History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery Part 17

The flat roofs of the houses of the city of Van may be seen to the left of the photograph nestling below the rock.

The centre and capital of this empire was the ancient city which stood on the site of the modern town of Van at the southwest corner of the lake which bears the same name. The city was built at the foot of a natural rock which rises precipitously from the plain, and must have formed an impregnable stronghold against the attack of the foe.

In this citadel at the present day remain the ancient galleries and staircases and chambers which were cut in the living rock by the kings who made it their fortress, and their inscriptions, engraved upon the face of the rock on specially prepared and polished surfaces, enable us to reconstruct in some degree the history of that ancient empire. From time to time there have been found and copied other similar texts, which are cut on the mountainsides or on the ma.s.sive stones which formed part of the construction of their buildings and fortifications. A complete collection of these texts, together with translations, will shortly be published by Prof. Lehmann. Meanwhile, this scholar has discussed and summarized the results to be obtained from much of his material, and we are thus already enabled to sketch the princ.i.p.al achievements of the rulers of this mountain race, who were constantly at war with the later kings of a.s.syria, and for two centuries at least disputed her claim to supremacy in this portion of Western Asia.

The country occupied by this ancient people of Van was the great table-land which now forms Armenia. The people themselves cannot be connected with the Armenians, for their language presents no characteristics of those of the Indo-European family, and it is equally certain that they are not to be traced to a Semitic origin. It is true that they employed the a.s.syrian method of writing their inscriptions, and their art differs only in minor points from that of the a.s.syrians, but in both instances this similarity of culture was directly borrowed at a time when the less civilized race, having its centre at Van, came into direct contact with the a.s.syrians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 417.jpg ANCIENT FLIGHT OF STEPS AND GALLERY ON THE FACE OF THE ROCK-CITADEL OF VAN.

The exact date at which this influence began to be exerted is not certain, but we have records of immediate relations with a.s.syria in the second half of the ninth century before Christ. The district inhabited by the Vannic people was known to the a.s.syrians by the name of Urartu, and although the inscriptions of the earlier a.s.syrian kings do not record expeditions against that country, they frequently make mention of campaigns against princes and petty rulers of the land of Na'iri. They must therefore for long have exercised an indirect, if not a direct, influence on the peoples and tribes which lay more to the north.

The earliest evidence of direct contact between the a.s.syrians and the land of Urartu which we at present possess dates from the reign of Ashur-nasir-pal, and in the reign of his son Shalmaneser II three expeditions were undertaken against the people of Van. The name of the king of Urartu at this time was Arame, and his capital city, Arzasku, probably lay to the north of Lake Van. On all three occasions the a.s.syrians were victorious, forcing Arame to abandon his capital and capturing his cities as far as the sources of the Euphrates.

Subsequently, in the year 833 B.C., Shalmaneser II made another attack upon the country, which at that time was under the sway of Sarduris I.

Under this monarch the citadel of Van became the great stronghold of the people of Urartu, for he added to the natural strength of the position by the construction of walls built between the rock of Van and the harbour. The ma.s.sive blocks of stone of which his fortifications were composed are standing at the present day, and they bear eloquent testimony to the energy with which this monarch devoted himself to the task of rendering his new citadel impregnable. The fortification and strengthening of Van and its citadel was carried on during the reigns of his direct successors and descendants, Ispui-nis, Menuas, and Argistis I, so that when Tiglath-pile-ser III brought fire and sword into the country and laid siege to Van in the reign of Sarduris II, he could not capture the citadel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 419.jpg PART OF THE ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS OF THE CITY OF VAN, BETWEEN THE CITADEL AND THE LAKE.]

It was not difficult for the a.s.syrian king to a.s.sault and capture the city itself, which lay at the foot of the citadel as it does at the present day, but the latter, within the fortifications of which Sarduris and his garrison withdrew, proved itself able to withstand the a.s.syrian attack. The expedition of Tiglath-pileser III did not succeed in crus.h.i.+ng the Vannic empire, for Rusas I, the son and successor of Sarduris II, allied himself to the neighbouring mountain races and gave considerable trouble to Sargon, the a.s.syrian king, who was obliged to undertake an expedition to check their aggressions.

