Chapter II: The Memphite Empire (4)

Papi took him into his friendship at the beginning of his reign, and conferred upon him the title of “friend,” and the office of head of the cabinet, in which position he acquitted himself with credit. Alone, without other help than that of a subordinate scribe, he transacted all the business and drew up all the documents connected with the harem and the privy council. He obtained an ample reward for his services. Pharaoh granted to him, as a proof of his complete satisfaction, the furniture of a tomb in choice white limestone; one of the officials of the necropolis was sent to obtain from the quarries at Troiû the blocks required, and brought back with him a sarcophagus and its lid, a door-shaped stele with its setting and a table of offerings. He affirms with much self-satisfaction that never before had such a thing happened to any one; moreover, he adds, “my wisdom charmed his Majesty, my zeal pleased him, and his Majesty’s heart was delighted with me.” All this is pure hyperbole, but no one was surprised at it in Egypt; etiquette required that a faithful subject should declare the favours of his sovereign to be something new and unprecedented, even when they presented nothing extraordinary or out of the common. Gifts of sepulchral furniture were of frequent occurrence, and we know of more than one instance of them previous to the VIth dynasty--for example, the case of the physician Sokhît-niônkhû, whose tomb still exists at Saqqâra, and whom Pharaoh Sahurî rewarded by presenting him with a monumental stele in stone from Turah. Henceforth Uni could face without apprehension the future which awaited him in the other world; at the same time, he continued to make his way no less quickly in this, and was soon afterwards promoted to the rank of “sole friend” and superintendent of the irrigated lands of the king. The “sole friends” were closely attached to the person of their master. In all ceremonies, their appointed place was immediately behind him, a place of the highest honour and trust, for those who occupied it literally held his life in their hands. They made all the arrangements for his processions and journeys, and saw that the proper ceremonial was everywhere observed, and that no accident was allowed to interrupt the progress of his train. Lastly, they had to take care that none of the nobles ever departed from the precise position to which his birth or office entitled him. This was a task which required a great deal of tact, for questions of precedence gave rise to nearly as many heart-burnings in Egypt as in modern courts. Uni acquitted himself so dexterously, that he was called upon to act in a still more delicate capacity. Queen Amîtsi was the king’s chief consort. Whether she had dabbled in some intrigue of the palace, or had been guilty of unfaithfulness in act or in intention, or had been mixed up in one of those feminine dramas which so frequently disturb the peace of harems, we do not know. At any rate, Papi considered it necessary to proceed against her, and appointed Uni to judge the case. Aided only by his secretary, he drew up the indictment and decided the action so discreetly, that to this day we do not know of what crime Amîtsi was accused or how the matter ended. Uni felt great pride at having been preferred before all others for this affair, and not without reason, “for,” says he, “my duties were to superintend the royal forests, and never before me had a man in my position been initiated into the secrets of the Royal Harem; but his Majesty initiated me into them because my wisdom pleased his Majesty more than that of any other of his lieges, more than that of any other of his mamelukes, more than that of any other of his servants.” These antecedents did not seem calculated to mark out Uni as a future minister of war; but in the East, when a man has given proofs of his ability in one branch of administration, there is a tendency to consider him equally well fitted for service in any of the others, and the fiat of a prince transforms the clever scribe of to-day into the general of to-morrow. No one is surprised, not even the person promoted; he accepts his new duties without flinching, and frequently distinguishes himself as much in their performance as though he had been bred to them from his youth up. When Papi had resolved to give a lesson to the Bedouin of Sinai, he at once thought of Uni, his “sole friend,” who had so skilfully conducted the case of Queen Amîtsi. The expedition was not one of those which could be brought to a successful issue by the troops of the frontier nomes; it required a considerable force, and the whole military organization of the country had to be brought into play. “His Majesty raised troops to the number of several myriads, in the whole of the south from Elephantine to the nome of the Haunch, in the Delta, in the two halves of the valley, in each fort of the forts of the desert, in the land of Iritît, among the blacks of the land of Maza, among the blacks of the land of Amamît, among the blacks of the land of Ûaûait, among the blacks of the land of Kaaû, among the blacks of To-Tamû, and his Majesty sent me at the head of this army. It is true, there were chiefs there, there were mamelukes of the king there, there were sole friends of the Great House there, there were princes and governors of castles from the south and from the north, ‘gilded friends,’ directors of the prophets from the south and the north, directors of districts at the head of troops from the south and the north, of castles and towns that each one ruled, and also blacks from the regions which I have mentioned, but it was I who gave them their orders--although my post was only that of superintendent of the irrigated lands of Pharaoh,--so much so that every one of them obeyed me like the others.” It was not without much difficulty that he brought this motley crowd into order, equipped them, and supplied them with rations. At length he succeeded in arranging everything satisfactorily; by dint of patience and perseverance, “each one took his biscuit and sandals for the march, and each one of them took bread from the towns, and each one of them took goats from the peasants.” He collected his forces on the frontier of the Delta, in the “Isle of the North,” between the “Gate of Imhotpû” and the “Tell of Horû nib-mâît,” and set out into the desert. He advanced, probably by Gebel Magharah and Gebel Helal, as far as Wady-el-Arîsh, into the rich and populous country which lay between the southern slopes of Gebel Tîh and the south of the Dead Sea: once there he acted with all the rigour permitted by the articles of war, and paid back with interest the ill usage which the Bedouin had inflicted on Egypt. “This army came in peace, it completely destroyed the country of the Lords of the Sands. This army came in peace, it pulverized the country of the Lords of the Sands. This army came in peace, it demolished their ‘douars.’ This army came in peace, it cut down their fig trees and their vines. This army came in peace, it burnt the houses of all their people. This army came in peace, it slaughtered their troops to the numbers of many myriads. This army came in peace, it brought back great numbers of their people as living captives, for which thing his Majesty praised me more than for aught else.” * As a matter of fact, these poor wretches were sent off as soon as taken to the quarries or to the dockyards, thus relieving the king from the necessity of imposing compulsory labour too frequently on his Egyptian subjects.

