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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Herkhnf, who tells us of four expedi- 

 tions which he made into the Sudan for 

 gold-dust and ivory. On the last of these 

 he got into touch, as Assa's caraA^an 

 leader had done before him, with a tribe 

 of that race of pigmies whom Stanley 

 encountered in his search for Emin 

 Pasha. Herkhuf succeeded in capturing 

 one of the dwarfs and bringing him back 

 to Egypt in safety. 



His king, Pepy II, who at this time 

 was a boy of 8 years, was highly de- 

 lighted at the news of the capture of so 

 choice a plaything, and wrote Herkhuf a 

 gracious letter of thanks, full of minute 

 instructions as to the care to be exercised 

 over his precious charge. Herkhuf is to 

 take great precautions lest the dwarf 

 should fall into the river on his way 

 down the Nile, and proper people are to 

 watch behind the place where he sleeps, 

 and to look into his bed ten times in the 

 course of each night to see that all is 

 well. 



A QUAINT I.HTTER 



"My Majesty," says the king, "wisheth 

 to see this pigmy more than all tribute 

 of Bata and Punt. And if thou comest 

 to court having this pigmy with thee 

 sound and whole, My Majesty will do 

 for thee more than was done for the 

 divine Chancellor Baurdeed in the times 

 of King Assa, and conformably to the 

 greatness of the desire of the heart of 

 My Majesty to see this pigmy." Herkhuf 

 was so proud of the king's letter that he 

 caused it to be engraved, word for word, 

 on the wall of his tomb at Elephantine 

 as proof of the royal favor which he 

 enjoyed. 



It was in the small pyramids reared 

 by the kings of this and the preceding 

 dynasty, and mainly opened by Maspero 

 in the early eighties, that there were 

 found the so-called "Pyramid Texts," 

 which have furnished us with most of 

 our knowledge as to Egyptian religious 

 beliefs in the earliest historical periods. 

 These texts reveal an exceedingly primi- 

 tive and almost savage set of religious 

 conceptions, especially with regard to the 

 life after death, which contrasts some- 

 what strangely with the high standard of 

 material ctvilization which the period 

 had attained. 



A wild fancy pictures the deceased 

 king ascending to heaven as a fierce 

 huntsman who lassoes the stars and de- 

 vours the gods. "Heaven rains, the stars 

 fight, the Bowmen [one of the constella- 

 tions] wander about when they have seen 

 how he ascends and has a soul as a god 

 who lives upon his fathers and feeds 

 upon his mothers. . . . He devours 

 men and lives upon the gods. . . . He 

 it is who devours their magic and swal- 

 lows their illuminated ones. The great 

 ones among them are his morning meal, 

 the middle ones are his evening meal, and 

 the small ones his night meal. 

 Their magic is in his body; he swallows 

 the understanding of every god." 



Such ideas are not uncommon among 

 cannibal tribes at the present time ; but 

 they coexist somewhat strangely with all 

 the material splendors of the Old King- 

 dom and with the placid common sense 

 and genial worldly v/isdom which have 

 already begun to find literary expression 

 in the precepts of Ptah-hotep and Gem- 

 nikai. 



THE DARK AGES OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY 



With the decline of the Old Kingdom^ 

 at the close of the sixth dynasty, we 

 enter upon one of the great dark periods 

 of Egyptian history, whose darkness even 

 the industry of modern exploration has 

 done very little to lighten — probably be- 

 cause there is very little to discover 

 about the period. It seems to have been 

 a time when the elements of society in 

 the land were in a state of solution, when 

 the central power of the old Memphite 

 monarchy no longer sufficed to control 

 the feudal barons and princelets, and 

 when the strife for dominion between 

 the northern and southern sections of the 

 community prevented that settling down 

 to peaceful industry without which great 

 work cannot be done. 



The seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth 

 dynasties remain more or less shadowy 

 to us, and we have only brief suggestions 

 and glimpses of a civil strife which 

 surged hither and thither in the narrow 

 Nile Valley, as the princes of the north 

 or the south alternately prevailed. The 

 outcome of all the confusion was the 

 shifting of the national center of gravity 

 from Memphis to Thebes. 



