Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt
: James Baikie
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A LAND OF OLD RENOWN 1
II. A DAY IN THEBES 6
III. A DAY IN THEBES (_continued_) 11
IV. PHARAOH AT HOME 17
V. THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER 24
VI. CHILD-LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT 33
VII. SOME FAIRY-TALES OF LONG AGO 41
VIII. SOME FAIRY-TALES OF LONG AGO
(_continued_) 47
IX. EXPLORING THE SOUDAN 54
X. A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY 59
XI. EGYPTIAN BOOKS 66
XII. TEMPLES AND TOMBS 72
XIII. AN EGYPTIAN'S HEAVEN 82
* * * * *
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE
*1. AN EGYPTIAN GALLEY, 1500 B.C. _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. THE GODDESS ISIS DANDLING THE KING 9
3. THE GREAT GATE OF THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR, WITH OBELISK 16
*4. RAMSES II. IN HIS WAR-CHARIOT--SARDINIAN GUARDSMEN ON FOOT 25
*5. ZAZAMANKH AND THE LOST CORONET 32
6. GRANITE STATUE OF RAMSES II. 35
7. NAVE OF THE TEMPLE AT KARNAK 38
*8. "AND THE GOOSE STOOD UP AND CACKLED" 41
*9. AN EGYPTIAN COUNTRY HOUSE 48
10. STATUES OF KING AMENHOTEP III. 51
11. THE SPHINX AND THE SECOND PYRAMID 54
*12. A DESERT POSTMAN 57
*13. THE BARK OF THE MOON, GUARDED BY THE DIVINE EYES 64
14. GATEWAY OF THE TEMPLE OF EDFU 73
15. WALL-PICTURES IN A THEBAN TOMB 80
*16. PHARAOH ON HIS THRONE 20
_Sketch-Map of Ancient Egypt on page viii_
* These eight illustrations are in colour; the others are in black
and white.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SKETCH-MAP OF ANCIENT EGYPT.]
ANCIENT EGYPT
CHAPTER I
"A LAND OF OLD RENOWN"
If we were asked to name the most interesting country in the world, I
suppose that most people would say Palestine--not because there is
anything so very wonderful in the land itself, but because of all the
great things that have happened there, and above all because of its
having been the home of our Lord. But after Palestine, I think that
Egypt would come next. For one thing, it is linked very closely to
Palestine by all those beautiful stories of the Old Testament, which
tell us of Joseph, the slave-boy who became Viceroy of Egypt; of Moses,
the Hebrew child who became a Prince of Pharaoh's household; and of the
wonderful exodus of the Children of Israel.
But besides that, it is a land which has a most strange and wonderful
story of its own. No other country has so long a history of great Kings,
and wise men, and brave soldiers; and in no other country can you see
anything to compare with the great buildings, some of them most
beautiful, all of them most wonderful, of which Egypt has so many. We
have some old and interesting buildings in this country, and people go
far to see cathedrals and castles that are perhaps five or six hundred
years old, or even more; but in Egypt, buildings of that age are looked
upon as almost new, and nobody pays very much attention to them. For the
great temples and tombs of Egypt were, many of them, hundreds of years
old before the story of our Bible, properly speaking, begins.
The Pyramids, for instance, those huge piles that are still the wonder
of the world, were far older than any building now standing in Europe,
before Joseph was sold to be a slave in Potiphar's house. Hundreds upon
hundreds of years before anyone had ever heard of the Greeks and the
Romans, there were great Kings reigning in Egypt, sending out their
armies to conquer Syria and the Soudan, and their ships to explore the
unknown southern seas, and wise men were writing books which we can
still read. When Britain was a wild, unknown island, inhabited only by
savages as fierce and untaught as the South Sea Islanders, Egypt was a
great and highly civilized country, full of great cities, with noble
palaces and temples, and its people were wise and learned.
So in this little book I want to tell you something about this wonderful
and interesting old country, and about the kind of life that people
lived in it in those days of long ago, before most other lands had begun
to waken up, or to have any history at all. First of all, let us try to
get an idea of the land itself. It is a very remarkable thing that so
many of the countries which have played a great part in the history of
the world have been small countries. Our own Britain is not very big,
though it has had a great story. Palestine, which has done more than any
other country to make the world what it is to-day, was called "the least
of all lands." Greece, whose influence comes, perhaps, next after that
of Palestine, is only a little hilly corner of Southern Europe. And
Egypt, too, is comparatively a small land.
It looks a fair size when you see it on the map; but you have to
remember that nearly all the land which is called Egypt on the map is
barren sandy desert, or wild rocky hill-country, where no one can live.
