the seven great monarchies of the ancient asian world by george rawlinson an index edited by david widger project gutenberg editions george rawlinson (1812-1902) chaldaea, assyria, media, babylon, persia, parthia, sassanian empire; and the history of phoenicia contents click on the ## before each title to go directly to a linked index of the detailed chapters and illustrations ## chaldaea ## assyria ## media ## babylon ## persia ## parthia ## sassanian empire and ## history of phoenicia volumes, chapters and stories chaldaea preface to five great monarchies. preface to second edition. preface to the sixth monarchy. preface to seventh monarchy. references the first monarchy. chaldaea. chapter i. general view of the country chapter ii. climate and productions chapter iii. the people chapter iv. language and writing chapter v. arts and sciences chapter vi. manners and customs chapter vii. religion chapter viii. history and chronology list of illustrations plate 1 1. plan of mugheir ruins (after taylor) plate 2 2. ruins of warka (erech) (after loftus) plate 3 3. akkerkuf (after ker porter) 4. hamman (after loftus) plate 4 5. tel-ede (ditto) 6. palms (after oppert) plate 5 7. chaldaean reeds, from an assyrian sculpture (after layard) plate 6 8. wild sow and pigs, from koyunjik (layard) 9. ethiopians (after prichard) 10. cuneiform inscriptions (drawn by the author, from bricks in the british museum) page 42 plate 7 10. cuneiform inscriptions (drawn by the author, from bricks in the british museum) 11. chaldaean tablet (after layard) 12. signet-cylinder (after ker porter) page 44 plate 8 13. bowariyeh (after loftus) 14. mugheir temple (ditto) plate 9 15. ground-plan of ditto (ditto) 16. mugheir temple, restored (by the author) 17. terra-cotta cone, actual size (after loftus) plate 10 18. plan and wall of building patterned with cones (after loftus) 19. ground-plan of chambers excavated at abu-shahrein (after taylor) plate 11 20. brick vault at mugheir (ditto) 21. chaldaean dish-cover tombs (ditto) plate 12 21. chaldaean dish-cover tombs (ditto) 22. chaldaean jar-coffin (ditto) 23. section of drain (ditto) plate 13 24. chaldaean vases of the first period (drawn by the author from vases in the british museum) 25. chaldaean vases, drinking-vessels, and amphora of the second period (ditto) 26. chaldaean lamps of the second period (ditto) plate 14 27. seal-cylinder on metal axis (drawn and partly restored by the author) 28. signet-cylinder of king urukh (after ker porter) 29. flint knives (drawn by the author from the originals in the british museum) plate 15 30. stone hammer, hatchet, adze, and nail (chiefly after taylor) 31. chaldaean bronze spear and arrow-heads (drawn by the author from the originals in the british museum) plate 16 32. bronze implements (ditto) 33. flint implement (after taylor) 34. ear-rings (drawn by the author from the originals in the british museum) 16 plate 17 35. leaden pipe and jar (ditto) 36. bronze bangles (ditto) plate 18 37. senkareh table of squares page 66 plate 19 38. costumes of chaldaeans from the cylinders (after cullimore and rich) 39. serpent symbol (after cullimore) 40. flaming sword (ditto) 41. figure of nin. the fish-god (layard) 42. nin's emblem. the man bull (ditto) 43. fish symbols (after cullimore) 44. bel-mer dash (ditto) page 81 page 83 page 84 plate 20 45. nergal's emblem, the ilan-lion (layard) plate 21 46. 47. clay images of ishtar (after cullimore and layard) 48. nebo (drawn by the author from a statue in the british museum) page 99 page 113�table of chaldaean kings assyria the second monarchy chapter i. description of the country chapter ii. climate and productions chapter iii. the people chapter iv. the capital chapter v. language and writing chapter vi. architecture and other arts chapter vii. manners and customs chapter viii. religion chapter ix. chronology and history references map_top_th (118k) map_bottom_th (92k) [click on maps to enlarge] media chapter i. description of the country. chapter ii. climate and productions. chapter iii. character, manners and customs. chapter iv. religion. chapter v. language and writing. chapter vi. chronology and history. list of illustrations map plate i. plate ii. plate iii. plate iv. plate v. plate vi. plate vii. babylon chapter i. extent of the empire. chapter ii. climate and productions. chaptee iii. the people. chaptee iv. the capital. chapter v. arts and sciences. chapter vi. manners and customs. chapter vii. religion. chapter viii. history and chronology. appendix. a. standard inscription of nebuchadnezzar. b. on the meanings of babylonian names. list of illustrations map plate vii. plate viii. plate ix. plate x. plate xi. plate xii. plate xiii. page 182 plate xiv. plate xv. plate xvi. plate xvii. plate xviii. plate xix. plate xx. plate xxi. plate xxii. plate xxiii. plate xxiv. plate xxv. page 229 page 237 page 263 page 264 page 265 persia chapter i. extent of the empire. chapter ii. climate and productions. chapter iii. character, manners and customs. chapter iv. language and writing. chapter v. architecture and other arts. chapter vi. religion. chapter vii. chronology and history. begin chapter i. parthia chapter i. chapter ii. chapter iii. chapter iv. chapter v. chapter vi. chapter vii. chapter viii. chapter ix. chapter x. chapter xi. chapter xii. chapter xiii. chapter xiv. chapter xv. chapter xvi. chapter xvii. chapter xviii. chapter xix. chapter xx. chapter xxi. chapter xxii. chapter xxiii. list of illustrations map of parthia proper map of parthia plate 1. plate 2. plate 3. plate 4. plate 5. plate 6. plate 7. plate 8. plate 9. plate 10. sassanian empire chapters i. to xiv. chapters xv. to xxviii. with maps and illustrations the seventh monarchy history of the sassanian or new persian empire. sassian_empire_th (154k) begin chapter i. history of phoenicia preface history of phoenicia chapter i�the land chapter ii�climate and productions chapter iii�the people�origin and characteristics chapter iv�the cities chapter v�the colonies chapter vi�architecture chapter vii�æsthetic art chapter viii�industrial art and manufactures chapter ix�ships, navigation, and commerce chapter x�mining chapter xi�religion chapter xii�dress, ornaments, and social habits chapter xiii�phoenician writing, language, and literature chapter xiv�political history 1. phoenicia, before the establishment of the hegemony of tyre. 2. phoenicia under the hegemony of tyre (b.c. 1252-877) 3. phoenicia during the period of its subjection to assyria (b.c. 4. phoenicia during its struggles with babylon and egypt (about b.c. 5. phoenicia under the persians (b.c. 528-333) 6. phoenicia in the time of alexander the great (b.c. 333-323) 7. phoenicia under the greeks (b.c. 323-65) 8. phoenicia under the romans (b.c. 65-a.d. 650) footnotes 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 ancient man the beginning of civilizations by hendrik willem van loon 1922 dedication to hansje and willem. my darling boys, you are twelve and eight years old. soon you will be grown up. you will leave home and begin your own lives. i have been thinking about that day, wondering what i could do to help you. at last, i have had an idea. the best compass is a thorough understanding of the growth and the experience of the human race. why should i not write a special history for you? so i took my faithful corona and five bottles of ink and a box of matches and a bale of paper and began to work upon the first volume. if all goes well there will be eight more and they will tell you what you ought to know of the last six thousand years. but before you start to read let me explain what i intend to do. i am not going to present you with a textbook. neither will it be a volume of pictures. it will not even be a regular history in the accepted sense of the word. i shall just take both of you by the hand and together we shall wander forth to explore the intricate wilderness of the bygone ages. i shall show you mysterious rivers which seem to come from nowhere and which are doomed to reach no ultimate destination. i shall bring you close to dangerous abysses, hidden carefully beneath a thick overgrowth of pleasant but deceiving romance. here and there we shall leave the beaten track to scale a solitary and lonely peak, towering high above the surrounding country. unless we are very lucky we shall sometimes lose ourselves in a sudden and dense fog of ignorance. wherever we go we must carry our warm cloak of human sympathy and understanding for vast tracts of land will prove to be a sterile desert--swept by icy storms of popular prejudice and personal greed and unless we come well prepared we shall forsake our faith in humanity and that, dear boys, would be the worst thing that could happen to any of us. i shall not pretend to be an infallible guide. whenever you have a chance, take counsel with other travelers who have passed along the same route before. compare their observations with mine and if this leads you to different conclusions, i shall certainly not be angry with you. i have never preached to you in times gone by. i am not going to preach to you today. you know what the world expects of you--that you shall do your share of the common task and shall do it bravely and cheerfully. if these books can help you, so much the better. and with all my love i dedicate these histories to you and to the boys and girls who shall keep you company on the voyage through life. hendrik willem van loon. _barrow street, new york city. may 8, xx_. contents chapter i. prehistoric man ii. the world grows cold iii. end of the stone age iv. the earliest school of the human race v. the key of stone vi. the land of the living and the land of the dead vii. the making of a state viii. the rise and fall of egypt ix. mesopotamia--the country between the rivers x. the sumerian nail writers xi. assyria and babylonia--the great semitic melting-pot xii. the story of moses xiii. jerusalem--the city of the law xiv. damascus--the city of trade xv. the phoenicians who sailed beyond the horizon xvi. the alphabet follows the trade xvii. the end of the ancient world prehistoric man it took columbus more than four weeks to sail from spain to the west indian islands. we on the other hand cross the ocean in sixteen hours in a flying machine. five hundred years ago, three or four years were necessary to copy a book by hand. we possess linotype machines and rotary presses and we can print a new book in a couple of days. we understand a great deal about anatomy and chemistry and mineralogy and we are familiar with a thousand different branches of science of which the very name was unknown to the people of the past. in one respect, however, we are quite as ignorant as the most primitive of men--we do not know where we came from. we do not know how or why or when the human race began its career upon this earth. with a million facts at our disposal we are still obliged to follow the example of the fairy-stories and begin in the old way: "once upon a time there was a man." this man lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. what did he look like? we do not know. we never saw his picture. deep in the clay of an ancient soil we have sometimes found a few pieces of his skeleton. they were hidden amidst masses of bones of animals that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth. we have taken these bones and they allow us to reconstruct the strange creature who happens to be our ancestor. the great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and unattractive mammal. he was quite small. the heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had colored his skin a dark brown. his head and most of his body were covered with long hair. he had very thin but strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey. his forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. [illustration: prehistoric man.] he wore no clothes. he had seen no fire except the flames of the rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke and their lava. he lived in the damp blackness of vast forests. when he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or he stole the eggs from the nest of an angry bird. once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he managed to catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit these he would eat raw, for prehistoric man did not know that food could be cooked. his teeth were large and looked like the teeth of many of our own animals. during the hours of day this primitive human being went about in search of food for himself and his wife and his young. at night, frightened by the noise of the beasts, who were in search of prey, he would creep into a hollow tree or he would hide himself behind a few big boulders, covered with moss and great, big spiders. in summer he was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun. during the winter he froze with cold. when he hurt himself (and hunting animals are for ever breaking their bones or spraining their ankles) he had no one to take care of him. he had learned how to make certain sounds to warn his fellow-beings whenever danger threatened. in this he resembled a dog who barks when a stranger approaches. in many other respects he was far less attractive than a well-bred house pet. altogether, early man was a miserable creature who lived in a world of fright and hunger, who was surrounded by a thousand enemies and who was for ever haunted by the vision of friends and relatives who had been eaten up by wolves and bears and the terrible sabre-toothed tiger. of the earliest history of this man we know nothing. he had no tools and he built no homes. he lived and died and left no traces of his existence. we keep track of him through his bones and they tell us that he lived more than two thousand centuries ago. the rest is darkness. until we reach the time of the famous stone age, when man learned the first rudimentary principles of what we call civilization. of this stone age i must tell you in some detail. the world grows cold something was the matter with the weather. early man did not know what "time" meant. he kept no records of birthdays and wedding-anniversaries or the hour of death. he had no idea of days or weeks or years. when the sun arose in the morning he did not say "behold another day." he said "it is light" and he used the rays of the early sun to gather food for his family. when it grew dark, he returned to his wife and children, gave them part of the day's catch (some berries and a few birds), stuffed himself full with raw meat and went to sleep. in a very general way he kept track of the seasons. long experience had taught him that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild spring--that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits ripened and the wild ears of corn were ready to be plucked and eaten. the summer ended when gusts of wind swept the leaves from the trees and when a number of animals crept into their holes to make ready for the long hibernal sleep. [illustration: the glacial period.] it had always been that way. early man accepted these useful changes of cold and warm but asked no questions. he lived and that was enough to satisfy him. suddenly, however, something happened that worried him greatly. the warm days of summer had come very late. the fruits had not ripened at all. the tops of the mountains which used to be covered with grass lay deeply hidden under a heavy burden of snow. then one morning quite a number of wild people, different from the other inhabitants of his valley had approached from the region of the high peaks. they muttered sounds which no one could understand. they looked lean and appeared to be starving. hunger and cold seemed to have driven them from their former homes. there was not enough food in the valley for both the old inhabitants and the newcomers. when they tried to stay more than a few days there was a terrible fight and whole families were killed. the others fled into the woods and were not seen again. for a long time nothing occurred of any importance. but all the while, the days grew shorter and the nights were colder than they ought to have been. finally, in a gap between the two high hills, there appeared a tiny speck of greenish ice. it increased in size as the years went by. very slowly a gigantic glacier was sliding down the slopes of the mountain ridge. huge stones were being pushed into the valley. with the noise of a dozen thunderstorms they suddenly tumbled among the frightened people and killed them while they slept. century-old trees were crushed into kindling wood by the high walls of ice that knew of no mercy to either man or beast. at last, it began to snow. it snowed for months and months and months. [illustration: the cave-man.] all the plants died. the animals fled in search of the southern sun. the valley became uninhabitable. man hoisted his children upon his back, took the few pieces of stone which he had used as a weapon and went forth to find a new home. why the world should have grown cold at that particular moment, we do not know. we can not even guess at the cause. the gradual lowering of the temperature, however, made a great difference to the human race. for a time it looked as if every one would die. but in the end this period of suffering proved a real blessing. it killed all the weaker people and forced the survivors to sharpen their wits lest they perish, too. placed before the choice of hard thinking or quick dying the same brain that had first turned a stone into a hatchet now solved difficulties which had never faced the older generations. in the first place, there was the question of clothing. it had grown much too cold to do without some sort of artificial covering. bears and bisons and other animals who live in northern regions are protected against snow and ice by a heavy coat of fur. man possessed no such coat. his skin was very delicate and he suffered greatly. he solved his problem in a very simple fashion. he dug a hole and he covered it with branches and leaves and a little grass. a bear came by and fell into this artificial cave. man waited until the creature was weak from lack of food and then killed him with many blows of a big stone. with a sharp piece of flint he cut the fur of the animal's back. then he dried it in the sparse rays of the sun, put it around his own shoulders and enjoyed the same warmth that had formerly kept the bear happy and comfortable. then there was the housing problem. many animals were in the habit of sleeping in a dark cave. man followed their example and searched until he found an empty grotto. he shared it with bats and all sorts of creeping insects but this he did not mind. his new home kept him warm and that was enough. often, during a thunderstorm a tree had been hit by lightning. sometimes the entire forest had been set on fire. man had seen these forest-fires. when he had come too near he had been driven away by the heat. he now remembered that fire gave warmth. thus far, fire had been an enemy. now it became a friend. a dead tree, dragged into a cave and lighted by means of smouldering branches from a burning forest filled the room with unusual but very pleasant heat. perhaps you will laugh. all these things seem so very simple. they are very simple to us because some one, ages and ages ago, was clever enough to think of them. but the first cave that was made comfortable by the fire of an old log attracted more attention than the first house that ever was lighted by electricity. when at last, a specially brilliant fellow hit upon the idea of throwing raw meat into the hot ashes before eating it, he added something to the sum total of human knowledge which made the cave-man feel that the height of civilization had been reached. nowadays, when we hear of another marvelous invention we are very proud. "what more," we ask, "can the human brain accomplish?" and we smile contentedly for we live in the most remarkable of all ages and no one has ever performed such miracles as our engineers and our chemists. forty thousand years ago when the world was on the point of freezing to death, an unkempt and unwashed cave-man, pulling the feathers out of a half-dead chicken with the help of his brown fingers and his big white teeth--throwing the feathers and the bones upon the same floor that served him and his family as a bed, felt just as happy and just as proud when he was taught how the hot cinders of a fire would change raw meat into a delicious meal. "what a wonderful age," he would exclaim and he would lie down amidst the decaying skeletons of the animals which had served him as his dinner and he would dream of his own perfection while bats, as large as small dogs, flew restlessly through the cave and while rats, as big as small cats, rummaged among the left overs. quite often the cave gave way to the pressure of the surrounding rock. then man was hurled amidst the bones of his own victims. thousands of years later the anthropologist (ask your father what that means) comes along with his little spade and his wheelbarrow. he digs and he digs and at last he uncovers this age-old tragedy and makes it possible for me to tell you all about it. the end of the stone age the struggle to keep alive during the cold period was terrible. many races of men and animals, whose bones we have found, disappeared from the face of the earth. whole tribes and clans were wiped out by hunger and cold and want. first the children would die and then the parents. the old people were left to the mercy of the wild animals who hastened to occupy the undefended cave. until another change in the climate or the slowly decreasing moisture of the air made life impossible for these wild invaders and forced them to find a retreat in the heart of the african jungle where they have lived ever since. this part of my history is very difficult because the changes which i must describe were so very slow and so very gradual. nature is never in a hurry. she has all eternity in which to accomplish her task and she can afford to bring about the necessary changes with deliberate care. prehistoric man lived through at least four definite eras when the ice descended far down into the valleys and covered the greater part of the european continent. the last one of these periods came to an end almost thirty thousand years ago. from that moment on man left behind him concrete evidence of his existence in the form of tools and arms and pictures and in a general way we can say that history begins when the last cold period had become a thing of the past. the endless struggle for life had taught the survivors many things. stone and wooden implements had become as common as steel tools are in our own days. gradually the rudely chipped flint axe had been replaced by one of polished flint which was infinitely more practical. it allowed man to attack many animals at whose mercy he had been since the beginning of time. the mammoth was no longer seen. the musk-ox had retreated to the polar circle. the tiger had left europe for good. the cave-bear no longer ate little children. the powerful brain of the weakest and most helpless of all living creatures--man--had devised such terrible instruments of destruction that he was now the master of all the other animals. the first great victory over nature had been gained but many others were to follow. equipped with a full set of tools both for hunting and fishing, the cave-dweller looked for new living quarters. the shores of rivers and lakes offered the best opportunity for a regular livelihood. the old caves were deserted and the human race moved toward the water. now that man could handle heavy axes, the felling of trees no longer offered any great difficulties. for countless ages birds had been constructing comfortable houses out of chips of wood and grass amidst the branches of trees. man followed their example. he, too, built himself a nest and called it his "home." he did not, except in a few parts of asia, take to the trees which were a bit too small and unsteady for his purpose. he cut down a number of logs. these he drove firmly into the soft bottom of a shallow lake. on top of them he constructed a wooden platform and upon this platform he erected his first wooden house. it offered many advantages over the old cave. no wild animals could break into it and robbers could not enter it. the lake itself was an inexhaustible store-room containing an endless supply of fresh fish. these houses built on piles were much healthier than the old caves and they gave the children a chance to grow up into strong men. the population increased steadily and man began to occupy vast tracts of wilderness which had been unoccupied since the beginning of time. and all the time new inventions were made which made life more comfortable and less dangerous. often enough these innovations were not due to the cleverness of man's brain. he simply copied the animals. you know of course that there are a large number of beasties who prepare for the long winter by burying nuts and acorns and other food which is abundant during the summer. just think of the squirrels who are for ever filling their larder in gardens and parks with supplies for the winter and the early spring. early man, less intelligent in many respects than the squirrels, had not known how to preserve anything for the future. he ate until his hunger was stilled, but what he did not need right away he allowed to rot. as a result he often went without his meals during the cold period and many of his children died from hunger and want. until he followed the example of the animals and prepared for the future by laying in sufficient stores when the harvest had been good and there was an abundance of wheat and grain. we do not know which genius first discovered the use of pottery but he deserves a statue. very likely it was a woman who had got tired of the eternal chores of the kitchen and wanted to make her household duties a little less exacting. she noticed that chunks of clay, when exposed to the rays of the sun, got baked into a hard substance. if a flat piece of clay could be transformed into a brick, a slightly curved piece of the same material must produce a similar result. and behold, the brick grew into a piece of pottery and the human race was able to save for the day of tomorrow. if you think that my praises of this invention are exaggerated, look at the breakfast table and see what pottery, in one form and the other, means in your own life. your oatmeal is served in a dish. the cream is served from a pitcher. your eggs are carried from the kitchen to the dining-room table on a plate. your milk is brought to you in a china mug. then go to the store-room (if there is no store-room in your house go to the nearest delicatessen store). you will see how all the things which we are supposed to eat tomorrow and next week and next year have been put away in jars and cans and other artificial containers which nature did not provide for us but which man was forced to invent and perfect before he could be assured of his regular meals all the year around. even a gas-tank is nothing but a large pitcher, made of iron because iron does not break as easily as china and is less porous than clay. so are barrels and bottles and pots and pans. they all serve the same purpose--of providing us in the future with those things of which we happen to have an abundance at the present moment. and because he could preserve eatable things for the day of need, man began to raise vegetables and grain and saved the surplus for future consumption. this explains why, during the late stone age, we find the first wheat-fields and the first gardens, grouped around the settlements of the early pile-dwellers. it also tells us why man gave up his habit of wandering and settled down in one fixed spot where he raised his children until the day of his death when he was decently buried among his own people. [illustration: prehistoric man is discovered.] it is safe to say that these earliest ancestors of ours would have given up the ways of savages of their own accord if they had been left to their fate. but suddenly there was an end to their isolation. prehistoric man was discovered. a traveler from the unknown south-land who had dared to cross the turbulent sea and the forbidding mountain passes had found his way to the wild people of central europe. on his back he carried a pack. when he had spread his wares before the gaping curiosity of the bewildered natives, their eyes beheld wonders of which their minds had never dared to dream. they saw bronze hammers and axes and tools made of iron and helmets made of copper and beautiful ornaments consisting of a strangely colored substance which the foreign visitor called "glass." and overnight the age of stone came to an end. it was replaced by a new civilization which had discarded wooden and stone implements centuries before and had laid the foundations for that "age of metal" which has endured until our own day. it is of this new civilization that i shall tell you in the rest of my book and if you do not mind, we shall leave the northern continent for a couple of thousand years and pay a visit to egypt and to western asia. "but," you will say, "this is not fair. you promise to tell us about prehistoric man and then, just when the story is going to be interesting, you close the chapter and you jump to another part of the world and we must jump with you whether we like it or not." i know. it does not seem the right thing to do. unfortunately, history is not at all like mathematics. when you solve a sum you go from "a" to "b" and from "b" to "c" and from "c" to "d" and so on. history on the other hand jumps from "a" to "z" and then back to "f" and next to "m" without any apparent respect for neatness and order. there is a good reason for this. history is not exactly a science. it tells the story of the human race and most people, however much we may try to change their nature, refuse to behave with the regularity and the precision of the tables of multiplication. no two men ever do precisely the same thing. no two human brains ever reach exactly the same conclusion. you will notice that for yourself when you grow up. it was not different a few hundred centuries ago. prehistoric man, as i just told you, was on a fair way to progress. he had managed to survive the ice and the snow and the wild animals and that in itself, was a great deal. he had invented many useful things. suddenly, however, other people in a different part of the world entered the race. they rushed forward at a terrible speed and within a very short space of time they reached a height of civilization which had never before been seen upon our planet. then they set forth to teach what they knew to the others who had been less intelligent than themselves. now that i have explained this to you, does it not seem just to give the egyptians and the people of western asia their full share of the chapters of this book? the earliest school of the human race we are the children of a practical age. we travel from place to place in our own little locomotives which we call automobiles. when we wish to speak to a friend whose home is a thousand miles away, we say "hello" into a rubber tube and ask for a certain telephone number in chicago. at night when the room grows dark we push a button and there is light. if we happen to be cold we push another button and the electric stove spreads its pleasant glow through our study. on the other hand in summer when it is hot the same electric current will start a small artificial storm (an electric fan) which keeps us cool and comfortable. we seem to be the masters of all the forces of nature and we make them work for us as if they were our very obedient slaves. but do not forget one thing when you pride yourself upon our splendid achievements. we have constructed the edifice of our modern civilization upon the fundament of wisdom that had been built at great pains by the people of the ancient world. do not be afraid of their strange names which you will meet upon every page of the coming chapters. babylonians and egyptians and chaldeans and sumerians are all dead and gone, but they continue to influence our own lives in everything we do, in the letters we write, in the language we use, in the complicated mathematical problems which we must solve before we can build a bridge or a skyscraper. and they deserve our grateful respect as long as our planet continues to race through the wide space of the high heavens. these ancient people of whom i shall now tell you lived in three definite spots. two of these were found along the banks of vast rivers. the third was situated on the shores of the mediterranean. the oldest center of civilization developed in the valley of the nile, in a country which was called egypt. the second was located in the fertile plains between two big rivers of western asia, to which the ancients gave the name of mesopotamia. the third one which you will find along the shore of the mediterranean, was inhabited by the phoenicians, the earliest of all colonizers and by the jews who bestowed upon the rest of the world the main principles of their moral laws. this third center of civilization is known by its ancient babylonian name of suri, or as we pronounce it, syria. the history of the people who lived in these regions covers more than five thousand years. it is a very, very complicated story. i can not give you many details. i shall try and weave their adventures into a single fabric, which will look like one of those marvelous rugs of which you read in the tales which scheherazade told to harun the just. the key of stone fifty years before the birth of christ, the romans conquered the land along the eastern shores of the mediterranean and among this newly acquired territory was a country called egypt. the romans, who are to play such a great role in our history, were a race of practical men. they built bridges, they constructed roads, and with a small but highly trained army of soldiers and civil officers, they managed to rule the greater part of europe, of eastern africa and western asia. as for art and the sciences, these did not interest them very much. they regarded with suspicion a man who could play the lute or who could write a poem about spring and only thought him little better than the clever fellow who could walk the tightrope or who had trained his poodle dog to stand on its hind legs. they left such things to the greeks and to the orientals, both of whom they despised, while they themselves spent their days and nights keeping order among the thousand and one nations of their vast empire. when they first set foot in egypt that country was already terribly old. more than six thousand and five hundred years had gone by since the history of the egyptian people had begun. long before any one had dreamed of building a city amidst the swamps of the river tiber, the kings of egypt had ruled far and wide and had made their court the center of all civilization. while the romans were still savages who chased wolves and bears with clumsy stone axes, the egyptians were writing books, performing intricate medical operations and teaching their children the tables of multiplication. this great progress they owed chiefly to one very wonderful invention, to the art of preserving their spoken words and their ideas for the benefit of their children and grandchildren. we call this the art of writing. we are so familiar with writing that we can not understand how people ever managed to live without books and newspapers and magazines. but they did and it was the main reason why they made such slow progress during the first million years of their stay upon this planet. they were like cats and dogs who can only teach their puppies and their kittens a few simple things (barking at a stranger and climbing trees and such things) and who, because they can not write, possess no way in which they can use the experience of their countless ancestors. this sounds almost funny, doesn't it? and why make such a fuss about so simple a matter? but did you ever stop to think what happens when you write a letter? suppose that you are taking a trip in the mountains and you have seen a deer. you want to tell this to your father who is in the city. what do you do? you put a lot of dots and dashes upon a piece of paper--you add a few more dots and dashes upon an envelope and you carry your epistle to the mailbox together with a two-cent stamp. what have you really been doing? you have changed a number of spoken words into a number of pothooks and scrawls. but how did you know how to make your curlycues in such a fashion that both the postman and your father could retranslate them into spoken words? you knew, because some one had taught you how to draw the precise figures which represented the sound of your spoken words. just take a few letters and see the way this game is played. we make a guttural noise and write down a "g." we let the air pass through our closed teeth and we write down "s." we open our mouth wide and make a noise like a steam engine and the sound is written down "h." it took the human race hundreds of thousands of years to discover this and the credit for it goes to the egyptians. of course they did not use the letters which have been used to print this book. they had a system of their own. it was much prettier than ours but not quite so simple. it consisted of little figures and images of things around the house and around the farm, of knives and plows and birds and pots and pans. these little figures their scribes scratched and painted upon the wall of the temples, upon the coffins of their dead kings and upon the dried leaves of the papyrus plant which has given its name to our "paper." but when the romans entered this vast library they showed neither enthusiasm nor interest. they possessed a system of writing of their own which they thought vastly superior. [illustration: the key of stone] they did not know that the greeks (from whom they had learned their alphabet) had in turn obtained theirs from the phoenicians who had again borrowed with great success from the old egyptians. they did not know and they did not care. in their schools the roman alphabet was taught exclusively and what was good enough for the roman children was good enough for everybody else. you will understand that the egyptian language did not long survive the indifference and the opposition of the roman governors. it was forgotten. it died just as the languages of most of our indian tribes have become a thing of the past. the arabs and the turks who succeeded the romans as the rulers of egypt abhorred all writing that was not connected with their holy book, the koran. at last in the middle of the sixteenth century a few western visitors came to egypt and showed a mild interest in these strange pictures. but there was no one to explain their meaning and these first europeans were as wise as the romans and the turks had been before them. now it happened, late in the eighteenth century that a certain french general by the name of buonaparte visited egypt. he did not go there to study ancient history. he wanted to use the country as a starting point for a military expedition against the british colonies in india. this expedition failed completely but it helped solve the mysterious problem of the ancient egyptian writing. among the soldiers of napoleon buonaparte there was a young officer by the name of broussard. he was stationed at the fortress of st. julien on the western mouth of the nile which is called the rosetta river. broussard liked to rummage among the ruins of the lower nile and one day he found a stone which greatly puzzled him. like everything else in that neighborhood, it was covered with picture writing. but this slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered. it carried three inscriptions and one of these (oh joy!) was in greek. the greek language was known. as it was almost certain that the egyptian part contained a translation of the greek (or vice versa), the key to ancient egyptian seemed to have been discovered. but it took more than thirty years of very hard work before the key had been made to fit the lock. then the mysterious door was opened and the ancient treasure house of egypt was forced to surrender its secrets. the man who gave his life to the task of deciphering this language was jean francois champollion--usually called champollion junior to distinguish him from his older brother who was also a very learned man. champollion junior was a baby when the french revolution broke out and therefore he escaped serving in the armies of the general buonaparte. while his countrymen were marching from one glorious victory to another (and back again as such imperial armies are apt to do) champollion studied the language of the copts, the native christians of egypt. at the age of nineteen he was appointed a professor of history at one of the smaller french universities and there he began his great work of translating the pictures of the old egyptian language. for this purpose he used the famous black stone of rosetta which broussard had discovered among the ruins near the mouth of the nile. the original stone was still in egypt. napoleon had been forced to vacate the country in a hurry and he had left this curiosity behind. when the english retook alexandria in the year 1801 they found the stone and carried it to london, where you may see it this very day in the british museum. the inscriptions however had been copied and had been taken to france, where they were used by champollion. the greek text was quite clear. it contained the story of ptolemy v and his wife cleopatra, the grandmother of that other cleopatra about whom shakespeare wrote. the other two inscriptions, however, refused to surrender their secrets. one of them was in hieroglyphics, the name we give to the oldest known egyptian writing. the word hieroglyphic is greek and means "sacred carving." it is a very good name for it fully describes the purpose and nature of this script. the priests who had invented this art did not want the common people to become too familiar with the deep mysteries of preserving speech. they made writing a sacred business. they surrounded it with much mystery and decreed that the carving of hieroglyphics be regarded as a sacred art and forbade the people to practice it for such a common purpose as business or commerce. they could enforce this rule with success so long as the country was inhabited by simple farmers who lived at home and grew everything they needed upon their own fields. but gradually egypt became a land of traders and these traders needed a means of communication beyond the spoken word. so they boldly took the little figures of the priests and simplified them for their own purposes. thereafter they wrote their business letters in the new script which became known as the "popular language" and which we call by its greek name, the "demotic language." the rosetta stone carried both the sacred and the popular translations of the greek text and upon these two champollion centered his attack. he collected every piece of egyptian script which he could get and together with the rosetta stone he compared and studied them until after twenty years of patient drudgery he understood the meaning of fourteen little figures. that means that he spent more than a whole year to decipher each single picture. finally he went to egypt and in the year 1823 he printed the first scientific book upon the subject of the ancient hieroglyphics. nine years later he died from overwork, as a true martyr to the great task which he had set himself as a boy. his work, however, lived after him. others continued his studies and today egyptologists can read hieroglyphics as easily as we can read the printed pages of our newspapers. fourteen pictures in twenty years seems very slow work. but let me tell you something of champollion's difficulties. then you will understand, and understanding, you will admire his courage. the old egyptians did not use a simple sign language. they had passed beyond that stage. of course, you know what sign language is. every indian story has a chapter about queer messages, written in the form of little pictures. hardly a boy but at some stage or other of his life, as a buffalo hunter or an indian fighter, has invented a sign language of his own, and all boy scouts are familiar with it. but egyptian was something quite different and i must try and make this clear to you with a few pictures. suppose that you were champollion and that you were reading an old papyrus which told the story of a farmer who lived somewhere along the banks of the river nile. suddenly you came across a picture of a man with a saw. [illustration: saw] "very well," you said, "that means, of course, that the farmer went out and cut a tree down." most likely you had guessed correctly. next you took another page of hieroglyphics. they told the story of a queen who had lived to be eighty-two years old. right in the middle of the text the same picture occurred. that was very puzzling, to say the least. queens do not go about cutting down trees. they let other people do it for them. a young queen may saw wood for the sake of exercise, but a queen of eighty-two stays at home with her cat and her spinning wheel. yet, the picture was there. the ancient priest who drew it must have placed it there for a definite purpose. what could he have meant? that was the riddle which champollion finally solved. he discovered that the egyptians were the first people to use what we call "phonetic writing." like most other words which express a scientific idea, the word "phonetic" is of greek origin. it means the "science of the sound which is made by our speech." you have seen the greek word "phone," which means the voice, before. it occurs in our word "telephone," the machine which carries the voice to a distant point. ancient egyptian was "phonetic" and it set man free from the narrow limits of that sign language which in some primitive form had been used ever since the cave-dweller began to scratch pictures of wild animals upon the walls of his home. now let us return for a moment to the little fellow with his saw who suddenly appeared in the story of the old queen. evidently he had something to do with a saw. a "saw" is either a tool which you find in a carpenter shop or it means the past tense of the verb "to see." this is what had happened to the word during the course of many centuries. first of all it had meant a man with a saw. then it came to mean the sound which we reproduce by the three modern letters, s, a and w. in the end the original meaning of carpentering was lost entirely and the picture indicated the past tense of "to see." a modern english sentence done into the images of ancient egypt will show you what i mean. [illustration: eye bee leaf eye saw giraffe] the [illustration: eye] means either these two round objects in your head which allow you to see, or it means "i," the person who is talking or writing. a [illustration: bee] is either an animal which gathers honey and pricks you in the finger when you try to catch it, or it represents to verb "to be," which is pronounced the same way and which means to "exist." again it may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." in this case the bee is followed by a [illustration: leaf] which represents the sound which we find in the word "leave" or "leaf." put your "bee" and your "leaf" together and you have the two sounds which make the verb "bee-leave" or "believe" as we write it nowadays. the "eye" you know all about. finally you get a picture which looks like a giraffe. [illustration: giraffe] it is a giraffe, and it is part of the old sign language, which has been continued wherever it seemed most convenient. therefore you get the following sentence, "i believe i saw a giraffe." this system, once invented, was developed during thousands of years. gradually the most important figures came to mean single letters or short sounds like "fu" or "em" or "dee" or "zee," or as we write them, f and m and d and z. and with the help of these, the egyptians could write anything they wanted upon every conceivable subject, and could preserve the experience of one generation for the benefit of the next without the slightest difficulty. that, in a very general way, is what champollion taught us after the exhausting search which killed him when he was a young man. that too, is the reason why today we know egyptian history better than that of any other ancient country. the land of the living and the land of the dead the history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food. wherever food was plentiful and easily gathered, thither man travelled to make his home. the fame of the nile valley must have spread at an early date. from far and wide, wild people flocked to the banks of the river. surrounded on all sides by desert or sea, it was not easy to reach these fertile fields and only the hardiest men and women survived. we do not know who they were. some came from the interior of africa and had woolly hair and thick lips. others, with a yellowish skin, came from the desert of arabia and the broad rivers of western asia. they fought each other for the possession of this wonderful land. they built villages which their neighbors destroyed and they rebuilt them with the bricks they had taken from other neighbors whom they in turn had vanquished. gradually a new race developed. they called themselves "remi," which means simply "the men." there was a touch of pride in this name and they used it in the same sense that we refer to america as "god's own country." part of the year, during the annual flood of the nile, they lived on small islands within a country which itself was cut off from the rest of the world by the sea and the desert. no wonder that these people were what we call "insular," and had the habits of villagers who rarely come in contact with their neighbors. they liked their own ways best. they thought their own habits and customs just a trifle better than those of anybody else. in the same way, their own gods were considered more powerful than the gods of other nations. they did not exactly despise foreigners, but they felt a mild pity for them and if possible they kept them outside of the egyptian domains, lest their own people be corrupted by "foreign notions." they were kind-hearted and rarely did anything that was cruel. they were patient and in business dealings they were rather indifferent life came as an easy gift and they never became stingy and mean like northern people who have to struggle for mere existence. when the sun arose above the blood-red horizon of the distant desert, they went forth to till their fields. when the last rays of light had disappeared beyond the mountain ridges, they went to bed. they worked hard, they plodded and they bore whatever happened with stolid unconcern and profound patience. they believed that this life was but a short preface to a new existence which began the moment death had entered the house. until at last, the life of the future came to be regarded as more important than the life of the present and the people of egypt turned their teeming land into one vast shrine for the worship of the dead. [illustration: the land of the dead.] and as most of the papyrus-rolls of the ancient valley tell stories of a religious nature we know with great accuracy just what gods the egyptians revered and how they tried to assure all possible happiness and comfort to those who had entered upon the eternal sleep. in the beginning each little village had possessed a god of its own. often this god was supposed to reside in a queerly shaped stone or in the branch of a particularly large tree. it was well to be good friends with him for he could do great harm and destroy the harvest and prolong the period of drought until the people and the cattle had all died of thirst. therefore the villages made him presents--offered him things to eat or a bunch of flowers. when the egyptians went forth to fight their enemies the god must needs be taken along, until he became a sort of battle flag around which the people rallied in time of danger. but when the country grew older and better roads had been built and the egyptians had begun to travel, the old "fetishes," as such chunks of stone and wood were called, lost their importance and were thrown away or were left in a neglected corner or were used as doorsteps or chairs. their place was taken by new gods who were more powerful than the old ones had been and who represented those forces of nature which influenced the lives of the egyptians of the entire valley. first among these was the sun which makes all things grow. next came the river nile which tempered the heat of the day and brought rich deposits of clay to refresh the fields and make them fertile. then there was the kindly moon which at night rowed her little boat across the arch of heaven and there was thunder and there was lightning and there were any number of things which could make life happy or miserable according to their pleasure and desire. ancient man, entirely at the mercy of these forces of nature, could not get rid of them as easily as we do when we plant lightning rods upon our houses or build reservoirs which keep us alive during the summer months when there is no rain. on the contrary they formed an intimate part of his daily life--they accompanied him from the moment he was put into his cradle until the day that his body was prepared for eternal rest. neither could he imagine that such vast and powerful phenomena as a bolt of lightning or the flood of a river were mere impersonal things. some one--somewhere--must be their master and must direct them as the engineer directs his engine or a captain steers his ship. a god-in-chief was therefore created, like the commanding general of an army. a number of lower officers were placed at his disposal. within their own territory each one could act independently. in grave matters, however, which affected the happiness of all the people, they must take orders from their master. the supreme divine ruler of the land of egypt was called osiris, and all the little egyptian children knew the story of his wonderful life. once upon a time, in the valley of the nile, there lived a king called osiris. he was a good man who taught his subjects how to till their fields and who gave his country just laws. but he had a bad brother whose name was seth. now seth envied osiris because he was so virtuous and one day he invited him to dinner and afterwards he said that he would like to show him something. curious osiris asked what it was and seth said that it was a funnily shaped coffin which fitted one like a suit of clothes. osiris said that he would like to try it. so he lay down in the coffin but no sooner was he inside when bang!--seth shut the lid. then he called for his servants and ordered them to throw the coffin into the nile. soon the news of his terrible deed spread throughout the land. isis, the wife of osiris, who had loved her husband very dearly, went at once to the banks of the nile, and after a short while the waves threw the coffin upon the shore. then she went forth to tell her son horus, who ruled in another land, but no sooner had she left than seth, the wicked brother, broke into the palace and cut the body of osiris into fourteen pieces. [illustration: a pyramid.] when isis returned, she discovered what seth had done. she took the fourteen pieces of the dead body and sewed them together and then osiris came back to life and reigned for ever and ever as king of the lower world to which the souls of men must travel after they have left the body. as for seth, the evil one, he tried to escape, but horus, the son of osiris and isis, who had been warned by his mother, caught him and slew him. this story of a faithful wife and a wicked brother and a dutiful son who avenged his father and the final victory of virtue over wickedness formed the basis of the religious life of the people of egypt. osiris was regarded as the god of all living things which seemingly die in the winter and yet return to renewed existence the next spring. as ruler of the life hereafter, he was the final judge of the acts of men, and woe unto him who had been cruel and unjust and had oppressed the weak. as for the world of the departed souls, it was situated beyond the high mountains of the west (which was also the home of the young nile) and when an egyptian wanted to say that someone had died, he said that he "had gone west." isis shared the honors and the duties of osiris with him. their son horus, who was worshipped as the god of the sun (hence the word "horizon," the place where the sun sets) became the first of a new line of egyptian kings and all the pharaohs of egypt had horus as their middle name. of course, each little city and every small village continued to worship a few divinities of their own. but generally speaking, all the people recognized the sublime power of osiris and tried to gain his favor. this was no easy task, and led to many strange customs. in the first place, the egyptians came to believe that no soul could enter into the realm of osiris without the possession of the body which had been its place of residence in this world. [illustration: how the pyramids grew.] whatever happened, the body must be preserved after death, and it must be given a permanent and suitable home. therefore as soon as a man had died, his corpse was embalmed. this was a difficult and complicated operation which was performed by an official who was half doctor and half priest, with the help of an assistant whose duty it was to make the incision through which the chest could be filled with cedar-tree pitch and myrrh and cassia. this assistant belonged to a special class of people who were counted among the most despised of men. the egyptians thought it a terrible thing to commit acts of violence upon a human being, whether dead or living, and only the lowest of the low could be hired to perform this unpopular task. afterwards the priest took the body again and for a period of ten weeks he allowed it to be soaked in a solution of natron which was brought for this purpose from the distant desert of libya. then the body had become a "mummy" because it was filled with "mumiai" or pitch. it was wrapped in yards and yards of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a beautifully decorated wooden coffin, ready to be removed to its final home in the western desert. the grave itself was a little stone room in the sand of the desert or a cave in a hill-side. after the coffin had been placed in the center the little room was well supplied with cooking utensils and weapons and statues (of clay or wood) representing bakers and butchers who were expected to wait upon their dead master in case he needed anything. flutes and fiddles were added to give the occupant of the grave a chance to while away the long hours which he must spend in this "house of eternity." then the roof was covered with sand and the dead egyptian was left to the peaceful rest of eternal sleep. but the desert is full of wild creatures, hyenas and wolves, and they dug their way through the wooden roof and the sand and ate up the mummy. this was a terrible thing, for then the soul was doomed to wander forever and suffer agonies of a man without a home. to assure the corpse all possible safety a low wall of brick was built around the grave and the open space was filled with sand and gravel. in this way a low artificial hill was made which protected the mummy against wild animals and robbers. then one day, an egyptian who had just buried his mother, of whom he had been particularly fond, decided to give her a monument that should surpass anything that had ever been built in the valley of the nile. he gathered his serfs and made them build an artificial mountain that could be seen for miles around. the sides of this hill he covered with a layer of bricks that the sand might not be blown away. people liked the novelty of the idea. soon they were trying to outdo each other and the graves rose twenty and thirty and forty feet above the ground. at last a rich nobleman ordered a burial chamber made of solid stone. on top of the actual grave where the mummy rested, he constructed a pile of bricks which rose several hundred feet into the air. a small passage-way gave entrance to the vault and when this passage was closed with a heavy slab of granite the mummy was safe from all intrusion. the king of course could not allow one of his subjects to outdo him in such a matter. he was the most powerful man of all egypt who lived in the biggest house and therefore he was entitled to the best grave. what others had done in brick he could do with the help of more costly materials. pharaoh sent his officers far and wide to gather workmen. he constructed roads. he built barracks in which the workmen could live and sleep (you may see those barracks this very day). then he set to work and made himself a grave which was to endure for all time. we call this great pile of masonry a "pyramid." the origin of the word is a curious one. when the greeks visited egypt the pyramids were already several thousand years old. [illustration: the mummy] of course the egyptians took their guests into the desert to see these wondrous sights just as we take foreigners to gaze at the wool-worth tower and brooklyn bridge. the greek guest, lost in admiration, waved his hands and asked what the strange mountains might be. his guide thought that he referred to the extraordinary height and said "yes, they are very high indeed." the egyptian word for height was "pir-em-us." the greek must have thought that this was the name of the whole structure and giving it a greek ending he called it a "pyramis." we have changed the "s" into a "d" but we still use the same egyptian word when we talk of the stone graves along the banks of the nile. the biggest of these many pyramids, which was built fifty centuries ago, was five hundred feet high. at the base it was seven hundred and fifty-five feet wide. it covered more than thirteen acres of desert, which is three times as much space as that occupied by the church of saint peter, the largest edifice of the christian world. during twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were used to carry the stones from the distant peninsula of sinai--to ferry them across the nile (how they ever managed to do this we do not understand)--to drag them halfway across the desert and finally hoist them into their correct position. but so well did pharaoh's architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the pyramid has never yet been pushed out of shape by the terrific weight of those thousands and thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides. the making of a state nowadays we all are members of a "state." we may be frenchmen or chinamen or russians; we may live in the furthest corner of indonesia (do you know where that is?), but in some way or other we belong to that curious combination of people which is called the "state." it does not matter whether we recognize a king or an emperor or a president as our ruler. we are born and we die as a small part of this large whole and no one can escape this fate. the "state," as a matter of fact, is quite a recent invention. the earliest inhabitants of the world did not know what it was. every family lived and hunted and worked and died for and by itself. sometimes it happened that a few of these families, for the sake of greater protection against the wild animals and against other wild people, formed a loose alliance which was called a tribe or a clan. but as soon as the danger was past, these groups of people acted again by and for themselves and if the weak could not defend their own cave, they were left to the mercies of the hyena and the tiger and nobody was very sorry if they were killed. in short, each person was a nation unto himself and he felt no responsibility for the happiness and safety of his neighbor. very, very slowly this was changed and egypt was the first country where the people were organized into a well-regulated empire. the nile was directly responsible for this useful development. i have told you how in the summer of each year the greater part of the nile valley and the nile delta is turned into a vast inland sea. to derive the greatest benefit from this water and yet survive the flood, it had been necessary at certain points to build dykes and small islands which would offer shelter for man and beast during the months of august and september. the construction of these little artificial islands however had not been simple. [illustration: the young nile.] a single man or a single family or even a small tribe could not construct a river-dam without the help of others. however much a farmer might dislike his neighbors he disliked getting drowned even more and he was obliged to call upon the entire country-side when the water of the river began to rise and threatened him and his wife and his children and his cattle with destruction. necessity forced the people to forget their small differences and soon the entire valley of the nile was covered with little combinations of people who constantly worked together for a common purpose and who depended upon each other for life and prosperity. out of such small beginnings grew the first powerful state. it was a great step forward along the road of progress. it made the land of egypt a truly inhabitable place. it meant the end of lawless murder. it assured the people greater safety than ever before and gave the weaker members of the tribe a chance to survive. nowadays, when conditions of absolute disorder exist only in the jungles of africa, it is hard to imagine a world without laws and policemen and judges and health officers and hospitals and schools. but five thousand years ago, egypt stood alone as an organized state and was greatly envied by those of her neighbors who were obliged to face the difficulties of life single-handedly. a state, however, is not only composed of citizens. there must be a few men who execute the laws and who, in case of an emergency, take command of the entire community. therefore no country has ever been able to endure without a single head, be he called a king or an emperor or a shah (as in persia) or a president, as he is called in our own land. [illustration: the fertile valley.] in ancient egypt, every village recognized the authority of the village-elders, who were old men and possessed greater experience than the young ones. these elders selected a strong man to command their soldiers in case of war and to tell them what to do when there was a flood. they gave him a title which distinguished him from the others. they called him a king or a prince and obeyed his orders for their own common benefit. therefore in the oldest days of egyptian history, we find the following division among the people: the majority are peasants. all of them are equally rich and equally poor. they are ruled by a powerful man who is the commander-in-chief of their armies and who appoints their judges and causes roads to be built for the common benefit and comfort. he also is the chief of the police force and catches the thieves. in return for these valuable services he receives a certain amount of everybody's money which is called a tax. the greater part of these taxes, however, do not belong to the king personally. they are money entrusted to him to be used for the common good. but after a short while a new class of people, neither peasants nor king, begins to develop. this new class, commonly called the nobles, stands between the ruler and his subjects. since those early days it has made its appearance in the history of every country and it has played a great role in the development of every nation. i must try and explain to you how this class of nobles developed out of the most commonplace circumstances of everyday life and why it has maintained itself to this very day, against every form of opposition. to make my story quite clear, i have drawn a picture. it shows you five egyptian farms. the original owners of these farms had moved into egypt years and years ago. each had taken a piece of unoccupied land and had settled down upon it to raise grain and cows and pigs and do whatever was necessary to keep themselves and their children alive. apparently they had the same chance in life. how then did it happen that one became the ruler of his neighbors and got hold of all their fields and barns without breaking a single law? [illustration: the origins of the feudal system.] one day after the harvest, mr. fish (you see his name in hieroglyphics on the map) sent his boat loaded with grain to the town of memphis to sell the cargo to the inhabitants of central egypt. it happened to have been a good year for the farmer and fish got a great deal of money for his wheat. after ten days the boat returned to the homestead and the captain handed the money which he had received to his employer. a few weeks later, mr. sparrow, whose farm was next to that of fish, sent his wheat to the nearest market. poor sparrow had not been very lucky for the last few years. but he hoped to make up for his recent losses by a profitable sale of his grain. therefore he had waited until the price of wheat in memphis should have gone a little higher. that morning a rumor had reached the village of a famine in the island of crete. as a result the grain in the egyptian markets had greatly increased in value. sparrow hoped to profit through this unexpected turn of the market and he bade his skipper to hurry. the skipper handled the rudder of his craft so clumsily that the boat struck a rock and sank, drowning the mate who was caught under the sail. sparrow not only lost all his grain and his ship but he was also forced to pay the widow of his drowned mate ten pieces of gold to make up for the loss of her husband. these disasters occurred at the very moment when sparrow could not afford another loss. winter was near and he had no money to buy cloaks for his children. he had put off buying new hoes and spades for such a long time that the old ones were completely worn out. he had no seeds for his fields. he was in a desperate plight. he did not like his neighbor, mr. fish, any too well but there was no way out. he must go and humbly he must ask for the loan of a small sum of money. he called on fish. the latter said that he would gladly let him have whatever he needed but could sparrow put up any sort of guaranty? sparrow said, "yes." he would offer his own farm as a pledge of good faith. unfortunately fish knew all about that farm. it had belonged to the sparrow family for many generations. but the father of the present owner had allowed himself to be terribly cheated by a phoenician trader who had sold him a couple of "phrygian oxen" (nobody knew what the name meant) which were said to be of a very fine breed, which needed little food and performed twice as much labor as the common egyptian oxen. the old farmer had believed the solemn words of the impostor. he had bought the wonderful beasts, greatly envied by all his neighbors. they had not proved a success. they were very stupid and very slow and exceedingly lazy and within three weeks they had died from a mysterious disease. the old farmer was so angry that he suffered a stroke and the management of his estate was left to the son, who worked hard but without much result. the loss of his grain and his vessel were the last straw. young sparrow must either starve or ask his neighbor to help him with a loan. fish who was familiar with the lives of all his neighbors (he was that kind of person, not because he loved gossip but one never knew how such information might come in handy) and who knew to a penny the state of affairs in the sparrow household, felt strong enough to insist upon certain terms. sparrow could have all the money he needed upon the following condition. he must promise to work for fish six weeks of every year and he must allow him free access to his grounds at all times. sparrow did not like these terms, but the days were growing shorter and winter was coming on fast and his family were without food. he was forced to accept and from that time on, he and his sons and daughters were no longer quite as free as they had been before. they did not exactly become the servants or the slaves of their neighbor, but they were dependent upon his kindness for their own livelihood. when they met fish in the road they stepped aside and said "good morning, sir." and he answered them--or not--as the case might be. he now owned a great deal of water-front, twice as much as before. he had more land and more laborers and he could raise more grain than in the past years. the nearby villagers talked of the new house he was building and in a general way, he was regarded as a man of growing wealth and importance. late that summer an unheard-of-thing happened. it rained. the oldest inhabitants could not remember such a thing, but it rained hard and steadily for two whole days. a little brook, the existence of which everybody had forgotten, was suddenly turned into a wild torrent. in the middle of the night it came thundering down from the mountains and destroyed the harvest of the farmer who occupied the rocky ground at the foot of the hills. his name was cup and he too had inherited his land from a hundred other cups who had gone before. the damage was almost irreparable. cup needed new seed grain and he needed it at once. he had heard sparrow's story. he too hated to ask a favor of fish who was known far and wide as a shrewd dealer. but in the end, he found his way to the fishs' homestead and humbly begged for the loan of a few bushels of wheat. he got them but not until he had agreed to work two whole months of each year on the farm of fish. fish was now doing very well. his new house was ready and he thought the time had come to establish himself as the head of a household. just across the way, there lived a farmer who had a young daughter. the name of this farmer was knife. he was a happy-go-lucky person and he could not give his child a large dowry. fish called on knife and told him that he did not care for money. he was rich and he was willing to take the daughter without a single penny. knife, however, must promise to leave his land to his son-in-law in case he died. this was done. the will was duly drawn up before a notary, the wedding took place and fish now possessed (or was about to possess) the greater part of four farms. it is true there was a fifth farm situated right in between the others. but its owner, by the name of sickle, could not carry his wheat to the market without crossing the lands over which fish held sway. besides, sickle was not very energetic and he willingly hired himself out to fish on condition that he and his old wife be given a room and food and clothes for the rest of their days. they had no children and this settlement assured them a peaceful old age. when sickle died, a distant nephew appeared who claimed a right to his uncle's farm. fish had the dogs turned loose on him and the fellow was never seen again. these transactions had covered a period of twenty years. the younger generations of the cup and sickle and sparrow families accepted their situation in life without questioning. they knew old fish as "the squire" upon whose good-will they were more or less dependent if they wanted to succeed in life. when the old man died he left his son many wide acres and a position of great influence among his immediate neighbors. young fish resembled his father. he was very able and had a great deal of ambition. when the king of upper egypt went to war against the wild berber tribes, he volunteered his services. he fought so bravely that the king appointed him collector of the royal revenue for three hundred villages. often it happened that certain farmers could not pay their tax. then young fish offered to give them a small loan. before they knew it, they were working for the royal tax gatherer, to repay both the money which they had borrowed and the interest on the loan. the years went by and the fish family reigned supreme in the land of their birth. the old home was no longer good enough for such important people. a noble hall was built (after the pattern of the royal banqueting hall of thebes). a high wall was erected to keep the crowd at a respectful distance and fish never went out without a bodyguard of armed soldiers. twice a year he travelled to thebes to be with his king, who lived in the largest palace of all egypt and who was therefore known as "pharaoh," the owner of the "big house." upon one of his visits, he took fish the third, grandson of the founder of the family, who was a handsome young fellow. the daughter of pharaoh saw the youth and desired him for her husband. the wedding cost fish most of his fortune, but he was still collector of the royal revenue and by treating the people without mercy he was able to fill his strong-box in less than three years. when he died he was buried in a small pyramid, just as if he had been a member of the royal family, and a daughter of pharaoh wept over his grave. that is my story which begins somewhere along the banks of the nile and which in the course of three generations lifts a farmer from the ranks of his own humble ancestors and drops him outside the gate but near the throne-room of the king's palace. what happened to fish, happened to a large number of equally energetic and resourceful men. they formed a class apart. they married each other's daughters and in this way they kept the family fortunes in the hands of a small number of people. they served the king faithfully as officers in his army and as collectors of his taxes. they looked after the safety of the roads and the waterways. they performed many useful tasks and among themselves they obeyed the laws of a very strict code of honor. if the kings were bad, the nobles were apt to be bad too. when the kings were weak the nobles often managed to get hold of the state. then it often happened that the people arose in their wrath and destroyed those who oppressed them. many of the old nobles were killed and a new division of the land took place which gave everybody an equal chance. but after a short while the old story repeated itself. this time it was perhaps a member of the sparrow family who used his greater shrewdness and industry to make himself master of the countryside while the descendants of fish (of glorious memory!) were reduced to poverty. otherwise very little was changed. the faithful peasants continued to work and pay taxes. the equally faithful tax gatherers continued to gather wealth. but the old nile, indifferent to the ambitions of men, flowed as placidly as ever between its age-worn banks and bestowed its fertile blessings upon the poor and upon the rich with the impartial justice which is found only in the forces of nature. the rise and fall of egypt we often hear it said that "civilization travels westward." what we mean is that hardy pioneers have crossed the atlantic ocean and settled along the shores of new england and new netherland--that their children have crossed the vast prairies--that their great-grandchildren have moved into california--and that the present generation hopes to turn the vast pacific into the most important sea of the ages. as a matter of fact, "civilization" never remains long in the same spot. it is always going somewhere but it does not always move westward by any means. sometimes its course points towards the east or the south. often it zigzags across the map. but it keeps moving. after two or three hundred years, civilization seems to say, "well, i have been keeping company with these particular people long enough," and it packs its books and its science and its art and its music, and wanders forth in search of new domains. but no one knows whither it is bound, and that is what makes life so interesting. [illustration: the soil of the fertile valley.] in the case of egypt, the center of civilization moved northward and southward, along the banks of the nile. first of all, as i told you, people from all over africa and western asia moved into the valley and settled down. thereupon they formed small villages and townships and accepted the rule of a commander-in-chief, who was called pharaoh, and who had his capital in memphis, in the lower part of egypt. after a couple of thousand years, the rulers of this ancient house became too weak to maintain themselves. a new family from the town of thebes, 350 miles towards the south in upper egypt, tried to make itself master of the entire valley. in the year 2400 b.c. they succeeded. as rulers of both upper and lower egypt, they set forth to conquer the rest of the world. they marched towards the sources of the nile (which they never reached) and conquered black ethiopia. next they crossed the desert of sinai and invaded syria where they made their name feared by the babylonians and assyrians. the possession of these outlying districts assured the safety of egypt and they could set to work to turn the valley into a happy home, for as many of the people as could find room there. they built many new dikes and dams and a vast reservoir in the desert which they filled with water from the nile to be kept and used in case of a prolonged drought. they encouraged people to devote themselves to the study of mathematics and astronomy so that they might determine the time when the floods of the nile were to be expected. since for this purpose it was necessary to have a handy method by which time could be measured, they established the year of 365 days, which they divided into twelve months. contrary to the old tradition which made the egyptians keep away from all things foreign, they allowed the exchange of egyptian merchandise for goods which had been carried to their harbors from elsewhere. they traded with the greeks of crete and with the arabs of western asia and they got spices from the indies and they imported gold and silk from china. but all human institutions are subject to certain definite laws of progress and decline and a state or a dynasty is no exception. after four hundred years of prosperity, these mighty kings showed signs of growing tired. rather than ride a camel at the head of their army, the rulers of the great egyptian empire stayed within the gates of their palace and listened to the music of the harp or the flute. one day there came rumors to the town of thebes that wild tribes of horsemen had been pillaging along the frontiers. an army was sent to drive them away. this army moved into the desert. to the last man it was killed by the fierce arabs, who now marched towards the nile, bringing their flocks of sheep and their household goods. another army was told to stop their progress. the battle was disastrous for the egyptians and the valley of the nile was open to the invaders. they rode fleet horses and they used bows and arrows. within a short time they had made themselves master of the entire country. for five centuries they ruled the land of egypt. they removed the old capital to the delta of the nile. they oppressed the egyptian peasants. they treated the men cruelly and they killed the children and they were rude to the ancient gods. they did not like to live in the cities but stayed with their flocks in the open fields and therefore they were called the hyksos, which means the shepherd kings. at last their rule grew unbearable. a noble family from the city of thebes placed itself at the head of a national revolution against the foreign usurpers. it was a desperate fight but the egyptians won. the hyksos were driven out of the country, and they went back to the desert whence they had come. the experience had been a warning to the egyptian people. their five hundred years of foreign slavery had been a terrible experience. such a thing must never happen again. the frontier of the fatherland must be made so strong that no one dare to attack the holy soil. a new theban king, called tethmosis, invaded asia and never stopped until he reached the plains of mesopotamia. he watered his oxen in the river euphrates, and babylon and nineveh trembled at the mention of his name. wherever he went, he built strong fortresses, which were connected by excellent roads. tethmosis, having built a barrier against future invasions, went home and died. but his daughter, hatshepsut, continued his good work. she rebuilt the temples which the hyksos had destroyed and she founded a strong state in which soldiers and merchants worked together for a common purpose and which was called the new empire, and lasted from 1600 to 1300 b.c. military nations, however, never last very long. the larger the empire, the more men are needed for its defense and the more men there are in the army, the fewer can stay at home to work the farms and attend to the demands of trade. within a few years, the egyptian state had become top-heavy and the army, which was meant to be a bulwark against foreign invasion, dragged the country into ruin from sheer lack of both men and money. without interruption, wild people from asia were attacking those strong walls behind which egypt was hoarding the riches of the entire civilized world. at first the egyptian garrisons could hold their own. one day, however, in distant mesopotamia, there arose a new military empire which was called assyria. it cared for neither art nor science, but it could fight. the assyrians marched against the egyptians and defeated them in battle. for more than twenty years they ruled the land of the nile. to egypt this meant the beginning of the end. a few times, for short periods, the people managed to regain their independence. but they were an old race, and they were worn out by centuries of hard work. the time had come for them to disappear from the stage of history and surrender their leadership as the most civilized people of the world. greek merchants were swarming down upon the cities at the mouth of the nile. a new capital was built at sais, near the mouth of the nile, and egypt became a purely commercial state, the half-way house for the trade between western asia and eastern europe. after the greeks came the persians, who conquered all of northern africa. two centuries later, alexander the great turned the ancient land of the pharaoh? into a greek province. when he died, one of his generals, ptolemy by name, established himself as the independent king of a new egyptian state. the ptolemy family continued to rule for two hundred years. in the year 30 b.c., cleopatra, the last of the ptolemys, killed herself, rather than become a prisoner of the victorious roman general, octavianus. that was the end. egypt became part of the roman empire and her life as an independent state ceased for all time. mesopotamia, the country between the rivers i am going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid. it is a good deal of a climb. the casing of fine stones which in the beginning covered the rough granite blocks which were used to construct this artificial mountain, has long since worn off or has been stolen to help build new roman cities. a goat would have a fine time scaling this strange peak. but with the help of a few arab boys, we can get to the top after a few hours of hard work, and there we can rest and look far into the next chapter of the history of the human race. way, way off, in the distance, far beyond the yellow sands of the vast desert, through which the old nile had cut herself a way to the sea, you will (if you have the eyes of a hawk), see something shimmering and green. it is a valley situated between two big rivers. it is the most interesting spot of the ancient map. it is the paradise of the old testament. it is the old land of mystery and wonder which the greeks called mesopotamia. the word "mesos" means "middle" or "in between" and "potomos" is the greek expression for river. (just think of the hippopotamus, the horse or "hippos" that lives in the rivers.) mesopotamia, therefore, meant a stretch of land "between the rivers." the two rivers in this case were the euphrates which the babylonians called the "purattu" and the tigris, which the babylonians called the "diklat." you will see them both upon the map. they begin their course amidst the snows of the northern mountains of armenia and slowly they flow through the southern plain until they reach the muddy banks of the persian gulf. but before they have lost themselves amidst the waves of this branch of the indian ocean, they have performed a great and useful task. they have turned an otherwise arid and dry region into the only fertile spot of western asia. that fact will explain to you why mesopotamia was so very popular with the inhabitants of the northern mountains and the southern desert. it is a well-known fact that all living beings like to be comfortable. when it rains, the cat hastens to a place of shelter. when it is cold, the dog finds a spot in front of the stove. when a certain part of the sea becomes more salty than it has been before (or less, for that matter) myriads of little fishes swim hastily to another part of the wide ocean. as for the birds, a great many of them move from one place to another regularly once a year. when the cold weather sets in, the geese depart, and when the first swallow returns, we know that summer is about to smile upon us. man is no exception to this rule. he likes the warm stove much better than the cold wind. whenever he has the choice between a good dinner and a crust of bread, he prefers the dinner. he will live in the desert or in the snow of the arctic zone if it is absolutely necessary. but offer him a more agreeable place of residence and he will accept without a moment's hesitation. this desire to improve his condition, which really means a desire to make life more comfortable and less wearisome, has been a very good thing for the progress of the world. it has driven the white people of europe to the ends of the earth. it has populated the mountains and the plains of our own country. it has made many millions of men travel ceaselessly from east to west and from south to north until they have found the climate and the living conditions which suit them best. in the western part of asia this instinct which compels living beings to seek the greatest amount of comfort possible with the smallest expenditure of labor forced both the inhabitants of the cold and inhospitable mountains and the people of the parched desert to look for a new dwelling place in the happy valley of mesopotamia. it caused them to fight for the sole possession of this paradise upon earth. it forced them to exercise their highest power of inventiveness and their noblest courage to defend their homes and farms and their wives and children against the newcomers, who century after century were attracted by the fame of this pleasant spot. this constant rivalry was the cause of an everlasting struggle between the old and established tribes and the others who clamored for their share of the soil. those who were weak and those who did not have a great deal of energy had little chance of success. only the most intelligent and the bravest survived. that will explain to you why mesopotamia became the home of a strong race of men, capable of creating that state of civilization which was to be of such enormous benefit to all later generations. the sumerian nail writers in the year 1472, a short time before columbus discovered america, a certain venetian, by the name of josaphat barbaro, traveling through persia, crossed the hills near shiraz and saw something which puzzled him. the hills of shiraz were covered with old temples which had been cut into the rock of the mountainside. the ancient worshippers had disappeared centuries before and the temples were in a state of great decay. but clearly visible upon their walls, barbara noticed long legends written in a curious script which looked like a series of scratches made by a sharp nail. when he returned he mentioned his discovery to his fellow-townsmen, but just then the turks were threatening europe with an invasion and people were too busy to bother about a new and unknown alphabet, somewhere in the heart of western asia. the persian inscriptions therefore were promptly forgotten. two and a half centuries later, a noble young roman by the name of pietro della valle visited the same hillsides of shiraz which barbaro had passed two hundred years before. he, too, was puzzled by the strange inscriptions on the ruins and being a painstaking young fellow, he copied them carefully and sent his report together with some remarks about the trip to a friend of his, doctor schipano, who practiced medicine in naples and who besides took an interest in matters of learning. schipano copied the funny little figures and brought them to the attention of other scientific men. unfortunately europe was again occupied with other matters. the terrible wars between the protestants and catholics had broken out and people were busily killing those who disagreed with them upon certain points of a religious nature. another century was to pass before the study of the wedge-shaped inscriptions could be taken up seriously. the eighteenth century--a delightful age for people of an active and curious mind--loved scientific puzzles. therefore when king frederick v of denmark asked for men of learning to join an expedition which he was going to send to western asia, he found no end of volunteers. his expedition, which left copenhagen in 1761, lasted six years. during this period all of the members died except one, by the name of karsten niebuhr, who had begun life as a german peasant and could stand greater hardships than the professors who had spent their days amidst the stuffy books of their libraries. this niebuhr, who was a surveyor by profession, was a young man who deserves our admiration. he continued his voyage all alone until he reached the ruins of persepolis where he spent a month copying every inscription that was to be found upon the walls of the ruined palaces and temples. after his return to denmark he published his discoveries for the benefit of the scientific world and seriously tried to read some meaning into his own texts. he was not successful. but this does not astonish us when we understand the difficulties which he was obliged to solve. when champollion tackled the ancient egyptian hieroglyphics he was able to make his studies from little pictures. the writing of persepolis did not show any pictures at all. they consisted of v-shaped figures that were repeated endlessly and suggested nothing at all to the european eye. nowadays, when the puzzle has been solved we know that the original script of the sumerians had been a picture-language, quite as much as that of the egyptians. but whereas the egyptians at a very early date had discovered the papyrus plant and had been able to paint their images upon a smooth surface, the inhabitants of mesopotamia had been forced to carve their words into the hard rock of a mountain side or into a soft brick of clay. [illustration: the rocks of behistun.] driven by necessity they had gradually simplified the original pictures until they devised a system of more than five hundred different letter-combinations which were necessary for their needs. let me give you a few examples. in the beginning, a star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked as follows. [illustration: star] but after a time the star shape was discarded as being too cumbersome and the figure was given this shape. [illustration: asterisk] after a while the meaning of "heaven" was added to that of "star," and the picture was simplified in this way [illustration: odd cross] which made it still more of a puzzle. in the same way an ox changed from [illustration: ox head] into [illustration: pattern] a fish changed from [illustration: fish] into [illustration: fish scales] the sun, which was originally a plain circle, became [illustration: diamond] and if we were using the sumerian script today we would make an [illustration: bike] look like this [illustration: pattern]. you will understand how difficult it was to guess at the meaning of these figures but the patient labors of a german schoolmaster by the name of grotefend was at last rewarded and thirty years after the first publication of niebuhr's texts and three centuries after the first discovery of the wedge-formed pictures, four letters had been deciphered. these four letters were the d, the a, the r and the sh. they formed the name of darheush the king, whom we call darius. then occurred one of those events which were only possible in those happy days before the telegraph-wire and the mail-steamer had turned the entire world into one large city. while patient european professors were burning the midnight candles in their attempt to solve the new asiatic mystery, young henry rawlinson was serving his time as a cadet of the british east indian company. he used his spare hours to learn persian and when the shah of persia asked the english government for the loan of a few officers to train his native army, rawlinson was ordered to go to teheran. he travelled all over persia and one day he happened to visit the village of behistun. the persians called it bagistana which means the "dwellingplace of the gods." centuries before the main road from mesopotamia to iran (the early home of the persians) had run through this village and the persian king darius had used the steep walls of the high cliffs to tell all the world what a great man he was. high above the roadside he had engraved an account of his glorious deeds. the inscription had been made in the persian language, in babylonian and in the dialect of the city of susa. to make the story plain to those who could not read at all, a fine piece of sculpture had been added showing the king of persia placing his triumphant foot upon the body of gaumata, the usurper who had tried to steal the throne away from the legitimate rulers. for good measure a dozen followers of gaumata had been added. they stood in the background. their hands were tied and they were to be executed in a few moments. the picture and the three texts were several hundred feet above the road but rawlinson scaled the walls of the rock at great danger to life and limb and copied the entire text. his discovery was of the greatest importance. the rock of behistun became as famous as the stone of rosetta and rawlinson shared the honors of deciphering the old nail-writing with grotefend. although they had never seen each other or heard each other's names, the german schoolmaster and the british officer worked together for a common purpose as all good scientific men should do. their copies of the old text were reprinted in every land and by the middle of the nineteenth century, the cuneiform language (so called because the letters were wedge-shaped and "cuneus" is the latin name for wedge) had given up its secrets. another human mystery had been solved. [illustration: a tower of babel.] but about the people who had invented this clever way of writing, we have never been able to learn very much. they were a white race and they were called the sumerians. they lived in a land which we call shomer and which they themselves called kengi, which means the "country of the reeds" and which shows us that they had dwelt among the marshy parts of the mesopotamian valley. originally the sumerians had been mountaineers, but the fertile fields had tempted them away from the hills. but while they had left their ancient homes amidst the peaks of western asia they had not given up their old habits and one of these is of particular interest to us. living amidst the peaks of western asia, they had worshipped their gods upon altars erected on the tops of rocks. in their new home, among the flat plains, there were no such rocks and it was impossible to construct their shrines in the old fashion. the sumerians did not like this. all asiatic people have a deep respect for tradition and the sumerian tradition demanded that an altar be plainly visible for miles around. to overcome this difficulty and keep their peace with the gods of their fathers, the sumerians had built a number of low towers (resembling little hills) on the top of which they had lighted their sacred fires in honor of the old divinities. when the jews visited the town of bab-illi (which we call babylon) many centuries after the last of the sumerians had died, they had been much impressed by the strange-looking towers which stood high amidst the green fields of mesopotamia. the tower of babel of which we hear so much in the old testament was nothing but the ruin of an artificial peak, built hundreds of years before by a band of devout sumerians. it was a curious contraption. the sumerians had not known how to construct stairs. they had surrounded their tower with a sloping gallery which slowly carried people from the bottom to the top. a few years ago it was found necessary to build a new railroad station in the heart of new york city in such a way that thousands of travelers could be brought from the lower to the higher levels at the same moment. it was not thought safe to use a staircase for in case of a rush or a panic people might have tumbled and that would have meant a terrible catastrophe. to solve their problem the engineers borrowed an idea from the sumerians. and the grand central station is provided with the same ascending galleries which had first been introduced into the plains of mesopotamia, three thousand years ago. assyria and babylonia--the great semitic melting-pot we often call america the "melting-pot." when we use this term we mean that many races from all over the earth have gathered along the banks of the atlantic and the pacific oceans to find a new home and begin a new career amidst more favorable surroundings than were to be found in the country of their birth. it is true, mesopotamia was much smaller than our own country. but the fertile valley was the most extraordinary "melting-pot" the world has ever seen and it continued to absorb new tribes for almost two thousand years. the story of each new people, clamoring for homesteads along the banks of the tigris and the euphrates is interesting in itself but we can give you only a very short record of their adventures. [illustration: hammurapi.] the sumerians whom we met in the previous chapter, scratching their history upon rocks and bits of clay (and who did not belong to the semitic race) had been the first nomads to wander into mesopotamia. nomads are people who have no settled homes and no grain fields and no vegetable gardens but who live in tents and keep sheep and goats and cows and who move from pasture to pasture, taking their flocks and their tents wherever the grass is green and the water abundant. far and wide their mud huts had covered the plains. they were good fighters and for a long time they were able to hold their own against all invaders. but four thousand years ago a tribe of semitic desert people called the akkadians left arabia, defeated the sumerians and conquered mesopotamia. the most famous king of these akkadians was called sargon. he taught his people how to write their own semitic language in the alphabet of the sumerians whose territory they had just occupied. he ruled so wisely that soon the differences between the original settlers and the invaders disappeared and they became fast friends and lived together in peace and harmony. the fame of his empire spread rapidly throughout western asia and others, hearing of this success, were tempted to try their own luck. a new tribe of desert nomads, called the amorites, broke up camp and moved northward. thereupon the valley was the scene of a great turmoil until an amorite chieftain by the name of hammurapi (or hammurabi, as you please) established himself in the town of bab-illi (which means the gate of the god) and made himself the ruler of a great bab-illian or babylonian empire. this hammurapi, who lived twenty-one centuries before the birth of christ, was a very interesting man. he made babylon the most important town of the ancient world, where learned priests administered the laws which their great ruler had received from the sun god himself and where the merchant loved to trade because he was treated fairly and honorably. indeed if it were not for the lack of space (these laws of hammurapi would cover fully forty of these pages if i were to give them to you in detail) i would be able to show you that this ancient babylonian state was in many respects better managed and that the people were happier and that law and order was maintained more carefully and that there was greater freedom of speech and thought than in many of our modern countries. but our world was never meant to be too perfect and soon other hordes of rough and murderous men descended from the northern mountains and destroyed the work of hammurapi's genius. the name of these new invaders was the hittites. of these hittites i can tell you even less than of the sumerians. the bible mentions them. ruins of their civilization have been found far and wide. they used a strange sort of hieroglyphics but no one has as yet been able to decipher these and read their meaning. they were not greatly gifted as administrators. they ruled only a few years and then their domains fell to pieces. of all their glory there remains nothing but a mysterious name and the reputation of having destroyed many things which other people had built up with great pain and care. then came another invasion which was of a very different nature. a fierce tribe of desert wanderers, who murdered and pillaged in the name of their great god assur, left arabia and marched northward until they reached the slopes of the mountains. then they turned eastward and along the banks of the euphrates they built a city which they called ninua, a name which has come down to us in the greek form of nineveh. at once these new-comers, who are generally known as the assyrians, began a slow but terrible warfare upon all the other inhabitants of mesopotamia. in the twelfth century before christ they made a first attempt to destroy babylon but after a first success on the part of their king, tiglath pileser, they were defeated and forced to return to their own country. five hundred years later they tried again. an adventurous general by the name of bulu made himself master of the assyrian throne. he assumed the name of old tiglath pileser, who was considered the national hero of the assyrians and announced his intention of conquering the whole world. [illustration: nineveh.] he was as good as his word. asia minor and armenia and egypt and northern arabia and western persia and babylonia became assyrian provinces. they were ruled by assyrian governors, who collected the taxes and forced all the young men to serve as soldiers in the assyrian armies and who made themselves thoroughly hated and despised both for their greed and their cruelty. fortunately the assyrian empire at its greatest height did not last very long. it was like a ship with too many masts and sails and too small a hull. there were too many soldiers and not enough farmers--too many generals and not enough business men. the king and the nobles grew very rich but the masses lived in squalor and poverty. never for a moment was the country at peace. it was for ever fighting someone, somewhere, for causes which did not interest the subjects at all. until, through this continuous and exhausting warfare, most of the assyrian soldiers had been killed or maimed and it became necessary to allow foreigners to enter the army. these foreigners had little love for their brutal masters who had destroyed their homes and had stolen their children and therefore they fought badly. life along the assyrian frontier was no longer safe. strange new tribes were constantly attacking the northern boundaries. one of these was called the cimmerians. the cimmerians, when we first hear of them, inhabited the vast plain beyond the northern mountains. homer describes their country in his account of the voyage of odysseus and he tells us that it was a place "for ever steeped in darkness." they were a race of white men and they had been driven out of their former homes by still another group of asiatic wanderers, the scythians. the scythians were the ancestors of the modern cossacks, and even in those remote days they were famous for their horsemanship. [illustration: nineveh destroyed.] the cimmerians, hard pressed by the scythians, crossed from europe into asia and conquered the land of the hittites. then they left the mountains of asia minor and descended into the valley of mesopotamia, where they wrought terrible havoc among the impoverished people of the assyrian empire. nineveh called for volunteers to stop this invasion. her worn-out regiments marched northward when news came of a more immediate and formidable danger. for many years a small tribe of semitic nomads, called the chaldeans, had been living peacefully in the south-eastern part of the fertile valley, in the country called ur. suddenly these chaldeans had gone upon the war-path and had begun a regular campaign against the assyrians. attacked from all sides, the assyrian state, which had never gained the good-will of a single neighbor, was doomed to perish. when nineveh fell and this forbidding treasure house, filled with the plunder of centuries, was at last destroyed, there was joy in every hut and hamlet from the persian gulf to the nile. and when the greeks visited the euphrates a few generations later and asked what these vast ruins, covered with shrubs and trees might be, there was no one to tell them. the people had hastened to forget the very name of the city that had been such a cruel master and had so miserably oppressed them. babylon, on the other hand, which had ruled its subjects in a very different way, came back to life. during the long reign of the wise king nebuchadnezzar the ancient temples were rebuilt. vast palaces were erected within a short space of time. new canals were dug all over the valley to help irrigate the fields. quarrelsome neighbors were severely punished. egypt was reduced to a mere frontier-province and jerusalem, the capital of the jews, was destroyed. the holy books of moses were taken to babylon and several thousand jews were forced to follow the babylonian king to his capital as hostages for the good behavior of those who remained behind in palestine. but babylon was made into one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. trees were planted along the banks of the euphrates. flowers were made to grow upon the many walls of the city and after a few years it seemed that a thousand gardens were hanging from the roofs of the ancient town. as soon as the chaldeans had made their capital the show-place of the world they devoted their attention to matters of the mind and of the spirit. like all desert folk they were deeply interested in the stars which at night had guided them safely through the trackless desert. they studied the heavens and named the twelve signs of the zodiak. they made maps of the sky and they discovered the first five planets. to these they gave the names of their gods. when the romans conquered mesopotamia they translated the chaldean names into latin and that explains why today we talk of jupiter and venus and mars and mercury and saturn. they divided the equator into three hundred and sixty degrees and they divided the day into twenty-four hours and the hour into sixty minutes and no modern man has ever been able to improve upon this old babylonian invention. they possessed no watches but they measured time by the shadow of the sun-dial. they learned to use both the decimal and the duodecimal systems (nowadays we use only the decimal system, which is a great pity). the duodecimal system (ask your father what the word means), accounts for the sixty minutes and the sixty seconds and the twenty-four hours which seem to have so little in common with our modern world which would have divided day and night into twenty hours and the hour into fifty minutes and the minute into fifty seconds according to the rules of the restricted decimal system. the chaldeans also were the first people to recognize the necessity of a regular day of rest. when they divided the year into weeks they ordered that six days of labor should be followed by one day, devoted to the "peace of the soul." [illustration: the chaldeans.] it was a great pity that the center of so much intelligence and industry could not exist for ever. but not even the genius of a number of very wise kings could save the ancient people of mesopotamia from their ultimate fate. the semitic world was growing old. it was time for a new race of men. in the fifth century before christ, an indo-european people called the persians (i shall tell you about them later) left its pastures amidst the high mountains of iran and conquered the fertile valley. the city of babylon was captured without a struggle. nabonidus, the last babylonian king, who had been more interested in religious problems than in defending his own country, fled. a few days later his small son, who had remained behind, died. cyrus, the persian king, buried the child with great honor and then proclaimed himself the legitimate successor of the old rulers of babylonia. mesopotamia ceased to be an independent state. it became a persian province ruled by a persian "satrap" or governor. as for babylon, when the kings no longer used the city as their residence it soon lost all importance and became a mere country village. in the fourth century before christ it enjoyed another spell of glory. it was in the year 331 b.c. that alexander the great, the young greek who had just conquered persia and india and egypt and every other place, visited the ancient city of sacred memories. he wanted to use the old city as a background for his own newly-acquired glory. he began to rebuild the palace and ordered that the rubbish be removed from the temples. unfortunately he died quite suddenly in the banqueting hall of nebuchadnezzar and after that nothing on earth could save babylon from her ruin. as soon as one of alexander's generals, seleucus nicator, had perfected the plans for a new city at the mouth of the great canal which united the tigris and the euphrates, the fate of babylon was sealed. a tablet of the year 275 b.c. tells us how the last of the babylonians were forced to leave their home and move into this new settlement which had been called seleucia. even then, a few of the faithful continued to visit the holy places which were now inhabited by wolves and jackals. the majority of the people, little interested in those half-forgotten divinities of a bygone age, made a more practical use of their former home. they used it as a stone-quarry. for almost thirty centuries babylon had been the great spiritual and intellectual center of the semitic world and a hundred generations had regarded the city as the most perfect expression of their people's genius. it was the paris and london and new york of the ancient world. at present three large mounds show us where the ruins lie buried beneath the sand of the ever-encroaching desert. this is the story of moses high above the thin line of the distant horizon there appeared a small cloud of dust. the babylonian peasant, working his poor farm on the outskirts of the fertile lands, noticed it. "another tribe is trying to break into our land," he said to himself. "they will not get far. the king's soldiers will drive them away." he was right. the frontier guards welcomed the new arrivals with drawn swords and bade them try their luck elsewhere. they moved westward following the borders of the land of babylon and they wandered until they reached the shores of the mediterranean. there they settled down and tended their flocks and lived the simple lives of their earliest ancestors who had dwelt in the land of ur. then there came a time when the rain ceased to fall and there was not enough to eat for man or beast and it became necessary to look for new pastures or perish on the spot. once more the shepherds (who were called the hebrews) moved their families into a new home which they found along the banks of the red sea near the land of egypt. but hunger and want had followed them upon their voyage and they were forced to go to the egyptian officials and beg for food that they might not starve. the egyptians had long expected a famine. they had built large store-houses and these were all filled with the surplus wheat of the last seven years. this wheat was now being distributed among the people and a food-dictator had been appointed to deal it out equally to the rich and to the poor. his name was joseph and he belonged to the tribe of the hebrews. as a mere boy he had run away from his own family. it was said that he had escaped to save himself from the anger of his brethren who envied him because he was the favorite of their father. whatever the truth, joseph had gone to egypt and he had found favor in the eyes of the hyksos kings who had just conquered the country and who used this bright young man to assist them in administering their new possessions. as soon as the hungry hebrews appeared before joseph with their request for help, joseph recognized his relatives. but he was a generous man and all meanness of spirit was foreign to his soul. he did not revenge himself upon those who had wronged him but he gave them wheat and allowed them to settle in the land of egypt, they and their children and their flocks--and be happy. for many years the hebrews (who are more commonly known as the jews) lived in the eastern part of their adopted country and all was well with them. then a great change took place. a sudden revolution deprived the hyksos kings of their power and forced them to leave the country. once more the egyptians were masters within their own house. they had never liked foreigners any too well. three hundred years of oppression by a band of arab shepherds had greatly increased this feeling of loathing for everything that was alien. [illustration: moses.] the jews on the other hand had been on friendly terms with the hyksos who were related to them by blood and by race. this was enough to make them traitors in the eyes of the egyptians. joseph no longer lived to protect his people. after a short struggle they were taken away from their old homes, they were driven into the heart of the country and they were treated like slaves. for many years they performed the dreary tasks of common laborers, carrying stones for the building of pyramids, making bricks for public buildings, constructing roads, and digging canals to carry the water of the nile to the distant egyptian farms. their suffering was great but they never lost courage and help was near. there lived a certain young man whose name was moses. he was very intelligent and he had received a good education because the egyptians had decided that he should enter the service of pharaoh. if nothing had happened to arouse his anger, moses would have ended his days peacefully as the governor of a small province or the collector of taxes of an outlying district. but the egyptians, as i have told you before, despised those who did not look like themselves nor dress in true egyptian fashion and they were apt to insult such people because they were "different." and because the foreigners were in the minority they could not well defend themselves. nor did it serve any good purpose to carry their complaints before a tribunal for the judge did not smile upon the grievances of a man who refused to worship the egyptian gods and who pleaded his case with a strong foreign accent. now it occurred one day that moses was taking a walk with a few of his egyptian friends and one of these said something particularly disagreeable about the jews and even threatened to lay hands on them. moses, who was a hot-headed youth hit him. the blow was a bit too severe and the egyptian fell down dead. to kill a native was a terrible thing and the egyptian laws were not as wise as those of hammurapi, the good babylonian king, who recognized the difference between a premeditated murder and the killing of a man whose insults had brought his opponent to a point of unreasoning rage. moses fled. he escaped into the land of his ancestors, into the midian desert, along the eastern bank of the red sea, where his tribe had tended their sheep several hundred years before. a kind priest by the name of jethro received him in his house and gave him one of his seven daughters, zipporah, as his wife. there moses lived for a long time and there he pondered upon many deep subjects. he had left the luxury and the comfort of the palace of pharaoh to share the rough and simple life of a desert priest. in the olden days, before the jewish people had moved into egypt, they too had been wanderers among the endless plains of arabia. they had lived in tents and they had eaten plain food, but they had been honest men and faithful women, contented with few possessions but proud of the righteousness of their mind. all this had been changed after they had become exposed to the civilization of egypt. they had taken to the ways of the comfort-loving egyptians. they had allowed another race to rule them and they had not cared to fight for their independence. instead of the old gods of the wind-swept desert they had begun to worship strange divinities who lived in the glimmering splendors of the dark egyptian temples. moses felt that it was his duty to go forth and save his people from their fate and bring them back to the simple truth of the olden days. and so he sent messengers to his relatives and suggested that they leave the land of slavery and join him in the desert. but the egyptians heard of this and guarded the jews more carefully than ever before. it seemed that the plans of moses were doomed to failure when suddenly an epidemic broke out among the people of the nile valley. the jews who had always obeyed certain very strict laws of health (which they had learned in the hardy days of their desert life) escaped the disease while the weaker egyptians died by the hundreds of thousands. amidst the confusion and the panic which followed this silent death, the jews packed their belongings and hastily fled from the land which had promised them so much and which had given them so little. as soon as the flight became known the egyptians tried to follow them with their armies but their soldiers met with disaster and the jews escaped. they were safe and they were free and they moved eastward into the waste spaces which are situated at the foot of mount sinai, the peak which has been called after sin, the babylonian god of the moon. there moses took command of his fellow-tribesmen and commenced upon his great task of reform. in those days, the jews, like all other people, worshipped many gods. during their stay in egypt they had even learned to do homage to those animals which the egyptians held in such high honor that they built holy shrines for their special benefit. moses on the other hand, during his long and lonely life amidst the sandy hills of the peninsula, had learned to revere the strength and the power of the great god of the storm and the thunder, who ruled the high heavens and upon whose good-will the wanderer in the desert depended for life and light and breath. this god was called jehovah and he was a mighty being who was held in trembling respect by all the semitic people of western asia. through the teaching of moses he was to become the sole master of the jewish race. one day moses disappeared from the camp of the hebrews. he took with him two tablets of rough-hewn stone. it was whispered that he had gone to seek the solitude of mount sinai's highest peak. that afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight. the darkness of a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man. but when moses returned, behold! ... there stood engraved upon the tablets the words which jehovah himself had spoken amidst the crash of his thunder and the blinding flashes of his lightning. from that moment on, no jew dared to question the authority of moses. when he told his people that jehovah commanded them to continue their wanderings, they obeyed with eagerness. for many years they lived amidst the trackless hills of the desert. they suffered great hardships and almost perished from lack of food and water. but moses kept high their hopes of a promised land which would offer a lasting home to the true followers of jehovah. at last they reached a more fertile region. they crossed the river jordan and, carrying the holy tablets of law, they made ready to occupy the pastures which stretch from dan to beersheba. as for moses, he was no longer their leader. he had grown old and he was very tired. he had been allowed to see the distant ridges of the palestine mountains among which the jews were to find a fatherland. then he had closed his wise eyes for all time. he had accomplished the task which he had set himself in his youth. he had led his people out of foreign slavery into the new freedom of an independent life. he had united them and he had made them the first of all nations to worship a single god. jerusalem--the city of the law palestine is a small strip of land between the mountains of syria and the green waters of the mediterranean. it has been inhabited since time immemorial, but we do not know very much about the first settlers, although we have given them the name of canaanites. the canaanites belonged to the semitic race. their ancestors, like those of the jews and the babylonians, had been a desert folk. but when the jews entered palestine, the canaanites lived in towns and villages. they were no longer shepherds but traders. indeed, in the jewish language, canaanite and merchant came to mean the same thing. they had built themselves strong cities, surrounded by high walls and they did not allow the jews to enter their gates, but they forced them to keep to the open country and make their home amidst the grassy lands of the valleys. after a time, however, the jews and the canaanites became friends. this was not so very difficult for they both belonged to the same race. besides they feared a common enemy and only their united strength could defend their country against these dangerous neighbors, who were called the philistines and who belonged to an entirely different race. the philistines really had no business in asia. they were europeans, and their earliest home had been in the isle of crete. at what age they had settled along the shores of the mediterranean is quite uncertain because we do not know when the indo-european invaders had driven them from their island home. but even the egyptians, who called them purasati, had feared them greatly and when the philistines (who wore a headdress of feathers just like our indians) went upon the war-path, all the people of western asia sent large armies to protect their frontiers. [illustration: jerusalem.] as for the war between the philistines and the jews, it never came to an end. for although david slew goliath (who wore a suit of armor which was a great curiosity in those days and had been no doubt imported from the island of cyprus where the copper mines of the ancient world were found) and although samson killed the philistines wholesale when he buried himself and his enemies beneath the temple of dagon, the philistines always proved themselves more than a match for the jews and never allowed the hebrew people to get hold of any of the harbors of the mediterranean. the jews therefore were obliged by fate to content themselves with the valleys of eastern palestine and there, on the top of a barren hill, they erected their capital. the name of this city was jerusalem and for thirty centuries it has been one of the most holy spots of the western world. in the dim ages of the unknown past, jerusalem, the home of peace, had been a little fortified outpost of the egyptians who had built many small fortifications and castles along the mountain ridges of palestine, to defend their outlying frontier against attacks from the east. after the downfall of the egyptian empire, a native tribe, the jebusites, had moved into the deserted city. then came the jews who captured the town after a long struggle and made it the residence of their king david. at last, after many years of wandering the tables of the law seemed to have reached a place of enduring rest. solomon, the wise, decided to provide them with a magnificent home. far and wide his messengers travelled to ransack the world for rare woods and precious metals. the entire nation was asked to offer its wealth to make the house of god worthy of its holy name. higher and higher the walls of the temple arose guarding the sacred laws of jehovah for all the ages. alas, the expected eternity proved to be of short duration. themselves intruders among hostile neighbors, surrounded by enemies on all sides, harassed by the philistines, the jews did not maintain their independence for very long. they fought well and bravely. but their little state, weakened by petty jealousies, was easily overpowered by the assyrians and the egyptians and the chaldeans and when nebuchadnezzar, the king of babylon, took jerusalem in the year 586 before the birth of christ, he destroyed the city and the temple, and the tablets of stone went up in the general conflagration. at once the jews set to work to rebuild their holy shrine. but the days of solomon's glory were gone. the jews were the subjects of a foreign race and money was scarce. it took seventy years to reconstruct the old edifice. it stood securely for three hundred years but then a second invasion took place and once more the red flames of the burning temple brightened the skies of palestine. when it was rebuilt for the third time, it was surrounded by two high walls with narrow gates and several inner courts were added to make sudden invasion in the future an impossibility. but ill-luck pursued the city of jerusalem. in the sixty-fifth year before the birth of christ, the romans under their general pompey took possession of the jewish capital. their practical sense did not take kindly to an old city with crooked and dark streets and many unhealthy alley-ways. they cleaned up this old rubbish (as they considered it) and built new barracks and large public buildings and swimming-pools and athletic parks and they forced their modern improvements upon an unwilling populace. the temple which served no practical purposes (as far as they could see) was neglected until the days of herod, who was king of the jews by the grace of the roman sword and whose vanity wished to renew the ancient splendor of the bygone ages. in a half-hearted manner the oppressed people set to work to obey the orders of a master who was not of their own choosing. when the last stone had been placed in its proper position another revolution broke out against the merciless roman tax gatherers. the temple was the first victim of this rioting. the soldiers of the emperor titus promptly set fire to this center of the old jewish faith. but the city of jerusalem was spared. palestine however continued to be the scene of unrest. the romans who were familiar with all sorts of races of men and who ruled countries where a thousand different divinities were worshipped did not know how to handle the jews. they did not understand the jewish character at all. extreme tolerance (based upon indifference) was the foundation upon which rome had constructed her very successful empire. roman governors never interfered with the religious belief of subject tribes. they demanded that a picture or a statue of the emperor be placed in the temples of the people who inhabited the outlying parts of the roman domains. this was a mere formality and it did not have any deep significance. but to the jews such a thing seemed highly sacrilegious and they would not desecrate their holiest of holies by the carven image of a roman potentate. they refused. the romans insisted. in itself a matter of small importance, a misunderstanding of this sort was bound to grow and cause further ill-feeling. fifty-two years after the revolt under the emperor titus the jews once more rebelled. this time the romans decided to be thorough in their work of destruction. jerusalem was destroyed. the temple was burned down. a new roman city, called aelia capitolina was erected upon the ruins of the old city of solomon. a heathenish temple devoted to the worship of jupiter was built upon the site where the faithful had worshipped jehovah for almost a thousand years. the jews themselves were expelled from their capital and thousands of them were driven away from the home of their ancestors. from that moment on they became wanderers upon the face of the earth. but the holy laws no longer needed the safe shelter of a royal shrine. their influence had long since passed beyond the narrow confines of the land of judah. they had become a living symbol of justice wherever honorable people tried to live a righteous life. damascus--the city of trade the old cities of egypt have disappeared from the face of the earth. nineveh and babylon are deserted mounds of dust and brick. the ancient temple of jerusalem lies buried beneath the blackened ruins of its own glory. one city alone has survived the ages. it is called damascus. within its four great gates and its strong walls a busy people has followed its daily occupations for five thousand consecutive years and the "street called straight" which is the city's main artery of commerce, has seen the coming and going of one hundred and fifty generations. humbly damascus began its career as a fortified frontier town of the amorites, those famous desert folk who had given birth to the great king hammurapi. when the amorites moved further eastward into the valley of mesopotamia to found the kingdom of babylon, damascus had been continued as a trading post with the wild hittites who inhabited the mountains of asia minor. in due course of time the earliest inhabitants had been absorbed by another semitic tribe, called the aramaeans. the city itself however had not changed its character. it remained throughout these many changes an important center of commerce. it was situated upon the main road from egypt to mesopotamia and it was within a week's distance from the harbors on the mediterranean. it produced no great generals and statesmen and no famous kings. it did not conquer a single mile of neighboring territory. it traded with all the world and offered a safe home to the merchant and to the artisan. incidentally it bestowed its language upon the greater part of western asia. commerce has always demanded quick and practical ways of communication between different nations. the elaborate system of nail-writing of the ancient sumerians was too involved for the aramaean business man. he invented a new alphabet which could be written much faster than the old wedge-shaped figures of babylon. the spoken language of the aramaeans followed their business correspondence. aramaean became the english of the ancient world. in most parts of mesopotamia it was understood as readily as the native tongue. in some countries it actually took the place of the old tribal dialect. and when christ preached to the multitudes, he did not use the ancient jewish speech in which moses had explained the laws unto his fellow wanderers. he spoke in aramaean, the language of the merchant, which had become the language of the simple people of the old mediterranean world. the phoenicians who sailed beyond the horizon a pioneer is a brave fellow, with the courage of his own curiosity. perhaps he lives at the foot of a high mountain. so do thousands of other people. they are quite contented to leave the mountain alone. but the pioneer feels unhappy. he wants to know what mysteries this mountain hides from his eyes. is there another mountain behind it, or a plain? does it suddenly arise with its steep cliffs from the dark waves of the ocean or does it overlook a desert? one fine day the true pioneer leaves his family and the safe comfort of his home to go and find out. perhaps he will come back and tell his experience to his indifferent relatives. or he will be killed by falling stones or a treacherous blizzard. in that case he does not return at all and the good neighbors shake their heads and say, "he got what he deserved. why did he not stay at home like the rest of us?" [illustration: the distant horizon] but the world needs such men and after they have been dead for many years and others have reaped the benefits of their discoveries, they always receive a statue with a fitting inscription. more terrifying than the highest mountain is the thin line of the distant horizon. it seems to be the end of the world itself. heaven have mercy upon those who pass beyond this meeting-place of sky and water, where all is black despair and death. and for centuries and centuries after man had built his first clumsy boats, he remained within the pleasant sight of one familiar shore and kept away from the horizon. then came the phoenicians who knew no such fears. they passed beyond the sight of land. suddenly the forbidding ocean was turned into a peaceful highway of commerce and the dangerous menace of the horizon became a myth. these phoenician navigators were semites. their ancestors had lived in the desert of arabia together with the babylonians, the jews and all the others. but when the jews occupied palestine, the cities of the phoenicians were already old with the age of many centuries. there were two phoenician centers of trade. one was called tyre and the other was called sidon. they were built upon high cliffs and rumor had it that no enemy could take them. far and wide their ships sailed to gather the products of the mediterranean for the benefit of the people of mesopotamia. at first the sailors only visited the distant shores of france and spain to barter with the natives and hastened home with their grain and metal. later they had built fortified trading posts along the coasts of spain and italy and greece and the far-off scilly islands where the valuable tin was found. [illustration: the phoenicians.] to the uncivilized savages of europe, such a trading post appeared as a dream of beauty and luxury. they asked to be allowed to live close to its walls, to see the wonderful sights when the boats of many sails entered the harbor, carrying the much-desired merchandise of the unknown east. gradually they left their huts to build themselves small wooden houses around the phoenician fortresses. in this way many a trading post had grown into a market place for all the people of the entire neighborhood. today such big cities as marseilles and cadiz are proud of their phoenician origin, but their ancient mothers, tyre and sidon, have been dead and forgotten for over two thousand years and of the phoenicians themselves, none have survived. this is a sad fate but it was fully deserved. the phoenicians had grown rich without great effort, but they had not known how to use their wealth wisely. they had never cared for books or learning. they had only cared for money. they had bought and sold slaves all over the world. they had forced the foreign immigrants to work in their factories. they cheated their neighbors whenever they had a chance and they had made themselves detested by all the other people of the mediterranean. they were brave and energetic navigators, but they showed themselves cowards whenever they were obliged to choose between honorable dealing and an immediate profit, obtained through fraudulent and shrewd trading. as long as they had been the only sailors in the world who could handle large ships, all other nations had been in need of their services. as soon as the others too had learned how to handle a rudder and a set of sails, they at once got rid of the tricky phoenician merchant. from that moment on, tyre and sidon had lost their old hold upon the commercial world of asia. they had never encouraged art or science. they had known how to explore the seven seas and turn their ventures into profitable investments. no state, however, can be safely built upon material possessions alone. the land of phoenicia had always been a counting-house without a soul. it perished because it had honored a well-filled treasure chest as the highest ideal of civic pride. the alphabet follows the trade i have told you how the egyptians preserved speech by means of little figures. i have described the wedge-shaped signs which served the people of mesopotamia as a handy means of transacting business at home and abroad. but how about our own alphabet? from whence came those compact little letters which follow us throughout our life, from the date on our birth certificate to the last word of our funeral notice? are they egyptian or babylonian or aramaic or are they something entirely different? they are a little bit of everything, as i shall now tell you. our modern alphabet is not a very satisfactory instrument for the purpose of reproducing our speech. some day a genius will invent a new system of writing which shall give each one of our sounds a little picture of its own. but with all its many imperfections the letters of our modern alphabet perform their daily task quite nicely and fully as well as their very accurate and precise cousins, the numerals, who wandered into europe from distant india, almost ten centuries after the first invasion of the alphabet. the earliest history of these letters, however, is a deep mystery and it will take many years of painstaking investigation before we can solve it. this much we know--that our alphabet was not suddenly invented by a bright young scribe. it developed and grew during hundreds of years out of a number of older and more complicated systems. in my last chapter i have told you of the language of the intelligent aramaean traders which spread throughout western asia, as an international means of communication. the language of the phoenicians was never very popular among their neighbors. except for a very few words we do not know what sort of tongue it was. their system of writing, however, was carried into every corner of the vast mediterranean and every phoenician colony became a center for its further distribution. it remains to be explained why the phoenicians, who did nothing to further either art or science, hit upon such a compact and handy system of writing, while other and superior nations remained faithful to the old clumsy scribbling. the phoenicians, before all else, were practical business men. they did not travel abroad to admire the scenery. they went upon their perilous voyages to distant parts of europe and more distant parts of africa in search of wealth. time was money in tyre and sidon and commercial documents written in hieroglyphics or sumerian wasted useful hours of busy clerks who might be employed upon more useful errands. when our modern business world decided that the old-fashioned way of dictating letters was too slow for the hurry of modern life, a clever man devised a simple system of dots and dashes which could follow the spoken word as closely as a hound follows a hare. this system we call "shorthand." the phoenician traders did the same thing. they borrowed a few pictures from the egyptian hieroglyphics and simplified a number of wedge-shaped figures from the babylonians. they sacrificed the pretty looks of the older system for the benefit of speed and they reduced the thousands of images of the ancient world to a short and handy alphabet of only twenty-two letters. they tried it out at home and when it proved a success, they carried it abroad. among the egyptians and the babylonians, writing had been a very serious affair--something almost holy. many improvements had been proposed but these had been invariably discarded as sacrilegious innovations. the phoenicians who were not interested in piety succeeded where the others had failed. they could not introduce their script into mesopotamia and egypt, but among the people of the mediterranean, who were totally ignorant of the art of writing, the phoenician alphabet was a great success and in all nooks and corners of that vast sea we find vases and pillars and ruins covered with phoenician inscriptions. the indo-european greeks who had migrated to the many islands of the aegean sea at once applied this foreign alphabet to their own language. certain greek sounds, unknown to the ears of the semitic phoenicians, needed letters of their own. these were invented and added to the others. but the greeks did not stop at this. they improved the whole system of speech-recording. all the systems of writing of the ancient people of asia had one thing in common. the consonants were reproduced but the reader was forced to guess at the vowels. this is not as difficult as it seems. we often omit the vowels in advertisements and in announcements which are printed in our newspapers. journalists and telegraph operators, too, are apt to invent languages of their own which do away with all the superfluous vowels and use only such consonants as are necessary to provide a skeleton around which the vowels can be draped when the story is rewritten. but such an imperfect scheme of writing can never become popular, and the greeks, with their sense of order, added a number of extra signs to reproduce the "a" and the "e" and the "i" and the "o" and the "u." when this had been done, they possessed an alphabet which allowed them to write everything in almost every language. five centuries before the birth of christ these letters crossed the adriatic and wandered from athens to rome. the roman soldiers carried them to the furthest corners of western europe and taught our own ancestors the use of the little phoenician signs. twelve centuries later, the missionaries of byzantine took the alphabet into the dreary wilderness of the dark russian plain. today more than half of the people of the world use this asiatic alphabet to keep a record of their thoughts and to preserve a record of their knowledge for the benefit of their children and their grandchildren. the end of the ancient world so far, the story of ancient man has been the record of a wonderful achievement. along the banks of the river nile, in mesopotamia and on the shores of the mediterranean, people had accomplished great things and wise rulers had performed mighty deeds. there, for the first time in history, man had ceased to be a roving animal. he had built himself houses and villages and vast cities. he had formed states. he had learned the art of constructing and navigating swift-sailing boats. he had explored the heavens and within his own soul he had discovered certain great moral laws which made him akin to the divinities which he worshipped. he had laid the foundations for all our further knowledge and our science and our art and those things that tend to make life sublime beyond the mere grubbing for food and lodging. most important of all he had devised a system of recording sound which gave unto his children and unto his children's children the benefit of their ancestors' experience and allowed them to accumulate such a store of information that they could make themselves the masters of the forces of nature. but together with these many virtues, ancient man had one great failing. he was too much a slave of tradition. he did not ask enough questions. he reasoned "my father did such and such a thing before me and my grandfather did it before my father and they both fared well and therefore this thing ought to be good for me too and i must not change it." he forgot that this patient acceptance of facts would never have lifted us above the common herd of animals. once upon a time there must have been a man of genius who refused any longer to swing from tree to tree with the help of his long, curly tail (as all his people had done before him) and who began to walk on his feet. but ancient man had lost sight of this fact and continued to use the wooden plow of his earliest ancestors and continued to believe in the same gods that had been worshipped ten thousand years before and taught his children to do likewise. instead of going forward he stood still and this was fatal. for a new and more energetic race appeared upon the horizon and the ancient world was doomed. we call these new people the indo-europeans. they were white men like you and me, and they spoke a language which was the common ancestor of all our european languages with the exception of hungarian, finnish and the basque of northern spain. when we first hear of them they had for many centuries made their home along the banks of the caspian sea. but one day (for reasons which are totally unknown to us) they packed their belongings on the backs of the horses which they had trained and they gathered their cows and dogs and goats and began to wander in search of distant happiness and food. some of them moved into the mountains of central asia and for a long time they lived amidst the peaks of the plateau of iran, whence they are called the iranians or aryans. others slowly followed the setting sun and took possession of the vast plains of western europe. they were almost as uncivilized as those prehistoric men who made their appearance within the first pages of this book. but they were a hardy race and good fighters and without difficulty they seem to have occupied the hunting grounds and the pastures of the men of the stone age. they were as yet quite ignorant but thanks to a happy fate they were curious. the wisdom of the ancient world, which was carried to them by the traders of the mediterranean, they very soon made their own. but the age-old learning of egypt and babylonia and chaldea they merely used as a stepping-stone to something higher and better. for "tradition," as such, meant nothing to them and they considered that the universe was theirs to explore and to exploit as they saw fit and that it was their duty to submit all experience to the acid test of human intelligence. [illustration: a colony.] soon therefore they passed beyond those boundaries which the ancient world had accepted as impassable barriers--a sort of spiritual mountains of the moon. then they turned against their former masters and within a short time a new and vigorous civilization replaced the out-worn structure of the ancient asiatic world. but of these indo-europeans and their adventures i give you a detailed account in "the story of mankind," which tells you about the greeks and the romans and all the other races in the world. a few dates connected with the people of the ancient world i can not give you any positive dates connected with prehistoric man. the early europeans who appear in the first chapters of this book began their career about fifty thousand years ago. the egyptians the earliest civilization in the nile valley developed forty centuries before the birth of christ. 3400 b.c. the old egyptian empire is founded. memphis is the capital. 2800--2700 b.c. the pyramids are built. 2000 b.c. the old empire is destroyed by the arab shepherds, called the "hyksos." 1800 b.c. thebes delivers egypt from the hyksos and becomes the center of the new egyptian empire. 1350 b.c. king rameses conquers eastern asia. 1300 b.c. the jews leave egypt. 1000 b.c. egypt begins to decline. 700 b.c. egypt becomes an assyrian province. 650 b.c. egypt regains her independence and a new state is founded with sais in the delta as its capital. foreigners, especially greeks, begin to dominate the country. 525 b.c. egypt becomes a persian province. 300 b.c. egypt becomes an independent kingdom ruled by one of alexander the great's generals, called ptolemy. 30 b.c. cleopatra, the last princess of the ptolemy dynasty, kills herself and egypt becomes part of the roman empire. the jews 2000 b.c. abraham moves away from the land of ur in eastern babylonia and looks for a new home in the western part of asia. 1550 b.c. the jews occupy the land of goshen in egypt. 1300 b.c. moses leads the jews out of egypt and gives them the law. 1250 b.c. the jews have crossed the river jordan and have occupied palestine. 1055 b.c. saul is king of the jews. 1025 b.c. david is king of a powerful jewish state. 1000 b.c. solomon builds the great temple of jerusalem. 950 b.c. the jewish state divided into two kingdoms, that of judah and that of israel. 900-600 b.c. the age of the great prophets. 722 b.c. the assyrians conquer palestine. 586 b.c. nebuchadnezzar conquers palestine. the babylonian captivity. 537 b.c. cyrus, king of the persians, allows the jews to return to palestine. 167-130 b.c. last period of jewish independence under the maccabees. 63 b.c. pompeius makes palestine part of the roman empire. 40 b.c. herod king of the jews. 70 a.d. the emperor titus destroys jerusalem. mesopotamia 4000 b.c. the sumerians take possession of the land between the tigris and the euphrates. 2200 b.c. hammurapi, king of babylon, gives his people a famous code of law. 1900 b.c. beginning of the assyrian state, with nineveh as its capital. 950-650 b.c. assyria becomes the master of western asia. 700 b.c. sargon, the ruler of the assyrians, conquers palestine, egypt and arabia. 640 b.c. the medes revolt against the assyrian rule. 530 b.c. the scythians attack assyria. there are revolutions all over the kingdom. 608 b.c. nineveh is destroyed. assyria disappears from the map. 608-538 b.c. the chaldeans reestablish the babylonian kingdom. 604-561 b.c. nebuchadnezzar destroys jerusalem, takes phoenicia and makes babylon the center of civilization. 538 b.c. mesopotamia becomes a persian province. 330 b.c. alexander the great conquers mesopotamia. the phoenicians 1500-1200 b.c. the city of sklon is the chief phoenician center of trade. 1100-950 b.c. tyre becomes the commercial center of phoenicia. 1000-600 b.c. development of the phoenician colonial empire. 850 b.c. carthage is founded. 586-573 b.c. siege of tyre by nebuchadnezzar. the city is captured and destroyed. 538 b.c. phoenicia becomes a persian province. 60 b.c. phoenicia becomes part of the roman empire. [illustration: a persian altar] the persians at an unknown date the indo-european people began their march into europe and into india. the year 1000 b.c. is usually given for zarathustra, the great teacher of the persians, who gave an excellent moral law. 650-b.c. the indo-european medes found a state along the eastern boundaries of babylonia. 550-330 b.c. the kingdom of the persians. beginning of the struggle between indo-europeans and semites. 525-8.c. cambyses, king of the persians, takes egypt. 520-485 b.c. rule of darius, king of the persians, who conquers babylon and attacks greece. 485-465 b.c. rule of king xerxes, who tries to establish himself in eastern europe but fails. 330 b.c. the greek, alexander the great, conquers all of western asia and egypt and persia becomes a greek province. the ancient world which was dominated by semitic peoples lasted almost forty centuries. in the fourth century before the birth of christ it died of old age. western asia and egypt had been the teachers of the indo-europeans who had occupied europe at an unknown date. in the fourth century before christ, the indo-european pupils had so far surpassed their teachers that they could begin their conquest of the world. the famous expedition of alexander the great in 330 b.c. made an end to the civilizations of egypt and mesopotamia and established the supremacy of greek (that is european) culture. peeps at many lands ancient egypt [illustration: plate 1. an egyptian galley.] peeps at many lands ancient egypt by rev. james baikie, f.r.a.s. author of "peeps at the heavens," "the story of the pharaohs," "the sea kings of crete," etc. with sixteen full-page illustrations, those in colour being by constance n. baikie a. & c. black, ltd. 4, 5 & 6, soho square, london, w. 1916 * * * * * _first published october 1912_ _reprinted january and april 1916_ agents america the macmillan company 64 & 66 fifth avenue, new york australasia oxford university press 205 flinders lane, melbourne canada the macmillan company of canada, ltd. st. martin's house, 70 bond street, toronto india macmillan & company, ltd. macmillan building, bombay 309 bow bazaar street, calcutta _printed in great britain._ * * * * * contents chapter page i. a land of old renown 1 ii. a day in thebes 6 iii. a day in thebes (_continued_) 11 iv. pharaoh at home 17 v. the life of a soldier 24 vi. child-life in ancient egypt 33 vii. some fairy-tales of long ago 41 viii. some fairy-tales of long ago (_continued_) 47 ix. exploring the soudan 54 x. a voyage of discovery 59 xi. egyptian books 66 xii. temples and tombs 72 xiii. an egyptian's heaven 82 * * * * * list of illustrations plate *1. an egyptian galley, 1500 b.c. _frontispiece_ facing page 2. the goddess isis dandling the king 9 3. the great gate of the temple of luxor, with obelisk 16 *4. ramses ii. in his war-chariot--sardinian guardsmen on foot 25 *5. zazamankh and the lost coronet 32 6. granite statue of ramses ii. 35 7. nave of the temple at karnak 38 *8. "and the goose stood up and cackled" 41 *9. an egyptian country house 48 10. statues of king amenhotep iii. 51 11. the sphinx and the second pyramid 54 *12. a desert postman 57 *13. the bark of the moon, guarded by the divine eyes 64 14. gateway of the temple of edfu 73 15. wall-pictures in a theban tomb 80 *16. pharaoh on his throne 20 _sketch-map of ancient egypt on page viii_ * these eight illustrations are in colour; the others are in black and white. * * * * * [illustration: sketch-map of ancient egypt.] ancient egypt chapter i "a land of old renown" if we were asked to name the most interesting country in the world, i suppose that most people would say palestine--not because there is anything so very wonderful in the land itself, but because of all the great things that have happened there, and above all because of its having been the home of our lord. but after palestine, i think that egypt would come next. for one thing, it is linked very closely to palestine by all those beautiful stories of the old testament, which tell us of joseph, the slave-boy who became viceroy of egypt; of moses, the hebrew child who became a prince of pharaoh's household; and of the wonderful exodus of the children of israel. but besides that, it is a land which has a most strange and wonderful story of its own. no other country has so long a history of great kings, and wise men, and brave soldiers; and in no other country can you see anything to compare with the great buildings, some of them most beautiful, all of them most wonderful, of which egypt has so many. we have some old and interesting buildings in this country, and people go far to see cathedrals and castles that are perhaps five or six hundred years old, or even more; but in egypt, buildings of that age are looked upon as almost new, and nobody pays very much attention to them. for the great temples and tombs of egypt were, many of them, hundreds of years old before the story of our bible, properly speaking, begins. the pyramids, for instance, those huge piles that are still the wonder of the world, were far older than any building now standing in europe, before joseph was sold to be a slave in potiphar's house. hundreds upon hundreds of years before anyone had ever heard of the greeks and the romans, there were great kings reigning in egypt, sending out their armies to conquer syria and the soudan, and their ships to explore the unknown southern seas, and wise men were writing books which we can still read. when britain was a wild, unknown island, inhabited only by savages as fierce and untaught as the south sea islanders, egypt was a great and highly civilized country, full of great cities, with noble palaces and temples, and its people were wise and learned. so in this little book i want to tell you something about this wonderful and interesting old country, and about the kind of life that people lived in it in those days of long ago, before most other lands had begun to waken up, or to have any history at all. first of all, let us try to get an idea of the land itself. it is a very remarkable thing that so many of the countries which have played a great part in the history of the world have been small countries. our own britain is not very big, though it has had a great story. palestine, which has done more than any other country to make the world what it is to-day, was called "the least of all lands." greece, whose influence comes, perhaps, next after that of palestine, is only a little hilly corner of southern europe. and egypt, too, is comparatively a small land. it looks a fair size when you see it on the map; but you have to remember that nearly all the land which is called egypt on the map is barren sandy desert, or wild rocky hill-country, where no one can live. the real egypt is just a narrow strip of land on either side of the great river nile, sometimes only a mile or two broad altogether, never more than thirty miles broad, except near the mouth of the river, where it widens out into the fan-shaped plain called the delta. someone has compared egypt to a lily with a crooked stem, and the comparison is very true. the long winding valley of the nile is the crooked stem of the lily, and the delta at the nile mouth, with its wide stretch of fertile soil, is the flower; while, just below the flower, there is a little bud--a fertile valley called the fayum. long before even egyptian history begins, there was no bloom on the lily. the nile, a far bigger river then than it is now, ran into the sea near cairo, the modern capital of egypt; and the land was nothing but the narrow valley of the river, bordered on either side by desert hills. but gradually, century by century, the nile cut its way deeper down into the land, leaving banks of soil on either side between itself and the hills, and the mud which it brought down in its waters piled up at its mouth and pressed the sea back, till, at last, the delta was formed, much as we see it now. this was long before egypt had any story of its own; but even after history begins the delta was still partly marshy land, not long reclaimed from the sea, and the real egyptians of the valley despised the people who lived there as mere marsh-dwellers. even after the delta was formed, the whole country was only about twice as large as wales, and, though there was a great number of people in it for its size, the population was only, at the most, about twice as great as that of london. an old greek historian once said, "egypt is the gift of the nile," and it is perfectly true. we have seen how the great river made the country to begin with, cutting out the narrow valley through the hills, and building up the flat plain of the delta. but the nile has not only made the country; it keeps it alive. you know that egypt has always been one of the most fertile lands in the world. almost anything will grow there, and it produces wonderful crops of corn and vegetables, and, nowadays, of cotton. it was the same in old days. when rome was the capital of the world, she used to get most of the corn to feed her hungry thousands from egypt by the famous alexandrian corn-ships; and you remember how, in the bible story, joseph's brethren came down from palestine because, though there was famine there, there was "corn in egypt." and yet egypt is a land where rain is almost unknown. sometimes there will come a heavy thunder-shower; but for month after month, year in and year out, there may be no rain at all. how can a rainless country grow anything? the secret is the nile. every year, when the rains fall in the great lake-basin of central africa, from which one branch of the great river comes, and on the abyssinian hills, where the other branch rises, the nile comes down in flood. all the lower lands are covered, and a fresh deposit of nile mud is left upon them; and, though the river does not rise to the higher grounds, the water is led into big canals, and these, again, are divided up into little ones, till it circulates through the whole land, as the blood circulates through your arteries and veins. this keeps the land fertile, and makes up for the lack of rain. apart from its wonderful river, the country itself has no very striking features. it is rather a monotonous land--a long ribbon of green running through a great waste of yellow desert and barren hills. but the great charm that draws people's minds to egypt, and gives the old land a never-failing interest, is its great story of the past, and all the relics of that story which are still to be seen. in no other land can you see the real people and things of the days of long ago as you can see them in egypt. think how we should prize an actual building that had been connected with the story of king arthur, if such a thing could be found in our country, and what wonderful romance would belong to the weapons, the actual shields and helmets, swords and lances, of the knights of the round table, lancelot and tristram and galahad--if only we could find them. out there in egypt you can see buildings compared with which king arthur's camelot would be only a thing of yesterday; and you can look, not only on the weapons, but on the actual faces and forms of great kings and soldiers who lived, and fought bravely for their country, hundreds of years before saul and jonathan and david began to fight the battles of israel. you can see the pictures of how people lived in those far-away days, how their houses were built, how they traded and toiled, how they amused themselves, how they behaved in time of sorrow, how they worshipped god--all set down by themselves at the very time when they were doing these things. you can even see the games at which the children used to play, and the queer old-fashioned toys and dolls that they played with, and you can read the stories which their mothers and their nurses used to tell them. these are the things which make this old land of egypt so interesting to us all to-day; and i want to try to tell you about some of them, so that you may be able to have in your mind's eye a real picture of the life of those long past days. chapter ii a day in thebes if any foreigner were wanting to get an idea of our country, and to see how our people live, i suppose the first place that he would go to would be london, because it is the capital of the whole country, and its greatest city; and so, if we want to learn something about egypt, and how people lived there in those far-off days, we must try to get to the capital of the country, and see what is to be seen there. suppose, then, that we are no longer living in britain in the twentieth century, but that somehow or other we have got away back into the past, far beyond the days of jesus christ, beyond even the times of moses, and are living about 1,300 years before christ. we have come from tyre in a phoenician galley, laden with costly bales of cloth dyed with tyrian purple, and beautiful vessels wrought in bronze and copper, to sell in the markets of thebes, the greatest city in egypt. we have coasted along past carmel and joppa, and, after narrowly escaping being driven in a storm on the dangerous quicksand called the syrtis, we have entered one of the mouths of the nile. we have taken up an egyptian pilot at the river mouth, and he stands on a little platform at the bow of the galley, and shouts his directions to the steersmen, who work the two big rudders, one on either side of the ship's stern. the north wind is blowing strongly and driving us swiftly upstream, in spite of the current of the great river; so our weary oarsmen have shipped their oars, and we drive steadily southwards under our one big swelling sail. at first we sail along through a broad flat plain, partly cultivated, and partly covered with marsh and marsh plants. by-and-by the green plain begins to grow narrower; we are coming to the end of the delta, and entering upon the real valley of egypt. soon we pass a great city, its temples standing out clear against the deep blue sky, with their towering gateways, gay flags floating from tall flagstaves in front of them, and great obelisks pointing to the sky; and our pilot says that this is memphis, one of the oldest towns in the country, and for long its capital. not far from memphis, three great pyramid-shaped masses of stone rise up on the river-bank, looking almost like mountains; and the pilot tells us that these are the tombs of some of the great kings of long past days, and that all around them lie smaller pyramids and other tombs of kings and great men. but we are bound for a city greater even than memphis, and so we never stop, but hasten always southward. several days of steady sailing carry us past many towns that cluster near the river, past one ruined city, falling into mere heaps of stone and brick, which our pilot tells us was once the capital of a wicked king who tried to cast down all the old gods of egypt, and to set up a new god of his own; and at last we see, far ahead of us, a huge cluster of buildings on both sides of the river, which marks a city greater than we have ever seen. as we sweep up the river we see that there are really two cities. on the east bank lies the city of the living, with its strong walls and towers, its enormous temples, and an endless crowd of houses of all sorts and sizes, from the gay palaces of the nobles to the mud huts of the poor people. on the west bank lies the city of the dead. it has neither streets nor palaces, and no hum of busy life goes up from it; but it is almost more striking than its neighbour across the river. the hills and cliffs are honeycombed with long rows of black openings, the doorways of the tombs where the dead of thebes for centuries back are sleeping. out on the plain, between the cliffs and the river, temple rises after temple in seemingly endless succession. some of these temples are small and partly ruined, but some are very great and splendid; and, as the sunlight strikes upon them, it sends back flashes of gold and crimson and blue that dazzle the eyes. [illustration: plate 2 the goddess isis dandling the king. _page 18_] but now our galley is drawing in towards the quay on the east side of the river, and in a few minutes the great sail comes thundering down, and, as the ship drifts slowly up to the quay, the mooring-ropes are thrown and made fast, and our long voyage is at an end. the egyptian custom-house officers come on board to examine the cargo, and collect the dues that have to be paid on it; and we watch them with interest, for they are quite different in appearance from our own hook-nosed, bearded sailors, with their thick many-coloured cloaks. these egyptians are all clean shaven; some of them wear wigs, and some have their hair cut straight across their brows, while it falls thickly behind upon their necks in a multitude of little curls, which must have taken them no small trouble to get into order. most wear nothing but a kilt of white linen; but the chief officer has a fine white cloak thrown over his shoulders; his linen kilt is stiffly starched, so that it stands out almost like a board where it folds over in front, and he wears a gilded girdle with fringed ends which hang down nearly to his knees. in his right hand he carries a long stick, which he is not slow to lay over the shoulders of his men when they do not obey his orders fast enough. after a good deal of hot argument, the amount of the tax is settled and paid, and we are free to go up into the great town. we have not gone far before we find that life in thebes can be quite exciting. a great noise is heard from one of the narrow riverside streets, and a crowd of men comes rushing up with shouts and oaths. ahead of them runs a single figure, whose writing-case, stuck in his girdle, marks him out as a scribe. he is almost at his last gasp, for he is stout and not accustomed to running; and he is evidently fleeing for his life, for the men behind him--rough, half-naked, ill-fed creatures of the working class--are chasing him with cries of anger, and a good deal of stone-throwing. bruised and bleeding, he darts up to the gate of a handsome house whose garden-wall faces the street. he gasps out a word to the porter, and is quickly passed into the garden. the gate is slammed and bolted in the faces of his pursuers, who form a ring round it, shouting and shaking their fists. in a little while the gate is cautiously unbarred, and a fine-looking man, very richly dressed, and followed by half a dozen well-armed negro guards, steps forward, and asks the workmen why they are here, making such a noise, and why they have chased and beaten his secretary. he is prince paser, who has charge of the works department of the theban government, and the workmen are masons employed on a large job in the cemetery of thebes. they all shout at once in answer to the prince's question; but by-and-by they push forward a spokesman, and he begins, rather sheepishly at first, but warming up as he goes along, to make their complaint to the great man. he and his mates, he says, have been working for weeks. they have had no wages; they have not even had the corn and oil which ought to be issued as rations to government workmen. so they have struck work, and now they have come to their lord the prince to entreat him either to give command that the rations be issued, or, if his stores are exhausted, to appeal to pharaoh. "we have been driven here by hunger and thirst; we have no clothes, we have no oil, we have no food. write to our lord the pharaoh, that he may give us something for our sustenance." when the spokesman has finished his complaint, the whole crowd volubly assents to what he has said, and sways to and fro in a very threatening manner. prince paser, however, is an old hand at dealing with such complaints. with a smiling face he promises that fifty sacks of corn shall be sent to the cemetery immediately, with oil to correspond. only the workmen must go back to their work at once, and there must be no more chasing of poor secretary amen-nachtu. otherwise, he can do nothing. the workmen grumble a little. they have been put off with promises before, and have got little good of them. but they have no leader bold enough to start a riot, and they have no weapons, and the spears and bows of the prince's nubians look dangerous. finally they turn, and disappear, grumbling, down the street from which they came; and prince paser, with a shrug of his shoulders, goes indoors again. whether the fifty sacks of corn are ever sent or not, is another matter. strikes, you see, were not unknown, even so long ago as this. chapter iii a day in thebes--_continued_ having seen the settlement of the masons' strike, we wander up into the heart of the town. the streets are generally narrow and winding, and here and there the houses actually meet overhead, so that we pass out of the blinding sunlight into a sort of dark tunnel. some of the houses are large and high; but even the largest make no display towards the street. they will be fine enough inside, with bright courts surrounded with trees, in the midst of which lies a cool pond of water, and with fine rooms decorated with gay hangings; but their outer walls are almost absolutely blank, with nothing but a heavy door breaking the dead line. we pass by some quarters where there is nothing but a crowd of mud huts, packed so closely together that there is only room for a single foot-passenger to thread his way through the narrow alleys between them. these are the workmen's quarters, and the heat and smell in them are so overpowering that one wonders how people can live in such places. by-and-by we come out into a more open space--one of the bazaars of the city--where business is in full swing. the shops are little shallow booths quite open to the front; and all the goods are spread out round the shopkeeper, who squats cross-legged in the middle of his property, ready to serve his customers, and invites the attention of the passers-by by loud explanations of the goodness and cheapness of his wares. all sorts of people are coming and going, for a theban crowd holds representatives of nearly every nation known. here are the townsfolk, men and women, out to buy supplies for their houses, or to exchange the news of the day; peasants from the villages round about, bringing in vegetables and cattle to barter for the goods which can only be got in the town; fine ladies and gentlemen, dressed elaborately in the latest court fashion, with carefully curled wigs, long pleated robes of fine transparent linen, and dainty, brightly-coloured sandals turned up at the toes. at one moment you rub shoulders with a hittite from kadesh, a conspicuous figure, with his high-peaked cap, pale complexion, and heavy, pointed boots. he looks round him curiously, as if thinking that thebes would be a splendid town to plunder. then a priest of high rank goes by, with shaven head, a panther skin slung across his shoulder over his white robe, and a roll of papyrus in his hand. a sardinian of the bodyguard swaggers along behind him, the ball and horns on his helmet flashing in the sunlight, his big sword swinging in its sheath as he walks; and a libyan bowman, with two bright feathers in his leather skull-cap, looks disdainfully at him as he shoulders his way through the crowd. all around us people are buying and selling. money, as we know it, has not yet been invented, and nearly all the trade is done by means of exchange. when it comes to be a question of how many fish have to be given for a bed, or whether a load of onions is good value for a chair, you can imagine that there has to be a good deal of argument. besides, the egyptian dearly loves bargaining for the mere excitement of the thing, and so the clatter of tongues is deafening. here and there one or two traders have advanced a little beyond the old-fashioned way of barter, and offer, instead of goods, so many rings of copper, silver, or gold wire. a peasant who has brought in a bullock to sell is offered 90 copper "uten" (as the rings are called) for it; but he loudly protests that this is robbery, and after a long argument he screws the merchant up to 111 "uten," with 8 more as a luck-penny, and the bargain is clinched. even then the rings have still to be weighed that he may be sure he is not being cheated. so a big pair of balances is brought out; the "uten" are heaped into one scale, and in the other are piled weights in the shape of bulls' heads. finally, he is satisfied, and picks up his bag of rings; but the wily merchant is not done with him yet. he spreads out various tempting bargains before the eyes of the countryman, and, before the latter leaves the shop, most of the copper rings have found their way back again to the merchant's sack. a little farther on, the tyrian traders, to whom the cargo of our galley is consigned, have their shop. screens, made of woven grass, shelter it from the sun, and under their shade all sorts of gorgeous stuffs are displayed, glowing with the deep rich colours, of which the tyrians alone have the secret since the sack of knossos destroyed the trade of crete. beyond the tyrian booth, a goldsmith is busily employed in his shop. necklets and bracelets of gold and silver, beautifully inlaid with all kinds of rich colours, hang round him; and he is hard at work, with his little furnace and blowpipe, putting the last touches to the welding of a bracelet, for which a lady is patiently waiting. in one corner of the bazaar stands a house which makes no display of wares, but, nevertheless, seems to secure a constant stream of customers. workmen slink in at the door, as though half ashamed of themselves, and reappear, after a little, wiping their mouths, and not quite steady in their gait. a young man, with pale and haggard face, swaggers past and goes in, and, as he enters the door, one bystander nudges another and remarks: "pentuere is going to have a good day again; he will come to a bad end, that young man." by-and-by the door opens again, and pentuere comes out staggering. he looks vacantly round, and tries to walk away; but his legs refuse to carry him, and, after a stumble or two, he falls in a heap and lies in the road, a pitiful sight. the passers-by jeer and laugh at him as he lies helpless; but one decent-looking man points him out to his young son, and says: "see this fellow, my son, and learn not to drink beer to excess. thou dost fall and break thy limbs, and bespatter thyself with mud, like a crocodile, and no one reaches out a hand to thee. thy comrades go on drinking, and say, 'away with this fellow, who is drunk.' if anyone should seek thee on business, thou art found lying in the dust like a little child." but in spite of much wise advice, the egyptian, though generally temperate, is only too fond of making "a good day," as he calls it, at the beerhouse. even fine ladies sometimes drink too much at their great parties, and have to be carried away very sick and miserable. worst of all, the very judges of the high court have been known to take a day off during the hearing of a long case, in order to have a revel with the criminals whom they were trying; and it is not so long since two of them had their noses cut off, as a warning to the rest against such shameful conduct. sauntering onwards, we gradually get near to the sacred quarter of the town, and can see the towering gateways and obelisks of the great temples over the roofs of the houses. soon a great crowd comes towards us, and the sounds of trumpets and flutes are heard coming from the midst of it. inquiring what is the meaning of the bustle, we are told that one of the images of amen, the great god of thebes, is being carried in procession as a preliminary to an important service which is to take place in the afternoon, and at which the king is going to preside. stepping back under the doorway of a house, we watch the procession go past. after a group of musicians and singers, and a number of women who are dancing as they go, and shaking curious metal rattles, there comes a group of six men, who form the centre of the whole crowd, and on whom the eyes of all are fixed. they are tall, spare, keen-looking men, their heads clean shaven, their bodies wrapped in pure white robes of the beautiful egyptian linen. on their shoulders they carry, by means of two long poles, a model of a nile boat, in the midst of which rises a little shrine. the shrine is carefully draped round with a veil, so as to hide the god from curious eyes. but just in front of the doorway where we are standing a small stone pillar rises from the roadway, and when the bearers come to this point, the bark of the god is rested on the top of the pillar. two censer-bearers come forward, and swing their censers, wafting clouds of incense round the shrine; a priest lifts up his voice, loudly intoning a hymn of praise to the great god who creates and sustains all things; and a few of the by-standers lay before the bark offerings of flowers, fruit, and eatables of various kinds. then comes the solemn moment. amid breathless silence, the veil of the shrine is slowly drawn aside, and the faithful can see a little wooden image, about 18 inches high, adorned with tall plumes, carefully dressed, and painted with green and black. the revelation of this little doll, to a theban crowd the most sacred object in all the world, is hailed with shouts of wonder and reverence. then the veil is drawn again, the procession passes on, and the streets are left quiet for awhile. [illustration: plate 3 the great gate of the temple of luxor, with obelisk. _pages 74, 75_] we are reminded that, if we wish to get a meal before starting out to see pharaoh passing in procession to the temple, we had better lose no time, and so we turn our faces riverwards again, and wander down through the endless maze of streets to where our galley is moored at the quay. chapter iv pharaoh at home the time is coming on now for the king to go in state to the great temple at karnak to offer sacrifice, and as we go up to the palace to see him come forth in all his glory, let me tell you a little about him and the kind of life he leads. pharaoh, of course, is not his real name; it is not even his official title; it is just a word which is used to describe a person who is so great that people scarcely venture to call him by his proper name. just as the turks nowadays speak of the "sublime porte," when they mean the sultan and his government, so the egyptians speak of "per-o," or pharaoh, as we call it, which really signifies "great house," when they mean the king. for the king of egypt is a very great man indeed; in fact, his people look upon him, and he looks upon himself, as something more than a man. there are many gods in egypt; but the god whom the people know best, and to whom they pay the most reverence, is their king. ever since there have been kings in the country, and that is a very long time now, the reigning monarch has been looked upon as a kind of god manifest in the flesh. he calls himself "son of the sun"; in the temples you will see pictures of his childhood, where great goddesses dandle the young god upon their knees (plate 2). divine honours are paid, and sacrifices offered to him; and when he dies, and goes to join his brother-gods in heaven, a great temple rises to his memory, and hosts of priests are employed in his worship. there is just one distinction made between him and the other gods. amen at thebes, ptah at memphis, and all the rest of the crowd of divinities, are called "the great gods." pharaoh takes a different title. he is called "the good god." at present "the good god" is ramses ii. of course, that is only one part of his name; for, like all the other pharaohs, he has a list of titles that would fill a page. his subjects in thebes have not seen very much of him for a long time, for there has been so much to do away in syria, that he has built another capital at tanis, which the hebrews call zoan, down between the delta and the eastern frontier, and spends most of his time there. people who have been down the river tell us great wonders about the beauty of the new town, its great temple, and the huge statue of the king, 90 feet high, which stands before the temple gate. but thebes is still the centre of the nation's life, and now, when it is growing almost certain that there will be another war with those vile hittites in the north of syria, he has come up to the great city to take counsel with his brother-god, amen, and to make arrangements for gathering his army. the royal palace is in a constant bustle, with envoys coming and going, and counsellors and generals continually passing in and out with reports and orders. outside, the palace is not so very imposing. the egyptians built their temples to last for ever; but the palaces of their kings were meant to serve only for a short time. the new king might not care for the old king's home, and so each pharaoh builds his house according to his own taste, of light materials. it will serve his turn, and his successor may build another for himself. a high wall, with battlements, towers, and heavy gates, surrounds it; for, though pharaoh is a god, his subjects are sometimes rather difficult to keep in order. plots against the king have not been unknown in the past; and on at least one occasion, a great pharaoh of bygone days had to spring from his couch and fight single-handed for his life against a crowd of conspirators who had forced an entrance into the palace while he was enjoying his siesta. so since then pharaoh has found it better to trust in his strong walls, and in the big broadswords of his faithful sardinian guardsmen, than in any divinity that may belong to himself. within the great boundary wall lie pleasant gardens, gay with all sorts of flowers, and an artificial lake shows its gleaming water here and there through the trees and shrubs. the palace itself is all glittering white stucco on the outside. a high central door leads into a great audience hall, glowing with colour, its roof supported by painted pillars in the form of lotus-stalks; and on either side of this lie two smaller halls. behind the audience chamber are two immense dining-rooms, and behind these come the sleeping apartments of the numerous household. ramses has a multitude of wives, and a whole army of sons and daughters, and it takes no small space to house them all. the bedroom of the great king himself stands apart from the other rooms, and is surrounded by banks of flowers in full bloom. the son of the sun has had a busy day already. he has had many letters and despatches to read and consider. some of the syrian vassal-princes have sent clay tablets, covered with their curious arrow-headed writing, giving news of the advance of the hittites, and imploring the help of the egyptian army; and now the king is about to give audience, and to consider these with his great nobles and generals. at one end of the reception hall stands a low balcony, supported on gaily-painted wooden pillars which end in capitals of lotus-flowers. the front of this balcony is overlaid with gold, and richly decorated with turquoise and lapis lazuli. here the king will show himself to his subjects, accompanied by his favourite wife, queen nefertari, and some of the young princes and princesses. the folding doors of the audience chamber are thrown open, and the barons, the provincial governors, and the high officers of the army and the state throng in to do homage to their master. [illustration] in a few moments the glittering crowd is duly arranged, a door opens at the back of the balcony, and the king of the two lands, lord of the vulture and the snake, steps forth with his queen and family. in earlier times, whenever the king appeared, the assembled nobles were expected to fall on their faces and kiss the ground before him. fashion has changed, however, and now the great folks, at all events, are no longer required to "smell the earth." as pharaoh enters the balcony, the nobles bow profoundly, and raise their arms as if in prayer to "the good god." then, in silent reverence, they wait until it shall please their lord to speak. ramses sweeps his glance over the crowd, singles out the general in command of the theban troops, and puts a question to him as to the readiness of his division--the picked division of the army. the soldier steps forward with a deep bow; but it is not court manners for him to answer his lord's question directly. instead, he begins by reciting a little psalm of praise, which tells of the king's greatness, his valour and skill in war, and asserts that wherever his horses tread his enemies flee before him and perish. this little piece of flattery over, the general begins, "o king, my master," and in a few sensible words gives the information required. so the audience goes on, counsellor after counsellor coming forward at the royal command, reciting his little hymn, and then giving his opinion on such matters as his master suggests to him. at last the council is over, the king gives orders to his equerry to prepare his chariot for the procession to the temple, and, as he turns to leave the audience chamber, the assembled nobles once more bow profoundly, and raise their arms in adoration. after a short delay, the great gates of the boundary wall of the palace are opened; a company of spearmen, in quilted leather kilts and leather skull-caps, marches out, and takes position a short distance from the gateway. behind them comes a company of the sardinians of the guard, heavily armed, with bright helmets, broad round shields, quilted corselets, and long, heavy, two-edged swords. they range themselves on either side of the roadway, and stand like statues, waiting for the appearance of pharaoh. there is a whir of chariot-wheels, and the royal chariot sweeps through the gateway, and sets off at a good round pace towards the temple. the spearmen in front start at the double, and the guardsmen, in spite of their heavy equipment, keep pace with their royal master on either side. the waiting crowd bows to the dust as the sovereign passes; but pharaoh looks neither to the right hand nor to the left. he stands erect and impassive in the swaying chariot, holding the crook and whip which are the egyptian royal emblems. on his head he wears the royal war helmet, in the front of which a golden cobra rears its crest from its coils, as if to threaten the enemies of egypt. his finely-shaped, swarthy features are adorned, or disfigured, by an artificial beard, which is fastened on by a strap passing up in front of the ears. his tall slender body is covered, above his corselet, with a robe of fine white linen, a perfect wonder of pleating; and round his waist passes a girdle of gold and green enamel, whose ends cross and hang down almost to his knees, terminating in two threatening cobra heads (plate 4 and cover picture). on either side of him run the fan-bearers, who manage, by a miracle of skill and activity, to keep their great gaily-coloured fans of perfumed ostrich feathers waving round the royal head even as they run. behind the king comes a long train of other chariots, only less splendid than that of ramses. in the first stands queen nefertari, languidly sniffing at a lotus-flower as she passes on. the others are filled by some of the princes of the blood, who are going to take part in the ceremony at the temple, chief among them the wizard prince khaemuas, the greatest magician in egypt, who has spells that can bring the dead from their graves. some in the crowd shrink from his keen eye, and mutter that the papyrus roll which he holds so close to his breast was taken from the grave of another magician prince of ancient days, and that khaemuas will know no peace till it is restored. in a few minutes the whole brilliant train has passed, dazzling the eyes with a blaze of gold and white and scarlet; and crowds of courtiers stream after their master, as fast as their feet can carry them, towards karnak. you have seen, if only for a moment, the greatest man on earth--the great oppressor of hebrew story. very mighty and very proud he is; and he does not dream that the little hebrew boy whom his daughter has adopted, and who is being trained in the priestly college at heliopolis, will one day humble all the pride of egypt, and that the very name of ramses shall be best remembered because it is linked with that of moses. chapter v the life of a soldier when you read about the egyptians in the bible, it seems as though they were nearly always fighting; and, indeed, they did a good deal of fighting in their time, as nearly every nation did in those old days. but in reality they were not a great soldier people, like their rivals the assyrians, or the babylonians. we, who have had so much to do with their descendants, the modern egyptians, and have fought both against them and with them, know that the "gippy" is not fond of soldiering in his heart. he makes a very good, patient, hardworking soldier when he has good officers; but he is not like the soudanese, who love fighting for fighting's sake. he much prefers to live quietly in his own native village, and cultivate his own bit of ground. and his forefathers, in these long-past days, were very much of the same mind. often, of course, they had to fight, when pharaoh ordered them out for a campaign in the soudan or in syria, and then they fought wonderfully well; but all the time their hearts were at home, and they were glad to get back to their farm-work and their simple pleasures. they were a peaceful, kindly, pleasant race, with little of the cruelty and fierceness that you find continually among the assyrians. [illustration: plate 4. ramses ii. in his war chariot: sardinian guardsmen on foot.] in fact, the old egyptian rather despised soldiering as a profession. he thought it was rather a miserable, muddled kind of a job, in which, unless you were a great officer, you got all the hard knocks and none of the honours; and i am not sure that he was far wrong. his great idea of a happy life was to get employment as a scribe, or, as we should say, a clerk, to some big man or to the government, to keep accounts and write reports. of course the people could not all be scribes; but an egyptian who had sons was never so proud as when he could get one of them into a scribe's position, even though the young man might look down upon his old father and his brothers, toiling on the land or serving in the army. a curious old book has come down to us from these ancient days, in which the writer, who had been both a soldier and a high officer under government in what we should call the diplomatic service, has told a young friend his opinion of soldiering as a profession. the young man had evidently been dazzled with the idea of being in the cavalry, or, rather, the chariotry, for the egyptian soldiers did not ride on horses like our cavalry, but drove them in chariots, in each of which there were two men--the charioteer, to drive the two horses, and the soldier, who stood beside the driver and fought with the bow, and sometimes with the lance or sword. but this wise old friend tells him that even to be in the chariotry is not by any means a pleasant job. of course it seems very nice at first. the young man gets his new equipment, and thinks all the world of himself as he goes home to show off his fine feathers. "he receives beautiful horses, and rejoices and exults, and returns with them to his town." but then comes the inspection, and if he has not everything in perfect order he has a bad time of it, for he is thrown down on the ground, and beaten with sticks till he is sore all over. but if the lot of the cavalry soldier is hard, that of the infantry-man is harder. in the barracks he is flogged for every mistake or offence. then war breaks out, and he has to march with his battalion to syria. day after day he has to tramp on foot through the wild hill-country, so different from the flat, fertile homeland that he loves. he has to carry all his heavy equipment and his rations, so that he is laden like a donkey; and often he has to drink dirty water, which makes him ill. then, when the battle comes, he gets all the danger and the wounds, while the generals get all the credit. when the war is over, he comes home riding on a donkey, a broken-down man, sick and wounded, his very clothes stolen by the rascals who should have attended on him. far better, the wise man says, to be a scribe, and to remain comfortably at home. i dare say it was all quite true, just as perhaps it would not be very far from the truth at the present time; but, in spite of it all, pharaoh had his battles to fight, and he got his soldiers all right when they were needed. the egyptian army was not generally a very big one. it was nothing like the great hosts that we hear of nowadays, or read of in some of the old histories. the armies that the pharaohs led into syria were not often much bigger than what we should call an army corps nowadays--probably about 20,000 men altogether, rarely more than 25,000. but in that number you could find almost as many different sorts of men as in our own indian army. there would be first the native egyptian spearmen and bowmen--the spearmen with leather caps and quilted leather tunics, carrying a shield and spear, and sometimes an axe, or a dagger, or short sword--the bowmen, more lightly equipped, but probably more dangerous enemies, for the egyptian archers were almost as famous as the old english bowmen, and won many a battle for their king. then came the chariot brigade, also of native egyptians, men probably of higher rank than the foot-soldiers. the chariots were very light, and it must have been exceedingly difficult for the bowman to balance himself in the narrow car, as it bumped and clattered over rough ground. the two horses were gaily decorated, and often wore plumes on their heads. the charioteer sometimes twisted the reins round his waist, and could take a hand in the fighting if his companion was hard pressed, guiding his horses by swaying his body to one side or the other. round the pharaoh himself, as he stood in his beautiful chariot, marched the royal bodyguard. it was made up of men whom the egyptians called "sherden"--sardinians, probably, who had come over the sea to serve for hire in the army of the great king. they wore metal helmets, with a round ball on the top and horns at the sides, carried round bossed shields, and were armed with great heavy swords of much the same shape as those which the norman knights used to carry. behind the native troops and the bodyguard marched the other mercenaries--regiments of black soudanese, with wild-beast skins thrown over their ebony shoulders; and light-coloured libyans from the west, each with a couple of feathers stuck in his leather skull-cap. scouts went on ahead to scour the country, and bring to the king reports of the enemy's whereabouts. beside the royal chariot there padded along a strange, but very useful soldier--a great tame lion, which had been trained to guard his master and fight with teeth and claws against his enemies. last of all came the transport train, with the baggage carried on the backs of a long line of donkeys, and protected by a baggage-guard. the egyptians were good marchers, and even in the hot syrian sunshine, and across a rough country where roads were almost unknown, they could keep up a steady fifteen miles a day for a week on end without being fagged out. let us follow the fortunes of an egyptian soldier through one of the great battles of the nation's history. menna was one of the most skilful charioteers of the whole egyptian army--so skilful that, though he was still quite young, he was promoted to be driver of the royal war-chariot when king ramses ii. marched out from zaru, the frontier garrison town of egypt, to fight with the hittites in northern syria. during all the long march across the desert, through palestine, and over the northern mountain passes, no enemy was seen at all, and, though menna was kept busy enough attending to his horses and seeing that the chariot was in perfect order, he was in no danger. but as the army began to wind down the long valley of the orontes towards the town of kadesh, the scouts were kept out in every direction, and the whole host was anxiously on the lookout for the hittite troops. kadesh came in sight at last. far on the horizon its towers could be seen, and the sun's rays sparkled on the river and on the broad moat which surrounded the walls; but still no enemy was to be seen. the scouts came in with the report that the hittites had retreated northwards in terror, and king ramses imagined that kadesh was going to fall into his hands without a battle. his army was divided into four brigades, and he himself hurried on rather rashly with the first brigade, leaving the other three to straggle on behind him, widely separated from one another (plate 4). the first brigade reached its camping-ground to the north-west of kadesh; the tired troops pitched camp; the baggage was unloaded; and the donkeys, released from their burdens, rolled on the ground in delight. just at that moment some of the egyptian scouts came in, bringing with them two arabs whom they had caught, and suspected to belong to the enemy. king ramses ordered the arabs to be soundly beaten with sticks, and the poor creatures confessed that the hittite king, with a great army, was concealed on the other side of kadesh, watching for an opportunity to attack the egyptian army. in great haste ramses, scolding his scouts the while for not keeping a better lookout, began to get his soldiers under arms again, while menna ran and yoked to the royal chariot the two noble horses which had been kept fresh for the day of battle. but before pharaoh could leap into his chariot a wild uproar broke out at the gate of the camp, and the scattered fragments of the second brigade came pouring in headlong flight into the enclosure. behind them the whole hittite chariot force, 2,500 chariots strong, each chariot with three men in it, came clattering and leaping upon the heels of the fugitives. the hittite king had waited till he saw the first brigade busy pitching camp, and then, as the second came straggling up, he had launched his chariots upon the flank of the weary soldiers, who were swept away in a moment as if by a flood. the rush of terrified men carried off the first brigade along with it in hopeless rout. ramses and menna were left with only a few picked chariots of the household troops, and the whole hittite army was coming on. but though king ramses had made a terrible bungle of his generalship, he was at least a brave man. leaping into his chariot, and calling to the handful of faithful soldiers to follow him, he bade menna lash his horses and charge the advancing hittites. menna was no coward, but when he saw the thin line of egyptian troops, and looked at the dense mass of hittite chariots, his heart almost failed him. he never thought of disobedience, but, as he stooped over his plunging horses, he panted to the king: "o mighty strength of egypt in the day of battle, we are alone in the midst of the enemy. o, save us, ramses, my good lord!" "steady, steady, my charioteer," said ramses, "i am going among them like a hawk!" in a moment the fiery horses were whirling the king and his charioteer between the files of the hittite chariots, which drew aside as if terrified at the glittering figures that dashed upon them so fearlessly. as they swept through, menna had enough to do to manage his steeds, which were wild with excitement; but ramses' bow was bent again and again, and at every twang of the bowstring a hittite champion fell from his chariot. behind the king came his household troops, and all together they burst through the chariot brigade of the enemy, leaving a long trail marked by dead and wounded men, overturned chariots, and maddened horses. still king ramses had only gained a breathing-space. the hittites far outnumbered his little force, and, though his orderlies were madly galloping to bring up the third and fourth brigades, it must be some time yet before even the nearest could come into action. besides, on the other bank of the river there hung a great cloud of 8,000 hittite spearmen, under the command of the hittite king himself. if these got time to cross the river, the egyptian position, bad enough as it was, would be hopeless. there was nothing for it but to charge again and again, and, if possible, drive back the hittite chariots on the river, so as to hinder the spearmen from crossing. so menna whipped up his horses again, and, with arrow on string, the pharaoh dashed upon his enemies once more. again they burst through the opposing ranks, scattering death on either side as they passed. now some of the fragments of the first and second brigades were beginning to rally and come back to the field, and the struggle was becoming less unequal. the egyptian quivers were nearly all empty now; but lance and sword still remained, and inch by inch the hittites were forced back upon the river. their king stood ingloriously on the opposite bank, unable to do anything. it was too late for him to try to move his spearmen across--they would only have been trampled down by the retreating chariots. at last a great shout from the rear announced the arrival of the third egyptian brigade, and, the little knot of brave men who had saved the day still leading, the army swept the broken hittites down the bank of the orontes into the river. great was the confusion and the slaughter. as the chariots struggled through the ford, the egyptian bowmen, spread out along the bank, picked off the chiefs. the two brothers of the hittite king, the chief of his bodyguard, his shield-bearer, and his chief scribe, were all killed. the king of aleppo missed the ford, and was swept down the river; but some of his soldiers dashed into the water, rescued him, and, in rough first aid, held the half-drowned leader up by the heels, to let the water drain out of him. the hittite king picked up his broken fugitives, covered them with his mass of spearmen, and moved reluctantly off the field where so splendid a chance of victory had been missed, and turned into defeat. the egyptians were too few and too weary to attempt to cross the river in pursuit, and they retired to the camp of the first brigade. then pharaoh called his captains before him. the troops stood around, leaning on their spears, ashamed of their conduct in the earlier part of the day, and wondering at the grim signs of conflict that lay on every side. king ramses called menna to him, and, handing the reins to a groom, the young charioteer came bowing before his master. pharaoh stripped from his own royal neck a collar of gold, and fastened it round the neck of his faithful squire; and, while the generals and captains hung their heads for shame, the king told them how shamefully they had left him to fight his battle alone, and how none had stood by him but the young charioteer. "as for my two horses," he said, "they shall be fed before me every day in the royal palace." [illustration: plate 5. zazamankh and the lost coronet.] both armies had suffered too much loss for any further strife to be possible, and a truce was agreed upon. the hittites drew off to the north, and the egyptians marched back again to egypt, well aware that they had gained little or nothing by all their efforts, but thankful that they had been saved from the total destruction which had seemed so near. a proud man was menna when he drove the royal chariot up to the bridge of zaru. as the troops passed the frontier canal the road was lined on either side with crowds of nobles, priests, and scribes, strewing flowers in the way, and bowing before the king. and after the pharaoh himself, whose bravery had saved the day, there was no one so honoured as the young squire who had stood so manfully by his master in the hour of danger. chapter vi child-life in ancient egypt how did the boys and girls live in this quaint old land so many hundreds of years ago? how were they dressed, what sort of games did they play at, what sort of lessons did they learn, and what kind of school did they go to? if you could have lived in egypt in those far-off days, you would have found many differences between your life of to-day and the life that the egyptian children led; but you would also have found that there were very many things much the same then as they are now. boys and girls were boys and girls three thousand years ago, just as they are now; and you would find that they did very much the same things, and even played very much the same games as you do to-day. when you read in your fairy-stories about a little boy or girl, you often hear that they had fairy godmothers who came to their cradles, and gave them gifts, and foretold what was going to happen to the little babies in after years. well, when little tahuti or little sen-senb was born in thebes fifteen hundred years before christ, there were fairy godmothers too, who presided over the great event; and there were others called the hathors, who foretold all that was going to happen to the little boy or girl as the years went on. the baby was kept a baby much longer in those days than our little ones are kept. the happy mother nursed the little thing carefully for three years at all events, carrying it about with her wherever she went, either on her shoulder, or astride upon her hip. if baby took ill, and the doctor was called in, the medicines that were given were not in the least like the sugar-coated pills and capsules that make medicine-taking easy nowadays. the egyptian doctor did not know a very great deal about medicine and sickness, but he made up for his ignorance by the nastiness of the doses which he gave to his patients. i don't think you would like to take pills made up of the moisture scraped from pig's ears, lizard's blood, bad meat, and decaying fat, to say nothing of still nastier things. often the doctor would look very grave, and say, "the child is not ill; he is bewitched"; and then he would sit down and write out a prescription something like this: "remedy to drive away bewitchment. take a great beetle; cut off his head and his wings, boil him, put him in oil, and lay him out. then cook his head and his wings; put them in snake-fat, boil, and let the patient drink the mixture." i think you would almost rather take the risk of being bewitched than drink a dose like that! [illustration: plate 6 granite statue of ramses ii. _page_ 75 note the hieroglyphics on base of statue. _pages_ 68, 69] sometimes the doctor gave no medicines at all, but wrote a few magic words on a scrap of old paper, and tied it round the part where the pain was. i daresay it did as much good as his pills. very often the mother believed that it was not really sickness that was troubling her child, but that a ghost was coming and hurting him; so when his cries showed that the ghost was in the room, the mother would rise up, shaking all over, i daresay, and would repeat the verse that she had been taught would drive ghosts away: "comest thou to kiss this child? i suffer thee not to kiss him; comest thou to quiet him? i suffer thee not to quiet him; comest thou to harm him? i suffer thee not to harm him; comest thou to take him away? i suffer thee not to take him away." when little tahuti has got over his baby aches, and escaped the ghosts, he begins to run about and play. he and his sister are not bothered to any great extent with dressing in the mornings. they are very particular about washing, but as egypt is so hot, clothes are not needed very much, and so the little boy and girl play about with nothing at all on their little brown bodies except, perhaps, a narrow girdle, or even a single thread tied round the waist. they have their toys just like you. tahuti has got a wonderful man, who, when you pull a string, works a roller up and down upon a board, just like a baker rolling out dough, and besides he has a crocodile that moves its jaws. his sister has dolls: a fine egyptian lady and a frizzy-haired, black-faced nubian girl. sometimes they play together at ninepins, rolling the ball through a little gate. for about four years this would go on, as long as tahuti was what the egyptians called "a wise little one." then, when he was four years old, the time came when he had to become "a writer in the house of books," which is what the egyptians called a school-boy; so little tahuti set off for school, still wearing no more clothes than the thread tied round his waist, and with his black hair plaited up into a long thick lock, which hung down over his right ear. the first thing that he had to learn was how to read and write, and this was no easy task, for egyptian writing, though it is very beautiful when well done, is rather difficult to master, all the more as there were two different styles which had to be learned if a boy was going to become a man of learning. i don't suppose that you think your old copy-books of much importance when you are done with them; but the curious thing is that among all the books that have come down to us from ancient egypt, there are far more old copy-books than any others, and these books, with the teachers' corrections written on the margins, and rough sketches scratched in here and there among the writing, have proved most valuable in telling us what the egyptians learned, and what they liked to read; for a great deal of the writing consisted in the copying out of wise words of the men of former days, and sometimes of stories of old times. these old copy-books can speak to us in one way, but if they could speak in another, i daresay they would tell us of many weary hours in school, and of many floggings and tears; for the egyptian school-master believed with all his heart in the cane, and used it with great vigour and as often as he could. little tahuti used to look forward to his daily flogging, much as he did to his lunch in the middle of the day, when his careful mother regularly brought him three rolls of bread and two jugs of beer. "a boy's ears," his master used to say, "are on his back, and he hears when he is beaten." one of the former pupils at his school writing to his teacher, and recalling his school-days, says: "i was with thee since i was brought up as a child; thou didst beat my back, and thine instructions went into my ear." sometimes the boys, if they were stubborn, got punishments even worse than the cane. another boy, in a letter to his old master, says: "thou hast made me buckle to since the time that i was one of thy pupils. i spent my time in the lock-up, and was sentenced to three months, and bound in the temple." i am afraid our schoolboys would think the old egyptian teachers rather more severe than the masters with whom they have to do nowadays. lesson-time occupied about half the day, and when it came to an end the boys all ran out of the school, shouting for joy. that custom has not changed much, anyway, in all these hundreds of years. i don't think they had any home lessons to do, and so, perhaps, their school-time was not quite so bad as we might imagine from the rough punishments they used to get. when tahuti grew a little older, and had fairly mastered the rudiments of writing, his teacher set him to write out copies of different passages from the best known egyptian books, partly to keep up his hand-writing, and partly to teach him to know good egyptian and to use correct language. sometimes it was a piece of a religious book that he was set to copy, sometimes a poem, sometimes a fairy-tale. for the egyptians were very fond of fairy-tales, and later on, perhaps, we may hear some of their stories, the oldest fairy-stories in the world. but generally the piece that was chosen was one which would not only exercise the boy's hand, and teach him a good style, but would also help to teach him good manners, and fill his mind with right ideas. very often tahuti's teacher would dictate to him a passage from the wise advice which a great king of long ago left to his son, the crown prince, or from some other book of the same kind. and sometimes the exercises would be in the form of letters which the master and his pupils wrote as though they had been friends far away from one another. tahuti's letters, you may be sure, were full of wisdom and of good resolutions, and i dare say he was just about as fond of writing them as you are of writing the letters that your teacher sometimes sets as a task for you. when it came to arithmetic, tahuti was so far lucky that the number of rules he had to learn was very few. his master taught him addition and subtraction, and a very slow and clumsy form of multiplication; but he could not teach him division, for the very simple reason that he did not properly understand it himself. enough of mensuration was taught him to enable him to find out, though rather roughly, what was the size of a field, and how much corn would go into a granary of any particular size. and when he had learned these things, his elementary education was pretty well over. [illustration: plate 7 nave of the temple at karnak. _pages_ 75, 76] of course a great deal would depend on the profession he was going to follow. if he was going to be only a common scribe, his education would go no farther; for the work he would have to do would need no greater learning than reading, writing, and arithmetic. if he was going to be an officer in the army, he entered as a cadet in a military school which was attached to the royal stables. but if he was going to be a priest, he had to join one of the colleges which belonged to the different temples of the gods, and there, like moses, he was instructed in all the wisdom of the egyptians, and was taught all the strange ideas which they had about the gods, and the life after death, and the wonderful worlds, above and below, where the souls of men lived after they had finished their lives on earth. but, whether his schooling was carried on to what we should call a university training or not, there was one thing that tahuti was taught with the utmost care, and that was to be very respectful to those who were older than himself, never to sit down while an older person was standing in the room, and always to be very careful in his manners. chief of the older people to whom he had to show respect were his parents, and above all, his mother, for the egyptians reverenced their mothers more than anyone else in the world. here is a little scrap of advice that a wise old egyptian once left to his son: "thou shalt never forget what thy mother has done for thee. she bare thee, and nourished thee in all manner of ways. she nursed thee for three years. she brought thee up, and when thou didst enter the school, and wast instructed in the writings, she came daily to thy master with bread and beer from her house. if thou forgettest her, she might blame thee; she might lift up her hands to god, and he would hear her complaint." children nowadays might do a great deal worse than remember these wise words of the oldest book in the world. but you are not to think that the egyptian children's life was all teaching and prim behaviour. when tahuti got his holidays, he would sometimes go out with his father and mother and sister on a fishing or fowling expedition. if they were going fishing, the little papyrus skiff was launched, and the party paddled away, armed with long thin spears, which had two prongs at the point. drifting over the quiet shallow waters of the marshy lakes, they could see the fish swimming beneath them, and launch their spears at them. sometimes, if he was lucky, tahuti's father would pierce a fish with either prong of the spear, and then there was great excitement. but still more interesting was the fowling among the marshes. the spears were laid aside on this kind of expedition, and instead, tahuti and his father were armed with curved throw-sticks, shaped something like an australian boomerang. but, besides the throw-sticks, they had with them a rather unusual helper. when people go shooting nowadays, they take dogs with them to retrieve the game. well, the egyptians had different kinds of dogs, too, which they used for hunting; but when they went fowling they took with them a cat which was trained to catch the wounded birds and bring them to her master. the little skiff was paddled cautiously across the marsh, and in among the reeds where the wild ducks and other waterfowl lived, sen-senb and her mother holding on to the tall papyrus plants and pulling them aside to make room for the boat, or plucking the beautiful lotus-lilies, of which the egyptians were so fond. when the birds rose, tahuti and his father let fly their throw-sticks, and when a bird was knocked down, the cat, which had been sitting quietly in the bow of the boat, dashed forward among the reeds and secured the fluttering creature before it could escape. [illustration: plate 8. "and the goose stood up and cackled."] altogether, it was great fun for the brother and sister, as well as for the grown folks, and tahuti and sen-senb liked nothing so well as when the gaily-painted little skiff was launched for a day on the marshes. i think that, on the whole, they had a very bright and happy life in these old days, and that, though they had not many of the advantages that you have to-day, the boys and girls of three thousand years ago managed to enjoy themselves in their own simple way quite as well as you do now. chapter vii some fairy-tales of long ago the little brown boys and girls who lived in egypt three thousand years ago were just as fond as you are of hearing wonderful stories that begin with "once upon a time;" and i want in this chapter to tell you some of the tales that tahuti and sen-senb used to listen to in the evening when school was over and play was done--the oldest of all wonder-tales, stories that were old and had long been forgotten, ages before the sleeping beauty and jack and the beanstalk were first thought of. one day, when king khufu, the great king who built the biggest of the pyramids, had nothing else to do, he called his sons and his wise men together, and said, "is there anyone among you who can tell me the tales of the old magicians?" then the king's son, prince baufra, stood up and said, "your majesty, i can tell you of a wonder that happened in the days of your father, king seneferu. it fell on a day that the king grew weary of everything, and sought through all his palace for something to please him, but found nothing. then he said to his officers, 'bring to me the magician zazamankh.' and when the magician came, the king said to him, 'o zazamankh, i have sought through all my palace for some delight, and i have found none.' then said zazamankh, 'let thy majesty go in thy boat upon the lake of the palace, and let twenty beautiful girls be brought to row thee, and let their oars be of ebony, inlaid with gold and silver. and i myself will go with thee; and the sight of the water-birds, and the fair shores, and the green grass will cheer thy heart.' so the king and the wizard went down to the lake, and the twenty maidens rowed them about in the king's pleasure-galley. nine rowed on this side, and nine on that, and the two fairest stood by the two rudders at the stern, and set the rowing song, each for her own side. and the king's heart grew glad and light, as the boat sped hither and thither, and the oars flashed in the sunshine to the song of the rowers. "but as the boat turned, the top of the steering-oar struck the hair of one of the maidens who steered, and knocked her coronet of turquoise into the water; and she stopped her song, and all the rowers on her side stopped rowing. then his majesty said, 'why have you stopped rowing, little one?' and the maiden answered, 'it is because my jewel of turquoise has fallen into the water.' 'row on,' said the king, 'and i will give you another.' but the girl answered, 'i want my own one back, as i had it before.' so king seneferu called zazamankh to come to him, and said, 'now, zazamankh, i have done as you advised, and my heart is light; but, behold, the coronet of this little one has fallen into the water, and she has stopped singing, and spoiled the rowing of her side; and she will not have a new jewel, but wants the old one back again.' "then zazamankh the wizard stood up in the king's boat, and spoke wonderful words. and, lo! the water of one half of the lake rose up, and heaped itself upon the top of the water of the other half, so that it was twice as deep as it was before. and the king's bark rode upon the top of the piled-up waters; but beyond it the bottom of the lake lay bare, with the shells and pebbles shining in the sunlight. and there, upon a broken shell, lay the little rower's coronet. then zazamankh leaped down and picked it up, and brought it to the king. and he spake wonderful words again, and the water sank down, and covered the whole bed of the lake, as it had done at first. so his majesty spent a joyful day, and gave great rewards to the wizard zazamankh." when king khufu heard that story, he praised the men of olden times. but another of his sons, prince hordadef, stood up, and said, "o king, that is only a story of bygone days, and no one knows whether it is true or a lie; but i will show thee a magician of to-day." "who is he, hordadef?" said king khufu. and hordadef answered, "his name is dedi. he is a hundred and ten years old, and every day he eats five hundred loaves of bread, and a side of beef, and drinks a hundred jugs of beer. he knows how to fasten on a head that has been cut off. he knows how to make a lion of the desert follow him, and he knows the plan of the house of god that you have wanted to know for so long." then king khufu sent prince hordadef to bring dedi to him, and he brought dedi back in the royal boat. the king came out, and sat in the colonnade of the palace, and dedi was led before him. then said his majesty, "why have i never seen you before, dedi?" and dedi answered, "life, health, strength to your majesty! a man can only come when he is called." "is it true, dedi, that you can fasten on a head which has been cut off?" "certainly i can, your majesty." then said the king, "let a prisoner be brought from the prison, and let his head be struck off." but dedi said, "long life to your majesty; do not try it on a man. let us try a bird or an animal." so a goose was brought; its head was cut off; and the head was laid at the east side of the hall, and the body at the west. then dedi rose, and spoke wonderful words. and, behold! the body of the goose waddled to meet the head, and the head came to meet the body. they joined together before his majesty's throne, and the goose stood up and cackled (plate 8). then, when dedi had joined to its body again the head that had been struck off from an ox, and the ox followed him lowing, king khufu said to him, "is it true, o dedi, that you know the plans of the house of god?" "it is true, your majesty; but it is not i who shall give them to you." "who, then?" said the king. "it is the eldest of three sons who shall be born to the lady rud-didet, wife of the priest of ra, the sun-god. and ra has promised that these three sons shall reign over this kingdom of thine." when king khufu heard that word, his heart was troubled; but dedi said, "let not your majesty's heart be troubled. thy son shall reign first, then thy son's son, and then one of these." so the king commanded that dedi should live in the house of prince hordadef; and that every day there should be given to him a thousand loaves, a hundred jugs of beer, an ox, and a hundred bunches of onions! when the three sons of rud-didet were born, ra sent four goddesses to be their godmothers. they came attired like travelling dancing-girls; and one of the gods came with them, dressed like a porter. and when they had nursed the three children awhile, rud-didet's husband said to them, "my ladies, what wages shall i give you?" so he gave them a bushel of barley, and they went away with their wages. but when they had gone a little way, isis, the chief of them, said, "why have we not done a wonder for these children?" so they stopped, and made crowns, the red crown and the white crown of egypt, and hid them in the bushel of barley, and sealed the sack, and put it in rud-didet's store-chamber, and went away again. a fortnight later, when rud-didet was going to brew the household beer, there was no barley. and her maidservant said, "there is a bushel, but it was given to the dancing-girls, and lies in the store-room, sealed with their seal." so the lady said to her maid, "go down and fetch it, and we shall give them more when they need it." the maid went down, but when she came to the store-room, lo! from within there came a sound of singing and dancing, and all such music as should be heard in a king's court. so in fear she crept back to her mistress and told her, and rud-didet went down and heard the royal music, and she told her husband when he came home at night, and their hearts were glad because their sons were to be kings. but after a time the lady rud-didet quarrelled with her maid, and gave her a beating, as ladies sometimes did in those days; and the weeping maid said to her fellow-servants, "shall she do this to me? she has borne three kings, and i will go and tell it to his majesty, king khufu." so she stole away first to her uncle, and told him of her plot; but he was angry because she wished to betray the children to king khufu, and he beat her with a scourge of flax. and as she went away by the side of the river a great crocodile came out of the water, and carried her off.... but here, alas! our story breaks off; the rest of the book is lost, and we cannot tell whether king khufu tried to kill the three royal babies or not. only we do know that the first three kings of the race which succeeded the race of khufu bore the same names as rud-didet's three babies, and were called, like all the kings of egypt after them, "sons of the sun." these, then, are absolutely the oldest fairy-stories in the world, and if they do not seem very wonderful to you, you must remember that everything has to have a beginning, and that the people who made these tales hadn't had very much practice in the art of story-telling. chapter viii some fairy-tales of long ago (_continued_) our next story belongs to a time several hundred years later, and i dare say it seemed as wonderful to the little egyptians as the story of sindbad the sailor does to you. it is called "the story of the shipwrecked sailor," and the sailor himself tells it to a noble egyptian. "i was going," he says, "to the mines of pharaoh, and we set sail in a ship of 150 cubits long and 40 cubits wide (225 feet by 60 feet--quite a big ship for the time). we had a crew of 150 of the best sailors of egypt, men whose hearts were as bold as lions. they all foretold a happy voyage, but as we came near the shore a great storm blew, the sea rose in terrible waves, and our ship was fairly overwhelmed. clinging to a piece of wood, i was washed about for three days, and at last tossed up on an island; but not one was left of all my shipmates--all perished in the waves. "i lay down in the shade of some bushes, and when i had recovered a little, i looked about me for food. there was plenty on every hand--figs and grapes, berries and corn, with all manner of birds. when my hunger was satisfied, i lit a fire, and made an offering to the gods who had saved me. suddenly i heard a noise like thunder; the trees shook, and the earth quaked. looking round, i saw a great serpent approaching me. he was nearly 50 feet long, and had a beard 3 feet in length. his body shone in the sun like gold, and when he reared himself up from his coils before me i fell upon my face. "then the serpent began to speak: 'what has brought thee, little one, what has brought thee? if thou dost not tell me quickly what has brought thee to this isle, i shall make thee vanish like a flame.' so saying, he took me up in his mouth, carried me gently to his lair, and laid me down unhurt; and again he said, 'what has brought thee, little one, what has brought thee to this isle of the sea?' so i told him the story of our shipwreck, and how i alone had escaped from the fury of the waves. then said he to me: 'fear not, little one, and let not thy face be sad. if thou hast come to me, it is god who has brought thee to this isle, which is filled with all good things. and now, see: thou shalt dwell for four months in this isle, and then a ship of thine own land shall come, and thou shalt go home to thy country, and die in thine own town. as for me, i am here with my brethren and my children. there are seventy-five of us in all, besides a young girl, who came here by chance, and was burned by fire from heaven. but if thou art strong and patient, thou shalt yet embrace thy children and thy wife, and return to thy home.' "then i bowed low before him, and promised to tell of him to pharaoh, and to bring him ships full of all the treasures of egypt; but he smiled at my speech, and said, 'thou hast nothing that i need, for i am prince of the land of punt, and all its perfumes are mine. moreover, when thou departest, thou shalt never again see this isle, for it shall be changed into waves.' [illustration: plate 9. an egyptian country house.] "now, behold! when the time was come, as he had foretold, the ship drew near. and the good serpent said to me, 'farewell, farewell! go to thy home, little one, see again thy children, and let thy name be good in thy town; these are my wishes for thee.' so i bowed low before him, and he loaded me with precious gifts of perfume, cassia, sweet woods, ivory, baboons, and all kinds of precious things, and i embarked in the ship. and now, after a voyage of two months, we are coming to the house of pharaoh, and i shall go in before pharaoh, and offer the gifts which i have brought from this isle into egypt, and pharaoh shall thank me before the great ones of the land." our last story belongs to a later age than that of the shipwrecked sailor. about 1,500 years before christ there arose in egypt a race of mighty soldier-kings, who founded a great empire, which stretched from the soudan right through syria and mesopotamia as far as the great river euphrates. mesopotamia, or naharaina, as the egyptians called it, had been an unknown land to them before this time; but now it became to them what america was to the men of queen elizabeth's time, or the heart of africa to your grandfathers--the wonderful land of romance, where all kinds of strange things might happen. and this story of the doomed prince, which i have to tell you, belongs partly to naharaina, and, as you will see, some of our own fairy-stories have been made out of very much the same materials as are used in it. once upon a time there was a king in egypt who had no child. his heart was grieved because he had no child, and he prayed to the gods for a son; so in course of time a son was born to him, and the fates (like fairy godmothers) came to his cradle to foretell what should happen to him. and when they saw him, they said, "his doom is to die either by the crocodile, or by the serpent, or by the dog." when the king heard this, his heart was sore for his little son, and he resolved that he would put the boy where no harm could come to him; so he built for him a beautiful house away in the desert, and furnished it with all kinds of fine things, and sent the boy there, with faithful servants to guard him, and to see that he came to no hurt. so the boy grew up quietly and safely in his house in the desert. but it fell on a day that the young prince looked out from the roof of his house, and he saw a man walking across the desert, with a dog following him. so he said to the servant who was with him, "what is this that walks behind the man who is coming along the road?" "it is a dog," said the page. then the boy said, "you must bring me one like him," and the page went and told his majesty. then the king said, "get a little puppy, and take it to him, lest his heart be sad." so they brought him a little dog, and it grew up along with him. now, it happened that, when the boy had grown to be a strong young man, he grew weary of being always shut up in his fine house. therefore he sent a message to his father, saying, "why am i always to be shut up here? since i am doomed to three evil fates, let me have my desire, and let god do what is in his heart." so the king agreed, and they gave the young prince arms, and sent him away to the eastern frontier, and his dog went with him, and they said to him, "go wherever you will." so he went northward through the desert, he and his dog, until he came to the land of naharaina. [illustration: plate 10 statues of king amenhotep iii.] now, the chief of the land of naharaina had no children, save one beautiful daughter, and for her he had built a wonderful house. it had seventy windows, and it stood on a great rock more than 100 feet high. and the chief summoned the sons of all the chiefs of the country round about, and said to them, "the prince who can climb to my daughter's window shall have her for his wife." so all the young princes of the land camped around the house, and tried every day to climb to the window of the beautiful princess; but none of them succeeded, for the rock was very steep and high. then, one day when they were climbing as they were wont, the young prince of egypt rode by with his dog; and the princes welcomed him, bathed him, and fed his horse, and said to him, "whence comest thou, thou goodly youth?" he did not wish to tell them that he was the son of pharaoh, so he answered, "i am the son of an egyptian officer. my father married a second wife, and, when she had children, she hated me, and drove me away from my home." so they took him into their company, and he stayed with them many days. now, it fell on a day that he asked them, "why do you stay here, trying always to climb this rock?" and they told him of the beautiful princess who lived in the house on the top of the rock, and how the man who could climb to her window should marry her. therefore the young prince of egypt climbed along with them, and it came to pass that at last he climbed to the window of the princess; and when she saw him, she fell in love with him, and kissed him. then was word sent to the chief of naharaina that one of the young men had climbed to his daughter's window, and he asked which of the princes it was, and the messenger said, "it is not a prince, but the son of an egyptian officer, who has been driven away from egypt by his stepmother." then the chief of naharaina was very angry, and said, "shall i give my daughter to an egyptian fugitive? let him go back to egypt." but, when the messengers came to tell the young man to go away, the princess seized his hand, and said, "if you take him from me, i will not eat; i will not drink; i shall die in that same hour." then the chief sent men to kill the youth where he was in the house. but the princess said, "if you kill him, i shall be dead before the sun goes down. i will not live an hour if i am parted from him." so the chief was obliged to agree to the marriage; and the young prince was married to the princess, and her father gave them a house, and slaves, and fields, and all sorts of good things. but after a time the young prince said to his wife, "i am doomed to die, either by a crocodile, or by a serpent, or by a dog." and his wife answered, "why, then, do you keep this dog always with you? let him be killed." "nay," said he, "i am not going to kill my faithful dog, which i have brought up since the time that he was a puppy." so the princess feared greatly for her husband, and would never let him go out of her sight. now, it happened in course of time that the prince went back to the land of egypt; and his wife went with him, and his dog, and he dwelt in egypt. and one day, when the evening came, he grew drowsy, and fell asleep; and his wife filled a bowl with milk, and placed it by his side, and sat to watch him as he slept. then a great serpent came out of his hole to bite the youth. but his wife was watching, and she made the servants give the milk to the serpent, and he drank till he could not move. then the princess killed the serpent with blows of her dagger. so she woke her husband, and he was astonished to see the serpent lying dead, and his faithful wife said to him, "behold, god has given one of thy dooms into thy hand; he will also give the others." and the prince made sacrifice to god, and praised him. now, it fell on a day that the prince went out to walk in his estate, and his dog went with him. and as they walked, the dog ran after some game, and the prince followed the dog. they came to the river nile, and the dog went into the river, and the prince followed him. then a great crocodile rose in the river, and laid hold on the youth, and said, "i am thy doom, following after thee." ... but just here the old papyrus roll on which the story is written is torn away, and we do not know what happened to the doomed prince. i fancy that, in some way or other, his dog would save him from the crocodile, and that later, by some accident, the poor faithful dog would be the cause of his master's death. at least, it looks as if the end of the story must have been something like that; for the egyptians believed that no one could escape from the doom that was laid upon him, but had to suffer it sooner or later. perhaps, some day, one of the explorers who are searching the land of egypt for relics of the past may come on another papyrus roll with the end of the story, and then we shall find out whether the dog did kill the prince, or whether god gave all his dooms into his hand, as his wife hoped. these are some of the stories that little tahuti and sen-senb used to listen to in the long evenings when they were tired of play. perhaps they seem very simple and clumsy to you; but i have no doubt that, when they were told in those old days, the black eyes of the little egyptian boys and girls used to grow very big and round, and the wizard who could fasten on heads which had been cut off seemed a very wonderful person, and the talking serpents and crocodiles seemed very real and very dreadful. anyhow, you have heard the oldest stories in all the world--the fathers and mothers, so to speak, of all the great family of wonder-tales that have delighted and terrified children ever since. chapter ix exploring the soudan there is no more wonderful or interesting story than that which tells how bit by bit the great dark continent of africa has been explored, and made to yield up its secrets. but did you ever think what a long story it is, and how very early it begins? it is in egypt that we find the first chapters of the story; and they can still be read, written in the quaint old picture writing which the egyptians used, on the rock tombs of a place in the south of egypt, called elephantine. [illustration: plate 11 the sphinx and the second pyramid. _page_ 79] in early days the land of egypt used to end at what was called the first cataract of the nile, a place where the river came down in a series of rapids among a lot of rocky islets. the first cataract has disappeared now, for british engineers have made a great dam across the nile just at this point, and turned the whole country, for miles above the dam, into a lake. but in those days the egyptians used to believe that the nile, to which they owed so much, began at the first cataract. yet they knew of the wild country of nubia beyond and, in very early times indeed, about 5,000 years ago, they used to send exploring expeditions into that half-desert land which we have come to know as the soudan. near the first cataract there lies the island of elephantine, and when the egyptian kingdom was young the great barons who owned this island were the lords of the egyptian marches, just as the percies and the douglases were the lords of the marches in england and scotland. it was their duty to keep in order the wild nubian tribes south of the cataract, to see that they allowed the trading caravans to pass safely, and sometimes to lead these caravans through the desert themselves. a caravan was a very different thing then from the long train of camels that we think of now when we hear the name. for, though there are some very old pictures which show that, before egyptian history begins at all, the camel was known in egypt, somehow that useful animal seems to have disappeared from the land for many hundreds of years. the pharaohs and their adventurous barons never used the queer, ungainly creature that carries the desert postman in our picture (plate 12), and the ivory, gold-dust, and ebony that came from the soudan had to be carried on the backs of hundreds of asses. the barons of elephantine bore the proud title of "keepers of the door of the south," and, in addition, they display, seemingly just as proudly, the title "caravan conductors." in those days it was no easy task to lead a caravan through the soudan, and bring it back safe with its precious load through all the wild and savage tribes who inhabited the land of nubia. more than one of the barons of elephantine set out with a caravan never to return, but to leave his bones, and those of his companions, to whiten among the desert sands; and one of them has told us how, hearing that his father had been killed on one of these adventurous journeys, he mustered his retainers, marched south with a train of a hundred asses, punished the tribe which had been guilty of the deed, and brought his father's body home, to be buried with all due honours. some of the records of these early journeys, the first attempts to explore the interior of africa, may still be read, carved on the walls of the tombs where the brave explorers sleep. one baron, called herkhuf, has told us of no fewer than four separate expeditions which he made into the soudan. on his first journey, as he was still young, he went in company with his father, and was away for seven months. the next time he was allowed to go alone, and brought back his caravan safely after an absence of eight months. on his third journey he went farther than before, and gathered so large a quantity of ivory and gold-dust that three hundred asses were required to bring his treasure home. so rich a caravan was a tempting prize for the wild tribes on the way; but herkhuf persuaded one of the soudanese chiefs to furnish him with a large escort, and the caravan was so strongly guarded that the other tribes did not venture to attack it, but were glad to help its leader with guides and gifts of cattle. herkhuf brought his treasures safely back to egypt, and the king was so pleased with his success that he sent a special messenger with a boat full of delicacies to refresh the weary traveller. [illustration: plate 12. a desert postman.] but the most successful of all his expeditions was the fourth. the king who had sent him on the other journeys had died, and was succeeded by a little boy called pepy, who was only about six years old when he came to the throne, and who reigned for more than ninety years--the longest reign in the world's history. in the second year of pepy's reign, the bold herkhuf set out again for the soudan, and this time, along with other treasures, he brought back something that his boy-king valued far more than gold or ivory. you know how, when stanley went in search of emin pasha, he discovered in the central african forests a strange race of dwarfs, living by themselves, and very shy of strangers. well, for all these thousands of years, the forefathers of these little dwarfs must have been living in the heart of the dark continent. in early days they evidently lived not so far away from egypt as when stanley found them, for, on at least one occasion, one of pharaoh's servants had been able to capture one of the little men, and bring him down as a present to his master, greatly to the delight of the king and court. herkhuf was equally fortunate. he managed to secure a dwarf from one of these pigmy tribes, and brought him back with his caravan, that he might please the young king with his quaint antics and his curious dances. when the king heard of the present which his brave servant was bringing back for him, he was wild with delight. the thought of this new toy was far more to the little eight-year-old, king though he was, than all the rest of the treasure which herkhuf had gathered; and he caused a letter to be written to the explorer, telling him of his delight, and giving him all kinds of advice as to how careful he should be that the dwarf should come to no harm on the way to court. the letter, through all its curious old phrases, is very much the kind of letter that any boy might send on hearing of some new toy that was coming to him. "my majesty," says the little eight-year-old pharaoh, "wisheth to see this pigmy more than all the tribute of punt. and if thou comest to court having this pigmy with thee sound and whole, my majesty will do for thee more than king assa did for the chancellor baurded." (this was the man who had brought back the other dwarf in earlier days.) little king pepy then gives careful directions that herkhuf is to provide proper people to see that the precious dwarf does not fall into the nile on his way down the river; and these guards are to watch behind the place where he sleeps, and look into his bed ten times each night, that they may be sure that nothing has gone wrong. the poor little dwarf must have had rather an uncomfortable time of it, one fancies, if his sleep was to be broken so often. perhaps there was more danger of killing him with kindness and care, than if they had left him more to himself; but pepy's anxiety was very like a boy. however, herkhuf evidently succeeded in bringing his dwarf safe and sound to the king's court, and no doubt the quaint little savage proved a splendid toy for the young king. one wonders what he thought of the great cities and the magnificent court of egypt, and whether his heart did not weary sometimes for the wild freedom of his lost home. herkhuf was so proud of the king's letter that he caused it to be engraved, word for word, on the walls of the tomb which he hewed out for himself at elephantine, and there to this day the words can be read which tell us how old is the story of african exploration, and how a boy was always just a boy, even though he lived five thousand years ago, and reigned over a great kingdom. chapter x a voyage of discovery about 3,500 years ago, there reigned a great queen in egypt. it was not usual for the egyptian throne to be occupied by a woman, though great respect was always shown to women in egypt, and the rank of a king's mother was considered quite as important as that of his father. but once at least in her history egypt had a great queen, whose fame deserves to be remembered, and who takes honourable rank among the great women, like queen elizabeth and queen victoria, who have ruled kingdoms. during part of her life queen hatshepsut was only joint sovereign along with her husband, and in the latter part of her reign she was joint sovereign with her half-brother or nephew, who succeeded her; but for at least twenty years she was really the sole ruler of egypt, and governed the land wisely and well. perhaps the most interesting thing that happened in her reign was the voyage of discovery which she caused to be made by some ships of her fleet. centuries before her time, when the world was young, the egyptians had made expeditions down the red sea to a land which they sometimes called punt, and sometimes "the divine land." probably it was part of the country that we now know as somaliland. but for a very long time these voyages had ceased, and people only knew by hearsay, and by the stories of ancient days, of this wonderful country that lay away by the southern sea. one day, the queen tells us, she was at prayers in the temple of the god amen at thebes, when she felt a sudden inspiration. the god was giving her a command to send an expedition to this almost forgotten land. "a command was heard in the sanctuary, a behest of the god himself, that the ways which lead to punt should be explored, and that the roads to the ladders of incense should be trodden." in obedience to this command, the queen at once equipped a little fleet of the quaint old galleys that the egyptians then used (plate 1), and sent them out, with picked crews, and a royal envoy in command, to sail down the red sea, in search of the divine land. the ships were laden with all kinds of goods to barter with the punites, and a guard of egyptian soldiers was placed on board. we do not know how long it took the little squadron to reach its destination. sea voyages in those days were slow and dangerous. but at last the ships safely reached the mouth of the elephant river in somaliland, and went up the river with the tide till they came to the village of the natives. they found that the punites lived in curious beehive-shaped houses, some of them made of wicker-work, and placed on piles, so that they had to climb into them by ladders. the men were not negroes, though some negroes lived among them; they were very much like the egyptians in appearance, wore pointed beards, and were dressed only in loincloths, while the women wore a yellow sleeveless dress, which reached halfway between the knee and ankle. nehsi, the royal envoy, landed with an officer and eight soldiers, and, to show that he came in peace, he spread out on a table some presents for the chief of the punites--five bracelets, two gold necklaces, a dagger, with belt and sheath, a battle-axe, and eleven strings of glass beads--much such a present as a european explorer might give to-day to an african chief. the natives came down in great excitement to see the strangers who had brought such treasures, and were astonished at the arrival of such a fleet. "how is it," they said, "that you have reached this country, hitherto unknown to men? have you come by way of the sky, or have you sailed on the waters of the divine sea?" the chief, who was called parihu, came down with his wife aty, and his daughter. aty rode down on a donkey, but dismounted to see the strangers, and, indeed, the poor donkey must have been greatly relieved, for the chieftainess was an exceedingly fat lady, and her daughter, though so young, showed every intention of being as fat as her mother. after the envoy and the chief had exchanged compliments, business began. the egyptians pitched a tent in which they stored their goods for barter, and to put temptation out of the way of the natives, they drew a guard of soldiers round the tent. for several days the market remained open, and the country people brought down their treasures, till the ships were laden as deeply as was safe. the cargo was a varied and valuable one. elephants' tusks, gold, ebony, apes, greyhounds, leopard skins, all were crowded into the galleys, the apes sitting gravely on the top of the bales of goods, and looking longingly at the land which they were leaving. but the most important part of the cargo was the incense, and the incense-trees. great quantities of the gum from which the incense was made were placed on board, and also thirty-one of the incense sycamores, their roots carefully surrounded with a large ball of earth, and protected by baskets. several young chiefs of the punites accompanied the expedition back to thebes, to see what life was like in the strange new world which had been revealed to them. altogether the voyage home must have been no easy undertaking, for the ships, with their heavy cargoes, must have been very difficult to handle. the arrival of the squadron at thebes, which they must have reached by a canal connecting the nile with the red sea, was made the occasion of a great holiday festival. long lines of troops in gala attire came out to meet the brave explorers, and an escort of the royal fleet accompanied the exploring squadron up to the temple quay where the ships were to moor. then the thebans feasted their eyes on the wonderful treasures that had come from punt, wondering at the natives, the incense, the ivory, and, above all, at a giraffe which had been brought home. how the poor creature was stowed away on the little egyptian ship it is hard to see; but there he was, with his spots and his long neck, the most wonderful creature that the good folks of thebes had ever seen. the precious incense gum was stored in the temple, and the queen herself gave a bushel measure, made of a mixture of gold and silver, to measure it out with. so the voyage of discovery had ended in a great success. but queen hatshepsut's purpose was only half fulfilled as yet. in a nook of the limestone cliffs, not far from thebes, her father before her had begun to build a very wonderful temple, close beside the ruins of an older sanctuary which had stood there for hundreds of years. hatshepsut had been gradually completing his work, and the temple was now growing into a most beautiful building, very different from ordinary egyptian temples. from the desert sands in front it rose terrace above terrace, each platform bordered with rows of beautiful limestone pillars, until at last it reached the cliffs, and the most sacred chamber of it, the holy of holies, was hewn into the solid wall of rock behind. this temple the queen resolved to make into what she called a paradise for amen, the god who had told her to send out the ships. so she planted on the terraces the sacred incense-trees which had been brought from punt; and, thanks to careful tending and watering, they flourished well in their new home. and then, all along the walls of the temple, she caused her artists to carve and paint the whole story of the voyage. we do not know the names of the artists who did the work, though we know that of the architect, sen-mut, who planned the building. but, whoever they were, they must have been very skilful sculptors; for the story of the voyage is told in pictures on the walls of this wonderful temple, so that everything can be seen just as it actually happened more than three thousand years ago. you can see the ships toiling along with oar and sail towards their destination, the meeting with the natives, the palaver and the trading, the loading of the galleys, and the long procession of theban soldiers going out to meet the returning explorers. not a single detail is missed, and, thanks to the queen and her artists, we can go back over all these years, and see how sailors worked, and how people lived in savage lands in that far-off time, and realize that explorers dealt with the natives in foreign countries in those days very much as they deal with them now. when our explorers of to-day come back from their journeys, they generally tell the story of their adventures in a big book with many pictures; but no explorer ever published the account of a voyage of discovery on such a scale as did queen hatshepsut, when she carved the voyage to punt on the walls of her great temple at deir-el-bahri, and no pictures in any modern book are likely to last as long, or to tell so much as these pictures that have come to light again during the last few years, after being buried for centuries under the desert sands. [illustration: plate 13. the bark of the moon, guarded by the divine eyes.] queen hatshepsut has left other memorials of her greatness besides the temple with its story of her voyage. she has told us how one day she was sitting in her palace, and thinking of her creator, when the thought came into her mind to rear two great obelisks before the temple of amen at karnak. so she gave the command, and sen-mut, her clever architect, went up the nile to aswan, and quarried two huge granite blocks, and floated them down the river. cleopatra's needle, which stands on the thames embankment, is 68-1/2 feet high, and it seems to us a huge stone for men to handle. our own engineers had trouble enough in bringing it to this country, and setting it up. but these two great obelisks of queen hatshepsut were 98-1/2 feet high, and weighed about 350 tons apiece. yet sen-mut had them quarried, and set up, and carved all over from base to summit in seven months from the time when the queen gave her command! one of them still stands at karnak, the tallest obelisk in the temple there; while the other great shaft has fallen, and lies broken, close to its companion. they tell us their own plain story of the wisdom and skill of those far-off days; and perhaps the great queen who thought of her creator as she sat in her palace, and longed to honour him, found that the god whom she ignorantly worshipped was indeed not far from his servant's heart. chapter xi egyptian books the egyptians were, if not quite the earliest, at least among the earliest of all the peoples of the world to find out how to put down their thoughts in writing, or in other words, to make a book; and one of their old books, full of wise advice from a father to his son, is, perhaps, the oldest book in the world. two words which we are constantly using might help to remind us of how much we owe to their cleverness. the one is "bible," and the other is "paper." when we talk of the bible, which just means "the book," we are using one of the words which the greeks used to describe the plant out of which the egyptians made the material on which they wrote; and when we talk of paper, we are using another name, the commoner name, of the same plant. for the egyptians were the first people to make paper, and they used it for many centuries before other people had learned how much handier it was than the other things which they used. yet, if you saw an egyptian book, you would think it was a very curious and clumsy thing indeed, and very different from the handy volumes which we use nowadays. when an egyptian wanted to make a book, he gathered the stems of a kind of reed called the papyrus, which grew in some parts of egypt in marshy ground. this plant grew to a height of from 12 to 15 feet, and had a stalk about 6 inches thick. the outer rind was peeled off this stalk, and then the inner part of it was separated, by means of a flat needle, into thin layers. these layers were joined to one another on a table, and a thin gum was spread over them, and then another layer was laid crosswise on the top of the first. the double sheet thus made was then put into a press, squeezed together, and dried. the sheets varied, of course, in breadth according to the purpose for which they were needed. the broadest that we know of measure about 17 inches across, but most are much narrower than that. when the egyptian had got his paper, he did not make it up into a volume with the sheets bound together at the back, as we do. he joined them end to end, adding on sheet after sheet as he wrote, and rolling up his book as he went along; so when the book was done it formed a big roll, sometimes many feet long. there is one great book in the british museum which measures 135 feet in length. you would think it very strange and awkward to have to handle a book like that. but if the book seemed curious to you, the writing in it would seem still more curious; for the egyptian writing was certainly the quaintest, and perhaps the prettiest, that has ever been known. it is called "hieroglyphic," which means "sacred carving," and it is nothing but little pictures from beginning to end. the egyptians began by putting down a picture of the thing which was represented by the word they wanted to use, and, though by-and-by they formed a sort of alphabet to spell words with, and had, besides, signs that represented the different syllables of a word, still, these signs were all little pictures. for instance, one of their signs for _a_ was the figure of an eagle; their sign for _m_ was a lion, and for _u_ a little chicken; so that when you look at an egyptian book written in the hieroglyphic character, you see column after column of birds and beasts and creeping things, of men and women and boats, and all sorts of other things, marching across the page. when the egyptians wanted any of their writings to last for a very long time, they did not trust them to the frail papyrus rolls, but used another kind of book altogether. you have heard of "sermons in stones"? well, a great many of the egyptian books that tell us of the great deeds of the pharaohs were written on stone, carved deep and clear in the hard granite of a great obelisk, or in the limestone of a temple wall. when one of the kings came back from the wars, he generally published the account of his battles and victories by carving them on the walls of one of the great temples, or on a pillar set up in the court of a temple, and there they remain to this day for scholars to read. when the hieroglyphics were cut in stone, the lines were often filled in with pastes of different colours, so that the whole writing was a blaze of beautiful tints, and the walls looked as if they were covered with finely-coloured hangings. of course, the colours have mostly faded now; but there are still some temples and tombs where they can be seen, almost as fresh as when they were first laid on, and from these we can gather some idea of how wonderfully beautiful were these stone books of ancient egypt. the scribes and carvers knew very well how beautiful their work was, and were careful to make it look as beautiful as possible; so much so, that if they found that the grouping of figures to make up a particular word or sentence was going to be ugly or clumsy, they would even prefer to spell the word wrong, rather than spoil the appearance of their picture-writing. some of you, i dare say, spell words wrong now and again; but i fancy it isn't because you think they look prettier that way. but now let us turn back again to our papyrus roll. suppose that we have got it, clean and fresh, and that our friend the scribe is going to write upon it. how does he go about it? to begin with, he draws from his belt a long, narrow wooden case, and lays it down beside him. this is his palette; rather a different kind of palette from the one which artists use. it is a piece of wood, with one long hollow in it, and two or three shallow round ones. the long hollow holds a few pens, which are made out of thin reeds, bruised at the ends, so that their points are almost like little brushes. the shallow round hollows are for holding ink--black for most of the writing, red for special words, and perhaps one or two other colours, if the scribe is going to do a very fine piece of work. so he squats down, cross-legged, dips a reed-pen in the ink, and begins. as he writes he makes his little figures of men and beasts and birds face all in the one direction, and his readers will know that they must always read from the point towards which the characters face. now and then, when he comes to some specially important part, he draws, in gay colours, a little picture of the scene which the words describe. now, you can understand that this picture-writing was not very easy work to do when you had nothing but a bruised reed to draw all sorts of animals with. gradually the pictures grew less and less like the creatures they stood for to begin with, and at last the old hieroglyphic broke down into a kind of running hand, where a stroke or two might stand for an eagle, a lion, or a man. and very many of the egyptian books are written in this kind of broken-down hieroglyphic, which is called "hieratic," or priestly writing. but some of the finest and costliest books were still written in the beautiful old style. on their papyrus rolls the egyptians wrote all sorts of things--books of wise advice, stories like the fairy-tales which we have been hearing, legends of the gods, histories, and poems; but the book that is oftenest met with is one of their religious books. it is nearly always called the "book of the dead" now, and some people call it the egyptian bible, but neither of these names is the right one. certainly, it is not in the least like the bible, and the egyptians themselves never called it the book of the dead. they called it "the chapters of coming forth by day," and the reason they gave it that name was because they believed that if their dead friends knew all the wisdom that was written in it, they would escape all the dangers of the other world, and would be able in heaven to go in and out just as they had done upon earth, and to be happy for ever. the book is full of all kinds of magical charms against the serpents and dragons and all the other kinds of evil things that sought to destroy the dead person in the other world. the scribes used to write off copies of it by the dozen, and keep them in stock, with blank places for the names of the persons who were to use them. when anyone died, his friends went away to a scribe, and bought a roll of the book of the dead, and the scribe filled in the name of the dead person in the blank places. then the book was buried along with his mummy, so that when he met the demons and serpents on the road to heaven, he would know how to drive them away, and when he came to gates that had to be opened, or rivers that had to be crossed, he would know the right magical words to use. some of these rolls of the book of the dead are very beautifully written, and illustrated with most wonderful little coloured pictures, representing different scenes of life in the other world, and it is from these that we have learned a great deal of what the egyptians believed about the judgment after death, and heaven. but the common ones are very carelessly done. the scribes knew that the book was going to be buried at once, and that nobody was likely ever to see it again; so they did not care much whether they made mistakes or not, and often they missed out parts of the book altogether. they little thought that, thousands of years after they were dead, scholars would dig up their writings again, and read them, and see all their blunders. of course, a great deal of this book is dreadful rubbish, and anything more unlike the noble and beautiful teaching of the bible you can scarcely imagine. it has no more sense in it than the "fee! fi! foh! fum!" of our fairy-stories. here is one little chapter from it. it is called "the chapter of repulsing serpents," and the egyptians supposed that when a serpent attacked you on your way to heaven, you had only to recite this verse, and the serpent would be powerless to harm you: "hail, thou serpent rerek! advance not hither. stand still now, and thou shalt eat the rat which is an abomination unto ra (the sun-god), and thou shalt crunch the bones of a filthy cat." it sounds very silly, doesn't it? and there are many things quite as silly as this in the book. you can scarcely imagine how wise people like the egyptians could ever have believed in such drivel. but, then, side by side with this miserable stuff, you find really wonderful and noble thoughts, that surely came to these men of ancient days from god himself, telling them how every man must be judged at last for all that he has done on earth, and how only those who have done justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with god, will be accepted by him. chapter xii temples and tombs anyone travelling through our own land, or through any european country, to see the great buildings of long ago, would find that they were nearly all either churches or castles. there are the great cathedrals, very beautiful and wonderful; and there are the great buildings, sometimes partly palaces and partly fortresses, where kings and nobles lived in bygone days. well, if you were travelling in egypt to see its great buildings, you would find a difference. there are plenty of churches, or temples, rather, and very wonderful they are; but there are no castles or palaces left, or, at least, there are next to none. instead of palaces and castles, you would find tombs. egypt, in fact, is a land of great temples and great tombs. [illustration: plate 14 gateway of the temple of edfu. _pages_ 74, 75] now, one can see why the egyptians built great temples; for they were a very religious nation, and paid great honour to their gods. but why did they give so much attention to their tombs? the reason is, as you will hear more fully in another chapter, that there never was a nation which believed so firmly as did the egyptians that the life after death was far more important than life in this world. they built their houses, and even their palaces, very lightly, partly of wood and partly of clay, because they knew that they were only to live in them for a few years. but they called their tombs "eternal dwelling-places"; and they have made them so wonderfully that they have lasted long after all the other buildings of the land, except the temples, have passed away. first of all, let me try to give you an idea of what an egyptian temple must have been like in the days of its splendour. people come from all parts of the world to see even the ruins of these buildings, and they are altogether the most astonishing buildings in the world; but they are now only the skeletons of what the temples once were, and scarcely give you any more idea of their former glory and beauty than a human skeleton does of the beauty of a living man or woman. suppose, then, that we are coming up to the gates of a great egyptian temple in the days when it was still the house of a god who was worshipped by hundreds of thousands of people. as we pass out of the narrow streets of the city to which the temple belongs, we find ourselves standing upon a broad paved way, which stretches before us for hundreds of yards. on either side, this way is bordered by a row of statues, and these statues are in the form of what we call sphinxes--that is to say, they have bodies shaped like crouching lions, and on the lion-body there is set the head of a different creature. some of the sphinxes, like the great sphinx, have human heads; but those which border the temple avenues have oftener either ram or jackal heads. as we pass along the avenue, two high towers rise before us, and between them is a great gateway. in front of the gate-towers are two tall obelisks, slender, tapering shafts of red granite, like cleopatra's needle on the thames embankment. they are hewn out of single blocks of stone, carved all over with hieroglyphic figures, polished till they shine like mirrors, and their pointed tops are gilded so that they flash brilliantly in the sunlight. beside the obelisks, which may be from 70 to 100 feet high, there are huge statues, perhaps two, perhaps four, of the king who built the temple. these statues represent the king as sitting upon his throne, with the double crown of egypt, red and white, upon his head. they also are hewn out of single blocks of stone, and when you look at the huge figures you wonder how human hands could ever get such stones out of the quarry, sculpture them, and set them up. before one of the temples of thebes still lie the broken fragments of a statue of ramses ii. when it was whole the statue must have been about 57 feet high, and the great block of granite must have weighed about 1,000 tons--the largest single stone that was ever handled by human beings. plate 10 will give you some idea of what these huge statues looked like. fastened to the towers are four tall flagstaves--two on either side of the gate--and from them float gaily-coloured pennons. the walls of the towers are covered with pictures of the wars of the king. here you see him charging in his chariot upon his fleeing enemies; here, again, he is seizing a group of captives by the hair, and raising his mace or his sword to kill them; but whatever he is doing, he is always gigantic, while his foes are mere helpless human beings. all these carvings are brilliantly painted, and the whole front of the building glows with colour; it is really a kind of pictorial history of the king's reign. now we stand in front of the gate. its two leaves are made of cedar-wood brought from lebanon; but you cannot see the wood at all, for it is overlaid with plates of silver chased with beautiful designs. passing through the gateway, we find ourselves in a broad open court. all round it runs a kind of cloister, whose roof is supported upon tall pillars, their capitals carved to represent the curving leaves of the palm-tree. in the middle of the court there stands a tall pillar of stone, inscribed with the story of the great deeds of pharaoh, and his gifts to the god of the temple. it is inlaid with turquoise, malachite, and lapis-lazuli, and sparkles with precious stones. at the farther side of this court, another pair of towers and another gateway lead you into the second court. here we pass at once out of brilliant sunlight into semi-darkness; for this court is entirely roofed over, and no light enters it except from the doorway and from grated slits in the roof. look around you, and you will see the biggest single chamber that was ever built by the hands of man. down the centre run two lines of gigantic pillars which hold up the roof, and form the nave of the hall; and beyond these on either side are the aisles, whose roofs are supported by a perfect forest of smaller columns. look up to the twelve great pillars of the nave. they soar above your head, seventy feet into the air, their capitals bending outwards in the shape of open flowers. on each capital a hundred men could stand safely; and the great stone roofing beams that stretch from pillar to pillar weigh a hundred tons apiece. how were they ever brought to the place? and, still more, how were they ever swung up to that dizzy height, and laid in their places? each of the great columns is sculptured with figures and gaily painted, and the surrounding walls of the hall are all decorated in the same way. but when you look at the pictures, you find that it is no longer the wars of the king that are represented. the inside of the temple is too holy for such things. instead, you have pictures of the gods, and of the king making all kinds of offerings to them; and these pictures are repeated again and again, with endless inscriptions, telling of the great gifts which pharaoh has given to the temple. finally we pass into the holy of holies. here no light of day ever enters at all. the chamber, smaller and lower than either of the others, is in darkness except for the dim light of the lamp carried by the attendant priest. here stands the shrine, a great block of granite, hewn into a dwelling-place for the figure of the god. it is closed with cedar doors covered with gold plates, and the doors are sealed; but if we could persuade the priest to let us look within, we should see a small wooden figure something like the one that we saw carried through the streets of thebes, dressed and painted, and surrounded by offerings of meat, drink, and flowers. for this little figure all the glories that we have passed through have been created: an army of priests attends upon it day by day, dresses and paints it, spreads food before it, offers sacrifices and sings hymns in its praise. behind the sanctuary lie storehouses, which hold corn and fruits and wines enough to supply a city in time of siege. the god is a great proprietor, holding more land than any of the nobles of the country. he has a revenue almost as great as that of pharaoh himself. he has troops of his own, an army which obeys no orders but his. on the red sea he has one fleet, bringing to his temple the spices and incense of the southland; and from the nile mouths another fleet sails to bring home cedar-wood from lebanon, and costly stuffs from tyre. his priests have far more power than the greatest barons of the land, and pharaoh, mighty as he is, would think twice before offending a band of men whose hatred could shake him on his throne. such was an egyptian temple 3,000 years ago, when egypt was the greatest power in the world. but if the temples of ancient egypt are wonderful, the tombs are almost more wonderful still. very early in their history the egyptians began to show their sense of the importance of the life after death by raising huge buildings to hold the bodies of their great men. even the earliest kings, who lived before there was any history at all, had great underground chambers scooped out and furnished with all sorts of things for their use in the after-life. but it is when we come to that king khufu, who figures in the fairy-stories of zazamankh and dedi, that we begin to understand what a wonderful thing an egyptian tomb might be. not very far from cairo, the modern capital of egypt, a line of strange, pointed buildings rises against the sky on the edge of the desert. these are the pyramids, the tombs of the great kings of egypt in early days, and if we want to know what egyptian builders could do 4,000 years before christ, we must look at them. take the largest of them, the great pyramid, called the pyramid of cheops. cheops is really khufu, the king who was so much put out by dedi's prophecy about rud-didet's three babies. no such building was ever reared either before or since. it stands, even now, 450 feet in height, and before the peak was destroyed, it was about 30 feet higher. each of its four sides measures over 750 feet in length, and it covers more than twelve acres of ground, the size of a pretty large field. but you will get the best idea of how tremendous a building it is when i tell you that if you used it as a quarry, you could build a town, big enough to hold all the people of aberdeen, out of the great pyramid; or if you broke up the stones of which it is built, and laid them in a line a foot broad and a foot deep, the line would reach a good deal more than halfway round the world at the equator. you would have some trouble in breaking up the stones, however; for many of the great blocks weigh from 40 to 50 tons apiece, and they are so beautifully fitted to one another that you could not get the edge of a sheet of paper into the joints! inside this great mountain of stone there are long passages leading to two small rooms in the centre of the pyramid; and in one of these rooms, called "the king's chamber," the body of the greatest builder the world has ever seen was laid in its stone coffin. then the passages were closed with heavy plug-blocks of stone, so that no one should ever disturb the sleep of king khufu. but, in spite of all precautions, robbers mined their way into the pyramid ages ago, plundered the coffin, and scattered to the winds the remains of the king, so that, as byron says, "not a pinch of dust remains of cheops." the other pyramids are smaller, though, if the great pyramid had not been built, the second and third would have been counted world's wonders. near the second pyramid sits the great sphinx. it is a huge statue, human-headed and lion-bodied, carved out of limestone rock. who carved it, or whose face it bears, we do not certainly know; but there the great figure crouches, as it has crouched for countless ages, keeping watch and ward over the empty tombs where the pharaohs of egypt once slept, its head towering seventy feet into the air, its vast limbs and body stretching for two hundred feet along the sand, the strangest and most wonderful monument ever hewn by the hands of man (plate 11). later on in egyptian history the kings and great folk grew tired of building pyramids, and the fashion changed. instead of raising huge structures above ground, they began to hew out caverns in the rocks in which to lay their dead. round about thebes, the rocks on the western side of the nile are honeycombed with these strange houses of the departed. their walls, in many cases, are decorated with bright and cheerful pictures, showing scenes of the life which the dead man lived on earth. there he stands, or sits, placid and happy, with his wife beside him, while all around him his servants go about their usual work. they plough and hoe, sow and reap; they gather the grapes from the vines and put them into the winepress; or they bring the first-fruits of the earth to present them before their master (plate 15). in other pictures you see the great man going out to his amusements, fishing, hunting, or fowling; or you are taken into the town, and see the tradesmen working, and the merchants, and townsfolk buying and selling in the bazaars. in fact, the whole of life in ancient egypt passes before your eyes as you go from chamber to chamber, and it is from these old tomb-pictures that we have learned the most of what we know of how people lived and worked in those long-past days. in one wild rocky glen, called the "valley of the kings," nearly all the later pharaohs were buried, and to-day their tombs are one of the sights of thebes. let us look at the finest of them--the tomb of sety i., the father of that ramses ii. of whom we have heard so much. entering the dark doorway in the cliff, you descend through passage after passage and hall after hall, until at last you reach the fourteenth chamber, "the gold house of osiris," 470 feet from the entrance, where the great king was laid in his magnificent alabaster coffin. the walls and pillars of each chamber are wonderfully carved and painted. the pillars show pictures of the king making offerings to the gods, or being welcomed by them, but the pictures on the walls are very strange and weird. they represent the voyage of the sun through the realms of the under-world, and all the dangers and difficulties which the soul of the dead man has to encounter as he accompanies the sun-bark on its journey. serpents, bats, and crocodiles, spitting fire, or armed with spears, pursue the wicked. the unfortunates who fall into their power are tortured in all kinds of horrible ways; their hearts are torn out; their heads are cut off; they are boiled in caldrons, or hung head downwards over lakes of fire. gradually the soul passes through all these dangers into the brighter scenes of the fields of the blessed, where the justified sow and reap and are happy. finally, the king arrives, purified, at the end of his long journey, and is welcomed by the gods into the abode of the blessed, where he, too, dwells as a god in everlasting life. [illustration: plate 15 wall-pictures in a theban tomb. _pages_ 80, 81] the beautiful alabaster coffin in which the mummy of king sety was laid is now in the soane museum, london. when it was discovered, nearly a century ago, it was empty, and it was not till 1872 that some modern tomb-robbers found the body of the king, along with other royal mummies, hidden away in a deep pit among the cliffs. now it lies in the museum at cairo, and you can see the face of this great king, its fine, proud features not so very much changed, we can well believe, from what they were when he reigned 3,200 years ago. in the same museum you can look upon the faces of tahutmes iii., the greatest soldier of egypt; of ramses ii., the oppressor of the israelites; and, perhaps most interesting of all, of merenptah, the pharaoh who hardened his heart when moses pled with him to let the hebrews go, and whose picked troops were drowned in the red sea as they pursued their escaping slaves. it is very strange to think that one can see the actual features and forms on which the heroes of our bible story looked in life. the reason of such a thing is that the egyptians believed that when a man died, his soul, which passed to the life beyond, loved to return to its old home on earth, and find again the body in which it once dwelt; and even, perhaps, that the soul's existence in the other world depended in some way on the preservation of the body. so they made the bodies of their dead friends into what we call "mummies," steeping them for many days in pitch and spices till they were embalmed, and then wrapping them round in fold upon fold of fine linen. so they have endured all these hundreds of years, to be stored at last in a museum, and gazed upon by people who live in lands which were savage wildernesses when egypt was a great and mighty empire. chapter xiii an egyptian's heaven in this chapter i want to tell you a little about what the egyptians thought of heaven--what it was, where it was, how people got there after death, and what kind of a life they lived when they were there. they had some very quaint and curious ideas about the heavens themselves. they believed, for instance, that the blue sky overhead was something like a great iron plate spread over the world, and supported at the four corners, north, south, east, and west, by high mountains. the stars were like little lamps, which hung down from this plate. right round the world ran a great celestial river, and on this river the sun sailed day after day in his bark, giving light to the world. you could only see him as he passed round from the east by the south to the west, for after that the river ran behind high mountains, and the sun passed out of sight to sail through the world of darkness. behind the sun, and appearing after he had vanished, came the moon, sailing in its own bark. it was protected by two guardian eyes, which watched always over it (plate 13), and it needed the protection, for every month it was attacked by a great enemy in the form of a sow. for a fortnight the moon sailed on safely, and grew fuller and rounder; but at the middle of the month, just when it was full, the sow attacked it, tore it out of its place, and flung it into the celestial river, where for another fortnight it was gradually extinguished, to be revived again at the beginning of the next month. that was the egyptians' curious way of accounting for the waxing and waning of the moon, and many of their other ideas were just as quaint as this. i do not mean to say anything of what they believed about god, for they had so many gods, and believed such strange things about them, that it would only confuse you if i tried to make you understand it all. but the most important thing in all the egyptian religion was the belief in heaven, and in the life which people lived there after their life on earth was ended. no other nation of these old times ever believed so firmly as did the egyptians that men were immortal, and did not cease to be when they died, but only began a new life, which might be either happy or miserable, according to the way in which they had lived on earth. they had a lot of different beliefs about the life after death, some of them rather confusing, and difficult to understand; but i shall tell you only the main things and the simplest things which they believed. they said, then, that very long ago, when the world was young, there was a great and good king called osiris, who reigned over egypt, and was very good to his subjects, teaching them all kinds of useful knowledge. but osiris had a wicked brother named set, who hated him, and was jealous of him. one day set invited osiris to a supper, at which he had gathered a number of his friends who were in the plot with him. when they were all feasting gaily, he produced a beautiful chest, and offered to give it to the man who fitted it. one after another they lay down in the chest, but it fitted none of them. then at last osiris lay down in it, and as soon as he was inside, his wicked brother and the other plotters fastened the lid down upon him, and threw the chest into the nile. it was carried away by the river, and at last was washed ashore, with the dead body of the good king still in it. but isis, wife of osiris, sought for her husband everywhere, and at last she found the chest with his body. while she was weeping over it the wicked set came upon her, tore his brother's body to pieces, and scattered the fragments far and wide; but the faithful isis traced them all, and buried them wherever she found them. now, isis had a son named horus, and when he grew to manhood he challenged set, fought with him, and defeated him. then the gods all assembled, and gave judgment that osiris was in the right, and set in the wrong. they raised osiris up from the dead, made him a god, and appointed him to be judge of all men after death. and then, not all at once, but gradually, the egyptians came to believe that because osiris died, and rose again from the dead, and lived for ever after death, therefore all those men who believed in osiris would live again after death, and dwell for ever with osiris. you see that in some respects the story is strangely like that of the death and resurrection of jesus christ. well, then, they supposed that, when a man died on earth, after his body was mummified and laid in its tomb, his soul went on to the gates of the palace of osiris in the other world, where was the hall of truth, in which souls were judged. the soul had to know the magic names of the gates before it could even enter the hall; but as soon as these names were spoken the gates opened, and the soul went in. within the hall there stood a great pair of scales, and beside the scales stood a god, ready to mark down the result of the judgment; while all round the hall sat forty-two terrible creatures, who had authority to punish particular sins. the soul had to make confession to these avengers of sin that he had not been guilty of the sins which they had power to punish; then, when he had made his confession, his heart was taken, and weighed in the scales against a feather, which was the egyptian sign for truth. if it was not of the right weight, the man was false, and his heart was thrown to a dreadful monster, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, which sat behind the balances, and devoured the hearts of the unjust; but if it was right, then horus, the son of osiris, took the man by the hand, and led him into the presence of osiris the judge, and he was pronounced just, and admitted to heaven. but what was heaven? well, the egyptians had several different ideas about it. one rather pretty one was that the souls which were pronounced just were taken up into the sky, and there became stars, shining down for ever upon the world. another was that they were permitted to enter the boat, in which, as i told you, the sun sails round the world day by day, and to keep company with the sun on his unending voyage. but the idea that most believed in and loved was that somewhere away in a mysterious land to the west, there lay a wonderful and beautiful country, called the field of bulrushes. there the corn grew three and a half yards high, and the ears of corn were a yard long. through the fields ran lovely canals, full of fish, and bordered with reeds and bulrushes. when the soul had passed the judgment hall, it came, by strange, hard roads, and through great dangers, to this beautiful country. and there the dead man, dead now no more, but living for ever, spent his time in endless peace and happiness, sowing and reaping, paddling in his canoe along the canals, or resting and playing draughts in the evening under the sycamore-trees. now, i suppose that all this seemed quite a happy sort of heaven to most of the common people, who had been accustomed all their days to hard work and harder fare; but by-and-by the great nobles came to think that a heaven of this sort was not quite good enough for them. they had never done any work on earth; why should they have to do any in heaven? so they thought that they would find out a way of taking their slaves with them into the other world. i fancy that at first they actually tried to take them by killing the slaves at their master's grave. when the funeral of a great man took place, some of his servants would be killed beside the tomb, so that they might go with their lord into heaven, and work for him there, as they had worked for him on earth. but the egyptians were always a gentle, kind-hearted people, and they quickly grew disgusted with the idea of such cruelty, so they found another way out of the difficulty. they got numbers of little clay figures made in the form of servants--one with a hoe on his shoulder, another with a basket in his hand, and so on. they called these little figures "answerers," and when a man was buried, they buried a lot of these clay servants along with him, so that, when he reached heaven, and was summoned to do work in the field of bulrushes, the answerers would rise up and answer for him, and take the task off his shoulders. so, along with the mummies of the dead egyptians, there is often found quite a number of these tiny figures, all ready to make heaven easy for their master when he gets there. they have sometimes a little verse written upon them, to tell the answerer what he has got to do in the other world. it runs like this: "oh, thou answerer, when i am called, and when i am asked to do any kind of work that is done in heaven, and am required at any time to cause the field to flourish, or to convey the sand from east to west, thou shalt say, 'here am i.'" it all seems rather a curious idea of heaven, does it not? and most curious of all is the idea of dodging work in the other world by carrying a bundle of china dolls to heaven with you. but, even if we think that very ridiculous, we need not forget that the egyptians had a wonderfully clear and sure grasp of the fact that it is a man's character in this world which will make him either happy or unhappy in the next, and that evil-doing, even if it escapes punishment in this life, is a thing that god will surely punish at last. remember that these men of old, wonderfully wise and strong as they were in many ways, were still the children of the time when the world was young; like children, forming many false and even ridiculous ideas about things they could not understand; like children, too, reaching out their groping hands through the darkness to a father whose love they felt, though they could not explain his ways. we need not wonder if at times they made mistakes, and went far astray. we may wonder far more at the way in which he taught them so many true and noble things and thoughts, never leaving himself without a witness even in those days of long ago. the end. printed at the complete press west norwood london 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. lord's lectures beacon lights of history, volume i the old pagan civilizations. by john lord, ll.d., author of "the old roman world," "modern europe," etc., etc. to the memory of mary porter lord, whose friendship and appreciation as a devoted wife encouraged me to a long life of historical labors, this work is gratefully and affectionately dedicated by the author. publishers' note. in preparing a new edition of dr. lord's great work, the "beacon lights of history," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of lectures and volumes. dr. lord began with his volume on classic "antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return to the remoter times of "old pagan civilizations" (reaching back to assyria and egypt) and the "jewish heroes and prophets." these issued, he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it down to modern days. the "old pagan civilizations," of course, stretch thousands of years before the hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the first. then follows the volume on "jewish heroes and prophets," ending with st. paul and the christian era. after this volume, which in any position, dealing with the unique race of the jews, must stand by itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the pagan centuries, in "ancient achievements" and "imperial antiquity," the latter coming down to the fall of rome in the fourth century a.d., which ends the era of "antiquity" and begins the "middle ages." new york, september 15, 1902. author's preface. it has been my object in these lectures to give the substance of accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a volume, i have sought to present what is true rather than what is new. although most of these lectures have been delivered, in some form, during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the literary institutions of this country, i have carefully revised them within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light shed on the topics and times of which they treat. the revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the bible, under the stimulus of recent oriental travels and investigations, not only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a series of lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with jewish history. of course i have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these biblical studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned scholars; but i have sought to interest intelligent christians by a continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible knowledge bearing on the main subjects. if i have persisted in adhering to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand years, i have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on important points by the great critics of the progressive schools. i have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the institutions which have grown out of them, have not, i trust, been uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made. inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and movements which we call civilization centres in no slight degree in the men who were identified with them, i have endeavored to give a faithful picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or men of action. and that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been their defects; since it is for _services_ that most great men are ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. these services, certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which i have aspired to show. john lord. vol. i. the old pagan civilizations. contents. ancient religions: egyptian, assyrian, babylonian, and persian. ancient religions christianity not progressive jewish monotheism religion of egypt its great antiquity its essential features complexity of egyptian polytheism egyptian deities the worship of the sun the priestly caste of egypt power of the priests future rewards and punishments morals of the egyptians functions of the priests egyptian ritual of worship transmigration of souls animal worship effect of egyptian polytheism on the jews assyrian deities phoenician deities worship of the sun oblations and sacrifices idolatry the sequence of polytheism religion of the persians character of the early iranians comparative purity of the persian religion zoroaster magism zend-avesta dualism authorities religions of india. brahmanism and buddhism. religions of india antiquity of brahmanism sanskrit literature the aryan races original religion of the aryans aryan migrations the vedas ancient deities of india laws of menu hindu pantheism corruption of brahmanism the brahmanical caste character of the brahmans rise of buddhism gautama experiences of gautama travels of buddha his religious system spread of his doctrine buddhism a reaction against brahmanism nirvana gloominess of buddhism buddhism as a reform of morals sayings of siddârtha his rules failure of buddhism in india authorities religion of the greeks and romans. classic mythology. religion of the greeks and romans greek myths greek priests greek divinities greek polytheism greek mythology adoption of oriental fables greek deities the creation of poets peculiarities of the greek gods the olympian deities the minor deities the greeks indifferent to a future state augustine view of heathen deities artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine temple of zeus in olympia greek festivals no sacred books among the greeks a religion without deities roman divinities peculiarities of roman worship ritualism and hypocrisy character of the roman authorities confucius. sage and moralist. early condition of china youth of confucius his public life his reforms his fame his wanderings his old age his writings his philosophy his definition of a superior man his ethics his views of government his veneration for antiquity his beautiful character his encouragement of learning his character as statesman his exaltation of filial piety his exaltation of friendship the supremacy of the state necessity of good men in office peaceful policy of confucius veneration for his writings his posthumous influence lao-tse authorities ancient philosophy. seeking after truth. intellectual superiority of the greeks early progress of philosophy the greek philosophy the ionian sophoi thales and his principles anaximenes diogenes of apollonia heraclitus of ephesus anaxagoras anaximander pythagoras and his school xenophanes zeno of elea empedocles and the eleatics loftiness of the greek philosopher progress of scepticism the sophists socrates his exposure of error socrates as moralist the method of socrates his services to philosophy his disciples plato ideas of plato archer butler on plato aristotle his services the syllogism the epicureans sir james mackintosh on epicurus the stoics zeno principles of the stoical philosophy philosophy among the romans cicero epictetus authorities socrates. greek philosophy. mission of socrates era of his birth; view of his times his personal appearance and peculiarities his lofty moral character his sarcasm and ridicule of opponents the sophists neglect of his family his friendship with distinguished people his philosophic method his questions and definitions his contempt of theories imperfection of contemporaneous physical science the ionian philosophers socrates bases truth on consciousness uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day superiority of moral truth happiness, virtue, knowledge,--the socratic trinity the "daemon" of socrates his idea of god and immortality socrates a witness and agent of god socrates compared with buddha and marcus aurelius his resemblance to christ in life and teachings unjust charges of his enemies his unpopularity his trial and defence his audacity his condemnation the dignity of his last hours his easy death tardy repentance of the athenians; statue by lysippus posthumous influence authorities phidias. greek art. general popular interest in art principles on which it is based phidias taken merely as a text not much known of his personal history his most famous statues; minerva and olympian jove his peculiar excellences as a sculptor definitions of the word "art" its representation of ideas of beauty and grace the glory and dignity of art the connection of plastic with literary art architecture, the first expression of art peculiarities of egyptian and assyrian architecture ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces general features of grecian architecture the doric, ionic, and corinthian orders simplicity and beauty of their proportions... the horizontal lines of greek and the vertical lines of gothic architecture assyrian, egyptian, and indian sculpture superiority of greek sculpture ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and distinguished men the great sculptors of antiquity their ideal excellence antiquity of painting in babylon and egypt its gradual development in greece famous grecian painters decline of art among the romans art as seen in literature literature not permanent without art artists as a class art a refining influence rather than a moral power authorities literary genius. the greek and roman classics. richness of greek classic poetry homer greek lyrical poetry pindar dramatic poetry aeschylus, sophocles, and euripides greek comedy: aristophanes roman poetry naevius, plautus, terence roman epic poetry: virgil lyrical poetry: horace, catullus didactic poetry: lucretius elegiac poetry: ovid, tibullus satire: horace, martial, juvenal perfection of greek prose writers history: herodotus thucydides, xenophon roman historians julius caesar livy tacitus orators pericles demosthenes aeschines cicero learned men: varro seneca quintilian lucian authorities list of illustrations. volume i. agapè, or love feast among the early christians _frontispiece_ _after the painting by j.a. mazerolle_. procession of the sacred bull apis-osiris _after the painting by e.f. bridgman_. driving sacrificial victims into the fiery mouth of baal _after the painting by henri motte_. apollo belvedere _from a photograph of the statue in the vatican, rome._ confucian temple, forbidden city, pekin _from a photograph_. the school of plato _after the painting by o. knille_. socrates instructing alcibiades _after the painting by h.f. schopin_. socrates _from the bust in the national museum, naples_. pericles and aspasia in the studio of phidias _after the painting by hector le roux_. zeuxis choosing models from among the beauties of kroton for his picture of helen _after the painting by e. pagliano_. homer _from the bust in the national museum, naples_. demosthenes _from the statue in the vatican, rome_. ancient religions: egyptian, assyrian, babylonian, and persian. beacon lights of history. ancient religions: egyptian, assyrian, babylonian, and persian. it is my object in this book on the old pagan civilizations to present the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within the limits of these volumes. the practical end which i have in view is to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times. the first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions, and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every period of the world. and, necessarily, considering what is the object in religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, how far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of deity, of the soul, and of immortality? how far did they arrive at lofty and immutable principles of morality? how far did religion, such as was taught, practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation, or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and endless life? and how did the various religions compare with what we believe to be the true religion--christianity--in its pure and ennobling truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and developing character? i assume that there is no such thing as a progressive christianity, except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by jesus the christ, but that they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. i assume also that christianity has elements which are not to be found in any other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and sublime truths. i know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain that improvements on the christian system are both possible and probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which christ and his apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion, when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. this notion i repudiate. i believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect, true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with christianity; and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the christian standard, and not christianity by any other system. the oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is probably the pure monotheism held by the jews. some nations have claimed a higher antiquity for their religion--like the egyptians and chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the hebrews show to have been communicated to abraham, and to earlier men of god treated of in those scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full credence. we are in doubt about them. the origin of religions is enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. authentic history does not go back far enough to settle this point. the primitive religion of mankind i believe to have been revealed to inspired men, who, like shem, walked with god. adam, in paradise, knew who god was, for he heard his voice; and so did enoch and noah, and, more clearly than all, abraham. they believed in a personal god, maker of heaven and earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world which he made. it is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the hebrew patriarchs, as handed down to his children by abraham, over that of all other founders of ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe, supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock, especially in its christian development, is superior to all others. this sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the hebrew race, in all their wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved. but it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the jews in this connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and since everybody has access to the bible, the earlier portions of which give the true account not only of the hebrews and their special progenitor abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and most intelligent persons are familiar with its details. i begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with which the jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more or less influenced. and whether these religions were, as i think, themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man, or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out of an original worship of the powers of nature, of ghosts of ancestral heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this background of history in its effects upon modern times, through judaism and christianity. * * * * * the first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of ancient egypt. but i can show only the main features and characteristics of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and their perplexing names as much as possible. i wish to present what is ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure. the religion of egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with certainty. we know that it existed before abraham, and with but few changes, for at least two thousand years. mariette places the era of the first egyptian dynasty under menes at 5004 b.c. it is supposed that the earliest form of the egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. what the esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the indian vedas and the persian zend-avesta. herodotus affirms that he knew the mysteries, but he did not reveal them. but monotheism was lost sight of in egypt at an earlier period than the beginning of authentic history. it is the fate of all institutions to become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. the reason of this is not difficult to explain. the bible and human experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. hence, before abraham's visit to egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the interest of the priesthood to perpetuate. the egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of nature,--the sun, the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a mysterious influence over human destiny. there was doubtless an indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe, extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could be seen or known. to these powers of nature the egyptians gave names, and made them divinities. the egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. what it lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. wilkinson enumerates seventy-three principal divinities, and birch sixty-three; but there were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and presiding over different localities. every town had its guardian deity, to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. the more complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services for the offerings and propitiations. of these egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great cities different deities were worshipped. these were ammon--the concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the jupiter of the romans), whose sacred city was thebes. at a later date this god was identified with ammon ra, the physical sun. ra was the sun-god, especially worshipped at heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat. kneph was the spirit of god moving over the face of the waters, whose principal seat of worship was in upper egypt. phtha was a sort of artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city was memphis. khem was the generative principle presiding over the vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. these deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and form,--a process of divine incarnation. but the most popular deity was osiris. his image is found standing on the oldest monument, a form of ra, the light of the lower world, and king and judge of hades. his worship was universal throughout egypt, but his chief temples were at abydos and philae. he was regarded as mild, beneficent, and good. in opposition to him were set, malignant and evil, and bes, the god of death. isis, the wife and sister of osiris, was a sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of nature. khons was the moon god. maut, the consort of ammon, represented nature. sati, the wife of kneph, bore a resemblance to juno. nut was the goddess of the firmament; ma was the goddess of truth; horus was the mediator between creation and destruction. but in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the egyptian worship centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most powerful and brilliant of the forces of nature. among all the ancient pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names, whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for the people. to these temples were erected, statues raised, and sacrifices made. no ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of its gods, than were the egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in india. we see, chiefly in india and egypt, the power of caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in proportion to the belief in a future state. take away the belief in future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not much religion left. there may be philosophy and morality, but not religion, which is based on the fear and love of god, and the destiny of the soul after death. saint augustine, in his "city of god," his greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most important thing which can occupy the mind of man. we cannot then utterly despise the religion of egypt, in spite of the absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future state of rewards and punishments "according to the deeds done in the body." on this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath. the idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in the soul. no ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable morality with more force than confucius, buddha, and epictetus. who in any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty, benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? with the discharge of these duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept into theological dogmas and speculations. believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient egyptians were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. all writers admit their industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty to priests and rulers. hence there was permanence to their institutions, for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. they were not warlike, although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings. generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific. military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar sins of egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national industries and resources. the occupation of the people was in agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and ornamental jewelry. their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but temples and mausoleums. even the pyramids may have been built to preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of the people. the priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and ceremonies to the various gods of the egyptians, were extremely numerous. they held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes. they were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean. they washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and wore no beard. they practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme antiquity, existing in egypt two thousand four hundred years before christ, and at least four hundred years before abraham, and has been found among primitive peoples all over the world. they did not make a show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the brahmans. they were married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish nor beans, which disturbed digestion. the son of a priest was generally a priest also. there were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not more so than in the roman catholic church. the high-priest was a great dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. the king himself was a priest. the egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals, and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology. "religious observances," says freeman clarke, "were so numerous and so imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation." there were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation. the land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body of priests. the authorities on egyptian history, especially wilkinson, speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices, processions, and funerals. their life was so full of minute duties and restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as well as influence was austere and sacerdotal. one of the most distinctive features of the egyptian religion was the idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. osiris was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be judged. if evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies. hence it was the great object of the egyptians to preserve their mortal bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. it is difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in egypt. if a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. the embalmed bodies of kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic monuments. the most repulsive thing in the egyptian religion was animal-worship. to each deity some animal was sacred. thus apis, the sacred bull of memphis, was the representative of osiris; the cow was sacred to isis, and to athor her mother. sheep were sacred to kneph, as well as the asp. hawks were sacred to ra; lions were emblems of horus, wolves of anubis, hippopotami of set. each town was jealous of the honor of its special favorites among the gods. "the worst form of this animal worship," says rawlinson, "was the belief that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so remained until the animal's death. such were the apis bulls, of which a succession was maintained at memphis in the temple of phtha, or, according to others, of osiris. these beasts, maintained at the cost of the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge sarcophagi, while all egypt went into mourning on their decease." such was the religion of egypt as known to the jews,--a complicated polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of the spiritual despotism of the middle ages. the priests of egypt ruled by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading superstition. how far they taught that the various objects of worship were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. but the priests believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and made its welfare paramount over all other interests. this recognition doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make them religious, despite their false and degraded views of god, and their disgusting superstitions. the jews could not have lived in egypt four hundred years without being influenced by the popular belief. hence in the wilderness, and in the days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy submission to the rule of priests. in one very important thing, however, the jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by moses of this belief that made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. it is seemingly ignored in the old testament, and hence many have been led to suppose that the jews did not believe in it. certainly the most cultivated and aristocratic sect--the sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the pharisees held to it. they, however, were products of a later age, and had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in their captivities, which moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls that escaped from egypt. * * * * * of the other religions with which the jews came in contact, and which more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any, have not come down to us. our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments, on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of nature, and the kings and priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. from these we learn or infer that among the assyrians, babylonians, and phoenicians religion was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a system as prevailed in egypt. only about twenty deities are alluded to in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers, to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the oversight of this world. they presided over cities and the elements of nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. some abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the earth. of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of nineveh. in the very earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was a development as men became wicked and sensual. the knowledge of the one god was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as lord of lords. this deity in assyria was asshur. he is recognized by most authorities as asshur, a son of shem and grandson of noah, who was probably the hero and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the assyrian empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified by his warlike descendants. assyria was the oldest of the great empires, occupying mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the tigris and euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east. its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of babylonia or chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although after many wars freed from the subjection of assyria, the institutions of babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as those of the elder empire. in babylonia the chief god was called el, or il. in babylon, although bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special temple for his worship. the assyrian asshur placed kings upon their thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. in speaking of him it was "asshur, my lord." he was also called "king of kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the "father of the gods." his position in the celestial hierarchy corresponds with the zeus of the greeks, and with the jupiter of the romans. he was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of ubiquity and eternity. this emblem was also the accompaniment of assyrian royalty. these assyrian and babylonian deities had a direct influence on the jews in later centuries, because traders on the tigris pushed their adventurous expeditions from the head of the persian gulf, either around the great peninsula of arabia, or by land across the deserts, and settled in canaan, calling themselves phoenicians; and it was from the descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the children of israel, returning from egypt, received the most pertinacious influences of idolatrous corruption. in phoenicia the chief deity was also called bel, or baal, meaning "lord," the epithet of the one divine being who rules the world, or the lord of heaven. the deity of the egyptian pantheon, with whom baal most nearly corresponds, was ammon, addressed as the supreme god. ranking after el in babylon, asshur in assyria, and baal in phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme god,--we notice among these mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called anu, bel, and hea. anu, the primordial chaos; hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as rawlinson thinks, "the original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding in the main with the classical pluto, jupiter, and neptune, who divided between them the dominion over the visible creation." the god bel, in the pantheon of the babylonians and assyrians, is the god of gods, and father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. his title expresses dominion. in succession to the gods of this first trio,--anu, bel, and hea,--was another trio, named siu, shamas, and vul, representing the moon, the sun, and the atmosphere. "in assyria and babylon the moon-god took precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the inhabitants of those hot countries than the day." hence, siu was the more popular deity; but shamas, the sun, as having most direct reference to physical nature, "the lord of fire," "the ruler of the day," was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king triumphant over enemies. the worship of this deity was universal, and the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. vul, the third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the assyrian legends recognize. he corresponds with the jupiter tonans of the romans,--"the prince of the power of the air," destroyer of crops, the scatterer of the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, "the lord of fecundity," he was beneficent as well as destructive. all these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the greek mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or pursuing them with their anger. and here one cannot resist the impression that the earliest forms of the greek mythology were derived from the babylonians and phoenicians, and that the greek poets, availing themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion of greece. it is a mooted question whether the greek civilization is chiefly derived from egypt, or from assyria and phoenicia,--probably more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of the aryan race east of the caspian sea. all these ancient monarchies had run out and were old when the greeks began their settlements and conquests. there was still another and inferior class of deities among the assyrians and babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed to have great influence on human affairs. these deities were the planets under different names. the early study of astronomy among the dwellers on the plains of babylon and in mesopotamia gave an astral feature to their religion which was not prominent in egypt. these astral deities were nin, or bar (the saturn of the romans); and merodach (jupiter), the august god, "the eldest son of heaven," the lord of battles. this was the favorite god of nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor were conferred upon him, as "king of heaven and earth," the "lord of all beings," etc. nergal (mars) was a war god, his name signifying "the great hero," "the king of battles." he goes before kings in their military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. his emblem is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces. ista (venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. nebo (mercury) had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who "teaches and instructs." there were other deities in the assyrian and babylonian pantheon whom i need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in human affairs, like the inferior deities of the romans, presiding over dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like. the phoenicians, like the assyrians, had their goddesses. astoreth, or astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as baal did the male. it was originally a name for the energy of god, on a par with baal. in one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly she was the representative of the female principle in nature, and was connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of aphrodite, or venus. tanith also was a noted female deity, and was worshipped at carthage and cyprus by the phoenician settlers. the name is associated, according to gesenius, with the egyptian goddess nut, and with the grecian artemis the huntress. an important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they do not uniformly represent the same power. thus baal, the phoenician sun-god, was made by the greeks and romans equivalent to zeus, or jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. apollo, the sun-god of the greeks, was not so powerful as zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in assyria and phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. in babylonia, shamas was a sun-god as well as bel; and bel again was the god of the heavens, like zeus. while zeus was the supreme deity in the greek mythology, rather than apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and the most commonly worshipped deity of all the oriental nations, as being the most powerful force in nature. behind the sun, however, there was supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who were his votaries, and called the "father of all the gods," "the ancient of days," reigning supreme over them all. this indefinite conception of the jehovah of the hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of the pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs, who were priests as well as kings. the most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of antiquity, whether among egyptians, or assyrians, or babylonians, or phoenicians, or greeks, or romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices. it was even a peculiarity of the old jewish religion, as well as that of china and india. these oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his supposed wrath or vengeance. the oblations were usually in the form of wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in greece. the sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather that which was dearest to them. sometimes, especially in phoenicia, human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity of polytheism. but the instincts of humanity generally kept men from rites so revolting. christianity, as one of its distinguishing features, abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless. the sacrifices pleasing to god are a broken spirit, as revealed to david and isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of jewish worship, and still more to paul and peter when the new dispensation was fully declared. the only sacrifice which christ enjoined was self-sacrifice, supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme god, and to his children: as the christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience to his father's will, that the world might be saved by his own self-sacrifice. with sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if we except that of persia in the time of zoroaster, there was need of an officiating priesthood. the priests in all countries sought to gain power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. the priestly caste became a terrible power in egypt and india, where the people, it would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of their souls. in china, where there was scarcely any religion at all, this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and grace rather than a spiritual god. sacerdotalism entered into christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power, and with great force ruled the christian world in times of ignorance and superstition. it is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference, showing how few worship god in spirit and in truth even in christian countries. yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition. among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun, moon, and stars, and the elements of nature, like fire, water, and air. but the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in india and africa at the present day. this is the lowest form of religion, and the most repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages, until the fulness of time arrived when god sent reformers among the debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being utterly lost. it is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated, as known to the jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated, have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they nourished. mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, christianity in some form has come in and dethroned them forever. * * * * * there was one form of religion with which the jews came in contact which was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of persia, the loftiest form of all pagan beliefs. the persians were an important branch of the iranian family. "the iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying between the suliman mountains and the pamir steppe on the one hand, and the great mesopotamian valley on the other." it was a region of great extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters piercingly cold. a great part of this region is an arid and frightful desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. in this country the iranians settled at a very early period, probably 2500 b.c., about the time the hindus emigrated from central asia to the banks of the indus. both iranians and hindus belonged to the great aryan or indo-european race, whose original settlements were on the high table-lands northeast of samarkand, in the modern bokhara, watered by the oxus, or amon river. from these rugged regions east of the caspian sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the aryans emigrated to india on the southeast, to iran on the southwest, to europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language. of those who settled in iran, the persians were the most prominent,--a brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral in their conduct. they were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and gloried in their horses and cattle. they had great skill as archers and horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. they lived in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "the whole plateau of iran," says johnson, "was suggestive of the war of elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of beauty lying in close proximity." the early persians are represented as having oval faces, raised features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. such a people were extremely receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious spells. they dissolved the old material civilization of cushite and turanian origin. what passion for vast conquests! "these rugged tribes, devoted to their chiefs, led by cyrus from their herds and hunting-grounds to startle the pampered lydians with their spare diet and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition, loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who scorned toil." artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march, carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles a day. there was much that is interesting about the ancient persians. all the old authorities, especially herodotus, testify to the comparative purity of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling sterility of soil and the elements of nature, to their love of agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a powerful will. the early persians chose the bravest and most capable of their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. xenophon makes cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations, dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all hearts by a true nobility of nature. he was a reformer of barbarous methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. in short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric heroes of the middle ages. there was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion essentially different from that of assyria and egypt, with which is associated the name of zoroaster, or zarathushtra. who this extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to determine. some suppose that he did not live at all. it is most probable that he lived in bactria from 1000 to 1500 b.c.; but all about him is involved in hopeless obscurity. the zend-avesta, or the sacred books of the persians, are mostly hymns, prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom ormazd was regarded as supreme. these poems were first made known to european scholars by anquetil du perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of menu were translated by sir william jones. what we know about the religion of persia is chiefly derived from the zend-avesta. _zend_ is the interpretation of the avesta. the oldest part of these poems is called the gâthâs, supposed to have been composed by zoroaster about the time of moses. as all information about zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, i proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to the iranians, according to dr. martin haug, the great authority on this subject. its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles; one good, the other evil. both principles were real persons, possessed of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity in perpetual contest. the good power was called ahura-mazda, and the evil power was called angro-mainyus. ahura-mazda means the "much-knowing spirit," or the all-wise, the all-bountiful, who stood at the head of all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man and everlasting happiness. angro-mainyus means the black or dark intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical. he had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of evil on mankind. ahura-mazda had no control over this power of evil; all he could do was to baffle him. these two deities who divided the universe between them had each subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels and demons. neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early iranians under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and magism, or the worship of the elements of nature, became general. the elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water. personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. but the most common form of worship was that of fire, in mithra, the genius of light, early identified with the sun. hence, practically, the supreme god of the persians was the same that was worshipped in assyria and egypt and india,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven images of him. with the sun was associated a supreme power that presided over the universe, benignant and eternal. fire itself in its pure universality was more to the iranians than any form. "from the sun," says the avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." to fire, the persian kings addressed their prayers. fire, or the sun, was in the early times a symbol of the supreme power, rather than the power itself, since the sun was created by ahura-mazda (ormazd). it was to him that zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the gâthâs. "i worship," said he, "the creator of all things, ahura-mazda, full of light.... teach thou me, ahura-mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth, whereby the world first arose." again, from the khorda-avesta we read: "in the name of god, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the name of ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom alone is derived rule." from these and other passages we infer that the religion of the iranians was monotheistic. and yet the sun also was worshipped under the name of mithra. says zoroaster: "i invoke mithra, the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of ormazd." it would seem from this that the sun was identified with the supreme being. there was no other power than the sun which was worshipped. there was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism, such as existed in egypt. the iranians believed in one supreme, eternal god, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was created by him. this confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent being makes the iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of egypt and babylon, it is much higher and purer. we see in it no degrading rites, no offensive sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the hebrews. in the zend-avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers and praises and supplication to a supreme being. in the vedas--the hindu books--the powers of nature are gods; in the avesta they are spirits, or servants of the supreme. "the main difference between the vedic and avestan religions is that in the latter the vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. ahura-mazda (ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces indra, the lightning-god. in iran there grew up, what india never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose, ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its eternal triumph." [1] [footnote 1: samuel johnson's religion of persia.] the loftiness which modern scholars like haug, lenormant, and spiegel see in the zend-avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of these sacred writings, attributable to zoroaster, called the gâthâs. but in the course of time the avesta was subjected to many additions and interpretations, called the zend, which show degeneracy. a world of myth and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. the old bactrian tongue in which the avesta was composed became practically a dead language. there entered into the avesta old chaldaean traditions. it would be strange if the pure faith of zoroaster should not be corrupted after persia had conquered babylon, and even after its alliance with media, where the magi had great reputation for knowledge. and yet even with the corrupting influence of the superstitions of babylon, to say nothing of media, the persian conquerors did not wholly forget the god of their fathers in their old bactrian home. and it is probable that one reason why cyrus and darius treated the jews with so much kindness and generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the jewish religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered babylonians. it is not unreasonable to suppose that both the persians and jews worshipped substantially the one god who made the heaven and the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the persian religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful agent in nature; and it is considered by many that from the persians the jews received, during their captivity, their ideas concerning a personal devil, or power of evil, of which no hint appears in the law or the earlier prophets. it would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism which modern scholars see behind the dualism of persia, as an elemental principle of the old religion of iran, that the persians were the noblest people of pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality known in the ancient world. virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. but when the persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on the fall of babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith became obscured. had it been the will of providence that the greeks should have contended with the persians under the leadership of cyrus,--the greatest oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than under xerxes, then even an alexander might have been baffled. the great mistake of the persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline and national heroism. the consequence was a panic, which would not have taken place under cyrus, whenever they met the greeks in battle. it was a panic which dispersed the persian hosts in the fatal battle of arbela, and made alexander the master of western asia. but degenerate as the persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in artaxerxes ii. and chosroes the romans found, in their declining glories, their most formidable enemies. though the brightness of the old religion of zoroaster ceased to shine after the persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of the magi, yet it is the only oriental religion which entered into christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early monasticism to the priests of india. christianity had a hard battle with gnosticism and manichaeism,--both of persian origin,--and did not come out unscathed. no grecian system of philosophy, except platonism, entered into the christian system so influentially as the disastrous manichaean heresy, which augustine combated. the splendid mythology of the greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of egypt, assyria, and phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but persian speculations remained. even origen, the greatest scholar of christian antiquity, was tainted with them. and the mighty myths of the origin of evil, which perplexed zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both christians and the disciples of the bactrian sage. * * * * * authorities. rawlinson's egypt and babylon; history of babylonia, by a.h. sayce; smith's dictionary of the bible; rawlinson's herodotus; george smith's history of babylonia; lenormant's manuel d'histoire ancienne; layard's nineveh and babylon; journal of royal asiatic society; heeren's asiatic nations; dr. pusey's lectures on daniel; birch's egypt from the earliest times; brugsch's history of egypt; records of the past; rawlinson's history of ancient egypt; wilkinson's ancient egyptians; sayce's ancient empires of the east; rawlinson's religions of the ancient world; james freeman clarke's ten great religions; religion of ancient egypt, by p. le page renouf; moffat's comparative history of religions; bunsen's egypt's place in history; persia, from the earliest period, by w. s. w. vaux; johnson's oriental religions; haug's essays; spiegel's avesta. the above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on ancient religions is very large. religions of india. brahmanism and buddhism. that form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most interest is buddhism. an inquiry into its characteristics is especially interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to embrace the doctrines which were taught by buddha, although his religion has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost sight of. the same may be said of the doctrines of confucius. the religions of ancient egypt, assyria, and greece have utterly passed away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search for a supernatural ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual. buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the hindus, although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the earliest brahmanical ascendency. but before we can appreciate his work and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as it is impossible to present the protestant reformation without first considering mediaeval catholicism before the time of luther. it was the object of buddha to break the yoke of the brahmans, and to release his countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially subverting ancient religious ideas. he was a moralist and reformer, rather than the founder of a religion. brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. it was flourishing in india at a period before history was written. it was coeval with the religion of egypt in the time of abraham, and perhaps at a still earlier date. but of its earliest form and extent we know nothing, except from the sacred poems of the hindus called the vedas, written in sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before christ,--for even the date of the earliest of the vedas is unknown. fifty years ago we could not have understood the ancient religions of india. but sir william jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an english judge in india, prepared the way for the study of sanskrit, the literary language of ancient india, by the translation and publication of the laws of menu. he was followed in his labors by the schlegels of germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. within fifty years this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even as egyptologists have revealed something of ancient egypt by interpreting the hieroglyphics; and chaldaean investigators have found stores of knowledge in the babylonian bricks. the sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those poems called vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws and religion of the hindus. it is poetry, not history, which makes this revelation, for the hindus have no history farther back than five or six hundred years before christ. it is from homer and hesiod that we get an idea of the gods of greece, not from herodotus or xenophon. from comparative philology, a new science, of which prof. max müller is one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various european languages, as well as of the latin and greek, are substantially the same as those of the sanskrit spoken by the hindus thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the hindus were a people of like remote origin with the greeks, the italic races (romans, italians, french), the slavic races (russian, polish, bohemian), the teutonic races of england and the continent, and the keltic races. these are hence alike called the indo-european races; and as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the zend-avesta, we infer that the ancient persians, or inhabitants of iran, belonged to the same great aryan race. the original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high table-lands of central asia, in or near bactria, east of the caspian sea, and north and west of the himalaya mountains. this country was so cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was difficult to support life. but the people, inured to hardship and privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising. it is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists, which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their various modifications in different living languages, to see how the lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple aryan roots. and there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! by this process, then, we learn that the aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance in civilization. they lived in houses which were roofed, which had windows and doors. their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold climates. their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. they used yokes, axes, and ploughs. they wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. they had clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land. their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural affections. polygamy was unknown among them. they had no established sacerdotal priesthood. they worshipped the powers of nature, especially fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their dreary land. authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others again pantheistic. most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests, who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their influence. whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to have been a pure theism, directly revealed by god,--which is my own conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the sun and moon and planets. i believe this to have been a corruption of original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in the religious sense of primitive man. in all the ancient nations the sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence of fertility to the earth. the emblem of the sun was fire, and hence fire was deified, especially among the hindus, under the name of agni,--the latin _ignis_. fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations, supposed to be the _animus mundi_. in egypt, as we have seen, osiris, the principal deity, was a form of ra, the sun-god. in assyria, asshur, the substitute for ra, was the supreme deity. in india we find mitra, and in persia mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as helios was among the greeks, and phoebus apollo among the romans. the sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the highest places in the pagan pantheon. it is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the hindus, persians, greeks, romans, kelts, teutons, and slavs, in their hard and sterile home in central asia, was a worship of the powers of nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the vedas representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and intelligence--god--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and sacrifices were devoutly offered. freeman clarke quotes from müller's "ancient sanskrit literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of god is most distinctly recognized:-"in the beginning there arose the source of golden light. he was the only lord of all that is. he established the earth and sky. who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? it is he who giveth life, who giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was established, and the earth created." but if the supreme god whom we adore was recognized by this ancient people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of his power, so that rawlinson thinks[2] that when the aryan race separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call the indo-european group of races, there was no conception of a single supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the assyrians and egyptians. [footnote 2: religions of the ancient world, p. 105.] as to these aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed the himalaya mountains, and settled on the banks of the indus, but probably it was at least two thousand years before christ. northern india had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval home. india was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate and a sunny sky. these aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal inhabitants, who were chiefly mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading vassalage. the conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes of indian caste. it was some time after the settlement of the aryans on the banks of the indus and the ganges before the vedas were composed by the poets, who as usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in persia and greece. these poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "there is no recognition," says monier williams, "of a supreme god disconnected with the worship of nature." there was a vague and indefinite worship of the infinite under various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds, the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified, and seemed to be instinct with life and power. god was in all things, and all things in god; but there was no idea of providential agency or of personality. in the vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only thirty-three. the chief of these were varuna, the sky; mitra, the sun; and indra, the storm: after these, agni, fire; and soma, the moon. the worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer, praise, and offerings. there were no temples and no imposing sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "the prayers and praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity addressed," [3] and when the customary offerings had been made, the worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection, happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin, peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. the offerings to the gods were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice. nor did these early hindus take much thought of a future life. there is nothing in the rig-veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[4], although the vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "he who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he goes to the gods[5].... where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, o soma! ... where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me immortal." [footnote 3: rawlinson, p. 121.] [footnote 4: wilson: rig-veda, vol. iii. p. 170.] [footnote 5: müller: chips from a german workshop, vol. i. p. 46.] in the oldest vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness, without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed so prominent a part of the religion of india at a later period. four hundred years after the rig-veda was composed we come to the brahmanic age, when the laws of menu were written, when the aryans were living in the valley of the ganges, and the caste system had become national. the supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of nature, like mitra or indra, but according to menu he is brahm, or brahma,--"an eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. the seed became an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed the heaven above, and the earth beneath. from the supreme soul brahma drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness, the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great principle of the soul.... the soul is, in its substance, from brahma himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. the soul, then, is simply an emanation from brahma; but it will not return unto him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires." this is the substance of the hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of menu. it accepts god, but without personality or interference with the world's affairs,--not a god to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a mere abstraction of the mind. the theology which is thus taught in the brahmanical vedas, it would seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the part of the indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets. in the laws of menu, intended to exalt the brahmanical caste, we read, as translated by sir william jones:-"to a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the vedas, nor liberality, nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever procure felicity.... let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion; let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a donation, let him never proclaim it.... by falsehood the sacrifice becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... single is each man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... by forgiveness of injuries the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout austerity, those who best know the vedas.... bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... a faithful wife who wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of virtue.... the soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of man, ... o friend to virtue, the supreme spirit, which is the same as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing inspector of thy goodness or wickedness." such were the truths uttered on the banks of the ganges one thousand years before christ. but with these views there is an exaltation of the brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the recognition of divine qualities. "from his high birth," says menu, "a brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities." hence, great things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the vedas; he is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. a brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into the divine essence. this was the early creed of the brahman before corruption set in. and in these things we see a striking resemblance to the doctrines of buddha. had there been no corruption of brahmanism, there would have been no buddhism; for the principles of buddhism, were those of early brahmanism. but brahmanism became corrupted. like the mosaic law, under the sedulous care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome ritualism. the brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and oppressive. with the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the laws made in his favor, the brahman became intolerable to the people, who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome and minute ceremonies of worship. caste destroyed all ideas of human brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations. like the pharisees in the time of jesus, the brahmans became oppressors of the people. as in pagan egypt and in christian mediaeval europe, the priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than druidical. but the brahman, when true to the laws of menu, led in one sense a lofty life. nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments, though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices. it was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the religion of the greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an incarnated deity like the zeus of the greeks, but an infinite spirit, pervading the universe. the pantheism of the brahmans was better than the godless materialism of the chinese. it aspired to rise to a knowledge of god as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of mortal man. it made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common to all the ancient religions except the persian. "he who through knowledge or religious acts henceforth attains to immortality, shall first present his body, death, to thee." whether human sacrifices were offered in india when the vedas were composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. the oldest form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. dr. h. c. trumbull, in his work on "the blood covenant," thinks that the origin of animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood (the universal, ancient symbol of _life_) as a sign of devotion to the deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. this presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common one. yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the devoted life-offerings to the divine friend, came propitiatory rites to appease divine anger or gain divine favor. then came in the natural human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste. again, the brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual desires, like the monks of syria and upper egypt, were meditative and intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in their system of religion and philosophy. constant and profound meditation on the soul, on god, and on immortality was not without its natural results. they explored the world of metaphysical speculation. there is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or modern times, which may not be found in the brahmanical writings. "we find in the writings of these hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism, pyrrhonism, idealism. they anticipated plato, kant, and hegel. they could boast of their spinozas and their humes long before alexander dreamed of crossing the indus. from them the pythagoreans borrowed a great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food. from them aristotle learned the syllogism.... in india the human mind exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its operation, before the philosophers of greece were beginning to enter the precincts of metaphysical inquiry." this intellectual subtlety, acumen, and logical power the brahmans never lost. to-day the christian missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical tournaments, whenever the brahman condescends to put forth his powers of reasoning. brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. it sought to leave the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which according to indian metaphysics is _being_, but not _existence_. desire, anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge. but i will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which brahmanical philosophers substituted for the nature-worship taught in the earlier vedas. this proved too abstract for the people; and the brahmans, in the true spirit of modern jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. gradually piety was divorced from morality. siva and vishnu became worshipped, as well as brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier vedas. in the sixth century before christ, the corruption of society had become so flagrant under the teachings and government of the brahmans, that a reform was imperatively needed. "the pride of race had put an impassable barrier between the aryan-hindus and the conquered aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable barrier between the different classes among the aryan people themselves." the old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the vedas, had died away. a funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest people of all were the brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and a repulsive theology. the worship of nature had degenerated into the worship of impure divinities. the priests were inflated with a puerile but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste. under these circumstances buddhism arose as a protest against brahmanism. but it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary life by a reform of morals. it was effected by a prince who goes by the name of buddha,--the "enlightened,"--who was supposed by his later followers to be an incarnation of deity, miraculously conceived, and sent into the world to save men. he was nearly contemporary with confucius, although the buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into china until about two hundred years before the christian era. he is supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called sâkyas, of great reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered northern india and made a permanent settlement several hundred years before. the name by which the reformer is generally known is gautama, borrowed by the sâkyas after their settlement in india from one of the ancient vedic bard-families. the foundation of our knowledge of sâkya buddha is from a life of him by asvaghosha, in the first century of our era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed after any indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north of india. the life of buddha by asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten thousand lines. it relates the miraculous conception of the indian sage, by the descent of a spirit on his mother, maya,--a woman of great purity of mind. the child was called siddârtha, or "the perfection of all things." his father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and misery of the world. he was therefore carefully educated within the walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery and sorrow. a beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness. at length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the palace. his father took care to remove everything in his way which could suggest misery and sorrow; but a _deva_, or angel, assumed the form of an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life, weak and oppressed. this was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of his charioteer what kind of a man it was. forced to reply, the charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young, sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment. on hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy is, the time will come, in the course of nature, when this boy will be wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. he became so miserable and dejected on this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other excursions for him; but on each occasion a _deva_ contrived to appear before him in the form of some disease or misery. at last he saw a dead man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. the same painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the hard labors and privations of poor people. the more he saw of life as it was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on every side. he became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. while meditating on this sad reality beneath a flowering jambu tree, where he was seated in the profoundest contemplation, a _deva_, transformed into a religious ascetic, came to him and said, "i am a shaman. depressed and sad at the thought of age, disease, and death, i have left my home to seek some way of rescue; yet everywhere i find these evils,--all things hasten to decay. therefore i seek that happiness which is only to be found in that which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation, all thought about the world destroyed." this embodies the soul of buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal and transient. the prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit, and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw around him on every hand. so he clandestinely and secretly escapes from his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments; dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. finding a patient trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the brahmans, and repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. this was the form which piety had assumed in india from time immemorial, under the guidance of the brahmans; for siddârtha as yet is not the "enlightened,"--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of disease and death. siddârtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of saving truth. his body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near unto death. the conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of the brahmans are fundamentally wrong. he discovers that no amount of austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation. in consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which is the turning-point of his history. he resolves to quit his self-inflicted torments as of no avail. he meets a shepherd's daughter, who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable condition. the rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his strength. he renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial to his changed views and condition. siddârtha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. under the shade of the bôdhi tree he devotes himself again to religious contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. he remains a while in peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely flowers seem to pay tribute to him. he passes through successive stages of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of his previous births in different forms; of the causes of re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living, not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. he is emancipated from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach. buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of benares, converting by the way even brahmans themselves. he claims to have reached perfect wisdom. he is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. while he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a middle path between penance and pleasures, even _temperance_,---the use, but not abuse, of the good things of earth. in his first sermon he declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to get rid of self. the means to this end is to forget self in deeds of mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live in the realm of devout contemplation. the active life of buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and poor. he even allows women to enter it. he thus matures his system, which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race, and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential followers, who see in him an incarnation of the deity. thus buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld on every side. he attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow would be forgotten. he could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age, disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and regulations. it is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from india to china, from china to japan and ceylon, until eastern asia was filled with pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some eighty-five thousand existed in china alone. buddha probably had as many converts in china as confucius himself. the buddhists from time to time were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of china, in which their sacred books were destroyed; and in india the brahmans at last regained their power, and expelled buddhism from the country. in the year 845 a.d. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to return to secular life in china, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy and useless members of the community. but the policy of persecution was reversed by succeeding emperors. in the thirteenth century there were in china nearly fifty thousand buddhist temples and two hundred and thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the professed adherents of the religion. under the present dynasty the buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish. now, what has given to the religion of buddha such an extraordinary attraction for the people of eastern asia? buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. in its most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the reaction against brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as repulsive and oppressive as roman catholicism was when loaded down with ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when europe was governed by priests, when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose in their artistic beauty. from a religious and philosophical point of view, buddhism at first did not materially differ from brahmanism. the same dreamy pietism, the same belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of god and nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine essence characterized both. in both there was a certain principle of faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of the unity and personality and providence of god. the prayer of the buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer, devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. in order to be purified and fitted for nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and disease. and the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence. buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal god is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the charge of atheism. he even supposed that gods were subject to death, and must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in nirvana. nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of existence, absorption in the spirit of the universe. in the buddhist catechism nirvana is defined as the "total cessation of changes; a perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man." this theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile occidental minds; but to the speculative orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief. they make the "spirit" the immortal part of man, the "soul" being its emotional embodiment, its "spiritual body," whose unsatisfied desires cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical "body,"--a very brief and temporary incarnation. when by the progressive enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of body; so that, to quote elliott coues in olcott's "buddhist catechism," "a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences [during its various incarnations], is nirvanic." buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy religion. it is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease, misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided intellect to arrive at a knowledge of god and immortal bliss. it would thus seem that the true idea of god, or even that of immortality, is not an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain no clearer or more inspiring notions of the being of infinite love and power, or of the happiness which he is able and willing to impart? what a feeble conception of god is a being without the oversight of the worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or anything corresponding to our notion of personality! what a poor conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease, misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! what is nirvana but an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a dreamless rest? what a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final achievement of exalted virtue! but if buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true knowledge of god and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality, all which i take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all ages and nations. these were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity, purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. the human mind arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about god and immortality has failed. the idea of god may be lost, but not that of moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. there is a sense of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true admiration of virtue. no sage that i ever read of enjoined immorality. no ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty. everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of moses. obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations. hence the prince siddârtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests, and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of deity. in all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like abraham when he disowned the gods of his fathers. having thus himself gained the security of the heights, buddha longed to help others up, and turned his attention to the moral instruction of the people of india. he was emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. he gave up metaphysical speculations for practical philanthropy. he wandered from city to city and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than theological philosophies. he did not know that god is love, but he did know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts. "let us then," said he, "live happily, not hating those who hate us; free from greed among the greedy.... proclaim mercy freely to all men; it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... whoever loves will feel the longing to save not himself alone, but all others." he compares himself to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a physician who cures the blind. he teaches the equality of the sexes as well as the injustice of castes. he enjoins kindness to servants and emancipation of slaves. "as a mother, as long as she lives, watches over her child, so among all beings," said gautama, "let boundless good-will prevail.... overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the false with truth.... never forget thy own duty for the sake of another's.... if a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows, as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... he who lives seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... the true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth and wings.... one may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... let no man think lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'it cannot overtake me.'... let a man make himself what he preaches to others.... he who holds back rising anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, i call a driver; others may hold the reins.... a man who foolishly does me wrong, i will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me." these are some of the sayings of the indian reformer, which i quote from extracts of his writings as translated by sanskrit scholars. some of these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the precepts of the great teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to buddha himself. the religion of buddha is founded on a correct and virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach nirvana. its essence, theologically, is "quietism," without firm belief in anything reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it inculcates ennobling, active duties. among the rules that buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation; to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection. his fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life, truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. he does not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered; but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the fatherhood of god." he insisted on the natural equality of all men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the brahmans, and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from india. he protested against all absolute authority, even that of the vedas. nor did he claim, any more than confucius, originality of doctrines, only the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. he taught that nirvana was not attained by brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law of cause and effect. buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while brahmanism is a pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most offensive sacerdotalism. the brahman reminds me of a dunstan,--the buddhist of a benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of the middle ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best ages. the brahman is like thomas aquinas with his dogmas and metaphysics; the buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker, stigmatized as an atheist. the brahman was so absorbed with his theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of humanity; the buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin misery. as a religion buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. its weak points, practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us of monastic institutions in the days of chaucer and luther. the buddhist priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety. buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. in its corruption it lent itself to idolatry, for the buddhist temples are filled with hideous images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although buddha himself did not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal god. "buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness without a god, existence without a soul, immortality without life, happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption without a redeemer, and worship without rites." the failure of buddhism, both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great historical fact, that in the ancient pagan world no efforts of reason enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and practically elevating--knowledge of deity. even buddha, one of the most gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world, despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a way of escaping its miseries. he appealed to human consciousness; but lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal divine influence, buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. and hence the necessity of that new revelation which jesus declared amid the moral ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing superstitions of india and the godless materialism of china be replaced with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of greece and rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of christian apostles and martyrs. it does not belong to my subject to present the condition of buddhism as it exists to-day in thibet, in siam, in china, in japan, in burmah, in ceylon, and in various other eastern countries. it spread by reason of its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of the lower classes. though a proselyting religion it was never a persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for its toleration. authorities. the chief authorities that i would recommend for this chapter are max müller's history of ancient sanskrit literature; rev. s. seal's buddhism in china; buddhism, by t. w. rhys-davids; monier williams's sákoontalá; i. muir's sanskrit texts; burnouf's essai sur la vêda; sir william jones's works; colebrook's miscellaneous essays; joseph muller's religious aspects of hindu philosophy; manual of buddhism, by r. spence hardy; dr. h. clay trumbull's the blood covenant; orthodox buddhist catechism, by h. s. olcott, edited by prof. elliott c. coues. i have derived some instruction from samuel johnson's bulky and diffuse books, but more from james freeman clarke's ten great religions^ and rawlinson's religions of the ancient world. religion of the greeks and romans. classic mythology. religion among the lively and imaginative greeks took a different form from that of the aryan race in india or persia. however the ideas of their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. they were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. they love, they hate, they eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures. it was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world, but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind. the religion of greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology. yet in some respects the gods of greece resembled those of phoenicia and egypt, being the powers of nature, and named after the sun, moon, and planets. their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in india and egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices. they taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they held in extraordinary reverence. they were not ascetics or enthusiasts; among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal class of the jews or the hindus. they had even no sacred books, and claimed no esoteric knowledge. nor was their office hereditary. they were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with prescribed usages and laws. the real objects of greek worship were beauty, grace, and heroic strength. the people worshipped no supreme creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions. they had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. they did not feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible power working for righteousness or truth. they had no religious sense, apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of nature, or the good or evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities they accepted. these divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the speculations of philosophers. and as everything in greece was beautiful and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. the worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate the senses. the gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "heaven was so near at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." every grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its presiding deity; while every wonder of nature,--the sun, the moon, the stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an awful power for good or evil. to them temples were erected, within which were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by artists of marvellous excellence. this polytheism of greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so degrading as that of egypt, since the gods were not represented by the forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth or holiness. it was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential, except among the few who had deep religious wants. one of its characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to secure future happiness. in fact, the future was generally ignored, and even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. men lived not in view of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of an immoral life. even zeus, "the father of gods and men," to whom absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and enmities of his divine associates. greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote antiquity,--probably among the pelasgians, the early inhabitants of greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their original settlement, or perhaps from egypt and phoenicia. herodotus--and he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the greek poets elaborated to a phoenician or egyptian source. the legends have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits, like the labors of hercules the faults and foibles of deified mortals were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean which marks the characters of the iliad and odyssey. the greeks adopted oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in their own country in the earliest times. "the labors of hercules originated in egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in the zodiac. the rape of proserpine, the wanderings of ceres, the eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of bacchus were all imported from egypt or phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were celebrated in the romantic annals of persia. the oracle of dodona was copied from that of ammon in thebes, and the oracle of apollo at delphos has a similar source." behind the oriental legends which form the basis of grecian mythology there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the pelasgians were known as ionians and the hellenes as dorians, a mystical and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the persians, the hindus, and the esoteric priests of egypt. in all the ancient religions the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular religion. belief in supreme deity underlies all the eastern theogonies, which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. there is great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history, or began as human history and were poetized into fable. my belief is that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. fables were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people, who have ever delighted in the marvellous. as the magnificent, the vast, the sublime, which was seen in nature, impressed itself on the imagination of the orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent; and what were symbols among eastern nations became impersonations in the poetry of greece. grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. they are all creations of the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the hindus and egyptians were. it was the natural and not the supernatural that filled their souls. it was art they worshipped, and not the god who created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures obedience and faith. in regard to the gods and goddesses of the grecian pantheon, we observe that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities of men. they are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of god; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the qualities revealed. the ancient romans, themselves stern, earnest, practical, had an almost oriental reverence for their gods, so that their jupiter (father of heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing, severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the jehovah of the hebrews was by that nation. when in later times the conquest of eastern countries and of macedon and greece brought in luxury, works of art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating influences of aestheticism, the romans became corrupted, and gradually began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of the greek mythology. the greek zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite deity of the aryan race, the indra of the hindus, the jupiter of the romans,--was in his grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless husband, and sometimes an unkind father. his character was a combination of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or even to be reverenced. he was the impersonation of power and dignity, represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all. poseidon (roman neptune), the brother of zeus, was represented as the god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime states. his morality was no higher than that of zeus; moreover, he was rough, boisterous, and vindictive. he was hostile to troy, and yet persecuted ulysses. apollo, the next great personage of the olympian divinities, was more respectable morally than his father. he was the sun-god of the greeks, and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the poets. he had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. he was obedient to the will of zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. temples were erected to this favorite deity in every part of greece, and he was supposed to deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at delphos. hephaestus (roman vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and lameness. he forged the thunderbolts for zeus, and was the armorer of heaven. it accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy blacksmith the husband of aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love. ares (roman mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless, and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving orders from apollo and athene. hermes (roman mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the olympian man of business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. he was also the god of eloquence. besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the most important of whom was hera (roman juno), wife of zeus, and hence the queen of heaven. she exercised her husband's prerogatives, and thundered and shook olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous, unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. the greek poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence represent this deity without those elements of character which we most admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. she scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to be reconciled with our notions of dignity. the roman juno, before the identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and its expenses. she was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women were forbidden to touch her altars. athene (roman minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character without a flaw, and ranked with apollo in wisdom. she even expostulated with zeus himself when he was wrong. but on the other hand she had few attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses. artemis (roman diana) was "a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her brother apollo." she presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which the greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest in anything intellectual. aphrodite (roman venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral point of view, and mentally contemptible. this goddess was represented as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet revolting, admired and yet corrupting. she was not of much importance among the romans,--who were far from being sentimental or passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their trojan origin. then, as mother of aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and the greek poets furnished her character. hestia (roman vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of the greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. her personality was vague, but she represented the purity which among both greeks and romans is attached to home and domestic life. demeter (roman ceres) represented mother earth, and thus was closely associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and bread-making. as agriculture is the primitive and most important of all human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving, and occupied an important position in the eleusinian mysteries. these were the twelve olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they represent only a small part of the grecian pantheon. there was dionysus (roman bacchus), the god of drunkenness. this deity presided over vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations. leto (roman latona), another wife of zeus, and mother of apollo and diana, was a very different personage from hera, being the impersonation of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent, unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and subordinating herself to her children. persephone (roman proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband pluto, severely pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to her, as the greeks did not trouble themselves much about the future state. the minor deities of the greeks were innumerable, and were identified with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes, with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the wonders of nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about, everything they felt. all these wonders and sentiments they impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. if a man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to zeus; if he wished to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked hermes; if he wished to be successful in war, he prayed to ares. he never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. the divinities whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits which they represented. thus, aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious dances, and dionysus with drunken revels. each deity represented the grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or wisdom or madness or folly. the character of hera was what the poets supposed should be the attributes of the queen of heaven; that of leto, what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of hestia, what should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of demeter, what should show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of athene, what would naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of aphrodite, what would be expected from a sensual beauty. in the main, zeus was serene, majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was occasionally faithless to his wife; poseidon was boisterous, as became the monarch of the seas; apollo was a devoted son and a bright companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet, beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; hephaestus, the god of fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor leads; ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be; hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and tricky; and dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become noisy and rollicking in his intoxication. thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or the duties and business in which they engage. drunkenness is not associated with zeus, or unchastity with hera or athene. the poets make each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he represents. hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and interesting. who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has learned to scan the lines of homer or of virgil? as varied and romantic as the "arabian nights," it shines in the beauty of nature. in the grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the understanding, because these creations are in harmony with nature, are consistent with humanity. there is no hatred and no love, no jealousy and no fear, which has not a natural cause. the poets proved themselves to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their divinities. they did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking, good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the present and for themselves alone. as a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the minds of the greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring future salvation. the welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where there was no settled belief in immortality. the gods themselves were fed on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals. they might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even happiness in its highest sense. on this fact saint augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological system. in his most celebrated work, "the city of god," he holds up to derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to save the soul. in his view the grand and distinguishing feature of christianity, in contrast with paganism, is the gift of eternal life and happiness. it is not the morality which christ and his apostles taught, which gave to christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. and it was this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty. it was this promise which filled the converts to christianity with joy, enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that salvation was the gift of god through the self-sacrifice of christ. immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were passed was the source of immeasurable joy. no sooner was this sublime expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than they threw their idols to the moles and the bats. but even in regard to morality, augustine showed that the gods were no examples to follow. he ridicules their morals and their offices as severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. he shows the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the state; so that philosophers like varro could pour contempt on players with impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples the same things. no wonder that the popular religion at last was held in contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty sentiments. a religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but yield to what was better. if we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of the greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and thus riveted the chains which the poets forged. the temple of zeus at olympia in elis, where the intellect and the culture of greece assembled every four years to witness the games instituted in honor of the father of the gods, was itself calculated to impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. the image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any poetical descriptions could do. if it was art which the greeks worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies, and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to the king of heaven! seated on his throne, with the emblems of sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head, neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with strength,--the image of the olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as well as power. no fear was blended with admiration, since his favor could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were instituted in his honor. clarke alludes to the sculptured apollo belvedere as giving a still more elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure expressive of the highest thoughts of the hellenic mind,--and quotes milman in support of his admiration:- "all, all divine! no struggling muscle glows, through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows; but, animate with deity alone, in deathless glory lives the breathing stone." if a christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan greeks? the same could be said of the statues of artemis, of pallas-athene, of aphrodite, and other "divine" productions of grecian artists, since they represented the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and majesty, which the greeks adored. hence, though the statues of the gods are in human shape, it was not men that the greeks worshipped, but those qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. no one can object to this boundless admiration which the greeks had for art in its highest forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. it was the divorce of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which were simply creations of poets and artists. it is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. this wise provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also availed of by the mosaic ritual among the hebrews, and has been a part of most well-organized religious systems. the festivals were celebrated in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of grecian life. they were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever could animate the soul with festivity and joy. hence the religious worship of the greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and sometimes degrading. it was similar in its effects to the rural sports of the yeomanry of the middle ages, and to the theatrical representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the processions and pomps which the catholic clergy instituted for the amusement of the people. hence the sneering but acute remark of gibbon, that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. the state encouraged and paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the ridicule of the same performances in the theatres. among the greeks there were no sacred books like the hindu vedas or hebrew scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious truths. the priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and ceremonies. it is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience. duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. from what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents, of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? it is difficult to tell. the poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of grace, of strength; and nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the same things. hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. it was the rule to be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the severity of art. the comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance, quackery, and lies. patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of the state, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. a hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the rocky mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their fellow-laborers. self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws which secured the welfare of society. the natural sacredness of home guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. men and women cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities. the graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future rewards and punishments. the ultimate law of self-preservation will protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. a traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community as in a christian city. the "heathen chinee" fears the officers of the law as much as does a citizen of london. the great difference between a pagan and a christian people is in the power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a spiritual deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and the development of higher types of social organization. but whatever laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of violence, of crimes against person and the state and the general material welfare of society, are found in pagan as well as in christian states; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love, friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by christianity, are also an inalienable part of the god-given heritage of all mankind. we see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan greece, even if these were not taught by priests or sages. every man instinctively clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children; and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in god. religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the temporal interests of men. governments and laws take these under their protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. they are made from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from the necessities of civilization. religion, from the christian standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come, to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no worldly reward. this kind of religion was not taught by grecian priests or poets or artists, and did not exist in greece, with all its refinements and glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who meditated on the secrets of nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and the duties which reason and reflection reveal. and it may be noticed that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and injunctions. we see this illustrated in socrates and zeno. they seemed to despair of finding out god, of explaining the wonders of his universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like solomon himself when he said, "fear god and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." in ethical teachings and inquiries some of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on earth is concerned. but these pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond the grave. they even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal. they did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary men to those glorious heights reached by the christian converts. that was the point to which augustine directed his vast genius and his unrivalled logic. he admitted that arts might civilize, and that the elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people, and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty communion with the deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people, and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. nor did he, in his matchless argument against the gods of greece and rome, take for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and philosophers like seneca and plato. and thus he reached the intelligence of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity. it would be instructive to show that the religion of greece, as embraced by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. it did not discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the sermon on the mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war, or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show that the love of money is a root of all evil. it made sensual pleasure and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable deities was without god in the world,--which was no religion at all, but a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as paul argued before the assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of the world. and yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of greece a sense of dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both in the iliad and the odyssey, among the boldest heroes. they seem to be reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. in the best ages of greece the worship of the various deities was sincere and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or avert their displeasure. it does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests. warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and goats, and poured out libations to the gods. homer's heroes were very strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was a great offence to the deities, from zeus down to inferior gods. we read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. there was universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. if the gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed, temporal and worldly good. people prayed for the same blessings that the ancient jews sought from jehovah. in this sense the early greeks were religious. irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. the people, however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. we seldom see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the iliad, but great solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped. * * * * * the religion of the romans differed in some respects from that of the greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. it was more of a ritual and a ceremony. it included most of the deities of the greek pantheon, but was more comprehensive. it accepted the gods of all the nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the pantheon,--even mithra, the persian sun-god, and the isis and osiris of the egyptians, to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. it was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths concerning the loves and quarrels of the grecian deities. it was more practical and less poetical. every roman god had something to do, some useful office to perform. several divinities presided over the birth and nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good, for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. there was an elaborate "division of labor" among them. a divinity presided over bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household transaction had its presiding deities. there were more superstitious rites practised by the romans than by the greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or bad omens. great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination. the roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more defined and general worship of ancestors than among the greeks. these were the _penates_, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. these included a _lar_, or ancestral family divinity, in each house. there were vestal virgins to guard the most sacred places. there was a college of pontiffs to regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were complicated and minute. the pontiffs were presided over by one called pontifex maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by caesar to gain control of the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the pope of rome with his college of cardinals. there were augurs and haruspices to discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight of birds. the festivals were more numerous in rome than in greece, and perhaps were more piously observed. about one day in four was set apart for the worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and sacrifices. the principal feast days were in honor of janus, the great god of the sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of january, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of the penates, of mars, of vesta, of minerva, of venus, of ceres, of juno, of jupiter, and of saturn. the saturnalia, december 19, in honor of saturn, the annual thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the festivals. the feast of minerva lasted five days, when offerings were made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. the feast of cybele, analogous to that of ceres in greece and isis in egypt, lasted six days. these various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities. the principal roman divinities were the olympic gods under latin names, like jupiter, juno, mars, minerva, neptune, vesta, apollo, venus, ceres, and diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. some of the deities were of etruscan, some of sabine, and some of latin origin; but most of them were imported from greece or corresponded with those of the greek mythology. many were manufactured by the pontiffs for utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like hope, fear, concord, justice, clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. the powers of nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and stars. the best side of roman life was represented in the worship of vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated with the lares and penates. of these household gods the head of the family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices. the vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the pontifex maximus. thus the romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the athenians by the apostle paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid down by the pontiffs. they were grave and decorous in their devotions, and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and ceremony. as faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety. superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. worship in the temples was most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most ridiculed in the theatres; and as the state was rigorous in its religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent and influential citizens. what sincerity was there in julius caesar when he discharged the duties of high-priest of the republic? it was impossible for an educated roman who read plato and zeno to believe in janus and juno. it was all very well for the people so to believe, he said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had been the curse of the human race. if the romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic services than the greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also more hypocritical. if they were not professed freethinkers,--for the state did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on their lives. the romans were more immoral yet more observant of religious ceremonies than the greeks, who acted and thought as they pleased. intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of the roman citizen. he professed to think as the state prescribed, for the masters of the world were the slaves of the state in religion as in war. the romans were more gross in their vices as they were more pharisaical in their profession than the greeks, whom they conquered and imitated. neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities, softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for war and bloody sports. their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. their slavery was more cruel than among any nation of antiquity. butchery and legalized murder were the delight of romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman sports in the days of their political decline. where was the spirit of religion, as it was even in india and egypt, when women were debased; when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law dictated by instincts of self-preservation? where was the ennobling influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in them? how powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring as to call out the terrible invective of paul, the cosmopolitan traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted christian missionary, indicting not a few, but a whole people: "who exchanged the truth of god for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of god, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections, unmerciful." an awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the hideous reality. if this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the pure spirituality of jesus the christ, shining into that blackness of darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the "light of the world"! * * * * * authorities. rawlinson's religions of the ancient world; grote's history of greece; thirlwall's history of greece; homer's iliad and odyssey; max müller's chips from a german workshop; curtius's history of greece; mr. gladstone's homer and the homeric age; rawlinson's herodotus; döllinger's jew and gentile; fenton's lectures on ancient and modern greece; smith's dictionary of greek and roman mythology; clarke's ten great religions; dwight's mythology; saint augustine's city of god. confucius. sage and moralist. 550-478 b.c. about one hundred years after the great religious movement in india under buddha, a man was born in china who inaugurated a somewhat similar movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three hundred millions of people. it cannot be said that he was the founder of a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. to quote his own words, he was "a transmitter, and not a maker." but he was, nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be measured by results, i know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so permanent. in genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world. "confucius" is a latin name given him by jesuit missionaries in china; his real name was k'ung-foo-tseu. he was born about 550 b.c., in the province of loo, and was the contemporary of belshazzar, of cyrus, of croesus, and of pisistratus. it is claimed that confucius was a descendant of one of the early emperors of china, of the chow dynasty, 1121 b.c.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the state of loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of loo, which state resembled a feudal province of france in the middle ages, acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the emperor. we know but little of the early condition of china. the earliest record of events which can be called history takes us back to about 2350 b.c., when yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting under his sway the different states of china, which had even then reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical history of the country dates back about five thousand years. yaou's son shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived only to advance the happiness of his subjects. at that period the religion of china was probably monotheistic. the supreme being was called shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in, and a worship of the powers of nature and of the spirits of departed ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants, became the prevailing religion. during the reigns of these good emperors the standard of morality was high throughout the empire. but morals declined,--the old story in all the states of the ancient world. in addition to the decline in morals, there were political discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire. to remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire and endeavor of confucius. the most marked feature in the religion of the chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this worship he did not seek to change. "confucius taught three thousand disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. like plato and xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to the national collection of the sacred books called the 'nim classes.'" confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to nothing of his early years. at fifteen years of age, however, we are told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under considerable difficulties, his family being poor. he married when he was nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son le, his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary nobility of china,--a class who for seventy generations were the recipients of the highest honors and privileges. on the birth of le, the duke ch'aou of loo sent confucius a present of a carp, which seems to indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments. at twenty years of age confucius entered upon political duties, being the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability, he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having attracted the attention of his sovereign. at twenty-two he began his labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. these were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years before he was born. there is no improbability in this alleged antiquity of the chinese empire, for egypt at this time was a flourishing state. at twenty-nine years of age confucius gave his attention to music, which he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. six years afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. it does not appear that confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. he was a mere seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the founder of the dynasty of chow, an observer of customs, like herodotus. he wandered for eight years among the various provinces of china, teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. moreover, he was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain him in his service. on the return of confucius to loo, he remained fifteen years without official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy. but he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar, with insatiable desire of knowledge. his great gifts and learning, however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. he was made governor of an important city. as chief magistrate of this city, he made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. the duke, surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to govern a whole state; and confucius told him that they could be applied to the government of the empire. on this the duke appointed him assistant superintendent of public works,--a great office, held only by members of the ducal family. so many improvements did confucius make in agriculture that he was made minister of justice; and so wonderful was his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws in execution, since no offenders could be found. confucius held his high office as minister of justice for two years longer, and some suppose he was made prime minister. his authority certainly continued to increase. he exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private families,--just as richelieu did in france, strengthening the throne at the expense of the nobility. it would thus seem that his political reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in times of anarchy and demoralization. so great was his fame as a statesman that strangers came from other states to see him. these reforms in the state of loo gave annoyance to the neighboring princes; and to undermine the influence of confucius with the duke, these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls, possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and twenty splendid horses. as the duke soon came to think more of his girls and horses than of his reforms, confucius became disgusted, resigned his office, and retired to private life. then followed thirteen years of homeless wandering. he was now fifty-six years of age, depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. he was accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he communicated his wisdom. but his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. the dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "i have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. the love of the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a greek and not an oriental idea. in the meantime confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and state to state, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became famous. he travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the people with his doctrines. a certain one of his followers was questioned by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was afraid to give a true answer. the sage hearing of it, said, "you should have told him, he is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows, and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." how seldom is it that any man reaches such a height! in a single sentence the philosopher describes himself truly and impressively. at last, in the year 491 b.c., a new sovereign reigned in loo, and with costly presents invited confucius to return to his native state. the philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt kindly with him. it is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected. the world will not bear rebukes. even a friend, if discreet, will rarely venture to tell another friend his faults. confucius told the truth when pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much offence. luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from those whom confucius sought to influence. conventional, polite, considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the chinese sage. a rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks; whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of propriety alone. the few remaining years of confucius' life were spent in revising his writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the evils of the world that he could not remove. disappointment also had made him cynical and bitter, like solomon of old, although from different causes. he survived his son and his most beloved disciples. as he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no apprehension. death to him was a rest. he died at the age of seventy-three. in the tenth book of his analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the philosopher. he was a man of rule and ceremony.-he was particular about his dress and appearance. he was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate. he lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. he drank wine freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this indulgence. i do not read that tea was then in use. he was charitable and hospitable, but not ostentatious. he generally travelled in a carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage in those days was like one of our carts. in his village, it is said, he looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was grave, but self-possessed. when eating he did not converse; when in bed he did not speak. if his mat were not straight he did not sit on it. when a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. he was capable of excessive grief, with all his placidity. when his favorite pupil died, he exclaimed, "heaven is destroying me!" his disciples on this said, "sir, your grief is excessive." "it is excessive," he replied. "if i am not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should i mourn?" the reigning prince of loo caused a temple to be erected over the remains of confucius, and the number of his disciples continually increased. the emperors of the falling dynasty of chow had neither the intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to perpetuate his memory. during his life confucius found ready acceptance for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to establish the reforms he inaugurated. after his death, however, no honor was too great to be rendered him. the most splendid temple in china was built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from worship. his writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice; schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their interpretation. for two thousand years confucius has reigned supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four hundred millions. confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. he said of himself, "i have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what i have not attained to. i am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but i am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. i am a transmitter, and not a maker." if he did not lay claim to divine illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony, but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most conservative of all known reformers. confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his analects, his book of poetry, his book of history, and his rules of propriety are the most important. it is these which are now taught, and have been taught for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of china. the chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. his writings are held in the same veneration that christians attach to their own sacred literature. there is this one fundamental difference between the authors of the bible and the chinese sage,--that he did not like to talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of philosophy or theology. he had no taste or capacity for such inquiries. hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the ionian philosophers, on the creation or end of things. he was not troubled about the origin or destiny of man. he meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise and virtuous. he confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies, proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the state; enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. he was no prophet of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. he utters no anathemas on princes, and no woes on peoples. nor does he glow with exalted hopes of a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. he was not stern and indignant like elijah, but more like the courtier and counsellor elisha. he was a man of the world, and all his teachings have reference to respectability in the world's regard. he doubted more than he believed. and yet in many of his sayings confucius rises to an exalted height, considering his age and circumstances. some of them remind us of some of the best proverbs of solomon. in general, we should say that to his mind filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal principle of government. he was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars and violence. he was liberal and tolerant in his views. he said that the "superior man is catholic and no partisan." duke gae asked, "what should be done to secure the submission of the people?" the sage replied, "advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will submit. but advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the people will not submit." again he said, "it is virtuous manners which constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your residence where virtuous manners prevail." the following sayings remind me of epictetus: "a scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. a man should say, 'i am not concerned that i have no place,--i am concerned how i may fit myself for one. i am not concerned that i am not known; i seek to be worthy to be known.'" here confucius looks to the essence of things, not to popular desires. in the following, on the other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: "in serving a prince, frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant." thus he talks like solomon. "tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master said, 'rotten wood cannot be carved. this yu--what is the use of my reproving him?'" of a virtuous prince, he said: "in his conduct of himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he was just." it was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. one said: "it is to be heard of through the family and state." the master replied: "that is notoriety, not distinction." again he said: "though a man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his poetical knowledge?" again, "if a minister cannot rectify himself, what has he to do with rectifying others?" there is great force in this saying: "the superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please, since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. the superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride without a dignified ease." a disciple asked him what qualities a man must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. the master said: "he must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and urgent, among his brethren bland." and, "the scholar who cherishes a love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." "if a man," he said, "take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand." and again, "he who requires much from himself and little from others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment." these proverbs remind us of bacon: "specious words confound virtue." "want of forbearance in small matters confound great plans." "virtue," the master said, "is more to man than either fire or water. i have seen men die from treading on water or fire, but i have never seen a man die from treading the course of virtue." this is a lofty sentiment, but i think it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. "there are three things," he continued, "which the superior man guards against: in youth he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and in old age against covetousness." i do not find anything in the sayings of confucius that can be called cynical, such as we find in some of the proverbs of solomon, even in reference to women, where women were, as in most oriental countries, despised. the most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this: "i have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly accuse himself." his definition of perfect virtue is above that of paley: "the man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a secondary consideration." throughout his writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no disparagement of want of success with virtue. nor have i found in his sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. he always takes the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity above all external appearances. there is a quaint common-sense in some of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of abraham lincoln. for instance: one of his disciples asked, "if you had the conduct of armies, whom would you have to act with you?" the master replied: "i would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or cross a river without a boat." here something like wit and irony break out: "a man of the village said, 'great is k'ung the philosopher; his learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any particular thing.' the master heard this observation, and said to his disciples: 'what shall i practise, charioteering or archery? i will practise charioteering.'" when the duke of loo asked about government, the master said: "good government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those who are far off are attracted." when the duke questioned him again on the same subject, he replied: "go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs.... pardon small faults, and raise to office men of virtue and talents." "but how shall i know the men of virtue?" asked the duke. "raise to office those whom you do know," the key to his political philosophy seems to be this: "a man who knows how to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to govern other men, knows how to govern an empire." "the art of government," he said, "is to keep its affairs before the mind without weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... to govern means to rectify. if you lead on the people with correctness, who will not dare to be correct?" this is one of his favorite principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: "if you, sir, were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would not steal." this was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an illustration of the force of a great example. confucius rarely openly rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate for his office. he contented himself with enforcing principles. here his moderation and great courtesy are seen. confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the pagan world. chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. the master said: "it is when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family, and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... the superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. let him never fail reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be brothers.... hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be moving continually to what is right." fan-chi asked about benevolence; the master said: "it is to love all men." another asked about friendship. confucius replied: "faithfully admonish your friend, and kindly try to lead him. if you find him impracticable, stop. do not disgrace yourself." this saying reminds us of that of our great master: "cast not your pearls before swine." there is no greater folly than in making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. some one asked: "what do you say about the treatment of injuries?" the master answered: "recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness." here again he was not far from the greater teacher on the mount "when a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again." one of the favorite doctrines of confucius was the superiority of the ancients to the men of his day. said he: "the high-mindedness of antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the present day shows itself in license. the stern dignity of antiquity showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in quarrelsome perverseness. the policy of antiquity showed itself in straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit." the following is a saying worthy of montaigne: "of all people, girls and servants are the most difficult to behave to. if you are familiar with them, they lose their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented." such are some of the sayings of confucius, on account of which he was regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of morality. the greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity, truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. he had no theology; he confounded god with heaven and earth. he says nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. he thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and punishments. his morality was elevated, but not supernal. we infer from his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have already said, his reproofs were gentle. blandness of speech and manners was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn national peculiarity, i do not know. he went through great trials most creditably, but he was no martyr. he constantly complained that his teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. he had no egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of michael angelo. he was humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not hilarious. were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his views of government and society than aristocratic. he seems to have loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. when he visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be distinguished and powerful at no distant day. he was also remarkably charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon riches and honors. though courted by princes he would not serve them in violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their presents. if he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. we cannot compare his teachings with those of christ; they are immeasurably inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and decorous, and are on an equality with those of solomon in moral wisdom. they are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress. the worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied absolute obedience to the emperor as head of the state. hence, the writings of confucius have tended to cement the chinese imperial power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his extraordinary posthumous influence. no wonder that emperors and rulers have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the state to establish his doctrines. moreover, his exaltation of learning as a necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into the hands of scholars. there never was a country where scholars have been and still are so generally employed by government. and as men of learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are fond of peace and detest war. hence, under the influence of scholars the policy of the chinese government has always been mild and pacific. it is even paternal. it has more similarity to the governments of a remote antiquity than that of any existing nation. thus is the influence of confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and gentleness and courtesy of manners. above all is his influence seen in the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of whatever tends to exalt a state and make it respectable and stable, if not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence. confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to his instructions. yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been preserved by posterity. perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all prophets, who, being despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the "headstone of the corner" in the rebuilding of humanity. confucius says so little about the subjects that interested the people of china that some suppose he had no religion at all. nor did he mention but once in his writings shang-te, the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from the worship of him. and yet there are expressions in his sayings which seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. he often spoke of heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. heaven to him was destiny, by the power of which the world was created. by heaven the virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. out of love for the people, heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. prayer is unnecessary, because heaven does not actively interfere with the soul of man. confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in government,--of the state, of the family, and of one's self. self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed to others, whether above or below in social standing. he supposed that all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at length destroy the original rectitude. the "superior man," who next to the "sage" holds the highest place in the confucian humanity, conquers the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity. confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the superior man. this admission may have been the result of his extraordinary humility and modesty. in "the great learning" confucius lays down the rules to enable one to become a superior man. the foundation of his rules is in the investigation of things, or _knowledge_, with which virtue is indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of socrates. he maintained that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted, without learning. "without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness." but mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for "learning without thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous." complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of yaou and of shun. the object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to virtue. virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile. the next step towards perfection is the _cultivation of the person_,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious outward expression. every man must guard his thoughts, words, and actions; and conduct must agree with words. by words the superior man directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. it by no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of plausible speech. the height of virtue is _filial piety_; for this is connected indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his people and the preserver of the state. loyalty to the sovereign is synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. next to parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. this reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of good. but then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is considered competent to rule a family or a state; for the same virtues which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other. no man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. the greatest stress, as we have seen, is laid by confucius on filial piety, which consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the state with loyalty. but while it is incumbent on a son to obey the wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. all remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. should these remonstrances fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. he carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of right and wrong. brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. "happy," says he, "is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of lutes and harps. the love which binds brother to brother is second only to that which is due from children to parents. it consists in mutual friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the younger to the elder brothers." while obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, confucius said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife. he had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife after living with her for a year. he looked on women as every way inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. it was not until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in china. hence, according to confucius, the great object of marriage is to increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. women could be lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of slaves. the failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great blot on the system of confucius as a scheme of morals. but the sage exalts friendship. everybody, from the emperor downward, must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of blood. "friends," said he, "are wealth to the poor, strength to the weak, and medicine to the sick." one of the strongest bonds to friendship is literature and literary exertion. men are enjoined by confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great officers. in the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity and frankness is imperatively enjoined. "he who is not trusted by his friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends." everything is subordinated to the state; but, on the other hand, the family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main object of good government. "no virtue," said emperor kuh, 2435 b.c., "is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in government than to profit all men." when he was asked what should be done for the people, he replied, "enrich them;" and when asked what more should be done, he replied, "teach them." on these two principles the whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the people, and their education. he laid great stress on knowledge, as leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. he made the profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen could aspire. he himself was a teacher. all sages are teachers, though all teachers are not sages. confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. the officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his teachings. it was in contrast to these officials that he painted the ideal times of kings wan and woo. the two motive-powers of government, according to confucius, are righteousness and the observance of ceremonies. righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a rule to the heart. what he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety, intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a reverential manner among all classes. doubtless he over-estimated the force of example, since there are men in every country and community who will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character and conduct. the ruling desire of confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and happy. the welfare of the people, the right government of the state, and the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. as conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. he himself summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form: "do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you." here we have the negative side of the positive "golden rule." reciprocity, and that alone, was his law of life. he does not inculcate forgiveness of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye. as to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. his humility and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as marked as his humility. he was the most learned man in the empire, yet lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. he even disclaimed the qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. "i am," said he, "not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear." he was always ready to serve his sovereign or the state; but he neither grasped office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own interests. he was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. he carried into practice all the rules he taught. poverty was his lot in life, but he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal character. indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his genius; and yet i think his genius has been underrated. his greatness is seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty their merits or exalted their rank. no one ever disputed his influence and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage, and men of letters were driven behind the scenes. the literary labors of confucius were very great, since he made the whole classical literature of china accessible to his countrymen. the fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. his works have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. they have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire, which includes one-fourth of the human race. to all educated men the "book of changes" (yin-king), the "book of poetry" (she-king), the "book of history" (shoo-king), the "book of rites" (le-king), the "great learning" (ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the "doctrine of the mean" (chung-yung), teaching the "golden mean" of conduct, and the "confucian analects" (lun-yu), recording his conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the works of mencius, the greatest of his disciples. there is no record of any books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the works of confucius, except the koran of the mohammedans, the book of the law among the hebrews, and the bible among the christians. what an influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man, worshipped as a god! no sooner had the sun of confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than his memory and principles were duly honored. but it was not until the accession of the han dynasty, 206 b.c., that the reigning emperor collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power to secure the study of them throughout the schools of china. it must be borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had ordered the books of confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground. succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage, and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the ming dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in china,--"the perfect sage, the ancient teacher, confucius." no higher title could be conferred upon him in a land where to be "ancient" is to be revered. for more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor, and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. his maxims of morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the han dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. they were especially adapted to the chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. moreover, as we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines, from the constant exhortations to loyalty which confucius enjoined. and yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal merit,--thus opening every office in the state to the learned, whatever their original social rank. the great political truth that the welfare of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any nation's history. this essay on the religion of the chinese would be incomplete without some allusion to one of the contemporaries of confucius, who spiritually and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even confucius paid extraordinary deference. this man was called lao-tse, a recluse and philosopher, who was already an old man when confucius began his travels. he was the founder of tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at present has millions of adherents in china. this old philosopher did not receive confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages, while he himself was a great awakener of thought. he was, like confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations existed. he held that man's nature was good, and that primitive pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. he maintained that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were meant to avert. while this great and profound man was in some respects superior to confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior people of china. taoism rivals buddhism as the religion of the lower classes, and taoism combined with buddhism has more adherents than confucianism. but the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to confucius as the greatest man whom china has produced. of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of chinese have now but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are the grossest formalism. but as a practical system of morals in the days of its early establishment, the religion of confucius ranks very high among the best developments of paganism. certainly no man ever had a deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact. it is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the hindus and chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand the changes which foreign conquest and christian missionary enterprise and civilization are producing. in the east the old religions gave place to mohamedanism, as in the west they disappeared before the power of christianity. and these conquering religions retain and extend their hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal god, and the brotherhood of universal man. with the ideas prevalent among all sects that god is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence, and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this elevating faith. * * * * * authorities. religion in china, by joseph edkins, d.d.; rawlinson's religions of the ancient world; freeman clarke's ten great religions; johnson's oriental religions; davis's chinese; nevins's china and the chinese; giles's chinese sketches; lenormant's ancient history of the east; hue's christianity in china; legge's prolegomena to the shoo-king; lecomte's china; dr. s. wells williams's middle kingdom; china, by professor douglas; the religions of china, by james legge. ancient philosophy. seeking after truth. whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question, or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of consequence. in the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost limit. they advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the establishment of ethical principles which even christianity did not supersede. the progress of philosophy from thales to plato is the most stupendous triumph of the human intellect. the reason of man soared to the loftiest flights that it has ever attained. it cast its searching eye into the most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the world. it exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever raised. it originated and carried out the boldest speculations respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. it established important psychological truths and created a method for the solution of abstruse questions. it went on from point to point, until all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its operations were subjected to a rigid method. the romans never added a single principle to the philosophy which the greeks elaborated; the ingenious scholastics of the middle ages merely reproduced greek ideas; and even the profound and patient germans have gone round in the same circles that plato and aristotle marked out more than two thousand years ago. only the brahmans of india have equalled them in intellectual subtilty and acumen. it was greek philosophy in which noble roman youths were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a cicero, a marcus aurelius, and an epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the romans as it was of the greeks themselves, after grecian liberties were swept away and greek cities became a part of the roman empire. the romans learned what the greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the rhine and the po to the nile and the tigris. greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient civilization long after the greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of god or future rewards and punishments. although it was purely grecian in its origin and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the roman schools. the romans did not originate medicine, but galen was one of its greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but virgil sang to its measure; they did not create ionic capitals, but their cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as those which called out the admiration of pericles. so, if they did not originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still its truths were systematized and explained by cicero, and formed no small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought everywhere to be enriched. it formed an essential part of the intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. and as it was the noblest triumph which the human mind, under pagan influences, ever achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. philosophy, like art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed away, leaving the world in night. why was so bright a glory followed by so dismal a shame? what a comment is this on the greatness and littleness of man! in all probability the development of greek philosophy originated with the ionian sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the east. it is questionable whether the oriental nations had any philosophy distinct from religion. the germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early speculations of the greeks to the systems which prevailed in asia from a very remote antiquity. gladish sees in the pythagorean system an adoption of chinese doctrines; in the heraclitic system, the influence of persia; in the empedoclean, egyptian speculations; and in the anaxagorean, the jewish creeds. but the orientals had theogonies, not philosophies. the indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient revelation. they profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. but the state of perfectibility could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout contemplation. the indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the supreme with nature. nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. the greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought. it is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of intellectual phenomena. philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those who observed nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. philosophy and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning. we do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until thales arose, the first of the ionian school. he was born at miletus, a greek colony in asia minor, about the year 636 b.c., when ancus martius was king of rome, and josiah reigned at jerusalem. he has left no writings behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of greece on account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. i do not here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great, and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. "and he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars which beam in charles's wain, and guide the bark of the phoenecian sailor o'er the sea." he is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "know thyself," is one of his remarkable sayings. the chief claim of thales to a lofty rank among sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical representations. thales felt that there was a grand question to be answered relative to the _beginning of things._ "philosophy," it has been well said, "maybe a history of _errors_^ but not of _follies_". it was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental principle of things. thales looked around him upon nature, upon the sea and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital principle. he felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in the ground beneath his feet. he saw that plants were sustained by rain and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water, and that to fishes it was the native element. what more important or vital than water? it was the _prima materia_, the [greek: archae] the beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. how so crude a speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult to conjecture. it is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin of the universe. it was these questions, and the solution of them, which marked the ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of their minds. what is the great first cause of all things? thales saw it in one of the four elements of nature as the ancients divided them; and this is the earliest recorded theory among the greeks of the origin of the world. it is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. he regarded the entire world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. this moisture endues the universe with vitality. the world, he thought, was full of gods, but they had their origin in water. he had no conception of god as _intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. he had a great and inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual, controlling, and personal deity. anaximenes, the disciple of thales, pursued his master's inquiries and adopted his method. he also was born in miletus, but at what time is unknown,--probably 500 b.c. like thales, he held to the eternity of matter. like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. he, too, speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not water, was the primal cause. this element seems to be universal. we breathe it; all things are sustained by it. it is life,--that is, pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. all things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal motion. thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable principle of life. he thus advanced a step beyond thales, since he regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. and he attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of change is the eternal motion of the air. diogenes of apollonia, in crete, one of the disciples of anaximenes, born 500 b.c., also believed that air was the principle of the universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. he made air and the soul identical. "for," says he, "man and all other animals breathe and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul." and as it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an eternal and imperishable body; but as _soul_ it is also endued with consciousness. diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. anaximenes regarded air as having life; diogenes saw in it also intelligence. thus philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for the origin of all things, according to diogenes, must exist in _intelligence_. according to diogenes laertius, he said: "it appears to me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about which there can be no dispute." heraclitus of ephesus, classed by ritter among the ionian philosophers, was born 503 b.c. like others of his school, he sought a physical ground for all phenomena. the elemental principle he regarded as _fire_, since all things are convertible into it. in one of its modifications this fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless activity. "if anaximenes," says maurice, not very clearly, "discovered that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the acts and functions of his bodily frame, heraclitus found that there was life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the very highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of life.... he proclaimed the absolute vitality of nature, the endless change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual things in contrast with the eternal being,--the supreme harmony which rules over all." to trace the divine energy of life in all things was the general problem of the philosophy of heraclitus, and this spirit was akin to the pantheism of the east. but he was one of the greatest speculative intellects that preceded plato, and of all the physical theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. he taught the germs of what was afterward more completely developed. "from his theory of perpetual fluxion," says archer butler, "plato derived the necessity of seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas." heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical and arrogant. anaxagoras, the most famous of the ionian philosophers, was born 500 b.c., and belonged to a rich and noble family. regarding philosophy as the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study of nature. he went to athens in the most brilliant period of her history, and had pericles, euripides, and socrates for pupils. he taught that the great moving force of nature was intellect ([greek: nous]). intelligence was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply the _primum mobile_,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of nature is effected. he thus laid the foundation of a new system, under which the attic philosophers sought to explain nature, by regarding as the cause of all things, not _matter_ in its different elements, but rather _mind_, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. this explanation of material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the world. moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the real component particles of things. like all the great inquirers, he was impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with what there is to be learned. "nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,"--the complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind. anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([greek: nous]) gave to all those material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this impulse was given in a circular direction. hence that the sun, moon, and stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle. in the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the ionians, sought to explain nature, but by a different method. anaximander, born 610 b.c., was one of the original mathematicians of greece, yet, like pythagoras and thales, speculated on the beginning of things. his principle was that _the infinite_ is the origin of all things. he used the word _[greek: archae] (beginning)_ to denote the material out of which all things were formed, as the everlasting, the divine. the idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar "elements" could be the primal cause of all things. it seems almost like the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the first cause in impersonal force, or infinite energy. yet it is not really easy to understand anaximander's meaning, other than that the abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. the speculations of thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the universe upon an _induction_ from observed facts, and thus made water to be the origin of all things. anaximander, accustomed to view things in the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure _deduction_. the primary being is a unity, one in all, comprising within itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are composed. it is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things can take place. thus anaximander, an original but vague thinker, prepared the way for pythagoras. this later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year 600 b.c., stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded in dim magnificence. the old historians paint him as "clothed in robes of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic, rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to the music of homer and hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres." pythagoras was supposed to be a native of samos. when quite young, being devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to egypt, where he learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. he then returned to samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a tyrant he fled to crotona, in italy, where he gained great reputation for wisdom, and made laws for the italians. his pupils were about three hundred in number. he wrote three books, which were extant in the time of diogenes laertius,--one on education, one on politics, and one on natural philosophy. he also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which he gave the name of _kosmos_. among the ethical principles which pythagoras taught was that men ought not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger. he forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood. pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights among the greeks. but it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our attention. his main principle was that _number_ is the essence of things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to law. the order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom. he attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. assuming that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws which are regular and harmonious in their operations. hence the necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. the infinite of anaximander became the one of pythagoras. he believed that the soul is incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. hence the tendency of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law and order,--of a supreme intelligence reigning in justice and truth. justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and sought as the end of life. "it is impossible not to see in these lofty speculations the effect of the greek mind, according to its own genius, seeking after god, if haply it might find him." we now approach the second stage of greek philosophy. the ionic philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the elements, and the pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying an intelligent creator. the eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source of truth is independent of the senses. here they were forestalled by the hindu sages. the founder of this school was xenophanes, born in colophon, an ionian city of asia minor, from which being expelled he wandered over sicily as a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest truths, and at last, about the year 536 b.c., came to elea, where he settled. the principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the great first cause, the supreme intelligence of the universe. from the principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_ he concluded that nothing could pass from non-existence to existence. all things that exist are created by supreme intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. from this truth that god must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. a plurality of gods is impossible. with these sublime views,--the unity and eternity and omnipotence of god,--xenophanes boldly attacked the popular errors of his day. he denounced the transference to the deity of the human form; he inveighed against homer and hesiod; he ridiculed the doctrine of migration of souls. thus he sings,- "such things of the gods are related by homer and hesiod as would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,- promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other." and again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,- "but men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are, and have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure; but there's but one god alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals, neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas." such were the sublime meditations of xenophanes. he believed in the _one_, which is god; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being was not a personal god, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all space. he could not separate god from the world, nor could he admit the existence of world which is not god. he was a monotheist, but his monotheism was pantheism. he saw god in all the manifestations of nature. this did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of philosophy. but there was no cynicism in his doubt. it was the soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the mighty questions that he burned to know. there was no way to arrive at the truth, "for," said he, "error is spread over all things." it was not disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that oppressed him. he could not solve the questions pertaining to god. what uninstructed reason can? "canst thou by searching find out god? canst thou know the almighty unto perfection?" what was impossible to job was not possible to xenophanes. but he had attained a recognition of the unity and perfections of god; and this conviction he would spread abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. i have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money, comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of god. this was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. it was a higher mission than that of homer, great as his was, though not so successful. parmenides of elea, born about the year 530 b.c., followed out the system of xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of god. with parmenides the main thought was the notion of _being_. being is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is _thought_; the _all_ is thought and intelligence. he maintained the uncertainty of knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. he did not deny the certainty of reason. he was the first who drew a distinction between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. from the uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the twofold system of true and apparent knowledge. zeno of elea, the friend and pupil of parmenides, born 500 b.c., brought nothing new to the system, but invented _dialectics_, the art of disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so powerful in the hands of plato and aristotle, and so generally admired among the schoolmen. it seeks to establish truth by refuting error through the _reductio ad absurdum_. while parmenides sought to establish the doctrine of the _one_, zeno proved the non-existence of the _many_. he did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real existences. it was the mission of zeno to establish the doctrines of his master. but in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a new method of argument. so he carried on his argumentation by question and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication. empedocles, born 444 b.c., like others of the eleatics, complained of the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. he regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force, the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which or whom the world was formed. thus "god is love" is a sublime doctrine which philosophy revealed to the greeks, and the emphatic and continuous and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation made by jesus, the christ, who resolved all the law and the gospel into the element of love,--fatherly on the part of god, filial and fraternal on the part of men. thus did the eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously with the ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge, taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations of sense by the notions of reason. but both schools, although they did not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened freedom of thought and inquiry. they raised up workmen for more enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the middle ages prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles. they were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as genius. they hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of their day. they handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness, and hence were often persecuted by the people. they did not establish moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to god and nature. thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to studies. pythagoras spent twenty-two years in egypt to learn its science. xenophanes wandered over sicily as a rhapsodist of truth. parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of sensual enjoyments that he might "behold the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." zeno declined all worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his master. heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of ephesus that he might have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. anaxagoras allowed his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. "to philosophy," said he, "i owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity." all these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of their times. they laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology reached the dignity of science. they too were prophets, although unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the science which explores and illustrates the works of god shall enlarge, enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative father. nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories which were incontrovertible. they had simply speculated, and the world ridiculed their speculations. their ideas were one-sided, and when pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. men denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away from the human mind. this spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and prosperity which followed the persian war. athens became a great centre of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. politics absorbed the minds of the people. glory and splendor were followed by corruption of morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. philosophy went out of fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. more scientific studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry, mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men, command talent, and lead to certain reward. in athens, rhetoric, mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations on god and providence. renown and wealth could be secured only by readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought immediate recompense, like eloquence. men began to practise eloquence as an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. they made special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any expense of law and justice. hence they taught that nothing was immutably right, but only so by convention. they undermined all confidence in truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. they denied to men even the capability of arriving at truth. they practically affirmed the cold and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink. _cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. who will show us any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in athens when art and eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth century before christ, and when the elegant pericles was the leader of fashion and of political power. these men were the sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men, trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later philosophers. they were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult missions. they were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw ridicule upon profound inquiries. they taught also mathematics, astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. they were polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. and some of them were men of great learning and talent, like democritus, leucippus, and gorgias. they were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. they taught the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. they thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by the ionians, the pythagoreans, or the eleatics, since they showed the vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. they had no doctrines in common. they were the barristers of their age, _paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the intellectual leaders of society. if they did not advance positive truths, they were useful in the method they created. they had no hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to gain a case. they are not a class of men whom i admire, as i do the old sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the development of philosophy. the sophists also rendered a service to literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in prose writing. protagoras investigated the principles of accurate composition; prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the significance of words; gorgias, like voltaire, gloried in a captivating style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences. the ridicule and scepticism of the sophists brought out the great powers of socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of error. he inaugurated a new era. born in athens in the year 470 b.c., the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations. he was the mortal enemy of the sophists, whom he encountered, as pascal did the jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless logic. it is true that socrates and his great successors plato and aristotle were called "sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise men were so called. the sophists as a class had incurred the odium of being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they imparted. the philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. the sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom. like the earlier philosophers, socrates disdained wealth, ease, and comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that providence who so often refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. he was what in our time would be called eccentric. he walked barefooted, meanly clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous, especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the world. he attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a silenus in appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy belly, he was sought by alcibiades and admired by aspasia. even xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him, although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the divinity of his nature. "i have heard pericles," said the most dissipated and voluptuous man in athens, "and other excellent orators, but was not moved by them; while this marsyas--this satyr--so affects me that the life i lead is hardly worth living, and i stop my ears as from the sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that i may not sit down and grow old in listening to his talk." socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely new path. he declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other people of theirs. he did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose error. and yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral obligations. he proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the immutability of justice. he sought to delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. his great object was the elucidation of morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the immutable principles of moral obligation. moral certitude was the lofty platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock, he rested in the storms of life. thus he was a reformer and a moralist. it was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and the least appreciated. he was a profoundly religious man, recognized providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. he did not presume to inquire into the divine essence, yet he believed that the gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a supreme intelligence that governed the world. hence he was hated by the sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of god. from the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the immortality of the soul. with him the end of life was reason and intelligence. he deduced the existence of god from the order and harmony of nature, belief in which was irresistible. he endeavored to connect the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the practical welfare of society. in this light socrates stands out the grandest personage of pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of ethics, as a man who recognized the divine. so far as he was concerned in the development of greek philosophy proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, yet he gave a turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge, and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor of bacon and pascal. he did not attempt to make physics explain metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable. he was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. although he employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the contemplation of nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil plato. the previous philosophers had given their attention to external nature; socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. and as he considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by which alone man could become better and wiser. to know one's self,--in other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed with thales. cicero said of him, "socrates brought down philosophy from the heavens to the earth." he did not disdain the subjects which chiefly interested the sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly discussed moral questions, such as, what is piety? what is the just and the unjust? what is temperance? what is courage? what is the character fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human relationships. these questions were discussed by socrates in a striking manner, and by a method peculiarly his own. "professing ignorance, he put perhaps this question: what is law? it was familiar, and was answered offhand. socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. the respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." thus, by this system of cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into species and genera. the discussion first turns upon the meaning of some generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to comprehend, but does not. socrates broke up the one into many by his analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to precision in the use of definitions. it was thus that he exposed the false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner, while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse, absolutely ridiculous. thus socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could be established. here he was not unlike bacon, who pointed out the way whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or advocating any system; but the athenian was unlike bacon in the object of his inquiries. bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_ speculations, and socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. he never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not comprehended. it was not by positive teaching, but by exciting scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical faculties, that socrates manifested originality. it was his aim to force the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization, whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. he thus struck out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. he was a religious and intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the platos and aristotles of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. this was his mission, and he declared it by talking. he did not lecture; he conversed. for more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality, until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the sophists accepted and practised. he probably might have been acquitted if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of usefulness had passed away. the services which socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _negative_, inasmuch as he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is capable and what is not of being accurately known. _positive_, inasmuch as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our understanding, and of which man is the centre." socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like xenophanes. he did not bequeath a system of doctrines. he had however his disciples, who followed in the path which he suggested. among these were aristippus, antisthenes, euclid of megara, phaedo of elis, and plato, all of whom were pupils of socrates and founders of schools. some only partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. nor can it be said that all of them advanced science. aristippus, the founder of the cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that pleasure is the end of life. antisthenes, the founder of the cynics, was both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute the opinions of another. he made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and body, brutal, scornful, proud. to men who maintained that science was impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were disciples of socrates. euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a century later--merely gave a new edition of the eleatic doctrines, and phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good." it was not till plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy was founded. he was born of noble athenian parents, 429 b.c., the year that pericles died, and the second year of the peloponnesian war,--the most active period of grecian thought. he had a severe education, studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with philosophy. he was only twenty when he found out socrates, with whom he remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. he then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day, especially in egypt. when he returned he began to teach the doctrines of his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and statues. this was called the academy, and gave a name to his system of philosophy. it is this only with which we have to do. it is not the calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that i would present, but _his contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his master. surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department of human inquiry than plato. he may not have had the originality or keenness of socrates, but he was more profound. he was pre-eminently a great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his "dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. he adopted the socratic method and enlarged it. says lewes:-"analysis, as insisted on by plato, is the decomposition of the whole into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... the individual thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. only concerning the latter could philosophy occupy itself. socrates, insisting on proper definitions, had no conception of the classification of those definitions which must constitute philosophy. plato, by the introduction of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into man and society, which exclusively occupied socrates, to that of dialectics." plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. dionysius of halicarnassus classes him with herodotus and demosthenes in the perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors. plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or abstract ideas. general terms were synonymous with real existences, and these were the only objects of philosophy. these were called _ideas_; and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of dialectics. he maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and permanent existence. hence his writings became the great fountain-head of the ideal philosophy. in his assertion of the real existence of so abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted to pythagoras, for plato was a master of the whole realm of philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of _numbers_. he was taught by socrates that beyond this world of sense there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain principles concerning which there can be no dispute. the soul apprehends the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. it is in the celestial world that we are to find the realm of ideas. now, god is the supreme idea. to know god, then, should be the great aim of life. we know him through the desire which like feels for like. the divinity within feels its affinity with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. the longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. love, then, is the bond which unites the human with the divine. beauty is not revealed by harmonious outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity. beauty, truth, love, these are god, whom it is the supreme desire of the soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul sustains itself. knowledge of god is the great end of life; and this knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can correct knowledge come. but man, immersed in the flux of sensualities, can never fully attain this knowledge of god, the object of all rational inquiry. hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. the supreme good is attainable; it is not attained. god is the immutable good, and justice the rule of the universe. "the vital principle of plato's philosophy," says ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by which he is in his origin connected." to quote from ritter again:-"when we review the doctrines of plato, it is impossible to deny that they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. this is the noble thought which inspired him to say that god is the constant and immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be consummated. in his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy disciple of socrates.... while he adopted many of the opinions of his predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of unity. he may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it." that plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can be no reasonable doubt. nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries and his belief in god and immortality make him, in an ethical point of view, the most worthy of the disciples of socrates. he was to the greeks what kant was to the germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society. the ablest part of the lectures of archer butler, of dublin, is devoted to the platonic philosophy. it is at once a criticism and a eulogium. no modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the crowning excellence of the greek philosophy. the dialectics of plato, his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple. butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. as the admirers of ralph waldo emerson claim that he, more than any other man of our times, entered into the spirit of the platonic philosophy, i introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient pagan world, hoping that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:-these sentences [of plato] contain the culture of nations; these are the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures. a discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. there never was such a range of speculation. out of plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. great havoc makes he among our originalities. we have reached the mountain from which all these drift-bowlders were detached.... plato, in egypt and in eastern pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one deity, in which all things are absorbed. the unity of asia and the detail of europe, the infinitude of the asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera-going europe plato came to join, and by contact to enhance the energy of each. the excellence of europe and asia is in his brain. metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of europe; he substricts the religion of asia as the base. in short, a balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... the physical philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in their genius. plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the world, but bare inventories and lists. to the study of nature he therefore prefixes the dogma,--'let us declare the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose the universe. he was good; ... he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself.'... plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power, namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... these expansions, or extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... his definition of ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era in the world. the great disciple of plato was aristotle, and he carried on the philosophical movement which socrates had started to the highest limit that it ever reached in the ancient world. he was born at stagira, 384 b.c., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. when plato returned from sicily aristotle joined his disciples at athens, and was his pupil for seventeen years. on the death of plato, he went on his travels and became the tutor of alexander the great, and in 335 b.c. returned to athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school in the lyceum. he taught while walking up and down the shady paths which surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the peripatetic, which has clung to his name and philosophy. his school had a great celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen, historians, and orators. aristotle taught for thirteen years, during which time he composed most of his greater works. he not only wrote on dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments. his work on "the history of animals" was deemed so important that his royal pupil alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an enormous sum--for the collection of materials. he also wrote on ethics and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. he was one of the most voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man whose writings have come down to us. nor has any one of the ancients exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. he was an oracle until the revival of learning. hegel says:-"aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him their separation and commencement." he is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto treated by the earlier philosophers. says adolph stahr:-"plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in the eternal immutable ideas. aristotle laid down the proposition that the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of its own energy." there can be no doubt as to aristotle's marvellous power of systematizing. collecting together all the results of ancient speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. from a literary point of view, plato was doubtless his superior; but plato was a poet, making philosophy divine and musical, while aristotle's investigations spread over a far wider range. he differed from plato chiefly in relation to the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which divided them. as he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena, he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and established thereby a necessary element in human science. but being bound to matter, he did not soar, as plato did, into the higher regions of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of god or of immortality. neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a perfect life. with aristotle closed the great socratic movement in the history of speculation. when socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting nature. he removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of nature to the study of man himself. he bade men to look inward. plato accepted his method, but applied it more universally. like socrates, however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which physics were only subordinate. the problem he sought to solve was the way to live like the deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim of life. with aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. he thus, by bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch of scepticism. both plato and aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but, as we have said, aristotle differed from his master respecting the theory of ideas. he did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but he did deny that they have an objective existence. he maintained that individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they can be known only by _sensation_. sensation thus becomes the basis of knowledge. plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but aristotle made _experience_ that basis. plato directed man to the contemplation of ideas; aristotle, to the observation of nature. instead of proceeding synthetically and dialectically like plato, he pursues an analytic course. his method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. it would seem that positive science began with aristotle, since he maintained that experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of experience from which to generalize with effect. it is only a most extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. aristotle reasoned without sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms. aristotle was the father of logic, and hegel and kant think there has been no improvement upon it since his day. this became to him the real organon of science. "he supposed it was not merely the instrument of thought, but the instrument of investigation." hence it was futile for purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought. induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of logic. the one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at particulars. the latter more particularly characterized his logic, which he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful dialectical exercise. this syllogistic process of reasoning would be incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the _particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. thus aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his system, when carried out by the mediaeval schoolmen, led to a spirit of useless quibbling. instead of interrogating nature they interrogated their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. from want of proper knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater collection of facts and materials. though aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit great parsimony of language. there is no fascination in his style. it is without ornament, and very condensed. his merit consisted in great logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms. philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated in aristotle. he completed the great fabric of which thales laid the foundation. the subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena. the sceptics, like pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of existence. they did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility. they pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to comprehend them. the epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their view these did not contribute to happiness. the subject of their inquiries was happiness, not truth. what will promote this? was the subject of their speculation. epicurus, born 342 b.c., contended that pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. he taught that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments should be limited. he was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded contentedness with a little to be a great good. he placed wealth not in great possessions, but in few wants. he sought to widen the domain of pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of life as the highest. nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from misery, as the buddhists think. epicurus has been much misunderstood, and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism was the great feature of society. epicurus had much of the spirit of a practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a religious man. he himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous, not because it was his duty. his writings were very voluminous, and in his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. his followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant should be the object of existence. sir james mackintosh says:-"to epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable value, not peculiar to the epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which, however, it is very far from solely constituting. with that truth the epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the happiness of the agent. although, therefore, he has the merit of having more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold, or tender virtues can exist." the stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological inquiries. their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a great part of the system of greek philosophy, the stoics are well worthy of attention. some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among them,--like seneca, epictetus, and marcus aurelius. the philosophy they taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated. the founder of this sect, zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island of cyprus, about the year 350 b.c. he was the son of wealthy parents, but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. he was so good a man, and so profoundly revered by the athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys of their citadel. he lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of grecian society, when greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land. deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the _stoa_, "the porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. hence the name of his school. he was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions, although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "the sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. they had shown that perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." then they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. but zeno, taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did buddha before him, and long after him reid and beattie, when they combated the scepticism of hume. philosophy, according to zeno and other stoics, was intimately connected with the duties of practical life. the contemplation, meditation, and thought recommended by plato and aristotle seemed only a covert recommendation of selfish enjoyment. the wisdom which it should be the aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with nature. to live harmoniously with nature is to exclude all personal ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised. and as all moral action must be in harmony with nature the law of destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate. with the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their system, the stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. they made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_ and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_, or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. they made _perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system. the perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. nor must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member of the whole body of mankind. he ought to marry, and to take part in public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness. yet with this ideal the stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond the reach of man. they were discontented with themselves and with all around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. they had a profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls "success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty and stern virtue in their degenerate times. their god was made subject to fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with nature. thus their system was pantheistic. but they maintained the dignity of reason, and sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully to reach. zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his constitution was not strong. he retained his powers by great abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. he was a modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the society of more than two or three friends at a time. he was as plain in his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines the chinese sage confucius. and yet this good man, a pattern to the loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. suicide was not deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most faultless men of antiquity, especially among the romans. the doctrines of zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though influential party. with the stoics ended among the greeks all inquiry of a philosophical nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when philosophy was revived in the christian schools of alexandria, where the hebrew element of faith was united with the greek ideal of reason. the struggles of so many great thinkers, from thales to aristotle, all ended in doubt and in despair. it was discovered that all of them were wrong, or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple of truth, in which they were laying foundation stones. the bright and glorious period of greek philosophy was from socrates to aristotle. philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever achieved. socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. he reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which dwells within him, and which also rules the world. he believes in science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which consists in the knowledge of the good. plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his spirit. he is full of hope for science and humanity. with soaring boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. he speculates on god and the soul. he is not much interested in physical phenomena; he does not, like thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things, but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. the sensible is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist, severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty and goodness. then aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. but everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is not easy to arrive at truth. a cold doubt creeps into the experimental mind of aristotle, with all his learning and his logic. the epicureans arise. misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. they despair of truth. but the world will not be abandoned to despair. the stoics rebuke the impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on virtue. yet it is unattainable virtue, while their god is not a moral governor, but subject to necessity. thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the god who was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of abraham, moses, david, and isaiah. and yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors of the ancient world. they gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while by their lives they set examples of a pure morality. * * * * * the romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the greeks. nor were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. it was only the ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them. they were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. they had conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air. there were doubtless students of the greek philosophy among the romans, perhaps as early as cato the censor. but there were only two persons of note in rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of cicero,--aurafanius and rubinus,--and these were epicureans. cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so greatly to his intellectual culture, but even he added nothing; he was only a commentator and expositor. nor did he seek to found a system or a school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. those subjects which had the greatest attraction for the grecian schools cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. yet he held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical investigation. he adopted the doctrine of socrates as to the pursuit of moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches. he had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. he thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of god, or the nature of the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established. cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of speculation. this is especially seen in his treatise "de finibus bonorum et malorum," in which the opinions of all the grecian schools concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. nor does he hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge of nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods and men. yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to indulge. it is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man with a guide and rule of life. even in the consideration of moral questions cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in this department he is most at home. the points he is most anxious to establish are the doctrines of god and the soul. these are most fully treated in his essay "de natura deorum," in which he submits the doctrines of the epicureans and the stoics to the objections of the academy. he admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of god, but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme god as the creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. he seems to believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the imitation of the divine. thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any philosophical principle. we might enumerate his various opinions, and show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the development of philosophy. his views, interesting as they are, and generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science. he merely repeats earlier doctrines. these were not without their utility, since they had great influence on the latin fathers of the christian church. he was esteemed for his general enlightenment. he softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day, and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. he was a critic of philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare. if anybody advanced philosophy among the romans it was epictetus, and even he only in the realm of ethics. quintius sextius, in the time of augustus, had revived the pythagorean doctrines. seneca had recommended the severe morality of the stoics, but added nothing that was not previously known. the greatest light among the romans was the phrygian slave epictetus, who was born about fifty years after the birth of jesus christ, and taught in the time of the emperor domitian. though he did not leave any written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his disciple arrian, who had for him the reverence that plato had for socrates. the loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think that he must have been indebted to christianity, for no one before him revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. he was a stoic, but he held in the highest estimation socrates and plato. it is not for the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. he was not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground of all the old inquirers after truth. with him, as to cicero and seneca, philosophy is the wisdom of life. he sets no value on logic, nor much on physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. his great idea is the purification of the soul. he believes in the severest self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that they are evil. he condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the stoics. he would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. he would not strive after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are transitory, and that they are not our own. he would bear evils with patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. he would, in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. he felt that he owed all to god,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to greatness. and if god has given us such a priceless gift, we should be contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are doubtless for the best. we should wish, indeed, for only what god wills and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part. such were the moral precepts of epictetus, in which we see the nearest approach to christianity that had been made in the ancient world, although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of christ or the christians. and these sublime truths had a great influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the roman emperors, marcus aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had learned from the slave, and whose "thoughts" are still held in admiration. thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of life, until in spirit they had, with epictetus, harmonized with many of the revealed truths which christ and his apostles laid down for the regeneration of the world. who cannot see in the inquiries of the old philosopher,--whether into nature, or the operations of mind, or the existence of god, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as has been exhibited in no other department of human science? nay, who does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that divine teacher, that holy spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth? we regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a marvellous reach of the human understanding. modern researches have discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the time of aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the grecian schools have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still unsettled. if any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in human culture. * * * * * authorities. for original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter, read diogenes laertius's lives of the philosophers; the writings of plato and aristotle; cicero, de natura deorum, de oratore, de officiis, de divinatione, de finibus, tusculanae disputationes; xenophon, memorabilia; boethius, de consolatione philosophiae; lucretius. the great modern authorities are the germans, and these are very numerous. among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are brucker, hegel, brandis, i.g. buhle, tennemann, hitter, plessing, schwegler, hermann, meiners, stallbaum, and spiegel. the history of ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive. tennemann, translated by morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. in connection with the writings of the germans, the great work of the french cousin should be consulted. the english historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the germans. the work of enfield is based on brucker, or is rather an abridgment. archer butler's lectures are suggestive and able, but discursive and vague. grote has written learnedly on socrates and the other great lights. lewes's biographical history of philosophy has the merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. see also thomas stanley's history of philosophy, and the articles in smith's dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. j. w. donaldson's continuation of k. o. müller's history of the literature of ancient greece is learned, and should be consulted with thompson's notes on archer butler. schleiermacher, on socrates, translated by bishop thirlwall, is well worth attention. there are also fine articles in the encyclopaedias britannica and metropolitana. socrates. 470-399 b.c. greek philosophy. to socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. in either light he is one of the august names of history. he has been venerated for more than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the truths he taught. he did not commit his precious thoughts to writing; that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been published by them, especially by plato and xenophon. and if the greek philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles by which only it could be advanced. as a system-maker, both plato and aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably their superior, and in important respects he was their master. as a good man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example. he was born about 470 or 469 years b.c., and therefore may be said to belong to that brilliant age of grecian literature and art when prodicus was teaching rhetoric, and democritus was speculating about the doctrine of atoms, and phidias was ornamenting temples, and alcibiades was giving banquets, and aristophanes was writing comedies, and euripides was composing tragedies, and aspasia was setting fashions, and cimon was fighting battles, and pericles was making athens the centre of grecian civilization. but he died thirty years after pericles; so that what is most interesting in his great career took place during and after the peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as the one which immediately preceded it. it was the age of the sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished, but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective truth or the wants of the soul. they were paid teachers, and sought pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being protagoras, gorgias, hippias, and prodicus; men who travelled from city to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and really improving the public speaking of popular orators. they also taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of arithmetic and geometry. in loftiness of character they were not equal to those ionian philosophers, who, prior to socrates, in the fifth century b.c., speculated on the great problems of the material universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great intellectual force. it was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great cultivation, especially in arts, that socrates arose, whose "appearance," says grote, "was a moral phenomenon." he was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. his family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient attic _gens_. socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. he was twenty when he conversed with parmenides and zeno; he was twenty-eight when phidias adorned the parthenon; he was forty when he fought at potidaea and rescued alcibiades. at this period he was most distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming intoxicated, than anybody in athens. his powerful physique and sensual nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain both appetites and passions. his physiognomy was ugly and his person repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. he spent his time chiefly in the market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he lived in "good society." the ancient pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. socrates never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly acted as if he were well known and prominent. he was listened to because he was eloquent. his conversation is said to have been charming, and even fascinating. he was an original and ingenious man, different from everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character." but there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. though lofty in his inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a jewish prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. he looked rather like a silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to make people laugh. he enjoined no austerities or penances. he was very attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he gave the best advice. he was the most human of teachers. alcibiades was completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions. his great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. he sought to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and shams appear ridiculous. his irony was tremendous; nobody could stand before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. he asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. his process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. hence he drew upon himself the wrath of the sophists. he had no intellectual arrogance, since he professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own intellectual superiority. he was contented to show that others knew no more than he. he had no passion for admiration, no political ambition, no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. although poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. he seemed to despise riches, since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. he did not live in a cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. he must have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small, even for athens. he was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in lofty contemplations. he was always talking with such as the skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his illustrations, and uttering plain truths. yet he was equally at home with poets and philosophers and statesmen. he did not take much interest in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world. though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not utilitarian. science had no charm to him, since it was directed to utilitarian ends and was uncertain. his sayings had such a lofty, hidden wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "to the mentally proud and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." most people probably thought him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred, and contemptuous of all conventionalities. so severely dialectical was he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. the very sophists, whose ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler; although there were some--so severely trained was the grecian mind--who saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. probably there are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one of the orations of demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator. and yet there were defects in socrates. he was most provokingly sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. he was not quite just to the sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. and if they loved applause and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize, they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. and then socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. he was too much carried away by the fascinations of aspasia, when he knew that she was not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "menexenus" (by many ascribed to plato) he is made to recite at length one of her long orations, and in the "symposium" he is made to appear absolutely indelicate in his conduct with alcibiades, and to make what would be abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest control of the passions. to me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical, provoking man could have won and retained the love of xanthippe, especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to provide for the wants of the household. i do not wonder that she scolded him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades, he only provokingly laughed at her. a modern christian woman of society would have left him. but perhaps in pagan athens she could not have got a divorce. it is only in these enlightened and progressive times that women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in society,--into which it would seem that socrates was received, even the best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts alone. think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in paris, london, or new york, with his repulsive appearance, and tantalizing and provoking irony. but in artistic athens, at one time, he was all the fashion. everybody liked to hear him talk. everybody was both amused and instructed. he provoked no envy, since he affected modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information, and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. though he provoked animosities, he had many friends. if his language was sarcastic, his affections were kind. he was always surrounded by the most gifted men of his time. the wealthy crito constantly attended him; plato and xenophon were enthusiastic pupils; even alcibiades was charmed by his conversation; apollodorus and antisthenes rarely quitted his side; cebes and simonides came from thebes to hear him; isocrates and aristippus followed in his train; euclid of megara sought his society, at the risk of his life; the tyrant critias, and even the sophist protagoras, acknowledged his marvellous power. but i cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities. more important things demand our attention. i propose briefly to show his contributions to philosophy and ethics. in regard to the first, i will not dwell on his method, which is both subtle and dialectical. we are not greeks. yet it was his method which revolutionized philosophy. that was original. he saw this,--that the theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of the ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the sophists were mere words. he despised both dreams and words. speculations ended in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. neither dreams nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a philosophical system. so he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. their conclusions broke down their assumptions. they stood convicted of ignorance, to which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his aim to prove. he showed that they did not know what they affirmed. he proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and partly false, which produce confusion in argument. he would be precise and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. every definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise, people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced into absurdities. thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in greek philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. after demonstrating what is not, socrates advanced to the demonstration of what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism, courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. he wanted only positive truth,--something to build upon,--like bacon and all great inquirers. having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. unless knowledge is certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon. uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical research than poetry or dreams or speculations. how far the "definitions" of socrates led to the solution of the great problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as plato and aristotle, i will not attempt to enter upon here; but this i think i am warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of socrates, as a teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths, concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore could not be overthrown. if i were teaching metaphysics, it would be necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and definitions by which socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy. but for my present purpose i do not care so much what his _method_ was as what his _aim_ was. the aim of socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is called physical science. and no wonder, since science in his day was very imperfect. there were not facts enough known on which to base sound inductions: better, deductions from established principles. what is deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge in his day. scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. it was all speculation. democritus might resolve the material universe--the earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion of atoms. but whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them motion? the proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the universe, is convicted of ignorance. much, has been said in praise of the ionian philosophers; and justly, so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. but what did they discover? what truths did they arrive at to serve as foundation-stones of science? they were among the greatest intellects of antiquity. but their method was a wrong one. their philosophy was based on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they settled nothing. their science was based on inductions which were not reliable, because of a lack of facts. they drew conclusions as to the origin of the universe from material phenomena. thales, seeing that plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first beginning of things. anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air, thought that air was the great primal cause. then diogenes of crete, making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy. heraclitus of ephesus substituted fire for air. none of the illustrious ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things must be intelligent. the speculations of succeeding philosophers, living in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they could see with their eyes. and in close connection with speculations about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the soul alone was of any account. so atheism, and the disbelief of the existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism. without god and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no foundation for anything. they said, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism. socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world within, and "for physics substituted morals." he knew the uncertainty of physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. he knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage. like job, he reposed on consciousness. he turned his attention to what afterwards gave immortality to descartes. to the scepticism of the sophists he opposed self-evident truths. he proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "moral certitude was the platform from which he would survey the universe." it was the ladder by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of happiness. "though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his ends." he was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and retaining the true. it was his mission to separate truth from error. he taught the world how to weigh evidence. he would discard any doctrine which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. instead of turning his attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either god or consciousness reveals. instead of the creation, he dwelt on the creator. it was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. not wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure, but the peace and harmony of the soul. the inquiry should be, not what we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with god?--for there is a god, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul will expand and be happy forever. thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics. but it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. the teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. as a living christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. the dissection of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions. the moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the intellect. the "thoughts" of pascal are all the more read because the religious life of pascal is known to have been lofty. augustine was the oracle of the middle ages, from the radiance of his character as much as from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. bernard swayed society more by his sanctity than by his learning. the useful life of socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day, but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. he found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul. no writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as plato, his chosen disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective knowledge. his longings after love were scarcely exceeded by augustine or st. theresa,--not for a divine spouse, but for the harmony of the soul. with longings after love were, united longings after immortality, when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of dantean heaven. virtue became the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. he discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the fashion of solomon in his proverbs. happiness, virtue, knowledge: this was the socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and mundane interests. but human nature is frail. the soul is fettered and bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination, to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "this inspiration, he was persuaded, was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions of an internal voice which he called [greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or supernatural voice." from youth he was accustomed to obey this prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on his trial. the fathers of the church regarded this daemon as a devil, probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the "divine grace" of st. augustine and of all men famed for christian experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly or sin. socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things, with most pagans. happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul; pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. happiness is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and comes from what is perishable. hence but little account should be made of pain and suffering, or even of death. the life is more than meat, and virtue is its own reward. there is no reward of virtue in mere outward and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity. one must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. a good citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. a wise man, and therefore a good man, will be temperate. he must neither eat nor drink to excess. but temperance is not abstinence. socrates not only enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. he was a model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes. while he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not extend beyond mortal life. he would show, by teaching and example, that he valued future good beyond any transient joy. hence he accepted poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. he did not lacerate the body, like brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent of it. he was a greek, and a practical man,--anything but visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or love. hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty. he approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or austerities. passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. the law of temperance, therefore, is self-control. courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. life is subordinate to patriotism. it was of but little consequence whether a man died or not, in the discharge of duty. to do right was the main thing, because it was right. "like george fox, he would do right if the world were blotted out." the weak point, to my mind, in the socratic philosophy, considered in its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and making them identical. socrates could probably have explained this difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to st. paul, "the evil that i would not, that i do." men often commit sin when the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. the knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing what he knows will end in grief and shame. the restraint comes, not from knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what socrates meant by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power. "est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo." but this is not exactly the knowledge which socrates meant, or solomon. alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it; but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which socrates called an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." yet socrates himself, with passions and appetites as great as alcibiades, restrained them,--was assisted to do so by that divine power which he recognized, and probably adored. how far he felt his personal responsibility to this power i do not know. the sense of personal responsibility to god is one of the highest manifestations of christian life, and implies a recognition of god as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. many have a vague idea of providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of personal responsibility to him; in other words, without a "fear" of him, such as moses taught, and which is represented by david as "the beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is wrong, but also because it is displeasing to him who can both punish and reward. i do not believe that socrates had this idea of god; but i do believe that he recognized his existence and providence. most people in greece and rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "god almighty" whom moses taught. the existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. and the people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers, to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of minos and rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible. paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number, representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties, and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. they had imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their existence and their power. socrates emancipated himself from these degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of god than the people, or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from the popular belief; although there is one thing which i cannot understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the sacrifice of a cock to aesculapius. but whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of god and immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his conceptions of providence and of duty. he was a reformer and a missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there lived in india, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they called buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to christ than did socrates or marcus aurelius. very possibly. have we any reason to adduce that god has ever been without his witnesses on earth, or ever will be? why could he not have imparted wisdom both to buddha and socrates, as he did to abraham, moses, and paul? i look upon socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of almighty power on this earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. he himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission. think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." you see a man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of morals. you see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. who gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? who gave to him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? who, in this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the christian paley? who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man than the gifted john stuart mill, who seems to have been a candid searcher after truth? in the wisdom of socrates you see some higher force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. how much this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! how much he did to present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light! what a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the epicureanism which was pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! who cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater teacher who was the friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the pharisees and the speculations of the sadducees; who scorned the riches and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to _his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "who shall show us any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" it very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution, especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are popular, or prevailing follies and sins. as the scribes and pharisees, who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by our lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the sophists and tyrants of athens headed the fanatical persecution of socrates because he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. his elevated morality and lofty spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. if he had let persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions, they would probably have let him alone. galileo aroused the wrath of the inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he ridiculed the dominican and jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the middle ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the scriptures and of the church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. the church did not persecute kepler or pascal. the athenians may have condemned xenophanes and anaxagoras, yet not the other ionian philosophers, nor the lofty speculations of plato; but they murdered socrates because they hated him. it was not pleasant to the gay leaders of athenian society to hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing severity, nor was it pleasant to the sophists and rhetoricians to see their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers and shallow pretenders. no one likes to see himself held up to scorn and mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. the people of athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the logical sequence of the teachings of socrates was to undermine the popular religion. it was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. it was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption, those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their children, should not see in socrates their uncompromising foe; and when he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the way. my wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was seventy years of age. men less offensive than he have been burned alive, and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in the amphitheatre. it is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered, or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been killed. no matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished. so socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves disliked and hated. first the great comic poet aristophanes, in his comedy called the "clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. he is made to utter a thousand impieties and impertinences. he is made to talk like a man of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on everybody else. it is not probable that the poet entered into any formal conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and mockery, since socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral teachings, for being declared by the oracle of delphi the wisest man in the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the athenians above all men justly execrated,--critias, the chief of the thirty tyrants whom lysander had imposed, or at least consented to, after the peloponnesian war; and alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a traitor to his country. public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought to trial before the dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges, leading citizens of athens. one of his chief accusers was anytus,--a rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to socrates because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in the expulsion of the thirty tyrants. the more formidable accuser was meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by socrates' terrible cross-examinations. the principal charges against him were, that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he corrupted the youth of athens. in regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. his lofty realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically carried out. as to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul but the tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. in a narrow and technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience. considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an able defence; he might have done better. it appeared as if he did not wish to be acquitted. he took no thought of what he should say; he made no preparation for so great an occasion. he made no appeal to the passions and feelings of his judges. he refused the assistance of lysias, the greatest orator of the day. he brought neither his wife nor children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears. his discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and without art. his unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate defence. he even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate them. on the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. he might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority (only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. and then he irritated his judges unnecessarily. according to the laws he had the privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. for a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance. we cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted. he wished to die. the time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the world in a more impressive form. he knew the moral greatness of a martyr's death. he reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered great services, of having made important revelations. he never had an ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. so he was perfectly resigned to his fate. most willingly he accepted the penalty of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no indignant denials. had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not have fulfilled his mission. he acted with amazing foresight; he took the only course which would secure a lasting influence. he knew that his death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the civilized world. it was a public disappointment that he did not defend himself with more earnestness. but he was not seeking applause for his genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by martyrdom. so he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but lofty conversations with his disciples. he unhesitatingly refused to escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. his last hours were of immortal beauty. his friends were dissolved in tears, but he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. he died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor. his death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. it was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining ever since in the "memorabilia" of xenophon and the "dialogues" of plato. too late the athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty. they erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by lysippus. his character and his ideas are alike immortal. the schools of athens properly date from his death, about the year 400 b.c., and these schools redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. the socratic philosophy, as expounded by plato, survived the wrecks of material greatness. it entered even into the christian schools, especially at alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world, and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of europe and america. "no man has ever been found," says grote, "strong enough to bend the bow of socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original thinker of antiquity." his teachings gave an immense impulse to civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an epicurean life. nor was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. it never will be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which they love. but it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric few,--the witnesses of truth whom god chooses, to keep alive the virtues and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces of evil. * * * * * authorities. the direct sources are chiefly plato (jowett's translation) and xenophon. indirect sources: chiefly aristotle, metaphysics; diogenes laertius's lives of philosophers; grote's history of greece; brandis's plato, in smith's dictionary; ralph waldo emerson's representative men; cicero on immortality; j. martineau, essay on plato; thirlwall's history of greece. see also the late work of curtius; ritter's history of philosophy; f.d. maurice's history of moral philosophy; g. h. lewes' biographical history of philosophy; hampden's fathers of greek philosophy; j.s. blackie's wise men of greece; starr king's lecture on socrates; smith's biographical dictionary; ueberweg's history of philosophy; w.a. butler's history of ancient philosophy; grote's aristotle. phidias 500-430 b.c. greek art. i suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated people in favored circumstances more than art. they travel in europe, they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-á-brac, they assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know what they are talking about or not. in short, the contemplation of art is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed opinions. artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who patronize them have no severity of discrimination. we see bad pictures on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be, the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or emotion in those who view them. and yet there is great enjoyment, to some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. the ideas of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and the favored classes. so, in high civilizations, especially material, art is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme of general criticism and constant conversation. it is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather than critically. my criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more than those of thousands of other people. as a public teacher to those who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, i presume to offer only reflections on art as it existed among the greeks, and to show its developments in an historical point of view. the reader may be surprised that i should venture to present phidias as one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him, or can be known about him. so far as the man is concerned, i might as well lecture on melchizedek, or pharaoh, or one of the dukes of edom. there are no materials to construct a personal history which would be interesting, such as abound in reference to michael angelo or raphael. thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. the development of art is an important part of the history of civilization. the influence of art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. ancient grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. any man who largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor. now, history says this much of phidias: that he lived in the time of pericles,--in the culminating period of grecian glory,--and ornamented the parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which parthenon was to athens what solomon's temple was to jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory. his great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its present value. all antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue, and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the grandeur and majesty of its proportions. another of the famous works of phidias was the bronze statue of minerva, which was the glory of the acropolis, this was sixty feet in height. but even this yielded to the colossal statue of zeus or jupiter in his great temple at olympia, representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. in this statue the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as michael angelo did in his statue of moses. so famous was this majestic statue, that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and repose among the ancients. this statue, removed to constantinople by theodosius the great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 a.d. phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their grace and majesty of form. the great master himself was probably vastly superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age, having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power, unless it be michael angelo. his distinguished excellence was simplicity and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what aeschylus was to tragic poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, though his works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. his fame is immortal, though we know so little about him. it is based on the admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations extorted even from the severest critics in an age of art, when the best energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which make men rich and comfortable. it would be interesting to know the private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but this is mere speculation. we may presume that he was rich, flattered, and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals; not a persecuted man like dante, but honored like raphael; one of the fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in his day. but it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively art itself in the ancient world--to which i would call your attention, especially the expression of art in buildings, in statues, and in pictures. "art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. we speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or an artistic writer like voltaire or macaulay; of an artistic preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. eternal ideas which the mind conceives are the foundation of art, as they are of philosophy. art claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the genius of a poet. however material the creation, the spirit which gives beauty to it is of the mind and soul. imagination is tasked to its utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes the deepest impression. the marble bust becomes animated, and even the temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to admiration and awe. these feelings belong to every one by nature, and are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. art is therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live in the great ideas on which it is based. the peasant stands awe-struck before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all thrones and empires, and even civilizations. they are as imperishable as stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. whenever, then, man creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. he impresses, to a greater or less degree, every order and class of men. he becomes a benefactor, since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure. he is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in praises and honors. like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of the deity he worships his highest reward. michael angelo worked preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced old age, even as dante lived in the visions to which his imagination gave form and reality. art is therefore not only self-sustained, but lofty and unselfish. it is indeed the exalted soul going forth triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the realm of deities and angels. the accidents-of earth are no more to the true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the beatitudes of love. and it is only when there is this soul longing to reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have been produced. when art has been prostituted to pander to perverted tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works only have been created. fra angelico lived secluded in a convent when he painted his exquisite madonnas. it was the exhaustion of the nervous energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed raphael at thirty-seven. the artists of greece did not live for utilities any more than did the ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which were their chosen joy. whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of man was attained by them. they represented all that the mind can conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of architectural proportions, in the realm of beauty and grace modern civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists of pagan antiquity. grecian artists have been the teachers of all nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. how far they were themselves original we cannot tell. we do not know how much they were indebted to egyptians, phoenicians, and assyrians, but in real excellence they have never been surpassed. in some respects, their works still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. hence we have a right to infer that art can flourish under pagan as well as christian influences. it was a comparatively pagan age in italy when the great artists arose who succeeded da vinci, especially under the patronage of the medici and the medicean popes. christianity has only modified art by purifying it from sensual attractions. christianity added very little to art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their saints and madonnas the seraphic sentiments of christian love and angelic purity. art even declined in the roman world from the second century after christ, in spite of all the efforts of christian emperors. in fact neither christianity nor paganism creates it; it seems to be independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and circumstances of an age. make art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown its great masters with olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the people are christian or pagan. so that art seems to be a human creation, rather than a divine inspiration. it is the result of genius, stimulated by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence. much has been written on those principles upon which art is supposed to be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and ingenuity have been displayed. it is difficult to conceive of beauty or grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "metaphysics, mathematics, music, and philosophy," says cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define, demonstrate, or generalize," great critics, like burke, alison, and stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "plato represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. leibnitz maintained that it consists in perfection. diderot referred beauty to the idea of relation. blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. leigh speaks of it as the music of the age." these definitions do not much assist us. we fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as probably did phidias, although art in greece could hardly have attained such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy alike afforded. art can flourish only as the taste of the people becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge. the mere contemplation of nature is not enough. savages have no art at all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the ever-changing sea. when phidias was asked how he conceived his olympian jove, he referred to homer's poems. michael angelo was enabled to paint the saints and sibyls of the sistine chapel from familiarity with the writings of the jewish prophets. isaiah inspired him as truly as homer inspired phidias. the artists of the age of phidias were encouraged and assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in the sunshine of pericles, even as the great men in the court of elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious appreciation. great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. they all mutually assist each other. when rome lost her great men, art declined. when the egotism of louis xiv. extinguished genius, the great lights in all departments disappeared. so art is indebted not merely to the contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas permeating society,--such as when the age of phidias was kindled with the great thoughts of socrates, democritus, thucydides, euripides, aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of augustan or elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the same people. now, in reference to the history or development of ancient art, until it culminated in the age of pericles, we observe that its first expression was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished for intellectual life. then arose the temples of egypt, of assyria, of india. they are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful. they arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably erected before the palaces of kings, and in egypt by the dynasty that builded the older pyramids. even those ambitious and prodigious monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but only of permanence. they do not indicate civilization, but despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. but this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. it is difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes, acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical forces, for herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on the great pyramid during forty years. what for? surely it is hard to suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king, since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even any hieroglyphics. the mystery seems impenetrable. but the temples are not mysteries. they were built also by sacerdotal monarchs, in honor of the deity. they must have been enormous, perhaps the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of karnac--a temple designated by the greeks as that of jupiter ammon---with its large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and surrounded with courts and colonnades, like solomon's temple, to accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. but these enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation. they may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. the emotion they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace or harmony, which require both taste and genius. the same is probably true of solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when art had been advanced somewhat by the phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems he was much indebted. we cannot conceive how that famous structure should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and money rather than architectural genius. after the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings, equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of art. yet even these were in imitation of the temples. and as kings became proud and secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the palaces of nebuchadnezzar and rameses the great and the persian monarchs at susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient in beauty and grace. it was not until the greeks applied their wonderful genius to architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization. and, as among egyptians, art in greece is first seen in temples; for the earlier greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make. the dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern greece, eighty years after the fall of troy, were the first who added substantially to the architectural art of asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and harmony to their temples. we see great thickness of columns, a fitting proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. the horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines of the columns. the temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms. the doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement on the egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward, about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. "so regular was the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement, and general proportions." and yet while the style of all the doric temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by the different proportions of the _column_, which is the peculiar mark of grecian architecture, even as the _arch_ is the feature of gothic architecture. the later doric was less massive than the earlier, but more rich in sculptured ornaments. the pedestal was from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. the pillar had twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the entablature. this again, two diameters in height, was divided into architrave, frieze, and cornice. but the great beauty of the temple was the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. from the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings, while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing both men and animals. the graceful outline of the columns, and the variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. all the glories of this order of architecture culminated in the parthenon,--built of pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior was the statue of minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. the walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself contained countless treasures. this unrivalled temple was not so large as some of the cathedrals of the middle ages, but it covered twelve times the ground of the temple of solomon, and from the summit of the acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. the marbles have crumbled and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the most beautiful buildings of the world, from the quirinus at rome to the madeleine at paris, stimulating alike the genius of michael angelo and christopher wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. who has copied the flavian amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or for the rostrum of an orator? who has not copied the parthenon as the severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes? the ionic architecture is only a modification of the doric,--its columns more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment, the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength. vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that "the greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of the capital." the corinthian order, which was the most copied by the romans, was still more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more decorated entablature. but the principles of all these three orders are substantially the same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even as vertical lines marked the gothic. we see the lintel and not the arch; huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than broken by projections. there is no great variety; but the harmony, the severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete, not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace of form. as the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the architecture of the greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores, libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring, we see the restoration of the gothic in churches, cathedrals, schools,--for philosophy and art did all they could to civilize the world before christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for the life above. such was the temple of the greeks, reappearing in all the architectures of nations, from the romans to our own times,--so perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new principles discovered which were not known to vitruvius. what a creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years, and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! ah, that was a triumph of art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. but how hidden and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the littleness of man and the greatness of art itself. how true that old greek saying, "life is short, but art is long." but the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was carried to the same perfection. the greeks did not originate sculpture. we read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. assyria, egypt, and india are full of relics. but these are rude, unformed, without grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. there are but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. everything which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive, imperturbable. nor is there a severe beauty of form. there is no grace, no loveliness, that we should desire them. nature was not severely studied. we see no aspiration after what is ideal. sometimes the sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. they are emblematic of strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. they are curious, but they do not inspire us. we do not copy them; we turn away from them. they do not live, and they are not reproduced. art could spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. they are merely historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the degradation of the people. but this cannot be said of the statues which the greeks created, or improved from ancient models. in the sculptures of the greeks we see the utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest beauty. a famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps one hundred different persons. the study of the human figure became a noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all respects. and not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. we see in those figures which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest, grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form. we see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage, agony, shame, joy, peace. but it is the perfection of form which is most wonderful and striking. nor did the artists work to please the vulgar rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent sentiments in which the whole nation shared. they sought to instruct; they appealed to the highest intelligence. "some sought to represent tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur." grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the portrait-statues of distinguished men. this art was later in its development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what had already nearly reached perfection. thus phidias ornamented the parthenon in the time of pericles, when sculpture was purest and most ideal in some points of view it declined after phidias, but in other respects it continued to improve until it culminated in lysippus, who was contemporaneous with alexander. he is said to have executed fifteen hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. he idealized human beauty, and imitated nature to the minutest details. he alone was selected to make the statue of alexander, which is lost. none of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is supposed that the famous _hercules_ and the _torso belvedere_ are copies from his works, since his favorite subject was hercules. we only can judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. it was his scholars who sculptured the _colossus of rhodes_, the _laocoön_, and the _dying gladiator_. after him plastic art rapidly degenerated, since it appealed to passion, especially under praxiteles, who was famous for his undraped venuses and the expression of sensual charms. the decline of art was rapid as men became rich, and epicurean life was sought as the highest good. skill of execution did not decline, but ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as among the romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter senatorial pride. but our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior respects,--in mere mechanical skill. the _olympian jove_ of phidias lives perhaps in the _moses_ of michael angelo, great as was his original genius, even as the _venus_ of praxiteles may have been reproduced in powers's _greek slave_. the great masters had innumerable imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. what a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times! they were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands, perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. their instructions were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of the proudest features of our own civilization. it is true that christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties which prevent the eclipse of art. in this way it comes to the rescue of art when in danger of being perverted. grecian art was consecrated to paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to christianity, like music and eloquence. it will not conserve christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish without it. i can now only glance at the third development of grecian art, as seen in painting. it is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in sculpture and architecture. we have no means of forming incontrovertible opinions. most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring, do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures of the great masters of modern times. but we have the testimony of the ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of pictures as they were of statues. and since their taste was severe, and their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the greeks. we read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of florence, rome, bologna, venice, and naples. the schools of sicyon, corinth, athens, and rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern schools to which i have alluded. painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. but painting is very ancient. the walls of babylon, it is asserted by the ancient historians, were covered with paintings. many survive amid the ruins of egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude, without regard to light and shade, like chinese pictures. nor do they represent passions and emotions. they aimed to perpetuate historical events, not ideas. the first paintings of the greeks simply marked out the outline of figures. next appeared the inner markings, as we see in ancient vases, on a white ground. the effects of light and shade were then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with nature. cimon of cleonae, in the eightieth olympiad, invented the art of "fore-shortening," and hence was the first painter of perspective. polygnotus, a contemporary of phidias, was nearly as famous for painting as he was for sculpture. he was the first who painted woman with brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. he gave to the cheek the blush and to his draperies gracefulness. he is said to have been a great epic painter, as phidias was an epic sculptor and homer an epic poet. he expressed, like them, ideal beauty. but his pictures had no elaborate grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. his figures were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. he took his subjects from epic poetry. he is celebrated for his accurate drawing, and for the charm and grace of his female figures. he also gave great grandeur to his figures, like michael angelo. contemporary with him was dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and micon, who was skilled in painting horses. with apollodorus of athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth century before christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic effect. his aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the appearance of reality. he painted men and things as they appeared. he also improved coloring, invented _chiaroscuro_ (or the art of relief by a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what is called "tone." he prepared the way for zeuxis, who surpassed him in the power to give beauty to forms. the _helen_ of zeuxis was painted from five of the most beautiful women of croton. he aimed at complete illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape picture. his style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures of phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. his marked excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. he did not paint ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty as it appeared in the models which he used. but he was greatly extolled, and accumulated a great fortune, like rubens, and lived ostentatiously, as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation of sentiment. his headquarters were not at athens, but at ephesus,--a city which also produced parrhasins, to whom zeuxis himself gave the palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while zeuxis only deceived birds by his grapes. parrhasius established the rule of proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. he was a very luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection of his art. but if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by apelles,--the titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the ionian school with the scientific severity of the school of sicyonia. he alone was permitted to paint the figure of alexander, as lysippus only was allowed to represent him in bronze. he invented ivory black, and was the first to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors and preserve them. his distinguishing excellency was grace,--"that artless balance of motion and repose," says fuseli, "springing from character and founded on propriety." others may have equalled him in perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste which placed him on the throne which is now given to raphael. no artists could complete his unfinished pictures. he courted the severest criticism, and, like michael angelo, had no jealousy of the fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own self-consciousness. he must have made enormous sums of money, since one of his pictures--a venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in cos, and afterwards removed by augustus to rome--cost one hundred talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum, i apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture, certainly in view of the relative value of gold. in this picture female grace was impersonated. after apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished artists for several centuries. they generally flocked to rome, where there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to vanity and a vitiated taste. the masterpieces of the old artists brought enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were brought to rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of italy and spain and flanders were brought to paris by napoleon. so rome gradually possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius expired with grecian liberties and glories. rome multiplied and rewarded painters, but none of them were famous. pictures were as common as statues. even varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred portraits. pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and palaces, as were statues. we are forced, therefore, to believe that the greeks carried painting to the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises of critics like cicero and pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm which the painters created and the enormous prices they received. whether polygnotus was equal to michael angelo, zeuxis to titian, and apelles to raphael, we cannot tell. their works have perished. what remains to us, in the mural decorations of pompeii and the designs on vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. we cannot conceive how the greek painters could have equalled the great italian masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture we call "encaustic." yet it is not the perfection of colors or of design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill, which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace, inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which appears in all the masterworks of the greeks, and such as has not been surpassed by the moderns. but art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone. it equally appears in all the literature of greece. the greek poets were artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. they were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the literature of the jews or other oriental nations, marvellous and profound as were their thoughts. the greeks had the power of putting things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. this especially appears among such poets as sophocles and euripides, such orators as pericles and demosthenes, such historians as xenophon and thucydides, such philosophers as plato and aristotle. we see in their finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. all is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when we read voltaire, rousseau, or macaulay. we perceive art in the arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of construction. we see means adapted to an end. the latin races are most marked for artistic writing, especially the french, who seem to be copyists of greek and roman models. we see very little of this artistic writing among the germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an english lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. it is in rhetoric and poetry that art most strikingly appears in the writings of the greeks, and this was perfected by the athenian sophists. but all the greeks, and after them the romans, especially in the time of cicero, sought the graces and fascinations of style. style is an art, and all art is eternal. it is probable also that art was manifested to a high degree in the conversation of the greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like brougham, mackintosh, madame de staël, and macaulay, in our times. but i may not follow out, as i could wish, this department of art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and statues. an interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their works are apt to perish, like those of varro, the most learned of the romans. it is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of cicero which makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. the same may be said of horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes him immortal. it is this singular fascination of language and style which keeps hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like pascal, goldsmith, voltaire, and fénelon. it is on account of these excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they have exerted their vast influence. art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by the greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races and ages. artists are great exponents of civilization. they are generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and usually associating with the rich and proud. the popes rewarded artists while they crushed reformers. i never read of an artist who was persecuted. men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no opposition and stir up no hostile passions. it is the men who propound agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are persecuted. artists create no revolutions, not even of thought. savonarola kindled a greater fire in florence than all the artists whom the medici ever patronized. but if the artists cannot wear the crown of apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like socrates, luther, bacon, descartes, burke,--yet they have fewer evils to contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression behind them, not like that of moses and paul, but still an influence; they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas, and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments. the great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little to save the world. art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which shine beyond the grave. and yet it is a great and invaluable assistance to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves. to the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge of the principles of art is as important as to the architect, the sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men. thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments of art the greeks were the teachers of the modern european nations, as well of the ancient romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new principles have been discovered which were not known to them. in everything which pertains to art they were benefactors of the human race, and gave a great impulse to civilization. authorities. müller's de phidias vita, vitruvius, aristotle. pliny, ovid, martial, lucian, and cicero have made criticisms on ancient art. the modern writers are very numerous, especially among the germans and the french. from these may be selected winckelmann's history of ancient art; müller's remains of ancient art; donaldson's antiquities of athens; sir w. gill's pompeiana; montfançon's antiquité expliquée en figures; ancient marbles of the british museum, by taylor combe; mayer's kunstgechicte; cleghorn's ancient and modern art; wilkinson's topography of thebes; dodwell's classical tour; wilkinson's ancient egyptians; flaxman's lectures on sculpture; fuseli's lectures; sir joshua reynolds's lectures; also see five articles on painting, sculpture, and architecture, in the encyclopaedia britannica, and in smith's dictionary. literary genius: the greek and roman classics. we know but little of the literature of antiquity until the greeks applied to it the principles of art. the sanskrit language has revealed the ancient literature of the hindus, which is chiefly confined to mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the chapter on "ancient religions." there was no history worthy the name in india. the egyptians and babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value. it is true that the literary remains of egypt show a reading and writing people as early as three thousand years before christ, and in their various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. the difficulties of deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological than of literary interest. the chinese annals also extend back to a remote period, for confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also that of all oriental nations, except the hindu vedas and the persian zend-avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos. accordingly, as i wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a direct influence upon our modern literature, i confine myself to that of greece and rome. even our present civilization delights in the masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists, and seeks to rival them. long before christianity became a power the great literary artists of greece had reached perfection in style and language, especially in athens, to which city youths were sent to be educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was known. educated romans were as familiar with the greek classics as they were with those of their own country, and could talk greek as the modern cultivated germans talk french. without the aid of greece, rome could never have reached the civilization to which she attained. how rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the greek or latin language! in all those qualities which give immortality classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. it existed from the early times of greek civilization, and continued to within a brief period of the fall of the roman empire. with the rich accumulation of ages the romans were familiar. they knew nothing indeed of the solitary grandeur of the jewish muse, or the nature-myths of the ante-homeric singers; but they possessed the iliad and the odyssey, with their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character, their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be found in them. we see in homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in literature that plato holds in philosophy or newton in science, and exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him. he was born, probably, at smyrna, an ionian city; the dates attributed to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before christ. herodotus puts him at 850 b.c. for nearly three thousand years his immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the athenians, since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated sentiments of the heroic ages. we find in them no pomp of words, no far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world, the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is; and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. we find in the homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur, sentiment, and beauty, such as phidias represented in his statues of zeus. no poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted greater admiration from critics. like shakspeare, homer is a kind of bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages, --one of the prodigies of the world. his poems form the basis of greek literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of all grecian compositions. the unconscious simplicity of the homeric narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details, and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of genius can claim. moreover it presents a painting of society, with its simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. its influence on the popular mythology of the greeks has been already alluded to. if homer did not create the grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it. nor is it necessary to speak of any other grecian epic, when the iliad and the odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and twenty years before hesiod was born. grote thinks that the iliad and the odyssey were produced at some period between 850 b.c. and 776 b.c. in lyrical poetry the greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. who has surpassed pindar in artistic skill? his triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments of moral wisdom. they alone of all his writings have descended to us, but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. he was so celebrated that he was employed by the different states and princes of greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the public games. although a theban, he was held in the highest estimation by the athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. born in thebes 522 b.c., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary with aeschylus and the battle of marathon. we possess also fragments of sappho, simonides, anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the lyrical poetry of greece be recovered, we should probably possess the richest collection that the world has produced. greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. even the great masterpieces of sophocles and euripides now extant were regarded by their contemporaries as inferior to many other greek tragedies utterly unknown to us. the great creator of the greek drama was aeschylus, born at eleusis 525 b.c. it was not till the age of forty-one that he gained his first prize. sixteen years afterward, defeated by sophocles, he quitted athens in disgust and went to the court of hiero, king of syracuse. but he was always held, even at athens, in the highest honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. it was not so much the object of aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct and elevate it. he combined religious feeling with lofty moral sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and terror. "at his summons," says sir walter scott, "the mysterious and tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled spectators; the more than mortal voices of deities, titans, and departed heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who struck horror into the gods themselves." his imagination dwells in the loftiest regions of the old mythology of greece; his tone is always pure and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. in sublimity aeschylus has never been surpassed. he was in poetry what phidias and michael angelo were in art. the critics say that his sublimity of diction is sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated. his characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and heroes of colossal magnitude. his religious views were homeric, and he sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of the generals who fought at marathon to do. he was an unconscious genius, and worked like homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. he was proud and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. he wrote seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal, among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of shakspeare. he died in sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. the fame of sophocles is scarcely less than that of aeschylus. he was twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. he was born in colonus, in the suburbs of athens, 495 b.c., and was the contemporary of herodotus, of pericles, of pindar, of phidias, of socrates, of cimon, of euripides,--the era of great men, the period of the peloponnesian war, when everything that was elegant and intellectual culminated at athens. sophocles had every element of character and person to fascinate the greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form, skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to his country. his tragedies, by the universal consent of the best critics, are the perfection of the greek drama; and they moreover maintain that he has no rival, aeschylus and shakspeare alone excepted, in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. it was the peculiarity of sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. he loved to paint forlorn heroes. he was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so religious as aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but more perfect in art. his sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable destiny, but of their own follies. nor does he even excite emotion apart from a moral end. he lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "oedipus at colonus." sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. his "antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when euripides had already gained a prize. only seven of his tragedies have survived, but these are priceless treasures. euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the greek tragic poets, was born at athens, 485 b.c. he had not the sublimity of aeschylus, nor the touching pathos of sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either, but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to both. in his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of aeschylus and sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. he paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects to the level of common life. he was the pet of the sophists, and was pantheistic in his views. he does not attempt to show ideal excellence, and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they are, especially in corrupt states of society. euripides wrote ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. whatever objection may be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question their transcendent art or their great originality. with the exception of shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied the three great greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially racine, who took sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets of all ages have been indebted to homer. the greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. both tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of bacchus; and as the jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose. at first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at the foundation of the greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in describing the appetite of hercules or the cowardice of bacchus. the comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. but the taste of the athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the day. the people loved to see their great men brought down to their own level. comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon wherewith to assail prevailing follies. in modern times, comedy reached its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the most intellectual,--as in france, when molière pointed his envenomed shafts against popular vices. in greece it flourished in the age of socrates and the sophists, when there was great bitterness in political parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. comedy first made itself felt as a great power in cratinus, who espoused the side of cimon against pericles with great bitterness and vehemence. many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but all yielded precedence to aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays have reached us. never were libels on persons of authority and influence uttered with such terrible license. he attacked the gods, the politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of athens; even private citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of his irony. socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered, cleon in the height of his power, and euripides when he had gained the highest prizes. aristophanes has furnished jests for rabelais, hints to swift, and humor for molière. in satire, in derision, in invective, and bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. no modern capital would tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be reached. aristophanes is called the father of comedy, and his comedies are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are doubtless caricatures. he was patriotic in his intentions, even setting up as a reformer. his peculiar genius shines out in his "clouds," the greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the sophists. he wrote fifty-four plays. he was born 444 b.c., and died 380 b.c. thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old greeks were great masters, and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages. the romans in these departments were not the equals of the greeks, but they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern nations. if the romans did not produce a homer, they can boast of a virgil; if they had no pindar, they furnished a horace; and in satire they transcended the greeks. the romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the greek language and literature were introduced among them. it was not till the fall of tarentum that we read of a roman poet. livius andronicus, a greek slave, 240 b.c., rudely translated the odyssey into latin, and was the author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which, according to cicero, were worth a second perusal. still, andronicus was the first to substitute the greek drama for the old lyrical stage poetry. one year after the first punic war, he exhibited the first roman play. as the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was, pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the greeks. his plays formed the commencement of roman translation-literature, and naturalized the greek metres in latium, even though they were curiosities rather than works of art. naevius, 235 b.c., produced a play at rome, and wrote both epic and dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be formed of his merits. he was banished for his invectives against the aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. mommsen regards naevius as the first of the romans who deserves to be ranked among the poets. his language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his verses had a graceful flow. in metres he closely adhered to andronicus. plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the romans produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original and fresh. he was born in umbria, 257 b.c., and was contemporaneous with publius and cneius scipio. he died 184 b.c. the first development of roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic, in which still the greek authors were copied. plautus might be mistaken for a greek, were it not for the painting of roman manners, for his garb is essentially greek. plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not always for the stage, but for the reading public. he lived about the time of the second punic war, before the theatre was fairly established at rome. his characters, although founded on greek models, act, speak, and joke like romans. he enjoyed great popularity down to the latest times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. cicero places his wit on a par with the old attic comedy; while jerome spent much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him tears of bitter regret. modern dramatists owe much to plautus. molière has imitated him in his "avare," and shakspeare in his "comedy of errors." lessing pronounces the "captivi" to be the finest comedy ever brought upon the stage; he translated this play into german, and it has also been admirably translated into english. the great excellence of plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the parts for dramatic effect. his humor, broad and fresh, produced irresistible comic effects. no one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary of nicknames and his happy jokes. hence he maintained his popularity in spite of his vulgarity. terence shares with plautus the throne of roman comedy. he was a carthaginian slave, born 185 b.c., but was educated by a wealthy roman into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best society and travelled extensively in greece. he was greatly inferior to plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence; but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which have been translated into all modern languages. terence, whom mommsen regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy, closely copied the greek menander. unlike plautus, he drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. plautus wrote for the multitude, terence for the few; plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; terence confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by cicero and quintilian and other great critics. he aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted the more original productions of plautus in the later years of the republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age. the "thyestes" of varius was regarded in its day as equal to greek tragedies. ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was regarded by the romans as the parent of their literature, although most of his works have perished. virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and was regarded as the prince of roman song in the time of cicero. the latin language is greatly indebted to him. pacuvius imitated aeschylus in the loftiness of his style. from the times before the augustan age no tragic production has reached us, although quintilian speaks highly of accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the greeks. the only tragedy of the romans which has reached us was written by seneca the philosopher. in epic poetry the romans accomplished more, though even here they are still inferior to the greeks. the aeneid of virgil has certainly survived the material glories of rome. it may not have come up to the exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries; it may not have the force and originality of the iliad,--but it is superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy than can be found in any greek author. in soundness of judgment, in tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description, in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works of genius. henry thompson, in his "history of roman literature," says:-"availing himself of the pride and superstition of the roman people, the poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'eternal city' to those heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character to awaken their admiration and awe. no subject could have been more happily chosen. it has been admired also for its perfect unity of action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem, which is to impress the divine authority under which aeneas first settled in italy. the wrath of juno, upon which the whole fate of aeneas seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the trojan name is to be continued in the roman, and thus heaven and earth are appeased." probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence as this poem of virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of learning, the model of the carlovingian poets, the guide of dante, the oracle of tasso. virgil was born seventy years before christ, and was seven years older than augustus. his parentage was humble, but his facilities of education were great. he was a most fortunate man, enjoying the friendship of augustus and maecenas, fame in his own lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his labors. he died at brundusium at the age of fifty. in lyrical poetry, the romans can boast of one of the greatest masters of any age or nation. the odes of horace have never been transcended, and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. they may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and passion which belong to the greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are unrivalled. even in the time of juvenal his poems were the common school-books of roman youth. horace, born 65 b.c., like virgil was also a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires. his odes composed but a small part of his writings. his epistles are the most perfect of his productions, and rank with the "georgics" of virgil and the "satires" of juvenal as the most perfect form of roman verse. his satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and lofty indignation that characterized those of juvenal. it is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice which horace describes with such playful skill and such keenness of observation. he was the first to mould the latin tongue to the greek lyric measures. quintilian's criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--_lyricorum horatius fere solus legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. no poetry was ever more severely elaborated than that of horace, and the melody of the language imparts to it a peculiar fascination. if inferior to pindar in passion and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit. it cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the masters of human thought. it is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as well as those of virgil, plautus, and terence, because they derived so much assistance from the greeks. but the greeks also borrowed from one another. pure originality is impossible. it is the mission of art to add to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. even shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of minute observers. in this mention of lyrical poetry i have not spoken of catullus, unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the augustan era. he was born 87 b.c., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated characters. one hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us, most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness and sensuality. critics say, however, that whatever he touched he adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective, and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the latin language. in didactic poetry lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by schlegel as the first of roman poets in native genius. he was born 95 b.c., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. his principal poem "de rerum natura" is a delineation of the epicurean philosophy, and treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was conversant. somewhat resembling pope's "essay on man" in style and subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. it is a lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the great phenomena of the outward world. as a painter and worshipper of nature, lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. his skill in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. into all subjects he casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. but he was not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so fully brought out the power of the latin language. professor ramsay, while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of tibullus, the exquisite ingenuity of ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of horace, the gentleness and splendor of virgil, and the vehement declamation of juvenal, thinks that had the verse of lucretius perished we should never have known that the latin could give utterance to the grandest conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. the eulogium of ovid is- "carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura lucretî, exitio terras quum dabit una dies." elegiac poetry has an honorable place in roman literature. to this school belongs ovid, born 43 b.c., died 18 a.d., whose "tristia," a doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the romans. his most famous work was his "metamorphoses," mythologic legends involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production. he, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a prediction, says bayle, which has not yet proved false. niebuhr thinks that ovid next to catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen. milton thinks he might have surpassed virgil, had he attempted epic poetry. he was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical authors; and chaucer, ariosto, and spenser owe to him great obligations. like pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. his "tristia" were more highly praised than his "amores" or his "metamorphoses," a fact which shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit. his poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste which marked the greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. he had great advantages, but was banished by augustus for his description of licentious love. nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished like cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart. but few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society. chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. ovid, as an immoral writer, was justly punished. tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as ovid, and was the friend of the poet horace. he lived in retirement, and was both gentle and amiable. at his beautiful country-seat he soothed his soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the country. niebuhr pronounces the elegies of tibullus to be doleful, but merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of three inconstant paramours.... his spirit is eminently religious, though it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope. he alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country." propertius, the contemporary of tibullus, born 51 b.c., was on the contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of augustus,--a man of wit and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was cynthia, a poetess and a courtesan. he was an imitator of the greeks, but had a great contemporary fame. he showed much warmth of passion, but never soared into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival. such were among the great elegiac poets of rome, who were generally devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. the older english poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, wordsworth and tennyson. it is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in imagination. the grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed rather in epic and dramatic poetry. in satire the romans transcended both the greeks and the moderns. satire arose with lucilius, 148 b.c., in the time of marius, an age when freedom of speech was tolerated. horace was the first to gain immortality in this department. next persius comes, born 34 a.d., the friend of lucian and seneca in the time of nero, who painted the vices of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign of domitian, when juvenal appeared. the latter, disdaining fear, boldly set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction all who departed from duty and conscience. there is nothing in any language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of juvenal, not even the invectives of swift and pope. but he flourished during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the elegance of the augustan writers. he was born 60 a.d., the son of a freedman, and was the contemporary of martial. he was banished by domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under the reign of nerva he returned to rome, and the imperial tyranny was the subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public morals. his great rival in satire was horace, who laughed at follies; but juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. his sarcasms on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope that they were unjust. from an historical point of view, as a delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even like the epigrams of martial. this uncompromising poet, not pliant and easy like horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. he discoursed on the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of dr. johnson, and urged self-improvement like socrates and epictetus. i might speak of other celebrated poets,--of lucan, of martial, of petronius; but i only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity, both greek and roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the realm of thought and art. the genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. the poets were the great creators of the languages of antiquity. it was not until they had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. but prose requires art as well as poetry. there is an artistic rhythm in the writings of the classical authors--like those of cicero, herodotus, and thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of homer and virgil. plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as apollo's lyre." burke and macaulay are as great artists in style as tennyson himself. and it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times, have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although voltaire, schiller, milton, swift, and scott are among the exceptions. cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries. bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and command of language, could not write poetry any easier than pope could write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no great reputation, that bacon wrote shakspeare's plays. all sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both greeks and romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory, in epistles. the earliest great prose writer among the greeks was herodotus, 484 b.c., from which we may infer that history was the first form of prose composition to attain development. but herodotus was not born until aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred years after simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six hundred years after homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this great "father of history" is admired by every critic, while his history as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. it is difficult to understand why no work in prose anterior to herodotus is worthy of note, since the greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of development under homer for more than five hundred years. the history of herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age, and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various countries he had visited. it pertains chiefly to the wars of the greeks with the persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the oriental nations. it was once the fashion to speak of herodotus as a credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting stories. but now it is believed that no historian was ever more profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations confirm his sagacity and impartiality. he was one of the most accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge, familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his day; acquainted with all the great men of greece and at the courts of asiatic princes; the friend of sophocles, of pericles, of thucydides, of aspasia, of socrates, of damon, of zeno, of phidias, of protagoras, of euripides, of polygnotus, of anaxagoras, of xenophon, of alcibiades, of lysias, of aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of genius who were ever found together within the walls of a grecian city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were inferior to him in knowledge. thus was he fitted for his task by travel, by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his original genius. the greatest prose work which had yet appeared in greece was produced by herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste, perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected, and beautiful, like the narratives of the bible, amusing yet instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. so highly was this historic composition valued by the athenians when their city was at the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents (about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. he even went from city to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of humboldt, having mastered everything. and he wrote, not for fame, but to communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at dodona, at delphi, at samos, at athens, at corinth, at thebes, at tyre; he even travelled into egypt, scythia, asia minor, palestine, babylonia, italy, and the islands of the sea. his episode on egypt is worth more, from an historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended to us from antiquity. herodotus was the first to give dignity to history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been surpassed. his very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. the translation of this great history by rawlinson, with notes, is invaluable. to thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud pre-eminence. he was born 471 b.c., and lived twenty years in exile on account of a military failure. he treated only of a short period, during the peloponnesian war; but the various facts connected with that great event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. he devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. his style has not the fascination of herodotus, but it is more concise. in a single volume thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes of a modern history. as a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. in his description of the plague of athens this writer is as minute as he is simple. he abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen perception of human character. his pictures are striking and tragic. he is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some of his sentences are not always easily understood. one of the greatest tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic, george long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and eventful period by thucydides than we have of any period in modern history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into a volume. xenophon is the last of the trio of the greek historians whose writings are classic and inimitable. he was born probably about 444 b.c. he is characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. his "anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger cyrus and the retreat of the ten thousand greeks, is his most famous book. but his "cyropaedia," in which the history of cyrus is the subject, although still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories of his hero without sufficient investigation. xenophon wrote a variety of treatises and dialogues, but his "memorabilia" of socrates is the most valuable. all antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing to xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man. if we pass from the greek to the latin historians,--to those who were as famous as the greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of sallust, of caesar, of livy, of tacitus rise up before us, together with a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this great department of prose composition. the first great masters of the greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it flexibility and refinement the first great prose writers of rome were the orators; nor was the latin language fully developed and polished until cicero appeared. but we do not here write a history of the language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various departments of learning. as herodotus did not arise until the greek language had been already formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the romans for a considerable time after plautus, terence, ennius, and lucretius flourished. the first great historian was sallust, the contemporary of cicero, born 86 b.c., the year that marius died. q. fabius pictor, m. portius cato, and l. cal. piso had already written works which are mentioned with respect by latin authors, but they were mere annalists or antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the middle ages, and had no claim as artists. sallust made thucydides his model, but fell below him in genius and elevated sentiment. he was born a plebeian, and rose to distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his profligacy. afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of numidia, and lived in magnificence on the quirinal,--one of the most profligate of the literary men of antiquity. we possess but a small portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show peculiar merit. he sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. the style of sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and lively, but rhetorical. like voltaire, who inaugurated modern history, sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. he was a party man, and never soared beyond his party. he aped the moralist, but exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and honored talent disconnected with virtue. like carlyle, sallust exalted _strong_ men, and _because_ they were strong. he was not comprehensive like cicero, or philosophical like thucydides, although he affected philosophy as he did morality. he was the first who deviated from the strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. he wrote for _éclat_. julius caesar, born 100 or 102 b.c., as an historian ranks higher than sallust, and no roman ever wrote purer latin. yet his historical works, however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius of the most august name of antiquity. he was mathematician, architect, poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. in eloquence he was second only to cicero. the great value of caesar's history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the customs, and the political conditions of gaul, britain, and germany. his observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the description of his military career is only a studied apology for his crimes,--even as the bulletins of napoleon were set forth to show his victories in the most favorable light. caesar's fame rests on his victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an historian,--even as louis napoleon will live in history for his deeds rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. caesar's "commentaries" resemble the history of herodotus more than any other latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected, precise and elegant, plain and without pretension. the augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of louis xiv., still was unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. of the historians of that age, livy, born 59 b.c., is the only one whose writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history. he was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary reputation,--so great that a spaniard travelled from cadiz on purpose to see him. most of the great historians of the world have occupied places of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high social position and ample means secure. herodotus lived in courts; thucydides was a great general, as also was xenophon; caesar was the first man of his times; sallust was praetor and governor; livy was tutor to claudius; tacitus was praetor and consul; eusebius was bishop and favorite of constantine; ammianus was the friend of the emperor julian; gregory of tours was one of the leading prelates of the west; froissart attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his day; clarendon was lord chancellor; burnet was a bishop and favorite of william iii.; thiers and guizot both were prime ministers; while gibbon, hume, robertson, macaulay, grote, milman, froude, neander, niebuhr, müller, dahlman, buckle, prescott, irving, bancroft, motley, have all been men of wealth or position. nor do i remember a single illustrious historian who has been poor and neglected. the ancients regarded livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. but his narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. he did not sift evidence like grote, nor generalize like gibbon; but like voltaire and macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. his annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from the foundation of the city to the death of drusus, 9 b.c., of which only thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the vandalism of the middle ages and the ignorance of the monks who could not preserve so great a treasure. "his story flows in a calm, clear, sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give." he delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences. livy was not a critical historian like herodotus, for he took his materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write with the exalted ideal of thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in the history of literature. moreover, he was honest and sound in heart, and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was conversant. in the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is assigned to tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his superior in any age or country. he was born 57 a.d., about forty-three years after the death of augustus. he belonged to the equestrian rank, and was a man of consular dignity. he had every facility for literary labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give, and lived under a reign when truth might be told. the extant works of this great writer are the "life of agricola," his father-in-law; his "annales," which begin with the death of augustus, 14 a.d., and close with the death of nero, 68 a.d.; the "historiae," which comprise the period from the second consulate of galba, 68 a.d., to the death of domitian; and a treatise on the germans. his histories describe rome in the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme law of the empire. he also wrote of events that occurred when liberty had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. he describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself. he fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great characters he describes. no ancient writer shows greater moral dignity and integrity of purpose than tacitus. in point of artistic unity he is superior to livy and equal to thucydides, whom he resembles in conciseness of style. his distinguishing excellence as an historian is his sagacity and impartiality. nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. but the writings of tacitus were not so popular as those of livy, since neither princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral elevation. he does not satisfy dr. arnold, who thinks he ought to have been better versed in the history of the jews, and who dislikes his speeches because they were fictitious. neither the latin nor greek historians are admired by those dry critics who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths of natural science. history can never be other than an approximation to the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own age. history does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. we know that caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or less so than pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his usurpation. a great history must have other merits besides accuracy, antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. it must be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and poetry and beauty. a dry history, however learned, will never be read; it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or mosheim's "commentaries." we require _life_ in history, and it is for their vividness that the writings of livy and tacitus will be perpetuated. voltaire and schiller have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "life of charles xii." and the "thirty years' war" are still classics. neander has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may pass away like the voluminous writings of varro, the most learned of the romans. it is the _art_ which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge, nor even the thoughts. what keeps alive the "provincial letters" of pascal? it is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them. the exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the "arabian nights" or froissart's "chronicles," are the elements which give immortality to the classic authors. we will not let them perish, because they amuse and interest and inspire us. a remarkable example is that of plutarch, who, although born a greek and writing in the greek language, was a contemporary of tacitus, lived long in rome, and was one of the "immortals" of the imperial age. a teacher of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as archon and priest of apollo in his native town. his most famous work is his "parallel lives" of forty-six historic greeks and romans, arranged in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography. but it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all christians belong to the same sect. some will be remarkable for style, others for learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some will make essays, and others chronicles. we have need of all styles and all kinds of excellence. a great and original thinker may not have the time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from them for the benefit of his readers. history is a boundless field of inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. it will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art of generalization. if an historian attempts to embody too much learning, he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything, he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation. moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to instruct. if all men were to write history according to dr. arnold's views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars. the ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. the ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of learning paraded in foot-notes. thus the great historians whom i have mentioned, both greek and latin, have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that are most to be admired. they were not pedants, but men of immense genius and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the language in which they wrote. rome can boast of no great historian after tacitus, who should have belonged to the ciceronian epoch. suetonius, born about the year 70 a.d., shortly after nero's death, was rather a biographer than an historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. his "lives of the caesars," like diogenes laertius's "lives of the philosophers," are rather anecdotical than historical. l. anneus florus, who flourished during the reign of trajan, has left a series of sketches of the different wars from the days of romulus to those of augustus. frontinus epitomized the large histories of pompeius. ammianus marcellinus wrote a history from nerva to valens, and is often quoted by gibbon. but none wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except sallust, caesar, livy, plutarch, and tacitus. * * * * * there is another field of prose composition in which the greeks and romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. it is true, we have not a rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe that both greeks and romans were most severely trained in the art of public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and munificently rewarded. it began with democratic institutions, and flourished as long as the people were a great power in the state; it declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. eloquence and liberty flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom of debate. in the fifth century before christ--the first century of democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an ascendent position. socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. in athens the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained in the use of public speaking. thus arose the lawyers, among whom eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other class. rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in greece, sicily, and italy both were extensively cultivated. empedocles was distinguished as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. it was not, however, in the courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion, but in political assemblies. these could only coexist with liberty; for a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of citizens. in the grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to have been born. it was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the strife of parties. it arose from appeals to the people as a source of power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it addressed interests. it was in athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. pericles, the greatest statesman of greece, 495 b.c., was celebrated for his eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. it was conceded by the ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the epithet of "olympian" was given him, as carrying the weapons of zeus upon his tongue. his voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and rapid. peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a usurper and a tyrant. isocrates, 436 b.c., was a professed rhetorician, and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue it from the influence of the sophists. he was the great teacher of the most eminent statesmen of his day. twenty-one of his orations have come down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they were written to be read, they were not extemporary. his language is the purest and most refined attic dialect. lysias, 458 b.c., was a fertile writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant. they are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did not interfere with strength. so able were these orations that only two were unsuccessful. they were so pure that they were regarded as the best canon of the attic idiom. but all the orators of greece--and greece was the land of orators--gave way to demosthenes, born 385 b.c. he received a good education, and is said to have been instructed in philosophy by plato and in eloquence by isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself for his brilliant career. as soon as he attained his majority, he brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was successful, conducting the prosecution himself. it was not until the age of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and became one of the leading statesmen of athens. henceforth he took an active part in every question that concerned the state. he especially distinguished himself in his speeches against macedonian aggrandizements, and his philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of his orations. but the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the battle of cheronaea, 338 b.c., put an end to the independence of greece, and philip of macedon was all-powerful. for this catastrophe demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his countrymen. accused by aeschines, he delivered his famous oration on the crown. afterward, during the supremacy of alexander, demosthenes was again accused, and suffered exile. recalled from exile on the death of alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of greece, without success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his private life. as an orator demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of any country. by his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest commendation. he never spoke without preparation, and most of his orations were severely elaborated. he never trusted to the impulse of the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than daniel webster, who said there is no such thing. all the orations of demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the loftiest sentiments. he was a great artist, and his oratorical successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. added to this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic, strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." his orations were most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries on them, most of which are lost. sixty of the great productions of his genius have come down to us. demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he pronounced in great political emergencies. his rival was aeschines, who was vastly inferior to demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and brilliant. indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have been unanimous in ascribing to demosthenes the highest position as an orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. david hume says of him that "could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern audience." says lord brougham, "it is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. it is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art. it is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection." it is probable that the romans were behind the athenians in all the arts of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose among the lawyers and politicians. it was in forensic eloquence that latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was to the romans what libraries are to us. the art of public speaking in rome was early developed. cato, laelius, carbo, and the gracchi are said to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by antonius, crassus, cotta, sulpitius, and hortensius. the last had a very brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be read. caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its characteristics being force and purity. "coelius was noted for lofty sentiment, brutus for philosophical wisdom, calidius for a delicate and harmonious style, and calvus for sententious force." but all the roman orators yielded to cicero, as the greeks did to demosthenes. these two men are always coupled together when allusion is made to eloquence. they were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have never been equalled in the modern. cicero, 106 b.c., was probably not equal to his great grecian rival in vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in learning, in culture, and in breadth. cicero distinguished himself very early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the prosecution of verres for corruption. although verres was defended by hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the metelli and other powerful families, cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than burke in his prosecution of warren hastings, who also was sustained by powerful interests and families. the speech on the manilian law, when cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his popularity. i need not describe his memorable career,--his successive elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his splendid services to the state, his greatness and his defects, his virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. these are foreign to my purpose. no man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. his life and labors are immortal. his virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the world. few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of its departments. next to aristotle and varro, cicero was the most learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either, since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a statesman, being the most conspicuous man in rome after pompey and caesar. he may not have had the moral greatness of socrates, nor the philosophical genius of plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. even civil law, the great science of the romans, became interesting in his hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. he popularized history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the romans conversant with the philosophy of greece, and systematized the various speculations. he may not have added to philosophy, but no roman after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various systems. his glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius that he rose to his exalted position and influence. but it was in forensic eloquence that cicero was pre-eminent, in which he had but one equal in ancient times. roman eloquence culminated in him. he composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are preserved. some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as those of demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism. francis w. newman, in his "regal rome," thus describes cicero's eloquence:-"he goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so strictly argumentative. and having established his case, he opens upon his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or, when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion." critics have uniformly admired cicero's style as peculiarly suited to the latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more redundancy than the greek. the simplicity of the attic writers would make latin composition bald and tame. to be perspicuous, the latin must be full. thus arnold thinks that what tacitus gained in energy he lost in elegance and perspicuity. but cicero, dealing with a barren and unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. he was a great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. thus he was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the times. the courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs; nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political questions, as in reference to the manilian and agrarian laws. it is in his political discourses that cicero rises to the highest ranks. in his speeches against verres, catiline, and antony he kindles in his countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence of tyranny and corruption. indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow. thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious examples, never even equalled. still, we cannot tell the comparative merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more distinguished of our times; indeed only mirabeau, pitt, fox, burke, brougham, webster, and clay can even be compared with them. in power of moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame when read. in philosophy the greeks and romans distinguished themselves more even than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. their speculations pertained to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. but this great department has already been presented. there were respectable writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great names whose writings have descended to us. contemporaries had an exalted opinion of varro, who was considered the most learned of the romans, as well as their most voluminous author. he was born ten years before cicero, and is highly commended by augustine. he was entirely devoted to literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old age. saint augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he found time to write." he composed four hundred and ninety books. of these only one has descended to us entire,--"de re rustica," written at the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from antiquity on ancient agriculture. we have parts of his other books, and we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their information would be invaluable, especially his "divine antiquities," in sixteen books,--his great work, from which saint augustine drew materials for his "city of god." varro wrote treatises on language, on the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects; he also wrote satire and criticism. but although his writings were learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him. the truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences. no man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. style is to written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. the multitude do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words, being repelled or attracted by _manner_. seneca was another great writer among the romans, but he belongs to the domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given him immortality,--as may be truly said of socrates and epictetus, although they are usually classed among the philosophers. seneca was a spaniard, born but a few years before the christian era; he was a lawyer and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of nero. it was his misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in four years one of the largest fortunes in rome while serving such a master; but since he lived to experience nero's ingratitude, seneca is more commonly regarded as a martyr. had he lived in the republican period, he would have been a great orator. he wrote voluminously, on many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. he rejected the superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion as a mere fashion. in his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance with the vices of others. he saw much of life, and died at fifty-three. what is remarkable in seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is that under pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost transcendent talent that he should, unaided by christianity, have soared so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. nor is it easy to find any modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way. quintilian is a latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians. he should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like lysias the greek, quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. he was born 40 a.d., and taught the younger pliny, also two nephews of domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. his great work is a complete system of rhetoric. "institutiones oratoriae" is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is inferior to the "de oratore" of cicero. it is very practical and sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. in systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by aristotle; but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination, showing great reading and reflection. quintilian should be viewed as a critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits and defects of the great masters of greek and roman literature. in his peculiar province he has had no superior. like cicero or demosthenes or plato or thucydides or tacitus, quintilian would be a great man if he lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking. there were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be compared with the modern. i can only draw attention to lucian,--a witty and voluminous greek author, who lived in the reign of commodus, and who wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances which have given hints to modern authors. his fame rests on his "dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion, and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient satire and mockery. his style of dialogue--a combination of plato and aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. yet he cannot be called a writer of comedy, like molière. he resembles rabelais and swift more than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent jokes, and pungent sarcasms. like juvenal, lucian paints the vices and follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high places of fashion and power. his dialogues have been imitated by fontanelle and lord lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his humor or pungency. lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral teachers of mankind. he is even shallow and flippant upon socrates; but he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all the learning of antiquity. in wit and sarcasm he may be compared with voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down without substituting anything instead. his scepticism was universal, and extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and ancient. his purity of style was admired by erasmus, and his works have been translated into most european languages. in strong contrast to the "dialogues" of lucian is the "city of god" by saint augustine, in which he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but substitutes instead the knowledge of the true god. thus the romans, as well as greeks, produced works in all departments of literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern times. and where would have been the literature of the early church, or of the age of the reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great original writers of athens and rome been our school-masters? when we further remember that their glorious literature was created by native genius, without the aid of christianity, we are filled with amazement, and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. nor, indeed, have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our christian times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced by christian ideas. some of the proudest trophies of genius have been won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. witness voltaire, rousseau, diderot, hegel, fichte, gibbon, hume, buckle. may there not be the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and native reach of thought? milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence to satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty of heaven. a great genius may be kindled even by the fires of discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the homes and hopes of man. since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish under pagan influences, it seems certain that christianity has a higher mission than the culture of the mind. religious scepticism cannot be disarmed if we appeal to christianity as the test of intellectual culture. the realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are adorned by pagan achievements. * * * * * authorities. there are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves, and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of ancient literature. modern historians of roman literature are merely critics, like dalhmann, schlegel, niebuhr, muller, mommsen, mure, arnold, dunlap, and thompson. nor do i know of an exhaustive history of roman literature in the english language; yet nearly every great writer has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to respect. the germans, in this department, have no equals. proofreading team early israel and the surrounding nations by the rev. a.h. sayce professor of assyriology at oxford author of "the early history of the hebrews," &c london service & paton 5 henrietta street covent garden 1899 introduction one of the first facts which strike the traveller in palestine is the smallness of a country which has nevertheless occupied so large a space in the history of civilised mankind. it is scarcely larger than an english county, and a considerable portion of it is occupied by rocky mountains and barren defiles where cultivation is impossible. its population could never have been great, and though cities and villages were crowded together on the plains and in the valleys, and perched at times on almost inaccessible crags, the difficulty of finding sustenance for their inhabitants prevented them from rivalling in size the european or american towns of to-day. like the country in which they dwelt, the people of palestine were necessarily but a small population when compared with the nations of our modern age. and yet it was just this scanty population which has left so deep an impress on the thoughts and religion of mankind, and the narrow strip of territory they inhabited which formed the battle-ground of the ancient empires of the world. israel was few in numbers, and the canaan it conquered was limited in extent; but they became as it were the centre round which the forces of civilisation revolved, and towards which they all pointed. palestine, in fact, was for the eastern world what athens was for the western world; athens and attica were alike insignificant in area and the athenians were but a handful of men, but we derive from them the principles of our art and philosophic speculation just as we derive from israel and canaan the principles of our religion. palestine has been the mother-land of the religion of civilised man. the geographical position of palestine had much to do with this result. it was the outpost of western asia on the side of the mediterranean, as england is the outpost of europe on the side of the atlantic; and just as the atlantic is the highroad of commerce and trade for us of to-day, so the mediterranean was the seat of maritime enterprise and the source of maritime wealth for the generations of the past. palestine, moreover, was the meeting-place of asia and africa. not only was the way open for its merchants by sea to the harbours and products of europe, but the desert which formed its southern boundary sloped away to the frontiers of egypt, while to the north and east it was in touch with the great kingdoms of western asia, with babylonia and assyria, mesopotamia and the hittites of the north. in days of which we are just beginning to have a glimpse it had been a province of the babylonian empire, and when egypt threw off the yoke of its asiatic conquerors and prepared to win an empire for itself, canaan was the earliest of its spoils. in a later age assyrians, babylonians, and egyptians again contended for the mastery on the plains of palestine; the possession of jerusalem allowed the assyrian king to march unopposed into egypt, and the battle of megiddo placed all asia west of the euphrates at the feet of the egyptian pharaoh. palestine is thus a centre of ancient oriental history. its occupation by babylonians or egyptians marks the shifting of the balance of power between asia and africa. the fortunes of the great empires of the eastern world are to a large extent reflected in its history. the rise of the one meant the loss of palestine to the other. the people, too, were fitted by nature and circumstances for the part they were destined to play. they were semites with the inborn religious spirit which is characteristic of the semite, and they were also a mixed race. the highlands of canaan had been peopled by the amorites, a tall fair race, akin probably to the berbers of northern africa and the kelts of our own islands; the lowlands were in the hands of the canaanites, a people of semitic blood and speech, who devoted themselves to the pursuit of trade. here and there were settlements of other tribes or races, notably the hittites, who had descended from the mountain-ranges of the taurus and spread over northern syria. upon all these varied elements the israelites flung themselves, at first in hostile invasion, afterwards in friendly admixture. the israelitish conquest of palestine was a slow process, and it was only in its earlier stages that it was accompanied by the storming of cities and the massacre of their inhabitants. as time went on the invaders intermingled with the older population of the land, and the heads of the captives which surmount the names of the places captured by the egyptian pharaoh shishak in the kingdom of judah all show the amorite and not the jewish type of countenance. the main bulk of the population, in fact, must have continued unchanged by the israelitish conquest, and conquerors and conquered intermarried together. the genealogies given by the hebrew writers prove how extensive this intermingling of racial elements must have been; even david counted a moabitess among his ancestors, and surrounded himself with guards of foreign nationality. solomon's successor, the first king of judah, was the son of an ammonite mother, and we have only to read a few pages of the book of judges to learn how soon after the invasion of canaan the israelites adopted the gods and religious practices of the older population, and paid homage to the old canaanite shrines. a mixed race is always superior to one of purer descent. it possesses more enterprise and energy, more originality of thought and purpose. the virtues and failings of the different elements it embodies are alike intensified in it. we shall probably not go far wrong if we ascribe to this mixed character of the israelitish people the originality which marks their history and finds its expression in the rise of prophecy. they were a race, moreover, which was moulded in different directions by the nature of the country in which it lived. palestine was partly mountainous; the great block of limestone known as the mountains of ephraim formed its backbone, and was that part of it which was first occupied by the invading israelites. but besides mountains there were fertile plains and valleys, while on the sea-coast there were harbours, ill adapted, it is true, to the requirements of modern ships, but sufficient for the needs of ancient navigation. the israelites were thus trained on the one hand to the habits of hardy warriors, living a life of independence and individual freedom in the fastnesses of the hills, and on the other hand were tempted to become agriculturists and shepherds wherever their lot was cast in the lowlands. the sea-coast was left to the older population, and to the philistines, who had settled upon it about the time of the hebrew exodus from egypt; but the philistines eventually became the subject-vassals of the jewish kings, and friendly intercourse with the phoenicians towards the north not only brought about the rise of a mixed people, partly canaanite and partly israelitish, but also introduced among the israelites the phoenician love of trade. alike, therefore, by its geographical position, by the characteristics of its population, and by the part it played in the history of the civilised east, palestine was so closely connected with the countries and nations which surrounded it that its history cannot be properly understood apart from theirs. isolated and alone, its history is in large measure unintelligible or open to misconception. the keenest criticism is powerless to discover the principles which underlie it, to detect the motives of the policy it describes, or to estimate the credibility of the narratives in which it is contained, unless it is assisted by testimony from without. it is like a dark jungle where the discovery of a path is impossible until the sun penetrates through the foliage and the daylight streams in through the branches of the trees. less than a century ago it seemed useless even to hope that such external testimony would ever be forthcoming. there were a few scraps of information to be gleaned from the classical authors of greece and rome, which had been so sifted and tortured as to yield almost any sense that was required; but even these scraps were self-contradictory, and, as we now know, were for the most part little else than fables. it was impossible to distinguish between the true and the false; to determine whether the chaldæan fragments of berossos were to be preferred to the second and third hand accounts of herodotus, or whether the egyptian chronology of manetho was to be accepted in all its startling magnitude. and when all was said and done, there was little that threw light on the old testament story, much less that supplemented it. but the latter part of the nineteenth century has witnessed discoveries which have revolutionised our conceptions of ancient oriental history, and illuminated the pages of the biblical narrative. while scholars and critics were disputing over a few doubtful texts, the libraries of the old civilised world of the east were lying underground, waiting to be disinterred by the excavator and interpreted by the decipherer. egypt, assyria, and babylonia have yielded up their dead; arabia, syria, and asia minor are preparing to do the same. the tombs and temples of egypt, and the papyri which have been preserved in the sandy soil of a land where frost and rain are hardly known, have made the old world of the egyptians live again before our eyes, while the clay books of babylonia and assyria are giving us a knowledge of the people who wrote and read them fully equal to that which we have of greece or rome. and yet we are but at the beginning of discoveries. what has been found is but an earnest of the harvest that is yet in store. it is but two years since that the french excavator, de sarzec, discovered a library of 30,000 tablets at tello in southern chaldæa, which had already been formed when gudea ruled over the city in b.c. 2700, and was arranged in shelves one above the other. at niffer, in the north of babylonia, the american excavators have found an even larger number of tablets, some of which go back to the age of sargon of akkad, or 6000 years ago, while fresh tablets come pouring into the museums of europe and america from other libraries found by the arabs at bersippa and babylon, at sippara and larsa. the babylonia of the age of amraphel, the contemporary of abraham, has, thanks to the recent finds, become as well known to us as the athens of periklês; the daily life of the people can be traced in all its outlines, and we even possess the autograph letters written by amraphel himself. the culture and civilisation of babylonia were already immensely old. the contracts for the lease and sale of houses or other estate, the documents relating to the property of women, the reports of the law cases that were tried before the official judges, all set before us a state of society which changed but little down to the persian era. behind it lie centuries of slow development and progress in the arts of life. the age of amraphel, indeed, is in certain respects an age of decline. the heyday of babylonian art lay nearly two thousand years before it, in the epoch of sargon and his son naram-sin. it was then that the babylonian empire was established throughout western asia as far as the mediterranean, that a postal service was organised along the highroads which led from one city of the empire to another, and that babylonian art reached its climax. it was then, too, that the babylonian system of writing practically took its final form. the civilisation of western asia is, as has been said, immensely old. that is the net result of modern discovery and research. as far back as excavation can carry us there is still culture and art. we look in vain for the beginnings of civilised life. even the pictures out of which the written systems of the ancient east were developed belong to a past of which we have but glimpses. of savagery or barbarism on the banks of the lower euphrates there is not a trace. so far as our materials enable us to judge, civilised man existed from the beginning in "the land of shinar." the great temples of babylonia were already erected, the overflow of the rivers controlled, and written characters imprinted on tablets of clay. civilisation seems to spring up suddenly out of a night of darkness, like athena from the head of zeus. this is one of the chief lessons that have been taught us by oriental archaeology. culture and civilisation are no new thing, at all events in the east; long before the days of classical greece, long before the days even of abraham, man was living in ease and comfort, surrounded by objects of art and industry, acquainted with the art of writing, and carrying on intercourse with distant lands. we must rid ourselves once for all of the starveling ideas of chronology which a classical training once encouraged, and of the belief that history, in the true sense of the word, hardly goes back beyond the age of darius or periklês. the civilisations of babylonia and egypt were already decrepid when the ancestors of periklês were still barbarians. another lesson is the danger of forming conclusions from imperfect evidence. apart from the earlier records of the old testament, there was no literature which claimed a greater antiquity than the homeric poems of ancient greece; no history of older date than that of hellas, unless indeed the annals of china were to be included, which lay altogether outside the stream of european history. criticism, accordingly, deemed itself competent to decide dogmatically on the character and credibility of the literature and history of which it was in possession; to measure the statements of the old testament writings by the rules of greek and latin literature, and to argue from the history of europe to that of the east. uncontrolled by external testimony, critical scepticism played havoc with the historical narratives that had descended to it, and starting from the assumption that the world of antiquity was illiterate, refused to credit such records of the past as dwarfed the proportions of greek history, or could not be harmonised with the canons of the critic himself. it was quite sufficient for a fact to go back to the second millennium b.c. for it to be peremptorily ruled out of court. the discoveries of oriental archaeology have come with a rude shock to disturb both the conclusions of this imperfectly-equipped criticism and the principles on which they rest. discovery has followed discovery, each more marvellous than the last, and re-establishing the truth of some historical narrative in which we had been called upon to disbelieve. dr. schliemann and the excavators who have come after him have revealed to an incredulous world that troy of priam which had been relegated to cloudland, and have proved that the traditions of mykenæan glory, of agamemnon and menelaos, and even of voyages to the coast of egypt, were not fables but veritable facts. even more striking have been the discoveries which have restored credit to the narratives of the old testament, and shown that they rest on contemporaneous evidence. it was not so long ago that the account of the campaign of chedor-laomer and his allies in canaan was unhesitatingly rejected as a mere reflection into the past of the campaigns of later assyrian kings. even the names of the canaanite princes who opposed him were resolved into etymological puns. but the tablets of babylonia have come to their rescue. we now know that long before the days of abraham not only did babylonian armies march to the shores of the mediterranean, but that canaan was a babylonian province, and that amraphel, the ally of chedor-laomer, actually entitles himself king of it in one of his inscriptions. we now know also that the political condition of babylonia described in the narrative is scrupulously exact. babylonia was for a time under the domination of the elamites, and while amraphel or khammurabi was allowed to rule at babylon as a vassal-prince, an elamite of the name of eri-aku or arioch governed larsa in the south. nay more; tablets have recently been found which show that the name of the elamite monarch was kudur-laghghamar, and that among his vassal allies was tudkhula or tidal, who seems to have been king of the manda, or "nations" of kurdistan. khammurabi, whose name is also written ammurapi, has left us autograph letters, in one of which he refers to his defeat of kudur-laghghamar in the decisive battle which at last delivered babylonia from the elamite yoke. the story of chedor-laomer's campaign preserved in genesis has thus found complete verification. the political situation presupposed in it--however unlikely it seemed to the historian but a few years ago--has turned out to be in strict harmony with fact; the names of the chief actors in it have come down to us with scarcely any alteration, and a fragment of old-world history, which could not be fitted into the scheme of the modern historian, has proved to be part of a larger story which the clay books of babylonia are gradually unfolding before our eyes. it is no longer safe to reject a narrative as "unhistorical" simply on the ground of the imperfection of our own knowledge. or let us take another instance from the later days of assyrian history, the period which immediately precedes the first intercourse between greece and the east. we are told in the books of the chronicles that manasseh of judah rebelled against his assyrian master and was in consequence carried in chains to babylon, where he was pardoned and restored to his ancestral throne. the story seemed at first sight of doubtful authenticity. it is not even alluded to in the books of the kings; nineveh and not babylon was the capital of the assyrian empire, and the assyrian monarchs were not in the habit of forgiving their revolted vassals, much less of sending them back to their own kingdoms. and yet the cuneiform inscriptions have smoothed away all these objections. esar-haddon mentions manasseh among the subject princes of the west, and it was just esar-haddon who rebuilt babylon after its destruction by his father, and made it his residence during a part of the year. moreover, other instances are known in which a revolted prince was reinstated in his former power. thus assur-bani-pal forgave the egyptian prince of sais when, like manasseh, he had been sent in chains to assyria after an unsuccessful rebellion, and restored him to his old principality. what was done by assur-bani-pal might well have been done by the more merciful esar-haddon, who showed himself throughout his reign anxious to conciliate the conquered populations. it is even possible that assur-bani-pal himself was the sovereign against whom manasseh rebelled and before whom he was brought. in this case manasseh's revolt would have been part of that general revolt of the assyrian provinces under the leadership of babylon, which shook the empire to its foundations, and in which the assyrian king expressly tells us palestine joined. the jewish king would thus have been carried to babylon after the capture of that city by the assyrian forces of assur-bani-pal. but the recent history of oriental archaeology is strewn with instances of the danger of historical scepticism where the evidence is defective, and a single discovery may at any moment throw new and unexpected light on the materials we possess. who, for instance, could have supposed that the name of the israelites would ever be found on an egyptian monument? they were but a small and despised body of public slaves, settled in goshen, on the extreme skirts of the egyptian territory. and yet in 1886 a granite stela was found by professor flinders petrie containing a hymn of victory in honour of meneptah the son of ramses ii., and declaring how, among other triumphs, "the israelites" had been left "without seed." the names of all the other vanquished or subject peoples mentioned in the hymn have attached to them the determinative of place; the israelites alone are without it; they alone have no fixed habitation, no definite locality of their own, so far at least as the writer knew. it would seem that they had already escaped into the desert, and been lost to sight in its recesses. who could ever have imagined that in such a case an egyptian poet would have judged it worth his while even to allude to the vanished serfs? still more recently the tomb of menes, the founder of the united egyptian monarchy, and the leader of the first historical dynasty, has been discovered by m. de morgan at negada, north of thebes. it was only a few months previously that the voice of historical criticism had authoritatively declared him to be "fabulous" and "mythical." the "fabulous" menes, nevertheless, has now proved to be a very historical personage indeed; some of his bones are in the museum of cairo, and the objects disinterred in his tomb show that he belonged to an age of culture and intercourse with distant lands. the hieroglyphic system of writing was already complete, and fragments of obsidian vases turned on the lathe indicate commercial relations with the ægean sea. if we turn to babylonia the story is the same. hardly had the critic pronounced sargon of akkad to be a creature of myth, when at niffer and telloh monuments both of himself and of his son were brought to light, which, as in the case of menes, proved that this "creature of myth" lived in an age of advanced culture and in the full blaze of history. at niffer he and his son naram-sin built a platform of huge bricks, each stamped with their names, and at telloh clay _bullæ_ have been discovered, bearing the seals and addresses of the letters which were conveyed during their reigns by a highly organised postal service along the highroads of the kingdom. numberless contract-tablets exist, dated in the year when sargon "conquered the land of the amorites," as syria and canaan were called, or accomplished some other achievement; and a cadastral survey of the district in which telloh was situated, made for the purpose of taxation, incidentally refers to "the governor" who was appointed over "the amorites." perhaps, however, the discovery which above all others has revolutionised our conceptions of early oriental history, and reversed the critical judgments which had prevailed in regard to it, was that of the cuneiform tablets of tel el-amarna. the discovery was made in 1887 at tel el-amarna on the eastern bank of the nile, midway between the modern towns of minia and siût. here is the site of the city built by khu-n-aten, the "heretic" pharaoh, when the dissensions between himself and the theban priesthood became too acute to allow him to remain any longer in the capital of his fathers. he migrated northward, accordingly, with his court and the adherents of the new creed which he sought to impose upon his subjects, carrying with him the archives of the kingdom and the foreign correspondence of the empire. it was this foreign correspondence which was embodied in the cuneiform tablets. they make it clear that even under egyptian rule the babylonian language and the babylonian system of writing continued to be the official language and script of western asia, and that the egyptian government itself was forced to keep babylonian secretaries who understood them. the fact proves the long and permanent influence of babylonian culture from the banks of the euphrates to the shores of the mediterranean, and is intelligible only in the light of the further fact that the empire of sargon of akkad had been founded more than two thousand years before. nothing but a prodigiously long lapse of time could explain the firm hold thus obtained by a foreign language, and a system of writing the most complex and difficult to learn that has ever been invented. the tablets further prove the existence throughout the oriental world of schools and libraries where the babylonian language and characters could be taught and learned and its voluminous literature stored and studied. the age of khu-n-aten, which is also the age of moses, was essentially a literary age; a knowledge of reading and writing was widely spread, and an active correspondence was being constantly carried on from one part of the civilised world to the other. even the bedâwin shêkhs, who acted as free-lances in palestine, sent letters to the pharaoh and read his replies. the archive-chambers of the cities of canaan contained numberless documents contemporaneous with the events they recorded, and the libraries were filled with the treasures of babylonian literature, with legends and stories of the gods, and the earlier history of the east. doubtless, as in babylonia, so too in palestine there were also in them contracts and inventories of property, dated in the babylonian fashion by the events which characterised the years of a king's reign. the scribes and upper classes could read and write, and therefore had access to all these stores of literature and historical materials. there is no longer any reason, therefore, for doubting that moses and his contemporaries could have read and written books, or that the hebrew legislator was learned in "all the wisdom of the egyptians." if we are to reject the historical trustworthiness of the pentateuch, it must be on other grounds than the assumption of the illiterateness of the age or the impossibility of compiling at the time an accurate register of facts. the tel el-amarna tablets have made it impossible to return to the old critical point of view; the probabilities henceforward are in favour of the early date and historical truth of the old testament narratives, and not against them. accurately-dated history and a reading public existed in babylonia long before the days of abraham; in the age of moses the whole eastern world from the nile to the euphrates was knit together in the bonds of literary intercourse, and all who were in contact with the great nations of the east--with egypt, with babylonia, or with assyria--came of necessity under its influence and held the book and its author in the highest reverence. but besides thus revolutionising our ideas of the age that preceded the hebrew exodus, the tel el-amarna letters have thrown a welcome light on the political causes of the exodus itself. they have made it clear that the reaction against the reforms and government of "the heretic king" khu-n-aten was as much national as religious. it was directed quite as much against the foreigner who had usurped the chief offices of state, as against the religion which the foreigner was believed to have brought with him. the rise of the nineteenth dynasty marks the triumph of the national uprising and the overthrow of asiatic influence. the movement of which it was the result resembled the revolt of arabi in our own days. but there was no england at hand to prevent the banishment of the stranger and his religion; the semites who had practically governed egypt under khu-n-aten were expelled or slain, and hard measure was dealt out to such of their kinsfolk as still remained in the land. the free-born sons of israel in the district of goshen were turned into public serfs, and compelled to work at the buildings with which ramses ii. was covering the soil of egypt, and their "seed" was still further diminished by the destruction of their male offspring, lest they should join the enemies of egypt in any future invasion of the country, or assist another attempt from within to subvert the old faith of the people and the political supremacy of the theban priests. that the fear was not without justification is shown by the words of meneptah, the son of ramses, at the time when the very existence of the egyptian monarchy was threatened by the libyan invasion from the west and the sea-robbers who attacked it from the greek seas. the asiatic settlers, he tells us, had pitched "their tents before pi-bailos" (or belbeis) at the western extremity of the land of goshen, and the egyptian "kings found themselves cut off in the midst of their cities, and surrounded by earthworks, for they had no mercenaries to oppose to" the foe. it would seem that the israelites effected their escape under cover of the libyan invasion in the fifth year of meneptah's reign, and on this account it is that their name is introduced into the pæan wherein the destruction of the libyan host is celebrated and the pharaoh is declared to have restored peace to the whole world. if the history of israel thus receives light and explanation on the one side from the revelations of oriental archaeology, on the other side it sometimes clears up difficulties in the history of the great nations of oriental antiquity. the egyptologist, for instance, is confronted by a fact towards the explanation of which the monuments furnish no help. this is the curious change that passed over the tenure of land in egypt during the period of hyksos rule. when the fourteenth dynasty fell, a large part of the soil of egypt was in the hands of private holders, many of whom were great feudal landowners whose acknowledgment of the royal supremacy was at times little more than nominal. when, however, the hyksos were at last driven back to asia, and ahmes succeeded in founding the eighteenth dynasty, these landowners had disappeared. all the landed estate of the country had passed into the possession of the pharaoh and the priests, and the old feudal aristocracy had been replaced by a bureaucracy, the members of which owed their power and position to the king. the history of joseph accounts for this, and it is the only explanation of the fact which is at present forthcoming. famine compelled the people to sell their lands to the king and his minister, and a hyksos pharaoh and his hebrew vizier thus succeeded in destroying the older aristocracy and despoiling the natives of their estates. it was probably at this period also that the public granaries, of which we hear so much in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, were first established in egypt, in imitation of those of babylonia, where they had long been an institution, and a superintendent was appointed over them who, as in babylonia, virtually held the power of life and death in his hands. one of the main results, then, of recent discovery in the east has been to teach us the solidarity of ancient oriental history, and the impossibility of forming a correct judgment in regard to any one part of it without reference to the rest. hebrew history is unintelligible as long as it stands alone, and the attempt to interpret it apart and by itself has led to little else than false and one-sided conclusions; it is only when read in the light of the history of the great empires which flourished beside it that it can be properly understood. israel and the nations around it formed a whole, so far as the historian is concerned, which, like the elements of a picture, cannot be torn asunder. if we would know the history of the one, we must know the history of the other also. and each year is adding to our knowledge; new monuments are being excavated, new inscriptions being read, and the revelations of to-day are surpassed by those of to-morrow. we have already learnt much, but it is only a commencement; egypt is only now beginning to be scientifically explored, a few only of the multitudinous libraries of babylonia have been brought to light, and the soil of assyria has been little more than touched. elsewhere, in elam, in mesopotamia, in asia minor, in palestine itself, everything still remains to be done. the harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few. we have, however, learnt some needful lessons. the historian has been warned against arguing from the imperfection of his own knowledge, and rejecting an ancient narrative merely because it seems unsupported by other testimony. he has been warned, too, against making his own prepossessions and assumptions the test of historical truth, of laying down that a reported fact could not have happened because it runs counter to what he assumes to have been the state of society in some particular age. above all, the lesson of modesty has been impressed upon him, modesty in regard to the extent of his own knowledge and the fallibility of his own conclusions. it does not follow that what we imagine ought to have happened has happened in reality; on the contrary, the course of oriental history has usually been very different from that dreamed of by the european scholar in the quietude of his study. if oriental archæology has taught us nothing else, it has at least taught us how little we know. contents introduction i. the israelites ii. canaan iii. the nations of the south-east iv. the nations of the north-east v. egypt vi. babylonia and assyria vii. conclusion appendices chapter i the israelites israel traced its origin to babylonia. it was from "ur of the chaldees" that abraham "the hebrew" had come, the rock out of which it was hewn. here on the western bank of the euphrates was the earliest home of the hebrews, of whom the israelites claimed to be a part. but they were not the only nation of the ancient oriental world which derived its ancestry from abraham. he was the father not only of the israelites, but of the inhabitants of northern and central arabia as well. the ishmaelites who were settled in the north of the arabian peninsula, the descendants of keturah who colonised midian and the western coast, were also his children. moab and ammon, moreover, traced their pedigree to his nephew, while edom was the elder brother of israel. israel, in fact, was united by the closest ties of blood to all the populations which in the historic age dwelt between the borders of palestine and the mountain-ranges of south-eastern arabia. they formed a single family which claimed descent from a common ancestor. israel was the latest of them to appear on the scene of history. moab and ammon had subjugated or absorbed the old amorite population on the eastern side of the jordan, ishmael and the keturites had made themselves a home in arabia, edom had possessed itself of the mountain-fastnesses of the horite and the amalekite, long before the israelites had escaped from their bondage in egypt, or formed themselves into a nation in the desert. they were the youngest member of the hebrew family, though but for them the names of their brethren would have remained forgotten and unknown. israel needed the discipline of a long preparation for the part it was destined to play in the future history of the world. the hebrews belonged to the semitic race. the race is distinguished by certain common characteristics, but more especially by the possession of a common type of language, which is markedly different from the other languages of mankind. its words are built on what is termed the principle of triliteralism; the skeleton, as it were, of each of them consisting of three consonants, while the vowels, which give flesh and life to the skeleton, vary according to the grammatical signification of the word. the relations of grammar are thus expressed for the most part by changes of vocalic sound, just as in english the plural of "man" is denoted by a change in the vowel. the verb is but imperfectly developed; it is, in fact, rather a noun than a verb, expressing relation rather than time. compound words, moreover, are rare, the compounds of our european languages being replaced in the semitic dialects by separate words. perhaps one of the most remarkable characteristics of the semitic family of speech is its conservatism and resistance to change. as compared with the other languages of the world, its grammar and vocabulary have alike undergone but little alteration in the course of the centuries during which we can trace its existence. the very words which were used by the babylonians four or five thousand years ago, can still be heard, with the same meaning attached to them, in the streets of cairo. _kelb_ is "dog" in modern arabic as _kalbu_ was in ancient babylonian, and the modern arabic _tayyîb_, "good," is the babylonian _tâbu_. one of the results of this unchangeableness of semitic speech is the close similarity and relationship that exist between the various languages that represent it. they are dialects rather than distinct languages, more closely resembling one another than is the case even with the romanic languages of modern europe, which are descended from latin. most of the semitic languages--or dialects if we like so to call them--are now dead, swallowed up by the arabic of mohammed and the qorân. the assyrian which was spoken in assyria and babylonia is extinct; so, too, are the ethiopic of abyssinia, and the hebrew language itself. what we term hebrew was originally "the language of canaan," spoken by the semitic canaanites long before the israelitish conquest of the country, and found as late as the roman age on the monuments of phoenicia and carthage. the minæan and the sabæan dialects of southern arabia still survive in modern forms; arabic, which has now overflowed the rest of the semitic world, was the language of central arabia alone. in northern arabia, as well as in mesopotamia and syria, aramaic dialects were used, the miserable relics of which are preserved to-day among a few villagers of the lebanon and lake urumîyeh. these aramaic dialects, it is now believed, arose from a mixture of arabic with "the language of canaan." on the physical side, the semitic race is not so homogeneous as it is on the linguistic side. but this is due to intermarriage with other races, and where it is purest it displays the same general characteristics. thick and fleshy lips, arched nose, black hair and eyes, and white complexion, distinguish the pure-blooded semite. intellectually he is clever and able, quick to learn and remember, with an innate capacity for trade and finance. morally he is intense but sensuous, strong in his hate and in his affections, full of a profound belief in a personal god as well as in himself. when abraham was born in ur of the chaldees the power and influence of babylonia had been firmly established for centuries throughout the length and breadth of western asia. from the mountains of elam to the coast of the mediterranean the babylonian language was understood, the babylonian system of writing was taught and learned, babylonian literature was studied, babylonian trade was carried on, and babylonian law was in force. from time to time syria and canaan had obeyed the rule of the babylonian kings, and been formed into a babylonian province. in fact, babylonian rule did not come to an end in the west till after the death of abraham; khammurabi, the amraphel of genesis, entitles himself king of "the land of the amorites," as palestine was called by the babylonians, and his fourth successor still gives himself the same title. the loss of canaan and the fall of the babylonian empire seem to have been due to the conquest of babylon by a tribe of elamite mountaineers. the babylonians of abraham's age were semites, and the language they spoke was not more dissimilar from canaanitish or hebrew than italian is from spanish. but the population of the country had not always been of the semitic stock. its first settlers--those who had founded its cities, who had invented the cuneiform system of writing and originated its culture--were of a wholly different race, and spoke an agglutinative language which had no resemblance to that of the semites. they had, however, been conquered and their culture absorbed by the semitic babylonians and assyrians of later history, and the civilisation and culture which had spread throughout western asia was a semitic modification and development of the older culture of chaldæa. its elements, indeed, were foreign, but long before it had been communicated to the nations of the west it had become almost completely semitic in character. the babylonian conquerors of canaan were semites, and the art and trade, the law and literature they brought with them were semitic also. in passing, therefore, from babylonia to canaan, abraham was but passing from one part of the babylonian empire to another. he was not migrating into a strange country, where the government and civilisation were alike unknown, and the manners and customs those of another world. the road he traversed had been trodden for centuries by soldiers and traders and civil officials, by babylonians making their way to canaan, and by canaanites intending to settle in babylonia for the sake of trade. harran, the first stage on his journey, bore a babylonian name, and its great temple of the moon-god had been founded by babylonian princes after the model of the temple of the moon-god at ur, the birthplace of the patriarch. even in canaan itself the deities of babylonia were worshipped or identified with the native gods. anu the god of the sky, rimmon the god of the air, nebo the interpreter and prophet of bel-merodach, were all adored in palestine, and their names were preserved to later times in the geography of the country. even ashtoreth, in whom all the other goddesses of the popular cult came to be merged, was of babylonian origin. abraham took with him to the west the traditions and philosophy of babylonia, and found there a people already well acquainted with the literature, the law, and the religion of his fatherland. the fact is an important one; it is one of the most striking results of modern discovery, and it has a direct bearing on our estimate of the credibility of the narratives contained in the book of genesis. written and contemporaneous history in babylonia went back to an age long anterior to that of abraham--his age, indeed, marks the beginning of the decline of the babylonian power and influence; and consequently, there is no longer any reason to treat as unhistorical the narratives connected with his name, or the statements that are made in regard to himself and his posterity. his birth in ur, his migration to harran and palestine, have been lifted out of the region of doubt into that of history, and we may therefore accept without further questioning all that we are told of his relationship to lot or to the tribes of north-western arabia. in canaan, however, abraham was but a sojourner. though he came there as a babylonian prince, as an ally of its amoritish chieftains, as a leader of armed troops, even as the conqueror of a babylonian army, his only possession in it was the burial-place of machpelah. here, in the close neighbourhood of the later hebron, he bought a plot of ground in the sloping cliff, wherein a twofold chamber had been excavated in the rock for the purposes of burial. the sepulchre of machpelah was the sole possession in the land of his adoption which he could bequeath to his descendants. of these, however, ishmael and the sons of keturah moved southward into the desert, out of the reach of the cultured canaanites and the domination of babylonia. isaac, too, the son of his babylonian wife, seemed bent upon following their example. he established himself on the skirts of the southern wilderness, not far on the one hand from the borders of palestine, nor on the other from the block of mountains within which was the desert sanctuary of kadesh-barnea. his sons esau and jacob shared the desert and the cultivated land between them. esau planted himself among the barren heights of mount seir, subjugating or assimilating its horite and amalekite inhabitants, and securing the road which carried the trade of syria to the red sea; while jacob sought his wives among the settled aramæans of harran, and, like abraham, pitched his tent in canaan. at shechem, in the heart of canaan, he purchased a field, not, as in the case of abraham, for the sake of burial, but in order that he might live upon it in tent or house, and secure a spring of water for his own possession. in jacob the israelites saw their peculiar ancestor. his twelve sons became the fathers and representatives of the twelve tribes of israel, and his own name was changed to that of israel. the inscribed tablets of early babylonia have taught us that both israel and ishmael were the names of individuals in the patriarchal age, not the names of tribes or peoples, and consequently the israelites, like the ishmaelites, of a later day must have been the descendants of an individual israel and ishmael as the old testament records assert. already in the reign of the babylonian king ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of amraphel, the contemporary of abraham, a high-priest in the district of northern chaldasa assigned to "amorite" settlers from canaan, bore the name of sar-ilu or israel.