OLD
KINGDOM 4
Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure
(age of faith)
5
(Ptah-hotep)
6
Pepi II, Nitokerti
7/8/9/10
2000 B.C.E.
11
MIDDLE KINGDOM
(age of
art)
12
Senusert III, Amenemhat III
13/14/15/16/17
(age of ideas)
18
Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, (Amenhotep son of Hapu, Ikhnaten, Tutankhamun
NEW KINGDOM
19
Rameses II
20
1000
B.C.E.
21/22/23/24
25
Piankhi
(age of power)
26
(Rhodopis), Necho
27 (Persian)
28/29/30
31 (Persian)
32
(Greek)
Ptolemy
II, (Berenice II), Cleopatra VII
1 B.C.E.
3. WHO'S WHO OF EGYPTIAN GODS
Originally, each Egyptian village had
its own god. These earliest gods
were usually in animal form. For example:
TAURET (TOWW-ret)--goddess of childbirth; pictured as a pregnant
hippopotamus with human breasts.
But as the Egyptian villages united
themselves into a nation, the stories of
their individual gods united into the adventures of a holy
family. These more
sophisticated gods were usually shown with a human body and a magical
head,
Ra
Shu
Tefnut
Sekhmet Ptah
Geb
Nut- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - -(Ra)
Isis
Osiris-----Nephthys
Set Hathor
Horus
Anubis
RA (rah)--god of the
sun. Egyptians called Ra the Great He-She, because he
could create himself and his children without any help. Ra
was born
every morning, sailed across the sky in a boat, grew old, and died in
the
evening. At night, the boat sailed under the earth back to
the east where
Ra would be born again the next morning. His symbol was the
Phoenix, a
magical bird which periodically set itself on fire and rose again from
its
own ashes.
NUT--goddess of the
sky. She was Ra's granddaughter. Her parents were
SHU
(shoo), god of the atmosphere, and TEFNUT (TEF-nut), goddess of dew.
One day she was found embracing her brother GEB, god of the
earth. Ra
was jealous, and insisted that Shu separate them. so the atmosphere
separated the earth
from the sky, thus creating the world. Nut is pictured
as a slender maiden arched above the earth, with only her toes and
fingers touching; but at night she slips down and again embraces Geb.
Their children include Osiris, Isis, and Set.
OSIRIS
(o-SIGH-ris)--god of agriculture and of the dead. Northern
Egypt
was
given to Osiris, and southern Egypt to his brother SET, the god of
storms.
But Set tried to grab everything, so the gods gave all of Egypt to
Osiris.
Osiris brought
civilization to Egypt, and then to all the world. Finally,
Set,
in his jealousy, killed Osiris, chopped up his body, and scattered the
parts all over the
earth. Osiris is usually shown as a mummy. Set has a
pig's nose and square ears.
ISIS (Ī-sis)--wife of
Osiris. She searched the earth for the parts of his body, put
them back together, and mummified him. Meanwhile, their son
Horus
was born, and she raised him to avenge his father's murder.
HORUS
(HOR-us)--ancestor of the pharaohs. He brought his uncle Set
to
trial
before all the gods, and Egypt was awarded to Horus and his
descendants.
(There may be some truth to this legend. Set-worshiping
Southerners did briefly take power away from Egypt's first family of
kings.
North and South split apart any time there was a weak central
government during the next three thousand years.) Horus wears
a
falcon's head.
ANUBIS (an-NOO-bis)--guardian of the tombs. NEPHTHYS
(NEF-theez) was the
wife of Set, but they
had no children. So she disguised herself as Isis and
sneaked in to Osiris. From this adventure Anubis was
born. Artists
showed him with a jackal's head.
HATHOR (HAH-thor)--the mother goddess. She was the daughter
of Nut and
Ra. While Isis gathered up Osiris' body Hathor nursed
Horus. She is
sometimes shown with cow's horns.
PTAH (tah)--local god
of Memphis who became the god of handicrafts. He was
an ancient god, married to Ra's daughter, SEKHMET (SEK-met), the
goddess of war, Egyptians pictured Sekhmet with a lion's head.
THOTH (thawth)--local god of Khmun (Hermopolis) who became the god of
the
moon and wisdom. Thoth is another ancient god. Like
Ra, he created
himself. Each day when Ra grew old and tired, he asked Thoth
to light
the world for a while. In his jealousy for Nut, Ra ordered
that she and
Geb could not have children during any month. So Thoth
invented the
Egyptian calendar with thirty days in each month and five feast-days
left
over. In his wisdom, Thoth helps weigh the souls of the
dead. He is
often shown with the head of an ibis, a type of heron.
