was drawn up in the time of Thothmes III., and contains the names of sixty-one of his ancestors. They are not arranged in any chronological order, but the tablet is of the highest historical importance, for it records the names of some of the rulers from the XIIIth to the XVIIth dynasties, and gives the names of those of the XIth dynasty more completely than any other list.

II. Annals of Egyptian Kings inscribed upon the walls of temples, obelisks, and buildings. The narrative of such inscriptions is very simple, and practically these records merely represent itineraries in which the names of conquered and tributary lands and people are given; incidentally facts of interest are noted down. As the day and month and regnal years of the king by whom these expeditions were undertaken are generally given, these inscriptions throw much light on history. The lists of tribute are also useful, for they show what the products of the various countries. were. The poetical version* of the history of the famous battle of Rameses II. against the Cheta by the poet Pen-ta-urt is a pleasant variety of historical narrative. The inscription on the stelef of Pianchi, the Ethiopian conqueror of Egypt, is decidedly remarkable for the minute details of his fights, the speeches made by himself and his conquered foes, and the mention of many facts which are not commonly noticed by Egyptian annalists. The vigour and poetical nature of the narrative are also very striking.

* See the notice of the official Egyptian account on page 354 f. + Preserved at Gizeh. See page 177.

For example, it is stated that when Piānchi had taken possession of the storehouses and treasury of Nimrod his foe, he went afterwards into the stables, and found that the horses there had been kept short of food. Bursting into a rage he turned to Nimrod and said, "By my life, by my darling Rā, who revives my nostrils with life, to have kept my horses hungry is more heinous in my sight than any other offence which thou hast committed against me." Mariette, Monuments Divers, pl. 3, 11. 65, 66.

III. Historical Stelæ and Papyri, which briefly relate in chronological order the various expeditions undertaken by the king for whom they were made. Egyptian kings occasionally caused summaries of their principal conquests and of the chief events of their reign to be drawn up; examples of these are (a) the stele of Thothmes III.,* and (b) the last section of the great Harris Papyrus, in which Rameses III. reviews all the good works which he has brought to a successful issue to the glory of the gods of Egypt and for the benefit of her inhabitants. This wonderful papyrus measures 135 feet by 17 inches, and was found in a box in the temple at Medînet Habû, built by Rameses III.; it is now in the British Museum.

IV. Decrees, Scarabs, Statues of Kings and Private Persons are fruitful sources of information about historical, religious, and chronological subjects.

V. Biblical notices about Egypt and allusions to events of Egyptian history.

VI. The Cuneiform Inscriptions. In 1887 a number of tablets+ inscribed in cuneiform were found at Tell el-Amarna. The inscriptions relate to a period of Egyptian history which falls in the fifteenth century B.C., and they are letters from the kings of Babylon, and cities of Mesopotamia and Phoenicia relating to marriages, offensive and defensive alliances, military matters, etc., etc., and reports on the rebellions and wars which took place at that time, addressed to Amenophis III. and to his son Chut-enåten or Amenophis IV. The Babylonian king who writes is called Kurigalzu. Thothmes III. had carried his victorious arms into Mesopotamia, and one of his successors, Amenophis III., delighted to go there and shoot the lions with which the country abounded. During one of these

hunting expeditions he fell in love with the lady (199 \\ §

* Preserved at Gizeh; see page 181.

+ See the description of the Gizeh Museum, pp. 186-189.

Thi (in cuneiform Ti-i-e), the daughter of

Iuȧa

attendants.

A

married her, and he brought her to Egypt, with another wife named Kilķipa (in cuneiform EGi-lu-khi-pa), accompanied by 317 of her It will be some time before these inscriptions are fully made out, but the examination of them has already been carried sufficiently far to show that they will throw most valuable light upon the social condition of Egypt and of the countries which were subject to her at that time. One of the tablets is written in the language of Mitani, and others are inscribed with cuneiform characters in a language which is at present unknown; and some of them have dockets in hieratic which state from what country they were brought. The discovery of these tablets shows that there must have been people at the court of Amenophis III. who understood the cuneiform characters, and that the officers in command over towns in Phoenicia subject to the rule of Egypt could, when occasion required, write their despatches in cuneiform. The greater part of these tablets are now in the Museums of London and Berlin, some are at the Gîzeh Museum, and some are in private hands.

