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ERRATA.

EGYPT.

EGYPT.

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.

History knows nothing of her infancy. The beginning of the development of the human race lies beyond the sphere of memory, and so also do the first steps in that development. The early stages of culture--whether in nations or individuals--are unconscious, and unobservant of self; they are therefore without the conditions which make remembrance possible. The original forms of social life in the family and in the tribe, the movement of wandering hunters and shepherds, the earliest steps in agriculture, could leave behind them neither monuments nor records. It is true no gifted or favoured nation, which has raised itself above these beginnings to civic life and independent culture, has neglected to cast a backward glance upon the history of its past. Everywhere the attempt has been made to present the past from the later point of culture. Whether the memory reaches but a little way, or goes back far into the past, it is always enriched by ideas taken from religious conceptions, or national pride, from reflection or theory. Such reconstructions are significant of the nature and character of the people for whom they replace the history of their youth, but they have no claim to represent the actual course of their development. The case is different when the growing culture of a people is observed by nations already at a higher grade of civilisation. The Romans were in a position to leave behind a picture of the youthful German tribes; the Byzantines could inform us of the movements of the Slaves; modern Europe could observe the tribes of America, the nomadic shepherds of Asia, and the islanders of the South Sea from a higher and riper point of development.

The oldest kingdoms of which tradition and monuments preserve any information passed unobserved through the earliest stages of their culture. Tradition and the earliest monuments present them already in the possession of a many-sided and highly-developed civilisation. In what way these nations, the oldest representatives of the culture of mankind, arrived at their possession, we can only deduce from such evidence as is before us anterior to tradition and independent of it--from the nature of the regions where these civilisations sprung up, from the physical character and constitution of the nations which developed them, from their languages and their religious ideas.

The history of antiquity is the description of the forms of culture first attained by the human race. If it is impossible to discover the origin of these forms historically, and the attempt is made to indicate their preliminary stages, so far as the recorded elements allow connected conclusions, it becomes the chief object of such a history to recover from the fragments of monuments and tradition the culture of the ancient East, and of the Hellenes so closely connected with the East: to reconstruct from isolated relics and myths the image of that rich and ample life which filled the East in religion and state, in art and industry, in research and commerce, in political struggles and intense religious devotion, long before the time when Solon gave laws to the Athenians, and the army of Cyrus trod the shore of the AEgean Sea.

The oldest civilisation, the oldest state grew up on that quarter of the globe which seems least favourable to the development of mankind. On either side of the equator, Africa stretches out in huge land-locked masses. A vast table-land occupies the whole south of the continent, and in the north sinks down to a plain more impassable even than the broad seas which wash the coasts of Africa on the west, south, and east. This plain--the bed of a dry sea--lies in the burning sun without vegetation. Only where springs water the thirsty soil do fruitful islands rise out of the moving sand, the lonely waste of ravines, the craggy ridges, and bald platforms of rock.

As the sea nowhere indents the coasts of Africa with deep bays, the rivers cannot excavate broad and fruitful valleys, and provide means of access to the interior. The high table-land is surrounded by a steep rampart of mountains, which descend in terraces to the coast, and here, almost without exception, leave narrow strips of low and marshy land. Through the barrier drawn around them by this rampart the rivers must force their path in a violent course, in waterfalls and rapids, in order to fall into the sea after a short, and proportionately more sluggish course through the narrow strip on the shore.

The table-land, its rampart of mountains, and the long lines of coast, are, with the exception of the southern apex and the Alpine territory of Abyssinia in the east, the dwelling-places of the black race--the negro. However great the number of negro nations and tribes, however much they differ in physical form and in dialect--living as they do beneath a vertical sun, in regions difficult of access--they have never risen beyond the infancy of human civilisation--a rude worship of gods. Wherever they have not been powerfully affected by the introduction of foreign elements, generation has followed generation without remembrance or essential alteration.

The north coast of Africa is of a different character to the rest of the continent. While the western coast looks to the broad Atlantic Ocean, and the waves which break on the southern apex lead to the ice of the pole, the north coast is separated from the neighbouring shores by a basin of moderate extent. It is a mountainous district which fills up the space between the Sahara and the Mediterranean. Towards the west the peaks of Atlas reach, even in this climate, to the region of eternal snow; on the east, towards the mouths of the Nile, the hills gradually sink down, and the plain of Barca rises little more than 1,000 feet above the sea level. Numerous chains of hills, at one time pressing close upon the sea, at another leaving more extensive plains upon the coast, cover the northern edge, which along the deep valleys of the mountain streams exhibits that vigorous and luxuriant vegetation so characteristic of Africa when not checked by want of water, although even these fruitful valleys are again in their turn broken by droughty, and therefore bare, table-lands and depressions.

