canon in the books of the minstrels. That national songs were also in vogue is shown by the monuments (
p. 222). Diodorus told us above that the achievements of Sesostris were celebrated in poetry (
p. 144). The description of a deed of arms of Ramses II. which he must have regarded as of considerable importance has been preserved. The battle he fought with the Cheta in the fifth year of his reign (
p. 152), he caused to be represented in the rock temple at Abu Simbel and in the Ramesseum, and a description of it is engraved in these temples, as at Luxor and Beth-el-Walli, and in the walls of the great temple at Karnak. It is found in still greater detail in a papyrus of the British Museum.
[284] At the end is the observation that the scribe Pentaur composed it in the seventh year of the reign of Ramses II. In this poem we are told that the chief of the Cheta had come with his archers and chariots, three men on each chariot. North-west of Kadesh they lay in ambush. The king, urging on his chariot, pressed into the midst of the miserable Cheta. He found himself surrounded by 2,500 chariots. "My bowmen and my chariots have abandoned me, this is what the king said; none of them is here to fight beside me. What is the will of my father Ammon? Is he a father who denies his son? Or have I followed my own thoughts? Did I not set forth at thy command; has not thy mouth led my armies, and thy counsel guided them? Have I not celebrated many brilliant festivals, and filled thy house with booty? Thirty thousand bulls I have sacrificed with odorous herbs and perfumes of all kinds. I have built thee temples of stone, I bring obelisks from Elephantine, and cause the everlasting stones to be carried down. For thee—the great ships swim upon the sea, to bring thee the tribute of the nations. Has the like been done before? Ruin on him who opposes thee: salvation to him who comprehends thee, Ammon. On thee I call. I am alone before thee in the midst of unknown nations. My bowmen and chariots left me when I called; no one heard me when I cried for help. But I choose Ammon before thousands of bowmen and millions of chariots. The devices of men are nothing; Ammon will deliver from them. These words echoed in Hermonthis. Ra comes to him who calls upon him. He reaches to thee his hand. He flies to thee, Ramses Miamun. I am with thee, I am thy father, the sun, and my hand is with thee. Their hearts shall waver in their breasts and all their limbs shall fail. They shall not shoot their arrows; their lances they shall not be able to hold. The chief of the Cheta sent princes, the prince of Aratus (Aradus) and the prince of Kirkamischa (Karchemish). My charioteer was weak, and a great terror came upon his limbs. He said, Brave king, hold, and let us save the breath of our lives. What can we do, noble lord, Ramses Miamun? Mark what his majesty answered to his charioteer. Courage! Stablish thine heart, my charioteer. Like the divine hawk, I will swoop into their midst, they shall be overthrown and hewn down into the dust. Ammon were no god if he glorified not my face before their countless hosts. The king pressed into the midst of the miserable Cheta, six times he pressed into their midst. My bowmen and charioteers came at the hour of evening from their camp: they found the whole region covered with dead bathed in their blood. His holiness answered his army and the captains who had not fought. Ye did not well to leave me alone in the midst of the enemies. I have fought, I have beaten back thousands of enemies, and I was alone. The horses which drew me were 'Might in Thebes,' and 'Rest in the upper land.' As soon as I am within my royal gates, I command that they have corn every day before the god Ra. When the earth again became light, he began the conflict again; he dashed into the battle like a bull, which hurls himself upon geese, and with him the mighty lion beside his horses. Rage inflamed all his limbs. They were hewn in pieces before his mares. The chief of the miserable Cheta sent to call upon the great name of his majesty. Thou art the sun, the god of both worlds, thou art Sutech the great conqueror, the son of heaven. Baal is in all thy limbs. Terror is upon the land of Cheta; thou hast possessed thyself of their inwards for ever. The slave said, as he spoke to Pharaoh: Since Ammon has granted to thee that Egypt and the nation of the Cheta shall be slaves at thy feet, and Ra has granted thee the dominion over them, thou canst slay thy slaves; they are in thy power; we lie bowed to the earth, ready to obey thy command. O brave king, delight of the warriors, grant us the breath of our lives! The king summoned his generals in order to hear the message and write an answer, and toward midday he took ship. He returned in peace with his army to Egypt. The whole earth has subjected itself to his name, and the princes, lying on the ground, worship his countenance."
[285]
Not only certain turns in this description, but passages in invocations which have come down to us, show that in expressing themselves, the Egyptians, in spite of the predominant vein of reflection, were not without force of imagination, or striking figures, or largeness and vigour of conception. That they are not free from bombast, foolish exaggeration, and incessant repetition, any more, or even so little, as the other nations of the East, is proved more especially by the inscriptions in the temples recording the mighty deeds of the kings. Our knowledge of the manuscripts does not as yet allow us to pass a more definite judgment. Yet it is beyond doubt that even in the centuries immediately preceding the irruption of the Hyksos, under the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, they were in possession of a written literature, that even then the oldest parts of the "Book of the Dead" were not only in existence, but already commentated upon, and that after the restoration of the kingdom, beside the comprehensive books of the priests, and manuscripts on medicine (p. 209), there was at any rate after the fourteenth century B.C., and the reign of Ramses II., a literature of a considerable extent. There is a second papyrus in existence by the author of the description of the battle, of which the title runs, "Beginning of the Rudiments of the Art of Letter-writing by the Scribe Pentaur, composed in the 10th year of Ramses II."[286] The fifth letter of this collection is addressed by Ameneman, the head of the keepers of the archives of the treasure of the king, to Pentaur; it is said that Pentaur has turned his back on the sacred writings, and applied himself to agriculture. The farmer has to fear grubs and rats, sparrows and locusts for his crops; and thieves too. Implements and horses wear out. The scribes come and demand the taxes, and the neighbours are away and busy with the harvest. On the other hand, the work of the scribe is the highest of all, and the scribe has no taxes to pay.[287] On a third papyrus a hymn, addressed by Ramses III. to Ammon, is said to have been found.[288] A fourth has the name-shields of Sethos II. (p. 163). It is a composition by a scribe of the name of Enna, and contains the story of the fate of two brothers.[289] A fifth papyrus, which is also attributed to the time of successors of Ramses II., has preserved a collection of apothegms.[290] In a country which placed such importance on preserving every incident, on enumerating, recording, and registering everything, care must have been taken to record the series of the kings. When the shepherds were driven out, the liberation from foreign dominion would give a strong impulse toward the attempt to keep firmly before the eyes the old days of independent Egypt. At the same time these attempts must have met with serious hindrances. The destruction which came upon numerous records and monuments of those old times, and the want of any definite æra of chronology, made it difficult to obtain a really correct order of succession, or a historical picture of the ancient period. The historical truth of the writings, which, in spite of these difficulties, were undertaken, as is shown by the monuments mentioned above, and the Turin papyrus (p. 25), was still more seriously impaired by the fact that the views of the priests were governed by the conception that the course of certain periods was allotted to the world by the gods, and in these periods the fortunes of Egypt had reached their fulfilment, and would continue to reach it. We have already become acquainted with this Sothis period (p. 29 ff). From the gods came life and the world. So the gods were said to have reigned in person over Egypt, before the kings, their divine successors, ruled
