dismay which the defeat at irasa had occasioned in the hearts of the egyptians, seemed to offer an opportunity too favourable to be neglected. the campaign was opened by nebuchadrezzar about 568, in the thirty-seventh year of his reign,* but we have no certain information as to the issue of his enterprise. * a fragment of his annals, discovered by pinches, mentions in the thirty-seventh year of his reign a campaign against [ah]masu, king of egypt; and wiedemann, from the evidence of this document combined with the information derived from one of the monuments in the louvre, thought that the fact of a conquest of egypt as far as syenô might be admitted; at that point the egyptian general nsihor would have defeated the chaldæans and repelled the invasion, and this event would have taken place during the joint reign of apries and amasis. a more attentive examination of the egyptian monument shows that it refers not to a chaldæan war, but to a rebellion of the garrisons in the south of egypt, including the greek and semitic auxiliaries. according to chaldæan tradition, nebuchadrezzar actually invaded the valley of the nile and converted egypt into a babylonian province, with amasis as its satrap.* we may well believe that amasis lost the conquests won by his predecessor in phoenicia, if, indeed, they still belonged to egypt at his accession: but there is nothing to indicate that the chaldæans ever entered egypt itself and repeated the assyrian exploit of a century before. * these events would have taken place in the twenty-third year of nebuchadrezzar; the reigning king (apries) being killed and his place taken by one of his generals (amasis), who remained a satrap of the babylonian empire. this was nebuchadrezzar�s last war, the last at least of which history makes any mention. as a fact, the kings of the second babylonian empire do not seem to have been the impetuous conquerors which we have fancied them to be. we see them as they are depicted to us in the visions of the hebrew prophets, who, regarding them and their nation as a scourge in the hands of god, had no colours vivid enough or images sufficiently terrible to portray them. they had blotted out nineveh from the list of cities, humiliated pharaoh, and subjugated syria, and they had done all this almost at their first appearance in the field--such a feat as assyria and egypt in the plenitude of their strength had been unable to accomplish: they had, moreover, destroyed jerusalem and carried judah into captivity. there is nothing astonishing in the fact that this nebuchadrezzar, whose history is known to us almost entirely from jewish sources, should appear as a fated force let loose upon the world. �o thou sword of the lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into the scabbard; rest and be still! how canst thou be quiet, seeing the lord hath given thee a charge?� but his campaigns in syria and africa, of which the echoes transmitted to us still seem so formidable, were not nearly so terrible in reality as those in which blam had perished a century previously; they were, moreover, the only conflicts which troubled the peace of his reign. the arabian chroniclers affirm, indeed, that the fabulous wealth of yemen had incited him to invade that region. nebuchadrezzar, they relate, routed, not far from the town of dhât-îrk, the joctanides of jorhom, who had barred his road to the kaabah, and after seizing mecca, reached the borders of the children of himyrâ: the exhausted condition of his soldiers having prevented him from pressing further forward in his career of conquest, he retraced his steps and returned to babylon with a great number of prisoners, including two entire tribes, those of hadhurâ and uabar, whom he established as colonists in chaldæa.* he never passed in this direction beyond the limits reached by assur-bani-pal, and his exploits were restricted to some successful raids against the tribes of kedar and nabatsea.** * most of the arabic legends relating to these conquests of nebuchadrezzar are indirectly derived from the biblical story; but it is possible that the history of the expeditions against central arabia is founded on fact. ** this seems to follow from jeremiah�s imprecations upon kedar the same reasons which at the commencement of his reign had restrained his ambition to extend his dominions towards the east and north, were operative up to the end of his life. astyages had not inherited the martial spirit of his father cyaxares, and only one warlike expedition, that against the cadusians, is ascribed to him.* * moses of chorene attributes to him long wars against an armenian king named tigranes; but this is a fiction of a later age. naturally indolent, lacking in decision, superstitious and cruel, he passed a life of idleness amid the luxury of a corrupt court, surrounded by pages, women, and eunuchs, with no more serious pastime than the chase, pursued within the limits of his own parks or on the confines of the desert. but if the king was weak, his empire was vigorous, and nebuchadrezzar, brought up from his youth to dread the armies of media, retained his respect for them up to the end of his life, even when there was no longer any occasion to do so. nebuchadrezzar was, after all, not so much a warrior as a man of peace, whether so constituted by nature or rendered so by political necessity in its proper sense, and he took advantage of the long intervals of quiet between his campaigns to complete the extensive works which more than anything else have won