




                  The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

                                    By

                           The Rev. A. H. Sayce

                    Professor of Assyriology at Oxford

                                  London

                        Rivington, Percical & Co.

                                   1895





CONTENTS


Preface
Chapter I. The Patriarchal Age.
Chapter II. The Age Of Moses.
Chapter III. The Exodus And The Hebrew Settlement In Canaan.
Chapter IV. The Age Of The Israelitish Monarchies.
Chapter V. The Age Of The Ptolemies.
Chapter VI. Herodotos In Egypt.
Chapter VII. In The Steps Of Herodotos.
Chapter VIII. Memphis And The Fayyum.
Appendices.
   Appendix I.
   Appendix II. Biblical Dates.
   Appendix III. The Greek Writers Upon Egypt.
   Appendix IV. Archaeological Excursions In The Delta.
Index.
Footnotes






PREFACE


A few words of preface are needful to justify the addition of another
contribution to the over-abundant mass of literature of which Egypt is the
subject. It is intended to supplement the books already in the hands of
tourists and students, and to put before them just that information which
either is not readily accessible or else forms part of larger and cumbrous
works. The travels of Herodotos in Egypt are followed for the first time
in the light of recent discoveries, and the history of the intercourse
between the Egyptians and the Jews is brought down to the age of the Roman
Empire. As the ordinary histories of Egypt used by travellers end with the
extinction of the native Pharaohs, I have further given a sketch of the
Ptolemaic period. I have moreover specially noted the results of the
recent excavations and discoveries made by the Egypt Exploration Fund and
by Professor Flinders Petrie, at all events where they bear upon the
subject-matter of the book. Those who have not the publications of the
Fund or of Professor Petrie, or who do not care to carry them into Egypt,
will, I believe, be glad to have the essence of them thus extracted in a
convenient shape. Lastly, in the Appendices I have put together
information which the visitor to the Nile often wishes to obtain, but
which he can find in none of his guide-books. The Appendix on the nomes
embodies the results of the latest researches, and the list will therefore
be found to differ here and there from the lists which have been published
elsewhere. Those who desire the assistance of maps should procure the very
handy and complete _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_, published by the Egypt
Exploration Fund (price 3s. 6d.). It makes the addition of maps to this or
any future work on Ancient Egypt superfluous.

Discoveries follow so thickly one upon the other in these days of active
exploration that it is impossible for an author to keep pace with them.
Since my manuscript was ready for the press Dr. Naville, on behalf of the
Egypt Exploration Fund, has practically cleared the magnificent temple of
Queen Hatshepsu at Der el-Bahari, and has discovered beneath it the
unfinished sepulchre in which the queen fondly hoped that her body would
be laid; Professor Petrie has excavated in the desert behind Zawedeh and
opposite Qoft the tombs of barbarous tribes, probably of Libyan origin,
who settled in the valley of the Nile between the fall of the sixth and
the rise of the eleventh dynasty; Mr. de Morgan has disinterred more
jewellery of exquisite workmanship from the tombs of the princesses of the
twelfth dynasty at Dahshur; and Dr. Botti has discovered the site of the
Serapeum at Alexandria, thus obtaining for the first time a point of
importance for determining the topography of the ancient city.

The people whose remains have been found by Professor Petrie buried their
dead in open situated in the central court. But his most interesting
discovery is that of long subterranean passages, once faced with masonry,
and furnished with niches for lamps, where the mysteries of Serapis were
celebrated. At the entrance of one of them pious visitors to the shrine
have scratched their vows on the wall of rock. Those who are interested in
the discovery should consult Dr. Botti's memoir on _L'Acropole
d'Alexandrie et le Serapeum_, presented to the Archaeological Society of
Alexandria, 17th August 1895.

Two or three other recent discoveries may also find mention here. A
Babylonian seal-cylinder now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York
has at last given me a clue to the native home of the Hyksos leaders. This
was in the mountains of Elam, on the eastern frontier of Chaldaea. It was
from these mountains that the Kassi descended upon Babylonia and founded a
dynasty there which lasted for nearly 600 years, and the same movement
which brought them into Babylonia may have sent other bands of them across
Western Asia into Egypt. At all events, the inscription upon the seal
shows that it belonged to a certain Uzi-Sutakh, "the son of the Kassite,"
and "the servant of Burna-buryas," who was the Kassite king of Babylonia
in the age of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. As the name of Sutakh is
preceded by the determinative of divinity, it is clear that we have in it
the name of the Hyksos deity Sutekh.

In a hieroglyphic stela lately discovered at Saqqarah, and now in the
Gizeh Museum, we read of an earlier parallel to the Tyrian Camp at Memphis
seen by Herodotos. We learn from the stela that, in the time of King Ai,
in the closing days of the eighteenth dynasty, there was already a similar
"Camp" or quarter at Memphis which was assigned to the Hittites. The
inscription is further interesting as showing that the authority of Ai was
acknowledged at Memphis, the capital of Northern Egypt, as well as in the
Thebaid.

