if not his very body-guard. In the Bible the Philistines do not appear as a nation, or at least not as a warlike nation, before the time of the Judges; and this agrees with the theory that their migration from the Isle of Caphtor, probably Cyprus, took place at the time of Ramses III. Nor is their connection in the ethnic table of the tenth chapter of Genesis in race or habitat with the Lehabim, or Lubim, less significant. It well accords with their place among the nations who, in all other confederacies, had the aid of the Libyans.* The Tekkariu have been identified with the Teucrians. If this is correct, we need not follow those who make them Teucrians of Troy. It is evident from the Teucrid origin of the kings of Salamis of the house of Euagoras, that there was a Teucrian stock in Cyprus, whether allied to Trojans or not we cannot tell. The Tuirsha and Shakalasha have been, as already noticed, thought to be the Etruscans and Sikels. The Taanau (Daanau) have been identified with the Danai or Daunians, and the Uashasha with the Oscans. The Daunians and Oscans go well together, like the Sards and Sikels. The invaders landed on the Syrian coast, and conquered the Hittites of the Orontes valley, the people of Carchemish and Aradus. These, no doubt, had confederated to repel the invasion, as they were leagued before against Ramses II. Having encamped in the conquered country, and levied forces among its population, the northerners passed into Egypt by land, supported by their fleet. At a fort on the eastern Egyptian border they were met by the army of Ramses, while the two fleets fought a battle at sea. The Egyptians achieved a complete victory. Yet one more invasion, the fifth, had to be met before these persistent enemies were repelled. In the eleventh year of Ramses, the Libyans again invaded Egypt, aided by the Tuirsha and Reka (Leka), and were again defeated. The Thenceforward we hear no more of these terrible invaders. Empire was secured by the energy of Ramses, or some other movement drew them away. Ramses was thus able to carry a war of reprisals into the enemy's country, and subdued islands of the Mediterranean, and perhaps also the southern coast of Asia Minor. In his list of conquered towns, Dr. Brugsch with reason identifies names of places in Cyprus, and more conjecturally in Asia Minor. A few words must be added on the arms and manners of these nations, as learnt from the Egyptian sources. The Pelesta, the Tekkariu, the Taanau, and the Uashasha, are characterized by a helmet or cap in the form of a crest rising at once from the head. The Tuirsha have pointed helmets, the Shardana, round M. Chabas objects to the identification of the Pelesta with the Philistines on the ground that the type of the people of Askalon, as represented on a sculpture of Ramses II., is distinctly Asiatic. (Ant. Hist. 2nd ed. 284,5.) Is it, however, certain that the great Philistine migration had been accomplished at this time? The double identification with Pelasgi and Philistines seems the best. 1 helmets, decorated with a crescent and a ball rising from the crown. The pointed helmet or cap is found on very early Etruscan and Cyprian figures. The head-gear of the Pelesta and their allies looks like the prototype of the Greek crested helmets. The spoil of the Akaiusha included a kind of armour, which is not expressed by a written word but by a symbol, which, in De Rougé's opinion, represents a greave. If this is correct, and it is difficult to imagine that the symbol can be anything but the picture of a greave with its strap, then the Akaiusha can only be the well-greaved Achæans of Homer. The buckler of all the nations is round and small. The usual weapon of offence is a short and very broad two-edged sword, tapering to its point, but long swords were taken in spoil from a Libyan nation, who alone seem to have used the bow. The javelin is a common weapon, the spear an unusual one. This would be characteristic of nations living rather by the chase than trained for war, and, indeed, the same may be inferred from the use of the short sword rather than the long one. The material of the swords, and the heads of the spears, whenever stated, is bronze. The body-armour is a corslet of bronze, or a kilt, probably of thick linen, but perhaps of bronze. The ships, unlike the Egyptian galleys, are high in prow and stern, both of which terminate in a bird's head, and, like the Egyptian, have a single mast and square sail. The wives and children of the invaders in the second war with Ramses III. are carried in primitive ox-cars, square in form, made of wood, as well as of wicker-work, and having two solid wooden wheels. We know little of the civilization of these nations. It was certainly much lower than that of the Egyptians, and the objects of art enumerated in booty taken from them may have been merely a recapture of what had been previously seized in Egypt. Yet they were not mere savages. Their power of organizing and of making long voyages and land marches shows a higher condition. It may be inferred from their carrying their wives and children with them that they had no settled state for the protection of their families, and did not fear to bring them into the dangers of war. It is an error to call these expeditions piratical; they were not made for warlike gain, nor for booty, though war and plunder were inseparable from them. It was the pressure of growing population that caused them, as it caused the conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbarians. Before the Homeric poems can be compared with the information of the Egyptian sculptures and texts it may be reasonably asked how far the geography of the Iliad and that of the Odyssey extends. It may be noticed that the Odyssey seems to show a greater acquaintance with the West than the Iliad, and to be more precise in what it relates of Egypt. It is as if the centre of the poet were further east in the poem of Troy than in the story of Odysseus. But it may be affirmed of the geography of both poems that its horizon includes Greece with western and southern Asia Minor and shows some acquaintance with Egypt* and the intervening islands, and less with Libya. Italy and Sicily are lands of shadows. Probably it comprises the whole eastern Mediterranean as far as the Adriatic, to the west of which all is obscurity. The Sikel nationality appears, and their character is that of slave-dealers, but their country is not fixed: there is a possible allusion to the grim smile of the piratical Sardinian. It is therefore reasonable to compare the Iliad and Odyssey with the Egyptian records of the maritime nations. Of course in the interval between Ramses III. and the poems the maritime nations may have moved farther west and passed out of the epic geography. Still, on the whole, we should expect that the view in both cases would not be altogether different. Proof of this assumption is afforded by the feigned story which Odysseus twice tells at Ithaca, a story like an incident in the maritime invasions of Egypt told by the invaders. An islander of Crete, he was impelled with a desire to go to Egypt, and having joined a party of pirates he sailed to the river Nile, where he harboured his nine ships curved at both ends, if we may so read véas àμpieλiooas, like those of the maritime foes of Egypt. In a night descent his comrades slay the men of the country and carry off the women and children. At dawn the neighbouring city is aroused, and the whole plain filled with horse and foot. The depredators flee: some are slain with brazen weapons, others carried away to work in forced labour, like the captives of Ramses III. The leader throws down his arms and begs the king to spare him, who takes him into his car and carries him home. In Egypt he remains seven years and amasses great wealth, according to the longer version of the tale. Similarly Kapur the Libyan king throws down his arms when attacked by Ramses III., no doubt in his car, for so the Egyptian kings always made war in the plains. The incident is not irrelevant, for it shows that the Libyan chief expected quarter, though it seems he did not receive it; and this is a proof that these wars of Ramses III., savage as they were, did not reach the ferocious conditions of those of the kings of Assyria. Like the hero of the tale of Odysseus the captives were sometimes allowed to settle in Egypt and become important colonists. The arms of the Homeric warriors are the same as those of the enemies of Egypt, with such difference as time and variety of race would explain. The comparison would be difficult had we not the discoveries at Mycenae for illustration, which undoubtedly stand much nearer the date of Ramses III. than do the poems, and we may * The description of the harbour of Pharos would be strongly in favour of his view, were it not for the expression Αἰγύπτου προπάροιθε τόσσον ἄνευθ ̓, ὅσσον τε πανημερίη γλαφυρὴ νηύς But why is not Aegyptus here the Nile, and the mouth of the Canopic Branch? with certain reserves use the still more ancient remains from the Troad. The Homeric names of the sword and similar weapons are curious as indicative of their origin. Eipoç of no certain Greek derivation is probably the Egyptian sef(t), the sword.* Máxaipa the dirk, again not proved to be Greek, may be from the Hebrew mechérah, ?, if, as is most probable, that difficult word is to be rendered "sword," though we need not follow the Rabbins in deriving the Hebrew from the Greek, as where the occurrence in the song of Jacob is thus commented on by Rabbi Eliezer, "He (Jacob) cursed their sword in the Greek language" (an pw, Pirke, R. Eliezer, 38), thus showing his extreme anger with Simeon and Levi. "Aop or dop and pάoyavov are obviously Greek. The bronze swords from Mycenæ show two types, one a very long and narrow two-edged weapon, originally over three feet in length, without the hilt. One blade measured 3ft. 2in., and must therefore have been originally with the hilt 4ft. long. The Egyptian monuments do not show in their pictures of the maritime enemies any swords of this type, but in the list of the booty taken from the Mashuasha we find "swords of 5 cubits 115, swords of 3 cubits 124." (Dümichen Hist. Inschr. xxvii.)