Ancient Egypt

“ The size and eternity of Egypt took me easily. There was an overwhelming grandeur in it that elbowed out all present standards. The whole place towered and stood up. The desert reared, the very horizons lifted; majestic figures of granite rose above the hotel, great faces hovered and drove past; huge arms reached up to pluck the stars and set them in the ceilings of the labyrinthine tombs. The colossal meaning of the ancient land emerged through all its ruined details⁠ ⁠... reconstructed⁠—burningly alive.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ The art of Egypt is the oldest of all the national arts, and the oldest monuments of Egypt are its tombs. By these alone is that earliest epoch in its history which we call the Ancient Empire known to us. ”

“ There are many traditions still extant in Egypt, of mysterious travellers floating down the Nile in craft of antique build, accompanied by women of blackest colour, but with Grecian or Abyssinian features, and adorned with rings, collars, and bracelets of pure gold, in shape resembling those found in the tombs of ancient Egypt. ”

“ Who carved it, or whose face it bears, we do not certainly know; but there the great figure crouches, as it has crouched for countless ages, keeping watch and ward over the empty tombs where the Pharaohs of Egypt once slept, its head towering seventy feet into the air, its vast limbs and body stretching for two hundred feet along the sand, the strangest and most wonderful monument ever hewn by the hands of man (Plate 11) .
Later on in Egyptian history the Kings and great folk grew tired of building pyramids, and the fashion changed. ”

“ Strangers appear to have overrun the country, and for over 400 years the history of ancient Egypt is a blank; neither tombs nor temples mark the changes and vicissitudes which befel that wonderful nation, only a few royal names appear on scarabs, or tablets, but of the great people themselves, and of their ancient civilisation, the people who built the great Pyramids and carved the immortal Sphinx, of them there is not a trace. ”

“ Apart from its wonderful river, the country itself has no very striking features. It is rather a monotonous land—a long ribbon of green running through a great waste of yellow desert and barren hills. But the great charm that draws people's minds to Egypt, and gives the old land a never-failing interest, is its great story of the past, and all the relics of that story which are still to be seen. ”

“ This Semitic-Sumerian culture, mingling with that of the Nilotes themselves, produced the civilization of Ancient Egypt as we know it.
This is a very plausible hypothesis, and has a great deal of evidence in its favour. It seems certain that in the early dynastic period two races lived in Egypt, which differed considerably in type, and also, apparently, in burial customs. The later Egyptians always buried the dead lying on their backs, extended at full length. ”

“ The present inhabitants of Egypt range from a yellow color in the north to a deep bronze. One writer believes that the ancient Egyptians belonged to a brown race which included the Nubian tribes and to some extent the Berber tribes of Algiers and Tunis.
The record of the greatness of ancient Egypt is preserved in her works. The pyramids, though but the ruins of their former grandeur, are the marvels of mankind. The river Nile, by means of enormous embankments, was diverted from its course to make a place for the old city of Memphis. ”

“ In fact, the whole of life in Ancient Egypt passes before your eyes as you go from chamber to chamber, and it is from these old tomb-pictures that we have learned the most of what we know of how people lived and worked in those long-past days.
In one wild rocky glen, called the "Valley of the Kings," nearly all the later Pharaohs were buried, and to-day their tombs are one of the sights of Thebes. Let us look at the finest of them—the tomb of Sety I., the father of that Ramses II. of whom we have heard so much. ”

“ THE position of Ancient Egypt was unique, not in one, but in every sense. To begin at the very foundation of life in that country, we find that the soil was unlike any other on earth in its origin. Every acre of fruitful land between the first cataract and the sea had been brought from Inner Africa, and each year additions were made to it. Out of this mud, borne down thousands of miles from the great fertile uplands of Abyssinia by rivers, grew everything needed to feed and clothe man and nourish animals. ”

“ Through me alone shall the kingdom of Egypt come to thee; thou shalt wear the White Crown of the South Land and the Red Crown of the North Land, thou shalt sit upon the throne of Geb the inheritor. To thee shall belong the whole land in its length and breadth, that land which the universal Lord makes glorious. Want and trouble shall never come nigh thee, for gifts shall be brought to thee from every country, near and afar; the duration of thy life shall be for many years ”

“ Egypt was ever considered, by all the ancients, as the most renowned school for wisdom and politics, and the source from whence most arts and sciences were derived. This kingdom bestowed its noblest labours and finest arts on the improvement of mankind; and Greece was so sensible of this, that its most illustrious men, as Homer, Pythagoras, Plato; even its great legislators, Lycurgus and Solon, with many more whom it is needless to mention, travelled into Egypt, to complete their studies, and draw from that fountain whatever was most rare and valuable in every kind of learning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Greeks found in Egypt a national culture and especially a religious system. The pliant Hellenic genius could not remain insensible to that ancient and marvellous civilisation with its sphinxes and hieroglyphics, its pyramids and temples, its learning and thought, so strangely perplexing and interesting to the Greek mind. ”

“ How few I shall need for dying, since so few were needed for living!' But one day human corpses were exhumed from the bosom of Egypt—Egypt that had lived out its period of civilization, and has just lived its period of barbarism! Egypt, where the ancient light, lost so long, is being rekindled, and a rested and rejuvenated Egypt may perhaps soon come and establish herself upon the extinguished torch of our own. Egypt, the living image of her mummies sleeping under the dust of ages, and now awaking to the broad daylight of science in order to reveal the age of the old world to the new! ”

“ His priests have far more power than the greatest barons of the land, and Pharaoh, mighty as he is, would think twice before offending a band of men whose hatred could shake him on his throne. Such was an Egyptian temple 3,000 years ago, when Egypt was the greatest power in the world.
But if the temples of ancient Egypt are wonderful, the tombs are almost more wonderful still. Very early in their history the Egyptians began to show their sense of the importance of the life after death by raising huge buildings to hold the bodies of their great men. ”

“ Not the pharaohs, as Thou knowest well, but the gods and the priests created Egypt. It is not the pharaohs who mark the rise and fall of the Nile and regulate its overflows; it is not the pharaohs who teach the people to sow, to gather fruits and rear cattle. It is not the pharaohs who cure diseases and watch over the safety of the state against foreign enemies. ”

“ The Egyptians extended their reputation in a very different manner, by sending colonies into all parts of the world, and with them laws and politeness. They triumphed by the wisdom of their counsels, and the superiority of their knowledge; and this empire of the mind appeared more noble and glorious to them, than that which is achieved by arms and conquest. But, nevertheless, Egypt has given birth to illustrious conquerors, as will be observed hereafter, when we come to treat of its kings. ”

“ On the west side, the plain grows wider in some places, and extends to twenty-five or thirty leagues. The greatest breadth of Egypt is from Alexandria to Damietta, being about fifty leagues.
Ancient Egypt may be divided into three principal parts: Upper Egypt, otherwise called Thebais, which was the most [pg 002] southern part; Middle Egypt, or Heptanomis, so called from the seven Nomi or districts it contained; Lower Egypt, which included what the Greeks call Delta, and all the country as far as the Red-Sea, and along the Mediterranean to Rhinocolura, or Mount Casius. ”

“ On this national tillage was founded the greatness of the country, for from it came the means to execute other works, and in it began that toil, training, and skill indispensable in rearing the monuments and doing those things which have made Egypt famous forever, and preserved to us a knowledge of the language, religion, modes of living, and history of that wonderful people who held the Nile valley. No civilized person who has looked on the pyramid of Ghizeh, the temple of Karnak, and the tombs of the pharaohs in the Theban region, can ever forget them. ”

“ With these new discoveries of Christian Egypt our work reaches its fitting close. The frontier which divides the ancient from the modern world has almost been crossed. We look back from the monastery of Bâwît down a long vista of new discoveries until, four thousand years before, we see again the Great Heads coming to the Tomb of Den, Narmer inspecting the bodies of the dead Northerners, and, far away in Babylonia, Narâm-Sin crossing the mountains of the East to conquer Elam, or leading his allies against the prince of Sinai. ”

“ They are squat, thick, and heavy in form, and seem oppressed by the weight of the woollen covering with which the Chaldeans enveloped themselves; when viewed closely, they excite at once the wonder and repulsion of an eye accustomed to the delicate grace, and at times somewhat slender form, which usually characterized the good statues of the ancient and middle empire of Egypt. But when we have got over the effect of first impressions, we can but admire the audacity with which the artists attacked their material. ”

“ The Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty, wearied of the long decadence and devastating wars which had followed the glorious epoch of the conquering Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, turned for a new and refreshing inspiration to the works of the most ancient kings, when Egypt was a simple self-contained country, holding no intercourse with outside lands, bearing no outside burdens for the sake of pomp and glory, and knowing nothing of the decay and decadence which follows in the train of earthly power and grandeur. ”

“ Be pleased also to remember that Egyptian edifices differ as much from those of Assyria as the Egyptian people differ from Assyrians. Among us the fundamental form of every building is a pointless pyramid,—the most enduring form, as Egypt is the most enduring among kingdoms. With Assyrians the fundamental form is a cube, which is injured easily and is subject to destruction.
“The proud and frivolous Assyrian puts his cubes one upon another, and rears a many-storied structure under which foundations yield. The obedient and prudent Egyptian puts his truncated pyramids one behind the other. ”

“ Since 1860, and particularly since the foundation in 1863 at Berlin of a journal in which everything connected with the language or archaeology of ancient Egypt might be discussed, the number of highly distinguished scholars has greatly increased. ”

“ He found the hitherto unknown names of four of the ancient kings of Egypt, the first men who could lay claim to rule the tribes, the men who figure before the first Dynasty. He was pushing civilization back, and yet farther back. Whereas others set the limit of the civilization of Egypt as five thousand years, he added another fifty centuries to it, doubled the life of the civilization that flourished and decayed and flourished and decayed many times in the valley of the Nile. ”

“ This Delta is called Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt extends from Cairo to the First Cataract; Nubia, from the First Cataract to the Sixth.
2. The Preservation of Antiquities.—Rain in Egypt is very, very rare. One might almost say that it never rains. The country lies in a latitude so far south that frost is rarely known. These two conditions have united to preserve the ruins of many ancient buildings in both Egypt and Nubia in a state of perfection which is rare in other countries. It was the custom of the ancient Egyptians to bury their dead in the dry land beyond the reach of the Nile’s overflow. ”

“ The Egyptians, whom we are accustomed to consider as a people respecting the established order of things, and conservative of ancient tradition, showed themselves as restless and as prone to modify or destroy the work of the past, as the most inconstant of our modern nations. ”

“ The Eastern world: Elam, Urartu, the Syrian kingdoms, the ancient Semitic states decayed and decaying—Babylon in its decline—The Jewish state and its miseries—Nehemiah, Ezra—Egypt in the eyes of the Greeks: Sais, the Delta, the inhabitants of the marshes—Memphis, its monuments, its population—Travels in Upper Egypt: the Fayum, Khemmis, Thebes, Elephantine—The apparent vigour and actual feebleness of Egypt. ”

“ It would require several volumes adequately to deal with the results of the excavations of the present century. Further discoveries, all throwing new light upon the life of ancient Egypt, are being made each season, and the number of enthusiastic workers gathered from every nation constantly increases. ”