A General History for Colleges and High Schools

the river; hence Herodotus, in happy phrase, called the country "the gift of the Nile." The delta country was known to the ancients as Lower Eg

le, forms the first obstruction to navigation in passing up the river. The rapids found at this point are

e Nile, swollen by the heavy tropical rains about its sources, begins to rise in its lower parts late in June, and b

he accumulations about the monuments, has been raised seven feet during the last seventeen hundred years.] present the appearance of black mud-flats. Usually the plow is run lightly over the soft surface, but in some cases the grain is sown upon the undisturbed

tion: ANC

ew slight showers falling throughout the year. This dryness of the Egyptian air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in su

the cereals of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly. Thus favored in climate as well as in the matter of irrigation, Egypt became in early times the granary of the East. To it less favored countrie

der the Great (332 B.C.), are grouped into thirty-one dynasties. Thirty of these we find in the lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who l

that several of these families were reigning at the same time in the different cities of Upper and Lower Egypt; while others think that they all reigned at different epochs, and that the sum of the lengths of the several dynasties gives us the true date of

Tradition makes him the founder of Memphis, near the head of the Delta, the site of which capital he secured against the inundations of the Nile by vast dike

I., the Cheops of the Greeks, was the first great builder. To him we can now positively ascribe the building of the Great Pyramid, the largest of the Gi

d them with useless labor upon these monuments of their ambition. Tradition tells how the very memory of these monarchs was hated

st from view. When finally the valley emerges from the obscurity of this period, the old capital Memphis h

ents scattered throughout the country perpetuate the fame of the sovereigns of this illustrious house. Egyptian civ

ty, Egypt again suffered a great eclipse. Nomadic tribes from Syria crossed the eastern frontier of Egypt, took

ey were in contact, and in time they adopted the manners and culture of the Egyptians. It was probably during the supremacy of the Hyksos that the families of Israel found a refu

t 1650 B.C. The episode of the Shepherd Kings in Egypt derives great importance from the fact that these Asiatic conquerors were one of the mediums through which Egypti

acity, and gave the country a strong centralized government. They made Egypt in fact a great monarchy, an

about 1650-1400 B.C.).-T

was led by Amosis, or Ah

e first king of what is

eatest race of kings, it

upon t

a bound from their long depression under the domination of the Shepherd Kings. To free his empire from the danger of another invasion from Asia, Amosis

er of Egyptian history." During his reign the frontiers of the empire reached their greatest expa

KHITA: In the background, town

mberless. He built a great part of the temple of Karnak, at Thebes, the remains of which form the most ma

that of Thothmes III. as one of the great r

their fame as conquerors and builders. It is their deeds and works, in connection with those of the preceding dynasty

s) and their allies. The Hittites were a powerful non-Semitic people, whose capital was Carchemis

mns," in the Temple of Karnak, at Thebes (see illustration, p. 32). He also cut for himself in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, at the same place, the most beautiful and elaborate of all the rock-sepu

I. (From a photogr

s, in fact, accorded him the first place among all the Egyptian sovereigns, and made him the hero of innumerable stories. His long reign,

ing with them a celebrated treaty, in which the chief of the Hittites is called "The Great King of the Khita" (Hittites), and is formally recognized as in every respect the equal of the king of Egypt. Lat

mer dynasties had been permitted to settle in Lower Egypt; for this Nineteenth Dynasty, to which Rameses II. belongs, was the new king (dynasty) that arose "whi

OM SYRIA, with his chariot garnished with the head

turies, marked, indeed, by great vicissitudes in the fortunes of the Egyptian monarchs, yet c

ince, Psammetichus I. (666-612 B.C.), with the aid of Greek mercenaries from Asia Minor, succeeded in

it seems, of non-Egyptian origin, and owing his throne chiefly to the swords of Greek soldiers, was led to reverse the policy of the past, and to throw the valley open to the commerce and inf

Mediterranean nations. From this time forward Greek philosophers, as in the case of Pythagoras and of Plato, are represented as becoming pupils of the Egyptian priests; and without question th

Displeased with the position assigned Greek mercenaries in the army, the native Egyptian soldiers revolted, and two hundred thousand

ate commerce, he attempted to reopen the old canal dug by Seti I. and his son, which had become unnavigable. After the loss of one hundred and twen

acles could interpose no objections. The expedition, we have reason to believe, actually accomplished the feat of sailing around the continent; for Herodotus, in his account of the enterprise, says that the voyagers upon their return report

rity (see p. 77). The Egyptians, however, were restive under this foreign yoke, and, after a little more than a century, succeeded in throwing it off; but the country was again subjugated by the Persian king Artaxerxes III. (about 340 B.C.), and from that time unti

masters; and for three centuries the valley was the seat of the renowned Gr?co-Egyptian Empire of the

had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably