XV.

BEGINNING OF THE DECLINE OF EGYPT.

The internal troubles connected with the "Disk-worship" had for about forty years distracted the attention of the Egyptians from their Asiatic possessions; and this circumstance had favoured the development of a highly important power in Western Asia. The Hittites, whose motto was "reculer pour mieux sauter," having withdrawn themselves from Syria during the time of the Egyptian attacks, retaining, perhaps, their hold on Carchemish (Jerabus), but not seeking to extend themselves further southward, took heart of grace when the Egyptian expeditions ceased, and descending from their mountain fastnesses to the Syrian plains and vales, rapidly established their dominion over the regions recently conquered by Thothmes I. and Thothmes III. Without absorbing the old native races, they reduced them under their sway, and reigned as lords paramount over the entire region between the Middle Euphrates and the Mediterranean, the Taurus range and the borders of Egypt. The chief of the subject races were the Kharu, in the tract bordering upon Egypt; the Rutennu, in Central and Northern Palestine; and in Southern Cœlesyria, the Amairu or Amorites. The Hittites themselves occupied the lower Cœlesyrian valley, and the tract reaching thence to the Euphrates. They were at this period so far centralized into a nation as to have placed themselves under a single monarch; and about the time when Egypt had recovered from the troubles caused by the "Disk-worshippers," and was again at liberty to look abroad, Saplal, Grand-Duke of Khita, a great and puissant sovereign, sat upon the Hittite throne.

Saplal's power, and his threatening attitude on the north-eastern border of Egypt, drew upon him the jealousy of Ramesses I., father of the great Seti, and (according to the prevalent tradition) founder of the "nineteenth dynasty." To defend oneself it is often best to attack, and Ramesses, taking this view, in his first or second year plunged into the enemy's dominions. He had the plea that Palestine and Syria, and even Western Mesopotamia, belonged of right to Egypt, which had conquered them by a long series of victories, and had never lost them by any defeat or disaster. His invasion was a challenge to Saplal either to fight for his ill-gotten gains, or to give them up. The Hittite king accepted the challenge, and a short struggle followed with an indecisive result. At its close peace was made, and a formal treaty of alliance drawn out. Its terms are unknown; but it was probably engraved on a silver plate in the languages of the two powers--the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the now well-known Hittite picture-writing--and set up in duplicate at Carchemish and Thebes.

A brief pause followed the conclusion of the first act of the drama. On the opening of the second act we find the _dramatis personæ_ changed. Saplal and Ramesses have alike descended into the grave, and their thrones are occupied respectively by the son of the one and the grandson of the other. In Egypt, Seti-Menephthah I., the Sethos of Manetho, has succeeded his father, Ramesses I.; in the Hittite kingdom, Saplal has left his sceptre to his grandson Mautenar, the son of Marasar, who had probably died before his father. Two young and inexperienced princes confront one the other in the two neighbour lands, each distrustful of his rival, each covetous of glory, each hopeful of success if war should break out. True, by treaty the two kings were friends and allies--by treaty the two nations were bound to abstain from all aggression by the one upon the other: but such bonds are like the "green withes" that bound Samson, when the desire to burst them seizes those upon whom they have been placed. Seti and Mautenar were at war before the latter had been on the throne a year, and their swords were at one another's throats. Seti was, apparently, the aggressor. We find him at the head of a large army in the heart of Syria before we could have supposed that he had had time to settle himself comfortably in his father's seat.

Mautenar was taken unawares. He had not expected so prompt an attack. He had perhaps been weak enough to count on his adversary's good faith, or, at any rate on his regard for appearances. But Seti, as a god upon earth, could of course do no wrong, and did not allow himself to be trammelled by the moral laws that were binding upon ordinary mortals. He boldly rushed into war at the first possible moment, crossed the frontier, and having chastised the Shasu, who had recently made an invasion of his territory, fell upon the Kharu, or Southern Syrians, and gave them a severe defeat near Jamnia in the Philistine country. He then pressed forward into the country of the Rutennu, overcame them in several pitched battles, and, assisted by a son who fought constantly at his side, slaughtered them almost to extermination. His victorious progress brought him, after a time, to the vicinity of Kadesh, the important city on the Orontes which, a century earlier, had been besieged and taken by the Great Thothmes. Kadesh was at this time in possession of the Amorites, who were tributary to the Khita (Hittites) and held the great city as their subject allies. Seti, having carefully concealed his advance, came upon the stronghold suddenly, and took its defenders by surprise. Outside the city peaceful herdsmen were pasturing their cattle under the shade of the trees, when they were startled by the appearance of the Egyptian monarch, mounted on his war-chariot drawn by two prancing steeds. At once all was confusion: every one sought to save himself; the herds with their keepers fled in wild panic, while the Egyptians plied them with their arrows. But the garrison of the town resisted bravely: a portion sallied from the gates and met Seti in the open field, but were defeated with great slaughter; the others defended themselves behind the walls. But all was in vain. The disciplined troops of Egypt stormed the key of Northern Syria, and the whole Orontes valley lay open to the conqueror.

Hitherto the Hittites had not been engaged in the struggle. Attacked at a disadvantage, unprepared, they had left their subject allies to make such resistance as they might find possible, and had reserved themselves for the defence of their own country. Mautenar had, no doubt, made the best preparations of which circumstances admitted--he had organized his forces in three bodies, "on foot, on horseback, and in chariots." At the head of them, he gave battle to the invaders so soon as they attacked him in his own proper country, and a desperate fight followed, in which the Egyptians, however, prevailed at last. The Hittites received a "great overthrow." The song of triumph composed for Seti on the occasion declared: "Pharaoh is a jackal which rushes leaping through the Hittite land; he is a grim lion exploring the hidden ways of all regions; he is a powerful bull with a pair of sharpened horns. He has struck down the Asiatics; he has thrown to the ground the Khita; he has slain their princes; he has overwhelmed them in their own blood; he has passed among them as a flame of fire; he has brought them to nought."

