The History of Antiquity Volume I Part 5

[91] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 46.

[92] Birch. "Gall." 1, 24, 44.

[93] Herod. 2, 66.

[94] Diod. 1, 83, 84.

[95] Plut. "De Isid." c. 43.

[96] Herod. 3, 28; aelian ("De Nat. Anim." 1, 10) speaks of twenty-nine marks of Apis; cf Plin. "Hist. Nat." 8, 184.

[97] Diod. 1, 84, 85.

[98] Diod. 1, 85; Plut. "De Iside." c. 29; Strabo, p. 807.

[99] "Mem. pres. a l'Acad. des Inscript." ser. 1, 2, p. 15.

[100] Mariette, "Bulletin de l'Athen-Francais," Oct. 1856, p. 75; Juill.

Nov. 1855, pp. 67, 96, 98.

[101] "Ardea purpurea;" Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 50.

[102] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 43, 46, 51.

[103] Brugsch in "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 651 ff.

[104] Herod. 2, 73.

[105] Plin. "Hist. Nat." 10, 2; cf. 13, 9; Pompon. Mela. 3, 8.

[106] "Annal." 6, 28.

[107] "De Nat. Anim." 6, 58.

[108] "Hist. Nat." 10, 5.

[109] Ibid. 1, 34, 35.

[110] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 651 ff.; Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 51; De Rouge, "Bulletin de l'Athen. Francais," 1856, p. 25 _seqq._

[111] Brugsch, "Zeitschr. d. d. m. G." 10, 683.

[112] Herod. 2, 69.

[113] Strabo, p. 811.

[114] Herod. 2, 65-67.

[115] Wilkinson, "Egypt," 5. 117, 123, 230 ff.

[116] Diod. 1, 51, cf. 92.

[117] Diod. 1, 92; Wilkinson, "Egypt," sec. ser. 2, 411.

[118] Diod. 1, 25.

[119] Plut. "De Iside," c. 33, 78.

[120] Herod. 2, 42; Diod. 1, 11, 13, 25.

[121] Ibid. 2, 123.

[122] "De Iside," c. 54, 61, 79, 80.

[123] Pierret, "Traduct. du Chap. I. du Livre des Morts;" "Zeitsch. fur aeg. Sprache," 1869, s. 135; 1870, s. 18 ff.

[124] De Rouge, "Revue archeolog." 1860, p. 79 ff.

[125] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 4.

[126] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 6, 9.

[127] Lepsius, _loc. cit._ s. 30 ff.

[128] Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 25.

[129] Herod. 2, 123.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KINGDOM OF MEMPHIS.

The lists of the Egyptians place Menes (Mena) at the head of their series of kings. They describe him as a native of This, a place in the neighbourhood of Abydus, below Thebes, a district which Diodorus considers the oldest part of Egypt. Menes pa.s.ses for the founder of the kingdom and the builder of Memphis (Mennefer); he is said to have taught the Egyptians the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds and the offering of sacrifice.[130] Herodotus informs us that he learnt from the Egyptian priests that Menes had thrown a dam across the Nile about 100 stades above Memphis, and thus forced the stream which previously flowed at the foot of the Libyan chain of hills to leave its ancient channel, and flow at an equal distance between the two ranges. When the land thus gained by the dam had become firm, he built upon it the city, now called Memphis, and still situated in the narrow part of Egypt. Towards the north and west sides of the city, Menes had excavated a lake, and filled it with water from the river--which was itself a protection to the city on the east,--and in the city he built the greatest and most remarkable temple of Hephaestus (Ptah).[131] Diodorus observes:--The founder of Memphis, the most splendid city in Egypt, selected the most suitable site by founding the city in the place where the Nile separates into several arms, so that the city, lying on the pa.s.s, commanded the navigation up the Nile. He also obtained for the place a wonderful advantage and security by throwing a huge dam in front of it towards the south, as the Nile at the time of inundation overflows the district.

This dam was a protection against the rising water, and at the same time served as an acropolis and defence from the attack of enemies. On all the other sides of the city he caused a large and deep lake to be excavated, which received the overflow of the water and afforded the strongest protection for the city. The circuit of the city he placed at 150 stades, and owing to the excellence of the situation, Memphis was generally chosen by the kings as their place of residence.[132] The situation, just a little above the place where the river-valley, hitherto enclosed between the two ranges of hills, opens out into the Delta, was certainly the best adapted to form the centre of an empire extending over the narrow valley of the upper river and the broader district of the Delta, with its wealth of corn-land and meadows, and to check the entrance of enemies who came from the north-west or the north-east into the upper valley, even when it was no longer possible to maintain the Delta against them. About fifteen miles above Memphis, at Kafr-el-Yat, the Nile makes a considerable bend to the east, and modern investigations claim to have discovered traces showing that this curve is due to the hand of man.

