They were originally Asiatic hordes who had overrun the valley of the Nile, and held it in subjection for several centuries. At first they had carried desolation with them wherever they went. The temples of the Egyptian G.o.ds were destroyed and their priests ma.s.sacred. But before long Egyptian culture proved too strong for the invaders. The rude chief of a savage horde became transformed into an Egyptian Pharaoh, whose court resembled that of the ancient line of monarchs, and who surrounded himself with learned men. The cities and temples were restored and beautified, and art began to flourish once more. Except in one respect it became difficult to distinguish the Hyksos prince from his predecessors on the throne of Egypt. That one respect was religion. The supreme object of Hyksos worship continued to be Sutekh, the Baal of Western Asia, whose cult the foreigners had brought with them from their old homes. But even Sutekh was a.s.similated to Ra, the Sun-G.o.d of On, and the Hyksos Pharaohs felt no scruple in imitating the native kings and combining their own names with that of Ra. It was only the Egyptians who refused to admit the a.s.similation, and insisted on identifying Sutekh with Set the enemy of Horus.
At the outset all Egypt was compelled to submit to the Hyksos domination. Hyksos monuments have been found as far south as Gebelen and El-Kab, and the first Hyksos dynasty established its seat in Memphis, the old capital of the country. Gradually, however, the centre of Hyksos power retreated into the delta. Zoan or Tanis, the modern San, became the residence of the court: here the Hyksos kings were in close proximity to their kindred in Asia, and were, moreover, removed from the unmixed Egyptian population further south. From Zoan, "built"--or rather rebuilt--"seven years" after Hebron (Num. xiii. 22), they governed the valley of the Nile. Their rule was a.s.sisted by the mutual jealousies and quarrels of the native feudal princes who shared between them the land of Egypt. The foreigner kept his hold upon the country by means of the old feudal aristocracy.
Thebes, however, had never forgotten that it had been the birthplace and capital of the powerful Pharaohs of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties, of the mighty princes who had conquered the Soudan, and ruled with an iron hand over the feudal lords. The heirs of the Theban Pharaohs still survived as princes of Thebes, and behind the strong walls of El-Kab they began to think of independence. Apophis II. in his court at Zoan perceived the rising storm, and endeavoured to check it at its beginning. According to the story of a later day, he sent insulting messages to the prince of Thebes, and ordered him to worship Sutekh the Hyksos G.o.d. The prince defied his suzerain, and the war of independence began. It lasted for several generations, during which the Theban princes made themselves masters of Upper Egypt, and established a native dynasty of Pharaohs which reigned simultaneously with the Hyksos dynasty in the North.
Step by step the Hyksos stranger was pushed back to the north-eastern corner of the delta. At length Zoan itself fell into the hands of the Egyptians, and the Hyksos took refuge in the great fortress of Avaris on the extreme border of the kingdom. Here they were besieged by the Theban prince Ahmes, and eventually driven back to the Asia from which they had come. The eighteenth dynasty was founded, and Ahmes entered on that career of Asiatic conquest which converted Canaan into an Egyptian province. At first the war was one of revenge; but it soon became one of conquest, and the war of independence was followed by the rise of the Egyptian empire. Thothmes II., the grandson of Ahmes, led his forces as far as the Euphrates and the land of Aram-Naharaim. The territories thus overrun in a sort of military reconnaissance were conquered and annexed by his son Thothmes III., during his long reign of fifty-four years (March 20, B.C. 1503 to February 14, B.C. 1449). Canaan on both sides of the Jordan was made into a province, and governed much as India is to-day. Some of the cities were allowed still to retain their old line of princes, who were called upon to furnish tribute to the Egyptian treasury and recruits to the Egyptian army. From time to time they were visited by an Egyptian "Commissioner," and an Egyptian garrison kept watch upon their conduct. Sometimes an Egyptian Resident was appointed by the side of the native king; this was the case, for example, at Sidon and Hazor. Where, however, the city was of strategical or political importance it was incorporated into the Egyptian empire, and placed under the immediate control of an Egyptian governor, as at Megiddo, Gaza, Gebal, Gezer, and Tyre. Similarly Ziri-Basana, "the field of Bashan," was under the government of a single _khazan_ or "prefect." The troops, who also acted as police, were divided into various cla.s.ses.
