258 



EGYPTOLOGICAL AND ASSYRIOLOGICAL RESEARCH. 



Mentuhotep III, dates have been found as high 

 as his forty-third year. Evidence like this 

 proves that there is no exaggeration in the list 

 of Abydos, which does not aim to present a 

 complete list of kings, but only mentions those 



know of the chronology of Egypt: 1. In go- 

 ing back from the Roman conquest to the first 

 years of the seventh century, the time of the 

 advent of the twenty-sixth dynasty, the chro- 

 nology is exact. 2. On ascending from that 



for whom Seti I had a special devotion. The date to the commencement of the eighteenth 



disappearance of Memphis and other great 

 cities is sufficient to account for the absence 

 of monumental evidence for some of the reigns. 

 But a want of space will not permit us to con- 

 sider further the nature of the evidence. 



SPLENDOR OF THE ORIGINAL MONUMENTS. 

 No correct ideas can be formed at the present 

 time of the original splendor of the great pyra- 

 mids. " The smooth casing of part of the top 

 of the second pyramid," says Dean Stanley, 

 " and the magnificent granite blocks which 

 form the lower stages of the third, serve to 

 show what they must have been all from top 

 to bottom ; the first and second, brilliant white 

 or yellow limestone, smooth from top to bot- 



DECAZ OP FIVE THOUSAND TEARS OX THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



torn, instead of those rude, disjointed masses 

 which their stripped sides now present; the 

 third all glowing with the red granite from the 

 first cataract. As it is, they have the barba- 

 rous look of Stonehenge ; but then they must 

 have shone with the polish of an age already 

 rich with civilization, and that the more re- 

 markable, when it is remembered that these 

 granite blocks which furnish the outside of 

 the third, and inside of the first, must have 

 come all the way from the first cataract. It 

 also seems, from Herodotus and others, that 

 these smooth outsides were covered with sculp- 

 tures." * 



WHAT is THE AMOUNT OF THE TESTIMONY ? 

 The aggregate testimony of the Egyptian monu- 

 ments, interpreted by M. de Rouge in 1865, 

 warrants the following summary of all we 

 * " SinailmdTalestine," p. 57. 



century, the period of the liberation of the 

 country by the expulsion of the Asiatic con- 

 querors, called Hyksos or Shepherd Kings, the 

 approximate chronology becomes much less 

 precise, in general, as one ascends upward, and 

 is probably arrested near the eighteenth cen- 

 tury before the Christian era. The end of the 

 fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth 

 centuries afford two points of data by coinci- 

 dences of events, one astronomical and the 

 other historical ; the first belongs to the sec- 

 ond reign of the twentieth dynasty, and the 

 second, that of the exodus, to the fourth reign 

 of the nineteenth dynasty. 



The eighteenth dynasty is rich in monuments 

 of every kind historical 

 and religious, literary and 

 artistic. The same is true 

 of the succeeding dynasty 

 down to the time in which 

 Moses probably lived. 

 That period comprises the 

 golden age of the later ar- 

 chitecture and of Egypt- 

 ian literature. A little 

 poem, almost contempo- 

 rary with the birth of the 

 prophet, and of which 

 there are three copies, 

 can be put by the side of 

 one of the most beautiful 

 chants of the Iliad ; even 

 then a series of magnifi- 

 cent specimens of relig- 

 ious lyric poetry had com- 

 menced. The period of 

 the domination of the 

 Hyksos, during which the 

 national kings were ban 

 ished to the south, in 

 humble situation, retai 



in the documents of Egypt, scarcely anythin^ 

 that is edifying, and even the thirteenth dy 

 nasty can be only most imperfectly resto: 

 But, on going back to the twelfth * dynasty, 

 such an abundance of contemporary texts are 

 found that the history and duration of the 

 dynasty, which was a little more than two 

 hundred years, can be reconstructed with 

 very great precision. Then comes another pe- 

 riod that is very obscure, most probably one 

 of division and anarchy, or of foreign invasion, 

 the duration of which is unknown. But be- 

 yond this is the series of the sixth, fifth, and 

 fourth dynasties, of which the inscriptions and 

 religious paintings and funerals manifest the 

 constitution of the administration of affairs, 

 and almost the etiquette of the court, also de- 

 tails of the funeral rites and of domestic life, 



heTake~Mceri8 and the~Labyrmth. 



