Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/58

 handicraft employment was forbidden, agricultural labours were enjoined. The monuments exhibit officers with recruiting parties, soldiers engaged in gymnastic exercises, and in the battle pieces, which are extremely spirited, all the arts of offensive and defensive war practised by the Egyptians are represented. The war-caste was necessarily a very important element in a state which was frequently engaged in distant conquests, and had a wide extent of territory to defend. Yet until the reigns of Sethos, when the priests invaded its privileges, and of Psammetichus, when the king encroached upon them, we find no trace of mutiny or civil war in Egypt, — a proof that the Calasirians and Hermotybians were not only well disciplined, but also, in the main, contented with their lot.

The History of Egypt is properly arranged under five eras.

1. Egypt under its native rulers — the Pharaonic Era. Its commencement is unknown: it closes with the conquest of the land by Cambyses in B.C. 625.

2. The Persian Era, from B.C. 625, to the Macedonian invasion, B.C. 332.

3. The Macedonian or Hellenic Era. This period is computed either from the foundation of Alexandria, in B.C. 332, or from B.C. 323, when Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, converted the satrapy oi Egypt into an hereditary kingdom. This period extends to the death of Cleopatra, in B.C. 30.

4. The Roman Era, from the surrender of Alexandria to Augustus, in B.C. 30, to the capture of that city by the Khalif Omar in A.D. 640.

5. The Mahonunedan Era, from A.D. 640 to the present time.

The last of these periods belongs to modern history, and does not come within the scope of this work. The first of them must be very briefly treated, partly because it involves questions which it would demand a volume to discuss, and partly because Egypt came into the field of classical history through its relations with the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. For complete information the student of the Pharaonic era must consult the larger works of Denon, Young, Champollion, Rosellini, Heeren, Wilkinson, Bunsen and Lepsius; or the very lucid abstract of this period in Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, which, indeed, contains all that the general reader can require.

Authorities. — The original records of Egypt were kept with no ordinary care, and were very various in kind, sculpture, symbol, writing, all contributing to their contents. Herodotus (ii. 72 — 82 Theophrastus (ap, Porphyr, de Abstinent. ii. 5), Cicero (de Repub. iii. 8) concur in describing the Egyptians as the most learned and accurate of mankind in whatsoever concerned their native annals. The priests, Diodorus (i. 44) assures us, had transmitted in unbroken succession written descriptions of all their kings — their physical powers and disposition, and their personal exploits. The antiquity of writing in Egypt is no longer a subject of dispute. Lepsius (Book of the Dead, Leipzig, 1842, Pref. p. 17) found on monuments as early as the 12th dynasty, the hieroglyphic sign of the papyrus; and on the 4th that of the stylus and inkstand. The Egyptians themselves also observed the distinction between the dry pontifical chronicle and mythical and heroical narratives couched in poetry and song. To this mass of written documents are to be added the sculptured monuments themselves, the tombs, obelisks, and temple walls, whose paintings and inscriptions have been partially decyphered by modern scholars, and are found generally to correspond with the written lists of kings compiled, in the first instance, by the native historian Manetho. Egyptian history, however, in the modern acceptation of the word, began after the establishment of the Greek sovereignty of Egypt. The natives, with the natural pride of a once ruling but now subject race, were eager to impart to their Hellenic masters more correct notions of their history and religion than could be obtained either from the relations of Greek travellers, such as Thales and Solop, or from the narratives of Hecataeus, Democritus, and Herodotus. Of Manetho, of Sextus Julius Africanus, from whose chronicon, in five books, Eusebius derived a considerable portion of his own chronicon, of Georgius the Syncellus, of Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian mathematician, who treated largely of Egyptian chronology, accounts have been given in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, and to its columns we must refer for the bibliography of Egyptian history. Lastly, we must point out the extreme value of the Hebrew scriptures and of Josephus among the records of the Nile-valley. The remote antiquity of Egyptian annals is not essentially an objection to their credibility. The Syncellus assigns 3555 years as the duration of Manetho's thirty dynasties. These being Egyptian years, are equivalent to 3553 Julian years, and, added to 339 B.C. when the thirtieth dynasty expired, give 3892 B.C. as the commencement of the reign of Menes, the founder of the monarchy. But although Bunsen and other distinguished Egyptologers are disposed to assign an historical personality to Menes, his very name, as the name of an individual man, seems suspicions. It too nearly resembles the Menu of the Indians, the Minyas and Minos of the Greeks, the Menerfa of the Etruscans, and the Mannus of the Germans — in all which languages the name is connected with a root — Man — signifying "to think and speak" (see Quarterly Review, vol. 78, p. 149) — to be accepted implicitly as a personal designation.

The Pharaonic era of Egyptian history may be divided into three portions — the Old, the Middle, and the New monarchy. The first extends from the foundation of the kingdom in B.C. 3892 to the invasion of the Hyksos. The second from the conquest of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos and the establishment of an independent kingdom in the Thebaid, to the expulsion of the Hyksos. The third from the re-establishment of the native monarchy by Amosis to the final conquest by Cambyses in B.C. 525. (Kenrick, Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 110.)

(1.) The Old Monarchy, The chronology of this and the succeeding division of the Egyptian monarchy is beset with, at present, insurmountable difficulties; since, in the first place, there are no synchronisms in the annals of other countries to guide the inquirer, and in the next, we know not whether the dynasties in Manetho should be taken as a series, or whether he enumerates contemporaneous families of kings, some of whom reigned, at the same time, at Memphis, and others at Sais, 