Conventional. The common lotus (Nymphaea), rising out of a clod of earth, represented the Upper country; the root of the papyrus, upon a clod, the Lower. Sebena was the goddess of the Upper, Neith of the Lower country. A white crown denoted the former, a red crown the latter; white and red crowns united composed the diadem of the king of all the land. The Upper country, however, was generally subdivided into two portions, (1) Upper Egypt Proper, or the Thebaid (On6ats, oi avw Tónoi), which extended from Syene to Hermopolis Magna, in lat. 28° N.; and (2) Middle Egypt, also called Heptanomis, or the Seven Cantons (ǹ μeтagù xúpa: 'Errarouís), which reached from the neighbourhood of Hermopolis to the apex of the Delta. This threefold partition has been adopted by the Arabs, who denominated Upper, Middle, and Lower Egypt respectively, Said, Wustáni, and El-Rif.

The traveller who ascends the Nile from its mouths to Syene passes through seven degrees of latitude, and virtually surveys two distinct regions. Lower Egypt is an immense plain: Upper Egypt, a narrowing valley. The former, in the main, resembles the neighbouring coastland of Africa; the latter is more akin to Nubia, and its climate, its Fauna and its Flora, indicate the approaching tropic. The line of demarcation commences about the 27th degree of N. latitude. Rain rarely falls in the Thebaid: the sycamore and the acacia almost disappear; the river plants and mollusca assume new types: the Theban or Dhoum palm, with its divaricated branches, grows beside the date palm: the crocodile, the jackal, the river-horse, and hyena become more numerous.

We must now return to the general boundaries of Egypt which affected, in various degrees, the climate, the population, and the social and political character of the Nile-valley.

1. The Eastern boundary. In this region lay the principal mineral wealth of Egypt, including the quarries, which furnished materials for this land of monuments. Beginning with the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and along the frontier of Stony Arabia, we find the barren and level region of Casiotis, whose only elevation is the ridge or table land of Mt. Casius ( Kários, Strab. pp. 38, 50, 55, 58, &c.; Mela, i. 10; Plin. v. 11, xii. 13; Lucan. viii. 539, x. 433). The Egyptian Casius (El Kas or El Katish) is, according to Strabo (xvi. 2), a round | sandstone ridge (λόφος ινώδης). It contained the grave of Cn. Pompeius Magnus, and a temple of Zeus Casius. At a very early period the Egyptians established colonies upon the Idumaean and Arabian border. Copper, mixed with iron ore, and heaps of scoriae from Egyptian smelting-houses, are still found on the western flank of Mt. Sinai, and inscriptions at Wady-Magara in this district, and hieroglyphics and fragments of pottery at SurabitEl-Kadim, on the modern road from Suez to Sinai, attest the existence of settlements coeval with at least the 18th dynasty of kings. Ascending from the head of the Delta, and about 50 miles from the Arabian Sea, we come upon a range of tertiary limestone hills (Τρωικοῦ λίθου ὄρος, Ptol.; ἀλαCurτpivov opos, id.) parallel with the Heptanomis, running north and south, and sloping westward to the Nile, and eastward to the Red Sea (õpη Tà 'Apaßund, Herod. ii. 8). A region of basalt and porphyry begins in the parallel of Antaeopolis, and extends to that of Tentyra or Coptos (Пopupírov opos, id.). This is again succeeded by limestone at Aias or Aeas (Alas, id.; Plin. vi. 29. § 33),

and at Acabe ('Axán, Ptol.), where, nearly opposite Latopolis, are vast quarries of white marble. From Mt. Smaragdus, which next follows, the Egyptians obtained the fine green breccia (Verde d Egitto), and emeralds in abundance. The breccia quarries, as inscriptions testify, were worked as far back as the 6th dynasty of kings (Manetho). The principal quarry was at Mount Zaburah. From Berenice southward are found, in various proportions, limestone and porphyry again. Mt. Basanites (Baoavírov Xitov opos, Ptol.), consisting of a species of hornblend, terminated the eastern boundary of the Nile-valley. Beyond this, and of uncertain extent, are the gold mines SE. of the Thebaid. They are about ten days' journey SE. from Apolli. nopolis Magna, in the present Bisháree desert. The process of gold-washing appears to be represented on tombs of the age of Osirtasen. Silver and lead were also found, and sulphur abounded in this mineral region.

The eastern frontier was mostly arid and barren, but neither uninhabited nor unfrequented by travellers. More than one caravan track, whose bearings are still marked by ruined cisterns and brick pyramids, followed the gorges of the hills; and occasional temples imply a settled population in towns or villages. The sides and passes of the mountains afforded also pasture for flocks and herds, and wild deer, wolves, &c. found here their abode. Two principal roads, diverging from Coptos on the Nile-the northern leading to Philoteras (Kosseir), lat. 26° 9', and Myos Hormos or Arsinoe; the southern to Berenice - penetrated the mountainbarrier, and connected the Nile-valley with the Red Sea. The population of this district was more Arabian than Coptic, and its physical characteristics were Arabian, not Libyan.

2. The Western boundary of Egypt is more particularly described under OASIS. The Libyan desert is not, as the ancients believed, merely an ocean of drifting sand, tenanted by serpents, and swept by pestilential blasts (Lucan, ix. 765): on the contrary, its gravelly surface presents considerable inequalities, and the blasts are noxious only in relaxing the human frame, or by obliterating the traveller's path with eddies of blinding sand. Everywhere this plateau rests upon a limestone basis, and descends in shelves to the Mediterranean.

3. The Northern boundary is the Mediterranean. From the western limit of Egypt to Pelusium the coast-line extends to about 180 geographical miles, and presents the convex form common to the alluvial deposits of great rivers. From the depression of its shore, the approach to Egypt is dangerous to the navigator. He finds himself in shallow water almost before he detects the low and sinuous mud banks which mask the land. Indeed, from Paraetonium in Libya to Joppa in Syria, Pharos afforded the only secure approach, and the only good anchorage (Diod. ii. 31). Nor is it probable that any considerable advance of the shore has taken place within historical times.

4. The Southern boundary is spoken of under Aethiopia.

II. Inhabitants.

The ancient Egyptians believed themselves to be autochthonous. This was no improbable conception in a land yearly covered with the life-teeming mud of the Nile. When the conquests of Alexander had rendered the Greeks acquainted with Western India

they inferred, from certain similarities of doctrine | stantially the same as the old Egyptian. It is imperfectly understood, since it has long ceased to be a living speech. Yet the ultimate analysis of its elements shows it to have been akin to the Semitic, and derived from a common source.

and usages, that the Indians, Ethiopians or Nubians, and Egyptians were derived from the same stock (Arrian, Indic. vi. 9); and Diodorus, who had conversed with Aethiopian envoys in Egypt about B. C. 58, derives both the Egyptians and their civilisation from Meroë (iii. 11). Both opinions have found numerous supporters in ancient and modern times, and Heeren has constructed upon Diodorus a theory of a priestly colonisation of Egypt from Meroë, which is interesting without being convincing.

|

III. Population.

Many causes combined to give the Greek and Roman writers an exaggerated conception of the population of Egypt, the great works of masonry, the infinitesimal cultivation of the soil, and the fact that, the kings and higher order of priests excepted, every Egyptian was either a husbandman or a manufacturer. To these causes, implying a vast amount of disposable labour, yet arguing also a complete command of it by the government, must be added the cheapness of food, and the small quantity of it consumed by the people generally. Health and longevity were common in a land where the climate was salubrious, diet simple, and indolence almost unknown. The Egyptian women were unusually fruitful; though we can hardly give credence to the statements of ancient writers, that five children at a birth were common (Aristot. Hist. Anim. vii. 5), and that even seven were not reckoned prodigious (Plin. H. N. vii. 3; Strab. xvi. 605). Still there is reason to think that the population fell short of the estimates transmitted by ancient writers.

No nation has bequeathed to us so many or such accurate memorials of its form, complexion, and physiognomy as the Egyptian. We have in its mummies portraits, and upon its tombs pictures of its people as they looked and lived, individually and socially. That the Egyptians were darker in hue than either the Greeks or even the neighbouring Asiatics, is shown by the terms in which Greek, Latin, and Hebrew writers mention them. To their progenitor the Hebrews gave the name of Ham, or adust (Genes. x. 6): Herodotus, speaking of the Colchians, says that they were an Egyptian colony because they were black in complexion (μeλáyxpoes), and curly-haired (ouλórpixes, ii. 104): Lucian, in his Navigium (vol. viii. p. 155, Bipont ed.), describes a young Egyptian mariner as like a negro: and Ammianus (xxii. 16. § 23) calls them subfusculi et atrati. But the Egyptians That a census was periodically taken, is probable were not a negro race a supposition contradicted from the fact that Sesostris caused the land to be alike by osteology and by monumental paintings, accurately surveyed, and Amasis, towards the end where negroes often appear, but always either as of the monarchy, compelled every male to report to tributaries or captives. It is probable, indeed, that a magistrate his means of livelihood. (Herod. ii. the Nile-valley contained three races, with an 109, 177.) Herodotus, however, gives no estimate admixture of a fourth. On the eastern frontier of the population, nor has any record of a census the Arabian type prevailed: on the western, the been hitherto discovered on the native monuments. Libyan; while the fourth variety arose from inter- Diodorus (i. 31) says that it amounted, in the marriages between the Egyptians Proper and the Pharaonic era, to seven millions, and that it was not Nubians or Aethiopians of Meroë. The ruling less in his own day (B. c. 58). Germanicus (Tac. caste, however, was an elder branch of the Syro- Ann. ii. 60; compare Strab. p. 816) was informed, Arabian family, which in two separate divisions in A. D. 16, by the priests of Thebes, that Egypt, in descended the Tigris and the Euphrates; and while the reign of Rameses Sesostris, contained 700,000 the northern stream colonised the land of Canaan men of the military age. If that age, as at Athens, and the future empires of Babylon and Nineveh, the extended from eighteen to sixty, and be allowed southern spread over Arabia Felix, and entered for adults between those periods of life, the entire Egypt from the east. This supposition, and this population (5 × 700,000) will amount to 3,500,000. alone, will account for the Caucasian type of the Allow 500,000 for error, and add for slaves and Coptic skull and facial outline, and corresponds with casual residents, and 6,000,000 will be the maxithe Mosaic ethnology in the 10th chapter of Genesis, muin of the census of Egypt. In the Macedonian which derives the Egyptians from Ham. We may and Roman eras, 300,000 must be included for the allow, too, for considerable admixture, even of the fixed or floating population of Alexandria (Joseph. ruling castes, with the cognate races to the south B. J. ii. 16). According to Herodotus (ii. 177), and east; and hence, on the one hand, the fullness there were, in the reign of Amasis, 20,000 inhabited of lips, and, on the other, the elongated Nubian eye, towns, and Diodorus (l. c.) says that 18,000 towns need not compel us to define the inhabitants of the were entered on the register. Many of these, howNile-valley as an African rather than an Asiatic ever, were probably little more than walled villages, race. The Egyptians may be said to be intermediate nor have we any means of knowing their average between the Syro-Arabian and the Ethiopic type; area or population. Yet it should be remembered and as at this day the Copt is at once recognised that, even allowing for the less perfect system of in Syria by his dark hue (un peau noirâtre, Volney, embankment and irrigation in modern times, the Voyage, vol. i. p. 114), the duskier complexion-extent of productive soil has not decreased. Two brown, with a tinge of red- of the ancient Egyptians may be ascribed solely to their climate, and to those modifying causes which, in the course of generations, affect both the osteology and the physiology of long-settled races. Nor does their language contradict this statement, although the variations between the Coptic and Syro-Arabian idioms are more striking than those of form and colour. The Coptic, the language of the native Christian population of Egypt, is now universally acknowledged to be sub

centuries ago the population of modern Egypt was loosely estimated at 4 millions. During the French occupation of the country in 1798-1801, it was computed at 2 millions. Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. i. p. 256) reduces it to 1 million.

IV. The Nomes.

The Nile-valley was parcelled out into a number of cantons, varying in size and number. Each of

6. The Cynopolite, the seat of the worship of the hound and dog-headed deity Anubis. Its capital was Cynopolis, which must however be distinguished from the Deltaic city and other towns of the same name. (Strab. p. 812; Ptol.; Plut. Is. et Osir. c. 72.) The Greater Oasis (Ammonium) and the Lesser were reckoned among the Heptanomite Cantons: but both were considered as one nome only. [OASES.] C. NOMES OF UPPER EGYPT. The most im portant were:

1. The Lycopolite, dedicated to the worship of the wolf. Its chief town was Lycopolis.

2. The Antaeopolite, probably worshipped Typhon (Diod. i. 21); its capital was Antacopolis (Plut. de Solert. Anim. 23.)

Thus

nomis, a little to the north of the castle and toll-house | too extensive for more than allusion. The worship ('Epμoroλitávn quλaкý, Strab. p. 813), where the of animals was either general or particular, common portage was levied on all craft coming from the to the whole nation, or several to the nome. Upper Country. throughout Egypt, the ox, the dog, and the cat, the ibis and the hawk, and the fishes lepidotus and oxyrrynchus, were objects of veneration. The sheep was worshipped only in the Saitic and Thebaid nomes: the goat at Mendes; the wolf at Lycopolis; the cepus (a kind of ape) at Babylon, near Memphis; the lion at Leontopolis, the eagle at Thebes, the shrewmouse at Athribis, and others elsewhere, as will be particularly noticed when we speak of their respective temples. As we have already seen, the object of reverence in one nome was accounted common and unclean, if not, indeed, the object of persecution in another. Animal worship has been in all ages the opprobrium of Egypt (comp. Clem. Alex. iii. 2, p. 253, Potter; Diod. i. 84). The Hebrew prophets denounced, the anthropomorphic religionists of Hellas derided it. To the extent to which the Egyptians carried it, especially in the decline of the nation, it certainly approached to the fetish superstitions of the neighbouring Libya. But we must bear in mind, that our vergers to the Coptic temples are Greeks who, being ignorant of the language, misunderstood much that they heard, and being preoccupied by their own ritual or philosophy, misinterpreted much that they saw. One good effect may be ascribed to this form of superstition. In no country was humanity to the brute creation so systematically practised. The origin of animal worship has been variously, but never satisfactorily, accounted for. If they were worshipped as the auxiliaries of the husbandman in producing food or destroying vermin, how can we account for the omission of swine and asses, or for the adoption of lions and wolves among the objects of veneration?

3. The Aphroditopolite [Comp. Nome (2), Heptanomis.] In cases where a southern and a northern canton possessed similar objects of worship, the latter was probably an offset or colony of the former, as the Thebaid was the original cradle of Egyptian civilisation, which advanced northward.

4. The Panopolite or, as it was afterwards called, the Chemmite, offered hero-worship to an apotheosized man, whom the Greeks compared to the Minyan hero Perseus. (Herod. ii. 91.) This canton, whose chief town was Panopolis or Chemmis (Diod. i. 18), was principally inhabited by linen-weavers and stone

masons.

5. The Thinite, probably one of the most ancient, as it was originally the leading nome of the Thebaid, and the nome or kingdom of Menes of This, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. The Thinite nome worshipped Osiris, contained a Memnonium, and, in Roman times at least (Amm. Marc. xix. 12; Spartian. Hadrian. 14), an oracle of Besa. Its capital was Abydus, or, as it was called earlier, This. [ABYDUS.]

6. The Tentyrite worshipped Athor (Aphrodite), Isis, and Typhon. Its inhabitants hunted the crocodile, and were accordingly at feud with the Ombite nome. (Juv. xv.) Its chief town was Tentyra.

7. The Coptite, whose inhabitants were principally occupied in the caravan trade between Berenice, Myos Hormos, and the interior of Arabia and Libya. Its capital was Coptos. [COPTOS.]