[1] the fuller and older form of jacob is jacob-el. we find it in contracts drawn up in babylonia in the time of abraham; we also find it as the name of an egyptian king in the period when egypt was ruled by asiatic conquerors. the latter fact is curious, taken in connection with the further fact, that the son of the biblical jacob--the progenitor of the israelites--was the viceroy of an egyptian pharaoh, and that his father died in the egyptian land of goshen. goshen was the district which extends from tel el-maskhuta or pithom near ismailîya to belbeis and zagazig, and includes the modern wadi tumilât; the traveller on the railway passes through it on his way from ismailîya to cairo. it lay outside the delta proper, and, as the egyptian inscriptions tell us, had from early times been handed over to the nomad bedâwin and their flocks. here they lived, separate from the native agriculturists, herding their flocks and cattle, and in touch with their kinsmen of the desert. here, too, the children of israel were established, and here they multiplied and became a people. the growth of a family into a tribe or people is in accordance with arab rule. there are numerous historical instances of a single individual becoming the forefather of a tribe or a collection of tribes which under favourable conditions may develop into a nation. the tribe or people is known as the "sons" of their ancestor; his name is handed down from generation to generation, and the names of his leading descendants, the representatives of the tribe, are handed down at the same time. where we speak of the population of a country, the arab speaks of the "children" of a certain man. such a mode of expression is in harmony with semitic habits of thought. the genealogical method prevails alike in history and geography; a colony is the "daughter" or "son" of its mother-city, and the town of sidon is the "first-born" of canaan. jacob had twelve sons, and his descendants were accordingly divided into twelve tribes. but the division was an artificial one; it never at any time corresponded exactly with historical reality. levi was not a tribe in the same sense as the rest of his brethren; no territory was assigned to him apart from the so-called levitical cities; and he represented the priestly order wherever it might be found and from whatever ancestors it might be derived. simeon and dan hardly existed as separate tribes except in name; their territories were absorbed into that of judah, and it was only in the city of laish in the far north that the memory of dan survived. the tribe of joseph was split into two halves, ephraim and manasseh, while judah was a mixture of various elements--of hebrews who traced their origin alike to judah, to simeon, and to dan; of kenites and jerahmeelites from the desert of arabia; and of kenizzites from edom. benjamin or ben-oni was, as a tribe, merely the southern portion of the house of joseph, which had settled around the sanctuary of beth-on or beth-el. benjamin means the "southerner," and ben-oni "the inhabitant of beth-on." it is even questionable whether the son of jacob from whom the tribe was held to be descended bore the name of benjamin. had the name of esau not been preserved we should not have known the true name of the founder of edom, and it may be that the name of the tribe of benjamin has been reflected back upon its ancestor. in goshen, at all events, the tribes of israel would have been distinguished by the names of their actual forefathers. they would have been "the sons" of reuben or judah, of simeon or gad. but they were all families within a single family. they were all "israelites" or "sons of israel," and in an inscription of the egyptian king meneptah they are accordingly called _israelu_, "israelites," without any territorial adjunct. they lived in goshen, like the bedâwin of to-day, and their social organisation was that of arabia. the immediate occasion of the settlement of israel on the outskirts of egypt was that which has brought so many bedâwin herdsmen to the valley of the nile both before and since. the very district of goshen in which they settled was occupied again, shortly after their desertion of it, by nomads from edom who had besought the pharaoh for meadow-land on which to feed their flocks. the need of pasturage from time immemorial has urged the pastoral tribes of the desert towards the fertile land of the nile. when want of rain has brought drought upon canaan, parching the grass and destroying the corn, the nomad has invariably set his face toward the country which is dependent for its fertility, not upon the rains of heaven, but upon the annual overflow of its river. it was a famine in canaan, produced by the absence of rain, which made jacob and his sons "go down into egypt." but besides this immediate cause there was yet another. they were assured of a welcome in the kingdom of the nile and the gift of a district in which they might live. one of the sons of jacob had become the vizier of the egyptian pharaoh. joseph, the hebrew slave who had been sold into bondage by his brothers, had risen to be the first minister of the king and the favourite of his sovereign. he had foretold the coming years of plenty and dearth; but he had done more--he had pointed out how to anticipate the famine and make it subserve the interests of despotism. he was not a seer only, he was a skilful administrator as well. he had taken advantage of the years of scarcity to effect a revolution in the social and political constitution of egypt. the people had been obliged to sell their lands and even themselves to the king for bread, and become from henceforth a population of royal slaves. the lands of egypt were divided between the king and the priests; the peasantry tilled them for the state and for the temples, while the upper classes owed their wealth and position to the offices which they received at court. it would seem that the israelites entered egypt when the country was governed by the last of those foreign dynasties from asia which had conquered the kingdom of the pharaoh, and are known by the name of the hyksos or shepherd kings. the egyptian monuments have shown us that during their dominion its internal constitution underwent precisely the change which is described in the history of joseph. before the hyksos conquest there was a great feudal aristocracy, rich in landed estates and influence, which served as a check upon the monarch, and at times even refused to obey his authority. when the hyksos conquerors are finally expelled, we find that this feudal aristocracy has disappeared, and its place has been taken by a civil and military bureaucracy. the king has become a supreme autocrat, by the side of whom the priests alone retain any power. the land has passed out of the hands of the people; high and low alike are dependent for what they have on the favour of the king. the hyksos dynasties were allied in race and sympathies with the settlers from asia. joseph must have died before their expulsion, but it is probable that he saw the outbreak of the war which ended in it, and which after five generations of conflict restored the egyptians to independence. the eighteenth dynasty was founded by the native princes of thebes, and the war against the asiatic stranger which had begun in egypt was carried into asia itself. canaan was made an egyptian province, and the egyptian empire was extended to the banks of the euphrates. but the conquest of asia brought with it the introduction of asiatic influences into the country of the conqueror. the pharaohs married asiatic wives, and their courts became gradually asiatised. at length amenophis iv., under the tutelage of his mother, attempted to abolish the national religion of egypt, and to substitute for it a sort of pantheistic monotheism, based on the worship of the asiatic baal as represented by the solar disk. the pharaoh transferred his capital from thebes to a new site farther north, now known as tel el-amarna, changed his own name to khu-n-aten, "the glory of the solar disk," and filled his court with asiatic officials and the adherents of the new cult. the reaction, however, soon came. the native egyptians rose in revolt; the foreigner fled from the valley of the nile, and the capital of khu-n-aten fell into ruin. a new dynasty, the nineteenth, arose under ramses i., whose grandson, ramses ii., reigned for sixty-seven years, and crowded egypt with his buildings and monuments. one of the cities he built has been shown by the excavations of dr. naville to have been pa-tum, the pithom of the old testament. ramses ii., therefore, must have been the pharaoh of the oppression. the picture set before us in the first chapter of exodus fits in exactly with the character of his reign. the dynasty to which he belonged represented the reaction against the domination and influence of the foreigner from asia, and the oppression of the israelites would naturally have been part of its policy. such of the asiatics as still remained in egypt were turned into public serfs, and measures were taken to prevent them from multiplying so as to be dangerous to their masters. the free spirit of the bedâwin was broken by servitude, and every care was used that they should be unable to help their brethren from asia in case of another "hyksos" invasion. the incessant building operations of ramses needed a constant supply of workmen, and financial as well as political interests thus suggested that merciless _corvée_ of the israelites which rendered them at once politically harmless and serviceable to the state. in spite of all repression, however, the oppressed people continued to multiply, and eventually escaped from their "house of bondage." the stela of meneptah, on which the name of "israelites" occurs, implies that they had already been lost to sight in the desert. the other nationalities over whom meneptah is said to have triumphed all have the term "country" attached to their names; the "israelites" alone are without local habitation. egyptian legend, as reported by the native historian manetho, placed the exodus in the reign of meneptah, and as meneptah was the son and successor of ramses ii., the correctness of the statement is antecedently probable. it was in the fifth year of his reign that the delta was attacked by a formidable combination of foes. the libyans threatened it on the west: on the north, bands of sea-pirates from the coasts of asia minor and the islands of the mediterranean attacked it by sea and land. a mutilated inscription of meneptah tells us how the tents of the invaders had been pitched on the outskirts of the land of goshen, within reach of the bedâwin shepherds who fed their flocks there, and how the troops of the pharaoh, pressed at once by the enemy and by the disaffected population of goshen, had been cooped up within the walls of the great cities, afraid to venture forth. the fate of the invasion was sealed, however, by a decisive battle in which the egyptians almost annihilated their foes. but the land of goshen was left empty and desolate; the foreign tribes who had dwelt in it fled into the wilderness under the cover of the libyan invasion. the pressure of the invasion had forced the pharaoh to allow his serfs a free passage out of egypt, quite as much as the "signs and wonders" which were wrought by the hand of moses. egypt was protected on its eastern side by a line of fortifications, and through these permission was given that the israelites should pass. but the permission was hardly given before it was recalled. a small body of cavalry, not move than six hundred in number, was sent in pursuit of the fugitives, who were loaded with the plunder they had carried away from the egyptians. they were a disorganised and unwarlike multitude, consisting partly of serfs, partly of women and children, partly of stragglers from the armies of the libyan and mediterranean invaders. six hundred men were deemed sufficient either to destroy them or to reduce them once more to captivity. but the fugitives escaped as it were by miracle. a violent wind from the east drove back the shallow waters at the head of the gulf of suez, by the side of which they were encamped, and the israelites passed dryshod over the bed of "the sea." before their pursuers could overtake them, the wind had veered, and the waters returned on the egyptian chariots. the slaves were free at last, once more in the wilderness in which isaac had tended his flocks, and in contact with their kinsmen of edom and midian. moses had led them out of egypt, and moses now became their lawgiver. the laws which he gave them formed them into a nation, and laid the foundations of the national faith. henceforth they were to be a separate people, bound together by the worship of one god, who had revealed himself to them under the name of yahveh. first at sinai, among the mountains of seir and paran, and then at kadesh-barnea, the modern 'ain qadîs, the mosaic legislation was promulgated. the first code was compiled under the shadow of mount sinai; its provisions were subsequently enlarged or modified by the waters of en-mishat, "the spring of judgment." the israelites lay hidden, as it were, in the desert for many long years, preparing themselves for the part they were afterwards to play in the history of mankind. but from the moment of their departure from egypt their goal had been canaan. they were not mere bedâwin; they belonged to that portion of the semitic race which had made settlements and founded kingdoms in moab and ammon and edom, and their residence in the cultured land of the nile had made it impossible for them ever to degenerate into the lawless robbers of the wilderness. they were settled bedâwin, not bedâwin proper; not bedâwin by blood and descent, but semites who had adopted the wandering and pastoral habits of the bedâwin tribes. they were like their brethren of edom, who, though they came to egypt seeking pasturage for their cattle, had nevertheless founded at home an elective monarchy. the true bedâwin of the old testament are the amalekites, and between the israelite and the amalekite there was the difference that there is between the peasant and the gypsy. the fact is important, and the forgetfulness of it has led more than one historian astray. the first attempt to invade canaan failed. it was made from the south, from the shelter of the block of mountains within which stood the sanctuary of kadesh-barnea. the israelitish forces were disastrously defeated at zephath, the hormah of later days, and the invasion of the promised land was postponed. the desert life had still to continue for a while. in the fastness of 'ain qadîs the forces of israel grew and matured, and a long series of legislative enactments organised it into a homogeneous whole. at length the time came when the israelites felt strong enough once more to face an enemy and to win by the sword a country of their own. it was from the east that they made their second attack. aaron the high-priest was dead, but his brother moses was still their leader. the edomites refused them a passage along the high-road of trade which led northward from the gulf of aqaba; skirting edom accordingly, they marched through a waterless desert to the green wadis of moab, and there pitched their camp. the amorite kingdoms of sihon and og fell before their assault. the northern part of moab, which sihon had conquered, was occupied by the invaders, and the plateau of bashan, over which og had ruled, fell into israelitish hands. the invaders now prepared to cross the jordan and advance into the highlands of canaan. moses died on the summit of a moabite mountain and his place was taken by joshua. joshua was a general and not a legislator. he could win battles and destroy cities, but he could not restore what he had destroyed, or organise his followers into a state. jericho, which commanded the ford across the jordan, fell into his hands; the confederate kings of southern canaan were overthrown in battle, and the tribe of ephraim, to which joshua belonged, was established in the mountainous region which afterwards bore its name. henceforward the mountains of ephraim formed the centre and the stronghold of israelitish power in palestine, from whence the invading tribes could issue forth to conquest, or to which they could retreat for shelter in case of need. beyond leading his people into canaan and establishing them too firmly in its midst to be ever dislodged, joshua personally did but little. the conquest of canaan was a slow process, which was not completed till the days of the monarchy. jerusalem was not captured till the reign of david, gezer was the dowry received by solomon along with his egyptian wife. at first the canaanites were treated with merciless ferocity. their cities were burned, the inhabitants of them massacred, and the spoil divided among the conquerors. but a time soon came when tribute was accepted in place of extermination, when leagues were made with the canaanitish cities, and the israelites intermarried with the older population of the country. as in britain after the saxon conquest, the invaders settled in the country rather than in the towns, so that while the peasantry was israelite the townsfolk either remained canaanite or were a mixture of the two races. the mixture introduced among the israelites the religion and the beliefs, the manners and the immoralities, of the canaanitish people. the mosaic legislation was forgotten; the institutions prescribed in the wilderness were ignored. alone at shiloh, in the heart of ephraim, was a memory of the past observed; here the descendants of aaron served in the tabernacle, and kept alive a recollection of the mosaic code. here alone no image stood in the sanctuary of the temple; the ark of the covenant was the symbol of the national god. but the influence of shiloh did not extend far. the age that succeeded the entrance into canaan, was one of anarchy and constant war. hardly had the last effort of the canaanites against their invaders been overthrown on the banks of the kishon, when a new enemy appeared in the south. the philistines, who had planted themselves on the sea-coast shortly before the israelites had invaded the inland, now turned their arms against the new-comers, and contended with them for the possession of the country. the descendants of jacob were already exhausted by struggle after struggle with the populations which surrounded them. moabites and midianites, ammonites and bedâwin, even the king of distant mesopotamia, had sacked their villages, had overrun their fields, and exacted tribute from the israelitish tribes. the tribes themselves had lost coherence; they had ranged themselves under different "judges" or "deliverers," had forgotten their common origin and common faith, and had even plunged into interfraternal war. joshua was scarcely dead before the tribe of benjamin was almost exterminated by its brethren; and a few generations later, the warriors of ephraim, the stalwart champion of israel, were massacred by the israelites east of the jordan. in the south, a new tribe, judah, had arisen out of various elements--hebrew, kenite, and edomite; and it was not long before there was added to the cleavage between the tribes on the two banks of the jordan, the further and more lasting cleavage between judah and the tribes of the north. israel was a house divided against itself, and planted in the midst of foes. it needed a head, a leader who should bring its discordant elements into peace and order, and lead its united forces against the common enemy. monarchy alone could save it from destruction. the theocracy had failed, the authority of the high-priests and of the law they administered was hardly felt beyond shiloh; an age of war and anarchy required military rather than religious control. the israelites were passing through the same experience as other kindred members of the semitic race. in assyria the high-priests of assur had been succeeded by kings; in southern arabia the high-priest had similarly been superseded by the king, and the kings of edom had but recently taken the place of _alûphîm_ or "dukes." the first attempt to found a monarchy was made by the northern tribes. jerubbaal, the conqueror of the midianites, established his power among the mixed hebrew and canaanite inhabitants of ophrah and shechem, and his son abimelech by a canaanitish wife received the title of king. but the attempt was premature. the kingdom of manasseh passed away with abimelech; the other tribes were not yet ready to acknowledge the supremacy of a chieftain who was not sprung from themselves, and abimelech, moreover, was half-canaanitish by descent. the pressure of philistine conquest at last forced the israelites with a common voice to "demand a king." reinforced by bodies of their kinsfolk from krete and the islands of the greek seas, the philistines poured over the frontier of judah, plundering and destroying as they went. at first they were contented with raids; but the raids gradually passed into a continuous warfare and a settled purpose to conquer canaan, and reduce it to tribute from one end to the other. the israelitish forces were annihilated in a decisive battle, the ark of the covenant was taken by the heathen, and the two sons of the high-priest perished on the field of battle. the philistine army marched northward into the heart of the mountains of ephraim, the sanctuary of shiloh was destroyed and its priesthood dispersed. it was not long before the philistine domination was acknowledged throughout the israelitish territory on the western side of the jordan, and canaan became palestine, "the land of the philistines." in the more inaccessible parts of benjamin, indeed, a few israelites still maintained a fitful independence, and samuel, the representative of the traditions of shiloh, was allowed to judge his own people, and preside over a naioth or "monastery" of dervish-like prophets under the eye of a philistine garrison. israel seemed about to disappear from among the nations of the world. but it had not yet wholly forgotten that it was a single people, the descendants of a common forefather, sharers in a common history, and above all, worshippers of the same god. in their extremity the israelites called for a king. saul, the benjamite of gibeah, was elected, and events soon proved the wisdom of the choice. jabesh-gilead was rescued from the ammonite king, the philistine garrisons were driven out of the centre of the country, and, for a time at least, a large part of the israelitish territory was cleared of its enemies. saul was able to turn his arms against the amalekite marauders of the desert, as well as the princes of zobah to the north-east of ammon. but the philistine war still continued. saul had incorporated in his body-guard a young shepherd of beth-lehem in judah of the name of david. david showed himself a brave and skilful soldier, and quickly rose to high command in the hebrew army, and to be the son-in-law of saul. his victories over the philistines were celebrated in popular songs, and the king began to suspect him of aiming at the throne. he was forced to fly for his life, and to hide among the mountain fastnesses of judah, where his boyhood had been spent. here he became a brigand-chief, outlaws and adventurers gathering around him, and exacting food from the richer landowners. saul pursued him in vain; david slipped out of his hands time after time, thanks to the nature of the country in which he had taken refuge; and the only result of the pursuit was to open the road once more to philistine invasion. meanwhile david and his followers had left the israelitish territory, and offered their services to achish of gath; the philistine prince enrolled them in his body-guard and settled them in the town of ziklag. saul and the priests were now at open war. samuel, perhaps naturally, had quarrelled with the king who had superseded his authority, and had espoused the cause of david. we are told, indeed, that he had anointed david as king in the place of saul. when, therefore, david escaped from the court, saul accused the shilonite priests who were established at nob of intentionally aiding the rebel. the high-priest vainly protested their innocence, but the furious king refused to listen, and the priests were massacred in cold blood. abiathar, the son of the murdered high-priest, alone escaped to david to tell the tale. he carried with him the sacred ephod through which the will of yahveh was made known, and from henceforth the influence of the priesthood was thrown against the king. saul had lost his best general, who had gone over to the enemy; he had employed his troops in hunting a possible rival through the judæan wilds when they ought to have been guarding the frontier against the national foe, and the whole force of israelitish religion had been turned against him. there was little cause for wonder, therefore, that the philistine armies again marched into the israelitish kingdom, and made their way northward along the coast into the plain of jezreel. a battle on the slopes of jezreel decided the fate of israel. the hebrew army was cut to pieces, and saul and his sons were slain. one only survived, esh-baal, too young or too feeble to take part in the fight. esh-baal was carried across the jordan by abner and the relics of the israelitish forces, and there proclaimed king at mahanaim. the philistines became undisputed masters of israel west of the jordan, while their tributary vassal, david, was proclaimed king of judah at hebron. his nephew joab was made commander-in-chief. war soon broke out between david and esh-baal. esh-baal grew continually weaker, and his general abner intrigued with david to betray him into the hands of the jewish king. abner, however, was slain by joab while in the act of carrying out his treason, but esh-baal was murdered shortly afterwards by two of his servants. david declared himself his successor, and claimed rule over all israel. this brought him into conflict with his philistine overlords. it was equivalent to revolt, and the philistine army swept the lowlands of judah. david fled from hebron and took refuge in his old retreat. here he organised his forces; the philistines were defeated in battle after battle, and david not only succeeded in driving them out of judah and israel, but in carrying the war into their own country. the philistine cities were conquered, and soldiers from gath, where david had himself once served as a mercenary, were drafted into the body-guard of the hebrew sovereign. before the philistine war was over, jerusalem had fallen into david's hands. the stronghold of the jebusites was one of the last of the canaanitish cities to surrender to the israelites. its older inhabitants were allowed to live in it side by side with colonists from judah and benjamin. the city itself was made the capital of the kingdom. its central position, its natural strength, and its independence of the history of any special tribe, all combined to justify the choice. here david built his palace, and planned the erection of a temple to yahveh. meanwhile the kingdom of israel was passing into an empire. joab and his veterans gained victory after victory, and the hebrew army became what the assyrian army was in later days, the most highly disciplined and irresistible force in western asia. moab and ammon were subdued; the aramaic kinglets to the north-east were made tributaries, and the kingdom of zobah, which had risen on the ruins of the hittite power, was overthrown. the limits of david's rule were extended to the banks of the euphrates, and the syrians on either side of the river were utterly crushed. even edom, which had successfully defied the pharaohs in the days of egyptian greatness, was compelled to submit to the jewish conqueror; its male population was mercilessly massacred, and its ports on the gulf of suez fell into israelitish hands. in the north hamath made alliance with the new power that had arisen in the oriental world, while hiram of tyre was glad to call himself the friend of the israelitish king, and to furnish him with skilled workmen and articles of luxury. the latter years of david were troubled by revolts which had their origin partly in the polygamy in which he had indulged, partly in the discontent of a people still imperfectly welded together, and restless under military conscription. his son solomon secured his throne by putting to death all possible rivals or opponents, including the grey-haired joab. solomon was cultured and well-educated, but his culture was selfish, and his extravagance knew no bounds. palaces were built at jerusalem in imitation of those of phoenicia or egypt, and phoenician architects and artisans erected there a sumptuous temple in honour of the national god. trade was encouraged and developed: the possession of the edomite seaports gave solomon the command of the arabian trade, while his alliance with hiram opened to him the harbours of the mediterranean coast. but the wealth which david had accumulated, the tribute of the conquered provinces, and the trading monopolies of the king himself did not suffice for the extravagance of his expenditure, and heavy fiscal burdens had to be laid on the israelitish tribes. disaffection grew up everywhere except in judah, where the king resided, and where the wealth raised elsewhere was spent. revolts broke out in edom and the north. garrisons, indeed, were planted in zobah, which secured the caravan road through tadmor or palmyra to the euphrates; but damascus was lost, and became in a few years a formidable adversary of israel. the death of solomon was the signal for a revolt in palestine itself. the northern tribes under jeroboam separated from judah and established a kingdom of their own, while judah and benjamin remained faithful to the house of david and to the capital, which lay on the frontier of both. the levites also naturally attached themselves to the kingdom which contained the great national sanctuary, and to the royal family whose chapel it was. the disruption of the monarchy necessarily brought with it the fall of the empire; moab, however, continued to be tributary to the northern kingdom and edom to that of judah. five years after the accession of rehoboam, the son of solomon, the kingdom of judah seemed in danger of perishing altogether. shishak, the egyptian pharaoh, invaded the country and sacked jerusalem itself. but jeroboam lost the opportunity thus afforded him of extending his rule over the south; his own territories had been partially overrun by the egyptians, and he was probably not in a position to commence a war. judah had time to recover; the walls of jerusalem were rebuilt, and the arabian trade soon supplied it with fresh resources. the long and prosperous reign of asa, the grandson of rehoboam, placed the line of david on a solid foundation. the jewish kingdom was compact; its capital was central, and was not only a strongly-fortified fortress, but also an ancient and venerable sanctuary. as time went on feelings of respect and affection gathered round the royal house; the people of judah identified it with themselves, and looked back with pride and regret to the glorious days of david and solomon. religion, moreover, lent its sanction to the davidic dynasty. the levitical priesthood had its centre in the temple which had been built by solomon, and was, as it were, the private chapel of his descendants; here were preserved the rites and traditions of the mosaic law, and the ark of the covenant between israel and its god. the northern kingdom, on the contrary, had none of these elements of stability. the first king was a rebel, who had no glorious past behind him, no established priesthood to support his throne, no capital even, around which all his subjects could rally. the sword had given him his crown, and the sword was henceforth the arbiter of his kingdom. the conservative forces which were strong in judah were absent in the north; there the army became more and more powerful, and its generals dethroned princes and established short-lived dynasties. northern israel, moreover, was not homogeneous; the tribes on the two sides of the jordan were never welded together like the inhabitants of judah, and the divergence of interests that had once existed between them was never wholly forgotten. israel perished while judah survived. dynasty after dynasty had arisen in it; its capital had been shifted from time to time; it did not even possess a religious centre. before a line of kings had time to win the loyalty of the people they were swept away by revolution, and the army became the dominating power in the state. there was no body of priests to preserve the memory of the mosaic law and insist upon its observance, and the prophets who took their place protested in vain against the national apostasy. alliance with the neighbouring kingdom of phoenicia brought with it the worship of the phoenician baal, and yahveh was forsaken for a foreign god. in b.c. 722 samaria, the later capital of the country, was taken by the assyrian king sargon, and northern israel ceased to be a nation. judah, on the other hand, successfully defied the assyrian power. the invasion of sennacherib was rolled back from the walls of jerusalem, and though the jewish kings paid tribute to nineveh, they were left in possession of their territories. edom, indeed, had long since been lost, and with it the trade with the arabian seas, but the philistines continued to acknowledge the supremacy of judah, and commercial relations were kept up with egypt. it was not until the babylonian empire of nebuchadrezzar had arisen on the ruins of that of assyria that jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and the davidic dynasty passed away. but they had accomplished their work; a nation had been created which through exile and disaster still maintained its religion and its characteristics, and was prepared, when happier days should come, to return again to its old home, to rebuild the temple, and carry out all the ordinances of its faith. from henceforth judah realised its mission as a peculiar people, separated from the rest of the world, whose instructor in religion it was to be. more and more it ceased to be a nation and became a race--a race, moreover, which had its roots in a common religious history, a common faith, and a common hope. israel according to the flesh became israel according to the spirit. [footnote 1: see pinches in the _journal_ of the royal asiatic society, july 1897. in a tablet belonging to a period long before that of abraham, isma-ilu or ishmael is given as the name of an "amorite" slave from palestine (thureau-dangin, _tablettes chaldéennes inédites_, p. 10).] chapter ii canaan canaan was the inheritance which the israelites won for themselves by the sword. their ancestors had already settled in it in patriarchal days. abraham "the hebrew" from babylonia had bought in it a burying-place near hebron; jacob had purchased a field near shechem, where he could water his flocks from his own spring. it was the "promised land" to which the serfs of the pharaoh in goshen looked forward when they should again become free men and find a new home for themselves. canaan had ever been the refuge of the asiatic population of egypt, the goal at which they aimed when driven out of the land of the nile. the hyksos conquerors from asia had retreated to jerusalem when the native egyptians recovered their independence and had expelled them from their seats in the delta. though moses had assured the pharaoh that all the israelites needed was to go a short journey of three days into the wilderness, and there sacrifice to their god, it was well understood that the desert was not to be the end of their pilgrimage. canaan, and canaan only, was the destined country they had in view. in the early inscriptions of babylonia, canaan is included in the rest of syria under the general title of "the land of the amorites." the amorites were at the time the dominant population on the mediterranean coast of western asia, and after them accordingly the whole country received its name. the "land of the amorites" had been overrun by the armies of babylonia at a very remote period, and had thus come under the influence of babylonian culture. as far back as the reigns of sargon of akkad and his son naram-sin (b.c. 3800), three campaigns had laid it at the feet of the chaldæan monarch, and palestine and syria became a province of the babylonian empire. sargon erected an image of himself by the shore of the sea, and seems even to have received tribute from cyprus. colonies of "amorite" or canaanitish merchants settled in babylonia for the purposes of trade, and there obtained various rights and privileges; and a cadastral survey of southern babylonia made at the time mentions "the governor of the land of the amorites." the amorites, however, though they were the dominant people of syria, were not its original inhabitants; nor, it is probable, did they even form the largest part of its population. they were essentially the inhabitants of the mountains, as we are told in the book of numbers (xiii. 29), and appear to have come from the west. we have learnt a good deal about them from the egyptian monuments, where the "amurru" or amorites are depicted with that fidelity to nature which characterised the art of ancient egypt. they belonged to the white race, and, like other members of the white race, were tall in stature and impatient of the damp heat of the plains. their beard and eye-brows are painted red, their hair a light red-brown, while their eyes are blue. the skin is a sunburnt white, the nose straight and regular, the forehead high, and the lips thin. they wore whiskers and a pointed beard, and dressed in long robes furnished with a sort of cape. their physical characteristics are those of the libyan neighbours of the egyptians on the west, the forefathers of the fair-skinned and blue-eyed kabyles or berbers who inhabit the mountains of northern africa to-day. anthropologists connect these libyans with the kelts of our own islands. at one time, it would seem, a kelto-libyan race existed, which spread along the northern coast of africa to western europe and the british isles. the amorites would appear to have been an eastern offshoot of the same race. wherever they went, the members of the race buried their dead in rude stone cairns or cromlechs, the dolmens of the french antiquarians. we find them in britain and france, in the spanish peninsula, and the north of africa. they are also found in palestine, more especially in that portion of it which was the home of the amorites. the skulls found in the cairns are for the most part of the dolichocephalic or long-headed type; this too is the shape of skull characteristic of the modern kabyle, and it has been portrayed for us by the egyptian artists in the pictures of their amorite foes. in the days of the egyptian artists--the age of the eighteenth and two following dynasties (b.c. 1600-1200)--the special seat of the amorites was the mountainous district immediately to the north of palestine. but amorite kingdoms were established elsewhere on both sides of the jordan. not long before the israelitish invasion, the amorite king sihon had robbed moab of its territory and founded his power on the ruins of that of the egyptian empire. farther north, in the plateau of bashan, another amorite king, og, had his capital, while amorite tribes were settled on the western side of the jordan, in the mountains of southern canaan, where the tribe of judah subsequently established itself. we even hear of amorites in the mountain-block of kadesh-barnea, in the desert south of canaan; and the amorite type of face, as it has been depicted for us on the monuments of egypt, may still be often observed among the arab tribes of the district between egypt and palestine. jerusalem, ezekiel tells us, had an amorite as well as a hittite parentage, and jacob declares that he had taken his heritage at shechem out of the hand of the amorite with his sword and bow. it must be remembered, however, that the term "amorite" is sometimes used in the old testament in its babylonian sense, as denoting an inhabitant of canaan, whatever might be the race to which he belonged; we cannot always infer from it the nationality or race of those to whom it is applied. moreover, individual branches of the amorite stock had names of their own. in the north they were known as hivites, at hebron they were called anakim, at jerusalem they were jebusites. the amorite kings of bashan are described as rephaim, a word which the authorised version translates "giants." it was only on the northern frontier of palestine and in the kingdom of sihon that the name of "amorite" alone was used. the babylonian conquests introduced into canaan the government and law, the writing and literature, of babylonian civilisation. the babylonian language even made its way to the west, and was taught, along with the script, in the schools which were established in imitation of those of chaldæa. babylonian generals and officials lived in palestine and administered its affairs, and an active trade was carried on between the euphrates and the mediterranean coast. the trade-road ran through mesopotamia past the city of harran, and formed a link between the mediterranean and the persian gulf. from an early date libraries had existed in babylonia stored with the literature of the country. similarly, libraries now grew up in "the land of the amorites," and the clay tablets with which they were filled made known to the west the legends and records of chaldæa. amorite culture was modelled on that of babylonia. babylonian influence lasted for centuries in western asia. in the age of abraham the amorites still obeyed the suzerainty of the babylonian kings. khammurabi, the amraphel of the book of genesis, calls himself king of the country of the amorites as well as of babylon, and his great-grandson does the same. at a later date babylonia itself was conquered by a foreign line of kings, and canaan recovered its independence. but this was of no long duration. thothmes iii., of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty (b.c. 1503-1449), made it a province of egypt, and the amorites were governed by egyptian prefects and commissioners. the cuneiform tablets found at tel el-amarna in upper egypt give us a vivid picture of its condition at the close of the eighteenth dynasty. the egyptian power was falling to pieces, and palestine was threatened by hittite invaders from the north. the native governors were fighting with one another or intriguing with the enemies of egypt, while all the time protesting their loyalty to the pharaoh. ebed-asherah and his son aziru governed the amorites in the north, and the prefect of phoenicia sends bitter complaints to the egyptian court of their hostility to himself and their royal master. aziru, however, was an able ruler. he succeeded in clearing himself from the charge of complicity with the hittites against whom he had been sent, as well as in getting the better of his phoenician rival. the latter disappears from history, while the amorites are allowed to settle undisturbed in zemar and other cities of inland phoenicia. under ramses ii. of the nineteenth dynasty, canaan still yielded a reluctant obedience to egypt. in the troubles which had followed the fall of the eighteenth dynasty, it had shaken itself free from foreign authority, but had been reconquered by seti i., the father of ramses. egyptian authority was re-established even on the eastern side of the jordan; but it did not continue for long. ramses was hardly dead before egypt was invaded by libyans from the west and robber hordes from the greek seas, and though the invasion was ultimately beaten back, its strength had been exhausted in the struggle. the egyptian empire in canaan passed away for ever, and the canaanites were left free to govern themselves. the kingdom of sihon was one of the results of this ending of egyptian rule. the amorites became a power once more. a few years later egypt was again attacked by armed invaders from the north. the assailants poured into it both by sea and land. fleets of ships filled with philistines and achæans and other northern tribes entered the mouths of the nile, while a vast army simultaneously attacked it by land. the army, we are told, had encamped in "the land of the amorites," and they carried with them on their farther march recruits from the countries through which they passed. the amorite "chief" himself was among those who followed the barbarians to egypt, eager for the spoils of the wealthiest country in the ancient world. ramses iii. of the twentieth dynasty was now on the throne. he succeeded in rolling back the wave of invasion, in gaining a decisive victory over the combined military and naval forces of the enemy, and in pursuing them to the frontiers of asia itself. gaza, the key to the military road which ran along the sea-board of palestine, fell once more into egyptian hands; and the egyptian troops overran the future judah, occupying the districts of jerusalem and hebron, and even crossing the jordan. but no permanent conquest was effected; ramses retired again to egypt, and for more than two centuries no more egyptian armies found their way into canaan. gaza and the neighbouring cities became the strongholds of the philistine pirates, and effectually barred the road to asia. the campaign of ramses iii. in southern palestine must have taken place when the israelites were still in the desert. between the two invasions of egypt by the barbarians of the north, there was no great interval of time. the exodus, which had been due in part to the pressure of the first of them in the reign of meneptah, was separated by only a few years from the capture of hebron by caleb, which must have occurred after its evacuation by the egyptian troops. the great movement which brought the populations of asia minor and the greek islands upon canaan and the nile, and which began in the age of the exodus, was over before the children of israel had emerged from the wilds of the desert. in the old testament the amorites are constantly associated with another people, the hittites. when ezekiel ascribes an amorite parentage to jerusalem, he ascribes to it at the same time a hittite parentage as well. the same interlocking of amorite and hittite that meets us in the bible, meets us also on the monuments of egypt. here, too, we are told that kadesh on the orontes, the hittite capital, was "in the land of the amorites." it was, in fact, on the shores of the lake of homs, in the midst of the district over which the amorites claimed rule. the hittites were intruders from the north. the egyptian monuments have shown us what they were like. their skin was yellow, their eyes and hair were black, their faces were beardless. square and prominent cheeks, a protrusive nose, with retreating chin and forehead and lozenge-shaped eyes, gave them a mongoloid appearance. they were not handsome to look upon, but the accuracy of their portraiture by the artists of egypt is confirmed by their own monuments. the heads represented on the egyptian monuments are repeated, feature by feature, in the hittite sculptures. ugly as they were, they were not the caricatures of an enemy, but the truthful portraits of a people whose physical characteristics are still found, according to sir charles wilson, in the modern population of cappadocia. the hittites wore their hair in three plaits, which fell over the back like the pigtail of a chinaman. they dressed in short tunics over which a long robe was worn, which in walking left one leg bare. their feet were shod with boots with turned-up ends, a sure indication of their northern origin. such boots, in fact, are snow-shoes, admirably adapted to the inhabitants of the mountain-ranges of asia minor, but wholly unsuited for the hot plains of syria. when, therefore, on the walls of the ramesseum we find the theban artists depicting the defenders of kadesh on the orontes with them, we may conclude that the latter had come from the colder north just as certainly as we may conclude, from the use of similar shoes among the turks, that they also have come from a northern home. in the hittite system of hieroglyphic writing, the boot with upturned end occupies a prominent place. when the tel el-amarna tablets were written (b.c. 1400), the hittites were advancing on the egyptian province of syria. tunip, or tennib, near aleppo, had fallen, and both amorites and canaanites were intriguing with the invader. the highlands of cappadocia and the ranges of the taurus seem to have been the cradle of the hittite race. here they first came into contact with babylonian culture, which they adopted and modified, and from hence they poured down upon the aramæan cities of the south. carche-mish, now jerablûs, which commanded the chief ford across the euphrates, fell into their hands, and for many centuries remained one of their capitals. but it was not until the stormy period which signalised the overthrow of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty, that the hittites succeeded in establishing themselves as far south as kadesh on the orontes. the long war, however, waged with them by ramses ii. prevented them from advancing farther; when peace was made at last between them and the egyptians, both sides had been exhausted by the struggle, and the southern limit of hittite power had been fixed. the kings of kadesh had, however, been at the head of a veritable empire; they were able to summon allies and vassals from asia minor, and it is probable that their rule extended to the banks of the halys in cappadocia, where hittite remains have been found. military roads connected the hittite cities of cappadocia with the rest of asia minor, and monuments of hittite conquest or invasion have been met with as far west as the neighbourhood of smyrna. these monuments are all alike distinguished by the same peculiar style of art, and by the same system of pictorial writing. the writing, unfortunately, has not yet been deciphered, but as the same groups of characters occur wherever an inscription in it is found, we may infer that the language concealed beneath it is everywhere one and the same. when the assyrians first became acquainted with the west, the hittites were the ruling people in syria. as, therefore, the babylonians had included all the inhabitants of syria and palestine, whatever might be their origin, under the general name of amorites, the assyrians included them under the name of hittites. even the israelites and ammonites are called "hittites" by an assyrian king. it is possible that traces of this vague and comprehensive use of the name are to be met with in the old testament; indeed, it has been suggested that the hittites, or "sons of heth," from whom abraham bought the cave of machpelah, owed their name to this cause. in the later books of the hebrew scriptures the hittites are described as a northern population, in conformity with the egyptian and assyrian accounts. the hittites of hebron, however, may really have been an offshoot of the hittite nations of the north. the "king of the hittites" accompanied the northern barbarians when they invaded egypt in the reign of ramses iii., and hittite bands may similarly have followed the hyksos conquerors of egypt several centuries before. one of these bands may easily have settled on its way at hebron, which, as we are told, was built seven years before zoan, the hyksos capital. at karnak, moreover, an egyptian artist has represented the people of ashkelon with faces of a hittite type, while ezekiel bears witness to the presence of a hittite element in the founders of jerusalem. but the fact that thothmes iii. in the century before moses calls the hittite land of the north "the greater," is the best proof we can have that there was a hittite colony elsewhere, which was well known to the egyptian scribes. the "greater" implies the less, and the only lesser hittite land with which we are acquainted is that of which the book of genesis speaks. so far as we can judge from the evidence of proper names, the hittites belonged to a race which was spread from the halys in asia minor to the shores of lake urumiyeh. the early inhabitants of armenia, who have left us inscriptions in the cuneiform character, also belonged to it. so also did the people of comagênê, and it seems probable that the ruling class in northern mesopotamia did the same. here there existed a kingdom which at one time exercised a considerable amount of power, and whose princesses were married to the pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty. this was the kingdom of aram naharaim, called naharina in the egyptian texts, mitanni by its own inhabitants. the language of mitanni was of a very peculiar type, as we learn from the tablets of tel el-amarna, one or two of which are written in it. like the hittites in syria, the mitannians appear to have descended from the north upon the cities of the semites, and to have established themselves in them. mitanni was at the height of its influence in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries before our era; its armies made their way even into canaan, and the canaanite princes intrigued from time to time against their egyptian masters, not only with the babylonians and hittites, but also with the kings of mitanni. before the time of david the power and almost the name of mitanni had passed away. the hittite empire also had been broken up, and henceforth we hear only of "the kings of the hittites" who ruled over a number of small states. the semites of syria had succeeded in rolling back the wave of hittite conquest, and in absorbing their hittite conquerors. the capture of carchemish by sargon of assyria in b.c. 717 marks the end of hittite dominion south of the taurus. but the hittite invasion had produced lasting results. it had severed the semites of assyria and babylonia from those of the west, and planted the barrier of a foreign population on the highroad that ran from nineveh to the mediterranean. the tradition of babylonian culture in western asia was broken; new influences began to work there, and the cuneiform system of writing to be disused. room was given for the introduction of a new form of script, and the phoenician alphabet, in which the books of the old testament were written, made its way into canaan. when joshua crosses the jordan there is no longer any trace in palestine of either babylonian or egyptian domination. like the amorites and the amorite tribe of jebusites at jerusalem, the hittites were mountaineers.[2] the hot river-valleys and the sea-coast were inhabited by canaanites. canaan is supposed to mean "the lowlands" of the mediterranean shore; here the canaanites had built their cities, and ventured in trading ships on the sea. but they had also settled in the inland plains, and more especially in the valley of the jordan. the plain of jezreel formed, as it were, the centre of the canaanitish kingdoms. the canaanites were semites in speech, if not in blood. the language of canaan is what we term hebrew, and must have been adopted either by the israelites or by the patriarchs their forefathers. between the dialect of the phoenician inscriptions and that of the old testament the difference is but slight, and the tablets of tel el-amarna carry back the record of this canaanitish speech to the century before the exodus. in person, as we learn from the egyptian monuments, the canaanites resembled their descendants, the modern inhabitants of palestine. they belonged to the white race, but had black hair and eyes. they dressed in brilliantly-coloured garments, stained with that purple or scarlet dye in search of which they explored the coasts of the greek seas, and which was extracted from the shell of the murex. on their feet they wore high-laced sandals; their hair was bound with a fillet. their skill as sailors was famous throughout the oriental world; the cities of the phoenician coast already possessed fleets of ships in the age of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty, and their merchants carried on a maritime trade with the islands of the ægean and the coast of africa. before the time of solomon their vessels had found their way to tartessus in spain, perhaps even to cadiz, and the alliance between hiram and the israelitish king enabled the tyrians to import gold and other precious things from africa and arabia through the ports of southern edom. the tel el-amarna letters refer to the riches of tyre, and excavations on the site of lachish have brought to light amber beads ef the same age, which indicate intercourse with the baltic. it is possible that the tin which was needed in such large quantities for the bronze tools and weapons of the ancient east was derived from cornwall; if so, it would have been brought, like the amber, across europe along the road which ended at the extremity of the adriatic gulf. the wealth of the canaanitish merchants was great. the spoils carried away to egypt by thothmes iii. after his conquest of palestine are truly astonishing. beautiful vases of gold and silver, artistically moulded bronzes, furniture carved out of ebony and cedar and inlaid with ivory and precious stones, were among the booty. iron, which was found in the hills, was freely used, and made into armour, weapons, and chariots. it was "the chariots of iron" which prevented the israelites from capturing and sacking the cities of the plains. wealth brought with it a corresponding amount of luxury, which to the simpler hebrews of the desert seemed extravagant and sinful. it was associated with a licentiousness which canaanitish religion encouraged rather than repressed. the religion was a nature-worship. the supreme deity was addressed as baal or "lord," and was adored in the form of the sun. and as the sun can be baleful as well as beneficent, parching up the soil and blasting the seed as well as warming it into life, so too baal was regarded sometimes as the friend and helper of man, sometimes as a fierce and vengeful deity who could be appeased only by blood. in times of national or individual distress his worshippers were called upon to sacrifice to him their firstborn; nothing less costly could turn away from them the anger of their god. by the side of baal was his colourless wife, a mere reflection of the male divinity, standing in the same state of dependence towards him as the woman stood to the man. it was only the unmarried goddess, ashêrah as she was called by the canaanites, who had a personality of her own. and since ashêrah came in time to be superseded by ashtoreth, who was herself of babylonian origin, it is probable that the idea of separate individuality connected with ashêrah. was due to the influence of babylonian culture. ashêrah was the goddess of fertility, and though the fertility of the earth depends upon the sun, it was easy to conceive of it as an independent principle. the name baal was merely a title. it was applied to the supreme deity of each city or tribe, by whatever special name he might otherwise be known. there were as many baals or baalim as there were states or cults. wherever a high-place was erected, a baal was worshipped. his power did not extend beyond the district in which he was adored and to which he was territorially attached. the baal of lebanon was distinct from the baal of tyre or sidon, though in every case the general conception that was formed of him was the same. it was the attributes of particular baalim which differed; baal was everywhere the sun-god, but in one place he showed himself under one shape, in another place under another. the goddesses followed the analogy of the gods. over against the baalim or baals stood the ashtaroth or ashtoreths. the canaanitish goddess manifested herself in a multitude of forms. as the firstborn was sacrificed to the god, so chastity was sacrificed to the goddess. the temples of ashtoreth were crowded with religious prostitutes, and the great festivals of canaan were orgies of licentious sin. it was a combination of nature-worship with the luxury that was born of wealth. the canaanites of phoenicia believed that they had originally migrated from the persian gulf. in canaan, at all events, according to the book of genesis, the "fishers" city of sidon was the first that was built. but tyre also, a few miles to the north of it, claimed considerable antiquity. the temple of melkarth or melek-kiryath, "the king of the city," the name under which the baal of tyre was worshipped, had been built on the island-rock twenty-three centuries before the time of herodotus, or b.c. 2700. gebal or byblos, still farther to the north, had been renowned for its sanctity from immemorial times. here stood the sanctuary of baalith, the "lady" of gebal, of whom we hear in the tablets of tel el-amarna. still farther north were other cities, of which the most famous was arvad, with its harbour and fleet. southward were dor and joppa, the modern jaffa, while inland were zemar and arqa, mentioned in the book of genesis and the tel el-amarna correspondence, but which ceased to be remembered after the age of the exodus. before the israelites entered canaan they had been captured by the amorites, and had passed into insignificance. between the canaanites of the coast and the canaanites of the interior a difference grew up in the course of centuries. this was caused by the sea-trade in which the cities on the coast engaged. the "phoenicians," as they were termed, on the coast became sailors and merchants, while their brethren farther inland were content to live on the products of agriculture and import from abroad the luxuries they required. while tyre and sidon were centres of manufacture and maritime trade, megiddo and hazor remained agricultural. after the hebrew invasion the difference between them became greater: phoenicia continued independent; the canaanites of the interior were extirpated by the israelites or paid tribute to their conquerors. little by little the latter amalgamated with the conquered race; towns like shechem contained a mixed population, partly hebrew and partly native; and the israelites adopted the manners and religion of the canaanites, worshipping at the old high-places of the country, and adoring the baalim and ashtaroth. the amorite heads depicted at karnak above the names of the places captured by shishak in judah show how little the population of southern palestine had changed up to the time of solomon's death. canaan was ruined by its want of union. the canaanitish cities were perpetually fighting with one another; even the strong hand of the pharaoh in the days of egyptian supremacy could not keep them at peace. now and again, indeed, they united, generally under a foreign leader, but the union was brought about by the pressure of foreign attack, and was never more than temporary. there was no lack of patriotism among them, it is true; but the patriotism was confined to the particular city or state to which those who were inspired by it belonged. the political condition of canaan resembled its religious condition; as each district had its separate baal, so too it had its separate political existence. if there were many baals, there were also many kinglets. the fourteenth century b.c. was a turning-point in the history of canaan. it witnessed the fall of the egyptian supremacy which had succeeded the supremacy of babylonia; it also witnessed the severance of western asia from the kingdoms on the euphrates and tigris, and the consequent end of the direct influence of babylonian culture. the hittites established themselves in syria "in the land of the amorites," while at the same time other invaders threatened canaan itself. the israelites made their way across the jordan; the philistines seized the southern portion of the coast. the philistine invasion preceded that of the israelites by a few years. the philistines were sea-robbers, probably from the island of krete. zephaniah calls them "the nation of the cherethites" or kretans, and their features, as represented on the egyptian monuments, are of a greek or aryan type. they have the straight nose, high forehead, and thin lips of the european. on their heads they wear a curious kind of pleated cap, fastened round the chin by a strap. they are clad in a pair of drawers and a cuirass of leather, while their arms consist of a small round shield with two handles, a spear, and a short but broad sword of bronze. greaves of bronze, like those of the homeric heroes, protected their legs in battle. the philistines formed part of the host which invaded egypt in the reign of ramses iii. along with their kinsfolk, the zakkal, they had already made themselves formidable to the coast of the delta and of southern canaan. the sea had long been infested by their ships, bent on plunder and piracy; the zakkal had attacked egypt in the time of meneptah, and the road from egypt to asia which skirted the sea had long been known as "the way of the philistines." when ramses iii. overran southern canaan, gaza still belonged to egypt, as it had done for the three preceding centuries; but it is probable that the philistines were already settled in its neighbourhood. at all events, it was not long before they made themselves masters of gaza, and thus closed for egypt the way to asia. henceforward gaza and its four companion cities became the strongholds of the philistines (b.c. 1200). the southern coast as far north as mount carmel fell into their hands: the zakkal established themselves at dor, and the port of joppa was lost to the phoenicians. hardly were the israelites planted in the promised land before they were confronted by the philistines. shamgar, we are told, one of the earliest of the judges, slew six hundred of them "with an ox-goad." but it was not until the close of the period of the judges that they became really formidable to israel. judah had become a distinct and powerful tribe, formed out of hebrew, kenite, and edomite elements, and its frontier adjoined philistia. at first there was desultory warfare; the philistines made raids into judæan territory, and the jews retaliated whenever the opportunity occurred. but the philistines were a nation of warriors, and their forces were recruited from time to time by fresh arrivals from krete or other parts of the eastern mediterranean. year by year, therefore, the philistine attack became more formidable; the raids of the enemy were no longer confined to judah, but extended into benjamin and mount ephraim. the philistines began to dream of conquering the whole of canaan, which was henceforth to bear the name of palestine, "the land of the philistines." the israelitish army was shattered in a decisive battle, the ark of the covenant between israel and its national god was taken by the heathen, and the priests of shiloh, the central sanctuary, were slain. the victors marched unresisted through the country, burning and spoiling, and securing the passes by means of permanent garrisons. shiloh and its temple were destroyed, and its priesthood scattered abroad. the philistine supremacy lasted for several years. a few outlaws maintained a guerilla warfare in the mountains of benjamin, and the prophet samuel, the representative of shiloh, was allowed to declare the oracles of yahveh to his countrymen. but the vanquished population was deprived of the means for revolt. the israelites were forbidden the use of arms, and no itinerant smith was permitted to enter their territory. the hebrew who wished to sharpen his ploughshare or axe was forced to go to a philistine city. the condition of israel became intolerable. there was but one remedy: the people needed a leader who should organise them into an army and a nation, and lead them forth against their foes. saul was elected king, and the choice was soon justified by the results. the philistines were driven out of the country, and saul set up his court in the very spot where a philistine garrison had stood. but the philistines were not yet subdued. civil war broke out in israel between saul and his son-in-law david; the troops which should have been employed in resisting the common enemy were used in pursuing david, and david himself took service as a mercenary under achish, king of gath. saul and his sons fell in battle on mount gilboa; the relics of the israelitish army fled across the jordan, and the philistine again ruled supreme on the western side of the jordan. david was allowed to govern judah as a tributary vassal of the philistine "lords." the murder of the feeble scion of saul's house who had the name of king on the eastern side of the jordan put an end to all this. david threw off his allegiance to the philistines, and was crowned king of israel. this act of open defiance was speedily followed by the invasion of judah. at first the war went against the israelitish king; he was forced to fly from his capital, hebron, and take refuge in an inaccessible cavern. here he organised his forces, and at last ventured into the field. the philistine forces were defeated in battle after battle; the war was carried into their own territory, and their cities were compelled to surrender. philistia thus became a part of the israelitish kingdom, and never again made any serious attempt to recover its independence. at the division of the israelitish kingdom it fell to judah, and its vassal princes duly paid their tribute to the jewish kings. it would seem from the assyrian inscriptions that they were played off one against the other, and that signs of disaffection in any one of them were speedily followed by his imprisonment in jerusalem. at all events, the philistine cities remained in the possession of judah down to the time of the overthrow of the monarchy, and the most devoted of david's body-guard were the philistines of gath. it has been said above that judah was a mixture of hebrew, kenite, and edomite elements. kenite means "smith," and the tribe furnished those itinerant smiths who provided canaan with its tools and arms. reference is made to one of them in the _travels of a mohar_, a sarcastic description of a tourist's misadventures in palestine which was written by an egyptian author in the reign of ramses ii., and of which a copy on papyrus has been preserved to us. the horses of the hero of the story, we are told, ran away and broke his carriage to pieces; he had accordingly to betake himself to "the iron-workers" and have it repaired. similar itinerant ironsmiths wandered through europe in the middle ages, handing down from father to son the secrets of their craft. the kenites came from the desert, and were apparently of midianitish descent. balaam had looked down upon their rocky strongholds from the heights of moab; and they had accompanied their hebrew comrades of judah from their first camping-ground near jericho to the wilderness south of arad. here they lived among the amalekite bedâwin down to the days of saul. to the last they maintained their nomadic habits, and the kenite family of rechab still dwelt in tents and avoided wine in that later age when the kingdom of judah was about to fall.[3] the edomite element in judah was stronger than the kenite. it consisted of the two clans of jerahmeel and kenaz, or the house of caleb as it was called in the time of david.[4] kenaz was a grandson of esau, and the fact that the kenizzites shared with the israelitish tribes in the conquest of canaan throws light on the law of deuteronomy[5] which gave the edomite of "the third generation" all the rights and privileges of a jew. caleb, the conqueror of hebron, was a kenizzite; so also was othniel, the first of the judges of israel. edomites, rather than hebrews, were the founders of the future judah. this accounts for the comparatively late appearance of judah as a separate tribe in the history of israel, as well as for the antagonism which existed between it and the more pure-blooded tribes of the north. in the song of deborah and barak, judah is not mentioned; ephraim and benjamin, and not judah, are still regarded as forming the bulwark of israel against the amalekite marauders of the southern wilderness. it was the philistine wars which first created the judah of later days. they forced hebrews, edomites, and kenites to unite against the common enemy, and welded them into a single whole. though the three peoples still continued to be spoken of separately, this was but a survival of ancient modes of speech, and after the accession of david all distinction between them disappears. from this time forward the kingdom of judah is one undivided community. but the amalekites were ever on its borders. the amalekite of the old testament is the bedâwi of to-day. now, as ever, he is the scourge of his more settled neighbours, whose fields he harries and whose families he murders. he lives by robbery and theft; too idle to work himself, he plunders those who do. a strong government forces him to hide himself in the depth of the wilderness; when the countries that skirt the desert fall into decay he emerges from his retreat like a swarm of flies. the ancient oriental world saw in amalek "the firstborn of nations;" he was for them the representative of the primitive savage who had survived in the wilds of the desert. untamed and untamable, his hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him. before babylonian culture had been brought to the west, amalek already existed. he was older than the oldest of the civilised kingdoms of the earth. but civilisation had raised a barrier against him which he was ever on the watch to break through. he never lost the opportunity of raiding the inhabitants of the cultivated lands, and escaping again into the desert with his booty before he could be overtaken and punished. the desert between palestine and egypt was his chief camping-ground. he had occupied the wadis of mount seir before the edomites had entered them, and a part of the later population of the country traced its descent from a mixture of the bedâwi with the edomite. the egyptians had many names for the bedâwin hordes. sometimes they were the herusha or "lords of the sands," sometimes the shasu or "plunderers," sometimes again the sutê or "archers." the third name was borrowed from the babylonians; in return, as we learn from the tablets of tel el-amarna, the babylonians adopted the second. hardly had the israelites escaped from egypt when they were called upon to dispute with the amalekites the possession of the desert. at rephidim the bedâwin robbers fell upon the israelitish camp. but they were beaten off with slaughter, and never again ventured to molest the people of yahveh during their wanderings in the wilderness. the attack, however, was never forgotten, and vengeance was exacted for it in the reign of saul. then the amalekites were pursued into their desert domain and mercilessly slaughtered. they had their home, it is said, in the desert which extended from shur to havilah. shur was the line of fortification which defended the eastern frontier of egypt, and ran pretty much where the suez canal has been dug to-day; havilah was the "sandy" desert of northern arabia. here was the "city" of tents of which agag was shêkh, and which the troops of the israelitish king burnt and spoiled. but the remembrance of the expedition did not last long. when civil war had weakened the power of saul, and the march of the philistine army to the north had left the south of canaan without defenders, an amalekite tribe again poured into judah and sacked the philistine town of ziklag. the wives and property of david and his followers were carried off into the wilderness. but the marauders were overtaken by the israelites they had robbed, and summary vengeance taken upon them. men, women, and children were alike put to the sword; four hundred only escaped through the fleetness of their camels. in the tel el-amarna tablets we find the bedâwin and their shêkhs playing a part in the politics of canaan. their services were hired by the rival princes of palestine, and from time to time we hear of their seizing or plundering its cities on their own account. they have never ceased indeed to infest the land. amalekite bands joined with the midianites in devastating the villages of central israel in the days of gideon, and the amalekite who brought to david the news of saul's death was one of those who had hovered on the skirts of the contending armies, eager when the fight was over to murder the wounded and strip the slain. in a later age the "arabs" who, according to the inscriptions of sennacherib, formed the body-guard of hezekiah were probably bedâwin, and geshem the arabian in the time of nehemiah seems to have represented the amalekite chieftain of an earlier epoch. the bedâwin still haunt the plains and unfrequented paths of palestine, waylaying the traveller and robbing the peasant of his flocks. the peasantry or fellahin are the perizzites of the hebrew scriptures. "perizzite," in fact, means "villager," and the word is a descriptive title rather than the name of a people or a race. it denotes the agricultural population, whatever their origin may have been. another word of similar signification is hivite. if any distinction is to be drawn between them, it is that the term perizzite was specially applied to the fellahin of southern canaan, while the term hivite was restricted to the inhabitants of the north. in two passages, it is true, "hivite" seems to be used with an ethnic meaning. esau is said in one of them to have married the granddaughter of "zibeon the hivite," while in the other we read of "the hivite" who dwelt under mount hermon. but a comparison of the first passage with the later verses of the same chapter shows that "hivite" must be corrected into "horite," and in the second passage it is probable that "hittite" instead of "hivite" should be read. amorite and hittite, canaanite and philistine, were all alike emigrants from other lands. the hittites had come from the mountains of asia minor, the amorites had probably wandered from the northern coast of africa, the canaanites traced their ancestry to the persian gulf, the philistines had sailed from the harbours of the greek seas. canaan had been inhabited, however, before any of them had found their way to it, and this prehistoric population of the country was known to the hebrews by the name of rephaim. in the english translation of the bible the word is usually rendered "giants;" it seems, however, to have been a proper name, which survived in the name of one of the cities of bashan. doubtless it often included other elements besides that to which it was properly applied. at times it was extended to the amorites, whose occupation of palestine went back to a remote past, just as in the babylonian inscriptions the name of amorite itself was extended to the aboriginal population. among the philistines this older population was called avvim, the people of "the ruins." such then were the races who lived in canaan, and with whom the invading israelites had to contend. there was firstly the primitive population of the country, whose rude rock-sculptures may still be seen in the wadi el-qana near tyre. then there were the intrusive amorites and canaanites, the amorites with their fair skins and blue eyes who made themselves a home in the mountains, and the semitic canaanites who settled on the coast and in the plains. the amorite migration went back to an epoch long before that of the first babylonian conquests in the west; the canaanitish migration may have been coeval with the latter event. next came the hittites, to whom the jebusites of jerusalem may have belonged; then the philistines, who seized the southern coast but a few years previously to the israelitish invasion. canaan was a land of many races and many peoples, who had taken shelter in its highlands, or had found their further progress barred by the sea. small as it was, it was the link between asia and africa, the battle-ground of the great kingdoms which arose on the euphrates and the nile. it formed, in fact, the centre of the ancient civilised world, and the mixture of races within it was due in great measure to its central position. the culture of babylonia and egypt met there and coalesced. [footnote 2: numb. xiii. 29.] [footnote 3: 1 chr. ii. 55; jer. xxxv. 3-10.] [footnote 4: 1 sam. xxx. 14.] [footnote 5: deut. xxiii 8.] chapter iii the nations of the south-east israel was cut in two by the jordan. the districts east of the jordan were those that had first been conquered; it was from thence that the followers of joshua had gone forth to possess themselves of canaan. but this division of the territory was a source of weakness. the interests of the tribes on the two sides of the river were never quite the same; at times indeed they were violently antagonistic. when the disruption of the monarchy came after the death of solomon, judah was the stronger for the fact that the eastern tribes followed those of the north. the eastern tribes were the first to lose their independence; they were carried into assyrian captivity twelve years before the fall of samaria itself. the eastern side of jordan, in fact, belonged of right to the kinsfolk of the israelites, the children of lot. ammon and moab derived their origin from the nephew of abraham, not from the patriarch himself, the ancestor of ammon being ben-ammi, "the son of ammi," the national god of the race. it was said that the two peoples were the offspring of incest, and the cave was pointed out where they had been born. ammon occupied the country to the north which in earlier days had been the home of the aboriginal zuzini or zamzummim. but they had been treated as the canaanites were treated by the israelites in later days; their cities were captured by the invading ammonites, and they themselves massacred or absorbed into the conquerors. to the north the territory of ammon was bounded by the plateau of bashan and the aramaic kingdoms of gilead. southward it extended towards the frontier of moab, if indeed the borders of the two nations did not at one time coincide. when the israelitish invasion, however, took place, the amorites under sihon had thrust themselves between, and had carved for themselves a kingdom out of the northern half of moab. the land north of the arnon became amorite; but the ammonite frontier was too well defended to be broken through. the kingdom of ammon maintained itself down to the time of david. at one time, in the days of the judges, the ammonites had made the israelitish tribes on the eastern side of the jordan tributary to them, and had even crossed the river and raided the highlands of ephraim. under saul, ammon and israel were at constant feud. saul had begun his reign by rescuing jabesh in gilead from the ammonite king nahash, who had threatened to treat its inhabitants with innate semitic barbarity. when civil war broke out in israel, nahash naturally befriended david, and the alliance continued after david's accession to the throne. common interests brought them together. esh-baal, the successor of saul in gilead, was the enemy of both: his frontier adjoined that of ammon, while between him and the king of judah there was perpetual war. david had strengthened himself by marrying the daughter of the king of the aramaic district of geshur, which bounded gilead on the north, and ammonites and aramæans were in close alliance with each other. as long as nahash lived, there was peace between him and david. but with the accession of his son hanun came a change. the king of judah had become king of israel, and his general, joab, had subdued the neighbouring kingdom of moab, and was looking out for a fresh field of fame. hanun determined to forestall the war which he believed to be inevitable, and, in alliance with the aramæans, to crush the rising power of david. family quarrels also probably conspired to bring about this resolution. in the after days of absalom's rebellion we find david entertained in gilead by shobi the brother of hanun;[6] it may be, therefore, that hanun had had a rival in his brother, who had received shelter and protection at david's court. at all events the israelitish ambassadors were grossly insulted, and a long war with ammon began. campaign followed upon campaign; the city of waters, rabbah, the "capital" of ammon, was closely invested, and the aramaic allies of hanun were put to flight. rabbah fell at last; its defenders were tortured and slain, and the kingdom of ammon annexed to the israelitish empire. when it recovered its independence we do not know. in the days of assyrian conquest in the west it was already again governed by its own kings. one of them, baasha, the son of rehob, was, like ahab of samaria, an ally of damascus against the assyrian invader, and we hear of two others, one of whom bears the same name as "shinab, king of admah." the storm of babylonian conquest which overwhelmed judah spared ammon; after the destruction of jerusalem baalis was still king of the ammonites, and ready to extend his power over the desolated fields of judah.[7] the language of ammon, if we may argue from the proper names, was, like that of moab, a mere dialectal variety of that of israel. the "language of canaan" must have been adopted by the ammonites and moabites just as it was by the israelitish tribes. the moabite stone has proved this conclusively. moabite and ammonite, phoenician and hebrew, were all alike dialects of one language, which differed from one another merely as one english dialect differs from another. hebrew had retained a few "arabisms," a few traces of its ancient contact with arabic-speaking tribes; that was all. in other respects it was the same as "the language of canaan" on either side of the jordan. the ammonites believed themselves to be the children of the national god ammi. but ammi was usually worshipped under the title of malcham or milcom, "the king." it was to milcom that solomon erected an altar at jerusalem, in honour of that ammonite wife whose son rehoboam succeeded him on the throne, and it was from the head of his image at kabbah that his crown of gold and precious stones, 131 pounds in weight, was removed to grace the triumph of david.[8] moab was more exposed to the inroads of its nomadic neighbours from the wilderness than its sister-kingdom of ammon. it lay along the eastern shores of the dead sea, and was a land of lofty mountains and fertile river-plains. its wadis were coveted by the tribes of the desert; the well-watered valley of the arnon attracted more powerful foes. when the israelites encamped in "the plain of moab," balak, the moabite king, sent in terror to balaam, the seer of pethor. he had indeed cause for alarm. the amorites had already robbed him of the fairest portion of his dominions; moab north of the arnon had fallen into their hands. the amorite song of triumph has been preserved in the book of numbers. "come unto heshbon," it said; "let the city of sihon be built and fortified. for a fire has gone forth from heshbon, a flame from the city of sihon; it hath consumed ar of moab, and the baalim of the high-places of arnon. woe to thee, moab! thou art undone, o people of chemosh: [chemosh] hath given his sons that escaped [the battle], and his daughters, into captivity unto sihon, king of the amorites."[9] moab was avenged by israel. the amorites were crushed by the israelitish forces, though the lands they had taken from moab were not restored to their original owners. the conquerors settled in them, and a mixed israelitish and moabite population was the result. the moabites, in fact, were powerless to resist. the southern portion of the kingdom had been overrun by midianite hordes; the enemy with whom the israelites had to contend on moabite soil was midianite and not moabite. those who corrupted israel on the high-place of peor were midianites in race. the midianites seem to have continued in occupation of moabite territory for several generations. reuben was enabled to pasture his flocks in peace in its valleys, and it is probable that it was not till hadad, the king of edom, "smote midian in the plain of moab" that midianitish supremacy came finally to an end. it may be that gideon's success against the midianite oppressors of gilead was one of the results of their overthrow by the edomite prince. at the same time, midianitish supremacy did not mean the destruction of the moabite kingdom. moab was still governed by its own kings, tributary vassals though they were to the foreigner. one of them, eglon, made himself master of southern palestine shortly after the israelitish conquest of the country, and was murdered by the benjamite ehud. between moab and judah there was, as might be expected from their geographical position, constant intercourse. a moabitess was the ancestress of david, and it was to the court of the king of moab that david entrusted his parents when hard pressed by saul. possibly the moabite prince was not ill pleased to befriend the enemy of his own enemy, the king of israel. it had been better for the moabites, however, had david never lived to succeed saul. the conquest of the philistines by his troops was followed by the conquest of moab. the vanquished people were decimated, every second man being mercilessly slain. so thoroughly was the country subdued that it was more than a century before it ventured to break away from its israelitish master. after the disruption of solomon's heritage it fell to the share of the northern kingdom, though native kings once more sat upon its throne. now and again they revolted, to be brought back to obedience, however, when israel recovered its strength. such was the case when omri founded his dynasty at samaria; moab again became a dependency of the israelitish monarch, and its ruler was forced to pay tribute and homage to his over-lord. the tribute consisted in sheep, or rather in their skins, which were tanned by the israelites into leather, while the fleeces upon them were woven into cloth. in the time of ahab, mesha, the son of chemosh-melech, sent each year 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams. mesha subsequently succeeded in shaking off the foreign yoke. he has left us a record of his victories, the so-called moabite stone, which was discovered among the ruins of his capital, dibon. the country north of the arnon was wrested from israelitish hands, and the king of israel, in spite of help from judah and edom, failed to recover it. moab was permanently lost to the kingdom of samaria. the assyrian texts mention some of its later rulers. one of them was shalman, who may be the spoiler of beth-arbel referred to by hosea;[10] another was chemosh-nadab, the contemporary of hezekiah. chemosh-nadab signifies "chemosh is noble." chemosh was the national god of moab, as milcom or ammi was of ammon. like yahveh of israel, he stood alone, with no wife to share his divinity. so entirely, in fact, had the conception of a goddess vanished from the mind of the moabite, that, as we learn from the moabite stone, the babylonian istar, the ashtoreth of canaan, had been transformed into a male deity, and identified with chemosh. it was to ashtar-chemosh, mesha tells us, and not to ashtoreth, that he devoted the captive women of israel. the older population, expelled or enslaved by the conquering moabites, went by the name of emim. it is probable that they belonged to the same stock as the zamzummim or zuzim whose country had been seized by the ammonites. we may gather from the narrative in genesis that the invaders forced their way eastward and northward from the valley of the jordan and the shores of the dead sea. south of moab were the rugged and barren mountains of seir, the seat of the kingdom of edom. in prehistoric days they had been the home of the horites, whose name may denote that they were of the "white" amorite race or that they were dwellers in "caves." to the egyptians it was known as "the red land," along with the desert that stretched westward; "edom" is merely the hebrew or canaanitish translation of the egyptian title. the title was one which well befitted the red cliffs of seir. through the centre of the mountains a rift extended from the dead sea to the gulf of aqaba. in geological times it had been the channel of the jordan; now it is called the wadi el-araba. it was this rift which brought wealth to edom; through it passed the highroad of commerce which connected syria with the harbours at the head of the gulf. the spices of arabia, the gold of africa, were unshipped at elath and ezion-gaber, and carried from thence on the backs of camels to the nations of the north. the tolls levied on the merchandise made the kingdom of edom wealthy, and at the same time an object of envy to its poorer neighbours. in conquering edom, david doubtless desired to secure the trade with the red sea and the ports through which the trade passed. edom was the elder brother of israel. the two nations never forgot that they were of one blood and one parentage. their languages were the same, as we may gather from the edomite proper names; indeed, it would seem that the dialect of edom agreed with hebrew in those arabising peculiarities which marked it off from the language of the canaanites. edomites took part in the israelitish conquest of palestine, and both caleb and othniel were kenizzites by race. the edomite occupation of seir was long subsequent to the settlement of the ammonites and moabites in the regions which bore their names, though it preceded the israelitish settlement in canaan. while israel was herding its flocks in egypt, edom was establishing itself in the mountains of seir. esau, the brother of jacob, had already gathered around him a body of followers, and had married into the family of a horite chief. his descendants, partly by conquest, partly by absorption, planted themselves securely in the country which was henceforth to be called edom. horite and amalekite bedâwin were alike absorbed into the new-comers, whose position in edom resembled that of the israelites in canaan. how long the work of conquest and settlement lasted we do not know. it resulted in the formation of numerous tribes, each under its chieftain, the _alûph_ or "duke" as he was termed. these "dukes" corresponded with the "princes" of the tribes of israel. but whereas the "princes" of the israelitish tribes did not survive the life in the desert, the "dukes" of edom give way only to kings. for this there was a good reason. the invasion of canaan and the promulgation of the mosaic law changed the whole organisation of the hebrew people. on the one hand, the israelites required a leader who should lead them in the first instance against the canaanites, in the second against the foreign oppressors who enslaved them from time to time. on the other hand, the high-priests at shiloh exercised many of the functions which would naturally have belonged to the head of the tribe. neither "judge" nor high-priest was needed in edom. there the native population was weak and uncivilised; it possessed neither cities nor chariots of iron, and its subjugation was no difficult task. once in possession of the fastnesses of seir, the edomites were comparatively safe from external attack. it was a land of dangerous defiles and barren mountains, surrounded on all sides by the desert. there was no central sanctuary, no levitical priesthood, no mosaic law. the "duke" consequently had no rival; the history of edom knows nothing of judges or high-priests. the law of evolution, however, which governed other semitic communities prevailed also in edom. the dukes had to give place to a king. the tribes were united under a single leader, and the loosely federated clans became a kingdom. as in israel, so too in edom the kingdom was elective. but, unlike israel, it remained elective; there was no pressure of philistine conquest, no commanding genius like david, no central capital like jerusalem to make it centralised and hereditary. several generations had to pass before the edomites were called upon to fight for their independence against a foreign invader, and when they did so the struggle ended in their subjugation. the elective principle and the want of a common centre and feeling of unity that resulted from it had much to do with the victory of david. the song of triumph with which the israelitish fugitives celebrated the overthrow of their egyptian enemies mentions the _alûphím_ or "dukes" of edom. but before the israelites had emerged from the wilderness the dukes had been supplanted by a king. it was a king who refused a passage through his dominions to moses and his followers, and in this king some scholars have seen the aramæan seer balaam the son of beor. at all events, the first edomite king is said to have been bela or balaam the son of beor, and the name of the city of din-habah, from which he came, has a close resemblance to that of dunip in northern syria. a list of the kings of edom is given in the thirty-sixth chapter of genesis, extracted from the state annals of the country. it seems to be brought down to the time when saul was elected king over israel. the chronicles of edom were probably taken to jerusalem at the time of its conquest by david; at any rate, they would then have become accessible to an israelitish writer. the conquest was very thorough, all the male population being put to the sword, and a few only escaping to egypt. among these was a member of the royal house, hadad by name, who grew up at the egyptian court, and, after marrying the sister-in-law of the pharaoh, returned to his native mountains, where he played the part of a bandit chief. the caravans which passed from the gulf of aqaba to the north were attacked and plundered, and solomon up to the end of his reign failed to suppress the brigands. with the disruption of the israelitish monarchy, edom, as was natural, fell to the lot of judah, and for many years was governed by a viceroy. it was not until after the death of jehoshaphat that the edomites succeeded in revolting from their masters, and in recovering their ancient independence. three of their rulers are mentioned in the assyrian inscriptions, from which we learn that there was a city of edom, as well as a country of that name. of the religion of the edomites we know but little. the supreme baal was the sun-god hadad; another god worshipped by them was qaus or kos. of goddesses we hear nothing. the israelites, however, recognised in the edomites brethren of their own, whose religion was not far removed from that of the descendants of jacob. an edomite of the third generation could enter "into the congregation of the lord," and we hear of no rival deity in edom to yahveh of israel. indeed, in the old poetry of israel yahveh was said to have risen up "from seir," and the charge brought against edom by the prophet obadiah is not that of idolatry or the worship of a "strange god," but of standing on the side of the "foreigners" on the day that jerusalem was destroyed. the southern part of edom was known as teman; it was to the east of teman that the kadmonites or "children of the east" pitched their tents. we first hear of them in an egyptian papyrus of the age of the twelfth dynasty (b.c. 2500). then they received with hospitality a political fugitive from egypt; he married one of their princesses and became one of their chiefs. their wisdom was celebrated in palestine like that of their edomite neighbours of teman, and the highest praise that could be bestowed on solomon was that his "wisdom excelled all the wisdom of the children of the east." not far from the camping-places of the kadmonites was the land of uz, famous as the home of job. uz, in fact, was a province of edom; edomite colonists, so we are told in the book of lamentations,[11] inhabited it. indeed, it has been suggested that the difficulties presented by the language of the book of job are due to the fact that it is the language of edom rather than of the jews, differing from the latter only as an english dialect may differ from that of a neighbouring county. at all events, job was as much a hero of hebrew as of edomite tradition, while the last chapter of the book of proverbs contains the wise sayings of a king whose territory adjoined the land of edom. lemuel, according to the hebrew text, which is mistranslated in the authorised version, ruled over massa, and massa, the mash of genesis, is described in the assyrian inscriptions as that part of northern arabia which spread eastward from edom. the hebrew of palestine doubtless included it in the country of "the children of the east." the larger part of northern arabia, however, was the home of the ishmaelites. they lived, it is said, "from havilah unto shur," like the amalekites or bedâwin. but whereas the amalekites were the wild, untamable natives of the desert, the ishmaelites came of a cultured ancestry, half babylonian, half egyptian, and the traditions of it were never forgotten. they lived a settled life in fenced villages and fortified castles, as their descendants still do to-day. like the israelites, they were divided into twelve tribes, the eldest and most important of which were the nabatheans, who spread from the frontiers of babylonia to petra in the far west. kedar was another powerful tribe; in the days of the later assyrian empire its kings contended in battle with the armies of nineveh. the name of ishmael is met with in babylonian contracts of the age of abraham. it is a name which belongs to canaan rather than to babylonia or arabia. the ishmaelite tribes, in fact, spoke dialects in which canaanitish and arabic elements were mingled together. they are the dialects we term aramaic, and represent a mixture of arabic with canaanitish or hebrew. as we go northwards into syria the canaanitish element predominates; southward the arabic element is the more pronounced. the ishmaelites were merchants and traders. they lived on the caravan-road which brought the spices of southern arabia to canaan and egypt, and the trade was largely in their hands. in the history of joseph we hear of them carrying the balm of gilead and the myrrh of the south on their camels to egypt, and in the second century before the christian era the merchant princes of petra made their capital one of the wealthiest of oriental cities. it was not until 105 a.d. that the nabathean state was conquered by rome, and the ishmaelites of northern arabia transformed into roman subjects. they have left their tombs and inscriptions among the rocks of petra, while the cliffs of the sinaitic peninsula are covered with the scrawls of nabathean travellers. southward of the ishmaelites came the midianites. midianites and ishmaelites were alike of the same blood. both traced their descent from abraham; it was only on the side of the mother that their origin was different. while the ishmaelites claimed connection with egypt, the midianites were more purely arabic in race. the name of keturah their ancestress means "incense," and points to the incense-bearing lands of the south. midian was properly the district which stretched along the western coast of the gulf of aqaba towards mecca, if not towards yemen. but midianite tribes had also pushed northwards and mingled with the descendants of ishmael. "ishmaelites" and "midianites" seem convertible terms in the story of joseph, and the midianites who swarmed into the north of israel in the days of gideon, along with the amalekites and "the children of the east," must have been as much ishmaelite as midianite in descent. between the midianites and the israelitish fugitives from egypt there had been close affinity. moses had found a refuge in midian, and his wife and children were midianite in race. his father-in-law, "the priest of midian," had visited him under the shadow of sinai, and had given him his first lessons in political organisation. a midianite remained to guide the israelites through the wilderness, and the kenites, who took part with the tribe of judah in the conquest of canaan, appear to have migrated from midian. it was not until just before the invasion of palestine that the old bonds of friendship and mixture between israel and midian were broken asunder. midianite hosts had overrun the land of moab as at a later time they overran the land of israel, and the israelites had forsaken yahveh for the worship of the midianite baal-peor. this was the result of intermarriage; the israelites had taken midianite wives and conformed to the licentious rites of a midianite god. israel, however, was saved by its levite priests. they rallied round yahveh and moses, and in the struggle that ensued the forces on the side of the national god proved the stronger. the midianitish faction was annihilated, its leaders put to death, and the midianites themselves attacked and despoiled. among the slain was the seer of pethor, balaam the son of beor. the moabites must have hailed the israelites as saviours. they had delivered them from their two assailants, the amorites on the north, the midianites on the east. but the midianite power was broken only for a time. we hear at a subsequent date of the edomite king hadad "who smote midian in the field of moab," and a time came when midianite shêkhs overran gilead, and penetrated into the valleys and villages of manasseh on the western side of the jordan. after their defeat by gideon, however, we hear of them no more. they passed out of the israelitish horizon; henceforth their raiding bands never approached the frontiers of israel. the land of midian alone is mentioned as adjoining edom; the midianites who had traversed the desert and carried terror to the inhabitants of canaan become merely a name. midian was originally governed by high-priests. this was the case among other semitic peoples as well. in assyria the kings were preceded by the high-priests of assur, and recently-discovered inscriptions show that in southern arabia, in the land of sheba, the high-priest came before the king. jethro, "the priest of midian," represented a peculiarly arabian institution. the name of "arab" was applied to certain tribes only of northern arabia. we hear of them in the old testament as well as in the assyrian inscriptions. in the old testament the name seems to include the ishmaelite clans to the east of edom. their "kings," it is said, brought tribute to solomon; a colony of them was established at gur-baal in the south of judah. we learn from the assyrian texts that they could be governed by queens; two of their queens indeed are mentioned by name. it was also a "queen of the south," it will be remembered, who came to hear the wisdom of solomon. sheba, the saba of classical antiquity, was an important kingdom of south-western arabia, which had grown wealthy through its trade in spicery. from time immemorial egypt had imported frankincense from the southern coasts of the arabian peninsula, and the precious spices had been carried by merchants to the far north. the caravan-road of trade ran northward to midian and edom, touching on the one side on the frontier of egypt, on the other on that of palestine. the road and the country through which it passed were in the hands of the south arabian kings. their inscriptions have been discovered at teima, the tema of the old testament, not far inland from el-wej, and in the days of tiglath-pileser the kings of saba claimed rule as far as the euphrates. it was no strange thing, therefore, for a queen of sheba to have heard of the power of solomon, or to have sought alliance with so wealthy and luxurious a neighbour. his province of edom adjoined her own possessions; his ports on the gulf of aqaba were open to her merchants, and the frankincense which grew in her dominions was needed for the temple at jerusalem. the people of sheba belonged to the south arabian stock. in both blood and language they differed considerably from the semites of the north. physically they bore some resemblance to the egyptians, and it has been suggested that the egyptians were originally emigrants from their shores. they lived in lofty castles, and terraced the slopes of the mountains for the purpose of cultivation, as they still do to-day. civilisation among them was old; it was derived, at least in part, from babylonia, and the dynasty which reigned over babylon in the age of abraham was of south arabian descent. some of them crossed the red sea and founded colonies in africa, in the modern abyssinia, where they built cities and introduced the culture of their former homes. like the egyptians and the babylonians, they were a literary people; their inscriptions are still scattered thickly among the ruins of their towns, written in the letters of the alphabet which is usually termed phoenician. but it is becoming a question whether it was not from south arabia that phoenicia first borrowed it, and whether it would not be more truthfully called arabian. the religion of southern arabia was highly polytheistic. each district and tribe had its special god or gods, and the goddesses were almost as numerous as the gods. along with babylonian culture had come the adoption of several babylonian divinities;--sin, the moon-god, for instance, or atthar, the ashtoreth of canaan. how far westward the worship of sin was carried may be judged from the fact that sinai, the sacred mountain whereon the law of israel was promulgated, took its name from that of the old babylonian god. in the tenth chapter of genesis sheba is one of the sons of joktan, the ancestor of the south arabian tribes. foremost among them is hazarmaveth, the hadhramaut of to-day; another is ophir, the port to which the gold of africa was brought. but the same chapter also assigns to sheba a different origin. it couples him with dedan, and sees in him a descendant of ham, a kinsman of egypt and canaan. both genealogies are right. they are geographical, not ethnic, and denote, in accordance with semitic idiom, the geographical relationships of the races and nations of the ancient world. sheba belonged not only to south arabia but to northern arabia as well. the rule of the sabæan princes extended to the borders of egypt and canaan, and sheba was the brother of hazarmaveth and of dedan alike. for dedan was a north arabian tribe, whose home was near tema, and whose name may have had a connection with that sometimes given by the babylonians to the whole of the west. such, then, was arabia in the days of the hebrew writers. the south was occupied by a cultured population, whose rule, at all events after the time of solomon, was acknowledged throughout the peninsula. the people of the north and the centre differed from this population in both race and language, though all alike belonged to the same semitic stock. the midianites on the western coast perhaps partook of the characteristics of both. but the ishmaelites were wholly northern; they were the kinsmen of the edomites and israelites, and their language was that aramaic which represents a mixture of arabic and canaanitish elements. wandering tribes of savage bedâwin pitched their tents in the desert, or robbed their more settled neighbours, as they do to-day; these were the amalekites of the old testament, who were believed to be the first created of mankind, and the aboriginal inhabitants of arabia. apart from them, however, the peninsula was the seat of a considerable culture. the culture had spread from the spice-bearing lands of the south, where it had been in contact with the civilisations of babylonia on the one side and of egypt on the other, and where wealthy and prosperous kingdoms had arisen, and powerful dynasties of kings had held sway. it is to arabia, in all probability, that we must look for the origin of the alphabet--in itself a proof of the culture of those who used it; and it was from arabia that babylonia received that line of monarchs which first made babylon a capital, and was ruling there in the days of abraham. we must cease to regard arabia as a land of deserts and barbarism; it was, on the contrary, a trading centre of the ancient world, and the moslems who went forth from it to conquer christendom and found empires, were but the successors of those who, in earlier times, had exercised a profound influence upon the destinies of the east. [footnote 6: 2 sam. xvii. 27.] [footnote 7: jer. xl. 14.] [footnote 8: rehoboam is an ammonite name, compounded with that of the god am or ammi. rehob, which is the first element in it, was also an ammonite name, as we learn from the assyrian inscriptions.] [footnote 9: numb. xxi. 27-29.] [footnote 10: x. 14.] [footnote 11: iv. 21.] chapter iv the nations of the north-east canaan is but the southern continuation of syria, which shades off, as it were, into the waterless wilderness. the name of syria is usually supposed to be an abbreviation of assyria, but it is more probable that it comes from suri, the name by which the babylonians denoted mesopotamia and syria of the north, and in which assyria itself was sometimes included. as we have seen, the syria of our own maps, and more especially the southern half of it, was commonly known to the babylonians as the land of the amorites; in the later inscriptions of assyria the place of the amorites is taken by the hittites. when assyria appeared upon the scene of history the hittites had become the dominant people in the west. the main part of the population of syria and mesopotamia was aramæan--that is to say, it consisted of semites from arabia who spoke aramaic dialects. but it was exposed to constant attacks from the north, and from time to time passed under the yoke of a northern conqueror. at one time it was the hittites who poured down the slopes of mount taurus and occupied the fertile plains and cities of northern syria. at another time a kindred people from the highlands of armenia established a kingdom in mesopotamia known as that of mitanni to its own subjects, as that of aram-naharaim to the hebrews. the northern invaders sundered the semites of the west from those of the east. the kings of mitanni held guard over the fords of the euphrates, and intrigued in palestine against the egyptian pharaohs. but this did not prevent them from marrying into the pharaoh's family, while their daughters were sent to the harem of the egyptian king. towards the end of the eighteenth dynasty the sacred blood of the pharaohs became contaminated by these foreign alliances. for two generations in succession the queen-mother was a mitannian princess, and a king finally sat upon the pharaohs' throne who attempted to supplant the religion of which he was the official head by a foreign cult, and thereby brought about the fall of his house and empire. the power of mitanni or aram-naharaim--aram of the two rivers--does not seem to have long survived this event. chushan-rishathaim, we learn from the book of judges, held palestine in subjection for eight years, until he was driven out by the kenizzite othniel, and about the same time ramses iii. of egypt records his victory over the mesopotamian king. after this we hear no more of a king of aram-naharaim in canaan or on the frontier of egypt, and when the name of mitanni is met with a little later in the assyrian inscriptions it is that of a small and insignificant state. the hittites had grown at the expense of mitanni, but their glory too was of no long duration. in the days of ramses ii., the pharaoh of the oppression, their power was at its height. from their southern capital at kadesh on the orontes their armies had gone forth to contend on equal terms with the forces of the nile, and after twenty-one years of warfare, peace was made between the two combatants, neither side having gained an advantage in the long struggle. the text of the treaty is engraved on the walls of karnak. there we may read how the two rivals swore henceforth to be friends and allies, how the existing boundaries of their respective territories in syria were to remain unchanged for ever, and how a general amnesty was to be granted to the political fugitives on either side. it was only the criminal to whom the right of asylum in the dominions of the other was denied. in the war they had waged with egypt the hittite princes of kadesh had summoned their vassal allies from the distant coasts of asia minor. lycians and dardanians had come from the far west; and were joined by the troops of aram-naharaim from the east. the extension of hittite supremacy to the shores of the ægean sea is testified by the monuments it has left behind. hittite inscriptions have been found near smyrna engraved on the rocks, as well as the figures of hittite warriors guarding the westernmost pass of the ancient road. the summer residences of the hittite princes were on the eastern bank of the halys. here the roads of asia minor converged, and here we still see the sculptured bas-reliefs of a hittite palace and long rows of hittite deities. the hittite empire broke up into a multitude of small principalities. of these carchemish, now jerablûs, on the euphrates, was perhaps the most important. it commanded the ford across the river, and the high-road of commerce from east to west. its merchants grew rich, and "the mina of carchemish" became a standard of value in the ancient world. its capture by sargon destroyed a rival of assyrian trade, and opened the road to the mediterranean to the armies of assyria. the decay of the hittite and mitannian power meant the revival of the older aramæan population of the country. the foreigner was expelled or absorbed; syria and mesopotamia became more and more semitic. aramæan kingdoms arose on all sides, and a feeling of common kinship and interests arose among them at the same time. to the north of the gulf of antioch, in the very heart of the hittite territory, german excavators have lately found the earliest known monuments of aramæan art. the art, as is natural, is based on that of their hittite predecessors; even the inscriptions in the alphabet of phoenicia are cut in relief like the older hieroglyphs of the hittites. but they prove that the triumph of the aramæan was complete. the foreigner and his works were swept away; no trace has been discovered of a hittite text, barely even of a hittite name. the gods are all semitic--hadad the sun-god and shahr the moon-god, the baal of harran, and rekeb-el, "the chariot of god." hittite inscriptions have been found at hamath on the orontes. but they must belong to a period earlier than that of david. the rulers of hamath who made alliance with david bear semitic names. the crown-prince came himself to jerusalem, bringing with him costly vessels of gold and silver and bronze. his name was hadoram, "hadad is exalted;" but out of compliment to the israelitish king, the name of hadad was changed into that of the god of israel, and he became known to history as joram. a common enmity united hamath and israel. the war with ammon had brought david into conflict with zobah, an aramaic kingdom which under hadad-ezer was aiming at the conquest of the whole of syria. in the reign of saul, zobah was divided into a number of separate clans or states; these had been welded together by hadad-ezer, who had added to his empire the smaller aramaic principalities of central syria. geshur, maachah, damascus all acknowledged his authority. he had secured the caravan-road which led across the desert, past the future palmyra, to the euphrates, and eastward of that river the aramæan states sent him help in war. like the pharaohs of a former generation, he had erected a monument of his victory on the banks of the great river, marking the farthest limit of his dominions. hamath was threatened by the growing power of hadad-ezer, when a new force entered the field. joab, the commander of the israelitish army, was a consummate general, and the veterans he led had been trained to conquer. ammon was easily crushed, and while its capital was closely invested the israelitish troops fell upon the aramæans in campaign after campaign. victory followed victory; the forces of zobah and its allies were annihilated, and the aramæan states as far as hamath and even the euphrates became the tributaries of david. wealth flowed into the royal treasury at jerusalem; the cities of northern syria were plundered of their bronze, and the yearly tribute of the subject states, as well as the proceeds of the desert trade, yielded an unfailing revenue to the conqueror. the attempt of hadad-ezer to found an aramæan empire had failed. but the empire of david was hardly longer lived. the murder of joab, and the unwarlike character and extravagance of solomon, brought about its downfall. damascus revolted under rezon; and though in the war that ensued solomon succeeded in keeping the cities of zobah which kept guard over the caravan road, it never returned to israelitish rule. when the disruption of the israelitish kingdom came after solomon's death, the aramæans rallied round the successors of rezon. damascus increased in strength, and at times laid northern israel under tribute. between the two kingdoms there was indeed constant intercourse, sometimes peaceful, sometimes hostile. syrian merchants had bazaars in samaria, where they could buy and sell, undisturbed by tolls and exactions, and israelitish traders had similar quarters assigned to them by treaty in damascus. "damask couches" were already famous, and ahab sent a contingent of 10,000 men and 2000 chariots to the help of ben-hadad ii. in his war against assyria. this ben-hadad is called hadad-idri or hadad-ezer in the assyrian texts; ben-hadad, in fact, was a god, who was worshipped by the syrians by the side of his father hadad. in the struggle with assyria the aramæan forces were led by hamath. most of the states of western asia contributed troops; even the "arabs" took part in the conflict. but the confederates were overthrown with great slaughter at karkar on the orontes in b.c. 853, and immediately afterwards we find ahab at war with his late ally. hadad-idri lived only a few years longer. in b.c. 842 he was murdered by hazael, who seized the throne. but hazael, like his predecessor, was soon called upon to face an assyrian army. year after year the assyrians invaded the territories of damascus, and though they never succeeded in capturing the capital, the country was devastated, and a countless amount of booty carried away. the syrian kingdom was utterly exhausted, and in no condition to resist the attacks of the israelitish kings jehoash and jeroboam ii. jehoash, we are told, gained three victories over his hereditary enemy, while jeroboam occupied its cities. when an assyrian army once more appeared at the gates of damascus in b.c. 797, its king mariha was glad to purchase peace by rich presents and the offer of homage. gold and silver, bronze and iron in large quantities were yielded up to the conqueror, and damascus for a while was the vassal of nineveh. but a respite was granted it in which to recover its strength. civil war sapped the strength of the kingdom of israel, and assyria fell into decay. freed from its enemies, damascus again amassed wealth through the trade across the desert, and was recognised as the head of the smaller aramæan states. in conjunction with the israelitish king pekah, rezon ii. proposed to overthrow judah and supplant the davidic dynasty by a syrian vassal-prince. the fall of judah would have meant the fall also of edom and the submission of the philistines, as well as that of moab and ammon. the strength of its capital made judah the champion and protector of southern canaan; with jerusalem in their hands, the confederate rulers of damascus and samaria could do as they chose. ahaz of judah turned in his despair to the assyrians, who had once more appeared on the scene. tiglath-pileser iii. had overthrown the older assyrian dynasty and put new life into the kingdom. in the interests of the merchants of nineveh he aimed at incorporating the whole of western asia and its commerce into his empire, and the appeal of ahaz gave him an excuse for interfering in the affairs of palestine. ahaz became his vassal; pekah was put to death, and an assyrian nominee made king in his place, while rezon was shut up in his capital and closely besieged. for two years the siege continued; then damascus was taken, its last king slain, and its territory placed under an assyrian satrap. hamath had already fallen. a portion of its population had been transported to the north, and their places filled with settlers from babylonia. its king had become an assyrian vassal, who along with the other subject princes of asia attended the court held by tiglath-pileser at damascus after its capture, there to pay homage to the conqueror and swell his triumph. a few years later, on the accession of sargon, hamath made a final effort to recover its freedom. but the effort was ruthlessly crushed, and henceforward the last of the aramæan kingdoms was made an assyrian province. when an aramæan tribe again played a part in history it was in the far south, among the rocky cliffs of petra and the desert fortress of the nabathean merchants. in the book of genesis, mesopotamia, the country between the euphrates and tigris, is called not only aram-naharaim, "aram of the two rivers," but also padan-aram, "the acre of aram." padan, as we learn from the assyrian inscriptions, originally signified as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough; then it came to denote the "cultivated land" or "acre" itself. the word still survives in modern arabic. in the egypt of to-day land is measured by _feddans_, the _feddan_ (or _paddmi_) being the equivalent of our acre. _paddan_ was used in the same sense in the babylonia of the age of abraham. numerous contracts have been found for the lease or sale of estates in which the "acreage" or number of _paddani_ is carefully stated. the application of the name to the plain of mesopotamia was doubtless clue to the babylonians. an early babylonian king claims rule over the "land of padan," and elsewhere we are told that it lay in front of the country of the arman or aramæans. it was in western padan that the kingdom of mitanni was established. its founders, as we have seen, came from the north. from the river halys in asia minor to lake urumiyeh, east of armenia, there was a multitude of tribes, most of whom seem to have belonged to the same race and to have spoken dialects of the same language. the hittites of cappadocia and the ranges of the taurus have already been described. east of them came the meshech and tubal of the bible as well as the kingdom of comagênê, of which we often hear in the assyrian texts. but of all these northern populations the most important--at all events in the later old testament age--were the inhabitants of a country called biainas, but to which its neighbours gave the name of ararat. ararat corresponded to southern armenia, biainas being the modern van, and the mount ararat of modern geography lying considerably to the north of it. in the ninth century before our era a powerful dynasty arose at van, which extended its conquests far and wide, and at one time threatened to destroy even the assyrian empire. it signalised its accession to power by borrowing the cuneiform writing of nineveh, and numerous inscriptions exist recording the names and victories of its sovereigns, the buildings they erected, and the gods they served. the language of the inscriptions is strange and peculiar; it seems to be distantly related to modern georgian, and may be akin to the dialects of the hittites or of mitanni. if we may trust the representations of the assyrian artists, the people of ararat did not all belong to the same race. two ethnic types have been handed down to us--one with beardless faces, resembling that of the hittites, the other of a people with high fore-heads, curved and pointed noses, thin lips, and well-formed chin. both, however, wear the same dress. on the head is a crested helmet like that of the greeks, on the feet the hittite boot with upturned end; the body is clad in a tunic which reaches to the knee, and a small round target is used in battle. for many centuries the semites and the people of the north contended for the possession of the syrian plains. horde after horde descended from the northern mountains, capturing the aramæan cities and setting up kingdoms in their midst. at one time it seemed as if the semites of the east and west were to be permanently sundered from one another. the decay of babylonia and egypt enabled the mitannians and hittites to establish themselves in mesopotamia and syria, and to gain possession of the fords of the euphrates and the great lines of trade. but the northerner was not suited by nature for the hot and enervating climate of the south. his force diminished, his numbers lessened, and the subjugated semite increased in strength. mitanni perished like the hittite empire, and with the rise of the second assyrian empire the intruding nations of the north found themselves compelled to struggle for bare existence. ararat had become the leader among them, and in the latter days of the older assyrian dynasty had wrested territory from the assyrians themselves, and had imposed its dominion from the borders of cappadocia to the shores of lake urumiyeh. but on a sudden all was changed. tiglath-pileser swept the land of ararat to the very gates of its capital, destroying and plundering as he went, and a war began between north and south which ended in the triumph of assyria. ararat indeed remained, though reduced to its original dimensions in the neighbourhood of lake van; but its allies in comagênê and cappadocia, in cilicia and among the hittites, were subjugated and dispersed. the tribes of meshech and tubal retreated to the coasts of the black sea, and ararat and its sister-kingdom of minni were too exhausted to withstand the invasion of a new race from new quarters of the world. the aryan kimmerians from russia poured through them, settling on their way in minni; while other aryans from phrygia made themselves masters of ararat, which henceforth took the name of armenia. the aramæan was avenged: the invaders who in days before the exodus had already robbed him of his lands were themselves pursued to their northern retreats. the south proved to them a land of decay and destruction; gog and his host were given, "on the mountains of israel," to the vulture and the beast of prey. chapter v egypt egypt had been the bondhouse of israel. it was there that israel had grown from a family into a people, which the desert was to transform into a nation. the exodus out of egypt was the beginning of israelitish history, the era from which it dated. down to the last the kingdom of the pharaohs exercised upon it an influence more or less profound; the extravagant splendour of solomon was modelled after that of the egyptian monarchs, his merchants found their best market on the banks of the nile, and the last canaanitish city which passed into israelitish hands was the gift to him of the pharaoh. the invasion of the egyptian king prevented rehoboam from attempting to reconquer the revolted tribes, and in the days of assyrian ascendancy it was egypt that was played off against the assyrian invader by the princes and statesmen of the west. the defeat of necho at carchemish handed palestine over to the babylonians, and indirectly brought about the destruction of jerusalem; even in the age of the ptolemies egypt still influenced the history of israel, and the jews of alexandria prepared the way for the christian church. for centuries palestine was the battle-ground of the nations; but it was so because it lay between the two great powers of the ancient east, between egypt on the one side and assyria and babylonia on the other. egypt is the creation of the nile. outside the delta and the strip of land which can be watered from the river there is only desert. when the annual inundation covers the fields the land of egypt exists no more; it becomes a watery plain, out of which emerge the villages and towns and the raised banks which serve as roads. for more than 1600 miles the nile flows without an affluent; in the spring it falls so low that its channel becomes almost unnavigable; but in the late summer, its waters, swollen by the rains and melted snows of central africa, and laden with the fertilising silt of the abyssinian mountains, spread over the cultivated country, and bring fertility wherever they go. the waters of the inundation must have been confined by dykes, and made to flow where the cultivator needed them, at a very remote date. recent discoveries have thrown light on the early history of the country. we find it inhabited by at least one race, possibly of libyan origin, which for the present we must term pre-historic. its burial-places are met with in various localities in upper egypt. the members of the race were not acquainted with the use of metals, but they were expert artificers in stone and clay. stone was skilfully carved into vessels of different forms, and vases of clay were fashioned, with brightly polished surfaces. sometimes the vases were simply coloured red and black, or adorned with patterns and pictures in incised white lines; at other times, and more especially in the later tombs, they were artistically decorated with representations of men and animals, boats, and geometrical patterns in red upon a pale drab ground. the pre-historic race or races had already reached a fair level of civilisation--neolithic in type though it may have been--when a new people appeared upon the scene, bringing with them the elements of a high culture and a knowledge of working in metals. these were the pharaonic egyptians, who seem to have come from babylonia and the coasts of southern arabia. cities were built and kingdoms were founded on the banks of the nile, and the older population was forced to become the serfs of the new-comers, to cultivate their fields, to confine the nile within artificial boundaries, and to carry out those engineering works which have made the valley of the nile what it is to-day. the pharaonic egyptians are the egyptians of history. they were acquainted with the art of writing, they mummified their dead, and they possessed to a high degree the faculty of organisation. the gods they worshipped were beneficent deities, forms of the sun-god from whom their kings derived their descent. it was a religion which easily passed into a sort of pantheistic monotheism in the more cultivated minds, and it was associated with a morality which is almost christian in its character. a belief in a future world and a resurrection of the flesh formed an integral part of it; hence came the practice of embalming the body that it might be preserved to the day of resurrection; hence too the doctrine of the dead man's justification, not only through his own good works, but through the intercession of the sun-god horus as well. horus was addressed as "the redeemer;" he had avenged the death of his father osiris upon his enemy set, the lord of evil, and through faith in him his followers were delivered from the powers of darkness. horus, however, and osiris were but forms of the same deity. horus was the sun-god when he rises in the morning; osiris the sun-god as he journeys at night through a world of darkness; and both were identical with tum, the sun-god of the evening. the gods who watched over the great cities of egypt, some of which had been the capitals of principalities, were identified with the sun-god in these his various forms. thus ptah of memphis became one with osiris; so also did ra, the sun-god of heliopolis, while in those later days when thebes rose to sovereign power its local god amon was united with ra. along with this higher and spiritual religion went--at least in historical times--a worship of sacred animals. the anomaly can be explained only by that mixture of races of which archaeology has assured us. beast-worship must have been the religion of the pre-historic inhabitants of egypt, and just as brahmanism has thrown its protection over the superstitions of the aboriginal tribes of india and identified the idols of the populace with its own gods, so too in ancient egypt a fusion of race must have brought about a fusion of ideas. the sacred animals of the older cult were associated with the deities of the new-comers; in the eyes of the upper classes they were but symbols; the lower classes continued to see in them what their fathers had seen, the gods themselves. while the pharaonic egyptian adored horus, the older race knew of horus only as a hawk. if we may trust manetho, the egyptian historian, it was not till the beginning of the second historical dynasty that the sacred animals of popular worship were received into the official cult. the pharaonic egyptian resembled in body and character the typical native of central egypt to-day. he was long-headed, with a high and intellectual forehead, straight nose, and massive lower jaw. his limbs were well-proportioned and muscular, his feet and hands were small. he belonged to the white race, but his hair and eyes were black, the hair being also straight. his artistic and intellectual faculties were highly developed, he was singularly good-tempered and light-hearted, averse to cruelty, though subject at times to fits of fanatical excitement and ferocity. at once obstinate and industrious, he never failed to carry out what he had once taken in hand. the nile valley was reclaimed for the use of man, and swamp and jungle, the home of wild beasts and venomous serpents, were turned by his labours into a fruitful paradise. by the side of the long-headed egyptian of the ruling classes we find in the age of the earlier dynasties a wholly different type, of which the famous wooden statue now in the cairo museum, and commonly known as the "shêkh el-beled," may be taken as an illustration. here the skull is round instead of long, the lips and nostrils are thick and fleshy, the expression good-humoured rather than intellectual. the type is that of a portion of the lower classes, and disappears from the monuments after the fall of the sixth dynasty. after that epoch the races which inhabited egypt were more completely fused together, and the rounded skull became rare. egyptian history begins with menes, the founder of the united monarchy, and of the first historical dynasty. our glimpses of the age that preceded him--the age of the followers of horus, as the egyptians termed it--are few and scanty. egypt was divided into several kingdoms, which were gradually unified into two only, those of the north and the south. the northern kingdom was symbolised by the snake and papyrus, the southern kingdom by the vulture and aloe. the vulture was the emblem of nekheb, the goddess of the great fortress whose ruins are now called el-kab; and it is probable that the city of nekhen, which stood opposite it on the western bank of the nile, was once the capital of the south. however this may be, when menes mounted the throne he was hereditary ruler of this, a city which adjoined the sacred burial-place of osiris at abydos, and of which girgeh is the modern successor. menes made himself master of the north, and so united all egypt under one rule. he then undertook and carried through a vast engineering work, one of the greatest the world has ever seen. the nile was turned aside out of its old channel under the libyan cliffs into a new channel to the east. the dyke which forced the river from its old course still remains, and two or three thousand years before the bed of the valley had risen to its present level the destruction of the dyke would have meant the return of the nile to its former path. north of the dyke english engineers have found that the alluvial soil bears witness to interference with the natural course of the river of a far-reaching kind, and its long straight course resembles that of a canal rather than of the naturally winding stream of the nile. on the embankment thus won from the waters menes built his capital, which bore the two names of men-nefer or memphis, "the beautiful place," and hâ-ka-ptah or ægyptos, "the temple of the double of ptah." on the north side of it, in fact, stood the temple of ptah, the local god, the scanty remains of which are still visited by the tourist. in front of the shrine was the sacred lake across which, on days of festival, the image of the god was ferried, and which now serves as a village pond. menes was followed by six dynasties of kings, who reigned in all 1478 years. the tombs of the two first dynasties have been found at abydos. menes himself was buried on the edge of the desert near negada, about twenty miles to the north of thebes. his sepulchre was built in rectangular form, of crude bricks, and filled with numerous chambers, in the innermost and largest of which the corpse of the king was laid. then wood was heaped about the walls and the whole set on fire, so that the royal body and the objects that were buried with it were half consumed by the heat. the mode of burial was peculiar to babylonia. here, in an alluvial plain, where stone was not procurable, and where the cemeteries of the dead adjoined the houses of the living, brick was needful instead of stone, and sanitary considerations made cremation necessary. but in the desert of egypt, at the foot of rocky cliffs, such customs were out of place; their existence can be explained only by their importation from abroad. the use of seal-cylinders of babylonian pattern, and of clay as a writing material, in the age of menes and his successors, confirms the conclusion to which the mode of burial points. the culture of pharaonic egypt must have been derived from the banks of the euphrates. that menes should have been buried at negada, and not, like the rest of his dynasty, in the sacred necropolis of his mother-city, is strange. but we are told that he was slain by a hippopotamus, the egyptian symbol of a foe. it may be, therefore, that he fell fighting in battle, and that his sepulchre was erected near the scene of his death. however that may be, the other monarchs of the first two dynasties were entombed at abydos, the mode of burial was the same as in the case of menes. the objects found in the tombs of menes and his successors prove that the culture of egypt was already far advanced. the hieroglyphic system of writing was fully developed, tools and weapons of bronze were used in large quantities, the hardest stones of the red sea coast were carved into exquisitely-shaped vases, plaques of ivory were engraved with high artistic finish, and even obsidian was worked into vases by means of the lathe. as the nearest source of obsidian to egypt that is known are the islands of santorin and melos in the ægean sea, there must have already been a maritime trade with the greek seas. art had already reached maturity; a small dog carved out of ivory and discovered in the tomb of menes is equal to the best work of later days. finally, the titles assumed by the pharaohs are already placed above the double name of the king, and the symbols employed to denote them are the same as those which continued in use down to the end of the egyptian monarchy. the first six dynasties are known to egyptologists as the old empire. kings of the fourth dynasty, khufu, khafra, and menkaura, built the great pyramids of giza, the largest of which is still one of the wonders of the world. its huge granite blocks are planed with mathematical exactitude, and, according to professor flinders petrie, have been worked by means of tubular drills fitted with the points of emeralds or some equally hard stone. it was left for the nineteenth century to re-discover the instrument when the mont cenis tunnel was half completed. the copper for the bronze tools employed by the workmen was brought from the mines of sinai, where the egyptian kings had kept an armed garrison for many generations; the tin mixed with the copper must have come from india and the malayan peninsula, or else from spain and britain. while the fifth and sixth dynasties were reigning, exploring expeditions were sent into the lands of the upper nile. the two dynasties had sprung from the island of elephantinê, opposite assuan; it was, therefore, perhaps natural that they should take an interest in the country to the south. one expedition made its way into the land of punt, to the north of abyssinia, and brought back a danga dwarf, whose tribal name still survives under the form of dongo. later expeditions explored the banks of the nile as far south as the country of the dwarfs, as well as the oases of libya. the old empire was followed by a period of decline. egypt was overrun by barbarians, its kings lost their power, and the whole land suffered decay. the pyramid tombs of the old empire were entered and despoiled; the bodies of the monarchs within them were torn to pieces, and the precious objects that had been buried with them were carried away. as the power of the kings diminished, that of the great landowners and nobles increased; a feudal aristocracy grew up, which divided egypt between its members, and treated the royal authority with only nominal respect. memphis ceased to be the capital, and a new dynasty, the ninth, was founded by the feudal prince of herakleopolis, now ahnas, south of the fayyûm. for a time the tenth dynasty succeeded in reducing its rebellious vassals to obedience, but the princes of thebes steadily grew in strength, and at length one of them seized the throne of the pharaohs and established the eleventh dynasty. thebes became the capital of the kingdom, and under the twelfth dynasty was the capital of an empire. once more egypt revived. the power of the aristocracy was broken, and the local princes became court officials. temples were built, and engineering works undertaken all over the country. the ancient temple of ra at heliopolis was restored, and two obelisks, one of which is still standing, were planted in front of it. the depression west of the nile, now known as the fayyûm, was drained of its waters, and by means of embankments transformed from a pestiferous marsh into fertile fields. the nile was brought to it by a river-like canal, and the supply of water regulated by locks. fresh exploring expeditions were sent to the somali coast and elsewhere. the gold-mines of hammamât were worked in the eastern desert, and egypt became the california or australia of the ancient world. the eastern frontier was defended against the asiatic tribes, while campaign after campaign was carried on in the south, resulting in the conquest of the sudan. the thirteenth dynasty came to an end in the midst of internal troubles. the short reigns of the kings of the dynasty that followed show that the line of the pharaohs was again becoming feeble. it closed in disaster and overthrow. hordes of invaders poured into egypt from asia and overran the whole country. they are known as the hyksos or shepherds, and the greater part of them were of semitic descent. for 669 years they ruled the valley of the nile in three dynasties, and the recollection of their hated sway never faded from the egyptian mind. at first they burned and plundered, then they established themselves in memphis and zoan, and from thence governed the rest of the country. but they soon submitted to the influence of egyptian culture. the conquered people took their conquerors captive, and the hyksos kings became veritable pharaohs. the manners and customs, the writing and titles of the native monarchs were adopted, and, in course of time, even the language also. the court was filled with native officials, the cities and temples were restored, and egyptian learning was patronised. one of the few egyptian treatises on mathematics that have come down to us is dedicated to a hyksos sovereign. it was only in religion that the new rulers of egypt remained foreign. they continued to worship a form of the semitic baal, who was invoked under the hittite name of sutekh. an attempt to impose his worship upon the native egyptians led to the war of independence which ended in the expulsion of the stranger. apophis iii., of the seventeenth dynasty, sent messengers to skenen-ra, the prince of thebes, bidding him renounce amon of thebes for the god of his suzerain. skenen-ra resisted, and a long war followed, which, after lasting through five generations, resulted in the complete triumph of the egyptians. the hyksos were driven back into asia, and the prince of thebes was acknowledged the pharaoh of an united egypt (b.c. 1600). it was while the hyksos kings were reigning that abraham visited the delta. their court was held at zoan, now sân, close to the asiatic frontier, and on the frontier itself stood their fortress of avaris, which served at once to bar the way from asia and to overawe the conquered egyptians. the pharaoh of joseph was probably apophis iii. if so, the hebrew vizier would have witnessed the outbreak of the war of independence towards the close of the long reign of the hyksos king. it may be that the policy which transferred the soil of egypt from the people to the king and the priests gave its first impulse to the movement. the eighteenth dynasty founded an egyptian empire. its kings carried the war into asia, and planted the boundaries of egyptian dominion on the banks of the euphrates. thothmes iii. (b.c. 1503-1449) made canaan an egyptian province, dividing it into districts, each under a governor or a vassal prince, who was visited from time to time by a royal commissioner. carriage roads were constructed, with posting inns at intervals along them where food and lodging could be procured. the country east of the jordan equally obeyed egyptian rule. the plateau of bashan was governed by a single prefect; ammon and moab were tributary; edom alone retained its independence, thanks to its barren mountains, and inaccessible ravines. thebes, the capital of the dynasty, was adorned with splendid buildings, and all the wealth and luxury of asia was poured into it. thothmes established zoological and botanical gardens, where the strange plants, birds, and animals he had collected in his campaigns could be preserved. his immediate predecessor, queen hatshepsu, had already revived the exploring expeditions of earlier centuries. an exploring fleet had been sent by her to punt, the land of frankincense, and it returned home with rarities of all kinds, including apes and giraffes. the history of the expedition and the treasures it brought back were depicted on the walls of the temple built by the queen at dêr el-bâhari, after the design of the architect sen-mut. the authority of egypt was not extended to the euphrates only. cyprus sent tribute to the pharaoh, the coasts of asia minor, perhaps also of greece, were harried, and the sudan was conquered as far south as berber, if not khartûm. under amen-hotep iii., the grandson of thothmes iii., the empire underwent still farther extension. egyptian temples were erected on the banks of the upper nile, and napata, the future capital of ethiopia, was built at gebel barkal, beyond dongola. in asia, mitanni was the first neighbour of egypt that had maintained its independence. assyria and the mesopotamian prince of singar or shinar had paid tribute to thothmes iii.; so, too, had the hittite king, and even babylonia had been forced to acquiesce sullenly in the annexation by egypt of her old province of canaan, and to beg for gifts of gold from the egyptian mines. but mitanni was too powerful to be attacked. her royal family accordingly married into the solar race of egypt. one of her princesses was the mother of amen-hotep iii.; another was probably the mother of his son and successor, amen-hotep iv. amen-hotep iv. was one of the most remarkable monarchs that have ever sat upon a throne. his father died while he was still a boy, and he was brought up under the asiatic influences of his mother teie. but he was a philosopher by nature rather than a king. the purpose of his life was to reform the religion of egypt, to replace it, in fact, by a pantheistic monotheism, the visible symbol of which was the solar disk. for the first time in history a religious persecution was entered on; the worship of amon, the god of thebes, was proscribed, and his very name erased from the monuments. amen-hotep changed his own name to khu-n-aten, "the glory of the solar disk," and every effort was made to extirpate the state religion, of which he was himself the official head. but the ancient priesthood of thebes proved too strong for the king. he left the city of his fathers, and built a new capital farther north, where its ruins are now known as tel el-amarna. here he lived with the adherents of the new creed, and here he erected a temple to the god of his worship and a stately palace for himself. along with the reformation in religion had gone a reformation in art. the old conventionalised art of egypt was cast aside, and an attempt was made to imitate nature, exactly, even to the verge of caricature. the wall and floor paintings that have been discovered at tel el-amarna are marvels of realistic art. plants and animals and birds are alike represented in them with a spirit and faithfulness to nature which is indeed astonishing. like the houses of his followers, the palace of the king was adorned with similar frescoes. but it was also decorated with a lavish profusion of precious materials; its walls and columns were inlaid with gold and bronze and precious stones, statues almost greek in their type stood within it, and even its stuccoed floors were covered with costly paintings. roads were made in the desert eastward of the city, where its wealthier inhabitants took their morning drives, and the king occupied the earlier part of the clay in giving lectures or sermons on the articles of his faith. the archives of the empire had been transferred from thebes to the new capital. among them was the foreign correspondence, written upon clay tablets in the cuneiform characters, and (for the most part) in the language of babylonia. we have learnt from it that the babylonian language and script were the common means of intercommunication from the euphrates to the nile in the century before the exodus. it proves how long and how profound must have been the influence and rule of babylonia in western asia. throughout the civilised world of asia the educated classes were compelled to learn a foreign writing and language, and when the empire passed from babylonia to egypt, egypt itself, whose script and literature went back to immemorial times, was forced to do the same. the correspondence was active and far-reaching. there are letters in it from the kings of babylonia and assyria, of mitanni and cappadocia, as well as from the egyptian governors in canaan. even bedâwin shêkhs take part in it, and the letters are sometimes on the most trivial of subjects. it is clear that schools and libraries must have existed throughout the civilised east, where the babylonian characters could be taught and learned, and where babylonian literature and official correspondence could be stored up. among the tablets found at tel el-amarna are some fragments of babylonian literature, one of which has served as a lesson-book, and traces of dictionaries have also been discovered there. the religious reforms of khu-n-aten resulted in the fall of the dynasty and the egyptian empire. the letters from canaan, more especially those from the vassal-king of jerusalem, show that the power of egypt in asia was on the wane. the hittites were advancing from the north, mitanni and babylonia were intriguing with disaffected canaanites, and the canaanitish governors themselves were at war with one another. the pharaoh is entreated to send help speedily; if his troops do not come at once, it is reputed, they will come too late. but it would seem that the troops could not be spared at home. there, too, civil war was breaking out, and though khu-n-aten died before the end came, his sepulchre was profaned, his mummy rent to pieces, and the city he had built destroyed. the stones of the temple of his god were sent to thebes, there to be used in the service of the victorious amon; and the tombs prepared for his mother and his followers remained empty. in the national reaction against the asiatised court and religion of khu-n-aten, the canaanitish foreigners who had usurped the highest offices were either put to death or driven into exile, and a new dynasty, the nineteenth, arose, whose policy was "egypt for the egyptians." ramses i. was regarded as the founder of the nineteenth dynasty. his reign was short, and he was followed by his son seti i., who once more led his armies into asia and subdued the coast-land of syria. seti was succeeded by his son ramses ii., who died at a great age after a reign of sixty-seven years (b.c. 1348-1281), and whose mummy, like that of his father, is now in the cairo museum. he set himself to restore the asiatic empire of thothmes. but the hittites barred his way. they had established themselves at kadesh on the orontes, and a long war of twenty-one years ended at last in a treaty of peace in which the two combatants agreed to respect from henceforth the existing boundaries of egypt and kadesh. egypt was left with palestine on both sides of the jordan, a possession, however, which it lost soon after ramses' death. the treaty was cemented by the marriage of the hittite princess with the pharaoh. ramses ii. was the great builder of egypt. go where we will, we find the remains of the temples he erected or restored, of the cities he founded, and of the statues he set up. his architectural conceptions were colossal; the temple of abu-simbel, hewn out of a mountain, and the shattered image of himself at thebes, are a proof of this. but he attempted too much for the compass of a single reign, however long. much of his work is pretentious but poor, and indicative of the feverish haste with which it was executed. among the cities he built in the delta were ramses and pithom. pithom, or pa-tum, is now marked by the mounds of tel el-maskhuta, on the line of railway between ismailîa and zagazig; it lay at the eastern extremity of qoshem or goshen, in the district of succoth. like ramses, it had been built by israelitish labour, for the free-born israelites of goshen had been turned into royal serfs. none had suffered more from the revolution which overthrew the asiatised court of the eighteenth dynasty and brought in a "new king which knew not joseph." they had been settled in the strip of pasture-land which borders the freshwater canal of to-day, and is still a place of resort for the bedâwin from the east. it lay apart from the cultivated lands of the egyptian peasantry, it adjoined the desert which led to asia, and it was near the hyksos capital of zoan. meneptah, the son and successor of ramses ii., tells us that from of old it had been given by the pharaohs to the nomad shepherds of asia; and after the departure of the israelitish tribes the same king is informed in a letter from one of his officials that the deserted district had been again handed over to bedâwin from edom. this was in the eighth year of the king's reign, three years later than that in which the exodus must have taken place. for 400 years the israelites had been "afflicted" by the egyptians. but while the eighteenth dynasty was in power their lot could not have been hard. they still remained the free herdsmen of the pharaoh, feeding their flocks and cattle on the royal demesne. during the reign of khu-n-aten, indeed, their own semitic kinsmen from canaan held the chief offices of state, and the pharaoh was endeavouring to force upon his subjects a form of monotheism which had much in common with that of israel. the language of the hymns engraved on the walls of the tombs at tel el-amarna reads not unfrequently like the verses of a hebrew psalm. the national reaction which found its expression in the rise of the eighteenth dynasty swept away the power and influence of asia, and brought back the gods and religion of egypt. the semites who had absorbed the government of the country were expelled or slain; their weaker brethren, the israelites in goshen, were enslaved. egypt became for them a house of bondage, and they had to toil under the lash of the taskmaster at the cities and temples which the pharaoh built. ramses held his court at zoan, like the hyksos of old days, but it was to keep guard over the asiatic frontier, not to be in touch with a kindred people in canaan. canaan itself was conquered afresh, and the canaanitish captives--the "mixed multitude" of the bible--assisted the israelites in erecting the monuments of their conqueror. nevertheless, the people multiplied. the memory of the hyksos invasion had not passed away, and the pharaoh and his subjects alike feared the possibility of other invaders from asia being joined by their disaffected kinsfolk in egypt itself. that their fears were justified is shown by what happened less than a century later. when the nineteenth dynasty fell in the midst of civil war, a canaanite, arisu by name, seized the throne and made himself master of egypt. ramses determined to prevent such a catastrophe by destroying as many as possible of the male children of the hebrews. the men were worn down in body and mind by constant labour, the children were not allowed to live. egyptian testimony confirms the statement of scripture that this policy was actually carried out. a hymn of victory addressed to meneptah alludes to "the israelites" to whom "no seed" had been left. but the policy was ineffectual. the opportunity came at last when the serfs could fly from their enforced labour and escape into the wilderness. it was in the fifth year of meneptah (b.c. 1276). egypt was threatened by formidable enemies. the libyans advanced against it by land, the nations of the greek seas attacked it by water. achæans came from the north, lycians from asia minor, sardinians and sicilians from the islands of the west. the delta was overrun by swarms of barbarians, who pitched their tents in front of belbeis at the western end of the land of goshen. plague after plague descended upon the egyptians, and the freedom of his serfs was wrung from the pharaoh. they fled by night, carrying with them the spoil they had taken from their masters, only to find that the gate of the great line of fortification which protected the eastern frontier of egypt was closed against them. meneptah had repented of his act, and a squadron of six hundred chariots was sent in pursuit of the fugitives. but a violent wind drove back the sea from the shallows at the southern extremity of the forts, and enabled the israelites to cross them. while their pursuers were following in their footsteps, the dropping of the wind caused the waters to return upon them, and chariots, horses, and men were alike overwhelmed. the israelites were saved as it were by miracle, and the pharaoh lost his bondsmen. but egypt also succeeded in repelling the storm of invasion which had fallen upon it. the libyans and their northern allies were annihilated in a decisive battle, their king, murai, fled from the field, and a countless amount of booty and prisoners fell into the hands of the victorious egyptians. canaan, however, was lost, with the exception of gaza, which defended the road from egypt, and was still garrisoned by egyptian troops. but gaza, the calais of egypt, was not destined to remain long in their power. already the coast-road was made dangerous by the attacks of philistine pirates from crete; and it was not long before the pirates took permanent possession of the southern corner of palestine, and established themselves in its five chief towns. the egyptian domination in asia had passed away for ever. after meneptah's death the nineteenth dynasty soon came to an inglorious end. civil war distracted the country, and for a time it obeyed the rule of a foreign chief. then came the rise of the twentieth dynasty, and a third ramses restored the prestige and prosperity of his kingdom. but once more the foreign invader was upon its soil. the nations of the north had again poured southward, partly by land, partly by sea, greedy for the wealth that was stored in the cultured lands of the oriental world, and eager to find new settlements for an expanding population. greek traditions spoke of the movement as a consequence of the trojan war, and delighted to dwell on the voyages of its heroes into unknown seas, of the piratical descents to which it led, and of the colonies which were planted by it. the philistine occupation of southern palestine was one of its results. as in the time of meneptah, the libyans took part with the northern tribes in the assault upon egypt, and sardinians and sicilians followed behind them. but the main bulk of the invaders came from the greek seas. the danaans take the place of the achæans, and the philistines are among their allies. the invaders had swept through western asia, plundering and destroying as they marched, and bringing in their train contingents from the countries through which they passed. hittites, mitannians, and amorites all followed with them, and the motley host of men and ships finally reached the egyptian frontier. here, however, they were met by the pharaoh. the battle raged by sea and land, and ended in a triumph of the egyptians. the invaders were utterly overthrown, their ships burned, their kings and leaders made captive. egypt was once more saved from destruction, and ramses iii. was free to develop its resources and repair the damage that had been done. first came a campaign in canaan and syria, the object of which was not to acquire territory, but to teach the asiatic that there was once more an army in egypt. the egyptian forces seem to have gone as far as hamath; at all events, they occupied southern palestine, capturing gaza, hebron, and jerusalem, and made their way across the jordan into moab. another campaign carried the egyptian troops into edom, where they burned the "tents" of the bedâwin, and for the first and last time in history planted the egyptian standard on the slopes of mount seir. ramses now turned to the internal administration of his country, and the copper-mines of sinai, like the gold-mines of the eastern desert, were worked with fresh vigour. the spoil won from the northern invaders made the pharaoh the richest monarch of the age. temples were built, and endowed with lavish generosity, and the priesthood must have grieved when he died at last after a reign of thirty-three years. he was followed by a line of feeble princes. the high-priests of amon at thebes usurped their power, and finally dispossessed the last of them of the throne. a new dynasty arose in the delta. in the south the government was practically in the hands of the theban high-priests. with a divided kingdom the strength of egypt passed away. it was restored by a foreigner, shishak i., the captain of the libyan mercenaries. the pharaoh whose daughter was married by solomon must have been the last king of the old dynasty. perhaps he sought to strengthen himself against his enemies in egypt by an alliance with his powerful neighbour. at all events, the king of israel allowed his army to march through palestine as far as gezer. the egyptians flattered themselves that they had thereby asserted their old claim to sovereignty over palestine, but the substantial gainer was the israelitish monarch. he won the last independent canaanite city without effort or expenditure, and was allowed to marry into the solar race. shishak had no need of israelitish alliances. on the contrary, solomon was connected by marriage with the dethroned dynasty, and the power of israel, if unchecked, was a menace to his own kingdom. but while solomon lived he was afraid to move. he kept at his court, however, an israelitish rebel, who might prove useful when the time came. hardly was solomon dead when jeroboam returned to his native country, and the kingdom of david was sundered in twain. shishak seized the opportunity of striking a blow at what remained of it. with contemptuous impartiality he overran the territories of both judah and the revolted tribes, but it was judah which suffered the most. the unfinished fortifications of jerusalem were stormed, the treasures accumulated by solomon carried to the nile, and the king of judah compelled to acknowledge himself the vassal of shishak. judah never recovered from the blow: had it not been for the egyptian invasion, and the consequent loss of its hoarded wealth, it might have been able to suppress the rebellion of jeroboam, and to reduce all the tribes of israel once more under one sceptre. the names of the captured cities of palestine are still to be read on the walls of the temple of karnak. shishak's successors of the twenty-second dynasty did not inherit his military vigour and skill. the central authority grew gradually weaker, and egypt again fell back into the condition from which he had rescued it. the tribes of the sûdan could no longer be hindered from attacking the enfeebled land, and ethiopian princes made their way to memphis, carrying back with them to their capital of napata the spoil and tribute of a defeated and disunited people. at last the ethiopian raids changed into permanent conquest, and a negro dynasty--the twenty-fifth--sat on the throne of menes. but the kings who belonged to it, shabaka and taharka, were vigorous, and for a short while there was peace in the valley of the nile. assyria, however, had already arisen in its strength, and was claiming the empire over western asia which had belonged to babylon in the dawn of history. the states of palestine endeavoured in vain to play off assyria against egypt. again and again the egyptian armies were defeated on the borders of canaan, and taharka was saved from invasion only by the disaster which befell sennacherib during his siege of jerusalem. but the respite was only momentary. asia at last submitted to the dominion of nineveh, the king of judah became an assyrian vassal, and esar-haddon, the successor of sennacherib, was now ready to march against the land of the nile. in b.c. 674 he entered the delta and scattered the forces of the ethiopians. but two more campaigns were needed before the country was thoroughly subdued. at last, in june b.c. 670, he drove the egyptian forces before him in fifteen days from the frontier to memphis, twice defeating them with heavy loss and wounding taharka himself. three days later memphis opened its gates, and taharka fled to egypt, leaving egypt in the hands of the assyrian. it was divided among twenty satraps, most of whom were egyptians by birth. two years, however, were hardly past when it revolted, and while on the march to subdue it esar-haddon fell ill, and died on the 10th of marchesvan or october. but the revolt was quickly suppressed by his successor assur-bani-pal, and the twenty satrapies restored. it was not long, however, before the satraps quarrelled with one another, intrigued with taharka, and rebelled against their suzerain. headed by necho of sais, they invited the ethiopians to return; but the plot was discovered, and necho and his fellow-conspirators sent in chains to nineveh. sais, mendes, and other cities of northern egypt were sacked, and taharka, who had advanced as far as thebes and even memphis, fled to ethiopia and there died. meanwhile necho had been pardoned and loaded with honours by the assyrian king; his son, who took an assyrian name, was made satrap of athribis, near the modern benha, and the satraps of the delta henceforward remained faithful to their assyrian master. but another ethiopian prince, tuant-amon, made a last attempt to recover the dominion of his fathers. thebes received him with acclamation, and memphis was taken without difficulty. there the satrap of goshen came to pay him homage on behalf of his brother-governors in the north. his triumph, however, was short-lived. assur-bani-pal determined to inflict a terrible punishment on the rebel country, and to reduce it to subjection once for all. thebes had been the centre of disaffection; its priesthood looked with impatience on the rule of the asiatic, and were connected by religion and tradition with ethiopia; on thebes and its priesthood, therefore, the punishment had to fall. the ethiopian army retreated to nubia without striking a blow, and egypt was left defenceless at the mercy of the assyrian. the assyrian army entered thebes, the no or "city" of amon, bent on the work of destruction. its temple-strongholds were plundered and overthrown, its inhabitants carried into slavery, and two obelisks, seventy tons in weight, were sent as trophies to nineveh. the sack of thebes made a deep impression on the oriental world; we find it referred to in the prophecies of nahum (iii. 8). egypt now enjoyed peace, but it was the peace of exhaustion and powerlessness. psammetikhos had succeeded his father necho, who had been put to death by tuant-amon. he was a man of vigour and ability, and he aimed at nothing less than sovereignty over an united and independent egypt. his opportunity came in b.c. 655. the assyrian empire was shaken to its foundations by a revolt of which babylonia was the centre and which had spread to its other provinces. for a time it was called on to struggle for bare existence. while the assyrian armies were employed elsewhere, psammetikhos shook himself free of its authority, and, with the help of greek and karian mercenaries from lydia, overcame his rival satraps and mounted the throne of the pharaohs. once more, under the twenty-sixth dynasty, egypt enjoyed rest and prosperity; the administration was re-organised, the cities and temples restored, and art underwent an antiquarian revival. psammetikhos even dreamed of recovering the old supremacy of egypt in asia; the assyrian empire was falling into decay, and egypt was endeavouring to model its life after the pattern of the past. after a long siege ashdod was taken, and the control of the road into palestine was thus secured. but the power of the twenty-sixth dynasty rested upon its greek mercenaries. the kings themselves were, it is probable, libyans by descent, and the feelings of the native priesthood towards them do not seem to have been cordial. their policy and ideas were european rather than egyptian. necho, the son and successor of psammetikhos, cleared out the old canal which united the red sea with the nile, and did all that he could to encourage trade with the mediterranean. an exploring fleet was even sent under phoenician pilots to circumnavigate africa. three years were spent on the voyage, and the ships finally returned through the straits of gibraltar to the mouths of the nile. meanwhile, the pharaoh had marched into palestine. gaza was captured, and the jewish king, josiah, slain in his attempt to bar the way of his unexpected enemy. jerusalem surrendered, and a nominee of the egyptians was placed upon its throne. the asiatic empire of the eighteenth dynasty was thus restored. but it lasted barely three years. in b.c. 605 the egyptians were defeated by nebuchadrezzar under the walls of carchemish on the euphrates, and asia passed into the possession of the babylonians. once more palestine became a shuttlecock between the kingdoms of the nile and the euphrates. trusting to the support of egypt, zedekiah of judah revolted from his babylonian master. his policy at first seemed successful. the babylonian army which was besieging jerusalem retired on the approach of psammetikhos ii., who had succeeded his father necho, and the jewish statesmen again breathed freely. but the respite lasted for only six years. the babylonian troops returned with increased strength; the egyptians retreated to their own country, and jerusalem fell in b.c. 588, one year after the death of the egyptian king. his son hophra or apries had made a vain attempt to rescue zedekiah. his fleet had held the sea, while his army marched along the coast of palestine and occupied tyre and sidon. but the fall of jerusalem obliged it to retire. the dream of an asiatic empire was over, and the pharaoh had more than enough to do to defend himself against his own subjects. they saw with growing impatience that the power and wealth of the greek mercenaries continually increased. the native army had already deserted to ethiopia; now the priests complained that the revenues of the temples were sacrilegiously confiscated for the support of the foreigner. in b.c. 570 discontent reached a head; civil war broke out between hophra and his brother-in-law ahmes or amasis, which ended in the defeat of hophra and his loss of the crown. but amasis found the greeks more indispensable than ever, and they were loaded with favours even more than before. they were moved to memphis that they might be close to the king, and at the same time overawe the native egyptians, and amasis himself married a greek wife. the invasion of egypt by nebuchadrezzar in b.c. 567 showed that the policy of amasis had been a wise one. the babylonians were unable to penetrate beyond the eastern part of the delta; the greek troops fought too well. the limits of the babylonian empire were permanently fixed at the frontiers of palestine. that empire, however, was overthrown by cyrus, and it was easy to see that the conqueror who had proved so irresistible in asia would not allow egypt to remain at peace. amasis prepared himself accordingly for the coming storm. cyprus was occupied, and therewith the command of the sea was assured. the maritime policy of the twenty-sixth dynasty was an indication of greek influence; in older days the sea had been to the egyptian a thing abhorred. kambyses carried out the invasion which his father, cyrus, had planned. unfortunately for the egyptians, amasis died while the persian army was on its march, and the task of opposing it fell to his young and inexperienced son. the greek mercenaries fought bravely, but to no purpose: the battle of pelusium gave egypt to the invader, memphis was taken, and the pharaoh put to death. in the long struggle between asia and egypt, asia had been finally the victor. the egyptians did not submit tamely to the persian yoke. kambyses indeed seemed inclined to change himself into an egyptian pharaoh; he took up his residence at memphis and sent an expedition to conquer the sudân. but under darius and his successors, whose zoroastrian monotheism was of a sterner description, there was but little sympathy between the conquered and their conquerors. time after time the egyptians broke into revolt, once against xerxes, once again against artaxerxes i., and a third time against artaxerxes ii. the last insurrection was more successful than those which had preceded it, and egypt remained independent for sixty-five years. then the crimes and incompetence of its last native king, nektanebo ii., opened the way to the persian, and the valley of the nile once more bowed its neck under the persian yoke. its temples were ruined, the sacred apis slain, and an ass set up in mockery in its place. a few years later egypt welcomed the macedonian alexander as a deliverer, and recognised him as a god. the line of the pharaohs, the incarnations of the sun-god, had returned in him to the earth. it was not the first time that the egyptian and the greek had stood side by side against the common persian foe. greek troops had disputed the passage of kambyses into egypt. the first revolt of egypt had saved greece from the impending invasion of darius, and postponed it to the reign of his feebler son, and during its second revolt athenian ships had sailed up the nile and assisted the egyptians in the contest with the persians. if egypt could not be free, it was better that its master should be a greek. alexander was followed by the ptolemies. they were the ablest of his successors, the earlier of them being equally great in war and in peace. alexandria, founded by alexander on the site of the village of rakotis, became the commercial and literary centre of the world; thousands of books were collected in its library, and learned professors lectured in the halls of its museum. an elaborate fiscal system was devised and carefully superintended, and enormous revenues poured into the treasury of the king. as time passed on, the ptolemies identified themselves more and more with their subjects; the temples were rebuilt or restored, and the greek king assumed the attributes of a pharaoh. the jews flocked into the country, where special privileges were granted to them, and where many of them were raised to offices of state. a rival temple to that of jerusalem was built at onion near heliopolis, the modern tel el-yahudîya, or "mound of the jews," and the books of the hebrew scriptures were translated into greek. a copy of the septuagint, as the greek translation was called, was needed for the alexandrine library. egypt, once the house of bondage, thus became a second house of israel. it gave the world a new version of the hebrew bible which largely influenced the writers of the new testament; it gave it also a new canon which was adopted by the early christian church. the prophecy of isaiah was fulfilled: "the lord shall be known to egypt, and the egyptians shall know the lord." in the course of centuries, however, the monotheistic element in egyptian religion had grown clearer and more pronounced in the minds of the educated classes. the gods of the official cult ceased to be regarded as different forms of the same deity; they became mere manifestations of a single all-pervading power. as m. grébaut puts it: they were "the names received by a single being in his various attributes and workings.... as the eternal, who existed before all worlds, then as organiser of the universe, and finally as the providence who each day watches over his work, he is always the same being, reuniting in his essence all the attributes of divinity." it was the hidden god who was adored under the name whatever the latter might be, the god who is described in the texts as "without form" and "whose name is a mystery," and of whom it is said that he is the one god, "beside whom there is no other." in ptah of memphis or amon of thebes or ra of heliopolis, the more educated egyptian recognised but a name and symbol for the deity which underlay them all. along with this growth in a spiritual conception of religion went, as was natural, a growth in scepticism. there was a sceptical as well as a believing school, such as finds its expression in the festal dirge of king antef of the eleventh dynasty. here we read in canon rawnsley's versified translation- "what is fortune? say the wise. vanished are the hearths and homes, what he does or thinks, who dies, none to tell us comes. eat and drink in peace to-day, when you go, your goods remain; he who fares the last, long way, comes not back again." a curious work of much later date that has come down to us is in the form of a discussion between an ethiopian cat and the unbelieving jackal kufi, in which the arguments of a sceptical philosophy are urged with such force and sympathy as to show that they were the author's own. but such scepticism was confined to the few; the egyptian enjoys this life too much, as a rule, to be troubled by doubts about another, and he has always been distinguished by an intensity of religious belief. with his religion there were associated ideas and beliefs some of which have a strangely christian ring. he was a believer in the resurrection of the body; hence the care that was taken from the time of the third dynasty onwards to preserve it by embalmment, and to place above the heart the scarab beetle, the symbol of evolution, which by its magical powers would cause it to beat again. hence, too, the long texts from the ritual of the dead which enabled the deceased to pass in safety through the perils that encompassed the entrance to the next world, as well as the endeavour to place the corpse where it should not be found and injured. the egyptian believed also in a messiah. thus, in a papyrus of the time of thothmes iii., we read that "a king will come from the south, ameni the truth-declaring by name.... he will assume the crown of upper egypt, and will lift up the red crown of lower egypt.... the people of the age of the son of man will rejoice, and establish his name for all eternity. they will be far from evil, and the wicked will humble their mouths for fear of him. the asiatics will fall before his blows, and the libyans before his flame." even the conception of a son who is born of a virgin and a god is met with in the temples of hatshepsu at dêr el-bâhari, and of amenophis iii. at luxor. here amon-ra is said to have "gone to" the queen, "that he might be a father through her. he made her behold him in his divine form, so that she might bear a child at the sight of his divine beauty. his charms penetrated her flesh, filling it with the odours of punt." and the god is finally made to declare to her: "amen-hotep shall be the name of the son that is in thy womb. he shall grow up according to the words that proceed out of thy mouth. he shall exercise sovereignty and righteousness in this land unto its very end. my soul is in him, and he shall wear the twofold crown of royalty, ruling the two lands like the sun for ever." religious dogmas did not weaken the firm hold the egyptian had upon morality. his moral code was very high. even faith in horus the "redeemer" did not suffice by itself to ensure an entrance for the dead man into the fields of alu, the egyptian paradise. his deeds were weighed in the balance, and if they were found wanting, he was condemned to the fiery pains of hell. each man, after death, was called upon to make the "negative confession," to prove that he had not sinned against his fellows, that he had not oppressed or taken bribes, had not judged wrongfully, had not injured a slave or overtasked the poor man, had not murdered or stolen, lied or committed adultery, had not given short weight or robbed the gods and the dead, had made none to "hunger" or "weep." only when all the questions of the awful judges in the underworld had been answered satisfactorily was he allowed to pass into the presence of osiris and to cultivate the fields of alu with his own hands. this was the last trial demanded from the justified egyptian, and it was a hard one for the rich and noble who had done no peasants' work in this present life. accordingly, small images of labourers were buried with the dead, and it was supposed that their "doubles" or shadows would assist him in his labours. the supposition rested on a theory which ascribed to all things, whether animate or inanimate, a double or reflection which corresponded to the thing itself in every particular. it was like a shadow, except that it was invisible to mortal eyes, and did not perish with the object which had projected it. the "double" was called _ka_, and the _ka_ of a man was his exact representation in the other world, a spiritual representation, it is true, but nevertheless one which had the same feelings, the same needs, and the same moral nature as himself. it thus differed from the _ba_ or "soul," which flew away to the gods on the dissolution of the body. it was, in fact, the personality of the man. from the outset the pharaonic egyptians were a nation of readers and writers. nothing is more astonishing than the way in which the simplest articles of daily use are covered with inscriptions. even the rocks on the river-bank are scribbled over by the generations who once passed beside them. already in the time of menes the hieroglyphic system of writing was fully developed, and before the end of the third dynasty a "hieratic" or running hand had been formed out of it. the more cumbrous and picturesque hieroglyphics were reserved for engraving on wood or stone or metal, or for the sacred texts; the ordinary book was written in hieratic. the papyrus which grew in the marshes of the delta was the writing material, and in spite of its apparently fragile character, it has been found to last as long as paper. when its use was at last discontinued in the tenth century of our era, the cultivation of the papyrus ceased also, and it became extinct in its ancient home. tradition, however, asserted that leather had been employed by the scribe before papyrus, and in the time of pepi of the sixth dynasty a description of the plan of the temple of dendera was discovered inscribed on parchment. even in later ages leather was sometimes employed. egyptian literature covered a wide field. two of the oldest books that have come down to us are the wise sayings of qaqemna and ptah-hotep, the first of whom lived under the third, the second under the fifth dynasty. they are moral treatises like the proverbs of solomon or the discourses of confucius. ptah-hotep already laments that men were not as they had been. he had reached the age of a hundred and ten years, and had fallen upon degenerate days. perhaps he was right, for it would seem that the examination system had already been introduced for the disposal of official posts. ptah-hotep's style, too, is involved and elaborate; he writes for a _blasé_ circle of readers who can no longer appreciate simplicity. the historical novel was an egyptian invention. several of the works that have survived are examples of it. but light literature of every kind was much in fashion. a tale written for seti ii. when he was crown-prince contains an episode which closely resembles the history of joseph and potiphar's wife, and the reign of ramses ii. produced a sarcastic account of the misadventures of a tourist in canaan, the object of which was to ridicule the style and matter of another writer. poetry--heroic, lyrical, and religious--flourished, and a sort of egyptian iliad was constructed by the poet pentaur out of a deed of personal prowess on the part of ramses ii. during the war with the hittites. reference has already been made to the work on mathematics that was composed when the hyksos were ruling egypt. a century or two later a work on medicine was written, a copy of which is known as the ebers papyrus. it shows that medicine has not advanced very rapidly since the age of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty. diseases were already carefully diagnosed and treated, much as they are to-day. the medical prescriptions read like those of a modern doctor; we have the same formulæ, the same admixture of various drugs. the egyptians were not only a people of scribes and readers, they were also a people of artists. they had the same power as the japanese of expressing in a few outlines the form and spirit of an object; their drawing is accurate, and at the same time spirited. it is true that their canon of perspective was not the same as our own, but the greater difficulties it presented to the artist were successfully overcome. their portraits of foreign races are marvellously true to life, and their caricatures are as excellent as their more serious drawings. it was in statuary, however, that the egyptian artist was at his best. the hardest of stones were carved into living likenesses, or invested with a dignity and pathos which it is difficult to match. such at least was the case with the statuary of the old empire, before the conventionalised art of a later day had placed restrictions on the sculptor and stifled his originality. the great statue of king khaf-ra of the fourth dynasty, seated on his throne with the imperial hawk behind his head, is carved out of diorite, and nevertheless the sculptor has thrown an idealised divinity over the face, which we yet feel to be a speaking likeness of the man. the seated scribe in the museum of cairo, with his high forehead, sparkling eyes, and long straight hair divided in the middle, has a countenance that is the very ideal of intellectuality, and in the wooden figure of the "shêkh el-beled," we have an inimitable portrait of the sleek and wealthy _bourgeois_ as he walks about his farm. all these statues are older than the sixth dynasty. in disposition the egyptian was remarkably kindly. he was affectionate to his family, fond of society, and, alone among the nations of antiquity, humane to others. his laws aimed at saving life and reclaiming the criminal. diodoros states that punishments were inflicted not merely as a deterrent, but also with a view towards reforming the evil-doer, and wilkinson notices that at medinet habu, where the artist is depicting the great naval battle which saved egypt from the barbarians in the reign of ramses iii., he has represented egyptian soldiers rescuing the drowning crew of an enemy's ship. the pharaoh derived his title from the per-âa or "great house" in which he lived, and where he dispensed justice. the title thus resembles that of the "sublime porte." next to him, the priests were the most powerful body in the kingdom; indeed, after the close of the struggle between khu-n-aten and the priesthood of thebes the latter obtained more and more power, until under the kings of the twentieth dynasty they were the virtual rulers of the state. they stood between the labouring classes and the great army of bureaucracy which from the days of the eighteenth dynasty onward carried on the administration of the kingdom. the labouring classes, however, knew how to defend their own interests; the artisans formed unions and "went on strike." curious accounts have been preserved of strikes among them at thebes in the time of ramses iii. the free labouring population must be distinguished from the slaves, who were partly negroes, partly captives taken in war. the greater part of the latter were employed on the public works. the mines and quarries were worked by criminals. at home the well-to-do egyptian was artistic in his tastes. the walls and columns of his house were frescoed with pictures, and his furniture was at once comfortable and tasteful. chairs and tables are of patterns which might well be imitated to-day, and the smallest and commonest articles of toilet were aesthetically and carefully made. nothing can exceed the beauty of the jewellery found at dahshur, and belonging to princesses of the twelfth dynasty. precious stones are so exquisitely inlaid in gold as to look like enamel, and are formed into the most beautiful of designs; small forget-me-nots, for example, alternate with plain gold crosses on one of the coronets, and the workmanship of the pectoral ornaments could hardly be equalled at the present day. in dress, however, the egyptian was simple; his limbs were not overloaded with jewellery, and he preferred light and muslin-like linen, which was kept as scrupulously clean as his own person. but he was fond of social entertainments, and egyptian cookery and confectionery were famous throughout the world. table and guests alike were adorned with fragrant flowers, and musicians and singers were called in to complete the banquet. the house was surrounded by a garden, if possible, near the river. it was open to the air and sun. the egyptian loved the country, with its fresh air and sunshine, as well as its outdoor amusements--hunting and fishing, fowling and playing at ball. like his descendants to-day, he was an agriculturist at heart. the wealth and very existence of egypt depended on its peasantry, and though the scribes professed to despise them and to hold the literary life alone worth living, the bulk of the nation was well aware of the fact. even the walls of the tombs are covered with agricultural scenes. in one of them--that of pa-heri, at el-kab--the songs of the labourers have been preserved. thus the ploughmen sing at the plough: "'tis a fine day, we are cool, and the oxen are drawing the plough; the sky is doing as we would; let us work for our master!" and of the reapers we read: "in answering chant they say: 'tis a good day, come out to the country, the north wind blows, the sky is all we desire, let us work and take heart." the best known, however, of the songs, is that sung by the driver of the oxen who tread out the corn, which was first deciphered by champollion-"thresh away, oxen, thresh away faster, the straw for yourselves, and the grain for your master!" such were the egyptians and such was egypt where the childhood of israel was passed. it was a land of culture, it was a land of wealth and abundance, but it was also a land of popular superstition and idolatry, and the idolatry and culture were too closely associated in the minds of the israelites to be torn apart. in turning their backs on the egyptian idols, it was necessary that they should turn them on egyptian civilisation as well. hence it was that intercourse with egypt was forbidden, and the king of israel who began by marrying an egyptian princess and importing horses from the valley of the nile, ended by building shrines to the gods of the heathen. hence, too, it was that the distinctive beliefs and practices of egypt are ignored or disallowed. even the doctrine of the resurrection is passed over in silence; the pentateuch keeps the eyes of the israelite fixed on the present life, where he will meet with his punishment or reward. the doctrine of the resurrection was part of the faith in osiris, isis, and horus, and yahveh of israel would have no other god beside himself. moreover, the israelites saw but little of the better side of the egyptians. they lived in goshen, on the outskirts of northern egypt, where the native population was largely mixed with foreign elements. when they first settled there the pharaoh and his court were asiatic or of asiatic descent. and in later days the rise of a purely native government meant for them a bitter bondage and the murder of their children. between the israelite and the egyptian there was hostility from the first; joseph began by confiscating the lands of both peasant and noble; the natives revenged themselves by reducing his kinsfolk to a condition of serfdom, and the last act in the drama of the exodus was the "spoiling of the egyptians." chapter vi babylonia and assyria while the influence of egypt upon israel may be described as negative, that of babylonia was positive. abraham was a babylonian by birth; the asiatic world through which he wandered was babylonian in civilisation and government, and the babylonian exile was the final turning-point in the religious history of judah. the semitic babylonians were allied in race and language to the hebrews; they had common ideas and common points of view. though egyptian influence is markedly absent from the mosaic code, we find in it old semitic institutions and beliefs which equally characterised babylonia. but the semites were not the first occupants of babylonia. the civilisation of the country had been founded by a race which spoke an agglutinative language, like that of the modern finns or turks, and which scholars have now agreed to call sumerian. the sumerians had been the builders of the cities, the reclaimers of the marshy plain, the inventors of the picture-writing which developed into the cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters, and the pioneers of a culture which profoundly affected the whole of western asia. the semites entered upon the inheritance, adopting, modifying, and improving upon it. the babylonian civilisation, with which we are best acquainted, was the result of this amalgamation of sumerian and semitic elements. out of this mixture of sumerians and semites there arose a mixed people, a mixed language, and a mixed religion. the language and race of babylonia were thus like those of england, probably also like those of egypt. mixed races are invariably the best; it is the more pure-blooded peoples who fall behind in the struggle for existence. recent excavations have thrown light on the early beginnings of babylonia. the country itself was an alluvial plain, formed by the silt deposited each year by the tigris and euphrates. the land grows at the rate of about ninety feet a year, or less than two miles in a century; since the age of alexander the great the waters of the persian gulf have receded more than forty-six miles from the shore. when the sumerians first settled by the banks of the euphrates it must have been on the sandy plateau to the west of the river where the city of ur, the modern mugheir, was afterwards built. at that time the future babylonia was a pestiferous marsh, inundated by the unchecked overflow of the rivers which flowed through it. the reclamation of the marsh was the first work of the new-comers. the rivers were banked out and the inundation regulated by means of canals. all this demanded no little engineering skill; in fact, the creation of babylonia was the birth of the science of engineering. settlements were made in the fertile plain which had thus been won, and which, along with the adjoining desert, was called by the sumerians the _edin_, or "plain." on the southern edge of this plain, and on what was then the coast-line of the persian gulf, the town of eridu was built, which soon became a centre of maritime trade. its site is now marked by the mounds of abu shahrein or nowâwis, nearly 150 miles from the sea; its foundation, therefore, must go back to about 7500 years, or 5500 b.c. ur, a little to the north-west, with its temple of the moon-god, was a colony of eridu. in the plain itself many cities were erected, which rose around the temples of the gods. in the north was nippur, now niffer, whose great temple of mul-lil or el-lil, the lord of the ghost-world, was a centre of babylonian religion for unnumbered centuries. after the semitic conquest mul-lil came to be addressed as bel or "lord," and when the rise of babylon caused the worship of its patron-deity bel-merodach to spread throughout the country, the bel of nippur became known as the "older bel." nippur was watered by the canal kabaru, the chebar of ezekiel, and to the south of it was the city of lagas, now tello, where french excavators have brought to light an early seat of sumerian power. a little to the west of lagas was larsa, the modern senkereh, famous for its ancient temple of the sun-god, a few miles to the north-west of which stood erech, now warka, dedicated to the sky-god anu and his daughter istar. northward of nippur was bab-ili or babylon, "the gate of god," a semitic translation of its original sumerian name, ka-dimirra. it was a double city, built on either side of the euphrates, and adjoining its suburb of borsippa, once an independent town. babylon seems to have been a colony of eridu, and its god, bel-merodach, called by the sumerians "asari who does good to man," was held to be the son of ea, the culture-god of eridu. e-saggil, the great temple of bel-merodach, rose in the midst of babylon; the temple of nebo, his "prophet" and interpreter, rose hard by in borsippa. its ruins are now known as the birs-i-nimrûd, in which travellers have seen the tower of babel. in the neighbourhood of babylon were kish (_el-hymar_) and kutha (_tel-ibrahim_); somewhat to the north of it, and on the banks of the euphrates, was sippara or sepharvaim, whose temple, dedicated to the sun-god, has been found in the mounds of abu-habba. sippara was the northern fortress of the babylonian plain; it stood where the tigris and euphrates approached most nearly one another, and where, therefore, the plain itself came practically to an end. upi or opis, on the tigris, still farther to the north, lay outside the boundaries of primæval chaldæa. east of babylonia were the mountains of elam, inhabited by non-semitic tribes. among them were the kassi or kossæeans, who maintained a rude independence in their mountain fastnesses, and who, at one time, overran babylonia and founded a dynasty there which lasted for several centuries. the capital of elam was susa or shushan, the seat of an early monarchy, whose civilisation was derived from the babylonians. in the south the tigris and euphrates made their way to the region of salt-marshes, called marratu in the inscriptions, merathaim by the prophet jeremiah. they were inhabited by the semitic tribe of the kaldâ, whose princes owned an unwilling obedience to the babylonian kings. one of them, merodach-baladan, succeeded in making himself master of babylonia, and from that time forward the kaldâ became so integral a part of the population as eventually to give their name to the whole of it. for the writers of greece and rome the babylonians are chaldæans. it is probable that nebuchadrezzar was of kaldâ origin; if so, this would have been a further reason for the extension of the tribal name to the whole country. the settlement of the kaldâ in the marshes was of comparatively late date. indeed, in the early age of babylonian history these marshes did not as yet exist; it was not until eridu had ceased to be a seaport that they were reclaimed from the sea. the kaldâ were the advance-guard of the nabatheans and other aramaic tribes of northern arabia, who migrated into babylonia and pitched their tents on the banks of the euphrates, first of all as herdsmen, afterwards as traders. after the fall of the babylonian monarchy their numbers and importance increased, and the aramaic they spoke--the so-called "chaldee"--came more and more to supersede the language of babylonia. when first we get a glimpse of babylonian history, the country is divided into a number of small principalities. they are all sumerian, and among them the principality of kish occupies a leading place. the temple of mul-lil at nippur is the central sanctuary, to which they bring their offerings, and from which a civilising influence emanates. it is an influence, however, which reflects the darker side of life. mul-lil was the lord of the dead; his priests were sorcerers and magicians, and their sacred lore consisted of spells and incantations. supplementing the influence of nippur, and in strong contrast with it, was the influence of eridu. ea or oannes, the god of eridu, was a god who benefited mankind. he was the lord of wisdom, and his wisdom displayed itself in delivering men from the evils that surrounded them, and in teaching them the arts of life. but he was lord also of the water, and it was told of him how he had arisen, morning after morning, from the depths of the persian gulf, and had instructed the people of chaldæa in all the elements of civilisation. eridu was the home of the hymns that were sung to the gods of light and life, and which came to be looked upon as divinely inspired. it is clear that the myth of cannes points to foreign intercourse as the ultimate cause of babylonian culture. it is natural that such should have been the case. commerce is still the great civiliser, and the traders and sailors of eridu created tastes and needs which they sought to satisfy. the small states of babylonia were constantly at war with each other, even though they shared in a common civilisation, worshipped the same gods, and presented their offerings to the same sanctuary of nippur. southern babylonia--or kengi, "the land of canals and reeds," as it was often named--was already divided against the north. at times it exercised supremacy as far as nippur. en-sakkus-ana of kengi conquered kis, like one of his predecessors who had dedicated the statue, the store of silver, and the furniture of the conquered prince to mul-lil. kis claimed sovereignty over the bedâwin "archers," who had their home in the district now called jokha. but kis eventually revenged itself. one of its rulers made himself master of nippur, and the kingdom of kengi passed away. the final blow was struck by lugal-zaggi-si, the son of the high-priest of the city of opis. lugal-zaggi-si not only conquered babylonia, he also created an empire. on the vases of delicately-carved stone which he dedicated to the god of nippur, a long inscription of one hundred and thirty-two lines describes his deeds, and tells how he had extended his dominion from the persian gulf to the mediterranean sea. it may be that at this time the culture of babylonia was first brought to the west, and that his conquests first communicated a knowledge of the sumerian language and writing to the nations of western asia. with the spoils of his victories the walls of ur were raised "high as heaven," and the temple of the sun-god at larsa was enlarged. erech was made his capital, and doubtless now received its sumerian title of "the city" _par excellence_. the dynasty of erech was supplanted by the first dynasty of ur. erech was captured by lugal-kigub-nidudu of ur, and took the second rank in the new kingdom. the position of ur on the western bank of the euphrates exposed it to the attacks of the semitic tribes of northern arabia, and thus accustomed its inhabitants to the use of arms, while at the same time its proximity to eridu made it a centre of trade. in abrahamic days it had long been a place of resort and settlement by arabian and canaanite merchants. how long the supremacy of ur lasted we do not know. nor do we know whether it preceded or was followed by the supremacy of lagas. the kings of lagas had succeeded in overcoming their hereditary enemies to the north. the so-called "stela of the vultures," now in the louvre, commemorates the overthrow of the forces of the land of upe or opis, and depicts the bodies of the slain as they lie on the battlefield devoured by the birds of prey. e-ana-gin, the king of lagas who erected it, never rested until he had subjected the rest of southern babylonia to his sway. the whole of "sumer" was subdued, and the memory of a time when a king of kis, mesa by name, had subjected lagas to his rule, was finally wiped out. high-priests now took the place of kings in kis and the country of opis. but a time came when the same change occurred also at lagas. doubtless in consequence of its conquest by some superior power. one of the monuments discovered at tello, the ancient lagas, describes the victories of the "high-priest" entemena over the ancestral foe, and the appointment of a certain ili as "high-priest" of the land of opis. from henceforward kis and opis disappear from history. a new power had meanwhile appeared on the scene. while the sumerian princes were engaged in mutual war, the semites were occupying northern babylonia, and establishing their power in the city of agadê or akkad, not far from sippara. here, in b.c. 3800, arose the empire of sargani-sar-ali, better known to posterity as "sargon" of akkad. he became the hero of the semitic race in babylonia. legends told how he had been hidden by his royal mother in an ark of bulrushes daubed with pitch, and intrusted to the waters of the euphrates, how he had been found and adopted as a son by akki the irrigator, and how the goddess istar had loved him and restored him to his kingly estate. at all events, the career of sargon was a career of victories. babylonia was united under his rule, elam was subjugated, and three campaigns sufficed to make "the land of the amorites," syria and canaan, obedient to his sway. he caused an image of himself to be carved on the shores of the mediterranean, and demanded tribute from cyprus, uru-malik or urimelech being appointed governor of syria, as we learn from a cadastral survey of the district of lagas. a revolt of the sumerian states, however, called him home, and for a time fortune seemed against him. he was besieged in akkad, but a successful sally drove back the rebels, and they were soon utterly crushed. then sargon marched into suri or mesopotamia, subduing that country as well as the future assyria. it was the last, however, of his exploits. his son naram-sin succeeded him shortly afterwards (b.c. 3750), and continued the conquests of his father, canaan was already a babylonian province, and naram-sin now carried his arms against magan, or the sinaitic peninsula, where he secured the precious mines of copper and turquoise. building stone from magan had already been imported to babylonia by ur-nina, a king of lagas, and grandfather of e-ana-gin, but it must have been brought in the ships of eridu. naram-sin's son was bingani-sar-ali. a queen, ellat-gula, seems to have sat on the throne not many years later, and with her the dynasty may have come to an end. at any rate, the empire of akkad is heard of no more. but it left behind it a profound and abiding impression on western asia. henceforward the culture and art of the west was babylonian,--semitic babylonian, however, and no longer sumerian babylonian as in the days of lugal-zaggi-si. sargon was a patron of literature as well as a warrior. standard works on astronomy and astrology and the science of omens were compiled for the great library he established at akkad, where numerous scribes were kept constantly at work. sumerian books were brought from the cities of the south and translated into semitic; commentaries were written on the older literature of the country, and dictionaries and grammars compiled. it was now that that mixed language arose, or at least was admitted into the literary dialect, which made babylonian so much resemble modern english. the lexicon was filled with sumerian words which had put on a semitic form, and semitic lips expressed themselves in sumerian idioms. art, too, reached a high perfection. the seal-cylinders of the reign of sargon of akkad represent the highest efforts of the gem-cutter's skill in ancient babylonia, and a bas-relief of naram-sin, found at diarbekr in northern mesopotamia, while presenting close analogies to the egyptian art of the old empire, is superior to anything of the kind as yet discovered in babylonia of either an earlier or a later date. as in egypt, so too in babylonia, the sculpture of later times shows retrogression rather than advance. it is impossible not to believe that between the art of egypt in the age of the old empire and that of babylonia in the reigns of sargon and naram-sin there was an intimate connection. the mines of the sinaitic peninsula were coveted by both countries. sumerian princes still continued to rule in sumer or southern babylonia, but after the era of sargon their power grew less and less. a second sumerian dynasty, however, arose at ur, and claimed sovereignty over the rest of chaldæa. one of its kings, ur-bau, was a great builder and restorer of the temples, and under his son and successor dungi (b.c. 2700), a high-priest of the name of gudea governed lagas, the monuments of which have given us an insight into the condition of the country in his age. his statues of hard diorite from the peninsula of sinai are now in the louvre; one of them is that of the architect of his palace, with a copy of its plan upon his lap divided according to scale. gudea, though owning allegiance to dungi, carried on wars on his own behalf, and boasts of having conquered "ansan of elam." the materials for his numerous buildings were brought from far. hewn stones were imported from the "land of the amorites," limestone and alabaster from the lebanon, gold-dust and acacia-wood from the desert to the south of palestine, copper from northern arabia, and various sorts of wood from the armenian mountains. other trees came from dilmun in the persian gulf, from gozan in mesopotamia, and from gubin, which is possibly gebal. the bitumen was derived from "madga in the mountains of the river gurruda," in which some scholars have seen the name of the jordan, and the naphtha springs of the vale of siddim. the library of gudea has been found entire, with its 30,000 tablets or books arranged in order on its shelves, and filled with information which it will take years of labour to examine thoroughly. not long after his death, the second dynasty of ur gave way to a third, this time of semitic origin. its kings still claimed that sovereignty over syria and palestine which had been won by sargon. one of them, inê-sin, carried his arms to the west, and married his daughters to the "high-priests" of ansan in elam, and of mer'ash in northern syria. his grandson, gimil-sin, marched to the ranges of the lebanon and overran the land of zamzali, which seems to be the zamzummim of scripture. but with gimil-sin the strength of the dynasty seems to have come to an end. babylonia was given over to the stranger, and a dynasty of kings from southern arabia fixed its seat at babylon. the language they spoke and the names they bore were common to canaan and the south of arabia, and sounded strangely in babylonian ears. the founder of the dynasty was sumu-abi, "shem is my father," a name in which we cannot fail to recognise the shem of the old testament. his descendants, however, had some difficulty in extending and maintaining their authority. the native princes of southern babylonia resisted it, and the elamites harried the country with fire and sword. in b.c. 2280 kudur-nankhundi, the elamite king, sacked erech and carried away the image of its goddess, and not long afterwards we find another elamite king, kudur-laghghamar or chedor-laomer, claiming lordship over the whole of chaldsea. the western provinces of babylonia shared in the fate of the sovereign power, and an elamite prince, kudur-mabug by name, was made "father" or "governor of the land of the amorites." his son eri-aku, the arioch of genesis, was given the title of king in southern babylonia, with larsa as his capital. larsa had been taken by storm by the elamite forces, and its native king, sin-idinnam, driven out. he fled for refuge to the court of the king of babylon, who still preserved a semblance of authority. khammurabi or amraphel, the fifth successor of sumu-abi, was now on the throne of babylon. his long reign of fifty-five years marked an epoch in babylonian history. at first he was the vassal of kudur-laghghamar, and along with his brother vassals, eri-aku of larsa and tudghula or tidal of kurdistan, had to serve in the campaigns of his suzerain lord in canaan. but an opportunity came at last for revolt, it may be in consequence of the disaster which had befallen the army of the invaders in syria at the hands of abram and his amorite allies. the war lasted long, and at the beginning went against the king of babylon. babylon itself was captured by the enemy, and its great temple laid in ruins. but soon afterwards the tide turned. eri-aku and his elamite supporters were defeated in a decisive battle. larsa was retaken, and khammurabi ruled once more over an independent and united babylonia. sin-idinnam was restored to his principality, and we now possess several of the letters written to him by khammurabi, in which his bravery is praised on "the day of kudur-laghghamar's defeat," and he is told to send back the images of certain elamite goddesses to their original seats. they had doubtless been carried to larsa when it fell into the hands of the elamite invaders. as soon as babylonia was cleared of its enemies, khammurabi set himself to the work of fortifying its cities, of restoring and building its temples and walls, and of clearing and digging canals. the great canal known as that of "the king," in the northern part of the country, was either made or re-excavated by him, and at kilmad, near the modern bagdad, a palace was erected. art and learning were encouraged, and a literary revival took place which brought back the old glories of the age of sargon. once more new editions were made of standard works, poets arose to celebrate the deeds of the monarch, and books became multiplied. among the literary products of the period was the great chaldæan epic in twelve books, recording the adventures of the hero gilgames, and embodying the chaldæan story of the deluge. the supremacy over western asia passed to khammurabi, along with sovereignty over babylonia, and he assumed the title of "king of the land of the amorites." so too did his great-grandson, ammi-ditana. two generations later, with samas-ditana the first dynasty of babylon came to an end. it had made babylon the capital of the country--a position which it never subsequently lost. it had raised bel-merodach, the god of babylon, to the head of the pantheon, and it had lasted for 304 years. it was followed by a sumerian dynasty from the south, which governed the country for 368 years, but of which we know little more than the names of the kings composing it and the length of their several reigns. it fell before the avalanche of an invasion from the mountains of elam. the kassites poured into the babylonian plain, and kassite kings ruled at babylon for 576 years and a half. during their domination the map of western asia underwent a change. the kassite conquest destroyed the babylonian empire; canaan was lost to it for ever, and eventually became a province of egypt. the high-priests of assur, now kaleh sherghat, near the confluence of the tigris and lower zab, made themselves independent and founded the kingdom of assyria, which soon extended northward into the angle formed by the tigris and upper zab, where the cities of nineveh and calah afterwards arose. the whole country had previously been included by the babylonians in gutium or kurdistan. the population of assyria seems to have been more purely semitic than that of babylonia. such at least was the case with the ruling classes. it was a population of free peasants, of soldiers, and of traders. its culture was derived from babylonia; even its gods, with the exception of assur, were of babylonian origin. we look in vain among the assyrians for the peace-loving tendencies of the babylonians; they were, on the contrary, the romans of the east. they were great in war, and in the time of the second assyrian empire great also in law and administration. but they were not a literary people; education among them was confined to the scribes and officials, rather than generally spread as in babylonia. war and commerce were their two trades. the kassite conquerors of babylonia soon submitted to the influences of babylonian civilisation. like the hyksos in egypt, they adopted the manners and customs, the writing and language, of the conquered people, sometimes even their names. the army, however, continued to be mainly composed of kassite troops, and the native babylonians began to forget the art of fighting. the old claims to sovereignty in the west, however, were never resigned; but the kassite kings had to content themselves with intriguing against the egyptian government in palestine, either with disaffected canaanites, or with the hittites and mitannians, while at the same time they professed to be the firm friends of the egyptian pharaoh. burna-buryas in b.c. 1400 writes affectionately to his "brother" of egypt, begging for some of the gold which in egypt he declares is as abundant "as the dust," and which he needs for his buildings at home. he tells the egyptian king how his father kuri-galzu had refused to listen to the canaanites when they had offered to betray their country to him, and he calls khu-n-aten to account for treating the assyrians as an independent nation and not as the vassals of babylonia. the assyrians, however, did not take the same view as the babylonian king. they had been steadily growing in power, and had intermarried into the royal family of babylonia. assur-yuballidh, one of whose letters to the pharaoh has been found at tel el-amarna, had married his daughter to the uncle and predecessor of burna-buryas, and his grandson became king of babylon. a revolt on the part of the kassite troops gave the assyrians an excuse for interfering in the affairs of babylonia, and from this time forward their eyes were turned covetously towards the kingdom of the south. as assyria grew stronger, babylonia became weaker. calah, now _nimrud_, was founded about b.c. 1300 by shalmaneser i., and his son and successor tiglath-ninip threw off all disguise and marched boldly into babylonia in the fifth year of his reign. babylon was taken, the treasures of its temple sent to assur, and assyrian governors set over the country, while a special seal was made for the use of the conqueror. for seven years the assyrian domination lasted. then tiglath-ninip was driven back to assyria, where he was imprisoned and murdered by his son, and the old line of kassite princes was restored in the person of rimmon-sum-uzur. but it continued only four reigns longer. a new dynasty from the town of isin seized the throne, and ruled for 132 years and six months. it was while this dynasty was reigning that a fresh line of energetic monarchs mounted the assyrian throne. rimmon-nirari i., the father of shalmaneser i. (b.c. 1330-1300) had already extended the frontiers of assyria to the khabur in the west and the kurdish mountains in the north, and his son settled an assyrian colony at the head-waters of the tigris, which served to garrison the country. but after the successful revolt of the babylonians against tiglath-ninip the assyrian power decayed. more than a century later assur-ris-isi entered again on a career of conquest and reduced the kurds to obedience. his son, tiglath-pileser i., was one of the great conquerors of history. he carried his arms far and wide. kurdistan and armenia, mesopotamia and comagênê, were all alike overrun by his armies in campaign after campaign. the hittites paid tribute, as also did phoenicia, where he sailed on the mediterranean in a ship of arvad and killed a dolphin in its waters. the pharaoh of egypt, alarmed at the approach of so formidable an invader, sent him presents, which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus, and on the eastern bank of the euphrates, near carchemish and pethor, he hunted wild elephants, as thothmes iii. had done before him. his son still claimed supremacy in the west, as is shown by the fact that he erected statues in "the land of the amorites." but the energy of the dynasty was now exhausted, and assyria for a time passed under eclipse. this was the period when david established his empire; there was no other great power to oppose him in the oriental world, and it seemed as if israel was about to take the place that had once been filled by egypt and babylon. but the opportunity was lost; the murder of joab and the unwarlike character of solomon effectually checked all dreams of conquest, and israel fell back into two petty states. the military revival of assyria was as sudden as had been its decline. in b.c. 885, assur-nazir-pal ii. ascended the throne. his reign of twenty-five years was passed in constant campaigns, in ferocious massacres, and the burning of towns. in both his inscriptions and his sculptures he seems to gloat over the tortures he inflicted on the defeated foe. year after year his armies marched out of nineveh to slaughter and destroy, and to bring back with them innumerable captives and vast amounts of spoil. western asia was overrun, tribute was received from the hittites and from phoenicia, and armenia was devastated by the assyrian forces as far north as lake van. the policy of assur-nazir-pal was continued by his son and successor shalmaneser ii., with less ferocity, but with more purpose (b.c. 860-825). assyria became dominant in asia; its empire stretched from media on the east to the mediterranean on the west. but it was an empire which was without organisation or permanency. every year a new campaign was needed to suppress the revolts which broke out as soon as the assyrian army was out of sight, or to supply the treasury with fresh spoil. the campaigns were in most cases raids rather than the instruments of deliberately planned conquest. hence it was that the assyrian monarch found himself checked in the west by the petty kings of damascus and the neighbouring states. ben-hadad and hazael, it is true, were beaten again and again along with their allies, while omri of israel offered tribute to the invader, like the rich cities of phoenicia; but damascus remained untaken and its people unsubdued. the war with assyria, however, saved israel from being swallowed up by its syrian neighbour. hazael's strength was exhausted in struggling for his own existence; he had none left for the conquest of samaria. shalmaneser himself, towards the end of his life, was no longer in a position to attack others. a great revolt broke out against him, headed by his son assur-dain-pal, the sardanapallos of the greeks, who established himself at nineveh, and there reigned as rival king for about seven years. his brother samas-rimmon, who had remained faithful to his father, at last succeeded in putting down the rebellion. nineveh was taken, and its defenders slain. henceforth samas-rimmon reigned with an undisputed title. but assyria was long in recovering from the effects of the revolt, which had shaken her to the foundations. the dynasty itself never recovered. samas-rimmon, indeed, at the head of the army which had overcome his brother, continued the military policy of his predecessors; the tribes of media and southern armenia were defeated, and campaigns were carried on against babylonia, the strength of which was now completely broken. in b.c. 812 babylon was taken, but two years later samas-rimmon himself died, and was succeeded by his son rimmon-nirari iii. his reign was passed in constant warfare on the frontiers of the empire, and in b.c. 804 damascus was surrendered to him by its king mariha, who became an assyrian tributary. in the following year a pestilence broke out, and when his successor, shalmaneser iii., mounted the throne in b.c. 781, he found himself confronted by a new and formidable power, that of ararat or van. the eastern and northern possessions of assyria were taken from her, and the monarchy fell rapidly into decay. in b.c. 763 an eclipse of the sun took place on the 15th of june, and was the signal for the outbreak of a revolt in assur, the ancient capital of the kingdom. it spread rapidly to other parts of the empire, and though for a time the government held its own against the rebels, the end came in b.c. 745. assur-nirari, the last of the old dynasty, died or was put to death, and pulu or pul, one of his generals, was proclaimed king on the 13th of iyyar or april under the name of tiglath-pileser iii. tiglath-pileser iii. was the founder of the second assyrian empire, which was based on a wholly different principle from that of the first. occupation and not plunder was the object of its wars. the ancient empire of babylonia in western asia was to be restored, and the commerce of the mediterranean to be diverted into assyrian hands. the campaigns of tiglath-pileser and his successors were thus carried on in accordance with a deliberate line of policy. they aimed at the conquest of the whole civilised world, and the building up of a great organisation of which nineveh and its ruler were the head. it was a new principle and a new idea. and measures were at once adopted to realise it. the army was made an irresistible engine of attack. its training, discipline, and arms were such as the world had never seen before. and the army was followed by a body of administrators. the conquered population was transported elsewhere or else deprived of its leaders, and assyrian colonies and garrisons were planted in its place. the administration was intrusted to a vast bureaucracy, at the head of which stood the king. he appointed the satraps who governed the provinces, and were responsible for the taxes and tribute, as well as for the maintenance of order. the bureaucracy was partly military, partly civil, the two elements acting as a check one upon the other. but it was necessary that ararat should be crushed before the plans of the new monarch could be carried out. the strength of the army was first tested in campaigns against babylonia and the medes, and then tiglath-pileser marched against the confederated forces of the armenian king. a league had been formed among the princes of northern syria in connection with that of the armenians, but the assyrian king annihilated the army of ararat in comagênê, and then proceeded to besiege arpad. arpad surrendered after a blockade of three years; hamath, which had been assisted by azariah of judah, was reduced into an assyrian province; and a court was held, at which the sovereigns of the west paid homage and tribute to the conqueror (b.c. 738). among these were rezon of damascus and menahem of samaria. tiglath-pileser was still known in palestine under his original name of pul, and the tribute of menahem is accordingly described by the israelitish chronicler as having been given to pul. the assyrian king was now free to turn the full strength of his forces against ararat. the country was ravaged up to the very gates of its capital, the modern van, and only the strong walls of the city kept the invader out of it. the assyrian army next moved eastward to the southern shores of the caspian, striking terror into the kurdish and median tribes, and so securing the lowlands of assyria from their raids. the affairs of syria next claimed the attention of the conqueror. rezon and pekah, the new king of samaria, had attempted to form a league against assyria; and, with this end in view, determined to replace ahaz, the youthful king of judah, by a creature of their own. ahaz turned in his extremity to assyrian help, and tiglath-pileser seized the opportunity of accepting the vassalage of judah, with its strong fortress of jerusalem, and at the same time of overthrowing both damascus and samaria. rezon was closely besieged in his capital, while the rest of the assyrian army was employed in overrunning samaria, ammon, moab, and the philistines (b.c. 734). pekah was put to death, and hosea appointed by the assyrians in his place. after a siege of two years, damascus fell in b.c. 732, rezon was slain, and his kingdom placed under an assyrian satrap. meanwhile tyre was compelled to purchase peace by an indemnity of 150 talents. syria was now at the feet of nineveh. a great gathering of the western kings took place at damascus, where tiglath-pileser held his court after the capture of the city, and the list of those who came to do homage to him includes jehoahaz or ahaz of judah, and the kings of ammon, moab, edom, and hamath. hosea, it would seem, was not yet on the israelitish throne. the old empire of babylonia was thus restored as far as the mediterranean. all that remained was for the assyrian usurper to legitimise his title by occupying babylon itself, and there receiving the crown of asia. in b.c. 731, accordingly, he found a pretext for invading babylonia and seizing the holy city of western asia. two years later he "took the hands" of bel-merodach, and was thereby adopted by the god as his own son. but he did not live long to enjoy the fruits of his victories. he died december b.c. 727, and another usurper, ululâ, possessed himself of the throne, and assumed the name of shalmaneser iv. his reign, however, was short. he died while besieging samaria, which had revolted after the death of its conqueror, and in december b.c. 722, a third general seized the vacant crown. he took the name of the old babylonian monarch, sargon, and the court chroniclers of after-days discovered that he was a descendant of the legendary kings of assyria. his first achievement was the capture of samaria. little spoil, however, was found in the half-ruined city; and the upper classes, who were responsible for the rebellion, were carried into captivity to the number of 27,280 persons. the city itself was placed under an assyrian governor. sargon found that the empire of tiglath-pileser had in great measure to be re-conquered. neither tiglath-pileser nor his successor had been able to leave the throne to their children, and the conquered provinces had taken advantage of the troubles consequent on their deaths to revolt. babylonia had been lost. merodach-baladan, the chaldæan prince, had emerged from the marshes of the south and occupied babylon, where he was proclaimed king immediately after shalmaneser's death. for twelve years he reigned there, with the help of the elamites, and one of the first tasks of sargon was to drive the latter from the assyrian borders. sargon had next to suppress a revolt in hamath, as well as an invasion of palestine by the egyptians. the egyptian army, however, was defeated at raphia, and the philistines with whom it was in alliance returned to their allegiance to the assyrian king. now came, however, a more serious struggle. ararat had recovered from the blow it had received at the hands of tiglath-pileser, and had organised a general confederacy of the northern nations against their dangerous neighbour. for six years the struggle continued. but it ended in victory for the assyrians. carchemish, the hittite stronghold which commanded the road across the euphrates, was taken in b.c. 717, and the way lay open to the west. the barrier that had existed for seven centuries between the semites of the east and west was removed, and the last relic of the hittite conquests in syria passed away. in the following year sargon overran the territories of the minni between ararat and lake urumiyeh, and two years later the northern confederacy was utterly crushed. the fortress of muzazir, under mount rowandiz, was added to the assyrian dominions, its gods were carried into captivity, and the king of ararat committed suicide in despair. from henceforward assyria had nothing to fear on the side of the north. the turn of the medes came next. they were compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of nineveh; so also was the kingdom of ellipi, the later ekbatana. sargon could now turn his attention to babylonia. merodach-baladan had foreseen the coming storm, and had done his best to secure allies. an alliance was made with the elamites, who were alarmed at the conquest of ellipi; and ambassadors were sent to palestine (in b.c. 711), there to arrange a general rising of the population, simultaneously with the outbreak of war between sargon and the babylonian king. but before the confederates were ready to move, sargon had fallen upon them separately. ashdod, the centre of the revolt in the west, was invested and taken by the turtannu or commander-in-chief; its ruler, a certain "greek," who had been raised to power by the anti-assyrian party, fled to the arabian desert in the vain hope of saving his life, and judah, moab, and edom were forced to renew their tribute. the egyptians, who had promised to assist the rebels in palestine, prudently retired, and the assyrian yoke was fixed more firmly than ever upon the nations of syria. merodach-baladan was left to face his foe alone. in b.c. 709 he was driven out of babylon, and forced to take refuge in his ancestral kingdom in the marshes. sargon entered babylon in triumph, and "took the hands of bel." his title to rule was acknowledged by the god and the priesthood, and an assyrian was once more the lord of western asia. four years later the old warrior was murdered by a soldier, and on the 12th of ab, or july, his son sennacherib was proclaimed king. sennacherib was a different man from his father. sargon had been an able and energetic general, rough perhaps and uncultured, but vigorous and determined. his son was weak and boastful, and under him the newly-formed assyrian empire met with its first check. it is significant that the babylonian priests never acknowledged him as the successor of their ancient kings; he revenged himself by razing the city and sanctuary of bel to the ground. merodach-baladan re-entered babylon immediately after the death of sargon in b.c. 705, but he was soon driven back to his retreat in the chaldæan marshes, and an assyrian named bel-ibni was appointed king in his place. the next campaign of importance undertaken by sennacherib was in b.c. 701. palestine had revolted, under the leadership of hezekiah of judah. the full strength of the assyrian army was accordingly hurled against it. the king of sidon fled to cyprus, and phoenicia, ammon, moab, and edom hastened to submit to their dangerous foe. hezekiah and his philistine vassals alone ventured to resist. the philistines, however, were soon subdued. a new king was appointed over ashkelon, and hezekiah was compelled to restore to ekron its former prince, whom he had imprisoned in jerusalem on account of his loyalty to assyria. the priests and nobles of ekron, who had given him up to hezekiah, were ruthlessly impaled. meanwhile tirhakah, the ethiopian king of egypt, on whose help hezekiah had relied, was marching to the assistance of his ally. sennacherib met him at eltekeh, and there the combined forces of the egyptians and arabians were defeated and compelled to retreat. hezekiah now endeavoured to make peace by the offer of rich and numerous presents, including thirty talents of gold and 800 of silver. but nothing short of the death of the jewish king and the transportation of his people would content the invader. hezekiah accordingly shut himself up within the strong walls of his capital, while the assyrians ravaged the rest of the country and prepared to besiege jerusalem. the cities and villages were destroyed, and 200,150 persons were led away into captivity. but at this moment a catastrophe befell the assyrians which saved hezekiah and "the remnant" of israel. the angel of death smote the assyrian army, and it was decimated by a sudden pestilence. sennacherib fled from the plague-stricken camp, carrying with him his spoil and captives, and the scanty relics of his troops. it was the last time he marched to the west, and his rebellious vassal remained unpunished. in the following year troubles in babylonia called him to the south. merodach-baladan was hunted out of the marshes, and fled with his subjects across the persian gulf to the opposite coast of elam, while a son of sennacherib was made king of babylon. but his reign did not last long. six years later he was carried off to elam, and a new king of native origin, nergal-yusezib by name, was proclaimed by the elamites. this was in return for an attack made by sennacherib upon the chaldæan colony in elam, where the followers of merodach-baladan had found a refuge. sennacherib had caused ships to be built at nineveh by phoenician workmen, and had manned them with tyrian, sidonian, and ionian sailors who were prisoners of war. the ships sailed down to the tigris and across the gulf, and then fell unexpectedly upon the chaldæans, burning their settlement, and carrying away all who had escaped massacre. nergal-yusezib had reigned only one year when he was defeated and captured in battle by the assyrians; but the elamites were still predominant in babylonia, and another babylonian, musezib-merodach, was set upon the throne of the distracted country (b.c. 693). in b.c. 691 sennacherib once more entered it, with an overwhelming army, determined to crush all opposition. but the battle of khalulê, fought between the assyrians on the one side, and the combined babylonians and elamites on the other, led to no definite result. sennacherib, indeed, claimed the victory, but so he had also done in the case of the campaign against hezekiah. two years more were needed before the babylonians at last yielded to the superior forces of their enemy. in b.c. 689 babylon was taken by storm, and a savage vengeance wreaked upon it. the sacred city of western asia was levelled with the dust, the temple of bel himself was not spared, and the arakhtu canal which flowed past it was choked with ruins. the babylonian chronicler tells us that for eight years there were "no kings;" the image of bel-merodach had been cast to the ground by the sacrilegious conqueror, and there was none who could legitimise his right to rule. on the 20th of tebet, or december, b.c. 681, sennacherib was murdered by his two sons, and the babylonians saw in the deed the punishment of his crimes. his favourite son, esar-haddon, was at the time commanding the assyrian army in a war against erimenas of ararat. as soon as the news of the murder reached him, he determined to dispute the crown with his brothers, and accordingly marched against them. they were in no position to resist him, and after holding nineveh for forty-two days, fled to the court of the armenian king. esar-haddon followed, and a battle fought near malatiyeh, on the 12th of iyyar, or april, b.c. 680, decided the fate of the empire. the veterans of esar-haddon utterly defeated the conspirators and their armenian allies, and at the close of the day he was saluted as king. he then returned to nineveh, and on the 8th of sivan, or may, formally ascended the throne. esar-haddon proved himself to be not only one of the best generals assyria ever produced, but a great administrator as well. he endeavoured to cement his empire together by a policy of reconciliation, and one of his first actions was to rebuild babylon, to bring back to it its gods and people, and to make it one of the royal residences. bel acknowledged him as his adopted son, and for twelve years esar-haddon ruled over western asia by right divine as well as by the right of conquest. but a terrible danger menaced assyria and the rest of the civilised oriental world at the very beginning of his reign. sennacherib's conquest of ellipi, and the wars against ararat and minni, had weakened the barriers which protected the assyrian empire from the incursions of the barbarians of the north. the gimirrâ or kimmerians, the gomer of the old testament, driven by the scyths from their seats on the dniester and the sea of azof, suddenly appeared on the horizon of western asia. swarming through the territories of the minni to the east of ararat, they swooped down upon the assyrian frontier, along with other northern nations from media, sepharad, and ashchenaz. while a body of kimmerians under teuspa marched westward, the rest of the allies, under kastarit or kyaxares of karu-kassi, attacked the fortresses which defended assyria on the north-east. at nineveh all was consternation, and public prayers, accompanied by fasting, were ordered to be offered up for a hundred days and nights to the sun-god, that he might "forgive the sin" of his people, and avert the dangers that threatened them. the prayers were heard, and the invaders were driven into ellipi. then esar-haddon marched against teuspa, and forced him to turn from assyria. the kimmerians made their way instead into asia minor, where they sacked the greek and phrygian cities, and overran lydia. the northern and eastern boundaries of the empire were at length secured. it was now necessary to punish the arab tribes who had taken advantage of the kimmerian invasion to harass the empire on the south. esar-haddon accordingly marched into the very heart of the arabian desert--a military achievement of the first rank, the memory of which was not forgotten for years. the empire at last was secure. the assyrian king was now free to complete the policy of tiglath-pileser by conquering egypt. palestine was no longer a source of trouble. judah had returned to its vassalage to assyria, and the abortive attempts of sidon and jerusalem to rebel had been easily suppressed. true to his policy of conciliation, esar-haddon had dealt leniently with manasseh of judah. he had been brought in fetters before his lord at babylon, and there pardoned and restored to his kingdom. it was a lesson which neither he nor his successors forgot, like the similar lesson impressed a few years later upon the egyptian prince necho. the assyrian conquest of egypt has been already described. the first campaign of esar-haddon against it was undertaken in b.c. 674; and it was while on the march to put down a revolt in b.c. 668 that he fell ill and died, on the 10th of marchesvan, or october. the empire was divided between his two sons. assur-bani-pal had already been named as his successor, and now took assyria, while saul-sum-yukin became king of babylonia, subject, however, to his brother at nineveh. it was an attempt to flatter the babylonians by giving them a king of their own, while at the same time keeping the supreme power in assyrian hands. the first few years of assur-bani-pal's reign were spent in tranquillising egypt by means of the sword, in suppressing insurrections, and in expelling ethiopian invaders. after the destruction of thebes in b.c. 661 the country sullenly submitted to the foreign rule; its strength was exhausted, and its leaders and priesthood were scattered and bankrupt. elam was now almost the only civilised kingdom of western asia which remained independent. it was, moreover, a perpetual thorn in the side of the assyrians. it was always ready to give the same help to the disaffected in babylonia that egypt was to the rebels in palestine, with the difference that whereas the egyptians were an unwarlike race, the elamites were a nation of warriors. assur-bani-pal was not a soldier himself, and he would have preferred remaining at peace with his warlike neighbour. but elamite raids made this impossible, and the constant civil wars in elam resulting from disputed successions to the throne afforded pretexts and favourable opportunities for invading it. the elamites, however, defended themselves bravely, and it was only after a struggle of many years, when their cities had fallen one by one, and shushan, the capital, was itself destroyed, that elam became an assyrian province. the conquerors, however, found it a profitless desert, wasted by fire and sword, and in the struggle to possess it their own resources had been drained and well-nigh exhausted. the second assyrian empire was now at the zenith of its power. ambassadors came from ararat and from gyges of lydia to offer homage, and to ask the help of the great king against the kimmerian and scythian hordes. his fame spread to europe; the whole of the civilised world acknowledged his supremacy. but the image was one which had feet of clay. the empire had been won by the sword, and the sword alone kept it together. suddenly a revolt broke out which shook it to its foundations. babylonia took the lead; the other subject nations followed in its train. saul-suma-yukin had become naturalised in babylonia. the experiment of appointing an assyrian prince as viceroy had failed; he had identified himself with his subjects, and like them dreamed of independence. he adopted the style and titles of the ancient babylonian mouarchs; even the sumerian language was revived in public documents, and the son of esar-haddon put himself at the head of a national movement. the assyrian supremacy was rejected, and once more babylon was free. the revolt lasted for some years. when it began we do not know; but it was not till b.c. 648 that it was finally suppressed, and saul-suma-yukin put to death after a reign of twenty years. babylon had been closely invested, and was at last starved into surrender. but, taught by the experience of the past, assur-bani-pal did not treat it severely. the leaders of the revolt, it is true, were punished, but the city and people were spared, and its shrines, like those of kutha and sippara, were purified, while penitential psalms were sung to appease the angry deities, and the daily sacrifices which had been interrupted were restored. a certain kandalanu was made viceroy, perhaps with the title of king. chastisement was now taken upon the arabian tribes who had joined in the revolt. but egypt was lost to the empire for ever. psammetikhos had seized the opportunity of shaking off the yoke of the foreigner, and with the help of the troops sent by gyges from lydia, had driven out the assyrian garrisons and overcome his brother satraps. assur-bani-pal was in no position to punish him. the war with elam and the revolt of babylonia had drained the country of its fighting men and the treasury of its resources. and a new and formidable enemy had appeared on the scene. the scyths had followed closely on the footsteps of the kimmerians, and were now pouring into asia like locusts, and ravaging everything in their path. the earlier chapters of jeremiah are darkened by the horrors of the scythian invasion of palestine, and assur-bani-pal refers with a sigh of relief to the death of that "limb of satan," the scythian king tugdamme or lygdamis. this seems to have happened in cilicia, and assyria was allowed a short interval of rest. assur-bani-pal's victories were gained by his generals. he himself never appears to have taken the field in person. his tastes were literary, his habits luxurious. he was by far the most munificent patron of learning assyria ever produced; in fact, he stands alone in this respect among assyrian kings. the library of nineveh was increased tenfold by his patronage and exertions; literary works were brought from babylonia, and a large staff of scribes was kept busily employed in copying and re-editing them. unfortunately, the superstition of the monarch led him to collect more especially books upon omens and dreams, and astrological treatises, but other works were not overlooked, and we owe to him a large number of the syllabaries and lists of words in which the cuneiform characters and the assyrian vocabulary are explained. when assur-bani-pal died the doom of the assyrian empire had already been pronounced. the authority of his two successors, assur-etil-ilani-yukin and sin-sar-iskun, or saracos, was still acknowledged both in syria and in babylonia, where kandalanu had been succeeded as viceroy by nabopolassar. one of the contract-tablets from the north of babylonia is dated as late as the seventh year of sin-sar-iskun. but not long after this the babylonian viceroy revolted against his sovereign, and with the help of the scythian king, who had established himself at ekbatana, defeated the assyrian forces and laid siege to nineveh. the siege ended in the capture and destruction of the city, the death of its king, and the overthrow of his empire. in b.c. 606 the desolator of the nations was itself laid desolate, and its site has never been inhabited again. nabopolassar entered upon the heritage of assyria. it has been supposed that he was a chaldæan like merodach-baladan; whether this be so or not, he was hailed by the babylonians as a representative of their ancient kings. the assyrian empire had become the prey of the first-comer. elam had been occupied by the persians, the scyths, whom classical writers have confounded with the medes, had overrun and ravaged assyria and mesopotamia, while palestine and syria had fallen to the share of egypt. but once established on the babylonian throne, nabopolassar set about the work of re-organising western asia, and the military abilities of his son nebuchadrezzar enabled him to carry out his purpose. the marriage of nebuchadrezzar to the daughter of the scythian monarch opened the road through mesopotamia to the babylonian armies; the egyptians were defeated at carchemish in b.c. 604, and driven back to their own land. from gaza to the mouth of the euphrates, western asia again obeyed the rule of a babylonian king. the death of nabopolassar recalled nebuchadrezzar to babylon, where he assumed the crown. but the egyptians still continued to intrigue in palestine, and the jewish princes listened to their counsels. twice had nebuchadrezzar to occupy jerusalem and carry the plotters into captivity. in b.c. 598 jehoiachin and a large number of the upper classes were carried into exile; in b.c. 588 jerusalem was taken after a long siege, its temple and walls razed to the ground, and its inhabitants transported to babylonia. the fortress-capital could no longer shelter or tempt the egyptian foes of the babylonian empire. the turn of tyre came next. for thirteen years it was patiently blockaded, and in b.c. 573 it passed with its fleet into nebuchadrezzar's hands. five years later the babylonian army marched into egypt, the pharaoh amasis was defeated, and the eastern part of the delta overrun. but nebuchadrezzar did not push his advantage any further; he was content with impressing upon the egyptians a sense of his power, and with fixing the boundaries of his empire at the southern confines of palestine. his heart was in babylonia rather than in the conquests he had made. the wealth he had acquired by them was devoted to the restoration of the temples and cities of his country, and, above all, to making babylon one of the wonders of the world. the temples of merodach and nebo were rebuilt with lavish magnificence, the city was surrounded with impregnable fortifications, a sumptuous palace was erected for the king, and the bed of the euphrates was lined with brick and furnished with quays. gardens were planted on the top of arched terraces, and the whole eastern world poured out its treasures at the feet of "the great king." his inscriptions, however, breathe a singular spirit of humility and piety, and we can understand from them the friendship that existed between the prophet jeremiah and himself. all he had done is ascribed to bel-merodach, whose creation he was and who had given him the sovereignty over mankind. he was succeeded in b.c. 562 by his son evil-merodach, who had a short and inglorious reign of only two years. then the throne was usurped by nergal-sharezer, who had married a daughter of nebuchadrezzar, and was in high favour with the priests. he died in b.c. 556, leaving a child, whom the priestly chroniclers accuse of impiety towards the gods, and who was murdered three months after his accession. then nabu-nahid or nabonidos, the son of nabu-balasu-iqbi, another nominee of the priesthood, was placed on the throne. he was unrelated to the royal family, but proved to be a man of some energy and a zealous antiquarian. he caused excavations to be made in the various temples of babylonia, in order to discover the memorial-stones of their founders and verify the history of them that had been handed down. but he offended local interests by endeavouring to centralise the religious worship of the country at babylon, in the sanctuary of bel-merodach, as hezekiah had done in the case of judah. the images of the gods were removed from the shrines in which they had stood from time immemorial, and the local priesthoods attached to them were absorbed in that of the capital. the result was the rise of a powerful party opposed to the king, and a spirit of disaffection which the gifts showered upon the temples of babylon and a few other large cities were unable to allay. the standing army, however, under the command of the king's son, belshazzar, prevented this spirit from showing itself in action. but a new power was growing steadily in the east. the larger part of elam, which went by the name of anzan, had been seized by the persians in the closing days of the assyrian empire, and a line of kings of persian origin had taken the place of the old sovereigns of shushan. cyrus ii., who was still but a youth, was now on the throne of anzan, and, like his predecessors, acknowledged as his liege-lord the scythian king of ekbatana, istuvegu or astyages. his first act was to defeat and dethrone his suzerain, in b.c. 549, and so make himself master of media. a year or two later he obtained possession of persia, and a war with lydia in b.c. 545 led to the conquest of asia minor. nabonidos had doubtless looked on with satisfaction while the scythian power was being overthrown, and had taken advantage of its fall to rebuild the temple of the moon-god at harran, which had been destroyed by the scythians fifty-four years before. but his eyes were opened by the conquest of his ally the king of lydia, and he accordingly began to prepare for a war which he saw was inevitable. the camp was fixed near sippara, towards the northern boundary of babylonia, and every effort was made to put the country into a state of defence. cyrus, however, was assisted by the disaffected party in babylonia itself, amongst whose members must doubtless be included the jewish exiles. in b.c. 538 a revolt broke out in the south, in the old district of the chaldæans, and cyrus took advantage of it to march into the country. the babylonian army moved northward to meet him, but was utterly defeated and dispersed at opis in the beginning of tammuz, or june, and a few days later sippara surrendered to the conqueror. gobryas, the governor of kurdistan, was then sent to babylon, which also opened its gates "without fighting," and nabonidos, who had concealed himself, was taken prisoner. the daily services in the temples as well as the ordinary business of the city proceeded as usual, and on the 3rd of marchesvan cyrus himself arrived and proclaimed a general amnesty, which was communicated by gobryas to "all the province of babylon," of which he had been made the prefect. shortly afterwards, the wife--or, according to another reading, the son--of nabonidos died; public lamentations were made for her, and kambyses, the son of cyrus, conducted the funeral in one of the babylonian temples. cyrus now took the title of "king of babylon," and associated kambyses with himself in the government. conquest had proved his title to the crown, and the priests and god of babylon hastened to confirm it. cyrus on his side claimed to be the legitimate descendant of the ancient babylonian kings, a true representative of the ancient stock, who had avenged the injuries of bel-merodach and his brother-gods upon nabonidos, and who professed to be their devoted worshipper. offerings to ten times the usual amount were bestowed on the babylonian temples, and the favour of the babylonian priesthood was secured. the images which nabonidos had sacrilegiously removed from their shrines were restored to their old homes, and the captive populations in babylonia were allowed to return to their native soil. the policy of transportation had proved a failure; in time of invasion the exiles had been a source of danger to the government, and not of safety. each people was permitted to carry back with it its ancestral gods. the jews alone had no images to take; the sacred vessels of the temple of jerusalem were accordingly given to them. it was a faithful remnant that returned to the land of their fathers, consisting mostly of priests and levites, determined henceforward to obey strictly the laws of their god, and full of gratitude to their deliverer. in jerusalem cyrus thus had a colony whose loyalty to himself and his successors could be trusted, and who would form, as it were, an outpost against attacks on the side of egypt. as long as cyrus and his son kambyses lived babylonia also was tranquil. they flattered the religious and political prejudices of their babylonian subjects, and the priesthood saw in them the successors of a sargon of akkad. but with the death of kambyses came a change. the new rulers of the empire of cyrus were persians, proud of their nationality and zealous for their zoroastrian faith. they had no reverence for bel, no belief in the claim of babylon to confer a title of legitimacy on the sovereign of western asia. the babylonian priesthood chafed, the babylonian people broke into revolt. in october b.c. 521 a pretender appeared who took the name of nebuchadrezzar ii., and reigned for nearly a year. but after two defeats in the field, he was captured in babylon by darius and put to death in august 520. once more, in b.c. 514, another revolt took place under a second pretender to the name of "nebuchadrezzar the son of nabonidos." the strong walls of babylon resisted the persian army for more than a year, and the city was at last taken by stratagem. the walls were partially destroyed, but this did not prevent a third rebellion in the reign of xerxes, while the persian monarch was absent in greece. on this occasion, however, it was soon crushed, and ê-sagila, the temple of bel, was laid in ruins. but a later generation restored once more the ancient sanctuary of merodach, at all events in part, and services in honour of bel continued to be held there down to the time when babylon was superseded by the greek town of seleucia, and the city of nebuchadrezzar became a waste of shapeless mounds. babylonian religion was a mixture of sumerian and semitic elements. the primitive sumerian had believed in a sort of animism. each object had its _zi_ or "spirit," like men and beasts; the _zi_ gave it its personality, and endowed it, as it were, with vital force. the _zi_ corresponded with the _ka_ or "double" of the egyptians, which accompanied like a shadow all things in heaven and earth. the gods themselves had each his _zi_; it was this alone that made them permanent and personal. with such a form of religion there could be neither deities nor priests in the usual sense of the words. the place of the priest was taken by the sorcerer, who knew the spells that could avert the malevolence of the "spirits" or bring down their blessings upon mankind. with the progress of civilisation, certain of the "spirits" emerged above the rest, and became veritable gods. the "spirit" of heaven became ana of erech, the sky-god; the "spirit" of earth passed into el-lil of nippur; and the "spirit" of the deep into ea of eridu. the change was hastened by contact with the semite. the semite brought with him a new religious conception. he believed in a god who revealed himself in the sun, and whom he addressed as baal or "lord." by the side of baal stood his colourless reflection, the goddess baalath, who owed her existence partly to the feminine gender possessed by the semitic languages, partly to the analogy of the human family. but the baalim were as multitudinous as their worshippers and the high-places whereon they were adored; there was little difficulty, therefore, in identifying the gods and "spirits" of sumer with the local baals of the semitic creed. el-lil became bel of nippur, asari or merodach bel of babylon. but in taking a semitic form, the sumerian divinities did not lose their old attributes. bel of nippur remained the lord of the ghost-world, bel-merodach the god who "raises the dead to life" and "does good to man." moreover, in one important point the semite borrowed from the sumerian. the goddess istar retained her independent position among the crowd of colourless female deities. originally the "spirit" of the evening-star, she had become a goddess, and in the sumerian world the goddess was the equal of the god. it is a proof of the influence of the sumerian element in the babylonian population, that this conception of the goddess was never forgotten in babylonia; it was only when babylonian culture was handed on to the semitic nations of the west that istar became either the male atthar of southern arabia and moab, or the emasculated ashtoreth of canaan. the official religion of babylonia was thus the baal-worship of the semites engrafted on the animism of the sumerians. it was further modified by the introduction of star-worship. how far this went back to a belief in the "spirits" of the stars, or whether it had a semitic origin, we do not know; but it is significant that the cuneiform character which denotes "a god" is a picture of a star, and that the babylonians were from the first a nation of star-gazers. in the astro-theology of a later date the gods of the pantheon were identified with the chief stars of the firmament, but the system was purely artificial, and must have been the invention of the priests. the religion and deities of babylonia were adopted by the assyrians. but in assyria they were always somewhat of an exotic, and even the learned class invoked assur rather than the other gods. assur was the personification of the old capital of the country and of the nation itself, and though the scribes found an etymology for the name in that of an-sar, the primæval god of sumerian cosmogony, the fact was always remembered. assur was purely semitic in his attributes, and, like yahveh of israel or chemosh of moab, was wifeless and childless. it is true that a learned scribe now and then found a wife for him among the numerous divinities of the babylonian cult, but the discovery was never accepted, and assur for the mass of his worshippers remained single and alone. it was through trust in him that the assyrian kings believed their victories were gained, and it was to punish those who disbelieved in him that their campaigns were undertaken. in the worship of assur, accordingly, a tendency to monotheism reveals itself. the tendency was even more pronounced in a certain literary school of thought in babylonia. we have texts which resolve the deities of the popular faith into forms of one god; sometimes this is anu of erech, sometimes it is merodach of babylon. babylonian worship necessitated a large hierarchy of priests. at the head was the high-priest, who in early times possessed temporal power and in many states was the predecessor of the king. the king, in fact, inherited his priesthood from him, and was consequently qualified to perform priestly functions. under the high-priest there were numerous classes of ministers of the gods, such as the "anointers," whose duty it was to anoint the holy images with oil, the ordinary "priests," the "seers," and the "prophets." the prophets enjoyed high consideration; they even accompanied the army to the field, and decided whether the campaign would result in victory or defeat. quite apart from all these were the astrologers, who did not belong to the priesthood at all. on the contrary, they professed to be men of science, and the predictions of the future which they read in the stars were founded on the records and observations of former generations. a chief part of the duty of the priests consisted in offering sacrifice and reciting the services. the sacrifices were of two kinds, as in the jewish ritual. the same animals and the same fruits of the earth were offered by both babylonians and israelites, and in many cases the regulations relating to the sacrifices were similar. the services were elaborate, and the rubrics attached to the hymns and prayers which had to be recited are minute and complicated. the hymns had been formed into a sort of bible, which had in time acquired a divine authority. so sacred were its words, that a single mispronunciation of them was sufficient to impair the efficacy of the service. rules for their pronunciation were accordingly laid down, which were the more necessary as the hymns were in sumerian. the dead language of sumer had become sacred, like latin in the middle ages, and each line of a hymn was provided with a translation in semitic babylonian. in appearance, a babylonian temple was not very unlike those of canaan or of solomon. the image of the god stood in the innermost shrine, the holy of holies, where also was the mercy-seat, whereon it was believed, as upon a throne, the deity was accustomed to descend at certain times of the year. in the little temple of balawât, near nineveh, discovered by mr. hormuzd rassam, the mercy-seat was shaped like an ark, and contained two written tables of stone; no statue of the god, however, seems in this instance to have stood beside it. in front of it was the altar, approached by steps. in the court of the temple was a "sea" or "deep," like that which was made by solomon. an early hymn which describes the construction of one of them, states that it was of bronze, and that it rested on the figures of twelve bronze oxen. it was intended for the ablutions of the priests and the vessels of the sanctuary, and was a representation of that primæval deep out of which it was believed that the world originated. one peculiarity the babylonian temples possessed which was not shared by those of the west. each had its _ziggurat_ or "tower," which served for the observation of the stars, and in the topmost storey of which was the altar of the god. it corresponded with the "high-place" of canaan, where man imagined himself nearest to the gods of heaven. but in the flat plain of babylonia it was needful that the high-place should be of artificial construction, and here accordingly they built the towers whose summits "reached to" the sky. the temples and their ministers were supported partly by endowments, partly by voluntary gifts, sometimes called _kurbanni_, the hebrew _korban_, partly by obligatory contributions, the most important of which was the _esrâ_ or "tithe." besides the fixed festivals, which were enumerated in the calendar, special days of thanksgiving or humiliation were appointed from time to time. there was also a weekly sabattu or "sabbath," on the 1st, 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of the month, as well as on the 19th, the last day of the seventh week from the beginning of the previous month. the sabbath is described as "a day of rest for the heart," and all work upon it was forbidden. the king was not allowed to change his dress, to ride in his chariot, or even to take medicine, while the prophet himself was forbidden to utter his prophecies. the mass of the people looked forward to a dreary existence beyond the grave. the shades of the dead flitted like bats in the darkness of the under-world, hungry and cold, while the ghosts of the heroes of the past sat beside them on their shadowy thrones, and allat, the mistress of hades, presided over the warders of its seven gates. the sumerians had called it "the land whence none return," though in the theology of eridu and babylon asari or merodach was already a god who, through the wisdom of his father ea, "restored the dead to life." but as the centuries passed, new and less gloomy ideas grew up in regard to the future life. in a prayer for the assyrian king the writer asks that he may enjoy an endless existence hereafter in "the land of the silver sky," and the realms of the gods of light had been peopled with the heroes of babylonian literature at an early date. the belief in hades went back to those primitive ages when the sumerians of eridu conceived of the earth as floating on the deep, which surrounded it as a snake with its coils, while the sky covered it above like an extinguisher, and was supported on the peak of "the mountain of the world," where the gods had their abode. this primitive cosmological conception underwent changes in the course of time, but the underlying idea of an abyss of waters out of which all things were shaped remained to the end. the chaldæan epic of the creation declares that "in the beginning," "the chaos of the deep" had been the "mother" of both heaven and earth, out of whom first came the primæval deities lakhmu and lakhamu, and then an-sar and ki-sar, the upper and lower firmament. long ages had to elapse before the trinity of the later theology--anu, ea, and bel--were born of these, and all things made ready for the genesis of the present world. merodach, the champion of the gods of light and law, had first to do battle with tiamat, "the dragon" of "the deep," and her allies of darkness and disorder. he had proved his powers by creating and annihilating by means of his "word" alone, and the conflict which he waged ended in the destruction of the enemy. the body of tiamat was torn asunder and transformed into the heaven and earth, her springs of water were placed under control, and the forces of anarchy and chaos were banished from the universe. then followed the creation of the existing order of things. the sun and moon and stars were fixed in their places, and laws given to them which they should never transgress, plants and animals were created, and finally man. babylonian literature went back to a remote date. the age of sargon of akkad was already a highly literary one, and the library he founded at akkad contained works which continued to be re-edited down to the latest days of babylonian literature. every great city had its library, which was open to every reader, and where the books were carefully catalogued and arranged on shelves. here too were kept the public records, as well as title-deeds, law-cases, and other documents belonging to private individuals. the office of librarian was held in honour, and was not unfrequently occupied by one of the sons of the king. every branch of literature and science known at the time was represented. theology was naturally prominent, as well as works on omens and charms. the standard work on astronomy and astrology, in seventy-two books, had been compiled for the library of sargon of akkad; so too had the standard work on terrestrial omens. there was also a standard work on medicine, in which medical prescriptions and spells were mixed together. philological treatises were numerous. there were dictionaries and grammars for explaining the sumerian language to semitic pupils, interlinear translations of sumerian texts, phrase-books, lists of synonyms, and commentaries on difficult or obsolete words and passages, besides syllabaries, in which the cuneiform characters were catalogued and explained. mathematics were diligently studied, and tables of squares and cubes have come to us from the library of larsa. geography was represented by descriptions of the countries and cities known to the babylonians, natural history by lists of animals and birds, insects and plants. the assyrians were endowed with a keen sense of history, and had invented a system of reckoning time by means of certain officers called _limmi_, who gave their names to their years of office. the historical and chronological works of the assyrian libraries are therefore particularly important. they have enabled us to restore the chronology of the royal period of israelitish history, and to supplement the old testament narrative with the contemporaneous records of the assyrian kings. the babylonians were less historically exact, perhaps because they had less of the semitic element in their blood; but they, too, carefully kept the annals of their kings, and took a deep interest in the former history of their country. contract and other tablets relating to trade and business formed, however, the larger part of the contents of most babylonian libraries. they have revealed to us the inner and social life of the people, so that the age of khammurabi, or even of sargon, in babylonia, is beginning to be as well known to us as the age of periklês in greece. along with the contract-tablets must be counted the numerous legal documents and records of law-cases which have been preserved. babylonian law was, like english law, built upon precedents, and an elaborate and carefully considered code had been formed at an early date. collections of letters, partly royal, partly private, were also to be found in the libraries. the autograph letters of khammurabi, the amraphel of genesis, have come down to us, and we even have letters of his time from a lover to his mistress, and from a tenant to his landlord, whom he begs to reduce his rent. boys went to school early, and learning the cuneiform syllabary was a task that demanded no small amount of time and application, especially when it is remembered that in the case of the semitic babylonian this involved also acquiring a knowledge of the dead language of sumer. one of the exercises of the sumerian schoolboy bids him "rise like the dawn, if he would excel in the school of the scribes." purely literary texts were numerous, especially poems, though nothing corresponding to the egyptian novel has been met with. the epic of gilgames, composed by sin-liqi-unnini, has already been referred to. its twelve books answered to the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the eleventh accordingly contains the episode of the deluge. gilgames was the son of a royal mother, whose son was fated to slay his grandfather, and who was consequently confined in a tower. but an eagle carried him to a place of safety, and when he grew up he delivered erech from its foes, and made it the seat of his kingdom. he slew the tyrant khumbaba in the forest of cedars, and by means of a stratagem tempted the satyr ea-bant to leave the woods and become his counsellor and friend. istar wooed him, but he scorned her offers, and taunted her with her misdeeds to the hapless lovers who had been caught in her toils. in revenge the goddess persuaded her father anu to create a winged bull, which should work havoc in the country of the babylonians. but gilgames destroyed the bull, an achievement, however, for which he was punished by heaven. ea-bani died of the bite of a gadfly, and his spirit mounted to the skies, while gilgames himself was smitten by a sore disease. to heal it he sailed beyond the mouth of the euphrates and the river of death, leaving behind him the deserts of arabia and the twin-mountain where men in the shape of huge scorpions guard the gateways of the sun. at last he found xisuthros, the hero of the deluge, and learned from him how he had escaped death. cured of his malady, he returned homeward with a leaf of the tree of life. but as he rested at a fountain by the way it was stolen by a serpent, and man lost the gift of immortality. in babylonia, and to a lesser extent in assyria, women were practically on a footing of equality with the men. they could trade in their own names, could make wills, could appear as witnesses or plaintiffs in court. we hear of a father transferring his property to his daughter, reserving only the use of it during his life. polygamy was not common; indeed, we find it stipulated in one instance that in the case of a second marriage on the part of the husband the dowry of the first wife should be returned to her, and that she should be free to go where she would. of course these rules did not apply to concubines, who were often purchased. adoptions were frequent, and slaves could be adopted into the family of a freeman. the large number of slaves caused the wages of the free labourer to be low. but the slaves were treated with humanity. from early times it was a law that if a slave were hired to another, the hirer should pay a penalty to his master whenever he was incapable of work, thus preventing "sweating" or overwork. similarly, injuries to a slave were punished by a fine. the slave could trade and acquire property for himself, could receive wages for his work when hired to another, could give evidence in a court of law, and might obtain his freedom either by manumission, by purchase, by adoption, or by impressment into the royal service. farms were usually held on a sort of _métayer_ system, half the produce going to the landlord as rent. sometimes, however, the tenant received only a third, a fourth, or even a tenth part of the produce, two-thirds of the annual crop of dates being also assigned to the owner of the land. the tenant had to keep the farm-buildings in order, and to build any that were required. house-property seems to have been even more valuable than farm-land. the deeds for the lease or sale of it enter into the most minute particulars, and carefully define the limits of the estate. the house was let for a term of years, the rent being paid either twice or three times a year. at the expiration of the lease, the property had to be returned in the state in which the tenant had found it, and any infringement of the legal stipulations was punished with a heavy fine. agents were frequently employed in the sale or letting of estates. the cities were busy centres of trade. commercial intercourse was carried on with all parts of the known world. wheat was exported in large quantities, as well as dates and date-wine. the staple of babylonian industry, however, was the manufacture of cloths and carpets. vast flocks of sheep were kept on the western bank of the euphrates, and placed under the charge of bedâwin from arabia. their wool was made into curtains and rugs, and dyed or embroidered fabrics of various kinds. even belshazzar, the heir-apparent of nabonidos, did not disdain to be a wool-merchant, and we find him lending twenty manehs, the proceeds of the sale of some of it, and taking as security for the repayment of the debt certain house-property in babylon. it was "a goodly babylonish garment," secreted by achan from among the spoil of jericho, that brought destruction upon himself and his family. money-lending naturally occupied a prominent place in the transaction of business. the ordinary rate of interest was 20 per cent, paid in monthly instalments; in the time of nebuchadrezzar, however, it tended to be lower, and we find loans made at 13-1/2 per cent. the penalty was severe if the capital were not repaid at the specified date. the payment was occasionally in kind, but money was the usual medium of exchange. it consisted of rings or tongue-like bars of gold, silver, and copper, representing manehs and shekels. the maneh was divided into sixty shekels, and the standard used in later babylonia had been fixed by dungi, king of ur. one of the standard maneh-weights of stone, from the mint of nebuchadrezzar, is now in the british museum. in the time of the second babylonian empire stamped or coined money was introduced, as well as pieces of five or more shekels. this was the period when the great banking firm of egibi flourished, which anticipated the rothschilds in making loans to the state. the babylonian cemetery adjoined the cities of the living, and was laid out in imitation of the latter. the tombs were built of crude bricks, and were separated from one another by streets, through which flowed streams of "living water." gardens were planted by the side of some of the tombs, which resembled the houses of the living, and in front of which offerings were made to the dead. after a burial, brushwood was heaped round the walls of the tomb and set on fire, partially cremating the body and the objects that were interred with it within. sanitary reasons made this partial cremation necessary, while want of space in the populous plain of babylonia caused the brick tombs to be built, like the houses of the towns, one on the top of the other. babylonia and assyria were both administered by a bureaucracy, but whereas in assyria the bureaucracy was military, in babylonia it was theocratic. the high-priest was the equal and the director of the king, and the king himself was a priest, and the adopted child of bel. in assyria, on the contrary, the arbitrary power of the monarch was practically unchecked. under him was the turtannu or tartan, the commander-in-chief, who commanded the army in the absence of the king. the rab-saki, rab-shakeh, or vizier, who ranked a little below him, was the head of the civil officials; besides him we hear of the rab-sa-resi or rabsaris, "the chief of the princes," the rab-mugi or rab-mag, "the court physician," and an endless number of other officers. the governors of provinces were selected from among the higher aristocracy, who alone had the privilege of sharing with the king the office of _limmu_, or eponymous archon after whom the year was named. most of these officers seem to have been confined to assyria; we do not hear of them in the southern kingdom of babylonia. there, however, from an early period royal judges had been appointed, who went on circuit and sat under a president. sometimes as many as four or six of them sat on a case, and subscribed their names to the verdict. the main attention of the assyrian government was devoted to the army, which was kept in the highest possible state of efficiency. it was recruited from the free peasantry of the country--a fact which, while it explains the excellence of the assyrian veterans, also shows why it was that the empire fell as soon as constant wars had exhausted the native population. improvements were made in it from time to time; thus, cavalry came to supersede the use of chariots, and the weapons and armour of the troops were changed and improved. engineers and sappers accompanied it, cutting down the forests and making roads as it marched, and the commissariat was carefully attended to. the royal tent was arranged like a house, and one of its rooms was fitted up as a kitchen, where the food was prepared as in the palace of nineveh. in babylonia it was the fleet rather than the army which was the object of concern, though under nebuchadrezzar and his successors the army also became an important engine of war. but, unlike the assyrians, the babylonians had been from the first a water-faring people, and the ship of war floated on the euphrates by the side of the merchant vessel and the state barge of the king. such then were the kingdoms of babylonia and assyria. each exercised an influence on the israelites and their neighbours, though in a different way and with different results. the influence of assyria was ephemeral. it represented the meteor-like rise of a great military power, which crushed all opposition, and introduced among mankind the new idea of a centralised world-empire. it destroyed the northern kingdom of samaria, and made palestine once more what it had been in pre-mosaic days, the battle-ground between the nations of the nile and the tigris. on the inner life of western asia it left no impression. the influence of babylonia, on the other hand, was that of a venerable and a widely reaching culture. the canaan of the patriarchs and the canaanitish conquest was a canaan whose civilisation was derived from the euphrates, and this civilisation the israelites themselves inherited. abraham was a babylonian, and the mosaic law is not egyptian but babylonian in character, wherever it ceases to be specifically israelite. the influence of babylonia, moreover, continued to the last. it was the babylonish exile which changed the whole nature of the jewish people, which gave it new aims and ideals, and prepared it for the coming of the messiah. the babylonian influence which had been working in the west for four thousand years received, as it were, a fresh impulse, and affected the religion and life of judah in a new and special manner. nor has the influence of babylonian culture vanished even yet. apart from the religious beliefs we have received from israel, there is much in european civilisation which can be traced back to the old inhabitants of chaldæa. it came through canaanitish hands; perhaps, too, through the hands of the etruscans. at all events, the system of augury which rome borrowed from etruria had a babylonian origin, and the prototype of the strange liver-shaped instrument by means of which the etruscan soothsayer divined, has been found among the relics of a babylonian library. chapter vii conclusion our task is finished. we have passed under review some of the facts which have been won by modern discovery from the monuments of the nations who helped to create the history of israel. that history no longer stands alone like a solitary peak rising from the plain. egypt, babylonia, and assyria have yielded up their dead; canaan and even arabia are now beginning to do likewise. the oriental world of the past is slowly developing before our eyes; centuries which were deemed pre-historic but a few years ago have now become familiar to us, and we can study the very letters written by the contemporaries and predecessors of abraham, and read the same books as those that were read by them. a new light has been poured upon the old testament; its story has been supplemented and explained; its statements tested and proved. the israelites were but one out of many branches of the same family. their history is entwined around that of their brethren, their characteristics were shared by others of the same race. the canaan they occupied was itself inhabited by more than one people, and after the first few years of invasion, its influence became strong upon them. in race, indeed, the jew was by no means pure; at the outset a mixture of israelite and edomite, he was further mingled with moabite and philistine elements. the first king of judah as a separate kingdom had an ammonite mother, and bore an ammonite name, while the portraits which surmount the names of shishak's conquests in southern palestine show that the old amorite population was still predominant there. it was religion and history that made the jew, not purity of race. that egypt must have exercised an influence upon israel has long been known. the israelites were born as a nation in the land of goshen, and the exodus from egypt is the starting-point of their national history. but it is only since the decipherment of the egyptian inscriptions that it has been possible to determine how far this influence extended, and to what extent it prevailed. and the result is to show that it was negative rather than positive; that the regulations of the mosaic code were directed to preventing the people from returning to egypt and its idolatries by suppressing all reference to egyptian beliefs and customs, and silently contradicting its ideas and practices. even the doctrine of the future life, and the resurrection of the body, which plays so prominent a part in egyptian religion, is carefully avoided, and the ten commandments have little in common with the ethical code of egypt. but while the influence of egypt has thus been shown to be negative rather than positive, the influence of babylonia has proved to be overwhelming. perhaps this is one of the greatest surprises of modern research, though it might have been expected had we remembered that abraham was a native of babylonia, and that israelites and semitic babylonians belonged to the same race. we have seen that the early culture of western asia was wholly babylonian, and that babylonian influence continued undiminished there down to the days of the exodus. the very mode of writing and the language of literature were babylonian; the whole method of thought had been modelled after a babylonian pattern for unnumbered generations. israel in goshen was no more exempt from these influences than were the patriarchs in canaan. babylonian influence is deeply imprinted on the mosaic laws. the institution of the sabbath went back to the sumerian days of chaldæa; the name itself was of babylonian origin. the great festivals of israel find their counterparts on the banks of the euphrates. even the year of jubilee was a babylonian institution, and gudea, the priest-king of lagas, tells us that when he kept it the slave became "for seven days the equal of his master." it was only the form and application of the old institutions that were changed in the levitical legislation. they were adapted to the needs of israel, and associated with the events of its history. but in themselves they were all of babylonian descent. there is yet one more lesson to be learnt from the revelations of the monuments. they have made it clear that civilisation in the east is immensely old. as far back as we can go we find there all the elements of culture; man has already invented a system of writing, and has made some progress in art. it is true that by the side of all this civilisation there were still races living in the lowest barbarism of the stone age, just as there were tasmanians who employed stone weapons of palaeolithic shape less than sixty years ago; but between the civilised man of the babylonian plain and the barbarians around him there existed the same gulf that exists to-day between the european and the savage. the history of the ancient east contains no record of the development of culture out of savagery. it tells us, indeed, of degeneracy and decay, but it knows of no period when civilisation began. so far as archaeology can teach us, the builders of the babylonian cities, the inventors of the cuneiform characters, had behind them no barbarous past. appendices i egyptian chronology egypt was originally divided into several independent principalities. eventually these became the kingdoms of northern (or lower), and southern (or upper) egypt. among the kings of northern egypt were (1) pu, (2) ska, (3) katfu (?), (4) tau, (5) thesh, (6) nenau (?), and (7) mekhâ; among the kings of southern egypt was besh. the two kingdoms were united by men or meni (menes), king of this, who builds memphis and founds the first dynasty of the united monarchy. dynasty i. (thinite). 1. meni. 2. teta i. 3. atotha. 4. ata. 5. husapti. 6. mer-ba-pa, 73 years. 7. samsu, 72 years. 8. qabhu, 83 years. dynasty ii. (thinite). 1. buzau or bai-neter, 95 years. 2. kakau. 3. ba-neter-en, 95 years. 4. uznas, 70 years. 5. send, 74 years. 6. per-ab-sen or ka-ra (?). 7. nefer-ka-ra, 70 years. dynasty iii. (memphite). 1. nefer-ka-sokar (2) 8 years, 4 months, 2 days. 2. hu-zefa, 25 (?) years, 8 months, 4 days. 3. babai. 4. zazai, 37 years, 2 months, 1 day. 5. neb-ka-ra, 19 years. 6. zoser, 19 years, 2 months. 7. zoser-teta, 6 years. 8. sezes. 9. nefer-ka-ra i., 6 years. 10. huni, 24 years. dynasty iv. (memphites). 1. snefru, 24 years. 2. sharu. 3. khufu (cheops), 23 years. 4. ra-dad-f, 8 years. 6. khâ-f-ha (chephren). 6. men-kau-ra (mykerinos). 7. shepseskaf. dynasty v. (elephantines). 1. user-ka-f, 28 years. 2. sahu-ra, 4 years. 3. kaka, 2 years. 4. nefer-ar-ka-ra i., 7 years. 5. shepses-ka-ra, 12 years. 6. khâ-nefer-ra. 7. ra-n-user an, 25 years. 8. men-ka-hor, 8 years. 9. dad-ka-ra assa, 28 years. 10. unas, 30 years. 11. akau-hor, 7 years. dynasty vi. (elephantines). 1. teta iii. 2. user-ka-ra. 3. meri-ra pepi i., 20 years. 4. mer-en-ra miht-em-saf i., 14 years. 5. nefer-ka-ra ii. pepi ii., 94 years. 6. mer-en-ra miht-em-saf ii., 1 year, 1 month. 7. neit-aker (nitôkris), a queen. dynasties vii. and viii. (memphites). 1. nefer-ka, 2 years, 1 month, 1 day. 2. neferus, 4 years, 2 months, 1 day. 3. ab-en-ra i., 2 years, 1 month, 1 day. 4. ... 1 year, 8 days. 5. ab-en-ra ii. 6. hanti. 7. pest-sat-en-sopd. 8. pait-kheps. 9. serhlinib. ... dad-nefer-ra dudumes. ... neter-ka-ra. men-ka-ra. nefer-ka-ra iii. nefer-ka-ra iv. nebi. dad-ka-ea shema. nefer-ka-ra v. khondu. mer-en-hor. snefer-ka i. ka-n-ra. nefer-ka-ra vi. terel. nefer-ka-hor. nefer-ka-ra vii. pepi-seneb. snefer-ka ii. annu. [user]-kau-ra. nefer-kau-ra. nefer-kau-hor. nefer-ar-ka-ra ii. dynasty ix. (herakleopolites). 1. khiti or khruti i. mer-ab-ra ... mâa-ab-ra. khâ-user-ra. âa-hotep-ra. skhâ-n-ra. aah-mes (?)-ra. se-n (?)-mu-ra. dynasty x. (herakleopolites). mer-ka-ea. ... ra-hotep-ab amu-si-hor-nez-hirtef. ... nefer-ka-ra viii. khiti ii. se-heru-herri. [ameni?] according to lauth, the turin papyrus gives 19 kings to the tenth dynasty, and 185 years. dynasty xi. (theban). 1. antef i. seshes-hor-ap-mâa-ra antuf-âa, prince of thebes. 2. neb-hotep mentu-hotep i. 3. uah-ankh [ter(?)-] seshes-ap-mâa-ra antef-âa ii., his son. 4. seshes-herher-mâa-ra-antef iii., his brother. 5. neter-nefer neb-taui-ra mentu-hotep ii. 6. nub-kheper-ra antauf, more than 50 years. 7. neb-khru-ra mentu-hotep iii., more than 46 years. 8. a'a'h, a queen. 9. antef v., her son. 10. s-ânkh-ka-ra i. according to lauth, the turin papyrus makes the sum of the eleventh dynasty 243 years, neb-khru-ra reigning 51 years. dynasty xii. (theban). 1. amon-em-hat i. s-hotep-ab-ra, alone 20 years. with usertesen i., 10 years. 2. usertesen i. kheper-ka-ra, alone 32 years. with amon-em-hat ii., 3 years. 3. amon-em-hat ii. nub-kau-ra, alone 29 years. with usertesen ii., 6 years. 4. usertesen ii. khâ-kheper-ra, 19 years. 5. usertesen iii. khâ-kau-ra, 3 [8] years. 6. amon-em-hat iii. mâat-en-ra, 43 years. 7. amon-em-hat iv. mâa-khru-ra, 9 years, 3 months, 27 days. 8. sebek-nefru-ra, a, queen, 3 years, 10 months, 24 days. the turin papyrus makes the sum of the twelfth dynasty 213 years, 1 month, 17 days. dynasties xiii. (theban) and xiv. (xoite). according to the turin papyrus: 1. sebek-hotep i. sekhem-khu-taui-ra, son of sebek-nefru-ra, 1 year, 3 months, 24 days. 2. sekhem-ka-ra, 6 years. 3. ra amon-em-hat v. 4. s-hotep-ab-ra ii. 5. aufni, 2 years. g. s-ânkh-ab-ra ameni antuf amon-em-hat vi., 1 year. 7. s-men-ka-ra. 8. s-hotep-ab-ra iii. 9. s-ânkh-ka-ra ii. 10, 11. names lost. 12. nezem-ab-ra. 13. ra sebek-hotep ii. 14. ren-seneb. 15. autu-ab-ra i. hor. 16. sezef-ka-ra. 17. sekhem-khu-taui-ra ii. sebek-hotep iii. 18. user-en-ra. 19. s-menkh-ka-ra mer-menfiu. 20. ... ka-ra. 21. s-user-set-ra. 22. sokhem-uaz-taui-ka sebek-hotep iv. 23. khâ-seshesh-ra nefer-hotep, son of ra-ânkh-f. 24. si-hathor-ra. 25. khâ-nefer-ra sebek-hotop v. 26. [khâ-ka-ra]. 27. [khâ-ânkh-ra sebek-hotep vi.] 28. khâ-hotep-ra sebek-hotep vii., 4 years, 8 months, 29 days. 29. uab-ra âa-ab, 10 years, 8 months, 29 days. 30. mer-nefer-ea ai, 23 (or 13) years, 8 months, 18 days. 31. mer-hotep-ra ana, 2 years, 2 months, 9 days. 32. s-ânkh-en-s-uaztu-ra, 3 years, 2 months. 33. mer-sekhem-ra andu, 3 years, 1 month. 34. s-uaz-ka-ra ur, 5 years, ... months, 8 days. 35. anemen ... ra. 36-46. names lost. 47. mer-kheper-ra. 48. mer-kau-ra sebek-hotep viii. 49-53. names lost. 54. ... mes-ra. 55. ... mât-ra aba. 56. nefer-uben-ra i. 57. ... ka-ra. 58. s-uaz-en-ra. 59-60. names lost. 61. nehasi-ra. 62. khâ-khru-ra. 63. neb-f-autu-ra, 2 years, 5 months, 15 days. 64. s-heb-ra, 3 years. 65. mor-zefa-ra, 3 years. 66. s-uaz-ka-ra, 1 year. 67. neb-zofa-ra, 1 year. 68. uben-ra i. 69-70. names lost. 71. [neb-] zefa-ra ii., 4 years. 72. [nefer-] uben-ea ii. 73. autu-ab-ra ii. 74. her-ab-ra. 75. neb-sen-ra. 76-79. names lost. 80. s-kheper-en-ra. 81. dad-khru-ra. 82. s-ânkh-ka-ra iii. 83. nefer-tum-ra. 84. sekhem-...-ra. 85. ka-...-ra. 86. nefer-ab-ra. 87. a...ka-ra. 88. khâ-...-ra, 2 years. 89. nez-ka-...-ra. 90. s-men-...-ra. 91-111. names lost. 112. sekhem-...-ra. 113. sekhem-...-ra. 114. sekhem-us...-ra. 115. sesen-...-ra. 116. neb-ati-uzu-ra. 117. neb-aten-uzu-ra. 118. s-men-ka-ra. 119. s-user-...-ra. 120. khâ-sekhem-[hent]-ra. about thirty-seven more names are illegible. dynasties xv., xvi. and xvii. (hyksos). according to josephus, quoted from mauetho:-1. salatis, 13 years. 2. beon or bnôn, 44 years. 3. apakhnas or pakhnan, 36 years, 7 months. 4. apôphis, 61 years. 5. iannas or annas, 50 years, 1 month. 6. assis, 49 years, 2 months. ... ya'qob-hal (jacob-el). ... khian (iannas) s-user-set-en-ra. ... apopi i. aa-user-ra (reigned more than 33 years). ... apopi iii. ra-âa-kenen. a dynasty of theban princes was contemporary with the seventeenth hyksos dynasty, the last four of whom were independent: skenen-ra taa i. (revolted against apopi iii.). skenen-ra taa ii. aa. skenen-ra taa iii. ken. uaz-kheper-ra ka-mes and wife aah-hotep. dynasty xviii. (theban). 1. neb-pehuti-ra aahmes i. (amosis), more than 20 years. 2. ser-ka-ra amon-hotep i., his son (amenophis i,), 20 years, 7 months. 3. aa-kheper-ka-ra dehuti dehuti-mes i., his son, and queen amen-sit. 4. aa-kheper-en-ra dehuti-mes ii., his son (more than 9 years), and wife (and sister) hatshepsu ii. mâ-ka-ra (daughter of hatshepsu i.). 5. khnum-amon hatshepsu ii. mâ-ka-ra, more than 16 years. 6. ra-men-kheper dehuti-mes (thothmes) iii., her half-brother, 57 years, 11 months, 1 day (b.c. 1503, march 20, to 1449 february 14, according to dr. mahler's astronomical determination). 7. aa-khepru-ra amon-hotep ii., his son, more than 5 years. 8. men-khepru-ra dehuti-mes iv., his son, more than 7 years. 9. neb-mâ-ra amon-hotep iii., his son (more than 35 years), and wife teie. 10. neter-khepru-ra amon-hotep iv. khu-n-aten, his son, more than 17 years. 11. ankh-khepru-ra and wife meri-aten. 12. tut-ânkh-amon khepru-neb-ra and wife ankh-nes-amon. 13. aten-ra-nefer-nefru--mer-aten. 14. ai kheper-khepru-ar-mâ-ra, more than 4 years. 15. hor-em-hib (armais) mi-amon ser-khepru-ka, more than 3 years. dynasty xix. (theban). 1. men-pehuti-ra ramessu i. (ramesses), more than 2 years. 2. men-mâ-ra seti i. (sethos) mer-en-ptah i., more than 27 years. 3. user-mâ-ra (osymandyas) sotep-en-ra ramessu ii. (ramses) mi-amon (the sesostris of the greeks), b.c. 1348-1281 (according to dr. mahler). 4. mer-en-ptah ii. (ammenephthes) hotep-hi-ma ba-n-ra mi-amon. 5. user-khepru-ra seti ii. mer-en-ptah iii. 6. amon-messu hik-an mer-kha-ra sotep-en-ra. 7. khu-n-ra sotop-en-ra mer-en-ptah iv. si-ptah and wife ta-user. dynasty xx. (theban). 1. set-nekht merer mi-amon (recovered the kingdom from the canaanite arisu). 2. ramessu iii. hik-an, more than 32 years. 3. ramessu iv. hik-mâ mi-amon, more than 11 years. 4. ramessu v. user-mâ-s-kheper-en-ra mi-amon, more than 4 years. 5. ramessu vi. neb-mâ-ra mi-amon amon-hir-kho-pesh-ef (called meri-tum in northern egypt). 6. ramessu vii. at-amon user-mâ-ra mi-amon. 7. ramessu viii. set-hir-kho-pesh-ef mi-amon user-mâ-ra khu-n-amon. 8. ramessu ix. si-ptah s-khâ-n-ra mi-amon, 19 years. 9. ramessu x. nefer-ka-ra mi-amon sotep-en-ra, more than 10 years. 10. ramessu xi. amon-hir-kho-pesh-ef kheper-mâ-ra sotep-en-ra. 11. ramessu xii. men-mâ-ra mi-amon sotep-en-ptah khâ-m-uas, more than 27 years. dynasty xxi. (tanite). 1. nes-bindidi (smendes) mi-amon. 2. p-seb-khâ-n i. (psusennes i.) mi-amon aa-kheper-ra sotep-en-amon. 3. [nefer-ka-ra] (nephelkheres). 4. amon-em-apt (amenophthis). 5. ... (osokhor). 6. pinezem (?) (psinakhes). 7. hor-p-seb-khâ-n ii. (psusennes ii.). contemporary with the twenty-first dynasty was an illegitimate dynasty of high-priests at thebes:-(1.) hir-hor si-amon. (2.) piankhi. (3.) pinezem i. (4.) pinezem ii. with title of "king." (5.) men-kheper-ra and wife isis-em-kheb. (6.) pinezem iii. dynasty xxii. (bubastite). 1. shashanq i. (shishak) mi-amon hez-kheper-ra sotep-en-ra, son of nemart, captain of the libyan mercenaries, more than 21 years. 2. usarkon i. mi-amon sek-hem-kheper-ra. 3. takelet i. mi-amon si-isis user-mâ-ra sotep-en-amon, more than 23 years. 4. usarkon ii. mi-amon si-bast user-mâ-ra, more than 23 years. 5. shashanq ii. mi-amon sek-hem-kheper-ra. 6. takelet ii. mi-amon si-isis hez-kheper-ra, more than 15 years. 7. shashanq iii. mi-amon si-bast user-mâ-ra, 52 years. 8. pimai mi-amon user-mâ-ra sotep-en-amon. 9. shashanq iv. aa-kheper-ra, more than 37 years. dynasty xxiii. 1. s-hir-ab-ra petu-si-bast. 2. usarkon iii. mi-amon aa-kheper-ra sotep-en-amon. 3. p-si-mut user-ra sotep-en-ptah. _interregnum_. egypt is divided between several princes, including tef-nekht, father of bak-en-ran-ef. it is overrun by piankhi the ethiopian, while usarkon iii. reigns at bubastis. the son and successor of piankhi was mi-amon-nut. dynasty xxiv. (saite). bak-en-ran-ef (bokkhoris) uah-ka-ra, more than 16 years. dynasty xxv. (ethiopian). 1. shabaka (sabako) nefer-ka-ra, son of kashet, 12 years. 2. shabatoka (sebikhos) dad-ka-ra. 3. taharka (tirhakah) nefer-tum-khu-ra, 26 years. _interregnum_. egypt is conquered by the assyrian king esar-haddon, and divided into 20 satrapies, b.c. 672-660. taharka and his successor urdamanu (rud-amon), or tan-damanu (tuant-amon), make vain attempts to recover it. finally, psamtik, son of niku (necho), satrap of sais, shakes off the foreign yoke. dynasty xxvi. (saite). b.c. 1. psamtik i. (psammeti-khos) uah-ab-ra 664 2. nekau (necho) nem-ab-ra 610 3. psamtik ii. nefer-ab-ra 594 4. uah-ab-ra (apries or hophra) haa-ab-ra 589 5. aahmes ii. (amasis) si-nit khnum-ab-ra 570 6. psamtik iii. ankh-ka-n-ra 526 dynasty xxvii. (persian). 1. kambathet (cambyses), sam-taui mestu-ra 525 2. ntariush (darius i.) settu-ra 521 3. khabbash senen tanen sotep-en-ptah, native prince 485 4. khsherish (xerxes) 484 5. artakhsharsha (artaxerxes) 465 6. ntariush (darius ii.) mi-amon-ra 424 dynasty xxviii. (saite). amon-art-t-rut (amyrtæus), more than 6 years 415 dynasty xxix. (mendesian). 1. nef-âa-rut i. ba-n-ra mi-neteru, more than 4 years. 2. hakori khnum-mâ-râ sotep-en-ptah, 13 years. 3. p-si-mut user-ptah-sotep-en-ra, 1 year. 4. hor-neb-kha, 1 year. 5. nef-âa-rut ii., 1 year. dynasty xxx. (sebennyte). 1. nekht-hor-hib ra-snezem-ab sotep-en-anhur, son of nef-âa-rut i., 19 years. 2. zihu (teos), 1 year. 3. nekht-neb-ef (nektanebo) kheper-ka-ra, 18 years. egypt reconquered by the persians, b.c. 349. ii babylonian chronology en-sag-saganna, king of kengi. lugal-zaggisi, king of erech, founds an empire in western asia cir. b.c. 5000 (?). kings of lagas, cir. b.c. 4000. ur-duggina. lugal-suggur, vassal of me-sa, king of kis. gursar. nini-khaldu, his son. ur-nina, his son. akur-gal, his son. e-annatum, his son. en-annadu i., his brother, high-priest. entemena, his nephew, high-priest. en-annadu ii., high-priest. lugal-usum-gal, vassal of sargon of akkad. kings of kis. me-sa. enne-ugun. alusarsid. lugal-khassi. dynasty of agade (akkad). sargon or sargani-sar-ali, b.c. 3800. naram-sin, his son, b.c. 3750. bingani-sar-ali, his son. queen ellat-gula (?). first dynasty of ur. lugal-kigub-nidudu. lugal-kisal-si, his son. second dynasty of ur. ur-bau, cir. b.c. 2700; his step-son, nammakhani, high-priest of lagas. dungi i., his son; gudea and his son, ur-nin-girsu, vassal high-priests of lagas. dynasty of erech. sin-gamil. sin-gasid. dynasty of isin. isbi-girra. libit-istar. pur-sin i. ur-ninip. isme-dagan. en-annatum, his son, vassal of gungunum of ur. third dynasty of ur. gungunum. dungi ii. (reigns at least 41 years). pur-sin ii. (reigns at least 12 years). gimil-sin (reigns at least 9 years). inê-sin (probably followed by sumu-abi). first dynasty of babylon, b.c. 2478. sumu-abi or samu-abi, 14 (or 15) years.[12] sumu-la-ilu, his son, 36 (or 35) years. zabium or zabu, his son, 14 years. abil-sin, his son, 18 years. sin-muballidh, his son, 20 (or 30) years. babylonia conquered by the elamites; kudur-laghghamar (chedor-laomer) king of elam is suzerain, while eri-aku (arioch) governs southern babylonia and makes larsa his capital. khammurabi or ammurapi, the amraphel of genesis, 43 (or 55) years (b.c. 2376-2333). he defeats the elamites, restores sin-idinnam to larsa, and reunites babylonia. samsu-iluna, his son, 38 (or 35) years. abesukh (abishua) or ebisum, 25 years. ammi-ditana, his son, 25 years. ammi-zadok, his son, 21 years. samsu-ditana, his son, 31 years. dynasty of sisku, b.c. 2174. anman, 60 years. ki-annibi, 56 years. damki-ilisu, 26 years. iskipal, 15 years. sussi, 24 years. gulkisar, 55 years. kirgal-daramas, 50 years. â-dara-kalamma, 28 years. e-kur-ul-anna, 26 years. melamma-kurkurra, 8 years. ea-ga ... 20 years. the dynasty of the kassites, b.c. 1806.[13] gandis, 16 years. agum-si, 22 years. agu-yasi, 22 years. ussi, his son, 9 years. adumetas. tazzigurumas. agum-kak-rime, his son. eight unknown kings. kara-indas. kadasman-bel (corresponded with the egyptian king amenophis iii.) kuri-galzu i. burna-huryas, his son. kuri-galzu ii., his son.[14] kara-khardas. kadasman-kharbe i., his son. the throne usurped by nazi-bugas. kuri-galzu iii., son of kadas-man-kharbe, 35 (?) years. nazi-maruttas, his son, 26 years, b.c. 1378. kadasman-turgu, his son, 17 years. kadasman-buryas, 14 years. kudur-bel, 6 years. sagarkti-buryas, his son, 13 years (800 years before nabonidos). bibeyasu, 8 years. bel-sum-iddin, 1-1/2 year. kadasman-kharbe ii., 1-1/2 year. rimmon-sum-uzur, 30 years (including the 7 years during which the assyrian king tig-lath-bir held babylon). meli-sipak, 15 years. merodach-baladan i., his son, 13 years. zamama-sum-iddin, 1 year. bel-sum-iddin, 3 years. the dynasty of isin, b.c. 1229. merodach... 18 years. four unknown kings. nebuchadrezzar i. bel-nadin-pal. merodach-nadin-akhi, 22 years.[15] merodach... 1-1/2 year. the throne usurped by rimmon-baladan. merodach-sapik-zer-mati, 12 years. nabu-nadin, 8 years. the dynasty of the sea-coast, b.c. 1096. simbar-sipak, 18 years. ea-mukin-zeri, 5 months. kassu-nadin-akhi, 3 years. the dynasty of bit-bazi, b.c. 1075. ê-ulmas-sakin-sumi, 17 years. bir-kudur-uzur i., 3 years. silanim-sukamuna, 3 months. the dynasty of elam, b.c. 1055. an ..., an elamite, 6 years. the second dynasty of babylon, b.c. 1049. nebo-kin abli, 36 years. bir-kudur-uzur ii. (?), 8 months, 12 days. probably four names missing. b.c. samas-mudammik cir. 920 nebo-sum-iskun cir. 900 nebo-baladan cir. 880 merodach-nadin-sumi. cir. 860 merodach-baladhsu-ikbi cir. 830 bau-akhi-iddin cir. 810 probably two names missing. nebo-sum-iskun, son of dakuri cir. 760 nabonassar, 14 years 747 nebo-nadin-sumi, his son, 2 years 733 nebo-sum-yukin, his son, 1 month, 12 days 731 the dynasty of sapê. yukin-zera or khinziros, 3 years 730 pulu (pul or poros), called tiglath-pileser iii. in assyria, 2 years 727 ululâ, called shalmaneser iv. in assyria 725 merodach-baladan ii the chaldæan from the sea-coast 721 sargon of assyria 709 sennacherib, his son 705 merodach-zakir-sumi, 1 month 702 merodach-baladan iii., 6 months 702 bel-ebus of babylon 702 assur-nadin-sumi, son of sennacherib 700 nergal-yusezib 694 musezib-merodach 693 sennacherib a second time 689 esar-haddon, his son 681 samas-sum-yukin (saos-du-khinos), his son 668 kandalanu (kineladanos) 648 nabopolassar 626 nabu-kudurri-uzur (nebuchadrezzar ii.), his son 605 amil-marduk (evil-merodach), his son 662 nergal-sarra-uzur (nergal-sharezer) 560 labasi-marduk (laborosoar-chod), his son, 3 months. 556 nabu-nahid (nabonidos) 556 cyrus conquers babylon 538 b.c. cambyses, his son 529 gomates (gaumata) the magian usurps the throne, 7 months 521 nebuchadrezzar iii., native king 521 darius (dârayavaush), son of hystaspes 520 nebuchadrezzar iv., rebel king 514 darius restored 513 xerxes i. (khshayârshâ), his son 485 samas-erba, rebel king 480 xerxes restored 479 artaxerxes i. (artakhshatra) longimanus, his son 465 xerxes ii., his son, 2 months 425 sogdianos, his half-brother, 7 months 425 darius ii. nothos, his brother 424 artaxerxes ii. mnêmon, his son 405 okhos (uvasu), son of artaxerxes 362 arses, his son 339 darius iii. kodomannos 336 conquered by alexander the great 330 [footnote 12: the first date is that of a chronological tablet compiled in the reign of ammi-zadok; the second that of the dynastic tablet compiled probably in the reign of nabonidos. in the latter the reigns of illegitimate kings, pungun-ilu, immerum, and eri-aku, seem to be included in those of the legitimate rulers of the dynasty. immerum, the son of lilium, was a contemporary of sumu-la-ilu, and perhaps, like nur-rimmon and sin-idinnam in the time of sin-muballidh and khammurabi, was vassal king of larsa in southern babylonia.] [footnote 13: the date is probably from 15 to 20 years too high.] [footnote 14: the position of this kuri-galzu is not certain. one of the kuri-galzus calls himself "son of burna-buryas," but since nabonidos states that a burna-buryas reigned 700 years after khammurabi, it is possible that among the eight (or in this ease nine) unknown kassite kings there was a burna-buryas i., b.c. 1640, whose son was kuri-galzu i.] [footnote 15: as sennacherib makes merodach-nadin-akhi defeat the assyrians in b.c. 1107, while the dynastic tablet places the death of the babylonian king in b.c. 1118, there must be a chronological error in the latter.] iii assyrian chronology sargon asserts that he was preceded by 330 assyrian kings, among the earlier of them being adasi and his son bel-bani. high-priests of assur. b.c. isme-dagon 1850 samsi-rimmon i., his son 1820 igur-kapkapu (?) samsi-rimmon ii., his son (?) khallu (?) irisum, his son (?) kings of assyria. bel-kapkapu, "the founder of the monarchy." assur-suma-esir (?) bir-tuklat-assur, his son, (contemporary of the babylonian king kharbe-sipak). erba-rimmon (?) assur-nadin-akhe i., his son (?) assur-bil-nisi-su cir. 1450 buzur-assur 1440 assur-nadin-akhe ii. 1420 assur-yuballidh, his son cir 1400 bel-nirari, his son 1380 pudilu (pedael), his son 1360 rimmon-nirari i., his son 1340 shalmaneser i., his son (the builder of calah) 1320 tiglath-bir i., his son 1300 conquers babylon and reigns there 7 years 1290 assur-nazir-pal i., his son, 6 years 1280 tiglath-asaur-bel 1275 assur-narara 1260 nebo-dan, his son 1250 bel-kudurri-uzur. 1225 bir-pileser 1215 assur-dan i., his son[16] 1185 mutaggil-nebo, his son 1160 assur-ris-isi, his son[17] 1140 tiglath-pileser i., his son 1120 assur-bil-kala, his son 1090 samsi-rimmon i., his brother 1070 assur-nazir-pal ii., his son 1050 assur-irbi (?) tiglath-pileser ii 950 assur-dan ii., his son 930 rimmon-nirari ii., his son 911 tiglath-bir ii., his son 889 assur-nazir-pal iii. his son 883 shalmaneser ii., his son 858 assur-dain-pal (sardana-pallos), rebel king 825 samsi-rimmon ii., his brother 823 rimmon-nirari ii., his son 810 shalmaneser iii. 781 assur-dân iii. 771 assur-nirari 753 pulu (pul), usurper, takes the name of tiglath-pileser iii. 745 conquers babylon 729 ululâ, usurper, takes the name of shalmaneser iv. 727 sargon, usurper 722 sennacherib (sin-akhe-erba), his son 705 esar-haddon (assur-akh-iddin), his son 681 assur-bani-pal, his son 668 assur-etil-ilani-yukinni, his son (?) sin-sarra-iskun (sarakos) (?) destruction of nineveh 606 [footnote 16: a contemporary of the babylonian king zamama-sum-iddin. if this is the last king but one of the kassite dynasty, and not rather one of the unknown kings of the dynasty of isin, the date of assurdan i. will have to be pushed about 40 years further back.] [footnote 17: a contemporary of the babylonian king nebuchadrezzar i.] iv hebrew chronology as corrected by the assyrian monuments the israelitish exodus out of egypt in the fifth year of meneptah, son of ramses ii. 1276 campaign of ramses iii. in southern palestine cir. 1230 chushan-rishathaim of aram-naharaim or mitanni conquers canaan cir. 1225 saul elected king of israel cir. 1020 accession of david cir. 1000 accession of solomon cir. 960 accession of rehoboam, division of the kingdom cir. 930 invasion of palestine by shishak i. of egypt 927 judah. rehoboam (17 years) cir. 932 abijah 915 asa 912 jehoshapbat 871 jeboram 846 ahaziah or jehoahaz 842 athaliah 842 joash 837 amaziah 797 uzziah or azariah 768 jotham 736 ahaz 734 becomes tributary to tig-lath-pileser 734 damascus taken by the assyrians 732 hezekiah 727 invasion of judah by sennacherib 701 manasseh 697 amon 642 josiah 640 jehoahaz 608 jehoiakim 608 jehoiachin 597 zedekiah 597 jerusalem destroyed by nebuchadrezzar 586 israel. jeroboam (22 years) 932 nadab 910 baasha 908 elah 884 zimri, for 7 days 882 omri 882 ahab 874 ahab and his allies defeated by the assyrians at qarqar 853 ahaziah 852 revolt of mesha of moab 851 joram 850 jehu 842 he pays tribute to assyria 841 jehoanaz 814 jehoash 798 jeroboam ii. 783 zeohariah 742 shallum 741 menahem 741 pays tribute to tiglath-pileser 738 pekahiah 737 pekah 736 hoshea 733 or 729 samaria taken by the assyrians 722 v the letters of ebeb-tob (or ebed kheba), vassal king of jerusalem, to amenophis iv., king of egypt i. "to the king my lord thus speaks ehed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. what have i done against the king my lord? they have slandered me before the king my lord, saying: ebed-tob has revolted from the king his lord. behold, neither my father nor my mother have exalted me in this place; the arm of the mighty king has made me enter the house of my father. why should i have committed a sin against the king my lord? by the life of the king, i say to the commissioner of the king my lord: why dost thou love the khabiri (confederates) and hate the (loyal) governors? and yet continually are they slandering me before the king my lord, because i say that the provinces of the king my lord are being destroyed. continually are they slandering me to the king my lord. but let the king my lord consider, since the king my lord has established the garrisons which have taken the fortresses ... may the king send help to his country. [may he send troops] to his country! the cities of the king my lord are lost which elimelech is destroying, even all the country of the king; so let the king my lord send help to his country. i say: i will go down to the king my lord, and shall i not see the tears of the king my lord? but the enemy are strong against me, and i have not been able to go down to the king my lord. so let the king incline towards my face and despatch a garrison to me, and i will go down and see the tears of the king my lord. since by the life of the king, when the commissioner departed, i say: the provinces of the king are being destroyed, (yet) thou dost not listen to me. all the governors are destroyed, no governor remains to the king my lord. may the king turn his face to the men and send the troops of the king my lord. no provinces remain unto the king; the khabiri have wasted all the provinces of the king. if troops come this year, the provinces of the king my lord will be preserved; but if no troops come, the provinces of the king my lord will be destroyed.--to the secretary of the king my lord, ebed-tob thy servant: make a clear report of my words to the king my lord that all the provinces of the king my lord are being destroyed." ii. "to the king my lord, my sun-god, thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. behold, the king my lord has established his name at the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun. they have uttered slanders against me. behold, i am not a governor, a dependent of the king my lord. behold, i am the king's friend, and i pay tribute to the king, even i. neither my father nor my mother, but the arm of the mighty king has established me in the house of my father. [when the governor of the king my lord] came to me, i gave him 13 prisoners (?) and 10 slaves. sûta (seti) the commissioner of the king came to me; i gave 21 slavewomen and 20 male prisoners into the hands of sûta as a present for the king my lord. may the king give counsel to his country! the country of the king is being destroyed, all of it. hostilities are being carried on against me. behold, the mountains of seir (see josh, xv. 10) as far as gath-carmel have united against all the other governors and are at war with myself. if one looks, shall not one see the tears of the king my lord because war has been made upon me? while there were ships in the midst of the sea the arm of the mighty king possessed naharaim and babylonia, but now the khabiri possess the cities of the king (of egypt). not a single governor remains (among them) to the king my lord; all are destroyed. behold, turbazu has been slain in the gate of the city of zilû (zelah), and the king does nothing. behold, zimrida of lachish has been thrown to the ground by (his) servants and murdered. yaptikh-addu (jephthah-hadad) has been slain in the gate of the city of zilû, and the king does nothing.... let the king [my lord] send help [to his country], let the king turn his face [to his servants]. let him despatch troops to the country [of jerusalem]. [behold], if no troops come this year, all the provinces of the king my lord will be utterly destroyed. they do not tell to the face of the king my lord that the country of the king my lord is destroyed and all the governors are destroyed. if no troops come this year, let the king send a commissioner, and let him come to me with allies, and we will die with the king our lord.--to the secretary of the king my lord, ebed-tob thy servant: at thy feet [i prostrate myself]. make a clear report of these my words to the king my lord that thy faithful servant am i." iii. "to the king my lord thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of my lord the king seven times seven i prostrate myself. behold, has not malchiel revolted to the sons of labai and the sons of arzai to demand the country of the king for themselves? as for the governor who does this deed, why does not the king question him? behold, malchiel and tagi (the father-in-law of malchiel) are they who have done this, since they have taken the city of rubutê (rabbah, josh. xv. 60).... there is no royal garrison. may the king live for ever! verily pûru (pa-hor) has gone down to him; he has left me and is in the city of gaza. but let the king remember him and send fifty men as a garrison to defend the country. all the country of the king has revolted. send yikhbil-khamu, and let him consider the country of the king. to the secretary of the king, ebed-tob thy servant: make a clear report of my words to the king: 'abundant good fortune be unto thee! i am thy servant.'" iv. "to the king my lord thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. [behold the deed] which malchiel and suardatum have done against the country of the king my lord, hiring (?) the forces of the cities of gezer, of gath, and of keilah, and occupying the country of the city of rubutê (rabbah). the country of the king has gone over to the khabiri. and now at this moment the city of the mountain of jerusalem (uru-salim), whose name is bit-bir (the temple of the god bir), the city of the king, is separated from the locality of the men of keilah. let the king listen to ebed-tob thy servant, and let him despatch troops that i may restore the country of the king to the king. but if no troops arrive, the country of the king is gone over to the khabiri. this is the deed of suardatum and malchiel. but may the king send help to his country." v. _the commencement is lost_.--"and now as to the city of jerusalem, if this country belongs to the king, why is it that gaza is made the seat of the garrison for the king? behold, the country of the city of gath-carmel has fallen away to tagi and the men of gath. he is in bit-sâni, and we have effected that they should give labai and the country of the bedâwin (suta) to the khabiri. malchiel has sent to tagi and takes his sons as servants. he has granted all their requests to the men of keilah, and we have delivered the city of jerusalem. the garrison whom thou sentest by the hand of khapi (apis), the son of miyaria (meri-ra) hadad-el has taken and has established in his house in gaza." vi. "to the king my lord thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. [let the king listen to] the words [of his servant which] have been conveyed to [him].... let the king know that all the provinces have united in hostility against me, and let the king send help to his country. behold, the country of the cities of gezer, of askalon and of lachish have given them food, oil, and whatever they wanted; so let the king send help to the troops and despatch troops against the men who have committed sin against the king my lord. if troops come this year, then there will remain both provinces and governors to the king my lord; but if no troops arrive, there will remain no provinces or governors to the king my lord. behold, this country of the city of jerusalem neither my father nor my mother has given to me; the arm of the mighty king gave it to me, even to me. behold, this is the deed of malchiel and the deed of the sons of labai, who have given the country of the king to the khabiri. behold, o king my lord, be just towards me as regards the babylonians; let the king ask the commissioners whether they have acted violently (?). but they have taken upon themselves a very grievous sin. they have taken their goods and ... let the king ask (them); they had abundance of food, abundance of oil and abundance of clothes, until pauru the commissioner of the king came up to the country of the city of jerusalem, and adai revolted, together with the garrison and the dependents upon the king. let the king know that (pauru) said to me: adai has revolted from me, do not leave the city. this [year] send me a garrison and a royal commissioner. let thy favour be towards me. i have sent to the king my lord 5000 prisoners and ... tribute-bearers. the caravans of the king have been robbed in the field of ajalon. let the king my lord know that i am not able to send a caravan to the king my lord according to thy instructions. behold, the king has established his name in the country of jerusalem for ever, and he cannot forsake the territory of the city of jerusalem.--to the secretary of the king my lord, ebed-tob thy servant. at thy feet i fall: i am thy servant. make a clear report of my words to the king my lord, that i am the vassal of the king. abundance of good fortune to thee!--and thou hast performed deeds i cannot enumerate against the men of the land of cush. ... bana is not slain. there are babylonians in my house. let the king my lord ask in regard to them..." * * * * * letter of suwardatum to amenophis iv. "to the king my lord, my gods, my sun-god, thus speaks suwardata thy servant, the dust of thy feet: at the feet of the king my lord, my gods, my sun-god, seven times seven i prostrate myself. the king my lord directed me to make war in the city of keilah; i made war; it is (now) at peace with me; my city is restored to me. why does ebed-tob send to the men of keilah, saying: 'take silver and march after me'? and the king my lord knows that ebed-tob has taken my city out of my hand. again let the king my lord inquire whether i have taken a man, or an ox, or an ass from him or his jurisdiction. again labai is the conspirator who had taken our cities, and now labai has taken ebed-tob, and they have taken our cities. and the king knows. to his servant let him grant power, for i did not know they had done anything until the king had sent an account of it to his servant." * * * * * letter from labai to amenophis iv. "to the king my lord and my sun-god thus (speaks) labai thy servant and the dust of thy feet: at the feet of the king my lord and my sun-god, seven times seven i prostrate myself. i have heard the words which the king has sent to me, and here am i, and the king apportions his country unto me. behold, i am a faithful servant of the king, and i have not sinned, and i have not offended, and i do not withhold my tribute, and i do not refuse the requests of the commissioner that is set over me. behold, they have slandered me, and the king my lord will not be hard on my offence. again it is an offence in me that i have entered the city of gezer and ordered the city to assemble, saying, 'the king has taken my property and the property of malchiel.' how could i know what malchiel has done against me? again the king has written to bin-sumya; he does not know that bin-sumya has marched along with the bedâwin, and lo, i have delivered him into the hand of adda-dan. again, if the king sends for my wife, how shall i withhold her; and if the king writes to myself, 'plunge an iron sword in thy heart and die,' how shall i not perform the commandment of the king?" iv the moabite stone (_see page 112_) 1. i am mesha the son of chemosh-melech, king of moab, the dibonite. 2. my father reigned over moab thirty years, and i reigned 3. after my father. i made this monument to (the god) chemosh at korkhah, as a monument 4. of salvation, for he saved me from all invaders, and let me see my desire upon all my enemies. omri 5. was king of israel, and he oppressed moab many days, for chemosh was angry with his 6. land. his son followed him, and he also said: i will oppress moab. in my days [chemosh] said: 7. i will see my desire on him and his house, and israel shall surely perish for ever. omri took the land of 8. medeba (numb. xxi. 30), and [israel] dwelt in it during his days and half the days of his son, altogether forty years. but there dwelt in it 9. chemosh in my days. i built baal-meon (josh. xiii. 17) and made therein the reservoirs; i built 10. kirjathain (numb, xxxii. 37). the men of gad dwelt in the land of ataroth (numb, xxxii. 3) from of old, and the king of israel built there 11. (the town) of ataroth; but i made war against the town and took it. and i slew all the [people] 12. of the town, for the pleasure of chemosh and moab. i took from thence the ariel (champion) of (the god) doda and tore 13. him before chemosh in kerioth (jer. xlviii. 24). and i placed therein the men of sharon and the men 14. of me-khereth. and chemosh said unto me: go, seize nebo upon israel; and 15. i went in the night and fought against it from the break of dawn till noon; and i took 16. it, and slew all (therein), 7000 men, [boys], women, [girls], 17. and female slaves, and devoted them to ashtor-chemosh. and i took from it the ariels of yahveh, and tore them before chemosh. and the king of israel had built 18. jahaz (isa. xv. 4), and dwelt in it, whilst he waged war against me, (but) chemosh drove him out before me. and 19. i brought from moab 200 men, all chiefs, and carried them to jahaz, which i took 20. to add to it dibon. i built korkhah, the wall of the forests and the wall 21. of the citadel: i built its gates and i built its towers. and 22. i built the temple of moloch, and i made sluices of the water-ditches in the middle 23. of the town. and there was no cistern in the middle of the town of korkhah, and i said to all the people: make for 24. yourselves every man a cistern in his house. and i dug the canals for korkhah by means of the prisoners 25. of israel. i built aroer and i made the road in [the province of] the arnon. [and] 26. i built beth-bamoth, for it was destroyed. i built bezer (deut. iv. 43), for [it was] in ruins. 27. [and all the chiefs] of dibou were fifty, for all dibon was subject (to me); and i placed 28. 100 [chiefs] in the towns which i added to the land. i built 29. beth-medeba (numb. xxi. 30), and beth-diblathain (jer. xlviii. 22), and beth-baal-meon, and transported thereto the ... 30. [and the shepherds] of the flocks of the land. and at horonaim (isa. xv. 5) there dwelt... 31. ... and chemosh said unto me: go down, make war upon horonaim. i went down [and made war] 32. [and took the city]; and chemosh dwelt in it in my days. i went up from thence ... 33. ... and i ... vii the treaty between ramses ii. and the hittites (_brugsch's translation_) (_see page 79_) in the year 21, in the month of tybi, on the 21st day of the month, in the reign of king ramessu mi-amun, the dispenser of life eternally and for ever, the worshipper of the divinities amun-ra (of thebes), hor-em-khu (of heliopolis), ptah (of memphis), mut the lady of the asher lake (at karnak), and khonsu the peace-loving, there took place a public sitting on the throne of horus among the living, resembling his father, hor-em-khu in eternity, in eternity, evermore. on that day the king was in the city of ramses, presenting his peace-offerings to his father amun-ra and to the gods hor-em-khu-tum, the lord of heliopolis (on), and to amun of ramessu mi-amun, to ptah of ramessu mi-amun, and to sutekh, the strong, the son of nut the goddess of heaven, that they might grant to him many thirty years' jubilee feasts, and innumerable happy years, and the subjection of all peoples under his feet for ever. then came forward the ambassador of the king and the governor [of his house, by name ..., and presented the ambassadors] of the great king of the hittites, khata-sir, who were sent to pharaoh to propose friendship with the king ramessu mi-amun, the dispenser of life, eternally and for ever, just as his father, the sun-god [dispenses it] each day. this is the copy of the contents of the silver tablet which the great king of the hittites, khata-sir, had caused to be made, and which was presented to the pharaoh by the hand of his ambassador tar-tisubu and his ambassador rames, to propose friendship to the king ramessu mi-amun, the bull among the princes, who places his boundary-marks where it pleases him in all lands. the treaty which had been proposed by the great king of the hittites, khata-sir, the powerful, the son of mar-sir, the great king of the hittites, the powerful, the grandson of sapalili, the great king of the hittites, the powerful, on the silver tablet, to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, the powerful--this was a good treaty for friendship and concord, which assured peace [and established concord] for a longer period than was previously the case for a long time. for it was the agreement of the great prince of egypt in common with the great king of the hittites that the god should not allow enmity to exist between them, on the basis of a treaty. to wit, in the times of mutal, the great king of the hittites, my brother, he was at war with [meneptah seti i.] the great prince of egypt. but now, from this very day forward, khata-sir, the great king of the hittites, shall look upon this treaty so that the agreement may remain which the sun-god ra has made, which the god sutekh has made, for the people of egypt and for the people of the hittites, that there should be no enmity between them for evermore. and these are the contents:-khata-sir, the great king of the hittites, is in covenant with ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, from this very day forward, that there may subsist a good friendship and a good understanding between them for evermore. he shall be my ally; he shall be my friend. i will be his ally; i will be his friend, for ever. to wit: in the time of mutal, the great king of the hittites, his brother khata-sir, after his murder, placed himself on the throne of his father as the great king of the hittites i strove for friendship with ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, and it is [my wish] that the friendship and the concord may be better than the friendship and the concord which before existed, and which was broken. i declare: i, the great king of the hittites, will hold together with [ramessu mi-amun] the great prince of egypt, in good friendship and good concord. the sons of the sons of the great king of the hittites will hold together and be friends with the sons of the sons of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt. in virtue of our treaty for concord, and in virtue of our agreement [for friendship, let the people] of egypt [be bound in friendship] with the people of the hittites. let a like friendship and a like concord subsist in such measure for ever. never let enmity rise between them. never let the great king of the hittites invade the land of egypt, if anything has been plundered from it (i.e. the land of the hittites). never let ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, overstep the boundary [of the land of the hittites], if anything shall have been plundered from [the land of egypt]. the just treaty which existed in the times of sapalili, the great king of the hittites, likewise the just treaty which existed in the times of mutal, the great king of the hittites, my brother, that will i keep. ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, declares that he will keep it. [we have come to an understanding about it] with one another at the same time from this day forward, and we will fulfil it, and will act in a righteous manner. if another shall come as an enemy to the lands of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, then let him send an embassy to the great king of the hittites to this effect: "come and make me stronger than him." then shall the great king of the hittites [assemble his warriors], and the king of the hittites [shall come] and smite his enemies. but if it should not be the wish of the great king of the hittites to march out in person, then he shall send his warriors and his chariots that they may smite his enemies. otherwise [he would incur] the wrath of ramessu mi-amun [the great prince of egypt. and if ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, should banish for a crime] subjects from his country, and they should commit further crime against him, then shall the king of the hittites come forward to kill them. the great king of the hittites shall act in common with [the great prince of egypt]. [if another should come as an enemy to the lands of the great king of the hittites, then shall he send an embassy to the great prince of egypt with the request that] he would come in great power to kill his enemies; and if it be the intention of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, (himself) to come, he shall [smite the enemies of the great king of the hittites. if it is not the intention of the great prince of egypt to march out in person, then he shall send his warriors and his two-] horse chariots, while he sends back the answer to the people of the hittites. if any subjects of the great king of the hittites have offended him, then ramessu mi-amun [the great prince of egypt, shall not receive them in his land, but shall advance to kill them] ... the oath with the wish to say, i will go ... until ... ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, living for ever ... that he may be given for them (?) to the lord, and that ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, may speak according to his agreement for evermore ... [if servants shall flee away] out of the territories of ramessu mi-amun [the great prince of egypt, to betake themselves to] the great king of the hittites, the great king of the hittites shall not receive them, but the great king of the hittites shall give them up to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt [that they may be punished]. if servants of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, leave his country and betake themselves to the land of the hittites, to make themselves servants of another, they shall not remain in the land of the hittites [but shall be given up] to ramessu mi-amuu, the great prince of egypt. if, on the other hand, there should flee away [servants of the great king of the hittites, in order to betake themselves to] ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt [in order to stay in egypt], then those who have come from the land of the hittites in order to betake themselves to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, shall not be [received] by ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, (but) the great prince of egypt, ramessu mi-amun, [shall deliver them up to the great king of the hittites]. [and if there shall leave the land of the hittites persons] of skilled mind, so that they come to the land of egypt to make themselves servants of another, then ramessu mi-amun shall not allow them to settle, he shall deliver them up to the great king of the hittites. when this [treaty] shall be known [by the inhabitants of the land of egypt and of the land of the hittites, then shall they not offend against it, for all that stands written upon] the silver tablet, these are words which will have been approved by the company of the gods, among the male deities and among the female deities, among those namely of the land of the hittites, and by the company of the gods, among the male deities and among the female deities, among those namely of the land of egypt. they are witnesses for me [to the validity] of these words. this is the catalogue of the gods of the land of the hittites:- [sutekh of the city of] tump (tennib). sutekh of the land of the hittites. sutekh of the city of arnema. sutekh of the city of zaranda, sutekh of the city of pairaka. sutekh of the city of khisasap. sutekh of the city of sarsu. sutekh of the city of aleppo. sutekh of the city of ... [sutekh of the city of ...] sutekh of the city of sarpina. astartha of the land of the hittites. the god of the land of zaiath-khirri. the god of the land of ka ... the god of the land of kher ... the goddess of the city of akh ... [the goddess of the city of ... ] and of the land of a ... ua. the goddess of the land of zaina. the god of the land of ... nath ... er. [i have invoked these male and these] female [deities of the land of the hittites; these are the gods] of the land, as [witnesses to] my oath. [with them have been associated the male and the female deities] of the mountains and of the rivers of the land of the hittites, the gods of the land of kazawadana (cappadocia), amun, ra, sutekh, and the male and female deities of the land of egypt, of the earth, of the sea, of the winds, and of the storms. with regard to the commandment which the silver tablet contains for the people of the hittites and for the people of egypt, he who shall not observe it shall be given over [to the vengeance] of the company of the gods of the hittites, and shall be given over [to the vengeance of the] company of the gods of egypt, [he] and his house and his servants. but he who shall observe these commandments which the silver tablet contains, whether he be of the people of the hittites or [of the people of the egyptians], because he has not neglected them, the company of the gods of the land of the hittites, and the company of the gods of the land of egypt shall secure his reward and preserve life [for him] and his servants, and those who are with him and with his servants. if there flee away [one] of the inhabitants [from the land of egypt], or two, or three, and they betake themselves to the great king of the hittites, the great king of the hittites shall take them and send them back to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt. now with regard to the inhabitant of the land of egypt who is delivered up to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, his fault shall not be avenged upon him, his house shall not be taken away, nor his wife nor his children. he shall not be put to death, neither shall he be mutilated in his eyes, nor in his ears, nor in his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet, so that thus no crime shall be brought forward against him. in the same way shall it be done if inhabitants of the land of the hittites take to flight, be it one alone or two or three, to betake themselves to ramessu mi-amun, the great king of egypt; ramessu mi-amun, the great king of egypt, shall cause them to be seized, and they shall be delivered up to the great prince of the hittites. with regard to him who is delivered up, his crime shall not be brought forward against him. his house shall not be destroyed, nor his wife, nor his children; he shall not be put to death, he shall not be mutilated in his eyes, nor in his ears, nor on his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet, nor shall any accusation be brought forward against him. that which is in the middle of this silver tablet and on its front side is a likeness of the god sutekh embracing the great prince of the hittites, surrounded by an inscription to this effect: "the seal of the god sutekh the sovereign of heaven," and "the seal of the writing made by khata-sir, the great and powerful prince of the hittites, the son of mar-sir, the great and powerful prince of the hittites." that which is in the middle of the frame is the seal of sutekh the sovereign of heaven. that which is on the other side (of the tablet) is the likeness of the god of the hittites embracing the great princess of the hittites, surrounded by an inscription to the following effect: "the seal of the sun-god of the city of iranna, the lord of the earth," and "the seal of puu-khipa, the great princess of the land of the hittites, the daughter of the land of qazawadana, the [servant of the goddess iskhara of] iranna, the regent of the earth; the servant of the goddess." that which is in the middle of the frame is the seal of the sun-god of iranna, the lord of all the earth. viii the travels of a mohar a satirical account of a tourist's misadventures in canaan, written in the time of ramses ii., the pharaoh of the oppression (_see page 189_) i will portray for thee the likeness of a mohar; i will let thee know what he does. thou hast not gone to the land of the hittites, nor hast thou beheld the land of aupa. the appearance of khatuma thou knowest not. likewise the land of igadai, what is it like? the zar (plain) of sesostris and the city of aleppo are on none of its sides. how is its ford? thou hast not taken thy road to kadesh (on the orontes) and tubikhi (the tibhath of 1 chr. xviii. 8), neither hast thou gone to the shasu (bedâwin) with numerous foreign soldiers, neither hast thou trodden the way to the magharat (the caves of the magoras near beyrout), where the heaven is dark in the daytime. the place is planted with maple trees, oaks, and acacias, which reach up to heaven, full of beasts, bears and lions, and surrounded by shasu in all directions. thou hast not gone up to the mountain of shaua (in the northern lebanon), neither hast thou trodden it; there thy hands hold fast to the [rein] of thy chariot; a jerk has shaken thy horses in drawing it. i pray thee, let us go to the city of beeroth (cisterns). thou must hasten to its ascent, after thou hast passed over its ford in front of it. do thou explain the attraction to be a mohar! thy chariot lies there [before] thee; thy [strength] has fallen lame; thou treadest the backward path at eventide. all thy limbs are ground small. thy [bones] are broken to pieces. sweet is [sleep]. thou awakest. there has been a time for a thief in this unfortunate night. thou wast alone, in the belief that the brother could not come to the brother. some grooms entered into the stable; the horse kicks out; the thief goes back in the night; thy clothes are stolen. thy groom wakes up in the night; he sees what has happened to him; he takes what is left, he goes to the evil-doers, he mixes himself up with the tribes of the shasu. he acts as if he were an amu (asiatic). the enemies come, they [feel about] for the robber. he is discovered, and is immovable from terror. thou awakest, thou findest no trace of them, for they have carried off thy property. become (again) a mohar, who is fully accoutred. let thy ear be full of that which i relate to thee besides. the town 'hidden'--such is the meaning of its name gebal--what is its state? its goddess (we will speak of) at another time. thou hast not visited it. be good enough to look out for beyrout, sidon, and sarepta. where are the fords of the land of nazana? the land of usu (palætyrus), what is its state? they speak of another city in the sea, tyre the haven is her name. drinking water is brought to her in boats. she is richer in fish than in sand. i will tell thee of something else. dangerous is it to enter into zorah. thou wilt say it is burning with a very painful sting (?) mohar, come! go forward on the way to the land of pa-kâkina. where is the road to achshaph? towards no city. pray look at the mountain of user. how is its crest? where is the mountain of shechem? who can surmount it? mohar, whither must you take a journey to the city of hazor? how is its ford? let me (choose) the road to hamath, dagara, (and) dagar-el. here is the road where all mohars meet. be good enough to spy out its road, cast a look on yâ ... when one goes to the land of adamim, to what is one opposite? do not draw back, but instruct us! guide us that we may know, thou leader! i will name to thee other cities besides these. thou hast not gone to the land of takhis, kafir-malona, tamnah, kadesh, dapul, azai, har-nammata, nor hast thou beheld kirjath-eneb near beth-sopher (kirjath-sepher or debir); nor dost thou know adullam (and) zidiputha, nor dost thou know any better the name of khalza in the land of aupa, the bull on its frontiers (?). here is the place where all the mighty warriors are seen. be good enough to look and see how qina is situated, and tell me about rehob. describe beth-sha-el (bethel) along with tarqa-el. the ford of the land of the jordan, how is it crossed? teach me to know the passage in order to enter into the city of megiddo which lies in front of it. verily thou art a mohar, well skilled in the work of the strong hand. pray, is there found a mohar like thee, to place at the head of the army, or a _seigneur_ who can beat thee in shooting? drive along the edge of the precipice, on the slippery height, over a depth of 2000 cubits, full of rocks and boulders. thou takest thy way back in a zigzag, thou bearest thy bow, thou takest the iron in thy left hand. thou lettest the old men see, if their eyes are good, how, worn-out with fatigue, thou supportest thyself with thy hand. _il est perdu, le chameau, le mohar! eh bien![18]_ make to thyself a name among the mohars and the knights of the land of egypt. let thy name be like that of qazirnai the lord of aser, because he discovered lions in the interior of the balsam-forest of baka at the narrow passes, which are rendered dangerous by the shasu who lie in ambush among the trees. (the lions) measured fourteen cubits by five cubits. their noses reached to the soles of their feet. of a grim appearance, without softness, they cared not for caresses. thou art alone, no stronger one is with thee, no _armée_ is behind thee, no ariel (see 2 sam. xxiii. 20, isa. xxix. 1) who prepares the way for thee, and gives thee counsel on the road before thee. thou knowest not the road. the hair on thy head stands on end; it bristles up. thy soul is given into thy hands. thy path is full of rocks and boulders, there is no way out near; it is overgrown with creepers and wolf's-foot. abysses are on one side of thee, the mountain and the wall of rock on the other. thou drivest in against it. the chariot jumps on which thou art. thou art troubled to hold up thy horses. if it falls into the abyss, the pole drags thee down too. thy _ceintures_ are pulled away. they fall down. thou shacklest the horse, because the pole is broken on the path of the narrow pass. not knowing how to tie it up, thou understandest not how it is to be repaired. the _essieu_ is left on the spot, as the load is too heavy for the horses. thy courage has evaporated. thou beginnest to run. the heaven is cloudless. thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; a trembling seizes thee; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee; thou thrustest it aside; the horse is scratched, till at length thou findest rest. explain thou thy attraction to be a mohar! thou comest into joppa. thou findest the date-palm in full bloom in its time. thou openest wide the aperture of thy mouth in order to eat. thou findest that the maid who keeps the garden is fair. she does whatever thou wantest of her.... thou art recognised, thou art brought to trial, and owest thy preservation to being a mohar. thy girdle of the finest stuff, thou payest it as the price of a bad rag. thou sleepest every evening with a rug of fur over thee. thou sleepest a deep sleep, for thou art weary. a thief takes thy bow and thy sword from thy side; thy quiver and thy armour are broken to pieces in the darkness; thy pair of horses run away. the groom takes his course over a slippery path that rises in front of him. he breaks thy chariot in pieces; he follows thy foot-tracks. [he finds] thy equipments, which had fallen on the ground, and had sunk into the sand, leaving only an empty space. prayer does not avail thee; even when thy mouth says: "give food in addition to water that i may reach my goal in safety," they are deaf and will not hear. they say not yes to thy words. the iron-workers enter into the smithy; they rummage in the workshops of the carpenters; the handi-craftsmen and soldiers are at hand; they do whatever thou requirest. they put together thy chariot: they put aside the parts of it that have been made useless; thy spokes are _façonné_ quite new; thy wheels are put on, they put the _courroies_ on the axles and on the hinder part; they splice thy yoke, they put on the box of thy chariot; the [workmen] in iron forge the ...; they put the ring that is wanting on thy whip, they replace the _lunières_ upon it. thou goest quickly onward to fight on the battlefield, to do the deeds of a strong hand and of firm courage. before i wrote i sought me out a mohar who knows his power, who leads the _jeunesse_, a chief in the _armée_ [who goes forward] even to the end of the world. answer me not, "that is good, this is bad;" repeat not to me thy opinion. come, i will tell thee all which lies before thee at the end of thy journey. i begin for thee with the palace of sesostris (ramses ii.). thou hast not set foot in it by force. thou hast not eaten the fish in the brook of .... thou hast not washed thyself in it. with thy permission i will remind thee of huzana (near el-arish); where is its fortress? come, i pray thee, to the palace of the land of uzi, of sesostris osymandyas in his victories, to saz-el together with absaqbu. i will inform thee of the land of ainin (the two springs), the customs of which thou knowest not. the land of the lake of nakhai and the land of rehoburtha (rehoboth, gen. xxvi. 22) thou hast not seen since thou wast born, o mohar. rapih (the modern boundary between egypt and turkey) is widely extended. what is its wall like? it extends for a mile in the direction of gaza. [footnote 18: by the use of french words and expressions brugsch endeavours to represent the canaanitish terms which the egyptian writer has affectedly introduced into his work.] ix the negative confession of the egyptians (_sir p. le page renouf's translation_) (_see page 186_) the 125th chapter of the book of the dead contains the confession which the soul of the dead man was required to make before osiris and the forty-two divine judges of the dead, before he could be justified and admitted to the paradise of aalu:-said on arriving at the hall of righteousness, that n (the soul of the dead man) may be loosed from all the sins which he hath committed, and that he may look upon the divine countenances. he saith:--hail to thee, mighty god, lord of righteousness! i am come to thee, o my lord! i have brought myself that i may look upon thy glory. i know thee, and i know the name of the forty-two gods who make their appearance with thee in the hall of righteousness; devouring those who harbour mischief and swallowing their blood, upon the day of the searching examination in the presence of un-neferu (osiris). verily "thou of the pair of eyes, lord of righteousness," is thy name. here am i; i am come to thee; i bring to thee right and have put a stop to wrong. i am not a doer of wrong to men. i am not one who slayeth his kindred. i am not one who telleth lies instead of truth. i am not conscious of treason. i am not a doer of mischief. i do not exact as the first-fruits of each day more work than should be done for me. my name cometh not to the bark of the god who is at the helm. i am not a transgressor against the god. i am not a tale-bearer. i am not a detractor. i am not a doer of that which the gods abhor. i hurt no servant with his master. i cause no famine. i cause not weeping. i am not a murderer. i give not orders for murder. i cause not suffering to men. i reduce not the offering in the temples. i lessen not the cakes of the gods. i rob not the dead of their funereal food. i am not an adulterer. i am undefiled in the sanctuary of the god of my domain. i neither increase nor diminish the measures of grain. i am not one who shorteneth the palm's length. i am not one who cutteth short the field's measurement. i put not pressure upon the beam of the balance. i snatch not the milk from the mouth of infants. i drive not the cattle from their pastures. i net not the birds of the manors of the gods. i catch not the fish of their ponds. i stop not the water at its appointed time. i divide not an arm of the water in its course. i extinguish not the lamp during its appointed time. i do not defraud the divine circle of their sacrificial joints. i drive not away the cattle of the sacred estate. i stop not a god when he cometh forth. i am pure, i am pure, i am pure, i am pure! x letters of khammurabi or ammurapi (the amraphel op gen. xiv. 1) to sin-idinnam, king of larsa (the ellasar of genesis) i. "to sin-idinnam thus says khammurabi: the goddesses of the land of emudbalum restored your courage to you on the day of the defeat of kudur-laghghamar (chedor-laomer). because they have supported you among the army of thy hand, turn back the army and let them restore the goddesses to their own seats." ii. "to sin-idinnam thus says khummarabi: when you have seen this letter you will understand in regard to amil-samas and nur-nintu, the sons of gisdubba, that if they are in larsa or in the territory of larsa you will order them to be sent away, and that one of your servants on whom you can depend shall take them and bring them to babylon." iii. "to sin-idinnam thus says khammurabi: as to the officials who have resisted you in the accomplishment of their work, do not impose upon them any additional task, but oblige them to do what they ought to have performed, and then remove them from the influence of him who has brought them." sin-idinnam seems to have been the legitimate prince of larsa, who had been expelled from his dominions by the elamite invader eri-aku or arioch, and had taken refuge at the court of khammurabi in babylon. after the overthrow of the elamites, sin-idinnam was restored by khammurabi to his ancestral principality. xi the babylonian account of the deluge 1. sisuthros spake thus unto him, even to gilgames: 2. 