third pyramid, like the two others which are so much older and larger, was built of the stone of the neighbourhood; but, unlike them, was beautifully cased with red granite from Syene, the most southerly part of Egypt, which stone was less likely before to have been brought to Memphis while the two kingdoms were under different sovereigns. This casing has unfortunately long since been carried off to form other buildings in the neighbourhood; and we have therefore lost the hieroglyphical inscriptions, which would have cleared up all doubt about the date and maker of this huge pile. The sarcophagus was found in an underground chamber beneath the middle of the pyramid, which was entered by a sloping passage from without, so that it was not made more difficult of approach by the pile of stonework raised overhead. It added to the monarch's glory, but not to the safety of his body. No second chamber has yet been found in the middle of the stonework, like that in the largest pyramid. So also the fourth pyramid, which accompanies this, seems to have had no chamber except that underground beneath it, and that also is entered from without. Burton's pl. 1*. (4) We have been able to note as many as six little monarchies within the limits of Egypt, and if to these we add Ethiopia, and perhaps the foreigners in the Delta, we may have eight monarchies which centred in Thothmosis III. Accordingly, when he added some new Excerpta, chambers to the great temple of Karnak, he was represented on the sculpture in one of the rooms as presenting offerings to his ancestors or predecessors of eight several dynasties, namely, the kings of Thebes, of Abydos, of Memphis, of Ethiopia, and of four other divisions of Egypt, perhaps Elephantine, Heracleopolis, Xois, and the district of the Shepherds. In one of the tombs Ethiopia. near Thebes is a painting (see Fig. 48) of a grand procession of men of the four tribes bordering on the Nile, who are bringing their costly gifts in token of homage to this king. They together form the nation that pays him its willing obedience. First, there are darkcoloured men of Nubia, with Negroes in their company bringing skins, elephants' tusks, sticks of ebony, strings of beads no doubt amber-ostrich eggs and feathers, apes, leopards, the ibex, and foreign plants carried in the earth in Hoskins's which they grow. The granite obelisks from Syene are also counted as their tribute. Next, there are the Copts, men of a light-red colour, and long hair. Their gifts are large and tasteful vases of many shapes, but all beautiful, some holding plants of the lotus and lily kind, the usual emblems of the country. The Nubians and Copts are dressed alike, except that the Copts wear sandals, and the Coptic tunic is of a richer stuff. Then follow the dark Ethiopians, with less clothing, bringing ivory, ebony, ostrich eggs and feathers, dogs, oxen, leopards, apes, monkeys, and camelopards, with dishes full of gold rings. They also are accompanied with Negroes. The fourth are men with fair skins and beards, and warmer clothing, bringing long gloves, bows, chariots with horses, vases, bears, and elephants. They are people of Arabia and the Arabian side of the Nile, from whom the Egyptians got their supply of horses, and they seemed to be named Lydians, Genesis, perhaps the tribe X. 13. spoken of in the Jeremiah, xlvi. 9. as Lydians that bend the bow. (5) The tribute of gold rings brought by the Ethiopians was for the most part the produce of the hills in the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea. The sand at the foot of these hills was now enriching the whole country; not only VOL. I. E Napata, where the glittering grains first reached the river, but Thebes, that claimed the sovereignty over the district, and even the cities in the Delta, which by their trade spread the precious metal over the coasts of the Mediterranean. The gold was melted and worked into rings, as a form in which it could be kept most safely, by being strung upon a cord, or carried on a finger. Theon, ap. B.C. 1321 (6) There are two or three circumstances by which we may hope to fix the date of this king's reign. His full name at Thebes is Mehophra, or, as sometimes spelt, Menhophra Thothmosis (see Fig. 43); and Theon calls the beginning of the great Egyptian cycle of 1460 years, which began in the year B.C. 1321, the era of Menophres, and thus seems to fix the year in which either his reign began or he reformed the calendar. The observing man may note that every star rises to-day earlier than it did yesterday, and that every morning a fresh set peeps up from the horizon, to be seen only for a moment before they are lost in the brighter light of the daybreak. The day on which a star is thus first seen in the east is called its heliacal rising; and at the beginning of the era of Menophres, the first day of the month of Thoth, the civil new-year's day, fell on the day when the Dog-star first was seen to rise at daybreak, which was held o be the natural new-year's day, when the Nile began to rise, six weeks before the overflow. This agreement between the natural new-year's day and the civil new-year's day may have happened simply by the motion of the civil year; but it was possibly accompanied