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THE XIth DYNASTY: HARMHABΗTHE HITTITE EMPIRE IN SYRIA AND IN ASIA MINOR—SETI I. AND RAMSES II.—THE PEOPLE OF THE SEA: MÎNEPHTAH AND THE ISRAELITE EXODUS.
The birth and antecedents of Harmhabî, his youth, his enthronement—The final triumph of Amon and his priests—Harmhabî infuses order into the government: his wars against the Ethiopians and Asiatics—The Khâti, their civilization, religion; their political and military constitution; the extension of their empire towards the north—The countries and populations of Asia Minor; commercial routes between the Euphrates and the Ægean Sea—The treaty concluded between Harmhabî and Sapalulu.
Ramses I. and the uncertainties as to his origin—Seti I. and the campaign against Syria in the 1st year of his reign; the re-establishment of the Egyptian empire—Working of the gold-mines at Etaï—The monuments constructed by Seti I. in Nubia, at Karnak, Luxor, and Abydos—The valley of the kings and tomb of Seti I. at Thebes.
Ramses II., his infancy, his association in the Government, his début in Ethiopia: he builds a residence in the Delta—His campaign against the Khâti in the 5th year of his reign—The talcing of Qodshu, the victory of Ramses II. and the truce established with Khâtusaru: the poem of Pentaûîrît—His treaty with the Khâti in the 21st year of his reign: the balance of power in Syria: the marriage of Ramses II. with a Hittite princess—Public works: the Speos at Abu-Simbel; Luxor, Karnak, the Eamesseum, the monuments in the Delta—The regency of Khamoîsît and Mînephtah, the legend of Sesostris, the coffin and mummy of Ramses II.
Minephtah—The kingdom of Libya, the people of the sea—The first invasion of Libya: the Egyptian victory at Piriû; the triumph of Minephtah—Seti II., Amenmeses, Siphtah-Minephtah—The foreign captives in Egypt; the Exodus of the Hebrews and their march to Sinai—An Egyptian romance of the Exodus: Amenophis, son of Pa-apis.
123.jpg the First Pylon of HarmhabÎ at Karnak
127.jpg Amenothes IV. From a Fragment Used Again By Harmhabi
129.jpg the Vaulted Passage of The Rock-tomb at Gebel Silsileh
131.jpg the Triumph Of HarmhabÎ in The Sanctuary of Gebel Silsileh
135.jpg Three Heads of Hittite Soldiers
140.jpg a Hittite Chariot With Its Three Occupants
166.jpg Representation of Seti I. Vanquishing the Libyans And Asiatics on the Walls, Karnak
168.jpg a Fortified Station on the Route Between The Nile And the Red Sea.
169.jpg the Temple of Seti I. At Redesieh
170.jpg Fragment of the Map Of The Gold-mines
171.jpg the Three Standing Columns of The Temple Of Sesebi
173 an Avenue of One Of the Aisles Of The Hypostyle Hall At Karnak
174.jpg the Gratings of The Central Colonnade in The Hypostyle Hall at Karnak
176.jpg One of the Colonnades Of The Hypostyle Hall In The Temple of Seti I. At Abydos
176b.jpg the Facade of The Temple Of Seti
184.jpg One of the Pillars Of The Tomb Of Seti I.
187.jpg Ramses II. Puts the Negroes to Flight
193.jpg the Shardana Guard of Ramses II.
195.jpg Two Hittite Spies Beaten by the Egyptian Soldiers
196.jpg the Egyptian Camp and The Council of War on The Morning of the Battle Of QodshÛ
198.jpg the Garrison of QodshÛ Issuing Forth to Help The Prince of KhÂti.
214.jpg KhÂtusaru, Prince of KhÂti, and his Daughter
218.jpg Phoenician Boats Landing at Thebes
221.jpg the Projecting Columns of The Speos Of Gerf-hosseÎn
221.jpg the Caryatides of Gerf-hosseÎn
224.jpg the Two Colossi of Abu Simbel to The South Of The Doorway
225.jpg the Interior of The Speos Of Abu Simbel
228.jpg the Face of The Rock at Abu Simgel
229.jpg Ramses Ii. Pierces a Libyan Chief With his Lance
230.jpg Ramses Ii. Strikes a Group of Prisoners
231.jpg the Façade of The Little Speos Of Hauthor at Abu Simbel
232.jpg Columns of Temple at Luxor
233.jpg the Chapel of Thutmosis III. And One Of The Pylons of Ramses Ii. At Luxor
235.jpg the Colonnade of Seti I. And The Three Colossal Statues of Ramses II. At Luxor
237.jpg the Remains of The Colossal Statue Of Ramses Ii. At the Ramesseum
240.jpg the Ruins of The Memnonium Of Ramses Ii. At Abydos
242.jpg the Colossal Statue of Ramses II. At Mitrahineh
245.jpg the Chapel of The Apis Of AmekÔthes III.
247.jpg Stele of the Nahr El-kelb
248.jpg the Bas-belief of Ninfi
249.jpg the Coffin and Mummy of Ramses II
263.jpg the Chapels of Ramses II. And Minephtah At Sisileh
The XIXth dynasty: Harmhabî—The Hittite empire in Syria and in Asia Minor—Seti I. and Ramses II.—The people of the sea: Minephtah and the Israelite Exodus.
While none of these ephemeral Pharaohs left behind them a, either legitimate or illegitimate, son there was no lack of princesses, any of which, having on her accession to the throne to choose a consort after her own heart, might thus become the founder of a new dynasty. By such a chance alliance Harmhabî, who was himself descended from Thûtmosis III., was raised to the kingly office.* His mother, Mûtnozmît, was of the royal line, and one of the most beautiful statues in the Gîzeh Museum probably represents her. The body is mutilated, but the head is charming in its intelligent and animated expression, in its full eyes and somewhat large, but finely modelled, mouth. The material of the statue is a finegrained limestone, and its milky whiteness tends to soften the malign character of her look and smile. It is possible that Mûtnozmît was the daughter of Amenôthes III. by his marriage with one of his sisters: it was from her, at any rate, and not from his great-grandfather, that Harmhabî derived his indisputable claims to royalty.**
* A fragment of an inscription at Karnak calls Thûtmosis
III. "the father of his fathers." Champollion called him
Hornemnob, Rosellini, Hôr-hemheb, Hôr-em-hbai, and both
identified him with the Hôros of Manetho, hence the custom
among Egyptologists for a long time to designate him by the
name Horus. Dévéria was the first to show that the name
corresponded with the Armais of the lists of Manetho, and,
in fact, Armais is the Greek transcription of the group
Harmhabî in the bilingual texts of the Ptolemaic period.
** Mûtnozmît was at first considered the daughter and
successor of Harmhabî, or his wife. Birch showed that the
monuments did not confirm these hypotheses, and he was
inclined to think that she was Harmhabî's mother. As far as
I can see for the present, it is the only solution which
agrees with the evidence on the principal monument which has
made known her existence.
He was born, probably, in the last years of Amenôthes, when Tîi was the exclusive favourite of the sovereign; but it was alleged later on, when Harmhabî had emerged from obscurity, that Amon, destining him for the throne, had condescended to become his father by Mûtnozmît—a customary procedure with the god when his race on earth threatened to become debased.* It was he who had rocked the newly born infant to sleep, and, while Harsiesis was strengthening his limbs with protective amulets, had spread over the child's skin the freshness and brilliance which are the peculiar privilege of the immortals. While still in the nursery, the great and the insignificant alike prostrated themselves before Harmhabî, making him liberal offerings. Every one recognised in him, even when still a lad and incapable of reflection, the carriage and complexion of a god, and Horus of Cynopolis was accustomed to follow his steps, knowing that the time of his advancement was near. After having called the attention of the Egyptians to Harmhabî, Amon was anxious, in fact, to hasten the coming of the day when he might confer upon him supreme rank, and for this purpose inclined the heart of the reigning Pharaoh towards him. Aï proclaimed him his heir over the whole land.**
* All that we know of the youth of Harmhabî is contained in
the texts on a group preserved in the Turin Museum, and
pointed out by Champollion, translated and published
subsequently by Birch and by Brugsch. The first lines of the
inscription seem to me to contain an account of the union of
Amon with the queen, analogous to those at Deîr el-Baharî
treating of the birth of Hâtshopsîtû, and to those at Luxor
bearing upon Amenôthes III. (cf. vol. iv. pp. 342, 343; and
p. 51 of the present volume), and to prove for certain that
Harmhabî's mother was a princess of the royal line by right.
** The king is not named in the inscription. It cannot have
been Amenôthes IV., for an individual of the importance of
Harmhabî, living alongside this king, would at least have
had a tomb begun for him at. Tel el-Amarna. We may hesitate
between Aï and Tûtankhamon; but the inscription seems to say
definitely that Harmhabî succeeded directly to the king
under whom he had held important offices for many years, and
this compels us to fix upon Aï, who, as we have said at p.
108, et seq., of the present volume, was, to all
appearances, the last of the so-called heretical sovereigns.
He never gave cause for any dissatisfaction when called to court, and when he was asked questions by the monarch he replied always in fit terms, in such words as were calculated to produce serenity, and thus gained for himself a reputation as the incarnation of wisdom, all his plans and intentions appearing to have been conceived by Thot the Ibis himself. For many years he held a place of confidence with the sovereign. The nobles, from the moment he appeared at the gate of the palace, bowed their backs before him; the barbaric chiefs from the north or south stretched out their arms as soon as they approached him, and gave him the adoration they would bestow upon a god. His favourite residence was Memphis, his preference for it arising from his having possibly been born there, or from its having been assigned to him for his abode. Here he constructed for himself a magnificent tomb, the bas-reliefs of which exhibit him as already king, with the sceptre in his hand and the uraaus on his brow, while the adjoining cartouche does not as yet contain his name.*
* This part of the account is based upon, a study of a
certain number of texts and representations all coming from
Harmhabî's tomb at Saqqârah, and now scattered among the
various museums—at Gîzeh, Leyden, London, and Alexandria.
Birch was the first to assign those monuments to the Pharaoh
Harmhabî, supposing at the same time that he had been
dethroned by Ramses I., and had lived at Memphis in an
intermediate position between that of a prince and that of a
private individual; this opinion was adopted by Ed. Meyer,
rejected by Wiedemann and by myself. After full examination,
I think the Harmhabî of the tomb at Saqqârah and the Pharaoh
Harmhabî are one and the same person; Harmhabî, sufficiently
high placed to warrant his wearing the uraius, but not high
enough to have his name inscribed in a cartouche, must have
had his tomb constructed at Saqqârah, as Aï and possibly
Ramses I. had theirs built for them at Tel el-Amarna.
He was the mighty of the mighty, the great among the great, the general of generals, the messenger who ran to convey orders to the people of Asia and Ethiopia, the indispensable companion in council or on the field of battle,* at the time when Horus of Cynopolis resolved to seat him upon his eternal throne. Aï no longer occupied it. Horus took Harmhabî with him to Thebes, escorted him thither amid expressions of general joy, and led him to Amon in order that the god might bestow upon him the right to reign. The reception took place in the temple of Luxor, which served as a kind of private chapel for the descendants of Amenôthes. Amon rejoiced to see Harmhabî, the heir of the two worlds; he took him with him to the royal palace, introduced him into the apartments of his august daughter, Mûtnozmît; then, after she had recognised her child and had pressed him to her bosom, all the gods broke out into acclamations, and their cries ascended up to heaven.**
* The fragments of the tomb preserved at Leyden show him
leading to the Pharaoh Asiatics and Ethiopians, burthened
with tribute. The expressions and titles given above are
borrowed from the fragments at Gîzeh.
