them alone could he recognise a race with which he was acquainted, namely, "the Shepherds of Libya," whom he read MENNAHÖM. All that can be learned as to the others, on this tomb of Menephthah, is that they, as well as the Shepherds, are not southern but northern

races.

It was this same king who ordered the inscriptions on the sides of the obelisk at Karnak, now in the Piazza Laterana at Rome. Among the historical notices we find it mentioned that he laid waste the enemy's country on the frontiers of Kesh, and subjugated the country of the Libyan Shepherds, the land of the bows (petu) 67; and that he made a barge of the God AmunRa, of cedar (ash), cut in the land of the Rutennu. The following chronological fact is also stated, that after the death of Thothmes III. the obelisk was 35 years in the hands of the workmen, till the reign of Thothmes IV. [Birch. 1858.]

D.

THE EIGHTH REIGN: AMENŌPHIS III. (AMENHEPT RA-NEBMA), SON OF TUTHMOSIS IV. (MONUMENTAL YEAR XXXVI.) (Plate VII. 42.)

(Lepsius, Hist. Mon. vol. v. Pl. 70-90.: end of the volume).

I. AMENŌPHIS III. AND HIS RELATION TO THE MEMNON OF THE GREEKS AND TO THE EXODUS.

THIS is the Pharaoh whose magnificent constructions show that the art of sculpture in Egypt had in his time very nearly arrived at its zenith. He is the monarch

67 Al. Mar. Ungarelli, Interpretatio obeliscorum urbis Romæ. 1842. Fol. 39-42. Comp. Rosellini, M. St. iii. A. 209. and i. 191.

whom the Greeks and Romans, since the beginning of our era, have called MEMNON, as the gigantic statue of him in the Amenopheum (on the west side of Thebes) is styled by them "the sounding stone," which Eos, the mother of the Ethiopian hero, saluted at sunrise with a clear-toned sound.

Letronne, whose sagacity and profundity of research so eminently distinguish his valuable labours, has proved the following points: that this designation of him, and all the evidence connected with it, are of more modern date than the earthquake which in the year 27 B. C. threw down the upper part of the northern colossus (in consequence of a crack in the stone); that these stories were not current after that part of it was restored in brick in the reign of Septimius Severus; and, lastly, that the Egyptians never regarded it as anything but a colossal statue of their king Amenhept Ra-neb-ma.

True it is that Hecatæus of Miletus sought for the Memnon of the Trojan legend in Egypt. He thought, according to Herodotus, that the sculptured figure, the Sesostris of the latter, was a representation of Memnon. We know now, at least, that the statue is not of Egyptian workmanship. The historical character of the Egyptian campaigns of the 14th and 15th centuries B. C. certainly is incontestable; and for that reason we cannot avoid entering into closer examination of the point, after we have refuted the fabulous conjectures of the Greeks, and the still more fabulous conjectures of the investigators of the last and present centuries. Whence did the Memnon come who is described in the Odyssey as the son of Eos and brother of Priam and the handsomest of the warriors; he whom Hesiod first called a king of Ethiopia, and the fabulous history of whom was told by the Cyclical Epics just as he was represented on the oldest vases and by the lyric poets? We now know that the Memnonia of the Greeks,

the so-called buildings of Memnon, were simply a misunderstanding of the word mennen which signifies vast monuments, especially sepulchral monuments. This, however, by no means justifies us in concluding that Memnon was merely the name of the builder of these fancied Memnonia in the dreams of the Greeks. The misunderstanding of the word mennen explains the fabulous use of the expression Memnonia, but not the origin of the name in the Epic age. On the contrary, it is the ancient legend alone about the enigmatical son of Eos in Ethiopia which explains the fact of the Greeks making a search after a king and hero of that name. The Greeks inquired after Memnon as they inquired after the king who was the host of Menelaus. The difference between the two cases is, that in the former they inquired after a prince out of the land of Ethiopia, who undertook an expedition into Asia Minor and there fought against the Greeks before Troy. It can be shown that the connexion between the name and Assyria or Media is of later date. Now it is true that the Ethiopia of the mythical age extended northwards as far as Phoenicia, and Joppa (Jaffa) was the most ancient locality for the history of Perseus and Andromeda, and the principal city of Kepheus, king of Ethiopia. This, however, does not seem to me to militate against the fact of Southern Egypt, and especially Ethiopia Proper, being the home of the Ethiopians. Any one, therefore, who will not adopt our version of the story about that great conqueror, as being the well known journey of the Sun-God (probably here therefore MIN, that is to say, SET), may regard him as a conqueror who came from Egypt, and whose warlike expeditions were kept alive among the Achæan races in some obscure legend. But the whole Ethiopian version of Memnon is in truth not Homeric. But were it ever so old, the connexion between an Ethiopian hero and the Trojan war might nevertheless be altogether unhistorical. Attila and