There were the _tsabi yidati_ or "auxiliaries," the _tsabi saruti_ or "militia," the _Khabbati_ or "Beduin plunderers," and the _tsabi matsarti_ or "Egyptian soldiers of the garrison," as well as the _tsabi bitati_ or "house-guards," who were summoned in cases of emergency.
Among the auxiliaries were included the Serdani or Sardinians, while the Sute--the Sati or Sitti of the hieroglyphic texts--formed the larger portion of the Beduin ("Bashi-bazouks"), and the Egyptian forces were divided into the cavalry or rather charioteers, and the Misi (called Mas"u in the hieroglyphics) or infantry.
Fragments of the annals of Thothmes III. have been preserved on the shattered walls of his temple at Karnak. Here too we may read the lists of places he conquered in Palestine--the land of the Upper Lotan as it is termed--as well as in Northern Syria. Like the annals, the geographical lists have been compiled from memoranda made on the spot by the scribes who followed the army, and in some instances, at all events, it can be shown that they have been translated into Egyptian hieroglyphs from Babylonian cuneiform. The fact is an indication of the conquest that Asia was already beginning to make over her Egyptian conquerors.
But the annals themselves are a further and still more convincing proof of Asiatic influence. To cover the walls of a temple with the history of campaigns in a foreign land, and an account of the tribute brought to the Pharaoh, was wholly contrary to Egyptian ideas. From the Egyptian point of view the decoration of the sacred edifice should have been theological only. The only subjects represented on it, so custom and belief had ruled, ought to be the G.o.ds, and the stereotyped phrases describing their attributes, their deeds, and their festivals. To subst.i.tute for this the records of secular history was a.s.syrian and not Egyptian. Indeed the very conception of annalistic chronicling, in which the history of a reign was given briefly year by year and campaign by campaign, belonged to the kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates, not to that of the Nile. It was a new thing in Egypt, and flourished there only during the short period of Asiatic influence. The Egyptian cared comparatively little for history, and made use of papyrus when he wished to record it. Unfortunately for us the annals of Thothmes III. remain the solitary monument of Egyptian chronicling on stone.
The twenty-second year of his reign (B.C. 1481) was that in which the Egyptian Pharaoh made his first determined effort to subdue Canaan. Gaza was occupied without much difficulty, and in the following year, on the fifth day of the month Pakhons, he set out from it, and eleven days later encamped at Ihem. There he learned that the confederated Canaanitish army, under the command of the king of Kadesh on the Orontes, was awaiting his attack at Megiddo. Not only were the various nations of Palestine represented in it, but contingents had come from Naharaim on the banks of the Euphrates, as well as from the Gulf of Antioch. For a while Thothmes hesitated whether to march against them by the road which led through "Aluna to Taanach or by way of Zaft (perhaps Safed), whence he would have descended southward upon Megiddo. The arrival of his spies, however, determined him to take the first, and accordingly, after the officers had sworn that they would not leave their appointed posts in battle even to defend the person of the king, he started on his march, and on the nineteenth of the month pitched his tent at "Aluna. The way had been rough and impa.s.sable for chariots, so that the king had been forced to march on foot.
"Aluna must have been close to Megiddo, since the rear of the Egyptian forces was stationed there during the battle that followed, while the southern wing extended to Taanach and the northern wing to Megiddo. The advanced guard pushed into the plain below, and the royal tent was set up on the bank of the brook of Qana, an affluent of the Kishon. The decisive struggle took place on the twenty-first of the month. Thothmes rode in a chariot of polished bronze, and posted himself among the troops on the north-west side of Megiddo. The Canaanites were unable to resist the Egyptian charge. They fled into the city, leaving behind them their horses and their chariots plated with gold and silver, those who arrived after the gates of the town had been shut being drawn up over the walls by means of ropes. Had the Egyptians not stayed behind in order to plunder the enemy"s camp they would have entered Megiddo along with the fugitives. As it was, they were compelled to blockade the city, building a rampart round it of "fresh green trees," and the besieged were finally starved into a surrender.
In the captured camp had been found the son of the king of Megiddo, besides a large amount of booty, including chariots of silver and gold from Asi or Cyprus. Two suits of iron armour were also obtained, one belonging to the king of Kadesh, the other to the king of Megiddo. The seven tent-poles of the royal tent, plated with gold, also fell into the hands of the Egyptians. The catalogue of the spoil was written down on a leather roll which was deposited in the temple of Amon at Thebes, and in it were enumerated: 3401 prisoners and 83 hands belonging to the slain, 32 chariots plated with gold, 892 ordinary chariots, 2041 mares, 191 foals, 602 bows, and 200 suits of armour.
Before the campaign was ended the Egyptian army had penetrated far to the north and captured Inuam, south of Damascus, as well as Anugas or Nukha.s.se, and Harankal, to the north of the land of the Amorites. All these places seem to have belonged to the king of Kadesh, as his property was carried away out of them. When Thothmes returned to Thebes the quant.i.ty of spoil be brought back with him was immense. "Besides precious stones," golden bowls, Phoenician cups with double handles and the like, there were 97 swords, 1784 pounds of gold rings and 966 pounds of silver rings, which served as money, a statue with a head of gold, tables, chairs, and staves of cedar and ebony inlaid with gold, ivory and precious stones, a golden plough, the golden sceptre of the conquered prince, and richly embroidered stuffs. The fields of the vanquished province were further measured by the Egyptian surveyors, and the amount of taxation annually due from them was fixed. More than 208,000 measures of wheat were moreover carried off to Egypt from the plain of Megiddo. The Canaanitish power was completely broken, and Thothmes was now free to extend his empire further to the north.
Accordingly in the following year (B.C. 1479) we find him receiving tribute from the a.s.syrian king. This consisted of leather bracelets, various kinds of wood, and chariots. It was probably at this time that Carchemish on the Euphrates was taken, the city being stormed from the riverside. Five years later the first part of the annals was engraved on the wall of the new temple of Amon at Karnak, and it concluded with an account of the campaign of the year. This had been undertaken in Northern Syria, and had resulted in the capture of Uarrt and Tunip, now Tennib, to the north-west of Aleppo. No less than one hundred pounds of silver and as many of gold were taken from Tunip, as well as lapis-lazuli from Babylonia, and malachite from the Sinaitic peninsula, together with vessels of iron and bronze. Some ships also were captured, laden with slaves, bronze, lead, white gold, and other products of the Greek seas. On the march home the Egyptian army took possession of Arvad, and seized its rich stores of wheat and wine. "Then the soldiers caroused and anointed themselves with oil as they used to do on feast days in the land of Egypt."
The next year Kadesh on the Orontes, near the Lake of Horns, was attacked and destroyed, its trees were cut down and its corn carried away. From Kadesh Thothmes proceeded to the land of Phoenicia, and took the cities of Zemar (now Sumra) and Arvad. The heirs of four of the conquered princes were carried as hostages to Egypt, "so that when one of these kings should die, then the Pharaoh should take his son and put him in his stead."
In B.C. 1472 the land of the Amorites was reduced, or rather that part of it which was known as Takhis, the Thahash of Genesis xxii. 24, on the sh.o.r.es of the Lake of Merna, in which we should probably see the Lake of Homs. Nearly 500 prisoners were led to Egypt. The Syrian princes now came to offer their gifts to the conqueror, bringing with them, among other things, more than 760 pounds of silver, 19 chariots covered with silver ornaments, and 41 leathern collars covered with bronze scales. At the same time the whole country was thoroughly organized under the new Egyptian administration. Military roads were constructed and provided with posting-houses, at each of which relays of horses were kept in readiness, as well as "the necessary provision of bread of various sorts, oil, balsam, wine, honey, and fruits." The quarries of the Lebanon were further required to furnish the Pharaoh with limestone for his buildings in Egypt and elsewhere.
