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whose father, the third high-priest of that name, had been murdered, fled into Egypt, and rose into high favour with the king and Cleopatra his queen. The high-priesthood of the temple of Jerusalem, which belonged of right to his family, having passed from it to the family of the Maccabees, by the nomination of Jonathan to this office (B.c. 153), Onias used his influence with the court to procure the establishment of a temple and ritual in Egypt which should detach the Jews who lived there from their connection with the temple at Jerusalem. The king complied with the request. To reconcile the Egyptian Jews to a second temple, Onias alleged Isa. xix. 18, 19. He chose for the purpose a ruined temple of Bubastis, at Leontopolis, in the Heliopolitan nome, one hundred and fifty stadia from Memphis, which place he converted into a sort of miniature Jerusalem (Joseph. De Bell. Jud. i. 1), erecting an altar in imitation of that in the temple, and constituting himself high-priest. The king granted a tract of land around the temple for the maintenance of the worship, and it remained in exist ence till destroyed by Vespasian (Joseph. Antiq. xiii.3; xx. 9; De Bell. Jud. vii. 11). The district in which this temple stood appears to have been, after Alexandria, the chief seat of the Jews in Egypt, and which from the name of its founder was called 'Ovíov xúpa (Joseph. Antiq. xiv. 8; Helon's Pilgrim. p. 328).

2 Kings xvii. we find that in the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah (B.c. 730) Hoshea king of Israel desisted from paying his usual tribute to the king of Assyria, and courted the alliance of So, king of Egypt, who must have been a very powerful monarch to have been thought able to give assistance in opposition to Assyria. Against this mere human resource the prophet Isaiah (xxxi.) warmly protested, declaring its utter inefficiency, and striving to lead his countrymen to the practice of that righteousness and piety by neglecting which they had been forsaken of God. Upon this act of king Hoshea, however, the Assyrians overran Samaria and carried (2 Kings xvii. 6) Israel away into Assyria. In the reign of Hezekiah (B.c. 726) it appears (2 Kings xviii. 21) that the kingdom of Judah still trusted upon the staff of this bruised reed, even Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt unto all that trust on him.' In the last year of the reign of Josiah (B.c. 609) Egypt seems to have attempted to increase its influence in Palestine, when Pharaoh-Nechoh (2 Kings xxiii. 29) 'went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates, and Josiah going against him was slain in battle. His successor, Jehoahaz, was dethroned after a brief reign of three months, and imprisoned at Riblah by the Egyptian monarch, who imposed on the country a heavy tribute. Pharaoh-Nechoh then made his elder brother Eliakim king, having changed his name to Jehoiakim. Jehoahaz afterwards died in Egypt. But the Egyptian influence over Judah soon ended; for in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (B.c. 604) Nebuchadnezzar king of Ba-The earliest history,' says Winer, (Bib. Realbylon marched against (Jer. xlvi., 2 Kings xxiv.) Judæa and its allies, defeated Pharaoh-Nechoh, and retook from the Egyptians Arabia Petræa and all that belonged to them between the Euphrates and the Nile. Zedekiah, the next king of Judah, rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar, made an alliance with Pharaoh-Hophra (Jer. xliv.); and when Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, on the march of the Egyptian army, the Chaldees raised the siege (Jer. xxxvii. 5) and withdrew the army. But this was the last time that the Egyptian power was able to serve the Jews. The Assyrian party in the state, indeed, was in the minority, though assisted by the influence of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Ezek. xxix., Jer. xxv.): yet it predominated; the Jews were carried captive to Babylon, and in less than a century afterwards Egypt was made a province of the same empire.

After the time of the exile the Egyptian Ptolemies were for a long while (from B.C. 301 to about 180) masters of Palestine, and during this period Egypt became as of old a place of refuge to the Jews, to whom many favours and privileges were conceded. This shelter seems not to have been for ages withdrawn (Matt. ii. 13). Yet it cannot be said that the Jews were held in esteem by the Egyptians (Philo, c. Apion. ii. 521). Indeed it was from an Egyptian, Manetho (B.C. 300), that the most defamatory misrepresentations of Jewish history were given to the world; and, in the days of Augustus, Chæremon took special pains to make the Jewish people appear despicable (Joseph. c. Apion. i. 32; comp. Creuzer, Com. Herod. i. 270).

p.

In the reign of Ptolemy Philometor, Onias,

If, instead of taking the sacred volume for our guide, we consult profane authors, only a few general conclusions can be given with any degree of historical truth and well-grounded confidence.

wörterb. in loc.) of Egypt is altogether legen dary till we come to the age of Sesostris. With this monarch, who was also named Rameses, begins the half-mythical half-historical period of great revolutions and august edifices (Heeren, Ideen), and lasts till the time of Psammeticus, about 700 years before Christ. Then, and not before, cre dible history begins. Originally several sacerdotal governments appear to have co-existed, among which that of Memphis was, though not the oldest, yet the most influential. Then Lower Egypt was invaded by certain nomade hordes from the east, who spread as far as Memphis, of which city they became masters, and founded a dynasty of shepherd kings (Hyksos). The states of Upper Egypt succeeded in driving these foreigners out of the land; that of Diospolis gained the ascendancy, whose king was the celebrated Sesostris-probably B.C. 1500-1400. In the eighth century before Christ the Ethiopians invaded Upper Egypt, and ruled there with mildness and wisdom, whilst two other dynasties, a Saitic and a Tanatic, flourished in Lower Egypt. A civil war converted Egypt into a state under twelve princes. Psammeticus, one of these twelve, supported by foreign mercenaries, succeeded in making himself sole monarch, and opened to strangers the hitherto closed country. The history now becomes clear. From 526 before our Lord Egypt became a Persian province, fell (B.c. 332) into the hands of Alexander the Great, and after his death (B.c. 323) the dynasty of the Ptolemies established itself, which (A.U.c. 723) came to a termination at the battle of Actium."

The ascertained correspondencies in respect of monarchs found alike in sacred and profane his

On few historical points have more various or conflicting opinions been held than respecting the Hyksos or shepherd kings. Who were they? When did they rule? When were they expelled? Were they the same as the Israelites? are questions which have received at the hands even of profoundly learned men very different answers. Nor in so debated a case should we here venture an opinion did we not feel that the view we take has an important bearing on the origin of some part of the religion of the Egyptians.

tory are not numerous. The following monarchs | the Euphrates westward of the most powerful and have been identified (Sharpe's Early Egypt, p. 26), (comparatively) most civilized people then found Shishak (2 Chron. xii.) with Sesostris (B.C. 983); in Western Asia, who in their progress subdued or Pharaoh-Nechoh (2 Kings xxiii.) with Necho II. expelled in the countries through which they not (B.C. 616); and Pharaoh-Hophra (Jer. xliv.) with improbably were urged by a pressure from other Apries (B.c. 594). advancing tribes, nation and tribe one after another, driving them down toward the sea, and compelling those who dwelt along the shores of the Mediterranean, to seek shelter and safety in the islands of that sea and other distant parts. To conquerors and aggressors of the character of these shepherd hordes Egypt would offer special attractions. They continued sweeping onwards, and at last entered and conquered Egypt, establishing there a new dynasty, which was hateful, because foreign, and because of a lower degree of culture than the Egyptians themselves had reached. Nor would these shepherds be less odious because, coming from the east and immediately from the deserts of Arabia, they came from the quarter whence the mild and cultivated Egyptians had long been wont to suffer from the predatory incursions of the wild nomade tribes (Die Phönizier, von Movers, Bonn, 1841; Zur Geschichte der Israeliten, von E. Bertheau, Gottingen, 1842), between whom and the agricultural natives of the country different pursuits, habits, and tastes would naturally engender animosities. This feeling of alienation exists at the present day. The Arab is still a depressed and despised being in Egypt. Bowring, in his valuable Report on the country, remarks, 'It is scarcely allowable even to send a message to a person in authority by an Arab servant.' (p. 7.)

Manetho makes his fifteenth dynasty to consist of the Phoenician shepherd kings. In the reign of King Timeus,' he says, 'there came up from the east men of an ignoble race, who had the confidence to invade our country, and easily subdued it without a battle, burning the cities, demolishing the temples, slaying the men, and reducing the women and children to slavery.' They made Salatis, one of themselves, king: he reigned at Memphis, and made the upper and lower region tributary. Of his seventeenth dynasty also were forty-three shepherd kings, called Hycsos, who reigned, perhaps contemporaneously with the preceding, at Diospolis. In the eighteenth dynasty of Diospolis a rising took place, and the shepherd kings were expelled out of the other parts of Egypt into the district of Abaris, which they fortified. Amosis besieged and compelled them to capitulate; on which they left Egypt, in number 210,000, and marched through the desert towards Syria, and built the city of Jerusalem.' The last few words seem to render it probable that Manetho confounded the Hyksos with the Israelites, which is the less surprising since the Hyksos were, as he rightly calls them, Phoenicians, of the ancient, if not original, race which inhabited Phoenicia, or Palestine (taken in its widest sense), before the conquest of the country by the Hebrews. Chronological considerations seem to refer the time of the dominion of the Hyksos to the period of Abraham and Joseph (say from B.c. 2000 to 1600). When Joseph went into the land he found the name of shepherd odious-which agrees with the hypothesis that places the irruption of the shepherd kings anterior to his time; and possibly both the ease with which he rose to power, and the fact that Jacob turned towards Egypt for a supply of food when urged by want, may be readily accounted for, on the supposition that a kindred race held dominion in the land, which, though hated by the people, as being foreign in its origin and oppressive in its character, would not be indisposed to show favour to members of the great Shemitic family to which they themselves belonged. The irruption into Egypt, and the conquest of the country on the part of the Phoenician shepherds, seems to have been a consequence of the general pressure of population, from the northeast towards the south-west, which led the nomade Shemitic tribes first to overcome the original inhabitants of Palestine, and, continuing in the same line of advance, then to enter and subdue Egypt. The invasion of the Hyksos is indeed to be regarded as one result of the movement from

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The expulsion of the shepherds was strangely confounded by Josephus or Manetho with the Exodus of the Israelites. The shepherds were conquerors, rulers, and oppressors; the Israelites guests and slaves. The shepherds were expelled, the Israelites were delivered. Josephus (c. Apion. i.), however, gives from Manetho a narrative of an event which wears a much nearer likeness to the Exodus, in the case of a King Amenophis, who was ordered by the gods to cleanse Egypt of a multitude of lepers and other unclean persons; many of whom were drowned, and others sent in great numbers to work in the quarries which are on the east side of the Nile. After a time they were permitted to establish themselves in Avaris, which had been abandoned by the shepherds. They then elected a ruler, Osarsiph, whose name was afterwards changed to that of Moses. This chief 'made this law for them, that they should not worship the Egyptian gods, but should kill the animals held sacred by the Egyptians; nor were they to have intercourse with any but such as were members of their own body-in all respects aiming to oppose the customs and influence of the nations. These, sending for aid to the shepherds who had settled in Jerusalem, and having received troops to the number of 200,000 men, were met by Amenophis, the king, with a yet larger force, but not attacked. On a subsequent occasion, however, they were assailed by the Egyptians, beaten, and driven to the confines of Syria. Lysimachus gives an account not dissimilar to this, adding, that under the leadership of Moses these mixed hordes settled in Judæa (Cory's Ancient Fragments). The account which Diodorus gives of the migration of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine is

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of a similar tenor. The deviations from the sacred narrative may be easily accounted for by; Egyptian ignorance, vanity, and pride. Wathen, following his own chronology, refers the great works existing in Egypt to three periods, separated by intervals of several centuries. The first includes the two great dynasties of Theban princes who governed Egypt during her "most high and palmy state," when Thebes sent forth her armies to distant conquests. In the second period is comprised the erection of the pyramids. The third includes the reigns of the Ptolemies and earlier Cæsars, under whom Egyptian architecture flourished in a second youth, and almost attained its original splendour. On the chronology, however, of the fine arts in Egypt, as well as on so many other points, different, not to say opposite, opinions are held; for instance, the erection of the pyramids, which Wathen thus brings down into his second period, others refer back to the early dawn of its history. This is not the place to state, much less discuss, the diversities which present themselves to the student; our purpose will be answered by some general details as to the extent and character of the sublime creations of art in Egypt-of that wonderful country, the most wonderful monuments.

In regard to style, that remained essentially the same, in principles and character, from its first appearance (in the seventeenth century before our era-Wathen) to its final downfall, on the introduction of Christianity; though ornamental members were in later times modified, elaborated, and improved, and some entirely new added. Many of its peculiarities may have been borrowed from large architectural excavations. One of the most striking peculiarities of the style is the pyramidal character of the ascending lines. The type of the architecture was the primitive dwelling formed of reeds, which abounded on the banks of the Nile. In one of the orders of the Pharaonic

276.

columns, the original post of reeds may be said to have been translated into stone. If the constructions were of any great height, their stability, as being originally built of reeds, would, it is evident, require them to incline one to the other, sloping inwards, thus forming the pyramidal outline to which reference has been made. The plan of the Egyptian temple appears to have

originated in the practice of extending the structure by successive additions till the original form became the mere nucleus of the whole. First, a large pylon, consisting of two broad towering masses of masonry, with a doorway in the middle, was erected in advance to give greater dignity to the approach. This was united to the original building by lateral walls, fronted internally by colonnades; and thus the intermediate space was converted into a cloistered court, solemn and secluded, well agreeing with the dark and mysterious character of the national religion. A succeeding monarch would add a grand hall of columns in advance of, and attached to, this court; and a third, not less anxious to honour the gods and immortalize his name, erected a second quadrangle before the hall, terminating the whole range of buildings with a stupendous pylon which bore his inscriptions; and, if he were a warrior, offered a grand field for the sculptured display of his achievements.

The most brilliant periods of Egyptian art were the reigns of the second and third Rameses. Most of the obelisks and colossal statues were wrought before or during the reign of Rameses II, the Sesostris of the Greek writers. Under this enterprising monarch, the ancient Theban empire attained its highest pinnacle of prosperity and power. Rameses III. undertook distant military expeditions, roused the energies of the country, encouraged art, and erected the splendid temple of Medinet Abu. At a later age the sceptre of Egypt was swayed by powerful monarchs, who built on a grand scale; but the seat of the government was then in the Delta, and there remain only a few obelisks.

The valley of the Nile is all along at intervals strewed with wrecks of ancient monumental grandeur; at Thebes, however, they are found on both sides of the river in greatest profusion. Next to the pyramids, the most wonderful relic of Egyptian art is the great hall of the temple of Carnak, on the east bank of the Nile. Its superficial area is 314 feet by 164. The massive stone roof is supported by 134 columns ranged in sixteen rows, most of which are 9 feet in diame ter, and nearly 43 feet high: those of the central avenue are not less than 11 feet 6 inches in diameter, and 72 feet high; the diameter of their capitals at their widest spread is 22 feet. The walls, columns, architraves, ceilings, every sur face exposed to the eye, is overspread with intaglio sculptures-gods, heroes, and hieroglyphics, painted in once vivid colours. But the hall of columns was but a part of this wonderful fabric. Immense pylons, half-buried quadrangles and halls, granite obelisks, and tremendous piles of fallen masonry once formed a range of buildings upwards of 1200 feet in length. An avenue of colossal sphinxes led from the temple to Luxor, forming a vista which extended nearly a mile and a half, and was admirably adapted for the pageantry of religious processions. All these buildings formed parts of one magnificent whole; all were constructed of gigantic blocks, and most were covered with sculpture. Such was the imperial palace of the Pharaohs when Europe was yet in primeval barbarism, ages before Romulus took his omen on the Palatine hill. Now the ruins are strewed in chaotic confusion over a sandy plain, broken into shapeless mounds.

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Among the most remarkable works of the Egyptians must be ranked the vast sepulchres excavated in the seclusion of the Theban mountains to receive their dead monarchs. It was,' says Wathen, about an hour before sunset one evening that I set out to visit this Necropolis, intending to pass the night in one of the royal sepulchres. On approaching the gorge, the first thing that struck me was the quantity of bones, fragments of mummies, rolls of mummy cloth, and other relics of rifled (Egyptian) tombs that strewed the ground. Princes, priests, and warriors, after reposing thousands of years, are now dragged forth by poor peasants, and their bones lie scattered before the doors of their sepulchres. Candles were lighted: I passed the threshold, and looked round with silent wonder on the scene within. A large corridor or gallery ran

back hundreds of feet into the heart of the mountain, divided by lateral projections into lengthening vistas of apartments. The walls were elegantly adorned with columns of blue hieroglyphics on a white ground, 3000 years old, yet retaining almost the freshness of yesterday. In a large chamber at the end of the gallery was a massive sarcophagus. Here once lay the royal mummy, but it had long been open, and was empty. There are eight or nine of these large painted tombs in a group, besides others of less interest. They vary in length from 100 to upwards of 400 feet. In most, you find on entering a long descending corridor or gallery, running off in a straight line into the heart of the mountain. At its farther end the corridor expands into one or more large apartments, whose roofs are supported by massive piers of the living rock. The walls

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277. [Great Hall of the Temple of Carnak.]

and piers throughout are generally decorated with paintings still wonderfully retaining their freshness: the subjects are chiefly processions, religious rites, and allegoric and enigmatical devices.' The object seems to have been to enshrine the corpse deep within the earth in a mass of masonry, far from the stir of the living world. For these royal sepulchres of Thebes they first selected the loneliest ravine; for each tomb they carried a gallery deep into the hill, and then placed the corpse in the remotest part. But the tombs of the kings form only a part of this great city of the dead. The sides of the hills overlooking the plain and the ravines intersecting them, contain innumerable sepulchral excavations. One valley was appropriated to the queens, and in a remote corner the apes had a cemetery. The priests seized the best spots. The purpose for which the pyramids were erected was once as little known as were most

other things connected with Egypt. It now appears satisfactorily ascertained that they were designed to be mausoleums; and what an idea does it give us of the grandeur of conception, the splendour in every respect of the monarchs to whom they owe their origin, that they should have devised and executed tombs so stupendous ! 'On leaving the village of Gizeh, on the river bank opposite old Cairo (Memphis), the pyramids rise before you glittering white against the blue sky; but the flatness of the plain and the purity of the atmosphere effectually deceive the eye as to their distance and consequently their size: you almost appear at their base while several miles really intervene. As you advance gradually they unfold their gigantic dimensions; but you must have been some time on the spot, your eye must have repeatedly travelled along the great pyramid's 740 feet of base, and up its steep towering angles,

before you can fully understand its immensity, and the actual amount of labour involved in its erection' (Wathen). According to Pliny

278. [Pyramid of Cheops.]

366,000 men were employed for 20 years in erecting the great pyramid, and Herodotus reports from an inscription which it bore, that the expense of providing the workmen with onions and other roots amounted to 1600 talents. Whole mosques have probably been built out of spoils from it alone. Yet the integrity of its form remains substantially unimpaired, and from a distance scarcely a trace of violence or decay can be seen. The existing masonry has been estimated at above six millions of tons, which was raised over an area of thirteen English acres and a half; and, supposing the cost of the structure to have been one shilling a cubic foot, including carriage, materials, and workmanship, the erection required an outlay of nearly five millions sterling. The original perpendicular height was 480 feet, exceeding that of St. Peter's by 43 feet, and that of St. Paul's by 110. The huge mass equalled a solid pile occupying the whole area of Lincoln'sinn-fields, and ascending to a point 100 feet higher than the top of St. Paul's.

If, as we have some reason to believe, and as the reader may see satisfactorily established in Movers and Bertheau (ut supra), a race of the Shemitic family, coming down from the upper (Aram) country into the lower (Canaan), in course of time subjugated Egypt and established their dominion, maintaining it for some five hundred years, such an historical event must have had a marked influence on the religion of the land. These invaders are described (Herod. ii. 128) as enemies to the religion of Egypt, who destroyed or closed the temples, broke in pieces the altars and images of the gods, and killed the sacred animals. Their influence on the Egyptian religion was, probably, not unlike that of the Persians on the Grecian, having for its aim and effect to discountenance and destroy a low and degrading system of idolatry; for the worship of the heavenly bodies, to which the Phoenician equally with the Persian invaders were given, was higher in its character and effects than the service of the ordinary gods of Greece, and still more so than the degrading homage paid by the Egyptians to the lowest animals. By this means the Shemitic religion exerted on the native Egyptian religion a decided and improving influence, which may be seen and traced in that element of the religion of Egypt which contains and presents the worship

of the heavenly bodies. The two systems, that of the Egyptians before it received inoculation from the East, and that of the Eastern invaders, agreed in this, that they were both the worship of the powers of nature; but they differed in this, and an important difference it was, that the Egyptians adored the brute creation, the Phoenicians, the host of heaven. Our limits forbid details on the subject, which, however, together with proofs and illustrations, may be found in the valuable works before mentioned. On the subject of Egyptian religion, besides the works already referred to, the following may be advantageously consulted. Pauly, Real-Encylopädie, Egyptische Religion; Prichard's Egyptian Mythology; Jablonski, Pantheon Egyptiacum; Beiträge zur Kentniss der Lit. Kunst, Mythol. und Geschich. des alten Egyptens, von G. Seyffarth; Untersuchung. über den Mythos der beruh. Völker alter Welt; Creuzer, Symbolik.

The relation in which the religion of Egypt stands to that of Moses is one of very considerable interest and importance, and one which has not yet received the kind and degree of attention which it merits. Michaelis (Mosaisches Recht), and others of the same school, have given valuable aid, but they wrote with, compared with what is now known, insufficient knowledge, if not with somewhat too much of a foregone conclusion. Other learned men, influenced by their philoso phical notions, or prejudiced against the Hebrew religion, have made Moses a mere copyist of institutions and retailer of ideas which he found in Egypt. As a basis for such a view it was neces sarily assumed that a purer system of religion was found in Egypt in the days of Moses than existed in any other part of the world. In particular, the Egyptian mysteries were set forth as the depositaries of high and valuable religious doctrines. Scripture and history (the Acts of the Apostles; Josephus, Philo) were adduced to show that Moses had been instructed in this priceless lore, and initiated into these mysteries; whence he was declared to have drawn his system of Monotheism, and even the characteristic name IA, which he gave to the God whom he proclaimed, as alone worthy of the solemn title (Plessing, Memnonium, ii. 529; Schiller, Die Sendung Moses; Reinhold, Die Hebräischen Mysterien). These views, however, rest on no solid foundation whatever, if, indeed, they may not be to some extent considered as the illusory and almost posthumous offspring of the old and exploded notion which ascribed boundless knowledge to the ancient Egyptians. Nor can they for a moment be held in these days, after the light thrown on early Egypt by the monumental disclosures. The brief notion given above of the general characteristics of the earliest religion of the country, shows how utterly baseless such a theory is. In truth, the inhabitants of Palestine, so far back as we have been able to learn anything of them, seem to have possessed far better and purer religious opinions than those of the valley of the Nile, and in all probability did something to improve and elevate the religious system of the latter (Movers, Phonizier). The exposure of this sceptical hypothesis, which the Bible enables the scholar to supply, may be found in Vatke, Die Religion des 4. T. nach den Canon. Buchern entwickelt, and Hengstenberg, Die Authentie des Pentateuch.

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