It was probably Rusas I who erected the buildings on Toprak Kala, the hill to the east of Van, traces of which remain to the present day. He built a palace and a temple, and around them he constructed a new city with a reservoir to supply it with water, possibly because the slopes of Toprak Kala rendered it easier of defence than the city in the plain (beneath the rock and citadel) which had fallen an easy prey to Tiglath-pileser III. The site of the temple on Toprak Kala has been excavated by the trustees of the British Museum, and our knowledge of Vannic art is derived from the s.h.i.+elds and helmets of bronze and small bronze figures and fittings which were recovered from this building. One of the s.h.i.+elds brought to the British Museum from the Toprak Kala, where it originally hung with others on the temple walls, bears the name of Argistis II, who was the son and successor of Rusas I, and who attempted to give trouble to the a.s.syrians by stirring the inhabitants of the land of k.u.mmukh (Kommagene) to revolt against Sargon. His son, Rusas II, was the contemporary of Esarhaddon, and from some recently discovered rock-inscriptions we learn that he extended the limits of his kingdom on the west and secured victories against Mushki (Meshech) to the southeast of the Halys and against the Hitt.i.tes in Northern Syria. Rusas III rebuilt the temple on Toprak Kala, as we know from an inscription of his on one of the s.h.i.+elds from that place in the British Museum. Both he and Sarduris III were on friendly terms with the a.s.syrians, for we know that they both sent emba.s.sies to Ashur-bani-pal.

By far the larger number of rock-inscriptions that have yet been found and copied in the mountainous districts bordering on a.s.syria were engraved by this ancient Vannic people, and Drs. Lehmann and Belck have done good service by making careful copies and collations of all those which are at present known. Work on other cla.s.ses of rock-inscriptions has also been carried on by other travellers. A new edition of the inscriptions of Sennacherib in the gorge of the Gomel, near the village of Bavian, has been made by Mr. King, who has also been fortunate enough to find a number of hitherto unknown inscriptions in Kurdistan on the Judi Dagh and at the sources of the Tigris. The inscriptions at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb, "the Dog River," in Syria, have been reexamined by Dr. Knudtzon, and the long inscription which Nebuchadnezzar II cut on the rocks at Wadi Brissa in the Lebanon, formerly published by M. Pognon, has been recopied by Dr. Weissbach.

Finally, the great trilingual inscription of Darius Hystaspes on the rock at Bisutun in Persia, which was formerly copied by the late Sir Henry Raw-linson and used by him for the successful decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, was completely copied last year by Messrs. King and Thompson.

Messrs. King and Thompson are preparing a new edition of this inscription.

The main facts of the history of a.s.syria under her later kings and of Babylonia during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods were many years ago correctly ascertained, and recent excavation and research have done little to add to our knowledge of the history of these periods. It was hoped that the excavations conducted by Dr. Koldewey at Babylon would result in the recovery of a wealth of inscriptions and records referring to the later history of the country, but unfortunately comparatively few tablets or inscriptions have been found, and those that have been recovered consist mainly of building-inscriptions and votive texts. One such building-inscription contains an interesting historical reference.

It occurs on a barrel-cylinder of clay inscribed with a text of Nabopola.s.sar, and it was found in the temple of Ninib and records the completion and restoration of the temple by the king. In addition to recording the building operations he had carried out in the temple, Nabopola.s.sar boasts of his opposition to the a.s.syrians. He says: "As for the a.s.syrians who had ruled all peoples from distant days and had set the people of the land under a heavy yoke, I, the weak and humble man who wors.h.i.+ppeth the Lord of Lords (i.e. the G.o.d Marduk), through the mighty power of Nab and Marduk, my lords, held back their feet from the land of Akkad and cast off their yoke."

