OUTLINES OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HISTORY.* USEFUL work has been done
in this translation of Mariette's Aperou, for although the language in which it is written might almost be said to be universally known, there are plenty
• Outlines of Ancient Egyptian History. By Aug. Marietta. Translated and edited by M. Brodriok. London : Gilbert and Rivington. of readers, and these of a class most needing instruction, who will get through an English book even if a little dry, but shrink from the trouble of mastering a French one. Yet Marlette, who wrote for the Egyptian schools in Cairo, has made his Outlines wonderfully attractive for a compen- dium ; and his translator, who aims at producing their entire sense without trying to render the author's exact wording, has added in the notes some very interesting recent informa- tion, and has also, wisely as we think, given the dates according to our way • of reckoning, instead of referring to the Hegira; and as the work has been perused both in manuscript and in proof by M. Le Page Renouf,
Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, we have a good guarantee for its accuracy. Except among Egyptologists, Mariette's little book is scarcely so well known as it deserves to be, for it is certainly a very clear and valuable summary. In its present form it should have a wide circulation, not merely as a book of reference, but on account of its fascinating pictures of "the time when history was not," when " Cheops was raising monuments which modern art can never hope to surpass ; and from every one of the then known races of mankind, Thotmes, Amenophis, and Ramses were bringing home captives chained to their victorious chariot- wheels." It will not be forgotten that the calculations on which Egyptian chronology is based are extraordinarily divergent, and that Mariette is one of those savants who reckon from almost the earliest period. In fixing the date of the foundation of the Monarchy, Gardiner Wilkinson and Boeckh differ by no less than 3,011 years, and other explorers have selected various periods between their limits for the same event. Marlette places it B.C. 5004, some 700 years later than Boeckh, regulating his data by the lists of Manetho, which, pending any light to be thrown upon the matter by future discoveries, he claims to be decidedly the nearest to the truth. Everything, he maintains, leads to the belief that in these lists, as we now have them, collateral dynasties had been already eliminated, and he utterly refuses to believe in any system based on their supposed existence in the lists until there shall be found on some monu- ment decisive evidence that two Royal families given by Manetho as successive were in fact simultaneous. Hence we find him allotting 1,940 years to the eleven dynasties of the Ancient Empire, that began with Menes; 1,361 years to the Middle Empire, that closed with the conquest of the Hyksos by Amosis or Aahmes of the eighteenth dynasty; and 1,371 to the New Empire, which, beginning under Amosis and em- bracing some of the most glorious as also some of the most troubled periods of Egyptian history, closed, after the rule of the Ethiopians, the Libyans, and the Persians, with -the con- quest of the country by Alexander the Great, and the absorption of Egypt into the Macedonian Monarchy. After this, follow the Greek, the Roman, and the Christian periods, all dealt with very shortly, and with them Mariette's outlines close, the history of Egypt under Islam not falling within the scope of his little work.
But while making use of such fragments of Manetho's work as have come down to us, and of the Greek and Latin writers, Marlette has evolved his history mainly from the monu- mental inscriptions ; and when we remember how short a time has elapsed since Ohampollion first discovered a key to their meaning, we may well marvel at the amount of knowledge since derived from that source, and be more and more im- pressed with the desirability of increased activity in Egyptian exploration. Much, indeed, has been done, as every one who has travelled in Egypt and studied the contents of the Bitlak Museum well knows ; but what a vast amount is still bidden ! Sometimes, indeed, as in the case of the discovery of. the Royal mummies at Deir-el-Bahari, mere accident will reveal on a sudden more than has been brought to light by years of persevering toil; and the editor of the Outlines has done well to insert the account of this remarkable trouvaille of barely ten years ago. After all, the greed of the Theban Arabs, who used to make such a good thing of pandering to curiosity-hunters, has more than once been of great service to science ; and it appears from certain papyri that the violation of the sanctity of sepulture is a very ancient offence, since it was a case of such violation during the twentieth dynasty— that of the Ramessidcs—that caused the removal of so many of the Royal sarcophagi and large quantities of statuettes and funerary furniture from the tombs in the Valley of the Kings to the ignoble hiding-place where they were dis-
covered, at a depth of 36 ft. beneath the surface. And we are further told that when it was found that the tombs of Sebek-em- Saf and his Queen Notebkas had been rifled, inspectors were periodically sent to examine all the Royal resting-places, and that these inspectors were bound to make a note of their visit not only upon the coffin, but also on the winding- sheet of the deceased. The sepulchre of the Priests of Ammon, so lately found also at Deir-el-Bahari, will doubt- less add much to our knowledge when thoroughly investi- gated. Thanks to the modern science of Egyptology, we no longer look upon the monuments as the wonders of a mysterious past. We read on them a history, and if a history which has, as Marlette says, to be pieced together as a clever workman pieces the thousand-and-one fragments of a precious vase long since broken, yet one that is well deserving of study, "for the part which Egypt has played in the world's history has been remarkable equidistant from Europe, Asia, and Africa proper, it may be said that no important event has ever taken place in which by the very nature of things she was not concerned. It is, in fact, one of the salient points of her history. Unlike so many countries, Egypt did not shine bril- liantly for a time, only to sink into a period of greater or less darkness. On the contrary, she had the unusual fortune of maintaining her influence through sixty-six centuries, and at nearly every epoch of that immense time proved herself a power not to be gainsaid."
In the matter of civilisation, however, the writer cannot but own that Egypt was as far advanced under the fourth dynasty as at any subsequent period. This is what he says :— " The Fourth Dynasty marks a culminating point in the history of the Kingdom. By an extraordinary movement forward, Egypt threw off all trammels and emerged in the glory of a fully
developed civilisation That splendid statue of Khafra, now in the Gizeh Palace, is, notwithstanding its six thousand years, a work of the finest execution. It is the production of the Fourth Dynasty. So too are the Pyramids, which from the very. earliest times have been reckoned among the seven wonders of the world."
And he closes his notice of the Ancient Empire with these words :—
"However far into the dim past we gaze, we are everywhere met by a fully developed civilisation to which the succeeding centuries, numerous as they are, have added nothing. On the contrary, Egypt lost rather than gained; for at no later period could she have raised such monuments as the Pyramids."
Her decline and final disappearance from among nations he justly attributes to the fact that her organisation was only adapted for immobility, not for progress ; nor is she herself a country suited to political struggle; "Her delicious climate,. the fertility of the soil, the gentleness of her inhabitants, who are so easily initiated in the ways of civilisation, all tend to make her par excellence the conservative country." Progress, when forced upon her from outside, took no hold upon her when she was yet a nation will the present recivilisation be more permanent now that the land of the Pharaohs is barely rescued by the foreigner from the iron despotism of the Turk El
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