Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt

“ The Pharaoh of Joseph was probably Apophis III. If so, the Hebrew vizier would have witnessed the outbreak of the war of independence towards the close of the long reign of the Hyksos king. It may be that the policy which transferred the soil of Egypt from the people to the king and the priests gave its first impulse to the movement.
The Eighteenth dynasty founded an Egyptian empire. Its kings carried the war into Asia, and planted the boundaries of Egyptian dominion on the banks of the Euphrates. ”

“ The 511 years which are ascribed to it by Manetho, as quoted by Josephus, are neither to be simply accepted nor rejected, but must remain subject to future verification. The only evidence from Egyptian sources which bears upon the subject is a monument of Rameses II., dated from the four hundredth year of one of these kings of foreign origin. But a considerable number of native kings must have reigned between the last king of the twelfth dynasty and the beginning of the foreign invasion. ”

“ They constructed magnificent tombs for their eternal rest, and the land blossomed culturally under their dominion.
These conditions prevailed until the coming of the Hyksos dynasty. These conquering kings were of Semitic origin and they seem to have come from the region of Ur. After this conquest, Egypt suddenly became an unlimited monarchy. The great lords became landless, stripped of their power and robbed of all authority. The people literally passed into the possession of the crown, and Egypt became a nation of slaves who owed their very existence to the royal head of the government. ”

“ They patronized art, employing themselves in building temples rather than tombs, and adorned their temples not only with reliefs and statues, but also with the novel architectural embellishment of the obelisk, a delicate form, and one especially suited to the country.
The founder of the "twelfth dynasty," Amenemhat I., deserves a few words of description. He found Thebes in a state of anarchy; civil war raged on every side; all the traditions of the past were forgotten; noble fought against noble; the poor were oppressed; life and property were alike insecure ”

“ It had become, after the conquests of Usirtasen III., the very centre of the Egyptian world—a centre from which the power of the Pharaoh could equally well extend in a northerly direction towards the Sinaitic Peninsula and Libya, or towards the Red Sea and the “humiliated Kûsh” in the south. The influence of its lords increased accordingly: under Amenemhâît III. and Amenemhâît IV. they were perhaps the most powerful of the great vassals, and when the crown slipped from the grasp of the XIIth dynasty, it fell into the hands of one of these feudatories. ”

“ During the Thirteenth dynasty art and everything else in Egypt were fairly prosperous, but wealth exercised an injurious effect on artistic taste. During this dynasty we hear nothing of the inhabitants of the Sinaitic Peninsula to the east, or of the Libyans to the west; it was in the south, in Ethiopia, that the Pharaohs expended all their superfluous energy. The middle basin of the Nile as far as Gebel-Barkal was soon incorporated with Egypt, and the population became quickly assimilated. ”

“ The broad outline of the history of Egypt is simpler than the history of Mesopotamia. It has long been the custom to divide the rulers of Egypt into a succession of Dynasties, and in speaking of the periods of Egyptian history it is usual to speak of the first, fourth, fourteenth, and so on, Dynasty. The Egyptians were ultimately conquered by the Persians after their establishment in Babylon, and when finally Egypt fell to Alexander the Great in 332 B.C., it was Dynasty XXXI that came to an end. ”

“ The old Memphite kings prided themselves on these armed pursuits as though they were real victories, and had them recorded in triumphal bas-reliefs; but under the XIIth dynasty they were treated as unimportant frontier incidents, almost beneath the notice of the Pharaoh, and the glory of them—such as it was—he left to his captains then in command of those districts.
Egypt had always kept up extensive commercial relations with certain northern countries lying beyond the Mediterranean. ”

“ When the male line failed, there was no lack of princesses in Egypt, of whom any one who happened to come to the throne might choose a consort after her own heart, and thus become the founder of a new dynasty. By such a chance alliance Harmhabi, himself a descendant of Thutmosis III., was raised to the kingly office as first Pharaoh of the XIXth Dynasty. He displayed great activity both within Egypt and beyond it, conducting mighty building enterprises and also undertaking expeditions against recalcitrant tribes along the Upper Nile. ”

“ The transference of the royal power to Memphis under the Hid Dynasty naturally led to a great increase of Egyptian activity in the Northern lands. We read in Manetho of a great Libyan war in the reign of Neche-rophes, and both Sa-nekht and Tjeser seem to have finally established Egyptian authority in the Sinaitic peninsula, where their rock-inscriptions have been found. ”

“ The whole course of the first dynasty is now laid bare to us, and we find that its beginning in 4700 b.c. is modern history compared with the periods of development that must have gone before, for there is proof positive that even before this dynasty, ten other kings reigned in Egypt, and other hands grew flax on the banks of the Nile and spun and wove it into Egypt’s far-famed linen. In ancient Egypt linen occupied a most important place ”

“ These two dynasties ruled Egypt for 420 years, from 3400 to 2980 B. C. This is known as the archaic period of Egyptian history. Men were, during this time, gradually developing the art of expressing thought by means of picture-writing. At some time during the first dynasty the Egyptians began to work the turquoise mines in the Wady Maghara in the peninsula of Sinai. The tombs of this period were low, flat houses of brick. ”

“ They constitute a portion of a vast book, whose chapters are found scattered over the monuments of subsequent periods. They are the means of restoring to us, not only the religion but the most ancient language of Egypt: the majority of the formulas contained in them were drawn up in the time of the earliest human kings, perhaps even before Menés.
The history of the VIth dynasty loses itself in legend and fable. Two more kings are supposed to have succeeded Papi Nofirkeri, Mirnirî Mihtimsaût (Metesouphis II.) and Nîtaûqrît (Nitokris) . ”

