Amun-Nitocris, or Neit-thor (for the guttural is written either with a TH or a c), the last Memphite sovereign, then reigned over Thebes. Eratosthenes says that she reigned for her husband. She was handsome among women and brave among men, and one of the more powerful sovereigns of Egypt; she was a great builder, and set up two obelisks and two small temples at Thebes, and built the smallest of the three large pyramids near Memphis. Henceforth all Egypt was under one sceptre.

Thebes.

Mesphra-Thothmosis II. was most likely the husband of Nitocris; he outlived her, and in many cases had her name cut out of the Wilkinson's monuments, and his own carved in the place of it. He added to the buildings at Thebes, and built at Samneh in Ethiopia.

Thothmosis III. also added to the buildings at Thebes, and built at Memphis, at Heliopolis, at Samneh, and at Talmis in Ethiopia. In his tomb at Thebes, which, like those of the other kings, is a set of spacious rooms tunnelled into the hill, is a painting of men of the several conquered nations bringing gifts to the king. There are Egyptians; there are negroes bearing ivory, apes, and leopardskins; there are Ethiopians with rings, hides, apes, leopards, ivory, ostrich-eggs and feathers, a camelopard, hounds with handsome collars, and long-horned oxen; and there are men of a white nation, with short beards and white dresses, bringing gloves, vases, a bear, an elephant, and a chariot with horses. At Thebes there is a brick arch with this king's name upon it; and, though there are vaulted rooms of an earlier time, this is perhaps the earliest arch known.

There are two chains of reasoning by which we may hope to fix the date of this reign: first, Herodotus says that Moeris, a king who governed Memphis, lived nine hundred years before his time; secondly, Theon says that Menophres was king when the calendar was reformed, and when the dog-star rose heliacally on the first day of

Wilkinson's
Thebes.

Manetho.

Exodus, xii.37.

the month of Thoth, or B.c. 1321. On which we remark-first, that Moeris and Menophres were most likely a Thothmosis, as they are nearer to Mesphres than to any other name; second, that the figure of Thothmosis III. is often drawn with a palm-branch, the hieroglyphic for 'year,' in each hand, which may be meant to point out that he made some change in the length of the civil year; third, that Plutarch says that the god Thoth, who may in this case have been meant for Thothmosis, taught the Egyptians the true length of the year. These reasons are perhaps not very strong; but in a part of the history where we find so few traces of chronology, we follow any thing which seems as if it would guide us.

Amunothph II. has left his name upon temples at Apollinopolis Parva, at Eilethyas, and at Elephantine, of all of which he was most likely the builder. The sculptures in his tomb are in the best style of Egyptian art, for borders, for vases, and for the human figure. This seems to have been the king who drove the Israelites out of Egypt. He was warned by the priests, says the Egyptian historian, to cleanse the country of the lepers who were working in the quarries on the east side of the Nile. They had then risen in arms under the guidance of a priest of Heliopolis, named Osarsiph [or Joseph], who afterwards changed his name to Moses. He made laws for his countrymen, and bound them by an oath not to worship the gods and sacred animals of Egypt.

The Jews marched out of the Delta, in number six hundred thousand men, beside women and children. After leaving the head of the Red Sea, they turned southward, along the toast, to Mount Sinai, and then northward, by Petra, towards Canaan; and with them went out a crowd of Arabs, who were part of the Phenician herdsmen of the Delta, and who are called Mixed People by the Jewish writers.

plate 80.

Thothmosis IV. built the small temple between the fore-legs of Hieroglyphics the great Sphinx near Memphis; but it may be doubted whether the rock was carved into the form of this huge monster in his reign, or at an earlier time. He built at El Berkel, the capital of Ethio- Wilkinson's pia; and in the sculptures on the walls of a temple at Silsilis he is being carried in a palanquin, surrounded by his fan-bearers, and receiving the gifts of the conquered nations.

Amunothph III. seems to have built more in Ethiopia than any other Egyptian king; he also began the temple of Luxor; but he is most known by his colossal statue at Thebes, called the statue of Memnon, which is sixty feet high though sitting, and which Strabo, Pausanias, and so many other Greek and Roman travellers, heard utter its far-famed musical sounds at sunrise.

