CHAPTER X.

THE MONUMENTAL HISTORY OF EGYPT.

PART II.

THE Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty will now require our attention. According to the Greek authors, this was the most celebrated of all the generations of kings that ever sat upon the throne of Egypt. The monuments fully confirm this account. There is scarcely a temple or palace in Egypt which has not been founded by this illustrious race of monarchs.

As the tablet of Abydos is the link by which the written and the monumental histories of ancient Egypt are connected together, and as this invaluable document principally respects the eighteenth dynasty, we give a few of the coincidences between it and the lists of Manetho, which establish the certainty of the connexion. The fifth legible ring in the second line of the tablet from the right,* constantly occurs on other monuments in connexion with a second ring. The two are here subjoined; they read together,

"Sun, or Pharaoh, lord of the region of Moue," 002-uc Amosis, that is, "son of the moon." The interpretation of the remainder of the tablet shows that this is the hieroglyphic name of Amosis, the last monarch of the seventeenth dynasty, who

* See page 179.

expelled the shepherds. He is also called by Manetho, Misphragmouthosis.*

The complete name of the ring which follows immediately to the right reads,

www

"Lord of the universe, (governor devoted to the sun,) lord of the diadems of Egypt, (Amenotph;") that is, "the consecrated to Amoun." The first monarch of the eighteenth dynasty is named by Manetho Amenoph.

The ring which follows reads, when completed,

"Lord of the universe, (the great sun devoted to the world,) lord of the diadems of Egypt, (like the sun Thothmos,") which means "the son of Thoth." The second monarch of this dynasty was Thothmosis, according to Manetho.

The seventh name from thence, the sixth from the right of the middle line, offers a still more remarkable coincidence : it reads, when complete,

"The king of an obedient people, (sun, lord of justice,) son of the sun, (Amenoph) governor of the region of purity and justice," (Egypt.) The eighth monarch of the eighteenth dynasty, in Manetho's lists, is Amenoph,

who was called also by the Greeks Memnon.†

Pausanias informs us, in his description of Attica, of a celebrated colossus at Thebes which emitted melodious sounds at sunrise, and which the Greeks called

* Eratosthenes explains that all the kings of Egypt had three or four names; and it appears from the monuments that this is also the case with private individuals. † G. Sync. Chronographia, p. 72, etc.

Memnon, the son of Aurora, (the morning;) but he adds, "The Thebans say that it is not the statue of Memnon, but of Phamenoph, one of their countrymen." The remains of this colossus still exist on the plain of Thebes, covered with Greek and Latin inscriptions, recording the visits of persons of all ranks, and at all periods of the domination of the Ptolemies and the emperors, to hear the mysterious sounds which issued from it. One of them reads thus: "I, Publius Balbinus, have heard Memnon or Phamenoph* uttering his divine sounds." On the base of this statue is inscribed in large hieroglyphic characters, of highly finished and perfect execution, the royal legend we are now considering. We cannot conceive of better evidence, either of the identity of this ancient monarch, or of the authenticity of the documents which establish it.†

The purport of the entire tablet having been to record the divine honours and gifts bestowed by Sesostris, by whose command it was engraven, upon the whole of his ancestry, the last line is entirely occupied with the repetitions of his name.

By the further aid of facts recorded on other monuments, a complete genealogical table of this illustrious line of warriors and statesmen has been made, which is here subjoined.

* Ph is the Egyptian definite article. The colossus was most probably named by

the Egyptians in common speech Phamenoph; that is, The Amenoph.

+ An interesting account of these inscriptions will be found in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. ii. part 1.

5th, Thothmosis 11., Mœris, son of Amense 12 9

1736

The monuments have preserved some record of the actions of every individual of this long succession of monarchs; so that they have added to human knowledge an important chapter in the world's history which had been entirely lost.

Amosis was the head of this great dynasty, who covered the entire face of their native country with wonders. Superb temples are said to have been erected to the local divinities in every city of Egypt by one or other of them; and their ruins, still existing, bear testimony to the truth of this account. They also crowded the plains of Thebes and Memphis with temples and palaces, the mutilated remains of which in the former city still set at defiance the powers of language to describe the sensations which the sight of them excites in the mind of the spectator, and force even from the most incredulous the confession that no imagination can conceive the combination of splendour and magnificence which must have overwhelmed the senses of him who, 3000 years ago, was privileged to enter the then hallowed precincts of Thebes in its glory.

The inspired narrative of the wealth of Egypt through Joseph's administration, solves the difficulty we otherwise find in accounting for the style of profuse magnificence of the public monuments of every description of the monarchs who reigned in the immediately succeeding period. Those who preceded and followed them (for the period is limited to the 346 years of the duration of this dynasty) fall greatly below them in these particulars. We have already considered those of their predecessors, of which, except the pyramids, the remains are small indeed. While their successors on the throne of Egypt for 1000 years afterwards found more than enough for the exercise of their energies in the vain attempt to finish the vast piles of building which their predecessors of the eighteenth dynasty had begun; so that some of them were destroyed by Cambyses the Persian, before they were finished, and others which escaped his