The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

by A. H. Sayce

When Khu-n-Aten was Pharaoh, the cities of Canaan were numerous and wealthy. The people were highly cultured, and excelled especially as [pg 070] workers in gold and silver, as manufacturers of porcelain and vari-coloured glass, and as weavers of richly-dyed linen. Their merchants already traded to distant parts of the known world. The governors appointed by the Pharaoh were for the most part of native origin, and at times a representative of the old line of kings was left among them, though an Egyptian prefect was often placed at his side. The governors were controlled by the presence of Egyptian garrisons, as well as by the visits of an Egyptian “commissioner.” Their rivalries and quarrels form the subject of many of the letters which have been found at Tel el-Amarna, both sides appealing to the Pharaoh for protection and help, and alike protesting their loyalty to him. It seems to have been the part of Egyptian policy to encourage these quarrels, or at all events to hold an even balance between the rival governors.

As long as the power of Egypt remained intact, these quarrels, which sometimes resulted in open war, offered no cause for alarm. Egyptian troops could always be sent to the scene of disturbance before it could become dangerous. But in the troublous days of Khu-n-Aten's reign, when Egypt itself was restless and inclined for revolt, the position of affairs was changed. The Egyptian forces were needed at home, and the Pharaoh was compelled to turn a deaf ear [pg 071] to the piteous appeals that were made to him for assistance. The enemies of Egyptian rule began to multiply and grow powerful. In the south the Khabiri or “Confederates” threatened the Egyptian domination; in the north, Amorite rebels intrigued with the Hittites and with the kings of Naharaim and Babylonia, while in all parts of Palestine the Sute or Bedouin were perpetually on the watch to take advantage of the weakness of the government.

It was the vassal-king of Jerusalem, Ebed-tob by name, who was especially menaced by the Khabiri. In his letters he describes himself as unlike the other governors, in that he had been appointed to his office by the “arm” or “oracle” of “the Mighty King,” the supreme deity of his city. It was not from his father or his mother, consequently, that he had derived his royal dignity. He was, in fact, a priest-king, like his predecessor Melchizedek, to whom Abram had paid tithes. Ebed-tob, however, was unable to make head against his enemies the Khabiri. One by one the towns which were included in the territory of Jerusalem, from Keilah and Gath-Karmel to Rabbah, fell into their hands; the Pharaoh was unable to send him the help for which he so earnestly begged, and we finally hear of his having fallen into the hands of his Bedouin enemy, Labai, along with the cities of which he was in charge. Labai was in alliance with [pg 072] a certain Malchiel, who also writes letters to the Egyptian monarch, as well as with Tagi of Gath and the Khabiri. The latter seem to have given the name of Hebron, “the Confederacy,” to the old city of Kirjath-Arba.

Megiddo was the seat of an Egyptian governor, like Gaza, near Shechem. The name of Shechem has not been found in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, but a reference is made to its “mountain,” in the Travels of a Mohar. Either Mount Ebal or Mount Gerizim must consequently have been already well known in Egypt. Another Egyptian governor was in command of Phœnicia. Gebal, north of Beyrût, was his chief residence, but he had palaces also at Tyre and Zemar, in the mountains of the interior. In one of his letters he alludes to the wealth of Tyre, which must therefore have been already famous.

Phœnicia and Palestine are alike included under the name of “Canaan” in the cuneiform documents, though in the hieroglyphic records they are called Zahi and Khal (or Khar). North of Palestine came “the land of the Amorites,” of which Ebed-Asherah and his son, Aziru or Ezer, were governors, and to the east of the Jordan was “the field of Bashan.” The Egyptian supremacy was acknowledged as far south as the frontier of Edom; the latter country preserved its independence.

