I.

THE PREDECESSORS OF RAMSES

 

IN the service of Ikhnaton as we have already noticed, there had been an able organizer and skilful man of affairs quite after the manner of Thutmose III. Harmhab, as he was called, belonged to an old family once monarchs of Alabastronpolis. He had been entrusted, with, important missions and had served the royal house with distinction. A man of popularity with the army, he had won also the support of the priesthood of Amon at Thebes. Eventually his power and influence were such that, in the troublous times under Ikhnaton’s feeble successors, it was only necessary for him to proceed to Thebes to be recognized as the ruling Pharaoh. The energy which had brought him his exalted office was immediately evident in his administration of it. He was untiring in restoring to the land the orderly organization which it had once enjoyed. After remaining at least two months at Thebes adjusting his affairs there, he sailed for the north to continue this work. “His majesty sailed down stream ... He organized this land, he adjusted it according to the time of Re (i.e. as when the Sun-god was Pharaoh). At the same time he did not forget the temples, which had been so long closed under the Aton regime. He restored the temples from the pools of the Delta marshes to Nubia. He shaped all their images in number more than before, increasing the beauty in that which he made ... He raised up their temples; he fashioned a hundred images with all their bodies correct and with all splendid costly stones. He sought the precincts of the gods which were in the districts in this land; he furnished them as they had been since the time of the first beginning. He established for them daily offerings every day. All the vessels of their temples were wrought of silver and gold. He equipped them with priests and with ritual priests and with the choicest of the army. He transferred to them lands and cattle, supplied with all equipment”. Among other works of this kind he set up a statue of himself and his queen in the temple of Horus of Alabastronpolis on which he frankly recorded the manner in which he had gradually risen from the rank of a simple official of the king to the throne of the Pharaohs.

Thus Amon received again his old endowments and the incomes of all the disinherited temples were restored. The people resumed in public the worship of all the innumerable gods which they had practiced in secret during the supremacy of Atom. The sculptors of the king were sent throughout the land continuing the restoration begun by Tutenkhamon, reinserting on the monuments defaced by Ikhnaton the names of the gods "whom he had dishonored and erased. At Thebes Harmhab razed to the ground the temple of Aton and used the materials for building two pylons, extending the temple of Amon on the south; and the materials which he left unused were employed in similar works by his successors. In the ruined pylons of Amon at Karnak today one may pick out the blocks which formed the sanctuary of Aton, still bearing the royal names of the despised Aton-worshippers. Everywhere the name of the hated Ikhnaton was treated as he had those of the gods. At Akhetaton his tomb was wrecked and its reliefs chiseled out; while the tombs of his nobles there were violated in the same way. Every effort was made to annihilate all trace of the reign of such a man; and when in legal procedure it was necessary to cite documents or enactments from his reign he was designated as that criminal of Akhetaton. The triumph of Amon was thus complete; as the royal favorites of Ikhnaton had once sung the good fortune of the disciples of Aton, so now Harmhab's courtiers recognized clearly the change in the wind of fortune, and they sang: “How bountiful are the possessions of him who know the gifts of that god (Amon), the king of gods. Wise is he who knows him, favored is he who serves him, there is protection for him who follows him”. The priest of Amon, Neferhotep, who uttered these words, was at the moment receiving the richest tokens of the king’s favour. Such men exulted in the overthrow of Amon’s enemies: “Woe to him who assails thee! Thy city endures but he who assails thee is overthrown. Fie upon him who sins against thee in any land ... The sun of him who knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee shines. The sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in darkness, but the whole earth is in light”.

There were other directions in which the restoration of what Harmhab regarded as normal conditions was not so easy. Gross laxity in the supervision of the local administration had characterized the reign of Ikhnaton and his successors; and those abuses which always arise under such conditions in the Orient had grown to excess. Everywhere the local officials, long secure from close inspection on the part of the central government, had reveled in extortions, practiced upon the long-suffering masses, until the fiscal and administrative system was honey-combed with bribery and corruption of all sorts. To ameliorate these conditions Harmhab first informed himself thoroughly as to the extent and character of the evils, and then in his private chamber he dictated to his personal scribe a remarkable series of highly specialized laws to suit every case of which he had learned. They were all directed against the practice of extortion from the poor by fiscal and administrative officials. The penalties were severe. A tax-collector found guilty of dealing thus with the poor man was sentenced to have his nose cut off, followed by banishment to Tharu, the desolate frontier city far out in the sands of the Arabian desert toward Asia. The troops used in administration and stationed in the north and south were accustomed to steal the hides of the Pharaoh’s loan-herds from the peasants responsible for them. “They went out from house to house, beating and plundering without leaving a hide”. In every such demonstrable case the new law enacted that the peasant should not be held responsible for the hides by the Pharaoh’s overseer of cattle. The guilty soldier was severely dealt with: “As for any citizen of the army concerning whom one shall hear, saying: he goeth about stealing hides; beginning with this day the law shall be executed against him by beating with a hundred blows, opening five wounds, and taking away the hides which he took”.

One of the greatest difficulties connected with the discovery of such local misgovernment was collusion with the local officials by inspecting officers sent out by the central government. The corrupt superiors, for a share in the plunder, would overlook the very extortions which they had been sent on journeys of inspection to discover and prevent. This evil had been rooted out in the days of the aggressive Thutmose III, but it was now rampant again, and Harmhab apparently revived the methods of Thutmose III for controlling it. In the introduction and application of the new laws Harmhab went personally from end to end of the kingdom. At the same time he improved the opportunity to look for fitting men with whom he could lodge the responsibility for an efficient administration of justice. In order to discourage bribery among the local judges he took an unprecedented step. He remitted the tax of gold and silver levied upon all local officials for judicial duties, permitting them to retain the entire income of their offices, in order that they might have no excuse for illegally enriching themselves. But he went still further; while organizing the local courts throughout the land he passed a most stringent law against the acceptance of any bribe by a member of a local court or council; “now, as for any official or any priest concerning whom it shall be heard, saying: He sits to execute judgment among the council appointed for judgment and he commits a crime against justice therein; it shall be counted against him as a capital crime. Behold my majesty has done this to improve the laws of Egypt”. In order to keep his executive officials in close touch with, himself, as well as to lift them above all necessity of accepting any income from a corrupt source, Harmhab had them provided for with great liberality. They went out on inspection several times a month, and on these occasions, either just before their departure or immediately after their return, the king gave them a sumptuous feast in the palace court, appearing himself upon the balcony, addressing each man by name and throwing down gifts among them. These sane and philanthropic reforms give Harmhab a high place in the history of humane government; especially when we remember that, even since the occupation of the country by the English, the evils at which he struck have been found exceedingly persistent and difficult to root out.

If Harmhab had any ambition to leave a reputation as a conqueror, the times were against him. His accession fell at a time when all his powers and all his great ability were necessarily employed exclusively in reorganizing the kingdom after the long period of unparalleled laxity which preceded him. He performed his task with a strength and skill not less than were required for great conquest abroad; while at the same time he showed a spirit of humane solicitude for the amelioration of the conditions among the masses, which has never been surpassed in Egypt, from his time until the present day. Although a soldier, with all the qualities which that calling implies in the Ancient East, yet, when he became king, he could truly say: “Behold his majesty spent the whole time seeking the welfare of Egypt”. A list of names of foreign countries on the wall near his great code of laws contains the conventional enumeration of conquests abroad, which are probably not to be taken very seriously; the name of the Hittites appears among them, but later conditions show that he could have accomplished no effective retrenchment of their power in Syria. On the contrary, we should possibly place in his reign the treaty of alliance and friendship, referred to by Ramses II some fifty years later, as having existed before. Harmhab therefore seems to have enjoyed a long and peaceful reign. In the days of Ramses II the reigns of Ikhnaton and the other Aton-worshippers had apparently been added to Harmhab's feign increasing it by twenty-five years or more, so that a lawsuit of the former's time refers to events of the forty-ninth year of Harmhab. He therefore probably reigned some thirty-five years.

Whether or not Harmhab succeeded in founding a dynasty we do not know. It is impossible to discover any certain connection between him and Ramses I, who now (1315 BC) succeeded him. Seemingly too old to accomplish anything, it was, nevertheless, this aged king who planned and began the vast colonnaded hall, the famous hypostyle of Karnack, afterwards continued and completed by his successors. In his second year he found the new responsibility beyond his strength and he associated as co-regent with himself his son Seti I, then probably about thirty years old.