Two more gods came later.
Their concept was even more highly
sophisticated:
AMON (ah-MOON)--local god of Thebes. He became important
during the
Middle Kingdom, when Thebes was the capital of Egypt. Amon
was one-
up on the rest of the gods because he was invisible.
Eventually, people
decided that he was the same as Ra, and called the combination Amon-
Ra. (Look up ammonia and ammoniac.)
ATEN (AH-ten)--Aten came much later. It was the name used by
the famous
king Akhenaten to describe the one and only god. The idea was
quite
un-Egyptian, and died out soon after the death of Akhenaten.
People
pictured Aten as the sun, with generous hands at the ends of the rays.
The history of Egypt is largely the
history of its kings. There are two
reasons for this.
First, only the pharaoh and a few high
officials could organize enough
people to haul stones for a rock tomb. Sometimes a great
scholar or a faithful
servant would be rewarded with a tomb of stone, but ordinary people
usually
had to build their burial places of sun-dried bricks. Peasant
farmers buried
their dead in the sand. Five thousand years of weather has
wiped out all but
the rock tombs.
Second, in the Egyptian mind the pharaoh
was the symbol of all Egypt. It
was a warm land. People needed little or no clothes, and very
little shelter
except shade. The peasants lived close to the soil with few
needs: enough
bread, enough beer, and stability. The pharaoh represented
stability. If he
rested secure, the land rested secure, and their lives rested
secure. Egyptians
saw history as the history of their kings.
Egypt had originally been two lands:
Upper Egypt was the desert region
upriver to the South, and Lower Egypt was the swampy area downriver to
the
North. About 3000 B.C.E. King Menes (MAY-nays) of Upper Egypt
captured
Lower Egypt. He slipped the hollow red crown of Lower Egypt
over his white
crown to signify that he reigned as the first pharaoh of all Egypt,
Menes was
killed by a hippopotamus, while hunting.
In its long history, Egypt has been
ruled by about thirty different families,
or dynasties. At the end of the second dynasty, an ambitious
general married
the pharaoh's daughter and made himself king. This set the
pattern: from then
on, the man who had married the old pharaoh's daughter usually became
the
new ruler. The system worked well, for it permitted powerful
enemies to join
the royal family rather than start a rebellion. But if the
pharaoh's son wanted to
succeed his father, he could only be sure of it by marrying his own
sister. This
happened often. (Much later, brother-sister marriages became popular
among
the commoners. This may have been because Egyptian
inheritance laws treated
women equally with men, and poorer families married their children
together to
keep the small family fortune from splitting.)
The first pyramid was built like
stairsteps. It held the body of King Djoser
(JO-ser) of the third dynasty. The architect was a little
bald man named
Imhotep (im-HO-tep). Later Egyptians called the
wonder-working Imhotep a
god.
The famous large pyramids went up during
the fourth dynasty. King
Khufu (KOO-foo) build the largest. It stood almost five
hundred feet tall, and
remained the world's tallest structure until 1890. Ventilator
shafts keep fresh
air circulating through the vaults.
It took twenty years to build the Great
Pyramid, but crews worked on it
only three months of each year. That was during the flood
season when
farmers could not get on their land. To keep them from
starving, the
government hired them for building projects.
But building a pyramid meant more than a
business arrangement; it was
also an act of worship. For the pharaoh was descended from
Horus, and
therefore a god.
The Egyptian idea of an afterlife was
very physical: this body would rise
again. They preserved the bodies with chemicals, and wrapped
them into a
mummy. They buried the dead person with things his body might
need--food,
extra clothes, maybe even some furniture or transportation.
There is some
evidence that at first they even buried live servants. It
appears that these
servants starved to death rather than touch the food set aside for the
dead.
This was indeed the age of great religious faith in Egypt.
But soon, people
began substituting little dolls to look after the dead in the afterlife.
Khufu's first son died after a very
short reign. Legend says that the
second son, Khafre (KAH-fray), was jealous and wanted to build a
pyramid even
larger than his father's. He chose higher ground, so that
from a distance his
pyramid does look taller. Like Khufu, he coated it with white
stone polished till
it shone like a mirror. Later generations stripped the
capstone off the other
pyramids, but a little remains at the peak of Khafre's.
Khafre wanted to add
one more layer so that his pyramid would indeed be the largest, but he
did not
live long enough to do that.
