royal archives at Thebes (IV, 557 ff.). A few letters from the king personally (e. g., §§ 350 ff., 664, 665) and some legal records (IV, 499-557) complete the list of state documents. The remaining royal documents are of a miscellaneous character, like the unique memorial scarabs of Amenhotep III (II, 860 ff.), or the huge stelæ erected as landmarks by Ikhnaton for the purpose of demarking the limits of his new capital at Amarna (II, 949 ff.). Finally, the greatest of all royal documents is the enormous Papyrus Harris, recording the good deeds of Ramses III (1198–1167 B. C.) to gods and men, compiled for his tomb, as a title to consideration at the hands of the gods in the future life (IV, 151-412).

19. The private monuments of the Empire are also more numerous than before and contribute greatly to our knowledge of it. The tombs of the Pharaoh's grandees have now become more personal monuments than ever before. These men, who were guiding Egypt on her imperial career, delighted to perpetuate in their tombs some record of the brilliant part which they were playing in these great events. The generals and administrative officials who under the Pharaoh governed the Empire, now sleep in rock-hewn tombs at Thebes, the chambers of which still bear magnificently painted scenes from their active and adventurous lives. Here we behold the reception of tribute from the remotest limits of the Empire, borne on the shoulders of Palestinians, Syrians, or northern islanders, the whole being accompanied by explanatory inscriptions. The various duties and activities of the greatest officials of the government are here depicted, and from these scenes and the appended inscriptions we can draw fuller data respecting the Empire and its organization than from any other source. 20. These tomb chapels, besides the Amarna Letters,

are also the only surviving contemporary source for the civilization of Syria and Palestine in the second millennium before Christ. The most important of such tombs is that of Rekhmire, the vizier of Thutmose III (II, 663-762). The biographies of the generals preserved in these tomb chapels are not infrequently our only source for entire wars of the Pharaoh, of which we should not otherwise have known anything at all-not even that they took place. Besides these tomb inscriptions, the nobles also recorded their biographies, or at least some of their achievements, on the statues accorded them by the Pharaoh in the Karnak temple. Examples of such records are the statue of Senmut (II, 345 ff.), or that of Beknekhonsu (III, 561 ff.). After the Eighteenth Dynasty the Empire abounds in papyri: letters, bills, receipts, administrative and legal documents, memoranda, numerous literary compositions, scientific treatises like those on medicine, mathematics, or astronomy, religious documents, and innumerable ostraca, or potsherds and flakes of limestone bearing receipts, letters, memoranda, or literary fragments. These, for the most part, fall outside of the scope of the present volumes and will appear in later series of these Ancient Records.

21. Such are the main sources for the history of the Empire; there are, of course, numerous unimportant miscellaneous monuments which we have not mentioned; nor do we recall all the classes of documents already referred to in the older epochs, like the inscriptions abroad, which now become very plentiful. Indeed, the rocks of the first cataract under the Empire became a veritable visitors' register of the officials and functionaries who, passing on some commission in Nubia, left a record of the errand, or merely name and titles, engraved on the rocks above the reach of the inundation (e. g., II, 675 ff.). Inscriptions of the

emperors are found in Nubia as far south as the island of Tombos, and mere cartouches with titles up to the fourth

cataract.