* The locality of the tribes against which Uni waged war
can, I think, be fixed by certain details of the campaign,
especially the mention of the oval or circular enclosures
“ûanît” within which they entrenched themselves. These
enclosures, or ndars, correspond to the nadami which are
mentioned by travellers in these regions, and which are
singularly characteristic. The “Lords of the Sands”
mentioned by Uni occupied the naûami country, i.e. the Negeb
regions situated on the edge of the desert of Tih, round
about Aîn-Qadis, and beyond it as far as Akabah and the Dead
Sea. Assuming this hypothesis to be correct, the route
followed by Uni must have been the same as that which was
discovered and described nearly twenty years ago, by
Holland.

“His Majesty sent me five times to lead this army in order to penetrate into the country of the Lords of the Sands, on each occasion of their revolt against this army, and I bore myself so well that his Majesty praised me beyond everything.” The Bedouin at length submitted, but the neighbouring tribes to the north of them, who had no doubt assisted them, threatened to dispute with Egypt the possession of the territory which it had just conquered. As these tribes had a seaboard on the Mediterranean, Uni decided to attack them by sea, and got together a fleet in which he embarked his army. The troops landed on the coast of the district of Tiba, to the north of the country of the Lords of the Sands, thereupon “they set out. I went, I smote all the barbarians, and I killed all those of them who resisted.” On his return, Uni obtained the most distinguished marks of favour that a subject could receive, the right to carry a staff and to wear his sandals in the palace in the presence of Pharaoh.

These wars had occupied the latter part of the reign; the last of them took place very shortly before the death of the sovereign. The domestic administration of Papi I. seems to have been as successful in its results, as was his activity abroad. He successfully worked the mines of Sinai, caused them to be regularly inspected, and obtained an unusual quantity of minerals from them; the expedition he sent thither, in the eighteenth year of his reign, left behind it a bas-relief in which are recorded the victories of Uni over the barbarians and the grants of territory made to the goddess Hâthor. Work was carried on uninterruptedly at the quarries of Hatnûbû and Kohanû; building operations were carried on at Memphis, where the pyramid was in course of erection, at Abydos, whither the oracle of Osiris was already attracting large numbers of pilgrims, at Tanis, at Bubastis, and at Heliopolis. The temple of Dendera was falling into ruins; it was restored on the lines I of the original plans which were accidentally discovered, and this piety displayed towards one of the most honoured deities was rewarded, as it deserved to be, by the insertion of the title of “son of Hâthor” in the royal cartouche. The vassals rivalled their sovereign in activity, and built new towns on all sides to serve them as residences, more than one of which was named after the Pharaoh. The death of Papi I. did nothing to interrupt this movement; the elder of his two sons by his second wife, Mirirî-ônkhnas, succeeded him without opposition. Mirnirî Mihtimsaûf I. (Metesouphis) was almost a child when he ascended the throne. The recently conquered Bedouin gave him no trouble; the memory of their reverses was still too recent to encourage them to take advantage of his minority and renew hostilities. Uni, moreover, was at hand, ready to recommence his campaigns at the slightest provocation. Metesouphis had retained him in all his offices, and had even entrusted him with new duties. “Pharaoh appointed me governor-general of Upper Egypt, from Elephantine in the south to Letopolis in the north, because my wisdom was pleasing to his Majesty, because my zeal was pleasing to his Majesty, because the heart of his Majesty was satisfied with me.... When I was in my place I was above all his vassals, all his mamelukes, and all his servants, for never had so great a dignity been previously conferred upon a mere subject. I fulfilled to the satisfaction of the king my office as superintendent of the South, so satisfactorily, that it was granted to me to be second in rank to him, accomplishing all the duties of a superintendent of works, judging all the cases which the royal administration had to judge in the south of Egypt as second judge, to render judgment at all hours determined by the royal administration in this south of Egypt as second judge, transacting as a governor all the business there was to do in this south of Egypt.” The honour of fetching the hard stone blocks intended for the king’s pyramid fell to him by right: he proceeded to the quarries of Abhaît, opposite Sehel, to select the granite for the royal sarcophagus and its cover, and to those of Hatnûbû for the alabaster for the table of offerings. The transport of the table was a matter of considerable difficulty, for the Nile was low, and the stone of colossal size: Uni constructed on the spot a raft to carry it, and brought it promptly to Saqqâra in spite of the sandbanks which obstruct navigation when the river is low.*

* Prof. Petrie has tried to prove from the passage which
relates to the transport, that the date of the reign of Papi
I. must have been within sixty years of 3240 B.C.; this date
I believe to be at least four centuries too late. It is,
perhaps, to this voyage of Uni that the inscription of the
Vth year of Metesouphis I. refers, given by Blackden-Frazer
in A Collection of Hieratic Graffiti from the Alabaster
Quarry of Rat-nub, pl. xv. 2.