The victory thus gained was followed by a treaty of peace. Mautenar and Seti agreed to be henceforth friends and allies, Southern Syria being restored to Egypt, and Northern Syria remaining under the dominion of the Hittites, probably as far as the sources of the Orontes river. A line of communication must, however, have been left open between Egypt and Mesopotamia, for Seti still exercised authority over the Naïri, and received tribute from their chiefs. He was also, by the terms of the treaty, at liberty to make war on the nations of the Upper Syrian coast, for we find him reducing the Tahai, who bordered on Cilicia, without any disturbance of his relations with Mautenar. The second act in the war between the Egyptians and the Hittites thus terminated with an advantage to the Egyptians, who recovered most of their Asiatic possessions, and had, besides, the prestige of a great victory.

The third act was deferred for a space of some thirty-five years, and fell into the reign of Ramesses II., Seti's son and successor. Before giving an account of it, we must briefly touch the other wars of Seti, to show how great a warrior he was, and mention one further fact in his warlike policy indicative of the commencement of Egypt's decline as a military power. Seti, then, had no sooner concluded his peace with the great power of the North, than he turned his arms against the West and South, invading, first of all, "the blue-eyed, fair-skinned nation of the Tahennu," who inhabited the North African coast from the borders of Egypt to about Cyrene, and engaging in a sharp contest with them. The Tahennu were a wild, uncivilized people, dwelling in caves, and having no other arms besides bows and arrows. For dress they wore a long cloak or tunic, open in front; and they are distinguished on the Egyptian monuments by wearing two ostrich feathers and having all their hair shaved excepting one large lock, which is plaited and hangs down on the right side of the head. This unfortunate people could make only a poor resistance to the Egyptian trained infantry and powerful chariot force. They were completely defeated in a pitched battle; numbers of the chiefs were made prisoners, while the people generally fled to their caves, where they remained hidden, "like jackals, through fear of the king's majesty." Seti, having struck terror into their hearts, passed on towards the south, and fiercely chastised the Cushites on the Upper Nile, who during the war with the Hittites had given trouble, and showed themselves inclined to shake off the Egyptian yoke. Here again he was successful; the negroes and Cushites submitted after a short struggle; and the Great King returned to his capital victorious on all sides--"on the south to the arms of the Winds, and on the north to the Great Sea."

Seti was not dazzled with his military successes. Notwithstanding his triumphs in Syria, he recognized the fact that Egypt had much to fear from her Asiatic neighbours, and could not hope to maintain for long her aggressive attitude in that quarter. Without withdrawing from any of the conquered countries, while still claiming their obedience and enforcing the payment of their tributes, he began to made preparation for the changed circumstances which he anticipated by commencing the construction of a long wall on his north-eastern frontier, as a security against invasion from Asia. This wall began at Pelusium, and was carried across the isthmus in a south-westerly direction by Migdol to Pithom, or Heroopolis, where the long line of lagoons began, which were connected with the upper end of the Red Sea. It recalls to the mind of the historical student the many ramparts raised by nations, in their decline, against aggressive foes--as the Great Wall of China, built to keep off the Tartars; the Roman wall between the Rhine and Danube, intended to restrain the advance of the German tribes; and the three Roman ramparts in Great Britain, built to protect the Roman province from its savage northern neighbours. Walls of this kind are always signs of weakness; and when Seti began, and Ramesses II. completed, the rampart of Egypt, it was a confession that the palmy days of the empire were past, and that henceforth she must look forward to having to stand, in the main, on the defensive.

Before acquiescing wholly in this conclusion, Ramesses II., who, after reigning conjointly with his father for several years, was now sole king, resolved on a desperate and prolonged effort to re-assert for Egypt that dominant position in Western Asia which she had held and obtained under the third Thothmes. Mautenar, the adversary of Seti, appears to have died, and his place to have been taken by his brother, Khita-sir, a brave and enterprizing monarch. Khita-sir, despite the terms of alliance on which the Hittites stood with Egypt, had commenced a series of intrigues with the nations bordering on Upper Syria, and formed a confederacy which had for its object to resist the further progress of the Egyptians, and, if possible, to drive them from Asia. This confederacy embraced the Naïri, or people of Western Mesopotamia, reckoned by the Egyptians among their subjects; the Airatu or people of Aradus; the Masu or inhabitants of the Mous Masius; the Leka, perhaps Lycians; the inhabitants of Carchemish, of Kadesh on the Orontes, of Aleppo, Anaukasa, Akarita, &c.--all warlike races, and accustomed to the use of chariots. Khitasir's proceedings, having become known to Ramesses, afforded ample grounds for a rupture, and quite justified him in pouring his troops into Syria, and doing his best to meet and overcome the danger which threatened him. Unaware at what point his enemy would elect to meet him, he marched forward cautiously, having arranged his troops in four divisions, which might mutually support each other. Entering the Cœlesyrian valley from the south, he had proceeded as far as the lake of Hems, and neighbourhood of Kadesh, before he received any tidings of the position taken up by the confederate army. There his troops captured two of the enemy's scouts, and on questioning them were told that the Hittite army had been at Kadesh, but had retired on learning the Egyptian's advance and taken up a position near Aleppo, distant nearly a hundred miles to the north-east. Had Ramesses believed the scouts, and marched forward carelessly, he would have fallen into a trap, and probably suffered defeat; for the whole confederate army was massed just beyond the lake, and there lay concealed by the embankment which blocks the lake at its lower end. But the Egyptian king was too wary for his adversary. He ordered the scouts to be examined by scourging, to see if they would persist in their tale, whereupon they broke down and revealed the true position of the army. The battle had thus the character of a regular pitched engagement, without surprise or other accident on either side. Khitasir, finding himself foiled, quitted his ambush, and marched openly against the Egyptians, with his troops marshalled in exact and orderly array, the Hittite chariots in front with their lines carefully dressed, and the auxiliaries and irregulars on the flanks and rear. Of the four divisions of the Egyptian army, one seems to have been absent, probably acting as a rear-guard; Ramesses, with one, marched down the left bank of the stream, while the two remaining divisions proceeded along the right bank, a slight interval separating them. Khitasir commenced the fight by a flank movement to the left, which brought him into collision with the extreme Egyptian right, "the brigade of Ra," as it was called, and enabled him to engage that division separately. His assault was irresistible. "Foot and horse of King Ramesses," we are told, "gave way before him," the "brigade of Ra" was utterly routed, and either cut to pieces or driven from the field. Ramesses, informed of this disaster, endeavoured to cross the river to the assistance of his beaten troops; but, before he could effect his purpose, the enemy had anticipated him, had charged through the Orontes in two lines, and was upon him. The adverse hosts met. The chariot of Ramesses, skilfully guided by his squire, Menna, seems to have broken through the front line of the Hittite chariot force; but his brethren in arms were less fortunate, and Ramesses found himself separated from his army, behind the front line and confronted by the second line of the hostile chariots, in a position of the greatest possible danger. Then began that Homeric combat, which the Egyptians were never tired of celebrating, between a single warrior on the one hand, and the host of the Hittites, reckoned at two thousand five hundred chariots, on the other, in which Ramesses, like Diomed or Achilles, carried death and destruction whithersoever he turned himself. "I became like the god Mentu," he is made to say; "I hurled the dart with my right hand, I fought with my left hand; I was like Baal in his fury against them. I had come upon two thousand five hundred pairs of horses; I was in the midst of them; but they were dashed in pieces before my steeds. Not one of them raised his hand to fight; their heart shrank within them; their limbs gave way, they could not hurl the dart, nor had they strength to thrust with the spear. As crocodiles fall into the water, so I made them fall; they tumbled headlong one over another. I killed them at my pleasure, so that not one of them looked back behind him, nor did any turn round. Each fell, and none raised himself up again."