for him his renown. during the century which had preceded the fall of nineveh, babylonia had had several bitter experiences; it had suffered almost entire destruction at the hands of sennacherib; it had been given up to pillage by assur-bani-pal, not to mention the sieges and ravages it had sustained in the course of continual revolts. the other cities of babylonia, sippara, borsippa, kutha, nipur, uruk, and uru, had been subjected to capture and recapture, while the surrounding districts, abandoned in turn to elamites, assyrians, and the kaldâ, had lain uncultivated for many years. the canals at the same time had become choked with mud, the banks had fallen in, and the waters, no longer kept under control, had overflowed the land, and the plains long since reclaimed for cultivation had returned to their original condition of morasses and reed-beds; at babylon itself the arakhtu, still encumbered with the _debris_ cast into it by sennacherib, was no longer navigable, and was productive of more injury than profit to the city: in some parts the aspect of the country must have been desolate and neglected as at the present day, and the work accomplished by twenty generations had to be begun entirely afresh. nabopolassar had already applied himself to the task in spite of the anxieties of his assyrian campaigns, and had raised many earthworks in both the capital and the provinces. but a great deal more still remained to be done, and nebuchadrezzar pushed forward the work planned by his father, and carried it to completion undeterred and undismayed by any difficulties.* the combined system of irrigation and navigation introduced by the kings of the first babylonian empire twenty centuries previously, was ingeniously repaired; the beds of the principal canals, the royal river and the arakhtu, were straightened and deepened; the drainage of the country between the tigris and the euphrates was regulated by means of subsidiary canals and a network of dykes; the canals surrounding babylon or intersecting in the middle of the city were cleaned out, and a waterway was secured for navigation from one river to the other, and from the plateau of mesopotamia to the nar-marratum.** * the only long inscriptions of nebuchadrezzar which we possess, are those commemorating the great works he designed and executed. ** the irrigation works of nebuchadrezzar are described at length, and perhaps exaggerated, by abydenus, who merely quotes berosus more or less inaccurately. the completion of the quays along the arakhtu, begun by nabopolassar, is noticed in the _east india company�s inscription_. a special inscription, publ. by h. rawlinson, gives an account of the repairing of the canal libil-khigallu, which crossed babylon. we may well believe that all nebuchadrezzar�s undertakings were carried out in accordance with a carefully prepared scheme for perfecting the defences of the kingdom while completing the system of internal communication. the riches of karduniash, now restored to vigour by continued peace, and become the centre of a considerable empire, could not fail to excite the jealousy of its neighbours, and particularly that of the most powerful among them, the medes of ecbatana. it is true that the relations between nebuchadrezzar and astyages continued to be cordial, and as yet there were no indications of a rupture; but it was always possible that under their successors the good understanding between the two courts might come to an end, and it was needful to provide against the possibility of the barbarous tribes of iran being let loose upon babylon, and attempting to inflict on her the fate they had brought upon nineveh. nebuchadrezzar, therefore, was anxious to interpose, between himself and these possible foes, such a series of fortifications that the most persevering enemy would be worn out by the prolonged task of forcing them one after another, provided that they were efficiently garrisoned. he erected across the northern side of the isthmus between the two rivers a great embankment, faced with bricks cemented together with bitumen, called the _wall of media_; this wall, starting from sippara, stretched from the confluence of the saklauiyeh with the euphrates to the site of the modern village of jibbara on the tigris; on both sides of it four or five deep trenches were excavated, which were passable on raised causeways or by bridges of boats, so arranged as to be easily broken up in case of invasion. [illustration: 456.jpg city defended by a triple wall] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of the time of sargon, in the museum of the louvre. the eastern frontier was furnished with a rampart protected by a wide moat, following, between jibbara and nipur, the contours of a low-lying district which could be readily flooded. the western boundary was already protected by the pallakottas, and the lakes or marshes of bahr-î-nejîf: nebuchadrezzar multiplied the number of the dikes, and so arranged them that the whole country between the suburbs of borsippa and babylon could be inundated at will. babylon itself formed as it were the citadel in the midst of these enormous outlying fortifications, and the engineers both of nabopo-lassar and of his son expended all the resources of their art on rendering it impregnable. a triple rampart surrounded it and united it to borsippa, built on the model of those whose outline is so frequently found on the lowest tier of an assyrian bas-relief. [illustration: 457.jpg probable section of the triple wall of