Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

And so they went on. They swept over the Plain of Esdraelon, and they passed up by Lebanon and Damascus into Armenia. They then overran Persia and Media. At last they reached Bactria, the district of which modern Bokhara is now the capital. Here they effected a lodgment, which kept this region in subjection and tributary to them for some generations. It is curious that in this remote and almost inaccessible centre of Asia the Greeks also in after times succeeded in establishing themselves, and were able to maintain the position they had acquired in it for several centuries. This was the Egyptians’ extremest point to the East. They now turned their faces westward, and, having overrun Asia Minor, they crossed into Thrace. From Thrace they appear to have endeavoured to make the circuit of the Euxine. This brought them into collision with the Scythians, whom they defeated. Among those peoples whose cities he destroyed, and whose country he ravaged, Rameses had probably taken no especial notice of the Persians. They, however, were the people who were destined to retaliate the wanton and enormous cruelties of the undertaking, in the success of which he saw only the establishment of the glory and power of Egypt. In the days of their empire they will not only repay Egypt for this expedition, but they will also follow the footsteps of Rameses through Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus into Thrace, and through Thrace, and across the Danube, into Scythia. But from the wide inhospitable steppes they will not bring back the barren victories—no others could be obtained there—which will enable the Egyptians to boast that the achievements of Darius had not equalled those of Rameses.

At the eastern end of the Black Sea, in the district known to the Greeks by the name of Colchis, Rameses left a detachment of his army for the purpose of permanently occupying a position. Those thus left behind established themselves on the spot; and long afterwards, by their practice of the rite of circumcision, their language, complexion, and hair, retained the evidence of their origin. As their hair was woolly and their skin black, they must have been detached from the Ethiopian contingent of the army.[4]

Everywhere throughout this great raid Rameses set up statues and tablets with inscriptions upon them to commemorate his achievements, making many of them insulting to the people he had conquered, and whose countries he had devastated. One of these inscriptions remains to this day on the living rock to the north-west of Damascus, near the mouth of the river the Greeks called Lycus, and which is now known by the name of El Kelb. Upon it are still legible the names of Rameses and of the gods Ra (the sun), and Ammon, whom especially he served, as the gods of his great capital, Thebes.

And so, after nine years of such warfare as we have been describing, he returns to favoured and protected Egypt, to thank Ra and Ammon for the favour and protection they had vouchsafed to him, and for all the mighty deeds they had enabled him to do, and to preserve for ever the memory of those deeds on the walls of their temples. He brings back with him much treasure, the spoils of the nations, and multitudes of captives. Both this treasure and these captives he uses up upon the temples, and upon the monuments, palaces, and cities, he now builds.

Without any possible provocation, and without any advantage to himself, if the wear and tear of his own kingdom be weighed in the balance against the spoil and the slaves he brought home, he had, like a lava torrent, passed over what were then some of the fairest portions of the world. His swarthy, bloodthirsty, destroying host must have appeared to the inhabitants of those countries like the legions of the lower world let loose. This was too dreadful a work even for those times ever to be forgotten.

And it was remembered some centuries afterwards, when the tables were turned, and Egypt was invaded by Cambyses. In the Persian army were contingents from many people who had treasured up the memory of what Rameses the Great had on this expedition done to their forefathers, and of what several of the successors of Rameses on the throne of Egypt had in like manner done to many of the peoples of Asia. The day of reckoning came, and the reckoning was fearfully exacted. We see the marks, remaining on the temples to this day, of the retributive fury of the Persians against the gods of Egypt.

CHAPTER XX.
GERMANICUS AT THEBES.

Tanquam tabula naufragii.—Bacon.