E. Berkley

“ It was here that the pyramids of Ghizeh rose in their stupendous majesty. Not far off a huge block of limestone rock, bearing probably some accidental resemblance to an animal at rest, [11] was transformed by the skill of the royal architect into the colossal image of a mysterious being—a lion with the head of a man wearing the crown and insignia of an Egyptian monarch—symbol of strength, intellect, and royal dignity. ”

“ Never, indeed, were the records of any sovereign’s life and victories so blazoned abroad as those of King Rameses; the walls of the temples in Egypt and in Nubia are covered with inscriptions, paintings, and sculptures belonging to this reign. One while we see him in what appears most inglorious warfare—trampling down a crowd of negroes, who are represented as pigmies, and over whom he is driving his chariot of war. Some have escaped, and are flying in hot haste towards their homes, represented by the little huts like bee-hives, such as are still common in Africa. ”

“ Thothmes addressed his army, and told them of the information he had just received concerning the position of the enemy, who had said, ‘I will withstand the King of Egypt at Megiddo.’ ‘And now,’ said the king, ‘tell me the way by which we shall go to break into the city.’ The army with one accord entreated to be led by any way but that which wound along by the Jordan. ‘It has been told us,’ they said, ‘that the foe lies there in ambush, and the way is impassable for a great host; one horse cannot stand there beside another, nor can one man find room by another. ”

“ The lowly ones are like unto the great. They all unite to say: “Come and let us celebrate the heavenly and the earthly festivals!” The people of the marsh land bring lilies, and from Pshenhor come the crimson-tinted flowers of the pools. The maidens of the “conqueror’s city” are adorned as for a day of festivity. They stand at the doors, and their hands are filled with flowers and garlands on the morning of the day when King Rameses Meri-amen, the war-god upon earth, makes his entry. All flock together, neighbour with neighbour; each man bringing his petition. ”

“ I myself, I myself am come here to build thy temple near to that of Unnefer, [48] the eternal king.’
Rameses proceeds to tell of all his gifts and rich endowments, and then addresses his father thus:—
‘Thou hast entered into the realm of heaven. Thou art in the company of Ra. Thou art united with the moon and stars. Thou restest in the deep like those who dwell with Unnefer the eternal king. When the sun ariseth thou dost behold its splendour: when he sinketh down to rest, thou art in his train. Thou enterest within the secret house, and remainest in the company of the gods. ”

“ Seti re-entered Egypt in triumph, laden with rich spoil; he was greeted with acclamations, and welcomed with peaceful offerings of fragrant flowers, songs of victory, and shouts of exultation. ‘Thou hast triumphed over thy foes, and hast quenched the fury of thy heart. Ra himself has established thy boundaries. His hand has protected thee when thy battle-axe was raised aloft above the heads of thine enemies ”

“ Cambyses heard so much from him of the beauty of the daughter of Amasis, that he desired to have her for his wife. Amasis, unwilling to send his own daughter, substituted the daughter of his predecessor Apries. Cambyses, on discovering the fraud, was so enraged that he undertook the invasion of Egypt to punish the perfidy of its king. Cambyses certainly was not the man to wait for a pretext, whether the story be true or not. The narratives of Herodotus are by no means to be relied on; all that he relates as an eye-witness is of the utmost value. ”

“ Four miles off are tombs and rock-temples excavated in the hill-side, but often entirely blocked up by sand. Wherever the new worship was portrayed, the sun’s disk is represented above, with long rays reaching downwards, and each ending in a hand—the sign of divine protection; the hand often holds the symbol of life before the king.
The family life of Khu-en-aten is depicted more than once. In one group he is seen with his queen Nefer-tai and their young daughters, distributing gifts of honour at some festival. ”

