Volume 1

A dictionary of Greek and Roman geography / by various writers ; edited by William Smith.

Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of Greek and Roman geography / by various writers ; edited by William Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    64/1140 (page 42)
    handicraft employment was forbidden, agricultural labom's were enjoined. The monuments exhibit offi- cers with recruiting parties, soldiers engaged in gym- nastic exercises, and in the battle pieces, which are extremely spirited, all the arts of offensive and de- fensive war practised by the Egyptians are repre- sented. The war-caste was necessarily a very im- portant element in a state which was frequently engaged in distant conquests, and had a wide extent of territory to defend. Yet until the reigns of Sethos, when the priests invaded its privileges, and of Psaminetichus, when the king encroached upon them, we find no trace of mutiny or civil war in Egypt, — a proof that the Calasirians and Hermo- tybians were not only well disciplined, but also, in the main, contented with their lot. Vll. Cwil History. The History of Egypt is properly arranged imder five eras. 1. Egypt under its native rulers—the Pharaonic Era. Its commencement is unkno’\\m: it closes with the conquest of the land by Cambyses in b. c. 525. 2. The Persian Era, from b. c. 525, to the Macedonian invasion, b. o. 332. 3. The IMacedoman or Hellenic Era. This period is computed either from the foundation of Alexan- dria, in B. c. 332, or from b. c. 323, when Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, converted the satrapy of Egypt into an hereditary Idngdom. This period extends to the death of Cleopatra, in b. c. 30. 4. The Homan Era, from the surrender of Alex- andria to Augustus, in b. c. 30, to the capture of that city by the Khalif Omar in a. d. 640. 5. The IMahommedan Era, from A. D. 640 to the present time. The last of these periods belongs to modem his- tory, and docs not come within the scope of this work. The first of them must be very briefly treated, partly because it involves questions which it would demand a volume to discuss, and partly because Egypt came into the field of classical his- tory through its relations with the Persians, Greeks, and Komans. For complete infonnation the student of the Pharaonic era must consult the larger works of Denon, Young, Champollion, Rosellini, Heeren, Wilkinson, Bunsen and Lepsius; or the very lucid abstract of this period in Kenrick’s Ancient Egypt, wliich, indeed, contains all that the general reader can require. 1. Pharaonic Era. Authorities. — The original records of Egypt were kept with no ordinary care, and were veiy various in kind, sculpture, symbol, writing, all con- tributing to their contents. Herodotus (ii. 72—82), Theophrastus (op. Porphyr. de Abstinent, ii. 5), Cicero (de Repuh. iii. 8) concur in describing the Egyptians as the most learned and accurate of mankind in whatsoever concerned their native annals. The priests, Diodorus (i. 44) assures us, had transmitted in unbroken succession wiitten descriptions of all their kings — their physical powers and disposition, and their personal exploits. The antiquity of writing in Egypt is no longer a subject of dispute. Lepsius (Booh of the Dead, Leipzig, 1842, Pref. p. 17) found on monuments as early as the 12th dynasty, the hieroglyphic sign of the papyrus; and on the 4th that of the stylus and hikstand. The Egyptians themselves also observed the distinction between the diy pontifical chronicle and mythical and heroical narratives couched in poetiy and song. To this mass of written documents are to be added the sculptured monuments themselves, the tombs, obelisks, and temple ■walls, whose paintings and inscriptions have been partially decyphered by modern scholars, and are found generally to correspond wdth the W'ritten lists of kings compiled, in the first instance, by the native historian Manetho. Egyptian history, how- ever, in the modern acceptation of the word, began after the establishment of the Greek sovereignty of Egypt. The natives, with the natural pride of a once ruling but now subject race, were eager to impart to their Hellenic masters more correct no- tions of their history and religion than could be obtained either from the relations of Greek tra- vellers, such as Thales and Solon, or from the narratives of Hecataeus, Democritus, and Herodotus. Of Manetho, of Sextus Julius Africanus, from whose chronicon, in five books, Eusebius derived a con- siderable portion of his omi chronicon, of Georgius the Syncellus, of Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian mathematician, who treated largely of Egyptian chronology, accounts have been given in the Dic- tionary of Greek and Roman Biography, and to its columns w'e must refer for the bibliography of Egyptian history. Lastly, 'v\^e must point out tlie extreme value of tlie Hebrew scriptm'es and of Josephus among the records of the Nile-valley. The remote antiquity of Egyptian annals is not essentially an objection to their credibility. The Syncellus assigns 3555 years as the duration of Llanetho’s thirty dynasties. These being Egyptian years, are equivalent to 3553 Julian years, and, added to 339 b. c., when the thhtieth dynasty ex- pired, give 3892 b. c. as the commencement of the reign of Menes, the founder of the monarchy. But although Bunsen and other distinguished Egypt- ologers are disposed to assign an historical person- ality to Menes, his very name, as the name of an individual man, seems suspicious. It too nearly resembles the ]\Ienu of the Indians, the Minyas and Minos of the Greeks, the Menerfa of the Etruscans, and the IMannus of the Germans — in all which languages the name is connected with a root — Man — signifying “to think and speak’’ (see Quarterly Review, vol. 78, p. 149) —to be accepted implicitly as a personal designation. The Pharaonic era of Egyptian history may be divided into three portions—the Old, the Middle, and the New monarchy. The first extends from the foundation of the kingdom in B. c. 3892 to the invasion of the Hyksos. The second from the con- quest of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos and the establishment of an independent kingdom in the Thebaid, to the expulsion of the Hyksos. I'he third from the re-establishment of the native monarchy by Amosis to the final conquest by Cam- byses in B. c. 525. (Kenrick, Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 110.) (1.) The Old Monarchy. The chronology of this and the succeeding division of the Egyptian monarchy is beset v?ith, at present, insurmountable difficulties; since, in the first place, there are no synchronisms in the annals of other countries to guide the inquirer, and in the next, we know not whether the dynasties in Manetho should be taken as a series, or whether he enumerates contempo- raneous families of kings, some of whom reigned, ! at the same time, at Memphis, and others at Sais,