Herodotus (Swayne)/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
EGYPT.
Of all the nine books of Herodotus, the second, which bears the name of the Muse "Euterpe," is incomparably the one of deepest interest to the modern reader, as giving glimpses, such as are found nowhere else but in Scripture, of the infancy of the human race, and as propounding important scientific problems, which can, if ever, only find their solution in remote futurity. It is, moreover, the portion of his work which is most strongly stamped with the characteristics of the author's personality. It must ever be borne in mind that Herodotus is not a historian in the modern sense of the term. He is the representative writer of a class who stand midway between poetical annalists like Homer and critical historians like Thucydides. They wrote their Iliads in prose, making no sharp distinction between truth and fiction. They did not yet look upon the verification of their facts as a duty, but jotted down all that they heard and saw, an instinctive love of truth alone suggesting occasional scepticism as to very extraordinary marvels, so that the modern reader may just observe the dawning of the critical spirit. Predominantly in his Egypt, Herodotus appears as the traveller and archæologist; nor is he fairly afloat on the current of history until he launches himself into the narrative of the Persian invasions of Greece, of the circumstances of which he had more immediate knowledge—if not as an eyewitness, yet from those who had themselves been eyewitnesses.
Egypt has been in all ages the land of wonders, from the time when its "magicians" found their enchantments fail before the mightier Power which was with Moses, to that when Napoleon told his soldiers that from the top of the Pyramids four thousand years looked down on their struggle with the Mamelukes,—and to our own day, when a French engineer repeats the feat of the old native kings and the Greek Ptolemies, in marrying by a canal the Red Sea to the Mediterranean; an achievement which will make the name of Lesseps immortal, if the canal can only be kept clear of sand. The civilisation of Egypt is older than time—or at least, than its records. Her kings were counted wholesale—not by individuals, but by dynasties, of which there were said to have been thirty-one, exclusive of gods and heroes. She was the mother of the arts to Greece, as Greece has been to us. Her monuments are nearly as vast and as seemingly indestructible as the everlasting hills themselves, and the study of her mere remnants seems to present a field as inexhaustible as that of nature. No wonder that Herodotus willingly lingered in this interesting country. He was no holiday traveller, but one all ears and eyes, not likely to let any fact or object escape him through carelessness or want of curiosity.
The Egyptians were wont to boast that they were the oldest people in the world; but our author says that their king Psammetichus once put this to the proof, and decided against them. Two infants were kept carefully apart from human society, their attendants being forbidden to utter a word before them. Under these circumstances women as nurses were out of the question, and they were suckled by goats. [There was indeed a Greek version of the legend, which said that the children were nursed by women—with their tongues cut out.] One day, when about two years old, they came to their keeper, stretching out their hands, and calling "Bekkos! bekkos!" This being Phrygian for "bread," the palm of antiquity was adjudged to the Phrygians. The test was scarcely trustworthy, for probably enough the cry was only an imitation of the bleat of the goats. It has indeed been claimed by etymologists as the Sanscrit root "pac" whence our word "cook" is said to be derived. The Germans, again, recognise in it their own "bakken"=bake.[1]
According to the priests, who were Herodotus's chief informants, the whole country except the district of Thebes, seven days' sail up the Nile from the sea, was originally a swamp. To the truth of this our author was ready to testify, as the whole Delta (called so from the shape of the Greek letter Δ, our D) appeared to him to be "the gift of the river." This formation certainly required time, but he considered that the Nile was so energetic, that in ten thousand years (which is, after all, a very moderate geological period) it might even deposit alluvial soil enough to fill up the Arabian gulf of the Red Sea. The priests appear to have given him very good data for supplementing his own observations on the physical phenomena of the country; and in these details he evinces a patient investigation of facts which would do credit to any age, however scientific. He only becomes fanciful when he begins to speculate on the unknown. With respect to the causes of the annual inundations of the Nile, he could, naturally enough, get no trustworthy information. It struck him as particularly strange that the Nile, unlike other rivers, should begin to rise with the summer solstice, and be in a state of flood for a hundred days afterwards. Certain Greeks who affected a reputation for science endeavoured to account for the phenomenon in three ways. The third, which appeared to Herodotus the least plausible explanation, was, that the Nile was swollen by melting snows, though it flows through the torrid land of the Ethiopians into Egypt—which seemed to him a contradiction. Yet this theory was so near the actual truth, that the inundations are caused by the summer rains in the highlands of Abyssinia and on the equatorial table-land of Africa. That Herodotus had seen an inundation of the river is tolerably certain, from his description of the appearance of the country at such times. He speaks of the towns and villages standing out of the water "like the islands in the Ægean Sea;" a graphic picture, of which modern travellers have recognised the truth. Adopting neither of the theories which had been advanced, Herodotus modestly propounds one of his own, which is curious, but of no scientific value, as resting on false cosmographical data.
