Another king of this dynasty, Amenophis IV., made himself exceedingly notorious by trying to introduce a new religion, and for this he had his memory execrated, and was deeply cursed as a heretic by priests and people of the succeeding generations. It appears he had imbibed from his mother, Ti, who was an Assyrian princess, certain religious opinions which he determined to force on his own people. In order to do this he removed his capital from Thebes, where the national worship of the great god Amen was celebrated, to Khu-en-aten, the modern Tell-el-Amarna, which name he took for himself, and which means the “splendour of the sun-disk”; there he set up the sun-disk god, Aten (the radiant sun). The new religion, however, was obnoxious to the conservative Egyptians, and soon died out (Fig. 94).
The Nineteenth Dynasty (B.C. 1400-1200) was founded by Rameses I. He was a successful king, but his son Seti (Fig. 95) was a greater one, and had the reputation of being a great builder. It was he who built the great “Hall of Columns,” at Karnak, which joins the pylon of Amenophis III. (Fig. 96).
Fig. 94.—The Adoration of the Solar-disk by Amenophis IV. (P.)
He also built the temple at Kûrnah, and remains of his work is seen at Abydos, Memphis, and Heliopolis. He was succeeded by his famous son Rameses II., the Sesostris of the Greeks, the supposed oppressor of the Israelites. He was a very powerful monarch, and, from all accounts, in order to glorify himself in the eyes of posterity, did not scruple to erase the names of former kings from off their cartouches on their monuments and inscribe his own in their place. That he has accomplished the end he had in view by so doing there is not the slightest doubt, for no monarch of Egypt is better known than he. But apart from this he was certainly a mighty chieftain, who “enriched the land with memorials of his name.”
Fig. 95.—Seti with Attributes of Osiris between Amen and Chuoam. (P. & C.)]
The greatest of his many battles (he was always fighting) was fought with the Khita (Hittites), under the walls of Kadesh, in the valley of the Orontes. His forces were almost defeated when by his personal valour he turned the tide of the battle and entirely routed the Khita (Fig. 97).
Fig. 96.—Entrance to the Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Amen at Karnak. (M.)
The most famous building of his time is the rock-hewn temple, the “Great Temple,” that he built and dedicated to Amen, Ptah, and Harmachis, which faces the Nile at Ipsamboul, in Nubia.
Fig. 97.—The Rout of the Khita; Egyptians to the left, the Khita to the right. (M.)
On the façade of this temple are sculptured in situ four seated colossal figures of Rameses, two on each side of the doorway. From the soles of the feet to the top of the pschent on the head measures sixty-five feet; they are the largest statues in Egypt, and the workmanship is careful in finish. Over the entrance is carved in relief on the rock a colossal figure of the god Rā, and on either side of it are single figures in low-relief of Rameses in the act of adoration (Fig. 98).
Fig. 98.—Façade of the Great Rock-cut Temple at Ipsamboul.
Fig. 99.—Principal Hall in the Great Temple. (H.; P. & C.)
Menephthah (B.C. 1300-1266) was the successor of Rameses II. and his successor was Seti II. The latter was the last king of the Middle Empire. With the commencement of the Twentieth Dynasty the New Empire dates (about B.C. 1200-358). Towards the Twenty-second Dynasty (B.C. 966-776) Egypt began to pass into a state of dissolution. In the Twenty-fourth Dynasty (B.C. 733-700) she was at the mercy of Assyria on the north and Ethiopia on the south. In 672 B.C. the Assyrian King Esarhaddon invaded Egypt and occupied the whole of the Delta, afterwards capturing Memphis and Thebes, which he pillaged. The Assyrian king died suddenly, and Taharka, a native usurper, succeeded in driving out the Assyrians, but soon after Egypt was again conquered by Ashurbanipal, a powerful Assyrian King (B.C. 666). The Assyrians, however, after a short time of occupation withdrew from Egypt, owing to their troubles at home with the Medes, who were laying siege to Nineveh, and Egypt again revived. Under Amāsis the country enjoyed peace for about forty years (B.C. 572-528). The Egyptians possessed a fleet at this time with which they advanced to the Phœnician coast and took the city of Sidon, and also annexed the island of Cyprus to Egyptian rule.
Fig. 100.—Portrait of Rameses II. (Louvre; P. & C.)
Egypt submitted to the Persian army under Cambyses in B.C. 527, and was for more than one hundred years afterwards a mere vassal of Persia. The Twenty-seventh Dynasty (B.C. 527-424) was composed solely of Persian kings. A successful revolt broke out in the last Persian king’s reign, Darius II., when Egypt was free once more. Amenrut was the only king of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty, and after the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Dynasties were ended, the latter, by the conquest of Egypt once more by the Persians under Artaxerxes III. (B.C. 340), we find the country under Persian rule for the space of eight years. About this time the Persian monarch was defeated by Alexander the Great, which brought Egypt under the Greek rule. At the death of Alexander Egypt was governed by the Macedonian kings, the Ptolemies, from 330 to 30 B.C. After the Roman wars and the death of Cleopatra, Egypt found itself a Roman province.
Fig. 101.—The Egyptian “Gorge.”
In A.D. 638 the Arabs under Omar conquered the country, and it was ruled by them till 1517, when it passed into the hands of the Turks.
Fig. 102.—General Appearance of an Egyptian Temple.
The Pyramids of Egypt have doubtless derived their shape from the prehistoric grave mounds. Although elaborately and ingeniously contrived for the concealment of the remains of the kings, and are stupendous monuments of building skill, they are not examples of architecture in the true sense of the word. Perhaps the earliest examples of Egyptian architecture, properly speaking, are seen in the ancient shrines, with sloping walls and flat roof, and having the peculiar cavetto cornice moulding called the Egyptian “Gorge” (Figs. 101 and 109). Horizontally is the great feature of Egyptian architecture, which is typically expressed by the illustration Fig. 102, an ideal generalisation of an Egyptian temple.
Fig. 103.—Square Building.
Fig. 104.—Oblong Building.
As hardly any, or no, rain falls in most parts of Egypt, a sloping roof was not a necessity. The external walls in the case of a square building are in the form of a trapezium, making the whole edifice of the shape of a truncated pyramid, and pyramid-like in either the square or rectangular-planned buildings (Figs. 103 and 104), except when the end walls are vertical (Fig. 104), then it tends toward the ridge-form.
Fig. 105.—Model of an Egyptian House. (P.