History of Egypt_ Chaldea_ Syria_ Babylonia_ and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery L. W. King and H. R. Hall 2194 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of Egypt, Chaldea,
Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light
of Recent Discovery

Author: L. W. King
H. R. Hall

Release date: July 8, 2006 [eBook #17321]
Most recently updated: January 31, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17321

Credits: David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF
EGYPT, CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA IN THE
LIGHT OF RECENT DISCOVERY ***

HISTORY OF EGYPT
CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA IN THE LIGHT
OF RECENT DISCOVERY BY L. W. KING and H. R. HALL
Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum
Containing over 1200 colored plates and illustrations.
Copyright 1906

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
It should be noted that many of the monuments and sites of
excavations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Kurdistan described in this
volume have been visited by the authors in connection with their own work
in those countries. The greater number of the photographs here published
were taken by the authors themselves. Their thanks are due to M. Ernest
Leroux, of Paris, for his kind permission to reproduce a certain number of
plates from the works of M. de Morgan, illustrating his recent discoveries in
Egypt and Persia, and to Messrs. W. A. Mansell & Co., of London, for
kindly allowing them to make use of a number of photographs issued by
them.

PREFACE
The present volume contains an account of the most important
additions which have been made to our knowledge of the ancient history of
Egypt and Western Asia during the few years which have elapsed since the
publication of Prof. Maspero’s Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient
Classique, and includes short descriptions of the excavations from which
these results have been obtained. It is in no sense a connected and
continuous history of these countries, for that has already been written by
Prof. Maspero, but is rather intended as an appendix or addendum to his
work, briefly recapitulating and describing the discoveries made since its
appearance. On this account we have followed a geographical rather than a
chronological system of arrangement, but at the same time the attempt has
been made to suggest to the mind of the reader the historical sequence of
events.
At no period have excavations been pursued with more energy and
activity, both in Egypt and Western Asia, than at the present time, and every
season’s work obliges us to modify former theories, and extends our
knowledge of periods of history which even ten years ago were unknown to
the historian. For instance, a whole chapter has been added to Egyptian
history by the discovery of the Neolithic culture of the primitive Egyptians,
while the recent excavations at Susa are revealing a hitherto totally
unsuspected epoch of proto-Elamite civilization. Further than this, we have
discovered the relics of the oldest historical kings of Egypt, and we are now
enabled to reconstitute from material as yet unpublished the inter-relations
of the early dynasties of Babylon. Important discoveries have also been
made with regard to isolated points in the later historical periods. We have
therefore attempted to include the most important of these in our survey of
recent excavations and their results. We would again remind the reader that
Prof. Maspero’s great work must be consulted for the complete history of
the period, the present volume being, not a connected history of Egypt and
Western Asia, but a description and discussion of the manner in which

recent discovery and research have added to and modified our conceptions
of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization.

Contents
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
PREFACE
EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA
CHAPTER I—THE DISCOVERY OF PREHISTORIC
EGYPT
CHAPTER II—ABYDOS AND THE FIRST THREE
DYNASTIES
CHAPTER III—MEMPHIS AND THE PYRAMIDS
CHAPTER IV—RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN WESTERN
ASIA AND THE DAWN OF CHALDÆAN HISTORY
CHAPTER V—ELAM AND BABYLON, THE COUNTRY
OF THE SEA AND THE KASSITES
CHAPTER VI—EARLY BABYLONIAN LIFE AND
CUSTOMS
CHAPTER VII—TEMPLES AND TOMBS OF THEBES
CHAPTER VIII—THE ASSYRIAN AND NEO-
BABYLONIAN EMPIRES IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT
RESEARCH
CHAPTER IX—THE LAST DAYS OF ANCIENT EGYPT

List of Illustrations
the Bed of an Ancient Watercourse in The Wadiyên, Thebes.
Palaeolithic Implements of the Quaternary Period. From the
Desert Plateau and Slopes West of Thebes.
Palaeolithic Implements. From Man, March, 1905.
Upper Desert Plateau, Where Paleolithic Implements Are
Found. Thebes: 1,400 Feet Above the Nile.
Flint Knife mounted in a gold handle
Buff Ware Vase, Predynastic Period
Camp of the Expedition Of The University Of California at
Nag’ Ed-dêr, 1901.
Portion of the “Stele Of Vultures” Found At Telloh
Obverse of a Slate Relief representing the King of Upper Egypt
in the form of a Bull
Reverse of a Slate Relief
Obverse of a Slate Relief with representations of the Egyptian
nomes
Reverse of a Slate Relief representing animals
Professor Petrie’s Camp at Abydos, 1901.
The Tomb of King Den at Abydos
Examples of conical vase-stoppers taken from Abydos

The Tomb of King Tjeser at Bêt Khallâf
False Door of the Tomb Of Teta, an official of the IVth
Dynasty
The Shunet ez-Zebib: The Fortress-town of the IId Dynasty at
Abydos
Statue No. 1 of the Cairo Museum
Exterior of the Southern Brick Pyramid of Dashur: XIIth
Dynasty
The Pyramids of Giza during the inundation
List of Archaic cuneiform signs
Fragment of a list Of Archaic Cuneiform signs
Obelisk of Manishtusu, King of the City of Kish
Babil, the most northern mound which marks the site of the
ancient city of Babylon
“Stele of Victory,” representing Naram-Sin conquering his
enemies
Roughly hewn sculpture of a lion standing over a fallen man,
found at Babylon
General view of the excavations on the Kasr at Babylon
View within the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II.
Excavations in the temple of Ninib at Babylon
The principal mound of Birs Nimrud, which marks the site of
the ancient capital of Borsippa
The principal mound at Sherghat, which marks the site of
Ashuk, the ancient capital of the Assyrians

The mound of Kuyunjik, one Of the palace mounds of the
ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh
Winged bull in the palace of Sennacherib on Kuyunjik, the
principal mound marking the site of Nineveh
Clay Memorial-tablet of Eannadu, viceroy of Shirpurla
Marble gate-socket bearing an inscription of Entemena, a
powerful Patesi of Shirpurla
Stone gate-socket bearing an inscription of Ur-Engur, an early
king of the city of Ur
Statue of Gudea, viceroy of Shirpurla
Tablet inscribed in Sumerian with details of a survey of certain
property
Clay tablet, found at Susa, bearing an inscription in the early
proto-Elamite character
Clay tablet, recently found at Susa, bearing an inscription in
the early proto-Elamite character.
Block of limestone, found at Susa, bearing inscriptions of
Karibu-sha-Shushinak
Brick stamped with an inscription of Kudur-mabug
Semitic Babylonian contract-tablet, inscribed in the reign of
Hammurabi with a deed recording the division of property
A Kudurru, or Boundary-stone, inscribed with a text of
Nazimaruttash
A Kudurru, or Boundary-stone, inscribed with a text of
Melishikhu
Upper Part of the Stele of Hammurabi, King Of Babylon
Clay contract-tablet and its outer case, First Dynasty

A track in the desert
A camping-ground in the desert, between Birejik And Urfa
Approach to the city of Samarra, situated on the left bank of
the Tigris
A small caravan in the mountains of Kurdistan
The city of Mosul
The village of Nebi Yunus
Portrait-sculpture of Hammurabi, King of Babylon
A modern machine for irrigation on the Euphrates
Kaiks, or native boats on the Euphrates at Birejik
The modern bridge of boats across the Tigris opposite Mosul
A small Kelek, or raft, upon the Tigris at Baghdad
Statue of Mera, Chief Steward, IXth Dynasty
Wall of XIth Dynasty: Dêr el-Bahari
Wall of XVIIIth Dynasty: Dêr el-Bahari.
Excavation of the north lower colonnade of the XIth dynasty
temple, Dêr el-Bahari, 1904
The granite threshold and sandstone pillars of the XIth dynasty
temple at Dêr el-Bahari
Excavation of the tomb of a priestess, on a platform of the XIth
Dynasty temple, Dêr el-Bahari, 1904
Cases of antiquities leaving Dêr el-Bahari for transport to Cairo
Shipping cases of antiquities on board the Nile steamer at
Luxor, for the Egypt Exploration Fund
Statue of Queen Teta-shera

The Two Temples of Dêr el-Bahari
The upper court and trilithon gate of the XVIIIth Dynasty
temple at Dêr el-Bahari
The tomb-mountain of Amenhetep III, in the western valley,
Thebes
The Tomb-hill of Shêkh ’abd el-Kûrna, Thebes
Wall-painting from a Tomb of Shêkh ’abd el-Kûrna, Western
Thebes
Fresco in the Tomb of Senmut at Thebes
The valley of the Tombs of the Queens at Thebes
The Nile-Bank at Luxor
The Great Temple at Karnak
M. Legrain’s excavation of the Karnak statues
Portrait-group of a great noble and his wife, of the time of the
XVIIIth Dynasty
A tomb fitted up as an Explorer’s Residence
Stone Object Bearing a Votive Inscription of Arik-dên-ilu
Entrance into one of the Galleries or Tunnels of the principal
mound at Sherghat
Stone Tablet of Tukulti-Ninib I, King of Assyria
The Ziggurat, or Temple Tower, of the Assyrian city of Calah
Work on one of the Rock-inscriptions of Sennacherib, near
Bavian in Assyria
The Principal Rock Sculptures in the Gorge of the Gomel near
Bavian

The rock and citadel of Van
Ancient Flight of steps and gallery on the face of the Rock-
citadel of Van
Part of the ancient fortifications of the city of Van
Within the Shrine of E-makh, Temple of the Goddess Nin-
makh
Trench in the Babylonian Plain, between the mound of the
Kasr and Tell Amran ibn-Ali, showing a section of the paved sacred
way
The Great Dam of Aswân, showing water rushing through the
sluices
The Kiosk at Philæ in process of underpinning and restoration,
January, 1902
The Ancient Quay Of Philæ, November, 1904
The Rock of Konosso in January, 1902, Before The Building of
the Dam
The Isle of Konosso, with its inscriptions, November 1904

EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA
In the Light of Recent Excavation and Research

CHAPTER I—THE DISCOVERY OF
PREHISTORIC EGYPT
During the last ten years our conception of the beginnings of Egyptian
antiquity has profoundly altered. When Prof. Maspero published the first
volume of his great Histoire Ancienne des Peuples des l’Orient Classique,
in 1895, Egyptian history, properly so called, still began with the Pyramid-
builders, Sne-feru, Khufu, and Khafra (Cheops and Chephren), and the
legendary lists of earlier kings preserved at Abydos and Sakkara were still
quoted as the only source of knowledge of the time before the IVth
Dynasty. Of a prehistoric Egypt nothing was known, beyond a few flint
flakes gathered here and there upon the desert plateaus, which might or
might not tell of an age when the ancestors of the Pyramid-builders knew
only the stone tools and weapons of the primeval savage.
Now, however, the veil which has hidden the beginnings of Egyptian
civilization from us has been lifted, and we see things, more or less, as they
actually were, unobscured by the traditions of a later day. Until the last few
years nothing of the real beginnings of history in either Egypt or
Mesopotamia had been found; legend supplied the only material for the
reconstruction of the earliest history of the oldest civilized nations of the
globe. Nor was it seriously supposed that any relics of prehistoric Egypt or
Mesopotamia ever would be found. The antiquity of the known history of
these countries already appeared so great that nobody took into
consideration the possibility of our discovering a prehistoric Egypt or
Mesopotamia; the idea was too remote from practical work. And further,
civilization in these countries had lasted so long that it seemed more than
probable that all traces of their prehistoric age had long since been swept
away. Yet the possibility, which seemed hardly worth a moment’s
consideration in 1895, is in 1905 an assured reality, at least as far as Egypt
is concerned. Prehistoric Babylonia has yet to be discovered. It is true, for
example, that at Mukay-yar, the site of ancient Ur of the Chaldees, burials
in earthenware coffins, in which the skeletons lie in the doubled-up position
characteristic of Neolithic interments, have been found; but there is no
doubt whatever that these are burials of a much later date, belonging, quite

possibly, to the Parthian period. Nothing that may rightfully be termed
prehistoric has yet been found in the Euphrates valley, whereas in Egypt
prehistoric antiquities are now almost as well known and as well
represented in our museums as are the prehistoric antiquities of Europe and
America.
With the exception of a few palasoliths from the surface of the Syrian
desert, near the Euphrates valley, not a single implement of the Age of
Stone has yet been found in Southern Mesopotamia, whereas Egypt has
yielded to us the most perfect examples of the flint-knapper’s art known,
flint tools and weapons more beautiful than the finest that Europe and
America can show. The reason is not far to seek. Southern Mesopotamia is
an alluvial country, and the ancient cities, which doubtless mark the sites of
the oldest settlements in the land, are situated in the alluvial marshy plain
between the Tigris and the Euphrates; so that all traces of the Neolithic
culture of the country would seem to have disappeared, buried deep beneath
city-mounds, clay and marsh. It is the same in the Egyptian Delta, a similar
country; and here no traces of the prehistoric culture of Egypt have been
found. The attempt to find them was made last year at Buto, which is
known to be one of the most antique centres of civilization, and probably
was one of the earliest settlements in Egypt, but without success. The
infiltration of water had made excavation impossible and had no doubt
destroyed everything belonging to the most ancient settlement. It is not
going too far to predict that exactly the same thing will be found by any
explorer who tries to discover a Neolithic stratum beneath a city-mound of
Babylonia. There is little hope that prehistoric Chaldæa will ever be known
to us. But in Egypt the conditions are different. The Delta is like Babylonia,
it is true; but in the Upper Nile valley the river flows down with but a thin
border of alluvial land on either side, through the rocky and hilly desert, the
dry Sahara, where rain falls but once in two or three years. Antiquities
buried in this soil in the most remote ages are preserved intact as they were
first interred, until the modern investigator comes along to look for them.
And it is on the desert margin of the valley that the remains of prehistoric
Egypt have been found. That is the reason for their perfect preservation till
our own day, and why we know prehistoric Egypt so well.
The chief work of Egyptian civilization was the proper irrigation of the
alluvial soil, the turning of marsh into cultivated fields, and the reclamation
of land from the desert for the purposes of agriculture. Owing to the rainless

character of the country, the only means of obtaining water for the crops is
by irrigation, and where the fertilizing Nile water cannot be taken by means
of canals, there cultivation ends and the desert begins. Before Egyptian
civilization, properly so called, began, the valley was a great marsh through
which the Nile found its way north to the sea. The half-savage, stone-using
ancestors of the civilized Egyptians hunted wild fowl, crocodiles, and
hippopotami in the marshy valley; but except in a few isolated settlements
on convenient mounds here and there (the forerunners of the later villages),
they did not live there. Their settlements were on the dry desert margin, and
it was here, upon low tongues of desert hill jutting out into the plain, that
they buried their dead. Their simple shallow graves were safe from the
flood, and, but for the depredations of jackals and hyenas, here they have
remained intact till our own day, and have yielded up to us the facts from
which we have derived our knowledge of prehistoric Egypt. Thus it is that
we know so much of the Egyptians of the Stone Age, while of their
contemporaries in Mesopotamia we know nothing, nor is anything further
likely to be discovered.
But these desert cemeteries, with their crowds of oval shallow graves,
covered by only a few inches of surface soil, in which the Neolithic
Egyptians lie crouched up with their flint implements and polished pottery
beside them, are but monuments of the later age of prehistoric Egypt. Long
before the Neolithic Egyptian hunted his game in the marshes, and here and
there essayed the work of reclamation for the purposes of an incipient
agriculture, a far older race inhabited the valley of the Nile. The written
records of Egyptian civilization go back four thousand years before Christ,
or earlier, and the Neolithic Age of Egypt must go back to a period several
thousand years before that. But we can now go back much further still, to
the Palaeolithic Age of Egypt. At a time when Europe was still covered by
the ice and snows of the Glacial Period, and man fought as an equal, hardly
yet as a superior, with cave-bear and mammoth, the Palaeolithic Egyptians
lived on the banks of the Nile. Their habitat was doubtless the desert slopes,
often, too, the plateaus themselves; but that they lived entirely upon the
plateaus, high up above the Nile marsh, is improbable. There, it is true, we
find their flint implements, the great pear-shaped weapons of the types of
Chelles, St. Acheul, and Le Moustier, types well known to all who are
acquainted with the flint implements of the “Drift” in Europe. And it is

there that the theory, generally accepted hitherto, has placed the habitat of
the makers and users of these implements.
The idea was that in Palaeolithic days, contemporary with the Glacial
Age of Northern Europe and America, the climate of Egypt was entirely
different from that of later times and of to-day. Instead of dry desert, the
mountain plateaus bordering the Nile valley were supposed to have been
then covered with forest, through which flowed countless streams to feed
the river below. It was suggested that remains of these streams were to be
seen in the side ravines, or wadis, of the Nile valley, which run up from the
low desert on the river level into the hills on either hand. These wadis
undoubtedly show extensive traces of strong water action; they curve and
twist as the streams found their easiest way to the level through the softer
strata, they are heaped up with great water-worn boulders, they are
hollowed out where waterfalls once fell. They have the appearance of dry
watercourses, exactly what any mountain burns would be were the water-
supply suddenly cut off for ever, the climate altered from rainy to eternal
sun-glare, and every plant and tree blasted, never to grow again. Acting on
the supposition that this idea was a correct one, most observers have
concluded that the climate of Egypt in remote periods was very different
from the dry, rainless one now obtaining. To provide the water for the wadi
streams, heavy rainfall and forests are desiderated. They were easily
supplied, on the hypothesis. Forests clothed the mountain plateaus, heavy
rains fell, and the water rushed down to the Nile, carving out the great
watercourses which remain to this day, bearing testimony to the truth. And
the flints, which the Palaeolithic inhabitants of the plateau-forests made and
used, still lie on the now treeless and sun-baked desert surface.

This is certainly a very weak conclusion. In fact, it seriously damages
the whole argument, the water-courses to the contrary notwithstanding. The
palæoliths are there. They can be picked up by any visitor. There they lie,
great flints of the Drift types, just like those found in the gravel-beds of
England and Belgium, on the desert surface where they were made.
Undoubtedly where they were made, for the places where they lie are the
actual ancient flint workshops, where the flints were chipped. Everywhere
around are innumerable flint chips and perfect weapons, burnt black and
patinated by ages of sunlight. We are taking one particular spot in the hills
of Western Thebes as an example, but there are plenty of others, such as the
Wadi esh-Shêkh on the right bank of the Nile opposite Maghagha, whence
Mr. H. Seton-Karr has brought back specimens of flint tools of all ages
from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic periods.
The Palæolithic flint workshops on the Theban hills have been visited
of late years by Mr. Seton-Karr, by Prof. Schweinfurth, Mr. Allen Sturge,
and Dr. Blanckenhorn, by Mr. Portch, Mr. Ayrton, and Mr. Hall. The
weapons illustrated here were found by Messrs. Hall and Ayrton, and are
now preserved in the British Museum. Among these flints shown we notice

two fine specimens of the pear-shaped type of St. Acheul, with curious
adze-shaped implements of primitive type to left and right. Below, to the
right, is a very primitive instrument of Chellean type, being merely a
sharpened pebble. Above, to left and right, are two specimens of the curious
half-moon-shaped instruments which are characteristic of the Theban flint
field and are hardly known elsewhere. All have the beautiful brown patina,
which only ages of sunburn can give. The “poignard” type to the left, at the
bottom of the plate, is broken off short.

In the smaller illustration we see some remarkable types: two scrapers
or knives with strongly marked “bulb of percussion” (the spot where the
flint-knapper struck and from which the flakes flew off), a very regular
coup-de-poing which looks almost like a large arrowhead, and on the right a
much weathered and patinated scraper which must be of immemorial age.

This came from the top plateau, not from the
slopes (or subsidiary plateaus at the head of
the wadis), as did the great St. Acheulian
weapons. The circular object is very
remarkable: it is the half of the ring of a
“morpholith “(a round flinty accretion often
found in the Theban limestone) which has
been split, and the split (flat) side carefully
bevelled. Several of these interesting objects
have been found in conjunction with
Palæolithic implements at Thebes. No doubt
the flints lie on the actual surface where they
were made. No later water action has swept
them away and covered them with gravel, no
later human habitation has hidden them with
successive deposits of soil, no gradual
deposit of dust and rubbish has buried them deep. They lie as they were left
in the far-away Palæolithic Age, and they have lain there till taken away by
the modern explorer.
But this is not the case with all the Palæolithic flints of Thebes. In the
year 1882 Maj.-Gen. Pitt-Rivers discovered Palæolithic flints in the deposit
of diluvial detritus which lies between the cultivation and the mountains on
the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. Many of these are of the same
type as those found on the surface of the mountain plateau which lies at the
head of the great wadi of the Tombs of the Kings, while the diluvial deposit
is at its mouth. The stuff of which the detritus is composed evidently came
originally from the high plateau, and was washed down, with the flints, in
ancient times.
This is quite conceivable, but how is it that the flints left behind on the
plateau remain on the original ancient surface? How is it conceivable that if
(on the old theory) these plateaus were in Palæolithic days clothed with
forest, the Palæolithic flints could even in a single instance remain
undisturbed from Palæolithic times to the present day, when the forest in
which they were made and the forest soil on which they reposed have
entirely disappeared? If there were woods and forests On the heights, it
would seem impossible that we should find, as we do, Palæolithic
implements lying in situ on the desert surface, around the actual

manufactories where they were made. Yet if the constant rainfall and the
vegetation of the Libyan desert area in Palæolithic days is all a myth (as it
most probably is), how came the embedded palaeoliths, found by Gen. Pitt-
Rivers, in the bed of diluvial detritus which is apparently débris from the
plateau brought down by the Palæolithic wadi streams?
Water erosion has certainly formed the Theban wadis. But this water
erosion was probably not that which would be the result of perennial
streams flowing down from wooded heights, but of torrents like those of to-
day, which fill the wadis once in three years or so after heavy rain, but
repeated at much closer intervals. We may in fact suppose just so much
difference in meteorological conditions as would make it possible for
sudden rain-storms to occur over the desert at far more frequent intervals
than at present. That would account for the detritus bed at the mouth of the
wadi, and its embedded flints, and at the same time maintain the general
probability of the idea that the desert plateaus were desert in Palæolithic
days as now, and that early man only knapped his flints up there because he
found the flint there. He himself lived on the slopes and nearer the marsh.
This new view seems to be much sounder and more probable than the
old one, maintained by Flinders Petrie and Blanckenhorn, according to
which the high plateau was the home of man in Palæolithic times, when the
rainfall, as shown by the valley erosion and waterfalls, must have caused an
abundant vegetation on the plateau, where man could live and hunt his
game.[1] Were this so, it is patent that the Palæolithic flints could not have
been found on the desert surface as they are. Mr. H. J. L. Beadnell, of the
Geological Survey of Egypt, to whom we are indebted for the promulgation
of the more modern and probable view, says: “Is it certain that the high
plateau was then clothed with forests? What evidence is there to show that
it differed in any important respect from its present aspect? And if, as I
suggest, desert conditions obtained then as now, and man merely worked
his flints along the edges of the plateaus overlooking the Nile valley, I see
no reason why flint implements, dating even from Palæolithic times should
not in favourable cases still be found in the spots where they were left,
surrounded by the flakes struck off in manufacture. On the flat plateaus the
occasional rains which fall—once in three or four years—can effect but
little transport of material, and merely lower the general level by dissolving
the underlying limestone, so that the plateau surface is left with a coating of
nodules and blocks of insoluble flint and chert. Flint implements might thus

be expected to remain in many localities for indefinite periods, but they
would certainly become more or less ‘patinated,’ pitted on the surface, and
rounded at the angles after long exposure to heat, cold, and blown sand.”
This is exactly the case of the Palæolithic flint tools from the desert plateau.
[1] Petrie, Nagada and Ballas, p. 49.

We do not know whether Palæolithic man in Egypt was contemporary
with the cave-man of Europe. We have no means of gauging the age of the
Palæolithic Egyptian weapons, as we have for the Neolithic period. The
historical (dynastic) period of Egyptian annals began with the unification of
the kingdom under one head somewhere about 4500 B.C. At that time
copper as well as stone weapons were used, so that we may say that at the
beginning of the historical age the Egyptians were living in the
“Chalcolithic” period. We can trace the use of copper back for a
considerable period anterior to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty, so that we
shall probably not be far wrong if we do not bring down the close of the
purely Neolithic Age in Egypt—the close of the Age of Stone, properly so
called—later than +5000 B.C. How far back in the remote ages the

transition period between the Palæolithic and Neolithic Ages should be
placed, it is utterly impossible to say. The use of stone for weapons and
implements continued in Egypt as late as the time of the XIIth Dynasty,
about 2500-2000 B.C. But these XIIth Dynasty stone implements show by
their forms how late they are in the history of the Stone Age. The axe heads,
for instance, are in form imitations of the copper and bronze axe heads
usual at that period; they are stone imitations of metal, instead of the
originals on whose model the metal weapons were formed. The flint
implements of the XIIth Dynasty were a curious survival from long past
ages. After the time of the XIIth Dynasty stone was no longer used for tools
or weapons, except for the sacred rite of making the first incision in the
dead bodies before beginning the operations of embalming; for this
purpose, as Herodotus tells us, an “Ethiopian stone” was used. This was no
doubt a knife of flint or chert, like those of the Neolithic ancestors of the
Egyptians, and the continued use of a stone knife for this one purpose only
is a very interesting instance of a ceremonial survival. We may compare the
wigs of British judges.

We have no specimen of a flint knife which can definitely be asserted
to have belonged to an embalmer, but of the archaistic flint weapons of the
XIIth Dynasty we have several specimens. They were found by Prof. Petrie
at the place named by him “Kahun,” the site of a XIIth Dynasty town built
near the pyramid of King Usertsen (or Senusret) II at Illahun, at the mouth
of the canal leading from the Nile valley into the oasis-province of the
Payyum. These Kahun flints, and others of probably the same period found
by Mr. Seton-Karr at the very ancient flint works in the Wadi esh-Shêkh, are
of very coarse and poor workmanship as compared with the stone-knapping
triumphs of the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic periods. The delicacy
of the art had all been lost. But the best flint knives of the early period—
dating to just a little before the time of the Ist Dynasty, when flint-working
had attained its apogee, and copper had just begun to be used—are
undoubtedly the most remarkable stone weapons ever made in the world.
The grace and utility of the form, the delicacy of the fluted chipping on the
side, and the minute care with which the tiny serrations of the cutting edge,
serrations so small that often they can hardly be seen with the naked eye,
are made, can certainly not be parallelled elsewhere. The art of flint-
knapping reached its zenith in Ancient Egypt. The specimen illustrated has
a handle covered with gold decorated with incised designs representing
animals.
The prehistoric Egyptians may also fairly be said to have attained
greater perfection than other peoples in the Neolithic stage of culture, in
other arts besides the making of stone tools and weapons. Their pottery is of
remarkable perfection. Now that the sites of the Egyptian prehistoric
settlements have been so thoroughly explored by competent archæologists
(and, unhappily, as thoroughly pillaged by incompetent natives), this
prehistoric Egyptian pottery has become extremely well known. In fact, it is
so common that good specimens may be bought anywhere in Egypt for a
few piastres. Most museums possess sets of this pottery, of which great
quantities have been brought back from Egypt by Prof. Petrie and other
explorers. It is of very great interest, artistically as well as historically. The
potter’s wheel was not yet invented, and all the vases, even those of the
most perfect shape, were built up by hand. The perfection of form attained
without the aid of the wheel is truly marvellous.
The commonest type of this pottery is a red polished ware vase with
black top, due to its having been baked mouth downward in a fire, the ashes

of which, according to Prof. Petrie, deoxidized the hæmatite burnishing,
and so turned the red colour to black. “In good examples the hæmatite has
not only been reduced to black magnetic oxide, but the black has the
highest polish, as seen on fine Greek vases. This is probably due to the
formation of carbonyl gas in the smothered fire. This gas acts as a solvent
of magnetic oxide, and hence allows it to assume a new surface, like the
glassy surface of some marbles subjected to solution in water.” This black
and red ware appears to be the most ancient prehistoric Egyptian pottery
known. Later in date are a red ware and a black ware with rude geometrical
incised designs, imitating basketwork, and with the incised lines filled in
with white. Later again is a buff ware, either plain or decorated with wavy
lines, concentric circles, and elaborate drawings of boats sailing on the Nile,
ostriches, fish, men and women, and so on.
These designs are in deep red. With this
elaborate pottery the Neolithic ceramic art of
Egypt reached its highest point; in the
succeeding period (the beginning of the
historic age) there was a decline in
workmanship, exhibiting clumsy forms and
bad colour, and it is not until the time of the
IVth Dynasty that good pottery (a fine
polished red) is once more found.
Meanwhile the invention of glazed pottery,
which was unknown to the prehistoric
Egyptians, had been made (before the
beginning of the Ist Dynasty). The unglazed
ware of the first three dynasties was bad, but
the new invention of light blue glazed
faience (not porcelain properly so called)
seems to have made great progress, and we possess fine specimens at the
beginning of the Ist Dynasty. The prehistoric Egyptians were also proficient
in other arts. They carved ivory and they worked gold, which is known to
have been almost the first metal worked by man; certainly in Egypt it was
utilized for ornament even before copper was used for work. We may refer
to the illustration of a flint knife with gold handle, already given.[2]
[2] See illustration.

The date of the actual introduction of copper for tools and weapons
into Egypt is uncertain, but it seems probable that copper was occasionally
used at a very early period. Copper weapons have been found in pre-
dynastic graves beside the finest buff pottery with elaborate red designs, so
that we may say that when the flint-working and pottery of the Neolithic
Egyptians had reached its zenith, the use of copper was already known, and
copper weapons were occasionally employed. We can thus speak of the
“Chalcolithic” period in Egypt as having already begun at that time, no
doubt several centuries before the beginning of the historical or dynastic
age. Strictly speaking, the Egyptians remained in the “Chalcolithic” period
till the end of the XIIth Dynasty, but in practice it is best to speak of this
period, when the word is used, as extending from the time of the finest flint
weapons and pottery of the prehistoric age (when the “Neolithic” period
may be said to close) till about the IId or IIId Dynasty. By that time the
“Bronze,” or, rather, “Copper,” Age of Egypt had well begun, and already
stone was not in common use.
The prehistoric pottery is of the greatest value to the archæologist, for
with its help some idea may be obtained of the succession of periods within
the late Neolithic-Chalcolithic Age. The enormous number of prehistoric
graves which have been examined enables us to make an exhaustive
comparison of the different kinds of pottery found in them, so that we can
arrange them in order according to pottery they contained. By this means
we obtain an idea of the development of different types of pottery, and the
sequence of the types. Thus it is that we can say with some degree of
confidence that the black and red ware is the most ancient form, and that the
buff with red designs is one of the latest forms of prehistoric pottery. Other
objects found in the graves can be classified as they occur with different
pottery types.
With the help of the pottery we can thus gain a more or less reliable
conspectus of the development of the late “Neolithic” culture of Egypt. This
system of “sequence-dating” was introduced by Prof. Petrie, and is certainly
very useful. It must not, however, be pressed too far or be regarded as an
iron-bound system, with which all subsequent discoveries must be made to
fit in by force. It is not to be supposed that all prehistoric pottery developed
its series of types in an absolutely orderly manner without deviations or
throws-back. The work of man’s hands is variable and eccentric, and does
not develop or evolve in an undeviating course as the work of nature does.

It is a mistake, very often made by anthropologists and archæologists, who
forget this elementary fact, to assume “curves of development,” and so
forth, or semi-savage culture, on absolutely even and regular lines. Human
culture has not developed either evenly or regularly, as a matter of fact.
Therefore we cannot always be sure that, because the Egyptian black and
red pottery does not occur in graves with buff and red, it is for this reason
absolutely earlier in date than the latter. Some of the development-
sequences may in reality be contemporary with others instead of earlier, and
allowance must always be made for aberrations and reversions to earlier
types.
This caveat having been entered, however, we may provisionally
accept Prof. Petrie’s system of sequence-dating as giving the best
classification of the prehistoric antiquities according to development. So it
may fairly be said that, as far as we know, the black and red pottery
(“sequence-date 30—“) is the most ancient Neolithic Egyptian ware known;
that the buff and red did not begin to be used till about “sequence-date 45;”
that bone and ivory carvings were commonest in the earlier period
(“sequence-dates 30-50”); that copper was almost unknown till “sequence-
date 50,” and so on. The arbitrary numbers used range from 30 to 80, in
order to allow for possible earlier and later additions, which may be
rendered necessary by the progress of discovery. The numbers are of course
as purely arbitrary and relative as those of the different thermometrical
systems, but they afford a convenient system of arrangement. The products
of the prehistoric Egyptians are, so to speak, distributed on a conventional
plan over a scale numbered from 30 to 80, 30 representing the beginning
and 80 the close of the term, so far as its close has as yet been ascertained.
It is probable that “sequence-date 80” more or less accurately marks the
beginning of the dynastic or historical period.
This hypothetically chronological classification is, as has been said,
due to Prof. Petrie, and has been adopted by Mr. Randall-Maclver and other
students of prehistoric Egypt in their work.[3] To Prof. Petrie then is due the
credit of systematizing the study of Egyptian prehistoric antiquities; but the
further credit of having discovered these antiquities themselves and settled
their date belongs not to him but to the distinguished French archæologist,
M. J. de Morgan, who was for several years director of the museum at Giza,
and is now chief of the French archæological delegation in Persia, which
has made of late years so many important discoveries. The proof of the

prehistoric date of this class of antiquities was given, not by Prof. Petrie
after his excavations at Dendera in 1897-8, but by M. de Morgan in his
volume, Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte: l’Âge de la Pierre et les
Métaux, published in 1895-6. In this book the true chronological position of
the prehistoric antiquities was pointed out, and the existence of an Egyptian
Stone Age finally decided. M. de Morgan’s work was based on careful
study of the results of excavations carried on for several years by the
Egyptian government in various parts of Egypt, in the course of which a
large number of cemeteries of the primitive type had been discovered. It
was soon evident to M. de Morgan that these primitive graves, with their
unusual pottery and flint implements, could be nothing less than the tombs
of the prehistoric Egyptians, the Egyptians of the Stone Age.
[3] El Amra and Abydos, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902.

Objects of the prehistoric period had been known to the museums for
many years previously, but owing to the uncertainty of their provenance and
the absence of knowledge of the existence of the primitive cemeteries, no
scientific conclusions had been arrived at with regard to them; and it was
not till the publication of M. de Morgan’s book that they were recognized
and classified as prehistoric. The necropoles investigated by M. de Morgan
and his assistants extended from Kawâmil in the north, about twenty miles
north of Abydos, to Edfu in the south. The chief cemeteries between these
two points were those of Bât Allam, Saghel el-Baglieh, el-’Amra, Nakâda,
Tûkh, and Gebelên. All the burials were of simple type, analogous to those
of the Neolithic races in the rest of the world. In a shallow, oval grave,
excavated often but a few inches below the surface of the soil, lay the body,
cramped up with the knees to the chin, sometimes in a rough box of pottery,
more often with only a mat to cover it. Ready to the hand of the dead man
were his flint weapons and tools, and the usual red and black, or buff and
red, pots lay beside him; originally, no doubt, they had been filled with the
funeral meats, to sustain the ghost in the next world. Occasionally a simple
copper weapon was found. With the body were also buried slate palettes for
grinding the green eye-paint which the Egyptians loved even at this early
period. These are often carved to suggest the forms of animals, such as
birds, bats, tortoises, goats, etc.; on others are fantastic creatures with two
heads. Combs of bone, too, are found, ornamented in a similar way with
birds’ or goats’ heads, often double. And most interesting of all are the

small bone and ivory figures of men and women which are also found.
These usually have little blue beads for eyes, and are of the quaintest and
naivest appearance conceivable. Here we have an elderly man with a long
pointed beard, there two women with inane smiles upon their countenances,
here another woman, of better work this time, with a child slung across her
shoulder. This figure, which is in the British Museum, must be very late, as
prehistoric Egyptian antiquities go. It is almost as good in style as the early
Ist Dynasty objects. Such were the objects which the simple piety of the
early Egyptian prompted him to bury with the bodies of his dead, in order
that they might find solace and contentment in the other world.
All the prehistoric cemeteries are of this type, with the graves pressed
closely together, so that they often impinge upon one another. The nearness
of the graves to the surface is due to the exposed positions, at the entrances
to wadis, in which the primitive cemeteries are usually found. The result is
that they are always swept by the winds, which prevent the desert sand from
accumulating over them, and so have preserved the original level of the
ground. From their proximity to the surface they are often found disturbed,
more often by the agency of jackals than that of man.
Contemporaneously with M. de Morgan’s explorations, Prof. Flinders
Petrie and Mr. J. Quibell had, in the winter of 1894-5, excavated in the
districts of Tukh and Nakada, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Koptos,
a series of extensive cemeteries of the primitive type, from which they
obtained a large number of antiquities, published in their volume Nagada
and Dallas. The plates giving representations of the antiquities found were
of the highest interest, but the scientific value of the letter-press is vitiated
by the fact that the true historical position of the antiquities was not
perceived by their discoverers, who came to the conclusion that these
remains were those of a “New Pace” of Libyan invaders. This race, they
supposed, had entered Egypt after the close of the flourishing period of the
“Old Kingdom” at the end of the VIth Dynasty, and had occupied part of
the Nile valley from that time till the period of the Xth Dynasty.
This conclusion was proved erroneous by M. de Morgan almost as
soon as made, and the French archæologist’s identification of the primitive
remains as pre-dynastic was at once generally accepted. It was obvious that
a hypothesis of the settlement of a stone-using barbaric race in the midst of
Egypt at so late a date as the period immediately preceding the XIIth

Dynasty, a race which mixed in no way with the native Egyptians
themselves, and left no trace of their influence upon the later Egyptians,
was one which demanded greater faith than the simple explanation of M. de
Morgan.
The error of the British explorers was at once admitted by Mr. Quibell,
in his volume on the excavations of 1897 at el-Kab, published in 1898.[4]
Mr. Quibell at once found full and adequate confirmation of M. de
Morgan’s discovery in his diggings at el-Kab. Prof. Petrie admitted the
correctness of M. de Morgan’s views in the preface to his volume Diospolis
Parva, published three years later in 1901.[5] The preface to the first volume
of M. de Morgan’s book contained a generous recognition of the method
and general accuracy of Prof. Petrie’s excavations, which contrasted
favourably, according to M. de Morgan, with the excavations of others,
generally carried on without scientific control, and with the sole aim of
obtaining antiquities or literary texts.[6] That M. de Morgan’s own work was
carried out as scientifically and as carefully is evident from the fact that his
conclusions as to the chronological position of the prehistoric antiquities
have been shown to be correct. To describe M. de Morgan’s discovery as a
“happy guess,” as has been done, is therefore beside the mark.
[4] El-Kab. Egyptian Research Account, 1897, p. 11.

[5] Diospolis Parva. Egypt Exploration Fund, 1901, p. 2.

[6] Recherches: Age de la Pierre, p. xiii.

Another most important British excavation was that carried on by
Messrs. Randall-Maclver and Wilkin at el-’Amra. The imposing lion-
headed promontory of el-’Amra stands out into the plain on the west bank
of the Nile about five miles south of Abydos. At the foot of this hill M. de
Morgan found a very extensive prehistoric necropolis, which he examined,
but did not excavate to any great extent, and the work of thoroughly
excavating it was performed by Messrs. Randall-MacIver and Wilkin for
the Egypt Exploration Fund. The results have thrown very great light upon
the prehistoric culture of Egypt, and burials of all prehistoric types, some of
them previously unobserved, were found. Among the most interesting are
burials in pots, which have also been found by Mr. Garstang in a
predynastic necropolis at Ragagna, north of Abydos. One of the more
remarkable observations made at el-’Amra was the progressive

development of the tombs from the simplest pot-burial to a small brick
chamber, the embryo of the brick tombs of the Ist Dynasty. Among the
objects recovered from this site may be mentioned a pottery model of oxen,
a box in the shape of a model hut, and a slate “palette” with what is perhaps
the oldest Egyptian hieroglyph known, a representation of the fetish-sign of
the god Min, in relief. All these are preserved in the British Museum. The
skulls of the bodies found were carefully preserved for craniometric
examination.
In 1901 an extensive prehistoric cemetery was being excavated by
Messrs. Reisner and Lythgoe at Nag’ed-Dêr, opposite Girga, and at el-
Ahaiwa, further north, another prehistoric necropolis has been excavated by
these gentlemen, working for the University of California.

The cemetery of Nag’ed-Dêr is of the usual prehistoric type, with its
multitudes of small oval graves, excavated just a little way below the
surface. Graves of this kind are the most primitive of all. Those at el-’Amra
are usually more developed, often, as has been noted, rising to the height of
regular brick tombs. They are evidently later, nearer to the time of the Ist
Dynasty. The position of the Nag’ed-Dêr cemetery is also characteristic. It
lies on the usual low ridge at the entrance to a desert wadi, which is itself

one of the most picturesque in this part of Egypt, with its chaos of great
boulders and fallen rocks. An illustration of the camp of Mr. Reisner’s
expedition at Nag’ed-Dêr is given above. The excavations of the University
of California are carried out with the greatest possible care and are financed
with the greatest possible liberality. Mr. Reisner has therefore been able to
keep an absolutely complete photographic record of everything, even down
to the successive stages in the opening of a tomb, which will be of the
greatest use to science when published.
For a detailed study of the antiquities of the prehistoric period the
publications of Prof. Petrie, Mr. Quibell, and Mr. Randall-Maclver are more
useful than that of M. de Morgan, who does not give enough details. Every
atom of evidence is given in the publications of the British explorers,
whereas it is a characteristic of French work to give brilliant conclusions,
beautifully illustrated, without much of the evidence on which the
conclusions are based. This kind of work does not appeal to the Anglo-
Saxon mind, which takes nothing on trust, even from the most renowned
experts, and always wants to know the why and wherefore. The complete
publication of evidence which marks the British work will no doubt be met
with, if possible in even more complete detail, in the American work of
Messrs. Reisner, Lythgoe, and Mace (the last-named is an Englishman) for
the University of California, when published. The question of speedy versus
delayed publication is a very vexing one. Prof. Petrie prefers to publish as
speedily as possible; six months after the season’s work in Egypt is done,
the full publication with photographs of everything appears. Mr. Reisner
and the French explorers prefer to publish nothing until they have
exhaustively studied the whole of the evidence, and can extract nothing
more from it. This would be admirable if the French published their
discoveries fully, but they do not. Even M. de Morgan has not approached
the fulness of detail which characterizes British work and which will
characterize Mr. Reisner’s publication when it appears. The only drawback
to this method is that general interest in the particular excavations described
tends to pass away before the full description appears.
Prof. Petrie has explored other prehistoric sites at Abadiya, and Mr.
Quibell at el-Kab. M. de Morgan and his assistants have examined a large
number of sites, ranging from the Delta to el-Kab. Further research has
shown that some of the sites identified by M. de Morgan as prehistoric are
in reality of much later date, for example, Kahun, where the late flints of

XIIth Dynasty date were found. He notes that “large numbers of Neolithic
flint weapons are found in the desert on the borders of the Fayyum, and at
Helwan, south of Cairo,” and that all the important necropoles and kitchen-
middens of the predynastic people are to be found in the districts of Abydos
and Thebes, from el-Kawamil in the North to el-Kab in the South. It is of
course too soon to assert with confidence that there are no prehistoric
remains in any other part of Egypt, especially in the long tract between the
Fayyûm and the district of Abydos, but up to the present time none have
been found in this region.
This geographical distribution of the prehistoric remains fits in
curiously with the ancient legend concerning the origin of the ancestors of
the Egyptians in Upper Egypt, and supports the much discussed theory that
they came originally to the Nile valley from the shores of the Red Sea by
way of the Wadi Hammamat, which debouches on to the Nile in the vicinity
of Koptos and Kus, opposite Ballas and Tûkh. The supposition seems a very
probable one, and it may well be that the earliest Egyptians entered the
valley of the Nile by the route suggested and then spread northwards and
southwards in the valley. The fact that their remains are not found north of
el-Kawâmil nor south of el-Kab might perhaps be explained by the
supposition that, when they had extended thus far north and south from
their original place of arrival, they passed from the primitive Neolithic
condition to the more highly developed copper-using culture of the period
which immediately preceded the establishment of the monarchy. The
Neolithic weapons of the Fayyûm and Hel-wân would then be the remains
of a different people, which inhabited the Delta and Middle Egypt in very
early times. This people may have been of Mediterranean stock, akin to the
primitive inhabitants of Palestine, Greece, Italy, and Spain; and they no
doubt were identical with the inhabitants of Lower Egypt who were
overthrown and conquered by Kha-sekhem and the other Southern founders
of the monarchy (who belonged to the race which had come from the Red
Sea by the Wadi Hammamat), and so were the ancestors of the later natives
of Lower Egypt. Whether the Southerners, whose primitive remains we find
from el-Kawâmil to el-Kab, were of the same race as the Northerners whom
they conquered, cannot be decided. The skull-form of the Southerners
agrees with that of the Mediterranean races. But we have no nécropoles of
the Northerners to tell us much of their peculiarities. We have nothing but
their flint arrowheads.

But it should be observed that, in spite of the present absence of all
primitive remains (whether mere flints, or actual graves with bodies and
relics) of the primeval population between the Fayyûm and el-Kawâmil,
there is no proof that the primitive race of Upper Egypt was not
coterminous and identical with that of the lower country. It might therefore
be urged that the whole Neolithic population was “Mediterranean” by its
skull-form and body-structure, and specifically “Nilotic” (indigenous
Egyptian) in its culture-type. This is quite possible, but we have again to
account for the legends of distant origin on the Red Sea coast, the
probability that one element of the Egyptian population was of extraneous
origin and came from the east into the Nile valley near Koptos, and finally
the historical fact of an advance of the early dynastic Egyptians from the
South to the conquest of the North. The latter fact might of course be
explained as a civil war analogous to that between Thebes and Asyût in the
time of the IXth Dynasty, but against this explanation is to be set the fact
that the contemporary monuments of the Southerners exhibit the men of the
North as of foreign and non-Egyptian ethnic type, resembling Libyans. It is
possible that they were akin to the Libyans; and this would square very well
with the first theory, but it may also be made to fit in with a development of
the second, which has been generally accepted.
According to this view, the whole primitive Neolithic population of
North and South was Miotic, indigenous in origin, and akin to the
“Mediterraneans “of Prof. Sergi and the other ethnologists. It was not this
population, the stone-users whose nécropoles have been found by Messrs.
de Morgan, Pétrie, and Maclver, that entered the Nile valley by the Wadi
Hammamat. This was another race of different ethnic origin, which came
from the Red Sea toward the end of the Neolithic period, and, being of
higher civilization than the native Nilotes, assumed the lordship over them,
gave a great impetus to the development of their culture, and started at once
the institution of monarchy, the knowledge of letters, and the use of metals.
The chiefs of this superior tribe founded the monarchy, conquered the
North, unified the kingdom, and began Egyptian history. From many
indications it would seem probable that these conquerors were of
Babylonian origin, or that the culture they brought with them (possibly
from Arabia) was ultimately of Babylonian origin. They themselves would
seem to have been Semites, or rather proto-Semites, who came from Arabia
to Africa by way of the straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and proceeded up the

coast to about the neighbourhood of Kusêr, whence the Wadi Hammamat
offered them an open road to the valley of the Nile. By this route they may
have entered Egypt, bringing with them a civilization, which, like that of
the other Semites, had been profoundly influenced and modified by that of
the Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia. This Semitic-Sumerian culture,
mingling with that of the Nilotes themselves, produced the civilization of
Ancient Egypt as we know it.
This is a very plausible hypothesis, and has a great deal of evidence in
its favour. It seems certain that in the early dynastic period two races lived
in Egypt, which differed considerably in type, and also, apparently, in burial
customs. The later Egyptians always buried the dead lying on their backs,
extended at full length. During the period of the Middle Kingdom (XIth-
XIIIth Dynasties) the head was usually turned over on to the left side, in
order that the dead man might look through the two great eyes painted on
that side of the coffin. Afterward the rigidly extended position was always
adopted. The Neolithic Egyptians, however, buried the dead lying wholly
on the left side and in a contracted position, with the knees drawn up to the
chin. The bodies were not embalmed, and the extended position and
mummification were never used. Under the IVth Dynasty we find in the
necropolis of Mêdûm (north of the Payyûm) the two positions used
simultaneously, and the extended bodies are mummified. The contracted
bodies are skeletons, as in the case of most of the predynastic bodies. When
these are found with flesh, skin, and hair intact, their preservation is due to
the dryness of the soil and the preservative salts it contains, not to
intentional embalming, which was evidently introduced by those who
employed the extended position in burial. The contracted position is found
as late as the Vth Dynasty at Dashasha, south of the Eayyûm, but after that
date it is no longer found.
The conclusion is obvious that the contracted position without
mummification, which the Neolithic people used, was supplanted in the
early dynastic period by the extended position with mummification, and by
the time of the VIth Dynasty it was entirely superseded. This points to the
supersession of the burial customs of the indigenous Neolithic race by those
of another race which conquered and dominated the indigenes. And, since
the extended burials of the IVth Dynasty are evidently those of the higher
nobles, while the contracted ones are those of inferior people, it is probable
that the customs of extended burial and embalming were introduced by a

foreign race which founded the Egyptian monarchical state, with its
hierarchy of nobles and officials, and in fact started Egyptian civilization on
its way. The conquerors of the North were thus not the descendants of the
Neolithic people of the South, but their conquerors; in fact, they dominated
the indigenes both of North and South, who will then appear (since we find
the custom of contracted burial in the North at Dashasha and Mêdûm) to
have originally belonged to the same race.
The conquering race is that which is supposed to have been of Semitic
or proto-Semitic origin, and to have brought elements of Sumerian culture
to savage Egypt. The reasons advanced for this supposition are the
following:—
(1) Just as the Egyptian race was evidently compounded of two
elements, of conquered “Mediterraneans” and conquering x, so the
Egyptian language is evidently compounded of two elements, the one
Nilotic, perhaps related in some degree to the Berber dialects of North
Africa, the other not x, but evidently Semitic.
(2) Certain elements of the early dynastic civilization, which do not
appear in that of the earlier pre-dynastic period, resemble well-known
elements of the civilization of Babylonia. We may instance the use of the
cylinder-seal, which died out in Egypt in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty,
but was always used in Babylonia from the earliest to the latest times. The
early Egyptian mace-head is of exactly the same type as the early
Babylonian one. In the British Museum is an Egyptian mace-head of red
breccia, which is identical in shape and size with one from Babylonia (also
in the museum) bearing the name of Shargani-shar-ali (i.e. Sargon, King of
Agade), one of the earliest Chaldæan monarchs, who must have lived about
the same time as the Egyptian kings of the IId-IIId Dynasties, to which
period the Egyptian mace-head may also be approximately assigned. The
Egyptian art of the earliest dynasties bears again a remarkable resemblance
to that of early Babylonia. It is not till the time of the IId Dynasty that
Egyptian art begins to take upon itself the regular form which we know so
well, and not till that of the IVth that this form was finally crystallized.
Under the 1st Dynasty we find the figure of man or, to take other instances,
that of a lion, or a hawk, or a snake, often treated in a style very different
from that in which we are accustomed to see a man, a lion, a hawk, or a
snake depicted in works of the later period. And the striking thing is that

these early representations, which differ so much from what we find in later
Egyptian art, curiously resemble the works of early Babylonian art, of the
time of the patesis of Shirpurla or the Kings Shargani-shar-ali and Narâm-
Sin. One of the best known relics of the early art of Babylonia is the famous
“Stele of Vultures” now in Paris. On this we see the enemies of Eannadu,
one of the early rulers of Shirpurla, cast out to be devoured by the vultures.
On an Egyptian relief of slate, evidently originally dedicated in a temple
record of some historical event, and dating from the beginning of the Ist
Dynasty (practically contemporary, according to our latest knowledge, with
Eannadu), we have an almost exactly similar scene of captives being cast
out into the desert, and devoured by lions and vultures. The two reliefs are
curiously alike in their clumsy, naïve style of art. A further point is that the
official represented on the stele, who appears to be thrusting one of the
bound captives out to die, wears a long fringed garment of Babylonish cut,
quite different from the clothes of the later Egyptians.
(3) There are evidently two distinct and different main strata in the
fabric of Egyptian religion. On the one hand we find a mass of myth and
religious belief of very primitive, almost savage, cast, combining a worship
of the actual dead in their tombs—which were supposed to communicate
and thus form a veritable “underworld,” or, rather, “under-Egypt”—with
veneration of magic animals, such as jackals, cats, hawks, and crocodiles.
On the other hand, we have a sun and sky worship of a more elevated
nature, which does not seem to have amalgamated with the earlier fetishism
and corpse-worship until a comparatively late period. The main seats of the
sun-worship were at Heliopolis in the Delta and at Edfu in Upper Egypt.
Heliopolis seems always to have been a centre of light and leading in
Egypt, and it is, as is well known, the On of the Bible, at whose university
the Jewish lawgiver Moses is related to have been educated “in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians.” The philosophical theories of the priests of the
Sun-gods, Râ-Harmachis and Turn, at Heliopolis seem to have been the
source from which sprang the monotheistic heresy of the Disk-Worshippers
(in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty), who, under the guidance of the
reforming King Akhunaten, worshipped only the disk of the sun as the
source of all life, the door in heaven, so to speak, through which the hidden
One Deity poured forth heat and light, the origin of life upon the earth. Very
early in Egyptian history the Heliopolitans gained the upper hand, and the
Râ-worship (under the Vth Dynasty, the apogee of the Old Kingdom) came

to the front, and for the first time the kings took the afterwards time-
honoured royal title of “Son of the Sun.” It appears then as a more or less
foreign importation into the Nile valley, and bears most undoubtedly a
Semitic impress. Its two chief seats were situated, the one, Heliopolis, in the
North on the eastern edge of the Delta,—just where an early Semitic
settlement from over the desert might be expected to be found,—the other,
Edfu, in the Upper Egyptian territory south of the Thebaïd, Koptos, and the
Wadi Ham-mamat, and close to the chief settlement of the earliest kings and
the most ancient capital of Upper Egypt.
(4) The custom of burying at full length was evidently introduced into
Egypt by the second, or x race. The Neolithic Egyptians buried in the
cramped position. The early Babylonians buried at full length, as far as we
know. On the same “Stele of Vultures,” which has already been mentioned,
we see the burying at full length of dead warriors.[7] There is no trace of any
early burial in Babylonia in the cramped position. The tombs at Warka
(Erech) with cramped bodies in pottery coffins are of very late date. A
further point arises with regard to embalming. The Neolithic Egyptians did
not embalm the dead. Usually their cramped bodies are found as skeletons.
When they are mummified, it is merely owing to the preservative action of
the salt in the soil, not to any process of embalming. The second, or x race,
however, evidently introduced the custom of embalming as well as that of
burial at full length and the use of coffins. The Neolithic Egyptian used no
box or coffin, the nearest approach to this being a pot, which was inverted
over the coiled up body. Usually only a mat was put over the body.
[7] See illustration.