Such was the condition of Canaan when the cuneiform correspondence of Tel el-Amarna comes suddenly to an end. The death of Khu-n-Aten had been the signal for a revolt against the faith which he had endeavoured to impose upon Egypt, as well as against the Asiatic influences by which he had been surrounded. He left daughters only behind him. One of them was married to a prince who, in order to secure the throne, was forced to return to the old religion of the country, and to call himself by the name of Tutânkh-Amon. But his reign was short, like those of one or two other relations and followers of Khu-n-Aten who have left traces of themselves upon the monuments. A rival king, Ai by name, held possession of Egypt for a while, and after his death Hor-m-hib, the Armais of Manetho, ruled once more at Thebes over a united Egypt, and the worship of the solar disk was at end.

But the ruins of Tel el-Amarna show that the restoration of the old creed and the overthrow of Khu-n-Aten's adherents had not been without a struggle. Most of the tombs in the cliffs and sandhills which surround the old city have been unfinished: the followers of the new cult for whom they were intended have never been allowed to occupy them. The royal sepulchre itself, as we have seen, is in an equally unfinished condition, and [pg 074] the sarcophagus in which the body of the king rested was violated soon after his mummy had been placed in it. Indeed, it had never been deposited in the niche that had been cut to receive it; its shattered fragments were discovered far away on the floor of the great columned hall. The capital of the “heretic king” was destroyed by its enemies soon after his death, and never inhabited again. The ruins of its palace and houses were full of broken statues and other objects which their owners had no time to carry away. The city lasted only for about thirty years, and the sands of the desert then began to close over its fallen greatness. How sudden and complete must have been its overthrow is proved by the cuneiform tablets; not only were these imperial archives not carried elsewhere, the correspondence contained in them breaks off suddenly with a half-told tale of disaster and dismay. The Asiatic empire of Egypt is falling to pieces, its enemies are enclosing it on every side; the Hittites have robbed it of its northern provinces, and revolt is shaking it from within. The governors and vassals of the Pharaoh send more and more urgent requests for instant aid: “If troops come this year, then there will remain both provinces and governors to the king, my lord; but if no troops come, no provinces or governors will remain.” But no answer was returned to these [pg 075] pressing appeals, and the sudden cessation of the correspondence under the ruins of the Egyptian foreign office itself gives us the reason why.

One of the first acts of Hor-m-hib after the settlement of affairs at home was to chastise the Asiatics, who had doubtless taken advantage of the momentary weakness of Egypt. With the death of Hor-m-hib, after a reign of five years,[7] the eighteenth dynasty came to an end. Ramses i., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, introduced a new type of royal name, and also, as we learn from the monuments, a new type of royal face. After a short reign of two years, he was succeeded by his son, Seti i., in whose name we have an evidence that the proscribed worship of the god Set—the god of the Delta—was again taken under royal patronage. It was an indication that the new dynasty traced its descent from northern Egypt.

Seti i. once more led the Egyptian armies to victory in Asia. With the spoils of conquest temples were built and decorated, and the names of conquered nations engraved upon their walls. One of these temples was at Abydos, the most beautiful of [pg 076] all those which have been left to us in Egypt. But Seti's fame as a builder was far eclipsed by that of his son and successor, Ramses ii., and even the temples which he had raised at Abydos and Qurnah were completed, and to a certain extent appropriated, by his better-known son.

We are told in the Book of Exodus that two of the “treasure cities” which the Israelites built for the Pharaoh of the Oppression were “Pithom and Raamses.” The discovery of Pithom was, as we have already seen, the inaugural work of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The discovery, as has been already stated, was made by Dr. Naville, who was led to the site by certain monuments of Ramses ii., which had been found there by the French engineers of M. de Lesseps. These monuments consisted of a great tablet and monolith of red granite, two sphinxes of exquisitely polished black granite, and a broken shrine of red sandstone which had been transported to Ismailîyeh, where they formed the chief ornament of the little public garden. As they all showed that Tum, the setting sun, was the supreme deity of the place from which they had come, Dr. Naville concluded that it would prove to be Pi-Tum, “the abode of Tum,” the Pithom of Scripture, and not the companion city of Raamses, as Lepsius had believed.