[53] Maspero, p. 18.
[54] Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient, p. 53. We believe that the division proposed by M. Maspero is, in fact, the best. It is the most suggestive of the truth as to the successive displacements of the political centre and the movement of history. We shall, however, have no hesitation in making use of the terms Ancient, Middle, and New Empire, as occasion arises.
[55] Mariette, Aperçu de l'Histoire d'Égypte, p. 66.
[56] Brugsch-Bey, Histoire de l'Égypt, pp. 6 and 7. Maspero's Histoire ancienne, p. 382, may also be consulted upon the character of the Ethiopian kingdom and the monuments of Napata. A good idea of this process of degradation may be gained by merely glancing through the plates to part v. of Lepsius's Denkmæler; plate 6, for example, shows what the caryatid became at Napata.
[57] Maspero, Histoire ancienne, p. 58. This affiliation of the king to the god was more than a figure of speech. In an inscription which is reproduced both at Ipsamboul and at Medinet-Abou, Ptah is made to speak in the following terms of Rameses II. and Rameses III. respectively: "I am thy father, as a god I have begotten thee; all thy members are divine; when I approached thy royal mother I took upon me the form of the sacred ram of Mendes" (line 3rd). This curious text has lately been interpreted by E. Naville (Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. vii. pp. 119-138). The monarchy of the Incas was founded upon an almost identical belief.
[58] See the account of the visit to Heliopolis of the conquering Ethiopian, Piankhi-Mer-Amen; we shall quote the text of this famous inscription in our chapter upon the Egyptian temple.
[59] Fr. Lenormant, Manuel d'Histoire ancienne, t. 1, pp. 485-486. The most celebrated of these is the famous Chamber of Ancestors from Karnak, which is now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.
[60] The beaters for the great hunts which took place in the Delta and the Fayoum were procured in the same fashion. These hunts were among the favourite pleasures of the kings and the great lords. See Maspero, Le Papyrus Mallet, p. 58 (in Recueil de Travaux, etc. t. 1).
[61] The work to which we here refer is the Histoire de l'Art Égyptien d'après les Monuments, 2 vols. folio. Arthus Bertrand, 1878. As the plates are not numbered, we can only refer to them generally.
[62] "The foundations of the great temple at Abydos, commenced by Seti I. and finished by Rameses II., consist of but a single course of generally ill-balanced masonry. Hence the settling which has taken place, and the deep fissure which divides the building in the direction of its major axis."—Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte, p. 59. The same writer speaks of Karnak in a similar strain: "The Pharaonic temples are built, as a rule, with extreme carelessness. The western pylon, for instance, fell because it was hollow, which made the inclination of the walls a source of weakness instead of strength."—Itineraire, p. 179.