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THE AGE OF THE IONIAN HISTORIES AND REMINISCENCES PRIOR TO THE OLYMPIADS.

THE reasons why, after the restoration of Egyptian chronology, it is impossible to suppose that the epical story of Troy was composed as late as 1200 B.C., or earlier than 1500, must be reserved for the concluding part of this work. Upon an impartial review of the Homeric question, it will hardly be maintained that it could have required less than from three to five centuries to obliterate so entirely the feeling of historic reality which must have taken place, when the author of the Iliad, that is, the principal portion of it, ventured to deal with the popular legend in so poetical and unreserved a manner.

But the chronological questions immediately connected with the Egyptian dates of the New Empire must be brought under discussion at once.

They are three in number; the date of the name of the Ionians on the Egyptian monuments; the date of the Ionian settlement in Asia Minor; and the possibility of explaining and restoring the epochs of maritime supremacy which Diodorus borrowed from Castor, and Eusebius from Diodorus. It is notorious that a thalassocracy is there mentioned which it has hitherto been impossible to deal with and to explain.

A.

IS THE NAME OF THE IONIANS FOUND ON THE PHARAONIC MONUMENTS OF EGYPT?

THIS question has been investigated with great ingenuity in the most recent treatises upon the subject, both

from the Egyptian and Hellenic point of view. I once thought (mainly owing to what Salvolini had said about the hieratic spelling of the name in the Sallier papyrus) that this was the case. My opinion is now decidedly changed.

After the researches that have taken place, Egyptologers are agreed that in the time of the Ptolemies the hieroglyphical name of the Greeks was the same as the demotic and Coptic. At that time they were never called anything but UININ, UIININ, which must be Ionians, like IUN (Hebr. YAVAN).275 The three baskets placed one over the other in the Rosetta stone, and in the two corresponding bilinguar inscriptions at Phile, which in the hieroglyphical writing follow after the Phonetic hieroglyphics UI (or even AU), must consequently be read phonetically, NN. It shows, however, the introduction, in this period of decline, of the most arbitrary innovations, for here the basket is phonetic. It reads NEB or NIM, and signifies either lord or all. The motive for this innovation is not difficult to divine. The rulers of Egypt prided themselves on being of Hellenic extraction, and so they coined the basket into a phonetical hieroglyphic, as N, but respectfully intimated, at the same time, that the Greeks were their masters. This, however, did not preclude them from affixing to the name the old and very contumelious determinative of foreign people, the stake or gallows. De Rougé has called attention to another circumstance which helps to explain it. We find on the Pharaonic monuments of the best times (as will be minutely entered into below) a scutcheon containing a list of peoples, with only two signs in it, the papyrus stalk (the symbol of Lower Egypt, and sign of

275 According to the phonetic law given in the First Volume, the I may originally have been sounded at the beginning, so that the most ancient pronunciation may have been IUINN.

the countries and people to the north of Egypt), and the three baskets. De Rougé observes, and I think with great truth, that this must signify, "the northern people all," or "the northern lords." He thinks it, therefore, very natural that, in expressing the names of the Hellenes in those flattering terms, they had this old scutcheon in view. It may also explain why the name. came to be written with those two signs only, on a stela at Memphis of the very latest Ptolemaic age. "The

northern lords" were intended to represent the idiographic sense of Hellenes. Any person conversant with the language would know the pronunciation of it from the demotic.

Now the simple question at issue is, whether this authorises us in concluding that the name of the Ionians can be identified on these Pharaonic scutcheons. Lepsius, to whom we are indebted for the first complete statement of facts in the paper read by him before the Royal Academy at Berlin, on the 19th of July, 1855, an epitome of which was given in the Reviews of the day, thinks it does authorise us.

The learned author has argued the point with his usual ingenuity, but still I cannot acquiesce in his conclusions.

The facts are these: The scutcheon with "the northern people all," is found at the head of a list of names of eight countries, beginning with Upper and Lower Egypt, and usually, indeed as early as the time of Tuthmosis III., concluding with a name which refers to the Libyan Shepherds, and which Lepsius now reads MENAT NU MENT.276 In another sepulchral inscription of the reign of Amenōphis II. other scutcheons follow, but the above

276 The last scutcheon but one must also, we think, be a northern, in fact, a Libyan one. Lepsius considers it a southern one, on account of the second sign and dark complexion of the men. But this complexion suits the Libyans perfectly, though they have never for that reason been considered a southern people.

eight never recur, except in the time of Tuthmōsis IV. and Amenōphis III. Whatever may be the conventional signification of the combination of the two Egypts with foreigners, either conquered or tributary nations, nothing seems more natural than that they should all be headed by the general designation of northern races, as being just as much lawful subjects of Egypt as those tribes whose names are afterwards entered separately. I think that a confirmation of this opinion is furnished by the fact of the Kesh (Ethiopians) being, in the time of Sethos I., mentioned after the above nine scutcheons as the first of the southern tribes whose names follow. On the monuments of the former great sovereign, at Gurnah, these southern names come immediately after the scutcheon of Upper Egypt, but the northern, with the scutcheon which we read "Northern people all," after that of Lower Egypt.

The same thing occurs upon the whole on the monuments of Ramses II. and Ramses III. On the buildings erected by Sheshonk at Karnak, lastly, where there are 140 scutcheons, containing names of countries, they are headed by the two Egypts; then come the southerns; and after them the northern people. The whole concludes with the general scutcheon, to assert, as it were, a sort of claim even to those who are not mentioned by name, like the et cetera in the titles of sovereigns of the present day.

Lepsius thinks that in every instance this general scutcheon means the Ionians, which, hieroglyphically, seems to me inadmissible, and, historically, neither demonstrable nor comprehensible.

I feel bound, therefore, to express my conviction that the name of the Ionians is not found on the Egyptian monuments of the Pharaonic times with which we are acquainted. All the conjectures and conclusions which have been based upon such a theory must consequently fall to the ground.

B.

DATE OF THE IONIAN SETTLEMENT IN ASIA MINOR.

I. THE ANTIQUITY OF THE NAME OF THE IONIANS IN THE BIBLE AND CENTRAL ASIA.

As regards the Yavanas, the corresponding Indian name for the Greeks, which is also brought again under discussion, it would be better to pass it by altogether without notice, as there are other indications that all the passages where it occurs are not only post-Buddhistic but also post-Alexandrian.

There still remains the testimony of the genealogical table in the Book of Genesis. We shall show elsewhere that the nucleus of this table, the Aramæan reminiscences, is of very ancient date, but that the details about the non-Semitic families immediately succeeding this Abrahamitic original cannot go back further than the Jewish horizon of the tenth century. This is evident also from the notices about the particular members of the race of IYUN or YAVAN. This, however, as a general name of a race, is primeval - it is found in the time of the Achæmenidæ in Persia, and in the Book of Joel, the Seer of the tenth century.

II. THE PRIMEVAL TIMES OF IONIA IN ASIA MINOR.

HERE again the best evidence is the native evidence, that of Ionian history itself. Niebuhr was the first to point out that the ordinary view was untenable of the Ionians having only come there, after the Doric migration, through the Attic settlers in Ionia. It is clear from the narrative itself that they found most of the cities already in existence, the foundation of which is ascribed to the Codridæ, and of which the league of the twelve Ionian cities was composed.

That settlement, when reduced to its proper proportions, is not on that account the less historical. It as