On this northern coast, toward the Mediterranean, opens the valley which, in extent of fruitful territory, is the largest in the whole continent. It occupies the north-east corner of Africa, which is only separated from Arabia by a narrow strip of sea, and carries its gleaming waters through the wide space from the subsidence of the table-land down to the coast, where for almost its whole remaining breadth the continent is filled up with the desert of Sahara.

From the north-east spur of the table-land, out of vast lakes , fed from the glaciers and snows of huge mountains lying under the equator, and passing through the lower lake Mwutan, flows the western arm of the Nile, the White Nile, Bahr-el-Abiad. After bursting through the terraces of the mountain, it reaches, at the foot, a woody morass, filled with thickets of tamarisks and sycamores, of bamboo and reeds and tall creepers, inhabited by the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the crocodile, the zebra and hyena, by antelopes and snakes. Then the stream passes into broad savannas, covered here and there with tropic forests, and while flowing through a mountainous district of moderate elevation, it unites with the eastern arm, the Blue Nile, Bahr-el-Azrak, which, rising further to the east out of the Abyssinian plateau, brings down a far smaller bulk of water from the Alpine glades of the snowy mountain Samen. Combined into one stream, these waters flow through a broad expanse of rock and desert, covered with conical stones of volcanic origin. The lines of hills running parallel to the terraces of the mountain rampart lie athwart the river; and through this barrier it breaks in numerous cataracts. Only in the depressions between them can the soil, refreshed with water, support vegetation. Finally, at Syene the Nile passes through the last cataract. Henceforward the structure of the mountains is changed. A fissure in the rock about 750 miles long opens on the Mediterranean; and through this the mighty river--at the last cataract it is 3,000 feet in breadth--can flow onward in undisturbed peace to the ocean.

Out of this fissure the Nile has created a narrow strip of fruitful soil--the valley is not more than three or four hours in breadth on an average--which is secured by the heights on the west from the moving sand and the storms of the great desert, and is separated by the mountain on the east from the rocky crags, the desolate flats, and sandy dunes which fill up the space between the valley of the river and the Red Sea. To this valley the mighty river not only gives a refreshing coolness and moisture by the mass of its waters, it fertilises and manures it from year to year by its overflow. At the summer solstice, when the snow on the peaks of the lofty mountains, in which the two arms of the Nile take their rise, is melting, and the tropical rains fall upon its upper course, the waters of the river slowly and gradually rise. Towards the end of July it passes over the banks and overflows the whole valley as far as the enclosing lines of hills, so that towards the end of September it stands more than twenty feet above the lowest water level. Falling as gradually as it rose after more than four months it sinks back to the ordinary level. Wherever the overflowing waters have covered the land, there is left behind a fertilising mud or slime. This is the soil which the two rivers before uniting have washed from the upper hills. Carried down by the stream, it is deposited by the gentle flow of the waters on the surface of the valley. The refreshment of the earth by the inundation, the fertilisation by this slime, and the cooling of the air by the immense body of water, are the essential advantages which Egypt owes to her river, and hence, even as early as Herodotus, Egypt seemed to be the gift of the Nile. The watering of the soil and the cooling of the air just in the very hottest months of the year, are the more invaluable because the blue and gleaming sky of the upper valley is never darkened by rain clouds, while the heat is severe, and the storms from the south-west occasionally carry the sand and the dust over the Libyan hills into the Nile. In the Delta, the region along the lowest course of the Nile, showers occasionally rise from the neighbouring sea; and through eight months of the year the whole valley opening on the Mediterranean is fanned by refreshing winds from the north, which also facilitate navigation against the stream.

