Achaemenid dynasty

“ By about 1700 B.C., Egypt experienced the weakening of central authority which permitted the invading Hyksos (“rulers of foreign lands”) to seize control of the country and establish their own dynasty. The prosperous Middle Kingdom was at an end, and the hard hand of alien rule was evident throughout the land. It was not until 1570 B.C. that Ahmose, founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, succeeded in driving the Hyksos back into Asia and establishing native control over Egypt. ”

“ He raises and maintains the standard of revolt; the next king wins greater successes; the last of his line expels the Shepherds out of all Egypt except the north-east, leaving the completion of the enterprise to Aahmes, or Amosis, head of the eighteenth dynasty. ”

“ The close of the twelfth dynasty was followed at no distant date by confusion and disaster. It appears, indeed, that the succeeding dynasty held for a time, at least nominally, the supremacy of Egypt; but sooner or later we find there was a rival dynasty (the fourteenth) ruling at Xois, in the Delta. To the kings composing it is assigned an average length of reign of little over two years, and this has led some to suppose that they were not in any sense Kings of Egypt, but were ruling in the Delta merely as governors—viceroys of foreign invaders. ”

“ In the theological poem of Hesiod, as in the prose narration of Apollodorus, Heaven and Earth are represented as the rulers of the first celestial dynasty; their offspring, called Titans, in the person of one of their number, Kronos, by a violent act of dethronement, forms a second dynasty; while he, in his turn, after a no less violent struggle, gives place to a third sceptre—viz., that of Jove—who, in the faith of the orthodox Athenian, was the supreme ruler of the world of gods, and men, now, after many throes and struggles, arrived, at its normal state, not henceforward to be disturbed. ”

“ After the French and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of the Accaioli, a family, plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and sovereign in Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new buildings, became the capital of a state, that extended over Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly; and their reign was finally determined by Mahomet the Second, who strangled the last duke, and educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the seraglio. ”

“ Whilst abroad, on one of his periodic visits, Parliament deposed him, and proclaimed the extinction of his dynasty, which had occupied the throne of Persia for a hundred and thirty years, whose rulers proudly claimed no less a descent than from Japhet, son of Noah, and whose successive monarchs, with only one exception, were either assassinated, deposed, or struck down by mortal disease. ”

“ Under the twelfth dynasty is the blossoming period of literature. The carving of hieroglyphics and the execution of the details of art reach their perfection. It is the culminating point of Egyptian culture.
THE MIDDLE EMPIRE (FROM ABOUT 2100 TO 1600 B.C.) .—The season of prosperity under the twelfth dynasty was followed by anarchy and the downfall of the Theban rule. According to Manetho, it was under a king named Timaos that a horde of invaders—the Hyksos, or "shepherds"—came in from the north, devastated the country, and made themselves its rulers. ”

“ How clearly, then, do we see the truth of the prophetic announcement that the disruption of the kingdom was "of the Lord"! Out of apparent catastrophe was evolved infinite reparation. The abandonment of the Davidic dynasty of the Ten Tribes looked like earthly ruin. It did indeed hasten the final overthrow of all national autonomy; but that would have come in any case, humanly speaking, from Assyria, or Babylonia, Persia, or the Seleucids, or the Ptolemies, or Rome. ”

“ The sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople, and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the khans of Persia. ”

“ We need not then wonder, that the Egyptians have made the Kings in the first Dynasty of their Monarchy, that which was seated at Thebes in the days of David, Solomon, and Rehoboam, so very ancient and so long lived; since the Persians have done the like to their Kings, who began to Reign in Assyria two hundred years after the death of Solomon; and the Syrians of Damascus have done the like to their Kings Adar and Hazael, who Reigned an hundred years after the death of Solomon, worshipping them as Gods, and boasting their antiquity, and not knowing, saith Josephus, that they were but modern. ”

