Egypt.

especially of literature, whose poetical style formed the model for all periods. It does not seem that the twelfth dynasty possessed more of Asia than the copper mines near Mount Sinai; but it conquered Nubia, the land Kosh (the biblical Kush), up to the second cataract and beyond it. Usertesen II. built there (at Semne) two strong fortresses on both sides of the Nile, and a tablet announces that no negro was allowed to pass this frontier from the south. The Pharaohs began to explore systematically the gold mines of that country, and kept this province for centuries under many struggles. The internal works of dynasty 12 are very numerous; many cities, especially Thebes and Heliopolis (On), besides also those of the eastern Delta (Tanis, Bubastis, etc.), have been embellished, and the province of the Fayum gained for agriculture. The latest excavations of Fl. Petrie have proved that Amenemhet III. was the king Moiris of Herodotus, who constructed a great basin for a branch of the Nile flowing into that oasis and losing itself in swamps. In the middle of the basin the two pyramids (i.e., large bases), with the colossal statues on the top were found, and near the pyramid of the king at Hawara the largest of all Egyptian temples, the so-called Labyrinth, of which, unfortunately, only some foundation stones have been preserved, representing not Abraham's immigration as some have thought, but a caravan of Semitic merchants, found in a tomb of dynasty 12 at Benihassan. It refutes the wrong opinion that Egypt excluded strangers even more rigorously than China. The succession of the different kings called Amenemhêt and Usertesen is: A. I., U. I., A. II., U. II., U. III., A. IV., and a queen Sebknefrurê, who reigned altogether 194 years. After this family had died out Egypt returned to its former bad condition in dynasties 13 and 14. Of more than 130 kings, the greater number reigned only two to four years, many some months, and probably different usurpers claimed the crown at the same time. Few monarchs, as Neferhotp and Sebkhotp V., gained sufficient power to leave some monuments. At the end of the Middle Empire (2000 or later), Egypt suddenly was conquered by a foreign people, whose rulers Manetho calls Hyksos, i.e., shepherd kings. Their statues show that they had emigrated from a remote country, and were of non-Semitic (Turanian ?) race. After some time the Hyksos kings allowed tributary princes in Upper Egypt, and kept only the Delta under their direct domination. For their capital, they built a strong fortress in the Sethroitic nome, on the northeastern frontier, called Auaris (Hatuaret), where a numerous garrison watched the subject country. Their god was the warlike Sutekh, but they accepted the Egyptian language and customs. The uncertainty concerning the duration of the Hyksos time (dyn. 15-17) and the number of its kings is responsible for the defects of the earlier chronology. The tributary princes of Thebes (dyn. 17) became more and more powerful, until Seknenrê III. after 1700 threw off the yoke of the foreigners, provoked, as a popular tale relates, by the insolence of his sovereign Apoph (is). He was slain, but his son, Kames, and afterward Amosis (Iahmose), who married the princess Nefertare and succeeded to the old Theban family, continued expelling the Hyksos, until they surrendered, besieged in Auaris, their last fortress. Amosis, the first king of dynasty 18, inaugurated the glorious period of conquest, introducing Egypt into universal history. His unlimited power (the many small princes had disappeared during the war) and the army maintained and practiced in the long struggle, enabled Amosis to conquer Phenicia and Palestine, where, in his fifth year, he took the city of Sharuhen (in Simeon) His son, Amenophis I. (Amenhotp), fought in African countries. Thotmosis (Dhutmose) I., penetrated into Nubia beyond the third cataract, and in Syria to the Euphrates river. His minor son, Dhutmose II., reigned with his elder sister and wife, Hatshepseut (not Hatasu). After his early and, perhaps, violent death, his sister reigned 21 years alone. In one of the finest buildings of Egypt, her temple at Deir el-bahri, the great expedition to Punt is represented as the most remarkable event of her reign. Punt (Phut in the Bible), the southern coasts of fertile Arabia and especially the Somali coast, furnished gold, rare animals, and incense, the most valuable article for the cult. Hatshepseut first equipped, instead of single ships, a fleet which brought living incense-trees to be planted in Thebes. After her death, a half-brother succeeded, the greatest conqueror among the Pharaohs, Thotmosis (Dhutmose) III., (about 1550). His reign of 33 years saw at least 16 campaigns in Syria. In the first one, he defeated a coalition of all princes of Palestine and middle Syria at Megiddo, but many efforts afterwards were necessary to subject the strong cities in southern Libanon, Phenicia, and Kadesh, on the Orontes. Then he conquered Nah (Naharin, i.e., "flat Syria "), near the Euphrates, with the princes of Tunep, Khaleb, Karkamish, and set his landmark at N on the Euphrates. In northern Mesopotamia he devastated Mitanni (the Osroene of Roman time), where he hunted elephants, but lived in peace with Assur, Sangar, and Babel. With his rich booty he embellished the temples of Egypt more than his predecessors, who had all been great builders, and the temple of Karnak owes its splendor mostly to him. Amenhotp II. suppressed rebellions in Syria and kept the frontier at Ni, probably also Dhutmose IV., but Amenhotp III. lost northern Syria. The letters in cuneiform writing received from Asiatic princes, during his reign and that of his son, were found some years ago, and have thrown much light upon his diplomatic relations, especially upon those with Mitanni, whose king, Sutarna, sent his daughter with 317 female slaves to the Pharaoh. His son, by the beautiful and influential queen Tiye, Amenhotp IV. (1450) caused a great revolution by trying to replace the old mummified religion by a solat monotheism, and persecuted the worship of the god Amon so persistently as to obliterate