This river-valley, the like of which in nature and formation is not to be found in the whole globe, offered in its seclusion a peculiarly favoured spot. It was a small green oasis of luxuriant fertility and grateful coolness in the midst of boundless deserts. The dwellers in a land whose soil was every year newly manured by nature, which brought forth abundantly almost without labour, must very soon have abandoned a pastoral life for agriculture, and in consequence have acquired fixed abodes and settled possessions. But the yearly inundation compelled them also at an early period to protect their flocks from the water, to secure their habitations, to observe the periods of the rising and falling of the stream. The long duration of the overflow made it necessary to provide for the support of man and beast. They had to learn how to carry on their dealings with each other upon the water, when the whole valley was still filled with the river, and to mark out firmly the limits of their plots, so that they might again take possession of them after the inundation. In Nubia the cataracts stopped the navigation of the river, and the lines of rock and strips of desert made intercourse difficult, and confined the life of the tribes within the limits of the native valley to their separate possessions. In Egypt, within the two lines of hills, land and river created no hindrance. A region so concentrated could not but carry the tribes beyond the limits of separate existence; the very land forced them to live a life more in common. There was only a slight natural distinction between the more secluded upper valley and the lower opening in the Delta about the mouths of the Nile; and this could merely have a stimulating effect upon the development of culture, without interfering in any way with its unity. Nevertheless the community of life in the valley of the Nile was not caused solely by the nature of the land. The tribes of the deserts around this long and narrow oasis must have had all the more lively a sense of the charm of the favoured valley owing to the difficulty with which they procured their own subsistence. Against these plundering neighbours, and their attempts to force themselves into the valley of blessing and abundance, the inhabitants of Egypt had to combine their forces. They needed a strong centralized command, a warlike monarchy, to which here, earlier than elsewhere, the patriarchal government of the tribes would therefore give way.

Egypt kept her inhabitants secluded within hard and fast limits; beyond the hills began the desert. With the increasing number of inhabitants the attempt must have been made to set low-lying marshy districts free from the excess of water, and to make fruitful the higher parts of the valley beyond the reach of the inundations by bringing the water upon them. Experience quickly taught that the plot produced the most abundant fruits on which the inundation had continued longest, and consequently had time to deposit the thickest layer of mud. Hence the attempt was made to keep the water longer on the soil by means of dykes. These objects, in regard to which the interests of the several districts differed, and which required the combination of large masses of operatives to carry them out, must have made the need of a supreme decisive and executive power felt earlier in Egypt than in other lands.

The inhabitants of Egypt found themselves surrounded by a solemn landscape, before fixed and unchanging forms and outlines, in the midst of natural phenomena, recurring with invariable regularity and always in the same succession. Such surroundings and impressions must have stamped on the young life of a ripening nation a settled, stern, and unvarying character. When the original unity and society of life, which comprises all members of the family and in the tribe, has been broken through--when at the beginning of their settled life some have turned their attention to agriculture and cattle, others to hunting and war, others again to the fulfilment of religious duties--the sons are wont to carry on the vocation of the fathers. This is the rule often in far more advanced periods; and simpler conditions of life compel the son to carry on the life of the father, in whose occupation he has grown up. In such times there is no mode of teaching and instruction but through the family. In this way the tribes and the nation part into separate circles, which carry on as an inheritance the mode of life derived from their forefathers. These divisions of occupation, of vocation, and mode of life could be carried out earlier and with greater sharpness in Egypt than in other lands.

As life becomes more settled and developed, there are always found families with an especial liking for war. They are enriched by the spoil which is the fruit of their bravery, and protect the agricultural and pastoral part of their tribe from the attacks of plunderers. Every nation gives willing honour to the brave warriors among them, and gladly recognises the superiority of a mode of life which puts life to the risk over other occupations. And when, from the early simple stage, in which every head of a family approaches the gods with his offerings in trust and confidence, religion has developed into a body of usages and customs which must be performed and followed out if any share is to be obtained in the grace of the gods, the exact knowledge of these can only be handed down from father to son. And if the mass of the population gives honour to the warriors, how much more readily will it bow down before those who, by their prayers, libations, and offerings, can bring them the fruits of the field and the blessing of the gods--protection in this world and salvation in the next! Moreover, if the families of warriors and priests, filled with the conviction of their own higher worth, disdain the occupations of the rest of the people; if they are convinced that they are of a better kind than the rest, that only from the noble and good can the noble and good arise--that better blood gives better feelings, and better birth better men--then in this feeling, so natural to a primitive era, they allow their occupation to be shared only by those who belong to their race; they take wives from their own class only, not from others; they give their daughters in marriage to their own people only. Thus the various modes of life and orders which naturally come into existence end in castes.

The more fruitful the land of Egypt, the richer the products of the soil, and the more frequent the necessity of repelling the plundering inroads of the desert tribes, the more rapidly did the distinction between the agricultural and military orders spring up. And the greater the pride with which the inhabitants of this favoured land might and did look down upon the miserable tribes of the desert, the more grateful were the looks turned towards the gods, who had given them so beautiful and productive a land in the midst of the desert, who supplied them with water, fertilised their soil, cooled the heat of the atmosphere and gave them life and plenty, while all around them reigned desolation and death. To these beneficent powers the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile could not refuse an earnest service of thanksgiving for blessings so rich and so ceaselessly renewed; by their piety they had also to provide that the gods would graciously preserve these blessings to them. It is obvious that a tone and feeling like this, arising in the population from the very nature of the land, must have been in a high degree conducive to the rise of a priestly order in Egypt.