It is not yet certain whether the Babylonians under Nabopola.s.sar actively a.s.sisted Cyaxares and the Medes in the siege and in the subsequent capture of Nineveh in 606 B.C. but this newly discovered reference to the a.s.syrians by Nabopola.s.sar may possibly be taken to imply that the Babylonians were pa.s.sive and not active allies of Cyaxares. If the cylinder were inscribed after the fall of Nineveh we should have expected Nabopola.s.sar, had he taken an active part in the capture of the city, to have boasted in more definite terms of his achievement. On his stele which is preserved at Constantinople, Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, who himself suffered defeat at the hands of Cyrus, King of Persia, ascribed the fall of Nineveh to the anger of Marduk and the other G.o.ds of Babylon because of the destruction of their city and the spoliation of their temples by Sennacherib in 689 B.C. We see the irony of fate in the fact that Cyrus also ascribed the defeat and deposition of Nabonidus and the fall of Babylon to Marduk's intervention, whose anger he alleges was aroused by the attempt of Nabonidus to concentrate the wors.h.i.+p of the local city-G.o.ds in Babylon.

Thus it will be seen that recent excavation and research have not yet supplied the data for filling in such gaps as still remain in our knowledge of the later history of a.s.syria and Babylon. The closing years of the a.s.syrian empire and the military achievements of the great Neo-Babylonian rulers, Nabopola.s.sar, Nerig-lissar, and Nebuchadnezzar II, have not yet been found recorded in any published a.s.syrian or Babylonian inscription, but it may be expected that at any moment some text will be discovered that will throw light upon the problems connected with the history of those periods which still await solution.

Meanwhile, the excavations at Babylon, although they have not added much to our knowledge of the later history of the country, have been of immense service in revealing the topography of the city during the Neo-Babylonian period, as well as the positions, plans, and characters of the princ.i.p.al buildings erected by the later Babylonian kings. The discovery of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar II on the mound of the Kasr, of the small but complete temple E-makh, of the temple of the G.o.ddess Nin-makh to the northeast of the palaces, and of the sacred road dividing them and pa.s.sing through the Great Gate of Ishtar (adorned with representations of lions, bulls, and dragons in raised brick upon its walls) has enabled us to form some conception of the splendour and magnificence of the city as it appeared when rebuilt by its last native rulers. Moreover, the great temple E-sagila, the famous shrine of the G.o.d Marduk, has been identified and partly excavated beneath the huge mound of Tell Amran ibn-Ali, while a smaller and less famous temple of Ninib has been discovered in the lower mounds which lie to the eastward.

Finally, the sacred way from E-sagila to the palace mound has been traced and uncovered. We are thus enabled to reconst.i.tute the scene of the most solemn rite of the Babylonian festival of the New Year, when the statue of the G.o.d Marduk was carried in solemn procession along this road from the temple to the palace, and the Babylonian king made his yearly obeisance to the national G.o.d, placing his own hands within those of Marduk, in token of his submission to and dependence on the divine will.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 425.jpg WITHIN THE SHRINE OP E-MAKH, THE TEMPLE OP THE G.o.dDESS NIN-MAKH.]

Though recent excavations have not led to any startling discoveries with regard to the history of Western Asia during the last years of the Babylonian empire, research among the tablets dating from the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods has lately added considerably to our knowledge of Babylonian literature. These periods were marked by great literary activity on the part of the priests at Babylon, Sippar, and elsewhere, who, under the royal orders, scoured the country for all remains of the early literature which was preserved in the ancient temples and archives of the country, and made careful copies and collections of all they found. Many of these tablets containing Neo-Babylonian copies of earlier literary texts are preserved in the British Museum, and have been recently published, and we have thus recovered some of the princ.i.p.al grammatical, religious, and magical compositions of the earlier Babylonian period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 426.jpg TRENCH IN THE BABYLONIAN PLAIN]

Between The Mound Of The Kasr And Tell Amran Ibn-Ali, Showing A Section Of The Paved Sacred Way.

Among the most interesting of such recent finds is a series of tablets inscribed with the Babylonian legends concerning the creation of the world and man, which present many new and striking parallels to the beliefs on these subjects embodied in Hebrew literature. We have not s.p.a.ce to treat this subject at greater length in the present work, but we may here note that discovery and research in its relation to the later empires that ruled at Babylon have produced results of literary rather than of historical importance. But we should exceed the s.p.a.ce at our disposal if we attempted even to skim this fascinating field of study in which so much has recently been achieved. For it is time we turned once more to Egypt and directed our inquiry towards ascertaining what recent research has to tell us with regard to her inhabitants during the later periods of her existence as a nation of the ancient world.

CHAPTER IX--THE LAST DAYS OF ANCIENT EGYPT

Before we turned from Egypt to summarize the information, afforded by recent discoveries, upon the history of Western Asia under the kings of the a.s.syrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, we noted that the Asiatic empire of Egypt was regained by the reactionary kings of the XIXth Dynasty, after its temporary loss owing to the vagaries of Akhunaten.

Palestine remained Egyptian throughout the period of the judges until the foundation of the kingdom of Judah. With the decline of military spirit in Egypt and the increasing power of the priesthood, authority over Asia became less and less a reality. Tribute was no longer paid, and the tribes wrangled without a restraining hand, during the reigns of the successors of Ramses III. By the time of the priest-kings of Thebes (the XXIst Dynasty) the authority of the Pharaohs had ceased to be exercised in Syria. Egypt was itself divided into two kingdoms, the one ruled by Northern descendants of the Ramessids at Tanis, the other by the priestly monarchs at Thebes, who reigned by right of inheritance as a result of the marriage of the daughter of Ramses with the high priest Amenhetep, father of Herhor, the first priest-king. The Thebans fortified Gebelen in the South and el-Hebi in the North against attack, and evidently their relations with the Tanites were not always friendly.

In Syria nothing of the imperial power remained. The prestige of the G.o.d Amen of Thebes, however, was still very great. We see this clearly from a very interesting papyrus of the reign of Herhor, published in 1899 by Mr. Golenischeff, which describes the adventures of Uenuamen, an envoy sent (about 1050 B.C.) to Phoenicia to bring wood from the mountains of Lebanon for the construction of a great festival bark of the G.o.d Amen at Thebes. In the course of his mission he was very badly treated (We cannot well imagine Thothmes III or Amenhetep III tolerating ill-treatment of their envoy!) and eventually s.h.i.+pwrecked on the coast of the land of Alas.h.i.+ya or Cyprus. He tells us in the papyrus, which seems to be the official report of his mission, that, having been given letters of credence to the Prince of Byblos from the King of Tanis, "to whom Amen had given charge of his North-land," he at length reached Phoenicia, and after much discussion and argument was able to prevail upon the prince to have the wood which he wanted brought down from Lebanon to the seash.o.r.e.

