W. M. Flinders Petrie

“ The whole system was so destructive of character and of wealth that it ruined the empire. Slavery was by no means the destruction of Rome, it flourished in the centuries when the Government was strongest, and diminished in advance of the social decay. Vice was by no means the destruction of Rome, it was worst when Rome was most powerful and was lessened in the decline. The one movement which grew steadily as Rome declined, and which was intimately connected with every stage of that decline, was the compulsion of labour and the maintenance of the wastrel as a burden on society. ”

“ Do not, do not, be silent and speechless; tell thy name; is it fear that prevents thee?" I answered in reply, "I fear, what is it that my lord has said that I should answer it? I have not called on me the hand of God, but it is terror in my body, like that which brings sudden death. Now behold I am before thee; thou art life; let thy majesty do what pleaseth him." The royal children were brought in, and his majesty said to the queen, "Behold thou Sanehat has come as an Amu, whom the Sati have produced." ”

“ It takes many forms; it appeals to the intellect, to the curiosity, to the affections; yet it is really a single instinct, and one which, from its strength, must spring from a primal cause.
The sense of loss touches us at every sunset, and in anticipation tinges all the afternoon with the sense of lengthening shadows. Even the things that seem most common, least worthy, when in use, all gain some being as time passes. Each little thing, that carelessly we value not at first, grows rich with store of years. ”

“ One may be following the outside of a fortification, another trenching across it to find its thickness, another sinking a pit inside it to find the depth of the soil, another clearing a room, or trenching to find the limits of the town, or removing a rubbish deposit layer by layer. Unless just beginning work on a very featureless site, the aimless trenching or pitting is merely an excuse for a lazy mind. Far better have some theory or working hypothesis, and labour to prove it to be either right or wrong, than simply remain in expectancy. ”

“ As true art, then—that is, the expression of his being, and the communication to others of his best feelings and sense of things—the Egyptian work must stand on the highest plane of reality. It would have been a falsehood to his nature to aspire, as a Gothic architect sometimes did, in towers and pinnacles which crush their foundations and will not hold together without incongruous bonds. ”

“ The soul or ba of the king at his death thus flew away as a hawk to meet the sun.
The veil drawn over the fate of the inhuman princess is well conceived. That she should die a sharp death has been foretold; but how Bata should slay the divine creation—his wife—his mother—is a matter that the scribe reserves in silence ”

“ And the king's son Hordedef said, "Thy state is that of one who lives to good old age; for old age is the end of our voyage, the time of embalming, the time of burial. Lie, then, in the sun, free of infirmities, without the babble of dotage: this is the salutation to worthy age. I come from far to call thee, with a message from my father Khufu, the blessed, for thou shalt eat of the best which the king gives, and of the food which those have who follow after him; that he may bring thee in good estate to thy fathers who are in the tomb." And Dedi replied to him, "Peace to thee! ”

“ To state every fact about everything found would be useless, as no one could wade through the mass of statements. It would be like a detective who would photograph and measure every man on London Bridge to search for a criminal: the complication would entirely defeat the object. It is absolutely necessary to know how much is already known before setting about recording more. In some periods, such as the XVIIIth Dynasty, so much is ascertained that it is seldom that new facts can be brought to light; and only fine or unusual discoveries are worth full publication. ”

“ This is done all in unison, and slowly at first; gradually the rate quickens, the accent is stronger, and becomes more of an explosive howl, sounding afar off like an engine; the excitement is wilder, and hideously wild, until a horrid creeping comes over you as you listen, and you feel that in such a state there is no answering for what may be done. ”

“ If the trade is not in the hands of a single firm for a whole district, like a railway company, there arises the problem, how is the burden of cheap work for the poor to be distributed over the constituent firms? This was solved in Rome by the union, which was the sole body recognised in law. Each member of the union was assessed by his union, on the basis of both his capital and his trade returns, and he had to do so much of the cheap work in proportion. Hence the wealth of each firm determined the amount of their proletariat taxation. ”

“ The one side of art in sculpture has obscured all others; and the English mind has, with its usual idolatry, made the standard of Greece its sole measure. We need to see that a dozen national arts have each been supreme over the others in some one aspect. Then we shall see how meaningless it is to contrast the excellence of one national art with another. Each country has to confess that it has only fully expressed one aspect out of many in the immense range of human life.
Now we can begin to see the real meaning of the so-called limitations of Egyptian art. ”

