Mr. Layard remarks on the facility with which edifices, such as those in Assyria, built of sunburnt bricks, perish when neglected, and crumble away into earth, leaving little or no trace.
CHAPTER XX.
EGYPTIANS.
If, on one side, the Phenicians were separated from the productive Babylonia by the Arabian desert; on the other side, the western portion of the same desert divided them from the no less productive valley of the Nile. In those early times which preceded the rise of Greek civilization, their land trade embraced both regions, and they served as the sole agents of international traffic between the two. Conveniently as their towns were situated for maritime commerce with the Nile, Egyptian jealousy had excluded Phenician vessels not less than those of the Greeks from the mouths of that river, until the reign of Psammetichus (672-618 B. C.); and thus even the merchants of Tyre could then reach Memphis only by means of caravans, employing as their instruments, as I have already observed, the Arabian tribes,[573] alternately plunderers and carriers. Respecting Egypt, as respecting Assyria, since the works of Hekatæus are unfortunately lost, our earliest information is derived from Herodotus, who visited Egypt about two centuries after the reign of Psammetichus, when it formed part of one of the twenty Persian satrapies. The Egyptian marvels and peculiarities which he recounts, are more numerous, as well as more diversified, than the Assyrian, and had the vestiges been effaced as completely in the former as in the latter, his narrative would probably have met with an equal degree of suspicion. But the hard stone, combined with the dry climate of Upper Egypt (where a shower of rain counted as a prodigy), have given such permanence to the monuments in the valley of the Nile, that enough has remained to bear out the father of Grecian history, and to show that, in describing what he professes to have seen, he is a guide perfectly trustworthy. For that which he heard, he appears only in the character of a reporter, and often an incredulous reporter; but though this distinction between his hearsay and his ocular evidence is not only obvious, but of the most capital moment,[574]—it has been too often neglected by those who depreciate him as a witness.
The mysterious river Nile, a god[575] in the eyes of ancient Egyptians, and still preserving both its volume and its usefulness undiminished amidst the general degradation of the country, reached the sea in the time of Herodotus by five natural mouths, besides two others artificially dug;—the Pelusiac branch formed the eastern boundary of Egypt, the Kanôpic branch—one hundred and seventy miles distant—the western; while the Sebennytic branch was a continuation of the straight line of the upper river: from this latter branched off the Saitic and the Mendesian arms.[576] Its overflowings are far more fertilizing than those of the Euphrates in Assyria,—partly from their more uniform recurrence both in time and quantity, partly from the rich silt which it brings down and deposits, whereas the Euphrates served only as a moisture. The patience of the Egyptians had excavated, in middle Egypt, the vast reservoir—partly, it seems, natural and preëxisting—called the lake of Mœris: and in the Delta, a network of numerous canals; yet on the whole the hand of man had been less tasked than in Babylonia; whilst the soil annually enriched, yielded its abundant produce without either plough or spade to assist the seed cast in by the husbandman.[577] That under these circumstances a dense and regularly organized population should have been concentrated in fixed abodes along the valley occupied by this remarkable river, is no matter of wonder; the marked peculiarities of the locality seem to have brought about such a result, in the earliest periods to which human society can be traced. Along the five hundred and fifty miles of its undivided course from Syênê to Memphis, where for the most part the mountains leave only a comparatively narrow strip on each bank, as well as in the broad expanse between Memphis and the Mediterranean, there prevailed a peculiar form of theocratic civilization, from a date which even in the time of Herodotus was immemorially ancient. But when we seek for some measure of this antiquity (earlier than the time when Greeks were first admitted into Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus), we find only the computations of the priests, reaching back for many thousand years, first, of government by immediate and present gods, next, of human kings. Such computations have been transmitted to us by Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus,[578]—agreeing in their essential conception of the foretime, with gods in the first part of the series, and men in the second, but differing materially in events, names, and epochs: probably, if we possessed lists from other Egyptian temples, besides those which Manetho drew up at Heliopolis, or which Herodotus learned at Memphis, we should find discrepancies from both these two. To compare these lists, and to reconcile them as far as they admit of being reconciled, is interesting, as enabling us to understand the Egyptian mind, but conducts to no trustworthy chronological results, and forms no part of the task of an historian of Greece.