The Assyrian kings Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal marched against Egypt; Tirhakah defeated Sennacherib at Eltekeh, but was defeated by Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib, who drove him back into Ethiopia. Esarhaddon's son, Assurbanipal, also attacked Tirhakah and defeated him. Thebes was captured, and Egypt was divided into twenty-two provinces, over some of which Assyrian viceroys were placed. A fragment of a Babylonian tablet states that Nebuchadnezzar II. marched into Egypt.

VII. The Greek and Roman writers upon Egypt are many; and of these the best known are Herodotus,

Manetho, and Diodorus Siculus. Herodotus devotes the whole of the second and the beginning of the third book of his work to a history of Egypt and the Egyptians, and his is the oldest Greek treatise on the subject known to us. In spite of the attacks made upon his work during the last few years, the evidence of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. which are being deciphered year after year shows that on the whole his work is trustworthy. A work more valuable than that of Herodotus is the Egyptian history of Manetho (still living in B.C. 271) of Sebennytus, who is said by Plutarch to have been a contemporary of Ptolemy I.; his work, however, was written during the reign of Ptolemy II. Philadelphus (B.C. 286-247). According to words put into his mouth, he was chief priest and scribe in one of the temples of Egypt, and he appears to have been perfectly acquainted with the ancient Egyptian language and literature. He had also had the benefit of a Greek education, and was therefore peculiarly fitted to draw up in Greek for Ptolemy Philadelphus a history of Egypt and her religion. The remains of the great Egyptian history of Manetho are preserved in the polemical treatise of Josephus against Apion, in which a series of passages of Egyptian history from the XVth to the XIXth dynasties is given, and in the list of the dynasties, together with the number of years of the reign of each king, given by Africanus and Eusebius on his authority. At the beginning of his work Manetho gives a list of gods and demi-gods who ruled over Egypt before Menes, the first human king of Egypt; the thirty dynasties known to us he divides into three sections:I-XI, XII-XIX, and XX-XXX. Diodorus Siculus, who visited Egypt B.C. 57, wrote a history of the country, its people and its religion, based chiefly upon the works of Herodotus and Hekatæus. He was not so able a writer nor so accurate an observer as Herodotus, and his work contains many blunders. Other important ancient writers

on Egypt are Strabo,* Chaeremon,† Josephus, Plutarch§

and Horapollo.||

According to Manetho, there reigned over Egypt before Menȧ, or Menes, the first mortal king of that country, a number of beings called Shesu Ḥeru, or "followers of Horus"; of their deeds and history nothing is known. Some have believed that during their rule Egypt was divided into two parts, each ruled by its own king; and others have thought that the whole of Upper and Lower Egypt was divided into a large series of small, independent principalities, which were united under one head in the person of Menes. There is, however, no support to be obtained from the inscriptions for either of these theories. The kings of Egypt following after the mythical period are divided into thirty dynasties. For the sake of convenience, Egyptian history is divided into three periods:-I, the Ancient Empire, which includes the first eleven dynasties; II, the Middle Empire, which includes the next nine dynasties (XIIth-XXth); and, III, the New Empire, which includes the remaining ten dynasties, one of which was of Persian kings. The rule of the Saïte kings was followed by that of the Persians, Ptolemies and Romans. The rule of the Arabs which began A.D. 641, ended A.D. 1517, when the country was conquered by the Turks; since this time Egypt has been nominally a pashalik of Turkey.

The date assigned to the first dynasty is variously given by different scholars: by Champollion-Figeac it is B.C. 5867, by Böckh 5702, by Bunsen 3623, by Lepsius 3892, by Lieblein 3893, by Mariette 5004, and by Brugsch 4400. As far as can be seen, there is much to be said in favour of that given by Brugsch, and his dates are adopted throughout in this book.