for the months. They divide the year into three parts; the season of vegetation (see Fig. 15); the season of harvest (see Fig. 16); and the season of inundation (see Fig. 17); each of the seasons is divided into the first, second, third, and fourth month; and every month into thirty days. At some unknown time five additional days were added, called by the Greeks the epagomenœ. This civil year of three hundred and sixty-five days was certainly in constant use ever after the year 1322 before Christ, and fourteen hundred and sixtyone of these years were counted in the fourteen hundred and sixty natural years which followed that date. During that time, called a Sothic period, the civil new year's day, for

want of a leap-year, wandered through the whole round of the seasons. But even at that early date, B.C. 1322, called the era of Menophra, the year of the calendar, we shall see, was no longer true to the names which the months bore. At that time the months had become a whole season too early for their names; and the month of Thoth, the first month of vegetation, began soon after Midsummer, or at the beginning of the inundation. Hence the question is naturally asked, when was the calendar formed, with the names of the months true to the seasons? This cannot be told, as we do not certainly know what was the length of the civil year before the era of Menophra. If, as Manetho says, the

B.C. 1808.

five additional days had been before added, with the help of astronomical knowledge brought from the east by the Phenician shepherds, and no after correction was made in the calendar, we may fix its date four hundred and eighty-seven years, or a third part of fourteen nundred and sixty-one years, before the era of Menophra. But even if this attempt to fix its origin be wrong, and the calendar had been several times reformed before the era of Menophra, at any rate we know of nothing in Egypt but the Egyptian language which is older than the hieroglyphical names of the months. Besides dividing the year pl. 104, 3. into months, the Egyptians made use of the halfpl. 108, 3. month and the week as smaller divisions of time. The week is mentioned in many of the very oldest of the inscriptions. It is spelt U K, and may even be the original of our own word week (see Fig. 18).

Inscript. pl. 92, 6.

Month.

Fig. 18.

Half- Week. month.

(23) The ancient hieroglyphics teach us that the Egyptian language was in its roots the same as the more modern Coptic, a language but slightly related to any other; and the Greek and Hebrew words which we now trace in it seem to have crept in at a later time. But in its manner of forming the tenses and persons of the verbs it is not unlike the Hebrew. As the people were at a very early period closely crowded together and less roving than their neighbours, because hemmed in by the desert, the language received fewer changes in each century than those of nations less fixed to the soil. When it becomes better known to us we find it divided into three dialects, the Thebaic of Upper Egypt, the Memphitic of the western half of the Delta, and the Bashmuric of the eastern half of the Delta. But before those dialects were observed, the kingdom had been in part peopled with foreigners. Arabs of various tribes had overrun Upper Egypt, while Phenicians, Jews, and Greeks had settled in the Delta; hence these dialects may perhaps in part be of modern growth; but of the three, the hieroglyphics teach us that the Thebaic is the most ancient, though afterwards equally corrupted by additions. Like all other early languages, it is full of monosyllables; but, unlike our own, these monosyllables are very much formed

with only one consonant, and thus increase the ease by which consonants came to be represented by characters which at the same time represented syllables. In pronunciation the Egyptian was strongly guttural, as we see by the confusion between Th, Ch, and K. For L, D, B, and G, they used the same letters as for R, T, P, and K, having in each case only one sound where we have two. The language agrees with the religion, and with the earliest buildings, in teaching us that the Thebaid was more closely joined to the eastern than to the western half of the Delta.

