tion of the reigning family could save him from confutation, it would not be difficult to understand that he would not have hesitated to tamper with the work of an almost unknown historian dealing with a remote age. But the passage is so self-contradictory, and so contradicted by what follows it, that it may be that Josephus had an inaccurate copy of Manetho before him. was the invasion and conquest of Egypt by | from the hand of a historian who had a the Shepherds. much finer sense. If Josephus were capa. The third great period of Egyptian ble of so bold a falsification of contempohistory which now opens has left its rec-rary history, when nothing but the protec ords not at Memphis or Thebes, but at a third great site, Tanis in the Delta, the Zoan of the Bible. Here the excavations of M. Mariette have yielded results as interesting and unexpected as those in the Troad and at Mycena. We now know the race of the Shepherds and their place in Egyptian history, not that chronological place which students are still looking for in vain, but the place in the series of influences which form the true history of each country. Much we have now to unlearn, many old theories to discard, but at length there is a sure base on which discovery and inquiry are building up a solid and lasting structure. art. 66 The proper mode of dealing with this difficult but most interesting period of Egyptian history, the age, as far as we know, of the first great war, the first inroads of the Easterns into Egypt, is that of M. Chabas, who has collected all the native documentary evidence. His main The story of the conquest and rule of results may here be given with such addiEgypt by the Shepherds, the great convul- tional evidence as may be gleaned from sion which overthrew the old kingdom, and M. Mariette's discoveries. M. Chabas's by stirring national feeling brought the paper is an admirable criticism of the empire into light, is told in a large frag-written data: he does not, however, deal ment of Manetho's history given by Jose- with the not less valuable evidence of phus. Until lately it was accepted without question. But the discoveries of M. Mariette, and the researches of other scholars in ancient Egyptian documents, have shown that this story, though no doubt in many respects correct, contains such serious errors, that it is not to be trusted where the monuments and other Egyptian records are silent and cannot be cited to confirm or correct it. We have only to lament the vast erudition that has been diverted from the fruitful study of the earlier documents for the vain attempt to build history of these unsound materials, and to ask how it can be that the Egyptian historian, generally trustworthy, here fails us. Probably the true answer is that Josephus writing controversially, and wishing to make the Shepherds the same as the Iraelites, has wilfully altered his authority. In an age of entire indifference to any but Greek and Roman history, when, moreover, books were only published in manuscript, and it was a serious matter to write, perhaps from Rome to Alexandria, to verify a passage, authors were not as safe as now. Certainly Josephus is not beyond suspicion of dishonesty. His character of Titus is contrary to the general tenor of history; and if Dr. J. Bernays is right in conjecturing that the ecclesiastical historian Sul picius Severus has preserved in epitome a lost part of the fragmentary fifth book of the Histories" of Tacitus, we have a direct contradiction of the favorable portrait which Josephus draws of his patron, LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1316 We may begin by discarding the timehonored name Hyksos. The etymologies given of it in the fragment of Manetho cannot, as M. Chabas has noticed, have been given by any one acquainted with the ancient language, and the name is not found elsewhere. The appellation in Manetho's list, "Shepherds," is more probable, and leads to the Egyptian Menti-u by which these foreigners seem to be called, and which certainly means Shepherds," though it is not certain that this is its sense when used ethnically. Unfortunately the word Menti-u is a generic term. It belongs to a class of appellations given to the hereditary enemies of the Egyptians, which usually, if not always, have a wide extent. Thus it occurs with the Amu or Shemites (?) and the negroes (Chabas, "Papyrus Magique Harris," 49). In an inscription by an Egyptian priest who was a partisan of the Persians, Darius Codomannus is called ruler of Menti, and the Greeks and Persians are called the Ionians (the corresponding Egyptian word having a wide extension) and Menti (Brugsch, "Geogr. Inschr." i. 40, 41. Pl. lviii.). Thus, the Menti-u would seem sometimes to mean nothing more definite than Asiatics, as Dr. Brugsch suggests. At present we can go no further in this line of inquiry. For the race of the Shepherds we must look to other evidence. The great result of M. Mariette's researches