Now it is evident that Babylonians and Assyrians, who buried the dead
at full length in chests, had some knowledge of embalming. An Assyrian
king tells us how he buried his royal father:—
“Within the grave, the secret place,
In kingly oil, I gently laid him.
The grave-stone marketh his resting-place.
With mighty bronze I sealed its entrance,
And I protected it with an incantation.”

The “kingly oil” was evidently used with the idea of preserving the body
from decay. Salt also was used to preserve the dead, and Herodotus says
that the Babylonians buried in honey, which was also used by the
Egyptians. No doubt the Babylonian method was less perfect than the
Egyptian, but the comparison is an interesting one, when taken in
connection with the other points of resemblance mentioned above.
We find, then, that an analysis of the Egyptian language reveals a
Semitic element in it; that the early dynastic culture had certain
characteristics which were unknown to the Neolithic Egyptians but are
closely parallelled in early Babylonia; that there were two elements in the
Egyptian religion, one of which seems to have originally belonged to the
Neolithic people, while the other has a Semitic appearance; and that there
were two sets of burial customs in early Egypt, one, that of the Neolithic
people, the other evidently that of a conquering race, which eventually
prevailed over the former; these later rites were analogous to those of the
Babylonians and Assyrians, though differing from them in points of detail.
The conclusion is that the x or conquering race was Semitic and brought to
Egypt the Semitic elements in the Egyptian religion and a culture originally
derived from that of the Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia, the non-Semitic
parent of all Semitic civilizations.
The question now arises, how did this Semitic people reach Egypt? We
have the choice of two points of entry: First, Heliopolis in the North, where
the Semitic sun-worship took root, and, second, the Wadi Hamma-mat in
the South, north of Edfu, the southern centre of sun-worship, and
Hierakonpolis (Nekheb-Nekhen), the capital of the Upper Egyptian
kingdom which existed before the foundation of the monarchy. The legends
which seem to bring the ancestors of the Egyptians from the Red Sea coast
have already been mentioned. They are closely connected with the worship
of the Sky and Sun god Horus of Edfu. Hathor, his nurse, the “House of

Horus,” the centre of whose worship was at Dendera, immediately opposite
the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat, was said to have come from Ta-neter,
“The Holy Land,” i.e. Abyssinia or the Red Sea coast, with the company or
paut of the gods. Now the Egyptians always seem to have had some idea
that they were connected racially with the inhabitants of the Land of Punt or
Puenet, the modern Abyssinia and Somaliland. In the time of the XVIIIth
Dynasty they depicted the inhabitants of Punt as greatly resembling
themselves in form, feature, and dress, and as wearing the little turned-up
beard which was worn by the Egyptians of the earliest times, but even as
early as the IVth Dynasty was reserved for the gods. Further, the word Punt
is always written without the hieroglyph determinative of a foreign country,
thus showing that the Egyptians did not regard the Punites as foreigners.
This certainly looks as if the Punites were a portion of the great migration
from Arabia, left behind on the African shore when the rest of the
wandering people pressed on northwards to the Wadi Hammamat and the
Nile. It may be that the modern Gallas and Abyssinians are descendants of
these Punites.
Now the Sky-god of Edfu is in legend a conquering hero who
advances down the Nile valley, with his Mesniu, or “Smiths,” to overthrow
the people of the North, whom he defeats in a great battle near Dendera.
This may be a reminiscence of the first fights of the invaders with the
Neolithic inhabitants. The other form of Horus, “Horus, son of Isis,” has
also a body of retainers, the Shemsu-Heru, or “Followers of Horns,” who
are spoken of in late texts as the rulers of Egypt before the monarchy. They
evidently correspond to the dynasties of Manes, Νεκύες or “Ghosts,” of
Manetho, and are probably intended for the early kings of Hierakonpolis.
The mention of the Followers of Horus as “Smiths” is very interesting, for
it would appear to show that the Semitic conquerors were notable as metal-
users, that, in fact, their conquest was that old story in the dawn of the
world’s history, the utter overthrow and subjection of the stone-users by the
metal-users, the primeval tragedy of the supersession of flint by copper.
This may be, but if the “Smiths” were the Semitic conquerors who founded
the kingdom, it would appear that the use of copper was known in Egypt to
some extent before their arrival, for we find it in the graves of the late
Neolithic Egyptians, very sparsely from “sequence-date 30” to “45,” but
afterwards more commonly. It was evidently becoming known. The
supposition, however, that the “Smiths” were the Semitic conquerors, and

that they won their way by the aid of their superior weapons of metal, may
be provisionally accepted.
In favour of the view which would bring the conquerors by way of the
Wadi Hammamat, an interesting discovery may be quoted. Immediately
opposite Den-dera, where, according to the legend, the battle between the
Mesniu and the aborigines took place, lies Koptos, at the mouth of the Wadi
Hammamat. Here, in 1894, underneath the pavement of the ancient temple,
Prof. Petrie found remains which he then diagnosed as belonging to the
most ancient epoch of Egyptian history. Among them were some extremely
archaic statues of the god Min, on which were curious scratched drawings
of bears, crioceras-shells, elephants walking over hills, etc., of the most
primitive description. With them were lions’ heads and birds of a style then
unknown, but which we now know to belong to the period of the beginning
of the Ist Dynasty. But the statues of Min are older. The crioceras-shells
belong to the Red Sea. Are we to see in these statues the holy images of the
conquerors from the Red Sea who reached the Nile valley by way of the
Wadi Hammamat, and set up the first memorials of their presence at
Koptos? It may be so, or the Min statues may be older than the conquerors,
and belong to the Neolithic race, since Min and his fetish (which we find on
the slate palette from el-’Amra, already mentioned) seem to belong to the
indigenous Nilotes. In any case we have in these statues, two of which are
in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, probably the most ancient cult-
images in the world:
This theory, which would make all the Neolithic inhabitants of Egypt
one people, who were conquered by a Semitic race, bringing a culture of
Sumerian origin to Egypt by way of the Wadi Hammamat, is that generally
accepted at the present time. It may, however, eventually prove necessary to
modify it. For reasons given above, it may well be that the Neolithic
population was itself not indigenous, and that it reached the Nile valley by
way of the Wadi Hammamat, spreading north and south from the mouth of
the wadi. It may also be considered probable that a Semitic wave invaded
Egypt by way of the Isthmus of Suez, where the early sun-cultus of
Heliopolis probably marks a primeval Semitic settlement. In that case it
would seem that the Mesniu or “Smiths,” who introduced the use of metal,
would have to be referred to the originally Neolithic pre-Semitic people,
who certainly were acquainted with the use of copper, though not to any
great extent. But this is not a necessary supposition. The Mesniu are closely

connected with the Sky-god Horus, who was possibly of Semitic origin, and
another Semitic wave, quite distinct from that which entered Egypt by way
of the Isthmus, may very well also have reached Egypt by the Wadi
Hammamat, or, equally possibly, from the far south, coming down to the
Nile from the Abyssinian mountains. The legend of the coming of Hathor
from Ta-neter may refer to some such wandering, and we know that the
Egyptians of the Old Kingdom communicated with the Land of Punt, not by
way of the Red Sea coast as Hatshepsut did, but by way of the Upper Nile.
This would tally well with the march of the Mesniu northwards from Edfu
to their battle with the forces of Set at Dendera.
In any case, at the dawn of connected Egyptian history, we find two
main centres of civilization in Egypt, Heliopolis and Buto in the Delta in
the North, and Edfu and Hierakonpolis in the South. Here were established
at the beginning of the Chalcolithic stage of culture, we may say, two
kingdoms, of Lower and Upper Egypt, which were eventually united by the
superior arms of the kings of Upper Egypt, who imposed their rule upon the
North but at the same time removed their capital thither. The dualism of
Buto and Hierakonpolis really lasted throughout Egyptian history. The king
was always called “Lord of the Two Lands,” and wore the crowns of Upper
and Lower Egypt; the snakes of Buto and Nekhebet (the goddess of
Nekheb, opposite Nekhen or Hierakonpolis) always typified the united
kingdom. This dualism of course often led to actual division and reversion
to the predynastic order of things, as, for instance, in the time of the XXIst
Dynasty.
It might well seem that both the impulses to culture development in the
North and South came from Semitic inspiration, and that it was to the
Semitic invaders in North and South that the founding of the two kingdoms
was due. This may be true to some extent, but it is at the same time very
probable that the first development of political culture at Hierakonpolis was
really of pre-Semitic origin. The kingdom of Buto, since its capital is
situated so near to the seacoast, may have owed its origin to oversea
Mediterranean connections. There is much in the political constitution of
later Egypt which seems to have been of indigenous and pre-Semitic origin.
Especially does this seem to be so in the case of the division and
organization of the country into nomes. It is obvious that so soon as
agriculture began to be practised on a large scale, boundaries would be
formed, and in the unique conditions of Egypt, where all boundaries

disappear beneath the inundation every year, it is evident that the fixing of
division-lines as permanently as possible by means of landmarks was early
essayed. We can therefore with confidence assign the formation of the
nomes to very early times. Now the names of the nomes and the symbols or
emblems by which they were distinguished are of very great interest in this
connection. They are nearly all figures of the magic animals of the primitive
religion, and fetish-emblems of the older deities. The names are, in fact,
those of the territories of the Neolithic Egyptian tribes, and their emblems
are those of the protecting tribal demons. The political divisions of the
country seem, then, to be of extremely ancient origin, and if the nomes go
back to a time before the Semitic invasions, so may also the kingdoms of
the South and North.
Of these predynastic kingdoms we know very little, except from
legendary sources. The Northerners who were conquered by Aha, Narmer,
and Khâsekhehiui do not look very much like Egyptians, but rather
resemble Semites or Libyans. On the “Stele of Palermo,” a chronicle of
early kings inscribed in the period of the Vth Dynasty, we have a list of
early kings of the North,—Seka, Desau, Tiu, Tesh, Nihab, Uatjântj, Mekhe.
The names are primitive in form. We know nothing more about them. Last
year Mr. C. T. Currelly attempted to excavate at Buto, in order to find traces
of the predynastic kingdom, but owing to the infiltration of water his efforts
were unsuccessful. It is improbable that anything is now left of the most
ancient period at that site, as the conditions in the Delta are so very different
from those obtaining in Upper Egypt. There, at Hierakonpolis, and at el-
Kab on the opposite bank of the Nile, the sites of the ancient cities Nekhen
and Nekheb, the excavators have been very successful. The work was
carried out by Messrs. Quibell and Green, in the years 1891-9. Prehistoric
burials were found on the hills near by, but the larger portion of the
antiquities were recovered from the temple-ruins, and date back to the
beginning of the 1st Dynasty, exactly the time when the kings of
Hierakonpolis first conquered the kingdom of Buto and founded the united
Egyptian monarchy.
The ancient temple, which was probably one of the earliest seats of
Egyptian civilization, was situated on a mound, now known as el-Kom el-
ahmar, “the Red Hill,” from its colour. The chief feature of the most ancient
temple seems to have been a circular mound, revetted by a wall of
sandstone blocks, which was apparently erected about the end of the

predynastic period. Upon this a shrine was probably erected. This was the
ancient shrine of Nekhen, the cradle of the Egyptian monarchy. Close by it
were found some of the most valuable relics of the earliest Pharaonic age,
the great ceremonial mace-heads and vases of Narmer and “the Scorpion,”
the shields or “palettes” of the same Narmer, the vases and stelas of
Khâsekhemui, and, of later date, the splendid copper colossal group of King
Pepi I and his son, which is now at Cairo. Most of the 1st Dynasty objects
are preserved in the Ashmo-lean Museum at Oxford, which is one of the
best centres for the study of early Egyptian antiquities. Narmer and
Khâsekhemui are, as we shall see, two of the first monarchs of all Egypt.
These sculptured and inscribed mace-heads, shields, etc., are monuments
dedicated by them in the ancestral shrine at Hierakonpolis as records of
their deeds. Both kings seem to have waged war against the Northerners,
the Anu of Heliopolis and the Delta, and on these votive monuments from
Hierakonpolis we find hieroglyphed records of the defeat of the Anu, who
have very definitely Semitic physiognomies.
On one shield or palette we see Narmer clubbing a man of Semitic
appearance, who is called the “Only One of the Marsh” (Delta), while
below two other Semites fly, seeking “fortress-protection.” Above is a
figure of a hawk, symbolizing the Upper Egyptian king, holding a rope
which is passed through the nose of a Semitic head, while behind is a sign
which may be read as “the North,” so that the whole symbolizes the leading
away of the North into captivity by the king of the South. It is significant, in
view of what has been said above with regard to the probable Semitic origin
of the Heliopolitan Northerners, to find the people typical of the North-land
represented by the Southerners as Semites. Equally Semitic is the
overthrown Northerner on the other side of this well-known monument
which we are describing; he is being trampled under the hoofs and gored by
the horns of a bull, who, like the hawk, symbolizes the king. The royal bull
has broken down the wall of a fortified enclosure, in which is the hut or tent
of the Semite, and the bricks lie about promiscuously.
In connection with the Semitic origin of the Northerners, the form of
the fortified enclosures on both sides of this monument (that to whose
protection the two Semites on one side fly, and that out of which the kingly
bull has dragged the chief on the other) is noticeable. As usual in Egyptian
writing, the hieroglyph of these buildings takes the form of a plan. The plan
shows a crenelated enclosure, resembling the walls of a great Babylonian

palace or temple, such as have been found at Telloh, Warka, or Mukayyar.
The same design is found in Egypt at the Shuret ez-Zebib, an Old Kingdom
fortress at Abydos, in the tomb of King Aha at Nakâda, and in many walls
of mastaba-tombs of the early time. This is another argument in favour of
an early connection between Egypt and Babylonia. We illustrate a fragment
of another votive shield or palette of the same kind, now in the museum of
the Louvre, which probably came originally from Hierakonpolis. It is of
exactly similar workmanship to that of Narmer, and is no doubt a fragment
of another monument of that king. On it we see the same subject of the
overthrowing of a Northerner (of Semitic aspect) by the royal bull. On one
side, below, is a fortified enclosure with crenelated walls of the type we
have described, and within it a lion and a vase; below this another fort, and
a bird within it. These signs may express the names of the two forts, but,
owing to the fact that at this early period Egyptian orthography was not yet
fixed, we cannot read them. On the other side we see a row of animated
nome-standards of Upper Egypt, with the symbols of the god Min of
Koptos, the hawk of Horus of Edfu, the ibis of Thot of Eshmunên, and the
jackals of Anubis of Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the
monument, we should see, bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner,
king, or animal symbolic of the North. On another slate shield, which we
also reproduce, we see a symbolical representation of the capture of seven
Northern cities, whose names seem to mean the “Two Men,” the “Heron,”
the “Owl,” the “Palm,” and the “Ghost” Cities.
“Ghost City” is attacked by a lion, “Owl City” by a hawk, “Palm City”
by two hawk nome-standards, and another, whose name we cannot guess at,
is being opened up by a scorpion.

The operating animals evidently represent nomes and tribes of the
Upper Egyptians. Here again we see the same crenelated walls of the
Northern towns, and there is no doubt that this slate fragment also, which is
preserved in the Cairo Museum, is a monument of the conquests of Narmer.
It is executed in the same archaic style as those from Hierakonpolis. The
animals on the other side no doubt represent part of the spoil of the North.
Returning to the great shield or palette found by Mr. Quibell, we see
the king coming out, followed by his sandal-bearer, the Hen-neter or
“God’s Servant,”[8] to view the dead bodies of the slain Northerners which
lie arranged in rows, decapitated, and with their heads between their feet.
The king is preceded by a procession of nome-standards.
Above the dead men are symbolic representations of a hawk perched
on a harpoon over a boat, and a hawk and a door, which doubtless again
refer to the fights of the royal hawk of Upper Egypt on the Nile and at the

gate of the North. The designs on the mace-heads refer to the same conquest
of the North.
[8] In his commentary (Hierakonpolis, i. p. 9) on this scene, Prof. Petrie
supposes that the seven-pointed star sign means “king,” and compares the eight-
pointed star “used for king in Babylonia.” The eight-pointed star of the
cuneiform script does not mean “king,” but “god.” The star then ought to mean
“god,” and the title “servant of a god,” and this supposition may be correct. Hen-
neter, “god’s servant,” was the appellation of a peculiar kind of priest in later
days, and was then spelt with the ordinary sign for a god, the picture of an axe.
But in the archaic period, with which we are dealing, a star like the Babylonian
sign may very well have been used for “god,” and the title of Narmer’s sandal-
bearer may read Hen-neter. He was the slave of the living god Narmer. All
Egyptian kings were regarded as deities, more or less.

The monuments Khâsekhemui, a king, show us that he conquered the
North also and slew 47,209 “Northern Enemies.” The contorted attitudes of
the dead Northerners were greatly admired and sketched at the time, and
were reproduced on the pedestal of the king’s statue found by Mr. Quibell,
which is now at Oxford. It was an age of cheerful savage energy, like most
times when kingdoms and peoples are in the making. About 4000 B.C. is
the date of these various monuments.

Khâsekhemui probably lived later than Narmer, and we may suppose
that his conquest was in reality a re-conquest. He may have lived as late as
the time of the IId Dynasty, whereas Narmer must be placed at the
beginning of the Ist, and his conquest was probably that which first united
the two kingdoms of the South and North. As we shall see in the next
chapter, he is probably one of the originals of the legendary “Mena,” who
was regarded from the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty onwards as the founder
of the kingdom, and was first made known to Europe by Herodotus, under
the name of “Menés.”
Narmer is therefore the last of the ancient kings of Hierakonpolis, the
last of Manetho’s “Spirits.” We may possibly have recovered the names of
one or two of the kings anterior to Narmer in the excavations at Abydos
(see Chapter II), but this is uncertain. To all intents and purposes we have
only legendary knowledge of the Southern kingdom until its close, when
Narmer the mighty went forth to strike down the Anu of the North, an
exploit which he recorded in votive monuments at Hierakonpolis, and
which was commemorated henceforward throughout Egyptian history in the
yearly “Feast of the Smiting of the Anu.” Then was Egypt for the first time
united, and the fortress of the “White Wall,” the “Good Abode” of

Memphis, was built to dominate the lower country. The Ist Dynasty was
founded and Egyptian history began.

CHAPTER II—ABYDOS AND THE FIRST
THREE DYNASTIES
Until the recent discoveries had been made, which have thrown so
much light upon the early history of Egypt, the traditional order and names
of the kings of the first three Egyptian dynasties were, in default of more
accurate information, retained by all writers on the history of the period.
The names were taken from the official lists of kings at Abydos and
elsewhere, and were divided into dynasties according to the system of
Manetho, whose names agree more or less with those of the lists and were
evidently derived from them ultimately. With regard to the fourth and later
dynasties it was clear that the king-lists were correct, as their evidence
agreed entirely with that of the contemporary monuments. But no means
existed of checking the lists of the first three dynasties, as no contemporary
monuments other than a IVth Dynasty mention of a IId Dynasty king, Send,
had been found. The lists dated from the time of the XVIIIth and XIXth
Dynasties, so that it was very possible that with regard to the earliest
dynasties they might not be very correct. This conclusion gained additional
weight from the fact that no monuments of these earliest kings were ever
discovered; it therefore seemed probable that they were purely legendary
figures, in whose time (if they ever did exist) Egypt was still a semi-
barbarous nation. The jejune stories told about them by Manetho seemed to
confirm this idea. Mena, the reputed founder of the monarchy, was
generally regarded as a historical figure, owing to the persistence of his
name in all ancient literary accounts of the beginnings of Egyptian history;
for it was but natural to suppose that the name of the man who unified
Egypt and founded Memphis would endure in the mouths of the people. But
with regard to his successors no such supposition seemed probable, until the
time of Sneferu and the pyramid-builders.
This was the critical view. Another school of historians accepted all the
kings of the lists as historical en bloc, simply because the Egyptians had
registered their names as kings. To them Teta, Ateth, and Ata were as
historical as Mena.

Modern discovery has altered our view, and truth is seen to lie between
the opposing schools, as usual. The kings after Mena do not seem to be such
entirely unhistorical figures as the extreme critics thought; the names of
several of them, e.g. Merpeba, of the Ist Dynasty, are correctly given in the
later lists, and those of others were simply misread, e. g. that of Semti of the
same dynasty, misread “Hesepti” by the list-makers. On the other hand,
Mena himself has become a somewhat doubtful quantity. The real names of
most of the early monarchs of Egypt have been recovered for us by the
latest excavations, and we can now see when the list-makers of the XIXth
Dynasty were right and when they were wrong, and can distinguish what is
legendary in their work from what is really historical. It is true that they
very often appear to have been wrong, but, on the other hand, they were
sometimes unexpectedly near the mark, and the general number and
arrangement of their kings seems correct; so that we can still go to them for
assistance in the arrangement of the names which are communicated to us
by the newly discovered monuments. Manetho’s help, too, need never be
despised because he was a copyist of copyists; we can still use him to direct
our investigations, and his arrangement of dynasties must still remain the
framework of our chronological scheme, though he does not seem to have
been always correct as to the places in which the dynasties originated.
More than the names of the kings have the new discoveries
communicated to us. They have shed a flood of light on the beginnings of
Egyptian civilization and art, supplementing the recently ascertained facts
concerning the prehistoric age which have been described in the preceding
chapter. The impulse to these discoveries was given by the work of M. de
Morgan, who excavated sites of the early dynastic as well as of the
predynastic age. Among these was a great mastaba-tomb at Nakâda, which
proved to be that of a very early king who bore the name of Aha, “the
Fighter.” The walls of this tomb are crenelated like those of the early
Babylonian palaces and the forts of the Northerners, already referred to. M.
de Morgan early perceived the difference between the Neolithic antiquities
and those of the later archaic period of Egyptian civilization, to which the
tomb at Nakâda belonged. In the second volume of his great work on the
primitive antiquities of Egypt (L’Age des Métaux et lé Tombeau Royale de
Négadeh), he described the antiquities of the Ist Dynasty which had been
found at the time he wrote. Antiquities of the same primitive period and
even of an earlier date had been discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie, as has

already been said, at Koptos, at the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat. But
though Prof. Petrie correctly diagnosed the age of the great statues of the
god Min which he found, he was led, by his misdating of the “New Race”
antiquities from Ballas and Tûkh, also to misdate several of the primitive
antiquities,—the lions and hawks, for instance, found at Koptos, he placed
in the period between the VIIth and Xth Dynasties; whereas they can now,
in the light of further discoveries at Abydos, be seen to date to the earlier
part of the Ist Dynasty, the time of Narmer and Aha.
It is these discoveries at Abydos, coupled with those (already
described) of Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis, which have told us most of
what we know with regard to the history of the first three dynasties. At
Abydos Prof. Petrie was not himself the first in the field, the site having
already been partially explored by a French Egyptologist, M. Amélineau.
The excavations of M. Amélineau were, however, perhaps not conducted
strictly on scientific lines, and his results have been insufficiently published
with very few photographs, so that with the best will in the world we are
unable to give M. Amélineau the full credit which is, no doubt, due to him
for his work. The system of Prof. Petrie’s publications has been often, and
with justice, criticized, but he at least tells us every year what he has been
doing, and gives us photographs of everything he has found. For this reason
the epoch-making discoveries at Abydos have been coupled chiefly with the
name of Prof. Petrie, while that of M. Amélineau is rarely heard in
connection with them. As a matter of fact, however, M. Amélineau first
excavated the necropolis of the early kings at Abydos, and discovered most
of the tombs afterwards worked over by Prof. Petrie and Mr. Mace. Yet
most of the important scientific results are due to the later explorers, who
were the first to attempt a classification of them, though we must add that
this classification has not been entirely accepted by the scientific world.
The necropolis of the earliest kings of Egypt is situated in the great bay
in the hills which lies behind Abydos, to the southwest of the main
necropolis. Here, at holy Abydos, where every pious Egyptian wished to
rest after death, the bodies of the most ancient kings were buried. It is said
by Manetho that the original seat of their dominion was This, a town in the
vicinity of Abydos, now represented by the modern Grîrga, which lies a few
miles distant from its site (el-Birba). This may be a fact, but we have as yet
obtained no confirmation of it. It may well be that the attribution of a
Thinite origin to the Ist and IId Dynasties was due simply to the fact that the

kings of these dynasties were buried at Abydos, which lay within the
Thinite nome. Manetho knew that they were buried at Abydos, and so
jumped to the conclusion that they lived there also, and called them
“Thinites.”

Their real place of origin must have been Hierakonpolis, where the
pre-dynastic kingdom of the South had its seat. The Hid Dynasty was no
doubt of Memphite origin, as Manetho says. It is certain that the seat of the
government of the IVth Dynasty was at Memphis, where the pyramid-
building kings were buried, and we know that the sepulchres of two Hid
Dynasty kings, at least, were situated in the necropolis of Memphis
(Sakkâra-Mêdûm). So that probably the seat of government was transferred
from Hierakonpolis to Memphis by the first king of the Hid Dynasty.
Thenceforward the kings were buried in the Memphite necropolis.
The two great nécropoles of Memphis and Abydos were originally the
seats of the worship of the two Egyptian gods of the dead, Seker and
Khentamenti, both of whom were afterwards identified with the Busirite
god Osiris. Abydos was also the centre of the worship of Anubis, an animal-
deity of the dead, the jackal who prowls round the tombs at night. Anubis
and Osiris-Khentamenti, “He who is in the West,” were associated in the
minds of the Egyptians as the protecting deities of Abydos. The worship of

these gods as the chief Southern deities of the dead, and the preeminence of
the necropolis of Abydos in the South, no doubt date back before the time
of the Ist Dynasty, so that it would not surprise us were burials of kings of
the predynastic Hierakonpolite kingdom discovered at Abydos. Prof. Petrie
indeed claims to have discovered actual royal relics of that period at
Abydos, but this seems to be one of the least certain of his conclusions. We
cannot definitely state that the names “Ro,” “Ka,” and “Sma” (if they are
names at all, which is doubtful) belong to early kings of Hierakonpolis who
were buried at Abydos. It may be so, but further confirmation is desirable
before we accept it as a fact; and as yet such confirmation has not been
forthcoming. The oldest kings, who were certainly buried at Abydos, seem
to have been the first rulers of the united kingdom of the North and South,
Aha and his successors. N’armer is not represented. It may be that he was
not buried at Abydos, but in the necropolis of Hierakonpolis. This would
point to the kings of the South not having been buried at Abydos until after
the unification of the kingdom.
That Aha possessed a tomb at Abydos as well as another at Nakâda
seems peculiar, but it is a phenomenon not unknown in Egypt. Several
kings, whose bodies were actually buried elsewhere, had second tombs at
Abydos, in order that they might possess last resting-places near the tomb
of Osiris, although they might not prefer to use them. Usertsen (or Senusret)
III is a case in point. He was really buried in a pyramid at Illahun, up in the
North, but he had a great rock tomb cut for him in the cliffs at Abydos,
which he never occupied, and probably had never intended to occupy. We
find exactly the same thing far back at the beginning of Egyptian history,
when Aha possessed not only a great mastaba-tomb at Nakâda, but also a
tomb-chamber in the great necropolis of Abydos. It may be that other kings
of the earliest period also had second sepulchres elsewhere. It is noteworthy
that in none of the early tombs at Abydos were found any bodies which
might be considered those of the kings themselves. M. Amélineau
discovered bodies of attendants or slaves (who were in all probability
purposely strangled and buried around the royal chamber in order that they
should attend the king in the next world), but no royalties. Prof. Petrie
found the arm of a female mummy, who may have been of royal blood,
though there is nothing to show that she was. And the quaint plait and fringe
of false hair, which were also found, need not have belonged to a royal
mummy. It is therefore quite possible that these tombs at Abydos were not

the actual last resting-places of the earliest kings, who may really have been
buried at Hierakonpolis or elsewhere, as Aha was. Messrs. Newberry and
Gtarstang, in their Short History of Egypt, suppose that Aha was actually
buried at Abydos, and that the great tomb with objects bearing his name,
found by M. de Morgan at Nakâda, is really not his, but belonged to a royal
princess named Neit-hetep, whose name is found in conjunction with his at
Abydos and Nakâda. But the argument is equally valid turned round the
other way: the Nakâda tomb might just as well be Aha’s and the Abydos
one Neit-hetep’s. Neit-hetep, who is supposed by Messrs. Newberry and
Garstang to have been Narmer’s daughter and Aha’s wife, was evidently
closely connected with Aha, and she may have been buried with him at
Nakâda and commemorated with him at Abydos.[1] It is probable that the
XIXth Dynasty list-makers and Manetho considered the Abydos tombs to
have been the real graves of the kings, but it is by no means impossible that
they were wrong.
[1] A princess named Bener-ab (“Sweet-heart”), who may have been Aha’s
daughter, was actually buried beside his tomb at Abydos.

This view of the royal tombs at Abydos tallies to a great extent with
that of M. Naville, who has energetically maintained the view that M.
Amélineau and Prof. Petrie have not discovered the real tombs of the early
kings, but only their contemporary commemorative “tombs” at Abydos. The
only real tomb of the Ist Dynasty, therefore, as yet discovered is that of Aha
at Nakâda, found by M. de Morgan. The fact that attendant slaves were
buried around the Abydos tombs is no bar to the view that the tombs were
only the monuments, not the real graves, of the kings. The royal ghosts
would naturally visit their commemorative chambers at Abydos, in order to
be in the company of the great Osiris, and ghostly servants would be as
necessary to their Majesties at Abydos as elsewhere.
It must not be thought that this revised opinion of the Abydos tombs
detracts in the slightest degree from the importance of the discovery of M.
Amélineau and its subsequent and more detailed investigation by Prof.
Petrie. These monuments are as valuable for historical purposes as the real
tombs themselves. The actual bodies of these primeval kings themselves we
are never likely to find. The tomb of Aha at Nakâda had been completely
rifled in ancient times.

The commemorative tombs of the kings of the Ist and IId Dynasties at
Abydos lie southwest of the great necropolis, far within the bay in the hills.
Their present aspect is that of a wilderness of sand hillocks, covered with
masses of fragments of red pottery, from which the site has obtained the
modern Arab name of Umm el-Ga’ab, “Mother of Pots.” It is impossible to
move a step in any direction without crushing some of these potsherds
under the heel. They are chiefly the remains of the countless little vases of
rough red pottery, which were dedicated here as ex-votos by the pious,
between the XIXth and XXVIth Dynasties, to the memory of the ancient
kings and of the great god Osiris, whose tomb, as we shall see, was
supposed to have been situated here also.
Intermingled with these later fragments
are pieces of the original Ist Dynasty vases,
which were filled with wine and provisions
and were placed in the tombs, for the
refreshment and delectation of the royal
ghosts when they should visit their houses at
Abydos. These were thrown out and broken
when the tombs were violated. Here and
there one sees a dip in the sand, out of which
rise four walls of great bricks, forming a
rectangular chamber, half-filled with sand.
This is one of the royal tomb-chambers of
the Ist Dynasty. That of King Den is
illustrated above. A straight staircase
descends into it from the ground-level
above. In several of the tombs the original flooring of wooden beams is still
preserved. Den’s is the most magnificent of all, for it has a floor of granite
blocks; we know of no other instance of stone being used for building in
this early age. Almost every tomb has been burnt at some period unknown.
The brick walls are burnt red, and many of the alabaster vases are almost
calcined. This was probably the work of some unknown enemy.
The wide complicated tombs have around the main chamber a series of
smaller rooms, which were used to store what was considered necessary for
the use of the royal ghost. Of these necessaries the most interesting to us are
the slaves, who were, as there is little reason to doubt, purposely killed and
buried round the royal chamber so that their spirits should be on the spot

when the dead king came to Abydos; thus they would be always ready to
serve him with the food and other things which had been stored in the tomb
with them and placed under their charge. There were stacks of great vases
of wine, corn, and other food; these were covered up with masses of fat to
preserve the contents, and they were corked with a pottery stopper, which
was protected by a conical clay sealing, stamped with the impress of the
royal cylinder-seal. There were bins of corn, joints of oxen, pottery dishes,
copper pans, and other things which might be useful for the ghostly cuisine
of the tomb. There were numberless small objects, used, no doubt, by the
dead monarch during life, which he would be pleased to see again in the
next world,—carved ivory boxes, little slabs for grinding eye-paint, golden
buttons, model tools, model vases with gold tops, ivory and pottery
figurines, and other objets d’art; the golden royal seal of judgment of King
Den in its ivory casket, and so forth. There were memorials of the royal
victories in peace and war, little ivory plaques with inscriptions
commemorating the founding of new buildings, the institution of new
religious festivals in honour of the gods, the bringing of the captives of the
royal bow and spear to the palace, the discomfiture of the peoples of the
North-land.

All these things, which have done so much to reconstitute for us the
history of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy, were placed under
the care of the dead slaves whose bodies were buried round the empty
tomb-chamber of their royal master in Abydos.
The killing and entombment of the royal servants is of the highest
anthropological interest, for it throws a vivid light upon the manners of the
time. It shows the primeval Egyptians as a semi-barbaric people of
childishly simple ways of thought. The king was dead. For all his kingship
he was a man, and no man was immortal in this world. But yet how could
one really die? Shadows, dreams, all kinds of phenomena which the
primitive mind could not explain, induced the belief that, though the outer
man might rot, there was an inner man which could not die and still lived
on. The idea of total death was unthinkable. And where should this inner
man still live on but in the tomb to which the outer man was consigned?
And here, doubtless it was believed, in the house to which the body was
consigned, the ghost lived on. And as each ghost had his house with the
body, so no doubt all ghosts could communicate with one another from
tomb to tomb; and so there grew up the belief in a tomb-world, a
subterranean Egypt of tombs, in which the dead Egyptians still lived and
had their being. Later on the boat of the sun, in which the god of light
crossed the heavens by day, was thought to pass through this dead world
between his setting and his rising, accompanied by the souls of the
righteous. But of this belief we find no trace yet in the ideas of the Ist
Dynasty. All we can see is that the sahus, or bodies of the dead, were
supposed to reside in awful majesty in the tomb, while the ghosts could
pass from tomb to tomb through the mazes of the underworld. Over this
dread realm of dead men presided a dead god, Osiris of Abydos; and so the
necropolis of Abydos was the necropolis of the underworld, to which all
ghosts who were not its rightful citizens would come from afar to pay their
court to their ruler. Thus the man of substance would have a monumental
tablet put up to himself in this necropolis as a sort of pied-à-terre, even if he
could not be buried there; for the king, who, for reasons chiefly connected
with local patriotism, was buried near the city of his earthly abode, a second
tomb would be erected, a stately mansion in the city of Osiris, in which his
ghost could reside when it pleased him to come to Abydos.
Now none could live without food, and men living under the earth
needed it as much as men living on the earth. The royal tomb was thus

provided with an enormous amount of earthly food for the use of the royal
ghost, and with other things as well, as we have seen. The same provision
had also to be made for the royal resting-place at Abydos. And in both cases
royal slaves were needed to take care of all this provision, and to serve the
ghost of the king, whether in his real tomb at Nakâda, or elsewhere, or in
his second tomb at Abydos. Ghosts only could serve ghosts, so that of the
slaves ghosts had to be made. That was easily done; they died when their
master died and followed him to the tomb. No doubt it seemed perfectly
natural to all concerned, to the slaves as much as to anybody else. But it
shows the child’s idea of the value of life. An animate thing was hardly
distinguished at this period from an inanimate thing. The most ancient
Egyptians buried slaves with their kings as naturally as they buried jars of
wine and bins of corn with them. Both were buried with a definite object.
The slaves had to die before they were buried, but then so had the king
himself. They all had to die sometime or other. And the actual killing of
them was no worse than killing a dog, no worse even than “killing” golden
buttons and ivory boxes. For, when the buttons and boxes were buried with
the king, they were just as much dead as the slaves. Of the sanctity of
human life as distinct from other life, there was probably no idea at all. The
royal ghost needed ghostly servants, and they were provided as a matter of
course.
But as civilization progressed, the ideas of the Egyptians changed on
these points, and in the later ages of the ancient world they were probably
the most humane of the peoples, far more so than the Greeks, in fact. The
cultured Hellenes murdered their prisoners of war without hesitation. Who
has not been troubled in mind by the execution of Mkias and Demosthenes
after the surrender of the Athenian army at Syracuse? When we compare
this with Grant’s refusal even to take Lee’s sword at Appomattox, we see
how we have progressed in these matters; while Gylippus and the
Syracusans were as much children as the Ist Dynasty Egyptians. But the
Egyptians of Gylippus’s time had probably advanced much further than the
Greeks in the direction of rational manhood. When Amasis had his rival
Apries in his power, he did not put him to death, but kept him as his
coadjutor on the throne. Apries fled from him, allied himself with Greek
pirates, and advanced against his generous rival. After his defeat and
murder at Momemphis, Amasis gave him a splendid burial. When we
compare this generosity to a beaten foe with the savagery of the Assyrians,

for instance, we see how far the later Egyptians had progressed in the paths
of humanity.
The ancient custom of killing slaves was first discontinued at the death
of the lesser chieftains, but we find a possible survival of it in the case of a
king, even as late as the time of the XIth Dynasty; for at Thebes, in the
precinct of the funerary temple of King Neb-hapet-Râ Mentuhetep and
round the central pyramid which commemorated his memory, were buried a
number of the ladies of his harîm. They were all buried at one and the same
time, and there can be little doubt that they were all killed and buried round
the king, in order to be with him in the next world. Now with each of these
ladies, who had been turned into ghosts, was buried a little waxen human
figure placed in a little model coffin. This was to replace her own slave. She
who went to accompany the king in the next world had to have her own
attendant also. But, not being royal, a real slave was not killed for her; she
only took with her a waxen figure, which by means of charms and
incantations would, when she called upon it, turn into a real slave, and say,
“Here am I,” and do whatever work might be required of her. The actual
killing and burial of the slaves had in all cases except that of the king been
long “commuted,” so to speak, into a burial with the dead person of
ushabtis, or “Answerers,” little figures like those described above, made
more usually of stone, and inscribed with the name of the deceased. They
were called “Answerers” because they answered the call of their dead
master or mistress, and by magic power became ghostly servants. Later on
they were made of wood and glazed faïence, as well as stone. By this means
the greater humanity of a later age sought a relief from the primitive
disregard of the death of others.
Anthropologically interesting as are the results of the excavations at
Umm el-Gra’ab, they are no less historically important. There is no need
here to weary the reader with the details of scientific controversy; it will
suffice to set before him as succinctly and clearly as possible the net results
of the work which has been done.
Messrs. Amélineau and Petrie have found the secondary tombs and
have identified the names of the following primeval kings of Egypt. We
arrange them in their apparent historical order.
1. Aha Men (?).
2. Narmer (or Betjumer) Sma (?).

3. Tjer (or Khent). Besh.
4. Tja Ati.
5. Den Semti.
6. Atjab Merpeba.
7. Semerkha Nekht.
8. Qâ Sen.
9. Khâsekhem (Khâsekhemui)
10. Hetepsekhemui.
11. Räneb.
12. Neneter.
13. Sekhemab Perabsen.
Two or three other names are ascribed by Prof. Petrie to the
Hierakonpolite dynasty of Upper Egypt, which, as it occurs before the time
of Mena and the Ist Dynasty, he calls “Dynasty 0.” Dynasty 0, however, is
no dynasty, and in any case we should prefer to call the “predynastic”
dynasty “Dynasty I.” The names of “Dynasty minus One,” however, remain
problematical, and for the present it would seem safer to suspend judgment
as to the place of the supposed royal names “Ro” and “Ka”(Men-kaf),
which Prof. Petrie supposes to have been those of two of the kings of Upper
Egypt who reigned before Mena. The king “Sma”(“Uniter”) is possibly
identical with Aha or Narmer, more probably the latter. It is not necessary to
detail the process by which Egyptologists have sought to identify these
thirteen kings with the successors of Mena in the lists of kings and the Ist
and IId Dynasties of Manetho. The work has been very successful, though
not perhaps quite so completely accomplished as Prof. Petrie himself
inclines to believe. The first identification was made by Prof. Sethe, of
Gottingen, who pointed out that the names Semti and Merpeba on a vase-
fragment found by M. Amélineau were in reality those of the kings Hesepti
and Merbap of the lists, the Ousaphaïs and Miebis of Manetho. The
perfectly certain identifications are these:—
5. Den Semti = Hesepti, Ousaphaïs, Ist Dynasty.
6. Atjab Merpeba = Merbap, Miebis, Ist Dynasty.
7. Semerkha Nekht= Shemsu or Semsem (?), Semempres, Ist Dynasty.
8. Qâ Sen = Qebh, Bienehhes, Ist Dynasty.

9. Khâsekhemui Besh = Betju-mer (?), Boethos, IId Dynasty.
10. Neneter = Bineneter, Binothris, IId Dynasty.
Six of the Abydos kings have thus been identified with names in the
lists and in Manetho; that is to say, we now know the real names of six of
the earliest Egyptian monarchs, whose appellations are given us under
mutilated forms by the later list-makers. Prof. Petrie further identifies (4)
Tja Ati with Ateth, (3) Tjer with Teta, and (1) Aha with Mena. Mena, Teta,
Ateth, Ata, Hesepti, Merbap, Shemsu (?), and Qebh are the names of the 1st
Dynasty as given in the lists. The equivalent of Ata Prof. Petrie finds in the
name “Merneit,” which is found at Umm el-Ga’ab. But there is no proof
whatever that Merneit was a king; he was much more probably a prince or
other great personage of the reign of Den, who was buried with the kings.
Prof. Petrie accepts the identification of the personal name of Aha as
“Men,” and so makes him the only equivalent of Mena. But this reading of
the name is still doubtful. Arguing that Aha must be Mena, and having all
the rest of the kings of the Ist Dynasty identified with the names in the lists,
Prof. Petrie is compelled to exclude Narmer from the dynasty, and to
relegate him to “Dynasty 0,” before the time of Mena. It is quite possible,
however, that Narmer was the successor, not the predecessor, of Mena. He
was certainly either the one or the other, as the style of art in his time was
exactly the same as that in the time of Aha. The “Scorpion,” too, whose
name is found at Hierakonpolis, certainly dates to the same time as Narmer
and Aha, for the style of his work is the same. And it may well be that he is
not to be counted as a separate king, belonging to “Dynasty 0 “(or “Dynasty
-I”) at all, but as identical with Narmer, just as “Sma” may also be. We thus
find that the two kings who left the most developed remains at
Hierakonpolis are the two whose monuments at Abydos are the oldest of all
on that site. That is to say, the kings whose monuments record the conquest
of the North belong to the period of transition from the old Hierakonpolite
dominion of Upper Egypt to the new kingdom of all Egypt. They, in fact,
represent the “Mena” or Menés of tradition. It may be that Aha bore the
personal name of Men, which would thus be the original of Mena, but this
is uncertain. In any case both Aha and Narmer must be assigned to the Ist
Dynasty, with the result that we know of more kings belonging to the
dynasty than appear in the lists.

Nor is this improbable. Manetho’s list is evidently based upon old
Egyptian lists derived from the authorities upon which the king-lists of
Abydos and Sakkâra were based. These old lists were made under the
XIXth Dynasty, when an interest in the oldest kings seems to have been
awakened, and the ruling monarchs erected temples at Abydos in their
honour. This phenomenon can only have been due to a discovery of Umm
el-Ga’ab and its treasures, the tombs of which were recognized as the
burial-places (real or secondary) of the kings before the pyramid-builders.
Seti I. and his son Ramses then worshipped the kings of Umm el-Ga’ab,
with their names set before them in the order, number, and spelling in which
the scribes considered they ought to be inscribed. It is highly probable that
the number known at that time was not quite correct. We know that the
spelling of the names was very much garbled (to take one example only, the
signs for Sen were read as one sign Qebh), so that one or two kings may
have been omitted or displaced. This may be the case with Narmer, or, as
his name ought possibly to be read, Betjumer. His monuments show by
their style that he belongs to the very beginning of the Ist Dynasty. No name
in the Ist Dynasty list corresponds to his. But one of the lists gives for the
first king of the IId Dynasty (the successor of “Qebh” = Sen) a name which
may also be read Betjumer, spelt syllabically this time, not ideographically.
On this account Prof. Naville wishes to regard the Hierakonpolite
monuments of Narmer as belonging to the IId Dynasty, but, as we have
seen, they are among the most archaic known, and certainly must belong to
the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. It is therefore probable that Khasekhemui
Besh and Narmer (Betjumer?) were confused by this list-maker, and the
name Betjumer was given to the first king of the IId Dynasty, who was
probably in reality Khasekhemui. The resemblance of Betju to Besh may
have contributed to this confusion.
So Narmer (or Betjumer) found his way out of his proper place at the
beginning of the 1st Dynasty. Whether Aha was also called “Men” or not, it
seems evident that he and Narmer were jointly the originals of the
legendary Mena. Narmer, who possibly also bore the name of Sma, “the
Uniter,” conquered the North. Aha, “the Fighter,” also ruled both South and
North at the same period. Khasekhemui, too, conquered the North, but the
style of his monuments shows such an advance upon that of the days of Aha
and Narmer that it seems best to make him the successor of Sen (or “Qebh
“), and, explaining the transference of the name Betjumer to the beginning

of the IId Dynasty as due to a confusion with Khasekhemui’s personal name
Besh, to make Khasekhemui the founder of the IId Dynasty. The beginning
of a new dynasty may well have been marked by a reassertion of the new
royal power over Lower Egypt, which may have lapsed somewhat under the
rule of the later kings of the Ist Dynasty.
Semti is certainly the “Hesepti” of the lists, and Tja Ati is probably
“Ateth.” “Ata” is thus unidentified. Prof. Petrie makes him = Merneit, but,
as has already been said, there is no proof that the tomb of Merneit is that of
a king. “Teta” may be Tjer or Khent, but of this there is no proof. It is most
probable that the names “Teta,” “Ateth,” and “Ata” are all founded on Ati,
the personal name of Tja. The king Tjer is then not represented in the lists,
and “Mena” is a compound of the two oldest Abydos kings, Narmer
(Betjumer) Sma (?) and Aha Men (?).
These are the bare historical results that have been attained with regard
to the names, identity, and order of the kings. The smaller memorials that
have been found with them, especially the ivory plaques, have told us of
events that took place during their reigns; but, with the exception of the
constantly recurring references to the conquest of the North, there is little
that can be considered of historical interest or importance. We will take one
as an example. This is the tablet No. 32,650 of the British Museum,
illustrated by Prof. Petrie, Royal Tombs i (Egypt Exploration Fund), pi. xi,
14, xv, 16. This is the record of a single year, the first in the reign of Semti,
King of Upper and Lower Egypt. On it we see a picture of a king
performing a religious dance before the god Osiris, who is seated in a shrine
placed on a dais. This religious dance was performed by all the kings in
later times. Below we find hieroglyphic (ideographic) records of a river
expedition to fight the Northerners and of the capture of a fortified town
called An. The capture of the town is indicated by a broken line of
fortification, half-encircling the name, and the hoe with which the
emblematic hawks on the slate reliefs already described are armed; this
signifies the opening and breaking down of the wall.
On the other half of the tablet we find the viceroy of Lower Egypt,
Hemaka, mentioned; also “the Hawk (i. e. the king) seizes the seat of the
Libyans,” and some unintelligible record of a jeweller of the palace and a
king’s carpenter. On a similar tablet (of Sen) we find the words “the king’s
carpenter made this record.” All these little tablets are then the records of

single years of a king’s life, and others like them, preserved no doubt in
royal archives, formed the base of regular annals, which were occasionally
carved upon stone. We have an example of one of these in the “Stele of
Palermo,” a fragment of black granite, inscribed with the annals of the
kings up to the time of the Vth Dynasty, when the monument itself was
made. It is a matter for intense regret that the greater portion of this
priceless historical monument has disappeared, leaving us but a piece out of
the centre, with part of the records of only six kings before Snefru. Of these
six the name of only one, Neneter, of the lid Dynasty, whose name is also
found at Abydos, is mentioned. The only important historical event of
Neneter’s reign seems to have occurred in his thirteenth year, when the
towns or palaces of Ha (“North”) and Shem-Râ (“The Sun proceeds”) were
founded. Nothing but the institution and celebration of religious festivals is
recorded in the sixteen yearly entries preserved to us out of a reign of thirty-
five years. The annual height of the Nile is given, and the occasions of
numbering the people are recorded (every second year): nothing else.
Manetho tells us that in the reign of Binothris, who is Neneter, it was
decreed that women could hold royal honours and privileges. This first
concession of women’s rights is not mentioned on the strictly official
“Palermo Stele.”
More regrettable than aught else is the absence from the “Palermo
Stele” of that part of the original monument which gave the annals of the
earliest kings. At any rate, in the lines of annals which still exist above that
which contains the chronicle of the reign of Neneter no entry can be
definitely identified as belonging to the reigns of Aha or Narmer. In a line
below there is a mention of the “birth of Khâsekhemui,” apparently a
festival in honour of the birth of that king celebrated in the same way as the
reputed birthday of a god. This shows the great honour in which
Khâsekhemui was held, and perhaps it was he who really finally settled the
question of the unification of North and South and consolidated the work of
the earlier kings.
As far as we can tell, then, Aha and Narmer were the first conquerors
of the North, the unifiers of the kingdom, and the originals of the legendary
Mena. In their time the kingdom’s centre of gravity was still in the South,
and Narmer (who is probably identical with “the Scorpion”) dedicated the
memorials of his deeds in the temple of Hierakonpolis. It may be that the
legend of the founding of Memphis in the time of “Menés” is nearly correct

(as we shall see, historically, the foundation may have been due to
Merpeba), but we have the authority of Manetho for the fact that the first
two dynasties were “Thinite” (that is, Upper Egyptian), and that Memphis
did not become the capital till the time of the Hid Dynasty. With this
statement the evidence of the monuments fully agrees. The earliest royal
tombs in the pyramid-field of Memphis date from the time of the Hid
Dynasty, so that it is evident that the kings had then taken up their abode in
the Northern capital. We find that soon after the time of Khâsekhemui the
king Perabsen was especially connected with Lower Egypt. His personal
name is unknown to us (though he may be the “Uatjnes” of the lists), but
we do know that he had two banner-names, Sekhem-ab and Perabsen. The
first is his hawk or Horus-name, the second his Set-name; that is to say,
while he bore the first name as King of Upper Egypt under the special
patronage of Horus, the hawk-god of the Upper Country, he bore the second
as King of Lower Egypt, under the patronage of Set, the deity of the Delta,
whose fetish animal appears above this name instead of the hawk. This
shows how definitely Perabsen wished to appear as legitimate King of
Lower as well as Upper Egypt. In later times the Theban kings of the XIIth
Dynasty, when they devoted themselves to winning the allegiance of the
Northerners by living near Memphis rather than at Thebes, seem to have
been imitating the successors of Khâsekhemui.
Moreover, we now find various evidences of increasing connection
with the North. A princess named Ne-maat-hap, who seems to have been
the mother of Sa-nekht, the first king of the Hid Dynasty, bears the name of
the sacred Apis of Memphis, her name signifying “Possessing the right of
Apis.” According to Manetho, the kings of the Hid Dynasty are the first
Memphites, and this seems to be quite correct. With Ne-maat-hap the royal
right seems to have been transferred to a Memphite house. But the
Memphites still had associations with Upper Egypt: two of them, Tjeser
Khet-neter and Sa-nekht, were buried near Abydos, in the desert at Bêt
Khallâf, where their tombs were discovered and excavated by Mr. Garstang
in 1900. The tomb of Tjeser is a great brick-built mastaba, forty feet high
and measuring 300 feet by 150 feet. The actual tomb-chambers are
excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet
below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times, but a
number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging to the
tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht’s tomb is similar. In

it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a giant seven feet
high.

