Egyptian hieroglyphs

“ We hear much about the absurd and corrupt side of the Egyptian religion, but few have taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with its brighter side. Our ideas on the subject have been determined largely by the writings of the Greeks and Romans who knew only the last decadent period of Egyptian history. The decipherment of the hieroglyphs has enabled us to study the contemporary documents and inscriptions, and as a result the religious ideas developed by the Egyptians have not only aroused our deepest interest, but are commanding our admiration. ”

“ In these panels there is nothing that can be called a "subject." Hesi either sits or stands (fig. 184) , and has four or five columns of hieroglyphs above his head; but the firmness of line, the subtlety of modelling, the ease of execution, are {211} unequalled. Never has wood been cut with a more delicate chisel or a firmer hand.
The variety of attitude and gesture which we so much admire in the Egyptian bas-relief is lacking to the statues. A mourner weeping, a woman bruising corn for bread, a baker rolling dough, are subjects as rare in the round as they are common in bas-relief. ”

“ Although the discovery of the general import of the hieroglyphics has by no means excited any great sensation in this country, yet the activity of the various collectors resident in Egypt seems to have been in some measure stimulated by it. Important additions have been made, or are about to be made, to the Egyptian department of the British Museum; and in France, the magnificent liberality of the Government, together with the insatiable curiosity of some affluent individuals, has held out ample encouragement to the commercial antiquarian. ”

“ It is certain, however, that state archives already existed in the chief cities of Phœnicia, and a library was probably attached to the ancient temple of Baal, the Sun-god, at Tyre, which was restored by Hiram. It was from the Phœnicians that the Israelites, and the nations round about them, received their alphabet. This alphabet was of Egyptian origin. As far back as the monuments of Egypt carry us, we find the Egyptians using their hieroglyphics to express not only ideas and syllables, but also the letters of an alphabet. ”

“ In recent years a large number of inscriptions from tombs and temples have been read and many rolls of papyrus have been translated. This has enabled historians to read back, step by step, into far away ages, and to carry the thread of Egyptian civilization to its beginnings. Maspero, Eduard Meyer, Breasted, Petrie and other painstaking students of Egyptology have given their lives to the task of unraveling the past, both by deciphering inscriptions and unearthing forgotten cities. ”

“ On the whole, it seems that the neolithic arrow-heads found in Egypt, and the fragments of pottery brought up by borings through the deposits of the Nile, are the oldest certain human relics of the neolithic age which have yet been discovered, and these do not carry us back further than a possible date of 15,000 or 20,000 years b.c.
Nor is there any certainty that any of the neolithic remains found in the newer deposits of rivers and the upper strata of caves go further, or even so far back as these relics of an Egyptian stone period. ”

“ This second book of Herodotus brings the history of Egypt as an independent power to a close. It is an inexhaustibly rich mine of historical, archaeological, and mythological wealth, on whose endless shafts and galleries modern discovery is ever throwing some new light. Formerly the deciphering of the hieroglyphic writing, in which all Egyptian sacred records were kept, was looked upon as all but hopeless, but since the key was supplied by the discovery of the famous Rosetta stone, which bore a Greek translation of its hieroglyphic inscription, scientific patience has been abundantly rewarded. ”

“ But, as has often happened in other fields after years of acrimonious controversy, a new discovery or two may suffice to show that neither contestant was right. After the Egyptologists of the school of De Rouge (1) thought they had demonstrated that the familiar symbols of the Phoenician alphabet had been copied from that modified form of Egyptian hieroglyphics known as the hieratic writing, the Assyriologists came forward to prove that certain characters of the Babylonian syllabary also show a likeness to the alphabetical characters that seemingly could not be due to chance. ”

“ With such a deep and mystic literature, encompassing the gods, nature, and man, in life and death, it is no wonder that a mystic and symbolic art should have succeeded in Egypt.
Their mythology was not less profound than that of the Trans-Himâlâyans; there was more of symmetry, at least architectural symmetry, in their conceptions and representations than in those of the Brahmans, though Egyptian priests and Brahmans have apparently taken their conceptions from one and the same source. ”

“ The book gives conclusive proof of the teaching of the Egyptians of a life beyond this. Their belief in the journey of the soul after death to the Underworld, before it is admitted to the Hall of Osiris, or the abode of light, is akin to the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory and Heaven. The Egyptian literature is painted or engraved on monuments, written on papyrus, and buried in tombs, or under the ruins of temples, hence, as has been said elsewhere, much of it remained hidden until nineteenth century research brought it to light. ”

“ The architecture of Egypt was practised in a manner to show almost no historical development—with the sculpture this is the case in still greater degree. The most ancient carved remains, which with reasonable security may be assigned to the fifth dynasty, show the formal system, retained during the subsequent twenty centuries, as already perfected. Even at that early date the network of lines, which the Egyptian sculptors (more as mechanics than as artists) followed down to the time of the Ptolemies, was already calculated and introduced as a canon. ”

“ Meyer has accurately compared the Egyptian Naharaim with the Parapotamia of the administration of the Seleucidæ.
It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the fourth millennium before our era. Wherever excavations are made, relics are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. ”