Here, however, a difficulty presented itself,--the harbour was filled with the piratical s.h.i.+ps of the Cretan Tjakaray, who refused to allow Uenuamen to return to Egypt. They said, 'Seize him; let no s.h.i.+p of his go unto the land of Egypt!' "Then," says Uenuamen in the papyrus, "I sat down and wept. The scribe of the prince came out unto me; he said unto me, 'What ail-eth thee?' I replied, 'Seest thou not the birds which fly, which fly back unto Egypt? Look at them, they go unto the cool ca.n.a.l, and how long do I remain abandoned here? Seest thou not those who would prevent my return?' He went away and spoke unto the prince, who began to weep at the words which were told unto him and which were so sad. He sent his scribe out unto me, who brought me two measures of wine and a deer. He sent me Tentnuet, an Egyptian singing-girl who was with him, saying unto her, 'Sing unto him, that he may not grieve!' He sent word unto me, 'Eat, drink, and grieve not! To-morrow shalt thou hear all that I shall say.' On the morrow he had the people of his harbour summoned, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said unto the Tjakaray, 'What aileth you?' They answered him, 'We will pursue the piratical s.h.i.+ps which thou sendest unto Egypt with our unhappy companions.' He said unto them, 'I cannot seize the amba.s.sador of Amen in my land. Let me send him away and then do ye pursue after him to seize him!' He sent me on board, and he sent me away... to the haven of the sea. The wind drove me upon the land of Alas.h.i.+ya. The people of the city came out in order to slay me. I was dragged by them to the place where Hatiba, the queen of the city, was. I met her as she was going out of one of her houses into the other. I greeted her and said unto the people who stood by her, 'Is there not one among you who understandeth the speech of Egypt?' One of them replied, 'I understand it.' I said unto him, 'Say unto thy mistress: even as far as the city in which Amen dwelleth (i. e. Thebes) have I heard the proverb, "In all cities is injustice done; only in Alas.h.i.+ya is justice to be found," and now is injustice done here every day!' She said, 'What is it that thou sayest?' I said unto her, 'Since the sea raged and the wind drove me upon the land in which thou livest, therefore thou wilt not allow them to seize my body and to kill me, for verily I am an amba.s.sador of Amen. Remember that I am one who will be sought for always. And if these men of the Prince of Byblos whom they seek to kill (are killed), verily if their chief finds ten men of thine, will he not kill them also?' She summoned the men, and they were brought before her. She said unto me, 'Lie down and sleep...'"

At this point the papyrus breaks off, and we do not know how Uenuamen returned to Egypt with his wood. The description of his casting-away and landing on Alas.h.i.+ya is quite Homeric, and gives a vivid picture of the manners of the time. The natural impulse of the islanders is to kill the strange castaway, and only the fear of revenge and of the wrath of a distant foreign deity restrains them. Alas.h.i.+ya is probably Cyprus, which also bore the name Yantinay from the time of Thothmes III until the seventh century, when it is called Yatnan by the a.s.syrians. A king of Alas.h.i.+ya corresponded with Amenhetep III in cuneiform on terms of perfect equality, three hundred years before: "Brother," he writes, "should the small amount of the copper which I have sent thee be displeasing unto thy heart, it is because in my land the hand of Nergal my lord slew all the men of my land (i.e. they died of the plague), and there was no working of copper; and this was, my brother, not pleasing unto thy heart. Thy messenger with my messenger swiftly will I send, and whatsoever amount of copper thou hast asked for, O my brother, I, even I, will send it unto thee." The mention by Herhor's envoy of Nesibinebdad (Smendes), the King of Tanis, a powerful ruler who in reality constantly threatened the existence of the priestly monarchy at Thebes, as "him to whom Amen has committed the wards.h.i.+p of his North-land," is distinctly amusing. The hard fact of the independence of Lower Egypt had to be glozed somehow.

The days of Theban power were coming to an end and only the prestige of the G.o.d Amen remained strong for two hundred years more. But the alliance of Amen and his priests with a band of predatory and destroying foreign conquerors, the Ethiopians (whose rulers were the descendants of the priest-kings, who retired to Napata on the succession of the powerful Bubast.i.te dynasty of s.h.i.+shak to that of Tanis, abandoning Thebes to the Northerners), did much to destroy the prestige of Amen and of everything connected with him. An Ethiopian victory meant only an a.s.syrian reconquest, and between them Ethiopians and a.s.syrians had well-nigh ruined Egypt. In the Sate period Thebes had declined greatly in power as well as in influence, and all its traditions were anathema to the leading people of the time, although not of course in Akhunaten's sense.

With the Sate period we seem almost to have retraced our steps and to have reentered the age of the Pyramid Builders. All the pomp and glory of Thothmes, Amenhetep, and Ramses were gone. The days of imperial Egypt were over, and the minds of men, sickened of foreign war, turned for peace and quietness to the simpler ideals of the IVth and Vth Dynasties.

