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The Tables of Abydos and of Memphis

In the month of September, 1863, M. Mariette, who had just made some excavations in the great burial district of Sakkara near Memphis with great success, published in the Archæological Review (Revue Archéologique) a monumental table containing, in their order, the names of the fifty-three Pharaohs. Seti I., of the 19th dynasty, himself, comprised in the same table, is represented as making the offerings prescribed by the funereal rites, to his deified predecessors. Although the Egyptian scribes to whom was confided the task of recalling their names, have inverted the order of the kings of the 12th dynasty, whether through inattention or in pursuance of some purpose as yet unfathomed, in such manner as to ascend instead of descending the scale of time; and although this table contains among the kings of the first dynasties, some names until then unknown, still, such as it is, it was at the time of its publication, in the month of September 1863, the most important document of its kind that had seen the light since the discovery of the famous tablet of Abydos in the possession of the British Museum. But it was not long ere the glory of this discovery was eclipsed by another, still more important, found by the indefatigable French explorer. M. Mariette was very recently lucky enough to find a considerable portion of a temple, buried in the soil and dedicated to Asiris, in the heart of the holy city of Abydos, the same from which the table in the British Museum came. Upon one of the walls of this APPENDIX. temple he discovered a representation of the offerings made by Seti I., and by his on, (who, afterwards, was Rameses the Great,) to their deceased ancestors, no less than seventysix in number, from the first dynasty ruler, Menes, down to Sethi himself. This discovery, which a German doctor, a savant by trade and a robber by calling, who clung to the steps of M. Mariette, has tried to take away from our countryman, is undoubtedly of great value, but has perhaps been rated too high in a historical point of view. A slight observation will suffice to prove as much. The first part of the old table of Abydos having been destroyed, it is not known whether this table did or did not commence with Menes. The Sakkara tablet does not contain this name, which, however, is found upon the new list of Abydos. These three lists are of nearly the same epoch; the first, dating from Rameses the Great, contains 49 kings; the second and the third are of the reign of Seti, and yet do not present the same number of names. The temple of Memphis has fifty two; that of Abydos seventy-five-all predecessors of the same Seti. Hence it must be inferred that the Egyptian priests who prepared them, had the privilege of selecting the kings whose names they wished, to retain a choice the motives of which must frequently have varied, since the two tables of the same city of Abydos, composed at two periods quite close together, differ in the names as well as in the number of them.

But it will be confessed that the choice made by the historian of certain kings commendable for their virtues or odious for their vices is reasonable only when one knows the motives that determined this adoption or exclusion, and all becomes mystery to one who has not possession of the key to the labyrinth. On the other hand, isolated monuments and the list of the royal chamber at Karnak have revealed to us the existence in Upper Egypt of dynasties of Nantefs and Sevekhoteps, preceding the 12th dynasty; and, although localized, perhaps, in Upper Egypt, they were powerful, but the names of all their people are omitted on the three tables of which we are treating.

APPENDIX.

A careful comparative examination of these different doc uments casts a ray of light, however, upon the dark places. By its help, we perceive that there was a period when the priests had not the privilege of choosing among the names of the kings; there was, indeed, a period in the history of Egypt in relation to which the different tables agree with each other as they, likewise, agree with the lists of the historian Manetho. This epoch was the commencement of the famous 12th dynasty of the Sesortasens and of the Amenemhas. In ascending from Rameses II. to Amenemha I. everything is clear, everything follows in the same order on the different documents; but, in taking the last named king for the point of departure, all becomes doubt and confusion excepting at the epoch, comparatively free from clouds and mists, of the Pharaohs who built the great pyramids. Hence we may conclude that the learned copyists and scribes of the colleges at Thebes and Memphis composed, in the fourteenth century preceding the Christian Era, a history of Egypt in which the whole period anterior to the 12th dynasty is but a tissue of fables, legends and traditions toned down to the historic form, - something like the history of England written in the ninth and tenth centuries by monks and translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The papyrus at Turin is a collection of this nature, with its mythical kings, its divine dynasties and its legendary conquerors and law-givers. The history of Manetho is probably but an abridgment or an amplification of these traditions, and, thus, these compilations of the fourteenth century before our era bring no support to the history of Manetho in all that concerns the epochs anterior to the commencement of the 12th dynasty. And, in fact, it is with this period that Manetho himself opens the second book of his history and emerges from the confused eras of the unfamiliar dynasties and nameless kings in order to enter upon the historically and monumentally well ascertained series of kings belonging to the 12th dynasty.