Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/760

736 736 EGYPT [niSTOBY. and fifth sovereigns of Dynasty XVIII. in his list ; but this may be a confusion due to copyists, as there is other evidence that he placed the conquest of the Shepherds under Amosis, or Aahmes. The expulsion of the foreigners was not so complete as Manetho would have us imagine. Several names in their territory remained Shemite, or the population non-Egyptian, and under Dynasty XIX. the prejudice that appears in Dynasty XVIII. seems almost removed. It must be here noticed that Dr Brugsch has copied a remarkable inscription, from the tomb at Eilethyia of Baba, whom he assigns to the latter part of Dynasty XVII., in which mention is made of a famine of successive years. &quot; A famine having broken out during many years, I gave corn to the town during each famine.&quot; There are but two known instances in history of a famine in Egypt lasting several years, the seven years famine of Joseph and the seven years famine of the Fatimee caliph El-Mustansir. Dr Brugsch has, therefore, argued with high probability that Baba records the famine of Joseph, and that the old tradi tion that Joseph governed Egypt under the Shepherd King Apophis is a true one (cf. supra, p. 735, note 1). To this we shall recur in speaking of the Exodus. (See Brugsch, Hist., 2 ed. 174, segq.) The beginning of Dynasty XVIII. (B.C. 1600-1500?) is marked by two great events, the union of divided Egypt under one head, and the victorious end of the great war with the Shepherds. 1 Aahmes, probably a Theban prince, appears to have secured the supreme rule over the various princes of Egypt, without abolishing their rights, and to have gained Ethiopian support by his marriage with Xefru-ari, daughter of a king of Ethiopia. He then directed his whole power to the final liberation of Egypt. The tomb at Eilethyia of Aahmes son of Abuna, an officer of the Egyptian flotillas, in an inscription relating his services, throws light on the events of this war. He passed his early youth in the fortress of Eilethyia, one of the strong posi tions where the kings of Dynasty XVII. rallied their subjects. In the reign of Aahmes he was made officer of the ship called the &quot; Calf.&quot; Later he went to the flotilla of the north to fight. It was during the siege of the fortress of Avaris. He served in the vessel &quot; liuling in Memphis,&quot; a name no doubt given to commemorate the addition of the ancient capital to the dominions of Aahmes. An engagement took place on the water near Avaris. Subsequently Avaris was taken, and the young officer carried off three captives, whom the king granted him as slaves. This was in the. fifth year of Aahmes ; in the next we read of the conquest of Sharuhan, the Sharuhen of the book of Joshua, in the south-west of Palestine. The memoir then adds that, after having slain the Shepherds of Asia, the king undertook a successful expedition against an Ethiopian country. (See Brugsch, Hist., 1 ed. 80, 81.) This narrative, while generally confirming Manetho s story, corrects it in some particulars. It states that Avaris was taken, not that it capitulated, and indicates a pursuit of the enemy within the territory of Palestine, where they were again conquered in a city which they attempted to hold. The Ethiopian expedition was a reassertion of the Egyptian dominion to the south. Two tablets in the Turii quarries record how, in the twenty-second year of his reign, Aahmes restored the temples which had fallen into decay, 1 The chronology of Dynasty XVIII. is not yet fixed. Manetlio s list is here in a very corrupt state. Certain numbers can be corrected or confirmed by the monuments, and if we provisionally accept the others, we obtain a sum of not greatly over two hundred years for the line, supposing it to end with the accession of Ramses I. It must, however, be remembered that those numbers which are provisionally accepted are manifestly unsafe. The sum may be more nearly deter mined when we know the place of the Shepherd-king Nub, whose reign was 400 years before that of Ramses II. the blocks being removed by bulls under the charge of Phosnicians ? (Fenkhu) (Brugsch, Hist., 2 ed. 173, 174). It may be recollected tbat the Phoenicians appear as skilled smiths and masons in the time of Solomon, and that as early as the Exodus they were already great metal workers. From the time of Aahmes till the close of Dynasty XX. we may reckon the rise, fulness, and decay of the Egyptian Empire. It is a period of abundant monuments, sculptured and painted, and of many papyri, rich in records of the history, manners, and religion of Egypt. The state of the country may be glanced at in this place, where the Shepherd period closes, so as not to break the continuity of the subsequent history. The sudden growth of prosperity at home and power abroad which marks the early reigns of Dynasty XVIII. is truly surprising. The Egypt of Dynasty XA II. is broken up and only slowly reuniting ; that of Dynasty XVIII. is at once solidly bound together, and soon to engage in designs of world-dominion never hinted at in earlier times. These conditions were the result of a great national war, in which the country discovered her hidden force, and was not content to use it only so far as was needful to make a strong Egypt like that of Dynasty XII. Having conquered her foreign rulers at home, she desired to add their native lands to her own dominions. The first effects of these designs were the enrichment of Egypt. In the early reigns of this house the wealth of the subjects as of the king rapidly grew. From the simple monuments of Dynasty XVII. and the first kings of Dynasty XVIIT. there is a sudden advance to richness and splendour. Egypt was, however, becoming a military state. The king is constantly more powerful, and his public works more magnificent ; the subjects, notwithstanding the luxury of individuals, have not that solid princely strength that we admire in those of the Pyramid kings and Dynasty XII. The appearance of the horse under this dynasty is most significant. The beasts of burden, the ox and ass, now yield in importance to the war-horse, and the landed proprietor journeys in his car whose ancestor went afoot staff in hand. Thus the military man succeeds the farmer. The priest is no longer a great man who has assumed sacerdotal functions, but one of a class immensely extended, reaching from the highest dignitaries, one of whom, strengthened by hereditary power, could at last seize the throne, down to the menial class who lived upon the superstitions of the people. To carry on the government there grew side by side with soldiers and priests a vast official body, clever, ambitious, and unscrupu lous, which rapidly on the true bureaucratic principle in volved the administration in an entanglement which must have mainly led to the decline of the Empire. Justice, which was difficult at home, must have been almost impos sible abroad. We now cease to hear of hereditary nomarchs studying the welfare of provinces to which they were attached by ancestral connection. All posts went by the royal favour. The common people fared ill in this age. Their function was to supply soldiers for the army and navy, and at first to take their share in the construction of public works ; their only hope was to rise in the official class. Handicrafts and all labour were beneath a gentleman ; hence no one could rise to his grade but through success at the schools, which were open to every one. and where a boy of talent had his chance of a career (&amp;lt;-f. Brugsch., Hint., 1 ed. 16, 17). Of the administration of provinces and conquered states we know little. Lower Ethiopia had always been ruled as a part of Egypt ; this system was extended southward. At first the eastern states only paid tribute. Ultimately garrisons were placed in Palestine and Phoenicia (Brugsch, Hist., 1 ed. 135). Compared with the Assyrians the