We have already seen that an archaistic revival of the styles of the early dynasties is characteristic of this late period, and that men were buried at Sakkara and at Thebes in tombs which recall in form and decoration those of the courtiers of the Pyramid Builders. Everywhere we see this fas.h.i.+on of archaism. A Theban n.o.ble of this period named Aba was buried at Thebes. Long ago, nearly three thousand years before, under the VIth Dynasty, there had lived a great n.o.ble of the same name, who was buried in a rock-tomb at Der el-Gebrawi, in Middle Egypt. This tomb was open and known in the days of the second Aba, who caused to be copied and reproduced in his tomb in the Asasif at Thebes most of the scenes from the bas-relief with which it had been decorated. The tomb of the VIth Dynasty Aba has lately been copied for the Archaeological Survey of Egypt (Egypt Exploration Fund) by Mr. de Garis Davies, who has found the reliefs of the XXVIth Dynasty Aba of considerable use to him in reconst.i.tuting destroyed portions of their ancient originals.

During late years important discoveries of objects of this era have been few. One of the most noteworthy is that of a contemporary inscription describing the battle of Momemphis, which is mentioned by Herodotus (ii, 163, 169). We now have the official account of this battle, and know that it took place in the third year of the reign of Amasis--not before he became king. This was the fight in which the unpatriotic king, Apries, who had paid for his partiality for the Greeks of Nau-kratis with the loss of his throne, was finally defeated. As we see from this inscription, he was probably murdered by the country people during his flight.

The following are the most important pa.s.sages of the inscription: "His Majesty (Amasis) was in the Festival-Hall, discussing plans for his whole land, when one came to say unto him, 'Haa-ab-Ra (Apries) is rowing up; he hath gone on board the s.h.i.+ps which have crossed over. Haunebu (Greeks), one knows not their number, are traversing the North-land, which is as if it had no master to rule it; he (Apries) hath summoned them, they are coming round him. It is he who hath arranged their settlement in the Peh-an (the An-dropolite name); they infest the whole breadth of Egypt, those who are on thy waters fly before them!'... His Majesty mounted his chariot, having taken lance and bow in his hand...

(the enemy) reached Andropolis; the soldiers sang with joy on the roads... they did their duty in destroying the enemy. His Majesty fought like a lion; he made victims among them, one knows not how many. The s.h.i.+ps and their warriors were overturned, they saw the depths as do the fishes. Like a flame he extended, making a feast of fighting. His heart rejoiced.... The third year, the 8th Athyr, one came to tell Majesty: 'Let their vile-ness be ended! They throng the roads, there are thousands there ravaging the land; they fill every road. Those who are in s.h.i.+ps bear thy terror in their hearts. But it is not yet finished.'

Said his Majesty unto his soldiers: '...Young men and old men, do this in the cities and nomes!'... Going upon every road, let not a day pa.s.s without fighting their galleys!'... The land was traversed as by the blast of a tempest, destroying their s.h.i.+ps, which were abandoned by the crews. The people accomplished their fate, killing the prince (Apries) on his couch, when he had gone to repose in his cabin. When he saw his friend overthrown... his Majesty himself buried him (Apries), in order to establish him as a king possessing virtue, for his Majesty decreed that the hatred of the G.o.ds should be removed from him."

This is the event to which we have already referred in a preceding chapter, as proving the great amelioration of Egyptian ideas with regard to the treatment of a conquered enemy, as compared with those of other ancient nations. Amasis refers to the deposed monarch as his "friend,"

and buries him in a manner befitting a king at the charges of Amasis himself. This act warded off from the spirit of Apries the just anger of the G.o.ds at his partiality for the "foreign devils," and ensured his reception by Osiris as a king neb menkh, "possessing virtues."

The town of Naukratis, where Apries established himself, had been granted to the Greek traders by Psametik I a century or more before. Mr.

