The Historians' History of the World 01

Thebes, so full of monuments consecrated to the fallen god, lost its rank of capital.

Khun-aten built a new capital at a place in Middle Egypt which to-day bears the name of Tel-el-Amarna, and which he called Khut-aten, where there was nothing to recall the old religion.

The sun was the principal god of the old religion; all the ancient solar divinities, Ra-Horemkhu, Hor, were recognised and respected. Monuments show us the god in the form of a disk whose rays descend toward the earth, each ray terminating in a hand holding the ansated cross—the emblem of life. The disk is called Aten. Wherever the king goes, the solar disk accompanies him and sheds its benediction upon him.

But with all the attention he paid to religion, Khun-aten was, like his ancestors, a great builder and conqueror. Ethiopia, Thebes, and Memphis were fields of his activity, and he continued to exercise sovereign authority in Syria as well as in Africa.

At his death the crown passed to Prince Ai, his foster-brother, and husband of his eldest daughter Tai. The new king, without renouncing the religion of sun-worship, suspended the persecutions which had the cult of Amen for their object and restored the religion of the ancient national divinities. For successors he had his brothers-in-law Tut-ankh-Amen, and later Saa-nekht, whose reign, although short, seems to have been prosperous. Tut-ankh-Amen, at least, is represented as an all-powerful Pharaoh, to whom foreign peoples give trembling homage. [According to Brugsch and Wiedemann and Petrie the order of these kings is Saa-nekht, Tut-ankh-Amen, and Ai—the reverse of the order here given.]

But after them civil and religious wars desolated Egypt; the throne was occupied by ephemeral kings whose names even are unknown to us. [The kings formerly reputed to belong to the end of this dynasty are now, as Professor Petrie remarks, “not of historical substance, but only linguistic questions.” It has been well established that the names in question are either errors or “Ptolemaic bungles,” and they are now assigned to monarchs of this and other dynasties.]

King Hor-em-heb re-established peace, suppressed the solar religion, destroyed Khun-aten’s monuments, and everywhere restored the ancient cult. Outside the country he reconquered Ethiopia, which for the time being had been lost, and made the land of Punt tributary, but risked no expeditions into Syria. The conquests of the Tehutimes and the Amenhoteps, so dearly obtained in this direction, had been lost during the religious wars. The petty local princes had ceased to pay tribute: and to reduce them anew, a whole generation of conquerors was necessary.a

FOOTNOTES

[3] [Whether Tehutimes I or Tehutimes II was the father of Tehutimes III is still in doubt, but Maspero and Petrie incline to the belief that it was Tehutimes II.]

[4] [Petrie says he was about thirty-one years old.]

[5] [A town in the land of Naharain that sometimes has been confounded with Nineveh.]

CHAPTER V. THE XIXTH DYNASTY

[ca. 1365-1225 B.C.]

Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king!

I go, and I return not. But the will

Of the great Gods is plain: and ye must bring

Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil

Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,

The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days.—Matthew Arnold.

We come now to the period when Egypt reached the apex of its power; when a series of great conquering monarchs made the name of Egypt known and feared far beyond the confines of the Nile. Of these great monarchs the name of one in particular was stamped upon the traditions of Asiatic peoples and has passed into popular knowledge. This was Ramses II, known to the Hebrews, and through them to the western world, as the Pharaoh of the Oppression. Great as this monarch was, little was known of him beyond the prejudiced recitals of the Hebrews, until our own time, when the decipherment of the monuments has brought to light the record of many of his warlike deeds. These records, like all such narratives, are highly coloured and told from the standpoint of the conqueror himself; but, with due allowance for exaggeration, they may no doubt be accepted as accounts of actual events.

A peculiar interest attaches to the name of Ramses II in addition to the never failing fascination of the great conqueror. We shall therefore have occasion to review his deeds in detail as told by the poet laureate of the day, and to consider various authoritative estimates, both ancient and modern, that have been passed upon this greatest hero of Egyptian history.a First Maspero: