Chapter XX: Egyptians (1)

If, on one side, the Phenicians were separated from the productive Babylonia by the Arabian desert; on the other side, the western portion of the same desert divided them from the no less productive valley of the Nile. In those early times which preceded the rise of Greek civilization, their land trade embraced both regions, and they served as the sole agents of international traffic between the two. Conveniently as their towns were situated for maritime commerce with the Nile, Egyptian jealousy had excluded Phenician vessels not less than those of the Greeks from the mouths of that river, until the reign of Psammetichus (672-618 B. C.); and thus even the merchants of Tyre could then reach Memphis only by means of caravans, employing as their instruments, as I have already observed, the Arabian tribes,[573] alternately plunderers and carriers. Respecting Egypt, as respecting Assyria, since the works of Hekatæus are unfortunately lost, our earliest information is derived from Herodotus, who visited Egypt about two centuries after the reign of Psammetichus, when it formed part of one of the twenty Persian satrapies. The Egyptian marvels and peculiarities which he recounts, are more numerous, as well as more diversified, than the Assyrian, and had the vestiges been effaced as completely in the former as in the latter, his narrative would probably have met with an equal degree of suspicion. But the hard stone, combined with the dry climate of Upper Egypt (where a shower of rain counted as a prodigy), have given such permanence to the monuments in the valley of the Nile, that enough has remained to bear out the father of Grecian history, and to show that, in describing what he professes to have seen, he is a guide perfectly trustworthy. For that which he heard, he appears only in the character of a reporter, and often an incredulous reporter; but though this distinction between his hearsay and his ocular evidence is not only obvious, but of the most capital moment,[574]—it has been too often neglected by those who depreciate him as a witness.

[573] Strabo, xvi, pp. 766, 776, 778; Pliny, H. N. vi,
32. “Arabes, mirum dictu, ex innumeris populis pars æqua
in commerciis aut latrociniis degunt: in universum gentes
ditissimæ, ut apud quas maximæ opes Romanorum Parthorumque
subsistant,—vendentibus quæ a mari aut sylvis capiunt, nihil
invicem redimentibus.”

The latter part of this passage of Pliny presents an enunciation
sufficiently distinct, though by implication only, of what has
been called the _mercantile theory_ in political economy.

[574] To give one example: Herodotus mentions an opinion given to
him by the γραμματιστὴς (comptroller) of the property of Athênê
at Sais, to the effect that the sources of the Nile were at an
immeasurable depth in the interior of the earth, between Syênê
and Elephantinê, and that Psammetichus had vainly tried to sound
them with a rope many thousand fathoms in length (ii, 28). In
mentioning this tale (perfectly deserving of being _recounted_
at least, because it came from a person of considerable station
in the country), Herodotus expressly says: “This comptroller
seemed to me to be only bantering, though he professed to know
accurately,”—οὗτος δ᾽ ἐμοίγε παίζειν ἐδόκεε, φάμενος εἰδέναι
ἀτρεκέως. Now Strabo (xvii, p. 819), in alluding to this story,
introduces it just as if Herodotus had told it for a fact,—Πολλὰ
δ᾽ Ἡρόδοτός τε καὶ ἄλλοι φλυαροῦσιν, οἷον, etc.

Many other instances might be cited, both from ancient and modern
writers, of similar carelessness or injustice towards this
admirable author.

The mysterious river Nile, a god[575] in the eyes of ancient Egyptians, and still preserving both its volume and its usefulness undiminished amidst the general degradation of the country, reached the sea in the time of Herodotus by five natural mouths, besides two others artificially dug;—the Pelusiac branch formed the eastern boundary of Egypt, the Kanôpic branch—one hundred and seventy miles distant—the western; while the Sebennytic branch was a continuation of the straight line of the upper river: from this latter branched off the Saitic and the Mendesian arms.[576] Its overflowings are far more fertilizing than those of the Euphrates in Assyria,—partly from their more uniform recurrence both in time and quantity, partly from the rich silt which it brings down and deposits, whereas the Euphrates served only as a moisture. The patience of the Egyptians had excavated, in middle Egypt, the vast reservoir—partly, it seems, natural and preëxisting—called the lake of Mœris: and in the Delta, a network of numerous canals; yet on the whole the hand of man had been less tasked than in Babylonia; whilst the soil annually enriched, yielded its abundant produce without either plough or spade to assist the seed cast in by the husbandman.[577] That under these circumstances a dense and regularly organized population should have been concentrated in fixed abodes along the valley occupied by this remarkable river, is no matter of wonder; the marked peculiarities of the locality seem to have brought about such a result, in the earliest periods to which human society can be traced. Along the five hundred and fifty miles of its undivided course from Syênê to Memphis, where for the most part the mountains leave only a comparatively narrow strip on each bank, as well as in the broad expanse between Memphis and the Mediterranean, there prevailed a peculiar form of theocratic civilization, from a date which even in the time of Herodotus was immemorially ancient. But when we seek for some measure of this antiquity (earlier than the time when Greeks were first admitted into Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus), we find only the computations of the priests, reaching back for many thousand years, first, of government by immediate and present gods, next, of human kings. Such computations have been transmitted to us by Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus,[578]—agreeing in their essential conception of the foretime, with gods in the first part of the series, and men in the second, but differing materially in events, names, and epochs: probably, if we possessed lists from other Egyptian temples, besides those which Manetho drew up at Heliopolis, or which Herodotus learned at Memphis, we should find discrepancies from both these two. To compare these lists, and to reconcile them as far as they admit of being reconciled, is interesting, as enabling us to understand the Egyptian mind, but conducts to no trustworthy chronological results, and forms no part of the task of an historian of Greece.

[575] Οἱ ἱρέες τοῦ Νείλου, Herod. ii, 90.

[576] The seven mouths of the Nile, so notorious in antiquity,
are not conformable to the modern geography of the country: see
Mannert, Geogr. der Gr. und Röm. x, 1, p. 539.