Of Amunmai Anamek we know little beyond his statue in the British Museum; and of Rameses I. nothing but his tomb at Thebes.

Amunmai Amunaan, or Osirei I., began the palaces at Abydos and at Old Quorneh, and made great additions to the temple of Karnak. The whole of his sculptures and buildings are remarkably beautiful, and in the best style of art. His tomb is at Thebes; and the sarcophagus which it once held is now in Sir John Soane's

museum.

This king seems to have been successful in his wars, and among the paintings on the walls of his tomb is a procession of the several conquered nations bringing their gifts.

Rameses II., or the Great, was the king under whom Egypt reached its greatest height in arms, in arts, and in wealth. His palace at Thebes yielded to no building in the world for beauty and costliness. Its spacious rooms, in the middle open to the sky, but with roofs resting upon columns round the sides, were standing in all their glory when Hecatæus travelled in Upper Egypt, and its

Thebes.

Diod. Sic. lib. i.

Tacitus, Annal. lib. ii.

Diod. Sic. lib. i. 49.

ruins are even now looked at with wonder by our travellers: it was called the Memnonium, from the king's first name, Amun-mai, or Mi-amun, which the Greeks changed into Memnon. He added to the temple of Luxor, and set up two obelisks in front of it, one of which is now at Paris. The temple of Osiris, and the palace called the Memnonium at Abydos, which were begun by his father, were for the most part built in this reign. His statues and obelisks are found in all parts of Egypt, and lead us to call this the Augustan, or when speaking of Egypt we ought perhaps to say the Philadelphian, age of Coptic art: it had reached its greatest beauty, and was not yet overloaded with ornament.

The sculptures on the walls of the Memnonium at Thebes show the king's victories over people of the Tartar, Arab, Ethiopian, and Negro races; and the hieroglyphics, which were read to Germanicus by one of the priests, recounted his conquests of the Libyans, Ethiopians, Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Scythians, Syrians, Armenians, Cappadocians, Bithynians, and Lycians, together with the weight of gold and silver, and the other gifts, which these nations sent to Thebes as their yearly tribute.

The population of the country may be counted at five millions and a half, as there were seven hundred thousand men able to carry arms; and the gold and silver mines alone were said to bring in each year the unheard-of sum of three million two hundred thousand minæ, or seven millions sterling.

After the reigns of three other kings, about whom we know but little, came Rameses III., whose palace at Medinet Abu, and other buildings and historical sculptures, prove that his reign fell very little short of that of Rameses II. in wealth and conquests.

He was followed by eight or ten other kings of the family, and most of them of the name, of Rameses; but, during their reigns,

SHISHANK.

11 Upper Egypt was falling and Lower Egypt rising in trade and power. Few of these kings held Lower Egypt; some were even vassals of the kings who then rose in Tanis and Bubastus; and when the Grecian chiefs were fighting against Troy, before Homer had called Egyptian Thebes the richest and greatest city in the world, its glory had already passed—its sun had set even before the day-break of Greek history; and before the Jebusites had been conquered by David, and Jerusalem made the capital of Judæa, Thebes had ceased to give laws to Egypt.

We are unable to show how the line of Theban kings joins that of Lower Egypt; but the first king of Lower Egypt who sat upon the throne of Rameses was Shishank of Bubastus, who has left the history of his conquests in Asia and Ethiopia carved upon the great temple of Karnak, by the side of those of Rameses II.; and on the figure of one of the conquered kings is written "The king of Judah,' in boast of his well-known conquest of Rehoboam.

Solomon had married the daughter of an Egyptian king, most likely of Shishank, who, having taken the city of Gaza, gave it to his son-in-law as his daughter's dower.

The trade of Thebes seems to have been at all times large. When navigation by sea was dangerous and little known, and not so cheap as caravans through the desert, there was no carrying trade in the world that could vie for ease and speed with that on the Nile, which brought the wealth of India and Arabia from the ports on the Red Sea to the coasting vessels of the Mediterranean. But when Memphis was at war with Thebes the trade of the Nile was stopt, and the caravans of Arabia then sought Jerusalem and Tyre, through the city of Petra; and Solomon and Hiram fitted out their ships on the Red Sea.

B. C. 970.

2 Chron. xii.

1 Kings, ix.