† If we take the measures to be by the royal cubit they would represent respectively 81ft. and a little over 5ft.; if the lesser cubit, which does not seem to have been the official measure‡ is intended, these dimensions would be reduced to 7ft. 4in., and about 4ft. 2in. The last dimension is that of the longest swords for Mycenae. The longer weapon was probably a sword-blade fixed in a long shaft like a swordbayonet attached to a rifle. The shorter sword from Mycenae, which is the far rarer type, appears to have been broad at the lower part, tapering to a point, and in one case about a foot long in the blade (Schliemann, Mycenæ, 282), but we cannot say with certainty what was its average length. The maritime and Libyan enemies of the Egyptians carry a sword of this form. The rare one-edged sword of Mycenae has the shape of a falchion in the Egyptian pictures, where it is not a common weapon. It is not certainly recognized in the Homeric poems. Homer knew rather the short spear than the javelin; the enemies of Egypt carry a spare javelin; they rarely hold a spear. The spear-heads of Mycenae, having lost their shafts, may belong to either class of spear. The bow is not so common as other weapons of offence in the Homeric poems; in the Egyptian pictures it is characteristic, as already remarked, of the Libyan nations. * The Arabic seuf a sword, which is a Semitic word (cf. the Hebrew) is not likely to be the origin of the Greek word, as we do not trace it in this sense in Palestine. + These dimensions are so extraordinary that it may be well to mention that they are accepted by Chabas (Ani. Hist., 2nd ed., 244) and Brugsch (Hierog.-demot. Wörterbuch, 1213). De Rougé, Chrestom., Eg. II. 120, from which the dimensions are computed. The Homeric shield is evidently very large, unlike the shields of the enemies of Egypt. The solitary shield from Dr. Schliemann's excavations in the Troad is small and round, so also is a shield from Cyprus, which is probably of about the seventh century B.C. One of the very remarkable gold signet rings from Mycenae shows a warrior covered by an enormous shield. The Etruscan shields are round, but far larger than those portrayed on the Egyptian monuments as borne by the maritime peoples. In the Bible are indications confirmatory of the Egyptian records. At the time of the Exodus (before в.c. 1300) there was war on the Philistine coast. During the interval between the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan some mysterious scourge, "the hornets," weakened the Canaanites and made their conquest easier. Was this the overthrow of the Hittites and Amorites of the Orontes valley by the maritime confederacy in the time of Ramses III., probably within forty years after the Exodus, which would have prevented these northern Canaanites from joining in the southern and northern leagues against Joshua? Let us now look at the broad historical features of the ages in which the records have been reviewed, though any but a brief outline would tend to disturb the progress of inductive research. In the time of the Ramessides, from about B.C. 1400 to 1250 roughly, the Mediterranean nations were passing from a stage which was probably that of hunters into that of warriors seeking more fertile lands. In the age of Homeric tradition they had attained the settled stage, and the few who retained the old restlessness were pirates. The three stages are easily paralleled in the history of the Northern nations of Europe. If the Homeric poems do not describe the same races as do the Egyptian records, they describe but another phase of the history of the same part of the world. Yet the reader will do well to hesitate before he abandons the interpretations of De Rougé, which have a solid coherence in themselves, and are singularly consistent with Homeric tradition, in favour of Dr. Brugsch's novel views, which though they begin with a contradiction of his predecessor end in a compromise. If he is curious to pursue the inquiry he will see in the list appended to this article that all prima facie probability is in favour of the system of De Rougé. It is to be hoped that the controversy will not be allowed to rest until it has been finally settled. The prolonged silence of Egyptologists on this vexed question would throw a lasting discredit on their critical skill and their interest in the gravest problems suggested by the ancient Egyptian texts and monuments. List of Principal Maritime and Libyan Enemies of Egypt. Akaiusha De Rougé, &c. Maxyes Brugsch. Achæans of Caucasus |