When once the Syrian conquest had been effected, Egypt gave permanency to its results by means of a series of international decrees, which officially established the constitution of her empire, and brought about her concerted action with the Asiatic powers.

She already occupied an important position among them, when Thûtmosis III. died, on the last day of Phamenoth, in the IVth year of his reign.* He was buried, probably, at Deîr el-Baharî, in the family tomb wherein the most illustrious members of his house had been laid to rest since the time of Thûtmosis I. His mummy was not securely hidden away, for towards the close of the XXth dynasty it was torn out of the coffin by robbers, who stripped it and rifled it of the jewels with which it was covered, injuring it in their haste to carry away the spoil. It was subsequently re-interred, and has remained undisturbed until the present day; but before re-burial some renovation of the wrappings was necessary, and as portions of the body had become loose, the restorers, in order to give the mummy the necessary firmness, compressed it between four oar-shaped slips of wood, painted white, and placed, three inside the wrappings and one outside, under the bands which confined the winding-sheet.

Happily the face, which had been plastered over with pitch at the time of embalming, did not suffer at all from this rough treatment, and appeared intact when the protecting mask was removed. Its appearance does not answer to our ideal of the conqueror. His statues, though not representing him as a type of manly beauty, yet give him refined, intelligent features, but a comparison with the mummy shows that the artists have idealised their model. The forehead is abnormally low, the eyes deeply sunk, the jaw heavy, the lips thick, and the cheek-bones extremely prominent; the whole recalling the physiognomy of Thûtmosis II., though with a greater show of energy. Thûtmosis III. is a fellah of the old stock, squat, thickset, vulgar in character and expression, but not lacking in firmness and vigour.* Amenôthes II., who succeeded him, must have closely resembled him, if we may trust his official portraits. He was the son of a princess of the blood, Hâtshopsîtû II., daughter of the great Hâtshopsîtû,** and consequently he came into his inheritance with stronger claims to it than any other Pharaoh since the time of Amenôthes I. Possibly his father may have associated him with himself on the throne as soon as the young prince attained his majority;*** at any rate, his accession aroused no appreciable opposition in the country, and if any difficulties were made, they must have come from outside.

It is always a dangerous moment in the existence of a newly formed empire when its founder having passed away, and the conquered people not having yet become accustomed to a subject condition, they are called upon to submit to a successor of whom they know little or nothing. It is always problematical whether the new sovereign will display as great activity and be as successful as the old one; whether he will be capable of turning to good account the armies which his predecessor commanded with such skill, and led so bravely against the enemy; whether, again, he will have sufficient tact to estimate correctly the burden of taxation which each province is capable of bearing, and to lighten it when there is a risk of its becoming too heavy. If he does not show from the first that it is his purpose to maintain his patrimony intact at all costs, or if his officers, no longer controlled by a strong hand, betray any indecision in command, his subjects will become unruly, and the change of monarch will soon furnish a pretext for widespread rebellion. The beginning of the reign of Amenôthes II. was marked by a revolt of the Libyans inhabiting the Theban Oasis, but this rising was soon put down by that Amenemhabî who had so distinguished himself under Thûtmosis.* Soon after, fresh troubles broke out in different parts of Syria, in Galilee, in the country of the Amurru, and among the peoples of Naharaim. The king’s prompt action, however, prevented their resulting in a general war.** He marched in person against the malcontents, reduced the town of Shamshiaduma, fell upon the Lamnaniu, and attacked their chief, slaying him with his own hand, and carrying off numbers of captives.

He crossed the Orontes on the 26th of Pachons, in the year II., and seeing some mounted troops in the distance, rushed upon them and overthrew them; they proved to be the advanced guard of the enemy’s force, which he encountered shortly afterwards and routed, collecting in the pursuit considerable booty. He finally reached Naharaim, where he experienced in the main but a feeble resistance. Nîi surrendered without resistance on the 10th of Epiphi, and its inhabitants, both men and women, with censers in their hands, assembled on the walls and prostrated themselves before the conqueror. At Akaîti, where the partisans of the Egyptian government had suffered persecution from a considerable section of the natives, order was at once reestablished as soon as the king’s approach was made known. No doubt the rapidity of his marches and the vigour of his attacks, while putting an end to the hostile attitude of the smaller vassal states, were effectual in inducing the sovereigns of Alasia, of Mitanni,* and of the Hittites to renew with Amenôthes the friendly relations which they had established with his father.**

This one campaign, which lasted three or four months, secured a lasting peace in the north, but in the south a disturbance again broke out among the Barbarians of the Upper Nile. Amenôthes suppressed it, and, in order to prevent a repetition of it, was guilty of an act of cruel severity quite in accordance with the manners of the time. He had taken prisoner seven chiefs in the country of Tikhisa, and had brought them, chained, in triumph to Thebes, on the forecastle of his ship. He sacrificed six of them himself before Amon, and exposed their heads and hands on the façade of the temple of Karnak; the seventh was subjected to a similar fate at Napata at the beginning of his third year, and thenceforth the sheîkhs of Kush thought twice before defying the authority of the Pharaoh.*

Amenôthes’reign was a short one, lasting ten years at most, and the end of it seems to have been darkened by the open or secret rivalries which the question of the succession usually stirred up among the kings’ sons. The king had daughters only by his marriage with one of his full sisters, who like himself possessed all the rights of sovereignty; those of his sons who did not die young were the children of princesses of inferior rank or of concubines, and it was a subject of anxiety among these princes which of them would be chosen to inherit the crown and be united in marriage with the king’s heiresses, Khûît and Mûtemûaû.

One of his sons, named Thûtmosis, who resided at the “White Wall,” was in the habit of betaking himself frequently to the Libyan desert to practise with the javelin, or to pursue the hunt of lions and gazelles in his chariot. On these occasions it was his pleasure to preserve the strictest incognito, and he was accompanied by two discreet servants only. One day, when chance had brought him into the neighbourhood of the Great Pyramid, he lay down for his accustomed siesta in the shade cast by the Sphinx, the miraculous image of Khopri the most powerful, the god to whom all men in Memphis and the neighbouring towns raised adoring hands filled with offerings. The gigantic statue was at that time more than half buried, and its head alone was seen above the sand. As soon as the prince was asleep it spoke gently to him, as a father to his son: “Behold me, gaze on me, O my son Thûtmosis, for I, thy father Harmakhis-Khopri-Tûmû, grant thee sovereignty over the two countries, in both the South and the North, and thou shalt wear both the white and the red crown on the throne of Sibû, the sovereign, possessing the earth in its length and breadth; the flashing eye of the lord of all shall cause to rain on thee the possessions of Egypt, vast tribute from all foreign countries, and a long life for, many years as one chosen by the Sun, for my countenance is thine, my heart is thine, no other than thyself is mine! Nor am I covered by the sand of the mountain on which I rest, and have given thee this prize that thou mayest do for me what my heart desires, for I know that thou art my son, my defender; draw nigh, I am with thee, I am thy well-beloved father.” The prince understood that the god promised him the kingdom on condition of his swearing to clear the sand from the statue. He was, in fact, chosen to be the husband of the queens, and immediately after his accession he fulfilled his oath; he removed the sand, built a chapel between the paws, and erected against the breast of the statue a stele of red granite, on which he related his adventure. His reign was as short as that of Amenôthes, and his campaigns both in Asia and Ethiopia were unimportant.*

He had succeeded to an empire so firmly established from Naharaim to Kari,* that, apparently, no rebellion could disturb its peace. One of the two heiress-princesses, Kûît, the daughter, sister, and wife of a king, had no living male offspring, but her companion Mûtemûaû had at least one son, named Amenôthes. In his case, again, the noble birth of the mother atoned for the defects of the paternal origin. Moreover, according to tradition, Amon-Ka himself had intervened to renew the blood of his descendants: he appeared in the person of Thûtmosis IV., and under this guise became the father of the heir of the Pharaohs.**

Like Queen Ahmasis in the bas-reliefs of Deîr el-Baharî, Mûtemûaû is shown on those of Luxor in the arms of her divine lover, and subsequently greeted by him with the title of mother; in another bas-relief we see the queen led to her couch by the goddesses who preside over the birth of children; her son Amenôthes, on coming into the world with his double, is placed in the hands of the two Niles, to receive the nourishment and the education meet for the children of the gods. He profited fully by them, for he remained in power forty years, and his reign was one of the most prosperous ever witnessed by Egypt during the Theban dynasties.

Amenôthes III. had spent but little of his time in war. He had undertaken the usual raids in the South against the negroes and the tribes of the Upper Nile. In his fifth year, a general defection of the sheikhs obliged him to invade the province of Abhaît, near Semneh, which he devastated at the head of the troops collected by Mari-ifi mosû, the Prince of Kûsh; the punishment was salutary, the booty considerable, and a lengthy peace was re-established. The object of his rare expeditions into Naharaim was not so much to add new provinces to his empire, as to prevent disturbances in the old ones. The kings of Alasia, of the Khâti, of Mitanni, of Singar,* of Assyria, and of Babylon did not dare to provoke so powerful a neighbour.**

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The remembrance of the victories of Thûtmosis III. was still fresh in their memories, and, even had their hands been free, would have made them cautious in dealing with his great-grandson; but they were incessantly engaged in internecine quarrels, and had recourse to Pharaoh merely to enlist his support, or at any rate make sure of his neutrality, and prevent him from joining their adversaries.

Whatever might have been the nature of their private sentiments, they professed to be anxious to maintain, for their mutual interests, the relations with Egypt entered on half a century before, and as the surest method of attaining their object was by a good marriage, they would each seek an Egyptian wife for himself, or would offer Amenôthes a princess of one of their own royal families. The Egyptian king was, however, firm in refusing to bestow a princess of the solar blood even on the most powerful of the foreign kings; his pride rebelled at the thought that she might one day be consigned to a place among the inferior wives or concubines, but he gladly accepted, and even sought for wives for himself, from among the Syrian and Chaldæan princesses. Kallimmasin of Babylon gave Amenôthes first his sister, and when age had deprived this princess of her beauty, then his daughter Irtabi in marriage.*

Sutarna of Mitanni had in the same way given the Pharaoh his daughter Gilukhîpa; indeed, most of the kings of that period had one or two relations in the harem at Thebes. This connexion usually proved a support to Asiatic sovereigns, such alliances being a safeguard against the rivalries of their brothers or cousins. At times, however, they were the means of exposing them to serious dangers. When Sutarna died he was succeeded by his son Dushratta, but a numerous party put forward another prince, named Artassumara, who was probably Gilukhîpa’s brother, on the mother’s side;* a Hittite king of the name of Pirkhi espoused the cause of the pretender, and a civil war broke out.

Dushratta was victorious, and caused his brother to be strangled, but was not without anxiety as to the consequences which might follow this execution should Gilukhîpa desire to avenge the victim, and to this end stir up the anger of the suzerain against him. Dushratta, therefore, wrote a humble epistle, showing that he had received provocation, and that he had found it necessary to strike a decisive blow to save his own life; the tablet was accompanied by various presents to the royal pair, comprising horses, slaves, jewels, and perfumes. Gilukhîpa, however, bore Dushratta no ill-will, and the latter’s anxieties were allayed. The so-called expeditions of Amenôthes to the Syrian provinces must constantly have been merely visits of inspection, during which amusements, and especially the chase, occupied nearly as important a place as war and politics. Amenôthes III. took to heart that pre-eminently royal duty of ridding the country of wild beasts, and fulfilled it more conscientiously than any of his predecessors. He had killed 112 lions during the first ten years of his reign, and as it was an exploit of which he was remarkably proud, he perpetuated the memory of it in a special inscription, which he caused to be engraved on numbers of large scarabs of fine green enamel. Egypt prospered under his peaceful government, and if the king made no great efforts to extend her frontiers, he spared no pains to enrich the country by developing industry and agriculture, and also endeavoured to perfect the military organisation which had rendered the conquest of the East so easy a matter.

A census, undertaken by his minister Amenôthes, the son of Hâpi, ensured a more correct assessment of the taxes, and a regular scheme of recruiting for the army.

Whole tribes of slaves were brought into the country by means of the border raids which were always taking place, and their opportune arrival helped to fill up the vacancies which repeated wars had caused among the rural and urban population; such a strong impetus to agriculture was also given by this importation, that when, towards the middle of the reign, the minister Khâmhâîfc presented the tax-gathers at court, he was able to boast that he had stored in the State granaries a larger quantity of corn than had been gathered in for thirty years. The traffic carried on between Asia and the Delta by means of both Egyptian and foreign ships was controlled by customhouses erected at the mouths of the Nile, the coast being protected by cruising vessels against the attacks of pirates. The fortresses of the isthmus and of the Libyan border, having been restored or rebuilt, constituted a check on the turbulence of the nomad tribes, while garrisons posted at intervals at the entrance to the Wadys leading to the desert restrained the plunderers scattered between the Nile and the Red Sea, and between the chain of Oases and the unexplored regions of the Sahara.* Egypt was at once the most powerful as well as the most prosperous kingdom in the world, being able to command more labour and more precious metals for the embellishment of her towns and the construction of her monuments than any other.

Public works had been carried on briskly under Thûtmosis III. and his successors. The taste for building, thwarted at first by the necessity of financial reforms, and then by that of defraying the heavy expenses incurred through the expulsion of the Hyksôs and the earlier foreign wars, had free scope as soon as spoil from the Syrian victories began to pour in year by year. While the treasure seized from the enemy provided the money, the majority of the prisoners were used as workmen, so that temples, palaces, and citadels began to rise as if by magic from one end of the valley to the other.*

Nubia, divided into provinces, formed merely an extension of the ancient feudal Egypt—at any rate as far as the neighbourhood of the Tacazzeh—though the Egyptian religion had here assumed a peculiar character.

The conquest of Nubia having been almost entirely the work of the Theban dynasties, the Theban triad, Amon, Maût, and Montû, and their immediate followers were paramount in this region, while in the north, in witness of the ancient Elephantinite colonisation, we find Khnûmû of the cataract being worshipped, in connexion with Didûn, father of the indigenous Nubians. The worship of Amon had been the means of introducing that of Eâ and of Horus, and Osiris as lord of the dead, while Phtah, Sokhît, Atûmû, and the Memphite and Heliopolitan gods were worshipped only in isolated parts of the province. A being, however, of less exalted rank shared with the lords of heaven the favour of the people. This was the Pharaoh, who as the son of Amon was foreordained to receive divine honours, sometimes figuring, as at Bohani, as the third member of a triad, at other times as head of the Ennead. Ûsirtasen III. had had his chapels at Semneh and at Kûmmeh, they were restored by Thûtmosis III., who claimed a share of the worship offered in them, and whose son, Amenôthes II., also assumed the symbols and functions of divinity.

Amenôthes I. was venerated in the province of Kari, and Amenôthes III., when founding the fortress Hâît-Khâmmâît* in the neighbourhood of a Nubian village, on a spot now known as Soleb, built a temple there, of which he himself was the protecting genius.**

The edifice was of considerable size, and the columns and walls remaining reveal an art as perfect as that shown in the best monuments at Thebes. It was approached by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, while colossal statues of lions and hawks, the sacred animals of the district, adorned the building. The sovereign condescended to preside in person at its dedication on one of his journeys to the southern part of his empire, and the mutilated pictures still visible on the façade show the order and detail of the ceremony observed on this occasion. The king, with the crown upon his head, stood before the centre gate, accompanied by the queen and his minister Amenôthes, the son of Hâpi, who was better acquainted than any other man of his time with the mysteries of the ritual.*

The king then struck the door twelve times with his mace of white stone, and when the approach to the first hall was opened, he repeated the operation at the threshold of the sanctuary previous to entering and placing his statue there. He deposited it on the painted and gilded wooden platform on which the gods were exhibited on feast-days, and enthroned beside it the other images which were thenceforth to constitute the local Ennead, after which he kindled the sacred fire before them. The queen, with the priests and nobles, all bearing torches, then passed through the halls, stopping from time to time to perform acts of purification, or to recite formulas to dispel evil spirits and pernicious influences; finally, a triumphal procession was formed, and the whole cortege returned to the palace, where a banquet brought the day’s festivities to a close.* It was Amenôthes III. himself, or rather one of his statues animated by his double, who occupied the chief place in the new building. Indeed, wherever we come across a temple in Nubia dedicated to a king, we find the homage of the inhabitants always offered to the image of the founder, which spoke to them in oracles. All the southern part of the country beyond the second cataract is full of traces of Amenôthes, and the evidence of the veneration shown to him would lead us to conclude that he played an important part in the organisation of the country. Sedeinga possessed a small temple under the patronage of his wife Tîi. The ruins of a sanctuary which he dedicated to Anion, the Sun-god, have been discovered at Gebel-Barkal; Amenôthes seems to have been the first to perceive the advantages offered by the site, and to have endeavoured to transform the barbarian village of Napata into a large Egyptian city. Some of the monuments with which he adorned Soleb were transported, in later times, to Gebel-Barkal, among them some rams and lions of rare beauty. They lie at rest with their paws crossed, the head erect, and their expression suggesting both power and repose.** As we descend the Nile, traces of the work of this king are less frequent, and their place is taken by those of his predecessors, as at Sai, at Semneh, at Wady Haifa, at Amada, at Ibrîm, and at Dakkeh. Distant traces of Amenôthes again appear in the neighbourhood of the first cataract, and in the island of Elephantine, which he endeavoured to restore to its ancient splendour.

Two of the small buildings which he there dedicated to Khnûmû, the local god, were still in existence at the beginning of the present century. That least damaged, on the south side of the island, consisted of a single chamber nearly forty feet in length. The sandstone walls, terminating in a curved cornice, rested on a hollow substructure raised rather more than six feet above the ground, and surrounded by a breast-high parapet. A portico ran round the building, having seven square pillars on each of its two sides, while at each end stood two columns having lotus-shaped capitals; a flight of ten or twelve steps between two walls of the same height as the basement, projected in front, and afforded access to the cella. The two columns of the façade were further apart than those at the opposite end of the building, and showed a glimpse of a richly decorated door, while a second door opened under the peristyle at the further extremity. The walls were covered with the half-brutish profile of the good Khnûmû, and those of his two companions, Anûkît and Satît, the spirits of stormy waters. The treatment of these figures was broad and simple, the style free, light, and graceful, the colouring soft; and the harmonious beauty of the whole is unsurpassed by anything at Thebes itself. It was, in fact, a kind of oratory, built on a scale to suit the capacities of a decaying town, but the design was so delicately conceived in its miniature proportions that nothing more graceful can be imagined.*

Ancient Egypt and its feudal cities, Ombos, Edfû,* Nekhabît, Esneh,** Medamôt,*** Coptos,**** Denderah, Abydos, Memphis,^ and Heliopolis, profited largely by the generosity of the Pharaohs.

Since the close of the XIIth dynasty these cities had depended entirely on their own resources, and their public buildings were either in ruins, or quite inadequate to the needs of the population, but now gold from Syria and Kûsh furnished them with the means of restoration. The Delta itself shared in this architectural revival, but it had suffered too severely under the struggle between the Theban kings and the Shepherds to recover itself as quickly as the remainder of the country. All effort was concentrated on those of its nomes which lay on the Eastern frontier, or which were crossed by the Pharaohs in their journeys into Asia, such as the Bubastite and Athribite nomes; the rest remained sunk in their ancient torpor.*

* Mariette and E. de Rougé, attribute this torpor, at least as far as Tanis is concerned, to the aversion felt by the Pharaohs of Egyptian blood for the Hyksôs capital, and for the provinces where the invaders had formerly established themselves in large numbers.

Beyond the Red Sea the mines were actively worked, and even the oases of the Libyan desert took part in the national revival, and buildings rose in their midst of a size proportionate to their slender revenues. Thebes naturally came in for the largest share of the spoils of war. Although her kings had become the rulers of the world, they had not, like the Pharaohs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties, forsaken her for some more illustrious city: here they had their ordinary residence as well as their seat of government, hither they returned after each campaign to celebrate their victory, and hither they sent the prisoners and the spoil which they had reserved for their own royal use. In the course of one or two generations Thebes had spread in every direction, and had enclosed within her circuit the neighbouring villages of Ashîrû, the fief of Maiit, and Apît-rîsîfc, the southern Thebes, which lay at the confluence of the Nile with one of the largest of the canals which watered the plain. The monuments in these two new quarters of the town were unworthy of the city of which they now formed part, and Amenôthes III. consequently bestowed much pains on improving them. He entirely rebuilt the sanctuary of Maût, enlarged the sacred lake, and collected within one of the courts of the temple several hundred statues in black granite of the Memphite divinity, the lioness-headed Sokhît, whom he identified with his Theban goddess. The statues were crowded together so closely that they were in actual contact with each other in places, and must have presented something of the appearance of a regiment drawn up in battle array. The succeeding Pharaohs soon came to look upon this temple as a kind of storehouse, whence they might provide themselves with ready-made figures to decorate their buildings either at Thebes or in other royal cities. About a hundred of them, however, still remain, most of them without feet, arms, or head; some over-turned on the ground, others considerably out of the perpendicular, from the earth having given way beneath them, and a small number only still perfect and in situ.

At Luxor Amenôthes demolished the small temple with which the sovereigns of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties had been satisfied, and replaced it by a structure which is still one of the finest yet remaining of the times of the Pharaohs. The naos rose sheer above the waters of the Nile, indeed its cornices projected over the river, and a staircase at the south side allowed the priests and devotees to embark directly from the rear of the building. The sanctuary was a single chamber, with an opening on its side, but so completely shut out from the daylight by the long dark hall at whose extremity it was placed as to be in perpetual obscurity. It was flanked by narrow, dimly lightly chambers, and was approached through a pronaos with four rows of columns, a vast court surrounded with porticoes occupying the foreground. At the present time the thick walls which enclosed the entire building are nearly level with the ground, half the ceilings have crumbled away, air and light penetrate into every nook, and during the inundation the water flowing into the courts, transformed them until recently into lakes, whither the flocks and herds of the village resorted in the heat of the day to bathe or quench their thirst. Pictures of mysterious events never meant for the public gaze now display their secrets in the light of the sun, and reveal to the eyes of the profane the supernatural events which preceded the birth of the king. On the northern side an avenue of sphinxes and crio-sphinxes led to the gates of old Thebes. At present most of these creatures are buried under the ruins of the modern town, or covered by the earth which overlies the ancient road; but a few are still visible, broken and shapeless from barbarous usage, and hardly retaining any traces of the inscriptions in which Amenôthes claimed them boastingly as his work.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.

Triumphal processions passing along this route from Luxor to Karnak would at length reach the great court before the temple of Amon, or, by turning a little to the right after passing the temple of Maût, would arrive in front of the southern façade, near the two gilded obelisks whose splendour once rejoiced the heart of the famous Hâtshopsîtû. Thûtmosis III. was also determined on his part to spare no expense to make the temple of his god of proportions suitable to the patron of so vast an empire. Not only did he complete those portions which his predecessors had merely sketched out, but on the south side towards Ashîrû he also built a long row of pylons, now half ruined, on which he engraved, according to custom, the list of nations and cities which he had subdued in Asia and Africa. To the east of the temple he rebuilt some ancient structures, the largest of which served as a halting-place for processions, and he enclosed the whole with a stone rampart. The outline of the sacred lake, on which the mystic boats were launched on the nights of festivals, was also made more symmetrical, and its margin edged with masonry.