General History for Colleges and High Schools Part 3

"The mission of Egypt among the nations was fulfilled; it had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably remote, and had pa.s.sed it on to other peoples of the West."

2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE.

CLa.s.sES OF SOCIETY.--Egyptian society was divided into three great cla.s.ses, or orders,--priests, soldiers, and common people; the last embracing shepherds, husbandmen, and artisans.

The sacerdotal order consisted of high-priests, prophets, scribes, keepers of the sacred robes and animals, sacred sculptors, masons, and embalmers.

They enjoyed freedom from taxation, and met the expenses of the temple services with the income of the sacred lands, which embraced one third of the soil of the country.

The priests were extremely scrupulous in the care of their persons. They bathed twice by day and twice by night, and shaved the entire body every third day. Their inner clothing was linen, woollen garments being thought unclean; their diet was plain and even abstemious, in order that, as Plutarch says, "their bodies might sit light as possible about their souls."

Next to the priesthood in rank and honor stood the military order. Like the priests, the soldiers formed a landed cla.s.s. They held one third of the soil of Egypt. To each soldier was given a tract of about eight acres, exempt from all taxes. They were carefully trained in their profession, and there was no more effective soldiery in ancient times than that which marched beneath the standard of the Pharaohs.

THE CHIEF DEITIES.--Attached to the chief temples of the Egyptians were colleges for the training of the sacerdotal order. These inst.i.tutions were the repositories of the wisdom of the Egyptians. This learning was open only to the initiated few.

The unity of G.o.d was the central doctrine in this private system. They gave to this Supreme Being the very same name by which he was known to the Hebrews--_Nuk Pu Nuk_, "I am that I am." [Footnote: "It is evident what a new light this discovery throws on the sublime pa.s.sage in Exodus iii. 14; where Moses, whom we may suppose to have been initiated into this formula, is sent both to his people and to Pharaoh to proclaim the true G.o.d by this very t.i.tle, and to declare that the G.o.d of the highest Egyptian theology was also the G.o.d of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. The case is parallel to that of Paul at Athens."--Smith's _Ancient History of the East_, p. 196, note.] The sacred ma.n.u.scripts say, "He is the one living and true G.o.d,... who has made all things, and was not himself made."

The Egyptian divinities of the popular mythology were frequently grouped in triads. First in importance among these groups was that formed by Osiris, Isis (his wife and sister), and Horus, their son. The members of this triad were wors.h.i.+pped throughout Egypt.

The G.o.d Set (called Typhon by the Greek writers), the principle of evil, was the Satan of Egyptian mythology. While the good and beneficent Osiris was symbolized by the life-giving Nile, the malignant Typhon was emblemized by the terrors and barrenness of the desert.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MUMMY OF A SACRED BULL. (From a photograph.)]

ANIMAL-WORs.h.i.+P.--The Egyptians regarded certain animals as emblems of the G.o.ds, and hence wors.h.i.+pped them. To kill one of these sacred animals was adjudged the greatest impiety. Persons so unfortunate as to harm one through accident were sometimes murdered by the infuriated people. The destruction of a cat in a burning building was lamented more than the loss of the property. Upon the death of a dog, every member of the family shaved his head. The scarabaeus, or beetle, was especially sacred, being considered an emblem of the sun, or of life.

Not only were various animals held sacred, as being the emblems of certain deities, but some were thought to be real G.o.ds. Thus the soul of Osiris, it was imagined, animated the body of some bull, which might be known from certain spots and markings.

Upon the death of the sacred bull, or Apis, as he was called, a great search, accompanied with loud lamentation, was made throughout the land for his successor: for, the moment the soul of Osiris departed from the dying bull, it entered a calf that moment born. The calf was always found with the proper markings; but, as Wilkinson says, the young animal had probably been put to "much inconvenience and pain to make the marks and hair conform to his description."

The body of the deceased Apis was carefully embalmed, and, amid funeral ceremonies of great expense and magnificence, deposited in the tomb of his predecessors. In 1851, Mariette discovered this sepulchral chamber of the sacred bulls. It is a narrow gallery, two thousand feet in length, cut in the limestone cliffs just opposite the site of ancient Memphis. A large number of the immense granite coffins, fifteen feet long and eight wide and high, have been brought to light.