The breadth of the base of the Delta, between Pelusium and
Kanôpus, is overstated by Herodotus (ii, 6-9) at three thousand
six hundred stadia; Diodorus (i, 34) and Strabo, at thirteen
hundred stadia, which is near the truth, though the text of
Strabo in various passages is not uniform on this matter, and
requires correction. See Grosskurd’s note on Strabo, ii, p. 64
(note 3, p. 101), and xvii, p. 186 (note 9, p. 332). Pliny gives
the distance at one hundred and seventy miles (H. N. v, 9).

[577] Herod, i, 193. Παραγίνεται ὁ σῖτος (in Babylonia) οὐ,
κατάπερ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, αὐτοῦ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἀναβαίνοντος ἐς τὰς
ἀρούρας, ἀλλὰ χερσί τε καὶ κηλωνηΐοισι ἀρδόμενος· ἡ γὰρ Βαβυλωνίη
χώρη πᾶσα, κατάπερ ἡ Αἰγυπτίη, κατατέτμηται ἐς διώρυχας, etc.

Herodotus was informed that the canals in Egypt had been dug by
the labor of that host of prisoners whom the victorious Sesostris
brought home from his conquests (ii, 108). The canals in Egypt
served the purpose partly of communication between the different
cities, partly of a constant supply of water to those towns which
were not immediately on the Nile: “that vast river, so constantly
at work,” (to use the language of Herodotus—ὑπὸ τοσούτου τε
ποτάμου καὶ οὕτως ἐργατικοῦ, ii, 11), spared the Egyptians all
the toil of irrigation which the Assyrian cultivator underwent
(ii, 14).

Lower Egypt, as Herodotus saw it, though a continued flat, was
unfit either for horse or car, from the number of intersecting
canals,—ἄνιππος καὶ ἀναμάξευτος (ii, 108). But lower Egypt,
as Volney saw it, was among the countries in the world best
suited to the action of cavalry, so that he pronounces the
native population of the country to have no chance of contending
against the Mamelukes (Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol.
i, ch. 12, sect. 2, p. 199). The country has reverted to the
state in which it was (ἱππασίμη καὶ ἁμαξευομένη πᾶσα) before the
canals were made,—one of the many striking illustrations of the
difference between the Egypt which a modern traveller visits, and
that which Herodotus and even Strabo saw,—ὅλην πλωτὴν διωρύγων
ἐπὶ διώρυξι τμηθεισῶν (Strabo, xvii, p. 788).

Considering the early age of Herodotus, his remarks on the
geological character of Egypt as a deposit of the accumulated
mud by the Nile, appear to me most remarkable (ii, 8-14). Having
no fixed number of years included in his religious belief as
measuring the past existence of the earth, he carries his mind
back without difficulty to what may have been effected by this
river in ten or twenty thousand years, or “in the whole space of
time elapsed before I was born,” (ii, 11).

About the lake of Mœris, see a note a little farther on.

[578] See note in Appendix to this chapter.

To the Greeks, Egypt was a closed world before the reign of Psammetichus, though after that time it gradually became an important part of their field both of observation and action. The astonishment which the country created in the mind of the earliest Grecian visitors may be learned even from the narrative of Herodotus, who doubtless knew it by report long before he went there. Both the physical and moral features of Egypt stood in strong contrast with Grecian experience: “not only (says Herodotus) does the climate differ from all other climates, and the river from all other rivers, but Egyptian laws and customs are opposed on almost all points to those of other men.”[579] The delta was at that time full of large and populous cities,[580] built on artificial elevations of ground, and seemingly not much inferior to Memphis itself, which was situated on the left bank of the Nile (opposite to the site of the modern Cairo), a little higher up than the spot where the delta begins. From the time when the Greeks first became cognizant of Egypt, to the building of Alexandria and the reign of the Ptolemies, Memphis was the first city in Egypt, but it seems not to have been always so,—there had been an earlier period when Thebes was the seat of Egyptian power, and upper Egypt of far more consequence than middle Egypt. Vicinity to the delta, which must always have contained the largest number of cities and the widest surface of productive territory, probably enabled Memphis to usurp this honor from Thebes, and the predominance of lower Egypt was still farther confirmed when Psammetichus introduced Ionian and Karian troops as his auxiliaries in the government of the country. But the stupendous magnitude of the temples and palaces, the profusion of ornamental sculpture and painting, the immeasurable range of sculptures hewn in the rocks still remaining as attestations of the grandeur of Thebes,—not to mention Ombi, Edfu, and Elephantinê,—show that upper Egypt was once the place to which the land-tax from the productive delta was paid, and where the kings and priests who employed it resided. It has been even contended that Thebes itself was originally settled by emigrants from still higher regions of the river, and the remains yet found along the Nile in Nubia are analogous, both in style and in grandeur, to those in Thebais.[581] What is remarkable is, that both the one and the other are strikingly distinguished from the Pyramids, which alone remain to illustrate the site of the ancient Memphis. There are no pyramids either in upper Egypt or in Nubia; but on the Nile, above Nubia, near the Ethiopian Meroê, pyramids in great number, though of inferior dimensions, are again found. From whence, or in what manner, Egyptian institutions first took their rise, we have no means of determining: but there seems little to bear out the supposition of Heeren,[582] and other eminent authors, that they were transmitted down the Nile by Ethiopian colonists from Meroê. Herodotus certainly conceived Egyptians and Ethiopians (who in his time jointly occupied the border island of Elephantinê, which he had himself visited) as completely distinct from each other, in race and customs not less than in language,—the latter being generally of the rudest habits, of great stature, and still greater physical strength,—the chief part of them subsisting on meat and milk, and blest with unusual longevity. He knew of Meroê, as the Ethiopian metropolis and a considerable city, fifty-two days’ journey higher up the river than Elephantinê, but his informants had given him no idea of analogy between its institutions and those of Egypt;[583] it was the migration of a large number of the Egyptian military caste, during the reign of Psammetichus, into Ethiopia, which first communicated civilized customs, in his judgment, to these southern barbarians. If there be really any connection between the social phenomena of Egypt and those of Meroê, it seems more reasonable to treat the latter as derivative from the former.[584]

[579] Herodot. ii, 35. Αἰγύπτιοι ἅμα τῷ οὐρανῷ τῷ κατὰ σφέας
ἐόντι ἑτεροίῳ, καὶ τῷ ποτάμῳ φύσιν ἀλλοίην παρεχομένῳ ἢ οἱ
ἄλλοι πόταμοι, τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ἔμπαλιν τοῖσι ἄλλοισι ἀνθρώποισι
ἐστήσαντο ἤθεα καὶ νόμους.