The temporary isolation of the monarch, which is the main point of the heroic poem of Pentaour, and which Ramesses himself recorded over and over again upon the walls of his magnificent constructions, must no doubt be regarded as a fact; but it is not likely to have continued for more than a few minutes. The minutes may have seemed as hours to the king; and there may have been time for him to perform several exploits. But we may be sure that, when his companions found that he was lost to their sight, they at once made frantic efforts to recover him, dead or alive; they forced openings in the first Hittite chariot line, and sped to the rescue of their sovereign. He had, perhaps, already emptied many chariots of the second line, which was paralysed by his audacity; and his companions found it easy to complete the work which he had begun. The broken second line turned and fled; the confusion became general; a headlong flight carried the entire host to the banks of the Orontes, into which some precipitated themselves, while others were forced into the water by their pursuers. The king of Khirabu (Aleppo) was among these, and was with great difficulty drawn out by his friends, exhausted and half dead, when he reached the eastern shore. But the great bulk of the Hittite army perished, either in the battle or in the river. Among the killed and wounded were Grabatasa, the charioteer of Khitasir; Tarakennas, the commander of the cavalry; Rabsuna, another general; Khirapusar, a royal secretary; and Matsurama, a brother of the Hittite king.

On the next day the battle was renewed; but, after a short time, Khitasir retired, and sent a humble embassy to the camp of his adversary to implore for peace. Ramesses held a council of war with his generals, and by their advice agreed to accept the submission made to him, and, without entering into any formal engagement, to withdraw his army and return to Egypt. It seems probable that his victory had cost him dear, and that he was not in a condition to venture further from his resources, or to affront new dangers in a difficult, and to him unknown, region.

Experience tells us that it is one thing to gain a battle, quite another to be successful in the result of a long war. Whatever glory Ramesses obtained by the battle of Kadesh, and the other victories which he claims to have won in the Syrian campaigns of several succeeding years, it is certain that he completely failed to break the power of the Hittites, and that he was led in course of time to confess his failure, and to adopt a policy of conciliation towards the people which he found himself unable to subdue. Sixteen years after the battle of Kadesh he concluded a solemn treaty with Khitasir, which was engraved on silver and placed under the most sacred sanctions, whereby an exact equality was established between the high contracting powers. Each nation bound itself under no circumstances to attack the other; each promised to give aid to the other, if requested, in case of its ally being attacked; each pledged itself to the extradition both of criminals flying from justice and of any other subjects wishing to change their allegiance; each stipulated for an amnesty of offences in the case of all persons thus surrendered. Thirteen years after the conclusion of the treaty the close alliance between the two powers was further cemented by a marriage, which, by giving the two dynasties common interests, greatly strengthened the previously existing bond. Ramesses requested and received in marriage a daughter of Khitasir in the thirty-fourth year of his sole reign, when he had borne the royal title for forty-six years. He thus became the son-in-law of his former adversary, whose daughter was thenceforth recognized as his sole legitimate queen.

A considerable change in the relations of Egypt to her still remaining Asiatic dependencies accompanied this alteration in the footing upon which she stood with the Hittites. "The bonds of their subjection became much less strict than they had been under Thothmes III.; prudential motives constrained the Egyptians to be content with very much less--with such acknowledgments, in fact, as satisfied their vanity, rather than with the exercise of any real power." From and after the conclusion of peace and alliance between Ramesses and Khitasir, Egyptian influence in Asia grew vague, shadowy, and discontinuous. At long intervals monarchs of more enterprize than the ordinary run asserted it, and a brief success generally crowned their efforts; but, speaking broadly, we may say that her Asiatic dominion was lost, and that Egypt became once more an African power, confined within nearly her ancient limits.