As to the sources of the Nile, he says that he never met with but one person who professed to know anything about them. This was the registrar of the treasury of Minerva at Sais; but when he began to talk about two conical hills—"called Krophi and Mophi"—between Syene and Elephantinè (below the cataracts), Herodotus thought he could hardly be quite serious. Between those hills, said his informant, lay the fountains of the Nile, of unfathomable depth. Half the water ran to Egypt, the other half to Ethiopia. Psammetichus had tried to sound them with a rope many thousand fathoms in length, but there were such strong eddies in the water that the bottom of the spring could never be reached. Herodotus himself went up the Nile as far as Elephantinè—that is, did not get beyond the first cataract; and though he learnt much by inquiry as to the country generally, he could throw no additional light on the great question. But a story reached him originally derived from certain Nasamonians—a people inhabiting the edge of the desert—that once on a time certain "wild young men," sons of their chiefs, took it into their heads to draw lots which of them should go and explore the desert of Libya, and try to get farther than any one had gone before. Five of their number set out, well supplied with food and water, and passed first through the inhabited region, then through a country tenanted only by wild beasts, and then entered the desert, taking a direction from east to west. After proceeding for many days over a sandy waste, they came at last to a plain where they found fruit-trees, and began to pluck the fruit. While they were doing so, certain very small men came upon them and took them prisoners. The Nasamonians could not understand them, nor make themselves understood. They were led by them across vast marshes, and at last came to a town where all the inhabitants were black dwarfs like their captors. A great river flowed by the town from west to east, abounding in crocodiles. And all the people in the town were wizards. It was added that the explorers returned in safety from their perilous journey. If the Bushmen now surviving at the Cape, and formerly more extensively spread over Africa, were a black race, which they are not, we might suppose them to be the descendants of the little men spoken of by Herodotus. Their colour may, however, have been modified by the temperate climate of South Africa in the course of long ages. The tribe of Dokos, in the south-west of Abyssinia, are dwarfish, and answer very nearly to Herodotus's description. Herodotus was inclined to identify the Kile with the river flowing by the mysterious city.[2]
It is strange that the oldest geographical problem in the world should be a problem still, though now probably in the course of solution. The nearest approach to the truth appears to have been made by the Alexandrian geographer, Ptolemy, who had heard of certain lakes as the sources of the Nile, and placed them some ten degrees south of the equator. The question slumbered through the middle ages, and one affluent after another was looked upon as the true Nile, till Bruce was for some time supposed to have set the question at rest in the eighteenth century, by the discovery of the source of the Blue River. Quite of late years it was agreed again that the White River was the main branch; and in 1857 Captain Speke, setting out from Zanzibar, discovered the Victoria Lake, which is now the farthest authenticated source in an easterly direction, while Sir Samuel Baker's Albert Lake is the farthest authenticated source in a westerly. Up to this time Speke and his companion Major Grant are the only men who have actually crossed Africa from south-east to north, and as yet the honours of discovery must be supposed to rest with them.
In treating of the wonders of Egypt, Herodotus certainly exaggerates on some points from love of paradox, as when he says that as the Nile differs from all other rivers in its nature, so the Egyptians differ from all other men in their habits, the men doing what is usually considered as women's work, and the women men's work; for in this he is refuted by the Egyptian paintings, which represent each sex as usually engaged in its proper occupation. But a Greek must have been much struck with the comparative freedom of the Egyptian women, so unlike the life of the Hellenic "lady's bower," or the Asiatic harem. Sophocles, in his 'Œdipus at Colonus,' has made a beautiful application of this recorded contrast to the helpful piety of the daughters and the selfish luxury of the sons of the blind hero, which would seem to show that he wrote the play fresh from the perusal of his friend's Egypt.