This was not the limit of his enterprise: the Pharaohs had not as yet a fleet in Nubia, and even if they had had, the condition of the channel was such as to prevent it from making the passage of the cataract. He demanded acacia-wood from the tribes of the desert, the peoples of Iritit and Uaûaît, and from the Mâzaiû, laid down his ships on the stocks, built three galleys and two large lighters in a single year; during this time the river-side labourers had cleared five channels through which the flotilla passed and made its way to Memphis with its ballast of granite. This was Uni’s last exploit; he died shortly afterwards, and was buried in the cemetery at Abydos, in the sarcophagus which had been given him by Papi I.

Plan drawn up by Thuillier, from the Map of the _Commission
d’Egypte._

Was it solely to obtain materials for building the pyramid that he had re-established communication by water between Egypt and Nubia? The Egyptians were gaining ground in the south every day, and under their rule the town of Elephantine was fast becoming a depot for trade with the Soudan.*

* The growing importance of Elephantine is shown by the
dimensions of the tombs which its princes had built for
themselves, as well as by the number of graffiti
commemorating the visits of princes and functionaries, and
still remaining at the present day.

The town occupied only the smaller half of a long narrow island, which was composed of detached masses of granite, formed gradually into a compact whole by accumulations of sand, and over which the Nile, from time immemorial, had deposited a thick coating of its mud. It is now shaded by acacias, mulberry trees, date trees, and dôm palms, growing in some places in lines along the pathways, in others distributed in groups among the fields. Half a dozen saqiyehs, ranged in a line along the river-bank, raise water day and night, with scarcely any cessation of their monotonous creaking. The inhabitants do not allow a foot of their narrow domain to lie idle; they have cultivated wherever it is possible small plots of durra and barley, bersim and beds of vegetables.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. In the
foreground are the ruins of the Roman mole built of brick,
which protected the entrance to the harbour of Syene; in the
distance is the Libyan range, surmounted by the ruins of
several mosques and of a Coptic monastery. Cf. the woodcut
on p. 275 of the present work.

A few scattered buffaloes and cows graze in corners, while fowls and pigeons without number roam about in flocks on the look-out for what they can pick up. It is a world in miniature, tranquil and pleasant, where life is passed without effort, in a perpetually clear atmosphere and in the shade of trees which never lose their leaf. The ancient city was crowded into the southern extremity, on a high plateau of granite beyond the reach of inundations. Its ruins, occupying a space half a mile in circumference, are heaped around a shattered temple of Khnûrnû, of which the most ancient parts do not date back beyond the sixteenth century before our era.

Map by Thuillier, from _La Description de l’Egypte, Ant_.,
vol. i. pl. 30, 1. I have added the ancient names in those
cases where it has been possible to identify them with the
modern localities.

It was surrounded with walls, and a fortress of sun-dried brick perched upon a neighbouring island to the south-west, gave it complete com-mand over the passages of the cataract. An arm of the river ninety yards wide separated it from Sûanît, whose closely built habitations were ranged along the steep bank, and formed, as it were, a suburb. Marshy pasturages occupied the modern site of Syene; beyond these were gardens, vines, furnishing wine celebrated throughout the whole of Egypt, and a forest of date palms running towards the north along the banks of the stream. The princes of the nome of Nubia encamped here, so to speak, as frontier-posts of civilization, and maintained frequent but variable relations with the people of the desert. It gave the former no trouble to throw, as occasion demanded it, bodies of troops on the right or left sides of the valley, in the direction of the Red Sea or in that of the Oasis; however little they might carry away in their raids--of oxen, slaves, wood, charcoal, gold dust, amethysts, cornelian or green felspar for the manufacture of ornaments--it was always so much to the good, and the treasury of the prince profited by it. They never went very far in their expeditions: if they desired to strike a blow at a distance, to reach, for example, those regions of Pûanît of whose riches the barbarians were wont to boast, the aridity of the district around the second cataract would arrest the advance of their foot-soldiers, while the rapids of Wady Haifa would offer an almost impassable barrier to their ships. In such distant operations they did not have recourse to arms, but disguised themselves as peaceful merchants. An easy road led almost direct from their capital to Ras Banât, which they called the “Head of Nekhabît,” on the Red Sea; arrived at the spot where in later times stood one of the numerous Berenices, and having quickly put together a boat from the wood of the neighbouring forest, they made voyages along the coast, as far as the Sinaitic peninsula and the Hirû-Shâîtû on the north, as well as to the land of Pûânît itself on the south. The small size of these improvised vessels rendered such expeditions dangerous, while it limited their gain; they preferred, therefore, for the most part the land journey.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Golénischeff.

