History Of Ancient Civilization Part 2

=The Accounts of Herodotus.=--Egypt was better known to the Greeks than the rest of the Orient. Herodotus had visited it in the fifth century B.C. He describes in his History the inundations of the Nile, the manners, costume, and religion of the people; he recounts events of their history and tales which his guides had told him. Diodorus and Strabo also speak of Egypt. But all had seen the country in its decadence and had no knowledge of the ancient Egyptians.

=Champollion.=--The French expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) opened the country to scholars. They made a close examination of the Pyramids and ruins of Thebes, and collected drawings and inscriptions. But no one could decipher the hieroglyphs, the Egyptian writing. It was an erroneous impression that every sign in this writing must each represent a word. In 1821 a French scholar, Champollion, experimented with another system. An official had reported that there was an inscription at Rosetta in three forms of writing--parallel with the hieroglyphs was a translation in Greek. The name of King Ptolemy, was surrounded with a cartouche.[8] Champollion succeeded in finding in this name the letters P, T, O, L, M, I, S. Comparing these with other names of kings similarly enclosed, he found the whole alphabet. He then read the hieroglyphs and found that they were written in a language like the Coptic, the language spoken in Egypt at the time of the Romans, and which was already known to scholars.

=Egyptologists.=--Since Champollion, many scholars have travelled over Egypt and have ransacked it thoroughly. We call these students Egyptologists, and they are to be found in every country of Europe. A French Egyptologist, Mariette (1821-1881), made some excavations for the Viceroy of Egypt and created the museum of Boulak. France has established in Cairo a school of Egyptology, directed by Maspero.

=Discoveries.=--Not every country yields such rich discoveries as does Egypt. The Egyptians constructed their tombs like houses, and laid in them objects of every kind for the use of the dead--furniture, garments, arms, and edibles. The whole country was filled with tombs similarly furnished. Under this extraordinarily dry climate everything has been preserved; objects come to light intact after a burial of 4,000 or 5,000 years. No people of antiquity have left so many traces of themselves as the Egyptians; none is better known to us.

THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE

=Antiquity of the Egyptian People.=--An Egyptian priest said to Herodotus, "You Greeks are only children." The Egyptians considered themselves the oldest people of the world. Down to the Persian conquest (520[9] B.C.) there were twenty-six dynasties of kings. The first ran back 4,000 years,[10] and during these forty centuries Egypt had been an empire. The capital down to the tenth dynasty (the period of the Old Empire) was at Memphis in Lower Egypt, later, in the New Empire, at Thebes in Upper Egypt.

=Memphis and the Pyramids.=--Memphis, built by the first king of Egypt, was protected by an enormous dike. The village has existed for more than five thousand years; but since the thirteenth century the inhabitants have taken the stones of its ruins to build the houses of Cairo; what these people left the Nile recaptured. The Pyramids, not far from Memphis, are contemporaneous with the old empire; they are the tombs of three kings of the fourth dynasty. The greatest of the pyramids, 480 feet high, required the labor of 100,000 men for thirty years.[11] To raise the stones for it they built gradually ascending platforms which were removed when the structure was completed.

=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; they had an organized religion, a king, and an administration.

=Thebes.=--At the eleventh dynasty Thebes succeeds Memphis as capital.

The ruins of Thebes are still standing. They are marvellous, extending as they do on both banks of the Nile, with a circuit of about seven miles. On the left bank there is a series of palaces and temples which lead to vast cemeteries. On the right bank two villages, Luxor and Karnak, distant a half-hour one from the other, are built in the midst of the ruins. They are united by a double row of sphinxes, which must have once included more than 1,000 of these monuments. Among these temples in ruins the greatest was the temple of Ammon at Karnak. It was surrounded by a wall of over one and one-third miles in length; the famous Hall of Columns, the greatest in the world, had a length of 334 feet, a width of 174 feet,[12] and was supported by 134 columns; twelve of these are over 65 feet high. Thebes was for 1,500 years the capital and sacred city, the residence of kings and the dwelling-place of the priests.

=The Pharaoh.=--The king of Egypt, called Pharaoh, was esteemed as the son of the Sun-G.o.d and his incarnation on earth; divinity was ascribed to him also. We may see in a picture King Rameses II standing in adoration before the divine Rameses who is sitting between two G.o.ds.