Egypt had excellent natural boundaries. If the forces of the land were once united in a single hand, there could be no difficulty in repelling the tribes of the desert. Thenceforward there would be little reason to fear an enemy on this side of the boundary hills. No rival power could arise in the neighbouring deserts, and should any victorious state arise at a distance, the deserts checked the advance of their armies. It was much more probable that the united forces of the river-valley should subjugate the tribes of the surrounding desert. Hence the position of their land allowed the inhabitants of the valley to develop undisturbed. The culture once obtained could be quietly transmitted to others, and constantly extended. This circumstance, in connection with the domestic peace of the country under a monarchy, allowed the priesthood to extend their lore in unbroken tradition from generation to generation, while quietly amassing stores of knowledge; and with the increase of the population all the hands not required for agriculture--and in Egypt this claims but a small amount of labour--had to devote themselves to trade and manufacture. And even these arts were likely to attain the greater excellence in so far as the artisans and tillers of the ground were less disturbed by war and military service. The more distinct the boundaries of the land, the less to conquer and occupy outside them, the more industrious, amid the growing population, must have been the culture of the ground and the irrigation of it, the more actively must the artisans have pursued their trade, and industry must have developed with a greater vigour as the number of mouths requiring food increased.

So far as our knowledge reaches, the northern edge of Africa, like the valley of the Nile as far as the marshes at the foot of the Abyssinian hills, was inhabited by nations who in colour, language, and customs were sharply distinguished from the negro. These nations belong to the whites: their languages were most closely allied to the Semitic. From this, and from their physical peculiarities, the conclusion has been drawn that these nations at some time migrated from Asia to the soil of Africa. They formed a vast family, whose dialects still continue in the language of the Berbers. Assisted by the favourable conditions of their land, the tribe which settled on the Lower Nile quickly left their kinsmen far behind. Indeed the latter hardly rose above a pastoral life. The descendants of these old inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, in spite of the numerous layers which the course of centuries has subsequently laid upon the soil of the land, still form the larger part of the population of Egypt, and the ancient language is preserved in the dialect of the Copts.

FOOTNOTES:

Bunsen, "AEgypten," 5, 1, 75 ff.; Ebers, "AEgypten and die B?cher Moses," p. 43; Renan will not admit this close connection.

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE.

In the eighteenth century B.C., according to their reckoning, the tradition of the Hebrews presents us with a complete picture of court and civic life in the valley of the Nile, and it tells us of the building of cities in the east of the Delta, which, according to the same computation, must have been founded about the year 1550 B.C. The Homeric poems contain accounts of the land of AEgyptus, of the fair-flowing Zeus-born river of the same name, of the very beautiful fields and cities of Egypt, of princes who fought from their chariots, and finally of "Egyptian Thebes, where in the palaces lie the greatest treasures; a city with a hundred gates, from each of which go forth two hundred men with horses and chariots." They also add "that the fruitful earth bears abundance of drugs in Egypt, some mingled for good, others for evil, and there every one is a physician and has acquaintance with men; they are all sprung from the god of healing."

According to the account given by the Greeks the Egyptians boasted to be the oldest of mankind, and to possess the most ancient traditions. Their priests believed that they could compute the history of Egypt by thousands of years. When Herodotus was in Egypt about the middle of the fifth century B.C., the priests at Thebes read to him from a book the names of 331 kings who had reigned from Menes, the first ruler of Egypt, and the founder of Memphis, down to Moeris inclusive; among these were eighteen Ethiopians, and one queen; the rest were Egyptians. After Moeris came Sesostris, Pheron, Proteus, Rhampsinitus, Cheops and Chephren, Mycerinus, Asychis, Anysis, Sabakon, and Sethos, so that from Menes to Sethos 341 kings had reigned over Egypt in as many generations. Herodotus remarks that the priests assured him that they had an accurate knowledge of what they said, for the years were always enumerated and put down. To convince him they carried him into the great temple at Thebes and showed him there 345 wooden colossi of the chief priests who had presided over the temple through as many generations, in regular succession from father to son; for every chief priest placed his statue here during his own life-time. Before these kings and chief priests the gods had ruled over Egypt; first the Eight Gods, then the Twelve, then Osiris the Greek Dionysus, after him Typhon, and, last of all, Horus. From the time of King Amasis to the time of Osiris 15,000 years had passed, but from the time of the Twelve Gods to Amasis 17,000 years.

