DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0040
ιό
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
plex and difficult since we found the Lady Nefert seated
in her dark chamber beneath the ground,
We have said that from about 4000-3000 B.C., from
the first to the sixth dynasty, the political centre of
gravity was generally at Memphis ; we have said also
that civilization followed just the opposite course of the
Nile river, rising towards the source while the river itself
descends. At the end of the Memphite period comes a
dark time, where chronology wavers, monuments fail, and
dynasties become more than ever confused. When we
emerge, about 2600 B.C., the political centre has shifted
to Thebes, the dynasties are Theban, the monuments
are at Luxor and Karnak, on the right bank of the river
on the site of ancient Thebes, and at Kurmeh, Medinet-
Habu, and the Valley of Kings, exactly opposite, at
Abydos, a hundred miles lower down on the left. Now
this Theban supremacy extends from about 2600-
1000 B.C., from the eleventh to the twentieth dynasty,
both inclusive, but with a noticeable break from the
fourteenth to the seventeenth dynasty, roughly speaking,
half-way through the Theban period, 2000 B.C., when
the Hyksos or shepherd-kings invade the country and,
in part, expel the Theban rulers. These Hyksos are, in
their turn, finally expelled by the descendants of the
Theban dynasties they had for a time supplanted. As
we are not studying Egyptian history, except as the
necessary background to certain phases of Egyptian art,
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
plex and difficult since we found the Lady Nefert seated
in her dark chamber beneath the ground,
We have said that from about 4000-3000 B.C., from
the first to the sixth dynasty, the political centre of
gravity was generally at Memphis ; we have said also
that civilization followed just the opposite course of the
Nile river, rising towards the source while the river itself
descends. At the end of the Memphite period comes a
dark time, where chronology wavers, monuments fail, and
dynasties become more than ever confused. When we
emerge, about 2600 B.C., the political centre has shifted
to Thebes, the dynasties are Theban, the monuments
are at Luxor and Karnak, on the right bank of the river
on the site of ancient Thebes, and at Kurmeh, Medinet-
Habu, and the Valley of Kings, exactly opposite, at
Abydos, a hundred miles lower down on the left. Now
this Theban supremacy extends from about 2600-
1000 B.C., from the eleventh to the twentieth dynasty,
both inclusive, but with a noticeable break from the
fourteenth to the seventeenth dynasty, roughly speaking,
half-way through the Theban period, 2000 B.C., when
the Hyksos or shepherd-kings invade the country and,
in part, expel the Theban rulers. These Hyksos are, in
their turn, finally expelled by the descendants of the
Theban dynasties they had for a time supplanted. As
we are not studying Egyptian history, except as the
necessary background to certain phases of Egyptian art,