BOOKS.
PROFESSOR AIA.SPERO'S "STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONS." * This volume, a sequel to the author's Dawn of Civilisation, requires more editing than Professor Sayce has been able to give it. We do not say this by way of questioning his com- petence. This is beyond all doubt. We mean that the work wants a more thorough recasting than any editor would feel himself justified in giving to his original. It contains the materials for at least three separate works. As it stands, it is almost overpowering, so bulky is it, so crowded with facts, a rudis indigestaque moles which a reader of average courage will be inclined to regard with despair. But we can assure such a reader that if he conquers his reluctance to venture on so large a task he will find the effort amply repaid.
Premieres Melees des Peuples is the title which Professor Maspero has given to his work, and it is a pity that the qualifying epithet has been omitted. The earliest struggle in the history of the world—perhaps we ought to say the first that has been immortalised by the literary art of its chronicler — is the campaign which Kudur-lagama (the Chedorlaomer of our Bible) waged against his re- bellious vassals in the highlands of Mount Seir and the Vale of Siddim. Victorious in this, be suffered a reverse on his homeward march at the hands of the first prominent leader of the Hebrew race ; a reverse which, by weakening his prestige, may have contributed to his want of success in his contest with the Chaldman conqueror, Khausrsurabi. The same Hebrew race had something to do, possibly more than appears in the record, with another of the great movements of this epoch,—the invasion and conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos. That the ilyksos were Semites and that they were nomads, and so far, both in race and occupation, akin to Israel, is about all that we know, or rather can guess, with probability of this strange people. Professor Maspero resolves their name into the words Hig-Shaasii,
or the "pillagers," being the opprobrious epithet which the Egyptians were accustomed to give to the Bedouin. Of the earlier period of the rule of the Shepherd Kings little is known. Their power was near its end when the Hebrew records make us acquainted with it. The Pharaoh who makes Joseph his Grand Vizier, and extends a bountiful hospitality to his Minister's kindred, appears, as he is represented in Genesis, to be a Monarch enjoying an unquestioned rule. His dynasty has become Egyptianised, very much as the Ma.ntchu dynasty in China has been veneered, so to speak, with the manners of the conquered race, but it has not been accepted by the native Egyptians. Thebes in particular had always preserved something like independence, and the struggle for mastery was about to begin. In the Hebrew story this momentous change is passed over in the simple phrase of the King who "knew not Joseph," but the Egyptian monuments preserve some details of the conflict. One of the most picturesque of these is taken from the mummy of Tiiiaqui, one of the treasures of the museum at Gizeh. He was the first of the native Princes to reclaim Egypt for the Egyptians, and fell in the prime of, life. The appearance of hi mummy proves that he died a violent death when about forty years of age. Two or three men, whether assassins or soldiers, must have surrounded and despatched him before help was available. The fractured skull, on which the exuded brain can still be seen, and the expression of fury still visible on the distorted features, bring back with singular distinctness the long-past tragedy of his fall. The war was brought to an end by • The Struggle of the Nations: Egypt, Syria, and Assyria. By G. Maxi ero. Edited by A. if. Sayoc. Translated uy M. L. McClure. London : S.P.0 K.
A.hmosis, his younger son. The Hyksos were driven back into the desert, and their proteges, the Beth-Israel, were left behind to be oppressed by the conqueror.
In the second chapter Professor Maspero turns aside from the story of Egypt, which forms the staple of his narrative, to describe the condition of Syria, where the progress of events for some generations had been preparing the way for the revival of the conquering activity of Egypt under the Eighteenth Dynasty. This activity, displayed as it was by Thiltmosis I. (Tbothmes according to the usual litera- tion), Queen Hittshopsitii (Hatasu), Thiamosis III., and Amenothes III. (Amenotep), is the subject of chap. 3, and is displayed in a connected narrative put to- gether with great ingenuity. Chap. 4 introduces us to the Nineteenth Dynasty, and, in connection with the Princes who belonged to it, to the Khati (Hittites), of whose religion, and organisation, both political and military, Professor Maspero gives us a valuable and highly interesting account. The Hittites were at this time in active process of expansion. During the reigns of Harushabi (HOrenheb) and Ramses I. the newly developed power and Egypt did not come into collision. When Ramses was succeeded by his son Seti the situation was changed. Seti, though not himself a great soldier, prepared a way for the conquests of Ramses II. His own taste was for splendid architecture. His greatest triumph in this direction was the magnificent hall at Karnak, "the only monument," says our author, "in which the first coup d'oeil surpasses the expecta- tions of the spectator instead of disappointing them." Ramses II. was initiated in kingship at a very early age. When he was ten he attended State Councils, and commanded armies. He was campaigning in Ethiopia when Seti died. In the fifth year of his reign came his great war with the Hittites, perhaps the most important of the "struggles" which form the subject of this volume. The Hittite King gathered a large miscellaneous host, with con- tingents from nations whose names recall the battles of the Iliad, Tp17,t; >Lai A6zun asiAcipaavor ityxtitaxrcrosi, and Ramses marched to encounter him with "an army almost as incongruous in its component elements as that of his adver- sary." The area involved in the conflict, if we reckon the a uxiliaries engaged on both sides, was measured by thousands of miles. The great battle that followed did not lack its bard, whose name indeed has perished, but whose work, the earliest epic in existence, still survives and still interests. Hostilities continued for many years, with intervals of peace, till in Ramses II.'s twenty-first year a treaty beween the two Powers was concluded. Its conditions were not so favourable to Egypt as one would expect after the innumerable victories which its Monarch claimed to have won. Thirteen years afterwards Ramses married the eldest daughter of the Hittite Prince. He had still five and thirty years to reign. When he died at Thebes he was almost a centenarian, and his son and suc- cessor, Meneptah, was already advanced in years, certainly sixty, possibly seventy. We are helped in estimating his character by the curious survival of his actual person :— "The forehead is low, the supra-orbital ridges accentuated, the eye-brows thick, the eyes small and set close to the nose,
the temples hollow, the cheek-bones prominent a strong jaw and square chin, together with a large thick.
lippedmouth make up the features of the mummied king the somewhat unintelligent expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose, displays itself with an air of royal majesty." Professor Maspero holds that Meneptah was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This is the common view of Egyptologists, and it is in some degree confirmed by the recent discovery on a sale of this King, discovered in 1896 by Professor Flinders Petrie, in which the name of Israel, discovered for the first time in Egyptian exploration, appears in the list:of discomfited peoples,—" the Israeli are destroyed." A thousand years afterwards some Grmco-Egyptian litterateur composed a romance, which Tacitus had probably seen when he wrote the fifth book of the Histories, relating the Exodus from the Egyptian point of view. That Egypt ranks very low in the century that followed the death of the great Ramses is certain.
Professor Maspero's fifth chapter, less important in its historical references, is fall of interest in the details of life which it supplies, for by this time contemporary material has become abundant. Chaps. 6 and 7, dealing respec- tively with the Assyrian and Hebrew kingdoms, might have been retrenched without much loss to the reader, though it is only fair to say that Professor Maspero is never tedious. His volume, as a whole, is a very valuable contribution to historical literature. It has been abundantly illustrated, and does no small credit to the enterprise of the society which publishes it.
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