“ Our museums are ghastly charnel-houses of murdered evidence; the dry bones of objects are there, bare of all the facts of grouping, locality, and dating which would give them historical life and value. And it is only the self-evident facts of age that we already know, which can be observed in such a useless condition. So ignorant are49 curators that they will even divide up a tomb-group of objects, which are the keys to knowledge, and foolishly scatter them up and down the galleries merely as second-rate specimens of what is already there, without any date or history. ”

“ The weepers crouching at the door of thy tomb shall cry aloud the prayers for offerings: they shall slay victims for thee at the door of thy pit; and thy pyramid shall be carved in white stone, in the company of the royal children. Thus thou shalt not die in a strange land, nor be buried by the Amu; thou shalt not be laid in a sheep-skin when thou art buried; all people shall beat the earth, and lament on thy body when thou goest to the tomb." When this order came to me, I was in the midst of my tribe. ”

“ The great subject of the waste by renewal of the population in each generation has an immense variety of aspects; but the essential importance of it is seen when we reflect that about half the labour of the world is swallowed up in this renewal. The burden of production, of rearing, of education, and the waste and loss in the process, exceeds that of any other activity, such as supply of food or shelter, for the adult. Hence any possible saving in this great mass of labour, or reduction of waste, is of the first importance to the individual and the race. ”

“ It is but a confusion of thought, therefore, to try to pit the art of one country against that of another. A Corinthian temple, a Norman church, or a Chinese pavilion are each perfect in their own conditions; but if the temple is of Aberdeen granite, the church of Pacific island coral, and the pavilion amid the Brighton downs, they are each of them hopelessly wrong. To understand any art we must first begin by grasping its conditions, and feeling the contrasts, the necessities, the atmosphere, which underlie the whole terms of expression. ”

“ The work of the archaeologist is to save lives; to go to some senseless mound of earth, some hidden cemetery, and thence bring into the comradeship of178 man some portions of the lives of this sculptor, of that artist, of the other scribe; to make their labour familiar to us as a friend; to resuscitate them again, and make them to live in the thoughts, the imaginations, the longing, of living men and women; to place so much of their living personality current side by side with our own labours and our own thoughts. And has not the past its rights, as well as the present and the future? ”

“ As a manufacturer in a park, with a motor, remarked, "you cannot expect anyone not to spend up to his income." The idea of using what is really requisite for successful living, and not squandering money beyond that, is entirely forgotten. The simplicity of having nothing that is unnecessary, the pleasure of having a large balance to use beyond the needs of life, and the comfort of never needing to worry about money, are all unknown to those who spend up to the hilt, and who turn their money into a grinding curse of life. ”

“ Assuredly all mankind has looked on the works of Egypt as giving a sense of these qualities before all others. Closely connected is the sense of Endurance, which was enjoined in words, and carried into practice in the laborious work on the hardest rocks. It was for endurance that statues were made of diorite or granite, though they were painted with life-like hues, so that their material was scarcely seen. Upon these primary qualities was built a rich and varied character, reflected in the elaborate and beautiful sculpture which covered, but never interfered with, the grand mass of a monument. ”

“ Turn now to our own land, and on a wide western moor stand within a ring of grey stones, which our own flesh and blood there placed in faith and trust, for something greater than the cares of daily life; so far from us in generations, so far from us in thoughts, that we can hardly grasp the pulse of the same life with them, and feel what they felt. ”

“ Free trade implies free competition, and that is trade-warfare.
Another form of trade war is holding a country for the sake of a monopoly of trade, thus enabling a group of manufacturers—say of France—to tax all the inhabitants under their government, especially in colonies—as Algiers, Madagascar, Tahiti, &c. This is simply a form of tribute, like the taxation levied by Rome on various conquered countries; it holds back the taxed countries. If other countries wish to get a share of that trade they will have to fight, by trade or by violence, to conquer the right to join in it. ”

“ There is no point in calling the Egyptian childish in his abilities, as every other nation has been equally childish in some other respects—the Roman in his abject submission to omens, the Greek in playing with words, the Assyrian in his inaccuracy, the Arab in his drawing. In short, there is no essential difference in the capacity for showing national life and feeling by the art of each country; and in the facility and truth of expression Egypt stands in the first rank of those lands where Art has exhibited the character of man. ”