If, from a military point of view, the decline of Egypt is to be dated from the reigns, partly joint reigns, of Seti I. and Ramesses II., from the stand-point of art the period must be pronounced the very apogee of Egyptian greatness. The architectural works of these two monarchs transcend most decidedly all those of all other Pharaohs, either earlier or later. No single work, indeed, of either king equals _in mass_ either the First or the Second Pyramid; but in number, in variety, in beauty, in all that constitutes artistic excellence, the constructions of Seti and Ramesses are unequalled, not only among Egyptian monuments, but among those of all other nations. Greece is, of course, unapproachable in the matter of sculpture, whether in the way of statuary, or of high or low relief; but, apart from this, Egypt in her architectural works will challenge comparison with any country that ever existed, or any people that ever gave itself to the embodiment of artistic conceptions in stone or marble. And Egyptian architecture culminated under Seti and his son Ramesses. The greatest of all Seti's works was his pillared hall at Karnak, the most splendid single chamber that has ever been built by any architect, and, even in its ruins, one of the grandest sights that the world contains. Seti's hall is three hundred and thirty feet long, by one hundred and seventy feet broad, having thus an internal area of fifty-six thousand square feet, and covers, together with its walls and pylons, an area of eighty-eight thousand such feet, or a larger space than that covered by the Dom of Cologne, the largest of all the cathedrals north of the Alps. It was supported by one hundred and sixty-four massive stone columns, which were divided into three groups--twelve central ones, each sixty-six feet high and thirty-three feet in circumference, formed the main avenue down its midst; while on either side, two groups of sixty-one columns, each forty-two feet high and twenty-seven round, supported the huge wings of the chamber, arranged in seven rows of seven each, and two rows of six. The whole was roofed over with solid blocks of stone, the lighting being, as in the far smaller hall of Thothmes III., by means of a clerestory. The roof and pillars and walls were everywhere covered with painted bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics, giving great richness of effect, and constituting the whole building the most magnificent on which the eye of man has ever rested. Fergusson, the best modern authority on architecture, says of it: "No language can convey an idea of its beauty, and no artist has yet been able to reproduce its form so as to convey to those who have not seen it an idea of its grandeur. The mass of its central piers, illumined by a flood of light from the clerestory, and the smaller pillars of the wings gradually fading into obscurity, are so arranged and lighted as to convey an idea of infinite space; at the same time the beauty and massiveness of the forms, and the brilliancy of their coloured decorations, all combine to stamp this as _the greatest of man's architectural works_, but such a one as it would be impossible to reproduce, except in such a climate, and in that individual style, in which and for which it was created."[24]

As Seti constructed the most wonderful of all the palatial buildings which Egypt produced, so he also constructed what is, on the whole, the most wonderful of the tombs. The pyramids impose upon us by their enormity, and astonish by the engineering skill shown in their execution; but they embody a single simple idea; they have no complication of parts, no elaboration of ornament; they are taken in at a glance; they do not gradually unfold themselves, or furnish a succession of surprises. But it is otherwise with the rock-tombs, whereof Seti's is the most magnificent The rock-tombs are "gorgeous palaces, hewn out of the rock, and painted with all the decorations that could have been seen in palaces." They contain a succession of passages, chambers, corridors, staircases, and pillared halls, each further removed from the entrance than the last, and all covered with an infinite variety of the most finished and brilliant paintings. The tomb of Seti contains three pillared halls, respectively twenty-seven feet by twenty-five, twenty-eight feet by twenty-seven, and forty-three feet by seventeen and a half; a large saloon with an arched roof, thirty feet by twenty-seven; six smaller chambers of different sizes; three staircases, and two long corridors. The whole series of apartments, from end to end of the tomb, is continuously ornamented with painted bas-reliefs. "The idea is that of conducting the king to the world of death. The further you advance into the tomb, the deeper you become involved in endless processions of jackal-headed gods, and monstrous forms of genii, good and evil; and the goddess of Justice, with her single ostrich feather; and barges carrying mummies, raised aloft over the sacred lake; and mummies themselves; and, more than all, everlasting convolutions of serpents in every possible form and attitude--human-legged, human-headed, crowned, entwining mummies, enwreathing or embraced by processions, extending down whole galleries, so that meeting the head of a serpent at the top of a staircase, you have to descend to its very end before you reach his tail. At last you arrive at the close of all--the vaulted hall, in the centre of which lies the immense alabaster sarcophagus, which ought to contain the body of the king. Here the processions, above, below, and around, reach their highest pitch--meandering round and round--white, and black, and red, and blue--legs and arms and wings spreading in enormous forms over the ceilings; and below lies the sarcophagus itself."[25]

The greatest of the works of Ramesses are of a different description, and are indicative of that inordinate vanity which is the leading feature of his character. They are colossal images of himself. Four of these, each seventy feet in height, form the façade of the marvellous rock-temple of Ipsambul--"the finest of its class known to exist anywhere"--and constitute one of the most impressive sights which the world has to offer. There stands the Great King, four times repeated, silent, majestic, superhuman--with features marked by profound repose and tranquillity, touched perhaps with a little scorn, looking out eternally on the grey-white Nubian waste, which stretches far away to a dim and distant horizon. Here, as you sit on the deep pure sand, you seem to see the monarch, who did so much, who reigned so long, who covered, not only Egypt, but Nubia and Ethiopia with his memorials. "You can look at his features inch by inch, see them not only magnified to tenfold their original size, so that ear and mouth and nose, and every link of his collar, and every line of his skin, sinks into you with the weight of a mountain; but those features are repeated exactly the same three times over--four times they once were, but the upper part of the fourth statue is gone. Look at them as they emerge--the two northern figures--from the sand which reaches up to their throats; the southernmost, as he sits unbroken, and revealed from the top of his royal helmet to the toe of his enormous foot"[26] Look at them, and remember that you have here portrait-statues of one of the greatest of the kings of the Old World, of the world that was "old" when Greece and Rome were either unborn or in their swaddling clothes; portrait-statues, moreover, of the king who, if either tradition or chronology can be depended on, was the actual great oppressor of Israel--the king who sought the life of Moses--the king from whom Moses fled, and until whose death he did not dare to return out of the land of Midian.