Menes, whose accession, according to the arrangement of Lepsius, would fall in the year 3892 B.C., was followed on the throne by King Athotis (Ateta), who was said to have built the citadel at Memphis. Next came Kenkenes, whose successor was Uenephes, to whom is ascribed the erection of the pyramids. We have seen what care and labour the Egyptians devoted to their tombs, their "everlasting houses." The west, where the sun sets, and the desert spreads out in boundless expanse beyond the Libyan range, belonged in their minds to the G.o.ds of night, of the under-world, and of death. About ten miles to the west of Memphis there rises a desolate and barren plateau of rock, which for many miles runs parallel to the river, about 100 feet above the blooming and animated valley through which the Nile takes its course. In that rocky soil, which separates the fruitful land from the desert, the bodies of the dead were placed in chambers, either hewn in the solid stone, or, where the soil was less firm, built of masonry, and thus secured even from the overflow of the river. Even the kings sought their resting-places on this plateau of rock. They, above all, gave attention to the solidity and durability of their tombs; and in death, as in life, they wished to be kings. The place where a king rested must be marked as royal, and visible from a distance; the grave of a king must tower over the rest; his chamber must be of all most difficult to open. Thus at first blocks of stone were rolled upon the closed burial-place of a king, or a mound of earth was raised over it, if sand and soil were to be obtained in the neighbourhood. The strong winds which blew from the desert made it, however, necessary to secure these mounds, and cover them with stone.

Hence by degrees the sepulchral heaps acquired a definite shape: they were rectangular structures, lessening toward the apex; then, by extending the base and sharpening the gradient, they were brought into the form of pyramids, and thus obtained the greatest possible firmness and solidity. For a similar reason the core, or central part, was no longer made of earth, but of brick; where blocks of stone could be obtained they were fitted into the core with more and more regularity, until at last these structures were completed within and without of rectangular hewn blocks of stone in regular layers, and artificial mountains of stone towered over the sepulchral chambers of the kings.

"At a distance of forty stades from Memphis," Strabo tells us, "is a range of hills, on which stand the pyramids, or sepulchres of the kings.

Among these, three are especially deserving of notice. Rectangular in shape, they are about one stadium high; and the height is slightly less than the length of either side. The sides are not equal, one is a little longer than the other, and near the middle of the longer side is a stone, which can be taken out. Behind this a winding, hollow pa.s.sage leads to the tomb. Two of these pyramids stand close to each other on the same level; at a distance, on a higher level, rises the third, which, though much smaller, has been erected at much greater cost."

"Like mountains," says Tacitus, "the pyramids have been raised amid impa.s.sable quicksands by the emulation and power of the kings."[133]

About seventy of these structures, which rise in a long line on the plateau of Memphis, from Abu Roash to Dahshur,[134] remain as witnesses of the rulers of the old kingdom of Memphis and their dependants, of the artistic skill and laborious industry of their nation. Of some only the bases and a few fragments are in existence; of the largest, the points, and at least a part of the casing, are either decayed, fallen down, or broken off; for at a later time the Arabs used these monuments as quarries. Three pyramids which stand in the neighbourhood of the modern Abusir are formed of rough blocks of stone, both in the cores and in the pa.s.sages to the sepulchral chambers; and these blocks are fastened together by mud from the Nile poured in between them; their casings, now decayed, were of lime-stone blocks, and in height they extended from 150 to 200 feet. Others, originally at least, of an equal height, of which the core was regularly built of brick, are found farther to the south near Dahshur. The architecture of these remains shows that the kings of Memphis commenced building their tombs soon after their accession. They began, it would seem, with a core of moderate size, and in this they probably constructed a sort of temporary chamber. If time sufficed, the first plan was overlaid with new strata, and thus it gradually increased in size. Should the builder die before the whole was completed, the casing of the structure thus raised in the form of steps was left to the successor.[135] Between seven smaller pyramids, built regularly of stone blocks, which are about 150 feet in height, and of similar plan and structure, rise the three largest at Gizeh; the highest was originally 480 feet in height, though now it measures only 450 feet; the next greatest, standing south-west of the highest, is now 447 feet, and was originally 457 feet in height; the third measures but 218 feet. The second largest, originally twenty-three feet lower than the largest, is on a slightly higher level, the masonry is inferior to the largest, and the chamber lies immediately under the area of the structure. The largest measures 716 feet, or 500 Egyptian cubits,[136] on each side of the area; the height along the slope is 574 feet, and the structure contains about ninety million cubic feet of masonry. Fifty feet above the original area, now covered with the sand of the desert, in the middle of the north side, there commences a gradually descending pa.s.sage, about three feet broad and four feet high, leading to a chamber hewn deep in the foundation rock. This chamber lies more than one hundred feet below the level of the pyramid, exactly 600 feet under the apex, and in a perpendicular line with it; it is thirty-six feet above the level of the Nile. From this pa.s.sage to the chamber there branches off, just behind the entrance, a horizontal shaft, and from this rises an ascending pa.s.sage leading to two chambers, one over the other, which, like the sepulchral chamber below, lie in the axis of the pyramid. The third and smaller pyramid--its sides measure 333 feet, and the height of the slope is 262 feet--being built upon looser soil, required a greater substructure, on which it rose in five or six perpendicular and gradually diminis.h.i.+ng stories, the s.p.a.ces between being filled up with bevelled masonry. Up to a considerable height the casing consists of polished slabs of granite. Under this structure in the native rock lies a larger chamber, and behind this the sepulchral chamber.