It is remarkable that Manetho chronicles among the kings of the early
period a king named Sesokhris, who was five cubits high. This may have
been Sa-nekht.
Tjeser had two tombs, one, the above-mentioned, near Abydos, the
other at Sakkâra, in the Memphite pyramid-field. This is the famous Step-
Pyramid. Since Sa-nekht seems really to have been buried at Bêt Khal-laf,
probably Tjeser was, too, and the Step-Pyramid may have been his
secondary or sham tomb, erected in the necropolis of Memphis as a
compliment to Seker, the Northern god of the dead, just as Aha had his
secondary tomb at Abydos in compliment to Khentamenti. Sne-feru, also,
the last king of the Hid Dynasty, seems to have had two tombs. One of these
was the great Pyramid of Mêdûm, which was explored by Prof. Petrie in
1891, the other was at Dashûr. Near by was the interesting necropolis
already mentioned, in which was discovered evidence of the continuance of
the cramped position of burial and of the absence of mummification among
a certain section of the population even as late as the time of the IVth

Dynasty. This has been taken to imply that the fusion of the primitive
Neolithic and invading sub-Semitic races had not been effected at that time.
With the IVth Dynasty the connection of the royal house with the
South seems to have finally ceased. The governmental centre of gravity was
finally transferred to Memphis, and the kings were thenceforth for several
centuries buried in the great pyramids which still stand in serried order
along the western desert border of Egypt, from the Delta to the province of
the Fayyum. With the latest discoveries in this Memphite pyramid-field we
shall deal in the next chapter.
The transference of the royal power to Memphis under the Hid
Dynasty naturally led to a great increase of Egyptian activity in the
Northern lands. We read in Manetho of a great Libyan war in the reign of
Neche-rophes, and both Sa-nekht and Tjeser seem to have finally
established Egyptian authority in the Sinaitic peninsula, where their rock-
inscriptions have been found.
In 1904 Prof. Petrie was despatched to Sinai by the Egypt Exploration
Fund, in order finally to record the inscriptions of the early kings in the
Wadi Maghara, which had been lately very much damaged by the
operations of the turquoise-miners. It seems almost incredible that
ignorance and vandalism should still be so rampant in the twentieth century
that the most important historical monuments are not safe from desecration
in order to obtain a few turquoises, but it is so. Prof. Petrie’s expedition did
not start a day too soon, and at the suggestion of Sir William Garstin, the
adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, the majority of the inscriptions have
been removed to the Cairo Museum for safety and preservation. Among the
new inscriptions discovered is one of Sa-nekht, which is now in the British
Museum. Tjeser and Sa-nekht were not the first Egyptian kings to visit
Sinai. Already, in the days of the 1st Dynasty, Semerkha had entered that
land and inscribed his name upon the rocks. But the regular annexation, so
to speak, of Sinai to Egypt took place under the Memphites of the Hid
Dynasty.
With the Hid Dynasty we have reached the age of the pyramid-
builders. The most typical pyramids are those of the three great kings of the
IVth Dynasty, Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, at Giza near Cairo. But, as we
have seen, the last king of the Hid Dynasty, Snefru, also had one pyramid, if
not two; and the most ancient of these buildings known to us, the Step-

Pyramid of Sakkâra, was erected by Tjeser at the beginning of that dynasty.
The evolution of the royal tombs from the time of the 1st Dynasty to that of
the IVth is very interesting to trace. At the period of transition from the
predynastic to the dynastic age we have the great mastaba of Aha at
Nakâda, and the simplest chamber-tombs at Abydos. All these were of
brick; no stone was used in their construction. Then we find the chamber-
tomb of Den Semti at Abydos with a granite floor, the walls being still of
brick. Above each of the Abydos tombs was probably a low mound, and in
front a small chapel, from which a flight of steps descended into the simple
chamber. On one of the little plaques already mentioned, which were found
in these tombs, we have an archaic inscription, entirely written in
ideographs, which seems to read, “The Big-Heads (i. e. the chiefs) come to
the tomb.” The ideograph for “tomb” seems to be a rude picture of the
funerary chapel, but from it we can derive little information as to its
construction. Towards the end of the Ist Dynasty, and during the lid, the
royal tombs became much more complicated, being surrounded with
numerous chambers for the dead slaves, etc. Khâsekhemui’s tomb has
thirty-three such chambers, and there is one large chamber of stone. We
know of no other instance of the use of stone work for building at this
period except in the royal tombs. No doubt the mason’s art was still so
difficult that it was reserved for royal use only.
Under the Hid Dynasty we find the last brick mastabas built for
royalty, at Bêt Khallâf, and the first pyramids, in the Memphite necropolis.
In the mastaba of Tjeser at Bêt Khallâf stone was used for the great
portcullises which were intended to bar the way to possible plunderers
through the passages of the tomb. The Step-Pyramid at Sakkâra is, so to
speak, a series of mastabas of stone, imposed one above the other; it never
had the continuous casing of stone which is the mark of a true pyramid. The
pyramid of Snefru at Mêdûm is more developed. It also originated in a
mastaba, enlarged, and with another mastaba-like erection on the top of it;
but it was given a continuous sloping casing of fine limestone from bottom
to top, and so is a true pyramid. A discussion of recent theories as to the
building of the later pyramids of the IVth Dynasty will be found in the next
chapter.
In the time of the Ist Dynasty the royal tomb was known by the name
of “Protection-around-the-Hawk, i.e. the king”(Sa-ha-heru); but under the

Hid and IVth Dynasties regular names, such as “the Firm,” “the Glorious,”
“the Appearing,” etc., were given to each pyramid.

We must not omit to note an interesting point in connection with the
royal tombs at Abydos, In that of King Khent or Tjer (the reading of the
ideograph is doubtful) M. Amélineau found a large bed or bier of granite,
with a figure of the god Osiris lying in state sculptured in high relief upon
it. This led him to jump to the conclusion that he had found the tomb of the
god Osiris himself, and that a skull he found close by was the veritable
cranium of the primeval folk-hero, who, according to the euhemerist theory,
was the deified original of the god. The true explanation is given by Dr.
Wallis Budge in his History of Egypt, i, p. 19. It is a fact that the tomb of
Tjer was regarded by the Egyptians of the XIXth Dynasty as the veritable
tomb of Osiris. They thought they had discovered it, just as M. Amélineau
did. When the ancient royal tombs of Umm el-Ga’ab were rediscovered and
identified at the beginning of the XIXth Dynasty, and Seti I built the great
temple of Abydos to the divine ancestors in honour of the discovery,
embellishing it with a relief of himself and his son Ramses making
offerings to the names of his predecessors (the “Tablet of Abydos “), the
name of King Khent or Tjer (which is perhaps the really correct original
form) was read by the royal scribes as “Khent” and hastily identified with
the first part of the name of the god Khent-amenti Osiris, the lord of
Abydos. The tomb was thus regarded as the tomb of Osiris himself, and it
was furnished with a great stone figure of the god lying on his bier, attended
by the two hawks of Isis and Nephthys; ever after the site was visited by
crowds of pilgrims, who left at Umm el-Ga’ab the thousands of little votive
vases whose fragments have given the place its name of the “Mother of
Pots.” This is the explanation of the discovery of the “Tomb of Osiris.” We
have not found what M. Amélineau seems rather naively to have thought
possible, a confirmation of the ancient view that Osiris was originally a man
who ruled over Egypt and was deified after his death; but we have found
that the Egyptians themselves were more or less euhemerists, and did think
so.
It may seem remarkable that all this new knowledge of ancient Egypt
is derived from tombs and has to do with the resting-places of the kings
when dead, rather than with their palaces or temples when living. Of
temples at this early period we have no trace. The oldest temple in Egypt is
perhaps the little chapel in front of the pyramid of Snefru at Mêdûm. We
first hear of temples to the gods under the IVth Dynasty, but of the actual
buildings of that period we have recovered nothing but one or two inscribed

blocks of stone. Prof. Petrie has traced out the plan of the oldest temple of
Osiris at Abydos, which may be of the time of Khufu, from scanty
evidences which give us but little information. It is certain, however, that
this temple, which is clearly one of the oldest in Egypt, goes back at least to
his time. Its site is the mound called Kom es-Sultan, “The Mound of the
King,” close to the village of el-Kherba, and on the borders of the
cultivation northeast of the royal tombs at Umm el-Oa’ab.
Of royal palaces we have more definite information. North of the Kom
es-Sultan are two great fortress-enclosures of brick: the one is known as
Sûnet es-Zebîb, “the Storehouse of Dried Orapes;” the other is occupied by
the Coptic monastery of Dêr Anba Musâs. Both are certainly fortress-
palaces of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy. We know from the
small record-plaques of this period that the kings were constantly founding
or repairing places of this kind, which were always great rectangular
enclosures with crenelated brick walls like those of early Babylonian
buildings.
We have seen that the Northern Egyptian possessed similar fortress-
cities which were captured by Narmer. These were the seats of the royal
residence in various parts of the country. Behind their walls was the king’s
house, and no doubt also a town of nobles and retainers, while the peasants
lived on the arable land without.

The Shûnet ez-Zebîb and its companion fortress were evidently the
royal cities of the 1st and IId Dynasties at Abydos. The former has been
excavated by Mr. E. R. Ayrton for the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the
supervision of Prof. Petrie. He found jar-sealings of Khâsekhemui and
Perabsen. In later times the place was utilized as a burial-place for ibis-
mummies (it had already been abandoned as a city before the time of the
XIIth Dynasty), and from this fact it received the name of Shenet deb-hib,
or “Storehouse of Ibis Burials.” The Arab invaders adapted this name to
their own language in the nearest form which would have any meaning, as
Shûnet ez-Zebïb, “the Storehouse of Dried Grapes.” The Arab word shûna
(“Barn” or “Storehouse”) was, it should be noted, taken over from the
Coptic sheune, which is the old-Egyptian shenet. The identity of sheune or
shûna with the German “Scheune” is a quaint and curious coincidence. In
the illustration of the Shûnet ez-Zebib the curved line of crenelated wall,
following the contour of the hill, should be noted, as it is a remarkable
example of the building of this early period.
It will have been seen from the foregoing description of what far-
reaching importance the discoveries at Abydos have been. A new chapter of
the history of the human race has been opened, which contains information
previously undreamt of, information which Egyptologists had never dared

to hope would be recovered. The sand of Egypt indeed conceals
inexhaustible treasures, and no one knows what the morrow’s work may
bring forth.
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi!

CHAPTER III—MEMPHIS AND THE
PYRAMIDS
Memphis, the “beautiful abode,” the “City of the White Wall,” is said
to have been founded by the legendary Menés, who in order to build it
diverted the stream of the Nile by means of a great dyke constructed near
the modern village of Koshêsh, south of the village of Mitrahêna, which
marks the central point of the ancient metropolis of Northern Egypt. It may
be that the city was founded by Aha or Narmer, the historical originals of
Mena or Menés; but we have another theory with regard to its foundation,
that it was originally built by King Merpeba Atjab, whose tomb was also
discovered at Abydos near those of Aha and Narmer. Merpeba is the oldest
king whose name is absolutely identified with one occurring in the XIXth
Dynasty king-lists and in Manetho. He is certainly the “Merbap” or
“Merbepa” (“Merbapen”) of the lists and the Miebis of Manetho. In both
the lists and in Manetho he stands fifth in order from Mena, and he was
therefore the sixth king of the Ist Dynasty. The lists, Manetho, and the small
monuments in his own tomb agree in making him the immediate successor
of Semti Den (Ousaphaïs), and from the style of these latter it is evident that
he comes after Tja, Tjer, Narmer, and Aha. That is to say, the contemporary
evidence makes him the fifth king from Aha, the first original of “Menés.”
Now after the piety of Seti I had led him to erect a great temple at
Abydos in memory of the ancient kings, whose sepulchres had probably
been brought to light shortly before, and to compile and set up in the temple
a list of his predecessors, a certain pious snobbery or snobbish piety
impelled a worthy named Tunure, who lived at Memphis, to put up in his
own tomb at Sakkâra a tablet of kings like the royal one at Abydos. If
Osiris-Khentamenti at Abydos had his tablet of kings, so should Osiris-
Seker at Sakkâra. But Tunure does not begin his list with Mena; his initial
king is Merpeba. For him Merpeba was the first monarch to be
commemorated at Sakkâra. Does not this look very much as if the strictly
historical Merpeba, not the rather legendary and confused Mena, was
regarded as the first Memphite king? It may well be that it was in the reign
of Merpeba, not in that of Aha or Narmer, that Memphis was founded.

The XIXth Dynasty lists of course say nothing about Mena or Merpeba
having founded Memphis; they only give the names of the kings, nothing
more. The earliest authority for the ascription of Memphis to “Menés”, is
Herodotus, who was followed in this ascription, as in many other matters,
by Manetho; but it must be remembered that Manetho was writing for the
edification of a Greek king (Ptolemy Philadelphus) and his Greek court at
Alexandria, and had therefore to evince a respect for the great Greek classic
which he may not always have really felt. Herodotus is not, of course,
accused of any wilful misstatement in this or in any other matter in which
his accuracy is suspected. He merely wrote down what he was told by the
Egyptians themselves, and Merpeba was sufficiently near in time to Aha to
be easily confounded with him by the scribes of the Persian period, who no
doubt ascribed everything to “Mena” that was done by the kings of the Ist
and IId Dynasties. Therefore it may be considered quite probable that the
“Menés” who founded Memphis was Merpeba, the fifth or sixth king of the
Ist Dynasty, whom Tunure, a thousand years before the time of Herodotus
and his informants, placed at the head of the Memphite “List of Sakkâra.”
The reconquest of the North by Khâsekhemui doubtless led to a further
strengthening of Memphis; and it is quite possible that the deeds of this
king also contributed to make up the sum total of those ascribed to the
Herodotean and Manethonian Menés.
It may be that a town of the Northerners existed here before the time of
the Southern Conquest, for Phtah, the local god of Memphis, has a very
marked character of his own, quite different from that of Khen-tamenti, the
Osiris of Abydos. He is always represented as a little bow-legged
hydrocephalous dwarf very like the Phoenician Kabeiroi. It may be that
here is another connection between the Northern Egyptians and the Semites.
The name “Phtah,” the “Opener,” is definitely Semitic. We may then regard
the dwarf Phtah as originally a non-Egyptian god of the Northerners,
probably Semitic in origin, and his town also as antedating the conquest.
But it evidently was to the Southerners that Memphis owed its importance
and its eventual promotion to the position of capital of the united kingdom.
Then the dwarf Phtah saw himself rivalled by another Phtah of Southern
Egyptian origin, who had been installed at Memphis by the Southerners.
This Phtah was a sort of modified edition of Osiris, in mummy-form and
holding crook and whip, but with a refined edition of the Kabeiric head of
the indigenous Phtah. The actual god of “the White Wall” was undoubtedly

confused vith the dead god of the necropolis, whose name was Seker or
Sekri (Sokari), “the Coffined.” The original form of this deity was a
mummied hawk upon a coffin, and it is very probable that he was imported
from the South, like the second Phtah, at the time of the conquest, when the
great Northern necropolis began to grow up as a duplicate of that at
Abydos. Later on we find Seker confused with the ancient dwarf-god, and it
is the latter who was afterwards chiefly revered as Phtah-Socharis-Osiris,
the protector of the necropolis, the mummied Phtah being the generally
recognized ruler of the City of the White Wall.
It is from the name of Seker that the modern Sak-kâra takes its title.
Sakkâra marks the central point of the great Memphite necropolis, as it is
the nearest point of the western desert to Memphis. Northwards the
necropolis extended to Griza and Abu Roâsh, southwards, to Daslmr; even
the nécropoles of Lisht and Mêdûm may be regarded as appanages of
Sakkâra. At Sakkâra itself Tjeser of the IIId Dynasty had a pyramid, which,
as we have seen, was probably not his real tomb (which was the great
mastaba at Bêt Khallâf), but a secondary or sham tomb corresponding to the
“tombs” of the earliest kings at Umm el-Ga’ab in the necropolis of Abydos.
Many later kings, however, especially of the Vith Dynasty, were actually
buried at Sakkâra. Their tombs have all been thoroughly described by their
discoverer, Prof. Maspero, in his history. The last king of the Hid Dynasty,
Snefru, was buried away down south at Mêdûm, in splendid isolation, but
he may also have had a second pyramid at Sakkâra or Abu Roash.
The kings of the IVth Dynasty were the greatest of the pyramid
builders, and to them belong the huge edifices of Griza. The Vth Dynasty
favoured Abusîr, between Cîza and Sakkâra; the Vith, as we have said,
preferred Sakkâra itself. With them the end of the Old Kingdom and of
Memphite dominion was reached; the sceptre fell from the hands of the
Memphite kings and was taken up by the princes of Herakleopolis
(Ahnasyet el-Medina, near Béni Suêf, south of the Eayyûm) and Thebes.
Where the Herakleopolite kings were buried we do not know; probably
somewhere in the local necropolis of the Gebel es-Sedment, between
Ahnasya and the Fayyûm. The first Thebans (the XIth Dynasty) were
certainly buried at Thebes, but when the Herakleopolites had finally
disappeared, and all Egypt was again united under one strong sceptre, the
Theban kings seem to have been drawn northwards. They removed to the
seat of the dominion of those whom they had supplanted, and they settled in

the neighbourhood of Herakleopolis, near the fertile province of the
Fayyûm, and between it and Memphis. Here, in the royal fortress-palace of
Itht-taui, “Controlling the Two Lands,” the kings of the XIIth Dynasty
lived, and they were buried in the nécropoles of Dashûr, Lisht, and Illahun
(Hawara), in pyramids like those of the old Memphite kings. These facts, of
the situation of Itht-taui, of their burial in the southern an ex of the old
necropolis of Memphis, and of the fori of their tombs (the true Upper
Egyptian and Thebian form was a rock-cut gallery and chamber driven deep
into the hill), show how solicitous were the Amenemhats and Senusrets of
the suffrages of Lower Egypt, how anxious they were to conciliate the
ancient royal pride of Memphis.
Where the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty and the Hyksos or “Shepherds”
were buried, we do not know. The kings of the restored Theban empire were
all interred at Thebes. There are, in fact, no known royal sepulchres
between the Fayyûm and Abydos. The great kings were mostly buried in the
neighbourhood of Memphis, Abydos, and Thebes. The sepulchres of the
“Middle Empire”—the XIth to XIIIth Dynasties—in the neighbourhood of
the Fayyûm may fairly be grouped with those of the same period at Dashûr,
which belongs to the necropolis of Memphis, since it is only a mile or two
south of Sakkâra.
It is chiefly with regard to the sepulchres of the kings that the most
momentous discoveries of recent years have been made at Thebes, and at
Sakkâra, Abusîr, Dashûr, and Lisht, as at Abydos. For this reason we deal in
succession with the finds in the nécropoles of Abydos, Memphis, and
Thebes respectively. And with the sepulchres of the “Old Kingdom,” in the
Memphite necropolis proper, we have naturally grouped those of the
“Middle Kingdom” at Dashûr, Lisht, Illahun, and Hawara.
Some of these modern discoveries have been commented on and
illustrated by Prof. Maspero in his great history. But the discoveries that
have been made since this publication have been very important,—those at
Abusîr, indeed, of first-rate importance, though not so momentous as those
of the tombs of the Ist and IId Dynasties at Abydos, already described. At
Abu Roash and at Gîza, at the northern end of the Memphite necropolis,
several expeditions have had considerable success, notably those of the
American Dr. Reisner, assisted by Mr. Mace, who excavated the royal
tombs at Umm el-Ga’ab for Prof. Petrie, those of the German Drs.

Steindorff and Borchardt,—the latter working for the Beutsch-Orient
Gesellschaft,—and those of other American excavators. Until the full
publication of the results of these excavations appears, very little can be
said about them. Many mastaba-tombs have, it is understood, been found,
with interesting remains. Nothing of great historical importance seems to
have been discovered, however. It is otherwise when we come to the
discoveries of Messrs. Borchardt and Schâfer at Abusîr, south of Gîza and
north of Sakkâra. At this place results of first-rate historical importance
have been attained.
The main group of pyramids at Abusir consists of the tombs of the
kings Sahurà, Neferarikarâ, and Ne-user-Râ, of the Vth Dynasty. The
pyramids themselves are smaller than those of Gîza, but larger than those of
Sakkâra. In general appearance and effect they resemble those of Gîza, but
they are not so imposing, as the desert here is low. Those of Gîza, Sakkâra,
and Dashûr owe much of their impressiveness to the fact that they are
placed at some height above the cultivated land. The excavation and
planning of these pyramids were carried out by Messrs. Borchardt and
Schâfer at the expense of Baron von Bissing, the well-known Egyptologist
of Munich, and of the Deutsch-Orient Gesell-schaft of Berlin. The
antiquities found have been divided between the museums of Berlin and
Cairo.
One of the most noteworthy discoveries was that of the funerary
temple of Ne-user-Râ, which stood at the base of his pyramid. The plan is
interesting, and the granite lotus-bud columns found are the most ancient
yet discovered in Egypt. Much of the paving and the wainscoting of the
walls was of fine black marble, beautifully polished. An interesting find was
a basin and drain with lion’s-head mouth, to carry away the blood of the
sacrifices. Some sculptures in relief were discovered, including a gigantic
representation of the king and the goddess Isis, which shows that in the
early days of the Vth Dynasty the king and the gods were already depicted
in exactly the same costume as they wore in the days of the Ramses and the
Ptolemies. The hieratic art of Egypt had, in fact, now taken on itself the
final outward appearance which it retained to the very end. There is no
more of the archaism and absence of conventionality, which marks the art
of the earliest dynasties.

We can trace by successive steps the swift development of Egyptian art
from the rude archaism of the Ist Dynasty to its final consummation under
the Vth, when the conventions became fixed. In the time of Khäsekhemui,
at the beginning of the IId Dynasty, the archaic character of the art has
already begun to wear off. Under the same dynasty we still have styles of
unconventional naïveté, such as the famous Statue “No. 1” of the Cairo
Museum, bearing the names of Kings Hetepahaui, Neb-râ, and Neneter. But
with the IVth Dynasty we no longer look for unconventionality. Prof. Petrie
discovered at Abydos a small ivory statuette of Khufu or Cheops, the
builder of the Great Pyramid of Gîza. The portrait is a good one and
carefully executed. It was not till the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, indeed,
that the Egyptians ceased to portray their kings as they really were, and
gave them a purely conventional type of face. This convention, against
which the heretical King Amenhetep IV (Akhunaten) rebelled, in order to
have himself portrayed in all his real ungainliness and ugliness, did not
exist till long after the time of the IVth and Vth Dynasties.
The kings of the XIIth Dynasty
especially were most careful that
their statues should be accurate
portraits; indeed, the portraits of
Usertsen (Senusret) III vary from a
young face to an old one, showing
that the king was faithfully depicted
at different periods of his life.
But the general conventions of
dress and deportment were finally
fixed under the Vth Dynasty. After
this time we no longer have such
absolutely faithful and original
presentments as the other little ivory
statuette found by Prof. Petrie at
Abydos (now in the British
Museum), which shows us an aged
monarch of the Ist Dynasty. It is
obvious that the features are absolutely true to life, and the figure wears an
unconventionally party-coloured and bordered robe of a kind which kings
of a later day may have worn in actual life, but which they would assuredly

never be depicted as wearing by the artists of their day. To the end of
Egyptian history, the kings, even the Roman emperors, were represented on
the monuments clothed in the official costume of their ancestors of the IVth
and Vth Dynasties, in the same manner as we see Khufu wearing his robe in
the little figure from Abydos, and Ne-user-Rà on the great relief from
Abusîr. There are one or two exceptions, such as the representations of the
original genius Akhunaten at Tell el-Amarna and the beautiful statue of
Ramses II at Turin, in which we see these kings wearing the real costume of
their time, but such exceptions are very rare.
The art of Abusîr is therefore of great interest, since it marks the end of
the development of the priestly art. Secular art might develop as it liked,
though the crystallizing influence of the ecclesiastical canon is always
evident here also. But henceforward it was an impiety, which only an
Akhunaten could commit, to depict a king or a god on the walls of a temple
otherwise (except so far as, the portrait was concerned) than as he had been
depicted in the time of the Vth Dynasty.
Other buildings have been excavated by the Germans at Abusîr,
notably the usual town of mastaba-tombs belonging to the chief dignitaries
of the reign, which is always found at the foot of a royal pyramid of this
period. Another building of the highest interest, belonging to the same age,
was also excavated, and its true character was determined. This is a building
at a place called er-Rîgha or Abû Ghuraib, “Father of Crows,” between
Abusîr and Gîza. It was formerly supposed to be a pyramid, but the German
excavations have shown that it is really a temple of the Sun-god Râ of
Heliopolis, specially venerated by the kings of the Vth Dynasty, who were
of Heliopolitan origin. The great pyramid-builders of the IVth Dynasty
seem to have been the last true Memphites. At the end of the reign of
Shepseskaf, the last monarch of the dynasty, the sceptre passed to a
Heliopolitan family. The following VIth Dynasty may again have been
Memphite, but this is uncertain. The capital continued to be Memphis, and
from the beginning of the Hid Dynasty to the end of the Old Kingdom and
the rise of Herakle-opolis and Thebes, Memphis remained the chief city of
Egypt.
The Heliopolitans were naturally the servants of the Sun-god above all
other gods, and they were the first to call themselves “Sons of the Sun,” a
title retained by the Pharaohs throughout all subsequent history. It was Ne-

user-Râ who built the Sun-temple of Abu Ghuraib, on the edge of the
desert, north of his pyramid and those of his two immediate predecessors at
Abusir. As now laid bare by the excavations of 1900, it is seen to consist of
an artificial mound, with a great court in front to the eastward. On the
mound was erected a truncated obelisk, the stone emblem of the Sun-god.
The worshippers in the court below looked towards the Sun’s stone erected
upon its mound in the west, the quarter of the sun’s setting; for the Sun-god
of Heliopolis was primarily the setting sun, Tum-Râ, not Râ Harmachis, the
rising sun, whose emblem is the Great Sphinx at Gîza, which looks towards
the east. The sacred emblem of the Heliopolitan Sun-god reminds us
forcibly of the Semitic bethels or baetyli, the sacred stones of Palestine, and
may give yet another hint of the Semitic origin of the Heliopolitan cult. In
the court of the temple is a huge circular altar of fine alabaster, several feet
across, on which slain oxen were offered to the Sun, and behind this, at the
eastern end of the court, are six great basins of the same stone, over which
the beasts were slain, with drains running out of them by which their blood
was carried away. This temple is a most interesting monument of the
civilization of the “Old Kingdom” at the time of the Vth Dynasty.
At Sakkâra itself, which lies a short distance south of Abusir, no new
royal tombs have, as has been said, been discovered of late years. But a
great deal of work has been done among the private mastaba-tombs by the
officers of the Service des Antiquités, which reserves to itself the right of
excavation here and at Dashûr. The mastaba of the sage and writer
Kagernna (or rather Gemnika, “I-have-found-a-ghost,” which sounds very
like an American Indian appellation) is very fine. “I-have-found-a-ghost”
lived in the reign of the king Tatkarâ Assa, the “Tancheres” of Manetho, and
he wrote maxims like his great contemporary Phtahhetep (“Offered to
Phtah”), who was also buried at Sakkâra. The officials of the Service des
Antiquités who cleaned the tomb unluckily misread his name Ka-bi-n (an
impossible form which could only mean, literally translated, “Ghost-soul-
of” or “Ghost-soul-to-me”), and they have placed it in this form over the
entrance to his tomb. This mastaba, like those, already known, of Mereruka
(sometimes misnamed “Mera”) and the famous Ti, both also at Sakkâra,
contains a large number of chambers, ornamented with reliefs. In the
vicinity M. Grébaut, then Director of the Service of Antiquities, discovered
a very interesting Street of Tombs, a regular Via Sacra, with rows of tombs
of the dignitaries of the VIth Dynasty on either side of it. They are generally

very much like one another; the workmanship of the reliefs is fine, and the
portrait of the owner of the tomb is always in evidence.
Several of the smaller mastabas have lately been disposed of to the
various museums, as they are liable to damage if they remain where they
stand; moreover, they are not of great value to the Museum of Cairo, but are
of considerable value to various museums which do not already possess
complete specimens of this class of tombs. A fine one, belonging to the
chief Uerarina, is now exhibited in the Assyrian Basement of the British
Museum; another is in the Museum of Leyden; a third at Berlin, and so on.
Most of these are simple tombs of one chamber. In the centre of the rear
wall we always see the stele or gravestone proper, built into the fabric of the
tomb. Before this stood the low table of offerings with a bowl for oblations,
and on either side a tall incense-altar. From the altar the divine smoke
(senetr) arose when the hen-ka, or priest of the ghost (literally, “Ghost’s
Servant”), performed his duty of venerating the spirits of the deceased,
while the Kher-heb, or cantor, enveloped in the mystic folds of the leopard-
skin and with bronze incense-burner in hand, sang the holy litanies and
spells which should propitiate the ghost and enable him to win his way to
ultimate perfection in the next world.
The stele is always in the form of a door with pyloni-form cornice. On
either side is a figure of the deceased, and at the sides are carved prayers to
Anubis, and at a later date to Osiris, who are implored to give the funerary
meats and “everything good and pure on which the god there (as the dead
man in the tomb has been constituted) lives;” often we find that the
biography and list of honorary titles and dignities of the deceased have been
added.
Sakkâra was used as a place of burial in the latest as well as in the
earliest time. The Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty, wearied of the long
decadence and devastating wars which had followed the glorious epoch of
the conquering Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, turned for a
new and refreshing inspiration to the works of the most ancient kings, when
Egypt was a simple self-contained country, holding no intercourse with
outside lands, bearing no outside burdens for the sake of pomp and glory,
and knowing nothing of the decay and decadence which follows in the train
of earthly power and grandeur. They deliberately turned their backs on the
worn-out and discredited imperial trappings of the Thothmes and Ramses,

and they took the supposed primitive simplicity of the Snefrus, the Khufus,
and the Ne-user-Râs for a model and ensampler to their lives. It was an age
of conscious and intended archaism, and in pursuit of the archaistic ideal
the Mem-phites of the Saïte age had themselves buried in the ancient
necropolis of Sakkâra, side by side with their ancestors of the time of the
Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several of these tombs have lately been discovered
and opened, and fitted with modern improvements. One or two of them, of
the Persian period, have wells (leading to the sepulchral chamber) of
enormous depth, down which the modern tourist is enabled to descend by a
spiral iron staircase. The Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the
Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing disturbs the silence but the steady
thumping pulsation of the dynamo-engine which lights the ancient
sepulchres of the Pharaohs. Thus do modern ideas and inventions help us to
see and so to understand better the works of ancient Egypt. But it is perhaps
a little too much like the Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. The interiors
of the later tombs are often decorated with reliefs which imitate those of the
early period, but with a kind of delicate grace which at once marks them for
what they are, so that it is impossible to confound them with the genuine
ancient originals from which they were adapted.
Riding from Sakkâra southwards to Dashûr, we pass on the way the
gigantic stone mastaba known as the Mastabat el-Fara’ûn, “Pharaoh’s
Bench.” This was considered to be the tomb of the Vth Dynasty king, Unas,
until his pyramid was found by Prof. Maspero at Sakkâra. From its form it
might be thought to belong to a monarch of the Hid Dynasty, but the great
size of the stone blocks of which it is built seems to point rather to the
XIIth. All attempts to penetrate its secret by actual excavation have been
unavailing.
Further south across the desert we see from the Mastabat el-Fara’ûn
four distinct pyramids, symmetrically arranged in two lines, two in each
line. The two to the right are great stone erections of the usual type, like
those of Gîza and Abusîr, and the southernmost of them has a peculiar
broken-backed appearance, due to the alteration of the angle of inclination
of its sides during construction. Further, it is covered almost to the ground
by the original casing of polished white limestone blocks, so that it gives a
very good idea of the original appearance of the other pyramids, which have
lost their casing. These two pyramids very probably belong to kings of the
Hid Dynasty, as does the Step-Pyramid of Sakkâra. They strongly resemble

the Gîza type, and the northernmost of the two looks very like an
understudy of the Great Pyramid. It seems to mark the step in the
development of the royal pyramid which was immediately followed by the
Great Pyramid. But no excavations have yet proved the accuracy of this
view. Both pyramids have been entered, but nothing has been found in
them. It is very probable that one of them is the second pyramid of Snefru.
The other two pyramids, those nearest the cultivation, are of very
different appearance. They are half-ruined, they are black in colour, and
their whole effect is quite different from that of the stone pyramids. For
they are built of brick, not of stone. They are pyramids, it is true, but of a
different material and of a different date from those which we have been
describing. They are built above the sepulchres of kings of the XIIth
Dynasty, the Theban house which transferred its residence northwards to
the neighbourhood of the ancient Northern capital. We have, in fact,
reached the end of the Old Kingdom at Sakkâra; at Dashûr begin the
sepulchres of the Middle Kingdom. Pyramids are still built, but they are not
always of stone; brick is used, usually with stone in the interior. The general
effect of these brick pyramids, when new, must have been indistinguishable
from that of the stone ones, and even now, when it has become half-ruined,
such a great brick pyramid as that of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Dashûr is not
without impressiveness. After all, there is no reason why a brick building
should be less admirable than a stone one. And in its own way the
construction of such colossal masses of bricks as the two eastern pyramids
of Dashûr must have been as arduous, even as difficult, as that of building a
moderate-sized stone pyramid. The photograph of the brick pyramids of
Dashûr on this page shows well the great size of these masses of brickwork,
which are as impressive as any of the great brick structures of Babylonia
and Assyria.

EXTERIOR OF THE SOUTHERN BRICK PYRAMID OF
DASHÛR:
XIITH DYNASTY.
Excavated by M. de Morgan, 1895. This is the secondary tomb of
Amenemhat III; about 2200 B.C.

The XIIth Dynasty use of brick for the royal tombs was a return to the
custom of earlier days, for from the time of Aha to that Tjeser, from the 1st

Dynasty to the Hid, brick had been used for the building of the royal
mastaba-tombs, out of which the pyramids had developed.
At this point, where we take leave of the great pyramids of the Old
Kingdom, we may notice the latest theory as to the building of these
monuments, which has of late years been enunciated by Dr. Borchardt, and
is now generally accepted. The great Prussian explorer Lepsius, when he
examined the pyramids in the ‘forties, came to the conclusion that each
king, when he ascended the throne, planned a small pyramid for himself.
This was built in a few years’ time, and if his reign were short, or if he were
unable to enlarge the pyramid for other reasons, it sufficed for his tomb. If,
however, his reign seemed likely to be one of some length, after the first
plan was completed he enlarged his pyramid by building another and a
larger one around it and over it. Then again, when this addition was
finished, and the king still reigned and was in possession of great resources,
yet another coating, so to speak, was put on to the pyramid, and so on till
colossal structures like the First and Second Pyramid of Giza, which, we
know, belonged to kings who were unusually long-lived, were completed.
And finally the aged monarch died, and was buried in the huge tomb which
his long life and his great power had enabled him to erect. This view
appeared eminently reasonable at the time, and it seemed almost as though
we ought to be able to tell whether a king had reigned long or not by the
size of his pyramid, and even to obtain a rough idea of the length of his
reign by counting the successive coats or accretions which it had received,
much as we tell the age of a tree by the rings in its bole. A pyramid seemed
to have been constructed something after the manner of an onion or a
Chinese puzzle-box.
Prof. Pétrie, however, who examined
the Griza pyramids in 1881, and carefully
measured them all up and finally settled
their trigonometrical relation, came to the
conclusion that Lepsius’s theory was
entirely erroneous, and that every pyramid
was built and now stands as it was originally
planned. Dr.Borchardt, however, who is an
architect by profession, has examined the
pyramids again, and has come to the
conclusion that Prof. Pétrie’s statement is not correct, and that there is an

element of truth in Lepsius’s hypothesis. He has shown that several of the
pyramids, notably the First and Second at Giza, show unmistakable signs of
a modified, altered, and enlarged plan; in fact, long-lived kings like Khufu
seem to have added considerably to their pyramids and even to have
entirely remodelled them on a larger scale. This has certainly been the case
with the Great Pyramid. We can, then, accept Lepsius’s theory as modified
by Dr. Borchardt.
Another interesting point has arisen in connection with the Great
Pyramid. Considerable difference of opinion has always existed between
Egyptologists and the professors of European archaeology with regard to
the antiquity of the knowledge of iron in Egypt. The majority of the
Egyptologists have always maintained, on the authority of the inscriptions,
that iron was known to the ancient Egyptians from the earliest period. They
argued that the word for a certain metal in old Egyptian was the same as the
Coptic word for “iron.” They stated that in the most ancient religious texts
the Egyptians spoke of the firmament of heaven as made of this metal, and
they came to the conclusion that it was because this metal was blue in
colour, the hue of iron or steel; and they further pointed out that some of the
weapons in the tomb-paintings were painted blue and others red, some
being of iron, that is to say, others of copper or bronze. Finally they brought
forward as incontrovertible evidence an actual fragment of worked iron,
which had been found between two of the inner blocks, down one of the air-
shafts, in the Great Pyramid. Here was an actual piece of iron of the time of
the IVth Dynasty, about 3500 B.C.
This conclusion was never accepted by the students of the
development of the use of metal in prehistoric Europe, when they came to
know of it. No doubt their incredulity was partly due to want of
appreciation of the Egyptological evidence, partly to disinclination to
accept a conclusion which did not at all agree with the knowledge they had
derived from their own study of prehistoric Europe. In Southern Europe it
was quite certain that iron did not come into use till about 1000 B.C.; in
Central Europe, where the discoveries at Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut
exhibit the transition from the Age of Bronze to that of Iron, about 800 B.C.
The exclusively Iron Age culture of La Tène cannot be dated earlier than
the eighth century, if as early as that. How then was it possible that, if iron
had been known to the Egyptians as early as 3500 B.C., its knowledge
should not have been communicated to the Europeans until over two

thousand years later? No; iron could not have been really known to the
Egyptians much before 1000 B.C. and the Egyptological evidence was all
wrong. This line of argument was taken by the distinguished Swedish
archaeologist, Prof. Oscar Montelius, of Upsala, whose previous experience
in dealing with the antiquities of Northern Europe, great as it was, was
hardly sufficient to enable him to pronounce with authority on a point
affecting far-away African Egypt. And when dealing with Greek prehistoric
antiquities Prof. Montelius’s views have hardly met with that ready
agreement which all acknowledge to be his due when he is giving us the
results of his ripe knowledge of Northern antiquities. He has, in fact,
forgotten, as most “prehistoric” archaeologists do forget, that the antiquities
of Scandinavia, Greece, Egypt, the Semites, the bronze-workers of Benin,
the miners of Zimbabwe, and the Ohio mound-builders are not to be treated
all together as a whole, and that hard and fast lines of development cannot
be laid down for them, based on the experience of Scandinavia.
We may perhaps trace this misleading habit of thought to the influence
of the professors of natural science over the students of Stone Age and
Bronze Age antiquities. Because nature moves by steady progression and
develops on even lines—nihil facit per sal-tum—it seems to have been
assumed that the works of man’s hands have developed in the same way, in
a regular and even scheme all over the world. On this supposition it would
be impossible for the great discovery of the use of iron to have been known
in Egypt as early as 3500 B.C. for this knowledge to have remained
dormant there for two thousand years, and then to have been suddenly
communicated about 1000 B.C. to Greece, spreading with lightning-like
rapidity over Europe and displacing the use of bronze everywhere. Yet, as a
matter of fact, the work of man does develop in exactly this haphazard way,
by fits and starts and sudden leaps of progress after millennia of stagnation.
Throwsback to barbarism are just as frequent. The analogy of natural
evolution is completely inapplicable and misleading.
Prof. Montelius, however, following the “evolutionary” line of
thought, believed that because iron was not known in Europe till about 1000
B.C. it could not have been known in Egypt much earlier; and in an
important article which appeared in the Swedish ethnological journal Ymer
in 1883, entitled Bronsaldrn i Egypten (“The Bronze Age in Egypt”), he
essayed to prove the contrary arguments of the Egyptologists wrong. His
main points were that the colour of the weapons in the frescoes was of no

importance, as it was purely conventional and arbitrary, and that the
evidence of the piece of iron from the Great Pyramid was insufficiently
authenticated, and therefore valueless, in the absence of other definite
archaeological evidence in the shape of iron of supposed early date. To this
article the Swedish Egyptologist, Dr. Piehl, replied in the same periodical,
in an article entitled Bronsaldem i Egypten, in which he traversed Prof.
Montelius’s conclusions from the Egyptological point of view, and adduced
other instances of the use of iron in Egypt, all, it is true, later than the time
of the IVth Dynasty. But this protest received little notice, owing to the fact
that it remained buried in a Swedish periodical, while Prof. Montelius’s
original article was translated into French, and so became well-known.
For the time Prof. Montelius’s conclusions were generally accepted,
and when the discoveries of the prehistoric antiquities were made by M. de
Morgan, it seemed more probable than ever that Egypt had gone through a
regular progressive development from the Age of Stone through those of
copper and bronze to that of iron, which was reached about 1100 or 1000
B.C. The evidence of the iron fragment from the Great Pyramid was put on
one side, in spite of the circumstantial account of its discovery which had
been given by its finders. Even Prof. Pétrie, who in 1881 had accepted the
pyramid fragment as undoubtedly contemporary with that building, and had
gone so far as to adduce additional evidence for its authenticity, gave way,
and accepted Montelius’s view, which held its own until in 1902 it was
directly controverted by a discovery of Prof. Pétrie at Abydos. This
discovery consisted of an undoubted fragment of iron found in conjunction
with bronze tools of VIth Dynasty date; and it settled the matter.[1] The VIth
Dynasty date of this piece of iron, which was more probably worked than
not (since it was buried with tools), was held to be undoubted by its
discoverer and by everybody else, and, if this were undoubted, the IVth
Dynasty date of the Great Pyramid fragment was also fully established. The
discoverers of the earlier fragment had no doubt whatever as to its being
contemporary with the pyramid, and were supported in this by Prof. Pétrie
in 1881. Therefore it is now known to be the fact that iron was used by the
Egyptians as early as 3500 B.C.[2]
[1] See H. R. Hall’s note on “The Early Use of Iron in Egypt,” in Man (the organ
of the Anthropological Society of London), iii (1903), No. 86.

[2] Prof. Montelius objected to these conclusions in a review of the British
Museum “Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age,” which was published in

Man, 1005 (Jan.), No 7. For an answer to these objections, see Hall, ibid., No.
40.

It would thus appear that though the Egyptians cannot be said to have
used iron generally and so to have entered the “Iron Age” before about 1300
B.C. (reign of Ramses II), yet iron was well known to them and had been
used more than occasionally by them for tools and building purposes as
early as the time of the IVth Dynasty, about 3500 B.C. Certainly dated
examples of its use occur under the IVth, VIth, and XIIIth Dynasties. Why
this knowledge was not communicated to Europe before about 1000 B.C.
we cannot say, nor are Egyptologists called upon to find the reason. So the
Great Pyramid has played an interesting part in the settlement of a very
important question.
It was supposed by Prof. Pétrie that the piece of iron from the Great
Pyramid had been part of some arrangement employed for raising the stones
into position. Herodotus speaks of the machines, which were used to raise
the stones, as made of little pieces of wood. The generally accepted
explanation of his meaning used to be that a small crane or similar wooden
machine was used for hoisting the stone by means of pulley and rope; but
M. Legrain, the director of the works of restoration in the Great Temple of
Karnak, has explained it differently. Among the “foundation deposits” of
the XVIIIth Dynasty at Dêr el-Bahari and elsewhere, beside the little
plaques with the king’s name and the model hoes and vases, was usually
found an enigmatic wooden object like a small cradle, with two sides made
of semicircular pieces of wood, joined along the curved portion by round
wooden bars. M. Legrain has now explained this as a model of the machine
used to raise heavy stones from tier to tier of a pyramid or other building,
and illustrations of the method of its use may be found in Choisy’s Art de
Bâtir chez les anciens Egyptiens. There is little doubt that this primitive
machine is that to which Herodotus refers as having been used in the
erection of the pyramids.
The later historian, Diodorus, also tells us that great mounds or ramps
of earth were used as well, and that the stones were dragged up these to the
requisite height. There is no doubt that this statement also is correct. We
know that the Egyptians did build in this very way, and the system has been
revived by M. Legrain for his work at Karnak, where still exist the remains
of the actual mounds and ramps by which the great western pylon was
erected in Ptolemaïc times. Work carried on in this way is slow and

expensive, but it is eminently suited to the country and understood by the
people. If they wish to put a great stone architrave weighing many tons
across the top of two columns, they do not hoist it up into position; they
rear a great ramp or embankment of earth against the two pillars, half-
burying them in the process, then drag the architrave up the ramp by means
of ropes and men, and put it into position. Then the ramp is cleared away.
This is the ancient system which is now followed at Karnak, and it is the
system by which, with the further aid of the wooden machines, the Great
Pyramid and its compeers were erected in the days of the IVth Dynasty.
Plus cela change, plus c’est la même chose.
The brick pyramids of the XIIth Dynasty were erected in the same
way, for the Egyptians had no knowledge of the modern combination of
wooden scaffolding and ladders. There was originally a small stone
pyramid of the same dynasty at Dashûr, half-way between the two brick
ones, but this has now almost disappeared. It belonged to the king
Amenemhat II, while the others belonged, the northern to Usertsen (Sen-
usret) III, the southern to Amenemhat III. Both these latter monarchs had
other tombs elsewhere, Usertsen a great rock-cut gallery and chamber in the
cliff at Abydos, Amenemhat a pyramid not very far to the south, at Hawara,
close to the Fayyûm. It is uncertain whether the Hawara pyramid or that of
Dashûr was the real burial-place of the king, as at neither place is his name
found alone. At Hawara it is found in conjunction with that of his daughter,
the queen-regnant Se-bekneferurâ (Skemiophris), at Dashûr with that of a
king Auabrâ Hor, who was buried in a small tomb near that of the king, and
adjoining the tombs of the king’s children. Who King Hor was we do not
quite know. His name is not given in the lists, and was unknown until M. de
Morgan’s discoveries at Dashûr. It is most probable that he was a prince
who was given royal honours during the lifetime of Amenemhat III, whom
he predeceased.[3] In the beautiful wooden statue of him found in his tomb,
which is now in the Cairo Museum, he is represented as quite a youth.
Amenemhat III was certainly succeeded by Amenemhat IV, and it is
impossible to intercalate Hor between them.
[3] See below, p. 121. Possibly he was a son of Amenemhat III.

The identification of the owners of the three western pyramids of
Dashûr is due to M. de Morgan and his assistants, Messrs. Legrain and
Jéquier, who excavated them from 1894 till 1896. The northern pyramid,

that of Usertsen (Senusret) III, is not so well preserved as the southern. It is
more worn away, and does not present so imposing an appearance. In both
pyramids the outer casing of white stone has entirely disappeared, leaving
only the bare black bricks. Each stood in the midst of a great necropolis of
dignitaries of the period, as was usually the case. Many of the mastabas
were excavated by M. de Morgan. Some are of older periods than the XIIth
Dynasty, one belonging to a priest of King Snefru, Aha-f-ka (“Ghost-
fighter”), who bore the additional titles of “director of prophets and general
of infantry.” There were pluralists even in those days. And the distinction
between the privy councillor (Geheimrat) and real privy councillor (Wirk-
licher-Greheimrat) was quite familiar; for we find it actually made, many an
old Egyptian officially priding himself in his tomb on having been a real
privy councillor! The Egyptian bureaucracy was already ancient and had its
survivals and its anomalies even as early as the time of the pyramid-
builders.
In front of the pyramid of Usertsen (Senusret) III at one time stood the
usual funerary temple, but it has been totally destroyed. By the side of the
pyramid were buried some of the princesses of the royal family, in a series
of tombs opening out of a subterranean gallery, and in this gallery were
found the wonderful jewels of the princesses Sit-hathor and Merit, which
are among the greatest treasures of the Cairo Museum. Those who have not
seen them can obtain a perfect idea of their appearance from the beautiful
water-colour paintings of them by M. Legrain, which are published in M. de
Morgan’s work on the “Fouilles à Dahchour” (Vienna, 1895). Altogether
one hundred and seven objects were recovered, consisting of all kinds of
jewelry in gold and coloured stones. Among the most beautiful are the great
“pectorals,” or breast-ornaments, in the shape of pylons, with the names of
Usertsen II, Usertsen III, and Amenemhat III; the names are surrounded by
hawks standing on the sign for gold, gryphons, figures of the king striking
down enemies, etc., all in cloisonné work, with beautiful stones such as
lapis lazuli, green felspar, and carnelian taking the place of coloured
enamels. The massive chains of golden beads and cowries are also very
remarkable. These treasures had been buried in boxes in the floor of the
subterranean gallery, and had luckily escaped the notice of plunderers, and
so by a fortunate chance have survived to tell us what the Egyptian
jewellers could do in the days of the XIIth Dynasty. Here also were found
two great Nile barges, full-sized boats, with their oars and other gear

complete. They also may be seen in the Museum of Cairo. It can only be
supposed that they had served as the biers of the royal mummies, and had
been brought up in state on sledges. The actual royal chamber was not
found, although a subterranean gallery was driven beneath the centre of the
pyramid.
The southern brick pyramid was constructed in the same way as the
northern one. At the side of it were also found the tombs of members of the
royal house, including that of the king Hor, already mentioned, with its
interesting contents. The remains of the mummy of this ephemeral
monarch, known only from his tomb, were also found. The entrails of the
king were placed in the usual “canopic jars,” which were sealed with the
seal of Amenemhat III; it is thus that we know that Hor died before him. In
many of the inscriptions of this king, on his coffin and stelo, a peculiarly
affected manner of writing the hieroglyphs is found,—the birds are without
their legs, the snake has no tail, the bee no head. Birds are found without
their legs in other inscriptions of this period; it was a temporary fashion and
soon discarded.
In the tomb of a princess named Nubhetep, near at hand, were found
more jewels of the same style as those of Sit-hathor and Merit. The pyramid
itself contained the usual passages and chambers, which were reached with
much difficulty and considerable tunnelling by M. de Morgan. In fact, the
search for the royal death-chambers lasted from December 5, 1894, till
March 17, 1895, when the excavators’ gallery finally struck one of the
ancient passages, which were found to be unusually extensive, contrasting
in this respect with the northern pyramid. The royal tomb-chamber had, of
course, been emptied of what it contained. It must be remembered that, in
any case, it is probable that the king was not actually buried here, but in the
pyramid of Hawara.
The pyramid of Amenemhat II, which lies between the two brick
pyramids, was built entirely of stone. Nothing of it remains above ground,
but the investigation of the subterranean portions showed that it was
remarkable for the massiveness of its stones and the care with which the
masonry was executed. The same characteristics are found in the dependent
tombs of the princesses Ha and Khnumet, in which more jewelry was
found. This splendid stonework is characteristic of the Middle Kingdom;
we find it also in the temple of Mentuhetep III at Thebes.