Within a year after the establishment of the co-regency the old king (Ramses I) died (1314 BC). Seti I must have already laid all his plans and organized his army in readiness for an attempt to recover the lost empire of Asia. The information which Seti I now received as to the state of the country betrays a condition of affairs quite such as we should expect would have resulted from the tendency already evident in the letters of Abdi-Khiba of Jerusalem to Ikhnaton. They showed us the Bedouins of the neighboring desert pressing into Palestine and taking possession of the towns, whether in the service of the turbulent dynasts or on their own responsibility. These letters were corroborated by Egyptian monuments, portraying the panic-striken Palestinians fleeing into Egypt before their foes. Seti I’s messengers now brought him information of the very same character regarding the Bedouins. They reported: “Their tribal chiefs are in coalition and they are gaining a foothold in Palestine; they have taken to cursing and quarrelling, each of them slaying his neighbor, and they disregard the laws of the palace”. It was among these desert invaders that, as some authorities think, the movement of the Hebrews took place which resulted in the settlement of Palestine.

Seti was able to march out from Tharu in his first year, and as he reached the frontier of Canaan—the name applied by the Egyptians to all western Palestine and Syria—he captured a walled town, which marked the northern limit of the struggle with the Bedouins. Thence he pushed rapidly northward, capturing the towns of the plain of Megiddo (Jezreel), pushing eastward across the valley of the Jordan and erecting his tablet of victory in the Hauran, and westward to the southern slopes of Lebanon, where he took the forest-girt city of Yenoam, once the property of the temple of Amon, after its capture by Thutmose III, nearly one hundred and fifty years before. The neighboring dynasts of the Lebanon immediately came to him and offered their allegiance. They held not seen a Pharaoh at the head of ins army in Asia for over fifty years—not since Amenhotep III had left Sidon; and Seti immediately put them to the test by requiring a liberal contribution of cedar logs. In Seti’s Karnak reliefs we see the subjects of the Lebanon felling these logs m his presence, and he was able to send them to Egypt by water from the harbors which, like his great predecessor, Thutmose III, he was now subduing. Having thus secured at least the southern Phoenician coast and restored the water-route between Syria and Egypt for future operations, Seti returned to Egypt.

The return of a victorious Pharaoh from conquest in Asia, so common in the days of the great conquerors, was now a spectacle which few living Egyptians had seen. At Tharu outside the gate of the frontier fortress beside the bridge over the fresh water canal, which already connected the Nile with the Bitter Lakes of the Isthmus of Suez, the leading men of Seti’s government gathered in a rejoicing group, and as the weary lines toiled up in the dust of the long desert march, with the Pharaoh at their head, driving before his chariot-horses the captive dynasts of Palestine and Syria, the nobles broke out in acclamation. At Thebes there was festive presentation of prisoners and spoil before Amon, such as had been common enough in the days of the empire, but which the Thebans had not witnessed for fifty years or more. This campaign seems to have been sufficient to restore southern Palestine to the kingdom of the Pharaoh, and probably also most of northern Palestine.

The western border of the Delta, from the earliest times open to Libyan invasion, was always a more or less uncertain frontier. Seti spent his entire next year, the second of his reign, in the Delta, and it is very probable that he carried on operations against the Libyans in that year. In any case, we next find him in Galilee, storming the walled city of Kadesh, which must not be confused with Kadesh on the Orontes. Here the Amorite kingdom founded by Abd-Assirta and Aziru formed a kind of buffer state; and to it belonged the Galilean Kadesh, lying between Palestine on the south and the southern Hittite frontier in the Orontes valley on the north. It was necessary for Seti to subdue this intermediate kingdom before he could come to blows with the Hittites lying behind it. After harrying its territory and probably taking Kadesh, Seti pushed northward against the Hittites. Their king, Shubbiluliuma (Egyptian Seplel), who had entered into treaty relations with Egypt toward the close of the XVIIIth Dynasty, was now long dead; his son, Murshil (Egyptian Merasar) was probably ruling in his stead. Somewhere in the Orontes valley Seti came into contact with them, and the first battle between the Hittites and a Pharaoh occurred. Of the character and magnitude of the action we know nothing; we have only a battle-relief showing Seti in full career charging the enemy in his chariot. It is, however, not probable that he met the main army of the Hittites; certain it is that he did not shake their power in Syria; Kadesh on the Orontes and all Syria north of Palestine remained in their hands, just as they had conquered it at the close of the XVIIIth Dynasty. At most, Seti could not have accomplished more than drive back their extreme advance, thus preventing them from absorbing any more territory on the south or pushing southward into Palestine. He returned to Thebes for another triumph, driving his Hittite prisoners before him, and presenting them, with the spoil, to the god of the empire, Amon of Karnak. The boundary which he had established in Asia roughly coincided inland with the northern limits of Palestine, and must have included also Tyre and the Phoenician coast south of the mouth of the Litany. Though much increasing the territory of Egypt in Asia, it represented but a small third of what she had once conquered there. Under these circumstances it would have been quite natural for Seti to continue the war in Syria. For some reason, however, he did not, so far as we know, ever appear with his forces in Asia again. He may have perceived the changed conditions and understood that the methods which had built up the empire of Thutmose III could no longer apply with a power of the first rank like that of the Hittites already occupying Syria. He therefore, either at this time or later, negotiated a treaty of peace with the Hittite king, probably Mutallu (Egyptian Metella), who had succeeded his father, Murshil.

At home Seti still found much to do in merely restoring the disfigured monuments of his ancestors surviving from the Aton revolution, which he did with characteristic piety. All the larger monuments of the XVIIIth Dynasty from the Nubian temple of Amada on the south to Bubastis on the north, bear records of his restoration. At all the great sanctuaries of the old gods his buildings were now rising on a scale unprecedented in the palmiest days of the empire—a fact which shows that the income, even of the reduced empire of Seti I, reaching from the fourth cataract of the Nile to the sources of the Jordan, was still sufficient to support enterprises of imperial scope. He continued the vast colonnaded hall at Karnak planned and begun by his father. It surpassed in size even the enormous unfinished hypostyle of Amenhotep III at Luxor. On the outside of the north wall his sculptors engraved a colossal series of reliefs portraying his campaigns. Mounting from the base to the coping they cover the entire wall, over two hundred feet in length. Similar works existed in the XVIIIth Dynasty temples but they have all perished, and Seti's battle-reliefs therefore form the most imposing work of the kind now surviving in Egypt. The great hall which it was to adorn was never finished by him, and it was left to his successors to com­plete it. Like his fathers of the XVIIIth Dynasty, he erected a large mortuary temple on the western plain of Thebes. It was located at the northern end of the line of similar sanctuaries left by the earlier kings, and as Seti’s father had died too soon to construct any such temple, it was also dedicated to him. This temple, now known as that of Kurna, was likewise left incomplete by Seti. At Abydos he built a magnificent sanctuary dedicated to the great gods of the empire, the Osirian triad and himself. Although this temple has lost the first and second pylons, its sculptures make it perhaps the noblest monument of Egyptian art still surviving in the land. A temple at Memphis, probably another at Heliopolis, with doubtless others in the Delta of which we know nothing, and in Nubia an enormous cliff-temple at Abu Simbel, left incomplete and afterward finished by his son, Ramses II, completed the series of Seti's greater buildings. The remarkable art, especially the sculpture and painting, preserved in these and other monuments of Seti’s reign show clear evidences of the Influence of lkhnaton’s Amarna school of art. Indeed the artistic works of Seti’s time are hardly thinkable without the influence of the Amarna age.

These works drew heavily on his treasury, and when he reached the point of permanently endowing the mortuary service of the Abydos temple, he found it necessary to seek additional sources of income, he therefore turned his attention to the possible resources and found that the supply of gold from the mountains of the Red Sea region in the district of Gebel Zebara was seriously restricted by lack of water along the desert route. At the main station, some thirty-seven miles east of Edfu, a well was dug under his own superintendence, yielding a plentiful supply of water. In all probability other stations farther out on the same route were erected. Then Seti established the income from the mines thus reached as a permanent endowment for his temple at Abydos, and called down terrifying curses on any posterity who should violate his enactments. Yet within a year after his death they had ceased to be effective and had to be renewed by his son. In a similar effort to replenish his treasury from gold mines farther south in the Wadi Alaki, Seti dug a well two hundred feet deep on the road leading south-east from Kubban, but he failed to reach water, and the attempt to increase the gold-supply from this region was evidently unsuccessful.