** Owing to a gap, the text cannot be accurately translated
at this point. The reading can be made out that Amon "betook
himself to the palace, placing the prince before him, as far
as the sanctuary of his (Amon's) daughter, the very
august...; she poured water on his hands, she embraced the
beauties (of the prince), she placed herself before him." It
will be seen that the name of the daughter of Amon is
wanting, and Birch thought that a terrestrial princess whom
Harmhabî had married was in question, Miifcnozmît, according
to Brugsch. If the reference is not to a goddess, who along
with Amon took part in the ceremonies, but to Mûtnozmît, we
must come to the conclusion that she, as heir and queen by
birth, must have ceded her rights by some ritual to her son
before he could be crowned.
"Behold, Amon arrives with his son before him, at the palace, in order to put upon his head the diadem, and to prolong the length of his life! We install him, therefore, in his office, we give to him the insignia of Eâ, we pray Amon for him whom he has brought as our protector: may he as king have the festivals of Eâ and the years of Horus; may he accomplish his good pleasure in Thebes, in Heliopolis, in Memphis, and may he add to the veneration with which these cities are invested." And they immediately decided that the new Pharaoh should be called Horus-sturdy-bull, mighty in wise projects, lord of the Vulture and of the very marvellous Urseus in Thebes, the conquering Horus who takes pleasure in the truth, and who maintains the two lands, the lord of the south and north, Sozir Khopîrûrî chosen of Eâ, the offspring of the Sun, Harmhabî Mîamûn, giver of life. The cortege came afterwards to the palace, the king walking before Amon: there the god embraced his son, placed the diadems upon his head, delivered to him the rule of the whole world, over foreign populations as well as those of Egypt, inasmuch as he possessed this power as the sovereign of the universe.
This is the customary subject of the records of enthronement. Pharaoh is the son of a god, chosen by his father, from among all those who might have a claim to it, to occupy for a time the throne of Horus; and as he became king only by a divine decree, he had publicly to express, at the moment of his elevation, his debt of gratitude to, and his boundless respect for, the deity, who had made him what he was. In this case, however, the protocol embodied something more than the traditional formality, and its hackneyed phrases borrowed a special meaning from the circumstances of the moment. Amon, who had been insulted and proscribed by Khûniatonû, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of the immediate successors of his enemy.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Beato.
They had restored to him his privileges and his worship, they had become reconciled to him, and avowed themselves his faithful ones, but all this was as much an act of political necessity as a matter of religion: they still continued to tolerate, if not to favour, the rival doctrinal system, and the temple of the hateful Disk still dishonoured by its vicinity the sanctuary of Karnak. Harmhabî, on the other hand, was devoted to Amon, who had moulded him in embryo, and had trained him from his birth to worship none but him. Harmhabî's triumph marked the end of the evil days, and inaugurated a new era, in which Amon saw himself again master of Thebes and of the world. Immediately after his enthronement Harmhabî rivalled the first Amen-ôthes in his zeal for the interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of Atonû and the building before which they stood; then, that no trace of them might remain, he worked up the stones into the masonry of two pylons, which he set up upon the site, to the south of the gates of Thûtmosis III. They remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in the year 27 B.C. a great earthquake brought them abruptly to light. We find everywhere among the ruins, at the foot of the dislocated gates, or at the bases of the headless colossal figures, heaps of blocks detached from the structure, on which can be made out remnants of prayers addressed to the Disk, scenes of worship, and cartouches of Amenôfches IV., Aï, and Tûtankhamon. The work begun by Harmhabî at Thebes was continued with unabated zeal through the length of the whole river-valley. "He restored the sanctuaries from the marshes of Athû even to Nubia; he repaired their sculptures so that they were better than before, not to speak of the fine things he did in them, rejoicing the eyes of Râ. That which he had found injured he put into its original condition, erecting a hundred statues, carefully formed of valuable stone, for every one which was lacking. He inspected the ruined towns of the gods in the land, and made them such as they had been in the time of the first Ennead, and he allotted to them estates and offerings for every day, as well as a set of sacred vessels entirely of gold and silver; he settled priests in them, bookmen, carefully chosen soldiers, and assigned to them fields, cattle, all the necessary material to make prayers to Râ every morning." These measures were inspired by consideration for the ancient deities; but he added to them others, which tended to secure the welfare of the people and the stability of the government. Up to this time the officials and the Egyptian soldiers had displayed a tendency to oppress the fellahîn, without taking into consideration the injury to the treasury occasioned by their rapacity. Constant supervision was the only means of restraining them, for even the best-served Pharaohs, Thûtmosis, and Amenôthes III. themselves, were obliged to have frequent recourse to the rigour of the law to keep the scandalous depredations of the officials within bounds.*
* Harmhabî refers to the edicts of Thûtmosis III.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Prisse d'Avennes.
The religious disputes of the preceding years, in enfeebling the authority of the central power, had given a free hand to these oppressors. The scribes and tax-collectors were accustomed to exact contributions for the public service from the ships, whether laden or not, of those who were in a small way of business, and once they had laid their hands upon them, they did not readily let them go. The poor fellow falling into their clutches lost his cargo, and he was at his wits' end to know how to deliver at the royal storehouses the various wares with which he calculated to pay his taxes. No sooner had the Court arrived at some place than the servants scoured the neighbourhood, confiscating the land produce, and seizing upon slaves, under pretence that they were acting for the king, while they had only their personal ends in view. Soldiers appropriated all the hides of animals with the object, doubtless, of making from them leather jackets and helmets, or of duplicating their shields, with the result that when the treasury made its claim for leather, none was to be found. It was hardly possible, moreover, to bring the culprits to justice, for the chief men of the towns and villages, the prophets, and all those who ought to have looked after the interests of the taxpayer, took money from the criminals for protecting them from justice, and compelled the innocent victims also to purchase their protection. Harmhabî, who was continually looking for opportunities to put down injustice and to punish deceit, at length decided to pro-mulgate a very severe edict against the magistrates and the double-dealing officials: any of them who was found to have neglected his duty was to have his nose cut off, and was to be sent into perpetual exile to Zalu, on the eastern frontier. His commands, faithfully carried out, soon produced a salutary effect, and as he would on no account relax the severity of the sentence, exactions were no longer heard of, to the advantage of the revenue of the State. On the last day of each month the gates of his palace were open to every one.
Any one on giving his name to the guard could enter the court of honour, where he would find food in abundance to satisfy his hunger while he was awaiting an audience. The king all the while was seated in the sight of all at the tribune, whence he would throw among his faithful friends necklaces and bracelets of gold: he inquired into complaints one after another, heard every case, announced his judgments in brief words, and dismissed his subjects, who went away proud and happy at having had their affairs dealt with by the sovereign himself.*
* All these details are taken from a stele discovered in
1882. The text is so mutilated that it is impossible to give
a literal rendering of it in all its parts, but the sense is
sufficiently clear to warrant our rilling up the whole with
considerable certainty.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Autograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.
The portraits of Harmhabî which have come down to us give us the impression of a character at once energetic and agreeable. The most beautiful of these is little more than a fragment broken off a black granite statue. Its mournful expression is not pleasing to the spectator, and at the first view alienates his sympathy. The face, which is still youthful, breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which is somewhat rare among the Pharaohs of the best period: the thin and straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour, and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the false beard depending from it. Every detail is treated with such freedom that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work upon, rather than a rock almost hard enough to defy the chisel; the command over it is so complete that the difficulty of the work is forgotten in the perfection of the result. The dreamy expression of his face, however, did not prevent Harmhabî from displaying beyond Egypt, as within it, singular activity.
Although Egypt had never given up its claims to dominion over the whole river-valley, as far as the plains of Sennar, yet since the time of Amenôthes III. no sovereign had condescended, it would I appear, to conduct in person the expeditions directed against the tribes of! the Upper Nile. Harmhabî was anxious to revive the custom which imposed upon the Pharaohs the obligation to make their first essay in arms in Ethiopia, as Horus, son of Isis, had done of yore, and he seized the pretext of the occurrence of certain raids there to lead a body of troops himself into the heart of the negro country.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
He had just ordered at this time the construction of the two southern pylons at Karnak, and there was great activity in the quarries of Silsileh. A commemorative chapel also was in course of excavation here in the sandstone rock, and he had dedicated it to his father, Amon-Ba of Thebes, coupling with him the local divinities, Hapî the Nile, and Sobkû the patron of Ombos. The sanctuary is excavated somewhat deeply into the hillside, and the dark rooms within it are decorated with the usual scenes of worship, but the vaulted approach to them displays upon its western wall the victory of the king. We see here a figure receiving from Amon the assurance of a long and happy life, and another letting fly his arrows at a host of fleeing enemies; Ethiopians raise their heads to him in suppliant gesture; soldiers march past with their captives; above one of the doors we see twelve military leaders marching and carrying the king aloft upon their shoulders, while a group of priests and nobles salute him, offering incense.*
* The significance of the monument was pointed out first by
Champollion. The series of races conquered was represented
at Karnak on the internal face of one of the pylons built by
Harmhabi; it appears to have been "usurped" by Ramses II.
At this period Egyptian ships were ploughing the Red Sea, and their captains were renewing official relations with Pûanît. Somali chiefs were paying visits to the palace, as in the time of Thûtmosis III. The wars of Amon had, in fact, begun again. The god, having suffered neglect for half a century, had a greater need than ever of gold and silver to fill his coffers; he required masons for his buildings, slaves and cattle for his farms, perfumed essences and incense for his daily rites. His resources had gradually become exhausted, and his treasury would soon be empty if he did not employ the usual means to replenish it. He incited Harmhabi to proceed against the countries from which, in olden times he had enriched himself—to the south in the first place, and then, having decreed victory there, and having naturally taken for himself the greater part of the spoils, he turned his attention to Asia.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Daniel Heron.
The black spots are due to the torches of the fellahîn of
the neighbourhood who have visited the rock tomb in bygone
years.
In the latter campaign the Egyptian troops took once more the route through Coele-Syria, and if the expedition experienced here more difficulties than on the banks of the Upper Nile, it was, nevertheless, brought to an equally triumphant conclusion. Those of their adversaries who had offered an obstinate resistance were transported into other lands, and the rebel cities were either razed to the ground or given to the flames: the inhabitants having taken refuge in the mountains, where they were in danger of perishing from hunger, made supplications for peace, which was granted to them on the usual conditions of doing homage and paying tribute.*
* These details are taken from the fragment of an
inscription now in the museum at Vienna; Bergmann, and also
Erman, think that we have in this text the indication of an
immigration into Egypt of a tribe of the Monâtiu.
We do not exactly know how far he penetrated into the country; the list of the towns and nations over which he boasts of having triumphed contains, along with names unknown to us, some already famous or soon to become so—Arvad, Pibukhu, the Khâti, and possibly Alasia. The Haui-Nibu themselves must have felt the effects of the campaign, for several of their chiefs associated, doubtless, with the Phoenicians, presented themselves before the Pharaoh at Thebes. Egypt was maintaining, therefore, its ascendency, or at least appearing to maintain it in those regions where the kings of the XVIIIth dynasty had ruled after the campaigns of Thûtmosis I., Thûtmosis III., and Amenothes II. Its influence, nevertheless, was not so undisputed as in former days; not that the Egyptian soldiers were less valiant, but owing to the fact that another power had risen up alongside them whose armies were strong enough to encounter them on the field of battle and to obtain a victory over them.