22. With the decline of Thebes in the Decadence (1150663 B. C.), and the transference of the seat of power to the North, the great mass of records of the royal houses was produced, and their monuments were erected, in the Delta, where almost the whole has perished forever, with the destruction of the exposed Delta cities, overwhelmed by invasion after invasion from abroad, and gradually engulfed by the rising soil as deposited from century to century by the inundation. The fortunes of the northern dynasties can therefore be traced only in the scanty monuments of Thebes, in which the Pharaohs no longer built largely, and at Memphis, where we have a series of dated stele recording Apis burials in the Serapeum. These are of great value from the Twenty-second to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. At Thebes the records of the restoration of royal mummies extend from the last generation of the Twentieth into the Twenty-second Dynasty (IV, 592 ff., 636 ff., 661 ff., 664 ff., 688 ff., 690 ff., 699 f.); and a series of dated Nile levels on the quay at Karnak continues from the Twenty-second to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (IV, 693 ff.). We have at Thebes also a few temple records from the priest-kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty (1090-945 B. C.), a series of decrees of Amon (IV, 614 ff., 650 ff., 669 ff.), and some not very important building records of the high priests of Amon, during the same period. The same is true in the Twentysecond Dynasty (945-755 B. C.), through the brief Twentythird and Twenty-fourth Dynasties (755-712 B. C.), and the Ethiopian period (Twenty-fifth Dynasty, 712-663 B. C.). At this point, fortunately, the scanty monuments of the Delta are supplemented by the historical stelæ erected by

the Ethiopians at Gebel Barkal (Napata). Among these, the narrative of his conquest of Egypt by Piankhi is one of the most remarkable documents of ancient Egypt (IV, 796-883).

23. The paucity of documents, so painfully evident during the Decadence, is even worse under the Restoration (Twenty-sixth Dynasty, 663-525 B. C.). Besides the great adoption stela of Psamtik I at Thebes (IV, 935 ff.), a few Serapeum stelæ, important for the chronology, a small number of statue inscriptions of noblemen of the time, and some miscellaneous stele of little importance, we possess almost nothing from the Restoration. Unhappily, the papyri, which are so plentiful during the Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Dynasties, are few and unimportant throughout the remainder of the Decadence and the whole of the Restoration. Fortunately, Herodotus, and the Greek historians after him, enter at this point with invaluable accounts of the history and civilization of the Restoration epoch; but these foreign sources do not fall within the province of these volumes.

24. Besides these contemporary native sources, we possess also a series of later native versions of important events in the history of the nation. These documents are either merely folk-tales, of course differing strikingly in form from the more formal contemporary records; or they are products of the later priesthoods, which, in the form of a tale, give an account of some earlier event, which they so interpret or so distort as to bring reputation, or even material gain, to their sanctuaries. Of the folk-tales we have three of importance: Papyrus Westcar, relating the prodigies attending the birth of the first three Fifth Dynasty kings; Papyrus Sallier I, narrating the cause of the war with the Hyksos; and Papyrus Harris 500, in which is told the story of the capture of

Joppa by one of Thutmose III's generals, named Thutiy. As tales these documents have no place in this series, although each is based on some actual historical incident, which may be obscurely discerned in the narrative. The priestly tales are likewise three in number: the Sehel inscription, recounting the gift of the Dodekaschoinos at the first cataract to Khnum by King Zoser of the Third Dynasty; the Sphinx Stela (II, 810 ff.), recording the accession of Thutmose IV to the kingship, because as prince he cleared the Sphinx of sand; and finally the Bentresh Stela, containing a tale in honor of one of the Theban Khonsus, by showing that he was carried to a distant Asiatic kingdom in order to heal its king's daughter, in the days of Ramses II (III, 429–47). The last two stories seemed of sufficient importance to be included here. It was with tales in common circulation like these that Herodotus' informants regaled him, and the narrative portions of Manetho's history were largely made up of just such stories, of which further examples from Ptolemaic times have survived in Demotic dress.

25. It will be seen that the great mass of the documents available are found in Upper Egypt, and but a scanty few in the Delta. This unfortunate fact makes all our knowledge one-sided, and the history of the Delta, the civilization of which must have risen at a very remote date, remains for the most part unknown to us. Our loss is here like that in Greek history, in which we know almost nothing of the great civilization in the powerful cities of Asia Minor, from which the culture of the early states in Greece drew so much.

26. The documents thus briefly surveyed have reached us, with very few exceptions, in a state of sad mutilation. This mutilation and gradual destruction are a ceaseless process, which, if not as rapid as formerly, nevertheless proceeds without cessation at the present day. In Egypt,