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his name on earlier monuments and to change his own name containing "Amon" into Sun's splendor" (Akhunaten). He built a new capital at Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt. After his death, the new religion, which had met with great opposition before, was destroyed with its monuments under the following ephemere kings (Ay, Tutankhamon). Haremheb finished the restoration of the old creed. died soon. Sety Sethos), whose tomb in Biban el-Moluk is the finest of all, attempted Ramses I., the founder of dyn. 19, to win again the northern provinces, which had fallen into the hands of the Kheta (Hittites), a people coming from Cappadocia. His son, Ramses II., or Sesostris (1380), continued, and in addition to Galilee and southern Phenicia, conquered Phenicia to the Dog's river (Lycus) near Beirut, defeated the Hittites at Kadesh on the Orontes (Laodicea ad Libanum), and suppressed revolting Palestine. After 20 years he made peace and married a daughter of the Kheta king. The numerous representations of the same modest victories on his monuments caused the Greeks to believe him to have been a conqueror of half the world. His activity as a builder during his reign of 67 years was beyond comparison, although he usurped many monuments, replacing earlier names by his own. of all monuments bear his name, the temple at Luxor, that of Abusimbel in Nubia cut into the rock, etc. He built the cities of Pitorn and Ramses, and was the king who oppressed Two-thirds the Israelites. Under his son Mernptah, the Libyans devastated the western Delta, and pirates from Asia Minor and Europe its shores--the Akaywash (Achæans ?), Tursh (Tyrsenians?), Shardin (Sardinians), Luk (Lycians), and Shakarush, who at that time appeared in the Orient as pirates and mercenaries. These enemies joined their armies near Heliopolis, but were defeated by Mernptah. He was the king of the Exodus, but no monuments as yet aid the difficult connection of Egyptian history with the biblical record. Dynasty 19 ends ingloriously with anarchy and the reign of a Syrian usurper. Dynasty 20 is founded by Setnakhte, whose son, Ramses III., is a feeble imitator of Ramses II. in every respect. He repelled several invasions of the Libyans, defended Egypt and the Syrian provinces against the pirates and incursions of barbarous swarms coming from Asia Minor, and plundered the country of the Amorites (at that time, 1250, between Libanon and Anti-Libanon). His palace and favorite temple was at Medinet Habu. Records of a conspiracy in his harem are preserved. The line of nine Ramessides after him seem to have reigned in peace without any remarkable event. The feebleness of the last kings caused the high priests of Thebes, who had become very rich by the donations of Ramses III., to depose them. Then a new dynasty from Tanis took the throne. Under their rather inglorious reign, the police gave up trying to protect the tombs of the preceding kings against thieves, who had already plundered some under Ramses IX. (records in a papyrus in London), and hid the mummies in an excavation where they were discovered in 1881.

Dynasty 22 (950) was of Libyan origin, because the Libyans, especially the tribe of the Mashuash as mercenary soldiers, had become so influential that their commanders were next in position to the king. Shoshenk I. (Shishak of the Bible) is known by his campaign despoiling the cities of India and Israel under Jeroboam and Rehoboam. Under the later kings and those of dynasty 23 (from Tanis), Shoshenk, Usorkon, and Takelot, the unity of the empire was lost. Tefnakht and his son, Bocchoris (Bekenranf), of dynasty 24 were only princes of Sais and Memphis. When the first tried to subdue the many Libyan commanders reigning in the cities of the Delta, he was stopped by king Pankhy of Napata. After B.C. 1200, Ethiopia became an independent civilized kingdom, and in dynasty 23 even conquered Upper Egypt. Bocchoris was burned alive (?) by Pankhy's second successor, Shabaka, and the whole of Egypt became an Ethiopian province (728, 25th dyn.). The vice-king of Shabaka, Sebe, united the kings of Syria against Assyria, the power of which threatened even Egypt, but the Assyrians destroyed Samaria and the kingdom of Israel (722), likewise Hamat, and defeated Sebe at Raphia. Taharka (Tirhaka, Bible), the successor of Shabaka and Shabataka (704), repeated this attempt, but Sanherib defeated him at Altakeh. from capturing Jerusalem, whose King, Hiskiah, had joined the Ethiopians, and from An epidemic prevented the Assyrians attacking Egypt; but Assarhaddon (671) conquered Egypt and divided it among 20 tributary princes from the old families of Libyan officers. În 668 Taharka drove out the Assyrian garrisons, and another unsuccessful attempt by his successor Tan(u)tamen (663) was not repeated. When the Assyrian empire began to decline, Psametik of Sais, an heir of the princes of dynasty 24, founded dynasty 26 (before 650), with the help of Ionian and Carian mercenaries. Nekao II. (609-594) began the canal connecting the Nile with the Red sea, and sent A large part of his Libyan troops deserted to Ethiopia. : Phenician sailors around Africa; he killed Josiah of Judea and conquered Syria to the Euphrates; but lost it, having been defeated by the Babylonian crown prince, Nebuchadnezzar, at Karkemish. Apries (Hophra, Bible), 588-69, successor of Psametik II., was not able to prevent the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (586). A military revolt deposed him. Amosis II. (Amasis), 569-526, reigned with diplomatic skill and conquered Cyprus. His son, Cambyses defeated him at Pelusium, and Egypt became a Persian province. It revolted Psametik III. (Psamenit), reigned one year; in 525 (487) under Khabbash, in 460-50 under Inaros and Amyrtæus (with Athenian aid), and more successfully about 400. Five national kings reigned; the last, Nectanebus, lost Egypt 342.

Soon Egypt became a province of Alexander, who founded Alexandria. After his