Beyond Naharaim, in the deep recesses of the Amanus and Taurus, there had lived, for no one knows how many centuries, the rude and warlike tribes of the Khâti, related not so, much to the Semites of the Syrian plain as to the populations of doubtful race and language who occupied the upper basins of the Halys and Euphrates.* The Chaldæan conquest had barely touched them; the Egyptian campaign had not more effect, and Thûtmosis III. himself, after having crossed their frontiers and sacked several of their towns, made no serious pretence to reckon them among his subjects. Their chiefs were accustomed, like their neighbours, to use, for correspondence with other countries, the cuneiform mode of writing; they had among them, therefore, for this purpose, a host of scribes, interpreters, and official registrars of events, such as we find to have accompanied the sovereigns of Assyria and Babylon.** These chiefs were accustomed to send from time to time a present to the Pharaoh, which the latter was pleased to regard as a tribute,*** or they would offer, perhaps, one of their daughters in marriage to the king at Thebes, and after the marriage show themselves anxious to maintain good faith with their son-in-law.
* Halévy asserts that the Khâti were Semites, and bases his
assertion on materials of the Assyrian period. Thés Khâti,
absorbed in Syria by the Semites, with whom they were
blended, appear to have been by origin a non-Semitic people.
** A letter from the King of the Khâti to the Pharaoh
Amenothes IV. is written in cuneiform writing and in a
Semitic language. It has been thought that other documents,
drawn up in a non-Semitic language and coming from Mitanni
and Arzapi, contain a dialect of the Hittite speech or that
language itself. A "writer of books," attached to the person
of the Hittite King Khatusaru, is named amongst the dead
found on the field of battle at Qodshû.
*** It is thus perhaps we must understand the mention of
tribute from the Khâti in the Annals of Thûtmosis III., 1.
26, in the year XXXIII., also in the year XL. One of the Tel
el-Amarna letters refers to presents of this kind, which the
King of Khâti addresses to Amenôthes IV. to celebrate his
enthronement, and to ask him to maintain with himself the
traditional good relations of their two families.
They had, moreover, commercial relations with Egypt, and furnished it with cattle, chariots, and those splendid Cappadocian horses whose breed was celebrated down to the Greek period.* They were already, indeed, people of consideration; their territory was so extensive that the contemporaries of Thutmosis III. called them the Greater Khâti; and the epithet "vile," which the chancellors of the Pharaohs added to their name, only shows by its virulence the impression which they had produced upon the mind of their adversaries.**
* The horses of the Khâti were called abarî, strong,
vigorous, as also their bulls. The King of Alasia, while
offering to Amenôthes III. a profitable speculation, advises
him to have nothing to do with the King of the Khâti or with
the King of Sangar, and thus furnishes proof that the
Egyptians held constant commercial relations with the Khâti.
** M. de Rougé suggested that Khâti "the Little" was the
name of the Hittites of Hebron. The expression, "Khâti the
Great," has been compared with that of Khanirabbat, "Khani
the Great," which in the Assyrian texts would seem to
designate a part of Cappadocia, in which the province of
Miliddi occurs, and the identification of the two has found
an ardent defender in W. Max Millier. Until further light is
thrown upon it, the most probable reading of the word is not
Khani-rabat, but Khani-galbat. The name Khani-Galbat is
possibly preserved in Julbat, which the Arab geographers
applied in the Middle Ages to a province situated in Lesser
Armenia.
Their type of face distinguishes them clearly from the nations conterminous with them on the south. The Egyptian draughtsmen represented them as squat and short in stature, though vigorous, strong-limbed, and with broad and full shoulders in youth, but as inclined frequently to obesity in old age. The head is long and heavy, the forehead flattened, the chin moderate in size, the nose prominent, the eyebrows and cheeks projecting, the eyes small, oblique, and deep-set, the mouth fleshy, and usually framed in by two deep wrinkles; the flesh colour is a yellowish or reddish white, but clearer than that of the Phoenicians or the Amurru.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
Their ordinary costume consisted, sometimes of a shirt with short sleeves, sometimes of a sort of loin-cloth, more or less ample according to the rank of the individual wearing it, and bound round the waist by a belt. To these they added a scanty mantle, red or blue, fringed like that of the Chaldæans, which they passed over the left shoulder and brought back under the right, so as to leave the latter exposed. They wore shoes with thick soles, turning up distinctly at the toes,* and they encased their hands in gloves, reaching halfway up the arm.
* This characteristic is found on the majority of the
monuments which the peoples of Asia Minor have left to us,
and it is one of the most striking indications of the
northern origin of the Khâti. The Egyptian artists and
modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority
of them have represented the Khâti without shoes.
They shaved off both moustache and beard, but gave free growth to their hair, which they divided into two or three locks, and allowed to fall upon their backs and breasts. The king's head-dress, which was distinctive of royalty, was a tall pointed hat, resembling to some extent the white crown of the Pharaohs. The dress of the people, taken all together, was of better and thicker material than that of the Syrians or Egyptians. The mountains and elevated plateaus which they inhabited were subject to extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold. If the summer burnt up everything, the winter reigned here with an extreme rigour, and dragged on for months: clothing and footgear had to be seen to, if the snow and the icy winds of December were to be resisted. The character of their towns, and the domestic life of their nobles and the common people, can only be guessed at. Some, at least, of the peasants must have sheltered themselves in villages half underground, similar to those which are still to be found in this region. The town-folk and the nobles had adopted for the most part the Chaldæan or Egyptian manners and customs in use among the Semites of Syria. As to their religion, they reverenced a number of secondary deities who had their abode in the tempest, in the clouds, the sea, the rivers, the springs, the mountains, and the forests. Above this crowd there were several sovereign divinities of the thunder or the air, sun-gods and moon-gods, of which the chief was called Khâti, and was considered to be the father of the nation. They ascribed to all their deities a warlike and savage character. The Egyptians pictured some of them as a kind of Râ,* others as representing Sit, or rather Sûtkhû, that patron of the Hyksôs which was identified by them with Sit: every town had its tutelary heroes, of whom they were accustomed to speak as if of its Sûtkhû—Sûtkhû of Paliqa, Sûtkhû of Khissapa, Sûtkhû of Sarsu, Sûtkhû of Salpina. The goddesses in their eyes also became Astartés, and this one fact suggests that these deities were, like their Phoenician and Canaanite sisters, of a double nature—in one aspect chaste, fierce, and warlike, and in another lascivious and pacific. One god was called Mauru, another Targu, others Qaui and Khepa.**
* The Cilician inscriptions of the Græco-Roman period reveal
the existence in this region of a god, Rho, Rhos. Did this
god exist among the Khâti, and did the similarity of the
pronunciation of it to that of the god Râ suggest to the
Egyptians the existence of a similar god among these people,
or did they simply translate into their language the name of
the Hittite god representing the sun?
** The names Mauru and Qaui are deduced from the forms
Maurusaru and Qauisaru, which were borne by the Khâti: Qaui
was probably the eponymous hero of the Qui people, as Khâti
was of the Khâti. Tarku and Tisubu appear to me to be
contained in the names Targanunasa, Targazatas, and
Tartisubu; Tisubu is probably the Têssupas mentioned in the
letter from Dushratta written in Mitannian, and identical
with the Tushupu of another letter from the same king, and
in a despatch from Tarkondaraush. Targu, Targa, Targanu,
resemble the god Tarkhu, which is known to us from the
proper names of these regions preserved in attributes
covered by each of these divine names, and as to the forms
with which they were invested.
Drawn by Faucher- Gudin, from a picture in Lepsius. Khatusaru, King of the Khâti,who was for thirty years a contemporary of Ramses II.
Tishubu, the Rammân of the Assyrians, was doubtless lord of the tempest and of the atmosphere; Shausbe answered to Shala and to Ishtar the queen of love;* but we are frequently in ignorance as to the Assyrian and Greek inscriptions. Kheba, Khepa, Khîpa, is said to be a denomination of Rammân; we find it in the names of the princesses Tadu-khîpa, Gilu-khîpa, Puu-khîpa.
The majority of them, both male and female, were of gigantic stature, and were arrayed in the vesture of earthly kings and queens: they brandished their arms, displayed the insignia of their authority, such as a flower or bunch of grapes, and while receiving the offerings of the people were seated on a chair before an altar, or stood each on the animal representing him—such as a lion, a stag, or wild goat. The temples of their towns have disappeared, but they could never have been, it would seem, either-large or magnificent: the favourite places of worship were the tops of mountains, in the vicinity of springs, or the depths of mysterious grottoes, where the deity revealed himself to his priests, and received the faithful at the solemn festivals celebrated several times a year.*
* The association of Tushupu, Tessupas, Tisubu, with Rammânu
is made out from an Assyrian tablet published by Bezold: it
was reserved for Say ce and Jensen to determine the nature
of the god. Shausbe has been identified with Ishtar or Shala
by Jensen.
We know as little about their political organisation as about their religion.* We may believe, however, that it was feudal in character, and that every clan had its hereditary chief and its proper gods: the clans collectively rendered obedience to a common king, whose effective authority depended upon his character and age.**
* The religious cities and the festivals of the Greek epoch
are described by Strabo; these festivals were very ancient,
and their institution, if not the method of celebrating
them, may go back to the time of the Hittite empire.
** The description of the battle of Qodshû in the time of
Ramses II. shows us the King of the Khâti surrounded by his
vassals. The evidence of the existence of a similar feudal
organisation from the time of the XVIIIth dynasty is
furnished by a letter of Dushratta, King of Mitanni, where
he relates to Amenôthes IV. the revolt of his brother
Artassumara, and speaks of the help which one of the
neighbouring chiefs, Pirkhi, and all the Khâti had given to
the rebel.
The various contingents which the sovereign could collect together and lead would, if he were an incapable general, be of little avail against the well-officered and veteran troops of Egypt. Still they were not to be despised, and contained the elements of an excellent army, superior both in quality and quantity to any which Syria had ever been able to put into the field. The infantry consisted of a limited number of archers or slingers. They had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented with a tuft. The bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in a point.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.
Their mode of attack was in close phalanxes, whose shock must have been hard to bear, for the soldiers forming them were in part at least recruited from among the strong and hardy mountaineers of the Taurus. The chariotry comprised the nobles and the élite of the army, but it was differently constituted from that of the Egyptians, and employed other tactics.
The Hittite chariots were heavier, and the framework, instead of being a mere skeleton, was pannelled on the sides, the contour at the top being sometimes quite square, at other times rudely curved. It was bound together in the front by two disks of metal, and strengthened by strips of copper or bronze, which were sometimes plated with silver or gold. There were no quiver-cases as in Egyptian chariots, for the Hittite charioteers rarely resorted to the bow and arrow. The occupants of a chariot were three in number—the driver; the shield-bearer, whose office it was to protect his companions by means of a shield, sometimes of a round form, with a segment taken out on each side, and sometimes square; and finally, the warrior, with his sword and lance. The Hittite princes whom fortune had brought into relations with Thûtmosîs III. and Amenôthes II. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent forces around them. It was owing probably to the feebleness of their character or to the turbulence of their barons that we must ascribe the poor part they played in the revolutions of the Eastern world at this time. The establishment of a strong military power on their southern frontier was certain, moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way against them to their own profit. Pharaoh's generals were accustomed to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at Thebes among those of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little effect in restraining the Hittites. They continued, in spite of them, to march southward, and the letters from the Egyptian governors record their progress year after year. They had a hand in all the plots which were being hatched among the Syrians, and all the disaffected who wished to be free from foreign oppression—such as Abdashirti and his son Azîru—addressed themselves to them for help in the way of chariots and men.*
* Azîru defends himself in one of his letters against the
accusation of having received four messengers from the King
of the Khâti, while he refused to receive those from Egypt.