Two years later Thothmes was again in Syria. He made his way as far as the Euphrates, and there on the eastern bank erected a stele by the side of one which his father Thothmes II. had already set up. The stele was an imperial boundary-stone marking the frontier of the Egyptian empire.
It was just such another stele that Hadad-ezer of Zobah was intending to restore in the same place when he was met and defeated by David (2 Sam.
viii. 3).
The Pharaoh now took ship and descended the Euphrates, "conquering the towns and ploughing up the fields of the king of Naharaim." He then re-ascended the stream to the city of Ni, where he placed another stele, in proof that the boundary of Egypt had been extended thus far.
Elephants still existed in the neighbourhood, as they continued to do four and a half centuries later in the time of the a.s.syrian king Tiglath-pileser I. Thothmes amused himself by hunting them, and no less than 120 were slain.
On his way home the tribute and "yearly tax" of the inhabitants of the Lebanon was brought to him, and the corvee-work annually required from them was also fixed. Thothmes indulged his taste for natural history by receiving as part of the tribute various birds which were peculiar to Syria, or at all events were unknown in Egypt, and which, we are told, "were dearer to the king than anything else." He had already established zoological and botanical gardens in Thebes, and the strange animals and plants which his campaigns furnished for them were depicted on the walls of one of the chambers in the temple he built at Karnak.
Before his return to Egypt he received the tribute of "the king of Sangar," or Shinar, in Mesopotamia, and "of the land of Khata the greater." The first consisted for the most part of lapis-lazuli, real and artificial, of which the most prized was "the lapis-lazuli of Babylon." Among the gifts was "a ram"s head of real lapis-lazuli, 15 pounds in weight." The land of the Hitt.i.tes, "the greater," so called to distinguish it from the lesser Hitt.i.te land in the south of Palestine, sent 8 rings of silver, 400 pounds in weight, besides "a great piece of crystal."
The following year Thothmes marched through "the land of Zahi," the "dry land" of the Phoenician coast, to Northern Syria, where he punished the king of Anugas or Nukha.s.se, who had shown symptoms of rebellion. Large quant.i.ties of gold and bronze were carried off, as well as 15 chariots, plated with gold and silver, 6 iron tent-poles studded with precious stones, and 70 a.s.ses. Lead and various kinds of wood and stone, together with 608 jars of Lebanon wine, 2080 jars of oil, and 690 jars of balsam, were also received from Southern Syria, and posting-houses were established along the roads of the land of Zahi. A fleet of Phoenician merchant vessels was next sent to Egypt laden with logs of wood from the forests of Palestine and the Lebanon for the buildings of the king. At the same time, "the king of Cyprus," which now was an Egyptian possession, forwarded his tribute to the Pharaoh, consisting of 108 bricks of copper 2040 pounds in weight, 5 bricks of lead nearly 29,000 pounds in weight, 110 pounds of lapis-lazuli, an elephant"s tusk, and other objects of value.
The next year (B.C. 1468) there was a campaign against the king of Naharaim, who had collected his soldiers and horses "from the extreme ends of the world." But the Mesopotamian army was utterly defeated. Its booty fell into the hands of the Egyptians, who, however, took only ten prisoners, which looks as if, after all, the battle was not on a very large scale.
In B.C. 1464 Thothmes was again in Northern Syria. Among the booty acquired during the expedition were "bowls with goats" heads on them, and one with a lion"s head, the work of the land of Zahi." Horses, a.s.ses and oxen, 522 slaves, 156 jars of wine, 1752 jars of b.u.t.ter, 5 elephants" tusks, 2822 pounds of gold besides copper and lead, were among the spoils of the campaign. The annual tribute was only received from Cyprus, consisting this time of copper and mares, as well as from Aripakh, a district in the Taurus.