Four hundred years after Herodotus, Diodorus travelled to Egypt. He tells that, according to some fabulous accounts, gods and heroes first ruled over Egypt for something less than 18,000 years. The last of these was Horus, the son of Isis. After these came 470 native kings, of whom the first was Menes, before the time of the Macedonian and Persian rule, and also four Ethiopian kings and five queens. The Ethiopians did not immediately succeed each other, but at intervals, and their united reigns amounted to a little less than thirty-six years. "Of all these kings the priests have sketches in their holy books, handed down through successive generations from extreme antiquity, showing how tall each king was, what he was like, and what he accomplished in his reign." If we place the reign of Menes 479 generations before Cambyses, this computation, on the reckoning of Herodotus, would place the accession of Menes in the year 16492 B.C.; taking a shorter average length for the generations, we may bring it to the year 12500 B.C. But Diodorus shows from other accounts that this mode of computation is inadmissible. He tells us that the priests of Egypt numbered about 23,000 years from the reign of Helius or Hephaestus, who, according to other priests, was the first of the gods to reign, till the entrance of Alexander into Asia . If of this total we allow about 18,000 years to the gods, the accession of Menes would have to be placed about the year 5300 B.C. But as Diodorus also says that something less than 5,000 years had elapsed since the first human king to his arrival in Egypt, Menes' reign would fall about the year 5000 B.C. Diodorus fixes the accession of this king even more closely when he remarks, in a third passage, that the Egyptians assured him that, "for more than 4,700 years, kings, mostly natives, had ruled, and the land had prospered greatly under them." With this agrees the further account given by Diodorus, that according to some the largest pyramid was built 3,400 years before his time. According to this Menes cannot be carried back further than 4,800 years B.C.

If Menes founded the kingdom of Egypt 4,800 years B.C., it continued for 4,275 years under native kings; and if in this period 346 kings ascended the throne, as Herodotus says, or 479, as Diodorus, the average duration of each reign would be in the first case more than twelve years, in the second less than nine, which contradicts all credible history. The lowest average of oriental reigns is fifteen years.

What amount of authority should be ascribed to the lists of Manetho? Did the priests really possess sketches of kings and accounts of their reigns reaching back more than 5,000 years? In order to believe this, must we not allow that at such a remote time as the reign of Menes, or soon after it, writing was known and in use in Egypt? And granting this, must not the first beginning of culture in Egypt be carried back at least 500 years before Menes? Moreover, the lists do not correspond with the number of the kings given by Herodotus, or by Diodorus. Herodotus, as we said, put 346 generations before the time of Cambyses, Diodorus gave 479 kings before the same date. The excerpt of Africanus from Manetho, even if we substitute the smaller numbers given in the excerpt of Eusebius in all the dynasties, of which only the total sum of the rulers is stated, still gives us 388 kings from Menes to Cambyses. If these discrepancies awaken the suspicion that the number and the succession of the kings was not agreed upon even by the priests themselves, the suspicion is increased by the fact that the lists do not tally in the various excerpts in which they have come down to us. What weight can be given to a list which, in the excerpt from Africanus, allows 953 years to the rule of the Hyksos, and in the excerpt of Eusebius allows 103 years, and again 511 years in the excerpt of Josephus? Still greater discrepancies appear if we compare the list of Eratosthenes with the names and numbers handed down to us from Manetho's work. Both lists begin with Menes; both allow him a reign of sixty-two years; but Eratosthenes describes his thirty-eight kings as of Theban origin or race, while in Manetho the first Theban dynasty began to reign 2,240 years after Menes. Nevertheless the names of the first three or four rulers in Eratosthenes agree with those in Manetho. Then the coincidence breaks off till the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth names in Eratosthenes, to which corresponding names are found in Manetho's list, but in the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth places; and from this point to the end of the list of Eratosthenes there are only two or three names to which corresponding names are found in Manetho, and these occur at far greater intervals in the series. The last name in Eratosthenes nearly corresponds to the name of the king, in Manetho, under whom the invasion of the Hyksos took place. If, therefore, we assume that the list of Eratosthenes was intended to enumerate the kings who ruled over Egypt to this date, we find thirty-eight kings who must have reigned through 1076 years; and, as parallel to these, we find in Manetho fourteen dynasties with at least 241 kings, occupying a period of 3,084 years.