'let me reveal unto thee, o gilgames, the tale of my preservation, 3. and the oracle of the gods let me declare unto thee. 4. the city of surippak, which, as thou knowest, is built [on the bank] of the euphrates, 5. this city was (already) old when the gods within it 6. set their hearts to cause a flood, even the great gods 7. [as many as] exist: anu the father of them, 8. the warrior bel their prince, 9. bir their throne-bearer, en-nugi (hades) their chief. 10. ea the lord of wisdom conferred with them, and 11. repeated their words to the reed-bed: 'reed-bed, o reed-bed! frame, o frame! 12. hear, o reed-bed, and understand, o frame! 13. o man of surippak, son of ubara-tutu, 14. frame the house, build a ship: leave what thou canst; seek life! 15. resign (thy) goods, and cause thy soul to live, 16. and bring all the seed of life into the midst of the ship. 17. as for the ship which thou shalt build, 18. ... cubits shall be in measurement its length; 19. and ... cubits the extent of its breadth and its height. 20. into the deep [then] launch it.' 21. i understood and spake to ea my lord: 22. 'as for the building of the ship, o my lord, which thou hast ordered thus, 23. i will observe and accomplish it. 24. [but what] shall i answer the city, the people and the old men?' 25. [ea opened his mouth and] says, he speaks to his servant, even to me: 26. ['if they question thee] thou shalt say unto them: 27. since (?) bel is estranged from me and 28. i will not dwell in your city, i will not lay my head [in] the land of bel; 29. but i will descend into the deep; with [ea] my lord will i dwell. 30. (bel) will rain fertility on you, 31. [flocks] of birds, shoals of fish.' _lines 32 to 42 are lost_. 43. on the fifth day i laid the plan of it (i.e. the ship); 44. in its hull (?) its walls were 10 _gar_ (120 cubits?) high; 45. 10 _gar_ were the size of its upper part.' another version of the account of the deluge, of which a fragment has been preserved, puts a wholly different speech into the mouth of ea, and gives the hero of the story the name of adra-khasis. this fragment is as follows:-'i will judge him above and below, [but] shut [not thou thy door] [until] the time that i shall tell thee of. [then] enter the ship, and close the door of the vessel. [bring into] it thy corn, thy goods, [thy] property, thy [wife], thy slaves, thy handmaids, and the sons of [thy] people, the [cattle] of the field, the beasts of the field, as many as i appoint ... i will tell thee of (the time), and the door [of thy ship] shall preserve them.' adra-khasis opened his mouth and says, he speaks to ea [his] lord: '[o my lord,] none has ever made a ship [on this wise] that it should sail over the land.' ... here the fragment is broken off. the other version proceeds thus:-46. 'i fashioned its side, and closed it in; 47. i built six storeys (?), i divided it into seven parts; 48. its interior i divided into nine parts. 49. i cut worked (?) timber within it. 50. i looked upon the rudder and added what was lacking. 51. i poured 6 _sars_ of pitch over the outside; 52. [i poured] 3 _sars_ of bitumen over the inside; 53. 3 _sars_ of oil did the men carry who brought it ... 54. i gave a _sar_ of oil for the workmen to eat; 55. 2 _sars_ of oil the sailors stored away. 56. for the [workmen?] i slaughtered oxen; 57. i killed [sheep?] daily. 58. beer, wine, oil and grapes 59. [i distributed among] the people like the waters of a river, and 60. [i kept] a festival like the festival of the new year. 61. ... i dipped my hand [in] oil: 62. [i said to] samas (the sun-god): 'the storeys (?) of the ship are complete; 63. the ... is strong, and 64. the oars (?) i introduced above and below.' 65. [those who should be saved?] went two-thirds of them. 66. with all i had i filled it; with all the silver i possessed i filled it; 67. with all the gold i possessed i filled it; 68. with all that i possessed of the seed of life of all kinds i filled it. 69. i brought into the ship all my slaves and my handmaids, 70. the cattle of the field, the beasts of the field, the sons of my people, all of them did i bring into it. 71. the sun-god appointed the time and 72. utters the oracle: 'in the night will i cause the heavens to rain destruction; 73. enter the ship, and close thy door.' 74. that time drew near whereof he uttered the oracle: 75. 'on this night will i cause the heavens to rain destruction.' 76. i watched with dread the dawning of the day; 77. i feared to behold the day. 78. i entered into the ship and closed my door. 79. when i had closed the ship, to buzur-sadi-rabi the sailor 80. i entrusted the palace with all its goods. 81. mu-seri-ina-namari (the waters of the morning at dawn) 82. arose from the horizon of heaven, a black cloud; 83. the storm-god rimmon thundered in its midst, and 84. nebo and merodach the king marched in front; 85. the throne-bearers marched over mountain and plain; 86. the mighty god of death lets loose the whirlwind; 87. bir marches causing the storm (?) to descend; 88. the spirits of the underworld lifted up (their) torches, 89. with the lightning of them they set on fire the world; 90. the violence of the storm-god reached to heaven; 91. all that was light was turned to [darkness]. 92. in the earth like ... [men] perished (?) _two lines are lost here_. 95. brother beheld not his brother, men knew not one another. in the heaven 96. the gods feared the deluge, and 97. hastened to ascend to the heaven of anu. 98. the gods cowered like a dog who lies in a kennel. 99. istar cried like a woman in travail, 100. the great goddess spoke with a loud voice: 101. 'the former generation is turned to clay. 102. the evil which i prophesied in the presence of the gods, 103. when i prophesied evil in the presence of the gods, 104. i prophesied the storm for the destruction of my people. 105. what i have home, where is it? 106. like the spawn of the fish it fills the deep.' 107. the gods wept with her because of the spirits of the underworld; 108. the gods sat dejected in weeping, 109. their lips were covered ... 110. six days and nights 111. rages the wind; the flood and the storm devastate. 112. the seventh day when it arrived the flood ceased, the storm 113. which had fought like an army 114. rested, the sea subsided, and the tempest of the deluge was ended. 115. i beheld the deep and uttered a cry, 116. for the whole of mankind was turned to clay; 117. like the trunks of trees did the bodies float. 118. i opened the window and the light fell upon my face; 119. i stooped, and sat down weeping; 120. over my face ran my tears. 121. i beheld a shore beyond the sea; 122. twelve times distant rose a land. 123. on the mountain of nizir the ship grounded; 124. the mountain of the country of nizir held the ship and allowed it not to float. 125. one day and a second day did the mountain of nizir hold it. 126. a third day and a fourth day did the mountain of nizir hold it. 127. a fifth day and a sixth day did the mountain of nizir hold it. 128. when the seventh day came i sent forth a dove and let it go. 129. the dove went and returned; a resting-place it found not and it turned back. 130. i sent forth a swallow and let it go; the swallow went and returned; 131. a resting-place it found not and it turned back. 132. i sent forth a raven and let it go; 133. the raven went and saw the going down of the waters, and 134. it approached, it waded, it croaked and did not turn back. 135. then i sent forth (everything) to the four points of the compass; i offered sacrifices; 136. i built an altar on the summit of the mountain. 137. i set libation-vases seven by seven; 138. beneath them i piled up reeds, cedar-wood and herbs. 139. the gods smelt the savour, the gods smelt the sweet savour; 140. the gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer. 141. already at the moment of her coming, the great goddess 142. lifted up the mighty bow which anu had made according to his wish (?). 143. 'these gods,' (she said), 'by my necklace, never will i forget! 144. those days, i will think of them and never will forget them. 145. let the gods come to my altar; 146. (but) let not bel come to my altar, 147. since he did not take counsel but caused a flood and counted my men for judgment.' 148. already at the moment of his coming, bel 149. saw the ship and stood still; 150. he was filled with wrath at the gods, the spirits of heaven, (saying): 151. 'let no living soul come forth, let no man survive in the judgment!' 152. bir opened his mouth and says, he speaks to the warrior bel: 153. 'who except ea can devise a speech? 154. for ea understands all kinds of wisdom.' 155. ea opened his mouth and speaks, he says to the warrior bel: 156. 'thou art the seer of the gods, o warrior! 157. why, o why didst thou not take counsel, but didst cause a deluge? 158. (let) the sinner bear his own sin, (let) the evil-doer bear his own evil-doing. 159. grant (?) that he be not cut off, be merciful that he be not [destroyed]. 160. instead of causing a deluge, let lions come and minish mankind; 161. instead of causing a deluge, let hyænas come and minish mankind; 162. instead of causing a deluge, let there be a famine and let it [devour] the land; 163. instead of causing a deluge, let the plague-god come and minish mankind! 164. i did not reveal (to men) the oracle of the great gods, 165. but sent a dream to adra-khasis and he heard the oracle of the gods.' 166. then bel again took counsel and ascended into the ship. 167. he took my hand and caused me, even me, to ascend, 168. he took up my wife (also, and) caused her to bow at my side; 169. he turned to us and stood between us; he blessed us (saying): 170. 'hitherto sisuthros has been mortal, but 171. henceforth sisuthros and his wife shall be like unto the gods, even unto us, and 172. sisuthros shall dwell afar at the mouth of the rivers,' 173. then he took us afar, at the mouth of the rivers he made us dwell. xii the babylonian epic of the creation tablet i. when the heaven above was not yet named or the earth beneath had recorded a name, the primæval (_ristû_) deep was their generator, mummu-tiamat (the chaos of the sea) was the mother of them all. their waters were embosomed together, and the corn-field was unharvested, the reed-bed was ungrown. when the gods had not yet appeared, any one of them, by no name were they recorded, no destiny [was fixed]. then the great gods were created, lakhmu and lakhamu issued forth [the first], until they grew up [when] ansar and kisar (the upper and lower firmaments) were created. long were the days, extended [was the time, till] the gods [anu, bel, and ea were born], ansar [and kisar gave them birth]. * * * * * the deep [opened] its mouth [and said,] to [tiamat], the glorious, [it spake]: while their path ... i will overthrow their path ... let lamentations arise, let complaining [be made] [when] tiamat [undertakes] this [work] * * * * * their way shall be difficult ... [then] the god mummu answered [his] father the deep: * * * * * their way [shall be overthrown], the light shall be darkened, let [it be] as the night! the deep [heard] him and [his] countenance was lightened; evil planned they against the gods. * * * * * tiamat, the mother of the gods, lifted up herself against them, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods united themselves together with her, until (all) that had been created marched at her side. banning the day they followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring (?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they gathered themselves together and began the battle. the mother of the deep (?) (_khubur_), the creatress of them all, added victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents, with sharp fangs, unsparing in their attack. with poison for blood she filled their bodies. horrible adders she clothed with terror, she decked them with fear, and raised high their ... 'may their appearance ... make huge their bodies that none may withstand their breast!' she created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakhamu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man and the (zodiacal) ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the battle, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she might create (?) eleven such-like monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she had summoned together, she raised up kingu, and magnified him among them: 'to march before the host, be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he might be the first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she took his hand and set him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee; exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' then she gave to him the tablets of destiny, and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed, let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself, and made himself like anu (the god of heaven), she determined for the gods her sons their destiny: 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire; the exalted of kidmuri (i.e. kingu) shall dissolve its flame.' * * * * * tablet ii. (_begins with a speech of ansar to merodach_.) "tiamat our mother has risen up against us, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods have united themselves together with her, until (all) that has been created marches at her side. banning the day they have followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring (?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they have gathered themselves together and begun the battle. the mother of the deep (?), the creatress of them all, has added victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents, with sharp fangs, unsparing in their attack. with poison for blood she has filled their bodies. horrible adders she has clothed with terror, she has decked them with fear, and raised high their ... 'may their appearance ... may their bodies be huge so that none may withstand their breast!' she has created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakh-amu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man (aquarius), and the (zodiacal) ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the battle, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she may create (?) eleven such-like monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she has summoned together, she has raised up kingu and magnified him among them. 'to march before the host,' (she has said,) 'be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he may be the first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she has taken his hand and seated him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee; exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' thereupon she has given him the tablets of destiny and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed, let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself, and made himself as anu, she determined for the gods her sons their destiny: 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire; the exalted of kidmuri shall dissolve its flame!' [when merodach heard this, his heart] was grievously troubled, he ... ... and his lips he bit; .....his heart grew angry ......his cry. ......[he determined on] battle. [then spake he to] his father (ea): 'be not troubled; ......thou shalt become the lord of the deep. ......with tiamat will i contend.'" * * * * * merodach [heard] the words of his father, in the fulness (?) of his heart he said to his father: 'o lord of the gods, offspring (?) of the great gods, if indeed i am your avenger, tiamat to overpower and you to rescue, make ready an assembly, prepare a banquet(?). enter joyfully into ubsugina (the seat of oracles) all together. with my mouth like you will i give the oracle. what i create shall never be changed, the word of my lip shall never go back or be unfulfilled!' tablet iii. thereupon ansar opened his mouth, to [gâgâ] his [messenger] he uttered the word: 'o angel [gâgâ] who rejoicest my heart, [to lakhmu and lakh]amu will i send thee; [the command of my heart] thou shalt gladly hear(?): 'ansar, your son, has sent me, the wish of his heart he has caused me to know. tiamat our mother has risen up against us, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods, all of them, have united themselves unto her, all whom she has created march at her side. banning the day they have followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring (?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they have gathered themselves together and begin the fray. the mother of the deep (?), the creatress of them all, has given them victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents with sharp fangs, unsparing in the onset. with poison for blood she has filled their bodies. horrible adders she has clothed with terror, she has decked them with fear, and raised high their ... 'may their appearance ... may their bodies grow huge so that none may stand before them!' she has created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakhamu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man and the ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the conflict, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she may have eleven such monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she has summoned together, she has raised up kingu and magnified him among them: 'to march before the host, be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he may be first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she has taken his hand and set him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee, exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' then she gave him the tablets of destiny, and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed; let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself and made himself as anu she determined for the gods her sons their destiny: 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire, the exalted of kidmuri shall dissolve its flame.' i sent forth anu, but he would not meet her; ea was terrified and turned back. then i bade merodach, the counsellor of the gods, your son; to attack tiamat his heart urged him. he opened his mouth and spake unto me: 'if i am indeed your avenger, tiamat to overpower, you to rescue, make ready an assembly, prepare a banquet (?). enter joyfully into ubsugina, all together. with my mouth, like you, will i then pronounce an oracle, what i create shall never be changed; the word of my lip shall never go back or be unfulfilled.' hasten therefore and determine at once for him his destiny that he may go forth and meet your mighty foe!' lakhmu and lakhamu heard this and lamented, the gods of heaven, all of them, bitterly grieved: 'foolish are they who thus desire battle (?); nor can we understand the [design] of tiamat.' then they came together and marched ... the great gods, all of them, who determine [destinies]. they came before (?) ansar, they filled [his abode], they crowded one on the other in the gathering ... they sat down to the feast, [they devoured] the food; they eat bread, they drank [wine], with sweet honey wine they filled themselves, they drank beer, and delighted their soul (?) ....they ascended into their [seats], to determine the destiny of merodach their avenger. * * * * * tablet iv. then they set him on a princely throne; before his fathers he seated himself as ruler. 'yea, thou art glorious among the great gods, thy destiny has no rival, thy name (?) is anu; from this day forward unchanged be thy command, high and low entreat thy hand! let the word of thy mouth be established, thy judgment never be violated, let none among the gods overpass thy bounds! as an adornment has (thy hand) founded the shrine of the gods, may the place of their gathering (?) become thy home. o merodach, thou art he that avenges us, we give unto thee the sovereignty over the multitudes of the universe. thou givest counsel, let thy word be exalted; may thy weapons be victorious, may thine enemies tremble! o lord, be gracious to the soul of him who putteth his trust in thee, but pour out the soul of the god who has hold of evil.' then place they in their midst a robe; they spake to merodach their first-born: 'may thy destiny, o lord, excel that of the gods; command destruction and creation, and so it shall be done. set thy mouth that it may destroy the robe; bid it return and the robe shall be restored!' he spake and with his mouth destroyed the robe; he spake to it again, and the robe was re-created. when the gods his fathers beheld (the power) of the word of his mouth, they rejoiced, they saluted merodach the king, they bestowed upon him the sceptre, the throne and reign, they gave him a weapon unrivalled, consuming the hostile: 'go,' (they said,) 'and cut off the life of tiamat, let the winds carry her blood to secret places.' (thus) the gods, his fathers, determined for bel his destiny, they showed his path, and they bade him listen and take the road. he made ready the bow and used it as his weapon; he made the club swing, he fixed its seat; then he lifted up the weapon which he caused his right hand to hold; the bow and the quiver he hung at his side. he set the lightning before him, with glancing flame he filled its body. he made also a net to enclose the dragon tiamat. he seized the four winds that they might not issue out of it, the south wind, the north wind, the east wind (and) the west wind; he made them enter the net, the gift of his father anu. he created the evil wind, the hostile wind, the storm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the whirlwind, the unending wind: he caused the winds he had created to issue forth, seven in all, confounding the dragon tiamat, as they swept after him. then bel lifted up the deluge, his mighty weapon: he rode in a chariot incomparable, (and) terrible. he stood firm, and harnessed four horses to its side, [steeds] that spare not, spirited and swift, [with sharp] teeth, that carry poison, which know how to sweep away [the opponent]. [on the right] ... mighty in battle, on the left they open ... ......before thee. [bring to the feast] the gods, all of them, [let them sit down and] satisfy themselves with food, [let them eat bread], let them drink wine, [let them ascend to their seats?] and determine the future. [go now,] gâgâ, approach before them, deliver unto them [the message i entrust to] thee: 'ansar, your son, has sent me, the wish of his heart he has caused me to know. tiamat, our mother, has risen up against us, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods, all of them, have united themselves unto her, even those who created you march at her side. banning the day they have followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring(?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they have gathered themselves together and begin the battle. the mother of the deep(?), the creatress of them all, has given them victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents, with sharp fangs, unsparing in their attack. with poison for blood she has filled their bodies. horrible adders she has clothed with terror, she has decked them with fear, and raised high their.... 'may their appearance,' (she has said).... 'let their bodies grow huge so that none may stand before them!' she has created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakh-amu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man and the ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the fight, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she may have eleven such monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she has summoned together, she has raised up kingu and magnified him among them. 'to march before the host, be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he may be the first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she has taken his hand and set him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee,' (she has said); 'exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' thereupon she has given him the tablets of destiny, and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed, let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself and made himself like anu she fixed for the gods, her sons, their destiny 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire; the exalted of kidmuri shall dissolve its flame.' i sent forth anu, but he would not meet her; ea was terrified and turned back. then i sent forth merodach, the counsellor of the gods, your son; to attack tiamat his heart urged him. he opened his mouth and said unto me: 'if i indeed am your avenger, tiamat to overpower and you to rescue, make ready an assembly, prepare a banquet (?). enter joyfully into ubsugina all together. with my mouth like you will i pronounce the oracle. what i create shall never be changed, the word of my lip shall never go back or be unfulfilled!' hasten therefore and determine for him at once his destiny, that he may go forward and meet your powerful foe!' then went gâgâ and completed his journey unto lakhmu and lakhamu the gods, his fathers, he prostrated himself and kissed the ground at their feet, he bowed himself and stood up and spake unto them: ... clothed with fear; with lustre and terror he covered his head. he directed also his way, he made his path descend, to the place where tiamat [stood] he turned his countenance; with his lip he kept back ... his finger holds the.... on that day they extolled him, the gods extolled him, the gods, his fathers, extolled him, the gods extolled him. then bel drew near, eager for the struggle with tiamat, looking for victory over kingu her husband. when she beheld him, her resolution was destroyed, her understanding was overthrown, her plans confounded. and the gods, his helpers, who marched beside him beheld (how merodach) the prince amazes their eyes. he laid judgment on tiamat, yet she turned not her neck; with her hostile lips she uttered defiance: 'let the gods, o bel, enter on battle behind thee, [behold,] they are gathered together to where thou art.' bel [launched] the deluge, his mighty weapon; against tiamat, who had raised herself (?), thus he sent it. 'thou wert mighty [below,' he cries,] 'exalted above, yet thy heart [has urged thee] to begin the strife, [to lead the gods from] their fathers to [thy side]; [thou hast gathered them around thee] and raisest thyself [against us], [thou hast made] kingu thy husband [and hast bestowed on] him divine power. ... thou hast devised evil, [against the] gods, my fathers, hast thou directed thy enmity. [may] thy host be fettered, thy weapons be restrained! stand up, and i and thou will fight together.' when tiamat heard this, she uttered her former spells, she repeated her command. tiamat also cried out vehemently with a loud voice. from her roots she rocked herself completely. she uttered an incantation, she cast a spell, and the gods of battle demand for themselves their arms. then tiamat attacked merodach the counsellor of the gods; in combat they joined; they engaged in battle. then bel opened his net and enclosed her; the evil wind that seizes behind he sent before him. tiamat opened her mouth to swallow it; he made the evil wind to enter so that she could not close her lips. the violence of the winds tortured her stomach, and her heart was prostrated, and her mouth was torn open. he swung the club; he shattered her stomach; he cut out her entrails; he divided her heart; he overpowered her and ended her life; he threw down her corpse; he stood upon it. when tiamat who marched before them was conquered, he dispersed her forces, her host was overthrown, and the gods her allies who marched beside her trembled and feared and turned their backs. they fled away to save their lives; they clung to one another, fleeing helplessly. he followed them and broke their arms; he flung his net and they are caught in the snare. then filled they the world with their lamentations; they bear their sin and are shut up in prison, and the elevenfold creatures are troubled with fear. the host of spirits (?) who marched beside them (?) he throws into fetters and [binds] their hands, and [tramples] their opposition under him. and the god kingu who [had been made leader over] them, he bound him also and did to him as to the [other] gods. and he took from him the tablets of destiny [that were on] his breast; he sealed them with his pen and hung them from his own breast. from the time he had bound and overmastered his foes he led the illustrious foe captive like an ox, bringing to full completion the victory of ansar over his antagonists. the warrior merodach (thus) performed the purpose of ea. over the gods in bondage he strengthened his watch, and he turned backwards tiamat whom he had overpowered. then bel trampled on the body of tiamat; with his club that spares not he smote her skull, he broke it and caused her blood to flow; the north wind bore it away to secret places. then his fathers beheld, they rejoiced and were glad; they bade peace-offerings to be brought to him. and bel rested; his body he fed; he strengthened his mind (?), he formed a clever plan, and he stripped her like a fish of her skin in two halves; one half he took and with it overshadowed the heavens; he stretched out the skin, he appointed watchers bidding them that her waters should not issue forth; he lit up the sky, the sanctuary rejoiced, and he set it over against the deep, the seat of ea. then bel measured the form of the deep; as a palace like unto it he made e-sarra (the upper firmament). the palace of the upper firmament, which he created as heaven, he caused anu, bel and ea to inhabit as their stronghold. tablet v. he made the stations of the great gods; he fixed the stars, even the twin-stars, to correspond with them; he ordained the year, appointing the signs of the zodiac over it; for each of the twelve months he fixed three stars, from the day when the year issues forth to its close. he established the station of jupiter that they might know their bounds, that they might not err, that they might not go astray in any way. he established the station of bel and ea along with himself. he opened also the gates on either side, the bolts he strengthened on the left hand and on the right, and in their midst he set the zenith. he illuminated the moon-god that he might watch over the night, and ordained him for a guardian of the night that the time might be known, (saying): 'month by month, without break, make full thine orb; at the beginning of the month, when the night begins, shine with thy horns that the heaven may know. on the seventh day, halve thy disk; stand upright on the sabbath with the [first] half. at the going down of the sun [rise] on the horizon; stand opposite it [on the fourteenth day] in full splendour (?). [on the 15th] draw near to the path of the sun; [on the 21st] stand upright against it for the second time." * * * * * tablet vi. (?) the gods in their assembly created [the beasts], they made perfect the mighty [monsters]; they caused the living creatures of the [field] to come forth, the cattle of the field, the wild beasts of the field, and the creeping things of the [field]; [they fixed their habitations] for the living creatures [of the field] [and] adorned [the dwelling-places] of the cattle and creeping things of the city; [they created] the multitude of creeping things, all the offspring [of the earth]! xiii a sumerian account of the creation from the city of eridu the glorious temple, the temple of the gods, in the holy place (of eridu) had not yet been made; no reed had been brought forth, no tree had been created; no brick had been made, no roof had been formed; no house had been built, no city had been constructed; no city had been made, no dwelling-place prepared. nippur had not been built, e-kur (the temple of nippur) had not been constructed. erech had not been built, e-ana (the temple of erech) had not been constructed. the deep had not been created, eridu had not been constructed. the glorious temple, the temple of the gods, its seat had not been made. all lands were sea. when within the sea there arose a movement, on that day eridu was built, e-sagila was constructed, e-sagila where the god lugal-du-azaga dwells within the deep. babylon was built, e-sagila was completed. the gods and the spirits of the earth were created all together. the holy city (eridu), the seat of the joy of their hearts, they proclaimed supreme. merodach bound together a reed-bed on the waters; dust he made, and he poured it out on the reed-bed. that the gods might dwell in a seat of the joy of their hearts, he formed mankind. the goddess aruru created the seed of mankind along with him. he made the beasts of the field and the living creatures of the desert he made the tigris and euphrates and set them in their place; he declared their names to be good. the _ussu_-plant, the _dittu_-plant of the marshland, the reed and the forest he created. he created the verdure of the plain, the lands, the marshes, and the greensward also, oxen, and calves, the wild ox and its young, the sheep and the lamb, meadows and forests also. the he-goat and the gazelle brought forth (?) to him. then merodach heaped up an embankment at the edge of the sea; ... as it had not before been made, ... he caused it to exist. [bricks] he made in their place, ... roofs he constructed; [houses he built], cities he constructed; [cities he made], dwelling-places he prepared; [nippur he built], e-kur he constructed; [erech he built], e-ana he constructed. [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. lord's lectures beacon lights of history, volume ii jewish heroes and prophets. by john lord, ll.d., author of "the old roman world," "modern europe," etc., etc. contents. abraham. religious faith. abraham the spiritual father of nations general forgetfulness of god when abraham arose civilization in his age ancestors of abram his settlement in haran his moral courage the call of abram his migrations the canaanites abram in egypt separation between abram and lot melchizedek abram covenants with god the mission of the hebrews the faith of abram its peculiarities trials of faith god's covenant with abram the sacrifice of isaac paternal rights among oriental nations universality of sacrifice had abram a right to sacrifice isaac? supreme test of his faith his obedience to god his righteousness supremacy of religious faith abraham's defects the most favored of mortals the boons he bestowed joseph. israel in egypt. early days of joseph envy of his brethren sale of joseph its providential results fortunes of joseph in egypt the imprisonment of joseph favor with the king joseph prime minister the shepherd kings the service of joseph to the king famine in egypt power of pharaoh power of the priests character of the priests knowledge of the priests teachings of the priests egyptian gods antiquity of sacrifices civilization of egypt initiation of joseph in egyptian knowledge austerity to his brethren grief of jacob severity of the famine in canaan jacob allows the departure of benjamin joseph's partiality to benjamin his continued austerity to his brethren joseph at length reveals himself the kindness of pharaoh israel in egypt prosperity of the israelites old age of jacob his blessing to joseph's sons jacob's predictions death of jacob death of joseph character of joseph condition of the israelites in egypt rameses the great acquisitions of the israelites in egypt influence of egyptian civilization on the israelites moses. jewish jurisprudence exalted mission of moses his appearance at a great crisis his early advantages and education his premature ambition his retirement to the wilderness description of the land of midian studies and meditations of moses the book of genesis call of moses and return to egypt appearance before pharaoh miraculous deliverance of the israelites their sojourn in the wilderness the labors of moses his moral code universality of the obligations general acceptance of the ten commandments the foundation of the ritualistic laws utility of ritualism in certain states of society immortality seemingly ignored the possible reason of moses its relation to the religion of egypt the civil code of moses reasons for the isolation of the israelites the wisdom of the civil code source of the wisdom of moses the divine legation of moses logical consequences of its denial general character of moses his last days his influence samuel. israel under judges. condition of the israelites on the death of joshua the judges birth and youth of samuel the jewish theocracy eli and his sons samuel called to be judge his efforts to rekindle religious life the school of the prophets the people want a king views of samuel as to a change of government he tells the people the consequences persistency of the israelites condition of the nation saul privately anointed king clothed with regal power mistakes and wars of saul spares agag rebuked by samuel samuel withdraws into retirement seeks a successor to saul jehovah indicates the selection of david saul becomes proud and jealous his wars with the philistines great victory at michmash death of samuel universal mourning his character as prophet his moral greatness his transcendent influence david. israelitish conquests. david as an historical study early days of david his accomplishments his connection with saul his love for jonathan death of saul david becomes king death of abner david generally recognized as king makes jerusalem his capital alliance with hiram transfer of the sacred ark folly of david's wife organization of the kingdom joab commander-in-chief of the army the court of david his polygamy war with moab war with the ammonites conquest of the edomites bathsheba david's shame and repentance edward irving on david's fall its causes census of the people why this was a folly wickedness of david's children amnon alienation of david's subjects the famine in judah revolt of sheba adonijah seeks to steal the sceptre troubles and trials of david preparation for building the temple david's wealth his premature old age absalom's rebellion and death david's final labors his character as a man and a monarch why he was a man after god's own heart david's services his psalms their mighty influence solomon. glory of the monarchy. early years of solomon his first acts as monarch the prosperity of his kingdom glory of solomon his mistakes his marriage with an egyptian princess his harem building of the temple its magnificence the treasures accumulated in it its dedication the sacrifices in its honor extraordinary celebration of the festivals the royal palace in jerusalem the royal palace on mount lebanon excessive taxation of the people forced labor change of habits and pursuits solomon's effeminacy and luxury his unpopularity his latter days of shame his death character influence of his reign his writings their great value the canticles the proverbs praises of wisdom and knowledge ecclesiastes contrasted with proverbs cynicism of ecclesiastes hidden meaning of the book the writing of solomon rich in moral wisdom his wisdom confirmed by experience lessons to be learned by the career of solomon elijah. division of the kingdom. evil days fall on israel division of the kingdom under rehoboam jeroboam of israel sets up golden calves other innovations egypt attacks jerusalem city saved only by immense contribution interest centres in the northern kingdom ruled by bad kings given to idolatry under ahab influence of jezebel the priests of baal the apostasy of israel the prophet elijah his extraordinary appearance appears before ahab announces calamities flight of elijah the drought the woman of zarephath shields and feeds elijah he restores her son to life miseries of the drought elijah confronts ahab assembly of the people at mount carmel presentation of choice between jehovah and baal elijah mocks the priests of baal triumphs, and slays them elijah promises rain the tempest ahab seeks jezebel she threatens elijah in her wrath second flight of elijah his weakness and fear the still small voice selection of elisha to be prophet he becomes the companion of elijah character and appearance of elisha war between ahab and benhadad naboth and his vineyard chagrin and melancholy of ahab wickedness and cunning of jezebel murder of naboth dreadful rebuke of elijah despair of ahab athaliah and jehoshaphat death of ahab regency of jezebel ahaziah and elijah fall of ramoth-gilead reaction to idolatry jehu death of jezebel death of ahaziah the massacres and reforms of jehu extermination of idolatry last days of elijah his translation isaiah. national degeneracy. superiority of judah to israel a succession of virtuous princes syrian wars the prophet joel outward prosperity of the kingdom of judah internal decay assyrian conquests tiglath-pilneser fall of damascus fall of samaria demoralization of jerusalem birth of isaiah his exalted character invasion of judah by the assyrians hezekiah submits to sennacherib rebels anew renewed invasion of judah signal deliverance the warnings and preaching of isaiah his terrible denunciations of sin retribution the spirit of his preaching holding out hope by repentance absence of art in his writings national wickedness ending in calamities god's moral government isaiah's predictions fulfilled woes denounced on judah fall of babylon foretold predicted woes of moab woes denounced on egypt calamities of tyre general predictions of woe on other nations end and purpose of chastisements isaiah the prophet of hope the promised glories of the chosen people messianic promises exultation of isaiah his catholicity the promised reign of peace the future glories of the righteous glad tidings declared to the whole world messianic triumphs jeremiah. fall of jerusalem. sadness and greatness of jeremiah second as a prophet only to isaiah jeremiah the prophet of despair evil days in which he was born national misfortunes predicted idolatry the crying sin of the times discovery of the book of deuteronomy renewed study of the law the reforms of josiah the greatness of josiah inability to stem prevailing wickedness incompleteness of josiah's reforms necho ii. extends his conquests death of josiah lamentations on the death of josiah rapid decline of the kingdom the voice of jeremiah drowned invasion of assyria by necho shallum succeeds josiah eliakim succeeds shallum his follies judah's relapse into idolatry neglect of the sabbath jeremiah announces approaching calamity his voice unheeded his despondency fall of nineveh defeat and retreat of necho greatness of nebuchadnezzar appears before jerusalem fall of jerusalem, but destruction delayed folly and infatuation of the people of jerusalem revolt of the city zedekiah the king temporizes expostulations of jeremiah nebuchadnezzar loses patience second fall of jerusalem the captivity weeping by the river of babylon judas maccabaeus. restoration of the jewish commonwealth. eventful career of judas maccabaeus condition of the jews after their return from babylon condition of jerusalem fanatical hatred of idolatry severe morality of the jews after the captivity the pharisees the sadducees synagogues, their number and popularity the jewish sanhedrim advance in sacred literature apocryphal books isolation of the jews dark age of jewish history power of the high priests the persian empire judaea a province of the persian empire jews at alexandria judaea the battle-ground of egyptians and syrians the syrian kings antiochus epiphanes his persecution of the jews helplessness of the jews sack of jerusalem desecration of the temple mattathias his piety and bravery revolt of mattathias slaughter of the jews death of mattathias his gallant sons judas maccabaeus his military genius the syrian generals wrath of antiochus desolation of jerusalem judas defeats the syrian general judas cleanses and dedicates the temple fortifies jerusalem the feast of dedication renewed hostilities successes of judas death of antiochus deliverance of the jews rivalry between lysias and philip death of eleazer bacchides embassy to rome death of judas maccabaeus judas succeeded by his brother jonathan heroism of jonathan his death by treachery jonathan succeeded by his brother simon simon's military successes his prosperous administration succeeded by john hyrcanus the great talents and success of john hyrcanus the asmonean princes pompey takes jerusalem accession of herod the great he destroys the asmonean princes his prosperous reign foundation of caesarea latter days of herod loathsome death of herod birth of jesus, the christ saint paul. the spread of christianity. birth and early days of saul his phariseeism his persecution of the christians his wonderful conversion his leading idea saul a preacher at damascus saul's visit to jerusalem saul in tarsus saul and barnabas at antioch description of antioch contribution of the churches for jerusalem saul and barnabas at jerusalem labors and discouragements saul and barnabas at cyprus saul smites elymas the sorcerer missionary travels of paul paul converts timothy paul at lystra and derbe return of paul to antioch controversy about circumcision bigotry of the jewish converts paul again visits jerusalem paul and barnabas quarrel paul chooses silas for a companion paul and silas visit the infant churches tact of paul paul and luke the missionaries at philippi paul and silas at thessalonica paul at athens character of the athenians the success of paul at athens paul goes to corinth paul led before gallio mistake of gallio paul's epistle to the thessalonians paul at ephesus the temple of diana excessive labors of paul at ephesus paul's first epistle to the corinthians popularity of apollos second epistle to the corinthians paul again at corinth epistles to the galatians and to the romans the pauline theology paul's last visit to jerusalem his cold reception his arrest and imprisonment the trial of paul before felix character of felix paul kept a prisoner by felix paul's defence before festus paul appeals to caesar paul preaches before agrippa his voyage to italy paul's life at rome character of paul his magnificent services his triumphant death list of illustrations volume ii. the wailing wall of the jews _after the painting by j.l. gerome_. abraham and hagar _after the painting by adrian van der werff_. joseph sold by his brethren. _after the painting by h.f. schopin_. erection of public building in the time of rameses _after the painting by sir edward j. poynter_. pharaoh pursues the israelites across the red sea _after the painting by f.a. bridgman_. moses _from the statue by michael angelo, rome_. david kills goliath _after the painting by w.l. dodge_. david _from the statue by michael angelo, florence_. elijah's sacrifice consumed by fire from heaven _after the painting by c.g. pfannschmidt_. isaiah _from the fresco in the sistine chapel, by michael angelo_. a sacrifice to baal _after the painting by henri motte_. the jews led into babylonian captivity _after the painting by e. bendeman_. st. paul preaching at the foot of the acropolis _after the painting by gebhart fügel_. abraham. religious faith. from a religious point of view, abraham appears to us, after the lapse of nearly four thousand years, as the most august character in history. he may not have had the genius and learning of moses, nor his executive ability; but as a religious thinker, inspired to restore faith in the world and the worship of the one god, it would be difficult to find a man more favored or more successful. he is the spiritual father equally of jews, christians, and mohammedans, in their warfare with idolatry. in this sense, he is the spiritual progenitor of all those nations, tribes, and peoples who now acknowledge, or who may hereafter acknowledge, a personal god, supreme and eternal in the universe which he created. abraham is the religious father of all those who associate with this personal and supreme deity a providential oversight of this world,--a being whom all are required to worship, and alone to worship, as the only true god whose right it is to reign, and who does reign, and will reign forever and ever over everything that exists, animate or inanimate, visible or invisible, known or unknown, in the mighty universe of whose glory and grandeur we have such overwhelming yet indefinite conceptions. when abraham appeared, whether four thousand or five thousand years ago, for chronologists differ in their calculations, it would seem that the nations then existing had forgotten or ignored this great cardinal and fundamental truth, and were more or less given to idolatry, worshipping the heavenly bodies, or the forces of nature, or animals, or heroes, or graven images, or their own ancestors. there were but few and feeble remains of the primitive revelation,--that is, the faith cherished by the patriarchs before the flood, and which it would be natural to suppose noah himself had taught to his children. there was even then, however, a remarkable material civilization, especially in egypt, palestine, and babylon; for some of the pyramids had been built, the use of the metals, of weights and measures, and of textile fabrics was known. there were also cities and fortresses, cornfields and vineyards, agricultural implements and weapons of war, commerce and arts, musical instruments, golden vessels, ornaments for the person, purple dyes, spices, hand-made pottery, stone-engravings, sundials, and glass-work, and even the use of letters, or something similar, possibly transmitted from the antediluvian civilization. even the art of printing was almost discovered, as we may infer from the stamping of letters on tiles. with all this material progress, however, there had been a steady decline in spiritual religion as well as in morals,--from which fact we infer that men if left to themselves, whatever truth they may receive from ancestors, will, without supernatural influences, constantly decline in those virtues on which the strength of man is built, and without which the proudest triumphs of the intellect avail nothing. the grandest civilization, in its material aspects, may coexist with the utmost debasement of morals,--as seen among the greeks and romans, and in the wicked capitals of modern europe. "there is no god!" or "let there be no god!" has been the cry in all ages of the world, whenever and wherever an impious pride or a low morality has defied or silenced conscience. tell me, ye rationalists and agnostics! with your pagan sympathies, what mean ye by laws of development, and by the _necessary_ progress of the human race, except in the triumphs of that kind of knowledge which is entirely disconnected with virtue, and which has proved powerless to prevent the decline and fall of nations? why did not art, science, philosophy, and literature save the most lauded nations of the ancient world? why so rapid a degeneracy among people favored not only with a primitive revelation, but by splendid triumphs of reason and knowledge? why did gross superstition so speedily obscure the intellect, and infamous vices so soon undermine the moral health, if man can elevate himself by his unaided strength? why did error seemingly prove as vital as truth in all the varied forms of civilization in the ancient world? why did even tradition fail to keep alive the knowledge of god, at least among the people? now, among pagans and idolaters abram (as he was originally called) lived until he was seventy-five. his father, terah, was a descendant of shem, of the eleventh generation, and the original seat of his tribe was among the mountains of southern armenia, north of assyria. from thence terah migrated to the plains of mesopotamia, probably with the desire to share the rich pastures of the lowlands, and settled in ur of the chaldeans. ur was one of the most ancient of the chaldean cities and one of the most splendid, where arts and sciences were cultivated, where astronomers watched the heavens, poets composed hymns, and scribes stamped on clay tablets books which, according to geikie, have in part come down to our own times. it was in this pagan city that abram was born, and lived until the "call." his father was a worshipper of the tutelary gods of his tribe, of which he was the head; but his idolatry was not so degrading as that of the chaldeans, who belonged to a different race from his own, being the descendants of ham, among whom the arts and sciences had made considerable progress,--as was natural, since what we call civilization arose, it is generally supposed, in the powerful monarchies founded by assyrian and egyptian warriors, although it is claimed that both china and india were also great empires at this period. with the growth of cities and the power of kings idolatry increased, and the knowledge of the true god declined. from such influences it was necessary that abram should be removed if he was to found a nation with a monotheistic belief. so, in obedience to a call from god, he left the city of his birthplace, and went toward the land of canaan and settled in haran, where he remained until the death of his father, who it seems had accompanied him in his wanderings, but was probably too infirm to continue the fatiguing journey. abram, now the head of his tribe and doubtless a powerful chieftain, received another call, and with it the promise that he should be the founder of a great nation, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed. what was that call, coupled with such a magnificent and cheering promise? it was the voice of god commanding abram to leave country and kindred and go to a country utterly unknown to him, not even indicated to him, but which in due time should be revealed to him. he is not called to repudiate idolatry, but by divine command to go to an unknown country. he must have been already a believer in the one supreme god, or he would not have felt the command to be imperative. unless his belief had been monotheistic, we must attribute to him a marvellous genius and striking originality of mind, together with an independence of character still more remarkable; for it requires not only original genius to soar beyond popular superstitions, but also great force of will and lofty intrepidity to break away from them,--as when buddha renounced brahmanism, or socrates ridiculed the sophists of attica. nothing requires more moral courage than the renunciation of a popular and generally received religious belief. it was a hard struggle for luther to give up the ideas of the middle ages in reference to self-expiation. it is exceedingly rare for any one to be emancipated from the tyranny of prevailing dogmas. so, if abram was not divinely instructed in a way that implies supernatural illumination, he must have been the most remarkable sage of all antiquity to found a religion never abrogated by succeeding revelations, which has lasted from his time to ours, and is to-day embraced by so large a part of the human race, including christians, mohammedans, and jews. abram must have been more gifted than the whole school of ionian philosophers united, from thales downward, since after three hundred years of speculation and lofty inquiries they only arrived at the truth that the being who controls the universe must be intelligent. even socrates, plato, and cicero--the most gifted men of classical antiquity--had very indefinite notions of the unity and personality of god, while abram distinctly recognized this great truth even amid universal idolatry and a degrading polytheism. yet the bible recognizes in abram moral rather than intellectual greatness. he was distinguished for his faith, and a faith so exalted and pure that it was accounted unto him for righteousness. his faith in god was so profound that it was followed by unhesitating obedience to god's commands. he was ready to go wherever he was sent, instantly, without conditions or remonstrance. in obedience to the divine voice then, abram, after the death of his father terah, passed through the land of canaan unto sichem, or shechem, afterward a city of samaria. he then went still farther south, and pitched his tent on a mountain having bethel on the west and hai on the east, and there he built an altar unto the lord. after this it would appear that he proceeded still farther to the south, probably near the northern part of idumaea. wherever abram journeyed he found the canaanites--descendants of ham--petty tribes or nations, governed by kings no more powerful than himself. they are supposed in their invasions to have conquered the aboriginal inhabitants, whose remote origin is veiled in impenetrable obscurity, but who retained some principles of the primitive religion. it is even possible that melchizedek, the unconquered king of salem, who blessed abram, belonged to those original people who were of semitic origin. nevertheless the canaanites, or hametic tribes, were at this time the dominant inhabitants. of these tribes or nations the sidonians, or phoenicians, were the most powerful. next to them, according to ewald, "were three nations living toward the south,--the hittites, the jebusites, and the amorites; then two in the most northerly country conquered by israel,--the girgashites and the hivites; then four in phoenicia; and lastly, the most northern of all, the well known kingdom of hamath on the orontes." the jebusites occupied the country around jerusalem; the amorites also dwelt in the mountainous regions, and were warlike and savage, like the ancient highlanders of scotland. they entrenched themselves in strong castles. the hittites, or children of heth, were on the contrary peaceful, having no fortified cities, but dwelling in the valleys, and living in well-ordered communities. the hivites dwelt in the middle of the country, and were also peaceful, having reached a considerable civilization, and being in the possession of the most flourishing inland cities. the philistines entered the land at a period subsequent to the other canaanites, probably after abram, coming it is supposed from crete. it would appear that abram was not molested by these various petty canaanitish nations, that he was hospitably received by them, that he had pleasant relations with them, and even entered into their battles as an ally or protector. nor did abram seek to conquer territory. powerful as he was, he was still a pilgrim and a wanderer, journeying with his servants and flocks wherever the lord called him; and hence he excited no jealousy and provoked no hostilities. he had not long been settled quietly with his flocks and herds before a famine arose in the land, and he was forced to seek subsistence in egypt, then governed by the shepherd kings called hyksos, who had driven the proud native monarch reigning at memphis to the southern part of the kingdom, in the vicinity of thebes. abram was well received at the court of the pharaohs, until he was detected in a falsehood in regard to his wife, whom he passed as his sister. he was then sent away with all that he had, together with his nephew lot. returning to the land of canaan, abram came to the place where he had before pitched his tent, between bethel and hai, unto the altar which he had some time before erected, and called upon the name of the lord. but the land was not rich enough to support the flocks and herds of both abram and lot, and there arose a strife between their respective herdsmen; so the patriarch and his nephew separated, lot choosing for his residence the fertile plain of the jordan, and abram remaining in the land of canaan. it was while sojourning at bethel that the lord appeared again unto abram, and promised to him the whole land as a future possession of his posterity. after that he removed his tent to the plain of mamre, near or in hebron, and again erected an altar to his god. here abram remained in true patriarchal dignity without further migrations, abounding in wealth and power, and able to rescue his nephew lot from the hands of chedorlaomer the king of elam, and from the other oriental monarchs who joined his forces, pursuing them even to damascus. for this signal act of heroism abram was blessed by melchizedek, in the name of their common lord the most high god. who was this prince of salem? was he an earthly potentate ruling an unconquered city of the aboriginal inhabitants; or was he a mysterious personage, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning nor end of days, nor end of life, but made like unto the son of god, an incarnation of the deity, to repeat the blessing which the patriarch had already received? the history of abram until his supreme trial seems principally to have been repeated covenants with god, and the promises held out of the future greatness of his descendants. the greatness of the israelitish nation, however, was not to be in political ascendancy, nor in great attainments in the arts and sciences, nor in cities and fortresses and chariots and horses, nor in that outward splendor which would attract the gaze of the world, and thus provoke conquests and political combinations and grand alliances and colonial settlements, by which the capital on zion's hill would become another rome, or tyre, or carthage, or athens, or alexandria,--but quite another kind of greatness. it was to be moral and spiritual rather than material or intellectual, the centre of a new religious life, from which theistic doctrines were to go forth and spread for the healing of the nations,--all to culminate, when the proper time should come, in the mission of jesus christ, and in his teachings as narrated and propagated by his disciples. this was the grand destiny of the hebrew race; and for the fulfilment of this end they were located in a favored country, separated from other nations by mountains, deserts, and seas, and yet capable by cultivation of sustaining a great population, while they were governed by a polity tending to keep them a distinct, isolated, and peculiar people. to the descendants of ham and japhet were given cities, political power, material civilization; but in the tents of shem religion was to dwell. "from first to last," says geikie, "the intellect of the hebrew dwelt supremely on the matters of his faith. the triumphs of the pencil or the chisel he left with contemptuous indifference to egypt, or assyria, or greece. nor had the jew any such interest in religious philosophy as has marked other people. the aryan nations, both east and west, might throw themselves with ardor into those high questions of metaphysics, but he contented himself with the utterances of revelation. the world may have inherited no advances in political science from the hebrew, no great epic, no school of architecture, no high lessons in philosophy, no wide extension of human thought or knowledge in any secular direction; but he has given it his religion. to other races we owe the splendid inheritance of modern civilization and secular culture, but the religious education of mankind has been the gift of the jew alone." for this end abram was called to the land of canaan. from this point of view alone we see the blessing and the promise which were given to him. in this light chiefly he became a great benefactor. he gave a religion to the world; at least he established its fundamental principle,--the worship of the only true god. "if we were asked," says max müller, "how it was that abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the divinity, as he has revealed himself to all mankind, but passed, through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the one god, we are content to answer that it was by a _special divine revelation_." [1] [footnote 1: chips from a german workshop, vol. i. p. 372.] if the greatness of the jewish race was spiritual rather than temporal, so the real greatness of abraham was in his faith. faith is a sentiment or a principle not easily defined. but be it intuition, or induction, or deduction,--supported by reason, or without reason,--whatever it is, we know what it means. the faith of abraham, which saint paul so urgently commends, the same in substance as his own faith in jesus christ, stands out in history as so bright and perfect that it is represented as the foundation of religion itself, without which it is impossible to please god, and with which one is assured of divine favor, with its attendant blessings. if i were to analyze it, i should say that it is a perfect trust in god, allied with obedience to his commands. with this sentiment as the supreme rule of life, abraham is always prepared to go wherever the way is indicated. he has no doubts, no questionings, no scepticism. he simply adores the lord almighty, as the object of his supreme worship, and is ready to obey his commands, whether he can comprehend the reason of them or not. he needs no arguments to confirm his trust or stimulate his obedience. and this is faith,--an ultimate principle that no reasonings can shake or strengthen. this faith, so sublime and elevated, needs no confirmation, and is not made more intelligent by any definitions. if the _cogito, ergo sum_, is an elemental and ultimate principle of philosophy, so the faith of abraham is the fundamental basis of all religion, which is weakened rather than strengthened by attempts to define it. all definitions of an ultimate principle are vain, since everybody understands what is meant by it. no truly immortal man, no great benefactor, can go through life without trials and temptations, either to test his faith or to establish his integrity. even jesus christ himself was subjected for forty days to the snares of the devil. abram was no exception to this moral discipline. he had two great trials to pass through before he could earn the title of "father of the faithful,"--first, in reference to the promise that he should have legitimate children; and secondly, in reference to the sacrifice of isaac. as to the first, it seemed impossible that abram should have issue through his wife sarah, she being ninety years of age, and he ninety-nine or one hundred. the very idea of so strange a thing caused sarah to laugh incredulously, and it is recorded in the seventeenth chapter of genesis that abram also fell on his face and laughed, saying in his heart, "shall a son be born unto him that is one hundred years old?" evidently he at first received the promise with some incredulity. he could leave ur of the chaldees by divine command,--this was an act of obedience; but he did not fully believe in what seemed to be against natural law, which would be a sort of faith without evidence, blind, against reason. he requires some sign from god. "whereby," said he, "shall i _know_ that i shall inherit it,"--that is canaan,--"and that my seed shall be in number as the stars of heaven?" then followed the renewal of the covenant; and, according to the frequent custom of the times, when covenants were made between individual men, abram took a new name: "and god talked with him, saying, as for me, behold my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. neither shall thy name be any more abram [father of elevation] but thy name shall be abraham [father of a multitude], for a father of many nations have i made thee." we observe that the covenant was repeatedly renewed; in connection with which was the rite of circumcision, which abraham and his posterity, and even his servants, were required scrupulously to observe, and which it would appear he unreluctantly did observe as an important condition of the covenant. why this rite was so imperatively commanded we do not know, neither can we understand why it was so indissolubly connected with the covenant between god and abraham. we only know that it was piously kept, not only by abraham himself, but by his descendants from generation to generation, and became one of the distinctive marks and peculiarities of the jewish nation,--the sign of the promise that in abraham all the families of the earth should be blessed,--a promise fulfilled even in the patriarchal monotheism of arabia, the distant tribes of which, under mohammed, accepted the one supreme god. a still more serious test of the faith of abraham was the sacrifice of isaac, on whose life all his hopes naturally rested. we are told that god "tempted," or tested, the obedient faith of abraham, by suggesting to him that it was his duty to sacrifice that only son as a burnt-offering, to prove how utterly he trusted the lord's promise; for if isaac were cut off, where was another legitimate heir to be found? abraham was then one hundred and twenty years old, and his wife was one hundred and ten. moreover, on principles of reason why should such a sacrifice be demanded? it was not only apparently against reason, but against nature, against every sacred instinct, against humanity, even an act of cruelty,--yea, more, a crime, since it was homicide, without any seeming necessity. besides, everybody has a right to his own life, unless he has forfeited it by crime against society. isaac was a gentle, harmless, interesting youth of twenty, and what right, by any human standard, had abraham to take his life? it is true that by patriarchal customs and laws isaac belonged to abraham as much as if he were a slave or an animal. he had the oriental right to do with his son as he pleased. the head of a family had not only absolute control over wife and children, but the power of life and death. and this absolute power was not exercised alone by semitic races, but also by the aryan in their original settlements, in greece and italy, as well as in northern india. all the early institutions of society recognized this paternal right. hence the moral sense of abraham was not apparently shocked at the command of god, since his son was his absolute property. even isaac made no resistance, since he knew that abraham had a right to his life. moreover, we should remember that sacrifices to all objects of worship formed the basis of all the religious rites of the ancient world, in all periods of its history. human sacrifices were offered in india at the very period when abraham was a wanderer in palestine; and though human nature ultimately revolted from this cruelty, the sacrifice of substitute-animals continued from generation to generation as oblations to the gods, and is still continued by brahminical priests. in china, in egypt, in assyria, in greece, no religious rites were perfected without sacrifices. even in the mosaic ritual, sacrifices by the priests formed no inconsiderable part of worship. not until the time of isaiah was it said that god took no delight in burnt offerings,--that the real sacrifices which he requires are a broken and a contrite heart. nor were the jews finally emancipated from sacrificial rites until christ himself made his own body an offering for the sins of the world, and in god's providence the romans destroyed their temple and scattered their nation. in antiquity there was no objective worship of the deity without sacrificial rites, and when these were omitted or despised there was atheism,--as in the case of buddha, who taught morals rather than religion. perhaps the oldest and most prevalent religious idea of antiquity was the necessity of propitiatory sacrifice,--generally of animals, though in remotest ages the offering of the fruits of the earth.[2] [footnote 2: dr. trumbull has made a learned and ingenious argument in his "blood covenant" to show that sacrifices were not to propitiate the deity, but to bring about a closer spiritual union between the soul and god; that the blood covenant was a covenant of friendship and love among all primitive peoples.] the inquiry might here arise, whether in our times anything would justify a man in committing a homicide on an innocent person. would he not be called a fanatic? if so, we may infer that morality--the proper conduct of men as regards one another in social relations--is better understood among us than it was among the patriarchs four thousand years ago; and hence, that as nations advance in civilization they have a more enlightened sense of duty, and practically a higher morality. men in patriarchal times may have committed what we regard as crimes, while their ordinary lives were more virtuous than ours. and if so, should we not be lenient to immoralities and crimes committed in darker ages, if the ordinary current of men's lives was lofty and religious? on this principle we should be slow to denounce christian people who formerly held slaves without remorse, when this sin did not shock the age in which they lived, and was not discrepant with prevailing ideas as to right and wrong. it is clear that in patriarchal times men had, according to universally accepted ideas, the power of life and death over their families, which it would be absurd and wicked to claim in our day, with our increased light as to moral distinctions. hence, on the command of god to slay his son, abraham had no scruples on the ground of morality; that is, he did not feel that it was wrong to take his son's life if god commanded him to do so, any more than it would be wrong, if required, to slay a slave or an animal, since both were alike his property. had he entertained more enlightened views as to the sacredness of life, he might have felt differently. with his views, god's command did not clash with his conscience. still, the sacrifice of isaac was a terrible shock to abraham's paternal affection. the anguish of his soul was none the less, whether he had the right of life and death or not. he was required to part with the dearest thing he had on earth, in whom was bound up his earthly happiness. what had he to live for, but isaac? he doubtless loved this child of his old age with exceeding tenderness, devotion, and intensity; and what was perhaps still more weighty, in that day of polygamous households, than mere paternal affection, with isaac were identified all the hopes and promises which had been held out to abraham by god himself of becoming the father of a mighty and favored race. his affection as a father was strained to its utmost tension, but yet more was his faith in being the progenitor of offspring that should inherit the land of canaan. nevertheless, at god's command he was willing to make the sacrifice, "accounting that god is able to raise up, even from the dead." was there ever such a supreme act of obedience in the history of our race? has there ever been from his time to ours such a transcendent manifestation of faith? by reason abraham saw the foundation of his hopes utterly swept away; and yet his faith towers above reason, and he feels that the divine promises in some way will be fulfilled. did any man of genius ever conceive such an illustration of blended piety and obedience? has dramatic poetry ever created such a display of conflicting emotions? is it possible for a human being to transcend so mighty a sacrifice, and all by the power of faith? let those philosophers and theologians who aspire to define faith, and vainly try to reconcile it with reason, learn modesty and wisdom from the lesson of abraham, who is its great exponent, and be content with the definition of paul, himself, that it is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen;" that reason was in abraham's case subordinate to a loftier and grander principle,--even a firm conviction, which nothing could shake, of the accomplishment of an end against all probabilities and mortal calculations, resting solely on a divine promise. another remarkable thing about that memorable sacrifice is, that abraham does not expostulate or hesitate, but calmly and resolutely prepares for the slaughter of the innocent and unresisting victim, suppressing all the while his feelings as a father in obedience and love to the sovereign of heaven and earth, whose will is his supreme law. "and abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon isaac his son," who was compelled as it were to bear his own cross. and he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and isaac said, "behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" yet suffered himself to be bound by his father on the altar. and abraham then stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. at this supreme moment of his trial, he heard the angel of the lord calling upon him out of heaven and saying, "abraham! abraham! lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him; for now i know that thou fearest god, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.... and abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering instead of his son. and the angel of the lord called unto abraham a second time out of heaven and said, by myself have i sworn, saith the lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing i will bless thee, and in multiplying i will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand upon the seashore, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice." there are no more recorded promises to abraham, no more trials of his faith. his righteousness was established, and he was justified before god. his subsequent life was that of peace, prosperity, and exaltation. he lives to the end in transcendent repose with his family and vast possessions. his only remaining solicitude is for a suitable wife for isaac, concerning whom there is nothing remarkable in gifts or fortunes, but who maintains the faith of his father, and lives like him in patriarchal dignity and opulence. the great interest we feel in abraham is as "the father of the faithful," as a model of that exalted sentiment which is best defined and interpreted by his own trials and experiences; and hence i shall not dwell on the well known incidents of his life outside the varied calls and promises by which he became the most favored man in human annals. it was his faith which made him immortal, and with which his name is forever associated. it is his religious faith looming up, after four thousand years, for our admiration and veneration which is the true subject of our meditation. this, i think, is distinct from our ordinary conception of faith, such as a belief in the operation of natural laws, in the return of the seasons, in the rewards of virtue, in the assurance of prosperity with due regard to the conditions of success. faith in a friend, in a nation's future, in the triumphs of a good cause, in our own energies and resources _is_, i grant, necessarily connected with reason, with wide observation and experience, with induction, with laws of nature and of mind. but religious faith is supreme trust in an unseen god and supreme obedience to his commands, without any other exercise of reason than the intuitive conviction that what he orders is right because he orders it, whether we can fathom his wisdom or not. "canst thou by searching find out him?" yet notwithstanding the exalted faith of abraham, by which all religious faith is tested, an eternal pattern and example for our reverence and imitation, the grand old man deceived both pharaoh and abimelech, and if he did not tell positive lies, he uttered only half truths, for sarah was a half sister; and thus he put expediency and policy above moral rectitude,--to be palliated indeed in his case by the desire to preserve his wife from pollution. yet this is the only blot on his otherwise reproachless character, marked by so many noble traits that he may be regarded as almost perfect. his righteousness was as memorable as his faith, living in the fear of god. how noble was his disinterestedness in giving to lot the choice of lands for his family and his flocks and his cattle! how brave was he in rescuing his kinsman from the hands of conquering kings! how lofty in refusing any remuneration for his services! how fervent were his intercessions with the almighty for the preservation of the cities of the plain! how hospitable his mode of life, as when he entertained angels unawares! how kind he was to hagar when she had incurred the jealousy of sarah! how serene and dignified and generous he was, the model of courtesy and kindness! with abraham we associate the supremest happiness which an old man can attain unto and enjoy. he was prosperous, rich, powerful, and favored in every way; but the chief source of his happiness was the superb consciousness that he was to be the progenitor of a mighty and numerous progeny, through whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. how far his faith was connected with temporal prosperity we cannot tell. prosperity seems to have been the blessing of the old testament, as adversity was the blessing of the new. but he was certain of this,--that his descendants would possess ultimately the land of canaan, and would be as numerous as the stars of heaven. he was certain that in some mysterious way there would come from his race something that would be a blessing to mankind. was it revealed to his exultant soul what this blessing should be? did this old patriarch cast a prophetic eye beyond the ages, and see that the promise made to him was spiritual rather than material, pertaining to the final triumph of truth and righteousness?--that the unity of god, which he taught to isaac and perhaps to ishmael, was to be upheld by his race alone among prevailing idolatries, until the saviour should come to reveal a new dispensation and finally draw all men unto him? did abraham fully realize what a magnificent nation the israelites should become,--not merely the rulers of western asia under david and solomon, but that even after their final dispersion they should furnish ministers to kings, scholars to universities, and dictators to legislative halls,--an unconquerable race, powerful even after the vicissitudes and humiliations of four thousand years? did he realize fully that from his descendants should arise the religious teachers of mankind,--not only the prophets and sages of the old testament, but the apostles and martyrs of the new,--planting in every land the seeds of the everlasting gospel, which should finally uproot all brahminical self-expiations, all buddhistic reveries, all the speculations of greek philosophers, all the countless forms of idolatry, polytheism, pantheism, and pharisaism on this earth, until every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that jesus christ is lord, to the glory of god the father? yet such were the boons granted to abraham, as the reward of faith and obedience to the one true god,--the vital principle without which religion dies into superstition, with which his descendants were inspired not only to nationality and civil coherence, but to the highest and noblest teachings the world has received from any people, and by which his name is forever linked with the spiritual progress and happiness of mankind. joseph. israel in egypt. no one in his senses would dream of adding anything to the story of joseph, as narrated in genesis, whether it came from the pen of moses or from some subsequent writer. it is a masterpiece of historical composition, unequalled in any literature sacred or profane, in ancient or modern times, for its simplicity, its pathos, its dramatic power, and its sustained interest. nor shall i attempt to paraphrase or re-tell it, save by way of annotation and illustration of subjects connected with it, having reference to the subsequent development of the jewish nation and character. joseph, the great-grandson of abraham, was born at haran in mesopotamia, probably during the xviii. century b.c., when his father jacob was in the service of laban the syrian. there was nothing remarkable in his career until he was sold as a slave by his unnatural and jealous brothers. he was the favorite son of the patriarch jacob, by his beloved rachel, being the youngest, except benjamin, of a large family of twelve sons,--a beautiful and promising youth, with qualities which peculiarly called out the paternal affections. in the inordinate love and partiality of jacob for this youth he gave to him, by way of distinction, a decorated tunic, such as was worn only by the sons of princes. the half-brothers of joseph were filled with envy in view of this unwise step on the part of their common father,--a proceeding difficult to be reconciled with his politic and crafty nature; and their envy ripened into hostility when joseph, with the frankness of youth, narrated his dreams, which signified his future pre-eminence and the humiliation of his brothers. nor were his dreams altogether pleasing to his father, who rebuked him with this indignant outburst of feeling: "shall i and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee on the earth?" but while the father pondered, the brothers were consumed with hatred, for envy is one of the most powerful passions that move the human soul, and is malignant in its developments. strange to say, it is most common in large families and among those who pass for friends. we do not envy prosperous enemies with the virulence we feel for prosperous relatives, who theoretically are our equals. nor does envy cease until inequality has become so great as to make rivalry preposterous: a subject does not envy his king, or his generally acknowledged superior. envy may even give place to respect and deference when the object of it has achieved fame and conceded power. relatives who begin with jealousy sometimes end as worshippers, but not until extraordinary merit, vast wealth, or overtopping influence are universally conceded. conceive of napoleon's brothers envying the great emperor, or webster's the great statesman, or grant's the great general, although the passion may have lurked in the bosoms of political rivals and military chieftains. but one thing certainly extinguishes envy; and that is death. hence the envy of joseph's brothers, after they had sold him to a caravan of ishmaelite merchants, was succeeded by remorse and shame. their murmurings passed into lies. they could not tell their broken-hearted father of their crime; they never told him. jacob was led to suppose that his favorite son was devoured by wild beasts; they added deceit and cowardice to a depraved heartlessness, and nearly brought down the gray hairs of their father to the grave. no subsequent humiliation or punishment could be too severe for such wickedness. although they were destined to become the heads of powerful tribes, even of the chosen people of god, these men have incurred the condemnation of all ages. but judah and reuben do not come in for unlimited censure, since these sons of leah sought to save their brother from a violent death; and subsequently in egypt judah looms up as a magnanimous character, whom we admire almost as much as we do joseph himself. what can be more eloquent than his defence of benjamin, and his appeal to what seemed to him to be an egyptian potentate! the sale of joseph as a slave is one of the most signal instances of the providence of god working by natural laws recorded in all history,--more marked even than the elevation of esther and mordecai. in it we see permission of evil and its counteraction,--its conversion into good; victory over evil, over conspiracy, treachery, and murderous intent. and so marked is this lesson of a superintending providence over all human action, that a wise and good man can see wars and revolutions and revolting crimes with almost philosophical complacency, knowing that out of destruction proceeds creation; that the wrath of man is always overruled; that the love of god is the brightest and clearest and most consoling thing in the universe. we cannot interpret history without the recognition of this fundamental truth. we cannot be unmoved amid the prevalence of evil without this feeling, that god is more powerful than all the combined forces of his enemies both on earth and in hell; and that no matter what the evil is, it will surely be made to praise him who sitteth in the heavens. this is a sublime revelation of the omnipotence and benevolence of a personal god, of his constant oversight of the world which he has made. the protection and elevation of joseph, seemingly a natural event in view of his genius and character, is in some respects a type of that great sacrifice by which a sinful world has been redeemed. little did the jews suspect when they crucified jesus that he would arise from his tomb and overturn the idolatries of nations, and found a religion which should go on from conquering to conquer. little did the gifted burke see in the atrocities of the french revolution the overturning of a system of injustices which for centuries had cried to heaven for vengeance. still less did the proud and conservative citizens of new england recognize in the cruelties of southern slaveholders a crime which would provoke one of the bloodiest wars of modern times, and lead to the constitutional and political equality of the whites and blacks. evil appeared to triumph, but ended in the humiliation of millions and the enfranchisement of humanity, when the cause of the right seemed utterly hopeless. so let every one write upon all walls and houses and chambers, upon his conscience and his intellect, "the lord god omnipotent reigneth, and will bring good out of the severest tribulation!" and this great truth applies not to nations alone, but to the humblest individual, as he bows down in grief or wrath or penitence to unlooked-for chastisement,--like job upon his heap of ashes, or the broken-hearted mother when afflicted with disease or poverty, or the misconduct or death of children. there is no wisdom, no sound philosophy, no religion, and no happiness until this truth is recognized in all the changes and relations of life. the history of joseph in egypt in all his varied fortunes is, as i have said, a most memorable illustration of this cardinal and fundamental truth. a favorite of fortune, he is sold as a slave for less than twenty dollars of our money, and is brought to a foreign country,--a land oppressed by kings and priests, yet in which is a high civilization, in spite of social and political degradation. he is resold to a high official of the egyptian court, probably on account of his beauty and intelligence. he rises in the service of this official,--captain of the royal guard, or, as the critics tell us, superintendent of the police and prisons,--for he has extraordinary abilities and great integrity, character as well as natural genius, until he is unjustly accused of a meditated crime by a wicked woman. it is evident that potiphar, his master, only half believes in joseph's guilt, in spite of the protestations of his artful and profligate wife, since instead of summarily executing him, as ahasuerus did haman, he simply sends him to a mild and temporary imprisonment in the prison adjacent to his palace. here joseph wins the favor of his jailers and of his brother prisoners, as paul did nearly two thousand years later, and shows remarkable gifts, even to the interpretation of dreams,--a wonderful faculty to superstitious people like the egyptians, and in which he exceeds even their magicians and priests. the fame of his rare gifts, the most prized in egypt, reaches at last the ears of pharaoh, who is troubled by a singular dream which no one of his learned men can interpret. the hebrew slave interprets it, and is magnificently rewarded, becoming the prime minister of an absolute monarch. the king gives him his signet ring, emblem of power, and a collar or chain of gold, the emblem of the highest rank; clothes him in a vestment of fine linen, makes him ride in his second chariot, and appoints him ruler over the land, second only to the king in power and rank. and, further, he gives to him in marriage the daughter of the high priest of on, by which he becomes connected with the priesthood. joseph deserves all the honor and influence he receives, for he saves the kingdom from a great calamity. he predicts seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, and points out the remedy. according to tradition, the monarch whom he served was apepi, the last shepherd king, during whose reign slaves were very numerous. the king himself had a vast number, as well as the nobles. foreign slaves were preferred to native ones, and wars were carried on for the chief purpose of capturing and selling captives. the sacred narrative says but little of the government of egypt by a hebrew slave, or of his abilities as a ruler,--virtually supreme in the land, since pharaoh delegates to him his own authority, persuaded both of his fidelity and his abilities. it is difficult to understand how joseph arose at a single bound to such dignity and power, under a proud and despotic king, and in the face of all the prejudices of the egyptian priesthood and nobility, except through the custom of all oriental despots to gratify the whim of the moment,--like the one who made his horse prime minister. but nothing short of transcendent talents and transcendent services can account for his retention of office and his marked success. joseph was then thirty years of age, having served potiphar ten years, and spent two or three years in prison. this all took place, as some now suppose, shortly after 1700 b.c., under the dynasty of the hyksos or shepherd kings, who had conquered the kingdom about three hundred years before. their capital was memphis, near the pyramids, which had been erected several centuries earlier by the older and native dynasties. rawlinson supposes that tanis on the delta was the seat of their court. conquered by the hyksos, the old kings retreated to their other capital, thebes, and were probably made tributary to the conquerors. it was by the earlier and later dynasties that the magnificent temples and palaces were built, whose ruins have so long been the wonder of travellers. the shepherd kings were warlike, and led their armies from scythia,--that land of roving and emigrant warriors,--or, as ewald thinks, from the land of canaan: aramaean chieftains, who sought the spoil of the richest monarchy in the world. hence there was more affinity between these people and the hebrews than between them and the ancient egyptians, who were the descendants of ham. abraham, when he visited egypt, found it ruled by these scythian or aramaean warriors, which accounts for the kind and generous treatment he received. it is not probable that a monarch of the ancient dynasties would have been so courteous to abraham, or would have elevated joseph to such an exalted rank, for they were jealous of strangers, and hated a pastoral people. it was only under the rule of the hyksos that the hebrews could have been tolerated and encouraged; for as soon as the shepherd kings were expelled by the pharaohs who reigned at thebes, as the moors were expelled from spain by the old castilian princes, it fared ill with the descendants of jacob, and they were bitterly and cruelly oppressed until the exodus under moses. prosperity probably led the hyksos conquerors to that fatal degeneracy which is unfavorable to war, while adversity strengthened the souls of the descendants of the ancient kings, and enabled them to subdue and drive away their invaders and conquerors. and yet the hyksos could not have ruled egypt had they not adapted themselves to the habits, religion, and prejudices of the people they subdued. the pharaoh who reigned at the time of joseph belonged like his predecessors to the sacerdotal caste, and worshipped the gods of the egyptians. but he was not jealous of the hebrews, and fully appreciated the genius of joseph. the wisdom of joseph as ruler of the land destined to a seven years' famine was marked by foresight as well as promptness in action. he personally visited the various provinces, advising the people to husband their harvests. but as all people are thoughtless and improvident, he himself gathered up and stored all the grain which could be spared, and in such vast quantities that he ceased to measure it. at last the predicted famine came, as the nile had not risen to its usual height; but the royal granaries were full, since all the surplus wheat--about a fifth of the annual produce--had been stored away; not purchased by joseph, but exacted as a tax. nor was this exaction unreasonable in view of the emergency. under the bourbon kings of france more than one half of the produce of the land was taken by the government and the feudal proprietors without compensation, and that not in provision for coming national trouble, but for the fattening of the royal purse. joseph exacted only a fifth as a sort of special tax, less than the present italian government exacts from all landowners. very soon the famine pressed upon the egyptian people, for they had no corn in reserve; the reserve was in the hands of the government. but this reserve joseph did not deal out gratuitously, as the roman government, under the emperors, dealt out food to the citizens. he made the people pay for their bread, and took their money and deposited it in the royal treasury. when after two years their money was all spent, it was necessary to resort to barter, and cattle were given in exchange for corn, by which means the king became possessed of all the personal property of his subjects. as famine pressed, the people next surrendered their land to avoid starvation,--all but the priests. pharaoh thus became absolute proprietor of the whole country; of money, cattle, and land,--an unprecedented surrender, which would have produced a wide-spread disaffection and revolt, had it not been that joseph, after the famine was past and the earth yielded its accustomed harvest, exacted only one-fifth of the produce of the land for the support of the government, which could not be regarded as oppressive. as the king thus became absolute proprietor of egypt by consent of the people, whom he had saved from starvation through the wisdom and energy of his prime minister, it is probable that later a new division of land took place, it being distributed among the people generally in small farms, for which they paid as rent a fifth of their produce. the gratitude of the people was marked: "thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the eyes of my lord, and we will be pharaoh's slaves." since the time of christ there have been two similar famines recorded,--one in the eleventh century, lasting, like joseph's, seven years; and the other in the twelfth century, of which the most distressing details are given, even to the extreme desperation of cannibalism. the same cause originated both,--the failure of the nile overflow. out of the sacred river came up for egypt its fat kine and its lean,--its blessings and its curses. the price exacted by joseph for the people's salvation made the king more absolute than before, since all were thus made dependent on the government. this absolute rule of the kings, however, was somewhat modified by ancient customs, and by the vast influence of the priesthood, to which the king himself belonged. the priests of egypt, under all the dynasties, formed the most powerful caste ever seen among the nations of the earth, if we except the brahmanical caste of india. at the head of it was the king himself, who was chief of the religion and of the state. he regulated the sacrifices of the temples, and had the peculiar right of offering them to the gods upon grand occasions. he superintended the feasts and festivals in honor of the deities. the priests enjoyed privileges which extended to their whole family. they were exempt from taxes, and possessed one-third of the landed property, which was entailed upon them, and of which they could not be deprived. among them there were great distinctions of rank, but the high-priests held the most honorable station; they were devoted to the service of the presiding deities of the cities in which they lived,--such as the worship of ammon at thebes, of phtha at memphis, and of ra at on, or heliopolis. one of the principal grades of the priesthood was that of prophets, who were particularly versed in all matters pertaining to religion. they presided over the temple and the sacred rites, and directed the management of the priestly revenues; they bore a distinguished part in solemn processions, carrying the holy vase. the priests not only regulated all spiritual matters and superintended the worship of the gods, but they were esteemed for their superior knowledge. they acquired an ascendency over the people by their supposed understanding of the sacred mysteries, only those priests being initiated in the higher secrets of religion who had proved themselves virtuous and discerning. "the honor of ascending from the less to the greater mysteries was as highly esteemed as it was difficult to obtain. the aspirant was required to go through the most severe ordeal, and show the greatest moral resignation." those who aspired to know the profoundest secrets, imposed upon themselves duties more severe than those required by any other class. it was seldom that the priests were objects of scandal; they were reserved and discreet, practising the strictest purification of body and mind. their life was so full of minute details that they rarely appeared in public. they thus obtained the sincere respect of the people, and ruled by the power of learning and sanctity as well as by privilege. they are most censured for concealing and withholding knowledge from the people. how deep and profound was the knowledge of the egyptian priests it is difficult to settle, since it was so carefully guarded. pythagoras made great efforts and sacrifices to be initiated in their higher mysteries; but these, it is thought, were withheld, since he was a foreigner. what he did learn, however, formed a foundation of what is most valuable in grecian philosophy. herodotus declares that he knew the mysteries, but should not divulge them. moses was skilled in all the knowledge of the sacred schools of egypt, and perhaps incorporated in his jurisprudence some of its most valued truths. possibly plato obtained from the egyptian priests his idea of the immortality of the soul, since this was one of their doctrines. it is even thought by wilkinson that they believed in the unity, the eternal existence, and invisible power of god, but there is no definite knowledge on that point. ammon, the concealed god, seems to have corresponded with the zeus of the greeks, as sovereign lord of heaven. the priests certainly taught a state of future rewards and punishments, for the great doctrine of metempsychosis is based upon it,--the transmission of the soul after death into the bodies of various animals as an expiation for sin. but however lofty were the esoteric doctrines which the more learned of the initiated believed, they were carefully concealed from the people, who were deemed too ignorant to understand them; and hence the immense difference between the priests and people, and the universal prevalence of degrading superstitions and the vile polytheism which everywhere existed,--even the worship of the powers of nature in those animals which were held sacred. among all the ancient nations, however complicated were their theogonies, and however degraded the forms of worship assumed,--of men, or animals, or plants,--it was heat or light (the sun as the visible promoter of blessings) which was regarded as the _animus mundi_, to be worshipped as the highest manifestation of divine power and goodness. the sun, among all the ancient polytheists, was worshipped under various names, and was one of the supremest deities. the priestly city of on, a sort of university town, was consecrated to the worship of ra, the sun. baal was the sun-god among the polytheistic canaanites, as bel was among the assyrians. the egyptian pantheon, except perhaps that of rome, was the most extensive among the ancient nations, and the most degraded, although that people were the most religious as well as superstitious of ancient pagans. the worship of the deity, in some form, was as devout as it was universal, however degrading were the rites; and no expense was spared in sacrifices to propitiate the favor of the peculiar deity who presided over each of the various cities, for almost every city had a different deity. notwithstanding the degrading fetichism--the lowest kind of nature-worship, including the worship of animals--which formed the basis of the egyptian religion, there were traces in it of pure monotheism, as in that of babylonia and of ancient india. the distinguishing peculiarity of the egyptian religion was the adoration of sacred animals as emblems of the gods, the chief of which were the bull, the cat, and the beetle. the gods of the egyptian pantheon were almost innumerable, since they represented every form and power of nature, and all the passions which move the human soul; but the most remarkable of the popular deities was osiris, who was regarded as the personification of good. isis, the consort of osiris, who with him presided at the judgment of the dead, was scarcely less venerated. set, or typhon, the brother of osiris, was the personification of evil. between osiris and set, therefore, was perpetual antagonism. this belief, divested of names and titles and technicalities and fables, seems to have resembled, in this respect, the religion of the persians,--the eternal conflict between good and evil. the esoteric doctrines of the priests initiated into the higher mysteries probably were the primeval truths, too abstract for the ignorant and sensual people to comprehend, and which were represented to them in visible forms that appealed to their senses, and which they worshipped with degrading rites. the oldest of all the rites of the ancient pagans was in the form of sacrifice, to propitiate the deity. abraham and jacob offered sacrifices, but without degrading ceremonies, and both abhorred the representation of the deity in the form of animals; but there was scarcely an animal or reptile in egypt that the people did not hold sacred, in fear or reverence. moral evil was represented by the serpent, showing that something was retained, though in a distorted form, of the primitive revelation. the most celebrated forms of animal worship were the bulls at memphis, sacred to osiris, or, as some think, to the sun; the cat to phtha, and the beetle to re. the origin of these superstitions cannot be traced; they are shrouded in impenetrable mystery. all that we know is that they existed from the remotest period of which we have cognizance, long before the pyramids were built. in spite, however, of the despotism of the kings, the privileges of the priests, and the degrading superstitions of the people, which introduced the most revolting form of religious worship ever seen on earth, there was in egypt a high civilization in comparison with that of other nations, dating back to a mythical period. more than two thousand years before the christian era, and six hundred before letters were introduced into greece, one thousand years before the trojan war, twelve hundred years before buddha, and fifteen hundred years before rome was founded, great architectural works existed in egypt, the remains of which still astonish travellers for their vastness and grandeur. in the time of joseph, before the eighteenth dynasty, there was in egypt an estimated population of seven millions, with twenty thousand cities. the civilization of that country four thousand years ago was as high as that of the chinese of the present day; and their literary and scientific accomplishments, their proficiency in the industrial and fine arts, remain to-day the wonder of history. but one thing is very remarkable,--that while there seems to have been no great progress for two thousand years, there was not any marked decline, thus indicating virtuous habits of life among the great body of the people from generation to generation. they were preserved from degeneracy by their simple habits and peaceful pursuits. though the armies of the king numbered four hundred thousand men, there were comparatively few wars, and these mostly of a defensive character. such was the egypt which joseph governed with signal ability for more than half a century, nearly four thousand years ago,--the mother of inventions, the pioneer in literature and science, the home of learned men, the teacher of nations, communicating a knowledge which was never lost, making the first great stride in the civilization of the world. no one knows whether this civilization was indigenous, or derived from unknown races, or the remains of a primitive revelation, since it cannot be traced beyond egypt itself, whose early inhabitants were more asiatic than african, and apparently allied with phoenicians and assyrians, but the civilization of egypt is too extensive a subject to be entered upon in this connection. i hope to treat it more at length in subsequent volumes. i can only say now that in some things the egyptians were never surpassed. their architecture, as seen in the pyramids and the ruins of temples, was marvellous; while their industrial arts would not be disdained even in the 19th century. over this fertile, favored, and civilized nation joseph reigned,--with delegated power indeed, but with power that was absolute,--when his starving brothers came to egypt to buy corn, for the famine extended probably over western asia. he is to be viewed, not as a prophet, or preacher, or reformer, or even a warrior like moses, but as a merely executive ruler. as the son-in-law of the high-priest of hieropolis, and delegated governor of the land, in the highest favor with the king, and himself a priest, it is probable that joseph was initiated into the esoteric wisdom of the priesthood. he was undoubtedly stern, resolute, and inflexible in his relations with men, as great executive chieftains necessarily must be, whatever their private sympathies and friendships. to all appearance he was a born egyptian, as he spoke the language of egypt, had adopted its habits, and was clothed with the insignia of egyptian power. so that when the sons of jacob, who during the years of famine in canaan had come down to egypt to buy corn, were ushered into his presence, and bowed down to him, as had been predicted, he was harsh to them, although at once recognizing them. "whence come ye?" he said roughly to them. they replied, "from the land of canaan to buy corn," "nay," continued he, "ye are spies." "not so, my lord, but to buy food are thy servants come. we are all one man's sons; we are true men; thy servants are not spies." "nay," he said, "to see the nakedness of the land are ye come,"--for famine also prevailed in egypt, and its governor naturally would not wish its weakness to be known, for fear of a hostile invasion. they replied, "thy servants are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of canaan; the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not." but joseph still persisted that they were spies, and put them in prison for three days; after which he demanded as the condition of their release that the younger brother should also appear before him. "if ye be true men," said he, "let one of your brothers be bound in the house of your prison, while you carry corn for the famine of your house; but bring your youngest brother unto me, and ye shall not die." there was apparently no alternative but to perish, or to bring benjamin into egypt; and the sons of jacob were compelled to accept the condition. then their consciences were moved, and they saw a punishment for their crime in selling joseph fifteen years before. even reuben accused them, and in the very presence of joseph reminded them of their unnatural cruelty, not supposing that he understood them, since joseph had spoken through an interpreter. this was too much for the stern governor; he turned aside and wept, but speedily returned and took from them simeon and bound him before their eyes, and retained him for a surety. then he caused their sacks to be filled with corn, putting also their money therein, and gave them in addition food for their return journey. but as one of them on that journey opened his sack to give his ass provender, he espied the money; and they were all filled with fear at this unlooked-for incident. they made haste to reach their home and report the strange intelligence to their father, including the demand for the appearance of benjamin, which filled him with the most violent grief. "joseph is not," cried he, "and simeon is not, and ye will take benjamin away!" reuben here expostulated with frantic eloquence. jacob, however, persisted: "my son shall not go down with you; if mischief befall him, ye will bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave." meanwhile the famine pressed, as joseph knew full well it would, and jacob's family had eaten all their corn, and it became necessary to get a new supply from egypt. but judah refused to go without benjamin. "the man," said he, "did solemnly protest unto us, saying, ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you." then jacob upbraided judah for revealing the number and condition of his family; but judah excused himself on account of the searching cross-examination of the austere governor which no one could resist, and persisted in the absolute necessity of benjamin's appearance in egypt, unless they all should yield to starvation. moreover, he promised to be surety for his brother, that no harm should come to him. jacob at last saw the necessity of allowing benjamin to go, and reluctantly gave his consent; but in order to appease the terrible man of egypt he ordered his sons to take with them a present of spices and balm and almonds, luxuries then in great demand, and a double amount of money in their sacks to repay what they had received. then in pious resignation he said, "if i am bereaved of my children, i am bereaved," and hurried away his sons. in due time they all safely arrived in egypt, and with benjamin stood before joseph, and made obeisance, and then excused themselves to joseph's steward, because of the money which had been returned in their sacks. the steward encouraged them, and brought simeon to them, and led them into joseph's house, where a feast was prepared by his orders. with great difficulty joseph restrained his feelings at the sight of benjamin, who was his own full brother, but asked kindly about the father. at last his pent-up affections gave way, and he sought his chamber and wept there in secret. he then sat down to the banquet with his attendants at a separate table,--for the egyptian would not eat with foreigners,--still unrevealed to his brethren, but showed his partiality to benjamin by sending him a mess five times greater than to the rest. they marvelled greatly that they were seated at the table according to their seniority, and questioned among themselves how the austere governor could know the ages of strangers. not yet did joseph declare himself. his brothers were not yet sufficiently humbled; a severe trial was still in store for them. as before, he ordered his steward to fill the sacks as full as they could carry, with every man's money in them, for he would not take his father's money; and further ordered that his silver drinking-cup should be put in benjamin's sack. the brothers had scarcely left the city when they were overtaken by the steward on a charge of theft, and upbraided for stealing the silver cup. of course they felt their innocence and protested it; but it was of no avail, although they declared that if the cup should be found in any one of their sacks, he in whose sack it might be should die for the offence. the steward took them at their word, proceeded to search the sacks, and lo! what was their surprise and grief to see that the cup was found in benjamin's sack! they rent their clothes in utter despair, and returned to the city. joseph received them austerely, and declared that benjamin should be retained in egypt as his servant, or slave. then judah, forgetting in whose presence he was, cast aside all fear, and made the most eloquent and plaintive speech recorded in the bible, offering to remain in benjamin's place as a slave, for how could he face his father, who would surely die of grief at the loss of his favorite child. joseph could refrain his feelings no longer. he made every attendant leave his presence, and then declared himself to his brothers, whom god had sent to egypt to be the means of saving their lives. the brothers, conscience stricken and ashamed, completely humbled and afraid, could not answer his questions. then joseph tenderly, in their own language, begged them to come near, and explained to them that it was not they who sent him to egypt, but god, to work out a great deliverance to their posterity, and to be a father to pharaoh himself, inasmuch as the famine was to continue five years longer. "haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him that god hath made me lord of all egypt: come down unto me, and thou shalt dwell in the land of goshen near unto me, thou and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and all that thou hast, and there will i nourish thee. and ye shall tell my father of all my glory in egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste, and bring down my father hither." and he fell on benjamin's neck and wept, and kissed all his brothers. they then talked with him without further reserve. the news that joseph's brethren had come to egypt pleased pharaoh, so grateful was the king for the preservation of his kingdom. he could not do enough for such a benefactor. "say to thy brethren, lade your beasts and go, and take your father and your households, 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." and the king commanded them to take his wagons to transport their families and goods. joseph also gave to each one of them changes of raiment, and to benjamin three hundred pieces of silver and five changes of raiment, and ten asses laden with the good things of egypt for their father, and ten she-asses laden with corn. as they departed, he archly said unto them, "see that ye fall not out by the way!" and when they arrived at canaan, and told their father all that had happened and all that they had seen, he fainted. the news was too good to be true; he would not believe them. but when he saw the wagons his spirit revived, and he said, "it is enough. joseph my son is yet alive. i will go and see him before i die." the old man is again young in spirit. he is for going immediately; he could leap,--yea, fly. to egypt, then, israel with his sons and his cattle and all his wealth hastened. his sons are astonished at the providence of god, so clearly and impressively demonstrated on their behalf. the reconciliation of the family is complete. all envy is buried in the unbounded prosperity of joseph. he is now too great for envy. he is to be venerated as the instrument of god in saving his father's house and the land of egypt. they all now bow down to him, father and sons alike, and the only strife now is who shall render him the most honor. he is the pride and glory of his family, as he is of the land of egypt, and of the household of pharaoh. in the hospitality of the king, and his absence of jealousy of the nomadic people whom he settled in the most fertile of his provinces, we see additional confirmation of the fact that he was one of the shepherd kings. the pharaoh of joseph's time seems to have affiliated with the israelites as natural friends,--to assist him in case of war. all the souls that came into egypt with jacob were seventy in number, although some historians think there was a much larger number. rawlinson estimates it at two thousand, and dean payne smith at three thousand. jacob was one hundred and thirty years of age when he came to dwell in the land of goshen, and he lived seventeen years in egypt. when he died, joseph was about fifty years old, and was still in power. it was the dying wish of the old patriarch to be buried with his fathers, and he made joseph promise to carry his bones to the land of canaan and bury them in the sepulchre which abraham had bought,--even the cave of machpelah. before jacob died, joseph brought his two sons to him to receive his blessing,--manasseh and ephraim, born in egypt, whose grandfather was the high-priest of on, the city of the sun. as manasseh was the oldest, he placed him at the right hand of jacob, but the old man wittingly and designedly laid his right hand on ephraim, which displeased joseph. but jacob, without giving his reason, persisted. while he prophesied that manasseh should be great, ephraim he said should be greater,--verified in the fact that the tribe of ephraim was the largest of all the tribes, and the most powerful until the captivity. it was nearly as large as all the rest together, although in the time of moses the tribe of manasseh had become more numerous. we cannot penetrate the reason why ephraim the younger son was preferred to the older, any more than why jacob was preferred to esau. after jacob had blessed the sons of joseph, he called his other sons around his dying bed to predict the future of their descendants. reuben the oldest was told that he would not excel, because he had loved his father's concubine and committed a grievous sin. simeon and levi were the most active in seeking to compass the death of joseph, and a curse was sent upon them. judah was exalted above them all, for he had sought to save joseph, and was eloquent in pleading for benjamin,--the most magnanimous of the sons. so from him it was predicted that the sceptre should not depart from his house until shiloh should come,--the messiah, to whose appearance all the patriarchs looked. and all that jacob predicted about his sons to their remote descendants came to pass; but the highest blessing was accorded to joseph, as was realized in the future ascendency of ephraim. when jacob had made an end of his blessings and predictions he gathered up his feet into his bed and gave up the ghost, and joseph caused him to be embalmed, as was the custom in egypt. when the days of public mourning were over (seventy days), joseph obtained leave from pharaoh to absent himself from the kingdom and his government, to bury his father according to his wish. and he departed in great pomp, with chariots and horses, together with his brothers and a great number, and deposited the remains of jacob in the cave of the field of machpelah, where abraham himself was buried, and then returned to his duties in egypt. it is not mentioned in the scriptures how long joseph retained his power as prime minister of pharaoh, but probably until a new dynasty succeeded the throne,--the eighteenth as it is supposed, for we are told that a new king arose who knew not joseph. he lived to be one hundred and ten years of age, and when he died his body was embalmed and placed in a sarcophagus, and ultimately was carried to canaan and buried with his fathers, according to the oath or promise he exacted of his brothers. his last recorded words were a prediction that god would bring the children of israel out of egypt to the land which he sware unto abraham, isaac, and jacob. on his deathbed he becomes, like his father, a prophet. he had foretold his own future elevation when only a youth of seventeen, though only in the form of a dream, the full purport of which he did not comprehend; as an old man, about to die, he predicts the greatest blessing which could happen to his kindred,--their restoration to the land promised unto abraham. joseph is one of the most interesting characters of the bible, one of the most fortunate, and one of the most faultless. he resisted the most powerful temptations, and there is no recorded act which sullies his memory. although most of his life was spent among idolaters, and he married a pagan woman, he retained his allegiance to the god of his fathers. he ever felt that he was a stranger in a strange land, although its supreme governor, and looked to canaan as the future and beloved home of his family and race. he regarded his residence in egypt only as a means of preserving the lives of his kindred, and himself as an instrument to benefit both his family and the country which he ruled. his life was one of extraordinary usefulness. he had great executive talents, which he exercised for the good of others. though stern and even hard in his official duties, he had unquenchable natural affections. his heart went out to his old father, his brother benjamin, and to all his kindred with inexpressible tenderness. he was as free from guile as he was from false pride. in giving instructions to his brothers how they should appear before the king, and what they should say when questioned as to their occupations, he advised the utmost frankness,--to say that they were shepherds, although the occupation of a shepherd was an abomination to an egyptian. he had exceeding tact in confronting the prejudices of the king and the priesthood. he took no pains to conceal his birth and lineage in the most aristocratic country of the world. considering that he was only second in power and dignity to an absolute monarch, his life was unostentatious and his habits simple. if we seek a parallel to him among modern statesmen, he most resembles colbert as the minister of louis xiv.; or prince metternich, who in great simplicity ruled continental europe for a quarter of a century. nothing is said of his palaces, or pleasures, or wealth. he had not the austere and unbending pride of mordecai, whose career as an instrument of providence for the welfare of his countrymen was as remarkable as joseph's. he was more like daniel in his private life than any of those jews who have arisen to great power in foreign lands, though he had not daniel's exalted piety or prophetic gifts. he was faithful to the interests of his sovereign, and greatly increased the royal authority. he got possession of the whole property of the nation for the benefit of his master, but exacted only a fifth part of the produce of the land for the support of the government. he was a priest of a grossly polytheistic religion, but acknowledged only the one supreme god, whose instrument he felt himself to be. his services to the state were transcendent, but his supremest mission was to preserve the hebrew nation. the condition of the israelites in egypt after the death of joseph, and during the period of their sojourn, it is difficult to determine. there is a doubt among the critics as to the length of this sojourn,--the bible in several places asserting that it lasted four hundred and thirty years, which, if true, would bring the exodus to the end of the nineteenth dynasty. some suppose that the residence in egypt was only two hundred and fifteen years. the territory assigned to the israelites was a small one, and hence must have been densely populated, if, as it is reckoned, two millions of people left the country under the leadership of moses and aaron. it is supposed that the reigning sovereign at that time was menephtah, successor of rameses ii. it is, then, the great rameses, who was the king from whom moses fled,--the most distinguished of all the egyptian monarchs as warrior and builder of monuments. he was the second king of the eighteenth dynasty, and reigned in conjunction with his father seti for sixty years. among his principal works was the completion of the city of rameses (raamses, or tanis, or zoan), one of the principal cities of egypt, begun by his father and made a royal residence. he also, it appears from the monuments, built pithon and other important towns, by the forced labor of the israelites. rameses and pithon were called treasure-cities, the site of the latter having been lately discovered, to the east of tanis. they were located in the midst of a fertile country, now dreary and desolate, which was the object of great panegyric. an egyptian poet, quoted by dr. charles s. robinson, paints the vicinity of zoan, where pharaoh resided at the time of the exodus, as full of loveliness and fertility. "her fields are verdant with excellent herbage; her bowers bloom with garlands; her pools are prolific in fish; and in the ponds are ducks. each garden is perfumed with the smell of honey; the granaries are full of wheat and barley; vegetables and reeds and herbs are growing in the parks; flowers and nosegays are in the houses; lemons, citrons, and figs are in the orchards." such was the field of zoan in ancient times, near rameses, which the israelites had built without straw to make their bricks, and from which place they set out for the general rendezvous at succoth, under moses. it will be noted that if rameses, or tanis, was the residence of the court when moses made his demands on menephtah, it was in the midst of the settlements of the israelites, in the land of goshen, which the last of the shepherd kings had assigned to them. it is impossible to tell what advance in civilization was made by the israelites in consequence of their sojourn in egypt; but they must have learned many useful arts, and many principles of jurisprudence, and acquired a better knowledge of agriculture. they learned to be patient under oppression and wrong, to be frugal and industrious in their habits, and obedient to the voice of their leaders. but unfortunately they acquired a love of idolatrous worship, which they did not lose until their captivity in babylon. the golden calves of the wilderness were another form of the worship of the sacred bulls of memphis. they were easily led to worship the sun under the egyptian and canaanitish names. had the children of israel remained in the promised land, in the early part of their history, they would probably have perished by famine, or have been absorbed by their powerful canaanitish neighbors. in egypt they were well fed, rapidly increased in number, and became a nation to be feared even while in bondage. in the land of canaan they would have been only a pastoral or nomadic people, unable to defend themselves in war, and unacquainted with the use of military weapons. they might have been exterminated, without constant miracles and perpetual supernatural aid,--which is not the order of providence. in egypt, it is true, the israelites lost their political independence; but even under slavery there is much to be learned from civilized masters. how rapid and marvellous the progress of the african races in the southern states in their two hundred years of bondage! when before in the history of the world has there been such a progress among mere barbarians, with fetichism for their native religion? races have advanced in every element of civilization, and in those virtues which give permanent strength to character, under all the benumbing and degrading influences of slavery, while nations with wealth, freedom, and prosperity have declined and perished. the slavery of the israelites in egypt may have been a blessing in disguise, from which they emerged when they were able to take care of themselves. moses led them out of bondage; but moses also incorporated in his institutions the "wisdom of the egyptians." he was indeed inspired to declare certain fundamental truths, but he also taught the lessons of experience which a great nation had acquired by two thousand years of prosperity. who can tell, who can measure, the civilization which the israelites must have carried out of egypt, with the wealth of which they despoiled their masters? where else at that period could they have found such teachers? the persians at that time were shepherds like themselves in canaan, the assyrians were hunters, and the greeks had no historical existence. only the discipline of forty years in the wilderness, under moses, was necessary to make them a nation of conquerors, for they had already learned the arts of agriculture, and knew how to protect themselves in walled cities. a nomadic people were they no longer, as in the time of jacob, but small farmers, who had learned to irrigate their barren hills and till their fertile valleys; and they became a powerful though peaceful nation, unconquered by invaders for a thousand years, and unconquerable for all time in their traditions, habits, and mental characteristics. from one man--the patriarch jacob--did this great nation rise, and did not lose its national unity and independence until from the tribe of judah a deliverer arose who redeemed the human race. surely, how favored was joseph, in being the instrument under providence of preserving this nation in its infancy, and placing its people in a rich and fertile country where they could grow and multiply, and learn principles of civilization which would make them a permanent power in the progress of humanity! moses. 1571-1451 b.c. [usher]. hebrew jurisprudence. among the great actors in the world's history must surely be presented the man who gave the first recorded impulse to civilization, and who is the most august character of antiquity. i think moses and his legislation should be considered from the standpoint of the scriptures rather than from that of science and criticism. it is very true that the legislation and ritualism we have been accustomed to ascribe to moses are thought by many great modern critics, including ewald, to be the work of writers whose names are unknown, in the time of hezekiah and even later, as jewish literature was developed. but i remain unconvinced by the modern theories, plausible as they are, and weighty as is their authority; and hence i have presented the greatest man in the history of the jews as our fathers regarded him, and as the bible represents him. nor is there any subject which bears more directly on the elemental principles of theological belief and practical morality, or is more closely connected with the progress of modern religious and social thought, than a consideration of the mosaic writings. whether as a "man of god," or as a meditative sage, or as a sacred historian, or as an inspired prophet, or as an heroic liberator and leader of a favored nation, or as a profound and original legislator, moses alike stands out as a wonderful man, not to the eyes of jews merely, but to all enlightened nations and ages. he was evidently raised up for a remarkable and exalted mission,--not only to deliver a debased and superstitious people from bondage, but to impress his mind and character upon them and upon all other nations, and to link his name with the progress of the human race. he arose at a great crisis, when a new dynasty reigned in egypt,--not friendly, as the preceding one had been, to the children of israel; but a dynasty which had expelled the shepherd kings, and looked with fear and jealousy upon this alien race, already powerful, in sympathy with the old régime, located in the most fertile sections of the land, and acquainted not merely with agriculture, but with the arts of the egyptians,--a population of over two millions of souls; so that the reigning monarch, probably a son of the sesostris of the greeks, bitterly exclaimed to his courtiers, "the children of israel are more and mightier than we!" and the consequence of this jealousy was a persecution based on the elemental principle of all persecution,--that of fear blended with envy, carried out with remorseless severity; for in case of war (and the new dynasty scarcely felt secure on the throne) it was feared the hebrews might side with enemies. so the new pharaoh (rameses ii., as is thought by rawlinson) attempted to crush their spirit by hard toils and unjust exactions. and as they still continued to multiply, there came forth the dreadful edict that every male child of the hebrews should be destroyed as soon as born. it was then that moses, descended from a family of the tribe of levi, was born,--1571 b.c., according to usher. i need not relate in detail the beautiful story of his concealment for three months by his mother jochebed, his exposure in a basket of papyrus on the banks of the nile, his rescue by the daughter of pharaoh, at that time regent of the kingdom in the absence of her father,--or, as wilberforce thinks, the wife of the king of lower egypt,--his adoption by this powerful princess, his education in the royal household among those learned priests to whose caste even the king belonged. moses himself, a great master of historical composition, has in six verses told that story, with singular pathos and beauty; yet he directly relates nothing further of his life until, at the age of forty, he killed an egyptian overseer who was smiting one of his oppressed brethren, and buried him in the sands,--thereby showing that he was indignant at injustice, or clung in his heart to his race of slaves. but what a history might have been written of those forty years of luxury, study, power, and honor!--since josephus speaks of his successful and brilliant exploits as a conqueror of the ethiopians. what a career did the son of the hebrew bondwoman probably lead in the palaces of memphis, sitting at the monarch's table, fêted as a conqueror, adopted as grandson and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, the hidden meaning of religious rites, and even the being and attributes of a supreme god,--the esoteric wisdom from which even a pythagoras drew his inspiration; possibly tasting, with generals and nobles, all the pleasures of sin. but whether in pleasure or honor, the soul of moses, fortified by the maternal instructions of his early days,--for his mother was doubtless a good as well as a brave woman,--soars beyond his circumstances, and he seeks to avenge the wrongs of his brethren. not wisely, however, for he slays a government official, and is forced to flee,--a necessity which we can hardly comprehend in view of his rank and power, unless it revealed all at once to the astonished king his hebrew birth, and his dangerous sympathies with an oppressed people, the act showing that he may have sought, in his earnest soul, to break their intolerable bonds. certainly moses aspires prematurely to be a deliverer. he is not yet prepared for such a mighty task. he is too impulsive and inexperienced. it must need be that he pass through a period of preparation, learn patience, mature his knowledge, and gain moral force, which preparation could be best made in severe contemplation; for it is in retirement and study that great men forge the weapons which demolish principalities and powers, and master those _principia_ which are the foundation of thrones and empires. so he retires to the deserts of midian, among a scattered pastoral people, on the eastern shore of the red sea, and is received by jethro, a priest of midian, whose flocks he tends, and whose daughter he marries. the land of midian, to which he fled, is not fertile like egypt, nor rich in unnumbered monuments of pride and splendor, with pyramids for mausoleums, and colossal statues to perpetuate kingly memories. it is not scented with flowers and variegated with landscapes of beauty and fertility, but is for the most part, with here and there a patch of verdure, a land of utter barrenness and dreariness, and, as hamilton paints it, "a great and terrible wilderness, where no soft features mitigated the unbroken horror, but dark and brown ridges, red peaks like pyramids of fire; no rounded hillocks or soft mountain curves, but monstrous and misshapen cliffs, rising tier above tier, and serrated for miles into rugged grandeur, and grooved by the winter torrents cutting into the veins of the fiery rock: a land dreary and desolate, yet sublime in its boldness and ruggedness,--a labyrinth of wild and blasted mountains, a terrific and howling desolation." it is here that moses seeks safety, and finds it in the home of a priest, where his affections may be cultivated, and where he may indulge in lofty speculations and commune with the elohim whom he adores; isolated yet social, active in body but more active in mind, still fresh in all the learning of the schools of egypt, and wise in all the experiences of forty years. and the result of his studies and inspirations was, it is supposed, the book of genesis, in which he narrates more important events, and reveals more lofty truths than all the historians of greece unfolded in their collective volumes,--a marvel of historic art, a model of composition, an immortal work of genius, the oldest and the greatest written history of which we have record. and surely what poetry, pathos, and eloquence, what simplicity and beauty, what rich and varied lessons of human experience, what treasures of moral wisdom, are revealed in that little book! how sublimely the poet-prophet narrates the misery of the fall, and the promised glories of the restoration! how concisely the historian compresses the incidents of patriarchal life, the rise of empires, the fall of cities, the certitudes of faith, of friendship, and of love! all that is vital in the history of thousands of years is condensed into a few chapters,--not dry and barren annals, but descriptions of character, and the unfolding of emotions and sensibilities, and insight into those principles of moral government which indicate a superintending power, creating faith in a world of sin, and consolation amid the wreck of matter. thus when forty more years are passed in study, in literary composition, in religious meditation, and active duties, in sight of grand and barren mountains, amid affections and simplicities,--years which must have familiarized him with every road and cattle-drive and sheep-track, every hill and peak, every wady and watercourse, every timber-belt and oasis in the sinaitic wilderness, through which his providentially trained military instincts were to safely conduct a vast multitude,--moses, still strong and laborious, is fitted for his exalted mission as a deliverer. and now he is directly called by the voice of god himself, amid the wonders of the burning bush,--him whom, thus far, he had, like abraham, adored as the elohim, the god almighty, but whom henceforth he recognizes as jehovah (jahveh) in his special relations to the jewish nation, rather than as the general deity who unites the attributes ascribed to him as the ruler of the universe. moses quakes before that awful voice out of the midst of the bush, which commissions him to deliver his brethren. he is no longer bold, impetuous, impatient, but timid and modest. long study and retirement from the busy haunts of men have made him self-distrustful. he replies to the great _i am_, "who am i, that _i_ should bring forth the children of israel out of egypt? behold, i am not eloquent; they will not believe me, nor hearken to my voice." in spite of the miracle of the rod, moses obeys reluctantly, and aaron, his elder brother, is appointed as his spokesman. armed with the mysterious wonder-working rod, at length moses and aaron, as representatives of the jewish people, appear in the presence of pharaoh, and in the name of jehovah request permission for israel to go and hold a feast in the wilderness. they do not demand emancipation or emigration, which would of course be denied. i cannot dwell on the haughty scepticism and obdurate hardness of the king--"who is jehovah, that i should obey _his_ voice?"--the renewed persecution of the hebrews, the successive plagues and calamities sent upon egypt, which the magicians could not explain, and the final extorted and unwilling consent of pharaoh to permit israel to worship the god of moses in the wilderness, lest greater evils should befall him than the destruction of the first-born throughout the land. the deliverance of a nation of slaves is at last, it would seem, miraculously effected; and then begins the third period of the life of moses, as the leader and governor of these superstitious, sensual, idolatrous, degraded slaves. then begin the real labors and trials of moses; for the people murmur, and are consumed with fears as soon as they have crossed the sea, and find themselves in the wilderness. and their unbelief and impatience are scarcely lessened by the tremendous miracle of the submersion of the pursuing host, and all successive miracles,--the mysterious manna, the pillar of cloud and of fire, the smitten rock at horeb, and the still more impressive and awful wonders of sinai. the guidance of the israelites during these forty years in the wilderness is marked by transcendent ability on the part of moses, and by the most disgraceful conduct on the part of the israelites. they are forgetful of mercies, ungrateful, rebellious, childish in their hankerings for a country where they had been more oppressed than spartan helots, idolatrous, and superstitious. they murmur for flesh to eat; they make golden calves to worship; they seek a new leader when moses is longer on the mount than they expect. when any new danger threatens they lay the blame on moses; they even foolishly regret that they had not died in egypt. obviously such a people were not fit for freedom, or even for the conquest of the promised land. they were as timid and cowardly as they were rebellious. even the picked men sent out to explore canaan, with the exception of caleb and joshua, reported nations of giants impossible to subdue. a new generation must arise, disciplined by forty years' experience, made hardy and strong by exposure and suffering. yet what nation, in the world's history, ever improved so much in forty years? what ruler ever did so much for a people in a single reign? this abject race of slaves in forty years was transformed into a nation of valiant warriors, made subject to law and familiar with the fundamental principles of civilization. what a marvellous change, effected by the genius and wisdom of one man, in communion with almighty power! but the distinguishing labor of moses during these forty years, by which he linked his name with all subsequent ages, and became the greatest benefactor of mind the world has seen until christ, was his system of jurisprudence. it is this which especially demands our notice, and hence will form the main subject of this lecture. in reviewing the mosaic legislation, we notice both those ordinances which are based on immutable truth for the rule of all nations to the end of time, and those prescribed for the peculiar situation and exigencies of the jews as a theocratic state, isolated from other nations. the moral code of moses, by far the most important and universally accepted, rests on the fundamental principles of theology and morality. how lofty, how impressive, how solemn this code! how it appeals at once to the consciousness of all minds in every age and nation, producing convictions that no sophistry can weaken, binding the conscience with irresistible and terrific bonds,--those immortal ten commandments, engraven on the two tables of stone, and preserved in the holy and innermost sanctuary of the jews, yet reappearing in all their literature, accepted and reaffirmed by christ, entering into the religious system of every nation that has received them, and forming the cardinal principles of all theological belief! yet it was by moses that these commandments came. he is the first, the favored man, commissioned by god to declare to the world, clearly and authoritatively, his supreme power and majesty, whom alone all nations and tribes and people are to worship to remotest generations. in it he fearfully exposes the sin of idolatry, to which all nations are prone,--the one sin which the almighty visits with such dreadful penalties, since this involves, and implies logically, rebellion against him, the supreme ruler of the universe, and disloyalty to him as a personal sovereign, in whatever form this idolatry may appear, whether in graven images of tutelary deities, or in the worship of nature (ever blind and indefinite), or in the exaltation of self, in the varied search for pleasure, ambition, or wealth, to which the debased soul bows down with grovelling instincts, and in the pursuit of which the soul forgets its higher destiny and its paramount obligations. moses is the first to expose with terrific force and solemn earnestness this universal tendency to the oblivion of the one god amid the temptations, the pleasures, and the glories of the world, and the certain displeasure of the universal sovereign which must follow, as seen in the fall of empires and the misery of individuals from his time to ours, the uniform doom of people and nations, whatever the special form of idolatry, whenever it reaches a peculiar fulness and development,--the ultimate law of all decline and ruin, from which there is no escape, "for the lord god is a jealous god, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." so sacred and awful is this controlling deity, that it is made a cardinal sin even to utter his name in vain, in levity or blasphemy. in order also to keep him before the minds of men, a day is especially appointed--one in seven--which it is the bounden duty as well as privilege of all generations to keep with peculiar sanctity,--a day of rest from labor as well as of adoration; an entirely new institution, which no pagan nation, and no other ancient nation, ever recognized. after thus laying solemn injunctions upon all men to render supreme allegiance to this personal god,--for we can find no better word, although matthew arnold calls it "the power which maketh for righteousness,"--moses presents the duties of men to each other, chiefly those which pertain to the abstaining from injuries they are most tempted to commit, extending to the innermost feelings of the heart, for "thou shalt not covet anything which is thy neighbor's;" thus covering, in a few sentences, the primal obligations of mankind to god and to society, afterward expanded by a greater teacher into the more comprehensive law of love, which is to bind together mortals on earth, as it binds together immortals in heaven. all christian nations have accepted these ten commandments, even mohammedan nations, as appealing to the universal conscience,--not a mere jewish code, but a primary law, susceptible of boundless obligation, never to be abrogated; a direct injunction of the almighty to the end of time. the ten commandments seem to be the foundation of the subsequent and more minute code which moses gave to the jews; and it is interesting to see how its great principles have entered, more or less, into the laws of christian nations from the decline of the roman empire, into the theodosian code, the laws of charlemagne, of ina, of alfred, and especially into the institutions of the puritans, and of all other sects and parties wherever the bible is studied and revered. they seem to be designed not merely for jews, but for gentiles also, since there is no escape from their obligation. they may seem severe in some of their applications, but never unjust; and as long as the world endures, the relations between man and man are to be settled on lofty moral grounds. an elevated morality is the professed aim of all enlightened lawgivers; and the prosperity of nations is built upon it, for it is righteousness which exalteth them. culture is desirable; but the welfare of nations is based on morals rather than on aesthetics. on this point moses, or even epictetus, is a greater authority than goethe. all the ordinances of moses tend to this end. they are the publication of natural religion,--that god is a rewarder of virtuous actions, and punishes wicked deeds. moses, from first to last, insists imperatively on the doctrine of personal responsibility to god, which doctrine is the logical sequence of belief in him as the moral governor of the world. and in enforcing this cardinal truth he is dogmatic and dictatorial, as a prophet and ambassador of the most high should be. it is a waste of time to use arguments in the teaching of the primal principles which appeal to consciousness; and i am not certain but that elaborate and metaphysical reasoning on the nature and attributes of god weakens rather than strengthens the belief in him, since he is a power made known by revelation, and received and accepted by the soul at once, if received at all. among the earliest noticeable corruptions of the church was the introduction of greek philosophy to harmonize and reconcile with it the truths of the gospel, which to a certain class ever have been, and ever will be, foolishness. the speculations and metaphysics of theologians, i verily believe, have done more harm than good,--from athanasius to jonathan edwards,--whenever they have brought the aid of finite reason to support the ultimate truths declared by an infinite and almighty mind. moses does not reason, nor speculate, nor refine; he affirms, and appeals to the law written on the heart,--to the consciousness of mankind. what he declares to be duties are not even to be discussed. they are to be obeyed with unhesitating obedience, since no discussion or argument can make them clearer or more imperative. the obligation to obey them is seen and felt at once, as soon as they are declared. what he says in regard to the relations of master and servant; to injuries inflicted on the body; to the respect due to parents; to the protection of the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate; to delicacy in the treatment of women; to unjust judgments; to bribery and corruption; to revenge, hatred, and covetousness; to falsehood and tale-bearing; to unchastity, theft, murder, and adultery,--can never be gainsaid, and would have been accepted by roman jurists as readily as by modern legislators; yea, they would not be disputed by savages, if they acknowledged a god at all. the elevated morality of the ethical code of moses is its most striking feature, since it appeals to the universal heart, and does not conflict with some of the ethical teachings of those great lights of the pagan world to whose consciousness god has been revealed. moses differs from them only in the completion and scope and elevation of his system, and in its freedom from the puerilities and superstitions which they blended with their truths, and from which he was emancipated by inspiration. brahma and confucius and socrates taught some great truths which moses would accept, but they taught errors likewise. he taught no errors, though he permitted some sins which in the beginning did not exist,--such, for instance, as polygamy. christ came not to destroy his law, but to fulfil it and complete it. in two things especially, how emphatic his teaching and how permanent his influence!--in respect to the observance of the sabbath and the relations of the sexes. to him, more than to any man in the world's history, do we owe the elevation of woman, and the sanctity and blessing of a day of rest. in the awful sacredness of the person, and in the regular resort to the sanctuary of god, we see his immortal authority and his permanent influence. the other laws which moses promulgated are more special and minute, and seem to be intended to preserve the jews from idolatry, the peculiar sin of the surrounding nations; and also, more directly, to keep alive the recognition of a theocratic government. thus the ceremonial or ritualistic law--an important part of the mosaic code--constantly points to jehovah as the king of the jews, as well as their supreme deity, for whose worship the rites and ceremonies are devised with great minuteness, to keep his _personality_ constantly before their minds. moreover, all their rites and ceremonies were typical and emblematical of the promised saviour who was to arise; in a more emphatic sense their king, and not merely their own messiah, but the redeemer of the whole race, who should reign finally as king of kings and lord of lords. and hence these rites and sacrifices, typical of him who should offer himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, are not supposed to be binding on other nations after the great sacrifice has been made, and the law of moses has been fulfilled by jesus and the new dispensation has been established. we see a complicated and imposing service, with psalms and hymns, and beautiful robes, and smoking altars,--all that could inspire awe and reverence. we behold a blazing tabernacle of gold and silver and precious woods and gorgeous tapestries, with inner and secret recesses to contain the ark and the tables of stone, the mysterious rod, the urn of manna, the book of the covenant, the golden throne over-canopied by cherubs with outstretched wings, and the mercy-seat for the shekinah who sat between the cherubim. the sacred and costly vessels, the candlesticks of pure and beaten gold, the lamps, the brazen sea, the embroidered vestments of the priests, the breastplate of precious stones, the golden chains, the emblematic rings, the ephods and mitres and girdles, the various altars for sacrifice, the burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, meat-offerings, and sin-offerings, the consecrated cakes and animals for sacrifice, the rites for cleansing leprosy and all uncleanliness, the grand atonements and solemn fasts and festivals,--all were calculated to make a strong impression on a superstitious people. the rites and ceremonies of the jews were so attractive that they made up for all other amusements and spectacles; they answered the purpose of the gothic churches and cathedrals of europe in the middle ages, when these were the chief attractions of the period. there is nothing absurd in ritualism among ignorant and superstitious people, who are ever most easily impressed through their senses and imagination. it was the wisdom of the middle ages,--the device of popes and bishops and abbots to attract and influence the people. but ritualism--useful in certain ages and circumstances, certainly in its most imposing forms, if i may say it--does not seem to be one of the peculiarities of enlightened ages; even the ritualism of the wilderness lost much of its hold upon the jews themselves after their captivity, and still more when greek and roman civilization had penetrated to jerusalem. the people who listened to peter and paul could no longer be moved by imposing rites, even as the european nations--under the preaching of luther, knox, and latimer--lost all relish for the ceremonies of the middle ages. what, then, are we to think of the revival of observances which lost their force three hundred years ago, unless connected with artistic music? it is music which vitalizes ritualistic worship in our times, as it did in the times of david and solomon. the vitality of the jewish ritual, when the nation had emerged from barbarism, was in its connections with a magnificent psalmody. the psalms of david appeal to the heart and not to the senses. the ritualism of the wilderness appealed to the senses and not to the heart; and this was necessary when the people had scarcely emerged from barbarism, even as it was deemed necessary amid the turbulence and ignorance of the tenth century. in the ritualism which moses established there was the absence of everything which would recall the superstitions and rites, or even the doctrines, of the egyptians. in view of this, we account partially for the almost studied reticence in respect to a future state, upon which hinged many of the peculiarities of egyptian worship. it would have been difficult for moses to have recognized the future state, in the degrading ignorance and sensualism of the jews, without associating with it the tutelary deities of the egyptians and all the absurdities connected with the doctrine of metempsychosis, which consigned the victims of future punishment to enter the forms of disgusting and hideous animals, thereby blending with the sublime doctrine of a future state the most degrading superstitions. bishop warburton seizes on the silence of moses respecting a future state to prove, by a learned yet sophistical argument, his divine legation, _because_ he ignored what so essentially entered into the religion of egypt. but whether moses purposely ignored this great truth for fear it would be perverted, or because it was a part of the egyptian economy which he wished his people to forget, still it is also possible that this doctrine of immortality was so deeply engraved on the minds of the people that there was no need to recognize it while giving a system of ritualistic observances. the comparative silence of the old testament concerning immortality is one of its most impressive mysteries. however dimly shadowed by job and david and isaiah, it seems to have been brought to light only by the gospel. there is more in the writings of plato and cicero about immortality than in the whole of the old testament, and this fact is so remarkable, that some trace to the sages of greece and egypt the doctrine itself, as ordinarily understood; that is, a _necessary_ existence of the soul after death. and they fortify themselves with those declarations of the apostles which represent a happy immortality as the special gift of god,--not a necessary existence, but given only to those who obey his laws. if immortality be not a gift, but a necessary existence, as socrates supposed, it seems strange that heathen philosophers should have speculated more profoundly than the patriarchs of the east on this mysterious subject. we cannot suppose that plato was more profoundly instructed on such a subject than abraham and moses. it is to be noted, however, that god seems to have chosen different races for various missions in the education of his children. as saint paul puts it, "there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit,... diversities of workings, but the same god who worketh in all." the hebrew genius was that of discerning and declaring moral and spiritual truth; while that of the greeks was essentially philosophic and speculative, searching into the reasons and causes of existing phenomena. and it is possible, after all, that the loftiest of the greek philosophers derived their opinions from those who had been admitted to the secret schools of egypt, where it is probable that the traditions of primitive ages were preserved, and only communicated to a chosen few; for the ancient schools were esoteric and not popular. the great masters of knowledge believed one thing and the people another. the popular religion was always held in contempt by the wise in all countries, although upheld by them in external rites and emblems and sacrifices, from patriotic purposes. the last act of socrates was to sacrifice a cock to esculapius, with a different meaning from that which was understood by the people. the social and civil code of moses seems to have had primary reference to the necessary isolation of the jews, to keep them from the abominations of other nations, and especially idolatry, and even to make them repulsive and disagreeable to foreigners, in order to keep them a peculiar people. the jew wore an uncouth dress. when he visited strangers he abstained from their customs, and even meats. when a stranger visited the jew he was compelled to submit to jewish restraints. so that the jew ever seems uncourteous, narrow, obstinate, and grotesque: even as others appeared to him to be pagan and unclean. moses lays down laws best calculated to keep the nation separated and esoteric; but there is marvellous wisdom in those which were directed to the development of national resources and general prosperity in an isolated state. the nation was made strong for defence, not for aggression. it must depend upon its militia, and not on horses and chariots, which are designed for distant expeditions, for the pomp of kings, for offensive war, and military aggrandizement. the legislation of moses recognized the peaceful virtues rather than the warlike,--agricultural industry, the network of trades and professions, manufacturing skill, production, not waste and destruction. he discouraged commerce, not because it was in itself demoralizing, but because it brought the jews too much in contact with corrupt nations. and he closely defined political power, and divided it among different magistrates, instituting a wise balance which would do credit to modern legislation. he gave dignity to the people by making them the ultimate source of authority, next to the authority of god. he instituted legislative assemblies to discuss peace and war, and elect the great officers of state. while he made the church support the state, and the state the church, yet he separated civil power from the religious, as calvin did at geneva. the functions of the priest and the functions of the magistrate were made forever distinct,--a radical change from the polity of egypt, where kings were priests, and priests were civil rulers as well as a literary class; a predominating power to whom all vital interests were intrusted. the kingly power among the jews was checked and hedged by other powers, so that an overgrown tyranny was difficult and unusual. but above all kingly and priestly power was the power of the invisible king, to whom the judges and monarchs and supreme magistrates were responsible, as simply his delegates and vicegerents. upon him alone the jews were to rely in all crises of danger; in him alone was help. and it is remarkable that whenever jewish rulers relied on chariots and horses and foreign allies, they were delivered into the hands of their enemies. it was only when they fell back upon the protecting arms of their eternal lord that they were rescued and saved. the mightiest monarch ruled only with delegated powers from him; and it was the memorable loyalty of david to his king which kept him on the throne, as it was self-reliance--the exhibition of independent power--which caused the sceptre to depart from saul. i cannot dwell on the humanity and wisdom which marked the social economy of the jews, as given by moses,--in the treatment of slaves (emancipated every fifty years), in the sanctity of human life, in the liberation of debtors every seven years, in kindness to the poor (who were allowed to glean the fields), in the education of the people, in the division of inherited property, in the inalienation of paternal inheritances, in the discouragement of all luxury and extravagance, in those regulations which made disproportionate fortunes difficult, the vast accumulation of which was one of the main causes of the decline of the roman empire, and is now one of the most threatening evils of modern civilization. all the civil and social laws of the jewish commonwealth tended to the elevation of woman and the cultivation of domestic life. what virtues were gradually developed among those sensual slaves whom moses led through the desert! in what ancient nation were seen such respect to parents, such fidelity to husbands, such charming delights of home, such beautiful simplicities, such ardent loves, such glorious friendships, such regard to the happiness of others! such, in brief, was the great work which moses performed, the marvellous legislation which he gave to the israelites, involving principles accepted by the christian world in every age of its history. now, whence had this man this wisdom? was it the result of his studies and reflections and experiences, or was it a wisdom supernaturally taught him by the almighty? on the solution of this inquiry into the divine legation of moses hang momentous issues. it is too grand and important an inquiry to be disregarded by any one who studies the writings of moses; it is too suggestive a subject to be passed over even in a literary discourse, for this age is grappling with it in most earnest struggles. no matter whether or not moses was gifted in a most extraordinary degree to write his code. nobody doubts his transcendent genius; nobody doubts his wonderful preparation. if any uninspired man could have written it, doubtless it was he. it was the most learned and accomplished of the apostles who was selected to be the expounder of the gospel among the gentiles; so it was the ablest man born among the jews who was chosen to give them a national polity. nor does it detract from his fame as a man of genius that he did not originate the most profound of his declarations. it was fame enough to be the oracle and prophet of jehovah. i would not dishonor the source of all wisdom, even to magnify the abilities of a great man, fond as critics are of exalting the wisdom of moses as a triumph of human genius. it is natural to worship strength, human or divine. we adore mind; we glorify oracles. but neither written history nor philosophy will support the work of moses as a wonder of mere human intellect, without ignoring the declarations of moses himself and the settled belief of all christian ages. it is not my object to make an argument in defence of the divine legation of moses; nor is it my design to reply to the learned criticisms of those who doubt or deny his statements. i would not run a-tilt against modern science, which may hereafter explain and accept what it now rejects. science--whether physical or metaphysical--has its great truths, and so has revelation; the realm of each is distinct while yet their processes are incomplete: and it is the hope and firm belief of many god-fearing scientists that the patient, reverent searching of to-day into god's works, of matter and of mind, as it collects the myriad facts and classifies them into such orderly sequences as indicate the laws of their being, will confirm to men's reason their faith in the revealed word. certainly this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. i am not scientist enough to judge of its probability, but it is within my province to present a few deductions which can be fairly drawn from the denial of the inspiration of the mosaic code. i wish to show to what conclusions this denial logically leads. we must remember that moses himself most distinctly and most emphatically affirms his own divine legation; for is not almost every chapter prefaced with these remarkable words, "and the lord spake unto moses"? jehovah himself, in some incomprehensible way, amid the lightnings and the wonders of the sacred mount, communicated his wisdom. now, if we disbelieve this direct and impressive affirmation made by moses,--that jehovah directed him what to say to the people he was called to govern,--why should we believe his other statements, which involve supernatural agency or influence pertaining to the early history of the race? where, then, is his authority? what is it worth? he has indeed no authority at all, except so far as his statements harmonize with our own definite knowledge, and perhaps with scientific speculations. we then make our own reason and knowledge, not the declarations of moses, the ultimate authority. as a divine oracle to us, his voice is silent; ay, his august voice is drowned by the discordant and contradictory opinions that are ever blended with the speculations of the schools. he tells us, in language of the most impressive simplicity and grandeur, that he _was_ directly instructed and commissioned by jehovah to communicate moral truths,--truths, we should remember, which no one before him is known to have uttered, and truths so important that the prosperity of nations is identified with them, and will be so identified as long as men shall speculate and dream. if we deny this testimony, then his narration of other facts, which we accept, is not to be fully credited; like other ancient histories, it may be and it may not be true,--but there is no certainty. however we may interpret his detailed narration of the genesis of our world and our race,--whether as chronicle or as symbolic poem,--its central theme and thought, the direct creative agency of jehovah, which it was his privilege to announce, stands forth clear and unmistakable. yet if we deny the supernaturalism of the code, we may also deny the supernaturalism of the creation, in so far as both rest on the authority of moses. and, further, if moses was not inspired directly from god to write his code, then it follows that he--a man pre-eminent for wisdom, piety, and knowledge--was an impostor, or at least, like mohammed and george fox, a self-deceived and visionary man, since he himself affirms his divine legation, and traces to the direct agency of jehovah not merely his code, but even the various deliverances of the israelites. and not only was moses mistaken, but the jewish nation, and christ and the apostles, and the greatest lights of the church from augustine to bossuet. hence it follows necessarily that all the miracles by which the divine legation of moses is supported and credited, have no firm foundation, and a belief in them is superstitious,--as indeed it is in all other miracles recorded in the scriptures, since they rest on testimony no more firmly believed than that believed by christ and the apostles respecting moses. sweep away his authority as an inspiration, and you undermine the whole authority of the bible; you bring it down to the level of all other books; you make it valuable only as a thesaurus of interesting stories and impressive moral truths, which we accept as we do all other kinds of knowledge, leaving us free to reject what we cannot understand or appreciate, or even what we dislike. then what follows? is it not the rejection of many of the most precious revelations of the bible, to which we _wish_ to cling, and without a belief in which there would be the old despair of paganism, the dreary unsettlement of all religious opinions, even a disbelief in an intelligent first cause of the universe, certainly of a personal god,--and thus a gradual drifting away to the dismal shores of that godless epicureanism which socrates derided, and paul and augustine combated? do you ask for a confirmation of the truths thus deduced from the denial of the supernaturalism of the mosaic code? i ask you to look around. i call no names; i invoke no theological hatreds; i seek to inflame no prejudices. i appeal to facts as incontrovertible as the phenomena of the heavens. i stand on the platform of truth itself, which we all seek to know and are proud to confess. look to the developments of modern thought, to some of the speculations of modern science, to the spirit which animates much of our popular literature, not in our country but in all countries, even in the schools of the prophets and among men who are "more advanced," as they think, in learning, and if you do not see a tendency to the revival of an attractive but exploded philosophy,--the philosophy of democritus; the philosophy of epicurus,--then i am in an error as to the signs of the times. but if i am correct in this position,--if scepticism, or rationalism, or pantheism, or even science, in the audacity of its denials, or all these combined, are in conflict with the supernaturalism which shines and glows in every book of the bible, and are bringing back for our acceptance what our fathers scorned,--then we must be allowed to show the practical results, the results on life, which of necessity followed the triumph of the speculative opinions of the popular idols of the ancient world in the realm of thought. oh, what a life was that! what a poor exchange for the certitudes of faith and the simplicities of patriarchal times! i do not know whether an epicurean philosophy grows out of an epicurean life, or the life from the philosophy; but both are indissolubly and logically connected. the triumph of one is the triumph of the other, and the triumph of both is equally pointed out in the writings of paul as a degeneracy, a misfortune,--yea, a sin to be wiped out only by the destruction of nations, or some terrible and unexpected catastrophe, and the obscuration of all that is glorious and proud among the works of men. i make these, as i conceive, necessary digressions, because a discourse on moses would be pointless without them; at best only a survey of that marvellous and favored legislator from the standpoint of secular history. i would not pull him down from the lofty pedestal whence he has given laws to all successive generations; a man, indeed, but shrouded in those awful mysteries which the great soul of michael angelo loved to ponder, and which gave to his creations the power of supernal majesty. thus did moses, instructed by god,--for this is the great fact revealed in his testimony,--lead the inconstant israelites through a forty years' pilgrimage, securing their veneration to the last. thus did he keep them from the idolatries for which they hankered, and preserved among them allegiance to an invisible king. thus did he impress his own mind and character upon them, and shape their institutions with matchless wisdom. thus did he give them a system of laws--moral, ceremonial, and civil--which kept them a powerful and peculiar people for more than a thousand years, and secured a prosperity which culminated in the glorious reigns of david and solomon and a political power unsurpassed in western asia, to see which the queen of sheba came from the uttermost part of the earth,--nay, more, which first formulated for that little corner of the world principles and precepts concerning the relations of men to god and to one another which have been an inspiration to all mankind for thousands of years. thus did this good and great man fulfil his task and deliver his message, with no other drawbacks on his part than occasional bursts of anger at the unparalleled folly and wickedness of his people. what disinterestedness marks his whole career, from the time when he flies from pharaoh to the appointment of his successor, relinquishing without regret the virtual government of egypt, accepting cheerfully the austerities and privations of the land of midian, never elevating his own family to power, never complaining in his herculean tasks! with what eloquence does he plead for his people when the anger of the lord is kindled against them, ever regarding them as mere children who know no self-control! how patient he is in the performance of his duties, accepting counsel from jethro and listening to the voice of aaron! with what stern and awful majesty does he lay down the law! what inspiration gilds his features as he descends the mount with the tables in his hands! how terrible he is amid the thunders and lightnings of sinai, at the rock of horeb, at the dances around the golden calf, at the rebellion of korah and dathan, at the waters of meribah, at the burning of nadab and abihu! how efficient he is in the administration of justice, in the assemblies of the people, in the great councils of rulers and princes, and in all the crises of the state; and yet how gentle, forgiving, tender, and accessible! how sad he is when the people weary of manna and seek flesh to eat! how nobly does he plead with the king of edom for a passage through his territories! how humbly does he call on god for help amid perplexing cares! never was a man armed with such authority so patient and so self-distrustful. never was so experienced and learned a man so little conscious of his greatness. "this was the truest warrior that ever buckled sword; this the most gifted poet that ever breathed a word: and never earth's philosopher traced with his golden pen, on the deathless page, truths half so sage, as he wrote down for men." at length--at one hundred and twenty years of age, with undimmed eye and unabated strength, after having done more for his nation and for posterity than any ruler or king in the world's history, and won a fame which shall last through all the generations of men, growing brighter and brighter as his vast labors and genius are appreciated--the time comes to lay down his burdens. so he assembles together the princes and elders of israel, recapitulates his laws, enumerates the mercies of the god to whom he has ever been loyal, and gives his final instructions. he appoints joshua as his successor, adds words of encouragement to the people, whom he so fervently loves, sings his final song, and ascends the mountain above the plains of moab, from which he is permitted to see, but not to enter, the promised land; not pensive and sad like godfrey, because he cannot enter jerusalem, but full of joyous visions of the future glories of his nation, and breaking out in the language of exultation, "who is like unto thee, o people saved by jehovah, the shield of thy help and the sword of thy excellency!" so moses, the like of whom no prophet has since arisen (except that later one whom he himself foretold), the greatest man in jewish annals, passes away from mortal sight, and jehovah buries him in a valley of the land of moab, and no man knoweth his sepulchre until this day. "that was the grandest funeral that ever passed on earth; but no one heard the trampling, or saw the train go forth,- perchance the bald old eagle on gray bethpeor's height, out of his lonely eyrie looked on the wondrous sight." * * * * * "and had he not high honor- the hillside for a pall- to lie in state, while angels wait with stars for tapers tall; and the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, over his bier to wave, and god's own hand, in that lonely land, to lay him in the grave?" * * * * * "o lonely grave in moab's land! o dark bethpeor's hill! speak to these curious hearts of ours, and teach them to be still! god hath his mysteries of grace, ways that we cannot tell; he hides them deep, like the hidden sleep of him he loved so well." samuel. 1100 b.c. the hebrew theocracy, under judges. after moses, and until david arose, it would be difficult to select any man who rendered greater services to the israelitish nation than samuel. he does not stand out in history as a man of dazzling intellectual qualities; but during a long life he efficiently labored to give to the nation political unity and power, and to reclaim it from idolatries. he was both a political and moral reformer,--an organizer of new forces, a man of great executive ability, a judge and a prophet. he made no mistakes, and committed no crimes. in view of his wisdom and sanctity it is evident that he would have adorned the office of high-priest; but as he did not belong to the family of aaron, this great dignity could not be conferred on him. his character was reproachless. he was, indeed, one of the best men that ever lived, universally revered while living, and equally mourned when he died. he ruled the nation in a great crisis, and his influence was irresistible, because favored alike by god and man. samuel lived in one of the most tumultuous and unsettled periods of jewish history, when the nation was in a transition state from anarchy to law, from political slavery to national independence. when he appeared, there was no settled government; the surrounding nations were still unconquered, and had reduced the israelites to humiliating dependence. deliverers had arisen occasionally from the time of joshua,--like gideon, jephthah, and samson,--but their victories were not decisive or permanent. midianites, amorites, and philistines successively oppressed israel, from generation to generation; they even succeeded in taking away their weapons of war. resistance to this tyranny was apparently hopeless, and the nation would have sunk into despair but for occasional providential aid. the sacred ark was for a time in the hands of enemies, and shiloh, the religious capital,--abode of the tabernacle and the ark,--had been burned. every smith's forge where a sword or a spear-head could be rudely made was shut up, and the people were forced to go to the forges of their oppressors to get even their ploughshares sharpened. on the death of joshua (about 1350 b.c.), who had succeeded moses and led the israelites into canaan, "nearly the whole of the sea-coast, all the strongholds in the rich plain of esdraelon, and, in the heart of the country, the invincible fortress of jebus [later site of jerusalem], were still in the hands of the unbelievers." the conquest therefore was yet imperfect, like that of the christianized saxons in the time of alfred over the pagan danes in england. the times were full of peril and fear. they developed the military energies of the israelites, but bred license, robbery, and crime,--a wild spirit of personal independence unfavorable to law and order. in those days "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." it was a period of utter disorder, anarchy, and lawlessness, like the condition of germany and italy in the middle ages. the persons who bore rule permanently were the princes or heads of the several tribes, the judges, and the high-priest; and in that primitive state of society these dignitaries rode on asses, and lived in tents. the virtues of the people were rough, and their habits warlike. their great men were fighters. samson was a sort of hercules, and jephthah an idomeneus,--a lawless freebooter. the house of micah was like a feudal castle; the benjamite war was like the strife of highland clans. jael was a hebrew boadicea; gideon, at the head of his three hundred men, might have been a hero of mediaeval romance. the saddest thing among these social and political evils was a great decline of religious life. the priesthood was disgraced by the prevailing vices of the times. the mosaic rites may have been technically observed, but the officiating priests were sensual and worldly, while gross darkness covered the land. the high-priests exercised but a feeble influence; and even eli could not, or did not, restrain the glaring immoralities of his own sons. in those evil days there were no revelations from jehovah, and there was no divine vision among the prophets. never did a nation have greater need of a deliverer. it was then that samuel arose, and he first appears as a pious boy, consecrated to priestly duties by a remarkable mother. his childhood was passed in the sacred tent of shiloh, as an attendant, or servant, of the aged high-priest, or what would be called by the catholic church an acolyte. he belonged to the great tribe of ephraim, being the son of elkanah, of whom nothing is worthy of notice except that he was a polygamist. his mother hannah (or anna), however, was a hebrew saint theresa, almost a nazarite in her asceticism and a prophetess in her gifts; her song of thanksgiving on the birth of samuel, for a special answer to her prayer, is one of the most beautiful remains of hebrew poetry. from his infancy samuel was especially dedicated to the service of god. he was not a priest, since he did not belong to the priestly caste; but the lord was with him, and raised him up to be more than priest,--even a prophet and a judge. when a mere child, it was he who declared to eli the ruin of his house, since he had not restrained the wickedness and cruelty of his sons. from that time the prophetic character of samuel was established, and his influence constantly increased until he became the foremost man of his nation, second to no one in power and dignity since the time of moses. but there is not much recorded of him until twenty years after the death of eli, who lived to be ninety. it was during this period that the philistines had carried away the sacred ark from shiloh, and had overrun the country and oppressed the hebrews, who it seems had fallen into idolatry, worshipping ashtaroth and other strange gods. it was samuel, already recognized as a great prophet and judge, who aroused the nation from its idolatry and delivered it from the hand of the philistines at mizpeh, where a great battle was fought, so that these terrible foes were subdued, and came no more into the borders of israel during the days of samuel; and all the cities they had taken, from ekron unto gath, were restored. the subjection of the philistines was followed by the undisputed rule of samuel, under the name of judge, during his life, even after the consecration of saul. the israelitish judge seems to have been a sort of dictator, called to power by the will of the people in times of great emergency and peril, as among the romans. "the theocracy," says ewald, "by pronouncing any human ruler unnecessary as a permanent element of the state, lapsed into anarchy and weakness. when a nation is without a government strong enough to repress lawlessness within and to protect from foes without, the whole people very soon divides once more into the two ranks of master and servant. in deborah's songs all israel, so far as lay in her circle of vision, was divided into princes and people. hence the nation consisted of innumerable self-constituted and self-sustained kingdoms, formed whenever some chieftain elevated himself whom individuals or the body of citizens in a town were willing to serve. gaal, son of zobah, entered shechem with troops raised by himself, just like a condottiere in italy in the middle ages. as it became evident that the nation could not permanently dispense with an earthly government, it was forced to rally round some powerful leader; and as the theocracy was still acknowledged by the best of the nation, these leaders, who owed their power to circumstances, could not easily be transformed into regular kings, but to exceptional dictators the state offered no strong resistance." and yet these rulers arose not solely by force of individual prowess, but were expressly raised up by god as deliverers of the nation in times of peculiar peril. and further, the spirit of jehovah came upon them, as it did upon deborah the prophetess, and as it did still more remarkably upon moses himself. the last and greatest of these extemporized leaders called judges, was samuel. in him the people learned to put their trust; and the national assembly which he summoned was completely guided by him. no one of the judges, it would seem, had his seat of government in any central city, but where he happened to live. so the residence of samuel was at his native town of ramah, where he married. it would seem that he travelled from city to city to administer justice, like the judges of england on their circuits; but, unlike them, on his own supreme authority,--not with power delegated by a king, but acknowledging no superior except god himself, from whom he received his commission. we know not at what time and whom he married; but his two sons, who in his old age shared power with him, did not discharge their delegated functions more honorably than the sons of eli, who had been a disgrace to their office, to their father, and to the nation. one of the greatest mysteries of human life is the seeming inability of pious fathers to check the vices of their children, who often go astray under an apparently irresistible impulse or innate depravity, in spite of parental precept and example,--thus seeming to show that neither virtue nor vice can be surely transmitted, and that every human being stands on his individual responsibility, with peculiar temptations to combat, and peculiar circumstances to influence him. the son of a saint becomes mysteriously a drunkard or a fraud, and the son of a sensualist becomes an ascetic. this does not uniformly occur: in fact, the sons of good men are more likely to be an honor to their families than the sons of the wicked; but why are exceptions so common as to be proverbial? it was no light work which was imposed on the shoulders of samuel,--to establish law and order among the demoralized tribes of the jews, and to prepare them for political independence; and it was a still greater labor to effect a moral reformation and reintroduce the worship of jehovah. both of these objects he seems to have accomplished; and his success places him in the list of great reformers, like mohammed and luther,--but greater and better than either, since he did not attempt, like the former, to bring about a good end by bad means; nor was he stained by personal defects, like the latter. "it was his object to re-enkindle the national life of the nation, so as to combat successfully its enemies in the field, which could be attained by rousing a common religious feeling;" for he saw that there could be no true enthusiasm without a sense of dependence on the god of battles, and that heroism could be stimulated only by exalted sentiments, both of patriotism and religion. but how was samuel to rekindle a fervent religious life among the degenerate israelites in such unsettled times? only by rousing the people by his teachings and his eloquence. he was a preacher of righteousness, and in all probability went from city to city and village to village,--as saint bernard did when he preached a crusade against the infidels, as john the baptist did when he preached repentance, as whitefield did when he sought to kindle religious enthusiasm in england. so he set himself to educate his countrymen in the great truths which appealed to the inner life,--to the heart and conscience. this he did, first, by rousing the slumbering spirits of the elders of tribes when they sought his counsel as a prophet, the like of whom had not appeared since moses, so gifted and so earnest; and secondly, by founding a school for the education of young men who should go with his instructions wherever he chose to send them, like the early missionaries, to hamlets and villages which he was unable to visit in person. the first "school of the prophets" was a seminary of missionaries, animated by the spirit of a teacher whom they feared and admired as no prophet had been revered in the whole history of the nation since moses. samuel communicated his own burning spirit wherever he went, and the burden of his eloquence was zeal and loyalty for jehovah. before his time the prophets had been known as seers; but samuel superadded the duties of a religious teacher,--the spokesman of the almighty. the number of his disciples, whom he doubtless commissioned as evangelists, must have been very large. they lived in communities and ate in common, like the primitive monks. they probably resembled the early dominican and franciscan friars of the middle ages, who were kindled to enthusiasm by such teachers as thomas aquinas and bonaventura. like them they were ascetics in their habits and dress, wearing sheepskins, and living on locusts and wild honey,--on the fruits which grew spontaneously in the rich valleys of their well-watered country. it did not require much learning to arouse the common people to new duties and a higher religious life. the bible does not inform us as to the details by which samuel made his influence felt, but there can be no doubt that by some means he kindled a religious life before unknown among his countrymen. he infused courage and hope into their despairing hearts, and laid the foundation of military enthusiasm by combining with it religious ardor; so that by the discipline of forty years,--the same period employed by moses in transmuting a horde of slaves into a national host of warriors; a period long enough to drop out the corrupted elements and replace them with the better trained rising generation,--the nation was prepared for accomplishing the victories of saul and david. but for samuel no great captains would have arisen to lead the scattered and dispirited hosts of israel against the philistines and other enemies. he was thus a political leader as well as a religious teacher, combining the offices of judge and prophet. everybody felt that he was directly commissioned by god, and his words had the force of inspiration. he reigned with as much power as a king over all the tribes, though clad in the garments of humility. who in all israel was greater than he, even after he had anointed saul to the kingly office? the great outward event in the life of samuel was the transition of the israelites from a theocratic to a monarchical government. it was a political revolution, and like all revolutions was fraught with both good and evil, yet seemingly demanded by the spirit of the times,--in one sense an advance in civilization, in another a retrogression in primeval virtues. it resulted in a great progress in material arts, culture, and power, but also in a decline in those simplicities that favor a religious life, on which the strength of man is apparently built,--that is, a state of society in which man in his ordinary life draws nearest to his maker, to his kindred, and his home; to which luxury and demoralizing pleasures are unknown; a life free from temptations and intellectual snares, from political ambition and social unrest, from recognized injustice and stinging inequalities. the historian with his theory of development might call this revolution the change from national youth to manhood, the emerging from the dark ages of hebrew history to a period of national aggrandizement and growth in civilization,--one of the necessary changes which must take place if a nation would become strong, powerful, and cultivated. to the eye of the contemplative, conservative, and god-fearing samuel this change of government seemed full of perils and dangers, for which the nation was not fully prepared. he felt it to be a change which might wean the israelites from their new sense of dependence on god, the only hope of nations, and which might favor another lapse to pagan idolatries and a decline in household virtues, such as had been illustrated in the life of ruth and boaz,--and hence might prove a mere exchange of that rugged life which elevates the soul, for those gilded glories which adorn and pamper the mortal body. he certainly foresaw and knew that the change in government would produce tyranny, oppression, and injustice, from which there could be no escape and for which there could be no redress, for he told the people in detail just what they should suffer at the hands of any king whom they might have; and these were in his eyes evils which nothing could compensate,--the loss of liberty, the extinction of personal independence, and a probable rebellion against the supreme jehovah in the degrading worship of the gods of idolatrous nations. when the people, therefore, under the guidance of so-called "progressive leaders," hankered for a government which would make them like other nations, and demanded a king, the prophet was greatly moved and sore displeased; and this displeasure was heightened by a bitter humiliation when the elders reproached him because of the misgovernment of his own sons. he could not at first say a word, in view of a demand apparently justified by the conduct of the existing rulers. there was a just cause of complaint. if his own sons would take bribes in rendering judgment, who could be trusted? civilization would say that there was needed a stronger arm to punish crime and enforce the laws. so samuel, perplexed and disheartened, fearing that the political changes would be evil rather than good, and yet feeling unable to combat the popular voice, sought wisdom in prayer. "and the lord said, hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that i should reign over them. now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them." the almighty would not take away the free-will of the people; but samuel is required to show them the perversity of their will, and that if they should choose evil the consequences would be on their heads and the heads of their children, from generation to generation. samuel therefore spake unto the people,--probably the elders and leading men, for the aristocratic element of society prevailed, as in the middle ages of feudal europe, when even royal power was merely nominal, and barons and bishops ruled,--and said: "this will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he shall take your sons and appoint them for himself for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots; and he shall appoint captains over thousands and captains over fifties, and will set them to ear [plough] his ground and reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. and he will take your daughters to be confectioners [or perfumers] and cooks and bakers. and he will take your fields and your vineyards and your olive-yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants; and he will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and to his servants. and he will take your men-servants and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. and he will take the tenth of your sheep; and ye shall be his servants. and ye will cry out in that day because of your king which ye have chosen you, and the lord will not hear you in that day." nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of samuel; and they said, "nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles." it would thus appear that the monarchy which the people sought would necessarily become nearly absolute, limited only by the will of god as interpreted by priests and prophets,--for the theocracy was not to be destroyed, but still maintained as even superior to the royal authority. the future king was to be supreme in affairs of state, in the direction of armies, in the appointment of captains and commanders, in the general superintendence of the realm in worldly matters; but he could not go contrary to the divine commands as they would be revealed to him, without incurring a fearful penalty. he could not interfere with the functions of the priesthood under any pretence whatever; and further, he was required to rule on principles of equity and immutable justice. he could not repel the divine voice, whether it spake to his consciousness or was revealed to him by divinely commissioned prophets, without the certainty of divine chastisement. thus was his power limited, even by invisible forces superior to his own; for jehovah had not withdrawn his special jurisdiction over the chosen people for whom he was preparing a splendid destiny,--that is, through them, the redemption of the world. whether the people of israel did not believe the predictions of the prophet, or wished to have a kingly government in spite of its evils, in order to become more powerful as a nation, we do not know. all that we know is that they persisted in their demand, and that god granted their request. with all the memories and traditions of their slavery in the land of egypt, and the grinding despotism incident to an absolute monarchy of which their ancestors bore witness, they preferred despotism with its evils to the independence they had enjoyed under the judges; for nationality, to which the jewish people were casting longing eyes, demands law and order as the first condition of society. in obedience to this same principle the grinding monarchy of louis xiv. seemed preferable to the turbulence and anarchy of the middle ages, since unarmed and obscure citizens felt safe in their humble avocations. in like manner, after the license of the french revolution the people said, "give us a king once more!" and seated napoleon on the throne of the bourbons,--a ruler who took one man out of every five adults to recruit his armies and consolidate his power, which he called the glory of france. thus kings have reigned by the will of the people,--or, as they call it, by the grace of god,--from saul and david to our own times, except in those few countries where liberty is preferred to material power and military laurels. the peculiar situation of the israelites in a narrow strip of territory which was the highway between syria and egypt, likely to be overrun by aramaeans, assyrians, babylonians, and egyptians, to say nothing of the hostile nations which surrounded them, such as moabites and philistines, necessarily made them a warlike people (like the inhabitants of the swiss cantons five or six hundred years ago), and they were hence led to put a high estimate on military qualities, especially on the general who led them to battle. they accordingly desired a greater centralized power than the judges wielded, which could be exercised only by a king, intrenched in a strong capital. their desire for a king was natural, and almost excusable if they were willing to pay the inevitable price. they simply wished to surrender liberty for protection and political safety. they did not repudiate the fundamental doctrine of their religion; they simply wanted a change of government,--a more efficient administration. the selection of a king did not rest with the people, however, but with the great prophet who had ruled them with so much wisdom and ability, and who was regarded as the interpreter of the will of god. samuel, by the direction of god, did not go into the powerful tribe of ephraim, which possessed one half of the israelitish territory, to select a sovereign, but to the smallest of the tribes, that of benjamin,--the most warlike, however,--and to one of the least of the families of that tribe, dwelling in very humble life. kish, the benjamite, had sent out his son saul in quest of three asses which had strayed away from the farm,--a man so poor that he had no money to give to the seer who should direct his search, as was customary, and was obliged to borrow a quarter of a shekel from his servant when they went together to seek the counsel of samuel. but this obscure youth was "a choice young man, and a goodly." he had a commanding presence, was very beautiful, and was head and shoulders taller than any other man of his tribe,--a man every way likely to succeed in war. samuel no sooner saw the commanding figure and intelligent countenance of saul than he was assured that this was the man whom the lord had chosen to be the future captain and champion of israel. he at once treated him with distinguished honor, and made him sit at his own table, much to the amazement of the thirty nobles who also were bidden to a banquet. the prophet took the young man aside, conducted him to the top of his house, anointed him with the sacred oil, kissed him (a form of allegiance), and communicated to him the will of god. but saul was only privately consecrated, and with rare discretion told no man of his good fortune,--for he had not yet distinguished himself in any way, and would have been laughed to scorn by his relatives, as joseph was by his brothers, had he revealed his destiny. nor did samuel dare to tell the people of the man whom the lord had chosen to rule over them, but assembled all the tribes, that the choice might be publicly indicated. probably to their astonishment the little tribe of benjamin was "taken,"--that is pointed out, presumably by lot, as was their custom when appealing for divine direction; and out of the tribe of benjamin the family of matri was chosen, and saul the son of kish was selected. but saul could not be found. with rare modesty and humility he had hidden himself. when at length they brought him from his hiding-place samuel said unto the people, "see ye him whom the lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people!" and such was the authority of samuel that the people shouted, saying, "god save the king!"--a circumstance interesting as being the first recorded utterance of a cry that has been echoed the world over by many a loyal people. not yet, however, was saul clothed with full power as a king. samuel still remained the acknowledged ruler until saul should distinguish himself in battle. this soon took place. with heroic valor he delivered jabesh-gilead from the hosts of the ammonites when that city was about to fall into their hands, and silenced the envy of his enemies. in a burst of popular enthusiasm samuel collected the people in gilgal, and there formally installed saul as king of israel. samuel was now an old man, and was glad to lay down his heavy burden and put it on the shoulders of saul. yet he did not retire from the active government without making a memorable speech to the assembled nation, in which with transcendent dignity he appealed to the people in attestation of his incorruptible integrity as a judge and ruler. "behold, here i am! witness against me before the lord, and before his anointed. whose ox have i taken, or whose ass have i taken, or whom have i defrauded? or of whose hand have i received any bribe to blind my eyes therewith? and they said, thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us; neither hast thou taken aught of any man's hand." then samuel closed his address with an injunction to both king and people to obey the commandments of god, and denouncing the penalty of disobedience: "only fear the lord, and serve him in truth and with all your heart, for consider what great things he hath done for you; but if ye shall do wickedly, ye shall be consumed,--both ye and your king." saul for a time gave no offence worthy of rebuke, but was a valiant captain, smiting the philistines, who were the most powerful enemies that the israelites had yet encountered. but in an evil day he forgot his true vocation, and took upon himself the function of a priest by offering burnt sacrifices, which was not lawful but for the priest alone. for this he was rebuked by samuel. "thou hast done foolishly," he said to the king; "for which thy kingdom shall not continue. the lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the lord commanded thee." we here see the blending of the theocratic with the kingly rule. nevertheless saul was prospered in his wars. he fought successfully the moabites, the ammonites, the edomites, the amalekites, and the philistines, aided by his cousin abner, whom he made captain of his host. he did much to establish the kingdom; but he was rather a great captain than a great man. he did not fully perceive his mission, which was to fight, but meddled with affairs which belonged to the priests. nor was he always true to his mission as a warrior. he weakly spared agag, king of the amalekites, which again called forth the displeasure and denunciation of samuel, who regarded the conduct of the king as direct rebellion against god, since he was commanded to spare none of that people, they having shown an uncompromising hostility to the israelites in their days of weakness, when first entering canaan. this, and similar commands laid upon the israelites at various times, to "utterly destroy" certain tribes or individuals and all of their possessions, have been justified on the ground of the bestial grossness and corruption of those pagan idolaters and the vileness of their religious rites and social customs, which unfortunately always found a temptable side on the part of the israelites, and repeatedly brought to nought the efforts of jehovah's prophets to bring up their people in the fear of the lord, to recognize him, only, as god. it was not easy for that sensual race to stand on the height of moses, and "endure as seeing him who is invisible." they too easily fell into idolatry; hence the necessity of the extermination of some of the nests of iniquity in canaan. whether saul spared agag because of his personal beauty, to grace his royal triumph, or whatever the motive, it was a direct disobedience; and when the king attempted to exculpate himself, inasmuch as he had made a sacrifice of the spoil to the lord, samuel replied: "hath the lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying his voice?... behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,--for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry." the prophet here sets forth, as did isaiah in later times, the great principles of moral obligation as paramount over all ceremonial observances. he strikes a blow at all pharisaism and all self-righteousness, and inculcates obedience to direct commands as the highest duty of man. saul, perceiving that he had sinned, confessed his transgression, but palliated it by saying that he feared the people. but this policy of expediency had no weight with the prophet, although saul repented and sought pardon. samuel continued his stern rebuke, and uttered his fearful message, saying, "jehovah hath rent the kingdom of israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbor of thine that is better than thou." furthermore samuel demanded that agag, whom saul had spared, should be brought before him; and he took upon himself with his aged hand the work of executioner, and hewed the king of the amalekites in pieces in gilgal. he then finally departed from saul, and mournfully went to his own house in ramah, and saul saw him no more. as the king was the "lord's anointed," samuel could not openly rebel against kingly authority, but he would henceforth have nothing to do with the headstrong ruler. he withdrew from him all spiritual guidance, and left him to his follies and madness; for the inextinguishable jealousy of saul, that now began to appear, was a species of insanity, which poisoned his whole subsequent life. the people continued loyal to a king whom god had selected, but samuel "came no more to see saul until the day of his death." to be deserted by such a counsellor as samuel, was no small calamity. meanwhile, in obedience to instructions from god, samuel proceeded to bethlehem, to the humble abode of jesse, of the tribe of judah, one of whose sons he was required to anoint as the future king of israel. he naturally was about to select the largest and finest looking of the seven sons; but god looketh on the heart rather than the outward appearance, and david, a mere youth, and the youngest of the family, was the one indicated by jehovah, and was privately anointed by the prophet. saul, of course, did not know on whom the choice had fallen as his successor, but from that day on which he was warned of the penalty of his disobedience divine favor departed from him, and he became jealous, fitful, and cruel. he presented a striking contrast to the character he had shown in his early days,--being no longer modest and humble, but proud and tyrannical. prosperity and power had turned his head, and developed all that was evil in him. nero was not more unreasonable and bloodthirsty than was saul in his latter days. prosperity developed in solomon a love of magnificence, in nebuchadnezzar a towering vanity, but in saul a malignant envy of all extraordinary merit, and a sullen determination to destroy the persons it adorned. the last person in his kingdom of whom apparently he had reason to be jealous, was the ruddy and beardless youth whom he had sent for to drive away his melancholy by his songs and music. nor was it until david killed goliath that saul became jealous; before this he had no cause of envy, for kings do not envy musicians, but reward them. david's reward was as extravagant as that which russian emperors shower upon singers and dancers: he was made armor-bearer to the king,--an office bestowed only upon favorites and those who were implicitly trusted and beloved. little did the moody and jealous king imagine that the youth whom he had brought from obscurity to amuse his melancholy hours by his music, and probably his wit and humor, would so soon, by his own sanction, become the champion of israel, and ultimately his successor on the throne. in the latter part of the reign of saul the enemies with whom he had to contend were the various canaanitish nations that had remained unconquered during the hard struggle of four hundred years after the hebrews had been led by joshua to the promised land. the most powerful of these nations were the philistines. "strong in their military organization, fierce in their warlike spirit, and rich by their position and commercial instincts, they even threatened the ancient supremacy of the phoenicians of the north. their cities were the restless centres of every form of activity. ashdod and gaza, as the keys of egypt, commanded the carrying trade to and from the nile, and formed the great depots for its imports and exports. all the cities, moreover, traded in slaves with edom and southern arabia, and their commerce in other directions flourished so greatly as to gain for the people at large the name of canaanites,--which was synonymous with 'merchant,' even the word 'palestine' is derived from the philistines. their skill as smiths and armorers was noted; the strength of their cities attest their strength as builders, and their idols and golden mice and emerods show their respect for the arts of peace." it is supposed that they had settled in canaan about the time of abraham, and were originally a pastoral people in the neighborhood of gesar, or emigrants from crete. when the israelites under joshua arrived, they were in full possession of the southern part of palestine, and had formed a confederacy of five powerful cities,--gaza, ashdod, askelon, gath, and ekron. in the time of the judges they had become so prosperous and powerful that they held the israelites in partial subjection, broken at intervals by heroes like shamgar and samson. under eli there was an organized but unsuccessful resistance to these prosperous and warlike heathen. under samuel the tide of success was turned in israel's favor at the battle of mizpeh, when the israelites erected their pillar at ebenezer as a token of victory. the battle of michmash, gained by saul and jonathan after an immense slaughter of their foes, was so decisive that for twenty-five years the israelites were unmolested. in the latter part of the reign of saul the philistines attempted to regain their ascendency, but on the death of goliath at the hand of david they were driven to their own territories. the battle of gilboa, where saul and jonathan were slain, again turned the scale in favor of the philistines. under david the israelites resumed the aggressive, took gath, and completely broke forever the ascendency of their powerful foes. under solomon it would appear that the whole of philistia was incorporated with the hebrew monarchy, and remained so until the calamities of the jews gave philistia to the assyrian conquerors of jerusalem, and finally it fell into the hands of the romans. the philistines were zealous idolaters, and in times of great religious apostasy they succeeded in introducing the worship of their gods among the israelites, especially that of baal and ashtaroth. samuel did not live to see the complete humiliation of his nation which succeeded the bloody battle when saul was slain; but he lived to a good old age, and never lost his influence over the israelites, whom he had rescued from idolatry and to whom he had given political unity. although saul was king, we are told that samuel judged israel all the days of his life. he died universally lamented. there is no record in the scriptures of a death attended with such profound and general mourning. all israel mourned for him. they mourned because he was a good man, unstained by crime or folly; they mourned because their judge and oracle and friend had passed away; they mourned because he had been their intercessor with god himself, and the interpreter of the divine will. his like would never appear again in israel. "he represents the independence of the moral law, as distinct from regal and sacerdotal enactments. if a levite, he was not a priest. he was a prophet, the first in the regular succession of prophets. he was also the founder of the first regular institutions of religious instruction, and communities for the purposes of education. from these institutions were developed the universities of christendom." in a spiritual and religious sense the prophet takes the highest rank in the kingdom of god on earth. among the hebrews he was the interpreter of the divine will; he predicted future events. he was a preacher of righteousness; he was the counsellor of kings and princes; he was a sage and oracle among the people. he was a reformer, teaching the highest truths and restoring the worship of god when nations were sunk in idolatry; he was the mouth-piece of the eternal, for warning, for rebuke, for encouragement, for chastisement. he was divinely inspired, armed with supernatural powers,--a man whom the people feared and obeyed, sometimes honored, sometimes stoned; one who bore heavy responsibilities, and of whom were demanded disagreeable duties. we associate with the idea of a prophet both wisdom and virtue, great gifts and great personal piety. we think of him as a man who lived a secluded life of meditation and prayer, in constant communion with god and removed from all worldly rewards,--a man indifferent to ordinary pleasures, to outward pomp and show, free from personal vanity, lofty in his bearing, independent in his mode of life, spiritual in his aims, fervent and earnest in his exhortations, living above the world in the higher regions of faith and love, disdaining praises and honors, soft raiment and luxurious food, and maintaining a proud equality with the greatest personages; a man not to be bought, and not to be deterred from his purpose by threatenings or intimidation or flatteries, commanding reverence, and exalted as a favorite of heaven. it was not necessary that the prophet should be a priest or even a levite. he was greater than any impersonation of sacerdotalism, sacred in his person and awful in his utterances, unassisted by ritualistic forms, declaring truths which appealed to consciousness,--a kind of spiritual dictator who inspired awe and reverence. in one sense or another most of the august characters of the old testament were prophets,--abraham, moses, joseph, david, elijah, daniel, isaiah, jeremiah, ezekiel. they either foretold the future, or rebuked kings as messengers of omnipotence, or taught the people great truths, or uttered inspired melodies, or interpreted dreams, or in some way revealed the ways and will of god. among them were patriarchs, kings, and priests, and sages uninvested with official functions. some lived in cities and others in villages, and others again in the wilderness and desert places; some reigned in the palaces of pride, and others in the huts of poverty,--yet all alike exercised a tremendous moral power. they were the national poets and historians of judaea, preachers of patriotism as well as of religion and morals, exercising political as well as spiritual power. those who stand out pre-eminently in the sacred writings were gifted with the power of revealing the future destinies of nations, and above all other things the peculiarities of the messianic reign. samuel was not called to declare those profound truths which relate to the appearance and reign of christ as the saviour of mankind, nor the fate of idolatrous nations, nor even the future vicissitudes connected with the hebrew nation, but to found a school of religious teachers, to revive the worship of jehovah, guide the conduct of princes, and direct the general affairs of the nation as commanded by god. he was the first and most favored of the great prophets, and exercised an influence as a prophet never equalled by any who succeeded him. he was a great prophet, since for forty years he ruled israel by direct divine illumination,--a holy man who communed with god, great in speech and great in action. he did not rise to the lofty eloquence of isaiah, nor foresee the fate of nations like daniel and ezekiel; but he was consulted and obeyed as a man who knew the divine will, gifted beyond any other man of his age in spiritual insight, and trusted implicitly for his wisdom and sanctity. these were the excellences which made him one of the most extraordinary men in jewish history, rendering services to his nation which cannot easily be exaggerated. david. 1055-1015 b.c. israelitish conquests. considering how much has been written about david in all the nations of christendom, and how familiar christian people are with his life and writings, it would seem presumptuous to attempt a lecture on this remarkable man, especially since it is impossible to add anything essentially new to the subject. the utmost that i can do is to select, condense, and rearrange from the enormous quantity of matter which learned and eloquent writers have already furnished. the warrior-king who conquered the enemies of israel in a dark and desponding period; the sagacious statesman who gave unity to its various tribes, and formed them into a powerful monarchy; the matchless poet who bequeathed to all ages a lofty and beautiful psalmody; the saint, who with all his backslidings and inconsistencies was a man after god's own heart,--is well worthy of our study. david was the most illustrious of all the kings of whom the jewish nation was proud, and was a striking type of a good man occasionally enslaved by sin, yet breaking its bonds and rising above subsequent temptations to a higher plane of goodness. a man so elevated, with almost every virtue which makes a man beloved, and yet with defects which will forever stain his memory, cannot easily be portrayed. what character in history presents such wide contradictions? what career was ever more varied? what recorded experiences are more interesting and instructive?--a life of heroism, of adventures, of triumphs, of humiliations, of outward and inward conflicts. who ever loved and hated with more intensity than david?--tender yet fierce, brave yet weak, magnanimous yet unrelenting, exultant yet sad, committing crimes yet triumphantly rising after disgraceful falls by the force of a piety so ardent that even his backslidings now appear but as spots upon a sun. his varied experiences call out our sympathy and admiration more than the life of any secular hero whom poetry and history have immortalized. he was an achilles and a ulysses, a marcus aurelius and a theodosius, an alfred and a saint louis combined; equally great in war and in peace, in action and in meditation; creating an empire, yet transmitting to posterity a collection of poems identified forever with the spiritual life of individuals and nations. interesting to us as are the events of david's memorable career, and the sentiments and sorrows which extort our sympathy, yet it is the relation of a sinful soul with its maker, by which he infuses his inner life into all other souls, and furnishes materials of thought for all generations. david was the youngest and seventh son of jesse, a prominent man of the tribe of judah, whose great-grandmother was ruth, the interesting wife of boaz the jew. he was born in bethlehem, near jerusalem,--a town rendered afterward so illustrious as the birthplace of our lord, who was himself of the house and lineage of david. he first appears in history at the sacrificial feast which his townspeople periodically held, presided over by his father, when the prophet samuel unexpectedly appeared at the festival to select from the sons of jesse a successor to saul. he was not tall and commanding like the benjamite hero, but was ruddy of countenance, with auburn hair, beautiful eyes, and graceful figure, equally remarkable for strength and agility. he had the charge of his father's sheep,--not the most honorable employment in the eyes of his brothers, who, according to ewald, treated him with little consideration; but even as a shepherd boy he had already proved his strength and courage by an encounter with a bear and a lion. until david was thirty years of age his life was identified with the fading glories of the reign of saul, who laid the foundation of the military power of his successors,--a man who lacked only the one quality imperative on the vicegerent of a supreme but invisible power, that of unquestioning obedience to the divine directions as interpreted by the voice of prophets. had saul been loyal in his heart, as david was, to the god of israel, the sceptre might not have departed from his house,--for he showed some of the highest qualities of a general and a ruler, until his jealousy was excited by the brilliant exploits of the son of jesse. on these exploits and subsequent adventures, which invest david's early career with the fascinations of a knight of chivalry, i need not dwell. all are familiar with his encounter with goliath, and with his slaughter of the philistines after he had slain the giant, which called out the admiration of the haughty daughter of the king, the love of the heir-apparent to the throne, and the applause of the whole nation. i need not speak of his musical melodies, which drove the fatal demon of melancholy from the royal palace; of his jealous expulsion by the king, his hairbreadth escapes, his trials and difficulties as a wanderer and exile, as a fugitive retreating to solitudes and caves of the earth, parched with heat and thirst, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, surrounded with increasing dangers,--yet all the while forgiving and magnanimous, sparing the life of his deadly enemy, unstained by a single vice or weakness, and soothing his stricken soul with bursts of pious song unequalled for pathos and loftiness in the whole realm of lyric poetry. he is never so interesting as amid caverns and blasted desolations and serrated rocks and dried-up rivulets, when his life is in constant danger. but he knows that he is the anointed of the lord, and has faith that in due time he will be called to the throne. it was not until the bloody battle with the philistines, which terminated the lives of both saul and jonathan, that david's reign began in about his thirtieth year,[3]--first at hebron, where he reigned seven and one half years over his own tribe of judah,--but not without the deepest lamentations for the disaster which had caused his own elevation. to the grief of david for the death of saul and jonathan we owe one of the finest odes in hebrew poetry. at this crisis in national affairs, david had sought shelter with achish, king of gath, in whose territory he, with the famous band of six hundred warriors whom he had collected in his wanderings, dwelt in safety and peace. this apparent alliance with the deadly enemy of the israelites had displeased the people. notwithstanding all his victories and exploits, his anointment at the hand of samuel, his noble lyrics, his marriage with the daughter of saul, and the death of both saul and jonathan, there had been at first no popular movement in david's behalf. the taking of decisive action, however, was one of his striking peculiarities from youth to old age, and he promptly decided, after consulting the urim and thummim, to go at once to hebron, the ancient sacred city of the tribe of judah, and there await the course of events. his faithful band of six hundred devoted men formed the nucleus of an army; and a reaction in his favor having set in, he was chosen king. but he was king only of the tribe to which he belonged. northern and central palestine were in the hands of the philistines,--ten of the tribes still adhering to the house of saul, under the leadership of abner, the cousin of saul, who proclaimed ishbosheth king. this prince, the youngest of saul's four sons, chose for his capital mahanaim, on the east of the jordan. [footnote 3: authorities differ as to the precise date of david's accession.] ishbosheth was, however, a weak prince, and little more than a puppet in the hands of abner, the most famous general of the day, who, organizing what forces remained after the fatal battle of gilboa, was quite a match for david. for five years civil war raged between the rivals for the ascendency, but success gradually secured for david the promised throne of united israel. abner, seeing how hopeless was the contest, and wishing to prevent further slaughter, made overtures to david and the elders of judah and benjamin. the generous monarch received him graciously, and promised his friendship; but, out of jealousy,--or perhaps in revenge for the death of his brother asahel, whom abner had slain in battle,--joab, the captain of the king's chosen band, treacherously murdered him. david's grief at the foul deed was profound and sincere, but he could not afford to punish the general on whom he chiefly relied. "know ye," said david to his intimate friends, "that a great prince in israel has fallen to-day; but i am too weak to avenge him, for i am not yet anointed king over the tribes." he secretly disliked joab from this time, and waited for god himself to repay the evil-doer according to his wickedness. the fate of the unhappy and abandoned ishbosheth could not now long be delayed. he also was murdered by two of his body-guard, who hoped to be rewarded by david for their treachery; but instead of gaining a reward, they were summarily ordered to execution. the sole surviving member of saul's family was now mephibosheth, the only son of jonathan,--a boy of twelve, impotent, and lame. this prince, to the honor of david, was protected and kindly cared for. david's magnanimity appears in that he made special search, asking "is there any that is left of the house of saul, that i may show him the kindness of god for jonathan's sake?" the memory of the triumphant conqueror was still tender and loyal to the covenant of friendship he had made in youth, with the son of the man who for long years had pursued him with the hate of a lifetime. david was at this time thirty-eight years of age, in the prime of his manhood, and his dearest wish was now accomplished; for on the burial of ishbosheth "came all the tribes of israel to david unto hebron," formally reminded him of his early anointing to succeed saul, and tendered their allegiance. he was solemnly consecrated king, more than eight thousand priests joining in the ceremony; and, thus far without a stain on his character, he began his reign over united israel. the kingdom over which he was called to reign was the most powerful in palestine. assyria, egypt, china, and india were already empires; but greece was in its infancy, and homer and buddha were unborn. the first great act of david after his second anointment was to transfer his capital from hebron to jerusalem, then a strong fortress in the hands of the jebusites. it was nearer the centre of his new kingdom than hebron, and yet still within the limits of the tribe of judah, he took it by assault, in which joab so greatly distinguished himself that he was made captain-general of the king's forces. from that time "david went on growing great, and the lord god of hosts was with him." after fortifying his strong position, he built a palace worthy of his capital, with the aid of phoenician workmen whom hiram, king of tyre, wisely furnished him. the philistines looked with jealousy on this impregnable stronghold, and declared war; but after two invasions they were so badly beaten that gath, the old capital of achish, passed into the hands of the king of israel, and the power of these formidable enemies was broken forever. the next important event in the reign of david was the transfer of the sacred ark from kirjath-jearim, where it had remained from the time of samuel, to jerusalem. it was a proud day when the royal hero, enthroned in his new palace on that rocky summit from which he could survey both judah and samaria, received the symbol of divine holiness amid all the demonstrations which popular enthusiasm could express. "and as the long and imposing procession, headed by nobles, priests, and generals, passed through the gates of the city, with shouts of praise and songs and sacred dances and sacrificial rites and symbolic ceremonies and bands of exciting music, the exultant soul of david burst out in the most rapturous of his songs: 'lift up your heads, o ye gates; and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in!'"--thus reiterating the fundamental truth which moses taught, that the king of glory is the lord jehovah, to be forever worshipped both as a personal god and the real captain of the hosts of israel. "one heart alone," says stanley, "amid the festivities which attended this joyful and magnificent occasion, seemed to be unmoved. whether she failed to enter into its spirit, or was disgusted with the mystic dances in which her husband shared, the stately daughter of saul assailed david on his return to his palace--not clad in his royal robes, but in the linen ephod of the priests--with these bitter and disdainful words: 'how glorious was the king of israel to-day, as he uncovered himself in the eyes of his handmaidens!'--an insult which forever afterward rankled in his soul, and undermined his love." thus was the most glorious day which david ever saw, clouded by a domestic quarrel; and the proud princess retired, until her death, to the neglected apartments of a dishonored home. how one word of bitter scorn or harsh reproach will sometimes sunder the closest ties between man and woman, and cause an alienation which never can be healed, and which may perchance end in a domestic ruin! david had now passed from the obscurity of a chief of a wandering and exiled band of followers to the dignity of an oriental monarch, and turned his attention to the organization of his kingdom and the development of its resources. his army was raised to two hundred and eighty thousand regular soldiers. his intimate friends and best-tried supporters were made generals, governors, and ministers. joab was commander-in-chief; and benaiah, son of the high-priest, was captain of his body-guard,--composed chiefly of foreigners, after the custom of princes in most ages. his most trusted counsellors were the prophets gad and nathan. zadok and abiathar were the high-priests, who also superintended the music, to which david gave special attention. singing men and women celebrated his victories. the royal household was regulated by different grades of officers. but david departed from the stern simplicity of saul, and surrounded himself with pomps and guards. none were admitted to his presence without announcement or without obeisance, while he himself was seated on a throne, with a golden sceptre in his hands and a jewelled crown upon his brow, clothed in robes of purple and gold. he made alliances with powerful chieftains and kings, and imitated their fashion of instituting a harem for his wives and concubines,--becoming in every sense an oriental monarch, except that his power was limited by the constitution which had been given by moses. he reigned, it would seem, in justice and equity, and in obedience to the commands of jehovah, whose servant he felt himself to be. nor did he violate any known laws of morality, unless it were the practice of polygamy, in accordance with the custom of all eastern potentates, permitted to them if not to their ordinary subjects. we infer from all incidental notices of the habits of the israelites at this period that they were a remarkably virtuous people, with primitive tastes and love of domestic life, among whom female chastity was esteemed the highest virtue; and it is a matter of surprise that the loose habits of the king in regard to women provoked so little comment among his subjects, and called out so few rebukes from his advisers. but he did not surrender himself to the inglorious luxury in which oriental monarchs lived. he retained his warlike habits, and in great national crises he headed his own troops in battle. it would seem that he was not much molested by external enemies for twenty years after making jerusalem his capital, but reigned in peace, devoting himself to the welfare of his subjects, and collecting materials for the future building of the temple,--its actual erection being denied to him as a man of blood. everything favored the national prosperity of the israelites. there was no great power in western asia to prevent them founding a permanent monarchy; assyria had been humbled; and egypt, under the last kings of the twentieth dynasty, had lost its ancient prestige; the philistines were driven to a narrow portion of their old dominion, and the king of tyre sought friendly alliance with david. in the course of time, however, war broke out with moab, followed by other wars, which required all the resources of the jewish kingdom, and taxed to the utmost the energies of its bravest generals. moab, lying east of the dead sea, had at one time given refuge to david when pursued by saul, and he was even allied by blood to some of its people,--being descended from ruth, a moabitish woman. the sacred writings shed but little light on this war, or on its causes; but it was carried on with unusual severity, only a third part of the people being spared alive, and they reduced to slavery. a more important contest took place with the kingdom of ammon on the north, on the confines of syria, caused by the insults heaped on the ambassadors of david, whom he sent on a friendly message to hanun the king. the campaign was conducted by joab, who gained brilliant victories, without however crushing the ammonites, who again rallied with a vast array of mercenaries gathered in their support. david himself took the field with the whole force of his kingdom, and achieved a series of splendid successes by which he extended his empire to the euphrates, including damascus, besides securing invaluable spoils from the cities of syria,--among them chariots and horses, for which syria was celebrated. among these spoils also were a thousand shields overlaid with gold, and great quantities of brass afterward used by solomon in the construction of the temple. yet even these conquests, which now made david the most powerful monarch of western asia, did not secure peace. the edomites, south of the dead sea, alarmed in view of the increasing greatness of israel, rose against david, but were routed by abishai, who penetrated to petra and became master of the country, the inhabitants of which were put to the sword with unrelenting vengeance. this war of the edomites took place simultaneously with that of the ammonites, who, deprived of their allies, retreated with desperation to their strong capital,--rabbah ammon, twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea, and twenty miles east of the jordan,--where they made a memorable but unsuccessful resistance. it was during the siege of this stronghold, which lasted a year, that david, no longer young, oppressed with cares, and unable personally to bear the fatigues of war, forgot his duties as a king and as a man. for fifty years he had borne an unsullied name; for more than thirty years he had been a model of reproachless chivalry. if polygamy and ferocity in war are not drawbacks to our admiration, certain it is that no recorded crime or folly that called out divine censure can be laid to his charge. but in an hour of temptation, or from strange infatuation, he added murder to adultery,--covering up a great crime by one of still greater enormity, evincing meanness and treachery as well as ungoverned passion, and creating a scandal which was considered disgraceful even in an oriental palace. "we read," says south in one of his most brilliant paragraphs, "of nothing like adultery in a persecuted david in the wilderness, when he fled hither and thither like a chased doe upon the mountains; but when the delicacies of his palace softened and ungirt his spirit, then it was that this great hero fell by a glance, and buried his glories in nocturnal shame, giving to his name a lasting stain, and to his conscience a fearful wound." nor did he come to himself until a child was born, and the prophet nathan had ingeniously pointed out to him his flagrant sin. he manifested no wrath against his accuser, as some despots would have done, but sank to the ground in the greatest anguish and grief. then it was that david's repentance was more marvellous than his transgression, offering the most memorable instance of contrition recorded in history,--surpassing in moral sublimity, a thousand times over, the grief of theodosius under the rebuke of ambrose, or the sorrow of the haughty plantagenet for the murder of becket. his repentance was so profound, so sincere, so remarkable, that it is embalmed forever in the heart of a sinful world. its wondrous depth and intensity almost make us forget the crime itself, which nevertheless pursued him into the immensity of eternal night, and was visited upon the third and fourth generation in treason, rebellion, and wars. "be sure your sin will find you out," is a natural law as well as a divine decree. it was not only because david added bathsheba to the catalogue of his wives; it was not only because he coveted, like ahab, that which was not his own,--but because he violated the most sacred of all laws, and treacherously stained his hands in the blood of an innocent, confiding, and loyal subject, that his soul was filled with shame and anguish. it was this blood-guiltiness which was the burden of his confession and his agonized grief, as an offence not merely against society and all moral laws, but also against his maker, in whose pure eyes he had committed his crimes of lust, deceit, and murder. "against thee, thee only, have i sinned, and have done this evil in thy sight!" what a volume of theological truth blazes from this single expression, so difficult for reason to fathom, that it was against god that the royal penitent felt that he had sinned, even more than against uriah himself, whose life and property, in a certain sense, belonged to an oriental king. "nor do we charge ourselves," says edward irving, "with the defence of those backslidings which david more keenly scrutinized and more bitterly lamented than any of his censors, because they were necessary, in a measure, that he might be the full-orbed man to utter every form of spiritual feeling. and if the penitential psalms discover the deepest hell of agony, and if they bow the head which utters them, then let us keep those records of the psalmist's grief and despondency as the most precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed by every man who essayeth to lead a spiritual life; for it is not until a man, however pure, honest, and honorable he may have thought himself, and have been thought by others, discovereth himself to be utterly fallen, defiled, and sinful before god,--not until he can, for expression of utter worthlessness, seek those psalms in which david describes his self-abasement, that he will realize the first beginning of spiritual life in his own soul." should we seek for the cause of david's fall, for that easy descent in the path of rectitude,--may we not find it in that fatal custom of eastern kings to have more wives than was divinely instituted in the garden of eden,--an indulgence which weakened the moral sense and unchained the passions? polygamy, under any circumstances, is the folly and weakness of kings, as well as the misfortune and curse of nations. it divided and distracted the household of david, and gave rise to incessant intrigues and conspiracies in his palace, which embittered his latter days and even undermined his throne. we read of no further backslidings which seemed to call forth the divine displeasure, unless it were the census, or numbering of the people, even against the expostulations of joab. why this census, in which we can see no harm, should have been followed by so dire a calamity as a pestilence in which seventy thousand persons perished in four days, we cannot see by the light of reason, unless it indicated the purpose of establishing an absolute monarchy for personal aggrandizement, or the extension of unnecessary conquests, and hence an infringement of the theocratic character of the hebrew commonwealth. the conquests of david had thus far been so brilliant, and his kingdom was so prosperous, that had he been a pagan monarch he might have meditated the establishment of a military monarchy, or have laid the foundation of an empire, like cyrus in after-times. from a less beginning than the jewish commonwealth at the time of david, the greeks and romans advanced to sovereignty over both neighboring and distant states. the numbering of the israelitish nation seemed to indicate a desire for extended empire against the plain indications of the divine will. but whatever was the nature of that sin, it seems to have been one of no ordinary magnitude; and in view of its consequences, david's heart was profoundly touched. "o god!" he cried, in a generous burst of penitence, "i have sinned. but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand be upon me, i pray thee, and upon my father's house!" if david committed no more sins which we are forced to condemn, and which were not irreconcilable with his piety, he was subject to great trials and misfortunes. the wickedness of his children, especially of his eldest son amnon, must have nearly broken his heart. amnon's offence was not only a terrible scandal, but cost the life of the heir to the throne. it would be hard to conceive how david's latter days could have been more embittered than by the crime of his eldest son,--a crime he could neither pardon nor punish, and which disgraced his family in the eyes of the nation. as to absalom, it must have been exceedingly painful and humiliating to the aged and pious king to be a witness of the pride, insolence, extravagance, and folly of his favorite son, who had nothing to commend him to the people but his good looks; and still harder to bear was his rebellion, and his reckless attempt to steal his father's sceptre. what a pathetic sight to see the old warrior driven from his capital, and forced to flee for his life beyond the jordan! how humiliating to witness also the alienation of his subjects, and their willingness to accept a brainless youth as his successor, after all the glorious victories he had won, and the services he had rendered to the nation! david's history reveals the sorrows and burdens of all kings and rulers. outward grandeur and power, after all, are a poor compensation for the incessant cares, vexations, and humiliations which even the most favored monarchs are compelled to accept,--troubles, disappointments, and burdens which oppress both soul and body, and induce fears, suspicions, jealousies, and animosities. who would envy a tiberius or a louis xiv. if he were obliged to carry their load, knowing well what that burden was? then again the kingdom of david was afflicted with a grievous famine, which lasted three years, decimating the people, and giving a check to the national prosperity; and the philistines, too, whom he thought he had finally subdued, renewed their ancient warfare. but these calamities were not all that the old king had to endure. a new rebellion more dangerous even than that of absalom broke out under sheba, a benjamite, who sounded the trumpet of defiance from the mountains of ephraim, and who rallied under his standard ten of the tribes. to amasa, it seems, was intrusted the honor and the task of defending david and the tribe of judah, to which he belonged,--the king being alienated from joab for the slaying of absalom, although it had ended that undutiful son's rebellion. the bloodthirsty joab, as implacable as achilles, who had rendered such signal services to his sovereign, was consumed with jealousy at this new appointment, and going up to the new general-in-chief as if to salute him, treacherously stabbed him with his sword,--but continued, however, to support david. he succeeded in suppressing the rebellion by intrigue, and on the promise that the city should be spared, the head of the rebel was thrown over the wall of the fortress to which he had retired. even this rebellion did not end the trials of david, since adonijah, the heir presumptive after the death of absalom, conspired to steal the royal sceptre, which david had sworn to bathsheba he would bequeath to her son solomon. joab even favored the succession of adonijah; but the astute monarch, amid the infirmities of age, still possessed a large measure of the intellect and decision of his heroic days, and secured, by a rapid movement, the transfer of his kingdom to solomon, who was crowned in the lifetime of his father. in all these foul treacheries and crimes within his own household may be seen the distinct fulfilment of the punishment foretold by nathan the prophet, as prepared for david's own "great transgression." god's providence is unerring, and men indeed prepare for themselves the retribution which, in spite of sincere repentance, is the inevitable consequence of their own violations of law,--physical, moral, and spiritual. god gave david the new heart he longed for; but the evil seeds sown bore nevertheless evil fruit for him and his children. aside from these troubles, we know but little of the latter days of david. after the death of absalom, it would seem that he reigned ten years, on the whole tranquilly, turning his attention to the development of the resources of his kingdom, and collecting treasure for the temple, which he was not to build. he was able to set aside, as we read in the twenty-second chapter of the chronicles, a hundred thousand talents of gold and a million talents of silver,--an almost incredible sum. if a talent of silver is, as estimated, about £390, or $1950, it would seem that the silver accumulated by david would have amounted to nearly two billion dollars, and the gold to a like sum,--altogether four billions, which is plainly impossible. probably there is a mistake in the figures. we read in the twenty-ninth chapter of chronicles that david gave to solomon, out of his own private property, three thousand talents of gold and seven thousand talents of silver,--together, nearly $74,000,000. his nobles added what would be equal to $120,000,000 in gold and silver alone, besides brass and iron,--altogether about $194,000,000, which is not incredible when we bear in mind that a single family in new york has accumulated a larger sum in two generations. but even this sum,--nearly two hundred million dollars,--would have more than built all the temples of athens, or st. peter's church at rome. whether the author of the chronicles has exaggerated the amount of the national contribution for the building of the temple or not, we yet are impressed with the vast wealth which was accumulated in the lifetime of david; and hence we infer that the wealth of his kingdom was enormous. and it was perhaps the excessive taxation of the people to raise this money, outside of the spoils of successful wars, that alienated them in the latter days of david, and induced them to rally under the standards of usurpers. certain it is that he became unpopular in the feebleness of old age, and was forced to abdicate his throne. david's premature old age presented a sad contrast to the vigor of his early days. he was not a very old man when he died,--younger than many monarchs and statesmen who in our times have retained their vigor, their popularity, and their power. but the intense labors and sorrows of forty years may have proved too great a strain on his nervous energies, and made him as timid as he once was bold. the man who had slain goliath ran away from absalom. he was completely under the domination of an intriguing wife. he showed a singular weakness in reference to the crimes of his favorite son, so as to merit the bitter reproaches of his captain-general. "thou hast shamed this day," said joab, "the faces of all thy servants; for i perceive had absalom lived, and all of us had died this day, then it had pleased thee well." in david's case, his last days do not seem to have been his best days, although he retained his piety and had conquered all his enemies. his glorious sun set in clouds after a reign of thirty-three years over united israel, and the nation hailed the accession of a boy whose character was undeveloped. the final years of this great monarch present an impressive lesson of the vanity even of a successful life, whatever services a man may have rendered to his country and to civilization. few kings have ever accomplished more than david; but his glory was succeeded, if not by shame, at least by clouds and darkness. and this eclipse is all the more mournful when we remember not only his services but his exalted virtues. he was the most successful and the most admired of all the monarchs who reigned at jerusalem. he was one of the greatest and best men who ever lived in any nation or at any period. "when, before or since, has there lived an outlaw who did not despoil his country?" where has there reigned a king whose head was less giddy on a throne, or who retained more humility in the midst of riches and glories, unless it were marcus aurelius or alfred the great? david had an inborn aptitude for government, and a power like julius caesar of fascinating every one who came in contact with him. his self-denial and devotion to the interests of the nation were marvellous. we do not read that he took any time for pleasure or recreation; the heavy load of responsibility and care never for a moment was thrown from his shoulders. his penetration of character was so remarkable that all stood in fear of him; yet fear gave place to admiration. never had a monarch more devoted servants and followers than david in his palmy days; he was the nation's idol and pride for thirty years. in every successive vicissitude he was great; and were it not for his cruelty in war and severity to his enemies, and his one great lapse into criminal self-indulgence, his reign would have been faultless. contrast david with the other conquerors of the world; compare him with classical and mediaeval heroes,--how far do they fall beneath him in deeds of magnanimity and self-sacrifice! what monarch has transmitted to posterity such inestimable treasures of thought and language? it is consoling to feel that david, whether exultant in riches and honors, or bowed down to the earth with grief and wrath, both in the years of adversity and in his prosperous manhood, in strength and in weakness, with unfailing constancy and loyalty turned his thoughts to god as the source of all hope and consolation. "as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, o god!" he has no doubts, no scepticism, no forgetfulness. his piety has the seal of an all-pervading sense of the constant presence and aid of a personal god whom it is his supremest glory to acknowledge,--his staff, his rock, his fortress, his shield, his deliverer, his friend; the one with whom he sought to commune, both day and night, on the field of battle and in the guarded recesses of his palace. in the very depths of humiliation he never sinks into despair. his piety is both tender and exultant. in the ecstasy of his raptures he calls even upon inanimate nature to utter god's praises,--upon the sun and moon, the mountains and valleys, fire and hail, storms and winds, yea, upon the stars of night. "bless ye the lord, o my soul! for his mercy endureth forever." and this is why he was a man after god's own heart. let cynics and critics, and unbelievers like bayle, delight to pick flaws in david's life. who denies his faults? he was loved because his soul was permeated with exalted loyalty, because he hungered and thirsted after righteousness, because he could not find words to express sufficiently his sense of sin and his longing for forgiveness, his consciousness of littleness and unworthiness when contrasted with the majesty of jehovah. let not our eyes be fixed upon his defects, but upon the general tenor of his life. it is true he is in war merciless and cruel; he hurls anathemas on his enemies. his wrath is as supernal as his love; he is inspired with the fiercest resentments; he exhibits the mighty anger of homer's heroes; he never could forgive joab for the slaughter of abner and absalom. but the abiding sentiments of his heart are gentleness and magnanimity. how affectionately his soul clung to jonathan! what a power of self-denial, when he was faint and thirsty, in refusing the water which his brave companions brought him at the risk of their lives! how generously he spared the life of saul! how patiently he bore the rebukes of nathan! how nobly he treated the aged barzillai! his impulses were all generous. he was affectionate to weakness. he had no egotistic ends. he forgot his own sorrows in the sufferings of his people. he had no pride in all the pomp of power, although he never forgot that he was the lord's anointed. when we pass from david's personal character to the services he rendered, how exalted his record! he laid the foundation of the prosperity of his nation. where would have been the glories of solomon but for the genius and deeds of david? but more than any material greatness are the imperishable lyrics he bequeathed to all ages and nations, in which are unfolded the varied experiences of a good man in his warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil,--those priceless utterances which portray every passion that can move the human soul. he has left bare to the contemplation of all ages all that a lofty soul can suffer or enjoy, all that can be learned from folly and sin, all that can stimulate religious life, all that can console in sorrow and affliction. these experiences and aspirations he has embodied in lyric poetry, on the whole the most exquisite in the hebrew language, creating a new world of religious thought and feeling, and furnishing the foundation for christian psalmody, to be sung from age to age throughout the world. his kingdom passed away, but his psalms remain,--a realm which no civilization can afford to lose. as moses lives in his jurisprudence, solomon in his proverbs, isaiah in his prophecies, and paul in his epistles, so david lives in those poems that are still the most expressive of all the forms in which the public worship of god is still continued. such poetry could not have been written, had not the author experienced in his own life every variety of suffering and joy. the literary excellence of the psalms cannot be measured by the standard of greek and roman lyrics. it is not seen in any of our present forms of metrical composition. it is the mighty soaring of an exalted soul which makes the psalms so dear to us, and not their artificial structure. they were made to reveal the ways of god to man and the life of the human soul, not to immortalize heroes or dignify a human love. we may not be able to appreciate in english form their original metrical skill; but it is impossible that a people so musical as the hebrews were kindled into passionate admiration of them, had they not possessed great rhythmic beauty. we may not comprehend the force of the melodic forms, but we can appreciate the tenderness, the pathos, the sublimity, and the intensity of the sentiments expressed. "in pathetic dirges, in songs of jubilee, in outbursts of praise, in prophetic announcements, in the agonies of contrition, in bursts of adoration, in the beatitudes of holy bliss, in the enchanting calmness of christian life," no one has ever surpassed david, so that he was called "the sweet singer of israel." there is nothing pathetic in national difficulties, or endearing in family relations, or profound in inward experience, or triumphant over the fall of wickedness, or beatific in divine worship, which he does not intensify. he raises mortals to the skies, though he brings no angels down. never does he introduce dogmas, yet his songs are permeated with fundamental truths, and are a perpetual rebuke to pharisaism, rationalism, epicureanism, and every form of infidel speculation that with "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no god." as the psalter was held to be the most inspiring poetry in the palmy days of the hebrew commonwealth, so it proved the most impressive part of the ritual of the mediaeval church, and is still the most valued of all the lyrics which protestantism has appropriated in the worship of god. and how potent, how lasting, how valued is a good song! the psalmody of the church will last longer than its sermons; and when a song stimulates the loftiest sentiments of which men are capable, how priceless it is, how permanently it is embalmed in the heart of the world! "thus have his songs become the treasured property of mankind, resounding in the anthems of different creeds, and carrying into every land that same voice which on mount zion was raised in sorrowful longings or ecstatic praise." what a mighty power the songs of the son of jesse still wield over the affections of mankind! we lose sight at times of moses, of solomon, and of isaiah; but we never lose sight of david. such is the tribute which all nations bring, o warrior, prophet, bard, and sainted king, from distant ages to thy hallowed name, transcending far all greek and roman fame! no pagan gods thy sacred songs invoke, no loves degrading do thy strains provoke. thy soul to heaven in holy rapture mounts, and joys seraphic in its bliss recounts. o thou sweet singer of a favored race, what vast results to thy pure songs we trace! how varied and how rich are all thy lays on nature's glories and jehovah's ways! in loftiest flight thy kindling soul surveys the promised glories of the latter days, when peace and love this fallen world shall bind, and richest blessings all the race shall find. solomon. the glory of the monarchy. about 993-953 b.c. we associate with solomon the culmination of the jewish monarchy, and a reign of unexampled prosperity and glory. he not only surpassed all his predecessors and successors in those things which strike the imagination as brilliant and imposing, but he had such extraordinary intellectual gifts that he has passed into history as the wisest of ancient kings, and one of the most favored of mortals. amid the evils which saddened the latter days of his father david, this remarkable man grew up. his interests were protected by his mother bathsheba, an intriguing, ambitious, and beautiful woman, and his education was directed by the prophet nathan. he was ten years of age when his elder brother absalom rebelled, and a youth of fifteen to twenty when he was placed upon the throne, during the lifetime of his father and with his sanction, aided by the cabals of his mother, the connivance of the high-priest zadok, the spiritual authority of nathan, and the political ascendency of benaiah, the most valiant of the captains of israel after joab. he became king in a great national crisis, when unfilial rebellion had undermined the throne of david, and adonijah, next in age to absalom, had sought to steal the royal sceptre, supported by the veteran joab and abiathar, the elder high-priest. solomon's first acts as monarch were to remove the great enemies of his father and the various heads of faction, not sparing even joab, the most successful general that ever brought lustre on the jewish arms. with abiathar, who died in exile, expired the last glory of the house of eli; and with shimei, who was slain with adonijah, passed away the last representative of the royal family of saul. soon after solomon repaired to the heights of gibeon, six miles from jerusalem,--a lofty eminence which overlooks judaea, and where stood the tabernacle of the congregation, the original tent of the wanderings, in front of which was the brazen altar on which the young king, as a royal holocaust, offered the sacrifice of one thousand victims. it was on the night of that sacrificial offering that, in a dream, a divine voice offered to the youthful king whatsoever his heart should crave. he prayed for wisdom, which was granted,--the first evidence of which was his celebrated judgment between the two women who claimed the living child, which made a powerful impression on the whole nation, and doubtless strengthened his throne. the kingdom which solomon inherited was probably at that time the most powerful in western asia, the fruit of the conquests of saul and david, of abner and joab. it was bounded by lebanon on the north, the euphrates on the east, egypt on the south, and the mediterranean on the west. its territorial extent was small compared with the assyrian or persian empire; but it had already defeated the surrounding nations,--the philistines, the edomites, the syrians, and the ammonites. it hemmed in phoenicia on the sea-coast, and controlled the great trade-routes to the east, which made it politic for the king of tyre to cultivate the friendship of both david and solomon. if palestine was small in extent, it was then exceedingly fertile, and sustained a large population. its hills were crested with fortresses, and covered with cedars and oaks. the land was favorable to both tillage and pasture, abounding in grapes, figs, olives, dates, and every species of grain; the numerous springs and streams favored a perfect system of irrigation, so that the country presented a picture in striking contrast to its present blasted and dreary desolation. the nation was also enriched by commerce as well as by agriculture. caravans brought from eastern cities the most valuable of their manufactures. from tarshish in spain ships brought gold and silver; egypt sent chariots and fine linen; syria sold her purple cloths and robes of varied colors; arabia furnished horses and costly trappings. all the luxuries and riches which tyre had collected in her warehouses found their way to jerusalem. even silver was as plenty as the stones in the streets. long voyages to the mouth of the indus resulted in a vast accumulation of treasure,--gold, ivory, spices, gums, perfumes, and precious stones. the nations and tribes subject to solomon from the river of egypt to the euphrates, and from syria to the red sea, paid a fixed tribute, while their kings and princes sent rich presents,--vessels of gold and silver, costly arms and armor, rich garments and robes, horses and mules, perfumes and spices. but the prosperity of the realm was not altogether inherited; it was firmly and prudently promoted by the young king. solomon made alliances with egypt and syria, as well as with phoenicia, and peace and plenty enriched all classes, so that every man sat under his own vine and fig-tree in perfect security. never was such prosperity seen in israel before or since. strong fortresses were built on lebanon to protect the caravans, and tadmor in the wilderness to the east became a great centre of trade, and ultimately a splendid city under zenobia. the royal stables contained forty thousand horses and fourteen hundred chariots. the royal palace glistened with plates of gold, and the parks and gardens were watered from immense reservoirs. "when the youthful monarch repaired to these gardens in his gorgeous chariot, he was attended," says stanley, "by nobles whose robes of purple floated in the wind, and whose long black hair, powdered with gold dust, glistened in the sun, while he himself, clothed in white, blazing with jewels, scented with perfumes, wearing both crown and sceptre, presented a scene of gladness and glory. when he travelled, he was borne on a splendid litter of precious woods, inlaid with gold and hung with purple curtains, preceded by mounted guards, with princes for his companions, and women for his idolaters, so that all israel rejoiced in him." we infer that solomon reigned for several years in justice and equity, without striking faults,--a wise and benevolent prince, who feared god and sought from him wisdom, which was bestowed in such a remarkable degree that princes came from remote countries to see him, including the famous queen of sheba, who was both dazzled and enchanted. yet while he was, on the whole, loyal to the god of his fathers, and was the pride and admiration of his subjects, especially for his wisdom and knowledge, solomon was not exempted from grave mistakes. he was scarcely seated on his throne before he married an egyptian princess, doubtless with the view of strengthening his political power. but while this splendid alliance brought wealth and influence, and secured chariots and horses, it violated one of the settled principles of the jewish commonwealth, and prevented that isolation which was so necessary to keep uncorrupted the manners and habits of the people. the alliance doubtless favored commerce, and in one sense enlarged the minds of his subjects, removing from them many prejudices; but the nation was not intended by the divine founder to be politically or commercially great, but rather to preserve the worship of jehovah. moreover, the daughter of pharaoh was an idolater, and her influence, so far as it went, tended to wean the king from his religious duties,--at least to make him tolerant of false gods. the enlargement of the king's harem was another mistake, for although polygamy was not condemned, and was practised even by david, it made solomon prominent among eastern monarchs for an absurd ostentation, allied with enervating effeminacy, and thus gradually undermined the healthy tone of his character. it may have prepared the way for the apostasy of his later years, and certainly led to a great increase of the royal expenses. the support of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines must have been a scandal and a burden for which the nation was not prepared. the pomp in which he lived presupposes a change in the government itself, even to an absolute monarchy and a grinding despotism, fatal to the liberties which the israelites had enjoyed under saul and david. the predictions and warnings of samuel were realized for the first time in the reign of solomon, so that wealth, prosperity, and luxury were but a poor exchange for that ancient religious ardor and intense patriotism which had led the hebrew nation to victory over surrounding idolatrous nations. the heroic ages of jewish history passed away when ships navigated by phoenician sailors brought gold from ophir and silver from tarshish, and did not return until the maccabees rallied the hunted and decimated tribes of israel against the armies of the syrian kings. solomon's peaceful and prosperous reign of forty years was, however, favorable to one grand enterprise which david had longed to accomplish, but to whom it was denied. this was the building of the temple, for so long a time identified with the glory of jerusalem, and common interest in which might have bound the twelve tribes together but for the excessive taxation which the extravagance and ostentation of the monarch had rendered necessary. we can form but an inadequate idea of the magnificence of this temple from its description in the sacred annals. an edifice which taxed the mighty resources of solomon and consumed the spoils of forty years' successful warfare, must have been in that age without a parallel in splendor and beauty. if the figures are not exaggerated, it required the constant labors of ten thousand men in the mountains of lebanon alone to cut down and hew the timber, and this for a period of eleven years. of ordinary laborers there were seventy thousand; and of those who worked in the quarries and squared the stones there were eighty thousand more, besides overseers. it took three years to prepare the foundations. as mount moriah, on which the temple was built, did not furnish level space enough, a wall of solid masonry was erected on the eastern and southern sides nearly three hundred feet in height, the stones of which, in some instances, were more than twenty feet long and six feet thick, so perfectly squared that no mortar was required. the buried foundations for the courts of the temple and the vast treasure-houses still remain to attest the strength and solidity of the work, seemingly as indestructible as are the pyramids of egypt, and only paralleled by the uncovered ruins of the palaces of the caesars on the palatine hill at rome, which fill all travellers with astonishment. vast cisterns also had to be hewn in the rocks to supply water for the sacrifices, capable of holding ten millions of gallons. the temple proper was small compared with the egyptian temples, or with mediaeval cathedrals; but the courts which surrounded it were vast, enclosing a quadrangle larger than the area on which st. peter's church at rome is built. it was, however, the richness of the decorations and of the sacred vessels and the altars for sacrifice, which consumed immense quantities of gold, silver, and brass, that made the temple especially remarkable. the treasures alone which david collected were so enormous that we think there must be errors in the calculation,--thirteen million pounds troy of gold, and one hundred and twenty-seven million pounds of silver,--an amount not easy to estimate. but the plates of gold which overlaid the building, and the cherubim or symbolical winged figures, the precious woods, the rich hangings and curtains of crimson and purple, the brazen altars, the lamps, the sacred vessels of solid gold and silver, the elaborate carvings and castings, the rare gems,--these all together must have required a greater expenditure than is seen in the most famous temples of greece or asia minor, whose value and beauty chiefly consisted in their exquisite proportions and their marble pillars and figures of men or animals. but no representation of man, no statue to the deity, was seen in the temple of solomon; no idol or sacred animal profaned it. there was no symbol to indicate even the presence of jehovah, whose dwelling-place was in the heavens, and whom the heaven of heavens could not contain. there were rites and sacrifices, but these were offered to an unseen divinity, whose presence was everywhere, and who alone reigned as king of kings and lord of lords, forever and forever. the temple, however, with its courts and porticos, its vast foundations of stones squared in distant quarries, and the immense treasures everywhere displayed, impressed both the senses and the imagination of a people never distinguished for art or science. and not only so, but fergusson says: "the whole mohammedan world look to it as the foundation of all architectural knowledge, and the jews still recall its glories, and sigh over their loss with a constant tenacity unmatched by that of any other people to any other building of the ancient world." whether or not we are able to explain the architecture of the temple, or are in error respecting its size, or the amount of gold and silver expended, or the number of men employed, we know that it was the pride and glory of that age, and was large enough, with its enclosures, to contain a representation of five millions of people, the heads of all the families and tribes of the nation, such as were collected together at its dedication. as the great event of david's reign was the removal of the ark to jerusalem, so the culminating glory of solomon was the dedication of the temple he had built to the worship of jehovah. the ceremony equalled in brilliancy the glories of a roman triumph, and infinitely surpassed them in popular enthusiasm. the whole population of the kingdom,--some four or five millions,--or their picked representatives, came to jerusalem to witness or to take part in it. "and as the long array of dignitaries, with thousands of musicians clothed in white, and the monarch himself arrayed in pontifical robes, and the royal household in embroidered mantles, and the guards with their golden shields, and the priests bearing the sacred but tattered tabernacle, with the ark and the cherubim, and the altar of sacrifice, and the golden candlesticks and table of shew bread, and the brazen serpent of the wilderness and the venerated tables of stone on which were engraved by the hand of god himself the ten commandments,"--as this splendid procession swept along the road, strewed with flowers and fragrant with incense, how must the hearts of the people have been lifted up! then the royal pontiff arose from the brazen scaffold on which he had seated himself, and amid clouds of incense and the smoke of burning sacrifice offered unto god the tribute of national praise, and implored his divine protection. and then, rising from his knees, with hands outstretched to heaven, he blessed the congregation, saying with a loud voice, "let the lord our god be with us as he was with our fathers, so that all the earth may know that jehovah is god and that there is none else!" then followed the sacrifices for this grand occasion,--twenty thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goats were offered up on successive days. only a portion of these animals was actually consumed on the altar by the officiating priests: the greater part furnished meat for the assembled multitude. the festival of the dedication lasted a week, and this was succeeded by the feast of the tabernacles; and from that time the temple became the pride and glory of the nation. to see it periodically and worship in its courts became the intensest desire of every hebrew. three times a year some great festival was held, attended by a vast concourse of the people. the command was that every male israelite should "appear before the lord" and make his offering; but this of course had its necessary exceptions, as multitudes of women and children could not go, and had to be cared for at home. we cannot easily understand how on any other supposition they were all accommodated, spacious as were the various courts of the temple; and we conclude that only a large representation of the tribes and families took place, for how could four or five millions of people assemble together at any festival? contemporaneous with the building of the temple, or immediately after it was dedicated, were other gigantic works, including the royal palace, which it took thirteen years to complete, and upon which, as upon the sacred house, syrian artists and workmen were employed. the principal building was only one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five broad, and forty-five feet high, in three stories, with a grand porch supported on lofty pillars; but connected with the palace were other edifices to support the magnificence in which the king lived with his court and his harem. around the tower of the house of david were hung the famous golden shields, one thousand in number, which had been made for the body-guard, with other glittering ornaments, which were likened by the poets to the neck of a bride decked with rays of golden coins. in the great judgment hall, built of cedar and squared stone, was the throne of the monarch, made of ivory, inlaid with gold. a special mansion was erected for solomon's egyptian queen, of squared stones twelve to fifteen feet in length. connected with these various palaces were extensive gardens constructed at great expense, filled with all the triumphs of horticultural art, and watered by streams from vast reservoirs. in these the luxurious king and court could wander among beds of spices and flowers and fruits. but these did not content the royal family. a summer palace was erected on the heights of mount lebanon, having gardens filled with everything which could delight the eye or captivate the senses. here, surrounded with learned men, women, and courtiers, with bands of music, costly litters, horses and chariots, and every luxury which unbounded means could command, the magnificent monarch beguiled his leisure hours, abandoned equally to pleasure and study,--for his inquiring mind sought to master all the knowledge that was known, especially in the realm of natural history, since "he was wiser than all men, and spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is on lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." we can get some idea of the expenses of his household, in the fact that it daily consumed sixty measures of flour and meal and thirty oxen and one hundred sheep, besides venison, game, and fatted fowls. the king never appeared in public except with crown and sceptre, in royal robes redolent of the richest perfumes of india and arabia, and sparkling with gold and gems. he lived in a constant blaze of splendor, whether travelling in his gorgeous litter, surrounded with his guards, or seated on his throne to dispense justice and equity, or feasting with his nobles to the sound of joyous music. to keep up this regal splendor, to support seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines on the fattest of the land, and deck them all in robes of purple and gold; to build magnificent palaces, to dig canals, and construct gigantic reservoirs for parks and gardens; to maintain a large standing army in time of peace; to erect strong fortresses wherever caravans were in danger of pillage; to found cities in the wilderness; to level mountains and fill up valleys,--to accomplish all this even the resources of solomon were insufficient. what were six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, yearly received (thirty-five million dollars), besides the taxes on all merchants and travellers, and the vast gifts which flowed from kings and princes, when that constant drain on the royal treasury is considered! even a louis xiv. was impoverished by his court and palace building, though he controlled the fortunes of twenty-five millions of people. king solomon, in all his glory, became embarrassed, and was obliged to make forced contributions,--to levy a heavy tribute on his own subjects from dan to beersheba, and make bondmen of all the people that were left of the amorites, hittites, perizites, hivites, and jebusites. the people were virtually enslaved to aggrandize a single person. the burdens laid on all classes and the excessive taxation at last alienated the nation. "the division of the whole country into twelve revenue districts was a serious grievance,--especially as the high official over each could make large profits from the excess of contributions demanded." a poll-tax, from which the nation in the olden times was freed, was levied on israelite and canaanite alike. the virtual slave-labor by which the great public improvements were made, sapped the loyalty of the people and produced discontent. this forced labor was as fatal as war to the real property of the nation, for wealth is ever based on private industry, on farms and vineyards, rather than on the palaces of kings. moreover, the friendly relations which solomon established with the neighboring heathen nations disgusted the old religious leaders, while the tendency to oriental luxury which outward prosperity favored alarmed the more thoughtful. it was not a pleasant sight for the princes of israel to see the whole land overrun with phoenicians, arabs, babylonians, egyptians, caravan drivers, strangers and travellers, camels and dromedaries from midian and sheba, traders to the fairs, pedlers with their foreign cloths and trinkets, all spreading immorality and heresy, and filling the cities with strange customs and degrading dances. nor was there, in that absolute monarchy which solomon centralized around his throne, any remedy for all this, save assassination or revolution. the king had become debauched and effeminate. the love of pomp and extravagance was followed by worldliness, luxury, and folly. from agricultural pursuits the people had passed to commercial; the israelites had become merchants and traders, and the foul idolatries of phoenicians and syrians had overspread the land. the king having lost the respect and affection of the nation, the rebellion of jeroboam was a logical sequence. i have not read of any king who so belied the promises of his early days, and on whom prosperity produced so fatal an apostasy as solomon. with all his wisdom and early piety, he became an egotist, a sensualist, and a tyrant. what vanity he displayed before the queen of sheba! what a slave he became to wicked women! how disgraceful was his toleration of the gods of phoenicia and egypt! how hard was the bondage to which he subjected his subjects! how different was his ordinary life from that of his illustrious father, with no repentance, no remorse, no self-abasement! he was a nebuchadnezzar and a sardanapalus combined, going from bad to worse. and he was not only a sensualist and a tyrant, an egotist, and to some extent an idolater, but he was a cynic, sceptical of all good, and of the very attainments which had made him famous. we read of no illustrious name whose glory passed through so dark an eclipse. the satiated, disenchanted, disappointed monarch, prematurely old, and worn out by self-indulgence, passed away without honor or regret, at the age of sixty, and was buried in the city of david; and rehoboam, his son, reigned in his stead. the christian fathers and many subsequent theological writers have puzzled their brains with unsatisfactory speculations whether solomon finally repented or not; but the scriptures are silent on that point. we have no means of knowing at what period of his life his heart was weaned from the religion of david, or when he entered upon a life of pleasure. there are some passages in the book of ecclesiastes which lead us to suppose that before he died he came to himself, and was a preacher of righteousness. this is the more charitable and humane view to take; yet even so, his moral teachings and warnings are not imbued with the personal contrition that endeared david's soul to god; they are unimpassioned, cold-hearted, intellectual, impersonal. moreover, it may be that even in the midst of his follies he retained the perception of moral distinctions. his will was probably enslaved, so that he had not the power to restrain his passions, and his head may have become giddy in his high elevation. how few men could have resisted such powerful temptations as assailed solomon on every side! the heart of the christian world cannot but feel that so gifted a man, endowed with every intellectual attraction, who reigned for a time with so much wisdom, who recognized jehovah as the guide and lord of israel, as especially appears at the dedication of the temple, and who wrote such profound lessons of moral wisdom, would not be suffered to descend to the grave without the divine forgiveness. all that we know is that he was wise, and favored beyond all precedent, but that he adopted the habits and fell in with the vices of oriental kings, and lost the affections of his people. he was exalted to the highest pinnacle of glory; he descended to an abyss of shame,--a sad example of the infirmity of human nature which all ages will lament. in one sense solomon left nothing to his nation but monuments of despotic power, and trophies of a material civilization which implied the decay of primitive virtues. he did not perpetuate his greatness; he did not even enlarge the boundaries of his kingdom. like louis xiv. he simply squandered a great inheritance. he did not leave his kingdom morally so strong as it was under david; it was even dismembered under his legitimate successor. the grand temple indeed remained the pride of every jew, but david had bequeathed the treasures to build it. the national resources had been wasted in palaces and in court festivities; and although these had contributed to a material civilization, especially the sums expended on fortresses, aqueducts, reservoirs, and roads for the caravans, this civilization, so highly and justly prized in our age, may--under the peculiar circumstances of the jews, and the end for which, by the mosaic dispensation, they were intended to be kept isolated--have weakened those simpler habits and sentiments which favored the establishment of their religion. it must never be lost sight of that the isolation of the hebrew race, unfavorable to such developments of civilization as commerce and the arts, was providentially designed (as is evidenced by the fact of accomplishment in spite of all obstacles) to keep alive the worship of jehovah until the fulness of time should come,--until the messiah should appear to establish a new dispensation. the glory and grandeur of solomon did not contribute to this end, but on the other hand favored idolatrous rites and corrupting foreign customs; and this is proved by the rapid decline of the jews in religious life, patriotic ardor, and primitive virtues under the succeeding kings, both of judah and israel, which led ultimately to their captivity. politically, solomon may have added to the temporary power of the nation, but spiritually, and so fundamentally, he caused an eclipse of glory. and this is why his kingdom departed from his house, and he left a sullied name. nevertheless, in many important respects solomon rendered great services to humanity, which redeemed his memory from shame and made him a truly immortal man, and even a great benefactor. he left writings which are still among the most treasured inheritances of his nation and of mankind. it is recorded that he spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. only a small portion of these have descended to us in the sacred writings, but they doubtless entered into the literature of the jews. enough remains, whenever they were compiled and collected, to establish his fame as one of the wisest and most gifted of mortals. and these writings, whatever may have been his backslidings, are pervaded with moral wisdom. whether written in youth or in old age, on the summit of human glory or in the depths of despair, they are generally accepted as among the most precious gems of the old testament. his profound experience, conveyed to us in proverbs and songs, remains as a guide in life through all generations. the dignity of intellect shines triumphantly through all the obscuration of virtues. thus do poets live even when buried in ignominious graves; thus do philosophers instruct the world even though, like seneca, and possibly bacon, their lives present a sad contrast to their precepts. great thoughts emancipate the soul, from age to age, while he who uttered them may have been enslaved by vices. who knows what the private life of shakspeare and goethe may have been, but who would part with the writings they have left us? how soon the personal peculiarities of coleridge and carlyle will be forgotten, yet how permanent and healthy their utterances! it is truth, rather than man, that lives and conquers and triumphs. man is nothing, except as the instrument of almighty power. of the writings ascribed to solomon, there are three books, each of which corresponds to the different periods of his life,--to his pious youth, to his prosperous manhood, and to his later years of cynicism and despair. they all alike blaze with moral truth, and appeal to universal experience. they present different features of human life, at different periods, and suggest sentiments which most people have realized at some time or another. and if in some cases they are apparently contradictory, like the proverbs and ecclesiastes, they are equally striking and convincing, and are not more inconsistent than the man himself. who does not change, and yet remain individually the same? is there not a change between youth and old age? do not most great men utter sentiments hard to be reconciled with one another, yet with equal sincerity? webster enforces free-trade at one time and a high tariff at another, as light or circumstances change. gladstone was in youth and middle age a pillar of the aristocracy; later he was the oracle of the masses, yet a lofty realism underlay all his utterances. the writings of solomon present life in different aspects, and yet they are alike true. they are not divine revelations, like the commandments given to moses amid the lightnings of sinai, or like the visions of the prophets respecting the future glories of the church. they do not exalt the soul into inspiring ecstasies like the psalms of david, or kindle a holy awe like the lofty meditations of job; but they are yet such impressive truths pertaining to human life that we invest them with more than human wisdom. the song of songs, long ascribed to king solomon, has been attended with some difficulty of explanation. it is a poem liable to be perverted by an unsanctified soul, since it is foreign to our modes of expression. for two hundred years it has been variously interpreted. it was the delight of saint bernard the ascetic, and a stumbling-block to ewald the critic. to many german scholars, who have rendered great services by their learning and genius, it is only the expression of physical love, like the amatory songs of greece. to others of more piety yet equal scholarship, like origen, grotius, and bossuet, it is symbolic of the love which exists between christ and the church. it seems, at least, to be a contrast with the impure love of the heathen world. but whether it describes the ardent affection which solomon bore to his young egyptian bride; or the still more beautiful love of the innocent shulamite maiden for her betrothed shepherd feeding his flock among the lilies, unseduced by all the influences of the royal court, and triumphant over the seductions of rank and power; or whether it is the rapt soul of the believer bursting out in holy transports of joy, like a saint theresa in the anticipated union with her divine spouse,--it is still a noble tribute to what is most enchanting of the great certitudes on earth or in heaven; and it is expressed in language of exquisite and incomparable elegance. "arise, my fair one, and come away! for the winter is past and gone, and the flowers appear upon the earth, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. make haste, my beloved! be thou like a roe on the mountains of spices, for many waters cannot quench love, nor the floods drown it; yea, were a man to offer all that he hath for it, it would be utterly despised." how tender, how innocent, how fervent, how beautiful, is this description of a lofty love, at rest in its happiness, in the society of the charmer, exultant in the certainty of that glorious sentiment which nothing can corrupt and nothing can destroy! if this unique and beautiful song was the work of solomon in his early days of innocence and piety, the book of proverbs seems to be the result of his profound observations when he was still uncorrupted by prosperity, ruling his kingdom with sagacity and amazing the world with his wisdom. how many of those acute sayings were uttered by solomon we know not, but probably most of them are his, collected, it is supposed, during the reign of hezekiah. they are written on almost every subject pertaining to ethics, to nature, to science, and to society. some are allusions to god, and others to the duties between man and man. many are devoted to the duties of women, applicable to the sex in all times. they are not on a level of the psalms in piety, nor of the prophecies in grandeur, but they recognize the immutable principles of moral obligation. in some cases they seem to be worldly-wise,--such as we might suppose to fall from the mouth of benjamin franklin or cobbett,--recognizing worldly prosperity as the greatest of blessings. sometimes they are witty, again ironical, but always forcible. in some of them there is awful solemnity. there are no more terrific warnings and exhortations in the sacred writings than are found in the proverbs of solomon. the sins of idleness, of anger, of covetousness, of gossip, of falsehood, of oppression, of injustice, of intemperance, of unchastity, are uniformly denounced as leading to destruction; while prudence, temperance, chastity, obedience to parents, and loyalty to truth are enjoined with the earnestness of a man who believes in personal accountability to god. the ethics of the proverbs are based on everlasting righteousness, and are imbued with the spirit of divine philosophy; their great peculiarity is the constant exhortation to wisdom and knowledge, to which young men are especially exhorted. like socrates, solomon never separates wisdom from virtue, but makes one the foundation of the other. he shows the connection between virtue and happiness, vice and misery. the proverbs are inexhaustible in moral force, and have universal application. there is nothing cynical or gloomy in them. they form a fitting study for youth and old age, an incentive to virtue and a terror to evil-doers, a thesaurus of moral wisdom; they speak in every line a lofty and comprehensive intellect, acquainted with all the experiences of life. such moral wisdom would be imperishable in any literature. such utterances go far to redeem all personal defects; they show how unclouded is a mind trained in equity, even when the will is enslaved by iniquity. what is still more remarkable, the proverbs never apologize for the force of temptation, and never blend error with truth; they uniformly exalt wisdom, and declare that the beginning of it is the fear of the lord. there is not one of them which seeks to cover up vice with sophistical excuses; they show that the author or authors of them love moral beauty and truth, and exalt the same,--as many great men, with questionable morals, give their testimony to the truths of christianity, and utterly abhor those who poison the soul by plausible sophistries,--as lord brougham detested rousseau. the famous writings of our modern times which nearest approach the proverbs in love of truth and moral wisdom are those of bacon and shakspeare. in striking contrast with the praises of knowledge which permeate the proverbs, is the book of ecclesiastes, supposed to have been written in the decline of solomon's life, when the pleasures of sin had saddened his soul, and filled his mind with cynicism. unless the book of ecclesiastes is to be interpreted as ironical, nothing can be more dreary than many of its declarations. it even seems to pour contempt on all knowledge and all enjoyments. "in much knowledge is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.... what profit hath a man of all his labor?... there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool.... there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink.... a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast; all go to the same place.... what hath the wise man more than the fool?... there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in wickedness.... one man among a thousand have i found, but a woman among all those have i not found.... the race is not to the swift, the battle to the strong; neither bread to the wise, nor riches to the man of understanding.... on all things is written vanity." such are some of the dismal and cynical utterances of solomon in his old age. the ecclesiastes contrasted with the proverbs is discouraging and sad, although there is great seriousness and even loftiness in many of its sayings. it seems to be the record of a disenchanted old man, to whom all things are a folly and vanity. there is a suppressed contempt expressed for what young men and the worldly regard as desirable, equalled only by a sort of proud disdain of success and fame. there is great bitterness in reference to women. some of the sayings are as mournful jeremiads as any uttered by carlyle, showing great scorn of what ninety-nine in one hundred are vain of, and pursue after, as all ending in vanity and vexation of spirit. we can understand how riches may prove a snare, how pleasure-seeking ends in disappointment, how the smiles of a deceitful woman may lead to the chamber of death, how little the treasures of wickedness profit, how sins will find out the transgressor, how the heart may be sad in the midst of laughter, how wine is a mocker, how ambition is babel-building, how he who pursueth evil pursueth it to his death; we can understand how abundance will produce satiety, and satiety lead to disgust,--how disappointment attends our most cherished plans, and how all mortal pursuits fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal soul. but why does the favored and princely solomon, in sadness and bitterness, pronounce knowledge also to be a vanity like power and riches, especially when in his earlier writings he so highly commends it? is it true that in much wisdom is much grief, and that the increase of knowledge is the increase of sorrow? can it be that the book of ecclesiastes is the mere record of the miserable experiences of an embittered and disappointed sensualist, or is it the profound and searching exposition of the vanities of this world as they appear to a lofty searcher after truth and god, measured by the realities of a future and endless life, which the soul emancipated from pollution pants and aspires after with all the intensity of a renovated nature? when i bear in mind the impressive lessons that are declared at the close of this remarkable book, the earnest exhortation to remember god before the dust shall return to the earth as it was, i cannot but feel that there are great moral truths underlying the sarcasm and irony in which the writer indulged. and these come with increased force from the mouth of a man who had tasted every mortal good, and found it all, when not properly used, a confirmation of the impossibility of earth to satisfy the soul of man. the writer calls himself "the preacher," and surely a great preacher he was,--not to a throng of "fashionable worshippers" or a crowd of listless pleasure-seekers, but to all ages and nations. and if he really was a living speaker to the young men who caught the inspiration of his voice, how terribly eloquent he must have been! i fancy that i can see that unhappy old man, worn out, saddened, embittered, yet at last rising above the decrepitude of age and the infirmities which sin had hastened, and speaking in tones that could never be forgotten. "behold, ye young men! i have tasted every enjoyment of this earth; i have indulged in every pleasure forbidden or permitted. i have explored the world of thought and the realm of nature. i have been favored beyond any mortal that ever lived; i have been flattered and honored beyond all precedent; i have consumed the treasures of kings and princes. i builded me houses, i planted me vineyards; i made me gardens and orchards, i made me pools of water; i got me servants and maidens, i gathered me also silver and gold; i got me men-singers and women-singers and musical instruments; whatsoever my eyes desired i kept not from them; i withheld not my heart from any joy,--and now, lo! i solemnly declare unto you, with my fading strength and my eyes suffused with tears and my knees trembling with weakness, and in view of that future and higher life which i neglected to seek amid the dazzling glories of my throne, and the bewilderment of fascinating joys,--i now most earnestly declare unto you that all these things which men seek and prize are a vanity, a delusion, and a snare; that there is no wisdom but in the fear of god." so this saddest of books closes with lofty exhortations, and recognizes moral obligations which are in harmony with the great principle enforced in the proverbs,--that there is no escape from the penalty of sin and folly; that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. the last recorded words of the preacher are concerning the vanity of life,--that is, the hopeless failure of worldly pleasures and egotistical pursuits in themselves alone to secure happiness; the impossibility of lasting good disconnected with righteousness; the fact that even knowledge, the greatest possession and the highest joy which a man can have, does not satisfy the soul. these final utterances of solomon are not dogmas nor speculations, they are experiences,--the experiences of one of the most favored mortals who has lived upon our earth, and one of the wisest. if, measured by the eternal standards, his glory was less than that of the flower which withers in a day, what hope have ordinary men in the pursuit of pleasure, or gain, or honor? utter vanity and vexation of spirit! nothing brings a true reward but virtue,--unselfish labors for others, supreme loyalty to conscience, obedience to god. hence, such profound experience so frankly published, such sad confessions uttered from the depths of the heart, and the summing up of the whole question of human life, enforced with the earnestness and eloquence of an old man soon to die, have peculiar force, and are among the greatest treasures of the old testament. the fundamental truth to be deduced from the book of ecclesiastes is that whatsoever is born of vanity must end in vanity. if vanity is the seed, so vanity is the fruit. it is, in fact, one of the most impressive of all the truths that appeal either to consciousness or experience. if a man builds a house from vanity, or makes a party from vanity, or gives a present from vanity, or writes a book from vanity, or seeks an office from vanity,--then, as certainly as the bite of an asp will poison the body, will the expected good be turned into a bitter disappointment. self-love cannot be the basis of human action without alienation from god, without weariness, disgust, and ultimate sorrow. the soul can be fed only by divine certitudes; it can be enlarged only by walking according to the divine commandments. confucius, socrates, epictetus, and marcus aurelius declared the same truths, but not so impressively. not for one's self, not for friends, not even for children alone must one live. there is a higher law still which speaks to the universal conscience, asking, what is your duty? with this is identified all that is precious in life, on earth or in heaven, for time and eternity. anything in this world which is sought as a good, whose end is selfish, is an impressive failure; so that self-aggrandizement becomes as absurd and fatal as self-indulgence. one can no more escape from the operation of this law than he can take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea. the commonest experiences of every-day life confirm the wisdom which solomon uttered out of his lonely and saddened soul. if ye will not hear him, be instructed by your own broken friendships, your own dispelled illusions, your own fallen idols; by the heartlessness which too often lurks in the smiles of beauty, by the poison concealed in polished flatteries, by the deceitfulness hidden, beneath the warmest praises, by the demons of envy, jealousy, and pride which take from success itself its promised joys. who is happy with any amount of wealth? who is free from corroding cares? who can escape anxiety and fear? how hard to shake off the burdens which even a rich man is compelled to bear? there is a fly in every ointment, a skeleton in every closet, solitude in the midst of crowds, isolation in the joy of festivals. the wrecks of happiness are strewn in every path that the world has envied. read the lives of illustrious men; how melancholy often are the latter days of those who have climbed the highest! caesar is stabbed when he has conquered the world. diocletian retires in disgust from the government of an empire. godfrey languishes in grief when he has taken jerusalem. charles v. shuts himself up in a convent. galileo, whose spirit has roamed the heavens, is a prisoner of the inquisition. napoleon masters a continent, and expires on a rock in the ocean. mirabeau dies of despair when he has kindled the torch of revolution. the poetic soul of burns passes away in poverty and moral eclipse. madness overtakes the cool satirist swift, and mental degeneracy is the final condition of the fertile-minded scott. the high-souled hamilton perishes in a petty quarrel, and curses overwhelm webster in the halls of his early triumphs. what a confirmation of the experience of solomon! "vanity of vanities" write on all walls, in all the chambers of pleasure, in all the palaces of pride! this is the burden of the preaching of solomon; but it is also the lesson which is taught by all the records of the past, and all the experiences of mankind. yet it is not sad when one considers the dignity of the soul and its immortal destinies. it is sad only when the disenchantment of illusions is not followed by that holy fear which is the beginning of wisdom,--that exalted realism which we believe at last sustained the soul of the preacher as he was hastening to that country from whose bourn no traveller returns. elijah. ninth century b.c. division of the jewish kingdom. evil days fell upon the israelites after the death of solomon. in the first place their country was rent by political divisions, disorders, and civil wars. ten of the tribes, or three quarters of the population, revolted from rehoboam, solomon's son and successor, and took for their king jeroboam,--a valiant man, who had been living for several years at the court of shishak, king of egypt, exiled by solomon for his too great ambition. jeroboam had been an industrious, active-minded, strong-natured youth, whom solomon had promoted and made much of. the prophet ahijah had privately foretold to him that, on account of the idolatries tolerated by solomon, ten of the tribes should be rent away from, the royal house and given to him. the lord promised him the kingdom of israel, and (if he would be loyal to the faith) the establishment of a dynasty,--"a sure house." jeroboam made choice of shechem for his capital; and from political reasons,--for fear that the people should, according to their custom, go up to jerusalem to worship at the great festivals of the nation, and perhaps return to their allegiance to the house of david, while perhaps also to compromise with their already corrupted and unspiritualized religious sense,--he made two golden calves and set them up for religious worship: one in bethel, at the southern end of the kingdom; the other in dan, at the far north. it does not appear that the people of israel as yet ignored jehovah as god; but they worshipped him in the form of the same egyptian symbol that aaron had set up in the wilderness,--a grave offence, although not an utter apostasy. moreover, this was the act of the king rather than of the priests or his own subjects. stanley makes a significant comment on this act of the new king, which the sacred narrative refers to as "the sin of jeroboam, the son of nebat, who made israel to sin." he says: "the golden image was doubtless intended as a likeness of the one true god. but the mere fact of setting up such a likeness broke down the sacred awe which had hitherto marked the divine presence, and accustomed the minds of the israelites to the very sin against which the new form was intended to be a safeguard. from worshipping god under a false and unauthorized form they gradually learned to worship other gods altogether.... 'the sin of jeroboam, the son of nebat,' is the sin again and again repeated in the policy--half-worldly, half-religious--which has prevailed through large tracts of ecclesiastical history.... for the sake of supporting the faith of the multitude, lest they should fall away to rival sects, ... false arguments have been used in support of religious truths, false miracles promulgated or tolerated, false readings in the sacred text defended. and so the faith of mankind has been undermined by the very means intended to preserve it." for priests, jeroboam selected the lowest of the people,--whoever could be induced to offer idolatrous sacrifices in the high places,--since the old priests and levites remained with the tribe of judah at jerusalem. these abominations and political rivalries caused incessant war between the two kingdoms for several reigns. the northern kingdom, including the great tribe of ephraim or joseph, was the richest, most fertile, and most powerful; but the southern kingdom was the most strongly fortified. and yet even in the fifth year of the reign of rehoboam, the king of egypt, probably incited by jeroboam, invaded judah with an immense army, including sixty thousand cavalry and twelve hundred chariots, and invested jerusalem. the city escaped capture only by submitting to the most humiliating conditions. the vast wealth which was stored in the temple,--the famous gold shields which david had taken from the syrians, and those also made by solomon for his body-guard, together with the treasures of the royal palace,--became spoil for the egyptians. this disaster happened when solomon had been dead but five years. the solitary tribe left to his son, despoiled by egypt and overrun by other enemies, became of but little account politically for several generations, although it still possessed the temple and was proud of its traditions. after this great humiliation, the proud king of judah, it seems, became a better man; and his descendants for a hundred years were, on the whole, worthy sovereigns, and did good in the sight of the lord. political interest now centres in the larger kingdom, called israel. judah for a time passes out of sight, but is gradually enriched under the reigns of virtuous princes, who preserved the worship of the true god at jerusalem. nations, like individuals, seldom grow in real strength except in adversity. the prosperity of solomon undermined his throne. the little kingdom of judah lasted one hundred and fifty years after the ten tribes were carried into captivity. yet what remained of power and wealth among the jews after the rebellion under jeroboam, was to be found in the northern kingdom. it was still exceedingly fertile, and was well watered. it was "a land of brooks of water, of fountains, of barley and wheat, of vines and fig-trees, of olives and honey." it boasted of numerous fortified cities, and had a population as dense as that in belgium at the present time. the nobles were powerful and warlike; while the army was well organized, and included chariots and horses. the monarchy was purely military, and was surrounded by powerful nations, whom it was necessary to conciliate. among these were the phoenicians on the west, and the syrians on the north. from the first the army was the great power of the state, its chief being more powerful than joab was in the undivided kingdom of david. he stood next after the king, and was the channel of royal favor. the history of the northern kingdom which has come down to us is very meagre. from jeroboam to ahab--a period of sixty-six years--there were six kings, three of whom were assassinated. there was a succession of usurpers, who destroyed all the members of the preceding reigning family. they were all idolaters, violent and bloodthirsty men, whom the army had raised to the throne. no one of them was marked by signal ability, unless it were omri, who built the city of samaria on a high hill, and so strongly fortified it that it remained the capital until the fall of the kingdom. he also made a close alliance with tyre, the great centre of commerce in that age, and one of the wealthiest cities of antiquity. to cement this political alliance, omri married his son ahab--the heir-apparent to the throne--to a daughter of the tyrian king, afterward so infamous as a religious fanatic and persecutor, under the name of jezebel,--one of the worst women in history. on the accession of ahab, nine hundred and nineteen years before christ, the kingdom of israel was rapidly tending to idolatry. jeroboam had set up golden calves chiefly for a political end, but ahab built a temple to baal, the sun-god, the chief divinity of the phoenicians, and erected an altar therein for pagan sacrifices, thus abjuring jehovah as the supreme and only god. the established religion was now idolatry in its worst form; it was simply the worship of the powers of nature, under the auspices of a foreign woman stained with every vice, who controlled her husband. for ahab himself was bad enough, but he was not the wickedest of the monarchs of israel, nor was he insignificant as a man. it was his misfortune to be completely under the influence of his phoenician bride, as many stronger men than he have been enslaved by women before and since his day. ahab, bad as he was, was brave in battle, patriotic in his aims, and magnificent in his tastes. to please his wife he added to his royal residences a summer retreat called jezreel, which was of great beauty, and contained within its grounds an ivory palace of great splendor. amid its gardens and parks and all the luxuries then known, the youthful monarch with his queen and attendant nobles abandoned themselves to pleasure and folly, as oriental monarchs are wont to do. it would seem that he was unusually licentious in his habits, since he left seventy children,--afterward to be massacred. the ascendency of a wicked woman over this luxurious monarch has made her infamous. she was an incarnation of pride, sensuality, and cruelty; and with all her other vices she was a religious persecutor who has had no equal. we may perhaps give to her, as to many other tiger-like persecutors in the cause of what they call their "religion," the meagre credit of conscientious devotion in their cruelty; for she feasted at her own table at jezreel four hundred priests of baal, besides four hundred and fifty others at samaria, while she erected two great sanctuaries for the phoenician deities, at which the officiating priests were clad in splendid vestments. the few remaining prophets of jehovah in the kingdom hid themselves in caves and deserts to escape the murderous fury of the idolatrous queen. we infer that she was distinguished for her beauty, and was bewitching in her manners like catherine de' medici, that italian bigot whom her courtiers likened both to aurora and venus. jezebel, like the florentine princess, is an illustration of the wickedness which is so often concealed by enchanting smiles, especially when armed with power. the priests of baal undoubtedly regarded their great protectress as one of the most fascinating women that ever adorned a royal palace, and in the blaze of her beauty and the magnificence of her bounty were blind to her innumerable sorceries and the wild license of her life. the fearful apostasy of israel, which had been increasing for sixty years under wicked kings, had now reached a point which called for special divine intervention. there were only seven thousand men in the whole kingdom who had not bowed the knee to baal, and god sent a prophet,--a prophet such as had not appeared in israel since samuel; more august, more terrible even than he; indeed, the most unique and imposing character in jewish history. almost nothing is known of the early history of elijah. the bible simply speaks of him as "the tishbite,"--one of the inhabitants of gilead, at the east of the jordan. he evidently was a man accustomed to a wild and solitary life. his stature was large, and his features were fierce and stern. his long hair flowed upon his brawny shoulders, and he was clothed with a mantle of sheepskin or hair-cloth, and carried in his hand a rugged staff. he was probably unlearned, being rude and rough in both manners and speech. his first appearance was marked and extraordinary. he suddenly and unannounced stood before ahab, and abruptly delivered his awful message. he was an apparition calculated to strike with terror the boldest of kings in that superstitious age. he makes no set speech, he offers no apology, he disdains all forms and ceremonies; he does not even render the customary homage. he utters only a few words, preceded by an oath: "as jehovah the god of israel liveth, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word." what arrogance before a king! elijah, an utterly unknown man, in a sheepskin mantle, apparently a peasant, dares to utter a curse on the land without even deigning to give a reason, although the conscience of ahab must have told him that he could not with impunity introduce idolatry into israel. elijah doubtless attacked the king in the presence of his wife and court. to the cynical and haughty queen, born in idolatry, he probably seemed a madman of the desert,--shaggy, unwashed, fierce, repulsive. to the israelitish king, however, with better knowledge of the ways of god, the prophet appeared armed with supernal powers, whom he both feared and hated, and desired to put out of the way. but elijah mysteriously disappears from the royal presence as suddenly as he had entered it, and no one knows whither he has fled. he cannot be found. the royal emissaries go into every land, but are utterly baffled in their search. the whole power of the realm was doubtless put forth to discover his retreat, and had he been found, no mercy would have been shown him; he would have been summarily executed, not only as a prophet of the detested religion, but as one who had insulted the royal station. he was forced to flee and hide after delivering his unwelcome message. and whither did the prophet fly? he fled with the swiftness of a bedouin, accustomed to traverse barren rocks and scorching sands, to a retired valley of one of the streams that emptied into the jordan near samaria. amid the clefts of the rocks which marked the deep valley, did the man of god hide himself from his furious and numerous persecutors. he does not escape to his native deserts, where he would most probably have been hunted like a wild beast, but remains near the capital in which ahab reigns, in a deeply secluded spot, where he quenches his thirst from the waters of the brook, and eats the food which the ravens deposit amid the steep cliffs he knows how to climb. the bravest and most undaunted man in israel, shielded and protected by god, was probably warned by the divine voice to make his escape, since his life was needful to the execution of providential purposes. he was the only one of all the prophets of his day who dared to give utterance to his convictions. some four or five hundred there were in the kingdom, all believers in jehovah; but all sought to please the reigning power, or timidly concealed themselves. they had been trained in the schools which samuel had established, and were probably teachers of the people on theological subjects, and hence an antagonistic force to idolatrous kings. their great defect in the time of ahab was timidity. there was needed some one who under all circumstances would be undaunted, and would not hesitate to tell the truth even to the king and queen, however unpleasant it might be. so this rough, fierce, unlettered man of few words was sent by god, armed with terrible powers. it was now the rainy season, when rain was confidently expected by the people throughout palestine. yet strangely no rain fell, though sixty inches were the usual quantity in the course of the year. the streams from the mountains were dried up; the land, long parched by the summer sun, became like dust and ashes; the hills presented a blasted and dreary desolation; the very trees were withered and discolored. at last even the sheltered brook failed from which elijah drank, and it became necessary for the man of god to seek another retreat. the lord therefore sent him to the last place in which his enemies would naturally search for him, even to a city of phoenicia, where the worship of baal was the only religion of the land. as in his tattered and strange apparel he approached sarepta, or zarephath, a town between tyre and sidon, worn out with fatigue, parched with thirst, and overcome with hunger,--everything around him being depressed and forlorn, the rivers and brooks showing only beds of stone, the trees and grass withered, the sky lurid, and of unnatural brightness like that of brass, and the sun burning and scorching every remnant of vegetation,--he beheld a woman issuing from the town to gather sticks, in order to cook what she supposed would be her last meal. to this sad and discouraged woman, doubtless a worshipper of baal, the prophet thus spoke: "fetch me, i pray you, a little water in a vessel that i may drink;" and as she turned sympathetically to look upon him, he added, "bring me, i pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand." this was no small request to make of a woman who was herself on the borders of starvation, and of a pagan woman too. but there was a mysterious affinity between these two suffering souls. a common woman would not have appreciated the greatness of the beggar and vagrant before her. only a discerning and sympathetic woman would have seen in the tones of his voice, and in his lofty bearing, despite all his rags and dirt, an unusual and marked character. she probably belonged to a respectable class, reduced to poverty by the famine, and her keen intelligence recognized at once in the hungry and needy stranger a superior person,--even as the humble friar of palos saw in columbus a nobleman by nature, when, wearied and disappointed, he sought food and shelter. she took the prophet by the hand, conducted him to her home, gave him the best chamber in her house, and in a strange devotion of generosity divided with him the last remnant of her meal and oil. it is probable that a lasting friendship sprang up between the pagan woman and the solemn man of god, such as bound together the no less austere jerome and his disciple paula. for two or three years the prophet dwelt in peace and safety in the heathen town, protected by an admiring woman,--for his soul was great, if his body was emaciated and his dress repulsive. in return for her hospitality he miraculously caused her meal and oil to be daily renewed; and more than this, he restored her only son to life, when he had succumbed to a dangerous illness,--the first recorded instance of such a miracle. the german critics would probably say that the boy was only seemingly dead, even as they would deny the miracle of the meal and oil. it is not my purpose to discuss this matter, but to narrate the recorded incidents that filled the soul of the woman of sarepta with gratitude, with wonder, and with boundless devotion. "verily, i say unto you," said a greater than elijah, "whosoever shall give a cup of cold water in the name of a prophet, shall in no way lose his reward." her reward was immeasurably greater than she had dared to hope. she received both spiritual and temporal blessings, and doubtless became a convert to the true faith. tradition asserts that her boy, whom elijah saved,--whether by natural or supernatural means, it is alike indifferent,--became in after years the prophet jonah, who was sent to nineveh. in all great friendships the favors are reciprocal. a noble-hearted woman was saved from starvation, and the life of a great man was preserved for future usefulness. austerity and tenderness met together and became a cord of love; and when the land was perishing from famine, the favored members of a retired household were shielded from harm, and had all that was necessary for comfort. meanwhile the abnormal drought and consequent famine continued. the northern kingdom was reduced to despair. so dried up were the wells and exhausted the cisterns and reservoirs that even the king's household began to suffer, and it was feared that the horses of the royal stables would perish. in this dire extremity the king himself set forth from his palace to seek patches of vegetation and pools of water in the valleys, while his prime minister obadiah--a secret worshipper of jehovah--was sent in an opposite direction for a like purpose. on his way, in the almost hopeless search for grass and water, obadiah met elijah, who had been sent from his retreat once more to confront ahab, and this time to promise rain. as the most diligent search had been made in every direction, but in vain, to find elijah, with a view to his destruction as the man who "troubled israel," obadiah did not believe that the hunted prophet would voluntarily put himself again in the power of an angry and hostile tyrant. yet the prime minister, having encountered the prophet, was desirous that he should keep his word to appear before the king, and promise to remove the calamity which even in a pagan land was felt to be a divine judgment. elijah having reassured him of his sincerity, the minister informed his master that the man he sought to destroy was near at hand, and demanded an interview. the wrathful and puzzled king went out to meet the prophet, not to take vengeance, but to secure relief from a sore calamity,--for ahab reasoned that if elijah had power, as the messenger of omnipotence, to send a drought, he also had the power to remove it. moreover, had he not said that there should be neither rain nor dew but according to his word? so ahab addressed the prophet as the author of national calamities, but without threats or insults. "art thou he who troubleth israel?" elijah loftily, fearlessly, and reproachfully replied: "i have not troubled israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that thou hast forsaken the commandments of jehovah, and hast followed baalim." he then assumes the haughty attitude of a messenger of divine omnipotence, and orders the king to assemble all his people, together with the eight hundred and fifty priests of baal, at mount carmel,--a beautiful hill sixteen hundred feet high, near the mediterranean, usually covered with oaks and flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs. he gives no reasons,--he sternly commands; and the king obeys, being evidently awed by the imperious voice of the divine ambassador. the representatives of the whole nation are now assembled at mount carmel, with their idolatrous priests. the prophet appears in their midst as a preacher armed with irresistible power. he addresses the people, who seemed to have no firm convictions, but were swayed to and fro by changing circumstances, being not yet hopelessly sunk into the idolatry of their rulers. "how long," cried the preacher, with a loud voice and fierce aspect, "halt ye between two opinions? if jehovah be god, _follow_ him; but if baal be god, then follow _him_." the undecided, crestfallen, intimidated people did not answer a word. then elijah stoops to argument. he reminds the people, among whom probably were many influential men, that he stood alone in opposition to eight hundred and fifty idolatrous priests protected by the king and queen. he proposes to test their claims in comparison with his as ministers of the true god. this seems reasonable, and the king makes no objection. the test is to be supernatural, even to bring down fire from heaven to consume the sacrificial bullock on the altar. the priests of baal select their bullock, cut it in pieces, put it on the wood, and invoke their supreme deity to send fire to consume the sacrifice. with all their arts and incantations and magical sorceries, the fire does not descend. they then perform their wild and fantastic dances, screaming aloud, from early morn to noon, "o baal, hear us!" we do not read whether ahab was present or not, but if he were he must have quaked with blended sentiments of curiosity and fear. his anxiety must have been terrible. elijah alone is calm; but he is also stern. he mocks them with provoking irony, and ridicules their want of success. his grim sarcasms become more and more bitter. "cry with a loud voice!" said he, "yea, louder and yet louder! for ye cry to a god; either he is talking, or he is hunting, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awakened." and they cried aloud, and cut themselves, after their manner, with knives and spears, till the blood gushed out upon them. then elijah, when midday was past, and the priests continued to call unto their god until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, and there was neither voice nor answer, assembled the people around him, as he stood alone by the ruins of an ancient altar. with his own hands he gathered twelve stones, piled them together to represent the twelve tribes, cut a bullock in pieces, laid it on the wood, made a trench around the rude altar, which he filled with water from an adjacent well, and then offered up this prayer to the god of his fathers: "o jehovah, god of abraham, isaac, and jacob, hear me! and let all the people know that thou art the god of israel, and that i am thy servant, and that i have done all these things at thy word. hear me, jehovah, hear me! that this people may know that thou, jehovah, art god, and that thou hast turned their hearts back again." then immediately the fire of jehovah fell and consumed the bullock and the wood, even melted the very stones, and licked up the water in the trench. and when the people saw it, they fell on their faces, and cried aloud, "jehovah, he is the god! jehovah, he is the god!" elijah then commanded to take the prophets of baal, all of them, so that not even one of them should escape. and they took them, by the direction of elijah, down the mountain side to the brook kishon, and slew them there. his triumph was complete. he had asserted the majesty and proved the power of jehovah. the prophet then turned to the king, who seems to have been completely subjected by this tremendous proof of the prophetic authority, and said: "get thee up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of abundance of rain." and ahab ascended the hill, to eat and drink with his nobles at the sacrificial feast,--a venerable symbol by which, from the most primitive antiquity to our own day, by so universal an impulse that it would seem to be divinely imparted, every form of religion known to man has sought to typify the human desire to commune with deity. elijah also went to the top of carmel, not to the symbolic feast, but in spirit and in truth to commune with god, reverentially hiding his face between his knees. he felt the approach of the coming storm, even when the sky was clear, and not a cloud was to be seen over the blue waters of the mediterranean. so he said to his servant: "go up now, and look toward the sea." and the servant went to still higher ground and looked, and reported that nothing was to be seen. six times the order was impatiently repeated and obeyed; but at the seventh time, the youthful servant--as some think, the very boy he had saved--reported a cloud in the distant horizon, no bigger seemingly than a man's hand. at once elijah sent word to ahab to prepare for the coming tempest; and both he and the king began to descend the hill, for the clouds rapidly gathered in the heavens, and that mighty wind arose which in eastern countries precedes a furious storm. with incredible rapidity the tempest spread, and the king hastened for his life to his chariot at the foot of the hill, to cross the brook before it became a flood; and elijah, remembering that he was king, ran before his chariot more rapidly than the arab steeds. as the servant of jehovah, he performs his mission with dignity and without fear; as a subject, he renders due respect to rank and power. ahab has now witnessed with his own eyes the impotency of the prophets of baal, and the marvellous power of the messenger of jehovah. the desire of the nation was to be gratified; the rains were falling, the cisterns and reservoirs were filling, and the fields once more would soon rejoice in their wonted beauty, and the famine would soon be at an end. in view of the great deliverance, and awe-stricken by the supernatural gifts of the prophet, one would suppose that the king would have taken elijah to his confidence and loaded him with favors, and been guided by his counsels. but, no. he had been subjected to deep humiliation before his own people; his religion had been brought into contempt, and he was afraid of his cruel and inexorable wife, who had incited him to debasing idolatries. so he hastens to his palace in jezreel and acquaints jezebel of the wonderful things he had seen, and which he could not prevent. she was transported with fury and vengeance, and vowing a tremendous oath, she sent a messenger to the prophet with these terrible words: "as surely as thou art elijah and i am jezebel, so may god do to me and more also, if i make not thy life to-morrow, about this time, as the life of one of them." in her unbounded rage she forgot all policy, for she should have struck the blow without giving her enemy time to escape. it may also be noted that she is no atheist, but believes in god according to phoenician notions. she reflects that eight hundred and fifty of baal's prophets had been slain, and that the nation might return to their allegiance to the god of their fathers, who had wrought the greatest calamity her proud heart could endure. unlike her husband, she knows no fear, and is as unscrupulous as she is fanatical. elijah, she resolved, should surely die. and how did the prophet receive her message? he had not feared to encounter ahab and all the priests of baal, yet he quailed before the wrath of this terrible woman,--this incarnate fiend, who cared neither for jehovah nor his prophet. even such a hero as elijah felt that he must now flee for his life, and, attended only by his boy-servant, he did not halt until he had crossed the kingdom of judah, and reached the utmost southern bounds of the holy land. at beersheba he left his faithful attendant, and sought refuge in the desert,--the ancient wilderness of sinai, with its rocky wastes. under the shade of a solitary tree, exhausted and faint, he lay down to die. "it is enough, o jehovah! now take away my life, for i am no better than my fathers." he had outstripped all pursuers, and was apparently safe, yet he wished to die. it was the reaction of a mighty excitement, the lassitude produced by a rapid and weary flight. he was physically exhausted, and with this exhaustion came despondency. he was a strong man unnerved, and his will succumbed to unspeakable weariness. he lay down and slept, and when he awoke he was fed and comforted by an angelic visitor, who commanded him to arise and penetrate still farther into the dreary wilderness. for forty days and nights he journeyed, until he reached the awful solitudes of sinai and horeb, and sought shelter in a cave. enclosed between granite rocks, he entered upon a new crisis of his career. it does not appear that the future destinies of samaria and jerusalem were revealed to elijah, nor the fate of the surrounding nations, as seen by isaiah, jeremiah, and daniel. he was not called to foretell the retribution which would surely be inflicted on degenerate and idolatrous nations, nor even to declare those impressive truths which should instruct all future generations. he therefore does not soar in his dreary solitude to those lofty regions of thought which marked the meditations of moses. he is not a man of genius; he is no poet; he has no eloquence or learning; he commits no precious truths to writing for the instruction of distant generations. he is a man of intensely earnest convictions, gifted with extraordinary powers resulting from that peculiar combination of physical and spiritual qualities known as the prophetic temperament. the instruments of the divine will on earth are selected with unerring judgment. elijah was sent by the almighty to deliver special messages of reproof and correction to wicked rulers; he was a reformer. but his character was august, his person was weird and remarkable, his words were earnest and delivered with an indomitable courage, a terrific force. he was just the man to make a strong impression on a superstitious and weak king; but he had done more than that,--he had roused a whole nation from their foul debasement, and left them quaking in terror before their offended deity. but the phase of exaltation and potent energy had passed for the time, and we now see him faint and despondent, yet, with the sure instinct of mighty spiritual natures, seeking recuperation in solitary companionship with the all-present spirit. we do not know how long elijah remained in his dismal cavern,--long enough, however, to recover his physical energies and his moral courage. as he wanders to and fro amid the hoary rocks and impenetrable solitudes of horeb, he seeks to commune with god. he listens for some manifestation of the deity; he is ready to do his bidding. he hears the sound of a rushing hurricane; but god is not in the wind. the mountain then is shaken by a fearful earthquake; but jehovah is not in the earthquake. again the mountain seems to flash with fire; but the signs he seeks are not in the fire. at last, after the uproar of contending physical forces had died away, in the profound silence of the solitude he hears the whisper of a still small voice in gentle accents; and by this voice in the soul jehovah speaks: "what doest thou here, elijah?" was this voice reproachful? had the prophet been told to flee? had he acted with the courage of a man sure of divine protection? had he not been faint-hearted when he wished to die? how does he reply to the mysterious voice? he justifies himself. but strengthened, comforted, uplifted by the exaltation of the consciousness of god's presence, elijah feels his resilient powers again upspringing. his courage returns; his perceptions grow sharp again; the inspiration of a new line of action opens up to him. he hears the word of the lord: "go, return on thy way to the wilderness of damascus; and when thou comest, anoint hazael to be king over syria, and jehu the son of nimshi to be king over israel, and elisha the son of shaphat to be prophet in thy room. and it shall come to pass that him who escapeth the sword of hazael shall jehu destroy, and him that escapeth the sword of jehu shall elisha slay. yet i have left me seven thousand in israel, who have not bowed the knee unto baal." elijah still knows that his life is in peril, but is ready, nevertheless, to obey his master's call. he is not designated as the power to effect the great revolution which should root out idolatry and destroy the house of omri; but jehu, an unscrupulous yet jealous warrior, was to found a new dynasty, and the king of syria was to punish and afflict the ten tribes, and elisha was to be the mouth-piece of the almighty in the court of kings. it would appear that elijah did not himself anoint either the general of benhadad or of ahab as future kings,--instruments of punishment on idolatrous israel,--but on elisha did his mantle fall. elisha was the son of a farmer, and, according to ewald, when elijah selected him for his companion and servant, had just been ploughing his twelve yoke of land (not of oxen), and was at work on the twelfth and last. passing by the place, elijah, without stopping, took off his shaggy mantle of skins, and cast it upon elisha. the young man, who doubtless was familiar with the appearance of the great prophet, recognized and accepted this significant call, and without remonstrance, even as others in later days devoted themselves to a greater prophet, "left all and followed" the one who had chosen him. he became elijah's constant companion and pupil and ministrant, until the great man's departure. he belonged to "the sons of the prophets," among whom elijah sojourned in his latter days,--a community of young men, for the most part poor, and compelled to combine manual labor with theological studies. very few of these prophets seem to have been favored with especial gifts or messages from god, in the sense that samuel and elijah were. they were teachers and preachers rather than prophets, performing duties not dissimilar to those of franciscan friars in the middle ages. they were ascetics like the monks, abstaining from wine and luxuries, as samson and the nazarites and rechabites did. religious asceticism goes back to a period that we cannot trace. after elijah had gone from the scenes of his earthly labors, elisha became a man of the city, and had a house in samaria. his dress was that of ordinary life, and he was bland in manners. his nature, unlike that of elijah, was gentle and affectionate. he became a man of great influence, and was the friend of three kings. jehoshaphat consulted him in war; joram sought his advice, and benhadad in sickness sent to him to be healed, for he exercised miraculous powers. he cured naaman of leprosy and performed many wonderful deeds, chiefly beneficent in character. elisha took no part in the revolutions of the palace, but he anointed jehu to be king over israel, and predicted to hazael his future elevation. his chief business was as president of a school of the prophets. his career as prophet lasted fifty-five years. he lived to a good old age, and when he died, was buried with great pomp as a man of rank, in favor with the court, for it was through him that jehu subsequently reigned. during the life of elijah, however, elisha was his companion and coadjutor. more is said in jewish history of elisha than of elijah, though the former was not so lofty and original a character as the latter. we are told that though elisha inherited the mantle of his master, he received only two-thirds of his master's spirit. but he was regarded as a great prophet for over fifty years, even beyond the limits of israel. unlike elijah, elisha preferred the companionship of men rather than life in a desert. he fixed his residence in samaria, and was highly honored and revered by all classes; he exercised a great influence on the king of israel, and carried on the work which elijah began. he was statesman as well as prophet, and the trusted adviser of the king; but his distinguished career did not begin till after elijah had ascended to heaven. after the consecration of elisha there is nothing said about elijah for some years, during which ahab was involved in war with benhadad, king of damascus. after that unfortunate contest it would seem that ahab had resigned himself to pleasure, and amused himself with his gardens at jezreel. during this time elijah had probably lived in retirement; but was again summoned to declare the judgment of god on ahab for a most atrocious murder. in his desire to improve his grounds ahab cast his eyes on a fertile vineyard belonging to a distinguished and wealthy citizen named naboth, which had been in the possession of his family even since the conquest. the king at first offered a large price for this vineyard, which he wished to convert into a garden of flowers, but naboth refused to sell it for any price. "god forbid," said he, with religious scruples blended with the pride of ancestry, "that i should give to thee the inheritance of my fathers." powerful and despotic as was the king, he knew he could not obtain this coveted vineyard except by gross injustice and an act of violence, which even he dared not commit. it would be an open violation of the jewish constitution. by the laws of moses the lands of the israelites, from the conquest, were inalienable. even if they were sold for debt, after fifty years they would return to the family. the pride of ownership in real estate was one of the peculiarities of the hebrews until after their final dispersion. after the fall of jerusalem by titus, personal property came to be more valued than real estate, and the jews became the money lenders and the bankers of the world. they might be oppressed and robbed, but they could hide away their treasures. a scrap of paper, they soon discovered, was enough to transfer in safety the largest sums. a jew had only to give a letter of credit on another jewish house, and a king could find ready money, if he gave sufficient security, for any enterprise. thus rare jewels pledged for gold accumulated among the hebrew merchants at an early date. ahab, disappointed in not being able without a crime to get possession of naboth's vineyard, abandoned himself to melancholy. in his deep chagrin he laid himself down on his bed, turned his face to the wall, and refused to eat. this seems strange to us, since he had more than enough, and there was no check on his ordinary pleasures. but covetous men never are satisfied. ahab was miserable with all his possessions so long as naboth was resolved to retain his paternal acres. it seems that it did not occur even to this unprincipled king that he could get possession of the coveted vineyard if he resorted to craft and violence. but his clever and unscrupulous wife came to his assistance. in her active brain she devised the means of success. she saw only the end; she cared nothing for the means. it is probable, indeed, that jezebel hankered even more than ahab for a garden of flowers. yet even she dared not openly seize the vineyard. such an outrage might have caused a rebellion; it would, at least, have created a great scandal and injured her popularity, of which this artful woman was as tenacious as the jew was of his property. moreover, naboth was a very influential and wealthy citizen, and had friends to support him. how could she remove the grievous eye-sore? she pondered and consulted the doctors of the law, as henry viii. made use of cranmer when he wished to marry anne boleyn. they told her that if it could be proved that any one, however high his rank, had blasphemed god and the king, he could legally be executed, and that his property would revert to the crown. so she suborned false witnesses, who swore at the trial of naboth, already seized for high treason, that he had blasphemed god and the king. sentence, according to law, was passed upon the innocent man, and according to law he was stoned to death, and the vineyard according to law became the property of the crown. jezebel, who had managed the whole affair, did not undertake the prosecution in her own name; as a woman, she had not the legal power. so she stole the king's ring, and sealed the indictment with the royal seal. thus by force and fraud under skilful technicalities, and by usurpation of the royal authority, the crime was consummated, and had the sanction of the law. oh, what crimes have been perpetrated in every age and country under cover of the law! the holy inquisition was according to law; the early christian persecutions were according to law; usurpers and murderers have reigned according to law; the quakers were put in prison, and witches were burned according to law. slavery was sustained by legal enactments; the rum shops are all under the protection of the law. there is scarcely a public scandal and wrong in any civilized country which the law does not somehow countenance or sustain. all public robbers appeal to legal technicalities. how could city officials steal princely revenues, how could lawyers collect exorbitant fees, if it were not for the law? neither ahab nor jezebel would have ventured to seize naboth's vineyard except under legal pretences; false witnesses swore to a lie, and the law condemned the accused. ahab in this instance was not as bad as his wife. he may not even have known by what diabolical craft the vineyard became his. but such crimes, striking at the root of justice, cry to heaven for vengeance. on ahab as king rested the responsibility, and he as well as his more guilty partner was made to pay the penalty. god in his providence avenged the death of naboth. the whole affair was widely known. as naboth's reputed offence was unusual, and the gravest known to the jewish laws, there was so great a sensation that a fast was proclaimed. the false trial and murderous execution were accomplished "before all the people." but this very ostentation of legal form made the outrage notorious. it reached the ears of elijah. the prophet's keen sense of right detected such an outrageous combination of hypocrisy, covetousness, fraud, usurpation, cruelty, robbery, and murder, that he once more heard the divine voice which summoned him from his retirement and sent him to the court with an awful message. suddenly, unannounced and unexpected, the man of god appeared before the king in his newly acquired possession, surrounded by his gardeners and artificers, and accompanied by two of his officers,--bidkar, and jehu the son of nimshi,--destined to be both instrument and witness of the retribution. with unwonted austerity, without preface or waste of words, elijah broke forth: "thus saith jehovah!"