The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 01

by Unknown

Notwithstanding the light thrown upon Egyptian history by the records from the monuments, the lists of the priest Manetho still form the basis of all computations of Egyptian chronology of the earlier periods. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, the records themselves, though in the aggregate wonderfully voluminous, yet, so far as deciphered, cover, after all, only scattered bits of the long periods of time involved. Mostly the individual records are the glorifications of the deeds of a single king. Some kings left scanty records, and often even these were wilfully destroyed by some subsequent ruler of another dynasty. Or, a king might leave the record of his predecessor, but substitute his own name for the rightful one in the chronicle. Even the great Ramses II was guilty of such an act as this. The fact of such tampering with the record would generally be perceptible, but it may not be so easy to determine whose was the rightful name which the falsifier erased.

Much more important than this, however, is the obstacle that arises from the fact that the Egyptians, like all other nations of antiquity, lacked a fixed era from which to reckon. They computed years with reasonable accuracy, but they never reckoned long periods consecutively from any single date. Hence the record of any particular king stands more or less by itself, or associated at most with recent predecessors. If the records of some of these predecessors have been lost, the gap may be of such a doubtful character as to throw uncertainty upon the chronology of long periods, or, indeed, of the entire remoter history. Thus it is that the records from the monuments, despite their great historic value and absorbing personal interest, do not in themselves, as yet, suffice to reveal in its entirety the history of the long succession of Egyptian dynasties. But fortunately these contemporary records have been found in many cases to accord marvellously with Manetho’s lists. Hence the faith in these lists as a whole has been greatly strengthened, and the historian of to-day, in basing his Egyptian chronology upon Manetho for the periods not covered by known monuments, is by no means working altogether in the dark. It is true that there have been two schools of opinion as to how far this reliance should be carried: one school contending very warmly that Manetho’s lists are probably in places the records of contemporaneous dynasties,—it being known that the government was in many periods divided,—and hence that the entire period of time required for the dynasties as listed must be materially shortened; the other school maintaining that Manetho himself took note of such contemporaneous dynasties and eliminated them from his list, retaining only a single line of what he regarded as legitimate succession.

For the general student, it really does not matter greatly which of these views is correct. The general accuracy of Manetho is admitted on all hands, and the monuments sustain him to the extent of making sure a long list of dynasties, whether or not his exact number be admitted. When we recall that Manetho himself was, relatively speaking, a modern, living in the third century B.C., and hence writing about periods that were, even according to minimum estimates, farther separated from his age than he is from our own, it would not seem strange if he should have made some mistakes. But it is well enough also to remember that his lists would probably not have been challenged with so much fervour in our time, had it not been for certain ulterior bearings of this question of chronology. The clew will be evident to whoever notices that in the different estimates of Egyptian chronology the older historians—those of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century—are pretty generally the ardent advocates of a lower or more recent date for the beginning of the first dynasty.

In a word, during the period when the question of the antiquity of man was still matter of ardent controversy, even the most fair-minded historian could not help letting his prejudice on that subject influence his judgment regarding Egyptian chronology. The year 2349 B.C., which his Bible margin had taught him to recall as a date when the history of mankind began anew after an all-devastating flood, stood out in his mind as a danger mark that he must not let himself be carried past if he could possibly avoid it. If he preferred the Septuagint reckoning, he gained a few centuries more of leeway, say till 3250 B.C., but this was the ultimate limit, behind which no evidence could carry him.

Meantime historians who had not this bias were unequivocally fixing the beginning of the Egyptian dynasties a thousand years or so farther back. But their reckoning could count for nothing in the general verdict so long as the old estimate of man’s antiquity was held. No sooner, however, had it come to be generally conceded that the long-authoritative dates were incorrect, than a reaction set in among the Egyptologists. Once it was conceded that man had been an inhabitant of the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and that the years of his early civilisation must reach back into the tens of thousands, the form of the bias of the average searcher into ancient history was changed. That very human tendency which makes one like to excel his neighbour, caused the Egyptologists now to vie with their only competitors, the Assyriologists, in lengthening out their records, instead of shortening them. We do not mean that a bias was consciously admitted in one case or the other; but historians are human, and their judgments, like those of other mortals, are never altogether free from human prejudice.

The clear and simple fact seems to be, that no knowledge is at hand that enables the historian to fix with certainty the remoter dates of Egyptian history. The very most that can be done, at present, is to determine minimum dates, as is done by the most recent German writers of authority, and to content ourselves with stating these, understanding that they make no pretence to absolute accuracy. When Professor Meyer, for example, says that the minimum date for the founding of the Old Memphis Kingdom by King Menes is 3180 B.C., he does not at all imply that Mariette is wrong in fixing the same event at 5004 B.C., or about two thousand years earlier. He simply means that in the present state of knowledge he does not feel justified in choosing a definite date; he is certain, however, that the true date cannot be placed later than 3180 B.C.

Some such latitude as this we must admit, then, in dealing with ancient Egyptian chronology. Of course the amount of possible variation progressively decreases as we come down the ages; but the chronology does not become absolutely fixed until we reach the comparatively recent period of King Psamthek I, who reigned from near the middle of the seventh century before our era.

Fortunately, however, these uncertainties of exact chronology need interfere but little with our interest and enjoyment in considering Egyptian history. Chronology is, indeed, as Professor Petrie has phrased it, “the backbone of history.” But this applies rather to the general sequence of events than to the exact citation of years; and fortunately there is no uncertainty at all about the sequence of important events in Egyptian history, even from the remotest times. We may not know the exact year in which the great Pyramid was built; but we do know exactly who built it, and the names and deeds of his predecessors and successors, as well as the general epoch in which the events took place. For the purpose of any one but the specialist, we could scarcely ask more than this. And a like certainty attaches to all other of the really great epochs of Egyptian history. The general student may feel quite content with the degree of precision of the attainable records; and, paying but slight attention to the less important dynasties, may well fix his attention upon those culminating periods when the great deeds were accomplished which render the history of Egypt memorable for all generations of men. The first of these periods, and the one which now claims our attention, was the epoch of the so-called Old Kingdom of Memphis—the epoch of the ushering in of Egyptian history, as known to succeeding generations; yet also the epoch of the building of the Pyramids—the most gigantic and permanent structures ever created by human minds and human hands.

Apart from questions of chronology, the sequence of chief events in Egyptian history is now fairly established and accepted by all schools of Egyptologists. This course of history proper we have followed under guidance of specialists who have devoted their lives to the elucidation of this subject. It may be well, however, to repeat a word of warning that has already been said as to the incompleteness of the records on which this narrative is based. It is one thing to assert that the main events of Egyptian history are known in proper sequence, and it is quite another to assume that a knowledge of all the events of that history is accessible. In point of fact, it must be freely admitted that our knowledge of Egyptian history as a whole is meagre indeed. Here and there a great event or a great name stands out prominently, but there are long stretches of time between, when not so much as the name of a single man is known in many generations.

Generally speaking, however, the periods marked by dearth of records may be presumed to be periods equally marked by dearth of great events; and in one sense our history of these distant times assumes truer relation of perspective than can possibly be given to the chronicle of later periods which are replete with insignificant and bewildering details of minor events. Without scruple or regret, therefore, we may here and there condense the narrative of many generations of Egyptian history into a line or paragraph, while giving extended treatment to the deeds and accomplishments of a few great heroes who make Egyptian history illustrious.