Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations Part 5

The Hitt.i.te empire broke up into a mult.i.tude of small princ.i.p.alities. Of these Carchemish, now Jerablus, on the Euphrates, was perhaps the most important. It commanded the ford across the river, and the high-road of commerce from east to west. Its merchants grew rich, and "the mina of Carchemish" became a standard of value in the ancient world. Its capture by Sargon destroyed a rival of a.s.syrian trade, and opened the road to the Mediterranean to the armies of a.s.syria.

The decay of the Hitt.i.te and Mitannian power meant the revival of the older Aramaean population of the country. The foreigner was expelled or absorbed; Syria and Mesopotamia became more and more Semitic. Aramaean kingdoms arose on all sides, and a feeling of common kins.h.i.+p and interests arose among them at the same time. To the north of the Gulf of Antioch, in the very heart of the Hitt.i.te territory, German excavators have lately found the earliest known monuments of Aramaean art. The art, as is natural, is based on that of their Hitt.i.te predecessors; even the inscriptions in the alphabet of Phoenicia are cut in relief like the older hieroglyphs of the Hitt.i.tes. But they prove that the triumph of the Aramaean was complete. The foreigner and his works were swept away; no trace has been discovered of a Hitt.i.te text, barely even of a Hitt.i.te name. The G.o.ds are all Semitic--Hadad the Sun-G.o.d and Shahr the Moon-G.o.d, the Baal of Harran, and Rekeb-el, "the Chariot of G.o.d."

Hitt.i.te inscriptions have been found at Hamath on the Orontes. But they must belong to a period earlier than that of David. The rulers of Hamath who made alliance with David bear Semitic names. The crown-prince came himself to Jerusalem, bringing with him costly vessels of gold and silver and bronze. His name was Hadoram, "Hadad is exalted;" but out of compliment to the Israelitish king, the name of Hadad was changed into that of the G.o.d of Israel, and he became known to history as Joram. A common enmity united Hamath and Israel. The war with Ammon had brought David into conflict with Zobah, an Aramaic kingdom which under Hadad-ezer was aiming at the conquest of the whole of Syria. In the reign of Saul, Zobah was divided into a number of separate clans or states; these had been welded together by Hadad-ezer, who had added to his empire the smaller Aramaic princ.i.p.alities of central Syria. Geshur, Maachah, Damascus all acknowledged his authority. He had secured the caravan-road which led across the desert, past the future Palmyra, to the Euphrates, and eastward of that river the Aramaean states sent him help in war. Like the Pharaohs of a former generation, he had erected a monument of his victory on the banks of the great river, marking the farthest limit of his dominions.

Hamath was threatened by the growing power of Hadad-ezer, when a new force entered the field. Joab, the commander of the Israelitish army, was a consummate general, and the veterans he led had been trained to conquer. Ammon was easily crushed, and while its capital was closely invested the Israelitish troops fell upon the Aramaeans in campaign after campaign. Victory followed victory; the forces of Zobah and its allies were annihilated, and the Aramaean states as far as Hamath and even the Euphrates became the tributaries of David. Wealth flowed into the royal treasury at Jerusalem; the cities of northern Syria were plundered of their bronze, and the yearly tribute of the subject states, as well as the proceeds of the desert trade, yielded an unfailing revenue to the conqueror. The attempt of Hadad-ezer to found an Aramaean empire had failed.

But the empire of David was hardly longer lived. The murder of Joab, and the unwarlike character and extravagance of Solomon, brought about its downfall. Damascus revolted under Rezon; and though in the war that ensued Solomon succeeded in keeping the cities of Zobah which kept guard over the caravan road, it never returned to Israelitish rule. When the disruption of the Israelitish kingdom came after Solomon's death, the Aramaeans rallied round the successors of Rezon. Damascus increased in strength, and at times laid northern Israel under tribute. Between the two kingdoms there was indeed constant intercourse, sometimes peaceful, sometimes hostile. Syrian merchants had bazaars in Samaria, where they could buy and sell, undisturbed by tolls and exactions, and Israelitish traders had similar quarters a.s.signed to them by treaty in Damascus.