The complicity of Aziru with the Khâti is denounced in an
appeal from the inhabitants of Tunipa. In a mutilated
letter, an unknown person calls attention to the
negotiations which a petty-Syrian prince had entered into
with the King of the Khâti.
Even inthe time of Amenôfches III. they had endeavoured to reap profit from the discords of Mitanni, and had asserted their supremacy over it. Dushratta, however, was able to defeat one of their chiefs. Repulsed on this side, they fell back upon that part of Naharaim lying between the Euphrates and Orontes, and made themselves masters of one town after another in spite of the despairing appeals of the conquered to the Theban king. From the accession of Khûniatonû, they set to work to annex the countries of Nukhassi, Nîi, Tunipa, and Zinzauru: they looked with covetous eyes upon Phoenicia, and were already menacing Coele-Syria. The religious confusion in Egypt under Tûtankhamon and Aî left them a free field for their ambitions, and when Harmhabî ventured to cross to the east of the isthmus, he found them definitely installed in the region stretching from the Mediterranean and the Lebanon to the Euphrates. Their then reigning prince, Sapalulu, appeared to have been the founder of a new dynasty: he united the forces of the country in a solid body, and was within a little of making a single state out of all Northern Syria.*
* Sapalulu has the same name as that wo meet with later on in the country of Patin, in the time of Salmanasar III., viz. Sapalulme. It is known to us only from a treaty with the Khâti, which makes him coeval with Ramses I.: it was with him probably that Harmhabî had to deal in his Syrian campaigns. The limit of his empire towards the south is gathered in a measure from what we know of the wars of Seti I. with the Khâti.
All Naharaim had submitted to him: Zahi, Alasia, and the Amurru had passed under his government from that of the Pharaohs; Carchemish, Tunipa, Nîi, Hamath, figured among his royal cities, and Qodshû was the defence of his southern frontier. His progress towards the east was not less considerable. Mitanni, Arzapi, and the principalities of the Euphrates as far as the Balikh, possibly even to the Khabur,* paid him homage: beyond this, Assyria and Chaldæa barred his way. Here, as on his other frontiers, fortune brought him face to face with the most formidable powers of the Asiatic world.
* The text of the poem of Pentaûîrît mentions, among the
countries confederate with the Khâti, all Naharaim; that is
to say, the country on either side of the Euphrates,
embracing Mitanni and the principalities named in the Amarna
correspondence, and in addition some provinces whose sites
have not yet been discovered, but which may be placed
without much risk of error to the north of the Taurus.
The latter prince was obliged to capture Qodshû, and to conquer the people of the Lebanon. Had he sufficient forces at his disposal to triumph over them, or only enough to hold his ground? Both hypotheses could have been answered in the affirmative if each one of these great powers, confiding in its own resources, had attacked him separately. The Amorites, the people of Zahi, Alasia, and Naharaim, together with recruits from Hittite tribes, would then have put him in a position to resist, and even to carry off victory with a high hand in the final struggle. But an alliance between Assyria or Babylon and Thebes was always possible. There had been such things before, in the time of Thut-mosis IV. and in that of Amenôthes III., but they were lukewarm agreements, and their effect was not much to boast of, for the two parties to the covenant had then no common enemy to deal with, and their mutual interests were not, therefore, bound up with their united action. The circumstances were very different now. The rapid growth of a nascent kingdom, the restless spirit of its people, its trespasses on domains in which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,—did not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an offensive and defensive treaty? If they decided to act in concert, how could Sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources to withstand the double assault? The Hittites, as we know them more especially from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, might be regarded as the lords only of Northern Syria, and their power be measured merely by the extent of territory which they occupied to the south of the Taurus and on the two banks of the Middle Euphrates. But this does not by any means represent the real facts. This was but the half of their empire; the rest extended to the westward and northward, beyond the mountains into that region, known afterwards as Asia Minor, in which Egyptian tradition had from ancient times confused some twenty nations under the common vague epithet of Haûî-nîbû. Official language still employed it as a convenient and comprehensive term, but the voyages of the Phoenicians and the travels of the "Royal Messengers," as well as, probably, the maritime commerce of the merchants of the Delta, had taught the scribes for more than a century and a half to make distinctions among these nations which they had previously summed up in one. The Lufeu* were to be found there, as well as the Danauna,** the Shardana,*** and others besides, who lay behind one another on the coast. Of the second line of populations behind the region of the coast tribes, we have up to the present no means of knowing anything with certainty. Asia Minor, furthermore, is divided into two regions, so distinctly separated by nature as well as by races that one would be almost inclined to regard them as two countries foreign to each other.
* The Luku, Luka, are mentioned in the Amarna correspondence
under the form Lukki as pirates and highway robbers. The
identity of these people with the Lycians I hold as well
established.
** The Danauna are mentioned along with the Luku in the
Amarna correspondence. The termination, -auna, -ana of
this word appears to be the ending in -aon found in Asiatic
names like Lykaôn by the side of Lykos, Kataôn by the side
of Kêtis and Kat-patuka; while the form of the name Danaos
is preserved in Greek legend, Danaôn is found only on
Oriental monuments. The Danauna came "from their islands,"
that is to say, from the coasts of Asia Minor, or from
Greece, the term not being pressed too literally, as the
Egyptians were inclined to call all distant lands situated
to the north beyond the Mediterranean Sea "islands."
*** E. de Rougé and Chabas were inclined to identify the
Shardana with the Sardes and the island of Sardinia. Unger
made them out to be the Khartanoi of Libya, and was followed
by Brugsch. W. Max Müller revived the hypotheses of De Rougé
and Chabas, and saw in them bands from the Italian island. I
am still persuaded, as I was twenty-five years ago, that
they were Asiatics—the Mæonian tribe which gave its name
to Sardis. The Serdani or Shardana are mentioned as serving
in the Egyptian Army in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.
In its centre it consists of a well-defined undulating plain, having a gentle slope towards the Black Sea, and of the shape of a kind of convex trapezium, clearly bounded towards the north by the highlands of Pontus, and on the south by the tortuous chain of the Taurus. A line of low hills fringes the country on the west, from the Olympus of Mysia to the Taurus of Pisidia. Towards the east it is bounded by broken chains of mountains of unequal height, to which the name Anti-Taurus is not very appropriately applied. An immense volcanic cone, Mount Argseus, looks down from a height of some 13,000 feet over the wide isthmus which connects the country with the lands of the Euphrates. This volcano is now extinct, but it still preserved in old days something of its languishing energy, throwing out flames at intervals above the sacred forests which clothed its slopes. The rivers having their sources in the region just described, have not all succeeded in piercing the obstacles which separate them from the sea, but the Pyramus and the Sarus find their way into the Mediterranean and the Iris, Halys and Sangarios into the Euxine. The others flow into the lowlands, forming meres, marshes, and lakes of fluctuating extent. The largest of these lakes, called Tatta, is salt, and its superficial extent varies with the season. In brief, the plateau of this region is nothing but an extension of the highlands of Central Asia, and has the same vegetation, fauna, and climate, the same extremes of temperature, the same aridity, and the same wretched and poverty-stricken character as the latter. The maritime portions are of an entirely different aspect.
The western coast which stretches into the Ægean is furrowed by deep valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers—the Caicus, the Hermos, the Cayster, and Meander—which flow through them are effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes the land to encroach there upon the sea. The littoral is penetrated here and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands—Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Cos, Rhodes—of which the majority are near enough to the continent to act as defences of the seaboard, and to guard the mouths of the rivers, while they are far enough away to be secure from the effects of any violent disturbances which might arise in the mainland. The Cyclades, distributed in two lines, are scattered, as it were, at hazard between Asia and Europe, like great blocks which have fallen around the piers of a broken bridge. The passage from one to the other is an easy matter, and owing to them, the sea rather serves to bring together the two continents than to divide them. Two groups of heights, imperfectly connected with the central plateau, tower above the Ægean slope—wooded Ida on the north, veiled in cloud, rich in the flocks and herds upon its sides, and in the metals within its bosom; and on the south, the volcanic bastions of Lycia, where tradition was wont to place the fire-breathing Chimaera. A rocky and irregularly broken coast stretches to the west of Lycia, in a line almost parallel with the Taurus, through which, at intervals, torrents leaping from the heights make their way into the sea. At the extreme eastern point of the coast, almost at the angle where the Cilician littoral meets that of Syria, the Pyramus and the Sarus have brought down between them sufficient material to form an alluvial plain, which the classical geographers designated by the name of the Level Cilicia, to distinguish it from the rough region of the interior, Gilicia Trachea.
The populations dwelling in this peninsula belong to very varied races. On the south and south-west certain Semites had found an abode—the mysterious inhabitants of Solyma, and especially the Phoenicians in their scattered trading-stations. On the north-east, beside the Khâti, distributed throughout the valleys of the Anti-Taurus, between the Euphrates and Mount Argseus, there were tribes allied to the Khâti*—possibly at this time the Tabal and the Mushkâ—and, on the shores of the Black Sea, those workers in metal, which, following the Greeks, we may call, for want of a better designation, the Chalybes.
* A certain number of these tribes or of their towns are to
be found in the list contained in the treaty of Ramses II.
with the Khâti.
We are at a loss to know the distribution of tribes in the centre and in the north-west, but the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, we may rest assured, never formed an ethnographical frontier. The continents on either side of them appear at this point to form the banks of a river, or the two slopes of a single valley, whose bottom lies buried beneath the waters. The barbarians of the Balkans had forced their way across at several points. Dardanians were to be encountered in the neighbourhood of Mount Ida, as well as on the banks of the Axios, from early times, and the Kebrenes of Macedonia had colonised a district of the Troad near Ilion, while the great nation of the Mysians had issued, like them, from the European populations of the Hebrus and the Strymon. The hero Dardanos, according to legend, had at first founded, under the auspices of the Idasan Zeus, the town of Dardania; and afterwards a portion of his progeny followed the course of the Scamander, and entrenched themselves upon a precipitous hill, from the top of which they could look far and wide over the plain and sea. The most ancient Ilion, at first a village, abandoned on more than one occasion in the course of centuries, was rebuilt and transformed, earlier than the XVth century before Christ, into an important citadel, the capital of a warlike and prosperous kingdom. The ruins on the spot prove the existence of a primitive civilization analogous to that of the islands of the Archipelago before the arrival of the Phoenician navigators. We find that among both, at the outset, flint and bone, clay, baked and unbaked, formed the only materials for their utensils and furniture; metals were afterwards introduced, and we can trace their progressive employment to the gradual exclusion of the older implements. These ancient Trojans used copper, and we encounter only rarely a kind of bronze, in which the proportion of tin was too slight to give the requisite hardness to the alloy, and we find still fewer examples of iron and lead. They were fairly adroit workers in silver, electrum, and especially in gold. The amulets, cups, necklaces, and jewellery discovered in their tombs or in the ruins of their houses, are sometimes of a not ungraceful form. Their pottery was made by hand, and was not painted or varnished, but they often gave to it a fine lustre by means of a stone-polisher. Other peoples of uncertain origin, but who had attained a civilization as advanced as that of the Trojans, were the Maeonians, the Leleges, and the Carians who had their abode to the south of Troy and of the Mysians. The Maeonians held sway in the fertile valleys of the Hermos, Cayster, and Maaander. They were divided into several branches, such as the Lydians, the Tyrseni, the Torrhebi, and the Shardana, but their most ancient traditions looked back with pride to a flourishing state to which, as they alleged, they had all belonged long ago on the slopes of Mount Sipylos, between the valley of the Hermos and the Gulf of Smyrna. The traditional capital of this kingdom was Magnesia, the most ancient of cities, the residence of Tantalus, the father of Niobe and the Pelopidae. The Leleges rise up before us from many points at the same time, but always connected with the most ancient memories of Greece and Asia. The majority of the strongholds on the Trojan coast belonged to them—such as Antandros and Gargara—and Pedasos on the Satniois boasted of having been one of their colonies, while several other towns of the same name, but very distant from each other, enable us to form some idea of the extent of their migrations.*
* According to the scholiast on Nicander, the word "Pedasos"
signified "mountain," probably in the language of the
Leleges. We know up to the present of four Pedasi, or
Pedasa: the first in Messenia, which later on took the name
of Methône; the second in the Troad, on the banks of the
Satniois; the third in the neighbourhood of Cyzicus; and the
fourth in Caria.
