A History of the Ancient Egyptians
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT A HISTORY THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS JAMES HENRY fiftEASTED, Ph.D. Professor of Egyptology and Oriental History in the University of Chicago; Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin WITH FOUR MAPS AND THREE PLANS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1908 1) UBRARYoTcONt^jSsJ iwo Copies HecAvUr I may i lyoe 2fcu. $r /?«# 3LAS8f4" AKc. Wu, OOHY B. Copyright 1905, 1908 By Charles Scribner's Sons Published May, 1908 TO W&z 9®tmotv of MY FATHER In Reverence and Gratitude PREFACE As works on the early Orient multiply, it becomes more and more easy to produce such books at second and third hand, which are thus separated by a long remove from the original monuments forming our primary sources of knowledge. As the use of this vol- ume is in a measure conditioned by the method which produced it, may the author state that it is based di- rectly and immediately upon the monuments, and in most cases upon the original monuments, rather than upon any published edition of the same ? For this pur- pose the historical monuments still standing in Egypt, or installed in the museums of Europe (the latter in to- to), were copied or collated by the author anew ad hoc and rendered into English (see infra, p. 445, B. Trans- lations, BAR). Upon this complete version the present volume rests. Those students who desire to consult the sources upon which any given fact is based, are re- ferred to this English corpus. A full bibliography of each original monument, if desired, will also be found there, and hence no references to such technical bibliog- raphy will be found herein, thus freeing the reader from a mass of workshop debris, to which, however, he can easily refer, if he desires it. While this volume is largely a condensation and abridgement of the author's longer history, he has en- viii PREFACE deavoured to conform it to the design of this historical series and to make it as, far as possible a history of the Egyptian people. At the same time the remarkable recent discoveries and the progress of research made since the appearance of his larger history have been fully incorporated. The discovery of the Hittite capital at Boghaz-Koi in Asia Minor, with numerous cuneiform records of this remarkable people, and elsewhere the evidence that they conquered Babylonia temporarily in the eighteenth century b. c, form the most remarkable of the new facts recently recovered.* The new-found evidence that the first and third dynasties of Babylon were contemporaneous with the second, has also settled the problem, whether the civilization of the Nile or of the Euphrates is older, in favour of Egypt, where the forma- tion of a homogeneous, united state, embracing the whole country under the successive dynasties, is over a thousand years older than in Babylonia. We possess no monument of Babylonia, as Eduard Meyer recently remarked to the author, older than 3000 b. c. The author's journey through Sudanese Nubia during the winter of 1906-07 cleared his mind of a number of mis- conceptions of that country, especially economically, while it also recovered the lost city of Gem-Aton, and disposed of the impossible though current view that the Egyptian conquest was extended southward immedi- ately after the fall of the Middle Kingdom. Those fa- miliar with the other history will also welcome the im- proved maps redrawn for this volume. On the never-settled question of a pronounceable, * This book was paged in October, 1907, but as the proof was unhappily lost for three months in transport to Europe, the re- sults of the second campaign (summer of 1907) at Boghaz-Koi, which appeared in December, 1907, could not be employed in detail as they might otherwise have been. PREFACE ix that is vocalized, form of Egyptian proper names, which are written in hieroglyphic without vowels, I must refer the reader to the remarks in the preface of my An- cient Records I., xiv. It is (Vol. pp. ff.). hoped that the index has made them pronounceable. As to the au- thor's indebtedness to others in the preparation of this volume, he may also refer to his acknowledgments in the same preface, as well as in that of his larger history — acknowledgments which are equally true of this briefer work. He would also express his appreciation of the patience shown him by both editor and pub- lisher, who have waited long for the manuscript of this book, delayed as it has been by distant travels and heavy tasks, and the fact that the mass of the material collected proved too large to condense at once into this volume, thus resulting in the production of the larger history first. Even so, the