G. Maspero

“ The walls of thy tomb are strong, thou hast planted trees at the edge of thy pond, thy soul reposes beneath them and drinks the water; follow that which seemeth good to thee as long as thou art on earth, and give bread to him who is without land, that thou mayest be well spoken of for evermore. Think upon the gods who have lived long ago: their meat offerings fall in pieces as if they had been torn by a panther, their loaves are defiled with dust, their statues no longer stand upright within the temple of Râ, their followers beg for alms! ”

“ Phtah, Hâpi, Khnûmû, Râ,—all the gods, in fact,—were blended with each other, and formed but one deity—a unique existence, multiple in his names, and mighty according to the importance of the city in which he was worshipped. Hence Amon, lord of the capital and patron of the dynasty, having more partisans, enjoyed more respect, and, in a word, felt himself possessed of more claims to be the sole god of Egypt than his brethren, who could not claim so many worshippers. He did not at the outset arrogate to himself the same empire over the dead as he exercised over the living ”

“ Judah answered with yet fiercer words; then Sheba, a chief of the Benjamites, losing patience, blew a trumpet, and went off crying: “We have no portion in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, O Israel.” If these words had produced an echo among the central and northern tribes, a schism would have been inevitable: some approved of them, while others took no action, and since Judah showed no disposition to put its military forces into movement, the king had once again to trust to Joab and the Philistine guards to repress the sedition. ”

“ The devout Hebrews who had come together from far and near returned to their respective tribes filled with admiration,** and their limited knowledge of art doubtless led them to consider their temple as unique in the world; in fact, it presented nothing remarkable either in proportion, arrangement, or in the variety and richness of its ornamentation and furniture. Compared with the magnificent monuments of Egypt and Chaldæa, the work of Solomon was what the Hebrew kingdom appears to us among the empires of the ancient world—a little temple suited to a little people. ”

“ We must look, not to the royal studios, but to the workshops connected with the necropolis, if we want to find statues of half life-size displaying intelligent workmanship, all of which we might be tempted to refer to the XVIIIth dynasty if the inscriptions upon them did not fix their date some two or three centuries later. An example of them may be seen at Turin in the kneeling scribe embracing a ram-headed altar: the face is youthful, and has an expression at once so gentle and intelligent that we are constrained to overlook the imperfections in the bust and legs of the figure. ”

“ Wherever she went she left records of her passage behind her, cutting her way through mountains, quarrying a pathway through the solid rock, making broad highways for herself, bringing rebellious tribes beneath her yoke, and raising tumuli to mark the tombs of such of her satraps as fell beneath the blows of the enemy. She built Ecbatana in Media, Semiramocarta on Lake Van in Armenia, and Tarsus in Cilicia; then, having reached the confines of Syria, she crossed the isthmus, and conquered Egypt and Ethiopia. ”

“ When once he had realised, at the time of the capture of Jerusalem, that God had chosen him to be the champion of Israel, he spared no labour to accomplish the task which the Divine favour had assigned to him. He attacked one after the other the peoples who had encroached upon his domain, Moab being the first to feel the force of his arm. He extended his possessions at the expense of Gilead, and the fertile provinces opposite Jericho fell to his sword. These territories were in dangerous proximity to Jerusalem, and David doubtless realised the peril of their independence. ”

“ As long as the campaigns of the Pharaohs had been confined to the Nile valley and the Oases, Thebes had been the natural centre of the kingdom; placed almost exactly between the Mediterranean and the southern frontier, it had been both the national arsenal and the treasure-house to which all foreign wealth had found its way from the Persian Gulf to the Sahara, and from the coasts of Asia Minor to the equatorial swamps. The cities of the Delta, lying on the frontier of those peoples with whom Egypt now held but little intercourse, possessed neither the authority nor the resources of Thebes ”

“ A colleague of his, now in the Berlin Museum, still maintains possession of his official baton, and is arrayed in his striped petticoat, his bracelets and gorget of gold. A priest in the Louvre holds before him, grasped by both hands, the insignia of Amon-Ra—a ram’s head, surmounted by the solar disk, and inserted on the top of a thick handle; another, who has been relegated to Turin, appears to be placed between two long staves, each surmounted by an idol, and, to judge from his attitude, seems to have no small idea of his own beauty and importance. ”