It was probably Khafre who had the
sphinx carved from a rock on the
pathway to his tomb. The face was painted red, the eyes
black, the hair white.
The third and fourth brothers ruled
briefly, and then came Khafre's son
Menkaure (men-COW-ray). Legend says that Khufu and Khafre
ruled harshly,
but that Menkaure felt more considerate for his people.
Anyway, Menkaure
started building a much smaller pyramid which he planned to cover with
red
stone. He did not finish it, and was probably not buried in
it. But someone
was. The Egyptians have always insisted that the third
pyramid held the body
of a woman. In the sixth dynasty, the famous Queen Nitokerti
finished the
outside--red on the bottom and white on top. In the
twenty-sixth, the famous
Rhodopis (Cinderella) painted the inside. Legend says that
one of these women
used the third pyramid for her tomb.
(Note--some books give these pharaoh's names in Greek. In
that language,
Khufu becomes Cheops; Khafre becomes Chephren; Menkaure becomes
Mycerinus.)
The oldest known book was written by
Ptah-Hotep (tah-HO-tep). He
served as advisor to one of the kings of the fifth dynasty.
His book was full of
practical advice on how to lead a good life:
from THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAH-HOTEP
12. If thou wouldest be a wise man, beget a son for the
pleasing of
the god. If he make straight his course after thine example,
if he
arrange thine affairs in due order, do unto him all that is good, for
thy
son is he, begotten of thine own soul. Sunder* not thine
heart from
him, or thine own begotten shall curse thee. If he be
heedless and
trespass thy rules of conduct, and is violent; if every speech that
cometh from his mouth be a vile word; then beat thou him, that his
talk may be fitting. Keep him from those that make light of
that which
is commanded, for it is they that make him rebellious. And
they that
are guided go not astray, but they that lose their bearings cannot find
a straight course.
21. If thou wouldest be wise, provide for thine house, and
love thy
wife that is in thine arms. Fill her stomach, clothe her
back; oil is the
remedy of her limbs. Gladden her heart during thy lifetime,
for she is
an estate profitable unto its lord. Be not harsh, for
gentleness
mastereth her more than strength. Give to her that for which
she
sigheth and that toward which her eye looketh; so shalt thou keep
her in thine house.
33. If thou wouldest seek out the nature of a friend, ask it
not of any
companion of his; but pass a time with him alone, that thou injure not
his affairs. Debate with him after a season;* test his heart
in an
occasion of speech. When he hath told thee his past
life, he hath
made an opportunity that thou may either be ashamed for him or be
familiar with him. Be not reserved with him when he openeth
speech, neither answer him after a scornful manner. Withdraw
not
thyself from him, neither Interrupt him whose matter is not yet ended,
whom it is possible to benefit.
38. A splendid thing is the obedience of an obedient son; he
cometh
in and listeneth obediently.
Excellent in hearing, excellent in
speaking, is every man that
obeyeth what Is noble; and the obedience of an obeyer is a noble
thing.
Obedience is better than all things that
are; it maketh good-
will.
How good it is that a son should take
that (obedience) from
his father by which he hath reached old age.
That which is desired by the god is
obedience; disobedience
is abhorred of the god.
Verily, it is the heart that maketh its
master to obey or to
disobey; for the safe and sound life of a man are his heart.
It is the obedient man that obeyeth what
is said; he that loveth
to obey, the same shall carry out commands.
He that obeyeth becometh one obeyed.
It is good indeed when a son obeyeth his
father, and (his
father) that hath spoken hath great joy of it. Such a son
shall be mild
as a master, and he that heareth him shall obey him that hath
spoken. He shall be comely* in body and honored by his
father. His
memory shall be in the mouths of the living, those upon earth, as
long as they exist.
*separate
*for a while
*handsome
In the sixth dynasty, Pepi I (PEP-ee)
married his sister to become king.
Then he divorced her and married a pretty commoner who gave him a son,
but
died. So Pepi married her twin sister who also gave him a
son. This time Pepi
died, and his first son became king for a few years.
The crown then went to the second son,
Pepi II, who was only about four
years old. He died at age one hundred. His
ninety-six year reign is the longest
in history. The boy-king heard that his ambassador had found
a dancing
dwarf, and thought it would be nice to have someone his own size around
the
palace. He wrote this letter:
from LETTER OF PEPI II
Come, then, when you come down the Nile,
come straight to
my palace. Make haste. Bring me this dwarf whom you
are bringing
back from the land of the Akhetiu; bring him back alive, well and
healthy to dance like a god, to rejoice and delight King Neferkare.*
When he comes down the Nile with you, put vigilant+ men around
him on both sides of the boat. Take care that he does not
fall into
the water. When he sleeps at night, send guards to sleep round him
in his cabin, which guards must be changed ten times a night.
