A Manual of Ancient History

by M. E. Thalheimer

167. B. C. 588-569. His grandson, Apries, the Pharaoh-hophra of Scripture, resumed the warlike schemes of Necho. He besieged Sidon, fought a naval battle with Tyre, and made an unsuccessful alliance with Zedekiah, king of Judah, against Nebuchadnezzar. He was deposed, and his successor, Ama´sis, held his crown at first as a tributary to the Babylonian. He afterward made himself independent; and many monuments throughout Egypt bear witness to his liberal encouragement of the arts, while his foreign policy enriched the country. He was on friendly terms with Greece and her colonies, and many Greek merchants settled in Egypt.

168. Alarmed by the increasing power of Persia, he sought to strengthen himself by alliances with Crœsus of Lydia, and Polycrates of Samos. The precaution was ineffectual, but Amasis did not live to see the ruin of his country. Cambyses, king of Persia, was already on his march at the head of a great army, when Psammen´itus, son of Amasis, succeeded to the throne of Egypt. The new king hastened to meet the invader at Pelusium, but was defeated and compelled to shut himself up in Memphis, his capital, where the Persians now advanced to besiege him. The city was taken and its king made captive, after a reign of only six months. A little later he was put to death; and the Kingdom of Egypt, after a thousand years of independent existence, became a mere province of the Persian Empire, B. C. 525.

RECAPITULATION.

At a very early period Egypt was highly civilized, but not united, for it consisted of many independent nomes governed by priests. Menes built Memphis, and founded the Empire of Upper and Lower Egypt, which was ruled by twenty-six dynasties before the Persian Conquest. Sesorcheres founded the Third Dynasty; Sesonchosis patronized all the arts, and his son improved the laws and worship. The Fourth Dynasty built many pyramids, while the Second and Fifth reigned as dependents in This and Elephantine. Egypt was afterward divided into five kingdoms, and became subject to the Hyksos from Asia, who enslaved the people, and after a time subdued the whole country, except Xois in the Delta. During the early part of their invasion, the Twelfth Dynasty reigned at Thebes in great power and splendor.

B. C. 1525, Amosis led a revolt which expelled the Hyksos, and founded the Eighteenth Dynasty at Memphis. Several queens were highly honored. The people were prosperous, but the captive Hebrews were oppressed. Thothmes III built many palaces; Seti re-conquered Syria; and his son, Rameses the Great, gained victories in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the reign of Menephthah, the Israelites were led out of Egypt by Moses. Under the Twentieth Dynasty, the art, enterprise, and power of Egypt declined. The Twenty-first Dynasty was composed of priests; the Twenty-second, of soldiers. The Twenty-fourth was overthrown by Sabaco the Ethiopian; the Twenty-fifth, which he founded, was, in turn, reduced by the Assyrians. After thirty years’ subjection, Egypt was delivered and united by Psammetichus, with the aid of foreign troops. Necho, his son, was successful in many naval and military enterprises, but was defeated at last by Nebuchadnezzar, in the battle of Carchemish. Apries was deposed by the same king, and Amasis came to the throne as a viceroy of Babylon. His son, Psammenitus, was conquered by Cambyses, and Egypt became a Persian province.

RELIGION OF EGYPT.

169. The religion of the ancient Egyptians was a perplexing mixture of grand conceptions and degrading superstitions. No other ancient people had so firm an assurance of immortality, or felt its motives so intimately affecting their daily life; yet no other carried its idolatries to so debasing and ridiculous an extreme. The contradiction is partly solved if we remember two distinctions: the first applying chiefly to the ancient and heathen world, between the religion of priests and people; the second every-where existing, even in the One True Faith, between theory and practice—between ideal teaching and the personal character of those who receive it.

170. The sacred books of the Egyptians contained the system adopted by the priests. Their fundamental doctrine was that God is one, unrepresented, invisible. But as God acts upon the world, his various attributes or modes of manifestation were represented in various forms. As the Creator, he was Phtha; as the Revealer, he was Am´un; as the Benefactor and the Judge of men, he was Osiris; and so on through an endless list of primary, secondary, and tertiary characters, which to the uneducated became so many separate divinities. Some portion of his divine life was even supposed to reside in plants and animals, which were accordingly cherished and worshiped by the ignorant. For what to the wise were merely symbols, to the people became distinct objects of adoration; and the Egyptian priests, like all other heathen philosophers, disdained to spread abroad the light which they possessed. They despised the common people, whom they judged incapable of apprehending the sacred mysteries, and taught them only those convenient doctrines which would render them submissive to kingly and priestly authority.

171. The people, then, believed in eight gods of the first order, twelve of the second, and seven of the third; but each of these was worshiped under many titles, or as connected with different places. Isis was, therefore, surnamed Myriônyma, or “with ten thousand names.” The sun and the moon were admitted to their worship; the former as representing the life-giving power of the deity, the latter as the regulator of time and the messenger of heaven. The moon was figured as the Ibis-headed Thoth, who corresponds to the Greek Hermes, the god of letters and recorder of all human actions.

172. A principle of evil was worshiped, in very early times, under the name of Seth, the Satan of Egyptian mythology. He was figured on a monument as instructing a king in the use of a bow. Sin is elsewhere represented as a great serpent, the enemy of gods and men, slain by the spear of Horus, the child of Isis. It seems impossible to doubt that the Egyptians had preserved some traditions of the promises made to Eve. At a later period the worship of the evil principle was abolished, and the square-eared images of Seth were chiseled off from the monuments.