"Damask couches" were already famous, and Ahab sent a contingent of 10,000 men and 2000 chariots to the help of Ben-Hadad II. in his war against a.s.syria. This Ben-Hadad is called Hadad-idri or Hadad-ezer in the a.s.syrian texts; Ben-Hadad, in fact, was a G.o.d, who was wors.h.i.+pped by the Syrians by the side of his father Hadad.

In the struggle with a.s.syria the Aramaean forces were led by Hamath. Most of the states of western Asia contributed troops; even the "Arabs" took part in the conflict. But the confederates were overthrown with great slaughter at Karkar on the Orontes in B.C. 853, and immediately afterwards we find Ahab at war with his late ally. Hadad-idri lived only a few years longer. In B.C. 842 he was murdered by Hazael, who seized the throne. But Hazael, like his predecessor, was soon called upon to face an a.s.syrian army. Year after year the a.s.syrians invaded the territories of Damascus, and though they never succeeded in capturing the capital, the country was devastated, and a countless amount of booty carried away. The Syrian kingdom was utterly exhausted, and in no condition to resist the attacks of the Israelitish kings Jehoash and Jeroboam II. Jehoash, we are told, gained three victories over his hereditary enemy, while Jeroboam occupied its cities. When an a.s.syrian army once more appeared at the gates of Damascus in B.C. 797, its king Mariha was glad to purchase peace by rich presents and the offer of homage. Gold and silver, bronze and iron in large quant.i.ties were yielded up to the conqueror, and Damascus for a while was the va.s.sal of Nineveh.

But a respite was granted it in which to recover its strength. Civil war sapped the strength of the kingdom of Israel, and a.s.syria fell into decay. Freed from its enemies, Damascus again ama.s.sed wealth through the trade across the desert, and was recognised as the head of the smaller Aramaean states. In conjunction with the Israelitish king Pekah, Rezon II. proposed to overthrow Judah and supplant the Davidic dynasty by a Syrian va.s.sal-prince. The fall of Judah would have meant the fall also of Edom and the submission of the Philistines, as well as that of Moab and Ammon. The strength of its capital made Judah the champion and protector of southern Canaan; with Jerusalem in their hands, the confederate rulers of Damascus and Samaria could do as they chose. Ahaz of Judah turned in his despair to the a.s.syrians, who had once more appeared on the scene. Tiglath-pileser III. had overthrown the older a.s.syrian dynasty and put new life into the kingdom. In the interests of the merchants of Nineveh he aimed at incorporating the whole of western Asia and its commerce into his empire, and the appeal of Ahaz gave him an excuse for interfering in the affairs of Palestine. Ahaz became his va.s.sal; Pekah was put to death, and an a.s.syrian nominee made king in his place, while Rezon was shut up in his capital and closely besieged. For two years the siege continued; then Damascus was taken, its last king slain, and its territory placed under an a.s.syrian satrap.

Hamath had already fallen. A portion of its population had been transported to the north, and their places filled with settlers from Babylonia. Its king had become an a.s.syrian va.s.sal, who along with the other subject princes of Asia attended the court held by Tiglath-pileser at Damascus after its capture, there to pay homage to the conqueror and swell his triumph. A few years later, on the accession of Sargon, Hamath made a final effort to recover its freedom. But the effort was ruthlessly crushed, and henceforward the last of the Aramaean kingdoms was made an a.s.syrian province. When an Aramaean tribe again played a part in history it was in the far south, among the rocky cliffs of Petra and the desert fortress of the Nabathean merchants.

In the Book of Genesis, Mesopotamia, the country between the Euphrates and Tigris, is called not only Aram-Naharaim, "Aram of the Two Rivers,"

but also Padan-Aram, "the acre of Aram." Padan, as we learn from the a.s.syrian inscriptions, originally signified as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough; then it came to denote the "cultivated land" or "acre" itself. The word still survives in modern Arabic. In the Egypt of to-day land is measured by _feddans_, the _feddan_ (or _paddmi_) being the equivalent of our acre. _Paddan_ was used in the same sense in the Babylonia of the age of Abraham. Numerous contracts have been found for the lease or sale of estates in which the "acreage" or number of _paddani_ is carefully stated. The application of the name to the plain of Mesopotamia was doubtless clue to the Babylonians. An early Babylonian king claims rule over the "land of Padan," and elsewhere we are told that it lay in front of the country of the Arman or Aramaeans.

It was in western Padan that the kingdom of Mitanni was established. Its founders, as we have seen, came from the north. From the river Halys in Asia Minor to Lake Urumiyeh, east of Armenia, there was a mult.i.tude of tribes, most of whom seem to have belonged to the same race and to have spoken dialects of the same language. The Hitt.i.tes of Cappadocia and the ranges of the Taurus have already been described. East of them came the Meshech and Tubal of the Bible as well as the kingdom of Comagene, of which we often hear in the a.s.syrian texts. But of all these northern populations the most important--at all events in the later Old Testament age--were the inhabitants of a country called Biainas, but to which its neighbours gave the name of Ararat. Ararat corresponded to southern Armenia, Biainas being the modern Van, and the Mount Ararat of modern geography lying considerably to the north of it. In the ninth century before our era a powerful dynasty arose at Van, which extended its conquests far and wide, and at one time threatened to destroy even the a.s.syrian empire. It signalised its accession to power by borrowing the cuneiform writing of Nineveh, and numerous inscriptions exist recording the names and victories of its sovereigns, the buildings they erected, and the G.o.ds they served. The language of the inscriptions is strange and peculiar; it seems to be distantly related to modern Georgian, and may be akin to the dialects of the Hitt.i.tes or of Mitanni.

If we may trust the representations of the a.s.syrian artists, the people of Ararat did not all belong to the same race. Two ethnic types have been handed down to us--one with beardless faces, resembling that of the Hitt.i.tes, the other of a people with high fore-heads, curved and pointed noses, thin lips, and well-formed chin. Both, however, wear the same dress. On the head is a crested helmet like that of the Greeks, on the feet the Hitt.i.te boot with upturned end; the body is clad in a tunic which reaches to the knee, and a small round target is used in battle.

For many centuries the Semites and the people of the north contended for the possession of the Syrian plains. Horde after horde descended from the northern mountains, capturing the Aramaean cities and setting up kingdoms in their midst. At one time it seemed as if the Semites of the east and west were to be permanently sundered from one another. The decay of Babylonia and Egypt enabled the Mitannians and Hitt.i.tes to establish themselves in Mesopotamia and Syria, and to gain possession of the fords of the Euphrates and the great lines of trade. But the northerner was not suited by nature for the hot and enervating climate of the south. His force diminished, his numbers lessened, and the subjugated Semite increased in strength. Mitanni perished like the Hitt.i.te empire, and with the rise of the second a.s.syrian empire the intruding nations of the north found themselves compelled to struggle for bare existence. Ararat had become the leader among them, and in the latter days of the older a.s.syrian dynasty had wrested territory from the a.s.syrians themselves, and had imposed its dominion from the borders of Cappadocia to the sh.o.r.es of Lake Urumiyeh. But on a sudden all was changed. Tiglath-pileser swept the land of Ararat to the very gates of its capital, destroying and plundering as he went, and a war began between north and south which ended in the triumph of a.s.syria. Ararat indeed remained, though reduced to its original dimensions in the neighbourhood of Lake Van; but its allies in Comagene and Cappadocia, in Cilicia and among the Hitt.i.tes, were subjugated and dispersed. The tribes of Meshech and Tubal retreated to the coasts of the Black Sea, and Ararat and its sister-kingdom of Minni were too exhausted to withstand the invasion of a new race from new quarters of the world. The Aryan Kimmerians from Russia poured through them, settling on their way in Minni; while other Aryans from Phrygia made themselves masters of Ararat, which henceforth took the name of Armenia. The Aramaean was avenged: the invaders who in days before the Exodus had already robbed him of his lands were themselves pursued to their northern retreats. The south proved to them a land of decay and destruction; Gog and his host were given, "on the mountains of Israel," to the vulture and the beast of prey.

