Delphian Society

“ In each direction man then set himself to supplement, to imitate, to rival or to exceed, the works of nature. Art, as the gratification of an artificial taste and standard, was scarcely in existence; but the simplicity, the vastness, the perfection, and the beauty of the earliest works place them on a different level to all the workers of art and man's device in later ages. They are unique in their splendid power, which no self-conscious civilization has ever rivalled, nor can hope to rival; and in their enduring greatness they may last till all the feebler works of man have perished. ”

“ In every land which I attacked I played the champion, I took the cattle, I led away the vassals, I carried off the slaves, I slew the people, by my sword, my bow, my marches and my good devices. I was excellent to the heart of my prince; he loved me when he knew my power, and set me over his children when he saw the strength of my arms.
A champion of the Tenu came to defy me in my tent: a bold man without equal, for he had vanquished the whole country. He said, "Let Sanehat fight with me;" for he desired to overthrow me, he thought to take my cattle for his tribe. ”

“ One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood—here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of Gizeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. ”

“ He concluded by saying:
"'I am a strong warrior, beloved of Asshur and Ishtar, the child of royalty. The gods have been gracious to me. The wheat has grown to five cubits, and its ears of corn are always one cubit long; during my reign, abundance has overflowed; during all the years of my reign, the divine blessing has been poured out upon me like a heavy dew. The gods have raised me higher than any king ever ascended before me. Whilst Asshur and Ishtar support me, who can prevail against me? My power is everlastingly founded by their hands, the duration of my race is established ”

“ A man hurries up with a handful of clay, and molds a little figure which he displays as the image of the sick man. We cannot see the resemblance, but the crowd presses forward and watches his motions with eager curiosity. He calls for a cup of wine, pours part of it over the image, and after drinking the rest, mutters an incantation. All in vain, while he is yet speaking, the family of the sick man raises a chorus of wails, in which the crowd joins. The man is dead; no charm can avail him more. ”

“ The creed of the desert nomad is simple and austere—for nature about him is monotonous, silent, and illiberal. But Syria is a land of lavish gifts and oracles—where woods are full of mysterious speech, and rivers burst suddenly from the ground, where the freedom of nature excites, and seems to sanction, the passions of the human body, where food is rich, and men drink wine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What more noble forms could have ushered the people into the temple of their gods? What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature by men who sought, unaided by the light of revealed religion, to embody their conception of the wisdom, power and ubiquity of a Supreme Being? They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge than the head of a man ”

“ Landward the soil is a chocolate brown, with breaks and gullies, now bare to their dirty white shingle and stagnant puddles, and now full of rich green reeds and rushes that tell of ample water beneath. Over corn and moorland a million flowers are scattered—poppies, pimpernels, anemones, the convolvulus and the mallow, the narcissus and blue iris—roses of Sharon and lilies of the valley. Lizards haunt all the sunny banks. ”

“ Let us imagine a crocodile, fresh from a warm, sumptuous bath, anointed with the most precious ointments and perfumed with fragrant odors; its head and neck glittering with jeweled earrings and necklace, and its feet with bracelets wallowing on a rich and costly carpet to receive the worship of intelligent human beings! Its death was mourned as a public calamity; its body, wrapped in linen, was carried to the embalmers, attended by a train of people weeping and beating their breasts in grief ”

“ Bees murmur everywhere, larks are singing; and although in the maze of hills you may wander for hours without meeting a man, or seeing a house, you are seldom out of sound of the human voice, shepherds and ploughmen calling to their cattle and to each other across the glens. Higher up you rise to moorlands, with rich grass if there is a spring, but otherwise, heath, thorns, and rough herbs that scent the wind. Bees abound here, too, and dragon-flies, kites and crows; sometimes an eagle floats over the cliffs of Judaea. The sun beats strong, but you see and feel the sea ”

