8

hood, and entirely subjected to the forms which it belonged to the priesthood to prescribe. In time, however, the royal power became hereditary and independent; but it never rose superior to the power which preceded it, not, at least, until the peculiar institutions of Egypt were changed by strangers and

conquerors.

Neither the original civilization nor the succeeding monarchy was established without cruel and repeated contests. The frame of the Egyptian does not appear to have been fit for bearing arms; but the history of all antiquity, if it could be revived, would bear witness to warfare so universal, that no nation, no generation even, would be found to have lived in unbroken peace. The early tribes of Egypt had their struggles amongst themselves; and the strangers, priests or warriors, no sooner conquered the native races than they turned their arms against one another. The shepherd kings, or Hyksos, as they are uncertainly named, broke in from the East; the Ethiopians from the South; and many series, as it were, of conflicts and victories ensued, before the single throne of Sesostris, the liberator as much as the conqueror, was established. Under him, at last, the country was free, for a season, from invaders and from internal wars.

In this sketch of various and long continued warfare we have the main outlines of Egyptian history.

8 See Pastoret, Hist. de la Lé- in Cory's Collection of Anc. Fraggislation, Tom. II. ch. 6. ments, p. 170.

9 See the fragment of Manetho

The shades of the earlier time are so profound, so accumulated, century upon century, that no learning appears capable of throwing light upon much more than a phantom roll of kings, at whose head, as already mentioned, stands the name of Menes. Other names, as little known as his, succeed, grouped into masses by ancient and modern chronologers, but restored to simple outlines, not to the full proportions that may have once belonged to them. The Old Empire, begun by Menes, was continued under eight-and-thirty sovereigns, whose reigns are now supposed to have extended over a period of nearly eleven centuries. Next followed the Middle Empire, during the course of which a race of foreign kings appears to have ruled at Memphis, while the Egyptian sovereigns, fifty-three in succession, kept possession of Thebes. The duration of this divided empire is supposed to have been a little more than nine hundred years. It was succeeded by the New Empire, founded by the expulsion of the stranger, and the restoration of the native princes. Near the beginning of this later period, the name of Sesostris stands as that of the liberator, the king, and the conqueror; near its close, many centuries afterwards, is that of Amasis, under whom the independence of Egypt was extinguished by the conquests of Cambyses, the Persian king. The most striking features in the Egyptian institutions belong to the New Empire; and as we have already investigated the character of a hierocracy in India, we can turn at once from the early ages of hierocracy in Egypt to the

later period, when human government assumed new principles and new forms. At the same time, there must be a frank remembrance of the nearly countless years which went before. 10

In the midst of wars, and during the succession of periods in Egyptian history, the firmness of the early institutions is scarcely altered. The invaders could not overthrow the civilization of the people, who retired before them, instead of remaining in their subjection; and when the Egyptians, set free from the strangers, returned to their usual labors and places of abode, they or their rulers were as jealous of innovation as their fathers could ever have been. One change, perhaps, is to be observed; but it is as conjectural now, as it was then transitory. Of whatever race were the Hyksos who overran Egypt, whether Arabs or Scythians, their example of adventurous conquest proved contagious to the Egyptians at or very near the time of their expulsion. The marches of Sesostris were in imitation of the wanderings of the shepherd kings. But the temper of his subjects was not inclined towards foreign warfare. They had been educated for many generations in the habits of obedience and of patient toil; and though the liberation through which they passed may have been an impulse to aggression and dominion, the habits of former time were soon re

10 According to this chronology, derived from Bunsen's labors upon Egypt, Menes would have reigned about A. C. 3650. Sesostris belongs to the nineteenth dynasty, his own

name being Ramesses, as has been mentioned. See the tables of Manetho ap. Bunsen, Book I. sect. 1, ch, 5; and in Cory's Collection of Anc. Fragments, pp. 110, 118.

newed. The laws of Sesostris himself were of much

11

greater importance than his conquests; by the latter, indeed, had they been preserved, the great object of the laws he received and the laws he made, the national unity, would have been endangered. Under him, the class on which the monarchy chiefly rested, and by which the liberation of the whole people had more lately been accomplished, was exalted to the position of an independent order. Wars and conquests resulted, at last, in the elevation of the warriors, as well as in the union of the monarchy and the priesthood in authority. Egypt was divided into thirty-six districts or nomes, over each of which was set a nomarch,12 appointed to administer the local government, and to collect the contributions of the nome to the dignity and the strength of the empire. Every district had its peculiar temple, to which an especial deity and a full complement of priests were formally assigned. The people, numbered according to their nomes,13 so that their submission to the priesthood in the temple, and to the king in his own person or in that of his nomarchs and generals, might be exacted without the failure of a service which they had to render, were likewise driven forth in armies, or much more commonly employed in herds upon the monuments and gigantic piles,

11 See Diod. Sic., I. 54, where the policy of Sesostris is made the subject of considerable praise. The historian mentions the king as particularly the legislator of the warriors. See the list, I. 94, 95.

12 Perhaps appointed from the priests, but more probably from the warriors. See Pliny's account of the nomes, Nat. Hist., V. 9. 13 Diod. Sic., I. 77.

which, scarce decayed, but long deserted, are still stupendous in their magnitude. The labors of agriculture would increase with population; those of trade would spread wide with conquest; and as labors multiplied, the means employed to control or to protect them would quickly grow into a system, under which the Egyptian institutions were developed and completed.

14

We have a sketch of royal power in Egypt, antecedent, indeed, to the time of Sesostris, but fit to be introduced in illustration of the later institutions which we have supposed him to have organized. When Abraham went down from Haran into Egypt, he found a sovereign, or Pharaoh, and his princes, already powerful. Two centuries afterwards, Joseph was carried as a slave into the land his ancestor had visited; but showing himself discreet and wise before the Pharaoh then reigning, he was by him set over the country with nearly supreme authority. The vestures of fine linen that he wore, and the chariot that bore him in sight of the people, were but a small part of the state to which he was raised. There were officers to cry, "Bow the knee!" before him, and a multitude to obey the cry; for he was as Pharaoh, we are told, -the lord, himself, of all the land. Joseph requited the favors he received by the most skilful services. He helped his master to increase his power, by laying up stores against a famine which drove the Egyptians to part with cattle, lands, and even their own bodies, so that they might get 14 Genesis, Ch. XII.