8. The Hermonthite, worshipped Osiris and his son Orus: its chief town was Hermonthis.

9. The Apollonite, like the Tentyrite nome, destroyed the crocodile (Strab. p. 817; Plin. v. 9; Aelian, H. An. x. 21; Plut. Is. et Os. 50), and reverenced the sun. Its capital was Apollinopolis Magna. This nome is sometimes annexed to the preceding.

10. The Ombite (Ombites praefectura, Plin. H. N. v. 9), worshipped the crocodile as the emblem of Sebak (comp. supra (6) and (9), and the Arsinoite (3), Heptanomite nomes). Ombos was its capital. The quarries of sandstone, so much employed in Egyptian architecture, were principally seated in this

canton.

V. Animal Worship.

Animal worship is so intimately connected with the division of the country into nomes, and, in some degree, with the institution of castes, that we must briefly allude to it, although the subject is much

The Greeks, as was their wont,

found many idle solutions of an enigma which probably veiled a feeling originally earnest and pious. They imagined that animals were worshipped because their effigies were the standards in war, like the Roman Dii Castrorum. This is evidently a substitution of cause for effect. The representations of animals on martial ensigns were the standards of the various nomes (Diod. i. 85). Lucian (Astrolog. v. p. 215, seq. Bipont) suggested that the bull, the lion, the fish, the ram, and the goat, &c. were correlates to the zodiacal emblems; but this surmise leaves the crocodile, the cat, and the ibis, &c. of the temples unexplained. It is much more probable that, among a contemplative and serious race, as the Egyptians certainly were, animal-worship arose out of the detection of certain analogies between instinct and reason, and that to the initiated the reverence paid to beasts was a primitive expression of pantheism, or the recognition of the Creator in every type of his work. The Egyptians are not the only people who have convertel type into substance, or adopted in a literal sense the metaphorical symbols of faith.

(1.74) he extends the number to five, by the addi-
tion of soldiers and shepherds. Strabo limits them
to three-priests, soldiers, and husbandmen
and as this partition is virtually correct, we shall
adopt it after brief explanation. The existence of
castes is a corroborative proof of the Asiatic origin
of the Egyptians. The stamp of caste was not in
Egypt, as is sometimes asserted, indelible. The son
usually, but not inevitably, followed his father's
trade or profession. From some of the pariah classes
indeed-such as that of the swineherds-it was
scarcely possible to escape.

The land in Egypt upon which the institution of
castes rested belonged in fee only to the king, the
priests, and the soldiers. We know from Genesis
(xlvii. 26) that all other proprietors of the soil had
surrendered their rights to the crown, and received
their lands again subject to an annual rent of
of the produce. The priests we know (Genes. l. c.),
the soldiers we infer (Diod. i. 74), retained their
absolute ownership; and in so productive a country
as Egypt the husbandman was too important a per-
son to be deprived at once of all his political rights.
He was in fact an integral although an inferior
section of the war-caste. The privileged orders
however were the king, the priest, the soldier:-

1. The King was at first elective, and always a member of the priesthood. He afterwards became hereditary, and was taken indifferently from the sacerdotal and military orders. If however he were by birth a soldier, he was adopted on his accession by the priests. Even the Ptolemies were not allowed to reign without such previous adoption. His initiation into the sacred mysteries was represented on monuments by the tau, the emblem of life and the key of secrecy, impressed upon his lips (Plut. de Is. et Osir. p. 354, B.; Plat. Rep. ii. p. 290).

