BOOKS.
KENRICR'S EGYPT UNDER THE PHARAOHS.* THIS work is the first sequence of Mr. Keurielc's essay on.Primseval History; but it hardly satisfies the expectations which that ex- cited. To the reader of the essay, speculation seemed the purpose of Mr. Kenrick, when, passing from the general survey of un- written story, he should investigate the myths, traditions, monu- mental records, and possibly the ethnographies, of 'the Ee, tiara and Assyrian empires, if he- should not travel to the equ mysterious civilization of India and the countries beyond the Ganges. In Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, however, there is hardly any speculation. In so remote and obscure a sub- ject, with some of the best available authorities as yet uncer- tain in their interpretation, there must of necessity be frequent discussion as to the nature, extent, and value of the evidence ; but the author scarcely moves without an authority of some kind, while he even seems chary in following those channels of specula- tion which he appeared to open up in his prefatory review. And perhaps this is best. Speculations, however ingenious, as to the original time and place of civilization, or the rise of any particular empire, could scarcely approach closer than probable conjecture, interesting to few. So much light has been thrown upon Egyptian society during the last thirty or forty years, by the exploration of monuments, that fresh discoveries will rather extend or modify conclusions than change them. If the power of interpreting Egyptian writings, the want of a complete series of records, and possibly the dry nature of the record itself, are obstacles to the present completion of anything like what we are accustomed to call history, there is yet enough of facts accumulated from the notices of ancient authors, and the partial interpretation of still more ancient monuments and papyri, to furnish classified lists of Egyptian monarchs, and to tell something of their actions and characters. To digest the materials for the ancient history of Egypt with the acquirements of the scholar and the ;mind of the historian, is more especially useful at present : the facts are scattered in numerous, expensive, and very often dry works of a special nature ; the attempts that have been made to popularize have been mostly by men of flashy and superficial minds, hardly equal to the task.
It is a peculiarity of the Egyptian and the Tuscan people, that while we know little of their public history, we know &great deal of their private life, and of their manners and customs both pre'- vats and public. It is questionable, indeed, whether a fuller idea has been gained of the habits of the Greeks and Romans, with all the literary pictures and works of art they have left us, than has been obtained by a half century's examination of the paintings and tombs of the Egyptians. It is therefore with judgment that Mr. Kenrick devotes the earlier and larger portion of his work to a general description of the arts, manners, and amusements of Egypt under the Pharoahs—in short, of all those things which go ,to make up the life and business of a people. He opens his book with a description of the river and valley of the Nile, and of its monuments ; inferring from the remains and the nature of the ease, that civilization ascended from lower Egypt, and did not descend from Ethiopia. He next considers the cha- racteristics and language of the people ; and describes the two great, wonders of the world, the Pyramids and Thebes. Having finished the natural features of the country, its existing remains, and the ethnography of the people, Mr. Kenrick proceeds to what may be termed in a large sense the social condition of the ancient Egyptians. The amount of the population, its industrial arts in agriculture, horticulture, hunting, fishing, navigation, commerce, and mechanical trades, are investigated, as well as the military; equipments and modes of warfare, domestic life and manners, dress, and amusements. Fine arts, letters, and practical science, (for Mr. Kenrick denies the Egyptians science in the proper Besse of the term,) are next considered under the heads of architecture,- soulp- titre, painting, music, the various modes of writing, with geometry, astronomy, astrology, arithmetic, medicine, and mechanics. The religion of the Egyptians is then elaborately examined ; and the survey closes with an account of their constitution and laws. The whole of these topics arc to a great extent independent of each other, and form in fact a series of essays or papers, in which the author brings together the pith of extensive reading and in- quiry, classical and modern. As furnishing a complete coup of the subject of ancient Egypt and its people, the work supplies a want ; and, combining critical acumen with historical elevation, it supplies it well. At the same time, it involves more of compila- tion from well-known, and in some sense almost popular books, than of the original research among volumes rarely referred to, which historians are usually called upon to snake.