(24) Nothing in the art of war is more important than good weapons; and great indeed was the superiority of a nation like the Egyptians that had spears tipped with steel, while their neighbours had no metal harder than brass. In Greece iron was scarce even in the time of Homer, while among the Egyptians it had been common many centuries earlier. They probably imported it from Cyprus. It is not easy to trace its history; because, from the quickness with which this metal is eaten away by rust, few ancient iron or steel tools have been saved to clear up what the writers have left in doubt. The Greeks speak of hard iron from some countries, without knowing from what the hardness arose; like the Cyprian breastplate which Agamemnon wore at the siege of Troy; and, as the smelting furnaces were heated with wood, the iron must often have been made into steel by the mere chance of the air being shut out. But though we have not now the Egyptian tools themselves, we have the stones which were carved with them; and the sharp deep lines of the hieroglyphics on the granite and basalt could have been cut with nothing softer than steel. No faults in the chiselling betray the workman's difficulty. To suppose that the Egyptian tools were made of flint or highly tempered copper, is to run into the greater difficulty to escape the lesser. The metal which was best for the mason's chisel would be used for the soldier's spear.

Iliad,

xi. 20.

(25) Memphis, which had been governed for two or three hundred years by a race of kings or priests of its Manetho. own, was strong enough under SUPHIS, or CHOFO, Eratosor CHEOPS (Fig. 19), and his successor, SENSUPHIS or NEF-CHOFO (Fig. 20), to conquer and hold Thebes

thenes.

a little before the time of Osirtesen I. These two kings
Bartlett's conquered the peninsula of
Forty. Days. Mount Sinai, the Tih or hill-
Burton's country, as it was called, and
Excerpta, have left their hieroglyphical

pl. xii.

inscriptions in the valley of Wâdy Mugareh on the north-west side of the range. There they worked mines, but of what mineral is doubtful. These mines continued to be worked in the reign of the Theban King Amunmai Thori III.

Fig. 19.

Fig. 20.

(26) The fruitful rice- and corn-fields made Lower Egypt 2 place of great wealth, though from its buildings it would seem to be less forward in the arts than Upper Egypt. Industry and earnestness of purpose were equally great in each half of the country. While one race was hollowing its tombs out of the rock near Thebes, the other was building its huge pyramids on the edge of the desert near Memphis. The historian Manetho, who has the best claim to be followed in this part of our history, when so many of our steps are made in doubt, says that Suphis and his successor built the two

Travels.

greatest of these pyramids (see Fig. 21). Each of Pocock's these huge piles stands upon a square plot of about eleven acres, and its four sides meet at a point about five hundred feet high. The stones were quarried out of the neighbouring hills, and some from the opposite side of

Fig. 21.

the Nile, and are all of a great size, and carefully cut into shape. The chinks between the stones are in some places filled with plaster of Paris and in others with the plaster mixed with mortar. In the limestone quarries of Toora,

opposite to Memphis, the sculptures on the face of the rock tell us of the size of the stones there cut. In one place six oxen are dragging along a sledge with a block of stone on it, which measures eight feet by four; and the early date of the sculpture makes us suppose that this stone was to form part of the casing for the pyramids (see Fig. 22). We see in

Fig. 22.

these buildings neither taste nor beauty, but their size and simplicity raise in us a feeling of grandeur, which is not a little heightened by the thought of the generations which they have outlived. They take their name from the words Pi-Rama, the mountain, and though when compared with mountains they may perhaps seem small, when measured by any human scale are found to be truly gigantic. They are the largest buildings in the world. It is not easy to imagine the patience needed to build them; and we can well forgive the mistake of the vulgar, who have thought that in the early ages of the world men were of larger stature and longer lives than ourselves. They can only have been raised by the untiring labour of years; and they are a proof of a low state of civilization, when compared with the buildings of Upper Egypt. Yet the builders were men of great minds and lofty aim, and had not a little knowledge of mathematics and mechanics to shape and move the huge blocks, and to raise them to their places. The Temples of Thebes and the Pyramids of Memphis belong to different classes of the sublime in art. As we examine the massive roof, the strength of the walls and columns, and the sculptured figures of the Theban buildings, we feel encouraged in our efforts to overcome difficulties, and to do something great. As we gaze upon the huge simple pyramids, without parts and without ornament, we bow down in awe and wonder. The pyramids were built as tombs for the kings, and they may be taken as a measure of their pride. Each of these mountains of stone was to cover the body of one weak man, and to keep it after embalming till the day of his resurrection.