--how the monarch must have quaked at this awful name: "in the place where dogs licked the blood of naboth, shall dogs also lick thine, even thine." the conscience-stricken, affrighted monarch could only say, "hast thou found me, oh mine enemy!" and terrible was the response: "yes, i have found thee! and because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the lord, behold, i will take away thy posterity, and will make thy house like the house of jeroboam, who made israel to sin. and as to thy wife also, saith jehovah, the dogs shall eat jezebel by the wall of jezreel. him that dieth of ahab in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat." when and where, in the annals of the great, has such a dreadful imprecation been uttered? it was more awful than the doom pronounced on belshazzar. the blood of ahab and his wife was to be licked up by dogs, their dynasty to be overthrown, and their whole house destroyed. this dire punishment was inflicted probably not only on account of the crime pertaining to naboth, but for a whole life devoted to idolatry. the sentence was not to be executed immediately,--possibly a time was given for repentance; but it would surely be inflicted at last. this ahab knew better than any man in his kingdom. he was thrown into the depths of the most abject despair. he rent his clothes; he put ashes on his head and sackcloth on his flesh, and refused to eat or drink. he repented after the fashion of criminals, and humbled himself, as nebuchadnezzar did, before the most high god. god in mercy delayed, but did not annul, the punishment ahab lived long enough to fight the king of syria successfully, so that for three years there was peace in israel. but ramoth in gilead, belonging to the northern kingdom, remained in the hands of the syrians. in the mean time jehoshaphat, king of judah, whose son jehoram had married athaliah, daughter of ahab, and who was therefore in friendly social and political relations with ahab, came to visit him. they naturally talked about the war, and lamented the fall of ramoth-gilead. ahab proposed a united expedition to recover it, to which jehoshaphat was consenting; but before embarking in an offensive war against a powerful state, the two monarchs consulted the prophets. it is not to be supposed that they were the priests of baal, but ordinary prophets who wished to please. false prophets and false friends are very much alike,--they give advice according to the inclinations and wishes of those who consult them. they are afraid of incurring displeasure, knowing well that no one likes to have his plans opposed by candid advisers. therefore they all gave their voices for war, foretelling a grand success. but one prophet, more honest and bold--perhaps more gifted--than the rest, micaiah by name, took a different view of the matter. he was constrained to speak his honest convictions, and prophesied evil, and was thrown into prison for his honesty and boldness. nevertheless ahab in his heart was afraid, and had sad forebodings. knowing his peril, and alarmed at the words of a true prophet, he disguised himself for the battle; but a chance arrow, shot at a venture, penetrated through the joints of his armor, and he was mortally wounded. his blood ran from his wound into the chariot, and when the chariot was washed in the pool of samaria, after ahab had expired, the dogs licked up his blood, as elijah had predicted. the death of ahab put an end to the fighting; nor was jehoshaphat injured, although he wore his royal robes. the syrian general had given orders to slay only the king of israel. at one time, however, the king of judah was in great peril, being mistaken for ahab; but when his pursuers discovered their mistake, they turned from the pursuit. it seems that jezebel survived her husband fourteen years, and virtually ruled the kingdom, for she was a woman of ability. she exercised the same influence over her son ahaziah that she had over her husband, so that the son like the father served baal and made israel to sin. to this young king was elijah also sent. ahaziah had been seriously injured by an accidental fall from his upper chamber, through the lattice, to the court yard below. he sent to the priests of baal, to inquire whether he should recover or not. but elijah by command of god had intercepted the king's messengers, and suddenly appearing before them, as was his custom, confronted them with these words: "is there no god in israel, that ye go to inquire of baalzebub, the god of ekron? now, therefore, say unto the king, thou shalt not come down from the bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die." on their return to ahaziah, without delivering their message to the god of the phoenicians or philistines, the king said: "why are ye now turned back?" they repeated the words of the strange man who had turned them back; and the king said: "what manner of man was he who came up to meet you?" they answered, "he was a hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather around his loins." the king cried, "it is elijah the tishbite." again his enemy had found him! whereupon ahaziah sent a band of fifty chosen soldiers to arrest the prophet, who had retired to the top of a steep and rugged hill, probably carmel. the captain of the troop approached, and commanded him in the name of the king to come down, addressing him as the man of god. "if i am a man of god," said elijah, "let fire come down from heaven and consume thee and thy fifty." the fire came down and consumed them. again the king sent another band of fifty with their captain, who met with the same fate. again the king sent another band of fifty men, the captain of which came and fell on his knees before elijah and besought him, saying, "o man of god! i pray thee let my life and the lives of these fifty thy servants be precious in thy sight." and the angel of the lord said unto elijah, "go down with him; be not afraid of him." and he arose and went with the soldiers to the king, repeating to him the words he had sent before, that he should not recover, but should surely die. so ahaziah died, as elijah prophesied, and jehoram (or joram) reigned in his stead,--a brother of the late king, who did not personally worship baal, but who allowed the queen-mother to continue to protect idolatry. the war which had been begun by ahab against the syrians still continued, to recover ramoth-gilead, and the stronghold was finally taken by the united efforts of judah and israel; but joram was wounded, and returned to jezreel to be cured. with the advent of elijah a reaction against idolatry had set in. the people were awed by his terrible power, and also by the influence of elisha, on whom his mantle fell. it does not appear that the people had utterly abandoned the religion of their fathers, for they had not hesitated to slay the eight hundred and fifty priests of baal at the command of elijah. the introduction of idolatry had been the work of princes, chiefly through the influence of jezebel; and as the establishment of a false religion still continued to be the policy of the court, the prophets now favored the revolution which should overturn the house of ahab, and exterminate it root and branch. the instrument of the almighty who was selected for this work was jehu, one of the prominent generals of the army; and his task was made comparatively easy from the popular disaffection. that a woman, a foreigner, a pagan, and a female demon should control the government during two reigns was intolerable. only a spark was needed to kindle a general revolt, and restore the religion of jehovah. this was the appearance of a young prophet at ramoth-gilead, whom elisha had sent with an important message. forcing his way to the house where jehu and his brother officers were sitting in council, he called jehu apart, led him to an innermost chamber of the house, took out a small horn of sacred oil, and poured it on jehu's head, telling him that god had anointed him king to cut off the whole house of ahab, and destroy idolatry. on his return to the room where the generals were sitting, jehu communicated to them the message he had received. as the discontent of the nation had spread to the army, it was regarded as a favorable time to revolt from joram, who lay sick at jezreel. the army, following the chief officers, at once hailed jehu as king. it was supremely necessary that no time should be lost, and that the news of the rebellion should not reach the king until jehu himself should appear with a portion of the army. jehu was just the man for such an occasion,--rapid in his movements, unscrupulous, yet zealous to uphold the law of moses. so mounting his chariot, and taking with him a detachment of his most reliable troops, he furiously drove toward jezreel, turning everybody back on the road. it was a drive of about fifty miles. when within six miles of jezreel the sentinels on the towers of the walls noticed an unusual cloud of dust, and a rider was at once despatched to know the meaning of the approach of chariots and horses. the rider, as he approached, was ordered to fall back in the rear of jehu's force. another rider was sent, with the same result. but joram, discovering that the one who drove so rapidly must be his own impetuous captain of the host, and suspecting no treachery from him, ordered out his own chariot to meet jehu, accompanied by his uncle ahaziah, king of judah. he expected stirring news from the army, and was eager to learn it. he supposed that hazael, then king of damascus, who had murdered benhadad, had proposed peace. so as he approached jehu--the frightful irony of fate halting him for the interview in the very vineyard of naboth--he cried out, "is it peace, jehu?" "peace!" replied jehu; "what peace can be made so long as jezebel bears rule?" in an instant the king understood the ominous words of his general, turned back his chariot, and fled toward his palace, crying, "there is treachery, o ahaziah!" an arrow from jehu pierced the monarch in the back, and he sank dead in his chariot. ahaziah also was mortally wounded by another arrow from jehu, but he succeeded in reaching megiddo, where he died. jehu spoke to bidkar, his captain, and recalling the dread prophecy of elijah, commanded the body of ahab's son to be cast out into the dearly-bought field of naboth. in the mean time, jezebel from her palace window at jezreel had seen the murder of her son. she was then sixty years of age. the first thing she did was to paint her eyelids, and put on her most attractive apparel, to appear as beautiful as possible, with the hope doubtless of attracting jehu,--as cleopatra, after the death of antony, sought to win augustus. will a flattered woman, once beautiful, ever admit that her charms have passed away? but if the painted and bedizened queen anticipated her fate, she determined to die as she had lived,--without fear, imperious, and disdainful. so from her open window she tauntingly accosted jehu as he approached: "what came of zimri, who murdered his master as thou hast done?" "are there any on my side?" was the only reply he deigned to make, as he looked up to a window of the palace, which was a part of the wall of the city. two or three eunuchs, looking out from behind her, answered the summons, for the wicked and haughty queen had no real friends. "throw her down!" ordered jehu; and in a moment the blood from her mangled body splashed upon the walls and upon the horses. in another instant the wheels of the chariot passed over her lifeless remains. jehu would have permitted a decent burial, "for," said he, "she is a king's daughter;" but before her mangled corpse could be collected, in the general confusion, the dogs of the city had devoured all that remained of her but the skull, the feet, and hands. so perished the most infamous woman that ever wore a royal diadem, as had been predicted. with her also perished the seventy sons of ahab, all indeed that survived of the royal house of omri. and the work of destruction did not end until the courtiers of the late king and all connected with them, even the palace priests, were killed. then followed the massacre of the other priests of baal, the destruction of the idolatrous temples, and the restoration of the worship of jehovah, not only at samaria, but at jerusalem, for the revolution extended far and wide on the death of ahaziah as of joram. athaliah, the daughter of jezebel, who reigned over judah, also perished in those revolutionary times. it is not to be supposed that the relentless and savage jehu was altogether moved by a zeal for jehovah in these revolting slaughters. he was an ambitious and successful rebel; but like all notable forces, he may be regarded as an instrument of providence, whose ways are "mysterious," because men are not large enough and wise enough to trace effects to their causes under his immutable laws. jehu was a necessary consequence of ahab and jezebel. jehovah, as the national deity of the jews, was the natural and necessary rallying cry of the revolt against phoenician idolatry and foulness. the missionary sermons of those crude days were preached with the sword and the strong arm. god's revelations of himself and his purposes to man have always been through men, and by his laws the medium always colors the light which it transmits. the splendor of the noonday sun cannot shine clearly through rough, imperfect glass; and so the conceptions of deity and of the divine will, as delivered by the prophets, in every case show the nature of the man receiving and delivering the inspired message. and yet, through all the turmoil of those times, and the startling contrast between the conceptions presented by the "jehovah" of elijah and the "father" of jesus, the one grand central truth which the seed of abraham were chosen to conserve stands out distinctly from first to last,--the unity and purity of god. however obscured by human passions and interests, that principle always retained a vital hold upon some--if only a "remnant"--of the hebrew race. the influence of elijah, then, acting personally through him and his successor elisha, had caused the extermination of the worship of baal. but the golden calves still remained; and there was no improvement in the political affairs of the kingdom. it was steadily declining as a political power, whether on account of the degeneracy which succeeded prosperity, or the warlike enterprises of the empires and states which were hostile equally to judah and israel. jehu was forced to pay tribute to assyria to secure protection against syria; and after his death israel was reduced to the lowest depression by hazael, and had not the power of syria soon after been broken by assyria, the northern kingdom would have been utterly destroyed. it was not given to elijah to foresee the future calamities of the jews, or to declare them, as isaiah and jeremiah did. it was his mission, and also elisha's, to destroy the worship of baal and punish the apostate kings who had introduced it. he was the messenger and instrument of jehovah to remove idolatry, not to predict the future destiny of his nation. he is to be viewed, like elisha, as a reformer, as a man of action, armed with supernatural gifts to awe kings and influence the people, rather than as a seer or a poet, or even as a writer to instruct future generations. his mission seems to have ended shortly after he had thrown his mantle on a man more accomplished than himself in knowledge of the world. but his last days are associated with unspeakable grandeur as well as pathetic interest. elijah seems to have known that the day of his departure was at hand. so, departing from gilgal in company with his beloved companion, he proceeded toward bethel. as he approached the city he besought elisha to leave him alone; but elisha refused to part with the master whom he both loved and revered. onward they proceeded from bethel to jericho, and from jericho to the jordan. it was a mournful journey to elisha, for he knew as well as the sons of the prophets at jericho that he and his master, and friend more than master, were to part for the last time on earth. the waters of the jordan happened to be swollen, and the two prophets, and the fifty sons of the prophets--their pupils, who came to say farewell--could not pass over. but the sacred narrative tells us that elijah, wrapping his mantle together like a staff, smote the waters, so that they were divided, and the two passed over to the eastern bank, in view of the disciples. in loving intercourse elijah promises to give to his companion as token of his love whatever elisha may choose. elisha asks simply for a double portion of his master's spirit, which elijah grants in case elisha shall see him distinctly when taken away. "and it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that behold there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder. and elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. and elisha saw it, and he cried, 'my father, my father! the chariot of israel, and the horsemen thereof !'"--thou art the chariot of israel; thou hast been its horsemen! and then there fell from elijah, as he vanished from human sight, the mantle by which he had been so well known; and it became the sign of that fulness of divine favor which was given to his successor in his arduous labors to restore the worship of jehovah, "and to prepare the way for him in whom all prophecy is fulfilled." isaiah. prophesied 740-701 b.c. national degeneracy. to understand the mission of isaiah, one should be familiar with the history of the kingdom of judah from the time of jeroboam, founder of the separate kingdom of israel, to that of uzziah, in whose reign isaiah was born, 760 b.c. judah had doubtless degenerated in virtue and spiritual life, but this degeneracy was not so marked as that of the northern kingdom,--called israel. judah had been favored by a succession of kings, most of whom were able and good men. out of nine kings, five of them "did right in the sight of the lord;" and during the two hundred and sixteen years when these monarchs reigned, one hundred and eighty-seven were years when the worship of jehovah was maintained by virtuous princes, all of whom were of the house of david. the reigns of those kings who did evil in the sight of the lord were short. during this period there were nineteen kings of israel, most of whom did evil. they introduced idolatry; many of them were usurpers, and died violent deaths. if the northern kingdom was larger and more fertile than the southern, it was more afflicted with disastrous wars and divine judgments for the sins into which it had fallen. it was to the wicked kings of israel, throned in the samarian shechem, that elijah and elisha were sent; and the interest we feel in their reigns is chiefly directed to the acts and sayings of those two great prophets. the kingdom of judah, blessed on the whole with virtuous rulers, and comparatively free from idolatry, continually increased in wealth and political power. rehoboam, the son of solomon, after the rebellion of the ten tribes, seems to have changed somewhat his course of life, although the high places and graven images were not removed; but his grandson asa destroyed the idols, and made fortunate alliances. asa's son jehoshaphat terminated the civil wars that had raged between judah and israel from the accession of rehoboam, and almost rivalled solomon in his outward prosperity. jerusalem became the strongest fortress in western asia; the temple service was continued in its former splendor; all that was vital in the strength of nations pertained to the smaller kingdom. the dark spot in the history of judah for nearly two hundred years was the ascendency gained by athaliah, the daughter of jezebel, over her husband jehoram, who introduced the gods of phoenicia. she seems to have exercised the same malign influence in jerusalem that jezebel did in samaria, and was as unscrupulous as her pagan mother. she even succeeded in usurping the throne, and in destroying the whole race of david, with the exception of joash, an infant, whom jehoiada the high-priest contrived to hide until the unscrupulous athaliah was slain, having reigned as queen six years,--the first instance in jewish history of a female sovereign. both judah and israel in these years had the danger of a syrian war constantly threatening them. under hazael, who reigned at damascus, great conquests were made by the syrians of jewish territory, and the capture of jerusalem was averted only by buying off the enemy, to whom were surrendered the gifts to the temple accumulating since the days of jehoshaphat. the whole land was overrun and pillaged. nor were calamities confined to the miseries of war. a long drouth burned the fields; seed rotted under the clods; the cattle moaned in the barren and dried-up pastures; while locusts devoured what the drouth had spared. says stanley: "the purple vine, the green fig-tree, the gray olive, the scarlet pomegranate, the golden corn, the waving palm, the fragrant citron, vanished before them, and the trunks and branches were left bare and white by their devouring teeth,"--a brilliant sentence, by the way, which geikie quotes without acknowledgment, as well as many others, which lays him open to the charge of plagiarism. both stanley and geikie, however, seem to be indebted to ewald for all that is striking and original in their histories,--so true is solomon's saying that there is nothing new under the sun. the rarest thing in literature is a truly original history. in this mournful crisis the prophet joel, who was a priest at jerusalem, demanded a solemn fast, which the entire kingdom devoutly celebrated, the whole body of the priests crying aloud before the gates of the temple, "spare thy people, o lord! give not thine heritage to reproach, lest the heathen make us a by-word, and ask, where is now thy god?" but joel, the oldest, and in many respects the most eloquent, hebrew prophet whose utterances have come down to us, did not speak in vain, and a great religious revival followed, attended naturally by renewed prosperity,--for among the jews a "revival of religion" meant a practical return from vice to virtue, personal holiness, and the just and wholesome requirements of their law; so that "under amaziah, uzziah, and jotham, judah rose once more to a pitch of honor and glory which almost recalled the golden age of david." a greater power than that of syria threatened the peace and welfare of the kingdom of judah, as it also did that of israel; and this was the empire of assyria. during the reigns of david and solomon this empire was passing through so many disasters that it was not regarded as dangerous, and both of the jewish kingdoms were left free to avail themselves of every facility afforded for national development. ewald notices emphatically this outward prosperity, which introduced luxury and pride throughout the kingdom. it was the golden age of merchants, usurers, and money-mongers. then appeared that extraordinary greed for riches which never afterward left the nation, even in seasons of calamity, and which is the most striking peculiarity of the modern hebrew. this was a period not only of prosperity and luxury, but of vanity and ostentation, especially among women. the insidious influences of wealth more than balanced the good effected by a long succession of virtuous and gifted princes. i read of no country that, on the whole, was ever favored by a more remarkable constellation of absolute kings than that of judah. most of them had long reigns, took prophets and wise men for their counsellors, developed the resources of their kingdoms, strengthened jerusalem, avoided entangling wars, and enjoyed the love and veneration of the people. most of them, unlike the kings of israel, were true to their exalted mission, were loyal to jehovah, and discouraged idolatry, if they did not root out the scandal by persecuting violence. some of these kings were poets, and others were saints, like their great ancestor david; and yet, in spite of all their efforts, corruption, and infidelity gained ground, and ultimately undermined the state and prepared the way for babylonian conquests. though jerusalem survived the fall of samaria for nearly five generations, divine judgment was delayed, but not withdrawn. the chastisement was sent at last at the hands of warriors whom no nation could successfully resist. the old enemies who had in the early days overwhelmed the hebrews with calamities under the judges had been conquered by saul and david,--the moabites, the edomites, the hittites, the jebusites, and the philistines,--and they never afterward seriously menaced the kingdom, although there were occasional wars. but in the eighth century before christ the assyrian empire, whose capital was nineveh, had become very formidable under warlike sovereigns, who aimed to extend their dominion to the mediterranean and to egypt. in the reign of jehoash, the son of athaliah, an assyrian monarch had exacted tribute from tyre and sidon, and syria was overrun. when pul, or tiglath-pileser, seized the throne of nineveh, he pushed his conquests to the caspian sea on the north and the indus on the east, to the frontier of egypt and the deserts of sinai on the west and south. in 739 b.c. he appeared in syria to break up a confederation which uzziah of judah had formed to resist him, and succeeded in destroying the power of syria, and carrying its people as captives to assyria. menahem, king of samaria, submitted to the enormous tribute of one thousand talents of silver. in 733 b.c. this great conqueror again invaded syria, beheaded rezin its king, took damascus, reduced five hundred and eighteen cities and towns to ashes, and carried back to nineveh an immense spoil. in 728 b.c. shalmanezer iv. appeared in palestine, and invested samaria. the city made an heroic defence; but after a siege of three years it yielded to sargon, who carried away into captivity the ten tribes of israel, from which they never returned. judah survived by reason of its greater military skill and its strong fortresses, with which asa, jehoshaphat, and uzziah had fortified the country, especially jerusalem. but the fate of western asia was sealed when rezin of damascus, menahem of samaria, hiram of tyre, and the king of hamath moodily consented to pay tribute to the king of assyria; the downfall of the sturdy judah was in preparation. greater evils than those of war threatened the stability of the state. in judah as in ephraim drunkenness was a national vice, and the nobles abandoned themselves to disgraceful debauchery. there was a general demoralization of the people more fearful in its consequences than even idolatry. judah was no exception to the ordinary fate of nations; the everlasting sequence--pertaining to institutions as well as nations, to religious as well as merely political communities--was here seen,--"inwardness, outwardness, worldliness, and rottenness." it was in this state of political danger and a general decline in morals, with a tendency to idolatry, that isaiah--preacher, statesman, historian, poet, and prophet--was born. less is said of the personal history of this great man than of moses or david, of daniel or elisha, and it is only in his writings that we see the solemn grandeur of his character. we infer that he was allied with the royal family of david; he certainly held a high position in the courts of jotham, ahaz, and hezekiah. he was a man of great dignity, experience, and wisdom, but ascetic in his habits and dress. although he associated with the great in courts and palaces, a cell was his delight. he was a retiring, contemplative, rapt, austere man, severe on passing follies, and not sparing in his rebukes of sin in high places,--something like savonarola at florence, both as preacher and prophet,--and exercising a commanding influence on political affairs and on the people directly, especially during the reigns of ahaz and hezekiah. he denounced woes and calamities, yet escaped persecution from the grandeur of his character and the importance of his utterances. he was a favorite of king hezekiah, and was contemporary with the prophets hosea, amos, and jonah. he lived in jerusalem, not far from the temple, and had a wife and two sons. he wrote the life of uzziah, and died at the age of eighty-four, in the reign of manasseh. it is generally supposed that although isaiah had lived in honor during the reigns of four kings, he suffered martyrdom at last. it is the fate of prophets to be stoned when they are in antagonism with men in power, or with popular sentiments. his prophetic ministry extended over a period of about fifty years, and he was continually consulted by the reigning monarchs. the great outward events that took place during isaiah's public career were the invasion of judah by the combined forces of israel and syria in the reign of ahaz, and the great assyrian invasion in the reign of hezekiah. in regard to the first, it was disastrous to judah. the weak king, the twelfth from david, was inclined to the idolatries of the surrounding nations, but was not signally bad like ahab. yet he was no match for pekah, who reigned at samaria, or for rezin, who reigned at damascus. their combined armies slew in one day one hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of ahaz, and carried away into captivity two hundred thousand women and children, with immense spoil. the conqueror then advanced to the siege of jerusalem. in his distress ahaz invoked the aid of pul, or tiglath-pileser ii., one of the most warlike of the assyrian kings, whose kingdom stretched from the armenian mountains on the north to bagdad on the south, and from the zagros chain on the east to the euphrates on the west. earnestly did the prophet-statesman expostulate with ahaz, telling him that the king of assyria would prove "a razor to shave but too clean his desolate land." the inspired advice was rejected; and the result of the alliance was that judah, like israel, fell to the rank of a subject nation, and became tributary to assyria, and ahaz, a mere vassal of tiglath-pileser. the whole of palestine became the border-land of the assyrian empire, easy to be invaded and liable to be conquered. the consequences which isaiah feared, took place in the time of hezekiah, in the actual invasion of judah by the assyrian hosts under sennacherib. not the splendid prosperity of hezekiah, little short of that enjoyed by solomon,--not his allegiance to jehovah, nor his grand reforms and magnificent feasts averted the calamities which were the legitimate result of the blindness of his father ahaz. sennacherib, the most powerful of all the assyrian kings, after suppressing a revolt in babylon and conquering various eastern states, turned his eyes and steps to palestine, which had revolted. hezekiah, in mortal fear, made humble submission, and consented to a tribute of three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, and the loss of two hundred thousand of his people as captives, and a cession of a part of his territory,--as great a calamity as france suffered in the war (1870-71) with prussia. considering the prosperity of the kingdom of judah under hezekiah, it is a difficult thing to be explained that the king could raise but three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, although david had contributed out of his private fortune, for the future erection of the temple, three thousand talents of gold and seven thousand talents of silver, besides the one million talents of silver and one hundred thousand talents of gold which he collected as sovereign. it would seem probable that an error has crept into the estimates of the wealth of the kingdom under solomon and under the subsequent kings; either that of solomon is exaggerated, or that of hezekiah is underrated. notwithstanding his former defeat and losses, hezekiah again revolted, and again was judah invaded by a still greater assyrian force. the king of judah in this emergency showed extraordinary energy, stopped the supply of water outside his capital, strengthened his defences, gathered together his fighting men, and encouraged them with the assurance that help would come from the lord, in whom they trusted, and whom sennacherib boastfully defied. for the ringing words of isaiah roused and animated the hearts of both king and people to a noble courage, announcing the aid of jehovah and the overthrow of the heathen invader. as we have seen, the men of judah showed their faith in the divine help by preparing to help themselves. but from an unexpected quarter the assistance came, as isaiah had predicted. a pestilence destroyed in a single night one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the assyrian warriors,--the most signal overthrow of the enemies of israel since pharaoh and his host were swallowed up by the waters of the red sea, and also the most signal deliverance which jerusalem ever had. the calamity created such a fearful demoralization among the invaders that the over-confident assyrian monarch retired to his capital with utter loss of prestige, and soon after was assassinated by his own sons. no assyrian king after this invaded judah, and nineveh itself in a few years was conquered by babylon. the fall of jerusalem at the hands of the babylonians was delayed one hundred years. but such were the moral and social evils of the times succeeding the ninevite invasion that isaiah saw that retribution would come sooner or later, unless the nation repented and a radical reform should take place. he saw the people stricken with judicial blindness; so he clothed himself in sackcloth and cried aloud, with fervid eloquence, upon the people to repent. he is now the popular preacher, and his theme is repentance. in his earnest exhortations he foreshadows john the baptist: "unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." it would seem that savonarola makes him the model of his own eloquence. "thy crimes, o florence! thy crimes, o rome! thy crimes, o italy! are the causes of these chastisements. o rome! thou shalt be put to the sword, since thou wilt not be converted! o harlot church! i will stretch forth mine hand upon thee, saith the lord." the burden of the soul of the florentine monk is sin, especially sin in high places. he sees only degeneracy in life, and alarms the people by threats of divine vengeance. so isaiah cries aloud upon the people to seek the lord while he may be found. he does not invoke divine wrath, as david did upon his enemies; but he shows that this wrath will surely overtake the sinner. in no respect does he glory in this retribution: he is sad; he is oppressed; he is filled with grief, especially in view of the prevailing infatuation. "my people," said he, "do not consider." he denounces all classes alike, and spares not even women. in sarcastic language he rebukes their love of dress, their abandonment to vanities, their finery, their very gait and mincing attitude. still more contemptuously does the preacher speak of the men, over whom the women rule and children oppress. he is severe on corrupt judges, on usurers; on all who are conceited in their own eyes; on those who are mighty to drink wine; on those who join house to house and field to field; on those whose glorious beauty is a fading flower; on those who call good evil and evil good, that put darkness for light, that take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. his terrible denunciation and enumeration of evil indicate a very lax morality in every quarter, added to hypocrisy and pharisaism. he shows what a poor thing is sacrifice unaccompanied with virtue. "to what purpose," said he, "is the multitude of sacrifices? bring no more vain oblations. incense is an abomination to me, saith the lord. therefore wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." isaiah does not preach dogmas, still less metaphysical distinctions; he preaches against sin and demands repentance, and predicts calamity. there are two points in his preaching which stand out with great vividness,--the certain judgments of god in view of sin, retribution on all offenders; and secondly, the mercy and forgiveness of god in case of repentance. retribution, however, is not in isaiah usually presented as the penalty of transgression according to natural law; not, as in the proverbs, as the inevitable sequence of sin,--"whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap,"--but as direct punishment from god. jehovah's awful personality is everywhere recognized,--a being who rules the universe as "the living god," who loves and abhors, who punishes and rewards, who gives power to the faint, who judges among the nations, who takes away from judah and jerusalem the stay and the staff of bread and water. "to whom then will ye liken god? have ye not known, have ye not heard, hath it not been told you from the beginning? it is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, that bringeth the princes to nothing. hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting god, the lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? he giveth power to the faint and weary, so that they who wait upon him shall renew their strength, mount up with wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint." can stronger or more comforting language be made use of to assert the personality and providence of god? and where in the whole circuit of hebrew poetry is there more sublimity of language, greater eloquence, or more profound conviction of the evil and punishment of sin? isaiah, the greatest of all the prophets in his spiritual discernment, in his profound insight of the future, is not behind the author of job in majestic and sublime description. whatever may be the severity of language with which isaiah denounces sin, and awful the judgments he pronounces in view of it, as coming directly from god, yet he seldom closes one of his dreadful sentences without holding out the hope of divine forgiveness in case of repentance, and the peace and comfort which will follow. in his view the mercy of the lord is more impressive than his judgments. isaiah is anything but a prophet of wrath; his soul overflows with tender sentiments and loving exhortation. "ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters! come ye, buy and eat! yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!... let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our god, for he will abundantly pardon...behold, the lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear...though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." according to modern standards, we are struck with the absence of what we call art, in the writings of isaiah. history, woes, promises, hopes, aspirations, and exultations are all mingled together in scarcely logical sequence. he exhorts, he threatens, he reproaches, he promises, often in the same chapter. the transition between preacher and prophet is very sudden. but it is as prophet that isaiah is most frequently spoken of; and he is the prophet of hope and consolation, although he denounces woes upon the nations of the earth. in his prophetic office he predicts the future of all the people known to the hebrews. he does not preach to _them_: they do not hear his voice; they do not know what tribulations shall be sent upon them. he commits his prophecies to writing for the benefit of future ages, in which he gives reasons for the judgments to be sent upon wicked nations, so that the great principles seen in the moral government of god may remain of perpetual significance. these principles centre around the great truth that national wickedness will certainly be followed by national calamities, which is also one of the most impressive truths that all history teaches; and so uniform is the operation of this great law that it is safe to make deductions from it for the guidance of statesmen and the teachings of moralists. national effeminacy which follows luxury, great injustices which cry to heaven for vengeance, and practical atheism and idolatry are certain to call forth divine judgments,--sometimes in the form of destructive wars, sometimes in pestilence and famine, and at other times in the gradual wasting away of national resources and political power. in conformity with this settled law in the moral government of god, we read the fate of nineveh, of babylon, of tyre, of jerusalem, of carthage, of antioch, of corinth, of athens, of rome; and i would even add of venice, of turkey, of spain. nor is there anything which can save modern cities and countries, however magnificent their civilization, from a like visitation of almighty power, if they continue in the iniquity which all the world perceives, and sometimes deplores. it must have seemed as absurd to the readers of isaiah's predictions twenty-five hundred years ago that babylon and tyre should fall, as it would to the people of our day should one predict the future ruin of paris or london or new york, if the vices which now flourish in these cities should reach an overwhelming preponderance, but which we hope may be wholly overcome by the influence of christianity and the spirit and interference of god himself; for he governs the world by the same principles that he did two thousand years ago,--a fact which seldom is ignored by any profound and religious inquirer. i have no faith in the permanence of any form of civilization, or of any government, where a certain depth of infamy and depravity is reached; because the impressive lesson of history is that righteousness exalteth a nation, and iniquity brings it low. isaiah predicted woes which came to pass, since the cities and peoples against whom he denounced them remained obstinately perverse in their iniquity and atheism. their doom was certain, without that repentance which would lead to a radical change of life and opinions. he held out no hope unless they turned to the lord; nor did any of the prophets. jeremiah was sad because he knew they would not repent, even as christ himself wept over jerusalem. no maledictions came from the pen or voice of isaiah such as david breathed against his enemies, only the expression of the sad and solemn conviction that unless the people and the nation repented, they would all equally and surely perish, in accordance with the stern laws written on the two tables of moses,--for "i, thy god, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation;"--yea, written before moses, and to be read unto this day in the very constitution of man, physical, mental, spiritual, and social. the prophet first announces the calamities which both judah and ephraim--the southern and the northern kingdoms--shall suffer from assyrian invasions. "the lord shall shave judah with a razor, not only the head, but the beard,"--thus declaring that the land would be not only depopulated, but become a desert, and that men should no longer live by agriculture, or by trade and commerce, but by grazing alone. "woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower; it shall be trodden under foot." the sins of pride and drunkenness are especially enumerated as the cause of their chastisement. "woe to ariel [that is jerusalem]! i will camp against thee round about, and lay siege against thee with a mount, and i will raise forts against thee, and thou shalt be brought down.... forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with lips do they honor me, but have removed their heart far from me,"--hereby showing that hypocrisy at jerusalem was as prevalent as drunkenness in samaria, and as difficult to be removed. isaiah also reproves judah for relying on the aid of egypt in the threatened assyrian invasion, instead of putting confidence in god, but declares that the evil day will be deferred in case that judah repents; however, he holds out no hope that her people may escape the final captivity to babylon. all that the prophet predicted in reference to the desolation of palestine by syrians, assyrians, and babylonians, as instruments of punishment, came to pass. from the calamities which both judah and israel should suffer for their pride, hypocrisy, drunkenness, and idolatry, isaiah turns to predict the fall of other nations. "wherefore it shall come to pass that when the lord hath performed his whole work upon jerusalem, i will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of assyria, and the glory of his high looks.... for he saith, by the strength of my hand i have done it, and by my wisdom; for i am prudent, and i have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: and as i have gathered all the earth, as one gathereth eggs, therefore shall the lord of hosts send among his fat ones leanness, and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire." in the inscriptions which have recently been deciphered on the broken and decayed monuments of nineveh nothing is more remarkable than the boastful spirit, pride, and arrogance of the assyrian kings and conquerors. the fall of still prouder babylon is next predicted. "since thou hast said in thine heart, i will ascend into heaven, i will exalt my throne above the stars of god, thou shalt be brought down to hell.... babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the chaldean excellency, shall be as when god overthrew sodom and gomorrah. it shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the arabians pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there; but wild beasts of the deserts shall lie there, and the owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there." both nineveh and babylon arose to glory and power by unscrupulous conquests, for their kings and people were military in their tastes and habits; and with dominion cruelly and wickedly obtained came arrogance and pride unbounded, and with these luxury and sensuality. the wickedest city of antiquity meets with the most terrible punishment that is recorded of any city in the world's history. not only were pride and cruelty the peculiar vices of its kings and princes, but a gross and degrading idolatry, allied with all the vices that we call infamous, marked the inhabitants of the doomed capital; so that the hebrew language was exhausted to find a word sufficiently expressive to mark its foul depravity, or sufficiently exultant to rejoice over its predicted \fall. most cities have recovered more or less from their calamities,--jerusalem, athens, rome,--but babylon was utterly destroyed, as by fire from heaven, and never has been rebuilt or again inhabited, except by wild beasts. its very ruins, the remains of walls three hundred and fifty feet in height, and of hanging gardens, and of palaces a mile in circuit, and of majestic temples, are now with difficulty determined. truly has that wicked city been swept with the besom of destruction, as isaiah predicted. the prophet then predicts the desolation of moab on account of its pride, which seems to have been its peculiar offence. it is to be noted that the sin of pride has ever called forth a severe judgment. "it goeth before destruction." pride was one of the peculiarities of both nineveh and babylon. but that which is exalted shall be brought low. a bitter humiliation, at least, has ever been visited upon those who have arrogated a lofty superiority. it presupposes an independence utterly inconsistent with the real condition of men in the eyes of the omnipotent; in the eyes of men, even, it is offensive in the extreme, and ends in isolation. we can tolerate certain great defects and weaknesses, but no one ever got reconciled to pride. it led to the ruin of napoleon, as well as of caesar; it creates innumerable enemies, even in the most retired village; it separates and alienates families; and when the punishment for it comes, everybody rejoices. people say contemptuously, "is this the man that made the earth to tremble?" there is seldom pity for a fallen greatness that rejoiced in its strength, and despised the weakness of the unfortunate. if anything is foreign to the spirit of christianity it is boastful pride, and yet it is one of those things which it is difficult for conscience to reach, as it is generally baptized with the name of self-respect. the next woe which isaiah denounced was on egypt, which had played so great a part in the history of ancient nations. the judgments sent on this civilized country were severe, but were not so appalling as those to be visited upon babylon. with egypt was included ethiopia. civil war should desolate both nations, and it should rage so fiercely that "every one should fight against his brother, and every one against his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom." moreover, the famed wisdom of egypt should fail; the people in their distress should seek to gain direction from wizards and charmers and soothsayers. it always was a country of magicians, from the time that aaron's rod swallowed up the rods of those boastful enchanters who sought to repeat his miracles; it was a country of soothsayers and sorcerers when finally conquered by the romans; it was the fruitful land of religious superstitions in every age. it was governed in the earliest times by pagan priests; the early kings were priests,--even moses and joseph were initiated into the occult arts of the priests. it was not wholly given to idolatry, since it is supposed that there was an esoteric wisdom among the higher priests which held to the one supreme god and the immortality of the soul, as well as to future rewards and punishments. nevertheless, the disgusting ceremonies connected with the worship of animals were far below the level of true religion, and the sorceries and magical incantations and superstitious rites which kept the people in ignorance, bondage, and degradation called loudly for rebuke. by reason of these things the nation was to be still farther subjected to the grinding rule of tyrants. it was a fertile and fruitful land, in which all the arts known to antiquity flourished; but the rains of ethiopia were to be withheld, and such should be the unusual and abnormal drouth that the nile should be dried up, and the reeds upon its banks should wither and decay. the river was stocked with fish, but the fishermen should cast their hooks and arrange their nets in vain. even the workers in flax (one great source of egyptian wealth and luxury) should be confounded. the princes were to become fools; there was to be general confusion, and no work was to be done in manufactures. even judah should become a terror to egypt, and fear should overspread the land. to these calamities there was to be some palliation. five cities should speak the language of canaan, and swear by the lord of hosts; and an altar should be erected in the middle of the land which should be a witness unto the lord of hosts, to whom the people should cry amid their oppressions and miseries; and jehovah should be known in egypt. "he shall smite it, but he also shall heal it." and when we remember what a refuge the jews found in alexandria and other cities in the no very distant future, keeping alive there the worship of the true god, and what a hold christianity itself took in the second and third centuries in that old country of priests and sorcerers, producing a clement, a cyprian, a tertullian, an athanasius, and an augustine; yea, that when conquered by the mohammedans, the worship of the one true god was everywhere maintained from that time to the present,--we feel that the mercy of god followed close upon his justice. isaiah predicted even the divine blessing on the land, which it should share with palestine: "blessed be egypt my people, and israel mine inheritance." it is not to be supposed that tyre would escape from the calamities which were to be sent on the various heathen nations. tyre was the great commercial centre of the world at that time, as babylon was the centre of imperial power. babylon ruled over the land, and tyre over the sea; the one was the capital of a vast empire, the other was a maritime power, whose ships were to be seen in every part of the mediterranean. tyre, by its wealth and commerce, gained the supremacy in phoenicia, although sidon was an older city, five miles distant. but tyre was defiled by the worship of baal and astarte; it was a city of exceeding dissoluteness. it was not only proud and luxurious, but abominably licentious; it was a city of harlots. and what was to be its fate? it was to be destroyed, and its merchandise was to be scattered. "howl, ye ships of tarshish! for your strength is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in.... the lord of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of glory, and bring to contempt all the honorable of the earth." the inhabitants of the city who sought escape from death were compelled to take refuge in the colonies at cyprus, carthage, and tartessus in spain. the destruction of tyre has been complete. there are no remains of its former grandeur; its palaces are indistinguishable ruins. its traffic was transferred to carthage. yet how strong must have been a city which took nebuchadnezzar thirteen years to subdue! it arose from its ashes, but was reduced again by alexander. isaiah condenses his judgment in reference to the other wicked nations of his time in a few rapid, vigorous, and comprehensive clauses. "behold, jehovah emptieth the earth, and layeth it waste, and scattereth its inhabitants. and it happeneth, as to the people, so to the priest; as to the servant, so to the master; as to the maid, so to her mistress; as to the buyer, so to the seller; as to the lender, so to the borrower; as to the creditor, so to the debtor. the earth has become wicked among its inhabitants, therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they who dwelt in it make expiation." we observe that these severe calamities are not uttered in wrath. they are not maledictions; they are simply divine revelations to the gifted prophet, or logical deductions which the inspired statesman declares from incontrovertible facts. in this latter sense, all profound observations on the tendency of passing events partake of the nature of prophecy. a sage is necessarily a prophet. men even prophesy rain or heat or cold from natural phenomena, and their predictions often come to pass. much more to be relied on is the prophetic wisdom which is seen among great thinkers and writers, like burke, webster, and carlyle, since they rely on the operation of unchanging laws, both moral and physical. when a nation is wholly given over to lying and cheating in trade, or to hypocritical observances in religion, or to practical atheism, or to gross superstitions, or abominable dissoluteness in morals, or to the rule of feeble kings controlled by hypocritical priests and harlots, is it presumptuous to predict the consequences? is it difficult to predict the ultimate effect on a nation of overwhelming standing armies eating up the resources of kings, or of the general prevalence of luxury, effeminacy, and vice? isaiah having declared the judgment of god on apostate, idolatrous, and wicked nations; having emphasized the great principle of retribution, even on nations that in his day were prosperous and powerful; having rebuked the sins of the people among whom he dwelt, and exposed hypocrisy and dead-letter piety,--lays down the fundamental law that chastisements are sent to lead men to repentance, and that where there is repentance there is forgiveness. severe as are his denunciations of sin, and certain as is the punishment of it, yet his soul dwells on the mercy and love of god more than even on his justice. he never loses sight of reconciliation, although he holds out but little hope for people wedded to their idols. there is no hope for babylon or tyre; they are doomed. nor is there much encouragement for ephraim, which composed so large a part of the kingdom of israel; its people were to be dispersed, to become captives, and never were to return to their native hills. but he holds out great hope for judah. it will be conquered, and its people carried away in slavery to babylon,--that is their chastisement for apostasy; but a remnant of them shall return. they had not utterly forgotten god, therefore a part of the nation shall be rescued from captivity. so full of hope is isaiah that the nation shall not utterly be destroyed, that he names his son shear-jashub,--"a remnant shall return." this is his watchword. certain is it that the lord will have mercy on jacob whom he hath chosen; his promises will not fail. judah shall be chastised; but a part of judah shall return to jerusalem, purified, wiser, and shall again in due time flourish as a nation. isaiah is the prophet of hope, of forgiveness, and of love. not only on judah shall a blessing be bestowed, but upon the whole world. forgiveness is unbounded if there is repentance, no matter what the sin may be. he almost anticipates the message of jesus by saying, "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." god's mercy is past finding out. "ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!" so full is he of the boundless love of god, extended to all created things, that he calls on the hills and the mountains to rejoice. here he soars beyond the jew; he takes in the whole world in his rapturous expectation of deliverance. he comforts all good people under chastisement. he is as cheerful as jeremiah is sad. having laid down the conditions of forgiveness, and expatiated on the divine benevolence, isaiah now sings another song, and ascends to loftier heights. he is jubilant over the promised glories of god's people; he speaks of the redemption of both jew and gentile. his prophetic mission is now more distinctly unfolded. he blends the forgiveness of sins with the promised deliverer; he unfolds the advent of the messiah. he even foretells in what form he shall come; he predicts the main facts of his personal history. not only shall there "come forth a rod out of the stem of jesse, and a branch out of its roots," but he shall be "a man despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; who shall be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, brought as a lamb to the slaughter, cut off from the living, making his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death; yet bruised because it pleased the lord, and because he made his soul an offering for sin, and made intercession with the transgressors." who is this stricken, persecuted, martyred personage, bearing the iniquity of the race, and thus providing a way for future salvation? isaiah, with transcendent majesty of style, clear and luminous as it is poetical, declares that this person who is still unborn, this light which shall appear in galilee, is no less than he on whose shoulders shall be the government, "whose name shall be called wonderful, counsellor, the mighty god, the everlasting father, the prince of peace; of the increase of whose kingdom and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of david and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and justice forever." only in some of the messianic psalms do we meet with kindred passages, indicating the reign of the christ upon the earth, expressed with such emphatic clearness. how marvellous and wonderful this prophecy! seven hundred years before its fulfilment, it is expressed with such minuteness, that, had the prophet lived in the apostolic age, he could not have described the messiah more accurately. the devout jew, especially after the captivity, believed in a future deliverer, who should arise from the seed of david, establish a great empire, and reign as a temporal monarch; but he had no lofty and spiritual views of this predicted reign. to isaiah, more even than to abraham or david or any other person in jewish history, was it revealed that the reign of the christ was to be spiritual; that he was not to be a temporal deliverer, but a saviour redeeming mankind from the curse of sin. hence isaiah is quoted more than all the other prophets combined, especially by the writers of the new testament. having announced this glorious prediction of the advent into our world of a divine redeemer in the form of a man, by whose life and suffering and death the world should be saved, the prophet-poet breaks out in rhapsodies. he cannot contain his exultation. he loses sight of the judgments he had declared, in his unbounded rejoicings that there was to be a deliverance; that not only a remnant would return to jerusalem and become a renewed power, but that the messiah should ultimately reign over all the nations of the earth, should establish a reign of peace, so that warriors "should beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks." heretofore the history of kings had been a history of wars,--of oppression, of injustice, of cruelty. miseries overspread the earth from this scourge more than from all other causes combined. the world was decimated by war, producing not only wholesale slaughter, but captivity and slavery, the utter extinction of nations. isaiah had himself dwelt upon the woes to be visited on mankind by war more than any other prophet who had preceded him. all the leading nations and capitals were to be utterly destroyed or severely punished; calamity and misery should be nearly universal; only "a remnant should be saved." now, however, he takes the most cheerful and joyous views. so marked is the contrast between the first and latter parts of the book of isaiah, that many great critics suppose that they were written by different persons and at different times. but whether there were two persons or one, the most comforting and cheering doctrines to be found in the scriptures, before the sermon on the mount was preached, are declared by isaiah. the breadth and catholicity of them are amazing from the pen of a jew. the whole world was to share with him in the promises of a saviour; the whole world was to be finally redeemed. as recipients of divine privileges there was to be no difference between jew and gentile. paul himself shows no greater mental illumination. "the glory of the lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it." in view of this glorious reign of peace and universal redemption, isaiah calls upon the earth to be joyful and all the mountains to break forth in singing, and zion to awake, and jerusalem to put on her beautiful garments, and all waste places to break forth in joy; for the glory of the lord is risen upon the city of david. how rapturously does the prophet, in the most glowing and lofty flights of poetry, dwell upon the time when the redeemed of the lord shall return to zion with songs and thanksgivings, no more to be called "forsaken," but a city to be renewed in beauties and glories, and in which kings shall be nursing fathers to its sons and daughters, and queens nursing mothers. these are the tidings which the prophet brings, and which the poet sings in matchless lyrics. to the zion of the holy one of israel shall the gentiles come with their precious offerings. "violence shall no more be heard in thy land," saith the poet, "wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates praise.... thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the day of thy mourning shall be ended.... thy people shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that i may be glorified. a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: i the lord will hasten it in its time." salvation, peace, the glory of zion!--these are the words which isaiah reiterates. with these are identified the spiritual kingdom of christ, which is to spread over the whole earth. the prophet does not specify when that time shall come, when peace shall be universal, and when all the people shall be righteous; that part of the prophecy remains unfulfilled, as well as the renewed glories of jerusalem. yet a thousand years with the lord are as one day. no believing christian doubts that it will be fulfilled, as certainly as that babylon should be destroyed, or that a messiah should appear among the jews. the day of deliverance began to dawn when christianity was proclaimed among the gentiles. from that time a great progress has been seen among the nations. first, wars began to cease in the roman world. they were renewed when the empire of the caesars fell, but their ferocity and cruelty diminished; conquered people were not carried away as slaves, nor were women and children put to death, except in extraordinary cases, which called out universal grief, compassion, and indignation. with all the progress of truth and civilization, it is amazing that christian nations should still be armed to the teeth, and that wars are still so frequent. we fear that they will not cease until those who govern shall be conscientious christians. but that the time will come when rulers shall be righteous and nations learn war no more, is a truth which christians everywhere accept. when, how,--by the gradual spread of knowledge, or by supernatural intervention,--who can tell? "zion shall arise and shine.... the gentiles shall come to its light, and kings to the brightness of its rising.... violence shall no more be heard in the land, nor wasting and destruction within its borders.... they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the lord.... and it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the lord." this is the sublime faith of christendom set forth by the most sublime of the prophets, from the most gifted and eloquent of the poets. on this faith rests the consolation of the righteous in view of the prevalence of iniquity. this prophecy is full of encouragement and joy amid afflictions and sorrows. it proclaims liberty to captives, and the opening of the prison to those that are bound; it preaches glad tidings to the meek, and binds up the broken-hearted; it gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. this prediction has inspired the religious poets of all nations; on this is based the beauty and glory of the lyrical stanzas we sing in our churches. the hymns and melodies of the church, the most immortal of human writings, are inspired with this cheering anticipation. the psalmody of the church is rapturous, like isaiah, over the triumphant and peaceful reign of christ, coming sooner perhaps than we dream when we see the triumphal career of wicked men. in the temporal fall of a monstrous despotism, in the decline of wicked cities and empires, in the light which is penetrating all lands, in the shaking of mohammedan thrones, in the opening of the most distant east, in the arbitration of national difficulties, in the terrible inventions which make nations fear to go to war, in the wonderful network of philanthropic enterprises, in the renewed interest in sacred literature, in the recognition of law and order as the first condition of civilized society, in that general love of truth which science has stimulated and rarely mocked, and which casts its searching eye into all creeds and all hypocrisies and all false philosophy,--we share the exultant spirit of the prophet, and in the language of one of our great poets we repeat the promised joy:- "rise, crowned with light, imperial salem, rise! exalt thy towering head and lift thine eyes! see a long race thy spacious courts adorn, see future sons and daughters yet unborn! see barbarous nations at thy gates attend, walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend! see thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings, and heaped with products of sabaean springs! no more the rising sun shall gild the morn, nor evening cynthia fill her silver horn; but lost, dissolved in thy superior rays, one tide of glory, one unclouded blaze o'erflow thy courts; the light himself shall shine revealed, and god's eternal day be thine! the seas shall waste, the skies to smoke decay, rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away; but fixed his word, his saving power remains: thy realm forever lasts; thy own messiah reigns!" jeremiah. about 629-580 b.c. the fall of jerusalem. jeremiah is a study to those who would know the history of the latter days of the jewish monarchy, before it finally succumbed to the babylonian conqueror. he was a sad and isolated man, who uttered his prophetic warnings to a perverse and scornful generation; persecuted because he was truthful, yet not entirely neglected or disregarded, since he was consulted in great national dangers by the monarchs with whom he was contemporary. so important were his utterances, it is matter of great satisfaction that they were committed to writing, for the benefit of future generations,--not of jews only, but of the gentiles,--on account of the fundamental truths contained in them. next to isaiah, jeremiah was the most prominent of the prophets who were commissioned to declare the will and judgments of jehovah on a degenerate and backsliding people. he was a preacher of righteousness, as well as a prophet of impending woes. as a reformer he was unsuccessful, since the hebrew nation was incorrigibly joined to its idols. his public career extended over a period of forty years. he was neither popular with the people, nor a favorite of kings and princes; the nation was against him and the times were against him. he exasperated alike the priests, the nobles, and the populace by his rebukes. as a prophet he had no honor in his native place. he uniformly opposed the current of popular prejudices, and denounced every form of selfishness and superstition; but all his protests and rebukes were in vain. there were very few to encourage him or comfort him. like noah, he was alone amidst universal derision and scorn, so that he was sad beyond measure, more filled with grief than with indignation. jeremiah was not bold and stern, like elijah, but retiring, plaintive, mournful, tender. as he surveyed the downward descent of judah, which nothing apparently could arrest, he exclaimed: "oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that i might weep day and night for the daughter of my people!" is it possible for language to express a deeper despondency, or a more tender grief? pathos and unselfishness are blended with his despair. it is not for himself that he is overwhelmed with gloom, but for the sins of the people. it is because the people would not hear, would not consider, and would persist in their folly and wickedness, that grief pierces his soul. he weeps for them, as christ wept over jerusalem. yet at times he is stung into bitter imprecations, he becomes fierce and impatient; and then again he rises over the gloom which envelops him, in the conviction that there will be a new covenant between god and man, after the punishment for sin shall have been inflicted. but his prevailing feelings are grief and despair, since he has no hopes of national reform. so he predicts woes and calamities at no distant day, which are to be so overwhelming that his soul is crushed in the anticipation of them. he cannot laugh, he cannot rejoice, he cannot sing, he cannot eat and drink like other men. he seeks solitude; he longs for the desert; he abstains from marriage, he is ascetic in all his ways; he sits alone and keeps silence, and communes only with his god; and when forced into the streets and courts of the city, it is only with the faint hope that he may find an honest man. no persons command his respect save the arabian rechabites, who have the austere habits of the wilderness, like those of the early syrian monks. yet his gloom is different from theirs: they seek to avert divine wrath for their own sins; he sees this wrath about to descend for the sins of others, and overwhelm the whole nation in misery and shame. jeremiah was born in the little ecclesiastical town of anathoth, about three miles from jerusalem, and was the son of a priest. we do not know the exact year of his birth, but he was a very young man when he received his divine commission as a prophet, about six hundred and twenty-seven years before christ. josiah had then been on the throne of judah twelve years. the kingdom was apparently prosperous, and was unmolested by external enemies. for seventy-five years assyria had given but little trouble, and egypt was occupied with the siege of ashdod, which had been going on for twenty-nine years, so strong was that philistine city. but in the absence of external dangers corruption, following wealth, was making fearful strides among the people, and impiety was nearly universal. every one was bent on pleasure or gain, and prophet and priest were worldly and deceitful. from the time when jeremiah was first called to the prophetic office until the fall of jerusalem there was an unbroken series of national misfortunes, gradually darkening into utter ruin and exile. he may have shrunk from the perils and mortifications which attended him for forty years, as his nature was sensitive and tender; but during this long ministry he was incessant in his labors, lifting up his voice in the courts of the temple, in the palace of the king, in prison, in private houses, in the country around jerusalem. the burden of his utterances was a denunciation of idolatry, and a lamentation over its consequences. "my people, saith jehovah, have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out for themselves underground cisterns, full of rents, that can hold no water.... behold, o judah! thou shalt be brought to shame by thy new alliance with egypt, as thou wast in the past by thy old alliance with assyria." in this denunciation by the prophet we see that he mingled in political affairs, and opposed the alliance which judah made with egypt, which ever proved a broken reed. egypt was a vain support against the new power that was rising on the euphrates, carrying all before it, even to the destruction of nineveh, and was threatening damascus and tyre as well as jerusalem. the power which judah had now to fear was babylon, not assyria. if any alliance was to be formed, it was better to conciliate babylon than egypt. roused by the earnest eloquence of jeremiah, and of those of the group of earnest followers of jehovah who stood with him,--huldah the prophetess, shallum her husband, keeper of the royal wardrobe, hilkiah the high-priest, and shaphan the scribe, or secretary,--the youthful king josiah, in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he was himself but twenty-six years old, set about reforms, which the nobles and priests bitterly opposed. idolatry had been the fashionable religion for nearly seventy years, and the law was nearly forgotten. the corruption of the priesthood and of the great body of the prophets kept pace with the degeneracy of the people. the temple was dilapidated, and its gold and bronze decorations had been despoiled. the king undertook a thorough repair of the great sanctuary, and during its progress a discovery was made by the high-priest hilkiah of a copy of the law, hidden amid the rubbish of one of the cells or chambers of the temple. it is generally supposed to have been the book of deuteronomy. when it was lost, and how, it is not easy to ascertain,--probably during the reign of some one of the idolatrous kings. it seems to have been entirely forgotten,--a proof of the general apostasy of the nation. but the discovery of the book was hailed by josiah as a very important event; and its effect was to give a renewed impetus to his reforms, and a renewed study of patriarchal history. he forthwith assembled the leading men of the nation,--prophets, priests, levites, nobles, and heads of tribes. he read to them the details of the ancient covenant, and solemnly declared his purpose to keep the commandments and statutes of jehovah as laid down in the precious book. the assembled elders and priests gave their eager concurrence to the act of the king, and judah once more, outwardly at least, became the people of god. nor can it be questioned that the renewed study of the law, as brought about by josiah, produced a great influence on the future of the hebrew nation, especially in the renunciation of idolatry. yet this reform, great as it was, did not prevent the fall of jerusalem and the exile of the leading people among the hebrews to the land of the chaldeans, whence abraham their great progenitor had emigrated. josiah, who was thoroughly aroused by "the words of the book," and its denunciations of the wrath of jehovah upon the people if they should forsake his ways, in spite of the secret opposition of the nobles and priests, zealously pursued the work of reform. the "high places," on which were heathen altars, were levelled with the ground; the images of the gods were overthrown; the temple was purified, and the abominations which had disgraced it were removed. his reforms extended even to the scattered population of samaria whom the assyrians had spared, and all the buildings connected with the worship of baal and astaroth at bethel were destroyed. their very stones were broken in pieces, under the eyes of josiah himself. the skeletons of the pagan priests were dragged from their burial places and burned. an elaborate celebration of the feast of the passover followed soon after the discovery of the copy of the law, whether confined to deuteronomy or including other additional writings ascribed to moses, we know not. this great passover was the leading internal event of the reign of josiah. having "taken away all the abominations out of all the countries that belonged to the children of israel," even as the earlier keepers of the law cleansed their premises, especially of all remains of leaven,--the symbol of corruption,--the king commanded a celebration of the feast of deliverance. priests and levites were sent throughout the country to instruct the people in the preparations demanded for the passover. the sacred ark, hidden during the reigns of manasseh and amon, was restored to its old place in the temple, where it remained until the temple was destroyed. on the approach of the festival, which was to be held with unusual solemnities, great multitudes from all parts of palestine assembled at jerusalem, and three thousand bullocks and thirty thousand lambs were provided by the king for the seven days' feast which followed the passover. the princes also added eight hundred oxen and seven thousand six hundred small cattle as a gift to priests and people. after the priests in their white robes, with bare feet and uncovered heads, and the levites at their side according to the king's commandment, had "killed the passover" and "sprinkled the blood from their hands," each levite having first washed himself in the temple laver, the part of the animal required for the burnt-offering was laid on the altar flames, and the remainder was cooked by the levites for the people, either baked, roasted, or boiled. and this continued for seven days; during all the while the services of the temple choir were conducted by the singers, chanting the psalms of david and of asaph. such a passover had not been held since the days of samuel. no king, not even david or solomon, had celebrated the festival on so grand a scale. the minutest details of the requirements of the law were attended to. the festival proclaimed the full restoration of the worship of jehovah, and kindled enthusiasm for his service. so great was this event that ezekiel dates the opening of his prophecies from it. "it seems probable that we have in the eighty-fifth psalm a relic of this great solemnity.... its tone is sad amidst all the great public rejoicings; it bewails the stubborn ungodliness of the people as a whole." after the great passover, which took place in the year 622, when josiah was twenty-six years of age, little is said of the pious king, who reigned twelve years after this memorable event. one of the best, though not one of the wisest, kings of judah, he did his best to eradicate every trace of idolatry; but the hearts of the people responded faintly to his efforts. reform was only outward and superficial,--an illustration of the inability even of an absolute monarch to remove evils to which the people cling in their hearts. to the eyes of jeremiah, there was no hope while the hearts of the people were unchanged. "can the ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" he mournfully exclaims. "much less can those who are accustomed to do evil learn to do well." he had no illusions; he saw the true state of affairs, and was not misled by mere outward and enforced reforms, which partook of the nature of religious persecution, and irritated the people rather than led to a true religious life among them. there was nothing left to him but to declare woes and approaching calamities, to which the people were insensible. they mocked and reviled him. his lofty position secured him a hearing, but he preached to stones. the people believed nothing but lies; many were indifferent and some were secretly hostile, and he must have been pained and disappointed in view of the incompleteness of his work through the secret opposition of the popular leaders. josiah was the most virtuous monarch of judah. it was a great public misfortune that his life was cut short prematurely at the age of thirty-eight, and in consequence of his own imprudence. he undertook to oppose the encroachments of necho ii, king of egypt, an able, warlike, and enterprising monarch, distinguished for his naval expeditions, whose ships doubled the cape of good hope, and returned to egypt in safety, after a three years' voyage. necho was not so successful in digging a canal across the isthmus of suez, in which enterprise one hundred and twenty thousand men perished from hunger, fatigue, and disease. but his great aim was to extend his empire to the limits reached by rameses ii., the sesostris of the greeks. the great assyrian empire was then breaking up, and nineveh was about to fall before the babylonians; so he seized the opportunity to invade syria, a province of the assyrian empire. he must of course pass through palestine, the great highway between egypt and the east. josiah opposed his enterprise, fearing that if the egyptian king conquered syria, he himself would become the vassal of egypt. jeremiah earnestly endeavored to dissuade his sovereign from embarking in so doubtful a war; even necho tried to convince him through his envoys that he made war on nineveh, not on jerusalem, invoking--as most intensely earnest men did in those days of tremendous impulse--the sacred name of deity as his authentication. said he: "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; for god commanded me to make haste. forbear thee from meddling with god, who is with me, that he destroy thee not." but nothing could induce josiah to give up his warlike enterprise. he had the piety of saint louis, and also his patriotic and chivalric heroism. he marched his forces to the plain of esdraelon, the great battle field where rameses ii. had triumphed over the hittites centuries before. the battle was fought at megiddo. although josiah took the precaution to disguise himself, he was mortally wounded by the egyptian archers, and was driven back in his splendid chariot toward jerusalem, which he did not live to reach. the lamentations for this brave and pious monarch remind us of the universal grief of the hebrew nation on the death of samuel. he was buried in a tomb which he had prepared for himself, amid universal mourning. a funeral oration was composed by jeremiah, or rather an elegy, afterward sung by the nation on the anniversary of the battle. nor did the nation ever forget a king so virtuous in his life and so zealous for the law. long after the return from captivity the singers of israel sang his praises, and popular veneration for him increased with the lapse of time; for in virtues and piety, and uninterrupted zeal for jehovah, josiah never had an equal among the kings of judah. the services of this good king were long remembered. to him may be traced the unyielding devotion of the jews, after the captivity, for the rites and forms and ceremonies which are found in the books of the law. the legalisms of the scribes may be traced to him. he reigned but twelve years after his great reformation,--not long enough to root out the heathenism which had prevailed unchecked for nearly seventy years. with him perished the hopes of the kingdom. after his death the decline was rapid. a great reaction set in, and faction was accompanied with violence. the heathen party triumphed over the orthodox party. the passions which had been suppressed since the death of manasseh burst out with all the frenzy and savage hatred which have ever marked the jews in their religious contentions, and these were unrestrained by the four kings who succeeded josiah. the people were devoured by religious animosities, and split up into hostile factions. had the nation been united, it is possible that later it might have successfully resisted the armies of nebuchadnezzar. jeremiah gave vent to his despairing sentiments, and held out no hope. when elijah had appealed to the people to choose between jehovah and baal, he was successful, because they were then undecided and wavering in their belief, and it required only an evidence of superior power to bring them back to their allegiance. but when jeremiah appeared, idolatry was the popular religion. it had become so firmly established by a succession of wicked kings, added to the universal degeneracy, that even josiah could work but a temporary reform. hence the voice of jeremiah was drowned. even the prophets of his day had become men of the world. they fawned on the rich and powerful whose favor they sought, and prophesied "smooth things" to them. they were the optimists of a decaying nation and a godless, pleasure-seeking generation. they were to jerusalem what the sophists were to athens when demosthenes thundered his disregarded warnings. there were, indeed, a few prophets left who labored for the truth; but their words fell on listless ears. nor could the priests arrest the ruin, for they were as corrupt as the people. the most learned among them were zealous only for the letter of the law, and fostered among the people a hypocritical formalism. true religious life had departed; and the noble jeremiah, the only great statesman as well as prophet who remained, saw his influence progressively declining, until at last he was utterly disregarded. yet he maintained his dignity, and fearlessly declared his message. in the meantime the triumphant necho, after the defeat and dispersion of josiah's army, pursued his way toward damascus, which he at once overpowered. from thence he invaded assyria, and stripped nineveh of its most fertile provinces. the capital itself was besieged by nabopolassar and cyaxares the mede, and necho was left for a time in possession of his newly-acquired dominion. josiah was succeeded by his son shallum, who assumed the crown under the name of jehoaz, which event it seems gave umbrage to the king of egypt. so he despatched an army to jerusalem, which yielded at once, and king jehoaz was sent as a captive to the banks of the nile. his elder brother eliakim was appointed king in his place, under the name of jehoiakim, who thus became the vassal of necho. he was a young man of twenty-five, self-indulgent, proud, despotic, and extravagant. there could be no more impressive comment on the infatuation and folly of the times than the embellishment of jerusalem with palaces and public buildings, with the view to imitate the glory of solomon. in everything the king differed from his father josiah, especially in his treatment of jeremiah, whom he would have killed. he headed the movement to restore paganism; altars were erected on every hill to heathen deities, so that there were more gods in judah than there were towns. even the sacred animals of egypt were worshipped in the dark chambers beneath the temple. in the most sacred places of the temple itself idolatrous priests worshipped the rising sun, and the obscene rites of phoenician idolatry were performed in private houses. the decline in morals kept pace with the decline of spiritual religion. there was no vice which was not rampant throughout the land,--adultery, oppression of foreigners, venality in judges, falsehood, dishonesty in trade, usury, cruelty to debtors, robbery and murder, the loosing of the ties of kindred, general suspicion of neighbors,--all the crimes enumerated by the apostle paul among the romans. judah in reality had become an idolatrous nation like tyre and syria and egypt, with only here and there a witness to the truth, like jeremiah, the prophetess huldah, and baruch the scribe. this relapse into heathenism filled the soul of jeremiah with grief and indignation, but gave to him a courage foreign to his timid and shrinking nature. in the presence of the king, the princes, and priests he was defiant, immovable, and fearless, uttering his solemn warnings from day to day with noble fidelity. all classes turned against him; the nobles were furious at his exposure of their license and robberies, the priests hated him for his denunciation of hypocrisy, and the people for his gloomy prophecies that the temple should be destroyed, jerusalem reduced to ashes, and they themselves led into captivity. not only were crime and idolatry rampant, but the death of josiah was followed by droughts and famine. in vain were the prayers of jeremiah to avert calamity. jehovah replied to him: "pray not for this people! though they fast, i will not hear their cry; though they offer sacrifice i have no pleasure in them, but will consume them by the sword, by famine, and pestilence." jeremiah piteously gives way to despairing lamentations. "hast thou, o lord, utterly rejected judah? is thy soul tired of zion? why hast thou smitten us so that there is no healing for us?" jehovah replies: "if moses and samuel stood pleading before me, my soul could not be toward this people. i appoint four destroyers,--the sword to slay, the dogs to tear and fight over the corpse, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field; for who will have pity on thee, o jerusalem? thou hast rejected me. i am weary of relenting. i will scatter them as with a broad winnowing-shovel, as men scatter the chaff on the threshing-floor." such, amid general depravity and derision, were some of the utterances of the prophet, during the reign of jehoiakim. among other evils which he denounced was the neglect of the sabbath, so faithfully observed in earlier and better times. at the gates of the city he cried aloud against the general profanation of the sacred day, which instead of being a day of rest was the busiest day of the week, when the city was like a great fair and holiday. on this day the people of the neighboring villages brought for sale their figs and grapes and wine and vegetables; on this day the wine-presses were trodden in the country, and the harvest was carried to the threshing-floors. the preacher made himself especially odious for his rebuke for the violation of the sabbath. "come," said his enemies to the crowd, "let us lay a plot against him; let us smite him with the tongue by reporting his words to the king, and bearing false witness against him." on this renewed persecution the prophet does not as usual give way to lamentation, but hurls his maledictions. "o jehovah! give thou their sons to hunger, deliver them to the sword; let their wives be made childless and widows; let their strong men be given over to death, and their young men be smitten with the sword." and to consummate, as it were, his threats of divine punishment so soon to be visited on the degenerate city, jeremiah is directed to buy an earthenware bottle, such as was used by the peasants to hold their drinking-water, and to summon the elders and priests of jerusalem to the southwestern corner of the city, and to throw before their feet the bottle and shiver it in pieces, as a significant symbol of the approaching fall of the city, to be destroyed as utterly as the shattered jar. "and i will empty out in the dust, says jehovah, the counsels of judah and jerusalem, as this water is now poured from the bottle. and i will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those that seek their lives; and i will give their corpses for meat to the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth; and i will make this city an astonishment and a scoffing. every one that passes by it will be astonished and hiss at its misfortunes. even so will i shatter this people and this city, as this bottle, which cannot be made whole again, has been shattered." nor was jeremiah contented to utter these fearful maledictions to the priests and elders; he made his way to the temple, and taking his stand among the people, he reiterated, amid a storm of hisses, mockeries, and threats, what he had just declared to a smaller audience in reference to jerusalem. such an appalling announcement of calamities, and in such strong and plain language, must have transported his hearers with fear or with wrath. he was either the ambassador of heaven, before whose voice the people in the time of elijah would have quaked with unutterable anguish, or a madman who was no longer to be endured. we have no record of any prophet or any preacher who ever used language so terrible or so daring. even luther never hurled such maledictions on the church which he called the "scarlet mother." jeremiah uttered no vague generalities, but brought the matter home with awful directness. among his auditors was pashur, the chief governor of the temple, and a priest by birth. he at once ordered the temple police to seize the bold and outspoken prophet, who was forthwith punished for his plain speaking by the bastinado, and then hurried bleeding to the stocks, into which his head and feet and hands were rudely thrust, to spend the night amid the jeers of the crowd and the cold dews of the season. in the morning he was set free, his enemies thinking that he now would hold his tongue; but jeremiah, so far from keeping silence, renewed his threats of divine vengeance. "for thus saith jehovah, i will give all judah into the hands of the king of babylon, and he shall carry them captive to babylon, and slay them with the sword." and then turning to pashur, before the astonished attendants, he exclaimed: "and thou, pashur, and all that dwell in thy house, will be dragged off into captivity; and thou wilt come to babylon, and thou wilt die and be buried there,--thou and all thy partisans to whom thou hast prophesied lies." we observe in these angry words of jeremiah great directness and great minuteness, so that his meaning could not be mistaken; also that the instrument of punishment on the degenerate and godless city was to be the king of babylon, a new power from whom judah as yet had received no harm. the old enemies of the hebrews were the assyrians and egyptians, not the babylonians and medes. whatever may have been the malignant animosity of pashur, he was evidently afraid to molest the awful prophet and preacher any further, for jeremiah was no insignificant person at jerusalem. he was not only recognized as a prophet of jehovah, but he had been the friend and counsellor of king josiah, and was the leading statesman of the day in the ranks of the opposition. but distinguished as he was, his voice was disregarded, and he was probably looked upon as an old croaker, whose gloomy views had no reason to sustain them. was not jerusalem strong in her defences, and impregnable in the eyes of the people; and was she not regarded as under the special protection of the deity? suppose some austere priest--say such a man as the abbé lacordaire--had risen from the pulpit of notre dame or the madeleine, a year before the battle of sedan, and announced to the fashionable congregation assembled to hear his eloquence, and among them the ministers of louis napoleon, that in a short time paris would be surrounded by conquering armies, and would endure all the horrors of a siege, and that the famine would be so great that the city would surrender and be at the entire mercy of the conquerors,--would he have been believed? would not the people have regarded him as a madman, great as was his eloquence, or as the most gloomy of pessimists, for whom they would have felt contempt or bitter wrath? and had he added to his predictions of ruin, utterly inconceivable by the giddy, pleasure-seeking, atheistic people, the most scathing denunciations of the prevailing sins of that godless city, all the more powerful because they were true, addressed to all classes alike, positive, direct, bold, without favor and without fear,--would they not have been stirred to violence, and subjected him to any chastisement in their power? if socrates, by provoking questions and fearless irony, drove the athenians to such wrath that they took his life, even when everybody knew that he was the greatest and best man at athens, how much more savage and malignant must have been the narrow-minded jews when jeremiah laid bare to them their sins and the impotency of their gods, and the certainty of retribution! yet vehement, or direct, or plain as were jeremiah's denunciations to the idol-worshippers of jerusalem in the seventh century before it was finally destroyed by titus, he was no more severe than when jesus denounced the hypocrisy of the scribes and pharisees, no more mournful than when he lamented over the approaching ruin of the temple. therefore they sought to kill him, as the princes and priests of judah would have sacrificed the greatest prophet that had appeared since elisha, the greatest statesman since samuel, the greatest poet since david, if isaiah alone be excepted. no wonder he was driven to a state of despondency and grief that reminds us of job upon his ash-heap. "cursed be the day," he exclaims, in his lonely chamber, "on which i was born! cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, a man-child is born to thee, making him very glad! why did i come forth from the womb that my days might be spent in shame?" a great and good man may be urged by the sense of duty to declare truths which he knows will lead to martyrdom; but no martyr was ever insensible to suffering or shame. all the glories of his future crown cannot sweeten the bitterness of the cup he is compelled to drain; even the greatest of martyrs prayed in his agony that the cup might pass from him. how could a man help being sad and even bitter, if ever so exalted in soul, when he saw that his warnings were utterly disregarded, and that no mortal influence or power could avert the doom he was compelled to pronounce as an ambassador of god? and when in addition to his grief as a patriot he was unjustly made to suffer reproach, scourgings, imprisonment, and probable death, how can we wonder that his patience was exhausted? he felt as if a burning fire consumed his very bones, and he could refrain no longer. he cried aloud in the intensity of his grief and pain, and jehovah, in whom he trusted, appeared to him as a mighty champion and an everlasting support. jeremiah at this time, during the early years of the reign of jehoiakim, the period of the most active part of his ministry, was about forty-five years of age. great events were then taking place. nineveh was besieged by one of its former generals,--nabopolassar, now king of babylon. the siege lasted two years, and the city fell in the year 606 b.c., when jehoiakim had been about four years on the throne. the fall of this great capital enabled the son of the king of babylonia, nebuchadnezzar, to advance against necho, the king of egypt, who had taken carchemish about three years before. near that ancient capital of the hittites, on the banks of the euphrates, one of the most important battles of antiquity was fought,--and necho, whose armies a few years before had so successfully invaded the assyrian empire, was forced to retreat to egypt. the battle of carchemish put an end to egyptian conquests in the east, and enabled the young sovereign of babylonia to attain a power and elevation such as no oriental monarch had ever before enjoyed. babylon became the centre of a new empire, which embraced the countries that had bowed down to the assyrian yoke. nebuchadnezzar in the pride of victory now meditated the conquest of egypt, and must needs pass through palestine. but jehoiakim was a vassal of egypt, and had probably furnished troops for necho at the fatal battle of carchemish. of course the babylonian monarch would invade judah on his way to egypt, and punish its king, whom he could only look upon as an enemy. it was then that jeremiah, sad and desponding over the fate of jerusalem, which he knew was doomed, committed his precious utterances to writing by the assistance of his friend and companion baruch. he had lately been living in retirement, feeling that his message was delivered; possibly he feared that the king would put him to death as he had the prophet urijah. but he wished to make one more attempt to call the people to repentance, as the only way to escape impending calamities; and he prevailed upon his secretary to read the scroll, containing all his verbal utterances, to the assembled people in the temple, who, in view of their political dangers, were celebrating a solemn fast. the priests and people alike, clad in black hair-cloth mantles, with ashes on their heads, lay prostrate on the ground, and by numerous sacrifices hoped to propitiate the deity. but not by sacrifices and fasts were they to be saved from nebuchadnezzar's army, as jeremiah had foretold years before. the recital by baruch of the calamities he had predicted made a profound impression on the crowd. a young man, awed by what he had heard, hastened to the hall in which the princes were assembled, and told them what had been read from the prophet's scroll. they in their turn were alarmed, and commanded baruch to read the contents to them also. so intense was the excitement that the matter was laid before the king, who ordered the roll to be read to him: he would hear the words that jeremiah had caused to be written down. but scarcely had the reading of the roll begun before he flew into a violent rage, and seizing the manuscript he cut it to pieces with the scribe's knife, and burned it upon a brazier of coals. orders were instantly given to arrest both jeremiah and baruch; but they had been warned and fled, and the place of their concealment could not be found. jehoiakim thus rejected the last offer of mercy with scorn and anger, although many of his officers were filled with fear. his heart was hardened, like that of pharaoh before moses. jeremiah having learned the fate of the roll, dictated its contents anew to his faithful secretary, and a second roll was preserved, not, however, without contriving to send to the king this awful message. "thus saith jehovah of thee jehoiakim: he shall have no son to sit on the throne of david, and his dead body will be cast out to lie in the heat by day and the frost by night; and no one shall raise a lament for him when he dies. he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn out of jerusalem, and cast down from its gates." no wonder that we lose sight of jeremiah during the remainder of the reign of jehoiakim; it was not safe for him to appear anywhere in public. for a time his voice was not heard; yet his predictions had such weight that the king dared not defy nebuchadnezzar when he demanded the submission of jerusalem. he was forced to become the vassal of the king of babylonia, and furnish a contingent to his army. but this vassalage bore heavily on the arrogant soul of jehoiakim, and he seized the first occasion to rebel, especially as necho promised him protection. this rebellion was suicidal and fatal, since babylon was the stronger power. nebuchadnezzar, after the three years of forced submission, appeared before the gates of jerusalem with an irresistible army. there was no resistance, as resistance was folly. jehoiakim was put in chains, and avoided being carried captive to babylon only by the most abject submission to the conqueror. all that was valuable in the temple and the palaces was seized as spoil. jerusalem was spared for a while; and in the mean time jehoiakim died, and so intensely was he hated and despised that no dirge was sung over his remains, while his dishonored body was thrown outside the walls of his capital like that of a dead ass, as jeremiah had foretold. on his death, b.c. 598, after a reign of eight years, his son jehoiachin, at the age of eighteen, ascended his nominal throne. he also, like his father, followed the lead of the heathen party. the bitterness of the babylonian rule, united with the intrigues of egypt, led to a fresh revolt, and jerusalem was invested by a powerful chaldean army. jeremiah now appears again upon the stage, but only to reaffirm the calamities which impended over his nation,--all of which he traced to the decay of religion and morality. the mission and the work of the jews were to keep alive the worship of the one god amid universal idolatry. outside of this, they were nothing as a nation. they numbered only four or five millions of people, and lived in a country not much larger than one of the northern counties of england and smaller than the state of new hampshire or vermont; they gave no impulse to art or science. yet as the guardians of the central theme of the only true religion and of the sacred literature of the bible, their history is an important link in the world's history. take away the only thing which made them an object of divine favor, and they were of no more account than hittites, or moabites, or philistines. the chosen people had become idolatrous like the surrounding nations, hopelessly degenerate and wicked, and they were to receive a dreadful chastisement as the only way by which they would return to the one god, and thus act their appointed part in the great drama of humanity. jeremiah predicted this chastisement. the chosen people were to suffer a seventy years' captivity, and then city and temple were to be destroyed. but jeremiah, sad as he was over the fate of his nation, and terribly severe as he was in his denunciations of the national sins, knew that his people would repent by the river of babylon, and be finally restored to their old inheritance. yet nothing could avert their punishment. in less than three months after jehoiachin became king of judah, its capital was unconditionally surrendered to the chaldean hosts, since resistance was vain. no pity was shown to the rebels, though the king and nobles had appeared before nebuchadnezzar with every mark and emblem of humiliation and submission. the king and his court and his wives, and all the principal people of the nation, were sent to babylon as captives and slaves. the prompt capitulation saved the city for a time from complete destruction; but its glory was turned to shame and grief. all that was of any value in the temple and city was carried to the banks of the euphrates, nearly one hundred and fifty years after samaria had fallen from a protracted siege, and its inhabitants finally dispersed among the nations that were subject to nineveh. one would suppose that after so great a calamity the few remaining people in jerusalem and in the desolate villages of judah would have given no further molestation to their powerful and triumphant enemies. the land was exhausted; the towns were stripped of their fighting population, and only the shadow of a kingdom remained. instead of appointing a governor from his own court over the conquered province, nebuchadnezzar gave the government into the hands of mattaniah, the third son of josiah, a youth of twenty, changing his name to zedekiah. he was for a time faithful to his allegiance, and took much pains to quiet the mind of the powerful sovereign who ruled the eastern world, and even made a journey to babylon to pay his homage. he was a weak prince, however, alternately swayed by the different parties,--those that counselled resistance to babylon, and those, like jeremiah, that advised submission. this long-headed statesman saw clearly that rebellion against nebuchadnezzar, flushed with victory, and with the whole eastern world at his feet, was absurd; but that the time would come when babylon in turn should be humbled, and then the captive hebrews would probably return to their own land, made wiser by their captivity of seventy years. the other party, leagued with moabites, tyrians, egyptians, and other nations, thought themselves strong enough to break their allegiance to nebuchadnezzar; and bitter were the contentions of these parties. jeremiah had great influence with the king, who was weak rather than wicked, and had his counsels been consistently followed, jerusalem would probably have been spared, and the temple would, have remained. he preferred vassalage to utter ruin. with babylon pressing on one side and egypt on the other,--both great monarchies,--vassalage to one or the other of these powers was inevitable. indeed, vassalage had been the unhappy condition of judah since the death of josiah. of the two powers jeremiah preferred the chaldean rule, and persistently advised submission to it, as the only way to save jerusalem from utter destruction. unfortunately zedekiah temporized; he courted all parties in turn, and listened to the schemes of rebellion,--for all the nations of palestine were either conquered or invaded by the chaldeans, and wished to shake off the yoke. nebuchadnezzar lost faith in zedekiah; and being irritated by his intrigues, he resolved to attack jerusalem while he was conducting the siege of tyre and fighting with egypt, a rival power. jerusalem was in his way. it was a small city, but it gave him annoyance, and he resolved to crush it. it was to him what tyre became to alexander in his conquests. it lay between him and egypt, and might be dangerous by its alliances. it was a strong citadel which he had unwisely spared, but determined to spare no longer. the suspicions of the king of babylonia were probably increased by the disaffection of the jewish exiles themselves, who believed in the overthrow of nebuchadnezzar and their own speedy return to their native hills. a joint embassy was sent from edom, from moab, the ammonites, and the kings of tyre and sidon, to jerusalem, with the hope that zedekiah would unite with them in shaking off the babylonian yoke; and these intrigues were encouraged by egypt. jeremiah, who foresaw the consequences of all this, earnestly protested. and to make his protest more forcible, he procured a number of common ox-yokes, and having put one on his own neck while the embassy was in the city, he sent one to each of the envoys, with the following message to their masters: "thus saith jehovah, the god of israel. i have made the earth and man and the beasts on the face of the earth by my great power, and i give it to whom i see fit. and now i have given all these lands into the hands of nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, to serve him. and all nations shall serve him, till the time of his own land comes; and then many nations and great kings shall make him their servant. and the nation and people that will not serve him, and that does not give its own neck to the yoke, that nation i will punish with sword, famine, and pestilence, till i have consumed them by his hand." a similar message he sent to zedekiah and the princes who seemed to have influenced him. "bring your necks under the yoke of the king of babylon, and serve him, and ye shall live. do not listen to the words of the prophets who say to you, ye shall not serve the king of babylon. they prophesy a lie to you." the same message in substance he sent to the priests and people, urging them not to listen to the voice of the false prophets, who based their opinions on the anticipated interference of god to save jerusalem from destruction; for that destruction would surely come if its people did not serve the king of babylonia until the appointed time should come, when babylon itself should fall into the hands of enemies more powerful than itself, even the medes and persians. jeremiah, thus brought into direct opposition to the false prophets, was exposed to their bitterest wrath. but he was undaunted, although alone, and thus boldly addressed hananiah, one of their leaders and himself a priest: "hear the words that i speak in your ears. not i alone, but all the prophets who have been before me, have prophesied long ago war, captivity, and pestilence, while you prophesy peace." on this, hananiah snatched the ox-yoke from the neck of jeremiah, and broke it, saying, "thus saith jehovah, even so will i break the yoke of nebuchadnezzar from the neck of all nations within two years." jeremiah in reply said to this false prophet that he had broken a wooden yoke only to prepare an iron one for the people; for thus saith jehovah: "i have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations, that they shall serve the king of babylon.... and further, hear this, o hananiah! jehovah has not sent thee, but thou makest this people trust in a lie; therefore thou shalt die this very year, because thou hast spoken rebellion against jehovah." in two months the lying prophet was dead. zedekiah, now awe-struck by the death of his counsellor, made up his mind to resist the egyptian party and remain true to nebuchadnezzar, and resolved to send an embassy to babylon to vindicate himself from any suspicion of disloyalty; and further, he sought to win the favor of jeremiah by a special gift to the temple of a set of silver vessels to replace the golden ones that had been carried to babylon. jeremiah entered into his views, and sent with the embassy a letter to the exiles to warn them of the hopelessness of their cause. it was not well received, and created great excitement and indignation, since it seemed to exhort them to settle down contentedly in their slavery. the words of jeremiah were, however, indorsed by the prophet ezekiel, and he addressed the exiles from the place where he lived in chaldaea, confirming the destruction which jeremiah prophesied to unwilling ears. "behold the day! see, it comes! the fierceness of chaldaea has shot up into a rod to punish the wickedness of the people of judah. nothing shall remain of them. the time is come! forge the chains to lead off the people captive. destruction comes; calamity will follow calamity!" meanwhile, in spite of all these warnings from both jeremiah and ezekiel, things were passing at jerusalem from bad to worse, until nebuchadnezzar resolved on taking final vengeance on a rebellious city and people that refused to look on things as they were. never was there a more infatuated people. one would suppose that a city already decimated, and its principal people already in bondage in babylon, would not dare to resist the mightiest monarch who ever reigned in the east before the time of cyrus. but "whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad." every preparation was made to defend the city. the general of nebuchadnezzar with a great force surrounded it, and erected towers against the walls. but so strong were the fortifications that the inhabitants were able to stand a siege of eighteen months. at the end of this time they were driven to desperation, and fought with the energy of despair. they could resist battering rams, but they could not resist famine and pestilence. after dreadful sufferings, the besieged found the soldiers of chaldaea within their temple, a breach in the walls having been made, and the stubborn city was taken by assault. the few who were spared were carried away captive to babylon with what spoil could be found, and the temple and the walls were levelled to the ground. the predictions of the prophets were fulfilled,--the holy city was a heap of desolation. zedekiah, with his wives and children, had escaped through a passage made in the wall, at a corner of the city which the chaldeans had not been able to invest, and made his way toward jericho, but was overtaken and carried in chains to riblah, where nebuchadnezzar was encamped. as he had broken a solemn oath to remain faithful, a severe judgment was pronounced upon him. his courtiers and his sons were executed in his sight, his own eyes were put out, and then he was taken to babylon, where he was made to work like a slave in a mill. thus ended the dynasty of david, in the year 588 b.c., about the time that draco gave laws to athens, and tarquinius priscus was king of rome. as for jeremiah, during the siege of the city he fell into the power of the nobles, who beat him and imprisoned him in a dungeon. the king was not able to release him, so low had the royal power sunk in that disastrous age; but he secretly befriended him, and asked his counsel. the princes insisted on his removal to a place where no succor could reach him, and he was cast into a deep well from which the water was dried up, having at the bottom only slime and mud. from this pit of misery he was rescued by one of the royal guards, and once again he had a secret interview with zedekiah, and remained secluded in the palace until the city fell. he was spared by the conqueror in view of his fidelity and his earnest efforts to prevent the rebellion, and perhaps also for his lofty character, the last of the great statesmen of judah and the most distinguished man of the city. nebuchadnezzar gave him the choice, to accompany him to babylon with the promise of high favor at his court, or remain at home among the few that were not deemed of sufficient importance to carry away. jeremiah preferred to remain amid the ruins of his country; for although jerusalem was destroyed, the mountains and valleys remained, and the humble classes--the peasants--were left to cultivate the neglected vineyards and cornfields. from mizpeh, the city which he had selected as his last resting-place, jeremiah was carried into egypt, and his subsequent history is unknown. according to tradition he was stoned to death by his fellow-exiles in egypt. he died as he had lived, a martyr for the truth, but left behind a great name and fame. none of the prophets was more venerated in after-ages. and no one more than he resembled, in his sufferings and life, that greater prophet and sage who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, that the world through him might be saved. judas maccabaeus. died, 160 b.c. restoration of the jewish commonwealth. after the heroic ages of joshua, gideon, and david, no warriors appeared in jewish history equal to judas maccabaeus and his brothers in bravery, in patriotism, and in noble deeds. they delivered the hebrew nation when it had sunk to abject submission under the kings of syria, and when its glory and strength alike had departed. the conquests of judas especially were marvellous, considering the weakness of the jewish nation and the strength of its enemies. no hero that chivalry has produced surpassed him in courage and ability; his exploits would be fabulous and incredible if not so well attested. he is not a familiar character, since the apocrypha, from which our chief knowledge of his deeds is derived, is now rarely read. jewish history resembles that of europe in the middle ages in the sentiments which are born of danger, oppression, and trial. as a point of mere historical interest, the dark ages that preceded the coming of the messiah furnish reproachless models of chivalry, courage, and magnanimity, and also the foundation of many of those institutions that cannot be traced to the laws of moses. but before i present the wonderful career of judas maccabaeus, we must look to the circumstances which made that career remarkable and eventful. on the return of the jews from the babylonian captivity there was among them only the nucleus of a nation: more remained in persia and assyria than returned to judaea. we see an infant colony rather than a developed state; it was so feeble as scarcely to attract the notice of the surrounding monarchies. in all probability the population of judaea did not number a quarter as many as those whom moses led out of egypt; it did not furnish a tenth part as many fighting men as were enrolled in the armies of saul; it existed only under the protection afforded by the persian monarchs. the temple as rebuilt by nehemiah bore but a feeble resemblance to that which nebuchadnezzar destroyed; it had neither costly vessels nor golden ornaments nor precious woods to remind the scattered and impoverished people of the glory of solomon. although the walls of jerusalem were partially restored, its streets were filled with the débris and ruins of ancient palaces. the city was indeed fortified, but the strong walls and lofty towers which made it almost impregnable were not again restored as in the times of the old monarchy. it took no great force to capture the city and demolish the fortifications. the vast and unnumbered treasures which david, solomon, and hezekiah had accumulated in the temple and the palaces formed no inconsiderable part of the gold and silver that finally enriched babylonian and persian kings. the wealth of one of the richest countries of antiquity had been dispersed and re-collected at babylon, susa, ecbatana, and other cities, to be again seized by alexander in his conquest of the east, then again to be hoarded or spent by the syrian and egyptian kings who descended from alexander's generals, and finally to be deposited in the treasuries of the romans and the byzantine greeks. whatever ruin warriors may make, whatever temples and palaces they may destroy, they always spare and seize the precious metals, and keep them until they spend them, or are robbed of them in their turn. not only was the holy city a desolation on the return of the jews, but the rich vineyards and olive-grounds and wheat-fields had run to waste, and there were but few to till and improve them. the few who returned felt their helpless condition, and were quiet and peaceable. moreover, they had learned during their seventy years' exile to have an intense hatred of everything like idolatry,--a hatred amounting to fanatical fierceness, such as the puritan colonists of new england had toward catholicism. in their dreary and humiliating captivity they at length perceived that idolatry was the great cause of all their calamities; that no national prosperity was possible for them, as the chosen people, except by sincere allegiance to jehovah. at no period of their history were they more truly religious and loyal to their invisible king than for two hundred years after their return to the land of their ancestors. the terrible lesson of exile and sorrow was not lost on them. it is true that they were only a "remnant" of the nation, as isaiah had predicted, but they believed that they were selected and saved for a great end. this end they seemed to appreciate now more than ever, and the idea that a great deliverer was to arise among them, whose reign was to be permanent and glorious, was henceforth devoutly cherished. a severe morality was practised among these returned exiles, as marked as their faith in god. they were especially tenacious of the laws and ceremonies that moses had commanded. they kept the sabbath with a strictness unknown to their ancestors. they preserved the traditions of their fathers, and conformed to them with scrupulous exactness; they even went beyond the requirements of moses in outward ceremonials. thus there gradually arose among them a sect ultimately known as the pharisees, whose leading peculiarity was a slavish and fanatical observance of all the technicalities of the law, both mosaic and traditional; a sect exceedingly narrow, but popular and powerful. they multiplied fasts and ritualistic observances as the superstitious monks of the middle ages did after them; they extended the payment of tithes (tenths) to the most minute and unimportant things, like the herbs which grew in their gardens; they began the sabbath on friday evening, and kept it so rigorously that no one was permitted to walk beyond one thousand steps from his own door. a natural reaction to this severity in keeping minute ordinances, alike narrow, fanatical, and unreasonable, produced another sect called the sadducees,--a revolutionary party with a more progressive spirit, which embraced the more cultivated and liberal part of the nation; a minority indeed,--a small party as far as numbers went,--but influential from the men of wealth, talent, and learning that belonged to it, containing as it did the nobility and gentry. the members of this party refused to acknowledge any oral law transmitted from moses, and held themselves bound only by the written law; they were indifferent to dogmas that had not reason or scriptures to support them. the writings of moses have scarcely any recognition of a future life, and hence the sadducees disbelieved in the resurrection of the dead,--for which reason the pharisees accused them of looseness in religious opinions. they were more courteous and interesting than the great body of the people who favored the pharisees, but were more luxurious in their habits of life. they had more social but less religious pride than their rivals, among whom pride took the form of a gloomy austerity and a self-satisfied righteousness. another thing pertaining to divine worship which marked the jews on their return from captivity was the establishment of synagogues, in which the law was expounded by the scribes, whose business it was to study tradition, as embodied in the talmud. the pharisees were the great patrons and teachers of these meetings, which became exceedingly numerous, especially in the cities. there were at one time four hundred synagogues in jerusalem alone. to these the great body of the people resorted on the sabbath, rather than to the temple. the synagogue, popular, convenient, and social, almost supplanted the temple, except on grand occasions and festivals. the temple was for great ceremonies and celebrations, like a mediaeval cathedral,--an object of pride and awe, adorned and glorious; the synagogue was a sort of church, humble and modest, for the use of the people in ordinary worship,--a place of religious instruction, where decent strangers were allowed to address the meetings, and where social congratulations and inquiries were exchanged. hence, the synagogue represented the democratic element in judaism, while it did not ignore the temple. nearly contemporaneous with the synagogue was the sanhedrim, or grand council, composed of seventy-one members, made up of elders, scribes, and priests,--men learned in the law, both pharisees and sadducees. it was the business of this aristocratic court to settle disputed texts of scripture; also questions relating to marriage, inheritance, and contracts. it met in one of the buildings connected with the temple. it was presided over by the high-priest, and was a dignified and powerful body, its decisions being binding on the jews outside palestine. it was not unlike a great council in the early christian church for the settlement of theological questions, except that it was not temporary but permanent; and it was more ecclesiastical than civil. jesus was summoned before it for assuming to be the messiah; peter and john, for teaching false doctrine; and paul, for transgressing the rules of the temple. thus in one hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the jews returned to their own country, we see the rise of institutions adapted to their circumstances as a religious people, small in numbers, poor but free,--for they were protected by the persian monarchs against their powerful neighbors. the largest part of the nation was still scattered in every city of the world, especially at alexandria, where there was a very large jewish colony, plying their various occupations unmolested by the civil power. in this period ewald thinks there was a great stride made in sacred literature, especially in recasting ancient books that we accept as canonical. some of the most beautiful of the psalms were supposed to have been written at this time; also apocalypses, books of combined history and revelatory prophecy,--like daniel, and simple histories like esther,--written by gifted, lofty, and spiritual men whose names have perished, embodying vivid conceptions of the agency of jehovah in the affairs of men, so popular, so interesting, and so religious that they soon took their place among the canonical books. the most noted point in the history of the jews in the dark ages of their history, for two hundred years after their return from babylon and persia, was the external peace and tranquillity of the country, favorable to a quiet and uneventful growth, like that of puritan new england for one hundred and fifty years after the settlement at plymouth,--making no history outside of their own peaceful and prosperous life. they had no intercourse with surrounding nations, but were contented to resettle ancient villages, and devote themselves to agricultural pursuits. they were thus trained by labor and poverty--possibly by dangers--to manly energies and heroic courage. they formed a material from which armies could be extemporized on any sudden emergencies. there was no standing army as in the times of david and solomon, but the whole people were trained to the use of military weapons. thus the hardy and pious agriculturists of palestine grew imperceptibly in numbers and wealth, so as to become once more a nation. in all probability this unhistorical period, of which we know almost nothing, was the most fruitful period in jewish history for the development of great virtues. if they had no heathen literature, they could still discuss theological dogmas; if they had no amusements, they could meet together in their synagogues; if they had no king, they accepted the government of the high-priest; if they had no powerful nobles, they had the aristocratic sanhedrim, which represented their leading men; if they were disposed to contention, as so many persons are, they could dispute about the unimportant shibboleths which their religious parties set up as matters of difference,--and the more minute, technical, and insoluble these questions were, the fiercer probably grew their contests. such was the hebrew commonwealth in the dark ages of its history, under the protection of the persian kings. it formed a part of the province of syria, but the internal government was administered by the high-priests. after the return from exile joshua, joachim, and eliashib successively filled the pontifical office. the government thus was not unlike that of the popes, abating their claims to universal spiritual dominion, although the office of high-priest was hereditary. jehoiada, son of eliashib, reigned from 413 to 373, and he was succeeded by his son johanan, under whose administration important changes took place during the reign of artaxerxes iii., called ochus, the last but two of the persian monarchs before the conquest of persia by alexander. the persians had in the mean time greatly degenerated in their religious faith and observances. magian rites became mingled with the purer religion of zoroaster, and even the worship of venus was not uncommon. under cyrus and darius there was nothing peculiarly offensive to the jews in the theism of ormuzd, which was the old religion of the persians; but when images of ancient divinities were set up by royal authority in persepolis, susa, babylon, and damascus, the allegiance of the jews was weakened, and repugnance took the place of sympathy. moreover, a creature of artaxerxes iii., by the name of bagoses, became satrap of syria, and presumed to appoint as the high-priest at jerusalem joshua, another son of jehoiada, and severely taxed the jews, and even forced his way into the holy of holies, the innermost sanctuary of the temple,--a sacrilege hard to be endured. this bagoses poisoned his master, and in the year 338 b.c. elevated to the throne of persia his son arses, who had a brief reign, being dethroned and murdered by his father. in 336 darius iii. became king, under whom the persian monarchy collapsed before the victories of alexander. judaea now came under the dominion of this great conqueror, who favored the jews, and on his death, 323 b.c., it fell to the possession of laomedon, one of his generals; while egypt was assigned to ptolemy soter, son of lagus. between these princes a war soon broke out, and laomedon was defeated by nicanor, one of ptolemy's generals; and palestine refusing to submit to the king of egypt, ptolemy invaded judaea, besieged jerusalem, and took it by assault on the sabbath, when the jews refused to fight. a large number of jews were sent to alexandria, and the jewish colony ultimately formed no small part of the population of the new capital. some eighty thousand jews, it is said, were settled in alexandria when palestine was governed by greek generals and princes. but judaea was wrested from ptolemy lagus by antigonus, and again recovered by ptolemy after the battle of ipsus, in 301 b.c. under ptolemy egypt became a powerful kingdom, and still more so under his son philadelphus, who made alexandria the second capital of the world,--commercially, indeed, the first. it became also a great intellectual centre, and its famous library was the largest ever collected in classical antiquity. this city was the home of scholars and philosophers from all parts of the world. under the auspices of an enlightened monarch, the hebrew scriptures were translated into greek, the version being called the septuagint,--an immense service to sacred literature. the jews enjoyed great prosperity under this grecian prince, and palestine was at peace with powerful neighbors, protected by the great king who favored the jews as the persian monarchs had done. under his successor, ptolemy euergetes, a still more powerful king, the empire reached its culminating glory, and was extended as far as antioch and babylon. under the next ptolemy,--philopater,--degeneracy set in; but the empire was not diminished, and the syrian monarch antiochus iii., called the great, was defeated at the battle of raphia, 217. under the successor of the enervated egyptian king, ptolemy v., a child five years old, antiochus the great retrieved the disaster at raphia, and in 199 won a victory over scopas the egyptian general, in consequence of which judaea, with phoenicia and coele-syria, passed from the ptolemies to the seleucidae. judaea now became the battle-ground for the contending syrian and egyptian armies, and after two hundred years of peace and prosperity her calamities began afresh. she was cruelly deceived and oppressed by the syrian kings and their generals, for the "kings of the north" were more hostile to the jews than the "kings of the south." in consequence of the incessant wars between syria and egypt, many jews emigrated, and became merchants, bankers, and artisans in all the great cities of the world, especially in syria, asia minor, greece, italy, and egypt, where all departments of industry were freely opened to them. in the time of philo, there were more than a million of jews in these various countries; but they remained jews, and tenaciously kept the laws and traditions of their nation. in every large city were jewish synagogues. it was under the reign of antiochus iv., called epiphanes, when judaea was tributary to syria, that those calamities and miseries befell the jews which rendered it necessary for a deliverer to arise. though enlightened and a lover of art, this monarch was one of the most cruel, rapacious, and tyrannical princes that have achieved an infamous immortality. he began his reign with usurpation and treachery. being unsuccessful in his egyptian campaigns, he vented his wrath upon the jews, as if he were mad. onias iii. was the high-priest at the time. antiochus dispossessed him of his great office and gave it to his brother jason, a hellenized jew, who erected in jerusalem a gymnasium after the greek style. but the king, a zealot in paganism, bitterly and scornfully detested the jewish religion, and resolved to root it out. his general, apollonius, had orders to massacre the people in the observance of their rites, to abolish the temple service and the sabbath, to destroy the sacred books, and introduce idol worship. the altar on mount moriah was especially desecrated, and afterward dedicated to jupiter. a herd of swine were driven into the temple, and there sacrificed. this outrage was to the jews "the abomination of desolation," which could never be forgotten or forgiven. the nation rallied and defied the power of a king who could thus wantonly trample on what was most sacred and venerable. two hundred years earlier, resistance would have been hopeless; but in the mean time the population had quietly increased, and in the practice of those virtues and labors which agricultural life called out, the people had been strengthened and prepared to rally and defend their lives and liberties. they were still unwarlike, without organization or military habits; but they were brave, hardy, and patriotic. compared, however, with the forces which could be arrayed against them by the syrian monarch, who was supreme in western asia, they were numerically insignificant; and they were also despised and undervalued. they seemed to be as sheep among wolves,--easy to be intimidated and even exterminated. the outrage in the temple was the consummation of a series of humiliations and crimes; for in addition to the desecration of the jewish religion, antiochus had taken jerusalem with a great army, had entered into the temple, where the national treasures were deposited (for it was the custom even among greeks and romans to deposit the public money in the temples), and had taken away to his capital the golden candlesticks, the altar of incense, the table of shew bread, and the various vessels and censers and crowns which were used in the service of god,--treasures that amounted to one thousand eight hundred talents, spared by alexander. so that there came great mourning upon israel throughout the land, both for the desecration of sacred places, the plunder of the temple, and the massacre of the people. jerusalem was sacked and burned, women and children were carried away as captives, and a great fortress was erected on an eminence that overlooked the temple and city, in which was placed a strong garrison. the plundered inhabitants fled from jerusalem, which became the habitation of strangers, with all its glory gone. "her sanctuary was laid waste, her feasts were turned into mourning, her sabbath into a reproach, and her honor into contempt." many even of the jews became apostate, profaned the sabbath, and sacrificed to idols, rather than lose their lives; for the persecution was the most unrelenting in the annals of martyrdom, even to the destruction of women and children. the insulted and decimated jews now rallied under mattathias, the founder of the asmonean dynasty. the immediate occasion of the jewish uprising, which was ultimately to end in national independence and in the rule of a line of native princes, was as unpremeditated as the throwing out of the window at the council chamber at prague those deputies who supported the emperor of germany in his persecution of the protestants, which led to the thirty years' war and the establishment of religious liberty in germany. at this crisis among the jews, a hero arose in their midst as marvellous as gustavus adolphus. in modin, or modein, a town near the sea, but the site of which is now unknown, there lived an old man of a priestly family named asmon, who was rich and influential. his name was mattathias, and he had five grown-up sons, each distinguished for bravery, piety, and patriotism. he was so prominent in his little city for fidelity to the faith of his fathers, as well as for social position, that when an officer of antiochus came to modin to enforce the decrees of his royal master, he made splendid offers to mattathias to induce him to favor the crusade against his countrymen. mattathias not only contemptuously rejected these overtures, but he openly proclaimed his resolution to adhere to his religion,--a man who could not be bribed, and who could not be intimidated. "be it far from us," he said, "to forsake law and ordinances. we will not hearken to the king's words, to turn aside to the right hand or to the left." when he had thus given noble attestation of his resolution to adhere to the faith of his fathers, there came forward an apostate jew to sacrifice on the heathen altar, which it seems was erected by royal command in all the cities and towns of judaea. this so inflamed the indignation of the brave old man that he ran and slew the jew upon the altar, together with the king's commissioner, and pulled down the altar. for this, mattathias was obliged to flee, and he escaped to the mountains, taking with him his five sons and all who would join his standard of revolt, crying with a loud voice, "let every one zealous for the law follow me!" a considerable multitude fled with him to the wilderness of judaea, on the west of the dead sea, taking with them their wives and children and cattle. but this flight from persecution speedily became known to the troops that were quartered on mount zion, a strong fortress which controlled the temple and city, and a detachment was sent in pursuit. the fugitives, zealous for the law, refused to defend themselves on the sabbath day, and the result was that they all perished, with their wives and children. their fate made such a powerful impression on mattathias, that it was resolved henceforth to fight on the sabbath day, if attacked. the patriots had to choose between two alternatives,--to be utterly rooted out, or to defend themselves on the sabbath, and thus violate the letter of the law. mattathias was sufficiently enlightened to perceive that fighting on the sabbath, if attacked, was a supreme necessity, remembering doubtless that moses recognized the right of necessary work even on the sacred day of rest. the law of self-defence is an ultimate one, and appeals to the consciousness of universal humanity. strange as it may seem, the sabbath has ever been a favorite day with generals to fight grand battles in every christian country. mattathias, although a very old man, now put forth superhuman energies, raised an army, drove the persecuting soldiers out of the country, pulled down the heathen altars, and restored the law; and when the time came for him to die, at the age of one hundred and forty-five years,--if we may credit the history, for josephus and the apocrypha are here our chief authorities,--he collected around him his five sons, all wise and valiant men, and enjoined them to be united among themselves, and to be faithful to the law,--calling to their minds the noted examples from the hebrew scriptures, abraham, joseph, joshua, david, elijah, who were obedient to the commandments of god. he did not speak of patriotism, although an intense lover of his country. he exhorted his sons to be simply obedient to the law,--not, probably, in the restricted and literal sense of the word, but in the idea of being faithful to god, even as abraham was obedient before the law was given. the glory which he assured them they would thus win was not the _éclat_ of victory, or even of national deliverance, but the imperishable renown which comes from righteousness. he promised a glorious immortality to those who fell in battle in defence of the truth and of their liberties, reminding us of the promises which mohammed made to his followers. but the great incentive to bravery which he urged was the ultimate reward of virtue, which runs through the scriptures, even the favor of god. the heroes of chivalry fought for the favor of ladies, the praises of knights, and the friendship of princes; the reward of modern generals is exaltation in popular estimation, the increase of political power, the accumulation of wealth, and sometimes the consciousness of rendering important services to their country,--an exalted patriotism, such as marked washington and cromwell. but the reward which the jewish hero promised was loftier,--even that of the divine favor. the aged mattathias, having thus given his last counsels to his sons, recommended the second one, simon, or simeon, as the future head of the family, to whose wisdom the other brothers were to defer,--a man whose counsel would be invaluable. the third brother, judas, a mighty warrior from his youth, was appointed as the leader of the forces to fight the battles of the people,--the peculiar vocations of saul and of david, for which they were selected to be kings. on the death of mattathias, mourned by all israel as samuel was mourned, at the age of one hundred and forty-five, and buried in the sepulchre of his fathers at modin, judas, called "the maccabaeus" ("the hammer," as some suppose), rose up in his stead; and all his brothers helped him, and all his father's friends, and he fought with cheerfulness the battles of israel. he put on armor as a hero, and was like a lion in his acts, and like a lion's whelp roaring for prey. he pursued and punished the jewish transgressors of the law, so that they lost courage, and all the workers of inquity were thrown into disorder, and the work of deliverance prospered in his hands. like josiah he went through the cities of judah, destroying the heathen and the ungodly. the fame of his exploits rapidly spread through the land, and apollonius, military governor of samaria, collected an army and marched against a man who with his small forces set at defiance the sovereignty of a mighty monarchy. judas attacked apollonius, slew him, and dispersed his army. ever afterward he was girded with the sword of the syrian,--a weapon probably adorned with jewels, and tempered like the famous damascus blades. seron, a general of higher rank, the commander-in-chief of the syrian forces in palestine, irritated at the defeat and death of apollonius, the following year marched with a still larger army against judas. the latter had with him only a small company, who were despondent in view of the great array of their heathen enemies, and moreover faint from having not eaten anything that day. but the heroic leader encouraged his men, and, undaunted in the midst of overwhelming danger, resolved to fight, trusting for aid from the god of battles; for "victory," said he, "is not through the multitude of an army, but from heaven cometh the strength." this resolution to fight against overwhelming odds would be audacity in modern warfare, which is perfected machinery, making one man with reliable weapons as good as another, and success to be chiefly determined by numbers skilfully posted and manoeuvred according to strategic science; but in ancient times personal bravery, directed by military genius and aided by fortunate circumstances, frequently prevailed over the force of multitudes, especially if the latter were undisciplined or intimidated by superstitious omens,--as evinced by alexander's victories, and those of charles martel and the black prince in the middle ages. the desperate valor of judas and his small band was crowned with complete success. seron was defeated with great loss, his army fled, and the fame of judas spread far and wide. his name became a terror to the nations. king antiochus now saw that the subjection of this valiant jew was no easy matter; and filled with wrath and vengeance he gathered together all the forces of his kingdom, opened his treasury, paid his soldiers a year in advance, and resolved to root out the rebellious nation by a war of extermination. crippled, however, in resources, and in great need of money, he concluded to go in person to persia and collect tribute from the various provinces, and seize the treasures which were supposed to be deposited in royal cities beyond the euphrates. he left behind, as regent or lieutenant, lysias, a man of royal descent, with orders to prosecute the war against the jews with the utmost severity, while with half his forces he proceeded in person to persia. lysias chose ptolemy, nicanor, and gorgias, experienced generals, to conduct the war, with forty thousand foot and seven thousand horsemen, besides elephants, with orders to exterminate the rebels, take possession of their lands, and settle heathen aliens in their place. so confident were these generals of success that merchants accompanied the army with gold and silver to purchase the jews from the conquerors, and fetters in which to make them slaves. a large force from the land of the philistines also joined the attacking army. jerusalem at this time was a forsaken city, uninhabited, like a wilderness; the sanctuary was trodden down, and heathen foreigners occupied the citadel on mount zion. it was a time of general mourning and desolation, and the sound of the harp and the pipe ceased throughout the land. but judas was not discouraged; and the warriors with him were bent upon redeeming the land from desolation. they however put on sackcloth, and prayed to the god of their fathers, and made every effort to rally their forces, feeling that it was better to die in battle than see the pollution of the sanctuary and the evils which overspread the land. judas succeeded in collecting altogether three thousand men, who however were poorly armed, and intrenched himself among the mountains, about twenty miles from jerusalem. learning this, gorgias took five thousand men, one thousand horsemen, under guides from the castle on mount zion, and departed from his camp at emmaus by night, with a view of surprising and capturing the jewish force. but judas was on the alert, and obtained information of the intended attack. so he broke up his own camp, and resolved to attack the main force of the enemy, weakened by the absence of gorgias and his chosen band. after reminding his soldiers of god's mercies in times of old, he ordered the trumpets to sound, and unexpectedly rushed upon the unsuspecting and unprepared syrians, totally routed them, pursued them as far as to the plains of idumaea, killed about three thousand men, took immense spoil,--gold and silver, purple garments and military weapons,--and returned in triumph to the forsaken camp, singing songs and blessing heaven for the great victory. many of the syrians that escaped came and told lysias all that had happened, and he on hearing it was confounded and discouraged. but in the year following he collected an army of sixty thousand chosen footmen and five thousand horsemen to renew the attack, and marched to the idumaean border. here judas met him at bethsura, near to jerusalem, with ten thousand men, now inspirited by victory, and again defeated the syrian forces, with a loss to the enemy of five thousand men. lysias, who commanded this army in person, returned to antioch and made preparations to raise a still greater force, while the victorious jews took possession of the capital. judas had now leisure to cleanse the sanctuary and dedicate it. when his army saw the desolation of their holy city,--trees growing in the very courts of the temple as in a forest, the altars profaned, the gates burned,--they were filled with grief, and rent their garments and cried aloud to heaven. but judas proceeded with his sacred work, pulled down the defiled altar of burnt sacrifice and rebuilt it, cleansed the sanctuary, hallowed the desecrated courts, made new holy vessels, decked the front of the temple with crowns and shields of gold, and restored the gates and chambers. judas also fortified the temple with high walls and towers, and placed in it a strong garrison, for the syrians still held possession of the tower,--a strong fortress near the mount of the temple. when all was cleansed and renewed, a solemn service of reconsecration was celebrated; the sacred fire was kindled afresh on the altar, thousands of lamps were lighted, the sacrifices were offered, the people thronged the courts of jehovah, and with psalms of praise, festive dances, harps, lutes, and cymbals made a joyful noise unto the lord. this triumphant restoration was celebrated three years, to the very day, from the day of desecration; it was forever after--as long as the temple stood--held a sacred yearly festival, and called the feast of the dedication, or sometimes, from its peculiar ceremonies, the feast of lights. the successes of judas and the restoration of the temple worship inflamed with renewed anger the heathen population of the countries in the near vicinity of judaea; and there seems to have been a general confederacy of idumaeans,--descendants of esau,--with sundry of the bedouin tribes, and of the heathen settled east of the jordan in the land of gilead, and of phoenicians and heathen strangers in galilee, to recover what the syrians had lost, and to restore idol worship. judas had now an army of eleven thousand men, which he divided between himself and his brother simon, and they marched in different directions to the attack of their numerous enemies. they were both eminently successful, gaining bloody battles, capturing cities and fortresses, taking immense spoils, mingling the sound of trumpets with prayers to almighty god,--heroes as religious as they were brave, an unexampled band of warriors, rivalling joshua, saul, and david in the brilliancy of their victories. all the jews who remained true to their faith in the districts which he overran and desolated, judas brought back with him to jerusalem for greater safety. only one misfortune sullied the glory of these exploits. judas had left behind him at jerusalem, when he and simon went forth to fight the idolaters, a garrison of two thousand men under the command of joseph and azarias, leaders of the people, with the strict command to remain in the city until he should return. but these popular leaders, dazzled by the victories of judas and simon, and wishing to earn a fame like theirs, issued from their stronghold with two thousand men to attack jamnia, and were met by gorgias the syrian general and completely annihilated,--a just punishment for military disobedience. the loss of two thousand men was a calamity, but judas pursued his victories, finally turning against the philistines, who at this point disappear from sacred history. in the meantime king antiochus, who, as already stated, had gone on a plundering expedition to persia, was defeated in the attempt, and returned in great grief and disappointment to ecbatana. here he heard that his armies under lysias had been disgracefully beaten, and that judaea was in a fair way to achieve its independence under the heroic judas; and, worse still, that all the pagan temples and altars which he had set up in jerusalem were removed and destroyed. this especially filled him with rage, for he was a fanatic in his religion, and utterly detested the monotheism of the jews. so oppressed with grief was this heathen persecutor that he took to his bed; and in addition to his humiliation he was afflicted with a loathsome disease, called elephantiasis, so that he was avoided and neglected by his own servants. he now saw that he must die, and calling for his friend philip, made him regent of his kingdom during the minority of his son, whom he had left at antioch. the jews were thus delivered from the worst enemy that had afflicted them since the babylonian captivity. neither assyrians nor egyptians nor persians had so ruthlessly swept away religious institutions. those conquerors were contented with conquest and its political results,--namely, the enslavement and spoliation of the people; they did not pollute the sacred places like the syrian persecutor. by the rivers of babylon the jews had sat down and wept when they remembered zion, but their sad wailing was over the fact that they were captives in a strange land. ground down to the dust by antiochus, however, they bewailed not only their external misfortunes, but far more bitterly the desecration of their sanctuary and the attempt to root out their religion, which was their life. the death of antiochus epiphanes was therefore a great relief and rejoicing to the struggling jews. he left as heir to his throne a boy nine years of age; but though he had made his friend philip guardian of his son and regent of his kingdom, his lieutenant at antioch, lysias, also claimed the guardianship and the regency. these rival claims of course led to civil wars between lysias and philip, in consequence of which the jews were comparatively unmolested, and had leisure to organize their forces, fortify their strongholds, and prepare for complete independence. among other things, judas maccabaeus attacked the citadel or tower on mount zion, overlooking the temple, in which a large garrison of the enemy had long been stationed, and which was a perpetual menace. the attack or siege of this strong fortress alarmed the heathen, who made complaint to the young king, called eupator, or more probably to the regent lysias, who sent an overwhelming army into judaea, consisting of one hundred thousand foot, twenty thousand horse, and thirty-two elephants. but judas did not hesitate to give battle to this great force, and again gained a victory. it was won, however, at the expense of his brother eleazer. seeing one of the elephants armed with royal armor, he supposed that it carried the king himself; and heroically forcing his way through the ranks of the enemy, he slipped under the elephant, and gave the beast a mortal wound, so that it fell to the ground, crushing to death the courageous maccabaeus,--for the brothers of judas, worthy compatriots and fellow-soldiers with him, were also called by his special name; and although the family name was asmon, they are famous as "the maccabees." this battle however was not decisive. lysias advanced to jerusalem and laid siege to it. but hearing that philip had succeeded in gaining authority at antioch, he made peace with judas, and hastily returned to his capital, where he found philip master of the city. although he recovered his capital, it was only for a short time, since demetrius, son of seleucus, who had been sojourning at rome, returned to the palace of his ancestors, and slaying both lysias and the young king, reigned in their stead. with this king the jews were soon involved in war. evil-minded men, hostile to judas (for in such unsettled times treachery was everywhere), went to antioch with their complaints, headed by alcimus, who wished to be high-priest, and inflamed the anger of king demetrius. the new monarch sent one of his ablest generals, called bacchides, with an army to chastise the jews and reinstate alcimus, who had been ejected from his high office. this wicked high-priest overran the country with the forces of bacchides, who had returned to antioch, but did not prevail; so the king sent nicanor, already experienced in this jewish war, with a still larger army against judas. the gallant maccabaeus, however, gained a great victory, and slew nicanor himself. this battle gave another rest for a time to the afflicted land of judah. meanwhile judas, fearing that the syrian forces would ultimately overpower him, sent an embassy to rome to invoke protection. it was a long journey in those times. a century and a half later it took saint paul six months to make it. the conquests of the romans were known throughout the east, and better known than the policy they pursued of devouring the countries that sought their protection when it suited their convenience. at this time, 162 b.c., italy was subdued, spain had been added to the empire, macedonia was conquered, syria was threatened, and carthage was soon to fall. the senate was then the ruling power at rome, and was in the height of its dignity, not controlled by either generals or demagogues. the senate received with favor the jewish ambassadors, and promised their protection. had judas known what that protection meant, he would have been the last man to seek it. nor did the treaty of alliance with rome save judaea from the continued hostilities of syria. demetrius sent bacchides with another army, which encamped against jerusalem, where judas had only eight hundred men to resist an army of twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse. we infer that his forces had dwindled away by perpetual contests. his heart of hope was now well-nigh broken, but his lion courage remained. against the solicitation of his companions in war he resolved to fight; gallantly and stubbornly contested the field from morning to night, and at last, hemmed in between two wings of the syrian foe, fell in the battle. the heroic career of judas maccabaeus was ended. he had done marvellous things. he had for six years resisted and often defeated overwhelming forces; he had fought more battles than david; he had kept the enemy at bay while his prostrate country arose from the dust; he had put to flight and slain tens of thousands of the heathen; he had recovered and fortified jerusalem, and restored the temple worship; he had trained his people to be warlike and heroic. at last he was slain only when his followers were scattered by successive calamities. he bore the brunt of six years' successful war against the most powerful monarchy in asia, bent on the extermination of his countrymen. and amid all his labors he had kept the law, being revered for his virtues as much as for his heroism. not a single crime sullied his glorious name. and when he fell at last, exhausted, the nation lamented him as david mourned for jonathan, saying, "how is the valiant fallen!" a greater hero than he never adorned an age of heroism. judas was not only a mighty captain, but a wise statesman,--so revered, that, according to josephus, in his closing years he was made high-priest also, thus uniting in his person both spiritual and temporal authority. it was a very small country that he ruled, but it is in small countries that genius is often most fully developed, either for war or for peace. we know but little of his private life. he had no time for what the world calls pleasures; his life was rough, full of dangers and embarrassments. his only aim seems to have been to shake off the syrian yoke that oppressed his native land, to redeem the holy places of the nation from the pollutions of the obscene rites of heathenism, and to restore the worship of jehovah according to the consecrated ritual established in the mosaic law. the death of judas was of course followed by great disorders and universal despondency. his mantle fell on his brother jonathan, who became the leader of the scattered forces of the jews. he also prevailed over bacchides in several engagements, so that the syrian leader returned to antioch, and the jews had rest for two years. jonathan was now clothed with honor and dignity, wore a purple garment and other emblems of high rank, and was almost an acknowledged sovereign. he improved his opportunities and fortified jerusalem. but his prosperous career was cut short by treachery. he was enticed by the syrian general, even when he had an army of forty thousand men,--so largely had the forces of judaea increased,--into ptolemais with a few followers, under blandishing promises, and slain. simon was now the only remaining son of mattathias; and on him devolved the high-priesthood, as well as the executive duties of supreme ruler. he wisely devoted himself to the internal affairs of the state which he ruled. he fortified joppa, the only port of judaea, reduced hostile cities, and made himself master of the famous fortress of mount zion, so long held in threatening vicinity by the syrians, which he not only levelled with the ground, but also razed the summit of the hill on which it stood, so that it should no longer overlook the temple area. the temple became not only the sanctuary, but also one of the strongest fortresses in the world. at a later period it held out for some time against the army of titus, even after jerusalem itself had fallen. simon executed the laws with rigorous impartiality, repaired the temple, restored the sacred vessels, and secured general peace, order, and security. even the lands desolated by the wasting wars with several successive syrian monarchs again rejoiced in fertility. every man sat under his own vine and fig-tree in safety. the friendly alliance with rome was renewed by a present to that greedy republic of a golden shield, weighing one thousand pounds, and worth fifty talents, thus showing how much wealth had increased under judas and his brothers. even the ambassadors of the syrian monarch were astonished at the splendor of simon's palace, and at the riches of the temple, again restored, not in the glory of solomon, but in a magnifience of which few temples could boast,--the pride once more of the now prosperous jews, who had by their persistent bravery earned their independence. in the year 143 b.c., the jews began a new epoch in their history, after twenty-three years of almost incessant warfare. yet simon was destined, like his brothers, to end his days by violence. he also, together with two of his sons, was treacherously murdered by his son-in-law ptolemy, who aspired to the exalted office of high-priest, leaving his son john hyrcanus to reign in his stead, in the year 136 b.c. the rule of the maccabees,--the five sons of mattathias,--lasted thirty years. they were the founders of the asmonean princes, who ruled both as kings and high-priests. with the death of simon, the last remaining son of mattathias, this lecture properly should end; yet a rapid glance at the jewish nation, under the rule of the asmonean princes and the idumaean herod, may not be uninteresting. john hyrcanus, the first of the asmonean kings, was an able sovereign, and reigned twenty-nine years. he threw off the syrian yoke, and the jewish kingdom maintained its independence until it fell under the roman sway. his most memorable feat was the destruction of the samaritan temple on mount gerizim, which had been an eye-sore to the people of jerusalem for two hundred years. he then subdued idumaea, and compelled the people of that country to adopt the jewish religion. he maintained a strict alliance with the romans, and became master of samaria and of galilee, which were incorporated with his kingdom, so that the ancient limits of the kingdom of david were nearly restored. he built the castle of baris on a rock within the fortifications that surrounded the hill of the temple, which afterward was known as the tower of antonia. on his death, 105 b.c., hyrcanus was succeeded by his son aristobulus,--a weak and wicked prince, who assassinated his brother, and starved to death his mother in a dungeon. the next king of the asmonean line, alexander jannaeus, was brave, but unsuccessful, and died after an unquiet and turbulent reign of twenty-seven years, 77 b.c. his widow, alexandra, ruled as regent with great tact and energy for nine years, and was succeeded by her son hyrcanus ii. this feeble and unfortunate prince had to contend with the intrigues and violence of his more able but unscrupulous brother, aristobulus, who sought to steal his sceptre, and who at one time even drove him from his kingdom. hyrcanus put himself under the protection of the romans. they came as arbiters; they remained as masters. it was when judaea was under the nominal rule of hyrcanus ii., driven hither and thither by his enemies, and when his capital was in their hands, that pompey, triumphant over the armies of the east, took jerusalem after a desperate resistance, entered the temple, and even penetrated to the holy of holies. to his credit he left untouched the treasures accumulated in the temple, but he demolished the walls of the city and imposed a tribute. judaea was now virtually under the dominion of the romans, although the sovereignty of hyrcanus was not completely taken away. on the fall of pompey, crassus the triumvir plundered the temple of ten thousand talents, as was estimated, and the fate of judaea, during the memorable civil war of which caesar was the hero and victor, hung in trembling suspense. i will not enumerate the contentions, the deeds of violence, the acts of treachery, and the strife of rival parties which marked the tumultuous period in judaea while caesar and pompey were contending for the sovereignty of the world. these came to an end at last by the dethronement of the last of the asmonean princes, and the accession of the idumaean herod by the aid of antony (40 b.c.). herod, called the great, was the last independent sovereign of palestine. he was the son of antipater, a noble idumaean, who had ingratiated himself in the favor of hyrcanus ii., high-priest and sovereign, and who ruled as the prime minister of this feeble and incapable prince. by rendering some service to caesar, antipater was made procurator of judaea, and appointed his son herod to the government of galilee, where he developed remarkable administrative talents. soon after, he was raised by sextus caesar to the military command of coele-syria. after the battle of philippi, herod secured the favor of antony by an enormous bribe, as he had that of cassius on the death of caesar, and was made one of the tetrarchs of the province. in the meantime his father, alexander, was poisoned at jerusalem, and antigonus, son of aristobulus, who had gained ascendency, cut off the ears of hyrcanus, and not only deprived him of the office of high-priest, but usurped his authority. herod himself proceeded to rome, and was successful in his intrigues, being by the favor of antony made king of judaea. but a severe contest was before him, since antigonus was resolved to defend his crown. with the aid of the romans, herod, after a war of three years, subdued his rival and put him to death, together with every member of the sanhedrim but two. his power was cemented by his marriage with mariamne, the beautiful sister of aristobulus, whom he made high-priest. the asmonean princes were now, by the death of antigonus, reduced to aristobulus and the aged hyrcanus, both of whom were murdered by the suspicious tyrant who had triumphed over so many enemies. in a fit of jealousy herod even caused the execution of his beautiful wife, whom he passionately loved, as he had already destroyed her grandfather, father, brother, and uncle. supported by augustus, whom he had managed to conciliate after the death of antony, herod reigned with undisputed authority over even an increase of territory. he doubtless reigned with great ability, tyrant and murderer as he was, and detested by the jews as an idumaean. he reigned in a state of magnificence unknown to the asmonean princes. he built a new and magnificent palace on the hill of zion, and rebuilt the fortress of baris, which he called antonia in honor of his friend and patron, antony. he also erected strong citadels in different cities of his kingdom, and rebuilt samaria; he founded caesarea and colonized it with greeks, so that it became a great maritime city, rivalling tyre in magnificence and strength. but herod's greatest work, by which he hoped to ingratiate himself in the favor of the jews, was the rebuilding of the temple on a scale of unexampled magnificence. he was also very liberal in the distribution of corn during a severe famine. he was in such high favor with augustus by his presents and his devotion to the imperial interests, that, next to agrippa, he was the emperor's greatest favorite. his two sons by mariamne were educated at rome with great care, and were lodged in the palace of the emperor. herod's latter days however were clouded by the intrigues of his court, by treason and conspiracies, in consequence of which his sons, favorites with the people on account of their accomplishments and their asmonean blood, were executed by the suspicious and savage despot. antipater, another son, by his first wife, whom he had chosen as his successor, conspired against his life, and the proof of his guilt was so clear that he also was summarily executed. in addition to these troubles herod was tormented by remorse for the execution of the murdered mariamne. he was the victim of jealousy, suspicion, and wrath. one of his last acts was the order to destroy the infants in the vicinity of jerusalem in the vain hope of destroying the predicted messiah,--him who should be "born king of the jews." he died of a loathsome and excruciating disease, in his seventieth year, having reigned nearly forty years. his kingdom, by his will, was divided between the children of his later wife, a samaritan woman,--the eldest of whom, archelaus, became monarch of judea; and the second, antipas, became tetrarch of galilee. the former married the widow of his half-brother alexander, who was executed; and the latter married herodias, wife of philip, also his half-brother. archelaus ruled judaea with such injustice and cruelty, that, after nine years, he was summoned to rome and exiled to vienne in gaul, and judaea became a roman province under the prefecture of syria. the supreme judicial authority was exercised by the jewish sanhedrim, the great ecclesiastical and civil council, composed of seventy-one persons presided over by the high-priest. the sanhedrim, under the name of chief priests, scribes, and elders of the people, now took the lead in all public transactions pertaining to the internal administration of the province, being inferior only to the tribunal of the governor, who resided in caesarea. meanwhile the long expectation of the jews, especially during the reign of herod, of a promised deliverer, was fulfilled, and one claiming to be the messiah appeared,--not a temporal prince and mighty hero of war, a greater judas maccabaeus, as the jews had supposed, but a helpless infant, born in a manger, and brought up as a peasant-carpenter. yet he it was who should found a spiritual kingdom never to be destroyed, going on from conquering to conquer, until the whole world shall be subdued. with the advent of jesus of nazareth, in which we see the fulfilment of all the promises made to the chosen people from abraham to isaiah, jewish history loses its chief interest. the mission of the hebrew nation seems to stand accomplished; the conception of one, holy, spiritual god was kept alive in the world until, in "the fulness of time," the mighty romans subdued and united all lands under one rule, drawing them nearer together by great highroads; the flexible greek language gave all peoples a common tongue, in which already the hebrew scriptures had been familiarized among scholars; the life and teachings of jesus entered with vital power into the heart and brain of those devoted followers who recognized him as the christ,--the revelator of the universal fatherhood of the one true god; and thenceforward christianity becomes the great spiritual power of the world. saint paul. died, about 67 a.d. the spread of christianity. the scriptures say but little of the life of saul from the time he was a student, at the age of fifteen, at the feet of gamaliel, one of the most learned rabbis of the jewish sanhedrim at jerusalem, until he appeared at the martyrdom of stephen, when about thirty years of age. saul, as he was originally named, was born at tarsus, a city of cilicia, about the fourth year of our era. his father was a jew, a pharisee, and a man of respectable social position. in some way not explained, he was able to transmit to his son the rights of roman citizenship,--a valuable inheritance, as it proved. he took great pains in the education of his gifted son, who early gave promise of great talents and attainments in rabbinical lore, and who gained also some knowledge, although probably not a very deep one, of the greek language and literature. saul's great peculiarity as a young man was his extreme pharisaism,--devotion to the jewish law in all its minuteness of ceremonial rites. we gather from his own confessions that at that period, when he was engrossed in the study of the jewish scriptures and religious institutions, he was narrow and intolerant, and zealous almost to fanaticism to perpetuate ritualistic conventionalities and the exclusiveness of his sect. he was austere and conscientious, but his conscience was unenlightened. he exhibited nothing of that large-hearted charity and breadth of mind for which he was afterward distinguished; he was in fact a bitter persecutor of those who professed the religion of jesus, which he detested as an innovation. his morality being always irreproachable, and his character and zeal giving him great influence, he was sent to damascus, with authority to bring to jerusalem for trial or punishment those who had embraced the new faith. he is supposed to have been absent from jerusalem during the ministry of our lord, and probably never saw him who was despised and rejected of men. we are told that saul, in the virulence of his persecuting spirit, consented to the death of stephen, who was no ignorant galilean, but a learned hellenist; nor is there evidence that the bitter and relentless young pharisee was touched either by the eloquence or blameless life or terrible sufferings of the distinguished martyr. the next memorable event in the life of saul--at that time probably a member of the jewish sanhedrim--was his conversion to christianity, as sudden and unexpected as it was profound and lasting, while on his way to damascus on the errand already mentioned. the sudden light from heaven which exceeded in brilliancy the torrid midday sun, the voice of jesus which came to the trembling persecutor as he lay prostrate on the ground, the blindness which came upon him--all point to the supernatural; for he was no inquirer after truth like luther and augustine, but bent on a persistent course of cruel persecution. at once he is a changed man in his spirit, in his aims, in his entire attitude toward the followers of the nazarene. the proud man becomes as docile and humble as a child; the intolerant zealot for the law becomes broad and charitable; and only one purpose animates his whole subsequent life,--which is to spend his strength, amid perils and difficult labors, in defence of the doctrines he had spurned. his leading idea now is to preach salvation, not by pharisaical works by which no man can be justified, but by faith in the crucified one who was sent into the world to save it by new teachings and by his death upon the cross. he will go anywhere in his sublime enthusiasm, among jews or among gentiles, to plant the precious seeds of the new faith in every pagan city which he can reach. it is thought by conybeare and howson, farrar and others that the new convert spent three years in retirement in arabia, in profound meditation and communion with god, before the serious labors of his life began as a preacher and missionary. after his conversion it would seem that saul preached the divinity of christ with so much zeal that the jews in damascus were filled with wrath, and sought to take his life, and even guarded the gates of the city for fear that he might escape. the conspiracy being detected, the friends of saul put him into a basket made of ropes, and let him down from a window in a house built upon the city wall, so that he escaped, and thereupon proceeded to jerusalem to be indorsed as a christian brother. he was especially desirous to see peter, as the foremost man among the christians, though james had greater dignity. peter received him kindly, though not enthusiastically, for the remembrance of his relentless persecutions was still fresh in the minds of the christians. it was impossible, however, that two such warmhearted, honest, and enthusiastic men should not love each other, when the common leading principle of their lives was mutually understood. among the disciples, however, it was only peter who took saul cordially by the hand. the other leaders held aloof; not one so much as spoke to him. he was regarded with general mistrust; even james, the lord's brother, the first bishop of jerusalem, would hold no communion with him. at length joseph, a levite of cyprus, afterward called barnabas,--a man of large heart, who sold his possessions to give to the poor,--recognizing saul's sincerity and superior talents, extended to him the right hand of fellowship, and later became his companion in the missionary journeys which he undertook. he used his great influence in removing the prejudices of the brethren, and saul henceforth was admitted to their friendship and confidence. saul at first did not venture to preach in hebrew synagogues, but sought the synagogue of the hellenists, in which the voice of stephen had first been heard. but his preaching was again cut short by a conspiracy to murder him, so fierce was the animosity which his conversion had created among the jews, and he was compelled to flee. the brethren conducted him to the little coast village of caesarea, whence he sailed for his native city tarsus, in cilicia. how long saul remained in tarsus, and what he did there, we do not know. not long, probably, for he was sought out by barnabas as his associate for missionary work in antioch. it would seem that on the persecution which succeeded stephen's death, many of the disciples fled to various cities; and among others, to that great capital of the east,--the third city of the roman empire. thither barnabas had gone as their spiritual guide; but he soon found out that among the greeks of that luxurious and elegant city there were demanded greater learning, wisdom, and culture than he himself possessed. he turned his eyes upon saul, then living quietly at tarsus, whose superior tact and trained skill in disputation, large and liberal mind, and indefatigable zeal marked him out as the fittest man he could find as a coadjutor in his laborious work. thus saul came to antioch to assist barnabas. no city could have been chosen more suitable for the peculiar talents of saul than this great eastern emporium, containing a population of five hundred thousand. i need not speak of its works of art,--its palaces, its baths, its aqueducts, its bridges, its basilicas, its theatres, which called out even the admiration of the citizens of the imperial capital. these were nothing to saul, who thought only of the souls he could convert to the religion of jesus; but they indicate the importance and wealth of the population. in this pagan city were half a million people steeped in all the vices of the oriental world,--a great influx of heterogeneous races, mostly debased by various superstitions and degrading habits, whose religion, so far as they had any, was a crude form of nature-worship. and yet among them were wits, philosophers, rhetoricians, poets, and satirists, as was to be expected in a city where greek was the prevailing language. but these were not the people who listened to saul and barnabas. the apostles found hearers chiefly among the poor and despised,--artisans, servants, soldiers, sailors,--although occasionally persons of moderate independence became converts, especially women of the middle ranks. poor as they were, the christians at antioch found means to send a large contribution in money to their brethren at jerusalem, who were suffering from a grievous famine. a year was spent by barnabas and saul at antioch in founding a christian community, or congregation, or "church," as it was called. and it was in this city that the new followers of christ were first called "christians," mostly made up as they were of gentiles. the missionaries had not much success with the jews, although it was their custom first to preach in the jewish synagogues on the sabbath. it was only the common people of antioch who heard the word gladly, for it was to them tidings of joy, which raised them above their degradation and misery. with the contributions which the christians of antioch, and probably of other cities, made to their poorer and afflicted brethren, barnabas and saul set out for jerusalem, soon returning however to antioch, not to resume their labors, but to make preparations for an extended missionary tour. saul was then thirty-seven years of age, and had been a christian seven years. in spite of many disadvantages, such as ill-health, a mean personal appearance, and a nervous temperament, without a ready utterance, saul had a tolerable mastery of greek, familiarity with the habits of different classes, and a profound knowledge of human nature. as a widower and childless, he was unincumbered by domestic ties and duties; and although physically weak, he had great endurance and patience. he was courteous in his address, liberal in his views, charitable to faults, abounding in love, adapting himself to people's weaknesses and prejudices,--a man of infinite tact, the loftiest, most courageous, most magnanimous of missionaries, setting an example to the xaviers and judsons of modern times. he doubtless felt that to preach the gospel to the heathen was his peculiar mission; so that his duty coincided with his inclination, for he seems to have been very fond of travelling. he made his journeys on foot, accompanied by a congenial companion, when he could not go by water, which was attended with less discomfort, and was freer from perils and dangers than a land journey. the first missionary journey of barnabas and saul, accompanied by mark, was to the isle of cyprus. they embarked at seleucia, the port of antioch, and landed at salamis, where they remained awhile, preaching in the jewish synagogue, and then traversed the whole island, which is about one hundred miles in length. whenever they made a lengthened stay, saul worked at his trade as a sail and tent maker, so as not to be burdensome to any one. his life was very simple and inexpensive, thus enabling him to maintain that independence so essential to self-respect. no notable incident occurred to the three missionaries until they reached the town of nea-paphos, celebrated for the worship of venus, the residence of the roman proconsul, sergius paulus,--a man of illustrious birth, who amused himself with the popular superstitions of the country. he sought, probably from curiosity, to hear barnabas and saul preach; but the missionaries were bitterly opposed by a jewish sorcerer called elymas, who was stricken with blindness by saul, the miracle producing such an effect on the governor that he became a convert to the new faith. there is no evidence that he was baptized, but he was respected and beloved as a good man. from that time the apostle assumed the name of paul; and he also assumed the control of the mission, barnabas gracefully yielding the first rank, which till then he had himself enjoyed. he had been the patron of saul, but now became his subordinate; for genius ever will work its way to ascendency. there are no outward advantages which can long compete with intellectual supremacy. from cyprus the missionaries went to perga, in pamphylia, one of the provinces of asia minor. in this city, famed for the worship of diana, their stay was short. here mark separated from his companions and returned to jerusalem, much to the mortification of his cousin barnabas and the grief of paul, since we have a right to infer that this brilliant young man was appalled by the dangers of the journey, or had more sympathy with his brethren at jerusalem than with the liberal yet overbearing spirit of paul. from perga the two travellers proceeded to antioch in pisidia, in the heart of the high table-lands of the peninsula, and, according to their custom, went on saturday to the jewish synagogue. paul, invited to address the meeting, set forth the mystery of jesus, his death, his resurrection, and the salvation which he promised to believers. but the address raised a storm, and paul retired from the synagogue to preach to the gentile population, many of whom were favorably disposed, and became converted. the same thing subsequently took place at philippi, at alexandria, at troas, and in general throughout the roman colonies. but the influence of the jews was sufficient to secure the expulsion of paul and barnabas from the city; and they departed, shaking off the dust from their feet, and turning their steps to iconium, a city of lycaonia, where a church was organized. here the apostles tarried some time, until forced to leave by the orthodox jews, who stirred up the heathen population against them. the little city of lystra was the scene of their next labors, and as there were but few jews there the missionaries not only had rest, but were very successful. the sojourn at lystra was marked by the miraculous cure of a cripple, which so impressed the people that they took the missionaries for divinities, calling barnabas jupiter, and paul mercury; and a priest of the city absolutely would have offered up sacrifices to the supposed deities, had he not been severely rebuked by paul for his superstition. at lystra a great addition was made to the christian ranks by the conversion of timothy, a youth of fifteen, and of his excellent mother eunice; but the report of these conversions reached iconium and antioch of pisidia, which so enraged the jews of these cities that they sent emissaries to lystra, zealous fanatics, who made such a disturbance that paul was stoned, and left for dead. his wounds, however, were not so serious as were supposed, and the next day he departed with barnabas for derbe, where he made a long stay. the two churches of lystra and derbe were composed almost wholly of heathen. from derbe the apostles retraced their steps, a.d. 46, to antioch, by the way they had come,--a journey of one hundred and twenty miles, and full of perils,--instead of crossing mount taurus through the famous pass of the cilician gates, and then through tarsus to antioch, an easier journey. one of the noticeable things which marked this first missionary journey of paul, was the opposition of the jews wherever he went. he was forced to turn to the gentiles, and it was among them that converts were chiefly made. it is true that his custom was first to address the jewish synagogues on saturday, but the jews opposed and hated and persecuted him the moment he announced the grand principle which animated his life,--salvation through jesus christ, instead of through obedience to the venerated law of moses. on his return to antioch with his beloved companion, paul continued for a time in the peaceful ministration of apostolic duties, until it became necessary for him to go to jerusalem to consult with the other apostles in reference to a controversy which began seriously to threaten the welfare of their common cause. this controversy was in reference to the rite of circumcision,--a rite ever held in supreme importance by the jews. the jewish converts to christianity had all been previously circumcised according to the mosaic law, and they insisted on the circumcision of the gentile converts also, as a mark of christian fraternity. paul, emancipated from jewish prejudices and customs, regarded this rite as unessential; he believed that it was abrogated by christ, with other technical observances of the law, and that it was not consistent with the liberty of the gospel to impose rites exclusively jewish on the pagan converts. the elders at jerusalem, good men as they were, did not take this view; they could not bear to receive into complete christian fellowship men who offended their prejudices in regard to matters which they regarded as sacred and obligatory as baptism itself. they would measure christianity by their traditions; and the smaller the point of difference seemed to the enlightened paul, the bitterer were the contests,--even as many of the schisms which subsequently divided the church originated in questions that appear to us to be absolutely frivolous. the question very early arose, whether christianity should be a formal and ritualistic religion,--a religion of ablutions and purifications, of distinctions between ceremonially pure and impure things,--or, rather, a religion of the spirit; whether it should be a sect or a universal religion. paul took the latter view; declared circumcision to be useless, and freely admitted heathen converts into the church without it, in opposition to those who virtually insisted on a gentile becoming a jew before he could become a christian. so, to settle this miserable dispute, paul went to jerusalem, taking with him barnabas and titus, who had never been circumcised,--eighteen years after the death of jesus, when the apostles were old men, and when peter, james, and john, having remained at jerusalem, were the real leaders of the jewish church. james in particular, called the just, was a strenuous observer of the law of circumcision,--a severe and ascetic man, and very narrow in his prejudices, but held in great veneration for his piety. before the question was brought up in a general assembly of the brethren for discussion, paul separately visited peter, james, and john, and argued with them in his broad and catholic spirit, and won them over to his cause; so that through their influence it was decided that it was not essential for a gentile to be circumcised on admission to the church, only that he must abstain from meats offered to idols, and from eating the meat of any animal containing the blood (forbidden by moses),--a sort of compromise, a measure by which most quarrels are finally settled; and the title of paul as "apostle to the gentiles" was officially confirmed. the controversy being settled amicably by the leaders of the infant church, paul and barnabas returned to antioch, and for a while longer continued their labors there, as the most important centre of missionary operations. but the ardent soul of paul could not bear repose. he set about forming new plans; and the result was his second and more important missionary tour. the relations between paul and barnabas had been thus far of the most intimate and affectionate kind. but now the two apostles disagreed,--barnabas wishing to associate with them his cousin mark, and paul determining that the young man, however estimable, should not accompany them, because he had turned back on the former journey. it must be confessed that paul was not very amiable and conciliatory in this matter; but his nature was earnest and stern, and he was resolved not to have a companion under his trying circumstances who had once put his hand to the plough and looked back. neither apostle would yield, and they were obliged to separate,--reluctantly, doubtless,--paul choosing silas as his future companion, while barnabas took mark. both were probably in the right, and both in the wrong; for the best of men have faults, and the strongest characters the most. perhaps paul thought that as he was now recognized as the leading apostle to the gentiles, barnabas should yield to him; and perhaps barnabas felt aggrieved at the haughty dictation of one who was once his inferior in standing. the choice of paul, however, was admirable. silas was a broad and liberal man, who had great influence at jerusalem, and was entirely devoted to his superior. "the first object of paul was to confirm the churches he had already founded; and accordingly he began his mission by visiting the churches of syria and cilicia," crossing the taurus range by the famous cilician gates,--one of the most frightful mountain passes in the world,--penetrating thus into lycaonia, and reaching derbe, lystra, and iconium. at lystra he found timothy, whom he greatly loved, modest and timid, and made him his deacon and secretary, although he had never been circumcised. to prevent giving offence to jewish christians, paul himself circumcised timothy, in accordance with his custom of yielding to prejudices when no vital principles were involved,--which concession laid him open to the charge of inconsistency on the part of his enemies. expediency was not disdained by paul when the means were unobjectionable, but he did not use bad means to accomplish good ends. he always had tenderness and charity for the weaknesses of his brethren, especially intellectual weakness. what would have been intolerable to some was patiently submitted to by him, if by any means he could win even the feeble; so that he seemed to be all things to all men. no one ever exceeded him in tact. after paul had finished his visit to the principal cities of galatia, he resolved to explore new lands. we next find him, after a long journey through mysia of three hundred miles, travelling to the south of mount olympus, at troas, near the ancient city of troy. here he fell in with luke, a physician, who had received a careful hellenic and jewish education. like timothy, the future historian of the acts of the apostles was admirably fitted to be the companion of paul. he was gentle, sympathetic, submissive, and devoted to his superior. through luke's suggestion, renan thinks, paul determined to go to macedonia. so, without making a long stay at troas, the four missionaries--paul, silas, luke, and timothy--took ship and landed at neapolis, the seaport of philippi on the borders of thrace at the extreme northern shores of the aegean sea. they were now on european ground,--the most healthy region of the ancient world, where the people, largely of celtic origin, were honest, earnest, and primitive in their habits. the travellers proceeded at once to philippi, a city more latin than grecian, and began their work; making converts, chiefly women, among whom lydia was the most distinguished, a wealthy woman who traded in purple. she and her whole household were baptized, and it was from her that paul consented against his custom to accept pecuniary aid. while the work of conversion was going on favorably, an incident occurred which hastened the departure of the missionaries. paul exorcised a poor female slave, who brought, by her divinations and ventriloquism, great gain to her masters; and because of this destruction of the source of their income they brought suit against paul and silas before the magistrates, who condemned them to be beaten in the presence of the superstitious people, and then sent them to prison and put their feet fast in the stocks. the jailer and the duumvirs, however, ascertaining that the prisoners were roman citizens and hence exempt from corporal punishment, released them, and hurried them out of the city. leaving timothy and luke at philippi, paul and silas proceeded to thessalonica, the largest and most important city of macedonia, where there was a jewish synagogue in which paul preached for three consecutive sabbaths. a few jews were converted, but the converts were chiefly greeks, of whom the larger part were women belonging to the best society of the city. by these converts the apostles were treated with extraordinary deference and devotion, and the church of thessalonica soon rivalled that of philippi in the piety and unity of its converts, becoming a model christian church. as usual, however, the jews stirred up animosities, and paul and silas were obliged to leave, spending several days at berea and preaching successfully among the greeks. these conquests were the most brilliant that paul had yet made,--not among enervated asiatics, but bright, elegant, and intelligent europeans, where women were less degraded than in the orient. leaving timothy and silas behind him, paul, accompanied by some faithful bereans, embarked for athens,--the centre of philosophy and art, whose wonderful prestige had induced its roman conquerors to preserve its ancient glories. but in the first century athens was neither the fascinating capital of the time of cicero, nor of the age of chrysostom. its temples and statues remained intact, but its schools could not then boast of a single man of genius. there remained only dilettante philosophers, rhetoricians, grammarians, pedagogues, and pedants, puffed up with conceit and arrogance, with very few real inquirers after truth, such as marked the times of socrates and plato. paul, like luther, cared nothing for art; and the thousands of statues which ornamented every part of the city seemed to him to be nothing but idols. still, he was not mistaken in the intense paganism of the city, the absence of all earnestness of character and true religious life. he was disappointed, as afterward augustine was when he went to rome. he expected to find intellectual life at least, but the pretenders to superior knowledge in that degenerate university town merely traded on the achievements of their ancestors, repeating with dead lips the echo of the old philosophies. they were marked only by levity, mockery, sneers, and contemptuous arrogance; idlers were they, in quest of some new amusement. the utter absence of sympathy among all classes given over to frivolities made paul exceedingly lonely in athens, and he wrote to timothy and silas to join him with all haste. he wandered about the streets distressed and miserable. there was no field for his labors. who would listen to him? what ear could he reach? he was as forlorn and unheeded as a temperance lecturer would be on the boulevards of paris. his work among the jews was next to nothing, for where trade did not flourish there were but few jews. still, amid all this discouragement, it would seem that paul attracted sufficient notice, from his conversation with the idlers and chatterers of the agora, to be invited to address the athenians at the areopagus. they listened with courtesy so long as they thought he was praising their religious habits, or was making a philosophical argument against the doctrines of rival sects; but when he began to tell them of that cross which was to them foolishness, and of that resurrection from the dead which was alien to all their various beliefs, they were filled with scorn or relapsed into indifference. paul's masterly discourse on mars hill was an obvious failure, so far as any immediate impression was concerned. the pagans did not persecute him,--they let him alone; they killed him with indifference. he could stand opposition, but to be laughed at as a fanatic and neglected by bright and intellectual people was more than even paul could stand. he left athens a lonely man, without founding a church. it was the last city in the world to receive his doctrines,--that city of grammarians, of pedants, of gymnasts, of fencing masters, of play-goers, and babblers about words. "as well might a humanitarian socialist declaim against english prejudices to the proud and exclusive fellows of oxford and cambridge." paul, disappointed and disgusted, without waiting for timothy, then set out for corinth,--a much wickeder and more luxurious city than athens, but not puffed up with intellectual pride. here there were sailors and artisans, and slaves bearing heavy burdens, who would gladly hear the tidings of a salvation preached to the poor and miserable. not yet was the alliance to be formed between philosophy and christianity. not to the intellect was the apostolic appeal to be made, but to the conscience and the heart of those who knew and owned that they were sinners in need of forgiveness. paul instinctively perceived that corinth, with its gross and shameless immoralities, was the place for him to work in. he therefore decided on a long stay, and went to live with aquila and priscilla, converted jews, who followed the same trade as himself, that of tent and sail making,--a very humble calling, but one which was well patronized in that busy mart of commerce. timothy soon joined him, with silas. as usual, paul preached to the jews until they repulsed him with insults and blasphemy, when he turned to the heathen, among whom he had great success, converting the common people, including some whose names have been preserved,--titus, justius, crispus, chloe, and phoebe. he remained in corinth eighteen months, not without difficulties and impediments. the jews, unable to vent their wrath upon him as fully as they wished in a city under the roman government, appealed to the governor of the province of which corinth was the capital. this governor is best known to us as gallio,--a man of fine intellect, and a friend of scholars. when sosthenes, chief of the synagogue, led paul before gallio's tribunal, accusing him of preaching a religion against the law, the proconsul interrupted him with this admirable reply: "if it were a matter of wrong, or moral outrage, it would be reasonable in me to hear you; but if it be a question of words and names and of your law, look ye to it, for i will be no judge of such matters." he thus summarily and contemptuously dismissed the complaint, without however taking any notice of paul. the mistake of gallio was that he did not comprehend that christianity was a subject infinitely greater than a mere jewish sect, with which, in common with educated romans, he confounded it. in his indifference however he was not unlike other roman governors, of whom he was one of the justest and most enlightened. in reference to the whole scene, canon farrar forcibly remarks that this distinguished and cultivated gallio "flung away the greatest opportunity of his life, when he closed the lips of the haggard jewish prisoner whom his decision had rescued from the clutches of his countrymen;" for paul was prepared with a speech which would have been more valued, and would have been more memorable, than all the acts of gallio's whole government. while paul was pursuing his humble labors with the poor converts of corinth, about the year 53 a.d., a memorable event took place in his career, which has had an immeasurable influence on the christian world. being unable personally to visit, as he desired, the churches he had founded, paul began to write to them letters to instruct and confirm them in the faith. the apostle's first epistle was to his beloved brethren, in thessalonica,--the first of that remarkable series of theological essays which in all subsequent ages have held their position as fundamentally important in the establishment of christian doctrine. they are luminous, profound, original, remarkable alike for vigor of style and depth of spiritual significance. they are not moral essays like those of confucius, nor mystic and obscure speculations like those of buddha, but grand treatises on revealed truth, written, as it were, with his heart's blood, and vivid as fire in a dark night. in these epistles we see also paul's intense personality, his frank egotism, his devotion to his work, his sincerity and earnestness, his affectionate nature, his tolerant and catholic spirit, and also his power of sarcasm, his warm passions, and his unbending will. he enjoins the necessity of faith, which is a gift, with the practice of virtues that appeal to consciousness and emanate from love and purity of heart. these letters are exhortations to a lofty life and childlike acceptance of revealed truths. the apostle warns his little flock against the evils that surrounded them, and which so easily beset them,--especially unchastity and drunkenness, and strifes, bickerings, slanders, and retaliations. he exhorts them to unceasing prayer, the feeling of constant dependence, and hence the supreme need of divine grace to keep them from falling, and to enable them to grow in spiritual strength. he promises as the fruit of spiritual victories immeasurable joys, not only amid present evils, but in the glorious future when the mortal shall put on immortality. especially and repeatedly does he urge them to "have also that mind which was in christ jesus," showing itself in humility, willingness to serve others, unselfish consideration of others, even the preference of others' interests before their own,--a combination of the homely practical with the divinely ideal, such as the world had never learned from any earlier philosophy of life. paul at last felt that he must revisit the earlier churches, especially those of syria. it was three years since he had left antioch. but more than all, he wished to consult with his brethren in jerusalem, and to be present at the feast of the passover. bidding an affectionate adieu to his christian friends, he set out for the little seaport of cenchrea, accompanied by aquila and his wife priscilla, and then set sail for ephesus, on his way to jerusalem. in his haste to reach the end of his journey he did not tarry at ephesus, but took another vessel, and arrived at caesarea without any recorded accident. nor did he make a long visit at jerusalem, probably to avoid a rupture with james, the head of the church in that city, whose views about jewish ceremonials, as already noted, differed from his. paul returned again to ephesus, where he made a sojourn of three years, following his trade for a living, while he founded a church in that city of necromancers, sorcerers, magicians, courtesans, mimics, flute-players,--a city abandoned to asiatic sensualities and superstitious rites; an exceedingly wicked and luxurious city, yet famous for arts, especially for the grandest temple ever erected by the greeks, one of the seven wonders of the world. it was in the most abandoned capitals, with mixed populations, that the greatest triumphs of christianity were achieved. antioch, corinth, and ephesus were more favorable to the establishment of christian churches than jerusalem and athens. but the trials of paul in ephesus, the capital of asia minor, the most celebrated of all the ionian cities,--"more hellenic than antioch, more oriental than corinth, more wealthy than thessalonica, more populous than athens,"--were incessant and discouraging, since it was the headquarters of pagan superstitions, and of all forms of magical imposture. as usual, he was reviled and slandered by the jews; but he was also at this time an object of intense hatred to the priests and image-makers of the temple of diana, troubled in mind by evil reports concerning the converts he had made in other cities, physically weak and depressed by repeated attacks of sickness, oppressed by cares and labors, exposed to constant dangers, his life an incessant mortification and suffering, "killed all the day long," carrying about him wherever he went "the deadness of the crucified christ." paul's labors in ephesus were nevertheless successful. he made many converts and exercised an extraordinary influence,--among other things causing magicians voluntarily to burn their own costly books, as savonarola afterward made a bonfire of vanities at florence. his sojourn was cut short at length by the riot which was made by the various persons who were directly or indirectly supported by the revenues of the temple,--a mongrel mob, brought to terms by the tact of the town clerk, who reminded the howling dervishes and angry silversmiths of the punishment which might be inflicted on them by the roman proconsul for raising a disturbance and breaking the law. yet paul with difficulty escaped from ephesus and departed again for greece, not however until he had written his extraordinary epistles to the corinthians, who had sadly departed from his teachings both in morals and doctrine, either through ignorance, or in consequence of the depravity which they had but imperfectly conquered. the infant churches were deplorably split into factions, "the result of the visits from various teachers who succeeded paul, and who built on his foundations very dubious materials by way of superstructure,"--even apollos himself, an alexandrian jew baptized by the apostle john, the most eloquent and attractive preacher of the day, who turned everybody's head. in the churches women rose to give their opinions without being veiled, as if they were greek courtesans; the agapae, or love-feasts, had degenerated into luxurious banquets; and unchastity, the peculiar vice of the corinthians, went unrebuked. these evils paul rebukes, and lays down rules for the faithful in reference to marriage, to the position of women, to the observance of the lord's supper, and sundry other things, enjoining forbearance and love. his chapter in reference to charity is justly regarded by all writers and commentators as the nearest approach in christian literature to the sermon on the mount. scarcely less remarkable is the chapter on death and the resurrection, shedding more light on that great subject than all other writers combined in heathen and christian annals,--one of the profoundest treatises ever written by mortal man, and which can be explained only as the result of a supernatural revelation. paul's second sojourn in macedonia lasted only six months; this time he spent in going from city to city confirming the infant churches, remaining longest in thessalonica and philippi, where his most faithful converts were found. here titus joined him, bringing good news from corinth. still, there were dissensions and evils in that troublesome church which called for a second letter. in this letter he sets forth, not in the spirit of egotism, the various sufferings and perils he had endured, few of which are alluded to by luke: "of the jews five times received i forty stripes save one; thrice was i beaten with rods; once was i stoned; thrice i suffered shipwreck; a night and a day have i spent in the deep; in journeyings often; in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own race, in perils from the gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in toil and weariness, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often; besides anxiety for all the churches." it was probably at the close of the year 57 a.d. that paul set out for corinth, with titus, timothy, sosthenes, and other companions. during the three months he remained in that city he probably wrote his epistle to the galatians and his epistle to the romans,--the latter the most profound of all his writings, setting forth the sum and substance of his theology, in which the great doctrine of justification by faith is severely elaborated. the whole epistle is a war on pagan philosophy, the insufficiency of good works without faith,--the lever by which in later times wyclif, huss, luther, calvin, knox, and saint cyran overthrew a pharisaic system of outward righteousness. in the epistle to the galatians paul speaks with unusual boldness and earnestness, severely rebuking them for their departure from the truth, and reiterating with dogmatic ardor the inutility of circumcision as of the law abrogated by christ, with whom, in the liberty which he proclaimed, there is neither jew nor greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in him. and paul reminds them,--a bitter pill to the jews,--that this is taught in the promise made to abraham four hundred and fifty years before the law was declared by moses, by which promise all races and tribes and people are to be blessed to remotest generations. this epistle not only breathes the largest christian liberty,--the equality of all men before god,--but it asserts, as in the epistle to the romans, with terrible distinctness, that salvation is by faith in christ and not by deeds of the law, which is only a schoolmaster to prepare the way for the ascendency of jesus. i need not dwell on these two great epistles, which embody the substance of the pauline theology received by the church for eighteen hundred years, and which can never be abrogated so long as paul is regarded as an authority in christian doctrine. i return to a brief notice of paul's last visit to jerusalem, which was made against the expostulations of his friends and disciples in ephesus, who gathered around him weeping, knowing well that they never would see his face again. but he was inflexible in his resolution, declaring that he had no fear of chains, and was ready to die at jerusalem for the name of jesus. why he should have persisted in his resolution, so full of danger; why he should again have thrown himself into the hands of his bitterest enemies, thirsty for his blood,--we do not know, for he had no new truth to declare. but the brethren were forced to yield to his strong will, and all they could do was to provide him with a sufficient escort to shield him from ordinary dangers on the way. the long voyage from ephesus was prosperous but tedious, and on the last day before the pentecostal feast, in may, in the year 58 a.d., paul for the fifth time entered jerusalem. his meeting with the elders, under the presidency of james,--"the stern, white-robed, ascetic, mysterious prophet,"--was cold. his personal friends in jerusalem were few, and his enemies were numerous, powerful, and bitter; for he had not only emancipated himself from the jewish law, with all its rites and ceremonies, but had made it of no account in all the churches he had founded. what had he naturally to expect from the zealots for that law but a renewed persecution? even the jewish christians gave no thanks for the splendid contribution which paul had gathered in asia for the relief of their poor. nor was there any exultation among them when paul narrated his successful labors among the gentiles. they pretended to rejoice, but added, "you observe, brother, how many myriads of the jews there are that have embraced the faith, and they are all zealots for the law. and we are informed that thou teachest all the jews that are among the gentiles to forsake moses." there was no cordiality among the jewish elders of the christian community, and deadly hostility among the unconverted jews, for they had doubtless heard of paul's marvellous career. jerusalem was then full of strangers, and the jews of asia recognizing paul in the temple, raised a disturbance, pretending that he was a profaner of the sacred edifice. the crowd of fanatics seized him, dragged him out of the temple, and set about to kill him. but the roman authorities interfered, and rescuing him from the hands of the infuriated mob, bore him to the castle, the tower of antonia. when they arrived at the stairs of the tower, paul begged the tribune to be allowed to speak to the angry and demented crowd. the request was granted, and he made a speech in hebrew, narrating his early history and conversion; but when he came to his mission to the gentiles, the uproar was renewed, the people shouting, "away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live!" and paul would have been bound and scourged, had he not proclaimed that he was a roman citizen. on the next day the roman magistrate summoned the chief priests and the sanhedrim, to give paul an opportunity to make his defence in the matter of which he was accused. ananias the high-priest presided, and the roman tribune was present at the proceedings, which were tumultuous and angry. paul seeing that the assembly was made up of pharisees, sadducees, and hostile parties, made no elaborate defence, and the tribune dissolved the assembly; but forty of the most hostile and fanatical formed a conspiracy, and took a solemn oath not to eat or drink until they had assassinated him. the plot reached the ears of a nephew of paul, who revealed it to the tribune. the officer listened attentively to all the details, and at once took his resolution to send paul to caesarea, both to get him out of the hands of the jews, and to have him judged by the procurator felix. accordingly, accompanied by an escort of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen of the guard, paul was sent by night, secretly, to the roman capital of the province. he entered the city in the course of the next day, and was at once led to the presence of the governor. felix, as procurator, ruled over judaea with the power of a king. he had been a freedman of the emperor claudius, and was allied by marriage to claudius himself,--an ambitious, extortionate, and infamous governor. felix was obliged to give paul a fair trial, and after five days the indomitable missionary was confronted with accusers, among whom appeared the high-priest ananias. they associated with them a lawyer called tertullus, of oratorical gifts, who conducted the case. the principal charges made against paul were that he was a public pest and leader of seditions; that he was a ringleader of the nazarenes (the contemptuous name which the jews gave to the christians); and that he had attempted to profane the temple, which was a capital offence according to the jewish law. paul easily refuted these charges, and had felix been an upright judge he would have dismissed the case; but supposing the apostle to be rich because of the handsome contributions he had brought from asia minor for the poor converts at jerusalem, felix retained paul in the hope of a bribe. a few days after, drusilla, a young woman of great beauty and accomplishments, who had eloped from her husband to be married to felix, was desirous to hear so famous a man as paul explain his faith; and felix, to gratify her curiosity, summoned his distinguished prisoner to discourse before them. paul eagerly embraced the opportunity; but instead of explaining the christian mysteries, he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and retribution,--moral truths which even intelligent heathen accepted, and as to which the consciences of both, his hearers must have tingled; indeed, he discoursed with such matchless boldness and power that felix trembled with fear as he remembered the arts by which he had risen from the condition of a slave, and the extortions and cruelties by which he had become enriched, to say nothing of the lusts and abominations which had disgraced his career. however, he did not set paul free, but kept him a prisoner for two years, in order to gain favor with the jews, or to receive a bribe. porcius festus, the successor of felix, was a just and inflexible man, who arrived at caesarea in the year 60 a.d., when paul was fifty-eight years of age. immediately the enemies of paul, especially the sadducees, renewed their demands to have him again tried; and festus, wishing to be just, ordered the second trial. again paul defended himself with masterly ability, proving that he had done nothing against the jewish law or temple, or against the roman emperor. festus, probably not seeing the aim of the conspirators, was disposed to send paul back to jerusalem to be tried by a jewish court. to prevent this, as at jerusalem condemnation and death would be certain, paul, remembering that he was a roman citizen, fell back on his privilege, and at once appealed to caesar himself. the governor, at first surprised by such an unexpected demand, consulted with his assistants for a moment, and then replied: "thou hast appealed unto caesar, and unto caesar shalt thou go." thus ended the trial of paul; and thus providentially was the way open to him, without expense to himself, to go to rome, which of all cities he wished to visit, and where he hoped to continue, even under bonds and restrictions, his missionary labors. in the meantime, before a ship could be got in readiness to transport him and other prisoners to rome, herod agrippa ii., with his sister bernice, came to caesarea to pay a visit to the new governor. conversation naturally turned upon the late extraordinary trial, and agrippa expressed a desire to hear the prisoner speak, for he had heard much about him. festus willingly acceded to this wish, and the next day paul was again summoned before the king and the procurator. agrippa and bernice appeared in great pomp with their attendants; all the officers of the army and the principal men of the city were also present. it was the most splendid audience that paul had ever addressed. he was equal to the occasion, and delivered a discourse on his familiar topics,--his own miraculous conversion and his mission to the gentiles to preach the crucified and risen christ,--things new to festus, who thought that paul was visionary, and had lost his balance from excess of learning. agrippa, however, familiar with jewish law and the prophecies concerning the messiah, was much impressed with paul's eloquence, and exclaimed: "almost thou persuadest me to be a christian!" when the assembly broke up, agrippa said, "this man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto caesar." paul, however, did not wish to be set at liberty among bitter and howling enemies; he preferred to go to rome, and would not withdraw his appeal. so in due time he embarked for italy under the charge of a centurion, accompanied with other prisoners and his friends timothy, luke, and aristarchus of thessalonica. the voyage from caesarea to italy was a long one, and in the autumn was a dangerous one, as in paul's case it unfortunately proved. the following spring, however, after shipwreck and divers perils and manifold fatigues, paul arrived at rome, in the year 61 a.d., in the seventh year of the emperor nero. here the centurion handed paul over to the prefect of the praetorian guards, by whom he was subjected to a merely nominal custody, although, according to roman custom, he was chained to a soldier. but he was treated with great lenity, was allowed to have lodgings, to receive his friends freely, and to hold christian meetings in his own house; and no one molested him. for two years paul remained at rome, a fettered prisoner it is true, but cheered by friendly visits, and attended by luke, his "beloved physician" and biographer, by timothy and other devoted disciples. during this second imprisonment paul could see very little outside the praetorian barracks, but his friends brought him the news, and he had ample time to write letters. he had no intercourse with gifted and fortunate romans; his acquaintance was probably confined to the praetorian soldiers, and some of the humbler classes who sought christian instruction. but from this period we date many of his epistles, on which his fame and influence largely rest as a theologian and man of genius. among those which he wrote from rome were the epistles to the colossians, the ephesians, and many pastoral letters like those written to philemon, titus, and timothy. we know but little of the life of paul after his arrival at rome, for at this point saint luke closes his narrative, and all after this is conjecture and tradition.[4] but the main part of paul's work was accomplished when he was first sent to rome as a prisoner to be tried in the imperial courts; and there is but little doubt that he finally met the death he so heroically contemplated, at the hands of the monster nero, who martyred such a vast multitude of paul's fellow-christians. [footnote 4: there has been much doubt as to whether paul was martyred during the three years of this imprisonment, or whether he was acquitted, left rome, visited his beloved churches in macedonia and asia minor, went to preach the gospel in spain, and was again arrested, taken to rome, and there beheaded. the earliest authorities seem to have been agreed upon the second hypothesis; and this is based chiefly upon a statement made by paul's disciple clement to the effect that the apostle had preached in "the extremity of the west" (an expression of roman writers to denote spain), and also on the impossibility of placing certain facts mentioned in the second letter to timothy and the one to titus in the period of the first imprisonment. he was certainly tried, defended himself, and he may have been at first acquitted.] at jerusalem and at antioch he had vindicated the freedom of the gentile from the yoke of the levitical law; in his letters to the romans and galatians he had proclaimed both to jew and gentile that they were not under the law, but under grace. during the space of twenty years paul had preached the gospel of jesus as the christ in the chief cities of the world, and had formulated the truths of christianity. what marvellous labors! but it does not appear that this apostle's extraordinary work was fully appreciated in his day, certainly not by the jewish christians at jerusalem; nor does it appear even that his pre-eminence among the apostles was conceded until the third and fourth centuries. he himself was often sad and discouraged in not seeing a larger success, yet recognized himself as a layer of foundations. like our modern missionaries, paul simply sowed the seed; the fruit was not to be gathered in until centuries after his death. before he died, as is seen in his second letter to timothy, many of his friends and disciples deserted him, and he was left almost alone. he had to defend himself single-handed against the capricious tyrant who ruled the world, and who wished to cast on the christians the stain of his greatest crime, the conflagration of his capital. as we have said, all details pertaining to the life of paul after his arrival at rome are simply conjectural, and although interesting, they cannot give us the satisfaction of certainty. but in closing, after enumerating the labors and writings of this great apostle, it is not inopportune to say a few words about his remarkable character, although i have now and again alluded to his personal traits in the course of this narrative. paul is the most prominent figure of all the great men who have adorned, or advanced the interest of, the christian church. great pulpit orators, renowned theologians, profound philosophers, immortal poets, successful reformers, and enlightened monarchs have never disputed his intellectual ascendency; to all alike he has been a model and a marvel. the grand old missionary stands out in history as a matchless example of christian living, a sure guide in christian doctrine. no more favored mortal is ever likely to appear; he is the counterpart of moses as a divine teacher to all generations. the popes may exalt saint peter as the founder of their spiritual empire, but when their empire as an institution shall crumble away, as all institutions must which are not founded on the "rock" which it was the mission of apostles to proclaim, paul will stand out the most illustrious of all christian teachers. as a man paul had his faults, but his virtues were transcendent; and these virtues he himself traced to divine grace, enabling him to conquer his infirmities and prejudices, and to perform astonishing labors, and to endure no less marvellous sufferings. his humanity was never lost in his discouraging warfare; he sympathized with human sorrows and afflictions; he was tolerant, after his conversion, of human infirmities, while enjoining a severe morality. he was a man of native genius, with profound insight into spiritual truth. trained in philosophy and disputation, his gentleness and tact in dealing with those who opposed him are a lesson to all controversialists. his voluntary sufferings have endeared him to the heart of the world, since they were consecrated to the welfare of the world he sought to enlighten. as an encouragement to others, he enumerates the calamities which happened to him from his zeal to serve mankind, but he never complains of them or regards them as a mystery, or as anything but the natural result of unappreciated devotion. he was more cheerful than confucius, who felt that his life had been a failure; more serene than plato when surrounded by admiring followers. he regarded every christian man as a brother and a friend. he associated freely with women, without even calling out a sneer or a reproach. he taught principles of self-control rather than rules of specific asceticism, and hence recommended wine to timothy and encouraged friendship between men and women, when intemperance and unchastity were the scandal and disgrace of the age; although so far as himself was concerned, he would not eat meat, if thereby he should give offence to the weakest of his weak-minded brethren. he enjoined filial piety, obedience to rulers, and kindness to servants as among the highest duties of life. he was frugal, but independent and hospitable; he had but few wants, and submitted patiently to every inconvenience. he was the impersonation of gentleness, sympathy, and love, although a man of iron will and indomitable resolution. he claimed nothing but the right to speak his honest opinions, and the privilege to be judged according to the laws. he magnified his office, but only the more easily to win men to his noble cause. to this great cause he was devoted heart and soul, without ever losing courage, or turning back for a moment in despondency or fear. he was as courageous as he was faithful; as indifferent to reproach as he was eager for friendship. as a martyr he was peerless, since his life was a protracted martyrdom. he was a hero, always gallantly fighting for the truth whatever may have been the array and howling of his foes; and when wounded and battered by his enemies he returned to the fight for his principles with all the earnestness, but without the wrath, of a knight of chivalry. he never indulged in angry recriminations or used unseemly epithets, but was unsparing in his denunciation of sin,--as seen in his memorable description of the vices of the romans. self-sacrifice was the law of his life. his faith was unshaken in every crisis and in every danger. it was this which especially fitted him, as well as his ceaseless energies and superb intellect, to be a leader of mankind. to paul, and to paul more than to any other apostle, was given the exalted privilege of being the recognized interpreter of christian doctrine for both philosophers and the people, for all coming ages; and at the close of his career, worn out with labor and suffering, yet conscious of the services which he had rendered and of the victories he had won, and possibly in view of approaching martyrdom, he was enabled triumphantly to say: "i have fought a good fight; i have finished my course; i have kept the faith. henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day." [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. the world's greatest books joint editors arthur mee editor and founder of the book of knowledge j.a. hammerton editor of harmsworth's universal encyclopædia vol. xi ancient history mediæval history * * * * * table of contents ancient history egypt maspero, gaston dawn of civilization struggle of the nations passing of the empires jews josephus, flavius antiquities of the jews wars of the jews milman, henry history of the jews greece herodotus history thucydides peloponnesian war xenophon anabasis grote, george history of greece schliemann, heinrich troy and its remains rome cæsar, julius commentaries on the gallic war tacitus, publius cornelius annals sallust, catos crispus conspiracy of catiline gibbon, edward decline and fall of the roman empire mommsen, theodor history of rome mediæval history holy roman empire gibbon, edward the holy roman empire europe guizot, f.p.g. history of civilization in europe hallam, henry view of the state of europe during the middle ages egypt lane-poole, stanley egypt in the middle ages england holinshed, raphael chronicles of england, scotland and ireland freeman, e.a. norman conquest of england froude, james anthony history of england a complete index of the world's greatest books will be found at the end of volume xx. * * * * * acknowledgment acknowledgment and thanks for permitting the use of the following selections--"the dawn of civilisation," "the struggle of the nations" and "the passing of the empires," by gaston maspero--which appear in this volume, are hereby tendered to the society for promoting christian knowledge, of london, england. * * * * * ancient history gaston maspero the dawn of civilisation gaston camille charles maspero, born on june 23, 1846, in paris, is one of the most renowned of european experts in philology and egyptology, having in great part studied his special subjects on oriental ground. after occupying for several years the chair of egyptology in the école des hautes études at the sorbonne in paris, he became, in 1874, professor of egyptian philology and archæology at the collège de france. from 1881 to 1886 he acted in egypt as director of the boulak museum. it was under his superintendence that this museum became enriched with its choicest antique treasures. dr. maspero retired in 1886, but in 1899 again went to egypt as director of excavations. his works are of the utmost value, his skill in marshalling facts and deducting legitimate inferences being unrivalled. his masterpiece is an immense work, with the general title of "history of the ancient peoples of the classic east," divided into three parts, each complete in itself: (1) "the dawn of civilisation"; (2) "the struggle of the nations"; (3) "the passing of the empires." _i.--the nile and egypt_ 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. where the delta ends, egypt proper begins. 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 by two ranges of hills, roughly parallel at a mean distance of about twelve 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 own ancient bed, the stream now makes a way through its own thick deposits of mud. the bulk of its waters keep to the east, and constitutes the true nile, the "great river" of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. at khartoum 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--_iauma, ioma_ was the name by which they called it. the egyptians, therefore, never sought its source. it was said to be of supernatural origin, to rise in paradise, to traverse burning regions inaccessible to man, and afterwards to fall into a sea whence it made its way to egypt. the sea mentioned in all the 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 nu; 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. 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 but portly body, such as befits the rich of high lineage. sometimes water springs from his breast; sometimes he presents a frog, or libation of vases, or bears a tray full of offerings of flowers, corn, fish, or geese. the inscriptions call him "hapi, 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, the other blue. the former, who wears a cluster of lotus-flowers on his head, presides over egypt of the south; the latter has a bunch of papyrus for his headdress, and watches over the delta. two goddesses, corresponding to the two hapis--mirit qimait for the upper, and mirit-mihit for the lower egypt--personified the banks of the river. they are represented with outstretched arms, as though begging for the water that should make them fertile. _ii.--the gods of egypt_ the incredible number of religious scenes to be found represented on the ancient monuments of egypt is at first glance very striking. nearly every illustration in the works of egyptologists shows us the figure of some deity. one would think the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, with just enough men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship. each of these deities represented a function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe. thus, naprit was identified with the ripe ear of wheat; maskhonit appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth; and raninit presided over the naming and nurture of the newly born. in penetrating this mysterious world we are confronted by an actual jumble of gods, many being of foreign origin; and these, with the indigenous deities, made up nations of gods. this mixed pantheon had its grades of noble princes and kings, each of its members representing one of the forces constituting the world. some appeared in human form; others as animals; others as combinations of human and animal forms. the sky-gods, like the earth-gods, were separated into groups, the one composed of women: hathor of denderah, or nit of sais; the other composed of men identical with horus, or derived from him: anhuri-shu of sebennytos and thinis; harmerati, or horus, of the two eyes, at pharbæthos; har-sapedi, or horus, of the zodiacal light, in the wady tumilat; and, finally, harhuditi at edfu. ra, the solar disc, was enthroned at heliopolis; and sun-gods were numerous among the home deities. horus the sun, and ra the sun-god of heliopolis, so permeated each other that none could say where the one began and the other ended. each of the feudal gods representing the sun cherished pretensions to universal dominion. the goddesses shared in supreme power. isis was entitled lady and mistress of buto, as hathor was at denderah, and as nit was at sais. the animal-gods shared omnipotence with those in human form. each of the feudal divinities appropriated two companions and formed a trinity; or, as it is generally called, a triad. often the local deity was content with one wife and one son, but often he was united to two goddesses. the system of triads enhanced, rather than lowered, the prestige of the feudal gods. 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, whose mother nursed him, offering him her breast. the gods had body and soul, like men; they had bones, muscles, flesh and blood; they hungered and thirsted, ate and drank; they had our passions, griefs, joys and infirmities; and they were subject to age, decrepitude and death, though they lived very far beyond the term of life of men. the _sa_, a mysterious fluid, circulated through their members, and carried with it divine vigour; and this they could impart to men, who thus might become gods. many of the pharaohs became deities. the king who wished to become impregnated with the divine _sa_ sat before the statue of the god in order that this principle might be infused into him. the gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which death so plentifully bestows on men. the gods died; each nome possessed the mummy and the tomb of its dead deity. at thinis there was the mummy of anhuri in its tomb, at mendes the mummy of osiris, at heliopolis that of tumu. usually, by dying, the god became another deity. ptah of memphis became sokaris; uapuaitu, the jackal of siut, was changed into anubis. osiris first represented the wild and fickle nile of primitive times; but was soon transformed into a benefactor to humanity, the supremely good being, unnofriu, onnophris. he was supposed to assume the shapes not only of man, but of rams and bulls, or even of water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, and cranes. his companion goddess was isis, the cow, or woman with cow's horns, who personified the earth, and was mother of horus. there were countless gods of the people: trees, serpents and family fetishes. fine single sycamores, flourishing as if by miracle amid the sand, were counted divine, and worshipped by egyptians of all ranks, who made them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers, vegetables and water. the most famous of them all, the sycamore of the south, used to be regarded as the living body of hathor on earth. each family possessed gods and fetishes, which had been pointed out by some fortuitous meeting with an animal or an object; perhaps by a dream and often by sudden intuition. _iii.--legendary history of egypt_ the legendary history of egypt begins with the heliopolitan enneads, or traditions of the divine dynasties of ra, shu, osiris, sit and horus. great space is taken up with the fabulous history of ra, the first king of egypt, who allows himself to be duped and robbed by isis, destroys rebellious men, and ascends to heaven. he dwelt in heliopolis, where his court was mainly composed of gods and goddesses. in the morning he went forth in his barque, amid the acclamations of the crowd, made his accustomed circuit of the world, and returned to his home at the end of twelve hours after the journey. in his old age he became the subject of the wiles of isis, who poisoned him, and so secured his departure from earth. he was succeeded by shu and sibu, between whom the empire of the universe was divided. the fantastic legends concocted by the priests go on to relate how at length egypt was civilised by osiris and isis. by osiris the people were taught agriculture; isis weaned them from cannibalism. osiris was slain by the red-haired and jealous demon, sit-typhon, and then egypt was divided between horus and sit as rivals; and so it consisted henceforth of two kingdoms, of which one, that of the north, duly recognised horus, son of isis, as its patron deity; the other, that of the south, placed itself under the supreme protection of sit-nubiti, the god of ombos. elaborate and intricate and hopelessly confused are the fables relating to the osirian embalmment, and to the opening of the kingdom of osiris to the followers of horus. souls did not enter it without examination and trial, as it is the aim of the famous book of the dead to show. before gaining access to this paradise each of them had to prove that it had during earthly life belonged to a friend or to a vassal of osiris, and had served horus in his exile, and had rallied to his banner from the very beginning of the typhonian wars. to menes of thinis tradition ascribes the honour of fusing the two egypts into one empire, and of inaugurating the reign of the human dynasties. but all we know of this first of the pharaohs, beyond his existence, is practically nothing, and the stories related of him are mere legends. the real history of the early centuries eludes our researches. the history as we have it is divided into three periods: 1. the memphite period, which is usually called the "ancient empire," from the first to the tenth dynasty: kings of memphite origin were rulers over the whole of egypt during the greater part of this epoch. 2. the theban period, from the eleventh to the twentieth dynasty. it is divided into two parts by the invasion of the shepherds (sixteenth dynasty). 3. saite period, from the twenty-first to the thirtieth dynasty, divided again into two parts by the persian conquest, the first saite period, from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth dynasty; the second saite period, from the twenty-eighth to the thirtieth dynasty. _iv.--political constitution of egypt_ between the fayum and the apex of the delta, the libyan range expands and forms a vast and slightly undulating table-land, which runs parallel to the nile for nearly thirty leagues. the great sphinx harmakhis has mounted guard over its northern extremity ever since the time of the followers of horus. in later times, a chapel of alabaster and rose granite was erected alongside the god; temples were built here and there in the more accessible places, and round these were grouped the tombs of the whole country. the bodies of the common people, usually naked and uncoffined, were thrust into the sand at a depth of barely three feet from the surface. those of the better class rested in mean rectangular chambers, hastily built of yellow bricks, without ornaments or treasures; a few vessels, however, of coarse pottery contained the provisions left to nourish the departed during the period of his existence. some of the wealthy class had their tombs cut out of the mountain-side; but the great majority preferred an isolated tomb, a "mastaba," comprised of a chapel above ground, a shaft, and some subterranean vaults. during the course of centuries, the ever-increasing number of tombs formed an almost uninterrupted chain, are rich in inscriptions, statues, and in painted or sculptured scenes, and from the womb, as it were, of these cemeteries, the egypt of the memphite dynasties gradually takes new life and reappears in the full daylight of history. the king stands out boldly in the foreground, and his tall figure towers over all else. he is god to his subjects, who call him "the good-god," and "the great-god," connecting him with ra through the intervening kings. so the pharaohs are blood relations of the sun-god, the "divine double" being infused into the royal infant at birth. the monuments throw full light on the supernatural character of the pharaohs in general, but tell us little of the individual disposition of any king in particular, or of their everyday life. the royal family was very numerous. at least one of the many women of the harem received the title of "great spouse," or queen. her union with the god-king rendered her a goddess. children swarmed in the palace, as in the houses of private citizens, and they were constantly jealous of each other, having no bond of union except common hatred of the son whom the chances of birth had destined to be their ruler. highly complex degrees of rank are revealed to us on the monuments of the people who immediately surrounded the pharaoh. his person was, as it were, minutely subdivided into compartments, each requiring its attendants and their appointed chiefs. his toilet alone gave employment to a score of different trades. the guardianship of the crowns almost approached the dignity of a priesthood, for was not the urseus, which adorned each one, a living goddess? troops of musicians, singers, dancers, buffoons and dwarfs whiled away the tedious hours. many were the physicians, chaplains, soothsayers and magicians. but vast indeed was the army of officials connected with the administration of public affairs. the mainspring of all this machinery was the writer, or, as we call him, the scribe, across whom we come in all grades of the staff. the title of scribe was of no particular value in itself, for everyone was a scribe who knew how to read and write, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. "one has only to be a scribe, for the scribe takes the lead of all," said the wise man. sometimes, however, a talented scribe rose to a high position, like the amten, whose tomb was removed to berlin by lepsius, and who became a favourite of the king and was ennobled. _v.--the memphite empire_ at that time "the majesty of king huni died, and the majesty of king snofrui arose to be a sovereign benefactor over this whole earth." all we know of him is contained in one sentence: he fought against the nomads of sinai, constructed fortresses to protect the eastern frontier of the delta, and made for himself a tomb in the form of a pyramid. snofrui called the pyramid "kha," the rising, the place where the dead pharaoh, identified with the sun, is raised above the world for ever. it was built to indicate the place in which lies a prince, chief, or person of rank in his tribe or province. the worship of snofrui, the first pyramid-builders, was perpetuated from century to century. his popularity was probably great; but his fame has been eclipsed in our eyes by that of the pharaohs of the memphite dynasty who immediately followed him--kheops, khephren and mykerinos. khufui, the kheops of the greeks, was probably son of snofrui. he reigned twenty-three years, successfully defended the valuable mines of copper, manganese and turquoise of the sinaitic peninsula against the bedouin; restored the temple of hathor at dendera; embellished that of babastis; built a sanctuary to the isis of the sphinx; and consecrated there gold, silver and bronze statues of horus and many other gods. other pharaohs had done as much or more; but the egyptians of later dynasties measured the magnificence of kheops by the dimensions of his pyramid at ghizel. the great pyramid was called khuit, the "horizon," in which kheops had to be swallowed up, as his father, the sun, was engulfed every evening in the horizon of the west. of dadufri, his immediate successor, we can probably say that he reigned eight years; but khephren, the next son who succeeded to the throne, erected temples and a gigantic pyramid, like his father. he placed it some 394 feet to the south-west of that of kheops, and called it uiru the great. it is much smaller than its neighbour, but at a distance the difference in height disappears. the pyramid of mykerinos, son and successor of khephren, was considerably inferior in height, but was built with scrupulous art and refined care. the fifth dynasty manifested itself in every respect as the sequel and complement of the fourth. it reckons nine pharaohs, who reigned for a century and a half, and each of them built pyramids and founded cities, and appear to have ruled gloriously. they maintained, and even increased, the power and splendour of egypt. but the history of the memphite empire unfortunately loses itself in legend and fable, and becomes a blank for several centuries. _vi.--the first theban empire_ the principality of the oleander--naru--comprised the territory lying between the nile and the bahr yusuf, a district known to the greeks as the island of heracleopolis. it, moreover, included the whole basin of the fayum, on the west of the valley. attracted by the fertility of the soil, the pharaohs of the older dynasties had from time to time taken up their residence in heracleopolis, the capital of the district of the oleander, and one of them, snofrui, had built his pyramid at medum, close to the frontier of the nome. in proportion as the power of the memphites declined, so did the princes of the oleander grow more vigorous and enterprising; and when the memphite kings passed away, these princes succeeded their former masters and eventually sat "upon the throne of horus." the founder of the ninth dynasty was perhaps khiti i., who ruled over all egypt, and whose name has been found on rocks at the first cataract. his successors seem to have reigned ingloriously for more than a century. the history of this period seems to have been one of confused struggle, the pharaohs fighting constantly against their vassals, and the nobles warring amongst themselves. during the memphite and heracleopolitan dynasties memphis, elephantiné, el-kab and koptos were the principal cities of the country; and it was only towards the end of the eighth dynasty that thebes began to realise its power. the revolt of the theban. princes put an end to the ninth dynasty; and though supported by the feudal powers of central and northern egypt, the tenth dynasty did not succeed in bringing them back to their allegiance, and after a struggle of nearly 200 years the thebans triumphed and brought the two divisions of egypt under their rule. the few glimpses to be obtained of the early history of the first theban dynasty give the impression of an energetic and intelligent race. the kings of the eleventh dynasty were careful not to wander too far from the valley of the nile, concentrating their efforts not on conquest of fresh territory, but on the remedy of the evils from which the country had suffered for hundreds of years. the final overthrow of the heracleopolitan dynasty, and the union of the two kingdoms under the rule of the theban house, are supposed to have been the work of that monthotpu, whose name the egyptians of rameside times inscribed in the royal lists as that of the founder and most illustrious representative of the eleventh dynasty. the leader of the twelfth dynasty, amenemhait i., was of another stamp, showing himself to be a pharaoh conscious of his own divinity and determined to assert it. he inspected the whole land, restored what he found in ruins, crushed crime, settled the bounds of towns, and established for each its frontiers. recognising that thebes lay too far south to be a suitable place of residence for the lord of all egypt, amenemhait proceeded to establish himself in the heart of the country in imitation of the glorious pharaohs from whom he claimed descent. he took up his abode a little to the south of dashur, in the palace of titoui. having restored peace to his country, the king in the twentieth year of his reign, when he was growing old, raised his son usirtasen, then very young, to the co-regency with himself. when, ten years later, the old king died, his son was engaged in a war against the libyans. he reigned alone for thirty-two years. the twelfth dynasty lasted 213 years; and its history can be ascertained with greater certainty and completeness than that of any other dynasty which ruled egypt, although we are far from having any adequate idea of its great achievements, for unfortunately the biographies of its eight sovereigns and the details of their interminable wars are very imperfectly known. uncertainty again shrouds the history of the country after the reign of sovkhoptu i. the twentieth dynasty contained, so it is said, sixty kings, who reigned for a period of over 453 years. the nofirhoptus and sovkhoptus continued to all appearances both at home and abroad the work so ably begun by the amenemhaits and the usirtasens. during the thirteenth dynasty art and everything else in egypt were fairly prosperous, but wealth exercised an injurious effect on artistic taste. during this dynasty we hear nothing of the inhabitants of the sinaitic peninsula to the east, or of the libyans to the west; it was in the south, in ethiopia, that the pharaohs expended all their superfluous energy. the middle basin of the nile as far as gebel-barkal was soon incorporated with egypt, and the population became quickly assimilated. sovkhoptu iii., who erected colossal statues of himself at tanis, bubastis and thebes, was undisputed master of the whole nile valley, from near the spot where it receives its last tributary to where it empties itself into the sea. the making of egypt was finally accomplished in his time. the fourteenth dynasty, however, consists of a line of seventy-five kings, whose mutilated names appear on the turin papyrus. these shadowy pharaohs followed each other in rapid sequence, some reigning only a few months, others for certainly not more than two and three years. meantime, during what appears to have been an era of rivalries between pretenders, mutually jealous of and deposing one another, usurpers in succession seizing the crown without strength to keep it, the feudal lords displayed more than their old restlessness. the nomad tribes began to show growing hostility on the frontier, and the peoples of the tigris and euphrates were already pushing their vanguards into central syria. while egypt had been bringing the valley of the nile and the eastern corner of africa into subjection, chaldæa had imposed not only language and habits, but also her laws upon the whole of that part of eastern asia which separated her from egypt. thus the time was rapidly approaching when these two great civilised powers of the ancient world would meet each other face to face and come into fierce and terrible collision. _vii.--ancient chaldæa_ the chaldæan account of genesis is contained on fragments of tablets discovered and deciphered in 1875 by george smith. these tell legends of the time when "nothing which was called heaven existed above, and when nothing below had as yet received the name of earth. apsu, the ocean, who was their first father, and chaos-tiamat, who gave birth to them all, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rushes which bore no fruit. in the time when the gods were not created, lakhmu and lakhamu were the first to appear and waxed great for ages." then came anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; inlil-bel, the king of the earth; ea, the sovereign of the waters and the personification of wisdom. each of them duplicated himself, anu into anat, bel into belit, ea into damkina, and united himself to the spouse whom he had produced from himself. other divinities sprang from these fruitful pairs, and, the impulse once given, the world was rapidly peopled by their descendants. sin, samash and ramman, who presided respectively over the sun, moon and air, were all three of equal rank; next came the lords of the planets, ninib, merodach, nergal, ishtar, the warrior-goddess, and nebo; then a whole army of lesser deities who ranged themselves around anu as around a supreme master. discord arose. the first great battle of the gods was between tiamat and merodach. in this fearful conflict tiamat was destroyed. splitting her body into halves, the conqueror hung up one on high, and this became the heavens; the other he spread out under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe as men have known it. merodach regulated the movements of the sun and divided the year into twelve months. the heavens having been put in order, he set about peopling the earth. many such fables concerning the cosmogony were current among the races of the lower euphrates, who seem to have belonged to three different types. the most important were the semites, who spoke a dialect akin to armenian, hebrew and phoenician. side by side with these the monuments give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, whom we provisionally call sumerians, who came, it is said, from some northern country, and brought with them a curious system of writing which, adopted by ten different nations, has preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the empires which rose and fell in western asia before the persian conquest. the cities of these semites and sumerians were divided into two groups, one in the south, near the sea, the other more to the north, where the euphrates and the tigris are separated by a narrow strip of land. the southern group consisted of seven, eridu lying nearest the coast. uru was the most important. lagash was to the north of eridu. the northern group consisted of nipur, "the incomparable," borsip, babylon (gate of the god and residence of life, the only metropolis of the euphrates region of which posterity never lost reminiscence), kishu, kuta, agade, and, lastly, the two sipparas, that of shamash, and that of annuit. the earliest chaldæan civilisation was confined almost to the banks of the lower euphrates; except at the northern boundary it did not reach the tigris and did not cross the river. separated from the rest of the world, on the east by the vast marshes bordering on the river, on the north by the mesopotamian table-land, on the west by the arabian desert, it was able to develop its civilisation as egypt had done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace. according to ferossasi the first king was aloros of babylon. he was chosen by the god oannes, and reigned supernaturally for ten sari, or 36,000 years, each saros being 3,600 years. nine kings follow, each in this mythical record reigning an enormous period. then took place the great deluge, 691,000 years after the creation, in consequence of the wickedness of men, who neglected the worship of the gods, and excited their wrath. shamashnapishtim, king at this time in shurippak, was saved miraculously in a great ship. concerning him and his voyage strange fables are recorded. after the deluge, 86 kings ruled during 34,080 years. one of these was nimrod, the mighty hunter of the bible, who appears as gilgamesh, king of uruk, and is the hero of extraordinary adventures. history proper begins with sargon the elder, king at the first in agade, who soon annexed babylon, sippara, kishu, uruk, kuta and nipur. his brilliant career was like an anticipation of that of the still more glorious life of sargon of nineveh. his son, naramsin, succeeded him about 3750 b.c. he conquered elam and was a great builder. after him the most famous king of that epoch was gudea, of lagash, the prince of whom we possess the greatest number of monuments. but in these records we have but the dust of history rather than history itself. the materials are scanty in the extreme and the framework also is wanting. _viii.--the temples and the gods of chaldæa_ the cities of the euphrates attract no attention, like those of egypt, by the magnificence of their ruins. they are merely heaps of rubbish in which no architectural outline can be traced--mounds of stiff greyish clay, containing the remains of the vast structures that were built of bricks set in mortar or bitumen. stone was not used as in egypt. while the egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area, the chaldæan temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible. these "ziggurats" were composed of several immense cubes piled up on one another, and diminishing in size up to the small shrine by which they were crowned, and wherein the god himself was supposed to dwell. the gods of the euphrates, like those of the nile, constituted a countless multitude of visible and invisible beings, distributed into tribes and empires throughout all the regions of the universe; but, whereas in egypt they were, on the whole, friendly to man, in chaldæa they for the most part pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in order to destroy him. whether semite or sumerian, the gods, like those of egypt, were not abstract personages, but each contained in himself one of the principal elements of which our universe is composed--earth, air, sky, sun, moon and stars. the state religion, which all the inhabitants of the same city were solemnly bound to observe, included some dozen gods, but the private devotion of individuals supplemented this cult by vast additions, each family possessing its own household gods. animals never became objects of worship as in egypt; some of them, however, as the bull and the lion, were closely allied to the gods. if the idea of uniting all these gods into a single supreme one ever crossed the mind of a chaldæan theologian, it never spread to the people as a whole. among all the thousands of tablets or inscribed stones on which we find recorded prayers, we have as yet discovered no document containing the faintest allusion to a divine unity. the temples were miniature reproductions of the arrangements of the universe. the "ziggurat" represented in its form the mountain of the world, and the halls ranged at its feet resembled approximately the accessory parts of the world; the temple of merodach at babylon comprised them all up to the chambers of fate, where the sun received every morning the tablets of destiny. every individual was placed, from the very moment of his birth, under the protection of a god or goddess, of whom he was the servant, or rather the son. these deities accompanied him by day and by night to guard him from the evil genii ready to attack him on every side. the chaldæans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them in the other world as the egyptians possessed. the chaldæan hades is a dark country surrounded by seven high walls, and is approached by seven gates, each guarded by a pitiless warder. two deities rule within it--nergal, "the lord of the great city," and peltis-allat, "the lady of the great land," whither everything which has breathed in this world descends after death. a legend relates that allat reigned alone in hades and was invited by the gods to a feast which they had prepared in heaven. owing to her hatred of the light she refused, sending a message by her servant, namtar, who acquitted himself, with such a bad grace, that anu and ea were incensed against his mistress, and commissioned nergal to chastise her. he went, and finding the gates of hell open, dragged the queen by her hair from the throne, and was about to decapitate her, but she mollified him by her prayers and saved her life by becoming his wife. the nature of nergal fitted him well to play the part of a prince of the departed; for he was the destroying sun of summer, and the genius of pestilence and battle. his functions in heaven and earth took up so much of his time that he had little leisure to visit his nether kingdom, and he was consequently obliged to content himself with the rôle of providing subjects for it by dispatching thither the thousands of recruits which he gathered daily from the abodes of men or from the field of battle. _ix.--chaldæan civilisation_ the chaldæan kings, unlike their contemporaries, the pharaohs, rarely put forward any pretension to divinity. they contented themselves with occupying an intermediate position between their subjects and the gods. while the ordinary priest chose for himself a single deity as master, the priest-king exercised universal sacerdotal functions. he officiated for merodach here below, and the scrupulously minute devotions daily occupied many hours. on great days of festival or sacrifice they laid aside all insignia of royalty and were clad as ordinary priests. women do not seem to have been honoured in the euphratean regions as in egypt, where the wives of the sovereign were invested with that semi-sacred character that led the women to be associated with the devotions of the man, and made them indispensable auxiliaries in all religious ceremonies. whereas the monuments on the banks of the nile reveal to us princesses sharing the throne of their husbands, whom they embrace with a gesture of frank affection, in chaldæa, the wives of the prince, his mother, sisters, daughters and even his slaves, remain absolutely invisible to posterity. the harem in which they were shut up by force of custom rarely, if ever, opened its doors; the people seldom caught sight of them; and we could count on our fingers the number of these whom the inscriptions mention by name. life was not so pleasant in chaldæa as in egypt. the innumerable promissory notes, the receipted accounts, the contracts of sale and purchase--these cunningly drawn-up deeds which have been deciphered by the hundred, reveal to us a people greedy of gain, exacting, litigious, and almost exclusively absorbed in material concerns. the climate, too, variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike, imposed on the chaldæan painful exactions, and obliged him to work with an energy of which the majority of egyptians would not have felt themselves capable. and the plague of usury raged with equal violence in city and country. in proportion, however, as we are able to bring this wonderful civilisation to light we become more and more conscious that we have indeed little or nothing in common with it. its laws, customs, habits and character, its methods of action and its modes of thought, are so far apart from those of the present day that they seem to belong to a humanity utterly different from our own. it thus happens that while we understand to a shade the classical language of the greeks and of the romans, and can read their works almost without effort, the great primitive literatures of the world, the egyptian and chaldæan, have nothing to offer us for the most part but a sequence of problems to solve or of enigmas to unriddle with patience. * * * * * the struggle of the nations maspero in this work gives us the second volume of his great historical trilogy. he shows in parallel views the part played in the history of the ancient world by the first chaldæan empire, by syria, by the hyksos, or shepherd kings, of egypt, and by the first cossæan kings who established the greatness of nineveh and the assyrian empire. the great theban dynasty is then exhibited in its romantic rise under the pharaohs. maspero writes not as a mere chronicler or reciter of events, but as a philosophical historian. he makes the reader understand how fatally the chronic militarism of these competing empires drained each of its manhood and brought babylon and assyria simultaneously into a hopeless condition of national anæmia. equally pathetic is the picture drawn of the gradual but sure decay of the grand empire of the pharaohs. maspero, with masterly skill, passes a processional of these despots before our eyes. _i.--the chaldæan empire and the hyksos_ some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battlefields of the contending nations which environ them. into such regions neighbouring peoples come to settle their quarrels, and bit by bit they appropriate it, so that at best the only course open to the inhabitants is to join forces with one of the invaders. from remote antiquity this was the experience of syria, which was thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. chaldæa, egypt, assyria and persia in turn presided over its destinies. semites dwelt in the south and the centre, while colonies from beyond the taurus occupied the north. the influence of egypt never penetrated beyond the provinces lying nearest the dead sea. the remaining populations looked rather to chaldæa, and received the continuous impress of the kingdoms of the euphrates. the lords of babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but gradually yielding to the latter as the city increased in power. each ruler was obliged to go in state to the temple of bel merodach within a year of his accession, there to do homage to the divine statue. the long lists of early kings contain semi-legendary names, including those of mythical heroes. towards the end of the twenty-fifth century, however, before the christian era, a dynasty arose of which all the members come within the range of history. the first of these kings, sumuabim, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one or other of the fifteen years of his reign. of the ten kings who followed during the period embraced between the years 2416 b.c. and 2112 b.c., the one who ruled for the longest term was the. famous and fortunate khammurabi (son of sinmuballit), who was on the throne for fifty-five years. while thus the first chaldean empire was being established, egypt, separated from her confines only by a narrow isthmus, loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. but she had strangely declined from her former greatness, and had been attacked and subdued by invaders appearing like a cloud of locusts on the banks of the nile, to whom was applied the name hiq shausu, from which the greeks derived the term hyksos for this people. modern scholars have put forward many conflicting hypotheses as to the identity of this race of conquerors. the monuments represent them with the mongoloid type of feature. the problem remains unsolved, and the origin of the hyksos is as mysterious as ever. about this time took place that entrance into egypt of the beni-isræl, or isrælites, which has since acquired a unique position in the world's history. a comparatively ancient tradition relates that the hebrews arrived in egypt during the reign of aphobis, a hyksos king, doubtless one of the apopi. the hyksos were ousted by a hero named ahmosis after a war of five years. the xviiith dynasty was inaugurated by the pharaohs, whose policy was so aggressive that egypt, attacked by enemies from various quarters, and 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; and the conflict of the nations was about to begin. _ii.--beginning of the egyptian conquest_ the egyptians had no need to anticipate chaldæan interference when, forsaking their ancient traditions, they penetrated for the first time into the heart of syria. babylonian rule ceased to exercise direct control when the line of sovereigns who had introduced it disappeared. when ammisatana died, about the year 2099 b.c., the dynasty of khammurabi became extinct, and kings of the semi-barbarous cossæan race gained the throne which had been occupied since the days of khammurabi by chaldæans of the ancient stock. the cossæan king who seized on babylon was named gandish. he and his tribe came from the mountainous regions of zagros, on the borders of media. the cossæan rule over the countries of the euphrates was doubtless similar in its beginnings to that which the hyksos exercised at first over the nomes of egypt. the cossæan kings did not merely bring with them their army, but their whole nation, who spread over the whole land. as in the case of the hyksos, the barbarian conquerors thus became merged in the more civilised people which they had subdued. but the successors of gandish were unable permanently to retain their ascendancy over all the districts and provinces, and several of these withdrew their allegiance. thus in syria the authority of babylon was no longer supreme when the encroachments of egypt began, and when thutmosis entered the region the native levies which he encountered were by no means formidable. the whole country consisted of a collection of petty states, a complex group of peoples and territories which the egyptians themselves never completely succeeded in disentangling. we are, however, able to distinguish at the present time several of these groups, all belonging to the same family, but possessing different characteristics--the kinsfolk of the hebrews, the children of ishmæl and edom, the moabites and ammonites, the arameans, the khati and the canaanites. the canaanites were the most numerous, and had they been able to confederate under a single king, it would have been impossible for the egyptians to have broken through the barrier thus raised between them and the rest of asia. _iii.--the eighteenth theban dynasty_ the account of the first expedition undertaken by thutmosis i. in asia, a region at that time new to the egyptians, would be interesting if we could lay our hands on it. we know that this king succeeded in reaching on his first campaign a limit which none of his successors was able to surpass. the results of the campaign were of a decisive character, for southern syria accepted its defeat, and gaza was garrisoned as the secure door of asia for future invasions. freed from anxiety in this quarter, pharaoh gave his whole time to the consolidation of his power in ethiopia, where rebellion had become rife. subduing this southern region and thus extending the supremacy of egypt in the regions of the upper nile, thutmosis was able to end his days in the enjoyment of profound peace. thutmosis ii. did not long survive him. his chief wife, queen hatshopsitu, reigned for many years with great ability while the new pharaoh, thutmosis iii., was still a youth. after the death of hatshopsitu, the young pharaoh set out with his army. it was at the beginning of the twenty-fourth year of his reign that he reached gaza. marching forward he reached the spurs of mount carmel and won a decisive victory at megiddo over the allied syrian princes. the inscriptions at karnak contain long lists of the titles of the king's syrian subjects. the pharaoh had now no inclination to lay down his arms, and we have a record of twelve military expeditions of this king. when the syrian conquest had been effected, egypt gave permanency to its results by means of a series of international decrees, which established the constitution of her empire, and brought about her concerted action with the asiatic powers. she had already occupied an important position among them when thutmosis iii. died in the fifty-fifth year of his reign. of his successors the most prosperous was the renowned amenothes iii., who is immortalised by the wonderful monumental relics of his long and peaceful reign. amenothes devoted immense energy to the building of temples, palaces and shrines, and gave very little of his time to war. _iv.--the last days of the theban empire_ when the male line failed, there was no lack of princesses in egypt, of whom any one who happened to come to the throne might choose a consort after her own heart, and thus become the founder of a new dynasty. by such a chance alliance harmhabi, himself a descendant of thutmosis iii., was raised to the kingly office as first pharaoh of the xixth dynasty. he displayed great activity both within egypt and beyond it, conducting mighty building enterprises and also undertaking expeditions against recalcitrant tribes along the upper nile. rameses i., who succeeded harmhabi, was already an old man at his accession. he reigned only six or seven years, and associated his son, seti i., with himself in the government from his second year of power. no sooner had seti celebrated his father's obsequies than he set out for war against southern syria, then in open revolt. he captured hebron, marched to gaza, and then northward to lebanon, where he received the homage of the phoenicians, and returned in triumph to egypt, bringing troops of captives. by seti i. were built the most wonderful of the halls at karaak and luxor, which render his name for ever illustrious. he associated with him his son, still very young, who became renowned as ramses ii., one of the greatest warriors and builders amongst all the rulers of egypt the monuments and temples erected by this king also are among the wonders of the world. he married a hittite princess when he was more than sixty. this alliance secured a long period of peace and prosperity. syria once more breathed freely, her commerce being under the combined protection of the two powers who shared her territory. ramses ii. was, in his youth, the handsomest man of his time, and old age and death did not succeed in marring his face sufficiently to disfigure it, as may be seen in his mummy to-day. ramses the great, who was thus the glory of the xixth dynasty, reigned sixty-eight years, and lived to the age of 100, when he passed away peacefully at thebes. under his successors, minephtah, seti ii., amenemis and siphtah, the nation became decadent, though there were transient gleams of prosperity, as when minephtah won a great victory over the libyans. but after the death of siphtah, there were many claimants for the crown, and anarchy prevailed from one end of the nile valley to the other. _v.--the rise of the assyrian empire_ ramses iii., a descendant of ramses ii., was the founder of the last dynasty which was able to retain the supremacy of egypt over the oriental world. he took for his hero ramses the great, and endeavoured to rival him in everything, and for a period the imperial power revived. in the fifth year of his reign he was able to repulse the confederated libyans with complete success. victories over other enemies followed, and also peace and prosperity. the cessation of egyptian authority over those countries in which it had so long prevailed did not at once do away with the deep impression it had made on their constitution and customs. syria and phoenicia had become, as it were, covered with an african veneer, both religion and language being affected by egyptian influence. but the phoenicians became absorbed in commercial pursuits, and failed to aspire to the inheritance which the egyptians were letting slip. coeval with the decline of the power of the latter was that of the hittites. the babylonian empire likewise degenerated under the cossæan kings, and gave way to the ascendancy of assyria, which came to regard babylon with deadly hatred. the capitals of the two countries were not more than 185 miles apart. the line of demarcation followed one of the many canals between the tigris and euphrates. it then crossed the tigris and was formed by one of the rivers draining the iranian table-land--the upper zab, the radanu, or the turnat. each of the two states strove by every means in its power to stretch its boundary to the farthest limits, and the narrow area was the scene of continual war. assyria was but a poor and insignificant country when compared with that of her rival. she occupied, on each side of the middle course of the tigris, the territory lying between the 35th and 37th parallels of latitude. this was a compact and healthy district, well watered by the streams running from the iranian plateau, which were regulated by a network of canals and ditches for irrigation of the whole region. the provinces thus supplied with water enjoyed a fertility which passed into a proverb. thus assyria was favoured by nature, but she was not well wooded. the most important of the cities were assur, arbeles, kalakh and nineveh. assur, dedicated to the deity from which it took its name, placed on the very edge of the mesopotamian desert, with the tigris behind it, was, during the struggle with the chaldæan power, exposed to the attacks of the babylonian armies; while nineveh, entrenched behind the tigris and the zab, was secure from any sudden assault. thus it became the custom for the kings to pass at nineveh the trying months of the year, though assur remained the official capital and chief sanctuary of the empire, which began its aggrandisement under assurballit, by his victory over the cossæan kings of babylon. but the heroic age comes before us in the career of shalmaneser i., a powerful sovereign who in a few years doubled the extent of his dominions. he beautified assur, but removed his court to kalakh. his son, tukulti-ninip i., made himself master of babylon, and was the first of his race who was able to assume the title of king of sumir and akkad. this first conquest of chaldæa did not produce lasting results, for the sons of the hero fought each other for the crown, and assyria became the scene of civil wars. the fortunes of babylon rose again, but the depression of assyria did not last long. nineveh had become the metropolis. confusion was increased in the whole of this vast region of asia by the invasion and partial triumph of the elamites over babylon. but these were driven back when nebuchadrezzar arose in babylon. to merodach he prayed, and "his prayer was heard," and he invaded elam, taking its king by surprise and defeating him. nebuchadrezzar no longer found any rival to oppose him save the king of assyria, whom he attacked; but now his aggression was checked, for though his forces were successful at first, they were ultimately sent flying across the frontiers with great loss, through the prowess of assurishishi, who became a mighty king in nineveh. but his son, tiglath-pileser, is the first of the great warrior kings of assyria to stand out before us with any definite individuality. he immediately, on his accession, began to employ in aggressive wars the well-equipped army left by his father, and in three campaigns he regained all the territories that shalmaneser i. had lost, and also conquered various regions of asia minor and syria. in a rising of the chaldæans he met with a severe defeat, which he did not long survive, dying about the year 1100 b.c. there is only one gleam in the murky night of this period. 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. his good fortune soon forsook him. the arameans wrested from him the fortresses of pitru and mutkinu, which commanded both banks of the euphrates near carchemish. 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 nor populous enough 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 chaldæan kings had no difficulty in raising, at a moment's notice, a force which could be employed to repel an invasion, or to make a sudden attack on some distant territory; it was in schemes that 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 campaigns against a stubborn foe soon reduced the army to a condition of weakness. when nebuchadrezzar i. made war on assurishishi, 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 ulai. in the first year he only secured a few indecisive advantages; in the second he succumbed. the same reasons which explain the decadence of babylon show us the causes of the periodic eclipses undergone by assyria after each outburst of her warlike spirit. the country was now forced to pay for the glories of assurishishi and of tiglath-pileser by falling into an inglorious state of languor and depression. and ere long newer races asserted themselves which had gradually come to displace the nations over which the dynasties of thutmosis and ramses had held sway as tributary to them. the hebrews on the east, and the philistines on the southwest, were about to undertake the conquest of kharu, as the land which is known to us as canaan was styled by the egyptians. * * * * * the passing of the empires maspero, in the third volume of his great archæological trilogy, completing his "history of the ancient peoples of the classic east," deals with the passing in succession of the supremacies of the babylonian, assyrian, chaldæan, medo-persian and iranian empires. the period dealt with in this graphic narrative covers fully five centuries, from 850 b.c. to 330 b.c. m. maspero in cinematographic style passes before us the actors in many of the most thrilling of historic dramas. one excellent feature of his method is his balancing of evidences. where xenophon and herodotus absolutely differ he tells what each asserts. with consummate skill also he arranges his recital like a series of dissolving views, showing how epochs overlap, and how as babylon is fading assyria is rising, and as the latter in turn is waning media is looming into sight. we are, in this third instalment of maspero's monumental work, brought to understand how the decline of one mighty asiatic empire after another, culminating in the overthrow of the persian dominion by alexander, prepared at length for the entry of western nations on the stage, and how europe became the heir of the culture and civilisation of the orient. _i.--the assyrian revival_ since the extinction of the race of nebuchadrezzar i. babylon had been a prey to civil discord and foreign invasion. it was a period of calamity and distress, during which the arabs or the arameans ravaged the country, and an elamite usurper overthrew the native dynasty and held authority for seven years. this intruder having died about the year 1030 b.c., a babylonian of noble extraction expelled the elamites and succeeded in bringing the larger part of the dominion under his rule. five or six of his descendants passed away and another was feebly reigning when war broke out afresh with assyria, and the two armies encountered each other again on their former battlefield between the lower zab and the turnat. the assyrians were victorious under their king, tukulti-ninip ii., who did not live long to enjoy his triumph. his son, assur-nazir-pal, inherited a kingdom which embraced scarcely any of the countries that had paid tribute to former sovereign, for most of these had gradually regained their liberty. nearly the whole empire had to be re-conquered under much the same conditions as in the first instance, but assyria had recovered the vitality and elasticity of its earlier days. its army now possessed a new element. this was the cavalry, properly so called, as an adjunct to the chariotry. but it must be remembered that the strength and discipline which the assyrian troops possessed in such high degree were common to the military forces of all the great states--elam, damascus, nairi, the hittites and chaldea. thus, the armies of all these states being, as a rule, both in strength and numbers much on a par, no single power was able to inflict on any of the rest such a defeat as would be its destruction. twice at least in three centuries a king of assyria had entered babylon, and twice the babylonians had forced the intruder back. profiting by the past, assur-nazir-pal resolutely avoided those conflicts in which so many of his predecessors had wasted their lives. he was content to devote his attention to less dangerous enemies than the people of babylonia. invading nummi, he quickly captured its chief cities, then subdued the kirruri, attacked the fortress of nishtu, and pillaged many of the cities around. bubu, the chief of nishtu, was flayed alive. after a reign of twenty-five years he died in 860 b.c. a summary of the events in the reign of thirty-five years of his successor, shalmaneser iii., is contained on the black obelisk of nimroud, discovered by layard and preserved in the british museum. he conquered the whole country round lake van, ravaging the country "as a savage bull ravages and tramples under his feet the fertile fields." an attack on damascus led to a terrible but indecisive battle, benhadad, king of syria, proving himself fully a match for the invader. but a war with babylon, lasting for a period of two years, ended with victory for assyria, and shalmaneser, entering the city, went direct to the temple of e-shaggil, where he offered worship to the local gods. memorable events followed, first in connection with damascus, ahab, king of isræl, benhadad's ally, and other confederates, had not been faithful to his suzerainty. ahab had by treaty agreed to surrender the city of ramoth-gilead to the syrian monarch and had not fulfilled his pledge. he and jehoshaphat, king of judah, had concluded an alliance against benhadad, who seized the disputed fortress, and the two had organised an expedition, which led to the death of ahab in battle. isræl lapsed once more into the position of a vassal to benhadad, and long remained in that subjection. the last days of shalmaneser were embittered by the revolt of his son, assur-dain-pal, and his death occurred in 824 b.c. the kingdom was shaken by the struggle that ensued between his sons. samsi-ramman iv., the brother of assurdain-pal, reigned for twelve years; his son, ramman-nirari iii., had married the babylonian princess sammuramat, and so had secured peace. he was an energetic and capable ruler. to him at length damascus made submission and paid tribute. but menuas, a bold and able king of urartu, proved himself a thorn in the side of the assyrian king, for he delivered from the yoke of nineveh the tribes on the borders of lake urmiah and all the adjacent regions. everywhere along the lower zab, and on the frontier as far as the euphrates, the assyrian outposts were driven back by menuas, who also overcame the hittites and by his campaigns formed that kingdom of van, or armenia, which was quite equal in size to assyria. he died shortly before the death of ramman-nirari, in 784 b.c. his son, argistis, spent the first few years of his reign in completing his conquests in the country north of the araxes. he was attacked by shalmaneser iv., son of ramman-nirari, but defeated the assyrians. misfortunes accumulated for the rulers and people who had exercised so wide a sway, and the end of the second assyrian empire was not far off. syria was lost under assur-nirari iii., who was also driven from calah by sedition in 746 b.c. he died some months later and the dynasty came to an end, and in 745 a usurper, the leader of the revolt at calah, proclaimed himself king under the name of tiglath-pileser iii. the second empire had lasted rather less than a century and a half. _ii.--to the destruction of babylon_ events proved that, at 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 owing mainly to the incapacity of its kings and the lack of energy displayed by their generals. the assyrian troops had lost none of their former valour, but their leaders had shown less foresight and skill. as soon as tiglath-pileser assumed leadership, the armies regained their former prestige and supremacy. the empire still included the original patrimony of assur and its ancient colonies on the upper tigris, but the buffer provinces, containing the tribes on the borders of syria, namri, nairi, melitene, had thrown off the yoke, as had the arameans, while menuas of armenia and his son argistis had by their invasions laid waste the median territory. sharduris iii., son of argistis, succeeded to the throne of armenia about 760, and at once overran the district of babilu, carrying by storm three royal castles, 23 cities, and 60 villages. he also captured the castles of the mountaineers of melitene. crossing mount taurus about 756, he forced the hittites to swear allegiance. it was in the middle of this eighth century b.c., in the days of tiglath-pileser iii. of assyria, and sharduris iii. of armenia, that isræl, under jehoash, and his son jeroboam ii.; inspired by the exhortations of elisha the prophet, was rehabilitated for a season, winning victories over the syrians and taking vengeance on damascus, and then attacking the moabites. the sudden collapse of damascus led to the decline of syria, but though jeroboam ii. seemed to be firmly seated as king in samaria, the downfall of isræl and judah alike, as well as of tyre, edom, gaza, moab, and ammon, was foretold by the prophet amos, while from the midst of ephraim the priest-seer, hosea, was never weary of reproaching the tribes with their ingratitude and of predicting their coming desolation. ere long, tiglath-pileser began his campaigns against them by attacking the arameans, dwelling on the banks of the tigris. he overthrew them at the first encounter. nabunazir, then king in babylon, bowed before him and swore fidelity to him, and he visited sippar, nipur, babylon, borsippa, kuta, kishu, dilbat and uruk, babylonian "cities without a peer," and offered sacrifices to all their gods--to bel zirbanit, nebo, tashmit, and nir-gal. this settlement took place in 745 b.c. his next exploit was the rapid conquest of the mountainous and populous regions on the shores of the caspian. and now he ventured to try conclusions with armenia and to attack the famous kingdom of urartu in the difficult fastnesses round lakes van and urumiah. crossing the euphrates in the spring of 743 b.c., he captured arpad, and soon afterwards marched forth to meet the great army of sharduris. the rout of the latter was complete, and he fled, after losing 73,000 men. the victor was covered with glory; yet the triumph cost him dear, for the forces left him were not sufficient to finish the campaign, nor to extort allegiance from the syrian princes who had allied themselves with sharduris. after spending the winter in nineveh, reorganising his troops, the assyrian inaugurated a campaign which ended in the subjugation of northern syria and its incorporation in the empire. only one difficulty foiled tiglath-pileser. he failed to capture the impregnable fortress of dhuspas, in which sharduris had taken refuge. this capital of urartu held out against a long siege, and at length the assyrian army withdrew. sharduris remained king as before, but he was utterly spent, and his power had received a blow from which it never recovered. 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. as for egypt at this period, it was ruled over by what is known as the bubastite dynasty, so called from the city of bubastis, in the delta, where the pharaohs of the time, osorkon i., his son takeloti i., and his grandson, osorkon ii., for an interval of fifty years chiefly resided, abstaining from politics, so that the country enjoyed an interval of profound peace. but the old cause brought about the fall of this dynasty also. military feudalism again developed and egypt split up into many petty states. the sceptre at length passed to another dynasty, this time of tanite origin. petubastis was the first of the line, but the power was really in the hands of the priests, one of whom, auiti, actually declared himself king, together with pharaoh. sensational events followed. the weakness of egypt tempted an uprising of the ethiopians, who overran a great part of the country. and it was at this period that tiglath-pileser crushed the kingdom of isræl, king pekah being compelled to flee from samaria into the mountains, while the inhabitants of naphtali and gilead were carried into captivity. nabonazir, king of babylon, who had never swerved from the fidelity he had sworn to his mighty ally after the events of 745, died in 734 b.c., and was succeeded by his son nabunadinziri, who at the end of two years was assassinated in a popular rising, and one of his sons, nabushumukin, who was concerned in the rising, usurped the crown. he wore it for two months and twelve days, and then abdicated in favour of a certain ukinzir, an aramean chief. but tiglath-pileser gave the new dynasty no time to settle itself firmly on the throne. the year after his return from syria he marched against it. after two years of fighting ukinzir was overcome and captured. tiglath-pileser entered babylon as conqueror, and 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 one ruler. his babylonian subjects seem to have taken a liking for him; but he did not long survive his triumph, dying after having reigned eighteen years over assyria, and less than two years over babylon and chaldæa. the next great assyrian name is that of sargon ii., whose origin is not clear. and the incidents of the revolution which raised him to the throne are also unknown. the first few years of his reign, which commenced in 722 b.c., were harassed by revolts among many of the border tribes, but these he resolutely faced at all points, inflicting overwhelming defeats on the medes and the armenians. the philistines were cowed by the storming of ashdod, and sargon subdued phoenicia, carrying his arms to the sea. this great monarch, while wars raged round him, found time for extensive works of a peaceful character, completing the system of irrigation, and erecting buildings at calah and nineveh, and raising a magnificent palace at dur-sharrukin. and here he intended in peace to build a great city, but he was, in 105 b.c., assassinated by an alien soldier. sennacherib, his son, fighting on the frontier, was recalled and proclaimed immediately. he either failed to inherit his father's good fortune, or lacked his ability. instead of conciliating the vanquished, he massacred entire tribes, and failed to re-people these with captive exiles from other nations. so, towards the end of his reign--which terminated in 681 b.c.--he found himself ruling over a sparsely inhabited desert where his father had left him flourishing and populous cities. phoenicia and judah formed an alliance with each other and with egypt. sennacherib bestirred himself and tyre perished. the assyrian invader then attacked judah and besieged jerusalem, where hezekiah was king and isaiah was prophesying. whatever was the cause, half the army perished by pestilence, and sennacherib led back the remnants of his force to nineveh. the disaster was terrible, but not irreparable, for another and an equal host could be raised. and it was needed to quell a great babylonian revolt led by merodachbaladan, who had given the signal of rebellion to the mountain tribes also. after a series of terrible conflicts, babylon was taken. and now sennacherib, who had shown leniency after two previous revolts, displayed unbounded fury in his triumph. the massacre lasted several days, none being spared of the citizens. piles of corpses filled the streets. the temples and palaces were pillaged, and finally the city was burnt. in the midst of his costly and absorbing wars we may well wonder how sennacherib found time and means for building villas and temples; yet he is, nevertheless, the assyrian king who has left us the largest number of monuments. his last years were embittered by the fierce rivalry of his sons. one of these he nominated his successor, esarhaddon, son of a babylonian wife. during his absence from nineveh, on the 20th day of teleth, 681, his father, sennacherib, when praying before the image of his god, was assassinated by two other sons, sharezer and adrammelech. esarhaddon, hearing of this tragedy, gathered an army, and in a battle defeated sharezer and established himself on the throne. _iii.--the crisis of the assyrian power_ esarhaddon was personally inclined for peace, for he delighted in building; but unfortunate disturbances did not permit him to pursue his favourite occupation without interruption, and, like his warlike predecessors, he was constrained to pass most of his life on the battlefield. he began his reign by quelling an insurrection of the cimmerians in the territories on the border of the black sea. sidon rebelled ungratefully, although his father had saved her from desolation by tyre. he stormed and burnt the city. the scythian tribes came on the field in 678 b.c., but they were diplomatically conciliated. now followed a memorable event. babylon was rebuilt. esarhaddon used all the available captives taken in war on the foundations and the fabrication of bricks, erected walls, rebuilt all the temples, and lavishly devoted gold, silver, costly stones, rare woods, and plates of enamel to decoration. the canals were made good for the gardens, and the people, who had been scattered in various provinces, were encouraged to return to their homes. but fresh foreign complications arose through the support given continually to recalcitrant states in the south of egypt. esarhaddon was provoked to undertake the first actual invasion of egypt in force by assyria for the purpose of subduing the country. over a great combination of the egyptians and ethiopians he won a crushing victory. memphis was taken and sacked. henceforth, esarhaddon, in his pride, styled himself king of egypt, and king of the kings of egypt, of the said, and of ethiopia. but he was not very long permitted to enjoy the glory of his triumph; a determined revolt of the conquered country demanded a fresh campaign. he set out, but was in bad health, and, his malady increasing, he died on the journey in the twelfth year of his reign. before starting on the expedition, he had realised the impossibility of a permanent amalgamation of assyria and babylon, notwithstanding his personal affection for babylon. accordingly, he designated as his successors his two sons. assurbanipal was to be king of assyria, and shamash-shumukin king of babylon, under the suzerainty of his brother. as soon as esarhaddon had passed away, the separation he had planned took place automatically, the two sons proclaiming themselves respectively kings of assyria and babylon. thus babylon regained half its independence. but the assyrian empire was now at its zenith. egypt was quelled by the army of esarhaddon, and to assurbanipal submitted in vassalage the nations of the mediterranean coast. now followed years of exhausting warfare and of victory after victory, which fatally wasted the strength of assyria. never had the empire been so respected; never had so many nations united under one sceptre. but troubles accumulated. mutiny in egypt called for another expedition, which led to the capture and sacking of thebes. next came a war with elam, ending in its subjection to assyria, for the first time in history. but with success. assurbanipal grew arrogant in his attitude to his brother, the king of babylon, and a fratricidal war resulted in the defeat and death of shamash-shumukin and the capture of the rival capital. but assyria was now near one of its recurrent periods of exhaustion, and foes were rising for a formidable attack. _iv.--fall of media and chaldæa_ at the very height of his apparent grandeur and prosperity assurbanipal was attacked by phraortes, king of the medes, who paid for his temerity with his life, being left dead, with the greater part of his army, on the field. but the sequel was unexpected, for cyaxares, son of the slain mede, stubbornly continued the conflict, patiently reorganising his army, until he won a great victory over the assyrian generals, and shut up the remnant of their forces in nineveh. assurbanipal, after a reign of forty-two years, died about 625 b.c., and was succeeded by his son, assuretililani. against his brother and successor, sinsharishkin, the standard of rebellion was raised by nabopolassar, the governor of babylon, who declared himself independent, and assumed the title of king, but his reign not long after ended with his death, in 605 b.c. nebuchadrezzar was proclaimed king in babylon. his reign was long and prosperous, and, on the whole, a peaceful one. the most notable event in the career of nebuchadrezzar ii., was the capture and destruction of jerusalem, in consequence of a revolt of tyre and judea. the unfortunate king, zedekiah, saw his sons slain in his presence, and then, his eyes having been put out, he was loaded with chains, and sent to babylon. nebuchadrezzar died in 562 b.c. after a reign of fifty-five years. his successors were weak rulers, and their reigns were brief and inglorious. the army was suffered to dwindle, and the dynasty founded by nabopolassar came to an end in 555 b.c., when labashi-marduk, the last of the line, after reigning only nine months, was murdered by nabonidus, a native babylonian. this usurper witnessed the rapid rise of the new iranian power which was to destroy him and babylon. in 553 b.c., cyrus, a persian general, revolted against astyages, defeated him, and destroyed the median empire at one blow. the only army that was a match for that of cyrus was the lydian host under king croesus. a conflict took place between the two, ending in the defeat of the most powerful potentate of asia minor. but cyrus treated croesus with consideration, and the lydian king is said to have become the friend of the mighty persian. from that day neither egypt nor chaldæa had any chance of victory on the battlefield. nabonidus became a mere vassal of cyrus, and lived more or less inactively in his palace at tima, leaving the direction of power at babylon in the hands of his son, bel-sharuzu. at length the babylonians grew weary of their king. nabonidus had never been popular, and the discontent of the people at length called for the intervention of the suzerain. in 538 cyrus moved against babylon, and nabonidus now retreated into the city with his troops, and prepared for a siege. but cyrus, taking advantage of the time of the year when the waters were lowest, diverted the tigris, so that his soldiers were able to enter the city without striking a blow. nabonidus surrendered, and belsharuzur was slain. with him perished the second chaldæan empire. the sagacious conqueror did not pillage the city, and treated the citizens with clemency. cyrus associated his son cambyses with himself, making him king of babylon. nothing in babylon was changed, and she remained what she had been since the fall of assyria, the real capital of the regions between the mediterranean and the zapcos. the persian dominion extended undisputed as far as the isthmus of suez. under cyrus took place the first return of the jews to jerusalem. according to xenophon, the great persian, in 529 b.c., died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifying them by his wisdom; but herodotus declares that he perished miserably in fighting with the barbarian hosts of the massagetæ, on the steppes of turkestan, beyond the arxes. he had believed that his destiny was to found an empire in which all other ancient empires should be merged, and he all but accomplished the stupendous task. when he passed away, egypt alone remained to be conquered. cambyses succeeded, took up the enterprise against egypt; but after a series of successes met with reverses in ethiopia, which affected his mind, and he is said to have ended his own life. power fell into the hands of a chief of one of the seven great clans, the famous darius, son of hystaspes, whose rival was nebuchadrezzar iii., then king of babylon. once more, in his reign, babylon was besieged and fell, nebuchadrezzar being executed. he was an impostor who had pretended to be the son of the great nebuchadrezzar. and now approached the last days of the greatness of the eastern world, for the eve of the macedonian conquest of the near east had arrived. * * * * * flavius josephus the antiquities of the jews josephus's "antiquities of the jews" traces the whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great war. he also wrote an autobiography (see lives and letters) and a polemical treatise, "flavius josephus against apion." his style is so classically elegant that critics have called him the greek livy. the following summary of the "antiquities of the jews" contains the substance of the really valuable sections, other portions being little else than a paraphrase of the histories embodied in the old testament. _i.--from alexander to antiochus_ after philip, king of macedon, had been treacherously slain by pausanias, he was succeeded by his son alexander, who, passing over the hellespont, overcame the army of darius, king of persia, at granicum. so he marched over lydia, subdued ionia, overran caria and pamphylia, and again defeated darius at issus. the persian king fled into his own land, and his mother, wife, and children were captured. alexander besieged and took first tyre, and then gaza, and next marched towards jerusalem. at sapha, in full view of the city, he was met by a procession of the priests in fine linen, and a multitude of the citizens in white, the high-priest, jaddua, being at their head in his resplendent robes. graciously responding to the salutations of priests and people, alexander entered jerusalem, worshipped and sacrificed in the temple, and then invited the people to ask what favours they pleased of him; whereupon the high-priest desired that they might enjoy the laws of their forefathers, and pay no tribute on the seventh year. all their requests were granted, and alexander led his army into the neighbouring cities. now, when alexander was dead and his government had been divided among many, ptolemy, the son of lagus, by treachery seized jerusalem, and took away many captives to egypt, and settled them there. his successor, ptolemy philadelphus, restored to freedom 120,000 jews who had been kept in slavery at the instance of aristeus, one of his most intimate friends. he also dedicated many gifts to god, and showed great friendship to the jews in his dominions. other kings in asia followed the example of philadelphus, conferring honours on jews who became their auxiliaries, and making them citizens with privileges equal to those enjoyed by the macedonians and greeks. in the reign of antiochus the great the jews suffered greatly while he was at war with ptolemy philopater, and with his son, called epiphanes. when antiochus had beaten ptolemy, he seized on judea, but ultimately he made a league with ptolemy, gave him his daughter cleopatra to wife, and yielded up to him celesyria, samaria, judea, and phoenicia by way of dowry. onias, son of simon the just, was then high-priest. he greatly provoked the king by neglecting to pay his taxes, so that ptolemy threatened to settle his soldiers in jerusalem to live on the citizens. but joseph, the nephew of onias, by his wisdom brought all things right again, and entered into friendship with the king, who lent him soldiers and sent him to force the people in various cities to pay their taxes. many who refused were slain. joseph not only thus gathered great wealth for himself, but sent much to the king and to cleopatra, and to powerful men at the court of egypt. he had a son named hyrcanus, who became noted for his ability, and crossed the jordan with many followers; he made war successfully on the arabians, built a magnificent stone castle, and ruled over all the region for seven years, even all the time that seleucus was king of syria. but when seleucus was dead, his brother antiochus epiphanes took the kingdom, and hyrcanus, seeing that antiochus had a great army, feared he should be taken and punished for what he had done to the arabians. so he took his own life, antiochus seizing his possessions. _ii.--to the death of judas_ antiochus, despising the son of ptolemy as being but weak, and coveting the possession of egypt, conducted an expedition against that country with a great force; but was compelled to withdraw by a declaration of the romans. on his way back from alexandria he took the city of jerusalem, entering it without fighting in the 143d year of the kingdom of the seleucidæ. he slew many of the citizens, plundered the city of much money, and returned to antioch. after two years he again came up against jerusalem, and this time left the temple bare, taking away the golden altar and candlesticks, the table of shewbread, and the altar of burnt offering, and all the secret treasures. he slew some of the people, and carried off into captivity about ten thousand, burnt the finest buildings, erected a citadel, and therein placed a garrison of macedonians. building an idol altar in the temple, he offered swine on it, and he compelled many of the jews to raise idol altars in every town and village, and to offer swine on them every day. but many disregarded him, and these underwent bitter punishment. they were tortured or scourged or crucified. now, at this time there dwelt at modin a priest named mattathias, a citizen of jerusalem. he had five sons, one of whom, judas, was called maccabæus. mattathias and his sons not only refused to sacrifice as antiochus commanded, but, with his sons, attacked and slew an apostate jewish worshipper and apelles, the king's general, and a few of his soldiers. then the priest and his five sons overthrew the idol altar, and fled into the desert, followed by many of their followers with their wives and children. about a thousand of these who had hidden in caves were overtaken and destroyed; but many who escaped joined themselves to mattathias, and appointed him to be the ruler, who taught them to fight, even on the sabbath. gathering a great army, he overthrew the idol altars, and slew those who broke the laws. but after ruling one year, he fell into a distemper, and committed to his sons the conduct of affairs. he was buried at modin, all the people making great lamentation. his son judas took upon himself the administration of affairs in the 146th year, and with the help of his brothers and others, cast their enemies out of the country and purified the land of its pollutions. judas celebrated in the temple at jerusalem the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices for eight days. from that time we call the yearly celebration the feast of lights. judas also rebuilt the wall and reared towers of great height. when these things were over he made excursions against adversaries on every side, he and his brothers simon and jonathan subduing in turn idumæa, gilead, jazer, tyre, and ashdod. antiochus died of a distemper which overtook him as he was fleeing from elymais, from which he was driven during an attack upon its gates. before he died he called his friends about him, and confessed that his calamities had come upon him for the miseries he had brought upon the jewish nation. antiochus was succeeded by his son, antiochus eupator, a boy of tender age, whose guardians were philip and lysias. he reigned but two years, being put to death, together with lysias, by order of the usurper demetrius, the son of seleucus, who fled from rome, and, landing in syria, gathered an army, and was joyfully received by the people. against jerusalem, demetrius sent an expedition commanded by his general, bacchides. judas maccabæus, fighting with great courage, but having with him only 800 men, fell in the battle. his brothers simon and jonathan, receiving his body by treaty from the enemy, carried it to the village of modin, and there buried him. he left behind him a glorious reputation, by gaining freedom for his nation and delivering them from slavery under the macedonians. he died after filling the office of high-priest for three years. _iii.--to the roman dominion_ jonathan and his brother simon continued the war against bacchides. they were assisted by alexander, the son of antiochus epiphanes, who, in the 160th year, came up into syria against demetrius, and defeated and slew him in a great battle near ptolemais. but the son of demetrius, named after his father, in the 165th year, after alexander had seated himself on the throne and had gained in marriage cleopatra, daughter of ptolemy philometor, came from crete with a great number of mercenary soldiers. jonathan and simon, brothers of judas maccabæus, entering into league with demetrius, who offered them very great advantages, defeated at ashdod the army sent by alexander under apollonius. a breach took place between alexander and ptolemy through the treachery of ammonius, a friend of the former, and the egyptian king took away his daughter cleopatra from her husband, and immediately sent to demetrius, offering to make a league of mutual assistance and friendship with him, to give him his daughter in marriage and to restore him to the principality of his fathers. these overtures were joyfully accepted, and ptolemy came to antioch and persuaded the people to receive demetrius. alexander was beaten in a battle by the two allies and fled into arabia, where, however, his head was speedily cut off by zabdiel, a prince of the country, and sent to ptolemy. but that king, through wounds caused by falling from his horse, died a few days afterwards. demetrius, being secure in power, disbanded a great part of his army, but this action greatly irritated the soldiers. furthermore, he was hated, as his father had been, by the people of syria. a revolt was raised by an apanemian named trypho, who overcame demetrius in a fight, and took from him both his elephants and the city of antioch. demetrius on this defeat retired into cilicia, and trypho delivered the kingdom to antiochus, the youthful son of alexander, who quickly sent ambassadors to jonathan and made him his confederate and friend, confirming him in the high-priesthood and yielding up to him four prefectures which had been added to judea. accordingly, jonathan promptly joined him in a war against demetrius, who was again defeated. soon after demetrius had been carried into captivity trypho deserted antiochus, who had now reigned four years. he usurped power, which he basely abused; and antiochus soter, brother of demetrius, raised a force against him and drove him away to apamea, where he was put to death, his term of power having lasted only three years. antiochus soter then attacked simon, who successfully resisted, established peace, and ruled in all for eight years. his death also was the result of treachery, his son-in-law ptolemy playing him false. his son hyrcanus became high-priest, and speedily ejected the forces of ptolemy from the land. subduing all factions, he ruled justly for thirty-one years, leaving five sons. the eldest, aristobulus, purposed to change the government into a kingdom, and placed a diadem on his own head; but his mother, to whom the supremacy had been entrusted, disputed his authority. he cast her into prison, where she was starved to death; and next he compassed the death of his brother antigonus, but was soon attacked by a painful disease. he reigned only one year. his widow, alexandra, let his brothers out of prison and made alexander janneus king. his reign was one of war and disorder. with savage cruelty he repressed rebellion, condemning hundreds of jews to crucifixion. while these were yet living, their wives and children were slain before their eyes. his life was ended by a sickness which lasted three years, and after his death civil war broke out between his two sons, aristobulus and hyrcanus, in which great barbarities were committed. the conflict was terminated by the intervention of the romans under scarus. the two brothers appealed to pompey after he came to damascus; but that roman general marched against jerusalem and took it by force. thus we lost our liberty as a nation and became subject to the romans. _iv.--the jews and the romans_ crassus next came with roman troops into judea and pillaged the temple, and then marched into parthia, where both he and his army perished. then cassius obtained syria, and checked the parthians. he passed on to judea, fell on tarichæa, and took it, and carried away 3,000 jewish captives. a wealthy idumean named antipater, who had been a great friend of hyrcanus, and had helped him against aristobulus, was a very active and seditious man. he had married cypros, a lady of his own idumean race, by whom he had four sons, phaselus, and herod, who afterwards became king, and joseph, and pheroras; and a daughter, salome. he cultivated friendship with other potentates, especially with the king of arabia, to whom he committed the care of his children while he fought against aristobulus. but when cæsar had taken rome, and after pompey and the senate had fled beyond the ionian sea, aristobulus was set free from the bonds in which he had been laid. cæsar resolved to send him with two legions into syria to set matters right; but aristobulus had no enjoyment of this trust, for he was poisoned by pompey's party. but scipio, sent by pompey to slay alexander, son of aristobulus, cut off his head at antioch. and ptolemy, son of menneus, ruler of chalcis, took alexander's brethren to him, and sent his son philippion to askelon to aristobulus's wife, and desired her to send back with him her son antigonus and her daughters; the one of whom, alexandra, philippion fell in love with, and married her; though afterwards his father ptolemy slew him, and married alexandra. now, after pompey was dead, and after the victory cæsar had gained over him, antipater, who had managed the jewish affairs, became very useful to cæsar when he made war against egypt, and that by the order of hyrcanus. he brought over to the side of cæsar the principal men of the arabians, and also jamblicus, the ruler of the syrians, and ptolemy, his son, and tholomy, the son of sohemus, who dwelt at mount libanus, and almost all the cities, and with 3,000 armed jews he joined mithradates of pergamus, who was marching with his auxiliaries to aid cæsar. antipater and mithradates together won a pitched battle against the egyptians, and cæsar not only then commended antipater, but used him throughout that war in the most hazardous undertakings, and finally, at the end of that campaign, made him procurator of judea, at the same time appointing hyrcanus high-priest. antipater, seeing that hyrcanus was of a slow and slothful temper, made his eldest son, phaselus, governor of jerusalem; but committed galilee to his next son, herod, who was only fifteen, but was a youth of great mind, and soon proved his courage, and won the love of the syrians by freeing their country of a nest of robbers, and slaying the captain of these, one hezekias. thus herod became known to sextus cæsar, a relation of the great cæsar, who was now president of syria. now, the growing reputation of antipater and his sons excited the envy of the principal men among the jews, especially as they saw that herod was violent and bold, and was capable of acting tyrannically. so they accused him before hyrcanus of encroaching on the government, and of transgressing the laws by putting men to death without their condemnation by the sanhedrin. protecting herod, whom he loved as his own son, from the sanhedrin when they would have sentenced him to death, hyrcanus aided him to flee to damascus, where he took refuge with sextus cæsar. when herod received the kingdom, he slew all the members of that sanhedrin excepting sameas, whom he respected because he persuaded the people to admit herod into the city, and he even slew hyrcanus also. now, when cæsar was come to rome, and was ready to sail into africa to fight against scipio and cato, hyrcanus sent ambassadors to him, desiring the ratification of the league of friendship between them. not only cæsar but the senate heaped honours on the ambassadors, and confirmed the understanding that subsisted. but during the disorders that arose after the death of cæsar, cassius came into syria and disturbed judea by exacting great sums of money. antipater sought to gather the great tax demanded from judea, and was foully slain by a collector named malichus, on whom herod quickly took vengeance for the murder of his father. by his energy in obtaining the required tax, herod gained new favour with cassius. _v.--the herodian era_ in order to secure his position, herod made an obscure priest from babylon, named ananelus, high-priest in place of hyrcanus. this offended alexandra, daughter of hyrcanus and wife of alexander, son of aristobulus the king. she had ten children, among whom were mariamne, the beautiful wife of herod, and aristobulus. she sent an appeal to cleopatra, queen of egypt, in order by her intercession to gain from antony the high-priesthood for this son. at the instance of antony, herod took the office from ananelus, and gave it to aristobulus, but took care that the youth should soon be murdered. then, from causeless jealousy, he put to death his uncle joseph and threw mariamne into prison. victory in a war with arabia enhanced his power. cruelly slaying hyrcanus, he hasted away to octavian, who had beaten antony at actium, and obtained also from him, the new cæsar, augustus, the kingdom, thus being confirmed in his position. women of the palace who hated mariamne for her beauty, her high birth, and her pride, falsely accused her to herod of gross unfaithfulness. he loved her passionately, but, giving ear to these traducers, ordered her to be tried. she was condemned to death, and showed great fortitude as she went to the place of execution, even though her own mother, alexandra, in order to make herself safe from the wrath of the king, basely, and publicly, and violently upbraided her, while the people, pitying her, mourned at her fate. herod was also attacked by a tormenting distemper. he ordered the execution of alexandra and of several of his most intimate friends. by his persistent introduction of foreign customs, which corrupted the constitution of the country, herod incurred the deep hatred of very many eminent citizens. he erected servile trophies to cæsar, and prepared costly games in which men were condemned to fight with wild beasts. ten men who conspired against him were betrayed, and were tortured horribly, and then slain. but the people seized the spy who had informed against them, tore him limb from limb, and flung the body in pieces to the dogs. by constant and relentless severity herod still strengthened his rule. but now fearful disturbances arose in his family. his sister salome and his brother pheroras displayed virulent hatred against alexander and aristobulus, sons of the murdered mariamne, and, on their part, the two young men were incensed at the partiality shown by herod to his eldest son, antipater. this prince was continually using cunning strategy against his brethren, while feigning affection for them. he so worked on the mind of the king by false accusations against alexander that many of the friends of this youth were tortured to death in the attempts made to force disclosures from them. a traitor named eurycles fanned the flame by additional accusations, all utterly groundless, so that herod wrote letters to rome concerning the treacherous designs of his sons against him, and asking permission of cæsar to bring them to trial. this was granted, and they were accused before an assembly of judges at berytus and condemned. by their father's command they were starved to death. for his share in bringing about this tragedy antipater was hated by the people. but the secret desire of this eldest son was to see the end of his father, whom he deeply hated, though he now governed jointly with him and was no other than a king already. herod by this time had nine wives and many children and grandchildren. the latter he brought up with much care. antipater was sent on a mission to rome, and during his absence his plots were discovered, and on his return, herod, amazed at his wickedness, condemned him to death. the king now altered his testament, dividing the territory among several of his sons. he died on the fifth day after the execution of antipater, having reigned thirty-four years after procuring the death of antigonus. archelaus, his son, was appointed by cæsar, in confirmation of herod's will, governor of one-half of the country; but accusation of enemies led to his banishment to vienna, in gaul. cyrenaicus, a roman senator and magistrate, was sent by cæsar to make taxation in syria and judea, and caponius was made procurator of judea. philip, a son of herod, built cities in honour of tiberius cæsar. when pontius pilate became procurator he removed the army from cassarea to jerusalem, abolished jewish laws, and in the night introduced cæsar's effigies on ensigns. about this time jesus, a wise man, a doer of wonderful works, drew over to him many jews and gentiles. he was christ; and when pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him did not forsake him, for he appeared to them again alive at the third day, as the prophets had foretold; and the tribe of christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. john, who was called the baptist, was slain by herod the tetrarch at his castle at machserus, by the dead sea. the destruction of his army by aretas, king of arabia, was ascribed by the jews to god's anger for this crime. agrippa, grandson of herod the great, became the most famous of his descendants. on him claudius cæsar bestowed all the dominions of his grandfather with the title of king. but pride overcame him. seated on a throne at a great festival at cæsarea, arrayed in a magnificent robe, he was stricken by a disease, and died. he was succeeded by his son agrippa, during whose time felix and festus were procurators in judea, while nero was roman emperor. this agrippa finished the temple by the work of 18,000 men. the war of the jews and romans began through the oppression by gessius florus, who secured the procuratorship by the friendship of his wife cleopatra with poppea, wife of nero. florus filled judea with intolerable cruelties, and the war began in the second year of his rule and the twelfth of the reign of nero. what happened will be known by those who peruse the books i have written about the jewish war. * * * * * the wars of the jews josephus, in his "wars of the jews," gives the only full and reliable account of the tragic siege and destruction of jerusalem by the romans under titus. excepting in the opening, he writes throughout in the third person, although he was present in the roman camp as a prisoner during the siege, and before then had been, as governor of galilee, the brave and energetic antagonist of the romans. becoming the friend of titus, and despairing of the success of his compatriots, he was employed in efforts to conciliate the leaders of the rebellion during the siege, and he was for three years a privileged captive in the camp of the besiegers. his recital is one of the most thrilling samples of romantic realism in the whole range of ancient literature, and its veracity and honesty have never been impugned. in his autobiography, josephus tells how, after the war, he was invited by titus to sail with him to rome, and how on his arrival there the emperor vespasian entertained him in his own palace, bestowed on him a pension, and conferred on him the honours of roman citizenship. the emperors titus and domitian treated this remarkable jew with continued favour. _i.--beginning of the great conflict_ whereas the war which the jews made against the romans hath been the greatest of all times, while some men who were not concerned themselves have written vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and while those that were there have given false accounts, i, joseph, the son of matthias, by birth a hebrew, and a priest also, and who at first fought against the romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, am the author of this book. now, the affairs of the romans were in great disorder after the death of nero. at the decease of herod agrippa, his son, who bore the same name, was seventeen years old. he was considered too young to bear the burden of royalty, and judea relapsed into a roman province. cuspius fadus was sent as governor, and administered his office with firmness, but found civil war disturbing the district beyond jordan. he cleared the country of the robber bands; and his successor, tiberius alexander, during a brief rule, put down disturbances which broke out in judea. the province was at peace till he was superseded by cumanus, during whose government the people and the roman soldiery began to show mutual animosity. in a terrible riot 20,000 people perished, and jerusalem was given up to wailing and lamentation. it was in cæsarea that the events took place which led to the final war. this magnificent city was inhabited by two races--the syrian greeks, who were heathens, and the jews. the two parties violently contended for the pre-eminence. the jews were the more wealthy; but the roman soldiery, levied chiefly in syria, took part with their countrymen. tumults and bloodshed disturbed the streets. at this time a procurator named gessius florus was appointed, and he, by his barbarities, forced the jews to begin the war in the twelfth year of the reign of nero and the seventeenth of the reign of agrippa. but the occasion of the war was by no means proportioned to those heavy calamities that it brought upon us. the fatal flame finally broke out from the old feud at cæsarea. the decree of nero had assigned the magistracy of that city to the greeks. it happened that the jews had a synagogue, the ground around which belonged to a greek. for this spot the jews offered a much higher price than it was worth. it was refused, and to annoy them as much as possible, the owner set up some mean buildings and shops upon it, and so made the approach to the synagogue as narrow and difficult as possible. the more impetuous of the jewish youth interrupted the workmen. then the men of greater wealth and influence, and among them john, a publican, collected the large sum of eight talents, and sent it as a bribe to florus, that he might stop the building. he received the money, made great promises, and at once departed for sebaste from cæsarea. his object was to leave full scope for the riot. on the following day, while the jews were crowding to the synagogue, a citizen of cæsarea outraged them by oversetting an earthen vessel in the way, over which he sacrificed birds, as done by the law in cleansing lepers, and thus he implied that the jews were a leprous people. the more violent jews, furious at the insult, attacked the greeks, who were already in arms. the jews were worsted, took up the books of the law, and fled to narbata, about seven miles distant. john, the publican, and twelve men of eminence went to samaria to florus, implored his aid, and reminded him of the eight talents he had received. he threw them into prison and demanded seventeen talents from the sacred treasury under pretence of cæsar's necessities. this injustice and oppression caused violent excitement in jerusalem when the news reached that city. the people assembled around the temple with the loudest outcries; but it was the purpose of florus to drive the people to insurrection, and he gave his soldiers orders to plunder the upper market and to put to death all whom they met. of men, women, and children there fell that day 3,600. when agrippa attempted to persuade the people to obey florus till cæsar should send someone to succeed him, the more seditious cast reproaches on him, and got the king excluded from the city; nay, some had the impudence to fling stones at him. at the same time they excited the people to go to war, and some laid siege to the roman garrison in the antonio; others made an assault on a certain fortress called masada. they took it by treachery, and slew the romans. one, menahem, a galilean, became leader of the sedition, and went to masada and broke open herod's armoury, and gave arms not only to his own people, but to other robbers, also. these he made use of for a bodyguard, and returned in state to jerusalem, and gave orders to continue the siege of the antonio. the tower was undermined, and fell, and many soldiers were slain. next day the high-priest ananias, and his brother hezekiah, were slain by the robbers. by these successes menahem was puffed up and became barbarously cruel; but he was slain, as were also the captains under him, in an attack led on by eleazar, a bold youth who was governor of the temple. _ii.--the gathering of great storms_ and now great calamities and slaughters came on the jews. on the very same day two dreadful massacres happened. in jerusalem the jews fell on netilius and the band of roman soldiers whom he commanded after they had made terms and had surrendered, and all were killed except the commander himself, who supplicated for mercy, and even agreed to submit to circumcision. on that very day and hour, as though providence had ordained it, the greeks in cæsarea rose, and in a single hour slew over 20,000 jews, and so the city was emptied of its jewish inhabitants. for florus caught those who escaped, and sent them to the galleys. by this tragedy the whole nation was driven to madness. the jews rose and laid waste the villages all around many cities in syria, and they descended on gadara, hippo, and gaulonitus, and burnt and destroyed many places. sebaste and askelon they seized without resistance, and they razed anthedon and gaza to the ground, pillaging the villages all around, with great slaughter. when thus the disorder in all syria had become terrible, cestius gallus, the roman commander at antioch, marched with an army to ptolemais and overran all galilee and invested jerusalem, expecting that it would be surrendered by means of a powerful party within the walls. but the plot was discovered, and the conspirators were flung headlong from the walls, and an attack by cestius on the north side of the temple was repulsed with great loss. seeing the whole country around in arms, and the jews swarming on all the heights, cestius withdrew his army and retired in the night, leaving 400 of his bravest men to mount guard in the camp and to display their ensigns, that the jews might be deceived. but at break of day it was discovered that the camp was deserted by the army, and the jews rushed to the assault and slew all the roman band. this happened in the twelfth year of the reign of nero. _iii.--judea in rebellion against rome_ nero was at this time in achaia. to him, as ambassador, cestius, sent in order to lay the blame on florus, costobar and saul, two brothers of the herodian family, who, with philip, the son of jacimus, the general of agrippa, had escaped from jerusalem. meantime, a great massacre of the jews took place at damascus. then those in jerusalem who had pursued after cestius called a general assembly in the temple, and elected their governors and commanders. their choice fell on joseph, the son of gorion, and ananus, the chief priest, who were invested with absolute authority in the city; but eleazar was passed over, for he was suspected of aiming at kingly power, as he went about attended by a bodyguard of zealots. but as commanding within the temple he had made himself master of the public treasures, and in a short time the need of money and his extreme subtlety won over the multitude, and all real authority fell into his hands. to the other districts they sent the men most to be trusted for courage and fidelity. josephus was appointed to the command of galilee, with particular charge of the strong city of gamala. he raised in that province in the north an army of more than a hundred thousand young men, whom he armed and exercised after the roman manner; and he formed a council of seventy, and appointed seven judges in each city. he sought to unite the people and to win their goodwill. but great trouble arose from the treachery of his enemy, john of gischala, who surpassed all men in craft and deceit. he gathered a force of 4,000 robbers and wasted galilee, while he inflamed the dissensions in the cities, and sent messengers to jerusalem accusing josephus of tyranny. tiberias and several cities revolted, but josephus suppressed the risings, severely punishing many of the leaders. john retired to the robbers at masada, and took to plundering idumsea. _iv.--vespasian and josephus_ nero, on learning from the messengers the state of affairs, at first regarded the revolt lightly; but presently grew alarmed, and appointed to the command of the armies in syria, and the task of subduing the jews, vespasian, who had pacified the west when it was disordered by the germans, and had also recovered britain for the romans. he came to antioch in the early spring, and was there joined by agrippa and all his forces. he marched to ptolemais, where he was met by his son titus, who had, with expedition unusual in the winter season, sailed from achaia to alexandria. so the roman army now numbered 60,000 horsemen and footmen, besides large numbers of camp followers who were also accustomed to military service and could fight on occasion. the war was now opened. josephus attempted no resistance in the open field, and the people had been directed to fly to the fortified cities. the strongest of all these was jotapata, and here josephus commanded in person. being very desirous of demolishing it, vespasian besieged it with his whole army. it was defended with the greatest vigour, but was, after fierce conflicts, taken in the thirteenth year of the reign of nero, on the first day of the month panemus (july). during this dreadful siege, and at the capture, 40,000 men fell. the romans sought in vain for the body of josephus, their stubborn enemy. he had leaped down the shaft of a dry well leading to a long cavern. a woman betrayed the hiding-place, and josephus was taken and brought before the conqueror, of whom he had demanded from his captors a private conference. to vespasian he announced that he and his son would speedily attain the imperial dignity. vespasian was conciliated by the speech of his prisoner, whom he treated with kindness; for though he did not release him from his bonds, he bestowed on him suits of clothes and other precious gifts. joppa, tiberias, taricheæ, and gamala were taken, both romans and jews perishing in the conflicts. soon afterwards, by the capture of gischala, all galilee was subdued, john of gischala fleeing to jerusalem. _v.--the prelude to the great siege_ while the cities of galilee thus arrested the course of the roman eagles, jotapata and gamala setting the example of daring resistance, the leaders of the nation in jerusalem, instead of sending out armies to the relief of the besieged cities, were engaged in the most dreadful civil conflicts. the fame of john of gishala had gone before him to jerusalem, and the multitude poured forth to do him honour. he falsely represented the roman forces as being very greatly weakened, and declared that their engines had been worn out in the sieges in galilee. he was a man of enticing eloquence, to whom the young men eagerly gave heed. so the city now began to be divided into hostile factions, and the whole of judea had before set to the people of jerusalem the fatal example of discord. for every city was torn to pieces by civil animosities. not only the public councils, but even numerous families were distracted by the peace and war dispute. through all judea the youth were ardent for war, while the elders vainly endeavoured to allay the frenzy. bands of desperate men began to spread over the land, plundering houses, while the roman garrisons in the towns, rather rejoicing in their hatred to the race than wishing to protect the sufferers, afforded little help. large numbers of these evil men stole into the city and grew into a daring faction, who robbed houses openly, and many of the most eminent citizens were murdered by these zealots, as they were called, from their pretence that they had discovered a conspiracy to betray the city to the romans. they dismissed many of the sanhedrin from office and appointed men of the lowest degree, who would support them in their violence, till the leaders of the people became slaves to their will. at length resistance was provoked, led by ananus, oldest of the chief priests, a man of great wisdom, and the robber zealots took refuge in the temple and fortified it more strongly than before. they appointed as high-priest one phanias, a coarse and clownish rustic, utterly ignorant of the sacerdotal duties, who when decked in the robes of office caused great derision. this sport and pastime for the zealots caused the more religious people to shed tears of grief and shame; and the citizens, unable to endure such insolence, rose in great numbers to avenge the outrage on the sacred rites. thus a fierce civil war broke out in which very many were slain. then john of gischala with great treachery, outwardly siding with ananus, and secretly aiding the zealots, sent messengers inviting the idumæans to come to his help, of whom 20,000 broke into the city during a stormy night, and slew 8,500 of the people. _vi.--the siege and fall of jerusalem_ nero died after having reigned thirteen years and eight days, and vespasian, being informed of the event, waited for a whole year, holding his army together instead of proceeding against jerusalem. galba was made emperor, and slain, as was also otho, his successor; and then, after the defeat and death of the emperor vitellius, vespasian was proclaimed by the east. he had preferred to leave the jews to waste their strength by their internal feuds while he sent his lieutenants with forces to reduce various surrounding districts instead of attacking jerusalem. when he became emperor, he released josephus from his bonds, honouring him for his integrity. hastening his journey to rome, vespasian commanded titus to subdue judea. at jerusalem were now three factions raging furiously. eleazar, son of simon, who was the first cause of the war, by persuading the people to reject the offerings of the emperors to the temple, and had led the zealots and seized the temple, pretended to cherish righteous wrath against john of gishala for the bloodshed he had occasioned. but he deserted the zealots and seized the inner court of the temple, so that there was war between him and simon, son of gioras. thus eleazar, john, and simon each led a band in constant fightings, and the temple was everywhere defiled by murders. now, as titus was on his march he chose out 600 select horsemen, and went to take a view of the city, when suddenly an immense multitude burst forth from the gate over against the monuments of queen helena and intercepted him and a few others. he had on neither helmet nor breastplate, yet though many darts were hurled at him, all missed him, as if by some purpose of providence, and, charging through the midst of his foes, he escaped unhurt. part of the army now advanced to scopos, within a mile of the city, while another occupied a station at the foot of the mount of olives. seeing this gathering of the roman forces, the factions within jerusalem for the first time felt the necessity for concord, as eleazar from the summit of the temple, john from the porticoes of the outer court, and simon from the heights of sion watched the roman camps forming thus so near the walls. making terms with each other, they agreed to make an attack at the same moment. their followers, rushing suddenly forth along the valley of jehoshaphat, fell with violence on the 10th legion, encamped at the foot of the mount of olives, and working there unarmed at the entrenchments. the soldiers fell back, many being killed. witnessing their peril, titus, with picked troops, fell on the flank of the jews and drove them into the city with great loss. the roman commander now carefully pushed forward his approaches, leveling the whole plain of scopos to the outward wall and destroying all the beautiful gardens with their fountains and water-courses, and the army took up a position all along the northern and the western wall, the footmen being drawn up in seven lines, with the horsemen in three lines behind, and the archers between. jerusalem was fortified by three walls. these were not one within the other, for each defended one of the quarters into which the city was divided. the first, or outermost, encompassed bezetha, the next protected the citadel of the antonia and the northern front of the temple, and the third, or old, and innermost wall was that of sion. many towers, 35 feet high and 35 feet broad, each surmounted with lofty chambers and with great tanks for rain water, guarded the whole circuit of the walls, 90 being in the first wall, 14 in the second, and 60 in the third. the whole circuit of the city was about 33 stadia (four miles). from their pent-houses of wicker the romans, with great toil day and night, discharged arrows and stones, which slew many of the citizens. at three different places the battering rams began their thundering work, and at length a corner tower came down, yet the walls stood firm, for there was no breach. suddenly the besieged sallied forth and set fire to the engines. titus came up with his horsemen and slew twelve jews with his own hands. one was taken prisoner and was crucified before the walls as an example, being the first so executed during the siege. the jews now retreated to the second wall, abandoning the defence of bezetha, which the romans entered. titus instantly ordered the second wall to be attacked, and for five days the conflict raged more fiercely than ever. the jews were entirely reckless of their own lives, sacrificing themselves readily if they could kill their foes. on the fifth day they retreated from the second wall, and titus entered that part of the lower city which was within it with i,000 picked men. but, being desirous of winning the people, he ordered that no houses should be set on fire and no massacres should be committed. the seditious, however, slew everyone who spoke of peace, and furiously assailed the romans. some fought from the walls, others from the houses, and such confusion prevailed that the romans retired; then the jews, elated, manned the breach, making a wall of their own bodies. thus the fight continued for three days, till titus a second time entered the wall. he threw down all the northern part and strongly garrisoned the towers on the south. the strong heights of sion, the citadel of the antonia, and the fortified temple still held out titus, eager to save so magnificent a place, resolved to refrain for a few days from the attack, in order that the minds of the besieged might be affected by their woes, and that the slow results of famine might operate. he reviewed his army in full armour, and they received their pay in view of the city, the battlements being thronged by spectators during this splendid defiling, who looked on in terror and dismay. then titus sent josephus to address them and to persuade them to yield, but the zealots reviled him and hurled darts at him; but many began to desert, titus permitted them to come in unmolested. john and simon in their anger watched every outlet and executed any whom they suspected of designing to follow. the famine increased, and the misery of the weaker was aggravated by seeing the stronger obtaining food. all natural affection was extinguished, husbands and wives, parents and children snatching the last morsel from each other. many wretched men were caught by the romans prowling in the ravines by night to pick up food, and these were scourged, tortured, and crucified. in the morning sometimes 500 of these victims were seen on crosses before the walls. this was done to terrify the rest, and it went on till there was not wood enough for crosses. terrible crimes were committed in the city. the aged high-priest, matthias, was accused of holding communication with the enemy. three of his sons were killed in his presence, and he was executed in sight of the romans, together with sixteen other members of the sanhedrin, and the parents of josephus were thrown into prison. the famine grew so woeful that a woman devoured the body of her own child. at length, after fierce fighting, the antonia was scaled, and titus ordered its demolition. titus now promised that the temple should be spared if the defenders would come forth and fight in any other place, but john and the zealots refused to surrender it. for several days the outer cloisters and outer court were attacked with rams, but the immense and compact stones resisted the blows. as many soldiers were slain in seeking to storm the cloisters, titus ordered the gates to be set on fire. a soldier flung a blazing brand into a gilded door on the north side of the chambers. the jews, with cries of grief and rage, grasped their swords and rushed to take revenge on their enemies or perish in the ruins. the slaughter was continued while the fire raged. soon no part was left but a small portion of the outer cloisters. titus next spent eighteen days in preparations for the attack on the upper city, which was then speedily captured. and now the romans were not disposed to display any mercy, night alone putting an end to the carnage. during the whole of this siege of jerusalem, 1,100,000 were slain, and the prisoners numbered 97,000. * * * * * henry milman, d.d. history of the jews henry hart milman, d.d., was born in london on february 10, 1791, died on september 24, 1868, and was buried in st. paul's cathedral, of which for the last nineteen years of his life he was dean. he was the youngest son of sir francis milman, physician to george iii, and was educated at greenwich, eton and oxford. although as a scholarly poet he had a considerable reputation, his literary fame rests chiefly on his fine historical works, of which fifteen volumes appeared, including the "history of the jews," the "history of christianity to the abolition of paganism in the roman empire," and the "history of latin christianity to the pontificate of nicholas v." the appearance of the "history of the jews" in 1830 caused no small consternation among the orthodox, but among the jews themselves it was exceptionally well received. dean milman wrote several hymns, including "ride on, ride on in majesty," "when our heads are bowed in woe." although this history carries the jewish race down to modern times, it is included in the section of the world's greatest books treating of ancient history, as it is the history of an ancient race, not of a definite country. _i.--dissolution of the jewish states_ by the destruction of jerusalem and of the fortified cities of machærus and masada, which had held out after it, the political existence of the jewish nation was annihilated; it was never again recognised as one of the states or kingdoms of the world. we have now to trace a despised and obscure race in almost every region of the world. we are called back, indeed, for a short time to palestine, to relate new scenes of revolt, ruin, and persecution. not long after the dissolution of the jewish state it revived again in appearance, under the form of two separate communities--one under a sovereignty purely spiritual, the other partly spiritual and partly temporal, but each, comprehending all the jewish families in the two great divisions of the world. at the head of the jews on this side of the euphrates appeared the patriarch of the west; the chief of the mesopotamian communities, assumed the striking but more temporal title of resch-glutha, or prince of the captivity. that judaism should have thus survived is one of the most marvellous of historic phenomena. but, for the most part, the populous cities beyond the jordan, the dominions of agrippa, and samaria escaped the devastation; and, according to tradition, the sanhedrin was spared in the general wreck. after a brief interval of peace for the jews scattered through the world during the reign of nerva, their settlements in babylonia, egypt, cyrene, and judea broke out in rebellion against the intolerant religious policy of the otherwise sagacious and upright trajan. great atrocities were committed by revolting jews in egypt, and the retaliation was terrible. it is said that 220,000 jews fell before the remorseless vengeance of their enemies. the flame spread to cyprus, where it was quenched by hadrian, afterwards emperor. he expelled the jews from the island. when hadrian ascended the throne, in 117 a.d., he issued an edict which was tantamount to the total suppression of judaism, for it interdicted circumcision, the reading of the law, and the observance of the sabbath. at this momentous juncture, when universal dismay prevailed, it was announced that the messiah had appeared. he had come in power and glory. his name fulfilled the prophecy of balaam. barcochab, the son of the star, was that star which was to "arise out of jacob." wonders attended on his person; he breathed flames from his mouth which, no doubt, would burn up the strength of the proud oppressor, and wither the armies of the tyrannical hadrian. above all, akiba, the greatest of the rabbins, the living oracle of divine truth, espoused the claims of the new messiah; he was called the standard-bearer of the son of the star. of him also wondrous stories were told. the first expedition of barcochab was to the ruins of jerusalem, where a rude town had sprung up. here he openly assumed the title of king. but he and his followers avoided a battle in the open field. on the arrival of the famous julius severus to take command of the roman forces, the rebel jews were in possession of fifty of the strongest castles and nearly a thousand villages. severus attacked the strongholds in detail, reducing them by famine, and gradually brought the war to a close. over half a million jews perished during the struggle, and the whole of judea was a desert in which wolves and hyenas howled through the streets of the desolate cities. hadrian established a new city on the site of jerusalem, which he called ælia capitolina, and peopled with a colony of foreigners. an edict was issued prohibiting any jew from entering the new city on pain of death, and the more effectually to enforce the edict, the image of a swine was placed over the gate leading to bethlehem. _ii.--judaism and christianity_ for the fourth time the jewish people seemed on the brink of extermination. nebuchadrezzar, antiochus, titus, and hadrian had successively exerted their utmost power to extinguish their existence as a separate people. yet in less than sixty years after the war under hadrian, before the close of the second century after christ, the jews present the extraordinary spectacle of two separate and regularly organised communities--one under the patriarch of tiberias, comprehending all of isrælitish descent who inhabited the roman empire; the other under the prince of the captivity, to whom all the eastern jews paid allegiance. by the mild temper of antoninus pius, the jews were restored to their ancient privileges. though still forbidden to enter jerusalem, they were permitted to acquire the freedom of rome, to establish many settlements in italy, and to enjoy municipal honours. this gentle treatment assuaged the stern temper of the race. awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behaviour of peaceable and industrious subjects. the worship of the synagogue became the great bond of racial union, and through centuries held the scattered nation in the closest uniformity. the middle of the third century beheld all isræl incorporated into their two communities, under their patriarch and their caliphate. the resch-glutha, or prince of the captivity, lived in all the state and splendour of an oriental potentate, far outshining in his pomp his rival sovereign in tiberias. the most celebrated of the rabbinical sovereigns was jehuda, sometimes called the nasi or patriarch. his life was of such spotless purity that he was named the holy. he was the author of a new constitution for the jewish people, for he embodied in the celebrated mischna all the authorised traditions of the schools and courts, and all the authorised interpretations of the mosaic law. both in the east and the west the jews maintained their seclusion from the rest of the world. the great work called the talmud, formed of the mischna and the gemara (or compilation of comments), was composed during a period of thirty years of profound peace for the masters of the babylonian schools, under persian rule. this remains a monumental token of learning and industry of the eastern jewish rabbins of the third and fourth centuries. the formal establishment of christianity by constantine the great, in the early part of the fourth century, might have led to jewish apprehension lest the synagogue should be eclipsed by the splendour of its triumphant rival, the christian church; but the rabbinical authority had raised an insurmountable barrier around the synagogue. and, unhappily, the church had lost its most effective means of conversion--its miraculous powers, its simple doctrine, and the blameless lives of its believers. constantine enacted severe laws against the jews, which seem in great part to have been occasioned by their own fiery zeal. but, still earlier than these enactments, spain had given the signal for hostility towards the jews. a decree was passed at the council of elvira prohibiting jewish and christian farmers and peasants from mingling together at harvest home and other festivals. in egypt, during the reign of constantius, who succeeded his father constantine, the hot-headed jews of alexandria provoked the enactment by that emperor of yet severer laws, by mingling themselves in the factions of arians and athanasians, which distracted that restless city. they joined with the pagans on the side of the arian bishop, and committed frightful excesses. an insurrection in judea, which terminated in the destruction of dio cæsarea, gave further pretext for exaction and oppression. but the apostasy of the emperor for a time revived the hopes of the race, especially when he issued his memorable edict decreeing the rebuilding of the temple on mount moriah, and the restoration of the jewish worship in its original splendour. the whole jewish world was now in commotion. julian entrusted the execution of the project to his favourite, alypius, while he advanced with his ill-fated army to the east. the jews crowded from the most distant quarters to assist in the work. but terrible disappointment ensued. fire destroyed the work, and various catastrophes frustrated the enterprise, and the death of julian rendered it hopeless. the irruption of the northern barbarians during the latter half of the fourth to about the end of the fifth century so completely disorganised the whole frame of society that the condition of its humblest members could not but be powerfully influenced thereby. the jews were widely dispersed in all those countries on which the storm fell--in belgium, the rhine districts, germany, where it was civilised, gaul, italy, and spain. not only did the jews in their scattered colonies engage actively in mercantile pursuits, but one great branch of commerce fell chiefly into their hands--the internal slave-trade of europe. the church beheld this evil with grief and indignation, and popes issued rescripts and interdicts. fierce hostility grew up between church and synagogue. the church had not then the power--it may be hoped it had not the will--to persecute. it was fully occupied with the task of seeking to impart to the fierce conquerors--the vandals; goths, and other barbarians--the humanising and civilising knowledge of christianity. a great enemy arose in the person of the emperor justinian, who was provoked by savage conflicts between the jews and the samaritans to issue severe enactments against both, which led to the fall of the patriarchate. in the east, under the rule during the same period of the persian king, chosroes the just, or nushirvan, who began his reign in 531 a.d., the position was not more favourable for the jews of babylonia. _iii.--the golden age of judaism_ during the conflict between persian and roman emperors a power was rapidly growing up in the secret deserts of arabia which was to erect its throne on the ruins of both. the jews were the first opponents and the first victims of mohammed. at least a hundred and twenty years before christ, jewish settlers had built castles in sabæa and established an independent kingdom, known as homeritis, which was subdued by an arab chieftain and came to an end. but the jews were still powerful in the arabian peninsula. mohammed designed to range all the tribes under his banner; but his overtures were scorned, and he ordered a massacre of all who refused to accept the koran. on one day 700 jews were slain in medina while the prophet looked on without emotion. but the persecution of the jews by the mohammedans was confined to arabia, for under the empire of the caliphs they suffered no further oppression than the payment of tribute. spain had maintained its odious distinction in the west, and it is not surprising that the suffering jews by active intrigue materially assisted the triumphant invasion of the country by the saracens. and in france the jews became numerous and wealthy, and traded with great success. we enter on a period which may be described as the golden age of the modern jews. the religious persecutions of this race by the mohammedans were confined within the borders of arabia. the prophet was content with enforcing uniformity of worship within the sacred peninsula which gave him birth. the holy cities of medina and mecca were not to be profaned by the unclean footstep of the unbeliever. his immediate successors rose from stern fanatics to ambitious conquerors. whoever would submit to the dominion of the caliph might easily evade the recognition of the prophet's title. the jews had reason to rejoice in the change of masters. an islamite sovereign would not be more oppressive than a byzantine on the throne of constantinople or a persian on the throne of ctesiphon. in every respect the jew rose in the social scale under his mohammedan rulers. provided he demeaned himself peaceably, and paid his tribute, he might go to the synagogue rather than to the mosque. in the time of omar, the second caliph, the coinage, already a trust of great importance, had been committed to the care of a jew. and the jews acted as intermediate agents in the interworking of european civilisation, its knowledge, arts, and sciences, into the oriental mind, and in raising the barbarian conquerors from the chieftains of wild, marauding tribes into magnificent and enlightened sovereigns. the caliph readily acknowledged as his vassal the prince of the captivity, who maintained his state as representative of the jewish community. and in the west, during the reigns of pepin and charlemagne, the treatment of jews became much more liberal than before. their superior intelligence and education, in a period when nobles and kings, and even the clergy, could not always write their names, pointed them out for offices of trust. they were the physicians, the ministers of finance, to monarchs. they even became ambassadors. the golden age of the jews endured in increasing prosperity during the reign of louis the débonnaire, or the pious, at whose court they were so powerful that their interest was solicited by the presents of kings. in the reign of charles the bald, the jews maintained their high estate, but dark signs of the approaching age of iron began to lower around. _iv.--the iron age of judaism_ our iron age commences in the east, where it witnessed the extinction of the princes of the captivity by the ignominious death of the last sovereign, the downfall of the schools, and the dispersion of the community, which from that period remained an abject and degraded part of the population. during the ninth and tenth centuries the caliphate fell into weakness and confusion, and split up into several kingdoms under conflicting sovereigns, and at the same time judaism in the east was distracted by continual disputes between the princes of the captivity and the masters of the schools. the tribunals of the civil and temporal powers of the eastern jewish community were in perpetual collision, so that this singular state was weakened internally by its own dissensions. when a violent and rapacious caliph, ahmed kader, ascended the throne, he cast a jealous look on the powers of his vassal sovereign, and, without pretext, he seized scherira, the prince of the community, now a hundred years old, imprisoned him and his son hai, and confiscated their wealth. hai escaped to resume his office and to transmit its honours and its dangers to hezekiah, who was elected chief of the community, but after a reign of two years was arrested with all his family by order of the caliph abdallah kaim ben marillah (a.d. 1036). the schools were closed. many of the learned fled to spain, where the revulsion under the almohades had not yet taken place; all were dispersed. among the rest two of the sons of the unfortunate prince of the captivity effected their escape to spain, while the last of the house of david who reigned over the jews of the dispersion in babylonia perished on the scaffold. the jewish communities in palestine suffered a slower but more complete dissolution. benjamin of tudela in the compilation of his travels in the twelfth century gives a humiliating account of the few brethren who still clung, in dire poverty and meanness, to their native land. in tyre he found 400 jews, mostly glass-blowers. there were in jerusalem only 200, almost all dyers of wool. ascalon contained 153 jews; tiberias, the seat of learning, and of the kingly patriarchate, but fifty. in the byzantine empire the number of jews had greatly diminished. we pursue our dark progress to the west, where we find all orders gradually arrayed in fierce and implacable animosity against the race of isræl. every passion was in arms against them. in that singular structure, the feudal system, which rose like a pyramid from the villeins, or slaves attached to the soil, to the monarch who crowned the edifice, the, jews alone found no proper place. in france and england they were the actual property of the king, and there was nowhere any tribunal to which they could appeal. the jew, often acquiring wealth in commerce, might become valuable property of some feudatory lord. he was granted away, he was named in a marriage settlement, he was pawned, he was sold, he was stolen. even churchmen of the highest rank did not disdain such lucrative property. louis, king of provence, granted to the archbishop of aries all the possessions which his predecessors have held of former kings, including the jews. philip the fair bought of his brother, charles of valois, all the jews of his dominions and lordships. the jew, making money as he knew how to do by trade and industry, was a valuable source of revenue, and was tolerated only as such, but he was a valuable possession. chivalry, the parent of so much good and evil, was a source of unmitigated wretchedness to the jew--for religious fanaticism and chivalry were inseparable, the knight of the middle ages being bound with his good sword to extirpate all the enemies of christ and his virgin mother. the power of the clergy tended greatly to increase this general detestation against the unhappy jew. and when undisciplined fanatics of the lowest order, under the guidance of peter the hermit and walter the penniless, were fired with the spirit of the crusades, fearful massacres of jews were perpetrated in treves, metz, spiers, worms, and cologne. everywhere the tracks of the crusaders were deeply marked with jewish blood. half a century after the shocking massacres of jews during the first crusade, another storm gathered, as the monk rodolph passed through germany preaching the duty of wreaking vengeance on all the enemies of god. the terrible cry of "hep!"--the signal for the massacre of isrælites--ran through the cities of the rhine. countless atrocities took place as the crusaders passed on, as the jews record with triumph, to perish by plague, famine, and the sword. _v.--the jews in england_ in the dark ages england was not advanced beyond the other nations of europe in the civil or religious wisdom of toleration. there were jews in england under the saxons. and during the days of the norman kings they were established in oxford and in london. they taught hebrew to christian as well as to jewish students. but they increased in both wealth and unpopularity, false tales about atrocities committed by them being bruited abroad. in many towns furious rabbles at different times attacked the jewish quarters, burnt the dwellings, and put the inmates cruelly to death, as at york, where hundreds perished during a riot in the reign of richard i. king john by cruel measures extorted large sums from wealthy jews. the church was also their implacable enemy, securing many repressive enactments against them. jewish history has a melancholy sameness--perpetual exactions, the means of enforcing them differing only in their cruelty. when parliament refused to maintain the extravagant royal expenditure, nothing remained but still further to drain hebrew veins. in the reign of henry iii. a tale was spread of the crucifixion of a christian child, called hugh of lincoln. the story refutes itself, but it created horror throughout the country. for this crime eighteen of the richest jews of lincoln were hanged, and many more flung into dungeons. the death of henry brought no respite, for edward acted with equal harshness. at length he issued the famous irrevocable edict of total expulsion from the realm. their departure was fixed for october 10, 1290. all who delayed were to be hanged without mercy. the jews were pursued from, the kingdom with every mark of popular triumph in their sufferings. in one day 16,511 were exiled; all their property, debts, obligations, mortgages were escheated to the king. a like expulsion had been effected in france; and spain, where the jews were of a far nobler rank, was not to be outdone in bigotry. during the reign of john i., in 1388 a.d., a fierce popular preacher of seville, ferdinand martinez, arch-deacon of ecija, excited the populace to excesses against the jews. the streets of the noble city ran with blood, and 4,000 victims perished. the cruel spirit spread through the kingdom, and appalling massacres followed in many cities. a series of intermittent persecutions followed both in spain and portugal, in reign after reign. jews and protestants together went through awful ordeals at the hands of the inquisition. when her glory had declined, spain, even in her lowest decrepitude, indulged in what might seem the luxury of persecution. it was in the reign of charles ii. that the jews found opportunity to steal insensibly back into england. cromwell had felt very favourably disposed towards them, but had not dared to permit the re-establishment which they had openly sought. but the necessities of charles and his courtiers quietly accomplished the, change, and the race has ever since maintained its footing, and no doubt contributed a fair share to the national wealth. russia throughout her history adhered to her hostility to the jews, but expulsion became impossible with such vast numbers. it is estimated that russia contains half the jewish population of the world, notwithstanding that russia proper from ancient times has been sternly inhospitable to the jewish race, while poland has ever been hospitable. the most important measures of amelioration in the lot of the jews in england were passed in 1723, when they acquired the right to possess land; in 1753, when parliament enacted the naturalisation bill; in 1830, when they were admitted to civic corporations; in 1833, when they were admitted to the profession of advocates; in 1845, when they were rendered eligible for the office of alderman and lord mayor; and in 1858, when the last and crowning triumph of the principle was achieved by the admission of jews into parliament. in asia, the jews are still found in considerable numbers on the verge of the continent; in china, they are now found in one city alone, and possess only one synagogue. in mesopotamia and assyria the ancient seats of the babylonian jews are still occupied by 5,270 families. but england and anglo-saxon countries generally have been the most favourable to the race. perhaps the most remarkable fact in the history of modern judaism is the extension of the jews in the united states. writing in 1829, i stated, on the best authority then attainable, their numbers at 6,000. they are now [in 1863] reckoned at 75,000. * * * * * herodotus history the "father of history," as herodotus has been styled, was born at halicarnassus, the centre of a greek colony in asia minor, between the years 490 and 480 b.c., and lived probably to sixty, dying about the year 425 b.c. a great part of his life was occupied with travels and investigations in those lands with which his history is mainly concerned. his work is the earliest essay in history in a european language. it is a record primarily of the causes and the course of the first great contest between east and west; and is a storehouse of curious and delightful traveller's gossip as well as a faithful record of events. the canons of evidence in his day were defective, for obvious reasons; a miscellaneous divine interposition in human affairs was taken for granted, and science had not yet reduced incredible marvels to ordinary natural phenomena. nevertheless, herodotus was a shrewd and careful critic, honest, and by no means remarkably credulous. if he had not acquired the conception of history as an exact science, he made it a particularly attractive form of literature, to which his simplicity of style gives a slight but pleasant archaic flavour. this epitome has been specially prepared far the world's greatest books from the greek text. _i.--the rise of persian power_ i will not dispute whether those ancient tales be true, of io and helen, and the like, which one or another have called the sources of the war between the hellenes and the barbarians of asia; but i will begin with those wrongs whereof i myself have knowledge. in the days of sadyattes, king of lydia, and his son alyattes, there was war between lydia and miletus. and croesus, the son of alyattes, made himself master of the lands which are bounded by the river halys, and he waxed in power and wealth, so that there was none like to him. to him came solon, the athenian, but would not hail him as the happiest of all men, saying that none may be called happy until his life's end. thereafter trouble fell upon croesus by the slaying of his son when he was a-hunting. then cyrus the persian rose up and made himself master of the medes and persians, and croesus, fearing his power, was fain to go up against him, being deceived by an oracle; but first he sought to make alliance with the chief of the states of hellas. in those days, pisistratus was despot of athens; but sparta was mighty, by the laws of lycurgus. therefore croesus sent envoys to the spartans to make alliance with them, which was done very willingly. but when croesus went up against cyrus, his army was put to flight, and cyrus besieged him in the city of sardis, and took it, and made himself lord of lydia. he would have slain croesus, but, finding him wise and pious, he made him his counsellor. now, this cyrus had before overthrown the median king, astyages, whose daughter was his own mother. for her father, fearing a dream, wedded her to a persian, and when she bore a child, he gave order for its slaying. but the babe was taken away and brought up by a herdsman of the hill-folk. but in course of time the truth became known to astyages, and to harpagus, the officer who had been bidden to slay the babe, and to cyrus himself. then harpagus, fearing the wrath of astyages, bade cyrus gather together the persians--who in those days were a hardy people of the mountains--and made himself king over the medians; which things cyrus did, overthrowing his grandfather astyages. and in this wise began the dominion of the persians. the ionian cities of asia were zealous to make alliance with cyrus when he had overthrown croesus. but he held them of little account, and threatened them, and the lacedæmonians also, who sent him messengers warning him to let the ionians alone. and he sent harpagus against the cities of the ionians, of whom certain phocæans and teians sailed away to rhegium and abdera rather than become the slaves of the barbarians; but the rest, though they fought valiantly enough, were brought to submission by harpagus. while harpagus was completing the subjugation of the west, cyrus was making conquest of upper asia, and overthrew the kingdom of assyria, of which the chief city was babylon, a very wonderful city, wherein there had ruled two famous queens, semiramis and nitocris. now, this queen had made the city wondrous strong by the craft of engineers, yet cyrus took it by a shrewd device, drawing off the water of the river so as to gain a passage. thus babylon also fell under the sway of the persian. but when cyrus would have made war upon tomyris, the queen of the massagetæ, who dwelt to the eastward, there was a very great battle, and cyrus himself was slain and the most part of his host. and cambyses, his son, reigned in his stead. _ii.--wars of egypt and persia_ cambyses set out to conquer egypt, taking in his army certain of the greeks. but of all that i shall tell about that land, the most was told to me by the priests whom i myself visited at memphis and thebes and heliopolis. they account themselves the most ancient of peoples. if the ionians are right, who reckon that egypt is only the nile delta, this could not be. but i reckon that the whole egyptian territory is. egypt, from the cataracts and elephantiné down to the sea, parted into the asiatic part and the libyan part by the nile. for the causes of the rising and falling of the nile, the reasons that men give are of no account. and of the sources whence the river springs are strange stories told of which i say not whether they be true or false: but the course of it is known for four months' journey by land and water, and in my opinion it is a river comparable to the ister. the priests tell that the first ruler of egypt was menes, and after him were three hundred and thirty kings, counting one queen, who was called nitocris. after them came sesostris, who carried his conquest as far as the thracians and scythians; and later was rhampsinitus, who married his daughter to the clever thief who robbed his treasure-house; and after him cheops, who built the pyramid, drawing the stones from the arabian mountain down to the nile. chephren also, and mycerinus built pyramids, and the greeks have a story--which is not true--that another was built by rhodopis. and in the reign of sethon, egypt was invaded by sennacherib the assyrian, whose army's bowstrings were eaten by field-mice. a thing more wonderful than the pyramids is the labyrinth near lake moeris, and still more wonderful is lake moeris itself, all which were made by the twelve kings who ruled at once after sethon. and after them, psammetichus made himself the monarch; and after him his great grandson apries prospered greatly, till he was overthrown by amasis. and amasis also prospered, and showed favour to the greeks. but for whatever reason, in his day cambyses made his expedition against egypt, invading it just when amasis had died, and his son psammenitus was reigning. cambyses put the egyptian army to rout in a great battle, and conquered the country, making psammenitus prisoner. yet he would have set him up as governor of the province, according to the persian custom, but that psammenitus was stirred up to revolt, and, being discovered, was put to death. thereafter cambyses would have made war upon carthage, but that the phoenicians would not aid him; and against the ethiopians, who are called "long-lived," but his army could get no food; and against the ammonians, but the troops that went were seen no more. now, madness came upon cambyses, and he died, having committed many crimes, among which was the slaying of his brother smerdis. and there rose up one among the magi who pretended to be smerdis, and was proclaimed king. but this false smerdis was one whose ears had been cut off, and he was thus found out by one of his wives, the daughter of a persian nobleman, otanes. then seven nobles conspired together, since they would not be ruled over by one of the magi; and having determined that it was best to have one man for ruler, rather than the rule of the people or of the nobles, they slew smerdis and made darius, the son of hystaspes, their king. then darius divided the persian empire into twenty satrapies, whereof each one paid its own tribute, save persia itself, and he was lord of all asia, and egypt also. in the days of cambyses, polycrates was despot of samos, being the first who ever thought to make himself a ruler of the seas. and he had prospered marvellously. but oroetes, the satrap of sardis, compassed his death by foul treachery, and wrought many other crimes; whom darius in turn put to death by guile, fearing to make open war upon him. and not long afterwards, he sent otanes to make conquest of samos. and during the same days there was a revolt of the babylonians; and darius went up against babylon, yet for twenty months he could not take it. howbeit, it was taken by the act of zopyrus, who, having mutilated himself, went to the babylonians and told them that darius had thus evilly entreated him, and so winning their trust, he made easy entry for the persian army, and so babylon was taken the second time. _iii.--persian arms in europe_ now, darius was minded to make conquest of the scythians--concerning which people, and the lands beyond those which they inhabit, there are many marvels told, as of a bald-headed folk called argippæi; and the arimaspians or one-eyed people; and the hyperborean land where the air is full of feathers. of these lands are legends only; nothing is known. but concerning the earth's surface, this much is known, that libya is surrounded by water, certain phoenicians having sailed round it. and of the unknown regions of asia much was searched out by order of darius. the scythians themselves have no cities; but there are great rivers in scythia, whereof the ister is the greatest of all known streams, being greater even than the nile, if we reckon its tributaries. the great god of the scythians is ares; and their war customs are savage exceedingly, and all their ways barbarous. against this folk darius resolved to march. his plan was to convey his army across the bosphorus on a bridge of boats, while the ionian fleet should sail up to the ister and bridge that, and await him. so he crossed the bosphorus and marched through thrace, subduing on his way the getse, who believe that there is no true death. but when he passed the ister, he would have taken the ionians along with him; but by counsel of coes of mitylene, he resolved to leave them in charge of the bridge, giving order that, after sixty days, they might depart home, but no sooner. then the scythians, fearing that they could not match the great king's army, summoned the other barbaric peoples to their aid; among whom were the sauromatians, who are fabled to be the offspring of the amazons. and some were willing, but others not. therefore the scythians retired before darius, first towards those peoples who would not come to their help; and so enticed him into desert regions, yet would in no wise come to battle with him. now, at length, darius found himself in so evil a plight that he began to march back to the ister. and certain scythians came to the ionians, and counselled them to destroy the bridge, the sixty days being passed. and this miltiades, the athenian despot of the chersonese, would have had them do, so that darius might perish with all his army; but histiæus of miletus dissuaded them, because the rule of the despots was upheld by darius. and thus the persian army was saved, megabazus being left in europe to subdue the hellespontines. when megabazus had subdued many of the thracian peoples, who, indeed, lack only union with each other to make them the mightiest of all nations, he sent an embassy to amyntas, the king of macedon, to demand earth and water. but because those envoys insulted the ladies of the court, alexander, the son of amyntas, slew them all, and of them or all their train was never aught heard more. now darius, with fair words, bade histiseus of miletus abide with him at the royal town of susa. then aristagoras, the brother of histiæus, having failed in an attempt to subdue naxos, and fearing both artaphernes, the satrap of sardis, and the persian general megabazus, with whom he had quarrelled, sought to stir up a revolt of the ionian cities; being incited thereto by secret messages from histiseus. to this end, he sought alliance with the lacedæmonians; but they would have nothing to do with him, deeming the venture too remote. then he went to athens, whence the sons of pisistratus had been driven forth just before. for hipparchus had been slain by harmodius and aristogiton, and afterwards hippias would hardly have been expelled but that his enemies captured his children and so could make with him what terms they chose. but the pisistratidse having been expelled, the city grew in might, and changes were made in the government of it by cleisthenes the alcmæonid. but the party that was against cleisthenes got aid from cleomenes of sparta; yet the party of cleisthenes won. then, since they reckoned that there would be war with sparta, the athenians had sought friendship with artaphernes at sardis; but since he demanded earth and water they broke off. but because athens was waxing in strength, the spartans bethought them of restoring the despotism of the pisistratidæ. but sosicles, the corinthian, dissuaded the allies of sparta from taking part in so evil a deed. then hippias sought to stir up against the athenians the ill-will of artaphernes, who bade them take back the pisistratidæ, which they would not do. therefore, when aristagoras came thither, the athenians were readily persuaded to promise him aid. and he, having gathered the troops of the ionians, who were at one with him, marched with them and the athenians against sardis and took the city, which by a chance was set on fire. but after that the athenians refused further help to the ionians, who were worsted by the persians. but the ruin of the ionians was at the sea-fight of lade, where the men of chios fought stoutly; but they of samos and lesbos deserting, there was a great rout. _iv.--marathon and thermopylæ_ thereafter king darius, being very wroth with the athenians for their share in the burning of sardis, sent a great army across the hellespont to march through thrace against athens, under his young kinsman mardonius. but disaster befell these at the hands of the thracians, and the fleet that was to aid them was shattered in a storm; so that they returned to asia without honour. then darius sent envoys to demand earth and water from the greek states; and of the islanders the most gave them, and some also of the cities on the mainland; and among these were the aeginetans, who were at feud with athens. but of those who would not give the earth and water were the eretrians of eubcea. so darius sent a great armament by sea against eretria and athens, led by datis and artaphernes, which sailed first against eretria. the athenians, indeed, sent aid; but when they found that the counsels of the eretrians were divided, so that no firm stand might be made, they withdrew. nevertheless, the eretrians fought valiantly behind their walls, till they were betrayed on the seventh day. but the persians, counselled by hippias, sailed to the bay of marathon. then the athenians sent the strong runner pheidippides to call upon the spartans for aid; who promised it, yet for sacred reasons would not move until the full moon. so the athenian host had none to aid them save the loyal platæans, valiant though few. yet in the council of their generals the word of miltiades was given for battle, whereto the rest consented. then the athenians and platæans, being drawn up in a long line, charged across the plain nigh a mile, running upon the masses of the persians; and, breaking them upon the wings, turned and routed the centre also after long fighting, and drove them down to the ships, slaying as they went; and of the ships they took seven. and of the barbarians there fell 6,400 men, and of the athenians, 192. but as for the story that the alcmæonidæ hoisted a friendly signal to the persians, i credit it not at all. now, darius was very wroth with the greeks when he heard of these things, and made preparation for a mighty armament to overthrow the greeks, and also the egyptians, who revolted soon afterwards. but he died before he was ready, and xerxes, his son, reigned in his stead. then, having first crushed the egyptians, he, being ruled by mardonius, gathered a council and declared his intent of marching against the hellenes; which resolution was commended by mardonius, but artabanus, the king's uncle, spoke wise words of warning. then xerxes would have changed his mind, but for a dream which came to him twice, and to artabanus also, threatening disaster if he ceased from his project; so that artabanus was won over to favour it. then xerxes made vast provision for his invasion for the building of a bridge over the hellespont, and the cutting of a canal through the peninsula of athos, where the fleet of mardonius had been shattered. and from all parts of his huge empire he mustered his hosts first in cappadocia, and marched thence by way of sardis to the hellespont. and because, when the bridge was a building, a great storm wrecked it, he bade flog the naughty waves of the sea. then, the bridge being finished, he passed over with his host, which took seven days to accomplish. and when they were come to doriscus he numbered them, and found them to be 1,700,000 men, besides his fleets. and in the fleet were 1,207 great ships, manned chiefly by the phoenicians and the greeks of asia, having also persian and scythian fighting men on board. but when demaratus, an exiled king of sparta, warned xerxes of the valour of all the greeks, but chiefly of the spartans, who would give battle, however few they might be, against any foe, however many, his words seemed to xerxes a jest, seeing how huge his own army was. now, xerxes had sent to many of the greek states heralds to demand earth and water, which many had given; but to athens and sparta he had not sent, because there the heralds of his father darius had been evilly entreated. and if it had not been for the resolution of the athenians at this time, all hellas would have been forced to submit to the great king; for they, in despite of threatening oracles, held fast to their defiance, being urged thereto by themistocles, who showed them how those oracles must mean that, although they would suffer evil things, they would be victorious by means of wooden bulwarks, which is to say, ships; and thus they were encouraged to rely upon building and manning a mighty fleet. and all the other cities of greece resolved to stand by them, except the argives, who would not submit to the leadership of the spartans. and in like manner gelon, the despot of syracuse in sicily, would not send aid unless he were accepted as leader. nor were the men of thessaly willing to join, since the other greeks could not help them to guard thessaly itself, as the pass of tempe could be turned. therefore the greeks resolved to make their stand at thermopylæ on land, and at the strait of artemisium by sea. but at the strong pass of thermopylæ only a small force was gathered to hold the barbarians in check, there being of the spartans themselves only 300, commanded by the king leonidas. and when the persians had come thither and sought to storm the pass, they were beaten back with ease, until a track was found by which they might take the defenders in the rear. then leonidas bade the rest of the army depart except his spartans. but the thespians also would not go; and then those spartans and thespians went out into the open and died gloriously. _v.--destruction of the persian hosts_ during these same days the greek fleet at artemisium fought three several engagements with the persian fleet, in which neither side had much the better. and thereafter the greek fleet withdrew, but was persuaded to remain undispersed in the bay of salamis. the peloponnesians were no longer minded to attempt the defence of attica, but to fortify their isthmus, so that the athenians had no choice but either to submit or to evacuate athens, removing their families and their goods to troezen or aegina or salamis. in the fleet, their contingent was by far the largest and best, but the commanding admiral was the spartan eurybiades. then the persians, passing through boeotia, but, being dispersed before delphi by thunderbolts and other portents, took possession of athens, after a fierce fight with the garrison in the acropolis. then the rest of the greek fleet was fain to withdraw from salamis, and look to the safety of the peloponnese only. but themistocles warned them that if they did so, the athenians would leave them and sail to new lands and make themselves a new athens; and thus the fleet was persuaded to hold together at salamis. yet he did not trust only to their goodwill, but sent a messenger to the persian fleet that the way of retreat might be intercepted. for the persian fleet had gathered at phalerum, and now looked to overwhelm the grecian fleet altogether, despite the council of queen artemisia of halicarnassus, who would have had them not fight by sea at all. when aristides, called the just, the great rival of themistocles, came to the greeks with the news that their retreat by sea was cut off, then they were no longer divided, but resolved to fight it out. in the battle, the aeginetans and the athenians did the best of all the greeks, and themistocles best among the commanders; nor was ever any fleet more utterly put to rout than that of the persians, among whom queen artemisia won praise unmerited. as for king xerxes, panic seized him when he saw the disaster to his fleet, and he made haste to flee. he consented, however, to leave mardonius behind with 300,000 troops in thessaly, he being still assured that he could crush the greeks. and it was well for him that themistocles was over-ruled in his desire to pursue and annihilate the fleet, then sail to the hellespont and destroy the bridge. when the winter and spring were passed, mardonius marched from thessaly and again occupied athens, which the athenians had again evacuated, the spartans having failed to send succour. but when at length the lacedæmonians, fearing to lose the athenian fleet, sent forth an army, the persians fell back to boeotia. so the greek hosts gathered near platæa to the number of 108,000 men, but the troops of mardonius were about 350,000. yet, by reason of doubtful auguries, both armies held back, till mardonius resolved to attack, whereof warning was brought to the athenians by alexander of macedon. but when the spartan pausanias, the general of the greeks, heard of this, he did what caused no little wonder, for he proposed that the athenians instead of the lacedæmonians should face the picked troops of the persians, as having fought them at marathon. but mardonius, seeing them move, moved his picked troops also. then mardonius sent some light horse against the greeks by a fountain whence flowed the water for the army; which, becoming choked, it was needful to move to a new position. but the move being made by night, most of the allies withdrew into the town. but the spartans, and tegeans and athenians, perceiving this, held each their ground till dawn. now, in the morning the picked persian troops fell on the spartans, and their grecian allies attacked the athenians. but, mardonius being slain, the persians fled to their camp, which was stormed by the spartans and tegeans, and the athenians, who also had routed their foes; and there the barbarians were slaughtered, so that of 300,000 men not 3,000 were left alive. but artabazus, who, before the battle, had withdrawn with 40,000 men, escaped by forced marches to the hellespont. and on that same day was fought another fight by sea at mycale in ionia, where also the barbarians were utterly routed, for the fleet had sailed thither. and thence the greeks sailed to sestos, captured the place, and so went home. * * * * * thucydides the peloponnesian war the athenian historian, thucydides, was born about 471 b.c., within ten years of the great repulse of the persian invasion. before he was thirty, the great political ascendancy of pericles was completely established at athens, and the ascendancy of athens among the greek states was unchallenged, except by sparta. he was forty at the beginning of the peloponnesian war. thucydides was appointed to a military command seven years later, but his failure in that office caused his banishment. from that time he remained an exiled spectator of events; the date of his death is uncertain. his great work is the history of the peloponnesian war to its twentieth year, where his history is abruptly broken off. to herodotus, history presented itself as a drama; thucydides views it with the eyes of a philosophical statesman, but writes it also with extraordinary descriptive power, not only in pregnant sentences which have never been effectively rendered in translation, but in passages of sustained intensity, of which it would be vain to reproduce fragments. the abridged translation given here has been made direct from the greek. _i.--the beginning of the war_ i have written the account of the war between athens and sparta, since it is the greatest and the most calamitous of all wars hitherto to the greeks. for the contest with the medes was decided in four battles; but this war was protracted over many years, and wrought infinite injury and bloodshed. of the immediate causes of the war the first is to be found in the affairs of epidamnus, corcyra, and corinth, of which corcyra was a colony. of the greek states, the most were joined either to the athenian or the peloponnesian league, but corcyra had joined neither. but having a quarrel with corinth about epidamnus, she now formed an alliance with athens, whose intervention enraged the corinthians. they then helped potidæa, a corinthian colony, but an athenian tributary, to revolt from athens. corinth next appealed to sparta, as the head of hellas, to intervene ere it should be too late and check the athenian aggression, which threatened to make her the tyrant of all greece. at sparta the war party prevailed, although king archidamus urged that sufficient pressure could be brought to bear without actual hostilities. the great prosperity and development of athens since the persian war had filled other states with fear and jealousy. she had rebuilt her city walls and refortified the port of piræus after the persian occupation; sparta had virtually allowed her to take the lead in the subsequent stages of the war, as having the most effective naval force at command. hence she had founded the delian league of the maritime states, to hold the seas against persia. at first these states provided fixed contingents of ships and mariners; but athens was willing enough to accept treasure in substitution, so that she might herself supply the ships and men. thus the provision of forces by each state to act against persia was changed in effect into a tribute for the expansion of the athenian fleet. the continuous development of the power of athens had been checked only momentarily by her disastrous egyptian expedition. her nominal allies found themselves actually her tributary dependencies, and various attempts to break free from her yoke had made it only more secure and more burdensome. hence the warlike decision of sparta was welcomed by others besides corinth. but diplomatic demands preceded hostilities. sparta and athens sent to each other summons and counter-summons for the "expulsion of the curse," that is of all persons connected with certain families which lay under the curse of the gods. in the case of athens, this amounted to requiring the banishment of her greatest citizen and statesman, pericles. to this the spartans added the demand that the athenians should "restore the freedom of hellas," and should specifically remove certain trading disabilities imposed on the people of megara. at this crisis pericles laid down the rules of policy on which athens ought to act--rules which required her to decline absolutely to submit to any form of dictation from sparta. when a principle was at stake, it made no difference whether the occasion was trivial or serious. athens could face war with confidence. her available wealth was far greater--a matter of vital importance in a prolonged struggle. her counsels were not divided by the conflicting interests of allies all claiming to direct military movements and policy. her fleet gave her command of the sea, and enabled her to strike when and where she chose. if peloponnesian invaders ravaged attica, still no permanent injury would be done comparable to that which the athenians could inflict upon them. the one necessity was to concentrate on the war, and attempt no extension of dominion while it was in progress. war was not yet formally declared when the thebans attempted to seize platæa, a town of boeotia, which had long been closely allied to athens. the attempt failed, and the thebans were put to death; but the platæans appealed to athens for protection against their powerful neighbour, and when the athenian garrison was sent to them, this was treated as a _casus belli_. preparations were urged on both sides; sparta summoned her allies to muster their contingents on the isthmus for the invasion of attica, nearly all the mainland states joining the peloponnesian league. the islanders and the cities in asia minor, on the other hand, were nearly all either actually subject to athens or in alliance with her. as pericles advised, the athenians left the country open to the ravages of the invading forces, and themselves retired within the city. in spite of the resentment of those who saw their property being laid waste, pericles maintained his ascendency, and persuaded the people to devote their energies to sending out an irresistible fleet, and to establishing a great reserve both of ships and treasure, which were to be an annual charge and brought into active use only in the case of dire emergency. the fleet sailed round the peloponnese, and the ravages it was able to inflict, with the alarm it created, caused the withdrawal of the forces in attica. in that winter pericles delivered a great funeral oration, or panegyric, in memory of the athenians who had so far fallen gloriously in defence of their country, in which he painted the characteristic virtues of the athenian people in such a fashion as to rouse to the highest pitch the patriotic pride of his countrymen, and their confidence in themselves, in their future, and in their leader. _ii.--early successes of athens_ in the second year of the war, athens suffered from a fearful visitation of the plague, which, however, made no way in the peloponnese. it broke out also among the reinforcements dispatched to potidæa; and it required all the skill of pericles to reconcile the athenians to the continuation of the war, after seeing their territories overrun for the second time for six weeks. by dint of dwelling on the supreme importance of their decisive command of the sea, and on the vast financial resources which secured their staying power, he maintained his ascendency until his death in the following year, though he had to submit to a fine. the events which followed his death only confirmed the profundity of his political judgment, and the accuracy with which he had gauged the capacities of the state. in that winter potidæa was forced to capitulate to the athenians. in the summer of the third year, the lacedæmonians called on the platæans to desert the athenian alliance. on their refusal, platæa was besieged by the allied forces of the peloponnesians. with splendid resolution, the platæans defeated the attempt of the allies to force an entry till they were able to complete and withdraw behind a second and more easily tenable line of defence, when the peloponnesians settled down to a regular investment. the same year was marked by the brilliant operations of the athenian admiral phormio in the neighbourhood of naupactus. on the other hand, a peloponnesian squadron threatened the piræus, caused some temporary panic, and awakened the athenians to the necessity of maintaining a look-out, but otherwise effected little. the year is further noted for the invasion of macedonia by the thracian or scythian king sitalces, who was, however, induced to retire. in the next year, lesbos revolted against the athenian supremacy. as a result, an athenian squadron blockaded mitylene. the lacedaæonians were well pleased to accept alliance with a sea-power which claimed to have struck against athens, not as being subject to her, but in anticipation of attempted subjugation. the prompt equipment, however, of another athenian fleet chilled the naval enthusiasm of sparta. during this winter the platæans began to feel in straits from shortage of supplies, and it was resolved that a party of them should break through the siege lines, and escape to athens, a feat of arms which was brilliantly and successfully accomplished. in the next--the fifth--summer, mitylene capitulated; the fate of the inhabitants was to be referred to athens. here cleon had now become the popular leader, and he persuaded the athenians to order the whole of the adult males to be put to death. the opposition, however, succeeded in getting this bloodthirsty resolution rescinded. the second dispatch, racing desperately after the first, did not succeed in overtaking it, but was just in time to prevent the order for the massacre from being carried out. lesbos was divided among athenian citizens, who left the lesbians in occupation as before, but drew a large rental from them. in the same summer the remaining garrison of platæa surrendered to the lacedæmonians, on terms to be decided by lacedæmonian commissioners. before them the platæans justified their resistance, but the commissioners ignored the defence, and, on the pretext that the only question was whether they had suffered any "wrong" at the hands of the platæans, and that the answer to that was obvious, put the platæans to death and razed the city to the ground. meanwhile, at corcyra, the popular and the oligarchical parties, who favoured the athenians and peloponnesians respectively, had reached the stage of murderous hostility to each other. the oligarchs captured the government, and were then in turn attacked by the popular party; and there was savage faction fighting. an attempt was made by the commander of the athenian squadron at naupactus to act as moderator; the appearance of a peloponnesian squadron and a confused sea-fight, somewhat in favour of the latter, brought the popular party to the verge of a compromise. but the peloponnesians retired on the reported approach of a fresh athenian fleet, and a democratic reign of terror followed. "the father slew the son, and the supplicants were torn from the temples and slain near them." and thus was initiated the peculiar horror of this war--the desperate civil strife in one city after another, oligarchs hoping to triumph by lacedæmonian and democrats by athenian, support, and either party, when uppermost, ruling by terror. it was at this time also that the ionian and dorian cities of sicily, headed by leontini and syracuse respectively, went to war with each other, and an athenian squadron was first induced to participate in the struggle. among the operations of the next, or sixth, summer was a campaign which the athenian commander demosthenes conducted in ætolia--successful at the outset, but terminating in disaster, which made the general afraid to return to athens. he seized a chance, however, of recovering his credit by foiling a lacedæmonian expedition against naupactus; and in other ways he successfully established a high military reputation, so that he was no longer afraid to reappear at athens. next year, the athenians dispatched a larger fleet with sicily for its objective. demosthenes, however, who had a project of his own in view, was given an independent command. he was thus enabled to seize and fortify pylos, a position on the south-west of peloponnese, with a harbour sheltered by the isle of sphacteria. the spartans, in alarm, withdrew their invading force from attica, and attempted to recover pylos, landing over 400 of their best men on sphacteria. the locality now became the scene of a desperate struggle, which finally resulted in the spartans on sphacteria being completely isolated. so seriously did the lacedæmonians regard this blow that they invited the athenians to make peace virtually in terms of an equal alliance; but the athenians were now so confident of a triumphant issue that they refused the terms--chiefly at the instigation of cleon. some supplies, however, were got into sphacteria, owing to the high rewards offered by the lacedæmonians for successful blockade-running. at this moment, cleon, the athenian demagogue, having rashly declared that he could easily capture sphacteria, was taken at his word and sent to do it. he had the wit, however, to choose demosthenes for his colleague, and to take precisely the kind of troops demosthenes wanted; with the result that within twenty days, as he had promised, the spartans found themselves with no other alternatives than annihilation or surrender. their choice of the latter was an overwhelming blow to lacedæmonian prestige. _iii.--victories of lacedæmon_ the capture of the island of cythera in the next summer gave the athenians a second strong station from which they could constantly menace the peloponnese. on the other hand, in this year the sicilians were awakening to the fact that athens was not playing a disinterested part on behalf of the ionian states, but was dreaming of a sicilian empire. at a sort of peace congress, hermocrates of syracuse successfully urged all sicilians to compose their quarrels on the basis of _uti possidetis,_ and thus deprive the athenians of any excuse for remaining. thus for the time athenian aspirations in that quarter were checked. at megara this year the dissensions of the oligarchical and popular factions almost resulted in its capture by the athenians. the lacedæmonian brasidas, however--who had distinguished himself at pylos--effected an entry, so that the oligarchical and peloponnesian party became permanently established in power. the most important operations were now in two fields. brasidas made a dash through thessaly into macedonia, in alliance with perdiccas of macedon, with the hope of stirring the cities of chalcidice to throw off the athenian yoke; and the democrats of boeotia intrigued with athens to assist in a general revolution. owing partly to misunderstandings and partly to treachery, the boeotian democrats failed to carry out their programme, the athenians were defeated at delium, and delium itself was captured by the boeotians. meanwhile, brasidas succeeded in persuading acanthus to revolt, he himself winning the highest of reputations for justice and moderation as well as for military skill. later in the year he suddenly turned his forces against the athenian colony of amphipolis, which he induced to surrender by offering very favourable terms before thucydides, who was in command of thasos, arrived to relieve it. the further successes of brasidas during this winter made the athenians ready to treat for peace, and a truce was agreed upon for twelve months. brasidas, however, continued to render aid to the subject cities which revolted from athens--this being now the ninth year of the war--but he failed in an attempt to capture potidæa. the period of truce terminating without any definite peace being arrived at, the summer of the tenth year is chiefly notable for the expedition sent under cleon to recover amphipolis, and for a recrudescence of the old quarrel in sicily between leontini and syracuse. before amphipolis, the incompetent cleon was routed by the skill of brasidas; but the victor as well as the vanquished was slain, though he lived long enough to know of the victory. their deaths removed two of the most zealous opponents of the peace for which both sides were now anxious. hence at the close of the tenth year a definite peace was concluded. the lacedæmonians, however, were almost alone in being fully satisfied by the terms, and the war was really continued by an anti-laconian confederation of the former peloponnesian allies, who saw in the peace a means to the excessive preponderance of athens and sparta. argos was brought into the new confederacy in the hope of establishing her nominal equality with sparta. for some years from this point the combinations of the states were constantly changing, while athens and sparta remained generally on terms of friendliness, the two prominent figures at athens being the conservative nicias and the restless and ambitious young intriguer alcibiades. in the fourteenth year there were active hostilities between argos, with which by this time athens was in alliance, and lacedæmon, issuing in the great battle of mantinea, where there was an athenian contingent with the argives. this was notable especially as completely restoring the prestige of the lacedæmonian arms, their victory being decisive. the result was a new treaty between sparta and argos, and the dissolution of the argive-athenian alliance; but this was once more reversed in the following year, when the argive oligarchy was attacked successfully by the popular party. the next year is marked by the high-handed treatment of the island of melos by the athenians. this was one of the very few islands which had not been compelled to submit to athens, but had endeavoured to remain neutral. thither the athenians now sent an expedition, absolutely without excuse, to compel their submission. the melians, however, refused, and gave the athenians a good deal of trouble before they could be subdued, when the adult male population was put to death, and the women and children enslaved. at this time the athenians resolved, under colour of an appeal for assistance from the sicilian city of egesta, deliberately to set about the establishment of their empire in sicily. the aggressive policy was vehemently advocated by alcibiades, and opposed by nicias. nevertheless, he, with alcibiades and lamachus, was appointed to command the expedition, which was prepared on a scale of unparalleled magnificence. it was on the point of starting, when the whole city was stirred to frenzy by the midnight mutilation of the sacred images called hermæ, an act laid at the door of alcibiades, along with many other charges of profane outrages. of set purpose, however, the enemies of alcibiades refused to bring him to trial. the expedition sailed. the syracusans were deaf to the warnings of hermocrates until the great fleet had actually arrived at rhegium. nicias was now anxious to find an excuse, in the evident falsity of statements made by the egestans, for the fleet to content itself with making a demonstration and then returning home. the scheme of alcibiades, however, was adopted for gaining over the other sicilian states in order to crush syracuse. but at this moment dispatches arrived requiring the return of alcibiades to stand trial. athens was in a panic over the hermæ affair, which was supposed to portend an attempt to reestablish the despotism which had been ended a hundred years before by the expulsion of the pisistratidæ. alcibiades, however, made his escape, and for years pursued a life of political intrigue against the athenian government. nicias and lamachus, left in joint command, drew off the syracusan forces by a ruse, and were thus enabled to occupy unchecked a strong position before syracuse. although, however, they inflicted a defeat on the returned syracusan forces, they withdrew into winter quarters; the syracusans were roused by hermocrates to improve their military organisation; and both sides entered on a diplomatic contest for winning over the other states of sicily. alcibiades, now an avowed enemy of athens, was received by the lacedæmonians, whom he induced to send an able spartan officer, gylippus, to syracuse, and to determine on the establishment of a military post corresponding to that of pylos on attic soil at decelea. _iv.--the disaster of syracuse_ in the spring the athenians succeeded in establishing themselves on the heights called epipolæ, overlooking syracuse, began raising a wall of circumvallation, and carried by a surprise the counter-stockade which the syracusans were raising. in one of the skirmishes, while the building of the wall was in progress, lamachus was killed; otherwise matters went well for the athenians and ill for the syracusans, till gylippus was allowed to land at himera, force his way into syracuse, and give new life. nicias was guilty of the blunder of allowing gylippus to land at himera, to aid the defence, at the moment when it was on the point of capitulation. a long contest followed, the athenians endeavouring to complete the investing lines, the syracusans to pierce them with counterworks. nicias sent to athens for reinforcements, while the syracusans were energetically fitting out a fleet and appealing for air in the peloponnese. nicias, in fact, was extremely despondent and anxious to resign; the athenians, however, answered his dispatches by preparing a great reinforcement under the command of demosthenes, without accepting the resignation of nicias. the lacedæmonians, however, also sent some reinforcements; at the same time they formally declared war, and carried out the plan of occupying and fortifying decelea, which completely commanded the athenian territory and was the cause of untold loss and suffering. now, at syracuse the besieged took the offensive both by sea and land, and were worsted on the water, but captured some of the athenian forts, commanding the entry to the besiegers' lines--a serious disaster. by the time that demosthenes with his reinforcements reached sicily nearly the whole island had come over to the side of syracuse. before this, the syracusans had again challenged an engagement both by sea and land, with results indecisive on the first day but distinctly in their favour on the second. at this juncture, demosthenes arrived, and, seeing the necessity for immediate action, made a night attack on the syracusan lines; but, his men falling into confusion after a first success, the attempt was disastrously repulsed. demosthenes was quick to realise that the whole situation was hopeless; but nicias lacked nerve to accept the responsibility of retiring, and also had some idea that affairs within syracuse were favourable. his obstinacy gave demosthenes and his colleague eurymedon the impression that he was guided by secret information. and now it became the primary object of gylippus and the syracusans to keep the athenians from retiring. another naval defeat reduced the athenians to despair; they resolved that they must cut their way out. the desperate attempt was made, but by almost hopeless men against an enemy now full of confidence. to the excited, almost agonised, watchers on shore, it seemed for a brief space that the ships might force a passage; the fight was a frenzied scuffle; but presently the terrible truth was realised--the athenian ships were being driven ashore. the last hope of escape by sea was gone, for, though there were still ships enough, the sailors were too utterly demoralised to make the attempt. hermocrates and gylippus, sure that a retreat by land would not be tried, succeeded by a trick in detaining the athenians till they had themselves sent out detachments to hold the roads. on the third day the athenians began their retreat in unspeakable misery, amid the lamentations of the sick and wounded, whom they were forced to leave behind. for three days they struggled on, short of food and perpetually harassed, cut off from all communications. on the third day their passage was barred in a pass, and they found themselves in a trap. on the third night they attempted to break away by a different route, but the van and the rear lost touch. overtaken by the syracusans, demosthenes attempted to fight a rearguard action, but in vain, and he was forced to surrender at discretion with his whole force. next day, nicias with the van was overtaken, and, after a ghastly scene of confusion and slaughter, the remnants of the vanguard were forced to surrender also. nicias and demosthenes were put to death; great numbers were seized as private spoil by their captors, the rest of the prisoners--more than 7,000--were confined for weeks under the most noisome conditions in the quarries, and finally the survivors were sold as slaves. so pitiably ended that once magnificent enterprise in the nineteenth year of the war. the terrific disaster filled every enemy of athens with confident expectation of her immediate and utter ruin. lacedæmonians anticipated an unqualified supremacy. at athens there was a stubborn determination to prepare for a desperate stand; but half the islanders were intriguing for lacedæmonian or persian aid in breaking free, while alcibiades became extremely busy. the first peloponnesian squadron which attempted to move was promptly driven into piræus by an athenian fleet and blockaded. on the open revolt of some of the states, the athenians for the first time brought into play their reserve fund and reserve navy--the emergency had arisen. while one after another of the subject cities revolted, the athenians struck hard at chios, and especially miletus, and obtained marked successes. meanwhile, a revolution in samos had expelled the oligarchy and re-established the democracy, to which the athenians accorded freedom, thereby securing an ally. in lesbos also they recovered their challenged supremacy. phrynicus now came into prominence as a shrewd commander and a crafty politician, while the intricate intrigues of alcibiades, whose great object was to recover his position at athens, created perpetual confusion. these events took place in the twentieth year of the war, and to them must be added a lacedæmonian treaty with persia through the satrap tissaphernes. all the leading men, however, were engaged in playing fast and loose, each of them having his personal ambitions in view. of this labyrinth of plots and counter-plots, the startling outcome was the sudden abrogation of the constitution at athens and the capture of the government by a committee of five with a council of four hundred and a supplementary assembly of five thousand--in place of the whole body of citizens as formerly. the five and the four hundred in effect were the government, and established a reign of terror. at athens, the administration thus formed was effective; but the army and fleet at satnos repudiated the revolution and swore loyalty to the democracy, claiming to be the true representatives of the athenian state. moreover, they allied themselves with alcibiades, expecting through him to receive persian support; and, happily for athens, he succeeded in restraining the fleet--which was still more than a match for all adversaries--from sailing back to the piræus to subvert the rule of the four hundred. the more patriotic of the oligarchs saw, in fact, that the best hopes for the state lay in the establishment of a limited democracy; with the result that the extreme oligarchs, who would have joined hands with the enemy, were overthrown, and the rule of the five thousand replaced that of the four hundred, providing athens with the best administration it had ever known. a great naval victory was won by the athenian fleet, under the command of thrasybulus, over a slightly larger peloponnesian fleet at cynossema. * * * * * xenophon anabasis xenophon was born at athens about b.c. 430, and died probably in 355. he was an athenian gentleman who in his early-manhood was an intimate member of the socratic circle. in 401 he joined the expedition of cyrus, recorded in the "anabasis," and did not again take up his residence in athens. the "anabasis" must be introduced by an historical note. in the year 404 b.c. the peloponnesian war was brought to a close by a peace establishing the lacedæmonian supremacy consequent upon the crowning disaster to the athenians at aegos potami. in the same year the persian king darius nothus died, and was succeeded on the throne by his son artaxerxes. his younger son, cyrus, determined to make a bid for the throne. he had personal knowledge of the immense superiority of the greek soldiery and the greek discipline over those of the eastern nations. accordingly, he planned to obtain the services of a large contingent of greek mercenaries, who had become the more readily available since the internecine struggle between the two leading states of hellas had been brought to an end. the term "anabasis," or "going up," applies properly to the advance into the interior; the retreat, with which the work is mainly concerned, is the "katabasis." the author writes his record in the third person. this epitome has been specially adapted for the world's greatest books from the greek text. _i.--the going-up of cyrus_ cyrus, the younger brother of artaxerxes the king, began his preparations for revolt by gradually gathering and equipping an army on the pretext of hostile relations between himself and another of the western satraps, tissaphernes. notably, he secretly furnished clearchus, a lacedæmonian, with means to equip a greek force in thrace; another like force was ready to move from thessaly under aristippus; while a boeotian, proxenus, and two others friends were commissioned to collect more mercenaries to aid in the war with tissaphernes. next, an excuse for marching up-country, at the head of all these forces, was found in the need of suppressing the pisidians. he advanced from sardis into phrygia, where his musters were completed at celænæ. a review was held at tyriæum, where the cilician queen, who had supplied funds, was badly frightened by a mock charge of the greek contingent. when the advance had reached tarsus, there was almost a mutiny among the greeks, who were suspicious of the intentions of cyrus. the diplomacy, however, of their principal general, clearchus, the lacedæmonian, coupled with promises of increased pay, prevailed, though it had long been obvious that pisidia was not the objective of the expedition. further reinforcements were received at issus, the eastern seaport of cilicia; cyrus then marched through the cilician gate into syria. at myriandrus two greek commanders, probably through jealousy of clearchus, deserted. cyrus won popularity by refusing to presume thereon; and the whole force now struck inland to thapsacus, on the euphrates. at thapsacus, cyrus announced his purpose. the greek soldiers were angry with their generals for having, as they supposed, wilfully misled them, but were mollified by promise of large rewards. one of the commanders, menon, won the approval of cyrus by being the first to lead his own contingent across the euphrates on his own initiative. the advance was now conducted by forced marches through a painfully sterile country. in the course of this, the troops of clearchus and menon very nearly came to blows; the intervention of proxenus only made matters worse; and order was restored by the arrival of cyrus, who pointed out that the whole expedition must be ruined if the greeks fell out among themselves. by this time, artaxerxes had realised that the repeated warnings of tissaphernes and others were justified; and as the expedition neared babylonia, signs of the enemy became apparent in the deliberate devastation of the country. here orontes, one of the principal persian officers of cyrus, was convicted of treason and put to death. the army was again reviewed, the whole force amounting to some 100,000 barbarians and nearly 14,000 greeks; the enemy were reputed to number over 1,000,000, though not so many took part in the engagement. cyrus now advanced, expecting battle immediately at an entrenched pass; but, finding this unoccupied, he did not maintain battle order; which was hurriedly taken up on news of the approach of the royal forces. the greeks, under clearchus, occupied the right wing, cyrus being in the centre, and ariæus on the left. the king's army was so large that its centre extended beyond the left of cyrus. the greeks advanced on the royalist left, which broke and fled almost without a blow. thinking that the greeks might be intercepted and cut off, cyrus charged the centre in person with his bodyguard, and routed the opposing troops; but dashing forward in the hope of capturing artaxerxes, was himself pierced by a javelin, and fell dead on the field. so ended the career of the most brilliant persian since cyrus the great had established the persian empire; brave, accomplished, the mirror of honour, just himself and the rewarder of justice in others, generous and most loyal to his friends. _ii.--the homeward march_ when cyrus fell, the left wing, under ariæus, broke and fled. the greeks had meantime poured on in pursuit of the royalist left, while the main body of the royalists were in possession of the rebel camp, though a greek guard, which had been left there, held the greek quarter. artaxerxes, however, had no mind to give battle to the returning greek column. it was not till next day that clearchus and his colleagues learned by messengers from ariæus that cyrus was slain, and that ariæus had fallen back to the last halting-place, where he proposed to wait twenty-four hours, and no more, before starting in his retreat westward. clearchus replied, that the greeks, for their part, had been victorious, and that if ariæus would rejoin them they would win the persian crown for him, since cyrus was dead. the next message was from artaxerxes inviting the greeks to give up their arms; to which they replied that he might come and take them if he could, but if he meant to treat them as friends, they would be no use to him without their arms, if as enemies, they would keep them to defend themselves. though no formal appointment was made, the greeks recognised clearchus as their leader. they fell back to join ariæus, who declined the proposal to seat him on the persian throne; and it was agreed to follow a new route in retreat to ionia, the way by which the force had advanced being now impracticable. now, however, artaxerxes began to negotiate through tissaphernes, the greeks maintaining a bold and even contemptuous front, warranted by the king's obvious fear of risking an engagement. finally, an offer came to conduct the greeks back to grecian territory, providing them, at their own cost, with necessaries. prolonged delays, however, aroused suspicions of treachery among the greeks, who distrusted tissaphernes and ariæus alike; but clearchus held it better not to break openly with the persians. the march at last began along a northerly route towards the black sea, the greeks keeping rigidly apart from the persian forces which accompanied them, in readiness for an attack. at the crossing of the tigris suspicion was particularly active, the conduct of ariæus being especially dubious; but still no overt hostilities were attempted until the river zabatus was reached, after three weeks of marching. here clearchus endeavoured to end the extremely strained relations between the greeks and the barbarian commanders by an interview with tissaphernes. both men carefully repudiated any idea of hostile intentions, and the persian invited clearchus and the greek officers generally to attend a conference. not all, but a considerable number--five generals, including clearchus, proxenus, and menon, with twenty more officers and nearly two hundred others--attended. at a given signal all were treacherously massacred; but a fugitive reached the greek camp, where the men sprang to arms. ariæus, approaching with an escort, declared that clearchus had been proved guilty of treason, but was received with fierce indignation, and withdrew. of the murdered generals, clearchus was a man of high military capacity, but a harsh disciplinarian, feared and respected, but very unpopular; proxenus, a particular friend of xenophon, was an amiable but not a strong man; menon, the thessalian, was a crafty and hypocritical time-server, of whom no good can be spoken. the ten thousand greeks were now in an ugly predicament; they were a thousand miles from home, while between them and the black sea lay the mountains of armenia. they were surrounded by hostile hordes, and were without cavalry. they had no recognised chief, and their most trusted leaders were gone. the whole company seemed paralysed under a universal despondency. it was at this juncture that xenophon, an athenian gentleman-volunteer, was stirred to action by a dream. he rose and roused the officers of the contingent of proxenus, to which he was attached. heartened by an address, in which he pointed out that, on the one hand they had to depend on their own courage, skill, and resourcefulness, and, on the other, were released from all obligation to the persians, they unanimously chose him their leader, and at his instigation roused the senior officers of all the other contingents to assemble for deliberation. the council thus summoned, inspired again by the words of xenophon, vigorously backed up by other leaders, appointed new generals, among them xenophon himself, and set about actively to organise a retreat to the sea. the contagion of resolute determination spread through the ranks of the whole force. cheirisophus the lacedæmonian was given the chief command, the two youngest generals, xenophon and timerion, were placed in charge of the rear-guard. a troop of slingers was organised; all horses with the arroy were sequestrated to form a cavalry squadron. the army started on its march through the unknown, formed in a hollow square, which was shortly so organised that the columns could be broadened or narrowed according to the ground without creating confusion. they soon found themselves able to repulse without difficulty even attacks in force by the troops of tissaphernes, the enemy being entirely outmatched in hand-to-hand fighting. the slingers and archers, however, proved troublesome, and hostile forces, though keeping out of reach, were never far off. at last tissaphernes and ariæus drew off altogether, and the greek generals having as alternative courses the march east upon susa, north upon babylon, and west towards ionia, decided to revert to the course northwards to the black sea. _iii.--the sea! the sea!_ this route led at first through the country of the carduchi, a very warlike folk who had never been subjugated. here there was a good deal of hard fighting, the carduchi being adepts in hill warfare, and particularly expert archers. such was the length and weight of their arrows that greeks collected them, and used them as javelins. seven days of this brought the retreating force to the river centrites, which parts the carduchian mountains from the province of armenia. with a barely fordable river, troops in evidence on the other side, and the carduchi hanging on their rear, the passage offered great difficulties, solved by the discovery of a much shallower ford. a feint at one point by the rearguard drew off the enemy on the opposite bank, while the main body crossed at the shallows, which the rearguard also managed to pass by a successful ruse which misled the carduchi. the persian governor of western armenia, tiribazus, offered safe passage through his province, but scouts brought information that large forces were collecting, and would dispute the passage of a defile through which the army must pass. this point, however, was reached by a forced march, and the enemy was put to rout. for some days after this the marching was very severe; the men had to struggle forward on very nearly empty stomachs, through blizzards, suffering terribly from frostbite and the blinding effect of the snow on their eyes, so that at times nothing short of actual threats from the officers could induce the exhausted men to toil forward; and all the time the enemy's skirmishers were harassing the troops and cutting off stragglers. these, however, were finally dispersed by a sudden onslaught of the rearguard, and after this a more populous district was reached, where food and wine abounded, and the greeks, who were not ill-received, made some days' halt to recuperate. here a guide was obtained for the next stages; but on the third night he deserted, because cheirisophus had lost his temper and struck him. this incident was the only occasion of a serious difference between xenophon and the elder commander. on the seventh day after this the river phasis was crossed; but two days later, on approaching a mountain pass, it was seen to be occupied in force. a council of war was held, at which some jesting passed, xenophon remarking on the reputation of the lacedæmonians as adepts in thieving, a jibe which cheirisophus retorted on the athenians; as the business in hand was to "steal a match" on the enemy, each encouraged the other to act up to the national reputation. in the night, a detachment of volunteers captured the ridge above the pass; the enemy facing the main body beat a hasty retreat when they found their position turned. another five days brought the army into the country of the taochi, where the greeks had to rush a somewhat dangerous position in order to capture supplies. a space of some twenty yards was open to such a storm of missiles from above that it could only be passed by drawing the enemy's fire and making a dash before fresh missiles were accumulated. when this was accomplished, however, the foe offered no practical resistance, but flung themselves over the cliffs. eighteen days later the greeks reached a town called gymnise, where they obtained a guide. their course lay through tribes towards whom the governor was hostile, and the greeks had no objection to gratifying him by spoiling and burning on their way. on the fifth day after leaving gymnise, a mountain pass was reached. when the van cleared the top of the mountain, there arose a great shouting. and when xenophon heard it, and they of the rear-guard, they supposed that other enemies were ranged against them, for the men of the land which had been ravaged were following behind; but when the clamour grew louder and nearer, and the new arrivals doubled forward to where the shouting was, so that it became greater and greater with the added numbers, xenophon thought this must be something of moment. therefore, taking lycias and the horsemen, he rode forward at speed to give aid; and then suddenly they were aware of the soldiers' shout, the word that rang through the lines--"the sea! the sea!" then every man raced, rear-guard and all, urging horses and the very baggage-mules to the top of their speed, and when they came to the top, they fell on each other's necks, and the generals, and officers, too, with tears of delight. and in a moment, whoever it was that passed the word, the men were gathering stones, and there they reared a mighty column. and as for the lucky guide, he betook himself home laden with presents. of what befell between this point and the actual arrival of the army on the coast of the black sea at the grecian colony of trapezus [trebizond] the most curious incident was that of the soldiers lighting upon great quantities of honey, which not only made them violently ill, but had an intoxicating effect, attributed to the herbs frequented by the bees in that district. this necessitated a halt of some days. the second day's march thence brought them to trapezus, where they made sacrificial thank-offerings to the gods, and further celebrated the occasion by holding athletic games. _iv.--the end of the expedition_ but trapezus was not greece, and the problem of transport was serious. the men, sick of marching, were eager to accomplish the rest of their journey by sea. cheirisophus the general, as being a personal friend of the lacedæmonian admiral stationed at byzantium, was commissioned to obtain ships from him to take the greeks home. cheirisophus departed. the army, which still numbered over ten thousand persons, was willing enough to maintain its military organisation for foraging and for self-defence; also to make such arrangements as were practicable for collecting ships in case cheirisophus should fail them; but the men flatly refused to consider any further movement except by water. so they stayed where they were, maintaining their supplies by raids on the natives; but time passed, and there were no tidings of cheirisophus. at last, they saw nothing for it but to put the sick and other non-combatants aboard of the vessels which had been secured, send them on by sea, and themselves march by the coast to cerasus, another greek colony. thence they continued their westward progress, in which they met with considerable resistance from the natives, who were barbarians of a primitive type, until they came to cotyora. this was another settlement from sinope; but it received the greeks very inhospitably, so that the latter continued their practice of ravaging the neighbouring territories. it was now eight months since the expedition had started on its homeward march. here a deputation arrived from sinope to protest against their proceedings; but xenophon pointed out that while they were perfectly willing to buy what they needed and behave as friends, if they were not allowed to buy, self-preservation compelled them to take by force. ultimately, the deputation promised to send ships from sinope to convey them thither. during the time of waiting there was some risk of the force breaking itself up, and some inclination to make attacks on the officers, including xenophon. the formulation of charges, however, enabled him amply to justify the acts complained of, and order generally was restored. at last, however, a sufficient number of ships were collected to convey the force to sinope, where also cheirisophus put in his long-delayed appearance. cheirisophus came practically without ships and with nothing but vague promises from the admiral at byzantium. at this point it occurred to the army that it would be better to have a single commander for the whole than a committee of generals each in control of his own division. hence xenophon was invited to accept the position. on consulting the omens he declined, recommending that, since cheirisophus was a lacedæmonian, it would be the proper thing to offer him the command, which was accordingly done. the force now sailed from sinope as far as heraclea. here the contingents from arcadia and archæa--more than half the force--insisted on requisitioning large supplies of money from heraclea. cheirisophus, supported by xenophon, refused assent; the arcadians and achæans consequently refused to serve under their command any more, and appointed captains for themselves. the other half of the army was also parted in two divisions, commanded by cheirisophus and xenophon respectively. from calpe the arcadians and archæans made an expedition into the interior, which fared so ill that xenophon, hearing by accident of what had happened, was obliged to march to their relief. to his satisfaction, however, it was found that the enemy had already dispersed, and the greek column was overtaken on the way back to calpe. the general effect of the episode was to impress upon the arcadians and archæans that it was commonsense for the whole force to remain united. the usual operations were carried on for obtaining supplies, report having arrived that cleander, the lacedæmonian governor of byzantium, was coming, which he presently did, with a couple of galleys but no transports. from information received, cleander was inclined to regard the army as little better than a band of brigands; but this idea was successfully dissipated by xenophon. cleander went back to byzantium, and the greeks marched from calpe to chrysopolis, which faces byzantium. here the whole force was at last carried over to the opposite shore, and once more found itself on european soil, having received promises of pay from the admiral anaxibius. suspicions of his real intentions were aroused, and xenophon had no little difficulty in preventing his soldiery from breaking loose and sacking byzantium itself. ultimately, the greater part of the force took service with the thracian king seuthes. seuthes, however, failed to carry out his promises as to payments and rewards. but now the lacedæmonians were engaged in a quarrel with the western satraps, tissaphernes and artabazus; six thousand veterans so experienced as those who had followed this famous march into the heart of the persian empire, had fought their way from cunaxa to trapezus, and had supported themselves mainly by their military prowess in getting from trapezus to europe, were a force by no means to be neglected, and the bulk of the troops were not unwilling to be incorporated in the lacedæmonian armies. and so ends the story of the retreat of the ten thousand greeks. * * * * * george grote history of greece george grote, born at beckenham, england, nov. 17, 1794, entered the bank founded by his grandfather, from which he withdrew in 1843. he joined the group of "philosophic radicals," among whom james mill was a leader, and was a keen politician and reformer, and an ardent advocate of the ballot. his determination to write a sound "history of greece" was ensured, if it was not inspired, by mitford's history, a work full of anti-democratic fervour and very antagonistic to the great greek democratic state of athens. in some respects his work is a defence of the athenian democracy, at least as contrasted with sparta; it appeared in twelve volumes between 1846 and 1856, and covered greek history from the earliest times "till the close of the generation contemporary with alexander the great." it at once occupied, and still holds, the field as the classic work on the subject as a whole, though later research has modified many of his conclusions. his methods were pre-eminently thorough, dispassionate, and judicial; but he suffers from a lack of sympathetic imagination. he died on june 18, 1871, and was buried in westminster abbey. _i.--early history_ the divine myths constitute the earliest matter of greek history. these may be divided into those which belong to the gods and to the heroes respectively; but most of them, in point of fact, present gods, heroes, and men in juxtaposition. every community sought to trace its origin to some common divine, or semi-divine, progenitor; the establishment of a pedigree was a necessity; and each pedigree contains at some, point figures corresponding to some actual historical character, before whom the pedigree is imaginary, but after whom, in the main, actual. the precise point where the legend fades into the mythical, or consolidates into the historical, is not usually ascertainable. the legendary period culminates in the tale of troy, which belongs to a period prior to the dorian conquest presented in the herakleid legend; the tale of troy itself remaining the common heritage of the greek peoples, and having an actual basis in historical fact. the events, however, are of less importance than the picture of an actual historical, political, and social system, corresponding, not to the supposed date of the trojan war, but to the date of the composition of the homeric poems. later ages regarded the myths themselves with a good deal of scepticism, and were often disposed to rationalise them, or to find for them an allegorical interpretation. the myths of other european peoples have undergone a somewhat similar treatment. greece proper, that is, the european territory occupied by the hellenic peoples, has a very extensive coast-line, covers the islands of the ægean, and is so mountainous on the mainland that communication between one point and another is not easy. this facilitated the system which isolated communities, compelling each one to develop and perfect its own separate organisation; so that greece became, not a state, but a congerie of single separate city states--small territories centering in the city, although in some cases the village system was not centralised into the city system. on the other hand, the hellenes very definitely recognised their common affinity, looked on themselves as a distinct aggregate, and very emphatically differentiated that entire aggregate from the non-hellenes, whom they designated as "barbarians." of these states, the first to come into view--post-homerically--is sparta, the head of the dorian communities, governed under the laws and discipline attributed to lycurgus, with its special peculiarity of the dual kingship designed to make a pure despotism impossible. the government lay and remained in the hands of the conquering spartan race--as for a time with the normans in england--which formed a close oligarchy, while within the oligarchical body the organisation was democratic and communistic. for sparta, the eighth and seventh centuries b.c. were characterised by the two messenian wars; and we note that while the hellenes generally recognised her headship, argos claimed a titular right to that position. as a general rule, the primitive monarchical system portrayed in the homeric poems was displaced in the greek cities by an oligarchical government, which in turn was overthrown by an irregular despotism called _tyrannis_, primarily established by a professed popular leader, who maintained his supremacy by mercenary troops. one after another these usurping dynasties were again ejected in favour either of a restored oligarchy or of a democracy. sparta, where the power of the dual kingship was extremely limited, was the only state where the legitimate kingship survived. corinth attained her highest power under the despot periander, son of cypselus. of the ionian section of greek states, the supreme type is athens. her early history is obscure. the kingship seems to have ended by being, so to speak, placed in commission, the royal functions being discharged by an elected body of archons. dissensions among the groups of citizens issued in the democratic solonian constitution, which remained the basis of athenian government, except during the despotism of the house of pisistratus in the latter half of the sixth century b.c. but outside of greece proper were the numerous dorian and ionian colonies, really independent cities, planted in the coast districts of asia minor, at cyrene and barka in mediterranean africa, in epirus (albania), southern italy, sicily, and even at massilia in gaul, and in thrace beyond the proper hellenic area. these colonies brought the greek world in touch with lydia and its king, croesus, with the one sea-going semitic power, the phoenicians, with the egyptians, and more remotely with the wholly oriental empires of assyria and babylon, as well as with the outer barbarians of scythia. between 560 and 510 b.c., athens was generally under the rule of the despot pisistratus and his son hippias. in 510, the pisistratidæ were expelled, and athens became a pure democracy. meanwhile, the persian cyrus had seized the median monarchy and overthrown every other potentate in western asia; egypt was added to the vast persian dominion by his son cambyses. a new dynasty was established by darius, the son of hystaspes, who organized the empire, but failed to extend it by an incursion into european scythia. the revolt of the ionic cities in asia minor against the governments established by the "great king" brought him in contact with the athenians, who sent help to ionia. demands for "earth and water," _i.e.,_ the formal recognition of persian sovereignty, sent to the apparently insignificant greek states were insolently rejected. darius sent an expedition to punish athens in particular, and the athenians drove his army into the sea at the battle of marathon. xerxes, son of darius, organised an overwhelming force by land and sea to eat up the greeks. the invaders were met but hardly checked at thermopylæ, where leonidas and the immortal three hundred fell; all greece north of the isthmus of corinth was in their hands, including athens. but their fleet was shattered to pieces, chiefly by the athenians under themistocles and aristides at salamis, and the destruction of their land forces was completed by the united greeks at platæa. a further disaster was inflicted on the same day at mycale. _ii.--the struggles of athens and sparta_ meanwhile, the sicilian greeks, led by gelo of syracuse, successfully resisted and overthrew the aggression of carthage, the issue being decided at the battle of himera. the part played by athens under the guidance of themistocles in the repulse of persia gave her a new position among the greek states and an indisputable naval leadership. as the maritime head of hellas she was chief of the naval delian league, now formed ostensibly to carry on the war against persia. but the leaguers, who first contributed a quota of ships, soon began to substitute money to provide ships, which in effect swelled the athenian navy, and turned the contributors into tributaries. thus, almost automatically, the delian league converted itself into an athenian empire. in athens itself an unparalleled personal ascendancy was acquired by pericles, who made the form of government and administration more democratic than before. but this growing supremacy of athens aroused the jealous alarm of other greek states. sparta saw her own titular hegemony threatened; the subject cities grew restive under the athenian yoke. sparta came forward professedly as champion of the liberties of hellas; athens, guided by pericles, refused to submit to spartan dictation, and accepted the challenge which plunged greece into the peloponnesian war. the athenians concentrated on the expansion of their naval armaments, left the open country undefended and gathered within the city walls, and landed forces at will on the peloponnese. platsea, almost their sole ally on land, held out valiantly for some time, but was forced to surrender; and athens herself suffered frightfully from a visitation of the plague. after the death of pericles, cleon became the most prominent leader of the aggressive and democratic party, nicias, of the anti-democratic peace party. over most of greece in each state the oligarchic faction favoured the peloponnesian league, the democratic, athens. the general demosthenes at pylos effected the surrender of a lacedæmonian force, which temporarily shattered sparta's military prestige, a blow in some degree counteracted by the brilliant operations of brasidas in the north, where, however, both he and cleon were killed. meanwhile, athens was awakening to the possibilities of a great sea-empire, in consequence of her intervention having been invited in disputes among the sicilian states. as the outcome, incited by the brilliant young alcibiades, she resolved on the fatal sicilian expedition. the expedition, planned under command of alcibiades and nicias, was dispatched in spite of the startling mutilation of the hermæ, a sacrilegious performance attributed to alcibiades. it had hardly reached sicily when he was recalled, but made his escape and spent some years mainly in intriguing against athens. the siege of syracuse was progressing favourably, when the spartan gylippus was allowed to enter and put new life into the defence. disaster followed on disaster both by sea and land; finally, the whole athenian force was either cut to pieces or surrendered at discretion, to become the slaves of the syracusans, both nicias and demosthenes being put to death. meanwhile, the truce between athens and sparta had been ended, and war again declared. sparta occupied permanently a post of the attic territory, deceleia, with merciless effect. the sicilian disaster moved the islanders, notably chios, to revolt, by spartan help, against athens. she, however, renovated her navy with unexpected vigour. but, with her fleets away, alcibiades inspired oligarchical intrigues in the city; a _coup d'état_ gave the government to the leaders of a group of 400. the navy stood by the democratic constitution, the 400 were overthrown, and an assembly, nominally of 5,000, assumed the government. a great athenian triumph at arginusæ was followed later by a still more overwhelming disaster at ægos potami. the spartan commander lysander blockaded athens; starvation forced her to surrender. lysander established the government known as that of the thirty tyrants, who were headed by kritias. lysander's ascendancy created in sparta a party in opposition to him; in the outcome, the spartan king pausanias helped in the overthrow of the thirty at athens by thrasybulus, and the restoration of the athenian democracy. throughout, the conduct of the democratic party, at its best and its worst, contrasted favourably with that of the oligarchical faction. these eighty years were the great period of athenian literature and art: of the parthenon and phidias; of æschylus, the soldier of marathon; then sophocles and euripides and aristophanes; finally, of socrates, not himself an author, but the inspirer of plato, and the founder of ethical science; according to popular ideas, the typical sophist, but in fact differing from the sophists fundamentally. _iii.--the blotting out of hellas_ the triumph of sparta has established her empire among the greeks; she used her power with a tyranny infinitely more galling than the sway of athens. the spartan character had become greatly demoralised. agesilaus, who succeeded to the kingship, set on foot ambitious projects for a greek conquest of asia; but greece began to revolt against the spartan dominion. thebes and other cities rose, and called for help from athens, their former foe. in the first stages of the ensuing war, of which the most notable battle was coronea, sparta maintained her supremacy within the peloponnesus, but not beyond. athens obtained the countenance of persia, and the counter-diplomacy of sparta produced the peace known by the name of the spartan antalcidas, establishing generally the autonomy of greek cities. but this in effect meant the restoration of spartan domination. in course of time, however, this brought about the defiance of spartan dictation by thebes and the tremendous check to her power inflicted at the battle of leuctra, by epaminondas the theban, whose military skill and tactical originality there overthrew the spartan military prestige. as a consequence, half the peloponnese itself broke away from sparta; a force under epaminondas aided the arcadians, and the arcadian federation was established. hellenic sicily during these years was having a history of her own of some importance. syracuse, after her triumph over the athenian forces, continued the contest with her neighbours, which had been the ostensible cause of the athenian expedition. but this was closed by the advent of fresh invaders, the carthaginians, who renewed the attack repulsed at himera. owing to the disaster to athens, her fleets were no longer to be feared by carthage as a protection to the hellenic world; and for two centuries to come, her interventions in sicily were incessant. now, the presence of a foreign foe in sicily gave intriguers for power at syracuse their opportunity, of which the outcome was the subversion of the democracy and the establishment of dionysius as despot. his son, dionysius ii., succeeded, and was finally ejected by the corinthian timoleon, who, after a brilliant career of victories as syracusan general against carthage, acted as general liberator of sicilian cities from despotisms, laid down his powers, and was content with the position, not of despot, but of counsellor, to the great prosperity of sicily as a whole. going back to the north of greece, the semi-hellenic macedon with a hellenic dynasty was growing powerful. philip--father of alexander the great--was now king, and was resolved to make himself the head of the greek world. his great opponent is found in the person of the athenian orator demosthenes, who saw that philip was aiming at ascendancy, but generally failed to persuade the athenians to recognise the danger in which they stood. philip gradually achieved his immediate end of being recognised as the captain-general of the hellenes, and their leader in a new persian war, when his life was cut short by an assassin, and he was succeeded by his youthful son alexander. the greek states, awakening to their practical subjection, would have thrown off the new yoke, but the young king with swift and overwhelming energy swept down from thrace upon thebes, the centre of resistance, and stamped it out. he had already conceived, in part at least, his vast schemes of asiatic conquest; while he lived, greece had practically no distinguishable history. she is merely an appendage to macedon. everything is absorbed in the macedon conqueror. with an army incredibly small for the task before him, he entered asia minor, and routed the persian forces on the river granicus. the greek memnon, the one able leader for the persians, would have organised against him a destructive naval power; but death removed him. alexander dispersed the armies of the persian king darius at the issus, captured tyre after a remarkable siege, and took easy possession of egypt, where he founded alexandria. having organised the administration of the conquered territories, he marched to the euphrates, but did not engage the enormous persian hosts till he found and shattered them at the battle of gaugamela, also called arbela. darius fled, and alexander swept on to babylon, to susa, to persepolis, assuming the functions of the "great king." the fugitive darius was assassinated. alexander henceforth assumed a new and oriental demeanour; but he continued his conquests, crossing the hindoo koosh to bactria, and then bursting into the punjab. but his ambitions were ended by his death, and their fulfilment, not at all according to his designs, was left to the "diadochi," the generals among whom the conquered dominions were parted. athens led the revolt against macedonian supremacy, but in vain. demosthenes, condemned by the conquering antipater, took poison. the remainder of the history is that of the blotting out of hellas and of hellenism. * * * * * heinrich schliemann troy and its remains heinrich schliemann was born at kalkhorst, a village in mecklenburg-schwerin, on january 6, 1822, and died on december 27, 1890. during his early childhood an old scholar, who had fallen upon evil days, delighted him with stories of the great deeds of homeric heroes. at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed in a warehouse, but never lost his love for antiquity, and unceasingly prayed to god that he might yet have the happiness to learn greek. an accident released him from his low position, and he went to holland and found a situation in an office. he now began to study languages, suffering extraordinary denials so as to be able to afford money for his studies. in 1846 he was sent by his firm to russia, learning swedish and polish, and next acquired greek. later, he travelled in europe and the east, making a voyage round the world. at last he realised the dream of his life. inaugurating a series of explorations in greece and asia minor, dr. schliemann gained fame by his discoveries at tiryus, mycenæ, and troy, largely solving the problems of antiquity and archæology associated with these localities. "troy and its remains" is published here in order that, having read in the classical histories, we may see how the ancient world is reconstructed for modern readers, by the records of one of the most famous of archæologists. _i.--searching for the site of troy_ _hissarlik, plain of troy, october_ 18, 1871. in my work, "ithaca, the peloponnesus, and troy," published in 1869, i endeavored to prove, both by my own excavations and by the statement of the iliad, that the homeric troy cannot possibly have been situated on the heights of bunarbashi, to which place most archæologists assign it. at the same time i endeavoured to explain that the site of troy must necessarily be identical with the site of that town which, throughout all antiquity and down to its complete destruction at the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century a.d., was called ilium, and not until 1,000 years, after its disappearance--that is, in 1788 a.d.--was christened ilium novum by lechevalier, who, as his work proves, can never have visited his ilium novum. the site of ilium is on a plateau 80 feet above the plain. its north-western corner is formed by a hill about 26 feet higher still, which is about 705 feet in breadth and about 984 feet in length, and from its imposing situation and natural fortifications, this hill of hissarlik seems specially suited to the acropolis of the town. ever since my first visit i never doubted that i should find the pergamus of priam in the depths of this hill. on october 10, 1871, i started with my wife from the dardanelles for the plain of troy, a journey of eight hours, and next day commenced my excavations where i had, a year previously, made some preliminary explorations, and had found, among other things, at a depth of 16 feet, walls about 6-1/2 feet thick, which belong to a bastion of the time of lysimachus. hissarlik, the turkish name of this imposing hill at the north-western end of the site of ilium, means "fortress," or "acropolis," and seems to prove that this is the pergamus of priam; that here xerxes in 480 b.c. offered up 1,000 oxen to the ilian athena; that here alexander the great hung up his armour in the temple of the goddess, and took away in its stead some of the weapons therein dedicated, belonging to the time of the trojan war. i conjectured that this temple, the pride of the ilians, must have stood on the highest point of the hill, and i therefore decided to excavate this locality down to the native soil, and i made an immense cutting on the face of the steep northern slope, about 66 feet from my last year's work. notwithstanding the difficulties due to coming on immense blocks of stone, the work advances rapidly. my dear wife, an athenian lady, who is an enthusiastic admirer of homer, and knows almost the whole of the iliad by heart, is present at the excavations from morning to night. all of my workmen are greeks from the neighbouring village of renkoi; only on sunday, a day on which the greeks do not work, i employ turks. _hissarlik, october_ 26, 1871. since my report of the 18th i have continued the excavations with the utmost energy, with, on the average, 80 workmen, and i have to-day reached an average depth of 13 feet. i found an immense number of round articles of terra-cotta, red, yellow, grey, and black, with two holes, without inscriptions, but frequently with a kind of potter's stamp upon them. i cannot find any trace of their having been used for domestic purposes, and therefore i presume they have served as _ex votos_ for hanging up in the temples. i found at a depth of about five feet three marble slabs with inscriptions. one of these must, i think, from the character of the writing, be assigned to the third century, the two others to the first century b.c. a king spoken of in the third century writing must have been one of the kings of pergamus. the view from the hill of hissarlik is magnificent. before me lies the glorious plain of troy, traversed from the south-east to the north-west by the scamander, which has changed its bed since ancient times. _hissarlik, november_ 18, 1871. i have now reached a depth of 33 feet. during these operations i was for a time deceived by the enormous mass of stone implements which were dug up, and by the absence of any trace of metal, and supposed that i had come upon the stone age. but since the sixth of this month there have appeared many nails, knives, lances, and battle-axes of copper of such elegant workmanship that they can have been made only by a civilised people. i cannot even admit that i have reached the bronze period, for the implements and weapons which i find are too well finished. i must, however, observe that the deeper i dig the greater are the indications of a higher civilisation. and as i thus find ever more and more traces of civilisation the deeper i dig, i am now perfectly convinced that i have not yet penetrated to the period of the trojan war, and hence i am more hopeful than ever of finding the site of troy by further excavations; for if ever there was a troy--and my belief in this is firm--it can only have been here, on the site of ilium. _ii.--trojan life and civilisation_ _hissarlik, april 5, 1872._ on the first of this month i resumed the excavations which were discontinued at the end of november. in the ruins of houses i find, amongst other things, a great number of small idols of very fine marble, with or without the symbols of the owl's head and woman's girdle. many trojan articles found in the ruins have stamped on them crosses of various descriptions, which are of the highest importance to archæology. such symbols were already regarded, thousands of years before christ, as religious tokens of the very greatest importance. the figure of the cross represents two pieces of wood which were laid crosswise upon one another before the sacrificial altars in order to produce holy fire. the fire was produced by the friction of one piece of wood against another. at all depths we find a number of flat idols of very fine marble; upon many of them is the owl's face, and a female girdle with dots. i am firmly convinced that all of the helmeted owls' heads represent a goddess, and the important question now presents itself, what goddess is it who is here found so repeatedly, and is, moreover, the only one to be found upon the idols, drinking-cups, and vases? the answer is, she must necessarily be the tutelary goddess of troy; she must be the ilian athena, and this indeed perfectly agrees with the statement of homer, who continually calls her _thea glaukopis athene,_ "the goddess with the owl's face." _hissarlik, june 18, 1872._ i had scarcely begun to extend a third cutting into the hill when i found a block of triglyphs of parian marble, containing a sculpture in high relief which represents phoebus apollo, who, in a long woman's robe with a girdle, is riding on the four immortal horses which pursue their career through the universe. nothing is to be seen of a chariot. above the head of the god is seen about two-thirds of the sun's disc with twenty rays. the face of the god is very expressive, and the folds of his robe are exquisitely sculptured; but my admiration is specially excited by the four horses, which, snorting and looking wildly forward, career through the universe with infinite power. their anatomy is so masterly that i confess i have never seen so masterly a work. it is especially remarkable to find the sun-god here, for homer knows nothing of a temple to the sun in troy, and later history says not a word about the existence of such a temple. however, the image of phoebus apollo does not prove that the sculpture must have belonged to a temple of the sun; in my opinion it may just as well have served as an ornament to any other temple. i venture to express the opinion that the image of the sun, which i find represented here thousands and thousands of times upon the whorls of terra-cotta, must be regarded as the name or emblem of the town--that is, ilios. in like manner, this sun-god shone in the form of a woman upon the propylæa of the temple of the ilian athena as a symbol of the sun-city. this head of the sun-god appears to me to have so much of the alexandrian style that i must adhere to history, and believe that this work of art belongs to the time of lysimachus, who, according to strabo, after the time of alexander the great, built here the new temple of the ilian athena, which alexander had promised to the town of ilium after the subjugation of the persian empire. were it not for the splendid terra-cottas which i find exclusively on the primary soil and as far as 6-1/2 feet above it, i could swear that at a depth of from 26 to 33 feet, i am among the ruins of the homeric troy. [the reader should bear in mind that dr. schliemann finally came back to this opinion.] for at this depth i have found a thousand wonderful objects; whereas i find little in the lowest stratum, the removal of which gives immense trouble. we daily find some of the whorls of very fine terra-cotta, and it is curious that those which have no decorations at all are always of the ordinary shape, and of the size of small tops, or like the craters of volcanoes, while almost all those possessing decorations are flat, and in the form of a wheel. metals, at least gold, silver, and copper, were known to the trojans, for i found a copper knife highly gilded, a silver hairpin, and a number of copper nails at a depth of forty-six feet. i found many small instruments for use as pins; also a number of ivory needles, and some curious pieces of ivory, one in the form of a paper-knife, the other in the shape of an exceedingly neat dagger. we discovered one-edged or double-edged knives of white silex in the form of saws in quantities, each about two inches long; also many hand millstones of lava, and some beautiful red vases, cups, vessels, jugs, and hand plates. in these depths we likewise find many bones of animals; boars' tusks, small shells, horns of the buffalo, ram, and stag, as well as the vertebræ of the shark. the houses and palaces in which the splendid terra-cottas were used were large and spacious, for to them belong all the mighty heaps of stone, hewn and unhewn, which cover them to the height of from 13 to 20 feet. these buildings were easily destroyed, for the stones were only joined with earth, and when the walls fell everything in the houses was crushed to pieces by the immense blocks of stone. the primitive trojan people disappeared simultaneously with the destruction of their town. [here, as well as in what goes before, dr. schliemann writes on the supposition, which he afterwards abandoned, that the remains in the lowest stratum are those of the trojans of the iliad.] upon the site of the destroyed city new settlers, of a different civilisation, manners, and customs, built a new town; but only the foundation of their houses consisted of stones joined with clay; all the house-walls were built of unburnt bricks. i must draw attention to the fact that i have found twice on fragments of pottery the curious symbol of the _suastika_, or crossed angles, which proves that the primitive trojans belonged to the aryan race. this is further proved by the symbols on the round terra-cottas. the existence of the nation which preceded the trojans was likewise of long duration, for all the layers of _débris_ at the depth of from 33 to 23 feet belong to it. they also were of aryan descent, for they possessed innumerable aryan religious symbols. several of the symbols belonged to the time when germans, pelasgians, hindoos, persians, celts, and greeks still formed one nation. i found no trace of a double cup among this people, but instead of it those curious cups which have a coronet below in place of a handle; then those brilliant, fanciful goblets, in the form of immense champagne glasses, and with two mighty handles on the sides; they are round below, so that they can only stand on their mouths. further, all those splendid vessels of burnt earthenware, as, for instance, funeral, wine, or water urns, five feet high; likewise, all of those vessels with a beak-shaped mouth, bent back, and either short or long. i have met with many very curious vases in the shape of animals with three feet. the mouth of the vessel is in the tail, which is upright and very thick, and is connected with the back by a handle. in these strata we also meet with an immense number of those round terra-cottas--the whorls--embellished with beautiful and ingenious symbolical signs, amongst which the sun-god always occupies the most prominent position. but the fire-machine of our primeval ancestors, the holy sacrificial altar with blazing flames, the holy soma-tree, or tree of life, and the _rosa mystica_, are also very frequently met with here. this mystic rose, which occurs very often in the byzantine sculptures, and the name of which, as is well known, is employed to designate the holy virgin in the roman catholic liturgies, is a very ancient aryan symbol, as yet, unfortunately, unexplained. it is very ancient, because i find it at a depth of from 23 to 33 feet, in the strata of the successors to the trojans, which must belong to a period about 1,200 years before christ. at a depth of 30-1/2 feet, among the yellow ashes of a house destroyed by fire, i found silver-ware ornaments and also a very pretty gold ear-ring, which has three lows of stars on both sides; then two bunches of earrings of various forms, most of which are of silver and terminate in five leaves. i now come to the strata of _débris_ at a depth of from 23 to 13 feet, which are evidently also the remains of a people of the aryan race, who took possession of the town built on the ruins of troy, and who destroyed it and extirpated the inhabitants; for in these strata of ten feet thick i find no trace of metal, and the structure of the houses is entirely different. all the house-walls consist of small stones joined with clay. in these strata--at a depth of from 23 to 13 feet--not only are all the stone implements much rougher, but all the terra-cottas are of a coarser quality. still, they possess a certain elegance. a new epoch in the history of ilium commenced when the accumulation of _débris_ on this hill had reached a height of 13 feet below its present surface; for the town was again destroyed, and the inhabitants killed or driven out by a wretched tribe, which certainly must likewise have belonged to the aryan race, for upon the round terra-cottas i still very frequently find the tree of life, and the simple cross and double cross with the four nails. in these depths, however, the forms of the whorls degenerate. of pottery, however, much less is found, and all of it is considerably less artistic than that which i have found in the preceding strata. with the people to whom these strata belonged--from 13 to 6-1/2 feet below the surface--the pre-hellenic ages end, for henceforth we see many ruined walls of greek buildings, of beautifully hewn stones laid together without cement, and the painted and unpainted terra-cottas leave no doubt that a greek colony took possession of ilium when the surface of this hill was much lower than it is now. it is impossible to determine when this new colonisation took place, but it must have been much earlier than the visit of xerxes reported by herodotus, which took place 480 years before christ. the event may have taken place 700 b.c. _iii.--homeric legends verified_ _pergamus of troy, august_ 4, 1872. on the south side of the hill where i made my great trench i discovered a great tower, 40 feet thick, which obstructs my path and appears to extend to a great length. i have uncovered it on the north and south sides along the whole breadth of my trench, and have convinced myself that it is built on the rock at a depth of 46-1/2 feet. this tower is now only 20 feet high, but must have been much higher. for its preservation we have to thank the ruins of troy, which entirely covered it as it now stands. its situation would be most interesting and imposing, for its top would command not only a view of the whole plain of troy, but of the sea, with the islands of tenedos, imbros, and samothrace. there is not a more sublime situation in the whole area of the plain of troy than this. in the ashes of a house at the depth of 42-1/2 feet i found a tolerably well preserved skeleton of a woman. the colour of the bones shows that the lady, whose gold ornaments were near by, was overtaken by fire and burnt alive. with the exception of the skeleton of an infant found in a vase, this is the only skeleton of a human being i have ever met with in the pre-hellenic remains on this hill. as we know from homer, all corpses were burnt and the ashes placed in urns, of which i have found great numbers. the bones were always burnt to ashes. _pergamus of troy, august 14, 1872._ in stopping the excavations for this year, and in looking back on the dangers to which we have been exposed between the gigantic layers of ruins, i cannot but fervently thank god for his great mercy, not only that no life has been lost, but that none of us has been seriously hurt. as regards the result of my excavations, everyone must admit that i have solved a great historical problem, and that i have solved it by the discovery of a high civilisation and immense buildings upon the primary soil, in the depths of an ancient town, which throughout antiquity was called ilium and declared itself to be the successor of troy, the site of which was regarded as identical with the site of the homeric ilium by the whole world of that time. the situation of this town not only corresponds perfectly with all the statements of the iliad, but also with all the traditions handed down to us by later authorities. _pergamus of troy, march 22, 1873. _during this last week, with splendid weather, and with 150 men on the average, i have got through a good piece of work. on the north side of the excavation on the site of the temple of athena i have already reached a depth of 26 feet, and have laid bare the tower in several places. the most remarkable of the objects found this week is a large knob of the purest and finest crystal, belonging to a stick, in the form of a beautifully wrought lion's head. it seems probable that in remote antiquity lions existed in this region. homer could not so excellently have described them had he not had the opportunities of watching them. _pergamus of troy, may 10, 1873._ although the pergamus, whose depths i have been ransacking, borders directly on the marshes formed by the simois, in which there are always hundreds of storks, yet none of them ever settle down here. though there are sometimes a dozen storks' nests on one roof in the neighbouring turkish villages, yet no one will settle on mine, even though i have two comfortable nests made for them. it is probably too cold and stormy for the little storks on _ilios anemoessa_. my most recent excavations have far surpassed my expectations, for i have unearthed two large gates, standing 20 feet apart, in a splendid street which proceeds from the chief building in the pergamus. i venture to assert that this great double gate must be the homeric scæan gate. it is in an excellent state of preservation. here, therefore, by the side of the double gate, at ilium's great tower, sat priam, the seven elders of the city, and helen. from this spot the company surveyed the whole plain, and saw at the foot of the pergamus the trojan and achæan armies face to face about to settle their agreement to let the war be decided by a single combat between paris and menelaus. i now positively retract my former opinion that ilium was inhabited up to the ninth century after christ, and i must distinctly maintain that its site has been desolate and uninhabited since the end of the fourth century. but troy was not large. i am extremely disappointed at being obliged to give so small a plan of the city; nay, i had wished to be able to make it a thousand times larger, but i value truth above everything, and i rejoice that my three years' excavations have laid open the homeric troy, even though on a diminished scale, and that i have proved the iliad based upon real facts. homer is an epic poet, and not an historian; so it is quite natural that he should have exaggerated everything with poetic licence. moreover, the events he describes are so marvellous that many scholars have long doubted the very existence of troy, and have considered the city to be a mere invention of the poet's fancy. i venture to hope that the civilised world will not only not be disappointed that the city of priam has shown itself to be scarcely a twentieth part as large as was to be expected from the statements of the iliad, but that, on the contrary, it will accept with delight and enthusiasm the certainty that ilium did really exist, that a large portion of it has now been brought to light, and that homer, even though he exaggerates, nevertheless sings of events that actually happened. homer can never have seen ilium's great tower, the surrounding wall of poseidon and apollo, the scæan gate of the palace of king priam, for all these monuments lay buried deep in heaps of rubbish, and he could have made no excavations to bring them to light. he knew of these monuments only from hearsay and tradition, for the tragic fate of ancient troy was then still in fresh remembrance, and had already been for centuries in the mouth of all minstrels. * * * * * julius cæsar commentaries on the gallic war caius julius cæsar was born on july 12, 100 b.c., of a noble roman family. his career was decided when he threw in his lot with the democratic section against the republican oligarchy. marrying cornelia, daughter of lucius cinna, the chief opponent of the tyrant dictator sulla, he incurred the implacable hatred of the latter, and was obliged to quit rome. for a season he studied rhetoric at rhodes. settling in rome after sulla's death, cæsar attached himself to the illustrious pompey, whose policy was then democratic. in b.c. 68 he obtained a quæstorship in spain, and on returning next year reconciled the two most powerful men in rome, pompey and crassus. with them he formed what became known as the first triumvirate. being appointed to govern gaul for five years, cæsar there developed his genius for war; but his brilliant success excited the fears of the senate and the envy even of pompey. civil war broke out. the conflict ended in the fall of pompey, who was defeated in the fateful battle of pharsalia, and was afterwards murdered in egypt. julius cæsar now possessed supreme power. he lavished vast sums on games and public buildings, won splendid victories in gaul, egypt, pontus, and africa, and was the idol of the common people. but the jealousy of many of the aristocrats led to the formation of a plot, and on march 15, 44 b.c., cæsar was assassinated in the senate house. this summary relates to the commentaries known to be by cæsar himself, certain other books having been added by other latin writers. it will be noticed that he writes in the third person. this epitome is prepared from the latin text. _i.--subduing celtic gaul_ gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the belgæ inhabit; the aquitani another; those who in their own language are called celts, in ours gauls, the third. all these differ from each other in language, customs, and laws. among the gauls the helvetii surpass the rest in valour, as they constantly contend in battle with the germans. when messala and piso were consuls, orgetorix, the most distinguished of the helvetii, formed a conspiracy among the nobility, persuading them that, since they excelled all in valour, it would be very easy to acquire the supremacy of the whole of gaul. they made great preparations for the expedition, but suddenly orgetorix died, nor was suspicion lacking that he committed suicide. after his death, the helvetii nevertheless attempted the exodus from their territories. when it was reported to cæsar that they were attempting to make their route through our province, he gathered as great a force as possible, and by forced marches arrived at geneva. the helvetii now sent ambassadors to cæsar, requesting permission to pass through the province, which he refused, inasmuch as he remembered that lucius cassius, the consul, had been slain and his army routed, and made to pass under the yoke by the helvetii. disappointed in their hope, the helvetii attempted to force a passage across the rhone, but, being resisted by the soldier, desisted. after the war with the helvetii was concluded, ambassadors from almost all parts of gaul assembled to congratulate cæsar, and to declare that his victory had happened no less to the benefit of the land of gaul than of the roman people, because the helvetii had quitted their country with the design of subduing the whole of gaul. when the assembly was dismissed, the chiefs' of the ædui and of the sequani waited upon cæsar to complain that ariovistus, the king of the germans, had seized a third of their land, which was the best in gaul, and was now ordering them to depart from another third part. to ambassadors sent by cæsar, demanding an appointment of some spot for a conference, ariovistus gave an insolent reply, which was repeated on a second overture. hearing that the king of the germans was threatening to seize vesontio, the capital of the sequani, cæsar, by a forced march, arrived there and took possession of the city. apprised of this event, ariovistus changed his attitude, and sent messengers intimating that he agreed to meet cæsar, as they were now nearer to each other, and could meet without danger. the conference took place, but it led to no successful result, for ariovistus demanded that the romans should withdraw from gaul and his conduct became afterwards so hostile that it led to war. a battle took place about fifty miles from the rhine. the germans were routed and fled to the river, across which many escaped, the rest being slain in pursuit. cæsar, having concluded two very important wars in one campaign, conducted his army into winter quarters. _ii.--taming the rebellious belgæ_ while cæsar was in winter quarters in hither gaul frequent reports were brought to him that all the belgæ were entering into a confederacy against the roman people, because they feared that, after all celtic gaul was subdued, our army would be led against them. cæsar, alarmed, levied two new legions in hither gaul, and proceeded to the territory of the belgæ. as he arrived there unexpectedly, and sooner than anyone anticipated, the remi, who are the nearest of the belgæ to celtic gaul, sent messages of submission and gave cæsar full information about the other belgæ. cæsar next learned that the nervii, a savage and very brave people, whose territories bordered those just conquered, had upbraided the rest of the belgæ who had surrendered themselves to the roman people, and had declared that they themselves would neither send ambassadors nor accept any condition of peace. he was informed concerning them that they allowed no access of any merchants, and that they suffered no wine and other things tending to luxury to be imported, because they thought that by their use the mind is enervated and the courage impaired. after he had made three days' march into their territory, cæsar discovered that all the nervii had stationed themselves on the other side of the river sambre, not more than ten miles from his camp, and that they had persuaded the atrebates and the veromandui to join with them, and that likewise the aduatuci were expected by them, and were on the march. the roman army proceeded to encamp in front of the river, on a site sloping towards it. here they were fiercely attacked by the nervii, the assault being so sudden that cæsar had to do all things at one time. the standard as the sign to run to arms had to be displayed, the soldiers were to be called from the works on the rampart, the order of battle was to be formed, and a great part of these arrangements was prevented by the shortness of time and the sudden charge of the enemy. time was lacking even for putting on helmets and uncovering shields. in such an unfavorable state of affairs, various events of fortune followed. the soldiers of the ninth and tenth legions speedily drove back the atrebates, who were breathless with running and fatigue. many of them were slain. in like manner the veromandui were routed by the eighth and eleventh legions; but as part of the camp was very exposed, the nervii hastened in a very close body, under boduagnatus, their leader, to rush against that quarter. our horsemen and light-armed infantry were by the first assault routed, and the enemy, rushing into our camp in great numbers, pressed hard on the legions. but cæsar, seizing a shield and encouraging the soldiers, many of whose centurions had been slain, ordering them to extend their companies that they might more freely use their swords. so great a change was soon effected that, though the enemy displayed great courage, the battle was ended so disastrously for them that the nervii were almost annihilated. scarcely five hundred were left who could bear arms. their old men sent ambassadors to cæsar by the consent of all who remained, surrendering themselves. the aduatuci, before mentioned, who were coming to the help of the nervii, returned home when they heard of this battle. all gaul being now subdued, so high an opinion of this war was spread among the barbarians that ambassadors were sent to cæsar by those nations that dwelt beyond the rhine, to promise that they would give hostages and execute his commands. he ordered these embassies to return to him at the beginning of the following summer, because he was hastening into italy and illyricum. having led his legions into winter quarters among the carnutes, the andes, and the turones, which states were close to those in which he had waged war, he set out for italy, and a public thanksgiving of fifteen days was decreed for these achievements, an honour which before that time had been conferred on none. _iii.--war by land and sea in gaul_ when cæsar was setting out for italy, he sent servius galba with the twelfth legion and part of the cavalry against the nantuates, the veragri, and the seduni, who extend from the territories of the allobroges and the lake of geneva and the river rhone to the top of the alps. the reason for sending him was that he desired that the pass along the alps, through which the roman merchants had been accustomed to travel with great danger, should be opened. galba fought several successful battles, stormed some of their forts, and concluded a peace. he then determined to winter in a village of the veragri, which is called octodurus. but before the winter camp could be completed the tops of the mountains were seen to be crowded with armed men, and soon these rushed down from all parts and discharged stones and darts on the ramparts. the fierce battle that followed lasted for more than six hours. during the fight more than a third part of the army of 30,000 men of the seduni and the veragri were slain, and the rest were put to flight, panic-stricken. then galba, unwilling to tempt fortune again, after having burned all the buildings in that village, hastened to return into the province, urged chiefly by the want of corn and provision. as no enemy opposed his march, he brought his forces safely into the country of the allobroges, and there wintered. these things being achieved, cæsar, who was visiting illyricum to gain a knowledge of that country, had every reason to suppose that gaul was reduced to a state of tranquillity. for the belgæ had been overcome, the germans had been expelled, and the seduni and the veragri among the alps defeated. but a sudden war sprang up in gaul. the occasion of that war was this. p. crassus, a young man, had taken up his winter quarters with the seventh legion among the andes, who border on the atlantic ocean. as corn was scarce, he sent out officers among the neighbouring states for the purpose of procuring supplies. the most considerable of these states was the veneti, who have a very great number of ships with which they have been accustomed to sail into britain, and thus they excel the rest of the states in nautical affairs. with them arose the beginning of the revolt. the veneti detained silius and velanius, who had been sent among them, for they thought they should recover by their means the hostages which they had given crassus. the neighbouring people, the essui and the curiosolitæ, led on by the influence of the veneti (as the measures of the gauls are sudden and hasty) detained other officers for the same motive. all the sea-coast being quickly brought over to the sentiments of these states, they sent a common embassy to p. crassus to say "if he wished to receive back his officers, let him send back to them their hostages." cæsar, being informed of these things, since he was himself so far distant, ordered ships of war to be built on the river loire; rowers to be raised from the province; sailors and pilots to be provided. these matters being quickly executed, he hastened to the army as soon as the season of the year admitted. cæsar at once ordered his army, divided into several detachments, to attack the towns of the enemy in different districts. many were stormed, yet much of the warfare was vain and much labour was lost, because the veneti, having numerous ships specially adapted for such a purpose, their keels being flatter than those of our ships, could easily navigate the shallows and estuaries, and thus their flight hither and thither could not be prevented. at length, in a naval fight, our fleet, being fully assembled, gained a victory so signal that, by that one battle, the war with the veneti and the whole sea-coast was finished. cæsar thought that severe punishment should be inflicted, in order that for the future the rights of ambassadors should be respected by barbarians; he therefore put to death all their senate, and sold the rest for slaves. about the same time p. crassus arrived in aquitania, which, as was already said, is, both from its extent and its number of population, a third part of gaul. here, a few years before, l. valerius præconius, the lieutenant, had been killed and his army routed, so that crassus understood no ordinary care must be used. on his arrival being known, the sotiates assembled great forces, and the battle that followed was long and vigorously contested. the sotiates being routed, they retired to their principal stronghold, but it was stormed, and they submitted. crassus then marched into the territories of the vocates and the tarusites, who raised a great host of men to carry on the war, but suffered total defeat, after which the greater part of aquitania of its own accord surrendered to the romans, sending hostages of their own accord from different tribes. a few only--and those remote nations--relying on the time of year, neglected to do this. _iv.--the first landing in britain_ the following winter, this being the year in which cn. pompey and m. crassus were consuls [this was the year 699 after the building of rome, 55 before christ; it was the fourth year of the gallic war] the germans, called the usipetes, and likewise the tenchtheri, with a great number of men, crossed the rhine, not far from the place at which that river falls into the sea. the motive was to escape from the suevi, the largest and strongest nation in germany, by whom they had been for several years harassed and hindered from agricultural pursuits. the suevi are said to possess a hundred cantons, from each of which they send forth for war a thousand armed men yearly, the others remaining at home, and going forth in their turn in other years. cæsar, hearing that various messages had been sent to them by the gauls (whose fickle disposition he knew) asking them to come forward from the rhine, and promising them all that they needed, set forward for the army earlier in the year than usual. when he had arrived in the region, he discovered that those things which he had suspected would occur, had taken place, and that, allured by the hopes held out to them, the germans were then making excursions to greater distances, and had advanced to the territories of the euburones and the condrusi, who are under the protection of the treviri. after summoning the chiefs of gaul, cæsar thought proper to pretend ignorance of the things which he had discovered, and, having conciliated and confirmed their minds, and ordered some cavalry to be raised, resolved to make war against the germans. when he had advanced some distance, the germans sent ambassadors, begging him not to advance further, as they had come hither reluctantly, having been expelled from their country. but cæsar, knowing that they wished for delay only to make further secret preparations, refused the overtures. marshalling his army in three lines, and marching eight miles, he took them by surprise, and the romans rushed their camp. many of the enemy were slain, the rest being either scattered or drowned in attempting to escape by crossing the meuse in the flight. the conflict with the germans being finished, cæsar thought it expedient to cross the rhine. since the germans were so easily urged to go into gaul, he desired they should have fears for their own territories. therefore, notwithstanding the difficulty of constructing a bridge, owing to the breadth, rapidity, and depth of the river, he devised and built one of timber and of great strength, piles being first driven in on which to erect it. the army was led over into germany, advanced some distance, and burnt some villages of the hostile sigambri, who had concealed themselves in the woods after conveying away all their possessions. then cæsar, having done enough to strike fear into the germans and to serve both honour and interest, after a stay of eighteen days across the rhine, returned into gaul and cut down the bridge. during the short part of the summer which remained he resolved to proceed into britain, because succours had been constantly furnished to the gauls from that country. he thought it expedient, if he only entered the island, to see into the character of the people, and to gain knowledge of their localities, harbours, and landing-places. having collected about eighty transport ships, he set sail with two legions in fair weather, and the soldiers were attacked instantly on landing by the cavalry and charioteers of the barbarians. the enemy were vanquished, but could not be pursued, because the roman horse had not been able to maintain their course at sea and to reach the island. this alone was wanting to cæsar's accustomed success. _v.--cæsar on the thames_ during the winter cæsar commanded as many ships as possible to be constructed, and the old repaired. about six hundred transports and twenty ships of war were built, and, after settling some disputes in gaul among the chiefs, cæsar went to port itius with the legions. he took with him several of the leading chiefs of the gauls, determined to retain them as hostages and to keep them with him during his next expedition to britain, lest a commotion should arise in gaul during his absence. cæsar, having crossed to the shore of britain and disembarked his army at a convenient spot advanced about twelve miles and repelled all attacks of the cavalry and charioteers of the enemy. then he led his forces into the territories of cassivellaunus to the river thames, which river can be forded in one place only. here an engagement took place which resulted in the flight of the britons. but cassivellaunus had sent messengers to the four kings who reigned over kent and the districts by the sea, cingetorix, carvilius, taximaquilus, and segonax, commanding them to collect all their forces and assail the naval camp. in the battle which ensued the romans were victorious, and when cassivellaunus heard of this disaster he sent ambassadors to cæsar to treat about a surrender. cæsar, since he had resolved to pass the winter on the continent, on account of sudden revolts in gaul, demanded hostages and prescribed what tribute britain should pay each year to the roman people. cæsar, expecting for many reasons greater commotion in gaul, levied additional forces. he saw that war was being prepared on all sides, that the nervii, aduatuci, and menapii, with the addition of all the germans on this side of the rhine, were under arms; that the senones did not assemble according to his command, and were concerting measures with carnutes and the neighbouring states; and that the germans were importuned by the treviri in frequent embassies. therefore he thought that he ought to take prompt measures for the war. accordingly, before the winter was ended, he marched with four legions unexpectedly into the territories of the nervii, captured many men and much cattle, wasted their lands, and forced them to surrender and give hostages. he followed up his success by worsting the senones, carnutes, and menapii, while labienus defeated the treviri. gaul being tranquil, cæsar, as he had determined, set out for italy to hold the provincial assizes. there he was informed of the decree of the senate that all the youth of italy should take the military oath, and he determined to hold a levy throughout the entire province. the gauls, animated by the opportunity afforded through his absence, and indignant that they were reduced beneath the dominion of rome, began to organise their plans for war openly. many of the nations confederated and selected as their commander vercingetorix, a young avernian. on hearing what had happened, cæsar set out from italy for transalpine gaul, and began the campaign by marching into the country of the helvii, although it was the severest time of the year, and the country was covered with deep snow. the armies met, and vercingetorix sustained a series of losses at vellaunodunum, genabum, and noviodunum. the gauls then threw a strong garrison into avaricum, which cæsar besieged, and at length cæsar's soldiers took it by storm. all the gauls, with few exceptions, joined in the revolt; and the united forces, under vercingetorix, attacked the roman army while it was marching into the country of the sequani, but they suffered complete defeat. after struggling vainly to continue the war, vercingetorix surrendered, and the gallic chieftains laid down their arms. cæsar demanded a great number of hostages, sent his lieutenants with various legions to different stations in gaul, and determined himself to winter at bibracte. a supplication of twenty days was decreed at rome by the senate on hearing of these successes. * * * * * tacitus annals publius cornelius tacitus was born perhaps at rome, shortly before the accession of the emperor nero in 54 a.d. he married the daughter of agricola, famous in the history of britain, and died probably about the time of hadrian's accession to the empire, 117 a.d. he attained distinction as a pleader at the bar, and in public life; but his fame rests on his historical works. a man of strong prepossessions and prejudices, he allowed them to colour his narratives, and particularly his portraits; but he cannot be charged with dishonesty. the portraits themselves are singularly powerful; his narrative is picturesque, vivid, dramatic; but the condensed character of his style and the pregnancy of his phrases make his work occasionally obscure, and particularly difficult to render in translation. his "germania" is a most valuable record of the early institutions of the teutonic peoples. his "histories" of the empire from galba to domitian are valuable as dealing with events of which he was an eye-witness. his "annals," covering practically the reigns from tiberius to nero, open only some forty years before his own birth. of the original sixteen books, four are lost, and four are incomplete. the following epitome has been specially prepared from the latin text. _i.--emperor and nephew_ tiberius, adopted son and actual stepson of augustus, was summoned from illyria by his mother livia to the bedside of the dying emperor at nola. augustus left a granddaughter, agrippina, who was married to germanicus, the nephew of tiberius; and a grandson, agrippa postumus, a youth of evil reputation. the succession of tiberius was not in doubt; but his first act was to have agrippa postumus put to death--according to his own statement, by the order of augustus. at rome, consuls, senators, and knights hurried to embrace their servitude. the nobler the name that each man bore, the more zealous was he in his hypocrisy. the grave pretence of tiberius that he laid no claim to imperial honours was met by the grave pretence that the needs of the state forbade his refusal of them, however reluctant he might be. his mother, livia augusta, was the object of a like sycophancy. but the world was not deceived by the solemn farce. the death of augustus, however, was the signal for mutinous outbreaks among the legions on the european frontiers of the empire; first in pannonia, then in germany. in pannonia, the ostensible motive was jealousy of the higher pay and easier terms of service of the prætorian guard. so violent were the men, and so completely did the officers lose control, that drusus, the son of tiberius, was sent to make terms with the mutineers, and only owed his success to the reaction caused by the superstitious alarm of the soldiery at an eclipse of the moon. germanicus, who was in command in germany, was absent in gaul. here the mutiny of the lower army, under cæcina, was very serious, because it was clearly organised, the men working systematically and not haphazard. news of the outbreak brought their popular general, germanicus, to the spot. the mutineers at once offered to make him emperor, a proposal which he indignantly repudiated. the position, in a hostile country, made some concession necessary; but fresh disturbances broke out when it was suspected that the arrival of a commission from the senate meant that the concessions would be cancelled. here the reaction which broke down the mutiny was caused by the shame of the soldiers themselves, when germanicus sent his wife and child away from a camp where their lives were in danger. of their own accord, the best of the soldiers turned on their former ringleaders, and slew them. and the legions under cæcina took similar steps to recover their lost credit. germanicus, however, saw that the true remedy for the disaffection would be found in an active campaign. the desired effect was attained by an expedition against the marsi, conducted with a success which tiberius, at rome, regarded with mixed feelings. the german tribe named the cherusci favoured arminius, the determined enemy of rome, in preference to segestes, who was conspicuous for "loyalty" to rome. germanicus advanced to support the latter, and arminius was enraged by the news that his wife, the daughter of segestes, was a prisoner. his call to arms, his declamations in the name of liberty, roused the cherusci, the people who had annihilated the legions of varus a few years before. a column commanded by cæcina was enticed by arminius into a swampy position, where it was in extreme danger, and a severe engagement took place. the scheme of arminius was to attack the romans on the march; fortunately, the rasher counsels of his uncle, inguiomerus, prevailed; an attempt was made to storm the camp, and the romans were thus enabled to inflict a decisive defeat on the foe. it was at this time that the disastrous practice was instituted of informers bringing charges of treason against prominent citizens on grounds which tiberius himself condemned as frivolous. the emperor began to make a practice of attending trials, which indeed prevented corrupt awards, but ruined freedom. now arose disturbances in the east. the parthians expelled their king, vonones, a former favourite of augustus. armenia became involved, and these things were the source of serious complications later. tiberius was already meditating the transfer of germanicus to these regions. that general, however, was planning a fresh german campaign from the north sea coast. a great fleet carried the army to the mouth of the ems; thence germanicus marched to the weser and crossed it. germanicus was gratified to find that his troops were eager for the impending fray. a tremendous defeat was inflicted on the cherusci, with little loss to the romans. arminius, who had headed a charge which all but broke the roman line, escaped only with the utmost difficulty. nevertheless, the germans rallied their forces, and a second furious engagement took place, in which the foe fought again with desperate valour, and were routed mainly through the superiority of the roman armour and discipline. the triumph was marred only by a disaster which befel the legions which were withdrawn by sea. a terrific storm wrecked almost the entire fleet, and it was with great difficulty that the few survivors were rescued. the consequent revival of german hopes made it necessary for two large armies to advance against the marsi and the catti respectively, complete success again attending the roman arms. jealousy of his nephew's popularity and success now caused tiberius to insist on his recall. at this time informers charged with treason a young man of distinguished family, libo drusus, mainly on the ground of his foolish consultation of astrologers, with the result that drusus committed suicide. this story will serve as one among many which exemplify the prevalent demoralisation. in the same year occurred the audacious insurrection of a slave who impersonated the dead agrippa postumus; and also the deposition of the king of cappadocia, whose kingdom was annexed as a province of the empire. a contest took place between the suevi and the cherusci, in which rome declined to intervene. maroboduus, of the suevi, was disliked because he took the title of king, which was alien to the german ideas, being in this respect contrasted with arminius. the cherusci had the better of the encounter. _ii.--the development of despotism_ germanicus on his recall was in danger, while in rome, of being made the head of a faction in antagonism to drusus, the son of tiberius. he was dispatched, however, with extraordinary powers, to take control of the east, where piso, the governor of syria, believed that he held his own appointment precisely that he might be a thorn in the side of germanicus. the latter made a progress through greece, settled affairs in armenia and parthia, and continued his journey to egypt. piso's machinations, encouraged by the reports which reached him of the emperor's displeasure at the conduct of germanicus, caused the gravest friction. finally, on the return from egypt through syria, germanicus became desperately ill. he declared his own belief that piso and his wife had poisoned him; and, on his death, the rumour met general credence, though it was unsupported by evidence. agrippina returned to rome, bent on vengeance, and the object of universal sympathy. piso attempted to make himself master of syria, but failed to win over the legions, and then resolved to return to rome and defy his accusers. about this time arminius was killed in attempting to make himself king. shortly before, tiberius had rejected with becoming dignity a rival chief's offer to poison the national hero of german independence. on the arrival in italy of agrippina with the ashes of germanicus, the popular and official expressions of grief and sympathy were almost unprecedented. this public display was not at all encouraged by tiberius himself. drusus was instructed to emphasize the fact that piso must not be held either guilty or innocent, till the case had been sifted. tiberius insisted that not he, but the senate, must be the judge; the case must be decided on its merits, not out of consideration for his own outraged feelings. piso was charged with having corrupted the soldiery, levied war on the province of syria, and poisoned germanicus. all except the last charge were proved up to the hilt; for that alone there was no evidence. piso, however, despaired, fearing less the ebullitions of popular wrath than the emotionless implacability of the emperor. he was found dead in his room; but whether by his own act or that of tiberius, was generally doubted. the penalties imposed on his wife and son were mitigated by the emperor himself. a number of notorious scandals at this period emphasise the degradation of morals and the disregard for the sanctity of the marriage tie in a society where children were regarded as a burden, in spite of official encouragement of the birth-rate. there was an instructive debate on a proposal that magistrates appointed to provinces should not take their wives with them. risings in gaul of the treveri and aedui created much alarm in rome; the composure of tiberius was justified by their decisive suppression. in africa, blæms successfully suppressed, though he did not finally curb, the brigand chief tacfarinas, who had been building up a nomad empire of his own. it was under dolabella, the successor of blæms, that tacfarinas was completely overthrown and slain. hitherto the rule of tiberius had been, on the whole, prosperous. but the ninth year marks the establishment of the ascendancy of ælius sejanus over the mind of the emperor, whereby his sway was transformed into a foul tyranny. not of noble birth, sejanus had neglected no means, however base, to secure his own favour with tiberius and with the prætorian guard, of which he held the command. he was now determined to get rid of drusus, the son of tiberius, as the most dangerous obstacle to his ambitions. he accomplished his purpose by administering a poison, of which the operation was unsuspected till the facts were revealed many years later by an accomplice. then the young sons of germanicus became the accepted representatives of the imperial line, for the infant sons of drusus died very shortly afterwards. accordingly, sejanus now directed his attacks against the more powerful persons who might be regarded as partisans of the house of germanicus. despite the multiplications of prosecutions, it is to be noted that it was still possible for a shrewd and tactful person, as exemplified by the career of marcus lepidus, to uphold the principles of justice and liberty without losing the favour of the emperor. among other prosecutions, that of cremutius, whose crime was that of praising the memory of brutus and cassius, demands attention, as the first of the kind. the ambitions of sejanus received a check when he had the presumption to request tiberius to grant him the hand of the widow of drusus in marriage. in order the more surely to bring disgrace on the house of germanicus, he now implanted in the mind of agrippina a conviction that tiberius intended to poison her. that such suspicions were mere commonplaces of that terrible time is well illustrated by the story. incapable of hiding her feelings, the persistent gloom of her face and voice, and her refusal of proffered dishes as she sat near tiberius at dinner, attracted his attention; to test her, he personally commended and pressed on her some apples; this only intensified her suspicions, and she gave them to the attendants untasted. tiberius made no open comment, but observed to his mother that it would hardly be surprising should he contemplate harsh measures towards one who obviously took him for a poisoner. _iii.--morbid tyrant and dotard_ it was at this time that tiberius withdrew himself from the capital, and took up his residence at a country seat where hardly anyone had access to him except sejanus; whether at the favourite's suggestion or not is uncertain. the retreat finally selected was the island of capræ. the monstrous lengths to which men of the highest rank were now prepared to go to curry favour with tiberius and sejanus was exemplified in the ruin of sabinus, a loyal friend of the house of germanicus. the unfortunate man was tricked into speaking bitterly of sejanus and tiberius. three senators were actually hidden above the ceiling of the room where he was entrapped into uttering unguarded phrases, and on this evidence he was condemned. the death of the aged livia augusta removed the last check on the influence of sejanus. [the account of his two years of unqualified supremacy, and of his sudden and utter overthrow has been lost, two books of the "annals" being missing here.] from this time, the life of tiberius at capræ was one of morbid and nameless debauchery. the condition of his mind may be inferred from the opening words of one of his letters to the senate. "if i know what to write, how to write it, what not to write, may the gods and goddesses destroy me with a worse misery than the death i feel myself dying daily." the end came when macro, the prefect of the prætorians, who, to save his own life and secure the succession of gaius cæsar caligula, the surviving son of germanicus, caused the old emperor to be smothered. [the record of the next ten years--the reign of caligula, and the first years of claudius--is lost. when the story is taken up again, the wife of claudius, the infamous messalina, was at the zenith of her evil career.] while the doting pedant claudius was adding new letters to the alphabet, messalina was parading with utter shamelessness her last and fatal passion for silius, and went so far as publicly to marry her paramour. it was the freedman narcissus who made the outrageous truth known to claudius, and practically terrorised him into striking. half measures were impossible; a swarm of messalina's accomplices in vice were put to death. to her, claudius showed signs of relenting; but narcissus gave the orders for her death without his knowledge. when they told claudius that she was dead, he displayed no emotion, but went on with his dinner, and apparently forgot the whole matter. a new wife had to be provided; agrippina, the daughter of germanicus, niece of claudius himself, and mother of the boy domitius, who was to become the emperor nero, was the choice of the freedman pallas, and proved the successful candidate. shortly after, her new husband adopted nero formally as his son. it was not long before she had assumed an air of equality with her husband; and all men saw that she intended him to be succeeded not by his own son britannicus, but by hers, nero. meanwhile, there had been a great revolt in britain against the proprætor ostorius. first the iceni took up arms, then the brigantes; then--a still more serious matter--the silures, led by the most brilliant of british warriors, caractacus. even his skill and courage, however, were of no avail against the superior armament of the roman legions; his forces were broken up, and he himself, escaping to the brigantes, was by them betrayed to the romans. the famous warrior was carried to rome, where by his dignified demeanour he won pardon and liberty. in the far east, mithridates was overthrown by his nephew rhadamistus, and parthia and armenia remained in wild confusion. the reign of claudius was brought to an end by poison--the notorious locusta was employed by agrippina for the purpose--and he was succeeded by nero, to whom his mother's artifices gave the priority over britannicus. _iv.--the infamies of nero_ at the outset the young emperor was guided by seneca and burrus; his first speech--put into his mouth by seneca, for he was no orator--was full of promise. but he was encouraged in a passion for acte, a freed-woman, by way of counterpoise to the influence of his mother, agrippina. the latter, enraged at the dismissal of pallas, threatened her son with the legitimate claims of britannicus, son of claudius; nero had the boy poisoned. in terror now of his mother, he would have murdered her, but was checked by burrus. nero's private excesses and debaucheries developed, while the horrible system of delation flourished, and prosecutions for treason abounded. about this time the emperor's passion for poppæa sabina, the wife of otho, became the source of later disaster. beautiful, brilliant, utterly immoral, but complete mistress of her passions, she had married nero's boon companion. otho was dispatched to lusitania, and poppæa remained at rome. poppæa was bent on the imperial crown for herself, and urged nero against his mother. a mock reconciliation took place, but it was only the preliminary to a treacherous plot for murdering the former empress. the plot failed; her barge was sunk, but she escaped to shore. nero, however, with the shameful assent of burrus and seneca, dispatched assassins to carry out the work, and agrippina was slaughtered. for a moment remorse seized nero, but it was soon soothed; burrus headed the cringing congratulations of roman society, to which thrasea pætus was alone in refusing to be a party. the emperor forthwith began to plunge into the wild extravagances on which his mother's life had been some check. he took cover for his passion for chariot-driving and singing by inducing men of noble birth to exhibit themselves in the arena; high-born ladies acted in disreputable plays; the emperor himself posed as a mime, and pretended to be a patron of poetry and philosophy. the wildest licence prevailed, and there were those who ventured even to defend it. about this time the roman governor in britain, suetonius, crossed the menai strait and conquered the island of anglesea. but outrages committed against boadicea, queen of the iceni, stirred that tribe to fierce revolt. being joined by the trinobantes, they fell upon the romans at camulodunum and massacred them. suetonius, returning hastily from the west, found the roman population in panic. the troops, however, inspired by the general's resolution, won a decisive victory, in which it is said that no fewer than 80,000 britons, men and women, were slaughtered. not long after, burrus died--in common belief, if not in actual fact, of poison; and seneca found himself driven into retirement, while tigellinus became nero's favourite and confidant. nero then capped his matricide by suborning the same scoundrel who had murdered agrippina to bring foul and false charges against his innocent wife, octavia; who was thus done to death when not yet twenty, that her husband might be free to marry poppæa. as a matter of course, the crime was duly celebrated by a public thanksgiving. the dispatch of an incompetent general into asia resulted in a most inglorious parthian campaign. nero, however, was more interested first in extravagant rejoicings at the birth of a daughter to poppæa, and then in equally extravagant mourning over the infant's death. it was well that corbulo, marching from syria, restored the roman prestige in the far east. these events were followed by the famous fire which devastated rome; whether or no it was actually nero's own work, rumour declared that he appeared on a private stage while the conflagration was raging, and chanted appropriately of the fall of troy. he planned rebuilding on a magnificent scale, and sought popularity by throwing the blame of the fire--and putting to the most exquisite tortures--a class hated for their abominations, called christians, from their first leader, christus, who had suffered the extreme penalty under pontius pilate, procurator of judæa, in the reign of tiberius. a very widespread conspiracy was now formed against nero, in favour of one gaius calpurnius piso; fænius rufus, an officer of the prætorians, who had been subordinated to tigellinus, being one of the leaders. the plot, however, was betrayed by a freedman of one of the conspirators. * * * * * sallust the conspiracy of catiline the roman historian caius crispus sallust, who was born at amiternum in 86 b.c., and died in 34 b.c., lived throughout the active career of julius cæsar, and died while anthony and octavian were still rivals for the supreme power. it might be supposed from his works that he was a person of eminent virtue, but this was merely a literary pose. he was probably driven into private life, in the first place, on account of the scandals with which he was associated. he became a partisan of cæsar in the struggle with pompey, and to this he owed the pro-consulship of numidia, on the proceeds of which he retired into leisured ease. sallust aspired with very limited success to assume the mantle of thucydides, and the rôle of a philosophic historian. he displays considerable political acumen on occasion, but his assumption of stern impartiality is hardly less a pose than his pretense of elevated morality. his "conspiracy of catiline"--the first of his historical essays--was probably written, in part at least, with the object of dissociating cæsar from it; the lurid colors in which he paints the conspirator are probably exaggerated. but whether true or false, the picture presented is a vivid one. this epitome is adapted specially from the latin text. _i.--the plotting_ i esteem the intellectual above the physical qualities of man; and the task of the historian has attracted me because it taxes the writer's abilities to the utmost personal ambition had at first drawn me into public life, but the political atmosphere, full of degradation and corruption, was so uncongenial that i resolved to retire and devote myself to the production of a series of historical studies, for which i felt myself to be the better fitted by my freedom from the influences which bias the political partisan. for the first of these studies i have selected the conspiracy of catiline. lucius catilina [commonly called catiline] was of high birth, richly endowed both in mind and body, but of extreme depravity; with extraordinary powers of endurance, reckless, crafty, and versatile, a master in the arts of deception, at once grasping and lavish, unbridled in his passions, ready of speech, but with little true insight of insatiable and inordinate ambitions, he was possessed, after sulla's supremacy, with a craving to grasp the control of the state, utterly careless of the means, so the end were attained. naturally headstrong, he was urged forward by his want of money, the consciousness of his crimes, and the degradation of morals in a society where luxury and greed ruled side by side. the wildest, the most reckless, the most prodigal, the most criminal, were readily drawn into the circle of catiline's associates; in such a circle those who were not already utterly depraved very soon became so under the sinister and seductive influence of their leader. this man, who in the pursuit of his own vices had done his own son to death, did not hesitate to encourage his pupils in every species of crime; and with such allies, and the aid of the disbanded sullan soldiery swarming in italy, he dreamed of subverting the roman state while her armies, under gnæus pompeius, were far away. the first step was to secure his own election as consul. one plot of his had already failed, because catiline himself had attempted to move prematurely; but the conspirators remained scatheless. those who were now with catiline included members of the oldest families and of equestrian rank. crassus himself was suspected of complicity, owing to his rivalry with pompeius. the assembled conspirators were addressed by catiline in a speech of the most virulent character. he urged these social outcasts to rise against a bloated plutocracy battening on the ill-gotten wealth to which his audience had just as good a title. he promised the cancellation of all debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the general application of the rule of "the spoils to the victors." he had friends at the head of the armies in spain and mauritania, if gaius antonius were the other successful candidate for the consulship, his co-operation, too, could be secured. such was the purport of his speech; but i do not credit the popular fiction that the conspirators were solemnly pledged in a bowl of mingled wine and blood. rumours of the plot, however, began to leak out through a certain fulvia, mistress of quintus curio, a man who had been expelled from the senatorial body on account of his iniquities; and this probably caused many of the nobility to support, for the consulship, cicero, whom, as a "new man," they would otherwise have religiously opposed. the result was that catiline's candidature failed, and cicero was elected with gaius antonius for his colleague. at length cicero, seeing that the ferment was everywhere increasing to an extent with which the ordinary law could not cope, obtained from the senate the exceptional powers for dealing with a national emergency which they had constitutional authority to grant. thus, when news came that a catilinarian, gaius manlius, had risen in etruria at the head of an armed force, prompt administrative measures were taken to dispatch adequate military forces to various parts of the country. catiline himself had taken no overt action; he now presented himself in the senate, was openly assailed by cicero, responded with insults which were interrupted by cries of indignation, and flung from the house with the words "since i am beset by enemies and driven out, the fire you have kindled about me shall be crushed out by the ruin of yourselves." seeing that delay would be fatal, he started at once for the camp of manlius, leaving cethegus and lentulus to keep up the ferment in rome. to several persons of position he sent letters announcing that he was retiring to marseilles; but, with misplaced confidence, he sent one of a different and extremely compromising tenor to quintus catullus, which the recipient read to the senate. it was next reported that he had assumed the consular attributes and joined manlius; whereupon he was proclaimed a public enemy, a general levy was decreed, antonius was appointed to take the field, while cicero was to remain in the capital. _ii.--the downfall_ meanwhile, lentulus at rome, among his various plots, intrigued to obtain the support of the allobroges, a tribe of gauls from whom there was at the time an embassy in rome. the envoys, however, took the advice of quintus fabius sanga, and while he kept cicero supplied with information, themselves pretended to be at one with the conspirators. risings were now taking place all over italy, though they were ill-concerted. at rome, the plan was that when catiline's army was at fæsulæ, the tribune lucius bestia should publicly accuse cicero of having caused the war; and this was to be the signal for an organised massacre, while the city itself was to be fired at twelve points simultaneously. the insurgents were then to march out and join catiline at fæsulæ. the allobroges were now departing, carrying with them letters from lentulus to catiline; but according to a concerted plan, they were arrested. this provided cicero with evidence which warranted the arrest of lentulus and other ringleaders in rome; and its publication created a popular revulsion--the lower classes were not averse from plunder, but saw no benefit to themselves in a general conflagration of rome. a certain lucius tarquinius was now captured, who gave information tallying with what was already published, but further incriminated crassus. crassus, however, was so wealthy, and had so many of the senate in his power, that even those who believed the charge to be true, thought it politic to pronounce it a gross fabrication. the danger of an attempted rescue of lentulus brought on a debate as to what should be done with the prisoners. cæsar, from whatever motive, spoke forcibly against any unconstitutional action which, however justified by the enormity of the prisoners' guilt, might become a dangerous precedent. in his opinion, the wise course would be to confiscate the property of the prisoners, and to place their persons in custody not in rome, but in provincial towns. cæsar's humanitarian statesmanship was answered by the grave austerity of cato. "the question for us is not that of punishing a crime, but of preserving the state--or of what the degenerate roman of to-day cares for more than the state, our lives and property. to speak of clemency and compassion is an abuse of terms only too common, when vices are habitually dignified with the names of virtues. let us for once act with vigour and decision, and doom these convicted traitors to the death they deserve." the decree of death was carried to immediate execution. in the meantime, catiline had raised a force numbering two legions, but not more than a quarter of them were properly armed. he remained in the hills, refusing to give battle to antonius. on hearing the fate of lentulus and the rest, he attempted to retreat to gaul, but this movement was anticipated and intercepted by metellus celer, who was posted at picenum with three legions. with antonius pressing on his rear, catiline resolved to hazard all on a desperate engagement. in exhorting his troops, he dwelt on the fact that men fighting for life and liberty were more than a match for a foe who had infinitely less at stake. thus brought to bay, catiline's soldiers met the attack of the government troops with furious valour, their leader setting a brilliant example of desperate daring, and the most vigilant and vigorous generalship. but petreius, on the other side, directed his force against the rebel centre, shattered it, and took the wings in flank. catiline's followers stood and fought till they fell, with their wounds in front; he himself hewed his way through the foe, and was found still breathing at a distance from his own ranks. no quarter was given or taken; and among the rebels there were no survivors. in the triumphant army, all the stoutest soldiers were slain or wounded; mourning and grief mingled with the elation of victory. * * * * * edward gibbon decline and fall of the roman empire--i edward gibbon, son of a hampshire gentleman, was born at putney, near london, april 27, 1737. after a preliminary education at westminster, and fourteen "unprofitable" months at magdalen college, oxford, a whim to join the roman church led to his banishment to lausanne, where he spent five years, and acquired a mastery of the french language, formed his taste for literary expression, and settled his religious doubts in a profound scepticism. he served some years in the militia, and was a member of parliament. it was in 1764, while musing amidst, the ruins of the capitol of rome, that the idea of writing "the decline and fall" of the city first started into his mind. the vast work was completed in 1787. "a study in literature," written in french, and his "miscellaneous works," published after his death, which include "the memoirs of his life and writings," complete the list of his literary labours. he died of dropsy on january 16, 1794. the portion of the work which is epitomized here covers the period from the reign of commodus to the era of charlemagne, and includes the famous portion of the work dealing with the growth of the christian church. _i.--rome, mistress of the world_ in the second century of the christian era, the empire of rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. on the death of augustus, that emperor bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries--on the west the atlantic ocean, the rhine and danube on the north, the euphrates on the east, and towards the south the sandy deserts of arabia and africa. the subsequent settlement of great britain and dacia supplied the two exceptions to the precepts of augustus, if we omit the transient conquests of trajan in the east, which were renounced by hadrian. by maintaining the dignity of the empire, without attempting to enlarge its limits, the early emperors caused the roman name to be revered among the most remote nations of the earth. the terror of their arms added weight and dignity to their moderation. they preserved peace by a constant preparation for war. the soldiers, though drawn from the meanest, and very frequently from the most profligate, of mankind, and no longer, as in the days of the ancient republic, recruited from rome herself, were preserved in their allegiance to the emperor, and their invincibility before the enemy, by the influences of superstition, inflexible discipline, and the hopes of reward. the peace establishment of the roman army numbered some 375,000 men, divided into thirty legions, who were confined, not within the walls of fortified cities, which the romans considered as the refuge of pusillanimity, but upon the confines of the empire; while 20,000 chosen soldiers, distinguished by the titles of city cohorts and prætorian guards, watched over the safety of the monarch and the capitol. "wheresoever the roman conquers he inhabits," was a very just observation of seneca. colonies, composed for the most part of veteran soldiers, were settled throughout the empire. rich and prosperous cities, adorned with magnificent temples and baths and other public buildings, demonstrated at once the magnificence and majesty of the roman system. in britain, york was the seat of government. london was already enriched by commerce, and bath was celebrated for the salutary effects of its medicinal waters. all the great cities were connected with each other, and with the capital, by the public highway, which, issuing from the forum of rome, traversed italy, pervaded the provinces, and was terminated only by the frontiers of the empire. this great chain of communications ran in a direct line from city to city, and in its construction the roman engineers snowed little respect for the obstacles, either of nature or of private property. mountains were perforated and bold arches thrown over the broadest and most rapid streams. the middle part of the road, raised into a terrace which commanded the adjacent country, consisted of several strata of sand, gravel, and cement, and was paved with granite or large stones. distances were accurately computed by milestones, and the establishment of post-houses, at a distance of five or six miles, enabled a citizen to travel with ease a hundred miles a day along the roman roads. this freedom of intercourse, which was established throughout the roman world, while it extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life. rude barbarians of gaul laid aside their arms for the more peaceful pursuits of agriculture. the cultivation of the earth produced abundance in every portion of the empire, and accidental scarcity in any single province was immediately relieved by the plentifulness of its more fortunate neighbours. since the productions of nature are the materials of art, this flourishing condition of agriculture laid the foundation of manufactures, which provided the luxurious roman with those refinements of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour which his tastes demanded. commerce flourished, and the products of egypt and the east were poured out in the lap of rome. though there still existed within the body of the roman empire an unhappy condition of men who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits of society, the position of a slave was greatly improved in the progress of roman development. the power of life and death was taken from his master's hands and vested in the magistrate, to whom he had a right to appeal against intolerable treatment. these magistrates exercised the authority of the emperor and the senate in every quarter of the empire, inflexibly maintaining in their administration, as in the case of military government, the use of the latin tongue. greek was the natural idiom of science, latin that of government. _ii.--the seeds of dissolution_ but while roman society persisted in a state of peaceful security, it already contained within itself the seeds of dissolution. the long peace and uniform government of the romans introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. the minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated. the citizens received laws and covenants from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army. of their ancient freedom nothing remained except the name, and that augustus, sensible that mankind is governed by names, was careful to preserve. it was by the will of the senate the emperor ruled. it was from the senate that he received the ancient titles of the republic--of consul, tribune, pontiff, and censor. even his title of _imperator_ was decreed him, according to the custom of the republic, only for a period of ten years. but this specious pretence, which was preserved until the last days of the empire, did not mask the real autocratic authority of the emperor. the fact that he nominated citizens to the senate was proof, if proof were needed, that the independence of that body was destroyed; for the principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive. moreover, the dependence of the emperor on the legions completely subverted the civil authority. to keep the military power, which had given him his position, from undermining it, augustus had summoned to his aid whatever remained in the fierce minds of his soldiers of roman prejudices, and interposing the majesty of the senate between the emperor and the army, boldly claimed their allegiance as the first magistrate of the republic. during a period of 220 years, the dangers inherent to a military government were in a great measure suspended by this artful system. the soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength and of the weakness of the civil authority which afterwards was productive of such terrible calamities. the emperors caligula and domitian were assassinated in their palace by their own domestics. the roman world, it is true, was shaken by the events that followed the death of nero, when, in the space of eighteen months, four princes perished by the sword. but, excepting this violent eruption of military licence, the two centuries from augustus to commodus passed away unstained with civil blood and undisturbed by revolution. the roman citizens might groan under the tyranny, from which they could not hope to escape, of the unrelenting tiberius, the furious caligula, the profligate and cruel nero, the beastly vitellius, and the timid, inhuman domitian; but order was maintained, and it was not until commodus, the son of marcus aurelius antoninus, the philosopher, succeeded to the authority that his father had exercised for the benefit of the roman empire that the army fully realised, and did not fail to exercise, the power it had always possessed. during the first three years of his reign the vices of commodus affected the emperor rather than the state. while the young prince revelled in licentious pleasures, the management of affairs remained in the hands of his father's faithful councillors; but, in the year 183, the attempt of his sister lucilla to assassinate him produced fatal results. the assassin, in attempting the deed, exclaimed, "the senate sends you this!" and though the blow never reached the body of the emperor, the words sank deep into his heart. he turned upon the senate with relentless cruelty. the possession of either wealth or virtue excited the tyrant's fury. suspicion was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation, and the noblest blood of the senate was poured out like water. he has shed with impunity the noblest blood of rome; he perished as soon as he was dreaded by his own domestics. a cup of drugged wine, delivered by his favourite concubine, plunged him in a deep sleep. at the instigation of lætus, his prætorian prefect, a robust youth was admitted into his chamber, and strangled him without resistance. with secrecy and celerity the conspirators sought out pertinax, the prefect of the city, an ancient senator of consular rank, and persuaded him to accept the purple. a large donative secured them the support of the prætorian guard, and the joyous senate eagerly bestowed upon the new augustus all the titles of imperial power. for eighty-six days pertinax ruled the empire with firmness and moderation, but the strictness of the ancient discipline that he attempted to restore in the army excited the hatred of the prætorian guards, and the new emperor was struck down on march 28, 193. _iii.--an empire at auction_ the prætorians had violated the sanctity of the throne by the atrocious murder of pertinax; they dishonored the majesty of it with their subsequent conduct. they ran out upon the ramparts of the city, and with a loud voice proclaimed that the roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction. sulpicianus, father-in-law of pertinax, and didius julianus, bid against each other for the prize. it fell to julian, who offered upwards of £1,000 sterling to each of the soldiers, and the author of this ignominious bargain received the insignia of the empire and the acknowledgments of a trembling senate. the news of this disgraceful auction was received by the legions of the frontiers with surprise, with indignation, and, perhaps, with envy. albinus, governor of britain, niger, governor of syria, and septimius severus, a native of africa, commander of the pannonian army, prepared to revenge the death of pertinax, and to establish their own claims to the vacant throne. marching night and day, severus crossed the julian alps, swept aside the feeble defences of julian, and put an end to a reign of power which had lasted but sixty-six days, and had been purchased with such immense treasure. having secured the supreme authority, severus turned his arms against his two competitors, and within three years, and in the course of two or three battles, established his position and brought about the death of both albinus and niger. the prosperity of rome revived, and a profound peace reigned throughout the world. at the same time, severus was guilty of two acts which were detrimental to the future interests of the republic. he relaxed the discipline of the army, increased their pay beyond the example of former times, re-established the prætorian guards, who had been abolished for their transaction with julian, and welded more firmly the chains of tyranny by filling the senate with his creatures. at the age of sixty-five in the year 211, he expired at york of a disorder which was aggravated by the labours of a campaign against the caledonians. severus recommended concord to his sons, caracalla and geta, and his sons to the army. the government of the civilised world was entrusted to the hands of brothers who were implacable enemies. a latent civil war brooded in the city, and hardly more than a year passed before the assassins of caracalla put an end to an impossible situation by murdering geta. twenty thousand persons of both sexes suffered death under the vague appellation of the friends of geta. the fears of macrinus, the controller of the civil affairs of the prætorian prefecture, brought about his death in the neighbourhood of carrhæ in syria on april 8, 217. for a little more than a year his successor governed the empire, but the necessary step of reforming the army brought about his ruin. on june 7, 218, he succumbed to the superior fortune of elagabulus, the grandson of severus, a youth trained in all the superstitions and vices of the east. under this sovereign rome was prostituted to the vilest vices of which human nature is capable. the sum of his infamy was reached when the master of the roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex. the shame and disgust of the soldiers resulted in his murder on march 10, 222, and the proclamation of his cousin, alexander severus. again the necessity of restoring discipline within the army led to the ruin of the emperor, and, despite thirteen years of just and moderate government, alexander was murdered in his tent on march 19, 235, on the banks of the rhine, and maximin, his chief lieutenant, a thracian, reigned in his stead. _iv.--tyranny and disaster_ fear of contempt, for his origin was mean and barbarian, made maximin one of the cruellest tyrants that ever oppressed the roman world. during the three years of his reign he disdained to visit either rome or italy, but from the banks of the rhine and the danube oppressed the whole state, and trampled on every principle of law and justice. the tyrant's avarice ruined not only private citizens, but seized the municipal funds of the cities, and stripped the very temples of their gold and silver offerings. maximus and balbinus, on july 9, 237, were declared emperors. the emperor maximus advanced to meet the furious tyrant, but the stroke of domestic conspiracy prevented the further eruption of civil war. maximin and his son were murdered by their disappointed troops in front of aquileia. three months later, maximus and balbinus, on july 15, 238, fell victims to their own virtues at the hands of the prætorian guard, gordian became emperor. at the end of six years, he, too, after an innocent and virtuous reign, succumbed to the ambition of the prefect philip, while engaged in a war with persia, and in march 244, the roman world recognized the sovereignty of an arabian robber. returning to rome, philip celebrated the secular games, on the accomplishment of the full period of a thousand years from the foundation of rome. from that date, which marked the fifth time that these rites had been performed in the history of the city, for the next twenty years the roman world was afflicted by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution. six emperors in turn succeeded to the sceptre of philip and ended their lives, either as the victims of military licence, or in the vain attempt to stay the triumphal eruption of the goths and the franks and the suevi. in three expeditions the goths seized the bosphorus, plundered the cities of bithynia, ravaged greece, and threatened italy, while the franks invaded gaul, overran spain and the provinces of africa. some sparks of their ancient virtue enabled the senate to repulse the suevi, who threatened rome herself, but the miseries of the empire were not assuaged by this one triumph, and the successes of sapor, king of persia, in the east, seemed to foreshadow the immediate downfall of rome. six emperors and thirty tyrants attempted in vain to stay the course of disaster. famine and pestilence, tumults and disorders, and a great diminution of the population marked this period, which ended with the death of the emperor gallienus on march 20, 268. _v.--restorers of the roman world_ the empire, which had been oppressed and almost destroyed by the soldiers, the tyrants, and the barbarians, was saved by a series of great princes, who derived their obscure origin from the martial provinces of illyricum. within a period of about thirty years, claudius, aurelian, probus, diocletian and his colleagues triumphed over the foreign and domestic enemies of the state, re-established, with a military discipline, the strength of the frontier, and deserved the glorious title of restorers of the roman world. claudius gained a crushing victory over the goths, whose discomfiture was completed by disease in the year 269. and his successor, aurelian, in a reign of less than five years, put an end to the gothic war, chastised the germans who invaded italy, recovered gaul, spain, and britain from the roman usurpers, and destroyed the proud monarchy which zenobia, queen of palmyra, had erected in the east on the ruins of the afflicted empire. the murder of aurelian in the east (january 275) led to a curious revival of the authority of the senate. during an interregnum of eight months the ancient assembly at rome governed with the consent of the army, and appeared to regain with the election of tacitus, one of their members, all their ancient prerogatives. their authority expired, however, with the death of his successor, probus, who delivered the empire once more from the invasions of the barbarians, and succumbed to the too common fate of assassination in august 282. carus, who was elected in his place, maintained the reputation of the roman arms in the east; but his supposed death by lightning, by delivering the sceptre into the hands of his sons carinus and numerian (december 25, 283), once more placed the roman world at the mercy of profligacy and licentiousness. a year later, the election of the emperor diocletian (september 17, 284) founded a new era in the history and fortunes of the empire. it was the artful policy of diocletian to destroy the last vestiges of the ancient constitution. dividing his unwieldly power among three other associates--maximian, a rough, brutal soldier, who ranked as augustus; and galerius and constantius, who bore the inferior titles of cæsar--the emperor removed the centre of government by gradual steps from rome. diocletian and maximian held their courts in the provinces, and the authority of the senators was destroyed by spoliation and death. _vi.--reign of the six emperors_ for twenty-one years diocletian held sway, establishing, with the assistance of his associates, the might of the roman arms in britain, africa, egypt, and persia; and then, on may 1, 305, in a spacious plain in the neighborhood of nicomedia, divested himself of the purple and abdicated the throne. on the same day at milan, maximian reluctantly made his resignation of the imperial dignity. according to the rules of the new constitution, constantius and galerius assumed the title of augustus, and nominated maximin and severus as cæsars. the elaborate machinery devised by diocletian at once broke down. galerius, who was supported by severus, intrigued for the possession of the whole roman world. constantine, the son of constantius, on account of his popularity with the army and the people, excited his suspicion, and only the flight of constantine saved him from death. he made his way to gaul, and, after taking part in a campaign with his father against the caledonians, received the title of augustus in the imperial palace at york on the death of constantius. civil war once more raged. maxentius, the son of maximian, was declared emperor of rome, and, with the assistance of his father, who broke from his retirement, defended his title against severus, who was taken prisoner at ravenna and executed at rome in february 307. galerius, who had raised licinius to fill the post vacated by the death of severus, invaded italy to reestablish his authority, but, after threatening rome, was compelled to retire. there were now six emperors. maximian and his son maxentius and constantine in the west; in the east, gelerius, maximin, and licinius. the second resignation of maximian, and his renewed attempt to seize the imperial power by seducing the soldiers of constantine, and his subsequent execution at marseilles in february 310, reduced the number to five. galerius died of a lingering disorder in the following year, and the civil war that broke out between maxentius and constantine, culminating in a battle near rome in 312, placed the sceptre of the west in the hands of the son of constantius. in the east, the alliance between licinius and maximin dissolved into discord, and the defeat of the latter on april 30, 313, ended in his death three or four months later. the empire was now divided between constantine and licinius, and the ambition of the two princes rendered peace impossible. in the years 315 and 323 civil conflict broke out, ending, after the battle of adrianople and the siege of byzantium, in a culminating victory for constantine in the field of chrysopolis, in september. licinius, taken prisoner, laid himself and his purple at the feet of his lord and master, and was duly executed. by successive steps, from his first assuming the purple at york, to the resignation of licinius, constantine had reached the undivided sovereignty of the roman world. his success contributed to the decline of the empire by the expense of blood and treasure, and by the perpetual increase as well of the taxes as of the military establishments. the foundation of constantinople and the establishment of the christian religion were the immediate and memorable consequences of this revolution. * * * * * decline and fall of the roman empire--ii _i.--decay of the empire under constantine_ the unfortunate licinius was the last rival who opposed the greatness of constantine. after a tranquil and prosperous reign, the conqueror bequeathed to his family the inheritance of the roman empire; a new capital, a new policy, and a new religion; and the innovations which he established have been embraced, and consecrated, by succeeding generations. byzantium, which, under the more august name of constantinople, was destined to preserve the shadow of the roman power for nearly a thousand years after it had been extinguished by rome herself, was the site selected for the new capital. its boundary was traced by the emperor, and its circumference measured some sixteen miles. in a general decay of the arts no architect could be found worthy to decorate the new capital, and the cities of greece and asia were despoiled of their most valuable ornaments to supply this want of ability. in the course of eight or ten years the city, with its beautiful forum, its circus, its imperial palace, its theatres, baths, churches, and houses, was completed with more haste than care. the dedication of the new rome was performed with all due pomp and ceremony, and a population was provided by the expedient of summoning some of the wealthiest families in the empire to take up their residence within its walls. the gradual decay of rome had eliminated that simplicity of manners which was the just pride of the ancient republic. under the autocratic system of diocletian, a hierarchy of dependents had sprung up. the rank of each was marked with the most scrupulous exactness, and the purity of the latin language was debased by the invention of the deceitful titles of your sincerity, your excellency, your illustrious and magnificent highness. the officials of the empire were divided into three classes of the illustrious, respectable, and honourable. the consuls were still annually elected, but obtained the semblance of their ancient authority, not from the suffrages of the people, but from the whim of the emperor. on the morning of january 1 they assumed the ensigns of their dignity, and in the two capitals of the empire they celebrated their promotion to office by the annual games. as soon as they had discharged these customary duties, they retired into the shade of private life, to enjoy, during the remainder of the year, the undisturbed contemplation of their own greatness. their names served only as the legal date of the year in which they had filled the chair of marius and of cicero. the ancient title of patrician became now an empty honour bestowed by the emperor. four prefects held jurisdiction over as many divisions of the empire, and two municipal prefects ruled rome and constantinople. the proconsuls and vice-prefects belonged to the rank of respectable, and the provincial magistrates to the lower class of honourable. in the military system, eight master-generals exercised their jurisdiction over the cavalry and the infantry, while thirty-five military commanders, with the titles of counts and dukes, under their orders, held sway in the provinces. the army itself was recruited with difficulty, for such was the horror of the profession of a soldier which affected the minds of the degenerate romans that compulsory levies had frequently to be made. the number of the barbarian auxiliaries enormously increased, and they were included in the legions and the troops that surrounded the throne. seven ministers with the rank of illustrious regulated the affairs of the palace, and a host of official spies and torturers swelled the number of the immediate followers of the sovereign. the general tribute, or indiction, as it was called, was derived largely from the taxation of landed property. every fifteen years an accurate census, or survey, was made of all lands, and the proprietor was compelled to state the true facts of his affairs under oath, and paid his contribution partly in gold and partly in kind. in addition to this land tax there was a capitation tax on every branch of commercial industry, and "free gifts" were exacted from the cities and provinces on the occasion of any joyous event in the family of the emperor. the peculiar "free gift" of the senate of rome amounted to some $320,000. constantine celebrated the twentieth year of his reign at rome in the year 326. the glory of his triumph was marred by the execution, or murder, of his son crispus, whom he suspected of a conspiracy, and the reputation of the emperor who established the christian religion in the roman world was further stained by the death of his second wife, fausta. with a successful war against the goths in 331, and the expulsion of the sarmatians in 334, his reign closed. he died at nicomedia on may 22, 337. _ii.--the division of east and west_ the unity of the empire was again destroyed by the three sons of constantine. a massacre of their kinsmen preceded the separation of the roman world between constantius, constans, and constantine. within three years, civil war eliminated constantine. the conflict among the emperors resulted in a doubtful war with persia, and the almost complete extinction of the christian monarchy which had been founded for fifty-six years in armenia. constantius was left sole emperor in 353. he associated with himself successively as cæsars the two nephews of the great constantine, gallus and julian. the first, being suspected, was destroyed in 354; the second succeeded to the purple in 361. trained in the school of the philosophers, and proved as a commander in a series of successful campaigns against the german hordes, julian brought to the throne a genius which, in other times, might have effected the reformation of the empire. the sufferings of his youth had associated in a mind susceptible of the most lively impressions the names of christ and of constantius, the ideas of slavery and religion. at the age of twenty he renounced the christian faith, and boldly asserted the doctrines of paganism. his accession to the supreme power filled the minds of the christians with horror and indignation. but instructed by history and reflection, julian extended to all the inhabitants of the roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration, and the only hardship which he inflicted on the christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow subjects, whom they stigmatised with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics. while re-establishing and reforming the old pagan system and attempting to subvert christianity, he held out a hand of succour to the persecuted jews, asked to be permitted to pay his grateful vows in the holy city of jerusalem, and was only prevented from rebuilding the temple by a supposed preternatural interference. he suppressed the authority of george, archbishop of alexandria, who had infamously persecuted and betrayed the people under his spiritual care, and that odious priest, who has been transformed by superstition into the renowned st. george of england, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter, fell a victim to the just resentment of the alexandrian multitude. the persian system of monarchy, introduced by diocletian, was distasteful to the philosophic mind of julian; he refused the title of lord and master, and attempted to restore in all its pristine simplicity the ancient government of the republic. in a campaign against the persians he received a mortal wound, and died on june 26, 363. the election of jovian, the first of the domestics, by the acclamation of the soldiers, resulted in a disgraceful peace with the persians, which aroused the anger and indignation of the roman world, and the new emperor hardly survived this act of weakness for nine months (february 17, 364). the throne of the roman world remained ten days without a master. at the end of that period the civil and military powers of the empire solemnly elected valentinian as emperor at nice in bithynia. the new augustus divided the vast empire with his brother valens, and this division marked the final separation of the western and eastern empires. this arrangement continued, until the death of valentinian in 375, when the western empire was divided between his sons, gratian and valentinian ii. his reign had been notable for the stemming of the invasion of the alemanni of gaul, the incursions of the burgundians and the saxons, the restoration of britain from the attacks of the picts and scots, the recovery of africa by the emperor's general, theodosius, and the diplomatic settlement with the approaching hordes of the goths, who already swarmed upon the frontiers of the empire. under the three emperors the roman world began to feel more severely the gradual pressure exerted by the hordes of barbarians that moved westward. in 376 the goths, pursued by the huns, who had come from the steppes of china into europe, sought the protection of valens, who succoured them by transporting them over the danube into roman territory. they repaid his clemency by uniting their arms with those of the huns, and defeating and killing him at the battle of hadrianople in 378. to save the provinces from the ravages of the barbarians, gratian appointed theodosius, son of his father's general, emperor of the east, and the wisdom of his choice was justified by the success of one who added a new lustre to the title of augustus. by prudent strategy, theodosius divided and defeated the goths, and compelled them to submit. the sons of theodosius, arcadius and honorius succeeded respectively to the government of the east and the west in 395. the symptoms of decay, which not even the wise rule of theodosius had been able to remove, had grown more alarming. the luxury of the romans was more shameless and dissolute, and as the increasing depredations of the barbarians had checked industry and diminished wealth, this profuse luxury must have been the result of that indolent despair which enjoys the present hour and declines the thoughts of futurity. the secret and destructive poison of the age had affected the camps of the legions. the infantry had laid aside their armour, and, discarding their shields, advanced, trembling, to meet the cavalry of the goths and the arrows of the barbarians, who easily overwhelmed the naked soldiers, no longer deserving the name of romans. the enervated legionaries abandoned their own and the public defence, and their pusillanimous indolence may be considered the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire. _iii.--ruin by goth, vandal, and hun_ the genius of rome expired with theodosius. his sons within three months had once more sharply divided the empire. at a time when the only hope of delaying its ruin depended on the firm union of the two sections, the subject of arcadius and honorius were instructed by their respective masters to view each other in a hostile light, to rejoice in their mutual calamity, and to embrace as their faithful allies the barbarians, whom they incited to invade the territories of their countrymen. alarmed at the insecurity of rome, honorius about this time fixed the imperial residence within the naturally fortified city of ravenna--an example which was afterwards imitated by his feeble successors, the gothic kings and the exarchs; and till the middle of the eighth century ravenna was considered as the seat of government and the capital of italy. the reign of arcadius in the east marked the complete division of the roman world. his subjects assumed the language and manners of greeks, and his form of government was a pure and simple monarchy. the name of the roman republic, which so long preserved a faint tradition of freedom, was confined to the latin provinces. a series of internal disputes, both civil and religious, marked his career of power, and his reign may be regarded as notable if only for the election of st. john chrysostom to the head of the church of constantinople. arcadius died in may 408, and was succeeded by his supposed son, theodosius, then a boy of seven, the reins of power being first held by the prefect anthemius, and afterwards by his sister pulcheria, who governed the eastern empire--in fact, for nearly forty years. the wisdom of honorius, emperor of the west, in removing his capital to ravenna, was soon justified by events. alaric, king of the goths, advanced in 408 to the gates of rome, and completely blockaded the city. in the course of a long siege, thousands of romans died of plague and famine, and only a heavy ransom, amounting to $1,575,000, relieved the citizens from their terrible situation in the year 409. in the same year alaric again besieged rome, after fruitless negotiations with honorius, and his attempt once more proving successful, he created attilus, prefect of the city, emperor. but the imprudent measures of his puppet sovereign exasperated alaric. attilus was formally deposed in 410, and the infuriated goth besieged and sacked rome, and ravaged italy. the spoil that the barbarians carried away with them comprised nearly all the movable wealth of the city. the ancient capital was devastated, the exquisite works of art destroyed, and nearly all the monuments of a glorious past sacrificed to the insatiate greed of the conquerors. fire helped to complete the ruin wrought by the goths, and it is not easy to compute the multitude of citizens who, from an honourable station and a prosperous fortune, were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of captives and exiles. the complete ruin of italy was prevented by the death of alaric in 410. during the reign of honorius, the goths, burgundians, and franks were settled in gaul. the maritime countries, between the seine and the loire, followed the example of britain in 409, and threw off the yoke of the empire. aquitaine, with its capital at aries, received, under the title of the seven provinces, the right of convening an annual assembly for the management of its own affairs. honorius died in 423, and was succeeded by valentinian iii. his long reign was marked by a series of disasters, which foretold the rapidly approaching dissolution of the western empire. genseric, king of the vandals, in 429 crossed into africa, conquered the province, and set up in the depopulated territory, with carthage as his capital, a new rule and government. italy was filled with fugitives from africa, and a barbarian race, which had issued from the frozen regions of the north, established their victorious reign over one of the fairest provinces of the empire. two years later, in 441, a new and even more terrible danger threatened the empire. the goths and vandals, flying before the huns, had oppressed the western world. the hordes of these barbarians, now gathering strength in their union under their king, attila, threatened an attack upon the eastern empire. in appearance their chieftain was terrible in the extreme; his portrait exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern calmuck: a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short, square body of nervous strength, though of a disproportionate form. he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired. this savage hero, who had subdued germany and scythia, and almost exterminated the burgundians of the rhine, and had conquered scandinavia, was able to bring into the field 700,000 barbarians. an unsuccessful raid into persia induced him to turn his attention to the eastern empire, and the enervated troops of theodosius the younger dissolved before the fury of his onset. he ravaged up to the very gates of constantinople, and only a humiliating treaty preserved his dominion to the "invincible augustus" of the east. after the death of theodosius the younger, and the accession of marcian, the husband of pulcheria, attila threatened, in 450, both empires. an incursion of his hordes into gaul was rendered abortive by the conduct of the patrician, ætius, who, uniting all the various troops of gaul and germany, the saxons, the burgundians, the franks, under their merovingian prince, and the visigoths under their king, theodoric, after two important battles, induced the huns to retreat from the field of chalons. attila, diverted from his purpose, turned into italy, and the citizens of the various towns fled before the savage destroyer. many families of aquileia, padua, and the adjacent towns, found a safe refuge in the neighbouring islands of the adriatic, where their place of refuge evolved, in time, into the famous republic of venice. valentinian fled from ravenna to rome, prepared to desert his people and his empire. the fortitude of ætius alone supported and preserved the tottering state. leo, bishop of rome, in his sacerdotal robes, dared to demand the clemency of the savage king, and the intervention of st. peter and st. paul is supposed to have induced attila to retire beyond the danube, with the princess honoria as his bride. he did not long survive this last campaign, and in 453 he died, and was buried amidst all the savage pomp and grief of his subjects. his death resolved the bonds that had united the various nations of which his subjects were composed, and in a very few years domestic discord had extinguished the empire of the huns. genseric, king of the vandals, sacked and pillaged the ancient capital in june 455. the vacant throne was filled by the nomination of theodoric, king of the goths. the senate of rome bitterly opposed the elevation of this stranger, and though avitus might have supported his title against the votes of an unarmed assembly, he fell immediately he incurred the resentment of count ricimer, one of the chief commanders of the barbarian troops who formed the military defence of italy. at a distance from his gothic allies, he was compelled to abdicate (october 16, 456), and majorian was raised to fill his place. _iv.--the last emperor of the west_ the successor of avitus was a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise in a degenerate age to vindicate the honour of the human species. in the ruin of the roman world he loved his people, sympathised with their distress, and studied by judicial and effectual remedies to allay their sufferings. he reformed the most intolerable grievances of the taxes, attempted to restore and maintain the edifices of rome, and to establish a new and healthier moral code. his military abilities and his fortune were not in proportion to his merits. an unsuccessful attempt against the vandals to recover the lost provinces of africa resulted in the loss of his fleet, and his return from this disastrous campaign terminated his reign. he was deposed by ricimer, and five days later died of a reported dysentery, on august 7, 461. at the command of ricimer, the senate bestowed the imperial title on libius severus, who reigned as long as it suited his patron. the increasing difficulties, however, of the kingdom of italy, due largely to the naval depredation of the vandals, compelled ricimer to seek the assistance of the emperor leo, who had succeeded marcian in the east in 457. leo determined to extirpate the tyranny of the vandals, and solemnly invested anthemius with the diadem and purple of the west (467). in 472, ricimer raised the senator olybrius to the purple, and, advancing from milan, entered and sacked rome and murdered anthemius (july 11, 472). forty days after this calamitous event, the tyrant ricimer died of a painful disease, and two months later death also removed olybrius. the emperor leo nominated julius nepos to the vacant throne. after suppressing a rival in the person of glycerius, julius succumbed, in 475, to a furious sedition of the barbarian confederates, who, under the command of the patrician orestes, marched from rome to ravenna. the troops would have made orestes emperor, but when he declined they consented to acknowledge his son augustulus as emperor of the west. the ambition of the patrician might have seemed satisfied, but he soon discovered, before the end of the first year, that he must either be the slave or the victim of his barbarian mercenaries. the soldiers demanded a third part of the land of italy. orestes rejected the audacious demand, and his refusal was favourable to the ambition of odoacer, a bold barbarian, who assured his fellow-soldiers that if they dared to associate under his command they might extort the justice that had been denied to their dutiful petition. orestes was executed, and odoacer, resolving to abolish the useless and expensive office of the emperor of the west, compelled the unfortunate augustulus to resign. so ended, in the year 476, the empire of the west, and the last roman emperor lived out his life in retirement in the lucullan villa on the promontory of misenum. * * * * * decline and fall of the roman empire--iii _i.--the growth of the christian church_ the policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious part of their subjects. the various modes of worship which prevailed in the roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; by the magistrate as equally useful. under this spirit of toleration the christian church grew with great rapidity. five main causes effectually favoured and assisted this development. 1. the inflexible and intolerant zeal of the christians, purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit of the jewish religion. 2. the doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important theory. 3. the miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. 4. the pure and austere morals of the early christians. 5. the union and discipline of the christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the roman empire. the early christians of the mother church at jerusalem subscribed to the mosaic law, and the first fifteen bishops of jerusalem were all circumcised jews. but the gentile church rejected the intolerable weight of mosaic ceremonies, and at length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for their own practise. after the ruin of the temple of the city, and of the public religion of the jews, the nazarenes, as the christian jews of jerusalem were called, retired to the little town of pella, from whence they could make easy and frequent pilgrimages to the holy city. when the emperor hadrian forbade the jewish people from approaching the precincts of the city, the nazarenes escaped from the common proscription by disavowing the mosaic law. a small remnant, however, still combined the mosaic ceremonies with the christian faith, and existed, until the fourth century, under the name of ebeonites. the immortality of the soul had been held by a few sages of greece and rome, who were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. but reason could not justify the specious and noble principles of the disciples of plato. to the christians alone the authority of christ gave a certainty of a future life, and when the promise of eternal happiness was proposed to mankind on condition of adopting the faith, and of observing the precepts of the gospel, it is no wonder that so advantageous an offer should have been accepted by great numbers of every religion, of every rank, and of every province in the roman empire. the immediate expectation of the second coming of christ, and the reign of the son of god with his saints for a thousand years, strengthened the ancient christians against all trials and sufferings. the supernatural gifts which even in this life were ascribed to the christians above the rest of mankind must have conduced to their own comfort, and very frequently to the conviction of infidels. the gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophecy, the power of expelling demons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead, were prodigies claimed by the christian church at the time of the apostles and their first disciples. repentance for their past sins, and the laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the society in which they were engaged, rendered the lives of the primitive christians much purer and more austere than those of their pagan contemporaries or their degenerate successors. they were insistent in their condemnation of pleasure and luxury, and, in their search after purity, were induced to approve reluctantly that institution of marriage which they were compelled to tolerate. a state of celibacy was regarded as the nearest approach to the divine perfection, and there were in the primitive church a great number of persons devoted to the profession of perpetual chastity. the government of the primitive church was based on the principles of freedom and equality. the societies which were instituted in the cities of the roman empire were united only by the ties of faith and charity. the want of discipline and human learning was supplied by the occasional assistance of the "prophets "--men or women who, as often as they felt the divine impulse, poured forth the effusions of the spirit in the assembly, of the faithful. in the course of time bishops and presbyters exercised solely the functions of legislation and spiritual guidance. a hundred years after the death of the apostles, the bishop, acting as the president of the presbyterial college, administered the sacrament and discipline of the church, managed the public funds, and determined all such differences as the faithful were unwilling to expose before the tribunal of an idolatrous judge. every society formed within itself a separate and independent republic, and towards the end of the second century, realizing the advantages that might result from a closer union of their interests and designs, these little states adopted the useful institution of a provincial synod. the bishops of the various churches met in the capital of the province at stated periods, and issued their decrees or canons. the institution of synods was so well suited to private ambition and to public interest that it was received throughout the whole empire. a regular correspondence was established between the provincial councils, which mutually communicated and approved their respective proceedings, and the catholic church soon assumed the form and acquired the strength of a great federative republic. the community of goods which for a short time had been adopted in the primitive church was gradually abolished, and a system of voluntary gifts was substituted. in the time of the emperor decius it was the opinion of the magistrates that the christians of rome were possessed of very considerable wealth, and several laws, enacted with the same design as our statutes of mortmain, forbade real estate being given or bequeathed to any corporate body, without special sanctions. the bishops distributed these revenues, exercised the right of exclusion or excommunication of recalcitrant members of the church, and maintained the dignity of their office with ever increasing pomp and circumstance. _ii.--the days of persecution_ the persecution of christians by the roman emperors must at first sight seem strange, when one considers their inoffensive mode of faith and worship. when one remembers the scepticism that prevailed among the pagans, and the tolerant view of all religions which was characteristic of the roman citizen in the early years of the empire, this harshness seems all the more remarkable. it can be explained partly by the misapprehension which existed in the mind of the pagan world as to the principles of the christian faith, and partly by the organization of the sect. the jews were allowed the exercise of their unsocial and exclusive faith. but the jews were a nation; the christians were a sect. moreover, the christians were regarded as apostates from the ancient faith of moses, and, worshipping no visible god, were held to be atheists. the roman policy also viewed with the utmost jealousy and distrust any association among its subjects, and the secret and nocturnal meetings of the christians appeared peculiarly dangerous in the eyes of the law. they were oppressed by the emperor domitian. trajan protected their meetings by requiring definite evidence of these illegal assemblies, and an informer who failed in his proofs was subject to a severe or capital penalty. but the edicts of hadrian and antoninus pius protected the church from the danger of popular clamour in times of disaster, declaring that the voice of the multitude should never be admitted as legal evidence to convict or to punish those unfortunate persons who had embraced the enthusiasm of the christians. the authority of origen and dionysius annihilates that formidable army of martyrs, whose relics, drawn for the most part from the catacombs of rome, have replenished so many churches, and whose marvellous achievements have been the subject of so many volumes of holy romance. the martyrdom of cyprian, bishop of carthage, on september 14, 258, was one of the most notable of that period. under marcus antoninus, the christians were treated harshly, but the tyrant commodus protected them by his leniency. after a temporary period of persecution during the reign of severus, the christians enjoyed a calm from 211 to 249. the storms gathered again under decius, and so vigorous was the persecution that the bishops of the most considerable cities were removed by exile or death. _iii.--the church under constantine_ from 284 to 303, during the reign of diocletian, the christian church enjoyed peace and prosperity, but in the latter year galerius persuaded the emperor to renew the persecution of the sect. an edict on february 24 enacted that all churches throughout the empire should be demolished, and the punishment of death was pronounced against all who should presume to hold any secret assemblies for the purposes of religious worship. many suffered martyrdom under this cruel enactment. churches everywhere were burnt, and sacred books destroyed. three more edicts published before march 304 led to the imprisonment of all persons of the ecclesiastical order, compelled the magistrates to exercise torture to subvert the religion of their christian prisoners, and made it the duty, as well as the interest, of the imperial officers to discover, to pursue, and to torment the most obnoxious among the faithful. but after six years of persecution, the mind of galerius, softened by salutary reflection, induced him to attempt some reparation. in the edict of toleration which he published on april 30, 311, he expresses the hope "that our indulgence will engage the christians to offer up their prayers to the deity whom they adore for our safety and prosperity, and for that of the republic." the triumph of the great constantine established the security of the christian church from the attacks of the pagans. converted in 306, constantine, as soon as he had achieved the conquest of italy, issued the edict of milan (313), declaring that the places of worship which had been confiscated should be restored to the church without dispute, without delay, and without expense. though himself never received by baptism into the church, until his last moments, his powerful patronage of the christians, and his edicts of toleration, removed all the temporal disadvantages which had hitherto retarded the progress of christianity. the faith of christ became the national religion of the empire. the soldiers bore upon their helmets and upon their shields the sacred emblem of the cross. all the machinery of government was employed to propagate the faith, not only within the empire, but beyond its borders. confirmed in his new religion by the miraculous vision of the cross, constantine, who was the master of the world, consented to recognise the superiority of the ecclesiastical orders in all spiritual matters, while retaining himself the temporal power. the persecution of heresy was carried out by constantine with all the ardour of a convert. an edict confiscated the public property of the heretics to the use either of the revenue or the catholic church, and the penal regulations of diocletian against the christians were now employed against the schismatics. the donatists, who maintained the apostolic succession of donatus, primate of carthage, as opposed to cæcilian, were suppressed in africa, and a general synod attempted to regulate the faith of the church. the subject of the nature of the divine trinity had early given rise to discussion. of the three main heretical views, that of arius and his disciples was the most prevalent. he held in effect that the son, by whom all things were made, though he had been begotten before all worlds, yet had not always existed. he shone only with the reflected light of his almighty father, and, like the sons of the roman emperors, who were invested with the titles of cæsar or augustus. he governed the universe. the tritheists advocated a system which seemed to establish three independent deities, while the sabellian theory allowed only to the man jesus the inspiration of the divine wisdom. the consubstantiality of the father and of the son had been established by the council of nicæa in 325, but the east ranged itself for the most part under the banner of the arian heresy. at first indifferent, constantine at last persecuted the arians, who later, under constantius, were received into favour. constantinople, which for forty years was the stronghold of arianism, was converted to the orthodox faith under theodosius by gregory nazianzen. _iv.--the conversion of the world_ the pagan religion was finally destroyed about the year 390, and the faintest vestiges of it were not visible thirty years later. its influence, however, might be observed in many of the ceremonies which were introduced into the church, and the worship of martyrs and relics seemed to revive a system of polytheism by the worship of a hierarchy of saints. among the most famous of the dignitaries of the church at this period was the archbishop of constantinople, who was distinguished by the epithet of chrysostom, or the golden mouth. he attempted to purify the eastern empire, excited the animosity of the empress eudoxia, and died in exile in 407. the monastic system had been founded by antony, an illiterate youth, in the year 305, by the establishment on mount cobyim, near the red sea, of a colony of ascetics, who renounced all the business and pleasures in life as the price of eternal happiness. a long series of hermits, monks, and anachorets propagated the system and, patronised by athanasius, it spread to all parts of the world. the monastic profession was an act of voluntary devotion, and the inconstant fanatic was threatened with the eternal vengeance of the god whom he deserted. the monks had to give a blind submission to the commands of their abbot, however absurd, and the freedom of the mind, the source of every generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed by the habits of credulity and submission. in their dress and diet they preserved the most rigorous simplicity, and they subsisted entirely by their own manual exertions. but in the course of time this simplicity vanished, and, enriched by the offerings of the faithful, they assumed the pride of wealth, and at last indulged in the luxury of extravagance. the conversion of the barbarians followed upon their invasion of the roman world; but they were involved in the arian heresy, and from their advocacy of that cause they were characterised by the name of heretics, an epithet more odious than that of barbarian. the bitterness engendered by this reproach confirmed them in their faith, and the vandals in africa persecuted the orthodox catholic with all the vigour and cruel arts of religious tyranny. * * * * * decline and fall of the roman empire--iv _i.--theodoric the ostrogoth_ after the fall of the roman empire in the west, an interval of fifty years, until the memorable reign of justinian, is faintly marked by the obscure names and imperfect annals of zeno, anastasius, and justin, who successively ascended the throne of constantinople. during the same period italy revived and nourished under the government of a gothic king, who might have deserved a statue among the best and bravest of the ancient romans. theodoric the ostrogoth, the fourteenth in lineal descent of royal line of the amali, was born (455) in the neighbourhood of vienna two years after the death of attila. the murmurs of the goths, who complained that they were exposed to intolerable hardships, determined theodoric to attempt an adventure worthy of his courage and ambition. he boldly demanded the privilege of rescuing italy and rome from odoacer, and at the head of his people forced his way, between the years 488 and 489, through hostile country into italy. in three battles he triumphed over odoacer, forced that monarch to capitulate on favourable terms at ravenna (493), and after pretending to allow him to share his sovereignty of italy, assassinated him in the same year. the long reign of theodoric (493-526) was marked by a transient return of peace and prosperity to italy. his domestic and foreign policy were dictated alike by wisdom and necessity. his people were settled on the land, which they held by military tenure. a series of matrimonial alliances secured him the support of the franks, the burgundians, the visigoths, the vandals, and the thuringians, and his sword preserved his territory from the incursions of rival barbarians and the two disastrous attacks (505 and 508) that envy prompted the emperor anastasius to attempt. _ii.--justinian the great_ the death of the emperor anastasius had raised to the throne a dardanian peasant, who by his arts secured the suffrage of the guards, despoiled and destroyed his more powerful rivals, and reigned under the name of justin i. from 518 to 527. he was succeeded by his nephew, the great justinian, who for thirty-eight years directed the fortunes of the roman empire. the empress theodora, who before her marriage had been a theatrical wanton, was seated, by the fondness of the emperor, on the throne as an equal and independent colleague in the sovereignty. her rapacity, her cruelty, and her pride were the subject of contemporary writings, but her benevolence to her less fortunate sisters, and her courage amidst the factions and dangers of the court, justly entitle her to a certain nobility of character. constantinople in the age of justinian was torn by the factions of the circus. the rival bands of charioteers, who wore respectively liveries of green and blue, created in the capital of the east, as they had created in rome, two factions among the populace. justinian's support of the blues led to a serious sedition in the capital. the two factions were united by a common desire for vengeance, and with the watchword of "nika" (vanquish) (january 532), raged in tumult through constantinople for five days. at the command of theodora 3,000 veterans who could be trusted marched through the burning streets to the hippodrome, and there, supported by the repentant blues, massacred the unresisting mob. the eastern empire, after rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations whom she had conquered beyond the adriatic, and as far as the frontiers of ethiopia and persia. justinian reigned over 64 provinces and 935 cities. the arts and agriculture flourished under his rule, but the avarice and profusion of justinian oppressed the people. his expensive taste for building almost exhausted the resources of the empire. heavy custom tolls, taxes on the food and industry of the poor, the exercise of intolerable monopolies, were not excused or compensated for by the parsimonious saving in the salaries of court officials, and even in the pay of the soldiers. his stately edifices were cemented with the blood and treasures of his people, and the rapacity and luxury of the emperor were imitated by the civil magistrates and officials. the schools of athens, which still kept alight the sacred flame of the ancient philosophy, were suppressed by justinian. the academy of the platonics, the lyceum of the peripatetics, the portico of the stoics, and the garden of the epicureans had long survived. with the death of simplicius and his six companions, who terminate the long list of grecian philosophers, the golden chain, as it was fondly styled, of the platonic succession was broken, and the edict of justinian (529) imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of athens. the roman consulship was also abolished by justinian in 541; but this office, the title of which admonished the romans of their ancient freedom, still lived in the minds of the people. they applauded the gracious condescension of successive princes by whom it was assumed in the first year of their reign, and three centuries elapsed after the death of justinian before that obsolete office, which had been suppressed by law, could be abolished by custom. the usurpation by gelimer (530) of the vandalic crown of africa, which belonged of right to hilderic, first encouraged justinian to undertake the african war. hilderic had granted toleration to the catholics, and for this reason was held in reproach by his arian subjects. his compulsory abdication afforded the emperor of the east an opportunity of interfering in the cause of orthodoxy. a large army was entrusted to the command of belisarius, one of those heroic names which are familiar to every age and to every nation. proved in the persian war, belisarius was given unlimited authority. he set sail from constantinople with a fleet of six hundred ships in june 533. he landed on the coast of africa in september, defeated the degenerate vandals, reduced carthage within a few days, utterly vanquished gelimer, and completed the conquest of the ancient roman province by 534. the vandals in africa fled beyond the power or even the knowledge of the romans. _iii.--gothic italy_ dissensions in italy excited the ambition of justinian. belisarius was sent with another army to sicily in 535, and after subduing that island and suppressing a revolt in africa, he invaded italy in 536. policy dictated the retreat of the goths, and belisarius entered rome (december 536). in march, vitiges, the gothic ruler, returned with a force of one hundred and fifty thousand men. the valour of the roman general supported a siege of forty-one days and the intrigues of the pope silverius, who was exiled by his orders; and, finally, with the assistance of a seasonable reinforcement, belisarius compelled the barbarians to retire in march of the following year. the conquests of ravenna and the suppression of the invasion of the franks completed the subjugation of the gothic kingdom by december 539. the success of belisarius and the intrigues of his secret enemies had excited the jealousy of justinian. he was recalled, and the eunuch narses was sent to italy, as a powerful rival, to oppose the interests of the conqueror of rome and africa. the infidelity of antonina, which excited her husband's just indignation, was excused by the empress theodora, and her powerful support was given to the wife of the last of the roman heroes, who, after serving again against the persians, returned to the capital, to be received not with honour and triumph, but with disgrace and contempt and a fine of $600,000. the incursions of the lombards, the slavonians, and the avars and the turks, and the successful raids of the king of persia were among the number of the important events of the reign of justinian. to maintain his position in africa and italy taxed his resources to their utmost limit. the victories of justinian were pernicious to mankind; the desolation of africa was such that in many parts a stranger might wander whole days without meeting the face of either a friend or an enemy. the revolts of the goths, under their king, totila (541), once more demanded the presence of belisarius, and, a hero on the banks of the euphrates, a slave in the palace of constantinople, he accepted with reluctance the painful task of supporting his own reputation and retrieving the faults of his successors. he was too late to save rome from the goths, by whom it was taken in december 546; but he recovered it in the following february. after his recall by his envious sovereign in september 548, rome was once more taken by the goths. the successful repulse of the franks and alemanni finally restored the kingdom to the rule of the emperor. belisarius died on march 13, 565. the emperor survived his death only eight months, and passed away, in the eighty-third year of his life and the thirty-eighth of his reign, on november 14, 565. the most lasting memorial of his reign is to be found neither in his victories nor his monuments, but in the immortal works of the code, the pandects, and the institutes, in which the civil jurisprudence of the romans was digested, and by means of which the public reason of the romans has been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of the whole of europe. _iv.--gregory the great_ justinian was succeeded by his nephew, justin ii., who lived to see the conquest of the greater part of italy by alboin, king of the lombards (568-570), the disaffection of the exarch, narses, and the ruin of the revived glories of the roman world. during a period of 200 years italy was unequally divided between the king of the lombards and the exarchate of ravenna. rome relapsed into a state of misery. the campania was reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness. the stagnation of a deluge caused by the torrential swelling of the tiber produced a pestilential disease, and a stranger visiting rome might contemplate with horror the solitude of the city. gregory the great, whose pontificate lasted from 590 to 604, reconciled the arians of italy and spain to the catholic church, conquered britain in the name of the cross, and established his right to interfere in the management of the episcopal provinces of greece, spain, and gaul. the merits of gregory were treated by the byzantine court with reproach and insult, but in the attachment of a grateful people he found the purest reward of a citizen and the best right of a sovereign. the short and virtuous reign of tiberius (578-582), which succeeded that of justin, made way for that of maurice. for twenty years maurice ruled with honesty and honour. but the parsimony of the emperor, and his attempt to cure the inveterate evil of a military despotism, led to his undoing, and in 602 he was murdered with his children. a like fate befell the emperor phocas, who succumbed in 610 to the fortunes of heraclius, the son of crispus, exarch of africa. for thirty-two years heraclius ruled the roman world. in three campaigns he chastised the rising power of persia, drove the armies of chosroes from syria, palestine, and egypt, rescued constantinople from the joint siege of the avars and persians (626), and finally reduced the persian monarch to the defence of his hereditary kingdom. the deposition and murder of chosroes by his son siroes (628) concluded the successes of the emperor. a treaty of peace was arranged, and heraclius returned in triumph to constantinople, where, after the exploits of six glorious campaigns, he peacefully enjoyed the sabbath of his toils. the year after his return he made the pilgrimage to jerusalem to restore the true cross to the holy sepulchre. in the last eight years of his reign heraclius lost to the arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from the persians. heraclius died in 612. his descendants continued to fill the throne in the persons of constantine iii. (641), heracleonas (641), constans ii. (641), constantine iv. (668), justinian ii. (685), until 711, when an interval of six years, divided into three reigns, made way for the rise of the isaurian dynasty. _v.--the new era of charlemagne_ leo iii. ascended the throne on march 25, 718, and the purple descended to his family, by the rights of heredity, for three generations. the isaurian dynasty is most notable for the part it played in ecclesiastical history. the introduction of images into the christian church had confused the simplicity of religious worship. the education of leo, his reason, perhaps his intercourse with jews and arabs, had inspired him with a hatred of images. by two edicts he proscribed the existence, as well as the use, of religious pictures. this heresy of leo and of his successors and descendants, constantine v. (741), leo iv. (775), and constantine vi. (780), whose blinding by his mother irene is one of the most tragic stories of roman history, justified the popes in rebelling against the authority of the emperor, and in restoring and establishing the supremacy of rome. gregory ii. saved the city from the attacks of the lombards, who had seized ravenna and extinguished the series of greek exarchs in 751. he secured the assistance of pepin, and the real governor of the french monarchy--charles martel, who, by his signal victory over the saracens, had saved europe from the mohammedan yoke. twice--in 754 and 756--pepin marched to the relief of the city. his son charlemagne, in 774, seemed to secure the permanent safety of the ancient capital by the conquest of lombardy, and for twenty-six years he ruled the romans as his subjects. the people swore allegiance to his person and his family, and the elections of the popes were examined and authorised by him. the senate exercised its rights by proclaiming him patrician and of the power of the emperor; nothing was lacking except the title. a document, known as the forged decretals, which assigned the free and perpetual sovereignty of rome, italy, and the provinces of the west to the popes by constantine, was presented by pope hadrian i. to charlemagne. this document served to absolve the popes from their debt of gratitude to the french monarch, and excused the revolt of rome from the authority of the eastern empire. though constantinople returned, under irene, to the employment of images, and the seventh general council of nicæa, september 24, 787, pronounced the worship of the greeks as agreeable to scripture and reason, the division between the east and the west could not be avoided. the pope was driven to revive the western empire in order to secure the gift of the exarchy, to eradicate the claims of the greeks, and to restore the majesty of rome from the debasement of a provincial town. the emperors of the west would receive their crown from the successor of st. peter, and the roman church would require a zealous and respectable advocate. inspired by these motives, pope leo, who had nearly fallen a victim to a conspiracy (788), and had been saved and reinstated by charlemagne, took the opportunity presented by the french king's visit to rome to crown him emperor. on the festival of christmas (800), in the church of st. peter, leo, after the celebration of the holy mysteries, suddenly placed a precious crown on his head. the dome resounded with the acclamations of the people, his head and body were consecrated with the royal unction, and he was saluted, or adored, by the pontiff after the example of the cæsars. europe dates a new era from his restoration of the western empire. * * * * * theodor mommsen history of rome theodor mommsen was born at garding in schleswig on november 30, 1817. he studied at kiel university for three years, examined roman inscriptions in france and italy from 1844 to 1847, and attained his first professorship at leipzig in 1848, and the berlin chair of ancient history in 1858. his greatest work was the "history of rome," published in 1854, and its successor, the "roman provinces." on this work he brought to bear a research and a scholarship of almost unparalleled range and completeness. he was a man capable of vehement and occasionally unreasonable partisanship, and a strict and cold-blooded impartiality would have tempered the enthusiasm of some of his portraits and the severity of others. these defects, however, are less obvious when his history is condensed in small compass. there are cases in which his judgments are open to adverse criticism. but at the present day it may safely be affirmed that there is no extant history of rome down to the establishment of the empire which can be regarded as rivalling that here presented. upwards of 900 separate publications remain as a monument of mommsen's industry. he died on november 1, 1903. iapygians, etruscans, and italians, the last certainly indo-europeans, are the original stocks of italy proper. of the italians there are two divisions, the latin and the umbro-sabellian. central italy was occupied by the latins, who were established in cantons formed of village groups; which cantons at an early age formed themselves into the loose latin league, with alba at its head. the roman canton, on both banks of the tiber, concentrated itself on the city earlier than others. the citizens consisted of the families which constituted the larger groups of clans or gentes, formed into those tribes. the remainder of the population were their dependents or slaves. at the head of the family was the father, and the whole community had its king, standing to it in the same relation as the father to the family. his power, within the law, was absolute; but he could not override it or change it on his own authority. this required the formal assent of the assembled citizens. the heads of the clans formed a separate body--the senate--which controlled the appointment of the king, and could veto legislation. by admission of aliens and absorption of other communities, swelling the number of dependents, was gradually created a great body of plebeians, non-citizens, who began to demand political rights; and whom it was necessary to organise for military purposes which was done by the "servian constitution." gradually rome won a supremacy in the latin league, a position of superiority over the aggregate of the other cantons. in this community arose three political movements: (1) on the part of the full citizen, patricii, to limit the power not of the state, but of the kings; (2) of the non-citizens, to acquire political rights; (3) of antagonism between the great landholders and the land-interests opposed to them. the first resulted in the expulsion of the monarchs, and the substitution of a dual kingship held for one year only. but in many respects their joint power was curtailed as compared with that of the monarch, while for emergencies they could appoint a temporary dictator. the change increased the power of the general assembly, to which it became necessary to admit the non-citizen freeholders who were liable to military duties. the life tenure of the members of the senate greatly increased the powers of that body, and intensified the antagonism of the patriarch and the plebeians. at the same time, a landed nobility was developing; and when fresh land was acquired by the state, the patricians claimed to control it. but the great agricultural population could not submit to this process of land absorption, and the consequent strife took the form of a demand for political recognition, which issued in the appointment of tribunes of the plebs, with power of administrative veto. the struggle over privileges lasted for two hundred years. first the canuleian law made marriage valid between patricians and plebeians, and instituted for a time military tribunes. the licinian law, eighty years later, admitted plebeians to the consulship, and also required the employment of free labour in agriculture. the decisively democratic measure was the horticunian law, after another seventy years, giving the exclusively plebeian assembly full legislative power. the practical effect of the changes was to create a new aristocracy, semi-plebeian in origin, and to reduce the personal power of the chief officers of state, while somewhat increasing that of the remodelled senate; rendering it a body selfish indeed in internal matters, but essentially patriotic as well as powerful. _i.--the description of italy_ during the period of this long constitutional struggle, rome and her kinsfolk had first been engaged in a stubborn and ultimately successful contest with the non-aryan etruscan race; and then italy had been attacked by the migrating aryan hordes of the celts, known as gauls, who sacked rome, but retired to north italy; events giving birth to many well-known stories, probably in the main mythical. but the practical effect was to impose a greater solidarity of the latin and kindred races, and a more decisive acceptance of roman hegemony. that hegemony, however, had to be established by persistent compulsion, and there were three stages in its completion. first, the subjection of the latins and campanians; then the struggle of rome with the umbrian-samnites; finally, the decisive repulse of the epirote invader pyrrhus--in effect a hellenic movement. the roman supremacy established through the exhaustion of the valiant samnites required to be confirmed by stern repression of attempts to recover liberty. but the hellenic element in italy, antagonistic to the growing roman power, in effect invited the intervention of the epirote chief. but his scheme was not that of an imperial statesman, but of a chivalrous and romantic warrior. his own political blunders and the iron determination of the romans, destroyed his chances of conquest. his retirement left rome undisputed lord of italy; which in part shared full citizenship, in part possessed only the more restricted latin rights, and in part only rights conceded under varying treaties. a sense of common italian nationality was developing. but if rome was queen of italy, carthage was queen of the seas. maritime expansion was precluded, though rome's position fitted her for it. carthage was the one phoenician state which developed political as well as commercial power. the commercial cities of north africa were in subordination to her, in the western mediterranean she had no rivals, her domestic government was oligarchical. roman intervention in the affairs of sicily, where carthage was the dominant power, produced the rupture between the two great states which was bound to come sooner or later. sicily itself was the scene of the initial struggle, which taught rome that her victories on land were liable to be nullified by the carthaginian sea power. she resolved to build a navy, on the plan of adopting boarding tactics which would assimilate a naval engagement to a battle on land. these tactics were successful enough to equalise the fighting value of the respective fleets. the romans were enabled to land an invading army under regulus in africa. though superior on land, the general's blundering led to a disaster, and for some time misfortune by sea and failure by land dogged the romans. but carthage failed to use her opportunity; she did not attempt to strike a crushing blow when she could have done so. but the private energy of roman patriots at last placed on the seas a fleet which once more turned the scale, whereas it was on land that the brilliant carthaginian hamilcar had displayed his genius and daring. the first punic war gave rome predominance in sicily, and a position of maritime equality. sardinia was added to the roman dominion, and her provincial administration came into being. she was carrying her expansion farther over celtic regions, when hannibal, the son of hamilcar, hurled himself against her, and came near to destroying her. hamilcar had conceived the idea of imperial expansion, and given it shape by creating a dominion in spain; he had looked forward to the life-and-death struggle with rome that was destined to his son; for which spain was to be the base. hannibal, left in control in spain, deliberately challenged rome to war. the challenge was accepted, war was declared, and hannibal accomplished the amazing feat of leading an army of 60,000 men from spain and effecting the passage of the alps, while the romans were landing an army in spain. in a brilliant campaign, he defeated the stubborn roman legions at vercellæ and the trebia. but success depended not on the winning of victories by an isolated force, but on the disruption of italy. his superiority in the field was again demonstrated at trasimenus, but no italian allies came in. he outwitted fabius, and then utterly shattered at cannæ a roman force of double his own numbers. for a moment it seemed that italian cohesion was weakening; but the roman senate and people were stirred only to a more dogged resolution. cannæ failed to break up the roman confederation. generalship unaided could accomplish no more. in spain, where young scipio was soon winning renown, the roman arms were in the ascendant, and in sicily. no effective aid was coming from macedon, though war was declared between her and rome. hannibal's activities began to be paralysed; by slow degrees he was forced into the south. hannibal succeeded in crossing the alps with fresh forces, but by a brilliant operation was annihilated on the metaurus. the time had come when scipio could disregard hannibal and strike at carthage herself. even hannibal's return could not save her. the victory of zama decided the issue. carthage became virtually a tributary and subject state. spain was a roman province, and north africa a sort of protectorate. the threatening extension of macedonian power now demanded the protecting intervention of rome; an honest act of liberation for the greeks, but entailing presently the war with antiochus of syria. antiochus had left phillip and macedon in the lurch; now he sought to impose his own yoke in place of theirs. the practical outcome was his decisive overthrow at the battle of magnesia, and the cession to rome of asia minor. pergamus, under the house of actalus, was established as a protected kingdom, as numidia under masinissa had been. the greek states, however, were becoming conscious that their freedom was hardly more than a name; perseus of macedon once more challenged rome, not without greek support. macedon was finally crushed by aemilius paullus at pydna. from that moment, rome dropped the policy of maintaining free states beyond the seas, which had manifestly failed. virtually, the known world was divided into subjects and dependencies of rome, so vast was the change in the forty years between the battles of the metaurus and pydna. rapid extension of dominion by conquest had demoralising results; the ruling race was exposed to strong temptations in the provinces, and the city remained the seat of government, while the best of the burgesses were distributed elsewhere. hence, the popular assembly became virtually the city mob, while the ruling families tended more and more to form a close and greedy and plutocratic oligarchy. the demoralisation was very inadequately checked by the austerity of the censorship as exercised by cato. in the provinces, the spanish natives revolted, and were only repressed after severe fighting. in greece, asia and africa, the roman rule gave neither freedom nor strong government. in africa, the disturbances led to the wiping out of carthage; in greece to the complete subjection of the dependent states; in the far east, a new parthian power arose under mithridates. the mediterranean was allowed to be infested by pirates. revolution was at hand. politics had become reduced to a process of intrigue for office emoluments, involving a pandering to the city mob for its suffrages. _ii.--the revolution_ socially, the most patent evil was the total disappearance of the free agricultural class, the absorption of all the land into huge estates under slave labour. the remedy proposed by tiberius gracchus was the partial state resumption of land and its re-allotment. he adopted unconstitutional methods for carrying his proposals, and was murdered in a riot led by the oligarchs. appeals to the roman populace were not, unfortunately, appeals to the roman nation. his brother, gaius, deliberately designed a revolution. he proposed to work through the antagonism of the aristocrats and the wealthy non-senatorial equestrian order; and by concentrating power in the hands of the tribunate, hitherto checked by the restrictions on re-election. in effect, he meant to destroy the oligarchy by making the tribune a perpetual dictator, and thus to carry through social reforms; to establish also legal equality first for the italians, then for the provinces also. but these reforms were not particularly attractive to the city mob, and the other side could play the demagogue. the condition of cæsarism is the control of physical force; gaius gracchus fell because he had not that essential control. the oligarchy remained supreme. the plans of gracchus for planting colonies and distributing allotments were nullified. the evils of slave labour multiplied, and issued in servile insurrections. in numidia, the able masimissa had been succeeded by micipsa. on micipsa's death, the rule was usurped by his illegitimate nephew jugurtha, whose story has been told by sallust. the war was at least terminated less by the low-born general in command, marius, than his brilliant lieutenant sulla. but marius re-organised the army on the basis which was to make a military despotism practicable, as it made a professional instead of a citizen army. but now a new foe appears; the first teutonic (not celtic) hordes of the cimbri and teutones; to meet with an overwhelming check at the hands of marius at aquæ sextiæ and vercellæ. the successful soldier allied himself with the popular leader saturninus; the programme of gaius gracchus was resuscitated. but marius, a political incapable, separated from the demagogues, and by helping to crush them, effaced himself. livius drusus attempted to carry out the gracchan social reform, with the senate instead of the tribunate as the controlling power; the senatorial party themselves wrecked his schemes, and the antagonistic power of the equestrian order was advanced. but the immediate outcome was the revolt of the italians, the _socii_ (whence the name social war). they were not citizens, not on an equal footing with the citizens before the law. the revolt was suppressed, but the legions were completely out of hand. the attempt of sulpicius to head the reform movement was answered by sulla, who for the first time led a roman army against rome, crushed sulpicius, prescribed some of his adherents, and placed the power of the senate on a stronger footing by legal enactment. then he went to the east, to conduct the war against mithridates. while sulla was conducting his operations, military and diplomatic, with skill and success in the east, his arrangements at rome had left discontent and disappointment seething. there was another revolution, led by cinna, marius and sertorius; it mastered rome. marius spilt seas of blood, but soon died. for three years cinna was supreme, but he had no constructive policy. but now sulla had finished his work in the east. he was returning at the head of a body of veterans devoted to him; and his diplomacy won over half italy to his side. the struggle with the revolutionary government was not greatly prolonged, and it was decisive. in plain terms, the roman constitution had gone utterly to wreck; sulla was in something of the same position as oliver cromwell. he had to reconstruct under conditions which made a constitutional restoration impracticable; but his control of the efficient military force gave him the necessary power. that any system introduced must be arbitrary and find its main sanction in physical force--that it should partake of terrorism--was inevitable. sulla obtained the formal conferment on himself of absolute power. he began by applying this rule of terror not vindictively, but with impersonal mercilessness, against the lives and property of the opposition. in the constitution which he promulgated the senatorial body was alone recognised as a privileged class; the senate itself was increased, it recovered full control of the judiciary and of legislation; no power was left of cancelling membership. the tribunician power was curtailed. the civil and military functions of consuls and prætors were separated. they were to hold civil power in italy proper during their year of office; they were then to have a second year in military control of a province. the planting of military colonies provided numerous garrisons whose interests were associated with the new constitution. when sulla had done his work, he resigned his extraordinary powers with entire indifference. in a little more than a year he died. the sullan constitution saved the roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makeshift, like cromwell's protectorate. there were huge classes with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves. and there was no man of the hour of supreme ability to carry on work demanding a master. _iii.--pompey and cæsar_ the young graccus pompeius was the most distinguished of the sullan party; crassus was the wealthiest and most powerful of the equestrian group; lepidus was the popular leader. a popular insurrection which he headed was suppressed, and he disappeared, but sertorius, once an associate of marius, had obtained a remarkable personal ascendancy in spain, and, in league with the mediterranean pirates, threatened to be a formidable foe of the new constitution. for some years he maintained a gradually waning resistance against the arms of pompeius, but finally was assassinated. meanwhile tigranes, king of armenia, had been developing a powerful monarchy; and mutual distrust had brought on another war with mithridates, successfully conducted by lucullus. out of this war arose a struggle with tigranes, on whom an overwhelming defeat was inflicted at tigranocerta. but the brilliant achievements of lucullus were nullified by the mutinous conduct of the troops, and the factious conduct of the home government. the gross inefficiency of that government was shown by the immense extension of organised piracy, and by the famous slave revolt under spartacus, which seriously endangered the state. pompeius on his return from spain was barred on technical grounds from the triumph and the consulship which he demanded. he was thus driven into an alliance with the democratic party, and with crassus. the result was the fall of the sullan constitution, and the restoration of checks on the power of the senate. pompeius might have grasped a military despotism; he did not, but he did receive extraordinary powers for dealing with the whole eastern question, and when that work was settled successfully, he would be able to dictate his own terms. pompeius began his task by a swift and crushing blow against the pirate cities and fleets, which broke up the organisation. he crushed mithridates in one campaign, and received the submission of tigranes; mithridates soon after fell by his own hand, the victim of an insurrection. anarchy in syria warranted pompeius in annexing the seleucid dominion. the whole of the nearer east was now a part of the roman empire; and was thenceforth ruled not as protectorates, but as a group of provinces. egypt alone was not incorporated. meanwhile, the democratic party at rome were dominant, though their policy was inconsistent and opportunist. probably the leading men, such as crassus and the rising gaius, julius cæsar, stood aside from the wilder schemes, such as the catilinarian conspiracies, but secretly fostered them. catiline's projects were betrayed, and the illegal execution of the captured conspirators by the consul cicero was hailed by cato and the senatorial party as a triumph of patriotic statesmanship. catiline himself was crushed in the field. the definite fact emerged, that neither the senatorial nor the democratic party could establish a strong government; that would be possible only for a military monarchy--a statesman with a policy and an irresistible, force at his back. but pompeius lacked the courage and skill. cæsar, as yet, lacked the military force. pompeius, on his return from the east, again allied himself with crassus and cæsar, whose object was to acquire for himself the opportunity which pompeius would not grasp. the alliance gave pompeius the land allotments he required for his soldiers, and to cæsar the consulship followed by a prolonged governorship of gaul. the conquest and organisation of gaul was an end in itself, a necessary defence against barbarian pressure. cæsar's operations there were invaluable to the empire; incidentally, they enabled him to become master of it. cæsar has left his own record. gaul was transformed into a barrier against the teutonic migration. but pompeius, nominally holding a far greater position, proved incapable of controlling the situation in rome; he could not even suppress the demagogue clodius, while the prestige of his military exploits was waning. fear of the power of the triumvirate was driving moderate men to the senatorial part; that party, without an efficient leader, began to find in pompeius rather in ally against the more dangerous cæsar than an enemy. but they would not concede him the powers he required; which might yet be turned to the uses of his colleagues in the triumvirate; he could not afford to challenge cæsar; and cæsar adroitly used the situation to secure for himself a prolongation of his gallic command. the completion of his work there was to have precedence of his personal ambitions. crassus was sent to the eastern command; and pompeius remained in italy, while nominally appointed to spain. pompeius, indeed, attained a predominance in rome which enabled him to secure temporarily dictatorial powers which were employed to counteract the electoral machinery of the republican party; but he had not the qualifications or the inclination to play the demagogue, and could not unite his aspirations as a restorer of law and order with effective party leadership. crassus disappeared; his armies in the east met with a complete disaster at carrhæ, and he took his own life. cæsar and pompeius were left; pompeius was not content that cæsar should stand on a real equality with him, and the inevitable rupture came. in effect pompeius used his dictatorship to extend his own military command and to curtail cæsar's. the position resolved itself into a rivalry between the two; cæsar declaring as always for the democracy, pompeius now assuming the championship of the aristocracy, and the guardianship of the constitution. for cæsar the vital point now was that his own command should not terminate till he exchanged it for a fresh consulship. as the law now stood, he could not obtain his election without resigning his command beforehand. but he succeeded in forcing pompeius to break the law; and in making the official government responsible for declaring war. he offered a compromise, perhaps, in the certainty that it would be rejected--as it was. he was virtually declared a public enemy; and he struck at once. at the head of his devotedly loyal veterans he crossed the rubicon. his rapid and successful advance caused pompeius to abandon italy and fall back on the eastern provinces. the discipline preserved, and the moderation displayed by cæsar won him unexpected favour. having secured italy, he turned next on spain, and secured that. swift and decisive action was pitted against inertness. when cæsar entered epirus the odds against him on paper were enormous; but the triumphant victory of phansalus shattered the pompeian coalition. pompeius hurried to egypt, but was assassinated while landing. the struggle, however, was not over till after the battle of thapsus nearly two years after phansalus. cæsar was now beyond question master of the whole roman world. he had made himself one of the mightiest of all masters of the art of war; but he was even more emphatically unsurpassed as a statesman. in the brief time that was left him he laid the foundation of the new monarchy which replaced the ancient republic of rome. * * * * * mediæval history edward gibbon the holy roman empire the third of gibbon's divisions of his great history was devoted to that period which is comprised between the establishment of the holy roman empire in 800 and the final extinction of the eastern empire with the conquest of constantinople by mahomet ii. in 1453. although this was the longest period, gibbon devoted much less space to it than to the preceding parts of his history. this fact was partly due to the gradual diminution of roman interests, for the dominions of the empire became contracted to the limits of a single city, and also to the fact that the material which the most painstaking search placed at his disposal was distinctly limited. but though the conquest of the normans, to instance one section, has been dealt with inadequately in the light of modern research, the wonderful panorama that gibbon's genius was able to present never fails in its effect or general accuracy. the holy roman empire is, of course, properly classified under mediæval history, which accounts for its separation from the rest of gibbon's work. _i.--birth and sway of the empire_ the western empire, or holy roman empire, as it has been called, which was re-established by charlemagne (and lasted in shadow until the abdication of francis ii. under the pressure of napoleon in 1806), was not unworthy of its title. the personal and political importance of charlemagne was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of europe. the greek emperor was addressed by him as brother instead of father; and as long as the imperial dignity of the west was usurped by a hero, the greeks respectfully saluted the _august_ charlemagne with the acclamations of "basileus" and "emperor of the romans." lewis the pious (814-840) possessed the virtue of his father but not the power. when both power and virtue were extinct, the greeks despoiled lewis ii. of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation of _rex_ degraded him amongst the crowd of latin princes. the imperial title of the west remained in the family of charlemagne until the deposition of charles the fat in 884. his insanity dissolved the empire into factions, and it was not until otho, king of germany, laid claim to the title, with fire and sword, that the western empire was restored (962). his conquest of italy and delivery of the pope for ever fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of germany. from that memorable era two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time: (1) that the prince who was elected in the german diet acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of italy and rome; (2) but that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and augustus till he had received the crown from the hands of the roman pontiff. the nominal power of the western emperors was considerable. no pontiff could be legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church, had graciously signified his approbation and consent. gregory vii., in 1073, usurped this power, and fixed for ever in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of election. nominally, also, the emperors held sway in rome, but this supremacy was annihilated in the thirteenth century. in the fourteenth century the power derived from his title was still recognised in europe; the hereditary monarchs confessed the pre-eminence of his rank and dignity. the persecution of images and their votaries in the east had separated-rome and italy from the byzantine throne, and prepared the way for the conquests of the franks. the rise and triumph of the mahometans still further diminished the empire of the east. the successful inroads of the bulgarians, hungarians, and russians, who assaulted by sea or by land the provinces and the capital, seemed to advance the approach of its final dissolution. the norman adventurers, who founded a powerful kingdom in apulia and sicily, shook the throne of constantinople (1146), and their hostile enterprises did not cease until the year 1185. _ii.--latin rulers of constantinople_ under the name of the latins, the subjects of the pope, the nations of the west, enlisted under the banner of the cross for the recovery or the release of the holy sepulchre. the greek emperors were terrified and preserved by the myriads of pilgrims who marched to jerusalem with godfrey of bouillon (1095-99) and the peers of christendom. the second (1147) and the third (1189) crusades trod in the footsteps of the first. asia and europe were mingled in a sacred war of two hundred years; and the christian powers were bravely resisted and finally expelled (1291) by saladin (1171-93) and the mamelukes of egypt. in these memorable crusades a fleet and army of french and venetians were diverted from syria to the thracian bosphorus; they assaulted the capital (1203), they subverted the greek monarchy; and a dynasty of latin princes was seated near three-score years on the throne of constantine. during this period of captivity and exile, which lasted from 1204 to 1261, the purple was preserved by a succession of four monarchs, who maintained their title as the heirs of augustus, though outcasts from their capital. the _de facto_ sovereigns of constantinople during this period, the latin emperors of the houses of flanders and courtenay, provided five sovereigns for the usurped throne. by an agreement between the allied conquerors, the emperor of the east was nominated by the vote of twelve electors, chosen equally from the french and venetians. to him, with all the titles and prerogatives of the byzantine throne, a fourth part of the greek monarchy was assigned; the remaining portions were equally snared between the republic of venice and the barons of france. under this agreement, baldwin, count of flanders and hainault, was created emperor (1204-05). the idea of the roman system, which, despite the passage of centuries devoted to the triumphs of the barbarians, had impressed itself on europe, was seen in the emperor's letter to the roman pontiff, in which he congratulated him on the restoration of his authority in the east. the defeat and captivity of baldwin in a war against the bulgarians, and his subsequent death, placed the crown on the head of his brother henry (1205-16). with him the imperial house of flanders became extinct, and peter of courtenay, count of auxerre (1217-19), assumed the empire of the east. peter was taken captive by theodore, the legitimate sovereign of constantinople, and his sons robert (1221-28) and baldwin ii. (1228-37) reigned in succession. the gradual recovery of their empire by the legitimate sovereigns of the east culminated in the capture of constantinople by the greeks (1261). the line of latin sovereigns was extinct. baldwin lived the remainder of his life a royal fugitive, soliciting the catholic powers to join in his restoration. he died in 1272. from the days of the emperor heraclius the byzantine empire had been most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary succession. five dynasties--the heraclian, isaurian, amorian, basilian, and comnenian families--enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four generations. the imperial house of comnenius, though its direct line in male descent had expired with andronicus i. (1185), had been perpetuated by marriage in the female line, and had survived the exile from constantinople, in the persons of the descendants of theodore lascaris. michael palæologus, who, through his mother, might claim perhaps a prior right to the throne of the comnenii, usurped the imperial dignity on the recovery of constantinople, cruelly blinded the young emperor john, the legitimate heir of theodore lascaris, and reigned until 1282. his career of authority was notable for an attempt to unite the greek and roman churches--a union which was dissolved in 1283--and his instigation of the revolt in sicily, which ended in the famous sicilian vespers (march 30, 1282), when 8,000 french were exterminated in a promiscuous massacre. he saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the west in rebellion and blood. from these seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son, andronicus the elder (1282-1332). thousands of genoese and catalans, released from the wars that michael had aroused in the west, took service under his successor against the turks. other mercenaries flocked to their standard, and, under the name of the great company, they subverted the authority of the emperor, defeated his troops, laid waste his territory, united themselves with his enemies, and, finally, abandoning the banks of the hellespont, marched into greece. here they overthrew the remnant of the latin power, and for fourteen years (1311-1326) the great company was the terror of the grecian states. their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignity of the house of arragon; and, during the remainder of the fourteenth century, athens as a government or an appanage was successfully bestowed by the kings of sicily. conquered in turn by the french and catalans, athens at length became the capital of a state that extended over thebes, argos, corinth, delphi, and a part of thessaly, and was ruled by the family of accaioli, plebeians of florence (1384-1456). the last duke of this dynasty was strangled by mahomet ii., who educated his sons in the discipline of the seraglio. during the reign of john palæologus, son of andronicus the younger, which began in 1355, the eastern empire was nearly subverted by the genoese. on the return of the legitimate sovereign to constantinople, the genoese, who had established their factories and industries in the suburb of galata, or pera, were allowed to remain. during the civil wars the genoese forces took advantage of the disunion of the greeks, and by the skilful use of their power exacted a treaty by which they were granted a monopoly of trade, and almost a right of dominions. the roman empire (i smile in transcribing the name) might soon have sunk into a province of genoa if the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the ruin of her freedom and naval power. yet the spirit of commerce survived that of conquest; and the colony of pera still awed the capital and navigated the euxine till it was involved by the turks in the final servitude of constantinople itself. _iii.--end of the roman world_ only three more sovereigns ruled the remnants of the roman world after the reign of john palæologus, but the final downfall of the empire was delayed above fifty years by a series of events that had sapped the strength of the mahometan empire. the rise and triumph of the moguls and tartars under their emperors, descendants of zingis khan, had shaken the globe from china to poland and greece (1206-1304). the sultans were overthrown, and in the general disorder of the mahometan world a veteran and adventurous army, which included many turkoman hordes, was dissolved into factions who, under various chiefs, lived a life of rapine and plunder. some of these engaged in the service of aladin (1219-1236), sultan of iconium, and among these were the obscure fathers of the ottoman line. orchan ruled from 1326 to 1360, achieved the conquest of bithynia, and first led the turks into europe, and in 1353 established himself in the chersonesus, and occupied gallipoli, the key of the hellespont. orchan was succeeded by amurath i. (1389-1403). bajazet carried his victorious arms from the danube to the euphrates, and the roman world became contracted to a corner of thrace, between the propontis and the black sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth, a space of ground not more extensive than the lesser principalities of germany or italy, if the remains of constantinople had not still represented the wealth and populousness of a kingdom. under manuel (1391-1425), the son and successor of john palteologus, constantinople would have fallen before the might of the sultan bajazet had not the turkish empire been oppressed by the revival of the mogul power under the victorious timour, or tamerlane. after achieving a conquest of persia (1380-1393), of tartary (1370-1383), and hindustan (1398-1399), timour, who aspired to the monarchy of the world, found himself at length face to face with the sultan bajazet. bajazet was taken prisoner in the war that followed. kept, probably only as a precaution, in an iron cage, bajazet attended the marches of his conqueror, and died on march 9, 1403. two years later, timour also passed away on the road to china. of his empire to-day nothing remains. since the reign of his descendant aurungzebe, his empire has been dissolved (1659-1707); the treasures of delhi have been rifled by a persian robber; and the riches of their kingdom is now possessed by the christians of a remote island in the northern ocean. far different was the fate of the ottoman monarchy. the massive trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane pass away than it again rose with fresh vigour and more lively vegetation. after a period of civil war between the sons of bajazet (1403-1421), the ottoman empire was once more firmly established by his grandson, amurath ii. (1421-1451). one of the first expeditions undertaken by the new sultan was the siege of constantinople (1422), but the fortune rather than the genius of the emperor manuel prevented the attempt. amurath was recalled to asia by a domestic revolt, and the siege was raised. while the sultan led his janizaries to new conquests, the byzantine empire was indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty years. manuel sank into the grave, and john palæologus ii. (1425-1448) was permitted to reign for an annual tribute of 300,000 aspers and the dereliction of almost all that he held beyond the suburbs of constantinople. on november 1, 1448, constantine, the last of the roman emperors, assumed the purple of the cæsars. for three years he was allowed to indulge himself in various private and public designs, the completion of which were interrupted by a turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins of the empire. _iv.--the great siege of constantinople_ mahomet ii. succeeded his father amurath on february 9, 1451. his hostile designs against the capital were immediately seen in the building of a fortress on the bosphorus, which commanded the source whence the city drew her supplies. in the following year a quarrel between some greeks and turks gave him the excuse of declaring war. his cannon--for the use of gunpowder, for some time the monopoly of the christian world, had been betrayed to amurath by the genoese--commanded the port, and a tribute was exacted from all ships that entered the harbour. but the actual siege was delayed until the ensuing spring of 1453. mahomet, in person, surveyed the city, encouraged his soldiers, and discussed with his generals and engineers the best means of making the assault. by his orders a huge cannon was built in hadrianople. it fired a ball one mile, and to convey it to its position before the walls, a team of sixty oxen and the assistance of 200 men were employed. the emperor constantine, unable to excite the sympathy of europe, attempted the best defence of which he was capable, with a force of 4,970 romans and 2,000 genoese. a chain was drawn across the mouth of the harbour, and whatever supplies arrived from candia and the black sea were detained for the public service. the siege of constantinople, in which scarcely 7,000 soldiers had to defend a city sixteen miles in extent against the powers of the ottoman empire, commenced on april 6, 1453. the last constantine deserves the name of a hero; his noble band of volunteers was inspired with roman virtue, and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the western chivalry. but their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. their ordnance was not powerful either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion. the great cannon of mahomet could only be fired seven times in one day, but the weight and repetition of the shots made some impression on the walls. the turks rushed to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm and to build a road to the assault. in the attack, as well as in the defence, ancient and modern artillery was employed. cannon and mechanical engines, the bullet and the battering-ram, gunpowder and greek fire, were engaged on both sides. christendom watched the struggle with coldness and apathy. four ships, which successfully forced an entrance into the harbour, were the limit of their assistance. none the less, mahomet meditated a retreat. unless the city could be attacked from the harbour, its reduction appeared to be hopeless. in this perplexity the genius of mahomet executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast. he transported his fleet over land for ten miles. in the course of one night four-score light galleys and brigantines painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and were launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the greeks. a bridge, or mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. the galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most accessible side of the walls, and, after a siege of forty days, the diminutive garrison, exhausted by a double attack, could hope no longer to avert the fate of the capital. on monday, may 28, preparations were made for the final assault. mahomet had inspired his soldiers with the hope of rewards in this world and the next. his camp re-echoed with the shouts of "god is god; there is but one god, and mahomet is the apostle of god"; and the sea and land, from galata to the seven towers, were illuminated with the blaze of the moslem fires. far different was the state of the christians. on that last night of the roman empire, constantine palæologus, in his palace, addressed the noblest of the greeks and the bravest of the allies on the duties and dangers that lay before them. it was the funeral oration of the roman empire. that same night the emperor and some faithful companions entered the dome of st. sofia, which, within a few hours, was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the sacrament of the holy communion. he reposed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations, solicited the pardon of all whom he might have injured, and mounted on horseback to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy. the distress and fall of the last constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the byzantine cæsars. at daybreak on may 29 the turks assaulted the city by sea and land. for two hours the greeks maintained the defence with advantage, and the voice of the emperor was heard encouraging the soldiers to achieve by a last effort the deliverance of their country. the new and fresh forces of the turks supplied the places of their wearied associates. from all sides the attack was pressed. the number of the ottomans was fifty, perhaps one hundred, times superior to that of the christians, the double walls were reduced by the cannons to a heap of ruins, and at last one point was found which the besiegers could penetrate. hasan, the janizary, of gigantic stature and strength, ascended the outward fortification. the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of turks, and the greeks, now driven from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes. amidst these multitudes, the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen and finally lost. his mournful exclamation was heard, "cannot there be found a christian to cut off my head?" and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. the prudent despair of constantine cast away the purple. amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain. after his death, resistance and order were no more. two thousand greeks were put to the sword, and more would have perished had not avarice soon prevailed over cruelty. it was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that constantinople, which had defied the power of chosroes and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of mahomet ii. sixty thousand greeks were driven through the streets like cattle and sold as slaves. the nuns were torn from the monasteries and compelled to enter the harems of their conquerors. the churches were plundered, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments of st. sofia were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind. the cathedral itself, despoiled of its images and ornaments, was converted into a mosque, and mahomet ii. performed the _namaz_ of prayer and thanksgiving at the great altar, where the christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the cæsars. the body of constantine was discovered under a heap of slain, by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes, and after exposing the bloody trophy, mahomet bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. constantinople, desolated by bloodshed, was re-peopled and re-adorned by mahomet. its churches were shared between the two religions, and the greeks were attracted back to their ancient capital by the assurance of their lives and the free exercise of their religion. the grief and terror of europe when the fall of constantinople became known revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades. pius ii. attempted to lead christendom against the turks, but on the very day on which he embarked his forces drew back, and he was compelled to abandon the attempt. the siege and sack of otranto by the turks put an end to all thoughts of a crusade, and the general consternation was only allayed by the death of mahomet ii. in the fifty-first year of his age. his lofty genius aspired to the conquest of italy; he was possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbour, and the same reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the new and the ancient rome. * * * * * françois guizot history of civilisation in europe françois pierre guillaume guizot, french historian and statesman, was born of huguenot parents at nimes on october 4, 1787. the liberal opinions of his family did not save his father from the guillotine in 1794, and the mother fled to geneva, where guizot was educated. he went to paris in the later days of the empire, and engaged himself at once in literature and politics. his lectures on the history of civilisation delivered in 1828, 1829, and 1830, during his professorship at the university of paris, revealed him as a historian with a rare capacity for mastering the broad essential truths of history, co-ordinating them, and expounding them with vigour and impressiveness. his first series of lectures was on "the history of civilisation in europe," a masterly abstract of a colossal subject; the second on "the history of civilisation in france." from 1830 to 1848 guizot occupied high offices of state, ultimately becoming prime minister; in 1848, like his master louis philippe, he had to fly the country. he died on september 12, 1874. _i.--the nature of civilisation_ the subject i propose to consider is the civilisation of europe--its origins, its progress, its aims, its character. the fact of civilisation belongs to what is called the philosophic portion of history; it is a vague, obscure, complex fact, very difficult, i admit, to explain and describe, but none the less requiring explanation and description. it is, indeed, the greatest historical fact, to which all others contribute; it is a kind of ocean which makes the wealth of a people, and in the bosom of which all the elements of the people's life, all the forces of its existence, are joined in unity. what, then, is civilisation--this grave, far-reaching precious reality that seems the expression of the entire life of a people? it seems to me that the first and fundamental fact conveyed by the word civilisation is the fact of progress, of development. but what is this progress? what is this development? here is the greatest difficulty of all. the etymology of the word civilisation seems to provide an easy answer. it tells us that civilisation is the perfecting of civil life, the development of society properly so called, of the relations of men to men. but is this all? have we exhausted the natural and usual sense of the word? france, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was acknowledged to be the most civilised country in europe; yet in respect of purely civil progress france was then greatly inferior to some other european countries, holland and england, for example. another development, then, reveals itself--the development of individual life, of the man himself, of his faculties, sentiments, and ideas. these two notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of civilisation--that of the development of social activity and that of the development of individual activity--are intimately related to each other. their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of men; it is proved by the course of the world's history--all the great moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the great social advances have profited the individual mind. so much for civilisation in general. it is now necessary to point out the essential difference between modern european and other civilisations. the characteristic of other civilisations has been unity; they seem to have emanated from a single fact, a single idea. in egypt and india, for example, the theocratic principle was dominant; in the greek and phoenician republics, the democratic principle. the civilisation of modern europe, on the contrary, is diverse, confused, stormy; all the forms and principles of social organisation theocratic, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, co-exist in it; there are infinite gradations of liberty, wealth, influence. all the various forces are in a state of constant struggle; yet all of them have a certain family resemblance, as it were, that we cannot but recognise. these diverse elements, for all their conflict, cannot any one of them extinguish any other; each has to dwell with the rest, make a compromise with the rest. the outcome, then, of this diversity and struggle is liberty; and here is the grand and true superiority of the european over the other civilisations. european civilisation, if i may say so, has entered into eternal truth; it advances in the ways of god. _ii.--feudalism_ it would be an important confirmation of my assertion as to the diverse character of our civilisation if we should find in its very cradle the causes and the elements of that diversity. and indeed, at the fall of the roman empire, we do so find it. three forms of society, each entirely different from the other, are visible at this time of chaos. the municipalities survived, the last remnant of the imperial system. the christian church survived. and in the third place there were the barbarians, who brought with them a military organisation, and a hardy individual independence, that were wholly new to the peoples who had dwelt under the shelter of the empire. the barbarian epoch was the chaos of all the elements, the infancy of all the systems, a universal hubbub in which even conflict itself had no definite or permanent effects. europe laboured to escape from this confusion; at some times, and in some places, it was temporarily checked--in particular by the great charlemagne in his revival of the imperial power; but the confusion did not cease until its causes no longer acted. these causes were two--one material, one moral. the material cause was the irruption of fresh barbarian hordes. the moral cause was the lack of any ideas in common among men as to the structure of society. the old imperial fabric had disappeared; charlemagne's restoration of it depended wholly on his own personality, and did not survive him; men had no ideas of any new structure--their intellectual horizon was limited to their own affairs. by the beginning of the tenth century the barbarian invasions ended, and as the populations settled down a new system appeared, based partly on the barbarians' love of independence, partly on their plans of military gradation--the system of feudalism. a sound proof that in the tenth century the feudal system was necessary, and the only social state possible, lies in the universality of its establishment. everywhere society was dismembered; everywhere there was formed a multitude of small, obscure, isolated societies, consisting of the chief, his family, his retainers, and the wretched serfs over whom he ruled without restraint, and who had no appeal against his whim. the power he exercised was the power of individual over individual, the domination of personal will and caprice; and this is perhaps the only kind of tyranny that man, to his eternal honour, is never willing to endure. hence the prodigious and invincible hatred that the people have at all times entertained for feudal rule, for the memories of it, for its very name. the narrow concentrated life of the feudal lord lent, undoubtedly, a great preponderance to domesticity in his affairs. the lord had his wife and children for his permanent society; they continually shared his interests, his destiny. it was in the bosom of the feudal family that woman gained her importance in civilisation. the system excited development of private character and passion that were, all things considered, noble. chivalry was the daughter of feudalism. but from the social point of view feudalism failed to provide either legal order or political security. it contained elaborate obligations between the higher and the lower orders of the feudal hierarchy, duties of protection on the one side and of service on the other. but these obligations could never be established as institutions. there was no superior force to which all had to submit; there was public opinion to make itself respected. hence the feudal system was without political guarantee to sustain it. might alone was right. feudalism was as much opposed to the establishment of general order as to the extension of general liberty. it was indispensable for the reconstruction of european society, but politically it was in itself a radically bad system. _iii.--the church_ meanwhile the church, adhering to its own principles, had steadily advanced along the route that it had marked out for itself in the early days of its organisation. it was during the feudal epoch the only power that made for civilised development. all education was ecclesiastical; all the arts were in the service of the church. it had, during the dark ages, won the barbarians to its fold by the gorgeous solemnity of its ritual; and, to protect itself against secular interference, it had declared the spiritual power to be independent of the temporal--the first great assertion, in the history of european civilisation, of the liberty of thought. in one set of respects the church during the feudal epoch satisfied the conditions of good government; in another, it did not. its power was uniformly distributed, it drew its recruits from all classes, and entrusted the rule to the most capable. it was in close touch with every grade of mankind; every colony of serfs, even, had its priest. it was the most popular and most accessible society of the time, the most open to all talents and all noble ambitions. but, on the other hand, it failed in that all-important requisite of good government, respect for liberty. it denied the rights of individual reason in spiritual matters, and it claimed the right to compel belief--a claim that placed it in some dependence upon the temporal powers, since as a purely spiritual body, governing by influence and not by force, it could not persecute without the aid of the secular arm. to sum up, the church exerted an immense and on the whole a beneficent influence on ideas, sentiments, and conduct; but from the political point of view the church was nearly always the interpreter and defender of the theocratic system and the roman imperial system--that is, of religious and civil despotism. _iv.--the towns_ like the church, the municipalities survived the downfall of the roman empire. their history varied greatly in different parts of europe, but none the less some observations can be made that are broadly accurate with respect to most of them. from the fifth to the tenth century, the state of the towns was a state neither of servitude nor of liberty. they suffered all the woes that are the fate of the weak; they were the prey of continual violence and depredation; yet, in spite of the fearful disorders of the time, they preserved a certain importance. when feudalism was established, the towns lost such independence as they had possessed; they found themselves under the heel of feudal chiefs. but feudalism did bring about a sort of peace, a sort of order; and with the slightest gleam of peace and order a man's hope revives, and on the revival of hope he takes to work. so it was with the towns. new wants were created; commerce and industry arose to satisfy them; wealth and population slowly returned. but industry and commerce were absolutely without security; the townsmen were exposed to merciless extortion and plundering at the hands of their feudal overlords. nothing irritates a man more than to be harassed in his toil, thus deprived of its promised fruits. the only way in which the towns could defend themselves from the violence of their masters was by using violence themselves. so in the eleventh century we find town after town rising in revolt against its despot, and winning from him a charter of liberty. although the insurrection was in a sense general, it was in no way concerted--it was not a rising of the combined citizens against the combined feudal aristocracy. all the towns found themselves exposed to much the same evils, and rescued themselves in much the same manner. but each town acted for itself--did not go to the help of any other town. hence these detached communities had no ambitions, no aspirations to national importance; their outlook was limited to themselves. but at the same time the emancipation of the towns created a new class, a class of citizens engaged in the same pursuits, with the same interests and the same modes of life; a class that would in time unite and assert itself, and prevent the domination of a single order of society that has been the curse of asia. although it may be broadly asserted that the emancipation did not alter the relations of the citizens with the general government, that assertion must be modified in one respect. a link was established between the citizens and the king. sometimes they appealed for his aid against their lord, sometimes the lord invoked him as judge; in one way or another a relation was established between the king and the towns, and the citizens thus came into touch with the centre of the state. _v.--the crusades_ from the fifth to the twelfth century, society, as we have seen, contained kings, a lay aristocracy, a clergy, citizens, peasantry, the germs, in fact, of all that goes to make a nation and a government; yet--no government, no nation. we have come across a multitude of particular forces, of local institutions, but nothing general, nothing public, nothing properly speaking political. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the contrary, all the classes and the particular forces have taken a secondary place, are shadowy and almost effaced; the stage of the world is occupied by two great figures, government and people. here, if i am not mistaken, is the essential distinction between primitive europe and modern europe. here is the change that was accomplished in the period extending from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. viewed by itself, that period seems a characterless one of confusion without cause, of movement without direction, of agitation without result. yet, in relation to the period that followed, this period had a tendency and a progress of its own; it slowly accomplished a vast work. it was the second period of european civilisation--the period of attempt and experiment, succeeding that of origins and formation, and preparing the way for that of development properly so called. the first great event of this period was the crusades--a universal movement of all classes and all countries in moral unity--the truly heroic event of europe. besides the religious impulse that led to the crusades, there was another impulse. they gave to me an opportunity of widening their horizons, of indulging the taste for movement and adventure. the opportunity, thus freely taken, changed the face of society. men's minds were opened, their ideas were extended, by contact with other races; european society was dragged out of the groove along which it had been travelling. religious ideas remained unchanged, but religious beliefs were no longer the only sphere in which the human intellect exercised itself. the moral state of europe was profoundly modified. the social state underwent a similar change. many of the smaller feudal lords sold their fiefs, or impoverished themselves by crusading, or lost much of their power during their absence. property and power came into fewer hands; society was more centralised, no longer dispersed as it formerly was. the citizens, on their part, were no longer content with local industry and trade; they entered upon commerce on a grander scale with countries oversea. petty influence yielded place to larger influences; the small existences grouped themselves round the great. by the end of the crusades, the march of society towards centralisation was in steady progress. _vi.--the age of centralisation_ already, in the twelfth century, a new idea of kingship had begun, very faintly, to make its appearance. in most european countries the king, under the feudal system, had been a head who could not enforce his headship. but there was, all the while, such a thing as kingship, and somebody bore the title of king; and society, striving to escape from feudal violence and to get hold of real order and unity, had recourse to the king in an experimental way, to see, as one might say, what he could do. gradually there developed the idea of the king as the protector of public order and justice and of the common interest as the paramount magistrate--the idea that changed europe society from a series of classes into a group of centralised states. but the old order did not perish without efforts to perpetuate itself. these efforts were of two kinds; a particular class sought predominance, or it was proposed that the classes should agree to act in concert. to the first kind belonged the design of the church to gain mastery over europe that culminated with pope gregory vii. it failed for three reasons--because christianity is a purely moral force and not a temporal administrative force; because the ambitions of the church were opposed by the feudal aristocracy; and because the celibacy of the clergy prevented the formation of a caste capable of theocratic organisation. attempts at democracy were made, for a time with apparent means, by the italian civic republics; but they were a prey to internal disorder, their government tended to become oligarchical, and their incapacity for uniting among themselves made them the victims of foreign invaders. the swiss republican organisation was more successful, but became aristocratic and immobile. the house towns and the towns of flanders and the rhine organised for pure defence; they preserved their privileges, but remained confined within their walls. the effort at concerted action by the classes was manifested in the states general of france, spain, and portugal, the diet in germany, and the parliament in england. all these, except the parliament, were ineffective and as it were accidental in their action; all they did was to preserve in a manner the notion of liberty. the circumstances of england were exceptional. the parliament did not govern; but it became a mode of government adopted in principle, and often indispensable in practice. nothing, however, could arrest the march of centralisation. in france the war of independence against england brought a sense of national unity and purpose, and feudalism was finally overthrown, and the central power made dominant, by the policy of louis xi. similar effects were brought about in spain by the war against the moors and the rule of ferdinand. in england feudalism was destroyed by the wars of the roses, and was succeeded by the tudor despotism. in germany, the house of austria began its long ascendancy. thus in the fifteenth century the new principles prevailed; the old forms, the old liberties were swept aside to make way for centralised government under absolute rulers. at the same time another new fact entered into european history. the kings began to enter into relations with each other, to form alliances; diplomacy was created. since it is in the nature of diplomacy to be conducted more or less secretly by a few persons, and since the peoples did not and would not greatly concern themselves in it, this development was favourable to the strengthening of royalty. _vii.--the spiritual revolt_ although the church until the sixteenth century had successfully suppressed all attempts at spiritual independence, yet the broadening of men's minds that began with the crusades, and received a vigorous impetus from the renaissance, made its mark even in the fifteenth century upon ecclesiastical affairs. three main facts of the moral order are presented during this period: the ineffectual attempts of the councils of constance and bale to reform the church from within; the most notable of which was that of huss in bohemia; and the intellectual revolution that accompanied the renaissance. the way was thus prepared for the event that was inaugurated when luther burnt the pope's bull at wittenberg in 1520. the reformation was not, as its opponents contend, the result of accident or intrigue; nor was it, as its upholders contend, the outcome of a simple desire for the reform of abuses. it was, in reality, a revolt of the human spirit against absolute power in spiritual affairs. the minds of men were during the sixteenth century in energetic movement, consumed by desire for progress; the church had become inert and stationary, yet it maintained all its pretensions and external importance. the church, indeed, was less tyrannical than it had formerly been, and not more corrupt. but it had not advanced; it had lost touch with human thought. the reformation, in all the lands that it reached, in all the lands where it played a great part, whether as conqueror, or as conquered, resulted in general, constant, and immense progress in liberty and activity of thought, and tended towards the emancipation of the human spirit. it accomplished more than it knew; more, perhaps, than it would have desired. it did not attack temporal absolutism; but the collision between temporal absolutism and spiritual freedom was bound to come, and did come. spiritual movement in european history has always been ahead of temporal movement. the church began as a very loose society, without a properly-constituted government. then it placed itself under an aristocratic control of bishops and councils. then it came under the monarchical rule of the popes; and finally a revolution broke out against absolutism in spiritual affairs. the ecclesiastical and civil societies have undergone the same vicissitudes; but the ecclesiastical society has always been the first to be changed. we are now in possession of one of the great facts of modern society, the liberty of the human spirit. at the same time we see political centralisation prevailing nearly everywhere. in the seventeenth century the two principles were for the first time to be opposed. _viii.--the political revolt_ their first shock was in england, for england was a country of exceptional conditions both civil and religious. the reformation there had in part been the work of the kings themselves, and was incomplete; the reformers remained militant, and denounced the bishops as they had formerly denounced the pope. moreover, the aspirations after civil liberty that were stirred up by the emancipation of thought had means of action in the old institution of the country--the charter, the parliament, the laws, the precedents. similar aspirations in continental countries had no such means of action, and led to nothing. two national desires coincided in england at this epoch--the desire for religious revolution and liberty, and the desire for political liberty and the overthrow of despotism. the two sets of reformers joined forces. for the political party, civil freedom was the end; for the religious party, it was only a means; but throughout the conflict the political party took the lead, and the others followed. it was not until 1688 that the reformers finally attained their aim in the abolition of absolute power spiritual and temporal; and the accession of william of orange in that year brought england into the great struggle that was raging on the continent between the principle of despotism and the principle of freedom. england differed from other european countries in that the essential diversity of european civilisation was more pronounced there than anywhere else. elsewhere, one element prevailed over the others until it was overthrown; in england, even if one element was dominant, the others were strong and important. elizabeth had to be far more wary with her nobles and commons than louis xiv. with his. for this reason, europe lagged behind england in civil freedom. but there was another reason--the influence of france. during the seventeenth century, the french government was the strongest in europe, and it was a despotic government. during the eighteenth century, french thought was the most active and potent in europe, and it was unboundedly free thought. louis xiv. did not, as is sometimes supposed, adopt as his principles the propagation of absolutism; his aim was the strength and greatness of france, and to this end he fought and planned--just as william of orange fought and planned, not against despotism, but against france. france presented herself at that age as the most redoubtable, skilful, and imposing power in europe. yet, after the death of louis xiv., the government immediately degenerated. this was inevitable. no system of government can be maintained without institutions, and a despot dislikes institutions. the rule of louis xiv. was great, powerful, and brilliant, but it had no roots. the decrepit remains of it were in the eighteenth century brought face to face with a society in which free examination and free speculation had been carried to lengths never imagined before. freedom of thought once came to grips with absolute power. of the stupendous consequence of that collision it is not for me to speak here; i have reached the end. but let me, before concluding, dwell upon the gravest and most instructive part that is revealed to us by this grand spectacle of civilisation. it is the danger, the insurmountable evil of absolute power in any form--whether in a form of a despot like louis xiv. or in that of the untrammelled human spirit that prevailed at the revolution. each human power has in itself a natural vice, a principle of weakness, to which there has to be assigned a limit. it is only by general liberty of all rights, interests and opinions that each power can be restrained within its legitimate bounds, and intellectual freedom enabled to exist genuinely and to the advantage of the whole community. * * * * * henry hallam view of the state of europe during the middle ages henry hallam, the english historian, was born on july 9, 1777, at windsor, his father being canon of windsor, and dean of bristol. educated at eton and at christ church, oxford, he was called to the english bar, but devoted himself to the study and writing of history. he received an appointment in the civil service, which, with his private means, placed him in comfortable leisure for his wide researches. his son, arthur henry, who died at the age of 22, is the subject of tennyson's "in memoriam." hallam died on january 21, 1859, and was buried at clevedon, somersetshire. the "view of the state of europe during the middle ages," commonly known as hallam's "middle ages," was published by the author in 1818. hallam was already well known among the literary men of the day, but this was his first important work. it is a study of the period from the appearance of clovis, the creator of the dominion of the franks, to the close of the middle ages, the arbitrary dividing line being drawn at the invasion of italy by charles viii. of france. _i.--france_ the frankish dominion was established over the roman province of gaul by clovis at the opening of the sixth century. the merovingian dynasty degenerated rapidly; and the power passed into the hands of the mayors of the palace--an office which became hereditary with pepin heristal and charles martel. with the sanction of the pope the merovingian king was deposed by pepin, the son of charles martel, who was crowned king and overthrew the lombard power in italy. pepin was succeeded by charlemagne, who completed the conquest of the lombards, carried his arms into spain as far as the ebro, and extended his power eastwards over the saxons as far as the elbe. in his person the roman empire was revived, and he was crowned emperor at rome on christmas day a.d. 800. the great empire he had built up fell to pieces under his successors, who adopted the disastrous plan of partition amongst brothers. france fell to the share of one branch of the carlovingians. the northmen were allowed to establish themselves in normandy, and germany was completely separated from france. the carlovingians were displaced by hugh capet. the actual royal domain was small, and the kings of the house of capet exercised little control over their great feudatories until the reign of philip augustus. that crafty monarch drew into his own hands the greater part of the immense territories held by the kings of england as french feudatories. after a brief interval the craft of philip augustus was succeeded by the idealism of st. louis, whose admirable character enabled him to achieve an extraordinary ascendancy over the imagination of his people. in spite of the disastrous failure of his crusading expeditions, the aggrandisement of the crown continued, especially under philip the fair; but the failure of the direct heirs after the successive reigns of his three sons placed philip of valois on the throne according to the "salic" law of succession in 1328. on the pretext of claiming the succession for himself, edward iii. began the great french war which lasted, interrupted by only one regular pacification, for a hundred and twenty years. the brilliant personal qualities of edward and the black prince, the great resources of england, and the quality of the soldiery, account for the english successes. after the peace of bretigny these triumphs were reversed, and the english lost their possessions; but when charles vi. ascended the throne disaster followed. france was rent by the rival factions of burgundy and orleans, the latter taking its more familiar name from the court of armagnac. the troubled reigns of richard ii. and henry iv. prevented england from taking advantage of these dissensions; but henry v. renewed the war, winning the battle of agincourt in his first campaign and securing the treaty of troyes on his second invasion. after his death came that most marvellous revolution wrought by joan of arc, and the expulsion of the english from the country. in france the effect of the war was to strengthen the crown as against the nobility, a process developed by the subtlety of louis xi. out of the long contest in which the diplomatic skill of the king was pitted against the fiery ambitions of charles of burgundy, louis extracted for himself sundry burgundian provinces. the supremacy of the crown was secured when his son charles viii. acquired brittany by marrying the duchess anne. the essential distinction of ranks in france was found in the possession of land. besides the national lands, there were lands reserved to the crown, which, under the name of benefices, were bestowed upon personal followers of the king, held more or less on military tenure; and the king's vassals acquired vassals for themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation. on the other hand freeholders inclined, for the sake of protection, to commend themselves, as the phrase was, to their stronger neighbours and so to assume the relation of vassal to liege lord. the essential principle was a mutual contract of support and fidelity, confirmed by the ceremonies of homage, fealty, and investiture, which conferred upon the lord the right to various reliefs, fines, and rights capable of conversion into money payments. gentility, now hereditary, was derived from the tenure of land; the idea of it was emphasised by the adoption of surnames and armorial bearings. a close aristocracy was created, somewhat modified by the right claimed by the king of creating nobles. prelates and abbots were in the same position as feudal nobles, though the duty of personal service was in many cases commuted for an equivalent. below the gentle class were freemen, and the remainder of the population were serfs or villeins. it was not impossible for villeins to purchase freedom. in france the privileges possessed by the vassals of the crown were scarcely consistent with the sovereignty. such were the rights of coining money, of private war, and of immunity from taxation. such legislation as there was appears to have been effected by the king, supported by a royal council or a more general assembly of the barons. it was only by degrees that the royal ordinances came to be current in the fiefs of the greater vassals. it was philip the fair who introduced the general assembly of the three estates. this assembly very soon claimed the right of granting and refusing money as well as of bringing forward grievances. the kings of france, however, sought to avoid convocation of the states general by obtaining grants from provincial assemblies of the three estates. the old system of jurisdiction by elected officers was superseded by feudal jurisdiction, having three degrees of power, and acting according to recognised local customs, varied by the right to ordeal by combat. the crown began to encroach on these feudal jurisdictions by the establishment of royal courts of appeal; but there also subsisted a supreme court of peers to whom were added the king's household officers. the peers ceased by degrees to attend this court, while the crown multiplied the councillors of inferior rank; and this body became known as the parliament of paris--in effect an assembly of lawyers. the decline of the feudal system was due mainly to the increasing power of the crown on the one hand, and of the lower ranks on the other; more especially from the extension of the privileges of towns. but the feudal principle itself was weakened by the tendency to commute military service for money, enabling the crown to employ paid troops. _ii.--italy and spain_ after the disruption of charlemagne's empire the imperial title was revived from the german, otto the great of saxony. his imperial supremacy was recognised in italy; the german king was the roman emperor. italian unity had gone to pieces, but the german supremacy offended italy. still from the time of conrad of franconia the election of the king of germany was assumed, at least my him, to convey the sovereignty of italy. in the eleventh century norman adventurers made themselves masters of sicily and southern italy. in northern italy on the other hand the emperors favoured the development of free cities, owning only the imperial sovereignty and tending to self-government on republican lines. the appearance on the scene in the twelfth century of the emperor frederick barbarossa introduced a period characterised by a three-fold change: the victorious struggle of the northern cities for independence; the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the papacy in the middle provinces; and the union of the kingdom of naples to the dominions of the imperial house. the first quarrels with milan led to the formation of the lombard league, and a long war in which the battle of legnano gave the confederates a decisive victory. the mutual rivalries of the states, however, prevented them from turning this to good account. barbarossa's grandson, frederick ii., was a child of four when he succeeded to the swabian inheritance, and through his mother to that of sicily. it was now that the powerful pope innocent iii. so greatly extended the temporal power of the papacy, and that the rival parties of guelfs and ghibelins, adherents the one of the papacy, the other of the empire, were established as factions in practically every italian city. when the young frederick grew up he was drawn into a long struggle with the papacy which ended in the overthrow of the imperial authority. from this time the quarrel of guelfs and ghibelins for the most part became mere family feuds resting on no principles. charles of anjou was adopted as papal champion; the republics of the north were in effect controlled by despots for a brief moment. rome revived her republicanism under the leadership of rienzi. in the general chaos the principle interest attaches to the peculiar but highly complicated form of democracy developed in florence, where the old patrician families were virtually disfranchised. wild and disorderly as was the state of florence, the records certainly point to the conditions having been far worse in the cities ruled by the visconti and their like. of genoa's wars with pisa and with venice a detailed account cannot be given. of all the northern cities venice achieved the highest political position; isolated to a great extent from the political problems of the cities of lombardy and tuscany, she developed her wealth and her commerce by the sea. her splendour may, however, be dated from the taking of constantinople by the latins in 1204, when she became effectively queen of the adriatic and mistress of the eastern mediterranean. in effect her government was a close oligarchy; possessed of complete control over elections which in theory were originally popular. the oligarchy reached its highest and narrowest development with the institution of the famous council of ten. naples and sicily came under the dominion of charles of anjou when he was adopted as papal champion. the french supremacy, however, was overthrown when the sicilians rose and carried out the massacre known as the sicilian vespers. they offered the crown to the king of aragon. it was not till 1409, however, that sicily was definitely united to the crown of aragon and a few years later the same king was able to assert successfully a claim to naples. when the roman empire was tottering the visigoths established their dominion in spain. in 712 saracen invaders made themselves masters of the greater part of the peninsula. the christians were driven into the more northern parts and formed a number of small states out of which were developed the kingdoms of navarre, leon and castille, and aragon. frontier towns acquired large liberties while they were practically responsible for defence against the moors. during the thirteenth century great territories were recovered from the moors; but the advance ceased as the moors were reduced to the compact kingdom of granada. in the fourteenth century the struggle for castille between pedro the cruel and his brother established the house of trastamare on the throne. the crowns of castille and aragon were united by the marriage of isabella and ferdinand. the government of the old gothic monarchy was through the crown and a council of prelates and nobles. at a comparatively early date, however, the "cortes" was attended by deputies from the town, though the number of these was afterwards closely limited. the principle of taxation through representatives was recognised; and laws could neither be made nor annulled except in the cortes. this form of constitutionalism was varied by the claim of the nobles to assume forcible control when matters were conducted in a fashion of which they disapproved. the union of castille and aragon led immediately to the conquest of granada completed in 1492; an event which in some respects counterbalanced the conquest of constantinople by the turks. _iii.--the german empire and the papacy_ when the german branch of the carlovingian dynasty became extinct the five german nations--franconia, swabia, bavaria, saxony, and lorraine--resolved to make the german kingship elective. for some generations the crown was bestowed on the saxon ottos. on the extinction of their house in 1024, it was succeeded by a franconian dynasty which came into collision with the papacy under pope gregory vii. on the extinction of this line in 1025 germany became divided between the partisans of the houses of swabia and saxony, the wibelungs and welfs,--the origin of the hibelines and guelfs. the swabian house, the hohenstauffen, gained the ascendancy in the person of frederick barbarossa. the lineal representatives of the saxon guelfs are found to-day in the house of brunswick. the rule of the swabian house is most intimately connected with italian history. in the thirteenth century the principle that the right of election of the emperor lay with seven electors was apparently becoming established. there were the archbishops of mentz, treves, and cologne, the duke of saxony, the count palatine of the rhine, the king of bohemia, and the margrave of brandenburg. in all other respects, however, several other dukes and princes were at least on an equality with the electors. in 1272 the election fell on the capable rudolph of hapsburg; and for some time after this the emperors were chosen from the houses of austria, bavaria, or luxemburg. disintegration was greatly increased by the practice of the partition of territories among brothers in place of primogeniture. a preponderating authority was given to the electors by the golden bull of charles iv. in 1355. the power of the emperor as against the princes was increased, as that of the latter was counterbalanced by the development of free cities. considerable reforms were introduced at the close of our period mainly by maximilian. the depravity of the greek empire would have brought it to utter ruin at a much earlier date but for the degeneration which overtook mohammedanism. incidentally the crusades helped the byzantine power at first to strengthen its hold on some of its threatened possessions; but the so-called fourth crusade replaced the greek empire by a latin one with no elements of permanency. when a greek dynasty was re-established, and the crusading spirit of western europe was already dead, the byzantine princes were left to cope with the turks single handed, and the last of the cæsars died heroically when the ottomans captured constantinople in 1453. throughout the early middle ages the church acquired enormous wealth and church lands were free from taxation. it was not till a comparatively late period that the payment of tithes was enforced by law. not infrequently the church was despoiled by violence, but the balance was more than recovered by fraud. by the time of charlemagne the clergy were almost exempt from civil jurisdiction and held practically an exclusive authority in matters of religion. the state, however, maintained its temporal supremacy. when the strong hand of charlemagne was removed ecclesiastical influence increased. it was under gregory the great that the papacy acquired its great supremacy over the provincial churches. as the power of the church grew after the death of charlemagne, partly from the inclination of weak kings to lean on ecclesiastical support, the papal claims to authority developed and began to be maintained by the penalties of excommunication and interdict. a period of extreme laxity in the tenth century was to be brought to a close in the eleventh partly by the pressure brought to bear on the papacy by the saxon emperors, but still bore by the ambitious resolution of gregory vii. this remarkable man was determined to assert the complete supremacy of the holy see over all secular powers. he refused to recognise the right of secular princes to make ecclesiastical appointments within their own dominions; and he emphasised the distinction between the priesthood, as a cast having divine authority, and the laity, by enforcing with the utmost strictness the ecclesiastical law of celibacy, which completely separates the churchman from the normal interests and ambitions which actuate the layman. in the contest between gregory and the emperor, it seemed for the moment as if the secular power had won the victory; but, in fact, throughout the twelfth century; the claims which gregory had put forward were becoming practically effective partly from the great influence exercised through the crusades. these papal pretensions reached their climax in the great pope innocent iii., who asserted with practical success the right to pronounce absolutely on all disputes between princes or between princes and their subjects, and to depose those who rejected his authority. throughout the thirteenth century rome was once more mistress of the world. the church derived great influence from the institution of mendicant orders, especially those of st. dominic and st. francis which recovered much of the esteem forfeited by the old monastic orders. another instrument of papal influence was the power of granting dispensations both with regard to marriages and as to the keeping of oaths. if the clergy were free for the most part from civil taxation, they were nevertheless severely mulcted by the papacy. the ecclesiastical jurisdiction encroached upon the secular tribunals; the classes of persons with respect to whom it claimed exclusive authority were persistently extended, in spite of the opposition of such princes as henry ii. and edward i. at last, however, the papal aggressor met his match in philip the fair. when boniface viii. died, his successors first submitted to the french monarchy and then became its nominees; while they resided at avignon, virtually under french control. the restoration of the pontificate to rome in 1375 was shortly followed by the great schism. for some years there were two rival popes, each of whom was recognised by one or the other half of western christendom. this was terminated by the council of constance, which incidentally affirmed the supremacy of general councils over the pope. the following council at basle was distinctly anti-papal; but the papacy had the better of the contest. _iv.--england_ the anglo-saxon polity limited the succession of the crown to a particular house but allowed a latitude of choice within that house. the community was divided into thames or gentry, ceorls or freemen, and serfs. the ceorls tended to sink to the position known later as villeinage. the composition of the king's great council called the witenagemot is doubtful. the country was divided into shires, the shire into districts called hundreds, and the hundreds into tithings. there appears to be no adequate authority for the idea that trial by jury was practised; the prevailing characteristic of justice was the system of penalty by fine, and the responsibility of the tithing for the misdeeds of any of its members. there is no direct evidence as to the extent to which feudal tenures were beginning to be established before the norman conquest. the norman conquest involved a vast confiscation of property and the exclusion of the native english from political privileges. the feudal system of land tenure was established; but its political aspect here and in france was quite different. there were no barons with territories comparable to those of the great french feudataries. that the government was extremely tyrannical is certain. the crown derived its revenues from feudal dues, customs duties, tallages--that is, special charges on particular towns,--and the war tax called the danegelt; all except the first being arbitrary taxes. the violence of king john led to the demand of the barons for the great charter, the keystone of english liberty, securing the persons and property of all freemen from arbitrary imprisonment or spoliation. thenceforth no right of general taxation is claimed. the barons held themselves warranted in refusing supplies. the king's court was gradually separated into three branches, king's bench, exchequer, and common pleas. the advance in the study of law had the definite effect of establishing a fixed rule of succession to the crown. one point must still be noticed which distinguishes england from other european countries; that the law recognises no distinction of class among freemen who stand between the peers and villeins. the reign of edward i. forms an epoch. the confirmation of the charters put an end to all arbitrary taxation; and the type of the english parliament was fixed. in the great councils the prelates and greater barons had assembled, and the lesser barons were also summoned; the term baron being equivalent to tenant in chief. a system of representation is definitely formulated in montfort's parliament of 1265. whether the knights were elected by the freemen of the shire or only by the tenants in chief, is not clear. many towns were self governing--independent, that is, of local magnates--under charters from the crown. montfort's parliament is the first to which towns sent representatives. edward established the practice in his model parliament; probably in order to ensure that his demands for money from the towns might in appearance at least receive their formal assent. parliament was not definitely divided into two houses until the reign of edward iii. in this reign the commons succeeded in establishing the illegality of raising money without consent; the necessity that the two houses should concur for any alterations in the law; and the right of the commons to enquire into public abuses and to impeach public counsellors. under the second heading is introduced a distinction between statutes and ordinances; the latter being of a temporary character, and requiring to be confirmed by parliament before they acquire permanent authority. in the next reign the commons assert the right of examining the public expenditure. moreover the parliaments more openly and boldly expressed resentment at the acts of the king's ministers and claimed rights of control. for a time, however, the king secured supremacy by a coup d'état; which in turn brought about his deposition, and the accession of henry iv., despite the absurd weakness of his title to the inheritance of the crown. the rights thus acquired developed until the war of the roses. notably redress of grievances became the condition of supply; and the inclination of the crown to claim a dispensing power is resolutely combated. it is also to be remarked that the king's foreign policy of war or peace is freely submitted to the approval of parliament. this continues during the minority of henry vi.; but the revival of dissatisfaction with the government leads to a renewed activity in the practice of impeachments; and parliament begins to display a marked sensitiveness on the question of its privileges. the commons further definitely express their exclusive right of originating money bills. at this time it is clear that at least all freeholders were entitled to vote in the election of the knights of the shire. the selection of the towns which sent up members, and the franchise under which their members were elected, seems to have been to a considerable extent arbitrary. nor can we be perfectly certain of the principles on which writs were issued for attendance in the upper house. we find that for some time the lower clergy as well as the higher were summoned to attend parliament; but presently, sitting in a separate chamber, they ceased to take part in parliamentary business. we have seen the king's court divided into three courts of justice. the court itself, however, as the king's council, continued to exercise a juridical as well as a deliberative and administrative function. in spite of the charter, it possessed an effective if illegal power of arbitrary imprisonment. so far the essential character of our constitution appears to be a monarchy greatly limited by law but swerving continually into irregular courses which there was no constraint adequate to correct. there is absolutely no warrant for the theory that the king was merely a hereditary executive magistrate, the first officer of the state. the special advantage enjoyed by england lay in the absence of an aristocracy with interests antagonistic to those of the people. it would be truer to say that the liberties of england were bought by money than by the blood of our forefathers. the process by which the villein became a hired labourer is obscure and an attempt was made to check it by the statute of labourers at the time of the black death. this was followed by the peasant's revolt of 1382, which corresponded to the far worse horrors of the french jacquerie. sharply though this was suppressed, the real object of the rising seemed to have been accomplished. of the period of the wars of the roses it is here sufficient to say that it established the principle embodied in a statute of henry vii. that obedience to the _de facto_ government is not to be punished on the ground that government is not also _de jure_. _v.--europe_ in spite of the teutonic incursion, latin remained the basis of language as it survived in italy, france, and spain. but the pursuit of letters was practically confined to the clergy and was by them employed almost exclusively in the interests of clerical authority. to this end a multitude of superstitions were encouraged; superstitions which were the cause of not a few strange and irrational outbursts of fanaticism. the monasteries served indeed a useful purpose as sanctuaries in days of general lawlessness and rapine; but the huge weight of evidence is conclusive as to the general corruption of morals among the clergy as among the laity. the common diversion of the upper classes, lay and clerical, when not engaged in actual war, was hunting. an extended commerce was impossible when robbery was a normal occupation of the great. gradually, however, a more orderly society emerged. maritime commerce developed in two separate areas, the northern and western, and the mediterranean. the first great commerce in the north arises from the manufacture in flanders of the wool exported from england. and in the fourteenth century england herself began to compete in the woollen manufacture. the german free manufacturing towns established the great hanseatic league; but maritime commerce between the northern and southern areas was practically non-existent till the fifteenth century, by which time english ships were carrying on a fairly extensive traffic in the mediterranean. in that area the great seaports of italy, and in a less degree, of catalonia and the french mediterranean seaboard, developed a large commerce. naturally, however, the law which it was sufficiently difficult to enforce by land was even more easily defied on the sea, and piracy was extremely prevalent. governments as well as private persons were under a frequent necessity of borrowing, and for a long time the great money lenders were the jews. they, however, were later to a great extent displaced by the merchants of lombardy, and the fifteenth century witnesses the rise of the great bankers, italian and german. the structure and furniture of all buildings for private purposes made exceedingly little provision for comfort, offering an extreme contrast to the dignity of the public buildings and the sublimity of ecclesiastical architecture. during the last three hundred years of our period it is clear that there was a great diminution of the status of servitude and a great increase in the privileges extended to corporate towns. private warfare was checked and lawless robbery to a considerable extent restrained. it is tolerably clear that the rise of heretical sects were both the cause and the result of moral dissatisfaction, tending to the adoption of higher moral standards. some of these sects were cruelly crushed by merciless persecution, as in the case of the albigenses. the doctrines of wickliffe, however, were never stamped out in england; and the form which they took in bohemia among the followers of the martyred john huss had little about them that was beneficial. the great moral school of the middle ages was the institution of chivalry, which existed to animate and cherish the principle of honour. to this a strong religious flavor was superadded, perhaps by the crusades. to valour and devotion was added the law of service to womanhood, and chivalry may fairly claim to have developed generally the three virtues essential to it, of loyalty, courtesy, and liberality. resting, however, as it did on the personal prowess and skill of the individual in single combat, the whole system of chivalry was destroyed by the introduction on an extensive scale of the use of firearms. we turn lastly to the intellectual improvement which may be referred to four points: the study of civil laws the institution of universities; the application of modern languages to literature, and especially to poetry; and the revival of ancient learning. education may almost be said to have begun with the establishment of the great schools by charlemagne out of which sprang the european universities. for a long time of course all studies were dominated by that of theology, and the scholastic philosophy which pertained to it. barren as these pursuits were, they kept alive an intellectual activity which ultimately found fresh channels. the romance languages developed a new literature first on the tongues of the troubadours and then in italy--the italy which gave birth to dante and petrarch. it was about the fourteenth century that a new enthusiasm was born for the study of classical authors, though greek was still unknown. and the final and decisive impulse was given when the invention of printing made the great multiplication of books possible. * * * * * stanley lane-poole egypt in the middle ages stanley lane-poole, born on december 18, 1845, studied arabic under his great-uncle, lane, the orientalist, and, before going up to oxford for his degree, began his "catalogue of oriental coins in the british museum," which appeared in fourteen volumes between 1875 and 1892, and founded his reputation as the first living authority on arabic numismatics. in 1883, 1896, and 1897 he was at cairo officially employed by the british government upon the mohammedan antiquities, and published his treatise on "the art of the saracens in egypt" in 1886, in which year he visited stockholm, helsingfors, st. petersburg, moscow, and constantinople to examine their oriental collections. he has written histories of the "moors in spain," "turkey," "the barbary corsairs," and "mediæval india," which have run to many editions; and biographies of saladin, babar, aurangzib; of lord stratford de redcliffe, and sir harry parkes. he has also published a miniature koran in the "golden treasury" series, and written "studies in a mosque," besides editing three volumes of lane's "arabic lexicon." for five years he held the post of professor of arabic at trinity college, dublin, of which he is litt.d. mohammedan egypt, his special subject, he has treated in several books on cairo, the latest being "the story of cairo." but his most complete work on this subject is "the history of egypt in the middle ages," here epitomised by the author. _i.