make an admirable soldier if he only wished to kill some one!" The fellahin furnish three squadrons, five batteries, three garrison artillery companies and nine battalions. The well-educated Egyptian officer, with his natural aptitude for figures, does subordinate regimental routine carefully, and works well when supervised by men of stronger character. The ordinary Egyptian is not self-reliant or energetic by nature, and, like most Eastern people, finds it difficult to be impartial where duty and family or other personal relations are in the balance. The black soldier has, on the other hand, many of the finest fighting qualities. This was observed by British officers, from the time of the preliminary operations about Kosha and at the action near Ginnis in December 1885 down to the brilliant operations in the pursuit of the Mahdists on the Blue Nile after the action of Gedaref (subsequent to the battle of Omdurman), and the fighting in Kordofan in 1899, which resulted in the death of the khalifa and his amirs. Black soldiers served in the army of Mehemet Ali, but their fighting value was not then duly appreciated. Prior to the death of the khalifa, many of his soldiers deserted to join their brethren who had been captured by the sirdar's troops, during the gradual advance up the Nile. After 1899 many more enlisted: the greater number were Shilluks and Dinkas coming from the country between Fashoda and the equatorial provinces, but a proportion came from the western borders of the Sudan, and some from Wadai and Bornu. Many were absolute savages, difficult to control, wayward and thoughtless like children. Sudanese are very excitable and apt to get out of hand; unlike the fellahs they are not fond of drill, and are slow to acquire it; but their dash, pugnacious instincts and desire to close with an enemy, are valuable military qualities. The Sudanese, moreover, shoot better than the fellahin, whose eyesight is often defective. The Sudanese captain can seldom read or write, and is therefore in the hands of the Egyptian-born company quartermastersergeant as regards pay and clothing accounts. He is slow, and as a rule has little knowledge of drill. Nevertheless he is selfreliant, much respected by his men, and can be trusted in the field to carry out any orders received from his British officer. The most efficient companies in the Sudanese battalions are apparently those in which the captain is a black and the lieutenants are Egyptians. The army raised by the first sirdar in January 1883 was highly commended for its work on the line of communication in 1884-1885, and its artillery and camelry distinguished themselves in the action at Kirbekan in February 1885. Colonel Sir Francis Grenfell succeeded General Sir Evelyn Wood in March 1885, and while under his command the army continued to improve, and fought successful actions at Gemaiza, Argin, Toski and Tokar. At Toski the Dervish succeeded General Sir Francis Grenfell, and four years later began his force was nearly annihilated. In March 1892 Colonel Kitchener successful reconquest of the Sudan. In June 1896, owing to the indefatigable exertions of Major Wingate, a perfected system of secret intelligence enabled the sirdar to bring an overwhelming force of 6 to I against the Dervish outpost at Firket and destroy it. In September 1896 a skirmish at Hafir, with similarly successful tactics, gave the British commander the possession of Dongola. On the 7th of August 1897 Colonel Hunter surprised and annihilated a weak Dervish garrison at Abu Hamed, to which place, by the 31st from Wadi Halfa, a distance of 230 m., the "record "construction of October 1897, a railway had been laid across the Nubian desert of 5300 yds surveyed, embanked and laid in one day having been attained. On the 26th of December 1897 the Italian troops handed over Kassala to Colonel Parsons, R.A. On the 8th of April 1898 a British division, with the Egyptian army, destroyed the Dervish force under the amir Mahmud Ahmed, on the Atbara river. On the 2nd of September the khalifa attacked the British-Egyptian troops at Kerreri (near Omdurman), and being routed, his men dispersed; Khartum was occupied, and on the 19th of September the Egyptian flag was rehoisted at Fashoda. On the 22nd of September 1898 Gedaref was taken from the amir Ahmed Fedil by Colonel Parsons, and on the 26th of December the army of Ahmed Fedil was finally defeated and dispersed near Roseires. The khalifa's army, reduced to an insignificant number, after several unsuccessful engagements withdrew to the west of the Nile, where it was attacked, on the 24th annihilated. The khalifa himself was killed; while the victor, who of November 1899, after a forced march by Colonel Wingate, and had joined the Egyptian army in 1883 as aide-de-camp to the first sirdar, in December 1899 became the fourth sirdar, as Major-General Sir F. R. Wingate, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., D.S.O., &c. (E. Wo.) II. ANCIENT EGYPT A. Exploration and Research.