IV 



Supplement to "Nature," November 6, 1902. 



from the Red Sea coast by way of the Wady Ham- 

 mamat. This version of a theory which has long been 

 broached and discussed seems more probable than any 

 other, because it does not go too far or ask us to believe 

 too much. 



From the Archaic Period, which came to an end with 

 the Third Dynasty, about 3800 B.C., the historian passes 

 on to the period of the great Pyramid-builders of 

 the Fourth Dynasty, the days of the mighty Cheops, 

 Chephren and Mykerinos, so well known to us from the 

 pages of the Father of History. And it is wonderful how 

 well informed Herodotus was about these ancient kings, 

 who seem to have impressed themselves on the 

 memories of their subjects for all time. With the Fourth 

 Dynasty, Egyptian civilisation ceased to develop with the 

 remarkable vigour and quickness which it had shown 

 during the Archaic Period, and became more or less 

 stereotyped. For many centuries, therefore, the task of 

 the historian is the simple one of recording the reign of 

 king after king, war after war, until with the accession of 

 the Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt became a world-power, and 

 subdued mankind from the marshes of the Bahr al-Ghazal 

 to the mountains of Armenia, from the plains of Babylonia 

 to the passes of the Taurus, to her sway. The strange 

 reign of the religious and artistic enthusiast Khu-en-Aten 

 is described, and the story of his shameful abandonment 

 of the Asiatic empire of Egypt and its partial reconquest 

 by Seti I. and his pretentious son Rameses II. (who has, 

 it appears, no particular claim to the title "Great," which 

 is usually bestowed upon him) is retold by Dr. Budge, and 

 the interest of the tale is much enhanced by the contem- 

 porary illustrations of these ancient wars and sieges which 

 he reproduces for us. We are speaking now of the 

 fourteenth century B.C., three thousand years after the 

 Archaic Period which we have just been discussing— i.e. 

 as much time lies between the days of those monarchs of 

 old, Mena and the rest, and the wars of Rameses and Seti 

 as lies between these and our own day. This may give 

 some idea of the expanse of time which Egyptian history 

 covers. Yet Babylonia was already civilised when Egypt 

 was inhabited by Neolithic savages. At least, so Dr. 

 Budge's conclusions would seem to show. 



Many interesting hints are given by Dr. Budge as to 

 the relations between the Egyptians and the peoples of 

 Southern Palestine from the fourteenth century B.C. 

 onwards. He discusses the question of the Exodus 

 very fully, and describes the rise of the Jewish kingdom 

 after the final withdrawal of Egyptian authority during 

 the time of the rois-faineants of the Twentieth Dynasty. 

 Henceforward the Egyptians merely made periodical raids 

 into Palestine, as under Shishak (950 B.C.) and Necho 

 (600 B.C.), with interludes of Assyrian and Ethiopian 

 invasion and conquest of Egypt itself, which now had 

 sunk to the position of the proverbial "broken reed, upon 

 which, if a man lean, it shall pierce his hand," and was 

 ripe for the Persian yoke and the Macedonian deliverance, 

 which was to bring Egypt within the fold of Hellenism. 



In the preface to the sixth volume Dr. Budge's tone be- 

 comes strongly controversial and, we think, righteously so, 

 for he is tilting at a great error which has had widespread 

 and most unfortunate consequences ; we refer to the erron- 

 eous conjectures of a German Assyriologist, Dr. Winckler, 

 as to the existence of a country in Arabia called Musri, 

 NO. I 7 2j, VI >L. 67] 



which have formed the foundation of a series of most 

 amazing theories, enunciated by one of "the ablest of 

 the higher critics," as Dr. Budge courteously de- 

 scribes him, Prof. Cheyne, of Oxford, on the subject 

 of the early history of the peoples of Palestine. The 

 first note of warning against these theories and their 

 source, the baseless conjectures of Dr. Winckler, was 

 sounded in a review which appeared in Nature for 

 June 26 of the present year (vol. lxvi. No. 1704) of the 

 third volume of the " Encyclopa-dia Biblica," in which 

 publication Prof. Cheyne's theories about his "Jerah- 

 meelites " are enshrined. Quite lately, on September 25 

 last, a review signed with the initials R. C. T. also 

 appeared in these columns, which dealt specifically 

 with the theories of Dr. Winckler, and proved them 

 errors step by step and point by point. Dr. Budge's pre- 

 face covers much the same ground as the reviewer's 

 article, but is fuller, and, as was to be expected in a 

 popular work, not so technical in its phraseology. His 

 final paragraph is worth reading, and should finally 

 dispose of "Musri" and his son "Jerahmeel." It is 

 rarely, we should think, that one eminent man of 

 science has felt compelled to write so severely 

 of the work of another as Dr. Budge has written of 

 the Jerahmeel theory ; yet we confess we think that 

 Prof. Cheyne fully deserves the castigation which 

 Dr. Budge has administered to him ; he should realise 

 that a mare's nest does not necessarily become a 

 " brilliant and inspired theory " merely because a German 

 discovered it. There is too much of this Bauchrutschen 

 vor Deutschland among our archaeologists and Biblical 

 critics, and Dr. Budge has made a timely protest 

 against the absurd habit. 



Dr. Budge does not leave the Hellenistic period of 

 Egyptian history outside the scope of his work. His last 

 two volumes contain a very complete summary of the 

 events of the Ptolemaic period, which should be useful to 

 classical students. So far as we remember, the older 

 histories of Egypt, such as Brugsch's " Egypt under the 

 Pharaohs," Wiedemann's " Geschichte," Erasmus Wilson's 

 "Egypt of the Past," &c, come to a close with the end 

 of the native kingdom, with the flight of King Nekhtnebf 

 before the Persians, about the middle of the fourth 

 century B.C , and not long before the coming of 

 Alexander the Great. Dr. Budge, however, does not 

 regard his task as ended at this point, for, as he points 

 out, although Egypt was ruled by Greek kings during the 

 Ptolemaic period, she still remained an independent king- 

 dom, and these Greek kings were Egyptian Pharaohs and 

 nothing else. So he goes on with his tale until the death 

 of Cleopatra and the Roman conquest finally bring the 

 independent career of Egypt to an end. 



Astronomers will be interested to note Dr. Budge's 

 scepticism as to the possibility of any very trustworthy 

 data for Egyptian chronology being obtained from astro- 

 nomical calculations which involve consideration of the 

 " Sothis period " (on Dr. Mahler's methods, for instance), 

 while at the same time he accepts Sir Norman Lockyer's 

 calculations in "The Dawn of Astronomy "of the probable 

 dates of the foundation of various Egyptian temples, based 

 upon a consideration of their orientation. This, however, 

 is a very different matter from juggling with Sothis 

 periods. Set festivals and the like, and the production of 