In the time of Strabo, ruined tombs and deserted sites of cities were shown in Caria which the natives regarded as Lelegia—that is, abode of the Leleges. The Carians were dominant in the southern angle of the peninsula and in the Ægean Islands; and the Lycians lay next them on the east, and were sometimes confounded with them. One of the most powerful tribes of the Carians, the Tremilse, were in the eyes of the Greeks hardly to be separated from the mountainous district which they knew as Lycia proper; while other tribes extended as far as the Halys. A district of the Troad, to the south of Mount Ida, was called Lycia, and there was a Lycaonia on both sides of the Middle Taurus; while Attica had its Lycia, and Crete its Lycians. These three nations—the Lycians, Carians, and Leleges—were so entangled together from their origin, that no one would venture now to trace the lines of demarcation between them, and we are often obliged to apply to them collectively what can be appropriately ascribed to only one.
How far the Hittite power extended in the first years of its expansion we have now hardly the means of knowing. It would appear that it took within its scope, on the south-west, the Cilician plain, and the undulating region bordering on it—that of Qodi: the prince of the latter district, if not his vassal, was at least the colleague of the King of the Khâti, and he acted in concert with him in peace as well as in war.*
* The country of Qidi, Qadi, Qodi, has been connected by
Chabas with Galilee, and Brugsch adopted the identification.
W. Max Müller identified it with Phoenicia. I think the
name served to designate the Cilician coast and plain from
the mouth of the Orontes, and the country which was known in
the Græco-Roman period by the name Kêtis and Kataonia.
It embraced also the upper basin of the Pyramos and its affluents, as well as the regions situated between the Euphrates and the Halys, but its frontier in this direction was continually fluctuating, and our researches fail to follow it. It is somewhat probable that it extended considerably towards the west and north-west in the direction of the Ægean Sea. The forests and escarpments of Lycaonia, and the desolate steppes of the central plateau, have always presented a barrier difficult to surmount by any invader from the east. If the Khâti at that period attacked it in front, or by a flank movement, the assault must rather have been of the nature of a hurried reconnaissance, or of a raid, than of a methodically conducted campaign.*
* The idea of a Hittite empire extending over almost all
Asia Minor was advanced by Sayce.
They must have preferred to obtain possession of the valleys of the Thermodon and the Iris, which were rich in mineral wealth, and from which they could have secured an inexhaustible revenue. The extraction and working of metals in this region had attracted thither from time immemorial merchants from neighbouring and distant countries—at first from the south to supply the needs of Syria, Chaldæa, and Egypt, then from the west for the necessities of the countries on the Ægean. The roads, which, starting from the archipelago on the one hand, or the Euphrates on the other, met at this point, fell naturally into one, and thus formed a continuous route, along which the caravans of commerce, as well as warlike expeditions, might henceforward pass. Starting from the cultivated regions of Mæonia, the road proceeded up the valley of the Hermos from west to east; then, scaling the heights of the central plateau and taking a direction more and more to the north-east, it reached the fords of the Halys. Crossing this river twice—for the first time at a point about two-thirds the length of its course, and for the second at a short distance from its source—it made an abrupt turn towards the Taurus, and joined, at Melitene, the routes leading to the Upper Tigris, to Nisibis, to Singara, and to Old Assur, and connecting further down beyond the mountainous region, under the walls of Carchemish, with the roads which led to the Nile and to the river-side cities on the Persian Gulf.*
* The very early existence of this road, which partly
coincides with the royal route of the Persian Achemenids,
was proved by Kiepert.
There were other and shorter routes, if we think only of the number of miles, from the Hermos in Pisidia or Lycaonia, across the central steppe and through the Cilician Gates, to the meeting of the ways at Carchemish; but they led through wretched regions, without industries, almost without tillage, and inhospitable alike to man and beast, and they were ventured on only by those who aimed at trafficking among the populations who lived in their neighbourhood. The Khâti, from the time even when they were enclosed among the fastnesses of the Taurus, had within their control the most important section of the great land route which served to maintain regular relations between the ancient kingdoms of the east and the rising states of the Ægean, and whosoever would pass through their country had to pay them toll. The conquest of Naharaim, in giving them control of a new section, placed almost at their discretion the whole traffic between Chaldæa and Egypt. From the time of Thûtmosis III. caravans employed in this traffic accomplished the greater part of their journey in territories depending upon Babylon, Assyria, or Memphis, and enjoyed thus a relative security; the terror of the Pharaoh protected the travellers even when they were no longer in his domains, and he saved them from the flagrant exactions made upon them by princes who called themselves his brothers, or were actually his vassals. But the time had now come when merchants had to encounter, between Qodshu and the banks of the Khabur, a sovereign owing no allegiance to any one, and who would tolerate no foreign interference in his territory. From the outbreak of hostilities with the Khâti, Egypt could communicate with the cities of the Lower Euphrates only by the Wadys of the Arabian Desert, which were always dangerous and difficult for large convoys; and its commercial relations with Chaldæa were practically brought thus to a standstill, and, as a consequence, the manufactures which fed this trade being reduced to a limited production, the fiscal receipts arising from it experienced a sensible diminution. When peace was restored, matters fell again into their old groove, with certain reservations to the Khâti of some common privileges: Egypt, which had formerly possessed these to her own advantage, now bore the burden of them, and the indirect tribute which she paid in this manner to her rivals furnished them with arms to fight her in case she should endeavour to free herself from the imposition. All the semi-barbaric peoples of the peninsula of Asia Minor were of an adventurous and warlike temperament. They were always willing to set out on an expedition, under the leadership of some chief of noble family or renowned for valour; sometimes by sea in their light craft, which would bring them unexpectedly to the nearest point of the Syrian coast, sometimes by land in companies of foot-soldiers and charioteers. They were frequently fortunate enough to secure plenty of booty, and return with it to their homes safe and sound; but as frequently they would meet with reverses by falling into some ambuscade: in such a case their conqueror would not put them to the sword or sell them as slaves, but would promptly incorporate them into his army, thus making his captives into his soldiers. The King of the Khâti was able to make use of them without difficulty, for his empire was conterminous on the west and north with some of their native lands, and he had often whole regiments of them in his army—Mysians, Lycians, people of Augarît,* of Ilion,** and of Pedasos.***
* The country of Augarît, Ugarît, is mentioned on several
occasions in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. The name has
been wrongly associated with Caria; it has been placed by W.
Max Miiller well within Naharaim, to the east of the
Orontes, between Khalybôn (Aleppo) and Apamoea, the writer
confusing it with Akaiti, named in the campaign of Amenôthes
II. I am not sure about the site, but its association in the
Amarna letters with Gugu and Khanigalbat inclines me to
place it beyond the northern slopes of the Taurus, possibly
on the banks of the Halys or of the Upper Euphrates.
** The name of this people was read Eiûna by Champollion,
who identified it with the Ionians; this reading and
identification were adopted by Lenormant and by W. Max
Müller. Chabas hesitates between Eiûna and Maiûna, Ionia and
Moonia and Brugsch read it Malunna. The reading Iriûna,
Iliûna, seems to me the only possible one, and the
identification with Ilion as well.
*** Owing to its association with the Dardanians, Mysians,
and Ilion, I think it answers to the Pedasos on the Satniois
near Troy.
The revenue of the provinces taken from Egypt, and the products of his tolls, furnished him with abundance of means for obtaining recruits from among them.*
All these things contributed to make the power of the Khâti so considerable, that Harmhabî, when he had once tested it, judged it prudent not to join issues with them. He concluded with Sapalulu a treaty of peace and friendship, which, leaving the two powers in possession respectively of the territory each then occupied, gave legal sanction to the extension of the sphere of the Khâti at the expense of Egypt.** Syria continued to consist of two almost equal parts, stretching from Byblos to the sources of the Jordan and Damascus: the northern portion, formerly tributary to Egypt, became a Hittite possession; while the southern, consisting of Phoenicia and Canaan,*** which the Pharaoh had held for a long time with a more effective authority, and had more fully occupied, was retained for Egypt.
* E. de Rougé and the Egyptologists who followed him thought
at first that the troops designated in the Egyptian texts as
Lycians, Mysians, Dardanians, were the national armies of
these nations, each one commanded by its king, who had
hastened from Asia Minor to succour their ally the King of
the Khâti. I now think that those were bands of adventurers,
consisting of soldiers belonging to these nations, who came
to put themselves at the service of civilized monarchs, as
the Oarians, Ionians, and the Greeks of various cities did
later on: the individuals whom the texts mention as their
princes were not the kings of these nations, but the warrior
chiefs to which each band gave obedience.
** It is not certain that Harmhabî was the Pharaoh with whom
Sapalulu entered into treaty, and it might be insisted with
some reason that Ramses I. was the party to it on the side
of Egypt; but this hypothesis is rendered less probable by
the fact of the extremely short reign of the latter Pharaoh.
I am inclined to think, as W. Max Miiller has supposed, that
the passage in the Treaty of Ramses II. with the Prince of
the Khâti, which speaks of a treaty concluded with
Sapalulu, looks back to the time of Ramses II.'s
predecessor, Harmhabî.
*** This follows from the situation of the two empires, as
indicated in the account of the campaign of Seti I. in his
first year. The king, after having defeated the nomads of
the Arabian desert, passed on without further fighting into
the country of the Amûrrû and the regions of the Lebanon,
which fact seems to imply the submission of Kharû. W. Max
Miiller was the first to* discern clearly this part of the
history of Egyptian conquest; he appears, however, to have
circumscribed somewhat too strictly the dominion of Harmhabî
in assigning Carmel as its limit. The list of the nations of
the north who yielded, or are alleged to have yielded,
submission to Harmhabî, were traced on the first pylon of
this monarch at Karnak, and on its adjoining walls. Among
others, the names of the Khâti and of Arvad are to be read
there.