Our author makes the observation that the Egyptians were the first nation who, holding the soul to be immortal, asserted its migration after death through the whole round of created beings, till it lived again in another man, which occupied a cycle of three thousand years. This doctrine of a "circle of necessity" was held alike by Buddhists, Druids, and—if Josephus may be trusted—by the sect of the Pharisees among the Jews. But this Egyptian doctrine, which is profusely illustrated on the tombs, suffered the wicked only to descend into animals, while the good passed at once into a state of happiness. A striking custom which Herodotus describes would seem to show that to them, as to the Greeks, the future existence was not a cheering prospect.
"In the social banquets of the rich, as soon as the feast is ended, a man carries round a wooden figure of a corpse in its coffin, graven and painted so as to resemble the reality as nearly as possible, from one to two cubits long. And as he shows it to each of the guests, he says, "Look on this, and drink, and be merry; for when thou art dead, such shalt thou be." The "skeleton at the banquet" has pointed many a moral for ancient and modern writers. St Paul may have had it in mind when he quoted as the motto of the Sadducee, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," as well as Shakespeare, when he makes his Hamlet moralise over Yorick's skull—"Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come."
Herodotus considers that the names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt, with the exception of Poseidon (Neptune), Castor and Pollux, Here (Juno), Hestia, Themis, the Graces and the Nereids. All these the Greeks were said to have inherited from the Pelasgians, with the exception of the sea-god Poseidon, with whom they became acquainted through the Libyans. The Egyptians, unlike the Greeks, paid no honour to heroes or demigods; for their god Osiris (who corresponded to Bacchus) appeared on earth only as a manifestation or Avatar of Deity. Amongst the mythological marvels of the Egyptians, Herodotus relates that they accounted cows as sacred to Isis, the moon-goddess, represented with horns, and objected to kill them as food a practice which finds its parallel in India at the present day. The sacredness of animals generally, in Egypt, struck our traveller forcibly. For each species there were certain appointed guardians, who tended and fed them, and the office was hereditary. To kill one of these sacred animals was a capital offence, unless done accidentally, in which case a fine was inflicted; but to kill an ibis or a hawk was death without reprieve. Cats were so much respected that, in case of a fire occurring, the Egyptians would let the house be burnt before their eyes, all their attention being given to saving the cats; which, however, they usually found impossible, as the animals (no doubt in terror at the well-meant efforts of their friends) had a trick of jumping into the flames. If they died, nevertheless, it was thought to be a terrible misfortune. When a cat died a natural death, all the inmates of a house went into mourning by shaving their eyebrows, and they shaved their heads and their whole bodies when a dog died. The dead cats were embalmed, and, their mummies stored in the sacred city of Bubastis; but the dogs were buried in their own cities, as were also the ichneumons. The hawks and shrew-mice were conveyed to Buto, and the ibises to Hermopolis. It would seem by this that the animals about whose funerals so much trouble was taken were more sacred than the rest.[3] The crocodile, of which Herodotus gives a description, perhaps as fairly accurate as could be expected from an ordinary observer, was accounted sacred by some of the Egyptians; for instance, by the people about Thebes, and those about Lake Mœris. In each of these places a tame crocodile was kept, who wore ear-rings (or rather rings in the corresponding holes) of glass or gold, and bracelets on his fore-paws. Every day he had his ration of bread and meat, and when he died he was buried in a consecrated vault. But the people of Elephantinè, so far from canonising these animals, thought them tolerable eating.
Herodotus gives a native receipt for catching crocodiles. Bait a hook with a chine of pork, and let it float to about the middle of the stream. Let a confederate hold a living pig on the bank, and belabour him lustily. The crocodile hears the pig squeak, and, making for him, encounters the pork, which he swallows. When the men on shore have drawn him to land, plug his eyes with mud; after that, it is very easy to kill him. This latter item of the receipt has a strong affinity to an old precept about "putting salt on a bird's tail." A very similar mode of capture (with this exception) is practised by the natives now. The name "crocodiles," as the author observes, is Ionic Greek for "lizard;" the Egyptians themselves calling the animal "champsa."[4] He is somewhat mistaken in his account of the hippopotamus, no specimen of which he appears to have seen. He gives it the hoof of an ox, and the mane and neigh of a horse.