The real Egypt is just a narrow strip of land on either side of the
great River Nile, sometimes only a mile or two broad altogether, never
more than thirty miles broad, except near the mouth of the river, where
it widens out into the fan-shaped plain called the Delta. Someone has
compared Egypt to a lily with a crooked stem, and the comparison is very
true. The long winding valley of the Nile is the crooked stem of the
lily, and the Delta at the Nile mouth, with its wide stretch of fertile
soil, is the flower; while, just below the flower, there is a little
bud--a fertile valley called the Fayum.
Long before even Egyptian history begins, there was no bloom on the
lily. The Nile, a far bigger river then than it is now, ran into the sea
near Cairo, the modern capital of Egypt; and the land was nothing but
the narrow valley of the river, bordered on either side by desert hills.
But gradually, century by century, the Nile cut its way deeper down into
the land, leaving banks of soil on either side between itself and the
hills, and the mud which it brought down in its waters piled up at its
mouth and pressed the sea back, till, at last, the Delta was formed,
much as we see it now. This was long before Egypt had any story of its
own; but even after history begins the Delta was still partly marshy
land, not long reclaimed from the sea, and the real Egyptians of the
valley despised the people who lived there as mere marsh-dwellers. Even
after the Delta was formed, the whole country was only about twice as
large as Wales, and, though there was a great number of people in it for
its size, the population was only, at the most, about twice as great as
that of London.
An old Greek historian once said, "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," and
it is perfectly true. We have seen how the great river made the country
to begin with, cutting out the narrow valley through the hills, and
building up the flat plain of the Delta. But the Nile has not only made
the country; it keeps it alive. You know that Egypt has always been one
of the most fertile lands in the world. Almost anything will grow there,
and it produces wonderful crops of corn and vegetables, and, nowadays,
of cotton. It was the same in old days. When Rome was the capital of the
world, she used to get most of the corn to feed her hungry thousands
from Egypt by the famous Alexandrian corn-ships; and you remember how,
in the Bible story, Joseph's brethren came down from Palestine because,
though there was famine there, there was "corn in Egypt." And yet Egypt
is a land where rain is almost unknown. Sometimes there will come a
heavy thunder-shower; but for month after month, year in and year out,
there may be no rain at all.
How can a rainless country grow anything? The secret is the Nile. Every
year, when the rains fall in the great lake-basin of Central Africa,
from which one branch of the great river comes, and on the Abyssinian
hills, where the other branch rises, the Nile comes down in flood. All
the lower lands are covered, and a fresh deposit of Nile mud is left
upon them; and, though the river does not rise to the higher grounds,
the water is led into big canals, and these, again, are divided up into
little ones, till it circulates through the whole land, as the blood
circulates through your arteries and veins. This keeps the land fertile,
and makes up for the lack of rain.
Apart from its wonderful river, the country itself has no very striking
features. It is rather a monotonous land--a long ribbon of green running
through a great waste of yellow desert and barren hills. But the great
charm that draws people's minds to Egypt, and gives the old land a
never-failing interest, is its great story of the past, and all the
relics of that story which are still to be seen.
In no other land can you see the real people and things of the days of
long ago as you can see them in Egypt. Think how we should prize an
actual building that had been connected with the story of King Arthur,
if such a thing could be found in our country, and what wonderful
romance would belong to the weapons, the actual shields and helmets,
swords and lances, of the Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and
Tristram and Galahad--if only we could find them. Out there in Egypt you
can see buildings compared with which King Arthur's Camelot would be
only a thing of yesterday; and you can look, not only on the weapons,
but on the actual faces and forms of great Kings and soldiers who lived,
and fought bravely for their country, hundreds of years before Saul and
Jonathan and David began to fight the battles of Israel. You can see the
pictures of how people lived in those far-away days, how their houses
were built, how they traded and toiled, how they amused themselves, how
they behaved in time of sorrow, how they worshipped God--all set down by
themselves at the very time when they were doing these things. You can
even see the games at which the children used to play, and the queer
old-fashioned toys and dolls that they played with, and you can read the
stories which their mothers and their nurses used to tell them.
These are the things which make this old land of Egypt so interesting to
us all to-day; and I want to try to tell you about some of them, so that
you may be able to have in your mind's eye a real picture of the life of
those long past days.
CHAPTER II
A DAY IN THEBES
If any foreigner were wanting to get an idea of our country, and to see
how our people live, I suppose the first place that he would go to would
be London, because it is the capital of the whole country, and its
greatest city; and so, if we want to learn something about Egypt, and
how people lived there in those far-off days, we must try to get to the
capital of the country, and see what is to be seen there.
Suppose, then, that we are no longer living in Britain in the twentieth
century, but that somehow or other we have got away back into the past,
far beyond the days of Jesus Christ, beyond even the times of Moses,
and are living about 1,300 years before Christ. We have come from Tyre
in a Phoenician galley, laden with costly bales of cloth dyed with
Tyrian purple, and beautiful vessels wrought in bronze and copper, to
sell in the markets of Thebes, the greatest city in Egypt. We have
coasted along past Carmel and Joppa, and, after narrowly escaping being
driven in a storm on the dangerous quicksand called the Syrtis, we have
entered one of the mouths of the Nile. We have taken up an Egyptian
pilot at the river mouth, and he stands on a little platform at the bow
of the galley, and shouts his directions to the steersmen, who work the
two big rudders, one on either side of the ship's stern. The north wind
is blowing strongly and driving us swiftly upstream, in spite of the
current of the great river; so our weary oarsmen have shipped their
oars, and we drive steadily southwards under our one big swelling sail.
At first we sail along through a broad flat plain, partly cultivated,
and partly covered with marsh and marsh plants. By-and-by the green
plain begins to grow narrower; we are coming to the end of the Delta,
and entering upon the real valley of Egypt. Soon we pass a great city,
its temples standing out clear against the deep blue sky, with their
towering gateways, gay flags floating from tall flagstaves in front of
them, and great obelisks pointing to the sky; and our pilot says that
this is Memphis, one of the oldest towns in the country, and for long
its capital. Not far from Memphis, three great pyramid-shaped masses of
stone rise up on the river-bank, looking almost like mountains; and the
pilot tells us that these are the tombs of some of the great Kings of
long past days, and that all around them lie smaller pyramids and other
tombs of Kings and great men.
But we are bound for a city greater even than Memphis, and so we never
stop, but hasten always southward. Several days of steady sailing carry
us past many towns that cluster near the river, past one ruined city,
falling into mere heaps of stone and brick, which our pilot tells us was
once the capital of a wicked King who tried to cast down all the old
gods of Egypt, and to set up a new god of his own; and at last we see,
far ahead of us, a huge cluster of buildings on both sides of the river,
which marks a city greater than we have ever seen.
As we sweep up the river we see that there are really two cities. On the
east bank lies the city of the living, with its strong walls and towers,
its enormous temples, and an endless crowd of houses of all sorts and
sizes, from the gay palaces of the nobles to the mud huts of the poor
people. On the west bank lies the city of the dead. It has neither
streets nor palaces, and no hum of busy life goes up from it; but it is
almost more striking than its neighbour across the river. The hills and
cliffs are honeycombed with long rows of black openings, the doorways of
the tombs where the dead of Thebes for centuries back are sleeping. Out
on the plain, between the cliffs and the river, temple rises after
temple in seemingly endless succession. Some of these temples are small
and partly ruined, but some are very great and splendid; and, as the
sunlight strikes upon them, it sends back flashes of gold and crimson
and blue that dazzle the eyes.
[Illustration: Plate 2
THE GODDESS ISIS DANDLING THE KING. _Page 18_]
But now our galley is drawing in towards the quay on the east side of
the river, and in a few minutes the great sail comes thundering down,
and, as the ship drifts slowly up to the quay, the mooring-ropes are
thrown and made fast, and our long voyage is at an end. The Egyptian
Custom-house officers come on board to examine the cargo, and collect
the dues that have to be paid on it; and we watch them with interest,
for they are quite different in appearance from our own hook-nosed,
bearded sailors, with their thick many-coloured cloaks. These Egyptians
are all clean shaven; some of them wear wigs, and some have their hair
cut straight across their brows, while it falls thickly behind upon
their necks in a multitude of little curls, which must have taken them
no small trouble to get into order. Most wear nothing but a kilt of
white linen; but the chief officer has a fine white cloak thrown over
his shoulders; his linen kilt is stiffly starched, so that it stands out
almost like a board where it folds over in front, and he wears a gilded
girdle with fringed ends which hang down nearly to his knees. In his
right hand he carries a long stick, which he is not slow to lay over the
shoulders of his men when they do not obey his orders fast enough.
After a good deal of hot argument, the amount of the tax is settled and
paid, and we are free to go up into the great town. We have not gone far
before we find that life in Thebes can be quite exciting. A great noise
is heard from one of the narrow riverside streets, and a crowd of men
comes rushing up with shouts and oaths. Ahead of them runs a single
figure, whose writing-case, stuck in his girdle, marks him out as a
scribe. He is almost at his last gasp, for he is stout and not
accustomed to running; and he is evidently fleeing for his life, for the
men behind him--rough, half-naked, ill-fed creatures of the working
class--are chasing him with cries of anger, and a good deal of
stone-throwing. Bruised and bleeding, he darts up to the gate of a
handsome house whose garden-wall faces the street. He gasps out a word
to the porter, and is quickly passed into the garden. The gate is
slammed and bolted in the faces of his pursuers, who form a ring round
it, shouting and shaking their fists.
In a little while the gate is cautiously unbarred, and a fine-looking
man, very richly dressed, and followed by half a dozen well-armed negro
guards, steps forward, and asks the workmen why they are here, making
such a noise, and why they have chased and beaten his secretary. He is
Prince Paser, who has charge of the Works Department of the Theban
Government, and the workmen are masons employed on a large job in the
cemetery of Thebes. They all shout at once in answer to the Prince's
question; but by-and-by they push forward a spokesman, and he begins,
rather sheepishly at first, but warming up as he goes along, to make
their complaint to the great man.
He and his mates, he says, have been working for weeks. They have had no
wages; they have not even had the corn and oil which ought to be issued
as rations to Government workmen. So they have struck work, and now they
have come to their lord the Prince to entreat him either to give command
that the rations be issued, or, if his stores are exhausted, to appeal
to Pharaoh. "We have been driven here by hunger and thirst; we have no
clothes, we have no oil, we have no food. Write to our lord the Pharaoh,
that he may give us something for our sustenance." When the spokesman
has finished his complaint, the whole crowd volubly assents to what he
has said, and sways to and fro in a very threatening manner.
Prince Paser, however, is an old hand at dealing with such complaints.
With a smiling face he promises that fifty sacks of corn shall be sent
to the cemetery immediately, with oil to correspond. Only the workmen
must go back to their work at once, and there must be no more chasing of
poor Secretary Amen-nachtu. Otherwise, he can do nothing. The workmen
grumble a little. They have been put off with promises before, and have
got little good of them. But they have no leader bold enough to start a
riot, and they have no weapons, and the spears and bows of the Prince's
Nubians look dangerous. Finally they turn, and disappear, grumbling,
down the street from which they came; and Prince Paser, with a shrug of
his shoulders, goes indoors again. Whether the fifty sacks of corn are
ever sent or not, is another matter. Strikes, you see, were not unknown,
even so long ago as this.
CHAPTER III
A DAY IN THEBES--_Continued_
Having seen the settlement of the masons' strike, we wander up into the
heart of the town. The streets are generally narrow and winding, and
here and there the houses actually meet overhead, so that we pass out of
the blinding sunlight into a sort of dark tunnel. Some of the houses
are large and high; but even the largest make no display towards the
street. They will be fine enough inside, with bright courts surrounded
with trees, in the midst of which lies a cool pond of water, and with
fine rooms decorated with gay hangings; but their outer walls are almost
absolutely blank, with nothing but a heavy door breaking the dead line.
We pass by some quarters where there is nothing but a crowd of mud huts,
packed so closely together that there is only room for a single
foot-passenger to thread his way through the narrow alleys between them.
These are the workmen's quarters, and the heat and smell in them are so
overpowering that one wonders how people can live in such places.
By-and-by we come out into a more open space--one of the bazaars of the
city--where business is in full swing. The shops are little shallow
booths quite open to the front; and all the goods are spread out round
the shopkeeper, who squats cross-legged in the middle of his property,
ready to serve his customers, and invites the attention of the
passers-by by loud explanations of the goodness and cheapness of his
wares. All sorts of people are coming and going, for a Theban crowd
holds representatives of nearly every nation known. Here are the
townsfolk, men and women, out to buy supplies for their houses, or to
exchange the news of the day; peasants from the villages round about,
bringing in vegetables and cattle to barter for the goods which can only
be got in the town; fine ladies and gentlemen, dressed elaborately in
the latest Court fashion, with carefully curled wigs, long pleated robes
of fine transparent linen, and dainty, brightly-coloured sandals turned
up at the toes. At one moment you rub shoulders with a Hittite from
Kadesh, a conspicuous figure, with his high-peaked cap, pale complexion,
and heavy, pointed boots. He looks round him curiously, as if thinking
that Thebes would be a splendid town to plunder. Then a priest of high
rank goes by, with shaven head, a panther skin slung across his shoulder
over his white robe, and a roll of papyrus in his hand. A Sardinian of
the bodyguard swaggers along behind him, the ball and horns on his
helmet flashing in the sunlight, his big sword swinging in its sheath as
he walks; and a Libyan bowman, with two bright feathers in his leather
skull-cap, looks disdainfully at him as he shoulders his way through the
crowd.
All around us people are buying and selling. Money, as we know it, has
not yet been invented, and nearly all the trade is done by means of
exchange. When it comes to be a question of how many fish have to be
given for a bed, or whether a load of onions is good value for a chair,
you can imagine that there has to be a good deal of argument. Besides,
the Egyptian dearly loves bargaining for the mere excitement of the
thing, and so the clatter of tongues is deafening. Here and there one or
two traders have advanced a little beyond the old-fashioned way of
barter, and offer, instead of goods, so many rings of copper, silver, or
gold wire. A peasant who has brought in a bullock to sell is offered 90
copper "uten" (as the rings are called) for it; but he loudly protests
that this is robbery, and after a long argument he screws the merchant
up to 111 "uten," with 8 more as a luck-penny, and the bargain is
clinched. Even then the rings have still to be weighed that he may be
sure he is not being cheated. So a big pair of balances is brought out;
the "uten" are heaped into one scale, and in the other are piled weights
in the shape of bulls' heads. Finally, he is satisfied, and picks up his
bag of rings; but the wily merchant is not done with him yet. He spreads
out various tempting bargains before the eyes of the countryman, and,
before the latter leaves the shop, most of the copper rings have found
their way back again to the merchant's sack.