To the Greeks, Egypt was a closed world before the reign of Psammetichus, though after that time it gradually became an important part of their field both of observation and action. The astonishment which the country created in the mind of the earliest Grecian visitors may be learned even from the narrative of Herodotus, who doubtless knew it by report long before he went there. Both the physical and moral features of Egypt stood in strong contrast with Grecian experience: “not only (says Herodotus) does the climate differ from all other climates, and the river from all other rivers, but Egyptian laws and customs are opposed on almost all points to those of other men.”[579] The delta was at that time full of large and populous cities,[580] built on artificial elevations of ground, and seemingly not much inferior to Memphis itself, which was situated on the left bank of the Nile (opposite to the site of the modern Cairo), a little higher up than the spot where the delta begins. From the time when the Greeks first became cognizant of Egypt, to the building of Alexandria and the reign of the Ptolemies, Memphis was the first city in Egypt, but it seems not to have been always so,—there had been an earlier period when Thebes was the seat of Egyptian power, and upper Egypt of far more consequence than middle Egypt. Vicinity to the delta, which must always have contained the largest number of cities and the widest surface of productive territory, probably enabled Memphis to usurp this honor from Thebes, and the predominance of lower Egypt was still farther confirmed when Psammetichus introduced Ionian and Karian troops as his auxiliaries in the government of the country. But the stupendous magnitude of the temples and palaces, the profusion of ornamental sculpture and painting, the immeasurable range of sculptures hewn in the rocks still remaining as attestations of the grandeur of Thebes,—not to mention Ombi, Edfu, and Elephantinê,—show that upper Egypt was once the place to which the land-tax from the productive delta was paid, and where the kings and priests who employed it resided. It has been even contended that Thebes itself was originally settled by emigrants from still higher regions of the river, and the remains yet found along the Nile in Nubia are analogous, both in style and in grandeur, to those in Thebais.[581] What is remarkable is, that both the one and the other are strikingly distinguished from the Pyramids, which alone remain to illustrate the site of the ancient Memphis. There are no pyramids either in upper Egypt or in Nubia; but on the Nile, above Nubia, near the Ethiopian Meroê, pyramids in great number, though of inferior dimensions, are again found. From whence, or in what manner, Egyptian institutions first took their rise, we have no means of determining: but there seems little to bear out the supposition of Heeren,[582] and other eminent authors, that they were transmitted down the Nile by Ethiopian colonists from Meroê. Herodotus certainly conceived Egyptians and Ethiopians (who in his time jointly occupied the border island of Elephantinê, which he had himself visited) as completely distinct from each other, in race and customs not less than in language,—the latter being generally of the rudest habits, of great stature, and still greater physical strength,—the chief part of them subsisting on meat and milk, and blest with unusual longevity. He knew of Meroê, as the Ethiopian metropolis and a considerable city, fifty-two days’ journey higher up the river than Elephantinê, but his informants had given him no idea of analogy between its institutions and those of Egypt;[583] it was the migration of a large number of the Egyptian military caste, during the reign of Psammetichus, into Ethiopia, which first communicated civilized customs, in his judgment, to these southern barbarians. If there be really any connection between the social phenomena of Egypt and those of Meroê, it seems more reasonable to treat the latter as derivative from the former.[584]
The population of Egypt was classified into certain castes or hereditary professions, of which the number was not exactly defined, and is represented differently by different authors. The priests stand clearly marked out, as the order richest, most powerful, and most venerated,—distributed all over the country, and possessing exclusively the means of reading and writing,[585] besides a vast amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the whole stock of medical and physical knowledge then attainable, and those rudiments of geometry, or rather land-measuring, which were so often called into use in a country annually inundated. To each god, and to each temple, throughout Egypt, lands and other properties belonged, whereby the numerous band of priests attached to him were maintained: it seems, too, that a farther portion of the lands of the kingdom was set apart for them in individual property, though on this point no certainty is attainable. Their ascendency, both direct and indirect, over the minds of the people, was immense; they prescribed that minute ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting the king himself,[586] was passed, and which was for themselves more full of harassing particularities than for any one else.[587] Every day in the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though Isis and Osiris were common to all,—and the priests of each god constituted a society apart, more or less important, according to the comparative celebrity of the temple: the high priests of Hephæstos, whose dignity was said to have been transmitted from father to son through a series of three hundred and forty-one generations[588] (commemorated by the like number of colossal statues, which Herodotus himself saw), were second in importance only to the king. The property of each temple included troops of dependents and slaves, who were stamped with “holy marks,”[589] and who must have been numerous in order to suffice for the large buildings and their constant visitors.
Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military caste or order, whose native name[590] indicated that they stood on the left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They were classified into Kalasiries and Hermotybii, who occupied lands in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in lower Egypt. The kalasiries had once amounted to one hundred and sixty thousand men, the hermotybii to two hundred and fifty thousand, when at the maximum of their population; but the highest point had long been past in the time of Herodotus. To each man of this soldier caste was assigned a portion of land equal to about six and a half English acres, free from any tax; what measures were taken to keep the lots of land in suitable harmony with a fluctuating number of holders, we know not. The statement of Herodotus relates to a time long past and gone, and describes what was believed, by the priests with whom he talked, to have been the primitive constitution of their country anterior to the Persian conquest: the like is still more true respecting the statement of Diodorus.[591] The latter says that the territory of Egypt was divided into three parts,—one part belonging to the king, another to the priests, and the remainder to the soldiers;[592] his language seems to intimate that every nome was so divided, and even that the three portions were equal, though he does not expressly say so. The result of these statements, combined with the history of Joseph in the book of Genesis, seems to be, that the lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded as privileged property and exempt from all burdens, while the remaining soil was considered as the property of the king, who, however, received from it a fixed proportion, one-fifth of the total produce, leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators.[593] We are told that Sethos, priest of the god Phtha (or Hephæstos) at Memphis, and afterwards named king, oppressed the military caste and deprived them of their lands, in revenge for which they withheld from him their aid when Egypt was invaded by Sennacherib,—and also that, in the reign of Psammetichus, a large number (two hundred and forty thousand) of these soldiers migrated into Ethiopia from a feeling of discontent, leaving their wives and children behind them.[594] It was Psammetichus who first introduced Ionian and Karian mercenaries into the country, and began innovations on the ancient Egyptian constitution; so that the disaffection towards him, on the part of the native soldiers, no longer permitted to serve as exclusive guards to the king, is not difficult to explain. The kalasiries and hermotybii were interdicted from every description of art or trade. There can be little doubt that under the Persians their lands were made subject to the tribute, and this may partly explain the frequent revolts which they maintained, with very considerable bravery, against the Persian kings.
Herodotus enumerates five other races (so he calls them), or castes, besides priests and soldiers,[595]—herdsmen, swineherds, tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots; an enumeration which perplexes us, inasmuch as it takes no account of the husbandmen, who must always have constituted the majority of the population. It is, perhaps, for this very reason that they are not comprised in the list,—not standing out specially marked or congregated together, like the five above named, and therefore not seeming to constitute a race apart. The distribution of Diodorus, who specifies (over and above priests and soldiers) husbandmen, herdsmen, and artificers, embraces much more completely the whole population.[596] It seems more the statement of a reflecting man, pushing out the principle of hereditary occupations to its consequences; (and the comments which the historian so abundantly interweaves with his narrative show that such was the character of the authorities which he followed);—while the list given by Herodotus comprises that which struck his observation. It seems that a certain proportion of the soil of the delta consisted of marsh land, including pieces of habitable ground, but impenetrable to an invading enemy, and favorable only to the growth of papyrus and other aquatic plants: other portions of the delta, as well as the upper valley, in parts where it widened to the eastward, were too wet for the culture of grain, though producing the richest herbage, and eminently suitable to the race of Egyptian herdsmen, who thus divided the soil with the husbandmen.[597] Herdsmen generally were held reputable, but the race of swineherds were hated and despised, from the extreme antipathy of all other Egyptians to the pig,—which animal yet could not be altogether proscribed, because there were certain peculiar occasions on which it was imperative to offer him in sacrifice to Selênê or Dionysus. Herodotus acquaints us that the swineherds were interdicted from all the temples, and that they always intermarried among themselves, other Egyptians disdaining such an alliance,—a statement which indirectly intimates that there was no standing objection against intermarriage of the remaining castes with each other. The caste or race of interpreters began only with the reign of Psammetichus, from the admission of Greek settlers, then for the first time tolerated in the country. Though they were half Greeks, the historian does not note them as of inferior account, except as compared with the two ascendant castes of soldiers and priests; moreover, the creation of a new caste shows that there was no consecrated or unchangeable total number.
Those whom Herodotus denominates tradesmen (καπήλοι) are doubtless identical with the artisans (τεχνῖται) specified by Diodorus,—the town population generally as distinguished from that of the country. During the three months of the year when Egypt was covered with water, festival days were numerous,—the people thronging by hundreds of thousands, in vast barges, to one or other of the many holy places, combining worship and enjoyment.[598] In Egypt, weaving was a trade, whereas in Greece it was the domestic occupation of females; and Herodotus treats it as one of those reversals of the order of nature which were seen only in Egypt,[599] that the weaver stayed at home plying his web while his wife went to market. The process of embalming bodies was elaborate and universal, giving employment to a large special class of men: the profusion of edifices, obelisks, sculpture and painting, all executed by native workmen, required a large body of trained sculptors,[600] who in the mechanical branch of their business attained a high excellence. Most of the animals in Egypt were objects of religious reverence, and many of them were identified in the closest manner with particular gods. The order of priests included a large number of hereditary feeders and tenders of these sacred animals.[601] Among the sacerdotal order were also found the computers of genealogies, the infinitely subdivided practitioners in the art of healing, etc.,[602] who enjoyed good reputation, and were sent for as surgeons to Cyrus and Darius. The Egyptian city population was thus exceedingly numerous, so that king Sethon, when called upon to resist an invasion without the aid of the military caste, might well be supposed to have formed an army out of “the tradesmen, the artisans, and the market-people:”[603] and Alexandria, at the commencement of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, acquired its numerous and active inhabitants at the expense of Memphis and the ancient towns of lower Egypt.