INTRODUCTION
AS OUR KNOWLEDGE of Egyptian history
depends on the paintings, writings and monuments which the Egyptians left
behind them, it follows that we know best the periods in which the country
was prosperous. When Egypt was torn by civil wars or plundered by foreign
invaders, its people spent their energies in a struggle to survive, and
they had no time to interest themselves in cultural matters. For this reason,
about three thousand years of Egyptian history is represented to us by
the monuments of three great periods known as the Old, the Middle, and
the New Kingdoms. The Old Kingdom has left us the pyramids, the Middle
Kingdom much art and some literature, and the New Kingdom all kinds of
records, varying between diplomatic correspondence with foreign kings to
remains of houses or pictures of everyday life. It is this third period,
dating from about 1600 B.C. to 1100 B.C., which is the subject of these
stories.
The New Kingdom was the age in which
Egyptian life was at its most colorful and varied. Great men had become
fabulously rich, but little men were as miserably poor as ever. Merchants
and soldiers learned foreign ways by traveling widely. Even people who
stayed at home rubbed shoulders with hundreds of thousands of foreign-born
traders, soldiers, and slaves. A fierce conflict developed as the old customs
of Egypt fought against the introduction of new ideas. Both luxury and
confusion sprang from foreign conquest. The most important thing about
the New Kingdom was that it was an age of empire.
Thothmes III was the great soldier and
statesman who conquered Syria and brought to Egypt immense plunder in the
form of slaves and foreign treasures. The riches of the empire paved the
way for Egypt's golden age, and yet the new influences produced a conflict
that in a few generations pulled Egypt's greatness down.
Akhenaton, great-great-grandson of Thothmes,
was the religious genius who brought chaos to Egypt by trying to substitute
the worship of a single god for that of many. Lofty as were Akhenaton's
ideas, he was himself an impractical dreamer who was so busy building a
city for his new religion that he paid no attention to the frantic appeals
of his representatives in Syria. By the time Akhenaton died, Syria was
almost completely overrun by enemies, and the whole of Egypt seemed on
the verge of revolution.
In the reign of Tut-ankh-amon, a son-in-law
and successor of Akhenaton, the new religion of Aton was completely abandoned.
Akhenaton's city was hastily deserted, and he himself became a "nameless
Pharaoh" whom people were forbidden to mention. Tut-ankh-amon died before
he was twenty, but by some miracle his tomb with its golden shrine and
rich furniture escaped destruction, and it is Tut-ankh-amon whose name
recalls to us most vividly the glory of the Egyptian past.
After the time of Akhenaton, the Egyptian
empire only partially regained its power. The most successful attempt to
restore it was made by Rameses II, about whom we know a great deal because
he blew his own trumpet so extremely loud. One of his favorite tricks was
to have his name cut on the bases of statues which had really been put
up many years before in honor of earlier Pharaohs. Rameses' long reign
was the last prosperous period of the New Kingdom. Decay had set in, and
even before his death the power and wealth of Egypt had begun to crumble
away.
The coming of the Israelites to Egypt
probably took place during a period of foreign invasion before the New
Kingdom arose, The Exodus under Moses seems to have occurred in the reign
of the successor of Rameses and to be in itself a symptom of how greatly
Egyptian power was falling away. Of the influence of the Israelites on
Egypt during these four hundred years, we know nothing. We can only say
that the ideas of Akhenaton were not in themselves Egyptian, but were characteristic
of the Eastern peoples to which the Israelites belonged.
The stories in this book are each inspired
by some thing which the Egyptians have left us: a picture of men hunting,
an appeal for help to Pharaoh, or a fragment of a story about an enchantress
who lived by a ford. They show us people of all classes and ages - some
rich, some poor; some happy, some not. Perhaps because their religion was
so hard and formal, there was a strange streak of harshness in Egyptian
lives. People accepted sorrow and pain as a part of living, and they did
not waste much pity on suffering. Instead, they all enjoyed to the full
what they had: the gorgeous festivals, the blue lotus flowers, and the
busy tempo of life along their mighty river. In the next world, they could
imagine nothing better than more of the pleasures of this one over again.
There was nothing dull about life to the Egyptians. These stories, which
might have been told or might have happened, give a picture of a people
who were intensely alive. It is this quality that makes them exciting to
read about, even though their civilization has long gone by.