CHAPTER V

EGYPT

Egypt had been the bondhouse of Israel. It was there that Israel had grown from a family into a people, which the desert was to transform into a nation. The Exodus out of Egypt was the beginning of Israelitish history, the era from which it dated. Down to the last the kingdom of the Pharaohs exercised upon it an influence more or less profound; the extravagant splendour of Solomon was modelled after that of the Egyptian monarchs, his merchants found their best market on the banks of the Nile, and the last Canaanitish city which pa.s.sed into Israelitish hands was the gift to him of the Pharaoh. The invasion of the Egyptian king prevented Rehoboam from attempting to reconquer the revolted tribes, and in the days of a.s.syrian ascendancy it was Egypt that was played off against the a.s.syrian invader by the princes and statesmen of the west.

The defeat of Necho at Carchemish handed Palestine over to the Babylonians, and indirectly brought about the destruction of Jerusalem; even in the age of the Ptolemies Egypt still influenced the history of Israel, and the Jews of Alexandria prepared the way for the Christian Church. For centuries Palestine was the battle-ground of the nations; but it was so because it lay between the two great powers of the ancient East, between Egypt on the one side and a.s.syria and Babylonia on the other.

Egypt is the creation of the Nile. Outside the Delta and the strip of land which can be watered from the river there is only desert. When the annual inundation covers the fields the land of Egypt exists no more; it becomes a watery plain, out of which emerge the villages and towns and the raised banks which serve as roads. For more than 1600 miles the Nile flows without an affluent; in the spring it falls so low that its channel becomes almost unnavigable; but in the late summer, its waters, swollen by the rains and melted snows of Central Africa, and laden with the fertilising silt of the Abyssinian mountains, spread over the cultivated country, and bring fertility wherever they go.

The waters of the inundation must have been confined by d.y.k.es, and made to flow where the cultivator needed them, at a very remote date. Recent discoveries have thrown light on the early history of the country. We find it inhabited by at least one race, possibly of Libyan origin, which for the present we must term pre-historic. Its burial-places are met with in various localities in Upper Egypt. The members of the race were not acquainted with the use of metals, but they were expert artificers in stone and clay. Stone was skilfully carved into vessels of different forms, and vases of clay were fas.h.i.+oned, with brightly polished surfaces. Sometimes the vases were simply coloured red and black, or adorned with patterns and pictures in incised white lines; at other times, and more especially in the later tombs, they were artistically decorated with representations of men and animals, boats, and geometrical patterns in red upon a pale drab ground.

The pre-historic race or races had already reached a fair level of civilisation--neolithic in type though it may have been--when a new people appeared upon the scene, bringing with them the elements of a high culture and a knowledge of working in metals. These were the Pharaonic Egyptians, who seem to have come from Babylonia and the coasts of southern Arabia. Cities were built and kingdoms were founded on the banks of the Nile, and the older population was forced to become the serfs of the new-comers, to cultivate their fields, to confine the Nile within artificial boundaries, and to carry out those engineering works which have made the valley of the Nile what it is to-day.

The Pharaonic Egyptians are the Egyptians of history. They were acquainted with the art of writing, they mummified their dead, and they possessed to a high degree the faculty of organisation. The G.o.ds they wors.h.i.+pped were beneficent deities, forms of the Sun-G.o.d from whom their kings derived their descent. It was a religion which easily pa.s.sed into a sort of pantheistic monotheism in the more cultivated minds, and it was a.s.sociated with a morality which is almost Christian in its character. A belief in a future world and a resurrection of the flesh formed an integral part of it; hence came the practice of embalming the body that it might be preserved to the day of resurrection; hence too the doctrine of the dead man's justification, not only through his own good works, but through the intercession of the Sun-G.o.d Horus as well.

