TIE HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TILL THE CONQUEST BY THE ARABS BY SAMUEL SHARPE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. THE SIXTH EDITION. LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1885. PREFACE. AMONG the histories of the ancient world those of the Jews, of Greece, and of Rome, will always hold the first place in value; that of the Jews, because it contains the history of our religion; those of Greece and Rome for the poets and historians, the almost perfect works of art, and the quantity of knowledge that those nations have left us, and for the share that they have had in forming our opinions and guiding our tastes even in the present day. After these three histories, that of Egypt may certainly claim the next place, from the influence which that remarkable country has had upon the philosophy and science of the world. Even now the great stream of civilisation, after flowing through ages of antiquity and fertilising the centuries through which it has passed, is in its present fulness still coloured with the Egyptian opinions, as the Nile reaches the Delta red with Ethiopian soil. Architecture and sculpture, the art of writing and the use of paper, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, indeed we might add legislation, and almost every art which flourishes under a settled form of government, either took its rise in Egypt or reached Europe through that country. Many of our superstitions, and some of our religious truths, are here first met with; and above two hundred references to the Bible in these pages show how much light Egypt and the Scriptures may throw one upon another. Much of the early portion of Egypt's history had been lost, and has latterly been regained; it had been hidden from us by the shade which time sooner or later throws over man's doings, and we are now delighted to find that it can be read by the light of modern science. Such further knowledge of the world's childhood brings with it some of the experience of age. An addition to the beginning of ancient history, without making our race older, gives us a longer life to look back to. We can thus more justly judge of the progress in science, in art, and in morals, with which God has already rewarded man's industry; we can more safely look forward to further improvement as a reward to our continued industry. The study of the past helps faith to lay hold upon the future. The older monuments of sculpture teach us the names of numerous kings of Thebes, of Memphis, and of the Phenician shepherds; and though there may be doubts as to the order in which these early dynasties are to be placed, yet they leave us in no doubt as to the high antiquity which must be granted to this earliest of nations. Greek tradition begins with the Trojan war, when Egyptian Thebes was already falling from its high rank among cities. Jewish tradition begins a little earlier with the flight of the Israelites from Egypt, when the Egyptian kings already boasted of a long line of ancestors. Egypt was then a highly civilised country, the pyramids had been built near Memphis, the Egyptians had worked the copper mines on Mount Sinai, and the sculptured monuments which must have been seen by them, still prove the high state of the arts at that time. Even from before the time of Solomon the history may be traced with certainty through the reigns of Thothmosis, Amunothph, Rameses, and the other great Coptic kings, who for upwards of five hundred years made Thebes their capital, and usually held Lower Egypt as a province. It was during these reigns that Egypt, enriched by the Nubian gold mines, surpassed every country of the known world in wealth and power, and was foremost in all the arts of civilisation, of commerce, and of agriculture. Moses was there educated in all the learning of the Egyptians; and though Upper Egypt was at that time little known to the Greeks, Homer speaks of the armies and wealth of Egyptian Thebes as proverbial. No Theban historians, it is true, have recorded their great deeds; but the buildings are themselves the deeds, and the sculptures on the walls show that the nation was conscious of their greatness while performing them. The massive temples and obelisks covered with hieroglyphics, and the colossal statues, which have already outlived three thousand years, prove the high civilisation of the kingdom, even before the Jews had become a people, before the Greeks had got an alphabet; and they are among the causes of the lively interest with which we trace its history in the following ages. They marked these buildings with a serious gravity wholly their own. We have ourselves no national style in architecture, but we borrow from each what to our judgment or feelings seems most suitable for its purpose. We copy the buildings of the Chinese or Arabs for a summer house in the garden, those of the Greeks for a theatre, those of the Romans for a bridge, and for a triumphal monument, those of the Italians for a palace, those of our northern forefathers for a place of worship, and we go back to the early Egyptians for the models best suited for the solemnity of a tomb. For about five hundred years more, beginning with Shishank the conqueror of Rehoboam, the kingdom was governed by kings of Lower Egypt, and the Thebaid fell to the rank of a province. The wars then carried on were chiefly in Syria, sometimes aimed at the conquest of Judea and Samaria, ard sometimes to save those kingdoms from becoming provinces of Babylon. The wealth and population of the country |