It was fatiguing and interminable: donkeys--the only beast of burden they were acquainted with, or, at least, employed--could make but short stages, and they spent months upon months in passing through countries which a caravan of camels would now traverse in a few weeks.*

* The _History of the Peasant_, in the Berlin Papyri Nos.
ii. and iv., affords us a good example of the use made of
pack-asses; the hero was on his way across the desert, from
the “Wady Natrûn” to Henasieh, with a quantity of merchandise
which he intended to sell, when an unscrupulous artisan,
under cover of a plausible pretext, stole his train of pack-
asses and their loads. Hirkhûf brought back with him a
caravan of three hundred asses from one of his journeys; cf.
p. 278 of the present work.

The roads upon which they ventured were those which, owing to the necessity for the frequent watering of the donkeys and the impossibility of carrying with them adequate supplies of water, were marked out at frequent intervals by wells and springs, and were therefore necessarily of a tortuous and devious character. Their choice of objects for barter was determined by the smallness of their bulk and weight in comparison with their value. The Egyptians on the one side were provided with stocks of beads, ornaments, coarse cutlery, strong perfumes, and rolls of white or coloured cloth, which, after the lapse of thirty-five centuries, are objects still coveted by the peoples of Africa. The aborigines paid for these articles of small value, in gold, either in dust or in bars, in ostrich feathers, lions’ and leopards’ skins, elephants’ tusks, cowrie shells, billets of ebony, incense, and gum arabic. Considerable value was attached to cynocephali and green monkeys, with which the kings or the nobles amused themselves, and which they were accustomed to fasten to the legs of their chairs on days of solemn reception; but the dwarf, the Danga, was the rare commodity which was always in demand, but hardly ever attainable.*

* Domichen, _Geographische Inschriften_, vol. i. xxxi. 1. 1,
where the dwarfs and pigmies who came to the court of the
king, in the period of the Ptolemies, to serve in his
household, are mentioned. Various races of diminutive
stature, which have since been driven down to the upper
basin of the Congo, formerly extended further northward, and
dwelt between Darfûr and the marshes of Bahr-el-Ghazâl. As
to the Danga, cf. what has been said on p. 226 of the
present work.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken by Dévèria in 1864.

Partly by commerce, and partly by pillage, the lords of Elephantine became rapidly wealthy, and began to play an important part among the nobles of the Said: they were soon obliged to take serious precautions against the cupidity which their wealth excited among the tribes of Konusît. They entrenched themselves behind a wall of sun-dried brick, some seven and a half miles long, of which the ruins are still an object of wonder to the traveller. It was flanked towards the north by the ramparts of Syene, and followed pretty regularly the lower course of the valley to its abutment at the port of Mahatta opposite Philas: guards distributed along it, kept an eye upon the mountain, and uttered a call to arms, when the enemy came within sight. Behind this bulwark the population felt quite at ease, and could work without fear at the granite quarries on behalf of the Pharaoh, or pursue in security their callings of fishermen and sailors. The inhabitants of the village of Satît and of the neighbouring islands claimed from earliest times the privilege of piloting the ships which went up and down the rapids, and of keeping clear the passages which were used for navigation. They worked under the protection of their goddesses Anûkît and Satît: travellers of position were accustomed to sacrifice in the temple of the goddesses at Sehêl, and to cut on the rock votive inscriptions in their honour, in gratitude for the prosperous voyage accorded to them. We meet their scrawls on every side, at the entrance and exit of the cataract, and on the small islands where they moored their boats at nightfall during the four or five days required for the passage; the bank of the stream between Elephantine and Philæ is, as it were, an immense visitors’ book, in which every generation of Ancient Egypt has in turn inscribed itself. The markets and streets of the twin cities must have presented at that time the same motley blending of types and costumes which we might have found some years back in the bazaars of modern Syene. Nubians, negroes of the Soudan, perhaps people from Southern Arabia, jostled there with Libyans and Egyptians of the Delta. What the princes did to make the sojourn of strangers agreeable, what temples they consecrated to their god Khnûmû and his companions, in gratitude for the good things he had bestowed upon them, we have no means of knowing up to the present. Elephantine and Syene have preserved for us nothing of their ancient edifices; but the tombs which they have left tell us their history. They honeycomb in long lines the sides of the steep hill which looks down upon the whole extent of the left bank of the Nile opposite the narrow channel of the port of Aswan. A rude flight of stone steps led from the bank to the level of the sepulchres. The mummy having been carried slowly on the shoulders of the bearers to the platform, was deposited for a moment at the entrance cf the chapel. The decoration of the latter was rather meagre, and was distinguished neither by the delicacy of its execution nor by the variety of the subjects. More care was bestowed upon the exterior, and upon the walls on each side of the door, which could be seen from the river or from the streets of Elephantine. An inscription borders the recess, and boasts to every visitor of the character of the occupant: the portrait of the deceased, and sometimes that of his son, stand to the right and left: the scenes devoted to the offerings come next, when an artist of sufficient skill could be found to engrave them.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger. The
entrance to the tombs are halfway up; the long trench,
cutting the side of the mountain obliquely, shelters the
still existing steps which led to the tombs of Pharaonic
times. On the sky-line may be noted the ruins of several
mosques and Coptic monasteries.

The expeditions of the lords of Elephantine, crowned as they frequently were with success, soon attracted the attention of the Pharaohs: Metesouphis deigned to receive in person at the cataract the homage of the chiefs of Ûaûaît and Iritît and of the Màzaiû during the early days of the fifth year of his reign.*

* The words used in the inscription, “The king himself went
and returned, ascending the mountain to see what there was
on the mountain,” prove that Metesouphis inspected the
quarries in person. Another inscription, discovered in 1893,
gives the year V. as the date of his journey to Elephantine,
and adds that he had negotiations with the heads of the four
great Nubian races.