Horus was addressed as "the Redeemer;" he had avenged the death of his father Osiris upon his enemy Set, the lord of evil, and through faith in him his followers were delivered from the powers of darkness. Horus, however, and Osiris were but forms of the same deity. Horus was the Sun-G.o.d when he rises in the morning; Osiris the Sun-G.o.d as he journeys at night through a world of darkness; and both were identical with Tum, the Sun-G.o.d of the evening. The G.o.ds who watched over the great cities of Egypt, some of which had been the capitals of princ.i.p.alities, were identified with the Sun-G.o.d in these his various forms. Thus Ptah of Memphis became one with Osiris; so also did Ra, the Sun-G.o.d of Heliopolis, while in those later days when Thebes rose to sovereign power its local G.o.d Amon was united with Ra.

Along with this higher and spiritual religion went--at least in historical times--a wors.h.i.+p of sacred animals. The anomaly can be explained only by that mixture of races of which archaeology has a.s.sured us. Beast-wors.h.i.+p must have been the religion of the pre-historic inhabitants of Egypt, and just as Brahmanism has thrown its protection over the superst.i.tions of the aboriginal tribes of India and identified the idols of the populace with its own G.o.ds, so too in ancient Egypt a fusion of race must have brought about a fusion of ideas. The sacred animals of the older cult were a.s.sociated with the deities of the new-comers; in the eyes of the upper cla.s.ses they were but symbols; the lower cla.s.ses continued to see in them what their fathers had seen, the G.o.ds themselves. While the Pharaonic Egyptian adored Horus, the older race knew of Horus only as a hawk. If we may trust Manetho, the Egyptian historian, it was not till the beginning of the Second historical dynasty that the sacred animals of popular wors.h.i.+p were received into the official cult.

The Pharaonic Egyptian resembled in body and character the typical native of Central Egypt to-day. He was long-headed, with a high and intellectual forehead, straight nose, and ma.s.sive lower jaw. His limbs were well-proportioned and muscular, his feet and hands were small. He belonged to the white race, but his hair and eyes were black, the hair being also straight. His artistic and intellectual faculties were highly developed, he was singularly good-tempered and light-hearted, averse to cruelty, though subject at times to fits of fanatical excitement and ferocity. At once obstinate and industrious, he never failed to carry out what he had once taken in hand. The Nile valley was reclaimed for the use of man, and swamp and jungle, the home of wild beasts and venomous serpents, were turned by his labours into a fruitful paradise.

By the side of the long-headed Egyptian of the ruling cla.s.ses we find in the age of the earlier dynasties a wholly different type, of which the famous wooden statue now in the Cairo Museum, and commonly known as the "Shekh el-Beled," may be taken as an ill.u.s.tration. Here the skull is round instead of long, the lips and nostrils are thick and fleshy, the expression good-humoured rather than intellectual. The type is that of a portion of the lower cla.s.ses, and disappears from the monuments after the fall of the Sixth dynasty. After that epoch the races which inhabited Egypt were more completely fused together, and the rounded skull became rare.

Egyptian history begins with Menes, the founder of the united monarchy, and of the First historical dynasty. Our glimpses of the age that preceded him--the age of the followers of Horus, as the Egyptians termed it--are few and scanty. Egypt was divided into several kingdoms, which were gradually unified into two only, those of the north and the south.

The northern kingdom was symbolised by the snake and papyrus, the southern kingdom by the vulture and aloe. The vulture was the emblem of Nekheb, the G.o.ddess of the great fortress whose ruins are now called El-Kab; and it is probable that the city of Nekhen, which stood opposite it on the western bank of the Nile, was once the capital of the south.

However this may be, when Menes mounted the throne he was hereditary ruler of This, a city which adjoined the sacred burial-place of Osiris at Abydos, and of which Girgeh is the modern successor.

Menes made himself master of the north, and so united all Egypt under one rule. He then undertook and carried through a vast engineering work, one of the greatest the world has ever seen. The Nile was turned aside out of its old channel under the Libyan cliffs into a new channel to the east. The d.y.k.e which forced the river from its old course still remains, and two or three thousand years before the bed of the valley had risen to its present level the destruction of the d.y.k.e would have meant the return of the Nile to its former path. North of the d.y.k.e English engineers have found that the alluvial soil bears witness to interference with the natural course of the river of a far-reaching kind, and its long straight course resembles that of a ca.n.a.l rather than of the naturally winding stream of the Nile.