[580] Theokritus (Idyll, xvii, 83) celebrates Ptolemy
Philadelphus king of Egypt as ruling over thirty-three thousand
three hundred and thirty-three cities: the manner in which he
strings these figures into three hexameter verses is somewhat
ingenious. The priests, in describing to Herodotus the unrivalled
prosperity which they affirmed Egypt to have enjoyed under
Amasis, the last king before the Persian conquest, said that
there were then twenty thousand cities in the country (ii, 177).
Diodorus tells us that eighteen thousand different cities and
considerable villages were registered in the Egyptian ἀναγραφαὶ
(i, 31) for the ancient times, but that thirty thousand were
numbered under the Ptolemies.

[581] Respecting the monuments of ancient Egyptian art, see the
summary of O. Müller, Archäologie der Kunst, sects. 215-233, and
a still better account and appreciation of them in Carl Schnaase,
Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Alten, Düsseldorf, 1843,
vol. i, book ii, chs. 1 and 2.

In regard to the credibility and value of Egyptian history
anterior to Psammetichus, there are many excellent remarks by Mr.
Kenrick, in the preface to his work, “The Egypt of Herodotus,”
(the second book of Herodotus, with notes.) About the recent
discoveries derived from the hieroglyphics, he says: “We know
that it was the custom of the Egyptian kings to inscribe the
temples and obelisks which they raised with their own names or
with distinguishing hieroglyphics; but in no one instance do
these names, as read by the modern decipherers of hieroglyphics
on monuments said to have been raised by kings before
Psammetichus, correspond with the names given by Herodotus.”
(Preface, p. xliv.) He farther adds in a note, “A name which has
been read phonetically _Mena_, has been found at Thebes, and Mr.
Wilkinson supposes it to be Menes. It is remarkable, however,
that the names which follow are not phonetically written, so that
it is probable that this is not to be read _Mena_. Besides, the
cartouche, which immediately follows, is that of a king of the
eighteenth dynasty; so that, at all events, it cannot have been
engraved till many centuries after the supposed age of Menes;
and the occurrence of the name no more decides the question
of historical existence than that of Cecrops in the Parian
Chronicle.”

[582] Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 1,
p. 403. The opinion given by Parthey, however (De Philis Insulâ,
p. 100, Berlin, 1830), may perhaps be just: “Antiquissimâ ætate
eundem populum, dicamus Ægyptiacum, Nili ripas inde a Meroë
insulâ usque ad Ægyptum inferiorem occupâsse, e monumentorum
congruentiâ apparet: posteriore tempore, tabulis et annalibus
nostris longe superiore, alia stirps Æthiopica interiora terræ
usque ad cataractam Syenensem obtinuit. Ex quâ ætate certa rerum
notitia ad nos pervenit, Ægyptiorum et Æthiopum segregatio jam
facta est. Herodotus cæterique scriptores Græci populos acute
discernunt.”

At this moment, Syênê and its cataract mark the boundary of
two people and two languages,—Egyptians and Arabic language to
the north, Nubians and Berber language to the south. (Parthey,
_ibid._)

[583] Compare Herodot. ii, 30-32; iii, 19-25; Strabo, xvi,
p. 818. Herodotus gives the description of their armor and
appearance as part of the army of Xerxês (vii, 69); they painted
their bodies: compare Plin. H. N. xxxiii, 36. How little Ethiopia
was visited in his time, may be gathered from the tenor of his
statements: according to Diodorus (i, 37), no Greeks visited
it earlier than the expedition of Ptolemy Philadelphus,—οὕτως
ἄξενα ἦν τὰ περὶ τοὺς τόπους τούτους, καὶ παντελῶς ἐπικίνδυνα.
Diodorus, however, is incorrect in saying that no Greek had
ever gone as far southward as the frontier of Egypt: Herodotus
certainly visited Elephantinê, probably other Greeks also.

The statements respecting the theocratical state of Meroê and its
superior civilization come from Diodorus (iii, 2, 5, 7), Strabo
(xvii, p. 822), and Pliny (H. N. vi, 29-33), much later than
Herodotus. Diodorus seems to have had no older informants before
him, about Ethiopia, than Agatharchidês and Artemidôrus, both in
the second century B. C. (Diod. iii, 10.)

[584] Wesseling ad Diodor. iii, 3.

The population of Egypt was classified into certain castes or hereditary professions, of which the number was not exactly defined, and is represented differently by different authors. The priests stand clearly marked out, as the order richest, most powerful, and most venerated,—distributed all over the country, and possessing exclusively the means of reading and writing,[585] besides a vast amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the whole stock of medical and physical knowledge then attainable, and those rudiments of geometry, or rather land-measuring, which were so often called into use in a country annually inundated. To each god, and to each temple, throughout Egypt, lands and other properties belonged, whereby the numerous band of priests attached to him were maintained: it seems, too, that a farther portion of the lands of the kingdom was set apart for them in individual property, though on this point no certainty is attainable. Their ascendency, both direct and indirect, over the minds of the people, was immense; they prescribed that minute ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting the king himself,[586] was passed, and which was for themselves more full of harassing particularities than for any one else.[587] Every day in the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though Isis and Osiris were common to all,—and the priests of each god constituted a society apart, more or less important, according to the comparative celebrity of the temple: the high priests of Hephæstos, whose dignity was said to have been transmitted from father to son through a series of three hundred and forty-one generations[588] (commemorated by the like number of colossal statues, which Herodotus himself saw), were second in importance only to the king. The property of each temple included troops of dependents and slaves, who were stamped with “holy marks,”[589] and who must have been numerous in order to suffice for the large buildings and their constant visitors.

[585] Herodot. ii, 37. Θεοσεβέες δὲ περισσῶς ἐόντες μάλιστα
πάντων ἀνθρώπων, etc. He is astonished at the retentiveness of
their memory; some of them had more stories to tell than any one
whom he had ever seen (ii, 77-109; Diodor. i, 73).

The word _priest_ conveys to a modern reader an idea very
different from that of the Egyptian ἱερεῖς, who were not a
profession, but an order comprising many occupations and
professions,—Josephus the Jew was in like manner an ἱερεὺς κατὰ
γένος (cont. Apion. c. 3).

[586] Diodorus (i, 70-73) gives an elaborate description of the
monastic strictness with which the daily duties of the Egyptian
king were measured out by the priests: compare Plutarch, De Isid.
et Osirid. p. 353, who refers to Hekatæus (probably Hekatæus of
Abdêra) and Eudoxus. The priests represented that Psammetichus
was the first Egyptian king who broke through the priestly canon
limiting the royal allowance of wine: compare Strabo, xvii, p,
790.

The Ethiopian kings at Meroê are said to have been kept in
the like pupillage by the priestly order, until a king named
Ergamenês, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt,
emancipated himself and put the chief priests to death (Diodor.
iii, 6).

[587] Herodot. ii, 82-83.

[588] Herodot. ii, 143.

[589] Herodot. ii, 113; στίγματα ἱρά.

Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military caste or order, whose native name[590] indicated that they stood on the left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They were classified into Kalasiries and Hermotybii, who occupied lands in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in lower Egypt. The kalasiries had once amounted to one hundred and sixty thousand men, the hermotybii to two hundred and fifty thousand, when at the maximum of their population; but the highest point had long been past in the time of Herodotus. To each man of this soldier caste was assigned a portion of land equal to about six and a half English acres, free from any tax; what measures were taken to keep the lots of land in suitable harmony with a fluctuating number of holders, we know not. The statement of Herodotus relates to a time long past and gone, and describes what was believed, by the priests with whom he talked, to have been the primitive constitution of their country anterior to the Persian conquest: the like is still more true respecting the statement of Diodorus.[591] The latter says that the territory of Egypt was divided into three parts,—one part belonging to the king, another to the priests, and the remainder to the soldiers;[592] his language seems to intimate that every nome was so divided, and even that the three portions were equal, though he does not expressly say so. The result of these statements, combined with the history of Joseph in the book of Genesis, seems to be, that the lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded as privileged property and exempt from all burdens, while the remaining soil was considered as the property of the king, who, however, received from it a fixed proportion, one-fifth of the total produce, leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators.[593] We are told that Sethos, priest of the god Phtha (or Hephæstos) at Memphis, and afterwards named king, oppressed the military caste and deprived them of their lands, in revenge for which they withheld from him their aid when Egypt was invaded by Sennacherib,—and also that, in the reign of Psammetichus, a large number (two hundred and forty thousand) of these soldiers migrated into Ethiopia from a feeling of discontent, leaving their wives and children behind them.[594] It was Psammetichus who first introduced Ionian and Karian mercenaries into the country, and began innovations on the ancient Egyptian constitution; so that the disaffection towards him, on the part of the native soldiers, no longer permitted to serve as exclusive guards to the king, is not difficult to explain. The kalasiries and hermotybii were interdicted from every description of art or trade. There can be little doubt that under the Persians their lands were made subject to the tribute, and this may partly explain the frequent revolts which they maintained, with very considerable bravery, against the Persian kings.

[590] Herodot. ii, 30.

[591] Herodot. i, 165-166; Diodor. i, 73.

[592] Diodor. i, 73.

[593] Besides this general rent or land-tax received by
the Egyptian kings, there seem, also, to have been special
crown-lands. Strabo mentions an island in the Nile (in the
Thebaid) celebrated for the extraordinary excellence of its
date-palms; the whole of this island belonged to the kings,
without any other proprietor: it yielded a large revenue, and
passed into the hands of the Roman government in Strabo’s time
(xvii, p. 818).

[594] Herodot. ii, 30-141.

Herodotus enumerates five other _races_ (so he calls them), or castes, besides priests and soldiers,[595]—herdsmen, swineherds, tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots; an enumeration which perplexes us, inasmuch as it takes no account of the husbandmen, who must always have constituted the majority of the population. It is, perhaps, for this very reason that they are not comprised in the list,—not standing out specially marked or congregated together, like the five above named, and therefore not seeming to constitute a race apart. The distribution of Diodorus, who specifies (over and above priests and soldiers) husbandmen, herdsmen, and artificers, embraces much more completely the whole population.[596] It seems more the statement of a reflecting man, pushing out the principle of hereditary occupations to its consequences; (and the comments which the historian so abundantly interweaves with his narrative show that such was the character of the authorities which he followed);—while the list given by Herodotus comprises that which struck his observation. It seems that a certain proportion of the soil of the delta consisted of marsh land, including pieces of habitable ground, but impenetrable to an invading enemy, and favorable only to the growth of papyrus and other aquatic plants: other portions of the delta, as well as the upper valley, in parts where it widened to the eastward, were too wet for the culture of grain, though producing the richest herbage, and eminently suitable to the race of Egyptian herdsmen, who thus divided the soil with the husbandmen.[597] Herdsmen generally were held reputable, but the race of swineherds were hated and despised, from the extreme antipathy of all other Egyptians to the pig,—which animal yet could not be altogether proscribed, because there were certain peculiar occasions on which it was imperative to offer him in sacrifice to Selênê or Dionysus. Herodotus acquaints us that the swineherds were interdicted from all the temples, and that they always intermarried among themselves, other Egyptians disdaining such an alliance,—a statement which indirectly intimates that there was no standing objection against intermarriage of the remaining castes with each other. The caste or race of interpreters began only with the reign of Psammetichus, from the admission of Greek settlers, then for the first time tolerated in the country. Though they were half Greeks, the historian does not note them as of inferior account, except as compared with the two ascendant castes of soldiers and priests; moreover, the creation of a new caste shows that there was no consecrated or unchangeable total number.

[595] Herodot. ii, 164.

[596] Diodor. i, 74. About the Egyptian castes generally, see
Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 2, pp.
572-595.

[597] See the citation from Maillet’s Travels in Egypt, in
Heeren, Ideen, p. 590; also Volney’s Travels, vol. i, ch. 6, p.
77.