D. G. Hogarth's recent exploration of the site has led to a considerable modification of our first ideas of the place, which were obtained from Prof. Petrie 's excavations. Prof. Petrie was the discoverer of Naukratis, and his diggings told us what Naukratis was like in the first instance, but Mr. Hogarth has shown that several of his identifications were erroneous and that the map of the place must be redrawn. The chief error was in the placing of the h.e.l.lenion (the great meeting-place of the Greeks), which is now known to be in quite a different position from that a.s.signed to it by Prof. Petrie. The "Great Temenos" of Prof. Petrie has now been shown to be non-existent. Mr. Hogarth has also pointed out that an old Egyptian town existed at Nau-kratis long before the Greeks came there. This town is mentioned on a very interesting stele of black basalt (discovered at Tell Gaif, the site of Naukratis, and now in the Cairo Museum), under the name of "Permerti, which is called Nukrate."

The first is the old Egyptian name, the second the Greek name adapted to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stele was erected by Tekhtnebf, the last native king of Egypt, to commemorate his gifts to the temples of Neth on the occasion of his accession at Sais. It is beautifully cut, and the inscription is written in a curious manner, with alphabetic spellings instead of ideographs, and ideographs instead of alphabetic spellings, which savours fully of the affectation of the learned pedant who drafted it; for now, of course, in the fourth century before Christ, n.o.body but a priestly antiquarian could read hieroglyphics. Demotic was the only writing for practical purposes.

We see this fact well ill.u.s.trated in the inscriptions of the Ptolemac temples. The accession of the Ptolemies marked a great increase in the material wealth of Egypt, and foreign conquest again came in fas.h.i.+on.

Ptolemy Euergetes marched into Asia in the grand style of a Ramses and brought back the images of G.o.ds which had been carried off by Esarhaddon or Nebuchadnezzar II centuries before. He was received on his return to Egypt with acclamations as a true successor of the Pharaohs. The imperial spirit was again in vogue, and the archaistic simplicity and independence of the Sates gave place to an archaistic imperialism, the first-fruits of which were the repair and building of temples in the great Pharaonic style. On these we see the Ptolemies masquerading as Pharaohs, and the climax of absurdity is reached when Ptolemy Auletes (the Piper) is seen striking down Asiatic enemies in the manner of Amen-hetep or Ramses! This scene is directly copied from a Ramesside temple, and we find imitations of reliefs of Ramses II so slavish that the name of the earlier king is actually copied, as well as the relief, and appears above the figure of a Ptolemy. The names of the nations who were conquered by Thothmes III are repeated on Ptolemaic sculptures to do duty for the conquered of Euergetes, with all sorts of mistakes in spelling, naturally, and also with later interpolations. Such an inscription is that in the temple of Kom Ombo, which Prof. Say ce has held to contain the names of "Caphtor and Casluhim" and to prove the knowledge of the latter name in the fourteenth century before Christ.

The name of Caphtor is the old Egyptian Keftiu (Crete); that of Casluhim is unknown in real Old Egyptian inscriptions, and in this Ptolemaic list at Kom Ombo it may be quite a late interpolation in the lists, perhaps no older than the Persian period, since we find the names of Parsa (Persia) and Susa, which were certainly unknown to Thothmes III, included in it. We see generally from the Ptolemaic inscriptions that n.o.body could read them but a few priests, who often made mistakes. One of the most serious was the identification of Keftiu with Phoenicia in the Stele of Canopus. This misled modern archaeologists down to the time of Dr. Evans's discoveries at Knossos, though how these utterly un-Semitic looking Keftiu could have been Phoenicians was a puzzle to everybody. We now know, of course, that they were Mycenaean or Minoan Cretans, and that the Ptolemaic antiquaries made a mistake in identifying the land of Keftiu with Phoenicia.

We must not, however, say too much in dispraise of the Ptolemaic Egyptians and their works. We have to be grateful to them indeed for the building of the temples of Edfu and Dendera, which, owing to their later date, are still in good preservation, while the best preserved of the old Pharaonic fanes, such as Medinet Hab, have suffered considerably from the ravages of time. Eor these temples show us to-day what an old Egyptian temple, when perfect, really looked like. They are, so to speak, perfect mummies of temples, while of the old buildings we have nothing but the disjointed and damaged skeletons.