The history proper of Egypt—the chronology of kings and an account of their public acts—is prefaced by a review cif, the an- cient classical authorities, both Greek and Egyptian ; in which the anther gives a critical estimate of their value, and compares them with the results of the information furnished by the monuments ; Mr. Kenrick assigning a high place to the fragments of Manetho, even as they have come to us, at second or third hand. He then proceeds to use the whole of these authorities, in conjunc- tion with the results of modern interpretation, to present a con- secutive view of Egyptian history, from its doubtful and un- certain glimmerings under the first dynasty, till the Persian inva- • Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs. By John %enrich, M.A. In two volumes. Published by Fellowes. sion by Cambyses during the twenty-sixth, and then, with fuller lights, till the final conquest of Egypt by Alexander, after the Persian had a second time been victorious, over the thirtieth and last dynasty. In this, as in the former part of his work, the author displays a wide and sound acquaintance with his subject, a critical judgment, and the power of exciting interest by vivify- ing the past in general description. The reader, however, who looks to have a distinct idea of the great masses of Egyptian his- tory presented to him, will probably be disappointed.
The first thing in Egyptian story is the evidence on which the monumental inscriptions. rest. This, as is well known, originated in the discovery, by a French engineer in Bonaparte's expedition, of a tablet with an inscription in three different characters.
" One of these being Greek, it was seem peertained that the purpose of its erection was to acknowledge, on the part of the high Iniesto,11,roPetot and other sacred functionaries assembled at Memphis in the year 196 B. c., at the coronation of Ptolemy Epiphanes, the services rendered to the sacerdotal order and to Egypt generally by the young king, and to decree him certain honours. The Greek contains a command that the decree should be in- scribed • in the sacred letters, and letters of the country, and Greek letters'. ; and it was obvious from the inspection of the character& that the first are what we call hieroglyphic, and the second what Herodotus and Diodorus call demotic or demothe, and Clemens epistolographic. It was natural to conclude that each of the inscriptions was substantially the same ; and as the numerals for first, second, and third were found in the same relative position at the end of the hieroglyphic and demotic as the corresponding words-in the Greek, it became probable that there was even a literal agreement."
Various efforts succeeded in deciphering the two by the aid of the Greek ; and Young and Champollion framed a species of alpha- bet from the characters, which other Egyptologists have extended, assisted by passages in ancient writers, that, read by the • ht of the new knowledge, are now more fully understood. The tel lowing is a succinct view of the present state of the art. " It is important to understand the nature of the evidence for the reading and interpretation which Egyptologists give of hieroglyphical writings. The general values of the phonetic characters are the most firmly established. They are fixed by the Rosetta Stone; the Obelisk of Philie the inscriptions on the Ptolemme temples, and the monuments of the Roman times, where the same names occur in Greek or Latin characters, the value of which is not doubtful. Such evidence cannot of course be furnished respecting the Persian times or those of the ancient Pharaohs. But a system which pre- vailed under the Ptolemies cannot have originated with them, and no reason can be imagined why the same principle of interpretation should not be ap- plied to what has all external marks of identity. When, therefore, the alpha- bet which has furnished us with the names of Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Alexander, Crow, and Trajan, gives us also Kenbot, Nteriush, Chshiersh, and Artesh- eshes, in a country which we know to have been subject to Persian sway, we minuet hesitate to reeognize Cambyses Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. In the line of the old Pharaohs we must rely on the evidence acquired by pre- vious successful identifications, and the striking coincidence with the names which Manetho professed to have derived from monuments and records. A single instance will serve to show the application of this process. The colos- sal statue of the plain of Thebes, popularly known as the vocal Memnon, we are told by Manetho was really the King Amenophis. Pausanias says, the Thebans deny this to be the statue of Memnon, and say that it is a native, Phamenoph. Among the inscriptions of the ,Roman age which cover the legs of the statue, is one in which the writer records that he has heard the voice of Memnon or Phamenoph. In the usual oval ring on the pedestal of the statue is a group of characters, which Champollion, by the aid of his al- phabet already established' by the evidence which I have mentioned, read Amenothph. Ph is the Coptic article, and it is diffieult to imagine a more convincing proof than this coincidence affords of the soundness of his prin- ciple. The pronunciation of many names not royal has been ascertained by their transcription in Greek. Among authorities of this kind, the bilingual papyrus of Leyden is most remarkable : it is of a late age, and bears traces of having been written after the rise of Gnosticism ; but, containing the tran- scription of some hundred names in Demotic, Hieratic, and Greek, it enables us to ascertain the phonetic value of the characters. There must still re- main some doubt in regard to chanicters which do not occur in the spelling of names whose pronunciation, is known by their Greek or Latin equivalents. Thus the name which Champollion and others after him have read °aorta- aen on the obelisks of Heliopolis and the Fyoum, is read by Lepsius and Bunsen Sesortasen, and no decisive test can be applied to settle the dispute."