The sacred bird called the phœnix Herodotus confesses he never saw except in pictures. Indeed it was rare in Egypt, for it came but once in five hundred years, when the old phœnix died. According to the pictures, it was like an eagle, with plumage partly red and partly golden. The bird was said to come from Arabia, bringing the body of his father enclosed in a ball of myrrh, that he might bury it in the temple of the Sun. Our author did not seem to be acquainted with that other version of the phœnix fable, according to which it returned from the east after a stated period to burn itself in frankincense, and was again resuscitated. The phœnix was an emblem of the soul and its supposed migrations, and its journey to the east typified the constant aspiration of the soul towards the sun. Its period of migration referred to a solar cycle in the Egyptian calendar. Pliny says that the name was derived from a species of palm in Lower Egypt, which dies down to the root and then is renovated. Ovid makes the bird build its nest on a palm. In hieroglyphic language the palm-bough is the sign of the year.
Amongst other wonders, our author had heard of winged serpents, which flew across from Arabia, and was induced to undertake a journey to the country whence they came, where he says he saw some of their bones. The ibises were said to destroy them as they flew, which caused this bird to be held in great honour by the Egyptians. We are now in possession of the probable key to this enigmatical story, which illustrates both the simple faith and painstaking of our author, and also the manner in which myths grow out of the use of words. When scorpions or snakes appear in large numbers in the houses in Upper Egypt, they are supposed to be brought by the wind, and to all such objects an Arabic word is applied which signifies to fly. Herodotus doubtless saw pictures of a winged serpent attacked by the ibis, but this bird typified the god Osiris in the white robes of his purity, and the winged serpent probably the Evil principle. The ibis, however, is said to destroy snakes. His mention of the harmless horned snakes at Thebes, which were considered sacred, and buried in the temple, may suggest the prolific subject of primeval serpent-worship.
The description which Herodotus gives of the manners and customs of the Egyptians stamps them as a highly civilised people. In the reverence paid by young men to their elders, he considered that they set a good example to the Greeks. In the medical profession they recognised a minute division of labour, some being oculists, others dentists, and so forth.[5] Those who embalmed the dead (the "physicians" of the book of Genesis) formed a profession of themselves. He describes at length three methods of embalming (they had really many more), which were adopted in order to suit the means of their customers, as modern undertakers provide for funerals at different tariffs. Amongst other local peculiarities, Herodotus notices the lotus-eaters of the marsh-lands, who remind us of those described by Homer in the voyage of Ulysses. But these latter—if they are to be identified at all—are to be recognised rather in the lotus-eating tribe whom our author mentions in a subsequent book as existing on the coast of Africa. Their lotus was probably a kind of jujube (Zizyphus napeca). The Egyptian lotus was a kind of water-lily, the centre of whose blossom was dried, crushed, and eaten, as also its round root. The seeds of another water-lily, whose blossoms were like a rose, were also eaten, as well as the lower stems of the byblus or papyrus, whose leaves were used for paper and other purposes. The mosquitoes were as great a nuisance in Egypt formerly as now. Herodotus says that some of the natives, to avoid them, slept on towers exposed to the wind; but in the marshes each man had a net, which served the double purpose of catching fish by day and acting as a mosquito-curtain at night.