On the embankment thus won from the waters Menes built his capital, which bore the two names of Men-nefer or Memphis, "the Beautiful Place,"

and Ha-ka-Ptah or aegyptos, "the Temple of the Double of Ptah." On the north side of it, in fact, stood the temple of Ptah, the local G.o.d, the scanty remains of which are still visited by the tourist. In front of the shrine was the sacred lake across which, on days of festival, the image of the G.o.d was ferried, and which now serves as a village pond.

Menes was followed by six dynasties of kings, who reigned in all 1478 years. The tombs of the two first dynasties have been found at Abydos.

Menes himself was buried on the edge of the desert near Negada, about twenty miles to the north of Thebes. His sepulchre was built in rectangular form, of crude bricks, and filled with numerous chambers, in the innermost and largest of which the corpse of the king was laid. Then wood was heaped about the walls and the whole set on fire, so that the royal body and the objects that were buried with it were half consumed by the heat. The mode of burial was peculiar to Babylonia. Here, in an alluvial plain, where stone was not procurable, and where the cemeteries of the dead adjoined the houses of the living, brick was needful instead of stone, and sanitary considerations made cremation necessary. But in the desert of Egypt, at the foot of rocky cliffs, such customs were out of place; their existence can be explained only by their importation from abroad. The use of seal-cylinders of Babylonian pattern, and of clay as a writing material, in the age of Menes and his successors, confirms the conclusion to which the mode of burial points. The culture of Pharaonic Egypt must have been derived from the banks of the Euphrates.

That Menes should have been buried at Negada, and not, like the rest of his dynasty, in the sacred necropolis of his mother-city, is strange.

But we are told that he was slain by a hippopotamus, the Egyptian symbol of a foe. It may be, therefore, that he fell fighting in battle, and that his sepulchre was erected near the scene of his death. However that may be, the other monarchs of the first two dynasties were entombed at Abydos, The mode of burial was the same as in the case of Menes.

The objects found in the tombs of Menes and his successors prove that the culture of Egypt was already far advanced. The hieroglyphic system of writing was fully developed, tools and weapons of bronze were used in large quant.i.ties, the hardest stones of the Red Sea coast were carved into exquisitely-shaped vases, plaques of ivory were engraved with high artistic finish, and even obsidian was worked into vases by means of the lathe. As the nearest source of obsidian to Egypt that is known are the islands of Santorin and Melos in the aegean Sea, there must have already been a maritime trade with the Greek seas. Art had already reached maturity; a small dog carved out of ivory and discovered in the tomb of Menes is equal to the best work of later days. Finally, the t.i.tles a.s.sumed by the Pharaohs are already placed above the double name of the king, and the symbols employed to denote them are the same as those which continued in use down to the end of the Egyptian monarchy.

The first six dynasties are known to Egyptologists as the Old Empire.

Kings of the Fourth dynasty, Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, built the great pyramids of Giza, the largest of which is still one of the wonders of the world. Its huge granite blocks are planed with mathematical exact.i.tude, and, according to Professor Flinders Petrie, have been worked by means of tubular drills fitted with the points of emeralds or some equally hard stone. It was left for the nineteenth century to re-discover the instrument when the Mont Cenis tunnel was half completed. The copper for the bronze tools employed by the workmen was brought from the mines of Sinai, where the Egyptian kings had kept an armed garrison for many generations; the tin mixed with the copper must have come from India and the Malayan Peninsula, or else from Spain and Britain.

While the Fifth and Sixth dynasties were reigning, exploring expeditions were sent into the lands of the Upper Nile. The two dynasties had sprung from the island of Elephantine, opposite a.s.suan; it was, therefore, perhaps natural that they should take an interest in the country to the south. One expedition made its way into the land of Punt, to the north of Abyssinia, and brought back a Danga dwarf, whose tribal name still survives under the form of Dongo. Later expeditions explored the banks of the Nile as far south as the country of the Dwarfs, as well as the oases of Libya.

