Thebes continued to be the favourite royal residence. Here in its temple the kings were crowned, and in its palaces they passed the greater part of their lives, and here in its valley of sepulchres they were laid to rest when their reigns and lives were ended. The small city of the beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty had long encroached upon the plain, and was now transformed into an immense town, with magnificent monuments, and a motley population, having absorbed in its extension the villages of Ashirû,* and Madit, and even the southern Apît, which we now call Luxor. But their walls could still be seen, rising up in the middle of modern constructions, a memorial of the heroic ages, when the power of the Theban princes was trembling in the balance, and when conflicts with the neighbouring barons or with the legitimate king were on the point of breaking out at every moment.**
* The village of Ashirû was situated to the south of the
temple of Karnak, close to the temple of Mût. Its ruins,
containing the statues of Sokhît collected by Amenôthes III.,
extend around the remains marked X in Mariette’s plan.
* These are the walls which are generally regarded as
marking the sacred enclosure of the temples: an examination
of the ruins of Thebes shows us that, during the XXth and
XXIst dynasties, brick-built houses lay against these walls
both on the inner and outer sides, so that they must have
been half hidden by buildings, as are the ancient walls of
Paris at the present day.
The inhabitants of Apît retained their walls, which coincided almost exactly with the boundary of Nsîttauî, the great sanctuary of Amon; Ashirû sheltered behind its ramparts the temple of Mût, while Apît-rîsît clustered around a building consecrated by Amenôthes III. to his divine father, the lord of Thebes. Within the boundary walls of Thebes extended whole suburbs, more or less densely populated and prosperous, through which ran avenues of sphinxes connecting together the three chief boroughs of which the sovereign city was composed. On every side might have been seen the same collections of low grey huts, separated from each other by some muddy pool where the cattle were wont to drink and the women to draw water; long streets lined with high houses, irregularly shaped open spaces, bazaars, gardens, courtyards, and shabby-looking palaces which, while presenting a plain and unadorned exterior, contained within them the refinements of luxury and the comforts of wealth. The population did not exceed a hundred thousand souls,* reckoning a large proportion of foreigners attracted hither by commerce or held as slaves.
* Letronne, after having shown that we have no authentic
ancient document giving us the population, fixes it at
200,000 souls. My estimate, which is, if anything,
exaggerated, is based on the comparison of the area of
ancient Thebes and that of such modern towns as Shit, Girgeh
and Qina, whose populations are known for the last fifty
years from the census.
The court of the Pharaoh drew to the city numerous provincials, who, coming thither to seek their fortune, took up their abode there, planting in the capital of Southern Egypt types from the north and the centre of the country, as well as from Nubia and the Oases; such a continuous infusion of foreign material into the ancient Theban stock gave rise to families of a highly mixed character, in which all the various races of Egypt were blended in the most capricious fashion. In every twenty officers, and in the same number of ordinary officials, about half would be either Syrians, or recently naturalised Nubians, or the descendants of both, and among the citizens such names as Pakhari the Syrian, Palamnanî the native of the Lebanon, Pinahsî the negro, Palasiaî the Alasian, preserved the indications of foreign origin.* A similar mixture of races was found in other cities, and Memphis, Bubastis, Tanis, and Siût must have presented as striking an aspect in this respect as Thebes.** At Memphis there were regular colonies of Phoenician, Canaanite, and Amorite merchants sufficiently prosperous to have temples there to their national gods, and influential enough to gain adherents to their religion from the indigenous inhabitants. They worshipped Baal, Anîti. Baal-Zaphuna, and Ashtoreth, side by side with Phtah, Nofîrtûmû, and Sokhit,*** and this condition of things at Memphis was possibly paralleled elsewhere—as at Tanis and Bubastis.
* Among the forty-three individuals compromised in the
conspiracy against Ramses III. whose names have been
examined by Dévéria, nine are foreigners, chiefly Semites,
and were so recognised by the Egyptians themselves—Adiram,
Balmahara, Garapusa, lunîni the Libyan, Paiarisalama,
possibly the Jerusalemite, Nanaiu, possibly the Ninevite,
Palulca the Lycian, Qadendena, and Uarana or Naramu.
** An examination of the stelæ of Abydos shows the extent of
foreign influence in this city in the middle of the
XVIIIth dynasty.
*** These gods are mentioned in the preamble of a letter
written on the verso of the Sallier Papyrus. From the
mode in which they are introduced we may rightly infer that
they had, like the Egyptian gods who are mentioned with
them, their chapels at Memphis. A place in Memphis is called
“the district called the district of the Khâtiû” is an
inscription of the IIIth year of Aï, and shows that Hittites
were there by the side of Canaanites.
This blending of races was probably not so extensive in the country districts, except in places where mercenaries were employed as garrisons; but Sudanese or Hittite slaves, brought back by the soldiers of the ranks, had introduced Ethiopian and Asiatic elements into many a family of the fellahîn.*
* One of the letters in the Great Bologna Papyrus treats of
a Syrian slave, employed as a cultivator at Hermopolis, who
had run away from his master.