The History of Antiquity, Vol. 3 (of 6). Duncker Max
in the hands of other members of the royal house – regulations obviously intended to strengthen the power of the throne – were observed by his successors. We find the sons of his successors as high priests of Thebes and Memphis, as commanders of the troops of Thebes, Hermopolis, and Heracleopolis, as "princes (i. e. leaders) of the Mashawasha."144 We remember the struggles which the earliest successors of Ramses II. had to carry on against the Libyans, especially against the Mashawasha, or Maxyians. From the time of Ramses III. the body-guard of the Pharaohs seems to have consisted mainly of Libyans, especially of Mashawasha; the warrior caste of Egypt appears to have been chiefly kept up and supplemented by Libyans. The father of Ssheshonk was, as observed, the captain of the Mashawasha. Ssheshonk, the son of Osorkon II. (afterwards Ssheshonk II.), as high priest of Memphis buried in the twenty-third year of the reign of his father an Apis, who had died in that year. Takeloth, the son of this Ssheshonk II. (afterwards Takeloth II.), was high priest of Ammon of Thebes. In the fifteenth year of the reign of his father a rebellion broke out in the cantons of the South and North. He fought without ceasing for many years at the side of his father, and gained victories over the rebels.145 According to the Apis-stones, Ssheshonk III. reigned more than 50 years. In the twenty-eighth year of his reign an Apis was born, which lived 26 years, and was buried in the second year of king Pimai under the superintendence of Petise, the son of the high priest of Memphis, Takeloth, and the royal princess Thisbastir. The successor of this Apis, which was discovered in the same year of king Pimai, died in the fourth year of Ssheshonk IV., a third in the eleventh, and a fourth in the thirty-seventh year of the same reign.146
According to Manetho's list, the nine princes of this dynasty of Bubastis reigned altogether 120 years; but the sum of the reigns, according to the items in the list, only reaches 116 years. The years of the reigns given on special occasions, on the monuments mentioned, give at least 150 years for six alone of these nine princes. If we maintain the assertion of Manetho, the dynasty of the Bubastites reigned from the year 960 B.C. to the year 840 B.C.; if we calculate the length of the rule of this dynasty according to the generations of the princes, then, even if the length of each generation is taken only at 20 years, they must at least have reigned 180 years, i. e. from 960 to 780 B.C.147 That the rule of the Bubastites ended about the year 780 B.C., at any rate in the minds of the chronographers who have preserved Manetho's list in the excerpt, follows from the fact that our excerpts put the celebration of the first Olympian festival in the reign of Petubastis, the prince who immediately succeeds the Bubastites. We may therefore assume that the Bubastites reigned over Egypt from the year 960 to about the year 780 B.C.
The successors of Petubastis of Tanis, whose date thus falls about the year 775 B.C., are, according to Manetho, Osorkon (the third of this name), Psammus, and Zet. Diodorus tells us of a Tnephachtus, king of Egypt, who carried on war with the Arabs. One day, when in the desert, there was a lack of the means of subsistence, and Tnephachtus after a day of fasting enjoyed so highly a scanty meal, that he abominated luxury, and cursed the king who first introduced it. So earnest was he with this curse that he had it engraved in sacred characters in the temple of Zeus at Thebes.148 Plutarch also tells us: On a campaign against the Arabs the baggage was left behind, and Technactis (Tnephachtus) gladly satisfied himself with the food which was at hand, and when he subsequently fell into a deep sleep on the straw, he was so pleased with this simple mode of life that he cursed Menes who first seduced the Egyptians from a simple and parsimonious mode of life, and caused this curse to be engraved on a memorial stone, with the sanction of the priests.149 The son of this Tnephachtus is called Bocchoris by Diodorus and Plutarch; Manetho's list puts a king Bocchoris after Zet, and describes him as belonging to the district of Sais. The date of Bocchoris is fixed by the fact that the seventh celebration of the Olympian games, i. e. the year 752, occurred during his reign.150 If Petubastis reigned, as we saw, about the year 775 B.C., and Bocchoris ascended the throne about 753 B.C., the date of his father Tnephachtus, who is not mentioned in Manetho's list (he must be meant by the Zet of the list), will fall in the period between 770 and 753 B.C. We can only assume that Tnephachtus, in the time of Petubastis or Osorkon III. who succeeded Petubastis, rebelled against the reigning Pharaoh, and obtained the power, and that the list of Manetho has passed him over as the opponent of the legitimate princes. As a fact we shall find that other usurpers beside Tnephachtus rose up beside and against Petubastis and Osorkon; that Osorkon was restricted to Bubastis, and as the inscriptions of Thebes mention Psammus (Psimut) we may further suppose that he retired from Tanis, where Manetho's list places him, to Upper Egypt.