The variations of these tables from the lists may be explained by assuming that it depended on the particular view and peculiar object of the kings who erected these monuments, which of their predecessors they wished to honour, and which they wished to exclude. But even a manuscript list of kings, which has come down to us, exhibits numerous and very considerable variations from Manetho's lists. This list is a papyrus, now in Turin, supposed to belong to the period 1500-1000 B.C. It begins with the rule of the gods; then follow the names of the kings, with the length of their reigns in years, months, and days, down to the time of the Tuthmosis; and thus it includes the first seventeen dynasties of Manetho's list. It has been much damaged, and therefore we can only discover that about 240 names were given, of which, however, about 100 are entirely gone; and of the others the lesser half at least is hardly legible. As has been remarked, Manetho numbers at least 284 kings to the eighteenth dynasty. Moreover, the papyrus does not agree with Manetho in the division of the dynasties; at certain places, which do not coincide with the sections of Manetho, totals are given of the preceding reigns. The first king after the gods is Mena , but of the names which follow only a few agree with those in Manetho, and a few more with those of the tables of Karnak, Abydus, and Sakkarah. But here also the same names occupy different places in the series.

If in addition to all these variations and discrepancies we add the fact that even in the contemporary monuments and inscriptions which have come down to us there is no lack of contradictions to Manetho's statements--if too these monuments have not been erected or preserved in sufficient continuity, nor are of a sufficiently ample kind, to form an adequate check upon the papyrus of Turin, or the tables of kings or the list of Manetho--we must give up the hope of ascertaining the antiquity and course of Egyptian history on such data. One thing only comes out clear and irrefragable from the tables of Karnak, Abydus, and Sakkarah, no less than the Turin papyrus. Long before Herodotus was in Egypt, long before Manetho wrote his Egyptian history, in the fifteenth century B.C. Menes was considered the first king of Egypt. Even then lists of the kings were in existence, and the priests had made a sketch of the history of their land, in which the rule of the gods preceded the rule of human kings.

Modern research has attempted in various ways to find the key to the puzzle of these long and confused series of kings made by the Egyptian priests. Assuming that the names of the kings and the length of their reigns, and the number of reigns belonging to each dynasty, has been handed down correctly by Manetho, but that some of these dynasties were contemporaneous, the attempt has been made to give such a selection from the dynasties of Manetho as would supply a continuous thread for Egyptian history. Thus from the dynasties expressly marked as Memphitic, or Theban, a series may be formed which shortens the calculation of Manetho by at least 1,000 years. We might proceed further in this direction, and reduce Manetho's list by 2,000 or 3,000 years. According to the separate items in the excerpts preserved, Manetho's thirty dynasties include a series of 5,366 Egyptian years ; nevertheless, Syncellus, in a passage of his Chronology, has observed that the whole period of history treated by Manetho in his three books covered 3,555 years. This observation has been used to prove that Manetho himself arranged several dynasties contemporaneously; and thus, by taking the whole total of years given by Syncellus as a basis, the year 3892 B.C. has been fixed as the first year of the reign of Menes. No doubt a selection may be made from the dynasties of Manetho in such a way that the sum total of the reigns included in it will carry us no farther back than this year. But it is clear from the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus that the series of kings made by the Egyptian priests were strictly successive; and this fact is abundantly confirmed by the Turin papyrus and the excerpts preserved from Manetho himself. The 3,555 years which Syncellus brings forward cannot, in the face of his own excerpt, be taken as a number really derived from Manetho, and with this number all the calculations founded upon it fall to the ground.

All attempts to arrive at the antiquity of the civilisation and history of Egypt by these means are the more doubtful, because in Egypt there is no fixed era to form a basis for calculation. The time is reckoned by the reigns of the kings. In such a case even the most cautious inquiry of the priests could hardly have arrived at a satisfactory chronology for the oldest period. Though they had before them far more numerous monuments than we have, and though the lists of the various dominant families began to be kept at a very early period, it was no longer possible at the time when the lists of the Turin papyrus were made out, to discover in what order the families came, or which ruled contemporaneously before the time of the alien kings. The mere arrangement of our materials in the order of succession cannot fail to give an entirely false picture of the history of Egypt, while on the other hand the national pride of the Egyptians, and the vanity of the priests, found a great satisfaction in exaggerating the antiquity of their history by such enumerations, even where it was known that any families of kings were contemporaneous. With what pride and complacency would they exhibit this endless list of kings to the travelling strangers from Greece!

