The mechanical obedience and fixed habits of the mass of the Egyptian population (not priests or soldiers) was a point which made much impression upon Grecian observers; so that Solon is said to have introduced at Athens a custom prevalent in Egypt, whereby the nomarch or chief of each nome was required to investigate every man’s means of living, and to punish with death those who did not furnish evidence of some recognized occupation.[604] It does not seem that the institution of caste in Egypt, though insuring unapproachable ascendency to the priests and much consideration to the soldiers, was attended with any such profound debasement to the rest as that which falls upon the lowest caste or sudras in India,—no such gulf between them as that between the twice-born and the once-born in the religion of Brahma. Yet those stupendous works, which form the permanent memorials of the country, remain at the same time as proofs of the oppressive exactions of the kings, and of the reckless caprice with which the lives as well as the contributions of the people were lavished. One hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians were said to have perished in the digging of the canal, which king Nekôs began but did not finish, between the Pelusian arm of the Nile and the Red sea;[605] while the construction of the two great pyramids, attributed to the kings Cheops and Chephrên, was described to Herodotus by the priests as a period of exhausting labor and extreme suffering to the whole Egyptian people,—and yet the great Labyrinth,[606] said to have been built by the dodekarchs, appeared to him a more stupendous work than the Pyramids, so that the toil employed upon it cannot have been less destructive. The moving of such vast masses of stone as were seen in the ancient edifices both of upper and lower Egypt, with the imperfect mechanical resources then existing, must have tasked the efforts of the people yet more severely than the excavation of the half-finished canal of Nekôs. Indeed, the associations with which the Pyramids were connected, in the minds of those with whom Herodotus conversed, were of the most odious character. Such vast works, Aristotle observes, are suitable to princes who desire to consume the strength and break the spirit of their people. With Greek despots, perhaps, such an intention may have been sometimes deliberately conceived; but the Egyptian kings may be presumed to have followed chiefly caprice, or love of pomp,—sometimes views of a permanent benefit to be achieved,—as in the canal of Nekôs and the vast reservoir of Mœris,[607] with its channel joining the river,—when they thus expended the physical strength and even the lives of their subjects.
Sanctity of animal life generally, veneration for particular animals in particular nomes, and abstinence on religious grounds from certain vegetables, were among the marked features of Egyptian life, and served preëminently to impress upon the country that air of singularity which foreigners like Herodotus remarked in it. The two specially marked bulls, called apis at Memphis, and mnevis at Heliopolis, seem to have enjoyed a sort of national worship:[608] the ibis, the cat, and the dog were throughout most of the nomes venerated during life, embalmed like men after death, and if killed, avenged by the severest punishment of the offending party: but the veneration of the crocodile was confined to the neighborhood of Thebes and the lake of Mœris. Such veins of religious sentiment, which distinguished Egypt from Phenicia and Assyria, not less than from Greece, were explained by the native priests after their manner to Herodotus, though he declines from pious scruples to communicate what was told to him.[609] They seem remnants continued from a very early stage of Fetichism,—and the attempts of different persons, noticed in Diodorus and Plutarch, to account for their origin, partly by legends, partly by theory, will give little satisfaction to any one.[610]
Though Thebes first, and Memphis afterwards, were undoubtedly the principal cities of Egypt, yet if the dynasties of Manetho are at all trustworthy, even in their general outline, the Egyptian kings were not taken uniformly either from one or the other. Manetho enumerates on the whole twenty-six different dynasties or families of kings, anterior to the conquest of the country by Kambysês,—the Persian kings between Kambysês and the revolt of the Egyptian Amyrtæus, in 405 B. C. constituting his twenty-seventh dynasty. Of these twenty-six dynasties, beginning with the year 5702 B. C., the first two are Thinites,—the third and fourth, Memphites,—the fifth, from the island of Elephantinê,—the sixth, seventh, and eighth, again Memphites,—the ninth and tenth, Herakleopolites,—the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, Diospolites or Thebans,—the fourteenth, Choïtes,—the fifteenth and sixteenth, Hyksos, or shepherd kings,—the seventeenth, shepherd kings, overthrown and succeeded by Diospolites,—the eighteenth (B. C. 1655-1327, in which is included Rameses, the great Egyptian conqueror, identified by many authors with Sesostris, 1411 B. C.), nineteenth, and twentieth, Diospolites,—the twenty-first, Tanites,—the twenty-second, Bubastites,—the twenty-third, again Tanites,—the twenty-fourth, Saïtes,—the twenty-fifth, Ethiopians, beginning with Sabakôn, whom Herodotus also mentions,—the twenty-sixth, Saïtes, including Psammetichus, Nekôs, Apries or Uaphris, and Amasis or Amosis. We see by these lists, that, according to the manner in which Manetho construed the antiquities of his country, several other cities of Egypt, besides Thebes and Memphis, furnished kings to the whole territory; but we cannot trace any correspondence between the nomes which furnished kings, and those which Herodotus mentions to have been exclusively occupied by the military caste. Many of the separate nomes were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked local character each to itself, religious as well as political; though the whole of Egypt, from Elephantinê to Pelasium and Kanôpus, is said to have always constituted one kingdom, from the earliest times which the native priests could conceive.
We are to consider this kingdom as engaged, long before the time when Greeks were admitted into it,[611] in a standing caravan-commerce with Phenicia, Palestine, Arabia, and Assyria. Ancient Egypt having neither vines nor olives, imported both wine and oil,[612] while it also needed especially the frankincense and aromatic products peculiar to Arabia, for its elaborate religious ceremonies. Towards the last quarter of the eighth century B. C. (a little before the time when the dynasty of the Mermnadæ in Lydia was commencing in the person of Gygês), we trace events tending to alter the relation which previously subsisted between these countries, by continued aggressions on the part of the Assyrian monarchs of Nineveh,—Salmaneser and Sennacherib. The former having conquered and led into captivity the ten tribes of Israel, also attacked the Phenician towns on the adjoining coast: Sidon, Palæ-Tyrus, and Akê yielded to him, but Tyre itself resisted, and having endured for five years the hardships of a blockade with partial obstruction of its continental aqueducts, was enabled by means of its insular position to maintain independence. It was just at this period that the Grecian establishments in Sicily were forming, and I have already remarked that the pressure of the Assyrians upon Phenicia, probably had some effect in determining that contraction of the Phenician occupations in Sicily, which really took place (B. C. 730-720). Respecting Sennacherib, we are informed by the Old Testament, that he invaded Judæa, and by Herodotus (who calls him king of the Assyrians and Arabians), that he assailed the pious king Sethos in Egypt: in both cases his army experienced a miraculous repulse and destruction. After this, the Assyrians of Nineveh, either torn by intestine dissension, or shaken by the attacks of the Medes, appear no longer active; but about the year 630 B. C. the Assyrians or Chaldæans of Babylon manifest a formidable and increasing power. It is, moreover, during this century that the old routine of the Egyptian kings was broken through, and a new policy displayed towards foreigners by Psammetichus,—which, while it rendered Egypt more formidable to Judæa and Phenicia, opened to Grecian ships and settlers the hitherto inaccessible Nile.