The Old Empire was followed by a period of decline. Egypt was overrun by barbarians, its kings lost their power, and the whole land suffered decay. The pyramid tombs of the Old Empire were entered and despoiled; the bodies of the monarchs within them were torn to pieces, and the precious objects that had been buried with them were carried away. As the power of the kings diminished, that of the great landowners and n.o.bles increased; a feudal aristocracy grew up, which divided Egypt between its members, and treated the royal authority with only nominal respect. Memphis ceased to be the capital, and a new dynasty, the Ninth, was founded by the feudal prince of Herakleopolis, now Ahnas, south of the Fayyum. For a time the Tenth dynasty succeeded in reducing its rebellious va.s.sals to obedience, but the princes of Thebes steadily grew in strength, and at length one of them seized the throne of the Pharaohs and established the Eleventh dynasty. Thebes became the capital of the kingdom, and under the Twelfth dynasty was the capital of an empire.

Once more Egypt revived. The power of the aristocracy was broken, and the local princes became court officials. Temples were built, and engineering works undertaken all over the country. The ancient temple of Ra at Heliopolis was restored, and two obelisks, one of which is still standing, were planted in front of it. The depression west of the Nile, now known as the Fayyum, was drained of its waters, and by means of embankments transformed from a pestiferous marsh into fertile fields.

The Nile was brought to it by a river-like ca.n.a.l, and the supply of water regulated by locks. Fresh exploring expeditions were sent to the Somali coast and elsewhere. The gold-mines of Hammamat were worked in the eastern desert, and Egypt became the California or Australia of the ancient world. The eastern frontier was defended against the Asiatic tribes, while campaign after campaign was carried on in the south, resulting in the conquest of the Sudan.

The Thirteenth dynasty came to an end in the midst of internal troubles.

The short reigns of the kings of the dynasty that followed show that the line of the Pharaohs was again becoming feeble. It closed in disaster and overthrow. Hordes of invaders poured into Egypt from Asia and overran the whole country. They are known as the Hyksos or Shepherds, and the greater part of them were of Semitic descent. For 669 years they ruled the valley of the Nile in three dynasties, and the recollection of their hated sway never faded from the Egyptian mind. At first they burned and plundered, then they established themselves in Memphis and Zoan, and from thence governed the rest of the country. But they soon submitted to the influence of Egyptian culture. The conquered people took their conquerors captive, and the Hyksos kings became veritable Pharaohs. The manners and customs, the writing and t.i.tles of the native monarchs were adopted, and, in course of time, even the language also.

The court was filled with native officials, the cities and temples were restored, and Egyptian learning was patronised. One of the few Egyptian treatises on mathematics that have come down to us is dedicated to a Hyksos sovereign. It was only in religion that the new rulers of Egypt remained foreign.

They continued to wors.h.i.+p a form of the Semitic Baal, who was invoked under the Hitt.i.te name of Sutekh. An attempt to impose his wors.h.i.+p upon the native Egyptians led to the war of independence which ended in the expulsion of the stranger. Apophis III., of the Seventeenth dynasty, sent messengers to Skenen-Ra, the prince of Thebes, bidding him renounce Amon of Thebes for the G.o.d of his suzerain. Skenen-Ra resisted, and a long war followed, which, after lasting through five generations, resulted in the complete triumph of the Egyptians. The Hyksos were driven back into Asia, and the prince of Thebes was acknowledged the Pharaoh of an united Egypt (B.C. 1600).

It was while the Hyksos kings were reigning that Abraham visited the Delta. Their court was held at Zoan, now San, close to the Asiatic frontier, and on the frontier itself stood their fortress of Avaris, which served at once to bar the way from Asia and to overawe the conquered Egyptians. 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. Thothmes III. (B.C. 1503-1449) made Canaan an Egyptian province, dividing it into districts, each under a governor or a va.s.sal prince, who was visited from time to time by a royal commissioner. Carriage roads were constructed, with posting inns at intervals along them where food and lodging could be procured. The country east of the Jordan equally obeyed Egyptian rule. The plateau of Bashan was governed by a single prefect; Ammon and Moab were tributary; Edom alone retained its independence, thanks to its barren mountains, and inaccessible ravines. Thebes, the capital of the dynasty, was adorned with splendid buildings, and all the wealth and luxury of Asia was poured into it. Thothmes established zoological and botanical gardens, where the strange plants, birds, and animals he had collected in his campaigns could be preserved. His immediate predecessor, Queen Hatshepsu, had already revived the exploring expeditions of earlier centuries. An exploring fleet had been sent by her to Punt, the land of frankincense, and it returned home with rarities of all kinds, including apes and giraffes. The history of the expedition and the treasures it brought back were depicted on the walls of the temple built by the queen at Der el-Bahari, after the design of the architect Sen-Mut.