For the early history of the country Herodotus had to depend upon his informants, who were usually the priests, especially those of Heliopolis—the Greek name by which he knew the oldest capital of Egypt, Êi-ń-re, the On or Aon of the Hebrew Scriptures—the "City of the Sun."[6] The college of priests there was in fact the university of Egypt; and whatever faith we may place in their historical records, their proficiency in mathematics and astronomy was very considerable indeed. They asserted that the first kings of Egypt were gods, "who dwelt upon earth with men." The last of this divine dynasty was Horus, son of Osiris—whom the Greeks identified with Apollo. The sufferings and death of Osiris were the great mystery of the Egyptian creed. Herodotus had seen his burial-place at Saïs, and knew the mysterious rites with which, under cover of night, these sufferings were commemorated. But he "will by no means speak of them," or even mention the god by name. Either the priests had enjoined secrecy upon him as the price of their information; or perhaps, being himself initiated in the Greek Mysteries, he had a scrupulous reverence for those of Egypt. Osiris was the great principle of Good, who slew his brother Typhon, the representative of Evil; and is pictured in the hieroglyphic paintings as the great judge of the dead. The first king of human race was Men, or Menes, the founder of Memphis, who began a line of three hundred and thirty monarchs (including one queen), whose names were read off to Herodotus from a roll of papyrus. Eighteen were said to be Ethiopians. Of most of these kings the priests professed to know little more than the names; but Mœris, the last of them, left his name to a large artificial lake, or reservoir, near the "City of Crocodiles," from which water was conveyed to all parts of the neighbourhood His successor, Sesostris, is said to have conquered all Asia, and even to have subdued Scythia and Thrace, in Europe, marking the limits of his conquests by pillars—two of which, in Palestine, Herodotus declares that he himself saw.[7] Sesostris, after his return from his conquests, met with, somewhat too warm a welcome from his brother, whom he had left viceroy of Egypt. He invited the hero and his family to a banquet, heaped wood all round the building, and set fire to it. Sesostris only escaped by sacrificing (by the mother's advice) two of his six sons, whose bodies he used to bridge the circle of flame. Having inflicted condign punishment on his brother, he then proceeded to utilise the vast multitudes of captives whom he had brought with him. By the employment of this forced labour he changed the face of Egypt, completely intersecting it with canals, and filling it with public buildings of unparalleled magnificence. The second king after Sesostris bore a Greek name, but must be regarded as a very apocryphal personage—Proteus, who was said to have entertained at his court no less famous a visitor than Helen, the heroine of the Trojan war. For the Egyptian priests had their version, too, of that wondrous Tale. According to them, the Spartan princess was driven by stress of weather to Egypt on her forced elopement with. Paris, while Troy was besieged by the Greeks, in the belief that she was there. King Proteus, when he heard the story, gave Helen refuge, but dismissed Paris at once with disgrace. Herodotus accuses Homer of knowing this legend, which was a more probable version of the story than his own, and suppressing it for poetical purposes, since he speaks of the long wanderings of Helen, and of Menelaus's visit to Egypt. The priests told him that their predecessors had the story from Menelaus himself, who went to Egypt to fetch Helen, when he found, after the capture of Troy, that she was not there. Herodotus himself saw in the sacred precincts at Memphis a temple to "Venus the Foreigner," whom his Greek patriotism at once identified with Helen.
A story told at considerable length by Herodotus of the next king, Bhampsinitus, is highly characteristic, showing that sympathy of the Greek mind for clever rascality which recalls Homer's manifest enjoyment of the wily tricks of Ulysses in the 'Odyssey.' The story of "The Treasury of Bhampsinitus," which has been "borrowed also by the Italian novelists, reads as if it were taken from the 'Arabian Nights.'
King Bhampsinitus, having vast treasure of silver, built for its safe keeping a chamber of hewn stone, one of whose walls formed also the outer wall of his palace. His architect, however, having designs on the treasure, built a stone into the wall, which even one man who knew the secret could easily displace. He did not live long enough to carry out his views, but on his deathbed explained the contrivance to his two sons, for whose sake, he said, he had devised it, that they might live as rich men, since the secret would make them virtual chancellors of the royal exchequer through their lives. After his death, the sons profited by his instructions to remove a considerable sum. The king, when next he came to visit the room, missed his money, finding it standing at a lower level in the vessels. This happened again and again, though the seals and fastenings of the room were as secure as ever. At last he set a man-trap inside. When the thieves next made their usual visit, one of them found himself suddenly caught. Seeing no hope of escape, he called to his brother to come and cut off his head, to prevent his being recognised. The brother obeyed; and, after replacing the stone, made his way home with the head. When the king entered at day-break, he greatly marvelled to see a headless trunk in the gin, while the building seemed still to be fast closed all round. To find out to whom the body belonged, he ordered it to be hung outside the palace-wall, and set a guard to watch, and bring before him any persons they