The extinction of the military vigour of Egypt under the later Ramessids, the formation of the body-guard and army of Libyan mercenaries, bore its natural fruit. The disruption of the state-power, which thus begun as early as the later Bubastites, led under Petubastis and Osorkon III. to the complete ruin of the kingdom. The commanders of the army in the districts, and no doubt other men of great position and ambition, threw off obedience, made themselves independent, and supported by their soldiers gained an independent power. Nine hundred years after the expulsion of the shepherds the ancient kingdom broke up into a series of separate dominions. A memorial stone discovered in the remains of Napata, near Mount Barkal, displays to us quite a different picture of the condition of Egypt about the middle of the eighth century from that which we should imagine when we read in Manetho an apparently unbroken succession of Pharaohs. On that stone Osorkon is indeed mentioned, but only as king of the city of Bubastis. Beside him we find Petisi of Athribis (west of Bubastis), Anchor of Sesennu (Hermopolis minor), Nimrod (Nemrut) of Sesennu (Hermopolis major, now Ashmunein), Ssheshonk of Busiris, Pefabast of Chnensu (Heraclea major), Pithenef of Pisabtu; fourteen or fifteen princes, and among them Tafnecht (Tnephachtus) of Sais. It is clear from this that Petubastis and Osorkon were not able to maintain the royal authority; that Osorkon was limited to Bubastis; the chiefs of the rest of the land stood beside him with equal right and equal power. The same memorial teaches us that Tnephachtus of Sais gained Memphis; that he undertook to subjugate the remaining princes to his supremacy. He succeeded in forcing king Osorkon and the chiefs of Upper Egypt into obedience; they recognised in him their superior; and he attempted to make even the princes of Upper Egypt, i. e. the Begs of the Mamelukes in that region, his vassals.
The Amenemha and Sesurtesen had once carried the southern border of Egypt to Semne and Kumne. After them the Tuthmosis and Amenophis forced their way as far as Mount Barkal; Lower as well as Upper Nubia became a province of Egypt. The Ramessids had maintained this province, and governed it by viceroys. Amenophis III. and Ramses II. filled Nubia as far as Mount Barkal with their temples; thus the worship observed in Egypt became dominant in Nubia also, especially the worship of the god Ammon, whom Upper Egypt and the Pharaohs of Thebes regarded as the highest deity. With the religious worship, and the government of Egyptian magistrates, the language, alphabet, and manners of Egypt became current in Nubia, although the people retained their ancient tongue. After a continuance of 500 years, when the Egyptian power began to sink under the later Ramessids, and the high priests of Ammon at Thebes rose against them, – before the year 1100 B.C. the supremacy of Egypt over the South became extinguished. The high priest Herhor is the last who bears the title of "King's son of Cush;" under the Tanites, Smendes and his successors, the monuments no longer mention any viceroy of Cush.151 We may, therefore, assume that Nubia was an independent state from the year 1100 B.C. onwards. Yet the long continuance of the Egyptian rule had caused the style and civilisation of Egypt to strike firm roots here. The city, which was adorned by Amenophis III. and Ramses II. with splendid buildings; the Neb (Napata) of the hieroglyphics, the Merua or Berua of the native language, was the seat of the princes of the new state, in which, before as after, the style, worship, and writing of Egypt was predominant; the language also, which the new monarchy used in its documents, was the language of Egypt. The name of the first independent ruler of Napata, the king of Ethiopia, as the Greeks call him, whom we know, is mentioned in the memorial stone already spoken of. The name and attribute are Egyptian: Pianchi Miamun.152 In the twenty-first year of his reign,
Chabas, "Mélanges," Ser. 2, pp. 73-107.
Lepsius, "Abh. Berl. Akad. Phil. Hist. Klasse," 1856, s. 264. Mariette, "Bull. Archéolog. Athen. Franc." 1855, pp. 93, 98-100.
Cp. Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s. 104,
Diod. 1, 45.
Plut. "de Isid." c. 8; cf. Athenæus, p. 418.
Joseph. "c. Apionem," 2, 2, 6.
Mariette, "Revue Archéolog." 1865, 12, 178.
Pianchi is also called the son of the high priest Herhor (p. 51). But this coincidence does not compel us to explain the kings of Napata as descendants of that Herhor who lived 400 years before Pianchi of Napata.