My
Majesty wants to see this dwarf more than the marvelous products of
Punt.
*part of his own name
+watchful
In later years, a rumor circulated that
Pepi II had become homosexual.
People began to doubt whether the pharaoh was really such a perfect god.
In his extreme old age, Pepi became
senile. His wise advisors carried on,
but when they died Pepi did not always remember to appoint new ones.
Government jobs went undone; people grew discontent.
When Pepi II finally died, chaos broke
loose. A pharaoh was murdered
and the murderers crowned his sister, Queen Nitokerti
(nee-TOE-ker-tee). She
pretended to be grateful and invited them to a banquet in the palace
basement.
During the meal, she opened a channel to the Nile which swirled in and
drowned all of the guilty persons. Before their families
could take vengeance
on her, she committed suicide in the ashes of a burning
building. She may
have been buried in the third pyramid. (See Chapter 4.)
The Egyptian nation soon split
apart. Several families tried briefly to hold
it together, but they could not. The age of faith was
over. No longer could the
pharaoh command respect as an unquestioned god.
After about a century of disorder, the
eleventh dynasty was able to unite
the Egyptian people once again. In this period (often called
the Middle
Kingdom), the individual and individual creativity mattered much more
than
they had in the Old Kingdom. A person became important--not
for his
position--but for his individual acts. The age produced
Egypt's finest art and
literature.
One story tells of a poor farmer whose
donkeys were stolen; so he went
to the capital to complain to a high government official. Day
after day he
demanded justice:
from THE ELOQUENT PEASANT
Good is perished, and there is no cleaving to it.... See,
there is no profit for him who
says it to you! Mercy has passed you by; how miserable is the
poor man whom you
have destroyed:... As for the judge who ought to be punished,
he is a pattern for the
wrongdoer. Fool, see, you are hit: Dunce, see, you are
questioned Baler-out of water.
see, you are entered: Helmsman, do not steer your ship awry; Lifegiver,
do not let men
die; Destroyer, do not let men be destroyed; Shade, do not act as the
sun heat; Shelter
do not let the crocodile take. The fourth time of appealing
to you, am I to spend all day
at it?
But a just ruler, such as King
Senusert III (sen-NOOS-ert) of the twelfth
dynasty received poems of praise for protecting his people:
from HYMN TO SENUSERT III
How great is the Lord for his City!
He is Ra and other rulers of man are insignificant.
How great is the Lord for his City!
Yea, he is a dam which holds back the river against its floodwaters.
How great is the Lord for his City!
Yea, he is a cool place which lets every man sleep to daybreak.
How great is the Lord for his City!
Yea, he is a rampart of walls of copper from Goshen.
How great is the Lord for his City!...
Yea, he is a resting place which
protects the fearful man from his enemy,
How great is the Lord for his City!
Yea, he is a
shade in the inundation* season, a cool place in
summer.
*flood
How great is the Lord for his City!
Yea, he is a warm, dry corner in time of
Winter.
How great is the Lord for his City!
Yea, he is a mountain which wards off
the storm at the time of tempest.
How great is the Lord for his City!
Yea, he is Sekhmet against the enemies
who tread upon his border.
Religious awe no longer kept grave
robbers from the pharaohs' tombs.
Senusert's son, Amenemhat III (a-MEN-em-hot), built an ingenious tomb
with
trap doors, false turns, and dead ends to lead intruders away from the
burial
chamber hollowed from a single block of polished yellow
stone. Outside, he
constructed the famous Labyrinth--a building so complex that people got
lost
in it. The Greek traveler, Herodotus, visited the Labyrinth
while it was still
standing, and wrote:
The pyramids likewise surpass description and are severally [each] equal
to a number of the greatest
works of the Greeks, but the Labyrinth
surpasses the
pyramids. It has twelve courts, all of them roofed, with
gates exactly opposite to one
another, six looking to the north, and six to
the south. A single
wall surrounds the entire building. There are two
different sorts of chambers
throughout--half under ground, half above
ground, the latter built upon
the former; the whole number of these
chambers is 3,000, 1,500 of
each kind.... The upper chambers, however,
I saw with my own eyes, and
found them to excel all other human
productions; for the passages
through the houses, and the varied
windings of the paths across
the courts, excited in me infinite admiration,
as I passed from the courts
into chambers, and from the chambers into
colonnades, and from the
colonnades into fresh houses, and again from
these into courts unseen
before. The roof was throughout of stone, like
the walls; and the walls were
covered all over with figures; every court
was surrounded with a
colonnade, which was built of white stones
exquisitely fitted together.