Herodotus draws a marked distinction between the history of Egypt before Psammetichus and the following period: the former he gives as the narration of the priests, without professing to guarantee it,—the latter he evidently believes to be well ascertained.[613] And we find that, from Psammetichus downward, Herodotus and Manetho are in tolerable harmony, whereas even for the sovereigns occupying the last fifty years before Psammetichus, there are many and irreconcilable discrepancies between them;[614] but they both agree in stating that Psammetichus reigned fifty-four years. So important an event as the first admission of the Greeks into Egypt, was made, by the informants of Herodotus, to turn upon two prophecies. After the death of Sethos, king and priest of Hephæstos, who left no son, Egypt became divided among twelve kings, of whom Psammetichus was one: it was under this dodekarchy, according to Herodotus, that the marvellous labyrinth near the lake of Mœris was constructed. The twelve lived and reigned for some time in perfect harmony, but a prophecy had been made known to them, that the one who should make libations in the temple of Hephæstos out of a brazen goblet would reign over all Egypt. Now it happened that one day, when they all appeared armed in that temple to offer sacrifice, the high priest brought out by mistake only eleven golden goblets instead of twelve, and Psammetichus, left without a goblet, made use of his brass helmet as a substitute. Being thus considered, though unintentionally, to have fulfilled the condition of the prophecy, by making libations in a brazen goblet, he became an object of terror to his eleven colleagues, who united to despoil him of his dignity, and drove him into the inaccessible marshes. In this extremity, he sent to seek counsel from the oracle of Lêtô at Butô, and received for answer an assurance, that “vengeance would come to him by the hands of brazen men showing themselves from the seaward.” His faith was for the moment shaken by so startling a conception as that of brazen men for his allies: but the prophetic veracity of the priest at Butô was speedily shown, when an astonished attendant came to acquaint him, in his lurking-place, that brazen men were ravaging the sea-coast of the delta. It was a body of Ionian and Karian soldiers, who had landed for pillage, and the messenger who came to inform Psammetichus had never before seen men in an entire suit of brazen armor. That prince, satisfied that these were the allies whom the oracle had marked out for him, immediately entered into negotiation with the Ionians and Karians, enlisted them in his service, and by their aid in conjunction with his other partisans overpowered the other eleven kings,—thus making himself the one ruler of Egypt.[615]
Such was the tale by which the original alliance of an Egyptian king with Grecian mercenaries, and the first introduction of Greeks into Egypt, was accounted for and dignified. What followed is more authentic and more important. Psammetichus provided a settlement and lands for his new allies, on the Pelusiac or eastern branch of the Nile, a little below Bubastis. The Ionians were planted on one side of the river, the Karians on the other; and the place was made to serve as a military position, not only for the defence of the eastern border, but also for the support of the king himself against malcontents at home: it was called the Stratopěda, or the Camps.[616] He took pains, moreover, to facilitate the intercourse between them and the neighboring inhabitants, by causing a number of Egyptian children to be domiciled with them, in order to learn the Greek language; and hence sprung the interpreters; who, in the time of Herodotus, constituted a permanent hereditary caste or breed.
Though the chief purpose of this first foreign settlement in Egypt, between Pelusium and Bubastis, was to create an independent military force, and with it a fleet for the king, yet it was of course an opening both for communication and traffic to all Greeks and to all Phenicians, such as had never before been available. And it was speedily followed by the throwing open of the Kanôpic or westernmost branch of the river for the purposes of trade specially. According to a statement of Strabo, it was in the reign of Psammetichus that the Milesians with a fleet of thirty ships made a descent on that part of the coast, first built a fort in the immediate neighborhood, and then presently founded the town of Naukratis, on the right bank of the Kanôpic Nile. There is much that is perplexing in this affirmation of Strabo; but on the whole I am inclined to think that the establishment of the Greek factories and merchants at Naukratis may be considered as dating in the reign of Psammetichus,[617]—Naukratis being a city of Egyptian origin, in which these foreigners were permitted to take up their abode,—not a Greek colony, as Strabo would have us believe. The language of Herodotus seems rather to imply that it was king Amasis—between whom and the death of Psammetichus there intervened nearly half a century—who first allowed Greeks to settle at Naukratis; but on comparing what the historian tells us respecting the courtezan Rhodôpis and the brother of Sapphô the Poetess, it is evident that there must have been both Greek trade and Greek establishments in that town long before Amasis came to the throne. We may consider, then, that both the eastern and western mouths of the Nile became open to the Greeks in the days of Psammetichus; the former as leading to the head-quarters of the mercenary Greek troops in Egyptian pay,—the latter for purposes of trade.