“ In the time of Khäsekhemui, at the beginning of the IId Dynasty, the archaic character of the art has already begun to wear off. Under the same dynasty we still have styles of unconventional naïveté, such as the famous Statue “No. 1” of the Cairo Museum, bearing the names of Kings Hetepahaui, Neb-râ, and Neneter. But with the IVth Dynasty we no longer look for unconventionality. Prof. Petrie discovered at Abydos a small ivory statuette of Khufu or Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Gîza. The portrait is a good one and carefully executed. ”

“ The kings of Egypt with whom Jeremiah was contemporary—Psammetichus II., Pharaoh Necho, and Pharaoh Hophra—belonged to the twenty-sixth dynasty. When growing distress at home compelled Assyria to loose her hold on her distant dependencies, Egypt still retained something of her former vigorous elasticity. In the rebound from subjection under the heavy hand of Sennacherib, she resumed her ancient forms of life and government. She regained her unity and independence, and posed afresh as an equal rival with Chaldea for the supremacy of Western Asia. ”

“ Scarcely half a century had elapsed between the moment when the XVIII’s dynasty reached the height of its power under Amenôthes III. and that of its downfall. It is impossible to introduce with impunity changes of any kind into the constitution or working of so complicated a machine as an empire founded on conquest. When the parts of the mechanism have been once put together and set in motion, and have become accustomed to work harmoniously at a proper pace, interference with it must not be attempted except to replace such parts as are broken or worn out, by others exactly like them. ”

“ The excavations at Tello, for instance, have revealed the existence of a dynasty which had its seat there, and the ancestral kingdom of Sargon of Accad does not seem to have extended beyond the territory of its chief city. The smaller states were, however, absorbed by the larger ones, and a time came when the whole of Babylonia was united into a single monarchy, whose ruler assumed the imperial title of 'king of Sumer and Accad.' As in Egypt, therefore, a recollection of the original dual character of the kingdom was preserved in the title of its kings. ”

“ Towards the end of the eleventh century this emblem had become more symbolic of the Emperor’s anxious outlook upon hostile neighbours. With Asia Minor practically lost by the establishment of a Mahometan dynasty at Nicea within one hundred miles of the Christian capital, with the Bulgarians at the gates of Adrianople, and the Normans and the Popes in possession of his Greek patrimony in Italy, Alexius Commenus, when he ascended the throne of the Caesars, found himself master of an attenuated Empire, consisting mainly of strips of Grecian seaboard. ”

“ But this monarchy proved to be short-lived, and was destroyed in less than two centuries, after the invasion of Greece by Darius and Xerxes had disclosed the fact that a few thousands of patriotic Hellenes were of more martial worth than the vast and heterogeneous armies led by the Persian king. Less than ten years of actual warfare sufficed to bring the Achaemenian Empire and its dependencies under the rule of Alexander; and the indigenous races were kept in subjection by the Graeco-Macedonian invaders for a longer period than the kindred dynasty established by Cyrus had endured. ”

“ It is reasonable to suppose that their ancestors and those of the Hindus at one time formed a single tribe somewhere in central Asia. The religion was remodelled by Zoroaster, who seems to be a historical character and to have lived about the 7th century B.C. About the same time they shook off the domination of Assyria. From the 6th century onwards their empire, then known as Median, began to expand at the expense of the surrounding states. They destroyed Nineveh in alliance with the Babylonians, and half a century later Cyrus took Babylon and founded the great dynasty of the Achaemenidae. ”

“ The majority of these great vassals secretly aspired to the crown: they frequently had reason to believe that they had some right to it, either through their mother or one of their ancestors. Had they combined against the reigning house, they could easily have gained the upper hand, but their mutual jealousies prevented this, and the overthrow of a dynasty to which they owed so much would, for the most part, have profited them but little: as soon as one of them revolted, the remainder took arms in Pharaoh’s defence, led his armies and fought his battles. ”