Seti I seems to have spent his energies chiefly upon his extensive buildings, and beyond his ninth year we know practically nothing of his reign. He did not forget the excavation of a vast tomb for himself in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, exceeded in the length of its gallery only by that of Hatshepsut. It is of complicated construction and descends into the mountain through a series of galleries and extensive halls no less than four hundred and seventy feet in oblique depth. The king's later years were disturbed by a conflict between his eldest son and the latter’s younger brother, Ramses, over the succession. Ramses, born to Seti by one of his queens named Tuya, was plotting to supplant his eldest brother, and during their father’s last days laid his plans so effectively that he was ready for a successful coup at the old king's death. Some time before his approaching jubilee, while the obelisks for it were still unfinished, Seti died (about 1292 BC), having reigned over twenty years since his own father's death. He was laid to rest in a sumptuous sarcophagus of alabaster in the splendid tomb which he had excavated in the western valley. Preserved by happy accident, the body, like many others of the Pharaohs whom we have seen, shows him to have been one of the stateliest figures that ever sat upon the throne of Egypt.

 

II.

THE WARS AND FOREIGN RELATIONS OF RAMSES II

 

Whether the elder brother gained the throne long enough to have his figure inserted in his father’s reliefs, where we now find traces of it, or whether his influence as crown prince had accomplished this, we cannot tell. In any case Ramses brushed him aside without a moment's hesitation and seized the throne. The only public evidence of his brother's claims—his figure inserted by that of Seti in the battle with the Libyans—was immediately erased with the inscriptions which stated his name and titles; while in their stead the artists of Ramses II inserted the figure of their new lord, with the title “crown prince” which, he had never borne. The color which once carefully veiled all traces of these alterations has now long since disappeared, disclosing the evidence of the bitter conflict of the two princes still discernible on the north wall of the Karnak hypostyle. Such was the accession of the famous Pharaoh Ramses II. But the usual court devices were immediately resorted to, that the manner of the Pharaoh’s actual conquest of the throne might be forgotten. When Ramses addressed the court he alluded specifically to the day when his father had set him as a child before the nobles and proclaimed him the heir to the kingdom. The grandees knew too well the road to favor not to respond in fulsome eulogies enlarging on the wonderful powers of the king in his childhood and narrating how he had even commanded the army at ten years of age. The young monarch showed great vigor and high abilities, and if his unfortunate rival left a party to dispute his claims, no trace of their opposition is now discoverable.

Hastening at once to Thebes, the seat of power, Ramses lost no time in making himself strong there, especially gaining the support of the priests of Amon. He devoted himself also with great zeal to pious works in memory of his father at Thebes and especially at Abydos, where he found his father's magnificent mortuary temple in a sad state; it was without roof, the drums of the columns and the blocks for the half-raised walls lay scattered in the mire, and the whole monument, left thus unfinished by Seti, was fast going to destruction. He carried out his father’s plans and completed the temple, at the same time renewing the landed endowments and reorganizing the administration of its property to which Ramses now added herds, the tribute of fowlers and fishermen, a trading-ship on the -Red Sea, a fleet of barges on the river, slaves and serfs, with priests and officials for the management of the temple-estate. Perhaps the heavy draughts upon his treasury entailed by the mortuary endowments or his father now moved Ramses to look for new sources of income. However this may be, we find him at Memphis in his third year consulting with his officials regarding the possibility of opening up the Wadi Alaki country in Nubia and developing there the gold mines which Seti I had unsuccessfully attempted to exploit. The result of the ensuing royal command was a letter from the viceroy of Kush announcing the complete success of the undertaking. Such enterprises or internal exploitation were but preparatory in the plans of Ramses. His ambition held him to greater purposes; and he contemplated nothing less than the recovery of the great Asiatic empire, conquered by his predecessors of the XVIIIth dynasty.

When Ramses II ascended the throne the Hittites had remained in undisputed possession of their Syrian conquests for probably more than twenty years since the attempt of Seti I to dislodge them. The long peace had given their king, Mutallu, an opportunity, of which he made good use, to render their position in Syria impregnable. Advancing southward, up the valley of the Orontes, he had seized Kadesh, the centre of the Syrian power in the days of Thutmose III, which, we remember, had given him more trouble and held out with more tenacious resistance than any other kingdom in Syria. We have already seen the strategic importance of the district, an importance which was quickly grasped by the Hittite king, who made the place the bulwark of his southern frontier. Ramses’s plan for the war was like that of his great ancestor, Thutmose III. He proposed first to gain the coast, that he might use one of its harbors as a base, enjoying quick and easy communication with Egypt by water. Our sources tell us nothing of his operations on the first campaign, when this purpose was accomplished. We have only the evidence of a limestone stela cut into the face of the rock overlooking the Dog River a few miles north of Beirut. The monument is so weathered that only the name of Ramses II and the date in the “year four” can be read. It was in that year, there (1289 BC), that Ramses pushed northward along the coast of Phoenicia to this point. Unfortunately for Ramses, this preparatory campaign, however necessary, gave the Hittite king, Mutallu, an opportunity to collect all his resources and to muster all available forces from every possible source. All the vassal kings of his extensive empire were compelled to contribute their levies to his army. We find among them the old enemies of Egypt in Syria: the kings of Naharin, Arvad, Carchemish, Kode, Kadesh, Nuges (Tslukh-ashshi?), Ekereth (Ugarit), the unknown Mesheneth, and Aleppo. Besides these, Mutallu’s subject or allied kingdoms in Asia Minor, like Kezweden (Kissuwadna) and Pedes (Pidasa), were drawn upon; and, not content with the army thus collected, he emptied his treasury to tempt the mercenaries of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands. Roving bands of Lycian sailors, such as had plundered the coasts of the Levant in the XVIIIth Dynasty, besides Mysians, Cilicians, Dardanians, and levies of the unidentified Erwenet (? Oroanda north-west of Cilicia), took service in the Hittites ranks. In this manner Mutallu collected an army more formidable than any winch Egypt had ever hitherto been called upon to meet. In numbers it was large for those times, containing probably not less than twenty thousand men.

Ramses on his part had not been less active in securing mercenary support. From the remote days of the Old Kingdom Nubian levies had been common in Egyptian service. Among the troops used to garrison Syria in the days or the Amarna Letters sixty years before, we find the “Sherden” (Shardina), and, as we learn from a Boghaz Keui tablet, the men of Melukhkha. The Sherden were now taken into Ramses army in considerable numbers, so that they constituted a recognized element in it, and the king levied “his infantry, his chariotry and the Sherden”. He must have commanded an army of not less than twenty thousand men all told, although the proportion of mercenaries is unknown to us, nor is it known what proportion of his force was chariotry, as compared with the infantry. He divided these troops into four divisions, each named after one of the great gods; Amon, Re, Ptah and Sutekh; and himself took personal command of the division of Amon. In the spring of his fifth year (1288 BC), when the rains of Syria had ceased, Ramses appeared with his army in the valley of the upper Orontes between the two Lebanons, overlooking the vast plain in which lay Kadesh, only a day's march distant, with its battlements probably visible on the northern horizon, toward which the Orontes wound its way across the plain. Putting himself at the head of the division of Amon, early in the day Ramses left the other divisions to follow after while he set out down the last slope of the high valley (the Beka) to the ford of the Orontes at Shabtuna, later known to the Hebrews as Riblah. Here the river left the precipitous, canon-like wadi in which it had hitherto flowed, and for the first time permitted a crossing to the west side on which Kadesh was, thus enabling an army approaching the city from the south to cut off a considerable bend in the river. At this juncture two Bedouins of the region appeared and stated that they had deserted from the Hittite ranks, and that the Hittite king had retreated northward to the district of Aleppo, north of Tunip. In view of the failure of his scouting parties to find the enemy, and the impressions of his officers coinciding with the report of the Bedouins, Ramses readily believed this story, immediately crossed the river with the division of Amon and pushed rapidly on, while the divisions of Re, Ptah and Sutekh, marching in the order named, straggled far behind. Anxious to reach Kadesh and begin the siege that day, the Pharaoh even drew away from the division of Amon and with no van before him, accompanied only by his household troops, was rapidly nearing Kadesh as midday approached.