According to the almost unanimous voice of those most conversant with Egyptian antiquities, the "great oppressor" of the Hebrews was this Ramesses. Seti may have been the originator of the scheme for crushing them by hard usage, but, as the oppression lasted close upon eighty years (Ex. ii, I; vii. 7), it must have covered at least two reigns, so that, if it began under Seti, it must have continued under his son and successor. The bricks found at Tel-el-Maskoutah show Ramesses as the main builder of Pithom (Pa-Tum), and the very name indicates that he was the main builder of Raamses (Pa-Ramessu). We must thus ascribe to him, at any rate, the great bulk of that severe and cruel affliction, which provoked Moses (Ex. ii, 12), which made Israel "sigh" and "groan" (ib. 23, 24), and on which God looked down with compassion (ib. iii. 7). It was he especially who "made their lives bitter in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field"--service which was "with rigour." Ramesses was a builder on the most extensive scale. Without producing any single edifice so perfect as the "Pillared Hall of Seti," he was indefatigable in his constructive efforts, and no Egyptian king came up to him in this respect. The monuments show that he erected his buildings chiefly by forced labour, and that those employed on them were chiefly foreigners. Some have thought that the Hebrews are distinctly mentioned as employed by him on his constructions under the term "Aperu," or "Aperiu"; but this view is not generally accepted. Still, "the name is so often used for foreign bondsmen engaged in the very work of the Hebrews, and especially during the oppression, that it is hard not to believe it to be a general term in which they are included, though it does not actually describe them."[27]

[Illustration: HEAD OF SETI]

[Illustration: BUST OF RAMESSES II.]

The physiognomies of Seti I. and Ramesses II., as represented on the sculptures,[28] offer a curious contrast Seti's face is thoroughly African, strong, fierce, prognathous, with depressed nose, thick lips, and a heavy chin. The face of Ramesses is Asiatic. He has a good forehead, a large, well-formed, slightly aquiline nose, a well-shaped mouth, with lips that are not too full, a small delicate chin, and an eye that is thoughtful and pensive. We may conclude that Seti was of the true Egyptian race, with perhaps an admixture of more southern blood; while Ramesses, born of a Semitic mother, inherited through her Asiatic characteristics, and, though possessing less energy and strength of character than his father, had a more sensitive temperament, a wider range of taste, and a greater inclination towards peace and tranquillity. His important wars were all concluded within the limit of his twenty-first year, while his entire reign was one of sixty-seven years, during fifty of which he held the sole sovereignty. Though he left the fame of a great warrior behind him, his chief and truest triumphs seem to have been those of peace--the Great Wall for the protection of Egypt towards the east, with its strong fortresses and "store-cities," the canal which united the Nile with the Red Sea, and the countless buildings, excavations, obelisks, colossal statues, and other great works, with which he adorned Egypt from one end to the other.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] "History of Architecture," vol. i. pp. 119, 120.

[25] Adapted from Dean Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," Introduction, p. xl.

[26] Stanley, "Sinai and Palestine," p. xlvii.

[27] Stuart Poole, "Cities of Egypt," p. 105

[28] The mummy of Seti I. has been recently uncovered. It was in good condition, and is said to have revealed a face very closely resembling that of Ramesses II., with fine delicate features, and altogether of an elevated type. "The nose, mouth, chin, in short all the features," says M. Maspero, "are the same; but in the father they are more refined, more intelligent, more spiritual, than when reproduced in the son. Seti I. is, as it were, the idealized type of Ramesses II." (Letter of M. Maspero in _The Times_ of July 23, 1886.) It may perhaps be doubted whether the shrunken mummy, 3300 years old, is better evidence of the living reality than the contemporary sculptures.

CHAPTER XVI.

MENEPHTHAH I., THE PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS.

Menephthah, the thirteenth son and immediate successor of Ramesses II., came to the throne under circumstances which might at first sight have seemed favourable. Egypt was on every side at peace with her neighbours. The wail of Ramesses, and his treaty with the Hittites, cemented as it had been by a marriage, secured the eastern frontier. No formidable attack had ever yet fallen upon Egypt from the west or from the south, and so no danger could well be apprehended from those quarters. Internal tranquillity might not be altogether assured, so long as there was within the limits of Egypt a large subject population, suffering oppression and bitterly discontented with its lot. But this population was quite unwarlike, and had hitherto passively submitted itself to the will of its rulers, without giving any indication that it might become actively hostile. Menephthah, who was perhaps not more than five and twenty, may have been justified in looking forward to a long, quiet, and uneventful reign, during which he might indulge the natural apathy of his temper, or dream away life, like his fabled neighbours, the Lotus-Eaters.

Menephthah's features were soft and womanly. He had a full but sleepy eye, a slightly aquiline nose an extremely short upper-lip, a broad cheek, and a rounded chin. In character he was weak, irresolute, wanting in physical courage, yet, as so often happens with weak characters, harsh, oppressive, and treacherous. The monuments depict him as neither a soldier nor an administrator, but as "one whose mind was turned almost exclusively towards the chimeras of sorcery and magic," which he regarded as of the utmost importance. Still, had the times been quiet, had the prospect of tranquillity which seemed to lie before him on his accession been realized, he might perhaps have so conducted affairs as to bring neither discredit nor injury upon his country. But the circumstances of the period were against him. The unclouded prospect of his early years gave place, after a brief interval, to storm and tempest of the most fearful kind; a terrible invasion carried fire and sword into the heart of his dominions; and he had scarcely escaped this danger by meeting it in a way not very honourable to himself, when internal troubles broke out: a subject race, highly valued for services which it was compelled to render, insisted on quitting the land; a great loss was incurred in an attempt to compel it to remain; then open rebellion broke out in the weakened state; and the reign, which had commenced under such fair auspices, terminated in calamity and confusion. Menephthah was quite incompetent to deal with the difficulties and complications wherewith he found himself surrounded; he hesitated, temporized, made concessions, retracted them, and finally conducted Egypt to a catastrophe from which she did not recover for a generation.