While this event afforded to the Greeks a valuable enlargement both of their traffic and of their field of observation, it seems to have occasioned an internal revolution in Egypt. The nome of Bubastis, in which the new military settlement of foreigners was planted, is numbered among those occupied by the Egyptian military caste:[618] whether their lands were in part taken away from them, we do not know; but the mere introduction of such foreigners must have appeared an abomination, to the strong conservative feeling of ancient Egypt. And Psammetichus treated the native soldiers in a manner which showed of how much less account they had become since the “brazen helmets” had got footing in the land. It had hitherto been the practice to distribute such portions of the military as were on actual service in three different posts: at Daphnê, near Pelusium, on the north-eastern frontier,—at Marea, on the north-western frontier, near the spot where Alexandria was afterwards built,—and at Elephantinê, on the southern or Ethiopian boundary. Psammetichus, having no longer occasion for their services on the eastern frontier, since the formation of the mercenary camp, accumulated them in greater number and detained them for an unusual time at the two other stations, especially at Elephantinê. Here, as Herodotus tells us, they remained for three years unrelieved, and Diodorus adds that Psammetichus assigned to those native troops who fought conjointly with the mercenaries, the least honorable post in the line; until at length discontent impelled them to emigrate in a body of two hundred and forty thousand men into Ethiopia, leaving their wives and children behind in Egypt,—nor could they be induced by any instances on the part of Psammetichus to return. This memorable incident,[619] which is said to have given rise to a settlement in the southernmost regions of Ethiopia, called by the Greeks the Automoli (though the emigrant soldiers still called themselves by their old Egyptian name), attests the effect produced by the introduction of the foreign mercenaries in lowering the position of the native military. The number of the emigrants, however, is a point noway to be relied upon: we shall presently see that there were enough of them left behind to renew effectively the struggle for their lost dignity.
It was probably with his Ionian and Karian troops that Psammetichus carried on those warlike operations in Syria which filled so large a proportion of his long and prosperous reign of fifty-four years.[620] He besieged the city of Azôtus in Syria for twenty-nine years, until he took it,—the longest blockade which the historian had ever heard of: moreover, he was in that country when the destroying Scythian nomads, who had defeated the Median king Kyaxarês and possessed themselves of Upper Asia, advanced to invade Egypt,—an undertaking which Psammetichus, by large presents, induced them to abandon.[621]
There were, however, more powerful enemies than the Scythians, against whom he and his son Nekôs—who succeeded him, seemingly about 604 B. C.[622]—had to contend in Syria and the lands adjoining. It is just at this period, during the reigns of Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar (B. C. 625-561) that the Chaldæans or Assyrians of Babylon appear at the maximum of their power and aggressive disposition, while the Assyrians of Ninus or Nineveh lose their substantive position through the taking of that town by Kyaxarês (about B. C. 600),—the greatest height which the Median power ever reached. Between the Egyptian Nekôs and his grandson Apriês—Pharaoh Necho and Pharaoh Hophra of the Old Testament—on the one side, and the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar on the other, Judæa and Phenicia form the intermediate subject of quarrel: and the political independence of the Phenician towns is extinguished never again to be recovered. At the commencement of his reign, it appears, Nekôs was chiefly anxious to extend the Egyptian commerce, for which purpose he undertook two measures, both of astonishing boldness for that age,—a canal between the lower part of the eastern or Pelusiac Nile, and the inmost corner of the Red sea,—and the circumnavigation of Africa; his great object being to procure a water-communication between the Mediterranean and the Red sea. He began the canal—much about the same time as Nebuchadnezzar executed his canal from Babylon to Terêdon—with such reckless determination, that one hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians are said to have perished in the work; but either from this disastrous proof of the difficulty, or, as Herodotus represents, from the terrors of a menacing prophecy which reached him, he was compelled to desist. Next, he accomplished the circumnavigation of Africa, already above alluded to; but in this way too he found it impracticable to procure any available communication such as he wished.[623] It is plain that in both these enterprises he was acting under Phenician and Greek instigation; and we may remark that the point of the Nile from whence the canal took its departure, was close upon the mercenary camps or stratopeda. Being unable to connect the two seas together, he built and equipped an armed naval force both upon the one and the other, and entered upon aggressive enterprises, naval as well as military. His army, on marching into Syria, was met at Megiddo—Herodotus says Magdolum—by Josiah king of Judah, who was himself slain and so completely worsted, that Jerusalem fell into the power of the conqueror, and became tributary to Egypt. It deserves to be noted that Nekôs sent the raiment which he had worn on the day of his victory, as an offering to the holy temple of Apollo at Branchidæ near Milêtus,[624]—the first recorded instance of a donation from an Egyptian king to a Grecian temple, and a proof that Hellenic affinities were beginning to take effect upon him: probably we may conclude that a large proportion of his troops were Milesians.