food from the royal granaries; yet it is expressly related, that the sovereign and his minister were obliged to spare one caste from the universal afflic tion and degradation of their subjects. The possessions of the priests were respected, and their order alone continued secure against the growing wealth and dominion of the monarch whom the Hebrew had adroitly served at the expense of a miserable people.15 Something can be drawn from these Egyptian sketches in the Old Testament; for though Joseph may have ruled in one court and Abraham visited another, yet the outlines of the royalty and the priesthood, as far as they are given, correspond to all we know of the power of the one to resist and of the other to increase. The warriors, it is true, can only be conjectured to have been the princes whom Abraham saw; inasmuch as his journey may have been made to a city in possession of the foreign shepherd kings. But the Pharaoh of Joseph must have been supported by other means than the craft. of his stranger servant; and these means must have been the arms of his warriors. At all events, the interval between Joseph and Sesostris was marked by the rise of a second caste, without whose aid the monarchy itself would have undoubtedly continued in its early subjection to the priesthood. It was from among the warriors that the king was elected, whenever the succession of son to father failed. They shared in the glory and the spoils of conquest; obtained their lands free from tax 15 Genesis, XLI. 39-44; XLIV. 18; XLV. 9; XLVII. 13 – 26. or charge; 16 and as generation succeeded to generation, imbibed a portion, at least, of the knowledge which the priests would have kept for ever sealed. If they sustained the monarch, the monarch sustained them; and it is through the rise of both to a level with, not to a superiority over, the Egyptian priesthood, that we can ascribe a larger freedom to Egypt than elsewhere prevailed at the same period. It is impossible, however, to mark any further progress; nor does the idea of "the great dragon in the midst of his rivers,"" that is to say, the king encircled by his warriors, excite any agreeable reflections. Neither was the growth of the monarchy uninterrupted so long as the priesthood continued to claim and exercise its ancient powers. One monarch, Cheops, was able, indeed, to subdue the priests, by ordering the temples to be closed; 18 but his son, Mycerinus, was so obedient to the same caste whom his father overcame, as to believe them when they bade him prepare for death, because it was not the will of the gods to have Egypt governed by a virtuous king.19 It would be painful to read that a monarch could be deposed because of his excellence, if it were not probable that the virtue of Mycerinus consisted only in his independence of, or his opposition to, the priesthood. His father, Cheops, whom the priests would have unquestionably deposed, had they 16 Herod., II. 168. Diod. Sic., I. 73. All landed property, according to Herodotus (II. 109), was granted by the king. 17 Ezekiel, XXIX. 3. 19 Ibid., II. 133. Cf. Diod. Sic., I. 64. been able, and perhaps on the same charge of excessive goodness, compelled his subjects to labor, unpaid and almost unfed,20 upon the pyramids, too vast to be raised or to be begun where the lower classes were mercifully ruled. The more turbulent warriors may have been as much in the way of royal gentleness as the haughtier priests; but the power of the monarchy itself was, at last, the greatest hindrance to its righteous exercise. The king, who was in theory "a mighty lover of truth," was also in theory incapable of doing wrong.22 Nor is the virtue of his having emancipated himself and his caste, if we suppose Sesostris to have done so much, from superstitious dependence upon the priesthood, to be exaggerated. Though born of the warriors, he was admitted by initiation among the priests.23 His attendants were young men of the sacerdotal families; his partners in civil authority were of the same order; 25 and in every solemn ceremony, as in 20 Herodotus (II. 125) gives a curious account, however, of the money expended upon "radishes, leeks, and garlic," for the laborers; and there is even a hint that they had something besides. Compare the remembrances of the Israelites at Taberah, Numbers, XI. 5. 21 Inscription quoted by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in his work on the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, Vol. I. p. 251, note. 22 Diod. Sic., I. 70. 236 Previously to his election." Bunsen, Egypt, etc., Vol. I. p. 19. See Plut., Is. et Osir., IX. Plutarch, one of our continual companions through ancient history, lived from about A. D. 50 to a good old age. He was a native of Chæronea in Boeotia, and the author of biographies and treatises that are, most of them, the former especially, invaluable. 24 Diod. Sic., I. 70. 25 Ten priests from each of the three principal cities, making thirty in all, were, with the king, the members of the supreme judicial tribunal. Diod. Sic., I. 75. They were also the depositaries of the sacred laws of Hermes," the first every magnificent festival, the priests were his ministers and his guides. 26 Their authority, therefore, is not to be undervalued, even when the days of their supreme dominion were passed away. As Joseph spared them in the great famine, so, although richest, both as an order and as individuals, amongst their countrymen, they were always free from charges of money, or any services besides those they would rather seek than avoid. Their votes were the most important at the election of a king; and when the crown passed from one head to another without election, they were still "the wise counsellors of Pharaoh,"27 whose opinions were generally consulted, if not always obeyed. Their religious authority was scarcely disturbed amidst the changes which transferred many of their civil powers to other hands. Superstition yet triumphed, while they interpreted the oracles to which the whole nation had recourse, and served before the shrines which not the king himself would have approached alone. The knowledge they had was of sciences and arts as well as mysteries; it was the source of an authority which no revolutions could close to them, or open, without their will, to the rest of their race. At first the parents and afterwards the off germ," says Bunsen (Vol. I. p. 20), "of the civil law." As for Hermes, see Creuzer, Rel. Égypt., Ch. IV. p. 443, trad. Franç. cise of the priestly influence over the king could not always have proved agreeable. He was, every morning, obliged to listen to a long 26 Diod. Sic., I. 73. They also discourse from the chief pontiff upon received public contributions. his royal virtues and duties. Diod. Sic., I. 70. 27 Isaiah, XIX. 11. One exer spring of Egyptian civilization, they were born to the inheritance of heavenly and of earthly learning, such as had then been reached by mortal minds. 28 Their world of prodigies has survived them; and it is in the hieroglyphic of the temples or the emblem of the monuments, to which their secrets were confided, that the history of Egypt is still to be sought with unwearied deciphering. Architecture was their peculiar art, and the one through which their power over the masses is, as it was, most plainly apparent; though there were monarchs, and, very likely, warriors also, to imitate their example, and build their own massive piles with the toil of the swarming poor. The palace of the king was built in imitation of the sanctuary, and his statues were fashioned after the divine images with which the temple was adorned.29 It was not alone in architecture, however, that the wisdom of the Egyptians was celebrated from century to century 30 amongst the neighbouring nations. Astronomy and physics, medicine and agriculture, prophecy and history,31 were the work and the property of one great class, to which all other ranks were intellectually, even if there were some to escape being politically, inferior. The king, as will be remembered, obtained these privileges by initiation; and many of his caste, as may be conjectured, rose up, through their con28Ce monde d'enchantemens." 30 1 Kings, IV. 30. Acts, VII. Sismondi, Études Écon. Polit., 22. 1er Essai. 31 Certain sacred books were par 29 Müller's Ancient Art, Sect. ticularly kept as annals. Diod. Sic., 225. I. 46, 73. Herod., II. 99, 100. |