[Illustration: HEAD OF MENEPHTHAH.]

The first great trouble which disturbed the tranquillity of his reign was an invasion of his territories from the north-west. Hitherto, though no serious danger had ever threatened from this quarter, there had been frequent raids into Egypt on the part of the native Africans, and most of the more warlike of the Egyptian monarchs had regarded it as incumbent on them to lead from time to time expeditions into the region, for the purpose of weakening the wild tribes, Tahennu, Maxyes, and others, and inspiring them with a wholesome dread of the Egyptian power. Ramesses II. had on one occasion warred in this quarter, as already related, and had met with a certain amount of success. But since that time many years had passed. A new generation had grown up, which the Egyptians had allowed to remain unmolested, and which felt no fear of its quiet, peaceful, and industrious neighbours. Population had probably multiplied in the region, and the tribes began to feel stinted for room. Above all, new relations had been contracted between the old inhabitants of the tract and some other races, now for the first time heard of in authentic history, who had been brought into contact with them. A league of nations had become possible; and the force of the united league must have been considerable. Might not an actual conquest be effected, and the half-starved nomads of Marmarica and the Cyrenaica become the lords and masters of the rich plain, so long coveted, which adjoined upon their eastern frontier?

The leading spirit of the combination was a native African prince, Marmaiu, the son of Deid. Having determined on a serious invasion of Egypt, for the purpose of conquest, not of plunder, he first of all collected his native forces, Lubu, Tahennu, Mashuash, Kahaka, to the number of twenty-five or thirty thousand, and then purchased the services of a number of auxiliaries, who raised his force probably to a total of thirty-five or forty thousand men. A peculiar interest attaches to these auxiliaries. They consisted of contingents from five nations, whose names are read as Akausha, Luku, Tursha, Shartana or Shardana, and Sheklusha, and whom most modern historians of Egypt identify with the Achæans Laconians, Tyrsenians, Sardinians, and Sicilians. If these identifications are accepted--- and they are at least plausible--we shall have to suppose that, as early as the fourteenth century B.C., the nations of Southern Europe were so far advanced as to launch fleets upon the Mediterranean, to enter into a regular league with an African prince, and in conjunction with him to make an attack on one of the chief civilized monarchies of the world, the old kingdom of the Pharaohs. We shall have to imagine the Achæans of the Peloponnese, a century before the time of Agamemnon, braving the perils of the Levant in their cockle-shells of ships, and not merely plundering the coasts, but landing large bodies of men on the North African shore to take part in a regular campaign. We shall have to picture to ourselves the Laconians--the people of Menelaüs--about the time of his grandfather, Atreus, or his great-grandfather, Pelops, similarly employed, and contending with the Pharaoh of the Exodus on the soil of the Delta. Nay, we shall have to antedate the rise of the Tyrsenians to naval greatness by about seven hundred years, and to suppose that the Sicels and Sardi, whom the Greeks and Romans found living the life of savages in Sicily and Sardinia, when they first visited their shores, about B.C. 750-600, were flourishing peoples and skilful navigators half a millennium earlier. The picture which we thus obtain of the ancient world is very surprising, and quite unlike anything that could be gathered from the literature of the Greeks; but it is not to be regarded as beyond the range of possibility, since nations are quite as apt to lapse from civilization into barbarism as to emerge out of barbarism into civilization. It is quite conceivable that the nations of South-Eastern Europe were more advanced in civilization and the arts of life about B.C. 1400-1300 than they are found to have been six centuries later, the false dawn having been succeeded by a time of darkness before the true dawn came.

However this may have been, it is certain that Menephthah, in the fifth year of his reign, had to meet a formidable, and apparently unprovoked, attack from a combination of nations, the like of which we do not again meet with in Egyptian history, either earlier or later. Marmaiu, son of Deid, led against him a confederate army, consisting of three principal tribes of the Tahennu--- the Lubu (Libyans), the Mashuash (Maxyes), and the Kahaka--together with auxiliaries from five other tribes or peoples, the Akausha, the Luku, the Tursha, the Shartana, and the Sheklusha. The entire number of the army, as already stated, was probably not less than forty thousand; they had numerous chariots, and were armed with bows and arrows, cuirasses, and bronze or copper swords. They had skin tents, and brought with them their wives and children, with the intention of settling in Egypt, as the Hyksôs had done five hundred years earlier. They had also with them a considerable number of cattle, as bulls, oxen, and goats. The chiefs came provided with thrones, and both they and their officers had numerous drinking vessels of bronze, of silver, and of gold.