-Owing to its early development of a high civilization with written records, its wealth, and its preservative climate, Egypt is the country which most amply repays archaeological research. It is especially those long ages during which Egypt was an independent centre of culture and government, before its absorption in the Persian empire in the 6th century B.C., that make the most powerful appeal to the imagination and can often justify this appeal by the splendour of the monuments representing them. however, the history of Hellenism, the provincial history of the Later, Roman empire, the rise of Christianity and the triumph of Islam successively receive brilliant illustration in Egypt. In 1908 the Egyptian army, with a total establishment of 18,000, consisted of three squadrons of cavalry (one composed of Sudanese) each numbering 116 men; four batteries of field artillery and a Maxim battery, horses and mules being used, with a total strength of 1257 of all ranks; the camel corps, 625 of all ranks (fellahin and Sudanese); and nine fellahin and six Sudanese infantry battalions, specimens of ancient Egyptian handiwork: a valuable stele As early as the 17th century travellers began to bring home 10,631 of all ranks. Every battalion receives two additional companies on mobilization and takes the field with six companies. from Sakkara of the beginning of the Old Kingdom was presented The armament of the infantry is Martini-Henry rifle and bayonet; to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in 1683. In the following of the cavalry, lance, sword and carbine. century the Englishman R. Pococke (1704-1765), the Dane There are seven gunboats on the Nile. The medical department (reorganized in 1883 by Surgeon-Major F. L. Norden (1708-1742), both travelling in 1737, and others J.G Rogers at the time of the cholera epidemic) controls in peace later, planned, described or figured Egyptian ruins in a primitive fourteen station hospitals, and in war furnishes a mobile field hos-way and identified many of the sites with cities named in classical pital to each brigade. There are also veterinary station hospitals. authors. Napoleon's great military expedition in 1798 was The supply department controls mills at Tura, Halfa and Khartum. The stringent system of selecting British officers, originated by the accompanied by a scientific commission including artists and first sirdar in 1883, is shown by the fact that of the 24 employed in archaeologists, the results of whose labours fill several of the creating the army, 14 rose to be generals. The competition for magnificent volumes of the Description de l'Égypte. The employment in the army is still severe. In 1908 there were 140 antiquities collected by the expedition, including the famous British warrant and non-commissioned officers. Four of the fellahin battalions were officered by Orientals; in the other five, British Rosetta stone, were ceded to the British government at the officers commanded. Seven officers were employed with the artillery, capitulation of Alexandria, in 1801. Thereafter Mehemet Ali six with the camel corps. Each of the Sudanese battalions had four threw Egypt freely open to Europeans, and a busy traffic in British officers, and each squadron of cavalry one. Twelve medical antiquities began, chiefly through the agency of the consuls of and two veterinary officers are also employed departmentally, as different powers. well as officers acting as directors of supply, &c. Since the assumpFrom the year 1820 onwards the growth of tion of command by the third sirdar, Colonel (afterwards Lord) the European collections was rapid, and Champollion's decipherKitchener, the ordnance, supply and engineer services have been ments (see below, "Language and Writing ") of the hieroseparately administered, and a financial secretary is charged with the duty of preparing the budget, making contracts, &c. The total glyphic inscriptions, dating from 1821, added fresh impetus to the fashion of collecting, in spite of doubts as to their trustworthiness. In 1827 a combined expedition led by Champollion and Rosellini was despatched by the governments of France and Tuscany, and accomplished a great deal of valuable work in copying scenes and inscriptions. But the greatest of such expeditions was that of Lepsius, under the auspices of the annual expenditure is £500,000. The reorganized military school system under British control, for supplying officers, dates from 1887. The course lasts for about two years, and two hundred students can be accommodated. After the reconquest of the Sudan one-fourth of the cadets in the military school of Cairo were Sudanese. Later, however, the Sudanese cadets were transferred to a branch school at Khartum. A new period was opened in Egyptian exploration in 1858 when Mariette was appointed director of archaeological works in Egypt, his duties being to safeguard the monuments and prevent their exploitation by dealers. As early as 1835 Mehemet Ali had given orders for a museum to be formed; little however, was accomplished before the whole of the resulting collection was given away to the Archduke Maximilian of Austria in 1855. Mariette, who was appointed by the viceroy Said Pasha at the instance of the French government, succeeded in making his office effective and permanent, in spite of political intrigues and the whims of an Oriental ruler; he also secured a building on the island of Bulak (Bulaq) for a viceregal museum in which the results of his explorations could be permanently housed. Supported by the French interest, the established character of this work as a department of the Egyptian government (which also claims the ancient sites) has been fully recognized since the British occupation. The "Service of Antiquities" now boasts a large annual budget and employs a number of European and native officials—a director, curators of the museum, European inspectors and native sub-inspectors of provinces (at Luxor for Upper Egypt and Nubia, at Assiut for Middle Egypt and the Fayum, at Mansura for Lower Egypt, besides a European official in charge of the government excavations at Memphis). The museum, no longer the property of an individual, was removed in 1889 from the small building at Bulak to a disused palace at Giza, and since 1902 has been established at Kasr-en-Nil, Cairo, in a special building, of ample size and safe from fire and flood. In the year 1881 the directorship of the museum was temporarily undertaken by Prof. Maspero, who resumed it in 1899. The admirably conducted Archaeological Survey of the portion of Nubia threatened by the raising of the Assuan dam is in the charge of another department-the Survey department, directed for many years up to 1909 by Captain H. G. Lyons. Non-official agencies (supported by voluntary contributions) for exploration in Egypt comprise the Egypt Exploration Fund, started in London in 1881, with its two branches, viz. the Archaeological Survey (1890) for copying and publishing the monuments above ground, and the Graeco-Roman Branch (1897), well known through the brilliant work in Greek papyri of B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt; and the separate Research Account founded by Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie in London (University College) in 1896, and since 1905 called the British School of Archaeology in Egypt (see especially MEMPHIS). The Mission archéologique française au Caire, established as a school by the French government in 1881, was re-organized in 1901 on a lavish scale under the title Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, and domiciled with printing-press and library in a fine building near the museum. As the result of an excellent bargain, it was afterwards removed to the Munira palace in the south-east part of the city. An archaeologist is attached to the German general consulate to look after the interests of German museums, and is director of the German Institute of Archaeology. The Orient-Gesellschaft (German Orient-Society) has worked in Egypt since 1901 with brilliant results. Excavations and explorations are also conducted annually by the agents of universities and museums in England, America and Germany, and by private explorers, concessions being granted generally on the terms that the Egyptian government shall retain half of the antiquities discovered, while the other half remains for the finders. The era of scientific excavation began with Flinders Petrie's work at Tanis in 1883. Previous explorers kept scientific aims in view, but the idea of scientific archaeology was not realized by them. The procedure in scientific excavation is directed to collecting and interpreting all the information that can be obtained from the excavation as to the history and nature of the site explored, be it town, temple, house, cemetery or individual grave, wasting no evidence that results from it touching the endless problems which scientific archaeology affords-whether in regard to arts and crafts, manners and customs, language, history or beliefs. This is a totally different thing from mere hunting for inscriptions, statues or other portable objects which will present a greater or less value in themselves even when torn from their context. Such may, of course, form the greater part of the harvest and working material of a scientific excavator; their presence is most welcome to him, but their complete absence need be no bar to his attainment of important historical results. The absence of scientific excavation in Egypt was deplored by the Scottish archaeologist Alexander Henry Rhind (1833–1863), as early as 1862. Since Flinders Petrie began, the general level of research has gradually risen, and, while much is shamefully bad and destructive, there is a certain proportion that fully realizes the requirements of scientific archaeology. Antiquities, Sites, &c.-The remains for archaeological investigation in Egypt may be roughly classified as material and literary: to the latter belong the texts on papyri and the inscriptions, to the former the sites of ancient towns with the temples, fortifications and houses; remains of roads, canals, quarries and other matters falling within the domain of ancient topography; the larger monuments, as obelisks, statues, stelae, &c.; and finally the small antiquities-utensils, clothes, weapons, amulets, &c. Where moisture can reach the antiquities their preservation is no better in Egypt than it would have been in other countries; for this reason all the papyri in the Delta have perished unless they happen to have been charred by fire. A terrible pest is a kind of termite which is locally abundant and has probably visited most parts of Egypt at one time or another, destroying all dead vegetable or animal material in the soil that was not specially protected. In Lower Egypt the cities built of crude brick were very numerous, especially after the 7th century B.C., but owing to the value of stone very few of their monuments have escaped destruction: even the mounds of rubbish which marked their sites furnish a valuable manure for the fields and in consequence are rapidly