--a province of the caliphate_ ever since the arab conquest in 641 egypt has been ruled by mohammedans, and for more than half the time by men of turkish race. though now and again a strong man has gathered all the reins of control into his own hands and been for a time a personal monarch, as a rule the government has been, till recent years, a military bureaucracy. the people, of course, had no voice in the government. the egyptians have never been a self-governing race, and such a dream as constitutional democracy was never heard of until a few years ago. by the arab conquest in the seventh century the people merely changed masters. they were probably not indisposed to welcome the moslems as their deliverers from the tyranny of the orthodox church of the east roman or byzantine empire, invincibly intolerant of the native monophysite heresy; and when the conquest was complete they found themselves, on the whole, better off than before. they paid their taxes to officials with arabic instead of greek titles, but the taxes were lighter and the amount was strictly laid down by law. the land-tax of about a pound per acre was not excessive on so fertile a soil, and the poll-tax on nonconformity, of the same amount, was a moderate price to pay for entire liberty of conscience and freedom in public worship guaranteed by solemn treaty. the other taxes were comparatively insignificant, and the total revenue in the eighth century was about £7,000,000. the surplus went to the caliph, the head of the vast mohammedan empire, which then stretched from seville to samarkand, whose capital was first damascus and afterwards baghdad. for over 200 years (till 868) egypt was a mere province of this huge caliphate, and was governed, like other provinces, with a sole view to revenue. "milk till the udder be dry and let blood to the last drop" was a caliph's instructions to a governor of egypt. as these governors were constantly changed--there were sixty-seven in 118 years under the abbasid caliphs of baghdad--and as a governor's main object was to "make hay while the sun shines," the process of milking the egyptian cow was often accelerated by illegal extortion, and the governor's harvest was reaped before it was due. illegality was, however, checked to some extent by the generally wise and just influence of the chief justice, or kadi, whose probity often formed the best feature of the arab government in egypt. nor did the caliphs extort taxes without giving something in return. the development of irrigation works was always a main consideration with the early mohammedan rules, from spain to india, and in egypt, where irrigation is the country's very life, it was specially cared for, with a corresponding increase in the yield. moreover, the governors usually held to the agreement that the christians should have liberty of conscience, and protected them from the moslem soldiery. as time went on, this toleration abated, partly because the moslems had gradually become the predominant population. at the beginning the caliphs had taken anxious precautions against the colonising of egypt; they held it by an army, but they were insistent that the army should not take root, but be always free to join the caliph's standard. but it was inevitable that the arabs should settle in so fertile and pleasant a land. each governor brought a small army as his escort, and these arab troops naturally intermarried with egyptian women, who were constitutionally inclined to such alliances. a few arab tribes also settled in egypt. this gradual and undesigned arabising of the country would lead to oppression of the christians, to the "squeezing" of wealthy natives, and occasionally to the institution of humiliating distinctions of dress and other vexations, and even to the spoiling of coptic churches. then sometimes the copts, as the egyptian christians are called, would rebel. their last and greatest rebellion, which occurred in the delta in 830-832, was ruthlessly trampled out by turkish troops under mamun, the only abbasid caliph who made a visit to egypt. many copts now apostatised, and from this time dates the predominance of the moslem population and the settling of arabs in the villages and on the land, instead of as heretofore only in the two or three large towns. the coming of the turkish troops with the caliph mamun was an ominous event for the country. up to 846 all the successive governors had been arabs, and many of them were related to the caliphs themselves. with some unfortunate exceptions, they seem to have been men of simple habits--the arabs were never luxurious--and usually of strict mohammedan principles. they made money, honestly if possible, during their brief tenure; but they did not harass the people much by their personal interference, and left the local officials to manage matters in their own way, as had always been the custom. they lived at the new capital, fustat, which grew up on the site of the conqueror's camp, and very near the modern cairo; for alexandria, the symbol of roman domination, was dismantled in 645 after the emperor manuel's attempt at reconquest. if they did not do much active good, they did little harm, and egypt pursued her immemorial ways. the last arab governor, anbasa, was a man of fine character, and his term of office was distinguished by the building of the fort of damietta, as a protection against roman raids, and by a defeat of the tributary sudanis near dongola. _ii.--turkish governors_ the arabs have neither the ferocity nor the luxuriousness, nor, it should be added, the courage and the genius for administration of the turkish race. in the arrival of turkish troops in 830 we see a symptom of what was going on all over the eastern caliphate. turks were taking the place of arabs in the army and the provincial governments, just as the persians were filling up the civil appointments. the caliph's turkish bodyguard was the beginning of the dismemberment of the caliphate. it became the habit of the caliphs to grant the government of egypt, as a sort of fief, to a leading turkish officer, who usually appointed a deputy to do his work and to pay him the surplus revenue. such a deputy was ahmad-ibn-tulun (868-884), the first of the many turkish despots of egypt. ibn-tulun was the first ruler to raise egypt from a mere tax-paying appendage of the caliphate to a kingdom, independent save for the recognition of the caliph on the coinage, and he was the first to found a moslem dynasty there. a man of fair mohammedan education, iron will, and ubiquitous personal attention to affairs, he added syria to his dominions, defeated the east romans with vast slaughter near tarsus (883), kept an army of 30,000 turkish slaves and a fleet of a hundred fighting ships. he beautified his capital by building a sumptuous palace and his well-known mosque, which still stands in his new royal suburb of katai; he encouraged the small farmers and reduced the taxation, yet he left five millions in the treasury when he died in 884. his son maintained his power, and more than his luxury and artistic extravagance; but there were no elements of stability in the dynasty, which depended solely upon the character of the ruler. the next generation saw egypt once more (905) a mere province of the caliphate, but with this difference, that its governors were now turks, generally under the control of their own soldiery, and much less dependent upon the ever-weakening power of the caliph of baghdad. one of them, the ikhshid, in 935 emulated ibn-tulun and united part of syria to egypt; but the sons he left were almost children, and the power fell into the hands of the regent kafur, a black eunuch from the sudan, bought for £25, who combined a luxurious and cultivated court with some military successes and real administrative capacity. _iii.--the fatimid caliphs_ the mohammedan world is roughly divided into sunnis and shia. the shia are the idealists, the mystics of islam; the sunnis are the formalists, the schoolmen. the shia trace an apostolic succession from ali, the husband of the prophet mohammed's daughter fatima, hold doctrines of immanence and illumination, adopt an allegorical interpretation of scripture, and believe in the coming of a mahdi or messiah. the sunnis adhere to the elective historical caliphate descended from mohammed's uncle, maintain the eternal uncreated sufficiency of the koran, literally interpreted, and believe in no messiah save mohammed. the shia, whatever their racial origin, form the persian, the aryan, adaptation of islam, which is an essentially semitic creed. in the tenth century they had established a caliph among the berbers at kayrawan (908). they had thence invaded egypt with temporary success in 914 and 919. when the death of kafur in 968 left the country a prey to rival military factions, the fourth of the caliphs of kayrawan--called the fatimid caliphs, because they claimed a very doubtful descent from fatima--sent his army into egypt. the people, who had too long been the sport of turkish mercenaries, received the invaders as deliverers, just as the copts had welcomed the arabs three centuries before. gauhar, the fatimid general, entered fustat (or misr, as it was usually called, a name still applied both to egypt and to its capital) amid acclamations in 969, and immediately laid the foundations of the fortified palace which he named, astrologically, after the planet mars (kahir), el-kahira, "the martial," or "the victorious," which gradually expanded to the city of cairo. he also founded the great historic university mosque of the azhar, which, begun by the heretical shia, became the bulwark of rigid scholasticism and the theological centre of orthodox islam. the theological change was abrupt. it was as though presbyterian scotland had suddenly been put under the rule of the jesuits. but, like the society of jesus, the shia were pre-eminently intellectual and recognised the necessity of adapting their teaching to the capacities of their hearers, and the conditions of the time. they did not force extreme shia doctrine upon the egyptians. their esoteric system, with its graduated stages of initiation, permitted a large latitude, and they were content to add their distinctive formulas to the ordinary mohammedan ritual, and to set them conspicuously on their coinage, without entering upon a propaganda. the bulk of the egyptian moslems apparently preserved their orthodoxy and suffered an heretical caliphate for two centuries with traditional composure. the christian copts found the new _régime_ a marked improvement. mysticism finds kindred elements in many faiths, and the fatimid caliphs soon struck up relations with the local heads of the christian religion. the second egyptian caliph, aziz (975-996), was greatly influenced by a christian wife, who encouraged his natural clemency. bishop severus attended his court, and coptic churches were rebuilt. throughout the fatimid period we constantly find christians and jews, and especially armenians, advanced to the highest offices of state. this was partly due, of course, to their special qualifications as scribes and accountants, for arabs and turks were no hands at "sums." the land had rest under this wise and tolerant caliph. if he set a dangerous example in his luxury and love of display, he unquestionably maintained law, enforced equity, punished corruption, and valiantly defended his kingdom. he fitted out a fleet of 600 sail at maks (then the port of cairo, on the nile), which kept the emperor basil at a distance and assured the caliph's ascendancy from end to end of the mediterranean sea. after these two great rulers the fatimid caliphate subsisted for nearly two centuries by no virtue or energy of its own. the caliphs lived secluded, like veiled prophets, in their huge palace at cairo, given over to sensual delights (saladin found 12,000 women in the great palace when he entered it in 1171), and wholly regardless of their kingdom, which they left to the care of vezirs, who were chiefly bent on making their own fortunes, though there were many able, and a few honest men amongst them. the real power rested with the army, and the only check upon the tyranny and debauchery of the army lay in its own jealous divisions. the fanatical berber regiments imported from tunis, the bloody blacks recruited in the sudan, and the mutinous turkish troops long established in the country, were always at daggers drawn, and their rivalry was the vezirs' opportunity. in such anarchy the country fell from bad to worse. the reign of hakim, the frantic son of aziz and his christian wife, was a personal despotism of the most eccentric kind, marked by apparently unreasonable regulations, such as keeping the shops open by night instead of by day, and confining all women to the house for seven years, as well as by intermittent persecution of christians and jews; and also by enlightened acts, such as the founding of the hall of science and the building of mosques, for all the fatimides were friends to the arts; and ending in the proclamation of hakim as the incarnation of the divine reason, in which capacity he is still adored by the druses of the lebanon. this assumption led to popular tumults and an orgy of carnage, in the midst of which hakim mysteriously disappeared (1021). his successors, zahir (1021-1036), and mustansir (1036-1096) did nothing to retrieve the anarchic situation, of which the soldiers were the unruly masters. palace cliques, disastrous famines (one of which lasted seven years, 1066-1072, and even led to the public selling of human joints as butcher's meat), slave, or rather freedmen's, revolts, military tumults, and the occasional temporary ascendancy of a talented vezir, sum up the history of egypt during most of the eleventh century. the wisdom and firmness of two great armenian vezirs, bedr-el-gemali (1073-1094) and his son afdal (1094-1121), brought a large degree of order, but the last years of the fatimid caliphate were blotted by savage murders both of caliphs and vezirs, and by the loss of their syrian dominions to seljuks and crusaders. _iv.--the house of saladin_ it was a question whether egypt would fall to the christian king of jerusalem or the moslem king of damascus; but, after several invasions by both, nur-ed-din settled the problem by sending his syrian army to cairo in 1169, when the crusaders withdrew without offering battle, and the fatimid caliphate came to an end in 1171. on the syrian general's death, two months after the conquest, his nephew, salah-ed-din ibn-ayyub (saladin), succeeded to the vezirate, and after nur-ed-din's death, in 1174, he made himself independent sultan, not only of egypt but of syria and mesopotamia. saladin was a kurd from the tigris districts; but his training and his following were purely turkish, moulded on the seljuk model, and recruited largely from the seljuk lands. his fame was won outside egypt, and only eight of the twenty-four years of his reign were spent in cairo; the rest was passed in waging wars in syria, mesopotamia, and palestine, culminating in the catastrophic defeat of the crusaders near tiberias in 1187, and the conquest of jerusalem and all of the holy land. the famous crusade of richard i., though it resulted only in recovering a strip of coast from acre to jaffa, and did not rescue jerusalem, wore out saladin's strength, and in 1193 the chivalrous and magnanimous "soldan" died. in egypt his chief work, after repressing revolts of black troops and shia conspiracies, and repelling successive naval attacks on damietta and alexandria by the eastern emperor and the kings of jerusalem and sicily, was the building of the citadel of cairo after the model of norman fortresses in syria, and the encouragement of sunni orthodoxy by the founding and endowment of medresas, or theological colleges. the people, who had never been really converted to the fatimid creed, accepted the latest reformation with their habitual nonchalance. this was really the greatest achievement of saladin and his house. cairo succeeded to baghdad and cordova as the true metropolis of islam, and egypt has remained true to the most narrow school of orthodoxy ever since. saladin's kinsmen, known as the ayyubid dynasty, ruled egypt for over half a century after the death of their great leader. first his politic brother, adil seyf-ed-din ("saphadin") carried on his fine tradition for a quarter of a century, and then from 1218 to 1238 seyf-ed-din's able son kamil, who had long been the ruler of egypt during his father's frequent absences, followed in his steps. the futile efforts of the discredited crusaders disturbed their peace. john of brienne's seizure of damietta was a serious menace, and it took all kamil's energy to defeat the "franks" at mansura (1219) and drive them out of the country. on the other hand, he cultivated very friendly relations with the emperor frederic ii., who concluded a singular defensive alliance with him in 1229, to the indignation of the pope. he was tolerant to christians, and listened to the preaching of st. francis of assisi; he granted trading concessions to the venetians and pisans, who established a consulate at alexandria. at the same time he notably encouraged moslem learning, built colleges, and developed the resources of the kingdom in every way. what had happened to the dynasties of tulun, ikhshid, and the fatimides, was repeated on the death of kamil. two sons kept the throne successively till 1249, and then, in the midst of louis ix's crusade, the salvation of egypt devolved on the famous mamluks, or white slaves, who had formed the _corps d'élite_ of saladin's army. _v.--the mamluks_ political women have played a great rôle in egypt from hatshepsut and cleopatra to the christian wife of aziz, the princess royal who engineered the downfall of hakim, and the black mother who dominated mustansir; and it was a woman who was the first queen of the mamluks. sheger-ed-durr ("tree of pearls"), widow of salih, the last reigning ayyubid of egypt, was the brain of the army which broke the chivalry of france. at the second battle of mansura in 1249, she took louis prisoner. then she married a leading mamluk emir, to conciliate moslem prejudice against a woman's rule, and thenceforth for more than two centuries and a half one mamluk after another seized the throne, held it as long as he could, and sometimes transmitted it to his son. when it is noted that forty-eight sultans (twenty-five bahri mamluks, or "white slaves of the river," so called from the barracks on an island in the nile, and twenty-three burgis, named after the burg, or citadel, where their quarters originally were), succeeded one another from 1250 to 1517, it will be seen that their average reign was but three and a half years. the throne, in fact, belonged to the man with the longest sword. the bravest and richest generals and court officials surrounded themselves with bands of warrior slaves, and reached a power almost equal to the reigning sultan, who was, in fact, only _primus inter pares_, and on his death--usually by assassination--they fought for his title. all were alike slaves by origin, but this term implied no degradation. any slave with courage and address had the chance of becoming a freedman, rising to influence, and climbing into his master's seat. every man was every other man's equal--if he could prove it; but the process of proving it often turned cairo into a shambles. the mamluks were physically superb, a race of born soldiers, dashing horsemen, skilled leaders, brilliant alike in battle and in all manly sports. they were at the same time the most luxurious of men, heavy drinkers, debauched sensualists, magnificent in their profusion, in their splendid prodigality in works of art and luxury, and in the munificence with which they filled their capital with noble monuments of the most exquisite saracenic architecture. most of the beautiful mosques of cairo were built by these truculent soldiers, all foreigners, chiefly turks, a caste apart, with no thought for the native egyptians whose lands they received as fiefs from the sultan; with no mercy when ambition called for secret assassination or wholesale massacre; yet fastidious in dress, equipment, and manners, given to superb pageants, laborious in business, and fond of music and poetry. their orthodoxy is attested not only by their innumerable religious foundations and endowments, but by their importing into cairo a line of abbasid caliphs--_fainéants_ indeed, but in a manner representative of the great caliphs of baghdad, extinguished by the mongols in 1258--and in maintaining them till the ottoman sultan usurped their very nominal authority as commanders of the faithful. the greatest of all the mamluks was beybars (1260-1277). he it was who had charged st. louis's knights at mansura in 1249, and afterwards helped to rout the mongol hordes at the critical battle of goliath's spring in 1260; and he was the real founder of the mamluk empire, and organised and consolidated his wide dominions so skilfully and firmly that all the follies and jealousies and crimes of his successors could not destroy the fabric. he made his army perfect in discipline, built a navy, made canals, roads, and bridges, annexed nubia, organised a regular postal service, built fortifications, mosques, colleges, halls of justice, and managed everything, from the fourth cataract of the nile and the holy cities of arabia to the pyramus and the euphrates, by his immense capacity for work and amazing rapidity of movements. egypt prospered exceedingly under his just, firm, and capable rule; he was severe to immorality and strictly prohibited wine, beer, and hashish. he entered into diplomatic relations with european powers to the great advantage of his country's trade; and his bravery, munificence, and justice have made him a popular hero in arabic romances down to the present day. none of his successors approached his high example khalil indeed recovered acre and all that remained of the crusader's possessions in palestine, and the mamluks, who never lost their soldierly qualities whoever happened to be their nominal ruler, handsomely defeated the mongols again in 1299 and 1303, and for ever saved egypt from the unspeakable curse of a mongol conquest nasir, whose reign covers most of the first half of the fourteenth century, was a great builder, and so were many of the nobles of his court. it was the golden age of saracenic architecture, and cairo is still full of the monuments of nasir's emirs. he encouraged agriculture, stockbreeding, farming, falconry, as well as literature and art, everything, in short, except vice, wine, and christians. the burgi, or circassian mamluks (1382-1517), were little more than chief among the emirs. widespread corruption, the open sale of high offices and of "justice," and general debauchery characterised their rule. yet they built many of the loveliest mosques in cairo, and the conquest of cyprus, long a nest of mediterranean piracy, by bars bey in 1426 may be added to their credit. kait bey (1468-1496) was a great builder, and in every way a wise, brave, and energetic, public-spirited sovereign, and was an exception to the general baseness. egypt was rich in his day. the european trade had swelled enormously, and the duties brought in a prodigious revenue. the italian republics had their consulates or their marts in alexandria, and marseilles, narbonne, and catalonia sent their representatives. the indian trade was also very considerable; we read of £36,000 paid at one time in customs dues at gidda, then an egyptian port on the red sea. the mamluk sultan took toll on every bale of goods that passed between europe and india in the palmy days that preceded vasco de gama's discovery of the cape route in 1497. it was an immense monopoly, extortionately used, and it was not resigned without a struggle. the mamluk fleet engaged the portuguese off chaul in the bay of bengal in 1508 and defeated them; but almeida avenged the honour of his country by a victory over the mamluk admiral hoseyn off diu in the following year, and the prolific transit trade of egypt was to a great extent lost. this final effort was made by the last great sultan of the circassian dynasty, kansuh ghuri (1501-1516), who also exerted himself manfully in defending his country from the impending disaster of ottoman invasion. but the othmanli turks, greatly heartened by the conquest of constantinople in 1453, had been steadily encroaching in asia, and, after defeating the shah of persia, their advance upon syria and egypt was only a matter of time. the victory was made easier by jealousies and treachery among the mamluks. kansuh fell at the head of his gallant troops in a battle near aleppo in august 1516; a last desperate stand of the mamluks under the mukattam hill at cairo in january 1517, was overcome, and sultan selim made egypt a province of the turkish empire. such it remains, formally, to this day. * * * * * raphael holinshed chronicles of england, scotland, and ireland raphael holinshed, who was born about 1520, is one of the most celebrated of english chroniclers. the "chronicles of england, scotland, and ireland," known by his name, cover a long period of english history, beginning with a "description" of britain from the earliest times, and carried on until the reign of elizabeth, in the course of which, between 1580 and 1584, holinshed died. the work did good service to shakespeare, who drew from it much of the material for his historical plays. the first edition, published in 1577, was succeeded in 1587 by another, in which the "chronicles" were continued by john hooker and others. an edition appeared in 1807, in the foreword to which the "chronicles" are described as containing "the most curious and authentic account of the manners and customs of our island in the reign of henry viii. and elizabeth "; and being the work of a contemporary observer this is not too much to claim for it. owing to the great scope of this work, it is impossible to convey an impression of the whole, which is best represented by means of selected examples of the chronicler's method. being the work of so many different authors, the literary quality of the "chronicles" naturally varies; but the learning and research they show make them an invaluable aid to the study of the manners and customs of early england. _i.--master holinshed to his good lord and master, sir william brooke, knight_ being earnestlie required, right honorable, of divers my freends, to set down some breefe discourse of some of those things which i had observed in the reading of manifold antiquities, i was at first verie loth to yeeld to their desires. but, they pressing their irksome sute, i condescended to it, and went in hand with the work, with hopes of good, although no gaie success. in the process of this booke, if your honor regard the substance of that which is here declared, i must needs confess that it is none of mine owne; but if your lordship have consideration of the barbarous composition shewed herein, that i may boldlie claim and challenge for mine owne. certes, i protest before god and your honor, that i never made any choise of stile, or words, neither regarded to handle this treatise in such precise order and method as manie other would have done, thinking it sufficient, truelie and plainelie to set forth such things as i minded to intreat of, rather than with vain affectation of eloquence to paint out a rotten sepulchre, a thing neither commendable in a writer, nor profitable to the reader. but howsoever it be done, i have had an especial eye unto the truth of things, and for the rest, i hope that this foule frizeled treatise of mine will prove a spur to others better learned to handle the self-same argument, if in my life-time i doo not peruse it again. _ii.--some account of the historie of britaine_ as few or no nations can justlie boast themselves to have continued sithence their countrie was first replenished, without anie mixture, more or lesse, of forreine inhabitant mixture, more or lesse, of forreine inhabitants; no more can this our iland, whose manifold commodities have oft allured sundrie princes and famous capteines of the world to conquer and subdue the same unto their owne subjection. manie sorts of people therefore have come in hither and settled themselves here in this ile, and first of all other, a parcell of the lineage and posteritie of japhet, brought in by samothes, in the 1910 after the creation of adam. howbeit in process of time, and after they had indifferentlie replenished and furnished this iland with people, albion, the giant, repaired hither with a companie of his owne race proceeding from cham, and not onelie annexed the same to his owne dominion, but brought all such as he found here of the line of japhet, into miserable servitude and most extreame thraldome. after him also, and within lesse than six hundred and two yeares, came brute, the son of sylvius, with a great train of the posteritie of the dispersed trojans in 324 ships; who rendering the like courtesie unto chemminits as they had done before unto the seed of japhet, brought them also wholie under his rule and governance, and dispossessing them he divided the countrie among such princes and capteines as he had led out of grecia with him. then after some further space of time the roman emperours subdued the land to their dominion; and after the coming of the romans, it is hard to say with how manie sorts of people we were dailie pestered. for their armies did commonlie consist of manie sorts of people, and were (as i may call them) a confused mixture of all other countries and nations then living in the world. howbeit i thinke it best, because they did all beare the title of romans, to retaine onelie that name for them all, albeit they were wofull guests to this our iland: sith that with them came all kinds of vice, all riot and excess of behaviour into our countrie, which their legions brought with them from each corner of their dominions. then did follow the saxons, and the danes, and at last the normans, of whom it is worthilie doubted whether they were more hard and cruell to our countrymen than the danes, or more heavie and intollerable to our iland than the saxons or the romans. for they were so cruellie bent to our utter subversion and overthrow, that in the beginning it was lesse reproach to be accounted a slave than an englishman, or a drudge in anie filthie businesse than a britaine: insomuch that everie french page was superiour to the greatest peere; and the losse of an englishman's life but a pastime to such of them as contended in their braverie who should give the greatest strokes or wounds unto their bodies when their toiling and drudgerie could not please them or satisfie their greedie humours. yet such was our lot in those daies by the divine appointed order, that we must needs obey such as the lord did set pyer us, and this all because we refused grace offered in time, and would not heare when god by his preachers did call us so favourablie unto him. by all this then we perceive, how from time to time this hand hath not onelie been a prey, but as it were a common receptacle for strangers, the naturall homelings or britons being still cut shorter and shorter, till in the end they came not onelie to be driven into a corner of this region, but in time also verie like utterlie to have been extinguished. thus we see how england hath been manie times subject to the reproach of conquest. and whereas the scots seeme to challenge manie famous victories also over us, it shall suffice for answer, that they deale in this as in the most part of their historie, which is to seeke great honour by lying, and great renown by prating and craking. indeed they have done great mischief in this hand, and with extreime crueltie; but as for anie conquest the first is yet to heare of. but beside those conquests aforementioned, huntingdon, the old historiographer, speaketh of another, likelie (as he saith) to come one daie out of the north, which is a wind that bloweth no man to good, sith nothing is to be had in those parts, but hunger and much cold. _iii.--of king richard, the first, and his journie to the holie land_ richard the first of that name, and second sonne of henrie the second, began his reign over england the sixt day of julie, in the yere of our lord 1189. he received the crowne with all due and accustomed sollemnitie, at the hands of baldwin, the archbishop of canterburie, the third daie of september. upon this daie of king richard's coronation, the jewes that dwelt in london and in other parts of the realme, being there assembled, had but sorie hap, as it chanced. for they meaning to honour the same coronation with their presence, and to present to the king some honourable gift, whereby they might declare themselves glad for his advancement, and procure his freendship towards them, for the confirming of their privileges and liberties; he of a zealous mind to christes religion, abhorring their nation (and doubting some sorcerie by them to be practised) commanded that they should not come within the church when he should receive the crowne, nor within the palace whilest he was at dinner. but at dinner-time, among other that pressed in at the palace gate, diverse of the jews were about to thrust in, till one of them was striken by a christian, who alledging the king's commandment, kept them backe from comming within the palace. which some of the unrulie people, perceiving, and supposing it had been done by the king's commandement, tooke lightlie occasion thereof, and falling upon the jewes with staves, bats, and stones, beat them and chased them home to their houses and lodgings. then did they set fire on the houses, and the jewes within were either smoldred and burned to death within, or else at their comming forth most cruellie received upon the points of speares, billes, and swords of their adversaries that watched for them verie diligentlie. this great riot well deserved sere and grievous punishment, but yet it passed over without correction, because of the hatred generallie conceived against the obstinate frowardnesse of the jewes. finallie, after the tumult was ceased, the king commanded that no man should hurt or harm any of the jewes, and so they were restored to peace after they had susteined infinit damage. no great while after this his coronation, the king sought to prepare himself to journey to the holie land, and to this end he had great need of money. therefore he made such sale of things appertaining to him, as well in right of the crowne, as otherwise, that it seemed to divers that he made his reckoning never to return agan, in so much that some of his councillors told him plainelie, that he did not well in making things awaie so freelie; unto whom he answered "that in time of need it was no evill policie for a man to help himself with his owne." and further, "that if london at that time of need would be bought, he would surelie sell it, if he might meet with a convenient merchant that were able to give him monie enough for it." then all things being readie, king richard set forth, and, after great hindrance by tempests, and at the hands of the men of cyprus, who warred against him and were overcome, he came to the citie of acres, which then was besieged by the christian armie. such was the valiancie of king richard shown in manfull constraining of the citie, that his praise was greatly bruted both amongst the christians and also the saracens. at last, on the twelfth date of julie, in the yeare of grace 1192, the citie of acres was surrendered into the christian men's hands. these things being concluded, the french king philip, upon envie and malice conceived against king richard (although he pretended sickness for excuse) departed homewards. now touching this departure, divers occasions are remembered by writers of the emulation and secret spite which he should bear towards king richard. but, howsoever, it came to passe, partlie through envie (as hath beene thought) conceived at the great deeds of king richard, whose mightie power and valiantnesse he could not well abide, and partlie for other respects him moving, he took the sea with three gallies of the genevois, and returned into italie, and so home into france, having promised first unto king richard in the holie land, and after to pope celestine at rome, that he would not attempt any hurtfull enterprise against the english dominions, till king richard should be returned out of the holie land. but this promise was not kept, for he sought to procure earle john, king richard's brother, to rebell against him, though he then sought it in vaine. yet were matters nowise peacefull within the realme of england, and because of this, and likewise because the froward humours of the french so greatlie hindered him in warring against the saracens, king richard determined fullie to depart homewards, and at last there was a peace concluded with saladin. but on his journie homewards the king had but sorie hap, for he made shipwracke on the coast of istria, and then fell into captivitie; and this was the manner that it came to passe. _iv.--of king richard's captivitie_ king richard, doubting to fall into the hands of those who might bear him ill-will, made the best shift he could to passe through quietlie, yet were many of his servants made captive, and he himself came with but three men to vienna. there causing his servants to provide meat for him more sumptuous and fine than was thought requisite for so meane a person as he counterfeited then, he was straightway remarked, and some gave knowledge to the duke of austrich named leopold, who loved him not for some matter that had passed in the holie land. moreover, his page, going about the towne to change gold, and buy vittels, bewraied him, having by chance the king's gloves under his girdle: whereupon, being examined, for fear of tortures he confessed the truth. the duke sent men to apprehend him, but he, being warie that he was descried, got him to his weapon; but they alledging the duke's commandement, he boldly answered, "that sith he must be taken, he being a king, would yeeld himselfe to none of the companie but to the duke alone." the duke hearing of this, speedilie came unto him, whom he meeting, delivered up his sword, and committed him unto his custodie. then was he brought before the princes and lords of the empire, in whose presence the emperour charged him with diverse unlawfull doings. king richard notwithstanding the vaine and frivolous objections laid to his charge, made his answers always so pithilie and directlie to all that could be laid against him, and excused himself e in everie point so thoroughlie, that the emperour much marvelled at his high wisdom and prudence, and not onelie greatlie commended him for the same, but from thenceforth used him more courteously. yet did king richard perceive that no excuses would serve, but that he must paie to his covetous host some great summe of monie for his hard entertainment. therefore he sent the bishop of salisburie into england to provide for the paiment of his ransome. finallie the king, after he had beene prisoner one yeare, six weekes, and three daies, was set at libertie on candle-mass day, and then with long and hastie journies, not keeping the high waies, he hasted forth towards england. it is reported that if he had lingered by the way, he had beene eftsoones apprehended. for the emperour being incensed against him by ambassadors that came from the french king, immediatlie after he was set forward, began to repent himselfe in that he had suffered him so soon to depart from him, and hereupon sent men after him with all speed to bring him backe if they could by any means overtake him, meaning as then to have kept him in perpetual prison. but these his knavish tricks being in the good providence of god defeated, king richard at length in good safetie landed at sandwich, and the morrow after came to canterburie, where he was received with procession. from thence he came unto london, where he was received with great joy and gladnesse of the people, giving heartie thanks to almightie god for his safe return and deliverance. the same yeare that king richard was taken by the duke of austrich, one night in the month of januarie about the first watch of the night, the northwest side of the element appeared of such a ruddie colour as though it had burned, without any clouds or other darknesse to cover it, so that the stars showed through that redness and might be verie well discerned. diverse bright strakes appeared to flash upwards now and then, dividing the rednesse, through the which the stars seemed to be of a bright sanguine colour. in februarie next insuing, one night after midnight the like wonder was seene and shortlie after newes came that the king was taken in almaigne. and the same daie and selfe houre that the king arrived at sandwich, whitest the sunne shone verie bright and cleare, there appeared a most brightsome and unaccustomed clearnesse, not farre distant from the sunne, as it were to the length and breadth of a man's personage, having a red shining brightnesse withall, like to the rainbow, which strange sight when manie beheld, there were that prognosticated the king alreadie to be arrived. _v.--of good queen elisabeth, and how she came into her kingdom_ after all the stormie, tempestuous, and blustering windie weather of queene marie was overblowne, the darksome clouds of discomfort dispersed, the palpable fogs and mists of most intollerable miserie consumed, and the dashing showers of persecution overpast, it pleased god to send england a calm and quiet season, a cleare and lovelie sunshine, and a world of blessings by good queene elisabeth, into whose gracious reign we are now to make an happie entrance as followeth. on her entering the citie of london, she was received of the people with prayers, wishes, welcomings, cries, and tender words, all which argued a wonderfull earnest love of most obedient subjects towards their sovereign. and on the other side, her grace, by holding up her hands, and merrie countenance to such as stood farre off, and most tender and gentle language to those that stood nigh unto her grace, did declare herselfe no lesse thankfullie to receive her people's good will, than they lovinglie offered it to her. and it was not onelie to those her subjects who were of noble birth that she showed herself thus verie gracious, but also to the poorest sort. how manie nose gaies did her grace receive at poore women's hands? how oftentimes staid she her chariot, when she saw anie simple bodie offer to speake to her grace? a branch of rosemarie given her grace with a supplication about fleetbridge, was seene in her chariot till her grace came to westminster, not without the marvellous wondering of such as knew the presenter, and noted the queene's most gracious receiving and keeping the same. therefore may the poore and needie looke for great hope at her grace's hand, who hath shown so loving a carefulnesse for them. moreover, because princes be set in their seat by god's appointing, and they must therefore first and chieflie tender the glorie of him from whom their glorie issueth; it is to be noted in her grace that for so much as god hath so wonderfullie placed her in the seat of government of this realme, she in all her doings doth show herselfe most mindful of his goodness and mercie shewed unto her. and one notable signe thereof her grace gave at the verie time of her passage through london, for in the tower, before she entered her chariot, she lifted up her eies to heaven and saith as followeth: "o lord almightie and everlasting god, i give thee most heartie thanks that thou hast beene so mercifull unto me as to spare me to behold this joy full daie. and i acknowledge that thou hast dealt as wonderfullie and as mercifullie with me as thou diddest with thy true and faithfull servant daniell thy prophet, whom thou deliveredst out of the den from the crueltie of the greedie and raging lions; even so was i overwhelmed, and onlie by thee delivered. to thee, therefore, onlie be thankes, honor, and praise, for ever. amen." on sundaie, the five and twentieth daie of januarie, her majestie was with great solemnitie crowned at westminster, in the abbey church there, by doctor oglethorpe bishop of carlisle. she dined in westminster hall, which was richlie hung, and everything ordered in such royall manner, as to such a regall and most solemn feast appertained. in the meane time, whilst her grace sat at dinner, sir edward dimmocke, knight, her champion by office, came riding into the hall in faire complete armour, mounted upon a beautifull courser, richlie trapped in cloth of gold, and in the midst of the hall cast downe his gauntlet, with offer to fight in her quarell with anie man that should denie her to be the righteous and lawfull queene of this realme. the queene, taking a cup of gold full of wine, dranke to him thereof, and sent it to him for his fee. finallie, this feast being celebrated with all due and fitting royall ceremonies, tooke end with great joy and contentation to all the beholders. yet, though there was thus an end of the ceremonies befitting the queene's coronation, her majesty was everywhere received with brave shows, and with pageants, all for the love and respect that her subjects bare her. thus on whitsundaie, in the first year of her reign, the citizens of london set forth a muster before the queene's majestie at greenwich in the parke there, of the number of 1,400 men, whereof 800 were pikes, armed in fine corselets, 400 shot in shirts of mail, and 200 halberdiers armed in almaine rivets; these were furnished forth by the crafts and companies of the citie. to everie hundred two wifflers were assigned, richlie appointed and apparelled for the purpose. there were also twelve wardens of the best companies mounted on horsebacke in coates of blacke velvet, to conduct them, with drums and fifes, and sixe ensigne all in lerkins of white sattin of bridges, cut and lined with black sarsenet, and caps, hosen, and scarfs according. the sergeant-majors, captaine constable, and captaine sanders, brought them in order before the queene's presence, placing them in battell arraie, even as they should have fought; so the shew was verie faire, the emperour's and the french king's ammbassadors being present. verilie the queene hath ever shown herself forward and most willing that her faithfull subjects should be readie and skilfull in war as in peace. thus in the fourteenth yeare of her reign, by order of her council, the citizens of london, assembling in their several halles, the masters chose out the most likelie and active persons of their companies to be pikemen and shot. to these were appointed diverse valiant captaines, who to train them up in warlike feats, mustered them thrice everie weeke, sometimes in the artillerie yard, teaching the gunners to handle their pieces, sometimes at the miles end, and in saint george's field, teaching them to skirmish. in the arts of peace likewise, she is greatlie pleased with them who are good craftsmen, and shews them favour. in government we have peace and securitie, and do not greatlie fear those who may stir up wicked rebellion within our land, or may come against us from beyond the sea. in brief, they of norwich did say well, when the queene's majestie came thither, and in a pageant in her honour, one spake these words: "dost them not see the joie of all this flocke? vouchsafe to view their passing gladsome cheere, be still (good queene) their refuge and their rocke, as they are thine to serve in love and feare; so fraud, nor force, nor forreine foe may stand against the strength of thy most puissant hand." * * * * * edward a. freeman the norman conquest of england edward augustus freeman was born at harborne, staffordshire, england, aug. 2, 1823. his precocity as a child was remarkable; at seven he read english and roman history, and at eleven he had acquired a knowledge of greek and latin, and had taught himself the rudiments of hebrew. an increase in fortune in 1848 enabled him to settle down and devote himself to historical research, and from that time until his death on march 17, 1892, his life was one spell of literary strenuousness. his first published work, other than a share in two volumes of verse, was "a history of architecture," which appeared in 1849. freeman's reputation as historian rests principally on his monumental "history of the norman conquest." it was published in fifteen volumes between 1867 and 1876, and, in common with all his works, is distinguished by critical ability, exhaustiveness of research, and an extraordinary degree of insight. his historical scenes are remarkably clear and vivid, as though, according to one critic "he had actually lived in the times." _preliminary events_ the norman conquest is important, not as the beginning of english history, but as its chief turning point. its whole importance is that which belongs to a turning point. this conquest is an event which stands by itself in the history of europe. it took place at a transitional period in the world's development. a kingdom which had hitherto been only teutonic, was brought within the sphere of the laws, manners, and speech of the romance nations. at the very moment when pope and cæsar held each other in the death grasp, a church which had hitherto maintained a sort of insular and barbaric independence was brought into a far more intimate connection with the roman see. the conquest of england by william wrought less immediate change than when the first english conquerors slew, expelled, or enslaved the whole nation of the vanquished britons or than when africa was subdued by genseric. but it wrought a greater immediate change than the conquest of sicily by charles of anjou. it brought with it not only a new dynasty, but a new nobility. it did not expel or transplant the english nation or any part of it; but it gradually deprived the leading men and families of england of their land and offices, and thrust them down into a secondary position under the alien intruders. it must not be forgotten that the old english constitution survived the norman conquest. what the constitution had been under the saxon eadgar, that it remained under william. the laws, with a few changes in detail, and also the language of the public documents, remained the same. the powers vested in king william and his witan remained constitutionally the same as those which had been vested in king eadgar and his witan a hundred years before. immense changes ensued in social condition and administration, and in the relation of the kingdom to foreign lands. there was also a vast increase of royal power, and new relations were introduced between the king and every class of his subjects; but formal constitutional changes there were none. i cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the whole history, that the norman conquest was not the wiping out of the constitution, the laws, the language, the national life of englishmen. the english kingship gradually changed from the old teutonic to the later mediæval type; but the change began before the norman conquest. it was hastened by that event; it was not completed till long after it, and the gradual transition, was brought to perfection by henry ii. certain events indicate the remoter causes of the norman conquest. the accession of eadward at once brings us among the events that led immediately to that conquest, or rather we may look on the accession of this saxon king as the first stage of the conquest itself. swend and cnut, the danes, had shown that it was possible for a foreign power to overcome england by force of arms. the misgovernment of the sons of cnut hindered the formation of a lasting danish dynasty in england. the throne of cerdic was again filled by a son of woden; but there can be no doubt that the shock given to the country by the danish conquest, especially the way in which the ancient nobility was cut off in the long struggle with swend and cnut, directly opened the way for the coming of the norman. eadward did his best, wittingly or unwillingly, to make his path still easier. this he did by accustoming englishmen to the sight of strangers--not national kinsmen like cnut's danes, but frenchmen, men of utterly alien speech and manners--enjoying every available place of honour or profit in the country. the great national reaction under godwine and harold made england once more england for a few years. but this change, happy as it was, could not altogether do away with the effects of the french predilections of eadward. with eadward, then, the norman conquest really begins. the men of the generation before the conquest, the men whose eyes were not to behold the event itself, but who were to do all that they could do to advance or retard it, are now in the full maturity of life, in the full possession of power. eadward is on the throne of england; godwine, leofric, and siward divide among them the administration of the realm. the next generation, the warriors of stamfordbridge and senlac, of york and ely, are fast growing into maturity. harold hadrada is already pursuing his wild career of night-errantry in distant lands, and is astonishing the world by his exploits in russia and sicily, at constantinople and at jerusalem. the younger warriors of the conquest, eadwine and morcere and waltheof and hereward, were probably born, but they must still have been in their cradles or in their mothers' arms. but, among the leaders of church and state, ealdred, who lived to place the crown on the head both of harold and of william, is already a great prelate, abbot of the great house of tewkesbury, soon to succeed lyfing in the chair of worcester. tostig must have been on the verge of manhood; swegen and harold were already men, bold and vigorous, ready to march at their father's bidding, and before long to affect the destiny of their country for evil and for good. beyond the sea, william, still a boy in years but a man in conduct and counsel, is holding his own among the storms of a troubled minority, and learning those arts of the statesman and the warrior which fitted him to become the wisest ruler of normandy, the last and greatest conqueror of england. the actors in the great drama are ready for their parts; the ground is gradually preparing for the scene of their performance. the great struggle of nations and tongues and principles in which each of them had his share, the struggle in which william of normandy and harold of england stand forth as worthy rivals of the noblest of prizes, will form the subject of the next, the chief and central portion of my history. the struggle between normans and englishmen began with the accession of eadward in 1042, although the actual subjugation of england by force of arms was still twenty-four years distant. the thought of another danish king was now hateful. "all folk chose eadward to king." as the son of æthelred and emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonised alfred, he had long been-familiar to english imaginations. eadward, and eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of english royalty, the representative of english nationality. in his behalf the popular voice spoke out at once, and unmistakably. his popular election took place in june, immediately on the death of harthacnut, and even before his burial. eadward, then, was king, and he reigned as every english king before him had reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which formed the essence of all ancient teutonic kingship. he was crowned at winchester, april 3, 1043. but by virtue of his peculiar character, his natural place was not on the throne of england, but at the head of a norman abbey, for all his best qualities were those of a monk. like him father, he was constantly under the dominion of favourites. it was to the evil choice of his favourites during the early part of his reign that most of the misfortunes of his time were owing, and that a still more direct path was opened for the ambition of his norman kinsman. in the latter part of his reign, either by happy accident or returning good sense, led him to a better choice. without a guide he could not reign, but the good fortune of his later years gave him the wisest and noblest of all guides. we have now reached the first appearance of the illustrious man round whom the main interest of this history will henceforth centre. the second son of godwine lived to be the last of our kings, the hero and martyr of our native freedom. the few recorded actions of harold, earl of the east angles, could hardly have enabled me to look forward to the glorious career of harold, earl of the west saxons, king of the english. tall in stature, beautiful in countenance, of a bodily strength whose memory still lives in the rude pictorial art of his time, he was foremost alike in the active courage and in the passive endurance of the warrior. it is plain that in him, no less than in his more successful, and, therefore, more famous, rival, we have to admire not only the mere animal courage, but that true skill of the leader of armies which would have placed both harold and william high among the captains of any age. great as harold was in war, his character as a civil ruler is still more remarkable, still more worthy of admiration. the most prominent feature in his character is his singular gentleness and mercy. never, either in warfare or in civil strife, do we find harold bearing hardly upon an enemy. from the time of his advancement to the practical government of the kingdom there is not a single harsh or cruel action with which he can be charged. such was the man who, seemingly in the fourth year of eadward, in the twenty-fourth of his own age, was invested with the rule of one of the great divisions of england, who, seven years later, became the virtual ruler of the kingdom; who, at last, twenty-one years from his first elevation, received, alone among english kings, the crown of england as the free gift of her people, and, alone among english kings, died axe in hand on her soil in the defence of england against foreign invaders. william of normandy bears a name which must for ever stand forth among the foremost of mankind. no man that ever trod this earth was endowed with greater natural gifts; to no man was it ever granted to accomplish greater things. no man ever did his work more effectually at the moment; no man ever left his work behind him as more truly an abiding possession for all time. in his character one feature stands out pre-eminently above all others. throughout his career we admire in him the embodiment in the highest degree that human nature will allow of the fixed purpose and the unbending will. we are too apt to look upon william as simply the conqueror of england. but so to do is to look at him only in his most splendid, but at the same time his least honourable, aspect. william learned to become the conqueror of england only by first becoming the conqueror of normandy and the conqueror of france. he found means to conquer normandy by the help of france, and to conquer france by the help of normandy. he came to his duchy under every disadvantage. at once bastard and minor, with competitors for his coronet arising at every moment, he was throughout the whole of his early life beset by troubles, none of which were of his own making, and he came honourably out of all. in 1052, william paid his memorable visit to england. at that time both normandy and england were at rest, enjoying peace. visits of mere friendship and courtesy among sovereign princes were rare in those days. such visits as those which william and eustace of boulogne paid at this time to this country were altogether novelties, and unlikely to be acceptable to the english mind. we may be sure that every patriotic englishman looked with an evil eye on any french-speaking prince who made his way to the english court. william came with a great following; he tarried awhile in his cousin's company; he went away loaded with gifts and honours. and he can hardly doubt that he went away encouraged by some kind of promise of succeeding to the kingdom which he now visited as a stranger. direct heirs were lacking to the royal house, and william was eadward's kinsman. the moment was in every way favourable for suggesting to william on the one hand, to eadward on the other, the idea of an arrangement by which william should succeed to the english crown on eadward's death. the norman writers are full of eadward's promise to william, and also of some kind of oath that harold swore to him. had either the promise or the oath been a pure norman invention, william could never have paraded both in the way that he did in the eyes of europe. i admit, then, some promise of eadward, some oath of harold. but when the time came for eadward the confessor to make his final recommendation of a successor, he certainly changed his purpose; for his last will, so far as such an expression can be used, was undoubtedly in favour of harold. there is not the slightest sign of any intention on the part of eadward during his later years to nominate william to the witan as future king. the two streams of english and norman history were joined together in the year when the two sovereigns met for the only time in their reigns. those streams again diverged. england shook off the norman influence to all outward appearance, and became once more the england of æthelstan and eadgar. but the effects of eadgar's norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped away. normans still remained in the land, and circumstances constituted secondary causes of the expedition of william. it was in the year 1051 that the influence of strangers reached its height. during the first nine years of eadward's reign we find no signs of any open warfare between the national and the normanising parties. the course of events shows that godwine's power was being practically undermined, but the great earl was still jutwardly in the enjoyment of royal favour, and his fast possessions were still being added to by royal grants. but soon england began to feel how great is the evil when a king and those immediately around him are estranged from the mass of his people in feeling. to the french favourites who gradually crowded the court of eadward the name, the speech, and the laws of england were things on which their ignorant pride looked with utter contempt. count eustace of boulogne, now brother-in-law of the king of the english, presently came, like the rest of the world, to the english court. the king was spending the autumn at gloucester. thither came count eustace, and, after his satisfactory interview with the king, he turned his face homewards. when a few miles from dover he felt himself, in a region specially devoted to godwine, to be still more thoroughly in an enemy's country than in other parts of england, and he and all his company took the precaution of putting on their coats of mail. the proud frenchmen expected to find free quarters at dover, and they attempted to lodge themselves at their pleasure in the houses of the burghers. one englishman resisted, and was struck dead on the spot. the count's party then rode through the town, cutting and slaying at pleasure. in a skirmish which quickly ensued twenty englishmen and nineteen frenchmen were slain. count eustace and the remnant of the party hastened back to gloucester, and told the story after their own fashion. on the mere accusation of a stranger, the english king condemned his own subjects without a hearing. he sent for godwine, as earl of the district in which lay the offending town, and commanded him to inflict chastisement on dover. the english champion was then in the midst of a domestic rejoicing. he had, like the king, been strengthening himself by a foreign alliance, and had just connected his house with that of a foreign prince. tostig, the third son of godwine, had just married judith, the daughter of baldwin of flanders. godwine, however, bidden without the least legal proof of offence, to visit with all the horrors of fire and sword, was not long in choosing his course. official duty and public policy, no less than abstract justice and humanity, dictated a distinct refusal. now or never a stand was to be made against strangers, and the earl demanded a legal trial for the burghers of dover. but there were influences about eadward which cut off all hope of a peaceful settlement of the matter. eustace probably still lingered about the king, and there was another voice ever at the royal ear, ever ready to poison the royal mind against the people of england and their leader. it was the voice of a foreign monk, archbishop robert. godwine and three other earls summoned their followers and demanded the surrender of eustace, but the frightened king sent for the northern earls siward, leofric, and ralph, bidding them bring a force strong enough to keep godwine in check. thus the northern and southern sections were arrayed against each other. there were, however, on the king's side, men who were not willing to see the country involved in civil war. leofric, the good earl of mercia, stood forth as the champion of compromise and peace, and it was agreed that hostilities should be avoided and that the witenagemot should assemble at michaelmas in london. of this truce king eadward and his foreign advisers took advantage to collect an army, at the head of which they appeared in london. godwine and his son harold were summoned to the gemot, but refused to appear without a security for a safe conduct. the hostages and safe-conduct were refused. the refusal was announced by bishop stigand to the earl as he sat at his evening meal. the bishop wept; the earl sprang to his feet, overthrew the table, leaped on his horse, and, with his sons, rode for his life all that night. in the morning the king held his witenagemot, and by a vote of the king and his whole army, godwine and his sons were declared outlaws, but five days were allowed them to get out of the land. godwine, swegen, tostig, and gyrth, together with gytha and judith, the newly-married wife of tostig, set sail for bruges in a ship laden with as much treasure as it would hold. they reached the court of flanders in safety, were honourably received by the count, and passed the whole winter with him. two of godwine's sons, however, sought another refuge. harold and his younger brother leofwine determined on resistance, and resolved to seek shelter among the danish settlers in ireland, where they were cordially received by king diarmid. for the moment the overthrow of the patriotic leaders in england was complete, and the dominion of the foreigners over the feeble mind of the king was complete. it was while godwine dwelt as an exile at bruges, and harold was planning schemes of vengeance in the friendly court of dublin, that william the bastard, afterwards known as william the conqueror, paid his memorable visit to england, that visit which has already been referred to as a stage, and a most important one, among the immediate causes of the norman conquest. stirring events followed in quick succession. general regret was felt among all patriotic englishmen at the absence of godwine. the common voice of england soon began to call for the return of the banished earl, who was looked to by all men as the father of his country. england now knew that in his fall a fatal blow had been dealt to her own welfare and freedom. and godwine, after sending many petitions to the king, vainly petitioning for a reconciliation, determined to return by force, satisfied that the great majority of englishmen would be less likely to resist him than to join his banners. harold sailed from ireland to meet his father by way of the english channel. godwine sailed up the thames, and london declared for him. panic reigned among the favourites of king eadward. the foreigners took to flight, among the fugitives being archbishop robert and bishop ulf. the gemot met and decreed the restoration of the earl and the outlawry of many normans. the king yielded, and accorded to godwine the kiss of peace, and a revolution was accomplished of which england may well be proud. but a tragedy soon followed, in the death of the most renowned englishman of that generation. during a meal at the easter festival godwine fell from his seat, and died after lying insensible for three days. great was the grief of the nation. harold, in the years that followed, became so increasingly popular that he was virtually chief ruler of england, even before the death of eadward, which happened on january 5, 1066. his burial was followed by the coronation of harold. but the moment of struggle was now come. the english throne had become vacant, and the norman duke knew how to represent himself as its lawful heir, and to brand the king of the nation's choice as an usurper. the days of debate were past, and the sword alone could decide between england and her enemy. william found one englishman willing to help him in all his schemes, in the person of tostig, harold's brother, who had been outlawed at the demand of the nation, owing to his unfitness to rule his province as earl of northumberland. he had sunk from bad to worse. harold had done all he could for his fallen brother, but to restore him was impossible. tostig was at the norman court, urging william to the invasion of england. at his own risk, he was allowed to make an incursion on the english coast. entering the humber, he burned several towns and slew many men. but after these ravages tostig repaired to ask help of harold hardrada, whom he induced to prepare a great expedition. harold hardrada and tostig landed and marched towards york. a battle was fought between the mercians and norwegians at fulford, in which the former were worsted, but harold was marching northward. in the fearful battle of stamford bridge both harold hardrada and tostig were slain, and the viking host was shattered. the victorious english king was banqueting in celebration of the great victory, when a messenger appeared who had come at fleetest pace from the distant coast of sussex. one blow had been warded off, but another still more terrible had fallen. three days after the fight at stamford bridge, william, duke of the normans, once the peaceful guest of edward, had again, but in quite another guise, made good his landing on the shores of england. it was in august 1066 that the norman fleet had set sail on its great enterprise. for several weeks a south wind had been waited for at the mouth of the river dive, prayers and sacred rites of every kind being employed to move heaven to send the propitious breeze. on september 28 the landing was effected at pevensey, the ancient anderida. there were neither, ships nor men to resist the landing. the first armed man who set foot on english ground was duke william himself, whose foot slipped, so that he fell with both hands on the ground. a loud cry of grief was raised at the evil omen. but the ready wit of william failed him not. "by the splendour of god," he cried, "i have taken seizin of my kingdom; the earth of england is in my hands." the whole army landed in order, but only one day was spent at pevensey. on the next day the army marched on eastward and came to hastings, which was fixed on as the centre of the operations of the whole campaign. it was a hard lot for the english king to be compelled to hasten southward to dislodge the new enemy, after scarcely a moment's rest from the toils and glories of stamford bridge. but the heart of harold failed him not, and the heart of england beat in unison with the heart of her king. as soon as the news came, king harold held a council of the leaders of stamford bridge, or perhaps an armed gemot. he told them of the landing of the enemy; he set before them the horrors which would come upon the land if the invader succeeded in his enterprise. a loud shout of assent rose from the whole assembly. every man pledged his faith rather to die in arms than to acknowledge any king but harold. the king thanked his loyal followers, and at once ordered an immediate march to the south, an immediate muster of the forces of his kingdom. london was the trysting-place. he himself pressed on at once with his immediate following. and throughout the land awoke a spirit in every english heart which has never died out to this day. the men from various shires flocked eagerly to the standard of their glorious king. harold seems to have reached london on october 5, about ten days after the fight at stamford bridge, and a week after the norman landing at pevensey. though his royal home was now at westminster, he went, in order to seek divine help and succour, to pray at waltham, the home of his earlier days, devoting one day to a pilgrimage to the holy cross which gave england her war-cry. harold and william were now both eager for the battle. the king set out from london on october 12. his consummate generalship is nowhere more plainly shown than in this memorable campaign. he formed his own plan, and he carried it out. he determined to give battle, but only on his own ground, and after his own fashion. the nature of the post shows that his real plan was to occupy a position where the normans would have to attack him at a great disadvantage. william constrained harold to fight, but harold, in his turn, constrained william to fight on ground of harold's own choosing. the latter halted at a point distant about seven miles from the headquarters of the invaders, and pitched his camp upon the ever-memorable heights of senlac. it was his policy not to attack. he occupied and fortified a post of great natural strength, which he speedily made into what is distinctly spoken of as a castle. the hill of senlac, now occupied by the abbey and town of battle, commemorates in its later name the great event of which it was the scene. the morning of the decisive day, saturday, october 14, at last had come. the duke of the normans heard mass, and received the communion in both kinds, and drew forth his troops for their march against the english post. then in full armour, and seated on his noble spanish war-horse, william led his host forth in three divisions. the normans from the hill of telham first caught sight of the english encamped on the opposite height of senlac. first in each of the three norman divisions marched the archers, slingers, and cross-bow men, then the more heavily-armed infantry, lastly the horsemen. the reason of this arrangement is clear. the light-armed were to do what they could with their missiles to annoy the english; the heavy infantry were to strive to break down the palisades of the english camp, and so to make ready the way for the charge of the horse. like the normans, the english had risen early. the king, after exhorting his troops to stand firm, rode to the royal post; he there dismounted, took his place on foot, and prayed to god for help. the battle began at nine in the morning--one of the sacred hours of the church. the trumpet sounded, and a flight of arrows from all three norman divisions--right, centre, and left,--was the prelude to the onslaught of the heavy-armed foot. the real struggle now began. the french infantry had to toil up the hill, and to break down the palisade, while a shower of stones and javelins disordered their approach, and while club, sword and axe greeted all who came within the reach of hand-strokes. both sides fought with unyielding valour. the war-cries rose on either side. the normans shouted "god help us!" the english called on the "holy cross." the norman infantry had soon done its best, but that best had been in vain. the choicest chivalry of europe now pressed on to the attack. the knights of normandy and of all lands from which men had flocked to william's standard, now pressed on, striving to make what impression they could with the whole strength of themselves and their horses on the impenetrable fortress of timber, shields, and living warriors. but all was in vain. the english had thus far stood their ground well and wisely, and the tactics of harold had so far completely answered. not only had every attack failed, but the great mass of the french army altogether lost heart. the bretons and the other auxiliaries on the left were the first to give way. horse and foot alike, they turned and fled. the whole of william's left wing was thrown into utter confusion. the strong heart of william, however, failed him not, and by his single prowess and presence of mind he recalled the fleeing troops. order was soon restored, and the norman host pressed on to a second and more terrible attack. the duke himself, his relics round his neck, sought out harold. a few moments more, and the two might have come face to face, but gyrth, the noble brother of the english king, hurled a spear at william. the missile narrowly missed the duke, but slew the spanish steed, the first of three that died under him that day. but william could not fight on foot as well as on horseback. he rose to his feet, pressed straight to seek the man who had so nearly slain him, and the earl fell, crushed beneath the blow of william's mace. nor did he fall alone, for his brother, earl leofwine, was smitten to the earth by an unknown assailant. the second attack, however, failed, for the english lines were as unyielding as ever. direct attack was unavailing. in the norman character fox and lion were equally blended, as william now showed. he ventured on the daring stratagem of ordering a pretended flight, and the unwary english rushed down the slope, pursuing the fugitive with shouts of delight. the error was fatal to england. the tide was turned; the duke's object was now gained; and the main end of harold's skilful tactics was frustrated. the english were no longer entrenched, and the battle fell into a series of single combats. as twilight was coming on an arrow, falling like a bolt from heaven, pierced harold's right eye, and he sank in agony at the foot of the standard. round that standard the fight still raged, till the highest nobility, the most valiant soldiery of england were slaughtered to a man. had harold lived, had another like him been ready to take his place, we may well doubt whether, even after senlac, england would have been conquered at all. as it was, from this moment her complete conquest was only a matter of time. from that day forward the normans began to work the will of god upon the folk of england, till there were left in england no chiefs of the land of english blood, till all were brought down to bondage and sorrow, till it was a shame to be called an englishman, and the men of england were no more a people. * * * * * james anthony froude history of england james anthony froude was born at darlington, england, april 23, 1818, and died on oct. 20, 1894. he was educated at westminster, and oriel college, oxford. taking holy orders, he was, for a time, deeply influenced by newman and the tractarian movement, but soon underwent the radical revolution of thought revealed by his first treatise, the "nemesis of faith," which appeared in 1849, and created a sensation. its tendency to skepticism cost him his fellowship, but its profound pathos, its accent of tenderness, and its fervour excited wide admiration. permanent fame was secured by the appearance, in 1856, of the first two instalments of his magnificent work, "the history of england, from the fall of wolsey to the defeat of the armada," the last volume appearing in 1870. this treatise on the middle tudor period is one of the most fascinating historical treatises in the whole range of literature. it is written in a vivid and graphic prose, and with rare command of the art of picturesque description. froude never accepted the doctrine that history should be treated as a science; rather he claimed that the historian should concern himself with the dramatic aspect of the period about which he writes. the student may disagree with many of froude's points of view and portraitures, yet his men and women breathe with the life he endows them, and their motives are actuated by the forces he sets in motion. of his voluminous works perhaps the most notable, with the exception of the "history," are his "history of ireland in the eighteenth century," 1871-74, and his "short studies on great subjects," the latter aptly exhibiting froude's gifts of masterful prose and glittering paradox. _i.--the condition of england_ in periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending, and the habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the influence of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back into a time in which for centuries the european world grew upon a single type, in which the forms of the father's thoughts were the forms of the son's, and the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the footprints of his ancestors. so absolutely has change become the law of our present condition, that to cease to change is to lose place in the great race. looking back over history, we see times of change and progress alternating with other times when life and thought have settled into permanent forms. such was the condition of the greeks through many ages before the persian wars, and such, again, became the condition of europe when the northern nations grafted religion and the laws of the western empire on their own hardy natures. a condition of things differing alike both inwardly and outwardly from that into which a happier fortune has introduced ourselves, is necessarily obscure to us. in the alteration of our own characters we have lost the key which would interpret the characters of our fathers. but some broad conclusions as to what they were are, however, at least possible to us. a rough census taken at the time of the armada shows that it was something under five millions. the feudal system, though practically modified, was still the organising principle of the nation, and the owner of land was bound to military service at home whenever occasion required. all land was held upon a strictly military principle. the state of the working classes can best be determined by a comparison of their wages with the price of food. both were as far as possible regulated by act of parliament. wheat in the fourteenth century averaged 10d. the bushel; beef and pork were 1/2d. a pound; mutton was 3/4d. the best pig or goose could be bought for 4d.; a good capon for 3d.; a chicken for 1d.; a hen for 2d. strong-beer, which now costs 1s. 6d. a gallon, was then a 1d. a gallon, and table beer was less than 1/2d. a penny at the time of which we write must have been nearly equal in the reign of henry viii. to the present shilling. for a penny the labourer could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine as the labourer of to-day can for a shilling. turning then to the question of wages, by the 3d of the 6th of henry viii., it was enacted that the master, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tilers, plumbers, glaziers, joiners, and others, employers of skilled workmen should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat and drink was allowed, sixpence a day for the half year, fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence-half penny for the yearly average. the common labourers were to receive fourpence a day for the half year; for the remaining half, threepence. the day labourer received what was equivalent to something near twenty shillings a week, the wages at present paid in english colonies; and this is far from being a full account of his advantages. the agricultural labourer held land in connection with his house, while in most parishes there were large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land, which furnished fuel to him gratis, where pigs might range, and ducks and geese, and where, if he could afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable to feed it; and so important was this privilege considered, that when the commons began to be largely enclosed, parliament insisted that the working man should not be without some piece of ground on which he could employ his own and his family's industry. by the 7th of the 31st of elizabeth it was ordered that no cottage should be built for residence without four acres of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the occupants of such cottage. the incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined for they varied probably as much as they do now. under henry iv. the average income of an earl was estimated at £2,000 a year. under henry viii. the great duke of buckingham, the wealthiest english peer, had £6,000. and the income of the archbishop of canterbury was rated at the same amount. but the establishments of such men were enormous. their retinues in time of peace consisted of several hundred persons, and in time of war a large share of the expenses was paid often out of private purses. passing down to the body of the people, we find that £20 a year and heavy duties to do for it, represented the condition of the squire of the parish. by the 2nd of henry v. "the wages" of a parish priest were limited to £5 6s. 8d., except in cases where there was a special license from the bishop, when they might be raised as high as £6. both squire and priest had sufficient for comfort. neither was able to establish any steep difference between himself and the commons among whom he lived, so far as concerned outward advantages. the habits of all classes were free, open, and liberal. in frank style the people lived in "merry england," displaying the "glory of hospitality," england's pre-eminent boast, by the rules according to which all tables were open to all comers without reserve. to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging. the people hated three things with all their hearts--idleness, want, and cowardice. a change, however, was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. chivalry was dying; the abbey and castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, and convictions of the old world were passing away never to return. a new continent had arisen beyond the western sea. the floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. in the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for themselves mankind were to remain no longer. _ii.--the fall of wolsey's policy_ times were changed in england since the second henry walked barefoot through the streets of canterbury, and knelt while the monks flogged him on the pavement in the chapter house, doing penance for becket's murder. the clergy had won the battle in the twelfth century because they deserved it. they were not free from fault and weakness, but they felt the meaning of their profession. their hearts were in their vows, their authority was exercised more justly, more nobly, than the authority of the crown; and therefore, with inevitable justice, the crown was compelled to stoop before them. the victory was great, but, like many victories, it was fatal to the conquerors. it filled them with the vanity of power; they forgot their duties in their privileges, and when, a century later, the conflict recommenced, the altering issue proved the altering nature of the conditions under which it was fought. the nation was ready for sweeping remedies. the people felt little loyalty to the pope. the clergy pursued their course to its end. they sank steadily into that condition which is inevitable from the constitution of human nature, among men without faith, wealthy, powerful, and luxuriously fed, yet condemned to celibacy and cut off from the common duties and common pleasures of ordinary life. many priests spent their time in hawking or hunting, in lounging at taverns, in the dissolute enjoyment of the world. if, however, there were no longer saints among the clergy, there could still arise among them a remarkable man. in cardinal wolsey the king found an adviser who was essentially a transition minister, holding a middle place between an english statesman and a catholic of the old order. under wolsey's influence, henry made war with louis of france in the pope's quarrel, entered the polemic lists with luther, and persecuted the english protestants. yet wolsey could not blind himself to the true condition of the church, before which lay the alternative of ruin or amendment. therefore he familiarised henry with sense that a reformation was inevitable. dreaming that it could be effected from within, by the church itself inspired with a wiser spirit, he himself fell the first victim of a convulsion which he had assisted to create, and which he attempted too late to stay. wolsey talked of reformation, but delayed its coming. the monasteries grew worse and worse. favoured parish clergy held as many as eight benefices. bishops accumulated sees, and, unable to attend to all, attended to none. wolsey himself, the church reformer (so little did he really know what a reformation means), was at once archbishop of york, bishop of winchester and of durham, and abbot of st. albans. under such circumstances, we need not be surprised to find the clergy sunk low in the respect of the english people. fish's famous pamphlet shows the spirit that was seething. he spoke of what he had seen and knew. the monks, he tells the king, "be they that have made a hundred thousand idle dissolute women in your realm." but wolsey could interfere with neither bishops nor monks without a special dispensation from the pope. a new trouble arose from the nation in the desire of henry to divorce catherine of aragon, who had been his deceased brother's wife, was six years older than himself, and was an obstacle to the establishment of the kingdom. her sons were dead, and she was beyond the period when more children could be expected. though descent in the female line was not formally denied, no queen regent had ever, in fact, sat upon the throne; nor was the claim distinctly admitted, or the claim of the house of york would have been unquestionable. it was, therefore, with no little anxiety that the council of henry viii. perceived his male children, on whom their hopes were centred, either born dead, or dying one after another within a few days of their birth. the line of the princess mary was precarious, for her health was weak from her childhood. if she lived, her accession would be a temptation to insurrection; if she did not live, and the king had no other children, a civil war was inevitable. the next heir in blood was james of scotland, and gravely as statesmen desired the union of the two countries, in the existing mood of the people, the very stones in london streets, it was said, would rise up against a king of scotland who entered england as sovereign. so far were henry and catherine alike that both had imperious tempers, and both were indomitably obstinate; but henry was hot and impetuous, catherine cold and self-contained. she had been the wife of prince arthur, eldest son of henry vii., but the death of that prince occurred only five months after the marriage. the uncertainty of the laws of marriage, and the innumerable refinements of the roman canon law, affected the legitimacy of the children and raised scruples of conscience in the mind of the king. the loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial sentence on a violation of the divine law. the divorce presented itself to him as a moral obligation, when national advantage combined with superstition to encourage what he secretly desired. wolsey, after thirty years' experience of public life, was as sanguine as a boy. armed with this little lever of divorce, he saw himself in imagination the rebuilder of the catholic faith and the deliverer of europe from ecclesiastical revolt and from innovations of faith. the mass of the people hated protestantism as he, a true friend of the catholic cult, sincerely detested the reformation of luther. he believed that the old life-tree of catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering the ground, might bloom again in its old beauty. but a truer political prophet than wolsey would have been found in the most ignorant of those poor men who were risking death and torture in disseminating the pernicious volumes of the english testament. catherine being a spanish princess, henry, in 1527, formed a league with francis i., with the object of breaking the spanish alliance. the pope was requested to make use of his dispensing power to enable the king of england to marry a wife who could bear him children. deeply as we deplore the outrage inflicted on catherine, and the scandal and suffering occasioned by the dispute, it was in the highest degree fortunate that at the crisis of public dissatisfaction in england with the condition of the church, a cause should have arisen which tested the whole question of church authority in its highest form. it was no accident which connected a suit for divorce with the reformation of religion. _anne boleyn_ the spanish emperor, charles v., gave catherine his unwavering support, and refused to allow the pope to pass a judicial sentence of divorce. catherine refused to yield. another person now comes into conspicuous view. it has been with anne boleyn as with catherine of aragon--both are regarded as the victims of a tyranny which catholics and protestants unite to remember with horror, and each has taken the place of a martyred saint in the hagiology of the respective creeds. anne boleyn was second daughter of sir thomas boleyn, a gentleman of noble family. she was educated in paris, and in 1525 came back to england to be maid of honour to queen catherine, and to be distinguished at the court by her talents, accomplishments, and beauty. the fortunes of anne boleyn were unhappily linked with those of men to whom the greatest work ever yet accomplished in this country was committed. in the memorable year 1529, after the meeting of parliament, events moved apace. in six weeks, for so long only the session lasted, the astonished church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up before the lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their incomes would be dried up to flow no longer. the great reformation had commenced in earnest. the carelessness of the bishops in the discharge of their most immediate duties obliged the legislature to trespass in the provinces most purely spiritual, and to undertake the discipline of the clergy. bill after bill struck hard and home on the privileges of the recreant clergy. the aged bishop of rochester complained to the lords that in the lower house the cry was nothing but "down with the church." yet, so frightful were the abuses that called for radical reform, that even persons who most disapprove of the reformation will not at the present time wonder at their enactment, or disapprove of their severity. the king treated the bishops, when they remonstrated, with the most contemptuous disrespect. archbishop cranmer now adopted a singular expedient. he advised henry to invite expressions from all the chief learned authorities throughout europe as to the right of the pope to grant him a dispensation of dissolution of his marriage. the english universities, to escape imputations of treasons and to avoid exciting henry's wrath, gave replies such as would please him, that of oxford being, however, the more decided of the two. most of the continental authorities declined to pronounce any dictum as to the powers of the pope. _the fall of the great chancellor_ the fall of wolsey was at hand. his enemies accused him of treason to the constitution by violating a law of the realm. he had acted as papal legate within the realm. the parliaments of edward i., edward iii., richard ii., and henry iv. had by a series of statutes pronounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any office or dignity in the anglican church, under a penalty of premunire. henry did not feel himself called on to shield his great minister, although the guilt extended to all who had recognised wolsey in the capacity of papal legate. indeed, it extended to the archbishops, bishops, the privy council, the two houses of parliament, and indirectly to the nation itself. the higher clergy had been encouraged by wolsey's position to commit those acts of despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. the overflow of england's last ecclesiastical minister was to teach them that the privileges they had abused were at an end. in february, 1531, henry assumed the title which was to occasion such momentous consequences, of "protector and only supreme head of the church and clergy of england." the clergy were compelled to assent. further serious steps marked the great breach with rome. the annates, or first fruits, were abolished. ever since the crusades a practice had existed in all the churches of europe that bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees, should transmit to the pope one year's income. this impressive impost was not abrogated. it was a sign of the parting of the ways. henry laid his conduct open to the world, declaring truly what he desired, and seeking it by open means. he was determined to proceed with the divorce, and also to continue the reformation of the english church. and he was in no small measure aided in the former resolve by the recommendation of francis, for the french king advised him to act on the general opinion of europe that his marriage with catherine, as widow of his elder brother arthur, was null, and at once made anne boleyn his wife. this counsel was administered at an interview between the two kings at boulogne, in october, 1532. the pope had trifled for six years with the momentous question, and henry was growing old. at the outset of the discussion the pope had said: "marry freely; fear nothing, and all shall be arranged as you desire." but the pontiff, reduced to a dilemma by various causes, had fallen back on his italian cunning, and had changed his attitude, listening to the appeals of catherine and her powerful friends. and now he threatened henry with excommunication. henry entered privately into matrimonial relations with anne in november, 1532, and the marriage was solemnly celebrated, with a gorgeous pageant, at westminster abbey in the following january. on july 24 the people gathering to church in every parish read, nailed to the church doors, a paper signed henry r., setting forth that lady catherine of spain, heretofore called queen of england, was not to be called by that title any more, but was to be called princess dowager, and so to be held and esteemed. the triumph of anne was to last but three short years. _protestantism_ wycliffe's labour had left only the bible as the seed of a future life, and no trace remained in the sixteenth century of the lollardry of the fourteenth. but now protestantism recommenced its enterprise in the growing desire for a nobler, holier insight into the will of god. in the year 1525 was enrolled in london a society calling itself "the association of christian brothers." its paid agents went up and down the land carrying tracts and testaments with them, and enrolling in the order all who dared risk their lives in such a cause. the protestants thus isolated were waiting for direction, and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain. luther had kindled the spark, which was to become a conflagration in germany, at wittemberg, on october 31, 1517, by his denunciation of indulgences. his words found an echo, and flew from lip to lip all through western europe. tyndal, an oxford student, went to germany, saw luther, and under his direction translated into english the gospels and epistles. this led to the formation of the "association" in london. the authorities were alarmed. the bishops subscribed to buy up the translations of the bible, and these were burned before a vast concourse in st. paul's churchyard. but wolsey had for two years been suppressing the smaller monasteries. simultaneously, protestants were persecuted wherever they could be detected and seized. "little" bilney, or "saint" bilney, a distinguished cambridge student, was burnt as a heretic at the stake, as were james bainham, a barrister of the middle temple, and several other members of the "association." these were the first paladins of the reformation, and the struggle went bravely forward. they were the knights who slew the dragons and made the earth habitable for common flesh and blood. as yet but two men of the highest order of power were on the side of protestantism--latimer and cromwell. these were now to come forward, pressed by circumstances which could no longer dispense with them. when the breach with the pope was made irreparable, and the papal party at home had assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the fortunes of the protestants entered into a new phase. the persecution ceased, and those who were but lately its likely victims, hiding for their lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the sunshine of political favour. cromwell and latimer together caught the moment as it went by, and before it was over a work had been done in england which, when it was accomplished once, was accomplished for ever. the conservative party recovered their power, and abused it as before; but the chains of the nation were broken, and no craft of kings or priests or statesmen could weld the magic links again, latimer became famous as a preacher at cambridge, and was heard of by henry, who sent for him and appointed him one of the royal chaplains. he was accused by the bishops of heresy, but was on trial absolved and sent back to his parish. soon after the tide turned, and the reformation entered into a new phase. thomas cromwell, like latimer of humble origin, was the "malleus monachorum." wolsey discovered his merit, and employed him in breaking up the small monasteries, which the pope had granted for the foundation of the new colleges. cromwell remained with the great cardinal till his fall. it was then that the truly noble nature which was in him showed itself. the lords had passed a bill of impeachment against wolsey--violent, vindictive, and malevolent. it was to be submitted to the commons. cromwell prepared an opposition, and conducted the defence from his place in parliament so skilfully that he threw out the bill, saved wolsey, and gained such a reputation that he became henry's secretary, representing the government in the house of commons, and was on the highroad to power. the reformation was blotted with a black and frightful stain. towards the end of april, 1536, certain members of the privy council were engaged in secretly collecting evidence which implicated the queen in adultery. in connection with the terrible charge, as her accomplices five gentlemen were arrested--sir william brereton, mark smeton, a court musician, sir henry norris, sir francis weston, and, the accusation in his case being the most shocking, lord rochford, the queen's brother. the trial was hastily pushed forward, and all were executed. the queen, who vehemently and piteously appealed to henry, passionately protesting that she was absolutely innocent, was also condemned, and was beheaded in public on tower hill. henry immediately after the tragedy married jane, daughter of sir john seymour. the indecent haste is usually considered conclusive of the cause of anne boleyn's ruin. on december 12, 1537, a prince, so long and passionately hoped for, was born; but a sad calamity followed, for the queen took cold, and died on october 24. in 1539 monastic life came to an end in england. the great monasteries were dissolved; the abbey lands were distributed partly amongst the old nobility and partly amongst the chapters of six new bishoprics. on january 6, 1540, was solemnised the marriage of henry with anne, daughter of the duke of cleves, and sister-in-law of the elector of saxony. this event was brought about by the negotiations of cromwell. the king was deeply displeased with the ungainly appearance of his bride when he met her on her landing, but retreat was impossible. though henry was personally kind to the new queen, the marriage made him wretched. cromwell's enemies speedily hatched a conspiracy against the great statesman. he was arrested on a charge of high treason, was accused of corruption and heresy, of gaining wealth by bribery and extortion, and, in spite of cranmer's efforts to save him, passed to the scaffold on july 28, 1540. for eight years cromwell, who had been ennobled as earl of essex, was supreme with king, parliament, and convocation, and the nation, in the ferment of revolution, was absolutely controlled by him. convocation had already dissolved the marriage of henry and anne, setting both free to contract and consummate other marriages without objection or delay. the queen had placidly given her consent. handsome settlements were made on her in the shape of estates for her maintenance producing nearly three thousand a year. in august of the same year the king married, without delay of circumstance, catherine, daughter of lord edmond howard. brief, indeed, was her reign. in november, 1541, she was charged with unfaithfulness to her marriage vows. the king was overwhelmed. some dreadful spirit pursued his married life, tainting it with infamy. two gentlemen confessed their guilty connection with the queen. they were hanged at tyburn, and the queen and lady rochford, who had been her confidential companion, suffered within the tower. once more the king ventured into marriage. catherine, widow of lord latimer, his last choice, was selected, not in the interest of politics or religion, but by his own personal judgment; and this time he found the peace which he desired. the great event of 1542 was the signal victory of the english over a scottish army of ten thousand men at solway moss. king james of scotland had undertaken, at the instigation of the pope and of the king of france to attack the english as heretics. the scottish clergy were ready to proclaim a pilgrimage of grace. but the english borderers, though only shepherds and agriculturists, as soon as they mounted their horses, were instantly the finest light cavalry in europe. they so disastrously defeated the scots that all the latter either perished in the morass by the solway, or were captured. henry died on january 28, 1547. he was attended in his last moments by cranmer, having sent specially for the archbishop. the king did not leave the world without expressing his views on the future with elaborate explicitness. he spent the day before his death in conversation with lord hertford and sir william paget on the condition of the country. by separate and earnest messages he commended prince edward to the care both of charles v. and of francis i. the earl, on the morning of henry's death, hastened off to bring up the prince, who was in hertfordshire with the princess elizabeth, and in the afternoon of monday, the 31st, he arrived at the tower with edward. the council was already in session, and hertford was appointed protector during the minority of edward. thus, the reforming protestant party was in full power. cranmer set the willing example, and the other prelates consented, or were compelled to imitate him, in an acknowledgment that all jurisdiction, ecclesiastical as well as secular, within the realm, only emanated from the sovereign. on february it was ordered in council that hertford should be duke of somerset, and that his brother, sir thomas seymour, should be lord seymour of sudleye; lord parr was to be marquis of northampton; lord wriothesley, the chancellor, earl of southampton; and viscount lisle was to be earl of warwick. the duke of somerset was the young king's uncle, and the real power was at once in his hands. but if he was ambitious, it was only--as he persuaded himself--to do good. _edward's guardian_ under his rule the spirit of iconoclasm spread fast, and the reformation proceeded to completion. churches were cleared of images, and crucifixes were melted into coin. somerset gave the popular movement the formal sanction of the government. injunctions were issued for the general purification of the churches. the book of homilies was issued as a guide to doctrine, care was taken that copies of the bible were accessible in the parish churches, and translations of erasmus's "paraphrase of the new testament" were provided as a commentary. somerset was a brave general as well as a great statesman. he invaded scotland during the first year of his protectorate, on account of the refusal of the scottish government to ratify the contract entered into with henry viii., by which it was agreed that mary queen of scots should marry edward. at the memorable battle of pinkie, on september 10, 1547, the scots were completely beaten. but somerset was hastily summoned southward. his brother, lord seymour, had been caballing against him, and was arrested, tried, and beheaded on tower hill, on march 20, 1549. but the fall of the protector himself was not long delayed, for under his administration of three years his policy gradually excited wide discontent. in various parts of the country insurrections had to be suppressed. the french king had taken away the young scottish queen, the king's majesty's espouse, by which marriage the realms of england and scotland should have been united in perpetual peace. money had been wasted on the royal household. the alliance with charles v. had been trifled away. the princely name and princely splendour which somerset affected, the vast fortune which he amassed amidst the ruin of the national finances, and the palace--now known as somerset house, london--which was rising before the eyes of the world amidst the national defeats and misfortunes, combined to embitter the irritation with which the council regarded him. his great rival, john dudley, earl of warwick, by constant insinuations both in and out of parliament, excited the national feeling against him to such a degree that at length the young king was constrained to sign his deposition. he seems to have entertained no strong attachment to his uncle. on december i, 1551, he was tried before the lords for high treason and condemned. he was beheaded on tower hill on january 22, 1582. the english public, often wildly wrong on general questions, are good judges, for the most part, of personal character; and so passionately was somerset loved, that those who were nearest the scaffold started forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. before this event, dudley, by whose cruel treachery the tragedy had been brought about, had been created duke of northumberland. the great aim of this nobleman was to secure the succession to the throne for his own family. with this purpose in view he married his son, lord guildford dudley, to lady jane grey, daughter of the duchess of suffolk, to whom, by the will of henry viii., the crown would pass, in default of issue by edward, mary, or elizabeth. in april, 1553, edward, who had been removed to greenwich in consequence of illness, grew rapidly worse. by the end of the month he was spitting blood, and the country was felt to be on the eve of a new reign. the accession of mary, who was personally popular, was looked forward to by the people as a matter of course. northumberland now worked on the mind of the feeble and dying king, and succeeded in persuading him to declare both his sisters incapable of succeeding to the crown, as being illegitimate. the king died on july 6. the last male child of the tudor race had ceased to suffer. when lady jane was saluted by northumberland and four other lords, all kneeling at her feet, as queen, she shook, covered her face with her hands, and fell fainting to the ground. the next monday, july 10, the royal barges came down the thames from richmond, and at three in the afternoon lady jane landed at the broad staircase of the tower, as queen, in undesired splendour. but that same evening messages came saying that mary had declared herself queen. she had sent addresses to the peers, commanding them on their allegiance to come to her. happily, the conspiracy in favour of lady jane was crushed, without bloodshed, although it had seemed for a time as if the nation, was on the brink of a civil war. but, though mary wished to spare lady jane and her husband, her intentions were frustrated by the determination of renard, ambassador of the emperor. northumberland was sent to the tower, and beheaded on august 22, and in the following november lady jane and her husband were also condemned. mary long hesitated, but at length issued the fatal warrant on february 8, 1554, and four days later both were executed. lady jane was but a delicate girl of seventeen, but met her fate with the utmost heroism. stephen gardiner, bishop of winchester, became the chief instrument of the restoration of the catholic faith under mary. his fierce spirit soon began to display itself. in the fiery obstinacy of his determination this prelate speedily became the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the irritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power they loathed. gardiner now saw his romanising party once more in a position to revenge their wrongs when there was no longer any henry to stand between them and their enemies. he would take the tide at the flood, forge a weapon keener than the last, and establish the inquisition. _the reign of terror_ mary listened to the worse counsels of each, and her distempered humour settled into a confused ferocity. both gardiner and she resolved to secure the trial, condemnation, and execution of her sister elizabeth, but their plans utterly miscarried, for no evidence against her could be gathered. the princess was known to be favourable to the protestant cause, but the attempts to prove her disloyalty to mary were vain. she was imprisoned in the tower, and the fatal net appeared to be closing on her. but though the danger of her murder was very great, the lords who had reluctantly permitted her to be imprisoned would not allow her to be openly sacrificed, or indeed, permit the queen to continue in the career of vengeance on which she had entered. the necessity of releasing elizabeth from the tower was an unspeakable annoyance to mary. a confinement at woodstock was the furthest stretch of severity that the country would, for the present, permit. on may 19, 1554, elizabeth was taken up the river. the princess believed herself that she was being carried off _tanquam ovis_, as she said--as a sheep for the slaughter. but the world thought she was set at liberty, and, as her barge passed under the bridge, mary heard with indignation, from the palace windows, three salvoes of artillery fired from the steelyard, as a sign of the joy of the people. vexations began to tell on mary's spirit. she could not shake off her anxieties, or escape from the shadow of her subject's hatred. insolent pamphlets were dropped in her path and in the offices of whitehall. they were placed by mysterious hands in the sanctuary of her bedroom. her trials began to tell on her understanding. she was ill with hysterical longings; ill with the passions which gardiner, as her chancellor, had provoked, but paget as leader of the opposing party, had disappointed. but she was now to become the wife of king philip of spain. negotiations for this momentous marriage had been protracted, and even after the contract had been signed, philip seemed slow to arrive. the coolness manifested by his tardiness did much to aggravate the queen's despondency. on july 20, 1554, he landed at southampton. the atmospheric auspices were not cheering, for philip, who had come from the sunny plains of castile, from his window at southampton looked out on a steady downfall of july rain. through the cruel torrent he made his way to church to mass, and afterwards gardiner came to him from the queen. on the next sunday he journeyed to winchester, again in pouring rain. to the cathedral he went first, wet as he was. whatever philip of spain was entering on, whether it was a marriage or a massacre, a state intrigue or a midnight murder, his first step was ever to seek a blessing from the holy wafer. mary was at the bishop's palace, a few hundred yards' distance. mary could not wait, and the same night the interview took place. let the curtain fall over the meeting, let it close also over the wedding solemnities which followed with due splendour two days after. there are scenes in life which we regard with pity too deep for words. the unhappy queen, unloved, unlovable, yet with her parched heart thirsting for affection, was flinging herself upon a breast to which an iceberg was warm; upon a man to whom love was an unmeaning word, except as the most brutal of all passions. mary set about to complete the catholic reaction. she had restored the catholic orthodoxy in her own person, and now was resolved to bring over her own subjects. but clouds gathered over the court. the spaniards were too much in evidence. with the reaction came back the supremacy of the pope, and the ecclesiastical courts were reinstated in authority to check unlicensed extravagance of opinion. gardiner, bonner, tunstal, and three other prelates formed a court on january 28, 1555, in st. mary overy's church, southwark, and hooper, bishop of gloucester, and canon rogers of st. paul's, were brought up before them. both were condemned as protestants, and both were burnt at the stake, the bishop at gloucester, the canon at smithfield. they suffered heroically. the catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals. there was a general conviction among them that protestants would all flinch at the last; that they had no "doctrine that would abide the fire." many more victims were offered. the enemies of the church were to submit or die. so said gardiner, and so said the papal legate and the queen, in the delirious belief that they were the chosen instruments of providence. the people, whom the cruelty of the party was reconverting to the reformation, while the fires of smithfield blazed, with a rapidity like that produced by the gift of tongues at pentecost, regarded the martyrs with admiration as soldiers dying for their country. on mary, sorrow was heaped on sorrow. her expectation of a child was disappointed, and philip refused to stay in england. his unhappy wife was forced to know that he preferred the society of the most abandoned women to hers. the horrible crusade against heretics became the business of the rest of her life. archbishop cranmer, bishops ridley and latimer, and many other persons of distinction were amongst the martyrs of the marian persecution. latimer was eighty years of age. mary's miseries were intensified month by month. war broke out between england and france. for ten years the french had cherished designs, and on january 7, 1558, the famous stronghold fell into their hands. the effect of this misfortune on the queen was to produce utter prostration. she now well understood that both parliament and the nation were badly disposed towards her. but her end was at hand. after much suffering from dropsy and nervous debility, she prepared quietly for what she knew was inevitable. on november 16, at midnight, taking leave of a world in which she had played so evil a part, mary received the last rites of the church. towards morning she was sinking, and at the elevation of the host, as mass was being said, her head sank, and she was gone. a few hours later the pope's legate, cardinal pole, at lambeth, followed her. thus the reign of the pope in england and the reign of terror closed together. the history of antiquity. the history of antiquity. from the german of professor max duncker, by evelyn abbott, m.a., _fellow and tutor of balliol college, oxford._ vol. ii. london: richard bentley & son, new burlington street, publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. 1879. bungay: clay and taylor, printers. the present volume has been translated from the fifth edition of the original, and has had, throughout, the benefit of professor duncker's revision. e. a. _oxford, jan. 14, 1879._ contents. book iii. _assyria. phoenicia. israel._ chapter i. page the story of ninus and semiramis 1 chapter ii. the beginnings of the assyrian kingdom 26 chapter iii. the navigation and colonies of the phenicians 49 chapter iv. the tribes of israel 89 chapter v. the establishment of the monarchy in israel 109 chapter vi. david's struggle against saul and ishbosheth 128 chapter vii. the rule of david 150 chapter viii. king solomon 179 chapter ix. the law of the priests 201 chapter x. judah and israel 227 chapter xi. the cities of the phenicians 262 chapter xii. the trade of the phenicians 294 chapter xiii. the rise of assyria 308 book iii. assyria. phoenicia. israel. assyria. chapter i. the story of ninus and semiramis. about the middle course of the tigris, where the mountain wall of the armenian plateau steeply descends to the south, there is a broad stretch of hilly country. to the west it is traversed by a few water-courses only, which spring out of the mountains of sindyar, and unite with the tigris; from the east the affluents are far more abundant. on the southern shore of the lake of urumiah the edge of the plateau of iran abuts on the armenian table-land, and then, stretching to the south-east, it bounds the river valley of the tigris toward the east. from its vast, successive ranges, the zagrus of the greeks, flow the lycus and caprus (the greater and the lesser zab), the adhim and the diala. the water, which these rivers convey to the land between the zagrus and the tigris, together with the elevation of the soil, softens the heat and allows olive trees and vines to flourish in the cool air on the hills, sesame and corn in the valleys between groups of palms and fruit-trees. the backs of the heights which rise to the east are covered by forests of oaks and nut trees. toward the south the ground gradually sinks--on the west immediately under the mountains of sindyar, on the east below the lesser zab--toward the course of the adhim into level plains, where the soil is little inferior in fertility to the land of babylonia. the land between the tigris and the greater zab is known to strabo and arrian as aturia.[1] the districts between the greater and lesser zab are called arbelitis and adiabene by western writers.[2] the region bounded by the lesser zab and the adhim or the diala is called sittacene, and the land lying on the mountains rising further toward the east is chalonitis. the latter we shall without doubt have to regard as the holwan[3] of later times. according to the accounts of the greeks, it was in these districts that the first kingdom rose which made conquests and extended its power beyond the borders of its native country. in the old time--such is the story--kings ruled in asia, whose names were not mentioned, as they had not performed any striking exploits. the first of whom any memorial is retained, and who performed great deeds, was ninus, the king of the assyrians. warlike and ambitious by nature, he armed the most vigorous of his young men, and accustomed them by long and various exercises to all the toils and dangers of war. after collecting a splendid army, he combined with ariæus, the prince of the arabs, and marched with numerous troops against the neighbouring babylonians. the city of babylon was not built at that time, but there were other magnificent cities in the land. the babylonians were an unwarlike people, and he subdued them with little trouble, took their king prisoner, slew him with his children, and imposed a yearly tribute on the babylonians. then with a still greater force he invaded armenia and destroyed several cities. barzanes, the king of armenia, perceived that he was not in a position to resist. he repaired with costly presents to ninus and undertook to be his vassal. with great magnanimity ninus permitted him to retain the throne of armenia; but he was to provide a contingent in war and contribute to the support of the army. strengthened by these means, ninus turned his course to media. pharnus, king of media, came out to meet him with a strong force, but he was nevertheless defeated, and crucified with his wife and seven children, and ninus placed one of his own trusty men as viceroy over media. these successes raised in ninus the desire to subjugate all asia as far as the nile and the tanais. he conquered, as ctesias narrates, egypt, phoenicia, coele syria, cilicia, lycia and caria, lydia, mysia, phrygia, bithynia, and cappadocia, and reduced the nations on the pontus as far as the tanais. then he made himself master of the land of the cadusians and tapyrians, of the hyrcanians, drangians, derbiccians, carmanians, chorasmians, barcians, and parthians. beside these, he overcame persia, and susiana, and caspiana, and many other small nations. but in spite of many efforts he failed to obtain any success against the bactrians, because the entrance to their land was difficult and the number of their men of war was great. so he deferred the war against the bactrians to another opportunity, and led his army back, after subjugating in 17 years all the nations of asia, with the exception of the indians and bactrians. the king of the arabians he dismissed to his home with costly presents and splendid booty; he began himself to build a city which should not only be greater than any other then in existence, but should be such that no city in the future could ever surpass it. this city he founded on the bank of the tigris,[4] in the form of an oblong, and surrounded it with strong fortifications. the two longer sides measured 150 stades each, the two shorter sides 90 stades each, so that the whole circuit was 480 stades. the walls reached a height of 100 feet, and were so thick that there was room in the gangway for three chariots to pass each other. these walls were surmounted by 1500 towers, each of the height of 200 feet. as to the inhabitants of the city, the greater number and those of the most importance were assyrians, but from the other nations also any who chose could fix his dwelling here, and ninus allotted to the settlers large portions of the surrounding territory, and called the city ninus, after his own name. when the city was built ninus resolved to march against the bactrians. he knew the number and bravery of the bactrians, and how difficult their land was to approach, and therefore he collected the armies of all the subject nations, to the number of 1,700,000 foot soldiers, 210,000 cavalry, and towards 10,600 chariots of war. the narrowness of the passes which protect the entrance to bactria compelled ninus to divide his army. oxyartes, who at that time was king of the bactrians, had collected the whole male population of his country, about 400,000 men, and met the enemy at the passes. one part of the assyrian army he allowed to enter unmolested; when a sufficient number seemed to have reached the plains he attacked them and drove them back to the nearest mountains; about 100,000 assyrians were slain. but when the whole force had penetrated into the land, the bactrians were overcome by superior numbers and scattered each to his own city. the rest of the cities were captured by ninus with little trouble, but bactra, the chief city, where the palace of the king lay, he could not reduce, for it was large and well-provisioned, and the fortress was very strong. when the siege became protracted, onnes, the first among the counsellors of the king and viceroy of syria, who accompanied the king on this campaign, sent for his wife semiramis to the camp. once when he was inspecting the flocks of the king in syria, he had seen at the dwelling of simmas, the keeper of these flocks, a beautiful maiden, and he was so overcome with love for her that he sought and obtained her as a wife from simmas. she was the foster-child of simmas. in a rocky place in the desert his shepherds had found the maiden about a year old, fed by doves with milk and cheese; as simmas was childless he had taken the foundling as his child, and given her the name of semiramis onnes took her to the city of ninus. she bore him two sons, hyapates and hydaspes, and as she had everything which beauty requires, she made her husband her slave; he did nothing without her advice, and everything succeeded admirably. she also possessed intelligence and daring, and every other gift likely to advance her. when requested by onnes to come to the camp, she seized the opportunity to display her power. she put on such clothing that it could not be ascertained whether she was a man or a woman, and this succeeded so well that at a later time the medes, and after them the persians also, wore the robe of semiramis. when she arrived in the camp she perceived that the attack was directed only against the parts of the city lying in the plain, not against the high part and the strong fortifications of the citadel, and she also perceived that this direction of the attack induced the bactrians to be careless in watching the citadel. she collected all those in the army who were accustomed to climbing, and with this troop she ascended the citadel from a deep ravine, captured a part of it, and gave the signal to the army which was assaulting the walls in the plain. the bactrians lost their courage when they saw their citadel occupied, and the city was taken. ninus admired the courage of the woman, honoured her with costly presents, and was soon enchained by her beauty; but his attempts to persuade onnes to give up semiramis to him were in vain; in vain he offered to recompense him by the gift of his own daughter sosana in marriage. at length ninus threatened to put out his eyes if he did not obey his commands. the terror of this threat and the violence of his own love drove onnes out of his mind. he hung himself. thus semiramis came to the throne of assyria. when ninus had taken possession of the great treasures of gold and silver which were in bactra, and had arranged everything there, he led his army back. at ninus semiramis bore him a son, ninyas, and at his death, when he had reigned 52 years, ninus bequeathed to her the sovereign power. she buried his corpse in the royal palace, and caused a huge mound to be raised over the grave, 6000 feet in the circuit and 5400 feet high, which towered over the city of ninus like a lofty citadel, and could be seen far through the plain in which ninus lay. as semiramis was ambitious, and desired to surpass the fame of ninus, she built the great city of babylon, with mighty walls and towers, the two royal citadels, the bridge over the euphrates, and the temple of belus, and caused a great lake to be excavated to draw off the water of the euphrates. other cities also she founded on the euphrates and the tigris, and caused depôts to be made for those who brought merchandise from media, paraetacene, and the bordering countries. after completing these works she marched with a great army to media and planted the garden near mount bagistanon. the steep and lofty face of this mountain, more than 10,000 feet in height, she caused to be smoothed, and on it was cut her picture surrounded by 100 guards; and an inscription was engraved in syrian letters, saying that semiramis had caused the pack-saddles of her beasts of burden to be piled on each other, and on these had ascended to the summit of the mountain. afterwards she made another large garden near the city of chauon, in media,[5] and on a rock in the middle of it she erected rich and costly buildings, from which she surveyed the blooming garden and the army encamped in the plain. here she remained for a long time, and gave herself up to every kind of pleasure. she was unwilling to contract another marriage from fear of losing the sovereign power, but she lived with any of her warriors who were distinguished for their beauty. all who had enjoyed her favours she secretly put to death. after this retirement she turned her course to egbatana, caused a path to be cut through the rocks of mount zagrus, and a short and convenient road to be made across them, in order to leave behind an imperishable memorial of her reign. in egbatana she erected a splendid palace, and in order to provide the city with water she caused a tunnel to be made through the lofty mountain orontes at its base, which conveyed the water of a lake lying on the other side of the heights into the city. after this she marched through persia and all the countries of asia which were subject to her, and caused the mountains to be cut through and straight and level roads to be built everywhere, while in the plains she at one place raised great mounds over her dead generals, and in another built cities on hills; and wherever the army was encamped eminences were raised for her tent so that she might overlook the whole. of these works many are still remaining in asia and bear the name of semiramis. then she subjugated egypt,[6] a great part of libya, and nearly the whole of ethiopia, and finally returned to bactra. a long period of peace ensued, till she resolved to subjugate the indians on hearing that they were the most numerous of all nations, and possessed the largest and most beautiful country in the world. for two years preparations were made throughout her whole kingdom; in the third year she collected in bactria 3,000,000 foot soldiers, 500,000 horsemen, and 100,000 chariots. beside these, 100,000 camels were covered with the sewn skins of black oxen, and each was mounted by one warrior; these animals were intended to pass for elephants with the indians. for crossing the indus 2000 ships were built, then taken to pieces again, and the various parts packed on camels. stabrobates, the king of the indians, awaited the assyrians on the bank of the indus. he also had prepared for the war with all his power, and gathered together even a larger force from the whole of india. when semiramis approached he sent messengers to meet her with the complaint that she was making war upon him though he had done her no wrong; and in his letter he reproached her licentious life, and calling the gods to witness, threatened to crucify her if victorious. semiramis read the letter, laughed, and said that the indians would find out her virtue by her actions. the fleet of the indians lay ready for battle on the indus. semiramis caused her ships to be put together, manned them with her bravest warriors, and, after a long and stubborn contest, the victory fell to her share. a thousand ships of the indians were sunk and many prisoners taken. then she also took the islands and cities on the river, and out of these she collected more than 100,000 prisoners. but the king of the indians, pretending flight, led his army back from the indus; in reality he wished to induce the enemy to cross the indus. as matters succeeded according to her wishes, semiramis caused a large and broad bridge to be thrown skilfully over the indus, and on this her whole army passed over. leaving 60,000 men to protect the bridge, she pursued the indians with the rest of her army, and sent on in front the camels clothed as elephants. at first the indians did not understand whence semiramis could have procured so many elephants and were alarmed. but the deception could not last. soldiers of semiramis, who were found careless on the watch, deserted to the enemy to escape punishment, and betrayed the secret. stabrobates proclaimed it at once to his whole army, caused a halt to be made, and offered battle to the assyrians. when the armies approached each other the king of the indians ordered his horsemen and chariots to make the attack. semiramis sent against them her pretended elephants. when the cavalry of the indians came up their horses started back at the strange smell, part of them dislodged their riders, others refused to obey the rein. taking advantage of this moment, semiramis, herself on horseback, pressed forward with a chosen band of men upon the indians, and turned them to flight. stabrobates was still unshaken; he led out his elephants, and behind them his infantry. himself on the right wing, mounted on the best elephant, he chanced to come opposite semiramis. he made a resolute attack upon the queen, and was followed by the rest of the elephants. the soldiers of semiramis resisted only a short time. the elephants caused an immense slaughter; the assyrians left their ranks, they fled, and the king pressed forward against semiramis; his arrow wounded her arm, and as she turned away his javelin struck her on the back. she hastened away, while her people were crushed and trodden down by their own numbers; and at last, as the indians pressed upon them, were forced from the bridge into the river. as soon as semiramis saw the greater part of her army on the nearer bank, she caused the cables to be cut which held the bridge; the force of the stream tore the beams asunder, and many assyrians who were on the bridge were plunged in the river. the other assyrians were now in safety, the wounds of semiramis were not dangerous, and the king of the indians was warned by signs from heaven and their interpretation by the seers not to cross the river. after exchanging prisoners semiramis returned to bactra. she had lost two-thirds of her army. some time afterwards she was attacked by a conspiracy, which her own son ninyas set on foot against her by means of an eunuch. then she remembered a prophecy given to her in the temple of zeus ammon during the campaign in libya; that when her son ninyas conspired against her she would disappear from the sight of men, and the honours of an immortal would be paid to her by some nations of asia. hence she cherished no resentment against ninyas, but, on the contrary, transferred to him the kingdom, ordered her viceroys to obey him, and soon after put herself to death, as though, according to the oracle, she had raised herself to the gods. some relate that she was changed into a dove, and flew out of the palace with a flock of doves. hence it is that the assyrians regard semiramis as an immortal, and the dove as divine. she was 62 years old, and had reigned 42 years. the preceding narrative, which is from diodorus, is borrowed in essentials from the persian history of ctesias, who lived for some time at the persian court in the first two decades of the reign of artaxerxes mnemon (405-361 b.c.). on the end of semiramis the account of ctesias contained more details than the account of diodorus. this is made clear by some fragments from ctesias preserved by other writers. in nicolaus of damascus we are told that after the indian war semiramis marched through the land of the medes. here she visited a very lofty and precipitous mountain, which could only be ascended on one side. on this she at once caused an abode to be built from which to survey her army. while encamped here, satibaras the eunuch told the sons of onnes, hyapates and hydaspes, that ninyas would put them to death if he ascended the throne; they must anticipate him by removing their mother and ninyas out of the way, and possessing themselves of the sovereign power. moreover, it was to their great dishonour to be spectators of the licentiousness of their mother, who, even at her years, daily desired every youth that came in her way. the matter, he said, was easy of accomplishment; when he summoned them to the queen (he was entrusted with this business) they could come to the summit of the mountain and throw their mother down from it. but it happened that behind the altar, near which they held this conversation, a mede was lying, who overheard them. he wrote down everything on a skin and sent it to semiramis. when she had read it she caused the sons of onnes to be summoned, and gave strict orders that they should come in arms. delighted that the deity favoured the undertaking, satibaras fetched the young men. when they appeared semiramis bade the eunuch step aside, and then she spoke to them: "you worthless sons of an honest and brave father have allowed yourselves to be persuaded by a worthless slave to throw down from this height your mother, who holds her empire from the gods, in order to obtain glory among men, and to rule after the murder of your mother and your brother ninyas. then she spoke to the assyrians."[7] here the fragment of nicolaus breaks off. from the fragments of cephalion we may gather that the sons of onnes were put to death by semiramis. yet cephalion gave a different account of the death of semiramis from ctesias; according to him ninyas slew her.[8] in ctesias, as is clear from the account of diodorus and other remains of ctesias, nothing was spoken of beyond the conspiracy which ninyas prepared against her.[9] after the death of semiramis, so diodorus continues his narrative, ninyas ruled in peace, for he by no means emulated his mother's military ambition and delight in danger. he remained always in the palace, was seen by no one but his concubines and eunuchs, took upon himself no care or trouble, thought only of pleasure and pastime, considered it the object of sovereign power to give himself up undisturbed to all sorts of enjoyment. his seclusion served to hide his excesses in obscurity; he seemed like an invisible god, whom no one ventured to offend even in word. in order to preserve his kingdom he put leaders over the army, viceroys, judges, and magistrates over every nation, and arranged everything as seemed most useful to himself. to keep his subjects in fear he caused each nation to provide a certain number of soldiers every year, and these were quartered together in a camp outside the city, and placed under the command of men most devoted to himself. at the end of the year they were dismissed and replaced by others to the same number. hence his subjects always saw a great force in the camp ready to punish disobedience or defection. in the same way his descendants also reigned for 30 generations, till the empire passed to the medes.[10] slightly differing from this account, nicolaus tells us that sardanapalus--to whom in the order of succession the kingdom of ninus and semiramis finally descended--neither carried arms nor went out to the hunting-field, like the kings in old times, but always remained in his palace. yet even in his time the old arrangements were kept and the satraps of the subject nations gathered with the fixed contingent at the gate of the king.[11] from what source is the narrative of ninus and semiramis derived? what title to credibility can be allowed it? herodotus states that the dominion of the assyrians in asia was the oldest; their supremacy was followed by that of the medes, and the supremacy of the medes was followed by the kingdom of the achæmenids. herodotus too is acquainted with the name of semiramis; he represents her as ruling over babylon, and building wonderful dykes in the level land, which the river had previously turned into a lake.[12] strabo tells of the citadels, cities, mountain-roads, aqueducts, bridges, and canals which semiramis constructed through all asia, and to semiramis lucian traces back the old temples of syria.[13] we may assume in explanation that the tradition of hither asia has ascribed to the first king and queen of assyria the construction of the ancient road over the zagrus, of old dykes and aqueducts in the land of the euphrates and tigris, the building, not of nineveh only, but also of babylon, the erection of the great monuments of forgotten kings of babylon,--as a fact, assyrian kings built in babylon also in the seventh century. we may find it conceivable that this tradition has gathered together and carried back to the time of the foundation all that memory retained of the acts of assyrian rulers, the campaigns of conquest of a long series of warlike and mighty sovereigns, the sum total of the exploits to which assyria owed her supremacy. yet against such an origin of this narrative doubts arise not easy to be removed. it is true that when this tradition explains the mode of life and the clothing of the kings of asia, and the clothing of the medes and persians, from the example of semiramis, who wore in the camp a robe, half male and half female (p. 6); when this tradition derives the inaccessibility of the kings of asia and their seclusion in the palace from the fact that ninyas wished to hide his excesses, and appear to his subjects as a higher being,--traits of this kind can be set aside as additions of the greeks. to the babylonians and assyrians, the medes and persians, the life and clothing of their rulers could not appear contemptible or remarkable, nor their own clothing half effeminate, though the greeks might very well search for an explanation of customs so different from their own, and find them in the example and command of semiramis, and the example of ninyas. and if in herodotus the empire of the assyrians over asia appears as a hegemony of confederates,[14] this idea is obviously borrowed from greek models. the opposite statement of the division of the assyrian kingdom into satrapies, the yearly change of the contingents of troops, comes from ctesias, who transferred the arrangements of the persian kingdom, with which he was acquainted, to their predecessors, the kingdom of the assyrians, or found this transference made in his authorities, persian or mede, and copied it. yet, after making as much allowance as we can for the amalgamating influence of native tradition, after going as far as we can in setting apart what may be due to the greeks, how could such an accurate narrative, so well acquainted with every detail of the siege of bactra, and the battle on the indus, have been preserved for many centuries in the tradition of hither asia, retained even after the overthrow of assyria, and down to the date when curious greeks, 200 years after the fall of nineveh, reached the euphrates and tigris? we possess a positive proof that about this time, in the very place to which this tradition must have clung most tenaciously, within the circuit of the old assyrian country, no remembrance of that mighty past was in existence. when, in the year 401 b.c., xenophon with his 10,000 marched past the ruins of the ancient cities of the assyrian kingdom, the ruins of asshur, chalah, and nineveh, before ctesias wrote, he was merely told that these were cities of the medes which could not be taken; into one of them the queen of the medes had fled before the persian king, and the persians, with the help of heaven, took and destroyed it when they gained the dominion over media.[15] from the assyrians, therefore, herodotus and ctesias could not have obtained the information given in their statements about ninus and semiramis, nor could their knowledge have come from the babylonians. the tradition of babylonia would never have attributed the mighty buildings of that city and land to the queen of another nation, to which babylon had succumbed. hence the account of the greeks about assyria and her rulers could only come from the medes and persians. but our narrative ascribes to semiramis even the great buildings of the median rulers, the erection of the royal citadel of egbatana, the residence of the median kings; the parks and rock sculptures of media, even the rock figure on mount bagistanon (p. 7). this sculpture in the valley of the choaspes on the rock-wall of bagistan (behistun) is in existence. the wall is not 10,000 but only 1500 feet high. it is not semiramis who is pourtrayed in those sculptures, but darius, the king of persia, and before him are the leaders of the rebellious provinces. it was the proudest monument of victory in all the history of persia. would a persian have shown this to a greek as a monument of semiramis? it would rather be a mede, who would wish to hide from the greeks that media was among the provinces a second time conquered and brought to subjection. the difficulty of ascertaining the sources of our narrative is still further increased in no inconsiderable degree by the fact that the books of ctesias are lost, and that diodorus has not drawn immediately from them, but from a reproduction of ctesias' account of assyria. yet the express references to the statements of ctesias which diodorus found in his authority, as well as fragments relating to the subject which have been elsewhere preserved, allow us to fix with tolerable accuracy what belongs to ctesias in this narrative, and what clitarchus, the renewer of his work, whom diodorus had before him, has added.[16] it is ctesias who enumerates the nations which ninus subdued (p. 3). with him semiramis was the daughter of a syrian and derceto, who throws herself into the lake of ascalon, and is then worshipped as a goddess there.[17] to ctesias belongs the nourishment of the child semiramis by the doves of the goddess, her rise from the shepherd's hut to the throne of assyria. he represents her as raising the mountain or the tomb of ninus; he ascribes to her the building of babylon, its mighty walls and royal citadels, the aqueducts, and the great temple of bel. he represented her as marching to the indus[18] and afterwards towards media; as making gardens there and building the road over the zagrus. he represented her as raising the mounds over the graves of her lovers;[19] he told of her sensuality, of the designs of her sons by the first marriage, and the plot of ninyas; he recounted her end, which was as marvellous as her birth and her youth: she flew out of the palace up to heaven with a flock of doves. if the conquest of egypt by semiramis also belongs to ctesias,[20] the march through libya, and the oracle given to her in the oasis of ammon, together with the version of her death, which rests on this oracle (she caused herself to disappear, _i.e._ put herself to death, in order to share in divine honours), belong to clitarchus. if, therefore, we may regard it as an established fact that our narrative has not arisen out of assyrian or babylonian tradition, that the views and additions of greek origin introduced into it leave the centre untouched; if we have succeeded in discovering, to a tolerably satisfactory degree, the outlines of the narrative of ctesias, the main question still remains to be answered: from what sources is this narrative to be derived? in the first attempt to criticise this account we find ourselves astonished by the certainty of the statements, the minute and, in part, extremely vivid descriptions of persons and incidents. not only the great prince who founded the power of assyria, and the queen whose beauty and courage enchanted him, are known to ctesias in their words and actions. he can mention by name the man who nurtured semiramis as a girl, and her first husband. he knows the names of the princes of the arabs, medes, bactrians, and indians with whom ninus and semiramis had to do. the number of the forces set in motion against bactria and india are given accurately according to the weapon used. the arrangements of the battle beyond the indus, the progress of the fight, the wounds carried away by semiramis, the exchange of prisoners, are related with the fidelity of an eye-witness. weight is obviously laid on the fact that after semiramis had conquered and traversed egypt and ethiopia, after her unbroken success, the last great campaign against the indians fails because she attacked them without receiving any previous injury. the message which stabrobates sends to her, the letter which he writes, the reproaches he makes upon her life, the minute details which ctesias gives of the relation of onnes to semiramis, of the conspiracy of the sons by this marriage, who felt themselves dishonoured by the conduct of their now aged mother, of the letter of the mede, whose fidelity discovered the plot to her, of the speeches which semiramis made on this occasion, carry us back to a description at once vivid and picturesque. if we take these pictures together with the account of ctesias about the decline of the assyrian kingdom, in which also very characteristic details appear, if we consider the style and the whole tone of these accounts of the beginning and the end of the assyrian kingdom, we cannot avoid the conclusion that ctesias has either invented the whole narrative or followed a poetic source. the first inference is untenable, because the whole narrative bears the colour and stamp of the east in such distinctness that ctesias cannot have invented it, and, on the other hand, it contains so much poetry that if ctesias were the author of these descriptions we should have to credit him with high poetic gifts. we are, therefore, driven to adopt the second inference--that a poetic source lies at the base of his account. if, as was proved above, neither assyrian nor babylonian traditions can be taken into consideration, assyrian and babylonian poems are by the same reasoning put out of the question. on the other hand, we find in ctesias' history of the medes episodes of at least equal poetic power with his narrative of ninus and semiramis. plutarch tells us that the great deeds of semiramis were praised in songs.[21] it is certain that they could not be the songs of assyria, which had long since passed away, but we find, on the other hand, that there were minstrels at the court of the medes, who sang to the kings at the banquet; it is, moreover, a mede who warns semiramis against hyapates and hydaspes; and the other names in the narrative of ctesias bear the stamp of the iranian language. further, we find, not only in the fragments of ctesias which have come down to us, but also in the narratives of herodotus and other greeks concerning the fortunes of the medes and persians down to the great war of xerxes against the hellenes, remains and traces of poems which can only have been sung amongst the medes and persians. we have, therefore, good grounds for assuming that it was medo-persian poems which could tell the story of ninus and semiramis, and that this part of the medo-persian poems was the source from which ctesias drew. it was the contents of these poems recounted to him by persians or medes which he no doubt followed in this case, as in his further narratives of parsondes and sparethra, of the rebellion and struggle of cyrus against astyages, just as herodotus before him drew from such poems his account of the rebellion of the magi, the death of cambyses, and the conspiracy of the seven persians. after severe struggles the princes and people of the medes succeeded in casting down the assyrian empire from the supremacy it had long maintained; they conquered and destroyed their old and supposed impregnable metropolis. if the tribes of the medes had previously been forced to bow before the assyrians, they took ample vengeance for the degradation. hence the median minstrels had a most excellent reason to celebrate this crowning achievement of their nation; it afforded them a most agreeable subject. if, in the earlier and later struggles of the medes against assyria, the bravery of individual heroes was often celebrated in song, these songs might by degrees coalesce into a connected whole, the close of which was the overthrow of the assyrian empire. the median poems which dealt with this most attractive material must have commenced with the rise of the assyrian kingdom; they had the more reason for explaining and suggesting motives for this mighty movement, as it was incumbent on them to make intelligible the wreck of the resistance of their own nation to the onset of the assyrians, and the previous subjection of media. in these poems no doubt they described the cruelty of the conqueror, who crucified their king, with his wife and seven children (p. 3). the more brilliant, the more overpowering the might of assyria, as they described it, owing to eminent sovereigns in the earliest times, the wider the extent of the empire, the more easily explained and tolerable became the subjection of the medes, the greater the glory to have finally conquered. this final retribution formed the close; the striking contrast of the former exaltation and subsequent utter overthrow, brought about by median power and bravery, formed the centre of these poems. the prince of the assyrians whose success is unfailing till he finds himself checked in bactria, the woman of unknown origin found in the desert, fostered by herdsmen, and raised from the lowest to the most elevated position,[22] who in bravery surpasses the bravest, who outdoes the deeds of ninus, whose charms allure to destruction every one who approaches her, who makes all whom she favours her slaves in order to slay them, who without regard to her years makes every youth her lover, and is, nevertheless, finally exalted to the gods--are these forms due to the mere imagination of medo-persian minstrels, or what material lay at the base of these lively pictures? the metropolis of the assyrians was known to the greeks as ninus; in the inscriptions of the assyrian kings it is called ninua. from this the name of ninus, the founder of the empire, as well as ninyas, is obviously taken. in herodotus[23] and the chronographers ninus is the son of belus, _i.e._ of bel, the sky-god already known to us (i. 265). the monuments of assyria show us that the assyrians worshipped a female deity, which was at once the war-goddess and goddess of sexual love--istar-bilit. istar was not merely the goddess of battles--bringing death and destruction, though also conferring victory; she was at the same time the goddess of sensual love. we have already learned to know her double nature. in turn she sends life, pleasure, and death. if istar of arbela was the goddess of battle, istar of nineveh was the goddess of love (i. 270). as the goddess of love, doves were sacred to her. in the temples of syria there were statues of this goddess with a golden dove on the head; she was even invoked there under the name of semiramis, a word which may mean high name, name of the height.[24] thus the medo-persian minstrels have changed the form and legend of a goddess who was worshipped in assyria, whose rites were vigorously cultivated in syria, into a heroine, the founder of the assyrian empire; just as in the greek and german epos divine beings have undergone a similar change. this heroine is the daughter of a maiden who slays the youth whom she has made happy with her love, who gave her her daughter, _i.e._ she is the daughter of the goddess herself. like her mother, the goddess, the daughter, semiramis, inspires men with irresistible love, and thus makes them her slaves. at the same time, as a war-goddess, she surpasses all men in martial courage, and brings death to all who have surrendered to her. the origin of the goddess thus transformed into a heroine is unknown and supernatural; her characteristics are marvellous powers of victory and charms of love. the neighbourhood of ascalon, where we found the oldest and most famous temples of the syrian goddess of love (i. 360), was the scene of the origin of the miraculous child. the doves of the syrian goddess nourish and protect her in the desert. she grows up in syria, where the worship of the goddess of sexual love was widely spread. whether simmas, her foster-father, has arisen out of samas, the sun-god of the semites, and onnes, the first husband of semiramis, out of anu, the god of babel and asshur, cannot indeed be decided. but in her relation to onnes, whom her charm makes her slave, to whom she brings uninterrupted success, till in despair at her loss he takes his life, the medo-persian minstrels describe the glamour of love and the sensual pleasure, as well as the destruction which proceeds from her, in the liveliest and most forcible manner. even after the indian campaign she indulges her passions, and then puts those to death to whom she grants her favours. in this life the poems found a motive for the plots of her sons, from which she was at first rescued by the fidelity of a mede,--a trait which again reveals the origin of the poem. as semiramis was a heroine merely, and not a goddess, to the minstrels, they could represent her overthrow, her defeat and wounds, on the indus, which afterwards was the limit of the conquests of the medians and persians. at the end of her life the higher style reappears, the supernatural origin comes in once more. she flies out of the palace with the doves of bilit, which protected her childhood. in ctesias the goddess of ascalon is derceto,[25] and therefore later writers could maintain that the kings of assyria, the descendants or successors of semiramis, were named dercetadæ.[26] footnotes: [1] strabo, pp. 736, 737. arrian, "anab." 3, 7, 7. the same form of the name, athura, is given in the inscriptions of darius. [2] plin. "hist. nat." 6, 27; 5, 12: adiabene assyria ante dicta. ptolemæus (6, 1) puts adiabene and arbelitis side by side. diodorus, 18, 39. arrian, epit. 35: [greek: tên men mesên tôn potamôn gên sai tên arbêlitin eneime amphimachô.] [3] polyb. 5, 54. the border line between the original country of assyria and elam cannot be ascertained with certainty. according to herodotus (5, 52) susa lay 42 parasangs, _i.e._ about 150 miles, to the south of the northern border of susiana. hence we may perhaps take the diala as the border between the later assyria and elam. the use of the name assyria for mesopotamia and babylonia, as well as assyria proper, in herodotus (_e.g._ 1, 178) and other greeks,--the name syria, which is only an abbreviation of assyria (herod. 7, 63),--arises from the period of the supremacy of assyria in the epoch 750-650 b.c. cf. strabo, pp. 736, 737, and nöldeke, [greek: assyrios], hermes, 1871 (5), 443 ff. [4] the euphrates, which diodorus mentions 2, 3 and also 2, 27, is not to be put down to a mistake of ctesias, since nicolaus (frag. 9, ed. müller) describes nineveh as situated on the tigris in a passage undoubtedly borrowed from ctesias. the error belongs, as carl jacoby ("rhein. museum," 30, 575 ff.) has proved, to the historians of the time of alexander and the earliest diadochi, who had in their thoughts the city of mabog (hierapolis), on the euphrates, which was also called nineveh. the mistake has passed from clitarchus to the narrative of diodorus. [5] steph. byzant. [greek: chauôn, chôra tês mêdias, ktêsias en prôtô pertikôn. ê de semiramis enteuthen exelaunei, k. t. l.] [6] diod. 1, 56. [7] frag. 7, ed. müller. [8] frag. 1, 2, ed. müller; cf. justin. 1, 1. [9] anonym. tract. "de mulier." c. 1. [10] diod. 2, 21. [11] nicol. frag. 8, ed. müller. [12] 1, 184. [13] strabo, pp. 80, 529, 737; lucian, "de syria dea," c. 14. [14] herod. 1, 102. [15] xenoph. "anab." 3, 4, 6-10. [16] diodorus tells us himself (2, 7) that in writing the first 30 chapters of his second book he had before him the book of clitarchus on alexander. carl jacoby (_loc. cit._)--by a comparison with the statements in point in curtius, who transcribed clitarchus, and by the proof that certain passages in the narrative of diodorus which relate to bactria and india are in agreement with passages in the seventeenth book, in which diodorus undoubtedly follows clitarchus; that certain observations in the description of babylon in diodorus can only belong to alexander and his nearest successors; that certain preparations of semiramis for the indian campaign agree with certain preparations of alexander for his indian campaign, and certain incidents in alexander's battle against porus with certain incidents in the battle of semiramis against stabrobates; and finally by showing that the situation of the ancient nineveh was unknown to the historians of the time of alexander, who were on the other hand acquainted with a nineveh on the euphrates (hierapolis, mabog; plin. "hist. nat." 5, 23; ammian. marcell. 14, 8, 7)--has made it at least very probable that diodorus had ctesias before him in the revision of clitarchus. we may allow that clitarchus brought the bactrian oxyartes into the narrative, unless we ought to read exaortes in diodorus; but that the name of the king in ctesias was zoroaster is in my opinion very doubtful. the sources of ctesias were stories related by persians or medes from the epic of west iran. that this should put zoroaster at the time of ninus, and make him king of the bactrians, in order to allow him to be overthrown by the assyrians, is very improbable. whether ctesias ascribed to semiramis the building of egbatana is also very doubtful; that he mentioned her stay in media, and ascribed to her the building of the road over the zagrus and the planting of gardens, follows from the quotation of stephanus given above. ctesias has not ascribed to her the hanging gardens at babylon. diodorus makes them the work of a later syrian king, whom ctesias would certainly have called king of assyria. ctesias too can hardly have ascribed to her the obelisk at babylon (diod. 2, 11); so at least the addition of diodorus, "that it belonged to the seven wonders," seems to me to prove. [17] "catasterism." c. 38; hygin. "astronom." 2, 41. in diodorus aphrodite, enraged by a maiden, derceto, imbues her with a fierce passion for a youth. in shame she slays the youth, exposes the child, throws herself into the lake of ascalon, and is changed into a fish. for this reason the image of the goddess derceto at ascalon has the face of a woman and the body of a fish (2, 4). [18] diod. 2, 17, _init._ [19] georg. syncell. p. 119, ed. bonn. [20] diod. 1, 56. [21] "de iside," c. 24. [22] diod. 2, 4, _init._ [23] herod. 1, 7. [24] lucian, "de syria dea," c. 33, 14, 38. the name semiramoth is found 1 chronicles xv. 18, 20; xvi. 5; 2, xvii. 8. [25] ctesias in strabo, p. 785. [26] agathias, 2, 24. chapter ii. the beginnings of the assyrian kingdom. to relegate ninus and semiramis with all their works and deeds to the realm of fiction may appear to be a startling step, going beyond the limits of a prudent criticism. does not ctesias state accurately the years of the reigns: ninus reigned, according to his statement, 52 years; semiramis was 62 years old, and reigned 42 years? do not the chronographers assure us that in ctesias the successors of ninus and semiramis, from ninyas to sardanapalus, the last ruler over assyria, 34 kings, were enumerated, and the length of their reigns accurately given, and has not eusebius actually preserved this list? since, at the same time, we find out, through diodorus and the chronographers, as well as through this list, that ctesias fixed the continuance of the assyrian kingdom at more than 1300 years, or more exactly at 1306, and the fall of the kingdom took place according to his reckoning in the year 883 b.c., ninus must on these dates have ascended the throne in the year 2189 b.c. (883 + 1306), and the reign of semiramis commenced in 2137 b.c. (883 + 1254). eusebius himself puts the accession of ninus at 2057 b.c.[27] if in spite of these accurate statements we persist in refusing to give credit to ctesias, berosus remains, who, according to the evidence of the chronographers, dealt with the rule of semiramis over assyria. after mentioning the dynasty of the medes which reigned over babylon from 2458-2224 b.c., the dynasty of the elamites (2224-1976 b.c.), of the chaldæans (1976-1518 b.c.), and of the arabs, who are said to have reigned over babylon from the year 1518 to the year 1273 b.c., berosus mentioned the rule of semiramis over the assyrians. "after this," so we find it in polyhistor, "berosus enumerates the names of 45 kings separately, and allotted to them 526 years. after them there was a king of the chaldæans named phul, and after him sennacherib, the king of the assyrians, whose son, esarhaddon, then reigned in his place."[28] if we take these 45 kings for kings of assyria, who ruled over this kingdom after semiramis, then, by allowing the supplements of these series of kings previously mentioned (i. 247), the era of these 45 kings will begin in the year 1273 b.c. and end in 747 b.c., and the date of semiramis will fall immediately before the year 1273 b.c. in the view of herodotus, ninus was at the head of the assyrian empire, but not semiramis. as already observed (p. 14), he mentions semiramis as a queen of babylon, and does not place her higher than the middle of the seventh century b.c.;[29] but he regards the dominion of assyria over upper asia as commencing far earlier. before the persians the medes ruled over asia for 156 years; before them the assyrians ruled for 520 years; the medes were the first of the subject nations who rebelled against the assyrians; the rest of the nations followed their example. as the median empire fell before the attack of the persians in 558 b.c., the beginning of the median empire would fall in the year 714 b.c. (558 + 156), and consequently the beginning of the assyrian kingdom in the year 1234 b.c. (714 + 520), _i.e._ four or five decades later than berosus puts the death of semiramis. for the date of the beginning of the assyrian dominion herodotus and berosus would thus be nearly in agreement. it has been assumed that the 45 kings whom the latter represents as following semiramis were kings of assyria, who ruled at the same time over babylon, and were thus regarded as a babylonian dynasty. this agreement would be the more definite if it could be supposed that, according to the view of herodotus, the beginning of the 156 years which he gives to the median empire was separated by an interval of some decades from the date of their liberation from the power of the assyrians. in this case the empire of the assyrians over asia would not have commenced very long before the year 1273 b.c., and would have extended from that date over babylonia. in complete contradiction to this are the statements of ctesias, which carry us back beyond 2000 b.c. for the commencement of the assyrian empire. they cannot be brought into harmony with the statements of herodotus, even if the time allotted by ctesias to the assyrian empire (1306 years) is reckoned from the established date of the conquest of nineveh by the medes and babylonians (607 b.c.). the result of such a calculation (607 + 1306) carries us back to 1913 b.c., a date far higher than herodotus and berosus give. is it possible in any other way to approach more closely to the beginning of the assyrian kingdom, the date of its foundation, or the commencement of its conquests? we have already seen how the pharaohs of egypt, after driving out the shepherds in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries b.c., reduced syria to subjection; how the first and third tuthmosis, the second and third amenophis, forced their way beyond syria to naharina. the land of naharina, in the inscriptions of these kings, was certainly not the aram naharaim, the high land between the euphrates and tigris, in the sense of the books of the hebrews. it was not mesopotamia, but simply "the land of the stream (nahar)." for the hebrews also nahar, _i.e._ river, means simply the euphrates. it has been already shown that the arms of the egyptians hardly went beyond the chaboras to the east; and if the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii. represent him as receiving on his sixth campaign against the syrians, _i.e._ about the year 1584 b.c., the tribute of urn assuru, _i.e._ of the chieftain of asshur, consisting of 50 minæ of lapis-lazuli; if these inscriptions in the year 1579 once more mention among the tribute of the syrians the tribute of this prince in lapis-lazuli, cedar-trunks, and other wood, it is still uncertain whether the chief of the assyrians is to be understood by this prince. had tuthmosis iii. really reached and crossed the tigris, were assuru assyria, then from the description of this prince, and the payment of tribute in lapis-lazuli and cedar-trunks, we could draw the conclusion that assyria in the first half of the sixteenth century b.c. was still in the commencement of its civilisation, whereas we found above that as early as the beginning of the twentieth century b.c. babylonia was united into a mighty kingdom, and had made considerable advance in the development of her civilisation. our hypothesis was that the semites, who took possession of the valley of the euphrates, were immigrants from the south, from arabia, and that this new population forced its way by successive steps up the river-valley. we were able to establish the fact that the earliest governments among the immigrants were formed on the lower course of the euphrates, and that the centre of the state in these regions slowly moved upwards towards babel. we found, further, that semitic tribes went in this direction as far as the southern slope of the armenian table-land.[30] in this way the region on the tigris, afterwards called assyria, was reached and peopled by the semites. with the hebrews asshur, beside arphaxad and aram, beside elam and lud, is the seed of shem. "from shinar" (_i.e._ from babylonia), we are told in genesis, "asshur went forth and built nineveh, and rehoboth-ir, and chalah, and resen between nineveh and chalah, which is the great city." there is no reason to call in question this statement that assyria was peopled and civilised from babylonia. language, writing, and religion exhibit the closest relationship and agreement between babylonia and assyria. on the west bank of the tigris, some miles above the confluence of the lesser zab, at the foot of a ridge of hills, lie the remains of an ancient city. the stamps on the tiles of these ruins tell us that the name of the city was asshur. tiglath pilesar, a king of assyria, the first of the name, whose reign, though we cannot fix the date precisely, may certainly be put about the year 1110 b.c., narrates in his inscriptions: the temple of the gods anu and bin, which samsi-bin, the son of ismidagon, built at asshur 641 years previously, had fallen down; king assur-dayan had caused the ruins to be removed without rebuilding it. for 60 years the foundations remained untouched; he, tiglath pilesar, restored this ancient sanctuary. tiles from this ruin on the tigris, from this city of asshur, establish also the fact that a prince named samsi-bin, son of ismidagon, once ruled and built in this city of asshur. they have the inscription: "samsi-bin, the son of ismidagon, built the temple of the god asshur."[31] hence samsi-bin built temples in the city of asshur to the god asshur as well as to the gods anu and bin. his date falls, according as the 60 years of the inscription of tiglath pilesar, during which the temple of anu and bin was not in existence, are added to the space of 641 years or included in them, either about the year 1800 or 1740 b.c.; the date of his father ismidagon about the year 1830 or 1770 b.c. in any case it is clear that a place of the name of asshur, the site of which is marked by the ruins of kileh-shergat, was inhabited about the year 1800 b.c., and that about this time sanctuaries were raised in it. the name of the place was taken from the god specially worshipped there. as babel (gate of el) was named after the god el, asshur was named after the god of that name. the city was asshur's city, the land asshur's land. beside the city of asshur, about 75 miles up the tigris, there must have been at the time indicated a second place of the name of ninua (nineveh), the site of which is marked by the ruins of kuyundshik and nebbi yunus (opposite mosul), since, according to the statement of shalmanesar i., king of assyria, samsi-bin built another temple here to the goddess istar.[32] ismidagon, as well as samsi-bin, is called in the inscription of tiglath pilesar i. "patis of asshur." the meaning of this title is not quite clear; the word is said to mean viceroy. if by this title a vice-royalty over the land of asshur is meant, we may assume that assyria was a colony of babylonia--that it was under the supremacy of the kings of babylon, and ruled by their viceroys. but since at a later period princes of assyria called themselves "patis of asshur," as well as "kings of asshur," the title may be explained as meaning that the old princes of assyria called themselves viceroys of the god of the land, of the god asshur. moreover, it would be strange that a colony of babylonia, which was under the supremacy of that country, should make its protecting god a deity different from that worshipped in babylonia. from this evidence we may assume that about the year 1800 b.c. a state named asshur grew up between the tigris and the lesser zab. this state must have passed beyond the lower stages of civilisation at the time when the princes erected temples to their gods at more than one chief place in their dominions, when they could busy themselves with buildings in honour of the gods after the example of the ancient princes of erech and nipur, of hammurabi, and his successors at babylon. with this result the statements in the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii do not entirely agree. two hundred years after the time of ismidagon and samsi-bin they speak only of the chief of asshur, and of tribute in lapis-lazuli and tree-trunks; but this divergence is not sufficient to make us affirm with certainty that the "assuru" of tuthmosis has no reference whatever to assyria. if we were able to place the earliest formation of a state on the lower euphrates about the year 2500 b.c., the beginnings of assyria, according to the inferences to be drawn from the evidence of the first tiglath pilesar and the tiles of kileh-shergat, could not be placed later than the year 2000 b.c. beside ismidagon and samsi-bin, the inscriptions of tiglath pilesar and the tiles of the ruins of kileh-shergat mention four or five other names of princes who belong to the early centuries of the assyrian empire, but for whom we cannot fix any precise place. the date of the two kings, who on assyrian tablets are the contemporaries of binsumnasir of babylon, assur-nirar, and nabudan, could not have been fixed with certainty if other inscriptions had not made us acquainted with the princes who ruled over assyria in succession from 1460--1280 b.c.[33] from these we may assume that assur-nirar and nabudan must have reigned before this series of princes, _i.e._ before 1460 b.c., from which it further follows that from about the year 1500 b.c. onwards assyria was in any case an independent state beside babylon. we found above that the treaty which assur-bil-nisi, king of assyria, concluded about the year 1450 b.c. with karaindas, king of babylon, for fixing the boundaries, must have been preceded by hostile movements on the part of both kingdoms. we saw that assur-bil-nisi's successor, busur-assur, concluded a treaty with the same object with purnapuryas of babylon, and that assur-u-ballit, who succeeded busur-assur on the throne of assyria, gave his daughter in marriage to purnapuryas. in order to avenge the murder of karachardas, the son of purnapuryas by this marriage, who succeeded his father on the throne of babylon, assur-u-ballit invaded babylonia and placed kurigalzu, another son of purnapuryas, on the throne. we might assume that about this time, _i.e._ about 1400 b.c., the borders of assyria and babylonia touched each other in the neighbourhood of the modern aker-kuf, the ancient dur-kurigalzu.[34] assur-u-ballit, who restored the temple of istar at nineveh which samsi-bin had built, was followed by pudiel, bel-nirar, and bin-nirar.[35] the last tells us, on a stone of kileh-shergat, that assur-u-ballit conquered the land of subari, bel-nirar the army of kassi, that pudiel subjugated all the land as far as the distant border of guti; he himself overcame the armies of kassi, guti, lulumi and subari; the road to the temple of the god asshur, his lord, which had fallen down, he restored with earth and tiles, and set up his tablet with his name, "on the twentieth day of the month muhurili, in the year of salmanurris."[36] bin-nirar's son and successor was shalmanesar i., who ascended the throne of assyria about 1340 b.c. we learnt above from genesis, that "asshur built the cities of nineveh, rehoboth-ir, resen and chalah." assur-nasirpal, who ruled over assyria more than 400 years after shalmanesar i., tells us that "shalmanesar the mighty, who lived before him, founded the ancient city of chalah."[37] it is thus clear that assyria before the year 1300 b.c. obtained a third residence in addition to the cities of asshur and nineveh. like asshur and nineveh, it lay on the banks of the tigris, about 50 miles to the north of asshur, and 25 to the south of nineveh. it was not, however, like asshur, situated on the western bank of the river, but on the eastern, like nineveh, a little above the junction of the upper zab, in a position protected by both rivers, and thus far more secure than asshur. shalmanesar also built in both the old residences of asshur and nineveh. tiles of kileh-shergat bear the stamp, "palace of shalmanesar, son of king bin-nirar."[38] his buildings in nineveh are certified by an inscription, in which shalmanesar says: "the temple of istar, which samsi-bin, the prince who was before me, built, and which my predecessor assur-u-ballit restored, had fallen into decay in the course of time. i built it up again from the ground to the roof. the prince who comes after me and sees my cylinder (p. 37), and sets it again in its place, as i have set the cylinder of assur-u-ballit in its place, him may istar bless; but him who destroys my monument may istar curse and root his name and race out of the land."[39] in the same inscription shalmanesar calls himself conqueror of niri, lulumi and musri, districts for which--at any rate for the two last--we shall have to look in the neighbourhood of nineveh, in the chain of the zagrus. the son of shalmanesar i. was tiglath adar; he completed the restoration of the temple of istar at nineveh, and fought with such success against nazimurdas of babylon that he placed on his seal this inscription: "tiglath adar, king of the nations, son of shalmanesar, king of asshur, has conquered the land of kardunias." but he afterwards lost this very seal to the babylonians, who placed it as a trophy in the treasure-house of babylon (about 1300 b.c.).[40] these are the beginnings of the assyrian kingdom according to the indications of the monuments. after the series of kings from assur-bil-nisi to tiglath adar, whose dates come down from about the year 1460 to about 1280 b.c., there is a gap in our knowledge of some decades. after this we hear at first of new struggles with babylon. in these belkudurussur of assyria (about 1220 b.c.) lost his life. the babylonians, led by their king, binpaliddin, invaded assyria with a numerous army in order to take the city of asshur. but adarpalbitkur, the successor of belkudurussur, succeeded in forcing them to retire to babylon.[41] of adarpalbitkur his fourth successor proudly declares that "he was the protector of the might of asshur, that he put an end to his weakness in his land, that he arranged well the army of the land of assyria."[42] his son, assur-dayan (about 1180 b.c.) was able to remove the war again into the land of babylonia; he claims to have carried the booty from three places in babylonia--zab, irriya and agarsalu--to assyria.[43] it was he who had carried away the ruins of the fallen temple which samsi-bin had built at asshur to anu and bin, but had not erected it again. according to the words of his great-grandson, "he carried the exalted sceptre, and prospered the nation of bel; the work of his hands and the gifts of his fingers pleased the great gods; he attained great age and long life."[44] of assur-dayan's son and successor, mutakkil-nebu (about 1160 b.c.), we only find that "asshur, the great lord, raised him to the throne, and upheld him in the constancy of his heart."[45] mutakkil-nebu's son, assur-ris-ilim (between 1150 and 1130 b.c.) had to undergo severe struggles against the babylonians, who repeatedly invaded assyria under nebuchadnezzar i. at length assur-ris-ilim succeeded in repulsing nebuchadnezzar, and took from him 40 (50) chariots of war with a banner. tiglath pilesar, the son of assur-ris-ilim, says of the deeds of his father, doubtless with extreme exaggeration, "he conquered the lands of the enemy, and subjugated all the hostile lands."[46] the tiles of a heap of ruins at asshur bear the inscription, "tiglath pilesar, the favoured of asshur, has built and set up the temple of his lord the god bin." at the four corners of the foundation walls of this building were discovered four octagonal cylinders of clay, about a foot and a half in height, on the inscriptions of which this king repeats the narrative of the deeds of the first five years of his life. he restored the royal dwelling-places and the fortresses of the land which were in a bad condition, and planted again the forests of the land of asshur; he renovated the habitation of the gods, the temples of istar and bilit in the city of asshur. at the beginning of his reign anu and bin, his lords, had bidden him set up again the temple which samsi-bin had once built for them. this he accomplished; he caused the two great deities to enter into their high dwelling-places and rejoiced the heart of their great divinity. "may anu and bin grant me prosperity for ever, may they bless the work of my hands, may they hear my prayer and lead me to victory in war and in fight, may they subdue to my dominion all the lands which rise up against me, the rebellious nations and the princes, my rivals, may they accept my sacrificial offerings for the continuance and increase of my race; may it be the will of asshur and the great gods to establish my race as firm as the mountains to the remotest days."[47] these cylinders tell us of the campaign of tiglath pilesar. first he defeated 20,000 moschi (muskai) and their five kings. he marched against the land of kummukh, which rebelled against him; even that part of the inhabitants which fled into a city beyond the tigris which they had garrisoned he overcame after crossing the tigris. he also conquered the people of kurkhië (kirkhië) who came to their help; he drove them into the tigris and the river nami, and took prisoner in the battle kiliantaru, whom they had made their king; he conquered the land of kummukh throughout its whole extent and incorporated it with assyria.[48] after this he marched against the land of kurkhië; next he crossed the lower zab and overcame two districts there. then he turned against the princes of the land of nairi (he puts the number of these at 23); these, and the princes who came from the upper sea to aid them, he conquered, carried off their flocks, destroyed their cities, and imposed on them a tribute of 1200 horses and 2000 oxen. these battles in the north were followed by a campaign in the west. he invaded the land of aram, which knew not the god asshur, his lord;[49] he marched against the city of karkamis, in the land of the chatti; he defeated their warriors on the east of the euphrates; he crossed the euphrates in pursuit of the fugitives and there destroyed six cities. immediately after this the king marched again to the east, against the lands of khumani and musri and imposed tribute upon them. "two-and-forty lands and their princes," so the cylinders inform us, "from the banks of the lower zab as far as the bank of the euphrates, the land of the chatti, and the upper sea of the setting sun, all these my hand has reached since my accession; one after the other i have subjugated them; i have received hostages from them and laid tribute upon them."[50] "this temple of anu and bin and these towers," so the inscription of the cylinders concludes, "will grow old; he who in the succession of the days shall be king in my place at a remote time, may he restore them and place his name beside mine, then will anu and bin grant to him prosperity, joy and success in his undertakings. but he who hides my tablets, and erases or destroys them, or puts his name in the place of mine, him will anu and bin curse, his throne will they bring down, and break the power of his dominion, and cause his army to flee; bin will devote his land to destruction, and will spread over it poverty, hunger, sickness, and death, and destroy his name and his race from the earth. on the twenty-ninth day of kisallu, in the year of in-iliya-allik."[51] in memory of his achievements against the land of nairi, tiglath pilesar also set up a special monument. on a rock at one of the sources of the eastern tigris near karkar we see his image hewn in relief. he wears the tall cap or _kidaris_; the hair and beard are long and curled; the robe falls in deep folds to the ancles. the inscription runs: "by the grace of asshur, samas and bin, the great gods, my lords, i, tiglath pilesar, am ruler from the great sea of the west land (_mat acharri_) to the lake of the land of nairi. three times i have marched to the land of nairi."[52] the first subjugation of this district could not, therefore, have been complete. as this monument proves, tiglath pilesar's campaigns could not have ended with the fifth year of his reign. from the synchronistic tablets we can ascertain that he had to undergo severe struggles with the babylonians. marduk-nadin-akh of babylon invaded assyria, crossed the tigris, and the battle took place on the lower zab. in the next year, according to the same tablets, tiglath pilesar is said to have taken the border-fortresses of babylon, dur-kurigalzu, sippara, babili and upi (opis ?).[53] however this may be, tiglath pilesar in the end was at a disadvantage in his contest with the babylonians. sennacherib, king of assyria, tells us, "the gods of the city hekali, which marduk-nadin-akh, king of the land of accad, had taken in the time of tiglath pilesar, king of asshur, and carried to babylon 418 years previously, i have caused to be brought back again from babylon and put up again in their place." a babylonian tablet from the tenth year of marduk-nadin-akh of babylon appears to deal with loans on conquered assyrian territory.[54] when tiglath pilesar ascended the throne about the year 1130 b.c. the empire of assyria, as his inscriptions show, had not as yet made any extensive conquests beyond the circle of the native country. the muskai, _i.e._ the moschi, whom we have found on the north-western slopes of the armenian mountains, against whom tiglath pilesar first fought, had forced their way, as the cylinders tell us, into the land of kummukh.[55] as the inhabitants of the land of kummukh are conquered on the tigris and forced into it, while others escape over the tigris and defend a fortified city on the further side of the river, as the land itself is then incorporated with assyria, we must obviously look for it at no great distance to the north on both shores of the upper tigris. we shall hardly be in error, therefore, if we take this land to be the district afterwards called gumathene, on the tigris, which ammianus describes as a fruitful and productive land, _i.e._ as the canton of amida.[56] the next conflicts of tiglath pilesar took place on the lower zab, _i.e._ at the south-eastern border of the assyrian country. further to the south, on the zagrus, perhaps in the district of chalonitis, or between the lower zab and the adhim, or at any rate to the east, we must look for the land of khumani and the land of musri. the image at karkar, tiglath pilesar's monument of victory, gives us information about the position of the land of nairi. it comprises the mountain cantons between the eastern tigris and the upper course of the great zab, where that river traverses the land of arrapachitis (albak). the lake of the land of nairi, to which the inscription of karkar extends the rule of tiglath pilesar, and the upper sea from which auxiliaries come to the princes of the land of nairi, are both, no doubt, lake van. the inhabitants of nairi are not like those of the land of kummukh, incorporated with assyria, they have merely to pay a moderate tribute in horses and oxen. the campaign of tiglath pilesar against karkamis (karchemish) proves that the dominion of assyria before his reign did not reach the euphrates. he marches against the land of aram and has then to fight with the army of karchemish on this side, _i.e._ on the east side of the euphrates; the results which he obtained on this campaign to the west of the euphrates he does not himself rate very highly. we saw that in the end he remained at a disadvantage in his contest with babylon. on the other hand, in campaigns which took place in years subsequent to the attempt against karchemish, he must have forced his way to the west far beyond the euphrates, in order to be able to boast on the monument at karkar "that he ruled from the sea of nairi as far as the great sea of the west land," _i.e._ to the mediterranean. hence we have to assume that he went forth from karchemish westwards almost as far as the mouth of the orontes. we should be more accurately informed on this matter if the fragment of an inscription on an obelisk beside an inscription of assurnasirpal, who reigned more than 200 years after tiglath pilesar, could be referred to tiglath pilesar. the fragment speaks in the third person of the booty gained in hunting by a king, which is given in nearly the same totals as the results of tiglath pilesar's hunts on his cylinders. these represent him as slaying 120 lions and capturing 800. the fragment speaks of 120 and 800 lions, of amsi killed in charran on the chabor, of rim whom the king slew before the land of chatti at the foot of mount labnani (lebanon), of a crocodile (_nasukh_) which the king of musri sent as a present. the hunter, it is said, ruled from the city of babylon, in the land of accad, as far as the land of the west (_mat acharri_).[57] according to the inscriptions on the cylinders the land of aram lies to the east of the euphrates; the city of karchemish lies on the west bank in the land of the chatti. the chatti are the hittites of the hebrews, the cheta of the egyptians. we found that the inscriptions of sethos and ramses ii. extended the name of the cheta as far as the euphrates (i. 151, 152). but although the kingdom of the hittites had fallen two centuries before tiglath pilesar crossed the euphrates, the name still clung to this region, as the inscriptions of tiglath pilesar and his successors prove, more especially to the region from hamath and damascus as far as lebanon. the land of the west (_mat acharri_) in the strict sense is, of course, to the assyrians, from their point of view, the coast of syria. whatever successes tiglath pilesar may have gained in this direction, they were of a transitory nature. the first of his sons to succeed him was assur-bel-kala, whose reign we may fix in the years 1100-1080 b.c. with three successive kings of babylon, marduk-sapik-kullat, saduni (?), and nebu-zikir-iskun, he came into contact, peaceful or hostile. with the first he made a treaty of peace, with saduni he carried on war, with nebu-zikir-iskun he again concluded a peace, which fixed the borders. this was confirmed by intermarriage;[58] assur-bel-kala married his daughter to nebu-zikir-iskun, while the latter gave his daughter to assur-bel-kala. of the exploits of his successor, samsi-bin ii. (1080-1060 b.c.), a second son of tiglath pilesar, we have no account.[59] we cannot maintain with certainty whether assur-rab-amar, of whom shalmanesar ii. tells us that he lost two cities on the euphrates which tiglath pilesar had taken,[60] was the direct successor of samsi-bin. after this, for the space of more than 100 years (1040-930), there is again a gap in our knowledge. not till we reach assur-dayan ii., who ascended the throne of assyria about the year 930 b.c., can we again follow the series of the assyrian kings downwards without interruption. this assur-dayan ii. is followed by bin-nirar ii., about 900; bin-nirar, by tiglath adar ii., who reigned from 889-883 b.c. he had to contend once more against the land of nairi, _i.e._ against the region between the eastern tigris and the upper course of the upper zab. as a memorial of the successes which he gained here he caused his image to be carved beside that of tiglath pilesar in the rocks at karkar (see below). besides this, there is in existence from his time a pass, _i.e._ a small tablet, with the inscription, "permission to enter into the palace of tiglath adar, king of the land of asshur, son of bin-nirar, king of the land of asshur."[61] neither at the commencement nor in the course of the history of assyria do the monuments know of a king ninus, a queen semiramis, or of any warlike queen of this kingdom; they do not even mention any woman as standing independently at the head of assyria. once, it is true, we find the name semiramis in the inscriptions in the form sammuramat. sammuramat was the wife of king bin-nirar iii., who ruled over assyria from the year 810-781 b.c. on the pedestal of two statues, which an officer of this king, the prefect of chalah, dedicated to the god nebo, the inscription is: "to nebo, the highest lord of his lords, the protector of bin-nirar, king of asshur, and protector of sammuramat, the wife of the palace, his lady." the name of ninyas is quite unknown to the monuments, and of the names of the 33 kings which ctesias gives, with their names and reigns as successors of ninyas down to the overthrow of the kingdom and sardanapalus (p. 26),--unless we identify the last name in the list, that of sardanapalus, with the assurbanipal of the inscriptions, _i.e._ with the ruler last but one or two according to the records,--no single one agrees with the names of the monuments, which, moreover, give a higher total than six-and-thirty for the reigns of the assyrian kings. the list of ctesias appears to have been put together capriciously or merely invented; the lengths of the reigns are pure imagination, and arranged according to certain synchronisms. not less definite is the evidence of the monuments that the pre-eminence of assyria over upper asia cannot have commenced in the year 2189 or 1913 b.c., as ctesias asserts, or as may be assumed from his data, nor in 1273, as has been deduced from the statements of berosus, nor finally in the year 1234, according to herodotus' statements (p. 27). though we are able to find only approximately the dates of the kings of assyria, whose names and deeds we have passed in review, the result is, nevertheless, that the power of assyria in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries did not go far beyond the native country--that her forces by no means surpassed those of babylon--that precisely in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries b.c. the kingdom of babylon was at least as strong as that of assyria--that even towards the close of the twelfth century tiglath pilesar i. could gain no success against babylon--that his successors sought to establish peaceful relations with babylonia. there is just as little reason to maintain the period of 520 years which herodotus allows for the assyrian empire over asia. this cannot in any case be assumed earlier than the date of tiglath pilesar i., who did at least cross the euphrates and enter northern syria. the beginning of this empire would, therefore, be about 1130 b.c., not 1234 b.c. the date also which herodotus gives for the close of this empire (before 700 b.c.) cannot, as will be shown, be maintained. according to this datum the decline and fall of assyria must have began with the period in which, as a fact, she rose to the proudest height and extended her power to the widest extent. the period of 520 years can only be kept artificially by reckoning it upwards from the year 607 b.c., the year of the overthrow of the assyrian empire; then it brings us from this date to 1127 b.c., _i.e._ to the time of tiglath pilesar i. but we saw that the conquests of tiglath pilesar did not extend very far, that his successes west of the euphrates were of a transitory nature; in no case could a dominion of assyria over babylon be dated from his reign. the complete agreement of the assyrian and babylonian style and civilisation is proved most clearly by the monuments. the names of the princes of assyria are formed analogously to those of the babylonians; the names and the nature of the deities which the assyrians and babylonians worship are the same. in assyria we meet again with anu the god of the high heaven, samas the sun-god, sin the moon-god, bin (ramman) the god of the thunder; of the spirits of the planets adar, the lord of saturn, nebo, the god of mercury, and istar, the lady of venus, in her double nature of destroyer and giver of fruit, reappear. there is only one striking difference: the special protector of assyria, asshur, the god of the land, stands at the head of the gods in the place of el of the babylonians. he it is after whom the land and the oldest metropolis is named, whose representatives the oldest princes of assyria appear to have called themselves. the name of asshur is said to mean the good or the kind;[62] which may even on the euphrates have been an epithet of el, which on the tigris became the chief name of the deity. as the ancient princes of ur and erech, of nipur and senkereh, as the kings of babel--so also the kings of assyria, as far back as our monuments allow us to go--built temples to their gods; like them they mark the tiles of their buildings with their names; like the kings of babel, they cause inscriptions to be written on cylinders, intended to preserve the memory of their buildings and achievements, and then placed in the masonry of their temples. the language of the inscriptions of assyria differs from those of the babylonian inscriptions, as one dialect from another; the system of writing is the same. the population of assyria transferred their language and writing, their religious conceptions and modes of worship, from the lower euphrates to the upper tigris. if the princes of erech, nipur and babylon had to repel the attacks of elam, the assyrian land, a region of moderate extent, lay under the spurs of the armenian table-land, under the ranges of the zagrus. the struggle against the tribes of these mountains, in the zagrus and in the region of the sources of the euphrates and the tigris, and the stubborn resistance of these tribes appears to have strengthened the warlike powers of the assyrians, and these ceaseless campaigns trained them to that military excellence which finally, after a period of exercise which lasted for centuries, won for them the preponderance over mesopotamia and syria, over babylonia and elam, no less than over egypt. footnotes: [27] diod. 2, 21; euseb. "chron." 1, p. 56; 2, p. 11, ed. schöne; syncellus, "chron." 1, 313, 314, ed. bonn; brandis, "rer. assyr. tempor. emend." p. 13 _seq._ [28] euseb. "chron." 1, p. 26, ed. schöne. [29] 1, 184, 187. [30] vol. i. 512. [31] ménant, "annal." p. 18. [32] g. smith, "discov." p. 249. [33] the date of tiglath adar is fixed by the statement of sennacherib that he lost his seal to the babylonians 600 years before sennacherib took babylon, _i.e._ about the year 1300 b.c. as the series of seven kings who reigned before tiglath adar is fixed, assur-bil-nisi, the first of these, can be placed about 1460 b.c. if we allow 20 years to each. [34] vol. i. p. 262. [35] this series, pudiel, bel-nirar and bin-nirar, is established by tiles of kileh-shergat, and the fact that it joins on to assur-u-ballit, by the tablet of bin-nirar discovered by g. smith, in which he calls himself great grandson of assur-u-ballit, grandson of bel-nirar, and son of pudiel; g. smith, "discov." p. 244. [36] g. smith, "discov." pp. 244, 245. [37] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. 20; "records of the past," 7, 17. [38] ménant, "annal." p. 73. [39] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. 249. [40] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. 250; e. schrader, "a. b. keilinschriften," s. 294. as sennacherib states that he brought back this seal from babylon after 600 years, and as sennacherib took babylon twice in 704 and 694 b.c., the loss of it falls either in the year 1304 or 1294 b.c. as he brings back the assyrian images of the gods at the second capture (694 b.c.), the seal of tiglath adar may have been brought back on this occasion. [41] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. 250. [42] so the passage runs according to a communication from e. schrader. on the reading adarpalbitkur as against the readings ninpalazira and adarpalassar, see e. schrader, "a. b. keilinschriften," s. 152. on what ménant ("annal." p. 29) grounds the assumption that belkudurussur was the immediate successor of tiglath adar i cannot say; it would not be chronologically impossible, but the synchronistic tablet merely informs us that adarpalbitkur was the successor of belkudurussur; g. rawlinson, "mon." 2, 49. still less am i able to find any foundation for the statement that binpaliddin of babylon, the opponent of belkudurussur and adarpalbitkur, was a vassal-king set up by assyria. the date of tiglath pilesar i. is fixed by the bavian inscription, which tells us that sennacherib at his second capture of babylon brought back out of that city the images of the gods lost by tiglath pilesar 418 years previously (bav. 43-50), at the period between 1130 and 1100 b.c. if he began to reign 1130, then the five kings before him (the series from adarpalbitkur to tiglath pilesar is fixed by the cylinder of the latter), allowing 20 years to each reign, bring us to 1230 b.c. for the beginning of belkudurussur. to go back further seems the more doubtful, as tiglath pilesar put assur-dayan, the third prince of this series, only 60 years before his own time. [43] sayce, "records of the past," 3, 31; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 31. [44] communication from e. schrader. [45] cf. g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. 251. [46] vol. i. p. 263; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 32. [47] ménant, "annal." pp. 47, 48. [48] column, 1, 62, _seqq._, 1, 89. [49] column, 5, 44. [50] column, 6, 39. [51] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 48. [52] vol. i. p. 519; e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. 16. [53] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 51. [54] vol. i. p. 263; bavian inscrip. 48-50; ménant, "annal." pp. 52, 236. inscription on the black basalt-stone in oppert et ménant, "documents juridiques," p. 98. is the name of the witness (col. 2, 27), sar-babil-assur-issu (p. 115), correctly explained by "the king of babel has conquered asshur"? [55] col. 1, 62. [56] ammian. marcell. 18, 9. [57] araziki cannot be taken for aradus, the name of which city on the obelisk and in the inscriptions of assurnasirpal, shalmanesar, and elsewhere is arvadu. [58] sayce, "records," 3, 33; ménant, "annal." p. 53; "babylone," pp. 129, 130. [59] according to g. smith ("discov." p. 91, 252) this samsi-bin ii. restored the temple of istar at nineveh which samsi-bin i. had built (above, p. 3). [60] inscription of kurkh, "records of the past," 3, 93; ménant, "annal." p. 55. [61] ménant, "annal." p. 63. [62] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. 7. chapter iii. the navigation and colonies of the phenicians. at the time when babylonia, on the banks of the euphrates, flourished under the successors of hammurabi in an ancient and peculiar civilisation, and assyria was struggling upwards beside babylonia on the banks of the tigris, strengthening her military power in the armenian mountains and the ranges of the zagrus, and already beginning to try her strength in more distant campaigns, a semitic tribe succeeded in rising into eminence in the west also, in winning and exerting a deep-reaching influence on distant and extensive lands. it was a district of the most moderate extent from which this influence proceeded, its dominion was of a different kind from that of the babylonians and assyrians; it grew up on an element which elsewhere appeared not a favourite with the semites, and sought its points of support in settlements on distant islands and coasts. by this tribe the sea was actively traversed and with ever-increasing boldness; by circumspection, by skill, by tough endurance and brave ventures it succeeded in extending its dominion in ever-widening circles, and making the sea the instrument of its wealth and the bearer of its power. on the coasts of syria were settled the tribes of the arvadites, giblites and sidonians (i. 344). their land extended from the mouth of the eleutherus (nahr el kebir) in the north to the promontory of carmel in the south. a narrow strip of coast under mount lebanon, from 10 to 15 miles in breadth and some 150 miles in length, was all that they possessed. richly watered by the streams sent down from lebanon to the sea, the small plains formed round their mouths and separated by the spurs of the mountain ranges are of the most abundant fertility. the eleutherus is followed to the south by the adonis (nahr el ibrahim), and this by the lycus (nahr el kelb); then follow the tamyras (nahr damur), the bostrenus (nahr el auli[63]), the belus (the sihor libnath of the hebrews, now nahr naman), and lastly the kishon. above the shore rise hills clothed with date-palms, vines and olives; higher up on lebanon splendid mountain pastures spread out, and above these we come to the vast forests (i. 338) which provide shade in the glowing heat, as tacitus says,[64] and to the bright snow-fields which crown the summit of lebanon. ammianus speaks of the region under lebanon as full of pleasantness and beauty. the upper slopes of the mountain furnish pasture and forests; in the rocks are copper and iron. the high mountain-range, which sharply divided the inhabitants of the coast from the interior (at a much later time, even after the improvements of the roman cæsars, there were, as there are now, nothing but mule-tracks across lebanon[65]), lay behind the inhabitants of the coast, and before them lay the sea. at an early period they must have become familiar with that element. the name of the tribe which the hebrew scriptures call the "first-born of canaan" means "fishermen." the places on the coast found the sea the easiest means of communication. thus the sea, so rich in islands, the long but proportionately narrow basin which lay before the sidonians, giblites and arvadites, would soon attract to longer voyages the fishermen and navigators of the coast. we found that the beginning of civilisation in canaan could not be placed later than about the year 2500 b.c., and we must therefore allow a considerable antiquity to the cities of the sidonians, giblites, arvadites, zemarites and arkites. the settlement on the site of sidon was founded, no doubt, before the year 2000 b.c., and that on the site of byblus cannot certainly be placed later than this period.[66] the campaigns which the pharaohs undertook against syria and the land of the euphrates after the expulsion of the shepherds could not leave these cities unmoved. if the zemar of the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii. is zemar (simyra) near aradus, and arathutu is aradus itself, the territories of these cities were laid waste by this king in his sixth campaign (about the year 1580 b.c.); if arkatu is arka, south of aradus, this place must have been destroyed in his fifteenth campaign (about the year 1570 b.c.). sethos i. (1440-1400 b.c.) subdued the land of limanon (_i.e._ the region of lebanon), and caused cedars to be felled there. one of his inscriptions mentions zor, _i.e._ tyre, among the cities conquered by him. the son and successor of sethos i., ramses ii., also forced his way in the first decades of the fourteenth century as far as the coasts of the phenicians. at the mouth of the nahr el kelb, between sidon and berytus, the rocks on the coast display the memorial which he caused to be set up in the second and third year of his reign in honour of the successes obtained in this region.[67] in the fifth year of his reign ramses, with the king of the cheta' defeats the king of arathu in the neighbourhood of kadeshu on the orontes, and ramses iii. about the year 1310 b.c., mentions beside the cheta who attack egypt the people of arathu, by which name, in the one case as in the other, may be meant the warriors of aradus.[68] if arathu, like arathutu, is aradus, it follows, from the position which ramses ii. and iii. give to the princes of arathu, that beside the power to which the kingdom of the hittites had risen about the middle of the fifteenth century b.c., and which it maintained to the end of the fourteenth,[69] the phenician cities had assumed an independent position. the successes of the pharaohs in syria come to an end in the first decades of the fourteenth century. egypt makes peace and enters into a contract of marriage with the royal house of the cheta; the syrians obtain even the preponderance against egypt (i. 152), to which ramses iii. towards the end of the fourteenth century was first able to oppose a successful defence. the overthrow of the kingdom of the hittites, which succumbed to the attack of the amorites (i. 348) soon after the year 1300 b.c., must have had a reaction on the cities of the phenicians. expelled hittites must have been driven to the coast-land, or have fled thither, and in the middle of the thirteenth century the successes gained by the hebrews who broke in from the east, over the amorites, the settlement of the hebrews on the mountains of the amorites, must again have thrown the vanquished, _i.e._ the fugitives of this nation, towards the coast. with this retirement of the older strata of the population of canaan to the coast is connected the movement which from this period emanates from the coasts of the phenicians, and is directed towards the islands of the mediterranean and the ægean. it is true that on this subject only the most scanty statements and traces, only the most legendary traditions have come down to us, so that we can ascertain these advances only in the most wavering outlines. one hundred miles to the west off the coast of phoenicia lies the island of cyprus. on the southern coast of this island, which looked towards phoenicia, stood the city of citium, kith and chith in the inscriptions of the phenicians, and apparently kittii in those of the assyrians. sidonian coins describe citium as a daughter of sidon.[70] after this city the whole island is known among the semites as kittim and chittim; this name is even used in a wider sense for all the islands of the mediterranean.[71] the western writers state that before the time of the trojan war belus had conquered and subjugated the island of cyprus, and that citium belonged to belus.[72] the victorious belus is the baal of the phenicians. the date of the trojan war is of no importance for the settlement of the phenicians in cyprus, for this statement is found in virgil only. more important is the fact that the settlers brought the babylonian cuneiform writing to cyprus. this became so firmly rooted in use that even the greeks, who set foot on the island at a far later time, scarcely before the end of the ninth century, adopted this writing, which here meanwhile had gone through a peculiar development, and had become a kind of syllabic-writing, and used it on coins and in inscriptions even in the fifth century b.c.[73] the settlement of the sidonians in cyprus must therefore have taken place before the time in which the alphabetic writing, _i.e._ the writing specially known as phenician, was in use in syria, and hence at the latest before 1100 b.c. how long before this time the settlement of the phenicians in cyprus took place can, perhaps, be measured by the fact that the cyprian alphabet is a simplification of the old babylonian cuneiform writing. the simplified form would undoubtedly have been driven out by the far more convenient alphabetic writing of the phenicians if the cyprian writing had not become fixed in use in this island before the rise of the alphabetic writing. further, since the phenicians, as we shall see, set foot on the coast of hellas from about the year 1200 b.c. onwards, we must place the foundation of the colonies on the coasts nearest them, the settlement in cyprus, before this date, about the middle of the thirteenth century b.c. what population the phenicians found on cyprus it is not possible to discover. herodotus tells us that the first inhabitants of the island were ethiopians, according to the statements of the cyprians. it is beyond a doubt that not citium only, but the greater part of the cities of the island were founded by the phenicians, and that the phenician element became the ruling element of the whole island.[74] it is belus who is said to have conquered cyprus, and to whom the city of citium is said to belong; _i.e._ citium worshipped the god baal. at amathus, to the west of citium, on the south coast of the island, which was called the oldest city on cyprus, and which nevertheless bears a distinctly semitic name (hamath), adonis and ashera-astarte were worshipped,[75] and these deities had also one of their oldest and most honoured seats of worship at paphos (pappa in the inscriptions), on the west coast. the homeric poems represent aphrodite as hastening to her altar at paphos in cyprus. pausanias observes that the aphrodite of cyprus was a warlike aphrodite,[76] and as the daughters of the cyprians surrendered themselves to the foreign seamen in honour of this goddess,[77] it was the astarte-ashera of the phenicians who was worshipped at amathus and paphos. the zeus of the cyprian city salamis (sillumi in the inscriptions of the assyrians), to whom, according to the evidence of western writers, human sacrifices were offered, can only be baal moloch, the evil sun-god of the phenicians. in the beginning of the tenth century b.c. the cities of cyprus stood under the supremacy of the king of tyre.[78] the island was of extraordinary fertility. the forests furnished wood for ship-building; the mountains concealed rich veins of the metal which has obtained the name of copper from this island.[79] hence it was a very valuable acquisition, an essential strengthening of the power of sidon in the older, and tyre in the later, period. following zeno of rhodes, who wrote the history of his home in the first half of the second century b.c.,[80] diodorus tells us: the king of the phenicians, agenor, bade his son cadmus seek his sister europa,[81] who had disappeared, and bring back the maiden, or not return himself to phoenicia. overtaken by a violent storm, cadmus vowed a shrine to poseidon. he was saved, and landed on the island of rhodes, where the inhabitants worshipped before all other gods the sun, who had here begotten seven sons and among them makar. cadmus set up a temple in rhodes to poseidon, as he had vowed to do, and left behind phenicians to keep up the service; but in the temple which belonged to athena at cnidus in rhodes he dedicated a work of art, an iron bowl, which bore an inscription in phenician letters, the oldest inscription which came from phoenicia to the hellenes. from rhodes cadmus came to samothrace, and there married harmonia. the gods celebrated this first marriage by bringing gifts, and blessing the married pair to the tones of heavenly music.[82] ephorus says that cadmus carried off harmonia while sailing past samothrace, and hence in that island search was still made for harmonia at the festivals.[83] herodotus informs us that cadmus of tyre, the son of agenor, in his search for europa, landed on the island of thera, which was then called callisto, and there left behind some phenicians, either because the land pleased him or for some other reason. these phenicians inhabited the island for eight generations before theras landed there from lacedæmon. the rest went to the island of thasos and there built a temple to heracles, which he had himself seen, and the city of thasos. this took place five generations before heracles the son of amphitryon was born. after that cadmus came to the land now called boeotia, and the phenicians who were with him inhabited the land and taught the hellenes many things, among others the use of writing, "which as it seems to me the hellenes did not possess before. they learnt this writing, as it was used by the phenicians; in the course of time the form of the letters changed with the language. from these phenicians the ionians, among whom they dwelt, learnt the letters, altered their form a little, and extended their use. as was right, they called them phenician letters, since the phenicians had brought them into greece. i have myself seen inscriptions in cadmeian letters (_i.e._ from the time of cadmus) in the temple of ismenian apollo at thebes."[84] according to the narrative of hellanicus, cadmus received an oracle, bidding him follow the cow which bore on her back the sign of the full moon, and found a city where she lay down. cadmus carried out the command, and when the cow lay down wearied, where thebes now stands, cadmus built there the cadmeia (the citadel of thebes).[85] according to the statement of pherecydes cadmus also built the city of thebes.[86] with hecatæus of miletus cadmus passes as the discoverer of letters; according to others he also discovered the making of iron armour and the art of mining.[87] the direction of the phenician settlements, which proceeds in the ægean sea from s.e. to n.w., cannot be mistaken in these legends. first rhodes, then the cyclades, then the islands on the thracian coast, samothrace and thasos, were colonised; and at length, on the strait of euboea, the mainland of hellas was trodden by the phenicians, who are said to have gained precisely from this point a deep-reaching influence over the hellenes. the legend of cadmus goes far back among the greeks. in the homeric poems the inhabitants of thebes are "cadmeians." the thebaid praised "the divine wisdom of cadmus;" in the poems of hesiod he leads home harmonia, "the daughter of ares and aphrodite," and pindar describes how the muses sang for "the divine cadmus, the wealthiest of mortals, when in seven-gated thebes he led the ox-eyed harmonia to the bridal-bed."[88] agenor, the father of cadmus, is a name which the greeks have given to the baal of the phenicians.[89] cadmus himself, the wealthiest of mortals, who leads home the daughter of a god and a goddess,--who celebrates the first marriage at which the gods assemble, bring gifts and sing,--whose wife was worshipped as the protecting goddess of thebes,[90]--whose daughters, ino, leucothea and semele, are divine creatures, whom zeus leads to the elysian fields,[91]--can only be a god. he seeks the lost europa, and is to follow the cow which bears the sign of the full moon. we know the moon-goddess of the phenicians, who bears the crescent moon and cow's horns, the horned astarte, who wears a cow's head, the goddess of battle and sensual desire, and thus the daughter of ares and aphrodite. "the great temple of astarte at sidon," so we find in the book of the syrian goddess, "belongs, as the sidonians say, to astarte; but a priest told me that it was a temple of europa, the sister of cadmus." the meaning of the word europa has been discussed previously (i. 371). cadmus, who seeks the lost moon-goddess, who at length finds and overcomes her, and celebrates with her the holy marriage, is the baal melkarth of the phenicians. the death-bringing istar-astarte is changed into bilit-ashera, into the fruit-giving goddess;[92] the gloomy europa changes into harmonia, the goddess of union, birth and increase, yet not without leaving to her descendants deadly gifts. it is the myth of melkarth and astarte which the greeks present to us in the story of cadmus; with this myth they have connected the foundation of the phenician settlements in rhodes, thera, samothrace, thasos and boeotia; they have changed it into the foundation of these colonies. the name cadmus means the man of the east; to the hebrews the arabs who dwelt to the east of them were known as beni kedem, _i.e._ sons of the east.[93] to the greeks the phenicians were men of the east, just as to the english of the thirteenth century the merchants of lubeck were easterlings. the citadel of thebes, which the men of the east built, preserved the name of cadmus the son of the east, and kept it alive among the greeks. what we can gather from grecian legend is confirmed by some statements of historians and by traces which tell of settlements of the phenicians. thucydides informs us that the phenicians colonised most of the islands of the ægean.[94] diodorus has already told us with regard to rhodes that in the temples of this island were phenician works of art and inscriptions, and that in rhodes the sun-god and the seven children which he begot there were worshipped. in the number eight made by these deities we can hardly fail to recognise the eight great deities of the phenicians; the sun-god at their head is the baal of the phenicians (i. 357). and if diodorus mentions makar among the seven sons of the sun-god of rhodes,--if according to others rhodes, like cyprus, was called macaria,--makar is a greek form of the name melkarth. we further learn that on the highest mountain summit in rhodes, on atabyris, zeus was worshipped under the form of a bull, and that a human sacrifice was offered yearly to cronos. in atabyris we cannot fail to recognise the semitic tabor, _i.e._ the height. we found above that the phenicians worshipped baal under the form of a bull, and the greeks are wont to denote baal moloch by the name of cronos.[95] these forms of worship continued to exist even when at a later time hellenic immigrants had got the upper hand in rhodes. it was the dorians who here met with resistance from the phenicians at camirus and ialysus; they got the upper hand, but admitted phenician families into their midst,[96] and continued their sacred rites. diodorus informs us that the phenicians whom cadmus had left behind on rhodes had formed a mixed community with the ialysians, and that it was said that priests of their families had performed the sacred duties.[97] even at a later time rhodes stood in close relation with phoenicia, especially with the city of aradus.[98] thus it happened that the colonies which the rhodians planted in the seventh and sixth centuries in sicily, gela and acragas, carried thither the worship of zeus atarbyrius. zeus atarbyrius was the protecting deity of acragas, and human sacrifices were offered to his iron bull-image on the citadel of that city as late as the middle of the sixth century. the coins of gela also exhibit a bull.[99] of the island of thera, herodotus told us that the phenicians colonised it and inhabited it for eight generations, _i.e._ for more than 250 years according to his computation. herodotus names the chief of the phenicians whom cadmus left behind on thera; others speak of the two altars which he erected there.[100] the descendants of these phenicians were found here by the greek settlers from laconia. it is certain that even in the third century b.c. the island worshipped the hero phoenix.[101] of the island of melos we learn that it was occupied by phenicians of byblus, and named by them after their mother city;[102] the island of oliaros near paros was, on the other hand, according to heraclëides ponticus, occupied by the sidonians.[103] strabo informs us that samothrace was previously called melite (malta); from its height (the island is a mountain rising high in the sea and covered with oak forests; the summit reaches 5000 feet) it obtained the name of samos, "for high places are called sami;"[104] as a matter of fact the stem of the word of this meaning, like the name melite, belongs to the phenician language. ephorus has already told us (p. 56) that the samothracians sought for harmonia at their festivals; diodorus represents cadmus as celebrating the marriage with harmonia on samothrace as well as at thebes, and we learn from herodotus that the cabiri, _i.e._ the great gods of the phenicians, were worshipped on samothrace; votive tablets of the island dating from roman times still bear the inscription, "to the great gods," _i.e._ to the cabiri.[105] the islands of imbros and lemnos also worshipped the cabiri; lemnos especially worshipped hephæstus, who had a leading place in this circle.[106] the island of thasos is said, according to the statement of the greeks, to have been called after a son of phoenix, or agenor, of the name of thasos, who was consequently a brother of cadmus. herodotus saw on the island a temple which the phenicians had built to heracles, _i.e._ to baal-melkarth, and the mines which they had made on the coast opposite samothrace; "they had overturned a great mountain in order to get gold from it."[107] herodotus also tells us that the temple of aphrodite urania on the island of cythera off the coast of laconia was founded by the phenicians, and pausanias calls this temple the oldest and most sacred temple of urania among the hellenes; the wooden image in this temple exhibited the goddess in armour. aphrodite urania is with the greeks the syrian aphrodite; if she was represented on cythera in armour it is clear that she was worshipped there by the phenicians as astarte-ashera, _i.e._ as the goddess of war and love.[108] not in the islands only, but on the coasts of hellas also, the phenicians have left traces of their ancient occupation, especially in the form of worship belonging to them. on the isthmus of corinth melicertes, _i.e._ melkarth, was worshipped as a deity protecting navigation; corinthian coins exhibit him on a dolphin.[109] aphrodite, whose shrine stood on the summit of acrocorinthus, was worshipped by prostitution like the ashera-bilit of the phenicians. in attica also, in the deme of athmonon, there was a shrine of the goddess of cythera, which king porphyrion, _i.e._ the purple man, the phenician, is said to have founded there at a very ancient time "before king actaeus."[110] at marathon, where heracles was worshipped, and of whom the name represents the phenician city marathus, rose a fountain which had the name makaria, _i.e._ makar,[111] the name of melkarth, which we have already met with in cyprus and rhodes, and shall meet with again. more plainly still do the tombs lately discovered in hymettus at the village of spata attest the ancient settlement of the phenicians on the attic coast. these are chambers dug deeply into the rock after the phenician manner, with horizontal roofs after the oldest fashion of phenician graves; and shafts lead down to them from the surface. the ornaments and works in glass, ivory, gold and brass discovered here, which are made after babylonian and egyptian models, can only have been brought by the phenicians.[112] the citadel of thebes, as has been said, retains the name of cadmus; the poetry of the greeks praised the mighty walls, the seven gates of thebes. we know the number seven of the great phenician gods; we can prove that the seven gates were dedicated to the gods of the sun, the moon and the five planets;[113] and the greeks have already admitted to us that they received the wearing of armour, the art of mining and masonry and finally their alphabet from cadmus, _i.e._ from the phenicians, the cadmeans of thebes. in the homeric poems europa, the daughter of phoenix, bears minos to zeus. the abode of minos is the "great city" of cnossus in crete; he receives each nine years the revelations of his father zeus; for his daughter ariadne dædalus adorns a dancing place at cnossus. after his death minos carries in the under world the golden sceptre, and by his decisions puts an end to the contentions of the shades.[114] his descendants rule in crete.[115] later accounts tell us that zeus in the form of a bull carried off europa from phoenicia, and bore her over the sea to crete. the wife of her son minos, pasiphaë, then united with a bull which rose out of the sea, and brought forth the minotaur, _i.e._ the minos-bull, a man with a bull's head.[116] the son of minos, androgeos (earth-man) or eurygyes (broadland), was destroyed in attica by the bull of marathon, who consumed him in his flames.[117] to avenge the death of androgeos minos seized megara, and blight and famine compelled the athenians to send, in obedience to the command of minos, seven boys and seven girls every ninth year to crete, who were then sacrificed to the minotaur.[118] others narrate that hephæstus had given minos a man of brass, who wandered round the island and kept off foreign vessels, and clasped to his glowing breast all who were disobedient to minos.[119] when dædalus retired before the wrath of minos from crete to sicily, minos equipped his ships to bring him back; but he there found, according to herodotus, a violent death.[120] the king of the sicanians, so diodorus tells us, gave him a friendly welcome, and caused a warm bath to be prepared, and then craftily suffocated him in it. the cretans buried their king in a double grave; they laid the bones in a secret place, and built upon them a temple to aphrodite, and as they could not return to crete because the cretans had burned their ships, they founded the city minoa in sicily; but the tomb of minos was shown in crete also.[121] a bull-god carries the daughter of phoenix over the sea to crete and begets minos; a bull who rises out of the sea begets with pasiphaë, _i.e._ the all-shining, the minos-bull, to which in case of blight and famine boys and girls are sacrificed in the number sacred among the semites; androgeos succumbs to the heat of the bull of marathon, an iron man slays his victims by pressing them to his glowing breast. these legends of the greeks are unmistakable evidence of the origin of the rites observed in crete from the coast of syria, of the settlement of phenicians in crete. the bull-god may be the baal samim or the baal moloch of the phenicians; europa has already revealed herself to us as the moon-goddess of the phenicians (p. 58); pasiphaë is only another name for the same goddess, the lady of the nightly sky, the starry heaven. we know that on occasions of blight human sacrifices were offered to baal moloch, the fiery, consuming, angry sun-god, and that these sacrifices were burnt. ister, a writer of the third century b.c., tells us quite simply; in ancient times children were sacrificed to cronos in crete.[122] before the harbour of megara lay an island of the name of minoa; at the time of the summer heat before the corn was ripe, the athenians offered peace-offerings at the thargelia, "in the place of human sacrifices,"[123] that the consuming sun might not kill the harvest. the name of the island and this custom, as well as the flames of the bull of marathon, prove that beside the worship of the syrian goddess at athmonon, and the worship of melkarth at marathon, the worship of baal moloch had penetrated as far as megara and attica. minos, the son of the sky-god, the husband of the moon-goddess, who from time to time receives revelations from heaven, and even after his death is judge of the dead, is himself a god; his proper name is minotaur, a name taken from the form of the bull's image and the bull's head. when baal melkarth had found and overcome astarte, after he had celebrated with her the holy marriage, he went to rest according to the phenician myth in the waters of the western sea which he had warmed. the phenicians were of opinion that the beams of the sun when sinking there in the far west had the most vigorous operation because of their greater proximity.[124] minos goes to sicily; there in a hot bath he ends his life, and over his resting-place rises the temple of astarte-ashera, with whom he celebrated his marriage in the west, and who by this marriage is changed from the goddess of war into the goddess of love. the tombs of minos in crete, sicily, and finally at gades, of which the greeks speak, are in the meaning of the phenician myth merely resting-places of the god, who in the spring wakes from his slumber into new power. the greeks made minos, who continued to live in the under-world, a judge in the causes of the shades, and finally a judge of the souls themselves. on the southern coast of sicily, at the mouth of the halycus, lay the city which the greeks called minoa or heraclea-minoa after minos. to the phenicians it was known as rus melkarth (p. 78), a title which proves beyond doubt that minos was one of the names given by the greeks to this god of the phenicians. the worship of baal moloch, which the phenicians brought to crete and the shores of megara and attica, was not all that the greeks personified in the form of minos; they did not confine themselves to one side of the myth of baal melkarth. when grecian colonists settled subsequently in crete they found the cities of the phenicians full of artistic capacity, and their life regulated by legal ordinances. thus their legend could place the artist dædalus, the discoverer and pattern of all art-industry, beside minos, and refer to minos the ordinances of the cities. zeus himself had revealed these arrangements to him. at a later time the greek cities of crete traced their own institutions back to minos; here and there they may perhaps have followed a phenician model, or they may have given out that such a model had been followed. plato represents minos as receiving the wise laws which he introduced into crete from zeus. with aristotle also minos is the founder of the cretan laws.[125] in the circle of the cabiri the sky-god baal samim was the protector and defender of law (i. 377). lastly, minos is with the greeks at once the representation and expression of the dominion which the phenicians exercised in ancient times over the islands of the ægean sea, before the settlements of the greeks obtained the supremacy over the islands and the ships of the greeks took the lead in these waters. in the age of the heroes, so herodotus tells us, minos established the first naval empire; the carians, who inhabited the islands, he made his subjects; they did not indeed pay tribute, but they had to man his ships whenever necessary.[126] "the oldest king," says thucydides, "of whom tradition tells us that he possessed a fleet was minos. he ruled over the greatest part of the greek sea and the cyclades, which he colonised, driving out the carians and making his sons lords of the islands."[127] minos, as a king ruling by law, is then said to have put an end to piracy. the phenicians could not certainly have left out of sight the largest of the islands, which forms the boundary of the ægean sea; and the traditions of the greeks can hardly go wrong if they make this island the centre of the naval supremacy of minos, _i.e._ of the supremacy of the phenicians over the cyclades. crete must have been the mainstay of their activity in the ægean, just as thebes was the point on the mainland where they planted the firmest foot. the title minoa seems to lie at the base of the name of minos, a title borne not only by the island off megara and the city in sicily, but also by two cities in crete (one on the promontory of drepanum, the other in the region of lyctus), by some islands near crete, a city in amorgus, and a city in siphnus. the name minoa (from _navah_) could mean dwelling; it is certain evidence of a phenician settlement. but the phenicians have left traces of their existence in crete beside the names minos and minoa and the forms of worship denoted by them. coins of the cretan cities gortys and phæstus exhibit a bull or a bull-headed man as a stamp. near the cretan city of cydonia the jardanus, _i.e._ the jordan, falls into the sea; the name of the city labana goes back to the phenician word _libanon_, i.e. "white." cnossus, the abode of minos in homer and herodotus,[128] was previously named kairatus; _karath_ in phenician means city. itanus, in crete (_ethanath_ in the semitic form), is expressly stated to be a foundation of the phenicians.[129] with regard to the state of civilisation reached by syria before the year 1500 b.c., we may draw some conclusions from the fact that not merely did the civilisation of egypt influence the shepherds of semitic race who ruled over egypt at that period, but that semitic manners and customs left behind traces in egypt (i. 128). hence we may assume that the syrians carried their wine and their oil to the nile at the time when their kinsmen ruled there (1950-1650 b.c.). the civilisation of syria appears more clearly from the tributes imposed by tuthmosis iii. on syria, which are here and there illustrated by the pictures accompanying the inscriptions of this pharaoh. the burdens imposed on the syrians consist not only of corn, wine, oil and horses; not only of gold, silver and iron, but also of arms and works of art, among which the pictures allow us to recognise carefully-decorated vessels. on the other hand, it is clear from the fact that the babylonian weights and measures were in use in syria at this time (i. 304) that the syrians before this period were in lively intercourse with the land of the euphrates, that even before the sixteenth century b.c. caravans must have traversed the syrian deserts in every direction, and even then the syrians must have exchanged the products of their land for babylonian stuffs and the frankincense which the arabians on their part carried to babylon. the dependence of syria on egypt under the tuthmosis and amenophis can only have augmented the intercourse of the syrians with the land of the nile. afterwards sethos i. (1440-1400) caused wood to be felled on lebanon; it must have been the places on the coast under lebanon which carried to egypt in their ships, along with the wine and oil of the coast and the interior, the wood so necessary there for building and exchanged it for the fabrics of egypt. wood for building could not be conveyed on the backs of camels, and the way by sea from the phenician towns to the mouths of the nile was far easier and less dangerous than the road by land over rocky heights and through sandy deserts. hence, as early as the fifteenth century b.c., we may regard the phenician cities as the central points of a trade branching east and west, which must have been augmented by the fact that they conveyed not only products of the syrian land to the euphrates and the nile, but could also carry the goods which they obtained in exchange in egypt to babylonia, and what they obtained beyond the euphrates to egypt. at the same time the fabrics of babylon and egypt roused them to emulation, and called forth an industry among the phenicians which we see producing woven stuffs, vessels of clay and metal, ornaments and weapons, and becoming pre-eminent in the colouring of stuffs with the liquor of the purple-fish, which are found on the phenician coasts. this industry required above all things metals, of which babylonia and egypt were no less in need, and when the purple-fish of their own coasts were no longer sufficient for their extensive dyeing, colouring-matter had to be obtained. large quantities of these fish produced a proportionately small amount of the dye. copper-ore was found in cyprus, gold in the island of thasos, and purple-fish on the coasts of hellas. when the fall of the kingdom of the hittites and the overthrow of the amorite princes in the south of canaan augmented the numbers of the population on the coast, these cities were no longer content to obtain those possessions of the islands by merely landing and making exchanges with the inhabitants. intercourse with semi-barbarous tribes must be protected by the sword. good harbours were needed where the ships could be sheltered from storm and bad weather, where the crews could find safety from the natives, rest and fresh stores of water and provisions. thus arose protecting forts on the distant islands and coasts, which received the ships of the native land. under the protection of these intercourse could be carried on with the natives, and they were points of support for the collection of the fish and the sinking of mines. in order to obtain the raw material necessary for their industry no less than to carry off the surplus of population, the phenicians were brought to colonise cyprus, rhodes, crete, thera, melos, oliarus, samothrace, imbros, lemnos and thasos. in the bays of laconia and argos, in the straits of euboea,[130] purple-fish were found in extraordinary quantities. the phenicians settled in the island of cythera in the bay of laconia, which, as aristotle says, was once called porphyrussa from its purple-fish,[131] and there erected that ancient temple to the oriental aphrodite, aphrodite in armour, just as in attica in the deme of athmonon they founded the temple of the syrian aphrodite and excavated the tombs on hymettus.[132] midway between the straits of euboea and the bay of corinth, which abounded with purple-fish, rose the strong fortress of the cadmeia, and on acrocorinthus the shrine of ashera. herodotus and thucydides told us above (p. 67) that the carians inhabited the islands of the ægean sea. these were they whom minos had made subject to his dominion. beside this, we are informed more particularly that the carians had possessed the island of rhodes, which lay off their coast, and had dwelt on chios and samos (i. 571). what degree of civilisation was reached by the population of the islands of the ægean sea before the phenicians came into relations with them may be inferred to some extent from the discoveries made in the island of thera. in and beneath three layers of ashes and tufa caused by vast eruptions of the volcanos of this island have been discovered stone instruments, pottery of the most rudimentary kind, in part with the rudest indications of the human face and figure, and beside these weapons of copper and brass. in the upper layers of the tufa we find far better pottery decorated in the phenician style. on melos also, and in the tombs at camirus in rhodes, vessels of the same kind have been discovered; and, finally, in the highest of the layers at thera are gold ornaments of the most various kinds, and ornaments of electron, _i.e._ of mixed gold and silver, all of a workmanship essentially non-hellenic. from these facts we may draw the conclusion that the ships of the phenicians brought to these inhabitants their earliest weapons in brass and copper, their pottery and ornaments; that the carians of the islands, following these patterns, raised their own efforts to a higher stage, and that afterwards the phenicians themselves settled in the islands and made themselves masters of them. perhaps we may even go a step further. in the lower strata of the excavations at hissarlik, on the trojan coast, we find exactly the same primitive pottery, with the same indications of human forms, as in thera, while in the refuse lying above this are idols and pottery adorned after phenician patterns, which correspond exactly to the idols of cyprus, as well as ornaments like those of thera. hence in this region also we may assume that the phenicians gave the impulse and the example to the development of civilisation, and the more so as the name of the city of adramyttion on the trojan coast repeats the name of a phenician foundation on the coast of north africa (adrames, hadrumetum), and even strabo ascribes the worship of the cabiri to some places on the trojan coast.[133] far more definite traces of the phenician style and skill are in existence on the shore of the bay of argos. the ancient tombs which have been recently discovered behind the lions' gate at mycenæ are hewn in the rocks after the manner of the phenicians. as in the ancient burying-places of the phenicians, a perpendicular shaft forms the entrance to the sepulchral chambers; the corpses are laid in them without coffins, as was the most ancient custom in phoenicia. the masks of beaten gold-leaf which were found on the faces of five or six of the corpses buried here are evidence of a custom which the phenicians borrowed from the gilded faces of egyptian coffins.[134] the corpses are covered with gold ornaments and other decorations. there is a large number of weapons and ornaments of gold, silver, copper, brass and glass in the tombs; the execution exhibits a technical skill sometimes more, sometimes less practised. the ornaments remind us of babylonian and assyrian patterns; the idols in burnt clay are in the phenician style; the palm-leaves and palms, antelopes and leopards which frequently occur, point to regions of the east; the articles of amber and the ostrich egg can only have reached the bay of argos in phenician ships. still there are grave reasons for refusing to believe that the persons buried in this tomb are princes of the phenicians. the numerous pieces of armour show that the dead who rest here were buried with their armour, which is not the traditional custom either with regard to the phenicians or the hellenes, but which thucydides quotes as a mark of the tombs of the carians.[135] we learn, moreover, even from the homeric poems, that the carians loved gold ornaments, and further, that the greeks improved their armour after the pattern of the carians (i. 572). as we also find the double axe of the carian god, the "zeus stratius" as the greeks called him, the "axe-god," the chars-el in the carian language (i. 573), on some ornaments of the tombs of mycenæ, the supposition forces itself upon us that carians from the western islands must have occupied the shore of the bay of argos. in any case, the tombs of mycenæ, both from their position and their contents, announce to us that the people who excavated them and placed their dead in them were dependent on the style and skill of the phenicians. can we fix the time at which the phenicians first set foot on the islands of hellas? herodotus tells us that troy was taken in the third generation after the death of minos.[136] if we put three full generations, according to the calculation of herodotus, between the death of minos and the conquest of ilium, the first event took place 100 years before the second. since, according to the data of herodotus, the capture of ilium falls in the year 1280 or 1260 b.c., minos would have died in the year 1380 or 1360 b.c. the landing of the phenicians on thasos and the expedition of cadmus from phoenicia beyond the islands to boeotia are placed by herodotus five generations before heracles, and heracles is placed 900 years before his own time. if we reckon upwards from the year 450 or 430 b.c., heracles lived about the year 1350 or 1330 b.c., and cadmus five generations, _i.e._ 166-2/3 years, before this date, or about the year 1516 or 1496 b.c.[137] on the island of thera, herodotus further remarks, the phenicians whom cadmus left behind him there had dwelt for eight generations, _i.e._ 266-2/3 years, before the dorians came to the island.[138] melos was also occupied by dorians, who asserted in 416 b.c. that their community had been in existence 700 years,[139] according to which statement the dorians came to melos in the year 1116 b.c. with this event the phenician rule over the island came to an end. if we assume that thera, which is close by melos, was taken from the phenicians by the dorians at the same time as the latter island, the eight generations given by herodotus for the settlements of the phenicians on thera would carry us back to the year 1382 b.c. (1116 + 266-2/3), a date which is certainly in agreement with his statement about the death of minos, but contradicts the date given for cadmus, who yet, according to the narrative of herodotus, left behind the settlers on thera and thasos when he first sailed to boeotia. herodotus fixes dates according to generations and the genealogies of legend. the five generations which separated cadmus from heracles were for him, no doubt, polydorus, labdacus, laius, oedipus and polynices; for the three generations between the death of minos and the capture of troy we find in homer only two, deucalion and idomeneus.[140] but we can still find from herodotus' calculations how far back the greeks placed the beginning and the end of the empire of the phenicians over their islands and coasts. beyond this the chronographers do not give us any help. eusebius and hieronymus (jerome) place the rape of europa in the year 1429 or 1426 b.c.; the rule of cadmus at thebes in the year 1427 b.c. or 1319 (1316) b.c.; the settlement of the phenicians on thera, melos, and thasos in the year 1415 b.c.; the beginning of the rule of minos in the year 1410 b.c., or, according to another computation, in the year 1251 b.c.[141] we can hardly obtain fixed points for determining the time of the settlements of the phenicians in the ægean sea. in the lower strata of the excavations at hissarlik, on the coast of troas, clay lentils have been found with cyprian letters upon them.[142] since the greeks declared that they learnt their alphabet from the phenicians and cadmus, and since as a fact it is the alphabet of the phenicians which lies at the root of the greek, the cyprian letters can only have been brought thither by phenician ships from cyprus before the discovery of the phenician letters, or from the islands off the trojan coast occupied by the phenicians, from lemnos, imbros and samothrace; otherwise they must have come to the troad at a later time by cyprian ships or settlers, a supposition which is forbidden by the antiquity of the other remains discovered with or near the lentils. among the sons of japheth, the representative of the northern nations, genesis mentions javan, _i.e._ the ionian, the greek; and enumerates the sons of javan: elisha, tarshish, chittim, and dodanim or rodanim--the reading is uncertain.[143] it is a question whether the genealogical table in genesis belongs to the first or second text of the pentateuch, _i.e._ whether it was written down in the middle of the eleventh or of the tenth century b.c. in any case it follows that in the beginning of the eleventh or tenth century b.c. the name and nation of the ionians was known not only in the harbour-cities of phoenicia, but in the interior of syria, and the inhabitants of the islands and of the northern coasts of the mediterranean were reckoned in the stock of these ionians. chittim is, as was remarked above, primarily the island of cyprus; the rodanim are the inhabitants of rhodes (dodanim would have to be referred to dodona); elisha is elis in the peloponnese, or the island of sicily, if the name is not one given generally to western coasts and islands;[144] tarshish is tartessus, _i.e._ the region at the mouth of the guadalquivir. if ezekiel mentions the purple which the phenicians bring from "the isles of elishah,"[145] the islands and coasts of the ægean sea are plainly meant, on which the phenicians collected the fish for their purple dye. this much is clear, that at least about the year 1000 b.c. not only the islands and coasts of the ægean were known in syria, but even then the name of the distant land of tarshish was current in syria. we shall further see that as early as 1100 b.c. phenician ships had passed the straits of gibraltar. hence we may conclude that the phenicians must have set foot on cyprus about the year 1250 b.c., and on the islands and coasts of hellas about the year 1200 b.c. thucydides observes that in ancient times the phenicians had occupied the promontories of sicily and the small islands lying around sicily, in order to carry on trade with the sicels.[146] diodorus siculus tells us that when the phenicians extended their trade to the western ocean they settled in the island of melite (malta), owing to its situation in the middle of the sea and excellent harbours, in order to have a refuge for their ships. the island of gaulus also, which lies close to melite, is said to have been a colony of the phenicians.[147] on the south-eastern promontory of malta there was a temple of heracles-melkarth,[148] the foundation walls of which appear to be still in existence, and still more definite evidence of the former population of this island is given by the phenician inscriptions found there. the island, like the mother-country, carried on weaving, and the products were much sought after in antiquity. on gaulus also, a name mentioned on phenician coins, are the remains of a phenician temple. between sicily and the coast of africa, where it approaches sicily most nearly, lay the island of cossyra, coins of which bear phenician legends. along with a dwarfish figure they present the name "island of the sons,"[149] _i.e._ no doubt, the children of the sun-god whom we met with in rhodes. on the east coast of sicily there lay, on a small promontory scarcely connected with the mainland (now isola degli magnisi), the city of thapsos, the name of which reveals its founders; _tiphsach_ means coming over, here coming over to the mainland. in the same way the promontory of pachynus (_pachun_ means wart), further to the south, and the harbour of phoenicus are evidence of phenician colonisation. on the south coast of sicily, not far from the mouth of the halycus, the phenicians built that city which is known to the greeks as makara and minoa, or heracleaminoa; the coins of the city present in phenician characters the name rus-melkart, _i.e._ "head (promontory) of melkarth."[150] off the west coast of sicily the phenicians occupied the small island of motye.[151] on this coast of the larger island, on mount eryx, which rises steeply out of a bald table land (2000 feet above the sea), they founded the city of eryx, and on the summit of the mount, 5000 feet high, they built a temple to the syrian aphrodite. in diodorus it is eryx the son of aphrodite who builds this temple; æneas then adorns it with many votive offerings, "since it was dedicated to his mother."[152] virgil represents the temple as being founded on the summit of eryx, near to the stars, in honour of venus idalia, _i.e._ the goddess worshipped at idalion (idial) on cyprus by the immigrants from the east, who, with him, are the companions of æneas.[153] the courtezans at this temple, the sensual character of the worship, and the sacred doves kept here (in a red one the goddess herself was supposed to be seen[154]), even without the phenician inscriptions found there, would leave no doubt of its syrian origin. the mighty substructure of the building is still in existence. dædalus is said to have built it for the king of the sicanians (p. 64). beside the syrian goddess, the phenicians also worshipped here the syrian god baal melkarth. according to the account of diodorus, heracles overcame eryx in wrestling, and so took his land from him, though he left the usufruct of it to the inhabitants.[155] the kings of sparta traced their origin to heracles. when dorieus, the son of anaxandridas, king of sparta, desired to emigrate in his anger that the crown had fallen to his brother cleomenes, the oracle bade him retire to eryx; the land of eryx belonged to the heraclids because their ancestor won it. the carthaginians, it is true, did not acknowledge this right; dorieus was slain, and most of those who followed him.[156] on the north coast of sicily, panormus (palermo) and soloeis were the most important colonies of the phenicians. panormus, on coins of the phenicians machanath, _i.e._ the camp, worshipped the goddess of the sexual passion; soloeis (_sela_, rock) worshipped melkarth. in a hymn to aphrodite, sappho inquires whether she lingers in cyprus or at panormus.[157] motye, soloeis and panormus were in the fifth century the strongest outposts of the carthaginians in sicily.[158] on sardinia also, as diodorus tells us, the phenicians planted many colonies.[159] the mountains of sardinia contained iron, silver, and lead. according to the legend of the greeks, sardus, the son of makeris, as the libyans called heracles, first came with libyans to the island. then heracles sent his brother's son iolaus, together with his own sons, whom he had begotten in attica, to sardinia. as heracles had been lord of the whole west, these regions belonged of right to iolaus and his companions. iolaus conquered the native inhabitants, took possession of and divided the best and most level portion of the land which was afterwards known by the name of iolaus; then he sent for dædalus out of sicily and erected large buildings, which, diodorus adds, are still in existence; but in sicily temples were erected to himself, and honour paid as to a hero, and a famous shrine was erected in agyrion, "where," as diodorus remarks of this his native city, "even to this day yearly sacrifices are offered."[160] makeris, the supposed father of sardus, is, like makar, a form of the name melkarth. if sardinia and the whole west as well as eryx is said to have belonged to heracles, if heracles sends out his nearest relations to sardinia, if the artist dædalus is his companion here as he was the companion of minos in crete and sicily, it becomes obvious that the temples of baal melkarth on the coasts of sardinia and sicily lie at the base of these legends of the greeks, that it was the phenicians who brought the worship of their god along with their colonies to these coasts, to which they were led by the wealth of the sardinian mountains in copper. as we already ventured to suppose (i. 368), iolaus may be an epithet or a special form of baal.[161] the legend of the greeks makes heracles, _i.e._ baal melkarth, lord of the whole west. as a fact, the colonies of the phenicians went beyond sardinia in this direction. their first colonies on the north coast of africa appear to have been planted where the shore runs out nearest sicily; hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony.[162] in the legends of the coins mentioned above (p. 53) hippo is named beside tyre and citium as a daughter of sidon. when a second hippo was afterwards founded further to the west, opposite the south coast of sardinia, at the mouth of the ubus, the old hippo got the name of "ippoacheret," and among the greeks "hippon zarytos," _i.e._ "the other hippo."[163] ityke (_atak_, settlement, utica), on the mouth of the bagradas (medsherda), takes the next place after this hippo, if indeed it was not founded before it. aristotle tells us that the phenicians stated that ityke was built 287 years before carthage,[164] and pliny maintains that ityke was founded 1178 years before his time.[165] as carthage was founded in the year 846 b.c. (below, chap. 11), ityke, according to aristotle's statement, was built in the year 1133 b.c. with this the statement of pliny agrees. he wrote in the years 52-77 a.d., and therefore he places the foundation of ityke in the year 1126 or 1100 b.c. about the same time, _i.e._ about the year 1100 b.c., the phenicians had already reached much further to the west. in his phenician history, claudius iolaus tells us that archaleus (arkal, heracles[166]), the son of phoenix, built gadeira (gades).[167] "from ancient times," such is the account of diodorus, "the phenicians carried on an uninterrupted navigation for the sake of trade, and planted many colonies in africa, and not a few in europe, in the regions lying to the west. and when their undertakings succeeded according to their desire and they had collected great treasures, they resolved to traverse the sea beyond the pillars of heracles, which is called oceanus. first of all, on their passage through these pillars, they founded upon a peninsula of europe a city which they called gadeira, and erected works suitable to the place, chiefly a beautiful temple to heracles, with splendid offerings according to the custom of the phenicians. and as this temple was honoured at that time, so also in later times down to our own days it was held in great reverence. when the phenicians, in order to explore the coasts beyond the pillars, took their course along the shore of libya, they were carried away far into the oceanus by a strong wind, and after being driven many days by the storm they came to a large island opposite libya, where the fertility was so great and the climate so beautiful that it seemed by the abundance of blessings found there to be intended for the dwelling of the gods rather than men."[168] strabo says, the gaditani narrated that an oracle bade the tyrians send a colony to the pillars of heracles. when those who had been sent reached the straits of mount calpe they were of opinion that the promontories which enclosed the passage, calpe and the opposite headland of abilyx in libya,[169] were the pillars which bounded the earth, and the limit of the travels of heracles, which the oracle mentioned. so they landed on this side of the straits, at the spot where the city of the axitani (sexi) now stands; but since the sacrifices were not favourable there they turned back. those sent out after them sailed through the straits, and cast anchor at an island sacred to heracles, 1500 stades beyond the pillars, opposite the city of onoba in iberia; but as the sacrifices were again unfavourable they also again turned home. finally, a third fleet landed on a little island 750 stades beyond mount calpe, close to the mainland, and not far from the mouth of the bætis. here, on the east side of the island, they built a temple to heracles; on the opposite side of the island they built the city of gadeira, and on the extreme western point the temple of cronos. in the temple of heracles there were two fountains and "two pillars of brass, eight cubits in height, on which is recorded the cost of the building of this temple."[170] this foundation of gades, which on the coins is called gadir and agadir, _i.e._ wall, fortification, the modern cadiz, and without doubt the most ancient city in europe which has preserved its name, is said to have taken place in the year 1100 b.c.[171] if ityke was founded before 1100 b.c. or about that time, we have no reason to doubt the founding of gades soon after that date. hence the ships of the phenicians would have reached the ocean about the time when tiglath pilesar i. left the tigris with his army, trod the north of syria, and looked on the mediterranean. the marvellous and impressive aspect of the rocky gate which opens a path for the waves of the mediterranean to the boundless waters of the atlantic ocean might implant in the phenician mariners who first passed beyond it the belief that they had found in these two mountains the pillars which the god set up to mark the end of the earth; in the endless ocean beyond them they could easily recognise the western sea in which their sun-god went to his rest. that gades, on the shore of the sea into which the sun went down, was especially zealous in the worship of melkarth, that the descent of the god into the western ocean (the supposed death of heracles[172]) and the awakening of the god with the sun of the spring were here celebrated with especial emphasis, is a fact which requires no explanation. the legends of the hesperides, the daughters of the west, in whose garden melkarth celebrates the holy marriage with astarte (i. 371), of the islands of the blest in the western sea, appear to have a local background in the luxuriant fertility and favoured climate of madeira and the canary islands. the land off the coast of which gades lay, the valley of the guadalquivir, was named by the phenicians tarsis (tarshish), and by the greeks tartessus. the genealogical table in genesis places tarsis among the sons of javan. the prophet ezekiel represents the ships of tarshish as bringing silver, iron, tin and lead to tyre. "the ships of tarshish," so he says to the city of tyre, "were thy caravans; so wert thou replenished and very glorious in the midst of the sea."[173] the sicilian stesichorus of himera expresses himself in more extravagant terms. he sang of the "fountains of tartessus (the guadalquivir) rooted in silver." the greeks represent the tartessus, the river which brought down gold, tin, iron in its waters, as springing from the silver mountain,[174] and according to herodotus the first greek ship, a merchantman of samos, which was driven about the year 630 b.c. by a storm from the east to tartessus, made a profit of 60 talents.[175] aristotle tells us that the first phenicians who sailed to tartessus obtained so much silver in exchange for things of no value that the ships could not carry the burden, so that the phenicians left behind the tackle and even the anchor they had brought with them and made new tackle of silver.[176] poseidonius says that among that people it was not hades, but plutus, who dwelt in the under-world. once the forests had been burned, and the silver and gold, melted by an enormous fire, flowed out on the surface; every hill and mountain became a heap of gold and silver. on the north-west of this land the ground shone with silver, tin and white gold mixed with silver. this soil the rivers washed down with them. the women drew water from the river and poured it through sieves, so that nothing but gold, silver and tin remained in the sieve.[177] diodorus tells the same story of the ancient burning of the forests on the pyrenees (from which fire they got their name), by which the silver ore was rendered fluid and oozed from the mountains, so that many streams were formed of pure silver. to the native inhabitants the value of silver was so little known that the phenicians obtained it in exchange for small presents, and gained great treasures by carrying the silver to asia and all other nations. the greed of the merchants went so far that when the ships were laden, and there was still a large quantity of silver remaining, they took off the lead from the anchors and replaced it with silver. strabo assures us that the land through which the bætis flows was not surpassed in fertility and all the blessings of earth and sea by any region in the world; neither gold nor silver, copper nor iron, was found anywhere else in such abundance and excellence. the gold was not only dug up, but also obtained by washing, as the rivers and streams brought down sands of gold. in the sands of gold pieces were occasionally found half-a-pound in weight, and requiring very little purification. stone salt was also found there, and there was abundance of house cattle and sheep, which produced excellent wool, of corn and wine. the coast of the shore beyond the pillars was covered with shell-fish and large purple-fish, and the sea was rich in fish (the tunnies and the tartessian murena so much sought after in antiquity),[178] which the ebb and flow of the tide brought up to the beach. corn, wine, the best oil, wax, honey, pitch and cinnabar were exported from this fortunate land.[179] if the phenicians were able in the thirteenth century to settle upon cyprus and rhodes, the islands of the ægean and the coasts of hellas, their population must have been numerous, their industry active, their trade lucrative. that subsequently in the twelfth century they also took into possession the coasts of sicily, sardinia and north africa by means of their colonies is a proof that the request for the raw products and metals of the west was very lively and increasing in syria and in egypt, in assyria and babylonia. the market of these lands must have been very remunerative to the phenicians in order to induce them to make their discoveries, their distant voyages and remote settlements. if the phenicians about the year 1100 b.c. were in a position to discover the straits of gibraltar, the fact shows us that they must have practised navigation for a long time. the horizon of the greek mariner ended even in the ninth century in the waters of sicily, and in the fifth century b.c. the voyage of a greek ship from the syrian coast to the pillars of heracles occupied 80 days.[180] after the founding of gades the phenicians ruled over the whole length of the mediterranean by their harbour fortresses and factories. their ships crossed the long basin in every direction, and everywhere they found harbours of safety. they showed themselves no less apt and inventive in the arts of navigation than the babylonians had shown themselves in technical inventions and astronomy; they were bolder and more enterprising than the assyrians in the campaigns which the latter attempted at the time when the phenicians were building gades; they were more venturesome and enduring on the water than their tribesmen the arabians on the sandy sea of the desert. in the possession of the ancient civilisation of the east their mariners and merchants presented the same contrast to the thracians and hellenes, the sicels, the libyans and iberians which the portuguese and the spaniards presented 2500 years later to the tribes of america. footnotes: [63] robinson, "palestine," 3, 710. [64] tac. "hist." 5, 6. [65] rénan, "mission de phénicie," p. 836. [66] vol. i. pp. 344, 345. [67] vol. i. p. 151. [68] vol. i. p. 153. [69] vol. i. p. 344. [70] the legend runs, "from the sidonians, mother of kamb, ippo, kith(?), sor," movers, "phoeniz." 2, 134. [71] isaiah xxiii. 1, 19; jeremiah ii. 10; ezekiel xxvii. 6; joseph. "antiq." 1, 6, 1. [72] virgil, "æn." 1, 619, 620. [73] brandis, "monatsberichte berl. akad." 1873, s. 645 ff. [74] herod. 7, 90. [75] stephan. byz. [greek: amathous]. [76] "odyss." 8, 362; tac. "annal." 2, 3; pausan. 1, 14, 6; pompon. mela, 2, 7. [77] vol. i. p. 359. [78] joseph. "in apion." 1, 18; "antiq." 8, 5, 3, 9, 14, 2. [79] movers, "phoeniz." 2, 239, 240. [80] diod. 5, 56. [81] in homer europa is not the daughter of agenor but of phoenix ("il." 14, 321), just as cadmus, thasos, and europa are sometimes children of agenor and sometimes of phoenix. in hdt. 1, 2 it is cretans who carry off europa, the daughter of the king of tyre. [82] diod. 4, 2, 60; 5, 56, 57, 58, 48, 49. [83] ephor. frag. 12, ed. müller. [84] herod. 4, 147; 2, 45, 49; 5, 58, 59. [85] frag. 8, 9, ed. müller. [86] frag. 40-42, 43-45, ed. müller. [87] frag. 163, ed. müller. [88] "theog." 937, 975; pind. "pyth." 3, 88 _seqq._ [89] movers, "phoeniz." 1, 129, 131. [90] plut. "pelop." c. 19. [91] pind. "olymp." 2, 141. [92] vol. i. 271. [93] movers, "phoeniz." 1, 517. [94] thac. 1, 8. [95] vol. i. 363, 364. [96] athenæus, p. 360. [97] diod. 5, 58. [98] boeckh. c. i. g. 2526. [99] hefter, "götterdienste auf rhodos," 3, 18; welcker, "mythologie," 1, 145; brandis, "munzwesen," s. 587. [100] schol. pind. "pyth." 4, 88; pausan. 3, 1, 7, 8; steph. byz. [greek: membliaros]. [101] boeckh. c. i. g. 2448. [102] herod. 4, 147; steph. byz. [greek: mêlos]. [103] steph. byz. [greek: ôliaros]. [104] strabo, pp. 346, 457, 472; diod. 5, 47. [105] vol. i. 378; herod. 2, 51; conze, "inseln des thrakischen meeres," _e.g._ s. 91. [106] strabo, p. 473; steph. byz. [greek: imbros]; vol. i. 378. [107] herod. 2, 44; 6, 47. [108] herod. 1, 105; pausan. 1, 14, 7; 3, 23, 1. [109] pausan. 10, 11, 5; boeckh, "metrologie," s. 45. [110] pausan. 1, 2, 5; 1, 14, 6, 7. [111] strabo, p. 377; pausan. 1, 32, 5. [112] [greek: athênaion s' g'], 1877, and below, chap. xi. [113] brandis, "hermes," 2, 275 ff. i cannot agree in all points with the deductions of this extremely acute inquiry. [114] "il." 14, 321; 18, 593; "odyss." 19, 178; 11, 568. [115] "odyss." 11, 523. [116] diod. 4, 60. [117] serv. ad "æneid." 6, 30. [118] hesych. [greek: ep' eurugun agôn]; plut. "thes." c. 15; diod. 4, 65. [119] apollodor. 1, 9, 26; suidas, [greek: sardônios gelôs]. [120] herod. 7, 110. [121] diod. 4, 76-78; schol. callim. "hymn. in jovem," 8. [122] istri frag. 47, ed. müller. [123] istri frag. 33, ed. müller. [124] müllenhoff, "deutsche alterthumskunde," i. 222. [125] plato, "minos," pp. 262, 266, 319, 321; "de. legg," _init._; aristot. "pol." 2, 8, 1, 2; 7, 9, 2. [126] herod. 1, 171; 3, 122; 7, 169-171. [127] herod. 1, 4. [128] herod. 3, 122. [129] strabo, p. 476; steph. byz. [greek: itanos]. [130] pausan. 3, 21, 6. [131] aristotle, in steph. byz. [greek: kythêra]. [132] above, p. 63. [133] strabo, p. 479. [134] below, chap. 11. [135] thuc. 1, 8. [136] herod. 7, 171. [137] herod. 2, 44, 145. [138] herod. 4, 147. [139] thuc. 5, 112. [140] herod. 5, 89; "il." 13, 451; "odyss." 19, 178. [141] euseb. "chron." 2, p. 34 _seqq._ ed. schöne. even in diodorus, 4, 60, we find two minoses, an older and a younger. [142] lenormant, "antiq. de la troade," p. 32. [143] genesis x. 2-4: 1 chron. i. 5-7. [144] kiepert, "monatsberichte berl. akad." 1859. [145] ezek. xxvii. 7. [146] thuc. vi. 2. [147] diod. v. 12. [148] ptolem. 4, 3, 47. [149] _ai benim_; movers, "phoeniz." 2, 355, 359, 362. [150] heracl. pont. frag. 29, ed. müller; gesen. "monum." p. 293; olshausen, "rh. mus." 1852, s. 328. [151] thuc. 6, 2. [152] diod. 4, 83. [153] "æn." 5, 760. [154] diod. 4, 83; strabo, p. 272; athenæus, p. 374; aelian, "hist. an." 4, 2; 10, 50. [155] diod. 4, 23. [156] herod. 5, 43. [157] steph. byz. [greek: solous]. sapphon. frag. 6, ed. bergk; it is possible that panormus on crete may be meant. [158] thuc. 6, 2. [159] diod. 5, 35. [160] diod. 4, 24, 29, 30; 5, 15; arist. "de mirab. ausc." c. 104; pausan. 10, 17, 2. [161] movers ("phoeniz." 1, 536) assumes that iolaus may be identical with esmun (i. 377). [162] sallust, "jugurtha," 19, 1. [163] movers, _loc. cit._ s. 144. [164] "de mirab. ausc." c. 146. [165] "hist. nat." 16, 79. [166] arkal or archal may mean "fire of the all," "light of the all." [167] etym. magn. [greek: gadeira]. [168] diod. 5, 19, 20. [169] on the meaning given in avienus ("ora marit") of abila as "high mountain," and calpa as "big-bellied jar," cf. müllenhoff, "deutsche alterthumsk," 1, 83. [170] strabo, pp. 169-172. justin (44, 5) represents the tyrians as founding gades in consequence of a dream. in regard to the name cf. avien. "ora marit," 267-270. [171] movers, "phoeniz." 2, 622. strabo (p. 48) puts the first settlements of the phenicians in the midst of the libyan coast and at gades just after the trojan war, velleius (1, 2, 6, in combination with 1, 8, 4), in the year 1100 b.c. cf. movers, _loc. cit._ s. 148, note 90. the greeks called both land and river tartessus. the pillars of the tyrian god "archaleus," are with them the pillars of their "heracles," which he sets up as marks of his campaigns. here, opposite the mouth of the tartessus, they place the island erythea, _i.e._ the red island on which the giant geryon, _i.e._ "the roarer," guards the red oxen of the sun: erythea is one of the islands near cadiz; müllenhoff, deutsche "alterthumsk:" 1, 134 ff. [172] sall. "jugurtha," c. 19. [173] ezek. xxvii. 12, 25. [174] in strabo, p. 148; müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ 1, 81. [175] herod. 4, 152. [176] "de mirab. ausc." c. 147. [177] in strabo, p. 148. [178] aristoph. "ranae," 475. [179] diod. 5, 35; strabo, p. 144 _seqq._ [180] scylax, "peripl." c. 111. chapter iv. the tribes of israel. not far removed from the harbour-cities, whose ships discovered the land of silver, which carried the natural wealth of the west to the lands of the euphrates and tigris, and the nile, in order to exchange them for the productions of those countries, in part immediately upon the borders of the marts which united the east and the west, and side by side with them, dwelt the israelites on the heights and in the valleys which they had conquered, in very simple and original modes of life. even during the war against the ancient population of canaan, immediately after the first successes against the amorites, they had, as we have seen, dropped any common participation in the struggle, any unity under one leader. according to their numbers and bravery, and the resistance encountered, the various tribes had won larger or smaller territories, better or inferior districts. immigration and conquest did not lead among the israelites to a combination of their powers under the supremacy of one leader, but rather to separation into clans and cantons, which was also favoured by the nature of the country conquered, a district lying in unconnected parts, and possessing no central region adapted for governing the whole. thus, after the settlement, the life of the nation became divided into separate circles according to the position and character of the mountain canton which the particular tribe had obtained, and the fortune which it had experienced. even if there was an invasion of the enemy, the tribe attacked was left to defend itself as well as it could. it was only very rarely, and in times of great danger, that the nobles and elders of the whole land, and a great number of the men of war from all the tribes, were collected round the sacred ark at shiloh, at bethel, at mizpeh, or at gilgal for common counsel or common defence. but even when a resolution was passed by the nobles and elders and the people, individual tribes sometimes resisted, even by force of arms, the expressed will of the nation, or at least of a great part of the nobles and people, and the division of the tribes sometimes led even to open war. within the tribes also there was no fixed arrangement, no fixed means for preserving peace. the clans and families for the most part possessed separate valleys, glens, or heights. the heads of the oldest families were also the governors of these cantons, and composed the differences between the members of the clan, canton, or city by their decisions; while in other places bold and successful warriors at the head of voluntary bands made acquisitions, in which the descendants of the leader took the rank of elder and judge. eminent houses of this kind, together with the heads of families of ancient descent, formed the order of nobles and elders; "who hold the judge's staff in their hands, and ride on spotted asses with beautiful saddles, while the common people go afoot."[181] if a tribe fell into distress and danger, the nobles and elders assembled and took counsel, while the people stood round, unless some man of distinction had already risen and summoned the tribe to follow him. for the people did not adhere exclusively to the chief of the oldest family in the canton; nobles and others within, and in special cases without, the tribe, who had obtained a prominent position by warlike actions, or by the wisdom of their decisions, whose position and power promised help, protection and the accomplishment of the sentence, were invited to remove strife and differences, unless the contending persons preferred to help themselves. only the man who could not help himself sought, as a rule, the decision of the elder or judge. the names of some of the men whose decision was sought in that time have been preserved in the tradition of the israelites. tholah of the tribe of issachar, jair of the land of gilead, ebzan of bethlehem in the tribe of judah, elon of the tribe of zebulun, and abdon of ephraim, are all mentioned as judges of note. of jair we are told that he had 30 sons, who rode on 30 asses, and possessed 30 villages. ebzan is also said to have had 30 sons and to have married 30 daughters; while abdon had 40 sons and 30 grandsons, who rode on 70 asses.[182] on the heights and table-lands of the districts east of the jordan, in the land of gilead, were settled the tribes of reuben and gad and a part of the tribe of manasseh. at an early period they grew together, so that the name of the region sometimes represents the names of these tribes. here the pastoral life and breeding of cattle remained predominant, as in the less productive districts on the west of the jordan. but on the plains and in the valleys of the west the greater part of the settlers devoted themselves to the culture of the vine and agriculture. the walls of the ancient cities were at first used as a protection against the attacks of robbers, or raids of enemies; the inhabitants, afterwards as before, planted their fields and vineyards outside the gates.[183] but the custom of dwelling together led to the beginnings of civic life, industrial skill, and common order. the trade of the phenicians, which touched the land of the hebrews here and there, and the more advanced culture of the cities of the coast, could not remain without influence on the hebrews. the religious feeling which separated the israelites from the canaanites was not more thoroughly effective than the community of blood and the contrast to the ancient population of the land in bringing about the combination and union of the israelites. the religious life was as much without organisation as the civic; on the contrary, as the israelites spread as settlers over a larger district, the unity and connection of religious worship which moses previously established again fell to the ground. it is true, the sacred ark remained at shiloh, five leagues to the north of bethel, under the sacred tent in the land of the tribe of ephraim. at this place a festival was held yearly in honour of jehovah, to which the israelites assembled to offer prayer and sacrifice. on other occasions also people went to shiloh to offer sacrifice.[184] the priestly office in the sacred tent at the sacred ark remained with the descendants of aaron, in the family of phinehas, the son of eleazar, the eldest son of aaron (i. 497). but with the settlement a number of other places of sacrifice had risen up beside the sanctuary at shiloh. on the heights and under the oaks at ramah in the land of benjamin, at mizpeh in the same district, as well as at mizpeh beyond jordan, where jacob and laban had parted in peace,[185] at bethel on the borders of the land of ephraim and benjamin, where abraham sacrificed (between bethel and ai) and jacob received the name of israel;[186] finally at gilgal on the east of jordan, where joshua lay encamped, and kept the passover, before he attacked jericho, jehovah was invoked. at these places also the firstlings of the fruits were offered; goats, rams, and bulls were offered, with or without the intervention of the priest, and inquiry made for the will of jehovah without priestly help or intervention. any one who set up an altar established a priest there, or hired a priest. for this purpose men were chosen who claimed to be of the race of moses and aaron, just as the service of the sacred ark at shiloh was in the hands of this family; but men of other origin and tribes were not excluded even from the priesthood at the ark.[187] in such a want of any defined and influential position of the priesthood, in the want of any church organisation, it was only the superior personal power of the priests at shiloh which could protect the religious feeling and traditional custom against the influences of the new surroundings, and canaanitish rites. tradition, at any rate from the first third of the eleventh century b.c., had no good to tell of the morals of the priests at shiloh. to those who came to bring an offering the servant of the priest said, "give flesh to roast for the priest; he will not have it sodden but raw." if the person sacrificing replied, "we will burn only the fat, then take what you desire," the servant answered, "you must give it me now, and if you will not i shall take it by force." if the priest desired cooked flesh from the sacrifice, he sent his servant, who struck with his three-pronged fork into the cauldron, and what he brought out was the priest's. the religious views of the israelites, not sufficiently represented among themselves, were the more exposed to the influence of the rites of the canaanites, as these rites belonged to tribes of kindred nature and character. in this way it came about that the canaanitish gods baal and astarte were worshipped beside jehovah, the god of israel, and that in one or two places the old worship was perhaps entirely driven out by these new gods. but even where this did not take place, it was owing to the example and impulse of the syrian modes of worship that images were here and there set up on the altars of jehovah. when the conception of the divine nature in the spirit of a nation passes beyond the first undefined feeling and intimation,--when it receives a plainer and more expressive shape in the minds of men, and the first steps of artistic and technical skill, or the example of neighbours, are coincident with this advance,--the general result is that men desire to see the ruling powers fixed in distinct forms, then the gods are presented in a realistic manner in visible forms and images. and thus it was among the israelites. the command of moses given in opposition to the images of egypt (i. 354) was long since forgotten. michah, a man of the tribe of ephraim, caused a goldsmith to make a carved and molten image of jehovah of 200 shekels of silver; and set it up in a temple on mount ephraim, establishing as a priest a levite, the "descendant of moses." when a part of dan marched northwards in order to win for themselves abodes there, which they could not conquer from the philistines, the men of dan carried off this image along with the levite and set it up in the city of laish (dan), which they took from the sidonians (i. 371), and the "grandson of moses" and his descendants continued to be priests before this image.[188] at nob also there was a gilded image of jehovah, and many had teraphim, or images of gods in the form of men, in their houses.[189] nothing important was undertaken before inquiry was made of the will of jehovah. the inquiry was made as a rule by casting lots before the sacred tabernacle at shiloh, before the altars and images of jehovah,[190] or by questioning the priests and soothsayers. counsel was also taken of these if a cow had gone astray, and they received in return bread or a piece of money. of the feuds which the tribes of israel carried on at this time, some have remained in remembrance.[191] the concubine of a levite, so we are told in the book of judges, who dwelt on mount ephraim, ran away from her husband; she went back to her father, to bethlehem in judah. her husband rose and followed her, pacified her, and then set out on his return. the first evening they reached the city of the jebusites, but the levite would not pass the night among the canaanites (i. 500), and turned aside to gibeah, a place in the tribe of benjamin. here no one received the travellers; they were compelled to remain in the street till an old man came home late in the evening from his work in the field. when he heard that the traveller was from ephraim he received him into his house, for he was himself an ephraimite, gave fodder to the asses of the levite and his concubine, and placed his attendant with his own servants. then they washed their feet, and drank, and their hearts were merry. but the men of gibeah collected round the house in the evening, pressed on the door, and demanded that the stranger from ephraim should be given up to them; they wished to destroy him. in order to save himself the priest gave up to them his concubine, that they might satisfy their passions on her. the men of gibeah abused her the whole night through, so that next morning she lay dead upon the threshold. the levite went with the corpse to his home at ephraim, cut it into twelve pieces with a knife, and sent a piece to each tribe. every one who saw it said, "the like was never heard since israel came out of egypt." and the chiefs of the nation assembled and pronounced a curse upon him who did not come to mizpah (in the land of benjamin) that he should be put to death. then all the tribes assembled at mizpah, it is said about 400,000 men;[192] only from jabesh in gilead and the tribe of benjamin no one came. the levite told what had happened to him, and the tribes sent messengers to benjamin, to bring the men of gibeah. but the children of benjamin refused, and assembled their men of war, more than 26,000 in number, and took up arms. then the people rose up and said, "cursed be he who gives a wife to benjamin."[193] every tenth man was sent back for supplies; the rest marched out against benjamin. but "benjamin was a ravening wolf, who ate up the spoil at morning and divided the booty in the evening;" they were mighty archers, and could throw with the left hand as well as the right.[194] they fought twice at gibeah with success against their countrymen. not till the third contest did the israelites gain the victory, and then only by an ambuscade and counterfeit flight. after this overthrow the whole tribe is said to have been massacred, the flocks and herds destroyed, and the cities burnt. only 600 men, as we are told, escaped to the rock rimmon on the dead sea. when the community again assembled at bethel the people were troubled that a tribe should be extirpated and wanting in israel; so they caused peace and a safe return to be proclaimed to the remainder of benjamin. and when 12,000 men were sent out against jabesh to punish the city because none of their inhabitants came to the gathering at mizpeh, they were ordered to spare the maidens of jabesh. in obedience to this command they brought 400 maidens back from jabesh, and these were given to the benjamites. but as this number was insufficient the benjamites were allowed, when the yearly festival was held at shiloh (p. 92), and the daughters of shiloh came out to dance before the city, to rush out from the vineyards and carry off wives for themselves. thus does tradition explain the non-execution of the decree that no israelite should give his daughter to wife to a man of benjamin, and the rescue of the tribe of benjamin from destruction.[195] without unity and connection in their political and religious life, amid the quarrels and feuds of the tribes, families and individuals, when every one helped and avenged himself, and violence and cruelty abounded,--in the lawless condition when "every one in israel did what was right in his own eyes,"--the israelites were in danger of becoming the prey of every external foe, and it was a question whether they could long maintain the land they had won. it was fortunate that there was no united monarchy at the head either of the philistines or the phenicians, that the latter were intent on other matters, as their colonies in the mediterranean, while the cities of the philistines, though they acquired a closer combination as early as the eleventh century b.c., or even earlier (i. 348), did not, at least at first, go out to make foreign conquests. but it was unavoidable that the old population, especially in the north, where they remained in the greatest numbers amongst the israelites, should again rise and find strong points of support in the canaanite princes of hazor and damascus; that the moabites who lay to the east of the dead sea, the ammonites, the neighbours of the land of gilead, that the wandering tribes of the syrian desert should feel themselves tempted to invade israel, to carry off the flocks and plunder the harvests and, if they found no vigorous resistance, to take up a permanent settlement in the country. without the protection of natural borders, without combination and guidance, as they were, the israelites could only succeed in resisting such attacks when in the time of danger a skilful and brave warrior was found, who was able to rouse his own tribe, and perhaps one or two of the neighbouring tribes, to a vigorous resistance, or to liberation if the enemy was already in the land. it is the deeds of such heroes, and almost these alone, which remained in the memory of the israelites from the first two centuries following their settlement; and these narratives, in part fabulous, must represent the history of israel for this period. eglon, king of moab, defeated the israelites, passed over the jordan, took jericho, and here established himself. with gilead the tribe of benjamin, which dwelt nearest to jericho, at first must have felt with especial weight the oppression of moab. for 18 years the israelites are said to have served eglon. then ehud, of the tribe of benjamin, a reputed great grandson of the youngest son of jacob, the father of the benjamites, came with others to jericho to bring tribute. when the tax had been delivered ehud desired to speak privately with the king. permission was given, and ehud went with a two-edged sword in his hand, under his garment, to the king, who sat alone in the cool upper chamber. ehud spoke: "i have a message from god to thee;" and when eglon rose to receive the message ehud smote him with the sword in the belly, "so that even the haft went in, and the fat closed over the blade, for the king of moab was a very fat man. but ehud went down to the court, and closed the door behind him." when the servants found the door closed they thought that the king had covered his feet for sleep. at last they took the key and found the king dead on the floor. but ehud blew the trumpet on mount ephraim, assembled a host, seized the fords of jordan, and slew about 10,000 moabites, and the moabites retired into their old possessions.[196] another narrative tells of the fortunes of the tribes of naphtali, zebulun, and issachar, which were settled in the north, under mount hermon. jabin, king of hazor, had chariots of iron, and sisera his captain was a mighty warrior, and for 20 years they oppressed the israelites.[197] deborah, the wife of lapidoth, of the tribe of issachar, dwelt in the land of benjamin, between bethel and ramah, under the palm-tree; she could announce the will of jehovah, and the people came to her to obtain counsel and judgment. at her command barak, the son of abinoam, assembled the men of the tribes of zebulun and naphtali; assistance also came from issachar, manasseh, ephraim and benjamin. sisera went forth with 900 chariots and a great host and the israelites retired before him to the south of the brook kishon. sisera crossed the brook and came upon the israelites in the valley of megiddo; he was defeated, leapt from his chariot, and fled on foot and came unto the tent of heber the kenite. jael, heber's wife, met him and said, "turn in, my lord, to me; fear not." when in his thirst he asked for water, she opened the bottle of milk and allowed him to drink, and when he lay down to rest she covered him with the carpet. being wearied, he sank into a deep sleep. then jael softly took the nail of the tent and a hammer in her hand, and smote the nail through his temples so that it passed into the earth. when barak, who pursued the fugitive, came, jael said, "i will show thee the man whom thou seekest," and led him into the tent where sisera lay dead on the ground. israel's song of victory is as follows: "listen, ye kings; give ear, ye princes; i will sing to jehovah, i will play on the harp of jehovah, the king of israel. there were no princes in israel till i, deborah, arose a mother in israel. arise, barak; bring forth thy captives, thou son of abinoam. shout, ye that ride on she-asses, and ye that sit upon carpets, and ye that go on foot, and let the people come down into the plain, to the gates of the cities. then i said, go down, o people of jehovah, against the strong; a small people against the mighty. from ephraim they came and from benjamin, from machir (_i.e._ from the manassites on the east of the lake of gennesareth) the rulers came, and the chiefs of issachar were with deborah, and zebulun is a people which perilled his life to the death, and naphtali on the heights of the field. on the streams of reuben there was taking of counsel, but why didst thou sit still among the herds to hear the pipe of the herdsmen? gilead also remained beyond jordan, and asher abode on the shore of the sea in his valleys, and dan on his heights. the kings came, they fought at the water of megiddo; they gained no booty of silver. issachar, the support of barak, threw himself in the valley at his heels. the brook kishon washed away the enemy: a brook of battles is the brook kishon. go forth, my soul, upon the strong. blessed above women shall jael be, above women in the tent. he asked for water, she gave him milk; she brought him cream in a lordly dish. she put forth her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer, and she smote sisera, she shattered and pierced his temples. between her feet he lay shattered. the mother of sisera looked from her window; she called through the lattice: 'why linger his chariots in returning? why delay the wheels of his chariot?' her wise maidens answered her; nay, she answered herself: 'will they not find spoil and divide it; one or two maidens to each, spoil of broidered robes for sisera?' so must all thine enemies perish, o jehovah, but may those who love him be as the sun going forth in his strength." whether this song was composed by deborah, or by some other person in her name, it is certainly an ancient song of victory and contemporary with the events it celebrates. the tribes of israel also which were settled in the land of gilead remembered with gratitude a mighty warrior who had once delivered them from grievous oppression. the ammonites, the eastern neighbours of the land of gilead, oppressed "the sons of israel who dwelt beyond jordan" for 18 years, and marched over jordan against judah, benjamin and the house of ephraim. then the elders of the land of gilead bethought them of jephthah (jephthah means "freed from the yoke"), to whom they had formerly refused the inheritance of his father because he was not the son of the lawful wife, but of a courtezan. he had retired into the gorges of the mountain and collected round him a band of robbers, and done deeds of bravery. to him the elders went; he was to be their leader in fighting against the sons of ammon. jephthah said, "have ye not driven me out of the house of my father? now that ye are in distress ye come to me." still he followed their invitation, and the people of gilead gathered round him at mizpeh and made him their chief and leader. "if i return in triumph from the sons of ammon," such was jephthah's vow, "the first that meets me at the door of my house shall be dedicated to jehovah, and i will sacrifice it as a burnt-offering." when he had asked the tribe of ephraim for assistance in vain he set out against the ammonites with the warriors of the tribes of reuben, gad and manasseh, and overcame them in a great battle on the river arnon. the ephraimites made it a reproach against jephthah that he had fought against the ammonites without them; they crossed the jordan in arms. but jephthah said, "i was in straits, and my people with me; i called to you, but ye aided me not." he assembled the men of gilead, defeated the ephraimites, and came to the fords of the jordan before the fugitives, so that more than 42,000 men of ephraim are said to have been slain. when he returned to his home at mizpeh his only daughter came to meet him joyfully, with her maidens and timbrels and dancing. jephthah tore his garments and cried, "my daughter, thou hast brought me very low; i have opened my mouth to jehovah and cannot take it back." "my father," she answered, "if thou hast opened thy mouth to jehovah, do to me as thou hast spoken, for jehovah has given thee vengeance on thine enemies, the ammonites. but first let me go with my companions to the mountains, and there for two months bewail my virginity." this was done, and on her return jephthah did to her according to his vow. and it was a custom in israel for the maidens to lament the daughter of jephthah for four days in the year. after this jephthah is said to have been judge for six years longer beyond jordan, _i.e._ to have maintained the peace in these districts. grievous calamity came upon israel in this period from a migratory people of the syrian desert, from the incursions of the midians, who, like the moabites and ammonites, are designated in genesis as a nation kindred to the israelites, with whom moses was said to have entered into close relations (i. 449, 468). now the midianites with other tribes of the desert attacked israel in constant predatory incursions. "like locusts in multitude," we are told, "the enemy came with their flocks and tents; there was no end of them and their camels. when israel had sowed the sons of the east came up and destroyed the increase of the land as far as gaza, and left no sustenance remaining, no sheep, oxen and asses. and the sons of israel were compelled to hide themselves in ravines, and caves, and mountain fortresses."[198] for seven years israel is said to have been desolated in this manner. beside the tribes of issachar and zebulun, between mount tabor and the kishon, dwelt a part of the tribe of manasseh. the family of abiezer, belonging to this tribe, possessed ophra. in an incursion of the midianites the sons of joash, a man of this family, were slain;[199] only gideon, the youngest, remained. when the midianites came again, after their wont, at the time of harvest, and encamped on the plain of jezreel, and gideon was beating wheat in the vat of the wine-press in order to save the corn from the midianites, jehovah aroused him. he gathered the men of his family around him, 300 in number.[200] when jehovah had given him a favourable sign, and he had reconnoitred the camp of the midianites, together with his armour-bearer phurah, he determined to attack them in the night. he divided his troop into companies containing a hundred men; each took a trumpet and a lighted torch, which was concealed in an earthen pitcher. these companies were to approach the camp of the midianites from three sides, and when gideon blew the trumpet and disclosed his torch they were all to do the same. immediately after the second night-watch, when the midianites had just changed the guards, gideon gave the signal. all broke their pitchers, blew their trumpets, and cried, "the sword for jehovah and gideon!" startled, terrified, and imagining that they were attacked by mighty hosts, the midianites fled. then the men of manasseh, asher, zebulun and naphtali arose, and gideon hastily sent messengers to the ephraimites that they should seize the fords of jordan before the midianites. the ephraimites assembled and took two princes of the midianites, oreb (raven) and zeeb (wolf). the ephraimites strove with gideon that he had not summoned them sooner. gideon replied modestly, "is not the gleaning of the grapes of ephraim better than the vintage of abiezer? did not jehovah give the princes of midian into your hand? could i do what ye have done?" he pursued the midianites over the jordan in order to get into his power their princes zebah and zalmunna, who had previously slain his brothers. when he passed the river at succoth he asked the men of succoth to give bread to his wearied soldiers. but the elders feared the vengeance of the midianites, and said, "are zebah and zalmunna already in thine hand, that we should give bread to thy men?" gideon replied in anger, "if jehovah gives them into my hand i will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers." the inhabitants of penuel on the jabbok also, to which gideon marched, refused to feed their countrymen; like those of succoth, they feared the midianites. gideon led his army by the way of the dwellers in tents far away to karkor. here he defeated and scattered the 15,000 midianites who had escaped, and captured the two princes. then he turned back to succoth and said to the elders, "see, here are zebah and zalmunna, for whom ye mocked me." he caused them to be seized, seventy-seven in number, and tore them to death with thorns and briers. the tower of penuel he destroyed, and caused the inhabitants of the place to be slain. to the captured princes he said, "what manner of men were they whom ye once slew at tabor?" and they answered, "as thou art, they looked like the sons of a king." "they were my brethren, the sons of my mother," gideon answered. "as jehovah liveth, if ye had saved them alive i would not slay you. stand up," he called to his first-born son jether, "and slay them." but the youth feared and drew not his sword, for he was yet young. "slay us thyself," said the prisoners, "for as the man is, so is his strength." this was done. when the booty was divided gideon claimed as his share the golden ear-rings of the slain midianites. they were collected in gideon's mantle, and the weight reached 1700 shekels of gold, beside the purple raiment of the dead kings, and the moons and chains on the necks of the camels. gideon had gained a brilliant victory; no more is heard of the raids of the midianites. out of the booty he set up a gilded image (ephod) at ophra.[201] he overthrew the altar of baal and the image of astarte in his city; and this, as is expressly stated, in the night (from which we must conclude that the inhabitants of ophra were attached to this worship); and in the place of it he set up an altar to jehovah on the height, and in the city another altar, which he called "jehovah, peace." "unto this day it is still in ophra." after the liberation of the land, which was owing to him, gideon held the first place in israel. we are told that the crown had been offered to him and that he refused it.[202] but if gideon left 70 sons of his body by many wives, if we find that his influence descended to his sons, he must have held an almost royal position, in which a harem was not wanting. he died, as it seems, in a good old age, and was buried in the grave of his fathers (after 1150 b.c.[203]). the same need of protection which preserved gideon in power till his death had induced some cities to form a league, after the pattern of the cities of the philistines, for mutual support and security. shechem, the old metropolis of the tribe of ephraim, was the chief city of this league. here on the citadel at shechem the united cities had built a temple to baal berith, _i.e._ to baal of the league, and established a fund for the league in the treasury of this temple. one of the 70 sons of gideon, the child of a woman of shechem, by name abimelech, conceived the plan of establishing a monarchy in israel by availing himself of gideon's name and memory, the desire for order and protection from which the league had arisen, and the resources of the cities. at first he sought to induce the cities to make him their chief. supported by them, he sought to remove his brothers and to take the monarchy into his own hands as the only heir of gideon. a skilful warrior like abimelech, who carried with him the fame and influence of a great father, must have been welcome to the cities as a leader and chief in such wild times. abimelech spoke to the men of shechem: "consider that i am your bone and your flesh; which is better, that 70 men rule over you or i only?" then the citizens of shechem and the inhabitants of the citadel assembled under the oak of shechem and made abimelech their king, and gave him 70 shekels of silver from the temple of baal berith, "that he might be able to pay people to serve him." with these and the men of shechem who followed him he marched and slew all his brethren at ophra in his father's house (one only, jotham, escaped him), and israel obeyed him. abimelech seemed to have reached his object. perhaps he might have maintained the throne thus won by blood had he not, three years afterwards, quarrelled with the cities which helped him to power. the cities rose against him. abimelech with his forces went against the chief city, shechem. the city was taken and destroyed, the inhabitants massacred. about 1000 men and women fled for refuge into the temple of baal berith in the citadel; abimelech caused them to be burned along with the temple. then he turned from shechem to thebez, some miles to the north. when he stormed the city the inhabitants fled into the strong tower, closed it, and went up on the roof of the tower. abimelech pressed on to the door of the tower to set it on fire, when a woman threw a stone down from above which fell on abimelech and broke his skull. then the king called to his armour-bearer, "draw thy sword and slay me, that it may not be said, a woman slew him." the youthful monarchy was wrecked on this quarrel of the citizens with the new king. after this time eli the priest at the sacred tabernacle, a descendant of ithamar, the youngest son of aaron,[204] is said to have been in honour among the israelites. not only was he the priest of the national shrine, but counsel and judgment were also sought from him. but eli's sons, hophni and phinehas; did evil, and lay with the women who came to the sacred tabernacle to offer prayer and sacrifice.[205] footnotes: [181] judges v. 10, 14; x. 4. [182] judges x. 1-5; xii. 8-15. [183] _e.g._ judges ix. 27. [184] judges xxi. 19; 1 sam. i. 3; ii. 13. [185] judges xx. 1; vol. i. 410. [186] 1 sam. x. 3; vol. i. 390, 411. [187] judges xvii. 5, 10; xviii. 30; 1 sam. vii. 1; 2, vi. 3. [188] judges xvii. ff. [189] 1 sam. xix. 13-16; xxi. 9; gen. xxxi. 34; judges xvii. 5; xviii. 14, 17; 2 kings xxiii. 24. [190] _e.g._ judges vi. 36-40; xviii. 5; xx. 18 ff. the priests wore a pocket with lots (apparently small stones) on the breast. the urim and thummim of the high priest was originally nothing but these lots. [191] on the composition of the book of judges, cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," 325 ff. [192] in david's time only 270,000 are given: below, chap. 7. [193] judges xx. 8; xxi. 7-18. [194] gen. xlix. 27; judges xx. 16; 1 chron. viii. 39; xii. 2; 2 chron. xiv. 7. [195] these events belong, according to judges xx. 27 ff., to the period immediately after the conquest: as a fact, the war against benjamin is not to be placed long after this, _i.e._ about 1200 b.c. cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. 326. [196] judges iii. 12 ff. [197] judges iv., v. [198] judges vi. 2-5. [199] judges viii. 19. [200] the observation that gideon was the least in the house of his father, and his family the weakest in manasseh (judges vi. 15), is due no doubt to the tendency of the ephraimitic text to show how strong jehovah is even in the weak. from similar motives it is said that gideon himself reduced his army to 300 men (judges vii. 2-6). in the presence of the ephraimites gideon speaks only of the family of abiezer. [201] what is meant in judges viii. 27 by an ephod is not clear. the words which follow in the verse--that all israel went whoring after gideon--are obviously an addition of the prophetic revision. [202] judges viii. 22. [203] gideon's date can only be fixed very indefinitely. he and the generations after him must have belonged to the second half of the twelfth century b.c. [204] joseph. "antiq." 5, 11, 5. [205] 1 sam. ii. 22-25. chapter v. the establishment of the monarchy in israel. more than a century and a half had passed since the israelites had won their land in canaan. the greater part of the tribes, beside the breeding of cattle, were occupied with the cultivation of vines and figs, and regular agriculture; the minority had become accustomed to life in settled cities, and the earliest stages of industry; but the unity of the nation was lost, and in the place of the religious fervour which once accompanied the exodus from egypt, the rites of the syrian deities had forced their way in alongside of the worship of jehovah. the division and disorganisation of the nation had exposed the israelites to the attacks of their neighbours; the attempt of abimelech to establish a monarchy in connection with the cities had failed; the anarchy still continued. worse dangers still might be expected in the future. the forces of the moabites, midianites, and ammonites were not superior to that of the israelites, the attacks of the tribes of the desert were of a transitory nature; but what if the cities of the coast, superior in civilisation, art, and combined power, should find it convenient when the affairs of israel were in this position to extend their borders to the interior, and israel should be gradually subjugated from the coast? from the phenicians there was nothing to fear: navigation and trade entirely occupied them; from the beginning of the eleventh century their ships devoted their attention to discoveries in the atlantic ocean, beyond the straits of gibraltar (p. 83). the case was different with the warlike cities of the philistines. if the philistines were behind the israelites in the extent of their territory and dominion, their forces were held together and well organised by means of the confederation of the cities. bounded to the west by the sea, and to the south by the desert, the only path open to them for extending their power was in the direction of the hebrews. for a long time they had been content to put a limit upon the extension of the tribes of judah and dan, but in the first half of the eleventh century b.c. the condition of israel appeared to the federation of the philistines sufficiently inviting to induce them to pass from defence to attack. their blows fell first on judah, simeon, and the part of dan which had remained in the south on the borders of the philistines; tribes which had hitherto been exempted from attack, whose territory had been protected by the deserts on the south, and the dead sea on the east. but now they were attacked from the direction of the sea. the struggle with the philistines was not a matter of rapine and plunder, but of freedom and independence. the aim of the five princes of the philistines (i. 348) was directed towards the extension of their own borders and their own dominion, and the war against the israelites was soon carried on with vigour. the tribes of judah and dan were reduced to submission.[206] if the israelites did not succeed in uniting their forces, if they could not repair what was neglected at the conquest, and had since been attempted in vain, the suppression of their independence, their religious and national life, appeared certain. the question was whether the nation of israel, accustomed to an independent and defiant life in small communities, and corrupted by it, possessed sufficient wisdom and devotion to solve the difficult task now laid upon it. it was a melancholy time for israel when the philistines ruled over the south of the land. later generations found some comfort for this national disgrace in the narratives of the strong and courageous samson, the son of manoah, of the tribe of dan, whose deeds were placed by tradition in this period. he had done the philistines much mischief, and slain many of them; even when his foolish love for a philistine maiden finally brought him to ruin, he slew more philistines at his death than in his life--"about 3000 men and women."[207] whatever be the truth about these deeds, no individual effort could avail to save israel when the philistines seriously set themselves to conquer the northern tribes, unless the nation roused itself and combined all its forces under one definite head. the philistines invaded the land of ephraim with a mighty army, and forced their way beyond it northwards as far as aphek, two leagues to the south of tabor. at tabor the israelites assembled and attempted to check the philistines, but they failed; 4000 israelites were slain. then the elders of israel, in order to encourage the people, caused the ark of jehovah to be brought from shiloh into the camp. eli, the priest at the sacred tabernacle, was of the age of 98 years. hophni and phinehas, his sons, accompanied the sacred ark, which was welcomed by the army with shouts of joy. in painful expectation eli sat at the gate of shiloh and awaited the result. then a man of the tribe of benjamin came in haste, with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head, and said, "israel is fled before the philistines, thy sons are dead, and the ark of god is lost." eli fell backwards from his seat, broke his neck, and died. about 30,000 men are said to have fallen in the battle (about 1070 b.c.).[208] at the sacred tabernacle at shiloh samuel the son of elkanah had served under eli. elkanah was an ephraimite; he dwelt at ramah (ramathaim, and hence among the greeks arimathia[209]). samuel was born to him late in life, and, in gratitude that at last a son was given to her, his mother had dedicated him to jehovah, and given him to eli to serve in the sanctuary. thus even as a boy samuel waited at the sacrifices in a linen tunic, and performed the sacred rites. he grew up in the fear of jehovah and became a seer, who saw what was hidden, a soothsayer, whom the people consulted in distress of any kind, and at the same time he announced the will of jehovah, for jehovah had called him, and permitted him to see visions, "so that he knew how to speak the word of god, which was rare in those days," and "jehovah was with him and let none of samuel's words fall to the ground."[210] after the crushing defeat at aphek it devolved on samuel to perform the duties of high priest. he summoned the people to mizpeh in the tribe of benjamin and prayed for israel. large libations of water were poured to jehovah. when the philistines advanced samuel sacrificed a sucking lamb (no doubt as a sin-offering), and burned it. "then on that day jehovah thundered mightily out of heaven over the philistines, and confounded them so that they were defeated." this victory remained without lasting results. on the contrary, the slavery of the israelites to the philistines became more extensive and more severe. in order to bring the northern tribes into the same subjection as the tribes of dan, judah, and simeon, the philistines established fortified camps at michmash and geba (gibeah) in the tribe of benjamin, as a centre from which to hold this and the northern tribes in check. the men of the tribes of judah and simeon had to take the field against their own countrymen. these arrangements soon obtained their object. all israel on this side of the jordan was reduced to subjection. in order to make a rebellion impossible, the israelites were deprived of their arms; indeed, the philistines were not content that they should give up the arms in their possession, they even removed the smiths from the land, that no one might provide a sword or javelin for the hebrews. the oppression of this dominion pressed so heavily and with such shame on the israelites that the books of samuel themselves tell us, if the plough-shares, bills, and mattocks became dull, or the forks were bent, the children of israel had to go down into the cities of the philistines in order to have their implements mended and sharpened.[211] at this period samuel's activity must have been limited to leading back the hearts of the israelites to the god who brought them out of egypt; he must have striven to fill them with the faith with which he was himself penetrated, and the distress of the time would contribute to gain acceptance for his teaching and his prescripts. the people sought his word and decision; he is said to have given judgment at bethel, gilgal, and mizpeh. he gathered scholars and disciples round him, who praised jehovah to the sound of harp and lute, flute and drum, who in violent agitation and divine excitement awaited his visions, and "were changed into other men."[212] from the position which tradition allots to samuel, there can be no doubt that he brought the belief in and worship of the old god into renewed life, and caused them to sink deeper into the hearts of the israelites. the oppression of his people by the philistines he could not turn away, though he cherished a lively hope in the help of jehovah. the tribes on the east of the jordan remained free from the dominion of the philistines; yet for them also servitude and destruction was near at hand. the ammonites were not inclined to let slip so favourable an opportunity. as the land on the west of the jordan was subject to the philistines, the tribes on the east would prove an easy prey. the ammonites encamped before jabesh in gilead, and the inhabitants were ready to submit. but nahash, the king of the ammonites, as we are told, would only accept their submission on condition that every man in jabesh put out his right eye. then the elders of jabesh sent messengers across the jordan and earnestly besought their countrymen for help. the tribe of benjamin had to feel most heavily, no doubt, the oppression of the philistines. in their territory lay the fortified camps of the enemy. here, at gibeah, dwelt a man of the race of matri, saul the son of kish, the grandson of abiel. kish was a man of substance and influence; his son saul was a courageous man, of remarkable stature, "higher by a head than the rest of the nation." he was in the full strength of his years, and surrounded by valiant sons: jonathan, melchishua, abinadab, and ishbosheth. one day, "just as he was returning home from the field behind his oxen," he heard the announcement which the messengers of jabesh brought. himself under the enemy's yoke, he felt the more deeply what threatened them. his heart was fired at the shame and ruin of his people. regardless of the philistines, he formed a bold resolution; assistance must be given to those most in need. he cut two oxen in pieces, sent the pieces round the tribes,[213] and raised the cry, "whoso comes not after saul, so shall it be done to his oxen." the troop which gathered round him out of compassion for the besieged in jabesh, and in obedience to his summons, saul divided into three companies. with these he succeeded in surprising the camp of the ammonites about the morning watch; he dispersed the hostile army and set jabesh free. whatever violence and cruelty had been exercised since the settlement of the israelites in canaan, however many the feuds and severe the vengeance taken, however great the distress and the oppression, the nation, amid all the anarchy and freedom so helpless against an enemy, still preserved a healthy and simple feeling and vigorous power. and at this crisis the israelites were not found wanting; saul's bold resolution, the success in setting free the city in her sore distress, the victory thus won, the first joy and hope after so long a period of shame, gave the people the expectation of having found in him the man who was able to set them free from the dominion of the philistines also, and restore independence, and law, and peace. when the thank-offering for the unexpected victory, for the liberation of the land of gilgal, was offered at gilgal on the jordan, as far as possible from the camp of the philistines, "all the people went to gilgal, and there made saul king before jehovah, and saul and all the men of israel rejoiced greatly" (1055 b.c.). the heavy misfortunes which the land had experienced for a long time, the severe oppression of the dominion of the philistines, had at length taught the majority that rescue could only come by a close connection and union of the powers of the tribes, and an established authority supreme over all. to check anarchy from within and oppression from without required a vigorous hand, a ruling will, and a recognised power. what the people could do to put an end to the disorganisation was now done, they had placed a man at the head whom they might expect to be a brave leader and resolute guide. the israelites had used their sovereignty to give themselves a master, and might hope with confidence that by this step they had laid the foundations of a happier future which they might certainly greet with joy.[214] immediately after his election on the jordan, saul was firmly resolved to take up arms against the philistines for the liberation of the land. he turned upon their camp in the district of his own tribe. while he lay opposite the fortifications at michmash, and thus held the garrison fast, his son jonathan succeeded in conquering the detachment of the philistines stationed at geba. but the princes of the philistines had no mind to look on at the union of israel. they assembled, as we are told, an army of 3000 chariots, 6000 cavalry, and foot soldiers beyond number; with these the tribes of judah and simeon were compelled to take the field against their brethren.[215] whether the numbers are correct or incorrect, the armament of the philistines was sufficient to cause the courage of the israelites to sink. saul summoned the israelites to the jordan, to gilgal, where he had been raised to be their chief. but in vain he caused the trumpets to be blown and the people to be summoned. the israelites crept into the caves and clefts of the rock, and thorn-bushes, into the towers and the cisterns, and fled beyond jordan to find refuge in the land of gilead. only the king and his brave son jonathan did not quail before the numbers or gallantry of the enemies, though only a small troop--it is said about 600 men--gathered round saul. the great army of the philistines had first marched to the fortified camp at michmash, and from this point, after leaving a garrison behind, in which were the israelites of judah and simeon, it separated into three divisions, in order to march through israel in all directions and hold the country in subjection. one column marched to the west in the direction of beth-horon, the second to the north towards ophra, the third to the east towards the valley of zeboim.[216] this division made it possible for saul to attack. he turned upon that part of the army which was weakest and most insecure, the garrison at michmash, and made an unexpected attack on the fortification. jonathan ascended an eminence in the rear, while saul attacked in the van. in the tumult of the attack the hebrews in the camp of the philistines joined the side of their countrymen, and saul gained the fortification. the philistines fled. the king knew what was at stake and strove to push the victory thus gained to the utmost.[217] without resting, he urged his men to the pursuit of the fugitives. that none of his troop might halt or stray in order to take food, he said, "cursed is the man who eats bread till the evening, till i have taken vengeance on mine enemies." jonathan had not heard the command of his father, and as the pursuers passed through a wood in which wild honey lay scattered he ate a little of the honeycomb. for this he should have been put to death, because he was dedicated to jehovah (i. 499). but the warriors were milder than their customs. "shall jonathan die," cried the soldiers, "who has won this great victory in israel? that be far from us: as jehovah liveth, not a hair of his head shall fall to the ground, for he has wrought with god this day;" "and the people rescued jonathan that he died not."[218] this success encouraged the israelites to come forth from their hiding-places and gather round their king. but only a part of the hostile army was defeated, and the philistines were not so easily to be deprived of the sovereignty over israel. "and the strife was hot against the philistines so long as saul lived," and "king saul was brave and delivered israel from the hand of the robbers," is the older of the two statements preserved in the books of samuel. saul had rendered the service which was expected by the israelites when they elevated him: he had saved his nation from the deepest distress, from the brink of the most certain destruction. without him the tribes beyond the jordan would have succumbed to the ammonites and moabites, and those on this side of the river would at length have become obedient subjects of the philistines. he found on his accession a disarmed, discouraged nation. by his own example he knew how to restore to them courage and self-confidence, and educate them into a nation familiar with war and skilled in it. the old military virtues of the tribe of benjamin (p. 96) found in saul their full expression and had a most beneficial result for israel. the close community in which from old time the small tribe of benjamin had been with the large tribe of ephraim, by the side of which it had settled, was an advantage to saul.[219] the strong position which he gained by the recognition of these two tribes could not but have an effect on the others, and contribute with the importance of his achievements and the splendour of their results to gain firmness and respect for the young monarchy, and win obedience for his commands. in the ceaseless battles which he had to carry on he was mainly supported by his eldest son jonathan, who stood beside him as a faithful brother in arms, and his cousin abner, the son of ner his father's brother, whom he made his chief captain. "and wherever saul saw a mighty man and a brave he took him to himself."[220] thus he formed around him a school of brave warriors. he appears to have kept 3000 warriors under arms in the district of benjamin, and this formed the centre for the levy of the people.[221] but the israelites had not merely to thank the king they had set up for the recovery and vigorous defence of their independence and their territory; he was also a zealous servant of jehovah. he offered sacrifice to him, built altars, and inquired of him by his priests, who accompanied him even on his campaigns.[222] he observed strictly the sacred customs; even after the battle the exhausted soldiers were not allowed to eat meat with blood in it. he was prepared to allow even his dearest son, whose life he had unconsciously devoted, to be put to death. he removed all magicians and wizards out of the land with great severity.[223] how earnestly he took up the national and religious opposition to the canaanites is clear from his conduct to the hivites of gibeon, chephirah, beeroth, and kirjath-jearim, who had once made a league with joshua, and in consequence had been allowed to remain among the israelites (i. 494). "saul sought to slay them in his zeal for israel," and the gibeonites afterwards maintained that saul had sought to annihilate them, and his purpose was that they should be destroyed and exist no more in all the land of israel.[224] the ark of the covenant, which had fallen into the hands of the philistines at the battle of aphek, was brought back to israel in his reign. the possession of it, so the hebrews said, had brought no good to the philistines. they had set it up as a trophy of victory in the temple of dagon at ashdod. but the image of the god had fallen to pieces, and only the fish-tail was left standing (i. 272); the people of ashdod had been attacked with boils, and their crops destroyed by mice. the same occurred at gath, when the ark was brought there, and, in consequence, the city of ekron had refused to accept it. then the philistines had placed the ark upon a wagon, and allowed the cows before it to draw it whither they would. they drew it to beth-shemesh in the tribe of judah. but when the people of beth-shemesh looked on the ark a grievous mortality began among them, till the men of kirjath-jearim (not far from beth-shemesh) took away the ark, and abinadab set it up in a house on a hill in his field, and established his own son eleazar as guardian and priest (about 1045 b.c.[225]). the books of the chronicles mention the gifts which saul dedicated to the national sanctuary.[226] as king of israel, saul remained true to the simplicity of his earlier life. of splendour, courts, ceremonial, dignitaries, and harem we hear nothing. if not in the field he remained on his farm at gibeah, with his wife ahinoam,[227] his four sons, and his two daughters. abner and other approved comrades in arms ate at his table. his elder daughter merab he married to adriel the son of barzillai. michal, the younger, he gave to a youthful warrior, david the son of jesse, who had distinguished himself in the war against the philistines, whom he had made his armour-bearer and companion of his table, entrusting him at the same time with the command of 1000 men of the standing army.[228] "what am i, what is the life and the house of my father in israel, that i should become the son-in-law of the king? i am but a poor and lowly man." so david said, but saul remained firm in his purpose. of saul's later battles against the philistines tradition has preserved only a few fragments, from which it is clear that the war was carried on upon the borders by plundering incursions, which were interrupted from time to time by greater campaigns.[229] but the preponderance of the philistine power was broken. and saul had not only to fight against these. "he fought on all sides," we are told, "against all the enemies of israel, against moab, and against the sons of ammon, and against edom, and against the kings of zobah, and whithersoever he turned he was victorious."[230] when the amalekites from their deserts on the peninsula of sinai invaded the south of israel, and forced their way as far as hebron, he defeated them there at maon-carmel,[231] and pursued them over the borders of israel into their own land as far as the desert of sur, "which lies before egypt," and took agag their king prisoner. it was a severe defeat which he inflicted on them.[232] "saul's sword came not back empty," and "the daughters of israel clothed themselves in purple," and "adorned their garments with gold" from the spoil of his victories.[233] the israelites felt what they owed to the monarchy and to saul.[234] footnotes: [206] judges xiii. 1; xiv. 4; xv. 11; 1 sam. iv. 9. [207] in samson, who overcomes the lion, and sends out the foxes with firebrands, who overthrows the pillars of the temple, and buries himself under it, steinthal ("zeitschrift für völkerpsychologie," 2, 21) recognises the sun-god of the syrians. the name samson means as a fact "the sunny one." the long hair in which samson's strength lay may symbolise the growth of nature in the summer, and the cutting off of it the decay of creative power in the winter: so too the binding of samson may signify the imprisoned power of the sun in winter. as melkarth in the winter went to rest at his pillars in the far west, at the end of his wanderings, so samson goes to his rest between the two pillars in the city on the shore of the western sea. if, finally, samson becomes the servant of a mistress dalilah--_i.e._ "the tender"--this also is a trait which belongs to the myth of melkarth; cf. i. 371. it is not to be denied that traits of this myth have forced their way into the form and legend of samson, although the long hair belongs not to samson only, but to samuel and all the nazarites; yet we must not from these traits draw the conclusion that the son of manoah is no more than a mythical figure, and even those traits must have gone through many stages among the israelites before they could assume a form of such vigorous liveliness, such broad reality, as we find pourtrayed in the narrative of samson. [208] the simplest method of obtaining a fixed starting-point for the date of the foundation of the monarchy in israel is to reckon backwards from the capture of jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple by nebuchadnezzar. according to the canon of ptolemy, nebuchadnezzar's reign began in the year 604 b.c., the temple and jerusalem were burned down in the nineteenth year of king nebuchadnezzar (2 kings xxv. 8; jer. lii. 12), _i.e._ in the year 586 b.c. from this year the hebrews reckoned 430 years to the commencement of the building of the temple (430 = 37 years of solomon since the beginning of the building + 261 years from the death of solomon to the taking of samaria + 132 years from the taking of samaria to the destruction of the temple). hence the building of the temple was commenced in the year 1015 b.c. since the commencement of the building is placed in the fourth year of solomon, his accession would fall in the year 1018 b.c.; and as 40 years are allotted to david, his accession at hebron falls in 1058 b.c., and saul's election about 1080 b.c. in the present text only the number two is left of the amount of the years of his reign (1 sam. xiii. 1), the years of his life also are lost; we may perhaps assume 22 years for his reign, since eupolemus gives him 21 years (alex. polyh. frag. 18, ed. müller), and josephus 20 ("antiq." 6, 14, 9, 10, 8, 4). his contemporary, nahash of ammon, is on the throne before the election of saul, and continues beyond the death of saul and ishbosheth, and even 10 years into the reign of david. nahash must have had an uncommonly long reign if saul reigned more than 22 years. it makes against the dates 1080 b.c. for saul, 1058 b.c. for david, 1018 b.c. for solomon, that they rest upon the succession of kings of judah, from the division of the kingdom down to the fall of samaria, which is reckoned at 261 years, while the succession of kings of israel during the same period only fills 241 years. movers ("phoeniz." 2, 1, 140 ff.) has attempted to remove this difficulty by assuming as a starting-point the statements of menander of ephesus, on the succession of kings in tyre, preserved in josephus ("c. apion," 1, 18). josephus says that from the building of the temple, which took place in the twelfth year of hiram king of tyre, down to the founding of carthage, which took place in the seventh year of pygmalion king of tyre, 143 years 8 months elapsed. from the date given by justin (18, 7) for the founding of carthage (72 years before the founding of rome; 72 + 754), _i.e._ from 826 b.c., movers reckons back 143 years, and so fixes the building of the temple at the year 969 b.c., on which reckoning solomon's accession would fall in the year 972 b.c., david's in the year 1012 b.c., and saul's election in 1034 b.c. but since the more trustworthy dates for the year of the founding of carthage, 846, 826, and 816, have an equal claim to acceptance, we are equally justified in reckoning back from 846 and 816 to saul's accession. according to the canon of the assyrians, the epochs in which were fixed by the observation of the solar eclipse of july 15 in the year 763 b.c., samaria was taken in the year 722 b.c. if from this we reckon backwards 261 years for judah, solomon's death would fall in the year 983 b.c., his accession in 1023 b.c., david's accession in 1063 b.c., saul's election in 1085 b.c. if we keep to the amount given for israel (241 years + 722), solomon's death falls in 963, his accession in 1003, the building of the temple in 1000 b.c., david's accession in 1043 b.c., saul's accession in 1065 b.c. but neither by retaining the whole sum of 430 years, according to which the building of the temple begins 1015 b.c. (430 + 586), and solomon dies in 978 b.c., nor by putting the death of solomon in the year 983 or 963 b.c., do we bring the assyrian monuments into agreement with the chronological statements of the hebrews. if we place the date of the division of the kingdom at the year 978 b.c., ahab's reign, according to the numbers given by the hebrews for the kingdom of israel, extends from 916 to 894 b.c.; if we place the division at 963 b.c., it extends, according to the same calculation, from 901 to 879 b.c. on the other hand, the assyrian monuments prove that ahab fought at karkar against shalmanesar ii. in the year 854 b.c. (below, chap. 10). since ahab after this carried on a war against damascus, in which war he died, he must in any case have been alive in 853 b.c. hence even the lower date taken for ahab's reign from the hebrew statements (901-879 b.c.) would have to be brought down 26 years, and as a necessary consequence the death of solomon would fall, not in the year 963 b.c., but in the year 937 b.c. if we could conclude from this statement in the assyrian monuments that the reigns of the kings of israel were extended by the hebrews beyond the truth, it follows from another monument, the inscription of mesha, that abbreviations also took place. according to the second book of kings (iii. 5), mesha of moab revolted from israel when ahab died. the stone of mesha says: "omri took medaba, and israel dwelt therein in his and his son's days for 40 years; in my days camus restored it;" nöldeke, "inschrift des mesa." hence omri, the father of ahab, took medaba 40 years before the death of ahab. ahab, according to the hebrews, reigned 22 years, omri 12. according to the stone of mesha the two reigns must have together amounted to more than 40 years. since omri obtained the throne by force, and had at first to carry on a long civil war, and establish himself on the throne (1 kings xvi. 21, 22), he could not make war upon the moabites at the very beginning of his reign. here, therefore, there is an abbreviation of the reign of omri and ahab by at least 10 years. hence the contradiction between the monuments of the assyrians and the numbers of the hebrews is not to be removed by merely bringing down the division of the kingdom to the year 937 b.c. in order to obtain a chronological arrangement at all, we are placed in the awkward necessity of making an attempt to bring the canon of the assyrians into agreement with the statements of the hebrews by assumptions more or less arbitrary. jehu slew joram king of israel and ahaziah of judah at the same time. from this date upwards to the death of solomon the hebrew scriptures reckon 98 years for israel, and 95 for judah. jehu ascended the throne of israel in the year 843 b.c. at the latest, since, according to the assyrian monuments, he paid tribute to shalmanesar ii. in the year 842 b.c. if we reckon the 98 years for israel upwards from 843 b.c., we arrive at 941 b.c. for the division of the kingdom; and if to this we add, as the time which has doubtlessly fallen out in the reigns of omri and ahab, 12 years, 953 b.c. would be the year of the death of solomon, the year in which the ten tribes separated from the house of david. if we keep the year 953 for the division, the year 993 comes out for the accession of solomon, the year 990 for the beginning of the building of the temple, the year 1033 for the accession of david at hebron, and the year 1055 for the election of saul. fifteen years may be taken for the continuance of the heavy oppression before saul. for the changes which we must in consequence of this assumption establish in the data of the reigns from jeroboam and rehoboam down to athaliah and jehu, _i.e._ in the period from 953 b.c. to 843 b.c., see below. omri's reign occupies the period from 899-875 b.c. (24 years instead of 12), _i.e._ a period which agrees with the importance of this reign among the moabites and the assyrians; ahab reigned from 875-853 b.c. according to 1 kings xvi. 31, ahab took jezebel the daughter of ethbaal the king of the sidonians to wife. if this ethbaal of sidon is identical with the ithobal of tyre in josephus, the chronology deduced from our assumptions would not be impossible. granted the assertion of josephus that the twelfth year of hiram king of tyre is the fourth year of solomon (990 b.c.), hiram's accession would fall in the year 1001 b.c.; according to josephus, ithobal ascended the throne of tyre 85 years after hiram's accession, when he had slain pheles. he lived according to the same authority 68 years and reigned 32 years, _i.e._ from 916-884 b.c. ahab, either before or after the year of his accession (875), might very well have taken the daughter of this prince to wife. and if we assume that the statement of appian, that carthage was in existence 700 years before her destruction by the romans, _i.e._ was founded in the year 846 b.c., the 143-2/3 or 144 years of josephus between the building of the temple and the foundation of carthage, reckoned backwards from 846 b.c., lead us to the year 990 b.c. for the building of the temple. [209] now beit-rima, north-east of the later lydda. [210] 1 sam. iii. 1, 19. [211] 1 sam. xiii. 19-23, from the older account. [212] 1 sam. x. 5, 6; xix. 20-24. [213] compare the division of the corpse by the levite, above, p. 96. [214] owing to the later conceptions that the king needed to be consecrated by the prophets, that jehovah is himself the king of israel, an almost inexplicable confusion has come into the narrative of saul's elevation. not only have we an older and later account existing side by side in the books of samuel, not only has there been even a third hand at work, but the attempts to bring the contradictory accounts into harmony have increased the evil. in 1 sam. viii. we are told: the elders of israel and the people required from samuel a king at ramah, because he was old and his sons walked not in his ways. jehovah says to samuel: they have not rejected thee, but me; yet samuel accedes to the request of the israelites. samuel gives the elders a terrifying description of the oppression which the monarchy would exercise upon them, a description which evidently predates the experiences made under david, solomon, and later kings, whereas at the time spoken of the nation had suffered only too long from wild anarchy. the reasons, moreover, given by the elders, why they desired a king, do not agree with the situation, but rather with the time of eli, who also had foolish sons. in spite of samuel's warning the people persist in their wish to have a king. further we are told in chap. ix. 1-x. 16, how saul at his father's bidding sets out in quest of lost she-asses, and goes to inquire of samuel, for the fourth part of a silver shekel, whither they had strayed. at jehovah's command samuel anoints the son of kish to be king, when he comes to him; he tells him where he will find his asses, and imparts to him two other prophecies on the way. then we are told in chap. x. 17-27 that samuel summons an assembly of the people to mizpeh, repeats his warning against the monarchy, but then causes lots to be cast who shall be king over the tribes, and families, and individuals. the lot falls upon saul, who makes no mention to any one of the anointing, but has hidden himself among the stuff. finally, in chap. xi. we find the account given in the text, to which, in order to bring it into harmony with what has been already related, these words are prefixed in ver. 14: "and samuel said to the people, come, let us go to gilgal to renew the kingdom;" but in xi. 15 we find: "then went all the people to gilgal, and made saul king before jehovah in gilgal." the contradictions are striking. the elders require a king from samuel, whom they could choose themselves (2 sam. ii. 4; v. 3; 1 kings xii. 1, 20; 2 kings xiv. 21), and whom, according to 1 sam. xi. 15, the people actually choose. jehovah will not have a king, but then permits it. nor is this permission all; he himself points out to samuel the man whom he is to anoint. anointed to be king, saul goes, as if nothing had taken place, to his home. he comes to the assembly at mizpeh, and again says nothing to any one of his new dignity. already king by anointment, he is now again made king by the casting of lots. he returns home to till his field, when the messengers from jabesh were sent not to the king of israel, but to the people of israel, to ask for help. in gibeah also they do not apply to the king; not till he sees the people weeping in gibeah, does saul learn the message. yet he does not summon the people to follow him as king; he requests the following just as in earlier times individuals in extraordinary cases sought to rouse the people to take up arms. it is impossible that a king should be chosen by lot at a time when the bravest warrior was needed at the head, and simple boys, who hid themselves among the stuff, were not suited to lead the army at such a dangerous time. at the time of saul's very first achievements his son jonathan stands at his side as a warrior; at his death his youngest son ishbosheth was 40 years of age (2 sam. ii. 10). saul must therefore have been between 40 and 50 years old when he became king. the request of the elders for a king, and samuel's resistance, belong on the other hand to the prophetic narrator of the books of samuel, in whose account it was followed by the assembly at mizpeh and the casting of lots. the same narrator attempts to bring the achievement at jabesh, and the recognition of saul as ruler and king which followed it, into harmony with his narrative by the addition of the restoration of the kingdom and some other interpolations. the philistines would hardly have permitted minute preparations and prescribed assemblies for the election of king. the simple elevation and recognition of saul as king after his first successful exploit in war corresponds to the situation of affairs (cf. i xii. 12). and i am the more decided in holding this account to be historically correct, because it does not presuppose the other accounts, and because the men of jabesh, according to the older account, fetched the bodies of saul and his sons to jabesh from beth-shan and burned them there, 1 sam. xxxi. 12, 13. the older account in the books of samuel knows nothing of the request of the elders for a king. after the defeat which caused eli's death, it narrates the carrying back of the ark by the philistines, and the setting up of it at beth-shemesh and kirjath-jearim. then follows saul's anointing by samuel (ix. 1-10, 16); then the lost statement about the age of saul when he became king, and the length of the reign; then the great exploits of saul against the philistines (xiii. 1-14, 46); xiii. 8-13 stands in precise relation to x. 8. that the achievement of jabesh cannot have been wanting in the older account follows from the express reference to it at the death of saul. [215] 1 sam. xiii. 3-7; xiv. 22. [216] 1 sam. xiii. 16-18. [217] 1 sam. xiv. 1-23. [218] so the older account, 1 sam. xiv. 24-45. [219] numbers ii. 18-24; joshua xviii. 12-20; judges v. 14. that ephraim remained true to saul follows from the recognition of ishbosheth after saul's death, 2 sam. ii. 9, 10. [220] 1 sam. xiv. 52. [221] 1 sam. xiii. 2. [222] 1 sam. xiv. 3, 18, 37; xxviii. 6. [223] 1 sam. xxviii. 3, 9. [224] 2 sam. xxi. 2, 5. [225] the ark was brought by david from kirjath-jearim to zion. that could not take place before the year 1025 b.c. saul's death falls, as was assumed above, in the year 1033 b.c. but the ark is said to have been at kirjath-jearim 20 years (1 sam. vii. 2; vi. 21), it must therefore have been carried thither 1045 b.c., or a few years later. the stay among the philistines must have been more than seven months, as stated in 1 sam. vi. 61; the stay at beth-shemesh was apparently only a short one. the battle at tabor and eli's death cannot, as shown above, be placed much later than 1070 b.c. according to 1 sam. xiv. 3; xviii. 19, the ark was in saul's army at the battle of michmash, and ahijah (ahimelech), the great-grandson of eli, was its keeper. [226] 1 chron. xxvi. 28. [227] only one concubine is mentioned, by whom saul had two sons. [228] 1 sam. xviii. 3, 17-20, 28; xxii. 4. [229] 1 sam. xvii., xviii., xxiii. 28. [230] 1 sam. xiv. 47, 48. [231] 1 sam. xv. 12. the place near hebron still bears the name carmel. [232] nöldeke, "die amalekiter," s. 14, 15. [233] 2 sam. i. 21-24. [234] this follows from the fact that the monarchy remains even after saul's death, from the lamentation of the israelites for saul, and their allegiance to his son ishbosheth. chapter vi. david's struggle against saul and ishbosheth. the position which samuel gained as a priest, seer, and judge after the death of eli and his sons, and continued to hold under the sway of the philistines must have undergone a marked change, owing to the establishment of the monarchy in israel, though in the later text of the books of samuel it is maintained that "samuel judged israel till his death."[235] we know that samuel had set up an altar to jehovah at ramathaim, his home and dwelling-place (p. 115), but it is not handed down that he had again set up there the sacred tabernacle and the worship at the sacred ark, though this may very well have been the case after the philistines sent back the ark. both the older and the later text of the two books of samuel represent him as in opposition to the monarchy. according to the later text, written from a prophetic point of view, samuel had from the first opposed the establishment of the monarchy; and both the older and the more recent account know of a contention between saul and samuel. the former tells us: when saul immediately after his election took up arms against the philistines, and these marched out with their whole fighting power, and saul gathered the israelites at gilgal, samuel bade the king wait seven days till he came down to offer burnt-offering and thank-offering. "and saul waited seven days, but samuel came not; the people were scattered. then saul said: bring me the burnt-offering and the thank-offering. he offered the burnt-sacrifice, and when he had made an end samuel came, and saul went to greet him. and samuel said, what hast thou done? saul answered, when i saw that the people were scattered from me, and thou didst not come at the time appointed, and the philistines were encamped at michmash, i said, the philistines will come down upon me to gilgal, and i have not made supplication to jehovah, so i forced myself and offered the burnt-sacrifice. then samuel said, thou hast done foolishly; thou hast not observed the command of thy god which he commanded thee. jehovah would have established thy kingdom over israel for ever, but now thy kingdom shall not endure."[236] the more recent account puts the contention at a far later date. when saul marched against the amalekites samuel bade him "curse" everything that belonged to amalek, man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. after the return of the victorious army samuel came to gilgal, and said, what meaneth this bleating of sheep and lowing of oxen in my ears? saul answered, i have obeyed the voice of jehovah and have gone the way which jehovah sent me, and i have brought with me agag the king of amalek, and have "cursed" amalek. but from the spoil the people have taken the best of what was "cursed," in order to sacrifice to jehovah, thy god, at gilgal. samuel answered in the tone of isaiah, hath jehovah delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifice? to obey is better than sacrifice. saul confesses that he has sinned and transgressed the command of jehovah and the word of samuel, "for i feared the people, and obeyed their voice. and now forgive me my sin, and turn with me, that i may entreat jehovah. but samuel said, i will not turn back with thee; because thou hast rejected the word of jehovah he will reject thee from being king over israel. samuel turned to go, but saul caught the hem of his garment and said, i have sinned, yet honour me before the elders of my people, and before israel, and return with me, that i may offer prayer before jehovah. then samuel turned behind saul, and saul offered prayer before jehovah. and samuel bade them bring agag the king of amalek before him, and said, as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women; and he hewed agag in pieces before jehovah at gilgal. and samuel went up to ramathaim and saw saul no more."[237] in the narrative of the first text saul appears to be thoroughly justified by the most urgent necessity; in the narrative of the second text he acknowledges openly and completely that he has sinned. it may have been the case that saul did not appear to samuel sufficiently submissive to his utterances, which for him were the utterances of god; that he wished to see the rights and power of a king exercised in a different manner and in a different feeling from that in which saul discharged his office. more dangerous for saul than any reproach or coldness on the part of samuel was the contention which he had in the latter years of his reign with another man, whom he had himself raised to eminence--a strife which cost saul the reward of his laborious and brave reign, and his house the throne; while israel lost the fruits of great efforts, and the fortunes of the people were again put to the hazard. of the family of perez[238] of the tribe of judah, david was the youngest (eighth) son of a man of some possessions, jesse of bethlehem. he was entrusted with the care and keeping of the sheep and goats of his father in the desert pastures on the dead sea, and his shepherd life had caused him to grow up in a rough school. it had made him hardy, it had given strength and suppleness to his body; he had gained a delight in adventure and unshaken courage in danger. in defence of the flocks he had withstood bears and ventured into conflict even with a lion. in the loneliness and silence which surrounded him he practised singing and playing; the severe and solemn nature of that region was adapted to impress great thoughts on his mind, to give force and elevation to his spirit. from such a school he came into the ranks of the warriors of saul; the bold deeds which even in his youth he had performed against the philistines induced saul to make david one of "the brave," whom he took into his house (about 1040 b.c.).[239] he also made him one of his captains,[240] and frequently sent him out against the philistines; in these inroads he fought with more success than other chieftains.[241] thus david was a favourite in the eyes of the people and the servants of the king, and jonathan, saul's eldest son, made a covenant with david, because "he loved him as his own soul."[242] in the house of saul david was trusted and honoured before the other warriors; he was his armour-bearer and the chief of a troop of 1000 men. after jonathan and abner, david was nearest the king; he had the complete confidence of saul, and at length became his son-in-law.[243] some years afterwards (about 1036 b.c.[244]), saul conceived a suspicion of the man whom he had elevated to such a height. he imagined that his son-in-law intended to seize the throne from himself, or contest the succession with his son jonathan. according to the older account it was jealousy of the military renown of david, which threatened to obscure his own, that roused saul against david;[245] according to the later, saul feared the partiality which the people displayed towards david. he says to jonathan, "so long as the son of jesse lives, thou and thy kingdom will not continue."[246] according to the same account an evil spirit came over saul, he was beside himself in the house and threw a spear at david, who played the harp.[247] david avoided the cast: he fled to samuel at ramathaim into the dwellings of the seers,[248] and from thence escaped to achish, the prince of the philistines of gath.[249] in the older account also it is an evil spirit of jehovah which comes over saul, and causes him to thrust with his spear at david while he is playing the harp. david escapes into his house. at saul's command the house is surrounded; and david is to be slain the next morning. but michal, the daughter of saul, david's wife, let him down from a window, and in his place she put the teraphim, _i.e._ the image of the deity, into the bed, covered it with a coverlet, laid the net of goat's hair on the face, and gave out that david was sick. david meanwhile flies to nob (in the land of benjamin), where was set up a gilded image of jehovah, before which a company of priests served, and at their head ahimelech, a great-grandson of eli,[250] who had previously inquired of jehovah for david.