A little farther on, the Tyrian traders, to whom the cargo of our galley
is consigned, have their shop. Screens, made of woven grass, shelter it
from the sun, and under their shade all sorts of gorgeous stuffs are
displayed, glowing with the deep rich colours, of which the Tyrians
alone have the secret since the sack of Knossos destroyed the trade of
Crete. Beyond the Tyrian booth, a goldsmith is busily employed in his
shop. Necklets and bracelets of gold and silver, beautifully inlaid with
all kinds of rich colours, hang round him; and he is hard at work, with
his little furnace and blowpipe, putting the last touches to the welding
of a bracelet, for which a lady is patiently waiting.
In one corner of the bazaar stands a house which makes no display of
wares, but, nevertheless, seems to secure a constant stream of
customers. Workmen slink in at the door, as though half ashamed of
themselves, and reappear, after a little, wiping their mouths, and not
quite steady in their gait. A young man, with pale and haggard face,
swaggers past and goes in, and, as he enters the door, one bystander
nudges another and remarks: "Pentuere is going to have a good day again;
he will come to a bad end, that young man."
By-and-by the door opens again, and Pentuere comes out staggering. He
looks vacantly round, and tries to walk away; but his legs refuse to
carry him, and, after a stumble or two, he falls in a heap and lies in
the road, a pitiful sight. The passers-by jeer and laugh at him as he
lies helpless; but one decent-looking man points him out to his young
son, and says: "See this fellow, my son, and learn not to drink beer to
excess. Thou dost fall and break thy limbs, and bespatter thyself with
mud, like a crocodile, and no one reaches out a hand to thee. Thy
comrades go on drinking, and say, 'Away with this fellow, who is drunk.'
If anyone should seek thee on business, thou art found lying in the dust
like a little child."
But in spite of much wise advice, the Egyptian, though generally
temperate, is only too fond of making "a good day," as he calls it, at
the beerhouse. Even fine ladies sometimes drink too much at their great
parties, and have to be carried away very sick and miserable. Worst of
all, the very judges of the High Court have been known to take a day off
during the hearing of a long case, in order to have a revel with the
criminals whom they were trying; and it is not so long since two of them
had their noses cut off, as a warning to the rest against such shameful
conduct.
Sauntering onwards, we gradually get near to the sacred quarter of the
town, and can see the towering gateways and obelisks of the great
temples over the roofs of the houses. Soon a great crowd comes towards
us, and the sounds of trumpets and flutes are heard coming from the
midst of it. Inquiring what is the meaning of the bustle, we are told
that one of the images of Amen, the great god of Thebes, is being
carried in procession as a preliminary to an important service which is
to take place in the afternoon, and at which the King is going to
preside. Stepping back under the doorway of a house, we watch the
procession go past. After a group of musicians and singers, and a number
of women who are dancing as they go, and shaking curious metal rattles,
there comes a group of six men, who form the centre of the whole crowd,
and on whom the eyes of all are fixed.
They are tall, spare, keen-looking men, their heads clean shaven, their
bodies wrapped in pure white robes of the beautiful Egyptian linen. On
their shoulders they carry, by means of two long poles, a model of a
Nile boat, in the midst of which rises a little shrine. The shrine is
carefully draped round with a veil, so as to hide the god from curious
eyes. But just in front of the doorway where we are standing a small
stone pillar rises from the roadway, and when the bearers come to this
point, the bark of the god is rested on the top of the pillar. Two
censer-bearers come forward, and swing their censers, wafting clouds of
incense round the shrine; a priest lifts up his voice, loudly intoning a
hymn of praise to the great god who creates and sustains all things; and
a few of the by-standers lay before the bark offerings of flowers,
fruit, and eatables of various kinds. Then comes the solemn moment. Amid
breathless silence, the veil of the shrine is slowly drawn aside, and
the faithful can see a little wooden image, about 18 inches high,
adorned with tall plumes, carefully dressed, and painted with green and
black. The revelation of this little doll, to a Theban crowd the most
sacred object in all the world, is hailed with shouts of wonder and
reverence. Then the veil is drawn again, the procession passes on,
and the streets are left quiet for awhile.
[Illustration: Plate 3
THE GREAT GATE OF THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR, WITH OBELISK. _Pages 74, 75_]
We are reminded that, if we wish to get a meal before starting out to
see Pharaoh passing in procession to the temple, we had better lose no
time, and so we turn our faces riverwards again, and wander down through
the endless maze of streets to where our galley is moored at the quay.
CHAPTER IV
PHARAOH AT HOME
The time is coming on now for the King to go in state to the great
temple at Karnak to offer sacrifice, and as we go up to the palace to
see him come forth in all his glory, let me tell you a little about him
and the kind of life he leads. Pharaoh, of course, is not his real name;
it is not even his official title; it is just a word which is used to
describe a person who is so great that people scarcely venture to call
him by his proper name. Just as the Turks nowadays speak of the "Sublime
Porte," when they mean the Sultan and his Government, so the Egyptians
speak of "Per-o," or Pharaoh, as we call it, which really signifies
"Great House," when they mean the King.
For the King of Egypt is a very great man indeed; in fact, his people
look upon him, and he looks upon himself, as something more than a man.
There are many gods in Egypt; but the god whom the people know best,
and to whom they pay the most reverence, is their King. Ever since there
have been Kings in the country, and that is a very long time now, the
reigning monarch has been looked upon as a kind of god manifest in the
flesh. He calls himself "Son of the Sun"; in the temples you will see
pictures of his childhood, where great goddesses dandle the young god
upon their knees (Plate 2). Divine honours are paid, and sacrifices
offered to him; and when he dies, and goes to join his brother-gods in
heaven, a great temple rises to his memory, and hosts of priests are
employed in his worship. There is just one distinction made between him
and the other gods. Amen at Thebes, Ptah at Memphis, and all the rest of
the crowd of divinities, are called "the great gods." Pharaoh takes a
different title. He is called "the good god."
At present "the good god" is Ramses II. Of course, that is only one part
of his name; for, like all the other Pharaohs, he has a list of titles
that would fill a page. His subjects in Thebes have not seen very much
of him for a long time, for there has been so much to do away in Syria,
that he has built another capital at Tanis, which the Hebrews call Zoan,
down between the Delta and the eastern frontier, and spends most of his
time there. People who have been down the river tell us great wonders
about the beauty of the new town, its great temple, and the huge statue
of the King, 90 feet high, which stands before the temple gate. But
Thebes is still the centre of the nation's life, and now, when it is
growing almost certain that there will be another war with those vile
Hittites in the North of Syria, he has come up to the great city to
take counsel with his brother-god, Amen, and to make arrangements for
gathering his army. The royal palace is in a constant bustle, with
envoys coming and going, and counsellors and generals continually
passing in and out with reports and orders.
Outside, the palace is not so very imposing. The Egyptians built their
temples to last for ever; but the palaces of their Kings were meant to
serve only for a short time. The new King might not care for the old
King's home, and so each Pharaoh builds his house according to his own
taste, of light materials. It will serve his turn, and his successor may
build another for himself. A high wall, with battlements, towers, and
heavy gates, surrounds it; for, though Pharaoh is a god, his subjects
are sometimes rather difficult to keep in order. Plots against the King
have not been unknown in the past; and on at least one occasion, a great
Pharaoh of bygone days had to spring from his couch and fight
single-handed for his life against a crowd of conspirators who had
forced an entrance into the palace while he was enjoying his siesta. So
since then Pharaoh has found it better to trust in his strong walls, and
in the big broadswords of his faithful Sardinian guardsmen, than in any
divinity that may belong to himself.
Within the great boundary wall lie pleasant gardens, gay with all sorts
of flowers, and an artificial lake shows its gleaming water here and
there through the trees and shrubs. The palace itself is all glittering
white stucco on the outside. A high central door leads into a great
audience hall, glowing with colour, its roof supported by painted
pillars in the form of lotus-stalks; and on either side of this lie two
smaller halls. Behind the audience chamber are two immense
dining-rooms, and behind these come the sleeping apartments of the
numerous household. Ramses has a multitude of wives, and a whole army of
sons and daughters, and it takes no small space to house them all. The
bedroom of the great King himself stands apart from the other rooms, and
is surrounded by banks of flowers in full bloom.
The Son of the Sun has had a busy day already. He has had many letters
and despatches to read and consider. Some of the Syrian vassal-princes
have sent clay tablets, covered with their curious arrow-headed writing,
giving news of the advance of the Hittites, and imploring the help of
the Egyptian army; and now the King is about to give audience, and to
consider these with his great nobles and Generals. At one end of the
reception hall stands a low balcony, supported on gaily-painted wooden
pillars which end in capitals of lotus-flowers. The front of this
balcony is overlaid with gold, and richly decorated with turquoise and
lapis lazuli. Here the King will show himself to his subjects,
accompanied by his favourite wife, Queen Nefertari, and some of the
young Princes and Princesses. The folding doors of the audience chamber
are thrown open, and the barons, the provincial governors, and the high
officers of the army and the State throng in to do homage to their
master.
[Illustration]
In a few moments the glittering crowd is duly arranged, a door opens at
the back of the balcony, and the King of the Two Lands, Lord of the
Vulture and the Snake, steps forth with his Queen and family. In earlier
times, whenever the King appeared, the assembled nobles were expected to
fall on their faces and kiss the ground before him. Fashion has
changed, however, and now the great folks, at all events, are no longer
required to "smell the earth." As Pharaoh enters the balcony, the nobles
bow profoundly, and raise their arms as if in prayer to "the good god."
Then, in silent reverence, they wait until it shall please their lord to
speak.
Ramses sweeps his glance over the crowd, singles out the General in
command of the Theban troops, and puts a question to him as to the
readiness of his division--the picked division of the army. The soldier
steps forward with a deep bow; but it is not Court manners for him to
answer his lord's question directly. Instead, he begins by reciting a
little psalm of praise, which tells of the King's greatness, his valour
and skill in war, and asserts that wherever his horses tread his enemies
flee before him and perish. This little piece of flattery over, the
General begins, "O King, my master," and in a few sensible words gives
the information required. So the audience goes on, counsellor after
counsellor coming forward at the royal command, reciting his little
hymn, and then giving his opinion on such matters as his master suggests
to him. At last the council is over, the King gives orders to his
equerry to prepare his chariot for the procession to the temple, and, as
he turns to leave the audience chamber, the assembled nobles once more
bow profoundly, and raise their arms in adoration.
After a short delay, the great gates of the boundary wall of the palace
are opened; a company of spearmen, in quilted leather kilts and leather
skull-caps, marches out, and takes position a short distance from the
gateway. Behind them comes a company of the Sardinians of the guard,
heavily armed, with bright helmets, broad round shields, quilted
corselets, and long, heavy, two-edged swords. They range themselves on
either side of the roadway, and stand like statues, waiting for the
appearance of Pharaoh. There is a whir of chariot-wheels, and the royal
chariot sweeps through the gateway, and sets off at a good round pace
towards the temple. The spearmen in front start at the double, and the
guardsmen, in spite of their heavy equipment, keep pace with their royal
master on either side.
The waiting crowd bows to the dust as the sovereign passes; but Pharaoh
looks neither to the right hand nor to the left. He stands erect and
impassive in the swaying chariot, holding the crook and whip which are
the Egyptian royal emblems. On his head he wears the royal war helmet,
in the front of which a golden cobra rears its crest from its coils, as
if to threaten the enemies of Egypt. His finely-shaped, swarthy features
are adorned, or disfigured, by an artificial beard, which is fastened on
by a strap passing up in front of the ears. His tall slender body is
covered, above his corselet, with a robe of fine white linen, a perfect
wonder of pleating; and round his waist passes a girdle of gold and
green enamel, whose ends cross and hang down almost to his knees,
terminating in two threatening cobra heads (Plate 4 and Cover Picture).
On either side of him run the fan-bearers, who manage, by a miracle of
skill and activity, to keep their great gaily-coloured fans of perfumed
ostrich feathers waving round the royal head even as they run.
Behind the King comes a long train of other chariots, only less splendid
than that of Ramses. In the first stands Queen Nefertari, languidly
sniffing at a lotus-flower as she passes on. The others are filled by
some of the Princes of the blood, who are going to take part in the
ceremony at the temple, chief among them the wizard Prince Khaemuas, the
greatest magician in Egypt, who has spells that can bring the dead from
their graves. Some in the crowd shrink from his keen eye, and mutter
that the papyrus roll which he holds so close to his breast was taken
from the grave of another magician Prince of ancient days, and that
Khaemuas will know no peace till it is restored. In a few minutes the
whole brilliant train has passed, dazzling the eyes with a blaze of gold
and white and scarlet; and crowds of courtiers stream after their
master, as fast as their feet can carry them, towards Karnak. You have
seen, if only for a moment, the greatest man on earth--the Great
Oppressor of Hebrew story. Very mighty and very proud he is; and he does
not dream that the little Hebrew boy whom his daughter has adopted, and
who is being trained in the priestly college at Heliopolis, will one day
humble all the pride of Egypt, and that the very name of Ramses shall be
best remembered because it is linked with that of Moses.
CHAPTER V
THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER
When you read about the Egyptians in the Bible, it seems as though they
were nearly always fighting; and, indeed, they did a good deal of
fighting in their time, as nearly every nation did in those old days.
But in reality they were not a great soldier people, like their rivals
the Assyrians, or the Babylonians. We, who have had so much to do with
their descendants, the modern Egyptians, and have fought both against
them and with them, know that the "Gippy" is not fond of soldiering in
his heart. He makes a very good, patient, hardworking soldier when he
has good officers; but he is not like the Soudanese, who love fighting
for fighting's sake. He much prefers to live quietly in his own native
village, and cultivate his own bit of ground. And his forefathers, in
these long-past days, were very much of the same mind. Often, of course,
they had to fight, when Pharaoh ordered them out for a campaign in the
Soudan or in Syria, and then they fought wonderfully well; but all the
time their hearts were at home, and they were glad to get back to their
farm-work and their simple pleasures. They were a peaceful, kindly,
pleasant race, with little of the cruelty and fierceness that you find
continually among the Assyrians.
