Francois Lenormant
c. 1882
trans. Jason Colavito
2017
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NOTE |
The French archaeologist FRANCOIS LENORMANT (1837-1883) focused his research primarily on Assyria, but in revisions to a lengthy 1869 book on ancient history, he covered a wide range of cultures. His section on ancient Egypt drew primarily on references to claims made by the eminent Egyptologist Gaston Maspero in 1875 that the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple predated dynastic Egypt and were the remnants of an ancient Empire founded by the Followers of Horus (Shemsu Hor) in the primordial past. Lenormant's version, more condensed and clearer than the diffuse discussion of Maspero, influenced Theosophists, who incorporated elements of its argument into Theosophical speculations about antediluvian civilizations. The references to the the Fourth Dynasty inscription refer in reality to the Inventory Stela, a Ptolemaic forgery. The text below is translated from the 1887 ninth edition, from text that first appeared around 1882. The standard English translation of 1870, based on the 1869 edition, lacks these passages.
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The Origins and Formation of the Egyptian People
... The Nile valley, on the arrival of the Hamitic settlers, as we have already said, presented a very different aspect from the richness and prosperity than the work of man knew how to bestow upon it. “The river, left to its own devices, was constantly changing its bed. It never reached, in its inundations, certain parts of the valley, which remained unproductive; elsewhere, on the contrary, it flooded so persistently that it changed the soil into pestilential quagmires. The Delta, half-drowned by the waters of the river, half-lost under the waves of the Mediterranean, was an immense marsh, strewn with some sandy islands, covered with papyrus, lotus, and enormous reeds, through which the branches of the Nile lazily fought a course without ceasing to move. On both banks, the desert invaded all of the soil that was not covered every year by the flood: there was no transition from the disorderly vegetation of the tropical marshes to absolute aridity. Little by little the newcomers learned to regulate the course of the river, to contain it, through irrigation canals to carry fertility to the most remote corners of the valley. Egypt emerged from the waters and became in the hands of man one of the most suitable countries for the peaceful development of a great civilization.” [Maspero, Histoire ancienne, 1875, p. 18]
It is impossible to estimate the number of centuries which it took to absorb this formative period of culture, manners, religion, nation, and the soil itself; but it is obvious that it required a considerable period of time. With the instinctive tendency of all ancient peoples to seek perfection in the past, the Egyptians of the historical period had come to consider the first centuries of the residence of their race on the banks of the Nile as a kind of golden age, and their ancestors, still half-barbarous, were seen as archetypes of piety and virtue, which they called the Shemsu-Hor, that is to say, “the attendants of Horus,” the national god par excellence, and the special shepherd of the Egyptian people. Half-deified, as first ancestors always are, the Shemsu-Hor, admitted to the bliss of the other life, had become, it was said, the boatmen who conducted the sun’s bark in its celestial navigation, and the cultivators of the Fields Blessed in the other life. Hence the strange manner in which the fragments of Manetho designate their epoch as the reign of the Manes.
"It is upon these generations without history that we visit honor of having constituted Egypt, as we know it from the beginning of the historical period. At first divided into a great number of tribes, they began by establishing small independent states simultaneously in different places, each of which had its own laws and its own worship. In the course of time these states merged into one another: there remained only two great principalities, Lower Egypt (To-mera) or the northern country (To-meh‘), in the Delta, Upper Egypt or the southern country (To-res) from the point of Delta to the first cataract. Their meeting under the same scepter formed the patrimony of the Pharaohs, or countries of Kemi-t, but this did not obliterate the primitive division: the small states became provinces and were the origin of the administrative districts which the Greeks called nomes.” [Maspero, Histoire ancienne, 1875, pp. 18-19]
The foundations of the principal cities of Egypt were attributed to the Shemsu-Hor, as well as the establishment of several of the most important sanctuaries. It was alleged that some religious writings dated back to them. The inscriptions of the temple of Dendera, the ancient Tantarer, speak of a plan of the primitive temple, traced on gazelle skin in the time of the Shemsu-Hor, which had been found many centuries later. And that which gives serious value to all these references to documents from the same epoch that are encountered in Egyptian texts from fully historical times is that these documents are always referred to as being written on skins and not on papyrus; this is a peculiarity which differs from the usage of later times. It is evidently during this prehistoric period, the time of the “Attendants of Horus,” that the Egyptian nation took possession of its hieroglyphic writing, which was invented on the banks of the Nile, and which borrowed from the nature of that country the great part of the figures constituting its graphic elements.
