nomis, a little to the north of the castle and toll-house (Epμoñoλiτávn quλaкh, Strab. p. 813), where the portage was levied on all craft coming from the Upper Country.

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 important 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 Antaeopolis (Plut. de Solert. Anim. 23.)

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 none. (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.

too extensive for more than allusion. The worship of animals was either general or particular, common to the whole nation, or several to the nome. Thus 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?

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 converted type into substance, or adopted in a literal sense the metaphorical symbols of faith.

(1.74) he extends the number to five, by the addition 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 asually, 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 person 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 bereditary, 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).

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 vigorous occuparts 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 frequently difficult to distinguish on the monuments Sesortasen, Amunopht, &c. from Osiris. It is remarkable 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 acensations against him. Virtuous princes received a species of deification: condemned princes were debarred from sepulture.

2. The Priests however were, in ordinary times,

exempt from tribute: their persons were greeted with servile homage; they were the sole depositanes 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 incessant occupations appear even in the titles of the subdivisions of the priest-caste. "Each deity," says Herodotus (ii. 37)," had several priests [priestesse] and a high priest." The chiefs or pontiff's 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 peculiarly 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 ordinary 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 addition 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.

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 eastern borders, at Syene and Elephantine, at Hieracompolis 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

handicraft employment was forbidden, agricultural labours were enjoined. The monuments exhibit officers with recruiting parties, soldiers engaged in gymnastic exercises, and in the battle pieces, which are extremely spirited, all the arts of offensive and defensive war practised by the Egyptians are represented. The war-caste was necessarily a very important element in a state which was frequently engaged in distant conquests, and had a wide extent of territory to defend. Yet until the reigns of Sethos, when the priests invaded its privileges, and of Psammetichus, when the king encroached upon them, we find no trace of mutiny or civil war in Egypt, - -a proof that the Calasirians and Hermotybians were not only well disciplined, but also, in the main, contented with their lot.

VII. Civil History.

observed the distinction between the dry pontifical chronicle and mythical and heroical narratives couched in poetry and song. To this mass of written documents are to be added the sculptured monuments themselves, the tombs, obelisks, and temple walls, whose paintings and inscriptions have been partially decyphered by modern scholars, and are found generally to correspond with the written lists of kings compiled, in the first instance, by the native historian Manetho. Egyptian history, however, in the modern acceptation of the word, began after the establishment of the Greek sovereignty of Egypt. The natives, with the natural pride of a once ruling but now subject race, were eager to impart to their Hellenic masters more correct notions of their history and religion than could be obtained either from the relations of Greek travellers, such as Thales and Solon, or from the

1. Egypt under its native rulers-the Pharaonic Era. Its cominencement is unknown: it closes with the conquest of the land by Cambyses in B. C. 525.

2. The Persian Era, from B. c. 525, to the Macedonian invasion, B. c. 332.

3. The Macedonian or Hellenic Era. This period is computed either from the foundation of Alexandria, in B. c. 332, or from B. c. 323, when Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, converted the satrapy of Egypt into an hereditary kingdom. This period extends to the death of Cleopatra, in B. c. 30.

4. The Roman Era, from the surrender of Alexandria to Augustus, in B. c. 30, to the capture of that city by the Khalif Omar in A. D. 640.

5. The Mahommedan Era, from A. D. 640 to the present time.

The last of these periods belongs to modern history, and does not come within the scope of this work. The first of them must be very briefly treated, partly because it involves questions which it would demand a volume to discuss, and partly because Egypt came into the field of classical history through its relations with the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. For complete information the student of the Pharaonic era must consult the larger works of Denon, Young, Champollion, Rosellini, Heeren, Wilkinson, Bunsen and Lepsius; or the very lucid abstract of this period in Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, which, indeed, contains all that the general reader can require.

1. Pharaonic Era. Authorities. The original records of Egypt were kept with no ordinary care, and were very various in kind, sculpture, symbol, writing, all contributing to their contents. Herodotus (ii. 72-82), Theophrastus (ap. Porphyr. de Abstinent. ii. 5), Cicero (de Repub. iii. 8) concur in describing the Egyptians as the most learned and accurate of mankind in whatsoever concerned their native annals. The priests, Diodorus (i. 44) assures us, had transmitted in unbroken succession written descriptions of all their kings-their physical powers and disposition, and their personal exploits. The antiquity of writing in Egypt is no longer a subject of dispute. Lepsius (Book of the Dead, Leipzig, 1842, Pref. p. 17) found on monuments as early as the 12th dynasty, the hieroglyphic sign of the papyrus; and on the 4th that of the stylus and inkstand. The Egyptians themselves also

Of Manetho, of Sextus Julius Africanus, from whose chronicon, in five books, Eusebius derived a considerable portion of his own chronicon, of Georgius the Syncellus, of Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian mathematician, who treated largely of Egyptian chronology, accounts have been given in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, and to its columnns we must refer for the bibliography of Egyptian history. Lastly, we must point out the extreme value of the Hebrew scriptures and of Josephus among the records of the Nile-valley. The remote antiquity of Egyptian annals is not essentially an objection to their credibility. The Syncellus assigns 3555 years as the duration of Manetho's thirty dynasties. These being Egyptian years, are equivalent to 3553 Julian years, and, added to 339 B. C., when the thirtieth dynasty expired, give 3892 B. C. as the commencement of the reign of Menes, the founder of the monarchy. But although Bunsen and other distinguished Egyptologers are disposed to assign an historical personality to Menes, his very name, as the name of an individual man, seems suspicious. It too nearly resembles the Menu of the Indians, the Minyas and Minos of the Greeks, the Menerfa of the Etruscans, and the Mannus of the Germans in all which languages the name is connected with a rootMan- signifying "to think and speak" (see Quarterly Review, vol. 78, p. 149)—to be accepted implicitly as a personal designation.

The Pharaonic era of Egyptian history may be divided into three portions-the Old, the Middle, and the New monarchy. The first extends from the foundation of the kingdom in B. C. 3892 to the invasion of the Hyksos. The second from the conquest of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos and the establishment of an independent kingdom in the Thebaid, to the expulsion of the Hyksos. The third from the re-establishment of the native monarchy by Amosis to the final conquest by Cambyses in B. c. 525. (Kenrick, Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 110.)

(1.) The Old Monarchy. The chronology of this and the succeeding division of the Egyptian monarchy is beset with, at present, insurmountable difficulties; since, in the first place, there are no synchronisms in the annals of other countries to guide the inquirer, and in the next, we know not whether the dynasties in Manetho should be taken as a series, or whether he enumerates contemporaneous families of kings, some of whom reigned, at the same time, at Memphis, and others at Sais,