The expression of Herodotus—οἱ περὶ τὴν ~σπειρομένην~ Αἴγυπτον
οἰκέουσι—indicates that the portion of the soil used as pasture
was not inconsiderable.

The inhabitants of the marsh land were the most warlike part of
the population (Thucyd. i, 110).

Those whom Herodotus denominates tradesmen (καπήλοι) are doubtless identical with the artisans (τεχνῖται) specified by Diodorus,—the town population generally as distinguished from that of the country. During the three months of the year when Egypt was covered with water, festival days were numerous,—the people thronging by hundreds of thousands, in vast barges, to one or other of the many holy places, combining worship and enjoyment.[598] In Egypt, weaving was a trade, whereas in Greece it was the domestic occupation of females; and Herodotus treats it as one of those reversals of the order of nature which were seen only in Egypt,[599] that the weaver stayed at home plying his web while his wife went to market. The process of embalming bodies was elaborate and universal, giving employment to a large special class of men: the profusion of edifices, obelisks, sculpture and painting, all executed by native workmen, required a large body of trained sculptors,[600] who in the mechanical branch of their business attained a high excellence. Most of the animals in Egypt were objects of religious reverence, and many of them were identified in the closest manner with particular gods. The order of priests included a large number of hereditary feeders and tenders of these sacred animals.[601] Among the sacerdotal order were also found the computers of genealogies, the infinitely subdivided practitioners in the art of healing, etc.,[602] who enjoyed good reputation, and were sent for as surgeons to Cyrus and Darius. The Egyptian city population was thus exceedingly numerous, so that king Sethon, when called upon to resist an invasion without the aid of the military caste, might well be supposed to have formed an army out of “the tradesmen, the artisans, and the market-people:”[603] and Alexandria, at the commencement of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, acquired its numerous and active inhabitants at the expense of Memphis and the ancient towns of lower Egypt.

[598] Herodot. ii, 59-60.

[599] Herodot. ii, 35; Sophokl. Œdip. Colon. 332: where the
passage cited by the Scholiast out of Nymphodôrus is a remarkable
example of the habit of ingenious Greeks to represent all customs
which they thought worthy of notice, as having emanated from
the design of some great sovereign: here Nymphodôrus introduces
Sesostris as the author of the custom in question, in order that
the Egyptians might be rendered effeminate.

[600] The process of embalming is minutely described (Herod. ii,
85-90); the word which he uses for it is the same as that for
salting meat and fish,—ταρίχευσις: compare Strabo, xvi, p. 764.

Perfect exactness of execution, mastery of the hardest stone,
and undeviating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are
general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen
in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having
three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics; so
certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision
(Schnaase, Gesch. der Bild. Künste, i, p. 428).

All the nomes of Egypt, however, were not harmonious in their
feelings respecting animals: particular animals were worshipped
in some nomes which in other nomes were objects even of
antipathy, especially the crocodile (Herod. ii, 69; Strabo, xvii,
p. 817: see particularly the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal).

[601] Herodot. ii, 65-72; Diodor. i, 83-90; Plutarch, Isid. et
Osir. p. 380.

Hasselquist identified all the birds carved on the obelisk near
Matarea (Heliopolis), (Travels in Egypt, p. 99.)

[602] Herodot. ii, 82-83; iii, 1, 129. It is one of the points
of distinction between Egyptians and Babylonians, that the
latter had no surgeons or ἰατροί: they brought out the sick into
the market-place, to profit by the sympathy and advice of the
passers-by (Herodot. i, 197).

[603] Herodot. ii, 141.

The mechanical obedience and fixed habits of the mass of the Egyptian population (not priests or soldiers) was a point which made much impression upon Grecian observers; so that Solon is said to have introduced at Athens a custom prevalent in Egypt, whereby the nomarch or chief of each nome was required to investigate every man’s means of living, and to punish with death those who did not furnish evidence of some recognized occupation.[604] It does not seem that the institution of caste in Egypt, though insuring unapproachable ascendency to the priests and much consideration to the soldiers, was attended with any such profound debasement to the rest as that which falls upon the lowest caste or sudras in India,—no such gulf between them as that between the twice-born and the once-born in the religion of Brahma. Yet those stupendous works, which form the permanent memorials of the country, remain at the same time as proofs of the oppressive exactions of the kings, and of the reckless caprice with which the lives as well as the contributions of the people were lavished. One hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians were said to have perished in the digging of the canal, which king Nekôs began but did not finish, between the Pelusian arm of the Nile and the Red sea;[605] while the construction of the two great pyramids, attributed to the kings Cheops and Chephrên, was described to Herodotus by the priests as a period of exhausting labor and extreme suffering to the whole Egyptian people,—and yet the great Labyrinth,[606] said to have been built by the dodekarchs, appeared to him a more stupendous work than the Pyramids, so that the toil employed upon it cannot have been less destructive. The moving of such vast masses of stone as were seen in the ancient edifices both of upper and lower Egypt, with the imperfect mechanical resources then existing, must have tasked the efforts of the people yet more severely than the excavation of the half-finished canal of Nekôs. Indeed, the associations with which the Pyramids were connected, in the minds of those with whom Herodotus conversed, were of the most odious character. Such vast works, Aristotle observes, are suitable to princes who desire to consume the strength and break the spirit of their people. With Greek despots, perhaps, such an intention may have been sometimes deliberately conceived; but the Egyptian kings may be presumed to have followed chiefly caprice, or love of pomp,—sometimes views of a permanent benefit to be achieved,—as in the canal of Nekôs and the vast reservoir of Mœris,[607] with its channel joining the river,—when they thus expended the physical strength and even the lives of their subjects.

[604] Herodot. iii, 177.

