140. At the same period with the invasion, a Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, the Osortasidæ, arose at Thebes, and became one of the most powerful tribes of native rulers. They obtained paramount authority over the kingdoms of Elephantine and Heracleopolis, held the Sinaitic Peninsula, and extended their victorious arms into Arabia and Ethiopia. Sesortasen I ruled all Upper Egypt. Under the second and third sovereigns of that name the kingdom reached its highest prosperity. The third Sesortasen enriched the country by many canals, and left monuments of his power at Senneh, near the southern border of the empire, which still excite the wonder of travelers. The largest edifice and the most useful work in Egypt were executed by his successor, Ammenemes III. The first was the Labyrinth in the Faioom, which Herodotus visited, and declared that it surpassed all human works. It contained three thousand rooms; fifteen hundred of these were under ground, and contained the mummies of kings and of the sacred crocodiles. The walls of the fifteen hundred upper apartments were of solid stone, entirely covered with sculpture. The other work of Ammenemes was the Lake Moëris. This was a natural reservoir formed near a bend of the Nile; but he so improved it by art as to retain and carefully distribute the gifts of the river, and thus insure the fruitfulness of the province.
141. A weaker race succeeded, and the calamities of Lower Egypt were now extended throughout the land. The Hyksos advanced to the southward, and the fugitive kings of Thebes sought refuge in Ethiopia. With the exception of the Xoites, intrenched in the marshes of the Delta, all Egypt became for a time subject to the Shepherds. They burned cities, destroyed temples, and made slaves of all the people whom they did not put to death. Two native dynasties reigned at Memphis, and one at Heracleopolis, but they were tributary to the conquerors.
142. Some have supposed that the Pyramids were erected by these Shepherd Kings. But the best authorities describe the race as rude, ignorant, and destitute of arts, as compared with the Egyptians, either before or after their invasion; and after the long deluge of barbarism was swept back, we find religion, language, and art—kept, doubtless, and cultivated in seclusion by the learned class—precisely as they were before the interruption. The absence of records during this period would alone prove the lack of learning in the ruling race. Baron Bunsen supposes the Hyksos to have been identical with the Philistines of Palestine. Some of them took refuge in Crete when they were driven out of Egypt, and re-appeared in Palestine from the west about the same time that the Israelites entered it from the east. In any case, a gap of nearly four hundred years occurs in Egyptian history between the old and the new empires, during which the Holy City of Thebes was in the hands of barbarians, the annals ceased, and the names of the kings, either native or foreign, are for the most part unknown.
143. Third Period. B. C. 1525-525. After their long humiliation, the people of Egypt rallied for a great national revolt, under the Theban king Amo´sis, and drove the invaders, after a hard-fought contest, from their soil. Now came the brightest period of Egyptian history. Amosis was rewarded with the undivided sovereignty, and became the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Memphis was made the imperial capital. Many temples were repaired, as we may learn from memoranda preserved in the quarries of Syene and the Upper Nile. Aahmes, the wife of Amosis, bears the surname Nefru-ari, “the good, glorious woman,” and seems to have been held in the highest honor ever ascribed to a queen. She was a Theban princess of Ethiopian blood, and probably had many provinces for her dowry. Amosis died B. C. 1499.
144. For eight hundred years Egypt continued a single, consolidated kingdom. During this time art obtained its highest perfection; the great temple-palaces of Thebes were built; numerous obelisks, “fingers of the sun,” pointed heavenward; and the people, who had long groaned under a cruel servitude, enjoyed, under the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties, the protection of a mild and well-organized government.
145. It may be feared that the Egyptians wreaked upon a captive nation within their own borders their resentment against their late oppressors. The Hebrews grew and multiplied in Egypt, and their lives were made bitter with hard bondage. Many of the vast brick constructions of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties may have been erected by the captive Hebrews, who are expressly said to have built the two treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.
146. Royal women were treated with higher respect in Egypt than in any other ancient monarchy. Thothmes I, the third king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, was succeeded by his daughter, Mesphra or Amen-set, who reigned as regent for her younger brother, Thothmes II. He died a minor, and she held the same office, or, perhaps, reigned jointly with her next younger brother, Thothmes III; but not with his cordial consent, for when she, too, died, after a regency of twenty-two years, he caused her name and image to be effaced from all the sculptures in which they had appeared together.
147. B. C. 1461-1414. This king, Thothmes III, is distinguished not more for his foreign wars than for the magnificent palaces and temples which he built at Karnac, Thebes, Memphis, Heliopolis, Coptos, and other places. Hardly an ancient city in Egypt or Nubia is unmarked by remains of his edifices. The history of his twelve successive campaigns is recorded in sculpture upon the walls of his palace at Thebes. He drove the Hyksos from their last stronghold, Ava´ris, where they had been shut up since the days of his father. The two obelisks near Alexandria, which some Roman wit called Cleopa´tra’s Needles, bear the name of this king. His military expeditions extended both to the north and south; inscriptions on his monuments declare that he took tribute from Nineveh, Hit (or Is), and Babylon.
B. C. 1400-1364.
148. His grandson, Thothmes IV, caused the carving of the great Sphinx near the Pyramids. Amunoph III, his successor, was a great and powerful monarch. He adorned the country by magnificent buildings, and improved its agriculture by the construction of tanks or reservoirs to regulate irrigation. The two Colossi near Thebes, one of which is known as the vocal Memnon, date from his reign; but the Amenophe´um, of which they were ornaments, is now in ruins. Amunoph maintained the warlike fame of his ancestors by expeditions into all the countries invaded by Thothmes III. He is styled upon his monuments, “Pacificator of Egypt and Tamer of the Libyan Shepherds.” He built the gorgeous palace of Luxor, which he connected with the temple at Karnac by an avenue of a thousand sphinxes. He made a similar avenue also at Thebes, lined with colossal sitting statues of the cat-headed goddess Pasht (Bubastis).