“ Usertesen sent a messenger to the land of the Tennu, laden with many royal gifts and intrusted with a mandate drawn up in his father’s name. ‘Thou hast passed through the lands,’ writes the king, ‘going from country to country as thy heart bade thee. Behold what thou hast done thou hast done. Thou shalt not be called to account for what thou hast said in the assembly of young men, nor for the business that thou didst devise. If thou comest to Egypt, a house shall be prepared for thee. If thou dost homage to Pharaoh, thou shalt be numbered amongst the king’s councillors.... ”

“ The latter years of Amenemhat’s reign flowed tranquilly by. ‘The land had rest’ from the warfare of centuries; and the sovereigns applied themselves to restoring the temples of the gods which had been neglected during the troublous times through which Egypt had passed. Amenemhat laid the foundation of the Great Temple at Thebes, whose colossal ruins still excite the wonder of the traveller at Karnak. ”

“ Sweet song by the women of the school of Memphis resounds; joy is in every heart. All are as one to celebrate the praises of this god—even of King Rameses Meri-amen, the war-god of the world.’
In the early part of his reign, Rameses was engaged in more than one warlike enterprise, but none ever created so much excitement, or so fascinated the popular imagination as that of the first campaign by the Orontes at Kadesh, which was celebrated with such true poetic licence in Pentaur’s epic song. ”

“ In front of the entrance stand four colossal statues of the king seated on his throne, each of which is 66 feet in height. The face is grandly represented; a calm, haughty repose marks the features, and the placid, if not scornful, smile so characteristic of the king rests upon his lips—accustomed to speak in accents of command from early childhood and on to extreme old age. Close by is a smaller temple erected by queen Nefertari, the loved wife of his early manhood, in honour of her lord. ”

“ Seti again celebrated a triumph, and dedicated his spoil to Amen-Ra, together with the prisoners, whom he gave to the service of the temple, both as men and women servants. ‘The kings of the nations that did not know Egypt,’ so they sang on the occasion, ‘are brought by Pharaoh. They magnify his mighty deeds, saying: “Hail to thee, King of Egypt! Mighty is thy name. Happy is the people that is subject to thy will, but he who oversteppeth thy boundaries shall appear led in chains as a prisoner. ”

“ Neither gold nor silver, cedar wood or precious stones, need be spared now when all that the world could offer of rich and rare was flowing in a constant stream to add to the ‘treasures in Egypt.’ Special mention is made, amongst countless other gifts, of a beautiful harp of silver and gold and precious stones, to sing the praises of Amen upon his splendid festival days. ”

“ One mighty statue lies prostrate—a colossal figure of Rameses ii., erected by himself in front of the temple of Ptah. It is lying on its face in a broad ditch, deserted and alone, save when some wandering Arab passes by, or cattle come to drink of the water which, for most part of the year, fills the trench and submerges the gigantic figure—
Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. ”

“ Here, too, is a city—Western Thebes [57] —and its streets contain a population vaster far than that [Pg 188] upon the other side. But all is silent here; no man buys or sells or joins in festive mirth. It is the City of the Dead. Here lie in countless numbers the embalmed bodies of those who have passed away generation after generation: kings and priests—men, women, children—the freeman and the slave. The hills encircling the plain are pierced and honeycombed in all directions with passages and tombs. ”

“ Shafts are sunk, false passages that lead nowhere are constructed. Everything is done that human ingenuity can suggest, if only the body hidden there might never be seen or handled again. [59] [Pg 189] Nor is the silent city of the dead without its stately palaces and temples. The two colossal twin statues of Amenhotep III. sit there upon the plain, and behind them is his magnificent temple. A little farther is the Ramesseum, a great temple erected by Rameses ‘to his name,’ and to the memory of his ancestors, marvellous for size and splendour. ”

“ In the face of the limestone cliff to the north-west arises the stately terraced temple of Queen Hatasu, and not far off is the narrow gorge leading to the desolate valley of the ‘tombs of the kings.’
The priests attached to the service of these temples must have lived in the neighbourhood and kept up intercourse with the world outside, and in Western Thebes were the dwellings of all those whose business was with the bodies of the dead,—of those who first opened the corpse, who were reckoned ceremonially unclean, and of those who skilfully embalmed and bandaged it afterwards. ”