The next year the Pharaoh led his troops against some country, the name of which is lost, in "the land of the hostile Shasu" or Beduin. The plunder which was carried off from it shows that it was somewhere in Syria, probably in the region of the Lebanon. Gold and silver, a silver double-handled cup with a bull"s head, iron, wine, balsam, oil, b.u.t.ter and honey, were among the spoils of the war. Tribute arrived also from "the king of the greater Hitt.i.te land," which included a number of negro slaves.
Revolt, however, now broke out in the north. Tunip rebelled, as did also the king of Kadesh, who built a "new" fortress to protect his city from attack. Thothmes at once marched against them by the road along "the coast," which led him through the country of the Fenkhu or Phoenicians.
First he fell upon the towns of Alkana and utterly destroyed them, and then poured his troops into the neighbouring land of Tunip. The city of Tunip was taken and burnt, its crops were trodden under-foot, its trees cut down, and its inhabitants carried into slavery. Then came the turn of Kadesh. The "new" fortress fell at the first a.s.sault, and the whole country was compelled to submit.
The king of a.s.syria again sent presents to the Pharaoh which the Egyptian court regarded in the light of tribute. They consisted chiefly of large blocks of "real lapis-lazuli" as well as "lapis-lazuli of Babylon." More valuable gifts came from the subject princes of Syria.
Foremost among these was "a king"s daughter all glorious with [a vesture of] gold." Then there were four chariots plated with gold and six chariots of gold, iron armour inlaid with gold, a jug of silver, a golden helmet inlaid with lapis-lazuli, wine, honey and balsam, ivory and various kinds of wood, wheat in such quant.i.ties that it could not be measured, and the sixty-five slaves who had to be furnished each year as part of the annual tax.
The annals of the next two years are in too mutilated a condition to yield much information. Moreover, the campaigns carried on in them were mainly in the Soudan. In B.C. 1461 the record closes. It was in that year that the account of the Pharaoh"s victories "which he had gained from the 23rd until the (4)2nd year" were engraved upon the wall of the temple. (The inscription has "32nd year," but as the wars extended beyond the 40th year of the king"s reign this must be a sculptor"s error.) And the chronicle concludes with the brief but expressive words, "Thus hath he done: may he live for ever!"
Thothmes, indeed, did not live for ever, but he survived the completion of his temple fourteen years. His death was followed by the revolt of Northern Syria, and the first achievement of his son and successor, Amenophis II., was its suppression. Ni and Ugarit, the centres of disaffection, were captured and punished, and among the prisoners from Ugarit were 640 "Canaanite" merchants with their slaves. The name of Canaanite had thus already acquired that secondary meaning of "merchant"
which we find in the Old Testament (Is. xxiii. 8; Ezek. xvii. 4). It is a significant proof of the commercial activity and trading establishments of the Canaanite race throughout the civilized world.
Even a cuneiform tablet from Kappadokia, which is probably of the same age as the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, gives us the name of Kinanim "the Canaanite" as that of a witness to a deed. It was not always, however, that the Canaanites were so honourably distinguished. At times the name was equivalent to that of "slave" rather than of "merchant," as in a papyrus [Anast. 4, 16, 2.] where mention is made of Kan"amu or "Canaanite slaves from Khal." So too in another papyrus we hear of a slave called Saruraz the son of Naqati, whose mother was Kadi from the land of Arvad. The Egyptian wars in Palestine must necessarily have resulted in the enslavement of many of its inhabitants, and, as we have seen, a certain number of young slaves formed part of the annual tax levied upon Syria.
The successors of Thothmes III. extended the Egyptian empire far to the south in the Soudan. But its Asiatic limits had already been reached.
Palestine, along with Phoenicia, the land of the Amorites and the country east of the Jordan, was const.i.tuted into an Egyptian province and kept strictly under Egyptian control. Further north the connection with the imperial government was looser. There were Egyptian fortresses and garrisons here and there, and certain important towns like Tunip near Aleppo and Qatna on the Khabur were placed under Egyptian prefects.
