CHAPTER II THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND SEMITIC EMPIRES Fifty years ago what we knew about the ancient empires, before Greece and Rome became great, was derived almost entirely from the Hebrew scriptures and from records compiled after the 1. The • year 500 B.C. But during the last fifty years a Records. number of ancient monuments and tombs have been excavated, revealing ancient inscriptions ; and much pro- gress has been made in the art of deciphering these records. Besides these actual graven records, the excavations have pro- vided an immense amount of material from which archaeologists are able to draw conclusions; sometimes with certainty, but sometimes only in the nature of plausible guesses, which cannot be wholly relied on without further evidence. Still, every year produces something fresh. Two generations have added greatly to our knowledge, and we are on the way to learn much more. On the whole it is rather surprising to find how far the new evidence confirms the old authorities. As concerns Egypt, the main authorities were the legends collected by the Greek Herodotus in the fifth century B.C., and 2. Egypt: the tables of the learned Egyptian Manetho com- Manetho. piled from the priests' records at a later date. These begin Egyptian history with Menes, the first king of all Egypt, the founder of what is called the First Dynasty. There were twenty-six dynasties in succession, ending with King Psammetichus in 664 B.C. From that time, the rulers of Egypt are not included in the 'Dynastic' list, and the Egyptian Empire came to an end with the conquest of Egypt by the Persian King Cambyses in 525 B.C. According to the pre- 12