“ Architecture and learning seem to have recovered at a bound from their long depression under the domination of the Shepherd Kings. To free his empire from the danger of another invasion from Asia, Amosis determined to subdue the Syrian and Mesopotamian tribes. This foreign policy, followed out by his successors, shaped many of the events of their reigns.
Thothmes III., one of the greatest kings of this Eighteenth Dynasty, has been called "the Alexander of Egyptian history." During his reign the frontiers of the empire reached their greatest expansion. ”

“ With Darius III. Codomannus the dynasty became extinct and the Persian empire came to an end (330) . The adjective Achaemenius is used by the Latin poets as the equivalent of ``Persian'' (Horace, Odes, ii. 12, 21) . See PERSIA.
The name Achaemenes is borne by a son of Darius I., brother of Xerxes. After the first rebellion of Egypt, he became satrap of Egypt (484 B.C.) ; he commanded the Persian fleet at Salamis, and was (460 B.C.) defeated and slain by Inarus, the leader of the second rebellion of Egypt. ”

“ But the beauty of the work seems to have restrained the hand of the destroyer. Then came the religious fanaticism of Akhenaton, mutilating all figures of Ammon and all inscriptions containing his name; this made havoc of the exquisite monuments of Hatshepsut; and the restorers of the XIXth Dynasty, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the queen, had no scruples in replacing her names by those of the associate kings Tethmosis I., II. or III. These acts of vandalism took place throughout Egypt, but in the distant mines of Sinai the cartouches of Hatshepsut are untouched. ”

“ In the Persian epoch, native dynasts established themselves in Caria and even extended their rule over the Greek cities. The last of them seems to have been Pixodarus, after whose death the crown was seized by a Persian, Orontobates, who offered a vigorous resistance to Alexander the Great. But his capital, Halicarnassus, was taken after a siege, and the principality of Caria conferred by Alexander on Ada, a princess of the native dynasty. ”

“ Alexander restored peace to the country and the Ptolemies identified themselves with the interests of the people. A dynasty which not only lightened the burdens of the poor, but respected the privileges of the rich; which honored the priesthood, endowed the temples, and compelled the Tigris to restore the spoils of the Nile, could scarcely fail to win the suffrages of all classes. The priests of Philæ might despise the language of Homer while honoring the descendants of Philip of Macedon. They could naturalize the king. ”

“ Ahmosis, by driving them from their last stronghold, averted this danger. It is, therefore, not without reason that the official chroniclers of later times separated him from his ancestors and made him the head of a new dynasty.
His predecessors had in reality been merely Pharaohs on sufferance, ruling in the south within the confines of their Theban principality, gaining in power, it is true, with every generation, but never able to attain to the suzerainty of the whole country. ”

“ Amenophis III., called by the Greeks Memnon, belongs to the previous 18th dynasty; while the three pyramid kings, whom Herodotus mentions as Cheops, Chephren, and Mykerinos, and whose actual Egyptian names are read in the hieroglyphic lists as Chufu, Chafra, and Menkaura, are set down in the 4th dynasty. ”

“ This dismemberment of the supreme authority in the interest of princes, who believed for the most part that they had stronger claims to the throne than its occupant, was attended with dangers to peace and to the permanence of the dynasty. The texts furnish us with evidence of the existence of at least half a dozen descendants of Akurgal—Inannatuma I., Intemena, his grandson Inannatuma II, all of whom seem to have been vigorous rulers who energetically maintained the supremacy of their city over the neighbouring estates. ”

“ Izalla and Bît-Bakhiâni had fulfilled their duties as vassals whenever Assur-nazir-pal had appeared in their neighbourhood; Bît-Adini alone had remained independent, though its strength was more apparent than real. The districts which it included had never been able to form a basis for a powerful state. If by chance some small kingdom arose within it, uniting under one authority the tribes scattered over the burning plain or along the river banks, the first conquering dynasty which sprang up in the neighbourhood would be sure to effect its downfall, and absorb it under its own leadership. ”