| Xois, Thebes, &c. And even if Manetho himself intended his dynasties to follow one another in direct order, the question still remains whether his authorities did so too. Gods, spirits, demigods, and Manes, or the souls of men were, according to Manetho, the first rulers of Egypt. They began with Ptha or Hephaestus and closed with Horus. Then follow thirty dynasties of mortal kings, 300 in number, according to the lowest, and 500, according to the highest computation. The time over which they extend varies also between the limits of 3555 and 5049 years. Manetho's account of these dynasties is contained in three volumes: Herodotus, Diodorus, Eratosthenes and Manetho, amid their many disagreements concur in this statement – that Menes of This was the first mortal king of Mizraim, the double land, i.e., Upper and Lower Egypt. Here, indeed, their coincidence ends. For Herodotus makes Menes the founder of Memphis, as well as of the monarchy: whereas Diodorus states that Memphis, the embankments which supported its area, and the diversion of the Nile stream were the works of a Monarch, who lived many centuries afterwards. The second name in the 4th dynasty is Suphis, to whom Manetho ascribes the building of the Great Pyramid. Here we seem to touch upon historical ground, since in a recently opened room of that pyramid has been decyphered the name of Chufu or Shufu, the Cheops of Herodotus, who, however, places that monarch much lower. The erection of the Second Pyramid is attributed by Herodotus and Diodorus to Chephren; and upon the neighbouring tombs, for the pyramid itself seems to be uninscribed, has been read the name of Shafre, accompanied by a pyramidal figure. There is sufficient approximation between Shafre and Chephren to identify them with each other, although no corresponding name occurs in either Eratosthenes or Manetho. Fourth
in the 4th dynasty is Mencheres, the builder of the third pyramid, the Mycerinus of Herodotus (ii. 127) and Diodorus (i. 64); and their statement is fully confirmed by the discovery of a mummy case in that pyramid, with the inscription, Menkers. Matheno, indeed, makes Nitocris, a queen of the 6th dynasty, the Nitocris of Herodotus (ii. 100), to have built the third pyramid. The 7th dynasty was apparently a period of anarchy, since it contains 70 Memphite kings, who reigned for 70 days only. They were probably interreges or vice-kings. Of the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th dynasties not even the names of the kings are known. Two of Memphite dynasties, two Heracleopolitan, and one Diospolitan, the dynasty being in each case named apparently from the birth-place of its founder. The 12th dynasty bears in Manetho's list a very historical aspect, since its catalogue of seven Diospolitan kings is not only complete, but comprises also the name of Sesostris, or more properly Sesortasen or Sesortosis, who, it is said, "subdued all Asia in nine years, and part of Europe as far as Thrace," as well as that of Lacharis (Lamaris or Meras), who built the Labyrinth in the Arsinoite name. Yet, until recently this list has received no confirmation from hieroglyphics. Even the conquests of Sesostris probably belong to the 18th dynasty and to Rameses III. Both Herodotus and Diodorus place Sesostris much later: and the former historian refers the erection of the Labyrinth to the period of the Dodecarchia. The 13th dynasty consisted of 60 Diospolite kings, who reigned, it is said 453 years, and the 14th of 76 Xoite kings, | who reigned 184 years, but the names and acts of both hare perished. With the 14th dynasty closes the first period of the Pharaonic era.
(2.) The Middle Monarchy. The second period, consisting of three dynasties, is that of the Shepherd kings. A passage of Manetho's lost work
Aegyptiaca, cited by Josephus in his rejoinder to the Greco-Egyptian grammarian Apion (Joseph. c. Apion. i. 14), places this period in comparative light before us. That a Nomadic Arab horde for several centuries occupied and made Egypt tributary; that their capital was Memphis; that in the Sethroite nome they constructed an immense earth camp which they called Abaris; that at a certain period of their occupation two independent kingdoms were formed in Egypt, one in the Thebaid, in intimate relations with Aethiopia, another at Xois, among the marshes of the Nile; that, finally, the Egyptians regained their independence and expelled the Hyksos,
who thereupon retired into Palestine, are probably authentic facts and indeed involve in themselves no just cause for doubt The only suspicions circmnstance inManetho's narrative is the exaggeration of numbers, but this is a defect common to all primeval record. The Hyksos indeed left behind them no architectural memorials, and the Egyptians, when they recovered Lower Egypt, would not be likely to perpetuate their own subjection, nor the priests who instructed Herodotus and Diodorus to confess that the Nile-valley had ever paid tithe or toll to an abominable race of shepherd kings. The silence of annalists and monuments is therefore at least a negative argument in support of the troth of Manetho's account: nor is it improbable that the long and inveterate hatred with which the Egyptians regarded the pastoral tribes of Arabia owed its origin to their remembrance of this period of humiliation.
The Middle Monarchy extended over a period of 953 years according to the Syncellus and Africanus: but, according to Manetho, the Hyksos were lords of
Egypt only 511 years. The larger number probably includes the sum of the years of the three contemporaneous dynasties at Xois, Memphis, and Thebes.
(3.) The New Monarchy. The third period, or the New Monarchy, extends from the commencement of the 18th to the end of the 30th dynasty.
The New Monarchy commences with the expulsion of the Hyksos, or rather perhaps with the revolt of the Thebaid which effected it. The earlier kings of the 18th dynasty, Amosis, Misphragmuthosis, &c. were apparently engaged in successive attacks upon the intruders. But, after its final victory, Egypt again, or perhaps now for the first time a united kingdom, attained a long and striking prosperity. The names of Thutmosis (Thothmes), of Amenophis (the Greek Memnon ?), and above all, of Rameses III., are read on various monuments in Nubia and Egypt, and most conspicuously in the Thebaid temples at Luxor and Karnak. The 18th dynasty was the flourishing age of Egyptian art: its sculpture became bolder, its paintings more artistic and elaborate: the appliances and inventions of civilisation more diversified. Rameses, if indeed under his name are not embodied the acts of his dynasty, was the Alexander of the Nile-valley. Seventeen centuries after his reign Germanicus visited Thebes, and the priests read to him, on the monuments, the acts and wars, the treasures and the tributes, the subjects and tho domains of this powerful king (Tac. Ann. ii. 60). This was no Eastern exaggeration. The "Tablet of Karnak," says Kenrick (vol. ii. |