might observe lamenting over it. The mother of the dead man, hearing of this desecration of a corpse that should have been a mummy, told her surviving son that unless he contrived to rescue it, she would go and tell the king that he was the robber. Wearied with her continual reproaches, at last the brother filled some skins with wine, loaded them on asses, and drove them by the place where the guards were watching the dead body. Then he slily untied the necks of some of the skins. The wine of course began to run out, upon which he fell to wailing and beating his head, as if distracted, and not knowing to which donkey he should run first to stanch the wine. This highly amused the guards, who ran eagerly to catch the wine in all the vessels they could lay hands on. Then the driver pretended to get into a passion, and abused them, upon which they did their best to quiet him. At last, appearing to be put in good-humour again by their raillery, he gave them one of the skins to drink. They invited him to help them with the drinking, as they had helped him in putting the skins in order. As the wine went round, all got more and more friendly, till they broached another skin, and at last the guards all got so drunk that they went to sleep on the spot. In the dead of the night the thief took down the body of his brother, laid it upon the asses, and made off, having first remained long enough to shave off the right whiskers of each of the men,—which was considered a deadly insult. When the king heard of this, he was more vexed than ever, and determined to find out the thief at any cost. He bade his daughter keep open house for all comers, and promise to marry the man who would tell her most to her satisfaction the cleverest and wickedest thing he had ever done. If any one told her the story of the robbery, she was to lay hold of him. But the thief was not to be thus outwitted. He procured a dead man's arm, put it under his dress, and went to call on the princess. When she put the question, he answered at once that the wickedest thing he had ever done was cutting off his brother's head in the king's treasury, and the cleverest was making the guards drunk, and carrying off his body. The princess made a grasp at him, but in the darkness he left the arm of the corpse in her hand and fled. But now the king was overwhelmed with astonishment and admiration for the man's cleverness, and made a proclamation of free pardon and a rich reward, if the thief would declare himself. He boldly came forward, and Rhampsinitus gave him his daughter in marriage. "The Egyptians," he said, "are the wisest of men, and thou art the wisest of the Egyptians."
Till the death of Rhampsinitus, Egypt enjoyed prosperity. Cheops, who succeeded him, and who built the Great Pyramid, is said to have shut up all the temples, that his people might do nothing but work for him; and he kept a hundred thousand labouring at a time, who were relieved every three months. It took ten years to make the causeway (of which traces still remain) for the conveyance of stones, and another twenty to build the Pyramid itself. The next kings, Chephren and Mycerinus (Mencheres), likewise built pyramids, but on a smaller scale. The memory of Cheops and Chephren, in consequence of their oppressions, became so odious to the Egyptians, that they would not even mention their names; but upon Mycerinus, though he was just and merciful, there fell the punishment due for their sins. First he lost his only daughter, and then an oracle told him that he had but six years to live. He expostulated with the oracle, saying it was hard that he who was a good and righteous king should die early, while his father and uncle, who were so impious, lived long. The oracle answered—"For that very reason thou must die, for Egypt was destined to suffer ill for one hundred and fifty years, and thou hinderest the doom from being fulfilled." On this Mycerinus, finding it useless to be virtuous, determined to outwit the gods; so he lighted lamps at nightfall, and turned all the nights into days, and enjoyed them, as well as the days, in feasting in. all pleasant places. Thus he lived twelve years in the space of six, making his six years one long day of continuous revel. The story of Mycerinus has been very happily treated in one of Matthew Arnold's earliest poems.[8]
My crime, that rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of youth, self-governed, at the feet of Law,
Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
With contemplation of diviner things.
Crowned with grey hairs he died, and full of sway.
I loved the good he scorned, and hated wrong;
The gods declare my recompense to-day.
I looked for life more lasting, rule more high—
And when six years are measured, lo, I die!"
After him came a blind king named Anysis, during whose reign Egypt was invaded by the Ethiopians, who lorded it over the country for fifty years. He was succeeded by Sethos, a priest of Vulcan, who oppressed the warrior caste, so that they refused to serve him when Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, invaded the country. But a vision in the sanctuary bid him be of good cheer; and when he went out to the frontier with an army of citizens, trusting in divine aid, a number of field-mice came in the night and gnawed the bowstrings, quivers, and shield-straps of the enemy, so that the Egyptians easily defeated them. Such is the dim tradition which, reached the historian of the mysterious destruction of the Assyrian host recorded in the Scriptures. The mouse, according to some interpreters of hieroglyphic language, was the symbol of destruction. Thus far Herodotus had derived his information as to early Egyptian history entirely from the priests. He computed that the reigns of these kings, as given him, would require eleven thousand three hundred and forty years.
