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ANCIENT TIMES "^
A HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF
ANCIENT HISTORY AND THE
CAREER OF EARLY MAN
BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED, Ph.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL HISTORY AND EGYPTOLOGY; CHAIRMAN
OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO
A
^X" COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED
JiNTEREI) AT STATIONERS' HALL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
OUTLINES OF EUROPEAN' HISTORY, PART I
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON
AND JAMES HENRY BREASTED
ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
320-3
P
377
GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON -U.S.A.
|f«U<"
PREFACE
In the selection of subject matter as well as in style and diction, it has been the purpose of the author to make this book sufficiently simple to be put into the hands of first-year high-school pupils. A great deal of labor has been devoted to the mere task of clear and simple statement and arrange- ment. While simple enough for first-year high-school work, "it nevertheless is planned to interest and stimulate all students of high-school age. In dealing with each civilization a suffi- cient framework of political organization and of historical events has been laid down ; but the bulk of the space has been deiwted to the life of man in all its manifestations — society, industry, commerce, religion, art, literature. These things are so presented as to make it clear how one age grows out of another, and how each civilization profits by that which has preceded it.
The story of each great race or nation is thus clearly disen- gaged and presented in period after period ; but, nevertheless, the book purposes to present the career of man as a whole, in a connected story of expanding life and civilization from the days of the rudest stone hatchet to the Christian cathedrals of Europe, without a serious gap. A symmetrical presentation of the career of man requires adequate space for the origins of civilization and the history of the Orient, as these two subjects have been revealed by the excavations and discoveries of the last two generations, especially the last twenty-five years. The reasons for devoting more than the customary space to these subjects in this book may therefore be briefly noted.
The length of the career of man discernible by us has been enormously increased at the present day by archaeological
iv Ancient Times
discovery, carrying back the development of human arts at least fifty, and perhaps two hundred thousand, years. Even as recorded in written documents, modern discovery in the Orient has placed behind the period of human history as formerly known to us another period equally long, thus doubling the length of the historic age. It cannot be said that all this vast new outlook has as yet been surveyed and briefly presented in a form intelligible to younger students as an imposing pano- rama of the expanding human career. The attainment of such a point of view of the career of man has been a slow process. The ancient history written by Sulpicius Severus, about 400 a.d., survived for over a thousand years, and became a respected text- book, which was in use as late as the sixteenth century. It dealt almost exclusively with the history of Rome. A mention of the battle of Marathon was its only reference to Greek history. The Roman colossus bulked so large that nothing earlier could be seen behind it. , ,» a a\ -v v v v
Within the last few years, however, the marvelous genius of the Greeks has finally found full recognition in our histori- cal textbooks. There is another similar step yet to be taken, and that is to discern behind Greece and Rome an additional great and important chapter of the human story and to give it adequate and interesting presentation to young readers. Prob- ably no one outside the arcanum of the traditional classicists would question the assertion that Conquests which we owe to the Orient, like the discovery of metal and the invention of alphabetic writing, were achievements of far greater impor- tance than the details of the Peloponnesian Wars, whether estimated by their consequences to the human race or by their value as information in the mind of the modern high-school pupil. Whether such achievements are regarded as falling within the historic epoch or not is a matter of small moment. They belong to the human career^ and as such they should find their place in the picture of that career which is presented to the younger generation.
Preface v
The intelligent person of to-day desires to be so familiar with such facts as these in the rise of civilization as to possess some moderate acquaintance with the early chapters in the human career. Civilization arose in the Orient, and early Europe ob- tained it there. But the languages of the early Orient perished, and the ability to read them was lost many centuries ago. On the other hand, the languages of Greece and Rome were never lost, like those of the ancient Orient. In modern educational history Greek and Latin have not been suddenly recovered, and we have not had to grow accustomed to their abrupt intro- duction into science and education. The sudden and dramatic recovery of the earlier chapters of the human career, lying behind Greece and Rome, has created a situation to which our histories of the ancient world, as they are found in our public schools, have not yet adjusted themselves. The habit of regard- ing ancient history as beginning with Greece has become so fixed that it is not easily to be changed. Furthermore, the monuments and documents left us by the ancient Orient are far larger in extent than those which we have inherited from Greece and Rome together, and their enormous volume, to- gether with their difficult systems of writing, have made it very laborious to recover and arrange the history of the Orient in form and language suitable for the high-school pupil.
In 1884 Eduard Meyer, the leading ancient historian of this generation, in his History of Antiquity devoted six hundred and nineteen pages to the Orient. In the third edition, still unfinished, which began to appear in 1913, the portion of the Orient thus far issued (less than half) occupies eleven hundred and fifty pages. The remainder, still unpublished, will easily bring the treatment of the Orient up to twenty- four or twenty-five hundred pages, that is, about four times its former bulk. A textbook which devotes a brief fifty- or sixty- page introduction to the Orient and begins " real history " with the Greeks is not proportioned in accordance with modem knowledge of the ancient world.
vi Ancient Times
Furthermore, the value of the early oriental monuments as teaching material has as yet hardly been discerned. The highly graphic pictorial monuments and records of the East, when accompanied by proper explanations, may be made to convey to the young student the meaning and- character of a contem- porary historical source more vividly than any body of ancient records surviving elsewhere. When adequately explained, such records also serve to dispel that sense of complete unreality which besets the young person in studying the career of ancient man. These materials have not been employed in our schools, because they have not been available to the teacher in the current textbooks.
Finally, when we recall that the leading religion of the world — the one which still dominates Western civilization to-day — came to us out of the Orient ; when we further remember that before it fell the Roman Empire was completely orientalized, it would appear to be only fair to our schools to give them books furnish- ing an adequate treatment of pre-Greek civilization. This does not mean to question for a moment the undeniable supremacy of Greek culture, or to give it any less space than before. The author believes that no one who reads the chapters on Greece in this survey will gain the impression that Hellas has been sac- rificed to Moloch — in other words, to her oriental predecessors.
The author is* convinced that the surviving monuments of the entire ancient world can be so visualized as to render ancient history a very real story even to young students, and that these monuments may be made to tell their own story with great vividness. This method he has already introduced into the ancient-history chapters of Outlines of European History^ Part Tj where it has demonstrated its availability. The same method has been employed in illustrating this ancient history. The result has been a book somewhat larger than the current text- books on ancient history ; but the excess is due to the series of illustrations. The book actually contains a text of about five hundred pages, with a " picture book " of about two hundred
Preface vii
and fifteen pages. Teachers will do well to make the illustra- tions and accompanying descriptive matter part of each lesson. The references in the text to the illustrations, and the refer- ences to the text in the descriptive matter under the illustrations, if noted and used, will be found to merge text and illustrations into a unified whole. It should be noted that all references to the text are by paragraph (§) except a few references by " Section."
An elaborate system of maps has been arranged by the author for the purpose of bringing the successive epochs of history before the pupil in terms of geography. The under- lying principle is the arrangement on the same plate of from two to four maps representing successive historical epochs. It is believed that these composite maps, called by the author sequence maps, will prove a powerful aid to the teacher.
The author has not found it an easy task to turn from twenty-five years of research in a laboratory of ancient history, extending from a university post in America to the frontiers of the oriental lands, and endeavor to summarize for youthful readers the facts now discernible in the career of ancient man. Under these circumstances the experience of my friend Professor James Harvey Robinson, who has done so much for the study of history in the schools of America, has been invaluable. The book owes a great deal to the inspiration of his unflagging interest and the helpfulness of his long experi- ence in the art of simplification. It may be mentioned here that Professor Robinson's Medieval arid Modern Times forms the continuation of this volume on ancient history. To my colleague Professor C. F. Huth also I am indebted for careful reading of the proofs, accompanied by unfailingly valuable counsel. To him, furthermore, I owe the excellent bibliography of Greece and Rome at the end of the volume. Mr. Robert I. Adriance, head of the history department of the East Orange high schools, has kindly read all the proofs. His discerning criticisms and wide knowledge have proved very valuable to the book, and his unfailing interest has been a great encouragement.
viii Ancient Times
It will be noticed that some of the author's treatment of the ancient world in Outlines of European History, Fart /, has been retained here. These portions had already been looked over by Mr. A. F. Barnard of the University High School of Chicago, and he has also very kindly read the proofs of the remainder of the volume. The chapters on the Babylonians and Assyrians have been read by Professor D. D. Luckenbill, and that on the Hebrews by Professor J. M. Powis Smith, and to their kindness I am indebted for several suggestions. The sections oh early Christianity and the Church have likewise been looked over by my colleague Professor S. J. Case. To all these friends and colleagues the author would here express his sincere thanks.
It has been very gratifying to the author to be able to include in a book of this character the six charming etchings made expressly for the volume by Mr. George T. Plowman. To Mrs. William T. Brewster he is also indebted for the beautiful water color of the Plain of Argos (Plate III). Besides photographs furnished by the Egyptian Expedition of The Uni- versity of Chicago, many illustrations have been contributed by foreign scholars, to whom the author would here express his thanks, especially to Bissing (Munich), Borchardt (Cairo), Dechelette now alas! a sacrifice of the great war (Roanne), Dorpfeld (Athens and Berlin), Hoemes (Vienna), Koldewey (Babylon), Montelius (Stockholm), Schaefer (Berlin), Schubart (Berlin), Steindorff (Leipzig), and some others, who have kindly furnished photographs and sketches. The author is also espe- cially indebted to Messrs. Underwood & Underwood for per- mission to use their unrivaled series of Egyptian, oriental, and Mediterranean photographs as the basis for a number of sketches: Figs. 23, 122, 128, 153, 159, 163, 171, 174, 175, 176, 177, 173, 179, 189, 190, 203, 221, 260. No'more vivid impressions of the places and scenes where the men of the early world lived and wrought can be obtained than by the use of these photographs in stereoscopic form. Teachers who make the Underwood stereographs a part of their equipment will
Preface ix
find that their teaching gains enormously in effectiveness. The author desires to thank also Mr. E. K. Robinson of Ginn and Company, without whose experienced assistance and unfailing patience it would have been impossible to complete the unusual and elaborate illustrative scheme of this book. To the pub- lishers, who have unhesitatingly supported this expensive and laborious illustrative equipment and to the remarkably skillful and efficient proofreaders and printers who have solved the numerous and extraordinary typographical difficulties involved in so large an illustrative scheme, the author would also offer his hearty thanks.
JAMES HENRY BREASTED
CONTENTS
PART I. THE EARLIEST EUROPEANS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Early Mankind in Europe
1. Earliest Man's Ignorance and Progress i
2. The Early Stone Age S
3. The Middle Stone Age 9
4. The Late Stone Age 14
PART II. THE ORIENT
II. The Story of Egypt: the Earliest Nile-Dwellers AND THE Pyramid Age
5. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants 35
6. The Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 R.c.) 49
7. Art and Architecture in the Pyramid Age 68
III. The Story of Egypt: the Feudal Age and the Empire
8. The Nile Voyage and the Feudal Age 74
9. The Founding of the Empire 80
10. The Higher Life of the Empire 86
11. The Decline and Fall of the ICgyptian Empire .... 93
12. The Decipherment of Egyptian Writing by Champollion 97
IV. Western Asia : Babylonia
13. The Lands and Races of Western Asia 100
14. Rise of Sumerian Civilization and Pearly Struggle of
Sumerian and Semite 107
15. The P'irst Semitic Triumph : the Age of Sargon . . . 122
16. Union of Sumerians and Semites: the Kings of vSumer
and Akkad 126
17. The Second Semitic Triumph: the Age of Plammurapi
and After 128
V. The Assyrians and Chaldeans
18. Early Assyria and her Rivals 140
19. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 B.C.) 151
20. The Chaldean Empire : the Last Semitic Empire . . . 164,
xi
xii Ancient Times
CHAPTER • PAGE
VI. The Medo-Persian Empire
21. The Indo-European Peoples and their Dispersion . . 171
22. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian Prophet Zoroaster 1 76
23. Rise of the Persian Empire : Cyrus 179
24. The Civilization of the Persian Empire (about 530
to 330 B.C.) 182
2 5. Persian Documents and the Decipherment of Cuneiform 1 89
26. The Results of Persian Rule and its Religious Influence 194
VII. The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient
27. Palestine and the Predecessors of the Hebrews there 197
28. The Settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine and the
United Hebrew Kingdom 200
29. The Two Hebrew Kingdoms 206
30. The Destruction of the Hebrew Kingdoms by Assyria
and Chaldea 210
31. The Hebrews in Exile and their Deliverance by the
Persians . 213
32. Decline of Oriental Leadership ; Estimate of Oriental
Civilization .'"."J l'"."^ 'V ": "J'' :'': 'V'-.^'r . . 217
PART III. THE GREEKS
VIII. The Dawn of European Civilization and the Rise OF THE Eastern Mediterranean World
33. The Dawn of Civilization in Europe 221
34. The ^gean World : the Islands . . . '. .'. / . . 225
35. The ^gean World: the Mainland . . . .... . . 236
36. Modern Discovery in the Northern Mediterranean and
the Rise of an Eastern Mediterranean World . . . 244
IX. The Greek Conquest of the ^gean World
37. The Coming of the Greeks 252
38. The Nomad Greeks make the Transition to the Settled
• >' . Life . . . .- . .- •• . .- .• .- .i'»4'*'l'>.^' . ... 259
X.' Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings
39. The ^gean Inheritance and the Spread of Phoenician
Commerce 263
40. The Phoenicians bring the First Alphabet to Europe 270
41. Greek Warriors and the Hero Songs 273
42. The Beginnings and Early Development of Greek
Religion 276
Contents xiii
CHAPTER PAGE
XI. The Age of the Nobles and Greek Expansion in THE Mediterranean
43. The Disappearance of the Kings and the Leadership
of the Nobles 282
44. Greek Expansion in the Age of the Nobles .... 287
45. Greek Civilization in the Age of the Nobles .... 290
XII. The Industrial Revolution and the Age of the Tyrants
46. The Industrial and Commercial Revolution .... 295
47. Rise of the Democracy and the Age of the Tyrants . 301
48. Civilization of the Age of the Tyrants 307
XIII. The Repulse of Persia
49. The Coming of the Persians ..... .... 322
50. The Greek Repulse of Persians and Phoenicians . .328
XIV. The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta,
AND the Rise of the Athenian Empire
51. The Beginnings of the Rivalry between Athens and
Sparta 336
52. The Rise of the Athenian Empire and the Triumph
of Democracy 339
53. Commercial Development and the Opening of the
Struggle between Athens and Sparta 344
XV. Athens in the Age of Pericles
54. Society, the Home, Education and Training of Young
Citizens 350
55. Higher Education, Science, and the Training (gained
by State Service 357
56. Art and Literature 362
XVI. The Struggle between Athens and Sparta and the Fall of the Athenian Empire
57. The Tyranny of Athens and the Second Peloponne-
sian War 378
58. Third Peloponnesian War and Destruction of the
Athenian Empire . . . fj.jjioW 3^5
XVII. The Final Conflicts among the (5reek States
59. Spartan Leadership and the Decline of Democracy . 394
60. The Fall of Sparta and the Leadership of Thebes . 402
xiv Ancient Times
CHAPTER PAGE
XVIII. The Higher Life of the Greeks from the Death OF Pericles to the Fall of the Greek States 6i. Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting ...... 406
62. Religion, Literature, and Thought 413
XIX. Alexander the Great
63. The Rise of Macedonia 425
64. Campaigns of Alexander the Great 429
65. International Policy of Alexander: its Personal Con-
sequences 438
PART IV. THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE HELLENISTIC AGE AND THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
XX. The Heirs of Alexander
66. The Heirs of Alexander's Empire 445
67. The Decline of Greece 450
XXI. The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age
68. Cities, Architecture, and Art 453
69. Inventions and Science ; Libraries and Literature . 466
70. Education, Philosophy, and Religion 475
71. Formation of a Hellenistic World of Hellenic-Oriental
Civilization; Decline of Citizenship and the City-State 481
XXII. The Western Mediterranean World and the Roman Conquest of Italy
72. The Western Mediterranean World 484
73. Earliest Rome 492
74. The Early Republic : its Progress and Government . 499
75. The Expansion of the Roman Republic and the Con-
quest of Italy 511
XXIII. The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy
and the Rivalry with Carthage
76. Italy under the Early Roman Republic 520
77. Rome and Carthage as Commercial Rivals .... 524
XXIV. The Roman Conquest of the Western Mediter-
ranean World
78. The Struggle with Carthage: the Sicilian War, or
First Punic War 533
79. The Hannibalic War (Second Punic War) and the
Destruction of Carthage 535
Contents
XV
CHAPTER PAGE
XXV. World Dominion and Degeneracy
80. The Roman Conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean
World 549
81. Roman Government and Civilization in the Age of
Conquest 553
82. Degeneration in City and Country 563
XXVI. A Century of Revolution and the End of the Republic
83. The Land Situation and the Beginning of the
Struggle between Senate and People 574
84. The Rise of One-Man Power: Marius and Sulla . 578
85. The Overthrow of the Republic : Pompey and
Caesar 584
86. The Triumph of Augustus and the End of the
Civil War 596
PART V. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
XXVII. The First of Two Centuries of Peace: the Age OF Augustus and the Successors of his Line
87. The Rule of Augustus and the Beginning of Two
Centuries of Peace (30 B.C.-14A.D.) 601
88. The Civilization of the Augustan Age 607
89. The Line of Augustus and the End of the First
Century of Peace (14 A. D.-68 A.D.) 617
XXVIII. The Second Century of Peace and the Civiliza- tion OF THE Early Roman Empire
90. The Emperors of the Second Century of Peace (be-
ginning 69 A.D.) 625
91. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire: the
Provinces 636
92. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire : Rome 649
93. Popularity of Oriental Religions and the Spread of
Early Christianity 659
94. The End of the Second Century of Peace .... 664
XXIX. A Century of Revolution and the Division of THE Empire
95. Internal Decline of the Roman Empire .... 667
96. A Century of Revolution 673
xvi Ancient Times
CHAPTER PAGE
97. The Roman Empire an Oriental Despotism .... 677
98. The Division of the Empire and the Triumph of
Christianity 682
XXX. The Triumph of the Barbarians and the End of THE Ancient World
99. The Barbarian Invasions and the Fall of the Western
Empire 688
100. The Triumph of the Roman Church and its Power
over the Western Nations 698
♦ loi. The Final Revival of the Orient and the Forerunners
of the Nations of Modern Europe .' . ' i .' . . . 705
102. Retrospect . 1 .' 1 ; . . . 713
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...':''.-...*.■ J:,""."'. .-'I .... 717
INDEX . . 733
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LIST OF COLORED PLATES
PLATE PAGB
I. Restoration of an Egyptian Vase of the
Pyramid Age. (After Borchardt) . Frontispiece
II. Glazed Brick Lion from the Wall of Nebu- chadnezzar's Palace. (After Koldewey) . 164
III. The Plain of Argos and the Sea viewed
FROM the Castle of Tiryns 276
IV. A Corner of the Parthenon 380
V. The Temples and Palms of Phil^e .... 444
VI. Greeks and Persians hunting Lions with
Alexander the Great 468
VII. The Greek Theater at Taormina, with its
Roman Additions 560
VIII. One of the Oldest Surviving Portrait
Paintings 654
xvii
LIST OF MAPS
PAGES
Map of Europe in the Ice Age 8
Egypt and the Nile Valley to the Second Cataract 36-37
Egyptian Thebes 81
The Ancient Oriental World and Neighboring Europe before the
Rise of the Greeks loo-ioi
Map of Sumer and Akkad, later called Babylonia 106
Map of Nineveh 1 54
Map of Babylon in the Chaldean Age 165
Sequence Map showing Expansion of the Oriental Empires for a
Thousand Years (from about 1500 to 500 h.c.) 188-189
I. Egyptian Empire (Fifteenth Century B.C.) II. Assyrian Empire (Seventh Century B.C.)
III. Median and Chaldean Empires (Sixth Century B.C.)
IV. Persian Empire (500 B.C.)
Palestine the Land of the Hebrews 196-197
Sequence Map of the Eastern Mediterranean World from the Grand Age of Cretan Civilization (about 1500 k.c.) to the Con- quest of the Aegean by the Greeks 252-253
I. Pre-Greek Civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean World till 1500 B.C. II. The Eastern Mediterranean and the Greek Conquest of the /Egean World (1500-1000 B.C.) and the Spread of Phoenician Commerce after 1200 B.C.