“ Despise not another who may be as thou once wast; be towards him as towards thine equal.’
‘With the courage that knowledge gives, discuss with the ignorant as with the learned. Good words shine more than the emerald, which the hand of the slave finds on the pebbles.’
‘He who obeys not does really nothing; he sees knowledge in ignorance, virtue in vices; he commits daily and boldly all sort of crimes, and lives as if he was dead. ”

“ No man in the kingdom was more honoured than the artist, the man ‘of enlightened spirit and skilfully working hand.’ The office of ‘architect to Pharaoh’ [25] was sometimes held by sons and grandsons of the sovereign. There is a remarkable account of a great noble, Mentuhotep, who was a judge and learned in the law, a priest and a warrior. It is recorded of him that, as chief architect of the king, he promoted the worship of the gods, and instructed the inhabitants of the country according to the best of his knowledge, as God had commanded to be done. ”

“ We may picture to ourselves the active life and gay animation that reigned in the streets of the mighty city that had grown up around the great temples of Amen, or, on the broad waters of the stream, the scene of constant traffic, where boats laden with merchandise, fishing vessels, and gay-looking pleasure-boats went to and fro in ceaseless motion. ”

“ The people might be said to have ‘dwelt alone.’ The position of the land was isolated and secluded, its people had an innate dislike of the sea, and possessed no sea-going ships; they were perfectly content within the bounds of their own luxuriant domains, and knew and cared very little about the world that lay beyond. The frontiers were well guarded and no foe had crossed them, nor had any vision of conquest or wide-spread empire arisen to dazzle the imagination of the early kings. ”

“ The Egyptians, with their strong turn for natural history, were much interested by the novelties they beheld around them, the unfamiliar plants and trees, the strange birds and animals not known in Egypt. All went well. Gifts were exchanged, and the natives promised to acknowledge the supremacy of Egypt, and to send an annual tribute thither. The king of the country appeared on the scene accompanied, say the hieroglyphs, ‘by his enormously fat wife ... an ass serves the fat wife to ride on.’ This lady, the queen of the fairyland of Egyptian fancy, is in truth a painful object to behold ”

“ After their expulsion it was neglected, nor did it come again into prominence until the days of Rameses, who almost rebuilt it, and under whom it became one of the most magnificent of the great cities of Egypt. It was known as Pa-Ramessu, the ‘city of Rameses,’ and we are fortunate in possessing a description of it by an Egyptian writer, written apparently in prospect of the king’s triumphal entry: ‘I came to the city of Rameses Meri-amen. Beautiful is she exceedingly. Thebes itself is not comparable unto her—the secret of happiness is here. ”

“ The coming of the Hyksos had wrought a great change, and had broken down the barriers of isolation. And the mighty wave of national energy, which, gathering strength as it rose, swept away the foe, did not thus [Pg 106] spend all its force. A longing arose for retribution, conquest, empire; the avenging campaign of Thothmes i. had stimulated rather than satisfied a national craving for glory and for wealth. The Pharaohs now emerge from the seclusion of the valley of the Nile, and enter that blood-stained arena—the battle-field of the nations—the Syrian and Mesopotamian lands. ”

“ This is only what might be expected; for the symbolism of any religion is apt to assume an unmeaning and often a grotesque appearance in the eyes of men professing another faith, and no religion was ever so pervaded by symbolism as that of ancient Egypt. Symbols are not, in any sense, works of art ”

“ The supremacy of the Egyptian crown may thus be said to have been acknowledged in some sort over the ‘known world;’ for the Egyptian horizon did not extend beyond the Mediterranean Sea, the Euphrates, and the range of Mount Taurus in Armenia. ‘I have placed the boundaries of Egypt at the horizon,’ said Thothmes iii., ‘and I have set Egypt at the head of all nations, because its people are united with me in the worship of Amen.’
These Asiatic campaigns were often renewed during this long reign; thirteen or fourteen such are recorded. ”