But elsewhere the conquered populations were allowed to remain under their native kings. In some instances, as, for example, in Anugas or Nukha.s.se, the kings were little more than satraps of the Pharaoh, but in other instances, like Alasiya, north of Hamath, they resembled the rulers of the protected states in modern India. In fact, the king of Alasiya calls the Pharaoh his "brother," and except for the obligation of paying tribute was practically an independent sovereign.
The Egyptian dominion was acknowledged as far north as Mount Ama.n.u.s.
Carchemish, soon to become a Hitt.i.te stronghold, was in Egyptian hands, and the Hitt.i.tes themselves had not yet emerged from the fortresses of the Taurus. Their territory was still confined to Kataonia and Armenia Minor between Melitene and the Saros, and they courted the favour of the Egyptian monarch by sending him gifts. Thothmes would have refused to believe that before many years were over they would wrest Northern Syria from his successors, and contend on equal terms with the Egyptian Pharaoh.
The Egyptian possessions on the east bank of Euphrates lay along the course of the Khabur, towards the oasis of Singar or Shinar. North of the Belikh came the powerful kingdom of Mitanni, Aram-Naharaim as it is called in the Old Testament, which was never subdued by the Egyptian arms, and whose royal family intermarried with the successors of Thothmes. Mitanni, the capital, stood nearly opposite Carchemish, which thus protected the Egyptian frontier on the east.
Southward of the Belikh the frontier was formed by the desert. Syria, Bashan, Ammon, and Moab were all included in the Pharaoh"s empire. But there it came to an end. Mount Seir was never conquered by the Egyptians. The "city" of Edom appears in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets as a foreign state whose inhabitants wage war against the Egyptian territory. The conquest of the Edomites in their mountain fastnesses would have been a matter of difficulty, nor would anything have been gained by it. Edom was rich neither agriculturally nor commercially; it was, in fact, a land of barren mountains, and the trade which afterwards pa.s.sed through the Arabah to Elath and Ezion-geber in the Gulf of Aqabah was already secured to the Egyptians through their possession of the Gulf of Suez. The first and last of the Pharaohs, so far as we know, who ventured on a campaign against the wild tribes of Mount Seir, was Ramses III. of the twentieth dynasty, and his campaign was merely a punitive one. No attempt to incorporate the "Red Land" into his dominions was ever made by an Egyptian king.
The Sinaitic peninsula, the province of Mafkat or "Malachite," as it was called, had been in the possession of the Egyptians since the time of Zosir of the third dynasty, and it continued to be regarded as part of the Egyptian kingdom up to the age of the Ptolemies. The earliest of Egyptian rock-sculptures is engraved in the peninsula, and represents Snefru, the founder of the fourth dynasty, slaughtering the Beduin who inhabited it. Its possession was valued on account of its mines of copper and malachite. These were worked by the Egyptian kings with the help of convict labour. Garrisons were established to protect them and the roads which led to them, colonies of officials grew up at their side, and temples were built dedicated to the deities of Egypt. Even as late as the reign of Ramses III. the amount of minerals produced by the mines was enormous. They existed for the most part on the western side of the peninsula, opposite the Egyptian coast; but Ramses III. also opened copper mines in the land of "Ataka further east, and the name of the G.o.ddess Hathor in hieroglyphics has been found by Dr. Friedmann on the sh.o.r.es of Midian.
Vanquished Syria was made to contribute to the endowments of the Egyptian temples. Thus the temple of Amon at Thebes was endowed by Thothmes III. with the revenues of the three cities Anugas, Inu"am, and Harankal; while Seti I., the father of Ramses II., bestowed upon it "all the silver, gold, lapis-lazuli, malachite, and precious stones which he carried off from the humbled land of Syria." Temples of the Egyptian G.o.ds, as well as towns, were built in Syria itself; Meneptah founded a city in the land of the Amorites; Ramses III. erected a temple to Amon in "the land of Canaan, great as the horizon of heaven above, to which the people of Syria come with their gifts"; and hieroglyphic inscriptions lately discovered at Gaza show that another temple had been built there by Amenophis II. to the G.o.ddess Mut.