Lastly, Professor Hommel seems to have found the name of the Zakkur or
Zakkal, the kinsfolk and associates of the Philistines, in a broken
cuneiform text which relates to one of the Kassite kings of Babylonia not
long before the epoch of Khu-n-Aten. Here mention is made not only of the
city of Arka in Phoenicia, but also of the city of Zaqqalu. In Zaqqalu we
must recognise the Zakkur of Egyptian history. I may add that Khar or
Khal, the name given by the Egyptians to the southern portion of
Palestine, is identified by Professor Maspero with the Horites of the Old
Testament.

By way of conclusion, I have only to say that those who wish to read a
detailed account of the manner in which the great colossus of Ramses II.
at Memphis was raised and its companion statue disinterred must refer to
the Paper published by Major Arthur H. Bagnold himself in the
_Proceedings_ of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for June 1888.

A. H. Sayce.

_October 1895._





CHAPTER I. THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.


"Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there." When he entered the country
the civilisation and monarchy of Egypt were already very old. The pyramids
had been built hundreds of years before, and the origin of the Sphinx was
already a mystery. Even the great obelisk of Heliopolis, which is still
the object of an afternoon drive to the tourist at Cairo, had long been
standing in front of the temple of the Sun-god.

The monuments of Babylonia enable us to fix the age to which Abraham
belongs. Arioch of Ellasar has left memorials of himself on the bricks of
Chaldaea, and we now know when he and his Elamite allies were driven out of
Babylonia and the Babylonian states were united into a single monarchy.
This was 2350 B.C.

The united monarchy of Egypt went back to a far earlier date. Menes, its
founder, had been king of This (or Girgeh) in Upper Egypt, and starting
from his ancestral dominions had succeeded in bringing all Egypt under his
rule. But the memory of an earlier time, when the valley of the Nile was
divided into two separate sovereignties, survived to the latest age of the
monarchy. Up to the last the Pharaohs of Egypt called themselves "kings of
the two lands," and wore on their heads the crowns of Upper and Lower
Egypt. The crown of Upper Egypt was a tiara of white linen, that of Lower
Egypt a throne-like head-dress of red. The double crown was a symbol of
the imperial power.

To Menes is ascribed the building of Memphis, the capital of the united
kingdom. He is said to have raised the great <DW18> which Linant de
Bellefonds identifies with that of Kosheish near Kafr el-Ayyat, and
thereby to have diverted the Nile from its ancient channel under the
Libyan plain. On the ground that he thus added to the western bank of the
river his new capital was erected.

Memphis is the Greek form of the old Egyptian Men-nefer or "Good Place."
The final _r_ was dropped in Egyptian pronunciation at an early date, and
thus arose the Hebrew forms of the name, Moph and Noph, which we find in
the Old Testament,(1) while "Memphis" itself--Mimpi in the cuneiform
inscriptions of Assyria--has the same origin. Another name by which it went
in old Egyptian times was Anbu-hez, "the white wall," from the great wall
of brick, covered with white stucco, which surrounded it, and of which
traces still remain on the northern side of the old site. Here a fragment
of the ancient fortification still rises above the mounds of the city; the
wall is many feet thick, and the sun-dried bricks of which it is formed
are bonded together with the stems of palms.

In the midst of the mounds is a large and deep depression, which is filled
with water during the greater part of the year. It marks the site of the
sacred lake, which was attached to every Egyptian temple, and in which the
priests bathed themselves and washed the vessels of the sanctuary. Here,
not long ago, lay the huge colossus of limestone which represented Ramses
II. of the nineteenth dynasty, and had been presented by the Egyptian
Khedive to the British Government. But it was too heavy and unwieldy for
modern engineers to carry across the sea, and it was therefore left lying
with its face prone in the mud and water of the ancient lake, a prey to
the first comer who needed a quarry of stone. It was not until after the
English occupation of Egypt that it was lifted out of its ignoble position
by Major Bagnold and placed securely in a wooden shed. While it was being
raised another colossus of the same Pharaoh, of smaller size but of better
workmanship, was discovered, and lifted beyond the reach of the
inundation.

The two statues once stood before the temple of the god Ptah, whom the
Greeks identified with their own deity Hephaestos, for no better reason
than the similarity of name. The temple of Ptah was coeval with the city
of Memphis itself. When Menes founded Memphis, he founded the temple at
the same time. It was the centre and glory of the city, which was placed
under the protection of its god. Pharaoh after Pharaoh adorned and
enlarged it, and its priests formed one of the most powerful organisations
in the kingdom.

The temple of Ptah, the Creator, gave to Memphis its sacred name. This was
Ha-ka-Ptah, "the house of the double (or spiritual appearance) of Ptah,"
in which Dr. Brugsch sees the original of the Greek Aigyptos.

