Berwick-upon-Tweed Vicar of St. Mary's James King

“ You have come to see the marvels of Egypt—the land which in the march of civilization took the lead of all the nations of antiquity. Here as strangers and pilgrims sojourned the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob. This was the adopted land of the princely Joseph, the home of Moses, and the abode of Israel’s oppressed race. I remember them well, for from the land of Goshen they all came to see me, and as they gazed at my countenance they were filled with amazement at my greatness and my beauty. ”

“ Thus arm stands for power, interior of a hall for festivity, lizard for multitude, beetle for immortality, sceptre for power, crook for authority, Anubis staff for plenty, vulture for queenly royalty, asp for kingly royalty, ostrich feather for truth, ankh or crux ansata for life, weight for equality, adze for approval, pike for power, horn for opposition, the bird called bennu for lustre, pyramous loaf for giving, hatchet called neter for god, lion’s head for victory, swallow for greatness. ”

“ Near to the gates stand the dreadful scales of justice. On one side of the scales stands Thoth, the recorder of human actions, with a tablet in his hand, ready to make a record of the sentence passed on each soul. Anubis is the director of the weights; in one scale he places the heart of the deceased, and in the other a figure of the goddess of truth. If on being weighed the heart is found wanting, then Osiris, the judge of the dead, lowers his sceptre in token of condemnation, and pronounces judgment against the soul, condemned to return to earth under the form of a pig. ”

“ Above Cairo the Nile Valley is hemmed in on both sides by limestone ridges, which form barriers between the fertile fields and the barren wastes on either side; and on the limestone ridge by the edge of the great western desert stand the pyramids of Egypt. Looking forth from the summit of the pyramid of Cheops eastwards, the Nile Valley was spread out like a panorama. The distant horizon was bounded by the Mokattam hills, and near to them rose the lofty minarets and mosques of Grand Cairo. ”

“ It was desirable in the interests of science to ascertain whether the mummy bearing the monogram of Thothmes III. was really the remains of that monarch. It was therefore unrolled. The inscriptions on the bandages established beyond all doubt the fact that it was indeed the most distinguished of the kings of the brilliant XVIIIth dynasty; and once more, after an interval of thirty-six centuries, human eyes gazed on the features of the man who had conquered Syria, and Cyprus, and Ethiopia, and had raised Egypt to the highest pinnacle of her power ”

“ In this subterranean hiding-place, buried deep in the heart of the Theban Hills, Rameses the Great, surrounded by a goodly company of thirty royal mummies, lay undisturbed and unseen by mortal eye for three thousand years, until, a few years ago, the lawless tomb-breakers of Thebes burrowed into this sepulchral chamber. ”

“ The Egyptian worship and religious life testify to a constant degradation in the popular idea of the gods and in the moral life of their worshippers. The worship and religious life of which the God of the Hebrews is the centre, tends ever more and more to lead men in that “path of the just, which is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” ”

“ The eye rested only on the barren sands of the vast desert, the great land of a silence unbroken by the sound of man or beast. Neither animal nor vegetable life exists there, and the solitude of desolation reigns for ever supreme; so that while the bountiful fields speak of activity and life, the boundless waste is a fitting emblem of rest and death. ”

“ To the edge of the silent desert they carried their dead for burial, and on the rocky platform that forms the margin of the sandy waste they reared those vast tombs known as the pyramids. The very configuration of Egypt preached a never-ending sermon, which intensified the moral feelings of the people, and tended to make the ancient Egyptians a religious nation.
The ancient Egyptians were a very religious people. ”

“ On the belt of the colossus is the cartouche of Rameses II. The fist and big toe of this monster figure are in the British Museum. In the Piazza of St. John Lateran, at Rome, the tall obelisk towers heavenwards like a lofty spire, adorning that square. Originally it was one hundred and ten feet long, and therefore the longest monolith ever quarried. It was also the heaviest, weighing, as it does, about four hundred and fifty tons, and therefore considerably more than twice the weight of the London obelisk. ”

“ The valley is the very ideal of desolation. Bare rocks, without a particle of vegetation, overhanging and enclosing in a still narrower and narrower embrace a valley as rocky and bare as themselves—no human habitation visible—the stir of the city wholly excluded. Such is, such always must have been, the awful aspect of the resting-place of the Theban kings. ”

“ An Egyptian sphinx has the body of a lion couchant with the head of a man. The sphinxes seem for the most part to have been set up in the avenues leading to the temples. It is thought by Egyptologists that the lion’s body is a symbol of power, the human head is a symbol of intellect. The whole figure was typical of kingly royalty, and set forth the power and wisdom of the Egyptian monarch.
In ancient Egypt, sphinxes might be numbered by thousands, but the gigantic figure known by pre-eminence as “The Sphinx,” stands on the edge of the rocky platform on which are built the pyramids of Ghizeh. ”

“ It tells us—so often as we look at its strange form and venerable characters—that ‘the Light which lighteneth every man’ shone also on those who raised it as an emblem of the beneficial rays of the sunlight of the world. It tells us that as true goodness was possible in the outcast Samaritan, so true wisdom was possible even in the hard and superstitious Egyptians, even in that dim twilight of the human race, before the first dawn of the Hebrew Law or of the Christian Gospel. ”

“ Next to Thebes, in Upper Egypt, Memphis was the most important city of ancient Egypt. Here lived the Pharaohs while the Israelites sojourned in the land, and within sight of this sacred city were reared the mammoth pyramids. “As the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so stand the pyramids round about Memphis.”
A few grassy mounds are the only vestiges of the once mighty city; and in the midst of a forest of palm trees is an excavation dug in the ground, in which lies a huge granite block, exposed to view by the encompassing débris being cleared away. ”

“ The number of hieroglyphs at present are about a thousand. A century ago there existed no hope of recovering the extinct language of the ancient Egyptians; but by the continued labours of genius, the darkness of fifteen centuries has been dispelled, and the endless inscriptions covering obelisks, temples and tombs, proclaim in a wondrous manner the story of Egypt’s ancient greatness. ”

“ Among the group are the mummied remains of the greatest royal builders, the most renowned warriors, and mightiest monarchs of ancient Egypt. They speak to us of the military glory and architectural splendour of that marvellous country thirty-five centuries ago; they illustrate the truth of the words of the Christian Apostle: “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. ”

“ The sun, the most glorious object of the universe, became the central object of worship, and occupies a conspicuous position in their religious system. The various aspects of the sun as it pursued its course across the sky became so many solar deities. Horus was the youthful sun seen in the eastern horizon. ”

“ Chessboard (men) is by many thought to be a battlemented wall, but it is probably a chessboard; for at Thebes a picture represents Rameses III. playing a game at chess, or some kindred game. What appears to be a battlement is really the chessmen on the board.
Men, as part of the divine name of Thothmes, may be the shortened form of Amen, the supreme god of Thebes, just as Tum is the shortened form of Atum. Ptah was the supreme god of Memphis, and Ra the supreme god of Heliopolis. Amen literally means “the concealed one,” and was the name applied to the sun after it had sunk below the horizon. ”

“ It is known that the tremendous paws project fifty feet, enclosing a considerable space, in the centre of which formerly stood a sacrificial altar for religious purposes. On a cartouche in front of the figure is the name of Thothmes IV.; but as Khufu, commonly called Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, is stated to have repaired the Sphinx, it appears that the colossus had an [Pg 32] existence before the pyramids were built. This being so, “The Sphinx” is not only the most colossal, but at the same time the oldest known idol of the human race. ”

“ Nut was a sky-goddess, and represents the blue midday sky. She was said to be the mother of Osiris, who is the friend of mankind, and one of the gods much beloved.
Second side.—Right hand.
“Horus, powerful bull, son of Kheper, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ra-user-Ma-sotep-en-Ra, golden hawk, abounding in years, greatly powerful, son of the sun, [Pg 106] Rameses-meri-Amen; the eyes of created beings witness what he has done, nothing has been said against the lord of the two countries, Ra-user-Ma-sotep-en-Ra, son of the sun. Rameses-meri-Amen, the lustre of the son, like the sun.” ”