The most celebrated caravan guide at this time was Hirkhûf, own cousin to Mikhû, Prince of Elephantine. He had entered upon office under the auspices of his father Iri, “the sole friend.” A king whose name he does not mention, but who was perhaps Unas, more probably Papi I., despatched them both to the country of the Amamît. The voyage occupied seven months, and was extraordinarily successful: the sovereign, encouraged by this unexpected good fortune, resolved to send out a fresh expedition. Hirkhûf had the sole command of it; he made his way through Iritît, explored the districts of Satir and Darros, and retraced his steps after an absence of eight months. He brought back with him a quantity of valuable commodities, “the like of which no one had ever previously brought back.” He was not inclined to regain his country by the ordinary route: he pushed boldly into the narrow wadys which furrow the territory of the people of Iritît, and emerged upon the region of Situ, in the neighbourhood of the cataract, by paths in which no official traveller who had visited the Amamît had up to this time dared to travel. A third expedition which started out a few years later brought him into regions still less frequented. It set out by the Oasis route, proceeded towards the Amamît, and found the country in an uproar. The sheikhs had convoked their tribes, and were making preparations to attack the Timihû “towards the west corner of the heaven,” in that region where stand the pillars which support the iron firmament at the setting sun. The Timihû were probably Berbers by race and language. Their tribes, coming from beyond the Sahara, wandered across the frightful solitudes which bound the Nile Valley on the west. The Egyptians had constantly to keep a sharp look out for them, and to take precautions against their incursions; having for a long time acted only on the defensive, they at length took the offensive, and decided, not without religious misgivings, to pursue them to their retreats. As the inhabitants of Mendes and of Busiris had relegated the abode of their departed to the recesses of the impenetrable marshes of the Delta, so those of Siût and Thinis had at first believed that the souls of the deceased sought a home beyond the sands: the good jackal Anubis acted as their guide, through the gorge of the Cleft or through the gate of the Oven, to the green islands scattered over the desert, where the blessed dwelt in peace at a convenient distance from their native cities and their tombs. They constituted, as we know, a singular folk, those _uiti_ whose members dwelt in coffins, and who had put on the swaddling clothes of the dead; the Egyptians called the Oasis which they had colonised, the land of the shrouded, or of mummies, _ûît_, and the name continued to designate it long after the advance of geographical knowledge had removed this paradise further towards the west. The Oases fell one after the other into the hands of frontier princes--that of Bahnesa coming under the dominion of the lord of Oxyrrhynchus, that of Dakhel under the lords of Thinis. The Nubians of Amamît had relations, probably, with the Timihû, who owned the Oasis of Dush--a prolongation of that of Dakhel, on the parallel of Elephantine. Hirkhûf accompanied the expedition to the Amamît, succeeded in establishing peace among the rival tribes, and persuaded them “to worship all the gods of Pharaoh:” he afterwards reconciled the Iritît, Amamît, and Ûaûaît, who lived in a state of perpetual hostility to each other, explored their valleys, and collected from them such quantities of incense, ebony, ivory, and skins that three hundred asses were required for their transport.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph, taken in 1892, by
Alexander Gayet.

He was even fortunate enough to acquire a Danga from the land of ghosts, resembling the one brought from Pûanît by Biûrdidi in the reign of Assi eighty years before. Metesouphis, in the mean time, had died, and his young brother and successor, Papi II., had already been a year upon the throne. The new king, delighted to possess a dwarf who could perform “the dance of the god,” addressed a rescript to Hirkhuf to express his satisfaction; at the same time he sent him a special messenger, Uni, a distant relative to Papi I.’s minister, who was to invite him to come and give an account of his expedition. The boat in which the explorer embarked to go down to Memphis, also brought the Danga, and from that moment the latter became the most important personage of the party. For him all the royal officials, lords, and sacerdotal colleges hastened to prepare provisions and means of conveyance; his health was of greater importance than that of his protector, and he was anxiously watched lest he should escape. “When he is with thee in the boat, let there be cautious persons about him, lest he should fall into the water; when he rests during the night, let careful people sleep beside him, in case of his escaping quickly in the night-time. For my Majesty desires to see this dwarf more than all the treasures which are being imported from the land of Pûanît.” Hirkhûf, on his return to Elephantine, engraved the royal letter and the detailed account of his journeys to the lands of the south, on the façade of his tomb.

These repeated expeditions produced in course of time more important and permanent results than the capture of an accomplished dwarf, or the acquisition of a fortune by an adventurous nobleman. The nations which these merchants visited were accustomed to hear so much of Egypt, its industries, and its military force, that they came at last to entertain an admiration and respect for her, not unmingled with fear: they learned to look upon her as a power superior to all others, and upon her king as a god whom none might resist. They adopted Egyptian worship, yielded to Egypt their homage, and sent the Egyptians presents: they were won over by civilization before being subdued by arms. We are not acquainted with the manner in which Nofirkiri-Papi II. turned these friendly dispositions to good account in extending his empire to the south. The expeditions did not all prove so successful as that of Hirkhûf, and one at least of the princes of Elephantine, Papinakhîti, met with his death in the course of one of them. Papi II. had sent him on a mission, after several others, “to make profit out of the Ûaûaiû and the Iritît.” He killed considerable numbers in this raid, and brought back great spoil, which he shared with Pharaoh; “for he was at the head of many warriors, chosen from among the bravest,” which was the cause of his success in the enterprise with which his Holiness had deigned to entrust him. Once, however, the king employed him in regions which were not so familiar to him as those of Nubia, and fate was against him. He had received orders to visit the Amu, the Asiatic tribes inhabiting the Sinaitic Peninsula, and to repeat on a smaller scale in the south the expedition which Uni had led against them in the north; he proceeded thither, and his sojourn having come to an end, he chose to return by sea. To sail towards Pûanît, to coast up as far as the “Head of Nekhabît,” to land there and make straight for Elephantine by the shortest route, presented no unusual difficulties, and doubtless more than one traveller or general of those times had safely accomplished it; Papinakhîti failed miserably. As he was engaged in constructing his vessel, the Hirû-Shâîtû fell upon him and massacred him, as well as the detachment of troops who accompanied him: the remaining soldiers brought home his body, which was buried by the side of the other princes in the mountain opposite Syene. Papi II. had ample leisure to avenge the death of his vassal and to send fresh expeditions to Iritît, among the Amamît and even beyond, if, indeed, as the author of the chronological Canon of Turin asserts,* he really reigned for more than ninety years; but the monuments are almost silent with regard to him, and give us no information about his possible exploits in Nubia. An inscription of his second year proves that he continued to work the Sinaitic mines, and that he protected them from the Bedouin.

* The fragments of Manetho and the Canon of Eratosthenes
agree in assigning to him a reign of a hundred years--a fact
which seems to indicate that the missing unit in the Turin
list was nine: Papi II. would have thus died in the hundreth
year of his reign. A reign of a hundred years is impossible:
Mihtimsaûf I. having reigned fourteen years, it would be
necessary to assume that Papi II., son of Papi I., should
have lived a hundred and fourteen years at the least, even
on the supposition that he was a posthumous child. The
simplest solution is to suppose (1) that Papi II. lived a
hundred years, as Ramses II. did in later times, and that
the years of his life were confounded with the years of his
reign; or (2) that, being the brother of Mihtimsaûf I., he
was considered as associated with him on the throne, and
that the hundred years of his reign, including the fourteen
of the latter prince, were identified with the years of his
life. We may, moreover, believe that the chronologists, for.
lack of information on the VIth dynasty, have filled the
blanks in their annals by lengthening the reign of Papi II.,
which in any case must have been very long.

On the other hand, the number and beauty of the tombs in which mention is made of him, bear witness to the fact that Egypt enjoyed continued prosperity. Recent discoveries have done much to surround this king and his immediate predecessors with an air of reality which is lacking in many of the later Pharaohs.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey. The
mummy is now in the Gîzeh Museum (cf. Maspero, _Guide au
Musée de Boulaq_, pp. 347, 348, No. 5250).

Their pyramids, whose familiar designations we have deciphered in the texts, have been uncovered at Saqqâra, and the inscriptions which they contain, reveal to us the names of the sovereigns who reposed within. Unas, Teti III., Papi I., Mete-souphis I., and Papi II. now have as clearly defined a personality for us as Ramses II. or Seti I.; even the mummy of Metesouphis has been discovered near his sarcophagus, and can be seen under glass in the Gîzeh Museum. The body is thin and slender; the head refined, and ornamented with the thick side-lock of boyhood; the features can be easily distinguished, although the lower jaw has disappeared and the pressure of the bandages has flattened the nose. All the pyramids of the dynasty are of a uniform-type, the model being furnished by that of Unas. The entrance is in the centre of the northern façade, underneath the lowest course, and on the ground-level. An inclined passage, obstructed by enormous stones, leads to an antechamber, whose walls are partly bare, and partly covered with long columns of hieroglyphs: a level passage, blocked towards the middle by three granite barrier, ends in a nearly square chamber; on the left are three low cells devoid of ornament, and on the right an oblong chamber containing the sarcophagus.

From drawings by Maspero, _La Pyramide d’Ounas_, in the
_Recueil de Travaux_, vol. iv. p. 177.

These two principal rooms had high-pitched roofs. They were composed of large slabs of limestone, the upper edges of which leaned one against the other, while the lower edges rested on a continuous ledge which ran round the chamber: the first row of slabs was surmounted by a second, and that again by a third, and the three together effectively protected the apartments of the dead against the thrust of the superincumbent mass, or from the attacks of robbers. The wall-surfaces close to the sarcophagus in the pyramid of Unas are decorated with many-coloured ornaments and sculptured and painted doors representing the front of a house: this was, in fact, the dwelling of the double, in which he resided with the dead body.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, taken in 1881, by Émil
Brugsch-Bey.

The inscriptions, like the pictures in the tombs, were meant to furnish the sovereign with provisions, to dispel serpents and malevolent divinities, to keep his soul from death, and to lead him into the bark of the sun or into the Paradise of Osiris. They constitute a portion of a vast book, whose chapters are found scattered over the monuments of subsequent periods. They are the means of restoring to us, not only the religion but the most ancient language of Egypt: the majority of the formulas contained in them were drawn up in the time of the earliest human kings, perhaps even before Menés.