The king as man adores himself as G.o.d. Being G.o.d, the Pharaoh has absolute power over men; as master, he gives his orders to his great n.o.bles at court, to his warriors, to all his subjects. But the priests, though adoring him, surround and watch him; their head, the high priest of the G.o.d Ammon, at last becomes more powerful than the king; he often governs under the name of the king and in his stead.

=The Subjects of Pharaoh.=--The king, the priests, the warriors, the n.o.bles, are proprietors of all Egypt; all the other people are simply their peasants who cultivate the land for them. Scribes in the service of the king watch them and collect the farm-dues, often with blows of the staff. One of these functionaries writes as follows to a friend, "Have you ever pictured to yourself the existence of the peasant who tills the soil. The tax-collector is on the platform busily seizing the t.i.the of the harvest. He has his men with him armed with staves, his negroes provided with strips of palm. All cry, 'Come, give us grain,' If the peasant hasn't it, they throw him full length on the earth, bind him, draw him to the ca.n.a.l, and hurl him in head foremost."

=Despotism.=--The Egyptian people has always been, and still is, gay, careless, gentle, docile as an infant, always ready to submit to tyranny. In this country the cudgel was the instrument of education and of government. "The young man," said the scribes, "has a back to be beaten; he hears when he is struck." "One day," says a French traveller, "finding myself before the ruins of Thebes, I exclaimed, 'But how did they do all this?' My guide burst out laughing, touched me on the arm and, showing me a palm, said to me, 'Here is what they used to accomplish all this. You know, sir, with 100,000 branches of palms split on the backs of those who always have their shoulders bare, you can build many a palace and some temples to boot.'"

=Isolation of the Egyptians.=--The Egyptians moved but little beyond their borders. As the sea inspired them with terror, they had no commerce and did not trade with other peoples. They were not at all a military nation. Their kings, it is true, often went on expeditions at the head of mercenaries either against the negroes of Ethiopia or against the tribes of Syria. They gained victories which they had painted on the walls of their palaces, they brought back troops of captives whom they used in building monuments; but they never made great conquests. Foreigners came more to Egypt than Egyptians went abroad.

=Religion of the Egyptians.=--"The Egyptians," said Herodotus, "are the most religious of all men." We do not know any people so devout; almost all their paintings represent men in prayer before a G.o.d; almost all their ma.n.u.scripts are religious books.

=Egyptian G.o.ds.=--The princ.i.p.al deity is a Sun-G.o.d, creator, beneficent, "who knows all things, who exists from the beginning."

This G.o.d has a divine wife and son. All the Egyptians adored this trinity; but not all gave it the same name. Each region gave a different name to these three G.o.ds. At Memphis they called the father Phtah, the mother Sekhet, the son Imouthes; at Abydos they called them Osiris, Isis, and Horus; at Thebes, Ammon, Mouth, and Chons. Then, too, the people of one province adopted the G.o.ds of other provinces.

Further, they made other G.o.ds emanate from each G.o.d of the trinity.

Thus the number of G.o.ds was increased and religion was complicated.

=Osiris.=--These G.o.ds have their history; it is that of the sun; for the sun appeared to the Egyptians, as to most of the primitive peoples, the mightiest of beings, and consequently a G.o.d. Osiris, the sun, is slain by Set, G.o.d of the night; Isis, the moon, his wife, bewails and buries him; Horus, his son, the rising sun, avenges him by killing his murderer.

=Ammon-ra.=--Ammon-ra, G.o.d of Thebes, is represented as traversing heaven each day in a bark ("the good bark of millions of years"); the shades of the dead propel it with long oars; the G.o.d stands at the prow to strike the enemy with his lance. The hymn which they chanted in his honor is as follows: "Homage to thee; thou watchest favoringly, thou watchest truly, O master of the two horizons.... Thou treadest the heavens on high, thine enemies are laid low. The heaven is glad, the earth is joyful, the G.o.ds unite in festal cheer to render glory to Ra when they see him rising in his bark after he has overwhelmed his enemies. O Ra, give abounding life to Pharaoh, bestow bread for his hunger (belly), water for his throat, perfumes for his hair."

