BUILDERS OF PYRAMIDS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 211, 30 May 1908, Page 10

BUILDERS OF PYRAMIDS.

MEMPHIS TO BE EXCAVATED. PROFESSOR PETRIE'S NEW TASK. Professor Pctrio has set. himself ono of tho most entrancing tasks to which a man could put his mind', He is to unearth the homo of tho builders of tho Pyramids, the placo which tradition gives as Moses' birthplace, where to-day tho palms wavo in tho sunshine, a very fairyland of beauty—Memphis. . A most interesting article in tho " Morning Post," which paper is promoting a fund to help this work, shows how the excavation of Momphis may fill up somo of the gaps in tho history of Egypt. From tho renaissance to tho close of tho eighteenth century the ancient world was- known only from tho records of Roman, Greek, and Hebrew literature. Three centuries of the study of so much of tho-so literatures us had survived had ended in doubt. Tho early history of Greece and Romo had come to bo regarded 1 as a mass of legend concealing facts unlikely over to bo ascertained and tho doubts extended also to the traditions of tho Semitic races. At tho. closo of the eighteenth century the openiiig-up of relations between East and AYcst and the riso of the experimental' mothods of natural science gave to historical ■studies a new impulse not yet exhausted. Tho eighteenth century scholars knew Egypt from tho literary tradition. Tliey knew tho Alexandria of Caesar's adventures and of Antony's inglorious end; the Alexandria of tho idyll of Theocritus in which tho Syraousan ladies go to. see tho image of Adonis and to hear the Greek prima donna sing her hymn. ' SIXTY CENTURIES:. . They wore acquainted with Alexander's conquost and his founding of his new capital; they woro familiar with # the Fifth Century Egypt of: Herodotus,' with his stories of Psaminetichus and Amasis, and of the conquest by tho Persian, Cambyses. . They had read in-. Herodotus that Homer lived four hundred years bofore his time, and they had read in Homer of "Egyptian Thebos, whore in tho houses is the greatest store'of wealth, Thebes witli a hundred gates, through each of which pass out two hundred men with horses and chariots," p.nd of the. presents which 'Helen had received from Egypt, a silver basket with golden rim and silver, wheels, and of the Egyptian drugs which she had in store. Last, but not least, they know.' the ■ Egypt o'f\ tho books of Genesis and Exodus, tho land, which Joseph administered as,' Vizier, and from which tho children of Israel set out to seek the desert of Sinai. They had besidos a number of excerpts from Manotho, an Egyptian priest'of the Third Century 8.C., with his list of Kings arranged in thirty dynasties. But tho most of these dynasties scorned t to be mythical, with no more substance than the seven kinps of Rome or the fabled, house of l'riam. When Napoleon harangued his soldiers beforo his battle with tho Mameluke horsemen, hp expressed his sense of the antiquity of Egypt by saying: "From the summits of yonder pyramids forty centuries aro watching-you.". In such a case Napoleon did not hesitate to exaggerate for effect; but his forty centuries, according to the Egyptologists of to-day, were twonty centuries short of the, truth. THE ROSETTA SLAB. Ono of Napoleon's officers found at Rosetta a slab, now in tho British Museum, jnscribed in Greek and in two styles of Egyptian writing. That slab, ah Englishman,, Young, used as a koy to,',tho' hieroglyphics,.and his work was carried'lfurther by.' a named Champolliqn.'y SincC' their time .tho inscripr tions 011 tlio' monuments that aro spread over tho Nile.vvalley froln the Fourth Cataract to the Delta -haVe been' collected and deciphered, and the lists of - Manetho have been at many points doufirnied. : : Pyramids, ' tombs, 'aud tomplcs record, tlio names; of their '; builders, and from thom lists of.kings hay.ojboen.compiled which reveal a government, a' law, and an ordor going back five thousand years beforo tho Christian era. This decipherment of tho monuments marks the second period in tho study of ancient Egypt. ' . A third process was to; be applied to that country, that'of excavation, which had been so .fruitful in Mesopotamia, in tho Troad, at Mycenao, and in Crete. By using the pick for tlio exploration, of ancient sites numerous "monuments have been brought to' light,- and works of-, art, inscriptions, and even manuscripts havo been discovered in great abundance.. The due/interpretation of these objects has supplemented; and extended tho knowledge ; obtained from'-' tho 'monuments, and makes it seem probablo that the search, if continued systematically, may lead to the recovery of the ' complete list of Egyptian Kings, to,tho settlement of their dates, and to a continuous knowledge of tho life of tho people going back oven to tho Stone Ago. PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS. The Pharaoh of tho Exodus is now generally identified with Merenptah, who roigued towards the close of ;thc '.thirteenth Century 8.C., and whoso body and portrait statuo aro among rooent discoveries. It seems well established that there were Kings of Egypt •of whom stoue .records yet exist who Jived as long before Merenptah as Merenptah before our own King Edward Vll. In Merenplah's timo tlio Great Pyramid was 2500 years old, .audi- for centuries before ' its builder, Cheops, Upper' and Loiter Egypt had been part 3 of a x united monarchy. 'Tho Pyramids were) the work of tho' Fourth Dynasty, whicli had . its seat at; Memphis, the original capital, and represented a great civilisation purely Egyptian, ■ with; little traco of foreign intercourse. • The Twelfth Dynasty (2775J-25G5' B.C.)' had its seat at Thebes, and ..was in commercial and other relations with the countries of, tlio Aegean and with Crete,' so that tho fixing of precise dates'for its Kings is 'a matter of much importance for the early history of European civilisation.. THE SETTLERS OF THE NILE . VALLEY. Tho Eightoonth Dynasty (1788-1580 b.0.) was a raco of kings who created a great Empire boyond the borders of Egypt proper, settling tho'Nile Valley as far as the Fourth . Cataract and conquering the .whole of Palestine'and. Syria to tho Upper Euphrates and tho :.'plairi • between the Euphrates and the Orontes. Of tho conquest of Syria , there are contemporary records on the monuments of theso kings, and a series of documents discovered at Tell ol Amarna contains correspondence between the Egyptian Kings and thoir contemporaries on the Euphrates and in Syria. This dynasty the period of Egypt's power aud splendour, which were 011 the wane during the rule of the next or Nineteenth Dynasty, 'to which., belonged Ramees 11, tho Pharaoh of tho Oppression, and, his successor Merenptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. . The chief difficulty of Egyptian history lies in two obscure periods which precede the Twelfth and the-Eigh-teenth' Dynasties. On the period beforo the Eightoonth Dynasty somo light has been thrown by the excavations of Prof. Petrio at Yehudiyeh in 1906, when he unearthed a great camp of tho Hyksos or Shepherd Kings. For' tho earlier period of obscurity it. is in the .site of Memphis that there is tho best hope of discovering fresh. sources of knowledge.