Amenophis had suppressed the rebellion in Northern Syria with little trouble. Seven Amorite kings were carried prisoners to Egypt from the land of Takhis, and taken up the river as far as Thebes. There six of them were hung outside the walls of the city, as the body of Saul was hung by the Philistines outside the walls of Beth-shan, while the seventh was conveyed to Napata in Ethiopia, and there punished in the same way in order to impress a lesson of obedience upon the negroes of the Soudan.
Amenophis II. was succeeded by Thothmes IV., who was called upon to face a new enemy, the Hitt.i.tes. It was at the commencement of his reign that they first began to descend from their mountain homes, and the frontier city of Tunip had to bear the brunt of the attack. It was probably in order to strengthen himself against these formidable foes that the Pharaoh married the daughter of the king of Mitanni, who changed her name to Mut-em-ua. It was the beginning of those inter-marriages with the princes of Asia which led to the Asiatized court and religion of Amenophis IV., and finally to the overthrow of the eighteenth dynasty.
The son of Mut-em-ua was Amenophis III., whose long reign of thirty-seven years was as brilliant and successful as that of Thothmes III. At Soleb between the second and third cataracts he built a temple to his own deified self, and engraved upon its columns the names of his va.s.sal states. Among them are Tunip and Kadesh, Carchemish and Apphadana on the Khabur. Sangar, a.s.syria, Naharaim, and the Hitt.i.tes also appear among them, but this must be on the strength of the tribute or presents which had been received from them. The Pharaoh filled his harim with Asiatic princesses. His queen Teie, who exercised an important influence upon both religion and politics, came from Asia, and among his wives were the sisters and daughters of the kings of Babylonia and Mitanni, while one of his own daughters was married to Burna-buryas the Babylonian sovereign. His marriage with Gilu-khipa, the daughter of Sutarna, king of Aram-Naharaim, was celebrated on a scarab, where it is further related that she was accompanied to Egypt by three hundred and seventeen "maids of honour." Besides allying himself in marriage to the royal houses of Asia, Amenophis III. pa.s.sed a good deal of his time in Syria and Mesopotamia, amusing himself with hunting lions. During the first ten years of his reign he boasts of having killed no less than one hundred and two of them. It was in the last of these years that he married queen Teie, who is said on scarabs to have been the daughter of "Yua and Tua." Possibly these are contracted forms of Tusratta and Yuni, who were at the time king and queen of Mitanni. But if so, it is curious that no royal t.i.tles are given to her parents; moreover, the author of the scarabs has made Yua the father of the queen and Tua her mother.
Tuya is the name of an Amorite in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, while from another of them it would seem as if Teie had been the daughter of the Babylonian king. One of the daughters of Tusratta, Tadu-khipa, was indeed married to Amenophis, but she did not rank as chief queen. In the reign of Meneptah of the nineteenth dynasty the vizier was a native of Bashan, Ben-Mazana by name, whose father was called Yu the elder. Yua may therefore be a word of Amorite origin; and a connection has been suggested between it and the Hebrew Yahveh. This, however, though possible, cannot be proved.
When Amenophis III. died his son Amenophis IV. seems to have been still a minor. At all events the queen-mother Teie became all-powerful in the government of the state. Her son, the new Pharaoh, had been brought up in the religious beliefs of his mother, and had inherited the ideas and tendencies of his Asiatic forefathers. A plaster-cast of his face, taken immediately after death, was discovered by Prof. Petrie at Tel el-Amarna, and it is the face of a refined and thoughtful theorist, of a philosopher rather than of a king, earnest in his convictions almost to fanaticism.
Amenophis IV. undertook no less a task than that of reforming the State religion of Egypt. For many centuries the religion of the priests and scribes had been inclining to pantheism. Inside the temples there had been an esoteric teaching, that the various deities of Egypt were but manifestations of the one supreme G.o.d. But it had hardly pa.s.sed outside them. With the accession of Amenophis IV. to the throne came a change.