Meantime Mutallu, the Hittite king, had drawn up his troops in battle-array on the north-west of Kadesh, and Ramses, without a hint of danger, was approaching the entire Hittite force, while the bulk of his army was scattered along the road some eight or ten miles in the rear, and the officers of Re and Ptah were resting m the shade of the neighboring forests after the hot and dusty march. The crafty Hittite, seeing that the story of his two Bedouins, whom he had sent out for the very purpose of deceiving Ramses, had been implicitly accepted, improved his shrewdly gamed opportunity to the full. He did not attack Ramses at once, but as the Pharaoh approached the city the Hittite quickly transferred his entire army to the east side of the river, and while Ramses passed northward along the west side of Kadesh, Mutallu deftly dodged him, moving southward along the east side of the city, always keeping it between him and the Egyptians to prevent his troops from being seen. As he drew in on the east and south­east of the city he had secured a position on Ramses flank which was of itself enough to ensure him an overwhelming victory. The Egyptian forces were now roughly divided into two groups: near Kadesh were the two divisions of Amon and Re, while far southward the divisions of Ptah and Sutekh had not yet crossed at the ford of Shabtuna. The division of Sutekh was so far away that nothing more was heard of it and it took no part in the day's action. Ramses himself halted on the north-west of the city, not far from and perhaps on the very ground occupied by the Asiatic army a short time before. Here he camped in the early afternoon, and the division of Amon, coming up shortly afterward, bivouacked around his tent.

THE BATTLE OF KADESH

The weary troops were resting, feeding their horses and preparing their own meal, when two Asiatic spies were brought in by Ramses scouts, and taken to the royal tent. Brought before Ramses they confessed, after a merciless beating, that Mutallu and his entire army were concealed behind the city. Thoroughly alarmed, the young Pharaoh hastily summoned his commanders and officials, chided them bitterly for their inability to inform him of the presence of the enemy, and commanded the vizier to bring up the division of Ptah with all speed. His dispatch to the division of Ptah alone, shows that Ramses had no hope of bringing up the division of Sutekh, which was, as we have seen, straggling far in the rear above Shabtuna. At the same time it discloses his confidence that the division of Re, which had been but a few miles behind him at most, was within call at the gates of his camp. He therefore at this juncture little dreamed of the desperate situation into which he had been betrayed, nor of the catastrophe which at that very moment was overtaking the unfortunate division of Re. Issuing on the south side of Kadesh, the chariotry of Mutallu struck the division of Re on the march, broke it in two and cut it to pieces. Of the remnants some fled northward toward Ramses’ camp in a wild rout. They had at the first moment sent a messenger to inform Ramses of the catastrophe, but in so far as we know, the first intimation received by the Pharaoh of the appalling disaster which now faced him was the headlong flight of these fugitives of the annihilated division, among whom were two of his own sons. They burst into the astonished camp with the Hittite chariotry close upon their heels in hot pursuit. Ramses’ heavy infantry guard quickly dragged these intruders from their chariots and dispatched them; but behind these were swiftly massing the whole body of some twenty-five hundred Asiatic chariots. As they pressed in upon the Egyptian position their wings rapidly spread, swelled out on either hand and enfolded the camp. The division of Amon, weary with the long and rapid march, in total relaxation, without arms and without officers, was struck as by an avalanche when the fleeing remnants of the division of Re swept through the camp. Inevitably involved in the rout, they were carried along with it to the northward.

The bulk of Ramses’ available force was thus in flight, his southern divisions were miles away and separated from him by the whole mass of the enemy’s chariotry. The disaster was complete. Taken thus with but short shrift, the young Pharaoh hesitated not a moment in attempting to cut his way out and to reach his southern columns. With only his household troops, his immediate followers and the officers, who happened to be at his side, he mounted his waiting chariot and boldly charged into the advance of the Hittite pursuit as if poured into his camp on the west side. He perceived at once how heavily the enemy was massed before him, and immediately understood that further onset in that direction was hopeless. Retiring into the camp again he must have noted how thin was the eastern wing of the surrounding chariots along the river, where there had not yet been time for the enemy to strengthen their line. As a forlorn hope he charged this line with an impetuosity that hurled the Asiatics in his immediate front pell-mell into the river. Mutallu, standing on the opposite shore amid a mass of eight thousand infantry saw several of his officers, his personal scribe, his charioteer, the chief of his body-guard and finally even his own royal brother go down before the Pharaoh's furious onset. Among many rescued, from the water by their comrades on the opposite shore was the half-drowned king of Aleppo, who was with difficulty resuscitated by his troops. Again and again Ramses renewed the charge along the river on his east, finally producing serious discomfiture in the enemy’s line at this point.

At this juncture an incident common in oriental warfare saved the Pharaoh from total destruction. Had the mass of the Hittite chariotry swept in upon his rear from the west and south he must certainly have been lost. But to his great good fortune his camp had now fallen into the hands of these troops and, dismounting from their chariots, they had thrown discipline to the winds as they gave themselves up to the rich plunder. Thus engaged, they were suddenly fallen upon by a body of Ramses’ recruits, reinforcements of uncertain origin, who may possibly have marched in from the coast to join his army at Kadesh. In any case, they did not belong to either of the southern divisions. They completely surprised the plundering Asiatics in the camp and slew them to a man. The sudden offensive of Ramses along the river and the unexpected onslaught of the recruits must have considerably dampened the ardor of the Hittite attack, giving the Pharaoh an opportunity to recover himself. These newly-arrived recruits together with the returning fugitives from the unharmed but scattered division of Amon, so augmented is power that there was now a prospect of his maintaining himself until the arrival of the division of Ptah. The stubborn defense which followed forced the Hittite king to throw in his reserves of a thousand chariots. Six times the desperate Pharaoh charged into the replenished lines of the enemy, but for some reason Mutallu did not send against him the eight thousand foot which he had stationed on the east side of the river opposite Ramses position; and the struggle remained a battle of chariotry as long as we can trace it. For several hours, by prodigies of personal valor, the Pharaoh kept his scanty forces together, doubtless throwing many an anxious glance southward toward the road from Shabtuna, along which the division of Ptah was toiling in response to his message. Finally, as the long afternoon wore on and the sun was low in the west, the standards of Ptah glimmering through the dust and heat gladdened the eyes of the weary Pharaoh. Caught between the opposing lines, the Hittite chariotry was driven into the city, probably with considerable loss; but our sources unfortunately do not permit us to follow these closing incidents of the battle. As evening drew on the enemy took refuge in the city and Ramses was saved. The prisoners taken were led before him while he reminded his followers that these captives had been brought off by himself almost single handed.

The records describe how the scattered Egyptian fugitives crept back and found the plain strewn with Asiatic dead, especially of the personal and official circle about the Hittite king. This was undoubtedly true; the Asiatics must have lost heavily in Ramses¡ camp, on the river north of the city and at the arrival of the division of Ptah; but Ramses’ loss was certainly far heavier than that of his enemies. If the Pharaoh could claim any success to offset the disaster he had suffered, it was his salvation from utter destruction, and the fact that he eventual held possession of the field added little practical advantage. It is commonly stated that Ramses captured Kadesh, but there is no such claim in any of his records.

In spite of the lack of caution which cost him so dearly, Ramses was very proud of his exploit at Kadesh. Throughout Egypt on his more important buildings he commissioned his sculptors to depict what were to him and his fawning courtiers the most important incidents of the battle. On the temple walls at Abu Simbel, at Derr, at the Ramesseum, his mortuary temple at Thenes, at Luxor, at Karnack, at Abydos, and probably on other buildings now perished, his artists executed a vast series of vivacious reliefs picturing Ramses’ camp, the arrival of his fugitive sons, the Pharaoh’s furious charge down to the river and the arrival of the recruits who rescued the camp. Before Ramses’ chariot the plain is strewn with Asiatic dead, among whom the accompanying bits of explanatory description furnish the identity of the notable personages whom we have mentioned above. On the opposite shore where their comrades draw the fugitives from the water a tall figure held head downward that he may disgorge the water which he has swallowed is accompanied by the words: “The wretched chief of Aleppo, turned upside down by his soldiers, after his majesty had hurled him into the water”. These sculptures are better known to modern travelers in Egypt than any other like monuments in the country. There early arose also a prose-poem on the battle, of which we shall later have more to say. The ever-repeated refrain in all these records is the valiant stand of the young Pharaoh: while he was alone, having no army with him. These sources have enabled us to trace with certainty the steps which led up to the battle of Kadesh, the first battle in history which can be so studied; and this fact must serve as our justification for treating it at such length1. We see that already in the thirteenth century BC the commanders of the time understood the value of clever manoeuvres masked from the enemy, as illustrated in the first flank movement of which we hear in the history of military strategy; and the plains of Syria, already at this remote epoch, witnessed notable examples of that supposed modern strategical science which was brought to such perfection by Napoleon--the science of winning the victory before the battle.