This could have been but a provisional arrangement: if Thebes had not altogether renounced the hope of repossessing some day the lost conquests of Thûtmosis III., the Khâti, drawn by the same instinct which had urged them to cross their frontiers towards the south, were not likely to be content with less than the expulsion of the Egyptians from Syria, and the absorption of the whole country into the Hittite dominion. Peace was maintained during Harmhabî's lifetime. We know nothing of Egyptian affairs during the last years of his reign. His rule may have come to an end owing to some court intrigue, or he may have had no male heir to follow him.* Ramses, who succeeded him, did not belong to the royal line, or was only remotely connected with it.**
* It would appear, from an Ostracon in the British Museum,
that the year XXI. follows after the year VII. of Harmhabî's
reign; it is possible that the year XXI. may belong to one
of Harmhabî's successors, Seti I. or Ramses II., for
example.
** The efforts to connect Ramses I. with a family of Semitic
origin, possibly the Shepherd-kings themselves, have not
been successful. Everything goes to prove that the Ramses
family was, and considered itself to be, of Egyptian origin.
Brugsch and Ed. Meyer were inclined to see in Ramses I. a
younger brother of Harmhabî. This hypothesis has nothing
either for Or against it up to the present.
He was already an old man when he ascended the throne, and we ought perhaps to identify him with one or other of the Ramses who flourished under the last Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty, perhaps the one who governed Thebes under Khûniatonû, or another, who began but never finished his tomb in the hillside above Tel el-Amarna, in the burying-place of the worshippers of the Disk.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Rosellini.
He had held important offices under Harmhabî,* and had obtained in marriage for his son Seti the hand of Tuîa, who, of all the royal family, possessed the strongest rights to the crown.**
* This Tel el-Amarna Ramses is, perhaps, identical with the
Theban one: he may have followed his master to his new
capital, and have had a tomb dug for himself there, which he
subsequently abandoned, on the death of Khûniatonû, in order
to return to Thebes with Tûtankhamon and Aï.
** The fact that the marriage was celebrated under the
auspices of Harmhabî, and that, consequently, Ramses must
have occupied an important position at the court of that
prince, is proved by the appearance of Ramses II., son of
Tuîa, as early as the first year of Seti, among the ranks of
the combatants in the war carried on by that prince against
the Tihonû; even granting that he was then ten years old, we
are forced to admit that he must have been born before his
grandfather came to the throne. There is in the Vatican a
statue of Tuîa; other statues have been discovered at San.
Ramses reigned only six or seven years, and associated Seti with himself in the government from his second year. He undertook a short military expedition into Ethiopia, and perhaps a raid into Syria; and we find remains of his monuments in Nubia, at Bohani near Wady Haifa, and at Thebes, in the temple of Amon.*
* He began the great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak; E. de Rougé
thinks that the idea of building this was first conceived
under the XVIIIth dynasty.
He displayed little activity, his advanced age preventing him from entering on any serious undertaking: but his accession nevertheless marks an important date in the history of Egypt. Although Harmhabî was distantly connected with the line of the Ahmessides, it is difficult at the present day to know what position to assign him in the Pharaonic lists: while some regard him as the last of the XVIIIth dynasty, others prefer to place him at the head of the XIXth. No such hesitation, however, exists with regard to Ramses I., who was undoubtedly the founder of a new family. The old familiar names of Thûtmosis and Amenôthes henceforward disappear from the royal lists, and are replaced by others, such as Seti, Mînephtah, and, especially, Ramses, which now figure in them for the first time. The princes who bore these names showed themselves worthy successors of those who had raised Egypt to the zenith of her power; like them they were successful on the battle-field, and like them they devoted the best of the spoil to building innumerable monuments. No sooner had Seti celebrated his father's obsequies, than he assembled his army and set out for war.
It would appear that Southern Syria was then in open revolt. "Word had been brought to His Majesty: 'The vile Shaûsû have plotted rebellion; the chiefs of their tribes, assembled in one place on the confines of Kharû, have been smitten with blindness and with the spirit of violence; every one cutteth his neighbour's throat."* It was imperative to send succour to the few tribes who remained faithful, to prevent them from succumbing to the repeated attacks of the insurgents. Seti crossed the frontier at Zalu, but instead of pursuing his way along the coast, he marched due east in order to attack the Shaûsû in the very heart of the desert. The road ran through wide wadys, tolerably well supplied with water, and the length of the stages necessarily depended on the distances between the wells. This route was one frequented in early times, and its security was ensured by a number of fortresses and isolated towers built along it, such as "The House of the Lion "—ta ait pa maû—near the pool of the same name, the Migdol of the springs of Huzîna, the fortress of Uazît, the Tower of the Brave, and the Migdol of Seti at the pools of Absakaba. The Bedawîn, disconcerted by the rapidity of this movement, offered no serious resistance. Their flocks were carried off, their trees cut down, their harvests destroyed, and they surrendered their strongholds at discretion. Pushing on from one halting-place to another, the conqueror soon reached Babbîti, and finally Pakanâna.**
* The pictures of this campaign and the inscriptions which
explain them were engraved by Seti I., on the outside of the
north wall of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak.
** The site of Pakanâna has, with much probability, been
fixed at El-Kenân or Khurbet-Kanâan, to the south of Hebron.
Brugsch had previously taken this name to indicate the
country of Canaan, but Chabas rightly contested this view.
W. Max Millier took up the matter afresh: he perceived that
we have here an allusion to the first town encountered by
Seti I. in the country of Canaan to the south-west of
Raphia, the name of which is not mentioned by the Egyptian
sculptor; it seems to me that this name should be Pakanâna,
and that the town bore the same name as the country.
The latter town occupied a splendid position on the slope of a rocky hill, close to a small lake, and defended the approaches to the vale of Hebron. It surrendered at the first attack, and by its fall the Egyptians became possessed of one of the richest provinces in the southern part of Kharû. This result having been achieved, Seti took the caravan road to his left, on the further side of Gaza, and pushed forward at full speed towards the Hittite frontier.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, by Émil Brugsch-Bey.
It was probably unprotected by any troops, and the Hittite king was absent in some other part of his empire. Seti pillaged the Amurru, seized Ianuâmu and Qodshû by a sudden attack, marched in an oblique direction towards the Mediterranean, forcing the inhabitants of the Lebanon to cut timber from their mountains for the additions which he was premeditating in the temple of the Theban Amon, and finally returned by the coast road, receiving, as he passed through their territory, the homage of the Phoenicians. His entry into Egypt was celebrated by solemn festivities. The nobles, priests, and princes of both south and north hastened to meet him at the bridge of Zalû, and welcomed, with their chants, both the king and the troops of captives whom he was bringing back for the service of his father Amon at Karnak. The delight of his subjects was but natural, since for many years the Egyptians bad not witnessed such a triumph, and they no doubt believed that the prosperous era of Thûtmosis III. was about to return, and that the wealth of Naharaim would once more flow into Thebes as of old. Their illusion was short-lived, for this initial victory was followed by no other. Maurusaru, King of the Khâti, and subsequently his son Mautallu, withstood the Pharaoh with such resolution that he was forced to treat with them. A new alliance was concluded on the same conditions as the old one, and the boundaries of the two kingdoms remained the same as under Harmhabî, a proof that neither sovereign had gained any advantage over his rival. Hence the campaign did not in any way restore Egyptian supremacy, as had been hoped at the moment; it merely served to strengthen her authority in those provinces which the Khâti had failed to take from Egypt. The Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon had too many commercial interests on the banks of the Nile to dream of breaking the slender tie which held them to the Pharaoh, since independence, or submission to another sovereign, might have ruined their trade. The Kharû and the Bedawîn, vanquished wherever they had ventured to oppose the Pharaoh's troops, were less than ever capable of throwing off the Egyptian yoke. Syria fell back into its former state. The local princes once more resumed their intrigues and quarrels, varied at intervals by appeals to their suzerain for justice or succour. The "Royal Messengers" appeared from time to time with their escorts of archers and chariots to claim tribute, levy taxes, to make peace between quarrelsome vassals, or, if the case required it, to supersede some insubordinate chief by a governor of undoubted loyalty; in fine, the entire administration of the empire was a continuation of that of the preceding century. The peoples of Kûsh meanwhile had remained quiet during the campaign in Syria, and on the western frontier the Tihonû had suffered so severe a defeat that they were not likely to recover from it for some time.* The bands of pirates, Shardana and others, who infested the Delta, were hunted down, and the prisoners taken from among them were incorporated into the royal guard.**
* This war is represented at Karnak, and Ramses II. figures
there among the children of Seti I.
** We gather this from passages in the inscriptions from the
year V. onwards, in which Ramses II. boasts that he has a
number of Shardana prisoners in his guard; Rouge was,
perhaps, mistaken in magnifying these piratical raids into a
war of invasion.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Ernil Brugsch-Bey.
Seti, however, does not appear to have had a confirmed taste for war. He showed energy when occasion required it, and he knew how to lead his soldiers, as the expedition of his first year amply proved; but when the necessity was over, he remained on the defensive, and made no further attempt at conquest. By his own choice he was "the jackal who prowls about the country to protect it," rather than "the wizard lion marauding abroad by hidden paths,"* and Egypt enjoyed a profound peace in consequence of his ceaseless vigilance.
* These phrases are taken direct from the inscriptions of
Seti I.
A peaceful policy of this kind did not, of course, produce the amount of spoil and the endless relays of captives which had enabled his predecessors to raise temples and live in great luxury without overburdening their subjects with taxes. Seti was, therefore, the more anxious to do all in his power to develop the internal wealth of the country. The mining colonies of the Sinaitic Peninsula had never ceased working since operations had been resumed there under Hâtshopsîtû and Thûtmosis III., but the output had lessened during the troubles under the heretic kings. Seti sent inspectors thither, and endeavoured to stimulate the workmen to their former activity, but apparently with no great success. We are not able to ascertain if he continued the revival of trade with Pûanît inaugurated by Harmhabî; but at any rate he concentrated his attention on the regions bordering the Red Sea and the gold-mines which they contained. Those of Btbaï, which had been worked as early as the XIIth dynasty, did not yield as much as they had done formerly; not that they were exhausted, but owing to the lack of water in their neighbourhood and along the routes leading to them, they were nearly deserted. It was well known that they contained great wealth, but operations could not be carried on, as the workmen were in danger of dying of thirst. Seti despatched engineers to the spot to explore the surrounding wadys, to clear the ancient cisterns or cut others, and to establish victualling stations at regular intervals for the use of merchants supplying the gangs of miners with commodities. These stations generally consisted of square or rectangular enclosures, built of stones without mortar, and capable of resisting a prolonged attack. The entrance was by a narrow doorway of stone slabs, and in the interior were a few huts and one or two reservoirs for catching rain or storing the water of neighbouring springs. Sometimes a chapel was built close at hand, consecrated to the divinities of the desert, or to their compeers, Mînû of Coptos, Horus, Maut, or Isis. One of these, founded by Seti, still exists near the modern town of Redesieh, at the entrance to one of the valleys which furrow this gold region.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Bock
It is built against, and partly excavated in, a wall of rock, the face of which has been roughly squared, and it is entered through a four-columned portico, giving access to two dark chambers, whose walls are covered with scenes of adoration and a lengthy inscription. In this latter the sovereign relates how, in the IXth year of his reign, he was moved to inspect the roads of the desert; he completed the work in honour of Amon-Râ, of Phtah of Memphis, and of Harmakhis, and he states that travellers were at a loss to express their gratitude and thanks for what he had done. "They repeated from mouth to mouth: 'May Amon give him an endless existence, and may he prolong for him the length of eternity! O ye gods of fountains, attribute to him your life, for he has rendered back to us accessible roads, and he has opened that which was closed to us. Henceforth we can take our way in peace, and reach our destination alive; now that the difficult paths are open and the road has become good, gold can be brought back, as our lord and master has commanded.'" Plans were drawn on papyrus of the configuration of the district, of the beds of precious metal, and of the position of the stations.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Golénischeff.
One of these plans has come down to us, in which the districts are coloured bright red, the mountains dull ochre, the roads dotted over with footmarks to show the direction to be taken, while the superscriptions give the local names, and inform us that the map represents the Bukhni mountain and a fortress and stele of Seti. The whole thing is executed in a rough and naive manner, with an almost childish minuteness which provokes a smile; we should, however, not despise it, for it is the oldest map in the world.
Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin of coloured chalk-drawing by Chabas.
The gold extracted from these regions, together with that brought from Ethiopia, and, better still, the regular payment of taxes and custom-house duties, went to make up for the lack of foreign spoil all the more opportunely, for, although the sovereign did not share the military enthusiasm of Thûtmosis III., he had inherited from him the passion for expensive temple-building.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.
He did not neglect Nubia in this respect, but repaired several of the monuments at which the XVIIIth dynasty had worked—among others, Kalabsheh, Dakkeh, and Amada, besides founding a temple at Sesebi, of which three columns are still standing.*
* In Lepsius's time there were still four columns standing;
Insinger shows us only three.
The outline of these columns is not graceful, and the decoration of them is very poor, for art degenerated rapidly in these distant provinces of the empire, and only succeeded in maintaining its vigour and spirit in the immediate neighbourhood of the Pharaoh, as at Abydos, Memphis, and above all at Thebes. Seti's predecessor Ramses, desirous of obliterating all traces of the misfortunes lately brought about by the changes effected by the heretic kings, had contemplated building at Karnak, in front of the pylon of Amenôthes III., an enormous hall for the ceremonies connected with the cult of Amon, where the immense numbers of priests and worshippers at festival times could be accommodated without inconvenience. It devolved on Seti to carry out what had been merely an ambitious dream of his father's.*
* The great hypostyle hall was cleared and the columns were
strengthened in the winter of 1895-6, as far, at least, as
it was possible to carry out the work of restoration without
imperilling the stability of the whole.
We long to know who was the architect possessed of such confidence in his powers that he ventured to design, and was able to carry out, this almost superhuman undertaking. His name would be held up to almost universal admiration beside those of the greatest masters that we are familiar with, for no one in Greece or Italy has left us any work which surpasses it, or which with such simple means could produce a similar impression of boldness and immensity. It is almost impossible to convey by words to those who have not seen it, the impression which it makes on the spectator. Failing description, the dimensions speak for themselves. The hall measures one hundred and sixty-two feet in length, by three hundred and twenty-five in breadth. A row of twelve columns, the largest ever placed inside a building, runs up the centre, having capitals in the form of inverted bells.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
One hundred and twenty-two columns with lotiform capitals fill the aisles, in rows of nine each. The roof of the central bay is seventy-four feet above the ground, and the cornice of the two towers rises sixty-three feet higher. The building was dimly lighted from the roof of the central colonnade by means of stone gratings, through which the air and the sun's rays entered sparingly. The daylight, as it penetrated into the hall, was rendered more and more obscure by the rows of columns; indeed, at the further end a perpetual twilight must have reigned, pierced by narrow shafts of light falling from the ventilation holes which were placed at intervals in the roof.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato. In the
background, on the right, may be seen a column which for
several centuries has been retained in a half-fallen
position by the weight of its architrave.
The whole building now lies open to the sky, and the sunshine which floods it, pitilessly reveals the mutilations which it has suffered in the course of ages; but the general effect, though less mysterious, is none the less overwhelming. It is the only monument in which the first coup d'oil surpasses the expectations of the spectator instead of disappointing him. The size is immense, and we realise its immensity the more fully as we search our memory in vain to find anything with which to compare it. Seti may have entertained the project of building a replica of this hall in Southern Thebes. Amenôthes III. had left his temple at Luxor unfinished. The sanctuary and its surrounding buildings were used for purposes of worship, but the court of the customary pylon was wanting, and merely a thin wall concealed the mysteries from the sight of the vulgar. Seti resolved to extend the building in a northerly direction, without interfering with the thin screen which had satisfied his predecessors. Starting from the entrance in this wall, he planned an avenue of giant columns rivalling those of Karnak, which he destined to become the central colonnade of a hypostyle hall as vast as that of the sister temple. Either money or time was lacking to carry out his intention. He died before the aisles on either side were even begun. At Abydos, however, he was more successful. We do not know the reason of Seti's particular affection for this town; it is possible that his family held some fief there, or it may be that he desired to show the peculiar estimation in which he held its local god, and intended, by the homage that he lavished on him, to cause the fact to be forgotten that he bore the name of Sit the accursed.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The king selected a favourable site for his temple to the south of the town, on the slope of a sandhill bordering the canal, and he marked out in the hardened soil a ground plan of considerable originality. The building was approached through two pylons, the remains of which are now hidden under the houses of Aarabat el-Madfuneh.
A fairly large courtyard, bordered by two crumbling walls, lies between the second pylon and the temple façade, which was composed of a portico resting on square pillars. Passing between these, we reach two halls supported by-columns of graceful outline, beyond which are eight chapels arranged in a line, side by side, in front of two chambers built in to the hillside, and destined for the reception of Osiris. The holy of holies in ordinary temples is surrounded by chambers of lesser importance, but here it is concealed behind them. The building-material mainly employed here was the white limestone of Tûrah, but of a most beautiful quality, which lent itself to the execution of bas-reliefs of great delicacy, perhaps the finest in ancient Egypt. The artists who carved and painted them belonged to the Theban school, and while their subjects betray a remarkable similarity to those of the monuments dedicated by Amenôthes III., the execution surpasses them in freedom and perfection of modelling; we can, in fact, trace in them the influence of the artists who furnished the drawings for the scenes at Tel el-Amarna. They have represented the gods and goddesses with the same type of profile as that of the king—a type of face of much purity and gentleness, with its aquiline nose, its decided mouth, almond-shaped eyes, and melancholy smile. When the decoration of the temple was completed, Seti regarded the building as too small for its divine inmate, and accordingly added to it a new wing, which he built along the whole length of the southern wall; but he was unable to finish it completely. Several parts of it are lined with religious representations, but in others the subjects have been merely sketched out in black ink with corrections in red, while elsewhere the walls are bare, except for a few inscriptions, scribbled over them after an interval of twenty centuries by the monks who turned the temple chambers into a convent. This new wing was connected with the second hypostyle hall of the original building by a passage, on one of the walls of which is a list of seventy-five royal names, representing the ancestors of the sovereign traced back to Mini. The whole temple must be regarded as a vast funerary chapel, and no one who has studied the religion of Egypt can entertain a doubt as to its purpose. Abydos was the place where the dead assembled before passing into the other world. It was here, at the mouth of the "Cleft," that they received the provisions and offerings of their relatives and friends who remained on this earth. As the dead flocked hither from all quarters of the world, they collected round the tomb of Osiris, and there waited till the moment came to embark on the Boat of the Sun. Seti did not wish his soul to associate with those of the common crowd of his vassals, and prepared this temple for himself, as a separate resting-place, close to the mouth of Hades. After having dwelt within it for a short time subsequent to his funeral, his soul could repair thither whenever it desired, certain of always finding within it the incense and the nourishment of which it stood in need.
Thebes possessed this king's actual tomb. The chapel was at Qurnah, a little to the north of the group of pyramids in which the Pharaohs of the XIth dynasty lay side by side with those of the XIIIth and XVIIth. Ramses had begun to build it, and Seti continued the work, dedicating it to the cult of his father and of himself. Its pylon has altogether disappeared, but the façade with lotus-bud columns is nearly perfect, together with several of the chambers in front of the sanctuary. The decoration is as carefully carried out and the execution as delicate as that in the work at Abydos; we are tempted to believe from one or two examples of it that the same hands have worked at both buildings.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The rock-cut tomb is some distance away up in the mountain, but not in the same ravine as that in which Amenôthes III., Aï, and probably Tûtankhamon and Harmhabî, are buried.*
* There are, in fact, close to those of Aï and Amenôthes
III., three other tombs, two at least of which have been
decorated with paintings, now completely obliterated, and
which may have served as the burying-places of Tûtankhamon
and Harmhabî: the earlier Egyptologists believed them to
have been dug by the first kings of the XVIIIth dynasty.
There then existed, behind the rock amphitheatre of Deîr el-Baharî, a kind of enclosed basin, which could be reached from the plain only by dangerous paths above the temple of Hâtshopsîtû. This basin is divided into two parts, one of which runs in a south-easterly direction, while the other trends to the south-west, and is subdivided into minor branches. To the east rises a barren peak, the outline of which is not unlike that of the step-pyramid of Saqqâra, reproduced on a colossal scale. No spot could be more appropriate to serve as a cemetery for a family of kings. The difficulty of reaching it and of conveying thither the heavy accessories and of providing for the endless processions of the Pharaonic funerals, prevented any attempt being made to cut tombs in it during the Ancient and Middle Empires. About the beginning of the XIXth dynasty, however, some engineers, in search of suitable burial sites, at length noticed that this basin was only separated from the wady issuing to the north of Qurnah by a rocky barrier barely five hundred cubits in width. This presented no formidable obstacle to such skilful engineers as the Egyptians. They cut a trench into the living rock some fifty or sixty cubits in depth, at the bottom of which they tunnelled a narrow passage giving access to the valley.*
* French scholars recognised from the beginning of this
century that the passage in question had been made by human
agency. I attribute the execution of this work to Ramses I.,
as I believe Harmhabî to have been buried in the eastern
valley, near Amenôthes III.
It is not known whether this herculean work was accomplished during the reign of Harnhabî or in that of Ramses I. The latter was the first of the Pharaohs to honour the spot by his presence. His tomb is simple, almost coarse in its workmanship, and comprises a gentle inclined passage, a vault and a sarcophagus of rough stone. That of Seti, on the contrary, is a veritable palace, extending to a distance of 325 feet into the mountain-side. It is entered by a wide and lofty door, which opens on to a staircase of twenty-seven steps, leading to an inclined corridor; other staircases of shallow steps follow with their landings; then come successively a hypostyle hall, and, at the extreme end, a vaulted chamber, all of which are decorated with mysterious scenes and covered with inscriptions. This is, however, but the first storey, containing the antechambers of the dead, but not their living-rooms. A passage and steps, concealed under a slab to the left of the hall, lead to the real vault, which held the mummy and its funerary furniture. As we penetrate further and further by the light of torches into this subterranean abode, we see that the walls are covered with pictures and formulae, setting forth the voyages of the soul through the twelve hours of the night, its trials, its judgment, its reception by the departed, and its apotheosis—all depicted on the rock with the same perfection as that which characterises the bas-reliefs on the finest slabs of Tûrah stone at Qurnah and Abydos. A gallery leading out of the last of these chambers extends a few feet further and then stops abruptly; the engineers had contemplated the excavation of a third storey to the tomb, when the death of their master obliged them to suspend their task. The king's sarcophagus consists of a block of alabaster, hollowed out, polished, and carved with figures and hieroglyphs, with all the minuteness which we associate with the cutting of a gem.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger, taken in
1884.