The history of the VIth dynasty loses itself in legend and fable. Two more kings are supposed to have succeeded Papi Nofirkeri, Mirnirî Mihtimsaût (Metesouphis II.) and Nîtaûqrît (Nitokris). Metesouphis II. was killed, so runs the tale, in a riot, a year after his accession.*

* Manetho does not mention this fact, but the legend given
by Herodotus says that Nitokris wished to avenge the king,
her brother and predecessor, who was killed in a revolution;
and it follows from the narrative of the facts that this
anonymous brother was the Metesouphis of Manetho. The Turin
Papyrus assigns a reign of a year and a month to Mihtimsaul-
Metesouphis II.

His sister, Nitokris, the “rosy-cheeked,” to whom, as was the custom, he was married, succeeded him and avenged his death. She built an immense subterranean hall; under pretext of inaugurating its completion, but in reality with a totally different aim, she then invited to a great feast, and received in this hall, a considerable number of Egyptians from among those whom she knew to have been instigators of the crime. During the entertainment, she diverted the waters of the Nile into the hall by means of a canal which she had kept concealed. This is what is related of her. They add, that “after this, the queen, of her own will, threw herself into a great chamber filled with ashes, in order to escape punishment.” She completed the pyramid of Mykerinos, by adding to it that costly casing of Syenite which excited the admiration of travellers; she reposed in a sarcophagus of blue basalt, in the very centre of the monument, above the secret chamber where the pious Pharaoh had hidden his mummy.*

* The legend which ascribes the building of the third
pyramid to a woman has been preserved by Herodotus: E. de
Bunsen, comparing it with the observations of Vyse, was
inclined to attribute to Nitokris the enlarging of the
monument, which appears to me to have been the work of
Mykerinos himself.

The Greeks, who had heard from their dragomans the story of the “Rosy-cheeked Beauty,” metamorphosed the princess into a courtesan, and for the name of Nitokris, substituted the more harmonious one of Rhodopis, which was the exact translation of the characteristic epithet of the Egyptian queen. One day while she was bathing in the river, an eagle stole one of her gilded sandals, carried it off in the direction of Memphis, and let it drop in the lap of the king, who was administering justice in the open air. The king, astonished at the singular occurrence, and at the beauty of the tiny shoe, caused a search to be made throughout the country for the woman to whom it belonged: Rhodopis thus became Queen of Egypt, and could build herself a pyramid. Even Christianity and the Arab conquest did not entirely efface the remembrance of the courtesan-princess.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

It is said that the spirit of the Southern Pyramid never appears abroad, except in the form of a naked woman, who is very beautiful, but whose manner of acting is such, that when she desires to make people fall in love with her, and lose their wits, she smiles upon them, and immediately they draw near to her, and she attracts them towards her, and makes them infatuated with love; so that they at once lose their wits, and wander aimlessly about the country. Many have seen her moving round the pyramid about midday and towards sunset. It is Nitokris still haunting the monument of her shame and her magnificence.*

* The lists of the VIth dynasty, with the approximate dates
of the kings, are as follows:--

After her, even tradition is silent, and the history of Egypt remains a mere blank for several centuries. Manetho admits the existence of two other Memphite dynasties, of which the first contains seventy kings during as many days. Akhthoës, the most cruel of tyrants, followed next, and oppressed his subjects for a long period: he was at last the victim of raving madness, and met with his death from the jaws of a crocodile. It is related that he was of Heracleopolite extraction, and the two dynasties which succeeded him, the IXth and the Xth, were also Heracleopolitan. The table of Abydos is incomplete, and the Turin Papyrus, in the absence of other documents, too mutilated to furnish us with any exact information; the contemporaries of the Ptolemies were almost entirely ignorant of what took place between the end of the VIth and the beginning of the XIIth dynasty; and Egyptologists, not finding any monuments which they could attribute to this period, thereupon concluded that Egypt had passed through some formidable crisis out of which she with difficulty extricated herself.*

* Marsham (_Canon Chronicus_, edition, of Leipzig, 1676, p.
29) had already declared in the seventeenth century that he
felt no hesitation in considering the Heracleopolites as
identical with the successors of Menes-Misraîm, who reigned
over the Mestraea, that is, over the Delta only. The idea of
an Asiatic invasion, analogous to that of the Hyksos, which
was put forward by Mariette, and accepted by Fr. Lenormant,
has found its chief supporters in Germany. Bunsen made of
the Heracleopolitan two subordinate dynasties reigning
simultaneously in Lower Egypt, and originating at
Heracleopolis in the Delta: they were supposed to have been
contemporaries of the last Memphite and first Theban
dynasties. Lepsius accepted and recognized in the
Heracleopolitans of the Delta the predecessors of the
Hyksos, an idea defended by Ebers, and developed by Krall in
his identification of the unknown invaders with the Hirû-
Shâîtû: it has been adopted by Ed. Meyer, and by Petrie.