While Ramses enjoyed the usual triumph in the state-temple, his return to Egypt immediately after the battle without even laying siege to Kadesh, after having lost nearly a whole division of his army, even though he had shown a brilliant defense, could only be destructive of Egyptian influence among the dynasts of Syria and Palestine. Nor would the Hittites fail to make every possible use of the doubtful battle to undermine mat influence and stir up revolt. Seti I had secured northern Palestine as Egyptian territory, and this region was so near the valley of the Orontes that the emissaries of the Hittites had little difficulty in exciting it to revolt. The rising spread southward to the very gates of Ramses’ frontier forts in the north-eastern Delta. We see him, therefore, far from increasing the conquests of his father, obliged to begin again at the very bottom to rebuild the Egyptian empire in Asia and recover by weary campaigns even the territory which his father had won. Our sources for this period are very scanty and the order of events is not wholly certain, but Ramses seems first to have attacked what was later the Philistine city of Askalon and taken it by storm. By his eighth year he had forced his way through to northern Palestine, and we then find him plundering the cities of western Galilee, one after another. Here he came again into contact with the Hittite outposts, which had been pushed far southward since the day of Kadesh. He found a Hittite garrison in the strong town of Deper, which seems to be the Tabor of Hebrew history; but assisted by his sons he assaulted and took the place, and the Hittite occupation of the region could have endured but a short time. It was perhaps at this time that he penetrated into the Hauran and the region east of the Sea of Galilee and left a stela there recording his visit. Ramses was thus obliged to campaign for three years in the recovery of Palestine.

The Pharaoh was thereupon at liberty to resume his ambitious designs in Asia at the point where he had begun them four years earlier. Advancing again down the valley of the Orontes, he must finally have succeeded m dislodging the Hittites. None of the scanty records of the time states this fact; but as he made conquests far north of Kadesh that place must certainly have fallen into his hands. In Naharin he conquered the country as far as Tunip, where he gained reputation by deliberately entering battle without his corselet. But these places had been too long exempt from tribute to the Pharaoh to take kindly to his yoke. Moreover, they were now occupied by Hittites, who doubtless continued to reside there under the rule of Ramses. His lists credit him with having subdued Naharin, Lower Retenu (North Syria), Arvad, the Keftiu, and Ketne in the Orontes valley. It is thus evident that Ramses’ ability and tenacity as a soldier had now really endangered the Hittite empire in Syria, although it is very uncertain whether he succeeded in holding these northern conquests.

TREATY BETWEEN EGYPT AND HITTITES

When he had been thus campaigning probably some fifteen years an important event in the internal history of the Hittite empire brought his wars in Asia to a sudden and final end. Mutallu, the Hittite king, in some way met his death, and his brother, Hattushil, succeeded him upon the throne. Hattushil displayed a statesmanlike understanding of the international situation in Asia. He at once grasped the fact that the collapse of Mitanni had exposed the eastern Hittite frontier directly to the attacks of Assyria. The invasion of Shalmaneser I, who at this junction plundered Mitanni and other subject peoples of Mattushil, and brought a powerful Assyrian army for the first time to the Euphrates, was an event which the Hittite king quite well understood. While pushing old-time friendly relations with Babylonia, he took steps to terminate the war with Egypt and to substitute for it a treaty of permanent peace and alliance between Egypt and the Hittites. In Ramses’ twenty-first year (1272BC) Hattushil’s messengers bearing the treaty reached the egyptian court, which had been permanently shifted to the Delta. The treaty which they bore had of course been drafted in advance and accepted by representatives of the two countries, for it was now in its final form: eighteen paragraphs inscribed on a silver tablet, surmounted by a representation showing engraved or inlaid figures of Sutekh embracing the likeness of the great chief of Kheta; and of a goddess similarly embracing the figure of Hattushil’s queen, Putukhipa; while beside these were the seals of Sutekh of Kheta, Re of Ernen, as well as those of the two royal personages.

It bore the title: “The treaty which the great chief of Kheta, Khetasar (cuneiform Hattushil, the valiant, the son of Merasar (cuneiform Murshil), the great chief of Kheta, the valiant, the grandson of Seplel (cuneiform Shubbiluliuma), the great chief of Kheta, the valiant, made, upon a silver tablet for Usermare-Setepnere (i.e. Ramses II, the great ruler of Egypt, the valiant, the son of Seti I, the great ruler of Egypt, the valiant; the grandson of Ramses I, the great ruler of Egypt, the valiant; the good treaty of peace and of brotherhood, setting peace between them forever”. After a review of the former relations between the two countries, it passed to a general definition of the present pact, and thus to its special stipulations. Of these the most important were: the renunciation by both rulers of all projects of conquest against the other, the reaffirmation of the former treaties existing between the two countries, a defensive alliance involving the assistance of each against the other's foes, co-operation in the chastisement of delinquent subjects, probably in Syria; and the extradition of political fugitives and immigrants. A codicil provided for the humane treatment of the last-named. A thousand gods and goddesses of the land of the Hittites, and the same number from the land of Egypt were called upon to witness the compact, some of the more important Hittite divinities being mentioned by the names of their cities. The remarkable document closes with a curse on the violators of the treaty and a blessing upon those who should keep it—or it would logically so close save that the codicil already mentioned is here attached. Ramses had copies of the treaty engraved on the walls of his temples at Thebes, preceded by an account of the coming of the Hittite messengers, and followed by a description of the figures and other representations depicted on the silver tablet. Two such copies have been found at Thebes, one at Karnak and the other at the Ramesseum, although the latter has since perished. One of the most remarkable achievements of modern excavation has been the discovery of a cuneiform transcript of this treaty in the archives of the Hittite kings at Boghaz Keui.

The cuneiform archives of Boghaz Keui show that the Hittite king retained control of Amor, just north of Palestine, Although the treaty does not take up the boundary question, it is evident that, notwithstanding Ramses II’s advance far into Naharin, he was unable to hold the conquests which he had made there. He had, therefore, not permanently advanced the boundary of his father’s kingdom in Asia, and the Egyptian frontier, as determined by the new peace, will not have been far north of the northern confines of Palestine. The Hittite king is recognized in the treaty as on an equality with the Pharaoh and received the same conditions; but, as commonly in the Orient, the whole transaction was interpreted by Ramses on his monuments as a great triumph for himself, and he now constantly designated himself as the conqueror of the Hittites. Once consummated, the peace was kept, and although it involved the sacrifice of Ramses’ ambitions for conquest in Asia, the treaty must have been entirely satisfactory to both parties. The wives of the two contracting sovereigns, calling themselves “the great queen of Egypt” and “the great queen of Hatti” exchanged friendly letters of greeting and addressed each other as sister. Thirteen years later (1259 BC) the Hittite king himself visited Egypt to celebrate the marriage of his eldest daughter as the wife of Ramses. Bearing rich gifts in a brilliant procession, with his daughter at its head, Hattushil, accompanied by the king of Kode, appeared in Ramses palace, and his military escort mingled with the Egyptian troops whom they had once fought upon the Syrian plains.

The Hittite princess was given an Egyptian name, Matnefrure (Who sees the beauty of Re), and assumed a prominent position at court. The visit of her father was depicted on the front of Ramses’ temple at Abu Simbel, with accompanying narrative inscriptions, and she was given a statue beside her royal husband in Tanis. Sound in limb and long in stride the visitors came, with rich gifts, traversing many mountains and difficult ways, warriors and regulars; and Ramses thoughtfully offered sacrifices to the god Sutekh for fair weather. Court poets celebrated the event and pictured the Hittite king as sending to the king of Kode and summoning him to join in the journey to Egypt that they might do honor to the Pharaoh. The event made a popular impression also, and a folk-tale, which was not put into writing, so far as we know, until Greek times, began with the marriage and told how afterward, at the request of her father, an image of the Theban Khonsu was sent to the land of the princess, that the god’s power might drive forth the evil spirits from her afflicted sister. Throughout Ramses’ long reign the treaty remained unbroken, and it is even probable that Ramses received a second daughter of Hattushil in marriage. The peace continued without interruption at least into the reign of his successor, Merneptah.