There still remains in Egypt at least one monument dating back to the time when the civilization on the banks of the Nile marshaled its first forces and began to live. It is the temple located next to the great Sphinx and cleared some thirty years ago by A. Mariette at the expense of the Duke of Luynes. Constructed of enormous blocks of Aswan granite and eastern alabaster, supported by square monolithic pillars, this temple is prodigious, even beside the Pyramids. It offers neither a molding, nor an ornament, nor a hieroglyph; it is the transition between megalithic monuments and architecture proper. In an inscription from the time of King Khufu (4th Dynasty), it is spoken of as an edifice whose origin was lost in the night of time, which had been fortuitously found during the reign of this prince, buried by the sands of the desert, under which it had been forgotten for many generations. Such indications of antiquity are calculated to frighten the imagination. Egypt, to say nothing of the rest of the world, possesses not a single monument built by the hand of man, and truly worthy of the name, that can be compared to it as an antiquity.
But the Sphinx itself is perhaps only slightly less ancient. According to the inscription to which I have just made reference, it would antedate by several centuries the great Pyramids, of which he appears to be their mysterious guardian, and in the time of Khufu he would have already been in need of repairs. We know that it is a natural rock that has been carved more or less roughly into the shape of a lion, and to which has been added a human head, constructed from courses of enormous stones. The Sphinx of Giza was the image of the god Hor-em-akhet, the setting sun, the infernal sun shining in the dwelling of the dead. The whole plateau above which it rises, became, under the protection of this gigantic simulacrum, like a vast sanctuary consecrated to funerary gods. The inhabitants of the locality developed the habit of depositing their dead there to shelter them from the inundation. The rich built sumptuous tombs, and the kings built their proud pyramids and various temples, now destroyed, all built here and there amidst this field of burials, to which, under the kings of the Old Kingdom, they came anew to add to the holiness of the place.
This was, moreover, near to the place where Memphis was soon to be built, but higher on the course of the river, in the middle part of Upper Egypt, a place which seems to have been, towards the end of the Shemsu-Hor period, the main focus of Egyptian civilization, the center of the religious and political life of the country. Here are Tjenu (Thinis), the birthplace of the founder of the royal line; Abdju (Abydos), the main center of the cult of Osiris, whose tomb was the only common worship of all Egypt; Iunet or Tentyra (Tentyris, Dendera), the favorite place of the goddess Hathor; Deb (Apollonopolis Magna, Edfu), where Hor-em-akhet, with his son Har-hud, passed in assembling the army with which they fought Set or Typhon—all places to which later tradition particularly connected the memory of the Attendants of Horus. It was the country of the great prehistoric sanctuaries, the seats of priestly domination, which played a preponderant part in the origins of civilization.
For all the ancient testimonies agree that, in the primitive period of Egypt, the priesthood, already powerfully constituted, the depository of the principal knowledge, and the initiator of the rest of the people to civilized life, had gradually secured absolute dominion over a nation which had not yet realized its unity. But the day came when this theocratic power, impatiently supported by the warrior class, was broken by it; when a bold man, rising from the ranks of this class and putting himself at its head, united the whole country under one scepter, created a hereditary and purely political power, marked by a strong military imprint, and founded the monarchy on the ruins of the power of the priests.
It is impossible to estimate the number of centuries which it took to absorb this formative period of culture, manners, religion, nation, and the soil itself; but it is obvious that it required a considerable period of time. With the instinctive tendency of all ancient peoples to seek perfection in the past, the Egyptians of the historical period had come to consider the first centuries of the residence of their race on the banks of the Nile as a kind of golden age, and their ancestors, still half-barbarous, were seen as archetypes of piety and virtue, which they called the Shemsu-Hor, that is to say, “the attendants of Horus,” the national god par excellence, and the special shepherd of the Egyptian people. Half-deified, as first ancestors always are, the Shemsu-Hor, admitted to the bliss of the other life, had become, it was said, the boatmen who conducted the sun’s bark in its celestial navigation, and the cultivators of the Fields Blessed in the other life. Hence the strange manner in which the fragments of Manetho designate their epoch as the reign of the Manes.