| exempt from tribute: their persons were greeted
with servile homage; they were the sole depositares of
learning and science: and they alone were acquainted
with all the formularies which in Egypt regulated
nearly every action of life. Their various and in-
cessant occupations appear even in the titles of the
subdivisions of the priest-caste.
"Each deity," says
Herodotus (ii. 37)," had several priests [priestesses]
and a high priest." The chiefs or pontiffs were the
judges of the land, the councillors of the sovereign,
the legislators and the guardians of the great mys-
teries. The minor priests were prophets, inferior
judges and magistrates, hierophants, hiero-grammats
or sacred scribes, basilico-grammats or royal scribes,
dressers and keepers of the royal and sacerdotal
wardrobes, physicians, heralds, keepers of the sacred
animals, architects, draughtsmen, beadles, vergers,
sprinklers of water, fan bearers, &c. (Wilkinson,
M. and C. vol. i. p. 238). So numerous a staff
was not in the peculiar polity of Egypt altogether
superfluous, neither does it seem to have been pe-
culiarly burdensome to the nation, since it derived its
support from regular taxes and from its proprietary
lands. Nowhere in the ancient world was the number
of temples so great as in Egypt: nowhere were there
so many religious festivals; nowhere was ordi-
nary life so intimately blended with religion. The
priest therefore was mixed up in affairs of the
market, the law court, the shop, the house, in ad-
dition to his proper vocation in the temple. His life
was the reverse of ascetic: in the climate of Egypt
frequent ablutions, linen garments, papyrus sandals,
were luxuries, only polygamy was forbidden him.
But he was enjoined to marry, and the son succeeded
the father in the sacred office (Herod. ii. 143).
Herodotus (comp. ii. 35, 55) contradicts himself
in saying that females could not fulfil sacerdotal
duties,- women might be incapable of the highest
offices, but both sculptures and documents prove,
that they were employed in many of the minor
duties connected with the temples.

The king, when not engaged in war, was occupied in jurisdiction and the service of religion. The royal life was one long ceremony. His rising and his lying down; his meals, his recreations, and the order of his employments, were rigidly prescribed to him. Some liberty in law-making indeed was allowed him, since we read of the laws of Sesostris, Amasis, and other Egyptian rulers: and, with vigorons occupants of the throne, it is probable that the soldier occasionally transgressed the priestly ordinances. As but few, however, of the Egyptian monarchs seem to have grossly abused their power, we may conclude that the hierarchy at least tempered royal despotism. In paintings the king is always represented as many degrees taller and more robust than his subject warriors. A thousand fly before him, and he holds strings of prisoners by the hair. The Egyptian king wears also the emblems and sometimes even the features of the gods; and it is fre-eastern borders, at Syene and Elephantine, at Hieraquently difficult to distinguish on the monuments Sesortasen, Amunopht, &c. from Osiris. It is re

markable that females were not excluded from a throne so sacerdotal. A queen, Nitocris, occurs in the sixth dynasty; another, Scemiophris, in the twelfth, and other examples are found in the sculptures. On the decease of a sovereign a kind of posthumous judgment was exercised on his character and government. His embalmed body was placed in the sepulchre, and all men were permitted to bring accusations against him. Virtuous princes received a species of deification: condemned princes were debarred from sepulture.

2. The Priests however were, in ordinary times, the real governing body of Egypt. Their lands were

3. The Soldiers. The whole military force of Egypt amounted to 410,000 men (Herod. ii. 165-166; Diod. i. 54). It was divided into two corps, the Calasirians and the Hermotybians. The former were the more numerous, and in the most flourishing era of Egypt, the 18th and 19th dynasties, were estimated at 250,000 men. Each of these divisions furnished a thousand men annually to perform the duty of royal body guards. During the term of their attendance they received from the king daily rations of bread, beef, and wine. When summoned to the field or to garrison duty, each soldier provided himself with the necessary arms and baggage. The principal garrisons of Egypt were on its southern and

compolis and Eilethyas, which towns, on opposite sides of the river, commanded the Nile-valley above Thebes, and at Marea and Pelusium. The western frontier was, until Egypt stretched to the Cyrenaica, guarded sufficiently by the Libyan desert. In time of peace the troops who were not in garrisons or at court were settled in various nomes principally east of the Nile, and in the Delta; since it was in that quarter Egypt was most exposed to invasion from the pastoral Arabs or the yet more formidable nomade tribes of Assyria and Palestine. According to Herodotus (ii. 168), each soldier was allowed 12 arourae of land, or about six acres free from all charge or tribute, from which allotment he defrayed the cost of his arms and equipment. To the Egyptian soldier