History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery Part 2

On one s.h.i.+eld or palette we see Narmer clubbing a man of Semitic appearance, who is called the "Only One of the Marsh" (Delta), while below two other Semites fly, seeking "fortress-protection." Above is a figure of a hawk, symbolizing the Upper Egyptian king, holding a rope which is pa.s.sed through the nose of a Semitic head, while behind is a sign which may be read as "the North," so that the whole symbolizes the leading away of the North into captivity by the king of the South. It is significant, in view of what has been said above with regard to the probable Semitic origin of the Heliopolitan Northerners, to find the people typical of the North-land represented by the Southerners as Semites. Equally Semitic is the overthrown Northerner on the other side of this well-known monument which we are describing; he is being trampled under the hoofs and gored by the horns of a bull, who, like the hawk, symbolizes the king. The royal bull has broken down the wall of a fortified enclosure, in which is the hut or tent of the Semite, and the bricks lie about promiscuously.

In connection with the Semitic origin of the Northerners, the form of the fortified enclosures on both sides of this monument (that to whose protection the two Semites on one side fly, and that out of which the kingly bull has dragged the chief on the other) is noticeable. As usual in Egyptian writing, the hieroglyph of these buildings takes the form of a plan. The plan shows a crenelated enclosure, resembling the walls of a great Babylonian palace or temple, such as have been found at Telloh, Warka, or Mukayyar. The same design is found in Egypt at the Shuret ez-Zebib, an Old Kingdom fortress at Abydos, in the tomb of King Aha at Nakada, and in many walls of mastaba-tombs of the early time. This is another argument in favour of an early connection between Egypt and Babylonia. We ill.u.s.trate a fragment of another votive s.h.i.+eld or palette of the same kind, now in the museum of the Louvre, which probably came originally from Hierakonpolis. It is of exactly similar workmans.h.i.+p to that of Narmer, and is no doubt a fragment of another monument of that king. On it we see the same subject of the overthrowing of a Northerner (of Semitic aspect) by the royal bull. On one side, below, is a fortified enclosure with crenelated walls of the type we have described, and within it a lion and a vase; below this another fort, and a bird within it. These signs may express the names of the two forts, but, owing to the fact that at this early period Egyptian orthography was not yet fixed, we cannot read them. On the other side we see a row of animated nome-standards of Upper Egypt, with the symbols of the G.o.d Min of Koptos, the hawk of Horus of Edfu, the ibis of Thot of Eshmunen, and the jackals of Anubis of Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the monument, we should see, bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner, king, or animal symbolic of the North. On another slate s.h.i.+eld, which we also reproduce, we see a symbolical representation of the capture of seven Northern cities, whose names seem to mean the "Two Men," the "Heron," the "Owl," the "Palm," and the "Ghost" Cities.

"Ghost City" is attacked by a lion, "Owl City" by a hawk, "Palm City" by two hawk nome-standards, and another, whose name we cannot guess at, is being opened up by a scorpion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 050.jpg (left) OBVERSE OF A SLATE RELIEF.]

The operating animals evidently represent nomes and tribes of the Upper Egyptians. Here again we see the same crenelated walls of the Northern towns, and there is no doubt that this slate fragment also, which is preserved in the Cairo Museum, is a monument of the conquests of Narmer.

It is executed in the same archaic style as those from Hierakonpolis.

The animals on the other side no doubt represent part of the spoil of the North.

Returning to the great s.h.i.+eld or palette found by Mr. Quibell, we see the king coming out, followed by his sandal-bearer, the _Hen-neter_ or "G.o.d's Servant,"* to view the dead bodies of the slain Northerners which lie arranged in rows, decapitated, and with their heads between their feet. The king is preceded by a procession of nome-standards.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 051.jpg (right)]

Above the dead men are symbolic representations of a hawk perched on a harpoon over a boat, and a hawk and a door, which doubtless again refer to the fights of the royal hawk of Upper Egypt on the Nile and at the gate of the North. The designs on the mace-heads refer to the same conquest of the North.