Many explanations have been given to account for the existence of such a debased form of wors.h.i.+p among so cultured a people as were the ancient Egyptians. Probably the sacred animals in the later wors.h.i.+p represent an earlier stage of the Egyptian religion, just as many superst.i.tious beliefs and observances among ourselves are simply survivals from earlier and ruder times.

JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD.--Death was a great equalizer among the Egyptians.

King and peasant alike must stand before the judgment-seat of Osiris and his forty-two a.s.sessors.

This judgment of the soul in the other world was prefigured by a peculiar ordeal to which the body was subjected here. Between each chief city and the burial-place on the western edge of the valley was a sacred lake, across which the body was borne in a barge. But, before admittance to the boat, it must pa.s.s the ordeal called "the judgment of the dead." This was a trial before a tribunal of forty-two judges, a.s.sembled upon the sh.o.r.e of the lake. Any person could bring accusations against the deceased, false charges being guarded against by the most dreadful penalties. If it appeared that the life of the deceased had been evil, pa.s.sage to the boat was denied; and the body was either carried home in dishonor, or, in case of the poor who could not afford to care for the mummy, was interred on the sh.o.r.es of the lake. Many mummies of those refused admission to the tombs of their fathers have been dug up along these "Stygian banks."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD: above, an ape-a.s.sessor scourges an evil soul, that has been changed into an unclean animal.]

But this ordeal of the body was only a faint symbol of the dread tribunal of Osiris before which the soul must appear in the lower world. In one scale of a balance was placed the heart of the deceased; in the other scale, an image of Justice, or Truth. The soul stands by watching the result, and, as the beam inclines, is either welcomed to the companions.h.i.+p of the good Osiris, or consigned to oblivion in the jaws of a frightful hippopotamus-headed monster, "the devourer of evil souls." This annihilation, however, is only the fate of those inveterately wicked.

Those respecting whom hopes of reformation may be entertained are condemned to return to earth and do penance in long cycles of lives in the bodies of various animals. This is what is known as the transmigration of souls. The kind of animals the soul should animate, and the length of its transmigrations, were determined by the nature of its sins.

TOMBS.--The Egyptians bestowed little care upon the temporary residences of the living, but the "eternal homes" of the dead were fitted up with the most lavish expenditure of labor. These were chambers, sometimes built of brick or stone, but more usually cut in the limestone cliffs that form the western rim of the Nile valley; for that, as the land of the sunset, was conceived to be the realm of darkness and of death. The cliffs opposite the ancient Egyptian capitals are honeycombed with sepulchral cells.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRICK-MAKING IN ANCIENT EGYPT, (From Thebes.)]

In the hills back of Thebes is the so-called Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the "Westminster Abbey of Egypt." Here are twenty-five magnificent sepulchres. These consist of extensive rock-cut pa.s.sages and chambers richly sculptured and painted.

The subjects of the decorations of many of the tombs, particularly of the oldest, are drawn from the life and manners of the times. Thus the artist has converted for us the Egyptian necropolis into a city of the living, where the Egypt of four thousand years ago seems to pa.s.s before our eyes.

THE PYRAMIDS.--The Egyptian pyramids, the tombs of the earlier Pharaohs, are the most venerable monuments that have been preserved to us from the early world. They were almost all erected before the Twelfth Dynasty.

Although thus standing away back in the earliest twilight of the historic morning, nevertheless they mark, not the beginning, but the perfection of Egyptian art. They speak of long periods of growth in art and science lying beyond the era they represent. It is this vast and mysterious background that astonishes us even more than these giant forms cast up against it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT HALL OF COLUMNS AT KARNAK.]

Being sepulchral monuments, the pyramids are confined to the western side of the Nile valley (see p. 31). There are over thirty still standing, with traces of about forty more.

The Pyramid of Cheops, the largest of the Gizeh group, near Cairo, rises from a base covering thirteen acres, to a height of four hundred and fifty feet. According to Herodotus, Cheops employed one hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection.

PALACES AND TEMPLES.---The earlier Memphian kings built great unadorned pyramids, but the later Theban monarchs constructed splendid palaces and temples. Two of the most prominent ma.s.ses of buildings on the site of Thebes are called, the one the Temple of Karnak, and the other the Temple of Luxor, from the names of two native villages built near or within the ruined enclosures. The former was more than five hundred years in building. As an adjunct of the temple at Karnak was a Hall of Columns, which consisted of a phalanx of one hundred and sixty-four gigantic pillars. Some of these columns measure over seventy feet in height, with capitals sixty-five feet in circ.u.mference.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUES OF MEMNON AT THEBES.]

In Nubia, beyond the First Cataract, is the renowned rock-hewn temple of Ipsambul, the front of which is adorned with four gigantic portrait- statues of Rameses II., seventy feet in height. This temple has been p.r.o.nounced the greatest and grandest achievement of Egyptian art.

SCULPTURE: SPHINXES AND COLOSSI.--A strange immobility, due to the influence of religion, attached itself, at an early period, to Egyptian art. The artist, in the portrayal of the figures of the G.o.ds, was not allowed to change a single line in the conventional form. Hence the impossibility of improvement in sacred sculpture. Wilkinson says that Menes would have recognized the statue of Osiris in the Temple of Amasis.

Plato complained that the pictures and statues in the temples in his day were no better than those made "ten thousand years" before.

The heroic, or colossal size of many of the Egyptian statues excites our admiration. The two colossi at Thebes, known as the "Statues of Memnon,"

are forty-seven feet high, and are hewn each from a single block of granite. The appearance of these time-worn, gigantic figures, upon the solitary plain, is singularly impressive. "There they sit together, yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant, still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Egypt."

One of these statues acquired a wide reputation among the Greeks and Romans, under the name of the "Vocal Memnon." When the rays of the rising sun fell upon the colossus, it emitted low musical tones, which the Egyptians believed to be the greeting of the statue to the mother-sun.

[Footnote: It is probable that the musical notes were produced by the action of the sun upon the surface of the rock while wet with dew. The phenomenon was observed only while the upper part of the colossus, which was broken off by an earthquake, remained upon the ground. When the statue was restored, the music ceased.]

The Egyptian sphinxes were figures having a human head and the body of a lion, symbolizing intelligence and power. The most famous of the sphinxes of Egypt is the colossal figure at the base of the Great Pyramid, at Gizeh, sculptured, some think, by Menes, and others, by one of the kings of the Fourth Dynasty. The immense statue, cut out of the native rock, save the fore-legs, which are built of masonry, is ninety feet long and seventy feet high. "This huge, mutilated figure has an astonis.h.i.+ng effect; it seems like an eternal spectre. The stone phantom seems attentive; one would say that it hears and sees. Its great ear appears to collect the sounds of the past; its eyes, directed to the east, gaze, as it were, into the future; its aspect has a depth, a truth of expression, irresistibly fascinating to the spectator. In this figure--half statue, half mountain-- we see a wonderful majesty, a grand serenity, and even a sort of sweetness of expression."

GLa.s.s MANUFACTURE.--The manufacture of gla.s.s, a discovery usually attributed to the Phoenicians, [Footnote: The Phoenicians, being the carriers of antiquity, often received credit among the peoples with whom they traded, for various inventions and discoveries of which they were simply the disseminators.] was carried on in Egypt more than four thousand years ago. The paintings of the monuments represent gla.s.s-blowers moulding all manner of articles. Gla.s.s bottles, and various other objects of the same material, are found in great numbers in the tombs. Some of these objects show that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with processes of coloring gla.s.s that secured results which we have not yet been able to equal. The Egyptian artists imitated, with marvellous success, the variegated hues of insects and stones. The manufacture of precious gems, so like the natural stone as to defy detection, was a lucrative profession.

THE PAPYRUS PAPER.--The chief writing material used by the ancient Egyptians was the noted papyrus paper, manufactured from a reed which grew in the marshes and along the water-channels of the Nile. From the Greek names of this Egyptian plant, _byblos_ and _papyrus_, come our words "Bible" and "paper." The plant has now entirely disappeared from Egypt, and is found only on the Anapus, in the island of Sicily, and on a small stream near Jaffa, in Palestine. Long before the plant became extinct in Egypt an ancient prophecy had declared, "The paper reeds by the brooks ... shall wither, be driven away, and be no more." (Isa. xix. 7.) The costly nature of the papyrus paper led to the use of many subst.i.tutes for writing purposes--as leather, broken pottery, tiles, stones, and wooden tablets.