at Tanis, or Zoan, is that this was a chief city, proba- | ble to illustrate this event from the Bible. bly the capital, of one of the Shepherd It is, however, worthy of notice that dynasties, whose sculptures, though appro- the group of Rephaite tribes were settled priated by later kings, have a distinctive in southern Palestine, and that in the Book character of their own, which gives us the of Numbers the Anakite (or Rephaite) national type. This type, as M. Mariette city, Hebron, is apparently connected, in remarks, is still preserved in the popula- its foundation, with that of Zoan. tion of the neighboring country, whose peculiarities had already attracted the notice of ancient travellers, as we may judge from the novelists Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. The type on the Shepherd monuments is distinctly Shemite, of a character distinguished from that of the Assyrians, as seen on their monuments, by a more marked cast of features. It represents the same vigorous, muscular race, a race with far less refinement but much more energy than the Egyptians. If there were any doubt that the Shep herds were Shemites, it would be removed by the numerous Semitic geographical names to be found in the east of Lower Egypt, and by the circumstance that under the nineteenth dynasty, between two and three centuries after the expulsion of the foreigners, the Semitic element in Egypt was so strong that it became the fashion not only to use Semitic words in place of Egyptian, but even to give Egyptian words Semitic forms. Although we thus know the race of these invaders, we cannot tell to what branch of it they belonged, whether they were Phoenicians or Arabs, Manetho suggesting both, or whether they migrated from beyond the Euphrates. The later geographical use of the terms Menti-u and Menti suggests Asia to the exclusion of Arabia, but of course does not forbid the notion that they were Arabs of Syria or Mesopotamia. It is easy to speculate on a dynastic change which may have caused a migration to Egypt, or to suggest conditions pointing to the possibility of a regular invasion by a powerful Asiatic state, but these are mere conjectures which can produce no trustworthy results. And it may be added that we are equally without a trace of the later history of the Shepherds who left Egypt. It may, however, be that but few really went away in a body. Manetho's account may be exaggerated. All we know from trustworthy sources is that, after the final conquest of the foreigners in Egypt, and apparently while still at war with them, the king of Egypt took the city of Sharuhana or Sharuhen in southernmost Palestine. This gives the direction of the march of the Shepherds out of Egypt, which is that which we should expect they would have taken. We are una We cannot yet conjecture the details of the history of the Shepherds in Egypt, or the duration of their dominion, for it is not until about its last century that we have a basis of fact. It is probable that the first conquest and early rule was marked by the violence of which Manetho speaks. There is in this period an absence of monuments which is strong negative evidence of an age of suffering. The dislike with which the Egyptians speak of the Shepherds cannot, however, be said to prove anything. It is their customary tone as to foreigners, and would not be least strong when these were foreign enemies ruling Egypt. It is probable that the Shepherds ruled all Egypt until a national rising caused the war of independence, which, after many years, ended in the expulsion of the foreigners by Aahmes, or Amosis, the head of the eighteenth dynasty. Manetho's statement as to the extent of the foreign rule and its termination in consequence of a revolt led by a king of the Thebaïs, is confirmed and illustrated by a most interesting Egyptian fragment contained in a papyrus, which probably told how that conflict arose. This document relates how the Shepherd-king Apapi ruled all Egypt, and having determined to worship Set alone, built a temple and instituted festivals. He accordingly sent a message, evidently on the subject of this religious innovation, to Sekenen-ra, prince of Upper Egypt, a Theban dynast, not here designated by the usual titles of the pharaohs. It appears that the foreign chief conceded the admission of the worship of Amen-ra in his new temple. The deliberations caused the greatest anxiety to the tributary Egyptian prince. It may be that much more is meant than the local worship of the territory occupied by the Shepherds, but of this we cannot be certain. The story breaks off, the ancient scribe having begun to copy another document. In the ruins of the great temple of Tanis M. Mariette found the name of Apapi with the titles of an Egyptian pharaoh. The story of the Egyptian papyrus is confirmed by the circumstance that at this period Set was the chief object of worship here, whereas as late as the time of the thirteenth dynasty, probably not long be fore the Shepherd invasion, his position | Aahmes, head of the eighteenth dynasty, was held by Ptah. and his successors. He took part in the siege of the stronghold of the Shepherds, Avaris, attacked by water and land, which fell before the fifth year of the king's reign, who then passed into southern Palestine, and captured Sharuhana. The chronological place of Apapi is probably not more than a century before the expulsion of the Shepherds. M. Chabas argues that of the three kings bearing the prenomen or official name Sekenen-ra, the one mentioned in the papyrus was the From the simple recital of Aahmes we first, and the last was the immediate pred- learn that the last effort of the Shepherds ecessor of Aahmes, the conqueror of the was not so important as Josephus states it strangers. He notices the significant fact to have been in his citation of Manetho. that, while each has the same prenomen The king's rewards were given for the and the same name Ta, the epithet follow-capture of a few prisoners. Nor do we ing the name increases in force with the second and third, the three being called, "the great," ""the very great," and "the very victorious."* There can be very little doubt that the outline of the war of independence is thus shown. The papyrus relates how a difference on a religious question arose with one of these kings, whom we may reasonably conjecture to be the first of the three bearing the name Ta, and the Shepherd-king Арарі. He raises and maintains the standard of revolt; the next king wins greater successes; the last of his line expels the Shepherds out of all Egypt except the north-east, leaving the completion of the enterprise to Aahmes, or Amosis, head of the eighteenth dynasty. The story in the papyrus would seem to show that the Shepherds, having adopted Egyptian civilization, selected Set the god of Lower Egypt, who was also supposed by the Egyptians to be the special protector of their eastern enemies, and thus identified with Baal. This was, however, accompanied by an innovation, the attempt to exclude all other worship at the chief temple, perhaps in all Egypt, as though Set had been selected to represent the Baal worshipped by the Shepherd tribe. The institution of new festivals is a proof how thorough the innovation was. So much we may infer as to the origin of the war of liberation. Another document relates its close. This is one of those memoirs which are the most truly historical and valuable of all Egyptian records, that of Aahmes, son of Abna at El-Kab, on the site of the city of Eileithyia. Aahmes relates that he was born in this place under the reign of Sekenen-ra, whom M. Chabas decides to be the last of the three kings having that prenomen. He then records his services under According to Manetho Apophis was either the last or last but one of the Shepherd Kings of either the fifteenth or the seventeenth dynasty. Thus it is not impossible that he placed Apapi immediately or two reigns before the eighteenth dynasty. hear anything of an honorable capitulation being granted to the Shepherds: on the contrary, the city is taken, and the war is carried on into Palestine, evidently in the form of a pursuit. This is all we as yet know of the events of the Shepherd dominion. The happy discovery of a new memoir, or another historical papyrus, may add to these facts. As yet there is no other point that may be discussed without risk of confutation from new documents, the constant fate of spec ulation in Egyptology; but it must be added that to have proved the high civilization of the Shepherds towards the close of their rule, and their influence in Egyptian history, is a gain far more valuable than any amount of detail. In nothing has Manetho, as reported, been so signally contradicted as in the proofs the monuments of the Shepherds afford that latterly the foreigners accepted Egyptian civilization. The result was of the greatest consequence to Egypt, for it firmly planted there a strong Shemite population, which was vigorous enough in quality, although assimilated to the nation in manners, to give back to the Egyptians, as a kind of return for the evils of conquest, a new element of thought and language. For a time after the subjugation of the Shepherds we have no trace of them; probably the early pharaohs of the empire, those of the eighteenth dynasty, repressed the strangers from a natural fear of their reasserting their power. The next line, the house of the Ramessides, comprising the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties, had no such policy. It has even been suspected that their worship of Set, the divinity of Lower Egypt and especially also of the Shepherds, and the tendency to a Semitic rather than an Ethiopian type in their portraits, indicate that they came of a stock partly of Shepherd origin. They rebuilt Tanis, the foreign capital, and greatly beautified its chief temple. Connected with this policy is the fashion already noticed prevalent among the scribes 7 of this time of Semiticizing Egyptian. | Curiously enough this influence and sympathy is connected with a great literary activity. In no age do the Egyptian scribes seem to have been so prolific. The Egyptians were always literary for the sake of preserving history; at this time they appear to have been literary for the mere pleasure of writing. In our present state of knowledge, the contrast between this and other times is most remarkable; and if later discoveries do not modify the facts, we may consider the literature of the Ramses period as having been fertilized by Semitic literature, as the Latin in the last days of the republic and the beginning of the empire owed its development to Greek. Of course it might be said that the foreign writers or speakers who changed for a time the Egyptian style, and probably influenced it permanently, were dwellers beyond Egypt, but it is far more likely that they were settled in that country. It is, indeed, not probable that they were either enemies or newly-conquered subjects. It is far more likely that they were fellow-countrymen speaking another language and with a literature perhaps unwritten of their own. No race has been more literary but less monumental than the Shemite. The most destructive criticism must allow a great antiquity to Hebrew literature. The Arabs must have cultivated poetry for ages before they wrote out their intricately measured odes. If the Shepherds in Egypt had this true Shemite faculty, the problem before us receives its solution. The Shepherd period has another remarkable characteristic in its influence on the Egyptians. It was the real cause of the empire. A national war of independence formed the military qualities that, when the country was free, could no longer resist the desire to carry the national arms into the enemy's land. The Egypt of the empire is no longer the Egypt of the old Memphite and Theban kings: extension of territory is desired, not only for purposes of commerce, but also for the gratification of ambition. A material aid to these designs was afforded by the introduction of the horse and the war-chariot. Both are unknown in Egypt before the eighteenth dynasty; both are used by its first king, at least in the final campaigns against the Shepherds, and thenceforward became common. There can be little doubt that the Shepherds brought the horse into Egypt, and so afforded the Egyptians a means without which they could never have made distant conquests. REGINALD STUART POOLE. From The Cornhill Magazine. THE DUTIES OF IGNORANCE. THE question what is the right attitude of mind to be maintained in regard to subjects on which we are at once deeply interested and very imperfectly informed, is one of considerable practical importance for most of us. Every decently educated person must be conscious of great tracts of ignorance lying on all sides of the subjects he has really studied, if not of dark chasms running right across those very subjects themselves. Education, indeed, seems rather to increase than to lessen the sense of ignorance. It reveals as many uncertainties as it removes. And the increased diffusion of knowledge which has taken place of late years tends greatly to confusion, and makes the art of groping our way among doubts every day more indispensable. Every year the machinery for spreading news over the length and breadth of the land becomes more complete and effective, and the flood of discussion of all sorts of subjects penetrates more and more thoroughly into the most secluded corners. It is easy If the subjects which are thus thrust upon our attention were matters of purely speculative interest, we might be content with carving out for ourselves a certain portion for careful study; leaving the rest to flow idly past, without disturbing ourselves about what we could not thoroughly understand. To recognize the limits of our knowledge, and suspend our judgment when imperfectly informed, would be all that was required. But this world is not so peacefully ordered as that. We cannot calmly suspend our judgment when our dearest interests are at stake. to avow our ignorance, but it does not therefore cease to torment us. For the last five-and-twenty years, wars and rumors of wars, in which, if not actually engaged, we have been keenly interested, have succeeded each other almost without intermission. Famines, and pestilences, and revolutions, and financial crises have filled up the intervals, and fatal accidents of the most extensive and dramatic kind send a succession of shocks through the length and breadth of the land. Each of these events, whose reality the most scep tical cannot doubt, raises a multitude of questions which the most ignorant and apathetic can hardly put aside altogether, and on which the best informed are widely and apparently hopelessly at variance. Besides passing events, and the burning questions which they raise, the air is full of