present volume is larger than its fellows in the series, and the author greatly appre- ciates the indulgence of the publishers in this respect. In conclusion, to the student of the Old Testament, by whom it will be chiefly used, the author would express the hope that the little book may contribute somewhat toward a wider recognition of the fact, that the rise and development, the culture and career, of the Hebrew nation were as vitally conditioned and as deeply influ- enced by surrounding civilizations, as modern historical science has shown to be the fact with every other peo- ple, ancient or modern. James Henry Breasted. Bordighera. Italy, March 2, 1908. CONTENTS PART I INTRODUCTION PAGE I. The Land of the Egyptians 3 II. Preliminary Survey, Chronology and Docu- mentary Sources 14 III. Earliest Egypt 29 PART II THE OLD KINGDOM IV. Early Religion 55 V. The Old Kingdom: Government and Society, Industry and Art 74 VI. The Pyramid Builders 103 VII. The Sixth Dynasty: the Decline of the Old- Kingdom 117 PART III THE MIDDLE KINGDOM : THE FEUDAL AGE VIII. The Decline of the North and the Rise of 133 IX. The Middle Kingdom or the Feudal Age State, Society and Religion .... 139 X. The Twelfth Dynasty ........ 152 ii CONTENTS PART IV THE HYKSOS: THE RISE OF THE EMPIRE PAGE XI. The Fall of the Middle Kingdom. The Hyksos 173 XII. The Expulsion of the Hyksos and the Tri- umph of Thebes 185 PART V THE EMPIRE: FIRST PERIOD XIII. The New State: Society and Religion . XIV. The Consolidation of the Kingdom; the Rise of the Empire 207 XV. The Feud of the Thutmosids and the Reign of Queen Hatshepsut 214 XVI. The Consolidation of the Empire : the Wars of Thutmose hi 223 XVII. The Empire at Its Height 244 XVIII. The Religious Revolution of Ikhnaton . 264 XIX. The Fall of Ikhnaton and the Dissolution of the Empire 280 PART VI THE EMPIRE: SECOND PERIOD XX. The Triumph of Amon and the Reorganiza- tion of the Empire 293 XXI. The Wars of Ramses II 303 XXII. The Empire of Ramses II 314 XXIII. The Final Decline of the Empire: Mernep- tah and Ramses III 327 1 CONTENTS xiii PART VII THE DECADENCE OF ANCIENT EGYPT PAGE XXIV. The Fall of the Empire 347 XXV. Priests and Mercenaries: the Supremacy op the Libyans 357 XXVI. The Ethiopian Supremacy and the Triumph of Assyria 367 PART VIII THE RESTORATION AND THE END XXVII. The Restoration 387 XXVIII. The Final Struggles: Babylon and Persia 404 Chronological Summary 419 Notes on Recent Discoveries 439 A Selected Bibliography (including Abbreviations) . 444 " Index of Names and Subjects . 455 MAPS AND PLANS FACING PAGE Map I. Egypt and the Ancient World 4 Map II. The Asiatic Empire of Egypt 210 218-' Map III. Thebes and Its Ancient Buildings . Plan IV. The Temples of Karnak 228 The Battle of Kadesh, First Stage 305 The Battle of Kadesh, Second Stage 307 Map V. General Map of Egypt and Nubia. At the End PART I INTRODUCTION THE LAND OF THE EGYPTIANS 1. The roots of modern civilization are planted deeply in the highly elaborate life of those nations which rose into power over six thousand years ago, in the basin of the eastern Mediterranean, and the ad- jacent regions on the east of it. Had the Euphrates finally found its way into the Mediterranean, toward which, indeed, it seems to have started, both the early civilizations, to which we refer, might then have been included in the Mediterranean basin. As it is, the scene of early oriental history does hot fall entirely within that basin, but must be designated as the east- ern Mediterranean region. It lies in the midst of the vast desert plateau, which, beginning at the Atlantic, extends eastward across the entire northern end of Africa, and continuing beyond the depression of the Red Sea, passes northeastward, with some interrup- tions, far into the heart of Asia. Approaching it, the one from the south and the other from the north, two great river valleys traverse this desert; in Asia, the Tigro-Euphrates valley; in Africa that of the Nile. It is in these two valleys that the career of man may be traced from the rise of European civilization back to a remoter age than anywhere else on earth; and it is from these two cradles of the human race that the in- fluences which emanated from their highly developed 4 INTRODUCTION but differing cultures, can now be more an< AJmore clearly traced as we discern them converging upjh the early civilization of Asia Minor and southern Europe. 2. The Nile, which created the valley home of the early Egyptians, rises three degrees south of the equa- tor, and flowing into the Mediterranean at over thirty- one and a half degrees north latitude, it attains a length of some four thousand miles and vies with the greatest rivers of the world in length, if not in volume.