The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6). Duncker Max

The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)

idea of their cultivation (3, 3 ff. Strabo, pp. 827, 828). At the time of the second Ptolemy, this priesthood was destroyed by the King, Ergamenes, whose name (Arkamen) Lepsius has discovered on ruins at Mt. Barkal, as well as Begerauieh, and an independent monarchy was established. Hence we must entirely give up the idea of deriving the supposed supremacy of the priesthood in Egypt, a supremacy which never existed here, from the priesthood formed at Begerauieh after the time of Thirhaka and Psammetichus (in the days of Psammetichus, Herodotus tells us that a king of the Ethiopians received strangers without an oracle, and gave them land, 2, 30); that is, in the sixth century B.C., which continued to exist till 250 B.C. Still less reason is there to suppose that the so-called Indian supremacy of the priesthood came through Meroe into Egypt. Rather we may feel ourselves justified in assuming that the elements of civilisation which took root on the middle Nile passed from Egypt to that district. In the inscriptions of Begerauieh the name Meroe occurs as Meru, and Merua, i. e. "White rock"; Lepsius, l. c. 205-232. As the banks of the Nile, here and also at Mt. Barkal, consist of whitish-yellow chalk rocks, the name of the land and its southern metropolis, of which the existence since the sixth century B.C. is demonstrated, may have been named from this peculiarity of the land.

3

"Il." 9, 381; "Od." 4, 230 ff. 477, 581. 14, 257, 264 ff. 17, 426.

4

Herod. 2, 2; Diod. 1, 10, 50; Plat. Tim. p. 23.

5

Herod. 2, 100, 142, 143.

6

Plato, "Tim." p. 23; "De Leg." p. 657.

7

Diodorus, 1, 44, 45, Olympiad 180, i. e. between 60 and 56 B.C.

8

Or, according to another version, more than 10,000 years from Osiris to Alexander. More than 10,000 years had passed, according to the Egyptians, since the creation of the first man. – Diod. 1, 23, 24.

9

Diod. 1, 13, 14.

10

Ibid. 1, 69.

11

Diod. 1, 63.

12

Syncell. p. 91, ed. Goar.

13

Syncell. p. 12.

14

Bœckh, "Manetho," p. 395.

15

"C. Apion." c. 14, 26.

16

Bœckh, "Manetho," p. 769 ff.

17

Reinisch reckons 389 kings from Menes to Cambyses, "Zeitschrift d. d. M. Ges." 15,251; Brugsch's table gives 334 royal shields from Menes to Cambyses.

18

According to Bœckh's "Kanon des Africanus."

19

This, like the following dates, is from Lepsius, see below.

20

Not including the thirty-eight shepherd kings; if these are added the number reaches 322.

21

Dümichen and Lepsius, "Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache," 1864, p. 81 ff. Deveria and Mariette, "Revue Archéolog." 1865, p. 50 ff; 1866 (13), p. 73 ff.

22

Mariette in "Revue Archéolog.," 1864 (10), p. 170.

23

Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 20, 44, 72; Devéria, loc. cit. p. 58 ff.

24

P. 98.

25

Gutschmid in the "Philologus," 10, 672.

26

The number of 113 generations, which Syncellus gives as contemporaneous, does not in the least agree with the accounts of Manetho; moreover, Gutschmid has shown from what items the number 3,555 in Syncellus has arisen in "Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s. 9.

27

On this rests the difference of the systems of Lepsius and Bunsen. Taking the total given by Syncellus from Manetho of 3,555 years before Nektanebös, Lepsius arrives at the years 3,892 B.C. Bunsen also considers the number 3,555 to be from Manetho, but without historical value. He insists on this number because he allows Manetho to reckon 1,286 years for the new monarchy, 922 years for the Hyksos, and 1,347 years for the old monarchy; but for these 1,347 years he substitutes the 1,076 years of Eratosthenes, in order to fix the historical accession of Menes. According to this, Menes began to reign in the year 3284 B.C. From this, Reinisch ("Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenl. Gesell." 15, 251 ff.) has attempted to reconcile the systems of Bunsen and Lepsius. He retains the total of 3,555 years, and the year 3,892 B.C. for Menes; to the 1,076 years given by Eratosthenes for the old monarchy he adds four years for Skemiophris, thus making 1,080 years, fixes the middle monarchy – the Hyksos – at 1,088 years, or down to the era ἀπὸ Μενοφρέως at 1,490, and the new monarchy down to Nektanebos at 985 years.

28

Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 411; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 148 ff. Th. Martin "Mém de l'Acad. d'Inscr," 1869 (8), 265 ff.

29

Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 404. In the decree of Kanopus, belonging to the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, i. e. to the year 238 B.C., we find as follows (Lepsius, "Das Bilingue Decret von Kanopus"): "In order that the seasons of the year may continue to observe their time according to the present arrangement of the world, and that feasts which ought to be celebrated in winter may not be celebrated in summer, because the star advances one day in every four years, while others which are celebrated in summer will in later times be celebrated in winter, as has already happened, and will happen again, if the year is to be composed of 360 days, and the five days usually added, from henceforth a day shall be kept as the festival of the Divi Euergetes, every fourth year after the intercalary days, before the new year." That the discovery of the want of a quarter of a day was made before the time of Ptolemæus Euergetes I., and that for a long time computations were made by the fixed year with an intercalary cycle every fourth year, as well as by the movable year, is beyond doubt. The decree did not become of universal application till 26 B.C.

30

Herod. 2, 142.

31

Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 36; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 193.

32

According to Bœckh's "Kanon des Africanus."

33

Lepsius, "Königsbuch," s. 118. Biot, "L'Année vague," p. 57; cf. however H. Martin, "Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscript." 1869, pp. 1, 8, 265.

34

Herod. 3, 37.

35

De Rougé, "Revue archéolog." 1860, 1, 357.

36

"De Isid." c. 51, 52; "De Pyth. Oraculis," p. 400.

37

Macrob. "Sat." 6, 18.

38

"De Isid." c. 36.

39

De Rougé, "Zeitsch. d. d. m. Gesellschaft," after a sepulchral pillar in the Berlin Museum, 4, 375.

40

Champollion, Monuments, pl. 123 seq. Dümichen, "Tempelinschriften." 1, 24. Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuchs," s. 13.

41

Lepsius, "Die Götter der vier Elemente;" Dümichen, in "Zeitsch. für ægyptische Sprache," 1869 s. 7.

42

Herod. 2, 61.

43

Plut. "De Isid." c. 38.

44

The identification of Neith with Athene (Herod. 2, 62; Plat. "Tim." p. 21) rests on the similarity of the name, on the torch-races in honour of Pallas at Athens, and the feast of lamps at Sais. Gutschmid, "Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s. 39, 45 ff., has shown that Neith and Athene cannot be brought into agreement in points of language. The inscription on the throne of Neith at Sais, given by Plutarch ("De Isid." c. 9), "I am all that has been, is, will be, and no mortal has lifted my robe," does not in the first part of it contradict certain applications of the oldest text of the "Book of the Dead" (see below). On the other hand, the second part is doubtful. In any case, the fact that the peplos has not been raised does not refer to the inconceivable nature of the goddess, but to seclusion from sexual intercourse.

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