History Of Ancient Civilization. Charles Seignobos
The Land of Egypt.—Egypt is only the valley of the Nile, a narrow strip of fertile soil stretching along both banks of the stream and shut in by mountains on either side, somewhat over 700[6] miles in length and 15 in width. Where the hills fall away, the Delta begins, a vast plain cut by the arms of the Nile and by canals. As Herodotus says, Egypt is wholly the gift of the Nile.
The Nile.—Every year at the summer solstice the Nile, swollen by the melted snows of Abyssinia, overflows the parched soil of Egypt. It rises to a height of twenty-six or twenty-seven feet, sometimes even to thirty-three feet.[7] The whole country becomes a lake from which the villages, built on eminences, emerge like little islands. The water recedes in September; by December it has returned to its proper channel. Everywhere has been left a fertile, alluvial bed which serves the purpose of fertilization. On the softened earth the peasant sows his crop with almost no labor. The Nile, then, brings both water and soil to Egypt; if the river should fail, Egypt would revert, like the land on either side of it, to a desert of sterile sand where the rain never falls. The Egyptians are conscious of their debt to their stream. A song in its honor runs as follows: "Greeting to thee, O Nile, who hast revealed thyself throughout the land, who comest in peace to give life to Egypt. Does it rise? The land is filled with joy, every heart exults, every being receives its food, every mouth is full. It brings bounties that are full of delight, it creates all good things, it makes the grass to spring up for the beasts."
Fertility of the Country.—Egypt is truly an oasis in the midst of the desert of Africa. It produces in abundance wheat, beans, lentils, and all leguminous foods; palms rear themselves in forests. On the pastures irrigated by the Nile graze herds of cattle and goats, and flocks of geese. With a territory hardly equal to that of Belgium, Egypt still supports 5,500,000 inhabitants. No country in Europe is so thickly populated, and Egypt in antiquity was more densely thronged than it is today.
The Accounts of Herodotus.—Egypt was better known to the Greeks than the rest of the Orient. Herodotus had visited it in the fifth century B.C. He describes in his History the inundations of the Nile, the manners, costume, and religion of the people; he recounts events of their history and tales which his guides had told him. Diodorus and Strabo also speak of Egypt. But all had seen the country in its decadence and had no knowledge of the ancient Egyptians.
Champollion.—The French expedition to Egypt (1798–1801) opened the country to scholars. They made a close examination of the Pyramids and ruins of Thebes, and collected drawings and inscriptions. But no one could decipher the hieroglyphs, the Egyptian writing. It was an erroneous impression that every sign in this writing must each represent a word. In 1821 a French scholar, Champollion, experimented with another system. An official had reported that there was an inscription at Rosetta in three forms of writing—parallel with the hieroglyphs was a translation in Greek. The name of King Ptolemy, was surrounded with a cartouche.[8] Champollion succeeded in finding in this name the letters P, T, O, L, M, I, S. Comparing these with other names of kings similarly enclosed, he found the whole alphabet. He then read the hieroglyphs and found that they were written in a language like the Coptic, the language spoken in Egypt at the time of the Romans, and which was already known to scholars.
Egyptologists.—Since Champollion, many scholars have travelled over Egypt and have ransacked it thoroughly. We call these students Egyptologists, and they are to be found in every country of Europe. A French Egyptologist, Mariette (1821–1881), made some excavations for the Viceroy of Egypt and created the museum of Boulak. France has established in Cairo a school of Egyptology, directed by Maspero.
Discoveries.—Not every country yields such rich discoveries as does Egypt. The Egyptians constructed their tombs like houses, and laid in them objects of every kind for the use of the dead—furniture, garments, arms, and edibles. The whole country was filled with tombs similarly furnished. Under this extraordinarily dry climate everything has been preserved; objects come to light intact after a burial of 4,000 or 5,000 years. No people of antiquity have left so many traces of themselves as the Egyptians; none is better known to us.
THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE
Antiquity of the Egyptian People.—An Egyptian priest said to Herodotus, "You Greeks are only children." The Egyptians considered themselves the oldest people of the world. Down to the Persian conquest (520[9] B.C.) there were twenty-six dynasties of kings. The first ran back 4,000 years,[10] and during these forty centuries Egypt had been an empire. The capital down to the tenth dynasty (the period of the Old Empire) was at Memphis in Lower Egypt, later, in the New Empire, at Thebes in Upper Egypt.
Memphis and the Pyramids.—Memphis, built by the first king of Egypt, was protected by an enormous dike. The village has existed for more than five thousand years; but since the thirteenth century the inhabitants have taken the stones of its ruins to build the houses of Cairo; what these people left the Nile recaptured. The Pyramids, not far from Memphis, are contemporaneous with the old empire; they are the tombs of three kings of the fourth dynasty. The greatest of the pyramids, 480 feet high, required the labor of 100,000 men for thirty years.[11] To raise the stones for it they built gradually ascending platforms which were removed when the structure was completed.
Egyptian Civilization.—The statues, paintings, and instruments which are taken from the tombs of this epoch give evidence of an already civilized people. When all the other eminent nations of antiquity—the Hindoos, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Romans—were still in a savage state, 3,500 years before our era, the Egyptians had known for a long time how to cultivate the soil, to weave cloths, to work metals, to paint, sculpture, and to write; they had an organized religion, a king, and an administration.
Thebes.—At the eleventh dynasty Thebes succeeds Memphis as capital. The ruins of Thebes are still standing. They are marvellous, extending as they do on both banks of the Nile, with a circuit of about seven miles. On the left bank there is a series of palaces and temples which lead to vast cemeteries. On the right bank two villages, Luxor and Karnak, distant a half-hour one from the other, are built in the midst of the ruins. They are united by a double row of sphinxes, which must have once included more than 1,000 of these monuments. Among these temples in ruins the greatest was the temple of Ammon at Karnak. It was surrounded by a wall of over one and one-third miles in length; the famous Hall of Columns, the greatest in the world, had a length of 334 feet, a width of 174 feet,[12] and was supported by 134 columns; twelve of these are over 65 feet high. Thebes was for 1,500 years the capital and sacred city, the residence of kings and the dwelling-place of the priests.
The Pharaoh.—The king of Egypt, called Pharaoh, was esteemed as the son of the Sun-god and his incarnation on earth; divinity was ascribed to him also. We may see in a picture King Rameses II standing in adoration before the divine Rameses who is sitting between two gods. The king as man adores himself as god. Being god, the Pharaoh has absolute power over men; as master, he gives his orders to his great nobles at court, to his warriors, to all his subjects. But the priests, though adoring him, surround and watch him; their head, the high priest of the god Ammon, at last becomes more powerful than the king; he often governs under the name of the king and in his stead.
The Subjects of Pharaoh.—The king, the priests, the warriors, the nobles, are proprietors of all Egypt; all the other people are simply their peasants who cultivate the land for them. Scribes in the service of the king watch them and collect the farm-dues, often with blows of the staff. One of these functionaries writes as follows to a friend, "Have you ever pictured