by a reform in the calendar, and by fixing the length of the civil year at 365 days, in the belief that the months would not again move from their seasons. Among the common names of the months, that of the last, Mesore, the Bull, was clearly brought into use at this time, when the year ended with the rising of that constellation. The months, however, were left with the mistakes in their hieroglyphic names, which had arisen from their former change of place. The four months which were named after the season of vegetation fell during the overflow of the Nile; the months named after the harvest fell during the height of vegetation; and those named after the inundation fell during harvest time. But if no alteration was tali. made at this time in the calendar, and the civil year already contained 365 days, the addition of the five days had probably been made 500 years earlier, when the first month of inundation would have begun with the Nile's overflow. The Egyptian year was never again altered. From Censorinus, the want of a leap year, 1461 civil years took place de Die Nain 1460 revolutions of the sun; and in the beginning of the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius the newyear's day again came round to the season from which it moved in the reign of Menophres. Again, Plutarch says that the god Thoth, who in this case may be meant for Thothmosis, taught the Egyptians the true length of the year; and the figure of this king is often drawn with a palm branch, the hieroglyphic for the word year, in each hand; hence it is probable that he is the author of the change in the calendar, made in the year B.C. 1321. (7) Thothmosis III. was one of the greatest of the Egyptian kings. His buildings, which are scattered over all parts of the kingdom, prove the wealth and good taste of the people, while the sculptures on the walls recount the number of neighbouring tribes that owned his sway. He built or rather restored the temple of the Sun at Egyptian Heliopolis, where Moses is said to have studied Inscript. Egyptian learning; and he set up, perhaps, in 2 Ser. 41. front of it, the two granite obelisks which were afterwards removed to Alexandria, and of which one is now called Cleopatra's needle. He carved the obelisk which now ornaments the circus at Constantinople. He built a temple to Savak, the crocodile-headed god, at Wilkinson, Ombos; and his buildings in Nubia, at Samneh, at Deer, and at Amada, prove that his sway over that country reached to the third cataract, and probably over the whole of Ethiopia north of Meroë. In this and the last reign the copper mines were again worked in the valley of Wady Mugareh, near Mount Sinai. The working Laborde's of those mines must have been stopped as long as Egypt was at war with the Shepherd kings, and we find the names of no Egyptian kings upon the temple of Sarbout el Cadem, between the reigns of Amunmai Thor III. and Thothmosis II. During these years the little town of Paran near Sinai was perhaps not Thebes. Arabia. Egypt, Inscript. 2 Ser. 36. free from the inroads of the Amalekites, or whatever Arab race it was whom the Egyptians had called the Shepherds. The kingdom of Thebes had now reached its full size. Thothmosis III. held Upper and Lower Egypt, and Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai. It is true that some of his successors stretched their arms further, and won battles in Asia and, as they said, in Thrace; but these conquests were never long held. Several later kings were more wealthy and more powerful; but though their deeds were the greater, his were the earlier; and their glories never threw the reign of Thothmosis III. into the shade. Their names were never held in equal reverence with his. On the sacred beetles and other small images which were kept as charms, and often buried with the dead, we find his name oftener than that of any other king. We have a colossal head in the British Museum, which seems 2nd Ser. to have been of this king (see Fig. 50); and among the buildings in Thebes bearing the name of Thothmosis III., we find an arch built of brick (see Fig. 51), as well as a false arch made with advancing courses of stone. (8) AMUNOTHPH II. (see Fig. 49), the next king, was the son of Thothmosis III. In his Egypt, Inscript. pl. 48. Wilkinson, Fig. 49. Tablet of reign the arts of painting and Abydos. sculpture made rapid strides, and Thebes. gave promise of what they were to become a century later. Though his monuments are not numerous, yet the walls in some of the Theban tombs, made while he was on the throne, are covered with beautiful drawings of dancers, chariot-makers, leather-cutters, and other workmen, and of vases and borders, which equal any works of the same kind in Greece or Etruria. A Horeau, rock-hewn temple at Ibrim, near Abousimbel, in Panorama. Ethiopia, has a statue of this king, seated as one of a trinity between the god Thoth and the goddess Sate or Isis. He was most likely the Pharaoh in whose Abul-Pha reign Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. When the rag., Hist. Shepherds had been conquered by Amosis, and their army driven out of the country, many of the nation had been kept as slaves, and made to work in the Manetho. Dynast. |