From the day of the peace compact with Hattushil, therefore, Ramses II was never called upon to enter the field again. With the Asiatic campaigns of this Pharaoh the military aggressiveness of Egypt which had been awakened under Ahmose I in the expulsion of the Hycsos was completely exhausted. Nor did it ever revive. It was with mercenary forces and under the influence of foreign blood in the royal family that sporadic attempts to recover Syria and Palestine were made in later days. Henceforward for a long time the Pharaoh’s army was to be but a weapon of defense against foreign aggression: a weapon, however, which he was himself unable to control—and before which the venerable line of Re was finally to disappear.

 

III.

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE AGE OF RAMSES II

 

The importance of Egyptian interests in Asia had as irresistibly drawn the centre of power on the Nile from Thebes to the Delta, as the residence of the late Roman emperors was shifted from Rome to Byzantium. The Pharaoh's constant presence there resulted in a development of the cities of the eastern Delta such as they had never before enjoyed. Tanis became a great and flourishing city with a splendid temple, the work of Ramses architects. High above its massive pylons towered, a monolithic granite colossus of Ramses, over ninety feet in height, weighing nine hundred tons, and visible across the level country of the surrounding Delta for many miles. The Wadi Tuymilat along which ran the canal from the Nile eastward to the Bitter Lakes, forming a natural approach to Egypt from Asia, was also the object of Ramses’ careful attention, and he built upon it, half-way out to the Isthmus of Suez, a store-city, which he called Pithom, or “House of Atum”. At its western end he and Seti founded a city just north of Heliopolis, now known as Tell el-Yehudiyeh. In the eastern Delta he founded a residence city, Per-Ramses, or “House of Ramses”, which, as recent study of the evidence would indicate, we should seek on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, at or near Pelusium. It was certainly close to the eastern frontier, for a poet of the time singing of its beauties refers to it as being between Egypt and Syria. It was also accessible to sea-faring traffic. Per-Ramses became the seat of government and all records of state were deposited there.

As the conclusion of his long war in Asia gave him greater leisure, Ramses devoted himself to vast monumental buildings. At Thebes he spent enormous resources on the completion of his father’s mortuary temple, on another beautiful sanctuary for his own mortuary service, known to all visitors at Thebes as the Ramesseum; and on a large court and pylon in enlargement of the Luxor temple. Surpassing in size all buildings of the ancient or modern world, the colossal colonnaded hall of the Karnak temple, already begun under the first Ramses, the Pharaoh's grandfather, was now completed by Ramses II. Few of the great temples of Egypt have not some chamber, hall, colonnade or pylon which bears his name, in perpetuating which the king stopped at no desecration or destruction of the ancient monuments of the country. Numberless were the monuments of his ancestors on which he placed his own name, or still worse, from which he remorselessly appropriated building materials, as if the ancient monuments of the nation were public quarries. But, in spite of these facts, his own legitimate building was on a scale quite surpassing in size and extent anything that his ancestors had ever accomplished. The buildings which he erected were filled with innumerable supplementary monuments, especially obelisks and colossal statues of himself. The latter are the greatest monolithic statues ever executed.

We have already referred to the tallest of these in the temple at Tanis; there was another granite monolith towering over the pylons of the Ramesseum at Thebes which, although not so high, weighed something like a thousand tons. As the years passed and he celebrated jubilee after jubilee the obelisks which he erected in commemoration of these festivals rapidly rose among his temples. At Tanis alone he erected no less than fourteen, all of which are now prostrate; three at least of his obelisks are in Rome and of the two which he erected in Luxor, one is in Paris. Notwithstanding the shift of the centre of gravity northward, the south was not neglected. In Nubia Ramses became the patron deity; no less than six new temples arose there, dedicated to the great gods of Egypt. Of his Nubian sanctuaries, the great rock temple at Abu Simbel is the finest and deservedly the goal of modern travelers in Egypt. Ramses’ great building enterprises were not achieved without vast expense of resources, especially those of labor. While he was unable to draw upon Asia for captive labor as extensively as his great predecessors of the XVIIIth Dynasty, yet his building must have been largely accomplished by such means. Besides the wealth absorbed in its erection, every temple demanded a rich endowment for its maintenance, and such liberal provision for all his numerous temples must have been a serious economic problem.

Foreign intercourse, especially with Palestine and Syria, was now more intimate than ever. In the rough memoranda of a commandant’s scribe, probably of the frontier fortress of Tharu (or Thel, just east of the modern Suez Canal at Kantara), we find noted the people whom he had allowed to pass: messengers with letters for the officers of the Palestinian garrisons, for the king of Tyre, and for officers with the king (Merneptah) then perhaps campaigning in Syria, besides officers bearing reports, or hurrying out to Syria to join the Pharaoh. Although there was never a continuous fortification of any length across the Isthmus of Suez, there was a line of strongholds, of which Tharu was one and Per-Ramses another, stretching well across the zone along which Egypt might be entered from Asia. This zone did not extend to the southern side of the isthmus, but was confined to the territory between Lake Timsah and the Mediterranean, whence the line of fortresses extended southward, passed the lake and bent westward into the Wadi Tumilat. Hence it is that Hebrew tradition depicts the escape of the Israelites across the southern half of the isthmus south of the line of defenses, which might have stopped them.

The tide of commerce that ebbed and flowed through the Isthmus of Suez was even fuller than under the XVIIIth Dynasty, while on the Mediterranean the Egyptian galleys must have whitened the sea. On the Pharaoh’s table were rarities and delicacies from Cyprus, the land of the Hittites and of the Amorites, Babylonia and Naharin. Elaborately wrought chariots, weapons, whips and gold-mounted staves from the Palestinian and Syrian towns filled his magazines, while his stalls boasted fine horses of Babylon and cattle of the Hittite country. The appurtenances of a rich man's estate included a galley plying between Egypt and the Syrian coast to bring to the pampered Egyptian the luxuries of Asia; and even Seti I’s mortuary temple at Abydos possessed its own sea-going vessels, given by Ramses, to convey the temple offerings from the east. The houses of the rich were filled with the most exquisite products of the Asiatic craftsman and artist; and these works strongly influenced the art of the time in Egypt. The country swarmed with Semitic and other Asiatic slaves. It is quite plausible that Ramses II, probably the builder of Pithom and Raamses, store-cities of the eastern Delta, should have been the Pharaoh who figured in the tradition of the Israelites, and that a group of their ancestors, after a friendly reception, were subjected to slave labor in the building of the two places mentioned. A letter of a frontier official, dated in the reign of Ramses II’s successor, tells of passing a body of Edomite Bedouins through a fortress in the Wadi Tumilat, that they might pasture their herds by the pools of Pithom as the Hebrews had done in the days of Joseph. Phoenician and other alien merchants were so numerous that there was a foreign quarter in Memphis, with its temples of Baal and Astarte; and these and other Semitic gods found a place in the Egyptian pantheon. The dialects of Syria, of which Hebrew was one, lent many a Semitic word to the current language of the day, as well as select terms with which the learned scribes were fond of garnishing their writings. We find such words commonly in the XIXth Dynasty papyri long before they appear in the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament.

SYRIAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 

Already apparent under the XVIIIth Dynasty, the influence of the vast influx of Asiatic life was now profound. The royal family was not exempt from such influence; Ramses’ favorite daughter was called “Bint-Anath”, a Semitic name, which means “Daughter of Anath” (a Syrian goddess), and one of the royal steeds was named “Anath-herte”, “Anath is Satisfied”. Many a foreigner of Semitic blood found favor and ultimately high station at the court or in the government. A Syrian named Ben-Ozen was chief herald or marshal of Merneptah’s court, though he was never regent as sometimes stated. The commercial opportunities of the time brought wealth and power to such foreigners in Egypt; a Syrian sea-captain named Ben-Anath was able to secure a son of Ramses II as a husband for his daughter. In the army great careers were open to such foreigners, although the rank and file of the Pharaoh’s forces were replenished from western and southern peoples rather than from Asia. In a body of five thousand troops sent by Ramses to the Wadi Hammamat for service in the quarries there, not a single native Egyptian was to be found; over four thousand of them were Sherden and Libyans and the remainder were Nubians, common in the Egyptian ranks as early as the VIth Dynasty. The dangerous tendencies inherent in such a system had already shown themselves, and were soon felt by the royal house, although powerless to make head against them. The warlike spirit which had made Egypt the first world power had endured but a few generations, and a naturally peaceful people were returning to their accustomed peaceful life; while at the very moment when this reversion to their old manner of living was taking place, the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and the Libyan tribes offered the Pharaoh an excellent class of mercenary soldiery which under such circumstances he could not fail to utilize.

