Rameses the Great was the Alexander of Egypt. His lot was cast in the palmiest days of Egyptian history. He was the most magnificent of the Pharaohs. None had such grand ideas, or gave them such grand embodiment. He carried the arms of Egypt to the utmost limits they ever reached. As one stands at Karnak, Thebes, and Abydos, before the sculptures he set up, and reads in them the records of his achievements, and of the thoughts that stirred within him, the mind is transported to a very distant past—but though so distant, we still may, by the aids we now possess, recover much of its form and features. Let us then endeavour to construct for ourselves some conception of his great expedition from the materials with which the monuments and history supply us.

Egypt is very flourishing. Pharaoh has an army of 700,000 men and great resources, and so he becomes dissatisfied at remaining idle in his happy valley. There is a wonderful world up in the north-east. He would like to be to that world what we might describe as an Egyptian Columbus and Cortez in one. He wishes to signalize the commencement of his reign with some achievement that will be for ever famous. But these distant people have never wronged him: they had never burnt his cities, or driven off his cattle. If they have ever heard of the grandeur of Egypt, they can hardly tell whether it belongs to this world of theirs, or to some other world. Considerations, however, of this kind do not affect him.

But there are many difficulties in his way. The very first step of the proposed expedition will carry his army into a desert of some days’ journey. How is this desert to be crossed? That is disposed of by the answer that his father Sethos, and even some of the predecessors of Sethos on the throne of Egypt, had crossed it.—But how is his army to be supported in that unknown world beyond? How are provisions to be procured, for they cannot be supplied from Egypt? The people they will invade can support themselves; what they have must be taken from them, and war must be made to support itself.—But supposing all goes well as they advance, how shall they ever get back, with their arms worn out, and their ranks thinned, and with a vengeful foe barring their return with fortified places, and swarming upon them from every side? They must, on their outward march, raze all these fortified places, and make as clean a sweep as they can of the population of the countries they pass through.—And how shall the Egyptians live when Nature shall assail them with frost and snow? Will their linen robes be then sufficient? They must do what they can. They will be able to take the woollen garments of the enemies they destroy. The difficulties, then, could not deter him. He must see this great and wonderful world outside. He must flaunt his greatness in its face. He must collect the treasures and the slaves that will be required for building the mighty temples and palaces he contemplates. These monuments he must have; and he will record upon them that he did not, in raising them, tax and use up Egyptians.

And so it becomes a settled thing that he and his armies shall go forth from Egypt. It would not have been the East had not the host, with which he was to go forth, been a mighty one—as God’s army, the locusts, for multitude. Everything must be on a grand scale; and everything must be foreseen and provided for, as is the custom of the wise Egyptians.

Then began a gathering of men, of horses, of chariots, of asses, such as had never been seen on the earth before—as much greater than other gatherings as the Pyramids were greater than other buildings. In those mighty structures they had had an example, now for a thousand years, of the style and fashion in which should be carried out whatever Egypt undertook. Day and night were the messengers going to and fro on the bank, and on the river. Many new forges were put in blast, many new anvils set up. Never had the sound of the hammer been so much heard before, never had been seen before so many buyers and lookers-on in the armourers’ bazaars. There were canvas towns outside the gates of Thebes, of This, of Memphis, and of other great cities. Never had so many horses been seen picketed before; men wondered where they all had come from. On the river there were boats full of men, and boats full of grain, to people and to feed the canvas towns. Never had the landing-places been so crowded before. Many a river trader, in those days, had to drop away from his moorings against the bank, to make room for the grain-boats and the troop-boats of the great king. Never had the temples been so full before: never had there been so many processions, and so many offerings. The gods must be propitiated for the great expedition: it must be undertaken in their names. Mightier temples and richer offerings must be promised for the return of the king and of the host, when they shall bring back victory. Many said in those days of preparation, ‘The gods be with the king and with his armies.’ Many said in their hearts, ‘Who can tell? The gods had made Egypt great, but would they go forth from Egypt? The king was as a god, but could he do all things?’ This was an issue that could not be forecast.

Such was the talk of many in the mud-built villages, as well as in hundred-gated Thebes, in old Abydos, in discrowned Memphis, and in all the cities of all the gods—for every god had his own city. Nothing else had much interest, either in the mansions of the rich, or in the hovels of the poor. The wives and daughters of the people—while in the evening they walked down to the river-side with their water-jars, or, when the sun was down, clustered together at the street-corners and at the village-gate, sitting on the ground—had never tarried before so long at those watering-places, those gates, and those street-corners. And all the while the musterings and the preparations went on like the work of a machine, for the king had the whole people well in hand, and he bent all Egypt to the work as if it had been one man.

And everything is now complete. The last processions and offerings have been made. The aid of the gods has been promised. The priests had thought that Egypt, at all events, would be secure, whatever might befall those going forth; that no abiding evil consequences could ever ensue to the country itself. In this they knew not the future. If all should not go well, Egypt, they deemed, could spare some of her soldier caste, and that her priests would in that take no hurt. As to the stranger, no matter what his thirst for vengeance, it never would be slaked in Egypt.

And now the host has reached Pelusium, the place which, under the name of Abaris, had been fortified so strongly on the expulsion of the Hyksos. This was the great rendezvous. In that neighbourhood the several army-corps had been assembling for the last two or three months. And now it is near the end of winter. Water will still be found in the wadies of Mount Cassius; and they will be in time to reap for themselves the harvests of Syria; and, as the season goes on, of the countries further to the north. At last they advance into the desert, and the host is brought together for the first time. Never before had been seen such a host. All the might and all the glory of Egypt are there; all the discipline and all the forethought. These Egyptians, who are so fond of colour and of flags at home, have not gone forth to show themselves to the world without this bravery. The desert cannot be seen for the myriads of men and animals that cover it. It has become as gay as a flower-garden. The bright sun is glinting from untarnished arms.

And so they crossed the desert, and got among the cities which were afterwards known as the cities of the Philistines, the cities of the Plain of Sharon. And now commenced their cruel work. Their two great objects were to provide themselves with supplies; and then to sweep away everything, both fortified places, and men capable of bearing arms, that might impede their return, they knew not when, or how. These people had never troubled Egypt, but most of them were akin to the hated Hyksos. No justification was needed, but that would justify anything. The Egyptian host must take all it wanted, though those from whom they take it perish; and they must leave neither foe, nor pretended friend, behind. And so they went on, clearing off everything, man and beast, fenced city and corn-field. It was done ruthlessly. Their swords and spears were seldom dry. You see on the sculptures the king set up when he returned home, how he treated the people whose countries he passed through, for this was not an expedition against enemies, but against the tribes and nations whose countries he chose to pass through and desolate.

And so they went on. They swept over the Plain of Esdraelon, and they passed up by Lebanon and Damascus into Armenia. They then overran Persia and Media. At last they reached Bactria, the district of which modern Bokhara is now the capital. Here they effected a lodgment, which kept this region in subjection and tributary to them for some generations. It is curious that in this remote and almost inaccessible centre of Asia the Greeks also in after times succeeded in establishing themselves, and were able to maintain the position they had acquired in it for several centuries. This was the Egyptians’ extremest point to the East. They now turned their faces westward, and, having overrun Asia Minor, they crossed into Thrace. From Thrace they appear to have endeavoured to make the circuit of the Euxine. This brought them into collision with the Scythians, whom they defeated. Among those peoples whose cities he destroyed, and whose country he ravaged, Rameses had probably taken no especial notice of the Persians. They, however, were the people who were destined to retaliate the wanton and enormous cruelties of the undertaking, in the success of which he saw only the establishment of the glory and power of Egypt. In the days of their empire they will not only repay Egypt for this expedition, but they will also follow the footsteps of Rameses through Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus into Thrace, and through Thrace, and across the Danube, into Scythia. But from the wide inhospitable steppes they will not bring back the barren victories—no others could be obtained there—which will enable the Egyptians to boast that the achievements of Darius had not equalled those of Rameses.

At the eastern end of the Black Sea, in the district known to the Greeks by the name of Colchis, Rameses left a detachment of his army for the purpose of permanently occupying a position. Those thus left behind established themselves on the spot; and long afterwards, by their practice of the rite of circumcision, their language, complexion, and hair, retained the evidence of their origin. As their hair was woolly and their skin black, they must have been detached from the Ethiopian contingent of the army.[4]

Everywhere throughout this great raid Rameses set up statues and tablets with inscriptions upon them to commemorate his achievements, making many of them insulting to the people he had conquered, and whose countries he had devastated. One of these inscriptions remains to this day on the living rock to the north-west of Damascus, near the mouth of the river the Greeks called Lycus, and which is now known by the name of El Kelb. Upon it are still legible the names of Rameses and of the gods Ra (the sun), and Ammon, whom especially he served, as the gods of his great capital, Thebes.

And so, after nine years of such warfare as we have been describing, he returns to favoured and protected Egypt, to thank Ra and Ammon for the favour and protection they had vouchsafed to him, and for all the mighty deeds they had enabled him to do, and to preserve for ever the memory of those deeds on the walls of their temples. He brings back with him much treasure, the spoils of the nations, and multitudes of captives. Both this treasure and these captives he uses up upon the temples, and upon the monuments, palaces, and cities, he now builds.

Without any possible provocation, and without any advantage to himself, if the wear and tear of his own kingdom be weighed in the balance against the spoil and the slaves he brought home, he had, like a lava torrent, passed over what were then some of the fairest portions of the world. His swarthy, bloodthirsty, destroying host must have appeared to the inhabitants of those countries like the legions of the lower world let loose. This was too dreadful a work even for those times ever to be forgotten.

And it was remembered some centuries afterwards, when the tables were turned, and Egypt was invaded by Cambyses. In the Persian army were contingents from many people who had treasured up the memory of what Rameses the Great had on this expedition done to their forefathers, and of what several of the successors of Rameses on the throne of Egypt had in like manner done to many of the peoples of Asia. The day of reckoning came, and the reckoning was fearfully exacted. We see the marks, remaining on the temples to this day, of the retributive fury of the Persians against the gods of Egypt.