Some distance south of Dashûr is Mêdûm, where the pyramid of
Sneferu reigns in solitude, and beyond this again is Lisht, where in the years
1894-6 MM. Gautier and Jéquier excavated the pyramid of Usertsen (Sen-
usret) I. The most remarkable find was a cache of the seated statues of the
king in white limestone, in absolutely perfect condition. They were found
lying on their sides, just as they had been hidden. Six figures of the king in
the form of Osiris, with the face painted red, were also found. Such figures
seem to have been regularly set up in front of a royal sepulchre; several
were found in front of the funerary temple of Mentu-hetep III, Thebes,
which we shall describe later. A fine altar of gray granite, with
representations in relief of the nomes bringing offerings, was also
recovered. The pyramid of Lisht itself is not built of bricks, like those of
Dashûr, but of stone. It was not, however, erected in so solid a fashion as
those of earlier days at Gîza or Abusîr, and nothing is left of it now but a
heap of débris. The XIIth Dynasty architects built walls of magnificent
masonry, as we have seen, and there is no doubt that the stone casing of
their pyramids was originally very fine, but the interior is of brick or rubble;
the wonderful system of building employed by kings of the IVth Dynasty at
Giza was not practised.
South of Lisht is Illahun, and at the entrance to the province of the
Fayyûm, and west of this, nearer the Fayyûm, is Hawara, where Prof. Petrie
excavated the pyramids of Usertsen (Senusret) II and Amenem-hat III. His
discoveries have already been described by Prof. Maspero in his history, so
that it will suffice here merely to compare them with the results of M. de
Morgan’s later work at Dashûr and that of MM. Gautier and Jéquier at
Lisht, to note recent conclusions in connection with them, and to describe
the newest discoveries in the same region.
Both pyramids are of brick, lined with stone, like those of Dashûr, with
some differences of internal construction, since stone walls exist in the
interior. The central chambers and passages leading to them were
discovered; and in both cases the passages are peculiarly complex, with
dumb chambers, great stone portcullises, etc., in order to mislead and block
the way to possible plunderers. The extraordinary sepulchral chamber of the
Hawara pyramid, which, though it is over twenty-two feet long by ten feet
wide over all, is hewn out of one solid block of hard yellow quartzite, gives
some idea of the remarkable facility of dealing with huge stones and the
love of utilizing them which is especially characteristic of the XIIth

Dynasty. The pyramid of Hawara was provided with a funerary temple the
like of which had never been known in Egypt before and was never known
afterwards. It was a huge building far larger than the pyramid itself, and
built of fine limestone and crystalline white quartzite, in a style eminently
characteristic of the XIIth Dynasty. In actual superficies this temple covered
an extent of ground within which the temples of Karnak, Luxor, and the
Ramesseum, at Thebes, could have stood, but has now almost entirely
disappeared, having been used as a quarry for two thousand years. In
Roman times this destroying process had already begun, but even then the
building was still magnificent, and had been noted with wonder by all the
Greek visitors to Egypt from the time of Herodotus downwards. Even
before his day it had received the name of the “Labyrinth,” on account of its
supposed resemblance to the original labyrinth in Crete.
That the Hawara temple was the Egyptian labyrinth was pointed out by
Lepsius in the ‘forties of the last century. Within the last two or three years
attention has again been drawn to it by Mr. Arthur Evans’s discovery of the
Cretan labyrinth itself in the shape of the Minoan or early Mycenæan palace
of Knossos, near Candia in Crete. It is impossible to enter here into all the
arguments by which it has been proved that the Knossian palace is the
veritable labyrinth of the Minotaur legend, nor would it be strictly germane
to our subject were we to do so; but it may suffice to say here that the word

has been proved to be of Greek-or rather of pre-Hellenic-origin, and
would mean in Karian “Place of the Double-Axe,” like La-braunda in
Karia, where Zeus was depicted with a double axe (labrys) in his hand. The
non-Aryan, “Asianic,” group of languages, to which certainly Lycian and
probably Karian belong, has been shown by the German philologer
Kretschmer to have spread over Greece into Italy in the period before the
Aryan Greeks entered Hellas, and to have left undoubted traces of its
presence in Greek place-names and in the Greek language itself. Before the
true Hellenes reached Crete, an Asianic dialect must have been spoken
there, and to this language the word “labyrinth” must originally have
belonged. The classical labyrinth was “in the Knossian territory.” The
palace of Knossos was emphatically the chief seat of the worship of a god

whose emblem was the double-axe; it was the Knossian “Place of the
Double-Axe,” the Cretan “Labyrinth.”
It used to be supposed that the Cretan labyrinth had taken its name
from the Egyptian one, and the, word itself was supposed to be of Egyptian
origin. An Egyptian etymology was found for it as “Ro-pi-ro-henet,”
“Temple-mouth-canal,” which might be interpreted, with some violence to
Egyptian construction, as “The temple at the mouth of the canal,” i.e. the
Bahr Yusuf, which enters the Fayyûm at Hawara. But unluckily this word
would have been pronounced by the natives of the vicinity as
“Elphilahune,” which is not very much like

“Ro-pi-ro-henet” is, in fact, a mere figment of the philological
imagination, and cannot be proved ever to have existed. The element Ro-
henet, “canal-mouth” (according to the local pronunciation of the Fayyûm
and Middle Egypt, called La-hunè), is genuine; it is the origin of the
modern Illahun (el-Lahun), which is situated at the “canal-mouth.”
However, now that we know that the word labyrinth can be explained
satisfactorily with the help of Karian, as evidently of Greek (pre-Aryan)
origin, and as evidently the original name of the Knossian labyrinth, it is
obvious that there is no need to seek a far-fetched explanation of the word
in Egypt, and to suppose that the Greeks called the Cretan labyrinth after
the Egyptian one.
The contrary is evidently the case. Greek visitors to Egypt found a
resemblance between the great Egyptian building, with its numerous halls
and corridors, vast in extent, and the Knossian palace. Even if very little of
the latter was visible in the classical period, as seems possible, yet the site
seems always to have been kept holy and free from later building till
Roman times, and we know that the tradition of the mazy halls and
corridors of the labyrinth was always clear, and was evidently based on a
vivid reminiscence. Actually, one of the most prominent characteristics of
the Knossian palace is its mazy and labyrinthine system of passages and
chambers. The parallel between the two buildings, which originally caused
the Greek visitors to give the pyramid-temple of Hawara the name of
“labyrinth,” has been traced still further. The white limestone walls and the
shining portals of “Parian marble,” described by Strabo as characteristic of

the Egyptian labyrinth, have been compared with the shining white selenite
or gypsum used at Knossos, and certain general resemblances between the
Greek architecture of the Minoan age and the almost contemporary
Egyptian architecture of the XIIth Dynasty have been pointed out.[4] Such
resemblances may go to swell the amount of evidence already known,
which tells us that there was a close connection between Egyptian and
Minoan art and civilization, established at least as early as 2500 B.C.
[4] See H. R. Hall, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1905 (Pt. ii). The Temple of the
Sphinx at Gîza may also be compared with those of Hawara and Knossos. It
seems most probable that the Temple of the Sphinx is a XIIth Dynasty building.

For it must be remembered that within the last few years we have
learned from the excavations in Crete a new chapter of ancient history,
which, it might almost seem, shows us Greece and Egypt in regular
communication from nearly the beginnings of Egyptian history. As the
excavations which have told us this were carried on in Crete, not in Egypt,
to describe them does not lie within the scope of this book, though a short
sketch of their results, so far as they affect Egyptian history in later days, is
given in Chapter VII. Here it may suffice to say that, as far as the early
period is concerned, Egypt and Crete were certainly in communication in
the time of the XIIth Dynasty, and quite possibly in that of the VIth or still
earlier. We have IIId Dynasty Egyptian vases from Knossos, which were
certainly not imported in later days, for no ancient nation had antiquarian
tastes till the time of the Saïtes in Egypt and of the Romans still later. In
fact, this communication seems to go so far back in time that we are
gradually being led to perceive the possibility that the Minoan culture of
Greece was in its origin an offshoot from that of primeval Egypt, probably
in early Neolithic times. That is to say, the Neolithic Greeks and Neolithic
Egyptians were both members of the same “Mediterranean” stock, which
quite possibly may have had its origin in Africa, and a portion of which may
have crossed the sea to Europe in very early times, taking with it the seeds
of culture which in Egypt developed in the Egyptian way, in Greece in the
Greek way. Actual communication and connection may not have been
maintained at first, and probably they were not. Prof. Petrie thinks
otherwise, and would see in the boats painted on the predynastic Egyptian
vases (see Chapter I) the identical galleys by which, in late Neolithic times,
commerce between Crete and Egypt was carried on across the
Mediterranean. It is certain, however, that these boats are ordinary little

river craft, the usual Nile felûkas and gyassas of the time; they are depicted
together with emblems of the desert and cultivated land,-ostriches,
antelopes, hills, and palm-trees,-and the thoroughly inland and Upper
Egyptian character of the whole design springs to the eye. There can be no
doubt whatever that the predynastic boats were not seagoing galleys.
It was probably not till the time of the pyramid-builders that
connection between the Greek Mediterraneans and the Nilotes was re-
established. Thence-forward it increased, and in the time of the XIIth
Dynasty, when the labyrinth of Amenemhat III was built, there seems to
have been some kind of more or less regular communication between the
two countries.
It is certain that artistic ideas were exchanged between them at this
period. How communication was carried on we do not know, but it was
probably rather by way of Cyprus and the Syrian coast than directly across
the open sea. We shall revert to this point when we come to describe the
connection between Crete and Egypt in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty,
when Cretan ambassadors visited the Egyptian court and were depicted in
tomb paintings at Thebes. Between the time of the XIIth Dynasty and that
of the XVIIIth this connection seems to have been very considerably
strengthened; for at Knossos have been found an Egyptian statuette of an
Egyptian named Abnub, who from his name must have lived about the end
of the XIIIth Dynasty, and the top of an alabastron with the royal name of
Khian, one of the Hyksos kings.
Quite close to Hawara, at Illahun, in the ruins of the town which was
built by Usertsen’s workmen when they were building his pyramid, Prof.
Petrie found fragments of pottery of types which we now know well from
excavations in Crete and Cyprus, though they were then unknown. They are
fragments of the polychrome Cretan ware called, after the name of the place
where it was first found in Crete, Kamares ware, and of a black ware
ornamented with small punctures, which are often filled up with white. This
latter ware has been found elsewhere associated with XIIIth Dynasty
antiquities. The former is known to belong in Crete to the “early Minoan”
period, long anterior to the “late Minoan” or “Palace” period, which was
contemporary with the Egyptian XVIIIth Dynasty. We have here another
interesting proof of a connection between XIIth Dynasty Egypt and early
Minoan Crete. The later connection, under the XVIIIth and following

dynasties, is also illustrated in the same reign by Prof. Petrie’s finds of late
Mycenaean objects and foreign graves at Medinet Gurob.[5]
[5] One man who was buried here bore the name An-Tursha, “Pillar of the
Tursha.” The Tursha were a people of the Mediterranean, possibly Tylissians of
Crete.

These excavations at Hawara, Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob were carried
out in the years 1887-9. Since then Prof. Petrie and his co-workers have
revisited the same district, and Gurob has been re-examined (in 1904) by
Messrs. Loat and Ayrton, who discovered there a shrine devoted to the
worship of fish. This work was carried on at the same time as Prof. Petrie’s
main excavation for the Egypt Exploration Fund at Annas, or Ahnas-yet el-
Medina, the site of the ancient Henensu, the Herakleopolis of the Greeks.
Prof. Naville had excavated there for the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1892,
but had not completely cleared the temple. This work was now taken up by
Prof. Petrie, who laid the whole building bare. It is dedicated to Hershefi,
the local deity of Herakleopolis. This god, who was called Ar-saphes by the
Greeks, and identified with Herakles, was in fact a form of Horus with the
head of a ram; his name means “Terrible-Face.” The greater part of the
temple dates to the time of the XIXth Dynasty, and nothing of the early
period is left. We know, however, that the Middle Kingdom was the
flourishing period of the city of Hershefi. For a comparatively brief period,
between the age of Memphite hegemony and that of Theban dominion,
Herakleopolis was the capital city of Egypt. The kings of the IXth and Xth
Dynasties were Herakleopolites, though we know little of them. One, Kheti,
is said to have been a great tyrant. Another, Nebkaurâ, is known only as a
figure in the “Legend of the Eloquent Peasant,” a classical story much in
vogue in later days. Another, Merikarâ, is a more real personage, for we
have contemporary records of his days in the inscriptions of the tombs at
Asyût, from which we see that the princes of Thebes were already wearing
down the Northerners, in spite of the resistance of the adherents of
Herakleopolis, among whom the most valiant were the chiefs of Asyût. The
civil war eventuated in favour of Thebes, and the Theban XIth Dynasty
assumed the double crown. The sceptre passed from Memphis and the
North, and Thebes enters upon the scene of Egyptian history.
With this event the Nile-land also entered upon a new era of
development. The metropolis of the kingdom was once more shifted to the

South, and, although the kings of the XIIth Dynasty actually resided in the
North, their Theban origin was never forgotten, and Thebes was regarded as
the chief city of the country. The XIth Dynasty kings actually reigned at
Thebes, and there the later kings of the XIIIth Dynasty retired after the
conquest of the Hyksos. The fact that with Thebes were associated all the
heroic traditions of the struggle against the Hyksos ensured the final
stability of the capital there when the hated Semites were finally driven out,
and the national kingdom was re-established in its full extent from north to
south. But for occasional intervals, as when Akhunaten held his court at Tell
el-Amarna and Ramses II at Tanis, Thebes remained the national capital for
six hundred years, till the time of the XXIId Dynasty.
Another great change which differentiates the Middle Kingdom (XIth-
XIIIth Dynasties) from the Old Kingdom was caused by Egypt’s coming
into contact with other outside nations at this period. During the whole
history of the Old Kingdom, Egyptian relations with the outer world had
been nil. We have some inkling of occasional connection with the
Mediterranean peoples, the Ha-nebu or Northerners; we have accounts of
wars with the people of Sinai and other Bedawin and negroes; and
expeditions were also sent to the land of Punt (Somaliland) by way of the
Upper Nile. But we have not the slightest hint of any connection with, or
even knowledge of, the great nations of the Euphrates valley or the peoples
of Palestine. The Babylonian king Narâm-Sin invaded the Sinaitic peninsula
(the land of Magan) as early as 3750 b. c, about the time of the IIId
Egyptian Dynasty. The great King Tjeser, of that dynasty, also invaded
Sinai, and so did Snefru, the last king of the dynasty. But we have no hint of
any collision between Babylonians and Egyptians at that time, nor do either
of them betray the slightest knowledge of one another’s existence. It can
hardly be that the two civilized peoples of the world in those days were
really absolutely ignorant of each other, but we have no trace of any
connection between them, other than the possible one before the founding
of the Egyptian monarchy.
This early connection, however, is very problematical. We have seen
that there seems to be in early Egyptian civilization an element ultimately
of Babylonian origin, and that there are two theories as to how it reached
Egypt. One supposes that it was brought by a Semitic people of Arab
affinities (represented by the modern Grallas), who crossed the Straits of
Bab el-Man-deb and reached Egypt either by way of the Wadi Hammamat

or by the Upper Nile. The other would bring it across the Isthmus of Suez to
the Delta, where, at Heliopolis, there certainly seems to have been a
settlement of a Semitic type of very ancient culture. In both cases we should
have Semites bringing Babylonian culture to Egypt. This, as we may
remind the reader, was not itself of Semitic origin, but was a development
due to a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians as they are called, who, so far
as we know, were the aboriginal inhabitants of Babylonia. The Sumerian
language was of agglutinative type, radically distinct both from the pure
Semitic idioms and from Egyptian. The Babylonian elements of culture
which the early Semitic invaders brought with them to Egypt were, then,
ultimately of Sumerian origin. Sumerian civilization had profoundly
influenced the Semitic tribes for centuries before the Semitic conquest of
Babylonia, and when the Sumerians became more and more a conquered
race, finally amalgamating with their conquerors and losing their racial and
linguistic individuality, they were conquered by an alien race but not by an
alien culture. For the culture of the Semites was Sumerian, the Semitic
races owing their civilization to the Sumerians. That is as much as to say
that a great deal of what we call Semitic culture is fundamentally non-
Semitic.
In the earliest days, then, Egypt received elements of Sumerian culture
through a Semitic medium, which introduced Semitic elements into the
language of the people, and a Semitic racial strain. It is possible. that both
theories as to the routes of these primeval conquerors are true, and that two
waves of Semites entered the Nile valley towards the close of the Neolithic
period, one by way of the Upper Nile or Wadi Hammamat, the other by way
of Heliopolis.
After the reconsolidation of the Egyptian people, with perhaps an
autocratic class of Semitic origin and a populace of indigenous Nilotic race,
we have no trace of further connection with the far-away centre of Semitic
culture in Babylonia till the time of the Theban hegemony. Under the XIIth
Dynasty we see Egyptians in friendly relations with the Bedawin of
Idumsea and Southern Palestine. Thus Sanehat, the younger son of
Amenemhat I, when the death of his royal father was announced, fled from
the new king Usertsen (Senusret) into Palestine, and there married the
daughter of the chief Ammuanshi and became a Syrian chief himself, only
finally returning to Egypt as an old man on the assurance of the royal
pardon and favour. We have in the reign of Usertsen (Senusret) II the

famous visit of the Arab chief Abisha (Abêshu’) with his following to the
court of Khnumhetep, the prince of the Oryx nome in Middle Egypt, as we
see it depicted on the walls of Khnumhetep’s tomb at Beni Hasan. We see
Usertsen (Senusret) III invading Palestine to chastise the land of Sekmem
and the vile Syrians.[6]
[6] We know of this campaign from the interesting historical stele of the general
Sebek-khu (who took part in it), which was found during Mr. Garstang’s
excavations at Abydos, not previously referred to above. They were carried out
in 1900, and resulted in the complete clearance of a part of the great cemetery
which had been created during the XIIth Dynasty. The group of objects from the
tombs of this cemetery, and those of XVIIIth Dynasty tombs also found, is
especially valuable as showing the styles of objects in use at these two periods
(see Garstang, el-Ardbah, 1901).

The arm of Egypt was growing longer, and its weight was being felt in
regions where it had previously been entirely unknown. Eventually the
collision came. Egypt collided with an Asiatic power, and got the worst of
the encounter. So much the worse that the Theban monarchy of the Middle
Kingdom was overthrown, and Northern Egypt was actually conquered by
the Asiatic foreigners and ruled by a foreign house for several centuries.
Who these conquering Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were no recent
discovery has told us. An old idea was that they were Mongols. It was
supposed that the remarkable faces of the sphinxes of Tanis, now in the
Cairo Museum, which bore the names of Hyksos kings, were of Mongolian
type, as also those of two colossal royal heads discovered by M. Naville at
Bubastis. But M. Golénischeff has now shown that these heads are really
those of XIIth Dynasty kings, and not of Hyksos at all. Messrs. Newberry
and Garstang have lately endeavoured to show that this type was foreign,
and probably connected with that of the Kheta, or Hittites, of Northern
Syria, who came into prominence as enemies of Egypt at a later period.
They think that the type was introduced into the Egyptian royal family by
Nefret, the queen of Usertsen (Senusret) II, whom they suppose to have
been a Hittite princess. At the same time they think it probable that the type
was also that of the Hyksos, whom they consider to have been practically
Hittites. They therefore revive the theory of de Cara, which connects the
Hyksos with the Hittites and these with the Pelasgi and Tyrseni.
This is a very interesting theory, which, when carried out to its logical
conclusion, would connect the Hyksos and Hittites racially with the pre-
Hellenic “Minoan” Mycenseans of Greece, as well as with the Etruscans of

Italy. But there is little of certainty in it. It is by no means impossible that
we may eventually come to know that the Hittites (Kheta, the Khatte of the
Assyrians) and other tribes of Asia Minor were racially akin to the
“Minoans” of Greece, but the connection between the Hyksos and the
Hittites is to seek. The countenances of the Kheta on the Egyptian
monuments of Ramses II’s time have an angular cast, and so have those of
the Tanis sphinxes, of Queen Nefret, of the Bubastis statues, and the statues
of Usertsen (Senusret) III and Amenemhat III. We might then suppose, with
Messrs. Newberry and Garstang, that Nefret was a Kheta princess, who
gave her peculiar racial traits to her son Usertsen (Senusret) III and his son
Amenem-hat, were it not far more probable that the resemblance between
this peculiar XIIth Dynasty type and the Kheta face is purely fortuitous.
There is really no reason to suppose that the type of face presented by
Nefret, Usertsen, and Amenemhat is not purely Egyptian. It may be seen in
many a modern fellah, and the truth probably is that the sculptors have in
the case of these rulers very faithfully and carefully depicted their portraits,
and that their faces happen to have been of a rather hard and forbidding
type. But, if we grant the contention of Messrs. Newberry and Garstang for
the moment, where is the connection between these XIIth Dynasty kings
and the Hyksos? All the Tanite monuments with this peculiar facial type
which would be considered Hyksos are certainly of the XIIth Dynasty. The
only statue of a Hyksos king, which was undoubtedly originally made for
him and is not one of the XIIth Dynasty usurped, is the small one of Khian
at Cairo, discovered by M. Naville at Bubastis, and this has no head. So that
we have not the slightest idea of what a Hyksos looked like. Moreover, the
evidence of the Hyksos names which are known to us points in quite a
different direction. The Kheta, or Hittites, were certainly not Semites, yet
the Hyksos names are definitely Semitic. In fact it is most probable that the
Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were, as the classical authorities say they were,
and as their name (hiku-semut or hihu-shasu,) “princes of the deserts” or
(“princes of the Bedawîn”) also testifies, purely and simply Arabs.
Now it is not a little curious that almost at the same time that a nomad
Arab race conquered Lower Egypt and settled in it as rulers (just as ‘Amr
and the followers of Islam did over two thousand years later), another Arab
race may have imposed its rule upon Babylonia. Yet this may have been the
case; for the First Dynasty of Babylon, to which the famous Hammurabi
belonged, was very probably of Arab origin, to judge by the forms of some

of the royal names. It is by no means impossible that there was some
connection between these two conquests, and that both Babylonia and
Egypt fell, in the period before the year 2000 B.C. before some great
migratory movement from Arabia, which overran Babylonia, Palestine, and
even the Egyptian Delta.
In this manner Egypt and Babylonia may have been brought together
in common subjection to the Arab. We do not know whether any regular
communication between Egypt, under Semitic rule, and Babylonia was now
established; but we do know that during the Hyksos period there were
considerable relations between Egypt and over-sea Crete, and relations with
Mesopotamia may possibly have been established. At any rate, when the
war of liberation, which was directed by the princes of Thebes, was finally
brought to a successful conclusion and the Arabs were expelled, we find the
Egyptians a much changed nation. They had adopted for war the use of
horse and chariot, which they learnt from their Semitic conquerors, whose
victory was in all probability largely gained by their use, and, generally
speaking, they had become much more like the Western Asiatic nations.
Egypt was no longer isolated, for she had been forcibly brought into contact
with the foreign world, and had learned much. She was no longer self-
contained within her own borders. If the Semites could conquer her, so
could she conquer the Semites. Armed with horse and chariot, the Egyptians
went forth to battle, and their revenge was complete. All Palestine and Syria
were Egyptian domains for five hundred years after the conquest by
Thothmes I and III, and Ashur and Babel sent tribute to the Pharaoh of
Egypt.
The reaction came, and Egypt was thrown prostrate beneath the feet of
Assyria; but her claim to dominion over the Western Asiatics was never
abandoned, and was revived in all its pomp by Ptolemy Euergetes, who
brought back in triumph to Egypt the images of the gods which had been
removed by Assyrians and Babylonians centuries before. This claim was
never allowed by the Asiatics, it is true, and their kings wrote to the
proudest Pharaoh as to an absolute equal. Even the King of Cyprus calls the
King of Egypt his brother. But Palestine was admitted to be an Egyptian
possession, and the Phoenicians were always energetic supporters of the
Egyptian régime against the lawless Bedawîn tribes, who were constantly
intriguing with the Kheta or Hittite power to the north against Egypt.

The existence of this extra-Egyptian imperial possession meant that the
eyes of the Egyptians were now permanently turned in the direction of
Western Asia, with which they were henceforth in constant and intimate
communication. The first Theban period and the Hyksos invasion,
therefore, mark a turning-point in Egyptian history, at which we may fitly
leave it for a time in order to turn our attention to those peoples of Western
Asia with whom the Egyptians had now come into permanent contact.
Just as new discoveries have been made in Egypt, which have
modified our previous conception of her history, so also have the excavators
of the ancient sites in the Mesopotamian valley made, during the last few
years, far-reaching discoveries, which have enabled us to add to and revise
much of our knowledge of the history of Babylonia and Assyria. In
Palestine and the Sinaitic peninsula also the spade has been used with
effect, but a detailed account of work in Sinai and Palestine falls within the
limits of a description of Biblical discoveries rather than of this book. The
following chapters will therefore deal chiefly with modern discoveries
which have told us new facts with regard to the history of the ancient
Sumerians themselves, and of the Babylonians, Elamites, Kassites, and
Assyrians, the inheritors of the ancient Sumerian civilization, which was
older than that of Egypt, and which, as we have seen, probably contributed
somewhat to its formation. These were the two primal civilizations of the
ancient world. For two thousand years each marched upon a solitary road,
without meeting the other. Eventually the two roads converged. We have
hitherto dealt with the road of the Egyptians; we now describe that of the
Mesopotamians, up to the point of convergence.

CHAPTER IV—RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN
WESTERN ASIA
AND THE DAWN OF CHALDÆAN HISTORY
In the preceding pages it has been shown how recent excavations in
Egypt have revealed an entirely new chapter in the history of that country,
and how, in consequence, our theories with regard to the origin of Egyptian
civilization have been entirely remodelled. Excavations have been and are
being carried out in Mesopotamia and the adjacent countries with no less
enthusiasm and energy than in Egypt itself, and, although it cannot be said
that they have resulted in any sweeping modification of our conceptions
with regard to the origin and kinship of the early races of Western Asia, yet
they have lately added considerably to our knowledge of the ancient history
of the countries in that region of the world. This is particularly the case in
respect of the Sumerians, who, so far as we know at present, were the
earliest inhabitants of the fertile plains of Mesopotamia. The beginnings of
this ancient people stretch back into the remote past, and their origin is still
shrouded in the mists of antiquity. When first we come across them they
have already attained a high level of civilization. They have built temples
and palaces and houses of burnt and unburnt brick, and they have reduced
their system of agriculture to a science, intersecting their country with
canals for purposes of irrigation and to ensure a good supply of water to
their cities. Their sculpture and pottery furnish abundant evidence that they
have already attained a comparatively high level in the practice of the arts,
and finally they have evolved a complicated system of writing which
originally had its origin in picture-characters, but afterwards had been
developed along phonetic lines. To have attained to this pitch of culture
argues long periods of previous development, and we must conclude that
they had been settled in Southern Babylonia many centuries before the
period to which we must assign the earliest of their remains at present
discovered.
That this people were not indigenous to Babylonia is highly probable,
but we have little data by which to determine the region from which they

originally came. Prom the fact that they built their ziggurats, or temple
towers, of huge masses of unburnt brick which rose high above the
surrounding plain, and that their ideal was to make each “like a mountain,”
it has been argued that they were a mountain race, and the home from
which they sprang has been sought in Central Asia. Other scholars have
detected signs of their origin in their language and system of writing, and,
from the fact that they spoke an agglutinative tongue and at the earliest
period arranged the characters of their script in vertical lines like the
Chinese, it has been urged that they were of Mongol extraction. Though a
case may be made out for this hypothesis, it would be rash to dogmatize for
or against it, and it is wiser to await the discovery of further material on
which a more certain decision may be based. But whatever their origin, it is
certain that the Sumerians exercised an extraordinary influence on all races
with which, either directly or indirectly, they came in contact. The ancient
inhabitants of Elam at a very early period adopted in principle their method
of writing, and afterwards, living in isolation in the mountainous districts of
Persia, developed it on lines of their own. [* See Chap. V, and note.] On
their invasion of Babylonia the Semites fell absolutely under Sumerian
influence, and, although they eventually conquered and absorbed the
Sumerians, their civilization remained Sumerian to the core. Moreover, by
means of the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia Sumerian culture continued
to exert its influence on other and more distant races. We have already seen
how a Babylonian element probably enters into Egyptian civilization
through Semitic infiltration across the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb or by way
of the Isthmus of Suez, and it was Sumerian culture which these Semites
brought with them. In like manner, through the Semitic Babylonians, the
Assyrians, the Kassites, and the inhabitants of Palestine and Syria, and of
some parts of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan, all in turn experienced
indirectly the influence of Sumerian civilization and continued in a greater
or less degree to reproduce elements of this early culture.
It will be seen that the influence of the Sumerians furnishes us with a
key to much that would otherwise prove puzzling in the history of the early
races of Western Asia. It is therefore all the more striking to recall the fact
that but a few years ago the very existence of this ancient people was called
in question. At that time the excavations in Mesopotamia had not revealed
many traces of the race itself, and its previous existence had been mainly
inferred from a number of Sumerian compositions inscribed upon Assyrian

tablets found in the library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh. These
compositions were furnished with Assyrian translations upon the tablets on
which they were inscribed, and it was correctly argued by the late Sir Henry
Rawlinson, the late M. Oppert, Prof. Schrader, Prof. Sayce, and other
scholars that they were written in the language of the earlier inhabitants of
the country whom the Semitic Babylonians had displaced. But M. Halévy
started a theory to the effect that Sumerian was not a language at all, in the
proper sense of the term, but was a cabalistic method of writing invented by
the Semitic Babylonian priests.

Drawn up by an Assyrian scribe to assist him in his studies of early
texts. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.

The argument on which the upholders of this theory mainly relied was
that many of the phonetic values of the Sumerian signs were obviously
derived from Semitic equivalents, and they hastily jumped to the conclusion
that the whole language was similarly derived from Semitic Babylonian,
and was, in fact, a purely arbitrary invention of the Babylonian priests. This
theory ignored all questions of inherent probability, and did not attempt to
explain why the Babylonian priests should have troubled themselves to
make such an invention and afterwards have stultified themselves by
carefully appending Assyrian translations to the majority of the Sumerian
compositions which they copied out. Moreover, the nature of these
compositions is not such as we should expect to find recorded in a cabalistic
method of writing. They contain no secret lore of the Babylonian priests,
but are merely hymns and prayers and religious compositions similar to
those employed by the Babylonians and Assyrians themselves.
But in spite of its inherent improbabilities, M. Halévy succeeded in
making many converts to his theory, including Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch and
a number of the younger school of German Assyriologists. More
conservative scholars, such as Sir Henry Rawlinson, M. Oppert, and Prof.
Schrader, stoutly opposed the theory, maintaining that Sumerian was a real
language and had been spoken by an earlier race whom the Semitic
Babylonians had conquered; and they explained the resemblance of some of
the Sumerian values to Semitic roots by supposing that Sumerian had not
been suddenly superseded by the language of the Semitic invaders of
Babylonia, but that the two tongues had been spoken for long periods side
by side and that each had been strongly influenced by the other. This very
probable and sane explanation has been fully corroborated by subsequent
excavations, particularly those that were carried out at Telloh in Southern
Babylonia by the late M. de Sarzec. In these mounds, which mark the site of
the ancient Sumerian city of Shirpurla, were found thousands of clay tablets
inscribed in archaic characters and in the Sumerian language, proving that it
had actually been the language of the early inhabitants of Babylonia; while
the examples of their art and the representations of their form and features,
which were also afforded by the diggings at Telloh, proved once for all that
the Sumerians were a race of strongly marked characteristics and could not
be ascribed to a Semitic stock.

The system of writing invented by the ancient Sumerians was adopted
by the Semitic Babylonians, who modified it to suit their own language.
Moreover, the archaic forms of the characters, many of which under the
Sumerians still retained resemblances to the pictures of objects from which
they were descended, were considerably changed. The lines, of which they
were originally composed, gave way to wedges, and the number of the
wedges of which each sign consisted was gradually diminished, so that in
the time of the Assyrians and the later Babylonians many of the characters
bore small resemblance to the ancient Sumerian forms from which they had
been derived. The reading of Sumerian and early Babylonian inscriptions
by the late Assyrian scribes was therefore an accomplishment only to be
acquired as the result of long study, and it is interesting to note that as an
assistance to the reading of these early texts the scribes compiled lists of
archaic signs. Sometimes opposite each archaic character they drew a
picture of the object from which they imagined it was derived. This fact is
significant as proving that the Assyrian scribes recognized the pictorial
origin of cuneiform writing, but the pictures they drew opposite the signs
are rather fanciful, and it cannot be said that their guesses were very
successful. That we are able to criticize the theories of the Assyrians as to
the origin and forms of the early characters is in the main due to M. de
Sarzec’s labours, from whose excavations many thousands of inscriptions
of the Sumerians have been recovered.
The main results of M. de Sarzec’s diggings at Telloh have already
been described by M. Maspero in his history, and therefore we need not go
over them again, but will here confine ourselves to the results which have
been obtained from recent excavations at Telloh and at other sites in
Western Asia. With the death of M. de Sarzec, which occurred in his sixty-
fifth year, on May 31, 1901, the wonderfully successful series of
excavations which he had carried out at Telloh was brought to an end. In
consequence it was feared at the time that the French diggings on this site
might be interrupted for a considerable period. Such an event would have
been regretted by all those who are interested in the early history of the
East, for, in spite of the treasures found by M. de Sarzec in the course of his
various campaigns, it was obvious that the site was far from being
exhausted, and that the tells as yet unexplored contained inscriptions and
antiquities extending back to the very earliest periods of Sumerian history.

Opposite each the scribe has drawn a picture of the object from
which he imagined it was derived. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell &
Co.

The announcement which was made in 1902, that the French
government had appointed Capt. Gaston Cros as the late M. de Sarzec’s
successor, was therefore received with general satisfaction. The fact that
Capt. Cros had already successfully carried out several difficult
topographical missions in the region of the Sahara was a sufficient
guarantee that the new diggings would be conducted on a systematic and
exhaustive scale.
The new director of the French mission in Chaldæa arrived at Telloh in
January, 1903, and one of his first acts was to shift the site of the mission’s
settlement from the bank of the Shatt el-Hai, where it had always been
established in the time of M. de Sarzec, to the mounds where the actual
digging took place. The Shatt el-Hai had been previously chosen as the site
of the settlement to ensure a constant supply of water, and as it was more
easily protected against attack by night. But the fact that it was an hour’s
ride from the diggings caused an unnecessary loss of time, and rendered the
strict supervision of the diggers a matter of considerable difficulty. During
the first season’s work rough huts of reeds, surrounded by a wall of earth
and a ditch, served the new expedition for its encampment among the
mounds of Telloh, but last year these makeshift arrangements were
superseded by a regular house built out of the burnt bricks which are found
in abundance on the site. A reservoir has also been built, and caravans of
asses bring water in skins from the Shatt el-Hai to keep it filled with a
constant supply of water, while the excellent relations which Capt. Cros has
established with the Karagul Arabs, who occupy Telloh and its
neighbourhood, have proved to be the best kind of protection for the
mission engaged in scientific work upon the site.
The group of mounds and hillocks, known as Telloh, which marks the
site of the ancient Sumerian city of Shirpurla, is easily distinguished from
the flat surrounding desert. The mounds extend in a rough oval formation
running north and south, about two and a half miles long and one and a
quarter broad. In the early spring, when the desert is covered with a light
green verdure, the ruins are clearly marked out as a yellow spot in the

surrounding green, for vegetation does not grow upon them. In the centre of
this oval, which approximately marks the limits of the ancient city and its
suburbs, are four large tells or mounds running, roughly, north and south,
their sides descending steeply on the east, but with their western slopes
rising by easier undulations from the plain. These four principal tells are
known as the “Palace Tell,” the “Tell of the Fruit-house,” the “Tell of the
Tablets,” and the “Great Tell,” and, rising as they do in the centre of the site,
they mark the position of the temples and the other principal buildings of
the city.
An indication of the richness of the site in antiquities was afforded to
the new mission before it had started regular excavation and while it was
yet engaged in levelling its encampment and surrounding it with a wall and
ditch. The spot selected for the camp was a small mound to the south of the
site of Telloh, and here, in the course of preparing the site for the
encampment and digging the ditch, objects were found at a depth of less
than a foot beneath the surface of the soil. These included daggers, copper
vases, seal-cylinders, rings of lapis and cornelian, and pottery. M. de Sarzec
had carried out his latest diggings in the Tell of the Tablets, and here Capt.
Cros continued the excavations and came upon the remains of buildings and
recovered numerous objects, dating principally from the period of Gudea
and the kings of Ur. The finds included small terra-cotta figures, a
boundary-stone of Gamil-Sin, and a new statue of Gudea, to which we will
refer again presently.
In the Tell of the Fruit-house M. de Sarzec had already discovered
numbers of monuments dating from the earlier periods of Sumerian history
before the conquest and consolidation of Babylonia under Sargon of Agade,
and had excavated a primitive terrace built by the early king Ur-Ninâ. Both
on and around this large mound Capt. Cros cut an extensive series of
trenches, and in digging to the north of the mound he found a number of
objects, including an alabaster tablet of Ente-mena which had been
blackened by fire. At the foot of the tell he found a copper helmet like those
represented on the famous Stele of Vultures discovered by M. de Sarzec,
and among the tablets here recovered was one with an inscription of the
time of Urukagina, which records the complete destruction of the city of
Shirpurla during his reign, and will be described in greater detail later on in
this chapter. On the mound itself a considerable area was uncovered with
remains of buildings still in place, the use of which appears to have been of

an industrial character. They included flights of steps, canals with raised
banks, and basins for storing water. Not far off are the previously
discovered wells of Bannadu, so that it is legitimate to suppose that Capt.
Cros has here come upon part of the works which were erected at a very
early period of Sumerian history for the distribution of water to this portion
of the city.

An early Semitic king of the city of Kish in Babylonia. The
photograph is taken from M. de Morgan’s Délégation en Perse, Mém., t.
i, pi. ix.

In the Palace Tell Capt. Cros has sunk a series of deep shafts to
determine precisely the relations which the buildings of Ur-Bau and Gudea,
found already on this part of the site, bear to each other, and to the building
of Adad-nadin-akhê, which had been erected there at a much later period.
Prom this slight sketch of the work carried out during the last two years at
Telloh it will have been seen that the Prench mission in Chaldæa is at
present engaged in excavations of a most important character, which are
being conducted in a regular and scientific manner. As the area of the
excavations marks the site of the chief city of the Sumerians, the diggings
there have yielded and are yielding material of the greatest interest and
value for the reconstruction of the early history of Chaldæa. After briefly
describing the character and results of other recent excavations in
Mesopotamia and the neighbouring lands, we will return to the discoveries
at Telloh and sketch the new information they supply on the history of the
earliest inhabitants of the country.
Another French mission that is carrying out work of the very greatest
interest to the student of early Babylonian history is that which is
excavating at Susa in Persia, under the direction of M. J. de Morgan, whose
work on the prehistoric and early dynastic sites in Egypt has already been
described. M. de Morgan’s first season’s digging at Susa was carried out in
the years 1897-8, and the success with which he met from the very first,
when cutting trenches in the mound which marks the acropolis of the
ancient city, has led him to concentrate his main efforts in this part of the
ruins ever since. Provisional trenches cut in the part of the ruins called “the
Royal City,” and in others of the mounds at Susa, indicate that many
remains may eventually be found there dating from the period of the
Achæmenian Kings of Persia. But it is in the mound of the acropolis at Susa
that M. de Morgan has found monuments of the greatest historical interest
and value, not only in the history of ancient Elam, but also in that of the
earliest rulers of Chaldæa.
In the diggings carried out during the first season’s work on the site, an
obelisk was found inscribed on four sides with a long text of some sixty-

nine columns, written in Semitic Babylonian by the orders of Manishtusu, a
very early Semitic king of the city of Kish in Babylonia.[* See illustration.]
The text records the purchase by the King of Kish of immense tracts of land
situated at Kish and in its neighbourhood, and its length is explained by the
fact that it enumerates full details of the size and position of each estate, and
the numbers and some of the names of the dwellers on the estates who were
engaged in their cultivation. After details have been given of a number of
estates situated in the same neighbourhood, a summary is appended
referring to the whole neighbourhood, and the fact is recorded that the
district dealt with in the preceding catalogue and summary had been duly
acquired by purchase by Manishtusu, King of Kish. The long text upon the
obelisk is entirely taken up with details of the purchase of the territory, and
therefore its subject has not any great historical value. Mention is made in it
of two personages, one of whom may possibly be identified with a
Babylonian ruler whose name is known from other sources. If the proposed
identification t should prove to be correct, it would enable us to assign a
more precise date to Manishtusu than has hitherto been possible. One of the
personages in question was a certain Urukagina, the son of Engilsa, patesi
of Shirpurla, and it has been suggested that he is the same Urukagina who is
known to have occupied the throne of Shirpurla, though this identification
would bring Manishtusu down somewhat later than is probable from the
general character of his inscriptions. The other personage mentioned in the
text is the son of Manishtusu, named Mesalim, and there is more to be said
for the identification of this prince with Mesilim, the early King of Kish,
who reigned at a period anterior to that of Eannadu, patesi of Shirpurla.
The mere fact of so large and important an obelisk, inscribed with a
Semitic text by an early Babylonian king, being found at Susa was an
indication that other monuments of even greater interest might be
forthcoming from the same spot; and this impression was intensified when a
stele of victory was found bearing an inscription of Naram-Sin, the early
Semitic King of Agade, who reigned about 3750 B.C. One face of this stele
is sculptured with a representation of the king conquering his enemies in a
mountainous country. [* See illustration.] The king himself wears a helmet
adorned with the horns of a bull, and he carries his battle-axe and his bow
and an arrow. He is nearly at the summit of a high mountain, and up its
steep sides, along paths through the trees which clothe the mountain, climb
his allies and warriors bearing standards and weapons. The king’s enemies

are represented suing for mercy as they turn to fly before him. One grasps a
broken spear, while another, crouching before the king, has been smitten in
the throat by an arrow from the king’s bow. On the plain surface of the stele
above the king’s head may be seen traces of an inscription of Narâm-Sin
engraved in three columns in the archaic characters of his period. From the
few signs of the text that remain, we gather that Narâm-Sin had conducted a
campaign with the assistance of certain allied princes, including the Princes
of Sidur, Saluni, and Lulubi, and it is not improbable that they are to be
identified with the warriors represented on the stele as climbing the
mountain behind Narâm-Sin.
In reference to this most interesting stele of Narâm-Sin we may here
mention another inscription of this king, found quite recently at Susa and
published only this year, which throws additional light on Narâm-Sin’s
allies and on the empire which he and his father Sargon founded. The new
inscription was engraved on the base of a diorite statue, which had been
broken to pieces so that only the base with a portion of the text remained.
From this inscription we learn that Narâm-Sin was the head of a
confederation of nine chief allies, or vassal princes, and waged war on his
enemies with their assistance. Among these nine allies of course the Princes
of Sidur, Saluni, and Lulubi are to be included. The new text further records
that Narâm-Sin made an expedition against Magan (the Sinaitic peninsula),
and defeated Manium, the lord of that region, and that he cut blocks of
stone in the mountains there and transported them to his city of Agade,
where from one of them he made the statue on the base of which the text
was inscribed. It was already known from the so-called “Omens of Sargon
and Narâm-Sin” (a text inscribed on a clay tablet from Ashur-bani-pal’s
library at Nineveh which associates the deeds of these two early rulers with
certain augural phenomena) that Narâm-Sin had made an expedition to
Sinai in the course of his reign and had conquered the king of the country.
The new text gives contemporary confirmation of this assertion and
furnishes us with additional information with regard to the name of the
conquered ruler of Sinai and other details of the campaign.
That monuments of such great interest to the early history of Chaldæa
should have been found at Susa in Persia was sufficiently startling, but an
easy explanation was at first forthcoming from the fact that Narâm-Sin’s
stele of victory had been used by the later Elamite king, Shutruk-
Nakhkhunte, for an inscription of his own; this he had engraved in seven

long lines along the great cone in front of Narâm-Sin, which is probably
intended to represent the peak of the mountain. From the fact that it had
been used in this way by Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, it seemed permissible to
infer that it had been captured in the course of a campaign and brought to
Susa as a trophy of war. But we shall see later on that the existence of early
Babylonian inscriptions and monuments in the mound of the acropolis at
Susa is not to be explained in this way, but was due to the wide extension of
both Sumerian and Semitic influence throughout Western Asia from the
very earliest periods. This subject will be treated more fully in the chapter
dealing with the early history of Blam.
The upper surface of the tell of the acropolis at Susa for a depth of
nearly two metres contains remains of the buildings and antiquities of the
Achæmenian kings and others of both later and earlier dates. In these upper
strata of the mound are found remains of the Arab, Sassanian, Parthian,
Seleucian, and Persian periods, mixed indiscriminately with one another
and with Elamite objects and materials of all ages, from that of the earliest
patesis down to that of the Susian kings of the seventh century B.C.

The most northern of the mounds which now mark the site of the
ancient city of Babylon; used for centuries as a quarry for building
materials.

The reason of this mixture of the remains of many races and periods is
that the later builders on the mound made use of the earlier building
materials which they found preserved within it. Along the skirts of the
mound may still be seen the foundations of the wall which formed the
principal defence of the acropolis in the time of Xerxes, and in many places
not only are the foundations preserved but large pieces of the wall itself still
rise above the surface of the soil.

Stele of Narâm-Sin, an early Semitic King of Agade in Babylonia,
who reigned about B. C. 3750. From the photograph by Messrs.
Mansell & Co.

The plan of the wall is quite irregular, following the contours of the
mound, and, though it is probable that the wall was strengthened and
defended at intervals by towers, no trace of these now remains. The wall is
very thick and built of unburnt bricks, and the system of fortification seems
to have been extremely simple at this period.

The group probably represents Babylon or the Babylonian king
triumphing over the country’s enemies. The Arabs regard the figure as
an evil spirit, and it is pitted with the marks of bullets shot at it. They
also smear it with filth when they can do so unobserved; in the

photograph some newly smeared filth may be seen adhering to the side
of the lion.

The earlier citadel or fortress of the city of Susa was built at the top of
the mound and must have been a more formidable stronghold than that of
the Achæmenian kings, for, besides its walls, it had the additional protection
of the steep slopes of the mound.
Below the depth of two metres from the surface of the mound are
found strata in which Elamite objects and materials are, no longer mixed
with the remains of later ages, but here the latest Elamite remains are found
mingled with objects and materials dating from the earliest periods of
Elam’s history. The use of un-burnt bricks as the principal material for
buildings erected on the mound in all ages has been another cause of this
mixture of materials, for it has little power of resistance to water, and a
considerable rain-storm will wash away large portions of the surface and
cause the remains of different strata to be mixed indiscriminately with one
another. In proportion as the trenches were cut deeper into the mound the
strata which were laid bare showed remains of earlier ages than those in the
upper layers, though here also remains of different periods are considerably
mixed. The only building that has hitherto been discovered at Susa by M. de
Morgan, the ground plan of which was in a comparatively good state of
preservation, was a small temple of the god Shu-shinak, and this owed its
preservation to the fact that it was not built of unburnt brick, but was largely
composed of burnt brick and plaques and tiles of enamelled terra-cotta.
But although the diggings of M. de Morgan at Susa have so far
afforded little information on the subject of Elamite architecture, the
separate objects found have enabled us to gain considerable knowledge of
the artistic achievements of the race during the different periods of its
existence. Moreover, the stelæ and stone records that have been recovered
present a wealth of material for the study of the long history of Elam and of
the kings who ruled in Babylonia during the earliest ages.

Showing the depth in the mound to which the diggings are carried.

The most famous of M. de Morgan’s recent finds is the long code of
laws drawn up by Hammurabi, the greatest king of the First Dynasty of
Babylon.[1] This was engraved upon a huge block of black diorite, and was
found in the tell of the acropolis in the winter of 1901-2. This document in
itself has entirely revolutionized current theories as to the growth and origin
of the principal ancient legal codes. It proves that Babylonia was the
fountainhead from which many later races borrowed portions of their
legislative systems. Moreover, the subjects dealt with in this code of laws
embrace most of the different classes of the Babylonian people, and it
regulates their duties and their relations to one another in their ordinary
occupations and pursuits. It therefore throws much light upon early
Babylonian life and customs, and we shall return to it in the chapter dealing
with these subjects.
[1] It will be noted that the Babylonian dynasties are referred to throughout this
volume as “First Dynasty,” “Second Dynasty,” “Third Dynasty,” etc. They are
thus distinguished from the Egyptian dynasties, the order of which is indicated
by Roman numerals, e.g. “Ist Dynasty,” “IId Dynasty,” “IIId Dynasty.”

The American excavators at Nippur, under the direction of Mr. Haynes,
have done much in the past to increase our knowledge of Sumerian and
early Babylonian history, but the work has not been continued in recent
years, and, unfortunately, little progress has been made in the publication of
the material already accumulated. In fact, the leadership in American
excavation has passed from the University of Pennsylvania to that of
Chicago. This progressive university has sent out an expedition, under the
general direction of Prof. R. F. Harper (with Dr. E. J. Banks as director of
excavations), which is doing excellent work at Bismya, and, although it is
too early yet to expect detailed accounts of their achievements, it is clear
that they have already met with considerable success. One of their recent
finds consists of a white marble statue of an early Sumerian king named
Daudu, which was set up in the temple of E-shar in the city of Udnun, of
which he was ruler. From its archaic style of workmanship it may be placed
in the earliest period of Sumerian history, and may be regarded as an earnest
of what may be expected to follow from the future labours of Prof. Harper’s
expedition.

At Fâra and at Abû Hatab in Babylonia, the Deutsch-Orient
Gesellschaft, under Dr. Koldewey’s direction, has excavated Sumerian and

Babylonian remains of the early period. At the former site they unearthed
the remains of many private houses and found some Sumerian tablets of
accounts and commercial documents, but little of historical interest; and an
inscription, which seems to have come from Abu Hatab, probably proves
that the Sumerian name of the city whose site it marks was Kishurra. But
the main centre of German activity in Babylonia is the city of Babylon
itself, where for the last seven years Dr. Koldewey has conducted
excavations, unearthing the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar II on the mound
termed the Kasr, identifying the temple of E-sagila under the mound called
Tell Amran ibn-Ali, tracing the course of the sacred way between E-sagila
and the palace-mound, and excavating temples dedicated to the goddess
Ninmakh and the god Ninib.

In the middle distance may be seen the metal trucks running on
light rails which are employed on the work for the removal of the
débris from the diggings.
Dr. Andrae, Dr. Koldewey’s assistant, has also completed the
excavation of the temple dedicated to Nabû at Birs Nimrud. On the
principal mound at this spot, which marks the site of the ancient city of
Borsippa, traces of the ziggurat, or temple tower, may still be seen rising
from the soil, the temple of Nabû lying at a lower level below the steep

slope of the mound, which is mainly made up of débris from the ziggurat.
Dr. Andrae has recently left Babylonia for Assyria, where his excavations at
Sher-ghat, the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Ashur, are confidently
expected to throw considerable light on the early history of that country and
the customs of the people, and already he has made numerous finds of
considerable interest.

Since the early spring of 1903 excavations have been conducted at
Kuyunjik, the site of the city of Nineveh, by Messrs. L. W. King and R. C.
Thompson on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum, and have
resulted in the discovery of many early remains in the lower strata of the
mound, in addition to the finding of new portions of the two palaces already

known and partly excavated, the identification of a third palace, and the
finding of an ancient temple dedicated to Nabû, whose existence had
already been inferred from a study of the Assyrian inscriptions.[2] All these
diggings at Babylon, at Ashur, and at Nineveh throw more light upon the
history of the country during the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, and
will be referred to later in the volume.
[2] It may be noted that excavations are also being actively carried on in
Palestine at the present time. Mr. Macalister has for some years been working for
the Palestine Exploration Fund at Gezer; Dr. Schumacher is digging at Megiddo
for the German Palestine Society; and Prof. Sellin is at present excavating at
Taanach (Ta’annak) and will shortly start work at Dothan. Good work on
remains of later historical periods is also being carried on under the auspices of
the Deutsch-Orient Gesellschaft at Ba’albek and in Galilee. It would be tempting
to include here a summary of the very interesting results that have recently been
achieved in this fruitful field of archaeological research, for it is true that these
excavations may strictly be said to bear on the history of a portion of Western
Asia. But the problems which they raise would more naturally be discussed in a
work dealing with recent excavation and research in relation to the Bible, and to
have summarized them adequately would have increased the size of the present
volume considerably beyond its natural limits. They have therefore not been
included within the scope of the present work.

Meanwhile, we will return to the diggings described at the beginning
of this chapter, as affording new information concerning the earliest periods
of Chaldæan history.
A most interesting inscription has recently been discovered by Capt.
Cros at Telloh, which throws considerable light on the rivalry which existed

between the cities of Shirpurla and Gishkhu, and at the same time furnishes
valuable material for settling the chronology of the earliest rulers whose
inscriptions have been found at Mppur and their relations to contemporary
rulers in Shirpurla.

The cities of Gishkhu and Shirpurla were probably situated not far
from one another, and their rivalry is typical of the history of the early city-
states of Babylonia. The site of the latter city, as has already been said, is
marked by the mounds of Telloh on the east bank of the Shatt el-Hai, the
natural stream joining the Tigris and Euphrates, which has been improved
and canalized by the dwellers in Southern Babylonia from the earliest
period.

The site of Gishkhu may be set with considerable probability not far to
the north of Telloh on the opposite bank of the Shatt el-Hai. These two
cities, situated so close to one another, exercised considerable political
influence, and though less is known of Gishkhu than of the more famous
Babylonian cities such as Ur, Brech, and Larsam, her proximity to Shirpurla
gave her an importance which she might not otherwise have possessed. The
earliest knowledge we possess of the relations existing between Gishkhu
and Shirpurla refers to the reign of Mesilim, King of Kish, the period of
whose rule may be provisionally set before that of Sargon of Agade, i.e,
about 4000 B.C.
At this period there was rivalry between the two cities, in consequence
of which Mesilim, King of Kish, was called in as arbitrator. A record of the
treaty of delimitation that was drawn up on this occasion has been
preserved upon the recently discovered cone of Entemena. This document

tells us that at the command of the god Enlil, described as “the king of the
countries,” Ningirsu, the chief god of Shirpurla, and the god of Gishkhu
decided to draw up a line of division between their respective territories,
and that Mesilim, King of Kish, acting under the direction of his own god
Kadi, marked out the frontier and set up a stele between the two territories
to commemorate the fixing of the boundary.
This policy of fixing the boundary by arbitration seems to have been
successful, and to have secured peace between Shirpurla and Gishkhu for
some generations. But after a period which cannot be accurately determined
a certain patesi of Gishkhu, named Ush, was filled with ambition to extend
his territory at the expense of Shirpurla. He therefore removed the stele
which Mesilim had set up, and, invading the plain of Shirpurla, succeeded
in conquering and holding a district named Gu-edin. But Ush’s successful
raid was not of any permanent benefit to his city, for he was in his turn
defeated by the forces of Shirpurla, and his successor upon the throne, a
patesi named Enakalli, abandoned a policy of aggression, and concluded
with Eannadu, patesi of Shirpurla, a solemn treaty concerning the boundary
between their realms, the text of which has been preserved to us upon the
famous Stele of Vultures in the Louvre.[3]
[3] A fragment of this stele is also preserved in the British Museum. It is
published in Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum, Pt. vii.

According to this treaty Gu-edin was restored to Shirpurla, and a deep
ditch was dug between the two territories which should permanently
indicate the line of demarcation. The stele of Mesilim was restored to its
place, and a second stele was inscribed and set up as a memorial of the new
treaty. Enakalli did not negotiate the treaty on equal terms with Eannadu,
for he only secured its ratification by consenting to pay heavy tribute in
grain for the supply of the great temples of Nin-girsu and Ninâ in Shirpurla.
It would appear that under Eannadu the power and influence of Shirpurla
were extended over the whole of Southern Babylonia, and reached even to
the borders of Elam. At any rate, it is clear that during his lifetime the city
of Gishkhu was content to remain in a state of subjection to its more
powerful neighbour. But it was always ready to seize any opportunity of
asserting itself and of attempting to regain its independence.

The characters of the inscription well illustrate the pictorial origin
of the Sumerian system of writing. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell &
Co.
Accordingly, after Eannadu’s death the men of Gishkhu again took the
offensive. At this time Urlumma, the son and successor of Enakalli, was on
the throne of Gishkhu, and he organized the forces of the city and led them

out to battle. His first act was to destroy the frontier ditches named after
Ningirsu and Ninâ, the principal god and goddess of Shirpurla, which
Eannadu, the powerful foe of Gishkhu, had caused to be dug. He then tore
down the stele on which the terms of Eannadu’s treaty had been engraved
and broke it into pieces by casting it into the fire, and the shrines which
Eannadu had built near the frontier, and had consecrated to the gods of
Shirpurla, he razed to the ground. But again Shirpurla in the end proved too
strong for Gishkhu. The ruler in Shirpurla at this time was Enannadu, who
had succeeded his brother Eannadu upon the throne. He marched out to
meet the invading forces of the men of Gishkhu, and a battle was fought in
the territory of Shirpurla. According to one account, the forces of Shirpurla
were victorious, while on the cone of Ente-mena no mention is made of the
issue of the combat. The result may not have been decisive, but Enannadu’s
action at least checked Urlumma’s encroachments for the time.
It would appear that the death of the reigning patesi in Shirpurla was
always the signal for an attack upon that city by the men of Gishkhu. They
may have hoped that the new ruler would prove a less successful leader
than the last, or that the accession of a new monarch might give rise to
internal dissensions in the city which would weaken Shirpurla’s power of
resisting a sudden attack. As Eannadu’s death had encouraged Urlumma to
lead out the men of Gishkhu, so the death of Enannadu seemed to him a
good opportunity to make another bid for victory. But this time the result of
the battle was not indecisive. Entemena had succeeded his father Enannadu,
and he led out to victory the forces of Shir-purla. The battle was fought near
the canal Lumma-girnun-ta, and when the men of Gishkhu were put to
flight they left sixty of their fellows lying dead upon the banks of the canal.
Entemena tells us that the bones of these warriors were left to bleach in the
open plain, but he seems to have buried those of the men of Gishkhu who
fell in the pursuit, for he records that in five separate places he piled up
burial-mounds in which the bodies of the slain were interred. Entemena was
not content with merely inflicting a defeat upon the army of Gishkhu and
driving it back within its own borders, for he followed up his initial
advantage and captured the capital itself. He deposed and imprisoned
Urlumma, and chose one of his own adherents to rule as patesi of Gishkhu
in his stead. The man he appointed for this high office was named Hi, and
he had up to that time been priest in Ninâb. Entemena summoned him to his
presence, and, after marching in a triumphal procession from Girsu in the

neighbourhood of Shirpurla to the conquered city, proceeded to invest him
with the office of patesi of Gishkhu.
Entemena also repaired the frontier ditches named after Ningirsu and
Ninâ, which had been employed for purposes of irrigation as well as for
marking the frontier; and he gave instructions to Hi to employ the men
dwelling in the district of Karkar on this work, as a punishment for the
active part they had taken in the recent raid into the territory of Shirpurla.
Entemena also restored and extended the system of canals in the region
between the Tigris and the Euphrates, lining one of the principal channels
with stone.

Marble Gate-Socket Bearing An Inscription Of Entemena, A
Powerful Patesi, Or Viceroy, Of Shirpurla.
In the photograph the gate-socket is resting on its side so as to show the
inscription, but when in use it was set flat upon the ground and partly
buried below the level of the pavement of the building in which it was
used. It was fixed at the side of a gateway and the pivot of the heavy
gate revolved in the shallow hole or depression in its centre. As stone is
not found in the alluvial soil of Babylonia, the blocks for gate-sockets
had to be brought from great distances and they were consequently
highly prized. The kings and patesis who used them in their buildings
generally had their names and titles engraved upon them, and they
thus form a valuable class of inscriptions for the study of the early
history. Photograph by Messrs. Man-sell & Co.
He thus added greatly to the wealth of Shirpurla by increasing the area
of territory under cultivation, and he continued to exercise authority in
Gishkhu by means of officers appointed by himself. A record of his victory
over Gishkhu was inscribed by Entemena upon a number of clay cones, that
the fame of it might be preserved in future days to the honour of Ningirsu
and the goddess Ninâ. He ends this record with a prayer for the preservation
of the frontier. If ever in time to come the men of Gishkhu should break out
across the frontier-ditch of Ningirsu, or the frontier-ditch of Ninâ, in order
to seize or lay waste the lands of Shirpurla, whether they be men of the city
of Gishkhu itself or men of the mountains, he prays that Enlil may destroy
them and that Ningirsu may lay his curse upon them; and if ever the
warriors of his own city should be called upon to defend it, he prays that
they may be full of courage and ardour for their task.
The greater part of this information with regard to the struggles
between Gishkhu and Shirpurla, between the period of Mesilim, King of
Kish, and that of Entemena, is supplied by the inscription of the latter ruler
which has been found written around a small cone of clay. There is little
doubt that the text was also engraved by the orders of Entemena upon a
stone stele which was set up, like those of Mesilim and Eannadu, upon the
frontier. Other copies of the inscription were probably engraved and erected
in the cities of Gishkhu and Shirpurla, and to ensure the preservation of the
record Entemena probably had numerous copies of it made upon small
cones of clay which were preserved and possibly buried in the structure of
the temples of Shirpurla. Entemena’s foresight in this matter has been

justified by results, for, while his great memorials of stone have perished,
the preservation of one of his small cones has sufficed to make known to
later ages his own and his forefathers’ prowess in their continual contests
with their ancient rival Gishkhu.
After the reign of Entemena we have little information with regard to
the relations between Gishkhu and Shirpurla, though it is probable that the
effects of his decisive victory continued to exercise a moderating influence
on Gishkhu’s desire for expansion and secured a period of peaceful
development for Shirpurla without the continual fear of encroachments on
the part of her turbulent neighbour. We may assume that this period of
tranquillity continued during the reigns of Enannadu II, Enlitarzi, and
Lugal-anda, but, when in the reign of Urukagina the men of Gishkhu once
more emerge from their temporary obscurity, they appear as the authors of
deeds of rapine and bloodshed committed on a scale that was rare even in
that primitive age.
In the earlier stages of their rivalry Gishkhu had always been defeated,
or at any rate checked, in her actual conflicts with Shirpurla. When taking
the aggressive the men of Gishkhu seem generally to have confined
themselves to the seizure of territory, such as the district of Gu-edin, which
was situated on the western bank of the Shaft el-Hai and divided from their
own lands only by the frontier-ditch. If they ever actually crossed the Shaft
el-Hai and raided the lands on its eastern bank, they never ventured to
attack the city of Shirpurla itself. And, although their raids were attended
with some success in their initial stages, the ruling patesis of Shirpurla were
always strong enough to check them; and on most occasions they carried
the war into the territory of Gishkhu, with the result that they readjusted the
boundary on their own terms. But it would appear that all these primitive
Chalæan cities were subject to alternate periods of expansion and defeat,
and Shirpurla was not an exception to the rule. It was probably not due so
much to Urukagina’s personal qualities or defects as a leader that Shirpurla
suffered the greatest reverse in her history during his reign, but rather to
Gishkhu’s gradual increase in power at a time when Shirpurla herself
remained inactive, possibly lulled into a false sense of security by the
memory of her victories in the past. Whatever may have been the cause of
Gishkhu’s final triumph, it is certain that it took place in Urukagina’s reign,
and that for many years afterwards the hegemony of Southern Babylonia

remained in her hands, while Shirpurla for a long period passed completely
out of existence as an independent or semi-independent state.
The evidence of the catastrophe that befell Shirpurla at this period is
furnished by a small clay tablet recently found at Telloh during Captain
Cros’s excavations on that site. The document on which the facts in
question are recorded had no official character, and in all probability it had
not been stored in any library or record chamber. The actual spot at Telloh
where it was found was to the north of the mound in which the most ancient
buildings have been recovered, and at the depth of two metres below the
surface. No other tablets appear to have been found near it, but that fact in
itself would not be sufficient evidence on which to base any theory as to its
not having originally formed part of the archives of the city. Its unofficial
character is attested by the form of the tablet and the manner in which the
information upon it is arranged. In shape there is little to distinguish the
document from the tablets of accounts inscribed in the reign of Urukagina,
great numbers of which have been found recently at Telloh. Roughly square
in shape, its edges are slightly convex, and the text is inscribed in a series of
narrow columns upon both the obverse and the reverse. The text itself is not
a carefully arranged composition, such as are the votive and historical
inscriptions of early Sumerian rulers. It consists of a series of short
sentences enumerating briefly and without detail the separate deeds of
violence and sacrilege performed by the men of Gishkhu after their capture
of the city. It is little more than a catalogue or list of the shrines and temples
destroyed during the sack of the city, or defiled by the blood of the men of
Shirpurla who were slain therein. No mention is made in the list of the
palace of the Urukagina, or of any secular building, or of the dwellings of
the citizens themselves. There is little doubt that these also were despoiled
and destroyed by the victorious enemy, but the writer of the tablet is not
concerned for the moment with the fate of his city or his fellow citizens. He
appears to be overcome with the thought of the deeds of sacrilege
committed against his gods; his mind is entirely taken up with the
magnitude of the insult offered to the god Ningirsu, the city-god of
Shirpurla. His bare enumeration of the deeds of sacrilege and violence loses
little by its brevity, and, when he has ended the list of his accusations
against the men of Gishkhu, he curses the goddess to whose influence he
attributes their success.

No composition at all like this document has yet been recovered, and
as it is not very long we may here give a translation of the text. It will be
seen that the writer plunges at once into the subject of his charges against
the men of Gishkhu. No historical résumé prefaces his accusations, and he
gives no hint of the circumstances that have rendered their delivery
possible. The temples of his city have been profaned and destroyed, and his
indignation finds vent in a mere enumeration of their titles. To his mind the
facts need no comment, for to him it is barely conceivable that such sacred
places of ancient worship should have been defiled. He launches his
indictment against Gishkhu in the following terms: “The men of Gishkhu
have set fire to the temple of E-ki [... ], they have set fire to Antashura, and
they have carried away the silver and the precious stones therefrom! They
have shed blood in the palace of Tirash, they have shed blood in
Abzubanda, they have shed blood in the shrine of Enlil and in the shrine of
the Sun-god, they have shed blood in Akhush, and they have carried away
the silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have shed blood in the
Gikana of the sacred grove of the goddess Ninmakh, and they have carried
away the silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have shed blood in
Baga, and they have carried away the silver and the precious stones
therefrom! They have shed blood in Abzu-ega, they have set fire to the
temple of Gatumdug, and they have carried away the silver and the precious
stones therefrom, and have destroyed her statue! They have set fire to the....
of the temple E-anna of the goddess Ninni, and they have carried away the
silver and the precious stones therefrom, and have destroyed her statue!
They have shed blood in Shapada, and they have carried away the silver
and precious stones therefrom! They have.... in Khenda, they have shed
blood in the temple of Nindar in the town of Kiab, and they have carried
away the silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have set fire to the
temple of Dumuzi-abzu in the town of Kinunir, and they have carried away
the silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have set fire to the
temple of Lugaluru, and they have carried away the silver and the precious
stones therefrom! They have shed blood in E-engura, the temple of the
goddess Ninâ, and they have carried away the silver and the precious stones
therefrom! They have shed blood in Sag..., the temple of Amageshtin, and
the silver and the precious stones of Amageshtin have they carried away!
They have removed the grain from Ginarbaniru, the field of the god
Ningirsu, so much of it as was under cultivation! The men of Gishkhu, by

the despoiling of Shirpurla, have committed a transgression against the god
Ningirsu! The power that is come unto them, from them shall be taken
away! Of transgression on the part of Urukagina, King of Girsu, there is
none. As for Lugalzaggisi, patesi of Gishkhu, may his goddess Ni-daba bear
on her head (the weight of) this transgression!”
Such is the account, which has come down to us from the rough tablet
of some unknown scribe, of the greatest misfortune experienced by
Shirpurla during the long course of her history. Many of the great temples
mentioned in the text as among those which were burnt down and despoiled
of their treasures are referred to more than once in the votive and historical
inscriptions of earlier rulers of Shirpurla, who occupied the throne before
the ill-fated Urukagina. The names of some of them, too, are to be found in
the texts of the later pate-sis of that city, so that it may be concluded that in
course of time they were rebuilt and restored to their former splendour. But
there is no doubt that the despoiling and partial destruction of Shirpurla in
the reign of Urukagina had a lasting effect upon the fortunes of that city,
and effectively curtailed her influence among the greater cities of Southern
Babylonia.
We may now turn our attention to the leader of the men of Gishkhu,
under whose direction they achieved their final triumph over their ancient,
and for long years more powerful, rival Shirpurla. The writer of our tablet
mentions his name in the closing words of his text when he curses him and
his goddess for the destruction and sacrilege that they have wrought. “As
for Lugalzaggisi,” he says, “patesi of Gishkhu, may his goddess Nidaba
bear on her head (the weight of ) this transgression!” Now the name of
Lugalzaggisi has been found upon a number of fragments of vases made of
white calcite stalagmite which were discovered by Mr. Haynes during his
excavations at Nippur. All the vases were engraved with the same
inscription, so that it was possible by piecing the fragments of text together
to obtain a more or less complete copy of the records which were originally
engraved upon each of them. From these records we learned for the first
time, not only the name of Lugalzaggisi, but the fact that he founded a
powerful coalition of cities in Babylonia at what was obviously a very early
period in the history of the country. In the text he describes himself as
“King of Erech, king of the world, the priest of Ana, the hero of Nidaba, the
son of Ukush, patesi of Gishkhu, the hero of Nidaba, the man who was
favourably regarded by the sure eye of the King of the Lands (i.e. the god

Enlil), the great patesi of Enlil, unto whom understanding was granted by
Enki, the chosen of the Sun-god, the exalted minister of Enzu, endowed
with strength by the Sun-god, the worshipper of Ninni, the son who was
conceived by Nidaba, who was nourished by Ninkharsag with the milk of
life, the attendant of Umu, priestess of Erech, the servant who was trained
by Ninâgidkhadu, the mistress of Erech, the great minister of the gods.”
Lugalzaggisi then goes on to describe the extent of his dominion, and he
says: “When the god Enlil, the lord of the countries, bestowed upon
Lugalzaggisi the kingdom of the world, and granted unto him success in the
sight of the world, when he filled the lands with his power, and conquered
them from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same, at that time he
made straight his path from the Lower Sea of the Tigris and Euphrates unto
the Upper Sea, and he granted him dominion over all from the rising of the
sun unto the setting of the same, so that he caused the lands to dwell in
peace.”
Now when first the text of this inscription was published there existed
only vague indications of the date to be assigned to Lugalzaggisi and the
kingdom that he founded. It was clear from the titles which he bore, that,
though Gishkhu was his native place, he had extended his authority far
beyond that city and had chosen Erech as his capital. Moreover, he claimed
an empire extending from “the Lower Sea of the Tigris and Euphrates unto
the Upper Sea.” There is no doubt that the Lower Sea here mentioned is the
Persian Gulf, and it has been suggested that the Upper Sea may be taken to
be the Mediterranean, though it may possibly have been Lake Van or Lake
Urmi. But whichever of these views might be adopted, it was clear that
Lugalzaggisi was a great conqueror, and had achieved the right to assume
the high-sounding title of lugal halama, “king of the world.” In these
circumstances it was of the first importance for the study of primitive
Chaldæan history and chronology to ascertain approximately the period at
which Lugalzaggisi reigned.
The evidence on which such a question could be provisionally settled
was of the vaguest and most uncertain character, but such as it was it had to
suffice, in the absence of more reliable data. In settling all problems
connected with early Chaldæan chronology, the starting-point was, and in
fact still is, the period of Sargon I, King of Agade, inasmuch as the date of
his reign is settled, according to the reckoning of the scribes of Nabonidus,
as about 3800 B.C. It is true that this date has been called in question, and

ingenious suggestions for amending it have been made by some writers,
while others have rejected it altogether, holding that it merely represented a
guess on the part of the late Babylonians and could be safely ignored in the
chronological schemes which they brought forward. But nearly every fresh
discovery made in the last few years has tended to confirm some point in
the traditions current among the later Babylonians with regard to the earlier
history of their country. Consequently, reliance may be placed with
increased confidence on the truth of such traditions as a whole, and we may
continue to accept those statements which yet await confirmation from
documents more nearly contemporary with the early period to which they
refer. It is true that such a date as that assigned by Nabonidus to Sargon is
not to be regarded as absolutely fixed, for Nabonidus is obviously speaking
in round numbers, and we may allow for some minor inaccuracies in the
calculations of his scribes. But it is certain that the later Babylonian priests
and scribes had a wealth of historical material at their disposal which has
not come down to us. We may therefore accept the date given by Nabonidus
for Sargon of Agade and his son Narâm-Sin as approximately accurate, and
this is also the opinion of the majority of writers on early Babylonian
history.
The diggings at Nippur furnished indications that certain inscriptions
found on that site and written in a very archaic form of script were to be
assigned to a period earlier than that of Sargon. One class of evidence was
obtained from a careful study of the different levels at which the
inscriptions and the remains of buildings were found. At a comparatively
deep level in the mound inscriptions of Sargon himself were recovered,
along with bricks stamped with the name of Narâm-Sin, his son. It was,
therefore, a reasonable conclusion roughly to date the particular stratum in
which these objects were found to the period of the empire established by
Sargon, with its centre at Agade. Later on excavations were carried to a
lower level, and remains of buildings were discovered which appeared to
belong to a still earlier period of civilization. An altar was found standing in
a small enclosure surrounded by a kind of curb. Near by were two immense
clay vases which appeared to have been placed on a ramp or inclined plane
leading up to the altar, and remains were also found of a massive brick
building in which was an arch of brick. No inscriptions were actually found
at this level, but in the upper level assigned to Sargon were a number of
texts which might very probably be assigned to the pre-Sargonic period.

None of these were complete, and they had the appearance of having been
intentionally broken into small fragments. There was therefore something to
be said for the theory that they might have been inscribed by the builders of
the construction in the lowest levels of the mound, and that they were
destroyed and scattered by some conqueror who had laid their city in ruins.
But all such evidence derived from noting the levels at which
inscriptions are found is in its nature extremely uncertain and liable to many
different interpretations, especially if the strata show signs of having been
disturbed. Where a pavement or building is still intact, with the inscribed
bricks of the builder remaining in their original positions, conclusions may
be confidently drawn with regard to the age of the building and its relative
antiquity to the strata above and below it. But the strata in the lowest levels
at Nippur, as we have seen, were not in this condition, and such evidence as
they furnished could only be accepted if confirmed by independent data.
Such confirmation was to be found by examination of the early inscriptions
themselves.
It has been remarked that most of them were broken into small pieces,
as though by some invader of the country; but this was not the case with
certain gate-sockets and great blocks of diorite which were too hard and big
to be easily broken. Moreover, any conqueror of a city would be unlikely to
spend time and labour in destroying materials which might be usefully
employed in the construction of other buildings which he himself might
erect. Stone could not be obtained in the alluvial plains of Babylonia and
had to be quarried in the mountains and brought great distances.

Stone Gate-Socket Bearing An Inscription of Uk-Engur, An Early
King of The City Of Ur. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
From any building of his predecessors which he razed to the ground,
an invader would therefore remove the gate-sockets and blocks of stone for
his own use, supposing he contemplated building on the site. If he left the
city in ruins and returned to his own country, some subsequent king, when
clearing the ruined site for building operations, might come across the
stones, and he would not leave them buried, but would use them for his own
construction. And this is what actually did happen in the case of some of the
building materials of one of these early kings, from the lower strata of
Nippur. Certain of the blocks which bore the name of Lugalkigubnidudu

had been used again by Sargon, King of Agade, who engraved his own
name upon them without obliterating the name of the former king.
It followed that Lugalkigubnidudu belonged to the pre-Sargonic
period, and, although the same conclusive evidence was not forthcoming in
the case of Lugalzag-gisi, he also without much hesitation was set in this
early period, mainly on the strength of the archaic forms of the characters
employed in his inscriptions. In fact, they were held to be so archaic that,
not only was he said to have reigned before Sargon of Agade, but he was set
in the very earliest period of Chaldæan history, and his empire was
supposed to have been contemporaneous with the very earliest rulers of
Shirpurla. The new inscription found by Captain Cros will cause this
opinion to be considerably modified. While it corroborates the view that
Lugalzaggisi is to be set in the pre-Sargonic period, it proves that he lived
and reigned very shortly before him. As we have already seen, he was the
contemporary of Urukagina, who belongs to the middle period of the
history of Shirpurla. Lugalzaggisi’s capture and sack of the city of Shirpurla
was only one of a number of conquests which he achieved. His father
Ukush had been merely patesi of the city of Gish-khu, but he himself was
not content with the restricted sphere of authority which such a position
implied, and he eventually succeeded in enforcing his authority over the
greater part of Babylonia. From the fact that he styles himself King of
Erech, we may conclude that he removed his capital from Ukush to that
city, after having probably secured its submission by force of arms. In fact,
his title of “king of the world” can only have been won as the result of
many victories, and Captain Cros’s tablet gives us a glimpse of the methods
by which he managed to secure himself against the competition of any rival.
The capture of Shirpurla must have been one of his earliest achievements,
for its proximity to Gish-khu rendered its reduction a necessary prelude to
any more extensive plan of conquest. But the kingdom which Lugalzaggisi
founded cannot have endured long.
Under Sargon of Agade, the Semites gained the upper hand in
Babylonia, and Erech, Grishkhu, and Shirpurla, as well as the other ancient
cities in the land, fell in turn under his domination and formed part of the
extensive empire which he ruled.
Concerning the later rulers of city-states of Babylonia which
succeeded the disruption of the empire founded by Sargon of Agade and

consolidated by Narâm-Sin, his son, the excavations have little to tell us
which has not already been made use of by Prof. Maspero in his history of
this period.[4]
[4] The tablets found at Telloh by the late M. de Sarzec, and published during his
lifetime, fall into two main classes, which date from different periods in early
Chaldæan history. The great majority belong to the period when the city of Ur
held pre-eminence among the cities of Southern Babylonia, and they are dated in
the reigns of Dungi, Bur- Sin, Gamil-Sin, and Ine-Sin. The other and smaller
collection belongs to the earlier period of Sargon and Narâm-Sin; while many of
the tablets found in M. de Sarzec’s last diggings, which were published after his
death, are to be set in the great gap between these two periods. Some of those
recently discovered, which belong to the period of Dungi, contain memoranda
concerning the supply of food for the maintenance of officials stopping at
Shirpurla in the course of journeys in Babylonia and Elam, and they throw an
interesting light on the close and constant communication which took place at
this time between the great cities of Mesopotamia and the neighbouring
countries.

The most famous of the later patesis, or viceroys, of Shirpurla, the
Sumerian city in Southern Babylonia now marked by the mounds of
Telloh. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
Ur, Isin, and,Larsam succeeded one another in the position of leading
city in Babylonia, holding Mppur, Eridu, Erech, Shirpurla, and the other
chief cities in a condition of semi-dependence upon themselves. We may
note that the true reading of the name of the founder of the dynasty of Ur
has now been ascertained from a syllabary to be Ur-Engur; and an
unpublished chronicle in the British Museum relates that his son Dungi
cared greatly for the city of Eridu, but sacked Babylon and carried off its
spoil, together with the treasures from E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk.
Such episodes must have been common at this period when each city was
striving for hegemony. Meanwhile, Shirpurla remained the centre of
Sumerian influence in Babylonia, and her patesis were content to owe
allegiance to so powerful a ruler as Dungi, King of Ur, while at all times
exercising complete authority within their own jurisdiction.
During the most recent diggings that have been carried out at Telloh a
find of considerable value to the history of Sumerian art has been made.
The find is also of great general interest, since it enables us to identify a
portrait of Gudea, the most famous of the later Sumerian patesis. In the
course of excavating the Tell of Tablets Captain Cros found a little seated
statue made of diorite. It was not found in place, but upside down, and
appeared to have been thrown with other débris scattered in that portion of
the mound. On lifting it from the trench it was seen that the head of the
statue was broken off, as is the case with all the other statues of Gudea
found at Telloh. The statue bore an inscription of Gudea, carefully executed
and well preserved, but it was smaller than other statues of the same ruler
that had been already recovered, and the absence of the head thus robbed it
of any extraordinary interest. On its arrival at the Louvre, M. Léon Heuzey
was struck by its general resemblance to a Sumerian head of diorite
formerly discovered by M. de Sarzec at Telloh, which has been preserved in
the Louvre for many years. On applying the head to the newly found statue,
it was found to fit it exactly, and to complete the monument, and we are
thus enabled to identify the features of Gudea. Prom a photographic
reproduction of this statue, it is seen that the head is larger than it should be,

in proportion to the body, a characteristic which is also apparent in a small
Sumerian statue preserved in the British Museum.

Probably situated in the neighbourhood of Telloh. The circular
shape is very unusual, and appears to have been used only for survey-
tablets. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
Gudea caused many statues of himself to be made out of the hard
diorite which he brought for that purpose from the Sinaitic peninsula, and
from the inscriptions preserved upon them it is possible to ascertain the
buildings in which they were originally placed. Thus one of the statues
previously found was set up in the temple of Ninkharsag, two others in E-

ninnû, the temple of the god Ningirsu, three more in the temple of the
goddess Bau, one in E-anna, the temple of the goddess Ninni, and another
in the temple of Gatumdug. The newly found statue of the king was made to
be set up in the temple erected by Gudea at Girsu in honour of the god
Ningishzida, as is recorded in the inscription engraved on the front of the
king’s robe, which reads as follows:
“In the day when the god Ningirsu, the strong warrior of Enlil, granted
unto the god Ningishzida, the son of Ninâzu, the beloved of the gods, (the
guardianship of) the foundation of the city and of the hills and valleys, on
that day Gudea, patesi of Shirpurla, the just man who loveth his god, who
for his master Ningirsu hath constructed his temple E-ninnu, called the
shining Imgig, and his temple E-pa, the temple of-the seven zones of
heaven, and for the goddess Ninâ, the queen, his lady, hath constructed the
temple Sirara-shum, which riseth higher than (all) the temples in the world,
and hath constructed their temples for the great gods of Lagash, built for his
god Ningishzida his temple in Girsu. Whosoever shall proclaim the god
Ningirsu as his god, even as I proclaim him, may he do no harm unto the
temple of my god! May he proclaim the name of this temple! May that man
be my friend, and may he proclaim my name! Gudea hath made the statue,
and ‘Unto - Gudea - the - builder - of - the - temple - hath life-been-given
hath he called its name, and he hath brought it into the temple.”
The long name which Gudea gave to the statue, “Unto - Gudea - the -
builder - of - the - temple - hath - life-been-given,” is characteristic of the
practice of the Sumerian patesis, who always gave long and symbolical
names to statues, stelae, and sacred objects dedicated and set up in their
temples. The occasion on which the temple was built, and this statue erected
within it, seems to have been the investiture of the god Ningishzida with
special and peculiar powers, and it possibly inaugurated his introduction
into the pantheon of Shirpurla. Ningishzida is called in the inscription the
son of Ninazu, who was the husband of the Queen of the Underworld.
In one of his aspects he was therefore probably a god of the
underworld himself, and it is in this character that he was appointed by
Ningirsu as guardian of the city’s foundations. But “the hills and valleys”
(i.e. the open country) were also put under his jurisdiction, so that in
another aspect he was a god of vegetation. It is therefore not improbable
that, like the god Dumuzi, or Tammuz, he was supposed to descend into the

underworld in winter, ascending to the surface of the earth with the earliest
green shoots of vegetation in the spring.[5]
[5] Cf. Thureau-Dangin, Rev. d’Assyr., vol. vi. (1904), p. 24.

A most valuable contribution has recently been made to our knowledge
of Sumerian religion and of the light in which these early rulers regarded
the cult and worship of their gods, by the complete interpretation of the
long texts inscribed upon the famous cylinders of Gudea, the patesi of
Shirpurla, which have been preserved for many years in the Louvre. These
two great cylinders of baked clay were discovered by the late M. de Sarzec
so long ago as the year 1877, during the first period of his diggings at
Telloh, and, although the general nature of their contents has long been
recognized, no complete translation of the texts inscribed upon them had
been published until a few months ago. M. Thureau-Dangin, who has made
the early Sumerian texts his special study, has devoted himself to their
interpretation for some years past, and he has just issued the first part of his
monograph upon them. In view of the importance of the texts and of the
light they throw upon the religious beliefs and practices of the early
Sumerians, a somewhat detailed account of their contents may here be
given.
The occasion on which the cylinders were made was the rebuilding by
Gudea of E-ninnû, the great temple of the god Ningirsu, in the city of
Shirpurla. The two cylinders supplement one another, one of them having
been inscribed while the work of construction was still in progress, the
other after the completion of the temple, when the god Ningirsu had been
installed within his shrine with due pomp and ceremony. It would appear
that Southern Babylonia had been suffering from a prolonged drought, and
that the water in the rivers and canals had fallen, so that the crops had
suffered and the country was threatened with famine. Gudea was at a loss to
know by what means he might restore prosperity to his country, when one
night he had a dream, and it was in consequence of this dream that he
eventually erected one of the most sumptuously appointed of Sumerian
temples. By this means he secured the return of Ningirsu’s favour and that
of the other gods, and his country once more enjoyed the blessings of peace
and prosperity.
In the opening words of the first of his cylinders Gudea describes how
the great gods themselves took counsel and decreed that he should build the

temple of E-ninnû and thereby restore to his city the supply of water it had
formerly enjoyed. He records that on the day on which the destinies were
fixed in heaven and upon earth, Enlil, the chief of the gods, and Ningirsu,
the city-god of Shirpurla, held converse. And Enlil, turning to Ningirsu,
said: “In my city that which is fitting is not done. The stream doth not rise.
The stream of Enlil doth not rise. The high waters shine not, neither do they
show their splendour. The stream of Enlil bringeth not good water like the
Tigris. Let the King (i.e. Ningirsu) therefore proclaim the temple. Let the
decrees of the temple E-ninnû be made illustrious in heaven and upon
earth!” The great gods did not communicate their orders directly to Gudea,
but conveyed their wishes to him by means of a dream. And while the patesi
slept a vision of the night came to him, and he beheld a man whose stature
was so great that it equalled the heavens and the earth. And by the crown he
wore upon his head Gudea knew that the figure must be a god. And by his
side was the divine eagle, the emblem of Shirpurla, and his feet rested upon
the whirlwind, and a lion was crouching upon his right hand and upon his
left. And the figure spoke to the patesi, but he did not understand the
meaning of the words. Then it seemed to Gudea that the sun rose from the
earth and he beheld a woman holding in her hand a pure reed, and she
carried also a tablet on which was a star of the heavens, and she seemed to
take counsel with herself. And while Gudea was gazing he seemed to see a
second man who was like a warrior; and he carried a slab of lapis lazuli and
on it he drew out the plan of a temple. And before the patesi himself it
seemed that a fair cushion was placed, and upon the cushion was set a
mould, and within the mould was a brick, the brick of destiny. And on the
right hand the patesi beheld an ass which lay upon the ground.
Such was the dream which Gudea beheld in a vision of the night, and
he was troubled because he could not interpret it. So he decided to go to the
goddess Ninâ, who could divine all mysteries of the gods, and beseech her
to tell him the meaning of the vision. But before applying to the goddess for
her help, he thought it best to secure the mediation of the god Ningirsu and
the goddess Gatumdug, in order that they should use their influence with
Ninâ to induce her to reveal the interpretation of the dream. So the patesi set
out to the temple of Ningirsu, and, having offered a sacrifice and poured out
fresh water, he prayed to the god that his sister, Ninâ, the child of Eridu,
might be prevailed upon to give him help. And the god hearkened to his
prayer. Then Gudea made offerings, and before the sleeping-chamber of the

goddess Gatumdug he offered a sacrifice and poured out fresh water. And
he prayed to the goddess, calling her his queen and the child of the pure
heaven, who gave life to the countries and befriended and preserved the
people or the man on whom she looked with favour.
“I have no mother,” cried Gudea, “but thou art my mother! I have no
father, but thou art a father to me!” And the goddess Gatumdug gave ear to
the patesi’s prayer. Thus encouraged by her favour and that of Ningirsu,
Gudea set out for the temple of the goddess Ninâ.
On his arrival at the temple, the patesi offered a sacrifice and poured
out fresh water, as he had already done when approaching the presence of
Ningirsu and Gatumdug. And he prayed to Ninâ, as the goddess who
divines the secrets of the gods, beseeching her to interpret the vision that
had been sent to him; and he then recounted to her the details of his dream.
When the patesi had finished his story, the goddess addressed him and told
him that she would explain the meaning of his dream to him. And this was
the interpretation of the dream. The man whose stature was so great that it
equalled the heavens and the earth, whose head was that of a god, at whose
side was the divine eagle, whose feet rested on the whirlwind, while a lion
couched on his right hand and on his left, was her brother, the god Ningirsu.
And the words which he uttered were an order to the patesi that he should
build the temple E-ninnû. And the sun which rose from the earth before the
patesi was the god Ningishzida, for like the sun he goes forth from the
earth. And the maiden who held a pure reed in her hand, and carried the
tablet with the star, was her sister, the goddess Nidaba: the star was the pure
star of the temple’s construction, which she proclaimed. And the second
man, who was like a warrior and carried the slab of lapis lazuli, was the god
Nindub, and the plan of the temple which he drew was the plan of E-ninnû.
And the brick which rested in its mould upon the cushion was the sacred
brick of E-ninnû. And as for the ass which lay upon the ground, that, the
goddess said, was the patesi himself.
Having interpreted the meaning of the dream, the goddess Ninâ
proceeded to give Gudea instruction as to how he should go to work to
build the temple. She told him first of all to go to his treasure-house and
bring forth his treasures from their sealed cases, and out of these to make
certain offerings which he was to place near the god Ningirsu, in the temple
in which he was dwelling at that time. The offerings were to consist of a

chariot, adorned with pure metal and precious stones; bright arrows in a
quiver; the weapon of the god, his sacred emblem, on which Gudea was to
inscribe his own name; and finally a lyre, the music of which was wont to
soothe the god when he took counsel with himself. Ninâ added that if the
patesi carried out her instructions and made the offerings she had specified,
Ningirsu would reveal to him the plan on which the temple was to be built,
and would also bless him. Gudea bowed himself down in token of his
submission to the commands of the goddess, and proceeded to execute them
forthwith. He brought out his treasures, and from the precious woods and
metals which he possessed his craftsmen fashioned the objects he was to
present, and he set them in Ningirsu’s temple near to the god. He worked
day and night, and, having prepared a suitable spot in the precincts of the
temple at the place of judgment, he spread out upon it as offerings a fat
sheep and a kid and the skin of a young female kid. Then he built a fire of
cypress and cedar and other aromatic woods, to make a sweet savour, and,
entering the inner chamber of the temple, he offered a prayer to Ningirsu.
He said that he wished to build the temple, but he had received no sign that
this was the will of the god, and he prayed for a sign.
While he prayed the patesi was stretched out upon the ground, and the
god, standing near his head, then answered him. He said that he who should
build his temple was none other than Gudea, and that he would give him the
sign for which he asked. But first he described the plan on which the temple
was to be built, naming its various shrines and chambers and describing the
manner in which they were to be fashioned and adorned. And the god
promised that when Gudea should build the temple, the land would once
more enjoy abundance, for Ningirsu would send a wind which should
proclaim to the heavens the return of the waters. And on that day the waters
would fall from the heavens, the water in the ditches and canals would rise,
and water would gush out from the dry clefts in the ground. And the great
fields would once more produce their crops, and oil would be poured out
plenteously in Sumer[sp.] and wool would again be weighed in great
abundance. In that day the god would go to the mountain where dwelt the
whirlwind, and he would himself direct the wind which should give the land
the breath of life. Gudea must therefore work day and night at the task of
building the temple. One company of men was to relieve another at its toil,
and during the night the men were to kindle lights so that the plain should
be as bright as day. Thus the builders would build continuously. Men were

also to be sent to the mountains to cut down cedars and pines and other
trees and bring their trunks to the city, while masons were to go to the
mountains and were to cut and transport huge blocks of stone to be used in
the construction of the temple. Finally the god gave Gudea the sign for
which he asked. The sign was that he should feel his side touched as by a
flame, and thereby he should know that he was the man chosen by Ningirsu
to carry out his commands.
Gudea bowed his head in submission, and his first act was to consult
the omens, and the omens were favourable. He then proceeded to purify the
city by special rites, so that the mother when angered did not chide her son,
and the master did not strike his servant’s head, and the mistress, though
provoked by her handmaid, did not smite her face. And Gudea drove all the
evil wizards and sorcerers from the city, and he purified and sanctified the
city completely. Then he kindled a great fire of cedar and other aromatic
woods, to make a sweet savour for the gods, and prayers were offered day
and night; and the patesi addressed a prayer to the Anun-naki, or Spirits of
the Earth, who dwelt in Shirpurla, and assigned a place to them in the
temple. Then, having completed his purification of the city itself, he
consecrated its immediate surroundings. Thus he consecrated the district of
Gu-edin, whence the revenues of Ningirsu were derived, and the lands of
the goddess Ninâ with their populous villages. And he consecrated the wild
and savage bulls which no man could turn aside, and the cedars which were
sacred to Ningirsu, and the cattle of the plains. And he consecrated the
armed men, and the famous warriors, and the warriors of the Sun-god. And
the emblems of the god Ningirsu, and of the two great goddesses, Ninâ and
Ninni, he installed before them in their shrines.
Then Gudea sent far and wide to fetch materials for the construction of
the temple. And the Elamite came from Elani, and men of Susa came from
Susa, and men brought wood from the mountains of Sinai and Melukh-kha.
And into the mountain of cedars, where no man before had penetrated, the
patesi cut a road, and he brought cedars and beams of other precious woods
in great quantities to the city. And he also made a road into the mountain
where stone was quarried, into places where no man before had penetrated.
And he carried great blocks of stone down from the mountain and loaded
them into barges and brought them to the city. And the barges brought
bitumen and plaster, and they were loaded as though they were carrying
grain, and all manner of great things were brought to the city. Copper ore

was brought from the mountain of copper in the land of Kimash, and gold
was brought in powder from the mountains, and silver was brought from the
mountains and porphyry from the land of Melukhkha, and marble from the
mountain of marble. And the patesi installed goldsmiths and silversmiths,
who wrought in these precious metals, for the adornment of the temple; and
he brought smiths who worked in copper and lead, who were priests of Nin-
tu-kalama. In his search for fitting materials for the building of the temple,
Gudea journeyed from the lower country to the upper country, and from the
upper country to the lower country he returned.
The only other materials now wanting for the construction of the
temple were the sun-dried bricks of clay, of which the temple platform and
the structure of the temple itself were in the main composed. Their
manufacture was now inaugurated by a symbolical ceremony carried out by
the patesi in person. At dawn he performed an ablution with the fitting rites
that accompanied it, and when the day was more advanced he slew a bull
and a kid as sacrifices, and he then entered the temple of Ningirsu, where he
prostrated himself. And he took the sacred mould and the fair cushion on
which it rested in the temple, and he poured a libation into the mould.
Afterwards, having made offerings of honey and butter, and having burnt
incense, he placed the cushion and the mould upon his head and carried it to
the appointed place. There he placed clay in the mould, shaping it into a
brick, and he left the brick in its mould within the temple. And last of all he
sprinkled oil of cedar-wood around.
The next day at dawn Gudea broke the mould and set the brick in the
sun. And the Sun-god was rejoiced at the brick that he had fashioned. And
Gudea took the brick and raised it on high towards the heavens, and he
carried the brick to his people. In this way the patesi inaugurated the
manufacture of the sun-dried bricks for the temple, the sacred brick which
he had made being the symbol and pattern of the innumerable bricks to be
used in its construction. He then marked out the plan of the temple, and the
text states that he devoted himself to the building of the temple like a young
man who has begun building a house and allows no pleasure to interfere
with his task. And he chose out skilled workmen and employed them on the
building, and he was filled with joy. The gods, too, are stated to have helped
with the building, for Enki fixed the temennu of the temple, and the goddess
Ninâ looked after its oracles, and Gatumdug, the mother of Shir-purla,
fashioned bricks for it morning and evening, while the goddess Bau

sprinkled aromatic oil of cedar-wood. Gudea himself laid its foundations,
and as he did so he blessed the temple seven times, comparing it to the
sacred brick, to the holy libation-vase, to the divine eagle of Shirpurla, to a
terrible couching panther, to the beautiful heavens, to the day of offerings,
and to the morning light which brightens the land. He caused the temple to
rise towards heaven like a mountain, or like a cedar growing in the desert.
He built it of bricks of Sumer, and the timbers which he set in place were as
strong as the dragon of the deep.
While he was engaged on the building Gudea took counsel of the god
Enki, and he built a fountain for the gods, where they might drink. With the
great stones which he had brought and fashioned he built a reservoir and a
basin for the temple. And seven of the great stones he set up as stelæ, and
he gave them favourable names. The text then recounts the various parts
and shrines of the temple, and it describes their splendours in similes drawn
from the heavens and the earth and the abyss, or deep, beneath the earth.
The temple itself is described as, being like the crescent of the new moon,
or like the sun in the midst of the stars, or like a mountain of lapis lazuli, or
like a mountain of shining marble. Parts of it are said to have been terrible
and strong as a savage bull, or a lion, or the antelope of the abyss, or the
monster Lakhamu who dwells in the abyss, or the sacred leopard that
inspires terror. One of the doors of the temple was guarded by a figure of
the hero who slew the monster with six heads, and at another door was a
good dragon, and at another a lion; opposite the city were set figures of the
seven heroes, and facing the rising sun was fixed the emblem of the Sun-
god. Figures of other heroes and favourable monsters were set up as
guardians of other portions of the temple. The fastenings of the main
entrance were decorated with dragons shooting out their tongues, and the
bolt of the great door was fashioned like a raging hound.
After this description of the construction and adornment of the temple
the text goes on to narrate how Gudea arranged for its material endowment.
He stalled oxen and sheep, for sacrifice and feasting, in the outhouses and
pens within the temple precincts, and he heaped up grain in its granaries. Its
storehouses he filled with spices so that they were like the Tigris when its
waters are in flood, and in its treasure-chambers he piled up precious
stones, and silver, and lead in abundance. Within the temple precincts he
planted a sacred garden which was like a mountain covered with vines; and
on the terrace he built a great reservoir, or tank, lined with lead, in addition

to the great stone reservoir within the temple itself. He constructed a special
dwelling-place for the sacred doves, and among the flowers of the temple
garden and under the shade of the great trees the birds of heaven flew about
unmolested.
The first of the two great cylinders of Gudea ends at this point in the
description of the temple, and it is evident that its text was composed while
the work of building was still in progress. Moreover, the writing of the
cylinder was finished before the actual work of building the temple was
completed, for the last column of the text concludes with a prayer to
Ningirsu to make it glorious during the progress of the work, the prayer
ending with the words, “O Ningirsu, glorify it! Glorify the temple of
Ningirsu during its construction!” The text of the second of the two great
cylinders is shorter than that of the first, consisting of twenty-four instead of
thirty columns of writing, and it was composed and written after the temple
was completed. Like the first of the cylinders, it concludes with a prayer to
Ningirsu on behalf of the temple, ending with the similar refrain, “O
Ningirsu, glorify it! Glorify the temple of Ningirsu after its construction!”
The first cylinder, as we have seen, records how it came about that Gudea
decided to rebuild the temple E-ninnû in honour of Ningirsu. It describes
how, when the land was suffering from drought and famine, Gudea had a
dream, how Ninâ interpreted the dream to mean that he must rebuild the
temple, and how Ningirsu himself promised that this act of piety would
restore abundance and prosperity to the land. Its text ends with the long
description of the sumptuous manner in which the patesi carried out the
work, the most striking points of which we have just summarized. The
narrative of the second cylinder begins at the moment when the building of
the temple was finished, and when all was ready for the great god Nin-girsu
to be installed therein, and its text is taken up with a description of the
ceremonies and rites with which this solemn function was carried out. It
presents us with a picture, drawn from life, of the worship and cult of the
ancient Sumerians in actual operation. In view of its importance from the
point of view of the study and comparison of the Sumerian and Babylonian
religious systems, its contents also may be summarized. We will afterwards
discuss briefly the information furnished by both the cylinders on the
Sumerian origin of many of the religious beliefs and practices which were
current among the later Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria.

When Gudea had finished building the new temple of E-ninnû, and
had completed the decoration and adornment of its shrines, and had planted
its gardens and stocked its treasure-chambers and storehouses, he applied
himself to the preliminary ceremonies and religious preparations which
necessarily preceded the actual function of transferring the statue of the god
Ningirsu from his old temple to his new one. Gudea’s first act was to install
the Anunnaki, or Spirits of the Earth, in the new temple, and when he had
done this, and had supplied additional sheep for their sacrifices and food in
abundance for their offerings, he prayed to them to give him their assistance
and to pronounce a prayer at his side when he should lead Ningirsu into his
new dwelling-place. The text then describes how Gudea went to the old
temple of Ningirsu, accompanied by his protecting spirits who walked
before him and behind him. Into the old temple he carried sumptuous
offerings, and when he had set them before the god, he addressed him in
prayer and said: “O my King, Ningirsu! O Lord, who curbest the raging
waters! O Lord, whose word surpasseth all others! O Son of Enlil, O
warrior, what commands shall I faithfully carry out? O Ningirsu, I have
built thy temple, and with joy would I lead thee therein, and my goddess
Bau would install at thy side.” We are told that the god accepted Gudea’s
prayer, and thereby he gave his consent to be removed from the old temple
of E-ninnû to his new one which bore the same name.
But the ceremony of the god’s removal was not carried out at once, for
the due time had not arrived. The year ended, and the new year came, and
then “the month of the temple” began. The third day of the month was that
appointed for the installation of Ningirsu. Gudea meanwhile had sprinkled
the ground with oil, and set out offerings of honey and butter and wine, and
grain mixed with milk, and dates, and food untouched by fire, to serve as
food for the gods; and the gods themselves had assisted in the preparations
for the reception of Ningirsu. The god Asaru made ready the temple itself,
and Ninmada performed the ceremony of purification. The god Enki issued
oracles, and the god Nindub, the supreme priest of Eridu, brought incense.
Ninâ performed chants within the temple, and brought black sheep and holy
cows to its folds and stalls. This record of the help given by the other gods
we may interpret as meaning that the priests attached to the other great
Sumerian temples took part in the preparation of the new temple, and added
their offerings to the temple stores. To many of the gods, also, special
shrines within the temple were assigned.

When the purification of E-ninnû was completed and the way between
the old temple and the new made ready, all the inhabitants of the city
prostrated themselves on the ground. “The city,” says Gudea, “was like the
mother of a sick man who prepareth a potion for him, or like the cattle of
the plain which lie down together, or like the fierce lion, the master of the
plain, when he coucheth.” During the day and the night before the
ceremony of removal, prayers and supplications were uttered, and at the
first light of dawn on the appointed day the god Ningirsu went into his new
temple “like a whirlwind,” the goddess Bau entering at his side “like the
sun rising over Shirpurla.” She entered beside his couch, like a faithful
wife, whose cares are for her own household, and she dwelt beside his ear
and bestowed abundance upon Shirpurla.
As the day began to brighten and the sun rose, Gudea set out as
offerings in the temple a fat ox and a fat sheep, and he brought a vase of
lead and filled it with wine, which he poured out as a libation, and he
performed incantations. Then, having duly established Ningirsu and Bau in
the chief shrine, he turned his attention to the lesser gods and installed them
in their appointed places in the temple, where they would be always ready
to assist Ningirsu in the temple ceremonies and in the issue of his decrees
for the welfare of the city and its inhabitants. Thus he established the god
Galalim, the son of Ningirsu, in a chosen spot in the great court in front of
the temple, where, under the orders of his father, he should direct the just
and curb the evil-doer; he would also by his presence strengthen and
preserve the temple, while his special duty was to guard the throne of
destiny and, on behalf of Ningirsu, to place the sceptre in the hands of the
reigning patesi. Near to Ningirsu and under his orders Gudea also
established the god Dunshaga, whose function it was to sanctify the temple
and to look after its libations and offerings, and to see to the due
performance of the ceremonies of ablution. This god would offer water to
Ningirsu with a pure hand, he would pour out libations of wine and strong
drink, and would tend the oxen, sheep, kids, and other offerings which were
brought to the temple night and day. To the god Lugalkurdub, who was also
installed in the temple, was assigned the privilege of holding in his hand the
mace with the seven heads, and it was his duty to open the door of the Gate
of Combat. He guarded the sacred weapons of Ningirsu and destroyed the
countries of his enemies. He was Ningirsu’s chief leader in battle, and

another god with lesser powers was associated with him as his second
leader.
Ningirsu’s counsellor was the god Lugalsisa, and he also had his
appointed place in E-ninnû. It was his duty to receive the prayers of
Shirpurla and render them propitious; he superintended and blessed
Ningirsu’s journey when he visited Eridu or returned from that city, and he
made special intercessions for the life of Gudea. The minister of Ningirsu’s
harîm was the god Shakanshabar, and he was installed near to Nin-girsu that
he might issue his commands, both great and small. The keeper of the harîm
was the god Urizu, and it was his duty to purify the water and sanctify the
grain, and he tended Ningirsu’s sleeping-chamber and saw that all was
arranged therein as was fitting. The driver of Ningirsu’s chariot was the god
Ensignun; it was his duty to keep the sacred chariot as bright as the stars of
heaven, and morning and evening to tend and feed Ningirsu’s sacred ass,
called Ug-kash, and the ass of Eridu. The shepherd of Ningirsu’s kids was
the god Enlulim, and he tended the sacred she-goat who suckled the kids,
and he guarded her so that the serpent should not steal her milk. This god
also looked after the oil and the strong drink of E-ninnû, and saw that its
store increased.
Ningirsu’s beloved musician was the god Ushum-gabkalama, and he
was installed in E-ninnû that he might take his flute and fill the temple court
with joy. It was his privilege to play to Ningirsu as he listened in his harîm,
and to render the life of the god pleasant in E-ninnû. Ningirsu’s singer was
the god Lugaligi-khusham, and he had his appointed place in E-ninnû, for
he could appease the heart and soften anger; he could stop the tears which
flowed from weeping eyes, and could lessen sorrow in the sighing heart.
Gudea also installed in E-ninnû the seven twin-daughters of the goddess
Bau, all virgins, whom Ningirsu had begotten. Their names were Zarzaru,
Impaë, Urenuntaëa, Khegir-nuna, Kheshaga, Gurmu, and Zarmu. Gudea
installed them near their father that they might offer favourable prayers.
The cultivator of the district of Gu-edin was the god Gishbare, and he
was installed in the temple that he might cause the great fields to be fertile,
and might make the wheat glisten in Gu-edin, the plain assigned to Ningirsu
for his revenues. It was this god’s duty also to tend the machines for
irrigation, and to raise the water into the canals and ditches of Shirpurla,
and thus to keep the city’s granaries well filled. The god Kal was the

guardian of the fishing in Gu-edin, and his chief duty was to place fish in
the sacred pools. The steward of Gu-edin was the god Dimgalabzu, whose
duty it was to keep the plain in good order, so that the birds might abound
there and the beasts might raise their young in peace; he also guarded the
special privilege, which the plain enjoyed, of freedom from any tax levied
upon the increase of the cattle pastured there. Last of all Gudea installed in
E-ninnû the god Lugalenurua-zagakam, who looked after the construction
of houses in the city and the building of fortresses upon the city wall; in the
temple it was his privilege to raise on high a battle-axe made of cedar.
All these lesser deities, having close relations to the god Ningirsu,
were installed by Gudea in his temple in close proximity to him, that they
might be always ready to perform their special functions. But the greater
deities also had their share in the inauguration of the temple, and of these
Gudea specially mentions Ana, Enlil, Ninkharsag, Enki, and Enzu, who all
assisted in rendering the temple’s lot propitious. For at least three of the
greater gods (Ana, Enlil, and the goddess Nin-makh) Gudea erected shrines
near one another and probably within the temple’s precincts, and, as the
passage which records this fact is broken, it is possible that the missing
portion of the text recorded the building of shrines to other deities. In any
case, it is clear that the composer of the text represents all the great gods as
beholding the erection and inauguration of Ningirsu’s new temple with
favour.
After the account of the installation of Ningirsu, and his spouse Bau,
and his attendant deities, the text records the sumptuous offerings which
Gudea placed within Ningirsu’s shrine. These included another chariot
drawn by an ass, a seven-headed battle-axe, a sword with nine emblems, a
bow with terrible arrows and a quiver decorated with wild beasts and
dragons shooting out their tongues, and a bed which was set within the
god’s sleeping-chamber. On the couch in the shrine the goddess Bau
reclined beside her lord Ningirsu, and ate of the great victims which were
sacrificed in their honour.
When the ceremony of installation had been successfully performed,
Gudea rested, and for seven days he feasted with his people. During this
time the maid was the equal of her mistress, and master and servant
consorted together as friends. The powerful and the humble man lay down
side by side, and in place of evil speech only propitious words were heard.

The rich man did not wrong the orphan and the strong man did not oppress
the widow. The laws of Ninâ and Ningirsu were observed, justice was
bright in the sunlight, and the Sun-god trampled iniquity under foot. The
building of the temple also restored material prosperity to the land, for the
canals became full of water and fish swarmed in the pools, the granaries
were filled with grain and the flocks and herds brought forth their increase.
The city of Shirpurla was satiated with abundance.
Such is a summary of the account which Gudea has left us of his
rebuilding of the temple E-ninnû, of the reasons which led him to undertake
the work, and of the results which followed its completion. It has often been
said that the inscriptions of the ancient Sumerians are without much
intrinsic value, that they mainly consist of dull votive formulæ, and that for
general interest the best of them cannot be compared with the later
inscriptions of the Semitic inhabitants of Mesopotamia. This reproach, for
which until recently there was considerable justification, has been finally
removed by the working out of the texts upon Gudea’s cylinders. For
picturesque narrative, for wealth of detail, and for striking similes, it would
be hard to find their superior in Babylonian and Assyrian literature. They
are, in fact, very remarkable compositions, and in themselves justify the
claim that the Sumerians were possessed of a literature in the proper sense
of the term.
But that is not their only value, for they give a vivid picture of ancient
Sumerian life and of the ideals and aims which actuated the people and their
rulers. The Sumerians were essentially an unmilitary race. That they could
maintain a stubborn fight for their territory is proved by the prolonged
struggle maintained by Shirpurla against her rival Gishkhu, but neither ruler
nor people was inflamed by love of conquest for its own sake. They were
settled in a rich and fertile country, which supplied their own wants in
abundance, and they were content to lead a peaceful life therein, engaged in
agricultural and industrial pursuits, and devoted wholly to the worship of
their gods. Gudea’s inscriptions enable us to realize with what fervour they
carried out the rebuilding of a temple, and how the whole resources of the
nation were devoted to the successful completion of the work. It is true that
the rebuilding of E-ninnû was undertaken in a critical period when the land
was threatened with famine, and the peculiar magnificence with which the
work was carried out may be partly explained as due to the belief that such
devotion would ensure a return of material prosperity. But the existence of

such a belief is in itself an index to the people’s character, and we may take
it that the record faithfully represents the relations of the Sumerians to their
gods, and the important place which worship and ritual occupied in the
national life.
Moreover, the inscriptions of Gudea furnish much valuable
information with regard to the details of Sumerian worship and the
elaborate organization of the temples. From them we can reconstruct a
picture of one of these immense buildings, with its numerous shrines and
courts, surrounded by sacred gardens and raising its ziggurat, or temple
tower, high above the surrounding city. Within its dark chambers were the
mysterious figures of the gods, and what little light could enter would have
been reflected in the tanks of sacred water sunk to the level of the
pavement. The air within the shrines must have been heavy with the smell
of incense and of aromatic woods, while the deep silence would have been
broken only by the chanting of the priests and the feet of those that bore
offerings. Outside in the sunlight cedars and other rare trees cast a pleasant
shade, and birds flew about among the flowers and bushes in the outer
courts and on the garden terraces. The area covered by the temple buildings
must have been enormous, for they included the dwellings of the priests,
stables and pens for the cattle, sheep, and kids employed for sacrifice, and
treasure-chambers and storehouses and granaries for the produce from the
temple lands.
We also get much information with regard to the nature of the
offerings and the character of the ceremonies which were performed. We
may mention as of peculiar interest Gudea’s symbolical rite which preceded
the making of the sun-dried bricks, and the ceremony of the installation of
Ningirsu in the presence of the prostrate city. The texts also throw an
interesting light on the truly Oriental manner in which, when approaching
one deity for help, the cooperation and assistance of other deities were first
secured. Thus Gudea solicited the intercession of Ningirsu and Gatumdug
before applying to the goddess Ninâ to interpret his dream. The extremely
human character of the gods themselves is also well illustrated. Thus we
gather from the texts that Ningirsu’s temple was arranged like the palace of
a Sumerian ruler and that he was surrounded by gods who took the place of
the attendants and ministers of his human counterpart. His son was installed
in a place of honour and shared with him the responsibility of government.
Another god was his personal attendant and cupbearer, who offered him fair

water and looked after the ablutions. Two more were his generals, who
secured his country against the attacks of foes. Another was his counsellor,
who received and presented petitions from his subjects and superintended
his journeys. Another was the head of his harîm, a position of great trust
and responsibility, while a keeper of the harîm looked after the practical
details. Another god was the driver of his chariot, and it is interesting to
note that the chariot was drawn by an ass, for horses were not introduced
into Western Asia until a much later period. Other gods performed the
functions of head shepherd, chief musician, chief singer, head cultivator and
inspector of irrigation, inspector of the fishing, land steward, and architect.
His household also included his wife and his seven virgin daughters. In
addition to the account of the various functions performed by these lesser
deities, the texts also furnish valuable facts with regard to the characters and
attributes of the greater gods and goddesses, such as the attributes of
Ningirsu himself, and the character of Ninâ as the goddess who divined and
interpreted the secrets of the gods.
But perhaps the most interesting conclusions to be drawn from the
texts relate to the influence exerted by the ancient Sumerians upon Semitic
beliefs and practices. It has, of course, long been recognized that the later
Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria drew most of their culture
from the Sumerians, whom they displaced and absorbed. Their system of
writing, the general structure of their temples, the ritual of their worship, the
majority of their religious compositions, and many of their gods themselves
are to be traced to a Sumerian origin, and much of the information obtained
from the cylinders of Gudea merely confirms or illustrates the conclusions
already deduced from other sources. As instances we may mention the
belief in spirits, which is illustrated by the importance attached to the
placating of the Anunnaki, or Spirits of the Earth, to whom a special place
and special offerings were assigned in E-ninnû. The Sumerian origin of
ceremonies of purification is confirmed by Gudea’s purification of the city
before beginning the building of the temple, and again before the
transference of the god from his old temple to the new one. The
consultation of omens, which was so marked a feature of Babylonian and
Assyrian life, is seen in actual operation under the Sumerians; for, even
after Gudea had received direct instructions from Ningirsu to begin building
his temple, he did not proceed to carry them out until he had consulted the
omens and found that they were favourable. Moreover, the references to

mythological beings, such as the seven heroes, the dragon of the deep, and
the god who slew the dragon, confirm the opinion that the creation legends
and other mythological compositions of the Babylonians were derived by
them from Sumerian sources. But there are two incidents in the narrative
which are on a rather different plane and are more startling in their novelty.
One is the story of Gudea’s dream, and the other the sign which he sought
from his god. The former is distinctly apocalyptic in character, and both
may be parallelled in what is regarded as purely Semitic literature. That
such conceptions existed among the Sumerians is a most interesting fact,
and although the theory of independent origin is possible, their existence
may well have influenced later Semitic beliefs.

CHAPTER V—ELAM AND BABYLON,
THE COUNTRY OF THE SEA AND THE
KASSITES
Up to five years ago our knowledge of Elam and of the part she played
in the ancient world was derived, in the main, from a few allusions to the
country to be found in the records of Babylonian and Assyrian kings. It is
true that a few inscriptions of the native rulers had been found in Persia, but
they belonged to the late periods of her history, and the majority consisted
of short dedicatory formulae and did not supply us with much historical
information. But the excavations carried on since then by M. de Morgan at
Susa have revealed an entirely new chapter of ancient Oriental history, and
have thrown a flood of light upon the position occupied by Elam among the
early races of the East.
Lying to the north of the Persian Gulf and to the east of the Tigris, and
rising from the broad plains nearer the coast to the mountainous districts
within its borders on the east and north, Elam was one of the nearest
neighbours of Chaldæa. A few facts concerning her relations with
Babylonia during certain periods of her history have long been known, and
her struggles with the later kings of Assyria are known in some detail; but
for her history during the earliest periods we have had to trust mainly to
conjecture. That in the earlier as in the later periods she should have been in
constant antagonism with Babylonia might legitimately be suspected, and it
is not surprising that we should find an echo of her early struggles with
Chaldæa in the legends which were current in the later periods of
Babylonian history. In the fourth and fifth tablets, or sections, of the great
Babylonian epic which describes the exploits of the Babylonian hero
Gilgamesh, a story is told of an expedition undertaken by Gilgamesh and
his friend Ba-bani against an Elamite despot named Khum-baba. It is
related in the poem that Khumbaba was feared by all who dwelt near him,
for his roaring was like the storm, and any man perished who was rash
enough to enter the cedar-wood in which he dwelt. But Gilgamesh,
encouraged by a dream sent him by Sha-mash, the Sun-god, pressed on

with his friend, and, having entered the wood, succeeded in slaying
Khumbaba and in cutting off his head. This legend is doubtless based on
episodes in early Babylonian and Elamite history. Khumbaba may not have
been an actual historical ruler, but at least he represents or personifies the
power of Elam, and the success of Gilgamesh no doubt reflects the
aspirations with which many a Babylonian expedition set out for the
Elamite frontier.
Incidentally it may be noted that the legend possibly had a still closer
historical parallel, for the name of Khumbaba occurs as a component in a
proper name upon one of the Elamite contracts found recently by M. de
Morgan at Mai-Amir. The name in question is written Khumbaba-arad-ili,
“Khumbaba, the servant of God,” and it proves that at the date at which the
contract was written (about 1300-1000 B.C.) the name of Khumbaba was
still held in remembrance, possibly as that of an early historical ruler of the
country.
In her struggles with Chaldæa, Elam was not successful during the
earliest historical period of which we have obtained information; and, so far
as we can tell at present, her princes long continued to own allegiance to the
Semitic rulers whose influence was predominant from time to time in the
plains of Lower Mesopotamia. Tradition relates that two of the earliest
Semitic rulers whose names are known to us, Sargon and Narâm-Sin, kings
of Agade, held sway in Elam, for in the “Omens” which were current in a
later period concerning them, the former is credited with the conquest of the
whole country, while of the latter it is related that he conquered Apirak, an
Elamite district, and captured its king. Some doubts were formerly cast
upon these traditions inasmuch as they were found in a text containing
omens or forecasts, but these doubts were removed by the discovery of
contemporary documents by which the later traditions were confirmed.
Sargon’s conquest of Elam, for instance, was proved to be historical by a
reference to the event in a date-formula upon tablets belonging to his reign.
Moreover, the event has received further confirmation from an unpublished
tablet in the British Museum, containing a copy of the original chronicle
from which the historical extracts in the “Omens” were derived. The portion
of the composition inscribed upon this tablet does not contain the lines
referring to Sargon’s conquest of Elam, for these occurred in an earlier
section of the composition; but the recovery of the tablet puts beyond a
doubt the historical character of the traditions preserved upon the omen-

tablet as a whole, and the conquest of Elam is thus confirmed by inference.
The new text does recount the expedition undertaken by Narâm-Sin, the son
of Sargon, against Apirak, and so furnishes a direct confirmation of this
event.
Another early conqueror of Elam, who was probably of Semitic origin,
was Alu-usharshid, king of the city of Kish, for, from a number of his
inscriptions found near those of Sargon at Nippur in Babylonia, we learn
that he subdued Elam and Para’se, the district in which the city of Susa was
probably situated. From a small mace-head preserved in the British
Museum we know of another conquest of Elam by a Semitic ruler of this
early period. The mace-head was made and engraved by the orders of
Mutabil, an early governor of the city of Dûr-ilu, to commemorate his own
valour as the man “who smote the head of the hosts” of Elam. Mutabil was
not himself an independent ruler, and his conquest of Elam must have been
undertaken on behalf of the suzerain to whom he owed allegiance, and thus
his victory cannot be classed in the same category as those of his
predecessors. A similar remark applies to the success against the city of
Anshan in Elam, achieved by Grudea, the Sumerian ruler of Shirpurla,
inasmuch as he was a patesi, or viceroy, and not an independent king. Of
greater duration was the influence exercised over Elam by the kings of Ur,
for bricks and contract-tablets have been found at Susa proving that Dungi,
one of the most powerful kings of Ur, and Bur-Sin, Ine-Sin, and Oamil-Sin,
kings of the second dynasty in that city, all in turn included Elam within the
limits of their empire.
Such are the main facts which until recently had been ascertained with
regard to the influence of early Babylonian rulers in Elam. The information
is obtained mainly from Babylonian sources, and until recently we have
been unable to fill in any details of the picture from the Elamite side. But
this inability has now been removed by M. de Morgan’s discoveries. From
the inscribed bricks, cones, stelæ, and statues that have been brought to
light in the course of his excavations at Susa, we have recovered the name
of a succession of native Elamite rulers. All those who are to be assigned to
this early period, during which Elam owed allegiance to the kings of
Babylonia, ascribe to themselves the title of patesi, or viceroy, of Susa, in
acknowledgment of their dependence. Their records consist principally of
building inscriptions and foundation memorials, and they commemorate the
construction or repair of temples, the cutting of canals, and the like. They

do not, therefore, throw much light upon the problems connected with the
external history of Elam during this early period, but we obtain from them a
glimpse of the internal administration of the country. We see a nation
without ambition to extend its boundaries, and content, at any rate for the
time, to owe allegiance to foreign rulers, while the energies of its native
princes are devoted exclusively to the cultivation of the worship of the gods
and to the amelioration of the conditions of the life of the people in their
charge.
A difficult but interesting problem presents itself for solution at the
outset of our inquiry into the history of this people as revealed by their
lately recovered inscriptions,—the problem of their race and origin. Found
at Susa in Elam, and inscribed by princes bearing purely Elamite names, we
should expect these votive and memorial texts to be written entirely in the
Elamite language. But such is not the case, for many of them are written in
good Semitic Babylonian. While some are entirely composed in the tongue
which we term Elamite or Anzanite, others, so far as their language and
style is concerned, might have been written by any early Semitic king ruling
in Babylonia. Why did early princes of Susa make this use of the
Babylonian tongue?
At first sight it might seem possible to trace a parallel in the use of the
Babylonian language by kings and officials in Egypt and Syria during the
fifteenth century B.C., as revealed in the letters from Tell el-Amarna. But a
moment’s thought will show that the cases are not similar. The Egyptian or
Syrian scribe employed Babylonian as a medium for his official foreign
correspondence because Babylonian at that period was the lingua franca of
the East. But the object of the early Elamite rulers was totally different.
Their inscribed bricks and memorial stelæ were not intended for the eyes of
foreigners, but for those of their own descendants. Built into the structure of
a temple, or buried beneath the edifice, one of their principal objects was to
preserve the name and deeds of the writer from oblivion. Like similar
documents found on the sites of Assyrian and Babylonian cities, they
sometimes include curses upon any impious man, who, on finding the
inscription after the temple shall have fallen into ruins, should in any way
injure the inscription or deface the writer’s name. It will be obvious that the
writers of these inscriptions intended that they should be intelligible to
those who might come across them in the future. If, therefore, they
employed the Babylonian as well as the Elamite language, it is clear that

they expected that their future readers might be either Babylonian or
Elamite; and this belief can only be explained on the supposition that their
own subjects were of mixed race.
It is therefore certain that at this early period of Elamite history
Semitic Babylonians and Elamites dwelt side by side in Susa and retained
their separate languages. The problem therefore resolves itself into the
inquiry: which of these two peoples occupied the country first? Were the
Semites at first in sole possession, which was afterwards disputed by the
incursion of Elamite tribes from the north and east? Or were the Elamites
the original inhabitants of the land, into which the Semites subsequently
pressed from Babylonia?
A similar mixture of races is met with in Babylonia itself in the early
period of the history of that country. There the early Sumerian inhabitants
were gradually dispossessed by the invading Semite, who adopted the
civilization of the conquered race, and took over the system of cuneiform
writing, which he modified to suit his own language. In Babylonia the
Semites eventually predominated and the Sumerians as a race disappeared,
but during the process of absorption the two languages were employed
indiscriminately. The kings of the First Babylonian Dynasty wrote their
votive inscriptions sometimes in Sumerian, sometimes in Semitic
Babylonian; at other times they employed both languages for the same text,
writing the record first in Sumerian and afterwards appending a Semitic
translation by the side; and in the legal and commercial documents of the
period the old Sumerian legal forms and phrases were retained intact. In
Elam we may suppose that the use of the Sumerian and Semitic languages
was the same.
It may be surmised, however, that the first Semitic incursions into
Elam took place at a much later period than those into Babylonia, and under
very different conditions. When overrunning the plains and cities of the
Sumerians, the Semites were comparatively uncivilized, and, so far as we
know, without a system of writing of their own. The incursions into Elam
must have taken place under the great Semitic conquerors, such as Sar-gon
and Narâm-Sin and Alu-usharshid. At this period they had fully adopted and
modified the Sumerian characters to express their own Semitic tongue, and
on their invasion of Elam they brought their system of writing with them.
The native princes of Elam, whom they conquered, adopted it in turn for

many of their votive texts and inscribed monuments when they wished to
write them in the Babylonian language.
Such is the most probable explanation of the occurrence in Elam of
inscriptions in the Old Babylonian language, written by native princes
concerning purely domestic matters. But a further question now suggests
itself. Assuming that this was the order in which events took place, are we
to suppose that the first Semitic invaders of Elam found there a native
population in a totally undeveloped stage of civilization? Or did they find a
population enjoying a comparatively high state of culture, different from
their own, which they proceeded to modify and transform! Luckily, we have
not to fall back on conjecture for an answer to these questions, for a recent
discovery at Susa has furnished material from which it is possible to
reconstruct in outline the state of culture of these early Elamites.
This interesting discovery consists of a number of clay tablets
inscribed in the proto-Elamite system of writing, a system which was
probably the only one in use in the country during the period before the
Semitic invasion. The documents in question are small, roughly formed
tablets of clay very similar to those employed in the early periods of
Babylonian history, but the signs and characters impressed upon them offer
the greatest contrast to the Sumerian and early Babylonian characters with
which we are familiar. Although they cannot be fully deciphered at present,
it is probable that they are tablets of accounts, the signs upon them
consisting of lists of figures and what are probably ideographs for things.
Some of the ideographs, such as that for “tablet,” with which many of the
texts begin, are very similar to the Sumerian or Babylonian signs for the
same objects; but the majority are entirely different and have been formed
and developed upon a system of their own.

The photograph is taken from M. de Morgan’s Délégation en
Perse, Mém., t. vi, pi. 23.
On these tablets, in fact, we have a new class of cuneiform writing in
an early stage of its development, when the hieroglyphic or pictorial
character of the ideographs was still prominent.

The photograph is reproduced from M. de Morgan’s Délégation en
Perse, Mém., t. vi, pi. 22.
Although the meaning of the majority of these ideographs has not yet
been identified, Père Scheil, who has edited the texts, has succeeded in
making out the system of numeration. He has identified the signs for unity,
10, 100, and 1,000, and for certain fractions, and the signs for these figures
are quite different from those employed by the Sumerians.

The system, too, is different, for it is a decimal, and not a sexagesimal,
system of numeration.
That in its origin this form of writing had some connection with that
employed and, so far as we know, invented by the ancient Sumerians is
possible.[1] But it shows small trace of Sumerian influence, and the disparity
in the two systems of numeration is a clear indication that, at any rate, it
broke off and was isolated from the latter at a very early period. Having
once been adopted by the early Elamites, it continued to be used by them
for long periods with but small change or modification. Employed far from
the centre of Sumerian civilization, its development was slow, and it seems
to have remained in its ideographic state, while the system employed by the
Sumerians, and adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, was developed along
syllabic lines.
[1] It is, of course, also possible that the system of writing had no connection in
its origin with that of the Sumerians, and was invented independently of the
system employed in Babylonia. In that case, the signs which resemble certain of
the Sumerian characters must have been adopted in a later stage of its
development. Though it would be rash to dogmatize on the subject, the view that
connects its origin with the Sumerians appears on the whole to fit in best with
the evidence at present available.

It was without doubt this proto-Elamite system of writing which the
Semites from Babylonia found employed in Elam on their first incursions
into that country. They brought with them their own more convenient form
of writing, and, when the country had once been finally subdued, the
subject Elamite princes adopted the foreign system of writing and language
from their conquerors for memorial and monumental inscriptions. But the
ancient native writing was not entirely ousted, and continued to be
employed by the common people of Elam for the ordinary purposes of daily
life. That this was the case at least until the reign of Karibu-sha-Shu-shinak,
one of the early subject native rulers, is clear from one of his inscriptions
engraved upon a block of limestone to commemorate the dedication of what
were probably some temple furnishings in honour of the god Shu-shinak.

The photograph is taken from M. de Morgan’s Délégation en
Perse, Mém., t. vi, pi. 2.
The main part of the inscription is written in Semitic Babylonian, and
below there is an addition to the text written in proto-Elamite characters,
probably enumerating the offerings which the Karibu-sha-Shushinak
decreed should be made for the future in honour of the god.[2] In course of
time this proto-Elamite system of writing by means of ideographs seems to
have died out, and a modified form of the Babylonian system was adopted
by the Elamites for writing their own language phonetically. It is in this
phonetic character that the so-called “Anzanite” texts of the later Elamite
princes were composed.

[2] We have assumed that both inscriptions were the work of Karibu-sha-
Shushinak. But it is also possible that the second one in proto-Elamite characters
was added at a later period. From its position on the stone it is clear that it was
written after and not before Karibu-sha-Shushinak’s inscription in Semitic
Babylonian. See the photographic reproduction.

Karibu-sha-Shushinak, whose recently discovered bilingual inscription
has been referred to above, was one of the earlier of the subject princes of
Elam, and he probably reigned at Susa not later than B.C. 3000. He styles
himself “patesi of Susa, governor of the land of Elam,” but we do not know
at present to what contemporary king in Babylonia he owed allegiance. The
longest of his inscriptions that have been recovered is engraved upon a stele
of limestone and records the building of the Gate of Shushinak at Susa and
the cutting of a canal; it also recounts the offerings which Karibu-sha-
Shushinak dedicated on the completion of the work. It may here be quoted
as an example of the class of votive inscriptions from which the names of
these early Elamite rulers have been recovered. The inscription runs as
follows: “For the god Shushinak, his lord, Karibu-sha-Shushinak, the son of
Shimbi-ish-khuk, patesi of Susa, governor of the land of Elam,—when he
set the (door) of his Gate in place,... in the Gate of the god Shushinak, his
lord, and when he had opened the canal of Sidur, he set up in face thereof
his canopy, and he set planks of cedar-wood for its gate. A sheep in the
interior thereof, and sheep without, he appointed (for sacrifice) to him each
day. On days of festival he caused the people to sing songs in the Gate of
the god Shushinak. And twenty measures of fine oil he dedicated to make
his gate beautiful. Four magi of silver he dedicated; a censer of silver and
gold he dedicated for a sweet odour; a,sword he dedicated; an axe with four
blades he dedicated, and he dedicated silver in addition for the mounting
thereof.... A righteous judgment he judged in the city! As for the man who
shall transgress his judgment or shall remove his gift, may the gods
Shushinak and Shamash, Bel and Ea, Ninni and Sin, Mnkharsag and Nati—
may all the gods uproot his foundation, and his seed may they destroy!”
It will be seen that Karibu-sha-Shushinak takes a delight in
enumerating the details of the offerings he has ordained in honour of his
city-god Shushinak, and this religious temper is peculiarly characteristic of
the princes of Elam throughout the whole course of their history. Another
interesting point to notice in the inscription is that, although the writer
invokes Shushinak, his own god, and puts his name at the head of the list of
deities whose vengeance he implores upon the impious, he also calls upon

the gods of the Babylonians. As he wrote the inscription itself in
Babylonian, in the belief that it might be recovered by some future Semitic
inhabitant of his country, so he included in his imprecations those deities
whose names he conceived would be most reverenced by such a reader. In
addition to Karibu-sha-Shushinak the names of a number of other patesis,
or viceroys, have recently been recovered, such as Khutran-tepti, and Idadu
I and his son Kal-Rukhu-ratir, and his grandson Idadu II. All these probably
ruled after Karibu-sha-Shushinak, and may be set in the early period of
Babylonian supremacy in Elam.
It has been stated above that the allegiance which these early Elamite
princes owed to their overlords in Babylonia was probably reflected in the
titles which they bear upon their inscriptions recently found at Susa. These
titles are “patesi of Susa, shakkannak of Elam,” which may be rendered as
“viceroy of Susa, governor of Elam.” But inscriptions have been found on
the same site belonging to another series of rulers, to whom a different title
is applied. Instead of referring to themselves as viceroys of Susa and
governors of Elam, they bear the title of sukkal of Elam, of Siparki, and of
Susa. Siparki, or Sipar, was probably the name of an important section of
Elamite territory, and the title sukkalu, “ruler,” probably carries with it an
idea of independence of foreign control which is absent from the title of
patesi. It is therefore legitimate to trace this change of title to a
corresponding change in the political condition of Elam; and there is much
to be said for the view that the rulers of Elam who bore the title of sukkalu
reigned at a period when Elam herself was independent, and may possibly
have exercised a suzerainty over the neighbouring districts of Babylonia.
The worker of this change in the political condition of Elam and the
author of her independence was a king named Kutir-Nakhkhunte or Kutir-
Na’khunde, whose name and deeds have been preserved in later Assyrian
records, where he is termed Kudur-Nankhundi and Kudur-Nakhundu.[3] This
ruler, according to the Assyrian king Ashur-bani-pal, was not content with
throwing off the yoke under which his land had laboured for so long, but
carried war into the country of his suzerain and marched through Babylonia
devastating and despoiling the principal cities. This successful Elamite
campaign took place, according to the computation of the later Assyrian
scribes, about the year 2280 B. c, and it is probable that for many years
afterwards the authority of the King of Elam extended over the plains of
Babylonia. It has been suggested that Kutir-Nakh-khunte, after including

Babylonia within his empire, did not remain permanently in Elam, but may
have resided for a part of each year, at least, in Lower Mesopotamia. His
object, no doubt, would have been to superintend in person the
administration of his empire and to check any growing spirit of
independence among his local governors. He may thus have appointed in
Susa itself a local governor who would carry on the business of the country
during his absence, and, under the king himself, would wield supreme
authority. Such governors may have been the sukkali, who, unlike the
patesi, were independent of foreign control, but yet did not enjoy the full
title of “king.”
[3] For references to the passages where the name occurs, see King, Letters of
Hammurabi, vol. i, p. Ivy.

It is possible that the sukkalu who ruled in Elam during the reign of
Kutir-Nakhkhunte was named Temti-agun, for a short inscription of this
ruler has been recovered, in which he records that he built and dedicated a
certain temple with the object of ensuring the preservation of the life of
Kutir-Na’khundi. If we may identify the Kutir-Va’khundi of this text with
the great Elamite conqueror, Kutir-Nakhkhunte, it follows that Temti-agun,
the sukkal of Susa, was his subordinate. The inscription mentions other
names which are possibly those of rulers of this period, and reads as
follows: “Temti-agun, sukkal of Susa, the son of the sister of Sirukdu’, hath
built a temple of bricks at Ishme-karab for the preservation of the life of
Kutir-Na’khundi, and for the preservation of the life of Lila-irtash, and for
the preservation of his own life, and for the preservation of the life of
Temti-khisha-khanesh and of Pil-kishamma-khashduk.” As Lila-irtash is
mentioned immediately after Kutir-Na’khundi, he was possibly his son, and
he may have succeeded him as ruler of the empire of Elam and Babylonia,
though no confirmation of this view has yet been discovered. Temti-khisha-
khanesh is mentioned immediately after the reference to the preservation of
the life of Temti-agun himself, and it may be conjectured that the name was
that of Temti-agun’s son, or possibly that of his wife, in which event the last
two personages mentioned in the text may have been the sons of Temti-
agun.
This short text affords a good example of one class of votive
inscriptions from which it is possible to recover the names of Elamite rulers
of this period, and it illustrates the uncertainty which at present attaches to

the identification of the names themselves and the order in which they are
to be arranged. Such uncertainty necessarily exists when only a few texts
have been recovered, and it will disappear with the discovery of additional
monuments by which the results already arrived at may be checked. We
need not here enumerate all the names of the later Elamite rulers which
have been found in the numerous votive inscriptions recovered during the
recent excavations at Susa. The order in which they should be arranged is
still a matter of considerable uncertainty, and the facts recorded by them in
such inscriptions as we possess mainly concern the building and restoration
of Elamite temples and the decoration of shrines, and they are thus of no
great historical interest. These votive texts are well illustrated by a
remarkable find of foundation deposits made last year by M. de Morgan in
the temple of Shushinak at Susa, consisting of figures and jewelry of gold
and silver, and objects of lead, bronze, iron, stone, and ivory, cylinder-seals,
mace-heads, vases, etc. This is the richest foundation deposit that has been
recovered on any ancient site, and its archaeological interest in connection
with the development of Elamite art is great. But in no other way does the
find affect our conception of the history of the country, and we may
therefore pass on to a consideration of such recent discoveries as throw new
light upon the course of history in Western Asia.
With the advent of the First Dynasty in Babylon Elam found herself
face to face with a power prepared to dispute her claims to exercise a
suzerainty over the plains of Mesopotamia. It is held by many writers that
the First Dynasty of Babylon was of Arab origin, and there is much to be
said for this view. M. Pognon was the first to start the theory that its kings
were not purely Babylonian, but were of either Arab or Aramaean
extraction, and he based his theory on a study of the forms of the names
which some of them bore. The name of Samsu-imna, for instance, means
“the sun is our god,” but the form of the words of which the name is
composed betray foreign influence. Thus in Babylonian the name for “sun”
or the Sun-god would be Shamash or Shamshu, not Samsu; in the second
half of the name, while ilu (“god”) is good Babylonian, the ending na,
which is the pronominal suffix of the first person plural, is not Babylonian,
but Arabic. We need not here enter into a long philological discussion, and
the instance already cited may suffice to show in what way many of the
names met in the Babylonian inscriptions of this period betray a foreign,
and possibly an Arabic, origin. But whether we assign the forms of these

names to Arabic influence or not, it may be regarded as certain that, the
First Dynasty of Babylon had its origin in the incursion into Babylonia of a
new wave of Semitic immigration.

The invading Semites brought with them fresh blood and unexhausted
energy, and, finding many of their own race in scattered cities and
settlements throughout the country, they succeeded in establishing a purely
Semitic dynasty, with its capital at Babylon, and set about the task of
freeing the country from any vestiges of foreign control. Many centuries
earlier Semitic kings had ruled in Babylonian cities, and Semitic empires
had been formed there. Sargon and Narâm-Sin, having their capital at
Agade, had established their control over a considerable area of Western
Asia and had held Elam as a province. But so far as Elam was concerned
Kutir-Nakhkhunte had reversed the balance and had raised Elam to the
position of the predominant power.
Of the struggles and campaigns of the earlier kings of the First
Dynasty of Babylon we know little, for, although we possess a considerable
number of legal and commercial documents of the period, we have
recovered no strictly historical inscriptions. Our main source of information
is the dates upon these documents, which are not dated by the years of the
reigning king, but on a system adopted by the early Babylonian kings from
their Sumerian predecessors. In the later periods of Babylonian history
tablets were dated in the year of the king who was reigning at the time the
document was drawn up, but this simple system had not been adopted at
this early period. In place of this we find that each year was cited by the
event of greatest importance which occurred in that year. This event might
be the cutting of a canal, when the year in which this took place might be
referred to as “the year in which the canal named Ai-khegallu was cut;” or it
might be the building of a temple, as in the date-formula, “the year in which
the great temple of the Moon-god was built;” or it might be “the conquest
of a city, such as the year in which the city of Kish was destroyed.” Now it
will be obvious that this system of dating had many disadvantages. An
event might be of great importance for one city, while it might never have
been heard of in another district; thus it sometimes happened that the same
event was not adopted throughout the whole country for designating a
particular year, and the result was that different systems of dating were
employed in different parts of Babylonia. Moreover, when a particular
system had been in use for a considerable time, it required a very good
memory to retain the order and period of the various events referred to in
the date-formulae, so as to fix in a moment the date of a document by its
mention of one of them. In order to assist themselves in their task of fixing

dates in this manner, the scribes of the First Dynasty of Babylon drew up
lists of the titles of the years, arranged in chronological order under the
reigns of the kings to which they referred. Some of these lists have been
recovered, and they are of the greatest assistance in fixing the chronology,
while at the same time they furnish us with considerable information
concerning the history of the period of which we should otherwise have
been in ignorance.
From these lists of date-formulæ, and from the dates themselves which
are found upon the legal and commercial tablets of the period, we learn that
Kish, Ka-sallu, and Isin all gave trouble to the earlier kings of the First
Dynasty, and had in turn to be subdued. Elam did not watch the diminution
of her influence in Babylonia without a struggle to retain it. Under Kudur-
mabug, who was prince or governor of the districts lying along the frontier
of Elam, the Elamites struggled hard to maintain their position in
Babylonia, making the city of Ur the centre from which they sought to
check the growing power of Babylon. From bricks that have been recovered
from Mukayyer, the site of the city of Ur, we learn that Kudur-mabug
rebuilt the temple in that city dedicated to the Moon-god, which is an
indication of the firm hold he had obtained upon the city. It was obvious to
the new Semitic dynasty in Babylon that, until Ur and the neighbouring city
of Larsam had been captured, they could entertain no hope of removing the
Elamite yoke from Southern Babylonia. It is probable that the earlier kings
of the dynasty made many attempts to capture them, with varying success.
An echo of one of their struggles in which they claimed the victory may be
seen in the date-formula for the fourteenth year of the reign of Sin-muballit,
Hammurabi’s father and predecessor on the throne of Babylon. This year
was referred to in the documents of the period as “the year in which the
people of Ur were slain with the sword.” It will be noted that the capture of
the city is not commemorated, so that we may infer that the slaughter of the
Elamites which is recorded did not materially reduce their influence, as they
were left in possession of their principal stronghold. In fact, Elam was not
signally defeated in the reign of Kudur-mabug, but in that of his son Rim-
Sin. From the date-formulæ of Hammurabi’s reign we learn that the
struggle between Elam and Babylon was brought to a climax in the thirtieth
year of his reign, when it is recorded in the formulas that he defeated the
Elamite army and overthrew Rim-Sin, while in the following year we

gather that he added the land of E’mutbal, that is, the western district of
Elam, to his dominions.
An unpublished chronicle in the British Museum gives us further
details of Hammurabi’s victory over the Elamites, and at the same time
makes it clear that the defeat and overthrow of Rim-Sin was not so crushing
as has hitherto been supposed. This chronicle relates that Hammurabi
attacked Rim-Sin, and, after capturing the cities of Ur and Larsam, carried
their spoil to Babylon. Up to the present it has been supposed that
Hammurabi’s victory marked the end of Elamite influence in Babylonia,
and that thenceforward the supremacy of Babylon was established
throughout the whole of the country. But from the new chronicle we gather
that Hammurabi did not succeed in finally suppressing the attempts of Elam
to regain her former position. It is true that the cities of Ur and Larsam were
finally incorporated in the Babylonian empire, and the letters of Hammurabi
to Sin-idinnam, the governor whom he placed in authority over Larsam,
afford abundant evidence of the stringency of the administrative control
which he established over Southern Babylonia. But Rîm-Sin was only
crippled for the time, and, on being driven from Ur and Larsam, he retired
beyond the Elamite frontier and devoted his energies to the recuperation of
his forces against the time when he should feel himself strong enough again
to make a bid for victory in his struggle against the growing power of
Babylon. It is probable that he made no further attempt to renew the contest
during the life of Hammurabi, but after Samsu-iluna, the son of
Hammurabi, had succeeded to the Babylonian throne, he appeared in
Babylonia at the head of the forces he had collected, and attempted to
regain the cities and territory he had lost.

Inscribed in the reign of Hammurabi with a deed recording the
division of property. The actual tablet is on the right; that which
appears to be another and larger tablet on the left is the hollow clay
case in which the tablet on the right was originally enclosed.
Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
The portion of the text of the chronicle relating to the war between
Rîm-Sin and Samsu-iluna is broken so that it is not possible to follow the
campaign in detail, but it appears that Samsu-iluna defeated Rim-Sin, and
possibly captured him or burnt him alive in a palace in which he had taken
refuge.

With the final defeat of Rîm-Sin by Samsu-iluna it is probable that
Elam ceased to be a thorn in the side of the kings of Babylon and that she
made no further attempts to extend her authority beyond her own frontiers.
But no sooner had Samsu-iluna freed his country from all danger from this
quarter than he found himself faced by a new foe, before whom the dynasty
eventually succumbed. This fact we learn from the unpublished chronicle to
which reference has already been made, and the name of this new foe, as
supplied by the chronicle, will render it necessary to revise all current
schemes of Babylonian chronology. Samsu-iluna’s new foe was no other
than Iluma-ilu, the first king of the Second Dynasty, and, so far from having
been regarded as Samsu-iluna’s contemporary, hitherto it has been imagined
that he ascended the throne of Babylon one hundred and eighteen years
after Samsu-iluna’s death. The new information supplied by the chronicle
thus proves two important facts: first, that the Second Dynasty, instead of
immediately succeeding the First Dynasty, was partly contemporary with it;
second, that during the period in which the two dynasties were
contemporary they were at war with one another, the Second Dynasty
gradually encroaching on the territory of the First Dynasty, until it
eventually succeeded in capturing Babylon and in getting the whole of the
country under its control. We also learn from the new chronicle that this
Second Dynasty at first established itself in “the Country of the Sea,” that is
to say, the districts in the extreme south of Babylonia bordering on the
Persian Gulf, and afterwards extended its borders northward until it
gradually absorbed the whole of Babylonia. Before discussing the other
facts supplied by the new chronicle, with regard to the rise and growth of
the Country of the Sea, whose kings formed the so-called “Second
Dynasty,” it will be well to refer briefly to the sources from which the
information on the period to be found in the current histories is derived.
All the schemes of Babylonian chronology that have been suggested
during the last twenty years have been based mainly on the great list of
kings which is preserved in the British Museum. This document was drawn
up in the Neo-Babylonian or Persian period, and when complete it gave a
list of the names of all the Babylonian kings from the First Dynasty of
Babylon down to the time in which it was written. The names of the kings
are arranged in dynasties, and details are given as to the length of their
reigns and the total number of years each dynasty lasted. The beginning of
the list which gave the names of the First Dynasty is wanting, but the

missing portion has been restored from a smaller document which gives a
list of the kings of the First and Second Dynasties only. In the great list of
kings the dynasties are arranged one after the other, and it was obvious that
its compiler imagined that they succeeded one another in the order in which
he arranged them. But when the total number of years the dynasties lasted is
learned, we obtain dates for the first dynasties in the list which are too early
to agree with other chronological information supplied by the historical
inscriptions. The majority of writers have accepted the figures of the list of
kings and have been content to ignore the discrepancies; others have sought
to reconcile the available data by ingenious emendations of the figures
given by the list and the historical inscriptions, or have omitted the Second
Dynasty entirely from their calculations. The new chronicle, by showing
that the First and Second Dynasties were partly contemporaneous, explains
the discrepancies that have hitherto proved so puzzling.
It would be out of place here to enter into a detailed discussion of
Babylonian chronology, and therefore we will confine ourselves to a brief
description of the sequence of events as revealed by the new chronicle.
According to the list of kings, Iluma-ilu’s reign was a long one, lasting for
sixty years, and the new chronicle gives no indication as to the period of his
reign at which active hostilities with Babylon broke out. If the war occurred
in the latter portion of his reign, it would follow that he had been for many
years organizing the forces of the new state he had founded in the south of
Babylonia before making serious encroachments in the north; and in that
case the incessant campaigns carried on by Babylon against Blam in the
reigns of Hammurabi and Samsu-iluna would have afforded him the
opportunity of establishing a firm foothold in the Country of the Sea
without the risk of Babylonian interference. If, on the other hand, it was in
the earlier part of his reign that hostilities with Babylon broke out, we may
suppose that, while Samsu-iluna was devoting all his energies to crush Bim-
Sin, the Country of the Sea declared her independence of Babylonian
control. In this case we may imagine Samsu-iluna hurrying south, on the
conclusion of his Elamite campaign, to crush the newly formed state before
it had had time to organize its forces for prolonged resistance.
Whichever of these alternatives eventually may prove to be correct, it
is certain that Samsu-iluna took the initiative in Babylon’s struggle with the
Country of the Sea, and that his action was due either to her declaration of
independence or to some daring act of aggression on the part of this small

state which had hitherto appeared too insignificant to cause Babylon any
serious trouble. The new chronicle tells us that Samsu-iluna undertook two
expeditions against the Country of the Sea, both of which proved
unsuccessful. In the first of these he penetrated to the very shores of the
Persian Gulf, where a battle took place in which Samsu-iluna was defeated,
and the bodies of many of the Babylonian soldiers were washed away by
the sea. In the second campaign Iluma-ilu did not await Samsu-iluna’s
attack, but advanced to meet him, and again defeated the Babylonian army.
In the reign of Abêshu’, Samsu-iluna’s son and successor, Iluma-ilu appears
to have undertaken fresh acts of aggression against Babylon; and it was
probably during one of his raids in Babylonian territory that Abêshu’
attempted to crush the growing power of the Country of the Sea by the
capture of its daring leader, Iluma-ilu himself. The new chronicle informs
us that, with this object in view, Abêshu’ dammed the river Tigris, hoping
by this means to cut off Iluma-ilu and his army, but his stratagem did not
succeed, and Iluma-ilu got back to his own territory in safety.
The new chronicle does not supply us with further details of the
struggle between Babylon and the Country of the Sea, but we may conclude
that all similar attempts on the part of the later kings of the First Dynasty to
crush or restrain the power of the new state were useless. It is probable that
from this time forward the kings of the First Dynasty accepted the
independence of the Country of the Sea upon their southern border as an
evil which they were powerless to prevent. They must have looked back
with regret to the good times the country had enjoyed under the powerful
sway of Hammurabi, whose victorious arms even their ancient foes, the
Blamites, had been unable to withstand. But, although the chronicle does
not recount the further successes achieved by the Country of the Sea, it
records a fact which undoubtedly contributed to hasten the fall of Babylon
and bring the First Dynasty to an end. It tells us that in the reign of Samsu-
ditana, the last king of the First Dynasty, the men of the land of Khattu (the
Hittites from Northern Syria) marched against him in order to conquer the
land of Akkad; in other words, they marched down the Euphrates and
invaded Northern Babylonia. The chronicle does not state how far the
invasion was successful, but the appearance of a new enemy from the
northwest must have divided the Babylonian forces and thus have reduced
their power of resisting pressure from the Country of the Sea. Samsu-ditana
may have succeeded in defeating the Hittites and in driving them from his

country; but the fact that he was the last king of the First Dynasty proves
that in his reign Babylon itself fell into the hands of the king of the Country
of the Sea.
The question now arises, To what race did the people of the Country of
the Sea belong? Did they represent an advance-guard of the Kassite tribes,
who eventually succeeded in establishing themselves as the Third Dynasty
in Babylon? Or were they the Elamites who, when driven from Ur and
Larsam, retreated southwards and maintained their independence on the
shores of the Persian Gulf? Or did they represent some fresh wave of
Semitic immigration’? That they were not Kassites is proved by the new
chronicle which relates how the Country of the Sea was conquered by the
Kassites, and how the dynasty founded by Iluma-ilu thus came to an end.
There is nothing to show that they were Elamites, and if the Country of the
Sea had been colonized by fresh Semitic tribes, so far from opposing their
kindred in Babylon, most probably they would have proved to them a
source of additional strength and support. In fact, there are indications that
the people of the Country of the Sea are to be referred to an older stock than
the Elamites, the Semites, or the Kassites. In the dynasty of the Country of
the Sea there is no doubt that we may trace the last successful struggle of
the ancient Sumerians to retain possession of the land which they had held
for so many centuries before the invading Semites had disputed its
possession with them.
Evidence of the Sumerian origin of the kings of the Country of the Sea
may be traced in the names which several of them bear. Ishkibal,
Grulkishar, Peshgal-daramash, A-dara-kalama, Akur-ul-ana, and Melam-
kur-kura, the names of some of them, are all good Sumerian names, and
Shushshi, the brother of Ishkibal, may also be taken as a Sumerian name. It
is true that the first three kings of the dynasty, Iluma-ilu, Itti-ili-nibi, and
Damki-ilishu, and the last king of the dynasty, Ea-gamil, bear Semitic
Babylonian names, but there is evidence that at least one of these is merely
a Semitic rendering of a Sumerian equivalent. Iluma-ilu, the founder of the
dynasty, has left inscriptions in which his name is written in its correct
Sumerian form as Dingir-a-an, and the fact that he and some of his
successors either bore Semitic names or appear in the late list of kings with
their Sumerian names translated into Babylonian form may be easily
explained by supposing that the population of the Country of the Sea was
mixed and that the Sumerian and Semitic tongues were to a great extent

employed indiscriminately. This supposition is not inconsistent with the
suggestion that the dynasty of the Country of the Sea was Sumerian, and
that under it the Sumerians once more became the predominant race in
Babylonia.
The new chronicle also relates how the dynasty of the Country of the
Sea succumbed in its turn before the incursions of the Kassites. We know
that already under the First Dynasty the Kassite tribes had begun to make
incursions into Babylonia, for the ninth year of Samsu-iluna was named in
the date-formulae after a Kassite invasion, which, as it was commemorated
in this manner by the Babylonians, was probably successfully repulsed.
Such invasions must have taken place from time to time during the period
of supremacy attained by the Country of the Sea, and it was undoubtedly
with a view to stopping such incursions—for the future that Ea-gamil—the
last king of the Second Dynasty, decided to invade Elam and conquer the
mountainous districts in which the Kassite tribes had built their strongholds.
This Elamite campaign of Ea-gamil is recorded by the new chronicle, which
relates how he was defeated and driven from the country by Ulam-Buriash,
the brother of Bitiliash the Kassite. Ulam-Buriash did not rest content with
repelling Ea-gamil’s invasion of his land, but pursued him across the border
and succeeded in conquering the Country of the Sea and in establishing
there his own administration. The gradual conquest of the whole of
Babylonia by the Kassites no doubt followed the conquest of the Country of
the Sea, for the chronicle relates how the process of subjugation, begun by
Ulam-Buriash, was continued by his nephew Agum, and we know from the
lists of kings that Ea-gamil was the last king of the dynasty founded by
Iluma-ilu. In this fashion the Second Dynasty was brought to an end, and
the Sumerian element in the mixed population of Babylonia did not again
succeed in gaining control of the government of the country.
It will be noticed that the account of the earliest Kassite rulers of
Babylonia which is given by the new chronicle does not exactly tally with
the names of the kings of the Third Dynasty as found upon the list of kings.
On this document the first king of the dynasty is named Gandash, with
whom we may probably identify Ulam-Buriash, the Kassite conqueror of
the Country of the Sea; the second king is Agum, and the third is Bitiliashi.
According to the new chronicle Agum was the son of Bitiliashi, and it
would be improbable that he should have ruled in Babylonia before his
father. But this difficulty is removed by supposing that the two names were

transposed by some copyist. The different names assigned to the founder of
the Kassite dynasty may be due to the existence of variant traditions, or
Ulam-Buriash may have assumed another name on his conquest of
Babylonia, a practice which was usual with the later kings of Assyria when
they occupied the Babylonian throne.
The information supplied by the new chronicle with regard to the
relations of the first three dynasties to one another is of the greatest possible
interest to the student of early Babylonian history. We see that the Semitic
empire founded at Babylon by Sumu-abu, and consolidated by Hammurabi,
was not established on so firm a basis as has hitherto been believed. The
later kings of the dynasty, after Elam had been conquered, had to defend
their empire from encroachments on the south, and they eventually
succumbed before the onslaught of the Sumerian element, which still
remained in the population of Babylonia and had rallied in the Country of
the Sea. This dynasty in its turn succumbed before the invasion of the
Kassites from the mountains in the western districts of Elam, and, although
the city of Babylon retained her position as the capital of the country
throughout these changes of government, she was the capital of rulers of
different races, who successively fought for and obtained the control of the
fertile plains of Mesopotamia.
It is probable that the Kassite kings of the Third Dynasty exercised
authority not only over Babylonia but also over the greater part of Elam, for
a number of inscriptions of Kassite kings of Babylonia have been found by
M. de Morgan at Susa. These inscriptions consist of grants of land written
on roughly shaped stone stelæ, a class which the Babylonians themselves
called kudurru, while they have been frequently referred to by modern
writers as “boundary-stones.” This latter term is not very happily chosen,
for it suggests that the actual monuments themselves were set up on the
limits of a field or estate to mark its boundary. It is true that the inscription
on a kudurru enumerates the exact position and size of the estate with which
it is concerned, but the kudurru was never actually used to mark the
boundary. It was preserved as a title-deed, in the house of the owner of the
estate or possibly in the temple of his god, and formed his charter or title-
deed to which he could appeal in case of any dispute arising as to his right
of ownership. One of the kudurrus found by M. de Morgan records the
grant of a number of estates near Babylon by Nazimaruttash, a king of the
Third or Kassite Dynasty, to the god Marduk, that is to say they were

assigned by the king to the service of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk
at Babylon.

All the crops and produce from the land
were granted for the supply of the temple,
which was to enjoy the property without the
payment of any tax or tribute. The text also
records the gift of considerable tracts of land
in the same district to a private individual
named Kashakti-Shugab, who was to enjoy
a similar freedom from taxation so far as the
lands bestowed upon him were concerned.
This freedom from taxation is specially
enacted by the document in the words:
“Whensoever in the days that are to come
the ruler of the country, or one of the
governors, or directors, or wardens of these
districts, shall make any claim with regard to
these estates, or shall attempt to impose the
payment of a tithe or tax upon them, may all
the great gods whose names are
commemorated, or whose arms are
portrayed, or whose dwelling-places are
represented, on this stone, curse him with an
evil curse and blot out his name!”
Incidentally, this curse illustrates one of
the most striking characteristics of the
kudurrus, or “boundary-stones,” viz. the
carved figures of gods and representations of their emblems, which all of
them bare in addition to the texts inscribed upon them. At one time it was
thought that these symbols were to be connected with the signs of the
zodiac and various constellations and stars, and it was suggested that they
might have been intended to represent the relative positions of the heavenly
bodies at the time the document was drawn up. But this text of
Nazimaruttash and other similar documents that have recently been
discovered prove that the presence of the figures and emblems of the gods

upon the stones is to be explained on another and far more simple theory.
They were placed there as guardians of the property to which the kudurru
referred, and it was believed that the carving of their figures or emblems
upon the stone would ensure their intervention in case of any attempted
infringement of the rights and privileges which it was the object of the
document to commemorate and preserve. A photographic reproduction of
one side of the kudurru of Nazi-maruttash is shown in the accompanying
illustration. There will be seen a representation of Gula or Bau, the mother
of the gods, who is portrayed as seated on her throne and wearing the four-
horned head-dress and a long robe that reaches to her feet. In the field are
emblems of the Sun-god, the Moon-god, Ishtar, and other deities, and the
representation of divine emblems and dwelling-places is continued on
another face of the stone round the corner towards which Grula is looking.
The other two faces of the document are taken up with the inscription.
An interesting note is appended to the text inscribed upon the stone,
beginning under the throne and feet of Marduk and continuing under the
emblems of the gods upon the other side. This note relates the history of the
document in the following words: “In those days Kashakti-Shugab, the son
of Nusku-na’id, inscribed (this document) upon a memorial of clay, and he
set it before his god. But in the reign of Marduk-aplu-iddina, king of hosts,
the son of Melishikhu, King of Babylon, the wall fell upon this memorial
and crushed it. Shu-khuli-Shugab, the son of Nibishiku, wrote a copy of the
ancient text upon a new stone stele, and he set it (before the god).” It will be
seen, therefore, that this actual stone that has been recovered was not the
document drawn up in the reign of Nazimaruttash, but a copy made under
Marduk-aplu-iddina, a later king of the Third Dynasty. The original deed
was drawn up to preserve the rights of Kashakti-Shugab, who shared the
grant of land with the temple of Marduk. His share was less than half that of
the temple, but, as both were situated in the same district, he was careful to
enumerate and describe the temple’s share, to prevent any encroachment on
his rights by the Babylonian priests.
It is probable that such grants of land were made to private individuals
in return for special services which they had rendered to the king. Thus a
broken kudurru among M. de Morgan’s finds records the confirmation of a
man’s claims to certain property by Biti-liash II, the claims being based on
a grant made to the man’s ancestor by Kurigalzu for services rendered to the
king during his war with Assyria. One of the finest specimens of this class

of charters or title-deeds has been found at Susa, dating from the reign of
Melishikhu, a king of the Third Dynasty. The document in question records
a grant of certain property in the district of Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû, near the
cities Agade and Dûr-Kurigalzu, made by Melishikhu to Marduk-aplu-
iddina, his son, who succeeded him upon the throne of Babylon. The text
first gives details with regard to the size and situation of the estates included
in the grant of land, and it states the names of the high officials who were
entrusted with the duty of measuring them. The remainder of the text
defines and secures the privileges granted to Marduk-aplu-iddina together
with the land, and, as it throws considerable light upon the system of land
tenure at the period, an extract from it may here be translated:
“To prevent the encroachment on his land,” the inscription runs, “thus
hath he (i.e. the king) established his (Marduk-aplu-iddina’s) charter. On his
land taxes and tithes shall they not impose; ditches, limits, and boundaries
shall they not displace; there shall be no plots, stratagems, or claims (with
regard to his possession); for forced labour or public work for the
prevention of floods, for the maintenance and repair of the royal canal
under the protection of the towns of Bit-Sikkamidu and Damik-Adad,
among the gangs levied in the towns of the district of Ninâ-Agade, they
shall not call out the people of his estate; they are not liable to forced labour
on the sluices of the royal canal, nor are they liable for building dams, nor
for closing the canal, nor for digging out the bed thereof.”
“A cultivator of his lands, whether hired or belonging to the estate, and
the men who receive his instructions (i.e. his overseers) shall no governor
of Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû cause to leave his lands, whether by the order of the
king, or by the order of the governor, or by the order of whosoever may be
at Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû. On wood, grass, straw, corn, and every other sort of
crop, on his carts and yoke, on his ass and man-servant, shall they make no
levy. During the scarcity of water in the canal running between the Bati-
Anzanim canal and the canal of the royal district, on the waters of his ditch
for irrigation shall they make no levy; from the ditch of his reservoir shall
they not draw water, neither shall they divert (his water for) irrigation, and
other land shall they not irrigate nor water therewith. The grass of his lands
shall they not mow; the beasts belonging to the king or to a governor, which
may be assigned to the district of Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû, shall they not drive
within his boundary, nor shall they pasture them on his grass. He shall not
be forced to build a road or a bridge, whether for the king, or for the

governor who may be appointed in
the district of Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû,
neither shall he be liable for any new
form of forced labour, which in the
days that are to come a king, or a
governor appointed in the district of
Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû, shall institute
and exact, nor for forced labour long
fallen into disuse which may be
revived anew. To prevent
encroachment on his land the king
hath fixed the privileges of his
domain, and that which appertaineth
unto it, and all that he hath granted
unto him; and in the presence of
Shamash, and Marduk, and Anunitu,
and the great gods of heaven and
earth, he hath inscribed them upon a
stone, and he hath left it as an
everlasting memorial with regard to
his estate.”
The whole of the text is too
long to quote, and it will suffice to
note here that Melishikhu proceeds
to appeal to future kings to respect
the land and privileges which he has
granted to his son, Marduk-aplu-
iddina, even as he himself has respected similar grants made by his
predecessors on the throne; and the text ends with some very vivid curses
against any one, whatever his station, who should make any encroachments
on the privileges granted to Marduk-aplu-iddina, or should alter or do any
harm to the memorial-stone itself. The emblems of the gods whom
Melishikhu invokes to avenge any infringement of his grant are sculptured
upon one side of the stone, for, as has already been remarked, it was
believed that by carving them upon the memorial-stone their help in
guarding the stone itself and its enactments was assured.

From the portion of the text inscribed upon the stone which has just
been translated it is seen that the owner of land in Babylonia in the period
of the Kassite kings, unless he was granted special exemption, was liable to
furnish forced labour for public works to the state or to his district, to
furnish grazing and pasture for the flocks and herds of the king or governor,
and to pay various taxes and tithes on his land, his water for irrigation, and
his crops. From the numerous documents of the First Dynasty of Babylon
that have been recovered and published within the last few years we know
that similar customs were prevalent at that period, so that it is clear that the
successive conquests to which the country was subjected, and the
establishment of different dynasties of foreign kings at Babylon, did not to
any appreciable extent affect the life and customs of the inhabitants of the
country or even the general character of its government and administration.
Some documents of a commercial and legal nature, inscribed upon clay
tablets during the reigns of the Kassite kings of Babylon, have been found
at Nippur, but they have not yet been published, and the information we
possess concerning the life of the people in this period is obtained indirectly
from kudurrus or boundary-stones, such as those of Nazimaruttash and
Melishikhu which have been already described. Of documents relating to
the life of the people under the rule of the kings of the Country of the Sea
we have none, and, with the exception of the unpublished chronicle which
has been described earlier in this chapter, our information for this period is
confined to one or two short votive inscriptions. But the case is very
different with regard to the reigns of the Semitic kings of the First Dynasty
of Babylon. Thousands of tablets relating to legal and commercial
transactions during this period have been recovered, and more recently a
most valuable series of royal letters, written by Hammurabi and other kings
of his dynasty, has been brought to light.

The stele is inscribed with his great code of laws. The Sun- god is
represented as seated on a throne in the form of a temple façade, and

his feet are resting upon the mountains. Photograph by Messrs.
Mansell & Co.
Moreover, the recently discovered code of laws drawn up by
Hammurabi contains information of the greatest interest with regard to the
conditions of life that were prevalent in Babylonia at that period. From
these three sources it is possible to draw up a comparatively full account of
early Babylonian life and customs.

CHAPTER VI—EARLY BABYLONIAN LIFE
AND CUSTOMS
In tracing the ancient history of Mesopotamia and the surrounding
countries it is possible to construct a narrative which has the appearance of
being comparatively full and complete. With regard to Babylonia it may be
shown how dynasty succeeded dynasty, and for long periods together the
names of the kings have been recovered and the order of their succession
fixed with certainty. But the number and importance of the original
documents on which this connected narration is based vary enormously for
different periods. Gaps occur in our knowledge of the sequence of events,
which with some ingenuity may be bridged over by means of the native lists
of kings and the genealogies furnished by the historical inscriptions. On the
other hand, as if to make up for such parsimony, the excavations have
yielded a wealth of material for illustrating the conditions of early
Babylonian life which prevailed in such periods. The most fortunate of
these periods, so far as the recovery of its records is concerned, is
undoubtedly the period of the Semitic kings of the First Dynasty of
Babylon, and in particular the reign of its greatest ruler, Hammurabi. When
M. Maspero wrote his history, thousands of clay tablets, inscribed with
legal and commercial documents and dated in the reigns of these early
kings, had already been recovered, and the information they furnished was
duly summarized by him.[1] But since that time two other sources of
information have been made available which have largely increased our
knowledge of the constitution of the early Babylonian state, its system of
administration, and the conditions of life of the various classes of the
population.
[1] Most of these tablets are preserved in the British Museum. The principal?
works in which they have been published are Cuneiform Texts in the British
Museum (1896, etc.), Strassmaier’s Altbabylonischen Vertràge aus Warka, and
Meissner’s Beitràge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. A number of similar
tablets of this period, preserved in the Pennsylvania Museum, will shortly be
published by Dr. Ranke.

One of these new sources of information consists of a remarkable
series of royal letters, written by kings of the First Dynasty, which has been
recovered and is now preserved in the British Museum. The letters were
addressed to the governors and high officials of various great cities in
Babylonia, and they contain the king’s orders with regard to details of the
administration of the country which had been brought to his notice. The
range of subjects with which they deal is enormous, and there is scarcely
one of them which does not add to our knowledge of the period.[2] The other
new source of information is the great code of laws, drawn up by
Hammurabi for the guidance of his people and defining the duties and
privileges of all classes of his subjects, the discovery of which at Susa has
been described in a previous chapter. The laws are engraved on a great stele
of diorite in no less than forty-nine columns of writing, of which forty-four
are preserved,[3] and at the head of the stele is sculptured a representation of
the king receiving them from Shamash, the Sun-god.
[2] See King, Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, 3 vols. (1898-1900).

[3] See Scheil, Délégationen perse, Mémoires, tome iv (1902).

This code shows to what an extent the administration of law and
justice had been developed in Babylonia in the time of the First Dynasty.
From the contracts and letters of the period we already knew that regular
judges and duly appointed courts of law were in existence, and the code
itself was evidently intended by the king to give the royal sanction to a
great body of legal decisions and enactments which already possessed the
authority conferred by custom and tradition. The means by which such a
code could have come into existence are illustrated by the system of
procedure adopted in the courts at this period. After a case had been heard
and judgment had been given, a summary of the case and of the evidence,
together with the judgment, was drawn up and written out on tablets in due
legal form and phraseology. A list of the witnesses was appended, and, after
the tablet had been dated and sealed, it was stored away among the legal
archives of the court, where it was ready for production in the event of any
future appeal or case in which the recorded decision was involved. This
procedure represents an advanced stage in the system of judicial
administration, but the care which was taken for the preservation of the
judgments given was evidently traditional, and would naturally give rise in
course of time to the existence of a recognized code of laws.

Moreover, when once a judgment had been given and had been duly
recorded it was irrevocable, and if any judge attempted to alter such a
decision he was severely punished. For not only was he expelled from his
judgment-seat, and debarred from exercising judicial functions in the future,
but, if his judgment had involved the infliction of a penalty, he was obliged
to pay twelve times the amount to the man he had condemned. Such an
enactment must have occasionally given rise to hardship or injustice, but at
least it must have had the effect of imbuing the judges with a sense of their
responsibility and of instilling a respect for their decisions in the minds of
the people. A further check upon injustice was provided by the custom of
the elders of the city, who sat with the judge and assisted him in the
carrying out of his duties; and it was always open to a man, if he believed
that he could not get justice enforced, to make an appeal to the king. It is
not our present purpose to give a technical discussion of the legal contents
of the code, but rather to examine it with the object of ascertaining what
light it throws upon ancient Babylonian life and customs, and the conditions
under which the people lived.
The code gives a good deal of information with regard to the family
life of the Babylonians, and, above all, proves the sanctity with which the
marriage-tie was invested. The claims that were involved by marriage were
not lightly undertaken. Any marriage, to be legally binding, had to be
accompanied by a duly executed and attested marriage-contract. If a man
had taken a woman to wife without having carried out this necessary
preliminary, the woman was not regarded as his wife in the legal sense. On
the other hand, when once such a marriage-contract had been drawn up, its
inviolability was stringently secured. A case of proved adultery on the part
of a man’s wife was punished by the drowning of the guilty parties, though
the husband of the woman, if he wished to save his wife, could do so by an
appeal to the king. Similarly, death was the penalty for a man who ravished
another man’s betrothed wife while she was still living in her father’s
house, but in this case the girl’s innocence and inexperience were taken into
account, and no penalty was enforced against her and she was allowed to go
free. Where the adultery of a wife was not proved, and only depended on
the accusation of the husband, the woman could clear herself by swearing
her own innocence; if, however, the accusation was not brought by the
husband himself, but by others, the woman could clear herself by
submitting to the ordeal by water; that is to say, she would plunge into the

Euphrates; if the river carried her away and she were drowned, it was
regarded as proof that the accusation was well founded; if, on the contrary,
she survived and got safely to the bank, she was considered innocent and
was forthwith allowed to return to her household completely vindicated.
It will have been seen that the duty of chastity on the part of a married
woman was strictly enforced, but the husband’s responsibility to properly
maintain his wife was also recognized, and in the event of his desertion she
could under certain circumstances become the wife of another man. Thus, if
he left his city and fled from it of his own free will and deserted his wife, he
could not reclaim her on his return, since he had not been forced to leave
the city, but had done so because he hated it. This rule did not apply to the
case of a man who was taken captive in battle. In such circumstances the
wife’s action was to be guided by the condition of her husband’s affairs. If
the captive husband possessed sufficient property on which his wife could
be maintained during his captivity in a strange land, she had no reason nor
excuse for seeking another marriage. If under these circumstances she
became another man’s wife, she was to be prosecuted at law, and, her action
being the equivalent of adultery, she was to be drowned. But the case was
regarded as altered if the captive husband had not sufficient means for the
maintenance of his wife during his absence. The woman would then be
thrown on her own resources, and if she became the wife of another man
she incurred no blame. On the return of the captive he could reclaim his
wife, but the children of the second marriage would remain with their own
father. These regulations for the conduct of a woman, whose husband was
captured in battle, give an intimate picture of the manner in which the
constant wars of this early period affected the lives of those who took part
in them.
Under the Babylonians at the period of the First Dynasty divorce was
strictly regulated, though it was far easier for the man to obtain one than for
the woman. If we may regard the copies of Sumerian laws, which have
come down to us from the late Assyrian period, as parts of the code in use
under the early Sumerians, we must conclude that at this earlier period the
law was still more in favour of the husband, who could divorce his wife
whenever he so desired, merely paying her half a mana as compensation.
Under the Sumerians the wife could not obtain a divorce at all, and the
penalty for denying her husband was death. These regulations were
modified in favour of the woman in Hammurabi’s code; for under its

provisions, if a man divorced his wife or his concubine, he was obliged to
make proper provision for her maintenance. Whether she were barren or
had borne him children, he was obliged to return her marriage portion; and
in the latter case she had the custody of the children, for whose maintenance
and education he was obliged to furnish the necessary supplies. Moreover,
at the man’s death she and her children would inherit a share of his
property. When there had been no marriage portion, a sum was fixed which
the husband was obliged to pay to his divorced wife, according to his status.
In cases where the wife was proved to have wasted her household and to
have entirely failed in her duty, her husband could divorce her without
paying any compensation, or could make her a slave in his house, and the
extreme penalty for this offence was death. On the other hand, a woman
could not be divorced because she had contracted a permanent disease; and,
if she desired to divorce her husband and could prove that her past life had
been seemly, she could do so, returning to her father’s house and taking her
marriage portion with her.
It is not necessary here to go very minutely into the regulations given
by the code with regard to marriage portions, the rights of widows, the laws
of inheritance, and the laws regulating the adoption and maintenance of
children. The customs that already have been described with regard to
marriage and divorce may serve to indicate the spirit in which the code is
drawn up and the recognized status occupied by the wife in the Babylonian
household. The extremely independent position enjoyed by women in the
early Babylonian days is illustrated by the existence of a special class of
women, to which constant reference is made in the contracts and letters of
the period. When the existence of this class of women was first recognized
from the references to them in the contract-tablets inscribed at the time of
the First Dynasty, they were regarded as priestesses, but the regulations
concerning them which occur in the code of Hammurabi prove that their
duties were not strictly sacerdotal, but that they occupied the position of
votaries. The majority of those referred to in the inscriptions of this period
were vowed to the service of E-bab-bara, the temple of the Sun-god at
Sippara, and of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk at Babylon, but it is
probable that all the great temples in the country had classes of female
votaries attached to them. From the evidence at present available it may be
concluded that the functions of these women bore no resemblance to that of
the sacred prostitutes devoted to the service of the goddess Ishtar in the city

of Erech. They seem to have occupied a position of great influence and
independence in the community, and their duties and privileges were
defined and safeguarded by special legislation.
Generally they lived together in a special building, or convent,
attached to the temple, but they had considerable freedom and could leave
the convent and also contract marriage. Their vows, however, while
securing them special privileges, entailed corresponding responsibilities.
Even when married a votary was still obliged to remain a virgin, and,
should her husband desire to have children, she could not bear them herself,
but must provide him with a maid or concubine. Also she had to maintain a
high standard of moral conduct, for any breach of which severe penalties
were enforced. Thus, if a votary who was not living in the convent opened a
beer-shop, or should enter one for drink, she ran the risk of being put to
death. But the privileges she enjoyed were also considerable, for even when
unmarried she enjoyed the status of a married woman, and if any man
slandered her he incurred the penalty of branding on the forehead.
Moreover, a married votary, though she could not bear her husband
children, was secured in her position as the permanent head of his
household. The concubine she might give to her husband was always the
wife’s inferior, even after bearing him children, and should the former
attempt to put herself on a level of equality with the votary, the latter might
brand her as a slave and put her with the female slaves. If the concubine
proved barren she could be sold. The votary could also possess property,
and on taking her vows was provided with a portion by her father exactly as
though she were being given in marriage. Her portion was vested in herself
and did not become the property of the order of votaries, nor of the temple
to which she was attached. The proceeds of her property were devoted to
her own maintenance, and on her father’s death her brothers looked after
her interests, or she might farm the property out. Under certain
circumstances she could inherit property and was not obliged to pay taxes
on it, and such property she could bequeath at her own death; but upon her
death her portion returned to her own family unless her father had assigned
her the privilege of bequeathing it. That the social position enjoyed by a
votary was considerable is proved by the fact that many women of good
family, and even members of the royal house, took vows. The existence of
the order and its high repute indicate a very advanced conception of the
position of women among the early Babylonians.

From the code of Hammurabi we also gather considerable information
with regard to the various classes of which the community was composed
and to their relative social positions. For the purposes of legislation the
community was divided into three main classes or sections, which
corresponded to well-defined strata in the social system. The lowest of these
classes consisted of the slaves, who must have formed a considerable
portion of the population. The class next above them comprised the large
body of free men, who were possessed of a certain amount of property but
were poor and humble, as their name, muslikênu, implied. These we may
refer to as the middle class. The highest, or upper class, in the Babylonian
community embraced all the officers and ministers attached to the court, the
higher officials and servants of the state, and the owners of considerable
lands and estates. The differences which divided and marked off from one
another the two great classes of free men in the population of Babylonia is
well illustrated by the scale of payments as compensation for injury which
they were obliged to make or were entitled to receive. Thus, if a member of
the upper class were guilty of stealing an ox, or a sheep, or an ass, or a pig,
or a boat, from a temple or a private house, he had to pay the owner thirty
times its value as compensation, whereas if the thief were a member of the
middle class he only had to pay ten times its price, but if he had no property
and so could not pay compensation he was put to death. The penalty for
manslaughter was less if the assailant was a man of the middle class, and
such a man could also divorce his wife more cheaply, and was privileged to
pay his doctor or surgeon a smaller fee for a successful operation.
But the privileges enjoyed by a man of the middle class were
counterbalanced by a corresponding diminution of the value at which his
life and limbs were assessed. Thus, if a doctor by carrying out an operation
unskilfully caused the death of a member of the upper class, or inflicted a
serious injury upon him, such as the loss of an eye, the punishment was the
amputation of both hands, but no such penalty seems to have been exacted
if the patient were a member of the middle class. If, however, the patient
were a slave of a member of the middle class, in the event of death under
the operation, the doctor had to give the owner another slave, and in the
event of the slave losing his eye, he had to pay the owner half the slave’s
value. Penalties for assault were also regulated in accordance with the
social position and standing of the parties to the quarrel. Thus, if one
member of the upper class knocked out the eye or the tooth of one of his

equals, his own eye or his own tooth was knocked out as a punishment, and
if he broke the limb of one of the members of his own class, he had his
corresponding limb broken; but if he knocked out the eye of a member of
the middle class, or broke his limb, he suffered no punishment in his own
person, but was fined one mana of silver, and for knocking out the tooth of
such a man he was fined one-third of a mana. If two members of the same
class were engaged in a quarrel, and one of them made a peculiarly
improper assault upon the other, the assailant was only fined, the fine being
larger if the quarrel was between members of the upper class. But if such an
assault was made by one man upon another who was of higher rank than
himself, the assailant was punished by being publicly beaten in the presence
of the assembly, when he received sixty stripes from a scourge of ox-hide.
These regulations show the privileges and responsibilities which pertained
to the two classes of free men in the Babylonian community, and they
indicate the relative social positions which they enjoyed.
Both classes of free men could own slaves, though it is obvious that
they were more numerous in the households and on the estates of members
of the upper class. The slave was the absolute property of his master and
could be bought and sold and employed as a deposit for a debt, but, though
slaves as a class had few rights of their own, in certain circumstances they
could acquire them. Thus, if the owner of a female slave had begotten
children by her he could not use her as the payment for a debt, and in the
event of his having done so he was obliged to ransom her by paying the
original amount of the debt in money. It was also possible for a male slave,
whether owned by a member of the upper or of the middle class, to marry a
free woman, and if he did so, his children were free and did not become the
property of his master. Also, if the free woman whom the slave married
brought with her a marriage portion from her father’s house, this remained
her own property on the slave’s death, and supposing the couple had
acquired other property during the time they lived together as man and wife,
the owner of the slave could only claim half of such property, the other half
being retained by the free woman for her own use and for that of her
children.
Generally speaking, the lot of the slave was not a particularly hard one,
for he was a recognized member of his owner’s household, and, as a
valuable piece of property, it was obviously to his owner’s interest to keep
him healthy and in good condition. In fact, the value of the slave is attested

by the severity of the penalty imposed for abducting a male or female slave
from the owner’s house and removing him or her from the city; for a man
guilty of this offence was put to death. The same penalty was imposed for
harbouring and taking possession of a runaway slave, whereas a fixed
reward was paid by the owner to any one by whom a runaway slave was
captured and brought back. Special legislation was also devised with the
object of rendering the theft of slaves difficult and their detection easy.
Thus, if a brander put a mark upon a slave without the owner’s consent, he
was liable to have his hands cut off, and if he could prove that he did so
through being deceived by another man, that man was put to death. For bad
offences slaves were liable to severe punishments, such as cutting off the
ear, which was the penalty for denying his master, and also for making an
aggravated assault on a member of the upper class of free men. But it is
clear that on the whole the slave was well looked after. He was also not
condemned to remain perpetually a slave, for while still in his master’s
service it was possible for him, under certain conditions, to acquire property
of his own, and if he did so he was able with his master’s consent to
purchase his freedom. If a slave were captured by the enemy and taken to a
foreign land and sold, and were then brought back by his new owner to his
own country, he could claim his liberty without having to pay any purchase-
money to either of his masters.
The code of Hammurabi also contains detailed regulations concerning
the duties of debtors and creditors, and it throws an interesting light on the
commercial life of the Babylonians at this early period. For instance, it
reveals the method by which a wealthy man, or a merchant, extended his
business and obtained large profits by trading with other towns. This he did
by employing agents who were under certain fixed obligations to him, but
acted independently so far as their trading was concerned. From the
merchant these agents would receive money or grain or wool or oil or any
sort of goods wherewith to trade, and in return they paid a fixed share of
their profits, retaining the remainder as the recompense for their own
services. They were thus the earliest of commercial travellers. In order to
prevent fraud between the merchant and the agent special regulations were
framed for the dealings they had with one another. Thus, when the agent
received from the merchant the money or goods to trade with, it was
enacted that he should at the time of the transaction give a properly
executed receipt for the amount he had received. Similarly, if the agent gave

the merchant money in return for the goods he had received and in token of
his good faith, the merchant had to give a receipt to the agent, and in
reckoning their accounts after the agent’s return from his journey, only such
amounts as were specified in the receipts were to be regarded as legal
obligations. If the agent forgot to obtain his proper receipt he did so at his
own risk.

Dating from the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon.
Travelling at this period was attended with some risk, as it is in the
East at the present day, and the caravan with which an agent travelled was
liable to attack from brigands, or it might be captured by enemies of the
country from which it set out. It was right that loss from this cause should
not be borne by the agent, who by trading with the goods was risking his
own life, but should fall upon the merchant who had merely advanced the
goods and was safe in his own city. It is plain, however, that disputes

frequently arose in consequence of the loss of goods through a caravan
being attacked and robbed, for the code states clearly the responsibility of
the merchant in the matter. If in the course of his journey an enemy had
forced the agent to give up some of the goods he was carrying, on his return
the agent had to specify the amount on oath, and he was then acquitted of
all responsibility in the matter. If he attempted to cheat his employer by
misappropriating the money or goods advanced to him, on being convicted
of the offence before the elders of the city, he was obliged to repay the
merchant three times the amount he had taken. On the other hand, if the
merchant attempted to defraud his agent by denying that the due amount
had been returned to him, he was obliged on conviction to pay the agent six
times the amount as compensation. It will thus be seen that the law sought
to protect the agent from the risk of being robbed by his more powerful
employer.
The merchant sometimes furnished the agent with goods which he was
to dispose of in the best markets he could find in the cities and towns along
his route, and sometimes he would give the agent money with which to
purchase goods in foreign cities for sale on his return. If the venture proved
successful the merchant and his agent shared the profits between them, but
if the agent made bad bargains he had to refund to the merchant the value of
the goods he had received; if the merchant had not agreed to risk losing any
profit, the amount to be refunded to him was fixed at double the value of
the goods advanced.

This last enactment gives an indication of the immense profits which
were obtained by both the merchant and the agent from this system of
foreign trade, for it is clear that what was regarded fair profit for the
merchant was double the value of the goods disposed of. The profits of a
successful journey would also include a fair return to the agent for the
trouble and time involved in his undertaking. Many of the contract tablets
of this early period relate to such commercial journeys, which show that
various bargains were made between the different parties interested, and
sometimes such contracts, or partnerships, were entered into, not for a
single journey only, but for long periods. We may therefore conclude that at
the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and probably for long centuries
before that period, the great trade-routes of the East were crowded with
traffic. With the exception that donkeys and asses were employed for beasts
of burden and were not supplemented by horses and camels until a much
later period, a camping-ground in the desert on one of the great trade-routes
must have presented a scene similar to that of a caravan camping in the
desert at the present day.

The rough tracks beaten by the feet of men and beasts are the same to-
day as they were in that remote period. We can imagine a body of these
early travellers approaching a walled city at dusk and hastening their pace
to get there before the gates were shut. Such a picture as that of the
approach to the city of Samarra, with its mediaeval walls, may be taken as
having had its counterpart in many a city of the early Babylonians. The
caravan route leads through the desert to the city gate, and if we substitute
two massive temple towers for the domes of the mosques that rise above the
wall, little else in the picture need be changed.

A small caravan is here seen approaching the city at sunset before
the gates are shut. Samarra was only founded in A. D. 834, by the
Khalif el-Motasim, the son of Harûn er-Rashîd, but customs in the East
do not change, and the photograph may be used to illustrate the
approach of an early Babylonian caravan to a walled city of the period.
The houses, too, at this period must have resembled the structures of
unburnt brick of the present day, with their flat mud tops, on which the
inmates sleep at night during the hot season, supported on poles and
brushwood. The code furnishes evidence that at that time, also, the houses
were not particularly well built and were liable to fall, and, in the event of
their doing so, it very justly fixes the responsibility upon the builder. It is
clear from the penalties for bad workmanship enforced upon the builder that
considerable abuses had existed in the trade before the time of Hammurabi,
and it is not improbable that the enforcement of the penalties succeeded in
stamping them out. Thus, if a builder built a house for a man, and his work
was not sound and the house fell and crushed the owner so that he died, it
was enacted that the builder himself should be put to death. If the fall of the
house killed the owner’s son, the builder’s own son was to be put to death.

If one or more of the owner’s slaves were killed, the builder had to
restore him slave for slave. Any damage which the owner’s goods might
have suffered from the fall of the house was to be made good by the builder.
In addition to these penalties the builder was obliged to rebuild the house,
or any portion of it that had fallen through not being properly secured, at his
own cost. On the other hand, due provisions were made for the payment of
the builder for sound work; and as the houses of the period rarely, if ever,

consisted of more than one story, the scale of payment was fixed by the area
of ground covered by the building.

Situated on the right bank of the Tigris opposite the mounds which
mark the site of the ancient city of Nineveh. The flat-roof ednouses
which may be distinguished in the photograph are very similar in form
and construction to those employed by the ancient Assyrians and
Babylonians.
From the code of Hammurabi we also gain considerable information
with regard to agricultural pursuits in ancient Babylonia, for elaborate
regulations are given concerning the landowner’s duties and
responsibilities, and his relations to his tenants. The usual practice in hiring
land for cultivation was for the tenant to pay his rent in kind, by assigning a
certain proportion of the crop, generally a third or a half, to the owner. If a
tenant hired certain land for cultivation he was bound to till it and raise a
crop, and should he neglect to do so he had to pay the owner what was
reckoned as the average rent of the land, and he had also to break up the
land and plough it before handing it back. As the rent of a field was usually
reckoned at harvest, and its amount depended on the size of the crop, it was
only fair that damage to the crop from flood or storm should not be made up
by the tenant; thus it was enacted by the code that any loss from such a
cause should be shared equally by the owner of the field and the farmer,

though if the latter had already paid his rent at the time the damage
occurred he could not make a claim for repayment.

Built on one of the mounds marking the site of the Assyrian city of
Nineveh. The mosque in the photograph is built over the traditional site
of the prophet Jonah’s tomb. The flat- roofed houses of the modern
dwellers on the mound can be well seen in the picture.
It is clear from the enactments of the code that disputes were frequent,
not only between farmers and landowners, but also between farmers and
shepherds. It is certain that the latter, in the attempt to find pasture for the
flocks, often allowed their sheep to feed off the farmers’ fields in the spring.
This practice the code set itself to prevent by fixing a scale of compensation
to be paid by any shepherd who caused his sheep to graze on cultivated land
without the owner’s consent. If the offence was committed in the early
spring, when the crop was still small, the farmer was to harvest the crop and
receive a considerable price in kind as compensation for the shepherd. But
if it occurred later on in the spring, when the sheep had been brought in
from the meadows and turned into the great common field at the city gate,
the offence would less probably be due to accident and the damage to the
crop would be greater. In these circumstances the shepherd had to take over
the crop and pay the farmer very heavily for his loss.

From a stone slab in the British Museum.
The planting of gardens and orchards was encouraged, and a man was
allowed to use a field for this purpose without paying a yearly rent. He
might plant it and tend it for four years, and in the fifth year of his tenancy
the original owner of the field took half of the garden in payment, while the
other half the planter of the garden kept for himself. If a bare patch had

been left in the garden it was to be reckoned in the planter’s half.
Regulations were framed to ensure the proper carrying out of the planting,
for if the tenant neglected to do this during the first four years, he was still
liable to plant the plot he had taken without receiving his half, and he had to
pay the owner compensation in addition, which varied in amount according
to the original condition of the land. If a man hired a garden, the rent he
paid to the owner was fixed at two-thirds of its produce. Detailed
regulations are also given in the code concerning the hire of cattle and
asses, and the compensation to be paid to the owner for the loss or ill-
treatment of his beasts. These are framed on the just principle that the hirer
was responsible only for damage or loss which he could have reasonably
prevented. Thus, if a lion killed a hired ox or ass in the open country, or if
an ox was killed by lightning, the loss fell upon the owner and not on the
man who hired the beast. But if the hirer killed the ox through carelessness
or by beating it unmercifully, or if the beast broke its leg while in his
charge, he had to restore another ox to the owner in place of the one he had
hired. For lesser damages to the beast the hirer had to pay compensation on
a fixed scale. Thus, if the ox had its eye knocked out during the period of its
hire, the man who hired it had to pay to the owner half its value; while for a
broken horn, the loss of the tail, or a torn muzzle, he paid a quarter of the
value of the beast.
Fines were also levied for carelessness in looking after cattle, though
in cases of damage or injury, where carelessness could not be proved, the
owner of a beast was not held responsible. A bull might go wild at any time
and gore a man, however careful and conscientious the owner might be, and
in these circumstances the injured man could not bring an action against the
owner. But if a bull had already gored a man, and, although it was known to
be vicious, the owner had not blunted its horns or shut it up, in the event of
its goring and killing a free man, he had to pay half a mana of silver. One-
third of a mana was the price paid for a slave who was killed. A landed
proprietor who might hire farmers to cultivate his fields inflicted severe
fines for acts of dishonesty with regard to the cattle, provender, or seed-corn
committed to their charge. If a man stole the provender for the cattle he had
to make it good, and he was also liable to the punishment of having his
hands cut off. In the event of his being convicted of letting out the oxen for
hire, or stealing the seed-corn so that he did not produce a crop, he had to

pay very heavy compensation, and, if he could not pay, he was liable to be
torn to pieces by the oxen in the field he should have cultivated.
In a dry land like Babylonia, where little rain falls and that in only one
season of the year, the irrigation of his fields forms one of the most
important duties of the agriculturist. The farmer leads the water to his fields
along small irrigation-canals or channels above the level of the soil, their
sides being formed of banks of earth. It is clear that similar methods were
employed by the early Babylonians. One such channel might supply the
fields of several farmers, and it was the duty of each man through whose
land the channel flowed to keep its banks on his land in repair. If he omitted
to strengthen his bank or dyke, and the water forced a breach and flooded
his neighbour’s field, he had to pay compensation in kind for any crop that
was ruined; while if he could not pay, he and his goods were sold, and his
neighbours, whose fields had been damaged through his carelessness,
shared the money.
The land of Babylonian farmers was prepared for irrigation before it
was sown by being divided into a number of small square or oblong tracts,
each separated from the others by a low bank of earth, the seed being
afterwards sown within the small squares or patches. Some of the banks
running lengthwise through the field were made into small channels, the
ends of which were carried up to the bank of the nearest main irrigation
canal. No system of gates or sluices was employed, and when the farmer
wished to water one of his fields he simply broke away the bank opposite
one of his small channels and let the water flow into it. He would let the
water run along this small channel until it reached the part of his land he
wished to water. He then blocked the channel with a little earth, at the same
time breaking down its bank so that the water flowed over one of the small
squares and thoroughly soaked it. When this square was finished he filled
up the bank and repeated the process for the next square, and so on until he
had watered the necessary portion of the field. When this was finished he
returned to the main channel and stopped the flow of the water by blocking
up the hole he had made in the dyke. The whole process was, and to-day
still is, extremely simple, but it needs care and vigilance, especially in the
case of extensive irrigation when water is being carried into several parts of
an estate at once. It will be obvious that any carelessness on the part of the
irrigator in not shutting off the water in time may lead to extensive damage,
not only to his own fields, but to those of his neighbours. In the early

Babylonian period, if a farmer left the water running in his channel, and it
flooded his neighbour’s field and hurt his crop, he had to pay compensation
according to the amount of damage done.
It was stated above that the irrigation-canals and little channels were
made above the level of the soil so that the water could at any point be
tapped and allowed to flow over the surrounding land; and in a flat country
like Babylonia it will be obvious that some means had to be employed for
raising the water from its natural level to the higher level of the land. As we
should expect, reference is made in the Babylonian inscriptions to
irrigation-machines, and, although their exact form and construction are not
described, they must have been very similar to those employed at the
present day. The modern inhabitants of Mesopotamia employ four sorts of
contrivances for raising the water into their irrigation-channels; three of
these are quite primitive, and are those most commonly employed. The
method which gives the least trouble and which is used wherever the
conditions allow is a primitive form of water-wheel. This can be used only
in a river with a good current. The wheel is formed of rough boughs and
branches nailed together, with spokes joining the outer rims to a roughly
hewn axle. A row of rough earthenware cups or bottles are tied round the
outer rim for picking up the water, and a few rough paddles are fixed so that
they stick out beyond the rim. The wheel is then fixed in place near the
bank of the river, its axle resting in pillars of rough masonry.

As the current turns the wheel, the bottles on the rim dip below the
surface and are raised up full. At the top of the wheel is fixed a trough made

by hollowing half the trunk of a date-palm, and into this the bottles pour
their water, which is conducted from the trough by means of a small
aqueduct into the irrigation-channel on the bank.
The convenience of the water-wheel will be obvious, for the water is
raised without the labour of man or beast, and a constant supply is secured
day and night so long as the current is strong enough to turn the wheel. The
water can be cut off by blocking the wheel or tying it up. These wheels are
most common on the Euphrates, and are usually set up where there is a
slight drop in the river bed and the water runs swiftly over shallows. As the
banks are very high, the wheels are necessarily huge contrivances in order
to reach the level of the fields, and their very rough construction causes
them to creak and groan as they turn with the current. In a convenient place
in the river several of these are sometimes set up side by side, and the noise
of their combined creakings can be heard from a great distance. Some idea
of what one of these machines looks like can be obtained from the
illustration. At Hit on the Euphrates a line of gigantic water-wheels is built
across the river, and the noise they make is extraordinary.
Where there is no current to turn one of these wheels, or where the
bank is too high, the water must be raised by the labour of man or beast.
The commonest method, which is the one employed generally on the Tigris,
is to raise it in skins, which are drawn up by horses, donkeys, or cattle. A
recess with perpendicular sides is cut into the bank, and a wooden spindle
on wooden struts is supported horizontally over the recess. A rope running
over the spindle is fastened to the skin, while the funnel end of the skin is
held up by a second rope, running over a lower spindle, until its mouth is
opposite the trough into which the water is to be poured. The beasts which
are employed for raising the skin are fastened to the ends of the ropes, and
they get a good purchase for their pull by being driven down a short cutting
or inclined plane in the bank. To get a constant flow of water, two skins are
usually employed, and as one is drawn up full the other is let down empty.
The third primitive method of raising water, which is commoner in
Egypt than in Mesopotamia at the present day, is the shadduf, and is worked
by hand. It consists of a beam supported in the centre, at one end of which
is tied a rope with a bucket or vessel for raising the water, and at the other
end is fixed a counterweight.[4] On an Assyrian bas-relief found at Kuyunjik
are representations of the shadduf in operation, two of them being used, the

one above the other, to raise the water to successive levels. These were
probably the contrivances usually employed by the early Babylonians for
raising the water to the level of their fields, and the fact that they were light
and easily removed must have made them tempting objects to the dishonest
farmer. Hammurabi therefore fixed a scale of compensation to be paid to
the owner by a detected thief, which varied according to the class and value
of the machine he stole. The rivers and larger canals of Babylonia were
used by the ancient inhabitants not only for the irrigation of their fields, but
also as waterways for the transport of heavy materials. The recently
published letters of Hammurabi and Abêshu’ contain directions for the
transportation of corn, dates, sesame seed, and wood, which were ordered to
be brought in ships to Babylon, and the code of Hammurabi refers to the
transportation by water of wool and oil. It is therefore clear that at this
period considerable use was made of vessels of different size for conveying
supplies in bulk by water. The method by which the size of such ships and
barges was reckoned was based on the amount of grain they were capable
of carrying, and this was measured by the gur, the largest measure of
capacity. Thus mention is made in the inscriptions of vessels of five, ten,
fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, and seventy-five gur capacity. A
boat-builder’s fee for building a vessel of sixty gur was fixed at two shekels
of silver, and it was proportionately less for boats of smaller capacity. To
ensure that the boat-builder should not scamp his work, regulations were
drawn up to fix on him the responsibility for unsound work. Thus if a boat-
builder were employed to build a vessel, and he put faulty work into its
construction so that it developed defects within a year of its being launched,
he was obliged to strengthen and rebuild it at his own expense.
[4] The fourth class of machine for raising water employed in Mesopotamia at
the present day consists of an endless chain of iron buckets running over a
wheel. This is geared by means of rough wooden cogs to a horizontal wheel, the
spindle of which has long poles fixed to it, to which horses or cattle are
harnessed. The beasts go round in a circle and so turn the machine. The
contrivance is not so primitive as the three described above, and the iron buckets
are of European importation.

The hire of a boatman was fixed at six gur of corn to be paid him
yearly, but it is clear that some of the larger vessels carried crews
commanded by a chief boatman, or captain, whose pay was probably on a
larger scale. If a man let his boat to a boatman, the latter was responsible for
losing or sinking it, and he had to replace it. A boatman was also

responsible for the safety of his vessel and of any goods, such as corn,
wool, oil, or dates, which he had been hired to transport, and if they were
sunk through his carelessness he had to make good the loss. If he succeeded
in refloating the boat after it had been sunk, he was only under obligation to
pay the owner half its value in compensation for the damage it had
sustained. In the case of a collision between two vessels, if one was at
anchor at the time, the owner of the other vessel had to pay compensation
for the boat that was sunk and its cargo, the owner of the latter estimating
on oath the value of what had been sunk. Boats were also employed as
ferries, and they must have resembled the primitive form of ferry-boat in
use at the present day, which is heavily built of huge timbers, and employed
for transporting beasts as well as men across a river.

Employed for ferrying caravans across the river.
There is evidence that under the Assyrians rafts floated on inflated
skins were employed for the transport of heavy goods, and these have
survived in the keleks of the present day. They are specially adapted for the
transportation of heavy materials, for they are carried down by the current,
and are kept in the course by means of huge sweeps or oars. Being formed
only of logs of wood and skins, they are not costly, for wood is plentiful in

the upper reaches of the rivers. At the end of their journey, after the goods
are landed, they are broken up. The wood is sold at a profit, and the skins,
after being deflated, are packed on to donkeys to return by caravan.

It is not improbable that such rafts were employed on the Tigris and
the Euphrates from the earliest periods of Chaldæan history, though boats
would have been used on the canals and more sluggish waterways.
In the preceding pages we have given a sketch of the more striking
aspects of early Babylonian life, on which light has been thrown by recently
discovered documents belonging to the period of the First Dynasty of
Babylon. We have seen that, in the code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi,
regulations were framed for settling disputes and fixing responsibilities
under almost every condition and circumstance which might arise among
the inhabitants of the country at that time; and the question naturally arises
as to how far the code of laws was in actual operation.
It is conceivable that the king may have held admirable convictions,
but have been possessed of little power to carry them out and to see that his
regulations were enforced. Luckily, we have not to depend on conjecture for
settling the question, for Hammurabi’s own letters which are now preserved
in the British Museum afford abundant evidence of the active control which
the king exercised over every department of his administration and in every
province of his empire. In the earlier periods of history, when each city
lived independently of its neighbours and had its own system of
government, the need for close and frequent communication between them
was not pressing, but this became apparent as soon as they were welded

together and formed parts of an
extended empire. Thus in the time of
Sargon of Agade, about 3800 B.C.,
an extensive system of royal
convoys was established between the
principal cities. At Telloh the late M.
de Sarzec came across numbers of
lumps of clay bearing the seal
impressions of Sargon and of his son
Narâm-Sin, which had been used as
seals and labels upon packages sent
from Agade to Shirpurla. In the time of Dungi, King of Ur, there was a
constant interchange of officials between the various cities of Babylonia
and Elam, and during the more recent diggings at Telloh there have been
found vouchers for the supply of food for their sustenance when stopping at
Shirpurla in the course of their journeys. In the case of Hammurabi we have
recovered some of the actual letters sent by the king himself to Sin-idinnam,
his local governor in the city of Larsam, and from them we gain
considerable insight into the principles which guided him in the
administration of his empire.
The letters themselves, in their general characteristics, resembled the
contract tablets of the period which have been already described. They were
written on small clay tablets oblong in shape, and as they were only three or
four inches long they could easily be carried about the person of the
messenger into whose charge they were delivered. After the tablet was
written it was enclosed in a thin envelope of clay, having been first
powdered with dry clay to prevent its sticking to the envelope. The name of
the person for whom the letter was intended was written on the outside of
the envelope, and both it and the tablet were baked hard to ensure that they
should not be broken on their travels. The recipient of the letter, on its being
delivered to him, broke the outer envelope by tapping it sharply, and it then
fell away in pieces, leaving the letter and its message exposed. The
envelopes were very similar to those in which the contract tablets of the
period were enclosed, of which illustrations have already been given, their
only difference being that the text of the tablet was not repeated on the
envelope, as was the case with the former class of documents.

The royal letters that have been recovered throw little light on military
affairs and the prosecution of campaigns, for, being addressed to governors
of cities and civil officials, most of them deal with matters affecting the
internal administration of the empire. One letter indeed contains directions
concerning the movements of two hundred and forty soldiers of “the King’s
Company” who had been stationed in Assyria, and another letter mentions
certain troops who were quartered in the city of Ur. A third deals with the
supply of clothing and oil for a section of the Babylonian army, and troops
are also mentioned as having formed the escort for certain goddesses
captured from the Elamites; while directions are sent to others engaged in a
campaign upon the Elamite frontier. The letter which contains directions for
the safe escort of the captured Elamite goddesses, and the one ordering the
return of these same goddesses to their own shrines, show that foreign
deities, even when captured from an enemy, were treated by the
Babylonians with the same respect and reverence that was shown by them
to their own gods and goddesses. Hammurabi gave directions in the first
letter for the conveyance of the goddesses to Babylon with all due pomp
and ceremony, sheep being supplied for sacrifice upon the journey, and their
usual rites being performed by their own temple-women and priestesses.
The king’s voluntary restoration of the goddesses to their own country may
have been due to the fact that, after their transference to Babylon, the army
of the Babylonians suffered defeat in Elam. This misfortune would
naturally have been ascribed by the king and the priests to the anger of the
Elamite goddesses at being detained in a foreign land, and Hammurabi
probably arrived at his decision that they should be escorted back in the
hope of once more securing victory for the Babylonian arms.
The care which the king exercised for the due worship of his own gods
and the proper supply of their temples is well illustrated from the letters that
have been recovered, for he superintended the collection of the temple
revenues, and the herdsmen and shepherds attached to the service of the
gods sent their reports directly to him. He also took care that the
observances of religious rites and ceremonies were duly carried out, and on
one occasion he postponed the hearing of a lawsuit concerning the title to
certain property which was in dispute, as it would have interfered with the
proper observance of a festival in the city of Ur. The plaintiff in the suit was
the chief of the temple bakers, and it was his duty to superintend the
preparation of certain offerings for the occasion. In order that he should not

have to leave his duties, the king put off the hearing of the case until after
the festival had been duly celebrated. The king also exercised a strict
control over the priests themselves, and received reports from the chief
priests concerning their own subordinates, and it is probable that the royal
sanction was obtained for all the principal appointments. The guild of
soothsayers was an important religious class at this time, and they also were
under the king’s direct control. A letter written by Ammiditana, one of the
later kings of the First Dynasty, to three high officials of the city of Sippar,
contains directions with regard to certain duties to be carried out by the
soothsayers attached to the service of the city, and indicates the nature of
their functions. Ammiditana wrote to the officials in question, stating that
there was a scarcity of corn in the city of Shagga, and he therefore ordered
them to send a supply thither. But before the corn was brought into the city
they were told to consult the soothsayers, who were to divine the future and
ascertain whether the omens were favourable. If they proved to be so, the
corn was to be brought in. We may conjecture that the king took this
precaution, as he feared the scarcity of corn in Shagga was due to the anger
of some local deity or spirit, and that, if this were the case, the bringing in
of the corn would only lead to fresh troubles. This danger it was the duty of
the soothsayers to prevent.
Another class of the priesthood, which we may infer was under the
king’s direct control, was the astrologers, whose duty it probably was to
make reports to the king of the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, with a
view to ascertaining whether they portended good or evil to the state. No
astrological reports written in this early period have been recovered, but at a
later period under the Assyrian empire the astrologers reported regularly to
the king on such matters, and it is probable that the practice was one long
established. One of Hammurabi’s letters proves that the king regulated the
calendar, and it is legitimate to suppose that he sought the advice of his
astrologers as to the times when intercalary months were to be inserted. The
letter dealing with the calendar was written to inform Sin-idinnam, the
governor of Larsam, that an intercalary month was to be inserted. “Since
the year (i.e. the calendar) hath a deficiency,” he writes, “let the month
which is now beginning be registered as a second Elul,” and the king adds
that this insertion of an extra month will not justify any postponement in the
payment of the regular tribute due from the city of Larsam, which had to be
paid a month earlier than usual to make up for the month that was inserted.

The intercalation of additional months was due to the fact that the
Babylonian months were lunar, so that the calendar had to be corrected at
intervals to make it correspond to the solar year.
From the description already given of the code of laws drawn up by
Hammurabi it will have been seen that the king attempted to incorporate
and arrange a set of regulations which should settle any dispute likely to
arise with regard to the duties and privileges of all classes of his subjects.
That this code was not a dead letter, but was actively administered, is
abundantly proved by many of the letters of Hammurabi which have been
recovered. From these we learn that the king took a very active part in the
administration of justice in the country, and that he exercised a strict
supervision, not only over the cases decided in the capital, but also over
those which were tried in the other great cities and towns of Babylonia. Any
private citizen was entitled to make a direct appeal to the king for justice, if
he thought he could not obtain it in his local court, and it is clear from
Hammurabi’s letters that he always listened to such an appeal and gave it
adequate consideration. The king was anxious to stamp out all corruption on
the part of those who were invested with authority, and he had no mercy on
any of his officers who were convicted of taking bribes. On one occasion
when he had been informed of a case of bribery in the city of Dûr-gurgurri,
he at once ordered the governor of the district in which Dûr-gurgurri lay to
investigate the charge and send to Babylon those who were proved to be
guilty, that they might be punished. He also ordered that the bribe should be
confiscated and despatched to Babylon under seal, a wise provision which
must have tended to discourage those who were inclined to tamper with the
course of justice, while at the same time it enriched the state. It is probable
that the king tried all cases of appeal in person when it was possible to do
so. But if the litigants lived at a considerable distance from Babylon, he
gave directions to his local officials on the spot to try the case. When he
was convinced of the justice of any claim, he would decide the case himself
and send instructions to the local authorities to see that his decision was
duly carried out. It is certain that many disputes arose at this period in
consequence of the extortions of money-lenders. These men frequently laid
claim in a fraudulent manner to fields and estates which they had received
in pledge as security for seed-corn advanced by them. In cases where fraud
was proved Hammurabi had no mercy, and summoned the money-lender to

Babylon to receive punishment, however wealthy and powerful he might
be.
A subject frequently referred to in Hammurabi’s letters is the
collection of revenues, and it is clear that an elaborate system was in force
throughout the country for the levying and payment of tribute to the state by
the principal cities of Babylonia, as well as for the collection of rent and
revenue from the royal estates and from the lands which were set apart for
the supply of the great temples. Collectors of both secular and religious
tribute sent reports directly to the king, and if there was any deficit in the
supply which was expected from a collector he had to make it up himself;
but the king was always ready to listen to and investigate a complaint and to
enforce the payment of tribute or taxes so that the loss should not fall upon
the collector. Thus, in one of his letters Hammurabi informs the governor of
Larsam that a collector named Sheb-Sin had reported to him, saying
“Enubi-Marduk hath laid hands upon the money for the temple of Bît-il-
kittim (i.e. the great temple of the Sun-god at Larsam) which is due from
the city of Dûr-gurgurri and from the (region round about the) Tigris, and he
hath not rendered the full sum; and Gimil-Marduk hath laid hands upon the
money for the temple of Bît-il-kittim which is due from the city.of Rakhabu
and from the region round about that city, and he hath not (paid) the full
amount. But the palace hath exacted the full sum from me.” It is probable
that both Enubi-Marduk and Gimil-Marduk were money-lenders, for we
know from another letter that the former had laid claim to certain property
on which he had held a mortgage, although the mortgage had been
redeemed. In the present case they had probably lent money or seed-corn to
certain cultivators of land near Dûr-gurgurri and Rakhabu and along the
Tigris, and in settlement of their claims they had seized the crops and had,
moreover, refused to pay to the king’s officer the proportion of the crops
that was due to the state as taxes upon the land. The governor of Larsam,
the principal city in the district, had rightly, as the representative of the
palace (i.e. the king), caused the tax-collector to make up the deficiency, but
Hammurabi, on receiving the subordinate officer’s complaint, referred the
matter back to the governor. The end of the letter is wanting, but we may
infer that Hammurabi condemned the defaulting money-lenders to pay the
taxes due, and fined them in addition, or ordered them to be sent to the
capital for punishment.

On another occasion Sheb-Sin himself and a second tax-collector
named Sin-mushtal appear to have been in fault and to have evaded coming
to Babylon when summoned thither by the king. It had been their duty to
collect large quantities of sesame seed as well as taxes paid in money. When
first summoned, they had made the excuse that it was the time of harvest
and they would come after the harvest was over. But as they did not then
make their appearance, Hammurabi wrote an urgent letter insisting that they
should be despatched with the full amount of the taxes due, in the company
of a trustworthy officer who would see that they duly arrived at the capital.
Tribute on flocks and herds was also levied by the king, and collectors
or assessors of the revenue were stationed in each district, whose duty it
was to report any deficit in the revenue accounts. The owners of flocks and
herds were bound to bring the young cattle and lambs that were due as
tribute to the central city of the district in which they dwelt, and they were
then collected into large bodies and added to the royal flocks and herds; but,
if the owners attempted to hold back any that were due as tribute, they were
afterwards forced to incur the extra expense and trouble of driving the
beasts to Babylon. The flocks and herds owned by the king and the great
temples were probably enormous, and yielded a considerable revenue in
themselves apart from the tribute and taxes due from private owners.
Shepherds and herdsmen were placed in charge of them, and they were
divided into groups under chief shepherds, who arranged the districts in
which the herds and flocks were to be grazed, distributing them when
possible along the banks and in the neighbourhood of rivers and canals
which would afford good pasturage and a plentiful supply of water. The
king received reports from the chief shepherds and herdsmen, and it was the
duty of the governors of the chief cities and districts of Babylonia to make
tours of inspection and see that due care was taken of the royal flocks and
sheep. The sheep-shearing for all the flocks that were pastured near the
capital took place in Babylon, and the king used to send out summonses to
his chief shepherds to inform them of the day when the shearing would take
place; and it is probable that the governors of the other great cities sent out
similar orders to the shepherds of flocks under their charge. Royal and
priestly flocks were often under the same chief officer, a fact which shows
the very strict control the king exercised over the temple revenues.
The interests of the agricultural population were strictly looked after
by the king, who secured a proper supply of water for purposes of irrigation

by seeing that the canals and waterways were kept in a proper state of repair
and cleaned out at regular intervals. There is also evidence that nearly every
king of the First Dynasty of Babylon cut new canals, and extended the
system of irrigation and transportation which had been handed down to him
from his fathers. The draining of the marshes and the proper repair of the
canals could only be carried out by careful and continuous supervision, and
it was the duty of the local governors to see that the inhabitants of villages
and owners of land situated on the banks of a canal should keep it in proper
order. When this duty had been neglected complaints were often sent to the
king, who gave orders to the local governor to remedy the defect. Thus on
one occasion it had been ordered that a canal at Erech which had silted up
should be deepened, but the dredging had not been carried out thoroughly,
so that the bed of the canal soon silted up again and boats were prevented
from entering the city. In these circumstances Hammurabi gave pressing
orders that the obstruction was to be removed and the canal made navigable
within three days.
Damage was often done to the banks of canals by floods which
followed the winter rains, and a letter of Abêshu’ gives an interesting
account of a sudden rise of the water in the Irnina canal so that it
overflowed its banks. The king was building a palace at the city of Kâr-
Irnina, which was supplied by the Irnina canal, and every year it was
possible to put so much work into the building. But one year, when little
more than a third of the year’s work was done, the building operations were
stopped by flood, the canal having overflowed its banks so that the water
rose right up to the wall of the town. In return for the duty of keeping the
canals in order, the villagers along the banks had the privilege of fishing in
its waters in the portion which was in their charge, and any poaching by
other villagers in this part of the stream was strictly forbidden. On one
occasion, in the reign of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi’s son and successor, the
fishermen of the district of Rabim went down in their boats to the district of
Shakanim and caught fish there contrary to the law. So the inhabitants of
Shakanim complained of this poaching to the king, who sent a palace
official to the authorities of Sippar, near which city the districts in question
lay, with orders to inquire into the matter and take steps to prevent all such
poaching for the future.
The regulation of transportation on the canals was also under the royal
jurisdiction. The method of reckoning the size of ships has already been

described, and there is evidence that the king possessed numerous vessels
of all sizes for the carrying of grain, wool, and dates, as well as for the
wood and stone employed in his building operations. Each ship seems to
have had its own crew, under the command of a captain, and it is probable
that officials who regulated the transportation from the centres where they
were stationed were placed in charge of separate sections of the rivers and
of the canals.
It is obvious, from the account that has been given of the numerous
operations directly controlled and superintended by the king, that he had
need of a very large body of officials, by whose means he was enabled to
carry out successfully the administration of the country. In the course of the
account we have made mention of the judges and judicial officers, the
assessors and collectors of revenue, and the officials of the palace who were
under the king’s direct orders. It is also obvious that different classes of
officers were in charge of all the departments of the administration. Two
classes of officials, who were placed in charge of the public works and
looked after and controlled the public slaves, and probably also had a good
deal to do with the collection of the revenue, had special privileges assigned
to them, and special legislation was drawn up to protect them in the
enjoyment of the same. As payment for their duties they were each granted
land with a house and garden, they were assigned the use of certain sheep
and cattle with which to stock their land, and in addition they received a
regular salary. They were in a sense personal retainers of the king and were
liable to be sent at any moment on a special mission to carry out the king’s
commands. Disobedience was severely punished; for, if such an officer,
when detailed for a special mission, did not go but hired a substitute, he was
liable to be put to death and the substitute he had hired could take his office.
Sometimes an officer was sent for long periods some distance from his
home to take charge of a garrison, and when this was done his home duties
were performed by another man, who temporarily occupied his house and
land, but gave it back to the officer on his return. If such an officer had a
son old enough to perform his duty in his father’s absence, he was allowed
to do so and to till his father’s lands; but if the son was too young, the
substitute who took the officer’s place had to pay one-third of the produce
of the land to the child’s mother for his education. Before departing on his
journey to the garrison it was the officer’s duty to arrange for the proper
cultivation of his land and the discharge of his local duties during his

absence. If he omitted to do so and left his land and duties neglected for
more than a year, and another had meanwhile taken his place, on his return
he could not reclaim his land and office. It will be obvious, therefore, that
his position was a specially favoured one and much sought after, and these
regulations ensured that the duties attaching to the office were not
neglected.
In the course of his garrison duty or when on special service, these
officers ran some risk of being captured by the enemy, and in that event
regulations were drawn up for their ransom. If the captured officer was
wealthy and could pay for his own ransom, he was bound to do so, but if he
had not the necessary means his ransom was to be paid out of the local
temple treasury, and, when the funds in the temple treasury did not suffice,
he was to be ransomed by the state. It was specially enacted that his land
and garden and house were in no case to be sold in order to pay for his
ransom. These were inalienably attached to the office which he held, and he
was not allowed to sell them or the sheep and cattle with which they were
stocked. Moreover, he was not allowed to bequeath any of this property to
his wife or daughter, so that his office would appear to have been hereditary
and the property attached to it to have been entailed on his son if he
succeeded him. Such succession would not, of course, have taken place if
the officer by his own neglect or disobedience had forfeited his office and
its privileges during his lifetime.
It has been suggested with considerable probability that these officials
were originally personal retainers and follows of Sumu-abu, the founder of
the First Dynasty of Babylon. They were probably assigned lands
throughout the country in return for their services to the king, and their
special duties were to preserve order and uphold the authority of their
master. In the course of time their duties were no doubt modified, but they
retained their privileges and they must have continued to be a very valuable
body of officers, on whose personal loyalty the king could always rely. In
the preceding chapter we have already seen how grants of considerable
estates were made by the Kassite kings of the Third Dynasty to followers
who had rendered conspicuous services, and at the same time they received
the privilege of holding such lands free of all liability to forced labour and
the payment of tithes and taxes. We may conclude that the class of royal
officers under the kings of the First Dynasty had a similar origin.

In the present chapter, from information recently made available, we
have given some account of the system of administration adopted by the
early kings of Babylon, and we have described in some detail the various
classes of the Babylonian population, their occupations, and the conditions
under which they lived. In the two preceding chapters we have dealt with
the political history of Western Asia from the very earliest period of the
Sumerian city-states down to the time of the Kassite kings. In the course of
this account we have seen how Mesopotamia in the dawn of history was in
the sole possession of the Sumerian race and how afterwards it fell in turn
under the dominion of the Semites and the kings of Elam. The immigration
of fresh Semitic tribes at the end of the third millennium before Christ
resulted in the establishment in Babylon of the Semitic kings who are
known as First Dynasty kings; and under the sway of Hammurabi, the
greatest of this group of kings, the empire thus established in Western Asia
had every appearance of permanence. Although Elam no longer troubled
Babylon, a great danger arose from a new and unexpected quarter. In the
Country of the Sea—which comprised the districts in the extreme south of
Babylonia on the shores of the Persian Gulf—the Sumerians had rallied
their forces, and they now declared themselves independent of Babylonian
control. A period of conflict followed between the kings of the First
Dynasty and the kings of the Country of the Sea, in which the latter more
than held their own; and, when the Hittite tribes of Syria invaded Northern
Babylonia in the reign of Samsu-ditana, Babylon’s power of resistance was
so far weakened that she fell an easy prey to the rulers of the Country of the
Sea. But the reappearance of the Sumerians in the rôle of leading race in
Western Asia was destined not to last long, and was little more than the last
flicker of vitality exhibited by this ancient and exhausted race. Thus the
Second Dynasty fell in its turn before the onslaught of the Kassite tribes
who descended from the mountainous districts in the west of Elam, and,
having overrun the whole of Mesopotamia, established a new dynasty at
Babylon, and adopted Babylonian civilization.
With the advent of the Kassite kings a new chapter opens in the history
of Western Asia. Up to that time Egypt and Babylon, the two chief centres
of ancient civilization, had no doubt indirectly influenced one another, but
they had not come into actual contact. During the period of the Kassite
kings both Babylon and Assyria established direct relations with Egypt, and
from that time forward the influence they exerted upon one another was

continuous and unbroken. We have already traced the history of Babylon up
to this point in the light of recent discoveries, and a similar task awaits us
with regard to Assyria. Before we enter into a discussion of Assyria’s origin
and early history in the light of recent excavation and research, it is
necessary that we should return once more to Egypt, and describe the
course of her history from the period when Thebes succeeded in displacing
Memphis as the capital city.

CHAPTER VII—TEMPLES AND TOMBS OF
THEBES
We have seen that it was in the Theban period that Egypt emerged
from her isolation, and for the first time came into contact with Western
Asia. This grand turning-point in Egyptian history seemed to be the
appropriate place at which to pause in the description of our latest
knowledge of Egyptian history, in order to make known the results of
archaeological discovery in Mesopotamia and Western Asia generally. The
description has been carried down past the point of convergence of the two
originally isolated paths of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, and what
new information the latest discoveries have communicated to us on this
subject has been told in the preceding chapters. We now have to retrace our
steps to the point where we left Egyptian history and resume the thread of
our Egyptian narrative.
The Hyksos conquest and the rise of Thebes are practically
contemporaneous. The conquest took place perhaps three or four hundred
years after the first advancement of Thebes to the position of capital of
Egypt, but it must be remembered that this position was not retained during
the time of the XIIth Dynasty. The kings of that dynasty, though they were
Thebans, did not reign at Thebes. Their royal city was in the North, in the
neighbourhood of Lisht and Mêdûm, where their pyramids were erected,
and their chief care was for the lake province of the Fayyûm, which was
largely the creation of Amenemhat III, the Moeris of the Greeks. It was not
till Thebes became the focus of the national resistance to the Hyksos that its
period of greatness began. Henceforward it was the undisputed capital of
Egypt, enlarged and embellished by the care and munificence of a hundred
kings, enriched by the tribute of a hundred conquered nations.
But were we to confine ourselves to the consideration only of the latest
discoveries of Theban greatness after the expulsion of the Hyksos, we
should be omitting much that is of interest and importance. For the
Egyptians the first grand climacteric in their history (after the foundation of
the monarchy) was the transference of the royal power from Memphis and

Herakleopolis to a Theban house. The second, which followed soon after,
was the Hyksos invasion. The two are closely connected in Theban history;
it is Thebes that defeated Herakleopolis and conquered Memphis; it is
Theban power that was overthrown by the Hyksos; it is Thebes that
expelled them and initiated the second great period of Egyptian history. We
therefore resume our narrative at a point before the great increase of Theban
power at the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos, and will trace this power
from its rise, which followed the defeat of Herakleopolis and Memphis. It is
upon this epoch—the beginning of Theban power—that the latest
discoveries at Thebes have thrown some new light.
More than anywhere else in Egypt excavations have been carried on at
Thebes, on the site of the ancient capital of the country. And here, if
anywhere, it might have been supposed that there was nothing more to be
found, no new thing to be exhumed from the soil, no new fact to be added
to our knowledge of Egyptian history. Yet here, no less than at Abydos, has
the archaeological exploration of the last few years been especially
successful, and we have seen that the ancient city of Thebes has a great deal
more to tell us than we had expected.
The most ancient remains at Thebes were discovered by Mr. Newberry
in the shape of two tombs of the VIth Dynasty, cut upon the face of the
well-known hill of Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna, on the west bank of the Nile
opposite Luxor. Every winter traveller to Egypt knows, well the ride from
the sandy shore opposite the Luxor temple, along the narrow pathway
between the gardens and the canal, across the bridges and over the
cultivated land to the Ramesseum, behind which rises Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna,
with its countless tombs, ranged in serried rows along the scarred and
scarped face of the hill. This hill, which is geologically a fragment of the
plateau behind which some gigantic landslip was sent sliding in the
direction of the river, leaving the picturesque gorge and cliffs of Dêr el-
Bahari to mark the place from which it was riven, was evidently the seat of
the oldest Theban necropolis. Here were the tombs of the Theban chiefs in
the period of the Old Kingdom, two of which have been found by Mr.
Newberry. In later times, it would seem, these tombs were largely occupied
and remodelled by the great nobles of the XVIIIth Dynasty, so that now
nearly all the tombs extant on Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna belong to that dynasty.

Of the Thebes of the IXth and Xth Dynasties, when the
Herakleopolites ruled, we have in the British Museum two very remarkable
statues—one of which is here illustrated—of the steward of the palace,
Mera. The tomb from which they came is not known. Both are very
beautiful examples of the Egyptian sculptor’s art, and are executed in a
style eminently characteristic of the transition period between the work of
the Old and Middle Kingdoms. As specimens of the art of the
Hierakonpolite period, of which we have hardly any examples, they are of
the greatest interest. Mera is represented wearing a different head-dress in
each figure; in one he has a short wig, in the other a skullcap.

When the Herakleopolite dominion was finally overthrown, in spite of
the valiant resistance of the princes of Asyût, and the Thebans assumed the
Pharaonic dignity, thus founding the XIth Dynasty, the Theban necropolis
was situated in the great bay in the cliffs, immediately north of Shêkh Abd
el-Kûrna, which is known as Dêr el-Bahari. In this picturesque part of
Western Thebes, in many respects perhaps the most picturesque place in
Egypt, the greatest king of the XIth Dynasty, Neb-hapet-Râ Mentuhetep,
excavated his tomb and built for the worship of his ghost a funerary temple,
which he called Akh-aset, “Glorious-is-its- Situation,” a name fully justified
by its surroundings. This temple is an entirely new discovery, made by Prof.
Naville and Mr. Hall in 1903. The results obtained up to date have been of
very great importance, especially with regard to the history of Egyptian art
and architecture, for our sources of information were few and we were
previously not very well informed as to the condition of art in the time of
the XIth Dynasty.
The new temple lies immediately to the south of the great XVIIIth
Dynasty temple at Dêr el-Bahari, which has always been known, and which
was excavated first by Mariette and later by Prof. Naville, for the Egypt
Exploration Fund. To the results of the later excavations we shall return.
When they were finally completed, in the year 1898, the great XVIIIth
Dynasty temple, which was built by Queen Hatshepsu, had been entirely
cleared of débris, and the colonnades had been partially restored (under the
care of Mr. Somers Clarke) in order to make a roof under which to protect
the sculptures on the walls. The whole mass of débris, consisting largely of
fallen talus from the cliffs above, which had almost hidden the temple, was
removed; but a large tract lying to the south of the temple, which was also
covered with similar mounds of débris, was not touched, but remained to
await further investigation. It was here, beneath these heaps of débris, that
the new temple was found when work was resumed by the Egypt
Exploration Fund in 1903. The actual tomb of the king has not yet been
revealed, although that of Neb-hetep Mentuhetep, who may have been his
immediate predecessor, was discovered by Mr. Carter in 1899. It was
known, however, and still uninjured in the reign of Ramses IX of the XXth
Dynasty. Then, as we learn from the report of the inspectors sent to examine
the royal tombs, which is preserved in the Abbott Papyrus, they found the
pyramid-tomb of King Xeb-hapet-Râ which is in Tjesret (the ancient
Egyptian name for Dêr el-Bahari); it was intact. We know, therefore, that it

was intact about 1000 B.C. The description of it as a pyramid-tomb is
interesting, for in the inscription of Tetu, the priest of Akh-aset, who was
buried at Abydos, Akh-aset is said to have been a pyramid. That the newly
discovered temple was called Akh-aset we know from several inscriptions
found in it. And the most remarkable thing about this temple is that in its
centre there was a pyramid. This must be the pyramid-tomb which was
found intact by the inspectors, so that the tomb itself must be close by. But
it does not seem to have been beneath the pyramid, below which is only
solid rock. It is perhaps a gallery cut in the cliffs at the back of the temple.
The pyramid was then a dummy, made of rubble within a revetment of
heavy flint nodules, which was faced with fine limestone. It was erected on
a pyloni-form base with heavy cornice of the usual Egyptian pattern. This
central pyramid was surrounded by a roofed hall or ambulatory of small
octagonal pillars, the outside wall of which was decorated with coloured
reliefs, depicting various scenes connected with the sed-heb or jubilee-
festival of the king, processions of the warriors and magnates of the realm,
scenes of husbandry, boat-building, and so forth, all of which were
considered appropriate to the chapel of a royal tomb at that period. Outside
this wall was an open colonnade of square pillars. The whole of this was
built upon an artificially squared rectangular platform of natural rock, about
fifteen feet high. To north and south of this were open courts. The southern
is bounded by the hill; the northern is now bounded by the Great Temple of
Hat-shepsu, but, before this was built, there was evidently a very large open
court here. The face of the rock platform is masked by a wall of large
rectangular blocks of fine white limestone, some of which measure six feet
by three feet six inches. They are beautifully squared and laid in bonded
courses of alternate sizes, and the walls generally may be said to be among
the finest yet found in Egypt. We have already remarked that the architects
of the Middle Kingdom appear to have been specially fond of fine masonry
in white stone. The contrast between these splendid XIth Dynasty walls,
with their great base-stones of sandstone, and the bad rough masonry of the
XVIIIth Dynasty temple close by, is striking. The XVIIIth Dynasty
architects and masons had degenerated considerably from the standard of
the Middle Kingdom.
This rock platform was approached from the east in the centre by an
inclined plane or ramp, of which part of the original pavement of wooden
beams remains in situ.

Excavated by Mr. Hall, 1904, for the Egypt Exploration Fund.
To right and left of this ramp are colonnades, each of twenty-two
square pillars, all inscribed with the name and titles of Mentuhetep. The
walls masking the platform in these colonnades were sculptured with
various scenes, chiefly representing boat processions and campaigns against
the Aamu or nomads of the Sinaitic peninsula. The design of the colonnades
is the same as that of the Great Temple, and the whole plan of this part, with
its platform approached by a ramp flanked by colonnades, is so like that of
the Great Temple that we cannot but assume that the peculiar design of the
latter, with its tiers of platforms approached by ramps flanked by
colonnades, is not an original idea, but was directly copied by the XVIIIth
Dynasty architects from the older XIth Dynasty temple which they found at
Dêr el-Bahari when they began their work.

Excavated by M. Naville, 1896; repaired by Mr. Howard Carter,
1904.
The supposed originality of Hatshepsu’s temple is then non-existent; it
was a copy of the older design, in fact, a magnificent piece of archaism. But
Hatshepsu’s architects copied this feature only; the actual arrangements on
the platforms in the two temples are as different as they can possibly be. In
the older we have a central pyramid with a colonnade round it, in the newer
may be found an open court in front of rock-cave shrines.

Before the XIth Dynasty temple was set up a series of statues of King
Mentuhetep and of a later king, Amenhetep I, in the form of Osiris, like
those of Usertsen (Senusret) I at Lisht already mentioned. One of these
statues is in the British Museum. In the south court were discovered six
statues of King Usertsen (Senusret) III, depicting him at different periods of
his life. Pour of the heads are preserved, and, as the expression of each
differs from that of the other, it is quite evident that some show him as a
young, others as an old, man.

Of The XIth Dynasty Temple At Dêr El-Bahari. About 2500 B.C.
The face is of the well-known hard and lined type which is seen also in
the portraits of Amenemhat III, and was formerly considered to be that of
the Hyksos. Messrs. Newberry and Garstang, as we have seen, consider it to
be so, indirectly, as they regard the type as having been introduced into the
XIIth Dynasty by Queen Nefret, the mother of Usertsen (Sen-usret) III. This
queen, they think, was a Hittite princess, and the Hittites were practically
the same thing as the Hyksos. We have seen, however, that there is very
little foundation for this view, and it is more than probable that this peculiar
physiognomy is of a type purely Egyptian in character.

On The Platform Of The XIth Dynasty Temple, Dêr El-Bahari,
1904.
On the platform, around the central pyramid, were buried in small
chamber-tombs a number of priestesses of the goddess Hathor, the mistress
of the desert and special deity of Dêr el-Bahari. They were all members of
the king’s harîm, and they bore the title of “King’s Favourite.” As told in a
previous chapter, all were buried at one time, before the final completion of
the temple, and it is by no means impossible that they were strangled at the
king’s death and buried round him in order that their ghosts might
accompany him in the next world, just as the slaves were buried around the
graves (or secondary graves) of the 1st Dynasty kings at Aby-dos. They
themselves, as also already related, took with them to the next world little
waxen figures which when called upon could by magic be turned into
ghostly slaves. These images were ushabtiu, “answerers,” the predecessors
of the little figures of wood, stone, and pottery which are found buried with
the dead in later times. The priestesses themselves were, so to speak, human

ushabtiu, for royal use only, and accompanied the kings to their final
resting-place.
With the priestesses was buried the usual funerary furniture
characteristic of the period. This consisted of little models of granaries with
the peasants bringing in the corn, models of bakers and brewers at work,
boats with their crews, etc., just as we find them in the XIth and XIIth
Dynasty tombs at el-Bersha and Beni Hasan. These models, too, were
supposed to be transformed by magic into actual workmen who would work
for the deceased, heap up grain for her, brew beer for her, ferry her over the
ghostly Nile into the tomb-world, or perform any other services required.
Some of the stone sarcophagi of the priestesses are very elaborately
decorated with carved and painted reliefs depicting each deceased receiving
offerings from priests, one of whom milks the holy cows of Hathor to give
her milk. The sarcophagi were let down into the tomb in pieces and there
joined together, and they have been removed in the same way. The finest is
a unique example of XIth Dynasty art, and it is now preserved in the
Museum of Cairo.

In memory of the priestesses there were erected on the platform behind
the pyramid a number of small shrines, which were decorated with the most
delicately coloured carvings in high relief, representing chiefly the same
subjects as those on the sarcophagi. The peculiar style of these reliefs was
previously unknown. In connection with them a most interesting possibility
presents itself.

We know the name of the chief artist of Mentuhetep’s reign. He was
called Mertisen, and he thus describes himself on his tombstone from
Abydos, now in the Louvre: “I was an artist skilled in my art. I knew my
art, how to represent the forms of going forth and returning, so that each
limb may be in its proper place. I knew how the figure of a man should
walk and the carriage of a woman, the poising of the arm to bring the

hippopotamus low, the going of the runner. I knew how to make amulets,
which enable us to go without fire burning us and without the flood
washing us away. No man could do this but I, and the eldest son of my
body. Him has the god decreed to excel in art, and I have seen the
perfections of the work of his hands in every kind of rare stone, in gold and
silver, in ivory and ebony.” Now since Mertisen and his son were the chief
artists of their day, it is more than probable that they were employed to
decorate their king’s funerary chapel. So that in all probability the XIth
Dynasty reliefs from Dêr el-Bahari are the work of Mertisen and his son,
and in them we see the actual “forms of going forth and returning, the
poising of the arm to bring the hippopotamus low, the going of the runner,”
to which he refers on his tombstone. This adds a note of personal interest to
the reliefs, an interest which is often sadly wanting in Egypt, where we
rarely know the names of the great artists whose works we admire so much.
We have recovered the names of the sculptor and painter of Seti I’s temple
at Abydos and that of the sculptor of some of the tombs at Tell el-Amarna,
but otherwise very few names of the artists are directly associated with the
temples and tombs which they decorated, and of the architects we know
little more. The great temple of Dêr el-Bahari was, however, we know,
designed by Senmut, the chief architect to Queen Hatshepsu.
It is noticeable that Mertisen’s art, if it is Mertisen’s, is of a peculiar
character. It is not quite so fully developed as that of the succeeding XIIth
Dynasty. The drawing of the figures is often peculiar, strange lanky forms
taking the place of the perfect proportions of the IVth-VIth and the XIIth
Dynasty styles. Great elaboration is bestowed upon decoration, which is
again of a type rather archaic in character when compared with that of the
XIIth Dynasty. We are often reminded of the rude sculptures which used to
be regarded as typical of the art of the XIth Dynasty, while at the same time
we find work which could not be surpassed by the best XIIth Dynasty
masters. In fact, the art of Neb-hapet-Râ’s reign was the art of a transitional
period. Under the decadent Memphites of the VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties,
Egyptian art rapidly fell from the high estate which it had attained under the
Vth Dynasty, and, though good work was done under the Hierakonpolites,
the chief characteristic of Egyptian art at the time of the Xth and early XIth
Dynasties is its curious roughness and almost barbaric appearance. When,
however, the kings of the XIth Dynasty reunited the whole land under one
sceptre, and the long reign of Neb-hapet-Râ Mentuhetep enabled the

reconsolidation of the realm to be carried out by one hand, art began to
revive, and, just as to Neb-hapet-Râ must be attributed the renascence of the
Egyptian state under the hegemony of Thebes, so must the revival of art in
his reign be attributed to his great artists, Mertisen and his son. They carried
out in the realm of art what their king had carried out in the political realm,
and to them must be attributed the origin of the art of the Middle Kingdom
which under the XIIth Dynasty attained so high a pitch of excellence. The
sculptures of the king’s temple at Dêr el-Bahari, then, are monuments of the
renascence of Egyptian art, after the state of decadence into which it had
fallen during the long civil wars between South and North; it is a reviving
art, struggling out of barbarism to regain perfection, and therefore has much
about it that seems archaic, stiff, and curious when compared with later
work. To the XVIIIth Dynasty Egyptian it would no doubt have seemed
hopelessly old-fashioned and even semi-barbarous, and he had no qualms
about sweeping it aside whenever it appeared in the way of the work of his
own time; but to us this very strangeness gives additional charm and
interest, and we can only be thankful that Mertisen’s work has lasted (in
fragments only, it is true) to our own day, to tell us the story of a little
known chapter in the history of ancient Egyptian art.
From this description it will have been seen that the temple is an
important monument of the Egyptian art and architecture of the Middle
Kingdom. It is the only temple of that period of which considerable traces
have been found, and on that account the study of it will be of the greatest
interest. It is the best preserved of the older temples of Egypt, and at Thebes
it is by far the most ancient building recovered. Historically it has given us
a new king of the XIth Dynasty, Sekhâhe-tep-Râ Mentuhetep, and the name
of the queen of Neb-hapet-Râ Mentuhetep, Aasheit, who seems to have
been an Ethiopian, to judge from her portrait, which has been discovered. It
is interesting to note that one of the priestesses was a negress.
The name Neb-hapet-Râ may be unfamiliar to those readers who are
acquainted with the lists of the Egyptian kings. It is a correction of the
former reading, “Neb-kheru-Râ,” which is now known from these
excavations to be erroneous. Neb-hapet-Râ (or, as he used to be called,
Neb-kheru-Râ) is Mentuhetep III of Prof. Petrie’s arrangement. Before him
there seem to have come the kings Mentuhetep Neb-hetep (who is also
commemorated in this temple) and Neb-taui-Râ; after him, Sekhâhetep-Râ
Mentuhetep IV and Seânkhkarâ Mentuhetep V, who were followed by an

Antef, bearing the banner or hawk-name Uah-ânkh. This king was followed
by Amenemhat I, the first king of the XIIth Dynasty. Antef Uah-ânkh may
be numbered Antef I, as the prince Antefa, who founded the XIth Dynasty,
did not assume the title of king.
Other kings of the name of Antef also ruled over Egypt, and they used
to be regarded as belonging to the XIth Dynasty; but Prof. Steindorff has
now proved that they really reigned after the XIIIth Dynasty, and
immediately before the Sekenenrâs, who were the fighters of the Hyksos
and predecessors of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The second names of Antef III
(Seshes-Râ-up-maat) and Antef IV (Seshes-Râ-her-her-maat) are exactly
similar to those of the XIIIth Dynasty kings and quite unlike those of the
Mentuheteps; also at Koptos a decree of Antef II (Nub-kheper-Râ) has been
found inscribed on a doorway of Usertsen (Senusret) I; so that he cannot
have preceded him. Prof. Petrie does not yet accept these conclusions, and
classes all the Antefs together with the Mentuheteps in the XIth Dynasty.
He considers that he has evidence from Herakleopolis that Antef Xub-
kheper-Râ (whom he numbers Antef V) preceded the XIIth Dynasty, and he
supposes that the decree of Nub-kheper-Râ at Koptos is a later copy of the
original and was inscribed during the XIIth Dynasty. But this is a difficult
saying. The probabilities are that Prof. Steindorff is right. Antef Uah-ânkh
must, however, have preceded the XIIth Dynasty, since an official of that
period refers to his father’s father as having lived in Uah-ânkh ‘s time.
The necropolis of Dêr el-Bahari was no doubt used all through the
period of the XIth and XIIth Dynasties, and many tombs of that period have
been found there. A large number of these were obliterated by the building
of the great temple of Queen Hatshepsu, in the northern part of the cliff-bay.
We know of one queen’s tomb of that period which runs right underneath
this temple from the north, and there is another that is entered at the south
side which also runs down underneath it. Several tombs were likewise
found in the court between it and the XIth Dynasty temple. We know that
the XVIIIth Dynasty temple was largely built over this court, and we can
see now the XIth Dynasty mask-wall on the west of the court running
northwards underneath the mass of the XVIIIth Dynasty temple. In all
probability, then, when the temple of Hatshepsu was built, the larger portion
of the Middle Kingdom necropolis (of chamber-tombs reached by pits),
which had filled up the bay to the north of the Mentuhetep temple, was

covered up and obliterated, just as the older VIth Dynasty gallery tombs of
Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna had been appropriated and altered at the same period.
The kings of the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties were not buried at Thebes,
as we have seen, but in the North, at Dashûr, Lisht, and near the Fayymn,
with which their royal city at Itht-taui had brought them into contact. But at
the end of the XIIIth Dynasty the great invasion of the Hyksos probably
occurred, and all Northern Egypt fell under the Arab sway. The native kings
were driven south from the Fayymn to Abydos, Koptos, and Thebes, and at
Thebes they were buried, in a new necropolis to the north of Dêr el-Bahari
(probably then full), on the flank of a long spur of hill which is now called
Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga, “Abu-’l-Negga’s Arm.” Here the Theban kings of the
period between the XIIIth and XVIIth Dynasties, Upuantemsaf, Antef Nub-
kheper-Râ, and his descendants, Antefs III and IV, were buried. In their time
the pressure of foreign invasion seems to have been felt, for, to judge from
their coffins, which show progressive degeneration of style and
workmanship, poverty now afflicted Upper Egypt and art had fallen sadly
from the high standard which it had reached in the days of the XIth and
XIIth Dynasties. Probably the later Antefs and Sebekemsafs were vassals of
the Hyksos. Their descendants of the XVIIth Dynasty were buried in the
same necropolis of Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga, and so were the first two kings of
the XVIIIth Dynasty, Aahmes and Amenhetep I. The tombs of the last two
have not yet been found, but we know from the Abbott Papyrus that
Amenhetep’s was here, for, like that of Menttihetep III, it was found intact
by the inspectors. It was a gallery-tomb of very great length, and will be a
most interesting find when it is discovered, as it no doubt eventually will
be. Aahmes had a tomb at Abydos, which was discovered by Mr. Currelly,
working for the Egypt Exploration Fund. This, however, like the Abydene
tomb of Usert-sen (Senusret) III, was in all likelihood a sham or secondary
tomb, the king having most probably been buried at Thebes, in the Dra’
Abu-’l-Negga. The Abydos tomb is of interesting construction. The
entrance is by a simple pit, from which a gallery runs round in a curving
direction to a great hall supported by eighteen square pillars, beyond which
is a further gallery which was never finished. Nothing was found in the
tomb. On the slope of the mountain, due west of and in a line with the tomb,
Mr. Currelly found a terrace-temple analogous to those of Dêr el-Bahari,
approached not by means of a ramp but by stairways at the side. It was
evidently the funerary temple of the tomb.

Statue of Queen Teta-shera
Grandmother of Aahmes, the conqueror of the Hyksos and founder of
the XVIIIth Dynasty. About 1700 B. C. British Museum. From the
photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.

The secondary tomb of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Abydos, which has
already been mentioned, was discovered in the preceding year by Mr. A. E.
P. Weigall, and excavated by Mr. Currelly in 1903. It lies north of the
Aahmes temple, between it and the main cemetery of Abydos. It is a great
bâb or gallery-tomb, like those of the later kings at Thebes, with the usual
apparatus of granite plugs, barriers, pits, etc., to defy plunderers. The tomb
had been plundered, nevertheless, though it is probable that the robbers
were vastly disappointed with what they found in it. Mr. Currelly ascribes
the absence of all remains to the plunderers, but the fact is that there
probably never was anything in it but an empty sarcophagus. Near the tomb
Mr. Weigall discovered some dummy mastabas, a find of great interest. Just
as the king had a secondary tomb, so secondary mastabas, mere dummies of
rubble like the XIth Dynasty pyramid at Dêr el-Bahari, were erected beside
it to look like the tombs of his courtiers. Some curious sinuous brick walls
which appear to act as dividing lines form a remarkable feature of this sham
cemetery. In a line with the tomb, on the edge of the cultivation, is the
funerary temple belonging to it, which was found by Mr. Randall-Maclver
in 1900. Nothing remains but the bases of the fluted limestone columns and
some brick walls. A headless statue of Usertsen was found.
We have an interesting example of the custom of building a secondary
tomb for royalties in these two nécropoles of Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga and
Abydos. Queen Teta-shera, the grandmother of Aahmes, a beautiful
statuette of whom may be seen in the British Museum, had a small pyramid
at Abydos, eastward of and in a line with the temple and secondary tomb of
Aahmes. In 1901 Mr. Mace attempted to find the chamber, but could not. In
the next year Mr. Currelly found between it and the Aahmes tomb a small
chapel, containing a splendid stele, on which Aahmes commemorates his
grandmother, who, he says, was buried at Thebes and had a mer-âhât at
Abydos, and he records his determination to build her also a pyramid at
Abydos, out of his love and veneration for her memory. It thus appeared
that the pyramid to the east was simply a dummy, like Usertsen’s mastabas,
or the Mentuhetep pyramid at Dêr el-Bahari. Teta-shera was actually buried
at Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga. Her secondary pyramid, like that of Aahmes himself,
was in the “holy ground” at Abydos, though it was not an imitation bâb, but
a dummy pyramid of rubble. This well illustrates the whole custom of the
royal primary and secondary tombs, which, as we have seen, had obtained
in the case of royal personages from the time of the 1st Dynasty, when Aha

had two tombs, one at Nakâda and the other at Abydos. It is probable that
all the 1st Dynasty tombs at Abydos are secondary, the kings being really
buried elsewhere. After their time we know for certain that Tjeser and
Snefru had duplicate tombs, possibly also Unas, and certainly Usertsen
(Senusret) III, Amenemhat III, and Aahmes; while Mentuhetep III and
Queen Teta-shera had dummy pyramids as well as their tombs. Ramses III
also had two tombs, both at Thebes. The reasons for this custom were two:
first, the desire to elude plunderers, and second, the wish to give the ghost a
pied-à-terre on the sacred soil of Abydos or Sakkâra.
As the inscription of Aahmes which records the building of the dummy
pyramid of Teta-shera is of considerable interest, it may here be translated.
The text reads: “It came to pass that when his Majesty the king, even the
king of South and North, Neb-pehti-Râ, Son of the Sun, Aahmes, Giver of
Life, was taking his pleasure in the tjadu-hall, the hereditary princess
greatly favoured and greatly prized, the king’s daughter, the king’s sister,
the god’s wife and great wife of the king, Nefret-ari-Aahmes, the living,
was in the presence of his Majesty. And the one spake unto the other,
seeking to do honour to These There,[1] which consisteth in the pouring of
water, the offering upon the altar, the painting of the stele at the beginning
of each season, at the Festival of the New Moon, at the feast of the month,
the feast of the going-forth of the Sem-priest, the Ceremonies of the Night,
the Feasts of the Fifth Day of the Month and of the Sixth, the Hak-festival,
the Uag-festival, the feast of Thoth, the beginning of every season of
heaven and earth. And his sister spake, answering him: ‘Why hath one
remembered these matters, and wherefore hath this word been said? Prithee,
what hath come into thy heart?’ The king spake, saying: ‘As for me, I have
remembered the mother of my mother, the mother of my father, the king’s
great wife and king’s mother Teta-shera, deceased, whose tomb-chamber
and mer-ahât are at this moment upon the soil of Thebes and Abydos. I
have spoken thus unto thee because my Majesty desireth to cause a pyramid
and chapel to be made for her in the Sacred Land, as a gift of a monument
from my Majesty, and that its lake should be dug, its trees planted, and its
offerings prescribed; that it should be provided with slaves, furnished with
lands, and endowed with cattle, with hen-ka priests and kher-heb priests
performing their duties, each man knowing what he hath to do.’ Behold!
when his Majesty had thus spoken, these things were immediately carried
out. His Majesty did these things on account of the greatness of the love

which he bore her, which was greater than anything. Never had ancestral
kings done the like for their mothers. Behold! his Majesty extended his arm
and bent his hand, and made for her the king’s offering to Geb, to the
Ennead of Gods, to the lesser Ennead of Gods... [to Anubis] in the God’s
Shrine, thousands of offerings of bread, beer, oxen, geese, cattle... to [the
Queen Teta-shera].” This is one of the most interesting inscriptions
discovered in Egypt in recent years, for the picturesqueness of its diction is
unusual.
[1] A polite periphrasis for the dead.

As has already been said, the king Amenhetep I was also buried in the
Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga, but the tomb has not yet been found. Amenhetep I and
his mother, Queen Nefret-ari-Aahmes, who is mentioned in the inscription
translated above, were both venerated as tutelary demons of the Western
Necropolis of Thebes after their deaths, as also was Mentuhetep III. At Dêr
el-Bahari both kings seem to have been worshipped with Hathor, the
Mistress of the Waste. The worship of Amen-Râ in the XVIIIth Dynasty
temple of Dêr el-Bahari was a novelty introduced by the priests of Amen at
that time. But the worship of Hathor went on side by side with that of Amen
in a chapel with a rock-cut shrine at the side of the Great Temple. Very
possibly this was the original cave-shrine of Hathor, long before
Mentuhetep’s time, and was incorporated with the Great Temple and
beautified with the addition of a pillared hall before it, built over part of the
XIth Dynasty north court and wall, by Hatshepsu’s architects.
The Great Temple, the excavation of which for the Egypt Exploration
Fund was successfully brought to an end by Prof. Naville in 1898, was
erected by Queen Hatshepsu in honour of Amen-Râ, her father Thothmes I,
and her brother-husband Thothmes II, and received a few additions from
Thothmes III, her successor. He, however, did not complete it, and it fell
into disrepair, besides suffering from the iconoclastic zeal of the heretic
Akhunaten, who hammered out some of the beautifully painted scenes upon
its walls. These were badly restored by Ramses II, whose painting is easily
distinguished from the original work by the dulness and badness of its
colour.
The peculiar plan and other remarkable characteristics of this temple
are well known. Its great terraces, with the ramps leading up to them,
flanked by colonnades, which, as we have seen, were imitated from the

design of the old XIth Dynasty temple at its side, are familiar from a
hundred illustrations, and the marvellously preserved colouring of its
delicate reliefs is known to every winter visitor to Egypt, and can be
realized by those who have never been there through the medium of Mr.
Howard Carter’s wonderful coloured reproductions, published in Prof.
Naville’s edition of the temple by the Egypt Exploration Fund. The Great
Temple stands to-day clear of all the débris which used to cover it, a lasting
monument to the work of the greatest of the societies which busy
themselves with the unearthing of the relics of the ancient world.

The two temples of Dêr el-Bahari will soon stand side by side, as they
originally stood, and will always be associated with the name of the society
which rescued them from oblivion, and gave us the treasures of the royal
tombs at Abydos. The names of the two men whom the Egypt Exploration
Fund commissioned to excavate Dêr el-Bahari and Abydos, and for whose

work it exclusively supplied the funds, Profs. Naville and Petrie, will live
chiefly in connection with their work at Dêr el-Bahari and Abydos.
The Egyptians called the two temples Tjeserti, “the two holy places,”
the new building receiving the name of Tjeser-tjesru, “Holy of Holies,” and
the whole tract of Dêr el-Bahari the appellation Tjesret, “the Holy.” The
extraordinary beauty of the situation in which they are placed, with its huge
cliffs and rugged hillsides, may be appreciated from the photograph which
is taken from a steep path half-way up the cliff above the Great Temple. In
it we see the Great Temple in the foreground with the modern roofs of two
of its colonnades, devised in order to protect the sculptures beneath them,
the great trilithon gate leading to the upper court, and the entrance to the
cave-shrine of Amen-Râ, with the niches of the kings on either side,
immediately at the foot of the cliff. In the middle distance is the duller form
of the XIth Dynasty temple, with its rectangular platform, the ramp leading
up to it, and the pyramid in the centre of it, surrounded by pillars, half-
emerging from the great heaps of sand and débris all around. The
background of cliffs and hills, as seen in the photograph, will serve to give
some idea of the beauty of the surroundings,—an arid beauty, it is true, for
all is desert. There is not a blade of vegetation near; all is salmon-red in
colour beneath a sky of ineffable blue, and against the red cliffs the white
temple stands out in vivid contrast.
The second illustration gives a nearer view of the great trilithon gate in
the upper court, at the head of the ramp. The long hill of Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga
is seen bending away northward behind the gate.

Of The Xviiith Dynasty Temple At Dêk El-Bahari. About 1500 B.C.
This is the famous gate on which the jealous Thothmes III chiselled
out Hatshepsu’s name in the royal cartouches and inserted his own in its
place; but he forgot to alter the gender of the pronouns in the accompanying
inscription, which therefore reads “King Thothmes III, she made this
monument to her father Amen.”
Among Prof. Naville’s discoveries here one of the most important is
that of the altar in a small court to the north, which, as the inscription says,
was made in honour of the god Râ-Harmachis “of beautiful white stone of
Anu.” It is of the finest white limestone known. Here also were found the
carved ebony doors of a shrine, now in the Cairo Museum. One of the most
beautiful parts of the temple is the Shrine of Anubis, with its splendidly

preserved paintings and perfect columns and roof of white limestone. The
effect of the pure white stone and simplicity of architecture is almost
Hellenic.
The Shrine of Hathor has been known since the time of Mariette, but
in connection with it some interesting discoveries have been made during
the excavation of the XIth Dynasty temple. In the court between the two
temples were found a large number of small votive offerings, consisting of
scarabs, beads, little figures of cows and women, etc., of blue glazed
faïence and rough pottery, bronze and wood, and blue glazed ware ears,
eyes, and plaques with figures of the sacred cow, and other small objects of
the same nature. These are evidently the ex-votos of the XVIIIth Dynasty
fellahîn to the goddess Hathor in the rock-shrine above the court. When the
shrine was full or the little ex-votos broken, the sacristans threw them over
the wall into the court below, which thus became a kind of dust-heap. Over
this heap the sand and débris gradually collected, and thus they were
preserved. The objects found are of considerable interest to anthropological
science.
The Great Temple was built, as we have said, in honour of Thothmes I
and II, and the deities Amen-Râ and Hathor. More especially it was the
funerary chapel of Thothmes I. His tomb was excavated, not in the Dra’
Abu-l-Negga, which was doubtless now too near the capital city and not in
a sufficiently dignified position of aloofness from the common herd, but at
the end of the long valley of the Wadiyên, behind the cliff-hill above Dêr el-
Bahari. Hence the new temple was oriented in the direction of his tomb.
Immediately behind the temple, on the other side of the hill, is the tomb
which was discovered by Lepsius and cleared in 1904 for Mr. Theodore N.
Davis by Mr. Howard Carter, then chief inspector of antiquities at Thebes.
Its gallery is of very small dimensions, and it winds about in the hill in
corkscrew fashion like the tomb of Aahmes at Aby-dos. Owing to its
extraordinary length, the heat and foul air in the depths of the tomb were
almost insupportable and caused great difficulty to the excavators. When
the sarcophagus-chamber was at length reached, it was found to contain the
empty sarcophagi of Thothmes I and of Hatshepsu. The bodies had been
removed for safe-keeping in the time of the XXIst Dynasty, that of
Thothmes I having been found with those of Set! I and Ramses II in the
famous pit at Dêr el-Bahari, which was discovered by M. Maspero in 1881.
Thothmes I seems to have had another and more elaborate tomb (No. 38) in

the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, which was discovered by M. Loret in
1898. Its frescoes had been destroyed by the infiltration of water.
The fashion of royal burial in the great valley behind Dêr el-Bahari
was followed during the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth Dynasties. Here in the
eastern branch of the Wadiyên, now called the Bibân el-Mulûk, “the Tombs
of the Kings,” the greater number of the mightiest Theban Pharaohs were
buried. In the western valley rested two of the kings of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, who desired even more remote burial-places, Amenhetep III and
Ai. The former chose for his last home a most kingly site. Ancient kings had
raised great pyramids of artificial stone over their graves. Amenhetep,
perhaps the greatest and most powerful Pharaoh of them all, chose to have a
natural pyramid for his grave, a mountain for his tumulus. The illustration
shows us the tomb of this monarch, opening out of the side of one of the
most imposing hills in the Western Valley. No other king but Amenhetep
rested beneath this hill, which thus marks his grave and his only.
It is in the Eastern Valley, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings
properly speaking, that the tombs of Thothmes I and Hatshepsu lie, and here
the most recent discoveries have been made. It is a desolate spot. As we
come over the hill from Dêr el-Bahari we see below us in the glaring
sunshine a rocky canon, with sides sometimes sheer cliff, sometimes sloped
by great falls of rock in past ages. At the bottom of these slopes the square
openings of the many royal tombs can be descried. [See illustration.] Far
below we see the forms of tourists and the tomb-guards accompanying
them, moving in and out of the openings like ants going in and out of an
ants’ nest. Nothing is heard but the occasional cry of a kite and the ceaseless
rhythmical throbbing of the exhaust-pipe of the electric light engine in the
unfinished tomb of Ramses XI. Above and around are the red desert hills.
The Egyptians called it “The Place of Eternity.”