The authority of Egypt was not extended to the Euphrates only. Cyprus sent tribute to the Pharaoh, the coasts of Asia Minor, perhaps also of Greece, were harried, and the Sudan was conquered as far south as Berber, if not Khartum. Under Amen-hotep III., the grandson of Thothmes III., the empire underwent still farther extension. Egyptian temples were erected on the banks of the Upper Nile, and Napata, the future capital of Ethiopia, was built at Gebel Barkal, beyond Dongola.

In Asia, Mitanni was the first neighbour of Egypt that had maintained its independence. a.s.syria and the Mesopotamian prince of Singar or s.h.i.+nar had paid tribute to Thothmes III.; so, too, had the Hitt.i.te king, and even Babylonia had been forced to acquiesce sullenly in the annexation by Egypt of her old province of Canaan, and to beg for gifts of gold from the Egyptian mines. But Mitanni was too powerful to be attacked. Her royal family accordingly married into the Solar race of Egypt. One of her princesses was the mother of Amen-hotep III.; another was probably the mother of his son and successor, Amen-hotep IV.

Amen-hotep IV. was one of the most remarkable monarchs that have ever sat upon a throne. His father died while he was still a boy, and he was brought up under the Asiatic influences of his mother Teie. But he was a philosopher by nature rather than a king. The purpose of his life was to reform the religion of Egypt, to replace it, in fact, by a pantheistic monotheism, the visible symbol of which was the solar disk. For the first time in history a religious persecution was entered on; the wors.h.i.+p of Amon, the G.o.d of Thebes, was proscribed, and his very name erased from the monuments. Amen-hotep changed his own name to Khu-n-Aten, "the glory of the solar disk," and every effort was made to extirpate the state religion, of which he was himself the official head.

But the ancient priesthood of Thebes proved too strong for the king. He left the city of his fathers, and built a new capital farther north, where its ruins are now known as Tel el-Amarna. Here he lived with the adherents of the new creed, and here he erected a temple to the G.o.d of his wors.h.i.+p and a stately palace for himself.

Along with the reformation in religion had gone a reformation in art.

The old conventionalised art of Egypt was cast aside, and an attempt was made to imitate nature, exactly, even to the verge of caricature. The wall and floor paintings that have been discovered at Tel el-Amarna are marvels of realistic art. Plants and animals and birds are alike represented in them with a spirit and faithfulness to nature which is indeed astonis.h.i.+ng. Like the houses of his followers, the palace of the king was adorned with similar frescoes. But it was also decorated with a lavish profusion of precious materials; its walls and columns were inlaid with gold and bronze and precious stones, statues almost Greek in their type stood within it, and even its stuccoed floors were covered with costly paintings. Roads were made in the desert eastward of the city, where its wealthier inhabitants took their morning drives, and the king occupied the earlier part of the clay in giving lectures or sermons on the articles of his faith.

The archives of the empire had been transferred from Thebes to the new capital. Among them was the foreign correspondence, written upon clay tablets in the cuneiform characters, and (for the most part) in the language of Babylonia. We have learnt from it that the Babylonian language and script were the common means of intercommunication from the Euphrates to the Nile in the century before the Exodus. It proves how long and how profound must have been the influence and rule of Babylonia in western Asia. Throughout the civilised world of Asia the educated cla.s.ses were compelled to learn a foreign writing and language, and when the empire pa.s.sed from Babylonia to Egypt, Egypt itself, whose script and literature went back to immemorial times, was forced to do the same.