Egyptology

“ The Egyptian is the most ancient of all nations, except indeed that its superior antiquity is contested by the Scythians: their country is bounded on the south by the greater Syrtes, Cape Eas, and Cape Borion, the Garamantes, and other nations; on the east, by Elephantine, and Meroe, cities of the Ethiopians, the Catadupi, the Red Sea, and the Scenite Arabs, whom we now call Saracens. On the north it joins a vast track of land, where Asia and the Syrian provinces begin; on the west it is bounded by the Sea of Issus, which some call the Parthenian Sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ancient Egyptians had that greatest mark of a civilized nation, the art of writing; indeed the hieroglyphic characters of their inscriptions appear to have been the origin of our alphabet. They were a nation skilled in agriculture, raising from their fields fertilized by the yearly inundation those rich crops of grain that provided subsistence for the dense population. How numerous and how skilled in constructive art the ancient Egyptians were, is seen by every traveller who looks on the pyramids which have made their name famous through all history. ”

“ Egyptian Civilization.—The statues, paintings, and instruments which are taken from the tombs of this epoch give evidence of an already civilized people. When all the other eminent nations of antiquity—the Hindoos, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Romans—were still in a savage state, 3,500 years before our era, the Egyptians had known for a long time how to cultivate the soil, to weave cloths, to work metals, to paint, sculpture, and to write ”

“ 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. ”

“ Full of their own memories and legends of tribal movements, of migrations, of invasions, the Greeks acknowledged themselves children of yesterday in face of a secular empire with an origin so remote that it was scarcely guessed at in the conjectures of fable. Egypt presented to them, as to us, the spectacle of antique civilisation without a known beginning. The spade of to-day reveals no more than the traditions of two thousand years ago. The most ancient relics of the earliest dynasty are the massive works of an organised society and an accomplished art. ”

“ The History of the Kings of Egypt. No part of ancient history is more obscure or uncertain, than that of the first kings of Egypt. This proud nation, fondly conceited of its antiquity and nobility, thought it glorious to lose itself in an abyss of infinite ages, which seemed to carry its pretensions backward to eternity. According to its own historians,400 first, gods, and afterwards demigods or heroes, governed it successively, through a series of more than twenty thousand years. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Not only certain turns in this description, but passages in invocations which have come down to us, show that in expressing themselves, the Egyptians, in spite of the predominant vein of reflection, were not without force of imagination, or striking figures, or largeness and vigour of conception. That they are not free from bombast, foolish exaggeration, and incessant repetition, any more, or even so little, as the other nations of the East, is proved more especially by the inscriptions in the temples recording the mighty deeds of the kings. ”

“ Yet even now, the physical characteristics of the ancient Egyptians are regarded with singular diversity of opinion by the learned, who variously refer them to the Jews, Arabs, Hindoos, Nubians, and Negroes. Even the details of organic structure have been involved in the same uncertainty,—the configuration of the head, the position of the ear, the form of the teeth, the colour of the skin, and the texture of the hair; while the great question is itself undetermined—whether civilization ascended or descended the Nile;—whether it had its origin in Egypt or in Ethiopia. ”

“ The Egyptians anciently boasted of a very great and lasting Empire under their Kings Ammon, Osiris, Bacchus, Sesostris, Hercules, Memnon, &c. reaching eastward to the Indies, and westward to the Atlantic Ocean; and out of vanity have made this monarchy some thousands of years older than the world: let us now try to rectify the Chronology of Egypt; by comparing the affairs of Egypt with the synchronizing affairs of the Greeks and Hebrews. ”

“ The legendary history of Egypt begins with the Heliopolitan Enneads, or traditions of the divine dynasties of Ra, Shu, Osiris, Sit and Horus. Great space is taken up with the fabulous history of Ra, the first king of Egypt, who allows himself to be duped and robbed by Isis, destroys rebellious men, and ascends to heaven. He dwelt in Heliopolis, where his court was mainly composed of gods and goddesses. ”

“ Will not the historian deign to notice the prior origin of every art and science in Egypt a thousand years before 27 the Pelasgians studded the isles and capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples,—long before Etruscan civilization had smiled on Italian skies? And shall not the ethnographer, versed in Egyptian lore, proclaim the fact that the physiological, craniological, capillary, and cuticular distinctions of the human race existed on the distribution of mankind throughout the earth? ”

“ The vastness of her monuments, the splendour of her tombs, the pomp of her ceremonies, the dignity and variety of her religious formulas, attracted their curiosity and commanded their respect: the wisdom of the Egyptians had passed into a proverb with them, as it had with the Hebrews. But if they had penetrated behind the scenes, they would have been obliged to acknowledge that beneath this attractive exterior there was hopeless decay. As with all creatures when they have passed their prime, Egypt had begun to grow old, and was daily losing her elasticity and energy. ”

“ After these acts followed the almost insensible creation of men and women by the process of weeping, and the more sophisticated making of vegetation, reptiles, and stars. In all this we see the survival of a creation myth of a most primitive and barbarous type, which much more resembles the crude imaginings of the Red Man than any concept which might be presumed to have arisen from the consciousness of 'classic' Egypt. ”

“ For nearly four hundred years Egypt had been a country politically contemptible, overrun now by Ethiopians, now by Assyrians, now by Babylonians, now by Persians. As the indignities of the present became more and more disagreeable to contemplate, the past and the other world became more splendid to Egyptian eyes. ”

“ In Egypt it was an art, a gift, mysterious in itself, reserved to the few. To the Egyptian, religion consisted in paraded symbols, in avenues of sphinxes, in forests of obelisks, in pharaohs seated colossally before the temple doors, in inscriptions that told indistinguishably of theomorphic men and anthropomorphic gods, and in a belief in the divinity of bulls and hawks. ”

“ Even to the ancients Egypt was antiquity, and the Greeks sought in the dateless mysteries of the Egyptian religion for the fountain of all that was most mysterious in their own. Curiosity about the obscure beginnings of human creeds and the first knowledge of the gods was naturally aroused by that spectacle of the Pantheon of Egypt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One was my sojourn in Paris, which is the place altogether best adapted to obtaining an initiation into Egyptian antiquity. The first broad foundation for this science was laid on the part of the French in the “Description de l’Égypte.” A French scholar first procured access to the native monuments of Egypt, and for a number of years he was the center of Egyptian studies on account of his admirable talent, which seemed made for the deciphering of the Egyptian monuments. ”

“ It was in Upper Egypt, the sacred city, and devoted to the worship of the god Amen, or Amon, whom the Greeks regarded as their Jove. From here went out the great war chariots and the bands of soldiers to battle, and often, especially at this period, to conquest.
“The chief peculiarity of the Egyptians,” says a writer who is an authority, “is the remarkable closeness of their eyelashes on both lids, forming a dense double fringe, which gives so animated an expression to their almond-shaped eyes.” ”

“ The earliest Greek travellers who went to Egypt, when that country was finally opened up to the outside world, must have noticed the strange picture scrolls everywhere to be seen there on the temple walls, on obelisks, on statues, and mummy-cases, as well as on papyrus rolls, which were obviously intended to serve the purpose of handing down records of events to future generations. ”

“ Such is especially the case with Egypt, the history of which country, as represented by its monuments of art, carries us back to the remotest ages of antiquity. Egyptian art generally presents itself in a sombre and massive character, with little of gaiety or joviality in its designs or forms. ”

“ In many minds the historical antiquity of Egypt, the almost fabulous ages to which its civilization ascends, seem to challenge the history of other countries, and the land of the Pharaohs, rejecting all chronological comparison, to have appeared in the midst of the world as a single example of a land which savage life had never trodden. ”

“ To the Egyptians we must attribute the invention of maps and plans. They first studied heraldry: every nome had its distinctive emblem, generally bird or beast; and each temple and guild its blazon. [471]
Literature would be imperfect without art and science, and accordingly we find their head-quarters and old home in Egypt. These studies humanised the people; their code suggests the mildness of modern penal law; and their reverence for letters, 148for old age, and for the dignity of man, makes them an eternal example to the world. The monuments show their fondness for music and painting. ”

“ Critics in the last century, especially, noticing some characteristics which early Greek work has in common, indeed, with Egyptian art, but which are common also to all such early work everywhere, supposed, as a matter of course, that it came, as the Greek religion also, from Egypt—that old, immemorial half-known birthplace of all wonderful things. ”

“ Of a prehistoric Egypt nothing was known, beyond a few flint flakes gathered here and there upon the desert plateaus, which might or might not tell of an age when the ancestors of the Pyramid-builders knew only the stone tools and weapons of the primeval savage. ”

“ 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. ”