There were brought to the festival of Narmer 120,000 captives, 400,000 oxen, 1,422,000 goats; and the system of numeration was as complete before Menes as it was in any later time. The other mace head of King Zar shows part of the festival, and also the ceremony of the king hoeing the bank of a canal, probably at the inundation. We see the reclamation of the land, with men busy embanking the canals, and cultivating a palm tree in an enclosure of reeds, while they lived in reed huts with plaited dome tops, and used boats with a very high, upright stem. The carved slate palette of Narmer shows him grasping the chief of the Fayum, prepared to smite him, a scene which was repeated for five thousand years in all the Egyptian triumphs. The metal water-pot and sandals are carried behind the king by his body servant. On the other side of the palette is the king going to a triumphal ceremony, preceded by the scribe, thet, and four men of different types bearing the standards of the army, possibly connected with the four territorial divisions of the army found under Ramessu II. Before them lie ten slain enemies, with their heads cut off and put between their legs. The carving of the detail, and particularly the muscular anatomy of the king’s figure, is extraordinarily fine and firm, and as true as any work of later time.
WRITTEN HISTORY. Having now dealt with the history as drawn from the remains which have come to light, we now enter from this point on the continuous written history, which has come down from hand to hand without a break to our own times, during over seven thousand years. This history was compiled by the high-priest and scribe Manetho of Sebennytos in the Delta, and only a fragment of his work has been preserved on its full scale; but three later writers have given epitomes of it, and it is on their lists that we have to depend. These are Julius Africanus (221 A.D.), Eusebius (326 A.D.), and George the Syncellus (792 A.D.).
The Men Who Handed Down the Story
Unfortunately, much confusion has been caused by scholars not being content to accept Manetho as being substantially correct in the main, though with many small corruptions and errors. Nearly every historian has made large and arbitrary assumptions and changes, with a view to reducing the length of time stated. But recent discoveries seem to prove that we must accept the lists as having been correct, however they may have suffered in detail. A favourite supposition has been that the dynasties named were arbitrary divisions of later times; but the earlier lists also show such divisions as far back as the eighteenth dynasty, and kings founding a dynasty used to copy the titles of the founder of the previous dynasty, showing that the change was recognised at the time.
Another idea has been that the dynasties were contemporary. But, on the contrary, in the overlapping of the tenth and eleventh and also the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth dynasties, we can trace that Manetho was very careful to cut off from one dynasty all the time which he allows to another. As regards the general character of the whole length of time, we can show that Manetho’s version in 271 B.C. at Sebennytos was the same as that given to Herodotus two hundred years earlier at Memphis. Herodotus was told that from Menes to his time were 330 kings, and the totals of Manetho are 192 + 96 + 50 to Artaxerxes = 338, so that, in spite of corruption in detail, the totals seem to have been correctly maintained.
In earlier times we can compare Manetho with the fragments of the Turin papyrus, written in the eighteenth dynasty; and here, in one of the most disputable points—the kings of the thirteenth dynasty—the average of eleven reigns legible in the papyrus is 6½ years, and Manetho states sixty kings in 453 years, or 7½ years’ average. The general character of a great number of short reigns in this age is quite supported. Then in the eighteenth dynasty there is a rising of Sirius in the movable calendar, in the twelfth dynasty another rising of Sirius, and some seasonal dates, and in the sixth dynasty are two seasonal dates. [Owing to the ignoring of leap year, the Egyptian months shifted round the seasons in 1,460 years; hence any seasonal date can only recur once in 1,460 years, and fixes an absolute date in that cycle.] All of these agree with Manetho; and though the seasonal dates are vague, they at least show that there is not an error of several centuries in the total. In the earliest times there is the account of the first dynasty, the names and succession of which are verified by the sculptured lists in the nineteenth dynasty and by the actual graves of the kings. Every accurate test that we can apply shows the general trustworthiness of Manetho, apart from minor corruptions.
THE EARLIEST DETAILED SCULPTURE
This carved slate palette of King Narmer shows him grasping the chief of the Fayum, prepared to smite him, a scene which was repeated for five thousand years in all the Egyptian triumphs. The sculpture shows anatomical treatment for the first time in art.