ruins of Thebes on both sides of the river, the temple of Esna, the ruins and tombs of El Kāb, the temple of Edfū, the quarries of Silsila and the temple of Ombos, followed by the inscribed rocks of the First Cataract, the tombs and quarries of Assuan and the temples of Philae.
In Nubia, owing to the poverty of the country and its scanty population, the proportion of monuments surviving is infinitely greater than in Egypt. Here are the temples of Debōd, the temple and quarries of Kertassi, the temples of Kalabsha, Bēt el Wali, Dendūr, Gerf Husēn, Dakka, Maharaka, Es-Sebūʽa, ʽAmāda and Derr, the grottos of Elles ya, the tombs of Anība, the temple of Ibrīm, the great rock-temples of Abū-Simbel, the temples at Jebel Adda and Wadi Halfa, the forts and temples of Semna, the temples of Amāra (Meroitic) and Sōleb. Beyond are the Ethiopian temples and pyramids of Jebel Barkal and the other pyramids of Napata at Tangassi, &c., the still later pyramids of Meroe at Begerawīa, and the temples of Mesauwarāt and Nāga reaching to within 50 m. of Khartūm.
Outside the Nile valley on the west are temples in the Great and Little Oases and the Oasis of Ammon: on the east quarries and stelae on the Hammamāt road to the Red Sea, and mines and other remains at Wadi Maghāra and Serābīt el Khādim in the Sinai peninsula. In Syria there are tablets of conquest on the rocks at the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb.
Of the collections of Egyptian antiquities in public museums, those of the British Museum, Leiden, Berlin, the Louvre, Turin were already very important in the first half of the 19th century, also in a less degree those of Florence, Bologna and the Vatican. Most of these have since been greatly increased and many others have been created. By far the largest collection in the world is that at Cairo. In America the museums and universities of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York have collections of greater or less interest. Besides these the museums of Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford are noteworthy in Great Britain for their Egyptian antiquities, as are those of St Petersburg, Vienna, Marseilles, Munich, Copenhagen, Palermo and Athens; there are also collections in most of the British colonies. Private collections are numerous.
Literary Records.—In estimating the sources of information regarding pre-Christian Egypt, the native sources, first opened to us by Champollion, are infinitely the most important. With very few exceptions they are contemporary with the events which they record. Of the composition of history and the description of their own manners and customs by the Egyptians for posterity, few traces have reached our day. Consequently the information derived from their monuments, in spite of their great abundance, is of a fortuitous character. For one early papyrus that survives, many millions must have perished. If the journals of accounts, the letters and business documents, had come down to us en masse, they would no doubt have yielded to research the history and life of Egypt day by day; but those that now represent a thousand years of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom together would not half fill an ordinary muniment chest. A larger proportion of the records on stone have survived, but that an event should be inscribed on stone depends on a variety of circumstances and not necessarily on its importance. There may seem to be a great abundance of Egyptian monuments, but they have to cover an enormous space of time, and even in the periods which are best represented, gravestones recording the names of private persons with a prayer or two are scarcely material for history. A scrap of annals has been found extending from the earliest times to the Vth Dynasty, as well as a very fragmentary list of kings reaching nearly to the end of the Middle Kingdom, to help out the scattered data of the other monuments. As to manners and customs, although we possess no systematic descriptions of them from a native source, the native artists and scribes have presented us with exceptionally rich materials in the painted and sculptured scenes of the tombs from the Old and Middle Kingdoms and the New Empire. For the Deltaic dynasties these sources fail absolutely, the scenes being then either purely religious or conventional imitations of the earlier ones.
Fortunately the native records are largely supplemented by others: valuable information comes from cuneiform literature, belonging to two widely separated periods. The first group is contemporary with the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties and consists in the first place of the Tell el Amarna tablets with others related to them, containing the reports of governors of the Syrian possessions of Egypt, and the correspondence of the kings of Babylon, Assur, Mitanni and Khatti (the Hittites) with the Pharaohs. The sequel to this is furnished by Winckler’s discovery of documents relating to Rameses II. of the XIXth Dynasty in the Hittite capital at Boghaz Keui (see also Hittites and Pteria). The other group comprises the annals and inscriptions of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal, recording their invasions of Egypt under the XXVth Dynasty. There are also a few references to Egypt of later date down to the reign of Darius. In Hebrew literature the Pentateuch, the historical books and the prophets alike contain scanty but precious information regarding Egypt. Aramaic papyri written principally by Jews of the Persian period (5th century B.C.) have been found at Syene and Memphis.
Of all the external sources the literary accounts written in Greek are the most valuable. They comprise fragments of the native historian Manetho, the descriptions of Egypt in Herodotus and Diodorus, the geographical accounts of Strabo and Ptolemy, the treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris and other monographs or scattered notices of less importance. Our knowledge of the history of Alexander’s conquest, of the Ptolemies and of the Roman occupation is almost entirely derived from Greek sources, and in fact almost the same might be said of the history of Egypt as far back as the beginning of the XXVIth Dynasty. The non-literary Greek remains in papyri and inscriptions which are being found in great abundance throw a flood of light on life in Egypt and the administration of the country from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the Arab conquest. On the other hand, papyri and inscriptions in Latin are of the greatest rarity, and the literary remains in that language are of small importance for Egypt.
Arabic literature appears to be entirely barren of authentic information regarding the earlier condition of the country. Two centuries of unchallenged Christianity had broken almost completely the traditions of paganism, even if the Moslems had been willing to consider them, either in their fanciful accounts of the origins of cities, &c., or elsewhere.
B. The Country in Ancient Times.—The native name of Egypt was Kēmi (KM·T), clearly meaning “the black land,” Egypt being so called from the blackness of its alluvial soil (cf. Plut. De Is. et Os. cap. 33): in poetical inscriptions Kēmi is often opposed to Toshri, “the red land,” referring to the sandy deserts around, which however, would probably be included in the term Kēmi in its widest sense. Egypt is called in Hebrew Mizraim, מִצְריִם, possibly a dual form describing the country in reference to its two great natural and historical divisions of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt: but Mizraim (poetically sometimes Māzōr) often means Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt being named Pathros, “the south land.” In Assyrian the name was Muṣri, Miṣri: in Arabic it is Miṣr, مَصر, pronounced Maṣr in the vulgar dialect of Egypt. These names are certainly of Semitic origin and perhaps derive from the Assyrian with the meaning “frontier-land” (see Mizraim). Winckler’s theory of a separate Muṣri immediately south of Palestine is now generally rejected (see, for instance, Ed. Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 455). The Greek Αἴγυπτος (Aegyptus) occurs as early as Homer; in the Odyssey it is the name of the Nile (masc.) as well as of the country (fem.): later it was confined to the country. Its origin is very obscure (see Pietschmann in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, s.v. “Aigyptos”). Brugsch’s derivation from Hakeptah, a name of the northern capital, Memphis, though attractive, is unconfirmed.
Egypt normally included the whole of the Nile valley from the First Cataract to the sea; pure Egyptians, however, formed the population of Lower Nubia above the Cataract in prehistoric