Greece in the Fifth Century H.c 264-265
Colonial Expansion of the Greeks and Phoenicians down to the
Sixth Century i?.c 288-289
Map of the World by Hecataeus (517 H.c.) 319
Sequence Map showing Western Limits of the Persian Empire and the Greek States from the Persian Wars (beginning 490 B.C.) to the Beginning of the Second Peloponnesian War (431 B-C.) 344-345
I. Western Limits of the Persian Empire and the Greek States in the Persian Wars (490-479 B.C.) II. The Athenian Empire and the Greek States at the Opening of the Second Peloponnesian War (431 b.c.) xviii
List of Maps xix
PAGES
Central Greece and Athens 352-353
I. Attica and Neighboring States II. Athens
Map of the World according to Herodotus 360
Plan of the Siege of Syracuse 386
rian of the Battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.) 403
Empire of Alexander the Great 436-437
Sequence Map showing the Three Empires of Alexander's Suc- cessors from the Third Century n.c. to their Decline at the Coming of the Romans after 200 n. c. 448-449
I. The Three Empires of Alexander's Successors in the Third Cen- tury B.C. II. The Three Empires of Alexander's Successors Early in the Second Century B.C.
Map of the World according to Eratosthenes (200 h.c.) .... 472 Italy and Adjacent Lands before the Supremacy of Rome . 484-485 Sketch Map showing Four Rival Peoples of the Western Medi- terranean : Etruscans, Italic Tribes, Greeks, and Carthaginians 489
Early Latium 493
Map of Early Rome showing the Successive Stages of its Growth 500
Four Sketch Maps showing Expansion of Roman Power in Italy 516
I. Italy at the Beginning of the Roman Republic (about 500 B.C.)
II. Roman Power during the Samnite Wars (down to 300 B.C.)
III. Roman Power after the Samnite Wars (290 B.C.)
IV. Roman Power after the War with Pyrrhus (275 B.C.)
The Route and Marches of Hannibal, from 218 to 203 i?.r. . . . 538
Plan of the Battle of Cannae
540
Sequence Map showing the Expansion of the Roman Power from the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 i;. c.) to the Death of Caesar (44 B. c.) 552-553
I. Roman Power at the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 B.C.) II. Expansion of Roman Power between the Sicilian and Hannibalian Wars with Carthage (241-218 B.C.)
III. Expansion of Roman Power from the End of the Hannibalian Wars
to the Beginning of the Revolution (201-133 b.c.)
IV. Expansion of Roman Power from the Beginning of the Revolu-
tion to the Death of Caesar (133-44 b.c.)
Plan of the Battle of Pharsalus 593
Map of Rome under the Emperors 622
XX Ancient Times
PAGES
Sequence Map showing Territorial Gains and Losses of the Roman Empire from the Death of Caesar (44 B.C.) to the Death of Diocletian (305 a. d.) 636-637
I. Expansion of the Roman Empire from the Death of Caesar to the End of the Two Centuries of Peace (44 B.C.-167 a.d.) II. The Roman Empire under Diocletian (284-305 a.d.) showing the Four Prefectures
Map of the World by the Astronomer and Geographer Ptolemy
(Second Century A.D.) 657
The Roman Empire as organized by Diocletian and Constan-
tine 676-677
Migrations of the Germans 692-693
Europe in the Time of Charlemagne 700-701
Mohammedan Conquests at their Greatest Extent 709
ANCIENT TIMES
PART I. THE EARLIEST EUROPEANS
CHAPTER I
EARLY MANKIND IN EUROPE
Section i. Earliest Man's Ignorance and Progress
We all know that our fathers and mothers never saw an i. Man's aeroplane when they were children, and very few of them had ventkm a ever seen an automobile. Their fathers lived during most of acqmrem
^ of the po
their lives without electric lights or telephones in their houses, sions of l Their grandfathers, our great-grandfathers, were obliged to make all long journeys in stagecoaches drawn by horses, and some of them died without ever having seen a locomotive. One after another, as they have been invented, such things have come and continue to come into the lives of men.
Each device grew out of earlier inventions, and each would 2. Anciei have been impossible without the inventions which came in story^f^
before it. Thus, if we went back far enough, we would reach a
similar achievem
point where no one could build a stagecoach or a wagon, because followed
1 1 . 1 , , 1 ., , 1 -r- ,. national
no one had mvented a wheel or tamed a wild horse. Earlier rivalries still there were no ships and no travel or commerce by sea. There were no metal tools, for no one had ever seen any metal. Without metal tools for cutting the stone there could be no fine buildings or stone structures. It was impossible to write, for no one had invented writing, and so there were no books nor any knowledge of science. At the same time there were no schools or hospitals or churches, and no laws or government This book is intended to tell the story of how
Ancient Times
3. Man be- gan with nothing and with no one to teach him
4. Savages of to-day show us the Ufe of earhest man ; the Tasmanians and what they had failed to learn
5. The Tasmanians and what they had learned
mankind gained all these things and built up great nations which struggled among themselves for leadership, and then weakened and fell. This story forms what we call ancient history.
If we go back far enough in the story of man, we reach a time when he possessed nothing whatever but his hands with which to protect himself, satisfy his hunger, and meet all his other needs. He must have been without speech and unable even to build a fire. There was no one to teach him anything. The earliest men who began in this situation had to learn everything for themselves by slow experience and long effort, and every tool, however simple, had to be invented.
People so completely uncivilized as the earliest men must have been, no longer exist on earth. Nevertheless, the lowest savage tribes found by explorers at the present day are still leading a life very much like that of our early ancestors. For example, the Tasmanians, the people whom the English found on the island of Tasmania a century or so ago, wore no clothing; they had not learned how to build a roofed hut; they did not know how to make" a bow and arrows, nor even to fish. They had no goats, sheep, or cows; no horses, not even a dog. They had never heard of sowing seed nor rais- ing a crop of any kind. They did not know that clay would harden in the fire, and so they had no pottery jars, jugs, or dishes for food.
Naked and houseless, the Tasmanians had learned to satisfy only a very few of man's needs. Yet that which they had learned had carried them a long way beyond the earliest men. They could kindle a fire, which kept them warm in cold weather, and over it they cooked their meat. They had learned to construct very good wooden spears, though without metal tips, for they had never heard of metal. These spears, tipped with stone, they could throw with great accuracy, and thus bring down the game they needed for food, or drive away their human enemies. They would take a flat stone and, by chipping off the edges to thin them, they could make a rude
Early Mankind in Europe
knife with which to skin and cut up the game they killed. They were also very deft in weaving cups, vessels, and baskets of bark fiber. Above all, they had a simple language, with words for all the ordinary things they used and did every day.
It was only after sev- eral hundred thousand years of savage life and slow progress that the earliest prehistoric men of Europe reached and passed beyond a stage of savagery like that of the Tasmanians just described. The Eu- rope which formed the home of these earliest men was very differ- ent from what it is to- day. In the shadow of the lofty primeval forests which fringed the streams and clothed the wide plains, the ponderous hippopota- mus wallowed along the shores of the Euro- pean rivers. The fierce rhinoceros, with a horn three feet in length, charged through the heavy tropical growth on their banks, and vast elepha its, with shaggy hair two feet long (Fig. lo, 7), wandered through the jungles behind. Myriads of bison and wild horses grazed on the uplands, and the broken glades sheltered numerous herds of deer. A moist atmosphere, warm and enervating, vibrant with
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6. Prehis- toric Europe its climate and animals
Fig. I. Fire-making without
Matches, by Modern Natives
OF Australia
The outfit is very simple, consisting merely of a round, dry stick placed upright with the lower end in a hole in a dry tree-trunk lying on the ground. By turning the stick rapidly between both hands the friction finally generates sufficient heat to produce flame (§ 8)
Ancient Times
Life and launts of the
the notes of many tropical birds, pervaded this prehistoric European wilderness stretching far across Europe.
With nothing to cover his naked- ness, the early sav- age of Europe roamed stealthily through these trop- ital forests, seek- ing his daily food among the roots, seeds, and wild fruits wherever he could find them, and listening with keen and eager ear for the sound of small game which he might be able to lay low with his rough wooden club. Doubtless he often fled in terror as he felt the thunderous tread of the giant animals of the for- est or caught dim glimpses of colossal elephants plunging through the deep vistas of the jungle. At night the hunter
Fig. 2. A Group of North American
Indians making Flint Weapons. (After
Holmes)
The farthest Indian is prying loose a large flint stone. This is the raw material, which is then taken by the middle Indian, who crashes it down upon a rock and shatters it into frag- ments. One of these fragments is then taken by the nearest Indian, who holds it in his left hand while he strikes it with a stone in his right hand. These blows flake off pieces of flint, and the Indian is so skillful that he can thus shape a flint hatchet. This process of shap- ing the flint by blows (that is, by percussion) was the earliest and rudest method and pro- duced the roughest stone tools. In the course of thousands of years two improvements fol- lowed— chipping the edge hy pressure (Fig. 5) and sharpening the edge by grinding {Fig. 16,5)
slept wherever the game had led him, after cutting up the flesh of his prey with a wooden knife and devouring it raw. Not knowing how to
Early Mankind in Europe 5
make a fire to ward off the savage beasts, he lay trembling in the darkness at the roar of the mighty saber-tooth tiger.
At length, however, he learned to know fire, perhaps finding 8. Man it in his jungle haunts when the lightning kindled a forest fire, kindle fire or fearing it from afar as he viewed the terrible volcanoes ^nd use stone along the Mediterranean. It was a great step forward when he at last learned to produce it himself with his whirl-stick (Fig. i). He could then cook his food, warm his body, and harden the tip of his wooden spear in the fire. But his dull wooden knife he could not harden, and he sometimes found a broken stone and used its ragged edge. When he learned to shape the stone to suit his needs (Fig. 2), and thus to produce a rude tool or weapon, he entered what we now call the Stone Age, more than fifty thousand years ago.
From this point on we can hold in our hands the very stone 9. Career of tools and implements with which early men maintained them- traceaSe"in selves in their long struggle to survive. By the long trail of surviving stone implements which they left behind them we can follow men ts and them and tell just' how far they had advanced in the succes- of his hands sive stages of their upward career; for these stages are re- vealed to us by their increasing skill in working stone and in other industries which they gradually learned. We can dis- tinguish, in the examples of their handiwork which still survive, three successive ages, which we may call the Early Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age, and the Late Stone Age. Let us now observe man's progress through these three ages, one after the other.
Section 2. The Early Stone Age
Until a short time ago it was supposed that human history 10. Modem
was comparatively brief. Moreover, everyone took it for mS^va^t^
granted that the earlier period of man's past had left no sur- ^|^ ""^^j.
viving traces. An old letter written in London two hundred ago years ago (17 14) tells how a certain apothecary discovered the bones of an elephant in a gravel-pit near London, and. near
Ancient Times
II. The
Early Stone
Age hunter Y\G. 3. A FliNT FisT- and I. IS fist- ^
hatchet HATCHET OF THE EaRLY
Stone Age
Rough flint flakes older t)ian the fist-hatchet still survive to show us man's earliest efforts at shaping stone. But the fist-hatchet is the earliest well-finished type of tool produced by man. The original is about 9 inches long, and the draw ing reduces it to less than one third. Either end might be used as the cutting edge, but it was usually grasped in the fist by the narrower part, and never had any handle. Handles of wood or horn do not appear until much later (cf. Fig. 16,^-5). Traces of use and wear are sometimes found on such fist-hatchets
by, the flint head of a spear. Al- though this letter was soon after- ward published, with a drawing of the spearhead, no attention was paid to it and it was quickly forgotten. For over a century similar discov- eries, both in England and on the Continent, met with the same fate. It was not until some fifty years ago, after the evidence had been available for a century and a half, that the eyes of scientific men were at last opened to the fact of the enormously long sojourn of man upon the earth.
Long-continued excavations, es- pecially in France, have furnished thousands of stone tools which re- veal to us the progress of the Early Stone Age hunter after he had found that he could chip stones. By study- ing the collections 6f such stone tools now in the museums of Europe we can see how the early man gradually outgrew a variety of rudely chipped stones and finally produced a suc- cessful stone implement (Fig. 3). This he used for almost everything. It was from eight to ten inches long, narrow above and wider below, and sufficiently sharp to enable him to cut the roots and branches which he used for food, to shape his wooden fire-kindling outfit (Fig. 1), and to hew out his heavy wooden club.
I
Early Mankind in Europe 7
This stone implement we call a " fist-hatchet," because it was grasped in the fist, usually by the narrow end, for the hunter had not yet discovered how to attach a handle. These fist- hatchets have been found in many places in Europe as well as in other parts of the world. It is the earliest widely made and used human device which has survived to our day.
Perishing probably in great numbers, as his hazardous life 12. Limita- went on, this savage hunter of prehistoric Europe continued Early stone for thousands of years the uncertain struggle for survival. He ^^^ "^^" slowly improved his rough stone fist-hatchet, and he probably learned to make additional implements of wood, but these have of course rotted and perished, so that we know nothing of them. Of all the later possessions of man he had not yet one. The wide grainfields and the populous and prosperous com- munities of later Europe were still many thousands of years distant, in a future which it was even more impossible for him to foresee than our own now is for us. Single-handed he waged war upon all animals. There was not a beast which was not his foe. There was as yet no dog, no sheep or fowl, to which he might stretch out a kindly hand. The ancestor of the modern dog was then either the jackal or the fierce wolf of the forest, leaping upon the primitive hunter unawares, and those beasts which were the ancestors of our modem domestic animals were either not yet in existence in Europe or, like the horse, still wandered the forests in a wild state (cf . Fig. 1 2).
At length the Early Stone Age hunter began to notice that 13. Coming the air of his forest home was losing its tropical warmth. Geologists have not yet found out why, but the climate grew colder, and, as the ages passed, the ice, which all the year round still overlies the region of the North Pole and the summits of the Alps, began to descend. The northern ice crept farther and farther southward until it covered England as far south as the Thames. The glaciers of the Alps moved down the Rhone valley as far as the spot where now the city of Lyons stands (see map, p. 8). On our own continent of North America
First Second
Descent /MstX Descent/' 2d
of the / Warm \ of the /Warm
^iSSy Interval M£S^ Interval
Human bones found as deep as
80 feet below the surface
of the earth
Third Fourth
Descent /3d\ Descent /"4th of the / Warm \ o^ the / Warm Ice
|
/ Interval |
Middle Stone |
Interval gU Late So *""' So ^e* o |
CQ |
Not less than 50.000 years
Sketch Map of Europe in the Ice Age and Diagram SHOWING Four Successive Descents of the Ice
During the Ice Age the ice advanced and retreated four times; that is, there were four periods of cold, each followed by a long interval of warmth. These periods of cold and warmth are indicated by the fall- ing (cold) and the rising (warmth) of the wavy line in the diagram. We are now living in the fourth warm interval. It is clear that prehistoric men began to make fist-hatchets jn one of the warm intervals ; but it has been very difficult for geologists and archaeologists to find out which warm interval. Some think that it was the second, and if so, then men began making stone tools at least two hundred thousand years ago. Most investigators, however, now believe that stone toolmaking be- gan early in the third warm interval ; that is, the warm interval pre- ceding the last advance of the ice. In this case stone toolmaking may have begun as late as fifty thousand years before Christ. But Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, in his valuable volume Men of the Old Stone Age^ accepts a date over one hundred and twenty-five thousand years ago for the earliest stone tools, which he also places in the third warm interval
8
Early Mankind in Europe 9
the southern edge of the ice is marked by lines of bowlders car- ried and left there by the ice. Such lines of bowlders are found, for example, as far south as Long Island, and westward along the valleys of the Ohio and Missouri.
The hunter saw the glittering blue masses of glacier ice, with 14. The end their crown of snow, pushing through the green of his forest stone Age ^ abode and crushing down vast trees in many a sheltered glen or favorite hunting-ground. Many of the animals familiar to him re- treated to the warmer South, and he was forced gradually to ac- custom himself to a cold climate. This change ended the Early Stone Age, but the rude fist-hatchet of its hunters, and the bones of the huge animals they slew, were sometimes left lying side by side in the sand and gravel far up on the valley slopes where in these prehistoric ages the rivers of France once flowed, before their deep modern beds had been eroded. And as these long-buried relics are brought forth to-day, they tell us the fas- cinating story of man's earliest progress in gaining control of the world about him. The coming of the ice, strange as it may seem, brought with it a new period of progress, which we call the Middle Stone Age.
Section 3. The Middle Stone Age
Unable to build himself a shelter from the cold, the hunter 15. The in- took refuge in the limestone caves (Fig. 4), where he and his Middle^stone descendants continued to live for thousands of years. We can ^^^ '"^^ ' *'^^
•^ new pressure-
imagine him at the door of his cave, carefully chipping off the chipped
edge of his flint tools. He has left the rude old fist-hatchet far troduc^ron'of behind, for the hunter has finally discovered that hy pressure with I'vo'l^ Impig. a hard piece of bone he can chip off a line of fine flakes along "^^^^s the edge of his flint tool and thus produce a much finer cutting edge (Fig. 5) than by chipping with blows {px percussion), as he formerly did. This discovery enabled him to produce a con- siderable variety of flint tools — chisels, drills and hammers, polishers and scrapers (Fig. 5). The new/r<?jj2/r<f-chipped edges
lO
Ancient Times
were sharp enough to cut and shape even bone, ivory, and especially reindeer horn. The mammoth (Fig. i o, /) furnished the hunter with ivory, and when he needed horn he found great herds of reindeer,^ driven southward by the ice, grazing before the entrance of his cavern (Fig. i o, j-j).
Fig. '4. Cliffs in the South of France containing Caverns
INHABITED BY MIDDLE StONE AgE MaN
This district is filled with remains of Middle Stone Age man. The dark opening at A is the entrance to a famous cavern (called Font-de- Gaume) containing the'finest wall paintings (§ 18) of the Middle Stone Age surviving in France. They are surpassed only by those of Altamira, Spain. On the floor are layers of rubbish containing human remains, as in Fig. 9. (Drawn from a photograph by Professor Osborn)
16. The Mid- dle Stone Age hunter's new weapons and skin clothing
Equipped with his new and keener tools, the hunter worked out barbed ivory spear-points, which he mounted with long wooden shafts. He also discovered the bow and arrows, and he carried at his girdle a sharp flint dagger. For straightening his wooden spear-shafts and arrows he invented an ingenious shaft-straightener of reindeer horn. Another clever device of
1 The reindeer was so plentiful in this age that French archaeologists often call it the " Reindeer Age."
Early Mankind in Europe
II
horn or ivory was his new throwing-stick, by which he could hurl his long spear much farther and with greater power (Figs. 6 and 7) than he could be- fore. Fine ivory needles (Fig. 8) show that the hunter now pro- tected himself from cold, and from the brambles of the forest wilderness with clothing made by sewing together the skins of the animals he slew. Thus equipped, the hunter of the Middle Stone Age was a much more dangerous foe of the wild creatures than were his an- cestors of the Early Stone Age. In a single cavern in Sicily modem ar- chaeologists have dug out the bones of no less than two thousand hippo- potamuses which these Middle Stone Age hunters killed. In France one group of such men slew so many wild horses (Fig. 10, d) for food that the bones which they tossed about their camp fires gathered
Fig.
Flint Tools And Weapons THE Middle Stone Age
OF
From right to left they include knives, spear- and arro\^-points, scrapers, drills, and various edged tools. They show great skill and preci- sion in flaking. The fine edges have all been produced by chipping off a line of flakes along the margin, seen especially in the long piece at the right. This chipping is done by pressure. The brittleness of flint is such that if a hard piece of bone is pressed firmly against a flint edge, a flake of flint, often reaching far back from the edge, will snap off in response to increasing pressure. This was a great im- provement over the earliest method by striking {percussion^ Figs. 2 and 3)
17. Life of the Middle Stone Age hunter
12 Ancient Times
in masses forming a layer in some places six feet thick and covering a space about equal to four modem city lots of fifty by two hundred feet. Among such deposits excavators have found even the bone whistle with which the returning hunter announced his coming to the hungry family waiting in the cave (Fig. 4). On his arrival there he found his home surrounded by revolting piles of garbage. Amid foul odors
Fig. 6. Modern Eskimo Native hurling a Spear with a Throwing-Stick
The spear lies in a channel in the throwing-stick (a), which the hunter grasps at one end. At the outer end [b) of the throwing-stick is a hook (cf. Fig. 7, B) against which the butt of the spear lies, and as the hunter throws forward his arm, retaining the throwing-stick in his hand and allowing the spear to go, the throwing-stick acts like an elongation of his arm, giving great sweep and propelling power as the spear is dis- charged. Modern schoolboys would not find it hard to make and use such a throwing-stick (see § 16)
of decaying flesh this savage European crept into his cave- dwelling at night, little realizing that, many feet beneath the cavern floor on which he slept, lay the remains of his ancestors in layer upon layer, the accumulations of thousands of years
(Fig. 9). 18. Discov- It is not a little astonishing to find that these Middle Stone
Stone Agf^^ Age hunters could already carve (Fig. 7), draw (Fig. 10), and art— carv- ^^^^ paint with considerable skill. A Spanish nobleman, in-
ings, draw- ^ . -vt i o •
ings, and vcstigating a cavern on his estate in Northern Spam, was at pamungs ^^^ ^^^ digging among the accumulations on the floor of the
Early Mankind in Europe
13
cave, where he found flint and bone im- plements, when his little daughter, who was playing about in the gloom of the cavern, suddenly shouted, "Toros! toros 1 " (" Bulls 1 bulls 1 "). At the same time she pointed to the ceiling. The startled father, looking up, beheld a never-to-be-forgotten sight which at once interrupted his flint-digging. In a long line stretching far across the ceiling of the cavern was a vast procession of bison bulls painted in well-preserved col- ors on the rock. For at least ten thou- sand years no human eye had beheld these cave paintings of a vanished race of prehistoric men, till the eye of a child rediscovered them.
Other evidences of higher life among these early men are few indeed. Never- theless, even these ancient men of the Middle Stone Age believed in divine beings; they already had a crude idea of the life of the soul, or of the de- parted person after death. Dressed in his customary ornaments, equipped at least with a few flint implements, and protected by a rough circle of stones, the departed hunter was buried in the cave beneath the hearth where he had so often shared the results of the hunt with his family. Here the bodies of these primitive men are found at the present day, lying in successive strata of refuse which continued to collect for ages, the lowest bodies sometimes far
i
m
\
A B
Fig. 7. A Throwing- Stick once used by A Hunter of the Middle Stone Age
Two views of the same stick, seen from front (A) and side {B). It is carved of reindeer horn to represent the head and forelegs of an ibex. Observe hook at the top of B for holding the butt of the spear-shaft, as in Fig. 6. The throwing- stick and the bow were man's earliest devices for propelling his weap- ons with speed
19. Religion and life here- after, in the Middle Stone Age
14
Ancient Times
20. Retreat of the ice ; dawn of the Late Stone Age
^
down at the bottom of the deep accumulations which gathered over them (Fig. 9).
The signs left by the ice, and still observable in Europe, would lead us to think that it slowly withdrew northward to its present latitude probably not less than some ten thousand years ago. The retreat of the ice was due to the fact that the climate again grew warmer and became what it is to-day. At this point, therefore, the men of the Middle Stone Age, whose story
we have been follow- ing in France, entered upon natural conditions in Europe like those of to-day. They had, meantime, maintained steady progress in the production of tools and implements with which to carry on their strug- gle for existence and to wring subsistence from the world around them. That progress now carried man into the third great period of the Stone Age, which we may call the Late Stone Age.^
Fig. 8. Ivory Needle of the Middle Stone Age
Such needles are found still surviving in the rubbish in the French caverns, where the wives of the prehistoric hunters lost them and failed to find them again twenty thousand years ago. They show that these women were already sewing together the skins of wild animals as clothing
21. Distribu- tion of surviv- ing remains
Section 4. The Late Stone Age
The Late Stone Age remains of man's life are discovered
widely distributed throughout a large part of Europe. In our
of Late Stone studv of such remains we must regard Europe as a whole.
Age man m -^ . . .
Europe and not confine ourselves to France and its vicinity, as here-
tofore. Especially beside watercourses, lakes, and inlets of the
1 The Stone Age periods are as follows :
Early Stone Age (stone edge made by striking, or percussion) ) Called Paleolithic Age Middle Stone Age (chipped stone edge made by pressure) ) by archaeologists.
. , J J ,. • J- X ) Called NeoUthic Age by
Late Stone Age (stone edge made by grinding) | arch^ologists.
Fig. 9. A Cross Section showing the Layers of Rubbish
AND the Human Remains in a Middle Stone Age Cavern
(After D^chelette)
This cavern is at Grimaldi on the ItaHan coast of the Mediterranean, just outside of France. The entrance is at the left and the back wall at the right. We see the original rock floor at the bottom, and above it the layers of accumulations, 30 feet deep (§ 17). The black lines A to / represent layers of ashes, etc., the remains of nine successive hearth-fires, each of which must have been kept going by the natives for many years. The thicker (lightly shaded) layers consisted of bones of animals, rubbish, and rocks which had fallen from the roof of the cavern in the course of ages. The lowermost layers (below /) con- tained bones of the rhinoceros (representing a warm climate), while the uppermost layers contained bones of the reindeer (indicating a cold climate). Two periods, the Early and the Middle Stone Age, are thus represented ; the Early Stone Age below, the Middle Stone Age (or Reindeer Age, § 1 5) above. Five burials were found by the excavators in the layers B, C, H, and /; layer C contained the bodies of two children. The lowermost burial (in /) was 25 feet below the surface of the accumulations in the cave. Such prehistoric skulls and bones show that several different races followed each other in Europe during the Stone Age. The space required and the difficulties involved in their discussion have compelled their omission in this volume. Hence the successive culture stages have been presented without reference to race
15
Fig. io. Carvings in Ivory (i and 3-7) and in Stone of
Cavern Walls (2), made by the Hunters of the Middle
Stone Age
The oldest works of art by man, made ten or fifteen thousand years ago. /, reindeer and salmon — hunter's and fisherman's talisman ; 2, bison bull at bay ; j, grazing reindeer ; 4, running reindeer ; 5, head of woman, front view and profile ; 6, head of wild horse whinnying ; 7, mammoth, showing huge tusks and long hair — an animal long since extinct
16
Early Mankind in Europe
17
sea these early communities throughout most of Europe located their settlements. It is, however, impossible to determine the different races and peoples in various parts of Europe in the Late Stone Age.
The earliest of such Late Stone Age settlements are found on the shores of Denmark, where the wattle huts (Fig. 11) of the prehis- toric Norsemen stretched in strag- gling lines far along the sea beach. We do not know the race of these earliest Norsemen, but we can see that they were both fishermen and hunters. They already possessed rude boats from which they were able to secure myriads of oystSrs near the shore, or even to push timidly out into deep water for other shellfish. On shore the hunter followed the wild boar and the wild bull (Fig. 1 2) in the neigh- boring forests, and brought down the waterfowl in the marshes. The air was keen — possibly a little colder than now. On their return at twilight the hunters and fisher- men, crouching about the fire, de- voured their prey, tossing aside the oyster shells and the bones of deer and wild boar, which formed a circle of very ill-smelling food refuse about the fire.
This refuse gathered in ridges parallel with the shore-line and hundreds of feet long (Fig. 13), marking the line of fires which once gleamed along the shores of prehistoric
22. Earliest settlements of the Late Stone Age found in Denmark
Fig. 1 1 . Plan of Remains
OF A Late Stone Age
Hut
The circle of stones sur- rounded the base of the walls. Beside the door (at the left) is a rough stone hearth, placed there in order to allow the smoke to escape through the door, chimneys having not yet been devised. The walls were of wattle (interwoven reeds), made tight by daub- ing with clay. The rubbish found in the circle sometimes contains patches of burned clay, bearing on one side the indented pattern of the basket- like wattle and on the other the impression of the human fingers which pressed the clay on the walls thousands of years ago. The fire which destroyed the hut baked the clay plaster to pottery
m$R'mfmj\i0m<}mMmm
|[)iiiiiniljillln{iiii/(n|iiii"j|tl9
i
Fig. 12. Skeleton of a Wild Bull bearing the Marks of
THE Late Stone Age Hunters' Arrows which killed him in
THE Danish Forests some Ten Thousand Years ago
A Late Stone Age hunter {§ 22) shot him in the back near the spine (see uj>/>er white ring on skeleton). The wound healed, leaving a scar on the rib {A, above). Another hunter later shot him, and this time sev- eral arrows pierced his vitals. One of them, however, struck a rib (see lower white ring on skeleton) and broke off. Both sides of this wound, still unhealed, with the broken flint arrowhead still filling it, are shown above in B and C. While the wounded bull was trying to swim across a neighboring lake he died and his body sank to the bottom, and the pursuing hunter, on reaching the lake, found no trace of him. In the course of thousands of years the lake slowly filled up, and water 10 feet deep was followed by dry peat of the same depth, covering the skeleton of the bull. Here he was found some years ago (1905), and 'with him were the flint arrowheads that had killed him. His skeleton, still bear- ing the marks of the flint arrowheads {A, B, C), was removed and set up in the Museum at Copenhagen . 18
Early Mankind in Europe
19
Denmark. Each of these shell-heaps is to-day a storehouse of 23. The shell- heaps of
Denmark and their revela-
remains from the life of these earliest Norsemen. The shells and bones reveal how extensive was their control over the wild life about them. The marks of animal teeth on many a bone show us how the jackals of the neighboring forest crept up to gnaw, the bones along the margin of the heap; and, slowly growing more and more familiar with their human neighbors,
tions
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Fig. 13. Ridge composed of the Food Refuse of Late Stone Age Man on the Coast of Denmark
The ridge on the top of the hill at the right stretches along the margin of a depression (at the left), which was once a shallow inlet of the sea but is now filled up and has become a hayfield (notice the hay wagon). Such a ridge made up chiefly of oyster shells is sometimes over half a mile long and over thirty paces wide and may contain a hundred thousand stone tools, weapons, and fragments of pottery
these wild beasts at last remained by the fireside, to become the loyal companions of man, the earliest domestic animal, which to-day we call the dog.
Bits of burned clay and broken pots, still lying in these shell-heaps, show us that these early Norsemen had already gained knowledge, probably from the South, of the hardening quality of clay when exposed to fire, and they were now able to make rude kettles of burned clay, which we call pottery, the earliest in Europe.^ This is one of the most important
1 Pottery was probably invented independently in many different regions of the world. The endeavor to make a water-tight, fireproof kettle by smearing a basket with clay would result in pottery when the attempt was made to heat water in it over a fire.
24. Indus- tries revealed by the shell- heaps of Denmark : earliest fot- teiy in Europe ; ground stone tools
20 Ancient Times
innovations of the Late Stone Age. Another important achieve- ment marked the beginning of this age. This was the discovery that the edge of a stone tool might be ground upon a whetstone^ precisely as we grind a steel tool at the present day. In the shell-heaps we find the earliest heavy stone axes with a ground edge (Fig. i6, 5). They made the man of the Late Stone Age vastly more successful in his control of the world about him.
25. Tools of His list of tools as he went about his work was now almost Stone Age ^s complete as that of the modern carpenter. It included, ™^^ besides the ax, likewise chisels, knives, drills, saws, and whet- stones, made mostly of flint but sometimes of other hard stones. Our ancient craftsman had now learned also to at- tach a wooden handle by lashings around the ax-head, or even to bore a hole in the ax-head and insert the handle (Fig. 16,5). These tools as found to-day often display a polish due to the wear which they have undergone in the hands of the user.
26. Effective- It is a mistake to suppose that such stone tools were wholly "oofs° ^'^"^ crude and ineffective. A recent experiment in Denmark has
shown that a modern mechanic with a stone ax, although un- accustomed to the use of stone tools, was able, in ten work- ing hours, to cut down and convert into logs twenty-six pine trees eight inches in thickness. Indeed, the entire work of getting out the timber and building a house was done by one mechanic with stone tools in eighty-one days. It was therefore quite possible for the men of the Late Stone Age to build comfortable dwellings and to attain a degree of civilization far above that of savages.
27. Swiss This step, however, we are not able to follow among the ofthe'L?t? shell-heaps of Denmark. The most plentiful traces of the Stone Age earliest wooden houses are to be found in Switzerland, whither
we must now go. Here the house-building communities of the Late Stone Age, desiring to make themselves safer from attack by man and beast, built their villages out over the Swiss lakes. They erected their dwellings upon platforms supported over
Early Mankind in Europe
21
the water by piles which they drove into the lake bottom. In long lines such lake-villages, or groups oi pile-dwellings^ as they are called, fringed the shores of the Swiss lakes (Fig. 14). In a few cases they grew to a considerable size. At Wangen not
Fig. 14. Restoration of a Swiss Lake-Dweclers' Settlement
The lake-dwellers felled trees with their stone axes (Fig. 16,5) and cut them into piles some 20 feet long, sharpened at the lower end. These they drove several feet into the bottom of the lake, in water 8 or 10 feet deep. On a platform supported by these piles they then built their houses. The platform was connected with the shore by a bridge, which may be seen here on the right. A section of it could be removed at night for protection. The fish nets seen drying at the rail, the " dug- out " boat of the hunters who bring in the deer, and many other things have been found on the lake bottom in recent times
less than fifty thousand piles were driven into the bottom of the lake for the support of the village (see remains of such piles in Fig. 15).
In so far as we can judge, these lake-dwellers lived a life 28. Life of of enviable peace and prosperity. Their houses were comfort- able shelters, and they were furnished with plentiful wooden
22
Ancient Times
furniture and implements, wooden pitchers and spoons, besides pottery dishes, bowls, and jars (Fig. 1 6, 7, 2, j). Although roughly made without the use of the potter's wheel (§ 83), and unevenly burned without an oven (Fig. 48), pottery vessels added much to the convenience of the house. The waters under the settlement teemed with fish, which were caught
Fig. 15. Surviving Remains of a Swiss Lake-Village
After an unusually dry season the Swiss lakes fell to a very low level in 1854, exposing the lake bottom with the rernains of the piles which once supported the lake villages along the shores. They were thus dis- covered for the first time. On the old lake bottom, among the projecting piles, were found great quantities of implements, tools, and furniture, like those in Fig. 16, including the dugouts and nets of Fig. 14, wheat, barley, bones of domestic animals, woven flax, etc. (§ 29). There they had been lying some five thousand years. Sometimes the objects were found in two distinct layers, the lower (earlier) containing only stone tools, and the upper (later) containing bronze tools, which came into the lake-village at a later age and fell into the water on top of the layer of old stone tools already lying on the bottom of the lake (see § 329)
29. Domesti- cation of wild grains and beginning of agriculture ; flax and weaving
with a bone hook through a trapdoor in the floor of the house, or snared in nets which the possession of flax, as we shall see, enabled the lake-villagers to make.
While he had thus not ceased to be a fisherman and hunter, the lake-dweller now discovered other sources of food. For thousands of years the women of these early ages had gath- ered the seeds of wild grasses to be crushed between two stones and made into rude cakes. They now gradually learned
Early Mankind in Europe
23
that the growth of such wild grasses on the margins of the forest and the shores of the lake might be artificially aided.
From such beginnings it was but a step to drop the seed 30- Cultiva-
, 1 • • 1 T tion of millet,
into the soil at the proper season, to cultivate it, and to harvest barley, and
Fig. 16. Part of the Equipment of a Late Stone Age Lake-Dweller
This group contains the evidence for three important inventions made or received by the men of the Late Stone Age : firsts pottery jars, like 2 and J, with rude decorations, the oldest baked clay in Europe, and /, a large kettle in which the lake-dwellers' food was cooked; second^ ground-edged tools like ,/, a stone chisel with ground edge (§ 24), mounted in a deerhorn handle like a hatchet, or j", stone ax with a ground edge, and pierced with a hole for the ax handle (the houses of Fig. 14 were built with such tools) ; and third, weaving, as shown by 6, a spinning "whorl" of baked clay, the earliest spinning wheel. When suspended by a rough thread of flax 18 to 20 inches long, it was given a whirl which made it spin in the air like a top, thus rapidly twisting the thread by which it was hanging. The thread when sufficiently twisted was wound up, and another length of 18 to 20 inches was drawn out from the unspun flax to be similarly twisted. One of these earliest spin- ning wheels has been found in the Swiss lakes with a spool of flaxen thread still attached. (From photograph loaned by Professor Hoernes)
the yield. When they had learned to do this, the women of these lake-dwellers were already agriculturists. The grains which they planted were barley, wheat, and some millet* This
1 Oats and rye, however, were still unknown, and came in much later.
M
Ancient Times
31. Social effects of agriculture
32. Domesti- cation of sheep, goats, and cattle
new source of food was a plentiful one ; more than a hundred bushels of grain were found by the excavators on the lake bot- tom under the vanished lake-village of Wangen. Up the hillside now stretched also the lake-dweller's little field of flax beside the growing grain. His women sat spinning flax (Fig. 16, 6) before the door, and the rough skin clothing of their ancestors (Fig. 8) had given way to garments of woven stuff.
These fields were an additional reason for the permanency of the lake-dweller's home. It was necessary for him to remain near the little plantation for which his women had hoed the ground, that they might care for it and gather the grain when it ripened. As each household gradually gained an habitual right to cultivate a particular field, they came to set up a per- petual claim to it, and thus arose the ownership of land. It was to be a frequent source of trouble in the future career of man, and the chief cause of the long struggle between the rich and the poor — a struggle which was earlier unknown, when land was free to all.
On the green Swiss uplands above the lake-villages were now feeding the descendants of the wild creatures which the Middle Stone Age hunters had pursued through the forests and mountains ; for the mountain sheep and goats and the wild cattle (Fig. 12), like the dog on the shores of Denmark (§ 23), had slowly learned to dwell near man and submit to his con- trol.^ For a long time, however, the Late Stone Age man in -Europe was still without any beast of burden. For thousands of years his ancestors of the Middle Stone Age had pursued the wild horse for food (§ 17), but had made no effort to tame and subdue the animal.^
1 Domestication of these animals, like the cultivation of grain and flax, was much older in the Orient than in the Late Stone Age in Europe ; but it is still a question just how the early Europeans received these things from the Orient. (See § 49.)
2 The draft horse, one of the most important influences in the history of civilization, came in comparatively late, from the Northern Orient, as we shall see (§247).
Early Mankind in Europe 25
The strong limbs of the once wild ox (Fig. 12), however, 33. Earliest made him well adapted to draw the hoe of Late Stone Age '-^^xl^^^^^ ^ man across the field — a hoe, to be sure, equipped with two culture" handles (Fig. 44), which thus became the earliest plow, while the ox which was tamed to draw it became the earliest draft animal of Europe. Thus " plow culture " slowly replaced the cruder and more limited " hoe culture " ^ carried on by the women. It was at this point, therefore, that the early European passed far beyond our own North American Indians, who remained until the discovery of America entirely without draft animals, and hence practiced only "hoe culture."
Agriculture, requiring as it now did the driving and control 34. Social of large draft animals, exceeded the strength of the primitive «piow woman, and the primitive man was obliged to give up more settled a 'ri^^ and more of his hunting freedom and devote himself to the cultural life field. Thus the hunter of thousands of years became an agriculturist, a farmer. By this time a large part of the Late Stone Age Europeans had adopted fixed abodes, following the settled agricultural life in and around villages (§38). *' ■
On the other hand, the domestication of grass-eating animals, 35. Flocks feeding on the grasslands, created not only a new industry the wander. but also a second class of men who might still follow a roving j"f|'<Jf°the^ life, leading their flocks about and pasturing them where the shepherd grasslands were too poor for agriculture. Such shepherd people we call nomads, and they still exist to-day. Without any fixed dwelling places, accompanied by their wives and children, they lead a wandering life, driving their flocks from pasture to pas- ture. These nomad peoples took possession of the eastern grasslands stretching from the Danube eastward along the north side of the Black Sea and thence far over into Asia. Their life always remained ruder and less civilized than that of the agriculturalists and townsmen (see § 136).
1 " Hoe culture " is the term applied to agriculture carried on by hand, without any draft animals ; that is, entirely with the hoe, as contrasted with ^
cultivation by the plow drawn by an animaL
26
Ancient Times
36. Age-long conflict be- tween
nomads and townsmen
37. Buildings and architec- ture in Late Stone Age Europe
38. The
earliest towns in Europe ; rise of gov- ernment
Thus developed side by side two methods of life — the settled, agricultural life and the wandering, nomad life. The impor- tance, of understanding these will be evident when we realize that the grasslands became the home of a numerous unsettled population. Thus such grasslands have become like overfilled reservoirs of nomad peoples, who have periodically overflowed and overwhelmed the towns and the agricultural settlements. Many epochs of human history can be understood only as we bear these facts in mind, especially as we shall see later Europe invaded over and over again by the hordes of intruding nomads from the eastern grasslands (§§ 370-373 and Section 99).
The settled communities of the Late Stone Age at last began to leave behind them more impressive monuments than pottery and stone tools. In all Europe before this there had existed only fragile houses and huts. But toward the close of the Late Stone Age the more powerful chiefs in the large settlements learned to erect great tombs, built of enormous blocks of stone. They fringe the western coast of Europe from Spain to the southern Scandinavian shores. There are at the present day no less than thirty-four hundred stone tombs of this age, some of considerable size, on the Danish island of Seeland alone. In France (Fig. 17) they exist in vast numbers and imposing size, and likewise in England. The often enormous blocks in these structures (Figs. 18, 20, and 21) were mostly left in the rough, but if cut at all, it was done with stone chisels. Such structures are not of masonry, that is, of smoothly cut stone laid with mortar. They can hardly be called works of great architecture, — a thing which did not as yet exist in Europe. We shallfirst meet it in the Orient (§ 95).
When we look at such buildings of the Late Stone Age still surviving, they prove to us the existence of the earliest towns in Europe. For near every great group of stone tombs there must have been a town where the people lived who built the tombs. The remains of some of these towns have been discovered, and they have been dug out from the earth covering them. Almost
Early Mankind in Europe
27
all traces of them had disappeared, but enough remained to show that they had been surrounded by walls of earth, with a ditch on the outside and probably with a wooden stockade along the top of the earth wall. They show us that men were learning to live together in considerable numbers and to work together on
Fig. 17. Late Stone Age Tomb in France
It was in such tombs that dead chiefs of the Late Stone Age were buried. The stones, weighing even as much as 40 tons apiece, were sometimes dragged many miles from the nearest quarry ; but much heavier ones were also used (see Fig. 18). These blocks were not smoothed but left rough as they came from the mountain side
a large scale. It required organization and successful manage- ment of men to raise the earth walls of such a town, to drive the fifty thousand piles supporting the lake setdement at Wangen (Switzerland), or to move the enormous blocks of stone for building the chieftain's tomb (Figs. 17, 18, 20, and 21). In such achievements we see the beginnings of government,
28
Ancient Times
39. Festivals and athletic contests shown by the stone build- ings of Late Stone Age Europe
organized under a leader. Many little states, each consisting of a fortified town with its surrounding fields, and each under a chieftain, must have grown up in Late Stone Age Europe. Out of such beginnings nations were yet to grow.
Furthermore, these stone buildings furnish us very interesting glimpses into the life of the Late Stone Age towns. Some of them suggest to us pictures of whole communities issuing from the towns on feast days and marching to such places as the
Fig. 18. Fallen Memorial Stone of the Late Stone Age IN Northern France
This vast block once stood upright, having been erected by the men
of the Late Stone Age as a tombstone. It is almost 65 feet long and
weighs some 300 tons. The fall has broken it into three pieces
huge stone circles at Stonehenge (Fig. 20). Here they held memorial contests, chariot races, and athletic games in honor of the dead chief buried within the stone circles. The domestic horse had now reached western Europe, and the straight chariot course, nearly two miles long, still to be seen at Stonehenge, must have resounded with the shouts of the multitudes as the competing chariots, thundered down the course.-^ The long processional avenues, marked out by mighty stones, in north- west France (Fig. 21) must have been alive with festival proces- sions and happy multitudes every season for centuries. To-day, silent and solitary, they stretch for miles across the fields of 1 One of the chariots later used on such a course may be seen in Fig. 133.
Early Mankind in Europe
29
40. Rise of
trades in the outgoing
the French peasants, a kind of voiceless echo of forgotten human joys, of ancient customs and beliefs long revered by the vanished races of prehistoric Europe.
While such monuments show us the Late Stone Age com- munities at play, other remains reveal them at their work. Each town was largely a home manufacturer and produced what it A^^g.^^j^^n needed for itself. Men were beginning to adopt trades ; for as a trade example, some men were probably wood- workers, others were potters, and still others were already miners. These early miners burrowed far into the earth in order to reach the finest deposits of flint for their stone tools. In the under- ground tunnels of the ancient flint mines at Brandon, England, eighty worn picks of deerhorn were found in recent times. At one place the roof had caved in, cutting
off an ancient gallery of the mine. In this gallery, behind the fallen rocks, modern archaeologists found two more deerhorn picks. These picks bore a coat of chalk dust in which were still visible the marks of the workmen's fingers, left there as they last laid down the implements, many thousands of years ago. In Belgium even the skeleton of one of these ancient miners, who had been crushed by falling rocks, was found in the mine with his deerhorn pick still lying between his hands (Fig. 22).
Fig. 19. Vertebra of a Late Stone
Age Man with a Flint Arrowhead
sticking in^ it
The arrowhead {A) struck the victirn full in the pit of the stomach. It must have been driven by a heavy bow, for it passed clear through to the vertebra, producing perito- nitis and death. (Photograph furnished by the great French archaeologist Dechelette, who himself fell in battle not long after sending this photograph to the author)
wmm
O Q
o o
^ W
o ^
O o
Pi w
o ffi
^ w
« ;?;
^ 2
o ^
SI
30
Early Mankind in Europe
31
Exchange and traffic between the communities already existed. 41. Com- This primitive commerce carried far and wide an especially fine intercourse variety of French flint, recognizable to-day by its color. The g^^Jj^ ^^^ amber gathered on the shores of the Baltic was already passing from hand to hand and thus found its way southward. Stone implements found on the islands around Europe show that men of this age lived on such islands, and they must have had boats sufficiently strong to carry them thither. Several of the
Fig. 21. Avenues of the Late Stone Age in Northern France (Carnac, Brittany)
The tall stones mark out avenues nearly 2\ miles long, containing nearly three thousand stones. These avenues were used for festival proces- sions or for races, as on the course at Stonehenge (Fig. 20 and § 39), at the religious celebrations of the Late Stone Age communities
dugouts (Fig. 14) of the lake-dwellers have been found lying on the lake bottom among the piles, but vessels with sails had not yet been devised in Europe.
The business of such an age was of course very primitive. 42. Primi- There were no metals and no money. Buying and selling were rnShodror only exchange of one kind of wares for another kind. In all Late Stone Europe there was no writing, nor did the continent of Europe ever devise a system of writing. If credit was given, the trans- action might be recorded in a few strokes scratched in the mud plaster of the wattle house wall (Fig. 11) to aid the memory as to the number of fish or jars of grain to be paid for later.
32
Ancient Times
43. Wars of the Late Stone Age
But the intercourse between these prehistoric communities was not always peaceful. The earthen walls and wooden stock- ades with which such towns were protected (§ 38) show us that the chieftain's war-horn must often have summoned these people from feasts and athletic games, or from the fields and mines, to expel the invader. Grim evidence of these earliest wars of Europe still survives. A skull taken out of a tomb of this age in Sweden contains a flint arrowhead still sticking iii
Fig. 22. Skeleton of a Miner of the Late Stone Age
The skeleton of this ancient miner was found lying on the floor of a flint mine in Belgium, under the rocks which had caved in and crushed him. Before him, just as it dropped from his hands at the instant of the cave-in, lies the double-pointed pick of deerhorn (§ 40) with which he was loosening the lumps of flint from their chalk bed, when the rock ceiling fell upon him and he was killed
44. Late Stone Age Europe and the Orient
one 'eyehole, while in France more than one human vertebra has been found with a flint arrowhead driven deep into it (Fig. 19). A stone coffin found in a Scottish cairn contained the body of a man of huge size, with one arm almost severed from the shoulder by the stroke of a stone ax. A fragment of stone broken out of the ax blade still remained in the gashed arm bone.
After fifty thousand years of progress carried on by their own efforts, the men of Stone Age Europe seemed now (about 3000 B.C.) to have reached a point where they could advance
Early Mankind in Europe 33
no farther. They were still without writings for making the records of business, government, and tradition ; they were still without metah ^ with which to make tools and to develop indus- tries and manufactures ; and they had no sailing ships in which to carry on commerce. Without these things they could go no farther. All these and many other possessions of civilization came to early Europe from the nearer Orient,^ the lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean (see map, p. 100). In order to understand the further course of European history, we must therefore turn to the Orient, whence came these indispensable things which made it possible for our European ancestors to gain the civilization we have inherited.
As we go to the Orient let us remember that we have been 45. Histori- following man's /r^/w/^r^V progress as it went on for some fifty ^^ summary thousand years after he began making stone implements. In the Orient, during the thousand years from 4000 to 3000 B.C. (see diagram. Fig. 2i^)^ i^en slowly built up a high civilization, forming the beginning of the Historic Epoch.^ Civilization thus began in the Orient, and it is between five and six thousand years old. There it long flourished and produced great and
1 Metal was introduced in southeastern Europe about 3000 B. c. and passed like a slow wave, moving gradually westward and northward across Europe. It probably did not reach Britain until about 2000 b. c. Hence we have included the great stone monuments of western Europe (like Stonehenge) in our sun-ey of Stone Age Europe. They were erected long after southeastern Europe had received metal, but before metal came into common use in ivestent Europe.
'^ The word " Orient" is used to-day to include Japan, China, and India. These lands make up 2i farther Orient. There is also a nearer Orient, consisting of the lands around' the eastern end of the Mediterranean, that is, Egypt and Western Asia, including Asia Minor, We shall use the word "Orient" in this book to designate the nearer Orient.
3 We may best describe the Historic Epoch by saying that it is the epoch beginning when written documents were first produced by man — documents which tell us in written words something of man's life and career. All that we know of man in the age previous to the appearance of writing has to be learned from weapons, tools, implements, buildings, and other things (bearing no writing) which he has left behind. These are the things from which we have been learn- ing something of the story of prehistoric Europe in Chapter I. The transition from the Prehistoric to the Historic Epoch was everywhere a slow and gradual one. In the Orient this transition took place in the thousand years between 4000 and 3000 B.C.
34 Ancient Times
powerful nations, while the men of Late Stone Age Europe continued to live without metals or writing. As they gradually acquired these things, civilized leadership both in peace and war shifted slowly from the Orient to Europe. As we turn to watch civilization emerging in the East, with metals, govern- ment, writing, great ships, and many other creations of civiliza- tion, let us realize that its later movement will steadily carry us from east to west as we follow it from the Orient to Europe.
QUESTIONS
Section i . What progress in invention have you noticed in your own lifetime .'' Has every device or convenience man now possesses had to be invented in the same way 1 Was there a time when man possessed none of these things ? Did he have anyone to teach him 1 Describe the life of the Tasmanians in recent times. Describe pre- historic Europe and the life of the earliest men there. What three ages ensued.?
Section 2. Give examples of the discovery of man's great age on the earth. Describe the earliest stone weapon. About when did the Early Stone Age begin.? (See map, p. 8, and read description.) What age did it introduce.? Describe the life of the Early Stone Age hunter. What great change ended this age.? Describe it.
Section 3. Where did the Middle Stone Age hunters take refuge? What improvement did they make in their stone tools (Fig. 5).? What new materials came in.? What new inventions.? Describe the results. Discuss Middle Stone Age art. Draw cross section of a cave with contents and describe (Fig. 9). What great change ended the Middle Stone Age, and when .?
Section 4. Where were the earliest settlements of the Late Stone Age known to us ? Describe them and their remains. What new inventions came in .? Discuss carpentry with ground stone tools. Describe the lake-villages and life in them. Describe the domestication of grain and its social results. Describe the domestication of animals and the two resulting methods of life. Discuss stone structures and the life they reveal — industries, traffic, and war. What important things did the Late Stone Age in Europe still lack.? Is civilization possible without these things .? Where did these things first appear .?
PART II. THE ORIENT
CHAPTER II
THE STORY OF EGYPT: THE EARLIEST NILE-DWELLERS AND THE PYRAMID AGE
Section 5. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants
We are to begin our study of the early Orient in Egypt. 46. Egypt of
The traveler who visits Egypt at the present day lands in a very modern-looking harbor at Alexandria (see map, p. 36). He is presently seated in a comfortable railway car in which we may accompany him as he is carried rapidly across a low, flat country stretching far away to the sunlit horizon. The wide expanse is dotted with little villages of dark mud-brick huts, and here and there rise groves of graceful date palms. The landscape is carpeted with stretches of bright and vivid green as far as the eye can see, and wandering through this verdure is a network of irrigation canals (Fig. 23). Brown- skinned men of slender build, with dark hair, are seen at inter- vals along the banks of these canals, swaying up and down as they rhythmically lift an irrigation bucket attached to a simple
Note. The tiara, or diadem, at the top of this page was found resting on the head of an Egyptian princess of the Feudal Age as she lay in her coffin. The diadem had been placed there nearly four thousand years ago. It is in the form of a chaplet, or wreath, of star flowers wrought of gold and set with bright-colored precious stones, and is one of the best examples of the work of the Egyptian gold- smiths and jewelers (Fig. 47 and § 82). It is shown here lying on a cushion.
35
to-day
36
Ancient Times
47. Its soil, shape, and area
Fig. 23. An Egyptian Shadoof, the Oldest of Well Sweeps, irrigat- ing THE Fields
The man below stands in the water, hold- ing his leather bucket {A). The pole {B) of the sweep is above him, with large ball of dried Nile mud on its lower end {C) as a lifting weight, or counterpoise, seen just behind the supporting post {D). This man lifts the water into a mud basin {E). A second man (in the middle) lifts it from this first basin {E) to a second basin {F) into which he is just empty- ing his bucket; while a third man [G) lifts the water from the middle basin {F) to the uppermost basin {H) on the top of the bank, where it runs off to the left into trenches spreading over the fields. The low water makes necessary three succes- sive lifts (to E, to F^ to H) without ceas- ing night and day for one hundred days
device (Fig. 23) exactly like the well sweep of our grandfathers in New England. The irrigation trenches are thus kept full of water until the grain ripens. This shows us that .Egypt enjoys no rain.
The black soil we see from the train is unex- celled in fertility, and it is enriched each year by the overflow of the river, whose turbid waters rise above its banks every summer, spread far over the flats (Fig. 24), and stand there long enough to deposit a very thin layer of rich earthy sediment. This sedi- ment has built up the Nile Delta which we are now crossing. The Delta and the valley above, as far as the First Cataract, contain together over "ten thou- sand square miles of cultivable soil, or some- what more than the state of Vermont.
As our train ap- proaches the southern
The Story of Egypt
37
point of the Delta we begin to see the heights on either side 48. The low of the valley into which the narrow end of the Delta merges. Mgh^dSert ^ These heights (Figs. 24 and 69) are the plateau of the Sahara Des- Plateau ert, through which the Nile has cut a vast, deep trench as it winds its way northward from inner Africa. This trench, or valley, is seldom more than thirty miles wide, while the strip of soil on each
Fig. 24. The Inundation seen from the Road to the Pyramids of Gizeh
On the right is the road leading to the pyramids ; at the left the waters of the inundation cover the level floor of the Nile valley. In the distance is the desert plateau on which the pyramids stand. The trees and the small modern village just in front of the pyramids occupy part of the ground where once the royal city of the pyramid-builders stood (§ 75)
side of the river rarely exceeds ten miles in width. On either edge of the soil strip one steps out of the green fields into the sand of the desert, which has drifted down into the trench ; or if one climbs the cliffs, forming the walls of the trench, he stands looking out over a vast waste of rocky hills and stretches of sand trembling in the heat of the blazing sunshine.
38 * Ancient Times
49. The As we journey on let us realize that this valley can tell us
Egyptians ^^i unbroken story of human progress such as we can find no- where else. We look out upon the sandy margin of the desert, where there are thousands of low, undulating mounds covering the graves of the earliest ancestors of the brown men we see in the Delta fields. When we have dug out such a grave to the bottom, we find lying there the ancient Nile peas- ant, surrounded by pottery jars and stone implements (Fig. 25). There he has been lying for over six thou- sand years, and these stone tools, which he used so long ago, tell us
of generations of Nile-dwellers who.
Fig. 25. Looking down ... ^u t 4. c. a r
INTO THE Grave of ^^^ ^^^ ^ate Stone Age men of
A Late Stone Age Europe, lived without the use of metal.
Egyptian Barley and split wheat ^ are some-
An oval pit 4 or 5 feet deep times found in the jars around the
(cf. Fig.38, /). The body is body (Fig. 25), for the dead were
surrounded by pottery jars ^ 1^^^ with food by those who once containing food and ^^ "^
drink. A few small objects buried them. These and fragments of copper have been found of linen found in such graves show even in the earliest of such ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ j^
Egyptian graves, which - '^ rp,
therefore belong to the end and flax came mto Europe. These of the Late Stone Age ancient Nile peasants were therefore watering their fields of flax and grain over six thousand years ago, just as the brown men whom the traveler sees from the car windows to-day are still doing.
1 This split wheat is a variety which differs from our common wheat. The kernel is split into halves. When threshed, the two halves are still held together by the hull, and a second threshing or hard rubbing is necessary to break off this hull and get out the tvro half kernels. Split wheat is still raised in parts of Europe, especially for use in making starch, and is often called starch wheat. This was the earliest variety of wheat cultivated by man. It has recently been rediscovered growing in a wild state in Palestine. Barley and split wheat were the two leading grains used by early man in the oriental world.
The Story of Egypt
39
The villages of low, mud-brick huts which flash by the car 50. Earliest windows furnish us also with an exact picture of those vanished ^dYaxes^" prehistoric villages, the homes of the early Nile-dwellers who are still lying in yonder cemeteries on the desert margin. In each such village, six to seven thousand years ago, lived a local chieftain who controlled the irrigation trenches of the district. To him the peasants were obliged to carry every season a share of the grain* and flax which they gathered from their fields; otherwise the supply of water for their crops would be stopped, and they would receive an un- pleasant visit from the chief- tain, demanding instant payment. These were the earliest taxes.
Such transactions led to scratching a rude picture of the basket grain-measure and a number of strokes on the mud wall of the peasant's hut, in- dicating the number of measures of grain he had paid (cf. § 42). The use of these purely pictorial signs formed the earliest stage in the process of learning to
write. Such pictorial writing is still in use among the un- civilized peoples in our own land. Thus, the Alaskan natives send messages in pictorial form, scratched on a piece of wood (Fig. 26). The exact words of the message are not represented. Fig. 26 might be read by one man, " No food in the tent," while another might read, '' Lack of meat in the wigwam." Such pictorial signs thus conveyed ideas without expressing the exact words. Among our own Indians the desire of a brave to record his personal exploits also led to pictorial records of them (Fig. 27). It should be noticed again that the exact words are not indicated by this record
LlA
Fig. 26. Pictorial Message
scratched on wood by
Alaskan Indians
A figure with empty hands hang- ing down helplessly, palms down, as an Indian gesture for uncer- tainty, ignorance, emptiness, or nothing, means " no." A figure with one hand on its mouth means " eating " or " food." It points toward the tent, and this means " in the tent." The whole is a message stating, " (There is) no food in the tent" (§51)
40
Ancie7it Times
52. First step leading from the pictorial to the pho- netic stage
53. Second step leading from the pic- torial to the phonetic stage
--' y^
(Fig. 27), but the exploit is merely so suggested that it might be put into words in a number of different ways. The early Egyptian kings of six thousand years ago prepared strikingly
similar picture records (Fig. 28).
But this pictorial stage, beyond which native American records never passed, was not real writing. Two steps had to be taken before the picture records could become phonetic writ- ing. Firsts each object drawn had to gain a fixed form, always the same and always recog- nized as the sign for a particular word denot- ing that object. Thus, it would become a habit that the drawing of a loaf should always be read "loaf," not "bread" or " food " ; the sign for a leaf would always be read " leaf," not " foli- age." ^
The second step then
naturally followed ; that
is, the leaf ^, for example, became the sign for the syllable
"leaf" wherever it might occur. By the same process \^
1 The author is of course obliged to use English words and syllables here, and consequently also signs not existing in Egyptian but devised for this demonstration.
Fig. 27. Pictorial Record of the
Victory of a Dakota Chief named
Running Antelope
This Dakota Indian prepared his autobi- ography in a series of eleven drawings, of which Fig. 27 is but one. It records how he slew five hostile braves in a single day. The hero, Running Antelope, with rifle in hand, is mounted upon a horse. His shield bears a falcon, the animal emblem of his family, while beneath the horse is a running antelope, which is of course intended to in- form you of the hero's name. We see the trail of his horse as he swept round the copse at the left, in which were concealed the five hostile braves whom he slew. Of these, one figure bearing a rifle represents all five, while four other rifles in the act of being discharged indicate the number of braves in the copse
I
The Story of Egypt
41
might become the sign for the syllable '' bee " wherever found. Having thus a means of writing the syllables " bee " and " leaf," the next step was to put them together, thus, \^ ^, and they would then represent the word " belief." No- tice, however, that in the word "belief" the sign ^ has ceased to suggest the idea of an insect. It now represents only the syllable "be." That is to say, ^ has become a phonetic sign.
If the writing of the Egyptian had remained merely a series of pictures, such words as " belief," " hate," " love," " beauty," and the like could never have been written.^ But when a large number of his pictures had become phonetic signs, each representing a syllable, it was possi- ble for the Egyptian to write any word he knew, whether the word meant a thing of which he could draw a picture or not. This possession of phonetic signs was what made real writing for the first time. It arose among these Nile-dwellers earlier than anywhere else in the ancient world.
Egyptian writing contained at last over six hundred signs, many of them repre- senting whole syllables, like ^. The Egyptian scribe gradually learned many groups of such syllable signs. Each group, like 1^ ^, represented a word. Writing thus became to him a large number of sign- being a word ; and a series of such groups
netic signs
Fig. 28. Example
OF Egyptian Writ- 54. Advan-
ING IN THE PiCTO- ^^Sf ^^. P^^O"
RiAL Stage
Interpretation: Above is the falcon, symbol of a king (cf. the fal- con on the shield of Running Antelope in Fig. 27), leading a hu- man head by a cord ; behind thehead are six lotus leaves (each the sign for 1000) grow- ing out of the ground to which the head is attached ; below is a single-barbed harpoon head and a little rec- tangle (the sign of a lake). The whole tells the picture story that the falcon king led captive six thousand men of the land of the Harpoon Lake (§51)
groups, each group formed a sentence.
55. Syllable signs and sign-groups
1 See the word '* beauty," the last three signs in the inscription over the ship (Fig. 41).
42
Ancient Times
56. Alpha- betic signs, or letters
Nevertheless, the Egyptian went still farther, for he finally possessed a series of signs, each representing only a letter-^ that is, alphabetic signs, or, as we say, real letters. There were twenty-four letters in this alphabet, which was known in Egypt
smooth breathing, like h in "honor." As vowel, see below
= y(in Greek times it was used as vowel)
' guttural, pronounced in back of throat ; not used in English
w (later C\ was also used ; ^ 1 both signs as vowels, see below)
= b
= f
m (later r was also
used for m)
= 1 in late times (orig nally r or rw)
ra
V
Ch (like ch in German "ich")
kh (like Ch in Scotch " loch " or German "Bach")
S
of slightly "fi
S (oris
different sound from the preceding)
sh
^
■ q (in Greek times also used for k)
k
g
t
th
d
dh or dsh (like j in "jug")
Fig. 29. The Egyptian Alphabet
,Each of these letters represents a consonant. The Egyptians of course pronounced their words with vowels as we do, but they did not write the vowels. This will be clear by a study of Fig. 30. Just as the consonants w and y are sometimes used as vowels in English, so three of the Egyp- tian consonants came to be employed as vowels in Greek times. The first letter (smooth breathing) was thus used as a or ^; the second letter {y) as /■ ; and the fourth (w) as « or ^ (cf. Fig. 76)
long before 3000 B.C. It was thus the earliest alphabet known. The Egyptian might then have written his language with twenty- four alphabetic letters (Fig. 29) if the j-^^«-group habit had not been too strong for the scribe, just as the letter-group habit is
The Story of Egypt 43
strong enough with us to-day to prevent the introduction of a simplified phonetic system of spelling English. If we smile at the Egyptian's cumbrous sign-groups, future generations may as justly smile at our often absurd letter-groups.
The Egyptian soon devised a convenient equipment for writ- 57. inven- ing. He found out that he could make an excellent paint or ing materials ink by thickening water with a little vegetable gum and then ^"^ ^"^ P^"
B
' — ' A^A/VW
/WVWv
AVkAAA /WWW
Fig. 30. An Egyptian Word {A) and Two English Words {B) and {C) written in Hieroglyphic
The first three signs in word A are ch-q-r (see Fig, 29) ; we do not know the vowels. The word means "pauper" (literally, "hungry") ; as it de- notes a person, the Egyptian adds a little kneeling man at the end. Before him is another man with hand on mouth, an indication of hunger, thirst, or speech. These two are old pictorial signs surviving from the pictorial stage. Such pictorial signs at the end of a word have no phonetic value and are called determinatives. B is an English word spelled for illus- tration in hieroglyphic. The first three signs indicate the letters /-«-rf (see Fig. 29), while the three wavy lines form the determinative for "water"; hence p-n-d spells "pond." C is another English word in hieroglyphic. The first three signs indicate the lettersy^w-w (see Fig. 29), and the last sign is the determinative for " hunger " (see Fig. 30, A) ; hence y^OT-« spells "famine." With the alphabet (Fig. 29) and the above determinatives the student can put a number of English words into hieroglyphic ; for example, " man " {m-n and determinative of kneeling man, Fig. Tf>, A), "drink" {d-r-n-k and determinative of kneeling man with hand on mouth, Fig. 30, C), "speak" {s-p-k and same determinative), or "brook" {b-r-k and determinative for "water," as in " pond," Fig. 30, B)
mixing in soot from the blackened pots over his fire. Dipping a pointed reed into this mixture, he found he could write very well. ^-
He also learned that he could split a kind of river reed, 58. inven- called papyrus^ into thin strips, and that he could write on iJJ^materiais: them much better than on bits of pottery, bone, and wood. P^P®"^ Desiring a larger sheet, he hit upon the idea of pasting his
44 Ancient Times
papyrus strips together with overlapping edges. This gave him a very thin sheet, but by pasting two such sheets together, back to back with the grain crossing at right angles, he produced a smooth, tough, pale-yellow paper (Fig. 58). The Egyptian had thus made the discovery that a thin vegetable membrane offers . the most practical surface on which to write, and the world has
Fig. 31. An Example of Egyptian Hieroglyphic (Upper Line) and its Equivalent in the Rapid Running Hand (Lower Line) written with Pen and Lnk on Papyrus and
CALLED HiEKATIC, THE WRITING OF AlL ORDINARY BUSINESS
The daily business of an Egyptian community of course required much writing and thousands of records. Such writing, after it began to be done with pen and ink on papyrus (Fig. 40), soon became very rapid. In course of time therefore there arose a rapid or running hand in which each hieroglyphic sign was much abbreviated. This running hand is called hieratic. It corresponds to our handwriting, while hieroglyphic corresponds to our print. In the above example the signs in the lower row show clearly that they are the result of an effort to make quickly . the signs in the hieroglyphic row above (compare sign for sign). We must notice also that the Egyptian wrote from right to left, for this line begins at the right and reads to the left. Vertical lines, that is, down- ward reading, was also employed (Fig. 58). A third still more rapid and abbreviated hand, corresponding in some ways to our shorthand, arose still later (eighth century B.C.). It was called demotic, and one of the versions on the Rosetta Stone (Fig. 207) is written in demotic
since discovered nothing better. In this way arose pen, ink, and paper (see Fig. 40). All three of these devices have descended to us from the Egyptians, and paper still bears its ancient name, " papyros," ^ but slightly changed.
1 The change from " papyros " to " paper " is really a very slight one. For OS is merely the Greek grammatical ending, which must be omitted in English. This leaves us papyr as the ancestor of our word " paper," from which it differs by only one letter. On the other Greek word for " papyrus," from which came our word " Bible," see § 405. On the rapid or running handwriting which resulted from using a pen on paper, see Fig. 31,
The Story of Egypt 45
The invention of writing and of a convenient system of 59. Un- records on paper has had a greater influence in uplifting the port^ance™f human race than any other intellectual achievement in the introduction
-' or writing
career of man. It was more important than all the battles ever fought and all the constitutions ever devised.
The Egyptians early found it necessary to measure time. 60. Begin- Like all other early peoples, they used the time from new calendar ^ moon to new moon as a very convenient rough measure. If a man had agreed to pay back some borrowed grain at the end of nine moons, and eight of them had passed, he knew that he had one more moon in which to make the payment. But the moon-month varies in length from twenty-nine to thirty days, and it does not evenly divide the year. The Egyptian soon showed himself much more practical in removing this incon- venience than his neighbors in other lands.
He decided to use the moon no longer for dividing his year. 61. Egyptian He would have twelve months, and he would make his months our calendar, all of the same length, that is, thirty days each ; then he would 424j^b.c., celebrate five feast days, a kind of holiday week five days long, fixed date
•^ in history
at the end of the year. This gave him a year of three hundred and sixty-five days. He was not yet enough of an astronomer to know that every four years he ought to have a leap year of three hundred and sixty-six days, although he discovered this fact later (§ 741). This convenient Egyptian calendar was devised in 4241 B.C., and its introduction is the earliest dated event in history. Furthermore, this calendar is the very one which has descended to us, after more than six thousand years — unfortunately with awkward alterations in the lengths of the months, but for these alterations the Egyptians were not responsible (see § 968).
At the same time, as documents dated by this convenient 62. Lack of calendar accumulated through many years, it was found that identifying a document like a lease or a note, signed in a certain month, fn^ndonoY' was not sufficiently dated, unless the year was also included, year-namos The system of numbering years from some great event, like
46
Ancient Times
63. Lists of year-names, the earliest chronicles ; and lists of kings with numbered years
1 z\ 3
our method of numbering them from the birth of Christ, was still unknown. In order to have some means of identifying a year when it was long past, each year was given a name after some prominent event which had happened in it. This method is still in use among our own North American Indians (Fig. 32),
and even among our- selves, as people in Chicago say " the year of the great fire." We find the earliest written monuments of Egypt dated by means of named years (Fig. 33). Lists of year-names then began to be kept. As each year-name usu- ally mentioned some great event (cf. Fig. 2^-^^ such lists of year- names were thus lists of great events, like historic chronicles. The earliest such year-list in human histor)^ now surviving, called the Pa- lermo Stone (because it is preserved in the museum at Palermo,
Fig. 32. Part of a Dakota Chief's List of Seventy-one Named Years
Lone Dog, a Dakota chief, had a buffalo robe with seventy-one named years re- corded on it, beginning in 1800, when he was a child of four. A year when whoop- ing cough was very bad was called the " Whooping-cough Year " ; its sign shows a human head violently coughing ! (/) Another year, very plentiful in meteors, was called the Meteor Year, and its sign was a rude drawing of a falling meteor {2). A third year saw the arrange- ment of peace between the Dakotas and the Crows ; its sign was therefore two Indians, with differing style of hair, indi- cating the two different tribes, exchanging pipes of peace (j). Thus, instead of say- ing, as we do, that a thing happened in the year 18 13, the Indian said it happened in the Whooping-cough Year, and by examining his table of years he could tell
how far back that year was , n , . ,
Sicily), begins about
3400 B.C., and contained when complete the names of some
seven hundred years, ending about 2700 B.C. Later the Egyp
tians found it more convenient to number the years of each
king's reign, and then to date events in the first year of King
So-and-so or the tenth year of King So-and-so. They finally
had lists of past kings, covering many centuries.
The Story of Egypt
47
Meantime the Egyptians were making great progress in other 64. Discov
matters. It was probably in the peninsula of Sinai (see map, p. 36) that some Egyptian, wan- dering thither, once happened to bank his camp fire with pieces of copper ore lying on the ground about the camp. The charcoal of his wood fire mingled with the hot fragments of ore piled around to shield the fire, and thus the ore was " reduced," as the miner says ; that is, the copper in me- tallic form was released from the lumps of ore. Next morn- ing, as the Egyptian stirred the embers, he discovered a few glittering globules, now hardened into beads of metal. He drew them forth and turned them admiringly as they glittered in the morning sunshine. Before long, as the experience was re- peated, he discovered whence these strange shining beads had come. He produced more of them, at first only to be worn as ornaments by the women. Then he learned to cast the metal into a blade, to replace the flint knife which he carried in his girdle.
Without knowing it this man stood at the dawning of a new
ery of metal (at least 4000 B.C.)
Fig. 33. Early Egyptian
Date by the Name of the
Year
This large alabaster jar, now in the Philadelphia Museum, was presented by a primitive king of Egypt to a Sun-temple and bears the date of the presentation in the words, " Year of Fighting and Smiting the Northland," which is the name of the year, given to it because of the victory over the Northland (the Delta) gained in that year. A long series of such year-names fur- nishes us a valuable record of great events, by which the years were named (§ 63)
65. The
dawning of the Age of
era, the Age of Metal ; and the little bead of. shining copper Metal which he drew from the ashes, if this Egyptian wanderer could have seen it, might have reflected to him a vision of gteel
48
Ancient Times
66. The Nile a vast histori- cal volume
67. The first glimpse of the pyramids
buildings, Brooklyn bridges, huge factories roaring with the noise of thousands of machines of metal, and vast stretches of steel roads along which thunder hosts of rushing locomotives. For these things of our modern world, and all they signify, would never have come to pass but for the little bead of metal which the wondering Egyptian held in his hand for the first time on that eventful day so long ago. Since the discovery of fire over fifty thousand years earlier (§ 8), man had made no conquest of the things of the earth which could compare in importance with this discovery of metal.
At this point we realize that we have followed early man out of the Stone Age (where we left him in Europe) into a civili- zation possessed of metal, writing, and government. We also begin to see that dry and rainless Egypt furnishes the conditions for the preservation of such plentiful remains of early man as to make this valley an enormous storehouse of his ancient works and records. These remains are the only link connecting pre- historic man with the historic age of written documents, which we are now to study as we make the voyage up the Nile. We shall read the monuments along the great river like a vast his- torical volume, whose pages will tell us, age after age, the fasci- nating story of ancient man and all that he achieved here so many thousands of years ago, after his discovery of metals and his invention of writing.
Such are the thoughts which occupy the mind of the well- informed traveler as his train carries him southward across the Delta. Perhaps he is pondering on the possible results which the Egyptians were to achieve as he sees them in imagination throwing away their flint chisels and replacing them with those of copper. The train rounds a bend, and through an opening in the palms he is fairly blinded by a burst of blazing sunshine from the western desert, in the midst of which he discovers a group of noble pyramids rising above the glare of the sands. It is his first glimpse of the great pyramids of Gizeh (Fig. 24), and it tells him better than any printed page what the Egyptian
I
The Stor^> of Egypt 49
builders with the copper chisel in their hands could do. A few minutes later his train is moving among the modern buildings of Cairo, and the very next day will surely find him taking the seven-mile drive from Cairo out to Gizeh.
Section 6. The Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 B.C.)
No traveler ever forgets the first drive from Cairo to the 68. The pyra- pyramids of Gizeh, as he sees their giant forms rising higher tombs and higher above the crest of the western desert (Fig. 24). A thousand questions arise in the visitor's mind. He has read that these vast buildings he is approaching are tombs, in which
Fig. 34. Winged Sun-Disk, a Symbol of the Sun-god
In this form the Sun-god was believed to be a falcon flying across the
sky. We shall later see how the other nations of the Orient in Asia
also adopted this Egyptian symbol (see Figs. 102, 117, and 129)
the kings of Egypt were buried. Such mighty buildings reveal many things about the men who built them. In the first place, these tombs show that the Egyptians believed in a life after death, and that to obtain such life it was necessary to preserve the body from destruction. They built these tombs to shelter and protect the body after death. From this belief came also the practice of embalmment, by which the body was preserved as a mummy (Fig. 72). It was then placed in the great ^tomb, in a small room deep under the pyramid masonry. Other tombs of masonry, much smaller in size, cluster about the pyramids in great numbers (Figs. 39 and 42). Here were buried the relatives of the king, and the great men of his court, who assisted him in the government of the land.
50
Ancient Times
69. The gods of Egypt: Re and Osiris
70. The prog- ress of the Egyptians be- fore they built stone masonry
The Egyptians had many gods, but there were two whom they worshiped above all others. The sun, which shines so gloriously in the cloudless Egyptian sky, was their greatest god, and their most splendid temples were erected for his worship. Indeed, the pyramid is a symbol sacred to the Sun-god. (See another symbol in Fig. 34.) They called him Re (pronounced ray). The other great power which they revered was the shining Nile. The great river and the fertile soil he refreshes, and the green life which he brings forth — all these the Egyptian thought of together as a single god, Osiris, the imperishable life of the
earth, which revives and fades every year with the changes of the seasons (see Fig. 35). It was a beautiful thought to the Egyptian that this same life-giving power which fur- nished him his food in this world would care for him also in the 7iext^ when his body lay out yonder in the great cemetery of Gizeh, which we are approaching.^ But this vast cemetery of Gizeh tells us of many other things besides the religion of the Egyptians. As we look up at the colossal pyramids behind the Sphinx (Fig. 54) we can hardly grasp the fact of the enormous forward stride taken by the Egyptians since the days when they used to be buried with their flint knives in a pit scooped out on the margin of the desert (Fig. 25). It was the use of metal which since then had carried them so far. That Egyptian in Sinai who noticed the first bit of metal (§ 65) lived over a thousand years before
1 There were many other Egyptian gods whose earthly symbols were animals, but. the animal worship usually attributed to Egypt was a degeneration belonging to the latest age. The animals were not gods in this early time, but only symbols of the divine beings, just as the winged sun-disk was a symbol of the Sun-god (Fig. 34).
Fig. 35. The Dead Osiris embalmed
From the body of the god stalks of grain have sprouted, a symbol suggesting the imperishable life of the god, by means of which he survived death (§ 69)
The Story of Egypt
51
these pyramids were built. He was buried in a pit like that of the earliest Egyptian peasant (Figs. 25 and 38, z).
It was a long time before the possession of metal resulted in copper tools which made possible great architecture in stone. Not more than a hundred and fifty years before the Great
Fig. 36. The Oldest Surviving Building of Stone Masonry (not long after 3000 b.c.)
This terraced building, often called the step-pyramid, was the tomb of King Zoser (early thirtieth century B.C.). It is about 200 feet high, and is composed of a series of buildings like those in Fig. 42, placed one on top of the other. It thus formed a tapering building (Fig. 38,5), out of which developed the pyramid form at the close of the thirtieth century (on the architect see Fig. 37 and § 71)
Pyramid of Gizeh, the Egyptians were still building the tombs of their kings out of sun-baked brick. Such a royal tomb was at first merely a chamber in the ground, roofed with wood and covered with a mound of sand and gravel (Fig. 38, 2).
Then some skillful workman among them found out that he could use his copper tools to cut square blocks of limestone and line the chamber with these blocks in place of the soft
Si
Ancient Times
71. The
earliest stone building, and Imhotep, the first architect in stone
72. From the earliest stone masonry to the Great Pyramid — a century and a half
bricks. So far as we know, this was the first piece of stone masonry ever put together (Fig. 38, j). It can hardly be called a building, for, like a cellar wall, it was all below ground.
The next step, a real building above- ground, was still of brick (Fig. 38, 4). It was soon followed by a terraced structure of stone for the king's tomb, the earliest surviving building of stone masonry ever erected. We know the name of the royal archi- tect, Imhotep, the earliest architect to put up a building of stone masonry. He flourished just after 3000 B.C., and his name deserves far greater fame and respect than those of the early kings or conquerors them- selves (Fig. 37).
The erection of Imhotep's ter- raced building was but a step toward the construction of a pyramid. A generation later, so rapid was the progress, the king's architects were building the Great Pyramid of Gizeh (2900 B.C.). From the earliest piece of stone masonry (Fig. 38, j) to the construction of the Great Pyramid (Fig. 38, 7), less than a century and a half elapsed. Most of this advance was made during the thirtieth cen- tury B.C., that is, between 3000 and 2900 B.C. (Fig. 38). Such rapid prog- ress in control of mechanical power can be found in no other period of the world's history until the nine- teenth century.
Fig. 37. Imhotep the Wise, the Earliest Ar- chitect OF Stone Build- ings (nearly 3000 B.C.)
This architect of the earli- est surviving building of stone (Fig. 36) was grand vizier at the court of King Zoser. He was also a great physician and wise man, and later on he was thought to be a god, until he was finally re- garded as Asclepius (^scu- lapius), the god of medicine among the Greeks and Romans. This little portrait of him is a bronze statuette, now in the Berlin Museum, and shows him reading from a papyrus roll
The Story of Egypt 5 3
It helps us to realize this progress when we know that the 73. The vast Great Pyramid covers thirteen acres. It is a solid mass of Great Pyra- masonry containing 2,300,000 blocks of limestone, each weigh- ™^ ing on an average two and a half tons ; that is, each block is as heavy as a large wagonload of coal. The sides of the pyramid at the base are 755 feet long,^ that is, about a block and three quarters (counting twelve city blocks to a mile), and the build- ing was nearly 500 feet high. An ancient story tells us that a hundred thousand men were working on this royal tomb for twenty years, and we can well believe it (Fig. 39).
We perceive at once that it must have required a very 74. Govern- skillful ruler and a great body of officials to manage and to PyJ^mid Age feed a hundred thousand workmen around this great building. The king who .controlled such vast undertakings was no longer a local chieftain (§ 50), but he now ruled a united Egypt, the earliest great unified nation, comprising several millions of people. The king was so reverenced that the people did not mention him by name, but instead they spoke of the palace in which Jie lived, that is, the " Great House," or, in Egyptian, '' Pharaoh." He had his local officials collecting taxes all over Egypt (Fig. 40). It was also their business to try the law cases which arose, and every judge had before him the written law,^ which bade him judge justly.
The king's huge central offices, occupying low, sun-baked- ' brick buildings, sheltered an army of clerks with their reed pens and their rolls of papyrus (Fig. 40), keeping the king's records and accounts. The taxes received from the people here were not in money, for coined money did not yet exist. Payments were made in produce — grain, live stock, wine, honey, linen, and the like. With the exception of the cattle, these had to be stored in granaries and storehouses, a vast group of which formed the treasury of the king.
1 It should be remembered that the pyramid is solid. Compare the length of the Colosseum (about 600 feet), which is built around a hollow inclosure.
2 This Egyptian code of laws has unfortunately been lost.
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Fig. 39. Restoration of the Great Pyramids and Other
Tomb-Monuments in the Ancient Cemetery of Gizeh,
Egypt. (After Hoelscher)
These royal tomb's (pyramids) belonged to the leading kings of the Fourth Dynasty, the early part {2900-2750 B.C.) of the Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 B.C.). The Great Pyramid, the tomb of King Khufu (Greek, Cheops), is on the right (see § 73). Next in size is that of King Khafre (Greek, Chephren) (Fig. 54), on the left. On the east side (front) of each pyramid is a temple (see also Fig. 56), where the food, drink, and clothing were placed for the use of the dead king. These temples, like the pyramids, were built on the desert plateau above, while the royal town was in the valley below (on the right) (see § 75 and Fig. 24). For convenience, therefore, the temple was connected with the town below by a covered gallery, or corridor, of stone, seen here descending in a straight line from the temple of King Khafre and terminating below, just beside the Sphinx, in a large oblong building of stone, called a valley-temple. It was a splendid structure of granite (Fig. 55), serving not only as a temple but also as the entrance to the great corridor from the royal city. The pyramids are surrounded by the tombs of the queens and the great lords of the age (see Fig. 42). At the lower left-hand corner is an unfinished pyramid, showing the inclined ascents up which the stone blocks were dragged. These ascents (called ramps) were built of sun-baked brick and were removed after the pyramid was finished. (This scene will be found in color in Outlines of European History, Part I, Plate I)
56
The Story of Egypt
57
The villas and gardens of the officials who assisted the king 75. The in all this business of government formed a large part of the ™^^ ^^ ^ royal city (Fig. 51). The chief quarter of the city, however, was occupied by the palace of the king and the luxurious parks and gardens which surrounded it. Thus the palace and its grounds, the official villas, and offices of the government made up the capital of Egypt, the royal city which extended along the foot of the pyramid ceme- tery and stretched far away over the low plain, of which there is a fine view from the summit of the pyramid. But the city was all built of sun- baked brick and wood, and it has therefore vanished. It extended far southward from Gizeh and was later called Memphis.
The city of the dead, — the pyra- mids and the tombs clustering around
them (Figs. 39 and 42), — being built of stone, has fortunately proved more durable. Hence it is that from the summit of the Great Pyramid there is a grand view southward, down a straggling but imposing line of pyramids rising dimly as far as one can see on the southern- horizon. Each pyramid was a royal tomb, and for us each such tomb means that a king lived, ruled, and died. The line is over sixty miles long, and its oldest pyramids represent the first great age of Egyptian
Fig. 40. Collection of Taxes by Local Treasury Officials in the Pyramid Age
The clerks and scribes are in two rows at the right. All squat, and write on the raised right knee, except the two who have desks. The left hand holds a sheet of papyrus ; the right, the pen. The taxpayers are delinquent village offi- cers brought in (at the left) by deputies with staves under their arms. The inscription above reads, '' Seizing the town rulers for a reckon- ing." The clerks had records of the taxpayers' names and how much they owed ; and they issued receipts when the taxes were paid, just as at the present day. Such arrangements did not arise in Europe until far down in the Roman Empire (§§ 1026- 1027)
76. Length and date of the Pyramid Age
58
Ancient Times
77. Northern commerce and earliest seagoing ships
civilization after the land was united under one king.^ We may call it the Pyramid Age, and it lasted about five hundred years, from 3000 to 2500 B.C.
In the Pyramid Kg& the Pharaoh was already powerful enough to begin seeking wealth beyond the boundaries of Egypt. We even possess painted reliefs (Fig. 41) showing
Fig, 41. Earliest Representation of a Seagoing Ship (Twenty-eighth Century b.c.)
The scene is carved on the wall of a temple (Fig. 56). The people are all bowing to the king whose figure (now lost) stood on shore (at the left), and they salute him with the words written in a line of hieroglyphs above, meaning : " Hail to thee ! O Sahure [the king's name], thou god of the living ! We behold thy beauty." Some of these men are bearded Phoenician prisoners brought by this Egyptian ship which with seven others, making a fleet of eight vessels, had therefore crossed the east end of the Mediterranean and returned. The big double mast is un- shipped and lies on supports rising by the three steering oars in the stern. The model and ornaments of these earliest-known ships spread in later times to ships found in all waters from Italy to India
us the ships which he dared to send beyond the shelter of the Nile mouths far across the end of the Mediterranean to the coast of Phoenicia (see map, p. 100). This was in the
1 For a long time before this there had been little kingdoms scattered up and down the valley. These finally merged into two leading kingdoms — one includ- ing the Delta, and the other the valley south of it. They long fought together (see Fig. 33), until they were finally united into one kingdom, under a single king. The first king to establish this union permanently was Menes, who united Egypt under his rule about 3400 b. c. But it was not until four centuries or more after Menes that the united kingdom became powerful and wealthy enough to build these royal pyramid-tombs, marking fpr us the first great age of Egyptian civilization,
The Story of Egypt
59
middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., and this relief (Fig. 41) contains the oldest known representation of a sea- going ship. Yet at that time the Pharaoh had already been carrying on such over-sea commerce for centuries.
Besides maintaining his copper mines in Sinai, the king was 78. Southern also already sending caravans of donkeys far up the Nile into and Tadkst the Sudan to traffic with the blacks of the south, and to bring "h^led'seT back ebony, ivory, ostrich feathers, and fragrant gums. The
Fig. 42. Restoration of a Group of Tombs of the Nobles IN the Pyramid Age
These tombs are grouped about the royal pyramids, as seen in Fig. 39. They are sometimes of vast size. The square openings in the top are shafts leading down to the burial chambers in the native rock far below the tomb structures. These structures are of stone, surrounding a heap of sand and gravel inside (Fig. 38, 4). The chapel room is in the east side, of which the door can be seen in the front of each tomb. The reliefs shown in Figs. 43-48 adorn the inside walls of these chapels
officials who conducted these caravans were the earliest ex- plorers of inner Africa, and in their tombs at the First Cataract they have left interesting records of their exciting adventures among the wild tribes of the south — adventures in which some of them lost their lives.^ The Pharaoh was also sending his ships on expeditions to a land called Punt, at the south end of the Red Sea (see map, p. 36), to procure the same products and to bring them back by water.
1 The teacher will find it of interest to read these records to the class. the author's Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I^ pp. 325-336, 350-374.
See
6o
Ancient Times
79. The A stroll among the tombs clustering so thickly around the
of"d?e^Pyr? pyramids of Gizeh (Fig. 42) is almost like a walk among the JP^^S^ ' ^^^ ^"^y communities which flourished in this populous valley in reveal the days of the pyramid-builders. We find the door of every
tomb standing open (Fig. 42), and there is nothing to prevent
Fig. 43. Relief Scene from the Chapel of a Noble's Tomb (Fig. 42) in the Pyramid Age
The tall figure of the noble stands at the right. He is inspecting three lines of cattle and a line of fowl brought before him. Note the two scribes who head the two middle rows. Each is writing with pen on a sheet of papyrus, and one carries two pens behind his ear. Such reliefs after being carved were colored in bright hues by the painter
(see § 93)
our entrance. We stand in an oblong room with walls of stone masonry. This is a chapel chamber, to which the Egyptian believed the dead man buried beneath the tomb might return every day. Here he would find food and drink left for him daily by his relatives. He would also find the stone walls of
The Story of Egypt
6i
this room covered from floor to ceiling with carved scenes, beau- tifully painted, picturing the daily life on a great estate (Figs. 40, 43-48, and 50). The place is now silent and deserted, or if we hear the voices of the donkey boys talking outside, they are speaking Arabic, for the ancient Egyptian language of the men who built these tombs so many thousand years ago is no longer spoken. But everywhere, in bright and charming colors, we see pictures of the life — the days of toil and pleasure — which these men of nearly five thousand years ago actually lived.
Fig. 44. Plowing and Sowing in the Pyramid Age
There are two plowmen, one driving the oxen and one holding the plow. This wooden plow was derived from such a wooden hoe as we see in use in front of the oxen. The handle of the hoe, here grasped by the user, was lengthened so that oxen might be yoked to it. The hoe handle thus became the beam of a plow. Two short handles were then attached by which the plowman behind could guide it (§ 33). The man with the hoe breaks up the clods left by the plow, and in* front of him is the sower, scattering the seed from the curious sack he carries before him. At the left is a scribe of the estate. The hiero- glyphs at the top in all such scenes explain what is going on. Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 42)
Dominating all these scenes on the walls is the tall form of 80. Agricul- the noble (Fig, 43), the lord of the estate, who was buried in this tomb. He stands looking out over his fields and inspecting the work going on there. These fields (Fig. 44) are the oldest scene of agriculture known to us. Here, too, are the herds, long lines of sleek, fat cattle grazing in the pasture, while the milch cows are led up and tied to be milked (Figs. 43 and 45). These cattle are also beasts of burden ; we notice the oxen draw- ing the plow. But we find no horses in these tombs of the
ture and cattle raising ; beasts of burden
62
Ancient Times
8i. The cofh porsmith
Fig. 45. Peasant milking in the Pyramid Age
The cow is restive and the ancient cow- herd has tied her hind legs. Behind her another man is holding her calf, which rears and plunges in the effort to reach the milk. Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 42)
Pyramid Age, for the horse was still unknown to the Egyptian.
The donkey, however, is everywhere, and it would be impossible
to harvest the grain without him (Fig. 46). On the next wall we find again the tall figure of the noble overseeing the booths and yards where the craftsmen of his estate are working. Yonder is the smith. He has never heard of his ancestor who picked up the first bead of
copper, over a thousand years earlier (§ 65). Much progress
has been made since that day. This man could make excellent
copper tools of all sorts; but the tool which demanded the
greatest skill was the long,
flat ripsaw, which the smith
knew how to hammer into
shape out of a broad strip of
copper five or six feet long.
Such a saw may be seen in
use in Fig. 50. Besides this
he knew how to make one
that would saw great blocks
of stone for the ' pyramids.
Moreover, this coppersmith
was already able to deliver
orders of considerable size.
We know that he could fur- nish thirteen hundred feet
(about a quarter of a mile) of copper drain piping for a pyra- mid temple (Fig. 56), where recent excavation has found it —
the earliest plumbing known to us.
Fig. 46. Donkey carrying a
Load of Grain Sheaves in
the Pyramid Age
The foal accompanies its mother while at work. Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig. 42)
The Story of Egypt
63
Fig. 47.
Goldsmith's Workshop in the Pyramid Age .
On the same wall we see the lapidary holding up for the noble's admiration splendid stone bowls cut from diorite. Although this kind of stone is as hard as steel, the bowl is ground to such thinness that the sunlight glows through its dark gray sides (Fig. 134). Other workmen are cutting and grinding tiny pieces of beautiful blue turquoise. These pieces they inlay with remarkable accuracy into recesses in the sur- face of a magnificent golden vase just made ready by the goldsmith (Plate I). The booth of the goldsmith is filled with workmen and apprentices (Fig. 47). They hammer and cast, solder and fit together richly wrought jewelry which is hardly sur- passed by the work of the best gold- smiths and jewelers of to-day.
In the next space on this wall we find the potter no longer building up his jars and bowls with his fingers alone, as in the Stone Age. He now sits before a small horizontal ivheel (Fig. 48), upon which he deftly shapes the whirling vessel. When the soft clay vessels are ready, they are no longer unevenly burned in an open fire, as among the Late Stone Age potters in the Swiss lake-villages (Fig. 1 6) ; but here in the Egyptian potter's yard are long rows of dosed furnaces of clay as tall as a man. When the pottery is packed in these furnaces it is burned evenly, because it is protected from the wind (Fig. 48). On the tomb wall we also
82. The lapi- dary, gold- smith, and jeweler
Upper row. At left the chief goldsmith weighs precious stones and a scribe records them; next, six men with blowpipes blow the fire in a small clay furnace ; next, a workman pours out molten metal or paste ; at the right end four men are beating gold leaf. Middle row. Pieces of finished jewelry and a jewel-box in the middle. Lower row. Workmen seated at low benches are putting together and engraving pieces of jewelry. Several of these men are dwarfs. (See the finished work on Plate I, and headpiece, p. 35)
83. The pot- ter's wheel and furnace ; the earliest glass
64
Ancient Times
84. The
weavers and tapestry- makers
see the craftsman making glass. This art the Egyptians had discovered centuries earlier. The glass was spread on tiles in gorgeous glazes for adorning house and palace walls (Plate II), and later it was wrought into exquisite many-colored glass bottles and vases, which were widely exported (Fig. 49).
Yonder the weaving women draw forth from the loom a gossamer fabric of linen. The picture would naturally give us no idea of its fineness, but fortunately pieces of it have sur- vived, wrapped around the mummy of a king of this age.
Fig. 48. Potter's Wheel and Furnaces
The potter crouches before his horizontal wheel, which is like a flat round plate, on which rests the jar being shaped. The potter keeps the wheel whirling with one hand, and with the other he shapes the soft clay jar as it wjbirls on the wheel. This wheel is the ancestor of our lathe. Two men (at the right end) are just filling a tall furnace with bowls and jars, and another furnace (at the -left) is already very hot, for the man stirring the fire is holding up his hand to shield his face from the heat
85. Paper- makers
These specimens of royal linen are so fine that it requires a magnifying glass to distinguish them from silk, and the best work of the modern machine loom is coarse in comparison with this fabric of the ancient Egyptian hand loom. At one loom a lovely tapestry is being made, for these weavers of Egypt furnished the earliest-known specimens of such work, to be hung on the walls of the Pharaoh's palace or stretched out to shade the roof garden of the noble's villa (Fig. 51).
In the next space on the wall we find huge bundles of papyrus reeds, which barelegged men are gathering along the
The Story of Egypt
65
edge of the Nile marsh. These reeds furnish piles of pale yellow paper in long narrow sheets (§ 58). The ships which we have followed on the Mediterranean (Fig. 41) will in course of time add bales of this Nile paper to their cargoes, and
carry it to the
European world.
We seem almost to hear the hubbub of hammers and mauls as we ap- proach the next sec- tion of wall, where we find the ship- builders and cabi- netmakers. Here is a long line of curving hulls, with workmen swarming over them like ants, fitting together the earliest seagoing ships (Fig. 41). Beside them are the busy cabinet- makers (Fig. 50), fashioning luxuri- ous furniture for the noble*s villa. The finished chairs and couches for the king or the rich are overlaid with gold and silver, inlaid with ebony and ivory, and upholstered with soft leathern cushions (Fig. 73).
As we look back over these painted chapel walls we see that the tombs of Gizeh have told us a very vivid story of how these early men learned to make for themselves the things they needed. We should notice how many more such things these men of the Nile could now make than the Stone Age men, who
86. Ship- builders, car penters, and cabinet- makers
ABC
Fig. 49. Egyptian Glass Bottles and
THEIR Distribution from Babylonia to
Ancient Italy
A, as found in ancient Egypt ; B, as found in ancient Babylonia ; C, as found in ancient Italy. The shape is in imitation of Egyptian perfume bottles cut out of alabaster. This shape became the common form for perfume and toilet bottles among the Mediterranean peoples in later times (see Fig. 170)
66
Anctenl Times
were still living in the lake-villages and other towns of Europe (Fig. 14) at the very time these tomb-chapels were built. 88. River It is easy to picture the bright, sunny river in those ancient
the market' days, alive with boats and barges (often depicted on these fn^godds^dr- ^^^'^) moving hither and thither, bearing the products of all cuiation of these industries, to be carried to the treasury of the Pharaoh
precious "^
metal as taxcs or to the market of the town to be bartered for other
goods. Here on the wall is the market place itself. We can watch the cobbler offering the baker a pair of sandals as
13/ \f
Fig. 50. Cabinetmakers in the Pyramid Age
At the left a man is cutting with a chisel which he taps with a mallet ; next, a man " rips " a board with a copper saw ; next, two men are finishing off a couch, and at the right a man is drilling a hole with a bow-drill. Scene from the chapel of a noble's tomb (Fig 42). Com- pare a finished chair belonging to a wealthy noble of the Empire which was placed in his tomb and thus preserved (Fig. 73)
payment for a cake, or the carpenter's wife giving the fisherman a little wooden box to pay for a fish ; while the potter's wife proffers the apothecary two bowls fresh from the potter's fur- nace in exchange for a jar of fragrant ointment. We see, there- fore, that the people have no coined money to use, and that in the market place trade is actual exchange of goods. Such is the business of the common people. If we could see the large transactions in the palace, we would find there heavy rings of gold of a standard weight, which circulated like money. Rings of copper also served the same purpose. Such rings were the forerunners of coin (§ 458).
The Story of Egypt 6y
These people in the gayly painted picture of the market 89. Three place on the chapel wall were the common folk of Egypt in sodety hi the the Pyramid Age. Some of them were free men, following Pyam^d Age their own business or industry. Others were slaves, working the fields on the great estates. Neither of these humble classes owned any land. Over them were the landowners, the Pharaoh and his great lords and officials, like the owner of this tomb (Fig. 42). We know many more of them by name, and a walk through this cemetery would enable us to make a directory of the wealthy quarter of the royal city under the kings who were buried in these pyramids of Gizeh. We know the grand viziers and the chief treasurers, the chief judges and the architects, the chamberlains and marshals of the palace, and so on. We can even visit the tomb of the architect who built the Great Pyramid of Gizeh for Khufu.
We can observe with what pleasure these nobles and officials 90. The presided over this busy industrial and social life of the Nile pyramid Age valley in the Pyramid Age. Here on this chapel wall again i" his home we see its owner seated at ease in his palanquin, a luxurious wheel-less carriage borne upon the shoulders of slaves, as he returns from the inspection of his estate where we have been following him. His bearers carry him into the shady garden before his house (Fig. 51), where they set down the palanquin and cease their song.^ His wife advances at once to greet him. Her place is always at his side ; she is his sole wife, held in all honor, and enjoys every righ't which belongs to her husband. This garden is the noble's paradise. Here he may recline for an hour of leisure with his family and friends, playing at draughts, listening to the music of harp, pipe, and lute, watching his women in the slow and stately dances of the time, while his children are sporting about among the arbors, splashing in the pool as they chase the fish, playing with ball, doll, and jumping jack, or teasing the tame monkey which takes refuge under their father's ivory-legged stool.
1 Recorded, with other songs, on the tomb-chapel walls.
68 Ancient History
Section 7. Art and Architecture in the Pyramid Age
91. The The noble drops one hand idly upon the head of his favorite
hound, and with the other beckons to the chief gardener and gives directions regarding the new pomegranates which he wishes to try for dinner. The house (Fig. 51) where this dinner awaits him is large an4 commodious, built of sun-dried brick and wood. Light and airy, as suits the climate, we find that it has many latticed windows on all sides. The walls of the living rooms are scarcely more than a frame to support gayly colored hangings (§84) which can be let down as a pro- tection against winds and sand storms when necessary. These give the house a very bright and cheerful aspect. The house is a work of art, and we discern in it how naturally the Egyptian demanded beauty in his surroundings. This he secured by making all his useful things beautiful.
Beauty surrounds us on every hand as we follow him in to his dinner. The lotus blossoms on the handle of his carved spoon, and his wine sparkles in the deep blue calyx of the same flower, which forms the bowl of his wineglass. The muscular limbs of the lion or the ox, beautifully carved in ivory, support the chair in which he sits or the couch where he reclines. The painted ceiling over his head is a blue and starry heaven resting upon palm-trunk columns (Fig. 56), each crowned with its graceful tuft of drooping foliage carved in wood and colored in the dark green of the living tree ; or columns in the form of lotus stalks rise from the floor as if to support the azure ceiling upon their swaying blossoms. Doves and butterflies, exquisitely painted, flit across this in- door sky. Beneath our feet we find the pavement of the dining hall carpeted in paintings picturing everywhere the deep, green of disheveled marsh grasses, with gleaming water between and fish gliding among the swaying reeds. Around the margin, leaping among the rushes, we see the wild ox
The Story of Egypt
69
Fig. 51. Villa of an Egyptian Noble
The garden is inclosed with a high wall. There are pools on either
side as one enters, and a long arbor extends down the middle. The
house at the rear, embowered in trees, is crowned by a rcTof garden
shaded with awnings of tapestry (see § 84)
tossing his head at the birds twittering on the nodding rush tops, as they vainly strive to frighten away the stealthy weasel creeping up to plunder their nests.
The Egyptians could not have left us the beautifully painted reliefs in the tomb-chapels we visited unless they had possessed
70
Ancient Times
93. Painting and relief in tombs and temples
94. Portrait sculpture
95. Architec- ture : the earliest clerestory
trained artists. Indeed, we can find, in one corner of the wall, the picture of the artist who painted the walls in one of the chapels, where he has represented himself enjoying a plentiful feast among other people of the estate. His drawings all around us show that he has not been able to overcome all the difficul- ties of depicting, on a flat surface, objects having thickness and roundness. Animal figures are drawn, however, with great lifelikeness (Figs. 43-46), but perspective is almost entirely unknown to him, and objects in the background or distance are drawn of almost the same size as those in front.
The portrait sculptor was the greatest artist of this age. His statues were carved in stone or wood, and colored in the hues of life ; the eyes were inlaid with rock crystal, and they still shine with the gleam of life (Fig. 53). More lifelike por- traits have never been produced by any age, although they are the earliest portraits in the history of art. Such statues of the kings are often superb (Fig. 52). They were set up in the Pharaoh's pyramid temple (Figs. 55 and 56). In size the most rernarkable statue of the Pyramid Age is the Great Sphinx, which stands here in this cemetery of Gizeh (Fig. 54). The head is a portrait of Khafre, the king who built the second pyramid of Gizeh (Fig. 54), and was carved from a promon- tory of rock which overlooked the royal city. It is the largest portrait ever wrought.
The massive granite piers and walls (Fig. 55) of Khafre's valley temple (Fig. 39) beside the Sphinx reveal to us the impressive architecture in stone which the men of the early part of the Pyramid Age were designing. This splendid hall (Fig. 55) was lighted by a series of oblique slits, which are really low roof windows. They occupied the difference in level between a higher roof over the middle aisle of the hall and a lower roof on each side of the middle (Fig. 271, i). Such an arrangement of roof windows, called a clerestory {clear- story), later passed over to Greece and Rome, and finally sug- gested the nave of the Christian basilica church or cathedral
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The Story of Egypt
71
(Fig. 271). And mid Age was the architecture as it developed in Eu- rope three thousand five hundred years later.
But before a century had passed, such massive gran- deur as we find in this great hall of Khafre (Fig. 55) was being trans- formed by the Egyptian's grow- ing sense of grace and beauty. In- stead of ponder- ous square piers or pillars the archi- tects now began to erect light and graceful round col- umns with beauti- ful capitals ; these were ranged in long rows, the earliest colonnades (Fig. 56), dating from the twenty- eighth century b. c. They were pecul- iar to Egypt, for when our study
so this granite hall of Khafre in the Pyra- ancestor of the leading form of Christian
Fig. $^. Restoration of the Clere- story Hall in the Valley-Temple of Khafre (cf. Fig. 39). (After Hoelscher)
The roof of this hall was supported on two rows of huge stone piers (see Fig. 271, /), each a single block of polished granite weighing 22 tons. This view shows only one row of the piers, the other being out of range at the right. At the left above, the light streams in obliquely from the very low clerestory windows (§ 95). Compare the cross section (Fig. 271, /). The statues shown here had been thrown by un- known enemies into a well in a connected hall, where they were found sixty years ago (see head of the finest in Fig. 52)
96. Earliest colonnades
72
Ancient Times
Fig. 56. Colonnades in the Court of a Pyramid-Temple (Twenty-eighth Century b.c). (After Borchardt)
Notice the pyramid rising behind the temple (just as in Fig. 39 also). The door in the middle leads to the holy place built against the side of the pyramid, where a false door in the pyramid masonry served as the portal through which the king came forth from the world of the dead into this beautiful temple to enjoy the food and drink placed here for him in magnificent vessels (Plate I) and to share in the splendid feasts celebrated here. The center of the court is open to the sky; the roof of the porch all around is supported on round columns, the earliest known in the history of architecture. Contrast the square piers without any capital which the architects of Khafre put into his temple-hall (Fig. 55) over a century earlier than these columns. Each column reproduces a palm tree, the capital being the crown of foliage. The whole place was colored in the bright hues of nature, including the painting on the walls behind the columns. Among these paintings was the ship in Fig. 41. Thirteen hundred feet of copper piping, the earliest-known plumbing, was installed in this building (§81)
97. Decline of the Pyra- mid Age
carries us to earliest Asia, we shall find that the colonnade was long unknown there (§ 195).
The Pyramid cemeteries have shown us the grandeur of the civilization gained by the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age. If time permitted, we might find other records here, showing how
I
The Story of Egypt 73
the nobles of the age (just such nobles as the one whose estate and home we have in imagination visited) gained more and more power until the Pharaohs could no longer control them. Then in struggles among themselves they destroyed the Pharaoh's government, and the last king of the Pyramid Age fell soon after 2500 B.C. It had lasted some five hundred years. Thus ended the first great civilized age of human his- tory— the age which carried men for the first time out of barbarism into civilization (see Fig. 38). But the Pyramid Age was not the end of civilization on the Nile ; other great periods were to follow. The monuments which these later ages left lie farther up the river, and we must make the voyage up the Nile in order to visit them and to recover the wonderful story which they still tell us.
QUESTIONS
Section 5. Tell something of the life of the earliest Nile men and how we know about them. Trace the steps by which phonetic writing arose. Where did the first alphabet arise? Write three words in hieroglyphic (Fig. 30). Discuss the importance of the invention of writing. Describe early methods of measuring time. Describe the probable manner of the discovery of metal. Which metal was it?
Section 6. What do the tombs of Egypt tell us of religion ? Describe the effect of the use of metal on architecture. Discuss the first architect in stone. Describe the government of the Pyramid Age. Study Fig. 38 and tell how the Egyptian tombs reveal the transition from barbarism to civilization. Describe the earliest sea- going ships. Make a list of the industries revealed in the tomb-chapel pictures. Discuss trade and commerce.
Section 7. Describe the house and garden of a noble in the Pyramid Age. Discuss painting and portrait sculpture. Make a sketch of the earliest piers or supports (Fig. 1$). Were they beautiful ? Draw a later pier (column) a hundred years after the Great Pyramid (Fig. ^6). Was it beautiful ? Describe the roof windows called clerestory windows (Figs. 55 and 271, /) and what they finally came to be. Give the date of the Pyramid Age, and tell why it was important.
CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF EGYPT: THE FEUDAL AGE AND THE EMPIRE
Section 8. The Nile Voyage and the Feudal Age
98. The
Nile voyage begins
As we begin our voyage up the Nile and our steamer moves away from the Cairo dock, we see, stretching far along the western horizon, the long line of pyramids, reminding us again of the splendor and progress of the Pyramid Age which we are now leaving behind. At length they drop down and dis- appear behind the fringe of palm groves. Other great monu- ments are before us. Along the palm-fringed shores far away to the south we shall find the buildings, tombs, and monuments
Note. At the left we see entering, in white robes, the deceased, a man named Ani, and his wife. Before them are the balances of judgment for weighing the human heart, to determine whether it is just or not. A Jackal-headed god adjusts the scales, while an Ibis-headed god stands behind him, pen in hand, ready to record the verdict of the balances. Behind him is a monster ready to devour the unjust soul, as his heart (symbolized by a tiny jar), in the left-hand scalepan, is weighed over against right and truth (symbolized by a feather) in the right-hand scalepan. The scene is painted in water colors on papyrus. Such a roll is sometimes as much as 90 feet long and filled from beginning to end with magical charms for the use of the dead in the next world. Hence the modem name for the whole roll, the " Book of the Dead."
74
The Story of Egypt
75
Fig. 57. Cliff-Tomb of an Egyptian Noble of the Feudal Age
This tomb is not a masonry structure like the tomb of the Pyramid Age (Fig. 42), but it is cut into the face of the cHff. The chapel entered through this door contains painted reliefs like those of the Pyramid Age (Figs. 43-47) and also many written records. In this chapel the noble tells of his kind treatment of his people ; he says : " There was no citizen's daughter whom I misused ; there was no widow whom I oppressed ; there was no peasant whom I evicted ; there was no shepherd whom I expelled; ... there was none wretched in my community, there was none hungry in my time. When years of famine came I plowed all the fields of the Oryx barony [his estate] . . . preserving its people alive and furnishing its food so that there was none hungry therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a husband ; I did not exalt the great above the humble in anything that I gave" (§ 100). All this we can read inscribed in this tomb
which will tell us of two more great ages on the Nile — the Feudal Age and the Empire. We steam steadily ■ southward, and soon the river begins to wind from side to side of the deep valley, carrying the steamer at times close under the scarred and weatherworn cliffs (Fig. 69). As we scan the rocks
76
Ancient Times
99. The
tombs of the Feudal Age
100. Books on kindness and justice
we look up to many a tomb-door cut in the face of the cliff, and leading to a tomb-chapel excavated in the rock (Fig. 57).
These cliff-tombs looking down upon the river belonged to the Feudal Age of Egyptian history. The men buried in these cliff-tombs looked back across five centuries to their ancestors of the Pyramid Age, as we look back upon our European ancestors before the discovery of America. But the nobles who made these cliff-tombs succeeded in gaining greater power than their ancestors. They were granted lands by the king, under arrangements which in later Europe we call feudal. They were thus powerful barons, living like little kings on their broad estates, made up of the fertile fields upon which these tomb-doors now look down. This Feudal Age lasted for several centuries and was flourishing by 2000 B.C. Fragments from the libraries of these feudal barons — the oldest libraries in the world — have fortunately been discovered in their tombs. These oldest of all surviving books are in the form of rolls of papyrus, which once were packed in jars, neatly labeled, and ranged in rows on the noble's library shelves. Here are the most ancient storybooks in the world : tales of wanderings and adventures in Asia; tales of shipwreck at the gate of the un- known ocean beyond the Red Sea — the earliest " Sindbad the Sailor " (Fig. 58) ; and tales of wonders wrought by ancient wise men and magicians.
Some of these stories set forth the sufferings of the poor and the humble, and seek to stir the rulers to be just and kind in their treatment of the weaker classes. Some describe the wickedness of men and the hopelessness of the future. Others tell of a righteous ruler who is yet to come, a "good shep- herd" they call him, meaning a good king, who shall bring in justice and happiness for all. We notice here a contrast with the Pyramid Age. With the in-coming of the Pyramid builders we saw a tremendous growth in power, in building, and in art ; but the Feudal Age reveals progress also in a higher realm, that of conduct and character (see description under Fig. 57).
The Stoiy of Egypt
77
Probably a number of rolls were required to contain the loi. Drama drama of Osiris — a great play in which the life, death, burial, ^" ^°^ ^ and resurrection of Osiris (§ 69) were pictured at an annual feast in which all the people loved to join. It is our earliest
Fig. 58. A Page from the Story of the Shipwrecked
Sailor, the Earliest Sindbad, as read by the Boys and
Girls of Egypt Four Thousand Years Ago (One Third of
Size of Original)
This page reads : " Those who were on board perished, and not one of them escaped. Then I was cast upon an island by a wave of the great sea. I passed three days alone, with (only) my heart as my companion, .sleeping in the midst of a shelter of trees, till daylight enveloped me. Then I crept out for aught to fill my mouth. I found figs and grapes there and all fine vegetables. etc. . . ." The tale then tells of his seizure by an enormous serpent with a long beard, who proves to be the king of this distant island in the Red Sea, at the entrance of the Indian Ocean. He keeps the sailor three months, treats him kindly, and re- turns him with much treasure to Egypt. In form such a book was a single strip of papyrus paper, 5 or 6 to 10 or 12 inches wide, and often 1 5 to 30 or 40 feet long. When not in use this strip was kept rolled up, and thus the earliest books were rolls, looking, when small, like a di- ploma or, when large, like a roll of wall paper
known drama — a kind of Passion Play ; but the rolls contain- ing it have perished. There were also rolls containing songs and poems, like the beautiful morning hymn sung by the nobles of the Pharaoh's court in greeting to the sovereign with the
78
Anciefit "Times
102. Books of science
6
D
Fig. 59. Ancient Egyp- tian Astronomical In- strument
return of each new day. Another song in praise of the Pharaoh was arranged to be sung responsively by two groups at the great court festi- vals. It was constructed in parallel verses or lines, like the parallel lines of the Hebrew Psalms. It is the oldest surviving example of this form of poetry.
Very few rolls were needed to deal with the science of this time. The largest and the most valuable of all contained what they had learned about medicine and the or- gans of the human body. This oldest medical book, when unrolled, is to- day about sixty-six feet long and has recipes for all sorts of ailments. Some of them are still good and call for remedies which, like castor oil, are still in common use ; others rep- resent the ailment as due to demons, which were long believed to be the cause of disease. There are also rolls containing the simpler rules of arithmetic, based on the decimal sys- tem which we still use ; others treat the beginnings of geometry and ele- mentary algebra. Even observations
The oldest surviving as- tronomical device. It is now in the Berlin Museum.
One part {A) is simply a plumb line with a handle attached at the top. It enabled the observer to hold the other part (B) directly over a given point on the ground while he sighted through the slot at the top toward some star like the North Star. By sighting over a rod between the observer and the North Star until the rod was exactly in line with the North Star, the astronomer could determine his meridian, observe each star that crossed it, measure time, and secure celestial data of value
The Storyf of Egypt 79
of the heavenly bodies, with simple instruments, were made (Fig. 59) ; but these records, like those in geography, have been lost.
Along with this higher progress, the Pharaohs of the Feudal 103. Admins Age much improved the government. Every few years they irrigation made census lists to be used in taxation, and a few of these fhe^peudal earliest census sheets in the world have survived. They erected Age huge earthen dikes and made vast basins, to store up the Nile waters for irrigation, thus greatly increasing the yield of the feudal lands and estates. They measured the height of the river from year to year, and their marks of the Nile levels are still to be found cut on the rocks at the Second Cataract. Thus nearly four thousand years ago they were already doing on a large scale what our government has only recently begun to do by its irrigation projects among our own arid lands.
At the same time these rulers of the Feudal Age reached out 104. Pha- by sea for the wealth of other lands. Their fleets sailed over mercebyTea; among the yf^gean islands and probably controlled the large o/'[h^l^u^^°'^ island of Crete (§§ 335-345). They dug a canal from the north Canal four end of the Red Sea westward to the nearest branch of the Nile years ago in the eastern Delta, where the river divides into a number of mouths (see map, p. 36). The Pharaoh's Mediterranean ships could sail up the easternmost mouth of the Nile, then enter the . canal and, passing eastward through it, reach the Red Sea. Thus the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea were first connected by this predecessor of the Suez Canal four thousand years ago. Such a connection was as important to the Egyptians as the Panama Canal is to us. Nile ships could likewise now sail from the eastern Delta directly to the land of Punt (§ 78) and to the straits leading to the Indian Ocean. These waters seemed to the sailors of the Feudal Age the end of the world, and their wondrous adventures there delighted many a circle of villagers on the feudal estates (Fig. 58). t
In this age the Pharaoh had organized a small standing army. He could now make his power felt both in north and south, in
8o
Ancient Times
105. Military Palestine and in Nubia. He conquered the territory of Nubia nS and ^is far south as the Second Cataract (see map, p. 36), and ihr.s enS^o'Ahe^^^ added two hundred miles of river to the kingdom of Egypt. Feudal Age * Here he erected strong frontier fortresses against the Nubian tribes, and these fortresses still stand. The enlightened rule of the Pharaohs of the Feudal Age did much to prepare the way for Egyptian leadership in the early world. Three of these kings bore the name " Sesostris," which became one of the great and illustrious names in Egyptian history. But not long after 1800 B.C. the power of the Pharaohs of the Feudal Age sud- denly declined and their line disappeared.
10(5. The
Nile voyage — arrival at '^hebe^
t07. Kamak • — arrival of the horse in Egypt
Section 9. The Founding of the Empire
The monuments along the river banks have thus far told us the story of two of the three periods ^ into which the career of this great Nile people falls. After we have left the tombs of the Feudal Age and have continued our journey over four hundred miles southward from Cairo, all at once we catch glimpses of vast masses of stone masonry and lines of tall columns rising among the palms on the east side of the river. They are the ruins of the once great city of Thebes, which will tell us the story of the third period, the Empire.
Here we shall find not only a vast cemetery, but also great temples (see plan, p. 81). A walk around the Temple of Karnak at Thebes (Fig. 64) is as instructive to us in studying the Empire as we have found the Gizeh cemetery to be in studying the Pyramid Age. We find the walls of this immense temple covered with enormous sculptures in relief, depicting the wars of the Egyptians in Asia. We see the giant figure of the Pharaoh as he stands in his war chariot, scattering the enemy before his plunging horses (Fig. 60). The Pharaohs of the Pyramid Age had never seen a horse (§ 80), and this is the first time we
1 These tJiree ages are (i) the Pyramid Age, about 3000 to 2500 B.C. (Sec- tions 6-7) ; (2) the Feudal Age, flourishing 2000 b. c. (Section 8) ; (3) the Empire, about 1580 to 1150 B.C. (Sections 9-11).
The Story of Egypt
8l
have met the horse on' the ancient monuments. After the close of the P'eudal Age the animal began to be imported from Asia; the chariot (Fig. 133) came with him, and Egypt, having learned warfare on a scale unknown before, became a military empire.
Map of Egyptian Thebes
This map may be compared with the aeroplane view of Karnak (Fig. 64), taken over point marked X , and with the view of the western plain toward the colossal statues of Amenhotep III and the western cliffs (Fig. 69), in and along which lie the tombs of the vast cemetery. Before it, and parallel with the cliffs, stretched a long line of temples facing the great temples of Luxor and Karnak on the east side of the river. The houses of the ancient city have passed away
The Pharaohs were now great generals with a well-organized 108. Egypt standing army made up chiefly of archers and heavy masses of empire ^ chariots. With these forces the Pharaoh conquered an empire which extended from the Euphrates in Asia to the Fourth Cata- ract of the Nile in Africa (see map I, p. 188). By an empire we
82
Ancient Times
mean a group of nations subdued and ruled over by the most powerful among them. (Government began with tiny city-states (§ 38), which gradually merged together into nations (§ 74) ; but the organization of men had now reached the point where
Fig. 60. A Pharaoh of the Empire fighting in his Chariot
The tiny figures of the enemy are scattered beneath the Pharaoh's horses. This is one of an enormous series of such scenes, 170 feet long, carved in relief on the outside of the Great Hall of Karnak (Fig. 68). Such sculpture was brightly colored and served to enhance the architectural effect and to impress the people with the heroism of the Pharaoh. The color has now entirely disappeared, and the sculpture is much battered and weatherworn. This is the cause of the indistinctness in the above sketch
many nations were combined into an empire including a large part of the early oriental world. This world power of the Pharaohs lasted from the early sixteenth century to the twelfth century b. c. — something over four hundred years.
The Story of Egypt
83
The Karnak Temple (Fig. 64), which stood in the once vast 109. The city of Thebes, is like a great historical volume telling us much QilerTi
Hat-
of the story of the Egyptian Empire. Behind the great hall ^^5^^"^'^^^^ (Figs. 66 and 68) towers a huge obelisk, a shaft of granite in a woman in
single piece nearly a hundred feet high (Fig. 65). It was
history
Fig. 61. Transportation of Queen Hatshepsut's 350-TON Obelisks down the Nile (Fifteenth Century b.c.)
The two obelisks are lying base to base on a large Nile barge some 300 feet long. The obelisks are each 97^ feet long and weigh about 350 tons each, the two making a burden of some 700 tons in the barge. It is being towed by thirty tugboats in three rows of ten each. Each tugboat has thirty-two oarsmen, making nine hundred and sixty oars- men in all. Under the guidance of the engineers in the other small boats these men towed the obelisks downstream from the granite quar- ries of the First Cataract to Thebes — a distance of about 150 miles. Under each obelisk we can see the sledge on which it was dragged on shore to the place where they were both set up in the Karnak Temple (Fig. 64). The scene is restored from a relief on the wall of the queen's temple at Thebes
erected early in the Empire by the first great woman in history. Queen Hatshepsut. There were once two of these enormous monuments (see Fig. 65), and it was no small task to cut out two such blocks as these from the granite quarries at the First Cataract, transport them on a huge boat down the river (Fig. 61), and erect them in this temple. But the queen did not stop with this achievement. She even dispatched an expedition
84
Ancient Times
of five ships (Fig. 62) through the Red Sea to Punt (§ 78), to bring back the luxuries of tropical Africa for another beautiful terraced temple which she was erecting against the western cliffs at Thebes (Plan, p. 81). Such achievements show what an efficient and successful ruler this first great woman was.
Fig. 62. Part of the Fleet of Queen Hatshepsut loading IN the Land of Punt
Only two of Hatshepsut's fleet of five ships are shown. The sails on the long spars are furled and the vessels are moored. The sailors are carrying the cargo up the gangplanks, and one of them is teasing an ape on the roof of the cabin. The inscriptions above the ships read : " The loading of the ships very heavily with marvels of the country of Punt; all goodly fragrant woods of God's- Land [the East], heaps of myrrh-resin, with fresh myrrh trees, with ebony and pure ivory, with green gold of Emu, with cinnamon wood, khesyt wood, with two kinds of incense, eye-cosmetic, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins of the southern panther, with natives and their children. Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the begin- ning." The scene is carved on the wall of the queen's temple at Thebes, in the garden of which she planted the myrrh trees
110. The end
of Hatshep- sut and the triumph of Thutmoselll
As we examine the obelisk of Hatshepsut we find around the base the remains of stone masonry with which it was once walled in almost up to the top. This was done by the queen's half brother and husband, Thutmose III, in order to cover up the records which proclaimed to the world the hated rule of a woman. Thus Thutmose III had the names of the queen and the men who aided her all cut' out and obliterated, including
The Story of Egypt
85
that of the skillful architect and engineer who erected this obe- lisk and its companion. But the masonry covering the obelisk has fallen down, and it still proclaims the fame of Hatshepsut.
Thutmose III (Fig. 63) was the first great general in history, m. The
the Napoleon of Egypt, the greatest of the Egyptian conquerors. iSSe in
(1501-
1447 B.C.)
A D
Fig. 63. Portrait of Thutmose III, the Napoleon of Ancient
Egypt {A\ compared with his Mummy {B)
This portrait [A), carved in granite, can be compared with the actual face of the great conqueror as we have it in his mummy. Such a com- parison is shown in B, where the profile of this granite portrait (out- side Hnes) is placed over the profile of Thutmose Ill's mummy (inside lines). The correspondence is very close, showing great accuracy in the portrait art of this age
He ruled for over fifty years, beginning about 1500 B.C. On the temple walls at Karnak we can read the story of nearly twenty years of warfare, during which Thutmose crushed the cities and kingdoms of Western Asia and welded them into an enduring empire. At the same time his war fleet carried his power even to the ^gean, and one of his generals became governor of the ^4^>gean islands (Fig. 143 ; see map I, p. 188).
86
Ancient Times
Section io. The Higher Life of the Empire
The wealth which the Pharaohs captured in Asia and Nubia during the Empire brought them power and magnificence un- known to the world before, especially as shown in their vast and splendid buildings. A new and impressive chapter in the history of art and architecture was begun. The temple of Karnak, which we have visited, contains the greatest colon- naded hall ever erected by man. The columns of the central aisle (Fig. 68) are sixty-nine feet high. The vast capital form- ing the summit of each column is large enough to contain a group of a hundred men standing crowded upon it at the same time. The clerestory windows (Fig. 68) on each side of these giant columns are no longer low, depressed openings, as in the Pyramid Age (Fig. 55 and Fig. 271,/), but they have now become fine, tall windows, showing us the Egyptian clerestory hall on its way to become the basilica church of much later times (Fig. 271). \. The sur- Such temples as these at Thebes were seen through the deep green of clustering palms, among towering obelisks and colos- sal statues of the Pharaohs (Fig. 69). The whole was bright with color, flashing at many a point with gold and silver. Mirrored in the unruffled surface of the temple lake (Fig. 64), it made a picture of such splendor as the ancient world had never seen before. As the visitor entered he found himself
* This point of view is behind (east of) the great Karnak Temple at point marked X in plan (p. 81). We look northwestward across the Temple and the river to the western cliffs (cf. plan, p. 81). From the rear gate below us (lower right-hand corner of view) to the tall front wall nearest the river, the Temple is nearly a quarter of a mile long, and was nearly two thousand years in course of construction. The oldest portions were built by the kings of the Feudal Age, and the latest, the front wall, by the Greek kings (the Ptolemies, Section 66). The standing obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut (Fig. 65) can be seen rising in the middle of the Temple. Beyond it is the vast colonnaded Hall of Karnak (Figs. 66 and 68), on the outside wall of which are the great war reliefs (Fig. 60). Hidden by the huge front wall is the Avenue of Sphinxes (Fig. 67). On the left we see the pool — all that is left of the sacred lake (§ 113).
Fig. 64. The Great Temple of Karnak and the Nile Valley at Thebes seen from an Aeroplane*
The area included in this view will be found bounded by two diverg- ing dotted lines on the map of Thebes (p. 81). It will be seen that our view includes only a portion of the ancient city, which extended up and down both sides of the river. For description of Karnak, see note on opposite page
From an etching by George T. Plowman
Fig. 65. The Obelisks of Queen Hatshepsut and her Father Thutmose I AT Karnak
The further obelisk is that of the queen. It was one of a pair transported from the First Cataract (Fig. 61), but its mate has fallen and broken into pieces. The shaft is 8^ feet thick at the base, and the human figure by contrast conveys some idea of the vast size of the monument. Its posi- tion in the temple can be seen from the aeroplane view (Fig. 64)
From a pen etching by Sears Gallagher
Fig. 66. The Colossal Columns of the Nave in the Great
Hall of Karnak
These are the columns of the middle two rows in Fig. 68. On the top
of the capital of each one of these columns a hundred men can stand at
once. These great columns may be seen in the aeroplane view (Fig. 64)
just at the left of the two obelisks
The Story of J^^gypt
87
in a spacious and sunlit court, surrounded by splendid colon- naded porches. Beyond, all was mystery, as he looked into the somber forest of vast columns in the hall behind the court (Figs. 66 and 68). These temples were connected by imposing
Fig. 68. Restoratiox of the Great Hall of Karnak, An- cient Thebes — Largest Building of the Egyptian Empire
With the wealth taken in Asia the Egyptian conquerors of the Empire enabled their architects to build the greatest colonnaded hall ever erected by man. It is 338 feet wide and 170 feet deep, furnishing a floor area about equal to that of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, although this is only a single room of the Temple. There are one hundred and thirty-six columns in sixteen rows. The nave (three central aisles) is 79 feet high and contains twelve columns in two rows, which the architects have made much higher than the rest, in order to insert lofty clerestory windows on each side. Compare the very low windows of the earliest clerestory (Fig. 55 and Fig. 271, / and 2). In this higher form the clerestory passed over to Europe (Fig. 271)
avenues of sphinxes (Fig. 67), and thus grew up at Thebes the first great "'monumental city " ever built by man — a city which as a whole was itself a vast and imposing monument.^ Much of the grandeur of Egyptian architecture was due to the sculptor and the painter. The colonnades, with flower capi- tals, were colored to suggest the plants they represented. The P'^^
1 City plans which treat a whole city as a symmetrical and harmonious unit are now beginning to be made in America.
114. Painting and sculpture in the tern-
88
Fig. 70. Colossal Portrait Figure of Ramses II at Abu- SiMBEL IN Egyptian Nubia
Four such statues, 75 feet high, adorn the front of this temple, which, hke the statues, is hewn from the sandstone cliffs. The faces are better pre- served than that of the Great Sphinx (Fig. 54) or the portrait statues of Amenhotep III (Fig. 69), and we can here see that such vast figures were portraits. The face of Ramses II here closely resembles that of his mummy (Fig. 123). (From a photograph taken from the top of the crown of one of the statues by The University of Chicago Expedition)
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The Story of Egypt 89
vast battle scenes, carved on the temple wall (Fig. 60), were painted in bright colors. The portrait statues of the Pharaohs, set up before these temples, were often so large that they rose above the towers of the temple front itself, — the tallest part of the building, • — and they could be seen for miles around (Figs. 69 and 70). The sculptors could cut these colossal figures from a single block, although they were sometimes eighty or ninety feet high and weighed as much as a thousand tons. This is a burden equal to the load drawn by a modern freight train, but unlike the trainload it was not cut up into small units of light weight, convenient for handling and loading. Nevertheless, the engineers of the Empire moved many such vast figures for hundreds of miles, using the same methods employed in moving obelisks. It is in works of this massive, monumental character that the art of Eg}'pt excelled (Fig. 70).
Two enormous portraits of Amenhotep III, the most luxu- 115. Tombs rious and splendid of the Egyptian emperors, still stand on menonhe the western plain of Thebes (Fig. 69), across the river from Empire Kamak. As we approach them we see rising behind them the majestic western cliffs in which are cut hundreds of tomb- chapels belonging to the great men of the Empire. Here were buried the able generals who marched with the Pharaohs on their campaigns in Asia and in Nubia. Here lay the gifted artists and architects who built the vast monuments we have just visited, and made Thebes the first great "monumental city" of the ancient world. Here in these tomb-chapels we may read their names and often long accounts of their lives. Here is the story of the general who saved Thutmose Ill's life, in a great' elephant hunt in Asia, by rushing in and cutting off the trunk of an enraged elephant which was pursuing the king. Here is the tomb of the general who captured the city of Joppa in Palestine by concealing his men in panniers loaded on the backs of donkeys, and thus bringing them into the city as merchandise — an adventure which afterward furnished part of the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."
90
Ancient Times
ii6. The fur- The very furniture which these great men used in their equipment of houses was put into their tombs. In a neighboring valley was lo?dfSfound ''^cently found the tomb of the parents of Amenhotep Ill's in their tombs queen. Their beautiful villa among the Theban gardens was filled with gorgeous furniture which their royal son-in- law, Amenhotep III, had given to them. When this worthy old couple died, the king had them won- derfully embalmed, and much of the furniture which he had given to them (Fig. 73) was car- ried to the cemetery and deposited in their tomb, includ- ing even the gold- covered chariot in which the old couple