It does not seem too much to hope that the continuation of such inquiries may ultimately enable us to solve several points connected with early Egyptian history. We read in Brugsch:—[114]
"According to Greek tradition, the primitive abode of the Egyptian people is to be sought in Ethiopia, and the honour of founding their civilisation should be given to a band of priests from Meroë. Descending the Nile, they are supposed to have settled near the later city of Thebes, and to have established the first state with a theocratic form of government.
"But it is not to Ethiopian priests that the Egyptian Empire owes its origin, its form of government, and its high civilisation; much rather was it the Egyptians themselves that first ascended the river to found in Ethiopia temples, cities, and fortified places, and to diffuse the blessings of a civilised state among the rude dark-coloured population.
... "Strange to say, the whole number of the buildings in stone, as yet known and examined, which were erected on both sides of the river by Egyptian and Ethiopian kings, furnish incontrovertible proof that the long series of temples, cities, sepulchres, and monuments in general, exhibit a distinct chronological order, of which the starting-point is found in the pyramids, at the apex of the Delta."
It must be emphatically stated that the results obtained from these monuments, studying them from the astronomical point of view, lead to a very different conclusion. Instead of one series, there are distinctly two (leaving out of consideration the great pyramid builders at Gîzeh) absolutely dissimilar astronomically; and instead of one set of temple-builders going up the river, there were at least two sets, one going up the river building temples to north stars, the other going down building temples to south stars; and the two streams practically met at Thebes, or at all events they were both very fully represented there, either together or successively.
The double origin of the people thus suggested on astronomical grounds may be the reason of the name of "double country," used especially in the titles of kings, of the employment of two crowns, and finally of the supposed sovereignty of Set over the north, and of Horus over the south divisions of the kingdom.[115]
Only by the time of Seneferu was there anything like an amalgamation of the peoples. He first was "King of the two Egypts,"[116] while later Chephren called himself "Horus and Sit"[117]—a distinct indication, I take it, that the influence of Upper Egypt was already felt as early as Seneferu, and, I think, much earlier, although all temple trace of it is lost.
SHIP OF HĀT-SHEPSET LADEN WITH PRODUCE FROM PUN-T. (Dêr el-Bahari Inscriptions.)
With regard to the start-point of the temple-builders who came down the river, there is no orientation evidence, for the reason that there is little or no information from the regions south of Naga. At Naga (lat. 16° 18′ N.), Meroë (lat. 16° 55′ N.), Gebel Barkal and Nuri (both in lat. 18° 30′ N.), there is information of the most important kind, but beyond Naga there is a gap; but since important structures were erected at the places named in early times (my inquiries suggest 3000-4000 B.C.), it is probable that the peoples who built them stretched further towards the equator.