babylon] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by dieulafoy. a moat of great width, with banks of masonry, communicating with the euphrates, washed the foot of the outer wall, which retained the traditional name of imgur-bel: behind this wall rose nimitti-bel, the true city wall, to a height of more than ninety feet above the level of the plain, appearing from a distance, with its battlements and towers, more like a mountain chain than a rampart built by the hand of man; finally, behind nimitti-bel ran a platform on the same level as the curtain of imgur-bel, forming a last barrier behind which the garrison could rally before finally owning itself defeated and surrendering the city. large square towers rose at intervals along the face of the walls, to the height of some eighteen feet above the battlements: a hundred gates fitted with bronze-plated doors, which could be securely shut at need, gave access to the city.* * the description of the fortifications of the city is furnished by herodotus, who himself saw them still partially standing; the account of their construction has been given by nebuchadrezzar himself, in the _east india company�s inscription_. the space within the walls was by no means completely covered by houses, but contained gardens, farms, fields, and, here and there, the ruins of deserted buildings. as in older babylon, the city proper clustered round the temple of merodach, with its narrow winding streets, its crowded bazaars, its noisy and dirty squares, its hostelries and warehouses of foreign merchandise. [illustration: 458.jpg fragment of a babylonian bas-relief] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in layard. the pyramid of esarhad-don and assur-bani-pal, too hastily built, had fallen into ruins: nebuchadrezzar reconstructed its seven stages, and erected on the topmost platform a shrine furnished with a table of massive gold, and a couch on which the priestess chosen to be the spouse of the god might sleep at night. other small temples were erected here and there on both banks of the river, and the royal palace, built in the marvellously short space of fifteen days, was celebrated for its hanging gardens, where the ladies of the harem might walk unveiled, secure from vulgar observation. no trace of all these extensive works remains at the present day. [illustration: 459.jpg ruins of the ziggurât of the temple of bel] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in layard. some scattered fragments of crumbling walls alone betray the site of the great ziggurât, a few bas-reliefs are strewn over the surface of the ground, and a lion of timeworn stone, lying on its back in a depression of the soil, is perhaps the last survivor of those which kept watch, according to custom, at the gates of the palace. but the whole of this vast work of reconstruction and ornamentation must not be attributed to nebuchadrezzar alone. the plans had been designed by nabopolassar under the influence of one of his wives, who by a strange chance bears in classic tradition the very egyptian name of nitocris; but his work was insignificant compared with that accomplished by his son, and the name of nebuchadrezzar was justly connected with the marvels of babylon by all ancient writers. but even his reign of fifty-five years did not suffice for the completion of all his undertakings, and many details still remained imperfect at his death in the beginning of 562 b.c. though of kaldu origin, and consequently exposed to the suspicions and secret enmity of the native babylonians, as all of his race, even mero-dach-baladan himself, had been before him, he had yet succeeded throughout the whole of his reign in making himself respected by the turbulent inhabitants of his capital, and in curbing the ambitious pretensions of the priests of merodach. as soon as his master-hand was withdrawn, the passions so long repressed broke forth, and proved utterly beyond the control of his less able or less fortunate successors.* * the sequel of this history is known from the narrative of berosus. its authenticity is proved by passages on the _cylinder of nabonidus_. messer-schmidt considers that amil marduk and labashi-marduk were overthrown by the priestly faction, but a passage on the _cylinder_, in which nabonidus represents himself as inheriting the political views of nebuchadrezzar and nergal-sharuzur, leads me to take the opposite view. we know what hatred nabonidus roused in the minds of the priests of merodach because his principles of government were opposed to theirs: the severe judgment he passed on the rule of amil-marduk and labashi-marduk seems to prove that he considered them as belonging to the rival party in the state, that is, to the priestly faction. the forms of the names and the lengths of the several reigns have been confirmed by contemporary monuments, especially by the numerous contract tablets. the principal inscriptions belonging to the reign of nergal-sharuzur deal only with public works and the restoration of monuments. [illustration: 460.jpg the stone lion of babylon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph furnished by father scheil. as far as we are able to judge by the documents which have come down to us, two factions had arisen in the city since the fall of nineveh, both of which aspired to power and strove to gain a controlling influence with the sovereign. the one comprised the descendants of the kaldâ who had delivered the city from the assyrian yoke, together with those of the ancient