“ A common bird in Egypt, resembling the crane, phœnix, and bennu. It was sacred to, and an emblem of, Thoth, the god of letters, who is usually depicted with an ibis head. As Thoth represented both the visible and concealed moon, he was fitly represented by the sacred bird ibis, which on account of its mingled black and white feathers, was an effective emblem of both the dark and illumined side of the moon. The ibis alone on a standard, as depicted on the obelisk, stood for Thoth, the first syllable of the word Thothmes.
Triple Twig (mes) means born, and is a symbol of birth. ”

“ Sometimes he is called Amen-Ra, and his principal temple was at Thebes. He is generally represented by the figure of a man with his face concealed under the head of a horned ram. The figure is coloured blue, the sacred colour of the source of life.
Sacred Beetle (kheper) usually called scarabeus or scarabee. It was thought that the beetle hid its eggs in the sand, where they remained until the young beetles broke forth to life. Thus the scarabeus became the symbol of the resurrection and a future life. ”

“ Thousands of travellers traversed the land of Egypt, and yet they never took the trouble to copy with accuracy a single line of an inscription. The monuments of Egypt received a little attention about the middle of the eighteenth century, and vague notions of the nature of hieroglyphs were entertained by Winckelman, Visconti, and others. Most of their suggestions are of little value; and it was not until the publication of the description of ancient Egypt by the first scientific expedition under Napoleon that the world regained a glimpse of the true nature of the long-forgotten hieroglyphs. ”

“ About fifteen centuries before the Christian era, in the reign of Thothmes III., by royal command, the London Obelisk, together with its companion column, was quarried at Syene, and thence in a huge raft was floated down the Nile to the sacred city of Heliopolis, a distance of seven hundred miles. Heliopolis, called in the Bible On, and by the ancient Egyptians An, was a city of temples dedicated to the worship of the sun. ”

“ The inscription is not of great historical value, but the hieroglyphs are valuable in setting forth the earliest stages of written language, while their expressive symbolism enables us to interpret the moral and religious thoughts of men who lived in the infancy of the world.
[Pg 7] Egypt is a country of surpassing interest to the Biblical student. From the early days of patriarchal history down to the discovery in 1883 of the site of Pithom, a city founded by Rameses II., Egyptian and Israelitish and Christian history have touched at many points. Abraham visited the Nile Valley ”

“ Other kings had arrogated to themselves a certain qualified dignity, and after their deaths had sometimes been placed by some of their successors on a par with the [Pg 100] real national gods; but it remained for Rameses to associate himself during his lifetime with such leading deities as Ptah, Ammon, and Horus, and to claim equally with them the religious regards of his subjects. He was also, as already observed, the first to introduce into Egypt the degrading custom of polygamy and the corrupting influence of a harem. ”

“ Horus is a solar deity, and represented the rising sun, or the sun in the horizon. Horus is here represented by a hawk, surmounted by the double crown of Egypt called PSCHENT. The hawk flew higher than any other bird of Egypt, and therefore became the usual emblem of any solar deity, just as the eagle, from its lofty soaring, is an emblem of sublimity, and therefore an emblem of [Pg 70] St. John. The double crown named PSCHENT is composed of a conical hat called HET, the crown and emblem of Upper Egypt, and the TESHER, or red crown, the emblem of Lower Egypt. ”

“ Thothmes III. is generally regarded as the greatest of the kings of Egypt—the Alexander the Great of Egyptian history. The name Thothmes means “child of Thoth,” and was a common name among the ancient Egyptians. On the pyramidion of the obelisk he is represented by a sphinx presenting gifts of water and wine to Tum, the setting sun, a solar deity worshipped at Heliopolis. ”

“ Fergusson, “is the finest of its class known to exist anywhere. Externally the façade is about one hundred feet in height, and adorned by four of the most magnificent colossi in Egypt, each seventy feet in height, and representing the king, Rameses II., who caused the excavation to be made. It may be because they are [Pg 99] more perfect than any other now found in that country, but certainly nothing can exceed their calm majesty and beauty, or be more entirely free from the vulgarity and exaggeration which is generally a characteristic of colossal works of this sort.” ”