The young king boldly rejected the religion of which he was officially the head, and professed himself a worshipper of the one G.o.d whose visible semblance was the solar disk. Alone of the deities of Egypt Ra, the ancient Sun-G.o.d of Heliopolis, was acknowledged to be the representative of the true G.o.d. It was the Baal-worship of Syria, modified by the philosophic conceptions of Egypt. The Aten-Ra of the "heretic" Pharaoh was an Asiatic Baal, but unlike the Baal of Canaan he stood alone; there were no other Baals, no Baalim, by the side of him.
Amenophis was not content with preaching and encouraging the new faith; he sought to force it upon his subjects. The other G.o.ds of Egypt were proscribed, and the name and head of Amon, the patron G.o.d of Thebes, to whom his ancestors had ascribed their power and victories, were erased from the monuments wherever they occurred. Even his own father"s name was not spared, and the emissaries of the king, from one end of the country to the other, defaced that portion of it which contained the name of the G.o.d. His own name was next changed, and Amenophis IV. became Khu-n-Aten, "the splendour of the solar disk."
Khu-n-Aten"s attempt to overthrow the ancient faith of Egypt was naturally resisted by the powerful priesthood of Thebes. A religious war was declared for the first time, so far as we know, in the history of mankind. On the one side a fierce persecution was directed against the adherents of the old creed; on the other side every effort was made to impede and defeat the Pharaoh. His position grew daily more insecure, and at last he turned his back on the capital of his fathers, and built himself a new city far away to the north. The priests of Amon had thus far triumphed; the old idolatrous worship was carried on once more in the great temple of Karnak, though its official head was absent, and Khu-n-Aten with his archives and his court had fled to a safer home.
Upper Egypt was left to its worship of Amon and Min, while the king established himself nearer his Canaanite possessions.
Here on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minyeh and Siut, the new capital was founded on a strip of land protected from attack by a semi-amphitheatre of cliffs. The city, with its palaces and gardens, extended nearly two miles in length along the river bank. In its midst rose the temple of the new G.o.d of Egypt, and hard by the palace of the king. Both were brilliant with painting and sculpture, and inlaid work in precious stones and gold. Even the floors were frescoed, while the walls and columns were enamelled or adorned with the most costly materials that the Egyptian world could produce. Here and there were statues of alabaster, of bronze or of gold, some of them almost Greek in form and design. Along with the reform in religion there had gone a reform in art. The old conventionalized art of Egypt was abandoned, and a new art had been introduced which aimed at imitating nature with realistic fidelity.
The mounds which mark the site of Khu-n-Aten"s city are now known as Tel el-Amarna. It had a brief but brilliant existence of about thirty years.
Then the enemies of the Pharaoh and his work of reform finally prevailed, and his city with its temple and palaces was levelled to the ground. It is from among its ruins that the wondering fellah and explorer of to-day exhume the gorgeous relics of its past.
But among these relics none have proved more precious than the clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters, which have revolutionized our conceptions of the ancient East. They were preserved in the Foreign Office of the day. This formed part of the public buildings connected with the palace, and the bricks of which it was built were stamped with an inscription describing its character. Many of the tablets had been brought from the archive chamber of Thebes, but the greater part of the collection belongs to the reign of Khu-n-Aten himself. It consists almost entirely of official correspondence; of letters from the kings of Babylonia and a.s.syria, of Mesopotamia and Kappadokia, and of despatches from the Egyptian governors and va.s.sal-princes in Syria and Palestine.
They furnish us with a living and unexpected picture of Canaan about 1400 B.C.
Fragments of dictionaries for the use of the scribes have also been recovered from the _debris_ of the building, as well as the seal of a servant of Samas-akh-iddin who looked after the cuneiform correspondence. Like several of the Canaanitish governors, he bore a Babylonian name. Even the brother of Amenophis III., who had been made king of Nukha.s.se, had received the Babylonian name of Rimmon-nirari. No stronger proof could be found of the extent and strength of Babylonian influence in the West.