A revolution seemed to have occurred after the death of Sethos, by which twelve provincial kings, like those of the Saxon Heptarchy, reigned at once. Their great work was a labyrinth near Lake Mœris, which struck Herodotus as one of the wonders of the world—more wonderful even than the Pyramids themselves. One of the twelve, Psammetichus, at length managed to depose the rest by the aid of Greek mercenaries. His son, Nechos (Pharaoh Necho), is credited by Herodotus with the first attempt to construct the canal to the Red Sea, which was afterwards finished by Darius Hystaspes. The canal, however, was more probably begun by Sesostris (Barneses II.), and there appears to be evidence that it was choked by sand (which is still the difficulty with modern engineers), and reopened many times—by the Ptolemies, for instance, and the Arabs. Necho is mentioned in Scripture as having defeated and slain King Josiah at Megiddo on his way to attack the Assyrians. Herodotus briefly notices the victory, but calls the place Magdolus, after which he says that Necho took the city of Cadytis, supposed to be either Jerusalem or Gaza. In a subsequent expedition, which Herodotus does not mention, he himself was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and lost all his conquests. He was succeeded by his son Psammis, and his grandson Apries (the Pharaoh-Hophra of Jeremiah). The latter had a long and prosperous reign; but failing in an attack on the Greek city of Cyrene, his army revolted from him, and chose Amasis, an officer who had been sent to reason with them, for their king. Apries on this armed his Greek mercenaries, amounting to thirty thousand men, and went to meet the revolted Egyptians. In the battle which ensued he was defeated and taken prisoner by Amasis, who finally gave him up to his former subjects, with whom he was unpopular, and they strangled him. Amasis was a coarse but humorous character, rather proud than otherwise of his low origin. Finding that his subjects despised him for it, he broke up a golden foot-bath, and made of it an image of one of the gods, which the Egyptians proceeded to worship. He then told them what it was made of, adding that "his own fortune had been that of the foot-pan;" thus anticipating the adage of Burns—
The man's the gowd for a' that."
When his courtiers reproved his undignified revels in his hours of relaxation, whereas none could complain of his inattention to business, he met them with the proverb, now common to most languages, that a bow becomes useless if not sometimes unstrung. His habits were certainly open to remark. To find money for his pleasures before he came to the throne, he occasionally took to highway robbery. The oracular shrines were the police-offices of those times, and Amasis, like other thieves, was cited in such cases before the nearest oracle. Some of them would acquit, others find him guilty. When he became king, he honoured the oracles which had detected him very highly, but the others he despised. But he was a great king, in spite of his failings; and Egypt is said to have prospered more under him than under any of his predecessors. One of his laws was, that every man should appear once a-year before the governor of his department, and prove, on pain of death, that he was getting an honest livelihood. Herodotus says that Solon borrowed this law from the Egyptians, and that it was in force at Athens up to his own days. If this be true, it fell into disuse soon after his time, as the Athenians enjoyed a reputation above all nations in the world for "gracefully going idle." We may at least join in his remark, that this ordinance of Amasis was "a most excellent custom," towards which our modern civilisation is making timid approaches. We shall hear of this king again in connection with Polycrates, the despot of Samos.
The account which Herodotus here gives of the kings of Egypt, however interesting and entertaining, must be read with the full understanding that its value in a historical point of view is about the same as that of Livy's popular account of the early kings of Home. He was unacquainted with the Egyptian language, and though the priests may not have purposely imposed upon him, he had to depend on the anecdotes which came to him through the medium of the caste of dragomans who were settled at Memphis. In consequence of this, the consecutiveness and general symmetry of his account only serves to conceal some palpable misstatements. Perhaps the greatest is that which makes the builders of the Pyramids later in time than the builders of the temples and other monuments. Modern investigations have tended to give great weight to the authority of a native chronicler, spoken of with much respect by early Christian writers, but who afterwards fell into disrepute—Manetho, the high priest in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus. His record is utterly fatal to the main facts of the account given by Herodotus. After dynasties of gods and heroes which reigned more than sixteen thousand years, he brings us to the builders of the Pyramids, whom Herodotus places at a late period of his history, perhaps because his Greek informants first became acquainted with the monuments at Memphis itself. He was probably furnished with two distinct lists of kings, both to a great extent mythical, which he took to be separate and successive dynasties. Cheops is almost certainly identical with Menes, the first human king of Herodotus, in whose time was effected the canalisation of the Delta. He is the traditional builder of the Great Pyramid, and Chemmis (the Sun) appears as one of his titles, at once connecting him with the sun-worship. The Pyramids are supposed to have "been built before the time of Abraham, with the Pharaoh of whose times Achthoes of the 11th dynasty has been identified. The name Pharaoh itself continues the title assumed by Cheops, in its meaning of children of the sun."
