The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

by A. H. Sayce

Herakleopolis, called Hininsu in Egyptian and the cuneiform inscriptions, was the capital of a nome which the Greek writers describe as an island. It was, in fact, enclosed on all sides by the water. On the east is the Nile; on the west the Bahr Yûsuf, itself probably an old channel of the river; northward a canal unites the two great streams, while southward another canal (or perhaps a branch of the river) once did the same in the neighbourhood of Ahnas. Strabo still speaks of it as a great “island” which he passed through on his way to the Fayyûm from the north.

The route followed by Strabo must have been that already traversed by Herodotos. He too must have passed through the island of Hininsu on his way to the Fayyûm, and his scheme of Egyptian chronology ought to contain evidence of the fact.

And this is actually the case. Mykerinos, he teaches us, was succeeded by a king named Sasykhis or Asykhis, who built not only the eastern propylon of the temple of Ptah at Memphis, but also a brick [pg 265] pyramid, about which, of course, his guides had a characteristic story to tell him. That the story was of Greek origin is shown by the inscription, which they professed had been engraved by order of the Pharaoh, but which only a Greek could have invented. The brick pyramid must have been that of Illahûn. The two brick pyramids of Dahshûr would have been invisible from the river, and even to a visitor on the spot the state of ruin in which they are would have made them seem of little consequence. His attention would have been wholly absorbed by the massive pyramids of stone at the foot of which they stand.

The brick pyramid of Howâra, again, cannot be the one meant by Herodotos. It formed part of the buildings connected with the Labyrinth, the size and splendour of which overshadowed in his eyes all the rest. There remains, therefore, only the brick pyramid of Illahûn, by the side of which, as we have seen, the voyage of Herodotos would have led him.

The pyramid of Illahûn, when seen near at hand, is indeed a very striking object. It is the only one of the brick pyramids which challenges comparison with the pyramids of stone, and may well have given occasion for the story which was repeated to the Greek tourist. Its striking character is due to the [pg 266] fact that the brick superstructure is raised upon a plateau of rock, which has been cut into shape to receive it. The excavations of Professor Petrie in 1890 revealed the name of its builder. This was Usertesen ii. of the twelfth dynasty, the king in the sixth year of whose reign the “Asiatics” arrived with their tribute of antimony as depicted in the tomb of Khnum-hotep at Beni-Hassan. How the guides came to call him Sasykhis is difficult to explain. Perhaps it is the Egyptian Sa-Sovk, “the son of Sovk” or “Sebek” the crocodile-god of the Fayyûm, whom the Greeks termed Sûkhos. The Pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty, as creators and benefactors of the Fayyûm, the nome of the crocodile, were specially devoted to its worship, and in their inscriptions they speak of the works they had undertaken for their “father Sovk.”

After Sasykhis, Herodotos continues, “there reigned a blind man named Anysis, from the city of Anysis: while he was reigning the Ethiopians and Sabako, king of Ethiopia, invaded Egypt with a large force, so the blind man fled into the marshes, and the Ethiopian ruled Egypt for fifty years.” After his departure in consequence of a dream the blind man returned from the marshes, where he had lived in an artificial island called Elbô, which no one could rediscover until Amyrtæos found it again. [pg 267] Anysis, of course, is the name of a city, not of a man, and, in making it both, Herodotos has committed a similar mistake to that which he has made in transforming Pi-Bast, “the temple of Bast,” and Pi-Uaz, “the temple of Uaz,” into the names of his goddesses Bubastis and Butô. It is, in fact, merely the Greek form of the Hebrew Hanes, and the Hebrew Hanes is the Egyptian Hininsu, which, according to a well-known rule of Semitic and Egyptian phonetics, was pronounced Hinissu. We learn from the Book of Isaiah (xxx. 4) that Hanes was playing a prominent part in Egyptian politics at the very time when Sabako and his Ethiopians occupied the country. The ambassadors of Hezekiah who were sent from Jerusalem to ask the help of the Egyptian monarch against the common Assyrian enemy came not only to Zoan in the Delta, but to Hanes as well. Zoan and Hanes must have been for the moment the two centres of Egyptian government and the seats of the Pharaoh's court.

The intermittent glimpses that we get of Egyptian history in the stormy period that preceded the Ethiopian conquest show how this had come to be the case. Shishak's dynasty, the twenty-second, had been followed by the twenty-third, which Manetho calls Tanite, and which, therefore, must have had its [pg 268] origin in Zoan. While its second king, Osorkon ii., was reigning at Tanis and Bubastis, the first sign of the coming Ethiopian invasion fell upon Egypt. Piankhi Mi-Amon, the king of Napata, descended the Nile, and called upon the rival princes of Egypt to acknowledge him as their head. Osorkon, who alone possessed a legitimate title to the supreme sovereignty, seems to have obeyed the summons, but it was resisted by two of the petty kings of Upper Egypt, those of Ashmunên and Annas, as well as by Tef-nekht or Tnêphakhtos, the prince of Sais. Ashmunên and Ahnas were accordingly besieged, and Ashmunên soon fell into the invader's hands. Ahnas and the rest of the south thereupon submitted, and Piankhi marched against Memphis. In spite of the troops and provisions thrown into it by Tef-nekht, the old capital of the country was taken by storm, and all show of resistance to the conqueror was at an end. From one extremity of the country to the other the native rulers hastened to pay homage to the Ethiopian and to accept his suzerainty.

Piankhi caused the account of his conquest to be engraved on a great stêlê of granite which he set up on Mount Barkal, the holy mountain of Napata. Here he gives a list of the seventeen princes among whom the cities of Egypt had been parcelled out, and each of whom claimed independent or semi-independent [pg 269] authority. Out of the seventeen, four bear upon their foreheads the royal uræus, receive the title of kings, and have their names enclosed in a cartouche. Two of them are princes of the north, Osorkon of Bubastis and Tanis, and Aupet of Klysma, near Suez. The other two represent Upper Egypt. One is the king of Sesennu or Ashmunên, the other is Pef-dod-Bast of Hininsu or Ahnas. Thebes is wholly ignored.

The conquest of Piankhi proved to be but momentary. The Ethiopians retired, and Egypt returned to the condition in which they found it. It was a nation divided against itself, rent with internal wars and private feuds, and ready to fall into the hands of the first invader with military ability and sufficient troops. Two states towered in it above the rest; Tanis in the north and Ahnas in the south. Tanis had succeeded to the patrimony of Bubastis and Memphis; Ahnas to that of Thebes.

Sabako, therefore, fixed his court at Zoan and Hanes, simply because they had already become the leading cities, if not the capitals, of the north and the south. And to Zoan and Hanes, accordingly, the Jewish envoys had to make their way. The princes of Judah assembled at Zoan; the ambassadors went farther, even to Hanes. It is noteworthy that a century later the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal still [pg 270] couples together the princes of Ahnas and Zoan in his list of the satraps of Egypt.