military nobility. the other was composed of the great priestly families and their adherents, who claimed for the gods or their representatives the right to control the affairs of the state, and to impose the will of heaven on the rulers of the kingdom. the latter faction seems to have prevailed at first at the court of amil-marduk, the sole surviving son and successor of nebuchadrezzar. this prince on his accession embraced a policy contrary to that pursued by his father: and one of his first acts was to release jehoiachin, king of judah, who had been languishing in chains for twenty-seven years, and to ameliorate the condition of the other expatriated jews. the official history of a later date represented him as having been an unjust sovereign, but we have no information as to his misdeeds, and know only that after two years a conspiracy broke out against him, led by his own brother-in-law, nergal-sharuzur, who assassinated him and seized the vacant throne (560 b.c.). nergal-sharuzur endeavoured to revive the policy of nebuchadrezzar, and was probably supported by the military party, but his reign was a short one; he died in 556 b.c., leaving as sole heir a youth of dissipated character named labashi-marduk, whose name is stigmatised by the chroniclers as that of a prince who knew not how to rule. he was murdered at the end of nine months, and his place taken by a native babylonian, a certain nabonâîd (nabonidus), son of nabo-balatsu-ikbi, who was not connected by birth with his immediate predecessors on the throne (556-555 b.c.). no oriental empire could escape from the effects of frequent and abrupt changes in its rulers: like so many previous dynasties, that of nabopolassar became enfeebled as if from exhaustion immediately after the death of its most illustrious scion, and foundered in imbecility and decrepitude. popular imagination, awe-struck by such a sudden downfall from exalted prosperity, recognised the hand of god in the events which brought about the catastrophe. a chaldæan legend, current not long after, related how nebuchadrezzar, being seized towards the end of his life with the spirit of prophecy, mounted to the roof of his palace, and was constrained, as a punishment for his pride, to predict to his people, with his own lips, the approaching ruin of their city; thereupon the glory of its monarch suffered an eclipse from which there was no emerging. the jews, nourishing undying hatred for conqueror who had overthrown jerusalem and destroyed the temple of solomon, were not satisfied with a punishment so inadequate. according to them, nebuchadrezzar, after his victorious career, was so intoxicated with his own glory that he proclaimed himself the equal of god. �is not this great babylon,� he cried, �which i have built for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power, and for the glory of my majesty!� and while he thus spake, there came a voice from heaven, decreeing his metamorphosis into the form of a beast. �he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair was grown like eagles� feathers, and his nails like birds� claws.� for seven years the king remained in this state, to resume his former shape at the end of this period, and recover his kingdom after having magnified the god of israel.* * dan. iv. the founder of the dynasty which replaced that of nebuchadrezzar, nabonidus, was certainly ill fitted to brave the storms already threatening to break over his kingdom. it has not been ascertained whether he had any natural right to the throne, or by what means he attained supreme power, but the way in which he dwells on the names of nebuchadrezzar and nergal-sharuzur renders it probable that he was raised to the throne by the military faction. he did not prove, as events turned turned out, a good general, nor even a soldier of moderate ability, and it is even possible that he also lacked that fierce courage of which none of his predecessors was ever destitute. he allowed his army to dwindle away and his fortresses to fall into ruins; the foreign alliances existing at his accession, together with those which he himself had concluded, were not turned to the best advantage; his provinces were badly administered, and his subjects rendered discontented: his most salient characteristic was an insatiable curiosity concerning historical and religious antiquities, which stimulated him to undertake excavations in all the temples, in order to bring to light monuments of ages long gone by. he was a monarch of peaceful disposition, who might have reigned with some measure of success in a century of unbroken peace, or one troubled only by petty wars with surrounding inferior states; but, unfortunately, the times were ill suited to such mild sovereignty. the ancient eastern world, worn out by an existence reckoned by thousands of years, as well as by its incessant conflicts, would have desired, indeed, no better fate than to enjoy some years of repose in the condition in which recent events had left it; but other nations, the greeks and the persians, by no means anxious for tranquillity, were entering the lists. for the moment the efforts of the greeks were concentrated on egypt, where pharaoh manifested for them inexhaustible good will, and on cyprus, two-thirds of which belonged to them; the danger for chaldæa lay in the persians, kinsfolk and vassals of the medes, whose semi-barbarous chieftains had issued from their mountain homes some eighty years previously to occupy the eastern districts of elam. end of vol. viii.