=Animal-Headed G.o.ds.=--The Egyptians often represented their G.o.ds with human form, but more frequently under the form of a beast. Each G.o.d has his animal: Phtah incarnates himself in the beetle, Horus in the hawk, Osiris in the bull. The two figures often unite in a man with the head of an animal or an animal with the head of a man. Every G.o.d may be figured in four forms: Horus, for example, as a man, a hawk, as man with the head of a hawk, as a hawk with the head of a man.

=Sacred Animals.=--What did the Egyptians wish to designate by this symbol? One hardly knows. They, themselves, came to regard as sacred the animals which served to represent the G.o.ds to them: the bull, the beetle, the ibis, the hawk, the cat, the crocodile. They cared for them and protected them. A century before the Christian era a Roman citizen killed a cat at Alexandria; the people rose in riot, seized him, and, notwithstanding the entreaties of the king, murdered him, although at the same time they had great fear of the Romans. There was in each temple a sacred animal which was adored. The traveller Strabo records a visit to a sacred crocodile of Thebes: "The beast," said he, "lay on the edge of a pond, the priests drew near, two of them opened his mouth, a third thrust in cakes, grilled fish, and a drink made with meal."

=The Bull Apis.=--Of these animal G.o.ds the most venerated was the bull Apis. It represented at once Osiris and Phtah and lived at Memphis in a chapel served by the priests. After its death it became an Osiris (Osar-hapi), it was embalmed, and its mummy deposited in a vault. The sepulchres of the "Osar-hapi" const.i.tuted a gigantic monument, the Serapeum, discovered in 1851 by Marietta.

=Cult of the Dead.=--The Egyptians adored also the spirits of the dead. They seem to have believed at first that every man had a "double" (Ka), and that when the man was dead his double still survived. Many savage peoples believe this to this day. The Egyptian tomb in the time of the Old Empire was termed "House of the Double."

It was a low room arranged like a chamber, where for the service of the double there were placed all that he required, chairs, tables, beds, chests, linen, closets, garments, toilet utensils, weapons, sometimes a war-chariot; for the entertainment of the double, statues, paintings, books; for his sustenance, grain and foods. And then they set there a double of the dead in the form of a statue in wood or stone carved in his likeness. At last the opening to the vault was sealed; the double was enclosed, but the living still provided for him. They brought him foods or they might beseech a G.o.d that he supply them to the spirit, as in this inscription, "An offering to Osiris that he may confer on the Ka of the deceased N. bread, drink, meat, geese, milk, wine, beer, clothing, perfumes--all good things and pure on which the G.o.d (_i.e._ the Ka) subsists."

=Judgment of the Soul.=--Later, originating with the eleventh dynasty, the Egyptians believed that the soul flew away from the body and sought Osiris under the earth, the realm into which the sun seemed every day to sink. There Osiris sits on his tribunal, surrounded by forty-two judges; the soul appears before these to give account of his past life. His actions are weighed in the balance of truth, his "heart" is called to witness. "O heart," cries the dead, "O heart, the issue of my mother, my heart when I was on earth, offer not thyself as witness, charge me not before the great G.o.d." The soul found on examination to be bad is tormented for centuries and at last annihilated. The good soul springs up across the firmament; after many tests it rejoins the company of the G.o.ds and is absorbed into them.

=Mummies.=--During this pilgrimage the soul may wish to re-enter the body to rest there. The body must therefore be kept intact, and so the Egyptians learned to embalm it. The corpse was filled with spices, drenched in a bath of natron, wound with bandages and thus transformed into a mummy. The mummy encased in a coffin of wood or plaster was laid in the tomb with every provision necessary to its life.

=Book of the Dead.=--A book was deposited with the mummy, the Book of the Dead, which explains what the soul ought to say in the other world when it makes its defence before the tribunal of Osiris: "I have never committed fraud; ... I have never vexed the widow; ... I have never committed any forbidden act; ... I have never been an idler; ... I have never taken the slave from his master; ... I never stole the bread from the temples; ... I never removed the provisions or the bandages of the dead; I never altered the grain measure; ... I never hunted sacred beasts; I never caught sacred fish; ... I am pure; ... I have given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; I have sacrificed to the G.o.ds, and offered funeral feasts to dead." Here we see Egyptian morality: observance of ceremonies, respect for everything pertaining to the G.o.ds, sincerity, honesty, and beneficence.

