Eastern Life. Harriet Martineau

have looked up at the Pyramids, and learned some of the particulars which we, following on his traces, long in vain to know: – how they were reared, and for what purpose precisely; and perhaps many details of the progress of the work. It is true these pyramids had then stood somewhere about 1500 years: the builders, tens of thousands in number, had slept for many centuries in their graves: the kings who had reared them lay embalmed in the stillness of ages, and the glory of a supremacy which had passed away; and these edifices had become so familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants, that they were like natural features of the landscape: but as Abraham walked round those vast bases, and looked up at the smooth pictured surfaces of their sides, he might have had explained to him those secrets of ancient civilisation which we seek to pry into in vain.

      We now come to the brilliant Third Period.

      The Theban kings had been growing in strength for some time; and at length they were able to rise up against the Shepherd Race, and expel them from Memphis, and afterwards from their stronghold, Abaris. On the surrender of this last place, the enemy were permitted to march out of the country in safety, the number of their men being recorded as 240,000. – The period of 1300 years now entered upon was the grandest of Egyptian history – if, we may add, the Sesostris of old renown was, as some recent students have supposed, the Ramases II. of this Period. Some high authorities, as Lepsius and Bunsen, believe Sesostris to have belonged to the old Monarchy. However this may be, all agree that the deeds of many heroes are attributed to the one who now bears the name of Sesostris; and the achievements of Ramases the Great are quite enough to glorify his age, whether he had a predecessor like himself or not. Of these achievements I shall say nothing here, as they will come before us quite often enough in our study of the temples. Suffice it that the empire of Egypt was extended by conquest southwards to Abyssinia; westwards over Libya; northwards over Greece; and eastwards beyond the banks of the Ganges. The rock statues and stelae of Sesostris may yet be seen in countries far apart, but within this range: his Babylonian captives were employed on some of the great edifices we have seen, and were afterwards permitted to build a city for themselves near the point of the Delta; and the tributary kings and chiefs of all the conquered countries were required to come up to Egypt once a year, to pay homage by drawing the conqueror's chariot, in return for which they received gifts and favour. The kings of Lower Egypt appear to have declined about this period; if even they were not tributary to those of Upper Egypt. Of these kings, one was he who received Joseph into favour,¹² and made him his prime minister; and another was he who afterwards »knew not Joseph.« Of Joseph's administration of the affairs of Lower Egypt we know more than of the rule of any other minister of the Pharaohs. I have walked upon the mounds which cover the streets of Memphis, through which Joseph rode, on occasion of his investiture, and where the king's servants ran before him, to bid the people bow the knee. And when at Heliopolis, I was on the spot where he married his wife – the daughter of the priest and governor of On, afterwards Heliopolis.

      It was in the early part of this Third Period of the Egyptian Monarchy that Cecrops is supposed (fable being here mingled with history) to have led a colony from Sais, and to have founded the kingdom of Athens,¹³ beginning here the long series of obligations that Greece, and, through Greece, Rome and the world, have been under to Egypt. It is almost overpowering to the imagination to contemplate the vast antiquity of the Egyptian empire, already above two thousand years, in the day when Cecrops was training his band of followers, to lead them in search of a place whereon to build Athens; – in a day long preceding that when Ceres was wandering about the earth in search of her daughter.

      It was about this time that a still more important event than even the founding of Athens had taken place. We all know how a certain Egyptian lady went out one day to bathe, and what was found by her maidens in a rushy spot on the banks of the Nile. That lady was the daughter of one of the Pharaohs of Memphis, at a time (as some think) shortly before the union on one head of the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. When she brought home the child found among the rushes, she little thought that that infant head was to become the organ of a wisdom that should eclipse the glory of Sesostris, and mainly determine the spiritual destinies of the human race for a longer course of centuries than even Egypt had yet seen.

      When the Shepherd kings and their army were driven out of Egypt, many of their people remained as slaves, and were employed on the public works. The Hebrews were also thus employed – latterly on the fortifications of Thoum and Heliopolis; and the Egyptians confounded the two races of aliens in a common hatred. From the prevalence of leprosy among the Hebrews, and other causes, they were considered an unclean people; and they were sent by the Pharaoh of their day, under the warning of the priests, to live by themselves in the district allotted to them. Whether the Pharaoh who opposed the departure of this army of slaves was Thothmes III., or his son, Amunoph II., or some later king, is undetermined; but it is believed on high authority that it was Thothmes III.,¹⁴ and that he reigned many years after the Exodus. The date of the Exodus is agreed upon as about B.C. 1491, whoever was the Pharaoh reigning at the time. There is no assertion in the Mosaic narrative that Pharaoh himself was lost in the Red Sea,¹⁵ nor that the whole of his host perished; nor is there any allusion in the Song of Moses to the death of the sovereign: and some of the Hebrew traditions declare¹⁶ that Pharaoh survived, and extended his conquests afterwards into Assyria. Thus the supposition that the Israelites marched out in an early year of the reign of this monarch is not irreconcileable with his having reigned thirty-nine years, as Egyptian history declares that he did. Manetho mentions their numbers to have been eighty thousand when they were sent to live by themselves; and it is curious on this account, and on some others, to find the number assigned by the Mosaic history so high as six hundred thousand, besides women and children. Even if we suppose a proportion of these to have been their fellow-slaves of the Shepherd Race, who, being confounded with the Hebrews by their masters, took this opportunity of leaving the country, it gives us a high idea of the power and population of Egypt in those days that such a body could be abstracted from the working class of the country, and leave behind a sufficient force for the achievement of such wars and arts as we know were prosecuted after their departure.¹⁷

      As our chief interest in Egypt was till lately from its being the scene of the early life of the Hebrew nation, we are apt to look for records of the Hebrews on the monuments wherever we go. I am convinced that none have been found relating to their connection with Egypt – none relating to them at all, till the long subsequent time when Jerusalem was conquered by Sheshonk (Shishak). In my opinion, it would be more surprising if there had been such records than that there are not. There is nothing in the presence of a body of slaves to require or suggest a monumental record, unless those slaves were made so by conquest, and had previously been a nation. The Hebrews were not a nation, and had no dream of being so till Moses began the mighty work of making them one. When they had a confirmed national existence; when their great King Solomon had married into the line of the Pharaohs, and their national interests came into collision with those of Egypt, we find them, among other nations, in the train of the captives of Sheshonk, on the walls of El Karnac. Some Hebrew names among those of the Egyptian months,¹⁸ and a sprinkling of Hebrew words in the Coptic language, are, I believe, the only traceable memorials in Egypt of the residence of the Israelites.

      According to Pliny, one of the Ramases was on the throne of Egypt when Troy was taken: and within thirty years of that time, King Solomon married a daughter of one of the Pharaohs. How great Thebes had long been is clear from the mention of Upper Egypt in Homer, who says, perhaps truly enough in one sense, that it was the birthplace of some of tile Greek gods; and that its inhabitants were so wise as to be favourites, and even hosts of those gods. It was with these wise Thebans (then one with the Ethiopians) that Jupiter and his family were supposed by the Greeks to be making holiday, when out of reach, as it seemed, of the prayers of the besiegers of Troy. The Theban family of monarchs, however, was by this time declining in power; and after a century or two of weakness, they were displaced by stronger men from a higher station up the river; and Egypt was governed by princes from the hitherto subordinate province of Ethiopia. In three generations, Thebes ceased to be the capital of Egypt; and the seat of government was removed to Saïs in the Delta. This event happened nearly 700 years B.C. From this time, we have the advantage of certainty of dates, within, at least, the range of a few months. We have come down to the record of Babylonian eclipses, and the skies light up the