“ Some are picketed about where the turf is richest, others contentedly munch the barley that has been placed before them in portable mangers, to reward them for the toils that they have gone through. Many prefer sleeping to eating, and, leaving their food untouched, stretch themselves upon the sward. Night falls—the stars come out—the traders sleep in their tents, with a stone or a bale of goods for their pillow—a profound hush sinks upon the camp, except for the occasional squeal of a skittish pair of mules, which have exchanged bites under cover of the darkness. ”

“ At that time Shamash-shum-ukin, the faithless brother, to whom I had done good, and whom I had established as king of Babylon, and for whom I had made every possible kind of royal decoration, and had given him, and had gathered together soldiers, horses, and chariots, and had intrusted them to him, and had given him cities, fields, and woods, and the men dwelling in them, even more than my father had commanded—even he forgot that favor I had shown him, and he planned evil. ”

“ If one takes the position that the history of the Hebrews is different from that of every other people in the world's history, if it be held that their development cannot be traced as the unfolding of all other peoples has been traced, then there is nothing more to be said—one can merely chronicle the wonders and marvel. ”

“ The feeling of the Persian towards his king is one of which moderns can with difficulty form a conception. In Persia the monarch was so much the State, that patriotism itself was, as it were, swallowed up in loyalty; and an unquestioning submission, not only to the deliberate will, but to the merest caprice of the sovereign, was, by habit and education, so ingrained into the nature of the people that a contrary spirit scarcely ever manifested itself. In war the safety of the sovereign was the first thought, and the principal care of all. If the king suffered, all was lost ”

“ Much as Venice attracts artists by its lavish display of color, Cairo also offers visions for one who is skillful with the brush. Its sapphire skies, gorgeous sunsets with their marvellous after-glow, the gleaming sands of the desert and Pyramids turned to gold in the setting sun, are intoxicating. ”

“ It is almost staggering even at this remote time to think of the pride and glory of Babylonian life, the splendor of its palaces, the wonder of its temples, being thus wantonly destroyed. Long periods of peace in the kingdom had given opportunity for art and literature to develop, and there can be no question that countless records of priceless worth were destroyed by the deed of this fierce Assyrian. The culture of Babylonia had indeed succumbed to the barbarism of Assyria. The inhabitants—scholars, artists, artisans, were taken captives, and deported to various points of the empire. ”

“ Like all other peoples in the same stage of culture, the primitive Egyptians feared and tried to render harmless, and perchance useful, the powers of nature, always mysterious because not understood. Thus arose the worship of natural phenomena, plants, animals and the dead. If we remember that among our own ignorant masses many of the religious ideas of our primitive forefathers survive in what we call superstition, we will not judge the common people of Egypt for holding fast to the beliefs of their ancestors, for it is true that they did so all through Egypt's long history. ”

“ Upon arrival, their return was the occasion for a gala-day at the capital. The state troops were out on parade, the veterans of the expedition formed in procession with the thirty-one myrrh trees which had been carefully packed and shielded under awning from the sun's rays; the strange animals from Punt—dogs, baboons, monkeys, a tame leopard with his keeper, natives who gave their war dance, the dwarf queen of Punt, who with her chief men brought gifts to Hatshepsut—all these made up a great spectacle sufficiently absorbing to the throngs who filled the streets of Thebes. ”

“ It has been surmised that for aid rendered they were allowed to go back to their own country and rebuild Jerusalem on its early site.
Not only were the Hebrews an element to be reckoned with; the priests of the Babylonian gods had been repeatedly offended by Nabonidus, and they too joined the opposition, beyond doubt.
So great a city as Babylon had never before existed. No city since has had so long a history, and yet, without a blow struck in its defense, it passed into the possession of a people just taking on the ways of civilized life. ”

“ When we think that each succeeding invasion was the occasion for destruction; when plunder and fire vied with each other in despoiling the conquered land; when later the few temples which had withstood these experiences were robbed of their contents, and obelisks, monuments and statues were scattered among the nations of the earth, to satisfy personal gratification, we can no longer wonder that so little remains of that Egypt we have been studying. ”