disappearing. Granite and other hard stones, having but a limited use (for millstones and the like), have the best chance of survival. At Bubastis, Tanis, Behbeit (Iseum) and Heliopolis considerable stone remains have been discovered. In the north of the Delta wherever salt marshes have prevented cultivation in modern times, the mounds, such as those of Pelusium, still stand to their full height, and the more important are covered with ruins of brick structures of Byzantine and Arab date. Middle and Upper Egypt were less busy and prosperous in the later ages than Lower Egypt. There was consequently somewhat less consumption of the old stone-work. Moreover, in many places equally good material could be obtained without much difficulty from the cliffs on both sides of the Nile. Yet even the buried portions of limestone buildings have seldom been permitted to survive on the cultivated land; the Nubian sandstone of Upper Egypt was of comparatively little value, and, generally speaking, buildings in that material have fallen into decay rather than been destroyed by quarrying. Starting from Cairo and going southward we have first the great pyramid-field, with the necropolis of Memphis as its centre; stretching from Abū Roāsh on the north to Lisht on the south, it is followed by the pyramid group of Dahshur, the more isolated pyramids of Medum and Illahun, and that of Hawāra in the Fayum. On the east bank are the limestone quarries of Turra and Masara opposite Memphis. South of the Fayum on the western border of the desert are the tombs of Deshasha, Meir and Assiut, and on the east bank those of Beni Hasan, the rockcut temple of Speos Artemidos, the tombs of El Bersha and Sheikh Said, the tombs and stelae of El Amarna with the alabaster quarries of Hanub in the desert behind them, and the tombs of Deir el Gebrawi. Beyond Assiut are the tombs of Dronka and Rifa, the temples of Abydos and Dendera, and the tombs, &c., at Akhmim and Kasr es Saiyād. Farther south are the stupendous ruins of Thebes on both sides of the river, the temple of Esna, the ruins and tombs of El Kab, the temple of Edfű, the quarries of Silsila and the temple of Ombos, followed by the inscribed rocks of the First Cataract, the tombs and quarries of Assuan and the temples of Philae. In Nubia, owing to the poverty of the country and its scanty population, the proportion of monuments surviving is infinitely greater than in Egypt. Here are the temples of Debōd, the temple and quarries of Kertassi, the temples of Kalabsha, Bēt el Wali, Dendur, Gerf Husen, Dakka, Maharaka, Es-Sebu'a, 'Amada and Derr, the grottos of Elles ya, the tombs of Anība, the temple of Ibrim, the great rock-temples of Abu-Simbel, the temples at Jebel Adda and Wadi Halfa, the forts and temples of Semna, the temples of Amāra (Meroitic) and Sōleb. Beyond are the Ethiopian temples and pyramids of Jebel Barkal and the other pyramids of Napata at Tangassi, &c., the still later pyramids of Meroe at Begerawia, and the temples of Mesauwarāt and Naga reaching to within 50 m. of Khartum. Outside the Nile valley on the west are temples in the Great and Little Oases and the Oasis of Ammon: on the east quarries and stelae on the Hammamat road to the Red Sea, and mines and other remains at Wadi Maghāra and Serābīt el Khadim in the Sinai peninsula. In Syria there are tablets of conquest on the rocks at the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb. Of the collections of Egyptian antiquities in public museums, those of the British Museum, Leiden, Berlin, the Louvre, Turin were already very important in the first half of the 19th century, also in a less degree those of Florence, Bologna and the Vatican. Most of these have since been greatly increased and many others have been created. By far the largest collection in the world is that at Cairo. In America the museums and universities of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York have collections of greater or less interest. Besides these the museums of Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford are | noteworthy in Great Britain for their Egyptian antiquities, as are those of St Petersburg, Vienna, Marseilles, Munich, Copenhagen, Palermo and Athens; there are also collections in most of the British colonies. Private collections are numerous. Literary Records. In estimating the sources of information regarding pre-Christian Egypt, the native sources, first opened to us by Champollion, are infinitely the most important. With very few exceptions they are contemporary with the events which they record. Of the composition of history and the description of their own manners and customs by the Egyptians for posterity, few traces have reached our day. Consequently the information derived from their monuments, in spite of their great abundance, is of a fortuitous character. For one early papyrus that survives, many millions must have perished. If the journals of accounts, the letters and business documents, had come down to us en masse, they would no doubt have yielded to research the history and life of Egypt day by day; but those that now represent a thousand years of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom together would not half fill an ordinary muniment chest. A larger proportion of the records on stone have survived, but that an event should be inscribed on stone depends on a variety of