[605] Herodot. ii, 158. Read the account of the foundation of
Petersburg by Peter the Great: “Au milieu de ces réformes,
grandes et petites, qui faisaient les amusemens du czar, et de
la guerre terrible qui l’occupoit contre Charles XII, il jeta
les fondemens de l’importante ville et du port de Pétersbourg,
en 1714, dans un marais où il n’y avait pas une cabane. Pierre
travailla de ses mains à la première maison: rien ne le rebuta:
des ouvriers furent forcés de venir sur ce bord de la mer
Baltique, des frontières d’Astrachan, des bords de la Mer Noire
et de la Mer Caspienne. Il périt plus de cent mille hommes dans
les travaux qu’il fallut faire, et dans les fatigues et la
disette qu’on essuya: mais enfin la ville existe.” (Voltaire,
Anecdotes sur Pierre le Grand, en Œuvres Complètes, ed. Paris,
1825, tom. xxxi, p. 491.)

[606] Herodot. ii, 124-129. τὸν λέων τετρυμένον ἐς τὸ ἔσχατον
κακοῦ. (Diodor. i, 63-64.)

Περὶ τῶν Πυραμίδων (Diodorus observes) οὐδὲν ὅλως οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς
ἐγχωρίοις, οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς συγγραφεῦσιν, συμφωνεῖται. He then
alludes to some of the discrepant stories about the date of the
Pyramids, and the names of their constructors. This confession,
of the complete want of trustworthy information respecting
the most remarkable edifices of lower Egypt, forms a striking
contrast with the statement which Diodorus had given (c. 44),
that the priests possessed records, “continually handed down
from reign to reign respecting four hundred and seventy Egyptian
kings.”

[607] It appears that the lake of Mœris is, at least in great
part, a natural reservoir, though improved by art for the
purposes wanted, and connected with the river by an artificial
canal, sluices, etc. (Kenrick ad Herodot. ii, 149.)

“The lake still exists, of diminished magnitude, being about
sixty miles in circumference, but the communication with the Nile
has ceased.” Herodotus gives the circumference as three thousand
six hundred stadia, = between four hundred and four hundred and
fifty miles.

I incline to believe that there was more of the hand of man in it
than Mr. Kenrick supposes, though doubtless the receptacle was
natural.

Sanctity of animal life generally, veneration for particular animals in particular nomes, and abstinence on religious grounds from certain vegetables, were among the marked features of Egyptian life, and served preëminently to impress upon the country that air of singularity which foreigners like Herodotus remarked in it. The two specially marked bulls, called apis at Memphis, and mnevis at Heliopolis, seem to have enjoyed a sort of national worship:[608] the ibis, the cat, and the dog were throughout most of the nomes venerated during life, embalmed like men after death, and if killed, avenged by the severest punishment of the offending party: but the veneration of the crocodile was confined to the neighborhood of Thebes and the lake of Mœris. Such veins of religious sentiment, which distinguished Egypt from Phenicia and Assyria, not less than from Greece, were explained by the native priests after their manner to Herodotus, though he declines from pious scruples to communicate what was told to him.[609] They seem remnants continued from a very early stage of Fetichism,—and the attempts of different persons, noticed in Diodorus and Plutarch, to account for their origin, partly by legends, partly by theory, will give little satisfaction to any one.[610]

[608] Herodot. ii, 38-46, 65-72; iii, 27-30: Diodor. i, 83-90.

It is surprising to find Pindar introducing into one of his odes
a plain mention of the monstrous circumstances connected with
the worship of the goat in the Mendesian nome (Pindar, Fragm.
Inc. 179, ed. Bergk). Pindar had also dwelt, in one of his
Prosodia, upon the mythe of the gods having disguised themselves
as animals, when seeking to escape Typhon; which was one of the
tales told as an explanation of the consecration of animals in
Egypt: see Pindar, Fragm. Inc. p. 61, ed. Bergk; Porphyr. de
Abstinent. iii, p. 251, ed. Rhoer.

[609] Herodot. ii, 65. Diodorus does not feel the same reluctance
to mention these ἀπόῤῥητα (i, 86).

[610] Diodor. i, 86-87; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 377,
_seq._

Though Thebes first, and Memphis afterwards, were undoubtedly the principal cities of Egypt, yet if the dynasties of Manetho are at all trustworthy, even in their general outline, the Egyptian kings were not taken uniformly either from one or the other. Manetho enumerates on the whole twenty-six different dynasties or families of kings, anterior to the conquest of the country by Kambysês,—the Persian kings between Kambysês and the revolt of the Egyptian Amyrtæus, in 405 B. C. constituting his twenty-seventh dynasty. Of these twenty-six dynasties, beginning with the year 5702 B. C., the first two are Thinites,—the third and fourth, Memphites,—the fifth, from the island of Elephantinê,—the sixth, seventh, and eighth, again Memphites,—the ninth and tenth, Herakleopolites,—the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, Diospolites or Thebans,—the fourteenth, Choïtes,—the fifteenth and sixteenth, Hyksos, or shepherd kings,—the seventeenth, shepherd kings, overthrown and succeeded by Diospolites,—the eighteenth (B. C. 1655-1327, in which is included Rameses, the great Egyptian conqueror, identified by many authors with Sesostris, 1411 B. C.), nineteenth, and twentieth, Diospolites,—the twenty-first, Tanites,—the twenty-second, Bubastites,—the twenty-third, again Tanites,—the twenty-fourth, Saïtes,—the twenty-fifth, Ethiopians, beginning with Sabakôn, whom Herodotus also mentions,—the twenty-sixth, Saïtes, including Psammetichus, Nekôs, Apries or Uaphris, and Amasis or Amosis. We see by these lists, that, according to the manner in which Manetho construed the antiquities of his country, several other cities of Egypt, besides Thebes and Memphis, furnished kings to the whole territory; but we cannot trace any correspondence between the nomes which furnished kings, and those which Herodotus mentions to have been exclusively occupied by the military caste. Many of the separate nomes were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked local character each to itself, religious as well as political; though the whole of Egypt, from Elephantinê to Pelasium and Kanôpus, is said to have always constituted one kingdom, from the earliest times which the native priests could conceive.

We are to consider this kingdom as engaged, long before the time when Greeks were admitted into it,[611] in a standing caravan-commerce with Phenicia, Palestine, Arabia, and Assyria. Ancient Egypt having neither vines nor olives, imported both wine and oil,[612] while it also needed especially the frankincense and aromatic products peculiar to Arabia, for its elaborate religious ceremonies. Towards the last quarter of the eighth century B. C. (a little before the time when the dynasty of the Mermnadæ in Lydia was commencing in the person of Gygês), we trace events tending to alter the relation which previously subsisted between these countries, by continued aggressions on the part of the Assyrian monarchs of Nineveh,—Salmaneser and Sennacherib. The former having conquered and led into captivity the ten tribes of Israel, also attacked the Phenician towns on the adjoining coast: Sidon, Palæ-Tyrus, and Akê yielded to him, but Tyre itself resisted, and having endured for five years the hardships of a blockade with partial obstruction of its continental aqueducts, was enabled by means of its insular position to maintain independence. It was just at this period that the Grecian establishments in Sicily were forming, and I have already remarked that the pressure of the Assyrians upon Phenicia, probably had some effect in determining that contraction of the Phenician occupations in Sicily, which really took place (B. C. 730-720). Respecting Sennacherib, we are informed by the Old Testament, that he invaded Judæa, and by Herodotus (who calls him king of the Assyrians and Arabians), that he assailed the pious king Sethos in Egypt: in both cases his army experienced a miraculous repulse and destruction. After this, the Assyrians of Nineveh, either torn by intestine dissension, or shaken by the attacks of the Medes, appear no longer active; but about the year 630 B. C. the Assyrians or Chaldæans of Babylon manifest a formidable and increasing power. It is, moreover, during this century that the old routine of the Egyptian kings was broken through, and a new policy displayed towards foreigners by Psammetichus,—which, while it rendered Egypt more formidable to Judæa and Phenicia, opened to Grecian ships and settlers the hitherto inaccessible Nile.

[611] On this early trade between Egypt, Phenicia, and Palestine,
anterior to any acquaintance with the Greeks, see Josephus cont.
Apion. i, 12.

[612] Herodotus notices the large importation of wine into Egypt
in his day, from all Greece as well as from Phenicia, as well as
the employment of the earthen vessels in which it was brought for
the transport of water, in the journeys across the desert (iii,
6).

In later times, Alexandria was supplied with wine chiefly from
Laodikeia, in Syria, near the mouth of the Orontes (Strabo, xvi,
p. 751).

Herodotus draws a marked distinction between the history of Egypt before Psammetichus and the following period: the former he gives as the narration of the priests, without professing to guarantee it,—the latter he evidently believes to be well ascertained.[613] And we find that, from Psammetichus downward, Herodotus and Manetho are in tolerable harmony, whereas even for the sovereigns occupying the last fifty years before Psammetichus, there are many and irreconcilable discrepancies between them;[614] but they both agree in stating that Psammetichus reigned fifty-four years. So important an event as the first admission of the Greeks into Egypt, was made, by the informants of Herodotus, to turn upon two prophecies. After the death of Sethos, king and priest of Hephæstos, who left no son, Egypt became divided among twelve kings, of whom Psammetichus was one: it was under this dodekarchy, according to Herodotus, that the marvellous labyrinth near the lake of Mœris was constructed. The twelve lived and reigned for some time in perfect harmony, but a prophecy had been made known to them, that the one who should make libations in the temple of Hephæstos out of a brazen goblet would reign over all Egypt. Now it happened that one day, when they all appeared armed in that temple to offer sacrifice, the high priest brought out by mistake only eleven golden goblets instead of twelve, and Psammetichus, left without a goblet, made use of his brass helmet as a substitute. Being thus considered, though unintentionally, to have fulfilled the condition of the prophecy, by making libations in a brazen goblet, he became an object of terror to his eleven colleagues, who united to despoil him of his dignity, and drove him into the inaccessible marshes. In this extremity, he sent to seek counsel from the oracle of Lêtô at Butô, and received for answer an assurance, that “vengeance would come to him by the hands of brazen men showing themselves from the seaward.” His faith was for the moment shaken by so startling a conception as that of brazen men for his allies: but the prophetic veracity of the priest at Butô was speedily shown, when an astonished attendant came to acquaint him, in his lurking-place, that brazen men were ravaging the sea-coast of the delta. It was a body of Ionian and Karian soldiers, who had landed for pillage, and the messenger who came to inform Psammetichus had never before seen men in an entire suit of brazen armor. That prince, satisfied that these were the allies whom the oracle had marked out for him, immediately entered into negotiation with the Ionians and Karians, enlisted them in his service, and by their aid in conjunction with his other partisans overpowered the other eleven kings,—thus making himself the one ruler of Egypt.[615]

[613] Herodot. ii, 147-154. ἀπὸ Ψαμμητίχου,—πάντα καὶ τὰ ὕστερον
ἐπιστάμεθα ἀτρεκέως.

[614] See these differences stated and considered in Boeckh,
Manetho und die Hundssternperiode. pp. 326—336, of which some
account is given in the Appendix to this chapter.

[615] Herodot. ii, 149-152. This narrative of Herodotus, however
little satisfactory in an historical point of view, bears evident
marks of being the genuine tale which he heard from the priests
of Hephæstos. Diodorus gives an account more historically
plausible, but he could not well have had any positive
authorities for that period, and he gives us seemingly the ideas
of Greek authors of the days of the Ptolemies. Psammetichus (he
tells us), as one of the twelve kings, ruled at Saïs and in the
neighboring part of the delta: he opened a trade, previously
unknown in Egypt, with Greeks and Phenicians, so profitable that
his eleven colleagues became jealous of his riches and combined
to attack him. He raised an army of foreign mercenaries and
defeated them (Diodor. i, 66-67). Polyænus gives a different
story about Psammetichus and the Karian mercenaries (vii 3).

Such was the tale by which the original alliance of an Egyptian king with Grecian mercenaries, and the first introduction of Greeks into Egypt, was accounted for and dignified. What followed is more authentic and more important. Psammetichus provided a settlement and lands for his new allies, on the Pelusiac or eastern branch of the Nile, a little below Bubastis. The Ionians were planted on one side of the river, the Karians on the other; and the place was made to serve as a military position, not only for the defence of the eastern border, but also for the support of the king himself against malcontents at home: it was called the Stratopěda, or the Camps.[616] He took pains, moreover, to facilitate the intercourse between them and the neighboring inhabitants, by causing a number of Egyptian children to be domiciled with them, in order to learn the Greek language; and hence sprung the interpreters; who, in the time of Herodotus, constituted a permanent hereditary caste or breed.