The so-called Heracleopolites of Manetho were assumed to have been the chiefs of a barbaric people of Asiatic origin, those same “Lords of the Sands” so roughly handled by Uni, but who are considered to have invaded the Delta soon after, settled themselves in Heracleopolis Parva as their capital, and from thence held sway over the whole valley. They appeared to have destroyed much and built nothing; the state of barbarism into which they sank, and to which they reduced the vanquished, explaining the absence of any monuments to mark their occupation. This hypothesis, however, is unsupported by any direct proof: even the dearth of monuments which has been cited as an argument in favour of the theory, is no longer a fact. The sequence of reigns and details of the revolutions are wanting; but many of the kings and certain facts in their history are known, and we are able to catch a glimpse of the general course of events. The VIIth and VIIIth dynasties are Memphite, and the names of the kings themselves would be evidence in favour of their genuineness, even if we had not the direct testimony of Manetho: the one recurring most frequently is that of Nofirkerî, the prenomen of Papi II., and a third Papi figures in them, who calls himself Papi-Sonbû to distinguish himself from his namesakes. The little recorded of them in Ptolemaic times, even the legend of the seventy Pharaohs reigning seventy days, betrays a troublous period and a rapid change of rulers.*

* The explanation of Prof. Lauth, according to which Manetho
is supposed to have made an independent dynasty of the five
Memphite priests who filled the interregnum of seventy days
during the embalming of Nitokris, is certainly very
ingenious, but that is all that can be said for it. The
legendary source from which Manetho took his information
distinctly recorded seventy successive kings, who reigned in
all seventy days, a king a day.

We know as a fact that the successors of Nitokris, in the Royal Turin Papyrus, scarcely did more than appear upon the throne. Nofirkerî reigned a year, a month, and a day; Nofîrûs, four years, two months, and a day; Abu, two years, one month, and a day. Each of them hoped, no doubt, to enjoy the royal power for a longer period than his predecessors, and, like the Ati of the VIth dynasty, ordered a pyramid to be designed for him without delay: not one of them had time to complete the building, nor even to carry it sufficiently far to leave any trace behind. As none of them had any tomb to hand his name down to posterity, the remembrance of them perished with their contemporaries. By dint of such frequent changes in the succession, the royal authority became enfeebled, and its weakness favoured the growing influence of the feudal families and encouraged their ambition. The descendants of those great lords, who under Papi I. and II. made such magnificent tombs for themselves, were only nominally subject to the supremacy of the reigning sovereign; many of them were, indeed, grandchildren of princesses of the blood, and possessed, or imagined that they possessed, as good a right to the crown as the family on the throne. Memphis declined, became impoverished, and dwindled in population. Its inhabitants ceased to build those immense stone mastabas in which they had proudly displayed their wealth, and erected them merely of brick, in which the decoration was almost entirely confined to one narrow niche near the sarcophagus. Soon the mastaba itself was given up, and the necropolis of the city was reduced to the meagre proportions of a small provincial cemetery. The centre of that government, which had weighed so long and so heavily upon Egypt, was removed to the south, and fixed itself at Heracleopolis the Great.

Volume II., Part .

_THE FIRST THEBAN EMPIRE_

_THE TWO HERACLEOPOLITAN DYNASTIES AND THE TWELFTH DYNASTY--THE CONQUEST OF ETHIOPIA, AND THE MAKING OF GREATER EGYPT BY THE THEBAN KINGS._

_The principality of Heracleopolis: Achthoës-Khîti and the Heracleopolitan dynasties--Supremacy of the great barons: the feudal fortresses, El-Kab and Abydos; ceaseless warfare, the army--Origin of the Theban principality: the principality of Sidt, and the struggles of its lords against the princes of Thebes--The kings of the XIth dynasty and their buildings: the brick pyramids of Abydos and Thebes, and the rude character of early Theban art._

_The XIIth dynasty: Amenemdidît I., his accession, his wars; he shares his throne with his son Usirtasen I., and the practice of a coregnancy prevails among his immediate successors--The relations of Egypt with Asia: the Amû in Egypt and the Egyptians among the Bedouin; the Adventures of Sinûhît--The mining settlements in the Sinaitic peninsula: Sarbût-el-Khddim and its chapel to Hâthor._

_Egyptian policy in the Nile Valley--Nubia becomes part of Egypt: works of the Pharaohs, the gold-mines and citadel of Kubân--Defensive measures at the second cataract: the two fortresses and the Nilometer of Semnêh--The vile Kush and its inhabitants: the wars against Kûsh and their consequences; the gold-mines--Expeditions to Pûanît, and navigation along the coasts of the Bed Sea: the Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor._

_Public works and new buildings--The restoration of the temples of the Delta: Tanis and the sphinxes of Amenemhâît III., Bubastis, Heliopolis, and the temple of Usirtasen I.--The increasing importance of Thebes and Abydos--Heracleopolis and the Fayûm: the monuments of Begig and of Biahmil, the fields and water-system of the Fayûm; preference shown by the Pharaohs for this province--The royal pyramids of Dashdr, Lisht, Ulahûn, and Haiodra._

_The part played by the feudal lords under the XIIth dynasty--History of the princes of Mondît-Khûfûi: Khnûmhotpil, Khîti, Amoni-Amenemhâît--The lords of Thébes, and the accession of the XIIIth dynasty: the Sovkhotpûs and the Nfirhotpûs--Completion of the conquest of Nubia; the XIVth dynasty_.