Then the Prince of Bekhten sent a second messenger to His Majesty, beseeching him to send a god to Bekhten to overcome the evil spirit, and he arrived in Egypt nine years after the arrival of the first ambassador. Again the king was celebrating a festival of Amen, and when he heard of the request of the Prince of Bekhten he went and stood before the statue of Khensu, called "Nefer-hetep," and he said, "O my fair lord, I present myself a second time before thee on behalf of the daughter of the Prince of Bekhten." He then went on to ask the god to transmit his power to Khensu, "Pa-ari-sekher-em-Uast," the god who drives out the evil spirits which attack men, and to permit him to go to Bekhten and release the Princess from the power of the evil spirit. And the statue of Khensu Nefer-hetep bowed its head twice at each part of the petition, and this god bestowed a fourfold portion of his spirit and power on Khensu Pa-ari-sekher-em-Uast. Then the king ordered that the god should set out on his journey to Bekhten carried in a boat, which was accompanied by five smaller boats and by chariots and horses. The journey occupied seventeen months, and the god was welcomed on his arrival by the Prince of Bekhten and his nobles with suitable homage and many cries of joy. The god was taken to the place where Princess Bentresht was, and he used his magical power upon her with such good effect that she was made whole at once. The evil spirit who had possessed her came out of her and said to Khensu: "Welcome, welcome, O great god, who dost drive away the spirits who attack men. Bekhten is thine; its people, both men and women, are thy servants, and I myself am thy servant. I am going to depart to the place whence I came, so that thy heart may be content concerning the matter about which thou hast come. I beseech Thy Majesty to give the order that thou and I and the Prince of Bekhten may celebrate a festival together." The god Khensu bowed his head as a sign that he approved of the proposal, and told his priest to make arrangements with the Prince of Bekhten for offering up a great offering. Whilst this conversation was passing between the evil spirit and the god the soldiers stood by in a state of great fear. The Prince of Bekhten made the great offering before Khensu and the evil spirit, and the Prince and the god and the spirit rejoiced greatly. When the festival was ended the evil spirit, by the command of Khensu, "departed to the place which he loved." The Prince and all his people were immeasurably glad at the happy result, and he decided that he would consider the god to be a gift to him, and that he would not let him return to Egypt. So the god Khensu stayed for three years and nine months in Bekhten, but one day, whilst the Prince was sleeping on his bed, he had a vision in which he saw Khensu in the form of a hawk leave his shrine and mount up into the air, and then depart to Egypt. When he awoke he said to the priest of Khensu, "The god who was staying with us hath departed to Egypt; let his chariot also depart." And the Prince sent off the statue of the god to Egypt, with rich gifts of all kinds and a large escort of soldiers and horses. In due course the party arrived in Egypt, and ascended to Thebes, and the god Khensu Pa-ari-sekher-em-Uast went into the temple of Khensu Nefer-hetep, and laid all the gifts which he had received from the Prince of Bekhten before him, and kept nothing for his own temple. This he did as a proper act of gratitude to Khensu Nefer-hetep, whose gift of a fourfold portion of his spirit had enabled him to overcome the power of the evil spirit that possessed the Princess of Bekhten. Thus Khensu returned from Bekhten in safety, and he re-entered his temple in the winter, in the thirty-third year of the reign of Rameses II. The situation of Bekhten is unknown, but the name is probably not imaginary, and the country was perhaps a part of Western Asia. The time occupied by the god Khensu in getting there does not necessarily indicate that Bekhten was a very long way off, for a mission of the kind moved slowly in those leisurely days, and the priest of the god would probably be much delayed by the people in the towns and villages on the way, who would entreat him to ask the god to work cures on the diseased and afflicted that were brought to him. We must remember that when the Nubians made a treaty with Diocletian they stipulated that the goddess Isis should be allowed to leave her temple once a year, and to make a progress through the country so that men and women might ask her for boons, and receive them.
CHAPTER VIII
HISTORICAL LITERATURE
The historical period of Egyptian history, that is to say, the period during which Egypt was ruled by kings, each one calling himself Nesu-bati, or "King of the South, King of the North," covers about 4400 years according to some Egyptologists, and 3300 years according to others. Of the kings of All Egypt who reigned during the period we know the names of about two hundred, but only about one hundred and fifty have left behind them monuments that enable us to judge of their power and greatness. There is no evidence to show that the Egyptians ever wrote history in our sense of the word, and there is not in existence any native work that can be regarded as a history of Egypt. The only known attempt in ancient times to write a history of Egypt was that made by Manetho, a skilled scribe and learned man, who, in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (289-246 B.C.), undertook to write a history of the country, which was to be placed in the Great Library at Alexandria. The only portion of this History that has come down to us is the List of Kings, which formed a section of it; this List, in a form more or less accurate, is extant in the works of Africanus and Eusebius. According to the former 553 or 554 kings ruled over Egypt in 5380 years, and according to the latter 421 or 423 kings ruled over Egypt in 4547 or 4939 years. It is quite certain that the principal acts and wars of each king were recorded by the court scribes, or official "remembrancer" or "recorder" of the day, and there is no doubt that such records were preserved in the "House of Books," or Library, of the local temple for reference if necessary. If this were not so it would have been impossible for the scribes of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties to compile the lists of kings found on the Palermo Stone, and in the Turin Papyrus, and on the Tablets set up by Seti I and Rameses II at Abydos, and on the Tablet of Ancestors at Karnak. These Lists, however, seem to show that the learned scribes of the later period were not always sure of the true sequence of the names, and that when they were dealing with the names of the kings of the first two dynasties they were not always certain even about the correct spelling and reading of their names. The reason why the Egyptians did not write the history of their country from a general point of view is easily explained. Each king wished to be thought as great as possible, and each king's courtiers lost no opportunity of showing that they believed him to be the greatest king who had sat on the throne of Egypt. To magnify the deeds of his ancestors was neither politic nor safe, nor did it lead to favours or promotion. In no inscription of their descendants do we find the mighty deeds and great conquests of Amenemhāt III, or of Usertsen III, or of Thothmes III, praised or described, and no court scribe ever dared to draft a text stating that these were truly three of the greatest kings of Egypt. When a local chief succeeded in making himself king of All Egypt he did not concern himself with preserving records of the great deeds of the king whose throne he had seized. When foreign foes invaded Egypt and conquered it their followers raided the towns, burnt and destroyed all that could be got rid of, and smashed the monuments recording the prowess of the king they had overthrown. The net result of all this is that the history of Egypt can only be partially constructed, and that the sources of our information are a series of texts that were written to glorify individual kings, and not to describe the history of a dynasty, or the general development of the country, or the working out of a policy. In attempting to draw up a connected account of a reign or period the funerary inscriptions of high officials are often more useful than the royal inscriptions. In the following pages are given extracts from annals, building inscriptions, narratives of conquests, and "triumph inscriptions" of an official character; specimens of the funerary inscriptions that describe military expeditions, and supply valuable information about the general history of events, will be given in the chapter on Biographical Inscriptions.
The earliest known annals are found on a stone which is preserved in the Museum at Palermo, and which for this reason is called "The Palermo Stone"; the Egyptian text was first published by Signor A. Pellegrini in 1896. How the principal events of certain years of the reigns of kings from the Predynastic Period to the middle of the fifth dynasty are noted is shown by the following:
[Reign of] Seneferu. Year ...
The building of Tuataua ships of mer wood of a hundred capacity, and 60 royal boats of sixteen capacity.