Part 2 (1/2)
On one s.h.i.+eld or palette we see Narmer clubbing a man of Semitic appearance, who is called the ”Only One of the Marsh” (Delta), while below two other Semites fly, seeking ”fortress-protection.” Above is a figure of a hawk, symbolizing the Upper Egyptian king, holding a rope which is pa.s.sed through the nose of a Semitic head, while behind is a sign which may be read as ”the North,” so that the whole symbolizes the leading away of the North into captivity by the king of the South. It is significant, in view of what has been said above with regard to the probable Semitic origin of the Heliopolitan Northerners, to find the people typical of the North-land represented by the Southerners as Semites. Equally Semitic is the overthrown Northerner on the other side of this well-known monument which we are describing; he is being trampled under the hoofs and gored by the horns of a bull, who, like the hawk, symbolizes the king. The royal bull has broken down the wall of a fortified enclosure, in which is the hut or tent of the Semite, and the bricks lie about promiscuously.
In connection with the Semitic origin of the Northerners, the form of the fortified enclosures on both sides of this monument (that to whose protection the two Semites on one side fly, and that out of which the kingly bull has dragged the chief on the other) is noticeable. As usual in Egyptian writing, the hieroglyph of these buildings takes the form of a plan. The plan shows a crenelated enclosure, resembling the walls of a great Babylonian palace or temple, such as have been found at Telloh, Warka, or Mukayyar. The same design is found in Egypt at the Shuret ez-Zebib, an Old Kingdom fortress at Abydos, in the tomb of King Aha at Nakada, and in many walls of mastaba-tombs of the early time. This is another argument in favour of an early connection between Egypt and Babylonia. We ill.u.s.trate a fragment of another votive s.h.i.+eld or palette of the same kind, now in the museum of the Louvre, which probably came originally from Hierakonpolis. It is of exactly similar workmans.h.i.+p to that of Narmer, and is no doubt a fragment of another monument of that king. On it we see the same subject of the overthrowing of a Northerner (of Semitic aspect) by the royal bull. On one side, below, is a fortified enclosure with crenelated walls of the type we have described, and within it a lion and a vase; below this another fort, and a bird within it. These signs may express the names of the two forts, but, owing to the fact that at this early period Egyptian orthography was not yet fixed, we cannot read them. On the other side we see a row of animated nome-standards of Upper Egypt, with the symbols of the G.o.d Min of Koptos, the hawk of Horus of Edfu, the ibis of Thot of Eshmunen, and the jackals of Anubis of Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the monument, we should see, bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner, king, or animal symbolic of the North. On another slate s.h.i.+eld, which we also reproduce, we see a symbolical representation of the capture of seven Northern cities, whose names seem to mean the ”Two Men,” the ”Heron,” the ”Owl,” the ”Palm,” and the ”Ghost” Cities.
”Ghost City” is attacked by a lion, ”Owl City” by a hawk, ”Palm City” by two hawk nome-standards, and another, whose name we cannot guess at, is being opened up by a scorpion.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 050.jpg (left) OBVERSE OF A SLATE RELIEF.]
The operating animals evidently represent nomes and tribes of the Upper Egyptians. Here again we see the same crenelated walls of the Northern towns, and there is no doubt that this slate fragment also, which is preserved in the Cairo Museum, is a monument of the conquests of Narmer.
It is executed in the same archaic style as those from Hierakonpolis.
The animals on the other side no doubt represent part of the spoil of the North.
Returning to the great s.h.i.+eld or palette found by Mr. Quibell, we see the king coming out, followed by his sandal-bearer, the _Hen-neter_ or ”G.o.d's Servant,”* to view the dead bodies of the slain Northerners which lie arranged in rows, decapitated, and with their heads between their feet. The king is preceded by a procession of nome-standards.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 051.jpg (right)]
Above the dead men are symbolic representations of a hawk perched on a harpoon over a boat, and a hawk and a door, which doubtless again refer to the fights of the royal hawk of Upper Egypt on the Nile and at the gate of the North. The designs on the mace-heads refer to the same conquest of the North.
* In his commentary (Hierakonpolis, i. p. 9) on this scene, Prof. Petrie supposes that the seven-pointed star sign means ”king,” and compares the eight-pointed star ”used for king in Babylonia.” The eight-pointed star of the cuneiform script does not mean ”king,” but ”G.o.d.” The star then ought to mean ”G.o.d,” and the t.i.tle ”servant of a G.o.d,” and this supposition may be correct. _Hen-neter_, ”G.o.d's servant,”
was the appellation of a peculiar kind of priest in later days, and was then spelt with the ordinary sign for a G.o.d, the picture of an axe. But in the archaic period, with which we are dealing, a star like the Babylonian sign may very well have been used for ”G.o.d,” and the t.i.tle of Narmer's sandal-bearer may read _Hen-neter_. He was the slave of the living G.o.d Narmer. All Egyptian kings were regarded as deities, more or less.
The monuments Khasekhemui, a king, show us that he conquered the North also and slew 47,209 ”Northern Enemies.” The contorted att.i.tudes of the dead Northerners were greatly admired and sketched at the time, and were reproduced on the pedestal of the king's statue found by Mr. Quibell, which is now at Oxford. It was an age of cheerful savage energy, like most times when kingdoms and peoples are in the making. About 4000 B.C.
is the date of these various monuments.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 052.jpg OBVERSE OP A SLATE RELIEF.]