Although the empire in Asia was greatly shrunken, all Palestine and possibly some of northern Syria continued to pay tribute to the Pharaoh, while on the south the boundary was as before at Napata, below the fourth cataract. There were stately pageants when the magnificent Pharaoh, now in the prime of life, received the magnates of his empire, from the crown-prince down through all his exalted dignitaries to the mayors of the outlying towns, a brilliant procession, bringing him the tribute and imposts of his realm from the southern limits of Nubia to the Hittite frontier in Syria. The wealth thus gained still served high purposes. Art still flourished, especially in works of the sculptor and architect. Buildings and statues of colossal proportions, which still serve to make the Nile valley a veritable wonderland, were the work of the XIXth Dynasty and especially of Ramses II. To him we chiefly owe the overwhelming grandeur of the great Karnak hall, while in his mortuary temple, the Ramesseum, we have a building hardly inferior in refined beauty to the best works of the XVIIIth Dynasty. No visitor to the temple of Abu Simbel will ever forget the solemn grandeur of this lonely sanctuary looking out upon the river from the sombre cliffs. But among the host of buildings which Ramses exacted from his architects, there were unavoidably many which were devoid of all life and freshness, or, like his addition to the Luxor temple, heavy, vulgar, and of very slovenly workmanship. All such buildings were emblazoned with gaily colored reliefs, depicting the valiant deeds of the Pharaoh in his various wars, especially, as we have already noticed, in his desperate defense at the battle of Kadesh. This last was the most pretentious composition ever attempted by the egyptian draughtsman. 

This last incident was not only influential in graphic art, it also wrought powerfully upon the imagination of the court poets, one of whom produced a prose poem on the battle, which displays a good deal of literary skill, and is the nearest approach to the epic to be found in egyptian literature. A copy of this composition on papyrus was made by a scribe named Pentewere (Pentaur), who was misunderstood by early students of the document to be the author of the poem. The real author is unknown, although Pentaur still commonly enjoys the distinction. In manner this heroic poem strikes a new note; but it came at a period too late in the history of the nation to be the impulse toward a really great epic. The martial age and the creative spirit were past in Egypt. In the tale, however, the XIXth Dynasty really showed great fertility, combined with a spontaneous naturalism, which quite swept away all trace of the artificialities of the Middle Kingdom. Already in the Middle Kingdom there had grown up collections of artless folk-tales woven often about a historical motive, and such tales, clothed in the simple language of the people, had already in the XVIIIth Dynasty gained sufficient respectability to be put into writing. While the XVIIIth Dynasty possessed such tales as these, yet by far the larger part of our surviving manuscripts of this class date from the XIXth Dynasty and later. While much of such literature is poetic in content and spirit, it lacks poetic form. Such form, however, was not wanting, and among the songs of this period are some poems which might well find a place among a more pretentious literature. There were love-songs also, which in a land where imagination was not strong possess qualities of genuine feeling, and do not fail in their appeal to us of the modern world. Religious poems, songs and hymns are now very numerous, and some of them display distinct literary character. We shall revert to them again in discussing the religion of this age. Numerous letters from scribes and officials of the time, exercises and practice letters composed by pupils of the scribal schools, bills, temple-records and accounts—all these serve to fill in the detail in a picture of unusual fullness and interest.

Since the overthrow of Ikhnaton and the return to the conventions of the past, the state religion had lost all vitality, and in the hands of the orthodox priests no longer possessed the creative faculty. Yet the religion of the time was making a kind of progress, or at least it was moving in a certain direction and that very rapidly. The state, always closely connected with religion, was gradually being more and more regarded as chiefly a religious institution, designed to exalt and honor the gods through its head the Pharaoh. Among other indications of this tendency the names of the temples furnish a significant hint. Sanctuaries which formerly bore names like “Splendour of Splendouss”, “Splendid in Monuments”, “Gift of Life” and the like, were now designated “Dwelling of Seti in the House of Amon” or “Dwelling of Ramses in the House of Ptah”. This tendency, already observable in the Middle Kingdom, was now universal, and every temple was thus designated not only as the sanctuary, but also as the dwelling of the ruling Pharaoh. It was an indication that what had long been a sacerdotal ideal of the state was now beginning to be practically realized: the empire was to become the domain of the gods and the Pharaoh was to give himself up to the duties of a universal high-priesthood.

Accordingly, the state was being gradually distorted to fulfill one function at the expense of all the rest, and its wealth and economic resources were thus being slowly engulfed, until its industrial processes should become but incidents in the maintenance of the gods. The temple endowments, not being subject to taxes, played an important economic role, and we have seen Seti I and Ramses II in search of new sources of revenue as the demands of the priesthoods increased. As the wealth and power of Amon in particular were augmented, his high-priest at Thebes became a more and more important political factor. We recall that he was head of the sacerdotal organization embracing all the priesthoods of the country; he thus controlled a most influential political faction. Hence it was that the high-priest of Amon under Merneptah (Ramses II’s son and successor) and possibly already under Ramses himself, was able to go further and to install his son as his own successor, thus firmly entrenching his family at the head of the most powerful hierarchy in Egypt. While such a family like a royal dynasty might suffer overthrow, the precedent was a dangerous one, and it ultimately resulted in the dethronement of the Pharaohs at the hands of the priests. That event, however, was still a century and half distant, and meantime the high-priest employed his power and influence with the Pharaoh in enforcing ever fresh demands upon his treasury until, before the close of the XIXth Dynasty, Amon had even secured certain “gold country “in his own right. It was administered by the viceroy of Kush, who therefore assumed the additional title Governor of the Gold Country of Amon. Already in his first year we find Ramses II permitting the priests of Amon to dictate the appointment of their own high-priest by an oracle of the god himself. Later m his reign the priesthood had actually usurped legal functions also, and the question of a disputed title to land was settled by an oracle from a temple statue of Ahmose I. That the judicial authorities were obliged to accept such priestly juggling as a legal verdict shows us the gradual emergence of the sacerdotal state described by Diodorus, upon which the Egyptian priests of Greek times looked back as upon a golden age.

ETHICS AND RELIGION 

Though the state religion was made up of formalities, the Pharaohs were not without their own ethical standards, and these were not always wholly a matter of appearances. We have witnessed the efforts of Harmhab to enforce honesty in the dealings of the government with its subjects; we have noted Thutmose III’s respect for truth. In the dedicatory record of his mortuary temple at Thebes, Ramses III proclaims that he did not remove any old tombs to obtain the necessary room for the building; and he also wishes it known that he gained his exalted station without depriving anyone else of the throne. On the other hand, we have also noticed the barbarous disregard of the sanctity of the monuments of his ancestors by Ramses II. The things for which the Ramessid kings prayed were not character nor the blameless life, it is material things which they desire. Ramses IV prays to Osiris, “And thou shalt give to me health, life, long existence and a prolonged reign; endurance to my every member, sight to my eyes, hearing to my ears, pleasure to my heart daily. And thou shalt give to me to eat until I am satisfied, and thou shalt give to me to drink until I am drunk. And thou shalt establish my issue as kings forever and ever. And thou shalt grant me contentment every day, and thou shalt hear my voice in every saying, when I shall tell them to thee, and thou shalt give them to me with a loving heart. And thou shalt give to me high and plenteous Niles in order to supply thy divine offerings and to supply the divine offerings of all the gods and goddesses of South and North; in order to preserve alive the divine bulls, in order to preserve alive the people of all thy lands, their cattle and their groves, which thy hand has made. For thou art he who has made them all and thou canst not forsake them to carry out other designs with them; for that is not right”.

It is at this time that we gain our sole glimpse into the religious beliefs of the common people. The appropriation of the temples by the state had long ago driven them from their ancient shrines. The poor man had not place amid such magnificence, nor could he offer anything worthy the attention of a god of such splendor. The old modest cult of the great gods having long since passed away, the poor man could only resort to the host of minor genii or spirits of mirth and music, the demi-gods, who, frequenting this or that local region, had interest and inclination to assist the humble in their daily cares and needs. Any object whatsoever might become the poor man's god. A man writing from Thebes commends his friend to Amon, Mut and Khonsu, the great divinities of that place, but adds also, to “the great gate of Beki, to the eight apes which are in the forecourt” and to two trees. In the Theban necropolis Amenhotep I and the queen Nefretere have become the favorite local divinities, and a man who accidentally thrust his hand into a hole where lay a large serpent, without being bitten, immediately erected a tablet to tell the tale and express his gratitude to Amenhotep, whose power alone had saved him. Another had in some way transgressed against a goddess who, according to popular belief, resided in a hill-top of the same necropolis, and when at last the goddess released him from the power of the disease with which she was afflicting him, he erected a similar memorial in her honor. In the same way the dead might afflict the living, and an officer who was tormented by his deceased wife wrote to her a letter of remonstrance and placed it in the hand of another dead person that it might be duly delivered to his wife in the Hereafter. Besides the local gods or demi-gods and the old kings, the foreign gods of Syria, brought in by the hosts of Asiatic slaves, appear also among those to whom the folk appeal; Baal, Kadesh, Astarte, Resheph, Anath and Sutekh are not uncommon names upon the votive tablets of the time, and Sutekh, a form of Set which had wandered into Syria from Egypt and returned with the Hycsos, even became the favorite and patron of the royal city of Ramses II. Animal worship now also begins to appear both among the people and in official circles.

Although perhaps rooted in the teaching of an exclusive few heretofore, belief in an intimate and personal relation between the worshipper and his god had now, with the lapse of centuries and by slow and gradual process, become widespread among the people. An age of personal piety and inner aspiration to God now began to dawn among the masses. It is a notable development, the earliest of its kind as yet discernible in the history of the east, or for that matter in the history of man. We are able to follow it only at Thebes, and it is not a little interesting to be able to look into the souls of the common folk who thronged the streets and markets, who tilled the fields and maintained the industries, who kept the accounts and carried on the official records, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, the men and women upon whose shoulders rested the great burdens of material life in the vast capital of the Egyptian empire during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries before Christ. A scribe in one of the treasury magazines of the Theban necropolis prays to Amon, as to him

Who cometh to the silent,

Who saveth, the poor,

Who heareth the prayers of him who calls to him.

Who saveth a man from the haughty,

Who bringeth the Nile for him who is among them,

When he riseth, the people live,

Their hearts live when they see him

Who giveth breath to him who is the egg,

Who maketh the people and the birds to live,

Who supplieth the needs of the mice in their holes,

The worms and the insects likewise.

 

It is in such an attitude as we find revealed in this prayer that the worshipper may turn to his God as to a fountain of spiritual refreshment, saying, “Thou sweet well for him that thirsteth in the desert; it is closed to him who speaks, but it is open to him who is silent. When he who is silent comes, lo, he finds the well”. This attitude of silent communion, waiting upon the gracious goodness of God, was not confined to the select few, nor to the educated priestly communities. On the humblest monuments of the common people Amon is called the god, “who cometh to the silent” or the “lord of the silent” as we have above observed. It is in this final development of devotional feeling, really crowning the religious and intellectual revolution of Ikhnaton, and also forming the culmination of the doctrines of social justice emerging in the Feudal Age, that the religion of Egypt reached its noblest period. The materials for the age of decadence which followed are too scanty to reveal clearly the causes of the stagnation which now ensued, a decline from which the religious life of Egypt never recovered.

In morals and in the attitude toward life the sages continued to maintain a spirit of wholesome regard for the highest practical ideals, an attitude in which we discern a distinct advance upon the teachings of the Fathers. Reputation was strictly to be guarded. “Let every place which thou lovest be known”, says the sage; and drunkenness and dissolute living are exhibited in all their disastrous consequences for the young. To the young man the dangers of immorality are bared with naked frankness. “Guard thee from the woman from abroad, who is not known in her city; look not on her...know her not in the flesh; (for she is) a flood great and deep, whose whirling no man knows. The woman whose husband is far away, I am beautiful, says she to thee every day. When she has no witnesses, she stands and ensnares thee. O great crime worthy of death when one hearkens, even when it is not known abroad. (For) a man takes up every sin (after) this one”. As for the good things of life, they are to be regarded with philosophical reserve. It is foolish to count upon inherited wealth as a source of happiness, “Say not, My maternal grandfather has a house on the estate of So and So”. “Then when thou comest to the division (by will) with thy brother, thy portion is (only) a storage-shed”. In such things indeed there is no stability. “So it is forever, men are naught. One is rich, another is poor....He who is rich last year, he is a vagrant this year.... The watercourse of last year, it is another place this year. Great seas become dry places, and shores become deeps”. We have here that oriental resignation to the contrasts in life which seem to have developed among all the peoples of the early east.

The records of Ramses II’s reign are so largely of sacerdotal origin, and so filled with the priestly adulation of the time, with its endless reiteration of conventional flattery, that we can discern little individuality through the mass of meaningless verbiage. His superb statue in Turin is proved by his surviving body to be a faithful portrait, showing us at least the outward man as he was. In person he was tall and handsome, with features of dreamy and almost effeminate beauty, in no wise suggestive of the manly traits which he certainly possessed. For the incident at Kadesh showed him unquestionably a man of fine courage with ability to rise to a supreme crisis; while the indomitable spirit evident there is again exhibited in the tenacity with which he pushed the war against the great Hittite empire and carried his conquests, even if not lasting, far into northern Syria. He was inordinately vain and made far more ostentatious display of his wars on his monuments than was ever done by Thutmose III. He loved ease and pleasure and gave himself up without restraint to voluptuous enjoyments. He had an enormous harem, and as the years passed his children multiplied rapidly. He left over a hundred sons and at least half as many daughters, several of whom he himself married. He thus left a family so numerous that they became a Ramessid class of nobles whom we still find over four hundred years later bearing among their titles the name Ramses, not as a patronymic, but as the designation of a class or rank. He took great pride in his enormous family and often ordered his sculptors to depict his sons and daughters in long rows upon the walls of his temples. His favorite among them was Khamwesse, whom he made high-priest of Ptah at Memphis. He was a great magician, whose memory still lived in the folk-tales of Egypt a thousand years later. The sons of Ramses’ youth accompanied him in his wars, and according to Diodorus one of them was in command of each of the divisions of his army.

A NEW THREAT TO EGYPT 

As the Pharaoh reached the thirtieth year of his reign he celebrated his first jubilee, placing the ceremonies of the celebration in the hands of his favorite son, Khamwese. Twenty years more passed, during which Ramses celebrated a jubilee every one to three years, instituting no less than nine of these feasts, a far larger number than we are able to find in the reigns of any of his predecessors. The obelisks erected on these occasions have already claimed our notice. With his name perpetuated in vast buildings distributed at all points along the Nile from the marshes of the northern Delta to the fourth cataract, Ramses lived on in magnificence even surpassing that of Amenhotep III. His was the sunset glory of the venerable line which he represented. As the years passed the sons of his youth were taken from him and Khamwese was no longer there to conduct the celebration of the old king’s jubilees. One by one they passed away until twelve were gone, and the thirteenth was the eldest and heir to the throne. Yet still the old king lived on. He had lost the vitality for aggressive rule. The Libyans and the maritime peoples allied with them, Sherden, Lycians and the Aegean races whom he had once swept from his coasts or impressed into the service of his army, now entered the western Delta with impunity. The Libyans pushed forward, gradually extending their settlements almost to the gates of Memphis and crossed the southern apex of the Delta under the very shadow of the walls of Heliopolis.

Senile decay rendered him deaf to alarms and complaints which would have brought instant retribution upon the invaders in the days of his vigorous youth. Amid the splendors of his magnificent residence in the eastern Delta, the threatening conditions at its opposite extremity never roused him from the lethargy into which he had fallen. Finally, having ruled for sixty-seven years, and being over ninety years of age, he passed away (1225 BC), none too soon for the redemption of his empire. We are able to look into the withered face of the aged Pharaoh, the features not greatly changed from what he was in those last days of splendor in the city of Per-Ramses, and the resemblance to the face of the youth in the noble Turin statue is still very marked. Probably no Pharaoh ever left a more profound impression upon his age. A quarter of a century later began a line of ten kings bearing his name. One of them prayed that he might be granted a reign of sixty-seven years like that of his great ancestor, and all of them with varying success imitated his glory. He had set his stamp upon them all for a hundred and fifty years, and it was impossible to be a Pharaoh without being a Ramses.