* In his commentary (Hierakonpolis, i. p. 9) on this scene, Prof. Petrie supposes that the seven-pointed star sign means "king," and compares the eight-pointed star "used for king in Babylonia." The eight-pointed star of the cuneiform script does not mean "king," but "G.o.d." The star then ought to mean "G.o.d," and the t.i.tle "servant of a G.o.d," and this supposition may be correct. _Hen-neter_, "G.o.d's servant,"

was the appellation of a peculiar kind of priest in later days, and was then spelt with the ordinary sign for a G.o.d, the picture of an axe. But in the archaic period, with which we are dealing, a star like the Babylonian sign may very well have been used for "G.o.d," and the t.i.tle of Narmer's sandal-bearer may read _Hen-neter_. He was the slave of the living G.o.d Narmer. All Egyptian kings were regarded as deities, more or less.

The monuments Khasekhemui, a king, show us that he conquered the North also and slew 47,209 "Northern Enemies." The contorted att.i.tudes of the dead Northerners were greatly admired and sketched at the time, and were reproduced on the pedestal of the king's statue found by Mr. Quibell, which is now at Oxford. It was an age of cheerful savage energy, like most times when kingdoms and peoples are in the making. About 4000 B.C.

is the date of these various monuments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 052.jpg OBVERSE OP A SLATE RELIEF.]

Khasekhemui probably lived later than Narmer, and we may suppose that his conquest was in reality a re-conquest. He may have lived as late as the time of the IId Dynasty, whereas Narmer must be placed at the beginning of the Ist, and his conquest was probably that which first united the two kingdoms of the South and North. As we shall see in the next chapter, he is probably one of the originals of the legendary "Mena," who was regarded from the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty onwards as the founder of the kingdom, and was first made known to Europe by Herodotus, under the name of "Menes."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 053.jpg REVERSE OF A SLATE RELIEF, REPRESENTING ANIMALS.]

Narmer is therefore the last of the ancient kings of Hierakonpolis, the last of Manetho's "Spirits." We may possibly have recovered the names of one or two of the kings anterior to Narmer in the excavations at Abydos (see Chapter II), but this is uncertain. To all intents and purposes we have only legendary knowledge of the Southern kingdom until its close, when Narmer the mighty went forth to strike down the Anu of the North, an exploit which he recorded in votive monuments at Hierakonpolis, and which was commemorated henceforward throughout Egyptian history in the yearly "Feast of the Smiting of the Anu." Then was Egypt for the first time united, and the fortress of the "White Wall," the "Good Abode" of Memphis, was built to dominate the lower country. The Ist Dynasty was founded and Egyptian history began.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 054.jpg ]

CHAPTER II--ABYDOS AND THE FIRST THREE DYNASTIES

Until the recent discoveries had been made, which have thrown so much light upon the early history of Egypt, the traditional order and names of the kings of the first three Egyptian dynasties were, in default of more accurate information, retained by all writers on the history of the period. The names were taken from the official lists of kings at Abydos and elsewhere, and were divided into dynasties according to the system of Manetho, whose names agree more or less with those of the lists and were evidently derived from them ultimately. With regard to the fourth and later dynasties it was clear that the king-lists were correct, as their evidence agreed entirely with that of the contemporary monuments.

But no means existed of checking the lists of the first three dynasties, as no contemporary monuments other than a IVth Dynasty mention of a IId Dynasty king, Send, had been found. The lists dated from the time of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, so that it was very possible that with regard to the earliest dynasties they might not be very correct. This conclusion gained additional weight from the fact that no monuments of these earliest kings were ever discovered; it therefore seemed probable that they were purely legendary figures, in whose time (if they ever did exist) Egypt was still a semi-barbarous nation. The jejune stories told about them by Manetho seemed to confirm this idea. Mena, the reputed founder of the monarchy, was generally regarded as a historical figure, owing to the persistence of his name in all ancient literary accounts of the beginnings of Egyptian history; for it was but natural to suppose that the name of the man who unified Egypt and founded Memphis would endure in the mouths of the people. But with regard to his successors no such supposition seemed probable, until the time of Sneferu and the pyramid-builders.

This was the critical view. Another school of historians accepted all the kings of the lists as historical _en bloc_, simply because the Egyptians had registered their names as kings. To them Teta, Ateth, and Ata were as historical as Mena.

Modern discovery has altered our view, and truth is seen to lie between the opposing schools, as usual. The kings after Mena do not seem to be such entirely unhistorical figures as the extreme critics thought; the names of several of them, e.g. Merpeba, of the Ist Dynasty, are correctly given in the later lists, and those of others were simply misread, e. g. that of Semti of the same dynasty, misread "Hesepti" by the list-makers. On the other hand, Mena himself has become a somewhat doubtful quant.i.ty. The real names of most of the early monarchs of Egypt have been recovered for us by the latest excavations, and we can now see when the list-makers of the XIXth Dynasty were right and when they were wrong, and can distinguish what is legendary in their work from what is really historical. It is true that they very often appear to have been wrong, but, on the other hand, they were sometimes unexpectedly near the mark, and the general number and arrangement of their kings seems correct; so that we can still go to them for a.s.sistance in the arrangement of the names which are communicated to us by the newly discovered monuments. Manetho's help, too, need never be despised because he was a copyist of copyists; we can still use him to direct our investigations, and his arrangement of dynasties must still remain the framework of our chronological scheme, though he does not seem to have been always correct as to the places in which the dynasties originated.

More than the names of the kings have the new discoveries communicated to us. They have shed a flood of light on the beginnings of Egyptian civilization and art, supplementing the recently ascertained facts concerning the prehistoric age which have been described in the preceding chapter. The impulse to these discoveries was given by the work of M. de Morgan, who excavated sites of the early dynastic as well as of the predynastic age. Among these was a great mastaba-tomb at Nakada, which proved to be that of a very early king who bore the name of Aha, "the Fighter." The walls of this tomb are crenelated like those of the early Babylonian palaces and the forts of the Northerners, already referred to. M. de Morgan early perceived the difference between the Neolithic antiquities and those of the later archaic period of Egyptian civilization, to which the tomb at Nakada belonged. In the second volume of his great work on the primitive antiquities of Egypt _(L'Age des Metaux et le Tombeau Royale de Negadeh)_, he described the antiquities of the Ist Dynasty which had been found at the time he wrote. Antiquities of the same primitive period and even of an earlier date had been discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie, as has already been said, at Koptos, at the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat. But though Prof.

Petrie correctly diagnosed the age of the great statues of the G.o.d Min which he found, he was led, by his misdating of the "New Race"

antiquities from Ballas and Tkh, also to misdate several of the primitive antiquities,--the lions and hawks, for instance, found at Koptos, he placed in the period between the VIIth and Xth Dynasties; whereas they can now, in the light of further discoveries at Abydos, be seen to date to the earlier part of the Ist Dynasty, the time of Narmer and Aha.

It is these discoveries at Abydos, coupled with those (already described) of Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis, which have told us most of what we know with regard to the history of the first three dynasties.

At Abydos Prof. Petrie was not himself the first in the field, the site having already been partially explored by a French Egyptologist, M.

Amelineau. The excavations of M. Amelineau were, however, perhaps not conducted strictly on scientific lines, and his results have been insufficiently published with very few photographs, so that with the best will in the world we are unable to give M. Amelineau the full credit which is, no doubt, due to him for his work. The system of Prof.

Petrie's publications has been often, and with justice, criticized, but he at least tells us every year what he has been doing, and gives us photographs of everything he has found. For this reason the epoch-making discoveries at Abydos have been coupled chiefly with the name of Prof.

Petrie, while that of M. Amelineau is rarely heard in connection with them. As a matter of fact, however, M. Amelineau first excavated the necropolis of the early kings at Abydos, and discovered most of the tombs afterwards worked over by Prof. Petrie and Mr. Mace. Yet most of the important scientific results are due to the later explorers, who were the first to attempt a cla.s.sification of them, though we must add that this cla.s.sification has not been entirely accepted by the scientific world.

The necropolis of the earliest kings of Egypt is situated in the great bay in the hills which lies behind Abydos, to the southwest of the main necropolis. Here, at holy Abydos, where every pious Egyptian wished to rest after death, the bodies of the most ancient kings were buried. It is said by Manetho that the original seat of their dominion was This, a town in the vicinity of Abydos, now represented by the modern Grirga, which lies a few miles distant from its site (el-Birba). This may be a fact, but we have as yet obtained no confirmation of it. It may well be that the attribution of a Thinite origin to the Ist and IId Dynasties was due simply to the fact that the kings of these dynasties were buried at Abydos, which lay within the Thinite nome. Manetho knew that they were buried at Abydos, and so jumped to the conclusion that they lived there also, and called them "Thinites."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 060.jpg PROF. PETRIE'S CAMP AT ABYDOS, 1901.]

Their real place of origin must have been Hierakonpolis, where the pre-dynastic kingdom of the South had its seat. The Hid Dynasty was no doubt of Memphite origin, as Manetho says. It is certain that the seat of the government of the IVth Dynasty was at Memphis, where the pyramid-building kings were buried, and we know that the sepulchres of two Hid Dynasty kings, at least, were situated in the necropolis of Memphis (Sakkara-Medm). So that probably the seat of government was transferred from Hierakonpolis to Memphis by the first king of the Hid Dynasty. Thenceforward the kings were buried in the Memphite necropolis.

The two great necropoles of Memphis and Abydos were originally the seats of the wors.h.i.+p of the two Egyptian G.o.ds of the dead, Seker and Khentamenti, both of whom were afterwards identified with the Busirite G.o.d Osiris. Abydos was also the centre of the wors.h.i.+p of Anubis, an animal-deity of the dead, the jackal who prowls round the tombs at night. Anubis and Osiris-Khentamenti, "He who is in the West," were a.s.sociated in the minds of the Egyptians as the protecting deities of Abydos. The wors.h.i.+p of these G.o.ds as the chief Southern deities of the dead, and the preeminence of the necropolis of Abydos in the South, no doubt date back before the time of the Ist Dynasty, so that it would not surprise us were burials of kings of the predynastic Hierakonpolite kingdom discovered at Abydos. Prof. Petrie indeed claims to have discovered actual royal relics of that period at Abydos, but this seems to be one of the least certain of his conclusions. We cannot definitely state that the names "Ro," "Ka," and "Sma" (if they are names at all, which is doubtful) belong to early kings of Hierakonpolis who were buried at Abydos. It may be so, but further confirmation is desirable before we accept it as a fact; and as yet such confirmation has not been forthcoming. The oldest kings, who were certainly buried at Abydos, seem to have been the first rulers of the united kingdom of the North and South, Aha and his successors. N'armer is not represented. It may be that he was not buried at Abydos, but in the necropolis of Hierakonpolis. This would point to the kings of the South not having been buried at Abydos until after the unification of the kingdom.

That Aha possessed a tomb at Abydos as well as another at Nakada seems peculiar, but it is a phenomenon not unknown in Egypt. Several kings, whose bodies were actually buried elsewhere, had second tombs at Abydos, in order that they might _possess_ last resting-places near the tomb of Osiris, although they might not prefer to _use_ them. Usertsen (or Senusret) III is a case in point. He was really buried in a pyramid at Illahun, up in the North, but he had a great rock tomb cut for him in the cliffs at Abydos, which he never occupied, and probably had never intended to occupy. We find exactly the same thing far back at the beginning of Egyptian history, when Aha possessed not only a great mastaba-tomb at Nakada, but also a tomb-chamber in the great necropolis of Abydos. It may be that other kings of the earliest period also had second sepulchres elsewhere. It is noteworthy that in none of the early tombs at Abydos were found any bodies which might be considered those of the kings themselves. M. Amelineau discovered bodies of attendants or slaves (who were in all probability purposely strangled and buried around the royal chamber in order that they should attend the king in the next world), but no royalties. Prof. Petrie found the arm of a female mummy, who may have been of royal blood, though there is nothing to show that she was. And the quaint plait and fringe of false hair, which were also found, need not have belonged to a royal mummy. It is therefore quite possible that these tombs at Abydos were not the actual last resting-places of the earliest kings, who may really have been buried at Hierakonpolis or elsewhere, as Aha was. Messrs. Newberry and Gtarstang, in their _Short History of Egypt_, suppose that Aha was actually buried at Abydos, and that the great tomb with objects bearing his name, found by M. de Morgan at Nakada, is really not his, but belonged to a royal princess named Neit-hetep, whose name is found in conjunction with his at Abydos and Nakada. But the argument is equally valid turned round the other way: the Nakada tomb might just as well be Aha's and the Abydos one Neit-hetep's. Neit-hetep, who is supposed by Messrs. Newberry and Garstang to have been Narmer's daughter and Aha's wife, was evidently closely connected with Aha, and she may have been buried with him at Nakada and commemorated with him at Abydos.* It is probable that the XIXth Dynasty list-makers and Manetho considered the Abydos tombs to have been the real graves of the kings, but it is by no means impossible that they were wrong.

* A princess named Bener-ab ("Sweet-heart"), who may have been Aha's daughter, was actually buried beside his tomb at Abydos.

This view of the royal tombs at Abydos tallies to a great extent with that of M. Naville, who has energetically maintained the view that M.

Amelineau and Prof. Petrie have not discovered the real tombs of the early kings, but only their contemporary commemorative "tombs" at Abydos. The only real tomb of the Ist Dynasty, therefore, as yet discovered is that of Aha at Nakada, found by M. de Morgan. The fact that attendant slaves were buried around the Abydos tombs is no bar to the view that the tombs were only the monuments, not the real graves, of the kings. The royal ghosts would naturally visit their commemorative chambers at Abydos, in order to be in the company of the great Osiris, and ghostly servants would be as necessary to their Majesties at Abydos as elsewhere.

It must not be thought that this revised opinion of the Abydos tombs detracts in the slightest degree from the importance of the discovery of M. Amelineau and its subsequent and more detailed investigation by Prof.

Petrie. These monuments are as valuable for historical purposes as the real tombs themselves. The actual bodies of these primeval kings themselves we are never likely to find. The tomb of Aha at Nakada had been completely rifled in ancient times.

The commemorative tombs of the kings of the Ist and IId Dynasties at Abydos lie southwest of the great necropolis, far within the bay in the hills. Their present aspect is that of a wilderness of sand hillocks, covered with ma.s.ses of fragments of red pottery, from which the site has obtained the modern Arab name of _Umm el-Ga'ab_, "Mother of Pots." It is impossible to move a step in any direction without crus.h.i.+ng some of these potsherds under the heel. They are chiefly the remains of the countless little vases of rough red pottery, which were dedicated here as _ex-votos_ by the pious, between the XIXth and XXVIth Dynasties, to the memory of the ancient kings and of the great G.o.d Osiris, whose tomb, as we shall see, was supposed to have been situated here also.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 065.jpg (right) THE TOMB OF KING DEN AT ABYDOS. About 4000 B.C.]

Intermingled with these later fragments are pieces of the original Ist Dynasty vases, which were filled with wine and provisions and were placed in the tombs, for the refreshment and delectation of the royal ghosts when they should visit their houses at Abydos. These were thrown out and broken when the tombs were violated. Here and there one sees a dip in the sand, out of which rise four walls of great bricks, forming a rectangular chamber, half-filled with sand. This is one of the royal tomb-chambers of the Ist Dynasty. That of King Den is ill.u.s.trated above.

A straight staircase descends into it from the ground-level above. In several of the tombs the original flooring of wooden beams is still preserved. Den's is the most magnificent of all, for it has a floor of granite blocks; we know of no other instance of stone being used for building in this early age. Almost every tomb has been burnt at some period unknown. The brick walls are burnt red, and many of the alabaster vases are almost calcined. This was probably the work of some unknown enemy.

The wide complicated tombs have around the main chamber a series of smaller rooms, which were used to store what was considered necessary for the use of the royal ghost. Of these necessaries the most interesting to us are the slaves, who were, as there is little reason to doubt, purposely killed and buried round the royal chamber so that their spirits should be on the spot when the dead king came to Abydos; thus they would be always ready to serve him with the food and other things which had been stored in the tomb with them and placed under their charge. There were stacks of great vases of wine, corn, and other food; these were covered up with ma.s.ses of fat to preserve the contents, and they were corked with a pottery stopper, which was protected by a conical clay sealing, stamped with the impress of the royal cylinder-seal. There were bins of corn, joints of oxen, pottery dishes, copper pans, and other things which might be useful for the ghostly cuisine of the tomb. There were numberless small objects, used, no doubt, by the dead monarch during life, which he would be pleased to see again in the next world,--carved ivory boxes, little slabs for grinding eye-paint, golden b.u.t.tons, model tools, model vases with gold tops, ivory and pottery figurines, and other _objets d'art_; the golden royal seal of judgment of King Den in its ivory casket, and so forth. There were memorials of the royal victories in peace and war, little ivory plaques with inscriptions commemorating the founding of new buildings, the inst.i.tution of new religious festivals in honour of the G.o.ds, the bringing of the captives of the royal bow and spear to the palace, the discomfiture of the peoples of the North-land.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 067.jpg CONICAL VASE-STOPPERS. From Abydos. 1st Dynasty: about 4000 B.C.]

All these things, which have done so much to reconst.i.tute for us the history of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy, were placed under the care of the dead slaves whose bodies were buried round the empty tomb-chamber of their royal master in Abydos.

The killing and entombment of the royal servants is of the highest anthropological interest, for it throws a vivid light upon the manners of the time. It shows the primeval Egyptians as a semi-barbaric people of childishly simple ways of thought. The king was dead. For all his kings.h.i.+p he was a man, and no man was immortal in this world. But yet how could one really die? Shadows, dreams, all kinds of phenomena which the primitive mind could not explain, induced the belief that, though the outer man might rot, there was an inner man which could not die and still lived on. The idea of total death was unthinkable. And where should this inner man still live on but in the tomb to which the outer man was consigned? And here, doubtless it was believed, in the house to which the body was consigned, the ghost lived on. And as each ghost had his house with the body, so no doubt all ghosts could communicate with one another from tomb to tomb; and so there grew up the belief in a tomb-world, a subterranean Egypt of tombs, in which the dead Egyptians still lived and had their being. Later on the boat of the sun, in which the G.o.d of light crossed the heavens by day, was thought to pa.s.s through this dead world between his setting and his rising, accompanied by the souls of the righteous. But of this belief we find no trace yet in the ideas of the Ist Dynasty. All we can see is that the _sahus_, or bodies of the dead, were supposed to reside in awful majesty in the tomb, while the ghosts could pa.s.s from tomb to tomb through the mazes of the underworld. Over this dread realm of dead men presided a dead G.o.d, Osiris of Abydos; and so the necropolis of Abydos was the necropolis of the underworld, to which all ghosts who were not its rightful citizens would come from afar to pay their court to their ruler. Thus the man of substance would have a monumental tablet put up to himself in this necropolis as a sort of _pied-a-terre_, even if he could not be buried there; for the king, who, for reasons chiefly connected with local patriotism, was buried near the city of his earthly abode, a second tomb would be erected, a stately mansion in the city of Osiris, in which his ghost could reside when it pleased him to come to Abydos.

Now none could live without food, and men living under the earth needed it as much as men living on the earth. The royal tomb was thus provided with an enormous amount of earthly food for the use of the royal ghost, and with other things as well, as we have seen. The same provision had also to be made for the royal resting-place at Abydos. And in both cases royal slaves were needed to take care of all this provision, and to serve the ghost of the king, whether in his real tomb at Nakada, or elsewhere, or in his second tomb at Abydos. Ghosts only could serve ghosts, so that of the slaves ghosts had to be made. That was easily done; they died when their master died and followed him to the tomb.

No doubt it seemed perfectly natural to all concerned, to the slaves as much as to anybody else. But it shows the child's idea of the value of life. An animate thing was hardly distinguished at this period from an inanimate thing. The most ancient Egyptians buried slaves with their kings as naturally as they buried jars of wine and bins of corn with them. Both were buried with a definite object. The slaves had to die before they were buried, but then so had the king himself. They all had to die sometime or other. And the actual killing of them was no worse than killing a dog, no worse even than "killing" golden b.u.t.tons and ivory boxes. For, when the b.u.t.tons and boxes were buried with the king, they were just as much dead as the slaves. Of the sanct.i.ty of _human_ life as distinct from other life, there was probably no idea at all. The royal ghost needed ghostly servants, and they were provided as a matter of course.

But as civilization progressed, the ideas of the Egyptians changed on these points, and in the later ages of the ancient world they were probably the most humane of the peoples, far more so than the Greeks, in fact. The cultured h.e.l.lenes murdered their prisoners of war without hesitation. Who has not been troubled in mind by the execution of Mkias and Demosthenes after the surrender of the Athenian army at Syracuse?

When we compare this with Grant's refusal even to take Lee's sword at Appomattox, we see how we have progressed in these matters; while Gylippus and the Syracusans were as much children as the Ist Dynasty Egyptians. But the Egyptians of Gylippus's time had probably advanced much further than the Greeks in the direction of rational manhood. When Amasis had his rival Apries in his power, he did not put him to death, but kept him as his coadjutor on the throne. Apries fled from him, allied himself with Greek pirates, and advanced against his generous rival. After his defeat and murder at Momemphis, Amasis gave him a splendid burial. When we compare this generosity to a beaten foe with the savagery of the a.s.syrians, for instance, we see how far the later Egyptians had progressed in the paths of humanity.

The ancient custom of killing slaves was first discontinued at the death of the lesser chieftains, but we find a possible survival of it in the case of a king, even as late as the time of the XIth Dynasty; for at Thebes, in the precinct of the funerary temple of King Neb-hapet-Ra Mentuhetep and round the central pyramid which commemorated his memory, were buried a number of the ladies of his _harim_. They were all buried at one and the same time, and there can be little doubt that they were all killed and buried round the king, in order to be with him in the next world. Now with each of these ladies, who had been turned into ghosts, was buried a little waxen human figure placed in a little model coffin. This was to replace her own slave. She who went to accompany the king in the next world had to have her own attendant also. But, not being royal, a real slave was not killed for her; she only took with her a waxen figure, which by means of charms and incantations would, when she called upon it, turn into a real slave, and say, "Here am I," and do whatever work might be required of her. The actual killing and burial of the slaves had in all cases except that of the king been long "commuted," so to speak, into a burial with the dead person of _ushabtis_, or "Answerers," little figures like those described above, made more usually of stone, and inscribed with the name of the deceased.

They were called "Answerers" because they answered the call of their dead master or mistress, and by magic power became ghostly servants.

Later on they were made of wood and glazed _faence_, as well as stone.