Khasekhemui probably lived later than Narmer, and we may suppose that his conquest was in reality a re-conquest. He may have lived as late as the time of the IId Dynasty, whereas Narmer must be placed at the beginning of the Ist, and his conquest was probably that which first united the two kingdoms of the South and North. As we shall see in the next chapter, he is probably one of the originals of the legendary ”Mena,” who was regarded from the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty onwards as the founder of the kingdom, and was first made known to Europe by Herodotus, under the name of ”Menes.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: 053.jpg REVERSE OF A SLATE RELIEF, REPRESENTING ANIMALS.]
Narmer is therefore the last of the ancient kings of Hierakonpolis, the last of Manetho's ”Spirits.” We may possibly have recovered the names of one or two of the kings anterior to Narmer in the excavations at Abydos (see Chapter II), but this is uncertain. To all intents and purposes we have only legendary knowledge of the Southern kingdom until its close, when Narmer the mighty went forth to strike down the Anu of the North, an exploit which he recorded in votive monuments at Hierakonpolis, and which was commemorated henceforward throughout Egyptian history in the yearly ”Feast of the Smiting of the Anu.” Then was Egypt for the first time united, and the fortress of the ”White Wall,” the ”Good Abode” of Memphis, was built to dominate the lower country. The Ist Dynasty was founded and Egyptian history began.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 054.jpg ]
CHAPTER II--ABYDOS AND THE FIRST THREE DYNASTIES
Until the recent discoveries had been made, which have thrown so much light upon the early history of Egypt, the traditional order and names of the kings of the first three Egyptian dynasties were, in default of more accurate information, retained by all writers on the history of the period. The names were taken from the official lists of kings at Abydos and elsewhere, and were divided into dynasties according to the system of Manetho, whose names agree more or less with those of the lists and were evidently derived from them ultimately. With regard to the fourth and later dynasties it was clear that the king-lists were correct, as their evidence agreed entirely with that of the contemporary monuments.
But no means existed of checking the lists of the first three dynasties, as no contemporary monuments other than a IVth Dynasty mention of a IId Dynasty king, Send, had been found. The lists dated from the time of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, so that it was very possible that with regard to the earliest dynasties they might not be very correct. This conclusion gained additional weight from the fact that no monuments of these earliest kings were ever discovered; it therefore seemed probable that they were purely legendary figures, in whose time (if they ever did exist) Egypt was still a semi-barbarous nation. The jejune stories told about them by Manetho seemed to confirm this idea. Mena, the reputed founder of the monarchy, was generally regarded as a historical figure, owing to the persistence of his name in all ancient literary accounts of the beginnings of Egyptian history; for it was but natural to suppose that the name of the man who unified Egypt and founded Memphis would endure in the mouths of the people. But with regard to his successors no such supposition seemed probable, until the time of Sneferu and the pyramid-builders.
This was the critical view. Another school of historians accepted all the kings of the lists as historical _en bloc_, simply because the Egyptians had registered their names as kings. To them Teta, Ateth, and Ata were as historical as Mena.
Modern discovery has altered our view, and truth is seen to lie between the opposing schools, as usual. The kings after Mena do not seem to be such entirely unhistorical figures as the extreme critics thought; the names of several of them, e.g. Merpeba, of the Ist Dynasty, are correctly given in the later lists, and those of others were simply misread, e. g. that of Semti of the same dynasty, misread ”Hesepti” by the list-makers. On the other hand, Mena himself has become a somewhat doubtful quant.i.ty. The real names of most of the early monarchs of Egypt have been recovered for us by the latest excavations, and we can now see when the list-makers of the XIXth Dynasty were right and when they were wrong, and can distinguish what is legendary in their work from what is really historical. It is true that they very often appear to have been wrong, but, on the other hand, they were sometimes unexpectedly near the mark, and the general number and arrangement of their kings seems correct; so that we can still go to them for a.s.sistance in the arrangement of the names which are communicated to us by the newly discovered monuments. Manetho's help, too, need never be despised because he was a copyist of copyists; we can still use him to direct our investigations, and his arrangement of dynasties must still remain the framework of our chronological scheme, though he does not seem to have been always correct as to the places in which the dynasties originated.
More than the names of the kings have the new discoveries communicated to us. They have shed a flood of light on the beginnings of Egyptian civilization and art, supplementing the recently ascertained facts concerning the prehistoric age which have been described in the preceding chapter. The impulse to these discoveries was given by the work of M. de Morgan, who excavated sites of the early dynastic as well as of the predynastic age. Among these was a great mastaba-tomb at Nakada, which proved to be that of a very early king who bore the name of Aha, ”the Fighter.” The walls of this tomb are crenelated like those of the early Babylonian palaces and the forts of the Northerners, already referred to. M. de Morgan early perceived the difference between the Neolithic antiquities and those of the later archaic period of Egyptian civilization, to which the tomb at Nakada belonged. In the second volume of his great work on the primitive antiquities of Egypt _(L'Age des Metaux et le Tombeau Royale de Negadeh)_, he described the antiquities of the Ist Dynasty which had been found at the time he wrote. Antiquities of the same primitive period and even of an earlier date had been discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie, as has already been said, at Koptos, at the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat. But though Prof.
Petrie correctly diagnosed the age of the great statues of the G.o.d Min which he found, he was led, by his misdating of the ”New Race”
antiquities from Ballas and Tkh, also to misdate several of the primitive antiquities,--the lions and hawks, for instance, found at Koptos, he placed in the period between the VIIth and Xth Dynasties; whereas they can now, in the light of further discoveries at Abydos, be seen to date to the earlier part of the Ist Dynasty, the time of Narmer and Aha.
It is these discoveries at Abydos, coupled with those (already described) of Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis, which have told us most of what we know with regard to the history of the first three dynasties.
At Abydos Prof. Petrie was not himself the first in the field, the site having already been partially explored by a French Egyptologist, M.