THE ARTS

=Industry.=--The Egyptians were the first to practice the arts necessary to a civilized people. From the first dynasty, 3,000[13]

years B.C., paintings on the tomb exhibit men working, sowing, harvesting, beating and winnowing grain; we have representations of herds of cattle, sheep, geese, swine; of persons richly clothed, processions, feasts where the harp is played--almost the same life that we behold 3,000 years later. As early as this time the Egyptians knew how to manipulate gold, silver, bronze; to manufacture arms and jewels, gla.s.s, pottery, and enamel; they wove garments of linen and wool, and cloths, transparent or embroidered with gold.

=Architecture.=--They were the oldest artists of the world. They constructed enormous monuments which appear to be eternal, for down to the present, time has not been able to destroy them. They never built, as we do, for the living, but for the G.o.ds and for the dead, _i.e._, temples and tombs. Only a slight amount of debris is left of their houses, and even the palaces of their kings in comparison with the tombs appear, in the language of the Greeks, to be only inns. The house was to serve only for a lifetime, the tomb for eternity.

=Tombs.=--The Great Pyramid is a royal tomb. Ancient tombs ordinarily had this form. In Lower Egypt there still remain pyramids arranged in rows or scattered about, some larger, others smaller. These are the tombs of kings and n.o.bles. Later the tombs are constructed underground, some under earth, others cut into the granite of the hills. Each generation needs new ones, and therefore near the town of living people is built the richer and greater city of the dead (necropolis).

=Temples.=--The G.o.ds also required eternal and splendid habitations.

Their temples include a magnificent sanctuary, the dwelling of the G.o.d, surrounded with courts, gardens, chambers where the priests lodge, wardrobes for his jewels, utensils, and vestments. This combination of edifices, the work of many generations, is encircled with a wall. The temple of Ammon at Thebes had the labors of the kings of all the dynasties from the twelfth to the last. Ordinarily in front of the temple a great gate-way is erected, with inclined faces--the pylone. On either side of the entrance is an obelisk, a needle of rock with gilded point, or perhaps a colossus in stone representing a sitting giant. Often the approach to the temple is by a long avenue rimmed with sphinxes.

Pyramids, pylones, colossi, sphinxes, and obelisks characterize this architecture. Everything is ma.s.sive, compact, and, above all, immense.

Hence these monuments appear clumsy but indestructible.

=Sculpture.=--Egyptian sculptors began with imitating nature. The oldest statues are impressive for their life and freshness, and are doubtless portraits of the dead. Of this sort is the famous squatting scribe of the Louvre.[14] But beginning with the eleventh dynasty the sculptor is no longer free to represent the human body as he sees it, but must follow conventional rules fixed by religion. And so all the statues resemble one another--parallel legs, the feet joined, arms crossed on the breast, the figure motionless; the statues are often majestic, but always stiff and monotonous. Art has ceased to reproduce nature and is become a conventional symbol.

=Painting.=--The Egyptians used very solid colors; after 5,000 years they are still fresh and bright. But they were ignorant of coloring designs; they knew neither tints, shadows, nor perspective. Painting, like sculpture, was subject to religious rules and was therefore monotonous. If fifty persons were to be represented, the artist made them all alike.

=Literature.=--The literature of the Egyptians is found in the tombs--not only books of medicine, of magic and of piety, but also poems, letters, accounts of travels, and even romances.

=Destiny of the Egyptian Civilization.=--The Egyptians conserved their customs, religion, and arts even after the fall of their empire.

Subjects of the Persians, then the Greeks, and at last of the Romans, they kept their old usages, their hieroglyphics, their mummies and sacred animals. At last between the third and second centuries A.D., Egyptian civilization was slowly extinguished.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Following the curves of the stream.--ED.

[7] In some localities, _e.g._ Thebes, the flood is even higher.--ED.

[8] An enclosing case.

[9] 525 B.C.--ED.

[10] The chronology of early Egyptian history is uncertain. Civilization existed in this land much earlier than was formerly supposed.--ED.

[11] According to Petrie ("History of Egypt," New York, 1895, i., 40) _twenty years_ were consumed.--ED.

[12] Perrot and Chipiez ("History of Ancient Egyptian Art," London.

1883, i., 365) give 340 feet by 170.--ED.

[13] Probably much earlier than this.--ED.