With this result before us the only course open is to seek for external evidence, and attempt to ascertain the antiquity of the civilisation of Egypt independently of the priests and their traditions. The first fixed point in Egyptian chronology is given by the campaign of Pharaoh Sisak against Judah and Jerusalem. Sisak caused a sketch of his enterprise to be delineated on the wall of a structure erected by him in the temple at Karnak. According to Manetho's list, Sisak , the first ruler of his twenty-second dynasty, begins his reign in the year 934 B.C. But the chronology of the Hebrews, which from the establishment of the monarchy downwards coincides within a few insignificant variations with the Assyrian records, proves that Sisak must have been king in the first half of the tenth century B.C. The campaign against Judah falls in the middle of this century. From Sisak to the expulsion of the Hyksos there was an interval of at least 500 years, as we may maintain approximately from the names of kings and their reigns recorded on monuments. If therefore we accept the excerpt from Manetho's history given in Josephus , and allow 511 years for the reign of the Hyksos, we arrive at the year 2000 B.C. as the end of the old monarchy. From this monarchy numerous monuments have come down to us belonging to the Amenemha, and Sesurtesen, the twelfth dynasty of Manetho; and again to the time preceding these princes belong the greatest monuments in Egypt, the pyramids of Memphis, which, according to Manetho's list, are the work of the fourth dynasty. These pyramids therefore may have been built about the year 2500 B.C. The plan and execution of these monuments presuppose a very long practice in the treatment and preparation of materials; the size, permanence, and solidity of the construction were impossible without great experience in the use of stone; and their massive form requires an acquaintance with the principles of architecture which can only be obtained in the course of centuries. And independently of the advanced state of architecture exhibited by these monuments at the first sight, their erection is a proof of a condition of social and civic life far removed from primitive tribal communities. So long as tribes few in number and isolated from each other possessed the valley of the Nile, under the rule of their tribal chiefs, such structures were impossible. They presuppose a settled population, accustomed to work, and skilled in it. And more than this. The whole population could not any longer be occupied in agricultural work; there must have been a considerable amount of superfluous labour, living upon the productions obtained from the earth by others. Such structures required the united force of many thousands, the continued efforts of long years. And as the use of complex machinery for moving and raising the heavy materials was unknown to the Egyptians, and remained unknown, as we see from the monuments, a still greater force of men and beasts of draught were necessary to move such huge squares and blocks by means of a simple lever and rollers. Finally, the combination and continued employment of such forces presupposes that society has been subordinated to a superior direction and power, which could apply those forces as it chose; in a word, it presupposes an economical, political, and technical civilisation, removed by at least 500 years from pastoral life and patriarchal rule. If therefore we may assume that the great pyramids were erected about the year 2500 B.C., the beginning of higher civilisation in the valley of the Nile must not be placed later than the year 3000 B.C.

Though the possession of such indicatory or symbolic pictures enabled men to describe a series of objects and conditions, and even certain classes of conceptions--this picture-writing was nevertheless far removed from the expression of a definite and intelligible speech. It was a great step in the Egyptian writing when to their simple metaphorical and symbolical pictures phonetic pictures were added. From the actual picture by means of abbreviation, by indicatory signs and symbols, they had arrived at picture-signs, and had succeeded in expressing a certain feeling by means of figures; but now the indication of the sound was added to the representation of the sense. The picture-writing could only go to these picture-signs in order to borrow the symbols for sound. Hence the sound A was denoted by a symbol which signified an object of which the name began with A; for this in Egypt the symbol of an eagle , or of a reed , might be, and was selected. Thus in order to express words which could not be made plain by picture-signs and images of sense, the plan was adopted of adding to the picture-signs already in use for such words, one or more phonetic symbols, a complete or incomplete phonetic supplement. Hence arose a class of mixed pictures, made up of the picture of the object, with the addition of the sounds of the words of which the picture was intended to express the meaning. To make the meaning yet more clear, it was found necessary to add key-signs, indicating the class and nature of the word in question. Thus with the pictorial and phonetic signs for day and hour was combined the sign of the sun, and to the names of countries and rivers the sign for land and water. Moreover these key-signs showed whether the word symbolised by a sound or a picture denoted an animal, a plant, a kind of stone, or belonged to a particular class of conditions and actions. Yet in this combination of real and phonetic pictures, it always remained uncertain whether a picture or symbol was to be taken for its real meaning, or was to be regarded as a phonetic symbol.