"It is upon these generations without history that we visit honor of having constituted Egypt, as we know it from the beginning of the historical period. At first divided into a great number of tribes, they began by establishing small independent states simultaneously in different places, each of which had its own laws and its own worship. In the course of time these states merged into one another: there remained only two great principalities, Lower Egypt (To-mera) or the northern country (To-meh‘), in the Delta, Upper Egypt or the southern country (To-res) from the point of Delta to the first cataract. Their meeting under the same scepter formed the patrimony of the Pharaohs, or countries of Kemi-t, but this did not obliterate the primitive division: the small states became provinces and were the origin of the administrative districts which the Greeks called nomes.” [Maspero, Histoire ancienne, 1875, pp. 18-19]
The foundations of the principal cities of Egypt were attributed to the Shemsu-Hor, as well as the establishment of several of the most important sanctuaries. It was alleged that some religious writings dated back to them. The inscriptions of the temple of Dendera, the ancient Tantarer, speak of a plan of the primitive temple, traced on gazelle skin in the time of the Shemsu-Hor, which had been found many centuries later. And that which gives serious value to all these references to documents from the same epoch that are encountered in Egyptian texts from fully historical times is that these documents are always referred to as being written on skins and not on papyrus; this is a peculiarity which differs from the usage of later times. It is evidently during this prehistoric period, the time of the “Attendants of Horus,” that the Egyptian nation took possession of its hieroglyphic writing, which was invented on the banks of the Nile, and which borrowed from the nature of that country the great part of the figures constituting its graphic elements.
There still remains in Egypt at least one monument dating back to the time when the civilization on the banks of the Nile marshaled its first forces and began to live. It is the temple located next to the great Sphinx and cleared some thirty years ago by A. Mariette at the expense of the Duke of Luynes. Constructed of enormous blocks of Aswan granite and eastern alabaster, supported by square monolithic pillars, this temple is prodigious, even beside the Pyramids. It offers neither a molding, nor an ornament, nor a hieroglyph; it is the transition between megalithic monuments and architecture proper. In an inscription from the time of King Khufu (4th Dynasty), it is spoken of as an edifice whose origin was lost in the night of time, which had been fortuitously found during the reign of this prince, buried by the sands of the desert, under which it had been forgotten for many generations. Such indications of antiquity are calculated to frighten the imagination. Egypt, to say nothing of the rest of the world, possesses not a single monument built by the hand of man, and truly worthy of the name, that can be compared to it as an antiquity.
But the Sphinx itself is perhaps only slightly less ancient. According to the inscription to which I have just made reference, it would antedate by several centuries the great Pyramids, of which he appears to be their mysterious guardian, and in the time of Khufu he would have already been in need of repairs. We know that it is a natural rock that has been carved more or less roughly into the shape of a lion, and to which has been added a human head, constructed from courses of enormous stones. The Sphinx of Giza was the image of the god Hor-em-akhet, the setting sun, the infernal sun shining in the dwelling of the dead. The whole plateau above which it rises, became, under the protection of this gigantic simulacrum, like a vast sanctuary consecrated to funerary gods. The inhabitants of the locality developed the habit of depositing their dead there to shelter them from the inundation. The rich built sumptuous tombs, and the kings built their proud pyramids and various temples, now destroyed, all built here and there amidst this field of burials, to which, under the kings of the Old Kingdom, they came anew to add to the holiness of the place.
This was, moreover, near to the place where Memphis was soon to be built, but higher on the course of the river, in the middle part of Upper Egypt, a place which seems to have been, towards the end of the Shemsu-Hor period, the main focus of Egyptian civilization, the center of the religious and political life of the country. Here are Tjenu (Thinis), the birthplace of the founder of the royal line; Abdju (Abydos), the main center of the cult of Osiris, whose tomb was the only common worship of all Egypt; Iunet or Tentyra (Tentyris, Dendera), the favorite place of the goddess Hathor; Deb (Apollonopolis Magna, Edfu), where Hor-em-akhet, with his son Har-hud, passed in assembling the army with which they fought Set or Typhon—all places to which later tradition particularly connected the memory of the Attendants of Horus. It was the country of the great prehistoric sanctuaries, the seats of priestly domination, which played a preponderant part in the origins of civilization.
For all the ancient testimonies agree that, in the primitive period of Egypt, the priesthood, already powerfully constituted, the depository of the principal knowledge, and the initiator of the rest of the people to civilized life, had gradually secured absolute dominion over a nation which had not yet realized its unity. But the day came when this theocratic power, impatiently supported by the warrior class, was broken by it; when a bold man, rising from the ranks of this class and putting himself at its head, united the whole country under one scepter, created a hereditary and purely political power, marked by a strong military imprint, and founded the monarchy on the ruins of the power of the priests.
Source: Francois Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de l'Orient jusqu'aux guerres médiques, vol. 2 (9th ed.) (Paris: A. Levy), 51-57.