A good deal of repairing has been done to these buildings, especially to that at Edfu, of late years. But the main archaeological interest of Ptolemaic and Roman times has been found in the field of epigraphy and the study of papyri, with which the names of Messrs. Kenyon, Grenfell, and Hunt are chiefly connected. The treasures which have lately been obtained by the British Museum in the shape of the ma.n.u.scripts of Aristotle's "Const.i.tution of Athens," the lost poems of Bacchylides, and the Mimes of Herondas, all of which have been published for the trustees of that inst.i.tution by Mr. Kenyon, are known to those who are interested in these subjects. The long series of publications of Messrs.

Grenfell and Hunt, issued at the expense of the Egypt Exploration Fund (Graeco-Roman branch), with the exception of the volume of discoveries at Teb-tunis, which was issued by the University of California, is also well known.

The two places with which Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt's work has been chiefly connected are the Fayym and Behnesa, the site of the ancient Permje or Oxyr-rhynchus. The lake-province of the Fayym, which attained such prominence in the days of the XIIth Dynasty, seems to have had little or no history during the whole period of the New Empire, but in Ptolemaic times it revived and again became one of the richest and most important provinces of Egypt. The town of Arsinoe was founded at Crocodilopolis, where are now the mounds of Kom el-Faris (The Mound of the Horseman), near Medinet el-Payyum, and became the capital of the province. At Illahn, just outside the entrance to the Fayym, was the great Nile harbour and entrepot of the lake-district, called Ptolemas Hormos.

The explorations of Messrs. Hogarth, Grenfell, and Hunt in the years of 1895-6 and 1898-9 resulted in the identification of the sites of the ancient cities of Karanis (Kom Us.h.i.+m), Bacchias (Omm el-'Atl), Euhemeria (Kasr el-Banat), Theadelphia (Harit), and Philoteris (Wadfa). The work for the University of California in 18991900 at Umm el-Baragat showed that this place was Tebtunis. Dime, on the northern coast of the Birket Karn, the modern representative of the ancient Lake Moeris, is now known to be the ancient Sokno-paiou Nesos (the Isle of Soknopaios), a local form of Sebek, the crocodile-G.o.d of the Fayym. At Karanis this G.o.d was wors.h.i.+pped under the name of Petesuchos ("He whom Sebek has given"), in conjunction with Osiris Pnepheros (P-nefer-ho, "the beautiful of face"); at Tebtunis he became Seknebtunis., i.e.

Sebek-neb-Teb-tunis (Sebek, lord of Tebtunis). This is a typical example of the portmanteau p.r.o.nunciations of the latter-day Egyptians.

Many very interesting discoveries were made during the course of the excavations of these places (besides Mr. Hogarth's find of the temple of Petesuchos and Pnepheros at Karanis), consisting of Roman pottery of varied form and Roman agricultural implements, including a perfect plough.* The main interest of all, however, lies, both here and at Behnesa, in the papyri. They consist of Greek and Latin doc.u.ments of all ages from the early Ptolemaic to the Christian. In fact, Messrs.

Grenfell and Hunt have been unearthing and sifting the contents of the waste-paper baskets of the ancient Ptolemaic and Roman Egyptians, which had been thrown out on to dust-heaps near the towns. Nothing perishes in,, the dry climate and soil of Egypt, so the contents of the ancient dust-heaps have been preserved intact until our own day, and have been found by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt, just as the contents of the houses of the ancient Indian rulers of Chinese Turkestan, at Niya and Khotan, with their store of Kha-roshthi doc.u.ments, have been preserved intact in the dry Tibetan desert climate and have been found by Dr. Stein.** There is much a.n.a.logy between the discoveries of Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in Egypt and those of Dr. Stein in Turkestan.

* Ill.u.s.trated on Plate IX of Faym Towns and Their Papyri.

** See Dr. Stein's Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan, London, 1903.