FORMS OF WRITING.--The Egyptians employed three forms of writing: the _hieroglyphical_, consisting of rude pictures of material objects, usually employed in monumental inscriptions; the _hieratic_, an abbreviated or rather simplified form of the hieroglyphical, adapted to writing, and forming the greater part of the papyrus ma.n.u.scripts; and the _demotic_, or _encorial_, a still simpler form than the hieratic. The last did not come into use till about the seventh century B.C., and was then used for all ordinary doc.u.ments, both of a civil and commercial nature. It could be written eight or ten times as fast as the hieroglyphical form.

KEY TO EGYPTIAN WRITING.--The key to the Egyptian writing was discovered by means of the Rosetta Stone. This valuable relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription, written in hieroglyphic, in demotic, and in Greek characters. Champollion, a French scholar, by comparing the characters composing the words Ptolemy, Alexander, and other names in the parallel inscriptions, discovered the value of several of the symbols; and thus were opened the vast libraries of Egyptian learning.

We have now the Ritual, or Book, of the Dead, a sort of guide to the soul in its journey through the underworld; romances, and fairy tales, among which is "Cinderella and the Gla.s.s Slipper"; autobiographies, letters, fables, and epics; treatises on medicine, astronomy, and various other scientific subjects; and books on history--in prose and verse--which fully justify the declaration of the Egyptian priests to Solon: "You Greeks are mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing at all of the past."

ASTRONOMY, GEOGRAPHY AND ARITHMETIC.--The cloudless and brilliant skies of Egypt invited the inhabitants of the Nile valley to the study of the heavenly bodies. And another circ.u.mstance closely related to their very existence, the inundation of the Nile, following the changing cycles of the stars, could not but have incited them to the watching and predicting of astronomical movements. Their observations led them to discover the length, very nearly, of the sidereal year, which they made to consist of 365 days, every fourth year adding one day, making the number for that year 366. They also divided the year into twelve months of thirty days each, adding five days to complete the year. This was the calendar that Julius Caesar introduced into the Roman Empire, and which, slightly reformed by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, has been the system employed by almost all the civilized world up to the present day.

The Greeks accounted for the early rise of the science of geometry among the Egyptians by reference to the necessity they were under each year of re-establis.h.i.+ng the boundaries of their fields--the inundation obliterating old landmarks and divisions. The science thus forced upon their attention was cultivated with zeal and success. A single papyrus has been discovered that holds twelve geometrical theorems.

Arithmetic was necessarily brought into requisition in solving astronomical and geometrical problems. We ourselves are debtors to the ancient Egyptians for much of our mathematical knowledge, which has come to us from the banks of the Nile, through the Greeks and the Saracens.

MEDICINE AND THE ART OF EMBALMING.--The custom of embalming the dead, affording opportunities for the examination of the body, without doubt had a great influence upon the development of the sciences of anatomy and medicine among the Egyptians. That the embalmers were physicians, we know from various testimonies. Thus we are told in the Bible that Joseph "commanded the _physicians_ to embalm his father." The Egyptian doctors had a very great reputation among the ancients.

Every doctor was a specialist, and was not allowed to take charge of cases outside of his own branch. As the artist was forbidden to change the lines of the sacred statues, so the physician was not permitted to treat cases save in the manner prescribed by the customs of the past; and if he were so presumptuous as to depart from the established mode of treatment, and the patient died, he was adjudged guilty of murder. Many drugs and medicines were used; the ciphers, or characters, employed by modern apothecaries to designate grains and drams are of Egyptian invention.

The Egyptians believed that after a long lapse of time, several thousand years, the departed soul would return to earth and reanimate its former body; hence their custom of preserving the body by means of embalmment. In the processes of embalming, the physicians made use of oils, resin, bitumen, and various aromatic gums. The body was swathed in bandages of linen, while the face was sometimes gilded, or covered with a gold mask.

As this, which was the "most approved method" of embalming, was very costly, the expense being equivalent probably to $1000 of our money, the bodies of the poorer cla.s.ses were simply "salted and dried," wrapped in coa.r.s.e mats, and laid in tiers in great trenches in the desert sands.