One of the moat remarkable circumstances connected with the lately discovered art of deciphering Egyptian writing, or rather with the increased attention and more extensive examination of the monuments to which this art has given rise, is the proof of the early and general use of records in Egypt, at a time when the art of writing seems to have been unknown to the rest of the world, and certainly in any other form than that of the inscription.
" The monuments and other antiquities 'of the Egyptians show that the art of writing was practised by them more extensively than by any contem- porary nation. They seldom raised an edifice without covering it with in- scriptions : there remain obelisks, statues, funereal tablets in great numbers, which appear never, except through accident, to have been left uninscribed : even articles of 'domestic and personal use frequently, have characters im- pressed or engraved upon them. The workman's tools, when buried with him, are found to bear his name; cattle were numbered and marked with the name of the owner ; garments are described having one or two hiero- glyphic characters woven or worked with a needle into the border after the manner of modern housewives. Fragments of manuscripts on papyrus exist of the earliest Theban dynasties, perhaps even of the times preceding the in- vasion of the Shepherds. Although the Pyramids externally no longer ex- hibit any inscriptions, the atones of the interior have hieroglyphics traced on them, and that too in a linear form, which shows that their origin was not recent. Even if we had not these tangible and extant evidences of the pre- valence of the art of writing from near the commencement of history, it would be sufficiently attested by the pictures of Egyptian life and manners which the tombs preserve. We not only find sacred functionaries, who from a written roll rehearse the praise of the god, or direct the ceremonial of a coronation, or sec the fate of the deceased in the funeral judgment recorded with the pen, but the same instrument is perpetually in use in the ordinary transactions of life. Scribes are employed in noting down the quantity of grain deposited in a granary, numbering the cattle on a farm, or recording
the weight which has been ascertained by the scales.
" From all this, however, it would be hasty to infer anything like a gene- ral diffusion of the art of writing in the times of the Pharaohs. These who are employed in the offices above described have the air of being professional scribes, such as even now supply in the South of Europe and the East the want of education among the people at large. No books ever appear among the furniture of a house; no one is ever represented reading, except in some function ; no female is ever seen reading or writing. The inscriptions re- lating to religion, which are beyond comparison the most numerous, would be explained, as far as their explanation was deemed expedient, by the priests and ministers of the temples to the people; and those which accompany the paintings and sculptures which record the exploits of the kings by persons of the same order. The composition and preservation of the sacerdotal and royal genealogies and annals belonged also to the priesthood. All the books which Clemens Alexandrinus enumerates were either sacred or suientilie, and as such would not only be in the custody of the priests but would receive their interpretation from them. It seems, indeed, from his account, as if the knowledge of the system of hieroglyphics belonged not to the entire priest- hood but only to the hierogrammatcus. There was a time when in Europe the knowledge of theology, science, and in great measure law, was attainable only through the medium of the Latin, which the cummou people could neither speak nor read, nor even all the priests. This was a state of things very analogous to that of Egypt ; it gave a monopoly of knowledge to the priesthood, yet was by no means devised for that purpose."
The antiquity, the magnitude, and till within these few years the mysterious purpose of the Pyramids, render them an object of unceasing interest, when the writer is at all equal to his theme. In the present ease, they will furnish more conveniently than anything else an example of Mr. Kenrick's power of dealing with the loftier topics that are continually turning up in treating of ancient Egypt.
"The Pyramids of Gizeh are about five miles distant from the brink of the Nile. As the traveller approaches them first across the plain and then the sandy valley to which the inundation does not extend, he is usually disap- pointed by their appearance, which falls short of the conception which their fame had raised. Their height and breadth are lessened by the hills of sand and heaps of rubbish which have accumulated around them. The simplicity and geometrical regularity of their outline is unfavourable to their apparent magnitude; there is nothing near them by which they can be measured • and it is not till, standing at their base, he looks up to their summit, and compares their proportions with his own or those of the human figures around them, that this first error of the judgment is corrected. And when he begins to Inquire into their history, and finds that 2300 years ago their first describer was even more ignorant than ourselves of the tune and purpose of their erection, he feels how remote must be their origin, which even then was an insoluble problem. • • • "No reasonable doubt can any longer exist respecting the destination of these groups of pyramids. Not only is it evident that they have been places of interment, the only rational purpose that was ever assigned to them, but where any inscriptions have been found, they concur with tradition in show- ing them to have been the sepulchres of kings. Further, these inscriptions belong to the earliest dynasties of Egypt, to the kings whom hisnetho plans before the invasion of the Shepherds, and of whom, besides the founders of Memphis, five dynasties are expressly called Memphite. Around the larger structures which received the bodies of the kings are grouped smaller pyra- mids, in which queens were deposited ; and the chief officers of state and religion were buried in excavations, near the remains of their masters. The animals whom the Egyptians most reverenced had also u place assigned them near the highest personages of the land, as we find that at the Labyrinth the bodies of the kings and the sacred crocodiles rested together in the subtenoo neous chambers.'
The Sphinx " restored," as an architect would say, will give an idea of the author's descriptive power in matters of art. "The Sphinx is, next to the Pyramids, the most remarkable object which the hill of Gizeh exhibits. It is near the Eastern edge of the platform on which they stand, and its head is turned towards the river. It is nearly in a line with the Southern side of the second Pyramid, but on somewhat lower ground, and has been excavated out of one of the faces of the Libyan chain. Its elevation of forty feet above the present level of the soil serves as a measure of the extent of rock which has been cut away to build the pyramids. Neither Herodotus, nor Diodorus, nor any ancient author before the Roman age, mentions it ; and as it is now known from its inscription to be at least as old as the reign of 'I'hothmes IV, we learn the hazard of relying on nega- tive arguments merely in proof of the non-existence of monuments of anti quity. In its present state, with only the head and shoulders visible above the sand, which is accumulated by the Western winds in the hollow space around it, the original form and dimensions of the Sphinx cannot be recog- nized. But a few years ago, by the exertions of Cariglia, the sand wee cleared away, and some important discoveries made. Approaching from the Nile when all was uncovered, a sloping deeeent out in the rock for 135 feet ended in a flight of thirteen steps and a level platform, from which another flight of thirty steps descended to the space between the Sphinx's feet. Tide gradual approach, during which the figure of the Sphinx was kept constantly in the spectator's view, rising above him as he descended, was well adapted to heighten the impression made by its colosssal size, its posture of repose, and calm majestic expression of countenance. The height titan the platform between the protruded paws and the to of the head is 62 feet ; thapaws tend 50 feet, and the body is 140 feet long, being excavated from the rook, excepting a portion of the back and the fore-paws, which have been cased with hewn stone. The countenance is now so much mutilated that the out- line of the features can with difficulty be traced ; but there is no • reason to believe that they exhibited more of the Negro conformation than belongs to the Egyptian physiognomy generally. The head has been covered with a cap, the lower part of which remains; and which probably terminated when entire in an erect urns, such as is seen in the figure of tho Sphinx on the tablet which represents the offerings of Thothmes and Rameses. It had ori- ginally a beard, fragments of which were found below. The space between the protruded paws appears to have served as a temple, in which, at least in later times, sacrifices were performed to the mysterious deity. Immediately under the breast stood a granite tablet, and another of limestone on either side resting against the paws."
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