controversies of the most vehement | is the remedy? How can such vulnerable and penetrating kind on all the fundamen- wayfarers learn to encounter the difficulties tal doctrines of faith and morals. Proba- of a path in which they can neither see bly there is scarcely a child out of the nurs- their way nor stand still? ery, or a day-laborer able to read, who does not know that the existence of God and of a future life, and the distinction between right and wrong, and therefore everything else that we have ever held sacred, are now treated on all sides as open questions. Who can possibly pass through such times unmoved? Can the loftiest intelligence attempt to solve, or anything short of brutal insensibility to ignore, such questions as these? Can we calmly suspend our judgment and rest in our ignorance, while all the dearest interests of our friends, our nation, and our souls, are, as it were, ranged in battle array | before our eyes? And yet, what task could be more hopeless than the attempt to disentangle and to deal with all these agitating perplexities? Any one of the subjects I have referred to is vast enough to. engross a lifetime; and each of us has many other pressing matters of more immediate concern to attend to besides. Must we then resign ourselves to a chronic state of anxious uncertainty? Is there no solid ground for the soles of our feet, and no art by which the ignorant may steady themselves, so as to pursue at least a useful, if not a peaceful course, in the midst of the storm? - The What we want, both for peace and for usefulness, is to clear a space, however small, within which, at all events, order shall reign. We want to be centres of light, not of darkness of clearness, and not of confusion. We want not to try to grasp a greater number of facts than we can rightly place in our minds; and yet, not to shut our minds to any facts which ought to affect our conclusions. difficulty is how to choose when by the hypothesis we have not knowledge enough to choose by. Unless we leave out of account some facts and some whole subjects, and a vast proportion of the opinions we hear, we have no chance of coming to any conclusions at all; but how are the ignorant to decide which are the facts, the opinions, and the subjects which they may safely disregard? Take for instance that pleasing collec.. tion of perplexities which we describe as the Eastern question. There are probably few of us who have not by this time some rather strong feeling on the subject, but how many of us can give any intelligent and consistent justification of that feeling? What proportion of those who are in the habit of discussing the question have ever taken the trouble to consider what are the facts it would be necessary to know in order to form a fair judgment about it? It is easy to say that one does not pretend to have followed it from the first, or to be fully qualified to pronounce upon all its parts; but this general avowal of comparative ignorance certainly does not prevent the use of strong language and excited feeling. It is not altogether easy to say to what extent it ought to check either feeling or speech. If no one ever took sides on public questions of this kind without mastering complicated historical, geographical, and political questions in all their details, we should have to leave our affairs even much more than we do in the I believe that the duties of ignorance ignorance which cannot be uninterested, but would fain not be prejudiced or obstructive deserve more careful attention than they often receive. Those who are liable to find themselves at any moment out of their depth should lose no time in learning to swim. Where roads may fail we must learn to read the stars and to use the compass. And surely there is a faculty by which some people contrive to take their bearings in the midst of perplexities which they have no means of clearing up; a faculty which can be cultivated, and which is better worth cultivation than many of which we think more. Some peo-hands of a few experts. Public opinion, ple are so happily gifted with this quality -call it common sense, mother-wit, judgment, instinct, veracity, force of character, or what you will that they go steadily on their way in what looks like actual unconsciousness of the bewildering confusion of the world and its ways. But for those who are not so armed, for those who feel their hearts burdened and their spirits wearied, and their very appetite for knowledge quenched by perpetual uncertainties, what instead of being the strongest, would be about the weakest of influences in all large questions, especially in questions of foreign and colonial policy. It is evident that, according to our usages at least, there are some legitimate substitutes for complete information. We are all familiar enough with the use of them in practice, but we might use them much more intelligently, and to much better purpose, if we were a little clearer about them in theory. |