The attack was made on the western side of Egypt, towards the apex of the Delta. It was at first completely successful. The small frontier towns were taken by assault, and "turned Into heaps of rubbish;" the Delta was entered upon, and a position taken up In the nome of Paari-sheps, or Prosopis, which lay between the Canobic and Sebennytic branches of the Nile, commencing at the point of their separation. From this position Memphis and Heliopolis were alike menaced. Menephthah hastily fortified these cities, or rather, we must suppose, strengthened their existing defences. Meanwhile the Libyans and their allies ravaged the open country. "The like had not been seen," as the native scribe observes, "even in the times of the kings of Lower Egypt, when the plague (_i.e._ the Hyksôs power) was in the land, and the kings of Upper Egypt were unable to drive it out." Egypt was desolated; its people "trembled like geese;" the fertile lands were overrun and wasted; the cities were pillaged; even the harbours were in some cases ruined and destroyed. Menephthah for a time remained on the defensive, shut up within the walls of Memphis, whose god Phthah he viewed as his special protector. He made, however, strenuous efforts to gather together a powerful force; his captains collected the native troops from the various provinces of Egypt, while he sent a number of emissaries Into Asia, who were instructed to raise a large body of mercenaries in that quarter. At last all was ready, and Menephthah appointed the fourteenth day as that on which he would place himself at the head of his army and lead them in person against the enemy; but, before the day came, his courage failed him. He "saw in a dream"--at least so he himself declares--"as it were a figure of the god Phthah, standing so as to prevent his advance;" and the figure said to him, "Stay where thou art, and let thy troops proceed against the enemy." So the pious king, in obedience to this convenient vision, remained secure behind the walls of Memphis, and sent his forces, native and mercenary, into the nome of Prosopis against the Libyans. The two armies joined battle on the 3rd of Epiphi (May 18), and a desperate engagement took place, in which, after six hours of hard fighting, the Egyptians were victorious, and the confederates suffered a severe defeat. Menephthah charges the Libyan chief with cowardice, but only because, after the battle was lost, he precipitately quitted the field, leaving behind him, not only his camp-equipage, but his throne, the ornaments of his wives, his bow, his quiver, and his sandals. The reproaches uttered recoil upon himself. Whose conduct is the more cowardly, that of the man who fights at the head of his troops for six hours against an enemy, probably more numerous, certainly better armed and better disciplined, and only quits the field when his forces are utterly overthrown and put to flight; or that of one who avoids exposing himself to danger, and lurks behind the walls of a fortress while his soldiers are affronting wounds and death in the battlefield? There is no evidence that Marmaiu, son of Deid, in the battle of Prosopis, conducted himself otherwise than as became a prince and a general; there is abundant evidence that Menephthah, son of Ramesses, who declined to be present at the engagement, showed the white feather.

The defeat of Prosopis was decisive. Marmaiu lost in slain between eight thousand and nine thousand of his troops, or, according to another estimate, between twelve thousand and thirteen thousand. Above nine thousand were made prisoners. The tents, camp-equipage, and cattle, fell into the hands of the enemy. The expedition at once broke up and dispersed. Marmaiu returned into his own land with a shattered remnant of his grand army, and devoted himself to peaceful pursuits, or at any rate abstained from any further collision with the Egyptians. The mercenaries, whatever the races to which they in reality belonged, learned by experience the wisdom of leaving the Libyans to fight their own battles, and are not again found in alliance with them. The Akaiusha and Luku appear in Egyptian history no more. The Tursha and Sheklusha do not wholly disappear, but receive occasional mention among the races hostile to Egypt As for the Shartana or Shardana, they were struck with so much admiration of the Egyptian courage and conduct, that they shortly afterwards entered the Egyptian service, and came to hold a place among the most trusted of the Egyptian troops.

Despite his cowardice in absenting himself from the battle of Prosopis under the transparent device of a divine vision, Menephthah took to himself the whole credit of the victory, and gloried in it as much as if he had really had a hand in bringing about the result. "The Lubu," he says, "were meditating to do evil in Egypt; they were as grasshoppers; every road was blocked by their hosts. Then I vowed to lead them captive. Lo, I vanquished them; I slaughtered them, making a spoil of their country. I made the land of Egypt traversable once more; I gave breath to those who were in the cities." Egyptian generals, like Roman poets, had to content themselves with complaining secretly, "Sic vos non vobis."

So far as we can tell, no long period elapsed between the expedition of Marmaiu, son of Deid, and the second great trouble in which Menephthah was involved. Moses must have returned to Egypt from his sojourn in Midian within a year or two of the death of Ramesses II., and cannot have allowed any very long time to elapse before he proffered the demand which he was divinely commissioned to make. Still, as he was timid, and a somewhat unwilling messenger, he may have delayed both his return and his first address to Pharaoh as long as he dared (Ex. iv. 19); and if the invasion of Marmaiu had begun before he had summoned courage to address Pharaoh a second time, he would then naturally wait until the danger was past, and the king could again be approached without manifest impropriety. In this case, the severe oppression of the Israelites, which followed the first application of Moses (Ex. v. 5-23) may have lasted longer than has generally been supposed; and it may not have been till Menephthah's sixth or seventh year that the divine messenger became urgent, and began to press his request, and to show the signs and wonders which alone, as he had been told (Ex. vii. 2-4), would break the spirit of the king. The signs then followed each other at moderately short intervals, the entire series of the plagues not covering a longer space than about six months, from October till April. None of the plagues affected the king greatly except the last, through which he lost his own eldest son, a bereavement mentioned in an inscription. This loss, combined with the dread power shown in the infliction during one night of not less than a million of deaths, produced a complete revolution in the mind of the king, and made him as anxious at the moment to get rid of the Israelites out of his country as he had previously been anxious to retain them. So he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said. "Rise up, get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel, and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said. Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also" (Ex. xii. 31, 32). Moses was prepared for the event, and had prepared his people. All were ready, with their loins girded, their sandals on their feet, and their staves in their hands; the word was given, and the exodus began. "The children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children; and a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle."

