The moral standard thus set up, though satisfactory, so far as it went,was in many respects deficient. It did not comprise humility; itscarcely seems to have comprised purity. The religious sculptures of theEgyptians were grossly indecent; their religious festivals were kept inan indecent way; phallic orgies were a part of them, and phallic orgiesof a gross kind. The Egyptians tolerated incest, and could defend it bythe example of the gods. Osiris had married his sister; Khem was "theBull of his mother". The Egyptian novelettes are full of indecency andimmorality, and Egyptian travellers describe their amours very much inthe spirit of Ferdinand, Count Fathom; moreover, the complacency withwhich each Egyptian declares himself on his tomb to have possessed everyvirtue, and to have been free from all vices, is most remarkable. "I wasa good man before the king; I saved the population in the dire calamitywhich befell all the land; I shielded the weak against the strong; I didall good things when the time came to do them; I was pious towards myfather, and did the will of my mother; I was kind-hearted towards mybrethren ... I made a good sarcophagus for him who had no coffin. Whenthe dire calamity befell the land, I made the children to live, Iestablished the houses, I did for them all such good things as a fatherdoes for his sons."
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Still, the three seem, all of them, to deserve description, and tochallenge a place in "the story of Egypt," which has never yet been toldwithout some account of the marvels of each of them. The smallest of thethree was a square of three hundred and fifty-four feet each way, andhad a height of two hundred and eighteen feet. It covered an area of twoacres, three roods, and twenty-one poles, or about that of an ordinaryLondon square. The cubic contents amounted to above nine million feet ofsolid masonry, and are calculated to have weighed 702,460 tons. Theheight was not very impressive. Two hundred and twenty feet is analtitude attained by the towers of many churches, and the "Pyramid ofthe Sun" at Teotihuacan did not fall much short of it; but the mass wasimmense, the masonry was excellent, and the ingenuity shown in theconstruction was great. Sunk in the rock from which the pyramid rose,was a series of sepulchral chambers. One, the largest, almost directlyunder the apex of the pyramid, was empty. In another, which had anarched roof, constructed in the most careful and elaborate way, wasfound the sarcophagus of the king, Men-kau-ra, to whom traditionassigned the building, formed of a single mass of blue-black basalt,exquisitely polished and beautifully carved, externally eight feet long,three feet high, and three feet broad, internally six feet by two. Inthe sarcophagus was the wooden coffin of the monarch, and on the lid ofthe coffin was his name. The chambers were connected by two longpassages with the open air; and another passage had, apparently, beenused for the same purpose before the pyramid attained its ultimate size.The tomb-chamber, though carved in the rock, had been paved and linedwith slabs of solid stone, which were fastened to the native rock byiron cramps. The weight of the sarcophagus which it contained, nowunhappily lost, was three tons.
These remarks apply especially to the first and second pyramids. The"Third" is not a work of any very extraordinary grandeur. The bulk isnot greater than that of the chief pyramid of Saccarah, which has neverattracted much attention; and the height did not greatly exceed that ofthe chief Mexican temple-mound. Moreover, the stones of which thepyramid was composed are not excessively massive. The monument aimed atbeing beautiful rather than grand. It was coated for half its heightwith blocks of pink granite from Syene, bevelled at the edges, whichremain still in place on two sides of the structure. The entrance to it,on the north side, was conspicuous, and seems to have had a metalornamentation let into the stone. The sepulchral chamber was beautifullylined and roofed, and the sarcophagus was exquisitively carved.Menkaura, the constructor, was not regarded as a tyrant, or anoppressor, but as a mild and religious monarch, whom the gods ill-usedby giving him too short a reign. His religious temper is indicated bythe inscription on the coffin which contained his remains: "O Osiris,"it reads, "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Menkaura, living eternally,engendered by the Heaven, born of Nut, substance of Seb, thy mother Nutstretches herself over thee in her name of the abyss of heaven. Sherenders thee divine by destroying all thy enemies, O King Menkaura,living eternally."
The "Shepherds" brought with them into Egypt the worship of a deity,whom they called Sut or Sutekh, and apparently identified with the sun.He was described as "the great ruler of heaven," and identified withBaal in later times. The kings regarded themselves as especially underhis protection. At the time of the invasion, they do not seem to haveconsidered this deity as having any special connection with any of theEgyptian gods, and they consequently made war indiscriminately againstthe entire Egyptian Pantheon, plundering and demolishing all the templesalike. But when the first burst of savage hostility was gone by, whenmore settled times followed, and the manners and temper of theconquerors grew softened by pacific intercourse with their subjects, alikeness came to be seen between Sutekh, their own ancestral god, andthe "Set" of the Egyptians. Set in the old Egyptian mythology wasrecognized as "the patron of foreigners, the power which swept thechildren of the desert like a sand-storm over the fertile land." He wasa representative of physical, but not of moral, evil; a strong andpowerful deity, worthy of reverence and worship, but less an object oflove than of fear. The "Shepherds" acknowledged in this god theirSutekh; and as they acquired settled habits, and assimilated themselvesto their subjects, they began to build temples to him, after theEgyptian model, in their principal towns. After the dynasty had bornerule for five reigns, covering the space perhaps of one hundred andfifty years, a king came to the throne named Apepi, who has left severalmonuments, and is the only one of the "Shepherds" that stands out for usin definite historical consistency as a living and breathing person.Apepi built a great temple to Sutekh at Zoan, or Tanis, his principalcapital, composed of blocks of red granite, and adorned it with obelisksand sphinxes. The obelisks are said to have been fourteen in number, andmust have been dispersed about the courts, and not, as usual, placedonly at the entrance. The sphinxes, which differed from the ordinaryEgyptian sphinx in having a mane like a lion and also wings, seem tohave formed an avenue or vista leading up to the temple from the town.They are in diorite, and have the name of Apepi engraved upon them.
The pacific rule of Apepi and his predecessors allowed Thebes toincrease in power, and her monuments now recommence. Three kings whobore the family name of Taa, and the throne name of Ra-Sekenen, borerule in succession at the southern capital. The third of these, Taa-ken,or "Taa the Victorious," was contemporary with Apepi, and paid histribute punctually, year by year, to his lawful suzerain. He does notseem to have had any desire to provoke war; but Apepi probably thoughtthat he was becoming too powerful, and would, if unmolested, shortlymake an effort to throw off the Hyksôs yoke. He therefore determined topick a quarrel with him, and proceeded to send to Thebes a succession ofembassies with continually increasing demands. First of all he requiredTaa-ken to relinquish the worship of all the Egyptian gods exceptAmen-Ra, the chief god of Thebes, whom he probably identified with hisown Sutekh. It is not quite clear whether Taa-ken consented to thisdemand, or politely evaded it. At any rate, a second embassy soonfollowed the first, with a fresh requirement; and a third followed thesecond. The policy was successful, and at last Taa-ken took up arms. Itwould seem that he was successful, or was at any rate able to hold hisown; for he maintained the war till his death, and left it to hissuccessor, Aahmes.
The joint reign of Hatasu and Thothmes II. did not continue for morethan a few years. It is suspected that she engaged in a conspiracyagainst him in order to rid herself of the small restraint which hisparticipation in the sovereignty exercised upon her, and was privy tohis murder. But there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate thesecharges, which have been somewhat recklessly made. All that distinctlyappears is, that Thothmes II. died while he was still extremely young,and when he had reigned only a short time, and that after his deathHatasu showed her hostility to his memory by erasing his name whereverit occurred on the monuments, and substituting for it either her ownname or that of her father. She appears also at the same time to havetaken full possession of the throne, and to have been accepted as actualsovereign of the Egyptian people. She calls herself "The living Horus,abounding in divine gifts, the mistress of diadems, rich in years, thegolden Horus, goddess of diadems, Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt,daughter of the Sun, consort of Ammon, living for ever, and daughter ofAmmon, dwelling in his heart." Nor was she content with attributes whichmade acknowledgment of her sex. She wished to be regarded as a man,assumed male apparel and an artificial beard, and gave herself on manyof her monuments the style and title of a king. Her name of Hatasu shechanged into Hatasu-Khnum-Ammon, thus identifying herself with two ofthe chief Egyptian gods. She often represented herself as crowned withthe tall plumes of Ammon. She took the titles of "son of the sun,""the good god," "lord of the two lands," "beloved of Ammon, theprotector of kings." A curious anomaly appears in some of herinscriptions, where masculine and feminine forms are inextricably mixedup; though spoken of consistently as "the king," and not "the queen,"yet the personal and possessive pronouns which refer to her are femininefor the most part, while sometimes such perplexing expressions occur as"le roi qui est bien aimée par Ammon," or "His Majesty herself." 2ff7e9595c
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