It contained a wooden coffin, shaped to the human figure and painted white, the features picked out in black, and enamel eyes inserted in a mounting of bronze. The mummy is that of a thin elderly man, well preserved; the face was covered by a mask made of linen smeared with pitch, but when this was raised by means of a chisel, the fine kingly head was exposed to view. It was a masterpiece of the art of the embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had only a few hours previously breathed his last. Death had slightly drawn the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had flattened the nose a little, and the skin was darkened by the pitch; but a calm and gentle smile still played over the mouth, and the half-opened eyelids allowed a glimpse to be seen from under their lashes of an apparently moist and glistening line,—the reflection from the white porcelain eyes let in to the orbit at the time of burial.
Seti had had several children by his wife Tuîa, and the eldest had already reached manhood when his father ascended the throne, for he had accompanied him on his Syrian campaign. The young prince died, however, soon after his return, and his right to the crown devolved on his younger brother, who, like his grandfather, bore the name of Ramses. The prince was still very young,* but Seti did not on that account delay enthroning with great pomp this son who had a better right to the throne than himself.
* The history of the youth and the accession of Ramses II.
is known to us from the narrative given by himself in the
temple of Seti I. at Abydos. The bulk of the narrative is
confirmed by the evidence of the Kubân inscription,
especially as to the extreme youth of Ramses at the time
when he was first associated with the crown.
"From the time that I was in the egg," Ramses writes later on, "the great ones sniffed the earth before me; when I attained to the rank of eldest son and heir upon the throne of Sibû, I dealt with affairs, I commanded as chief the foot-soldiers and the chariots. My father having appeared before the people, when I was but a very little boy in his arms, said to me: 'I shall have him crowned king, that I may see him in all his splendour while I am still on this earth!' The nobles of the court having drawn near to place the pschent upon my head: 'Place the diadem upon his forehead!' said he." As Ramses increased in years, Seti delighted to confer upon him, one after the other, the principal attributes of power; "while he was still upon this earth, regulating everything in the land, defending its frontiers, and watching over the welfare of its inhabitants, he cried: 'Let him reign!' because of the love he had for me." Seti also chose for him wives, beautiful "as are those of his palace," and he gave him in marriage his sisters Nofrîtari II. Mîmût and Isîtnofrît, who, like Ramses himself, had claims to the throne. Ramses was allowed to attend the State councils at the age of ten; he commanded armies, and he administered justice under the direction of his father and his viziers. Seti, however, although making use of his son's youth and activity, did not in any sense retire in his favour; if he permitted Ramses to adopt the insignia of royalty—the cartouches, the pschent, the bulbous-shaped helmet, and the various sceptres—he still remained to the day of his death the principal State official, and he reckoned all the years of this dual sovereignty as those of his sole reign.*
* Brugsoh is wrong in reckoning the reign of Ramses II. from
the time of his association in the crown; the great
inscription of Abydos, which has been translated by Brugsch
himself, dates events which immediately followed the death
of Seti I. as belonging to the first year of Ramses II.
Ramses repulsed the incursions of the Tihonû, and put to the sword such of their hordes as had ventured to invade Egyptian territory. He exercised the functions of viceroy of Ethiopia, and had on several occasions to chastise the pillaging negroes. We see him at Beît-Wally and at Abu Simbel charging them in his chariot: in vain they flee in confusion before him; their flight, however swift, cannot save them from captivity and destruction.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
He was engaged in Ethiopia when the death of Seti recalled him to Thebes.*
* We do not know how long Seti I. reigned; the last date is
that of his IXth year at Redesieh and at Aswan, and that of
the year XXVII. sometimes attributed to him belongs to one
of the later Ramessides. I had at first supposed his reign
to have been a long one, merely on the evidence afforded by
Manetho's lists, but the presence of Ramses II. as a
stripling, in the campaign of Seti's 1st year, forces us to
limit its duration to fifteen or twenty years at most,
possibly to only twelve or fifteen.
He at once returned to the capital, celebrated the king's funeral obsequies with suitable pomp, and after keeping the festival of Amon, set out for the north in order to make his authority felt in that part of his domains. He stopped on his way at Abydos to give the necessary orders for completing the decoration of the principal chambers of the resting-place built by his father, and chose a site some 320 feet to the north-west of it for a similar Memnonium for himself. He granted cultivated fields and meadows in the Thinite name for the maintenance of these two mausolea, founded a college of priests and soothsayers in connexion with them, for which he provided endowments, and also assigned them considerable fiefs in all parts of the valley of the Nile. The Delta next occupied his attention. The increasing importance of the Syrian provinces in the eyes of Egypt, the growth of the Hittite monarchy, and the migrations of the peoples of the Mediterranean, had obliged the last princes of the preceding dynasty to reside more frequently at Memphis than Amenôthes I. or Thûtmosis III. had done. Amenôthes III. had set to work to restore certain cities which had been abandoned since the days of the Shepherds, and Bubastis, Athribis, and perhaps Tanis, had, thanks to his efforts, revived from their decayed condition. The Pharaohs, indeed, felt that at Thebes they were too far removed from the battle-fields of Asia; distance made it difficult for them to counteract the intrigues in which their vassals in Kharû and the lords of Naharaim were perpetually implicated, and a revolt which might have been easily anticipated or crushed had they been advised of it within a few days, gained time to increase and extend during the interval occupied by the couriers in travelling to and from the capital. Ramses felt the importance of possessing a town close to the Isthmus where he could reside in security, and he therefore built close to Zalû, in a fertile and healthy locality, a stronghold to which he gave his own name,* and of which the poets of the time have left us an enthusiastic description. "It extends," they say, "between Zahi and Egypt—and is filled with provisions and victuals.—It resembles Hermonthis,—it is strong like Memphis,—and the sun rises—and sets in it—so that men quit their villages and establish themselves in its territory."—"The dwellers on the coasts bring conger eels and fish in homage,—they pay it the tribute of their marshes.—The inhabitants don their festal garments every day,—perfumed oil is on their heads and new wigs;—they stand at their doors, their hands full of bunches of flowers,—green branches from the village of Pihâthor,—garlands of Pahûrû,—on the day when Pharaoh makes his entry.—Joy then reigns and spreads, and nothing can stay it,—O Usirmarî-sotpûnirî, thou who art Montû in the two lands,—Ramses-Mîamûn, the god." The town acted as an advance post, from whence the king could keep watch against all intriguing adversaries,—whether on the banks of the Orontes or the coast of the Mediterranean.
* An allusion to the foundation of this residence occurs in
an inscription at Abu Simbel, dated in his XXVth year.
Nothing appeared for the moment to threaten the peace of the empire. The Asiatic vassals had raised no disturbance on hearing of the king's accession, and Mautallu continued to observe the conditions of the treaty which he had signed with Seti. Two military expeditions undertaken beyond the isthmus in the IInd and IVth years of the new sovereign were accomplished almost without fighting. He repressed by the way the marauding Shaûsû, and on reaching the Nahr el-Kelb, which then formed the northern frontier of his empire, he inscribed at the turn of the road, on the rocks which overhang the mouth of the river, two triumphal stelæ in which he related his successes.* Towards the end of his IVth year a rebellion broke out among the Khâti, which caused a rupture of relations between the two kingdoms and led to some irregular fighting. Khâtusaru, a younger brother of Maurusaru, murdered the latter and made himself king in his stead.** It is not certain whether the Egyptians took up arms against him, or whether he judged it wise to oppose them in order to divert the attention of his subjects from his crime.
* The stelæ are all in a very bad condition; in the last of
them the date is no longer legible.
** In the Treaty of Harrises II. with the Prince of Khâti,
the writer is content to use a discreet euphemism, and
states that Mautallu succumbed "to his destiny." The name of
the Prince of the Khâti is found later on under the form
Khatusharu, in that of a chief defeated by Tiglath-pileser
I. in the country of Kummukh, though this name has generally
been read Khatukhi.
At all events, he convoked his Syrian vassals and collected his mercenaries; the whole of Naharaim, Khalupu, Carchemish, and Arvad sent their quota, while bands of Dardanians, Mysians, Trojans, and Lycians, together with the people of Pedasos and Girgasha,* furnished further contingents, drawn from an area extending from the most distant coasts of the Mediterranean to the mountains of Cilicia. Ramses, informed of the enemy's movement by his generals and the governors of places on the frontier, resolved to anticipate the attack. He assembled an army almost as incongruous in its component elements as that of his adversary: besides Egyptians of unmixed race, divided into four corps bearing the names of Amon, Phtah, Harmakhis and Sûtkhû, it contained Ethiopian auxiliaries, Libyans, Mazaiu, and Shardana.**
* The name of this nation is written Karkisha, Kalkisha, or
Kashkisha, by one of those changes of sh into r-l which
occur so frequently in Assyro-Chaldæan before a dental; the
two different spellings seem to show that the writers of the
inscriptions bearing on this war had before them a list of
the allies of Khâtusaru, written in cuneiform characters. If
we may identify the nation with the Kashki or Kashku of the
Assyrian texts, the ancestors of the people of Colchis of
classical times, the termination -isha of the Egyptian
word would be the inflexion -ash or -ush of the Eastern-
Asiatic tongues which we find in so many race-names, e.g.
Adaush, Saradaush, Ammaush. Rouge and Brugsch identified
them with the Girgashites of the Bible. Brugsch, adopting
the spelling Kashki, endeavoured to connect them with
Casiotis; later on he identified them with the people of
Gergis in Troas. Ramsay recognises in them the Kisldsos of
Cilicia.
** In the account of the campaign the Shardana only are
mentioned; but we learn from a list in the Anastasi Papyrus
I, that the army of Ramses II. included, in ordinary
circumstances, in addition to the Shardana, a contingent of
Mashauasha, Kahaka, and other Libyan and negro mercenaries.
When preparations were completed, the force crossed the canal at Zalû, on the 9th of Payni in his Vth year, marched rapidly across Canaan till they reached the valley of the Litâny, along which they took their way, and then followed up that of the Orontes. They encamped for a few days at Shabtuna, to the south-west of Qodshû,* in the midst of the Amorite country, sending out scouts and endeavouring to discover the position of the enemy, of whose movements they possessed but vague information.
* Shabtuna had been placed on the Nahr es-Sebta, on the site
now occupied by Kalaat el-Hosn, a conjecture approved by
Mariette; it was more probably a town situated in the plain,
to the south of Bahr el-Kades, a little to the south-west of
Tell Keby Mindoh which represents Qodshû, and close to some
forests which at that time covered the slopes of Lebanon,
and, extending as they did to the bottom of the valley,
concealed the position of the Khâti from the Egyptians.
Khâtusaru lay concealed in the wooded valleys of the Lebanon; he was kept well posted by his spies, and only waited an opportunity to take the field; as an occasion did not immediately present itself, he had recourse to a ruse with which the generals of the time were familiar. Ramses, at length uneasy at not falling in with the enemy, advanced to the south of Shabtuna, where he endeavoured to obtain information from two Bedawîn. "Our brethren," said they, "who are the chiefs of the tribes united under the vile Prince of Khâti, send us to give information to your Majesty: We desire to serve the Pharaoh. We are deserting the vile Prince of the Khâti; he is close to Khalupu (Aleppo), to the north of the city of Tunipa, whither he has rapidly retired from fear of the Pharaoh." This story had every appearance of probability; and the distance—Khalupu was at least forty leagues away—explained why the reconnoitring parties of the Egyptians had not fallen in with any of the enemy. The Pharaoh, with this information, could not decide whether to lay siege to Qodshû and wait until the Hittites were forced to succour the town, or to push on towards the Euphrates and there seek the engagement which his adversary seemed anxious to avoid.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
He chose the l