Actually, Amenemhat's daughter finished the Labyrinth when she became
ruler
of Egypt. But Amenemhat III took greatest pride in his system
of dams and
dikes to control the flooding of the Nile.
Unfortunately, not much art from this
period has survived. The
fragments that we possess show far more personality and liveliness than
any
other period of Egyptian history. Senusert III and Amenemhat
III have been
carved in stone with great sensitivity. There are delightful
animal sculptures
and one small well-proportioned building.
Every note of Egyptian music has been
lost--except possibly for one
chant the peasants still sing as they pump water into the fields.
Again, the Egyptian union fell
apart. Northern Egypt came under the rule
of foreign families who introduced war machinery such as the horse, the
chariot, and spears made of iron rather than bronze. After
about two centuries,
the eighteenth dynasty drove out all rivals and introduced a new age
when
ideas mattered most.
Egyptian civilization was fifteen
centuries old. People had gone through a
religious age, and an artistic age; now they began to wonder what it
all meant.
They asked what was important in life, or if life itself was
important. One of the
favorite writings in their tombs was the Song of the Harper, which
appeared in
many different versions:
from THE SONG OF THE HARPER
The Great One has gone to his rest,
Ended his task and his race:
Thus men are aye* passing away,
*forever
And youths are aye taking their place.
As Ra rises up every morn. And Tum* every evening doth
set,
*another name for Ra
So women conceive and bring forth,
And men without ceasing beget.
Each soul in its turn draweth breath–
Each man born of woman sees Death....
They are as they never had been,
Since the Sun went forth upon high;
They sit on the banks of the stream
That floweth in stillness by.
Thy soul is among them; thou
Dost drink of the sacred tide,
Having the wish of thy heart--
At peace ever since thou hast died.
Give bread to the man who is poor,
And thy name shall be blest evermore.
One conflict of ideas lurked in the
question of peace or war--whether
Egyptians should mind their own affairs as they had for fifteen
centuries, or
whether they should use their technology to conquer their neighbors and
establish an empire. Queen Hatshepsut (hot-SHEP-soot) worked
vigorously for
peace. So great was her ability that her father had let her
share the
administration of the country with him. She married her
half-brother, and
continued to rule with him for a few years. But then she had
to share her power
with her stepson, Thutmose III (thoot-MO-sa). That boy
dreamed of becoming
a great soldier. Queen Hatshepsut determined that there
should be no war
while she lived to prevent it, and she seized control of the whole
government.
To doubting politicians, she had to
prove that she could do anything that
a male ruler could. So she ordered statues carved of her
engaged in male
activities and wearing male clothes, and sometimes even wearing a false
beard.
She decorated her tomb with pictures of the gods blessing her birth and
childhood. She sent trading expeditions to make friends in
distant lands.
Egypt enjoyed over twenty years of prosperity and peace,
By the time Thutmose III got some power,
he had grown so angry at his
stepmother that he had her statues smashed and her face scratched out
of every
painting he could find. This again demonstrates how physical
was the Egyptian
idea of an afterlife.
Thutmose III became Egypt's mightiest
conqueror, leading his army as far
north as modern Turkey.
In some fields, the Egyptians knew more
than we do today. For instance,
no one has ever preserved bodies as well. And historians are
still arguing over
how the Egyptians could possibly have measured, cut, and moved such
enormous blocks of stone. Yet the squareness and levelness of
the Great
Pyramid remains accurate within one ten-thousandth of its
length. Some
historians say they raised the stones with a series of balances, just
as they
raised water from the Nile. Others say they slid the blocks
up ramps of wet
sand. Most historians agree that small paid crews did the
work--not millions of
slaves. In later times, the Egyptians did build high walls by
burying the lower
parts in sand. Then starting from the top, they carved
decorations as workers
removed the sand.
Very early, the Egyptians discovered how
to make a heavy type of paper
from the papyrus plants growing in the Nile. They wove the
reeds into mats,
soaked them, and pounded them into solid sheets, Then they pounded the
sheets together into long scrolls.
Egyptians valued writing highly; scribes
were among the most important
people in the land. A great distance separated the top and
bottom of Egyptian
society, but each young person was free to choose his own
profession. He
could rise easily. The highest positions lay open to those
who studied hardest,
From their examinations of dead bodies,
Egyptian scientists developed a
vast knowledge of medicine. Medical textbooks still exist for
the treatment of
various head injuries and kidney disorders.