[251] ahimelech gave david the sacred loaves, and a sword which was consecrated there, and from hence, according to this account, david escaped to achish. saul reproached his daughter for aiding david, and said, "why hast thou allowed my enemy to escape?" then he gave her to wife to phalti of gallim. we are not in a position to decide whether david really pursued ambitious designs; whether, as a matter of fact, he conspired with the priests against saul and his house, as saul assumed; whether saul saw through his designs and plots, or suspected him without reason.[252] david was not content with escaping the anger and pursuit of saul, with placing himself and his family in security. he repaired to the enemies of his land, the philistines, who would not have accepted at once an opponent who had done them grievous injury, if he had not openly broken with saul and given them to suppose that henceforth he would support their struggle against saul and israel. yet david did not bring his father and mother, on whom saul could have taken vengeance, out of the land to gath, where they might have been a pledge of his fidelity to the philistines; he put them in the hands of the king of moab, and also entered into relations with the king of the ammonites.[253] it was probably with the consent of the philistines that david returned from gath into the land of judah, and there threw himself into the wild regions by the dead sea, where he had previously pastured his father's sheep and goats, in order to bring his own tribe of judah into arms against the king sprung from the small tribe of benjamin.[254] the cave of adullam was the place of gathering. his brothers, the whole house of his father, came, and a prophet of the name of gad, "and all oppressed persons, and any one who had a creditor and was of a discontented spirit," and "david was their chief, and had under him 400 men."[255] "saul heard that all men knew about david and the men who were with him, and sent out to bring before him ahimelech and the house of his father and all the priests of nob." the king sat on the height near gibeah under the tamarisk, with his spear in his hand and his servants round him. "why hast thou conspired against me," he said to ahimelech, "thou and the son of jesse, that he has rebelled against me. thou shalt die, and the house of thy father." and he commanded his body-guard who stood near him: "come up and slay the priests of jehovah, their hand is with david." then 85 men were slain who wore the linen tunic; and nob, the city of the priests, saul smote with the edge of the sword; one only, abiathar, a son of ahimelech, escaped with the image of jehovah to david.[256] david had no doubt calculated on greater success in the tribe of judah. so long as his following was confined to four or six hundred men, he could only live a robber life with this troop. but by this course he would have roused against himself those whom he robbed, and strengthened the attachment to saul. so he attempted to keep a middle path. he sent to nabal, a rich man at carmel near hebron (p. 127), who possessed 3000 sheep and 1000 goats, a descendant of that caleb who had once founded himself a kingdom here with his sword (i. 505), and bade his messengers say: david has taken nothing of thy flocks, send him therefore food for him and his people. but nabal answered: "who is david, and who is the son of jesse? there are now many servants who run away from their masters." then david set out in the night to fall upon nabal's house and flocks. on the way abigail, nabal's wife, met him. in fear of the freebooters she had caused some slaughtered sheep, loaves, and pitchers of wine, some figs and cakes of raisins, to be laid on asses in order to bring them secretly into david's camp. praised be thy wisdom, woman, said david: by the life of jehovah, if thou hadst not met me there would not have been alive at break of day a single male of nabal and his house. nabal died ten days after this incident. david saw that such a wealthy possession in this region could not but be advantageous. saul's daughter was lost to him; he sent, therefore, some servants to abigail to carmel. they said, david has sent us to thee to take thee to him to wife. abigail stood up, bowed herself with her face to earth, and said: behold, thy handmaid is ready to wash the feet of the servants of thy master. then she set out with five of her maids, and followed the servants of david and became his wife.[257] as a fact this marriage appears to have furthered the undertaking of david; the places in the south of judah, aroer, hormah, ramoth, jattir, eshtemod, and even hebron, declared for him.[258] from this point david sought to force his way farther to the north, and possessed himself of the fortified town of kegilah (keilah).[259] when saul was told that david was in kegilah, he said: god has delivered him into my hand in that he has shut himself up in a city with gates and bars. he set out against kegilah. david commanded abiathar the priest, who had fled to him from nob with the image of jehovah, to bring the image, and david inquired of the image: will the men of kegilah deliver me and my followers into the hand of saul? jehovah, god of israel, announce this to me. and jehovah said, they will deliver thee.[260] then david despaired of remaining in the city and fled; he retired again into the desert by the dead sea near ziph and maon. but saul pursued and overtook him; nothing but a mountain separated david's troop from the king; david was already surrounded and lost, when the news was brought to saul, "hasten and come, for the philistines are in the land." this was no doubt an incursion made by the philistines in aid of the hardly-pressed rebels. saul abandoned the pursuit and went against the philistines: david called the mountain the rock of escape.[261] when the king had driven back the philistines he took 3000 men out of the army to crush the rebellion utterly. david had retired farther to the east, on the shore of the dead sea, in the neighbourhood of engedi, to the "rock of the goat," and there he was so closely shut in by saul that he had to despair of remaining in judah. he escaped with his troop to the philistines: the rebellion was at an end.[262] david's attempt to induce the tribe of judah to fall away from saul was entirely wrecked. driven from the ground on which he had raised the standard of revolt, he no longer scrupled to enter formally into the service of the philistines, and these must have welcomed the aid of a brave and skilful leader, who, though once their enemy, had already in judah engaged the arms of saul, the weight of which they had so often felt, and which had taken from them their dominion over israel. achish, king of gath, to whom david again fled, was of opinion "that david had made himself to stink among his people, israel, and would be his servant for ever;" and gave the border city ziklag to be a dwelling for him and his band of freebooters.[263] david now settled as a vassal of achish at ziklag. at his command he was compelled to take the field, and also to deliver up a part of the spoil which he obtained.[264] thus from the land of the philistines, with his band, which here became strengthened by the discontented in israel[265] who fled to him over the border, david carried on a petty war against saul and his country. in these campaigns david was wise enough to spare his former adherents in judah, the cities which had once declared for him, and his attacks were only directed against the adherents of saul; in secret he even maintained his connection with his party in judah, and to the elders of the cities which clung to him he sent presents out of the booty won in his raids and plundering excursions.[266] david had already lived more than a year in ziklag,[267] when the philistines assembled all their forces against saul. when the princes of the philistines marshalled their army, and caused it to march past in troops, david and his men also came among the soldiers of achish. then the other princes said to achish: what need of these hebrews? let not david go to the battle; he may become a traitor, and go over to his master, in order to win favour with saul at the price of our heads. achish trusted david, and said: he has already dwelt with me for a time, for years; to this day i have found nothing in him. but the other princes insisted on their demand; perhaps they remembered the day of michmash, when saul had obtained his first victory over the philistines with the aid of the hebrews in their camp. when achish announced to david that he could not accompany the army, he answered: what have i done, and what hast thou found in thy servant since i came to thee to this day, that i should not fight against the enemies of my king? in spite of his earnest desire, david was sent back.[268] the army of the philistines passed to the north, through the land of ephraim, into the land of issachar, and encamped at shunem in the plain of jezreel. on mount gilboa, over against them, saul was encamped with the army of the israelites.[269] the battle broke out, and the contest was severe. saul saw his sons abinadab and melchishua, and finally jonathan himself, fall; the israelites retired, and the archers of the enemy pressed on the king. saul refused to fly, and survive the death of his sons and his first defeat. he called to his armour-bearer: draw thy sword and slay me, that these uncircumcised may not come upon me and maltreat me. but the faithful comrade would not lift his hand against his master. then saul threw himself upon his sword, and the armour-bearer followed the example of the king. the army of the israelites was scattered in every direction. the philistines rejoiced when they found the corpse of saul on mount gilboa. they took the armour from the dead king, and sent it round their whole land, that every one might be convinced that the dreaded leader of israel was no longer living. then the armour was laid up in the temple of astarte. the philistines cut off the head of the corpse and hung it up as a trophy in the temple of dagon; the trunk and the corpses of the three sons of saul were set up in the market-place of beth-shan, not far from the field of battle, in order to show the israelites that they had nothing more to hope from saul and his race (1033 b.c.).[270] israel was benumbed with terror. the nurse let the young son of jonathan, mephibosheth, fall to the ground when she heard the news of gilboa. many retired beyond the jordan before the philistines; others hastened to ziklag, to place themselves under david's protection. but from jabesh in gilead, which saul had once rescued from the most grievous distress, valiant men set out over the jordan to beth-shan. here, at night, they took the corpses of saul and his three sons from the market-place, brought them to jabesh, and buried them under the tamarisk, and the inhabitants of jabesh fasted and lamented seven days for saul's death.[271] the israelites had reason enough to sorrow and lament for saul. from one of the songs of lamentation sung in these days it is convincingly clear what this man had done for them. "the gazelle, o israel," so it was sung at that time, "is stricken on thy heights! fallen are thy heroes! tell it not in gath, publish it not in the streets of ascalon, lest the daughter of the philistine rejoice, lest the daughter of the uncircumcised triumph. ye mountains of gilboa, let there be no dew nor rain upon you, nor offerings of first-fruits! for there the shield of the mighty was cast away, the shield of saul. from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of jonathan turned not back, and the sword of saul returned not empty. saul and jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided. they were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions. ye daughters of israel, weep for saul, who clothed you delicately in purple, and put ornaments of gold on your garments. how are the mighty fallen in battle."[272] a single stroke had annihilated all that had been obtained in long and toilsome struggles. the philistines were again masters on this side of jordan as in the unhappy times before saul. but in spite of the fall of the hero who had been the defence of israel and the terror of the enemies, the monarchy remained, so firmly had saul established it. ishbosheth, the youngest son of saul, had escaped the battle; with abner, the general, he had found safety beyond the jordan. here he took up his abode at machanaim, and the tribes on the other side of the jordan recognised him as their king. abner's sword was a strong support for ishbosheth, and the adherence of the israelites to saul's family soon permitted him to force his way from machanaim over the jordan. here, also, amid the arms of the philistines, ishbosheth was recognised as king. thus abner's courage and bravery succeeded in wresting the fruits of the victory at gilboa from the philistines, and liberating from their yoke first ephraim and benjamin, and then the whole region of the northern tribes.[273] while abner was engaged in preserving the remnants of saul's dominion for his son, and in driving the philistines out of the land, david looked after his own interests. the fresh terror of the overthrow at gilboa had driven many israelites to ziklag. david's name stood high among the warriors of israel, and protection against the philistines was certain to be found with their vassal. the places in the tribe of judah which had formerly joined david now again resorted to him, and the tribe of judah had previously been subject to the philistines longer than any other, and was more accustomed to their dominion. as the tradition tells us, david inquired of jehovah whether he should go from ziklag into one of the cities of judah, and jehovah answered: go to hebron. this was done. "and the men of judah there anointed david king of the house of judah, for only the house of judah adhered to david."[274] thus david, after saul's death, succeeded in the attempt which had failed in saul's lifetime; he established an independent monarchy in the tribe of judah. here he ruled at hebron at first quietly, under the protection of the philistines.[275] but when abner had again wrested the north and centre of the land from the hands of the philistines, when ishbosheth's rule again united the whole land as far as the tribe of judah, he turned his arms not more against the philistines than against their vassal at hebron in order to complete the liberation of israel. "the strife was long between the house of saul and the house of david,"--so runs the older account.[276] of the events of this war between judah and the rest of the tribes, we only know that on a certain day joab at the head of david's men, and abner at the head of the men of ishbosheth, strove fiercely at the pool of gibeon, and joab's brother asahel was slain by abner. for several years the war continued without any decisive result, till a division arose between ishbosheth and abner which gave david the advantage, and finally placed him on the throne of saul. ishbosheth appears to have become distrustful of abner, to whom he owed everything. when abner took rizpah, the concubine of saul, to himself, ishbosheth thought that he intended in this way to establish a right to the throne, in order to wrest the dominion from himself, and did not conceal his anger.[277] then abner turned from the man he had exalted and entered into a secret negotiation with david. this was received with joy by david. crafty as he was, he first demanded that his wife michal, the daughter of saul, whom saul after david's rebellion had married to phalti, should be sent back to him. david had found out the attachment of the israelites to the house of saul, and was no doubt of opinion that nothing would sooner help him to the throne than the renewed connection with saul's family; if none of the descendants of saul survived but this daughter he would be his legitimate heir. abner sent michal, and went himself to hebron in order to arrange about the transfer of the kingdom. they were agreed; abner had done his service. he was already on his way home to machanaim, when joab, the captain of david, called him back. he came, and joab took him aside under the gate of hebron, as though he had something to tell him in secret; instead, he thrust his sword through his body. david asserted his innocence and lamented abner's death. abner's body was buried solemnly at hebron. david followed the bier in sackcloth, but joab remained unpunished.[278] he slew abner because the latter had previously slain his brother asahel at gibeon; but this was done in honourable fight, not by assassination. when the announcement of abner's death came to machanaim "ishbosheth's hands were numbed, and all israel was troubled." the israelites lamented abner's death. "must abner die as a godless man dieth?" they sang. "thy hands were never bound, thy feet never fettered; thou hast fallen as a man falls before the children of iniquity."[279] the pillar of the kingdom was broken. then two captains of the army of ishbosheth, brothers of the tribe of benjamin, hoped to gain favour with david. while ishbosheth was resting at midday in his chamber on his bed, they entered unobserved into his house, cut off his head, and brought it hastily to hebron to david. this murder carried david quickly to his goal, but he would not praise those who committed it; he caused them both to be executed. the throne of saul was empty. david, the husband of his daughter, was at the head of a not inconsiderable power; whom could the tribes who had obeyed ishbosheth raise to the throne except him, if an end was to be put to the pernicious division, and the people were again to be united under one government? the elders of the tribes were intelligent enough to value rightly this position of affairs. hence the people met together at hebron; in full assembly david was raised to be king of israel, and anointed by the elders.[280] eight years had passed since saul and his three elder sons fell on gilboa. all was full of joy, union, and hope that better times would come again after the end of the long strife (1025 b.c.).[281] at length david stood at the goal which he had pursued steadfastly under many changes of fortune. but there were still some male descendants of saul in existence. the hivites of gibeon cherished a deadly hatred to the race of saul, because saul's hand had been heavy upon them "in his zeal for the sons of israel." david offered to "avenge the wrong which saul had done to them."[282] they demanded, that as their land had borne no fruit for three years, seven men of the race of saul should be given to them, that they might "hang them up before jehovah at gibeah," the dwelling-place of saul. there were just seven male descendants of saul remaining: two sons by rizpah, his concubine, and five grandchildren, whom merab, the eldest daughter of saul, had borne to adriel. these david took and "gave them into the hands of the gibeonites, and they hanged them up on the hill before jehovah." there was still another descendant of saul's remaining, mephibosheth, the son of jonathan; but he was only 10 or 12 years of age, and was, moreover, lame of both feet, from the fall which he had suffered in the hands of his nurse. david also thought of the close friendship which he had contracted in earlier days with jonathan; he gave to mephibosheth saul's land at gibeah, and arranged that saul and jonathan's bones should be brought from jabesh to zelah, near gibeah, and buried where kish, saul's father, lay. in the tribe of benjamin, to which saul belonged, and among those connected with his house, the acts of david to the house of saul were not forgotten; they hated david, the "man of blood." footnotes: [235] 1 sam. vii. 15. [236] 1 sam. x. 8; xiii. 8-15. [237] 1 sam. xv. [238] ruth iv. 18-22. [239] in 2 sam. v. 4, 5 it is stated that david when he was raised at hebron to be king of judah was 30 years old. this took place 1033 b.c. (p. 113, note); david must therefore have been born 1063 b.c., and could not have marched out to battle before 1043 b.c. [240] 1 sam. xviii. 5. [241] the tale of the battle of david with the giant goliath appears to have arisen out of a later conflict of david when king with a mighty philistine. in 2 sam. xxi. 18-22 we are told, "and there was again a battle of philistines at gob. then elhanan, the son of jair orgim, a bethlehemite, slew goliath of gath; the shaft of whose spear was as a weaver's beam." shortly before it is stated: "david and his servants strove with the philistines, and david was weary, and ishbi thought to slay david--the weight of his spear was 300 shekels; then abishai (the brother of joab) aided the king, and slew the philistine," 2 sam. xxi. 15-17. from the conflict with a giant which david had to undergo when king, and the slaughter of goliath of gath by elhanan, a fellow-townsman of david's from bethlehem, the legend may have arisen that david himself slew a great giant. this legend was then transferred by the theocratic narrative into david's boyhood; in this way he was marked from the beginning as the chosen instrument of jehovah. the statement in 1 chron. xxi. 5 cannot be made to tell against this view, which in order to explain the contradiction between the first and second books of samuel explains the giant whom elhanan slew, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam, to be a brother of goliath; the less so inasmuch as the passage from the book of samuel is repeated word for word with this addition, while the battle of david with ishbi is omitted. if david really slew a distinguished warrior of gath in saul's time, it is the more difficult to explain how he could afterwards fly to the prince of gath of all others, and enter into such close relations with him. the often-mentioned national song, "saul has slain his thousands and david his tens of thousands," is scarcely applicable to the slaying of a giant, however great he might be, and probably comes from the time of david's reign when he had really gained more brilliant victories than saul. [242] 1 sam. xviii. 3. [243] 1 sam. xvi. 22; xviii. 5; xxii. 14. [244] this date may be assumed, if we put the death of saul in the year 1033 b.c. (p. 113), since david's rebellion in judah lasted a considerable time, and he afterwards remained at ziklag at least 16 months, 1 sam. xxvii. 7; xxix. 3. [245] 1 sam. xviii. 9. [246] 1 sam. xviii. 16; xx. 31. [247] 1 sam. xviii. 11. [248] as najoth, or rather newajoth, means dwellings, the habitations of the prophet's disciples must be meant. [249] 1 sam. xix. 18-24; xxi. 11-15. [250] 1 sam. xxii. 9. [251] 1 sam. xiv. 3. [252] the older text, 1, xxvi. 19, represents david as saying to saul: "if jehovah hath stirred thee against me, let him accept an offering, but if men, cursed be they before jehovah." in the books of samuel the relations of saul and david are strangely confused, for reasons which are not far to seek. the older account of the priests and the later one of the prophets, which are mixed together in these books, had equally reason to place in as favourable a light as possible the founder of the power of israel, of the united worship, the minstrel of the psalms, the progenitor of the kings of judah, and to put him in the right as against saul and the house of saul. to the older narrative belongs the description of david's shepherd life, his battle with the giant, his rise as a warrior,--the intention is to show that jehovah is strong in the weak. the shepherd-boy comes into the camp in order to bring bread to his brethren and cheese to the captain. his brethren are angry that he has left the sheep, and wish to send him back, but he will fight with the giant who has defied the army of the living god. saul dissuades him from the contest, but david persists, refuses armour, and goes forth in trust on jehovah, who gives not the victory by spear and shield. by this victory he is marked as the chosen instrument of jehovah. in both accounts saul loses the favour of jehovah by disobedience to samuel. according to the later text, samuel, when he had broken with saul owing to the incomplete "cursing" of amalek, took the horn of oil and anointed the youngest son of jesse, who was fetched from the sheep, king over israel amid his brethren. when this had been done saul's servants bring david as a brave hero and warrior, "prudent in speech, a comely person, cunning in playing," 1 sam. xvi. yet samuel had no right to place kings over the israelites, and if he went so far in his opposition to saul, he made himself responsible for the rebellion; if he really intended this, he would have set up some other than a shepherd-boy against saul. if, on the other hand, david was really anointed, saul was quite justified in pursuing him. yet it was with this anointment, as with that of saul; no one knew anything of it, and david himself makes no use of this divine election, not even when he organises the rebellion in judah, nor after saul's death at hebron, nor in the struggle against ishbosheth, who was not in any case anointed, nor even after the death of ishbosheth: he is after this chosen by the people in hebron and anointed king over israel. it is only the philistines in gath who know anything of david's royal dignity, when he comes to them for the first time, 1 sam. xxi. 11. we see plainly that this anointment is a careless interpolation of the prophetic revision, to which the verses 11-15 of the chapter quoted undoubtedly belong, just as chap. xvi. is intended to legitimise david. the same account represents saul as thrusting twice with his javelin at david, xviii. 10, 11, on the very day after he has slain the giant. as though nothing had happened, david continues in the house of saul, and saul confers on him still greater honours and dignities. in the older as well as in the later account this is turned round so as to seem that saul gave these to david as a "snare," that david might fall by the hands of the philistines, xviii. 17, 25; and with this view saul requires 100 foreskins of the philistines as the price of michal. it is obvious that saul had other means, more certain to accomplish his object, at his command to destroy david, if he really intended it; according to the older account saul requests jonathan and his men, though in vain, to slay david, xix. 1. when the attempt at assassination and the open breach has taken place in both narratives, saul, according to the prophetic account, marvels nevertheless that david does not come to table, xx. 26, 27. to this text also belongs the further statement that when jonathan excused david, saul thrust at him also with his spear, xx. 33. in the older account ahimelech, who had aided david in his flight, makes the excuse that he knew not that david fled before the king. "david was the most honoured among the friends of saul:" no one therefore knew anything of these plots and attempts of saul upon david. every one sees that this is impossible. jonathan knows david better than saul, and always defends him against his father; then david himself calls on jonathan to kill him if there is any wickedness in him, 1, xx. 8. the story of the arrows is very poetical, but the sign is quite unnecessary, since they afterwards converse with each other, 1, xx. 18-43. in the older account also of the occurrence in the desert by the dead sea, the prophetic account has inserted a visit of jonathan to david. jonathan strengthens david's courage although he is in rebellion against his father. "fear not," jonathan says to him, "the hand of my father will not reach thee, thou shalt be king over israel," xxiii. 15-18. saul was something different from the madman who betwixt sane intervals and reconciliations is constantly making fresh attacks on david's life, whether innocent or guilty. even the most complete recognition of all that david established at a later time for israel, and with an influence extending far beyond israel, does not make it a duty to overlook the way in which he rose to his eminence. [253] 1 sam. xxii. 3; 2, x. 1. [254] in 1 sam. xxix. 3, achish says of david, "he has now been with me for years." [255] so the older account, 1 sam. xxii. 1-5. [256] so the older story, 1 sam. xxii. the priestly point of view from which it is written causes it, in order to prove the innocence of the priests, to represent david as saying on his flight to ahimelech that he had a hasty mission from the king, so that ahimelech can explain to saul that he knew nothing about the flight. from the same point of view we must derive the statement that the body-guard hesitated to lay hands on the holy men, and that an edomite slew them. that the punishment of nob took place long after david's flight and rebellion, is clear from the fact that the fugitive abiathar finds david already in possession of kegilah, 1 sam. xxii. 20; xxiii. 6, 7. [257] 1 sam. xxv. 2-12, 18-42. [258] 1 sam. xxx. 26-31. [259] that david saved and won kegilah from the philistines, and obtained a great victory over them, as we find it in the older account (1 sam. xxiii. 1-5), is more than improbable. david certainly could not undertake to fight with saul and the philistines at one time with 600 men. how could he meet an army of the philistines in the field, when he does not trust himself to maintain the walls of kegilah against saul with his troop. the citizens of kegilah would hardly have been prepared to give him up, if just before he had done them such a kindness. finally, this battle contradicts the position in which we find david before and afterwards with regard to the philistines. achish at any rate has unbounded confidence in david since his desertion, and will even make him "keeper of his head," 1 sam. xxviii. 2. [260] 1 sam. xxiii. 9-13. [261] 1 sam. xxiii. 25-28. [262] so the older account, 1 sam. xxvi. 1, 2; xxvii. 1-3. while saul has cast his spear at david, and pursues him everywhere with unwearying energy in order to slay him, david gives him his life. according to the older account, saul sleeps in his encampment in the wilderness of ziph. david with abishai secretly enters this, and he distinctly refuses, when urged by abishai to slay saul, to listen to him, because saul is an "anointed of jehovah," takes the spear and the water-bowl of the king, plants himself on a mountain in the distance, and from this reproaches abner that he has been so careless in providing for the safety of the king. saul is again touched, acknowledges his sins and follies, begs david to return, and finally gives him his blessing on his undertaking. david upon this declares that his life will be regarded before jehovah as he has regarded saul's life, and escapes to the philistines. according to the prophetic account, saul "covers his feet" in a cave in the desert of engedi, in which are concealed david and his men. these urge david to slay saul, but he replies, "far be it from me to lay my hand on the lord's anointed," and merely cuts off the corner of saul's upper garment. when saul awakes and goes out of the cave, david hurries after him, prostrates himself, and proves by the piece in his hand that those did him wrong who said that he sought to do saul mischief, "but thou art seeking to take my life." saul weeps, acknowledges that david is more just than he is; may jehovah reward him (david) for this day. "i know," saul continues, "that thou wilt be king, and the kingdom of israel will continue in thy hand." let david only swear to him not to destroy his seed. this david does, 1 sam. xxiv. 4-23. if this event, in itself all but impossible, ever took place, it must have had some consequences; yet there is no change in the relations of saul and david, saul continues to pursue david. if david took the oath not to destroy the descendants of saul, he broke it. [263] so the older account, 1 sam. xxvii. 12. [264] 1 sam. xxvii. 6, 12. [265] chron. xiii. 1-7, 20. [266] 1 sam. xxx. 26-30; _supra_, p. 137. in order to wash david clean from the reproach of fighting with the philistines against his people, it is observed (xxvii. 8-11) that david always marched against the tribes of the desert, that he cut down the prisoners, and then reported to achish that he "had invaded the south of judah." the position of ziklag was ill-suited for attacks on the desert, and achish had not given him any commands to fight against the children of the desert. at a later time achish says of david: "since his desertion i have found nothing in him," xxix. 3, 6; he will make him even the protector of his own life (1, xxviii. 2), and such deceit as is here attributed to david presupposes that achish and all the rest of the philistines were blind. [267] 1 sam. xxvii. 7, "one year and four months:" xxix. 3, achish says, "he has been with me--for years." [268] according to the older account, 1 sam. xxviii. 2, when achish requires him to march with him against saul, david replies, "so shalt thou behold what thy servant will do." the narrative of the sending back of david at the wish of the remaining princes, and david's protest against it, belong also to the older narrative. this is repeated in chronicles (1, xiii. 19) very emphatically, and without any motive in the context, so that it might be possible to accept the same view which represents david as constantly marching against the desert from ziklag. for the moral estimate of david it is sufficient that it did not rest with him to join in the battle. [269] the story of the witch of endor (xxviii. 3 ff.) belongs to the later account. to begin with, this account contradicts itself; we are told in the introduction (verse 3) that saul had removed the necromancers and "wise men" out of israel, a statement which is repeated in the course of the story (verse 9). nevertheless saul causes a witch to be sought out, because when already encamped before the philistines "he is in great fear of the enemy." saul was a brave warrior, who even in a worse position had never trembled. he sends for this woman in order to speak with samuel's ghost. if saul had any desire to see ghosts, he would desire to see the ghost of samuel least of all, for he, according to the same prophetic account, had anointed david to be king against saul (verse 11). samuel as a ghost has thus a third opportunity for reproaching saul, and telling him "that jehovah had given the kingdom to david, because he had not satisfied his wrath on amalek" (p. 129). [270] 1 sam. xxxi. 1-11; 1 chron. x. 10. according to a second account of the death of saul in 2 sam. i. ff., an amalekite came unexpectedly to mount gilboa. he finds saul in flight leaning on his spear, and saul says to him, "slay me." the amalekite does so; takes the crown from the head of the king, and his bracelets, and then flies to ziklag in the territory of the philistines in order to bring the crown to david. david causes him to be slain, because "he had lifted up his hand against the anointed of the lord." the object of this story is too plain--to bring the crown of saul into the hands of david in order to make him the legitimate king, and at the same time to exhibit david as loyal to saul even after his death, and avenging his murder--and the impossibilities in it are too great. david afterwards permitted the execution of the remaining descendants of saul. [271] 1 sam. xxxi. 12, 13; 2, xxi. 12. [272] this lament, which was in the book of jasher (2 sam. i. 18), is ascribed to david. his moral participation in the issue of the battle must have been most clear to himself; his rebellion and desertion to the philistines had weakened saul's powers of fighting and deprived him of brave warriors; he had been ready to fight in the army of the philistines against saul and jonathan. least of all could david sing, "tell it not in gath," since he himself was in the land of gath. the last verse, "i am distressed for thee, my brother jonathan," etc., may certainly have come from david, and may have been added to the lament at a later time. thus the whole might appear to be the work of david. [273] 2 sam. ii. 8-10. [274] 2 sam. ii. 1, 3, 4-10. [275] this conclusion must be drawn both from the earlier relation to the philistines, and from the fact that david during this whole time has not to fight with the philistines, whereas afterwards, as soon as he has united the tribes under his rule, he has to wage the fiercest war with them; apparently he was supported against ishbosheth and abner by the philistines in order to put a stop to abner's advances. cf. ewald, "geschichte des volks israel," 2, 572. [276] david reigned seven years and six months at hebron, 2 sam. iii. 1, 10, 11; 2, v. 4, 5; 1 kings ii. 11. ishbosheth's reign is given at two years only. these two statements can only be brought into harmony by supposing that ishbosheth was not acknowledged king of the northern tribes till five and a half years after saul's death, _i.e._ abner required this time to drive the philistines out of these regions, or that david was not acknowledged king of israel till five and a half years after the death of ishbosheth. [277] 2 sam. iii. 7. [278] 2 sam. iii. 31-39. [279] this beautiful lament is also ascribed to david: david was the singer, and, like the psalms, other songs also come from him. but david could not speak of joab and indirectly of himself as a "child of iniquity." [280] 2 sam. v. 1-3. [281] 1 chron. xii. 23 ff. [282] 2 sam. xxi. 3. chapter vii. the rule of david. at the cost of his nation, in collusion with the enemies of his land, and under the protection of the philistines, david had paved the way to dominion over israel. he had much to make good. he had to cause the way which led him to the throne to be forgotten, to heal the wounds which the long contention must have inflicted on his land, to surpass the great services which saul had rendered to the israelites by yet greater services, by more brilliant exploits, by more firmly-rooted institutions. a brave warrior even in early years, david had been afterwards tested and strengthened by adventures and dangers of every kind; he had understood how to meet or escape even the most difficult situations. he had the inclination and power for great things, and was little scrupulous in the choice of the means which brought him most swiftly and completely to his object. his vision was clear and wide; clever, crafty, and quickly decided, he nevertheless knew how to wait when the object could not be obtained at the moment. it was his in an extraordinary measure to retain old comrades, to win new ones and attach them to himself. it was not his intention to be at the beck of the philistines longer than he had need of them; with his elevation at hebron came the moment for breaking with them. he saw that they would not lose without a heavy price the preponderance in which his rebellion against saul, his leadership in judah, his struggle against ishbosheth had again placed them; that their exasperation would be the deeper and more lasting because he had deceived the hopes which they had placed in him. he began his reign with an undertaking which shows the certainty and width of his views. his dominion over the tribes of simeon and judah had been established for almost eight years, but over the northern tribes it was recent, and had to be confirmed. the remembrance of saul was cherished most warmly in the tribe of benjamin, which lay next to judah on the north. in this land, not far from the northern border of judah, was a city of the name of jebus, inhabited by the jebusites, a relic of the old population which at the time of the settlement the benjaminites had not been able to overcome.[283] the city stood on steep heights, surrounded by deep gorges, which formed natural trenches; the walls of the eastern height on which the citadel stood, mount zion, were so strong that the jebusites are said to have boasted that the blind and lame were sufficient to defend them. this city appeared to david excellently situated for protection against the philistines and for his own royal abode; it had the faithful tribes of judah and simeon to the south, and was pushed forward like a fortification into the territory of benjamin and the northern tribes. nor was it useful only in establishing his dominion over israel. even in saul's reign it had been difficult when an enemy invaded the open cantons of israel to find time for assembling the fighting powers, the levy of the people; there had been no fortified point on which the first shock of the enemy's onset broke, no city strongly fortified and of considerable size in which large numbers could find protection. soon after the assembly at hebron, which had transferred to him the royal authority over all the tribes of israel, david set himself to win this place. first he cut off the water from the city of the jebusites, and then joab with the veteran band of david succeeded in climbing the wall in a sudden attack. the inhabitants were spared; at any rate a part of them must have remained, for we afterwards find jebusites in and about jerusalem.[284] the princes of the philistines had begun to arm immediately upon the announcement of david's election to be king of all israel.[285] david awaited their approach in the citadel of zion which he had just conquered. the philistines encamped before the city. when they were scattered in search of plunder in the valley of rephaim david inquired of jehovah whether he should go down against them. the answer was favourable. the philistines were surprised and defeated. but they soon appeared a second time under the walls of zion, and the oracle of jehovah bade david not to go directly against them, but to turn aside under the balsam trees. if he heard the tops of the trees rustle he was to hasten on; that was the sign from god that he would go before him to smite the camp of the philistines. so it befel. david gained a great victory and was enabled to pursue the philistines as far as gezer.[286] yet the war was not decided, but still continued for a long time. four battles took place on the borders near gob and gath, and many severe combats had to be fought with the philistines. from all the traces of tradition it is clear that this war was the most stubborn and dangerous of all that david had to wage. in israel there were stories of the brave deeds of individual heroes which were accomplished in these battles: of abishai, the brother of joab, who saved the king in battle, when the mighty philistine ishbi thought to overcome him; of elhanan, who slew goliath of gath; and of the deeds of jonathan, the nephew of david, and sibbechai against the philistines.[287] at length david succeeded in "wresting the bridle out of the hand of the philistines," and "breaking their horn in pieces;"[288] he drove them back to their old borders. they had suffered such serious blows that for a long time they abstained from all further attacks, after they had carried on warfare against the hebrews for about 70 years. yet even david, in spite of this success, made no serious attempt to advance the borders of israel towards the sea, or to subjugate the cities of the philistines. when the most pressing danger from the philistines was over, david turned his arms to the south and east, against the amalekites, the moabites, and ammonites, who had once caused so much misery and disaster to israel. against the amalekites saul had already accomplished the main task (p. 127). david smote them with such effect that the name of the amalekites is hardly once mentioned afterwards; the remainder of the race seem to have been amalgamated with the edomites.[289] david had at a former time entered into connection with the king of moab; when he fled from saul he placed his parents under his protection. the cause of the rupture is unknown; we only know that david utterly overthrew the moabites and caused two-thirds of the prisoners to be put to death. it is said that they were compelled to lie down; they were then divided by a measuring cord into three parts, of which two were slain by iron threshing-carts being drawn over them, and only a third part were spared.[290] nahash, the king of ammon, with whom david had also previously been in relations (p. 136), was succeeded by his son hanon. this prince insulted david's envoys, he caused their beards to be shaved off, and their garments to be cut away as high as the middle. david sent joab with the levy of the people against the ammonites to avenge the insult. hanon called on the king of zobah--saul had already had to fight against zobah--and the rulers of beth-rehob, maacah, and tob in syria for assistance. hadad-ezer of zobah sent 20,000 men; from tob came 12,000; from maacah 1000. joab divided his army, left his brother abishai to oppose the ammonites, and turned himself with picked men against the syrians and defeated them before they could join the ammonites.[291] after this defeat the ammonites also retired before abishai into their fortified city of rabbath-ammon on the nahr-ammon. but in the next spring hadad-ezer collected his whole force. david marched across the jordan to meet the syrians, and defeated hadad-ezer in a decisive battle at helam; the israelites carried off the chariots of the enemy for spoil; 1700 horsemen and 20,000 foot-soldiers were captured.[292] david followed up this victory and overran the cities of the king of zobah, when the king of damascus took the field in aid of hadad-ezer, and the edomites invaded judah from the south. david remained in the field against the syrians, and sent joab with only a part of the army against the edomites. in the salt valley, at the southern end of the dead sea, joab and abishai defeated the edomites; 12,000 out of 18,000 are said to have fallen on this day.[293] in spite of this severe defeat the edomites made a stubborn resistance. joab, in continuous struggles which went on for six months, destroyed a great part of the male population (the son of the king of edom was carried by the servants of his father to egypt), and subjugated the rest of the inhabitants to the dominion of david. while joab was fighting in edom, david had defeated the men of damascus and brought the war in the north to an end. thoi, the king of hamath, whom hadad-ezer had previously oppressed, entered into a league with david. only the ammonites still continued to resist. joab was sent against them in the next year; he laid their land waste, and took one city after another. the captives were placed under saws and axes, and burnt in kilns, or slain like the moabites under iron threshing-wagons. at length joab could announce to david that rabbath-ammon, the chief city of the ammonites, was reduced to extremities; the king must come to enter into the city. rabbath was destroyed (about 1015 b.c.[294]); the inhabitants shared the fate of the other ammonite cities. from the syrian campaign david had brought back a trophy of 100 war-horses, copper vessels from the cities of hadad-ezer of zobah which were captured, and finally the golden shields which the commanders of this king had carried. from rabbath he brought home the golden crown of the king of the ammonites,--it is said to have been a kikkar (i. 285) in weight and set with precious stones,--together with other utensils of silver and gold. the moabites, the ammonites, and edomites were compelled to pay tribute. garrisons were put in the strong places; even damascus is said to have received a garrison of israelites.[295] after saul had first saved israel out of the hand of their oppressors, after these advantages were lost by the domestic strife, david had now formed the israelites into a ruling nation from isolated tribes who had been so often and so long plundered by their enemies. he had come victorious out of the most severe struggles. with reason could israel now sing: "saul has slain his thousands, david his tens of thousands." it was a rapid and brilliant transformation. david was master from the borders of egypt, the north-east point of the red sea, to damascus. he was not content with successfully establishing his rule for the moment by these great and brilliant deeds of arms; he intended to give it a solid support for the future. he employed the spoils of his victories in order to fortify more strongly and extend the city which he had chosen for his metropolis; it was now called the city of david, and afterwards jerusalem.[296] on zion, the citadel of jerusalem, david caused a royal palace to be built. in the city the remnant of the jebusites had been joined by inhabitants from the tribes of judah and benjamin. if david hoped to lessen the disaffection of the tribe of benjamin by establishing a royal citadel in their land he had not calculated wrongly. the sequel shows that benjamin, which previously held to ephraim, now stood fast by judah. in possession of a considerable and well-fortified metropolis, and a strong royal citadel, david was able to rule over israel with greater safety and severity than saul from his rural court at gibeah. moreover, david intended to create independent means and property for the crown, and kept together what he had won. from the tribute of the subjugated nations he formed a treasury, which was placed under the care of asmaveth. in addition we hear of overseers of the royal gardens, oliveyards, vineyards, and sycamore plantations, and we learn that david kept flocks of small cattle, herds of oxen, and camels.[297] the strongest support of the throne were his selected and thoroughly devoted troops of warriors. david was accompanied by a body-guard which was always with him (saul had had round him some "runners"). it appears from the name, pelethites and cherethites, to have been entirely composed of foreigners; their leader was benaiah.[298] the core of the army was formed not by this body-guard, but by the freebooters who once gathered round him in the cave of adullam and at ziklag, warriors tried often and in numerous battles. they remained in one body in jerusalem, and were maintained by the king. this band--it was apparently about 600 men in number,[299] and in the ranks were also foreigners, hittites, ammonites, moabites, and others, who formerly associated with david, or were attracted by the fame of his deeds--was called the troop of the mighty, "gibborim;" accompanied by armour-bearers and servants, they took the field. they were divided into three portions, under three leaders; at their head fought 30 selected heroes: abishai, joab's brother, was the captain.[300] as simple peasants, the israelites had always fought on foot, without horses and horsemen; david, after the pattern of the syrians, introduced chariots. josheb bassebet was the captain of the war-chariots.[301] along with the gibborim, the chariots were intended to give, as trained divisions, firmness and support to the levy of the whole people. in order to regulate the levy, joab, the chief captain, with some of his subordinates, was commanded to enumerate and write down all the fighting men from the jabbok to mount hermon, and from dan to beersheba. nine months and twenty days were required by the captains for this task. when the muster was completed, captains were appointed for hundreds and thousands; but in order that the whole mass of the people need not be called out on every campaign and every attack of the enemy,--in which hitherto, for the most part, only those who were eager for battle had engaged, while those who preferred peace and rest remained at home,--the whole number of the fighting men was divided into twelve portions, of which each, in number 24,000 men, was pledged to service for one month in the year. each of these divisions had a separate captain. as occasion required, several of the divisions, or all, might be called out. if we may trust these accounts, israel had at that time 300,000 fighting men, and consequently a population of about two millions.[302] hitherto the descendants of the oldest families, the heads of the tribes, the successors of those who in the conquest of the land had won for themselves separate localities and valleys, had enjoyed a pre-eminent position within the circle of the various tribes (p. 91). to them, or to brave warriors, the israelites had gone,--to men who had become of importance owing to their possessions, and who had the reputation of passing sound judgments,--or to priests and soothsayers, when they sought for advice, protection, and justice. since the establishment of the monarchy the king was the supreme judge. david exercised this office as saul had done.[303] but though he retained the right of deciding in the last instance, david seems to have appointed the princes and judges of the tribes; he charged certain of his adherents with the duty of giving justice to the tribes and communities, although, of course, every man had the right of appeal from his decision to the decision of the king. jurisdiction and administration not yet being separated, we may suppose that a regular government, which secured to the throne the execution of its will and of the orders given, was established by this means already in david's reign. we find that, beside the captains of the army, the officers of the house and treasury, the king had a chancellor, a scribe, and overseer of the taxes. ahithophel was the man on whose advice david mainly depended; his most trusted friend was hushai; and in the last twenty years of his life the prophet nathan enjoyed a high place in his favour.[304] it was a marvellous career that lay behind david. he had grown up in a hardy youth; early approved as a brave warrior and skilful leader, he was then raised to the side of saul and jonathan; after this he experienced the most sudden reverse of fortune, and at length by very perplexed paths he reached the highest stage. on this he had been able to retrieve many mistakes; he came victorious out of every conflict. saul's deeds were surpassed, and israel was proud of the successes of david and the respect which he won for her. he had securely established his authority; it was founded so firmly that the crown must pass to his descendants. the religious feeling which impelled him to inquire of jehovah before every undertaking, which brought him at an early period into connection with the seers and priests, could not but increase as he looked back upon the course of his life. who had greater reason than he to be thankful to the god who protected him and guided him so marvellously, who saved him out of every danger and had raised him to such power and splendour? in early days singing and harp-playing had occupied the leisure of his shepherd life; gifted with poetic powers, he understood how to give a powerful expression to his gratitude towards jehovah. after these great wars he is said to have sung: "jehovah, my rock, my fortress, my shield; the horn of my salvation, my defence. i called on him who is worthy of praise, and was delivered from my enemies. out of his palace he heard my voice, and my cry came into his ears. then the earth moved and quaked, and the foundations of the earth trembled, for he was wroth. smoke rose out of his nostrils, and a consuming fire went from his mouth; coals burned forth from him. he bowed the heavens, and came down on the cherubim, and hovered on the wings of the wind. he made darkness his veil, the tempest and dark cloud his tabernacle. jehovah thundered, and the highest gave forth his voice, hail-stones and coals of fire. he shot forth his arrows and destroyed the enemy, the lightning fell and dispersed them. with thee, jehovah, i went against hosts, and with my god i climbed over walls. jehovah girded me with power; he gave me feet like harts' feet; he taught my hand the battle, so that my arm strung the iron bow. i pursued my enemies and overtook them, and turned not back till i had destroyed them; i shattered them in pieces that they could not rise up; i scattered them like dust before the wind; i cast them forth like dung. thou, jehovah, didst save me from the battles of the nations, and didst place me at their head; nations which i knew not serve me. at a rumour they obey me, and the sons of strangers flatter me; they sink away and tremble out of their castles. praised be my protector, exalted be the god of my salvation."[305] it was not in praise and thanksgiving only that david gave expression to the grateful feeling which filled him towards god; he had it much at heart to create a lasting abode and visible centre for the worship of jehovah. for 20 years the sacred ark of israel had remained at kirjath-jearim, in the house of abinadab, who had made one of his sons the custodian of it. david determined to convey it into his metropolis, that it might there be in secure keeping, and receive proper reverence. it was placed on a new wagon; abinadab's sons, ahio and uzzah, led it forth. on the way an evil omen occurred: the oxen which drew the wagon broke loose, the ark tottered, and uzzah put out his hand to stay it. "then the anger of jehovah broke forth against uzzah, and he smote him, and he died there before god." after this incident david feared to carry the ark further; it remained on the road, at the house of obed-edom; and not until it was seen that it brought prosperity to the house of obed-edom did david, three months after, again take it up and carry it to jerusalem. in festal train the people accompanied it with "shouting and trumpets;" and david, clad in the linen tunic of the priests, "danced before jehovah." "lift up your heads, o ye gates, that the king of glory may come in," he is said to have sung. the tabernacle was already erected on zion, and in it the ark of jehovah was then placed; and "david sacrificed burnt offerings and thank offerings, and gave to all the people, to each man a measure of wine, a loaf of bread and a cake of raisins" (about 1020 b.c.[306]). abiathar, the son of ahimelech, of the house of eli, of the race of ithamar, of the tribe of aaron, who had formerly fled to him with the image of jehovah from nob and remained by his side, and beside him zadok, of the house of eleazar, of the tribe of aaron, who had hitherto been high priest at the place of sacrifice at gibeon,[307] were made by david the custodians of the new tabernacle, which he then adorned with the costly spoil of his victories. by bringing the ark of the covenant into his city he gave it a sacred pledge, the assurance of the protection and the grace of jehovah. his city was the dwelling of jehovah, the citadel of zion the mount of god. david's new metropolis was thus at the same time raised to be the central point of the national worship, and in the fullest sense the metropolis of the land. service before the ark of the covenant on zion could not but throw into the shade the old places of sacrifice at shiloh, bethel, gibeon, gilgal, and nob. the erection of the sacred ark on zion, the foundation of a central point for the worship, certainly met the wishes of the priests. only by a strictly-regulated and dominant mode of worship, by centralising the service, could the priests hope to bring into vogue the arrangement of ritual which they regarded as the true method appointed by god. relying on the importance of such a central point, on the authority of the crown, they could expect obedience to their regulations. david on his part would hardly fail to see what weight the influence of an allied priesthood could add to the strength of the throne. what david did for israel by the cultivation of religious song, by setting up the old national shrine in the new metropolis, by the dedication of it to be the abode of jehovah has been of deep-reaching and even decisive influence for the fortunes of israel and the course of her religious development. it is, of course, beyond doubt that only a few of the psalms which david is said to have sung can with certainty be traced back to him; but from the fact that the greater part of these poems could be ascribed to him, it follows with the greater certainty that he must have given a powerful impulse to the religious poetry of israel, that the words of thankfulness and trust in god from the lips of the victorious royal minstrel had the greatest influence on the israelites. this influence connected with the exaltation and worship of the national sacred relic at zion gave a new life and firmer root to the belief of the israelites, both in the direction of religious feeling and religious prescriptions. when the chief place of sacrifice was marked out indubitably by the sacred ark on zion, and members of the oldest priestly family officiated there, it was natural that by degrees a considerable number of priests should collect there, in order to share and co-operate in the worship in the sacred tent, in the tabernacle. these priests were arranged according to their families or "houses;" the greater number claimed eleazar, the third son of aaron, as their progenitor, while the less claimed to be descended from ithamar, the fourth son of aaron.[308] the eyes of the priesthood were already turned from hebron to the early history of the nation, to the correct mode of worship, as aaron and moses had formerly proclaimed and practised it, which since the settlement in canaan had become almost forgotten and obsolete with priests and laymen, since different customs had come into use at different places of sacrifice. the service at the new and yet ancient shrine at jerusalem must support the impulse to practise, here at any rate, the old correct customs in perfect purity as a pattern and example, to insist on the custom of zion as pleasing to god, and established by moses, and to bring once more into authority and practice the true regulations of the sacrificial rites for the whole land. agreement and union in the mode of worship would be most quickly and most thoroughly obtained if the place of the tabernacle could be shown to be the only correct place of sacrifice. though the philistines had opposed the growth of the strength of israel, the combination and arrangement of her powers, with perseverance and stubbornness, the cities of the phenicians seem rather to have welcomed the establishment of a strict ruling authority in israel, which preserved peace in the land and so made trade easier. perhaps too they looked with pleasure on the formation of a power which could balance that of the philistines, and prevent them from advancing as far as the gates of tyre. at any rate hiram, king of tyre, who began to rule in that city in the year 1001 b.c.,[309] entered into friendly relations with david. he sent him tyrian artisans, who adorned david's palace on zion. the israelites were not skilled in fine building. after this palace was completed we must look on david's house and court as splendid and numerous. there was the chancellor, the keeper of the treasury, the chief tax-gatherer, the scribe with his subordinates; there were singers, male and female, the body-guard, and the servants.[310] david had brought seven wives from hebron to his new metropolis. michal, the daughter of saul, had borne no children to david; his eldest son, amnon, was by ahinoam of jezreel; the second, chileab, by abigail, the widow of nabal. when he ruled the tribe of judah from hebron he married a fourth wife, maacah, the daughter of thalmai, prince of geshur, in order, no doubt, to strengthen by this connection his power, then so weak. maacah bore him a third son, absalom, and a daughter, tamar; his fifth wife, haggith, bore a fourth son, adonijah. in jerusalem he took yet more wives and concubines into his house, who, besides these sons, bore seventeen sons and several daughters, beside tamar. when his sons became men, the unavoidable consequences of the harem came to light: the mutual jealousy of the sons of the various wives, and the ambition of some of the wives to obtain the succession for their sons. the establishment of the monarchy had brought a rich return to the israelites. under its guidance, not only had the enemies of the land been beaten back, but israel had gained a leading place in syria. moreover, david had transformed the somewhat insecure leadership conferred on saul by his election into a firm and deep-reaching supremacy; a mere name, a wavering authority, he had raised after the pattern of his neighbours into a strict rule, which could lead the people at will, and dispose of them at pleasure. this transformation had taken place so quickly, the enrolment of israel in the forms of syrian monarchy was carried out so thoroughly, that there could not fail to be a strong reaction. the new officers were oppressive; task-work for the king, levies of the army for muster and for service beyond the land, were to the israelites new and very unwonted burdens. when external dangers had passed away with the humiliation of the neighbours, and the days of the old incursions, distresses, and oppressions were forgotten, it might very well happen that the israelites felt the new arrangement of the community, the mode in which they were governed, to be a burden rather than a benefit. in the later years of the reign of david a lively aversion to his rule was spread through all the tribes; and it is remarkable that it was most deeply felt in his own tribe of judah, which had formerly exalted him in hebron. on this feeling of the people, david's third son, absalom, founded the plan of depriving his father of the sovereignty, in order to ascend the throne before it came to him by inheritance.[311] absalom, david's son by maacah of geshur, was a handsome man, without blemish from head to foot, adorned with a heavy growth of hair, and a favourite of the people, though the guilt of a foul deed lay upon him. the beauty of tamar, the full sister of absalom, had roused the passions of amnon, the eldest son of david. he enticed her into his house by deceit, dishonoured her and thrust her in scorn into the street. as the king did not punish the crime, absalom invited amnon to his plot of baal hazor, to the sheep-shearing, and there caused him to be stabbed by his servants in order to avenge his sister's shame. after this he fled to his grandfather, the prince of geshur. after three years' banishment he was allowed to return, but might not see his father's face; this was not permitted till two years after his return. amnon was dead; chileab, david's second son, died, as it seems, in this period. absalom was now again received into favour, and became the legitimate heir to the throne. as a token of his claims, absalom procured horses, and chariots and a retinue of 50 men. early in the morning he was at the gates of jerusalem; he inquired of every one whence he came, allowed no one to prostrate himself before him, but shook all by the hand and kissed them. if he heard that any one came for justice, he caused the matter to be told to him, and then said: your cause is good, but you will not be heard; if i were judge in israel you would certainly gain your rights. four years after his return from geshur, when ahithophel, the most distinguished of david's counsellors, and amasa, the son of a sister of david, had gone over to his side,[312] absalom considered his prospects favourable. he sent trusty men to all the tribes with instructions to proclaim him king as soon as they understood that he was in hebron. under pretence of offering sacrifice at hebron, which city perhaps looked with jealousy on the new metropolis, absalom went from jerusalem to hebron. the tribes obeyed this signal for revolt; everywhere the people on this side jordan declared for absalom, and great numbers gathered round him. at their head he set out against jerusalem, against his father. david was completely taken by surprise. his own son now brought on him retribution for all that he had previously done to saul. clever and circumspect as the old king was, he seems to have found his master in his son. not secure of the people even at jerusalem, he could not venture to defend himself in his fortified metropolis; nothing remained but to retire in all haste. yet even in this desperate position the cunning which had so often come to his aid in his varied life did not desert him. absalom he feared little; his greatest terror was the counsels of ahithophel. hence he commanded hushai (p. 160) to remain behind, and in appearance to take absalom's part, in order to counteract ahithophel. if absalom could be induced not to pursue his advantage immediately, and david could gain time to collect his adherents, much would be won. abiathar and zadok also, the high priests of the sacred tabernacle, who wished to share his flight, were bidden to remain in jerusalem. their position as priests was a sufficient protection for them; by means of their sons they were to furnish information of what took place in the city.[313] accompanied by some of his wives and their children, by his most faithful adherents, the gibborim, and the body-guard, david left the city in the early morning. over the kidron, along the mount of olives, he hastened eastwards to find protection beyond the jordan. at bahurim shimei, a man of benjamin, of the race of matri, to which saul belonged, saw from an eminence the flight of the king. he threw stones down upon him and said: may jehovah bring upon thee all the blood of the house of saul, in whose place thou hast become king; see, thou art now in calamity; away, thou man of blood. the body-guard wished to take the man and slay him, but david restrained them, and said: my son, who has come forth from my loins, is seeking my life; how much more a man of benjamin; let him curse. perhaps at this moment david's spirit was really broken; perhaps he did not wish that the people should be further roused by new acts of violence; in the sequel he showed that he had neither forgotten nor forgiven the words of shimei. on the same day absalom marched into jerusalem, and among those who greeted him he saw with astonishment hushai, the ancient friend of his father. he believed hushai's assurance that he wished to "serve him whom jehovah and all the men of israel had chosen." ahithophel considered the success which had been obtained, the rebellion which spread through the whole country on this side of the jordan, and the possession of the strong metropolis and the palace without a blow, insufficient and indecisive. he saw the situation clearly, and was convinced that all would be lost if the king had time to collect round him his old adherents, his companions in victory. filled with the conviction that the only way to obtain the end in view was to make an immediate use of the great advantages won by the surprise, he insisted that absalom should at once set out in pursuit of david. the people which absalom had led from hebron were numerous, of these he wished to leave behind the burdensome multitude and select 12,000 for this expedition. hushai opposed this proposal with great skill. thou knowest thy father, he said to absalom, he is a mighty warrior, like a bear deprived of her whelps in the forest, and his men are mighty and of fierce courage. he will not be encamped on the field, but will have concealed himself in one of the hiding-places. if any of our men fall it will be said, absalom's men have been defeated, and all thy adherents will lose courage. rather rouse all israel, and march out at their head, that we may encamp against david like the sand of the sea, and none of his men may escape. absalom followed this advice to his ruin. yet hushai was not certain that ahithophel would not win over absalom to his opinion, or go of his own will against david; so he sent his maid before the gate to the fuller's well (to the south of the city, where the valleys of hinnom and kidron join), where jonathan, the son of abiathar, and ahimaaz, the son of zadok, lay concealed (absalom's men had not allowed them to leave the gate), with instructions to them to hasten to the king and warn him not to encamp on this side of jordan. though watched by absalom's guards and pursued, the two men came without disaster to david, who again set out in the night. when ahithophel heard that the king was beyond jordan he despaired of the undertaking; he saddled his ass, went to his own city, set his house in order and hung himself. absalom took formal possession of the sovereignty, and as a sign that he had broken for ever with his father and assumed the government, he took the royal harem into his possession. a tent was set up on the roof of the palace of zion, under which absalom lived with the ten concubines whom david had left behind in jerusalem before the eyes of israel. when this was done he raised the whole people to march against his father, and went with numerous troops to the jordan. david was at mahanaim, like ishbosheth before him, eagerly busied with his army. it was due to the cunning arrangements made in the flight from jerusalem that he had escaped without danger beyond jordan, and was enabled to assemble his own adherents there while absalom was calling out and collecting the whole army. from the ammonites, whom he had treated so harshly, he seems nevertheless to have received support.[314] while absalom crossed the jordan, david divided the forces he had at his disposal into three corps, the command of which he entrusted to joab, his brother abishai, and ithai, a philistine of gath. he remained behind in mahanaim, and bade the captains deal gently with absalom in the event of victory. the armies met in the forest of ephraim, not far from the jordan. in spite of the superiority of the numbers opposed to them, the tried and veteran soldiers of david had the advantage over the ill-armed and ill-organised masses of peasants. absalom started back on his mule, fell into a thicket, and became entangled by his long hair in the branches of a large terebinth. he remained hanging while his mule ran away from under him. joab found him in this position, and thrust his spear thrice through his heart. either the fall of the hostile leader, the author of the rebellion, appeared a sufficient success to david's men, or the advantage gained over absalom's army was not very great, or they found themselves too weak to follow it up. joab led the army back to mahanaim. though the rebellion had lost its leader by the fall of absalom, it was far from being crushed. absalom's captain, amasa, the nephew of david, collected the masses of the rebellious army; the elders of the tribes, as well as the people, were ready to continue the struggle against david, though some were again inclined to accept their old king. if the tribes could be divided, and amasa separated from the elders of judah, the victory was almost certain. on this david built his plan. by means of the priests abiathar and zadok he caused it to be made known to the elders of judah that the rest of the tribes had made overtures to him, to recognise him again as king, which was not the case;--would they be the last to lead back their own flesh and blood, their tribesman david? at the same time the priests were bidden to offer to amasa the post of captain-general as the reward of his return, and this offer david confirmed with an oath: so might god do to him if amasa were not captain all his days in the place of joab.[315] the elders of judah allowed themselves to be entrapped no less than amasa, who little knew with whom he had to do. they sent a message to the king that he might return over the jordan, and went to meet him at gilgal. david showed himself placable, and prepared to pardon the adherents of absalom. shimei, who had cursed him on his retirement from jerusalem, went to meet him at the jordan; and when the boat which carried david over reached the hither bank he fell at his feet. david promised not to slay him with the sword.[316] from mephibosheth, the son of jonathan, who had declared for absalom, he only took the half of saul's inheritance.[317] the remaining tribes were enraged at the tribe of judah, partly because they had abandoned the common cause, partly because judah had entirely appropriated the merit of bringing back the king. their feelings were wavering: half were for submission, the others for continuing the resistance.[318] then rose up a man of benjamin, sheba, the son of bichri. "what part have we in david, what portion in the son of jesse?" he cried to the waverers, caused the trumpets to be blown, and gave a new centre to rebellion and resistance. david commissioned amasa to call out the warriors of judah within three days and lead them to jerusalem. while amasa was occupied with carrying out this command, david sent joab with the gibborim and the body-guard against sheba. at gibeon joab met amasa. is all well with thee, my brother? he said, and took him by the beard with his right hand to greet him, while with the left he thrust his sword through his body.[319] thus, after he had been gained by deceptive promises, the dangerous man was removed as abner had been before him. sheba could not withstand the impetuous advance of joab; the tribes submitted. sheba's first resistance was made far in the north at dan, in the city of abel-beth-maachah, and there he defended himself so stubbornly that a rampart was thrown up against the city and besieging engines brought up against the walls. when the walls were near upon falling, and the citizens saw destruction before them, they saved themselves by cutting off sheba's head and sending it to joab.[320] the reaction of the people against the new government, at the head of which absalom, amasa, and sheba had successively placed themselves, was overcome. many years before, at the time when joab was besieging rabbath, the metropolis of the ammonites, david had gone out on the roof of his house in zion in the cool of the evening. this position overlooked the houses in the ravine which separated the citadel from the city. in one of these david saw a beautiful woman in her bath. this was bathsheba, the wife of uriah, a hittite, who served in the troop of the "mighty." the king sent for her to his palace, and she soon announced to david that she was with child. david gave orders to joab to send uriah from the camp to jerusalem. he asked him of the state of the war and the army, and then bade him go home to his wife, but uriah lay before the gate of the palace. when david asked him on the next morning why he had not gone home to his house, he answered: israel is in the field, and my fellows lie in the camp before rabbath, and shall i go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? remain here, replied david; to-morrow morning i will let thee go. david invited him into the palace and made him drunken, but, as before, uriah passed the night before the gate of the palace. then, on the following day, david sent uriah to the camp with a letter to joab: place uriah in the thickest of the battle, and turn away from him, that he may be smitten, and die. soon after a messenger came from the camp and announced to the king: the men of rabbath made a sally; we repulsed them, and drove them to the gate; then the bowmen shot at thy servants from the walls, and some of our men were slain, among them uriah. david caused bathsheba, when the time for mourning was over, to come into his harem, and after the death of her first child, she bore a second child, whom david called solomon, _i.e._ the peaceful,[321] as the times of war were over with the capture of rabbath and the subjugation of the ammonites. after absalom's death the heir to the crown was adonijah, the fourth son of david, whom haggith had borne to him while at hebron. solomon was the seventh in the series of the surviving sons of david, and as yet quite young; yet bathsheba attempted to place her son on the throne. one of the two high priests, zadok, supported bathsheba's views, as also nathan the prophet, who acquired great influence with david in the last years of his reign. both might expect a greater deference to priestly influence from the youthful solomon than from the older and more independent adonijah, and the more so if they assisted the young man to gain the throne against the legitimate successor. so bathsheba prevailed upon david to swear an oath by jehovah that solomon should be his successor in the place of adonijah.[322] but adonijah did not doubt that the throne belonged to him, that all israel was of the same conviction, and their eyes turned upon him.[323] if zadok was in favour of solomon's succession, abiathar, the old and influential adherent of david, was for adonijah, and what was more important, the captain of the army, joab, who had won david's best victories, also declared for him. on the other hand, bathsheba's party won benaiah, the captain of the body-guard, so that the power and prospects of both party were about equal. when david, 70 years old, lay on his death-bed, adonijah felt that he must anticipate his opponents. he summoned his adherents to meet outside the walls at the fuller's well (p. 170). joab appeared with the leaders of the army, abiathar came to offer sacrifice, and all the sons of david except solomon. the sacrifice was already being offered, the sheep, oxen and calves were killed, the proclamation of adonijah was to follow immediately after the sacrifice, when the intelligence was carried to the opposite party. bathsheba and nathan hastened to the dying king to remind him of his oath in favour of solomon. he gave orders that solomon should be placed on the mule which he always rode himself and that zadok should anoint the youth under the wall of zion eastwards of the city at the fount of gihon. then benaiah with the body-guard was to bring him back into the city at once with the sound of trumpets, and lead him into the palace, in order to set him upon the throne there. this was done. zadok took the horn of oil from the sacred tabernacle, and when the new ruler returned in solemn procession to the palace all the people cried with joy: long live king solomon. when adonijah and his adherents heard the shouting from the city, and understood what had taken place, they gave up their cause for lost, and dispersed in dread in every direction. david rejoiced over this last success;[324] he called solomon to his bedside, and said to him: "do good to the sons of barzillai the gileadite; he received me well when i fled over jordan before thy brother absalom. shimei, who cursed me when i fled to mahanaim, i have sworn not to slay; let him not go unpunished, and bring his grey hairs to the grave with blood. what joab did to abner and amasa thou knowest; let not his grey hairs go down to the grave in peace."[325] david was buried in the grave which he had caused to be made on zion, where the heights of the citadel meet the western height, on which the city lay. thus david had succeeded in healing the wounds which his ambition had inflicted in past days on israel; he understood how to establish firmly the monarchy, and along with it the power and security of the state. he had given such an important impulse to the worship, to the religious poetry, and consequently to the religious life, of the hebrews, that his reign has remained of decisive importance for the entire development of israel. but beside these great successes and high merits lie very dark shadows. if we cannot but admire the activity and bravery, the wisdom and circumspection, which distinguish his reign, there stands beside these qualities not only the weakness of his later years, which caused him to make a capricious alteration in the succession, thereby endangering the work of his life; other actions, both of his earlier and later years, show plainly that in spite of religious feeling and sentiment he did not hesitate to set aside very fundamental rules of morality when it came to winning the object he had in view. if even in his last moments he causes joab to be put to death by the hand of his son, it may be that this old servant, when he had taken the side of the other son in the succession, appeared very dangerous for the rule of the younger son. but joab had rendered the greatest services to david, he had won for him the most brilliant victories; and if our account makes david give the murder of abner and amasa as the reason for that command, david had made no attempt to punish one deed or the other; on the contrary, he had gladly availed himself of at least the results and fruits of them. we must not indeed measure those days of unrestrained force and violent passion in hatred and love, in devotion and ambition, by the standard of our own tamer impulses; the manner of the ancient east, above all of the semites, was too much inclined to the most bloody revenge. yet david's instructions to destroy a man of no importance, whom he had once in a difficult position sworn to spare, out of the grave, by the hand of his son, goes beyond the limit of all that we can elsewhere find in those times and feelings. footnotes: [283] joshua xv. 63; judges i. 21. [284] 2 sam. v. 5-8; xxiv. 18; 1 kings ix. 20. [285] 2 sam. v. 17. [286] 2 sam. v. 22-25. [287] above, p. 131, note 4; 2 sam. xxi. 15-22; 1 chron. xxi. 4-8; xix. 1. [288] 2 sam. viii. 1. jesus, son of sirach, xlvii. 8. [289] nöldeke, "amalekiter," s. 17-25. [290] 2 sam. viii. 2. [291] 2 sam. x. 6-14. [292] 2 sam. viii. 3, 4; x. 15-19. [293] psalms lx. 2; 2 sam. viii. 13. [294] the date rests on the fact that solomon was born soon after, and was more than 20 years old when he came to the throne; see below. the war against hadad-ezer cannot be placed before 1020, since rezon, who escaped, remained solomon's opponent as long as solomon lived. 1 kings xi. 25. [295] 2 sam. viii. 6, 7, 14; x. 19. [296] 1 kings xi. 27. [297] 1 chron. xxvii. 25-31. [298] 2 sam. xx. 23; 1 chron. xviii. 17. [299] 2 sam. xv. 18. [300] 2 sam. xxiii. 18; 1 chron. xi. 15, 26-45. [301] 2 sam. xxiii. 8. [302] 2 sam. xxiv. 9. the number of the levy here, as in almost all accounts of the assembling of the people, must be grossly exaggerated: 800,000 are given in israel, 500,000 in judah only. chronicles raises the first number to 1,100,000, and reduces the second to 30,000, 1 xxii. 5. the statement given in chronicles about the division of the levy into 12 troops, and the strength of these troops (1 xxviii. 1-15), contradicts these numbers. as this arrangement of the army is mentioned in chronicles only, which books show a great tendency to systematise, the division into 12 remains uncertain. that there was a numbering of the people is not to be doubted. it is counted as one of david's errors, and jehovah strikes the people with pestilence. this narrative is connected with the command to redeem the firstborn, the boys (vol. i. 499), the ordinance given in exod. xxx. 12, which is connected with the same conception: "when thou takest the sum of the children of israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul to jehovah that there be no plague among them." [303] 2 sam. viii. 15. [304] 2 sam. xx. 23-26; 1 chron. xxvii. 16-22. [305] psalm xviii.; cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. 345. [306] 2 sam. vi. 1-8, 12-15; psalm xxiv. on the date see above, p, 125, n. 2. m. niebuhr ("assur und babel," s. 350) explains the number of 466-1/2 years given by josephus ("ant." 20, 10) by assuming that it contains the interval of 430-1/2 years which the hebrews give for the interval between the building of the temple and its destruction. to this amount is added eight years for the captive high priest jozadak, down to the time when his son joshua became high priest, and 28 years for zadok's priesthood before the commencement of the building of the temple. if we reckon the 28 years of zadok backwards for the time that we have assumed for the beginning of the temple, 990 b.c., we arrive at the year 1018 b.c. for the erection of the new tabernacle. [307] 1 chron. xvi. 39. [308] 2 sam. xv. 24, 27; 1 chron. vii. 4-15, 50-53; xxiii.-xxvi. [309] if josephus is right, that the fourth year of solomon was the twelfth year of hiram of tyre. [310] 2 sam. xix. 35. [311] absalom's rebellion cannot have taken place till the latter years of david. absalom was born in hebron, and therefore, at the least, after david's thirtieth year, 2 sam. v. 4. he must at the least have been towards 20 years old when he caused amnon to be murdered. five years passed before david would allow him to enter his presence, 2 sam. xiii. 38, and xiv. 28. lastly, his efforts to gain popularity, and the preparations for rebellion, must have occupied two years. if it is stated in 2 sam. xv. 7 that after absalom's return from geshur 40 years elapsed till his rebellion, absalom must have been 63 years old at the time of his rebellion, and david at the least 93 years old. hence in the passage quoted four years must be read instead of 40. [312] 2 sam. xv. 1-6; xvii. 25; 1 chron. ii. 17. [313] 2 sam. xv. 5-14. [314] 2 sam. xvii. 27. [315] 2 sam. xix. 11-13. [316] 2 sam. xix. 18-33; 1 kings ii. 8. [317] 2 sam. xvi. 3-5; xix. 24-30. [318] 2 sam. xix. 40. [319] 2 sam. xx. 8-13; 1 kings ii. 5. [320] 2 sam. xx. 15-22. [321] 2 sam. xii. 15-24; 1 chron. xxii. 9. [322] 1 kings i. 17, 20. [323] 1 kings ii. 15, 22. [324] 1 kings ii. 5-9. [325] 1 kings ii. 5-9. the verses 2 sam. xxiii. 1-7 may have been a speech of david's at some former time, if they are not an addition of the prophet's. contrasted with the very definite and realistic colouring of the passage quoted from the book of kings, they can hardly be considered the last words. chapter viii. king solomon. in the last hour of his life david had raised his favourite son to the throne. the young king was not much more than 20 years of age,[326] and the news of the death of the dreaded ruler of israel could not but awaken among all who had felt the weight of his arm the hope of withdrawing themselves from the burden laid upon them. the son of the king of edom, whom his father's servants had carried away in safety into egypt, had grown up there under the protection of the pharaoh; at the news of david's death he hastened to edom to summon his people to freedom and the struggle against israel. a captain of hadad-ezer of zobah, whom david overthrew, rezon by name, fled at that time into the desert, where he collected a troop round him and lived by plundering. now he threw himself on damascus, gained the city, and made himself prince. moreover, the power of solomon was not firmly established even in israel; the people had expected the accession of adonijah,[327] and though he and his confederates retired at the first alarm, there was no lack of adherents. serious dangers and commotions appeared to threaten the new reign. adonijah had fled for refuge to the altar; he besought solomon for a pledge not to slay him. solomon promised to spare him if he remained quietly at home. joab did not know what commands david had given solomon in his dying hour, but he did know that solomon would not forgive him for supporting adonijah. he sought refuge in the tabernacle of jehovah, and took hold of the horns of the altar in the tent. solomon bade benaiah cut him down. benaiah hesitated to pollute the altar with blood; he reported that joab could not be induced to leave the altar. the young king repeated his command, "cut him down, and take from me and from the house of my father the blood of abner and the blood of amasa." so joab was slain by benaiah at the altar of the sacred tent, and buried "in his house in the desert." the high priest abiathar escaped with his life. "i will not slay thee," so solomon said to him, "because thou didst once suffer with my father." he banished him as a "man of death" to his inheritance at anathoth. zadok was henceforth sole high priest at the sacred tent. when adonijah afterwards besought solomon to give him one of the concubines of david, abishag the shunamite, to wife, solomon thought that he sought to obtain the throne by this means. he commanded benaiah to slay him on the spot. with the death of adonijah his party lost their head and centre: it ceased to exist. solomon broke the rebellion of the edomites not by his arms only, but also by withdrawing from them the support of egypt. he sought the hand of the daughter of the king of egypt and obtained it.[328] thus he not only withdrew from edom their reliance on egypt, he also obtained the active support of his father-in-law. the edomites were defeated in battle by solomon; egyptian soldiers reduced gezer for him.[329] on the other hand, solomon could not defeat the new king of damascus. rezon maintained his place, and was an "adversary to israel as long as solomon lived."[330] hence it is hardly possible that solomon reduced the kingdom of hamath, north of damascus, to subjection, as the chronicles assert;[331] on the other hand, it appears that the oasis of tadmor, in the syrian desert, north of damascus, was gained, and the city of that name was founded and established there. hence, even after the loss of damascus, he had command of one of the roads to the euphrates.[332] we may assume that solomon retained the kingdom of david without any essential alteration in extent; that he, like his predecessor, held sway as far as the north-east point of the red sea; and that even if his rule did not extend, like david's, to the euphrates, yet he possessed a predominant position in this direction. the connection in which hiram king of tyre stood with his father he not only maintained, but made it more close and more extensive. with the close of the third year of the reign of solomon the wars which the change on the throne kindled came to an end. it is said to have been david's intention in the last years of his reign to build a temple in the place of the sacred tent on zion. as soon as times of peace came solomon set himself to carry out this purpose. hiram of tyre promised to deliver wood from the forests of lebanon at a price, and to put at his disposal architects and moulders of brass. to the north of the palace which david had built on zion the mountain, on which the citadel was, rose higher. here the new temple was to be erected. the first task was to level the height; a terrace was raised upon it by removing some parts and filling up others, and building substructures; this terrace was intended to form the precincts and support the temple itself. the surrounding hills and the neighbourhood provided an ample supply of stones for building; stone of a better quality was quarried in lebanon and carried down. the trees felled in lebanon were carried to the coast, floated round the promontory of carmel as far as japho (joppa), and again dragged up from this point to jerusalem.[333] the vessels and the ornaments of brass intended for the temple were cast "in clay ground" beyond the jordan, between succoth and zarthan, by the tyrian hiram.[334] a wall of huge stones, on which were built the dwellings of the priests, surrounded the temple precincts. the temple itself was a building of moderate dimensions, but richly adorned. a portico of 20 cubits in breadth and 10 cubits in depth, opening to the east, formed the entrance into the temple. before this portico, after the syrian manner, stood two pillars of brass, one called jachin, the other boaz. the temple, exclusive of the portico, was 60 cubits in length, 20 cubits in breadth, and 30 cubits in height. the breadth was limited by the unsupported span of the beams of the roof. on both sides of the temple itself leaned side-buildings, which rose to the height of half the main structure. the front space of the temple was lighted by trellised openings over these side-buildings. this front space, which was the largest, and entered from the portico by a door of cypress wood, adorned with carved work overlaid with gold, was richly ornamented. the floor was laid with cypress wood overlaid with gold; the walls and the roof were covered with panels of cedar wood, which in richly-carved work displayed cherubs and palm-branches, so that not a stone could be seen in the interior. in this space of the temple--the "holy"--was an altar overlaid with gold for offering frankincense (for the smoke-offering), and a sacred table for the sacrificial bread. nearer to the inner space of the temple--the "holy of holies"--were ten candlesticks, and further in a candlestick with seven branches. the holy of holies, _i.e._ the smaller inner space of the temple, which was intended to receive the sacred ark, was divided from the holy by a wall of cedar wood, in which was a double door of olive wood, hanging on golden hinges. only the high priest could enter the holy of holies, the walls of which were covered with gold-leaf, and even from him the sight of the ark was hidden by a curtain of blue and red purple, and approach was barred by a golden chain. immediately before the ark were two cherubs of carved olive wood overlaid with gold, 10 cubits high, with outspread wings, so that from the point of one wing to the point of the other was also a distance of 10 cubits.[335] the sacrifices of animals were offered in the open air of the court in front of the temple. for this object a great altar of brass was erected in the middle of the court, 10 cubits in height and 20 in the square. southward of this altar was placed a great basin, in which the priests had to perform their ablutions and purifications; this was a much-admired work of the artisan hiram, and called the sea of brass. supported by twelve brazen oxen, arranged in four sets of three, and turned to the four quarters of the sky, the round bowl, which was of the shape of a lily broken open, measured five cubits in depth and 30 in circumference.[336] beside this great basin five smaller iron bowls were set up on either side of the altar. these rested on wheels, and were adorned with cherubs and lions, palms and flowers, with the greatest skill. they were intended to serve for washing and purifying the animals and implements of sacrifice. solomon commenced the building of the temple in the second month of the fourth year of his reign (990 b.c.). after seven years and six months it was finished in the eighth month of the eleventh year of solomon's reign (983 b.c.). the elders of all israel, the priests and levites, and all the people "from hamath to the brook of egypt," flocked to jerusalem. in solemn pomp the sacred ark was drawn up to the temple height; oxen and sheep without number were sacrificed for seven days, and from that time forward the king offered a solemn sacrifice each year at the three great festivals in the new temple.[337] the house which david had built for himself on zion no longer satisfied the requirements of solomon and his larger court. when the temple was finished he undertook the building of a new palace, which was carried out on such a scale that the completion occupied thirteen years.[338] the new palace was not built on zion, but on the western ridge, which supported the city to the west of zion and david's palace. it consisted of several buildings, surrounded by courts and houses for the servants, and enclosed by a separate wall. the largest building was a house of stone three stories high, the stories and roof of which were supported by cedar pillars and beams of cedar; the length was 100, the breadth 50, and the height 30 cubits (about 50 feet). a balustrade or staircase in this house was made of sandal wood, which the ships of ezion-geber had brought from ophir.[339] on this building abutted three colonnades, the largest 50 cubits long and 30 broad; the third was the hall of the throne and of justice.[340] here stood the magnificent throne of solomon, "of which the like was never made in any kingdom," of ivory overlaid with gold. six steps, on which were twelve lions, led up to it; beside the arms of the seat were also two lions.[341] then followed the dwelling of solomon, from which a separate stair-way was made leading up to the temple, together with the chambers for the wives of the king,--their number is given at 700, the number of the concubines at 300,[342]--and lastly a separate house for his egyptian consort, who passed as the first wife, and was honoured and distinguished above the rest. in the four-and-twentieth year of solomon's reign (970 b.c.) this building was brought to an end, "and the daughter of pharaoh went up from the city of david into the house which solomon had built for her."[343] solomon felt it incumbent on him to secure his land, and not merely to adorn the metropolis by splendid buildings, but to make it inaccessible to attack. to protect northern israel against rezon and damascus he fortified hazor, whose king had once so grievously oppressed israel, and baalath; to protect the western border he fortified megiddo, gezer, and beth-horon.[344] the defensive works which david had added to the old fortifications of the metropolis he enlarged and extended. the gorge which, running from north to south, divided the city of jerusalem on the western height from the citadel of zion on the east he closed towards the north by a separate fortification, the tower of millo. by another fortification, ophel, he protected a depression of mount zion between david's palace and the new temple, which allowed the citadel to be ascended from the east. the space over which the city had extended on the western height opposite the temple, in consequence of the growth of a suburb there towards the north, the lower city, he surrounded with a wall.[345] he raised the number of the chariots of war, which david had introduced, to 1400, for which 4000 horses were kept. he formed a cavalry force of 12,000 horses, he built stables and sheds for the horsemen and chariots. if we include the body-guard, the standing army which solomon maintained may very well have reached 20,000 men.[346] the excellent arrangement of his military means and forces must have contributed to make israel respected and to preserve peace in the land. in solomon's reign, so we are told in the books of kings, every one could dwell in peace under his own vine and his own fig tree.[347] this peace from without, united with the peace which the power and authority of the throne secured in the country, must have invigorated trade, favoured industry, and considerably increased the welfare of israel. the example of the court, the splendour and magnificence of which was not increased by buildings only, made the wealthy israelites acquainted with needs and enjoyments hitherto unknown to their simple modes of life. if hitherto the israelites had sold to the phenicians wine and oil, the wool of their flocks, and the surplus products of their lands for utensils and stuffs, the finer manufactures of the phenicians now found a demand in israel. if the king of israel was friendly to the phenicians, he allowed them a road by land through his territories to egypt; now that the ammonites, moabites and edomites had been subjugated he could close or open the caravan road past rabbath-ammon, kir moab, and elath to south arabia (i. 320), and when tadmor was in his hands he could permit or prohibit a road to the euphrates beside that past damascus. solomon prohibited none of these; on the contrary, he promoted the intercourse of the merchants by erecting resting-places and warehouses on all the lines of traffic which crossed his dominions.[348] the exportation of chariots and war-horses from egypt to syria, which the pharaoh no doubt permitted in an especial degree to his son-in-law, solomon carried on by means of merchants commissioned by him.[349] another trade undertaking, at once much more far-seeing, and promising far greater gains, he commenced in union with the king of tyre. it was of great importance to the phenicians to obtain an easier connection with south arabia in the place of, or at least in addition to, the dangerous and very uncertain caravan routes past damascus and dumah (i. 320), or past elath along the coast of the red sea, to south arabia. the circuit by babylon was very distant, and not much more secure. the rule of solomon over edom pointed out the way, and secured the possibility of reaching south arabia by the red sea. at eziongeber, near elath, tyrian shipbuilders built the vessels which were to explore the coasts of south arabia, the coasts of the land of gold. guided by phenician pilots, phenicians and israelites sailed into the unknown sea, and to unknown and remote corners of the earth. they succeeded not only in reaching the south arabian coasts and the coasts of east africa, but in passing beyond to ophir, _i.e._, as it seems, to the mouths of the indus. after an absence of three years the first expedition brought back gold in quantities, silver, ivory, sandal wood, precious stones, apes and peacocks. the profits of this expedition are said to have contributed as solomon's share 420 kikkars of gold, _i.e._ towards 20,000,000 thalers (about £3,000,000).[350] with the increased sale of the products of the country, the improvement and security of the great routes of traffic, the entrance of israel into the trade of the phenicians, and the influx of a considerable amount of capital, money seems to have become very rapidly and seriously depreciated in price in israel. before the establishment of the monarchy a priest is said to have received 10 silver shekels, with food and clothing, for his yearly service at a sacred place.[351] the amount from which abimelech is said to have maintained his retinue (p. 107) is placed at only 70 shekels of silver. before the epoch of the monarchy the prophet received a quarter of a shekel as a return for his services. david purchased the threshing-floor of araunah at zion with two oxen for 50 shekels of silver.[352] on the other hand, solomon appears to have paid the keepers of his vineyards a yearly salary of 200 silver shekels, and in his time 150 shekels were paid for an egyptian horse, and 600 shekels (500 thalers = £80) for a war-chariot.[353] the prosperity of the land allowed solomon to increase the income of the throne by taxation of the people. his income from the navigation to ophir, from trade, from the royal demesnes, and the taxes of israel is said to have brought in a yearly sum of 666 kikkars of gold, _i.e._ about 30,000,000 of thalers (about £5,000,000).[354] he applied these revenues to the support of his army, to his fortifications, sheds, and splendid buildings, to the erection of the stations on the trade roads, and finally to the adornment of the court. "he built in jerusalem, on lebanon, and in the whole land of his dominion," say the books of kings.[355] we hear of conduits, pools and country houses of the king on antilibanus; of vineyards and gardens at baal-hammon. the splendour of his court is described in extravagant terms. all the drinking-vessels and many other utensils in the palace at jerusalem, and in the forest-house in antilibanus, are said to have been of pure gold, and the servants were richly clad.[356] in a costly litter of cedar wood, of which the posts were of silver, the arms of gold, and the seat of purple, solomon was conveyed to his vineyards and pleasure-houses in antilibanus, surrounded by a retinue of 60 men chosen from the body-guard.[357] at solemn processions the body-guard carried 500 ornamented shields: 200 were of pure gold,--for each 600 shekels were used,--300 of alloyed gold.[358] the number of male and female singers, of the servants for the king and crowded harem, and the kitchen, must have been very great, as may be inferred from the very considerable consumption of food and drink in the palace. from the court and from trade such an amount of gold flowed to jerusalem that silver was in consequence depreciated.[359] the new arrangement of state life, which was partly established, partly introduced, by solomon, the leisure of peace, the close contact with phoenicia and egypt, the entrance of israel into extensive trade, the increase of prosperity, the richer, more various, and more complicated conditions of life, the wider range of vision, could not be without their influence on the intellectual life of the israelites. from this time an increased activity is displayed. they were impelled and forced to observation, comparison and consideration in quite another manner than before. the results of these new reflections grew into fixed rules, into proverbs and apophthegms. in this intellectual movement solomon took a leading part. a man of poetical gifts like his father, he composed religious and other poems (1005 in number, according to the tradition). the impulse to knowledge and the sense of art which he excites must first have found room within himself; his vision, like his means, reached the furthest. hence we have no reason to doubt that he was one of the wisest in his nation. "god," says the book of kings, "gave solomon a spirit beyond measure, as the sand of the sea. and the wisdom of solomon was greater than the wisdom of all the sons of the east, and the wisdom of egypt. he was wiser than all men, and he spoke of the trees, from the cedar on lebanon to the hyssop which grows on the wall, and of the cattle and the birds, and the worms and the fishes."[360] beside poetry and extensive knowledge of nature, in which he surpassed his wisest countrymen, ethal and heman, chalcol and darda, it was his keen observation, his penetrating knowledge of mankind, his experience of life which made the greatest impression. his proverbs and rules of life seemed to the israelites so pointed and exhaustive that they attributed to solomon the entire treasure of their gnomic wisdom, which was afterwards collected into one body. among these proverbs scarcely any can with complete certainty be ascribed to solomon, but the fact that all are attributed to him is a sufficient proof that solomon possessed a very striking power in keen observation of human nature and human affairs, in the pregnant expression of practical experience, in combining its lessons into pointed and vigorous sentences. as a proof of his acuteness and the calm penetration of his judicial decisions, the people used to narrate the story of the two women who once came before solomon into the hall of justice. one said: i and that woman lived in one house, and each of us bore a male child. in the night the son of this woman died. she rose, laid her dead son at my breast, and took my living child to her bosom. when i woke i had a dead child in my arms; but in the morning i perceived that this child was not the son which i had borne. the other woman answered: no; the living boy is my son, and thine is the dead child. the king turned to his retinue and said: cut the living child into two parts, and give half to one and half to the other. then tenderness for her child arose in the mother of the living child. i pray you, my lord, she said, give her the living child, but slay it not. and the king gave sentence: this is the mother, give her the child. it is further narrated that the fame of solomon's wisdom reached even to distant lands, and kings set forth to hear it. from arabia the queen of the sabæans (sheba, i. 315) is said to have come with a long train of camels, carrying spices, gold, and precious stones, in order to try solomon with enigmas. and solomon told her all that she asked, and solved all the enigmas, and nothing was hidden from him. when the queen perceived such wisdom, and saw the house which he had built, and the food on his table, and his counsellors, and his cup-bearers, and servants, and the burnt sacrifice which he offered in the house of jehovah, she sent him 120 kikkars of gold, and such an amount of spices as never afterwards came to jerusalem. this narrative may not be without some foundation, in fact we saw above how old was the trade of egypt and syria with the land of frankincense. we shall afterwards find queens among the arabians in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.: zabibieh, samsieh, and adijah, and even at the head of the tribes of the desert. to this day the east preserves the memory of the wise king solomon, who, in their legends and stories, has at the same time become a great magician and exorcist. however great the splendour of israel in solomon's reign, this advance was not without a darker side. the new paths in which solomon led his people brought the israelites comfort and opulence, the advantages and impulses of a higher civilisation and more active intellectual life. but with the splendour and luxury of the court, and the increasing wealth, the old simplicity of manners disappeared. the land had to bear the burden of a rule which was completely assimilated to the forms of court life, and the mode of government established in egypt and syria, in babylon and assyria. the court, the army and the buildings required heavy sums and services, and these for the most part had to be paid and undertaken by the people. solomon not only imposed on the tribes the maintenance of his standing troops, the cavalry and the chariots, he also demanded that they should support the court by contributions in kind. this service was not inconsiderable. each day 30 kor of fine and 60 kor of ordinary meal were required, 10 stalled oxen, and 20 oxen from the pasture, and 100 head of small cattle. besides this, deer and fallow-deer, gazelles and fed geese were supplied. the assistance which hiram king of tyre gave to solomon's buildings, the wood from lebanon, had to be paid for; each year 20,000 kor of wheat and 20,000 bath of oil and wine were sent to tyre, and this the israelites had to provide. further, the people had to pay a regular yearly tax in money to the king.[361] still more oppressive was the task-work for the buildings of the king. it is true that the remnant of the tribes subject to the israelites, the amorites, hittites, hivites and jebusites, were taken chiefly for these tasks, for solomon had compelled them to do constant task-work,[362] but the israelites themselves were also employed in great numbers in the building. over each tribe of israel solomon placed an overseer of the task-work, and these overseers were all subordinate to adoniram, the chief task-master. the israelites summoned for these services are said to have had two months' rest after one month of work, and there was a regular system of release. in the years when the buildings were carried on with the greatest vigour, 80,000 workmen are said to have been engaged in felling wood in lebanon, in quarrying and hewing stones under tyrian artisans, while 70,000 others carried out the transport of this material. though the workmen were constantly changed and the extension of the task was not unendurable, these burdens were unusual and certainly undesirable. in order to introduce regularity into the payments in kind and the taxes of the land, the country was divided into twelve districts,--no doubt on the basis of the territorial possessions of the tribes,--and over these royal officers were placed. each district had to provide the requirements of the royal house for one month in the year. these overseers of the districts were subordinate to a head overseer, azariah, the son of that nathan to whom, next to his mother, solomon owed the throne.[363] yet in spite of all the services of subjects, in spite of all means of receipts, solomon's expenditure was in excess of his income. when the settlement with hiram followed the completion of the building of the temple and palace, it was found that hiram had still 120 kikkars of gold to receive. as solomon could not pay the sum, he ceded to tyre twenty israelite places on the border. no doubt the king of tyre was well pleased to complete and round off his territory on the mainland.[364] the example of a lavish and luxurious court, the spectacle of a crowded harem, the influence and demeanour of these females, was not only injurious to the morals of the people, but to their religious conduct. if the national elevation of the israelites under saul and david had forced back the foreign rites which had taken a place after the settlement beside the worship of jehovah, it is now the court which adopts the culture and manners of the phenicians and syrians, and by which the worship of strange gods in israel again becomes prominent. among the wives of the king many were from sidon, ammon, moab and edom. solomon may have considered it wise to display tolerance towards the worship of the tributary nations, but it was going far beyond tolerance when the king, who had built such a richly-adorned and costly temple to the national god of israel, erected, in order to please these women, altars and shrines to astarte of sidon, to camus of the moabites, and milcom of the ammonites.[365] yet the impulse which solomon's reign gave to the worship of jehovah was far the most predominant. it is true that the idea of raising a splendid temple to jehovah in jerusalem arose out of the model of the temple-service of the phenicians and philistines and their magnificent rites (i. 367), whereas the israelites hitherto had known nothing but places for sacrifice on altars on the heights and under the oaks,--nothing but a sacred tent. the temple itself was an approximation to the worship of the syrians; but it was at the same time the completion of the work begun by david. this building of the temple was the most important of the acts of solomon during his reign, and an undertaking, which in its origin was to some degree at variance with national feeling, not only contributed to the maintenance of the national religion, but also had very considerable influence upon its development. solomon, after his manner, may have had the splendour and glory of the structure chiefly in view,--yet just as the monarchy comprised the political life of the nation, so did the specious, magnificent temple centralise the religious life of the nation, even more than david's sacred tent. by this the old places of sacrifice were forced into the shade, and even more rarely visited. the building of the temple increased the preponderance of the sacrifice offered in the metropolis. the priests of the altars in the country, who mostly lived upon their share in the sacrifices, turned to jerusalem, and took up their dwelling in the city. here they already found the priesthood, which had gathered round abiathar and zadok (p. 164). the union of a large number of priestly families at jerusalem, under the guidance of the high priest appointed already by david, caused the feeling and the consciousness of the solid community and corporate nature of their order to rise in these men, while the priests had previously lived an isolated life, at the places of sacrifice among the people, and hardly distinguished from them, and thus they were led to a far more earnest and systematic performance of the sacred worship. it was easy to make use of the number of priests already in existence in order to give to the rites the richer and more brilliant forms which the splendour and dignity of the temple required. for this object the arrangements of the sacred service must be divided, and the sacred acts allotted to special sections of the priests at hand. the organisation of the priesthood needed for these divisions was naturally brought about by the fact that those entrusted with the office of high priest supposed themselves to be descendants of aaron, and that even in david's reign these had been joined by the priests who claimed to be of the same origin. these families, the descendants of eleazar and ithamar, retained the essential arrangements of the sacrifice and the expiation, the priesthood in the stricter sense. even the families, who side by side with these are said to have belonged to the race of aaron, which, like aaron, are said to have sprung from the branch of kohath, were not any longer admitted to this service. the priestly families of this and other origin, which are first found at a later date in jerusalem, who retained their dwelling outside jerusalem, were united with the races of gershom and merari, and to them, as to the families of the race of kohath which did not come through aaron, were transferred the lesser services in the worship and in the very complicated ritual. those men of these races who were acquainted with music and singing, together with such musicians as were not of priestly blood, were also divided into sections. they had to accompany the sacrifice and acts of religious worship with sacred songs and the harp. others were made overseers of the sacred vessels and the dedicatory offerings, others set apart for the purification of the sanctuary and for door-keepers. all these services were hereditary in the combinations of families allotted to them. this organisation of the priesthood cannot have come into existence, as the tradition tells us, immediately after the completion of the temple; it can only have taken place as the effects of a splendid centre of worship in the metropolis of the kingdom became more widely felt, and was finally brought to completion under the guidance of the priests attending on the sacred ark.[366] thus there was connected with the building of the temple by solomon, not only the reunion of the families of the tribe of levi--if these even previously had formed a separate tribe;--by means of adoption from all the families which for generations had been dedicated to the sacred rites, the formation and separation of the priestly order became perfect.[367] at first, without any independent position, this order was dependent on the protection of the monarchy, which built the temple for it, and the importance of the priests was increased with the splendour of the worship. at the head of the new order stood the priests of the ark of jehovah, who had already, in earlier times, maintained a pre-eminent position, which was now increased considerably by the reform in the worship. but they also were dependent on the court, though they soon came to exercise a certain influence upon it. as david had made zadok and abiathar high priests, so solomon removed abiathar and transferred the highest priestly office to zadok, of the branch of eleazar. far more important than the position of the priesthood at the court was the feeling and consciousness of the mission given to them, of the duties and rights, to which the priesthood attained when combined in the new society. as they were at pains to practise a worship pleasing to jehovah, they succeeded even before solomon in discovering an established connection between the past and the present of the nation, in recognising the covenant which jehovah had made with his people. from isolated records, traditions, and old customs they collected the law of ritual in the manner which they considered as established from antiquity, the observation of which was, from their point of view, the maintenance of the covenant into which israel had entered with his god. this was the light in which, even in david's time, the fortunes of israel appeared to the priests, and from this point of view they were recorded in the first decade of david's reign. the order which the priests required for the worship, its unity, centralisation and adornment, the exact obedience to the ritual which was considered by them true and pleasing to god, the position which the priesthood had now obtained, or claimed, appeared to them as already ordained and current in the time when jehovah saved his people with a mighty arm, and led them from egypt to canaan. they had been thrust into the background and forgotten, owing to the guilt and backsliding of later times. now the time was come to establish in power the true and ancient ordinances of moses in real earnest, and to restore them. it was of striking ethical importance, that by these views the present was placed in near relation and the closest combination with a sublime antiquity, with the foundation of the religious ordinances. the impulse to religious feeling which arose out of these views and efforts found expression in a lyrical poetry of penetrating force. david had not only attempted simple songs, but also, as we have seen, more extended invocations of jehovah; and the skilled musical accompaniment which now came to the aid of religious song in the families of the musicians, must have contributed to still greater elevation and choice of expression. the intensity of religious feeling and its expression in sacred songs must also have come into contact more especially with that impulse which had hitherto been represented in the seers and prophets, who believed that they apprehended the will of jehovah in their own breasts, and, in consequence of their favoured relation to him, understood his commands by virtue of internal illumination. all these impulses operated beyond the priestly order. in union with the lofty spiritual activity of the people, they led, in the first instance, to the result that in the last years of solomon the annalistic account of the fortunes of the people and the record of the law was accompanied by a narrative of greater liveliness, of a deeper and clearer view of the divine and human nature (i. 386), which at the same time, in the fate of joseph, gave especial prominence to the newly-obtained knowledge of egyptian life, the service rendered by the daughter of the king of egypt to the great leader of israel in the ancient times, the blessing derived from the friendly relations of israel and egypt, and the distress brought upon egypt by the breach with israel. footnotes: [326] bathsheba became david's wife not long before the capture of rabbath-ammon. her first child died. according to 1 kings iii. 7, solomon, at the time of his accession, is still a boy. but since, according to 1 kings xiv. 21, his son rehoboam is 42 years old at solomon's death, and solomon had reigned 40 years, solomon must have been more than 20 at the death of david. hence, on p. 155 above, the date of the capture of rabbath-ammon is fixed at 1015 b.c. [327] 1 kings ii. 15. [328] 1 kings iii. 1. from the statement in 1 kings xi. 14-21, this must have been the daughter of amenophtis, the pharaoh who succeeded the king mentioned here, the fourth tanite in manetho's list. below, book iv. chap. 3. [329] 1 kings ix. 16. [330] 1 kings xi. 23-25. [331] 2 chron. viii. 3. [332] 2 chron. vii. 8; viii. 4; 1 kings ix. 18; joseph. "antiq." 8, 6, 1. the passage in the book of kings appears, it is true, to indicate thamar in southern judæa. [333] 1 kings v. 7-10, 15-17. [334] 1 kings vii. 46. [335] 1 kings vi., vii. 13-51; 2 chron. iii. 4, 10. [336] a similar vessel of stone, 30 feet in circumference, adorned with the image of a bull, lies among the fragments of amathus in cyprus: o. müller, "archæologie," § 240, anm. 4. [337] 1 kings ix. 25. [338] 1 kings vii. 1-12. [339] 1 kings x. 12; 2 chron. ix. 11. [340] 1 kings vii. 7. [341] 1 kings x. 18-20. [342] the song of solomon says, "there are 60 queens, 80 concubines, and maids without number." [343] 1 kings ix. 10, 24. [344] 1 kings ix. 15-19. [345] 1 kings xi. 27; ix. 15-24. [346] 1 kings iv. 26; x. 26. [347] 1 kings iv. 20, 25; v. 4. [348] 1 kings ix. 19. [349] 1 kings x. 29. [350] 1 kings ix. 26-28; x. 22. [351] judges xvii. 10. the hebrew silver shekel is to be reckoned at more than 2_s._ 6_d._; the gold shekel from 36 to 45_s._ cf. vol. i. 304. [352] 2 sam. xxiv. 24. [353] song of solomon viii. 11; cf. mover's "phoenizier," 3, 48 ff, 81 ff. [354] 1 kings x. 14. [355] 1 kings ix. 19. [356] 1 kings x. 21; 2 chron. ix. 20. [357] song of solomon iii. 7-10. [358] 1 kings x. 27. [359] 1 kings x. 27. [360] 1 kings iv. 29-34. [361] 1 kings iv. 22, 23, 26-28. [362] 1 kings ix. 20, 21. in order to prove that solomon used these and no others for his workmen, the chronicles (2, ii. 16, 17) reckon this remnant at 153,000 men, _i.e._ exactly at the number of task workmen with their overseers given in the book of kings. according to this the incredible number of half a million of canaanites must have settled among the israelites. the general assertion of the books of kings (1, ix. 22) is supported by the detailed evidence in the same books, 1, v. 13; xi. 28; xii. 4 ff. [363] 1 kings iv. 11-15; v. 13-18. [364] 1 kings ix. 10-14. the contradictory statement in chronicles (2, viii. 2) cannot be taken into consideration. [365] 1 kings xi. 4-9, 33. though this account belongs to times no earlier than the author of deuteronomy, yet since the destruction of these places of worship "set up by solomon" is expressly mentioned under josiah (2 kings xxiii. 13), it cannot be doubted. [366] 1 chron. xxiv.-xxvii. here, as is usual in the chronicles, the division of the priests is given systematically, and the idea of such a division is ascribed to the last years of david. "the levites were numbered according to david's last commands," 1 chron. xxiv.; cf. cap. xxvii. throughout the chronicles make a point of exhibiting david as the originator, and solomon as the executive instrument. we must content ourselves with the result that the temple is of decisive importance in separating the priests from the people, and for gathering together and organising the order. [367] it appears that the lists of the priestly families were taken down in writing when the organisation of the order was concluded: nehem. vii. 64. chapter ix. the law of the priests. out of the peculiar relation in which israel stood from all antiquity to his god, out of the protection and prosperity which he had granted to the patriarchs and their seed, out of the liberation from the oppression of the egyptians, which jehovah had prepared for the israelites with a strong arm, out of the bestowal of canaan, _i.e._ the promise of jehovah to conquer the land, which the israelites had now possessed for centuries, there grew up in the circles of the priests, from about the time of samuel, the idea of the covenant which jehovah had made with the patriarchs, and through them with israel. jehovah had assured israel of his protection and blessing; on the other hand, israel had undertaken to serve him, to obey his commands, and do his will. if israel lives according to the command of jehovah, the blessing of his god will certainly be his in the future also; the reward of true service will not and cannot be withheld from him. the will of jehovah which israel has to obey, the law of jehovah which he has to fulfil, was contained in the moral precepts, the rules of law, and rubrics for purification and sacrifice, the writing down of which in the frame-work of a brief account of the fortunes of the fathers, the slavery in egypt, the liberation and the conquest of canaan, on the basis of older sketches of separate parts, was brought to a conclusion at hebron, in the priestly families of the tribe of aaron, about the first decade of david's reign (i. 385). in this writing were laid down the views held by the priesthood on the life pleasing to god, on the past of the nation and the priests, and of the correct mode of worship. it was the ideal picture of conduct in morals, law and worship which the priests strove after, which must in any case have existed in that great period when jehovah spoke to the israelites by the mouth of moses. and, as a fact, the foundations of the moral law, the fundamental rules of law and customs of sacrifice, as we found above (i. 484), do go back to that time of powerful movement of the national feeling, of lofty exaltation of religious emotion against the dreary polytheism of egypt. it is doubtful, whether the families of the priests and sacrificial servants who traced back their lineage to levi, the son of jacob (p. 197), and were now united by david and solomon for service at the sacred tabernacle, for sacrifice and attendance at the temple, had of antiquity formed a separate tribe, which afterwards became dispersed (i. 488),--or if this tribe first was united under the impression made by the idea of true priesthood, which those writings denoted as an example and pattern, and under the influence of the change introduced by the foundation of a central-point for the worship of israel in the tabernacle of david, and then in the temple of solomon, for the priestly families scattered through the land, by means of a gradual union of the priestly families; at all events, a position at least equal in dignity to the rest of the tribes ought to be found for the tribe of levi, which knew the will and law of jehovah, and the correct mode of sacrifice. it was not indeed possible in israel to give the first and most ancient place to the tribe of the priests, as has been done in other nations where a division of orders has crystallised into hereditary tribes. in the memory of the nation reuben was the first-born tribe, _i.e._ the complex of the oldest families, the oldest element of the nation, and the importance of the tribes derived from joseph and the tribe of judah in and after the conquest of canaan was so firmly fixed that the tribe of levi could not hope to contend with them successfully in the question of antiquity. but what was wanting in rank of derivation could be made up by special blessings given by jehovah, and by peculiar sanctity. according to an old conception the first-born male belonged to jehovah. in the sketch of the fortunes of israel and of the law, jehovah says to moses, he will accept the tribe of levi in place of the first-born males of the people. the number of the first-born males of one month old of all the other tribes was taken--they reached 22,373; the number of all the men and boys down to the age of one month in the tribe of levi was 22,000. these 22,000 levites jehovah took in the place of the first-born of the people, and the remaining 373 were ransomed from jehovah at the price of five shekels of silver for each person.[368] thus the levites were raised by jehovah to be the first-born tribe of israel. levi was the tribe which jehovah had selected for his service, the chosen tribe of a chosen nation. moses and aaron were of this tribe, and if, instead of a few families who stood beside moses when he led israel out of egypt, and restored the worship of the tribal deity, the whole tribe of levi was represented as active in his behalf, and as a supporter of moses, the consecration of age was not wanting to this tribe, and reverence was naturally paid to it in return for such ancient services. the levites were not to busy themselves with care for their maintenance, they were not to work for hire, or possess any property; they were to occupy themselves exclusively with their sacred duties. instead of inheritance jehovah was to be their heritage.[369] it is true that the plan for the maintenance of the tribe of levi, sketched in the first text on the occasion of the division of canaan, the 48 cities allotted to them in the lands of the other twelve tribes (13 for the priests and 35 for the assistant levites[370]), could never be carried out; yet claims might be founded on it. moreover, the necessary means for support were supplied in other ways. the firstlings of corn, fruits, the vintage, the olive tree, were offered by being laid on the altar. no inconsiderable portion of other offerings was presented in the same manner. all these gifts could be applied by the priests to their own purposes.[371] but by far the most fruitful source of income for the priesthood was the tithe of the produce of the fields, which was offered according to an ancient custom to jehovah as his share of the harvest. the law required that a tenth of corn, and wine, and oils, and of all other fruits, and the tenth head of all new-born domestic animals, should be given to the priests.[372] the statements of the prophets and the evidence of the historical books prove that the tithes were offered as a rule, though not invariably. as the levites who were not priests had no share in the sacrifices, the law provided that the tithe should go to them, but the levites were in turn to restore a tenth part of these tithes to the priests. finally, the law required that a portion of the booty taken in war should go to the levites; that in all numberings of the people and levies each person should pay a sum to the temple for the ransom of his life.[373] only the descendants of aaron could take part in the most important parts of the ceremonial of sacrifice. from his twenty-fifth or thirtieth year to his fiftieth every levite was subject to the temple service.[374] the law prescribed a formal dedication, with purifications, expiations, sacrifices, and symbolical actions for the exercise of the lower as well as the higher priesthood, for the offering of sacrifice and the sprinkling of the blood as well as for the due performance of the door-keeping. at the dedication of a priest these ceremonies lasted for seven days, but the chief import of the ritual was to denote the future priest himself as a sacrifice offered to jehovah. only those might be dedicated who were free from any bodily blemish. "a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or anything superfluous, or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed, or crook-backt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken shall not come nigh to offer the offering of the lord made by fire."[375] no priest was to make baldness on his head or shave off the corners of his beard, or make any cuttings in his flesh;[376] before the sacrifice he might not take wine or any intoxicating drink; he was required to devote himself to especial purity and cleanliness, and observe in a stricter degree the laws concerning food; he might not marry a widow or a woman divorced from her husband, still less a harlot; he was to avoid most carefully any contact with a corpse: only in the case of his nearest relatives was this defilement allowed. the clothing of the priests was definitely prescribed. he must wear a robe of white linen (byssus), woven in one piece; and this robe was held together by a girdle of three colours, red, blue and white. the priest also wore a band of white linen round his head, and trousers of white linen in order that he might not discover his nakedness when he ascended the steps of the altar.[377] the foremost place among the consecrated priests was occupied by the high priest. he alone had the right to enter the inner space of the sanctuary, the cell in which stood the ark of the covenant--the other priests could enter the outer space only; he alone could offer sacrifice in the name of the whole people, he alone could announce the will and oracle of jehovah, and consecrate the priests. the ritual for the high priest was most strict. in the belief of the hebrews the most accurate knowledge and the most careful circumspection was needed in order to offer an effective sacrifice and avoid arousing the anger of jehovah by some omission in the rite, and if the law required of all priests that they should devote themselves to especial purity and holiness, this demand was made with peculiar severity upon the high priest. he might marry only with a pure virgin of the stock of his kindred; he must keep himself so far from all defilement that he might not touch the corpse even of his father and his mother; he might not, on any occasion, rend his garments in sorrow. the distinguishing garb of the high priest was a robe of blue linen, which on the edge was adorned with pomegranates and bells; the bells were intended, as the law says, to announce the coming of the priest to the god who dwelt in the shrine of the temple, that the priest might not die.[378] over this robe the high priest wore a short wrapper, the so-called ephod or shoulder-garment, and on his breast in front the tablet with the holy urim and thummim, by means of which he inquired of jehovah, if the king or any one from the people asked for an oracle. the other priests also, at least in more ancient times, wore the ephod with the urim and thummim; but the ephod of the high priest was fastened on the shoulders by two precious stones, and the front side of his breastplate was made of twelve precious stones set in gold, on which were engraved the names of the twelve tribes. the head-band of the high priest was distinguished from that of the other priests by a plate of gold bearing the inscription, "holy is jehovah;" he might not even uncover his head.[379] the mode of worship was regulated by the law in a systematic manner. beside the sabbath, on keeping which the law laid special stress, and regarded it as a symbol of the relation of israel to jehovah, the israelites celebrated feasts at the new moon and the full moon,[380] and held three great national festivals in the year. these festivals marked in the first instance certain divisions of the natural year. yet the first, the festival of spring, had from ancient times a peculiar religious significance. it has been remarked above that at the spring festival not only were the firstlings of the harvest, the first ears of corn, offered to the tribal god, but that also, as at the beginning of a new season of fertility, a sin offering, the vicarious sacrifice of a lamb, was made for the first-born which were not offered. the spring festival was also the festival of the sparing of the first-born, the passah or passover of jehovah (i. 414). the priestly ordinance, which sought to give a definite historical cause for the customs of the festival, and to mark the favours which jehovah had granted to his people, connects the old usages of this festival with the exodus from egypt, and we have already seen how from this point of view old ceremonies of this festival were transformed, and new ones were added (i. 445). as the spring festival was kept in the first month of the hebrew year, nisan (march-april) (it began on the evening of the day after the new moon, at the rise of the full moon, when the sun is in the ram), the exodus from egypt was supposed to have taken place on the morning which followed this night. the passah continued for seven days, in which, from the morning of the second day to the evening of the seventh, only unleavened bread could be eaten, i.e. the firstlings of the corn in their original form, and no business could be carried on. on each of the seven days of the feast, according to the law, two young bulls, a ram and seven yearling lambs were offered as a burnt offering for israel in the temple, and besides these a goat, as a sin offering. the neglect of the festival, the eating of leavened bread on any of the days, was threatened by the law with extirpation from the community.[381] as the greater number of the tribes attained to a settled life and agriculture, the feast of the ripe fruits or harvest naturally rose to importance beside this festival of the earliest fruits. seven full weeks after the commencement of the passah, or six weeks after the end of it, the feast of new bread was celebrated. the sheaves were brought, the corn trodden out, the first new meal prepared. according to the law, each house in israel, _i.e._, no doubt, each which possessed land and flocks, had to bring two leavened firstling loaves of new wheaten meal and two yearling lambs as a thank offering. before these were offered no one could eat bread made from the new corn.[382] the festival of autumn, which took place in the seventh month of the hebrew year (september--october), from the fourteenth to the twenty-first day of the month, was merrier and of longer duration. it was the festival of the completion of the in-gathering, and of the vintage, and consequently can hardly go back beyond the time of the settlement in canaan.[383] it was customary to erect arbours of palm leaves, willows, and oak branches, as was indeed necessary at a time when men were occupied in remote orchards and vineyards, and in these the feast was kept, unless it was preferred to keep it at some important place of sacrifice, in order to offer the thank offering there,[384] and in this case those who came to the feast also passed the day in tents or arbours. like the feast of spring, the feast of tabernacles continued for seven days. according to the law, israel was to offer 70 bulls, 14 rams, and seven times 14 lambs at this festival as a burnt offering. to this feast also a historical meaning was given; the tabernacles were erected to remind israel of the fact that he had once dwelt in tents in the wilderness. at these three festivals, "thrice in the year, all the males of israel must appear before jehovah."[385] such was the law of the priests. it was the intention of the priests that the three great festivals should be celebrated at the dwelling of jehovah, _i.e._ at the tabernacle, and afterwards at the temple; hence at the great festivals the israelites were to go to jerusalem. but the strict carrying out of such a common celebration was opposed to the character of the festivals themselves. we saw that even when the sacred ark still stood at shiloh, pilgrimages were made thither once a year at the festival of jehovah. after the erection of the tabernacle and the temple this, no doubt, took place more frequently, and the numbers were greater. yet the object of the priests could not be completely realised. the paschal festival was the redemption of the separate house, of each individual family. this meaning and object was very definitely stamped on the ritual. in a similar manner, the feast of the beginning of harvest and of the first fruits required celebration at home, on the plot of land, and this was still more the case with the festival of thanksgiving for the completed harvest. before the people rejoiced in the blessing of the completed harvest at the feast of tabernacles, all misdeeds which might have defiled the year to that time must be cancelled and removed by a special sacrifice. for this object the law on this occasion made a requirement never demanded at any other time. from the evening of the ninth to the evening of the tenth day there was not only a cessation of business, but a strict fast was kept. every man among the people must subject himself to this regulation, and he who transgressed it was threatened with the loss of his life.[386] the high priest had first to cleanse himself and the other priests, and then the dwelling of jehovah; for even the sanctuary might be defiled by the inadvertence of the priests. when the high priest had bathed he must clothe himself in a coat and trousers of white linen, with a girdle and head-band of the same material, and offer a young bull as a sin offering. bearing a vessel filled with the blood of this victim, and with the censer from the altar of incense in the interior of the sanctuary, which contained burning coals and frankincense, the high priest went alone into the holy of holies, behind the curtain before the ark of the covenant. immediately on his entrance the clouds arising from the censer must fill the chamber, that the priest might not see the face of jehovah over the cherubs and die. then the high priest sprinkled the blood from the vessel seven times towards the ark, and when thus cleansed he turned back to the court of the sanctuary, in which two goats stood ready for sacrifice. he cast lots which of the two should be sacrificed to jehovah and which to azazel, the evil spirit of the desert. when the lot was cast, the high priest laid his hand on the head of the goat assigned to azazel, confessed all the sins and transgressions of israel on this goat, and laid them on his head, in order that he might carry them into the desert-land into which the goat was driven from the sanctuary. then the high priest slew the other goat assigned to jehovah, and, returning into the holy of holies, sprinkled with his blood the ark of the covenant for the second time, in order to purify the people. when the altar of incense, in the outer part of the sanctuary, had been sprinkled in a similar manner, the high priest declared that jehovah was appeased. after a second bath he put on his usual robes, and offered three rams as burnt offerings for himself, the priesthood, and the nation.[387] all sacrifices were to be offered at the tabernacle, "before the dwelling of jehovah;" and afterwards in like manner in the temple. the law of the priests threatened any one with death who sacrificed elsewhere.[388] the most essential regulations for the offering of sacrifice are perhaps the following:--any one who intended to bring an offering must purify himself for several days. wild animals could not be offered. in the hebrew conception the sacrifice is the surrender of a part of a man's possessions and enjoyments. hence only domestic offerings could be offered, because only these are really property. cattle, sheep, and goats were the animals appointed for sacrifice. the poorer people were also allowed to offer doves. each victim must be without blemish and healthy, and it must not be weakened and desecrated by labour. before the animal was killed the sacrificer laid his hand on its head for a time; then he who offered the sacrifice, whether priest or layman, slew the victim, but only the priest could receive the warm blood in the sacrificial vessel. with this vessel in his hand the priest went round the altar and sprinkled the feet, the corners, and the sides of it with the blood of the victim. in the hebrew conception the life of the victim was in its blood, and thus the sprinklings which were to be made with it form the most important part of the holy ceremony. from ancient times the burnt offering was the most solemn kind of sacrifice. only male animals, and, as a rule, bulls and rams, could be offered as burnt offerings. when they had been slain and skinned these offerings were entirely burnt in the fire on the altar, without any part being enjoyed by the sacrificer or the priest, as was the case in other kinds of offerings; only the skin fell to the share of the priests. as the burnt offering was intended to gain the favour of jehovah, so were the sin offerings intended to appease his anger and blot out transgressions. for sin offerings female animals were used as a rule, as male animals for the burnt offerings,[389] but young bulls and he-goats were also offered as expiatory offerings for the whole people, and for oversights or transgressions of the priests in the ritual, and for sin offerings for princes. in sin offerings only certain parts of the entrails were burnt, the kidneys, the liver, and other parts; and in this sacrifice the priests sprinkled the blood on the horns of the altar; the flesh which was not burned belonged to the priests. in thank offerings and offerings of slaughter (so called because in these the slaying and eating of the victim was the principal matter) only the fat was burnt, the priests kept the breast and the right thigh,[390] the rest was eaten by the sacrificer at a banquet with the guests whom he had invited; but this banquet must be held at the place of sacrifice, on the same or at any rate on the following day. drink offerings consisted of libations of wine, which were poured on and round the altar (libations of water are also mentioned, though not in the law, p. 115); the food offerings in fruits, corn, and white meal, which the priests threw into the fire of the altar; in bread and cookery, which, drenched with oil and sprinkled with salt and incense, was partly burned, and partly fell to the lot of the priests. lastly, the incense offerings consisted in the burning of incense, which did not take place, like the other sacrifices, on the larger altar in the court of the sanctuary, but on the small altar, which stood in the space before the holy of holies of the tabernacle, and afterwards of the temple.[391] according to the law, a service was to be continually going on in the dwelling of jehovah. the sacred fire on the altar in the interior of the tabernacle was never to be quenched; before the holy of holies on the sacred table twelve unleavened loaves always lay sprinkled with salt and incense, as a symbolical and continual offering of the twelve tribes. each sabbath this bread was renewed, and the loaves when removed fell to the priests. before the curtain of the holy of holies the candlestick with seven lamps was always burning, and every morning and evening the priests of the temple were to offer a male sheep as a burnt offering at the dwelling of jehovah, and two sheep on the morning and evening of the sabbath. the high priest had also to make an offering of corn every morning and evening.[392] beside the sacrifice, the law of the priests required the observance of a whole series of regulations for purity. it is not merely bodily cleanliness which these laws required of the israelites, nor is it merely a natural abhorrence of certain disgusting objects which lies at the base of these prescriptions; it is not merely that to the simple mind physical and moral purity appear identical, that moral evil is conceived as a defilement of the body; nor are these regulations merely intended to place a certain restriction on natural states and impulses. these factors had their weight, but beside them all a certain side of nature and of the natural life was set apart as impure and unholy. the laws of purity among the israelites are far less strict and comprehensive than those of the egyptians and the indians; but if we unite them with the ritual by which transgressions of these rules were done away and made good, they form a system entering somewhat deeply into the life of the nation. for the laity also the law required and prescribed cleanliness of clothing. stuffs of two kinds might not be worn; pomegranates must be fixed on the corners of the robe. the field and vineyard might not be sown with two kinds of seed; nor could ox and ass be yoked together before the plough.[393] certain animals were unclean, and these might not be eaten. the clean and permitted food was obtained from oxen, sheep, goats, and in wild animals from deer, wild-goats, and gazelles, and in fact from all animals which ruminate and have cloven feet. unclean are all flesh-eating animals with paws, and more especially the camel, the swine, the hare, and the coney. of fish, those only might be eaten which have fins and scales; all fish resembling snakes, like eels, might not be eaten. most water-fowl are unclean; pigeons and quails, on the other hand, were permitted food. all creeping things, winged or not, with the exception of locusts, are forbidden.[394] moreover, if the permitted animals were not slain in the proper manner their flesh was unclean; if it had "died of itself," or was strangled, or torn by wild beasts,[395] the use of the blood of the animal was most strictly forbidden, "for the life of all flesh is the blood;" even of the animals which might be eaten the blood must be poured on the earth and covered with earth.[396] as the eating of forbidden food made a man unclean, so also did all sexual functions of man or woman, and all diseases connected with these functions, including lying in child-bed. every one was also unclean on whose body was "a rising scab or bright spot," but above all the white leprosy rendered the sufferer unclean.[397] finally, any contact with the corpse of man or beast, whether intentional or accidental, rendered a man unclean. the house in which a man died, with all the utensils, was unclean; any one who touched a grave or a human bone was tainted.[398] the priestly regulations set forth in great detail the ceremonies, the washings and sacrifices, by which defilements were to be removed. the unclean person must avoid the sanctuary, and even society and contact with others, till the time of his purification, which in serious defilements can only begin after the lapse of a certain time. in the more grievous cases ordinary water did not suffice for the cleansing, but from the ashes of a red cow without blemish, which was slain as a sin offering and entirely burnt, the priest prepared a special water of purification with cedar wood and bunches of hyssop. the reception of healed lepers required the most careful preparations and most scrupulous manipulations. among the regulations of purity is reckoned the custom of circumcision, which was practised among the israelites, and retained by the law. yet the reason for this peculiar custom, which according to the regulations of the priests was performed on the eighth day after birth, the first day of the second week of life,[399] seems to lie in other motives rather than in the desire to remove a certain part of the male body which was regarded as unclean. we saw above that according to the old conception of the israelites the firstborn must be ransomed from jehovah, that the life of all boys, if it was to be secured, must be purchased from jehovah (i. 414, 448). hence, if we may follow the hint of an obscure narrative, it is not improbable that circumcision of the reproductive member was a vicarious blood-sacrifice for the life of the boy. when moses returned from the land of midian to egypt--so we learn from the ephraimitic text--"jehovah met him in the inn, and sought to kill him. then zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and he departed from him."[400] to the israelites circumcision was a symbol of their connection with the nation, of their covenant with jehovah and selection by him. the most important part of the purity of the people of jehovah was their maintenance of his worship, the strict severance of israel from the religion of their neighbours and community with them. it was now seen what influence living and mingling with the canaanites had exercised in the national worship, and it was perceived what an attraction the syrian rites had presented for centuries to the nation, and what a power they still had upon them. hence even moses was said to have given the command to destroy the altars and images of the canaanites, to drive out all the canaanites, and make neither covenant nor marriage with them.[401] the law forbade sacrifices to moloch under penalty of death; any one who did so was to be stoned. those who made offerings to other gods than jehovah were to be "accursed" (i. 499). wizards were also to be stoned.[402] "ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any mark upon you. do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to play the harlot."[403] all these are commands directed against the manners, funeral customs, and religious worship of the canaanites. strangers were not to be received into the community and people of israel; nor could israelites contract marriage with women who were not israelites; it is only the later law which allows women captured in war to be taken into the marriage bed.[404] these are the "misanthropical" laws of the jews of which tacitus speaks with such deep aversion. the law assigned a far-reaching religious influence to the priests. they alone could turn the favour of jehovah towards his people by correct and effective sacrifices, and appease his wrath; they announced the will of jehovah by his oracle; in regard to diseases and leprosy, they exercised police functions over the whole nation by means of the regulations for cleanliness and food; they could exclude any one at their discretion from the sacrifices and, consequently, from the community; and, in fine, they were in possession of the skill and knowledge with which the people were unacquainted. the priesthood arranged the chronology and the festivals, they supervised weights and measures,[405] they knew the history of the people in past ages, and their ancient covenant with the god of the ancestors. from their knowledge of the ordinances of jehovah followed the claim which the priests made to watch over the application of these ordinances in life, the administration of law and justice. but at first this claim was put forward modestly. the old regulations about the right of blood in the time-honoured observances of justice were added to the law of ritual when this was written down (i. 385, 484); they were modified here and there by the views of the priesthood, and in some points essentially extended; and now, like the ordinances for the places of sacrifice, mode of worship, and purification, they stood opposed in many regulations to real life as ideal but hardly practicable standards. according to the view of the priests jehovah was the true possessor of the land of israel. he had given it to his people for tenure and use. from this conception the law derived very peculiar conclusions, which might be of essential advantage for retaining the property of the families in their hands, for keeping up the family and their possessions, on which the hebrews laid weight, and for proprietors when in debt. to aid the debtor against the creditor, the poor against the rich, the labourer against him who gave the work, the slave against his master, is in other ways also the obvious object of the law. as all work must cease on the seventh day, the day of jehovah, so must there be a similar cessation in the seventh year, which is therefore called the sabbath year. in every seventh year the israelites were to allow the land which jehovah had let to them to lie fallow, in honour of the real owner. in this year the land was not sowed, nor the vine-trees cut, nor the wild beast driven from the field, every one must seek on the fallow what had grown there without culture. if this sabbath of the seventh year was kept jehovah would send such increase on the preceding sixth year that there should be no want.[406] when this period of seven fallow years had occurred seven times the circle appeared to be complete, and from this point of view the law ordained that at such a time everything should return to the original position. hence, when the seventh sabbath year was seven times repeated (in the year of jubilee) not only was agriculture stopped, but all alienated property, with the buildings and belongings, went back to the original owner or his heirs.[407] the consequence was that properties were never really sold, but the use of them was assigned to others, and hence, even before the year of jubilee, the owner could redeem his land by paying the value of the produce which would be yielded before the year of jubilee. but the priests were far from being able to carry out these extended requirements which proceeded from the sanctity of the sabbath, and from the conception that the land of israel belonged to jehovah, and every family held their property from jehovah himself, and which were intended to make plain the true nature of the property of the israelites. it was an ideal picture which they set up, and hardly so much as an attempt was made to carry it out. they could reckon with more certainty on obedience to a law which ordained that no interest was to be taken from the poor, and no poor man's mantle was to be taken in pledge.[408] nevertheless, the law of debt was severe. if the debtor could not pay his debt before a fixed time the creditor was allowed to pay himself with the moveable and fixed property of the debtor; he could sell his wife and children, and even the debtor himself, as slaves, or use him as a slave in his own service. for the legal process we find in the law no more than the regulation "that one witness shall not bear evidence against a man for his death," _i.e._ that one witness was not sufficient to establish a serious charge, that "injustice shall not be done in judgment, that the person of the small shall not be disregarded, nor the person of the great honoured;" "according to law thou shalt judge thy neighbour."[409] for every injury done to the person or property of another, the guilty shall make reparation. we know already the old ordinances which require life for life, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth (i. 485). injury to property and possession was to be fully compensated; even the injury done by his beast was to be compensated by the master. theft was merely punished by restoring four or five times the value of the stolen goods. if the thief could not pay this compensation he was handed over to the injured man as a slave. but any one who steals a man in order to keep him as a slave, or to sell him, was to be punished with death.[410] if a murder was committed, the avenger of blood, _i.e._ the nearest relative and heir of the murdered man, was to pursue the murderer and slay him, wherever he met him, as soon as it was established by two persons that he was really guilty. the law even forbade the avenger of blood to accept a ransom instead of taking the life of the guilty, because the land was desecrated by the blood of the murdered man, "and the land is not cleansed from the blood spilt, save by the blood of the murderer." an exception was allowed only when one man slew another by accident, and without any fault of his own, and not out of hostility or hatred. in this case the slayer was to fly into one of the six cities which were marked out as cities of refuge.[411] from the elders of the city the pursuing avenger of blood was to demand the delivery of the slayer, and they were to decide whether the act was done from hatred and hostility, or was merely an accident. if the elders decided in favour of the first alternative, they were to give up the guilty into the hands of the avenger of blood, that he might die. in the other case, the slayer must remain in the city of refuge till the death of the high priest, and the avenger was free from the guilt of bloodshed if before that time he met him beyond the confines of the city of refuge and slew him.[412] the regulations of the priests even went so far as to lay down a rule that if a savage bull slew a man the bull was not only to be stoned, and not eaten as an unclean animal, but his master also must die, or at any rate pay a ransom, if he knew that the animal was savage, and yet did not control him.[413] among the people of the east the wealthier men did not content themselves with one wife. this custom prevailed in israel also. the law of the priests did not oppose a custom which had an example and justification in the narratives of the patriarchs. the israelites also followed the general custom of the east, in purchasing the wife from her father, and recompensing the father for the loss of a useful piece of property--for the two working hands which he lost when he gave away his daughter from his house. thus jacob obtained the daughters of laban by a service of 14 years. the price of a wife purchased for marriage from the father seems to have been from 15 to 50 shekels of silver (36_s._ to 125_s._).[414] the conclusion of the marriage was marked by a special festivity, after which the bride was carried by her parents into the nuptial chamber. the prostitution of maidens in honour of the goddess of birth, so common among the neighbouring nations, was strictly forbidden by the book of the law. the daughter of a priest who began to prostitute herself was to be burnt with fire, because she thus "defiled not herself only, but also her father."[415] the man who seduced a virgin was compelled to purchase her for his wife, and even if her father would not give her to wife he was to pay him the usual purchase-money. adultery was punished by the law with even greater severity than violations of chastity before marriage. the adulteress, together with the man who had seduced her into a violation of the marriage bond, were to be put to death.[416] if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness without being able to prove it against her a divine judgment was to decide the matter. the priest was to lead man and wife before jehovah. then he was to draw holy water in an earthen pitcher, and throw dust swept from the floor of the dwelling of jehovah into this, and say to the woman, "if thou hast not offended in secret against thy husband, remain unpunished by this water of sorrow, that bringeth the curse; but if thou hast sinned, may this water go into thy body and cause thy thighs to rot, and may jehovah make thee a curse and an oath among thy people." the woman answered, "so be it;" and when the priest had dipped in the water a sheet written with the words of this curse, she was compelled to drink it.[417] thus the woman was brought to confession, or was freed from the suspicion of her husband. marriages were forbidden not only with strange women, but also within certain degrees of relationship; in which were included not only those close degrees, to which there is a natural abhorrence, but also such as did not exclude marriage in other nations. in this matter the law of the priests proceeded from the sound view that marriage did not belong to a natural connection already in existence, but was intended to found a new relationship. not only was marriage forbidden with a mother, with any wife or concubine of the father, with a sister, a daughter, or granddaughter, a widowed daughter-in-law; but also with an aunt on the father's or mother's side, with a stepsister, or sister by marriage, with a sister-in-law, or wife's sister so long as the wife lived.[418] the husband purchased his wife as a chattel; hence in marriage she continued to live in entire dependence beside her husband. the husband could not commit adultery as against his wife; it was the right of another husband which was injured by the seduction of the wife. it rested with the husband to take as many wives as he chose beside his first wife, and as many concubines from his handmaids and female slaves as seemed good to him. the husband could put away his wife if she "found no favour in his eyes," while the wife, on her part, could not dissolve the marriage, or demand a separation; she possessed no legal will. like the wife, the children stood to the father in a relation of the most complete dependence. nor only did he sell his daughters for marriage, he could give them as pledges, or even sell them as slaves, but not out of the land;[419] and though the father was not allowed to sell the son as a slave, he could turn him out of his house. obedience and reverence towards parents were impressed strongly on children, even in the earliest regulations derived from the time of moses. the son who curses his father or mother, or strikes them, must be put to death.[420] the first-born son is the heir of the house; after the death of the father he is the head of the family, and succeeds to his rights over the younger sons and the females. it is not clear whether the law allows any claims to the moveable inheritance to any of the sons besides the eldest, to whom the immoveable property passed absolutely; the sons of concubines and slaves had no right of inheritance if there were sons in existence by legitimate marriage. daughters could only inherit if there were no sons. the heiress could not marry beyond the tribe, in order that the inheritance might at least fall to the lot of a tribesman. if there were neither sons nor daughters, the brother of the father was the heir, and then the uncles of the father.[421] the law attempts to fix and ameliorate the position of day-labourers and slaves. "the hire of the labourer shall not remain with thee till the morrow."[422] the number of slaves appears to have been considerable. they were partly captives taken in war, and partly strangers purchased in the way of trade; partly hebrews who, when detected in thieving, could not pay the compensation, or who could not pay their debts, or hebrew daughters sold by their parents. the marriages of slaves increased their number. the law required that slaves should rest on the sabbath day;[423] and even the oldest regulations restrict the right of the master over the life of his slave by laying down the rule that the slave shall be free if his master has inflicted a severe wound upon him, and that the master must be punished if he has slain his slave.[424] the slave who was a born israelite might be ransomed by his kindred, if they could pay the sum required.[425] the hebrew slave was treated by his master as a hired labourer, and hind.[426] when the hebrew slave had served six years his master was compelled to set him free without ransom in the seventh year. a hebrew could only remain in slavery for ever when, after six years of service, he voluntarily declared that he wished to remain with his master; then, as a sign that he permanently belonged to the house of his master, his ear was pierced on the door-post with an awl. footnotes: [368] exod. xiii. 2; numbers iii. 5-51; viii. 16. [369] numbers xviii. 20-26. [370] vol. i. 488, 502. [371] numbers xviii. 8-20. [372] levit. xxvii. 29-33. [373] genesis xiv. 20; xxviii. 22. [374] exod. xxx. 11-16; xxxviii. 25-28. [375] levit. xxi. 16-21. [376] levit. xxi. 5. [377] exod. xx. 26. [378] exod. xxviii. 31-35; xxxix. 22-27. [379] exod. xxviii. 4-30, 36-43. [380] 1 sam. xx. 5, 24, 27, and many passages in the prophets; numbers xxviii. 11; xxix. 6; ewald, "alterthümer," s. 360. [381] exod. xii. 15-19; numbers ix. 13; xxviii. 16-24. [382] levit. xxii. 9-21. [383] at the division of the kingdom jeroboam is said to have changed this festival to the fifteenth day of the eighth month; 1 kings xii. 33. [384] _e. g._ 1 sam. i. 3; 1 kings xii. 27-32. [385] exod. xxiii. 13; xxxiv. 23. [386] levit. xxiii. 29. [387] levit. xvi., xxiii. 26-32. [388] levit. xvii. 3-5. [389] levit. i-vi. [390] levit. vii. 23-34, and in other passages. [391] _supr._ p. 183. exod. xxx. 1-9. [392] levit. vi. 12, 13; ix. 17. [393] numbers xv. 38; levit. xix. 19. [394] levit. xi. 1-44. [395] levit. xvii. 15. [396] levit. xvii. 14. [397] levit. xiii., xiv. [398] the spoils taken in war are also to be purified; numbers xxxi. 20-24. [399] levit. xii. 3. the arabian tribes in the north of the peninsula, who were nearly related to the hebrews, observed this custom, and the phenicians also, while the philistines did not observe it; herod. 2, 104. in genesis (xxi. 4; xvii. 12-14, 25) it is expressly mentioned that ishmael was not circumcised till his thirteenth year, but isaac was circumcised at the proper time, on the eighth day. this shows that circumcision was a very ancient custom among the israelites, and at the same time indicates that among the arabs the boys were not circumcised till later years, which may have been the case in the older times among the hebrews also. cf. joshua v. 1-9; joseph. "antiq." 1, 12, 3. [400] exod. iv. 24; cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. 282. [401] numbers xxxiii. 50-56; exod. xxiii. 29 ff; xxxiv. 12-16; vol. i. 500. [402] levit. xviii. 21; xx. 2, 27; exod. xxii. 18. [403] levit. xix. 27-29. [404] deut. xxi. 11-14; cf. numbers xii. 1. [405] levit. xix. 35, 36. [406] exod. xxiii. 10, 11; levit. xxv. 20. [407] levit. xxv. 24-31. [408] exod. xxii. 25-27; levit. xxv. 35-38. [409] numbers xxxv. 30; levit. xix. 15. [410] exod. xxi. 16. [411] exod. xxi. 12-14; numbers xxxv. 31; joshua xx. 7-9. [412] numbers xxxv. 25-28. [413] exod. xxi. 28-36. [414] exod. xxi. 32; hosea iii. 2; cf. deuteron. xxii. 19, 29. [415] levit. xix. 29; xxi. 9. [416] levit. xviii. 20; xx. 10. [417] numbers v. 5-31. [418] levit. xviii. [419] exod. xxi. 7, 8. [420] exod. xxi. 17; levit. xx. 9. [421] numbers xxxvi. 1-11; tobit vii. 10; numbers xxvii. 9. [422] levit. xix. 13. [423] exod. xx. 10. [424] exod. xxi. 20, 21, 26; vol. i. 483. [425] levit. xxv. 47 ff. [426] levit. xxv. 39-41. chapter x. judah and israel. the monarchy in israel was established by the people to check the destruction and ruin with which the land and population were threatened by the incursions of the neighbours on the east, by the dangerous arms of the philistines. the first attempt to set up a monarchy in connection with the cities of the land was soon wrecked and swept away, without leaving a trace behind. in spite of his support in the wishes of the great majority of the israelites, the monarchy of saul had not succeeded in establishing itself securely by its simple and popular conduct. it was not till the monarchy had fortified the royal city and palace, established a body-guard and standing troops, magistrates and tax-gatherers, and had entered into close relation with the priests, that it obtained security and permanence. it had indeed fulfilled its mission and saved israel; it had won power, glory, and respect for the nation, and imparted to it lofty impulses of the most important kind. it had at the same time gone far beyond the intention of its foundation. it was now a sultanate, which, by filling the land with syrian trade and customs, and allowing the growth of syrian modes of worship, threatened in one direction the nationality with the same dangers which it had removed in another. the transformation which the manner of life in israel underwent during the reigns of david and solomon was so thorough that even under david a reaction set in. if in the time before david and solomon the israelites had led an unrestrained life, they were now ruled by a severe monarchy. in the place of the patriarchal authority of the elders and heads of tribes, whose decisions they had formerly sought, came the rule of royal officers, who could exercise their power capriciously enough. if hitherto they had lived unmolested, every man on his own plot, beneath his vine and fig tree, they were now compelled to pay taxes and do task-work. after the burdens solomon had laid upon the people, this reaction must have been stronger than at the time when absalom's rebellion shattered the throne of his father. moreover, solomon's reign, though it lasted full 40 years, did not give the same impression of vigorous power as david's strong arm had done before him, and the monarchy was not so old, nor so firmly established as an institution, that the israelites could not remember the times which preceded it. no doubt the tribe of judah could bear the new burdens, because it enjoyed the advantages of the new polity. the king belonged to this tribe; the temple and metropolis were in its territory. but the interests of the other tribes were the more deeply injured. above all, the tribe of ephraim must have felt itself degraded. in this tribe the memory of joshua still lived, the remembrance of the conquest of the land; once it had held the foremost place, and on its soil the ark of jehovah had stood. now the pre-eminence was with judah, the tribe which had long been subject to the philistines; the sacred ark stood at jerusalem, and the ancient places of sacrifice were neglected. of the feeling of the tribe of ephraim we have indubitable evidence in an attempt at rebellion at the beginning of the last decade of the reign of solomon; an attempt, it is true, which was quickly suppressed.[427] when solomon died, in the year 953 b.c., it was not the contests between his sons or the intrigues of the harem which now threatened the succession. rehoboam, solomon's eldest son, who was born to him by naamah the ammonite, was now in his forty-second year, and thus in the vigour of age. this vigour he needed. at the news of solomon's death the people gathered to their old place of assembly at shechem. this self-collected assembly showed that the majority of israel were mindful of their right to elect the king. the greatest circumspection and tact were needed to avert the approaching storm. rehoboam saw that he must not look idly on. he must either attempt to disperse the assembled multitude by force and maintain the crown by arms, or he must treat with it. hence he set forth to shechem, accompanied by the counsellors of his father. a deputation of the people met him, and said, "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 promised to make an answer on the third day. he assembled his counsellors. the old men among them--so all the older text of the books of kings tells us--advised compliance, and recommended him to speak kindly to the people; the younger, who had grown up with the new king, and were accustomed to flatter him, and desired unrestricted power over the people, urged him to reject strongly such claims and such rebellion. rehoboam was foolish enough to follow advice which could not but be ruinous. although he can hardly have said to the people the words which the books of kings put in his mouth--"my father chastised you with whips, but i will chastise you with scorpions,"--he rejected the demand of the israelites. then a cry arose in the assembly of the people, "we have no part in david, nor any inheritance in the son of jesse; to your tents, o israel!" when it was too late rehoboam attempted to soothe the enraged multitude. he sent his task-master, adoniram, to them, but the people slew the ill-chosen messenger by stoning him to death. nothing remained for rehoboam but to mount his chariot in haste and fly to jerusalem. the grievous distress which 100 years before had caused the nation at gilgal to proclaim saul king with one consent, and which after the death of ishbosheth had united the tribes round david at hebron, had long passed away. the danger which division had once brought upon israel had faded into the distance, and was forgotten in the security which had prevailed in the last generations against the neighbours on every side. nothing was thought of but the immediate evil and the coming oppression, if the monarchy went further on the lines on which it was treading. at the time of solomon an ephraimite named jeroboam, the son of nabath (nebat) of zereda, who is spoken of as "a brave man," was a second overseer among the task-labourers. as he was skilful in the discharge of his duties, solomon raised him to be the overseer of the task-work of his tribe. this office, which made him known to all his tribe, jeroboam must have discharged in such a way as to gain the favour rather than the aversion of the tribesmen. we are told in a few words that "jeroboam raised his hand against solomon," and that "solomon sought to slay him." jeroboam escaped to egypt, and found refuge with the pharaoh shishak (about 960 b.c.). immediately after solomon's death jeroboam received a message from his tribesmen to return. rehoboam's refusal to carry on a milder form of government decided the choice of jeroboam as king. that choice declared sufficiently the degree of aversion which the multitude bore to the house of david and the monarchy at jerusalem. the chief city, the tribe of judah, the tribe of simeon, so long united in close connection with judah, and a part of the tribe of benjamin, whose land lay immediately at the gates of jerusalem, remained true to the son of solomon. from the tribe of judah the rise and dominion of david had its commencement; to them that dominion was now returned, and was again confined within its early limits. the question was whether rehoboam could achieve what his grandfather david had succeeded in doing--could regain the dominion over the whole land from judah. rehoboam thought, no doubt, that he could reduce by the power of his arms the tribes which had withdrawn themselves from his dominion. he armed and assembled the warriors of the tribes of judah and benjamin. if he soon abandoned this intention, the reason hardly lies in the warning of the prophet semaiah, as the prophetic revision maintains in a passage interpolated into the annals,--we are told at the same time that there had been "a contention between rehoboam and jeroboam from the first,"[428]--but in the fact that a mightier enemy came upon rehoboam. from the time when the hebrews won their abode in canaan, they had not been molested in any way from egypt, where the rulers since the reign of ramses iii. rested quietly by the nile. solomon, as we saw (p. 180), entered into friendly relations with egypt, and even into affinity. but in the later years of his reign a new dynasty ascended the throne of egypt in the person of shishak, which took up a different attitude. with him jeroboam had found refuge from the pursuit of solomon. it was to jeroboam's interest, no less than shishak's, that this connection should continue after jeroboam became king of israel. it is not improbable that shishak made war upon rehoboam in order to secure jeroboam in his new dominion. whether jeroboam sought the help of egypt or not, why should not egypt have availed herself of the breach in the israelitish kingdom which had reached such a height in syria under david and solomon, and forced her way even to the borders of egypt? why should she not establish the division and the weakness of israel? at the same time, in all probability, a cheap reputation for military valour might be obtained, and the treasures of solomon seized. in the year 949 b.c., the fifth year of rehoboam's reign, the pharaoh invaded judah. he is said to "have come with 1200 chariots, and 60,000 horsemen; and the people who accompanied him from egypt, libya, and ethiopia were beyond number." rehoboam could not withstand the power of shishak; one city after another, including jerusalem, opened her gates to the pharaoh. the glory of solomon was past and gone. shishak took away the treasures of the temple and the royal palace, and the gold shields which solomon had caused to be made for the body-guard. there was no thought of a lasting conquest and the subjugation of syria; the object was merely to weaken, plunder, and reduce judah. when this object was obtained the pharaoh turned back to egypt. on the outer walls of the temple of karnak we may see the gigantic form of shishak, who brandishes the weapon of victory over a crowd of conquered enemies; 133 bearded figures are to be seen, with their hands tied behind them, whom ammon and mut are leading before shishak. the lower part of these figures is covered by the name-shields. they represent the places in the kingdom of judah, which in equal number were taken or were taxed by the pharaoh. of these 133 name-shields about 100 are still legible, but few names are found among these which correspond to known places in judæa. we may perhaps recognise jehud, ajalon, beth-horon, gibeon, beeroth, rimmon in the north of judah or in benjamin; engedi and adullam in the east; lachish, adoraim, mareshah, kegilah (keilah), and some other places in the centre of judah. as there is scarcely one among these names which can with certainty be apportioned to the kingdom of israel, the conclusion may naturally be drawn that the campaign was made with a favourable regard to jeroboam, and was confined to judah.[429] it was a heavy blow which had befallen the little kingdom, and, what was still worse, jeroboam could avail himself of it, and the pharaoh could repeat his raid. rehoboam saw that the only way to increase the power of resistance in his kingdom and prevent its overthrow was to strengthen the fortifications of the metropolis, and change all the larger towns in the land into fortresses. he carried this plan out, we are told, so far as he could, and provided them with garrisons, arms, supplies, and governors. fifteen of these are mentioned in the chronicles. the dominion over the edomites, whom saul fought with and david overcame, and who attempted in vain to break loose under solomon, was maintained by rehoboam. after the brief reign of abiam, the son of rehoboam (932-929 b.c.), asa, the brother of abiam, ascended the throne of judah. in his time, according to the chronicles, serah, the cushite, invaded judah with a great army, and forced his way as far as maresa; but in the fifteenth year of his reign asa defeated the cushites, and sacrificed 700 oxen and 7000 sheep out of the booty to jehovah at jerusalem. the books of the kings know nothing but the fact that asa was engaged in constant warfare with baasha, the second successor of jeroboam, king of israel (925-901 b.c.).[430] baasha forced his way as far as ramah, _i.e._ within two leagues of jerusalem. this place he took and fortified, and was now enabled to press heavily on the metropolis of judah, by checking their trade and cutting off their supplies. asa's military power does not seem to have been sufficient to relieve him from this intolerable position. he "took all the silver and gold that remained in the treasures of the house of jehovah, and in the treasures of the king's house," and sent it to benhadad, who was now king of damascus in the room of rezon the opponent of solomon, and urged him to break his covenant with baasha, and make war upon him that he might leave judah at peace. benhadad agreed to his request. he invaded israel. as jeroboam had summoned egypt against judah, judah was now joined by damascus against israel. baasha abandoned his war against israel, and asa caused the wood and the stones of the fortifications to be hastily carried away from ramah, and with this material he entrenched gebah and mizpeh against israel.[431] an addition in the first book of kings remarks that asa removed the harlots and the idols out of the land, that he threw down the image of astarte, which his mother had set up, and burnt it in the valley of the kidron.[432] this was a healthy reaction against the foreign rites which had crept in in the last years of solomon's reign. asa's son jehoshaphat (873-848 b.c.) went further in this direction. the remainder of the harlots were removed from the land; he entered into peaceful relations with israel. the supremacy over the edomites was maintained, and they were governed by viceroys of the king of judah.[433] we find that the edomites sent contingents to him; and his sway extended as far as the north-east point of the red sea. here, at elath, as in solomon's time, great ships were built for the voyage to ophir.[434] the ten tribes who had set jeroboam at their head were the mass of the people both in numbers and extent of territory. they might hope to carry on the kingdom, they preserved the name of israel; while in the south there was little more than one powerful tribe separated from the rest. shechem, the ancient metropolis of the tribe of ephraim, the place at which the crown was transferred to jeroboam, was the residence of the new king. when jerusalem was no longer the chief metropolis of the kingdom, the temple there could not any longer be the place of worship for all the tribes. it would be nothing less then recognising the supremacy of rehoboam if the tribes continued to go up to jerusalem to the great sacrifices and festivals. the places of worship for the new kingdom must be within its own borders. jeroboam consecrated afresh the old place of sacrifice, bethel, on the southern border of the territory of ephraim, the place where abraham had offered sacrifice, and jacob had rested (i. 390, 408); and on the northern boundaries of his kingdom he consecrated the place of sacrifice at dan, which the danites had once founded on taking laish from the sidonians (p. 94). at both places he set up a golden calf to jehovah, and instituted priests; and, as we are told, the israelites came like one man to the feasts of dan, and sacrificed at bethel, where the sanctuary also contained a treasury. of other actions of jeroboam, we only know that he built, _i.e._ fortified, peniel in the land beyond jordan; no doubt in order to be able to maintain his supremacy over the ammonites. the severe blow which had fallen on the kingdom of judah by the incursion of shishak secured him from any serious attack on the part of rehoboam. the petty warfare on the borders of judah and israel naturally did not cease during his reign (p. 231). nadab, the son of jeroboam (927-925 b.c.), marched against the philistines in order to recover from them gibbethon in the land of the southern danites. here in the camp at gibbethon he was slain by baasha, one of the captains of his army, and the whole race of jeroboam was destroyed. baasha ascended the throne, which nadab had held for two years only. he took up his abode at tirzah, a pleasantly-situated place north of shechem.[435] the division of the kingdom of israel and its consequent debility could not but appear a desirable event to the kingdom of damascus, which, though overthrown by david, was restored by rezon in solomon's time (p. 179.) attacks of judah on israel could not be supported by damascus, because they might lead to a reunion, and for the same reason israel could not be allowed to subjugate judah. this seems to have been the reason which induced benhadad of damascus to accede to the request of asa, king of judah, when baasha had entrenched ramah against jerusalem. benhadad's invasion of the north of israel, the desolation of the district on the upper jordan and the lake of genesareth,[436] gave relief to the oppressed kingdom of judah (p. 235). baasha's son elah was slain at a banquet at tirzah, after a short reign (901-899 b.c.), by zimri, one of the captains of his army, who seized the crown. but the army of israel, which was again encamped at gibbethon, on hearing of what had taken place at tirzah, elected omri, their leader, king. omri broke up the siege of gibbethon, marched to tirzah, and took the city. zimri despaired of maintaining himself in the royal castle, and burnt himself in it. yet omri was not master of israel. half of the people joined tibni, the son of ginath. omri gradually gained the upper hand, till tibni's death decided the matter in his favour. with the elevation of omri (899-875 b.c.) a third dynasty ascended the throne of israel, while in judah the crown continued peacefully in the family of david. like baasha, omri founded a new residence; he removed his seat from tirzah to mount shomron, and here built the new city of that name (samaria). nothing is said of the wars of omri against judah. to benhadad of damascus he seems to have lost some towns in the land of gilead.[437] that he ruled with address, vigour, and a strong hand is clear from the inscription on a monument which mesha, king of moab, caused to be erected in his city of dibon (east of the dead sea). this tells us that omri and his son after him held moab in subjection for 40 years; that not only was the city of nebo garrisoned by the israelites, but omri even took medabah, _i.e._ the region south of nebo towards dibon, and occupied it, and "oppressed moab for a long time," because "camos, the god of the moabites, was angry at his land."[438] as mesha regained his independence after the death of ahab, the son of omri, the more severe subjection of the moabites by omri must have begun in the year 893 b.c. omri seems to have entered into friendly relations with ethbaal, king of tyre (917-885 b.c.), or his successor balezor (885-877 b.c.).[439] omri's authority and reputation must have been considerable, since even after the overthrow of his house, in the second half of the ninth century b.c., the kings of assyria speak of the king of israel as "the son of omri," and the kingdom of israel as the "house of omri." ahab, omri's son (875-853 b.c.), maintained the power which his father had won. the books of kings tell us that mesha, king of moab, sent him yearly the wool of 100,000 sheep and lambs,[440] and mesha himself tells us that omri was followed by his son, who also said, "i will oppress moab;" and israel "dwelt at medabah for 40 years in the days of omri and ahab." that the ammonites also were subject to ahab seems a just conclusion from the inscriptions of shalmanesar, king of assyria.[441] with tyre ahab was in close connection. his wife jezebel was the daughter of ethbaal, king of tyre, the aunt of mutton, the contemporary king of tyre (p. 268). he was on friendly terms with judah, which began to rise again (as we saw) under the rule of jehoshaphat. jehoram, the son of jehoshaphat, was married to athaliah, the daughter of ahab and jezebel.[442] on the vine-clad hills of jezreel ahab built himself a palace adorned with ivory, after the pattern of the phenician princes.[443] the rites of the neighbouring tribes, the worship of astarte, camos, and milcom, which found their way into the hebrew tribes, and even to jerusalem in the last years of solomon's reign, were again removed in judah, as we have seen (p. 235), under the reigns of asa and jehoshaphat. for israel the dedication of the places of worship at bethel and dan to jehovah, which jeroboam instituted, in spite of the erection of the image of jehovah, marked a reaction against the rites of the canaanites. but the connection into which ahab entered with tyre brought it about that the gods of the phenicians were again looked on with reverence in israel. induced by jezebel, his tyrian wife, so we are told, ahab caused a temple to be erected in samaria, which his father had built, to baal of tyre, at which 450 priests maintained the worship; and a temple was also dedicated to astarte, which gave occupation to 400 priests.[444] it was an ancient custom among the hebrews, as we have already found more than once, to inquire of jehovah what should be done. in israel the custom of thus making inquiry was more widely spread than in other nations. before any undertaking inquiry was made of his will. jehovah's voice decided the sentence in the judgment court. it was usual in all cases and times to appeal to the decision of jehovah. question and answer were made, as has been remarked, by the priests casting lots before the sacred ark, the altars, and the images of jehovah. if a criminal had to be discovered, the tribes and races came forward, and he was marked out by the lot cast before jehovah. we saw that saul inquired of jehovah on his campaign (p. 124). david undertook nothing without inquiring of the image of jehovah which he carried about with him (p. 139). if any one wished to mark out the wisdom of any advice, it was said, "it is as if jehovah had answered." but beside the priests who cast the lots, there were men who saw into what was hidden, and knew the future. to these soothsayers men went as well as to the lot before jehovah; they desired to know whether there would be rain or drought, where a lost beast was to be found; they inquired for remedies for disease. the soothsayers even pronounced sentences at law, and their sentence was then as the sentence of jehovah. it was jehovah who illuminated such men, and imparted to them a keener vision, a higher knowledge. they believed, as the people believed of them--and the belief was stronger as the religious feeling was more intense--that they stood in a nearer and closer relation to jehovah. if they also foretold events for reward, yet they lived in the belief that they knew the will and the counsels of jehovah, and in this conviction they gave advice and judgment; they were not only soothsayers, but seers. in such a conviction mere prediction passed into prophecy, _i.e._ into the revelation of the will of jehovah by the mental certainty of the seer. in this position we found samuel, who, from being a priest, had attained to a knowledge of the will of jehovah; he was at once priest, soothsayer for hire, and prophet; _i.e._ he not only announced external matters still in the future, but also announced the just decision, the resolve pleasing to god. he gathered disciples round him, who praised jehovah with harp and lute, and waited to see his face, and became changed into other men (p. 117). gad and nathan, with whom david and solomon took counsel, were men of this style and tone. with the loftier impulses which the religious life received both on the ritual and legal side, as well as on the side of religious feeling under david and solomon, with the survey of the fortunes which jehovah had prepared for his people, with the expression of intense devotion in that poetry to which david opened the way, the elevation of mind in the prophets must have been increased and extended; their views must have become deeper. in the kingdom of israel, so far as our knowledge goes, the seers and prophets had made no protest against the worship of jehovah under an image. but they came forward with decisive opposition to the worship of baal and astarte, the strange gods which ahab and jezebel had introduced into samaria and israel. ahab decreed persecution against them, which strengthened instead of breaking the intensity of their faith, their adhesion and devotion to the god of the ancestors. they were driven to live in solitudes, deserts, ravines, and caves. on their privations, fasts, and lonely contemplations in the silence of the desert followed dreams and ecstatic visions. by these the close and favoured relation of the persecuted to the god of israel became an established certainty. the power of prediction passed into the background as compared with this awakening by jehovah, and the duty to strive, contend, and suffer for the worship of the god of the nation against strange gods. if a prophet who had lifted up his voice against the sacrifice to baal was compelled to fly before the king into the desert, he was followed thither by eager associates, who had at heart the worship and service of jehovah. these listened to his words and promptings; these were his disciples. the numbers of the awakened and illuminated increased; amid danger and in privation their religious life became more earnest; their zeal for jehovah and their hatred of the strange gods and their worshippers became deeper as the persecution fell heavier upon them. they became men of word and action. strengthened in this conflict for zealous struggles in behalf of the ancient lord, oppressed and persecuted for their faithfulness to the god of israel, their relation to him took the shape of an inward conviction of great force and intensity. filled with their belief and the revelations which jehovah had imparted to them, they came forward in the boldest manner to oppose the apostate kings; their zeal for jehovah rose to the wildest fanaticism, which shrunk from no means of destroying the servants of the strange gods. to bring into light the force of their opposition to the wicked kings, and the power which jehovah gives to his faithful servants, tradition has adorned with many miracles the lives of elijah and elisha, the men who in ahab's time transformed the prognostications of the seers into a prophetic censure. elijah is said to have ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, and even the corpse of elisha worked miracles. at the urgent request of jezebel, so we are told, ahab gave orders that the prophets of jehovah, who roused the people against him, should be driven out of the land or put to death.[445] elijah retired from thisbe in gilead, first to the region of jordan, and then to zarephath (sarepta) in the land of the sidonians;[446] and finally he found a place of refuge in the ravines of carmel, on the sea-shore. a girdle of skins surrounded his loins, and a mantle of hair covered his shoulders; ravens were said to have brought bread and flesh to the hungry prophet in the desert.[447] it came to pass that there was a long drought in israel. in this time of distress elijah came forth from his hiding-place to point out the anger of jehovah on the king and the people for their worship of baal, and to proclaim relief if they returned to the god of israel. he requested ahab to gather the people and all the priests of baal and astarte to carmel, and there jehovah would send rain. to this request ahab agreed. "how long will ye halt on both knees, and go after jehovah as well as baal," cried elijah to the assembled multitude. "i alone am left of the prophets of jehovah, and the prophets of baal are 450 men. give us then two bulls: one to me, and one to the priests of baal. we will cut them in pieces and lay them on the wood, and the god who answers with fire shall be our god." the priests of baal slew their bull, laid him on the wood, and called on baal from morning to mid-day, and said, o baal, hear us! but in vain. meanwhile elijah, so the narrative continues, built an altar of 12 stones, for the 12 tribes, and made a trench round it; cut the bull in pieces, and laid him on the wood of the altar, and thrice poured water over all. when he called on jehovah--to make it known on that day that he was god in israel, and elijah was his servant--fire fell from heaven and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the altar. all the people fell on their faces, and elijah said, seize the prophets of baal; let none of them escape. the people fell upon them; they were brought down from the mountain, and elijah slew them at the brook kishon. then a little cloud was seen from carmel rising out of the sea, of the size of a man's hand, and elijah said to the king, "harness thy chariot and haste away, that the rain overtake thee not." the sky was quickly covered with black clouds, and heavy rain followed upon storms of wind. but elijah ran before ahab to his palace in jezreel.[448] of this narrative, which belongs to the prophetic revision of the annals, we may perhaps retain with certainty the facts that elijah declared a severe famine and drought in the land to be the punishment of jehovah for the worship of baal; that the excited people slew the priests of baal; that ahab accorded to the prophets of jehovah permission to return to their homes and liberty; and that the worship of jehovah in israel, which had been seriously threatened by those rites, regained the upper hand and decided victory, though it could not entirely drive out the worship of baal. the increase in the strength of israel under omri and ahab, the connection into which ahab entered with jehoshaphat of judah, the alliance between the two houses, must have appeared to benhadad ii., the king of damascus, a serious matter for his own position. for this or for other reasons he broke with ahab, and renewed the struggle which had gone on in omri's time between israel and damascus. he invaded israel with all his power: 32 kings were with him--such is the no doubt greatly exaggerated account. ahab fell upon the aramaeans while benhadad was at a banquet, and though his army was only 7000 strong, he obtained a great victory. then, as we are told in the prophetic revision of the books of kings, benhadad's servants advised him to contend with the israelites on the plain; their gods were gods of the hills, and therefore they had gained the victory. benhadad came in the next year with an army of aramaeans, which filled the land. nevertheless ahab again defeated them at aphek (eastward of lake merom), and so utterly overthrew them that benhadad sent his servants with sackcloth about their loins, and halters round their heads, to ahab to pray for mercy. this ahab granted, and benhadad in turn undertook to restore the cities which his father had taken from the father of ahab, _i.e._ from omri. the princes of syria had every reason to forget their hatred and make up their quarrels. assurbanipal and shalmanesar ii., kings of assyria, had attacked and subjugated the districts on the euphrates, and established fortresses there. the former forced his way as far as the orontes and the amanus; the latter had already subjugated cilicia. in the year 854 b.c. shalmanesar ii. left nineveh in the spring, crossed the euphrates, demanded tribute there, and then turned towards damascus. he came upon benhadad (bin-hidri) of damascus, to whom ahab (achabbu), king of israel, as well as the king of hamath, and the king of aradus, together with some other syrian kings, had brought up their forces. to the army of the syrians shalmanesar allowed more than 60,000 men--he enumerates 12 princes who combined to oppose him. damascus furnished the strongest contingent, viz., 20,000 men and 1200 chariots; then came israel, with 10,000 men and 200 chariots; and hamath, with 10,000 men and 700 chariots. the armies met at karkar. the king of assyria claims the victory; he professes to have captured the chariots and horsemen of the syrians, and to have cut down their leaders. according to one inscription 14,000 syrians, according to two others 20,500, were left on the field. but shalmanesar says nothing of the subjection of the princes who fought against him, or of the payment of tribute by those who are said to be vanquished, or of conquered cities. hence the truth is that the combined forces of the syrians succeeded in repulsing the attack of the assyrians. this was their victory, though they may not have obtained the victory on the field.[449] when the danger threatened by the attack of assyria passed away, the contention between damascus and israel broke out again. the hebrew scriptures tell us that benhadad did not keep his promise, and did not restore the city of ramoth in gilead to ahab. ahab may have thought that he had the greater ground for complaint against damascus, as he took upon himself the severe battle against assyria, though it was damascus, and not israel, which stood in the direct line of danger. he united with judah against damascus, and sent a request to jehoshaphat, king of judah, to march out with him. jehoshaphat answered, "i will go forth as thou goest; my people as thy people; my horses as thy horses;" and he came with his warriors to samaria. both kings sat on their seats at the gate, in order to review the army as it passed out; and the prophets of jehovah, 400 in number, prophesied good things to them, and said, "go forth against ramoth in gilead; jehovah will give it into your hands." one only of these prophets, michaiah, the son of imlah, prophesied evil; ahab, we are told, caused him to be thrown into prison till he should return in prosperity.[450] a battle took place in the neighbourhood of ramoth in gilead; ahab was severely wounded by an arrow which passed between the joints of his mail; he caused the wound to be bound up, and returned to the fight, in order not to discourage his warriors, and continued to stand upright in his chariot, though his blood flowed to the bottom of it, till the evening, when he died. when the soldiers heard of the death of the king the army dispersed in every direction. jehoshaphat, king of judah, escaped (853 b.c.). the death of such a brave warrior as ahab was a heavy blow to the kingdom of israel. we are not told by what sacrifices ahaziah, the son of ahab and jezebel, had to purchase peace; we only know that the moabites revolted from israel on the news of the death of ahab, and that mesha no longer paid the tribute which he and his father had paid to omri and ahab. in any case it was a great relief for israel when shalmanesar, king of assyria, in the years 851 and 850 b.c., turned his arms against hamath and damascus.[451] in this way ahaziah's younger brother, joram, who succeeded him after a short reign (851-843 b.c.), was able to attempt to subjugate the moabites anew. he called on jehoshaphat, king of judah, to go out with him, and jehoshaphat said, "i am as thou art; my horses as thy horses," and raised not only the warriors of judah, but those of edom also. the attack was made from the land of the kingdom of judah and edom on the southern border of the moabites. the moabites were defeated, their cities destroyed, their fields laid waste, their wells filled up. mesha threw himself into the fortress of kir harosheth, which is probably the later kerak, to the south of the arnon, not far from the east shore of the dead sea. the slingers of both kings surrounded the fortress, and cast stones against the walls. "and when the king of moab saw that the battle was too strong for him," and he had attempted in vain to break out, "he took his firstborn son, who would be king in his place, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering on the wall. and there was a great anger against israel, and they returned from him, and went back into their own land" (849 b.c.). notwithstanding this fortunate beginning, the campaign against moab, as is allowed even by the books of kings, was finally wrecked. this termination agrees with the statements of mesha on the monument of dibon. "forty years," it says, "israel dwelt in medabah; camos gave it back in my days. and the king of israel built ataroth, and i fought against the stronghold and took it, and took all the men captive, and brought them as a pleasing spectacle to camos and moab. and camos said to me, go and take nebo from israel; and i went in the night and fought against it from daybreak to mid-day; and i took it. it was devoted to destruction to ashtor-camos (i. 373); and i took from thence the furniture of jehovah, and dragged them before camos. and the king of israel built jahaz, and placed himself therein, in his contest against me, and camos drove him out before me. i took from moab 200 men, all the chiefs, and led them out to jahaz, and took it, in order to unite it to dibon. i built karho,[452] the gates, the towers, and the royal palace. i built aroer, and made the road over the arnon. i built beth bamoth, which was destroyed. i built bazor, and beth diblathaim, and beth baal-meon. and camos said to me, go down to fight against horonaim." here our fragments of the inscription break off. we see that ahab's successors, ahaziah and joram, attempted to force moab to submission by planting fortresses in the land; that they attempted to subjugate the moabites from ataroth, nebo, and jahaz. when this mode of warfare did not succeed, and the fortresses were destroyed, the great campaign was undertaken which in the end came to disaster, unless we were to place this campaign before the time when joram built those fortresses. it was impossible for joram to entertain any further hopes of the subjugation of moab when benhadad, after escaping from the attack of shalmanesar, turned upon him. the israelites were unable to keep the field, and joram was shut up in samaria. the supplies failed, and the famine is said to have been so grievous in the city that an ass's head sold for 80 shekels, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five shekels, and mothers even laid their hands upon their own children. but elisha, the favourite disciple of elijah, is said to have urged them to hold out, and promised present help from jehovah. suddenly, in a single night, the army of the aramaeans disappeared. they feared, so the prophetic revision of the annals relates, that the kings of the hethites and the kings of egypt had set out to the aid of joram. as shalmanesar of assyria tells us that he marched in the year 846 b.c. with 120,000 men against benhadad of damascus and irchulina of hamath, we may assume that it was the approach of the assyrians which induced benhadad to raise the siege of samaria, in order to meet the assyrians with all his own forces and those of hamath. here again shalmanesar announces a victory obtained over benhadad and irchulina of hamath, and twelve princes, and again the victory is without results. it was not to the power of shalmanesar, but to elisha, the prophet of israel, that benhadad of damascus succumbed. for what reason we know not, elisha left israel and went to damascus. benhadad lay sick. he sent his chosen servant hazael with costly presents to elisha to inquire if he would recover. elisha answered, say to him, thou shalt recover; but jehovah has shown me that he will die. hazael announced the message, and on the next day smothered the king, and placed himself on the throne of damascus (844 b.c.). the new king at once resumed the war with israel, and, as it would appear, not without the instigation of elisha.[453] jehoshaphat of judah had died a few years previously (848 b.c.). the crown passed to his son jehoram, the brother-in-law of joram. the edomites, who had continued to follow jehoshaphat into the field against moab, revolted from him, and slew the judæans who had settled in edom,--these settlers may have been most numerous in the harbour city of elath,--and placed themselves under a king.[454] jehoram attempted to reduce them in vain; the fortune of war was against him; he was surrounded by the edomites, and was compelled to force his way with his chariots of war by night through the army of the edomites. the philistines also pressed upon jehoram, and carried away, even from jerusalem, captives and precious things.[455] jehoram's reign continued for four years. yet the misfortunes of judah do not seem to have been very heavy. jehoram's son ahaziah, the nephew of joram of israel, who came to the throne in the year 844 b.c., was soon after his accession in a position to aid his uncle against the men of damascus. both kings encamped at ramoth gilead, in order to maintain the city against hazael.[456] in the conflict joram was wounded; he returned to jezreel to be healed, and soon after ahaziah left the camp at ramoth in order to visit his uncle in his sickness. to elisha this seemed the most favourable moment for overthrowing the king of israel, and he urged jehu, the foremost captain in the israelite army, to revolt against the wounded king. he sent one of his disciples to ramoth with instructions to pour oil upon jehu, with the words, "jehovah says, i anoint thee to be king over israel." the chiefs were sitting together at ramoth when the messenger of elisha entered. "i have a message for jehu," he said; and poured the oil upon him with the words, "jehovah, the god of israel, anoints thee to be king over his people, and says, thou shalt destroy the house of thy master. i will avenge the blood of my prophets on jezebel. the house of ahab shall be destroyed, and i will cut off from ahab what pisseth against the wall, and dogs shall eat jezebel in jezreel, and none shall bury her." the youth had scarcely uttered these words when he returned in haste. the chiefs and the servants asked in wonder, "wherefore came this madman?" but when jehu declared to them what had taken place, they hastily took off their mantles, and spread them before jehu's feet; they blew trumpets and cried, "jehu is king." jehu at once set out with a host to jezreel, that no tidings might precede him. the watchmen of the tower told the king that a troop was coming in great haste, and apparently led by jehu. thinking that jehu was bringing news of the army, the wounded joram went to meet him with his guest, ahaziah, king of judah. "is it peace?" cried joram to jehu. "what peace," he replied, "while the whoredoms of thy mother jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?" in terror joram cried out, "there is treachery, o ahaziah," and turned his horses to escape by flight. but jehu smote him with an arrow in the back through the shoulders, so that the point reached the heart. joram fell dead from the chariot. ahaziah escaped. from the window of her palace at jezreel jezebel saw the death of the king, her second son. by this her own fate was decided. but her courage failed not. as jehu approached she called to him from the window, "had zimri peace, who slew his master?" jehu made no answer, but called out, "who is on my side?" two or three eunuchs answered, "we are." then jehu commanded, "throw the queen down." they threw the widow of ahab out of the window, so that her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on jehu's horses, and the ruthless murderer drove over the corpse. she had survived ahab ten years. jehu went into the palace, ate and drank, and sent a message to the elders of the tribes and the captains of the fortresses: "if ye are on my side and obey my voice, slay the sons of ahab who are with you, and send their heads to jezreel." the elders feared the murderer to whom joram and jezebel had succumbed, and did as he bade them. seventy sons and grandsons of ahab were slaughtered; their heads were thrown in two heaps before the palace at jezreel by jehu's orders. then he spoke in scorn to the people, "i have slain one; but who slew all these?" still unsatisfied with blood, he caused all the kindred of the royal house, all the councillors, friends, and priests of joram to be slain (843 b.c.). jehu had caused the king of judah to be closely pursued on that day. at jibleam the arrows of the pursuers reached ahaziah; wounded to the death, he came to megiddo, and there he died. thus the prospect was opened to jehu of becoming master of the kingdom of judah also. with this object in view, he caused the brothers and relatives of the murdered ahaziah to be massacred, so far as he could take them; in all they were 42 men.[457] but meanwhile the mother of the murdered ahaziah, athaliah, heard in judah of the death of her son in israel, and seized the reins of government there. she determined to retain them against every one; and on her side also destroyed all who stood in her way. she did not spare even her own grandsons, the sons of ahaziah; it was with difficulty that the king's sister succeeded in saving joash, the infant son of her brother.[458] the prophets of israel took no offence at the cruelties of jehu, to which they had given the first impulse; according to the revision of the annals, they even proclaimed to him the word of jehovah. "because thou hast done what is right and good in my eyes, and hast executed upon the house of ahab all that was in my heart, thy descendants shall sit upon the throne of israel."[459] jehu on his part was no less anxious to show his gratitude to the men to whom he owed his exaltation. he summoned the priests of baal, and announced to them in craft, "ahab served baal a little, but jehu shall serve him much;" and caused a great sacrifice to be made to baal; all who remained absent should not live. thus he collected all the servants and priests of baal in the temple of the god at samaria. the sacrifice began; jehu came in person to take part in the solemnity; when on a sudden 80 soldiers entered the temple and massacred them all. the two pillars before the temple were burnt, the image of baal was thrown down, the temple was destroyed, and the place purified.[460] a hundred and ten years had elapsed since the revolt of the ten tribes from the house of david and the division of israel. during this time the two kingdoms had been at war, and had summoned strangers into the land against each other; even the connection into which they had entered in the last thirty years, and the close relations existing between ahab and joram of israel and jehoshaphat, jehoram and ahaziah of judah had not been able to give more than a transitory firmness and solidity to the two kingdoms. in the kingdom of judah the crown continued in the house of david; in israel neither jeroboam's nor baasha's race had taken root. and now the house of omri also was overthrown and destroyed by a ruthless murderer. with jehu a third warrior had gained the crown of israel by a violent hand, and a fourth dynasty sat upon the throne of jeroboam. it was a favourable circumstance for the new king of israel that shalmanesar ii. of assyria again made war upon damascus. on the mountains opposite to the range of lebanon, so shalmanesar tells us, he defeated hazael of the land of aram, _i.e._ of damascus, in the year 842 b.c.; he slew 16,000 of his warriors, and took 1121 war-chariots. after this he besieged him in damascus, and destroyed his fortifications. jehu could hardly think, as ahab had done before him, of joining damascus in resisting assyria; his object was rather to establish the throne he had usurped by submission to and support from assyria. in this year, as shalmanesar tells us, he sent tribute like sidon and tyre. on an obelisk in his palace at chalah, on which shalmanesar caused the annals of his victories to be written and a picture to be made of the offering of the tribute from five nations, we see him standing with two eunuchs behind him, one of whom holds an umbrella, while two others lead before him the deputies of jehu. the first israelite prostrates himself and kisses the ground before the feet of shalmanesar; seven other israelites bring jars with handles, cups, sacks, goblets, and staves. they are bearded, with long hair, with shoes on their feet, and round caps on their heads, the points of which fall slightly backwards. the under garment reaches almost to the ancles; the upper garment falls in two parts evenly before and behind from the shoulders to the hem of the under garment. the inscription underneath runs: "the tribute of jehu (jahua), the son of omri (chumri): bars of gold, bars of silver, cups of gold, ladles and goblets of gold, golden pitchers, lead, and spears: this i received."[461] though jehu submitted to the assyrians, the power and spirit of hazael was not broken by his defeat or by the siege of damascus. shalmanesar speaks of a new campaign against the cities of hazael in the year 839 b.c. he does not tell us that he has reduced damascus, he merely remarks that sidon, tyre, and byblus have paid tribute; and again, under the year 835 b.c. he merely notes in general terms that he has received the tribute of all the princes of the land of chatti (syria). hazael remained powerful enough to take from jehu, who, though a bloody and resolute murderer, was a bad ruler, all the territory on the east of the jordan which ahab and joram had defended with such vigour.[462] under jehoahaz, the son of jehu (815-798 b.c.), the power of israel sank lower and lower. hazael, and after him his son, benhadad iii., pressed heavily upon him. jehoahaz was compelled to purchase peace by further concessions;[463] his whole fighting force was reduced to 10 chariots of war, 50 horsemen, and 10,000 foot-soldiers, while ahab had led 200 chariots into the field. the devastation caused by damascus in israel was terrible. the books of kings represent elisha as saying to hazael, "the fortresses of israel thou shalt set on fire, their young men thou shalt slay with the sword, their children thou shalt cut in pieces, and rip up their women with child;"[464] and in the prophet amos we are told that the damascenes had thrashed israel with sledges of iron. in the prophecies of amos, jehovah says: "therefore i will send fire into the house of hazael, to consume the palaces of benhadad, and break the bars of damascus, and destroy the inhabitants of the valley of idols."[465] the assyrians brought relief to the kingdom of israel. in the books of the kings we are told, "jehovah gave israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the aramaeans (syrians), and they dwelt in their tents as yesterday and the day before."[466] it was bin-nirar iii., king of asshur, who threatened damascus and syria. in the year 803 b.c. the canon of the assyrians notices a campaign of this king against syria, and in his inscriptions he mentions that he had conquered mariah, king of damascus (who must have been the successor of benhadad iii.), and laid heavy tribute upon him.[467] though israel (the house of omri), as well as sidon, the philistines, and edomites, had now to pay tribute to the conqueror of damascus, yet in the last years of the reign of jehoahaz the land was able to breathe again, and joash, the grandson of jehu (798-790 b.c.[468]), was able to retake from the enfeebled damascus the cities which his father had lost,[469] and make the weight of his arms felt by the kingdom of judah. in judah, as has been mentioned, jehoram's widow, athaliah, the mother of the murdered ahaziah, had seized the throne (843 b.c.). she is the only female sovereign in the history of israel. athaliah was the daughter of ahab of israel and jezebel of tyre; like her mother, she is said to have favoured the worship of baal. as the prophets of israel had prepared the ruin of the house of omri in israel, the high priest of the temple at jerusalem, jehoiadah, now undertook to overthrow the daughter of this house in judah. ahaziah's sister had saved a son of ahaziah, joash, while still an infant, from his grandmother (p. 255). he grew up in concealment in the temple at jerusalem, and was now seven years old. this boy the priest determined to place upon the throne. he won the captains of the body-guard, showed them the young joash in the temple, and imparted his plan for a revolt. on a sabbath the body-guard and the levites formed a circle in the court of the temple. jehoiadah brought the boy out of the temple and placed the crown upon his head; he was anointed, and the soldiers proclaimed him king to the sound of trumpets. the people agreed. athaliah hastened with the cry of treason into the temple. but at jehoiadah's command she was seized by the body-guard, taken from the temple precincts, and slain in the royal palace. then the boy was brought thither by the levites and solemnly placed upon the throne. "and all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was at rest," say the books of kings (837 b.c.). the victory of the priesthood had the same result for judah as the resistance of elijah and the prophets against ahab, and the overthrow of his house, had introduced in israel, _i.e._ the suppression of the worship of baal. the temple of baal at jerusalem was destroyed; the high priest of it, mathan by name, was slain. yet the number of the worshippers in jerusalem must have been so considerable, and their courage so little broken, that it was thought necessary to protect the temple of jehovah by setting a guard to prevent their attacks.[470] jehoiadah continued to act as regent for the young king, and the prophecies of joel, which have come down to us from this period,[471] prove that under this regency the worship of jehovah became dominant, that the festivals and sacrifices were held regularly in the temple at jerusalem, and that the ordinances of the priests were in full force. when joash became ruler he carried on the restoration of the temple, which had fallen into decay, even more eagerly than the priesthood. his labours were interrupted. it was the time when israel could not defend themselves against damascus. marching through israel, hazael invaded judah, and besieged jerusalem. joash was compelled to ransom himself with all that his fathers, jehoshaphat, jehoram, and ahaziah, had consecrated to jehovah, and what he himself had dedicated in the temple, and with the treasures of the royal palace.[472] like his father and his grandmother, joash died by a violent death. two of his servants murdered him (797 b.c.); but his son amaziah kept the throne, and caused the murderers of his father to be executed. he commenced a war, for what reason we know not, with israel, who was now fighting with success against damascus. joash of israel defeated him at bethshemesh; amaziah was taken prisoner and his army dispersed. the king of israel occupied jerusalem, plundered the temple and the palace, and did not set the king of judah free till the walls of jerusalem were thrown down for a space of 400 cubits from the gate of ephraim, _i.e._ the western gate of the outer city to the corner gate, at the north-west corner of jerusalem, and the judæans had given hostages to keep the peace for the future. against the edomites amaziah contended with more success. he defeated them in the valley of salt; 10,000 edomites are said to have been left on the field on that day. the result of the victory was the renewal of the dependence of edom on judah, though not as yet throughout the whole extent of the land. amaziah also fell before a conspiracy. it was in vain that he escaped from the conspirators from jerusalem to lachish; they followed him and slew him there. but the people placed his son uzziah (azariah), though only 16 years old, on the throne of judah (792 b.c.).[473] footnotes: [427] 1 kings xi. 26 ff place the rebellion of jeroboam in the time when solomon built millo (p. 186), and give him asylum with shishak, king of egypt. solomon built millo, the walls of jerusalem, and the fortifications (p. 186) when the building of the palace was finished (1 kings ix. 10, 15, 24). the building of the palace was completed in 970 b.c. (p. 186); hence the building of millo must have begun about this time. it can hardly have lasted more than 10 years. jeroboam's rebellion, therefore, and shishak's accession are not to be placed after, but a little before, 960 b.c. lepsius puts shishak's accession at 961 b.c. [428] 1 kings xii. 22; xiv. 30. [429] o. blau in "zeitschr. d. m. g." 10, 233 ff, and below. the shield which champollion read judaha malek is read jehud by blau, who refers it to jehud, a place of the southern danites. even the occurrence of names of towns belonging to the kingdom of ephraim would not exclude the possibility that shishak's campaign was undertaken in favour of jeroboam. jeroboam acknowledged the supremacy of egypt in the meaning of the pharaoh when he called on egypt for help, and therefore, after the manner of egyptian monuments of victory and inscriptions, his cities could be denoted as subject to egypt. hence makethu, as brugsch reads (gesch. ægyptens, s. 661), may be megiddo or makedu in the north of judah; in the first case the explanation given holds good. jerusalem is not found among the names which can be read and interpreted. [430] _supra_, p. 112, _note_. i have remarked that assumptions there noticed are necessary to bring the hebrew chronology into harmony with the assyrian monuments and the stone of mesha. that ahaziah of judah and joram of israel must have been slain, at the latest, in the year 843 b.c. is a necessary consequence of the fact that jehu paid tribute to the assyrians as early as the year 842 b.c. in the same way the assyrian monuments prove that ahab of israel cannot have died before the year 853 b.c. as the hebrew scriptures, in the chronology of israel, put ahaziah with two years, and joram with twelve years, between ahab's death and jehu's accession, four years must be struck out and deducted from the reign of joram. to maintain the parallelism, the same operation must be performed with the contemporary kings of judah, and the reign of jehoram of judah (for which, even if we retain the data of the books of kings, six years remain at the most) must be reduced from eight years to four. these four years in each kingdom will be best added to the first reigns after the division, to jeroboam (22 + 4 = 26) and rehoboam (17 + 4 = 21). twelve years must be added to the reign of omri (p. 114, _n._). the same augmentation must be made in the corresponding reign of asa of judah, or, rather, as the chronology of judah from rehoboam to athaliah gives three years less than that from jeroboam to jehu, 15 years must be added to asa instead of 12, so that his reign reaches 41 + 15 = 56, and omri's reign 12 + 12 = 24 years. hence rehoboam was succeeded by abiam not in the eighteenth, but in the twenty-second year of jeroboam; ahab ascended the throne not in the thirty-sixth, but in the fifty-fourth year of asa. from these assumptions are deduced the numbers given in the text. i consider it hopeless to attempt to reconcile the divergencies in the comparisons of the two series of kings in the books of kings; _e. g._ that omri should ascend the throne in the thirty-first year of asa, and reign 12 years, while ahab nevertheless ascends the throne in the thirty-eighth year of asa. [431] 1 kings xv. 16-24; 2 chron. xvi. 1-10. [432] 1 kings xv. 11-14; 2 chron. xiv. 2-5. [433] 1 kings xxii. 48; 2, viii. 20. [434] 1 kings xxii. 49. [435] song of solomon vi. 4. [436] 1 kings xv. 20. [437] 1 kings xx. 34. [438] nöldeke, "inschrift des mesa." [439] _infra_, chap. xi. [440] 2 kings iii. 4. [441] the inscription of kurkh enumerates in the army of the syrians at karkar men from ammon under bahsa, the son of ruchub (rehob); schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. 95. [442] 2 kings viii. 18. [443] 1 kings xxi. 1; xxii. 39; 2, ix. 15 ff. [444] 1 kings xvi. 31-33; xviii. 19; 2, iii. 2. [445] 1 kings xviii. 4-13, 17; xix. 10-14. [446] 1 kings xvii. 9, 10. [447] 2 kings i. 8; 1, xvii. 4-6. [448] 1 kings xviii. 17-46. [449] the objections which have been made against the assumption that the king of damascus and achabbu, against whom and their confederates shalmanesar fought at karkar, according to the monument of kurkh (col. 2), were benhadad ii. of damascus of the books of kings and ahab of israel are untenable. shalmanesar ii. marches four times against a king of damascus; subsequently, four years after his last war with this king, he marches against a second king of damascus, whose name in the inscriptions is indubitably chazailu. in the books of kings benhadad, ahab's contemporary and opponent, is overthrown by hazael, who becomes king of damascus in benhadad's place. thus we obtain a certain basis for identifying the benhadad overthrown by hazael with the prince of damascus against whom shalmanesar fought four times. hence on the reading of the name of this opponent of shalmanesar in the inscriptions i cannot place special weight, especially as the assyrian symbol for the deity in the name in question is well known to have more than one signification. if a further objection is made, that ahab cannot have combined with damascus against assyria, but rather with assyria against damascus, in order to get rid of that opponent, the answer is that ahab had reduced damascus before shalmanesar's first march against the city. ahab had released benhadad under a treaty (1 kings xx. 34), and they "were at peace three years" (1 kings xxii. 3). hence at this moment ahab was not in need of the assistance of assyria. that free leagues are altogether inconceivable among the syrian princes of that time is an assumption contradicted by numerous statements in the egyptian monuments of tuthmosis iii., of ramses ii. and iii., and yet more numerous statements in the assyrian inscriptions. not much weight can be allowed to the late and very general statements of nicolaus in josephus. if nicolaus (joseph. "antiq." 7, 5, 2) calls the opponent of david hadad, the books of kings do not mention the name of the king of damascus against whom david contends. if he maintains that the grandson of benhadad i., the third of the name, desolated samaria, it is rather benhadad i. of the books of kings, who was not the son and grandson of a benhadad, but the son of tabrimmon, and grandson of hesjon, who first laid samaria waste (1 kings xv. 18-20). a second benhadad contends with ahab, who certainly may have been a grandson of the first, but certainly cannot have been the grandson of the opponent of david. if nicolaus further tells us, that after benhadad i. his descendants ruled for 10 generations, and each of them along with the throne received the name of benhadad, this is contradicted by the books of kings, not merely in the genealogy of the first benhadad of those books, but also in the fact that in them benhadad ii., the contemporary of ahab and jehoram, is overthrown by hazael, who then in a long reign over damascus inflicts severe injury on israel and judah. hazael is followed in the books of kings by benhadad iii. that "achabbu from the land of sir'lai" is correctly read in the inscription of kurkh is an ascertained fact. [450] the prophetic revision explains the overthrow of ahab by the fact that he had spared benhadad in the previous war, when jehovah had delivered him into his hand. [451] ninth and tenth year of shalmanesar ii. [452] according to nöldeke, "inschrift des mesa," the upper city of dibon. [453] 1 kings xix. 15; 2, viii. 7-15. [454] joel iv. 19; amos i. 11, 12. [455] 2 chron. xxi. 16-18; amos i. 6; cf. _infra_, p. 260. n. 2. [456] 2 kings ix. 14. [457] 2 kings x. 12-14. [458] 2 kings xi. 1-3. [459] 2 kings x. 30. "to the fourth generation" may have been added by the revision _post eventum_. [460] 2 kings x. 18-27. [461] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. 105. [462] 2 kings x. 32. [463] 2 kings xiii. 25. [464] 2 kings viii. 12. [465] amos i. 3. [466] 2 kings xiii. 5. [467] see below, p. 326. [468] of this date and the time of amaziah i shall treat in the first chapter of book iv. [469] 2 kings xiii. 25. [470] 2 kings xi. 3-20. [471] they fall about 830 b.c. the minority of the king is clear, and the verses iv. 4 ff. points to the incursion of the philistines into judah, mentioned p. 252. [472] 2 kings xii. 17, 18. the occurrence is recorded after the twenty-third year of joash, and the twenty-third year was 815 b.c. [473] the subjugation of edom can only have taken place after the year 803 b.c., _i.e._ after the march of bin-nirar ii. to the sea-coast. bin-nirar enumerates edom among the tribute-paying tribes of syria. on this and on the date of uzziah's accession, cf. book iv. chap. 2. chapter xi. the cities of the phenicians. the voyages of the phenicians on the mediterranean; their colonies on the coasts and islands of that sea; their settlements in cyprus, rhodes, crete, the islands of the ægean, samothrace, and thasos, on the coasts of hellas, on malta, sicily, and sardinia; their establishments on the northern edge of africa in the course of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries b.c.; their discovery of the atlantic about the year 1100 b.c., have been traced by us already. of the internal conditions and the constitution of the cities whose ships traversed the mediterranean in every direction, and now found so many native harbours on the coasts and islands, we have hardly any information. we only know that monarchy existed from an ancient period in sidon and tyre, in byblus, berytus, and aradus; and we are restricted to the assumption that this monarchy arose out of the patriarchal headship of the elders of the tribes. these tribes had long ago changed into civic communities, and their members must have consisted of merchant-lords, ship-owners, and warehousemen, of numerous labourers, artisans, sailors, and slaves. the accounts of the hebrews exhibit the cities of the philistines, the southern neighbours of the phenicians on the syrian coast, united by a league in the eleventh century b.c. the kings of the five cities of the philistines combine for consultation, form binding resolutions, and take the field in common. we find nothing like this in the cities of the phenicians. not till a far later date, when the phenicians had lost their independence, were federal forms of government prevalent among them. the campaigns of the pharaohs, tuthmosis iii., sethos, and ramses ii., did not leave the cities of the phenicians untouched (i. 342). after the reign of ramses iii., _i.e._ after the year 1300 b.c., syria was not attacked from the nile; but the overthrow of the kingdom of the hittites about this period, and the subjugation of the amorites by the israelites, forced the old population to the coast (about 1250 b.c.). one hundred and fifty years later a new opponent of syria showed himself, not from the south, but from the east. tiglath pilesar i., king of assyria (1130-1100 b.c.), forced his way over the euphrates, and reached the great sea of the western land (p. 42). his successes in these regions, even if he set foot on lebanon, could at most have reached only the northern towns of the phenicians; in any case they were of a merely transitory nature. the oldest city of the phenicians was sidon; her daughter-city, tyre, was also founded at a very ancient period. we found that the inscriptions of sethos i. mentioned it among the cities reduced by him. the power and importance of tyre must have gradually increased with the beginning of a more lively navigation between the cities and the colonies; about the year 1100 b.c. her navigation and influence appears to have surpassed those of the mother-city. if old hippo in africa was founded from sidon, tyrian ships sailed through the straits of gibraltar, discovered the land of silver, and founded gades beyond the pillars. accordingly we also find that tyre, and not sidon, was mistress of the island of cyprus. according to the statements of the greeks, a king of the name of sobaal or sethlon ruled in sidon at the time of the trojan war, _i.e._ before the year 1100 b.c.;[474] about the same time a king of the name of abelbaal reigned in berytus.[475] from a fragment of menander of ephesus, preserved to us by josephus, it follows that after the middle of the eleventh century b.c. abibaal was reigning in tyre. a sardonyx, now at florence, exhibits a man with a high crown on his head and a staff in his hand; in front of him is a star with four rays; the inscription in old phenician letters runs, "of abibaal." did this stone belong to king abibaal?[476] hiram, the son of this king, ascended the throne of tyre while yet a youth, in 1001 b.c. he is said to have again subjugated to his dominion the kittians, _i.e._ the inhabitants of citium, or the cities of cyprus generally, who refused to pay tribute. what reasons and what views of advantage in trade induced hiram to enter into relations with david in the last years of his reign, and unite these relations even more closely with solomon, the successor of david, has been recounted above. it was this understanding which not only opened israel completely to the trade of the phenicians, but also procured to the latter secure and new roads through israel to the euphrates and egypt, and made it possible for them to discover and use the road by sea to south arabia. thus, a good century after the founding of gades, the commerce of the phenicians reached the widest extension which it ever obtained. we saw that the phenicians about the year 990 b.c. went by ship from elath past south arabia to the somali coast, and reached ophir, _i.e._ apparently the land of the abhira (_i.e._ herdsmen) on the mouths of the indus.[477] the other advantages which accrued to hiram from his connection with israel were not slight. solomon paid him, as has been said, 20,000 kor of wheat and 20,000 bath of oil yearly for 20 years in return for wood and choice quarry stones, and finally, in order to discharge his debt, had to give up 20 israelitish towns on his borders. hiram had to dispose of very considerable resources; his receipts must have been far in excess of solomon's. of the silver of tarshish which the ships brought from gades to tyre, of the gold imported by the trade to ophir, of the profits of the maritime trade with the land of incense, a considerable percentage must have come into the treasury of the king, and he enjoyed in addition the payments of solomon. in any case he had at his command means sufficient to enlarge, adorn, and fortify his city. ancient tyre lay on the seashore; with the growth of navigation and trade, the population passed over from the actual city to an island off the coast, which offered excellent harbours. on a rock near this island lay that temple of baal melkarth, the god of tyre, to which the priests ascribed a high antiquity; they told herodotus that it was built in the year 2750 b.c. (i. 345). hiram caused this island to be enlarged by moles to the north and west towards the mainland, and protected these extensions by bulwarks. the circuit of the island was now 22 stades, _i.e._ more than two and a half miles; the arm of the sea, which separates the island from the mainland, now measured only 2400 feet (three stades).[478] the whole island was surrounded with strong walls of masonry, which ran out sharply into the sea, and were washed by its waves, so that no room remained for the besieger to set foot and plant his scaling-ladders there. on the side of the island towards the mainland, where the docks were, these walls were the highest. alexander of macedon found them 150 feet high. the two harbours lay on the eastern side of the island--on the north-east and the south-east; on the north-east was the sidonian harbour (which even now is the harbour of sur); and on the south-east the egyptian harbour. if the former was secured and closed by huge dams, the latter also was not without its protecting works, as huge blocks in the sea appear to show, though the dams here were no longer in perfect preservation even in strabo's time. on the south shore of the island, eastward of the egyptian harbour, lay the royal citadel; on the north-west side a temple of baal samim, the agenorion of the greeks. the rock which supported the temple of melkarth appears to have been situated close to the city on the west.[479] this, like the temple of astarte, was adorned and enlarged or restored by hiram. for the roof he caused cedars of lebanon to be felled. in the ancient shrine of the protecting deity of the city, the temple of melkarth, he dedicated a great pillar of gold, which herodotus saw there 500 years later beside an erect smaragdus, which was so large that it gave light by night. this was perhaps a symbol of the light not overcome by the darkness.[480] hiram died after a reign of 34 years, in the fifty-third year of his life. his son baleazar, who sat on the throne for seven years (967-960 b.c.), was succeeded by his son abdastartus (_i.e._ servant of astarte), who, after a reign of nine years (960-951 b.c.), fell before a conspiracy headed by the sons of his nurse. abdastartus was murdered, and the eldest of the sons of his nurse maintained his dominion over tyre for 12 years (951-939 b.c.). then the legitimate dynasty returned to the throne. of the brothers of the murdered abdastartus, astartus was the first to reign (939-927 b.c.), and after him astarymus (927-918 b.c.), who was murdered by a fourth brother, pheles. but pheles could not long enjoy the fruits of his crime. he had only been eight months on the throne when he was slain by the priest of astarte, ethbaal (ithobaal). with pheles the race of abibaal comes to an end (917 b.c.). ethbaal ascended the throne of tyre, and was able to establish himself upon it. he is said to have built or fortified bothrys in lebanon, perhaps as a protection against the growing forces of damascus.[481] in israel, during ethbaal's reign, as we have seen, omri at the head of the army made himself master of the throne in 899 b.c., just as ethbaal had usurped the throne of tyre. both were in a similar position. both had to establish their authority and found their dynasty. ethbaal's daughter was married to ahab, the son of omri. what were the results of this connection for israel and judah we have seen already. to what a distance the power of tyre extended in another direction is clear from the fact that ethbaal founded auza in the interior of africa, to the south of the already ancient colony of ityke (p. 82).[482] after a reign of 32 years ethbaal was succeeded by his son balezor (885-877 b.c.).[483] after eight years balezor left two sons, mutton and sicharbaal, both under age. yet the throne remained in the house of ethbaal, and continued to do so even when mutton died in the year 853 b.c., and again left a son nine years old, pygmalion, and a daughter elissa, a few years older, whom he had married to his brother sicharbaal, the priest of the temple of melkarth.[484] mutton had intended that elissa and pygmalion should reign together, and thus the power really passed into the hands of sicharbaal, the husband of elissa. when pygmalion reached his sixteenth year the people transferred to him the sovereignty of tyre, and he put sicharbaal, his uncle, to death, either because he feared his influence as the chief priest of the tutelary god of the city, or because, as we are told, he coveted his treasures (846 b.c.).[485] elissa fled from tyre before her brother, as we are told, with others who would not submit to the tyranny of pygmalion.[486] the exiles (we may perhaps suppose that they were members of old families, as it was apparently the people who had transferred the throne to pygmalion) are said to have first landed at cyprus, then to have sailed to the westward, and to have landed on the coast of africa, in the neighbourhood of ityke, the old colony of the phenicians, and there to have bought as much land of the libyans as could be covered by the skin of an ox. by dividing this into very thin strips they obtained a piece of land sufficient to enable them to build a fortress. this new dwelling-place, or the city which grew up round this fortress, the wanderers called, in reference to their old home, karthada (_karta hadasha_), _i.e._ "the new city," the karchedon of the greeks, the carthage of the romans. the legend of the purchase of the soil may have arisen from the fact that the settlers for a long time paid tribute to the ancient population, the maxyans, for their soil. the ox-hide and all that is further told us of the fortunes of elissa, her resistance to the suit of the libyan prince iarbas,[487] her self-immolation in order to escape from this suit (virgil made despised love the motive for this immolation), is due to the transference of certain traits from the myths of the horned moon-goddess, to whom the cow is sacred, the wandering astarte, who also bore the name of dido, and of certain customs in the worship of the goddess to carthage; these also have had influence on the narrative of the flight of elissa.[488] the new settlement was intended to become an important centre for the colonies of the phenicians in the west. the situation was peculiarly fortunate. where the north coast of africa approaches sicily most nearly, the mountain range which runs along this coast, and forms the edge of the table-land in the interior, sinks down in gentle declivities, which thus form water-courses of considerable length, to a fertile hill country still covered with olive-gardens and orange-forests. from the north the sea penetrates deeply into the land between the "beautiful promontory" (ras sidi ali) and the promontory of hermes (ras addar). on the western side of this bay a ridge of land runs out, which possesses excellent springs of water. not far from the shore a rock rises steeply to the height of about 200 feet. on this was planted the new citadel, byrsa, on which the wanderers erected a temple to their god esmun (i. 377). this citadel, which is said to have been about 2000 paces (double paces) in the circuit,[489] was also the city round which at a later time grew up the lower city, at first on the south-east toward the shore, and then on the north-west toward the sea. the harbour lay to the south-east, under the citadel. some miles to the north of the new settlement, on the mouth of the bagradas (medsherda), at the north-west corner of the bay, was ityke, the ancient colony of the phenicians, which had been in existence for more than two centuries when the new settlers landed on the shore of the bay; and not far to the south on the shore was adrymes (hadrumetum), another city of their countrymen, which sallust mentions among the oldest colonies of the phenicians.[490] the carthaginians never forgot their affection for the ancient ityke, by whose assistance, no doubt, their own settlement had been supported.[491] the fragment which josephus has preserved from the annals of the kings of tyre ends with the accession of pygmalion and the flight of elissa. more than two centuries had passed since the campaign of tiglath pilesar i. to the mediterranean, during which the cities of the phenicians had suffered nothing from the arms and expeditions of the assyrians. but when balezor and mutton, the son and grandson of ethbaal, ruled over tyre (885-853 b.c.), assurbanipal of assyria (883-859 b.c.) began to force his way to the west over the euphrates. when he had reduced the sovereign of karchemish to obedience by repeated campaigns, and had built fortresses on both banks of the euphrates, he advanced in the year 876 b.c. to the orontes, captured the marches of lebanus (labnana), and received tribute from the king of tyre, _i.e._ from mutton, from the kings of sidon, of byblus, and aradus. according to the inscriptions, the tribute consisted of bars of silver, gold, and lead. assurbanipal's successor, shalmanesar ii. of assyria (859-823 b.c.), pushed on even more energetically to the west. after forcing cilicia to submit, he attacked hamath, and in the year 854, as we have seen, he defeated at karkar the united kings of hamath, damascus, and israel, who were also joined by matinbaal, the king of aradus. but shalmanesar was compelled to undertake three other campaigns to damascus (850, 849, and 846 b.c.) before he succeeded, in the year 842 b.c., in making damascus tributary. as has been remarked, israel did not any longer attempt the decision of arms, and sought to gain the favour of assyria; like tyre and sidon, jehu sent tribute to shalmanesar. this payment of tribute was repeated perforce by tyre, sidon, and byblus, in the years 839 and 835 b.c., in which shalmanesar's armies again appeared in syria. moreover, the inscriptions of bin-nirar, king of assyria (810-781 b.c.), tell us that damascus, tyre, sidon, israel, edom, and the land of the philistines had paid him tribute. it is obvious that the cities of the phenicians would have been as a rule most willing to pay it. when assyria had definitely extended her dominion as far as the euphrates, it was in the power of the assyrian king to stop the way for the merchants of those cities to mesopotamia and babylon, and thus to inflict very considerable damage on the trade of the phenicians, which was for the most part a carrying trade between the east and west. what were the sums paid in tribute, even if considerable, when compared with such serious disadvantages? hitherto we have been able to observe monarchy in the patriarchal form of the head of the tribe, in the god-like position of the pharaohs of egypt, in the forms of a military principate, who ruled with despotic power over wide kingdoms, or in diminished copies of this original. it would be interesting to trace out and ascertain the changes which it had now to undergo at the head of powerful trading and commercial cities such as the phenicians were. we have already seen that the principate of these cities was of great antiquity, that it remained in existence through all the periods of phenician history, that it was rooted deeply enough to outlive even the independence of the cities. all more detailed accounts are wanting, and even inductions or comparisons with the constitution of carthage in later times carry us little further. not to mention the very insufficient accounts which we possess of this constitution, it was only to the oldest settlements of the phenicians in cyprus that the monarchy passed, at least it was only in these that it was able to maintain itself. the examination of these institutions of carthage is adapted to show us in contrast on the one hand to the tribal princes of the arabians, and on the other to the monarchy of elam, babel, and asshur--what forms the feeling and character of a semitic community, in which the burghers had reached the full development of their powers, were able to give to their state, which at the same time was supreme over a wide region; but for the constitution of the phenician cities scarcely any conclusions can be drawn from it. of the internal condition of the phenician cities, the fragment of the history of tyre in josephus only enables us to ascertain that there was no lack of strife and bloodshed in the palaces of the kings, and that the priests of the tutelary deity must have been of importance and influence beside the king. but it follows from the nature of things that these city-kings could not have held sway with the same complete power as the military princes of the great kingdoms of the east. the development of independence among the burghers must have placed far closer limitations upon the will of the kings in these cities than was the case elsewhere in the east. the more lively the trade and industry of the cities, the more strongly must the great merchants and manufacturers have maintained against the kings the consideration and advancement of their own interests. for the maintenance of order and peace, of law and property in the cities they looked to the king, but they had also to make important demands before the throne, and were combined against it by community of interests. they were compelled to advance these independently if the king refused his consent. isaiah tells us that the merchants of tyre were princes. ezekiel speaks of the grey-haired men, the "elders" of the city of byblus.[492] of the later period we know with greater certainty that there was a council beside the kings, the membership in which may have belonged primarily to the chiefs of the old families, but also in part to the hereditary priests. inscriptions of the cities belonging to grecian times present the title "elders."[493] the families in the phenician cities which could carry back their genealogy to the forefathers of the tribes which possessed land and influence before the fall of the hittites, the incursions of the hebrews, and the spread of trade had brought a mass of strangers into the city walls, would appear to have had the first claim to a share in the government; the heads of these families may at first have formed the council which stood beside the king. yet it lies in the nature of great manufacturing and trading cities that the management of interests of this kind cannot be confined to the elders of the family or remain among the privileges of birth. hence we may assume that the great trading firms and merchants could not long be excluded from these councils. in the fourth century b.c. the council of sidon seems to have consisted of 500 or 600 elders.[494] owing to the treasures of east and west which poured together into the cities of the phenicians, life became luxurious within their walls. men's efforts were directed to gain and acquisition; the merchants would naturally desire to enjoy their wealth. the lower classes of the closely-compressed population no doubt followed the example set them by the higher. from the multitude of retail dealers and artizans, the number of pilots and mariners who returned home eager for enjoyment after long voyages, men whose passions would be unbridled, a turbulent population must have grown up, in spite of the numerous colonies into which the ambitious as well as the poor might emigrate or be sent with the certain prospect of a better position. we saw above that the people of tyre are said to have transferred the rule to pygmalion. for the later period it is certain that even the people had a share in the government.[495] the hereditary monarchy passed, so far as we can see, from the mother-cities to the oldest colonies only, _i.e._ the cities in cyprus. in the other colonies the chief officers were magistrates, usually two in number.[496] they were called _sufetes_, _i.e._ judges. in carthage these two yearly officers, in whose hands lay the supreme administration of justice, and the executive, formed with 30 elders the governing body of the city. it seems that these 30 men were the representatives of as many original combinations of families into which the old houses of the city were incorporated. the connection of the colonies and mother-cities, both in general and more especially where the colony could dispense with the protection of the mother-city, were far more mercantile and religious than political. the colonies worshipped the deities of the mother-cities, and gave them a share in their booty. we also find that descendants of priests who had emigrated from the mother-city stood at the head of the temples of the colonies. in carthage, where the priests of melkarth wore the purple robe, the office was hereditary in the family of bithyas, who is said to have left tyre with elissa.[497] we are acquainted with the gods of the phenician cities, and the mode in which they worshipped them; with el and baal-samim, baal-melkarth and baal-moloch, adonis, astarte and ashera, with the rites of continence and mutilation, of sensual excess and prostitution, of sacrifice and fire-festival, which were intended to win their favour and grace. we observed that the protecting deities of the separate states had even before the days of hiram been united in the system of the seven great gods, the cabiri, at whose head was placed an eighth, esmun, the supreme deity. we saw that in this system special meanings were ascribed to them in reference to the protection of peace and law, of industry and navigation; and we cannot doubt that with the riches which accumulated in the walls of the cities, with the luxury of life which these riches permitted, the lascivious and sensual side of the worship must have increased and extended. the life led by the kings of the old phenician cities is described as rich and splendid. we have already assumed that the princes of the phenician cities had a rich share in the returns of trade, and indeed the fact can be proved from the hebrew scriptures for hiram, king of tyre. ezekiel tells us, "the king of tyre sits like a god in the seat of god, in the midst of the seas; he dwells as in eden, in the garden of god. precious stones are the covering of his palaces: the ruby, the topaz, the diamond, the chrysolite, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the carbuncle, the emerald, and gold; the workmanship of his ring-cases he bears upon him."[498] "his garments," we are told in a song of the hebrews, "smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia; in ivory palaces the sound of harps gladdens him. at his right hand stands the queen in gold of ophir, in a garment of wrought gold: on broidered carpets she shall be brought to him; the young maidens, her companions, follow her."[499] hosea calls tyre "a plantation in a pleasant meadow."[500] of the city itself ezekiel says, "the architects have made her beauty perfect. all her planks (wainscot) were of cypress, and her masts of cedar of lebanon; the rudders are of oaks of bashan, the benches of ivory, set in costly wood from the island of cyprus. for sails tyre spreads out byssus and gay woofs; blue and red purple from the islands of elisa formed their coverlets."[501] in the description of strabo, more than 500 years later, tyre appears less magnificent. the houses of the city were very high, higher than at rome; the city still wealthy, owing to the trade in her two harbours and her purple factories, but the number of these made the city unpleasant. strabo does not mention any considerable building in the city. of aradus he says, "the smallness of the rock on which the city lies, seven stades only in circuit, and the number of inhabitants caused every house to have many stories. drinking-water had to be obtained from the mainland; on the island there were only wells and cisterns."[502] scarcely any striking remains of the ancient buildings of phoenicia have come down to our time. the ancient temples enumerated in the treatise on the syrian goddess have perished without a trace; the temple of melkarth of tyre, the great temple of astarte at sidon, the temple of bilit (ashera) at byblus,[503] although they were certainly not of a character easy to destroy. that the phenicians were acquainted from very ancient periods with the erection of strong masonry was proved above. not only have we the legend of the greeks, that cadmus taught them the art of masonry and built the famous walls of thebes; we saw how israel, about the year 1000 b.c., provided herself with masons, stone-cutters, and materials from tyre. hence we may also assume that the architecture of the temple and the royal palaces of solomon described in the books of kings corresponded to the architecture of the phenicians. the temples and palaces of the phenicians consisted, therefore, of walls of large materials, roofed with beams of cedar; in the interior the materials were no doubt covered, as at jerusalem, with planks of wood and ornaments of brass, "so that the stone was nowhere seen" (p. 183). ezekiel has already told us that the planks of the roofs of the royal palace at tyre were overlaid with gold and precious stones; and the books of kings showed us that even the floors were adorned with gold. all the remains of walls in phoenicia that can be referred to an ancient period exhibit a style of building confined to the stone of the mountain range which hems the coast, and desirous of imitating the nature of the rocks. blocks of large dimensions were used by preference; at first they were worked as little as possible, and fitted to each other, and the interstices between the great blocks were filled with smaller stones. of this kind are the fragments of the walls which surround the rock on which the city of aradus stood. gigantic blocks, visible even now here and there, formed the dams of the harbours of aradus, sidon, tyre, and japho.[504] it was a step in advance that the blocks, while retaining the form in which they were quarried, were smoothed at the joints in order to be fitted together more firmly, and a further step still that the blocks were hewn into squares, though at first the outer surfaces of the squares were not smoothed. so far as remains allow us to see, the detached structures were of a simple and massive character, in shape like cubes of vast dimensions; the walls, as is shown by the city wall of aradus, were joined without mortar, and in the oldest times the buildings appear to have been roofed with monoliths. cedar beams were not sought after till larger spaces had to be covered. beside old water-basins hewn in the rock, and oil or wine presses of the same character, we have no remains of ancient phenician temples but those on the site of marathus (now amrit), a city of the tribe of the arvadites, to the south of aradus, and in the neighbourhood of byblus.[505] the bases of the walls which enclose the courts and water-basins of the temple of marathus can still be traced, as well as the huge stones which formed the three cellæ, the innermost shrines of this temple. on either side of a back wall formed of similar materials heavy blocks protrude, and are roofed over, together with this wall, by a great monolith, which protected the sacred stone or the image of the deity.[506] this heavy style of the city walls, dams, temples, and royal castles did not prevent the phenicians, any more than the egyptians, from building the upper stories of the dwelling-houses of their cities in light wood-work. by far the most important remains of ancient phoenicia are the rock-tombs, which are found in great numbers and extent opposite to the islands of tyre and aradus, as well as at sidon, byblus, and among the ruins of the other cities on the spurs of lebanon; and which at tyre especially spread out into wide burial-places, and several stories of tombs, one upon the other. in the same style we find to the west of the ruins of carthage long walls of rocks hollowed out into thousands of tombs, and furnished with arched niches for the reception of the dead.[507] in the oldest period the phenicians must have placed their dead in natural cavities of rock, and perhaps they erected a stone before them as a memorial. in genesis abraham buries sarah in the cave of machpelah, and jacob sets up a stone on the grave of rachel.[508] afterwards the natural hollows were extended, and whole cavities dug out artificially for tombs. the tomb of david and the tombs of his successors were hewn in the rocks of the gorge which separated the city from the height of zion (p. 177). the oldest of the artificial tombs in phoenicia are doubtless those which consist of cubical chambers with horizontal hewn roofs. round one or two large chambers lower oblong depressions are driven further in the rocks to receive the corpses. the entrance into these ancient chambers are formed by downward perpendicular shafts, at the bottom of which on two sides are openings into the chambers secured by slabs of stone laid before them. shafts of this kind must be meant when the hebrews say in a figure of the dead, "the mouth of the well has eaten him up." later than the tombs of this description are those the entrance to which is on the level ground (which was then closed by a stone), which have roofs hewn in low arches, and side niches for the corpses. the arched chambers approached by steps leading downward, the walls of which are decorated after grecian patterns on the stone, or on stucco, must originate from the time of the predominance of greek art, _i.e._ of the days of hellenism. the oldest style of burial was the placing of the corpse in the cavity, the grave-chamber, and afterwards in the depression at the side of this. at a later time apparently the enclosure of the corpse in a narrow coffin of clay became common here, as in babylonia. coffins of lead have also been found in the rock-tombs of phoenicia. but beside these, heavy oblong stone-coffins with a simple slab of stone as a lid were in use in ancient times; along with flat lids, lids raised in a low triangle are also found; later still, and latest of all, are coffins and sarcophagi adorned with acroteria and other ornaments of the greek style.[509] in the flat limestone rocks which run at a moderate elevation in the neighbourhood of sidon, and contain the vast necropolis of that city, there is a cavern, now called mogharet ablun, _i.e._ the cave of apollo. beside the entrance, in a depression covered by a structure attached to the rock-wall (the rock-tombs were supplemented and extended by structures attached to the wall), was found a coffin of blackish blue stone, the form of which indicates the shape of the buried person after the manner of the mummy-coffins of egypt, and displays in colossal relief the mask of the dead in egyptian style, with an egyptian covering for the head and beard on the chin; the band round the neck ends behind in two hawk's heads. the inscription in phenician letters teaches us that this coffin contained esmunazar, king of sidon. similar sarcophagi in stone, in part expressing the form even more accurately, seven or eight in number, have been discovered in other chambers of the burial-place of sidon, and in the burial-places of byblus and antaradus, but only in cubical, _i.e._ in more ancient chambers. marble coffins of this kind have also been found in the phenician colonies of soloeis and panormus in sicily, and of the same shape in burnt earth in malta and gozzo. the phenicians, therefore, came to imitate the coffins of the egyptians. similar imitation of egyptian burial is proved by the gold plates found in phenician chambers, which are like those with which we find the mouth closed in egyptian mummies, and the discovery of golden masks in phenician chambers,[510] which correspond to the gilding of the masks of the face of the innermost egyptian coffins which immediately surround the linen covering. as the face-mask of the external coffin imitated the face of the dead in stone or in coloured wood, so also ought the inner gilded face to preserve the features of the dead. this imitation of the egyptian style of burial among the phenicians must go back to a great antiquity. it is true that esmunazar of sidon did not rule till the second half of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century b.c.[511] yet the shape and style of his coffin reminds us of older egyptian patterns; it is most like the stone coffins of egypt which have come down from the beginning of the sixth century. and if the ancient tombs opened at mycenæ behind the lion's gate belong to carians influenced by phenician civilisation (p. 74), if golden masks are here found on the face of the dead, the phenicians must have borrowed this custom from the egyptians as early as the thirteenth century, if not even earlier. the remains which have come down to us of the sculpture, jars, and utensils of phoenicia exhibit the double influence which the art and industry of the phenicians underwent even at an early period. agreeably to the close relations into which the phenicians entered, on the one hand with babel and asshur, and on the other with egypt, the effects of these two ancient civilisations meet each other on the coast of syria. the arts of the kindred land of the euphrates, the relations of which to phoenicia were at the same time the older, naturally made themselves felt first. when tuthmosis iii. collected tribute in syria at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the babylonian weight was already in use there; the jars which were brought to this king as the tribute of syria are carefully worked, but as yet adorned with very simple and recurring patterns of lines. on the other hand, the ornaments found in the tombs of mycenæ, gold-plates, frontlets, and armlets, exhibit ornaments like those figured on the monuments of assyria; and the objects found in the rock-tombs on hymettus, at spata, point even more definitely to babylonian patterns: winged fabulous animals and battles of beasts (a lion attacking a bull or an antelope[512]) are formed in the manner of the eastern semites, which brings the form of the muscles into prominence. we may assume that the influence of egypt began with the times of the tuthmosis and amenophis, and their supremacy in syria, and slowly gathered strength. the heavy style of phenician buildings would not be made lighter or more free by the architecture of egypt, which also arose out of building in rock. the temples of phoenicia adopted egyptian symbols for their ornaments; the monoliths of the roofs of those three cellæ at marathus exhibit the winged sun's-disk, the emblem at the entrance of egyptian temples; the chests for the dead and masks for the mummies of the egyptians were imitated in the rock-tombs of phoenicia. if the weaving of the phenicians at first copied the ancient babylonian patterns, they began under the stronger influence of egypt to adorn their pottery and metal-work after egyptian patterns. but they also combined the babylonian and egyptian elements in their art.[513] the oldest memorial of this combination is perhaps retained in that winged sphinx, which belongs to the time of the dominion of the shepherds in egypt. in the graves on hymettus pictures in relief of female winged sphinxes are found with clothed breasts and peculiar wings, in a treatment obviously already conventional. in phoenicia itself are found reliefs of similar sphinxes, old men with a human face on either side of the tree of life, which meet us oftentimes in the monuments of assyria. this combination, this use of babylonian and egyptian types and forms side by side, is seen most clearly on a large bowl found at curium near amathus, in cyprus, and wrought with great care and skill.[514] it follows that the art of the phenicians was essentially imitative and intended to furnish objects for trade. of round works of sculpture we have only dwarfish deities (i. 378), the typical form of which was naturally retained, and a few lions coarsely wrought in the style of the plastic art of babylon and assyria.[515] the relation in which the lion stood to the god melkarth naturally made the delineation of the lion a favourite object of phenician art. phoenicia, though the home of alphabetical writing, has left us no more than two or three inscriptions, and carthage has not left us a great number. not that there was any lack of inscriptions in phoenicia in ancient days. we have heard already of ancient inscriptions at rhodes, thebes, and gades. job wishes that "his words might be graven on rocks for ever with an iron chisel and lead."[516] the inscriptions of phoenicia have perished because they were engraved like those inscriptions of gades, on plates of brass. beside the inscription on the coffin of esmunazar, king of sidon, already mentioned, of a date about 400 b.c., only two or three smaller inscriptions have been preserved, which do not go beyond the second century b.c. in this inscription esmunazar speaks in person; he calls himself the son of tabnit, king of the sidonians, son of esmunazar, king of the sidonians. with his mother, amastarte, the priestess of astarte, he had erected temples to baal, astarte, and esmun. he beseeches the favour of the gods for himself and his land; he prays that dor and japho may always remain under sidon; he declares that he wishes to rest in the grave which he has built and in this coffin. no one is to open the tomb or plunder it, or remove or damage this stone coffin. if any man attempts it the gods will destroy him with his seed; he is not to be buried, and after death will find no rest among the shades.[517] there is scarcely any side of civilisation, any forms of technical art, the invention of which was not ascribed by the greeks to the phenicians. they were nearly all made known to the greeks through the phenicians; more especially the building of walls and fortresses, mining, the alphabet, astronomy, numbers, mathematics, navigation, together with a great variety of applications of technical skill. if the discovery of alphabetic writing belongs to the phenicians, the babylonians were the instructors of the phenicians in astronomy as well as in fixing measures and weights (i. 305). yet this is no reason for contesting the statement of strabo that the sidonians were "eager inquirers into the knowledge of the stars and of numbers, to which they were led by navigation by night and the art of calculation."[518] in the same way the technical discoveries ascribed by the greeks to the phenicians were not all made in their cities; they carried on with vigour and skill what grew up independently among them as well as what they learnt from others. the making of glass was undoubtedly older in egypt than in phoenicia (i. 224). egypt also practised work in metals before phoenicia. snefru and chufu made themselves masters of the copper mines of the peninsula of sinai before the year 3000 b.c. (i. 95), while the phenicians can hardly have occupied the copper island off their coast (cyprus) before the middle of the thirteenth century b.c. artistic weaving and embroidery were certainly practised at a more ancient date in babylonia than in the cities of the phenicians. but all these branches of industry were carried on with success by the phenicians. sidon furnished excellent works in glass, which were accounted the best even down to a late period of antiquity. the dunes on the coast between acco and tyre, where is the mouth of the glass-river (sihor libnath),[519] provided the phenician manufacturers with the earth necessary for the manufacture of glass. it was maintained that the most beautiful glass was cast in sarepta (zarpath, _i.e._ melting), a city on the coast between sidon and tyre.[520] the purple dyeing, _i.e._ the colouring of woofs by the liquor from fish, was discovered by the phenicians. they were unsurpassed in this art; it outlived by many centuries the power and splendour of their cities. trumpet and purple fish were found in great numbers on their coasts, and the liquor from these provided excellent dye. the liquor of the purple-fish, which comes from a vessel in the throat, is dark-red in the small fish, and black in the larger fish; the liquor of the trumpet-fish is scarlet. the fish were pounded and the dye extracted by decoction. by mixing, weakening, or thickening this material, and by adding this or that ingredient, various colours were obtained, through all the shades of crimson and violet down to the darkest black, in which fine woollen stuffs and linen from egypt were dipped. the stuffs soaked in these colours are the purple cloths of antiquity, and were distinguished by the bright sheen of the colours. the tyrian double-dyed cloth, which had the colour of curdled blood, and the violet amethyst purple were considered the most beautiful.[521] three hundred pounds of the raw material were usually required to dye 50 pounds of wool.[522] when the purple stuffs began to be sought after, the fish collected on the coasts of tyre, sidon, and sarepta were no longer sufficient. we saw how the ships of the phenicians went from coast to coast in order to get fresh materials for the dye, and found them in great numbers on the shores of cyprus, rhodes, crete, cythera, and thera; in the bays of laconia and argos, and in the straits of euboea. purple-fish were also collected on the greater syrtis, in sicily, the balearic isles, and coasts of tarshish.[523] even at a later period, when the art of dyeing with the purple-fish was understood and practised at many places in the mediterranean sea, the tyrian purple still maintained its pre-eminence and fame. "tyre," says strabo, "overcame her misfortunes, and always recovered herself by means of her navigation, in which the phenicians were superior to all others, and her purples. the tyrian purple is the most beautiful; the fish are caught close at hand, and every other requirement for the dyeing is there in abundance."[524] a hundred years later pliny adds "that the ancient glory of tyre survived now only in her fish and her purples."[525] the consumption and expense of purple in antiquity was very great, especially in hither asia. at first the phenician kings wore the purple robe as the sign of their rank; then it became the adornment of the princes of the east, the priests, the women of high rank, and upper classes. in the temples and palaces the purple served for curtains and cloths, robes and veils for the images and shrines. the kings of babylon and assyria, and after them the kings of persia, collected stores of purple stuffs in their palaces. plutarch puts the value of the amount of purple found by alexander at susa at 5000 talents.[526] in the west also the purple robe soon became the distinguishing garb of royalty and rank. yet the greeks and romans of the better times, owing to the costliness of the material, contented themselves with the possession of borders or stripes of purple. the weaving and embroidery of the phenicians apparently followed assyrian and babylonian patterns. they must also have made and exported ceramic ware and earthen vessels in large numbers at an ancient period, as is proved by the tributes brought to tuthmosis iii., the discoveries in cyprus, rhodes, thera, and at hissarlik. in the preparation of perfumes sidon and tyre were not equal to the babylonians. it is true that their manufacturers supplied susinum and cyprinum of excellent quality, but they could not attain to the cinnamon or the nard ointment, nor to the royal ointment of the babylonians.[527] in mining the phenicians were masters. in regard to the phenician skill in this art, the book of job says, "the earth, from which comes nourishment, is turned up; he lays his hand upon the flint; far from the dealings of men he makes his descending shaft. no bird of prey knows the path; the eye of the vulture discovers it not; the wild beasts do not tread it. through the rocks paths are made; he searches out the darkness and the night. then his eye beholds all precious things. the stone of the rocks is the place of the sapphire and gold-dust. iron is taken out of the mountains; stones are melted into brass, the drop of water is stopped, and the hidden is brought to light."[528] the phenicians dug mines for copper, first on lebanon and then in cyprus. we saw that they afterwards, in the second half of the thirteenth century, opened out the gold treasures of thasos in the thracian sea. herodotus, who had seen their abandoned mines there (they lay on the south coast of thasos), informed us that the phenicians had entirely "turned over a whole mountain." yet even in the fifth century b.c. the mines of thasos produced a yearly income of from two to three hundred talents. in spain the phenicians opened their mines in the silver mountain, _i.e._ in the sierra morena, above the lower course of the baetis (the guadalquivir);[529] their ships went up the stream as far as sephela (perhaps hispalis, seville). the richest silver-mines lay above sephela at ilipa (niebla); the best gold and copper mines were at cotini, in the region of gades.[530] diodorus assures us that all the mines in iberia had been opened by phenicians and carthaginians, and not one by the romans. in the more ancient times the workmen here brought up in three days an euboic talent of silver, and their wages were fixed at a fourth part of the returns. the mines in iberia were carried down many stades in depth and length, with pits, shafts, and sloping paths crossing each other; for the veins of gold and silver were more productive at a greater depth. the water in the mines was taken out by egyptian spiral pumps. strabo observes that the gold ore when brought up was melted over a slow fire, and purified by vitriolated earth. the smelting-ovens for the silver were built high, in order that the vapour from the ore, which was injurious and even deadly, might pass into the air.[531] the phenicians also understood how to work skilfully the metals supplied by their mines. at the founding of gades, which we had to place about the year 1100 b.c., iron pillars with inscriptions are mentioned which the settlers put up in the temple of melkarth (p. 82). the brass work which the melter, hiram of tyre, executed for solomon (p. 182) is evidence of long practice in melting brass, and of skill in bringing into shape large masses of melted metal. the homeric poems speak of sidon as "rich in brass," and "skilful;" they tell us of large beaten bowls of brass and silver of sidonian workmanship, "rich in invention." even at a later period the goblets of sidon were in request. not only metal implements and vessels of brass and copper, molten and beaten, were furnished by the phenicians; they must also have manufactured armour in large quantities, if we may draw any conclusion about armour from the tribute imposed on the syrians by tuthmosis iii. it is easily intelligible of what value it must have been for the nations of the west to come into the possession of splendid armour and good weapons. besides these are the ornaments found in great numbers, and of high antiquity, in the tombs of spata and mycenæ, and in the excavations at hissarlik. in homer, phenician ships bring necklaces of gold and amber to the greeks. at a later time the ornaments of the phenicians and their alabaster boxes were sought after; the carved work in ivory and wood, with which they also adorned the prows and banks of oars of their ships, is praised by ezekiel. they also knew how to set and cut precious stones; some seals have come down to us in part from an ancient date.[532] in ship-building the phenicians were confessedly superior; they are said to have discovered navigation.[533] the ancient forests of cedar and cypress which rose immediately above their shores supplied the best wood, which resisted decay for an extraordinary length of time even in salt water. much as the phenicians used these forests in the course of a thousand years for building their ships, their palaces, and temples, as well as for exportation, they provided even in the third century b.c. a material which for extent, size, and beauty won the admiration of the greeks.[534] the oldest ship of the phenicians which continued through all time in use as a trading-vessel was the _gaulos_, a vessel with high prow and stern, both of which were similarly rounded. it was propelled by a large sail and by rowers, from 20 to 30 in number. besides the gaulos, there was the long and narrow fifty-oar, which served for a merchantman and pirate-ship as well as for a ship of war, and after the discovery of the silver land the large and armed merchantman, the ship of tarshish. isaiah enumerates the ship of tarshish among the costly structures of men.[535] ezekiel compares tyre to a proud ship of the sea. we know that the great transport-ships and merchantmen of the phenicians and carthaginians could take about 500 men on board. the byblians were considered the best ship-builders. the keels of the ships, like the masts, were made of cedar; the oars were of oak, supplied by the oak forests of the table-land of bashan. the mariners of sidon and aradus were considered the best rowers. the greeks praise the strict and careful order on board a phenician ship, the happy use of the smallest spaces, the accuracy in distributing and placing the lading, the experience, wisdom, activity, and safety of the phenician pilots and officers.[536] others commend the great sail and oar power of the phenician ships. they could sail even against the wind, and make fortunate voyages in the stormy season of the year. while the greeks steered by the great bear, which, if a more visible, was a far more uncertain guide, the phenicians had at an early time discovered a less conspicuous but more trustworthy guide in the polar star, which the greeks call the "phenician star." the greeks themselves allow that this circumstance rendered the voyages of the phenicians more accurate and secure. on an average the phenician ships, which as a rule did not set out before the end of february, and returned at the end of october, accomplished 120 miles in 24 hours; but ships that were excellently built and equipped, and sufficiently manned, ran about 150 miles.[537] in the fifteenth century the galleys of venice could run from 50 to 100 miles in the mediterranean in the 24 hours. the excellence of the phenician navy survived the independence of the cities. inclination towards, and pleasure in navigation, as well as skill in it, were always to be found among the populations of those cities. the phenician ships were by far the best in the fleets of the persian kings. footnotes: [474] eustath. ad "odysseam," 4, 617. [475] vol. i. p. 352. [476] de luynes, "essai sur la numismatique des satrapies," p. 69. [477] above, p. 188. [478] curt. 4, 8. pliny ("hist. nat." 5, 17) puts the distance from the mainland at 700 paces (double paces). [479] on coins of tyre of a later time we find two rocks, which indicate the position of the city. ezekiel (xxvi. 4, 5) threatens that she shall be a naked rock in the sea for the spreading of nets. joseph. "c. apion," 8, 5, 3; diod. 17, 46; arrian, 2, 21, 23. renan's view ("mission de phénicie," p. 546 ff.) on the agenorion has been adopted; some others of his results appear to be uncertain. [480] vol. i. 367; menander in joseph. "c. apion." 1, 17, 18. [481] joseph. "antiq." 8, 13, 2. [482] joseph. _loc. cit._ [483] in order to bring the reigns of josephus into harmony with his total, the total, which is given twice, must be retained. hence nothing remains but to replace, as movers has already done, the three and six years given by josephus for balezor and mutton by the eight and 25 years given by syncellus. [484] on the identity of the names acerbas, sichaeus, sicharbas, sicharbaal, serv. "ad æneid," 1, 343; movers, "phoeniz." 2, 1, 355. [485] justin, 18, 4. [486] timaeus, fragm. 23, ed. müller; appian, "rom. hist." 8, 1. [487] timaeus, fragm. 23, ed. müller. [488] vol. i. 371; movers, "phoeniz." 1, 609 ff. [489] oros. 4, 22; strabo, p. 832. [490] sall. "jug." 19. [491] the various statements about the year of the foundation of carthage are collected in müller, "geograph. græci min." 1, xix. it is impossible to fix the foundation more accurately than about the middle of the ninth century b.c. we may place it in the year 846 b.c. if we rest on the 143-2/3 years of josephus from the building of the temple (according to our own date 990 b.c.), and the round sum given by appian--that 700 years elapsed from the founding by dido to the destruction of the city; "rom. hist." 8, 132. [492] ezekiel xxvii. 9. [493] renan, "mission de phénicie," p. 199. [494] diod. 16, 41, 45; fragm. 23, ed. bipont; cf. justin. 18, 6. [495] joseph. "antiq." 14, 12, 4, 5; curt. 4, 15. [496] liv. 28, 37; movers, "phoeniz." 2, 1, 490 ff, 529 ff. [497] servius, "ad æneid." 1, 738. [498] ezekiel xxviii. 2-17. [499] psalm xlv. 9-15. though it is doubtful whether there is any reference here to tyre, the court-life of the israelites was imitated from the phenicians. [500] hosea ix. 13. [501] ezekiel xxvii. 4-7. [502] strabo, pp. 754, 756. [503] lucian, "de syria dea," 3-5. [504] renan, "mission de phénicie," p. 39 ff, 362. [505] ceccaldi, "le monument de sarba," revue archéolog. 1878. [506] renan, "mission de phénicie," p. 60 ff. [507] beulé, "nachgrabungen zu karthago," s. 98 ff (translation). [508] gen. xxxv. 20. [509] renan, _loc. cit._ 412 ff. [510] in cyprus also a mask of this kind has been found. [511] von gutschmid, in "fleckeisens jahrbücher," 1875, s. 579. [512] [greek: athênaion s' g' pinax]; a. 7, b. 8. [513] helbig, "cenni sopra l'arte fenicia," p. 17 ff. [514] ceccaldi, "les fouilles de curium," revue archéolog. 1877. [515] renan, _loc. cit._ pp. 175, 181, 397. [516] job xix. 23. [517] rödiger, "z. d. m. g." 9, 647; schlottmann, "inschrift esmunazars;" halévy, "mélanges," pp. 9, 34; oppert, "records of the past," 9, 109. [518] strabo, p. 757. [519] joshua xix. 26. strabo, p. 758. tacitus says, "on the shore of judæa the belus falls into the sea: the sand collected at the mouth of this river, when mixed with saltpetre, is melted into glass. the strip of shore is of moderate extent, but inexhaustible;" "hist." 5, 7 [520] pliny, "hist. nat." 5, 17. [521] adolph schmidt, "forschungen auf dem gebiete des alterthums," s. 69. [522] schmidt, _loc. cit._ 129 ff. [523] herod. 4, 151; pliny, "hist. nat." 9, 60; strabo, pp. 145, 835. [524] strabo, p. 757. [525] pliny, "hist. nat." 5, 17. [526] plut. "alex." c. 36. [527] movers, "phoeniz." 3, 103. [528] job xxviii. 1-11. in this description the author could only have phenician mines in his eye. [529] müllenhoff, "deutsche altertumskunde," 1, 120 ff. [530] strabo, p. 142. kotini = the oleastrum of the romans; pliny, "hist. nat." 3, 3. ptolem. 2, 4, 14. [531] strabo, pp. 175, 176, 120; pliny, "hist. nat." 7, 57. [532] ezekiel xxvii. 5, 6; levy, "siegel und gemmen." if the first text of the pentateuch represents the names of the tribes of the people as engraved upon the precious stones in the shield on the breast of the high priest (exod. xxv. 7; xxviii. 9 ff, _supra_, 207), the author had, no doubt, the work of phenician artists in his eye. [533] pliny, "hist. nat." 5, 13. [534] diodor. 19, 58. [535] isaiah ii. 16. [536] xen. "oecon." 8, 12. [537] movers, "phoeniz." 3, 182 ff, 191 ff. chapter xii. the trade of the phenicians. we found above at what an early period the migratory tribes of arabia came into intercourse with the region of the euphrates, and the valley of the nile, how in both these places they purchased corn, implements, and weapons in return for their horses and camels, their skins and their wool, and the prisoners taken in their feuds. it was this exchange trade of the arabian tribes which in the first instance brought about the intercourse of syria with babylonia and egypt. egypt like babylonia required oil and wine for their population; metals, skins, and wool for their manufactures; wood for the building of houses and ships. for the syrians and cities of the phenicians the intercourse with the arabians, and the lands of the euphrates and tigris, was facilitated by the fact that nations related to them in race and language dwelt as far as the border-mountains of armenia and iran and the southern coast of arabia, and their trade with egypt was facilitated in the same manner when semitic tribes between 2000 and 1500 b.c. obtained the supremacy in egypt and maintained it for more than three centuries. from the fact that babylonian weights and measures were in use in syria in the sixteenth century b.c., we may conclude that there must have been close trade relations between syria and babylonia from the year 2000 b.c.; and in the same manner in consequence of the conquest of egypt by the shepherds more active relations must have commenced between syria and the land of the nile, at a period not much later. the supremacy which egypt afterwards obtained over syria under the tuthmosis and amenophis must have rather advanced than destroyed this; thus sethos, towards the year 1400, used his successes against the cheta, _i.e._ the hittites, to have cedars felled on lebanon. we may assume that even before this time, after the rise of the kingdom of the hittites, _i.e._ after the middle of the fifteenth century, the cities of the phenicians were no longer content to exchange the products of syria, wine, oil, and brass, the manufactures of their own growing industry, purple stuffs and weapons, with the manufactures of egypt, linen cloths, and papyrus tissues, glass and engraved stones, ornaments and drugs, on the one hand, and on the other hand with the manufactures of babylon, cloths, ointments, and embroidered stuffs: they also carried egyptian fabrics to babylon, and babylonian fabrics to egypt. the trade of phoenicia with egypt and babylonia was no longer restricted to the exchange of phenician-syrian products and fabrics with those of egypt and babylon: it was at the same time a middle trade between those two most ancient seats of cultivation, between egypt and babylonia. it cannot have been any detriment to this trade of the phenicians that a second centre of civic life sprang up subsequently on the central tigris in the growing power of assyria. in the ruins of chalah (p. 34) egyptian works of art have been dug up in no inconsiderable numbers. herodotus begins his work with the observation that the phenicians at an early period endeavoured to export and exchange egyptian and assyrian (_i.e._ babylonian and assyrian) wares. the sea lay open to the cities of the phenicians for their intercourse with egypt; for this route they were independent of the good will or aversion of the tribes and princes, who ruled in the south of canaan; moreover the wood of lebanon could not be carried by land to egypt. we may certainly assume that the navigation of the phenicians was enabled to obtain its earliest practice for further journeys by these voyages to that mouth of the nile, which the egyptians opened to foreign ships (i. 227). the free and secure use of the routes of the caravans to the euphrates, and from this river to the syrian coast, must have been obtained from the rulers of syria, the princes of hamath and damascus, the migratory tribes of the syrian desert, the princes whose dominions lay on the euphrates; and would hardly be obtained without heavy payments. so much the more desirable was it, if the cities could enter into special relations with one or other of these princes, such as david and solomon, who not only opened israel to them, but also provided the routes with caravanserais and warehouses (p. 187). the trade-road to the euphrates led from sidon past dan (laish) in israel to damascus, hence northwards past riblah and emesa (hems) to hamath, from hamath to bambyke (hierapolis) in the neighbourhood of the euphrates, and then crossed over the river to harran (i. 320). from harran the caravans went down along the belik to the euphrates, then in the valley of the euphrates to babylon, or went eastwards past nisibis (nisib) to the tigris. a shorter road to the euphrates ran past damascus and the oasis of tadmor, and reached the river at thipsach (thapsacus) at the farthest bend to the west.[538] we have already seen at what an early period the trade with the land of frankincense, _i.e._ with south arabia, grew up for egypt, owing to the mutual intercourse of the arabian tribes (i. 226). the first attempt of egypt to open a communication by sea with south arabia falls about the year 2300 b.c. at a period not later, other arabian tribes must have carried the incense and spices of south arabia to elam, ur and nipur, and babylon. syria must have received the products of south arabia first through babylon, then by means of direct communication with the arabs, and lastly by the special caravans of the phenicians. we hear of two trade-roads to that land. one led past damascus to the oasis of duma (dumat el dshandal), and from thence through the interior of arabia to the south; the other ran through israel past ashtaroth karnaim, through the territories of the ammonites, moabites, and edomites, to elath, and thence led along the coast of the arabian gulf to the sabæans (i. 320). from the sabæans and the chatramites even before the year 1500 b.c. the caravans brought not spices only and incense, but also the products of the somali coast. the sabæans traversed the arabian gulf and carried home the products of the coast of east africa; the southwest coast of arabia was no longer a place for producing and exporting frankincense and spices; it became the trading-place of the somali coast, and before the year 1000 b.c. was also the trading-place for the products of india, which ships of the indians carried to the shore of the sabæans and chatramites (i. 322). it must have been a considerable increase in the extent of the phenician trade and the gains obtained from it, when the phenicians were able to make such a fruitful use of their connection with south arabia that it fell into their hands to provide egypt, with her products, and perhaps even babylonia also. their caravan trade with south arabia must have been lively, and the impulse to extend it strong, as they induced king solomon to allow them to attempt a connection by sea from elath with south arabia. by the foundation and success of the trade to ophir, and the most remote places of the east which they reached, their commerce obtained its widest extent, and brought in the richest returns. with incense and balsam, there came to tyre cinnamon and cassia, sandal-wood and ivory, gold and pearls from india, and the silk tissues of the distant east.[539] the commerce of the phenician cities comprised egypt, babylonia, and assyria, it touched mesopotamia and armenia, the lands of the moschi and tibarenes, the silver and copper mines of the chalybes on the black sea.[540] when on the opening of the communication by the red sea with south arabia and the countries beyond, it gained the widest extent to the south and east, it had for a whole century past traversed the entire length of the mediterranean to the straits of gibraltar. we saw above how the phenicians steered to cyprus, rhodes, crete, to the ægean sea, to the coasts of hellas, in order to barter or dig up minerals, to collect purple-fish for their coloured stuffs, and how after the middle of the thirteenth century they began to plant settlements on these coasts. the request for minerals must have been so strongly felt in their own cities, in egypt and the lands of the euphrates, in the course of the twelfth century, that the ships of the phenicians went farther and farther to the west in search of them, that sicily, sardinia, and corsica were reached and then colonised by them. at the same time ityke and old hippo were built on the coast of africa. these supplied saltpetre, alum, and salt, skins of lions and panthers, horns of buffalos, ostrich eggs and feathers, slaves and ivory to the mother-cities. after this, about the year 1100 b.c., gades was built on the shore of the atlantic ocean. the trade of the phenicians now brought not only the products of syria and the manufactures of their cities to egypt and babylonia; it was not merely a middle trade between those two lands, nor merely an independent trade and middle trade between south arabia and the civilised countries; it mediated now between the east and the west, the products and manufactures of the near and distant east, and the natural products of the near and distant west, between the ancient civilisation of the east and the young life of the nations of the west. it was above all the metals of the west, the gold of the thracian, the copper of the italian islands, the silver of tartessus, which the ships of the phenicians carried into the harbours of the mother-cities: the nations of the west received in return weapons, and metal vases, ornaments, variegated cloths, and purple garments. the works of babylonian and egyptian style, the works which are found in the tombs of caere, clusium, alsium, at corneto and praeneste, adorned in types at once egyptian and babylonian-assyrian, like the implements and ornaments found in the tombs of spata and mycenæ, can only have come into the possession of the etruscans, latins, and lucanians from intercourse with the phenicians, the phenician colonies of sicily, or from the trade with carthage.[541] from gades the phenicians succeeded in forcing their way farther to the atlantic ocean. phenician colonies were founded on the west coast of africa. lixus, the oldest and most important of these (lachash, now el araish), at the mouth of the river of the same name (now wadi el ghos), is said to have been the seat of a famous sanctuary of melkarth.[542] strabo is of opinion that these colonies of the phenicians beyond the pillars of hercules were built soon after the trojan war, _i.e._ about the year 1100 b.c.[543] diodorus told us already how phenician ships, steering to the coast of libya in order to explore the sea beyond the pillars were carried away by a storm far into the ocean, and discovered a large island opposite libya, which, from the pleasantness of the air and the abundance of blessings, seemed fitted to be the dwelling of the gods rather than men (p. 82). we can hardly doubt, therefore, that the phenicians visited madeira and the canary islands. tin was early known to the ancient world, and was indispensable for the alloy of copper, but it could only be found mixed with copper in the mines of the chalybes and tibarenes (the tabal of the assyrians, the tubal of the hebrews), whose name is found in genesis in tubal-cain, the first smith, the father of them that work in brass and iron (i. 539). besides these, there were tin mines only in the lofty hindukush, in the north-west of iberia, and in the south-west of england.[544] herodotus observes: tin and amber come from the extreme western ends of europe. he could not learn from any eye-witness whether there was a sea there, though he had taken much trouble in the matter. pliny tells us: midacritus first brought tin from the island kassiteris, _i.e._ the tin-island.[545] it was the phenicians who obtained tin, and they did not obtain it from iberia only: their ships sailed through the bay of biscay, they became acquainted with the shore of brittany, which appears to have been known to them as oestrymnis; they discovered the tin islands, _i.e._ the channel islands, the coast of cornwall, and even the island of albion.[546] the tin-islands or kassiterides of the greeks are the islands of the north-west ocean, known to the phenicians, who procured tin from them. the homeric poems often mention amber, which, worked into ornaments, phenician ships brought to the greeks. ornaments of amber are met with in the oldest tombs of cumae, in the tombs at the lion's gate at mycenæ.[547] hence the phenicians must have been in possession of amber as early as the eleventh century b.c. amber was found not only on the shores of the baltic, but also on the coast of the north sea, between the mouth of the rhine and the elbe. we may therefore draw the conclusion that in the eleventh and tenth centuries b.c. they must have advanced far enough in the channel towards the mouth of the rhine, or beyond it, to obtain amber by exchange or collect it themselves, unless we assume an extensive intercourse between the celts and germans.[548] the starting-point, harbour, and emporium for the trade in the west and the voyages beyond the pillars of melkarth in the atlantic ocean was gades. long after the naval power of the phenicians and carthage had perished, gades remained a great, rich, and flourishing city of trade. strabo describes it thus: "situated on a small island not much more than a hundred stades in length, and scarce a stade in breadth, without any possessions on the mainland or the islands, this city sends out the most and largest ships, and seems to yield to no other city, except rome, in the number of the inhabitants. but the greater part do not live in the city, but on ships."[549] in the tenth century b.c. the navigation and trade of the phenicians extended from the coasts of the arabian sea, from the somali coast, and perhaps from the mouths of the indus as far as the coast of britain; from the coasts of mauritania on the atlantic to the tigris, from armenia to the sabæans. stretching out far in every direction, they had as yet suffered reverses in one region only, in the basin of the ægean sea. their trade and intercourse was not indeed destroyed, but their mines, their colonies on the islands of this sea and the coasts of hellas, were lost. before hiram ascended the throne of tyre, the phenicians, after teaching babylonian weights and measures, the building of fortresses and walls, and mining to the greeks, and bringing them their alphabet (p. 57), were compelled to retire before the increasing strength of the greek cantons, not only from the coasts of hellas, but also from the islands of the ægean. the trade, however, with the hellenes continued as before, in lively vigour, so far as the homeric descriptions can be accepted as evidence. the most valuable possessions in the treasuries of the greek princes are sidonian works of art. phenician ships often show themselves in greek waters. when one of these merchantmen is anchored, the wares are set out in the ship, or under tents on the shore, or the phenicians offer them for sale in the nearest place. a phenician vessel laden with all kinds of ornaments lands on an island; after the phenicians have sold many wares they offer to the queen a necklace of gold and amber, and at the same time they carry off her son, and sell him on another island. a phenician freights a ship to libya, and persuades a greek to go with him as overseer of the lading: he intended to sell him there as a slave. along with these notices in the homeric poems on the trade of the phenicians, an account has also come down to us from an eastern source. the prophet joel, who prophesied about the year 830 b.c., says, in regard to the invasion of the philistines in judah, which took place about the year 845 b.c., and brought them to the walls of jerusalem (p. 252); tyre and sidon, and all the regions of the land of the philistines, have stolen the silver and gold of jehovah, and carried the costly things into their temples; the sons of judah and jerusalem they sold to the sons of javan (the greeks), in order to remove them far from their land.[550] for the colonies which the phenicians had to give up on the greek coasts and islands, they found a rich compensation in the strengthening and increase of their colonies on the west of the mediterranean, on sardinia, where they built caralis (cagliari) on the southern shore, on corsica, on the north coast of africa, where carthage arose about the middle of the ninth century (p. 269), and on the shores of iberia. but another loss which befell them in the east could not be made good so easily. after king jehoshaphat's death (848 b.c.), even before the invasion of the philistines, the kingdom of judah, as we saw (p. 252), lost the sovereignty over the edomites. hence the harbour-city of elath was lost to the phenicians also, and the ophir trade at an end, a century and a half after it began. though 50 years later, when judah under amaziah and uzziah had reconquered the edomites, and elath was rebuilt, this navigation, as it seems, was again set in motion, this restoration was of no long continuance. after the middle of the eighth century the phenicians were finally limited for their trade with the sabæans to the caravan routes through arabia. a still more serious source of danger was the approach of the assyrian power to the syrian coast. in the course of the ninth century (from 876 b.c.), as has been remarked above, assyrian armies repeatedly showed themselves in syria, and their departure had repeatedly to be purchased by tribute. as this pressure increased, and the assyrian rulers insisted on pushing forward the borders of their kingdom towards syria as far as the shores of the mediterranean, as the cities of the phenicians became subject to a power the centre of which lay in the distant interior, the trade not to the east but to the west came into question, and it was doubtful whether the cities, when embodied in a great land-power, could retain cyprus in subjection, and keep up the trade with egypt, and the connection with their colonies in the west. the doubt became greater when, after the beginning of the eighth century b.c., a dangerous opposition rose in the mediterranean, and a still more serious competition against the phenicians. not content with driving the phenicians out of the ægean sea, with obtaining possession of the islands and the west coast of asia minor, the hellenes spread farther and farther to the west. already they had got rhodes into their hands; they were already settled off the coast of syria, on the island of cyprus, among the ancient cities of the phenicians. still more vigorous was the growth of their settlements to the west of the mediterranean. after founding cyme (cumae) on the coast of lower italy, they built in sicily, after the middle of the eighth century, in quick succession, naxus (738 b.c.), syracuse (735 b.c.), catana (730 b.c.), and megara (728 b.c.), to which were quickly added rhegium, sybaris, croton, and tarentum in lower italy (720-708 b.c.). were the cities of the phenicians in sicily, rus melkarth, motye, panormus, soloeis, and eryx (p. 79), in a position to hold the balance against these rivals and their navigation? the injurious effects of the competition of a rival power by sea for the trade of the phenicians must have increased when, in the seventh century, the cities of the greeks in sicily increased in number, and egypt was opened to them about the middle of this century; when, in the year 630 b.c., the first greek city, cyrene, rose on the shore of africa, and about the same time the greeks entered into direct trade connections with tartessus; when at the close of this century a greek city was built on the shore of the ligystian sea, at the mouth of the rhone, and soon after the settlements of the greeks in sicily and in the west of the mediterranean began to multiply. while in this manner the field of phenician trade was limited by the constant advance of the greeks, the mother-cities, from the same period, the middle of the eighth century, had to feel the whole weight of the development of assyrian power. and when this pressure ceased, in the second half of the seventh century, it was followed by the still more burdensome oppression of the babylonian empire. yet in spite of all hindrances and losses, a prophet of the hebrews after the middle of the eighth century could say of tyre, that "she built herself strongholds, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets."[551] and ezekiel at the beginning of the sixth century describes the trade of tyre in the following manner: "thou who dwellest at the entrance of the sea, who art the trader of the nations to many islands! on mighty waters thy rowers carry thee; thy trade goes out over all seas; thou satisfiest many nations; thou hast enriched the kings of the earth by the multitude of thy goods and wares. thou art become mighty in the midst of the sea. all ships of the sea and their sailors were in thee to purchase thy wares. persians and libyans and lydians serve in thee; they are thy warriors; they hang shield and helmet on thy walls: thy own warriors stand round on the walls, and brave men are on all thy towers. syria is thy merchant, because of the number of the wares of thy skill; they make thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. damascus is thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, in the wine of helbon, and white wool. judah and the land of israel were thy merchants; they traded in thy market wheat and pastry and honey. they of the house of togarmah (armenia) traded in thy fairs with horses and mules. haran, canneh, and asshur, and childmad were thy merchants in costly robes, in blue cloths and embroidered work, and chests of cedar-wood full of damasks bound with cords, in thy place of merchandise. dedan (the dedanites[552]) is thy merchant in horse-cloths for riding. wedan brings tissues to thy markets: forged iron, cassia, and calamus were brought to thy markets. arabia and all the princes of kedar are ready for thee with lambs, rams, and goats. the merchants of sabæa and ramah[553] traffic with thee; they occupied in thy fairs with the chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold. javan (the greeks), tubal, and mesech (the tibarenes and moschi) are thy merchants; they trade with silver, iron, tin, and lead. many islands are at hand to thee for trade; they brought thee for payment horns of ivory and ebony. the ships of tarshish are thy caravans in thy trade: so art thou replenished and mighty in the midst of the sea."[554] footnotes: [538] _supra_, p. 187. movers, "phoeniz." 2, 3, 244 ff. [539] movers, _loc. cit._ 2, 3, 265 ff. [540] vol. i. p. 538. ezekiel xxvii. 14; xxxviii. 6. [541] helbig, "annali del inst. arch." 1876, pp. 57, 117, 247 ff. [542] pliny, "hist. nat." s. 1; 19, 22. cf. movers, _loc. cit._ 2, 2, 537 ff. [543] strabo, p. 48; cf. p. 150. [544] the german tin-mines were not opened till the middle ages; those of farther india in the last century; müllenhoff, "deutsche altertumskunde," s. 24. [545] herod. 3, 115; pliny, "hist. nat." 7, 57. [546] at a later time we meet with the name prettanian islands. ynis prydein, _i.e._ island of prydein, was the name given by the welsh to their land; müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. 88 ff, 93 ff. [547] helbig, "commercio dell ambra," p. 10, _n._ 4. on the amber in the tombs east of the apennines, pp. 15, 16. [548] müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. 223. [549] strabo, p. 168. [550] joel iii. 4 ff. on the date of joel, _supra_, p. 260, _n._ 2. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. 454. according to the data established above, the minority of joash falls between 837 and 825 b.c. [551] the older zechariah ix. 3, and de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. 480. [552] vol. i. p. 314. [553] vol. i. p. 314. [554] ezekiel xxvii. chapter xiii. the rise of assyria. the campaigns which tiglath pilesar, king of asshur, undertook towards the west about the end of the twelfth century, and which carried him to the upper euphrates and into northern syria, remained without lasting result. the position which tiglath pilesar then had won on the euphrates was not maintained by his successors in any one instance. more than 200 years after tiglath pilesar we find tiglath adar ii. (889-883 b.c.) again in conflict with the same opponents who had given his forefather such trouble--with the mountaineers of the land of nairi, the district between the highland valley of albak on the greater zab and the zibene-su, the eastern source of the tigris. the son and successor of this tiglath adar, assurnasirpal, was the first whom we see again undertaking more distant campaigns; the successful results of which are the basis of a considerable extension of the assyrian power. assurnasirpal also chiefly directed his arms against the mountain-land in the north. on his first campaign he fought on the borders of urarti, _i.e._ of the land of ararat, the region of the upper araxes. in the second year of his reign (881 b.c.) he marched out of the city of nineveh, crossed the tigris, and imposed tribute on the land of kummukh (gumathene, p. 41), and the moschi, in asses, oxen, sheep, and goats. in the third year he caused his image to be hewn in the place where tiglath pilesar and tiglath adar his fathers had chosen to set up their images; he tells us that his own was engraved beside the others.[555] only the image of tiglath pilesar i. is preserved at karkar. assurnasirpal received tribute from the princes of the land of nairi--bars of gold and silver, iron, oxen and sheep; and placed a viceroy over the land of nairi. but the subjugation was not yet complete; assurnasirpal related that on a later campaign he destroyed 250 places in the land of nairi.[556] he tells us further, that on his tenth campaign he reduced the land of kirchi, took the city of amida (now diarbekr), and plundered it.[557] below this city, on the bank of the tigris at kurkh (karch), there is a stone tablet which represents him after the pattern of tiglath pilesar at karkar (p. 40.) between these conflicts in the north lie campaigns to the south and west. in the year 879 b.c. he marched out, as he tells us, from chalah. on the other bank of the tigris he collected a heavy tribute, then he marched to the euphrates, took the city of suri in the land of sukhi, and caused his image to be set up in this city. fifty horsemen and the warriors of nebu-baladan, king of babylon (kardunias), had fallen into his hand, and the land of the chaldæans had been seized with fear of his weapons.[558] we must conclude therefore that the king of babylon had sent auxiliary troops to the prince of the land of sukhi (whom the inscriptions call sadudu). in the following year he occupied the region at the confluence of the chaboras with the euphrates, crossed the euphrates on rafts, and conquered the inhabitants of the lands of sukhi, laki, and khindani, which had marched out with 6000 men to meet him. on the banks of the euphrates he then founded two cities; that on the further bank bore the name of "dur-assurnasirpal," and that on the nearer bank the name of "nibarti-assur." during this time he pretends to have slain 50 amsi (p. 43) on the euphrates, and captured 20; to have slain 20 eagles and captured 20.[559] then he turned against karchemish, in the land of the chatti (p. 43). in the year 876 b.c. he collected tribute in the regions of bit bakhian and bit adin in the neighbourhood of karchemish, and afterwards laid upon sangar, king of karchemish, a tribute of 20 talents of silver, and 100 talents of iron. from karchemish assurnasirpal marched against the land of labnana, _i.e._ the land of lebanon. king lubarna in the land of the chatti submitted, and had to pay even heavier tribute than the king of karchemish. assurnasirpal reached the orontes (arantu), took the marches of lebanon, marched to the great sea of the western land, offered sacrifice to the gods, and received the tribute of the princes of the sea-coasts, the prince of tyre (ssurru), of sidon (ssidunu), of byblus (gubli), and the city of arvada (aradus), "which is in the sea" (p. 277)--bars of silver, gold, and lead;--"they embraced his feet." then the king marched against the mountains of chamani (amanus); here he causes cedars and pines to be felled for the temples of his gods, and the narrative of his exploits to be written on the rocks, and worshipped at nineveh before the goddess istar.[560] according to the evidence of these inscriptions, assurnasirpal established the supremacy of assyria in the region of the sources of the tigris. but even he does not appear to have gone much further than tiglath pilesar before him, for he also fought once on the borders of armenia, _i.e._ of the land of ararat, and on the other hand forced his way as far as the upper course of the eastern euphrates. against babylon he undertook, so far as we can see, no offensive war; he was content to drive out of the field the auxiliaries which nebu-baladan of babylon sent to a prince on the middle euphrates without pursuing the advantage further. the most important results which he obtained were in the west. he gained the land of the chaboras, and fixed himself firmly on the euphrates above the mouth of that river. to secure the crossing he built a fortress on either side, and then forced his way from here to the mountain land of the amanus, to the orontes and lebanon. for the first time the cities of the phenicians paid tribute to the king on the banks of the tigris; arvad (aradus), gebal (byblus), sidon, and tyre, where at this time, as we saw (p. 267), mutton, the son of ethbaal, was king. shalmanesar i., who reigned over assyria about the year 1300 b.c., built, as we have remarked above, the city of chalah (nimrud), on the eastern bank of the tigris above the confluence of the greater zab. the remains of the outer walls show that this city formed a tolerably regular square, and that the western wall ran down to the ancient course of the tigris, which can still be traced. in the south-western corner of the city, on a terrace of unburnt bricks, rose the palaces of the kings and the chief temples. they were shut off towards the city by a separate wall. nearly in the middle of this terrace on the river-side we may trace the foundation-works of a great building, called by our explorers the north-west palace. in the remains of this structure, on two surfaces on the upper and lower sides of a large stone, which forms the floor of a niche in a large room, is engraved an inscription of assurnasirpal, and a second on a memorial stone of 12 to 13 feet high. inscriptions on the slabs of the reliefs with which the halls of the building were adorned repeat the text of these inscriptions in an abbreviated manner. they tell us that the ancient city of chalah, which shalmanesar the great founded, was desolate and in ruins; assurnasirpal built it up afresh from the ground;[561] he led a canal from the greater zab, and gave it the name of patikanik;[562] traces and remains are left, which show us that the course of the canal from the greater zab led directly north to the city. cedars, pines, and cypresses of mount chamani (amanus) had he caused to be felled for the temples of adar, sin, and samas, his lords.[563] he built temples at chalah for adar, bilit, sin, and bin. he made the image of the god adar, and set it up to his great divinity in the city of chalah, and in the piety of his heart dedicated the sacred bull to this great divinity. for the habitation of his kingdom, and the seat of his monarchy, he founded and completed a palace. whosoever reigns after him in the succession of days may he preserve this palace in chalah, the witness of his glory, from ruin; may he not surrender it to rebels, may he not overthrow his pillars, his roof, his beams, or change it for another structure, or alter his inscriptions, the narrative of his glory. "then will asshur the lord and the great god exalt him, and give him all lands of the earth, extend his dominion over the four quarters of the world, and pour abundance, purity, and peace over his kingdom."[564] the palace of assurnasirpal at chalah was a building about 360 feet in length and 300 feet in breadth. two great portals guarded by winged lions with bearded human heads, the images or symbols of the god nergal, led from the north to a long and proportionately narrow portico of 154 feet in length and 35 feet in breadth. in the south wall of this portico a broad door, by which stand two winged human-headed bulls, images of the god adar, and hewn out of yellow limestone, opens into a hall 100 feet long and 25 broad. on the east and south sides also of the central court (the west side is entirely destroyed) lie two longer halls, and a considerable number of larger and smaller chambers. the height of the rooms appears to have been from 16 to 18 feet.[565] the walls of the northern portico were covered with slabs of alabaster to a height of 10 or 12 feet, on which were reliefs of the martial exploits of the king, his battles, his sieges, his hunting--he claims to have killed no fewer than 370 mighty lions, and to have taken 75 alive. the reliefs on the slabs of the second hall, which abuts on this, exhibit colossal forms with eagle heads. above the slabs the masonry of the walls was concealed by tiles coloured and glazed, or by painted arabesques. beside the fragments of this building a statue of the builder, assurnasirpal, was discovered. on a simple base of square stone stands a figure in an attitude of serious repose, in a long robe, without any covering to the head, with long hair and strong beard, holding a sort of sickle in the right hand, and a short staff in the left.[566] on the breast we read, "assurnasirpal, the great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of asshur, the son of tiglath adar, king of asshur, the son of bin-nirar, king of asshur. victorious from the tigris to the land of labnana (lebanon), to the great sea, he subjugated all lands from the rising to the setting of the sun."[567] an image in relief at the entrance of the west of the two temples which this king built, to the north of his palace, on the terrace of chalah (at the entrance to the first are two colossal winged lions with the throats open, and at the entrance of the second two wingless lions), exhibits the king with the kidaris on his head, and his hand upraised; before the base of the relief stands a small sacrificial altar.[568] we have already mentioned the image of assurnasirpal which he had engraved near kurkh, and which is preserved there. according to inscriptions lately discovered, and not yet published, assurnasirpal built a palace at niniveh also, and restored the ancient temple of istar, which samsi-bin formerly erected there (p. 31).[569] the reign of assurnasirpal gave the impulse to a warlike movement which continued in force long after his time, and extended the power of assyria in every direction. his son, shalmanesar ii., who ascended the throne in 859 b.c., followed in the path of his father. in the first years of his reign he fought against khubuskia, which, as we find from the inscriptions, was a district lying on the greater zab, against a prince of the land of nairi (p. 41), against the prince of ararat (urarti), arami, and received the tribute of the land of kummukh (p. 41). he crosses the river arzania--either the arsanias (murad-su), the eastern euphrates, or the arzen-su (nicephorius), which falls into the tigris before it bends to the south--and takes the city of arzaska in urarti, _i.e._ perhaps arsissa, on lake van.[570] these wars in the north were followed by battles on the euphrates. he conquers the city of pethor on this side of the euphrates, and the city of mutunu on the farther side, which tiglath pilesar had won, but assur-rab-amar had restored by a treaty to the king of aram, and settled assyrians in both places. then he fought against a prince of the name of akhuni, who resided at tul barsip on the euphrates. shalmanesar takes this city, transplants the inhabitants to assyria, and calls it kar-salmanassar. he receives the tribute of sangar, prince of karchemish, against whom his father had fought, and finally took akhuni himself prisoner.[571] then he advances towards chamani (to the amanus), crosses the arantu (orontes); pikhirim of the land of chilaku (_i.e._ of cilicia) is conquered by him.[572] the next object of the arms of shalmanesar was syria, which he had merely touched on the north in passing by on the campaign against cilicia. on a memorial stone which he set up at kurkh, on the upper tigris, where we already found the image of assurnasirpal,--the stone is now in the british museum,--shalmanesar tells us that in the year 854 b.c. he left nineveh, marched to kar-salmanassar, and there received the tribute of sangar of karchemish, kutaspi of kummukh, and others. "from the euphrates i marched forth, and advanced against the city of halwan. they avoided a battle and embraced my feet. i received gold and silver from them as their tribute. i made rich offerings to bin, the god of halwan. from halwan i set forth and marched against two cities of irchulina of hamath. argana, his royal city, i took; his prisoners, the goods and treasures of his palace, i carried away; i threw fire upon his palaces. from argana i marched forth to karkar. i destroyed karkar and laid it waste and burnt it with fire. twelve hundred chariots, 1200 horsemen, 20,000 men of benhadad of damascus;[573] 700 chariots, 700 horsemen, 10,000 men of irchulina of hamath; 200 (?2000) chariots, 10,000 men of ahab of israel; 500 men of the guaeer; 1000 men of the land of musri; 10 chariots, 10,000 men of the land of irkanat; 200 men of matinbaal of aradus (arvada); 200 men of the land of usanat; 30 chariots and 10,000 men of adonibal of sizan; 1000 camels of gindibuh of arba;--hundred men of bahsa of ammon; these twelve princes rendered aid to each other, and marched out against me to contend with me in battle. aided by the sublime assistance which asshur my lord gave to me, i fought with them. from the city of karkar as far as the city of gilzana[574] (?) i made havoc of them. fourteen thousand of their troops i slew; like the god bin i caused the storm to descend upon them; during the battle i took their chariots, their horses, their horsemen, and their yoke-horses from them."[575] on the obelisk of black basalt found in the ruins of chalah, shalmanesar says quite briefly, "in my sixth campaign i went against the cities on the banks of balikh (belik) and crossed the euphrates. benhadad of damascus, and irchulina of hamath, and the kings of the land of chatti and the sea came down to battle with me. i conquered them; i overcame 20,500 of their warriors with my arms." the same statement is repeated in a third inscription, that of the bulls.[576] the kings of syria were defeated, but by no means subdued. shalmanesar says nothing of their subjugation and tribute (p. 246). the arms of assyria were next turned in another direction. an illegitimate brother, marduk-belusati, had rebelled against marduk-zikir-iskun, the son and successor of nebu-baladan of babylon. shalmanesar supported the first. during the second campaign against marduk-belusati the united troops of marduk-zikir-iskun and shalmanesar, or the latter alone, succeeded in defeating the rebels; marduk-belusati was captured and put to death with his adherents. shalmanesar sacrificed at babylon, borsippa, and kutha. he claims to have imposed tribute on the chiefs of the land of kaldi (chaldæa), and to have spread his fame to the sea.[577] after this decisive success in babylonia, shalmanesar resumed the war against damascus. for two years in succession he marched out against benhadad of damascus. in the year 851 he defeats benhadad of damascus, the king of hamath, together with 12 kings from the shores of the sea.[578] then the king tells us further: "for the ninth time (850 b.c.) i crossed the euphrates. i conquered cities without number; i marched against the cities of the land of chatti and of hamath; i conquered 89 (79) cities. benhadad of damascus, 12 kings of the chatti (syrians), mutually confided in their power. i put them to flight." and further: "in the fourteenth year of my reign (846 b.c.) i counted my distant and innumerable lands. with 120,000 men of my soldiers i crossed the euphrates. meanwhile benhadad of damascus, and irchulina of hamath, with the 12 kings of the upper and lower sea, armed their numerous troops to march against me. i offered them battle, put them to flight, seized their chariots and their horsemen, and and marched against the cities of hazael of damascus, took from them their baggage. in order to save their lives, they rose up and fled."[579] this victory also was without result. in vain shalmanesar had marched four times against damascus; in vain he led out on the last campaign 120,000 men against syria. not till some years afterwards, when hazael, as we saw above (p. 252), killed benhadad and acquired the throne of damascus in his place, can shalmanesar speak of a decisive campaign in syria. "in the eighteenth year of my reign (842 b.c.) i crossed the euphrates for the sixteenth time. hazael (chazailu) from the land of aram trusted in the might of his troops, collected his numerous armies, and made the mountains of sanir,[580] the summits of the mountains facing the range of lebanon, his fortress. i fought with him and overthrew him; 16,000 of his warriors i conquered with my weapons; 1121 of his chariots, 410 of his horsemen, together with his treasures, i took from him. to save his life he fled away. i pursued him. i besieged him in damascus, his royal city; i destroyed his fortifications. i marched to the mountains of hauran; i destroyed cities without number, laid them waste, and burned them with fire: i led forth their prisoners without number. i marched to the mountains of the land of bahliras, which lies hard by the sea: i set up my royal image there. at that time i received the tribute of the tyrian and sidonian land, of jehu (jahua), the son of omri (chumri), _i.e._ of jehu, king of israel."[581] though sidon, tyre, and israel paid tribute, the resistance of the damascenes was still unbroken. shalmanesar further informs us that (in the year 839 b.c.) he crossed the euphrates for the twenty-first time, but he does not say that he reduced them; he only asserts that he received the tribute of tyre, sidon, and byblus, and then assures us, quite briefly, in the account, of his twenty-fifth campaign (835 b.c.), that he received "the tribute of all the princes of syria" (of the land of chatti).[582] in the very first years of his reign shalmanesar had contended against the prince arami of ararat, and against the land of nairi, between the eastern tigris and the greater zab. the obedience of these regions was not gained. in the year 853 shalmanesar again marched to the sources of the tigris, erected his statue there, and laid tribute on the land of nairi.[583] twenty years later he sent the commander-in-chief of his army, dayan-assur, against the land of ararat, at the head of which siduri now stood, and not arami. dayan-assur crossed the river arzania (p. 314) and defeated siduri (833 b.c.). on a farther campaign (in 830 b.c.) dayan-assur crosses the greater zab, invades the territory of khubuskia (p. 314), fights against prince udaki of van, _i.e._ of the armenian land round lake van, and from this descends into the land of the parsua, which shalmanesar himself had trodden seven years before. here dayan-assur collected fresh tribute. on a third campaign (829 b.c.) dayan-assur received tribute from the land of khubuskia, then invaded ararat, and there plundered and burned 50 places. meanwhile shalmanesar himself marched in the years 838 and 837 b.c. against the land of tabal, _i.e._ against the tibarenes, on the north-west offshoot of the armenian mountains, advanced as far as the mines of the tibarenes, and laid tribute on their 24 princes.[584] in the next year he turns to the south-east, marches over the lesser zab, against the lands of namri and karkhar, which we must therefore suppose to have been between the lesser zab and the adhim and diala, on the spurs of the zagrus. yanzu, king of namri, was taken captive, and carried to assyria. shalmanesar left the land of namri, imposed tribute on the 27 princes of the land of parsua, and turned to the plains of the land of amadai, _i.e._ against media (835 b.c.).[585] two years afterwards. shalmanesar climbed, for the ninth time, the heights of amanus (chamani), then he laid waste the land of kirchi (831 b.c.), then marched once more against the land of namri, there laid waste 250 places, and advanced beyond chalvan (chalonitis, holwan).[586] on the obelisk of black basalt, dug up at chalah in the remains of the palace of shalmanesar ii. (the central palace of the explorers), we find beside the account of the deeds of the king five sculptures in relief, which exhibit payments of tribute. of the picture which represents the payment of jehu, of the kingdom of israel, we have spoken at length above (p. 257). above this, which is the second picture, on the highest or first, is delineated the payment from the land of kirzan. the title tells us: "tribute imposed on sua of the land of kirzan:[587] gold, silver, copper, lead, staves, horses, camels with two humps." as on the second strip the king is represented receiving the tribute of israel; so on this strip also we see the leader of those who pay tribute prostrate on the ground before him; behind the leader are led a horse and two camels with double humps; then follow people carrying staves and kettles. the superscription of the third relief says: "tribute imposed on the land of mushri: camels with two humps, the ox of the river sakeya." on the picture we see two camels with double humps, a hump-backed buffalo, a rhinoceros, an antelope, an elephant, four large apes, which are led, and one little one, which is carried. the superscription of the fourth relief says: "tribute imposed upon marduk-palassar of the land of sukhi:[588] silver, gold, golden buckets, amsi-horns, staves, birmi-robes, stuffs." the relief itself depicts a lion, a deer, which is clutched by a second lion, two men with kettles on their heads, two men who carry a pole, on which are suspended materials for robes, four men with hooked buckets or hooked scrips, two men with large horns on their shoulders, two men with staves, and lastly a man carrying a bag. the superscription of the fifth relief says, "tribute imposed on garparunda of the land of patinai: silver, gold, lead, copper, objects made of copper, amsi-horns, hard wood."[589] under this we see a man raising his hands in entreaty, a man with a bowl with high cups on his head, two men with hooked buckets, carrying horns on their shoulders, one man with staves; after these two assyrian officers, a man in a position of entreaty, two men with hooked buckets and horns, a man with two goblets, two men with hooked buckets and sacks on their shoulders, two men, of whom one holds a kettle, and the other carries a kettle on his head. assurnasirpal had already fought against the land of sukhi. as he marches to the euphrates in order to attack sadudu, prince of sukhi, as the king of babylon sends auxiliaries to sadudu at that time, and the land of chaldæa is seized with terror after the conquest of the land of sukhi, we must look for sukhi on the middle euphrates, below the mouth of the chaboras. the tribute which, according to that inscription, shalmanesar imposed on the prince of sukhi, who has a name which may be compared with the names of the kings of babylon,--gold, silver, robes, and stuffs,--does not contradict this assumption. shalmanesar fought against the patinai in the first year of his reign, according to the inscription of kurkh. shapalulme, the prince of the patinai at that time, combined with sangar of karchemish and akhuni of tul-barsip. like these, the patinai were vanquished, their cities were taken, 14,600 prisoners were carried away, and they were compelled to pay tribute. as shalmanesar in order to reach the patinai marches against them from mount amanus,[590] we must look for their abode on the upper euphrates, to the north of karchemish, between the euphrates and the orontes. the tribute imposed on garparunda of patinai--gold, silver, copper, amsihorns, hard wood--is not against this supposition. the land of kirzan or guzan we can only attempt to fix by the tribute paid--camels with double humps. this kind of camel is found on the southern shore of the caspian sea and tartary, and we are therefore led to place kirzan on the southern shore of the caspian. the land of mushri, the tribute of which consists of hump-backed buffaloes, _i.e._ yaks (an animal belonging to the same district, bactria and tibet), camels with double humps, elephants, and rhinoceroses, and apes, must therefore be sought in eastern iran, on the borders of the district of the indus, whether it be that shalmanesar really penetrated so far, or that the terror of his name moved east iranian countries to send tribute to the warrior prince of nineveh and chalah. like his father, shalmanesar resided at chalah. on the terrace of this city, to the south-east of the palace of his father, he built a dwelling-place for himself, and in this set up the obelisk, the inscriptions on which give a brief account of each year of his reign. in the ruins of this house two bulls also have been discovered, which are covered with inscriptions, which, together with the inscription of kurkh on the tigris, supplement or extend the statements of the obelisk. more considerable remains have come down to us of another building of shalmanesar. assurnasirpal had erected at chalah two temples to the north of his palace. to the larger (western) of these two temples on the north-west corner of the terrace shalmanesar added a tower, the ruins of which in the form of a pyramidal hill still overtop the uniform heap of the ruined palaces. on the foundation of the natural rock of the bank of the tigris lies a square substructure (each of the sides measures over 150 feet) of 20 feet in height, built of brick and cased with stone. on this base rises a tower of several diminishing stories. in the first of these stories, immediately upon the platform, is a passage 100 feet long, 12 feet high, and 6 feet in breadth, which divides the storey exactly in the middle from east to west. two centuries after the fall of the assyrian kingdom, xenophon, marching up the tigris with the 10,000, reached the ruins of chalah. after crossing the zapatus, _i.e._ the greater zab, he came to a large deserted city on the tigris, the name of which sounded to him like larissa (chalah); it was surrounded by a wall about seven and a-half miles long. this wall had a substructure of stone masonry about 20 feet high; on this it rose, 25 feet in thickness, and built of bricks, to the height of 100 feet. beside the city was a pyramid of stone, a plethron (100 feet) broad and two plethra high; to these many of the neighbouring hamlets fled for refuge.[591] shalmanesar's tower was broken, and by the fall of the upper parts had become changed into a pyramid. the sides of the tower xenophon put at almost half their real size; the height of the ruins is still about 140 feet. that shalmanesar also stayed at nineveh is proved by the inscriptions; that he possessed a palace in the ancient city of asshur is proved by the stamp of the tiles at kileh shergat.[592] in a reign of 36 years shalmanesar ii. had gained important successes. in the north he had advanced as far as lake van, and the valley of the araxes, the tibarenes in the north-west, and the cilicians in the west had felt the weight of his arms. he had directed his most stubborn efforts against the princes on the crossings over the euphrates towards syria, and towards the region of mount amanus and syria itself. damascus and hamath were forced to pay tribute after a series of campaigns; byblus, sidon, and tyre repeatedly paid tribute, and israel after it had received a new master in jehu. by shalmanesar's successful interference in the contest for the crown in the civil war in babylon, the supremacy of asshur over babel was at length obtained. the regions of the zagrus had to pay tribute to shalmanesar. he first trod the land of media, and his successes were felt beyond media as far as the southern shore of the caspian sea and east iran. in spite of the unwearied activity of shalmanesar, in spite of his ceaseless campaigns and the important results gained by his weapons, his reign ended amid domestic troubles, caused by a rebellion of the native land. shalmanesar's son and successor, samsi-bin iii. (823-810 b.c.), tells us in an inscription found in the remains of his palace, which he built in the south-east corner of the terrace of chalah, that his brother assurdaninpal set on foot a conspiracy against his father shalmanesar, and that the land of asshur, both the upper and lower, joined the rebellion. he enumerates 27 cities, among them asshur itself, the ancient metropolis, and arbela, which joined assurdaninpal; but "with the help of the great gods" samsi-bin reduced them again to his power. then he tells us of his campaigns in the north and east. in his first campaign the whole land of nairi was subjugated--all the princes, 24 in number, are mentioned; the land of van also paid tribute. the assyrian dominion, asserts the king, stretched from the land of nairi to the city of kar-salmanassar, opposite karchemish (p. 315). then he fought against the land of giratbunda (apparently a region on the caspian sea, perhaps gerabawend), took the king prisoner, and set up his own image in sibar, the capital of giratbunda,[593] and afterwards directed his arms against the land of accad (babylonia). when he had slain 13,000 men and taken 3000 prisoners, king marduk-balatirib marched out against him with the warriors of chaldæa and elam, of the lands of namri (p. 320) and aram. he defeated them near dur-kurzu, their capital: 5000 were left on the field, 2000 taken prisoners; 200 chariots of war and ensigns of the king remained in the hands of the assyrians (819 b.c.). at this point the inscription breaks off; elsewhere we hear nothing of further successes against babylonia, we only learn that samsi-bin in the eleventh and twelfth years of his reign (812 and 811 b.c.) again marched to chaldæa and babylon,[594] and we can only conclude from the fact that the king of babylon received help not only from namri and aram, but also from elam, that the assyrians under samsi-bin continued to advance, and that their power must by this time have appeared alarming to the elamites also. bin-nirar iii. (810-781 b.c.), the son and successor of samsi-bin, raised the assyrian power still higher. twice he marched out against the armenian land on the shore of lake van; eight times he made campaigns in the land of the rivers, _i.e._ mesopotamia. in the fifth year of his reign he went out against the city of arpad in syria; in the eighth against the "sea-coast," _i.e._ no doubt against the coast of syria. the beginning of an inscription remains from which we can see the extent of the lands over which he ruled, or which he had compelled to pay tribute. "i took into my possession," so this fragment tells us, "from the land of siluna, which lies at the rising of the sun, onwards; viz., the land of kib, of ellip, karkas, arazias, misu, madai (media), giratbunda throughout its whole extent, munna, parsua, allabria, abdadana, the land of nairi throughout its whole extent, the land of andiu, which is remote, the mountain range of bilchu throughout its whole extent to the great sea which lies in the east, _i.e._ as far as the caspian sea. i made subject to myself from the euphrates onwards: the land of chatti (aram), the western land (_mat acharri_) throughout its whole extent, tyre, sidon, the land of omri (israel) and edom, the land of palashtav (philistæa) as far as the great sea to the setting of the sun. i imposed upon them payment of tribute. i also marched against the land of imirisu (the kingdom of damascus), against mariah, the king of the land of imirisu. i actually shut him up in damascus, the city of his kingdom; great terror of asshur came upon him; he embraced my feet, he became a subject; 2300 talents of silver, 20 talents of gold, 3000 talents of copper, 5000 talents of iron, robes, carven images, his wealth and his treasures without number, i received in his palace at damascus where he dwelt.[595] i subjugated all the kings of the land of chaldæa, and laid tribute upon them; i offered sacrifice at babylon, borsippa, and kutha, the dwellings of the gods bel, nebo, and nergal."[596] according to this king bin-nirar not only maintained the predominance over babylon which his grandfather had gained, but extended it: his authority reached from media, perhaps from the shores of the caspian sea, to the shore of the mediterranean as far as damascus and israel and edom, as far as sidon and tyre and the cities of the philistines. the cilicians and tibarenes who paid tribute to shalmanesar are not mentioned by bin-nirar in his description of his empire. so far as we can see, the centre of the kingdom was meanwhile extended and more firmly organised. among the magistrates with whose names the assyrians denote the years, at the time of shalmanesar and his immediate successors the names of the commander-in-chief and three court officers are regularly followed by the names of the overseers of the districts of rezeph (resapha on the euphrates), of nisib (nisibis on the mygdonius, the eastern affluent of the chaboras), of arapha, _i.e._ the mountain-land of arrapachitis (albak); hence we may conclude that these districts were more closely connected or incorporated with the native land, and governed immediately by viceroys of the king. how uncertain the power and supremacy of assyria was at a greater distance is on the other hand equally clear from the fact that bin-nirar had to make no fewer than eight campaigns in the land of the streams, _i.e._ between the tigris and the euphrates; that he marched four times against the land of khubuskia in the neighbourhood of armenia, and twice against the district of lake van, against which his father and grandfather had so often contended. bin-nirar iii. also built himself a separate palace at chalah, on the western edge of the terrace of the royal dwellings, to the south of the palace of his great grandfather assurnasirpal. in the ruins of the temple which he dedicated to nebo have been found six standing images of this deity, two of which bear upon the pedestal those inscriptions which informed us that the wife of bin-nirar iii. was named sammuramat (p. 45). on a written tablet dated from the year of musallim-adar (_i.e._ from the year 793 b.c.), the eighteenth year of bin-nirar, on which is still legible the fragment of a royal decree, we also find the double impress of his seal--a royal figure which holds a lion. a second document from the time of the reign of this prince, from the twenty-sixth year of his reign (782 b.c.), registers the sale of a female slave at the price of ten and a half minæ, and gives the name of the ten witnesses to the transaction.[597] the preservation of this document is the more important inasmuch as a notice in phenician letters is written beside it. hence we may conclude that even in the days of bin-nirar iii. the alphabetic writing was known as far as this point in the east, though the cuneiform alphabet was retained beside it, not only at that time, but down to 100 b.c., and indeed, to all appearance, down to the first century of our reckoning.[598] footnotes: [555] ménant, "ann." pp. 71, 72, 73. [556] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 82. [557] ménant, _loc. cit._ pp. 90, 91. [558] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 84. [559] ménant, p. 86. [560] e. schrader. "k. a. t." s. 66, 67. [561] schrader, _loc. cit._ s. 20, 21. [562] "records of the past," 3, 79. [563] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 89. [564] ménant, p. 93. [565] g. rawlinson, "monarch." 2^2, 94. [566] g. rawlinson, "monarch." 1^2, 340. [567] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 67. [568] g. rawlinson, "monarch." 1^2, 319; 2^2, 97. [569] g. smith, "discov." pp. 91, 141, 252. [570] sayce, "records of the past," pp. 94, 95. [571] according to the inscription of kurkh in the year 856; according to the obelisk 854 b.c. [572] ménant, "ann." p. 107. [573] bin-hidri is read by e. schrader and others. rimmon-hidri by sayce. as the god bin was also called rimmon, the ideogram of the name may be read one way or the other. the books of the kings call the contemporary of ahab, benhadad. for farther information, see p. 247, note. [574] sayce, "records," 3, 100. [575] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. 94 ff., 101, 102; ménant, _loc. cit._ pp. 99, 113. [576] ménant, "ann." p. 115. [577] vol. i. 257. ménant, "babyl." p. 135. [578] inscriptions on the bulls in ménant, "ann." p. 114. [579] e. schrader, _loc. cit._ s. 103; above, p. 251. [580] communication from e. schrader; cf. deuteron. iii. 9. [581] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. 106, 107. [582] cf. above, p. 257. [583] inscription of the obelisk and the bulls in ménant, "ann." 99, 114. [584] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 101. [585] ménant, p. 101. [586] ménant, p. 104. [587] sayce reads guzan. [588] according to a communication from e. schrader, marduk-habal-assur ought to be read, not marduk-habal-iddin. [589] oppert, "memoires de l'acad. d. inscript." 1869, 1, 513; sayce, "records of the past," 5, 42. [590] sayce, "records of the past," 3, 88, 89, 90, 91, 99. [591] "anab." 3, 4, 7-9. [592] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 96. [593] the reading is uncertain. [594] oppert, "empires," pp. 127, 128; g. rawlinson, "monarch." 2^2, p. 115, _n._ 8; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 124. [595] e. schrader, _loc. cit._ s. 111, 112. [596] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 127; cf. g. rawlinson, 2^2, 117. [597] oppert et ménant, "documents juridiques," pp. 146-148. [598] g. smith, "discov." p. 389; oppert et ménant, _loc. cit._ p. 342. end of vol. ii. transcriber's notes: 1. passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2. carat character is used to indicate subscript in this text version. 3. footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in this text version. 4. the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. 5. certain words use oe ligature in the original. 6. obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected. 7. other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. [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,