Theodoric of Bern are historical names of the fifth and sixth centuries, but the relation in which they stand to each other as contemporaries in the Germanic Epos, is just as little historical as the connexion between them and Sigfried the hero or god of the primeval times, or Pilgrim the bishop of the 11th century. Such a connexion would leave but a few centuries for the decomposition of the historical elements. The previous question, however, which was raised by Jacobs, is thisWhether Memnon was a historical personage? It is hardly probable that the Greeks ever thought of Amenōphis III. before the invention of the story about the sounding stone being saluted at dawn by his mother-a repetition of the old Hellenic fiction about the son of Eos in the first century of our era. It is consolatory to find that, in that melancholy period, poetry, ever blooming in the Hellenic mind, could create out of a sounding stone the salutation of the mournful son of Eos.

We have already discussed the subject of the religious changes which occurred in Central Egypt during the reign of this Amenōphis or immediately after his death. We know that political schisms took place directly after that event, and were productive of universal disorder, in which the House of the Tuthmoses perished. There is, however, not the slightest ground for supposing any general connexion between these events and a change of religion.

It is possible, indeed, that according to the ordinary assumption of the length of the period between the Exodus and the building of the Temple (480 years) the Exodus took place at this time, and that this Amenōphis was the first king under whom that great event could have taken place; for it is clear that it could not have occurred in the reign of the third Tuthmōsis, or at an earlier period.

But all the information we obtain from the monu

ments of this Amenophis (a likeness of whom, copied from the splendid statue of him in the British Museum, is prefixed to this Book), about himself and the events of his reign, is altogether irreconcilable with such a supposition.

II. THE EDIFICES ERECTED BY AMENŌPHIS III. IN NUBIA AND SILSILIS: THE AMENOPHEUM ON THE WESTERN SIDE OF THEBES, AND THE PALACE OF LUXOR ON THE EASTERN SIDE. THE temple in Upper Nubia (Dongola), near Soleb 68, belonged to this Pharaoh. Two bearded prisoners, and one without a beard, are the representatives of his conquests. In the quarries of Silsilis are two rock-temples, each consisting of a single block, and containing inscriptions of Amenōphis. Unfortunately, his greatest work, the Amenopheum, on the western side of Thebes, is a total ruin. The fragments are scattered around the two colossi of the builder. The one on the right (as you view them) is the Memnon of the Greeks and Romans. The Egyptian name of the building was, THE HOUSE OF RA-NEB-MA. There was a temple attached to it, in which we find, in later times, "priests of RA-NEB-MA" established.69 Rosellini quotes two of the titles of the king found among these inscriptions: "Pacificator of Egypt," and "Tamer of the Libyan Shepherds," with the remark that they are both repeated at Luxor. They must, consequently, as he rightly observed, allude to actual historical events.

Two large stele at the southern end of the ruins represent Amun-Ra and Osiris-Sokaris as the Temple-Gods. Rosellini considers the former to be the general patron of Thebes; the latter as the special God of the Temple, consequently, the Osiris of the Lower Regions, the God of the Realms of the Departed. He remarks, also, that

68 Facsimiles in Cailliaud, Voyage à Méröe, ii. Pl. xiv. M. St. iii. A. 214. seq.

69 M. St. iii. A. 219. seq.