[Illustration: PLATE 4.
RAMSES II. IN HIS WAR CHARIOT: SARDINIAN GUARDSMEN ON FOOT.]
In fact, the old Egyptian rather despised soldiering as a profession. He
thought it was rather a miserable, muddled kind of a job, in which,
unless you were a great officer, you got all the hard knocks and none
of the honours; and I am not sure that he was far wrong. His great
idea of a happy life was to get employment as a scribe, or, as we should
say, a clerk, to some big man or to the Government, to keep accounts and
write reports. Of course the people could not all be scribes; but an
Egyptian who had sons was never so proud as when he could get one of
them into a scribe's position, even though the young man might look down
upon his old father and his brothers, toiling on the land or serving in
the army.
A curious old book has come down to us from these ancient days, in which
the writer, who had been both a soldier and a high officer under
Government in what we should call the diplomatic service, has told a
young friend his opinion of soldiering as a profession. The young man
had evidently been dazzled with the idea of being in the cavalry, or,
rather, the chariotry, for the Egyptian soldiers did not ride on horses
like our cavalry, but drove them in chariots, in each of which there
were two men--the charioteer, to drive the two horses, and the soldier,
who stood beside the driver and fought with the bow, and sometimes with
the lance or sword.
But this wise old friend tells him that even to be in the chariotry is
not by any means a pleasant job. Of course it seems very nice at first.
The young man gets his new equipment, and thinks all the world of
himself as he goes home to show off his fine feathers.
"He receives beautiful horses,
And rejoices and exults,
And returns with them to his town."
But then comes the inspection, and if he has not everything in perfect
order he has a bad time of it, for he is thrown down on the ground, and
beaten with sticks till he is sore all over.
But if the lot of the cavalry soldier is hard, that of the infantry-man
is harder. In the barracks he is flogged for every mistake or offence.
Then war breaks out, and he has to march with his battalion to Syria.
Day after day he has to tramp on foot through the wild hill-country, so
different from the flat, fertile homeland that he loves. He has to carry
all his heavy equipment and his rations, so that he is laden like a
donkey; and often he has to drink dirty water, which makes him ill.
Then, when the battle comes, he gets all the danger and the wounds,
while the Generals get all the credit. When the war is over, he comes
home riding on a donkey, a broken-down man, sick and wounded, his very
clothes stolen by the rascals who should have attended on him. Far
better, the wise man says, to be a scribe, and to remain comfortably at
home. I dare say it was all quite true, just as perhaps it would not be
very far from the truth at the present time; but, in spite of it all,
Pharaoh had his battles to fight, and he got his soldiers all right when
they were needed.
The Egyptian army was not generally a very big one. It was nothing like
the great hosts that we hear of nowadays, or read of in some of the old
histories. The armies that the Pharaohs led into Syria were not often
much bigger than what we should call an army corps nowadays--probably
about 20,000 men altogether, rarely more than 25,000. But in that number
you could find almost as many different sorts of men as in our own
Indian army. There would be first the native Egyptian spearmen and
bowmen--the spearmen with leather caps and quilted leather tunics,
carrying a shield and spear, and sometimes an axe, or a dagger, or
short sword--the bowmen, more lightly equipped, but probably more
dangerous enemies, for the Egyptian archers were almost as famous as the
old English bowmen, and won many a battle for their King. Then came the
chariot brigade, also of native Egyptians, men probably of higher rank
than the foot-soldiers. The chariots were very light, and it must have
been exceedingly difficult for the bowman to balance himself in the
narrow car, as it bumped and clattered over rough ground. The two horses
were gaily decorated, and often wore plumes on their heads. The
charioteer sometimes twisted the reins round his waist, and could take a
hand in the fighting if his companion was hard pressed, guiding his
horses by swaying his body to one side or the other.
Round the Pharaoh himself, as he stood in his beautiful chariot, marched
the royal bodyguard. It was made up of men whom the Egyptians called
"Sherden"--Sardinians, probably, who had come over the sea to serve for
hire in the army of the great King. They wore metal helmets, with a
round ball on the top and horns at the sides, carried round bossed
shields, and were armed with great heavy swords of much the same shape
as those which the Norman knights used to carry. Behind the native
troops and the bodyguard marched the other mercenaries--regiments of
black Soudanese, with wild-beast skins thrown over their ebony shoulders; and light-coloured Libyans from the West, each with a couple of feathers stuck in his leather skull-cap. |
|
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기