ib. The collar, the badge of office, is being placed on the governor of a province. THE HISTORY OF EGYPT. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION; THE EARLY KINGS; THE INVASION BY THE SHEP- lib. ii. 17. But as (1) EGYPT, during the greater part of its history, had the is now. VOL. I. B Odyssey, 477. Philometor's death; his family 145 PTOLEMY EUPATOR murdered by his uncle PTOLEMY EUERGETES II.; his cruelties His coronation; second marriage; his person The collar, the badge of office, is being placed on the governor of a province. THE HISTORY OF EGYPT. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION; THE EARLY KINGS; THE INVASION BY THE SHEPHERDS, AND THEIR EXPULSION, THE RISE OF THEBES. lib. ii. 17. But as (1) EGYPT, during the greater part of its history, had the same boundaries as it has now. It is little more than the strip of country that is every year overflowed by the waters of the Nile, between its seven mouths at the Mediterranean Sea on the north, and the cataracts or rapids which stop the navigation at Syene, on the south. This valley is shut in on both sides by the desert, and divided into two gardens by the river. The eastern bank formed part of Arabia, and the western bank part of Libya; and, before Herodotus, rivers were crossed in wicker boats, the Nile may have been the boundary between the two tribes. soon as men were bold enough to trust themselves to a plank, rivers ceased to divide nations; and at the beginning of this history we find both banks of the Nile, or of the Ægyptus, as it was also called, held by a people who, taking their name from the river, are called Egyptians. The country was then naturally divided as it Upper Egypt is that part of the valley which is closely pressed in between two ranges of hills; while Lower Egypt is the open plain, where the more level and less rocky soil allows the river to divide itself into several streams, and which, from its triangular form, was by the Greeks named the Delta. To this we must add a few ports on the Red Sea, which, as they were separated from the Nile by a three or four days' journey over the sands, had but few is now. VOL. I. B Odyssey, lib. iv. 477. advantages for trade, and also two or three green spots in the western desert, made fertile by their own springs, such as the Great Oasis, the Little Oasis, and the Oasis of Ammon. Egypt could only attack its neighbours, or be attacked, through narrow and difficult passes. Of these one is on the south, at the first cataract, where the valley above the granite rocks at Syene takes the name of Lower Ethiopia or Nubia. A second is on the west, between the desert and the sea, along the coast of the Mediterranean, where it was afterwards bounded by the little Greek state of Cyrene. And the third is on the east, also along the coast, towards Syria and Arabia Nabatæa, where the salt lakes and marshes almost join the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. When the kingdom, under its more powerful sovereigns, was lengthened southward, it was still limited by one or other of the granite ranges which cross the valley and cause the cataracts in Ethiopia. Of these the second, or first above Syene, covers a long district from Wady Halfa to the Island of Saye; the third is at the Island of Tombos; and the fourth above the city of Napata. Each of these ranges of granite in its turn formed the boundary of the kingdom. (2) In endeavouring to make use of the early notices of history we are often puzzled at finding that a wandering tribe carried its name into the land to which it removed, as the name belonged to the people rather Genesis, Diogenes Vit. De ch. x. 7. than to the country in which they dwelt. Thus a difficulty hangs over the names by which the several parts of Egypt have at various times been called. In every case the name changed its place from north to south, and so we must believe that the tribes had at some early time moved southward from the head of the Red Sea; which gradual movement may have formed part of a great migration from central Asia. Upper Egypt had once been called Meroë, which name was afterwards carried southward almost to Abyssinia. At another time, Upper Egypt was named Cush or Ethiopia, till that name was in the same way moved southward beyond Theog. the cataracts, and sometimes even to Abyssinia. 985. In the language of the country, Egypt was named Chemi, a word the same as Ham or Cham; in Hebrew it was named the land of Mizraim, one of the tribes mocriti. Hesiodi |