But the glories of the temple of Ptah have long since passed away. The
worship of its god ceased for ever when Theodosius, the Roman Emperor,
closed its gates, and forbade any other religion save the Christian to be
henceforth publicly professed in the empire. Soon afterwards came the
Mohammedan conquest of Egypt. Memphis was deserted; and the sculptured
stones of the ancient shrine served to build the palaces and mosques of
the new lords of the country. Fostat and Cairo were built out of the
spoils of the temple of Ptah. But the work of destruction took long to
accomplish. As late as the twelfth century, the Arabic writer 'Abd
el-Latif describes the marvellous relics of the past which still existed
on the site of Memphis. Colossal statues, the bases of gigantic columns, a
chapel formed of a single block of stone and called "the green
chamber"--such were some of the wonders of ancient art which the traveller
was forced to admire.

The history of Egypt, as we have seen, begins with the record of an
engineering feat of the highest magnitude. It is a fitting commencement
for the history of a country which has been wrested by man from the waters
of the Nile, and whose existence even now is dependent on the successful
efforts of the engineer. Beyond this single record, the history of Menes
and his immediate successors is virtually a blank. No dated monuments of
the first dynasty have as yet been discovered. It may be, as many
Egyptologists think, that the Sphinx is older than Menes himself; but if
so, that strange image, carved out of a rock which may once have jutted
into the stream of the Nile, still keeps the mystery of its origin locked
up in its breast. We know that it was already there in the days of
Khephren of the fourth dynasty; but beyond that we know nothing.

Of the second dynasty a dated record still survives. Almost the first gift
received by the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was the lintel-stone of an
ancient Egyptian tomb, brought from Saqqarah, the necropolis of Memphis,
by Dr. Greaves at the end of the seventeenth century. When, more than a
century later, the hieroglyphics upon it came to be read, it was found
that it had belonged to the sepulchre of a certain Sheri who had been the
"prophet" of the two Pharaohs Send and Per-ab-sen. Of Per-ab-sen no other
record remains, but the name of Send had long been known as that of a king
of the second dynasty.

The rest of Sheri's tomb, so far as it has been preserved, is now in the
Gizeh Museum. Years after the inscription on the fragment at Oxford had
been deciphered, the hinder portion of the tomb was discovered by
Mariette. Like the lintel-stone in the Ashmolean Museum, it is adorned
with sculptures and hieroglyphics. Already, we learn from it, the
hieroglyphic system of writing was complete, the characters being used not
only to denote ideas and express syllables, but alphabetically as well.
The name of Send himself is spelt in the letters of the alphabet. The art
of the monument, though not equal to that which prevailed a few
generations later, is already advanced, while the texts show that the
religion and organisation of the empire were already old. In the age of
the second dynasty, at all events, we are far removed from the beginnings
of Egyptian civilisation.

With Snefru, the first king of the fourth dynasty, or, according to
another reckoning, the last king of the third, we enter upon the
monumental history of Egypt. Snefru's monuments are to be found, not only
in Egypt, but also in the deserts of Sinai. There the mines of copper and
malachite were worked for him, and an Egyptian garrison kept guard upon
the Bedouin tribes. In Egypt, as has now been definitely proved by
Professor Petrie's excavations, he built the pyramid of Medum, one of the
largest and most striking of the pyramids. Around it were ranged the tombs
of his nobles and priests, from which have come some of the most beautiful
works of art in the Gizeh Museum.

The painted limestone statues of Ra-nefer and his wife Nefert, for
instance, are among the finest existing specimens of ancient Egyptian
workmanship. They are clearly life-like portraits, executed with a
delicacy and finish which might well excite the envy of a modern artist.
The character, and even the antecedents of the husband and wife, breathe
through their features. While in the one we can see the strong will and
solid common-sense of the self-made man, in the other can be traced the
culture and refinement of a royal princess.

The pyramids of Gizeh are the imperishable record of the fourth dynasty.
Khufu, Khaf-Ra and Men-ka-Ra, the Kheops, Khephren and Mykerinos of
Herodotos, were the builders of the three vast sepulchres which, by their
size and nearness to Cairo, have so long been an object of pilgrimage to
the traveller. The huge granite blocks of the Great Pyramid of Khufu have
been cut and fitted together with a marvellous exactitude. Professor
Petrie found that the joints of the casing-stones, with an area of some
thirty-five square feet each, were not only worked with an accuracy equal
to that of the modern optician, but were even cemented throughout. "Though
the stones were brought as close as 1/500 inch, or, in fact, into contact,
and the mean opening of the joint was 1/50 inch, yet the builders managed
to fill the joint with cement, despite the great area of it and the weight
of the stone to be moved--some sixteen tons. To merely place such stones in
exact contact at the sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement
in the joints seems almost impossible."(2)

Professor Petrie believes that the stones were cut with tubular drills
fitted with jewel points--a mode of cutting stone which it was left to the
nineteenth century to re-discover. The lines marked upon the stone by the
drills can still be observed, and there is evidence that not only the tool
but the stone also was rotated. The great pressure needed for driving the
drills and saws with the requisite rapidity through the blocks of granite
and diorite is