circumstances and not necessarily on its importance. There may seem to be a great abundance of Egyptian monuments, but they have to cover an enormous space of time, and even in the periods which are best represented, gravestones recording the names of private persons with a prayer or two are scarcely material for history. A scrap of annals has been found extending from the earliest times to the Vth Dynasty, as well as a very fragmentary list of kings reaching nearly to the end of the Middle Kingdom, to help out the scattered data of the other monuments. As to manners and customs, although we possess no systematic descriptions of them from a native source, the native artists and scribes have presented us with exceptionally rich materials in the painted and sculptured scenes of the tombs from the Old and Middle Kingdoms and the New Empire. For the Deltaic dynasties these sources fail absolutely, the scenes being then either purely religious or conventional imitations of the earlier ones. Fortunately the native records are largely supplemented by others: valuable information comes from cuneiform literature, belonging to two widely separated periods. The first group is contemporary with the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties and consists in the first place of the Tell el Amarna tablets with others related to them, containing the reports of governors of the Syrian possessions of Egypt, and the correspondence of the kings of Babylon, Assur, Mitanni and Khatti (the Hittites) with the Pharaohs. The sequel to this is furnished by Winckler's discovery of documents relating to Rameses II. of the XIXth Dynasty in the Hittite capital at Boghaz Keui (see also HITTITES and PTERIA). The other group comprises the annals and in、 scriptions of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal, recording their invasions of Egypt under the XXVth Dynasty. There are also a few references to Egypt of later date down to the reign of Darius. In Hebrew literature the Pentateuch, the historical books and the prophets alike contain scanty but precious information regarding Egypt. Aramaic papyri written principally by Jews of the Persian period (5th century B.C.) have been found at Syene and Memphis. Of all the external sources the literary accounts written in Greek are the most valuable. They comprise fragments of the native historian Manetho, the descriptions of Egypt in Herodotus and Diodorus, the geographical accounts of Strabo and Ptolemy, the treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris and other monographs or scattered notices of less importance. Our knowledge of the history of Alexander's conquest, of the Ptolemies and of the Roman occupation is almost entirely derived from Greek sources, and in fact almost the same might be said of the history of Egypt as far back as the beginning of the XXVIth Dynasty. The non-literary Greek remains in papyri and inscriptions which are being found in great abundance throw a flood of light on life in Egypt and the administration of the country from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the Arab conquest. On the other hand, papyri and inscriptions in Latin are of the greatest rarity, and the literary remains in that language are of small importance for Egypt. Arabic literature appears to be entirely barren of authentic information regarding the earlier condition of the country. Two centuries of unchallenged Christianity had broken almost completely the traditions of paganism, even if the Moslems had been willing to consider them, either in their fanciful accounts of the origins of cities, &c., or elsewhere. B. The Country in Ancient Times.-The native name of Egypt was Kēmi (KM-T), clearly meaning "the black land," Egypt being so called from the blackness of its alluvial soil (cf. Plut. De Is. et Os. cap. 33): in poetical inscriptions Kēmi is often opposed to Toshri, " the red land," referring to the sandy deserts around, which however, would probably be included in the term Kēmi in its widest sense. Egypt is called in Hebrew Mizraim, y, possibly a dual form describing the country in reference to its two great natural and historical divisions of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt: but Mizraim (poetically sometimes Māzōr) often means Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt being named Pathros, "the south land." In Assyrian the name was Muşri, Mişri: in Arabic it is Misr, o, pronounced Maşr in the vulgar dialect of Egypt. These names are certainly of Semitic origin and perhaps derive from the Assyrian with the meaning frontier-land (see MIZRAIM). Winckler's theory of a separate Mușri immediately south of Palestine is now generally rejected (see, for instance, Ed. Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 455). The Greek ALYUTTOS (Aegyptus) occurs as early as Homer; in the Odyssey it is the name of the Nile (masc.) as well as of the country (fem.): later it was confined to the country. Its origin is very obscure (see Pietschmann in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, s.v. Aigyptos "). Brugsch's derivation from Hakeptah, a name of the northern capital, Memphis, though attractive, is unconfirmed. 66 Egypt normally included the whole of the Nile valley from the First Cataract to the sea; pure Egyptians, however, formed the population of Lower Nubia above the Cataract in prehistoric |