“ It was by dint of fighting her neighbours again and again, without a single day’s respite, that Rome succeeded in forging the weapons with which she was to conquer the world; and any one who, repelled by their tedious sameness, neglected to follow the history of her early struggles, would find great difficulty in understanding how it came about that a city which had taken centuries to subjugate her immediate neighbours should afterwards overcome all the states on the Mediterranean seaboard with such magnificent ease. ”

“ If we were to accept implicitly all that is recorded of the Assyrian exploits in Naîri or the Taurus, we should be led to believe that for at least half a century the valleys of the Upper Tigris and Middle Euphrates were transformed into a desert; each time, however, that they are subsequently mentioned on the occasion of some fresh expedition, they appear once more covered with thriving cities and a vigorous population, whose generals offer an obstinate resistance to the invaders. We are, therefore, forced to admit that the majority of these expeditions must be regarded as mere raids. ”

“ Merodach-nadin-akhi, who was at this time reigning in Chaldæa, was like his ancestor Nebuchadrezzar I., a brave and warlike sovereign: he appears at first to have given way under the blow thus dealt him, and to have acknowledged the suzerainty of his rival, who thereupon assumed the title of Lord of the four Houses of the World, and united under a single empire the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. ”

“ Till what time, O lord of Babylon, wilt thou remain in hostile regions?—Let thy heart be softened, and make Babylon joyful,—and let thy face be turned toward Eshaggil which thou lovest!’” Merodach gave ear to the plaint of his servant: he answered him graciously and promised his aid. Namar, united as it had been with Chaldæa for centuries, did not readily become accustomed to its new masters. ”

“ Jeroboam adopted a plan which while safeguarding the interests of his treasury, prevented his becoming unpopular with his own subjects; as he was unable to have a temple for himself alone, he chose two out of the most venerated ancient sanctuaries, that of Dan for the northern tribes, and that of Bethel, on the Judæan frontier, for the tribes of the east and centre. He made two calves of gold, one for each place, and said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” ”

“ The fusion of Râ and Amon, and the predominance of the solar idea which arose from it, forced the theologians to examine more closely these inconsistent notions, and to eliminate from them anything which might be out of harmony with the new views. The devout servant of Amon, desirous of keeping in constant touch with his god both here and in the other would, could not imagine a happier future for his soul than in its going forth in the fulness of light by day, and taking refuge by night on the very bark which carried the object of his worship through the thick darkness of, Hades. ”

“ Abner therefore installed Ishbaal at Mahanaim, in the heart of the country of Gilead. The house of Jacob, including the tribe of Benjamin, acknowledged him as king, but Judah held aloof. It had adopted the same policy at the beginning of the previous reign, yet its earlier isolation had not prevented it from afterwards throwing in its lot with the rest of the nation. But at that time no leader had come forward from its own ranks who was worthy to be reckoned among the mighty men of Israel; now, on the contrary, it had on its frontier a bold and resolute leader of its own race. ”

“ Let there be singing and music before thee, and, forgetting all thy sorrows, think only of pleasure until the day when thou must enter the country of Marîtsakro, the silent goddess, though all the same the heart of the son who loves thee will not cease to beat! Be happy for one day, O man!—I have heard related what befell our ancestors; their walls are destroyed, their place is no more, they are as those who have ceased to live from the time of the god! ”

“ Jerusalem, on the other hand, was close to the crossing point of the roads which lead from the Sinaitic desert into Syria, and from the Shephelah to the land of Gilead; it commanded nearly the whole domain of Israel and the ring of hostile races by which it was encircled. From this lofty eyrie, David, with Judah behind him, could either swoop down upon Moab, whose mountains shut him out from a view of the Dead Sea, or make a sudden descent on the seaboard, by way of Bethhoron, at the least sign of disturbance among the Philistines, or could push straight on across Mount Ephraim into Galilee. ”

“ The successors of Agumkakrimê were not more fortunate than he had been in attempting to raise Babylon once more to the foremost rank; their want of power, their discord, the insubordination and sedition that existed among their Cossæan troops, and the almost periodic returns of the Theban generals to the banks of the Euphrates, sometimes even to those of the Balikh and the Khabur, all seemed to conspire to aggravate the helpless state into which Babylon had sunk since the close of the dynasty of Uruazagga. ”

“ No monarch in those days could regard his position as unassailable until he had a sanctuary and a priesthood attached to his religion, either in his own palace or not far away from it. David had scarcely entered Jerusalem before he fixed upon the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite as a site for the temple, and built an altar there to the Lord during a plague which threatened to decimate his people; but as he did not carry the project any farther,** Solomon set himself to complete the task which his father had merely sketched out. ”