The Mycerinus of Herodotus is found to resolve himself into two kings, the Mencheres who built the Pyramids, and another much later king, of whom the story of turning night into day is told; a legend which may have originated in the torch-light festival of Osiris and Isis. Sesostris also resolves himself into two kings—Sethos, the great engineer and builder, and Rameses II., the great conqueror whose victories are recorded in the temples at Karnak and Luxor, and whose fallen statue at Luxor is the largest in the world. After him came Menephthes or Amenonoph, who has been identified with the Pharaoh of Exodus. The Shishak of Scripture has been confounded with Sesostris, but he came far too late, and is now identified with one Sesorchis. But the identification of any of these kings is as yet very uncertain.
Amongst other stories in the second book of Herodotus is one not quite presentable to the general reader, about a Greek beauty of doubtful repute, named Rhodopis ("Rosy-cheek"), who had been brought as a slave to Egypt, and who was said to have built one of the Pyramids. Strabo embellishes her history by telling how, when this lady was bathing, an eagle carried off one of her sandals, and deposited it before the king of Egypt's throne, who was so struck by the suggested beauty of the foot which it fitted, that he sent for her and made her his queen. Such is the venerable antiquity of the story of Cinderella.
It is remarkable that Herodotus says nothing about the Great Sphinx, which strikes all modern travellers so forcibly, and which plays so prominent a part in the legends of the Greek Thebes. He must have seen it, but may have thought it (as he did other things in this mysterious country) "too sacred to mention." Its composite form is supposed to be emblematic of Nature, and connected in some way with the inundations of the Nile.
This second book of Herodotus brings the history of Egypt as an independent power to a close. It is an inexhaustibly rich mine of historical, archaeological, and mythological wealth, on whose endless shafts and galleries modern discovery is ever throwing some new light. Formerly the deciphering of the hieroglyphic writing, in which all Egyptian sacred records were kept, was looked upon as all but hopeless, but since the key was supplied by the discovery of the famous Rosetta stone, which bore a Greek translation of its hieroglyphic inscription, scientific patience has been abundantly rewarded. Religion is essentially conservative, and older dialects and characters are continued in her service long after they have been superseded in secular use. We may cite as an example the Church Sclavonic dialect of the north, so valuable to philologists; the Sanscrit of India; the Latin still in use in the Roman Catholic ritual. Even in England we still use archaic characters for the inscriptions in our churches, but this is no doubt partly because of their greater picturesqueness.
- ↑ Englishmen have suggested that it may have been a feeble attempt to call for "breakfast."
- ↑ It was more probably, as Mr Rawlinson and Mr Blakesley both think, the Niger, and the city may have been Timbuctoo.
- ↑ Lane says that the modern Egyptians are remarkably kind to animals. On one occasion a lady buried a favourite dog with all the honours due to a good Mussulman, and houseless cats are fed at the expense of the Cadi of the district.
- ↑ Apparently an attempt to write the name msah, still to be traced in the Arabic temsah.—See Sir G. Wilkinson's note, Rawlinson, ii. 116.
- ↑ "O virgin, daughter of Egypt, in vain shalt thou use many medicines" Jer. xlvi. 11.
- ↑ The "Aven" of Ezek. xxx. 17; translated into the Hebrew Beth-shemesh—"House of the Sun"—Jer. xliii. 13. The silt of the Nile has now covered most of its monuments and buildings, but its massive walls may still be traced, and a solitary granite obelisk, said to be near 4000 years old, marks what was the entrance to the temple of the Sun.
- ↑ There is little doubt that these are the tablets still to be seen near Beyrout.
- ↑ Its moral—if it has any—may be found in Moore's song,—"And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days,
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear."