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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



darkness. We know that upon a deca- 

 dent Egypt, suffering perhaps from the 

 reaction which seems so often to follow 

 upon the rule of a race of strong and 

 masterful monarchs, there descended a 

 horde of invaders, probably of Semitic 

 origin; that Egypt was conquered and 

 lay under the dominion of these invaders 

 for several generations, and that the yoke 

 of the oppressor was not thrown off till 

 the rise of the seventeenth dynasty, when 

 the Theban princes asserted their power 

 and, after a long war of independence, 

 drove out the alien rulers. In spite of 

 exploration and speculation, the Hyksos 

 remain almost as much of a mystery as 

 ever. 



AN age: 01^ SPIyENDOR AND POWER 



We come now, however, to that period 

 of Egyptian history which has left us the 

 most abundant and convincing evidences 

 of its greatness and splendor. Quite 

 probably the actual prosperity and power 

 of the land under the empire was no 

 greater than under the Middle King- 

 dom, and indeed the period of the Senu- 

 serts and Amenemhats comes more and 

 more to be regarded as the true Golden 

 Age of Egyptian history; but in the 

 eighteenth dynasty Egypt begins to take 

 definite rank as a world empire, and un- 

 der the brilliant leadership of kings like 

 Tahutmes III makes her one real ap^ 

 pearance on the stage of history as a 

 great military power, while the kings of 

 the nineteenth dynasty, less successful in 

 their warlike ventures, exhibit a splen- 

 dor and lavishness in their domestic en- 

 terprises which are elsewhere unparal- 

 leled in the national history. 



The mass of material coming down to 

 us from this time is far greater than that 

 which we possess from any earlier, and 

 far more interesting than that from any 

 later period, and it is in connection with 

 eighteenth and nineteenth dynasty his- 

 tory and personalities that the romance 

 of modern exploration has perhaps been 

 most conspicuous. 



The power and magnificence of the 

 Egyptian monarchy in this period has for 

 long, of course, been no novelty. Evi- 

 dence of both was manifest and unmis- 

 takable in the great temple buildings at 



Karnak, Luxor, Abydos, the Rames- 

 seum, and elsewhere. What modern dis- 

 covery has done is to fill in the outlines, 

 to give color and movement to the pic- 

 ture, to reveal to us documentary evi- 

 dence of the historical processes whose 

 lines could be already traced, and to 

 bring us, strangely enough, into contact 

 with the actual remains of the men and 

 women who guided the destinies of 

 Egypt in these far-off days. 



Nothing has more profoundly moved 

 the imagination of the intelligent public 

 than the fact that it has become possible 

 to look upon the very faces and forms of 

 men whose actions were familiar to us 

 from our childhood in the Bible story — 

 the Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites 

 and ordered their children to be cast into 

 the river, and his successor, whose hard 

 heart was humbled by the plagues of 

 Egypt. 



THE MUMMIES OF THE GREAT KINGS OF 

 BIBI^ICAL TIMES DISCOVERED 



Erom about 1871 it became evident, by 

 the relics of certain kings which were 

 coming by illicit channels upon the an- 

 tiquity market, that tomb-robbers had 

 obtained access to some hitherto unsus- 

 pected tombs. The authorities in Egypt 

 took up the matter ; methods of some- 

 what primitive justice were employed to 

 extract the facts, and in 1881 M. (now 

 Sir Gaston) Maspero was led to the 

 mouth of a disused tomb at the foot of 

 the cliffs of Deir-el-Bahari, where, in the 

 bowels of the earth, was discovered a 

 most wonderful collection of the mum- 

 mies of the great kings of this most glit- 

 tering period of Egyptian history (see 

 page 974). 



Tahutmes III, the great soldier of 

 Egypt, was there, proving, like so many 

 other famous captains, to have been a 

 man of somewhat small stature and in- 

 significant appearance. Rameses II, the 

 Great Oppressor of Hebrew story and 

 the most grandiose figure of Egyptian 

 history, and, most stately and kingly of 

 all, Sety I, the father of Rameses, whose 

 wonderfully preserved features, clear-cut 

 and aristocratic, convey a remarkable im- 

 pression of royal dignity ; these, and 

 many other figures of less significance, 