“ It is evidently a development on Egyptian soil, in prehistoric times, of 122 the picture-writing of a primitive period. The symbols are taken from Egypt and not from foreign objects, and are essentially different from those of the Chaldæan cuneiform, which is the only other form of writing which might possibly compare in point of antiquity with the Egyptian hieroglyphics and hieratic. These were certainly known prior to the time of Menes, and they are the parents of the Phœnician, Hebrew, Greek, and all more modern alphabets. ”

“ Egyptian hieroglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions yet remained, for the most part, but confusion of ornament and meaningless signs. Some little advance, it is true, had been reached during the latter part of the eighteenth century, as to the signification of certain hieroglyphic characters, but these were as yet but conjecture; a groping in the dark, with no means to verify, uncertain, unassured. ”

“ Upon reflecting for a single moment, we are fully satisfied that the origin of the art now under contemplation came from Egypt. An ancient philosopher expressed himself with great truth, when he said, “Necessity was man’s first instructor.” We accordingly perceive the necessity of the earliest inhabitants of Egypt to exercise56 the art of drawing, they having determined to record their transactions by hieroglyphical representation. We have not the slightest doubt but we have now in the British Museum some of the earliest specimens of Egyptian hieroglyphical delineation, in the sarcophagi ”

“ These animal forms, in which a later myth saw the shapes assumed by the affrighted gods during the great war between Horus and Typhon, take us back to a remote prehistoric age, when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism. They are survivals from a long-forgotten past, and prove that Egyptian civilisation was of slow and independent growth, the latest stage only of which is revealed to us by the monuments. Apis of Memphis, Mnevis of Heliopolis, and Pachis of Hermonthis are all links that bind together the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Egypt of the stone age. ”

“ Next to the history of art, however, a great part of our time and attention was claimed by Egyptian archaeology in its widest sense. This was a field which had already been worked with success and industry, especially by Wilkinson and Rosellini. It contains an inexhaustible wealth of detached monuments of common life, and representations thereof of all kinds, far exceeding in abundance all other remains of antiquity. And on this account this branch of study needed much more a vigorous prosecution of its aims and elevation of its standard, than a farther accumulation of details. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Phœnicians and Hebrews are supposed to have borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptian hieratic writing; and in the transition the irregular character of the markings of the reed pen on papyrus disappeared and monumental regularity took its place, as nearly all of the early Phœnician and Hebrew writing was in the form of inscriptions on stone and metal. But in this transition the letters did not revert to the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol, but simply became an angular, simplified form of the hieratic, so that the A became a V or caret-like form with a line crossing it. ”

“ It has also been observed by an accomplished scholar, who is much attached to the pursuit of Egyptian antiquities, that, according to the testimony of Herodotus, all the kings of this dynasty [Pg 33] were buried at Saïs, and that we must either reject this evidence, or admit that neither Psammis nor Necho can be the personage here represented. We may, however, hope, that future researches will furnish us with materials, that may enable us to remove this and many other difficulties, which at present envelope the chronology of the kings of Egypt. ”

“ Looking now at the history of purely alphabetical writing, it has been shown that there is one alphabet, that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, the development of which (and of course of its derived forms) is clearly to be traced from the stage of pure pictures to that of pure letters. It was long ago noticed that some of the old Egyptian hieratic characters have been directly retained in use in Egypt. The Coptic Christians still keep up in their churches their sacred language, which is a direct descendant of the ancient Egyptian ”

“ Prehistoric burials were found on the hills near by, but the larger portion of the antiquities were recovered from the temple-ruins, and date back to the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, exactly the time when the kings of Hierakonpolis first conquered the kingdom of Buto and founded the united Egyptian monarchy. ”

“ The bracelets of the High Priest Pinotem III., found upon his mummy, are mere round rings of gold incrusted with pieces of coloured glass and carnelian, like those still made by the Soudanese blacks. The Greek invasion began by modifying the style of Egyptian gold-work, and ended by gradually substituting Greek types for native types. The jewels of an Ethiopian queen, purchased from Ferlini by the Berlin Museum, contained not only some ornaments which might readily have been attributed to Pharaonic times, but others of a mixed style in which Hellenic influences are distinctly traceable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many attempts had been made during the eighteenth century to interpret the hieroglyphic inscriptions found on Egyptian remains, but all had failed. It had been conjectured, however, that some at least of the characters represented sounds, and that those enclosed in an oval line represented proper names. When, in 1799, a tablet was discovered at Rosetta, at the mouth of the Nile, with a decree of the priests inscribed on it in hieroglyphic (sacred) , enchorial (cursive) , and Greek characters, it was seen that the Greek might afford a clue to the interpretation of the Egyptian inscriptions. ”

“ Among the objects recovered from this site may be mentioned a pottery model of oxen, a box in the shape of a model hut, and a slate “palette” with what is perhaps the oldest Egyptian hieroglyph known, a representation of the fetish-sign of the god Min, in relief. All these are preserved in the British Museum. The skulls of the bodies found were carefully preserved for craniometric examination. ”