Their numbering system used one symbol
for ones, another for tens,
another for hundreds, on up to millions. They simply used as
many of each as
they needed to show a given number. For instance, the number
423 looked like
this:
@@ŋII
@@ŋI
All of their fractions had 1 for the top numbers so 7/8 would be
written 1/2 +
1/4 + 1/8.
Each year, the Nile flooded, washing out
all boundary markers and
leaving a new layer of fertile mud over the fields.
Government officials had to
quickly remeasure the land to locate each farmer's fields in time to
plant his
seeds. They developed a vast knowledge of geometry.
In the eighteenth
dynasty, Ahmes the Moonborn computed π at 3 1/7, and gave the
formula for
the area of a circle as πr2.
The Egyptian calendar contained twelve
months of thirty days each. A
month contained three weeks of ten days. At the end of the
year came five
extra holidays. But the additional ¼ day was
missing. That meant that each
year the calendar fell a little further behind. So the
astronomers kept track of
the years, knowing that every 1460 years the calendar would become
exactly
one year behind and the problem would solve itself.
Amenhotep son of Hapu (ah-mon-HO-tep,
HAH-poo) was so wise that
later Egyptians called him a god. As an architect, he
constructed the pharaoh's
tomb and the giant statues known as the Colossae of Memnon.
For centuries,
schoolboys copied down and studied his words of wisdom.
Generally, his
philosophy seems to have been to trust oneself and beware of gods, and
especially beware of rich and powerful priests.
Egypt's best-known thinker was the
pharaoh Ikhnaten (ik-NAH-ten) who,
in his lifetime, tried to change the traditions of centuries.
He went even further
than his teacher, Amenhotep son of Hapu, by declaring that there
existed only
one god which he called the Aten (AH-ten). It was not a
physical creature; he
explained it as the source of life very much like the energy of the
sun. But
people did not understand, and artists drew the sun with hands at the
ends of
its rays.
Ikhnaten revolutionized art, too, by
insisting on total honesty. He
demanded that artists portray him as he actually was, with his
wrinkles, his
spindly legs, his fat hips, and his protruding stomach. He
would not pose, but
let the artists catch him doing ordinary things such as eating or
driving his own
chariot. But most often they found him playing with his young
daughters and
his wife, the beautiful Queen Nefertiti (nef-er-TEE-tee).
(Historians disagree about this
art. Some say that Ikhnaten and his
daughters could not have been so ugly. They point out that,
during their Age
of Ideas, many civilizations go into abstract art--painting ideas
rather than
actual things. Other historians point out that the eighteenth
dynasty had lasted
three hundred years--longer than any other. The many
brother-sister
marriages probably did mess up the genes. For Ikhnaten's
father suddenly
broke tradition by marrying a vigorous commoner, and Ikhnaten was
matched
with the most beautiful woman known in Egyptian history.)
Ikhnaten closed the old temples and
built a new capital city dedicated to
the Aten. He established a school to teach the new ideas, and
Ikhnaten,
himself, taught painting and poetry. One of his writings is
the long Hymn to
the Aten, in which he praises the wisdom of creating peoples of
different skin
colors, and of creating rain for other lands that need it:
from THE HYMN TO THE ATEN
How much is there that thou hast made,
and that is hidden
from me, thou sole god, to whom none is to be likened!
Thou hast fashioned the earth according
to thy desire, thou
alone, with men, cattle, and all wild beasts, all that is upon the earth
and goeth upon feet, and all that soareth above and flieth with its
wings,
The lands of Syria and Nubia, and the
land of Egypt--thou
puttest every man in his place and thou suppliest their
needs. Each
one hath his provision, and his lifetime is reckoned. Their
tongues
are diverse in speech, and their form likewise. Their skins
are
distinguished, for thou distinguishest the peoples.
Thou makest the Nile in the nether*
world and bringest it
whither thou wilt, in order to sustain mankind, even as thou hast
made them. Thou art lord of them all, who wearieth himself on
their
behalf, the lord of every land, who ariseth for them, the sun of the
day greatly reverenced.
All far-off peoples, thou makest that
whereon they live. Thou
hast also put the Nile in the sky that it may come down for them, and
may make waves upon the hills like a sea, in order to moisten their
fields in their townships. How excellently made are all thy
designs, O
Lord of Eternity! The Nile in heaven, thou appointest it for
the foreign
peoples and all the beasts of the wilderness which walk upon feet
and the real Nile, it cometh forth from the nether world for [Egypt].