“ It is in the first place necessary to recur to the fact of the very long occupation of Egypt by successive dynasties of Hykshos or shepherd kings, and that these were not of one but of several nations—Phenicians, Pelasgi, and Scythians; while to these followed, at a long interval, an Ethiopian or Austral-Egyptian dynasty. Each of these great revolutions must have tended in turn to the amalgamation of the Egyptians with other nations ”

“ One of the chasms of Egyptian history follows the sixth dynasty. Other Memphite kings then ruled, a rival or later royal house arose at Heracleopolis, either the town of that name in Middle Egypt or that in Lower Egypt, and we have no records but the names of kings in later royal lists, which we cannot assign to any dynasty. Contemporary monuments fail us until the rise of the Theban house, when Egypt again appears rich and powerful, with signs of a fresh development of art and civilization. ”

“ It was the real cause of the empire. A national war of independence formed the military qualities that, when the country was free, could no longer resist the desire to carry the national arms into the enemy's land. The Egypt of the empire is no longer the Egypt of the old Memphite and Theban kings: extension of territory is desired, not only for purposes of commerce, but also for the gratification of ambition. A material aid to these designs was afforded by the introduction of the horse and the war-chariot. Both are unknown in Egypt before the eighteenth dynasty ”

“ The culture of Egypt starts on a magnificently high level and is later reduced to a tremendous degree by a consistent record of degeneration. It might be said that by the end of the fourth dynasty, the people had reached the high peak of Egyptian art and learning. But after the sixth dynasty had well begun, a definite decline and retrogression had set in. We find ourselves then groping in a dark age wherein were no arts and no written history. No great monuments come from that period, and no great buildings were begun, repaired, or finished. ”

“ The Pharaoh who dedicated it was a great builder, and, like most of his predecessors with similar tastes, somewhat of a conqueror. The sovereigns of the XXIst dynasty, though they never undertook any distant campaigns, did not neglect to keep up a kind of suzerainty over the Philistine Shephelah to which they still laid claim. The expedition which one of them, probably Psiûkhânnît II., led against Gezer, the alliance with the Hebrews and the marriage of a royal princess with Solomon, must all have been regarded at the court of Tanis as a partial revival of the former Egyptian rule in Syria. ”

“ The Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty, wearied of the long decadence and devastating wars which had followed the glorious epoch of the conquering Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, turned for a new and refreshing inspiration to the works of the most ancient kings, when Egypt was a simple self-contained country, holding no intercourse with outside lands, bearing no outside burdens for the sake of pomp and glory, and knowing nothing of the decay and decadence which follows in the train of earthly power and grandeur. ”

“ It was a period of calamity and distress, during which the Arabs or the Aramæans ravaged the country, and pillaged without compunction not only the property of the inhabitants, but also that of the gods. The Elamite usurper having died about the year 1030, a Babylonian of noble extraction expelled the intruders, and succeeded in bringing the larger part of the kingdom under his rule.*
* The names of the first kings of this dynasty are destroyed in the copies of the Royal Canon which have come down to us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After their dispersion, the Egyptian Pharaoh turned his eyes towards Palestine, with the intention of restoring the Asiatic empire of Ramses ii. The twenty-sixth dynasty was an age of antiquarian revival; not content with restoring Egypt to peace and prosperity, its kings aimed also at restoring the Egypt of the past. Egyptian art again puts on an antique form, temples are repaired or erected in accordance with ancient models, and literature reflects the general tendency. ”

“ The upper classes had degenerated as much as the masses. The feudal nobles who had expelled the Shepherds, and carried the frontiers of the empire to the banks of the Euphrates, seemed to have expended their energies in the effort, and to have almost ceased to exist. As long as Egypt was restricted to the Nile valley, there was no such disproportion between the power of the Pharaoh and that of his feudatories as to prevent the latter from maintaining their privileges beside, and, when occasion arose, even against the monarch. ”

“ The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so long as his body remained intact so was his immortality; whence arose the embalming of the great, and hence the immense structures of stone to secure the inviolability of the entombed monarch. The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended to unite Egypt under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups, each of which formed a separate kingdom. ”

“ Egyptian culture, however, gradually conquered Ethiopia where her armies could not, and Egyptian religion and civil rule began to center in the darker kingdom. When, therefore, Shesheng I, the Libyan, usurped the throne of the Pharaohs in the tenth century B.C., the Egyptian legitimate dynasty went to Nepata as king priests and established a theocratic monarchy. Gathering strength, the Ethiopian kingdom under this dynasty expanded north about 750 B.C. and for a century ruled all Egypt. ”

“ This corporation seems to have flourished unchecked until the Hyksos conquest, but was succeeded, when the invaders were cast out, by that of the priests of Amen of Thebes who, after crushing the “heresy” or religious revolt of King Amenhotep IV, gradually became the supreme power in the state, and established the theocracy or rule of the priest-kings, under which Egypt went rapidly down the hill. The decadence was stayed for a time by an uprising of the Libyan mercenaries, who placed their leader Sheshonq or Shishak, Solomon’s suzerain, upon the throne, and thus founded the XXIInd Dynasty. ”

“ The expedition of Shishak, king of Egypt, against Rehoboam, is ascertained, from both Egyptian and Hebrew sources, to have been not earlier than 971 B.C., and within twenty-five years of that date. The nineteenth Egyptian dynasty began about the year 1350 B.C. The Middle Empire is thought by some to have commenced as early as 2200 B.C.; by others as late as 1720 B.C. When we go backward into the Old Empire, the sources of uncertainty are multiplied. ”