[616] Herodot. ii, 154.

Though the chief purpose of this first foreign settlement in Egypt, between Pelusium and Bubastis, was to create an independent military force, and with it a fleet for the king, yet it was of course an opening both for communication and traffic to all Greeks and to all Phenicians, such as had never before been available. And it was speedily followed by the throwing open of the Kanôpic or westernmost branch of the river for the purposes of trade specially. According to a statement of Strabo, it was in the reign of Psammetichus that the Milesians with a fleet of thirty ships made a descent on that part of the coast, first built a fort in the immediate neighborhood, and then presently founded the town of Naukratis, on the right bank of the Kanôpic Nile. There is much that is perplexing in this affirmation of Strabo; but on the whole I am inclined to think that the establishment of the Greek factories and merchants at Naukratis may be considered as dating in the reign of Psammetichus,[617]—Naukratis being a city of Egyptian origin, in which these foreigners were permitted to take up their abode,—not a Greek colony, as Strabo would have us believe. The language of Herodotus seems rather to imply that it was king Amasis—between whom and the death of Psammetichus there intervened nearly half a century—who first allowed Greeks to settle at Naukratis; but on comparing what the historian tells us respecting the courtezan Rhodôpis and the brother of Sapphô the Poetess, it is evident that there must have been both Greek trade and Greek establishments in that town long before Amasis came to the throne. We may consider, then, that both the eastern and western mouths of the Nile became open to the Greeks in the days of Psammetichus; the former as leading to the head-quarters of the mercenary Greek troops in Egyptian pay,—the latter for purposes of trade.

[617] Strabo, xvii, p. 801. καὶ τὸ Μιλησίων τεῖχος· πλεύσαντες
γὰρ ἐπὶ Ψαμμητίχου τριάκοντα ναυσὶν Μιλήσιοι ~κατὰ Κυαξάρη~
(~οὗτος δὲ τῶν Μήδων~) κάτεσχον εἰς τὸ στόμα τὸ Βολβίτινον· εἶτ᾽
ἐκβάντες ἐτείχισαν τὸ λεχθὲν κτίσμα· χρόνῳ δ᾽ ἀναπλεύσαντες εἰς
τὸν Σαϊτικὸν νομὸν, καταναυμαχήσαντες Ἴναρον, πόλιν ἔκτισαν
Ναύκρατιν οὐ πολὺ τῆς Σχεδίας ὕπερθεν.

What is meant by the allusion to Kyaxarês, or to Inarus, in this
passage, I do not understand. We know nothing of any relations
either between Kyaxarês and Psammetichus, or between Kyaxarês
and the Milesians. moreover, if by κατὰ Κυαξάρη be meant _in
the time of Kyaxarês_, as the translators render it, we have in
immediate succession ~ἐπὶ~ Ψαμμητίχου—~κατὰ~ Κυαξάρη, with the
same meaning, which is, to say the least of it, a very awkward
sentence. The words ~οὗτος δὲ τῶν Μήδων~ look not unlike a
comment added by some early reader of Strabo, who could not
understand why Kyaxarês should be here mentioned, and who noted
his difficulty in words which have subsequently found their way
into the text. Then again, _Inarus_ belongs to the period between
the Persian and Peloponnesian wars: at least we know no other
person of that name than the chief of the Egyptian revolt against
Persia (Thucyd. i, 114) who is spoken of as a “Libyan, the son of
Psammetichus.” The mention of Kyaxarês, therefore, here appears
unmeaning, while that of Inarus is an anachronism: possibly, the
story that the Milesians founded Naukratis “after having worsted
Inarus in a sea-flight,” may have grown out of the etymology
of the name Naukratis, in the mind of one who found Inarus the
son of Psammetichus mentioned two centuries afterwards, and
identified the two Psammetichuses with each other.

The statement of Strabo has been copied by Steph. Byz. v.
Ναύκρατις. Eusebius also announces (Chron. i, p. 168) the
Milesians as the founders of Naukratis, but puts the event at 753
B. C., during what he calls the Milesian thalassokraty: see Mr.
Fynes Clinton ad ann. 732 B. C. in the Fasti Hellenici.

While this event afforded to the Greeks a valuable enlargement both of their traffic and of their field of observation, it seems to have occasioned an internal revolution in Egypt. The nome of Bubastis, in which the new military settlement of foreigners was planted, is numbered among those occupied by the Egyptian military caste:[618] whether their lands were in part taken away from them, we do not know; but the mere introduction of such foreigners must have appeared an abomination, to the strong conservative feeling of ancient Egypt. And Psammetichus treated the native soldiers in a manner which showed of how much less account they had become since the “brazen helmets” had got footing in the land. It had hitherto been the practice to distribute such portions of the military as were on actual service in three different posts: at Daphnê, near Pelusium, on the north-eastern frontier,—at Marea, on the north-western frontier, near the spot where Alexandria was afterwards built,—and at Elephantinê, on the southern or Ethiopian boundary. Psammetichus, having no longer occasion for their services on the eastern frontier, since the formation of the mercenary camp, accumulated them in greater number and detained them for an unusual time at the two other stations, especially at Elephantinê. Here, as Herodotus tells us, they remained for three years unrelieved, and Diodorus adds that Psammetichus assigned to those native troops who fought conjointly with the mercenaries, the least honorable post in the line; until at length discontent impelled them to emigrate in a body of two hundred and forty thousand men into Ethiopia, leaving their wives and children behind in Egypt,—nor could they be induced by any instances on the part of Psammetichus to return. This memorable incident,[619] which is said to have given rise to a settlement in the southernmost regions of Ethiopia, called by the Greeks the Automoli (though the emigrant soldiers still called themselves by their old Egyptian name), attests the effect produced by the introduction of the foreign mercenaries in lowering the position of the native military. The number of the emigrants, however, is a point noway to be relied upon: we shall presently see that there were enough of them left behind to renew effectively the struggle for their lost dignity.

[618] Herodot. ii, 166

[619] Herodot. ii, 30: Diodor. i, 67.