This, then, is the difficult writing of the Egyptians; these are the hieroglyphics as presented even on those great monuments. Even here we find this method of writing applied in the same forms, and with the same mixture of pictorial and phonetic signs, which it retained in Egypt, with slight modifications . Without doubt, the development of this complicated system was the work of centuries. In the infancy of history, special insight and capability is obtained and handed down only within the limits of certain circles. There could be no regular application and development of this system of writing before the formation of a priestly order. And again, the separation of such an order from the rest of the people could only take place gradually; it must go through a number of stages to raise it above the primitive conditions of life. When this point of culture was reached, a considerable space of time was still needed in order to bring the picture-writing, even within the priestly class, to the form in which we see it on the pyramids. In those nations whose progress we can follow with greater accuracy, centuries must pass before the indefinite and floating notions entertained of the gods are fixed in rigid forms. Yet in Egypt this change had already taken place before the date of the oldest hieroglyphics: for even in these we find typical forms in use for the gods, with sharply drawn and abbreviated outlines. In the picture-writing itself there is a wide interval between the delineation of an incident, or object, and the representation of a definite feeling; and a yet wider interval before the expression of ideas, of definite speech, is attained. An advanced stage of reflection and abstraction is required in order to step from the picture of an occurrence to picture-signs and images of sense, and again from these to phonetic symbols. The symbols for an incident, and for an idea and a sound, are separated by a wide gulf. Independently of these internal requirements for the advance of picture-writing, the external form in which the oldest hieroglyphics are represented, their even, harmonious, clearly-cut and unalterable forms, are evidence not only of an industrious and careful application of these signs, but also of a tolerably long use. The oldest hieroglyphics of the date of the great pyramids are for the most part embossed; but even the engraved work of a date very little more recent is not surpassed by later times in artistic excellence, in sharpness and neatness of execution.

The study of the calendar of Egypt, no less than other rider spurred into view, coming from the opposite direction to the boys and the Merrill party.

"Walt Phelps!" cried Jack with a glad shout.

The other returned the greeting and soon learned the news from Agua Caliente.

Soon the three boys were riding forward together. Walter Phelps, it appeared, had heard rumors that the rustlers had been abroad in the night, and had risen early and saddled for a ride to the Merrill ranch. He was much concerned when he learned of the rancher's loss, and volunteered to join the party.

The noonday meal was a hasty one. As soon as it was dispatched the party pressed on without pausing for further rest. The road now grew so rough that the trail of the stolen horses, which had at first been plain and clear, could no longer be seen. The Mexican guide, closely guarded by Bud Wilson and a cowboy named Coyote Pete, rode in front. Close behind came Mr. Merrill, the three boys and the professor, and in their rear followed the half-dozen cowboys who formed the remainder of the expedition.

"Are we getting near the place now, Jose?" asked Mr. Merrill, addressing their guide by the name he had given, about the middle of the afternoon.

"Si, se?or," rejoined the guide, who soon after directed the cavalcade toward the mouth of the pass through which he said the stolen horses had been driven.

If the mountains had been gloomy and sinister to the view while riding along the base of them, the northern entrance to Grizzly Pass itself threw a damper over the spirit of even Coyote Pete, who had hitherto larked about and displayed a great fund of high spirits. The dark wall of the ca?on rose perpendicularly to a height of more than a hundred feet on the right side of the rough trail. At the other hand was a deep and dark abyss at the bottom of which a hidden river roared. Beyond the formidable pit reared another frowning rampart of sheer rock. Deep down could be heard the murmuring of water.

"That's the overflow from the big dam," explained Walter Phelps, pointing over into the sonorous depths.

"The dam is up in this direction, then?" inquired Ralph.

"Yes, it is located in a small ca?on, off to the right of the pass. I'll show you the place when we reach it."

For some time they rode on without a word. The deep gloom and oppressive silence was not encouraging to conversation. The sound of a stone dislodged by a pony's hoof in that dismal place caused several of the party to give a nervous start more than once.

Suddenly the right-hand wall of the ca?on opened out--as they rounded a sharp promontory of rock--and another deep chasm cut abruptly into Grizzly Pass almost at right angles. The deep rift which this caused across the trail had been bridged by a span of rough logs which crossed the intersecting ca?on at a height of fully three hundred feet. A scene of wilder and more impressive grandeur than the ca?on presented at the point they had now reached not one of the party had ever beheld. Even a whisper went echoing and reverberating among the gloomy rocks in startling contrast to the brooding silence of the spot.

The frowning black walls, the melancholy-looking trees clinging to the almost perpendicular walls, the bottomless chasm, and the deep dusk of late afternoon, all combined to make it the most oppressive scene into which any of the boys had ever penetrated.

They had reached the bridge and the feet of the Mexican guide's horse were upon it, when from behind them there came a sudden startling sound.

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