EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT DISCOVERIES.
FROM THE CORRESPONDANT.
II.
THE SACERDOTAL CLASS.
Egyptian civilization had its source in the priesthood. There is reason to believe that at first they exercised sovereign authority. “After the reign of the demigods and the Manes,” says Manethon, “came the first dynasty, consisting of eight kings, who reigned for the space of two hundred and fifty-two years. Menes was the first of these kings. He carried war into foreign lands, and made himself renowned.”
Menes, the chief of the military forces, effected a revolution which substituted a civil government for a theocracy. He was the first to assume the title of king, and he founded the hereditary monarchy of Egypt.
The separation of the sovereign power from the priesthood was maintained for a long time, for it is not till the twenty-second dynasty that we meet Pahôr-Amonsé, high-priest of Amon-Ra, whose name is still to be seen in the inscriptions at Thebes on a royal cartouche. Pihmé, another high-priest, also figures in the royal legendes among the historical representations with which the pronaos of the temple of Khons at Thebes is decorated. This sacerdotal revolution doubtless took place at the end of the seven generations of sluggish kings of whom Diodorus speaks. The twenty-second dynasty
in fact left no traces in history. It is only known by its downfall. “And this leads us to remark,” says Champollion-Figeac, “that there was perhaps some admirable conception, or profound combination, or happy inspiration in the monarchical establishment of a powerful nation in which the loss of the crown was the inevitable effect of the incapacity or the negligence of the family that had received it by the will of the nation. A Theban family preserved it for thirteen consecutive centuries, and furnished six dynasties of more than fifty kings. The first suffered from foreign invasion, and achieved the arduous labor of sustaining the government, finally restoring all the branches of public administration, and re-establishing the temples and the public works. They rebuilt Thebes, Memphis, and the principal cities, Lake Moeris, and the canals of Lower Egypt. They and their successors bore their victorious arms over distant lands and seas. The arts developed under the wing of victory. Public prosperity seemed to keep pace with these heroic achievements, and the reigning family to become more powerful and more firmly established by such great undertakings. Inaction succeeded to so much zeal. Ten inglorious kings ascended the throne, the last of whom were deposed by the priests.