Hereupon the king's mind underwent another change. "Unstable as water," he was certain not to "excel." Learning that the Israelites, instead of marching away into the desert, had after reaching its edge turned southward, and were "entangled" in a corner of his territory, between high mountains on the one hand, and on the other the Red Sea, which then stretched far further to the north than at present, perhaps to Lake Timseh, at any rate as far as the "Bitter Lakes," he thought he saw an opportunity of following and recovering the fugitives, whose services as bondsmen he highly valued. Rapidly calling together such troops as were tolerably near at hand, he collected a considerable force of infantry and chariots--of the latter more than six hundred--and following upon the steps of the Hebrews, he caught them on the western shore of the Red Sea, encamped "between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-Zephon." The exact spot cannot be fixed, on account of the alterations in the bed of the Red Sea, and the uncertainty of the ancient geography of Egypt, in which names so often repeat themselves; but it was probably some part of the region that is now dry land, between Suez and the southern extremity of the Bitter Lakes. Here in high tides the sea and the lakes communicated; but on the evening of Menephthah's arrival, an unusual ebb of the tide, cooperating with a "strong east wind" which held back the water of the Bitter Lakes, left the bed of the sea bare for a certain space; and the Israelites were thus able to cross during the night from one side of the sea to the other. As morning dawned, Menephthah, once more carefully guarding his own person, sent his chariots in pursuit. The force entered on the slippery and dangerous ground, and advanced half-way; but its progress was slow; the chariot-wheels sank into the soft ooze, the horses slipped and floundered; all was disorder and confusion. Before the troops could extricate themselves, the waters returned on either hand; a high flow of the tide, the necessary consequence of a low ebb, brought In the whelming flood from the south-east; a strong wind from the Mediterranean, drove down upon them the pent up waters of the Bitter Lakes from the north-west. The channel, which had lately been dry land, became once more sea, and the entire force that had entered it in pursuit of the Israelites perished. Safe on the opposite shore, the Israelites saw the utter destruction of their adversaries, whose dead bodies, driven before the gale, were cast up in hundreds upon the coast where they sate encamped (Ex. xiv. 30).

The disaster paralyzed the monarch, and he made no further effort. If the loss was not great numerically, it affected the most important arm of the service, and it was the destruction of the very _élite_ of the Egyptian troops. It was a blow in which the anger of the Egyptian gods may well have been seen by some, while others may have regarded it as a revelation of the incompetence of the monarch. The blow seems to have been followed, within a short time, by revolt. Menephthah's last monumental year is his eighth. A pretender to the crown arose in a certain Amon-mes, or Amon-meses, who contested the throne with Seti II., Menephthah's son, and succeeded in establishing himself as king; but for many years there raged in Egypt, as so often happens when a state is suddenly weakened, civil war, bloodshed, and confusion.

The two dynasties that have last occupied us constitute the most brilliant period of Egyptian architecture; for, as Fergusson, the latest historian of architecture, has said, the hall of Seti at Karnak is "the greatest of man's architectural works," the building to which it belongs is "the noblest effort of architectural magnificence ever produced by the hand of man," and the rock-cut temple of Ipsambul is "the finest of its class known to exist anywhere." These works combine enormous mass and size with a profusion of elaborate ornamentation. Covering nearly as much ground as the greatest of the pyramids, and containing equally enormous blocks of stone, the Theban palace-temples unite a wealth of varied ornamentation almost unparalleled among the edifices erected by man. Here are long avenues of sphinxes and colossi, leading to tall, tapering obelisks which shoot upwards like the pinnacles, towers, and spires of a modern cathedral, while beyond the obelisks are vistas of gateways and courts, of colonnades and pillared halls, that impress the beholder with a deep sense of the constructive imagination of the architect who could design them, no less than with admiration of the ruler whose resources were sufficient to make them realities.

Truly the Egyptians were, as Mr. Fergusson enthusiastically asserts, "the most essentially a building people of all those we are acquainted with, and the most generally successful in all that they attempted in this way. The Greeks, it is true, surpassed them in refinement and beauty of detail, and in the class of sculpture with which they ornamented their buildings, while the Gothic architects far excelled them in constructive cleverness; but with these exceptions, no other styles can be put into competition with them. At the same time, neither Grecian nor Gothic architects understood more perfectly all the gradations of art, and the exact character that should be given to every form and every detail.... They understood also better than any other nation, how to use sculpture In combination with architecture, and to make their colossi and avenues of sphinxes group themselves into parts of one great design, and at the same time to use historical paintings, fading by insensible degrees into hieroglyphics on the one hand, and into sculpture on the other, linking the whole together with the highest class of phonetic utterance. With the most brilliant colouring, they thus harmonized all these arts Into one great whole, unsurpassed by anything the world has seen during the thirty centuries of struggle and aspiration that have elapsed since the brilliant days of the great kingdom of the Pharaohs."

Not only did architecture and the glyphic art reach such perfection during this period, but the arts of life made considerable progress. The royal costumes became suddenly most elaborate; brilliant colours, costly armlets and bracelets, many-hued collars, complicated head-dresses, elegant sandals, jewels of price, gay sashes, and wigs with conventional adornment, came into vogue. Luxury was exhibited in the designs of the dwellings of the wealthy; the grounds were laid out with formal courts and alleys, palms and vines adorned them, ponds and reservoirs gave freshness to the summer temperature, irrigation clothed the lawns with verdure. Inside, there was richly carved furniture covered with cushions of delicate stuffs, and adding the harmony of colour to the luxurious scene.

The horse, which had been introduced from Asia, helped in the march of extravagance and refinement; the chariot took the place of the palanquin, and there was a new opportunity for adornment in the trappings, as well as in the construction of light or heavy vehicles.

At the same time, letters made equal progress; men of wisdom devoted themselves to the preservation of the knowledge of the past, and to the composition of original works in history, divinity, poetry, correspondence, and practical philosophy, for the preservation of which a public library was established at Thebes under a competent director. The highest perfection thus reached in the arts of peace seems to have been coincident with an advance in sensualism; indecency in apparel was common, polygamy increased, woman lost her former degree of purity; cruelty and barbarism were more and more common in war; taxation bore heavily and without pity upon the lower orders, and the wretched fellahin were beaten by the severest of tyrants, the irresponsible tax-gatherer; women as well as men were stripped for the indignity and pain of the terrible bastinado; and even dead enemies were mutilated for the purpose of preserving evidence of their numbers.