*under
Ikhnaten's reforms hardly lasted beyond
his lifetime. He was succeeded
by his son-in-law, and shortly after by his second son-in-law,
Tutankhamun
(toot-ahnk-AH-moon)--often known for short as King Tut. In
his brief reign,
Tut re-established the old religion before dying unexpectedly at age
eighteen.
By then, Egyptians had learned that it was wise to hide their tombs in
caves; but
the young king had made no preparations for death. The family
borrowed a
small tomb and gathered what funeral equipment they could find on such
sudden notice. So insignificant was King Tut that grave
robbers rarely ever
bothered to look for his burial place. As a result, his was
the only royal tomb
which remained unopened until discovered in modern times.
When historians opened the tomb in 1922,
they gasped at the
magnificence it contained: rooms stacked to the ceiling with furniture,
chariots,
and statues; four gold-covered cabinets inside each other; inside them
the
stone sarcophagus containing three coffins inside each other--the last
one of
pure gold; and inside that, the mummy with its gold mask and a wealth of
jewels wrapped in the cloth and on the body itself. How much
more splendid
were the tombs of really important persons?
Egyptian civilization grew old and
stiff. The religion had become
exhausted, art had become exhausted, ideas had become
exhausted. Instead
of doing new things, people tended to do the same things bigger and
bigger.
Rameses II (RAM-es-eez) of the
nineteenth dynasty became Egypt's most
powerful ruler. He ordered hundreds of giant statues of
himself raised all over
Egypt. Far to the south, he had the famous temple of Abu
Simbel carved from
the cliffs alongside the Nile. In front sit four statues of
himself--each as tall as
a six-story building.
He built the great columned hall of the
temple at Karnak, which is the
world's largest religious building. His columns stand
sixty-nine feet tall, and so
fat that five men can not reach around them. The hall
contains 140 of these
pillars.
Bible scholars have long believed that
Rameses' son, Mereneptah (mare-
en-NEP-tah) was the pharaoh of Exodus, but there is no real proof of it.
From the mouths of village storytellers,
literature remained alive a bit
longer. But it, too, was growing simple and exaggerated--and
sometimes
shockingly indecent. The love poems show how much times had
changed.
AN EGYPTIAN LOVE POEM
Diving and swimming with you here
Gives me the chance I've been waiting for:
To show my looks
Before an appreciative eye.
My gown of the best material,
The finest sheer,
Now that it's wet
Notice the transparency,
How it clings.
Let us admit, I find you attractive.
I swim away, but soon I'm back,
Splashing, chattering,
Any excuse at all to join your party.
Look! a redfish flashed through my fingers!
You'll set it better
If you come over here,
Near me.
Priests and politicians each tried to
seize power. The nation strangled in
bureaucracy. By the twenty-first dynasty, there sprang up two
rival pharaohs--
a family of priests in the south, and a family of politicians in the
north. Local
families took to hacking out small kingdoms for themselves.
It seemed that
Egypt's glory was over.
From the far south marched a mighty king
named Piankhi (Pee-AHNG-
kee). His skin was black. The Egyptians were of
mixed race and intermarried
frequently. Piankhi's family became the twenty-fifth dynasty,
but some of the
other dynasties were distantly related.
Piankhi was a ferocious fighter, but
went out of his way to be fair. He
instructed his soldiers:
There must be no attack at night, but
you must fight when you can be seen,
according to the rules of the game. Announce the combat from
a distance. If the
enemy says that the soldiery or horsemen of some other city are late,
then wait until his
army has arrived. You will fight when he tells you to
fight. If his allies find themselves
elsewhere, you must wait for them. As for the princes he
brings to help him, the
Libyans, his faithful fighters: announce the combat to them by saying:
"You, whatever
your name may be, you who command the troops, harness the best horses
in your
stable, take up your battle stations. You will learn that the
god Amun sends us."
Piankhi treated his captives
with kindness. But he roared with anger
when he learned that the citizens of one besieged city had let their
horses
starve.
A religious man, he brought fresh vigor
to old Egyptian customs. He
discovered that the priests had involved themselves with politics so
much that
almost no one could read the old hieroglyphic writing.
Piankhi rescued much of
the almost forgotten learning. But he soon died.
His brother, then his nephew,
went on to become great builders.
----------
The next dynasty also tried to revive
the past. They repaired the old
tombs, and began the practice of worshiping and embalming cats,
crocodiles,
and other animals.
One small event from the reign of
Psamtik I (SAHM-tik) became the
familiar Cinderella story. According to the Egyptian
historians, a Greek girl
named Rhodopis (roe-DOE-pis) was bathing in the Nile one day when an
eagle
snatched up her fur sandal and dropped it many miles away in the lap of
the
astonished pharaoh. He was so curious that he sent his agents
throughout the
land looking for the owner. Rhodopis had served as a slave
girl in Greece; in
Egypt she became a favorite of the pharaoh and one of the most powerful
women in the land. She may have been buried in the third
pyramid. (See
Chapter 4.) But another famous woman wrote a poem calling her
nasty names.
(See Chapter 41.)
Psamtik's son, Necho (NEK-o), began
enlarging a canal which would
connect the Red Sea with the Nile and the Mediterranean. But
so many of his
workers died that Necho abandoned the project. The Persians
finished it when
they became masters of Egypt. Necho also sent out ships to
sail around Africa.
The journey took three years.
----------
The Persians captured Egypt and made it
a part of their empire. Some of
the Persian kings never bothered to go to Egypt. Egypt
regained its
independence for a few years before the Persians captured it once more.
Finally, the Greek Alexander the Great captured Persia and all of its
empire,
including Egypt. He left his general, Ptolemy, in charge.
MAP SHOWING:
EGYPT
PERSIA
GREECE
PIANKHI'S ROUTE
CANAL
PART OF ROUTE AROUND AFRICA
ALEXANDRIA
ROME
The rest is not really Egyptian, but a
part of Greek and Roman history.
Outstanding among the Greek rulers of
Egypt was Ptolemy II (TOL-em-
me). His father, the first Ptolemy, had managed to get
Aristotle's library
brought to the new Egyptian capital, Alexandria. Ptolemy II
added to the library
and attracted foreign scholars until Alexandria became the center of
learning
for much of Europe, Asia, and Africa. He ordered that anyone
entering the
country should have his books confiscated for the library, and a copy
made for
the original owner. He had the scriptures of many religions
translated into
Greek. And for scientific study, he kept a zoo which included
a polar bear.
Fires damaged the library several times, but Alexandria remained the
center of
learning for the next thousand years.
The next Ptolemy added leap year to our
calendar, and also married a
Greek princess named Berenice (bare-en-NICE-see). Her great
pride was her
long blond hair. When her husband went off to war, she became
worried, and
decided to offer her hair as a sacrifice to the gods. That
night someone stole
the hair from the altar. She got the priest out of bed to
punish him for his
carelessness. But he pointed up in the sky at a tiny cluster
of stars which no
one had ever bothered to name. He persuaded the queen that
that was her
golden hair shining in the sky: the gods had accepted her
gift. To this day, that
tiny constellation near the tail of Leo is still known as Coma
Berenices, or
Berenice's Hair.
The famous Cleopatra became queen of
Egypt at age seventeen. She had
to share the throne with her younger brother, whom she
married. But he soon
seized her half. Julius Caesar happened to be in Egypt just
then, but
Cleopatra's brother would not let her see the Roman general.
So she sent
Caesar a beautiful carpet. When it was placed before him, it
suddenly began to
unroll, and out jumped a red-haired girl wearing little or nothing who
announced that she was Cleopatra Queen of Egypt. The aging
general was
fascinated. He promised to help her.
In the battle, her brother
drowned. His share of the kingdom went to an
even younger brother, whom she also married. She bore
Caesar's only son, and
lived with Caesar in Rome until his assassination. Then she
fled back to Egypt,
poisoned her brother, and ruled with her son.
The Roman Mark Antony threatened
war. Instead, she sailed to him
across the Mediterranean in a golden boat with purple sails and silver
oars
handled by beautiful girls. Incense and music drifted to the
shore. She lay
under a golden canopy in the near-transparent gown of the goddess of
love.
Mark Antony forgot all about war. Historians of her time say
that her greatest
attraction was her mind. She spoke at least ten languages,
drew her own battle
plans, and carried on witty conversations with the cleverest men of the
time.
Mark Antony lived with her in Egypt for most of the next eleven years,
and they
had three children.
Finally, Augustus Caesar came to destroy
Antony. Antony thought
Cleopatra was dead and committed suicide. The Romans captured
her. She
tried her charms a third time on Augustus, but he coldly remarked that
he
would parade her through Rome in a cage. Rather than that,
she pressed a
poisonous snake to her breast and died at thirty-nine. She
was the last ruler of
ancient Egypt,